Abstract
Based on an ethnography carried on for almost a decade in Japan, we described affects in the ethnographic experience. At first, we narrate episodes that highlight the feeling of inadequacy and incompleteness, centering the analysis on how the body as a personification of difference. We then describe the field work carried out by the first author among Brazilians in Japan, emphasizing how this group became marginalized in this country. We also reveal how alterity was constructed, both historically and at present, showing how this concept is blurred by the dominant State discourse on the “racial homogeneity of the Japanese people”. Moreover, we stress the effects of these discourses and practices on the ethnographer and on her interlocutor’s bodies. In conclusion, we emphasise a “lived theory” in the field of anthropology, which incorporates biographical elements and affects. This kind of anthropological approach can be therapeutic, because it includes theories and lived experience, but also the unrepresented knowledge and affects.
Key words:
Ethnography; Japan; Brazilian migrants; Affection; Lived theory