"Are you writing about the bear, about yourself, or about us?"

Kamchatka, August 2015. Anthropologist Nastassja Martin is attacked by a bear during her research trip. She survives the attack with a severe face injury. The bear, injured by a pick axe the author used to defend herself, runs back into the wild. After that, the healing process starts and the first year of it is described in Natassja's autobiographical book In the Eye of the Wild. The author describes how her wounds heal and how her world, split in half, the wild Kamchatka and the "Western civilisation", becomes one again. The story provides a very honest description of the author's inner conflict, embraces vulnerability and stresses how important it is to understand and explore the limits of what we describe as "human". How does an experience of radical difference translates into our native language and context? And what exactly is anthropology?

Season 49: End of Illusions