Realities of illusion: tracing an anthropology of the unreal from Torres Strait to virtual reality

This article examines how perceptual illusions become reliable markers of truth in the context of experimental psychology. As laboratory tools, illusions travel across time, place, and media: from the Torres Strait expedition at the close of the nineteenth century to a contemporary psychology lab that utilizes virtual reality. In this historical and ethnographic study, something that might otherwise be considered misleading (illusion) becomes an epistemological guide. Illusion takes on a reality and in so doing raises questions about what ought and ought not to be considered real. This research thus joins other anthropologies that expand what counts as ‘the real’. These anthropologies of the unreal are proliferating of late and breathe hope back into human and nonhuman futures by reconsidering what constitutes being in the world. The reality of illusion highlights a phenomenological position in which reality is the world as perceptually experienced. Further, as this investigation unfolds in the laboratory, it becomes clear that the unreal is not set apart from but incorporated into knowledge systems.