THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF EXPERIENCE .+ •+ EDITED BY VICTOR W. TURNER AND EDWARD M. BRUNER .+ •+ WITH AN EPILOGUE BY CLIFFORD GEERTZ UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS URBANA AND CHICAGO First paperback edition, 1986 1986 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois © Manufactured in the United States of America To Vic and Barbara P109 876 This book is printed on acidlree paper. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: The anthropology of experience. Includes index. Ethnology-Philosophy-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. \.Ethn ology-Methodology-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Symbolism-Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Humanities -Methodology-Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. Experience -Addresses, essays, lectures. Turner, Victor Witter. II. Bruner, Edward M. 1. GN345.A58 1986 306'.01 85- 1200 ISBN 0-252-01249-6 Digitally reprinted from the sixth paperback printing - Contents INTRODUCTION Experience and Its Expressions 3 1. EDWARD M. BRUNER PART ONE: The Concept of Experience 2. Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in 33 the Anthropology of Experience VICTOR TURNER W. 3. Ordinary and Extraordinary Experience 45 ROGER D. ABRAHAMS 4. Reflexivity as Evolution in Thoreau's ualden 73 FREDERICK TURNER PART TWO: Narrative 5. Ilongot Hunting as Story and Experience 97 RENATO ROSALDO 6. Ethnography as Narrative 139 EDWARD M. BRUNER PART THREE: Images 7. The Argument of Images and the Experience of Returning to the Whole 159 JAMES FERNANDEZ w. 8. Performance and the Structuring of Meaning and Experience 188 BRUCE KAPFERER -- PART FOUR: Reflexivity 9. Play and the Problem of Knowing in Hamlet: An Excursion into Interpretive Anthropology 207 PHYLLIS GORFAIN 10. Symbols, Sylphs, and Siwa: Allegorical Machineries in the Te xt of Balinese Culture 239 JAMES A. BOON II. "Life Not Death in Venice": I ts Second Life 261 BARBARA MYERHOFF Introduction PART FIVE: Enactments 12. Patronage and Control in the Trinidad Carnival 289 JOHN STEWART Modeled Selves: Helen Cordero's 13. "Little People" 316 BARBARA A. BABCOCK 14. Magnitudes of Performance 344 RICHARD SCHECHNER EPILOGUE 15. Making Experience, Authoring Selves 373 CLIFFORD GEERTZ Notes on Contributors 381 Index 385 po 1 Experience and I ts Expressions EDWARD M. BRUNER Victor Tu rner passed away in December 1983, while this volume was still in process of preparation. The idea fo r this collection of essays arose at a symposium on the anthropology of experience, organized by Victor, Barbara Myerhoff, and me, fo r the American Anthropological Association annual meeting in 1980. All of the participants in the symposium contributed papers, and additional contributions were solicited from James Fernandez, Frederick Tu rner, and Phyllis Gorfain to round out the volume by adding a humanistic perspective and a touch of humanistic elegance. Sub­ sequently, Victor and I used the manuscript as the basis fo r graduate seminars at the University of Virginia and the University of Illinois, affording us additional opportunities to think through key issues. Clifford Geertz, who had been a discussant at the AAA symposium, agreed to incorporate his comments and reflections on the project in an epilogue. The fo rmulation of an anthropology of experience belonged to Victor Tu rner. He wrote independently on the topic in 1982 and most of us view it as a continuation of his lifelong "rebellion against structural-functional orthodoxy, with its closed static model of social systems" (Babcock 1984:462). We also note his recognition in the late 1970s that anthropology was "withering on the structuralist vine," although he acknowledged then that the "neo-Kantian storm [had] almost abated." For Tu rner, however, t e immediate inspiration fo r an anthropology of experience de­ n�ved fr om the German thinker Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) and . hIs concept of an experience, Erlebnis, or what has been "lived through." Indeed, the revitalizing message that Dilthey offered 3 r The Anthropology of Experience Bruner: Introduction 5 4 presents us with a new anthropological ancestor, in the tradition out, experience comes to us not just verbally but also in images of the human sciences and hermeneutics, as opposed to the more and impressions. As social scientists we have long given too much fa miliar ancestral line of Emile Durkheim, A. R. Radcliffe -Brown, weight to verbalizations at the expense of visualizations, to lan­ and the many later varieties of French and British structuralism. guage at the expense of images. Lived experience, then, as thought This intl1oduction includes a brief discussion of Dilthey and and desire, as word and image, is the primary reality. his work, so that the reader may better appreciate the inspiration Experience, in our perspective, is not equivalent to the more that Victor Turner found there, and elaborates on Dilthey's key fa miliar concept of behavior. The latter implies an outside ob­ concepts of experience and expressions to highlight their an­ server describing someone else's actions, as if one were an audi­ thropological relevance, before turning to the essays themselves. ence to an event; it also implies a standardized routine that one Let me say at the outset that the reader will find no final answers simply goes through. An experience is more personal, as it refers or definitive paradigms here, no totally "new" anthropology, but to an active self, to a human being who not only engages in but rather a fu rther articulation of a growing trend to which many of shapes an action. We can have an experience but we cannot have the authors in this volume have contributed. In deciding on the a behavior; we describe the behavior of others but we characterize title of the volume, Victor and I chose "the anthropology of experi­ our own experience. It is not customary to say, "Let me tell you ence" for good reason-namely, it best captures what it is we have about my behavior"; rather, we tell about experiences, which in­ to say-but we did consider alternative titles that were indicative clude not only actions and fe elings but also reflections about those of the embeddedness of this work within anthropology. Among the actions and fe elings. The distinguishing criterion is that the com­ alternatives were "processual anthropology," which seemed too munication of experience tends to be self-referential. vague; "poststructural anthropology, " which implied that we were The difficulty with experience, however, is that we can only once structuralists or that structuralism is over, neither of which experience our own life , what is received by our own conscious­ is the case; "hermeneutic, or interpretive anthropology, " although ness. We can never know completely another's experiences, even the interpretive perspective has already become widely known and though we have many clues and make inferences all the time. accepted; and "symbolic anthropology, " although the papers do Others may be willing to share their experiences, but everyone not deal with the analysis of symbols as such, except in the censors or represses, or may not be fu lly aware of or able to articu­ gen­ eral sense that everything cultural is symbolic. In his epilogue late, certain aspects of what has been experienced. How, then, do Geertz uses the phrase "behavioral hermeneutics," which is ap­ we overcome the limitations of individual experience? Dilthey's pealing; however, our focus is more on experience, pragmatics, (1976:230) answer was that we "transcend the narrow sphere of practice, and performance. So, we decided to go with the an­ experience by interpreting expressions." By "interpreting" Dilthey thropology of experience. meant understanding, interpretation, and the methodology of her­ meneutics; by "expressions" he meant representations, perform­ ances, objectifications, or texts. For example, the expressions DILTHEY'S HERMENEUTICS analyzed by the contributors to this volume include theater, narra­ Dilthey (1976: 161) wrote that "reality only exists for us in the facts tives, hunting stories, revitalization movements, curing rites, mu­ of consciousness given by inner experience." What comes first is rals, parades, carnival, Thoreau's Uizlden, Shakespeare's Hamlet, experience. The anthropology of experience deals with how indi­ and Helen Cordero's pottery. Certainly a broad array, but viduals actually experience their culture, that is, how events are nonetheless expressions that are presented to us by the cultures received by consciousness. By experience we mean not just sense we study; they are what is given in social life. Expressions are data, cognition, or, in Dilthey's phrase, "the diluted juice of encapsulations of the experience of others, or as Tu rner (1982: 17) reason," but also feelings and expectations. As Fernandez points wrote, they are "the crystallized secretions of once living human experience." For Dilthey (1976: 175), we deal with the subject mat- r 6 The Anthropology of Experience Bruner: Introduction 7 ter of human studies, including anthropology, "when we experi­ periences are not storyable, or because we lack the perfo mative ence human states, give expressions to them, and understand . � and narrative resources, or because the vocabulary lackmg. As these expressions." Tu rner, in this volume, refers to Dilthey's dis­ we ourselves are telling others about an experience, weIS sometimes tinction between mere "experience" and "an experience": the lize, even as we speak, that our account does not fully encom­ fo rmer is received by consciousness, it is individual experience, rea pass all that we thought and fe lt during that experience. Every the temporal flow; the latter is the intersubjective articulation of anthropological fieldworker would readily acknowledge that the experience, which has a beginning and an ending and thus be­ accepted genres of anthropological expression-our fieldnotes, comes transformed into an expression. diaries, lectures, and professional publications-do not capture The relationship between experience and its expressions is al­ the richness or the complexity of our lived experience in the field. ways problematic and is one of the important research areas in There are inevitable gaps between reality, experience, and expres­ the anthropology of experience.