Now you see it, now you don’t: methods for perceiving intersubjectivity

Abstract

What work is entailed in learning skills? How do processes of enskillment enable alternative ways of seeing, feeling and acting? How can we intersubjectively meet each other when deception is regarded as prevalent? This article addresses these questions through recounting my experiences associated with learning entertainment magic. I outline how the training of competencies can involve an ongoing problematising of the relationship between seeing and knowing as well as between knowledge and ignorance. Furthermore, through recounting the affirmations and disorientations of my process of learning, I want to consider how skills acquisition can serve as a method for self-other investigation.