ABSTRACT
How can ethnographers work over and work through things that they see that pertain to gestural repertoires? More specifically, how to grasp and work through gestures whose affect and effect should be properly characterized as uncanny, perturbing, discordant and indeterminate? The concept of the Pathosformel, formula for the expression of pathos, drawn from the work of historian of images Aby Warburg, is a conceptual tool for working through the aesthetic, ethical and narrative stakes of the confrontation with uncanny, haunting, disconcerting gestures.
