Auschwitz and the sensory dimensions of inquiry in pandemic times: a double absence

This article presents a reflexive ethnography of a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial museum in summer 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the singular experience of a site emptied of its visitors, the author examines the effects of a double absence—of both the dead and the living—on the production and transmission of historical knowledge. Rather than interrupting research, this absence becomes a heuristic lens for rethinking the anthropology of memory, the role of the senses in research, and the affective conditions of fieldwork. Drawing on an anthropology of the senses attentive to forms of invisibility, differed transmissions, and field subjectivities, this article examines the interplay of bodies, silence, material visit arrangements, and emotional socialization. Reflexivity here opens access to knowledge dynamics otherwise inaccessible.