Dreams from a Saint: Anthropological Atheism and the Temptation to Believe

The anthropological taboo against "going native" is examined in the context of the ethnographer's own dreams during fieldwork among Sufi saints in Pakistan. The essay demonstrates that accounts of these dreams shaped social relations in the field and argues that relativist neutrality is a cover for a refusal to believe that is impossible to hide. This refusal constitutes an implicit insistence that the relationship between ethnographer and subject be shaped by the parameters of a hegemonic Western discourse of rationality.