ABSTRACT
Revisitation, or the ethnographic return to something one is initially repelled or expelled by in fieldwork, can serve as a solid basis for a worldly ethnography. This chapter outlines an example of how one secular humanist ethnographer used feminist new materialisms – particularly Donna Haraway's notion of companionism – to revisit her ethnographic work on Christian adoption as evangelism (adoptive evangelism); a world that she once felt so distant from, she thought she could/should never complete the project. Re-examining several of her original interviews, as well as archival, ethnographic, and image research into US adoptive evangelical campaigns, the chapter first thinks on the ‘world-making’ potential of Christian covenants for social actors involved in adoptive evangelism. The chapter also works on and through some ‘knottings’ of adoptive evangelism, including its environments, narratives, ethics, practices, and networks that justify and execute the large-scale circulation of children through adoption into evangelical communities in the US. It concludes by considering the world-making potential of revisitation research itself, especially those aspects that allow the ethnographer to connect and share worlds with others when one feels otherworldly. Ultimately, the chapter is a thought experiment on how revisitation – and its concomitant interruptions – invite us to play with ethnography as an auto-inclusive intersection of worldly subjects and objects. This, for all its sins, extends the form as an utterly human practice.
