The Introduction presents the book’s general argument. It describes the main objectives and central themes related to the conceptualization of not-knowing. It argues for an anthropology of that which remains nameless in anthropology, lost in the gaps between culture, structure, and process. Not-knowing refers to the difficulty of accounting for certain intense individual and collective experiences that often arise in ritual, spiritual, and religious contexts and, in many ways, defy any attempt at complete rationalization. It deals with situations in which meaning is broken, forcing anthropologists to think beyond reason. It describes how an otherness of a radical nature unfolds before the anthropologist’s gaze, both in its experiential dimension and ethnographic and argumentative construction, as well as the discipline´s blind spots. The Introduction also describes the book’s structure, the organization of each chapter, and its contribution to anthropology.

Chapter 2 analyzes the concept of not-knowing through various anthropological and philosophical perspectives. It examines how culture addresses the boundaries of knowledge and what transcends rationality. A crucial aspect of this discussion is the notion of blind spots, which connect to extreme experiences of alterity, and which are often challenging to describe ethnographically. The blind spot encompasses a wide range of knowledge-generating structures, including the natural sciences, but also, and particularly, the humanities, literature, and theology. The latter has, ironically, transformed its blind spot into a historically intricate discursive form – negative theology. The chapter contends that this theology of unsaying provides a platform for exploring diverse processes of not-knowing within religious contexts.