Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance 9780857450371

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

VICTOR TURNER AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL PERFORMANCE

{

edited by Graham St John

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First edition published in 2008 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2008 Graham St John

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Victor Turner and contemporary cultural performance / edited by Graham St John — 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-84545-462-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Turner, Victor Witter. 2. Ethnology—Philosophy. 3. Symbolic anthropology. 4. Performing arts—Social aspects. 5. Popular culture. 6. Theater and society. 7. Rites and ceremonies. 8. Pilgrimage. I. St. John, Graham, 1968– GN345.V53 2008 306.48—dc22 2008007613

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN: 978-1-84545-462-3 hardback

Acknowledgements

{ This volume is dedicated to Victor Turner, whose life’s work provided the inspiration for this collection and the various contributions to it. May the work of this “incursive nomad” continue to inspire future generations of anthropologists and scholars in other disciplines. The book would not have been completed without support from the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, where Graham St John was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from January 2003 to December 2005. He is grateful to the Centre’s director Graeme Turner for continuing support and to Centre manager Andrea Mitchell for her excellent and most kind assistance. The School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is also owed thanks for its support during in 2006/07, when Graham was hosted as a Social Science Research Council Research Fellow and SAR Resident Scholar.

Contents

{ Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance: An Introduction Graham St John

1

Part I: Performing Culture: Ritual, Drama, and Media 1. Toward a Unified Theory of Cultural Performance: A Reconstructive Introduction to Victor Turner J Lowell Lewis 2. The Ritualization of Performance (Studies) Ian Maxwell 3. Performing “Sorry Business”: Reconciliation and Redressive Action Michael Cohen, Paul Dwyer, and Laura Ginters

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4. Liminality in Media Studies: From Everyday Life to Media Events 94 Mihai Coman 5. Social Drama in a Mediatized World: The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence Simon Cottle

109

Part II: Popular Culture and Rites of Passage 6. Modern Sports: Liminal Ritual or Liminoid Leisure? Sharon Rowe 7. Trance Tribes and Dance Vibes: Victor Turner and Electronic Dance Music Culture Graham St John

vii

127

149

viii

Contents

8. Backpacking as a Contemporary Rite of Passage: Victor Turner and Youth Travel Practices Amie Matthews

174

9. Walking to Hill End with Victor Turner: A Theater-Making Immersion Event Gerard Boland

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Part III: Contemporary Pilgrimage and Communitas 10. Of Ordeals and Operas: Reflexive Ritualizing at the Burning Man Festival Lee Gilmore

211

11. “Shopping For A Self”: Pilgrimage, Identity-Formation, and Retail Therapy Carole M Cusack and Justine Digance

227

12. Turner Meets Gandhi: Pilgrimage, Ritual and the Diffusion of Nonviolent Direct Action Sean Scalmer

242

13. Dramas, Fields, and “Appropriate Education”: The Ritual Process, Contestation, and Communitas for Parents of Special-Needs Children Margi Nowak

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Part IV: Edith Turner 14. An Interview with Edith Turner Matthew Engelke

275

15. Woman/women in “the Discourse of Man”: Edie Turner and Victor Turner’s Language of the Feminine Barbara A Babcock

297

16. Faith and Social Science: Contrasting Victor and Edith Turner’s Analyses of Spiritual Realities Douglas Ezzy

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17. Challenging the Boundaries of Experience, Performance, and Consciousness: Edith Turner’s Contributions to the Turnerian Project Jill Dubisch

324

Contents

ix

Contributor Biographies

338

Select Bibliography

344

Index

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance: An Introduction Graham St John

{ It will take many more lifetimes to trace out the multifarious and interconnecting ramifications of the stupendous interdisciplinary web of ideas that [Victor Turner] spun endlessly out of himself. Barbara A. Babcock (1984: 461)

Held by Edward Bruner (1993: 332f.) to be the “archetype of the creative spirit in anthropology,” a prolific contributor to the anthropology of ritual, symbols, and performance, Victor Turner died in 1983 at the age of 63. Yet, as countless graduates and scholars maintained interest in the interstices and margins of (post)modern culture, applying and reworking Turner’s cultural processualism in explorations of manifold cultural performances, his legacy continued, and endures still. Inspired by the results of field research conducted with wife Edith Turner on the rituals of the Ndembu of northwestern Zambia, and by the post-African scholarship, cultural anthropologists, literary theorists and other social and cultural researchers have explored the subjunctive, reflexive, and communal dimensions of the limen, that experiential “realm of pure possibility” apparent from “ritual to theatre” and beyond. In the twenty years following his death, interventions on the interconnected performance modes of play, drama, and community, and experimental and analytical forays into the study of ritual and the anthropologies of experience and consciousness (including that conducted by Edith Turner), have complemented and extended Turnerian readings on the moments and sites of culture’s becoming. This volume plays host to wide-ranging applications of Turnerian thought in the twenty-first century. Here I provide an extended 1

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introduction to Turner’s work before discussing the impact of Turnerian thought and outlining the chapters in this collection. Turner’s ethnographic method—what he called “comparative symbology”—was shaped by a uniquely poetic sensibility. Few anthropologists, especially those writing between the 1950s and 1980s, made observations on the social relations of their research fields or developed theory with declarations from Prospero, the poetry of Rilke and the work of Melville or in the light of Kierkegaard’s philosophy of paradox. Yet this was the hallmark of Glasgow-born Victor Turner, who, prior to entering the Manchester School of British Social Anthropology under Max Gluckman, had studied poetry and classics at University College, London from 1938 to 1941, and was himself a poet and, variously, a Marxist, Catholic, processualist, mystic (see E. Turner 1985b; 1990). While his undergraduate studies in the classics were disrupted by the war, a passion for literature assisted, perhaps compelled, a strategy of repeatedly pulling away from structural-functionalism and the Marxist anthropological script he inherited at Manchester1 to embrace a more “intuitive” and processual approach to ritual and symbols. A self-proclaimed “incursive nomad” (1974: 18) who taught Blake and Dante alongside anthropological theory, who was renowned for his charismatic oratory in lecture halls around the world (but particularly in the US, where Turner would spend much of his working life), and whose “refusal to abandon the empiricist creed while contributing mightily to the hermeneutic turn” (Frank Manning cited in E Turner 1992b: x), Victor Turner made a prodigious impact across a spectrum of disciplines: from anthropology, sociology, history, and religious and theological studies, to cultural, literary, media, and performance studies, to neurobiology and behavioral studies.2 As a tireless interdisciplinarian, Turner was instrumental in the formation of ritual studies, a subject upon which he is recognized as the last to “elicit a wide consensus” (Grimes 1995: xvii). One of the principal reasons for this was that while carrying forward the Durkheimian understanding of “ritual” as an efficacious socioreligious phenomenon serving to transfer individuals/groups from the “profane” to the “sacred,” Turner understood symbols, ritual, and indeed religion as processes in which individuals and collectivities were wholly engaged. “After many years as an agnostic and monistic materialist,” he declared, “I learned from the Ndembu that ritual and its symbols are not merely epiphenomena or disguises of deeper social and psychological processes, but have ontological value” (1975: 31–32; also see 1974: 57). Experimental theater practitioner and leading performance studies proponent Richard Schechner owed a substantial debt to Turner. Indeed, a fruitful exchange developed between the two: while the literary and dramatic arts had become fertile conceptual material for Turner, anthropological mod-

Introduction

3

els of ritual would assist comprehension of theater and other performance genres, a dialogue that proved critical to the formation of performance studies (see McKenzie 2001: 36) and indeed, what Ian Maxwell (this volume) calls the “ritualization of performance theory.” This dialogue was particularly evident in Turner’s From Ritual to Theatre (1982a) and Schechner’s Between Theatre and Anthropology (1985). Schechner was interested in Turner’s “geneaology of performance,” possibly best articulated in the material presented in a lecture delivered at Smith College in 1982 and published as “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” (1985g). This was perhaps the closest to a condensation of ideas, which otherwise lay scattered—often half-unpacked and revealing what Schechner (1987b: 7) referred to as a characteristic “unfinishedness”—within numerous research articles and published compilations of essays and lectures, including those (re)published posthumously by Schechner (1987a) and Edith Turner (1985a; 1992a).3 Trespassing disciplinary boundaries with tireless enthusiasm, Turner rarely paused to galvanize his ideas into a transparent theoretical model. Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, he remarked that academic clarity “is the last refuge of the Philistines” (Babcock and MacAloon 1987: 19). While an aggregated model was hardly Turner’s style, and while there is no operator’s manual available for students, key ideas and trends are evident. Comparing Theodor Gaster’s approach to ritual theory with Turner’s, Ron Grimes (1976: 19) identifies a “Janus-like” character to Turner’s work, arguing that methodologically he faced, on the one hand, “towards semantics and semiotics . . . and political anthropology or ‘processualism’, on the other.” There is an indelible complexity to Turner’s contribution with which students of ritual and religion have long struggled. But while Turner “tacked” like a “sailboat beating upwind” (E. Turner 1985b: 8) into drama, away from the earlier emersion in the semantic complexity of ritual, process and action appears to have been at the helm all along. Turner strove to grasp and reveal how society (symbols, conflicts, performance) is actually lived by its members, how symbolic units, social “fields” and aesthetic genres condense, evoke, and channel meaning and emotion. The path-breaking analysis of the “bipolar” (sensorial and ideological) character of symbols enabled understanding of how ritual constitutes a “mechanism that periodically converts the obligatory into the desirable” (1967b: 30), and how, for instance, healing cults like those documented in The Drums of Affliction (1968) were affective and transformative. His work would eventually convey a fascination with the way sociocultural “structures” are produced or reproduced— the formed, performed. And rather than pursue structural-functionalist or depth psychological anlyses of such processes, a concern with the experiential dimensions of symbolic action became paramount, an “anthropology

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of experience” that would account for the way rituals—and later ritual-like, or perhaps “rituoid” (F. Turner 1990: 152) performances—are critical to the reflexive (re)production of culture (not simply reflecting/expressing culture/ myth, or evidence of ‘cultural defense mechanisms’). In this approach, meaning would be found in temporalized “structures of experience” (the Erlibnise of German philosopher Wilhem Dilthey) rather than formal categories of thought (the “dualistic rigormortis” of the Lévi-Straussians [V. Turner 1982b: 21]). Religion was found in human action, in the expression of experience, and what would become the study of performance and experience “was like catching the electron in motion” (E. Turner 1985b: 11; see also V. Turner 1985d). Since “normal social science” ignored “at least one half of human sociality,” Turner sought to gaze upon interstices that “provide homes for anti-structural visions, thoughts and ultimately behaviours” (1974: 293f.). As outlined in The Ritual Process (1969), society is the product of the dialectical historical relationship between “structure” (society’s status and role differentiation, behavioral norms and cognitive rules) and “antistructure” (those regions of experience in culture—outside, in between, and below structure), between the “fixed” and “floating worlds” (1969: vii, 201), corresponding to “indicative” and “subjunctive moods” (1984: 21). While Turner has been referred to as a “post-functionalist” (Flanigan 1990: 52), his scheme more accurately reveals a structural processualism (itself conveying a sophisticated functionalism). That such floating worlds were necessary sources of resolution (or redress) is at the heart of this perspective. The explorations in his later work beyond, beneath, and between the fixed, the finished, and the predictable constitutes an extensive journey into such performative moments and spaces, pregnant margins, the cracks of society, necessary thresholds of dissolution through which sociocultural order is said to be (re)constituted. The processual project recognizes that society is in-composition, openended, becoming, and that its (re)production is dependent upon the periodic appearance, in the history of societies and in the lives of individuals, of organized moments of categorical disarray and intense reflexive potential. These moments were, of course, “liminal,” a term rooted in the Latin limen (threshold) used by Arnold van Gennep (1960) to describe the central phase in his tripartite rites of passage model (separation, transition, reincorporation). Van Gennep’s concept enabled a heuristic for concrete symbolic social action resonating with the world literature to which Turner was exposed. Thus he had subconsciously recognized rites of passage in the shipwreck on Caliban’s Island, in Rosalind’s sojourn in the forest of Arden, in the quest for the whale, Moby Dick, in the passage from guilt to redemption in Crime and Punishment, in Oedipus at Colonnus. . . . In the journey of the Pandava brothers in the Ma-

Introduction

5

habharata, in Sita’s kidnapping and rescue in Ramayana, in Tolkien’s quest for the ring, in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia, in Jack Kerouac and his beats in On the Road, in unending passage from one place to another in many of the No plays of Japan, each enacting the passage through violent earthly concerns to Nirvana— let alone Mary Poppins and countless children’s stories with the theme of passage to adulthood (E. Turner 1990: 167).

Excavating and reapplying this rich resonant concept, Turner understood the limen to constitute a universally potent temporality, a “realm of pure possibility” (1967c: 97), a temporary breach of structure whereby the familiar may be stripped of certitude and the normative unhinged, an interlude wherein conventional social, economic, and political life may be transcended. A condition of growth and potential novelty in which individuals, societies, and cultures are periodically implicated, liminality would become the leitmotif in Turner’s philosophy. Significantly, liminal conditions would be “provisional of a cultural means of generating variability, as well as of ensuring the continuity of proved values and norms” (1985b: 162). Not a “distorting mirror” or a “cloak” for the operations of capital (as dialectical materialists might have had it), antistructural liminality was said to “generate and store a plurality of alternative models for living, from utopias to programs, which are capable of influencing the behaviour of those in mainstream social and political roles . . . in the direction of radical change, just as much as they can serve as instruments of political control” (1982b: 33). Thus the limen would be culture’s revolving door—a framework enabling the possibility of more than one exit, a protostructural domain where the abandonment of form, the dissolution of fixed categories, and the licensed approximation of a ludic sensibility or “subjunctive mood”—the mood of were, in “if I were you” (1984: 20f.)—enables re-creation. Transitional rites would carry “the essence” of liminality since, in these primitive novelty rides liminars may be androgynous, at once ghosts and babies, cultural and natural, or human and animal (1977: 37). And since liminality is essentially an arena of recombinant indeterminacy, “a fructile chaos, a storehouse of possibility” (1986: 42), it was understood to be “‘the realm of primitive hypothesis’ (Turner and Turner 1982: 205). As Turner’s career became an exercise in enunciating and unpacking this realm, elaborating on the limen’s diverse manifestations and implications for diverse audiences, several themes are notable.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DRAMA “Drama,” as Edith Turner noted about her late husband, “was in his blood.” Victor’s mother, an actress, rehearsed lines in front of his high chair: “His

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

head was full of lines and verses of poetry. . . . He was reared on Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Shaw, Flecker, Ibsen” (E. Turner 1985b: 5). And an enduring fascination with the Icelandic Sagas, Greek tragedies, and Elizabethan stage dramas forms a prologue to the configuration of ritual. While the “form” of social process was identified as agonistic or “dramatic,” as is outlined in research on the role of ritual in Ndembu conflict resolution and in affliction cults (notably 1957, but also 1968 and 1975), the redressive nature of such social processes found cultural form in the whole spectrum of performance genres. With their phases of “breach,” “conflict,” “redress,” “resolution,” and/or “schism,” “social dramas”—such as those apparent in Zambian villages, Brazilian Umbandistas and scandals contemporaneous with Turner’s life in the US (such as Watergate)—are given the light of reflexive attention in “cultural dramas.” And these performances—from rites and festivals to sports events, theater, film, and television, and indeed literature—in turn provide fuel for renewed social drama. Life and art would imitate each other according to a perpetual cultural feedback mechanism (1985g). The redressive phase in the life of social drama is seen to have evolved as a “eufunctional” attribute of aesthetic genres, which like “ritual frames” (Bateson 1958) or “metasocial commentaries” (Geertz 1972: 26), are thought to facilitate investigation, collective inquiry, especially into the historical and daily exigencies, conflicts, and contradictions of social existence. The “sacra” that are “shown,” “done,” and “said” to initiates in passage rituals (1967c: 102), Icelandic Sagas (1971), Japanese Buddhist Theater (1984), for instance, are observed in this light. Variant fields of performance from tribal ritual to global leisure genres demonstrate the perennial reliance of culture upon frameworks of meaningful action through which individuals—or “Homo Performans” (“man the self performing animal” [1985c: 187])—relive, re-create, retell and reconstruct their culture (Bruner 1986: 9). And the Turners would be enthusiasts of global sites for the expression of experience. As Edith conveys: [I]n various contexts and countries, Vic and I witnessed or participated in the Yaqui Deer Dance, Suzuki’s Japanese postmodern theatre, a Brooklyn gospelsinging healing service, the Manhattan Pentecostals, Japanese Noh plays, and other performances such as Kabuki, Bunraka puppet theatre, the Kagura dance of divinity, and popular festivals, Indian Kutiyattam, and Kathakali temple theatre, Wole Soyinka’s Yoruba theatre, Korean shamanism, Eskimo dance, Indonesian Wayang and Topeng, postmodern Off-Off Broadway theatre, Carnaval, Umbanda, and the Kardecism spirit cult in Brazil, the Jewish Purim and Passover, the Samaritan paschal sacrifice, Easter at the Holy Sepulchre, Indian tribal marriage, the Indian Sariswati, the Ik theatrt production in the USA, and Chorus Line—the list goes on. (E. Turner 1985b: 8f.)

Introduction

7

In such performances, where individual subjects may become the object of their own awareness, action is evaluative of social systems, and through “collective reflexology” society is imminent. Performances may then themselves be active agencies of change, representing, thought Turner (1987a: 24), “the eye by which culture sees itself and the drawing board on which creative actors sketch out what they believe to be more apt or interesting ‘designs for living.’”4

COMMUNITAS For Turner, communitas was the (re)formation of affectual relationships with co-liminars. In “spontaneous communitas,” individuals interrelate relatively unobstructed by sociocultural divisions of role, status, reputation, class, caste, sex, age, and other structural niches (1982b: 48). Interaction is characterized by personal honesty, openness, a lack of pretensions or pretentiousness. A term borrowed from Paul and Percival Goodman (1947) and configured to signify “a relatively undifferentiated community, or even communion of equal individuals” (V. Turner 1969: 96), communitas designates a feeling of immediate community, and may involve the sharing of special knowledge and understanding—“a flash of mutual understanding on the existential level, and a ‘gut’ understanding of synchronicity” (1982b: 48). This immediate and “total confrontation of human identities” occurs between fixed social categories (in liminality), on the edges of structured social life (in marginality), and beneath structure (in inferiority).5 The theme evolved out of the life experiences of the Turners. Edith (1990: 168) notes how her Glaswegian partner envisioned communitas in “Robert Burns—‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ between Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim the slave, in Bakhtin, in Chekhov, Jorge Amado, St. John’s Gospel and the Sermon on the Mount, and above all, Shakespeare.” But there was also the camaraderie experienced in the Royal Engineers defusing unexploded bombs with fellow conscientious objectors during WWII (Turner 1975: 21), the impact of the American counterculture of the 1960s, the influence of Catholicism, and the communion with Edith herself. It is clear from interviews with Edith conducted by Matthew Engelke (2004, and this volume) that the long and intimate dialogue between the Turners (who shared a marriage, parenthood, fieldwork, and a religion) was indispensable to the forging of theory. This is apparent in Edith’s Spirit and the Drum (1987: 141), where, in a kind of communion unlooked for, it is conveyed how she and Victor hit upon extraordinary insights following their participation in the Ndembu “shit ritual” Chihamba, intriguing because they appear to be insights about the universal

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quality of revelation itself. Critical to Turner’s theory of religion, communitas was thoroughly grounded in experience, receiving its most effusive application in the study of (Christian) pilgrimage, a field upon which both Turners made a substantial contribution (Turner and Turner 1978). Itself approximating a “religious experience,” it was “almost everywhere held to be sacred or ‘holy’ [since] it is accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency” (V. Turner 1969: 128).6 In work published posthumously, communitas was discussed as the “matrix of individuality,” a realm in which the “social persona” dissipates (1992: 149). As the “open morality of the individual,” this represents a challenge to Durkheimian thought, which regards religion in a way recalling Bergson’s concept of “closed” morality and religion—what is directed to strengthening moral obligations. Adopting the more dynamic view, in a process wherein the moral attributes of social personhood have been suspended, following Kenelm Burridge (1979), Turner perceived the individual as a “moral innovator” asserting autonomy, creating and destroying vested mores (1992: 159, 147). Evidence of the dialectic informing Turner, communitas was regarded as an experience that “liberates from conformity to general norms” (1974: 52), and normal structural activity becomes “arid” and a source of conflict if those in it are not “periodically immersed in the regenerative abyss of communitas” (1969: 139). In this scheme, communitas may become “normative” (and/or “ideological” or prescriptive), historical eventualities that may trigger further episodes of spontaneous communitas.7 It was observed that while “pathological” manifestations of such episodes “outside or against the law” (e.g., rebellion) can transpire if “structure” (institutionalism, repression, etc.) is “exaggerated,” if communitas is itself exaggerated, in for instance religious or political movements, there may ensue “despotism, overbureaucratisation or other modes of structural rigidification” (as in totalitarianism) (1969: 129).

FROM LIMINAL (RITUAL) TO LIMINOID (LEISURE)? In the seminal essay “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual” (1982b, originally published in Rice University Studies in 1974), Turner sketched a “comparative symbology”8 that, he argued, should be “wider” than symbolic anthropology since it proposed ethnography not only of small-scale cultures, but of the “symbolic genres” of postindustrial societies (1982b: 23). In this project, evidence for which can be found in The Ritual Process (1969), anthropologists were to harness “the methods, theories and findings of history, literature, musicology, art history, theology, the history of religions, philosophy, etc.” The ambitious project would look to the past—such as the “honor-

Introduction

9

able tradition” of predecessors like Durkheim and the Anée Sociologique, and Kroeber and Redfield (1982b: 23f.)—in order to comprehend emergent symbolic genres. “Liminality” was to undergo a conceptual transition of its own, one aptly characterized by uncertainty. While the concept had been applied to illuminate the central phases of transition rites common to small-scale and agrarian societies (life crisis, affliction and initiation rites) and seasonal and calendar rites, gazing upon the “floating worlds” of (post)modernity, Turner detected the presence of “quasi-liminal,” or “liminoidal” elements. Often unacknowledged by scholars of performance, the liminal/liminoid distinction, was, like much of Turner’s work, provocative and insightful, albeit speculative. Liminal cultural phenomena reveal the collective, integrated, and obligatory ritual action of premodernity. While they are concerned with calendrical, biological, and social structural rhythms or with crises in social processes emerging in feudal, industrial, and predominantly capitalist societies with a complex social and economic division of labor, liminoidentertainment genres are shaped by new media technologies, rationalization, and bureaucracy. Liminal symbols often possess a common intellectual and emotional meaning for all participants (1982: 53f), and while liminal events contain the potentiality for the formation of new symbols, models, and ideas, they generally involve the “the work of the gods” (where work and play are “intricately intercalibrated,” ibid.: 32). The liminoid, on the other hand, occurs within leisure settings apart from work, is voluntary, plural, and fragmentary, with liminoidality associated with marginality, conditions fomenting social critique, subversive behavior, and radical experimentation. Some have acknowledged (see Lowe, and St John, this volume) the problematic nature of these categories in Turner’s historical exegesis. Whatever their value, it appears that they are underpinned by contradictory dispositions illustrating a Durkheimian legacy. The first disposition involves the loss, or attenuation, and the second the resilience, or rebirth, of the sacred— especially as it is transparent in “the orchestrated religious gestalt” of ritual (V. Turner 1982c: 85). These are the tragic and heroic narratives. First, in modernity, the “religious sphere” has contracted, and, as a consequence, Turner speaks of “the decline of ritual” (1983: 105), “deliminalization” (1982c: 85), the exaltation of the “indicative mood” (ibid.: 86), and the loss of ritual’s “cultural evolutionary resilience [which ceases] to be an effective metalanguage or an agency of collective reflexology” (1985b: 165). As an apparent manifestation of what Catherine Bell (1997: 254) identifies as the kind of “sociological truism” that, since the mid-nineteenth century, would crystallize from a “popular contention that ritual and religion decline in proportion to modernization,” aesthetic media like song, dance, and graphic, and pictorial representation were said to have “broken loose from their ritual integument”

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

(V. Turner 1985b: 166). In modern times, where societies have grown in scale and complexity, as the division of labor has increased, and as work and leisure spheres are more clearly demarcated, the argument follows that ritual’s power and potential for transformation has been denuded. It is largely the perceived shift from collective, obligatory social bonds—as seen in rites of passage—to individual voluntary association, which has foreshadowed and accompanied the emergence of aesthetic, fragmentary, liminoid genres (ibid.). However, despite lengthy ruminations on ‘the Fall’, Turner was keen in later writing to demonstrate that ‘traces of the original’ are found in the modern world, that the symbolic action of premodernity can be observed—albeit through a miasmic ensemble of magnifying and distorting lenses such as film and sports events. While ritual perishes as the mother genre, “it dies a multipara, giving birth to ritualized progeny” (1982c: 79). At another point, it was claimed that “free liminoid experiences are the cultural debris of forgotten liminal ritual” (1982b: 55). Not only was this essential social performance frame residual in fragmented memories, strong pockets of revival were detected. Assuming the task of plural cultural reflexivity, “a multiplicity of desacralised performative genres” (1985b: 165f.) (particularly new theater, to which the Turners themselves were committed)9 were thought to be emergent in the postmodern world (1985b: 165f.), illustrating a re-turn to subjunctivity and a “rediscovery of cultural transformative modes” (1982c: 86). There are signs, it was declared, “that the amputated specialized genres are seeking to regain and to recover something of the numinosity lost in their dismemberment” (1986: 42). Indeed in liminoid genres ritual saw undergoing revitalization, and it is probable that Turner saw himself witness to the actualization of Durkheim’s prophecy: “A day will come when our societies will know again those hours of creative effervescence in the course of which new ideas arise and new formulae are found which serve for a while as a guide to humanity” (Durkheim 1976: 427f.). The tragic decline of ritual (the sacred) remains a key intellectual investment, forming the necessary background to its resurgence—its heroic renewal in performance genres. For Turner, the depiction of modern secularization becomes a strategic narrative—a condition out of which the sacred (the authentic liminal) is rediscovered or relived. As he pointed out, “dismembering may be a prelude to remembering” (1982c: 86). While modern history appeared to be the stage for an epic drama of the kind where performance itself was performing tragic and heroic roles, in Turner’s ontohistorical melodrama, in one way or another—in fragmented and/or resurgent forms—the sacred persists. As Grimes wrote, “the liminoid is sacred to members of a secular society.” The remnants of liminality are now everywhere: in the arts, politics, and advertising (Grimes 1990: 145).

Introduction

11

THE TURNERIAN IMPACT During the 1980s and 1990s, on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere, Turner’s ideas were received with a mix of enthusiasm, ambivalence, and caution. Commenting on Turner’s waning influence on American studies, Donald Weber (1995: 533) stated that “Turnerian models of social analysis appear less helpful, less compelling than they once did.” We could look to several problems and tensions to explain this. To begin with, Turner possessed an ambiguous status as a cultural theorist. Acknowledging, somewhat regrettably, that “the modern is now becoming part of the past” (1985c: 177), late in his writing, and independent of the continental paradigms which would gain wide currency, he suggested that he was inclined towards “postmodern ways of thinking” (ibid.: 185). Given what Foster (1990: 133) identified as Turner’s concern for “straightening out” complexity or “getting to the bottom of [it] so that an orderly and satisfying analysis could become feasible,” and his “somewhat mechanistic, constricted, and impoverished” method of “decoding” the symbolic worlds of others (ibid.: 125), objections are understandable. The continuing quest to comprehend the ‘total’ constituents of experience (cognition, affect, volition), a “unified science of man” (Babcock 1987: 40) drawing him to Freud (1978), Jung, and even sociobiology, seems consistent with a modernist project. As Turner stated himself, while “prejudiced against system building,” he was “not prejudiced against attempts to find the systematic in nature and culture” (1985d: 206). Despite this “prejudice,” the ambiguity inhering to this statement appears symptomatic of a postmodern turn, cues for which are plentiful. Speculation about the experimental liminoidal cultural products and commodities proliferating in leisure and lifestyle spheres and in the media and arts of post-industrial societies was consistent with post-structuralist trends in the anthropological understanding of culture, ritual, and religion. An implicit challenge to the modernist preoccupation with consistency, congruence, and cognition, processual analysis forged a path beyond British and French structuralisms. While recognition of the polysemous and “multivocality” of symbols in groundbreaking work on ritual analysis (see 1967a) represent early cues on the trajectory, an anthropology of experience, he contended, amounted to “the processualization of space, its temporalization,” as opposed to the spatialization of time (what he called “spatialized thinking” [1985c: 181]). Furthermore, there were allusions to “a multiperspectival consciousness,” and reference to society as “an endless crisscrossing of processes” (ibid.: 185). The championing of disciplinary cross-fertilization and recognition of the fragmentation of liminality into aesthetic genres, especially what he deemed the “hall of magic mirrors,” were influential leads.

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

The semiotic, subjunctive, and reflexive characteristics peculiar to ritual, festival, and narrative genres alike would provide fuel for literary criticism (see essays in Ashley 1990), and the contention that religion has generally “moved into the leisure sphere” (Turner and Turner 1978: 35) would attract students of religion, tourism, popular culture, and media. As Bennetta JulesRosette (1994: 178) observes, with his later work forecasting “the advent of postmodern culture, the dissolution of old cultural narratives, and their reconfiguration into heteroglossic performances,” Turner is a “genuinely transitional figure” working within a significant period of colonial/ethnographic change. With his oeuvre serving as a “bridge between the past and the future in anthropological theorizing” (ibid.: 162), it appears that Turner occupied the threshold between modern and postmodern thought. While Turner’s structural processualism buckled from growing impressions of culture as an “endless crisscrossing of processes,” a “eufunctional” (V. Turner 1982b: 54) script prefiguring an “immortal antagonism” (an evolutionary dialectical structuralism) persisted because, despite fragmentation and attenuation, the liminoid (and play) performed the necessary ritual (or “rituoid”) role in history’s drama. Thus, conveyed in essays collected in From Ritual to Theatre, ritual remained an essential antistructural condition albeit diversified and renewed in a complex grid of genres. And as this background noise informed, for instance, the analysis of “social drama”—considered to be “to the last simple and irradicable” (1982c: 78), or demonstrative of ritual’s agency and telos—challenges would arise. Thus according to the “performative dimension” of history particular to Jeffrey Alexander’s (2004) “cultural pragmatics,” Turner’s scheme does not address “post-ritual” cultural performance, the elements of which have become differentiated, separated, and “de-fused” with the growth of complex societies. In other critiques, the resolutionary process implicit in “social drama” contrasts with instances where rituals fail or become illogical, or where meaning remains elusive, as in Erica Bornstein’s (2006) interpretation of a World Vision prayer meeting in the development context of post-1990s Zimbabwe as an enactment paralleling the “theatre of the absurd.” To the disquiet of recent commentators, even while ritual was functionally absent, or served as the context for meaningless activity, it (or drama as ritual) remains a driving force in Turner’s historical scheme. The fanciful particularity of this perspective was that ritual liminality (evolved as liminoid) appeared to be both everywhere (in a vast range of cultural performances) and nowhere (as “quasi,” perhaps not-quite-ritual, or once were ritual). And since the sacred, the transformative, the transcendent, could be simultaneously present/absent, possible/diminished, real/virtual, we encounter a particularly challenging layer in Turner’s narrative. The problem

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was observed by Grimes (1976: 23) who, researching Theodor Gaster and Turner’s categories, questioned the view that contemporary symbolic acts are best regarded as either “survivals” or “liminoid,” “since both concepts seem to locate the primary phenomenon elsewhere,” being a “function of their study of ritual in ancient and pre-industrial contexts from whose perspectives contemporary symbolic acts must be viewed as reflections, likenesses, or remnants of earlier or simpler ones.” In this model, while perhaps ritual-like, commodified communitas and increasingly mediated events could be evaluated as contexts for inauthentic, un-real sociality, “deprived of direct transcendental reference” (Turner 1992: 160). Yet how would such logic be reconciled with the advent of global media technologies (from satellites and mobile telephony to virtual digital media) and consequential mediascapes transforming the daily lives of global populations, enabling and enhancing the very immediacy, social spontaneity, identification, and sacrality that Turner embraced as a human necessity?10 Perhaps the latter demonstrate the resurgence of the limen in the present, or that it never actually ebbed? Whatever the case, critics have noted that the limen (especially as spontaneous communitas) seemed to be more a utopic description of being than a heuristic device. Echoing Bakhtin’s utopianism, social liminality “acquired transcendent value and became depicted as what was quintessentially real, a kind of primal unity” (Flanigan 1990: 52). It has been recognized that the ‘vibe’ of the American 1960s—the romanticism and millenarianism of the expectant counterculture—had facilitated the conceptual birthing of communitas (see Grimes 1990: 21). As Vincent Crapanzano observed (1984: 475), the concept had a “hippy ring to it.” Moreover, because communitas was also derivative of the Turners’ Roman Catholic faith, and was in turn a cornerstone of their approach to Christian pilgrimage, they were reproached for interpreting performance (pilgrimage) from a theological position, faithful commitment to which appears to have motivated Turner’s late quest for a unitary “neurosociology.”11 Indeed, in the introduction to a special edition of Zygon dedicated to Turner, and addressing his interest in the role of biogenetic processes in the ekstasis of communitas, Edith (1986a: 8) states: “Vic was a religious man, a Catholic; and I think it was a delight to him before he died to know that God—Providence—had indeed provided in the human brain an arrangement of organs with which to experience Him.” If the limen—in this case the “cerebral commissure . . . limen or threshold between the brain hemispheres” (V. Turner 1985f: 288)—held more design than chance then there is little doubting that most scientists (social or otherwise) were loath to accept such faith. But such disciplinary skepticism also reveals the atheism endemic to anthropology (and cultural studies, etc,),12 itself mirroring a Western prejudice in favor of rationalism. So when Turner

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

gave credence to visionary, mystical, or “Orphic experience” (1992: 154f.) within marginal Western cultural realms (e.g., the transpersonal experience of mystics, communards, and other experimentalists), he was a liminoidal agent mounting, from within the privileged interstices of academia, a challenge to “normative” cultural frameworks that routinely delegitimate and outlaw extraordinary experience transpiring beyond authorized religiocultural frameworks, political arenas, and entertainment venues (from church to parliament to sports stadiums and dance clubs).13 This matter aside, critics would see the Turners’ Christian pilgrim communitas highlighting an ideal and homogeneous experience at the expense of complexity and power contestations. According to John Eade and Michael Sallnow’s influential approach (1991), as a “realm of competing discourses” a pilgrimage may accentuate prior distinctions between pilgrims as much as it dissolves difference (see also Sallnow 1981; Wheeler 1999; Coleman 2002). Competing with or complementing the limen’s implicit consensuality, there emerged innovative approaches to modified or new pilgrimage sites (see Coleman and Elsner 1998; Coleman and Eade 2004). Referring to real and present sites of “otherness” and implying multitudinous discourse and practice, Foucault’s loosely defined “heterotopia” would be adopted as a designation for contemporary sites existing in a problematic or antithetical relationship with structure, although retaining the efficacy/potency inscribed in communitas (see Hetherington 2000; St John 2001a; and see Gilmore this volume). Others, notably Don Handelman (1993: 121), expressed reservations about the “ontological implications” of communitas, the potential dark side of which (e.g., Nazism) he thought “frightened” Turner, who “avoided confronting” such implications (see also Maxwell, this volume). Weber has pointed out that the potency and ambiguity of the “border” (and those subalterns occupying it) has, within American studies at least, made the transcendent and apolitical limen something of a questionable model. Indeed, the optative marginality implicit in Turner’s later digressions is ill-suited to perspectives on colonial history and gender politics. Yet, while an approach thought to privilege a sense of “social leveling and attendant cultural bonding over what we now recognise as an encounter with identity politics” (Weber 1995: 530) would offer a dissatisfactory heuristic for some, illuminating rock concerts (Sardiello 1994), folk and countercultural gatherings (Newton 1988; Lewis and Dowsey-Magog 1993; Hetherington 2000; St John 1997, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c), hip hop (Maxwell 2003: 214f.), raves (see Takahashi and Olaveson 2003; Gerard 2004; and St John in this collection), and Jamaican dancehall (Stanley-Niaah 2006), communitas would continue to provide an apposite conceptual framework for extraordinary social experience. In a period when youth formations self-identify as “tribes” and fans

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of popular media icons as “cultic,” observers returned to Turner’s insightful efforts to retrain the anthropological gaze upon Western culture. Theory would be applied to elucidate “symbolic pilgrimage” (Aden 1999) and the office workplace (Letkemann 2002), to comprehend “emergency structures” arising in the wake of natural disasters (Jencson 2001), and be instructive to developing “strategic family therapy” (Holle 2000), “rituals of impartiality” (D’Agostino 2001), and as Jencson suggests, “culturally appropriate” disaster responses.14 With varying faithfulness to or comprehension of the intended logic, researchers have located an almost ephemeral liminality: in sex (Moore 2003), illness (Dumit 2005), consulting activity (Czarniawska and Mazza 2003), narrative genres (Ashley 1990), “media events” (Dayan and Katz 1992), and sites of media production (Couldry 2000), in consumption behavior and shopping malls (Zukin 1991, and Cusack and Digance this volume), in “cyborg” subjectivities (Gough 2005), and in the cybercommunication of digitally virtual spaces (Shields 2003; Barbatsis, Fegan, and Hansen 1999; Sant 2001). It is not only the digitally virtual that is considered liminal. As “a threshold between at least one immediate lived milieu and the distant ground of the other(s),” actualizing the ideal, realizing the possible, and anticipating the ability of information and communication technologies to “make present what is both absent and imaginary,” according to Rob Shields, liminal rituals have been virtual worlds all along (2003: 49, 11). It is something of a paradox that, holding the logic of temporality, the limen would become recognizably pervasive, so much so as to even possess its own journals—Limen: Journal for Theory of Liminal Phenomena, and the more recent Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies.15 The theme’s currency and circulation within performance studies and media studies would see it become detached from its theoretical origins (e.g., Broadhurst 1999), developing a life of its own as an all-purpose tool. And, appropriated by New Age ritual and theater practitioners, counterculturalists, Catholics, ravers, and other popular music fans, liminality (and ritual generally) would break free of its academic moorings. As Bell conveys, among all the significant theorists of ritual, Turner has been adopted as “the authority behind much American ritual invention,” legitimating ritual “as a universal process that authenticates changes in traditional rites or empowers people to invent new ones” (1997: 263). As “belief in ritual as a central dynamic in human affairs,” as opposed to a belief in Christian liturgical traditions, for instance, provides ritualists with “the authority to ritualize creatively and even idiosyncratically” (ibid.: 264), a new paradigm is thought to have emerged. Applying these academically authorized accounts of ritual theory to ritual practice, practitioners believe that “their rites participate in something universal. They consider what they do as fundamentally symbolic and having

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

much in common with the equally symbolic practices of Chinese ancestral offerings, Trobriand garden magic, or Turner’s accounts of Ndembu healing” (ibid.). Critical scrutiny of Turner’s work demonstrates how, not long after his death, the academy would develop an institutionalized mistrust of transcendent principles and universal absolutes, triggering a decommissioning of essentialism. Yet, as Jon McKenzie conveys in his groundbreaking Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance (2001: 50), poststructuralism provided a platform for the (re)invigoration of what Philip Auslander (1994) identified as the “transgressive” or “resistant” theme inscribed in liminality—an approach said to have constituted something of a “liminal-norm” in performance studies (thus often denying the either/or pivot central to Turner’s thesis). While the conflation of liminality with “resistance” within American performance studies led to its representation as that discipline’s “metamodel of cultural performance” (McKenzie 2001: 90), the indeterminacy at the root of the Turnerian perspective appeared to preclude its entry into British cultural studies of the 1970s and 1980s. If the cultural-Marxist scholars at Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) (see Hall and Jefferson 1976) saw working-class youth’s subcultural “rituals” and symbols (styles) deployed to resist (re)incorporation or “recuperation” (see Hebdige 1979), the redress/resolution of conflict integral to Turnerian “ritual” process would appear undesirably neutral. Setting aside the fact that the CCCS offered little definition of “rituals” themselves, part of the problem was that the ontologically privileged status Turner afforded liminal ritual removed “indicative” events and processes from focus. Thus, what Handelman calls “events of presentation” (ceremonial forms like state funerals, royal pageants, and commemorative days), whose contemporary predominance, he argues, has culminated in a hegemony over the transformative work associated with rites of passage (1990: 79), were effectively dismissed from analysis. Resembling Michel Maffesoli’s (1996) influential attention to an “underground centrality” or puissance, which is—by contrast with institutional power or pouvoir—the “inherent energy and vital force of the people,” Turner’s fixation with antistructure generated models of transformation/integration uninterested in ways the “symbolic means of production” is controlled and managed (Alexander 2004), or how the “indicative” or “fixed world” (capital, morality, the state) is mirrored in special ritual/ceremonial frameworks, and in processes of commodification and self-governmentality that may alter the limen itself. Since, as John Sherry (2005) recognizes, liminality—or what Sherry calls “the liminate”—is at the “absolute centre of economic and political processes” and not, as Turner (1982b: 54) had it, at the “margins” and “interstices of central and

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serving institutions,” a need arises to observe branded subjunctivity, normatized performance, and domesticated virtuality. While critics might overlook how “normative” and “ideological” communitas assists understanding of processes of sociocultural institutionalization, this is far from the critical heuristics in models addressing, for instance, hegemonic, patriarchal, or disciplinary power, or indeed what might be deemed the politics of performance. In an effort to reevaluate liminality (or at least how this trope has become complicit with liberation), McKenzie suggests that “the subjunctive mood of the ‘as if’ [. . .] must be understood not in opposition to an indicative mood of ‘it is,’ but as ultimately related to an imperative mood which commands ‘it must be’” (2001: 168). This mood is indeed observed to feature strongly in, for instance, “filmic rituals” (Westerfelhaus and Brookey 2004), the analysis of which seems to recognize the persistent power of liminal conditions to affirm the sacra, and to reinforce normative, or in the case of Fight Club, heteronormative, values. Cultural theorists have begun making qualified rereadings and renovations of the limen. Setting aside the unified approach to the individual, ritual, and drama, liminality has been found to resonate usefully with Felix Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm. Perhaps this is resultant of a “philosophy of immanence, for which the primordiality of Being and Subject are brought into question and overturned in favour of what we can best term a processuality which is univocal, in the sense that no categories or conceptualizations fall outside its scope” (Arnott 2001). As a consequence, the creative possibilities inscribed in spontaneous communitas render it compatible with the language of “territorialization,” “ecologies of the virtual,” and “schizophrenic escape,” thus describing “the advent of a line of flight which leads away from the plane of organization towards the non-hierarchical and relatively disorganized plane of immanence” (ibid.). Inspired by Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari to submit a theory of “global performance,” McKenzie himself reconfigures liminality in the digital age as “liminautical,” which while retaining the efficacy of the original, jettisons the liminal/liminoid distinction. The distinction is assumed untenable since, for one thing, occupational performance management has sought to infuse the workplace with elements of play, and for another, with increased digitization (mobile phones, faxes, computers, and handheld information devices), business and work activities penetrate homes, cars, and vacations, to create circumstances dissolving work/play, labor/leisure distinctions, and giving shape to postindustrial liminality. For McKenzie [l]imen remain sites of passage and transformation, but these sites are now themselves in passage, their transformation becoming networked over many dif-

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

ferent borders: geopolitical, societal, institutional, paradigmatic, generational . . . At the turn of the twenty-first century, the citationality of discourses and practices is passing across an electronic threshold, a digital limen. Words and gesture, statements and behaviors, symbolic systems, and living bodies are being recorded, archived, and recombined through multimedia communication networks. Liminal and liminoid genres are becoming cyberspatial, flighty, liminautic. (McKenzie 2001: 94)

McKenzie argues that these “liminautical” trajectories, or “machinic performances,” are, in classic Turnerian, either “normative or mutational” (ibid.: 197). While a Deleuzoguattarian account of the production of subjectivity contemplates a different “becoming” from that of Turner, and while a critical lens on “the age of global performance” contributes to advanced debates about knowledge/power, Turner’s insistent, though for many invisible, paradox seems to have provided fertile grist for McKenzie’s conceptual mill.

CHAPTER OUTLINES Despite the challenges from poststructuralism and postcolonial studies, as is evident in interdisciplinary applications, this collection demonstrates that the Turnerian model remains as compelling today as it was in earlier decades. Investigating how the perspective has been reanimated, renovated, and repurposed in studies of contemporary cultural performance and experience, the volume presents chapters in four parts. Part One, “Performing Culture,” attends to reconfigurations of Turnerian theory in response to contemporary cultural performance with particular attention to the intersections of ritual, drama, and media. In Chapter One, “Toward a Unified Theory of Cultural Performance,” J. Lowell Lewis undertakes a productive revision of Turner’s ideas in the light of shortcomings and inconsistencies identified in the Turnerian approach. While Lewis follows Turner, suggesting that the duality of special events vs. everyday life is central to understanding cultural performance, some “special events” serving to reinforce structural conditions (e.g., ceremonies) are conveniently excluded from Turner’s dialectic, while others arise “as exercises in enjoyment, excitement, and illumination” (e.g., festivals) rather than as responses to dramatic crises, and others still (e.g., games and sports) cannot be adequately interpreted according to the rites of passage model. Simultaneously reinforcing/contesting normativity, Lewis considers play (a different order of experience than ritual) to hold greater explanatory power for many special events than Turner’s enduring passage/redress perspective. Desiring a balance to the “liberatory, redemptive strain” of Turner’s approach, it is

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further suggested that some events create “obfuscation, mystification, confusion, sensational excess, or rampant escapism.” Arguing that communitas may be the context for “rejection” and “revulsion” rather than liberation, Lewis presages the approach taken by Ian Maxwell in Chapter Two. Though not explicitly stated by the author, in “The Ritualization of Performance (Studies)” Maxwell offers something of a response to Ron Grimes’ prefaced question in his revised edition of Beginnings in Ritual Studies (1995: xxii): “how are ritual processes manipulated for the purpose of abuse and oppression, both personal and collective . . . what are the symptoms of a ‘sick’ ritual?” Maxwell introduces readers to the sphere of Turner’s greatest influence: performance studies. With the assistance of Jon McKenzie, he notes how the crucial Turner/Schechner dialogue would see the discipline’s object and method become synonymous with liberatory efficacy. While embracing Turner’s “attempt to push towards a phenomenology of cultural performance,” Maxwell argues that the “liberation theology of salvation” inherent to liminality overlooks the possibility that performance can “effect radically dystopian change,” cautioning about what is “altogether darker and dangerous at the heart of communitas.” While the fascistic Nuremburg rallies offer obvious counterpoint to the grace and wholesomeness implicit to Turner’s “communitas,” it is demonstrated that pervasive experiences outside the “liminal-norm” can be found closer to home. Offering recollections of two diverse Sydney performance experiences committed to memory, Maxwell’s accounts serve to indicate the oppressive and dangerous implications of liminal sociality, showing that performers may deviate or recoil from an otherwise alluring “undifferentiated, homogenous whole in which individuals confront one another integrally” (Turner 1969: 177). The theme of performative efficacy lies at the heart of Chapter Three, “Performing ‘Sorry Business’: Reconciliation and Redressive Action,” by Michael Cohen, Paul Dwyer, and Laura Ginters. If liminality constitutes an unsettled, unsettling, and ambiguous movement between fixed points, and if this is as applicable to the historical trajectories of societies as it is to the biography of individuals, then we can observe the contemporary “reconciliatory” climate within settler nations like Australia approximating such temporal unsettlement. Demonstrating influences from Turner and Baz Kershaw, the authors consider conditions under which the “potential sociopolitical efficacy” of performance may be actualized. The circumstance with which they are taken is “Australia’s longest running social drama”: the history of the continent’s colonization, particularly recent performances on this stage. While settlement (involving dispossession and displacement of indigenous inhabitants) has set in train a social drama of epic proportions, events in the 1990s triggered an unprecedented popularizing of the “crisis”

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

and legitimate efforts at settler “redress.” While such efforts were hindered by the Howard Government, popular performances arose within a climate of indigenous/nonindigenous “reconciliation.” The authors critically discuss the “People’s Walk for Reconciliation” across Sydney Harbour Bridge, contemporary indigenous theater (the productions Stolen and Aliwa), and the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony as diverse cultural dramas where indigenous and nonindigenous Australians have made efforts at “negotiating together a response to what is shared in their history.” One of the significant aspects of the Olympics opening ceremony—the planet’s most popular spectacle—is the mediatization of the performance (as an indelible part of the performance). The impact of television and other media on contemporary social life, particularly the performative implications of this media and the imputation that media is ritual, has stimulated research enlisting Turner’s ideas (with varying degrees of sophistication). As Mihai Coman points out in Chapter Four, “Liminality in Media Studies: From Everyday Life to Media Events,” increasingly popular positions, held within the discipline of media studies, that practices of media production and consumption constitute liminal ritual are generally unconvincing since they tend to appropriate Turnerisms without the theory and with little or no supportive ethnographic grounding. In his own work, Coman finds a Turnerian framework appropriate since “the mass media creates a liminal, subjunctive framework, a framework for symbolically experiencing possible ways of articulating social life.” For instance, during the period of instability in Romania (1990-1992), the mass media were both triggers and tools for creating and maintaining liminal social conditions. Applying the Turnerian analysis to contemporary social worlds made complex by media and the mediatization of culture, in Chapter Five, “Social Drama in a Mediatized World,” Simon Cottle offers a response to problems identified by Coman. As ever newer media become deeply implicated in the sociocultural drama of the present, we could replace “each society’s” with “each era’s” in Turner’s comment that “each society’s social drama could be expected to have its own style” (1985a: 74). As Cottle argues, since contemporary public rituals are “enacted on the media stage . . . performed within differentiated and globalizaing media ecologies,” mediatized social dramas ensue. Turner’s attention to extended performances unfolding in response to crises in public life makes his approach more appropriate, according to Cottle, than studies of “media events” and “media spectacles” in comprehending exceptional media phenomena like what transpired in the wake of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence (in the UK). Cottle adds an “ebbing/revivification” phase to the “social drama” sequence since, as evinced by the prefix “post,” some social dramas “become embedded as historical ref-

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erence point, political benchmark, and cultural residue” long after “schism/ reintegration.” Part Two, “Popular Culture and Rites of Passage,” attends to studies of contemporary transition rites. Unfortunately, Turner never really did get to “make more precise these crude, almost medieval maps I have been unrolling of the obscure liminal and liminoid regions which lie around our comfortable village of the sociologically known, proven, tried, and tested” (1982b: 55). Offering insights on passage experience within the contemporary, popular media studies can illuminate inconsistencies in Turner’s speculative and “crude” liminal/liminoid distinction (in which television is cast as liminoidal). Take, for example, the popular “reality TV” series Survivor. A game involving selected contestants who elect to give up their normal lives (family, friends, home, job, etc.) for up to forty days of isolation, personal deprivation, and collective ordeals in “primitive conditions,” and with viewers choosing to invest their commitment, the program is technically liminoidal. However, since it is a powerful pedagogical vehicle for transmitting the rules and appropriate conduct of market capitalism (ruthless individualism, corporatism, and acquisitive materialism) to both players and home viewers, the series approximates definitive aspects of the liminal experience. While film and television studies could offer useful insights in this area, an interrogation of Turner’s liminal/liminoid (and the supporting “ergicludic/anergic-ludic” dichotomy) is taken up here by Sharon Rowe. Disputing Turner (and diverging from Lewis, this volume), in Chapter Six, “Modern Sports: Liminal Ritual or Liminoid Leisure?” Rowe argues that modern sports events are decidedly liminal phenomena. In Turner’s scheme, as secular leisure phenomena characterized by optative practice, sports are incapable of “supporting a context sufficient to sustain the shared beliefs and visions” linking participants/spectators to a transcendent reality. But identifying the various “collective” dimensions of sport, and its equivalence to the “eufunctional” aspect of liminal phenomena, Rowe argues that sports events possess a “doubled double-edged capacity to present ourselves to ourselves in our sheer potentiality while at the same time conserving cherished images of what we are.” Exemplifying the dynamic Turner characterized by the term “ergic-ludic” (work-play), sport’s paradoxical context of choice and duty is shared with other realms of contemporary cultural performance. In Chapter Seven, “Trance Tribes and Dance Vibes,” my investigation of a subgenre of electronic dance music culture, trance (or psytrance), is informed by Turnerian insights despite noted discrepancies in the liminal/ liminoid formulations. One of Turner’s principal insights, developed during the radical cultural upheaval of the 1960s, was that liminality/communitas potentiates a freedom from (routine/convention/structure) and a freedom to

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Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

(experience and explore otherness/alternatives). Not only have there evolved performance genres dedicated to facilitating such freedoms, but countercultures are inventing dance “rituals” (“trance parties”) in order to (re)live a “tribal” experience (“the vibe”). While participation is voluntary, participants commit to the party “vibe” and defer to various cultural authorities. And while trance dance parties reclaim the sacred via a dedication to changelessness, they are, all the same, transitional worlds generative of alternative cultural forms. If “experience” is the realm to which Turner gravitated, then it is reasonable to assume that his anthropology would be appealing for studies of contemporary youth, for whom experience constitutes an ultimate concern. In Chapter Eight, Amie Matthews investigates an increasingly popular leisure pursuit through which young people seek and obtain experience. In “Backpacking as a Contemporary Rite of Passage: Victor Turner and Youth Travel Practices,” Matthews indicates that backpacking in one response to growing desires for the experience of freedom (personal liberty) and authenticity (“realness”) necessitated by the “ambivalence, uncertainty, and sense of loss felt under modernity.” Extended overseas travel is regarded as a “secular rite of passage” for young people, a liminoidal process involving the rapid acquisition of experiential knowledge within extraordinary and sometimes risk-laden circumstances potentiating “a sense of solidarity and community between a diverse group of individuals,” and assisting “the development of reflexive and potentially cosmopolitan youth identities.” The experiences of “breaking out,” “living large,” and “being more” identified within backpacking resonate with the commitment to “going hard” and being “out there” that I identified among trance habitués, and since involvement in the latter may also involve travel (backpacking) and risk taking, the connection is not coincidental. In an example of passage ritual within an educational (as opposed to leisure) context, in Chapter Nine, “Walking to Hill End with Victor Turner: A Theater-Making Immersion Event,” Gerard Boland introduces what he calls a “weekend immersion event” experienced by all three years of undergraduate cohorts in a unique theater/media studies course run by Boland at Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia. Operating for over fifteen years and now becoming known as the “Hill End Project,” the event is both invented ritual and normative communitas within a higher learning context. Boland employs Turner’s ideas to interpret the process by which young theater students are transformed (ideally) into courageous, creative, and cooperative practitioners, through a serious of “neoliminal” performances, or “physical, psychic, and social threshold crossings,” involving site-specific and improvised theater near Bathurst’s Turon River and in the context of

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a historic gold mining town, Hill End. While Boland’s “Walkers,” like Matthews’s backpackers, are removed from the routine and transferred to an alternative experiential interzone, their passage is a unique component of a higher educational requirement suggesting that, by comparison to backpacking and other optative adventures of contemporary life, this invented ritual possesses strong liminal characteristics. This unique pedagogical ritual, where student neophytes traverse unpredictable and challenging terrain, represents a theatricalized threshold with significant social and cultural implications. Discussion of travel and passage in the contemporary carries to Part Three, “Contemporary Pilgrimage and Communitas” where contributions comment upon the intersections of communitas, pilgrimage, and passage. A significant destination for alternative experience transpires annually in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert at the countercultural festival known as Burning Man. In Chapter Ten, “Of Ordeals and Operas: Reflexive Ritualizing at the Burning Man Festival,” Lee Gilmore demonstrates the applicability of the Turnerian perspective to Burning Man in a way that also problematizes the paradigm. Burning Man possesses traits characteristic of a rite of passage (and/or pilgrimage), including the “release from mundane structures,” the movement of “Burners” from “center to periphery,” participant ordeals, a “homogenization of status,” reflection on the meaning of basic religious and cultural values, and reaggregation in “decompression” events. Yet, as Gilmore observes, since Burning Man’s temporary desert city imports and replicates civic infrastructure and urban comforts, separation from the mundane may be cursory. Furthermore, since participants frame and construct their experience of the event in multitudinous ways, and class and status differences are reproduced in situ, communitas is jeopardized and undermined by the event’s “deeply heterogeneous” (or “heterotopic”) character. While Gilmore is cautious, the resonance between Turnerian theory and the event is striking. She recognizes that Turnerisms often “speak” so viscerally to participants precisely because the formulations were in part shaped and buoyed by the counterculture from which Burning Man and its participants draw heritage. As a site for the “recursive absorption of ritual theory” in contemporary efforts to create innovative rites “ideologically positioned outside of more traditional religious contexts,” Burning Man illustrates the cultural filtration of Turnerian thought, with on-site performances demonstrating how popular theory has authorized “contemporary ideas about what ritual is and how it should transpire.” While Burning Man offers a liminal break from the marketplace, it could be argued that the marketplace is the “realm of pure possibility” since individualism has altered what we understand and experience as religious

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practice and the sacred has become uncoupled from institutional religion. In a world where consumption has a critical role in the re-production of (the now sacred) Self, the temples to what Russell Belk refers to as “consumption sacredness” are shopping malls. In Chapter Eleven, “Shopping for a Self: Pilgrimage, Identity Formation, and Retail Therapy,” Justine Digance and Carole M Cusack argue that the quest for Self drives “shopping pilgrims” toward these sacred centers of the West. “Consumption pilgrimage” is investigated in the context of a secondary school girl’s Formal Fashion Spectacular at Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building (reinvented as a shopping plaza), which the authors argue is a site of fragmentary communitas and potential transformation. This is a liminal world where dominant symbols (what the authors calls “tribal identifiers”) appear to be corporate logos, and “consumers regard shopping as a quest for contemporary answers to perennial problems.” Leaping (wildly) from “shopping pilgrims” seeking the sacred Self in malls to protest pilgrims seeking sacrality in Gandhian Satyagraha, the following chapter demonstrates the broad application of the Turnerian pilgrimage model. If political techniques are diffused, translated, and reinvented across national boundaries, how are these processes organized and performed? According to Sean Scalmer, translation is often the work of pilgrims, and reinvention “relies upon the unity gained through public rituals.” In Chapter Twelve, “Turner Meets Gandhi: Pilgrimage, Ritual, and the Diffusion of Nonviolent Direct Action,” Scalmer draws on the Turners’ approach to pilgrimage and communitas to enable comprehension of the diffusion of Gandhian Satyagraha (or nonviolent direct action) from India to Britain in the mid-twentieth century, and its reinvention in the Easter Alderston nuclear reactor marches from 1958, which themselves had a formative impact on social movement activism in the 1960s and after. Spontaneous communitas has been found to arise at diverse sites. Margi Nowak found it manifested in an “online community” that enabled parents of children with ‘invisible’ behavior-affecting disabilities to share their “narratives of vulnerability” and become courageous critics of the state. As Nowak argues in Chapter Thirteen, “Dramas, Fields, and ‘Appropriate Education,’” confronted with the difficult and painful task of ensuring their special-needs children an “appropriate” education within the bureaucratic US school system, one feature of such a community is that it provides parents whose disabled children are entering the education system access to “parent advocates” experienced in the discourse of the educational, medical, and legal systems. As Nowak comments, once “scared neophytes” become experienced advocates through the assistance of the virtual communities, they may become ardent critics of the education system, and thus perform

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important roles in escalating conflicts with their respective school districts, conflicts that take the form of a social drama. Part Four addresses the critical role of Edith Turner in the Turnerian project. The contributions need some introduction. Victor Turner married Edith Davis in 1943, precipitating an extraordinary relationship. While Turner had many colleagues, none were more intimate and central than Edith, who admits to being a “principal collaborator in every field that Vic explored” (1985b: 1). Edith’s own anthropological research career spans diverse fields, from the Ndembu of Zambia to Catholic Pilgrimage in Mexico and the Iñupiat of North Slope Alaska. With her publication rate and lecture appearances growing prolifically following Victor’s death she would publish her own monographs, beginning with The Spirit and the Drum (which had been written 33 years before its publication in 1987), becoming a significant figure in the anthropology of consciousness and editor of the journal Anthropology and Humanism. But it is the inter-Turnerian dialogue that is of interest here, a dialogue that appears to complicate what is held to be Turnerian. The Turners coauthored their first scholarly article in 1953 (Turner and Turner 1955), a feat not repeated until the late 1970s (Turner and Turner 1978). While their names rarely shared the authorial byline—a result of several factors, not the least of which was Edith’s nonprofessional status (the “anthropologist’s wife”) (see Engelke 2001: 124–133)—Edith was nevertheless the coauthor of everything Victor wrote (see Engelke 2004). Given this extraordinary circumstance, the intellectual boundary between the Turners was fuzzy and complex. As Victor completed his PhD dissertation (and in preparing other publications), Edith notes how she responded with enthusiasm to being “conscripted to draw up the tables, to correct them endlessly, to put together satisfyingly complex genealogies” (1985b: 5). The exchange of notes and ideas was also critical. For instance, “Social Dramas in a Brazilian Umbanda” (Turner 1987b) clearly illustrates how Victor relied upon his wife’s keen and sensitive eye (as revealed in her detailed field notes, which he drew upon extensively). And, herself infected by his enthusiasm with the implications of brain research for ritual (and thus of scientific—neurobiological and biogenetic—research for understanding religion), Edith would speak and write on the subject with comparative zest following his death (see E. Turner 1986b). Moreover, the Turners shared a life that was extraordinary in range and intensity. Their experience of ritual during the initial fieldwork in Africa inspired the move toward Roman Catholicism, a decision that, Victor explained, enabled (via pilgrimage) assimilation “inside the heart of the human matter. . . . Deciphering ritual forms and discovering what generates symbolic actions may be more germane to our cultural growth than we have supposed. But we have

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to put ourselves in some way inside religious processes to obtain knowledge of them” (1975: 32). Recognition of this intimate exchange and commonality of experience compels a reimagining of what is generally regarded as the Turnerian approach. Originally called “Kajima” after the Ndembu village of the Turners’ second field period (1954–55), and employing an intimate first-person narrative developed outside the stylistic demands of anthropology, The Spirit and the Drum was intended to be a humanistic “companion piece” alongside the more scientific Schism and Continuity (Engelke 2001: 128). Having returned, some thirty years later, to the Ndembu village in which fieldwork was initially undertaken, and participating in the ihamba healing rituals, Edith would produce an ethnography, Experiencing Ritual (1992), diverging markedly from Victor’s sometimes positivist account of the same ritual (see V. Turner 1967d). Her account of witnessing the ihamba spirit removed from the patient Meru marked the emergence of an experiential anthropology challenging the discipline to open its boundaries to experience that, by the standards of most ethnographers, is beyond the “ordinary” (see Young and Goulet 1994). Challenging anthropology’s secularist fundamentalism (E. Turner 1994: 91), Edith’s radical methodology pushed beyond disciplinary taboos (1992c) and cleared the way for a humanistic anthropology of consciousness. Developing linguistic competence, plunging beneath the surface of symbols, her ethnography would demonstrate a commitment to conveying cultural worlds and performances faithful to the sensibilities of those who dwell in those worlds (see E. Turner 1996, 2005, 2006). Matthew Engelke’s “Interview with Edith Turner” (Chapter Fourteen) offers a fascinating prologue to this section. The chapter reproduces an interaction16 that touches on significant aspects of Edith’s life and demonstrates “how the dynamics of gender and marriage affect the production of anthropological work.” The interview not only reveals Edith’s role in the field, editing Victor’s work and complicity in Victor’s intellectual development (especially the idea of “communitas”); it also provides insight on her immersion in the “human story” of the Ndembu (and others she has lived among as an ethnographer). While her approach diverges from Victor’s, she regards her work as an “extension” of his experiential, intuitive, and generative approach (such as was conveyed in Chihamba the White Spirit [1962]). As she elsewhere explains (1985b: 4), opposed to formalism and structure, whether British or French, Victor “enjoyed what was earthy, what was fecund, growing, seminal.” Inscribed in the core themes of liminality and communitas, the trait illustrates what one of Victor’s foremost students, Barbara Babcock, suggests is the “gynesis”—the “putting of Woman into discourse”—in his work. Most accounts of Turner list influences including Durkheim, Gluckman,

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van Gennep, Dilthey, Csikszentmihalyi, even Rilke, Blake, Shakespeare. But in Chapter Fifteen, “Woman/Women in ‘the Discourse of Man’,” not only is Woman figuratively significant in Turner’s anthropology of the generative, indeterminate, and either/or, but as Babcock suggests, the voices and ideas of actual women were critical in his intellectual development. While these include his mother and Babcock herself, of course principal amongst these influences was Edith, who, not only the “indicative mother” of his children and much of his work (being heavily involved in field and library research, writing, and editing), was also his work’s “subjunctive mother.” Responding to an apparent “oscillation between methodological atheism and respect of religious experience” in the Turners’ work, in Chapter Sixteen, “Faith and (Social) Science: Contrasting Victor and Edith Turner’s Analysis of Spiritual Realities,” Douglas Ezzy attends to epistemological issues at the heart of the anthropological enterprise. While Victor’s earlier anthropology was shaped by a perspective that would “implicity denigrate” Ndembu religion as “mistaken and ethically inferior,” he resisted the atheistic implications endemic to structural functionalism, striving to record, via social drama, ritual’s “ontological status.” Yet, as Ezzy points out, such status seems to have only applied to “certain types of religious experience” consistent with Victor’s Christian faith. Thus, while the revelatory Chihamba ritual appears to resemble communitas (a concept owing something to the experience of Christian mystics like Eckhart), “secular anthropological discourse” is the privileged model in the case of Ndembu divination rituals. Yet, thrown into the field and undisciplined in anthropological methodology, Edith Turner appears to have been placed in a unique position to write unfettered by the “endemic methodological atheism” with which her spouse struggled. While, according to Ezzy, her approach to ritual has not been uninfluenced by her Catholic faith, Edith developed an experiential methodology that would reveal the significant role of altered states of consciousness in religious experience. Offering the kind of “respectful interpretative frame” required to supersede anthropology’s “methodological atheism,” Edith (and in other ways, Victor) are seen to have made important contributions to the interpretation of religious experience. In the final contribution, Chapter Seventeen, “Challenging the Boundaries of Experience, Performance, and Consciousness,” Jill Dubisch relates just how Edith Turner’s approach made its significant contribution to Turnerian theory, anthropological method, and the study of cultural performance. While Dubisch recognizes that Edith’s reflexive, engaging, and revelatory narrative style constitutes a radical departure from standard anthropology, more radical, she argues, is the way such style is deployed to “illuminate and expand” our understanding of Turnerian theory. Edith’s work demon-

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strates how the field experience embodies theory, and, as Dubisch conveys, since she takes extraordinary ritual experience (that of others and her own) seriously, such an approach enhances our understanding of “communitas, ritual, symbol, social process.” Enlarging the boundaries of what constitutes anthropological analysis, the approach assists Dubisch in taking her own experiences seriously (e.g., visions experienced during her research on healing modalities, and in particular during her associated Reiki training). It is concluded that by developing “an anthropology through experience” and an “anthropology through ritual,” Edith has moved in directions Victor only hinted at, meanwhile furthering the Turnerian project in ways he would have surely approved. While the Turnerian framework has left an extraordinary legacy, perhaps the most intriguing quality is what Schechner identified as its “unfinishedness.” His sometimes “crude, almost medieval maps” are, for some, a probable cause for infuriation, yet the incompleteness of Victor Turner’s work and career has inspired many to continue blazing the trail—including, of course, Edith Turner herself. Invariably, attention to the shortcomings and inconsistencies in Victor Turner’s approach are swiftly qualified with a recognition that our comprehension of culture, performance, and religion would be considerably deficient in his absence. In response to the challenge of understanding contemporary cultural performance, and in recognition of the persistent relevance of its heuristics, the chapters in this collection demonstrate the broad and evolving appeal of the Turnerian project.

NOTES 1. Turner submitted his PhD dissertation (published as Schism and Continuity, 1957) and would work as a Senior Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Manchester. 2. Turner’s enormous cross-disciplinary sphere of influence is illustrated by the appearance of various volumes indebted to his work (e.g., literary studies—Ashley 1990; pilgrimage—Morinis 1992; psychoanalysis—Schwartz-Salent and Stein 1991; neurophenomenology—Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquil 1990), and special journal editions published posthumously, including Seneviratne (1983) and Bouissac (1985). For specific examples of Turner’s cross-disciplinary influence, see Olaveson (2001: 92). He also had an impact on American Studies, indeed becoming a Visiting Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota in 1980. Roland Delattre (personal communication) recalls that the auditorium at the 1977 ASA convention in Boston was “packed to spilling over” in anticipation of Turner’s response to Delattre’s address. 3. See Frank Manning (1990) for a comprehensive, yet incomplete, list of Turner’s publications, and Henry Barnard (1985) for a useful annotated bibliography

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

29

of Turner’s published work to 1975. For a reasonably comprehensive review of his work, see Matieu Deflem (1991). Barbara Babcock and John MacAloon’s commemorative essay (1987), Edith Turner’s prologue to On the Edge of the Bush (1985b), Benjamin Ray’s entry on Victor Turner in the Encyclopedia of Religion (1993: 94–96), and Matthew Engelke’s extended analysis (2004), provide good primers. Symptomatic of Turner’s enlisting of the natural sciences to assist the understanding of ritual, “corresponding to open-endedness in biological evolution” (1974: 15), cultural drama is perceived to be evolutionally advantageous. Accordingly, liminality provides culture with an adaptive response to changing historical circumstance, to the trenchant contradictions and conflicts of daily existence. Turner suggested that communitas is closely associated with the lowering of status. He extended this concept metaphorically to cover such themes as: the relationship between those undergoing ritual transition; “religions of humility” (e.g., Franciscan, Vaisnavism); institutionalized poverty (such as that taught by Buddha or Gandhi) and other monastic and mendicant states (these states are described as “permanent liminality” and are an attempt to bring about sustained “normative communitas”); the middle-class countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s; the status of autochthonous people; “submerged” kinship links; and Christian pilgrimage (1969; 1973; 1974; Turner and Turner 1978). As a timeless condition or “a place that is not a place,” the pan-human modality of communitas is perceived to be manifest, for example, in Zen Buddhism’s “prajna” (“intuition”) and Confucianism’s “jen” (“love, goodness, benevolence, humaneness and man-to-man-ness”) (Turner 1974:46, 283). French anthropologist Roger Bastide’s theory of the “instituent” “immanence of sociality” operating in response to the “instituted” (with institutional religion in turn forming out of normative instituency) demonstrates a curious parallel with Turner’s theory. According to François Gauthier (2004: 67), in Bastide’s scheme “when instituted forms no longer provide for the vividness of the instituent experience we witness the appearance of savage quests for the vivid fervour of the instituent that shun any regard for domestication.” There are further parallels with the universal sociality of Michel Maffesoli’s “orgiasm” (1993), which could be identified as corporealized communitas (see St John 2001a). See also the “Encounter with Freud” (1978) and essays gathered in E. Turner (1992a), including “African Ritual and Western Literature” (chapter 4) which compares the Chihamba initiation ritual and Dante’s Purgatoria, and the “Kannokura Festival at Shingu” (chapter 6). Influenced by Grotowski and in conjunction with Schechner, the Turners became involved in staging experimental Theater/ritual “ethnodrama” with their students. Of course, Turner does not hold a monopoly on perspectives on ritual, and the role of media in complicating and extending what we regard as ritual (includ-

30

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance

ing liminality) has been undergoing serious analyses (see Hughes-Freeland and Crain 1998; Couldry 2003). Forging a holistic anthropology and freakishly astride disciplines, Turner adopted psychological and biological perspectives on ritual with the aim of abolishing “the sharp distinction between the classic study of culture and sociobiology” (1985g: 297). The “geology” of the brain and nervous system suggested the symbiotic coadaptation of biogenetic and sociocultural processes, or a “dual control” of genotypes and culturetypes (1985e). “The New Neurosociology” (the title of an essay presented in 1982 at Smith College), to which Turner was latterly committed, held sympathy with Maclean’s “triune brain” theory, Jung’s archetypes, the collective unconscious and individuation (see 1985f.), and the potential complementarity of the brain’s hemispheres, the fundamental union of which was an expression, according to Schechner, of Turner’s “utopian wish” (1987b: 14). Which, as Doug Ezzy explains (this volume), is itself a “religious/philosophical” faith masquerading, through methodology, as unbiased objectivity. Also, while spontaneous communitas has been found to compare favorably with Durkheim’s “collective effervescence” (Olaveson 2001), since Turner made only an incomplete riposte to the anomalies in Durkheim’s theory of religion (where ritual appeared to be both social and asocial), it remains uncertain as to how his theory advances upon the latter. While acknowledging that a phenomenological perspective would shed light on the transpersonal (and thus astructural) character of communitas, this development was cut short by Turner’s death. The utility of such conceptual architecture should not be underestimated in an era when “natural” and “non-natural” disasters (e.g., the Asian tsunami of December 2004 and especially 9/11) have triggered and continue to require extraordinary local/global responses. For Limen, see http://limen.mi2.hr/. The journal’s brief period of activity (there were two editions) might be considered to be consistent with a liminal logic. For Liminalities, see http://www.liminalities.net. Originally Engelke (2000), though part of a larger project (see Engelke 2001 and 2004).

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Auslander, P. 1994. Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Babcock, B. 1984. “Obituary: Victor W. Turner (1920–1983).” Journal of American Folklore 97: 461–464. ———. 1987. “‘The Arts and All Things Common’: Victor Turner’s Literary Anthropology.” Comparative Criticism 9: 39–46. Babcock, B. and J. J. MacAloon. 1987. “Victor W. Turner (1920–1983): Commemorative Essay.” Semiotica 65, nos. 1–2: 1–27. Barbatsis, G., M. Fegan, and K. Hansen. 1999. “The Performance of Cyberspace: An Exploration into Computer-Mediated Reality.” The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 5, no. 1. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/barbatsis.html Barnard, H. 1985. “Victor Witter Turner: A Bibliography (1952–1975).” Anthropologica 27, nos. 1–2: 207–233. Bateson, G. 1958. Naven. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bell, C. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. Boussaic. P. ed. 1985. “Victor Turner: A Canadian Tribute.” Anthropologica 27, nos. 1–2: 1–239. Bornstein, E. 2006. “Rituals Without Final Acts: Prayer and Success in World Vision Zimbabwe’s Humanitarian Work.” In M. Engelke and M. Tomlinson, eds., The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity, pp. 84–104. New York: Berghahn Books. Broadhurst, S. 1999. Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory. London: Cassell. Bruner, E. 1986. “Experience and Its Expressions.” In V. Turner and E. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 3–30. Champaigne: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1993. “Creative Persona and the Problem of Authenticity.” In S. Lavie, K. Narayan, and R. Rosaldo, eds., Creativity/Anthropology, pp. 321–34. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Burridge, K. 1979. Someone, No One: An Essay on Individuality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Coleman, S. 2002. “Do you Believe in Pilgrimage? Communitas, Contestation, and Beyond Anthropological Theory? Anthropological Theory 2, no. 3: 355–368. Coleman, S., and J. Eade. 2004. Reframing Pilgrimage - Cultures in Motion. London: Routledge. Coleman, S., and J. Elsner. 1998. “Performing Pilgrimage: Walsingham and the Ritual Construction of Irony.” In F. Hughes-Freeland, ed., Ritual, Performance, Media, pp. 46–65. London: Routledge. Couldry, N. 2000. The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses of the Media Age. London: Routledge. ———. 2003. Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge. Crapanzano, V. 1984. “Liminal Recreations.” Review of From Ritual to Theatre in the Times Literary Supplement. April 473. Czarniawska, B, and C. Mazza. 2003. “Consulting as a Liminal Space.” Human Relations 56, np. 3: 267–290.

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Grimes, R. 1976. “Ritual Studies: A Comparative Review of Theodor Gaster and Victor Turner.” Religious Studies Review 2, no.4: 13–25. ———. 1990. “Victor Turner’s Definition, Theory and Sense of Ritual.” In K. Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 141–46. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1995 [1982]. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Washington: University Press of America. Hall, S., and T. Jefferson, eds. 1976. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in PostWar Britain. London: Hutchinson & Co. Handelman, D. 1990. Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1993. “Is Victor Turner Receiving His Intellectual Due?” Journal of Ritual Studies 7: 117–124. Hebdige, D. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. Hetherington, K. 2000. New Age Travellers: Vanloads of Uproarious Humanity. London: Cassell. Holle, K. 2000. “Strategic Family Therapy.” Journal of Ritual Studies 14, no. 2. Hughes-Freeland, F., and M. Crain, eds. 1998. Recasting Ritual: Performance, Media, Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Jencson, L. 2001. “Disastrous Rites: Liminality and Communitas in a Flood Crisis.” Anthropology and Humanism 26, no. 1: 46–58. Jules-Rossette, B. 1994. “Decentering Ethnography: Victor Turner’s Vision of Ethnography.” Journal of Religion in Africa 24, no. 2: 150–181. Laughlin, C., J. McManus, and E. d’Aquil. 1990. Brain, Symbol and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Human Consciousness. Boston: New Science Library. Letkemann, P. G. 2002. “The Office Workplace: Communitas and Hierarchical Social Structures.” Anthropologica 44, no. 2: 257–270. Lewis, J. L., and P. Dowsey-Magog. 1993. “The Maleny Fire Event: Rehearsals Toward Neo-Liminality.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 4, no. 3: 198–219. Manning, F. 1990. “Victor Turner’s Career and Publications.” In K. Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 170–177. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Maffesoli, M. 1993 [1982]. The Shadow of Dionysus: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Orgy. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1996 [1988]. The Time of the Tribes: the Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. London: Sage. Maxwell, I. 2003. Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip Hop Down Under Comin’ Upper. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London and New York: Routledge. Moore, T. The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love. New York: Harper Collins. Morinis, A., ed. 1992. Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Newton, J. 1988. “Aborigines, Tribes and the Counterculture.” Social Analysis 23: 53–71.

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Olaveson, T. 2001. “Collective Effervescence and Communitas: Processual Models of Ritual and Society in Emile Durkheim and Victor Turner.” Dialectical Anthropology 26: 89–124. Ray, B. 1993. “Victor Turner.” Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. Vol. 15: 94–96. Sant, T. 2001. “Liminality and Altered States of Mind in Cyberspace.” Limen: Journal for Theory of Liminal Phenomena 1. Online at: http://limen.mi2.hr/limen1-2001/ toni_sant.html Sallnow, M. 1981. “Communitas Reconsidered: the Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage.” Man 16: 163–82. Sardiello, R. 1994. “Secular Rituals in Popular Culture: a Case for Grateful Dead Concerts and Dead Head Identity.” In J. S. Epstein ed., Adolescents and Their Music: If It’s Too Loud, You’re Too Old, pp. 115–38. New York: Garland. Schechner, R. 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. ed. 1987a. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1987b. “Victor Turner’s Last Adventure.” In R. Schechner, ed., The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 7–20. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Schwartz-Salent, N., and M. Stein, eds. 1991. Liminality and Transitional Phenomena. Wilmette, IL: Chiron. Seneviratne, H. L., ed., 1983. “Essays in Honor of Victor Turner.” South Asian Anthropologist, special issue 4, no. 1: 1–58. Sherry, J. F., Jr. 2005. “We Might Never be Post-Sacred: A Tribute to Russell Belk on the Occasion of His Acceptance of the Converse Award.” In A. Griffin, and C. Otnes, eds., 16th Paul D. Converse Symposium, pp. 67–77. Chicago: American Marketing Association. Shields, R. 2003. The Virtual. London and New York: Routledge. Stanley-Niaah, S. 2006. “Readings of ‘Ritual’ and Community in Dancehall Performance.” Wadabagei 9, no. 2: 43–73. St John, G. 1997. “Going Feral: Authentica on the Edge of Australian Culture.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8, no. 2: 167–189. ———. 2001a. “Alternative Cultural Heterotopia and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at ConFest.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 12, no. 1: 47–66. ———. 2001b. “Australian (Alter)natives: Cultural Drama and Indigeneity.” Social Analysis: Journal of Cultural and Social Practice 45, no. 1: 122–140. ———. 2001c. “‘Heal thy Self—thy Planet’: ConFest, Eco-Spirituality and the Self/Earth Nexus.” Australian Religion Studies Review 14, no. 1: 97–112. Takahashi, M., and T. Olaveson. 2003. “Music, Dance and Raving Bodies: Raving as Spirituality in the Central Canadian Rave Scene.” Journal of Ritual Studies 17, no. 2: 72–96. Turner, E., ed. 1985a. On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985b. “Prologue: From the Ndembu to Broadway.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 1–15. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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———. 1986a. “The Genesis of an Idea: Remembering Victor Turner.” Zygon 21, no. 1: pp. 7–8. ———. 1986b. “Encounter with Neurobiology: The Response of Ritual Studies.” Zygon 21, no. 2: 219–232. ———. 1987. The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1990. “The Literary Roots of Victor Turner’s Anthropology.” In K. Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 163–69. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. ed.1992a. Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1992b. “Prologue: Exploring the Trail.” In E. Turner, ed., Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols, pp. ix–xxi. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1992c. “The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study?” The Anthropology of Consciousness 3, no. 3: 9–12. ———. 1994. “A Visible Spirit Form in Zambia.” In D. Young and J. Goulet. eds., Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, pp. 71–95. New York: Broadview Press. ———. 1996. The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence Among a Northern Alaskan People. Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press. ———. 2005. Among the Healers: Stories of Spiritual and Ritual Healing Around the World (Religion, Health, and Healing). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. ———. 2006. Heart of Lightness: The Life Story of an Anthropologist. New York: Berghahn Books. Turner, E., with W. Blodgett, S. Hakona, and F. Benwa. 1992. Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, F. 1990. “Hyperion to a Satyr: Criticism and Anti-Structure in the Work of Victor Turner.” In K. Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 147–62. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 1962. Chihamba, the White Spirit: Ritual Drama of the Ndembu. Rhodes-Livingstone Institute Papers, 13. Manchester: Manchester University Press for the RhodesLivingstone Institute. ———. 1967a. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1967b. “Symbols in Ndembu Ritual.” In V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, pp. 19–47. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1967c. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, pp. 93–111. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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———. 1967d. “A Ndembu Doctor in Practice.” In V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, pp. 359–393. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1968. The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes Among the Ndembu of Zambia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine. ———. 1971. “An Anthropological Approach to the Icelandic Saga.” In T. Beidelman, ed., The Translation of Culture: Essays to E. E. Pritchard, pp. 349–374. London: Tavistock. ———. 1973. “The Center out There: Pilgrim’s Goal.” History of Religions 12, no. 1: 191–230. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1975. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1977. “Variations on a Theme of Liminality.” In S. Moore and B. Myerhoff, eds., Secular Ritual, pp. 36–52. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. ———. 1978. “Encounter with Freud: The Making of a Comparative Symbologist.” In G. D. Spindler, ed., The Making of Psychological Anthropology, pp. 558–83. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1982a. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1982b. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” In V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, pp. 20–60. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1982c. “Social Dramas and Stories About Them.” In V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, pp. 61–88. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1983. “Carnival in Rio: Dionysian Drama in an Industrialising Society.” In F. Manning, ed., The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary Cultural Performance, pp. 103–24. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press. ———. 1984. “Liminality and the Performative Genres.” In J. J. MacAloon, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Towards a Theory of Cultural Performance, pp. 19–41. Philadelphia: Institute for Study of Human Issues. ———. 1985a. “An Anthropological Approach to the Icelandic Saga.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 71–94. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985b. “Process, System, and Symbol: A New Anthropological Synthesis.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 151–173. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985c. “The Anthropology of Performance.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 177–204. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985d. “Experience and Performance: Towards a New Processual Anthropology.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 205–226. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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———. 1985e. “Body, Brain and Culture.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 249–273. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985f. “The New Neurosociology.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 275–289. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985g. “Are there Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 291–301. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In V. Turner and E. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 33–44. Champaigne: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1987a. “Images and Reflections: Ritual, Drama, Carnival, Film, and Spectacle in Cultural Performance.” In R. Schechner, ed., The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 21–32. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1987b. “Social Dramas in a Brazilian Umbanda: The Dialectics of Meaning.” In R. Schechner, ed., The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 33–71. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1992. “Morality and Liminality.” In E. Turner, ed., Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols, pp. 132–62. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Turner, V., and E. Turner. 1955. “Money Economy Among the Mwinilunga Ndembu: A Study of Some Individual Cash Budgets.” The Rhodes-Livingstone Journal 19: 19–37. ———. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1982. “Religious Celebrations.” In V. Turner, ed., Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual, pp. 201–19. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. van Gennep, A. 1960 [1909]. The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge and Kegan. Weber, D. 1995. “From Limen to Border: a Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner for American Cultural Studies.” American Quarterly 47, no. 3: 525–536. Westerfelhaus, R., and R. Brookey. 2004. “At the Unlikely Confluence of Conservative Religion and Popular Culture: Fight Club as Heteronormative Ritual.” Text and Performance Quarterly 24, nos. 3–4: 302–326. Wheeler, B. 1999. “Models of Pilgrimage: From Communitas to Confluence.” Journal of Ritual Studies 13, no. 2: 26–41. Young, D., and J. Goulet. eds. 1994. Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. New York: Broadview Press. Zukin, S. 1991. Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley: University of California Press.

PART I

{ Performing Culture: Ritual, Drama, and Media

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Chapter One

Toward a Unified Theory of Cultural Performance: A Reconstructive Introduction to Victor Turner J Lowell Lewis

{ As an academic who teaches both in anthropology and in performance studies, I am indebted to the work of Victor Turner which has been central to my thinking about cultural events since the beginning of my postgraduate career. Turner’s influence has been widespread in many disciplines because his ideas were innovative, clearly presented, and generally applicable to many areas of humanistic study. Indeed, this is surely one reason why Richard Schechner saw him as the ideal person with whom to collaborate on the creation of a new academic discipline. This influence has also brought with it criticism, of course, although many have been sufficiently impressed with Turner’s work to follow up such critique with creative engagement or revision of his theories. It is in this spirit that I offer the following piece, which is my attempt to assess the usefulness of Turner’s approach in the light of contemporary work, including some suggestions about how his frameworks might be productively revised to overcome the shortcomings that have become more evident in the years since his death. I want to begin with what I consider to be the most inclusive framework he suggested, the relation between structure and antistructure, and work my way downward in a hierarchy of generality to social drama, ritual (and play) theory, and liminal vs. liminoid frameworks, ending with the troubling con41

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cept of communitas. In all cases I will suggest revisions that I believe serve to improve Turner’s theoretical approach while at the same time (I hope) preserving many of his important and inspirational insights. A similar kind of constructive critique has been characterized by Hans Joas as the “reconstructive introduction” of various well-known concepts that need revision to become useful again as tools for analysis in a contemporary climate (1996: 147).

STRUCTURE AND ANTISTRUCTURE It is well known that Turner advocated, fairly early in his academic career, a processual theory of cultural life, which was already evident in nascent form in his dissertation, published as Schism and Continuity in an African Society (1957). Expressed as a dramatistic metaphor (“social drama”), this move could be seen as the first step away from a structural theory of culture, even though the epitome of structuralism, in the work of Lévi-Strauss, was a program yet to be introduced. Turner himself was unable to articulate fully a theory of culture as process, instead developing a model of dynamic change based on the alternation between structure (as daily life) and antistructure (as ritual process). This dialectical model was a reaction to his training in the British structural-functionalist school of anthropology, representing an important innovation by suggesting a mechanism for processes of social change. Accordingly, he characterized normative regimes of ordinary life as the “indicative mood” of social life, whereas ritual antistructure was the “subjunctive mood” (e.g., 1987: 101–2). This was an important insight, as far as it went, but the model was still burdened by an overly objectivist or systematic view of culture as structure, in opposition to its counter-object, antistructure. Nonetheless, this model paved the way for more dynamic, processual or practice-based theories of cultural activity, which Turner foresaw and welcomed. One interesting critique of Turner has compared him to Bakhtin, who argued for the “heteroglossia” of what might seem to be well-ordered textual, and social, systems (Flanigan 1990). In this view, Turner’s preoccupation with antistructure caused him to downplay the structural or regulatory force of ritual events, just as Bakhtin exaggerated the inherent disorder of normative texts and social arrangements. One could recast this argument by noting that in repeated practices, the heart of what has been called “social structure,” there is always an interplay between replication and adaptation or improvization. Any reenactment is always partly a re-creation as well as a reproduction, whether in the realm of daily life or during special events. Therefore, any enactment adheres somewhat to the normative constraints

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of the past, while also creatively reconstituting them to account for present circumstances, as well as conceptual ideals. Such ideals, according to the philosopher C. S. Peirce, are the actions of the future (what would be) on the present and the past.1 Toward the end of his life, Turner was coming to realize a vision similar to that suggested above, as his detailed and enthusiastic reception of Moore and Myerhoff’s work demonstrated (Turner 1987: 77–79). In my view, special events (a category that includes ritual) are basically intensifications of some of the tendencies inherent in any ordinary activity, but often latent or subliminally present.2 Thus normative practice (everyday life) carries the seeds of its own negation, or it exists in a field of alternative possibilities, some of which may never be acted out. Turner was right in that he saw how ordinary life events were mostly about continuity, repeated patterns, and thus the indicative mood of “structure”; whereas many special events (perhaps most) highlight creative (subjunctive) possibility. Turner’s approach was incomplete when he opted not to also note, or dwell on, the innovative aspects of daily life, nor again the reinforcing continuities of many sorts of special events, especially state ceremonies such as coronations, memorial days, independence days, and the like (cf. Handelman 1998; DaMatta 1991; Kapferer 1988). Radcliffe-Brown, the dean of the British structural-functionalists, had argued (like Durkheim before him) that ritual primarily acted to reinforce, to reproduce, a normative social structure (1952). In this he was not exactly wrong, but only partly right; Turner emphasized the antistructural aspects of ritual and took the theory a step further. Bakhtin was correct that language, for example, is not a completely unified system, that it contains significant heteroglossia, but he did not dwell on the fact that, most of the time, especially in ordinary everyday discourse, the constraints on heteroglossia allow relatively clear communication to take place, so that quotidian business gets done.

SOCIAL DRAMA The usefulness of the distinction between daily life and special events is further illustrated by the effectiveness of metaphors used by theorists to relate the two. One case in point is Turner’s concept of “social drama.” In his view, not all cultural life was a social drama; rather, the phrase was intended to describe periodic social upheavals, such as political conflict, disputes, warfare, or any other disturbance to the normative order caused by human transgression. He proposed a four-part scheme for describing the usual pro-

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cess of such dramas: breach, crisis, redress, and schism or continuity (e.g., 1982: 61–88). The third, redressive phase took on the greatest weight in his theorizing, since he argued it was from this process that most rituals and ultimately most other kinds of regulated special events developed. The picture that emerges, at least from one central aspect of Turner’s work, is of an ordered social system that is disrupted dramatically, and from this disruption people create rituals (or employ judicial processes) to try to restore order. In doing so they must reflect on who and what they are (as a group and as individuals), and out of these reflexive performances social change may also be generated. Therefore I see Turner’s overarching distinction, between structure and antistructure, as a theory of the dialectic between social order and social disorder, in which unplanned or spontaneous events lead to purposeful, programmed events, especially rituals. Again, one can see in Turner’s work the legacy of the British structuralfunctionalism in which he was trained, and it is this functional relation between dramatic crises and ritual events that now seems in need of refinement. In his first book he described social drama as “a limited area of transparency on the otherwise opaque surface of regular, uneventful social life” (1957: 93). This limpid phrase is a good description of the sort of special events humans create to understand their social (and cosmic) life-worlds, but it does not describe the “breach” or “crisis” phases of social drama. Nor, it seems to me, do all ritual events merely have to be responses to crises of order. Instead, people often create such performances for their own sake, as exercises in enjoyment, excitement, and illumination. To be sure, social crises do engender reflective and normalizing events, but events also develop at other times, and for other reasons. For example, the cycles of “nature” (admittedly a culturally and historically specific concept) have often presented themselves as marking or dividing human life, and have provided convenient occasions for the construction of ritual events. These are recurring situations that are not crises, but expected patterns in the yearly, or multi-yearly, round. The initial point here is that “social drama” works as a concept because any aspect of social life is a potential candidate for intensification. One cannot predict with any degree of certainty where or when a social drama might arise. Also, these crises come in all sizes, from personal and family dramas to events with national and international implications (such as 9/11, as it often now known, which might be called a mega- or multisocial drama). A second point is that the relation Turner describes between the transparency of reflexive performance and “opaque” daily life should be recomplicated by pointing out that, after experiencing a period of transparency, ordinary life may seem, at least to some people, a bit less opaque. Furthermore, the

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cumulative effect of many periods of transparency, or awareness, fostered by special events, may be to increase the general level of reflexivity in the population as a whole. This seems to me to be a clear trend in human cultural development over the long term: that our degree of self-awareness, or selfreflexivity, has gradually been increasing, though this has proved to be something of a mixed blessing. It all depends on which, or what kind of “self” (and society) one is becoming aware of. Finally, it should be noted that some special events do not necessarily create “transparent” reflection at all, but may instead create obfuscation, mystification, confusion, sensational excess, or rampant escapism. As many have pointed out, the liberatory, redemptive strain of Turner’s theorizing should probably be brought into some kind of greater balance. Accordingly, I want to suggest a revision of the idea of “social drama,” such that all special events are seen as coming in two forms: spontaneous and planned. Spontaneous special events include Turner’s social dramas, and also any events that seem to people to arise “from outside” their cultural domains: from spirit forces, from gods, or from what most academics would call “natural” sources. The most troublesome spontaneous events are those that are threats to the social order: natural “disasters,” anger of the gods, vengeful ancestors, and the like. In these cases, human efforts will often create subsequent events to remediate the resultant disorder, to appease deities, to restore or rebuild. In other cases, special events are well integrated into the social field, usually when they recur periodically and become part of the social order, in which case they lose some of their spontaneity and become expected. Thus the round of seasons, because it occurs regularly, is adjusted to the corresponding human special events that accompany them, according to a particular cultural program. Other special events are more or less sui generis: they arise from cultural interests and are relatively independent of “outside” or uncontrolled factors, in which case they are primarily planned. In many cases, however, special events are somewhere “in between,” since it is human nature to be cultural and human culture is generally “naturalized” for particular social groups. Edward Casey has a similar solution to the anthropological conundrum of nature versus culture, calling the relation between the two concepts “coadunative,” a term designed to express the belief that “everything is cultural in us” while at the same time, “everything is natural in us” (1996: 36). Thus the distinction between planned and unplanned is mediated by the most commonly found type: “partially planned events.” For instance, it is expected that people will fall ill from time to time, and there is usually a cultural schema for types of diseases and methods of cure, but the actual event of a particular person (or group) falling ill to just that disease at just that time may require a revision of the usual cur-

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ing method to accommodate the circumstances. Likewise, if rain comes late, or there is an unexpected frost, or the neighboring group suddenly decides to attack, appropriate activities may have to be altered or modified accordingly.

META-GENRES: RITUAL AND PLAY Turner is well known for his contributions to ritual theory, to which he devoted the majority of his working life, but he came to emphasize the importance of play only rather late in his career (1987; 1982). His view was that all human perfomative genres developed initially from social dramas, and secondarily from rituals that were outgrowths (primarily) of the redressive phase of those dramas. These prototypical rituals (and he believed he had witnessed a contemporary species of such among the Ndembu of Zambia) were richly elaborated, multivocal affairs, combining visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, kinesthetic, and dramaturgic elements into performances rich in possibility and communality. He viewed what he came to call the “liminoid” (ritual-like) performance genres of secularized, industrialized societies as derivations from these more fulsome forms, in which certain of the aspects or themes became elaborated in isolation from the others. For example, the impetus to social change gradually shifted: “in these modern processes and movements, the seeds of cultural transformation, discontent with the way things are culturally and social criticism, always implicit in the preindustrially liminal, have become situationally central” (Turner 1982: 45). In the above piece, Turner notes that the position of play is also crucial in determining whether an event should be seen as liminal or liminoid. What he did not clearly realize is that this avowed centrality of play casts doubt on his contention that ritual is the primordial source for all kinds of human special events. Although I share many of Turner’s views on ritual, I want to differ with his speculative scenario of cultural development by allying myself with those, like Huizinga (1955) and Bateson (1972), among others, who would begin the story of human cultural performance with the idea of play. In the first place, it is important to recognize our animal origins, and to think about how hominids became human, diverging from other similar primates. It seems clear that one major activity we share with primates, as well as other mammals, is the propensity for play, especially in youth. However, humans differ from other animals in how we play, and also in the importance of play for adults. Contrariwise, I will disagree with those many animal behaviorists and others who label certain animal activities as “rituals;” I argue that this is a projection of our interests on to them. This usage of

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“ritual” is for me a metaphorical extension of human concerns, an elaborate anthropomorphism. I want to define ritual in such a way as to exclude animal behavior, thus more clearly differentiating us from them in that regard. Following a suggestion made by MacAloon (1984: 250) I refer to ritual and play as the two most important “meta-genres” of human performance, by which I mean concepts that are useful for the cross-cultural comparison of special events (cf. Schechner 2002). In my view, these are the oldest forms of human interaction that, over time, have developed into many of the event frameworks we name and recognize at present. The argument is that play is somewhat older than ritual, since it links us with the animal world, whereas ritual (as I define it) was an early, but uniquely human, invention. In more recent times other meta-genres have been invented, such as work, for example, whose ubiquity can arguably be linked to the industrial revolution and the dominance of capitalism as a mode of social organization.3 One of the foremost theorists of play, Sutton-Smith, has noted that the rise of the work vs. leisure distinction in large-scale industrial societies has indelibly colored the way theorists tend to understand play (1997: 173–200). The thrust of his book is to argue that play is ambiguous in a number of ways, a view that underscores the antiquity of this mode of activity both ontogenetically (in human evolution) and phylogenetically (as central to the development of children). In this forum I can only present a brief overview of play theory, beginning with the most general point: I see it as central both to the establishment of human coherence frameworks, and to the undermining or changing of them. This accords well with the work of Roger Caillois, a play theorist whose work was influential for Turner. Caillois made a distinction between paidia (unstructured play) and ludus (play organized into frameworks) (1961). Huizinga attempted something similar when he distinguished between ludus (free play) and agon (contest) (1955). Adults and children both play games and sports, but the former also create playful imaginative frameworks, according to the society, for things like music, dance, poetry, and drama. Child play is often spontaneous and unstructured, but even in adult life play can spontaneously “break out” in joking, in irony, in foolishness or fooling around of many kinds. Play can be rule-governed, but only provisionally, because it is often about the limits of rules, or a reflection on how rules apply or how they should apply. I remember entire game sessions as a child that were spent in discussing, or arguing about, the rules of the game, such that the argument became a form of play itself. Games need rules, need clear goals and outcomes, but free play resists rules and thrives on ambiguity. If the rules are “too rigid” they can destroy the playfulness of a game, but if they are “too vague” a game fails to have coherence.

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Play is a fundamental process of creating social order, both in humans and animals, but in the human case it is also about the problems of order, the limits to it, the dispensability or impermanence of it. In many cases these opposing functions operate at different moments, in some instances being mostly pattern affirming, while in others being pattern defying. In more interesting cases, however, human play can do both at once: it can be a process both of reinforcing social normativity and simultaneously of contesting it. For example, this dynamic can be found in the organization of personal identity: making fun of oneself, or being made fun of, can serve to reinforce one’s self-image, but this teasing can also (and at the same time) provide an impetus to change, and suggest directions for desirable self-transformation. When play is organized into special events, in some cases such activities can be seen to increase social cohesion. People can be united in the enthusiasm for games and sports, in their love of being caught up in the flow of those sorts of play. However, insofar as many games and sports highlight competition, they can also be divisive of the social fabric, inciting fans of opposing teams to violence, for instance. When playfulness breaks out spontaneously in the flux of ordinary life, on the other hand, the same two-edged character can be observed. Jokes, irony, and the many forms of verbal and nonverbal play may point to social problems, to the inconsistencies or strictures of social order, to the limitations of normative social habits. On the other hand, the laughter that these sallies produce can create solidarity and friendship among the small-scale groups sharing the humor. Thus when play is bounded, and when it is spontaneous, in both cases it tends to create ambiguities between social cohesion versus social dissolution or critique. The relation between play and reflexivity is also a complex one, since play can be a source of self-reflection, as well as an escape from it. The framed play of games and sports are clearly “good to think” (in Lévi-Strauss’s famous phrase about totemic animals [1963: 89]) for some, but for others these events offer precisely the escape from the burdens of reflective thought that they are seeking.

LIMINAL AND LIMINOID Turner argued for a long-term historical sequence, a familiar anthropological secenario, in which a world made up of many small-scale foraging and horticultural societies gradually developed into a world of large-scale empires and nation states, increasingly secularized and industrialized. He associated “liminality” with the rituals of the former world, and called the “leisure genres” of the latter world “liminoid” (e.g., 1982: 20ff.). As is the case above,

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I want to preserve the essentials of this scenario, which has been overlooked by many contemporary theorists outside of anthropology, while modifying some aspects. The first problem stems from the term “liminality” itself. Van Gennep used the Greek term limen in his famous book on “rites of passage” (1960 [1908]), intending it to apply to the middle phase of his threepart scheme for understanding these rites: separation (séparation), transition (marge), and reincorporation (agrégation). Van Gennep argued that the primary rites of passage were birth, marriage, and death, as well as initiation rituals in some societies. However, toward the end of his book he suggested that even such events as seasonal rituals celebrated by an entire group might also be included under this rubric, arguing that these too involved transitions, or changes of state (1960: 178ff.). Soon after van Gennep published, some anthropologists took issue with the latter move, arguing that seasonal rituals should not be lumped with rites of passage. For instance, Chapple and Coon (1942) suggested that repeated calendrical rituals should instead be called “rites of intensification,” since they had a somewhat different structure. Unfortunately, Turner ignored these sorts of critiques and adopted the problematic extension of the definition of rites of passage, and eventually he came to equate “liminality” with ritual itself, which now seems to be an unwarranted overgeneralization. If one admits that there are other types of ritual besides rites of passage, as most theorists have agreed (even Turner at times), then it follows that those forms may be linked to different sequences, as distinguished from the tripartite scheme proposed by van Gennep. For example, Drewal (1992) argues convincingly that many Yoruba ritual types in Nigeria are understood to have a five-part movement, in which the activities are seen as a metaphorical journey or pilgrimage. In many kinds of Yoruba ritual, the performance processes embody all of the characteristics of a journey: 1) travel from one place to another, and a return— sometimes actual sometimes virtual, 2) new experiences, 3) joys and hardships along the route, 4) material for further contemplation and reflection, and 5) presumed growth or progress as a result of the whole experience. (Ibid.:37)

The argument is that there are many sorts of rituals, and that these different sorts may well have different sequential patterns (syntagms), so when analyzing events that might be derived from ritual processes, it is essential to begin by deciding what kind of ritual they derived from. In my view, one should not blindly try to apply the van Gennep schema unless there is a convincing link to a rite of passage, narrowly defined: for instance, fraternity or college initiations or army basic training regimes seem quite similar to initiation rituals, at least in this basic organizational sequence. Neither should

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van Gennep’s schema be reduced to a simple beginning, middle, and end analysis, which can clearly apply to just about any sort of event. Likewise, as I indicated above, many kinds of events can be related more clearly to play, such as games and sports, and it may not be useful to compare them to rituals at all. Elsewhere (Lewis and Dowsey-Magog 1993) I have proposed some criteria by which events might be evaluated as more or less ritual-like, an approach I am currently refining. One key criterion proposed is that ritual events be considered as the most important kind of activities, as matters of “ultimate concern” for a given group of participants.4 The term “ritual-like” seems to be a good alternative to Turner’s usage of “liminoid,” to designate those events that have derived historically from rituals, or have been influenced by them, and thus share some, but not all of their characteristics (see Lewis 1992; cf. Bell 1992). This is not intended as a strategy for classifying all performance into genres, but rather as a tactic for exploring the limits of useful comparison between types of events. Since I argued that not all human special events derive ultimately from rituals, but that some are the offspring of play activities, for instance, it is therefore necessary to have a category of “not ritual” or at least “not (very) ritual-like.” When one can establish that certain events derived from rituals historically, or were modeled on them, an examination of those ritual forms may facilitate the analysis of the derived ones. But when such connections have been lost over time, or when no plausible ritual forebears or models can be found, then calling such events “ritual-like” is not particularly helpful. In the case of games and sports, it seems likely that many were never seen as supremely important but were always considered merely entertaining, or simply pastimes. In these cases, comparing them to other play-like activities will probably be more useful. However, it is also true that some games become “ritualized” over time: that is, in some cases they become matters of ultimate concern. Examples of these could probably be found in the preColumbian Mayan ball games (Enriquez 1968), as well as the ancient Greek Olympic games. In my approach, many of the formal characteristics usually attributed to ritual, such as invariance or repetition, decorum, elevated speech, and efficacy, might be seen as entailments of the performance of most important events, which amounts to something of an inversion on the approach to ritual suggested by Rappaport (1999). However, it is even more exact to say that importance is recognized and identified by social actors due to the presence of at least some of these elements, and that these elements, in turn, are used to signify the importance of such events. In other words, content does not follow form, nor form content, but both co-evolve together. The reason why ritual has been so hard to define lies in the great cultural variability of

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both formal and substantive elements of such performances, leading to the resultant arguments about which of those elements are the least variable. My argument is that importance, or ultimate concern (marked by appropriate formality), is the most central (or least variable) element, and that the others can be seen to follow (logically though not phenomenologically) from this. Since I am arguing that play and ritual are the most ancient activity frameworks developed by humans, which is why they are the most influential on contemporary event forms, it will be useful to examine the relations between them in general, insofar as they can be determined. Handelman, for example, argued early in his career for a fundamental contrast between play and ritual; he saw them as “complementary, yet mutually exclusive” (1977: 187). Whereas in that essay he understood these processes in terms of contrasting frameworks, I am arguing that both can be implicated in the fundamental processes of framework construction, maintenance, alteration, and dissolution. In this view, ritual is primarily an attempt to establish sociocultural patterns in relation to an environing cosmos. This involves questions of morality, normality, legitimacy, authority, and the like. On the other hand, play may be used either to establish such frameworks or to deconstruct, critique, or alter them. The event frameworks that play is used to create, such as sports and games, are rarely seen as the most important ones. At the same time, playfulness can erupt spontaneously during many kinds of events, as a way of (implicitly or explicitly) questioning the appropriateness or usefulness of a framework. This doesn’t usually happen during ritual events, that is, the most important ones, unless play is understood by a group to be a fundamental aspect of the cosmos. Such is the case, for instance, among groups who make use of “ritual clowns,” the subject of later work by Handelman (he uses examples from Pakistani, Mexican indigenous, and Native American groups). In that piece he seems to moderate his earlier position, arguing that ritual clowns “have crucial functions of boundary-dissolution, of processuality, and of reflexivity, for the organisation itself of such rites” (1981: 21). This is very close to the position that I have just outlined. Many other groups put play or playfulness at the heart of their cosmological performances: for instance, in some parts of South Asia the dance of Shiva is said to spin out the cosmos in play (lila) from which mortals may try to extricate themselves. In Yoruba cultural worlds, both in Africa and Brazil, the spirit of Exú represents the trickery and treachery of divine forces, which can often also be expressed in forms of playful dance (Browning 1995; Drewal 1992). In these and other cases play is seen as a cosmological process, and it is therefore of fundamental importance as a link between human cultural life-worlds and the greater environing conditions.

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COMMUNITAS AND SEMIOSIS In their epitaph to the life of Turner, Babcock and MacAloon (1987) note that communitas was one of the least developed and most contentious aspects of his theoretical apparatus. When I approach the teaching of this concept, I usually begin by arguing that it represents Turner’s attempt to get at the internal experience of liminality, as opposed the overtly observable actions of ritual practice. Yet the term explicity evokes communal feeling, which is not a common way of viewing inwardness in the European philosophical tradition. In general, I have come to replace this term in my own thinking with something like “embodied experience,’” which removes the expressly liberatory, even Christian connotations with which Turner imbued communitas. However, embodiment raises many other questions concerning the relations between individual and group experience, and the relations between feeling and thought or discourse. To begin with the second problem, I turn to the phenomenological semiotics of C. S. Peirce, for whom “meaning” is defined as the effects signs have, or could have, on interpreters (CP 5.402). In this view, there is a hierarchy of effects, starting with more or less inchoate feelings, and evolving into more or less coherent ideas and words. Thus, primarily iconic and indexical signs (as found in sound [music], movement [dance], and visual patterns [plastic arts, costume]) may become (partially) expressible in primarily symbolic signs (language) (Lewis 1992).5 This means in practice that the experience of participation in an event that may include singing, dancing, special costume, and the like, can never be fully captured in discourse: in other words, such participation is something of an end in itself. One enjoys, or endures, such events. and one may or may not be able to put those experiences clearly into words. Conceptual and linguistic interpretations, as reflections primarily after the fact, are meaningful effects that may or may not be directly linked to the experiences they are meant to “explain.” Turner’s suggestion that one link the “sensory” (or “orectic”) pole of significata with the “ideological” pole in a process he called “polarization” (1967: 28) was clearly an attempt to characterize this link between embodied practice and interpretive discourse. This is a most crucial point about any kind of performance analysis: there is always a gulf between the experience of participation and the linguistic interpretations given as to what those experiences (or the events they constitute) might mean. For me, following Peirce, embodied experiences are one aspect of the meaning of events, and the link to what people say about them upon reflection is always fraught and problematic. This situation goes some way toward explaining why one’s position in an event framework is crucial to what one makes of it. Perform-

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ers tend to have different experiences from audiences, or technical support people, for instance, which obviously gives them different perspectives on what those events can be said to “mean.” Added to this is the more extreme case of the anthropological encounter, also of central concern to Turner, wherein the experiences and interpretations of cultural insiders must be reconciled with those of cultural outsiders. For both of these kinds of reasons, Turner always advocated what he called the “multivocality” of ritual events, which in a late work he called “multiperspectival” (1987: 79), an idea that is still quite pertinent and often overlooked by contemporary analysts of performance. These points are not unrelated to the modes of communitas that Turner suggested, namely: spontaneous, ideological, and normative (1982: 47–50). For me this is an attempt to think through the process of cultural development sometimes known as institutionalization, which is clearly related to the semiotic scheme above. What begins as an embodied experience (feelings arise) over time becomes expected (what you should feel), finally ending up as prescriptive (what you must feel). This scheme always reminds me of the process Max Weber called the “routinization of charisma” (1978: chap. 14). Whereas Weber was describing the evolution of religious systems, beginning with a charismatic leader, Turner is describing the feelings of group solidarity that he believes arise between age sets of young initiates in a puberty ritual. One could argue that charisma is first an individual thing (although Weber is careful to note how much is projected onto a leader by the group), whereas communitas is initially a group feeling, which then becomes a central experience in the constitution of individual faith, at least in some applications. What I want to highlight here is the important dynamic between person and group in the constitution of embodied experience. In phenomenological theory, one way that this dynamic is expressed is through the term “intersubjectivity.”6 Recently, some scholars have been exploring a slightly more embodied version of this concept, which could be called “intercorporeality,” following a lead from Merleau-Ponty (1962). This thematic represents an attempt to understand how intersubjectivity might arise through common corporeal experience, such as shared touch (intertactility), shared smell, shared taste, shared hearing (interaudition), shared sound making (intervocality), and the like. One key question that arises in both cases is whether embodied experience is, in the first place, (a) always already shared, (b) always already private, or (c) always already some combination of the two. One can find philosophers and researchers who take each of these positions. The decision as to which of the above positions one wants to advocate is ultimately perhaps only speculation, but the identification of specific ways

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that intercorporeality operates in human events may be a good method for discovering specific ways that intersubjective experience is constituted and/ or reinforced. As noted above, events can lead to conflict, to the refusals of commonality, to violence against those who are not part of the in-group. Even attempts at intercorporeal merging might result in rejection, denial, or revulsion on the part of some. On many phenomenological accounts, and in the work of Peirce, subjectivity itself is seen as dialogical: that is, any kind of thinking necessarily involves dialogue, the action of separate voices (cf. Colapietro 1989). Thus one can argue with oneself, and one can reject parts of oneself, even parts of one’s own body, in a process that is similar to, or directly related to, modes of social conflict. From this perspective, Jackson has argued that even violence should be seen as a form of intersubjectivity (1998: 4). Others might argue that violence represents a failure of communication, a lapse or lacuna in the semiotic or cultural field (Daniel 1996). As violence escalates in warfare, many unintended consequences definitely pose a threat to the ordinary human being, taking people to the limits of intersubjectivity and perhaps beyond. In forms of playful violence, such as contact or martial sports, there is a sort of intercorporeality that often can lead to damage, but not always to estrangement, as sometime enemies can become mates, not just in spite but even because of their bruising contact. Even in forms of “contemporary performance” that explore themes of violence, horror, anomie, or isolation, there is presumably some communicative intent in trying to evoke these feelings. In this sense, it is important that theorists do not reflexively discard Turner’s liberatory agenda, without due consideration. In the vast majority of performative frameworks, the intent is toward enjoyment, entertainment, interest, and the creation of positive (or troubling, but not totally disruptive) group feelings that result merely from congregation in audience. Insofar as contemporary society environs people in a cultural life-world (a proposition some might now doubt), it must do so by encouraging events that do succeed in creating some degree, or some form, of communitas.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, let me try to summarize what I have argued above. In moving from concepts of “structure” to a processual model based on something like “performance,” I want to retain one dualism, closely linked to the insights of Turner, namely that of special events vs. everyday life. This apparent dualism, however, is always already mediated in several ways: (1) the categories repre-

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sent a continuum with no clear division possible: all events are more or less special, more or less ordinary; (2) the categories are reciprocal, since each codefines the other: neither can exist, or be experienced, in isolation, but only in contrast to the other; (3) order or disorder can arise, or be experienced, in either domain, although perhaps there are habitual tendencies toward more order in everyday life and more disorder in special events, as Turner argued; (4) this dualistic distinction is based on the underlying potential for any human event or event type to become patterned, framed, and set apart from the everyday, a potential that I call “performativity.” Point three above can be related to my discussion of the importance of play, as a supplement to ritual, in a scenario of the development of special event frameworks. Thus I have argued that play is both constructive and deconstructive of generic events, whereas ritual is usually constructive. This is related to the tendency for play frameworks to be seen as “mere,” whereas ritual ones are the most important types. I suggest that the term “liminoid” be replaced by “ritual-like” event types, but with a clear understanding that some events should be seen as not ritual-like. I have argued that there is often a gulf between embodied practice and discourse about it, which is related to Turner’s concept of multivocality. In this discussion, attention to the intercorporeal aspects of human intersubjectivity may be a useful clarifying strategy for understanding the links between personal and social formations. Finally, I have suggested that Turner’s liberatory vision for human sociality be moderated somewhat, that it should be tempered by the equally strong tendency toward destruction of the self and the environment. However, in this struggle, which ultimately is a question of our survival as a species, it would be foolish to abandon totally the hope that liberation, as something like communitas, might be the stronger of the two forces.

NOTES 1. Peirce argued that the use of general terms constituted an action of the future upon the present (and past), since they represent predictions that present conditions would conform to these generalities (CP 1.26; 1.343). Following the convention of Peirce scholarship, this and subsequent bracketed references are to the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931–1958), indicating the volume number, followed by the paragraph number. 2. As I will argue in my forthcoming book, The Anthropology of Cultural Performance (manuscript). 3. Some have argued that ‘work’ is much older than this as an identifiable metagenre. For instance, some have suggested that ‘work’ has been central to indigenous conceptions of events in Papua New Guinea (Wilde 2004).

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4. The phrase “ultimate concern” is from Paul Tillich, cited in MacAloon (1984: 250–254). My criterion of importance is thus indebted to the work of MacAloon in this respect. 5. For other explanations of Peirce’s semiotic scheme see Sebeok (1977); Buchler (1955). 6. There is a vast literature on this subject: for some overviews see Jackson (1998); Haney (1994); Schutz (1967).

REFERENCES Babcock, Barbara and John MacAloon 1987. “Victor W. Turner (1920-1983).” Semiotica 65, nos. 1–2: 1–27. Bateson, Gregory 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books. Bell, Catharine 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Browning, Barbara 1995. Samba: Resistance in Motion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Buchler, Justus, ed. 1955. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover. Caillois, Roger. 1961. Man, Play and Games. Transl. M. Barash. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Casey, Edward S. 1996. “How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomonenological Prolegomena.” In S. Feld and K. Basso, eds., Senses of Place, pp. 13–52. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Chapple, E., and C. Coon. 1942. Principles of Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt. Colapietro, Vincent. 1989. Peirce’s Approach to the Self; A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. Albany: State University of New York. Da Matta, Roberto. 1991. Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma. Transl. J. Drury. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Daniel, E. Valentine. 1996. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Drewal, Margaret. 1992. Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Enriquez, Celso. 1968. Sports in Pre-Hispanic America. Mexico City: Litografica Machado. Flanigan, C. Clifford. 1990. “Liminality, Carnival, and Social Structure: the Case of Late Medieval Biblical drama.” In K. Ashely, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism, pp. 42–63. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Handelman, Don. 1998. Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events, 2nd ed. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 1977. “Play and Ritual: Complementary Frames of Meta-communication.” In A. Chapman and H. Foot, eds., It’s a Funny Thing, Humour. Oxford: Pergamon. ———. 1981. “The Ritual-Clown: Attributes and Affinities.” Anthropos 76: 321–70. Haney, Kathleen. 1994. Intersubjectivity Revisited: Phenomenology and the Other. Athens: Ohio University Press.

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Huizinga, Johan. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Jackson, Michael. 1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Joas, Hans. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Transl. Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kapferer, Bruce. 1988. Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerancc, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Totemism. Transl. R. Needham. New York: Basic Books. Lewis, J. Lowell. 1992. Ring of Liberation: Deceptive Discourse in Brazilian Capoeira. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lewis, J. Lowell, and Paul Dowsey-Magog. 1993. “The Maleny ‘Fire Event’: Rehearsals Toward Neo-liminality.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 4, no. 3: 198–219. MacAloon, John. 1984. “Olympic Games and the Theory of Spectacle in Modern Societies.” In J. MacAloon, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, pp. 241–280. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. The Phenomenology of Perception. Transl. C. Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Moore, Sally and Barbara Myerhoff, eds. 1977. Secular Ritual. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. Peirce, Charles 1931–1958. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. New York: The Free Press. Rappaport, Roy. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schechner, Richard. 2002. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Schutz, Alfred. 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Transl. G. Walsh and F. Lehnert. London: Heinemann. Sebeok, Thomas ed. 1977. A Perfusion of Signs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1997. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1987. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. van Gennep, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Transl. M. Vizedom and G. Caffee. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

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Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society:An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wilde, Charles. 2004. “From Racing to Rugby: All Work and No Play for Gogodala Men of Western Province, Papua New Guinea.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 15, no. 3: 286–302.

Chapter Two

The Ritualization of Performance (Studies) Ian Maxwell

{ INTRODUCTION: NUREMBURG, 1933 In 1933 a young Jewish historian accompanied her friend to the Nuremberg rally for Adolf Hitler. With curiosity and apprehension, she watched group after group parade by—idealistic youth, disciplined soldiers, worshipful women, loyal elderly citizens—all costumed and choreographed. Once they had marched into orderly sections within a vast field, Brown Shirts formed lines on the aisles and the S.S. cleared an area in the center. Expectations of Hitler’s arrival rose to a fever pitch as people scanned the space for a glimpse of his entrance. At the sound of a small plane, all eyes shot upward. As it landed in their midst and Hitler emerged, the crowd roared with one voice and the Jewish historian found her arm in the air and heard her own voice cheering with the others, “Heil Hitler.” Years later, a scholar of German history living in the United States, she was still appalled and stunned that she could have done it. Davis and Dulicai (1992: 156)

FRUCTILE CHAOS: THE ROMANCE OF THE LIMINAL “Liminality,” wrote Victor Turner can perhaps be described as a fructile chaos, a fertile nothingness, a storehouse of possibilities, not by any means a random assemblage but a striving after new forms and structure, a gestation process, a fetation of modes appropriate to and 59

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anticipating postliminal experience. It is what goes on in nature in the fertilized egg, in the chrysalis, and even more richly and complexly in their cultural homologues. (1990: 12)

This essay is about the allure of this fructile chaos Turner described; both the allure that such an intensity of experience holds for participants, and, no less, the allure of that state as a theoretical construct: one that is foundational to the project of performance studies. Inaugurated by the collaboration between Turner and theater director-theorist Richard Schechner, performance studies takes its ideological lead from Turner’s faith, implicit in the layering of maternal images in the passage quoted above, in a fundamental, nascent human goodness. Indeed, Turner’s commitment to a liberatory, salvational, “grace”-ful essence of the deep, fundamental human states predicated at the heart of liminal and liminoid experiences, grounding the possibility of a transcendent communitas, has proved irresistible to performance studies. So much so, in fact, that Jon McKenzie (2001) has argued that it has led performance studies to celebrate some modes of performance—those that fit the liberatory model—while tending to ignore orders of performance falling outside the Turner-Schechnerian rubric, in which aesthetic and cultural performances in postindustrial societies are understood as derivatives of ritual forms in less complex worlds. More than this, however, I will suggest that even in modes of performance that are closely related to the ritual and (on Schechner’s account) ritualderived forms, the focus upon liberatory efficacy too easily overlooks the potential of performance to effect radically dystopian change. By elevating and sanctifying the rapture of intense shared physiological, psychological, and phenomenological experiences as moments of the liberation of a beneficient fundamental humanity, we run the risk of misrecognizing the flip side of the picture, misconstruing such instances as deviant, mischievous, aberrant. In effect, I am arguing for something altogether darker and dangerous at the heart of communitas, if only to advocate a moment of caution before the leap to the rapture of the liminal.

UNIO MYSTICA: LIMINALITY AND GRACE For Turner liminal experiences are “ultimately eufunctional . . . ways of making [the social structure] work without too much friction” (1982: 54). This is ritual process as redressive mechanism, prophylactically negotiating crisis and breach, working “for the good”, ensuring the maintenance of the status quo. Liminoid phenomena, by distinction, “are often parts of social critiques

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or even revolutionary manifestos” (ibid.: 54–55). Such phenomena, derivative or vestigial of the more purely ritual processes of simple, pre-industrial societies, explains Turner, offer a range of options for playful “experimentation” and “innovation.” In Brian Sutton-Smith’s words, quoted approvingly by Turner, they constitute a “latent system of potential alternatives from which novelty will arise when normative systems require it” (ibid.: 52). For Turner, such phenomena function to “expos[e] the injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities of the mainstream economic and political structures and organizations” (ibid.: 55). The somewhat circumscribed, restorative eufunctionality that Turner ascribes to the liminal yields, in the passage to liminoidity, an unqualified capacity to facilitate not only an enlightening critique, but, even more, the potential to effect societal change, and to do so for the better. Rarely does Turner countenance otherwise. In the same essay, Turner enumerates the three “distinct and not necessarily sequential forms” of communitas, that “anti-structural” state at stake in the liminal phase of ritual forms. “Spontaneous” communitas, “a direct, immediate and total confrontation of human identities,” has “something ‘magical’ about it,” offering “[s]ubjectively . . . a feeling of endless power” (1982: 47–48), and an “intersubjective illumination . . . a ‘gut’ understanding of synchronicity.” Those sharing communitas “become totally involved into a single, synchronized, fluid event” (ibid.: 48). The third, subsequently described, form of communitas, the “normative,” involves a subculture or group attempting “to foster and maintain relationships or spontaneous communitas on a more or less permanent basis” (ibid.: 49), a process that of necessity “denatures” the “grace” state of spontaneous communitas, subjecting it to “law.” Between these two, Turner posits an “ideological” communitas, which seeks to retrospectively interrupt the flow-experience of spontaneous communitas through the intervention of an agent (“experiencer,” writes Turner) to “look to language and culture to mediate the former immediacies” (ibid.: 48). The end of such an intervention, Turner speculates, can be to develop a “‘utopian’ model of society, in which all human activities would be carried out on the level of spontaneous communitas” (ibid.). At once, Turner qualifies his speculation: “I hasten to add that not all or even the majority of ‘utopian’ models are those of ‘ideological communitas’. . . . There are many hierarchical utopias, conservative utopias, fascistic utopias” (ibid.: 49). Such utopias lie outside the ambit of what Turner designates “the ‘communitas’ utopia” (my italics); communitas utopia, he continues “is found in variant forms as a central ingredient, connected with the notion of ‘salvation’” (ibid.). Having considered the possibility of a fascist communitas, if only briefly, Turner discounts it tout court—such communitas cannot be real communitas— and reverting at once to the liberation theology discourse of salvation.

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At the heart of the liminal experience, then, is a moment of grace, transcending all difference, offering the possibility of salvation. This liminal moment involves a momentary suspension of the past (which is “negated, suspended, or abrograted”); it is “an instant of pure potentiality, when everything trembles in the balance” (1982: 44), the future not yet begun. In small societies, this moment can be hedged about with taboos and exclusions: “the tribal liminal, however exotic in appearance, can never be much more than a subversive flicker. It is put into the service of normativeness almost as soon as it appears” (ibid.: 44–45). In more complex cultural worlds, Turner finds this flicker, now less rigidly structured into a ritual framework, at the heart of revolutionary art and cultural movements.

ANTISTRUCTURE AND FLOW: NATURE AGAINST CULTURE The terms of the liminal/liminoid “grace” state are explicit: the individual is removed from all context, falling into “anti-structure,” by which Turner means not a structural reversal, a mirror-imaging of “profane” workaday socioeconomic structure, or a fanstasy-rejection of structural “necessities,” but the liberation of human capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity, etc., from the normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social statuses, enacting a multiplicity of social roles, and being acutely conscious of membership in some corporate group such as a family, lineage, clan, tribe, nation, etc., or of affiliation with some pervasive social category such as a class, a caste, sex or age-division. (1982: 44)

As we have seen, this “liberation” of an innate humanity is experienced in the gut, as a flow and connectedness. Turner moves toward a description of such states, glossing Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s six characteristics of the “flow experience” of play, sport (the “liminoid metagenres of our society,” writes Turner [ibid.: 56]), creativity in art and literature, and religious experiences; experiences “in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, stimulus and response or between past, present and future” (ibid.). In Csikszentmihalyi’s account, as glossed by Turner, “flow” appears as an empirically grounded intercorporeality marked by the following characteristics: 1. Flow merges action and awareness: “there is no dualism in “flow” . . . an actor may be aware of what he is doing, [but] he cannot be aware that he is aware” (ibid.: 56).

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2. Flow involves a radical “centering of attention,” a narrowing of consciousness, and a negation of temporality: “only now matters” (ibid.). 3. The self becomes irrelevant: the “actor is immersed in the ‘flow,’” although “[s]elf-forgetfulness does not mean loss of self-awareness”; rather, “[f]low reaches out to nature and to other men . . . [a]ll men, even all things are felt to be one, subjectively, in the flow experience” (ibid.: 57). Turner refers to Csikszentmihalyi’s use of the accounts of “athletes and sportsmen,” inter alia, to substantiate this kind of claim. 4. In flow, the individual experiences himself [sic] as being in control of his actions and the environment. 5. Flow contains coherent, non-contradictory demands for action, and clear, unambiguous feedback. 6. Flow is autotelic, having no goal or reward beyond itself. “To flow,” writes Turner, “is to be as happy as a human can be” (ibid.: 58). Turner is careful not to identify flow, as conceived by Csikszentmihalyi, with communitas. Rather, he simply claims that “communitas has something of a “flow quality” (ibid.: 58). In fact, Turner wants to claim communitas as something even more fundamental and prestructural than that generated within the rule-bound circumstances generative of flow experiences. To move such an experience into language is to do symbolic violence to its immediacy and spontaneity: for Turner, even a description of the experience of communitas as flow places that experience “in the domain of what I have called “structure,” as opposed to which communitas “is always prestructural” (ibid.). The point, for Turner, is that liminoid practices have, in complex societies, “taken over the flow-function in culture” (ibid.: 59). In the final lines of the essay, Turner poses the crucial question “Are all ‘flows’ one?” (ibid.), hinting at a universal communitas in which all possible humans are rendered into a transcendental unity. In a late essay, “Body, Brain, Culture,” Turner moved toward an answer in the affirmative, suggesting that advances in neurophysiology would find biophysical correlates for these experiences. Outlining then state-of-the-art research into hemispheric specialization in the human brain, Turner suggests that trance states involve a hyperstimulation of either the dominant (usually left) hemisphere, which “governs analytical verbal and causal thinking [and is] identified with the ergotropic or energy-expending system” (quoted in Turner 1987: 164–165, from d’Aquili and Laughlin 1979: 175), or the right, generally nondominant hemisphere, identified with the “trophotropic”, or baseline energy state system. The hyperstimulation, writes Turner, glossing d’Aquili and Laughlin,

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results in a “spill-over” into the opposite system: “the rhythmic activity of ritual, aided by sonic, visual, photic, and other kinds of ‘driving,’ may lead in time to simultaneous maximal stimulation of both systems, causing ritual participants to experience what d’Aquili and Laughlin call “positive, ineffable affect.” They also use Freud’s term “oceanic experience,” as well as “yogic ecstasy,” also the Christian term unio mystica, an experience of the union of these cognitively discriminated opposites, typically generated by binary, digital left-hemispherical ratiocination. I suppose one might also use the Zen term satori (the integrating flash), and one could add the Quakers’ “inner light,” Thomas Merton’s “transcendental consciousness,” and the yogic Samadhi. (ibid.: 165)

To these we might add the sportsperson’s “zone”, the musician’s “groove”, the thrall, too, of the dance party or rave, or, as I have argued myself, the experience of freestyle rapping (Maxwell 1997, 2003). Such experiences constitute compelling phenomenological evidence upon which people constitute themselves as belonging: to a community, to others, to a place, an idea, a cause. Turner’s work—offering, in its excited canvassing of phenomenology and neurophysiology, no matter how problematic, so much more than simply a formal, schematic functionalism—provides extraordinarily compelling means with which to think through such belongingness, and does so in a manner that, as I have suggested, is predicated upon a fundamental assertion of faith in a fundamental human goodness, accessed by means of a putative erasure of time, history, and culture. More, Turner layers up the appeal of this ur-state, framing it, as we have seen, in the language of “subversion”, “liberation”, “salvation” and “grace”. And so, we can start to understand the young Jewish woman’s experience of her body acting against her will. The “fever pitch” of anticipation, the bodies crushed together, eyes and bodies straining skyward as the Fokker descends through the clouds over Nuremburg. These moments are preserved, of course, in Leni Riefenstahl’s extraordinary documentation of the 1934 rallies, Triumph of the Will. Watch the film again: the most compelling passages are not necessarily those involving the mass orchestration of bodies, totem, and space inside the stadium (although those moments are certainly powerful enough). Instead, look again at the passage where Hitler’s motorcade passes through a swirling, crushing mass of bodies. It is less a carefully stage-managed, paganized debasement of Catholic liturgy (see Thamer 1996: 178) than it is Beatlemania. Most disturbingly, and in contrast to the clenched-jaw coolness of the set pieces, in this passage, the people pressing themselves—throwing themselves—forward for a glimpse of the Führer are clearly enjoying themselves. Thamer’s otherwise excellent reading of Hitler’s rallies as quasiritualized stage-management stumbles before this performative, embodied dimension of the Nuremberg event, resort-

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ing to categories such as “irrationality”, “charisma” or “Saturnalia”, with its implication of possession, to explain the behavior of the participants (ibid.: 186–188). On the other hand, Elias Canetti was moved by such experience to write Crowds and Power, a frequently overlooked study that understands the fundamental amorality of the crowd, the ethical void at the heart of communitas: the crowd, he writes, “needs a direction . . . it moves towards a goal” (2000: 29)—any goal. This is Canetti’s fundamental dystopianism, cutting straight across the crude binaries that, in Nietzsche (2000) and Bakhtin (1984), oppose, respectively, Apollo and Lent (equated with, variously “order”, the status quo, authoritarian culture) to Dionysus and carnival (equated with liberation, revolution, the folk-as-“nature”). It is an altogether bleaker, but perhaps more realistic understanding of the thrall of communitas than Turner’s somewhat cursory dismissal of fascistic communitas as somehow not real communitas.

INTRODUCING PERFORMANCE STUDIES Rarely has one thinker had the kind of impact upon an academic field that Victor Turner had upon performance studies. Indeed, the nascent discipline was inaugurated institutionally by the collaboration between Turner himself and Richard Schechner of New York University, an avant-garde theater director seeking a reinvigoration of what he considered the moribund theater scene of late 1960s New York. Arguably, Turner’s theory of ritual is the foundational theory of performance studies, as Schechner recounts in his 2002 survey (45–76), with several interesting implications. Indeed, such has been the allure, and apparent relevance of Turner’s work, that something akin to the ritualization of performance theory has taken place: Turner’s theory, and Schechner’s taking up of that theory—or, more correctly, the productive mutual engagement of the two with each other’s work that is best termed a Turner-Schechner assemblage/symbiot—has made it an easy matter to identify any form of performance as having a ritual, ritual-like, or ritual-derived dimension. Performance studies first emerged as a possibility through Milton Singer’s 1959 designation of “cultural performance” as a distinct field of human activity, and what theater historian Marvin Carlson calls the subsequent “convergence of anthropology and theatre” (1996: 19) that yielded performance studies as a discipline. In the 1960s and 1970s, the nascent project of Performance Studies took its lead, on the one hand, from genre-based, or frame-theory-informed understandings, and on the other, from theories

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predicated upon analyses and understandings of putatively transcultural physiological, or pre-expressive, potentials. Thus, sociologists Gregory Bateson and Erving Goffman, folklorists and genre theorists including Kenneth Burke, Dell Hymes, and Roger Abrahams, and those who followed, such as linguist Richard Bauman, sought an understanding of cultural performance in terms of the marking of certain activities as different from the everyday. For such thinkers, performance was created within, and by, social context, serving social—often pedagogical—ends, marked by distinctions between work and play. Alternatively, theater anthropologists—eminently Eugenio Barba—looked less to social context than to innate, universal aspects of bodily behavior as technique: displays of variously “daily,” “virtuosic,” and “extra-daily” techniques recognized by spectators at a precultural, physiological level, that of the “pre-expressive”. From such a perspective, performance is theorized as emerging from this transcultural, enabling, physiology, shared by all humans. One of the implications of such an approach is the possibility of a universal performance language or form that transcends cultural difference in the name of a shared, substratal human essence. Turner himself identified the “reflexive and therapeutic character of theater, as essentially a child of the redressive phase of social drama,” drawing upon “power sources often inhibited or contained in the cultural life of society’s ‘indicative’ mode [i.e., the day-to-day world of cause-and-effect, rationality and common-sense]” (1990: 12). Turner’s claims for theater are explicit: “[t]rue theater,” he writes, quoting no less an authority than John Dewey, “at its height signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events,” yielding the possibility that “[a] sense of harmony is made possible, and the whole planet is felt to be in communitas” (1990: 13). Such thinking finds its manifestation not only in the theater practice of Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, and others—as identified by Turner (ibid.)—but in the claims made for, for example, world music, although generally this claim is made less by theorists or ethnographers than by musicians and recording companies. The Turner-Schechner collaboration would eventually shift emphasis to a model predicated upon certain universal processes; more specifically, to processes involved in the facilitation of (various forms of) transformation. In a theoretical move of Klein-bottle or moebian involution, Turner developed a “model from the specific cultural form of theatre to apply to the analysis of a far larger body of cultural manifestations” (Carlson 1996: 20): the “social drama.” Theater, a culturally specific and, as Turner and Schechner were to argue, emergent form of a more general class of human activity, was to provide the structuring metaphor for a theory of that general class. As Schechner elaborated the model, all cultural performance came to be understood

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as derivative of the playing out of the social drama: specifically, of the prophylactic structures and processes in place in every society, the function of which is to negotiate the deep, circadian cycles of crisis and breach in social order that, in effect, constitute the social. The circularity inherent in such a move was negotiated through a sustained exchange between Turner and Schechner, and often yielded overly schematic models, including the famous figure-eight diagram attempting to explain the dialectic, co-creative relationship between aesthetic performance practices and the telluric rhythms of the social drama (Turner 1990: 17). Such schematization has been characteristic of Schechner’s work over a period of decades: a characteristic yielding easily applied (and therefore seductive), but, ultimately, overly simplistic analyses of complex cultural events based largely upon equations between formal elements of performances. In “From Ritual to Theatre and Back” (1976), for example, Schechner draws upon ethnographies of kaiko celebrations among the Tsembaga of New Guinea and his own experience of an “ecological ritual” at Kurumugl, also in the New Guinea highlands, to produce a “transformational” schema, illustrating how “real” societal positions, such as “war parties,” “human victims,” and ‘real’ practices, such as “battle dress” and “combat” are transformed, in the ritual, into, respectively, “dancing groups,” “pig meat,” “costumes,” and “dancing,” facilitating a performative, and, critically for Schechner’s argument, an efficacious exchange of roles between two competing groups: “debtors” and “creditors,” through the process of performing the ritual, reverse roles. “The celebration . . . managed a complicated and potentially dangerous exchange with a minimum of danger and a maximum of pleasure,” Schechner concludes, in the process making his fundamental theoretical claim: that performance, in its ritual-like manifestations, is fundamentally efficacious (1976: 206). The power of the Turner-Schechner model lay precisely in this schematic simplicity: from it were derived some powerful oppositions—albeit oppositions framed as polar tendencies along a performance continuum, most notably, that between efficacy, identified with ritual, and entertainment, identified with aesthetic performance in complex societies in Schechner, and, later, in Turner, between (societal) structure and (pre- or transsocietal) antistructure. Jon McKenzie’s summary is usefully succinct: Theater provided anthropologists and ethnographers with a formal model for ‘seeing’ performance, for recognizing its forms in society, for conceptualizing the ways in which social meanings and values became embodied in behaviors and events. In turn, liminal rites of passage gave theater scholars a functional model for theorizing the transformational potential of theater and other performative genres. (2001: 36)

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RITUALIZING THEATER Equally compelling is the explicitly evolutionary thinking, in which theater in complex societies comes to be understood as a derivative (or vestige) of the ritual structures of small-scale societies. Turner’s hyperbolic language is worth quoting at length: Theatre is one of the many inheritors of that great multifaceted system of preindustrial ritual which embraces ideas and images of cosmos and chaos, interdigitates clowns and their foolery with gods and their solemnity, and uses all the sensory codes, to produce symphonies in more than music: the intertwining of dance, body languages of many kinds, song, chant, architectural forms (temples, amphiTheatres), incense, burnt offerings, ritualised feasting and drinking, painting, body painting, body marking of many kinds, including circumcision and scarification, the application of lotions and drinking of potions, the enacting of mythic and heroic plots drawn from oral traditions. And so much more. (1990: 12)

Schechner’s project, in significant part, was to explore the potential reversibility of the evolution of aesthetic drama from efficacious ritual. At stake is, precisely, efficacy: the capacity of a performance to not merely represent, or even to model societal change or transformation, but to effect that change. In the examples Schechner uses in his essay, the transformations are precisely of the order of eufunctionality: the ritual performances are essentially a version of risk management. Moving to his diagnosis of the state of theater in the latter part of the twentieth century, Schechner famously identifies an “ascendency” of, and a return to, an aspiration to efficacy: specifically, the rise of avant-garde theatrical practices, and those artists’ “use of terms like ‘experiment’, and ‘research’ to characterize their work, which took place in ‘laboratories’” (1976: 208–209). “Efficacy,” Schechner notes, “lies at the ideological heart of all aspects of this new Theatre” (ibid.: 209). The ambit of this efficacy (set, claims Schechner, to “dominate the theatrical world within the next twenty years”) ranges from direct political action to psychotherapy. Toward the end of the essay, Schechner lays out his own program for pushing contemporary theatrical performance back toward the ‘efficacy’ end of the continuum. “Any ritual,” he suggests, “can be lifted from its original setting and performed as Theatre, just as any everyday event can be” (1976: 217). This is because context, not fundamental structure, distinguishes ritual, entertainment, and ordinary life from each other. The differences among them arise from the agreement (conscious or unexpressed) between performers and spectators. Entertainment/Theatre emerges from ritual out of a complex consisting of an audience separate from the performers, the development of professional per-

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formers and economic needs imposing a situation in which performances are made to please the audience rather than according to a fixed code or dogma. It is also possible for ritual to arise out of Theatre by reversing the process just described. This move from Theatre to ritual marks Grotowski’s work and that of the Living Theatre. But the rituals created were unstable because they were not attached to actual social structures outside theatre. (ibid.: 217–218)

Schechner concludes by describing the process by which his theater company, The Performance Group, was going about activating the latent efficacious potential of theater in a production of Brecht’s Mother Courage. Rehearsals, weather permitting, were open to the street, resulting in “a deep difference”: “work on the play now includes a public social core. And the work is about showing-a-way-of-working” (ibid.: 218). A part of the performance space “has been made into a Green Room wholly visible to the audience,” who may observe any off-stage cast member as he or she “gets some coffee, reads, relaxes” (ibid.). The theater space itself, filled with “irregular scaffolding, platforms and ropes; galleries, walkways and a bridge,” was designed to allow the audience to move, changing their perspective. “The [garage] door stays open for the final three scenes” explains Schechner: “in winter this means that the temperature in the theatre plunges” (ibid.: 219). The only intermission includes supper, during which the performers mix with the audience, which, Schechner “thinks,” causes the latter to experience the rest of the show “differently” (ibid.). “The ideas,” concludes Schechner, “are common to ritual performances: to control or manipulate the whole world of the performance . . . In this way a theatrical event in SoHo, New York, is nudged a little way from the entertainment end of the continuum towards efficacy” (ibid.). Notwithstanding Schechner’s “contextualist” position quoted above, little in his account of his production engages with the life-world of the audience. Instead, it would seem that a range of formal interventions, borrowed from a set of “ideas” constituting ritual-as-form, are grafted onto a piece of standard Western dramaturgy, with a view to reawakening a latent (lost) potential for efficacy. Just what this efficacy is, or what it achieves, beyond an unqualified “difference” of perspective, is moot, although the words “control” and “manipulate”, unelaborated upon in Schechner’s account, might give us some pause.

THE LIMINAL-NORM The “image of performance as a border, a margin, a site of negotiation,” writes Carlson, “has become extremely important in subsequent thinking about such activity” (1996: 20). He refers to a seminal address to the First Annual Conference on Performance Studies in New York in 1994, wherein

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Dwight Conquergood “cited performance’s location on the borders and margins as what most clearly distinguished [the emerging discipline of performance studies] from traditional disciplines and fields of study, [which are pre-eminently] concerned with establishing a center for their activity” (ibid.: 20). More recently, Jon McKenzie has gone further, identifying (and offering a critique of) what he calls the “liminal-norm” informing performance studies. “Today,” he writes, “the field of cultural performance and the paradigm of Performance Studies cannot be thought without citing theatre and ritual. They remain, as it were, specific and historical touchstones for any general theory of cultural performance” (ibid.: 49). Further, the discipline has tended to construct all cultural performance as “an engagement of social norms . . . with the potential to uphold societal arrangements or, alternatively, to change people and societies” (ibid.: 30). While “performance’s efficacy to reaffirm existing structures and console or heal peoples has consistently been recognized, it is its transgressive or resistant potential that has come to dominate the study of cultural performance” (ibid.). McKenzie suggests not only that, over time, liminal rites have come to serve as an exemplar of the field of objects to which the discipline of performance studies addresses itself, but that at the same time, performance scholars have downplayed the potential for rites of passage to conserve social structures—Turner’s eufunctionality—and instead emphasized their transgressive possibilities. Additionally, McKenzie cites MacAloon’s claim that liminal rites have been used to theorize the very emergence of performance studies: “we” (McKenzie speaks for the whole of performance studies) “have theorized our own activities as liminally efficacious” (ibid.: 37). The discipline, on this account, is not just invested in a eufunctional orientation to society: it has adopted the mantle of efficacy, with which, as I have suggested, comes an unswerving stake in a (personal and) political emancipatory project. Schechner acknowledges as much in the opening pages of his own overview of the discipline: one of the four orientations of performance studies, he claims, is to be “actively involved in social practices and advocacies” (2002: 2). Across the discipline, McKenzie concludes, “the valorization of liminal transgression or resistance itself becomes normative” (2001: 50). The emergence of performance studies in the late 1960s and 1970s coincided, McKenzie suggests, with a period of unrest in which liminality became identified more or less exclusively with the “space and time of transgression and subversion” (2001: 51). Whereas, in Turner’s original formulation, liminality functioned for the most part to normalize social relations, only occasionally yielding schism as an outcome, in the emerging, politicized field of performance studies, the concept “helped to guide the selection and construction of objects as well as their analysis and evalua-

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tion,” and did so in manner that reflected performance studies’ image of itself (ibid.). Most critically, McKenzie argues, “[b]y focusing on liminal activities, on transgressive or resistant practices, or, more generally, on socially efficacious performances, we have overlooked the importance of other performances. . . . These other performances are not metaphorical displacements of theatrical or cultural activities, though they certainly and mistakenly can be reduced to them. Nor would we describe these other performances as primarily transgressive or resistant, far from it” (ibid.: 52). McKenzie’s work then turns to performance practices that fall well beyond the liminal-norm of performance studies; specifically, to the use of performance in business contexts: performance in the service of capital. In effect, McKenzie is seeking to break the nexus between Turner and performance studies altogether.

CODA: TWO PERFORMANCES However, it seems to me that there is still plenty of great value in Turner’s work, and in particular, as I have suggested in this essay, in his attempt to push toward a phenomenology of cultural performance. For me, the problem to be negotiated is what I have addressed from the outset: the unqualified assumption of a fundamental “good” at the core of such experiences. To get at that assumption, I want to offer two accounts of intense performance experiences: events in which participants—I among them, in both cases—experienced something akin to the rapture and connectivity Turner described in his accounts of liminality and communitas. The examples trouble me greatly, not least because of my sense of a fundamental betrayal of the “oceanic feeling” each event constructed, but also because they seem, in the first instance, to confirm so many of the claims made by Turner for the power of ritual and ritual-like (or liminal and liminoid) experiences, while, upon more thought, contradicting his fundamental, enlightenment optimism. Each works toward constructing the fructile chaos of communitas; each takes on the Schechnerian injunction to control and manipulate, and each would make a claim to efficacy: the first through an appeal to a transcendent enlightenment; the second by means of the possibility of a (Brechtian?) reflexive awareness, cutting across the rapture of the experience.

Sydney, 1983 Over twenty years ago, young, open-minded, on the lookout for things with which to shape my approach to adulthood, I accompanied two close friends

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to an evangelical church meeting in the northern beach suburbs of Sydney. The intervening years have worn away much of the detail of that evening’s events; certain features, however, are as vivid today as when I first experienced them. Grabs of those memories: a vast hall, drenched in light. On a stage, a man in a sports jacket—my recollection is of flashing teeth and a sleek blow-wave, but I’m sure that I’ve made that up—striding backwards and forwards, maintaining a stream of salutation and exhortation into a microphone. Behind him, a band: drum kit, bass, guitars, keyboard. A choir, clapping, cheering, eyes and mouths dilated, impossible smiles, impossible eyes, rapturous. The service: sing-alongs, the congregation following the words to nurseryrhyme simple foot-stompers, the lyrics thrown on a screen from an overhead projector (these were the days before PowerPoint). All of us, on our feet, clapping, singing, gazing deep into our neighbors’ eyes, smiling, smiling, faces stretched into glowing rictuses. My Lord, it was powerful: irresistible. How could one not get up, get into it, surge on and with this oceanic experience, this shared joy and life? Later: the man in the sports coat—what do I call him? the minister? the MC?—brings us down; the lights dim, his voice takes on the soft warmth of the confidante, the confessor. He shares with us his great gift: the beauty and grace of inviting the Lord Jesus into his life. Reassuring us, gentling us, he asks us to close our eyes. His loving whisper seems to enfold me, an omnidirectional, lulling caress. He asks those of us who have not asked the Lord Jesus into our lives to raise our hands—we are, remember, in darkness, eyes closed—and I feel my arm lift and gesture. Towards the end: more singing, more exhortations. And then, the climax: the whole catastrophe. Speaking in tongues. Laying on of hands. Bodies snapping backward, eyes rolling back in heads, strong arms to catch the falling faithful. Bang! Another one, arms flung out, collapsing; another, as if shot between the eyes. The band is going off, the congregation’s roar surges with each new act of abandon and rapture. And the sports jacketed one, in the midst of this frenzy at first invites, and then commands, all those who had not yet invited the Lord Jesus Christ into their lives to do so now, here, in this congregation of friends; to allow him to lay his hands on their forehead, to be filled with the spirit, to join in the love. First a trickle, and then a flood of convertees stream down the aisles, lining up on stage, twitching, jumping, and again the manic, glazed eyes, the rictus smiles. Zap! Zap! Each is jolted into the waiting arms of the faithful. There are tears, more tongues, the band ratchets it up another notch, and the minister turns back to us, and points out that not everyone who had raised their hands before has

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come forward—that some people are holding out; he gestures, he cajoles, he exhorts, and from the crowd another bare handful come forth, embraced; there are more tears now, and the bodies, once touched, collapse rather then explode, as if in grateful weariness, welcomed into the fold. But not everyone steps forward: I’m shrinking in my seat; or rather, I’m trying to shrink back into my feet, for we are all standing, all clapping along, all mouthing the words to songs, interjecting “hallelujah’s” and, of course, smiling. I try to remain in my seat, but I just can’t. I try not to sway and clap, but how could I not? And then: the man in the jacket gestures for silence, and, with a beckoning gesture, reaches out, gently noticing that at least one person who had previously confessed the lack of Christ in their life, has not come forward, and the beckoning gesture resolves itself into a pointed finger, and he’s pointing straight at me, and every eye turns to me, and I feel hands on my back, and the space opens up in front of me, sucking me towards the stage. It is absolutely terrifying, and irresistible, and I feel myself moving forward, stepping resolutely through the throng of happy-sad faces, to the aisle, and I turn, break into a run, and don’t stop running until I get to the car, start the engine, and drive off into the godless night.

Sydney, 1994 The genius of the performance group The Sydney Front was to involve the audience integrally in their work. In their early productions, this involved physical interactions between performers and spectators: touching, manipulations, inversions of conventional stagings and so on. Later work involved moving audiences through their preferred venue, Sydney’s Performance Space. For 1992’s Don Juan, for example, the audience entered to find the cast, dressed in bridal gowns, assembled on the sole seating rostra, fenced off from the rest of the space by strands of barbed wire (see Schaefer 1999). As the audience gathered, milling around the open floor, the cast produced fishing rods, casting roses into the crowd, roses that somehow adhered to jackets, frocks, and shirts; deploying the repertoire of seduction—pouts, batting eyes, simpering smiles—the cast then reeled in their catch. The same show ended with an open invitation to a member of the audience to undress (nudity had long been a feature of the Front’s performances); if no one was forthcoming, a twenty-dollar note was produced, inevitably sufficient incentive for someone to strip down. As they did so, the company would leave the space: the end. For 1993’s First and Last Warning, the audience could either select first-class tickets, which entitled them to a glass of (cheap) champagne and seating on the small proscenium stage, or join the rest, who were required to change

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out of their street clothes into black nylon negligees, women on one side of the space, men on the other, separated by, and then united by the parting of, a black curtain. In the second half of the work, the negligee-wearers were organized to erect a wall of cardboard boxes, themselves assembled in a massmobilization of spectator effort, between themselves and the first-class audience, in a scene reminiscent of Salgado’s photographs of laboring miners, antlike, teeming in their hundreds, unified in their work (Schaefer 1993). But the ultimate audience involvement was that enjoined for the company’s final show, The Passion, the second half of which—a passion play—was performed entirely by the audience. Indeed, by this stage of their career, The Sydney Front had become so adept in the art of getting audiences to do things that I cannot even recall how the performance was stage-managed. At one point, by one such forgotten mechanism, one of our number was selected and set apart from the mass of spectators. He or she was dressed in a ludicrous clown suit, complete with full-head mask and oversized shoes. The vicissitudes of the passion at length delivered this figure to the point of crucifixion: I remember a bedraggled, lurching figure, tripping over its clown shoes, paraded down the length of the Performance Space, bearing a cross, upon which he/she was set. Sometime earlier, someone (a member of the Front) had thrust a small pail of tomatoes into my hand—small, hard, bleachedout things—delphically telling me “you’ll know when and what to do.” And, indeed, the moment came: the Christ figure, transfixed on a prop cross; me, part of a baying, surging crowd. I pushed forward, cocking my arm to throw the first tomato. Others came shooting out of the crowd, clattering and ricocheting off the wall of the theater, from the body and the head of our erstwhile fellow. Not splattering—these fruit were unripe, bleached rocks—bouncing and smashing. It was an extraordinary moment; it hit me in a flash: what on earth was I doing? What was this delight, this excitement I felt, to which I had so readily yielded? How was it that I was so prepared, so easily provoked to inflict harm upon not just a complete stranger, an innominate someone, but a someone who had been arbitrarily selected from my side, from amidst this audience now reveling in . . . a permission? . . . to physically persecute that someone just because the opportunity presented itself? What was going on?1 I aimed wide, and threw to miss.

NOTE 1. In fact, a substitution had been made; the persecuted clown was, in each performance, a member of The Sydney Front. It is worth remarking that despite wear-

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ing protective equipment, including a full-face hockey mask, under the clown suit, the performer suffered serious bruising throughout the season.

REFERENCES Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984 [1965]. Rabelais and His World. Transl. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Canetti, Elias. 2000 [1960]. Crowds and Power. Transl. Carol Stewart. London: Phoenix Press. Carslon, Marvin. 1996. Performance: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Davis, Martha and Diannne Dulicai. 1992. “Hitler’s Movement Signature.” The Drama Review 36, no. 2 (T134): 152–172. Maxwell, Ian. 1997. “On the Flow—Dancefloor Grooves, Rapping ‘Freestylee’ and the Real Thing”. Perfect Beat: The Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture 3, no. 3: 15–27. ———. 2003. “Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes”: Hip Hop Down Under Comin’ Upper. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London and New York: Routledge. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2000 [1872]. The Birth of Tragedy. Transl. Walter Kaufmann. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Schaefer, Kerrie. 1993. “Given the Slip: The Sydney Front’s ‘First and Last Warning’” in West 6/7: Out of the Intermix: 17–21. ———. 1999. The Politics of Poaching in Postmodern Performance: A Case Study of the Sydney Front’s Don Juan in Rehearsal and Performance. PhD thesis, University of Sydney Schechner, Richard.1976. “From Ritual to Theatre and Back” in Richard Schechner and Mady Schuman, eds., Ritual, Play and Performance, pp. 196–222. New York: Seabury Press. ———. 2002. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Thamer, Hans-Ulrich. 1996. “The Orchestration of the National Community: The Nuremberg Party Rallies of the NSDAP”. Trans. Ann Taylor. In Günter Berghaus, ed., Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics of Performance in Europe, 1925–1945, pp. 172–190. Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Turner, Victor. 1982. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology”. In Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, pp. 20–60. New York: Publications. ———. 1987. “Body, Brain, Culture.” In Richard Schechner, ed., The Anthropology of Performance. pp. 156–178. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1990. “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual and Drama?” In Richard Schechner and Willa Appel, eds., By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual, pp. 8–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Three

Performing “Sorry Business”: Reconciliation and Redressive Action Michael Cohen, Paul Dwyer, and Laura Ginters

{ INTRODUCTION The phrase “sorry business” carries a number of meanings in Australian English. For speakers of our parents’ generation it may convey an air of resignation.1 “It’s a sorry business,” one might say while contemplating someone’s misfortune. For Indigenous Australians, on the other hand, the phrase implies an altogether more active engagement with kin and country. When a family member dies, for instance, an Indigenous person will speak of “having sorry business” in the sense of having things to do. The sorrowful event propels you and the rest of your community into a set of mutually binding, ritual obligations, such as not referring to the deceased by name, performing particular songs and dances at a funeral ceremony, and so on. Clearly, such actions involve a powerful integration of performance, community identity, and cultural memory. They are liminal practices in the fullest sense of the term. In this chapter, we explore ways in which an active, engaged understanding of “sorry business” has also begun to feature in cultural performances where Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are together negotiating a response to what is shared in their history. Following the lead of Baz Kershaw (1992), we consider the conditions under which the “potential socio-political efficacy” of performance is more or less likely to be actualized. And following Richard Schechner (2002), we ask these questions in relation to a “broad 76

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spectrum” of performances—street marches, contemporary mainstage theater and the Olympic Games’ spectacle—all of which took place during the year 2000, a “peak experience” for “sorry people” (or “sorry citizens”) engaging with official discourses of reconciliation (St John 2001: 122). While our analysis will demonstrate the continuing relevance of Turner’s social drama model for the study of aesthetic genres, we will also use the case studies below to highlight ambiguities in the way this model has been popularized as a key paradigm in performance studies. As McKenzie (2001) and Maxwell (in this volume) argue, Turner’s account of ritual performance as redressive action and his (overstated) claim that all performing arts “derive from the subjunctive, liminal, reflexive, exploratory heart of the social drama” (1990: 13) have inspired some scholars to (mis)take liminality as a kind of normative trope for performance studies: aesthetic genres of performance seem to be valorized to the extent that they approach a notional standard of ritual efficacy. Thus, the distinction between liminoid and liminal genres is quickly lost amid Schechner’s enthusiasm for making formal and functional analogies between Melanesian ritual and Western avant-garde theater (1976). In this early work at least, Schechner projects too much of the aesthetico-social agenda of his own performance-making practice onto the analysis of widely disparate practices, a complaint that could still be made of other practitioner-theorists.2 That said, attempting to stretch Turner’s model so that it covers the broadest possible spectrum of performance also helps foreground its inherent conceptual limits. While maintaining some theoretical distance between liminal and liminoid genres is important, we would also agree with Lewis (2004, and this volume) that the criteria Turner uses for making this distinction are problematic.

AUSTRALIA’S LONGEST-RUNNING SOCIAL DRAMA Part of the challenge of analyzing any social drama lies in deciding where each phase of this “processional form” begins and ends (Turner 1957: 91, 1974: 79). One can certainly argue that the longest running social drama in Australia since the beginnings of European settlement is precisely the consequences of that settlement/invasion on 26 January 1788. In doing so, however, one risks eliding important distinctions between specific episodes within the larger drama of colonial/postcolonial race relations. The creative tactics of social agents—as they pursue particular modes of redress in particular circumstances—are all too easily rendered as pre-ordained moves in an analysis covering too broad a sweep of history and too large a range of cultural contexts. The social drama model risks becoming, as Geertz warned, “[a] form

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for all seasons . . . making vividly disparate matters look drably homogenous” (1993: 28). Yet, some wider historical perspective is obviously vital when, as Turner showed in his Ndembu ethnography, the outcome of a social drama is often only a provisional reintegration and a period of apparent equilibrium before the next social drama (1957: 131). Thus, after MacAloon, we consider the performances within any social drama as “occasions in which as a culture or society we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths and history, present ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while remaining the same in others” (1984a: 1). The continuity in relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians should not be in doubt: the effects are still being felt of an appalling record in which white settlers/invaders dispossessed communities of their traditional lands, conducted numerous massacres, coralled people in missions, defrauded them of wages, broke up families, committed sexual assault and other abuses. Nevertheless—despite the former prime minister’s wish to dismiss this record as “black armband history”—Graham St John is well justified in claiming that the last decade of the twentieth century marked a turning point as “‘reconciliation’ became something of a local zeitgeist—a national ‘ultimate concern’,” to the point where “the postcolonial apology for past wrong-doings is perceived as a passport to legitimate citizenship, to authentic belonging” (2001: 122). While there have been many moments of raised expectations for reconciliation in the recent past, two events stand out. First, in 1992, the High Court delivered a judgment in Mabo vs Queensland acknowledging Eddie Mabo’s ownership of land on Murray Island via a continuing form of “native title”. This decision overturned the two-centuries-old fiction of terra nullius, according to which pre-invasion Australia was a “land belonging to nobody,” not commercially exploited or cultivated by its Indigenous occupants and thus lawfully taken over by Europeans. Second, in 1997, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission delivered its report into the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families, a practice that was widespread and systematic from the early 1900s until the 1970s, under policies that were clearly racist in application and arguably genocidal in intent.3 The “Stolen Generations” report—as it became known—documents the abuses that many children suffered as a result of these policies, in foster care or as wards of the state. Members of Parliament wept openly as these stories were read into Hansard, yet the election of a new government in 1996 meant this state-sanctioned process of reconciliation was already beginning to unravel. Rather than reconcile with Indigenous Australians over this history of social injustice, the conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007) wound back many provisions of the original Native Title

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Act (1993), which followed from the Mabo decision and responded to the “Stolen Generations” report by (1) cutting funds to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission; (2) rejecting in principle the term “stolen generations” because not all Indigenous children were removed; (3) casting doubt on the validity of stories told to the commission because its inquiry was not bound by the same rules of evidence as in a court of law; and (4) refusing to offer an official apology on behalf of the nation because to do so implied, in Howard’s phrase, “transgenerational guilt,” not to mention the moral obligation to provide proper compensation.

CORROBOREE 2000 AND THE DRAMATURGY OF POLITICAL PROTEST Given this context, the performances we discuss below are in some respects following in the wake of, representing, or celebrating institutional social change; in other respects, they pre-empt change, offering perhaps a lastresort mode of redress when political institutions and legal remedies are blocked, or at least giving sensuous form to the signs of a desired reconciliation. This desire was made most publicly manifest in the “Corroboree 2000 Reconciliation Marches” during which hundreds of thousands of Australians processed across bridges and other landmarks, in almost every city and town, in support for the reconciliation process (however vaguely this notion may have been interpreted). In Sydney alone, the “People’s Walk for Reconciliation” closed traffic on the Harbour Bridge for five hours while a constant wave of humanity—more than a quarter of a million people—pressed down the Bradfield highway and into the city center. Of course, none of these marches occurred as a spontaneous popular uprising. They were a meticulously planned and family-friendly affair organized by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (a body set up by a previous Labor government) and were timed to coincide with what was supposed to have been the great work of the Council’s ten year mandate, namely the release of a “national declaration towards reconciliation” at a gala event in the Sydney Opera House. Reflecting on the fact that Prime Minister Howard, who accepted this “national declaration” through gritted teeth, was returned to power a year later, in an election where Indigenous rights issues barely figured at all, it is appropriate to question whether such massive displays of “people power” achieved any significant measure of sociopolitical efficacy or whether they served, instead, as a therapeutic safety valve, releasing the pressure for Indigenous rights into thin air. Yet, how does one assess the likelihood of efficacy?

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Schechner suggests a correlation between the formal characteristics of what he calls “direct theatre” (protests, parades, mardi gras, etc.) and their sociopolitical function. “Revolutions in their incipient period,” he writes, “are carnivalesque” (1993: 47). Thus, they tend toward “[t]he frolic—with its characteristic whirling choreography, the dispersal of orderly ranks into many intense and volatile small groups, the show of private pleasures satisfied in public places” (ibid.: 65). By comparison, the orderly occupation of space in the People’s Walk—the even flow of bodies, the low-key dispersal—implies a carefully contained and none-too-progressive political agenda. While a bridge normally facilitates movement from two directions, this walk was not about the two parties to reconcilation meeting one another across a recognized divide; it was about blurring as many boundaries as possible while moving together briefly in a single direction and finishing nowhere in particular. There is value in Schechner’s model as a kind of diagnostic tool. It suggests, for instance, that we might pay more attention to what was happening on the fringes of this event. Indeed, just before the walk there were some extremely heated exchanges among Indigenous activists who met at a separate gathering point to debate whether they should participate. However, as Baz Kershaw (1999: 107–108) argues, the binary opposition in Schechner’s analysis (the “swirls” and “vortexes” of radical protest versus the “neat rectangles” of official parades) is itself too neat and rigid. It elides distinctions within particular protests and “downplays the ideological content, the political significance of particular events as part of a wider historical process” (1999: 108). In Turner’s ethnographic writings, the social drama model— though structural-functionalist in orientation—does not preclude a Geertzian “thick description” (1973) of cultural practice; in Schechner’s usage, we are basically encouraged to “read off” the political function of a protest from a purely formal analysis. Too much attention is being paid to whether the protest dramaturgy matches the choreography one would expect to find in liminal/ritual performance, and not enough attention is being paid to the links that run sideways in the social drama model, connecting redressive ritual (or ritual-like) performance with legal-judicial and political actions.

DEGREES OF RADICAL: RECONCILIATION THROUGH THE THEATER Kershaw’s most recent writing about the “radical in performance” does, however, follow Schechner’s assumption that politically efficacious performance is inevitably more likely to occur outside the institutions of mainstream (or

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even “alternative”) theater. Theater, Kershaw complains, is “becoming increasingly commodified as part of the so-called ‘cultural industries’ of the globalised economy” (2000: 124) and this “commodification stifles radicalism in the moment of its birth” (1999: 23). While there is certainly evidence to support this argument—Kershaw’s analysis of mega-musicals like Miss Saigon being a case in point (1999: 33–37)—it is also unnecessarily totalizing (and rather dismissive of the arguments in Kershaw’s earlier work). Our second case study—contemporary Indigenous theater—bears this out most powerfully. We can begin by noting that many of the performance-makers responsible for the recent leap in profile of Indigenous theater within mainstream Australian culture are, literally, the sons and daughters, nieces and nephews of the generation of Indigenous activists who were at the forefront of the Aboriginal Land Rights movement in the 1970s. Not only were people like Paul Coe, Gary Foley, and Bob Maza intensely active in setting up the legendary (and continuing) Aboriginal Tent Embassy protest in front of Parliament House, Canberra, they, with others, were also creating such breakthrough institutions as the National Black Theatre (1972), the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre (1975), and a host of dedicated Indigenous legal, health, and housing services. When Geertz writes about “art as a cultural system” (1993: 94–120), produced and received by agents who share a “matrix of sensibility” (1993: 102), it is precisely this interweaving of familial, social, and institutional networks—across a whole range of practices—that he has in mind. In a very real sense, contemporary Indigenous theater is only one strand in a cohesive cultural project sustained over more than thirty years by several generations of Indigenous Australians for whom the cultural distinctions most other Australians make (those that would see theater, for instance, permanently consigned to a trivial and/or elite cultural niche) simply do not hold. While the stakes are of course very high in any project of mainstreaming the work of minority cultures, the last decade of Indigenous theater suggests it may still be possible for performance to be both oppositional and popular, balancing “on a knife edge between resistance to, and incorporation into, the status quo” (Kershaw 1992: 8). One of the most interesting case studies in this regard is the collaboration between Indigenous theater practitioners and Company B at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre.4 For reasons of space, we will concentrate here on the productions Stolen (2000) and (to a lesser extent) Aliwa (2001), both of which exemplify features of an emerging new Indigenous dramaturgy. Jane Harrison’s play Stolen drew on true stories to explore the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families. Aliwa, by Dallas Winmar, is the (again true) story of the Davis family and the

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efforts of their mother, Alice, to prevent her family being separated and her children removed in the 1930s. Both productions meet key criteria that Kershaw (1992) previously suggested are essential to actualizing the potential sociopolitical efficacy of theater. The productions are connected to a wider social movement (box office sales for Stolen skyrocketed after the Sydney People’s Walk); they engage with “the fundamental constitution of the audience’s community identity” (1992: 33);5 and they exploit the tension between what Kershaw calls (following Elizabeth Burns) the “rhetorical” and “authenticating” conventions of performance. Rhetorical conventions bind us to the event, enabling the spectator to recognize and react to the performance as a particular type of theater event (Kershaw 1992: 258), whereas authenticating conventions challenge the relationship between the fictional world of performance and the “real world” of the spectator, allowing him or her “to perceive the specific ideological meanings of the show in relatively explicit ways” (Kershaw 1992: 26). The performances set up a dynamic of rule-breaking within rule-keeping— between structure and antistructure, to use the Turnerian framework which Kershaw explicitly cites—and thus play on the audience’s fundamental beliefs without producing immediate rejection. While both Stolen and Aliwa start from the model of narrative/characterbased theater that the Belvoir Street audiences are comfortable with, a number of consistently deployed dramaturgical and staging strategies challenge and/or break these familiar expectations and provide for a more fluid, dynamic interplay of “fictional” and “real world” realities. Three specific strategies which these and other productions use involve emphasizing connection to place, transactions with the audience, and telling one’s own story. Acknowledgement of traditional, cultural, and spiritual connection to place remains a fraught issue for Australians. The assertion of an Indigenous connection to place is characteristic of these works, both often as a feature of mise-en-scène but also in the theater building’s relation to its environment. The Belvoir Street Theatre is located in Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb neighboring the Redfern area where traditionally the urban Indigenous community has been based. Redfern and Surry Hills also have large blocks of public housing with disproportionately high numbers of Indigenous residents. The spectators coming to Belvoir Street, though, are largely white, middle-class and live elsewhere. One way in which these productions address this disjuncture between location and audience relates to the theater’s architecture. At the back of the stage is a door leading directly onto the street and visible to the audience. In a number of productions, including Stolen, this door is opened or left open and the outside reality has a direct impact on what takes place on stage. In Stolen, at the beginning of the play,

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the audience watches as the actors, one of whom grew up in this neighborhood, walk in quite literally off the street and onto the stage. This manifestation of connection to place is also connected to another significant element of contemporary Indigenous dramaturgy—the notion of being always, already there. A number of recent Indigenous productions at the Belvoir Street Theatre begin by denying the mainly white audience one of its most basic assumptions; that the (hi)story doesn’t begin until their arrival. The performers are always, already there, on stage before the audience enters—a subtle but significant reminder also of a pre-invasion presence in this country. In Aliwa, for example, the musicians are already on stage, making music. In other productions performers are sitting on stage, drinking tea, chatting amongst themselves or to punters as they arrive. Speaking directly to the audience is characteristic of this Indigenous theater. This is also a way of setting up an intimate, and sometimes demanding, engagement with the audience. These transactions between actors and audience do away with the pretense of invisibility and acknowledge the embodied presence of both performers and spectators. Also involved here is a strategy of “gazing back.” Gilbert and Tompkins (1996: 248–249) have warned of the dangers of the theatrical (largely mono-directional) gaze tending to replicate imperialism’s scopic regimes, and in a theater where the audience enters, takes up a superior position (quite literally as the seats are raked upwards) in the dark, fixing in their gaze the actors who cannot return this gaze (blinded by footlights), we can indeed see the dangers of replicating the patronizing position of watching over—an attitude characterizing the colonizer’s attitude towards the colonized. In Stolen, although it seems as though the play will begin in conventional darkness, in fact what happens is that the house lights darken and then go back up: the actors enter and stand motionless on stage gazing back at the audience, fixing individuals in their gaze, letting people know that they are being looked at and can be seen. Actors turning their gaze upon the audience allows a reversal or inversion of the usual (patronizing) dynamic of conventional theater and also for a shared space to be created between actors and audience. This “house lights equality” encourages, even more compellingly, the audience to become complicit in, and engage with, the actors’ project—that is, to be seen to be involved. Gazing back is, however, sometimes just the beginning. Even more active transactions with the audience are part and parcel of this form of theater. Performers often invite the audience into their space to share their fictional realm: in Aliwa members of the audience are brought on stage to throw balls at a “coconut shy” at a country fair in 1930s Western Australia; ‘Mum’ chops up a watermelon and passes it around the audience (with one of the

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kids following behind offering a box of tissues) and later splits a damper with her “children” and the audience. In Stolen, a particularly remarkable moment of transaction with the audience comes right at the end of the performance and is simultaneously an example of the third characteristic element of Indigenous dramaturgy: the opportunity (and ability) to tell one’s own stories. This is critical for people whose cultures have frequently been deliberately and systematically suppressed, if not destroyed.6 In this kind of theater, traditional Western methods of storytelling—where a well-made play has a beginning, middle, and end, and the audience is prepared to suspend its disbelief for the reward of this reassuring and familiar experience—are disrupted and displaced. In Stolen, at the end of the play proper, the actors line up on stage, mirroring their initial positions, and don’t just look, but also talk, back to the audience, sharing with the audience their own personal stories and experiences of forced removal. This part of the show was not scripted, and it changed from night to night. As the director, Wesley Enoch, argues, technical or aesthetic questions about the relation of actor to character seem no longer to matter at this point, only the acceptance that truths are being revealed on all levels between performers and audience: “That moment hammered home what theatre is really about for me because what came out of it was a real communion, a sense of truth, a sense of exchange. The actors were giving to the audience some sense of that they had had returned to them and there was this exchange going on, a sense of truth” (2001: 9–10). A comparison between this and the kind of experiences Turner evokes with his notion of “spontaneous communitas” (1969) does not seem entirely out of place. At any rate, Enoch is clearly interested in moving the audience toward a ritual-like compact with the performers: “When this show is over this story does not stop for us because it is about our lives; when this show is over our responsibilities do not end; when this show is over, whether you like it or not, you will be part of the story” (2000).

OLYMPIC SPECTACLE AND THE CONSTRAINTS OF LIMINALITY Turner’s distinction between liminal and liminoid genres may be read as offering some support for the high hopes Enoch and others have placed in Indigenous theater’s potential for efficacy. Whereas Turner held ritual to be ultimately a means of reaffirming social structure (despite the “flow,” “antistructure” and “pure potentiality” experienced fleetingly during the liminal phase), he argued that the greater degree of choice allowed to participants in modern liminoid processes means “the seeds of cultural transformation, discontent with the way things are culturally and social criticism . . . have be-

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come situationally central” (1982: 45). However, this argument leaves many issues unresolved. Do all liminoid genres foster this kind of social critique and change? And what precisely are the criteria for distinguishing between liminality and liminoidality? As John MacAloon has demonstrated, one of the most useful sites for examining such fraught questions is provided every four years by the Olympic Games, an example of a “ramified performance type” in which liminal ritual and games are nested within the more diffuse liminoid genres of festival and spectacle (1984b: 258). Press reports in Australia were united in their assertions that the Sydney 2000 Olympics’ Opening Ceremony offered to the nation and the world a statement about what Australian cultural identity stood for. “This three-hour spectacular is a journey through our past, present and future” trumpeted one typical report: “It’s who we are, whether we like it or not” (Gelastopoulos 2000). In particular, much was made of the representation of Australia as a successfully reconciled nation as mainstream press commentators, politicians, and others invested these images with great powers. One report observed: “The end, with the Dreamtime figure and the young Australian spirit walking hand in hand into the future, not only rounds off the narrative but offers hope for the future. It presages the continuation of the story of Australia into an era of reconciliation” (Hywood 2000). The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation itself espoused the exact same rhetoric and used this same image for the cover illustration of its final report, Reconciliation: Australia’s Challenge (2000). We offer here a counter-reading to these populist interpretations. We suggest that, for the most part, the Opening Ceremony served the interests of dominant power structures in its representation of minority cultures (both Indigenous and migratory) in relation to mainstream Anglo-Celtic Australia. There are two sides to our counter-reading: first, we examine how Aboriginality in the performance was revealed to the audience through the eyes of an “angelic blonde,” the performance’s protagonist, known as the “Hero Girl.” This is in line with an overarching strategy that attempted to “white out” blemishes in Australia’s “national script” and to discreetly “forget” areas of social sensitivity (for example; convicts, genocide, racist foreign policy). Second, however, we will illustrate a number of occasions when the actions of Indigenous participants demonstrated a resistance to this mainstream rendering of Australian nationhood.

INDIGENOUS PERFORMERS IN THE OPENING CEREMONY During the Opening Ceremony, the expanse of the Olympic Stadium was transformed into a sandy desertscape. The image clearly recalled the “wide,

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brown land” of outback Australia and significantly, at the start of the performance, the space was empty: terra nullius. Into this unclaimed space skipped a blond haired little girl who spread her rug on the “sandy” ground and then lay back on it, appearing to drift off to sleep. Closing her eyes thus, the Hero Girl invited the gaze of the spectators into the visions of her subconscious. This subconscious realm was the central reference point for the succession of scenes to follow. The Hero Girl played hostess to a representation of the nation’s evolution—ushering in a sequence of imagery that was both a fantasy and a mainstream rendering of history. This ideological inscription of the Hero Girl’s body was demonstrated most clearly in her positioning vis à vis the representation of Indigenous and migrant cultures in the Opening Ceremony. For example, even when much of the Indigenous segment, Awakenings, effectively sidelined the Anglo-Celtic perspective, the directors of the television broadcast superimposed a shot of the Hero Girl gazing over the performance by Indigenous clans as they entered the stadium. Indigenous self-representation was contained within a mainstream vision. This was clearly a whitefellas’ appropriation of blackfellas’ dreaming. Note also that the dream construct allowed for representations of multiple, incongruent narratives and forgave the presence of contradictory and discontinuous temporal shifts: dreams take place in the ever-present and, in the Opening Ceremony, this pushed the action into a genre of magical realism—anchored only by the dreaming subject. Significantly, the Hero Girl never woke up: not in the Opening Ceremony nor in the partner text of the Closing Ceremony. Therefore the possibility of any “reality check” upon regaining consciousness was never present. Most importantly, the visions and cultural memory of this dreamy blonde angel did not extend to a recollection of any historical encounter between Indigenous Australians and European settlers. Indeed, it is only under close scutiny of the ceremony (endless runs and reruns of the videotaped version) that any depiction of this encounter can be identified. Right out in the middle of the field, amidst the flurry of retreating wildflower choruses, Captain Cook gives a perfunctory wave to the Indigenous protagonist, the Songman. European invasion was thus elided with a wave—a moment lasting no more than two seconds (the theatrical performance in the ceremony lasted over an hour in total). By any account it was a remarkable gesture and pretense. Was it planned? The actor playing Captain Cook stated that in the first public dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony (in front of 80,000 people), he was startled to see that this Indigenous character, the Songman, was even present on stage at this moment.7 Until then, the director of this segment had never even raised the issue with

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the performers. Was the performer playing Captain Cook deliberately denied any knowledge of how this colonial encounter would be staged? Was there a fear that perhaps the Songman and Captain Cook might conspire to improvise a scene of ‘murder by blunderbuss’? Surely such an omission also represented a deeper refusal to acknowledge this moment in history by according it performative significance. In an interview, the director of ceremonies for the Sydney Olympics, Ric Birch, stated that the opening ceremony producers had decided to depict the aggression of European settlers by a mass representation, later in the ceremony, of the bushranger figure Ned Kelly. And yes, hundreds of black-headed Ned Kelly figures did rush around the stage spurting their pyrotechnic ire into the night. But they fired upon no one. There was no conflict, no frontier. According to Birch, this was “a way of showing a European invasion without it being black arm band.” For all the aggression they showed, the Europeans might just as well have entered in a Mr. Whippy ice cream van. The Opening Ceremony performance finished with the erection of five large H-frame structures, in the middle of which the Hero Girl and Songman stood on a raised podium, surveying their surrounding. The program notes identified this image as “the bridge of life, of connection and reconciliation.” In light of the dominant framing of the ceremony from an Anglo-Celtic perspective, the purported reconciliation of this scene sat as conspicuously stuck on. There were obvious limits to this discourse of big “R” reconciliation in the Opening Ceremony (not least the fact that the Songman was effectively framed as a figment of the Hero Girl’s imagination!), and it is significant that this final scene represented reconciliation as a simple end point rather than as a complex, ongoing process. However, within the performance-making process of the Olympic ceremonies, there were elements that suggested a resistance to such a depiction of happy reconciliation and to this mainstream rendering of the nation’s history.

RESISTANCE TO A POPULIST RECONCILIATION At the beginning of Awakenings, the Indigenous segment of the Opening Ceremony, the Hero Girl knelt down at the feet of the Songman as he sang his introductory call to the mass of spectators and to his fellow Indigenous performers. This was a potent image: the two protagonists perched on the stage beneath the Olympic Cauldron, the elder Aboriginal man calling to other Indigenous clans while the Hero Girl looked on passively. A suc-

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cession of clan groups—each in distinctive costumes—gathered to form a ground pattern that filled the stadium floor. This collective use of space was elaborated by a soundtrack and choreography that similarly represented a diversity of Indigenous styles, including contemporary interpretations of Indigenous culture. Finally, the groups danced beneath a massive Wandjina totem (a spiritual symbol from the Kimberley region in Western Australia but recognized elsewhere) to represent the unification of diverse Indigenous presences. Whatever the overarching structure of the Opening Ceremony, it must be acknowledged that the Indigenous artists who organized this segment managed an impressive, mass occupation of Stadium Australia, a vast terrain otherwise given over to mainstream representations of the nation’s history. This occupation extended of course into the even greater domain of media space, opening up an opportunity for resistance during the segment by the commentator, an Aboriginal television celebrity called Ernie Dingo. The opening (video) sequence of Awakenings depicted the Hero Girl surrounded by a massive chorus of Indigenous performers caked in ochre. The camera followed the Hero Girl’s path from the center of the field up to the stage at one end where the Songman was singing. While the camera preferred to follow the movements of the Hero Girl protagonist, Dingo prioritized specific demographic details about Indigenous culture: “G’day mob. How are ya? Over 40,000 years of culture, over 600 Indigenous nations, over 200 Aboriginal groups representing over 250,000 Indigenous Australians.” The direction of visuals and commentary here were driving very different agendas. Dingo’s narration did not draw on the historical significance of Olympic ritual, nor did he attempt to woo the audience with exuberance and superlatives. He made level, explanatory comments that focused on the significance of the action for his own community. On the one occasion when Dingo did refer to the Hero Girl, he positioned her very much as the ancillary observer: “The young Australian girl is now a part of the land of this ancient culture—hers too to share, first of all to understand the origins of where it came from.” Although the Opening Ceremony attempted to subsume Indigenous dreaming within the white imaginary of the Hero Girl, Dingo clearly reoriented this positioning. He encouraged a reading of the Awakenings segment as a complex cultural performance in its own right that was both self-contained and cohesive. Dingo reminded us of an efficacious, “small r” reconciliation—a process arguably more significant to Indigenous Australians than the much-touted, populist, “Big R” reconciliation conveyed in images of the Songman and the Hero Girl. He referred to reconciliation within his own community as follows:

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[The performers] take to the heart of Australia the ancient art, the ancient stories of the past to be embraced by the young Aboriginal culture of today and to share in its history—and acceptance without question. They’re preparing for a welcome and a rebirth and unity so we can all be as one mob—the youth of today and the ancient culture of years gone by.

This performance of unity in diversity, of an Indigenous will to self-determination, was a potent and very public resistance to an overarching narrative of Anglo-Celtic dominance in the opening ceremony. Behind the scenes, in the rehearsals prior to and in the aftermath of performance, there were, of course, other expressions of agency by Indigenous artists that cut much deeper than the “stuck-on” reconciliation that the “national script” of the ceremony espoused. There were over nine hundred Indigenous performers from all over Australia participating in the Awakenings section of the Opening Ceremony, mostly living and working together—with continuous translation and facilitation between different groups. During this period, urban children performers (many of whom had been culturally estranged from their Indigenous backgrounds) were mentored by their fellow, more traditional Indigenous participants (many of whom had never before been to a city nor traveled in an airplane). “Welcome to Country” and farewell celebrations were organized as part of the process; on occasion, spontaneous parties took place in the participants’ backstage areas and accommodations. Painful lessons in Indigenous dance were learned by novices to the form and tearful reunions took place between relatives in the dressing rooms. Prior to the Opening Ceremony there were extensive community workshops and consultations; also, well after the performance, education and exchange programs between diverse urban and rural Indigenous communities were continued. This brief list not only demonstrates that there was an active “small r” reconciliation at work in the Opening Ceremony, but also suggests that the nature of the performance-making process was more than a liminoid experience for some of the Indigenous participants. Some of these experiences are clearly transformative and transitional in their nature: activities were taking place that surely facilitated a shift toward new states of cultural standing and cultural understanding for these participants.

CONCLUSION Our analysis of the Sydney 2000 Opening Ceremony thus offers some support for MacAloon’s contention that “[t]aken as a whole, with its system of

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interacting genres, the Olympic Games represent a complex performance type that stands historically betwixt and between two cultural moments: the fragmentation into ‘liminoidality’ of liminal genres once capable of transporting entire societies outside of their ordinary boundaries of space and time (and of providing societywide communitas experiences), and the development of neoliminal genres out of the liminoid to provide such experiences for emergent social units whose outlines we can but now dimly forsee” (1984b: 269). At the same time, however, by taking “the spectacle frame erected around ritual . . . as recruiting device” (1984b: 268), MacAloon effectively casts doubt on whether the binary of obligation/choice is, after all, such a stable criterion for distinguishing between liminal and liminoid genres. Ritual becomes, in effect, something you can “try before you buy”. As Lewis argues, “[r]ituals are obligatory for those who want to be part of a certain group formation, but there may be a certain choice as to which group one wishes to affiliate with” (2004). This move to loosen the theoretical ties that bind ritual, obligation, and efficacy in Turner’s work seems a salutory one. Scholars interested in the political functioning of aesthetic performance are reminded to be wary of continually framing our analyses of nonritual, or superficially ritual-like, genres in terms of a compound concept of “ritual efficacy” (Schechner 1976: 206–210). Perhaps also, we need to scale down the pretensions of what we are claiming when we argue for the political efficacy of cultural performance. In this respect, we could do worse than to consider the position of the Indigenous theater director, Wesley Enoch, whose work on Stolen we discussed above. Elaborating on his hopes for what the production of Stolen could achieve in terms of reconciliation, Enoch has compared it to events such as the Corroboree 2000 marches: “I define the walk across the Bridges around the country as, in fact, an act of Indigenous theatre. When we have seen and been part of these huge walks, you can feel it. It has provided a shared experience, a reference point to talk about a way for talking Reconciliation and a sense of general support. [This] put[s] the audience in the shared space with a shared purpose of communicating their message, where the roles are blurred. You are both part of the creation of theatre and the witnessing of it. This is the most traditional of models in terms of Indigenous performance— there is no audience, only waiting participants” (2001: 12). While a “way to talk about a way for talking” might not sound like the kind of radical efficacy many theorists desire from performance, when one looks sideways—at the blocked legal-judicial and political channels in the current social drama of reconciliation—it surely counts for something. Enoch’s “waiting participants” might also take heart from Turner’s observations of social drama among the Ndembu: “After a social drama has passed a climax, . . . beneath

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the manifest pattern of daily interactions a reshaping of the social group is taking place . . . so that in effect a new and at first hidden set of power relations gradually comes into being. There comes a time when this re-alignment becomes visible in a fresh social drama” (1957: 131).

NOTES 1. Given this essay’s focus on the politics of race relations, it is as well to identify and acknowledge the place from where we as authors speak. The parents we refer to here are, variously, of Jewish, Irish Catholic, Lutheran, long-time settler and (relatively) recent refugee backgrounds—the usual mongrel mix that makes up “white” Australia. In other words, let us be quite clear that this is a partial— in every sense of the word—account of cultural practices which Indigenous academics, artists, and activists might well analyze differently. 2. A recent case in point is John Bell’s assertion that “the idea of performance offers concepts, means of analysis, and methods of action which can help us figure out where we are and what we ought to do” as concerned citizens against the “War on Terror” (2003: 7). 3. On the assumption that “full-blood” Aborigines were a dying race, A. O. Neville (bearer of the dubious title Chief Protector of the Aborigines in the State of Western Australia) argued that removing “half-castes,” “quadroons,” and “octoroons” from any contact with black communities would have what he regarded as the desirable effect of “breeding out the colour” (1947). In 1937, his proposal had been accepted without dissent by delegates of the first national conference of Aboriginal administrators. 4. Company B is one of the few mainstream companies in Australia with a commitment to the inclusion of Aboriginal work and artists in each of its seasons— arguably a kind of reconciliation in action. It should be noted, however, that a number of the “new” works produced by Company B—for example, Up the Road, Stolen, and Aliwa—were originally produced by Indigenous companies such as Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre (Western Australia) and Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative (Victoria) but were given subsequent—substantially revised and developed—productions at Belvoir Street Theatre. 5. Indigenous director of Stolen, Wesley Enoch, for example, explicitly defines the role of Indigenous theater as not just being a black versus white thing: “The purpose of Indigenous Theater is two-fold; a celebration of community and the challenging of a community. And I don’t think that one is black and one is white. The challenge and the celebration happen on both sides, if there are in fact two sides. The audience has to place themselves within this dynamic” (2001: 11). 6. It is notable that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission had become convinced, during the course of its hearings into the Stolen Genera-

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tion, that “the process of story-telling was itself the beginning of a healing process” (Wilson 1998: xiv). One of their (unfulfilled) recommendations was that “those remaining stories we were unable to hear because of lack of time and resources should be continued to be told to an appropriate authority” (Wilson 1998: xiv). 7. Comments from participants in the Opening Ceremony (unless otherwise indicated) are drawn from informal audio interviews and field notes Michael Cohen collected while doing ethnographic fieldwork for his doctoral research.

REFERENCES Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. 2000. Reconciliation: Australia’s Challenge: Final Report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation to the Prime Minister and the Commonwealth Parliament. Canberra: Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. Bell, John. 2003. “Performance Studies in an Age of Terror.” The Drama Review 47, no. 2: 6–8. Enoch, Wesley. 2000. “Director’s Note.” Program, Stolen. ———. 2001. “‘We Want Hope’. The Power of Indigenous Arts in Australia Today,” The 6th Annual Rex Cramphorn Lecture. Australasian Drama Studies Journal 38 (April): 4–15. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1993 [1983]. Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. London: Fontana Press. New York: Basic Books. Gelastopoulos, E. 2000. “Tune In.” The Daily Telegraph, 14 September 2000. Gilbert, Helen, and Joanne Tompkins. 1996. Post-Colonial Drama. Theory, Practice, Politics. London and New York: Routledge. Hywood. G. C. 2000. “Dare to Dream.” Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 2000. Kershaw, Baz. 1992. The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 1999. The Radical in Performance. Between Brecht and Baudrillard. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2000. “The Theatrical Biosphere and Ecologies of Performance.” New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 2: 122–130. Lewis, J. Lowell. 2004. “Play and Ritual Revisited.” Unpublished seminar paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney. MacAloon, John. 1984a. “Introduction: Cultural Performances, Culture Theory.” In John MacAloon, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Towards a Theory of Cultural Performance, pp. 1–15. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. ———. 1984b. “Olympic Games and the Theory of Spectacle in Modern Societies.” In John MacAloon, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Towards a Theory of Cultural Performance, pp. 241–280. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.

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McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London and New York: Routledge. Neville, A. O. 1947. Australia’s Coloured Minority: Its Place in the Community. Sydney: Currawong Publishing Company. Schechner, Richard. 1976. “From Ritual to Theatre and Back.” In Richard Schechner and Mady Schuman, eds., Ritual, Play, and Performance: Readings in the Social Sciences/Theatre, pp. 196–222. New York: The Seabury Press. ———. 1993. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2002. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. St John, Graham. 2001. “Australian (Alter)natives: Cultural Drama and Indigeneity.” Social Analysis 45, no. 1: 122–140. Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1990. “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” In Richard Schechner and Willa Appel, eds., By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual, pp. 8–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, Ronald. 1998. “Preface.” In Carmel Bird, ed., The Stolen Children: Their Stories, pp. xiv–xv. Sydney: Random House.

Chapter Four

Liminality in Media Studies: From Everyday Life to Media Events1 Mihai Coman

{ TURNER AND RITUAL IN MODERN SOCIETY Of all the concepts configured by cultural anthropologists in the analysis of ritual/ceremonial events, one in particular has enjoyed special attention in the analysis of mass media processes: liminality. Inspired by the French ethnologist Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner coined the term to describe and define the in-between status of initiates during rites of passage. Turner integrated the concept of liminality into a general theory of ritual and its social functions, central elements of which are: a) In all societies (traditional and modern) rituals control social change: “ritual is by definition associated with social transition” (1977: 77); in other words, “many societies ritualize social and cultural transition” (1969: 95). b) Rituals are enacted by basic symbolic units that point to the “root paradigms” of a culture. In this respect “ritual is a transformative performance, revealing major classifications, categories and contradictions of cultural processes” (1977: 77). c) Being “between and betwixt” two social stages, rituals create a state of liminality—“a legitimized situation of freedom from cultural constraints and social classifications” (1968: 581). Liminality, as opposed to normal social structure (“societas”) makes possible a period of “com94

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munitas,” that is, “an unstructured or rudimentary structured and relatively undifferentiated community” (1969: 96). d) The liminal break allows participants to experience a “subjunctive mood” in which they “express desires, hypotheses, suppositions, possibilities: it may or might be so” (1977: 71). Thus, through liminality, a society is able to evaluate itself, to reflect upon its structure and the possibilities of changing it; due to this quality, liminality can be a threat to the social order, it is “ambiguous.” e) During the “ritual process,” especially during the liminal break, societies experience a form of “acceptable disorder,” which is the product of dis-membering the usual system of classification, of values, and of daily behavior (norms). After this period of “structural impoverishment and symbolic enrichment” (1968: 577), a process of “re-membering” slowly emerges. f) In modern societies, some “phases of history . . . are in many respects homologous to the liminal period of important rituals in stable and repetitive societies” (1969: 112). But, according to Turner, our societies are more liminoid than liminal; in fact, the opportunities for change (and crisis) are now larger; social and cultural criticism are “no longer a matter of the interface between fixed structure, but a matter of the holistically developmental” (1982: 45). Although the concept of liminality had been created in the context of discussing nonmodern cultures, and although it was tied to a number of other, specifically charged, concepts, Turner tried to extrapolate it to contemporary cultures. From this perspective, he interpreted pilgrimages (traditional and modern), popular riots, theater, student street protests, even revolutions, as liminal phenomena. Turner then “moved from community, locality, homogeneity and correspondence to boundary crossing, passage, heterogeneity and dissonance” (Vincent 2001: 110). From this perspective one might argue that the frequent recurrence of the concept of liminality in studies of cultural phenomena in Third World societies and in the Western world, and in studies of historic transformations, political processes, education, urbanism, ethnicity, and gender, demonstrates a continuation and confirmation of Turner’s vision. For a number of media scholars, liminality has become an ideal vehicle for defining both media production and media consumption, best fit to represent the symbolic interruption in daily life and the opportunity for detachment, reflection, and challenging social structures that media consumption entails. The current study focuses on research on “classic” media—mainly

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television, but also radio and printed press. I do not address the issue of the new media (Internet, games, cell phones), which tend to be rather interpersonal and do not need the mediation of communication professionals. In principle, media scholars imply that if liminality is a product of ritual processes, then whenever liminal situations emerge, rite and ritual behavior are not far away. This perspective suggests that media production or consumption are liminal forms: when engaging any medium people engage in an activity placed between structural-cultural systems. That the labor of journalists or popular media consumption constitutes a radical break (generating communitas in a dissolution of social and cultural structures) is neither obvious nor proven by ethnographic research. Nevertheless, for numerous media scholars, liminality functions as a universal tool, explaining away public media consumption, journalists’ interactions in the newsroom, the role of television in society, and the lived experiences of people who participate in media events. That the “liminoid” could be used in an explicit manner has rarely, if ever, been properly understood by media theorists. Several attempts to apply Turner’s concept of liminality have addressed different aspects of the media process. These can be organized into the following: the consumption of media messages, the production of media events, and the role of media in social crises and historical transition.

SMALL-SCALE LIMINALITY: MEDIA CONSUMPTION The first way to approach the relationship between ritual phenomena and mass media is by focusing on micro-groups. Some researchers claim that, in certain situations, “a ritualized consumption of mass media” (Rothenbuhler 1998: 78) contrasts with the usual nonritualized consumption of press products. Two interpretations have been adopted to explain the emergence of ritualized behavior: one is based on the effect of rarity and the exceptional nature of media messages, the other on their banality and recurrence. An initial hypothesis involves a correlation between the unusual content distributed by the mass media and the public’s attitude; this category includes media events characterized by a peculiar mode of consumption. According to Dayan and Katz (1992: 120), “media events require not only the consent of the viewer, they require his or her active involvement. . . . [A]n aesthetics of television events invites ritual participation by (1) offering free and equal access, (2) creating a liminal space, (3) rehearsing the ritual order, (4) positioning the viewer so that he can both identify with an observer and respond as a participant.” In this sense, Dayan and Katz recall some examples of reproducing the ritual behavior manifested at an event-location

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at home: the mourning clothes worn in front of the television set during Indira Gandhi’s funeral; assuming the festive position during the royal speech; or group participation and “stadium” behavior during important sports broadcasts. A second hypothesis is that the ceremonial dimension of mass media message consumption is mainly due to the regularity of the mass media flux. Rhythmic media broadcasts—on the same weekdays and at the same time of day—produce messages identical in form: “The news presents public symbols through which contemporary persons understand reality. The ritualistic power of nightly news is due, in part, to its regularly scheduled time and uniform presentation . . . This collective viewing provides community solidarity since countless citizens are exposed to identical explanations of current realities” (Goethals 1981: 25; Gripsrud 2000: 295; Hoover, 1988: 224; Langer 1998: 140–141; Morley, 1992: 276). The term “ritual” is used in this case to name and grant additional prestige to: (1) identical and regular behavior; (2) acts of simultaneous reception of certain messages—thus considered as common, therefore also communitarian; and (3) certain dramatically loaded content with the power to interpret the world. Besides daily news, there are other mass media products, regularly broadcast, that configure ritualistic reception behavior, for example television crime dramas, soap operas, or crime news in the written press (Barrios, 1988; Katz, 1987; Riggs 1996). Unfortunately, this debate cannot be finalized by testing either of the two hypotheses about the ritualistic nature of media consumption. Neither the first hypothesis (on the exceptional character of certain “media events”), nor the second (on the rhythmical, programmed, standardized character of the diffusion or reception of certain mass media products) is confirmed by convincing field research. Yet, while ethnographic reception studies have not identified and explored clear cases of media consumption ceremonies, the diffusion of the idea of the inevitable ritual dimension of mass media consumption has not been hindered. On the contrary, media scholars claim that, irrespective of the contextual details, any act of mass media consumption is a “ritual” act. They consider media consumption a ritual, because it allows for the creation of community spirit and the construction of unitary visions about the world. A synthesis of the uniqueness and commonality of media rituals is offered, in a more elaborate theoretical framework, by Silverstone (1994), who states that television viewing organizes our lives temporally, spatially, and semantically. Its schedules organize our time, the location of the television set defines the manner in which household objects are arranged in domestic space, and the way we understand and assign meaning to life events is defined by the content of television news and entertainment we consume. Con-

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sumer behavior is, in its turn, ritualized, and this, due to the special feelings associated with the regular consumption of mass media, creates the ritual framework of our daily lives. According to Silverstone, regular television consumption leads to breakdowns in daily routines, and to an integrated vision of the world and of one’s place in it, generating ontological security even when it expresses a hegemonic model: “I also suggest that the medium of television itself marks a threshold in our cultural experience and that our watching it involves us in a rite of passage, away from and back to the mundane via another taken-for-granted, but nonetheless significant immersion in the other worldliness of the screen. Drama has its source, historically, in ritual and its ends in television. Our nightly news-watching is a ritual, both in its mechanical repetitiveness, but much more importantly in its presentation, through its fragmentary logic, of the familiar and the strange, the reassuring and the threatening” (1988: 26). In these explanations, a double process of simplification occurs: a random characteristic of the ritual complex is isolated, which is then presented as a unique, representative feature of the ritual and as generator of an “everyday liminality” (Couldry 2003: 208). Emptied of the variety of realities and conceptual values they specify, rite and liminality are turned into convenient, “good for everything” terms, easy to extrapolate across media consumption behaviors. Unfortunately, many media scholars metaphorically superimpose media phenomena and liminality, observing that the normal form of media functions almost mechanically as a rite (and the experience of media is conflated with a ritual feeling). The concept of liminality is drastically simplified—it becomes synonymous with all kind of breaks punctuating daily life; it refers to all cultural experiences that temporarily remove individuals from accepted symbolic frames; it implies a mystical power to enrich, almost mechanically, our understanding of the world we live in. Consequently, all cultural sharing and exchanges become liminal, and are associated with periodic acts of social communion, with ritual. Television—as the most important system of distributing cultural products—is now the center of liminal activity, and the mere consumption of television appears as the liminal ritual of modern life.

LARGE-SCALE LIMINALITY: MEDIA EVENTS Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz explore liminality in their seminal book on media events (1992), starting from the observation that there are two important types of news in the press. There is routine news related to common facts or situations, with limited social impact, and nonroutine news, which

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affects important social segments, and for this reason interrupts current journalistic activities and requires special coverage. Two important classes of events, both related to the liminal process, have the ability to generate nonroutine news. There are “great news events [that] speak of accidents, of disruption” and “great ceremonial events [that] celebrate order and its restoration” (1992: 9). While the former allude to dis-membering, the latter are connected to re-membering. From this perspective, Dayan and Katz propose a typology of “media events,” viewed both as historical facts and as a specific mass media genre. “The corpus of events,” they claim, “can be subdivided into Contests, Conquests and Coronations. These are story forms, or ‘scripts’, which constitute the main narrative possibilities within the genre. They determine the distribution of roles within each type of event and the ways in which they will be enacted” (1992: 25). The above-mentioned typology is extremely heterogeneous. It includes in the same categories social manifestations easily identifiable as rituals as well as those perceived as rituals due to their intense coverage. A royal wedding (Coronation), such as that of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, is a ritual (or ceremony) before and regardless of its mediatization. However, a political visit (Contest), or a scientific or sports accomplishment (Conquest) does not necessarily represent a homogenous ritual; it becomes ritual merely through a certain mediatization, in particular social and political circumstances. Dayan and Katz do not indicate whether all public ceremonies that are broadcast are “media events,” or whether all major political events can become ceremonies, given their “media event” status. Furthermore, it is not clear whether all current social gatherings (red-letter days, demonstrations, spectacular manifestations, pilgrimages, carnivals, etc.) qualify as “media events” through mere coverage. Referring to the functions of these event-ceremonies, Dayan and Katz identify two large classes. Ceremonies related to past events (distant or recent) that stop the flow of time and permit us to relive a lost time and order, are restorative events (royal weddings, commemorations, other political rituals). Other ceremonies propose a radical change of social order and prompt society to accept and support this change; they operate as transformative events: “Transformative media ceremonies: (1) address a latent conflict, (2) by enacting within themselves a reorganization of time and space—that is of history and geography, (3) thus making formerly unthinkable solutions thinkable” (1992: 160). Transformative events are in fact newly created ceremonies (on the basis of preexisting ritual patterns). There are two cases that illustrate this new type of ritual: The Pope’s visit to Communist Poland, and Sadat’s visit to Israel. The authors do not analyze the events or the discourse of the mass media; they create an abstract, speculative theoretical model that is meant to integrate a multitude of cases. The “transformative events”

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outlined by Dayan and Katz resemble Turner’s “social drama.” A transformative event involves a problem considered insoluble and accepted as fatal; the announcement of a ceremonial event offers a way toward change; the manifestation of a gesture, in a dramatic context, offers “an illustration of a desired state of affairs”; the gesture is reinforced by rich discursive activity, which interprets the event and predefines the manner of reception; after the event the public is invited to meditate on the proposed model and to evaluate its effects (1992: 167–168). A transformative (media) event is the source of a state of liminality, and it is significant to note that Dayan (2001) would directly recognize the Turnerian legacy in his work on media events. Yet, such events can prove disruptive, ambiguous, and conflictual, which appears contrary to Dayan and Katz’s initial definition of media events as celebratory of social solidarity. Numerous case studies inspired by the Dayan and Katz model have been published in the last two decades. Most illustrate the model suggested by Dayan and Katz: the case studies label a phenomenon as a “media event” and then interpret it in such a way as to confirm the canonical scheme of media events. (Crivello 1999; Davis 1998; De Repetigny 1985; Hallin and Mancini 1991; Peri 1997; Tsaliki 1995; Wardle and West 2004). Despite a variety of themes researched, critical evaluation of the theory focuses either on the integrative functions of media events (the Durkheimian paradigm) or on the disruptive and conflictual characteristics of a media event (the Turnerian paradigm). Research by Carey (1998: 46), Fiske (1996), Hunt (1999) and Yadgar (2003) underlines the fact that some ceremonialized and highly mediated events, such as the trials of O. J. Simpson in the US and the religious leader Arieh Deri from Israel, or the “hearings” of judges Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas when nominated to the Supreme Court, do not find their place in the media events typology proposed by Dayan and Katz. In Carey’s view, they are “chaotic and ungoverned and, in their own way, quite frightening”; they are characterized by “a peculiar bitterness” and generate “protracted conflict with long term political consequences that are acridly partisan”; they do not heal social wounds, do not bring catharsis, do not create consensus and do not promote compromise; on the contrary, their purpose is “to discover and implant a fissure” and “to reveal conflict.” This leads to the conclusion that, for these scholars, media events perform the function of a liminal period that enables society to address its failures and to expel the sources of crisis. This kind of media event looks less like a normal public debate and more like a synthesis of various rituals such as degradation, excommunication, carnival, and sacrifice. In fact, they “purify” society in the same way as a charivari: on one side they produce a public excommuni-

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cation of the “guilty” body and on the other they offer a symbolic healing by publicly displaying the dark side of the social system, behaviors, and thoughts: “media events of degradation approach the main sacred values of society through disensus rather than consensus” (Yadgar 2003: 208). Other authors also view media events as ritual manifestations that generate liminal intervals/breaks, tension and disintegrative conflict. The intense media coverage of Princess Diana’s dramatic death allowed Dayan (1999) to reveal the complex processes through which the memories of different audiences are activated and remodeled. Due to Princess Diana’s controversial status, her mediated funeral was treated as a transforming event, where roles were redistributed and the actors’ position in relation to themselves and to larger institutions was modified (e.g., Diana in relation to the Royal Family, the monarchy in relation to the public, the public in relation to Diana and the monarchy). In the media coverage of the funeral ceremony, television started a process of translation, allowing the rite to be lived in areas remote from the (sacred) place where it was performed. Dayan expands the meaning of the concept of “media events,” turning it into a system for creating and distributing sacrality on a supernational scale. However, this sacralization is achieved not only through ceremonies of integration and reconciliation, but also through mediatic ceremonies of suffering and contestation. By using elements of nonintegration, these ceremonies create a communitas-like space. In the same vein, Kitch (2003) and Rothenbuhler (2005) argue that the many forms of mourning (in situ or through mass media) that followed the terrorist attack on 11 September, 2001 generated a series of media events centered on suffering, vulnerability, and uncertainty. The mourning micro-rites and the mediatization of some “senseless” news created liminal spaces where, through shared suffering, society accepted a new situation and a new identity. I reached similar conclusions in my analysis (Coman 1994, 1996) of social phenomena (a political protest in Bucharest and the mass participation in King Mihai’s first visit to Romania) that were not consecrated rituals, but were covered by the Romanian media in a ceremonial code. The two studies draw attention to the fact that, in presenting social phenomena with political implications, mass media utilize two types of discourse: a sacralizing one, which interprets facts from the perspective of positive ritual and mythological categories (rituals of consecration and liturgical symbols), and a desacralizing one, which views everything as ridiculous or hilarious and as a symbol of a world turned upside down, fallen into chaos. Consequently, the press created two media events: a consecrating one analogous through its structure and significance to the “canonic” model, and a violent, contesting one that generated social conflict and dissension.

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For instance, the question of the conceptual coherence of media events is unsettled. While Carey (1998) and Liebes (1998) tried to settle the matter by adding other categories (media events of degradation and disaster marathon) to the three known types of media events, Couldry (2003) and Coman (2003) argue that media events are nothing but particular aspects of broader categories. Couldry underlines the expression of power and the naturalization of control over symbolic resources. Thus, media events become merely nonconflictual cases of “media rituals.” I adopt a post-Turnerian perspective by regarding these manifestations as results of ritualization processes. By ritualizing the coverage of events, journalists create the liminal; by doing so they assure themselves “mastery” over the battle to impose meaning on mediated events. Thus, they also establish legitimacy and the right of the profession to control the social mechanism by which the symbolic definition of reality is constructed. In both cases there is only one theoretical issue that needs to be settled: How can a model of media events integrate the concept of liminality, which is preeminently a way of manifesting a ritual state? In other words, how can one reconcile the Durkheimian paradigm with the Turnerian? In studies devoted to media events, the media functions as a factor of ritual feeling, allowing the audience to interpret different forms of social mobilization as great collective rituals. In other words, in exceptional moments, media organizations function as part of a true liminal system, proposing images and ways of behaving which are possible, but not necessarily applicable outside these places and moments. This means that media events are able to express not so much the concerns or interests of limited groups, as the fears and aspirations of the entire social body; thus, using a ritual language, the mass media creates a liminal, subjunctive framework, a framework for symbolically experiencing possible ways of articulating social life: “By their subjunctive, anti-structural, community dimensions, media events thus use all the elements whose sum defines, according to V. Turner, liminality situations” (Dayan 2000: 257).

THE GENERAL RITUAL FRAMEWORK When he interpreted millenarian cults as “homologous to the liminal periods of important rituals” (1969: 112), or characterized the Mexican social movements from the beginning of the twentieth century as “a complex and dramatic liminal period” (1974: 99), Victor Turner expanded the concept of liminality to cover long-term historic processes and macro-social phenomena. Still, is it possible that a concept built on small scale social phenomena could adequately describe and interpret phenomena involving hundreds of

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thousands, maybe millions of people, complex social institutions, and long periods of time? What would be the role of mass media in interpreting history as a ritual process? For example, starting from a ritualistic paradigm, Shinar (1996) proposes a broad perspective: global social change is seen as a liminal configuration, which means a combination of agents and processes of “dis-membering” (of the existing social structure, i.e., “societas”) and of “re-membering” a new configuration. While Shinar does not explicitly claim that social change is ritually patterned, by applying concepts derived from Turnerian ritual theory he implies that social change can be understood as a ritual process. In Shinar’s model, dis-membering is of lesser import: it is considered a more or less “natural” stage of a crisis situation or of a process of rapid social change. What he emphasizes is the return to order (the re-membering), which is a culturally and historically determined process. Shinar claims that re-membering is the product of three factors: values (the root paradigms), institutions (the formulative efforts), and actors (the transformative agents): “First, remembering involves a formulative effort, a concerted search for new consciousness. Second, this effort is oriented by root paradigms: consciousness, recognized cultural models of an allusive, metaphorical kind, cognitively delimited, emotionally loaded and ethically impelled that give form to action in publicly critical circumstances. Third, formulative efforts are conducted through transformative agents such as collective memory, or increased awareness of a unique collective self” (Shinar 1996: 95). In dis-membering or re-membering social space, these social change factors “float” as if an aquarium, and the different forms in which they are combined give birth to three configurations: the Avis model, in which the reconstruction process starts from the root paradigms; the Pirandello model, in which the remaking process is dominated by the formulative efforts; and the Che Guevara model, in which the transformative agents are ascendent (1996). In my own research (Coman 1995), I have developed and refined this model to reveal some of the mechanisms through which, in the first-years after the fall of communism in Romania, the agents of change (political parties, intellectual charismatic leaders, media outlets) attempted to impose an ambiguous model for social order that alternated between the primacy of values, of institutions, or of individual actions. The 1990–1992 period in Romania can be defined by the collapse not only of the standard value scales, institutions, and power structures, but also of the “action agencies” of the communist era. Because the structuring factors of the system had been abolished, the mechanisms of social change, no longer organized by a coherent system of rules, were increasingly dependent on the immediate contexts they emerged from, i.e., the process of social action and/or communicative

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exchange. Street demonstrations (which took place almost every day during the first half of 1990), reunions and spontaneous meetings, a fabulous number of newspapers adding even more confusion to the rumors in the street, violent arguments among different groups, all sorts of “societies,” “associations,” “parties,” “party-wings,” etc, were all proof of the ebullition of the transformative agents and the obstructions to the formative efforts or root paradigms. In this unstable configuration, the mass media were active in creating and maintaining liminality. They sustained a continuous state of dis-membering, promoting a discourse that generated insecurity and lack of trust, refusing, attacking, or discrediting any project for creating a new social order. It appears as if, within an interval of prolonged liminality, transformative agents, especially the mass media, assume a privileged position as both triggers and tools of change. Thanks to the ambiguous way in which they operate, these agents are compatible with the process of transformation and are, at the same time, able to emerge not weakened but even stronger from the failings of that process. In this respect it may be considered that transitional periods (i.e., of complex and rapid change) are frameworks created by the transformative agents, which impose their own logic on the root paradigms and formulative efforts. This means that, as transformative agents, the mass media are oriented toward the disorderly reproduction of spontaneous communitas and the immediate priority of communication. Naficy (1993) and Couldry (2000) have a similar macro-social vision. Naficy argues that any social group in exile is, inevitably, a liminal one: “Exile is a process of perpetual becoming, involving separation from home, a period of liminality and in-betweenness that can be temporary or permanent” (1993: 8–9). Under these circumstances mass media, television in particular, become ritual factors that “help to negotiate between the two states of exile, societas and communitas” (1993: 90). Couldry is concerned with “the significance of particular sites where non media people witness the actual process of making news coverage.” Such sites, argues Couldry, are liminal: “they involve a major change in people’s relationship to the media frame, not least because the news in this case is about them” (2000: 128). Couldry studies two such sites. First, there are the Granada studios where the famous British television series Coronation Street was filmed, which have become for series fans “a ritual place, even a place of pilgrimage” (2000: 69). In these studios, the game of filming and of assuming roles—in a series or in news anchoring—generates a borderline ludic space, one found between the mass media studio and the domestic space of watching what goes on in the studio, a space that the author considers liminoid (2000: 108). Second, there are free-speech locations, like Brightlingsea or Greenham, venues where

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hundreds of people have protested US military bases in England. Protesters lived in camps for weeks, estranged from their social routines, professional duties, and urban comforts. Such places have a complicated borderline status: they are between home and non-home, they are civilized and wild, indoors and outdoors, and protesters are simultaneously between legal and illegal, normal and delinquent, defenders of an ideal and disturbers of peace. Couldry noticed that protester actions were directed not only toward the military bases but also toward the media. Moreover, they were disappointed to discover that the media-reported information about them that was different from what they had done, said, or otherwise intended to communicate. They are both what they are and do, but also what the press says they are and do. In this situation, people may be both outside and within mass media discourse, acquiring a liminal status (2000: 130–157). These analyses move us closer to Victor Turner’s initial definition of liminality in that the mediatized ritual manifestations maintain their character of ambiguity, disturbance, anarchy, even of threat, specific to the liminal break. In all of these cases, liminality (mostly the mediated kind) appears as a dangerous phenomenon, a threat to social stability. But, unlike the ritual framework conceived by Turner, what we are now facing embraces far-reaching social and historic phenomena that involve complex institutions, large groups of people, and long periods of time. In other words, these approaches suggest the existence of a new type of “everyday liminality” as a permanent component of the historic process.

CONCLUSION The concept of liminality has been used in media studies with reference to both large-scale social phenomena and small-scale events. In both cases usage surpassed Victor Turner’s definitions. While studies of media consumption and media events adopt Turnerian ideas (i.e., “liminality”), the spontaneous, ambiguous, and conflictual traits characteristic of the latter tend to be overlooked. On a larger, general scale, analysis returns to the disruptive dimensions of Turner’s vision, yet loses local character, physical, community contact, and a relatively temporary break. The performative dimension of the liminal phenomenon is also lacking in media studies, as “most media theorists have tended to neglect the body for the mind” (Peterson 2003: 242). The concept’s extension has rarely been adequate from a theoretical point of view, and is even more rarely based on detailed ethnographic research. For this reason, generalizing the application of liminality to media phenomena is problematic: this kind of approach risks depriving the concepts

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of “ritual” and “liminality” of anthropological meaning. An approach more faithful to the anthropological vision (that uses liminality as a descriptive and analytical concept, not as a simple metaphor) should explain the relationships between local and translocal, body mediation and mass media mediation, long- and short-term liminality, and integrative and conflictual trends. But rather than becoming totally dedicated to anthropological concepts, media studies should be concerned with developing a paradigm assisted by tools designed to comprehend human universals amidst cultural difference. I believe that such an approach does not imply the simple transfer of concepts from one discipline to another, but the creation of a new interdisciplinary perspective and theoretical paradigm.

NOTE 1. A number of colleagues have contributed to the writing of this chapter. I am indebted to Peter Gross, Sorin Matei, Manuela Nelersa, Eric Rothenbuhler and Alexandru Ulmanu for their support and comments. Special thanks to Graham St John for his commitment and patience.

REFERENCES Barrios, Leoncio. 1988. “Television, Telenovelas and Family Life in Venezuela.” In James Lull, ed., World Families Watch Television, pp. 47–79. London: Sage. Carey, James. 1998. “Political Ritual on Television: Episodes in the History of Shame, Degradation and Excommunication.” In Tamar Liebes and James Curran, eds., Media, Ritual and Identity, pp. 42–49. London: Routledge. Coman, Mihai. 1994. “La victime et le vainqueur: La construction mythologique de la visite du roi Mihai en Roumanie par le discours de la presse roumaine.” Reseaux, no. 66: 179–191. ———. 1995. “La transition en Roumanie dans la perspective de Victor Turner.” In Roger Tessier ed., La transition en Roumanie: Communication et qualité de la vie, pp 79–91. Montreal: Presses Universitaires du Quebec. ———. 1996. “L’événement rituel: Médias et cérémonies politiques (La Place de l’Université à Bucarest en 1990).” Reseaux, no. 76: 11–29. ———. 2003. Pour une anthropologie des medias. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Couldry, Nick. 2000. The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses of the Media Age. London: Routledge. ———. 2003. Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge. Crivello, Maryline. 1999. “La télévision mémorielle? Jubilés historiques et récits médiatiques à la télévision Française (1950–1999).” Médiatiques 17: 8–11.

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Davis, Charlotte A. 1998. “A oes heddwech: Contesting Meanings and Identities in the Welsh National Eisteddfod.” In Felicia Hughes-Freeland, ed., Ritual, Performance, Media, pp. 141–159. London: Routledge. Dayan, Daniel. 1999. “Madame se meurt. Des publics se construisent. Le jeu des médias et du public aux funerailles de Lady Diana.”Quaderni, no. 38: 49–68. ———. 2000. “Les grands événements médiatiques au miroir du rituel.” In Pierre Brechon and Jean-Pierre Willaime, eds., Médias et religions en miroir, pp. 245–265. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. 2001. “The Peculiar Public of television.” Media, Culture and Society 23: 743–765. Dayan, Daniel and Elihu Katz. 1992. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. De Repetigny, Michel. 1985. “La visite du pape à Quebec (spectacle et spiritualité).” Communication: Informations, medias, theories, pratiques 7, no. 2: 33–43. Fiske, John. 1996. Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. Goethals, Gregor. 1981. The TV Ritual. Boston: Beacon Press. Gripsrud, Jostein. 2000. “Tabloidization, Popular Journalism and Democracy.” In Collin Sparks and John Tulloch, eds., Tabloid Tales: Global Debates over Media Standards, pp. 285–300. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Hallin, Daniel and Paolo Mancini. 1991. “Summits and the Constitution of the Public Sphere: The Reagan - Gorbaciov Meetings as Televisual Media Events.” Communications: The European Journal of Communications 12, no 4: 249–266. Hoover, Stewart M. 1988. Mass Media Religion: The Social Sources of Electronic Church. London: Sage. Hunt, Daniel. 1999. O.J. Simpson Facts and Fictions: New Rituals in the Construction of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Katz, Jack. 1987. “What Makes Crimes News.” Media, Culture and Society 9, no. 1: 47–76. Kitch, Carolyn. 2003. “Mourning in America: Ritual, Redemption and Recovery in News Narrative after September 11.” Journalism Studies 4, no. 2: 213–224. Langer, John. 1998. Tabloid Television: Popular Journalism and the “Other News.” London: Routledge. Liebes, Tamar. 1998. “Television’s Disaster Marathons: A Danger for Democratic Processes.” In Tamar Liebes and James Curran, eds., Media, Ritual, and Identity, pp. 71–85. London: Routledge. Morley, David. 1992. Television Audiences and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Naficy, Hamid. 1993. The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Peri, Yoram. 1997. “The Rabin Myth and the Press: Reconstruction of the Israeli Collective Identity.” European Journal of Communication 12, no. 4: 435–458. Peterson, Mark. 2003. Anthropology & Mass Communication: Media and Myth in the New Millenium. New York: Berghahn. Riggs, Karen. 1996. “The Case of the Mysterious Ritual: Murder Dramas and Older Women Viewers.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13, no. 4: 309–323.

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Rothenbuhler, Eric. 1998. Ritual Communication: From Everyday Conversation to Mediated Ceremony. London: Sage. ———. 2005. “Ground Zero, the Firemen and the Symbolics of Touch on 9/11 and After.” In Eric Rothenbuhler and Mihai Coman, eds., Media Anthropology, pp. 176–187. Thousands Oaks: Sage. Shinar, D. 1996. “Re-membering and Dis-membering Europe: A Cultural Strategy for Studying the Role of Communication in the Transformation of Collective Identities.” In A. Sreberny-Mohammadi and S. Braman, eds., Globalization, Communication, and Transnational Civil Society, pp. 89–103. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Silverstone, Roger. 1988. “Television, Myth and Culture.” In James Carey, ed., Media, Myth and Narratives, 20–47. London: Sage. ———. 1994. Television and Everyday Life. London: Routledge. Tsaliki, Lisa. 1995. “The Media and the Construction of an Imagined Community: The Role of the Media Events on Greek Television.” European Journal of Communication 10, no. 3: 345–370. ———. 1968. “Myth.” International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, vol. 10: 576–582. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine Publishers. Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1977. “Process, System and Symbol.” Daedalus 106, no. 1: 61–80. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Wardle, Claire and Emily West. 2004. “The Press as Agents of Nationalism in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee: How British Newspapers Celebrated a Media Event.” European Journal of Communication 19, no. 2: 195–214. Vincent, Joan. 2001. “System and Process (1974–1985).” Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 99–119. Yadgar, Yaacov. 2003. “A Disintegrating Ritual: The Reading of the Deri Verdict as a Media Event of Degradation.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 20, no. 2: 204–233.

Chapter Five

Social Drama in a Mediatized World: The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence Simon Cottle

{ Victor Turner’s schema of “social dramas” continues to hold analytical and explanatory promise for understanding public rituals and their complex dynamics and transformative impacts within contemporary societies. This chapter sets out to demonstrate how this is so. Based on recent research into the media’s representations of the racist murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence and how through time this became a major “social drama” raising issues of injustice, identity, and racism in British society and releasing cultural reflexivity and social reform, I argue that Turner’s ideas offer deep insights into the transformative capacities of contemporary rituals.1 In today’s mediatized and conflicted societies, however, processes of public ritual are principally enacted on the media stage and performed within differentiated and globalizing media ecologies. In this mediatized context Turner’s ideas, necessarily, require theoretical revision and embedding within approaches to media communication research. Studies of “media events” (Dayan and Katz 1994) and “media spectacles” (Kellner 2003) too often ignore the longer-term dynamics of exceptional media phenomena and, in consequence, overlook contingencies of performance and public enactment and how these variously unfold through time. Turner’s conceptualization of social dramas has the specific virtue of targeting precisely this processual dynamic and, as such, opens up a vantage point from which to analyze and better explain the complex articulation 109

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between society’s expressive cultural genres, public performances, and underlying forces of contention. The complexity and interpenetration of Turner’s four discerned phases of social dramas—breach, mounting crisis, redress, reintegration/schism—as well as their complex articulation in respect of the operations of symbolic and strategic power, demand in-depth empirical exploration. On the basis of findings reported here, a fifth phase, that of “ebbing/revivification”, can also be proposed. This phase offers an extended conceptualization of Turner’s social dramas and how these reverberate into the future. Often signaled by the prefix “post-” (“post-Watergate”, “post-Lawrence”, “post–9/11”), some “social dramas” become embedded as historical reference point, political benchmark, and cultural residue and can do so long after Turner’s suggested culminating phase of “reintegration/schism.” In this way, then, major social dramas can continue to exert symbolic agency within the contests, identities, and politics of the future. How contemporary social dramas are enacted and performed by the media however, forms the principal focus of interest here. Turner’s view of social dramas encourages a more nuanced understanding of the mediations of power and how these are often played out through symbolism, ritual, and public performances. Importantly, his discussion of ritual as “performance” and “enactment,” and not simply as “ceremony” and “formality” (Turner 1982: 79–80), breaks with earlier Durkheimian views and challenges the idea of public rituals as necessarily integrative or supportive of the dominant social order (see also Chaney 1986, 1993; Cottle 2006; Emirbayer 2003; Kertzer 1988). Related concepts of “communitas” and “liminality” further help to illuminate how social dramas can generate emotional intensity, mobilize moral solidarity, and encourage social reflexivity in precipitous moments that seemingly reside, on occasion, outside of normal space and time. These suggestive ideas now need to be better integrated within studies of mediatized social dramas. To date, however, only a few scholars have sought to mine Turner’s rich anthropological seam of ideas (Alexander 1988; Alexander and Jacobs 1998; Cottle 2004a, 2005; Elliott 1980; Ettema 1990; Jacobs 2000; Wagner-Pacifici 1986). If we are to better understand how or to what extent society’s “expressive cultural genres” can “flood their subjects with affect,” contribute to processes of “institutional and cultural reflexivity,” and “subjunctively” orient readers/audiences toward “redressive actions” aimed at dichotomous cleavages and divisions within society (Turner 1982), so today we must attend to the media’s performative (Hughes-Freeland 1998) enactment of social dramas. Mediatized social dramas, I argue, are a contemporary form of “society in action,” and their disruptive and transformative possibilities often inhere as much within their emotional and moral appeals, narrative dynam-

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ics, and ritual forms as their centering of discursive contention, strategic claims-making, and deliberative forums of engagement. The following case study powerfully demonstrates these claims as it attends to how the media performatively enacted the Stephen Lawrence case and unleashed processes of institutional reflexivity, social reform, and cultural change.

MEDIATIZED SOCIAL DRAMA: THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE STORY In previous studies I have used the notion of a social drama as a device for describing and analysing episodes that manifest social conflict. At its simplest, the drama consists of a four-stage model, proceeding from breach of some social relationship regarded as crucial in the relevant social group, which provides not only its setting but many of its goals, through a phase of rapidly mounting crisis in the direction of the group’s major dichotomous cleavage, to the application of legal or ritual means of redress or reconciliation between the conflicting parties which compose the action set. The final stage is either the public and symbolic expression of reconciliation or else of irremediable schism. (Turner 1974: 78–79, italics added)

In Britain the Institute of Race Relations documented 124 racially motivated killings in England and Wales in the period 1970–2003, fifty of which occurred between 1991 to 2002 (IRR 2001, 2002a, 2003). The police in England and Wales recorded 53,090 racist incidents in the year 2000–01 alone, including 7,887 common assaults and aggravated woundings—a figure that we reliably know from the British Crime Survey is an underrepresentation (CRE 1999; IRR 2002b). The collective stain of British racism and violence, however, rarely finds public exposure and concerted response (Cottle 2000, 2004b). The case of Stephen Lawrence, the 18-year-old school student stabbed to death in Southeast London in April 1993, proved to be very, very different. Institutionally the case unfolded within the criminal justice system and involved two police inquiries, two police reviews, the Crown Prosecution Service, committal and trial proceedings, a private prosecution, a coroner’s public inquest, and a public inquiry authorized by the new Labour Home Secretary four years after the murder. This, in turn, resulted in Sir William Macpherson’s report that found police incompetence and institutional racism to blame for the five prime suspects’ evasion of the law and the injustice experienced by the Lawrences (Macpherson 1999). A raft of wide-ranging, and consequential, legislative reforms followed, which were aimed at, inter alia, changing policing practices, increasing ethnic minority recruitment, and instituting social reforms designed to tackle “institutional racism” (pub-

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licly acknowledged and defined for the first time) within police services as well as other public institutions throughout British society. The Stephen Lawrence case, then, unfolded within the arenas and processes of the criminal justice system; but the public story of “Stephen Lawrence” was principally played out within the nation’s media (and some international media too). To be publicly seen and, importantly, ‘felt’ as a mounting crisis releasing consequential effects, the Stephen Lawrence case had to be placed within a narrative framework that could establish its significance and meaning. While the campaign for justice for Stephen Lawrence by his parents and their supporters undoubtedly won some media exposure (Cathcart 2000), this work of public meaning construction—both cognitive and affective—was principally enacted by the media. It was here that the symbolic and moral charge of the case became generalized outward and canalized to different publics in society.

Breach The public story of the Stephen Lawrence case developed unevenly and over a considerable period of time before it enveloped the nation as a moment of social reflexivity and critique. Initially the murder in April 1993 was ignored by large sections of the British news media, and those that reported it did so on inside pages. Nelson Mandela’s visit two weeks after the murder and his words of support for the Lawrence family helped attract some media interest, and Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother, used the opportunity to publicly criticize the police and their handling of the investigation. At this point, the Stephen Lawrence case also attracted some news interest through community marches and demonstrations protesting against the rising tide of racist violence in areas of South East London (where at least three other racist murders had recently been committed). But it was not until the “bombshell” decision announced by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) not to prosecute the prime suspects that a “breach,” in Turner’s sense, opened up paving the way for a period of mounting crisis.

Mounting Crisis The CPS decision of 30 July 1993 not to prosecute the five prime suspects on grounds of “insufficient evidence” crystallized the family’s growing lack of confidence in the criminal justice system and, in the context of growing community calls for action against the rising tide of racist violence, signaled

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a public “breach” of trust in the authorities charged with the responsibility of investigating and prosecuting racist murder. The Stephen Lawrence case now moved into a protracted phase of “mounting crisis” that ran until 15 March 1998, the day before the opening of the public inquiry. Across this period, the Stephen Lawrence story was kept in the public eye on a daily basis through a succession of news updates, and his name also began to be referenced in reports of other racist attacks and murders. The name “Stephen Lawrence”, at first a “sign” of the murder of a particular black teenager in South East London, thereby began to transform into a symbol that could act as a common focal point holding together diverse events and issues within the troubled field of “race” and racism. None but the most rabidly racist could deny the inhumanity and injustice of his murder. But there were other features that also made “Stephen Lawrence” a universalizing symbol of racial injustice within white British society. Young, gifted, and black—Stephen was studying for his exams to become an architect—he did not conform to the usual media stereotypes of black youths as criminal, disaffected, or otherwise troublesome, and his parents seemingly matched the middle-England ideal profile of hard working, god fearing, and self-improving first-generation immigrants content to make their own way in British society. The sign of “Stephen Lawrence”, then, spoke to different discourses within the field of British “race” relations and registered with emotive force and political urgency the essential inhumanity of his murder. Additional symbolic charge was also generated in this period by two key moments of failed institutional redress: the private prosecution mounted by the Lawrences and their legal team, and the later coroner’s public inquest into Stephen Lawrence’s death. Each was characterized by moments of high tension and ritual drama, and each, through its performative mediatization, flooded the Stephen Lawrence story with emotional affect and moral charge. Stephen Lawrence’s murder, as we have heard, at first received limited press reporting. Now, three years later with the opening of the private prosecution on 19 April 1996, it was prominently replayed in terms that emphasized its racist brutality: “Hacked to death just for being black” (The Sun), “RACE-HATE LED TO BOY’S KNIFE KILLING” (Daily Mirror), “Black Student Killed ‘out of racist hatred’” (The Independent). Under the headline “Black teenager ‘Murdered’ by race-hate gang,” The Times described Stephen’s last hours and included eye witness statements and graphic accounts of the attack. Press reporting, then, was now giving full vent to the racist nature of the attack and its appalling violence. When the case collapsed on 25 April 1996, after the judge ruled that both the testimony of Duwayne Brooks (who had been with Stephen Law-

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rence when he was attacked) and the video evidence of the prime suspects acting out racist attacks were inadmissible, the media reported the anger that attended this latest “breach” of justice: “It’s Just Not Fair” (The Sun), “SO WHO DID KILL STEPHEN? FATHER OF RACE MURDER VICTIM DEMANDS JUSTICE” (Daily Mirror). The mainstream press also followed up on the collapse of the prosecution and many provided lengthy transcripts of the covert police video that, again, underlined the extreme racism of the prime suspects. Depth of hatred revealed in covert video Neil Acourt brandished a knife, waved it around and thrust it into the wall or furniture uttering vile racist abuse. “I reckon that every nigger should be chopped up mate and they should be left with nothing but fucking stumps.” (The Independent, 26 April, 1996)

Touched by the understandable grief and sentiments of the Lawrences and repulsed by the suspects’ grotesque display of verbal racism and acting out of racist violence, the British press collectively became emboldened in its support for the Lawrences. The coroner’s public inquest was reported in detail. Police blunders were publicly revealed for the first time, and various police claims were challenged by the Lawrences’ legal team. The refusal by the five accused to answer questions in the witness box produced universal press condemnation. In its mediatization, the ritual drama and affect of the inquest was publicly elaborated and commented on by both the press and broadcasting institutions, and by the time the inquest reached its final, unprecedented verdict, the story was guaranteed to receive extensive coverage. The Guardian led with the story on its front page: “Unlawfully killed in an unprovoked racist attack by five white youths” (The Guardian, 14 February 1997). The mainstream British press followed up on the verdict with detailed commentaries and analysis reflecting on the failure of the criminal justice system to deliver justice to the Lawrence family. The Daily Mail went further in a stunning performative intervention. On 14 February, under the headline “MURDERERS” blazoned across its front page, it reproduced pictures of the five prime suspects and subtitled “The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us,” and did so in the knowledge that none of the suspects would want to risk self-incrimination in a libel case. The paper’s action, praised in many quarters, was motivated not by views coinciding with those of the Lawrences, however, but indignation at how the process of criminal justice had seemingly been thwarted by, to use their terms, five “moronic thugs,” and how this threatened to “damage race relations and the reputation of British justice” (Daily Mail, 14 February 1997).

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Through the public mediatization of the coroner’s inquest, and the earlier private prosecution, then, the Lawrence story signaled issues of “race” and racism as well as the injustice at the heart of its public telling. Press advocacy and the media’s elaboration of emotions and feelings generated by the case powerfully moved the story into a subjunctive register enacted by both “quality” broadsheets and “popular” tabloids. The Stephen Lawrence story thereby entered into a moral realm in which symbolism and ritual would play an increasingly important part in determining how it discharged its political effects.

Redress According to Turner, it is in the redressive phase “that both pragmatic techniques and symbolic action reach their fullest expression,” for it is here that society is “at its most ‘self-conscious’.” Redress often exhibits “liminal features, its being ‘betwixt and between’ and may be conducted through the idiom of judicial process, or in the metaphorical and symbolic idiom of a ritual process” (Turner 1974: 41). With each successive failure of the criminal justice system and with each new report of continuing racist attacks and murders in London and elsewhere in Britain, the sign of Stephen Lawrence accumulated further symbolic power. The phase of judicial and symbolic redress began on 17 March 1998, the opening day of the Government-instigated public inquiry, included the release of the Macpherson report on 24 February 1999, and continued across the first wave of political responses and public discussion in March of that year. It mirrors Turner’s discussion remarkably. The inquiry opened with a minute’s silence in memory of Stephen Lawrence, before rehearsing, to use Turner’s terms, “a distanced replication and critique of the events leading up to and composing the ‘crisis’” (Turner 1974: 41). This began with detailed scrutiny and criticism of the botched police investigations: “Inquiry told of Lawrence case blunders” (The Independent, 25 March 1998), “Cops waited two weeks to quiz murder suspects” (The Sun, 25 March 1998), “Amazing trail of blunders by police: Inquiry opens with catalogue of errors” (Daily Mail, 25 March 1998). But it was the highly charged testimonies and emotional scenes of the inquiry itself, as much as the disclosure of previously hidden details, that sustained the sense of “communitas” now infused in its public mediatization. On the second day of the inquiry Doreen Lawrence testified: “Mum’s hell at murder of Stephen” (The Sun, 26 March 1998), “The anger and anguish of Mrs Lawrence” (The Guardian, 26 March 1998). The following day

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this emotional intensity was deepened even further with the heartrending testimony, publicly aired for the first time, of a couple who had cared for Stephen Lawrence as he lay dying: “You are loved, woman passer-by whispered as Stephen slipped away” (Daily Mail, 27 March 1998). The intensity of this emotional discharge was not dependent only on spoken testimonies at the inquiry, however, but inhered in the media’s performative enactment of them. Consider, for example, the following extract from the front page of The Independent. Passing before their eyes, one by one, were the racist thugs they believed killed their son IF HE felt the slightest twinge of self-consciousness, he did not show it. Jamie Acourt swaggered into the room, glanced at the massed ranks of hostile faces and settled down in the witness box, adjusting the lapels of his freshly pressed suit. Twenty feet away, Neville and Doreen Lawrence gazed steadily at this young man, with his slicked back dark hair and insolent demeanour. Acourt slouched back in his chair, unfazed by the attention. (The Independent, 30 June 1998)

Expectation of public drama also informed the participation of the Metropolitan Police at the inquiry, building to a climax as public apologies were belatedly offered by senior representatives of the Met, declined by the Lawrences, and as calls for Sir Paul Condon’s resignation began to be heard. This was now essentially a moral drama being played out on the media stage and in which public accountability, humility, and shame were seemingly demanded and, periodically, offered up as a means of demonstrating public contrition—and slowing the flow of public opprobrium being directed at the institution of the police. By the time Sir Paul Condon was required to take the stand, public expectancy was palpable. The Guardian performatively displayed this dramatic event on its front page: “Lawrence family spurns Met chief’s personal apology over racist murder: When sorry is not enough” (The Guardian, 2 October 1998). Alongside and contributing to the daily mediatized enactment of the public inquiry, the press produced an upsurge in background stories, features, opinion pieces, and editorials both contributing to and expressing wider processes of cultural reflection. This produced such headlines as: “Shame on the racists in our police ranks” (The Times, 9 September 1998), “Forgotten victims of race hate: The murder of Stephen Lawrence was not an isolated incident. Nor was the bungled police response to his death” (The Observer, 7 February 1999), “Straw demands more black cops” (The Sun, 10 February 1999) “Why racists flourish in an anti-racist force” (The Independent, 24 February 1999).

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The press also focused on itself and other media in an upsurge of media reflexive pieces. Liberal broadsheets, for example, reflected on the symbolic status acquired by Stephen Lawrence in the media and compared this historically to other “watershed” cases, thereby extending and deepening both its historical and political reach: “Lawrence becomes black icon” (The Independent, 20 December 1998), “ICON FOR A SCEPTICAL AGE” (The Observer, 10 January 1999), “Tragedies that shaped perceptions” (The Guardian, 26 February 1999). Such media reflexivity grew across the mounting crisis and redress phases, but assumed its most prominent aspect following the release of the Macpherson inquiry report on 24 February 1999. The release of the Macpherson report, six years after the murder, represented the pinnacle moment of symbolic redress. Here the political center of society came together to publicly demonstrate its support for the Lawrences, acknowledge a collective sense of shame, and lend support to symbolic processes of redress. This all-party support was embodied in the statements by leading politicians in the House of Commons on 24 February 1999, statements that were broadcast live and in full by television as well as in abridged form later that same day, and then reported by the press the following day. Prime Minister Tony Blair offered the following reflections: “Madam Speaker, I think it right today to praise Doreen and Neville Lawrence for their courage and dignity. We should confront honestly as a nation the racism that still exists within our society. We should find within ourselves as a nation the will to overcome it. The publication of today’s report on the killing of Stephen Lawrence is a very important moment in the life of our country; it is a moment to reflect, learn and to change. It will certainly lead to new laws, but more than that it will lead to new attitudes, a new era in race relations and a new more tolerant and inclusive Britain” (BBC2 Westminster, 24 February 1999). Following the official release of the Macpherson report on 24 February 1999, the media collectively performed a spectacular outpouring that dominated the media sphere on that day, and for many days and weeks thereafter. Front pages, double-page spreads, supplementary pages, and special reports all made full use of page layout, visual impact, and championing headlines including: “Stephen Lawrence’s Legacy: confronting Racist Britain” (The Guardian), “A family tragedy, a police force disgraced and a nation shamed” (The Independent), “Judge’s damning report on race murder will change Britain” and “The Legacy of Stephen” (Daily Mail), “Straw War on Racism” (The Sun), and “Legacy will be social change” (The Times). Britain’s mainstream media, then, collectively reported the response from the political center of society as a moment of historical import. This “cultural flooding” also signaled a liminal moment outside of routine time

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and party-politics and thereby helped to promote a sense of national renewal and moral solidarity. While different newspapers, as we have seen, had sought to emphasise certain aspects of the case and not others, for a while at least they evidently felt obligated to cover a shared recognition of “national shame” and the need for a moral commitment to change. This new public mood continued to be expressed by the media and also conditioned press performativity for some time thereafter.

Reintegration/Schism Following the announcement by the prime minister and home secretary in the House of Commons on 24 February 1999, the Labour Government embarked on turning Macpherson’s seventy recommendations, and some of its own, into legislation and policy. This did not, however, preclude some sections of the media challenging the pace of reforms or the validity of the concept of :institutional racism”, or even refuting claims of widespread police racism. But the mainstream media nevertheless evidently felt obligated to refer to a deeper collective sense of “society” and regard it as one now in need of repair after its bruising from the Stephen Lawrence case. This was a necessary collective project if the social imaginary of British civil society was once again to reestablish itself as a taken-for-granted, if mythical, place of even-handed justice and social inclusion protected by, rather than undermined by, the forces of law and order. As time moved on, however, the press began to reassert its editorial independence from the moral mood that it had helped to produce. Some newspapers now sought to slow, if not derail, the momentum of reform being directed at the forces of law and order, while others performatively stoked the engine of change. But for a time, the moral momentum of the Stephen Lawrence story had powerfully intervened in the life of society, polity, and culture and contributed a powerful impetus to views of how civil society could and should be.

GLOBAL MEDIATION, CULTURAL APPROPRIATIONS As the height of this mediatized social drama the media made use of the full panoply of “expressive cultural genres”—press, TV current affairs and documentary, and the Internet. Mainstream news providers, including the BBC and The Guardian for example, produced their own Web pages with sections devoted to the Stephen Lawrence case and with easy access to summaries of earlier news reports. Minority and alternative sites also disseminated

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information and commentary on the Stephen Lawrence case, avoiding mainstream editorial positions and control. “Blink”, the Black Information Link, carried all the transcripts of the Macpherson Inquiry and received 60,000 hits on the day of its publication. Far-right political organizations such as the National Front and the British National Party sought to counter, to use their terms, the “media hysteria” and “media circus” that the Stephen Lawrence case had given rise to. The Stephen Lawrence story also radiated outward geo-politically. Across the mounting crisis and redress phases, regional and international newspapers began to pick up on the case. As they did so, it became inflected by different cultural identities, social interests, and political agendas. Scotland’s press, for example, reported the main developments in the case whilst reflecting on Scotland’s own situation: “Shadow of Racism Hangs Over Scots Police Forces” (The Scotsman, 4 March 1999). Northern Ireland’s The Belfast Telegraph went further in its use of the Lawrence case to interpret its own political violence: “The murder of Stephen Lawrence in London and the gruesome brutal paramilitary attack on an Armagh woman may not, at first sight, have a lot in common. . . . But both, in their respective spheres of violence, are motivated by the reality that an endemic hatred exists within their communities” (The Belfast Telegraph, 25 February 1999). Given its strong readership connection to Britain, the Australian press (Sydney Morning Herald, Courier-Mail, The Age, The Advertiser, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph) reported the Lawrence story in culturally consonant ways, deferring in the main to the known public details of the case. The Canadian press, in contrast, was less deferential and took the opportunity to voice a more independent view: “The British take on race relations has always been a little absurd. Britain is the nation which perfected maritime imperialism and the slave trade and which has latterly become infamous for religious mayhem in the province of Northern Ireland and for its black- and Arab-hating soccer hooligans. . . . But there it is. Countries which are hyper-critical of other countries often have trouble acknowledging how deeply screwed up they may be about some things themselves” (The Toronto Sun, 10 July 1998). The US press, evidently, felt the need to “translate” the Stephen Lawrence case into terms that would immediately be recognized by their readership: “For years, black and Asian Britons have complained about what they see as overt and tacit police racism, and except at times of particular upheaval—like during race riots in Brixton in 1981—no one in authority in Britain has paid much attention. . . . But in the last few months, the issue has been at the forefront of the country’s consciousness. . . . The impetus for all this is the six year old case of Stephen Lawrence . . . ‘Rodney King without the video’” (The New York Times, 22 February 1999). Exhibiting historical

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and diasporic connections, newspapers in Hong Kong and India tended to reflect on how their own communities fared in Britain and in respect of the culture of racism publicly revealed through the Lawrence inquiry: “India is not the only country where intolerance is practised. Discrimination, hatred, violence and murders are openly perpetrated on the minorities in the UK. . . . India should take steps to draw attention in the Lok Sabha to the harassment, intimidation and murder in the U.K. of citizens of Indian origin” (The Hindu, 3 March 1999). At the height of this mediatized social drama, then, the symbol of Stephen Lawrence circumnavigated the globe and registered in disparate outlets of the world’s global media. Here the story of Stephen Lawrence received differing cultural appropriations and was put to work in the service of other peoples’ causes and concerns.

MEDIATIZED SOCIAL DRAMA AND THE FIFTH PHASE: EBBING/REVIVIFICATION The social, cultural, and institutional reflexivity spurred by the release of the Macpherson report did not come to an end with Macpherson’s recommendations and the instigation of policy reforms. Though remaining dependent on the preceding stages, a further phase draws away from them through time and, in its mediatization, disseminates the cultural resonance of the Stephen Lawrence story into the future—as historical reference, political benchmark, and cultural residue. This process, marked by ebbing and revivification, was and continues to be publicly enacted by the media to this day, and it tells us something about the longevity of some social dramas. In this “post-Lawrence,” “post-Macpherson” period, the media periodically and performatively sought to revivify the collective sentiments that they had earlier given expression to. The Guardian, for example, continued to enact its liberal social-democratic agenda by reporting on, investigating, and pushing the need for reform across diverse social and cultural fronts: “Setting the pace on race: Ethnic equality inquiry to shape social housing agenda” (The Guardian, 10 January 2001), “Falling behind in the race: As forces struggle to attract ethnic minority officers Clare Dyer reports on the Sikh policewoman who claims she was hounded out of her job by colleagues” (The Guardian, 30 January 2001). The Independent also demonstrated its support for ongoing processes of reform, often displaying its commitments in more emphatic tones: “THE UNPLEASANT STENCH OF RACISM. These cases suggest the problems of institutional racism uncovered by the Macpherson report have not been dealt with at all” (The Independent, 23 January 2001).

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The conservative and right-wing press took a very different public stance. As time moved on they deliberatively sought to distance themselves, and their readerships, from the subjunctive public mood, the sense of communitas produced by the Macpherson inquiry that had seemingly tamed their reactionary disposition on questions of race, racism and identity. With the passing of time and in response to the new Labour Government agenda of reform, they now mounted a backlash. Why Sir William was wrong about race . . . In the wake of the Macpherson report, the liberal establishment underwent a kind of nervous collapse. It is not too late, however, for others to subject it to the critical analysis it should have received when it first appeared. (The Times, 1 May 2001)

The right-wing tabloids also enacted this backlash and did so in characteristically sensationalist ways. The Sun, for example, declared that “GREAT AND GOOD HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS” and went on to explain: “MEDDLERS like Sir William Macpherson whose report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence branded the police ‘institutionally racist’. . . triggered a collapse in police morale and a surge in street violence” (The Sun, 9 March 2002). Ten years after the murder of Stephen Lawrence the media publicly enacted a commemoration and momentarily revitalized something of the subjunctive mood, the sense of communitas that had earlier invested the story with such transformative energy. Right-wing tabloids again bowed to the sacred aura that surrounded the name of “Stephen Lawrence” and publicly acknowledged the far-reaching energies that this had previously stirred, even if politically they weren’t committed to them. The Sun, for example, reported the words of the prime minister and, in typical Sun style, sensationalized these in terms of “war against racism,” but now refrained from criticizing the “post-Macpherson” reforms or the shift in wider sensibilities toward issues of race, racism, and identity (The Sun, 23 April 2003). The liberal broadsheets, by contrast, sought to performatively enact the ten-year anniversary as a major event and thereby maximize the opportunity to raise issues and reflect on questions of race, racism, and British identity. For example, black broadcaster, writer and chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, amongst many other commentaries in The Observer, reflected on what the Stephen Lawrence case had meant to Britain and British identity “How tragedy, trial and error brought us all together” (The Observer Review, 6 April 2003) and performed the legacy of Stephen Lawrence by putting it to work in respect of the new wave of asylum seekers and migrants experiencing racism: “One thing that we could learn from Stephen

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Lawrence’s death is that we must not wait 50 years to create a legal framework that protects the new migrants” (The Observer, 6 April 2003). A full ten years after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, then, sections of Britain’s media continued to performatively invoke the subjunctive mood galvanized by the Stephen Lawrence case and sought to revivify and extend its catalytic force to continuing concerns of race, racism, and identity in British society.

CONCLUSION Mediatized social dramas are a recurring and constitutive part of contemporary societies. Media performativity, as in the Stephen Lawrence case, proves instrumental in propelling forward these exceptional phenomena as well as their characteristic forms of symbolism, ritual and performance. By these performative means, particularized publics and a subjunctive orientation to how society should be are summoned, and forces of cultural reflexivity and institutional critique are unleashed, the latter granting mediatized social dramas their disruptive charge. Turner’s processual understanding of social dramas and their embodiment within “expressive cultural genres” continues, therefore, to map their contemporary mediatized incarnations. Importantly, however, contemporary mediatized social dramas are characterized by high degrees of media performativity and enacted within differentiated media ecologies. Here the media appeals to particularized publics both within and beyond traditionally conceived societies. Today’s increasingly globalized media and differentiated interpretative communities render problematic notions of social dramas conceived as uniform or predictable vehicles working to disclose meanings, perhaps in the service of dominant interests. As Turner noted earlier, the radical potential of a social drama inheres in its performance: “Through the performance process itself, what is normally sealed up, inaccessible to everyday observation and reasoning, in the depth of sociocultural life, is drawn forth” (Turner 1982: 13). Today this radical potential may well be circumscribed and delimited in terms of its mediatization, but, fascinatingly, on occasion it seemingly breaks forth and cultural reflexivity and institutional critique ensues. The mediatized case of Stephen Lawrence is a case in point, having served to expose the dark side of British society and its shameful racist secrets to public criticism. Through its mediatization the Stephen Lawrence case became, and remains to this day, a potent symbol and catalyst for change; it has proved to be a litmus test of the extent to which British society is prepared to move beyond the anachronistic practices of the past, acknowledge institutional racism, and embrace cultural diversity. Exceptionally, then,

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this case focused national attention on deep-seated issues of race, racism, and British identity, and as it did so it embroiled powerful institutions of state and elite public figures. The ideas of Victor Turner have proved invaluable in illuminating how this and other mediatized social dramas discharge powerful cultural affects and occasionally contribute to dynamics of reflexivity and change.

NOTE 1. This chapter draws, in part, on more extensive discussions of the Stephen Lawrence case approached as “mediatized public crisis” (Cottle 2004a, 2005) and encompassing ideas of “mediatized ritual” (Cottle 2006). For the purpose of this discussion, the concept of “mediatized public crisis” (Alexander and Jacobs 1998) and, elaborating on Victor Turner (1969, 1974, 1982), “mediatized social drama,” are used interchangeably.

REFERENCES Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1988. “Culture and Political Crisis: ‘Watergate’ and Durkheimian Sociology.” In C. J. Alexander, ed., Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies, pp. 187–224. New York: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Jacobs, Ronald N. 1998. “Mass Communication, Ritual and Civil Society.” In T. Liebes and J. Curran, eds., Media, Ritual and Identity, pp. 23–41. London: Routledge. Cathcart, Brian. 2000. The Case of Stephen Lawrence. London: Penguin Books. Chaney, David. 1986. “The Symbolic Form of Ritual in Mass Communication.” In P. Golding, G, Murdock, and P. Schlesinger, eds., Communicating Politics: Mass Communication and Political Process, pp.115–132. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Chaney, David. 1993. Fictions of Collective Life: Public Drama in Late Modern Culture. London: Routledge. Commission for Racial Equality. 1999. Racial Attacks and Harassment. CRE Factsheets. London: Commission for Racial Equality. Cottle, Simon. 2004a. The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence: Media Performance and Public Transformation. Westport, CT: Praeger. ———. 2004b. “Representations.” In E. Cashmore, ed., Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, pp. 368–372. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. “Mediatized Public Crisis and Civil Society Renewal: The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence.” Crime, Media, Culture 1, no. 1: 49–71. ———. 2006. “Mediatized Rituals: Beyond Manufacturing Consent.” Media, Culture and Society 28, no. 3: 411–432. ———. ed. 2000. Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries. Buckingham: Open University Press.

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Dayan, Daniel and Elihu Katz. 1994. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Elliott, Philip. 1980. “Press Performance as Political Ritual.” In H. Christian, ed., The Sociology of Journalism and the Press, pp. 141–177. University of Keele, Sociological Review Monograph no. 29. Emirbayer, Mustapha. ed. 2003. Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Ettema, James. 1990. “Press Rites and Race Relations: A Study of Mass Mediated Ritual.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 7: 309–331. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia. ed. 1998. Ritual, Performance, Media. London: Routledge. Institute of Race Relations. 2001. Counting the Cost: Racial Violence since Macpherson. London: Institute of Race Relations. ———. 2002a. Racially Motivated Murders (Known or Suspected) Since 1991. Factfile. London: Institute of Race Relations. ———. 2002b. Racial Violence. Factfile. London: Institute of Race Relations. ———. 2003. Rising Deaths as a Result of Racial Violence. London: Institute of Race Relations. Jacobs, Ronald N. 2000. Race, Media and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kellner, Douglas. 2003. Media Spectacle. London: Routledge Kertzer, David I. 1988. Ritual, Politics and Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Macpherson, Sir William. 1999. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. Cm 4262-I. London: The Stationary Office. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publication. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin E. 1986. The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

PART II

{ Popular Culture and Rites of Passage

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Chapter Six

Modern Sports: Liminal Ritual or Liminoid Leisure? Sharon Rowe

{ Sport is classified by Victor Turner as a liminoid phenomenon, in contrast to a genuinely liminal, or ritual form of cultural performance.1 Turner names sport in several enumerations of “industrial-liminoid” phenomena, a classification of performative genres that includes the full spectrum of modern art and entertainment.2 Not alone among anthropologists in excluding sport from the realm of ritual,3 his exclusion is based on a distinction that becomes unduly arbitrary when analyzed against the phenomenon of modern sport. Indeed, by relying on the very terms he uses to develop his liminal/liminoid distinction, I hope to show that modern sport compares more strongly with Turner’s own conceptualization of genuine liminal performance. While this analysis raises questions about the merits of Turner’s liminal/liminoid distinction, it also suggests a theoretical basis for asserting that sports, as genuinely liminal phenomena, carry into the modern world as powerful, modern ritual phenomena.

LIMINALITY AND THE “WHAT-IF” IN SPORTS Turner defines liminality as “the state and process which is betwixt-andbetween the normal, day-to-day cultural and social states and processes of getting and spending, preserving law and order, and registering structural status”4 (Turner 1977a: 33). The meaning of this formulation becomes clear within the context of tribal rituals, such as rites of passage in which partici127

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pants are temporarily separated from all that identifies and constrains them within a normative reality. Set apart, often with a group of peers, they are stripped of their identity and made to undergo some ordeal or symbolic action, to be later reinstated into society with an altered identity at the ritual’s conclusion. In the midst of ritual participation they are neither here nor there, but genuinely in between distinctions, beyond the limits of ordinary social sanctions, and unconcerned with the mundane affairs of everyday life. Temporarily defined by the ritual context, they are beings-in-transition, no longer what they were, nor yet what they will be. Following Arnold van Gennep, Turner uses “liminality” primarily in this very specific sense, referring to the mid-phase of rituals during which participants are in transition from one social status to another (Turner 1982a: 24–25). This phase of ritual is a kind of “temporal interface whose properties partially invert those of the already consolidated order that constitutes any specific cultural ‘cosmos’” (41). Grimes has described this world-within-a-world as “a moment of ritually generated limbo . . . an antistructural moment of reversal” (1995: 151). While in this antistructural context, liminars experience the suspension of at least some elements of normative social structure. Roles and rules that normally define acceptable conduct may be suspended or inverted, thus encouraging a range of behavior and expression not fully available within the boundaries that conventionally organize and restrain daily life. The antistructural suspension of the ordinary establishes a context in which an alternative mode of relation, or communitas, emerges among liminars. Communitas has been described as “the social anti-structure” (Alexander 1991: 192) because it presents a model of human relatedness other than what routinely prevails, one that contrasts with the mediated, abstract, and ultimately arbitrary nature of social roles and modes of relation established by law, language, and custom. Within Turner’s writings, the relationship of antistructure and communitas to liminality is complex and multifaceted, and Turner himself has offered no systematic treatment of the interrelationship among these key ideas.5 Yet, his claim that the “essence of liminality” is “its release from normal constraints, making possible the deconstruction of . . . the meaningfulness of ordinary life” (Turner 1985a: 160), testifies to their significance in his understanding of ritual. As social conventions and identities move into the background, several features appear in the foreground. Foremost is a ludic dimension in which playful experimentation brings variation to old structural themes. The importance of this ludic element leads Turner to describe liminality as “a time outside time in which it is often permitted to play with the factors of sociocultural experience, to disengage what is mundanely connected, what, outside liminality, people may even believe to be naturally and intrinsically connected, and to join the

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disarticulated parts in novel, even improbable ways” (1985c: 236). Released from the daily formalities that regulate social life, liminality encourages the deconstruction of society’s conventions and structural elements “into cultural units which may then be reconstructed in novel ways” (1985a: 160). The element of play supports the spirit of spontaneity and creativity that brings novelty onto the field of possibility not only as an experiential event for direct participants, but as a reflective event for observers as well. Not only are fundamental features of social structure revealed, but through their recombination new images of self, new expressions of social relationship, even new arrangements of social order, are demonstratively experienced. The ludic is the substantial core of liminality, as Turner clearly asserts. “It is the analysis of culture into factors and their free ‘ludic’ recombination in any and every possible pattern, however weird, that is the essence of liminality, liminality par excellence” (1982a: 28). If liminality is a primary means by which a society reveals itself to itself, and in so doing not only maintains a capacity to continually rejuvenate itself with new values and new relational patterns but reasserts its allegiance to the old; then a society without liminality lacks a mechanism for the selfreflection and creative self-renewal that Turner identifies as the essence of liminality. Modern industrial societies, as uniquely secular, are often thought empty of ritual, thus empty of genuinely liminal phenomena. But I will argue that contemporary sports present this ludic essence, and thus are modernday variants of the liminal. I will further argue that there is no need to distinguish liminal and liminoid as Turner does to distinguish modern sport from its ancient variants (indeed, I will cast doubt on the merits of this distinction in general). It is not simply because sports are structured as games, or that we use a language of play in our reference to them, that I connect sports to Turner’s unique sense of ludic. Rather, it is the open-ended context of sports, and more importantly their double-edged capacity to present ourselves to ourselves in our sheer potentiality while at the same time conserving cherished images of what we are, that draws me in this direction. This element of “what-if” stirs our imaginations and our hopes until the final outcome of a sporting event is determined, and connects us to the reality of our own indeterminacy. The ludic element is indispensable to sport and as aspects of the ludic dimension of modern society, sporting events are critical to the role liminality plays in our collective reflexivity and in supporting a context for metacommunication. Turner speaks of the liminal as “dominated by the subjunctive mood of culture, the mood of maybe, might-be, as-if, hypothesis, fantasy, conjecture, desire” (1985d: 295). It “is full of potency and potentiality” (1977a: 33). Stirring a dialectical interplay between actuality and pos-

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sibility, liminality makes available new options for experience and relation that are not possible, or desired, within the constraints of established, conventional order. Liberated from behavioral norms and cognitive rules, liminars engage in acts and behaviors that, while neither likely nor specifically intended, are the desired product of the liminal context. Thus liminality becomes a kind of dynamic core within which cultures produce, reproduce, and store possibilities of social action and being. Turner seems to restrict the concept of liminality to simple, tribal contexts, warning against broader application: “It is within the context of social systems which keep relatively stable the changes and transformation of symbolic systems as in cyclical or repetitive ritual that the term “liminality” properly belongs. When used of processes, phenomena and persons in large-scale complex societies, its use must be in the main metaphorical. . . . Failure to distinguish between symbolic systems and genres belonging to cultures which have developed before and after the Industrial Revolution can lead to much confusion both in theoretical treatment and in operational methodology” (1982a: 29–30). Yet much of his most creative work involves extending and transforming the concept of liminality, recognizing, as Grimes describes, that liminality is “a creative font not only for ritual, but for culture in general” (1995: 151). In order to resolve the tension between his assertions that genuine liminality is a feature of ritual, which in turn is a feature of small-scale, tribal societies, and his observation that liminality is a critical component in the creative maintenance and regeneration of culture in general, Turner queries, “If liminality in tribal, traditional ritual is a mode of plural, reflexive, often ludic metacommunication . . . we have to ask the question . . . what are the functional equivalents of liminality in complex societies” (1985a: 164).6 It is within the context of a search for “functional equivalents” of liminality in modern societies that Turner develops the distinction between liminal and liminoid. In general terms, liminoid phenomena have the quality of liminality but are neither ritual per se nor a specific phase of ritual. The liminoid, he claims, “resembles without being identical with ‘liminal’” (1982a: 32). Like liminal-rituals, modern liminoid forms of theater, entertainment, and sport, even forms of expressive art and literature, generate or are generated from a subjunctive mood. They share with ritual the feature of playfulness from which emerge new, expressive possibilities and modes of self-representation. Liminoid phenomena, too, encourage public reflexivity by representing ourselves to ourselves in a context that accommodates critical scrutiny and personal, if not public, renewal. But unlike tribal rituals, liminoid forms are not integrated into the broad weave of a cohesive social tapestry, nor do they blend into a single context a wider range of available performative and expres-

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sive media. Rather, they manifest themselves as independent genres, as distinct arts or modes of personal expression, created and chosen by individuals according to taste. Unlike rituals, they are not obligatory but voluntarily chosen, competing with one another alongside other commodities in a market of liminoid choices. Turner does not completely disassociate the liminal and the liminoid. Yet, while he claims that many modern forms are “historically continuous with ritual (1985c: 237), he hesitates to characterize them as liminal-ritual, stating: “Crucial differences separate the structure, function, style, scope and symbology of the liminal in tribal and agrarian ritual and myth from what we may perhaps call the ‘liminoid’, of leisure genres, of symbolic forms and action in complex, industrial society” (1982a: 41). Turner explains the basis for these differences in evolutionary terms, by developing a broader narrative context that accounts for the development of performance genres from sacred, tribal ritual to modern, secular entertainment. Key to the unfolding of this narrative is the concept of “social drama,” which he identifies as the common ancestor of tribal rituals and modern genres of popular entertainment. Viewed as a universal form of cultural experience, social dramas unfold through four successive phases of public action. Turner speculates that many forms of public performances are generated in the redressive phase, or “exploratory heart” of social drama. In this phase “the contents of group experiences (Erlebnisse) are replicated, dismembered, remembered, refashioned, and mutely or vocally made meaningful”7 (1985d: 298). As one form of redressive action, ritual re-presents the basic elements of the drama, orchestrating them into performances that resonate with the collective experience, values, and cosmological vision of a community. Its repetitive public performance integrates the community by uniting members in common experience, thereby building the basis for communal identity. Making use of the entire spectrum of what Lévi-Strauss has called the “sensory code,” rituals blend multiple layers of symbols that come to elicit a collective response. But in Turner’s story of ritual, the communal identity that was created and sustained by public ritual fractures, and ritual dies as an effective resource for redressive action. As it dies, it “spins off” the separate strands of sensory stimuli that were once integrated into a single, cohesive and culturally meaningful context. He notes, “Often when ritual perishes as a dominant genre, it dies a multipara, giving birth to ritualized progeny, including the many performative arts” (1982b: 79). The motive force for this death dance is the social structural change brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, industrialization triggers dramatic and irreversible changes in social life. Human self-identity shifts from a communitarian to an individualist paradigm. The “sphere of

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religious ritual” contracts. Society fragments into spheres of specialization, organized by the forces of rationalization and bureaucratization. Efficiency and technology provide the frames within which answers to perceived problems are articulated. The communal context capable of supporting broadly shared visions and meanings is fractured, fundamentally altering human social interaction “at the level of expressive culture” (Turner 1982a: 30). Turner explains: “As society increases in scale and complexity, . . . these strands of symbolic action are torn from their original connection in ritual and become independent modes of expression” (1985c: 237). These independent modes of expression are Turner’s “liminoid.” He refers to them as “genres of industrial leisure,” and among them he includes major sporting events. Given their place in modern, complex, industrial, urban life, liminoid genres do not reflect, nor do they connect us with, the rhythms and cycles of life and land. They are not, in Turner’s words, “contextsensitive” (1985c: 243). Rather, they exist and are sustained independently, reflecting personal, sometimes “idiosyncratic” visions and meanings. Nurtured by the spirit of modern industrialization, they exhibit the specialization, rationalization, and increasing technologization characteristic of that social turn. Yet, as descendants of ritual they carry, in their history or in some aspect of their modern practice, a trace of that ritual heritage even as they move further in the direction of autonomy. Thus we see in the forms of many modern sports (as with modern forms of music, pictorial and performance art, literary forms, and decorative arts) a common ritual legacy. That this legacy is overshadowed, however, by their development as autonomous forms of expression seems to be the reason for Turner’s hesitancy to classify modern sports and other liminoid genres of public performance as ritual per se. He supports this position by indicating through a series of distinguishing contrasts what he sees as the essential differences between ritual-liminal forms of cultural performance and industrial-liminoid forms of modern entertainment and performance. This basic dichotomy is clarified by reference to another, the “ergic-ludic/anergic-ludic,” which links directly to the evolutionary history of social drama. In what follows I will try to illustrate the specific difficulties sport poses for both facets of Turner’s liminal/liminoid distinction. In several places Turner enumerates essentially the same series of contrasting features to differentiate liminal and liminoid genres of performance. Liminoid genres . . . contrast with liminal phenomena in the following ways. Liminal phenomena tend to dominate in tribal and early agrarian societies; they are collective, concerned with calendrical, biological, and social structural cycles; they are integrated into the total social process; they reflect the collective

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experience of a community over time; and they may be said to be “functional” or “eufunctional” . . . . Liminoid phenomena, on the other hand, flourish in societies of more complex structure. . . . They are not cyclical but intermittent, generated often in times and places assigned to the leisure sphere. . . . [They] tend to develop apart from central political and economic processes, along the margins, in the interstices, on the interfaces of central and servicing institutions— they are plural, fragmentary . . . and often experimental in character (1977b 50– 51; see also 1982a: 52–55, 1977a: 50–51).

First, and perhaps most strongly, he distinguishes liminal and liminoid forms of cultural performance on the basis of the type of social structure in which they are found. This contrast reflects the broader narrative relied upon to explain the diversity within the many forms of social drama. However, with regard to sport, this narrative explains little, for sports are found virtually in every culture in some form, and in many cases the practice of particular forms has changed little over time. This fact is acknowledged by many anthropologists who nonetheless argue that ancient and modern sports are clearly distinguishable. The typical line of argument is that ancient sports were highly ritualized phenomena, experienced and interpreted within a broader religious context, while modern sports, despite their historical continuity with ancient forms, are merely very popular but highly secular forms of public entertainment. Turner seems to accept this view. Modern sports are not instances of ritual because they are leisure phenomena, and leisure is a feature of postindustrial, secular societies, which are incapable of supporting a context sufficient to sustain the shared beliefs and visions that would link sports to a transcendent reality, and thus maintain them as ritual phenomena. This explanation, however, begs the question, for it defines the entire category of liminal-ritual phenomena in terms of its embeddedness in the religious practices of ancient, simple societies, thus denying at the outset the possibility of a modern secular ritual supported by a broad-based community. I would argue that the relationship between ancient and modern sports is not clarified by the ritual-secular distinction (assuming the legitimacy of the distinction). One can concede that modern sports are secular phenomena, clearly separated from modern religious institutions, that they are driven by contemporary commercialization, and that increasingly they incorporate the innovations of modern technology. But we cannot distinguish ancient sports from modern sports on these premises. Ancient sports were equally exploited and supported by the commercial element of the societies in which they were embedded. They, too, took advantage of the technological achievements of the day. Secularization is a feature of modern culture (even modern religion has to some degree been secularized) and may have

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diluted some of the richness of a once-integrated ritual context, but it has not necessarily compromised the essence of ritual liminality, which I argue remains at the core of the contemporary sports.

SPORT AT THE CENTER OF COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE Sports pose different difficulties for Turner’s liminal/liminoid distinction when we consider them in light of his view that, while liminoid phenomena appeal to individuals or small sets of individuals, liminal genres reflect “the collective experience of a community over time.” This contrast has significant meaning for Turner because it speaks to the heart of the fundamental change in “expressive culture,” which he sees as the result of moving from small-scale, tribal societies that focus upon the community, to large-scale, industrial societies that emphasize the individual. This change is reflected in the respective symbologies to be found in liminal and liminoid forms. Symbols characteristic of liminal phenomena “tend to have a common intellectual and emotional meaning for the members of the widest effective community” (Turner 1977a: 45) and are closer to what Turner calls the “objective-social” typological pole (Turner 1982a: 54, 1977a: 51). The symbols we find in liminoid genres reflect the individualistic character of the phenomena in general and tend to be “more idiosyncratic and quirky” (Turner 1977a: 51, 1977b: 45). They do not emerge from the collective, nor do they necessarily express the collective experiences of the community. Rather, because they are created “by named individuals,” the symbols associated with these liminoid forms reflect a more “personal-psychological” range of meaning that is relevant specifically, although not uniquely, to the particular individuals who create them (1982a: 54, 1977a: 51). By contrast, genuine ritual is a collective effort identifiable by a tightly orchestrated context that unites many different genres of performance into a single cohesive whole. Its symbology reflects the psyche of the community and is accessible to the whole. Furthermore, while change is a feature of ritual, at least superficially one notices first its sameness and the redundancy of its form. Liminoid genres, on the other hand, are recognizable as distinct and autonomous forms of expression or entertainment, existing independently and without any necessary reference to one another, expressing the individual effort and diversity of their creators. As such they are “plural, fragmentary, and experimental” (Turner 1977b: 43), generating a wide range of forms. Certainly modern sport presents itself through a wide plurality of forms, each autonomous in its constitution by a unique set of rules and its development apart from other forms; but there are at least three distinctly different

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senses in which sport can be described as “collective.” First, unlike other liminoid forms, such as modern painting or poetry, in which a unique product is created by a named individual, sports, like ritual, emerge from the collective. Evidence of this is found in sports history, which finds its first expression mutely in prehistoric art and artifact, and later in myths of heros and gods. The Olympic Games is only one example whose legacy is rooted in such ancient stories. Japan’s national sport, Ozumo, is another (Cuyler 1979: 22). One can only speculate on the specific origins of sports such as wrestling and racing, forms so ancient and universal they seem to point beyond culture to something primal and commonly human. Only rarely can one attribute the origin or invention of a particular sports event to an individual. Even when one considers the origins of distinctly modern sports, one hears stories more remarkable for their mythic color than their historical accuracy. The widely accepted story of the invention of modern baseball by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839, for example, is acknowledged to be a myth (Zeigler 1979: 183). Even basketball, which fits Turner’s liminoid model inasmuch as it was the singular invention of one, known and named individual, is understood more significantly through stories of the heroic efforts of its legendary players. James Naismith is incidental compared to the mythic feats of players kept alive in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Like other sports shrines, this place tells the sport’s sacred history through the concrete (and often miraculous) deeds of players who, though certainly known and named individuals, are more recognizable as “The Stilt,” “The Pearl,” “Magic,” or “Air.” We do not remember and do not really care about their individuality, if we understand individuality in terms of personal history. That individuality is effaced by the records that make players immortals of the game. Our experience of the athlete as athlete is not an experience of an individual but of a symbol, an emblem. In frozen images of peak performances, and in the endless litany of their records, athletes themselves become larger-than-life symbols that gain their life, meaning, and significance from the imagination and aspirations of the collective.8 Secondly, sport forms reflect and symbolize the collective spirit of the group from which they arise, as Ozumo, for example, carries forward the values, traditions, and cultural spirit of Japan. Japan’s sumotori (wrestlers) are living emblems, embodiments of this spirit. The forms and rules of this manner of wrestling reflect cultural values and attitudes with which an entire people identify. They represent the self-projected image of the collective as it sees itself in competitive struggle. This is equally true of the national sports and the major sports figures of many countries: the distance runners of Kenya, the gymnasts of Russia, the weight-lifters of Eastern Europe, or ball players of the United States. These examples testify to the fact that large

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collectives of people identify, and come to be identified, with particular athletes and athletic events.9 A third sense in which modern sports can be described as collective is found in the fact that sports draw the collective to them, where the collective is understood to be an entire community, or an otherwise significant portion of the community. Homecoming games, for example, in small communities across America are collective events, engaging the entire community. Attendance is a community expectation and at least a significant majority, if not the whole, celebrates in and deeply identifies with the anticipated victory or a consequent loss. This sort of collective response is replicated in everwidening communities, culminating in the Olympic Games, an event that anthropologist James Peacock has labeled “a global ritual” (1985: 81). The sheer number of athletes, officials, and fans alone illustrates the capacity of sports to focus the collective attention and identification of a significant portion of humanity toward a singular public performance. Like the tribal rituals Turner describes, these modern sports are occasions for public reflexivity and metacommunication. Athletes serve as symbolic representations of ourselves. Through their efforts we witness ourselves in defeat and in sublime transcendence. But sports do not merely represent; they also transform. Sports construct a context in which we, as humans, in fact, transform ourselves; creating ourselves anew with each record; extending our potential as we establish new limits to our present being. When records are set human horizons are literally redefined. As the frame for such defining experiences, modern sport bears a transcendent quality as capable as any tribal ritual of representing the collective experiences, aspirations, values, and limitations of our human beingness, and as able to transform the limits of our being within a structured, organized context. Sport fits Turner’s description of the liminal most clearly when one considers that, while new forms of sport continue to be produced and sports are available for continuous consumption, they are indeed seasonal phenomena. Like liminal rituals, individual sports have a feature of sameness. They are redundant, tend to be cyclical, and often follow, if not biological or social-structural rhythms, certainly meteorological rhythms. Preseason preparation augurs the coming of the next season, and big matches are seasonally defining events. Even as commercial influences have led to the virtually ubiquitous presentation of sporting events, major sports are still identified with, and experienced in terms of, a particular season. Baseball is summer; football is autumn. Lesser sports, such as swimming, track and field, gymnastics, even surfing, have competitive seasons and reflect the cyclical character of liminal phenomena more than the intermittent and continuous generation of liminoid phenomena.

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To the extent that our lives are ordered by the rhythms of sports seasons, the centrality of sports in our total social life follows somewhat from this seasonal character. But sports are “integrated into the total social process” in other subtle, and not-so-subtle, respects. To the extent, for example, that our choices and perceptions of what exists in the commercial market are enhanced by appeal to various sports and sporting figures, free market choices—the bedrock of our culture—are influenced by sport. As a significant factor in modern leisure, the degree to which sports structure our time increases as leisure time increases. Even more subtle and, some would argue, more significantly, the influence of sport is reflected in our politics and beyond—in the idioms of our language. As one of the “most ubiquitous activities of modern contemporary society,” sport “penetrates into and plays a significant role in all of the social institutions” (Sage 1979: 1). Thus, while Turner’s assessment of sport as liminoid may be true with respect to the fact that sports “tend to develop apart from central political and economic processes, along the margins,” as a total phenomenon, sport cannot be accurately characterized as “marginal, fragmentary,” or “outside the central economic and political processes” as Turner claims of liminoid phenomena in general. The integrative importance of sport can most easily be argued from the fact that sports serve as primary social structuring events for individuals as well as for groups, drawing the entire community together in heightened appreciation of and identification with their community. Sociologist George Sage notes that “sport and education are inexorably intertwined in American society” (5). Indeed, our educational lives are structured around sports. Sports link health and moral education with recreative leisure. Beginning with organized recess and physical education classes, and continuing in extracurricular activities from grade school through college, not only do sports channel the energy of those who participate directly, they channel their identity, reputations, and in some cases, the course of entire lives. To the larger community, a school’s team sports provide a focus for collective identity. In urban communities, while the singular power of a sporting season may have less structuring force in the life of the community as a whole, should the city’s team make the final round of a playoff tournament, and better still, win a championship, the mood and rhythms of that community are dramatically affected. Whether or not one’s own personal life is structured around sports, the general pattern of modern life is affected by the impact and influence of sport; in its mood, its rhythms, its energy, and its identity. Much of this impact is reflected in the world of business and economics. “Although exact numbers of sports related jobs are difficult to calculate, estimates are as high as 5 million” (Stedman, Delpy and Goldblatt 2001: 4). This is in the US alone, where the sports industry has been ranked as high as

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eleventh based on estimates of total consumption and investments (Mullin, Hardy and Sutton 2000: 3). These facts make it easy to claim that sport is a business, but it is equally true that business is a parasite upon sport. The combined forces of globalization and technological innovation are expected to increase the consumer base for sports, and companies are poised to take advantage of fans who become sports participants through their consumption of products and services. The International Olympic Committee projected the value of television rights for the 2008 Olympic Games to increase four times over what it was just twenty years ago, and a similar rate of increase was predicted for the 2006 World Cup (Westerbeek and Smith 2003: 91). Television simply opens up the frame that was once limited by stadium walls, making it possible for more fans to experience a sports event. Thus, despite the fact that many decisions affecting sports are made in business offices and have financial implications, business is a driving force in sport precisely due to sport’s capacity to sustain human interest. The power of sports to peak and sustain our attention and carry our imaginations is the core of the centuries-old linkage between sports and politics, a link that reveals some of our more contradictory, if not paradoxical beliefs about sports. On the one hand, our collective imaginations hold a vision of athletic purity, of pristine competition among skilled and noble athletes capable of bringing warring factions to peaceful truce. The reality, however, for ancient sport as well as contemporary contests, is that sports are linked to politics and economics as much as they are to mythic images. Images of battling athletes have always served the purposes of politics. In our own time, both domestically and internationally, sports provide a background against which political battles have been waged. We need think back no further than the long Olympic cold war, which for over thirty years functioned as a thin metaphor for the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union to demonstrate their respective ideological superiority. “Wherever one looks, sports serve as a tool of politics in one form or another—as a means of diplomatic recognition or isolation, as a vehicle of protest and propaganda, as a catalyst of conflict, as a way to gain prestige or further international cooperation, as a vehicle of international social control, as a stimulus to modernization, and unification. The list of examples are endless” (Strenk 1979: 129).10 Sports do indeed mirror the dynamics of social-political process, but they infiltrate and direct our consciousness of those processes through language. Over three decades ago Ike Balbus drew attention to “[t]he ubiquity of the sports metaphor” and argued that “the increasingly frequent application of sports language to the sphere of state activity both signals and helps promote the internalization of [a new] ideology” (1975: 30). The particulars

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of such a change are not as important for our purpose here as is Balbus’s observation that through the metaphors drawn from it, sport functions to mediate change in the fundamental structures and norms of our political life. Richard Lipsky offers a similar argument in How We Play the Game: “The strength of sports language and drama demonstrates how the symbolic world of sports provides for an emotional network in American society that forms an important foundation for political stability. The power of sports language, as an agent of sports symbolism, forms a network of national and social communication that provides large masses of Americans with communal warmth and personal identity” (1981: 41). These writers note a distinctive relationship between sport and the broader social context mediated by language. The use of sports metaphors to describe political or other social realities feeds back into these realities as they are cast in terms of the metaphors used to describe them. From different perspectives Balbus and Lipsky observe not only that social reality is mediated by the metaphors of sport, but that at some point the differentiation between reality and metaphor begins to blur, confounding the two. This mediating power of sport relates directly to what Turner refers to as the “eufunctional” aspect of genuinely liminal genres. Serving the positive function of maintaining structure in society, this feature is absent in modern liminoid genres. In Turner’s view these later genres do have a purpose beyond entertainment and personal expression, functioning “as an independent and critical source” (1982a: 33). Turner is obviously thinking of modern genres of literature or art, and speculative philosophy,11 when he explains that liminoid phenomena “are often parts of social critiques or revolutionary manifestos” (ibid.: 54–55). Yet, unlike art or literature, sport rarely moves explicitly in this direction. Indeed, there are examples, such as the political acts of protest displayed by individual African-American athletes during the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, or by gymnast Vera Caslavska in protest of the Soviet invasion of her country that same year, but sports rarely serve as platforms for explicit social critique, and still less for revolutionary pronouncements. More often they are associated with a conservative nationalism or with traditional social and cultural values. The relationship between sport and society is indeed multifaceted and no doubt complex. Commonly sports are thought to reflect, conserve, and further the values of the prevailing culture. But sports function more integrally in developing the values that guide societies and move them through fundamental changes. British sociologist John Hargreaves has noted, for example, that in the mid nineteenth century, “athleticist discourse/practice was absolutely crucial in the formation of the dominant class in Britain” (1987: 143). In the same vein, Jim Riordan has argued that one of the compelling reasons for the establishment of the elaborate Soviet sports system was a rec-

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ognition that sport was “an eminently appropriate device to achieve certain key aims associated with the establishment and maintenance of a new social order” (1987: 391). In The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul links modern sports with industrialization, viewing them as “an extension of the technical spirit” (1964: 384). But he argues further, claiming that: “In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions, and objectives—in short—all the technical laws and customs—which he encounters in the office or factory” (ibid.: 384). While this observation forms the basis of a largely negative appraisal of modern sport, Ellul’s observations, along with those of other sociologists, illustrate Turner’s claims regarding the role liminality plays in “furthering the purposes of the existing social order.” In this respect sport is more illustrative of what Turner refers to as the “eufunctional” aspect of liminal phenomena than it is of the critical pronouncements articulated by individuals in literature, art, political theory, or the myriad forms of industrial-liminoid expression. As a form of cultural performance, the relationship of sports to everyday sociocultural processes is not exclusively unidirectional, simply expressing, reflecting, or preserving the central relationships and values of the system at large. Rather, it is what Turner calls “reciprocal and reflexive.” Thus in the dialectical interplay that comes alive through public performance, sports not only reflect and conserve larger social values but also invert them, creating values as they abrogate those that prevail, furthering the values and structures that exist as they replenish or redefine them, drawing from a “fructile storehouse of possibility.” In considering Turner’s characterization of sports as liminoid, I have contested the claim that sports are “marginal, fragmentary, outside the central economic and political processes,” arguing instead that they are an integrated, interdependent facet of social life; that they dynamically reflect, absorb, give back, alter, and help move social processes onward. I have argued that they derive from and appeal to the collective, that they draw the collective to a common appreciation of an emblematic presentation of itself. Thus, at least in terms of the specific contrasts used by Turner to distinguish the liminoid from the liminal, I find that sports align more strongly with liminal phenomena. However, before rejecting Turner’s inclusion of sports within the category of the industrial-liminoid, there is another facet of his analysis that we ought to consider.

BETWIXT AND BETWEEN WORK AND PLAY In his attempt to further clarify the liminal-liminoid distinction Turner invokes again the broad narrative context he has relied upon to explain the

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evolution of major genres of cultural performance. The key concepts to which he draws our attention in this context are those of work, play, and leisure (1982a: 30). Turner observes that in large-scale modern industrial societies, where ritual is absent, one finds a clear division between the realms of work and play, work and leisure (ibid.: 35). Work, defined by effort, discipline, serious endeavor, and duty, is a matter of social obligation to which we are contractually bound. Through work one assumes a formal social role and contributes to the maintenance of society through labor. Leisure, on the other hand, is a realm defined by personal pleasure and free choice. It is separated from work life in place and time. It is not under the control and demands of socially dictated rules, routines, and responsibilities; rather, our actions in the realm of leisure reflect personal taste and choice. In leisure we explore, experiment, create, and indulge our tastes through individually chosen modes of play and relaxation. Thus, work and leisure are thought to be mutually exclusive, separate realms, dominated by different goals, values, and attitudes. In Turner’s analysis, one does not integrate the activities, attitudes and energies appropriate to one arena into those of the other. Leisure, as a time apart during which we refresh and rejuvenate ourselves as individuals, is a unique feature of modern life. Turner follows the analysis of Joffe Dumazedier to argue that leisure evolves only when “society ceases to govern its activities by means of common ritual obligations” and the means of livelihood are separated from other activities (36). Only in industrialized societies, where work life is organized in a rational, bureaucratized, technologized manner and individual leisure can be separated as a distinctly “other” realm of activity, given over to the free choice of the individual, has leisure had an opportunity to emerge. While it is one of the salient features of modern life, this sharp contrast between work and leisure or play is not found by Turner in smaller-scale, tribal societies where “ritual is the nerve center of cultural sensitivity” (1977b: 40). In such societies ritual blends the serious work of carrying out social obligation and maintaining vital social structures with a ludic dimension that brings forward the novelty, recreation, delight, and spontaneity modern Western societies have relegated to leisure. This contrast in the way societies relate work and play is captured by Turner in his distinction between “ergic-ludic” and “anergicludic” forms of liminality. The dichotomy has been called “a ‘watershed’ division in his theoretical treatment of the liminal ‘play’ manifest within ritual proper, as distinct from the ‘liminoid’ forms of liminality found in leisure activities or entertainment” (Alexander 1991: 46). As with the workplay dichotomy, Turner links the “ergic-ludic” with genuinely liminal forms of tribal ritual, and the “anergic-ludic” with the liminoid forms of modern leisure and expression. This distinction gives a fuller and historically more

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concrete answer to the question, “Whatever happened to liminality, as societies increased in scale and complexity?” He answers: “With deliminalization seems to have gone the powerful play component. . . . Traditional religions, their rituals denuded of much of their former symbolic wealth and meaning, hence their transformative capacity, persist in the leisure sphere, but have not adapted well to modernity” (1982b: 85–86). It is a salient feature of modern, secularized society that the consecrated context that once supported ritual’s centralizing importance fragments and the many performative elements utilized in that context are marginalized, pushed into the newly emergent realm of leisure. In leisure, liminality and its transformative potential remain available as a matter of personal, individual choice, but they are no longer centralizing and vital forces of community. As one among a multitude of leisure choices, sports should, according to Turner’s analysis, reflect the values of leisure over those of work. Yet, I would suggest modern sports maintain the symbolic wealth and meaning that supports a transformative capacity.12 Moreover, sports easily illustrate the blend of work and play that Turner finds so characteristic of ergic-ludic phenomena. It is not among professional sports alone that we are able to find a demonstration of the tension between the categories of work and play, conspicuous enough to collapse the distinction by which Turner defines modern leisure. Indeed, the professional athlete’s work is predicated upon play, but it is equally true that many so-called leisure athletes work seriously at their play. Professional athletes combine a sense of contractual obligation and professional preparation with a spirit of fun and relaxation that draws forward the spontaneity, creativity, and joy that make them entertaining and exciting to watch. This fact is most clearly illustrated by an athlete of the caliber of Michael Jordan, who when playing his best is fulfilling to the fullest his contractual obligations while at the same time exhibiting creativity and enjoyment in the play of the game. The paradox, and the charm, of such a livelihood are often noted in the remarkable fact that grown men are paid so richly to “play a game.” From the side of leisure a similar paradox is apparent. Many serious “weekend athletes” bring to their leisure pursuit of sport a kind of intensity of purpose, competition and goal orientation more expected in the domain of work. They do indeed, in some sense, “choose” sport, but this voluntary aspect is submerged under the serious effort of disciplined competition and the drive to compete well. Thus, I must disagree with Turner’s observation that “even when there is effort as in competitive sport, that effort-—and the discipline of training—-is chosen voluntarily, in the expectation of an enjoyment that is disinterested, unmotivated by gain, and has no utilitarian or ideological purpose . . . this is ideally the spirit of leisure” (1982a: 37). Chosen

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it may be, but not necessarily in the expectation of disinterested enjoyment, and certainly not without utilitarian purpose (granted that purposes may be individually defined, as purposes and interests generally are in modern life). It is not uncommon to see individuals investing, in their so-called leisure pursuit of sports, a degree of time and effort, and a sense of identity and purpose, that one would expect of professional pursuits. This ambiguity has been noted by sociologists and sports psychologists. Sage claims with respect to sports that “involvement, either as a participant or in more indirect ways, is almost considered a public duty” (1979: 1). Lewis Mumford states the case more strongly, arguing that sport “has become one of the mass duties of the machine age” (1973: 65). Not only do we find that the characteristics of play, enjoyment, and disinterestedness that Turner argues properly define leisure, or anergic-ludic pursuits; we also find it is not so easy as it appears to separate the playing of sports from the social obligation to participate, to distinguish the choice of the individual from the push and pull of larger, unarticulated collective aims. This tension between choice and duty is most apparent in the lives of young boys for whom sports participation (at least in many parts of the United States) does not seem to be entirely optional. Minimally it seems that public pressure directs them to prove at the very least their lack of suitability for sports. Noting the confusion generated by “functional ambiguities” in modern life, sport psychologist Arnold Beisser suggests sports serve a function analogous to tribal rites of passage, as “a useful bridge in [the] individual transition from boy to man” (1967: 37). His further observation that “sports have become a transitional institution, neither work nor play, but somewhere in between” (ibid.: 232) is strikingly reminiscent of Turner’s characterization of liminality as a threshold phenomenon that is essentially “betwixt and between.” Yet, if Turner’s inclusion of sport among the liminoid is accurate, then as “successor of the liminal in complex large-scale societies, where individuality and optation . . . have in theory supplanted collective and obligatory ritual performance” (1987: 29), sport ought to reflect the free choice of the individual. Furthermore, as an example of “anergic-ludic” phenomena, it ought to reflect the disinterested lack of utilitarian or ideological purpose properly reflective of the spirit of leisure, as Turner sees it. But as a phenomenon, sport does not live up to the expectations of this analysis. Whether considered within the frames of leisure or professional work life, whether reflecting the perspective of the fan or the performer, sport exemplifies, perhaps more clearly than any other modern performative genre, the sort of dynamic that Turner characterizes by the term “ergic-ludic.” For sports blend work into play and play into work in a manner that renders it difficult to see where the two can be separated. Against these observations we can

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thus see a weakness in the explanatory power of his ergic-ludic/anergic-ludic dichotomy.

RETHINKING SPORT AS RITUAL I have tried to show that, given the profile Turner has relied upon to differentiate liminoid from liminal genres of performance, and given the overall profile of sport as an example of contemporary cultural performance, modern sports more easily align with Turner’s model of “genuinely liminal” performance. Given the wide variation of modern sports, I do not discount the potential for seeing liminoid qualities in specific presentations. A pickup game of basketball, for example, is more genuinely recreational, more akin to what Turner sees as anergic-ludic. I am, however, hesitant to ascribe genuine liminality exclusively to major professional events, such as a Superbowl or other events of similar caliber, because while the complete context may not display the cohesive integration we see in larger events, even on a smaller scale sporting events organize, integrate, obligate, and re-create in ways that serve the eufunctional needs of communities and the transformative needs of individuals. The consequences of my analysis open up two different directions requiring further research and development. On the one hand, modern sport presents a clear case from which to critique Turner’s liminal/liminoid distinction, challenging it as arbitrary and raising questions about its ultimate, analytic value. Turner himself hints at the arbitrariness of the distinction when he remarks that “in fact, all performative genres demand an audience even as they abandon a congregation. Most of them, too, incarnate their plots or scores in the synchronized actions of players. It is only formally that these aesthetic progeny of ritual may be described as individual creations. Even such forms as the novel involve a publishing process and a reading process, both of which have collective and initiatory features” (1985a: 166, emphasis added). This hint that perhaps in some important way the collective force that underpins the grand works of ritual operates in modern liminoid forms of art, entertainment, and self-expression encourages a closer analysis of the substance of Turner’s liminal/liminoid distinction. The second direction is more pertinent to my own concerns regarding the nature of modern sports. If sports do not fit neatly into Turner’s category of the liminoid, whether or not that category holds up under further scrutiny, the question arises: Can modern sports be categorized among modern rituals? While the association of sport and ritual has been casually addressed in popular sports lore as well as by a number of anthropologists,

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sociologists, and sports theorists, a positive answer grounded in a coherent theory of ritual has not yet been fully developed. A full theoretical account of sports as ritual requires a coherent theory of ritual and a comparative analysis of modern sports within the frame of such a theory. While I am critical of his liminal/liminoid distinction, I do believe that Turner’s broader analysis of liminal-ritual, with its rich conceptual apparatus of antistructure, communitas, and liminality, offers solid theoretical ground for not only assessing the relationship between sport and ritual affirmatively, but for seeing the phenomenon of sport as a dynamic, creative, and transformative force in our social life. Such a project would require a closer look at the capacity of modern sports to effect substantive changes that directly impact social and moral order. It is my hypothesis that modern sports can show these characteristics, and it is toward this demonstration that I hope to direct further inquiries.

NOTES 1. This article is reprinted, with updates and revisions, from the Journal of Ritual Studies 12, no. 1, 1998 by permission from the journal’s editors. 2. See “Images of Anti-temporality” (Turner 1985c). Here Turner lists “folk and high cultural theater, musical composition; epic, ballad, and the novel; painting, sculpture, architecture; genres of dance, including ballet and morris-dancing; opera; sports and athletics, stemming from sacred ballgames and funeral games, games of chance devolving from divination; miming, clowning, circus performance in general; tumbling and juggling; postmodern experimental theater, and the various electronic genres, film, television, and rock concerts” (1985c: 237). Later, “Such genres of industrial leisure would include theater, ballet, opera, film, the novel, printed poetry, the art exhibition, classical music, rock music, carnivals, processions, folk drama, major sporting events and dozens more” (ibid.: 243, my emphasis). This same list is repeated in Guttman (1978: 55). See also Turner (1977b: 43). 3. For explicit argument against the proposition that modern sport and athletic events are rituals see Guttman (1978), and Gluckman and Gluckman (1977). 4. Turner does not explicate his theory of liminality in any single work. Rather, he develops it in several books and articles published throughout his career. My interpretation of his view in this paper derives primarily from a study of several of his works, most importantly The Ritual Process (1969), From Ritual to Theater (1982), and the essays contained in the collections On the Edge of the Bush (1985) and The Anthropology of Performance (1987). I have also benefited from other articles by Turner and from the critical commentary of other scholars. 5. I am not, in my own mind, clear on the interplay among liminality, communitas, and antistructure. In From Ritual Turner speaks of communitas as “the other

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major variable of the ‘antistructural’” (1982a: 45). In some places Turner speaks of “anti-structure” as a qualification of liminality and communitas (ibid.: 44). In other places he argues as if antistructure is a condition for the appearance of communitas and liminality. Whatever their specific relationship, the conceptual triad of communitas, liminality, and antistructure seems to refer back and forth to one another, on the one hand, and to a dialectical relationship with social structures and conventionally accepted modes of relation, on the other. Turner does not assert that the genuinely liminal, or the liminal ritual has no place in modern, complex societies. But he limits its presence, saying, “In modern, complex societies both types coexist in a sort of cultural pluralism. But the liminal--found in the activities of churches, sects and movements, in the initiation rites of clubs, fraternities, masonic orders, and other secret societies, etc.-- is no longer world-wide” (1969: 55). Turner admits his work in this area is “exploratory” and states: “I hope to make more precise these crude, almost medieval maps I have been unrolling of the obscure liminal and liminoid regions . . .” (ibid.: 55). Yet his published work leaves his ideas in this area largely as they were first presented. Turner sees “social drama” as a subcategory of Dilthey’s Erlebnisse, understood as unique structures of experience, or in Dilthey’s words, “‘what in the stream of life forms a unity in the present because it has unitary meaning’“ (quoted in 1985b: 214). Further explicating Dilthey’s view he describes “lived experience” as “a many-faceted yet coherent system dependent on the interaction and interpenetration of cognition, affects, and volition. It is made up of not only our observations and reactions, but also the cumulative wisdom . . . of humankind, expressed not only in custom and tradition but also in great works of art” (1987: 84). See Peacock: “Ritual has been called ‘a machine for stopping time,’ because it repeats, monumentalizes, freezes, and, in some sense, counteracts the passing of time as experienced in life histories and social histories” (1985: 81). One cannot help but notice that every sports Hall of Fame is about freezing moments of victory, of agony, of spectacular achievement, of grace and character, and presenting them writ large as emblems of human achievement. See Andrews (1991) and Rinehart (1996). This identity cuts in the other direction as well. As Rinehart points out, the athletes themselves often experience a need to vindicate not just themselves but the “ideology of their country.” See also Houlihan (1994), whose analysis illustrates the role of sport in the process of globalization. He mentions specifically the “liminoid” works of Marx, and “experimental and theoretical science,” and refers to “‘liminoid’ settings,” among which he includes “universities, institutes, colleges, etc.” as places “for freewheeling, experimental cognitive behavior as well as forms of symbolic action” (1982a: 33). Comments such as these make me think that Turner paints with the liminoid brush perhaps too broadly, moving himself in the direction of identifying “liminoid” with any and all creative or playful activity.

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12. I recognize that to establish modern sport as ritual in Turner’s sense of that term, I would want to consider the internal organization of modern sports, their specific symbologies, and transformative capacity. This is a project for another time.

REFERENCES Alexander, Bobby C. 1991. Victor Turner Revisted: Ritual as Social Change. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Andrews, David L. 1991. “Welsh Indigenous! and British Imperial? Welsh Rugby, Culture, and Society 1890–1914.” Journal of Sport History 18, no. 3: 335–349. Balbus, Ike. 1975. “Politics as Sports: The Political Ascendancy of the Sports Metaphor in America.” Monthly Review 26, no. 10: 26–39. Beisser, Arnold. 1967. The Madness in Sports. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Cuyler, P. L. 1979. Sumo: From Rite to Sport. New York: Weatherhill. Ellul, Jacques. 1964. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. Gluckman, Max and Mary Gluckman. 1977. “On Drama, and Games and Athletic Contests.” In Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Meyeroff, eds., Secular Ritual, pp. 227–243. Assen: Van Gorcum. Grimes, Ronald. 1995. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Guttman, Allen. 1978. From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sport. New York: Columbia University Press. Hargreaves, John. 1987. “The Body, Sport and Power Relations.” In J. Horne, D. Jary, and A. Tomlinson. eds., Sport, Leisure and Social Relations, pp. 139–159. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Houlihan, Barrie. 1994. Sports and International Politics. New York: Harvester, Wheatsheaf. Lipsky, Richard. 1981. How We Play the Game: Why Sports Dominate American Life. Boston: Beacon Press. Mullin, Bernard J., Stephen Hardy, and William H. Sutton. 2000. Sports Marketing. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Mumford, Lewis. 1973 [1934]. “Sport and the ‘Bitch-Goddess.’” In John Talamini and Charles Page, eds., Sport and Society: An Anthology, pp. 60–65. Boston: Little, Brown. Peacock, J. 1985. “An Anthropologist Goes to the Olympics.” Social Science Newsletter. 70, no. 2: 77–81. Rinehart, Robert E. 1996. “Fists Flew and Blood Flowed: Symbolic Resistance and International Response in Hungary, Water Polo at Melbourne Olympics 1956.” Journal of Sport History 23, no. 1: 120–137. Riordan, James. 1987. “Soviet Muscular Socialism: A Durkheimian Analysis.” Sociology of Sport Journal, 4: 376–393. Sage, George. H. 1979. “Sport and the Social Sciences.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 445: 1–14.

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Stedman, Graham, Lisa Delpy, and Joe, J. Goldblatt. 2001. The Ultimate Guide to Sports Marketing. New York: McGraw Hill. Strenk, Andrew. 1979. “What Price Victory? The World of International Sport and Politics.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 445: 128–140. Turner, Victor. 1969. Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. ———. 1977a. “Frame, Flow and Reflection: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality.” In Michael Benamou and Charles Caramello, eds., Performance and Postmodern Culture, pp. 33–55. Madison: Coda Press. ———. 1977b. “Variations on a Theme of Liminality.” In Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff, eds., Secular Ritual, pp. 36–52. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. ———. 1982a. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” In V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, pp. 20–60. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1982b. “Social Dramas and Stories About Them.” In V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, pp. 61–88. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1985a. “Process, System, and Symbol: A New Anthropological Synthesis.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 151–173. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985b. “Experience and Performance: Towards a New Processual Anthropology.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 205–226. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985c. “Images of Anti-Temporality: an Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 227–246. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985d. “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” In E. Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 291–301. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In Victor Turner and Edward Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 33–44. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1987. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal. Westerbeek, Hans and Aaron Smith. 2003. Sports Business in the Global Marketplace. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Zeigler, Earle. 1979. History of Physical Education and Sport. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Chapter Seven

Trance Tribes and Dance Vibes: Victor Turner and Electronic Dance Music Culture Graham St John

{ Is there any one of us who has not known this moment when compatible people—friends, congeners—obtain a flash of lucid mutual understanding on the existential level, when they feel that all problems, not just their problems, could be resolved, whether emotional or cognitive, if only the group which is felt (in the first person) as “essentially us” could sustain its intersubjective illumination. (Turner 1982a: 48)

Does anyone who has experienced the benevolent, expectant, and even millenarian “vibe” of a dance party not recognize what Turner meant by this statement?1 Excavating and renovating his ideas, scholars of electronic dance music culture (EDMC)2 have indeed begun looking to Turner for insights. While other youth, music, and alternative cultural phenomena—including Deadheads (Sardiello 1994), New Age Travelers (Hetherington 1998, 2000), the Maleny “Fire Event” (Lewis and Dowsey-Magog 1993), ConFest (St John 1997, 2001a) and Burning Man (Gilmore and Van Proyen 2005; Kozinets 2002)—have received illumination via Turnerian thought, EDMC (especially the genre and culture of “trance”) stands to gain from its heuristic insights. Though EDMCs have received growing attention within contemporary cultural and ethnographic studies—with, for instance, the study of acid house raves (Redhead 1993), international “house” (Rietveld 1998), clubbing (e.g., Jackson 2004; Malbon 1999; Pini 2001; Thornton 1995), and post-rave (see St John 2001b) cultures serving to buttress or introduce varying theoreti149

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cal positions post-CCCS (Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies)—“trance” as a countercultural EDMC has been little understood or studied. Rooted in psychedelic dance parties held on the beaches of Goa, India, in the 1980s and 1990s, trance would develop as an alternative post-rave phenomenon. DJ-led and psychedelically fuelled trance parties became the background for the birth of a new electronic music genre: “Goa trance,” later “psychedelic trance” (“psytrance” or “tribal trance”). By 2005, psytrance would enjoy massive international appeal among a highly mobile and technologically savvy spiritual-counterculture. Though the lifestyle constitutes a significant departure from that of clubbing and raving, since the psytrance evolution is clearly interdependent with these developments—as popular cultural histories convey (Collin 1997; Reynolds 1998)—the following does not neglect these wider developments. The chapter will explore trance formations—especially their “tribal” recreations—according to an understanding that they (and EDM events in general) are significant contexts for the subjunctive, reflexive, and social dimensions of what Victor Turner held to be the limen. I demonstrate how trance culture problematizes analyses of contemporary cultural performance that assume an underlying disparity between “liminal” and “liminoidal” behavior.

SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD RISING: TURNER, PLAY, AND ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC CULTURE As Turner inveighed, the ethnography of those moments beyond, beneath, and between the fixed, the finished, and the predictable lends great insight into culture in its moments of (re)constitution. As a recreational pursuit enabling participants to be “out there,” “loved up,” or “in the zone,” EDMCs are intriguing manifestations of liminality in the present. Ostensibly constituting a voluntary rather than obligatory set of actions and associations typical of cultures with a complex social and economic division of labor, implying a separation of leisure and work accompanying capitalist democracies in particular, and featuring a media apparatus enabled by advanced communications technology, EDMC is a complex cluster of “liminoidal” genres. Significantly, in his later speculative digressions Turner saw that liminoidal (or ritual-like) occasions and sites are characterized by the “negative” and “positive” freedoms to which political philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1958) gave vague attention. That is, emergent performance genres and aesthetic forms, from sports to “the Arts” and festivals, enable both the “freedom from” institutional obligations “prescribed by the basic forms of social, particularly technological and bureaucratic organization,” and from “the

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chronologically regulated rhythms of factory and office”, and the “freedom to” generate “new symbolic worlds,” to transcend social structural limitations, to play with ideas, with fantasies, with words, and with social relationships (Turner 1982a: 36f.). According to Turner, in societies where “leisure” has emerged, this experiential freedom (free play) proliferates. While this is as true of EDMCs as it is of other forms of popular music, the nature of freedom is ambiguous, since, as with sports, games, and other recreations, play can be disciplined, bound by intricate codes of style and genre, increased knowledge of which enables a hardcore sensibility and a concomitant accumulation of “subcultural capital” (Thornton 1995). Such requisite rules of distinction and codes of appropriation are features of “cult fandom” (Hills 2002), and may trigger a passionate (or cultic) commitment to a club night, dance festival, sound system, micro-label, music style, or artist, who may be recognized as authentic, legitimate, and an “authority”. Commitments may also be characterized by sacrificial and pilgrimage behaviors. Devotional behavior within EDMC and other experiential consumption pursuits reveal that leisure genres possess an “ergic” (“of the nature of work,” Turner 1982a: 36), perhaps even dutiful character. But, as exhortations to “work your body” (in “house” music), “go hard or go home” (in clubs), or to “surrender to the Cosmic Spirit” (in trance)—perhaps at disused industrial warehouses, in ex-churches, or in proximity to geometric “shrines” in forests—resound within leisure genres enabling individual choice and experimental freedoms, such work/play guarantees an acceleration of risk taking, innovation, and transformation. Turner recognized that, despite the apparent contraction of institutional religion in the twentieth century, play (in leisure genres) had “become a more serious matter,” inheriting something of “the function of the ritual frame” (1983: 105). Yet while he acknowledged that the way people play in the present is possibly “more profoundly revealing of a culture than how they work, giving access to their heart ‘values’” (ibid.: 104), there is a further, unwritten, though equally significant dimension: the way societies extinguish, diffuse, discipline, or regulate ludic behavior gives us access to a culture’s hegemonic, perhaps head, values. Play is hotly contested in the contemporary since it may be transcendent and valuable to players, albeit potentially dangerous or taboo for nonplayers (and thus categorically ambiguous in Mary Douglas’s formulations [1966]). This speaks to the reversible nature of transgression: what constitutes the sacra for some may be sacrilegious to others. As performance theorist Richard Schechner (1993: 27) reported, play constitutes “a rotten category” in Western history. Schechner’s suggestion that playing is “an activity tainted by unreality, inauthenticity, duplicity, make believe, looseness, fooling around and inconsequentiality” echoes Don Handelman’s

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observation (1990: 70) that, in modernity, “the forces of uncertainty in play” are “domesticated,” dismissed as irrational, mere fantasy and pretence. That “domestication” is here synonymous with regulation or, more generally, governmentality, is perhaps no better evinced than by repressive and disciplinary state responses to the transgressive aesthetics of counterculturalists, such as beats, hippies, anarchists, queers, and other, to use Turner’s (1969: 128) phrase, “edgemen” whose ludic lifestyles, category disruptions, and cultural politics threaten to disrupt the established order. While there is cogency to this reading, it may overlook processes consequential to twentieth century detraditionalizing tendencies, to the expansion of corporate transnationalism, and to the accompanying emergence of restless, fickle, and irresolute identities (Bauman 1996: 32) whose “lifestyle tribalism” is thought to be associated with postmodern consumerism. Market-enabled identity formation (playing as consumer behavior), and the commodification of free play is central to life under capital. If the work of Goulding, Shankar, and Elliott (2002) and other consumer researchers is to be taken seriously, play is a lucrative, or perhaps, ripe category. After all, while Turner had it that liminal (or more specifically “liminoidal”) processes arise “apart from central economic and political processes along the margins, in the interfaces and interstices of central and serving institutions” (1982a: 54), according to John Sherry (2005) a “postmodern liminality” is central to capitalism.3 We thus need to qualify that domestication and control can mean both regulation (the suppressive practices and prohibitional injunctions of ruling authorities—from church to state) and commodification (the expansive and exploitative practices of industry). At one extreme we find exclusion and discipline; at the other, protection and investment. This is perhaps no more evident than in attitudes toward the human body. Illustrative of both state and entrepreneurial power ranging against or recuperating the youth corporeality notably evident in hipness, punk, and other “hard” modes of play, are efforts either to discipline the dirty, abject, or carnival body of the hippie/queer/punk/raver/feral, or to redirect its now measured corporeality into style catalogues and “pleasure prisons” (Reynolds 1998: 242); to arrest and confine the liminoid ( freak) body or to manipulate its excesses and expenditure through loyalty to the brand. Transgression is thus rendered “deviant” or “cool” (see Frank 1997). Accordingly, dance, in its most passionate and unproductive manifestations, constitutes an ecstatic and unruly embodiment that has been the subject of suspicion and panic (prohibition) throughout Western history (see Wagner 1997), and legitimacy (productivity) at the hands of contemporary market forces. Of course, the desire to dance within socially unorthodox and permissive environments has motivated all forms of EDMC (from disco to rave to

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trance and beyond). While Turner only made a brief entry on the carnal liminalities of social dance in industrial social contexts (the Carnavale in Rio, published in one of his best essays: [1983]), he did make important observations about the development of culture’s “subjunctive,” as opposed to “indicative mood,” assisting explanation of the unsanctioned social dance forms emerging throughout Western popular music (especially EDM). As denizens of nightworld, raving neophytes and entranced habitués abscond from the labor market, parents, and the nightly news and enter a world of “wish, desire, possibility or hypothesis,” a mood of “maybe,” “could be” and “as if ” (Turner 1982b: 83, 1992: 149), they are exposed to domains of licensed otherness, festal zones of “free or ludic recombination in any and every possible pattern, however weird” (Turner 1982b: 82). As such, they become temporary “freaks.” While ravers may, like tribal liminars, be adorned with “unprecedented combinations of familiar elements” (e.g., at once space aliens and indigenes, giving simultaneous expression to primitivism and ascensionism, incorporating Disney characters, superheroes, and the Buddha), there is little sense of structural transformation to their freakiness. At these ludic thresholds, where there may be, as Roberto Da Matta (1984: 223) recognized, little preoccupation with “the act of arriving,” the forces of uncertainty in play are valued and consequential. Futhermore, dancers may experience ekstasis, which has been identified by Hemment (1996: 23, drawing on Heidegger) as the condition of “standing out from the surface of life’s contingencies . . . [enabling] a more profound contemplation of being.” As is acknowledged in the recent film documentary Dances of Ecstasy (Mahrer and Ma 2004), ekstasis or ecstasy approximates a sacred work, an experience Turner (after Csikszentmihalyi 1975) would have deemed “flow,” whereby the rules of engagement to life are dissolved to the point where the ego may give way to a “non-reflective awareness autonomous in its ‘freedom’ from ideology, language and culture” (Landau 2004: 113). In such moments, “freaks” may more approximate the experience of being other than performing otherness. Here, the ludic reversal or reconfiguration of structure and language common to festival and carnival performance is replaced with the dissolution of language and meaning, with a raw experience of self-dissolution or “surrender,” a process most consciously orchestrated within trance parties. Emically recognized as “going hard,” “losing it,” or being “out there,” and often involving the use of chemical alterants such as “Ecstasy” (MDMA)4 and “acid” (LSD), the condition may potentiate something of a “limit experience,” which, as Anthony D’Andrea (2004: 246) notes, can be sublime and traumatic: “Pleasure, pain, catharsis, awareness, despair, and happiness underlie such accounts of non-ordinary sensations and states. Telepathy, mystical visions, paranoia, ego dissolution, excruciating

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pleasures, deep insight, serenity, and cosmic love are not uncommon. . . . As an exercise of intensity and impossibility, these transpersonal practices engender experiences of personal derailment—deterritorializing asignification— sacred madness with rewards and dangers” (ibid.: 249). Since journeying beyond the bounds of the ego and predictability, and embodied submission to the rhythm and experimentation with alternative subjectivities, became integral to popular global dance cultures, interdependent efforts to eliminate the threat of EDMC,5 or to exploit its fiscal promise (superclubs like Liverpool’s Cream), can at least be partially understood. Furthermore, the “inconsequential” (and gendered—i.e., feminine) character of dance has tended to warrant its dismissal within studies of youth subcultural language and practice around which the field of cultural studies originated (at the CCCS). Ignoring what could not conform to cultural Marxist models of resistance (e.g., Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 1979), and uninterested in nonverbal or nonvisual (i.e., kinaesthetic) actions (see Desmond 1997: 30), CCCS scholars neglected much youth cultural practice— including, as McRobbie (1993: 419) observed, that practice “where girls were always found in subcultures,” and later “a motivating force for an entire subculture”—dance. Yet a growing literature, including studies of “playful vitality” (Malbon 1999), an alternative “habitus” (Jackson 2004) and a “freak ethnoscape” (D’Andrea 2004), attest to the possibilities of the subjunctive mood rising in the present.

COMMUNITAS AND THE COUNTERCULTURAL “VIBE” OF TRANCE [Ravers] experience deep feelings of unlimited compassion and love for everyone around them . . . For a few hours they are able to leave behind a world full of contradiction, conflict and confusion, and enter a universal realm where everyone is truly equal, a place where peace, love, unity and respect are the laws of the land. (Fritz 1999: 43, 172)

The social interstices of EDMCs (re)produce a sense of immediacy, safety, and belonging, outside and in between the routine habitus, conventional gender roles, or the crushing ennui of workaday lives. In her ethnography of young female clubbers, Maria Pini (1997: 121) found that the “sense of connectedness between mind, body and spirit, between individual and crowd, is a theme of a wider ‘synchronicity’ of individual components within what comes to look increasingly like a complex, mechanic network.” In his ethnography of clubbing, Jackson (2004: 19) comments that on a crowded dance floor, “you sense the sheer closeness of the bodies next to you and the sen-

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sation of moving en masse. Your kinaesthetic sense is externalised by being transferred from your own body into the body of the crowd. . . . The room ceases to be occupied by strangers, instead it is filled with party folk all satisfying their need to be. The heat can be overwhelming as the energy level rises with each tune the DJ drops. The sweat, which pours from your skin, cleanses you, draining out the toxic residue of frustrated plans, niggling worries, stupid arguments and petty insecurities. Nothing matters, but the beat, the crowd, the dance. Glorious.” While Pini and Jackson take no recourse to Turner to elucidate this glorious intercorporeality, as the dance floor is thought to contextualize an abandonment of the sociocultural roles and status expectations by which individuals are routinely divided, Turner’s “spontaneous communitas” has proven particularly appealing to dance scholars and ethnographers (see Bardella 2002; Gerard 2004; McAteer 2002; Olaveson 2004; Sommer 2001– 02; St John 2004a: 29ff.; Sylvan 2002; Takahashi and Olaveson 2003: 81; Tramacchi 2000), some of whom perceive how Turner’s (1974: 169) understanding of a “direct, immediate and total confrontation of human identities which tends to make those experiencing it think of mankind as a homogeneous, unstructured and free community” facilitates comprehension of “the vibe.” According to Sally Sommer (2001–02: 73), the “vibe” is “an active communal force, a feeling, a rhythm that is created by the mix of dancers, the balance of loud music, the effects of darkness and light, the energy. Everything interlocks to produce a powerful sense of liberation. The vibe is an active, exhilarating feeling of ‘now-ness’ that everything is coming together— that a good party is in the making. The vibe is constructive; it is a distinctive rhythm, the groove that carries the party psychically and physically.” The “vibe” is an experience pervasive to dance cultures, where habitués “rid themselves of the clichés associated with status incumbency and role-playing and enter into vital relations with other[s]” (Turner 1969: 128, in Sommer 2001–02: 72). According to Donald Weber (1995: 528), “the heady promise of social critique and social regeneration” inscribed in the countercultural carnivalesque of the 1960s in the US provided the principal stimulus for the “apocalyptic agency” of Turner’s ritual liminality (communitas). As was revealed in The Ritual Process (1969) and Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors (1974), communitas is a theme at least partially shaped by the countercultural and utopian undercurrents of 1960s California. In his own “long conversation” with Edith Turner, Matthew Engelke (2004: 30) points out that in Palo Alto (where Turner was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences from 1961 to 1962) the Turners encountered beatniks, “fellow admirers of Rimbaud and detractors from ‘the establishment’. These new

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friends had them read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and the poetry of Alan Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ithaca was also a fertile intellectual ground. It was full of budding hippies and the site for Edie of her first ‘love-in’ on the Arts and Sciences Quadrangle at Cornell.” This subversive and defiant atmosphere transpiring within the “social drama” of a modern nation state (and indeed in the global context of an escalating “cold war”), had some conceptual impact on liminality. Turner recognized that “happenings” (extended psychedelic rock music gatherings, “freak” playgrounds, locales of “good vibes” sometimes known as “raves”; see Rietveld 1993: 41), and the hippie quest for “existence” paralleled the experience of traditional ritual liminars. While nowhere clearly stated by Turner, the effect of psychedelics on a generation of young Westerners in the 1960s—a dismemberment of psychic and social structures—may well have nourished the concept of “antistructure.” It is not unreasonable to suggest that hallucinogenic highs correspond with the “floating worlds” that preoccupied Turner (1969: vii). Unlike the antistructure of tribal ritual, though, the counterculture harbored a millenarian, perhaps even apocalyptic, disposition to embrace the psychedelic “happening” as “the end of human endeavour” (ibid.: 139).6 Taking a “heroic dose” of communitas, it was a conscious effort to escape the dialectic, enter more permanent autonomous zones, to stay afloat forever. The decade constituted a historically “liminal” juncture where, for instance, “the ‘rock’ communitas” (as reported in such significant scene publications as HaightAshbury’s The Oracle) would be extolled by scenesters as a principal site of what Turner related as the construction of “new definitions and models for behaviour” (Turner 1974: 261ff.), indeed, the formation of a new America. EDMC would be heir to this transformational sensibility. As early as proto-disco (for a discussion of David Mancuso’s Soho “Loft” see Lawrence 2003: 9f.), electronic dance music would be a conduit for experimentation, transgression, and liberation, with rave becoming a manifestation of countercultural continuity in the 1990s. While disco was domesticated in commodified communitas, and the E-fueled “second summer of love” (in London in 1988) hardly replicated the “politics of ecstasy” advocated by Timothy Leary (nor developed as a context for New Left insurgence), acid house rave and its offshoots did carry forward the “anti-disciplinary” politics of the 1960s (Stephens 1998). Early ravers may have been “Disneyland hippies” stridently simulating the images of that decade (Rietveld 1993: 43, 55), but their “amoralism” would nevertheless demonstrate continuity with earlier efforts to disappear from, rather than openly oppose, the disciplinary gaze of the state and the recuperating powers of the market. A “fructile chaos” in the present, inheriting a “freedom to” construct what is akin to Hetherington’s (1997) “alternative orderings,” trance culture would become most rem-

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iniscent of the sociality informing the Turners. Fulfilling advanced needs for self-realization and a highly developed reflexive apparatus, trance (and psytrance) enthusiasts would be most expressively continuous with earlier countercultural generations.7 That those exotic sites of hippie experimentation, Goa and Ibiza, have played significant roles in the techno-counterculture (D’Andrea 2004; Davis 2004) demonstrates this, as does the fact that electronic trance dance parties are continuous with UK free rock-folk and New Age Traveller festivals (Partridge 2006). Furthermore, Eastern (especially Hindu) and pagan religiosity8—integral to the earlier counterculture—remain formative, and a “techno-millenarian” sensibility has evolved (see St John 2004b). Since the formative 1980s “full moon parties” in Goa, travel—often to international festivals such as, for instance, Portugal’s biennial Boom festival9—has become integral to the psytrance experience (though club events such as Earthdance or the UK’s Synergy Project are common too). Events become akin to pilgrimage destinations, a circumstance adding weight to the applicability of communitas to trance events, as it is in the study of pilgrimage to sacred centers (specifically Catholic centers: Turner and Turner 1978) that communitas has received its most effusive application (and where its unqualified application came into question). A trance party’s physical and cultural remoteness (its otherness) from “civilization” enhances its potential as a sacred context for extraordinary experience. And as D’Andrea comments, the “horizontal displacements” constituted by travel (trips) to remote physical locations are often accompanied by “vertical displacements” of self and identity (2004: 249)—“tripping” experiences that, with the assistance of DJs like sadhu Goa Gil, enable the “surrender to the vibe” (McAteer 2002: 29). That the “vital relations” constituting a “good vibe” are, for many, chemically assisted, seems incontestable. While clubs such as those documented by Jackson (2004) are sites whose “hyper-sociality” is enhanced by the “chemical intimacy” of Ecstasy, a different order of sociality, indeed, a “psychedelic communitas” (Tramacchi 2000),10 is generated on and around the dance floor at psytrance events where use of psychedelics (e.g., LSD and other “entheogens”)11 is common. As parties in exotic (peripheral) locations gain reputations as significant centers for reproducing “the vibe,” they attract travelers who undergo periodic (seasonal) journeys, often involving trials, ordeals, and “limit experiences,” and who hold expectations of the special vibe to which they gravitate and “surrender”. But the idea of the dance communitas is not without its problems. Adopting communitas to unpack the techniques and practices of “connectedness” within EDMC, and evaluating its possible contiguity with new religious movements, Tim Olaveson (2004: 93) observes raves as contexts for the dissolution

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of differences based on class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age—thereby reproducing the ideology of inclusivity that enjoys a lasting legacy in EDMC and provides motivation for “raving” evangelists (see Fritz 1999). Yet, while a social leveling thesis is maintained as an emic ideology manifested, for instance, in such conceits as PLUR (the oft-repeated rave mantra of Peace Love Unity and Respect), or even in the “vibe” itself, studies indicate that not only is the techno-communitas jeopardized by a pharmacological dystopia (Reynolds 1997b; 1998), a sexual division of labor (Bradby 1993; McRobbie 1994: 170), elitism, exclusivity, and coolness (Thornton 1995), and the reproduction of “striated” relations such as those that Saldanha (2002, 2004) observes in contemporary Goa, it is compromised by vigilant authorities seeking to covertly monitor its production and curtail its reproduction. Thus, in negotiation with authorities to conform to zoning restrictions and health and safety guidelines, organizers and promoters sometimes make compromises in their struggle to reproduce an unadulterated, utopic experience. The result is varied. While little research is available to buttress discussion of the results of such compromises in trance culture exclusively, for EDMC generally the “vibe” may become: encoded, its liquid architecture solidified, its immediacy and unpredictability enshrined in routinized and normative (i.e., legal) party structures (such as that described by Gerard 2004: 173f.); decoded, subject to surveillance, its temporal and spatial practice heavily regulated and criminalized (see Gibson and Pagan); or recoded, its transgressions redirected and rerouted within authorized leisure corporations (clubs) occupying the liminal zones of the postindustrial city (Hobbs et al. 2000) or exotic locations like Ibiza or Koh Phangan that cater to rave (trance) tourism (see D’Andrea 2004; Westerhausen 2002). With simultaneous standardization, criminalization, and institutionalization triggering outbreaks of ferality, inciting nascent “freakness” (D’Andrea 2006), spurring renegade sound systems to secede from the parent culture (see St John 2005), or engendering “hardcore” commitments pushing below the radar of the major media and the legislature,12 we come close to the “instituant” religion identified by French anthropologist Roger Bastide (1975, see Gauthier 2004) whose “savage” religiosity is to the “instituted” as Turner’s “anti-structure” is to “structure.”

DANCE, RITUAL, AND NEOTRIBALISM Just as EDMCs are popular carriers of liminality flourishing among Western youth, might not dance cultures exemplify what Turner considered to be the “cultural debris of some forgotten liminal ritual” (1982a: 55) surfacing in

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(post)modernity? Despite the apparent diminishing power of ritual (ostensibly passing like Tolkien’s Elves from the “Grey Havens” into the West), “there are signs today,” Turner thought, “that the amputated specialized genres are seeking to rejoin and to recover something of the numinosity lost in their sparagmos, in their dismemberment” (1986: 42). Would trance contextualize such a recovery? While the notion that ritual has diminished from the disenchanted nineteenth and twentieth centuries onward may be a specious intellectual position (see Bell 1997: 254), there seems little doubt that trance party promoters and cultural habitués, like their countercultural forebears, have generally embraced such an argument. Whatever the case, the in-between, liminal, or passage-like character of dance cultures has received increased scholarly attention (e.g., Goulding, Shankar, and Elliott 2002: 268f.; Sommer 2001–02). Though insiders and academics have repeatedly referenced the “ritual” of clubs and raves,13 as Gerard points out, the structures and experience of such “ritual-ness” are most often subjected to neither empirical, nor critical, investigation. In this way, a sense of ill-defined “ritual-ness” inherited from Birmingham’s CCCS is thought to pose an obstacle to understanding the ritualized social interaction at dance events (Gerard 2004: 169; see also St John 2006).14 But the proposition that EDMC is liminal ritual, possessing the processual structure of a rite de passage (van Gennep 1960), remains problematic since the experience may better approximate the transitional world of the festival, the return to which is sought over and over by participants repeatedly deferring “agrégation.” If such constitutes a threshold, it is indeterminate and without telos. If it is liminal, then it possesses an accelerated, iterative, and hyperliminal character—perhaps similar to the ephemeral “hyper-communities” referred to by Kozinets (2002)15—comprehension of which may assist explanation of postmodern ritual. Attempting to sustain the vibration through a vast network that D’Andrea calls a “freak ethnoscape,” as participants in a “civilizational diaspora,” trance travelers pursue a kind of transnational “vibe.” Escaping commercial exploitation, they seek refuge and sustenance in parallel worlds of their own making. But while they may be exiles occupying a place that is “no-place,” squatters on utopian thresholds, they are less passengers than habitués— “nomads” who “do not move” (D’Andrea 2004: 241). Connoting separation, a breaking away from the parent culture, and thus an implicit cultural politics, the “Exodus” Cyber-Tribal Festival held in Northeast NSW, Australia, evinces a desire to be separate together, collectively elsewhere. It is this subterranean sociality, this sense of being together in exile, of being “alone together” (Moore 1995), of being colleagues in transition, that may approximate the specific meaning of being en-tranced within milieus from proto-disco through to psytrance.

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Since liminality is thought to be “the central aesthetic feature of underground dance music,” indeed “encoded in every mix between records” (Gerard 2004: 174, 177), such practice also evokes Turner’s speculated “retribalization” (and resacralization) of the contemporary. If we listen to dancers who valorize and adopt the raiments of tribalism, borrowing symbols and motifs of indigenous cultures, referring to “the vibe” as “tribal,”16 consuming hallucinogenic or entheogenic substances whose use is known or purported to have originated with certain indigenous peoples,17 and even regarding their dance and party organizations as “tribes” (e.g., Spiral Tribe, Moontribe, Shrumtribe, Moksha Tribe), then we can hardly avoid speculation about the valency of such a claim. Associated with contemporary romanticist desires to reconnect with origins and regain a lost authenticity, to “Return to the Source” (a UK trance club and label; see St John 2004c: 26ff.), such claims are redolent within the trance community. As François Gauthier (2005: 25) asserts, the “myth” that rave enables a “re-connection with more tribal, primitive, simpler, fuller, truer, more powerful and ‘more real’ times and experiences more or less explicitly sets raves in opposition to a decayed, empty, superficial and meaningless world.” And the imagined return to “more real” and perhaps “more human” or other times is often facilitated by the reclamation of other places, such as industrial wastelands, abandoned warehouses, church basements, and bridge lees. The transforming of such spaces into sites of sacred sociality evinces a desire for more compassionate, authentic, and enchanted communities. Commentators have grown excited about an apparent “electronic retribalization of society” whereby electronic musics (and other advanced technologies) are implicated in the achievement of a desired “reconnection with the primitive in us all” (Amoeba 1994: 1; Fatone 2004: 204). Though a host of cultural traditions—including Indigenous (Australian Aboriginal, American Indian, Mayan) and Oriental (e.g., Buddhist and Hindu)—are borrowed from and remixed by new generations of consumers with advanced “compositional sensibilities” (Bennett 1999: 610), the presence, for example, of a Balinese gamelan orchestra in San Francisco Bay Area techno parties (Fatone 2004: 206), the sexualized exoticizing of Hinduism at the 1999 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Sleaze Ball (Velayutham and Wise 2001), or the use of Australian Aboriginal instruments and iconography, demonstrates that such desires surface in the romanticizing of ethnic Others whose symbols may be appropriated (borrowed, disembodied, homogenized, and dehistoricized) for the purpose of authenticating Western selves. Of course, it is not the music alone that contextualizes the embrace of primitivity, or the embodiment of the East. Dance—collective “trance” under perhaps the “shamanic” guidance of DJs conducting an all night dance “ritual” (perhaps in the vein

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of sadhu Goa Gil)—is often articulated to exemplify a generalized return to tribalness, which may be conceptualized as a stripping down (a lowering) of social status and pretense, or an “opting out” or withdrawal (a marginalizing) from the center, both of which, as Turner noted, enable the approximation of the social liminality of communitas for countercultures, cults, gangs, and other modern agents of antistructure (see Turner 1969: 112f., 1974: 244). While the abandonment to an experience approximating trance (and thus tribalness in the popular discourse of participants) may reflect the “continuing rhetorical association” amongst dominant Western populations of “bodily expressivity” with “other” (gender, class, but specifically ethnic) groups (Desmond 1997: 30), many aver that the “tribal gathering” constitutes a return to an experience common to all humanity. Roy Rappaport’s (1999) philosophy of ritual, and the role of dance within it, assists understanding of the undifferentiated and timeless sociality commonly felt to be relived or revived at trance parties.18 A prolonged dance experience appears to orchestrate a shift in temporal awareness from what Rappaport calls “social time” (mundane social interactions) to a synchronization of “organic” (physiological) temporalities facilitated in particular by percussive rhythm (electronic beat-driven dancing can occur over several days at trance festivals). The experience of “organic time,” argues Rappaport, enables entry into “eternity”—or a “time of out of time”: “the sheer successionless duration of the absolute changelessness of what recurs, the successionless duration of what is neither preceded nor succeeded, which is ‘neither coming nor passing away,’ but always was and always will be” (1999: 231). Others have noted that what Rappaport calls a “successionless duration” where “one returns ever again to what never changes” (ibid.), is particular to festal realms, the “eternal presence” of which contrasts with the teleology or function that ritual is often thought to harbor. As Gauthier (2004: 69) suggests, it is the festival that “implicitly seeks forgetfulness, selflessness and oblivion. What this implies is that the prompted effervescence is sought after for itself and in itself. In other words, it is its own purpose and reason. By opening up to creativity, by staging an otherly, unlicensed temporary world, the festive need only contain itself. Disengaging from temporality, the festive bursts into an ‘eternal’—or, to be more precise, ‘indefinite’—present.”19 But while “eternal presence” may imply a “forgetting” of the present, a disappearance, at the same time it implies remembering, a simultaneous “anamnesis,” and thus a return to familiarity.20 Thus the effervescent moment of “intersubjective illumination,” to return to Turner’s discourse on communitas, may involve not only those who are “essentially us,” and those who are corporeally present, but those “others” who are perceived to have ‘come before us’, and perhaps even those who are yet to come. As McAteer

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(2002: 33) points out, for trance enthusiasts this memory “extends back as far as archaeological knowledge will permit since members of this culture typically identify with all civilizations, especially tribal ones.” As he further relates: “Not only do the beats stay constant throughout the party, giving rise to a sense of changelessness, but the event is marked by a feeling that similar activities revolving around similar beats have been going on since time immemorial” (ibid.: 33f.).21 The experience of “one-ness with oneself, with the congregation, or with the cosmos” (Rappaport 1999: 220) appears to trigger the kind of reflexive imagination apparent in the following San Francisco raver’s comment: “You don’t have to watch many National Geographics to see the obvious similarities between parties such as these and the religious ceremonies of more ‘primitive’ cultures. Ritualistic raving will remain viable because it appeals to the sense of spirit in us that has been viable since the dawn of human consciousness. . . . On Sunday we were a tribe of the Universe, of the basic essence of life and energy, body and mind (reproduced in Sylvan 2002: 147). That Western youth populations are not entrained to enter and interpret entranced states of consciousness within received tribal frameworks— such as Condomble Orisha possession ceremonies among the Mae Zelinha of Pelo Ife Axa, Brazil (in Dances of Ecstasy)—is recognized by scholars of contemporary dance (see Takahashi 2004). But this does not prevent people from attempting to make sense of their experience, often via highly personalized, complex, and fluid frameworks of meaning. In a culture dominated by “monophasic consciousness” (Laughlin, McManus, and D’Aquili 1992), the desire for altered states of consciousness tends to result in a proliferation of interpretative schemes. Turner indicated that the inhabitant of “a place that is no place and a time that is no time” (1983: 103) will seek out frameworks to make sense of, recount, and eventually replicate the experience. “He,” says Turner, will “ransack the inherited cultural past for models or for cultural elements drawn from the debris of past models from which he can construct a new model which will, however falteringly, replicate in words his concrete experience of spontaneous communitas” (1982a: 48). Via an articulation of a generalized “tribe of the Universe” to more specific appropriations, trance culture demonstrates how this is achieved. Events like Moontribe Full Moon Gatherings, Tribeadelic, and Psycorroboree are determined efforts by promoters and organizers to recreate “eternity”, to revive a “time out of time” (and thus liminal ritual). Thus the objective of Goa Gil, who has studied and experienced various traditional initiation rites, has been to “redefine ancient tribal ritual for the 21st century” (McAteer 2002). Furthermore, the intention to replicate the altered experience of the tribal initiate, cult member, pagan rite, ancestral pilgrimage, or epic quest is apparent in the strategies of

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party organizations such as Return to the Source, Exodus, or the US Pacific Northwest’s Oracle Gatherings, in event décor (totems and do-it-yourself shrines) and fliers, in the imagery projected by VJs and in DJ monikers, in the titles of releases and the samples used on them. While we can hardly call a party “vibe” an “imposition of liturgical sequences upon duration” (Rappaport 1999: 234), the commentary of a great many participants—and see, for example, Fritz (1999), ENRG (2001), Davis (2004) or the work of Apollo (2001)—suggests not that events are merely, if at all, primitivist reenactments or simulations of eternity, but that they facilitate the transportation of participants into a realm of experience constituting “an extraordinary union of the quick and the changeless” (Rappaport 1999: 225).

LIMINOID TRIBES? While produced by a conscious effort at ritualization or an intention to resacralize, the trance party’s liminal status seems always tempered by its independent, do-it-yourself, and subversive character. In liminoidal fashion, the party strives for its autonomy, its freedom outside the law, and beyond the gaze of the “authorities.” But since participants are exposed to and express “truths” relating to how the world “ought to be,” there appears to be no clear progression from liminal to liminoid in its emergence. Participants may regard performers (such as the revered Goa Gil and other DJs like Ray Castle) as “authorities” in their own right. And it is also common, as illustrated by Australian trance festivals (see St John 2001b and forthcoming), that Indigenous traditional owners of event sites are respected as authorities, deference to whom is observed through various gestures such as permission ceremonies. At Exodus, for instance, Bunjalung Nation dancers perform Opening and Closing Ceremonies, assisting, one could argue, the transition to “cosmic time.” Redolent truths, or sacra (Turner 1967: 102), such as reconciliation and ecological sustainability, may not possess “common intellectual and emotional meaning for all the members of the widest effective community” (Turner 1977: 45), but the wide circulation of their symbols indicates a reasonable approximation. The dilemmas inherent to observing ritual in the contemporary via a liminal/liminoid, sacred/secular division are thus apparent in the study of trance culture. As these frameworks constitute leisure experiences within the context of postwar consumer capitalism, where involvement is voluntary, often short-lived, and subject to changes in fashion, style, and the development of communication technologies, it appears to be a lifestyle (liminoid) tribalism to which we are witness. Yet that the process has greater complex-

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ity seems confirmed by the heuristics of poststructuralist sociologist Michel Maffesoli (1996). As Maffesolians aver, what has come to be accepted as “neotribalism”—the elective, temporary, empathetic, and networked sociality developing post-WWII—has found its most apposite manifestation in raving, or techno-tribalism (Bennett 1999; Gaillot 1999; Gore 1997: 55f; Luckman 2003: 324; Malbon 1998, 1999; St John 2003, forthcoming). According to the theory, the contemporary “tribus” converge in optional “orgiastic” associations from theater restaurants to football matches to rock concerts and raves.22 But the Maffesolian perspective also identifies a “return to local ethics,” reclamatory practices illustrating a “persistent and imperious need to be en-reliance” (Maffesoli 1997: 32), an “empathetic,” “de-individualized,” and re-enchanted sociality—replicating Turner’s own speculations about re-liminalization. For Turner, echoing Durkheim, while a qualitative de-liminalization appeared to characterize modernity, holding a trace of “the original,” many performance genres involve collective commitment, moral duty, the display of sacred symbols, and the engagement in sacred work. “Re-liminalization,” or “neoliminality,” has been noted to be pervasive within contemporary cultural performances, from sporting events—notably the Olympic Games (McAloon 1984) and the “carnival liminality” of football (Hognestad 2003)—to alternative music and lifestyle festivals (see Hetherington 2000; Kozinets 2002; Lewis and Dowsey-Magog 1993; Newton 1988; St John 2001a). Yet, the curious feature of many of these “neotribal” associations, which they hold in common with psytrance events, is that they are orchestrated to accommodate or revive a consciously “tribal” sociality. According to a Turnerian framework, these neotribal tribes would appear to be liminoidal liminalities, a complicated circumstance that appears to further confound the distinction.

CONCLUSION “Raves are good because they don’t happen all the time.” Reproduced by Scott Hutson (2000: 43), this raver’s comment—which could have been “raves are good because they are temporary departures from time”—is close to a popular, emic, definition of the dialectical logic of the limen: a necessarily impermanent yet perennial, fleeting yet eternal, condition. With the limen offering insights on electronic dance music cultures (and psytrance in particular), Turnerian ritual theory assists efforts to elucidate youth cultural practices and contemporary society more widely. EDMCs constitute efforts by contemporary habitués to “make now last longer,” to push eternity’s envelope. Such is attempted through increasing the frequency of party attendance, by accelerating the “vibe,” by defying (re)incorporation and desacralization.

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A convergence of counter- and electronic dance music cultures, psytrance demonstrates a unique manifestation of this. Trance constitutes a persistent effort to escape the dialectic in more permanent states of impermanence through the adoption of transitional “tribal” identities. This chapter has also explored how tribal trance demonstrates inconsistencies in Turner’s speculative liminal/liminoid, ritual/leisure formulation. It is particularly apparent that, while illustrative of hypersubjunctive contexts for the expression of freedom and autonomy, such cultures are characterized by dutiful commitment and respect for authority, inconsistencies I explore in current investigations of global psytrance culture.

NOTES 1. My observations of trance culture in Australia are drawn from both a growing literature on the subject, and ongoing ethnographic research (including Victoria’s Rainbow Serpent Festival and Exodus Cyber-Tribal Festival in New South Wales), the more complete results of which I hope to convey in future publications. I thank Sarah Nicholson for reading and commenting on an earlier draft. 2. EDMC includes a vast range of genres and associated subcultures, from protodisco through house to rave and post-rave developments—from jungle to trance, from clubs to free parties. See St John (2006) for an introduction to EDMC by way of an overview of scholarly approaches to its religio-spirituality. 3. Sharon Rowe (this volume) argues that sport’s characterization as liminoidal (marginal, fragmentary) is belied by its central and ubiquitous role in contemporary society (especially capitalism), where it can serve to reinforce traditional social and cultural values. 4. In 2003, official, though likely conservative, statistics estimated that 500,000 to two million Ecstasy tablets were being consumed each week in Britain (by 2.2 percent of the British population aged 16 to 59—730,000 people) and reported that eight million people were consuming Ecstasy (an increase of 70 percent over five years) globally (Thompson and Doward 2003). 5. In the form of the UK’s Criminal Justice Act (1994) or America’s so called “RAVE Act” (2003). The CJA gave police extraordinary powers to thwart unlicensed rave parties, especially those in rural areas, and criminalize promoters and participants. Legislated as the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, the “RAVE (or Reducing America’s Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act” would involve repressive penalties for promoters and club owners. 6. This sentiment is found in the hippies’ etymologically homologous relationship between “existence” and “ecstasy,” where “to exist is to ‘stand outside’—i.e., to stand outside the totality of structural positions one normally occupies in a social system. To exist is to be in ecstasy” (Turner 1969: 138).

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7. Like ambient house, psytrance would be influenced by the pastoralism, pantheism, and nostalgia of psychedelic rock (see Reynolds 1997a), and the desire for an experience approximating “panenhenism” (or “all-in-one-ism”), which may itself engender “psychedelic mysticism” whereby participants may experience a profound sense of interdependence with the cosmos (see Partridge 2003). 8. As is perhaps most evident in the work of Terence McKenna, who held that trance parties (and hallucinogenic substances—particularly psilocybin) would be a chief means of bootstrapping the “archaic revival”—a near-future reconciliation with the “planetary other” (1991: chap. 15). 9. Featuring a “Liminal Village,” which in 2004, included a conferencing and workshop area with presentations on ayahuasca and a range of workshops including yoga, meditation, “crystal technology,” astrology, alchemy, ecological awareness, and “ritual structures,” and a “Dreamspell School”—all of which evince post-1960s spiritual pathways attending to the interconnectedness of self healing and ecological harmony (see http://www.boomfestival.org). The village name reveals how trance culture has been exposed to and influenced by Turnerian theory. See Lee Gilmore (this volume) for discussion of the adoption of ritual theory at Burning Man. 10. Researching the significance of psychoactives in actualizing the “subjective continuity” of “doofs” in north eastern New South Wales and southern Queensland, Australia, Des Tramacchi suggests that doofs “open a juncture where individuals are able to share in a kind of agape or collective ecstasy that mitigates against the sense of ennui and isolation so often associated with modernity” (2001: 184). Joshua Schmidt (2005) uses the phrase “hallucinatory communitas” to describe a similar experience in Israeli psy-trance culture. 11. “Entheogenic” is a nonpejorative and non-ethnocentric term recommended by Jonathon Ott (1993) meaning that which “engenders god within.” Other than LSD, the “endogenous psychedelic” (Strassman 2001) DMT has also grown in popularity at trance events. 12. As Gauthier (2004: 79) points out, such “hardcore” developments involve “decomposition, destructuring, the essence and aim of a counterculture that, paradoxically, desires not—a priori—to be instituted in a new definable, and therefore possibly recuperated and commodified, culture.” 13. This is evident in a range of approaches, from early dance culture research (Redhead 1993; particularly Melechi 1993; and Reitveld 1993) attending to the apparent “rituals of disappearance” of acid house via a Baudrillardian lens, to Takahashi and Olaveson’s (2003; see also Olaveson 2004) serious approach to the ritual, or more to the point, to the “syncretic ritualizing” of raves; to Sylvan’s (2002: 136ff.) discussion of the temporal and spatial ordering forming the ritual dimension of the typical rave. 14. Detailing the DJ-dancer interaction, Gerard’s (2004) approach is of particular note since it enhances understanding of the ritual process of the EDM experience. As stages in the transition between records (tracks) in a DJ’s “set” are thought to correspond to van Gennep’s tripartite rites of passage model, and dancing

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15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

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participants acquire a “ritual knowledge” of the dance/music experience that is contingent upon the DJ’s manipulation of the “liminal techniques” of filtering, looping, EQing and mixing, each successful record (or track) mix may, Gerard argues, enable belonging in a dance floor community. In another approach, Tramacchi draws parallels between “psychedelic dance rituals” (Australian outdoor dance events or “doofs”) and several non-Western community-oriented entheogenic rituals (Tramacchi 2004: 125; see also Tramacchi 2001: 179ff.). Sustaining “the vibe” by accelerating the frequency of party-going is a process thought to render the experience ever more fleeting, unobtainable, and dystopic. For instance, Simon Reynolds (1997b) argues that increasingly risky pharmacological dosages and combinations possess dystopian consequences for partygoers. For instance, Saunders (1996:35) favorably compares raves with “tribal rituals or religious ceremonies,” and Sylvan (2002: 147) reports raves celebrating “ageless tribal rituals.” For example, psilocybin and Salvia divinorum with the Mazatec of Mexico, and ayahuasca amongst the inhabitants of the Western Amazon. A theme also explored by Michael McAteer (2002). An adequate consideration of the roots of trance festivals would recognize that, in European history, this “eternal presence” has been periodically reestablished in agricultural festivals and seasonal celebrations (experienced throughout premodern history into the present) and through carnivals (since at least the Roman Saturnalia and Lupercalia)—events that are realms of “turbulence, free improvisation, carefree gaiety [and] . . . uncontrolled fantasy,” and that give permission to what Roger Caillois named paidia (from Greek meaning “child”) (Turner 1983: 106). As Iyer (1978) relates, “anamnesis” means “soul memory.” The popularity of the film Dances of Ecstasy, which documents similarities between trance experiences within traditional and nontraditional cultures, and which has been screened at trance festivals worldwide, may be indicative of a longing for familiarity and duration among the habitués of such events. And techno-tribes, like EDMCs, utilize available technologies—especially the Internet (websites, list-serves, blogs, p2p networks)—to build and maintain an identity and to promote events (the “tribal” raison d’etre).

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Partridge, C. 2003. “Sacred Chemicals? Psychedelic Drugs and Mystical Experience.” In C. Partridge and T. Gabriel, eds., Mysticisms East and West: Studies in Mystical Experience, pp. 98–131. Carlisle: Paternoster. ———. 2006. “The Spiritual and the Revolutionary: Alternative Spirituality, British Free Festivals, and the Emergence of Rave Culture.” Culture and Religion 7, no. 1: 41–60. Pini, M. 1997. “Cyborgs, Nomads and the Raving Feminine.” In H. Thomas, ed., Dance in the City, pp. 111–129. London: Macmillan. ———. 2001. Club Cultures and Female Subjectivity: The Move From home to House. Hampshire: Palgrave. Rappaport, R. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Redhead, S. 1993. Rave off: Politics and Deviance in Contemporary Youth Culture. Aldershot: Avebury. Reynolds, S. 1997a. “Back to Eden: Innocence, Indolence and Pastoralism in Psychedelic Music, 1966–1996.” In A. Melechi, ed., Psychedelia Britannica: Hallucinogenic Drugs in Britain, pp. 143–165. London: Turnaround. ———. 1997b. “Rave Culture: Living Dream or Living Death?.” In S. Redhead, ed., The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies, pp. 102–111. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ———. 1998. Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture. London: Picador. Rietveld, H. 1993. “Living the Dream.” In S. Redhead, ed., Rave Off: Politics and Deviance in Contemporary Youth Culture. Aldershot: Avebury. ———. 1998. This is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Saldanha, A. 2002. “Music Tourism and Factions of Bodies in Goa.” Tourist Studies 2, no. 1: 43–62. ———. 2004. “Goa Trance and Trance in Goa: Smooth Striations.” In G. St John, ed., Rave Culture and Religion, pp. 273–86. London: Routledge. Sardiello, R. 1994. “Secular Rituals in Popular Culture: A Case for Grateful Dead Concerts and Dead Head Identity.” In J. S. Epstein, ed., Adolescents and Their Music: If It’s Too Loud, You’re Too Old, pp. 115–38. New York: Garland. Saunders, N. 1995. http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion= ShowFulltext&ProduktNr=224233&Ausgabe=228337&ArtikelNr=59385 Ecstasy and the Dance Culture. London: Neal’s Yard Studio. Schechner, R. 1993. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London: Routledge. Schmidt, J. 2005. “Hallucinatory Communitas: Wordless Discourse Among New Edge Psy-Trance Neo-Tribes.” Paper delivered at the 13th Biennial International Association for Study of Popular Music Conference, in Rome, 25–30 July. Sherry, John F., Jr. 2005. “We Might Never Be Post-Sacred: A Tribute to Russell Belk on the Occasion of His Acceptance of the Converse Award.” In A. Griffin and

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C. Otnes, eds., 16th Paul D. Converse Symposium, pp. 67–77. Chicago: American Marketing Association. Sommer, S. 2001–02. “C’mon to My House: Underground-House Dancing.” Dance Research Journal 33, no. 2: 72–86. Stephens, J. 1998. Anti-Disciplinary Protest: Sixties Radicalism and Postmodernism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. St John, G. 1997. “Going Feral: Authentica on the Edge of Australian Culture.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8, no. 2: 167–189. ———. 2001a. “Alternative Cultural Heterotopia and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at ConFest.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 12, no. 1: 47–66. ———. 2001b. “Doof! Australian Post Rave Culture.” In G. St John, ed., FreeNRG: Notes From the Edge of the Dance Floor, pp. 9–36. Altona: Common Ground. ———. 2003. “Post-Rave Technotribalism and the Carnival of Protest.” In D. Muggleton, and R. Weinzierl, eds., The Post-Subcultures Reader, pp. 65–82. London: Berg. ———. 2004a. “The Difference Engine: Liberation and the Rave Imaginary.” In G. St John, ed., Rave Culture and Religion, pp. 19–45. London: Routledge. ———. 2004b. “Techno Millennium: Dance, Ecology and Future Primitives.” In G. St John, ed., Rave Culture and Religion, pp. 213–35. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. “Off Road Show: Techno, Protest and Feral Theatre.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19, no. 1: 7–22. ———. 2006. “Electronic Dance Music Culture and Religion: An Overview.” Culture and Religion 7, no. 1: 1–26. ———. (forthcoming). Technomad: Global Post-Rave Countercultures. New York: Berghahn Books. Strassman, R. 2001. DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. Sylvan, R. 2002. Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music. New York: New York University Press. Takahashi, M. 2004. “The ‘Natural High’: Altered States, Flashbacks and Neural Tuning at Raves.” In G. St John, ed., Rave Culture and Religion, pp. 145–164. London: Routledge. Takahashi, M., and T. Olaveson. 2003. “Music, Dance and Raving Bodies: Raving as Spirituality in the Central Canadian Rave Scene.” Journal of Ritual Studies 17, no. 2: 72–96. Thompson, T., and J. Doward. 2003. “Ecstasy Use Doubles in Five Years.” The Observer 28 September. Available at: http://mdma.net/club-drugs/uk.html. Thornton, S. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity. Tramacchi, D. 2000. “Field Tripping: Psychedelic Communitas and Ritual in the Australian Bush,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 15: 201–213. ———. 2001. “Chaos Engines: Doofs, Psychedelics, and Religious Experience.” In G. St John, ed., FreeNRG: Notes From The Edge of The Dance Floor, pp. 171–188. Altona: Common Ground. ———. 2004. “Entheogenic Dance Ecstasis: Cross-cultural Contexts.” In G. St John, ed., Rave Culture and Religion, pp. 125–144. London: Routledge.

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Turner, V. 1967. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, pp. 93–111. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1977. “Variations on a Theme of Liminality.” In S. Moore and B. Myerhoff, eds., Secular Ritual, pp. 36–52. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. ———. 1982a. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” In V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, pp. 20–60. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1982b. “Social Dramas and Stories About Them.” In V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, pp. 61–88. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1983. “Carnival in Rio: Dionysian Drama in an Industrialising Society.” In F. Manning, ed., The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary Cultural Performance, pp. 103–24. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press. ———. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In V. Turner, and E. Bruner. eds., The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 33–44. Champaigne: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1992. “Morality and Liminality.” In E. Turner, ed., Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols, pp. 132–62. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Turner, V., and E. Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. van Gennep, A. 1960 [1909]. The Rites of Passage. Transl. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul. Velayutham, S., and A. Wise. 2001. “Dancing with Ga(y)nesh: Rethinking Cultural Appropriation in Multicultural Australia.” Postcolonial Studies 4, no. 2: 143–160. Wagner, A. 1997. Adversaries of Dance: From Puritans to the Present. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Weber, D. 1995. “From Limen to Border: a Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner for American Cultural Studies.” American Quarterly 47, no. 3: 525–536. Westerhausen, K. 2002. Beyond the Beach: An Ethnography of Modern Travellers in Asia. Bangkok: White Lotus.

Chapter Eight

Backpacking as a Contemporary Rite of Passage: Victor Turner and Youth Travel Practices Amie Matthews

{ After spending twenty-four hours on a flight from Sydney to London, in November 2001 I touched down in England.1 I was twenty and it was my first real flight, my first overseas experience, and my first time traveling alone. It was 5:30 AM when I arrived at Heathrow, and yet despite the cold, despite the jet lag, all that I was aware of as I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders was a pervading sense of freedom, of liberation, of a “world-is-youroyster” kind of optimism. As I traipsed my way around the United Kingdom and continental Europe, I was struck by the uncanny resemblance between my own travel experiences and the tales told by other backpackers I met along the way. Many were, like me, taking a break from study or work. Alternatively, some were using their time overseas to complete internships and to bolster their resumes, a few were using their working holiday visas in an attempt to save a deposit for a house in their home countries, and others were simply after some kind of seachange. Despite the variations in rationale, what seemed to permeate many of these young people’s motivations for travel was the yearning for experiential learning: the desire to experience as much as possible of the world (albeit often in a relatively short time) and to learn as much as possible about the world, and about themselves, before settling into a life of responsibility. This observation amplified an already present interest in youth cultures, prompting me to ponder the mechanisms and discourses by which young people 174

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were constructing their identity in an increasingly globalized and secular world, as well as causing me to question, more specifically, the ways in which the life goals of young adults had seemingly changed over time. In an attempt to answer such questions this chapter argues that extended overseas travel, as a perceived source of freedom and authentic experience, operates as a secular rite of passage that assists in the development of reflexive and potentially cosmopolitan youth identities. That is, as young travelers engage with the interplay between self and other, and between localism and globalism in their search for meaning, I propose many take on a sense of reflexivity that involves a feeling of being at home in or “opening up to” the world (Werbner 1999: 18). In addition, I argue that Victor Turner’s (1969; 1982) seminal works on ritual and rites of passage, and to a lesser extent more recent approaches to understanding alternative socio-spatial orderings (such as those offered by Hetherington 1997; Shields 1991; and St John 2001), are integral to fully appreciating the role that international travel, or more specifically backpacking, plays in the lives of Western youth. While a number of significant studies have emerged in recent decades linking tourism with pilgrimage, extraordinary experience, and ritual (see, for example, Cohen 1979, 1992; Graburn 1983, 1989), and arguing that travel is an identity forming experience, significant moment or transitional period in the life trajectories of individuals (Desforges 1998, 2000; Elsrud 2001), few have explicitly recognized the contribution that Turner’s (1969, 1982, 1986a, 1986b) studies of liminality can offer this field. As such, the bulk of this chapter will be dedicated to analyzing empirical data with reference to the rite of passage model, in an attempt not only to gain a greater appreciation of the increasingly common social phenomenon of international travel among young people, but also to assert and extend the relevance of Turnerian analysis to sociocultural life in the twentyfirst century.

WHY BACKPACKING? It is well documented that overseas travel requires substantial time and money. It is, therefore, an activity usually consistent with privilege, which often operates as a form of cultural capital within Western societies (see, for example, Graburn 1983). With this in mind, the findings of this chapter relate to a very specific socio-cultural group and are not necessarily easily generalized. Arguably, however, young people’s expectations and attitudes are, by and large, changing. Although many of these changes began some time ago, it would seem that they are intensifying as contemporary youth juggle the

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demands and contradictions presented by life in a rapidly changing, global environment (see, for example, White 1999). Indeed, as the sociocultural traditions that previously dictated individual roles, responsibilities, and social mores wane, there occurs an increase in both the capacity for choice or decision making in everyday life and, paradoxically, recognized feelings of risk, uncertainty, and ambivalence (see, for example Bauman 1995, 2001; Giddens 1994; Lash 1994). This has significant implications for identification practices in the current era. As Manuel Castells (1996: 3) observes: “[I]dentity is becoming the main, and sometimes the only, source of meaning in a historical period characterized by widespread destructuring of organizations, delegitimation of institutions, fading away of major social movements, and ephemeral cultural expressions. People increasingly organize their meaning not around what they do but on the basis of what they are, or believe they are.” As identity becomes ever more contingent, it is not surprising then that a significant number of young people are turning to ‘alternative’ social practices, such as backpacking, in an attempt to actively construct and at the same time legitimize their position in the social world. In recent decades, as travel has become an increasingly accessible and hence common form of leisure within Western society, the connections between tourism and the uncertainties, contingencies, and ambivalence of modernity, have been expounded by a number of sociologists (MacCannell 1989; Wang 2000). Most significantly, it has been argued that through tourism individuals are able to escape from the disillusionment, tediousness, or uncertainty of life in contemporary society (if only for a short time) and seek what is apparently missing from their everyday interactions (see, for example, Cohen 1973, 1979; MacCannell 1989; Wang 2000). In light of the above, I argue that there is a link between the ambivalence, uncertainty, and sense of loss felt under modernity, the need to reflexively assess and assert identity, and the almost compulsive search for new and seemingly varied experiences in Western societies. As Roger Abrahams (1986: 46) maintains, experience (both as a concept and as lived reality) has become “the new holy word” in contemporary social life, a term that is connected with newness, salvation, and evolutionary renewal. Hence, the fact that rites of passage are marked by extraordinary periods of experience means that for many, especially in an increasingly secular society, they are perceived as significant sources of knowledge. In his discussion of rites of passage, Turner (1969, 1982, 1986b) argues that by crossing a threshold or limen into an unstructured and indeterminate social space that is free from the constraints of normative behavior, individuals may enter a safe and socially licensed space for play. Further,

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these transitional periods encourage a sense of creativity and malleability, a sense of possibility, which upon an individual’s reincorporation or return to the everyday may invoke a heightened reflexivity and, therefore, a more informed or authenticated sense of self. The reason, then, that backpacking acts as a fluid, emancipated place, time, and/or space wherein young people can play with notions of self and other, and that travel operates for many as a rite of passage, is that it is, by its very nature, liminoid. According to Turner (1982), whereas liminal rites of passage are prescribed and entered into as a matter of tradition, liminoid rituals, common to “societies of greater scale and complexity” (Turner and Turner 1978: 231), tend to be entered into freely. Although it seems that there is a growing moral imperative and normative component to youth travel, as a chosen leisure pursuit informed by individualism, backpacking remains undoubtedly liminoid. Significantly, Turner (1982: 42–43) seems to suggest in his later works that liminoid rites of passage, as matters of “optation” rather than “obligation,” wield greater potential for social change due to their comparatively unrestricted nature. This observation is crucial to my argument that international travel may result in the development of potentially cosmopolitan identities in a number of young backpackers. Vital to the productive or regenerative component of liminoid or liminal phenomena is Turner’s understanding of the dialectic between structure and “communitas.” According to the Turners (Turner and Turner 1978: 13), where pre- and postliminal states are times of ordinary and closed social structure, the ambiguity and uncertainty of liminality generates among individuals a sense of open communitas or “commonness of feeling,” which assists in the deconstruction of social hierarchies. As an extremely powerful expression of union or social solidarity and an experience of deep affinity and egalitarianism, communitas undermines or challenges normative social structures and culturally constructed modes of differentiation, allowing individuals to move beyond the confines of status and socially prescribed roles (Turner 1969, 1982). To this end, Turner writes (1969: 128): “Communitas breaks in through the interstices of structure, in liminality; at the edges of structure, in marginality . . . It is almost everywhere held to be sacred or ‘holy,’ possibly because it transgresses or dissolves the norms that govern structured and institutionalized relationships and is accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency.” It is this potency, this sense of “evolutionary potential” (Turner 1969: 128), that is the temporal strength of communitas. But while communitas gives rise to a sense of possibility, the ambiguity, creativity, and inherent spontaneity of this moment of intense unification cannot be maintained

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forever. Neither communitas nor structure can exist indefinitely; they are interdependent and relative categories (Turner 1969, 1982). It seems the movement between communitas and structure is analogous to the movement between extraordinary and ordinary, and between alternative and mainstream forms of social life: the more insignificant states depend upon their extreme counterparts for a sense of defining normality, and each of the more extreme states depends upon those more insignificant to imbue a sense of sacredness. This dialogue between ordinary and extraordinary states is recognizable in Rob Shields’s (1991) discussion of the carnivalesque elements of seaside resorts. In his study of the socio-cultural meanings ascribed to place and space, Shields suggests that Brighton (in the United Kingdom) existed (and still exists) as a space and place on both the geographic and social periphery: a liminal realm guided by the principles of pleasure, which provided a sense of release from the structure and organization of mundane life. Temporarily located within a permissive atmosphere and embroiled in a spectacular sense of revelry and engagement with the exotic or grotesque body, he argues that visitors to Brighton were united, at least momentarily, by shared experience. Significantly, the communitas Shields identifies is not in any sense homogenous, but rather a culmination of diverse and contradictory elements, a fusion of heterogeneous entities. Such heterogeneity within a liminoid community is emphasized by Graham St John (2001) in his analysis of the alternative lifestyle festival ConFest. In providing a contemporary context for the revision of Turner’s work on liminality and pilgrimage, St John demonstrates that increasingly complicated social environments, such as those encountered at ConFest, require the development of a heuristic model that allows for greater heterogeneity and corporeality. Having engaged with existing debates surrounding Turner’s utopian tendencies and “implicitly consensual” limen (2001: 47), St John advocates the need to acknowledge the potential for contestation (as well as consensus) and bodily interaction and connection (as well as sacred communion) within pilgrimage sites and plural communities. To this end St John, drawing on Hetherington (1997), employs the term “alternative cultural heterotopia” to describe the alternative heterogeneous space that emerges during the carnivalesque operations of ConFest. St John (2001: 51) defines these alternative cultural heterotopias as liminal realms that enable the “(re)creation of alternative identities” and that encourage, following Hetherington, “alternative orderings.” While I agree that heterotopia is a useful model for understanding alternative social orderings, given that it is not imagined as a transformative space but rather as a “not quite space” of “transition” (Hetherington 1997:

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ix), it is ultimately not as useful as Turner’s model of passage in analyzing the narratives of personal growth and change encountered in this research. Additionally, although I concur with St John’s argument that it is necessary to move beyond schematic and unqualified applications of Turnerian theory that deny the complex reality of contemporary social life, I remain undecided as to the debates regarding Turner’s utopian and/or functionalist tendencies (for an overview of these see St John 2001). Certainly, a number of the empirical examples Turner employed to explicate liminality and communitas emphasized consensus and homogeneity over conflict and diversity. However, Turner was also at pains to note in later works (if only fleetingly) that temporary unification or a deepening of the social bonds between individuals does not equate to a loss of individuality or “distinctiveness” (1982: 45). I am inclined to argue that this, along with references to a “relatively undifferentiated” (Turner 1969: 96, emphasis mine) social space, and the acknowledgement that structural roles and responsibilities remain present in the consciousness of those individuals engaged in communitas (Turner, 1982: 47), temper the notion of an all-encompassing homogeneous unification. To my mind, the latter observation from Turner suggests that the stripping of social roles and structures under the spell of spontaneous communitas does not necessitate the actual “forgetting” of these social norms, in which case individuality would be annihilated. Rather, communitas seems more akin to an unconscious “choosing to forget” or a “putting to one side” of these norms (if only momentarily) and a striving toward equality in the pursuit of a common goal or synchronized experience. Further, Turner himself was acutely aware that the communitas model was incomplete, recognizing that: “the modality of human interrelatedness which is communitas can ‘play’ across structural systems in a way too difficult for us at present to predict its motions” (1982: 45). I suggest that such acknowledgements pave the way for the development of a more complex conceptualization of the dialectic between structure and antistructure, and I would speculate that just as there may well be “different kinds and depths of flow” (Turner 1982: 59), there may also be different kinds and depths of communitas. Maybe what we are (or should be) talking about, in the study of diverse contemporary communities, is not so much a pure, ethereal, or allencompassing unification, but rather a relative unification or bonding: if you like, a continuum of communitas states that involve moments of both bodily and cognitive connection; a heterogeneous communitas, or a fluid movement between moments of consensus and contestation within the liminoid space. Without further ethnographic research, however, it is not within the scope of this chapter to address such possibilities in any finite manner. Rather, I

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would simply argue that a reconciliation between St John’s (2001) model of alternative cultural heterotopia, Shields’s (1991) understandings of the marginal, and Turner’s (1969, 1982, 1986a, 1986b) work on liminality, is beneficial to understanding the way in which backpacking operates simultaneously as a secular rite of passage, source of freedom, and meaningful experience for many young people within contemporary society. Given that backpacking involves the traversing of an increasingly postmodern world where multiple identities, corporealities, roles, and responsibilities must be negotiated to produce holistic understandings of pluralistic individuals and communities, reconciliation of these theoretical frameworks and the tentative concept of heterogeneous communitas assists in explaining the predisposition among backpackers toward cosmopolitanism. In an attempt to better understand these issues and the ways in which they played out in the everyday experiences of young people, I conducted semistructured, in-depth interviews with seven Australian backpackers who had recently returned from a period of extended overseas travel. The main priority in the research was that participants’ voices be heard and that the “particularity of experience” (Fiske 1994: 189), as it was articulated by respondents, be fully appreciated. As such, the remainder of this chapter will focus on the travel narratives of these backpackers and examine how a Turnerian analysis facilitates understanding of discourses of freedom and authenticity as they emerge in contemporary youth travel pursuits.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD: DESTINATION FREEDOM It is the promise of freedom, at once alluring and terrifying, sometimes surreal or ephemeral, and yet at times intoxicatingly tangible, that unites many young travelers in their search for meaning. Certainly it was a prominent concern for the backpackers involved in my research. Interviewees talked of the need to escape the known in order to get a better appreciation of self, also noting the desire to escape from commitments, responsibilities, and social expectations. Embracing the flexibility of the backpacking lifestyle, they espoused notions of individualism, opportunism, and independence and relished “living in the moment.” The prominence of these concerns among young travelers is seemingly encouraged by a wide array of travel literature and advertisements communicating the joys of the open road, the trials and tribulations of “living large” in the world, and the need for individuals to break away from their mundane lives and make the most of their youth. Freedom, as embodied by the backpacker’s desire for escape, search for novel and unique experiences, and signs of difference, is articulated with reference to

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notions of authenticity in the construction of reflexive and potentially cosmopolitan identities. More specifically, discourses of freedom and authenticity coalesce within the liminoid space of travel, and the carnivalesque and spontaneous elements inherent to the flexibility of the backpacker lifestyle give rise to a sense of play. Subsequently, both self and interpersonal relationships are experienced as increasingly fluid and transient. This mutability is recognizable in the following quote from Erin (aged 22), which also conveys quite clearly the strength of the “travel as escape” discourse among young backpackers: I think young people see traveling as a way to break out of the mold they’ve been so used to for years and years. To get away from parents and family and try something new. I think young people like to think outside the square and put themselves out of their comfort zone just to see what they can and can’t do.

In talking of “breaking out,” of “getting away,” and of purposefully challenging herself to “think outside the square,” Erin seems to be conceptualizing travel as a means by which individuals are able to move beyond or transgress the status quo. Belinda (aged 23) also spoke of wanting a “change of scenery” and her desire to see “something else,” something other, stating: “I thought my horizons were ridiculously narrow and I wanted to broaden them!” Similarly, Lisa (aged 28) raised the idea of being able to perform a number of roles or identities while overseas and of accessing a more authentic or truer sense of self whilst traveling: When I went away I went with the notion that I could play with who I was and be whoever I wanted to be—step outside my square, if you like. There was also a sense that it was all “make believe” and not my “real” career so I was able to do all sorts of jobs. . . It was easier just to be me from the heart because no one had any expectations of me.

These extracts clearly draw on discourses of escape, otherness, newness, liberation, and experiential knowledge, but crucially, in talking of “getting away,” “broadening horizons,” and “breaking out,” participants can also be understood as engaging (albeit unknowingly) in a language of breach, rupture, or departure, a language that in the voice of Victor Turner (1969) could be seen as characteristic of one who has chosen to cross the “threshold” into new and unknown territory. This novel situation allows, on the one hand, the freedom to enact a variety of roles or parts, heightened reflexivity, and the anonymity of strangerhood—of being distanced from ‘home’ and adopting as tourist or traveler the marginal position of “other”—and at the same time the opportunity to join a transient community or culture that crosses

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the usual time-space boundaries and, in so doing, is perceived as enabling access to more real or authentic levels of experience, self-understanding, and connection. Further, this new territory, as a liminoid space, is often marked by frivolity, extreme sociability, and at the same time a heightened sense of risk or uncertainty. Indeed, many of the research participants cited changing social norms and a breakdown in either self or socioculturally imposed limitations as a reason for changes in behavior while traveling, and acknowledged that travel granted the (perceived) freedom to take chances or risks that one would probably avoid when at home. For instance, Erin states: “While you’re essentially the same person underneath and I don’t think my morals or standards changed, my behavior [while I was traveling] was much more on the risky side and I had a more carefree attitude.” A pragmatic or calculative approach to risk was voiced by interviewees, a number of whom made a connection between such perceived risks and the authenticity of their endeavors. For instance, Scott (aged 22) relayed travel stories about staying with strangers while overseas and of participating in an official form of hitchhiking in Germany (where an organization links travelers with drivers). Such activities could be considered risky, and yet for him they contributed to a greater sense of personal achievement and meaningful interaction: [I]f you do a tour it’s less like independent traveling . . . y’know. . . . You’re doing and seeing the same things that everyone has seen before you, and that was one of the reasons I got so much out of staying with . . . [locals I had met on my travels] and stuff, because it was stuff that was different, like . . . it was my trip and it wasn’t someone else’s trip.

As a liminoidal event, travel provides the freedom to make the most of one’s opportunities and to take chances or risks that would be abstained from at home. Subsequently, as risk appears to pay dividends in terms of the intensity or strength of an experience, it appears likely that in backpacking, young people are free to behave authentically. Thus, backpacking allows these young people to engage in what I term, somewhat paradoxically, authentic freedom. The authenticity experienced by young backpackers is not, however, necessarily objective or open to any kind of external measurement or scrutiny. Indeed, the backpackers involved in the research indicated their awareness of the uncanny juxtaposition between touristic or kitsch events and sites, and their desire to see or experience something more in their travels. This problematizing of authenticity corresponds with Ning Wang’s (2000) observation that in late modernity it is not just an objective or even socially

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constructed form of authenticity that is significant in tourism, but rather it is the subjective meanings individuals make of their experience of sites and attractions and the role that such experience plays in self-making that is important. Certainly, the theoretical concept of “existential authenticity” (Wang 2000: 56) seems to be the lived reality for many of the young backpackers involved in this research. For instance, although a time limit was imposed on their travels, each interviewee emphasized flexibility and spoke of constant efforts to balance preparation and planning, or “routine,” against the ethos of improvisation and the “realness” of being able to act on a whim. Thus, even when taking a tour, or traveling with an itinerary or a deadline, the very existence of available or imagined freedom was exploited and celebrated. As such, while David (aged 22) and Natalie (aged 23) acknowledged that they were traveling on a tight itinerary, at no time did they speak of their travels as a routine or constrained affair. For them, the authenticity of their freedom lay in being able to fulfill personal desires and embrace hedonistic frivolity and enjoyment: [W]e had to be doing things every day, and we wanted to be doing things every day because otherwise we wouldn’t have seen all the stuff we wanted to see. Like we didn’t actually have any relaxation days where we did nothing at all. (David) [W]hen you’re in Australia you’re obviously working, busy doing day-to-day life things . . . whereas when you’re overseas you really do have a lot of spare time, [and] that’s what you’re there to do; to see different, to do different things and to do things that you enjoy. (Natalie)

The issues of free time and that of authentic freedom are thus configured contextually. At home, impinged upon by work and everyday activities, leisure becomes a planned and itemized luxury. When traveling, free time is pushed to its furthest limits, filled with experiences that are different, enjoyable, fun, and extraordinary. Nevertheless, far from being infinite, this freedom or free time is structured or constrained by a concern with authenticity and often jeopardized by a deep-seated sense of urgency. For example Kate (aged 27) suggests that as a contemporary rite of passage it is almost imperative that during one’s travels life be lived to the fullest and time stretched to its utmost: [W]hen you’re out and about you kind of have to continually, I don’t know, move on and progress. That’s why you’re there [overseas], so you’ve got more pressure to . . . make the most of it. It’s a time factor thing. “Time’s running out. I’ve got to do everything possible!”

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Certainly the construction of travel as a privilege undoubtedly acts to reinforce the notion of making the most of one’s time while overseas and the need for individuals to embrace freedom authentically. However, this opportunistic attitude does not appear to be restricted to travel alone; rather, it seems to infiltrate interviewees’ life plans at every level: I think today’s generation wants a lot more out of life and they think it’s all attainable. I’ve been taught that I can have whatever I want if I put my mind to it. I think it’s important to remember, though, that often we can’t have it all so it’s important to make smart decisions so you can make the most out of the time you have. (Erin) One of the things that really influences me is a fear of settling down and waking up years later, not having done the things that I want to do. Travel sort of prevents me from falling into this “trap.” And it amuses me that I can be so aware of it, I mean when I’m traveling it’s still always there. (Scott)

This pressure to try to achieve “it all” and make the most of one’s time is by no means a theme restricted to backpackers. Rather, it is a reflection of broader social trends whereby increased instability, uncertainty, and risk, as well as greater decision-making opportunities, individualism, and apparent freedom give rise to increased reflexivity and the emergence of fluid and transient identity forms. Such factors inevitably have an impact on interpersonal relationships, wherein, in contemporary society, there appears to be an inherent ambivalence between individualism and the desire for connection (for further discussion, see Bauman 2003). Such ambivalence appears to be amplified in the liminoid realm of travel, a space that is already defined by the complex interplay between the somewhat contradictory discourses of authenticity and freedom.

LOVE AND LUST ON THE BACKPACKER TRAIL: THE FREEDOM OF LIMINOID RELATIONSHIPS The internal conflict, as experienced by backpackers, between individualization and community was particularly evident in this research, with at least two interviewees having sacrificed a relationship for overseas travel. Kate left her boyfriend because she could not postpone traveling any longer; Erin, on the other hand, went overseas planning to return home to her fiancé but experienced a “change of heart” while away: “I had a fiancé before I left and didn’t have one when I returned home. All my decision though. I think traveling widened my views of the world and made me realize that I was too young to commit myself to any one person.” Such sacrifice is consis-

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tent with the ideals of individualism, opportunism, and escapism and is further evidence of the trend among young people to exchange traditional roles and responsibilities for new or alternative experiences. Certainly, the idea of the single traveler is a dominant theme among backpacker narratives, with many travelers expressing a desire to embrace the freedom of “singledom” during this period of liminoid ambiguity. This desire is no doubt reinforced through travel media and is encouraged by the sexually permissive attitude that is perceived as an inherent part of the backpacker culture. For example, when asked whether he felt his behavior had changed overseas Scott referred to the contextuality of social norms, stating that: [T]he way people relate [to one another] in their own country and in their own community is very sort of defined . . . there are barriers that people have up. . . . And when you’re, y’know, sitting down having dinner with someone at a hostel in Prague and then [you] go . . . to the common room to have some beers with some people who you don’t know at all from a bar of soap, but you have this open conversation and y’know . . . it’s almost like that for some reason it’s okay to . . . have sex with someone who you’ve only just met . . . when you’re traveling, but at any other time it’s not . . . somehow . . . there are different social rules when you travel, like in a backpacking thing. And it’s not the same for everyone. . . . But, I think people are more open to a lot of things. . . [when they’re traveling].

There seems to be a socioculturally constructed expectation that the freedom inherent to backpacking will carry across to opportunistic sexual behavior and interpersonal relationships. It is almost as though one’s travel experiences are not truly authentic, and therefore not truly meaningful, unless they involve a full inversion of the norms and roles that operate within everyday life. While this situation is most obvious in so far as sex and sexuality is concerned, it is also significant to travelers with regard to the forging of platonic relationships, many of which are constructed as more spontaneous and perhaps “deeper” than those developed over much longer periods of time and under more normal circumstances. The fact that people are more “open” when they are traveling is undoubtedly a result of the liminoid space in which they are interacting. This temporal, social, and bodily juncture allows people to engage in a manner that would perhaps be deemed inappropriate in another setting. Given that many of the relationships that develop between backpackers emerge in response to the deconstruction of everyday social barriers and norms within the liminoid space of travel, these connections can be considered equivalent to Turner’s communitas (1969, 1982, 1986a). That is, in the liminoid space of travel, commonality of feeling, shared experiences, and the inversion of social norms and behaviors, as well as a sense of temporal

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and spatial unfamiliarity, may result in the development of a sense of solidarity and community among a diverse group of individuals. Taking this idea one step further, I view this solidarity as being mediated or structured with reference to authenticity, particularly as it demands relationships that are, albeit transient, genuine, earnest, and influential. And it is here that we come to the center of the dialectic between authenticity and freedom, or in Turner’s (1969) words, between structure and antistructure. For whereas, on the one hand, interviewees displayed a desire for a “free life”—unstable and uncertain—they also maintained connections with their “home” life, which represented stability, minimal risk, and greater levels of monotony. The former, whilst in a sense “addictive,” cannot be sustained eternally, but is required so that individuals can avoid stagnating in the latter. Hence, the connections forged between individuals who are traveling are conceived as more intense and somehow more meaningful than some of those developed at home over longer periods of time, even though often they may not last beyond the confines of the liminoid space. What is significant here, though, is not the durability of these friendships (or, if you like, the permanence of communitas), but their prominence in travel narratives upon reincorporation into a postliminoid space. The fact that these connections, no matter how fleeting, are characterized as significant means that for many travelers, they will have real repercussions in the everyday, home world.

COMING HOME The international travel space is an incredibly diverse realm that involves the constant fusion of local and global cultures. Such heterogeneity undoubtedly makes an impact upon the subjective experience of travel and the types of narrative that are constructed around these experiences upon reincorporation into home life. In an attempt to gain greater insight into the way the travel experience is constructed by young people and the role it plays in the reflexive assessment of self, in this chapter I applied a thematic analysis to the travel tales of several young Australian backpackers. Significantly, for the backpackers involved in this research, travel marks, or is at least conceptualized as marking, a monumental moment or transitional process that involves both feelings of freedom and a concern with authenticity. As such, I have proposed that, as a perceived source of personal and social liberation and as a purveyor of “realness,” extended overseas travel operates for many young people in contemporary society as a secular rite of passage, and that the travel space, as a local-global composite, operates much like Turner’s limen. Additionally, I have argued that the desire for

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escape into what is perceived as a liberating, highly social, and adventurous international lifestyle, is interlinked with the apparent cosmopolitan or humanist need among many young people to equip themselves with knowledge—not just about self, but about the world; knowledge of their country, of different people, cultures, and ways of life, knowledge that ultimately affects the way in which the young travelers perceive themselves, those around them, and their position in the social world. Hence, I have argued in this chapter that the rapid acquisition of experiential knowledge, when paired with the intensity of liminoid relationships, may result in the development of a heterogeneous communitas. In turn, following Turner’s contention that liminoid space and communitas offer moments of pure potentiality and creativity, I have suggested that the experience of communitas is most strongly felt not in the liminoid space, but upon return to the everyday, where it may result in the development of a more worldly or cosmopolitan sense of self. In summary, it would seem that by escaping (or at least postponing) the social expectations and routines of everyday life, and by embracing the authentic freedom of the liminoid travel space, the backpackers involved in this research found themselves in a position to see more, do more, experience more, and ultimately fulfill their desires to be more.

NOTE 1. I thank Deborah Stevenson (School of Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney) for her ongoing assistance and support, and Tamara Young and Graham St John for suggested revisions to this chapter. I also thank the backpackers involved in this project, without whom my research would not have been possible.

REFERENCES Abrahams, R. D. 1986. “Ordinary and Extraordinary Experience.” In V. Turner, and E. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Bauman, Z. 1995. “Searching for a Centre that Holds.” In M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson, eds., Global Modernities. London: Sage. ———. 2001. The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2003. Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge: Polity Press. Castells, M. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwells. Cohen, E. 1973. “Nomads from Affluence: Notes on the Phenomenon of DrifterTourism.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 14: 89–103.

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———. 1979. “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences.” Sociology 13: 179–201. ———. 1992. “Pilgrimage Centers: Concentric and Excentric.” Annals Of Tourism Research 19: 33–50. Desforges, L. 1998. “Checking out the Planet: Global Representations/Local Identities and Youth Travel.” In T. Skelton, and G. Valentine, eds., Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Culture. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2000. “Traveling The World: Identity and Travel Biography.” Annals of Tourism Research 27: 926–945. Elsrud, T. 2001. “Risk Creation in Traveling: Backpacker Adventure Narration.” Annals Of Tourism Research 28: 597–617. Fiske, J. 1994. “Audiencing: Cultural Practice and Cultural Studies.” On N. K Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, eds., Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, London and New Delhi: Sage. Giddens, A. 1994. “Living in a Post-Traditional Society.” In U. Beck, A. Giddens, and S. Lash, eds., Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press. Graburn, N. H. H. 1983. “The Anthropology of Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 10: 9–33. ———. 1989. “Tourism: The Sacred Journey.” In V. L. Smith, ed., Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism. Philadelphia: University Of Pennsylvania Press. Hetherington, K. 1997. The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering. London & New York: Routledge. Lash, S. 1994. “Reflexivity and its Doubles: Structure, Aesthetics, Community.” In U. Beck, A. Giddens, and S. Lash, eds., Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press. MacCannell, D. 1989. The Tourist: a New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken Books. St John, G. 2001. “Alternative Cultural Heterotopia and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at ConFest.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 12: 47–66. Shields, R. 1991. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London and New York: Routledge. Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1986a. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1986b. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: an Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In V. Turner, and E. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Turner, V., and E. Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. Wang, N. 2000. Tourism and Modernity: A Sociological Analysis. Oxford: Pergamon.

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Werbner, P. 1999. “Global Pathways: Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds.” Social Anthropology 7: 17–35. White, R. 1999. “Introduction.” In R. White, ed., Australian Youth Subcultures: On the Margins and in the Mainstream. Tasmania: Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies.

Chapter Nine

Walking to Hill End with Victor Turner: A Theater-Making Immersion Event Gerard Boland

{ It begins in November, three months prior to their commencement of study in Bathurst, New South Wales (Australia). The participants have presented themselves for audition and interview in the hope of securing one of thirty places within the BA Communication (Theater/Media) program at Charles Sturt University. In one room, a woman and a man watch the three audition pieces that each of the applicants has prepared. In another room, two men put questions to the applicants. Many of these are of a type that one would expect to be asked, but some them are surprising, insofar as this is an interview for entry into a theater and media studies course. Do you like to cook? What did you cook recently? Could you cook for thirty people? How would you theatricalise the presentation of this food for your guests? Do you weld? What sort of experience do you have with power tools? Do you know anything about tying knots and other types of bushcraft? So, what about bush walking? Do you ever do much of that? Do you like camping? Ever gone camping in remote places? Could you walk for thirty kilometers? What are you like to be with when the bush flies are a nuisance and you’re hot, tired, and thirsty? Do people like to be with you at that point? 190

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The two questioners watch the interviewee closely, carefully noting his or her answers and the manner of their responses. Most interviewees find it somewhat curious that we would ask such questions. Many answer affirmatively and enthusiastically. Some giggle and allow that although they would be prepared to do it, they don’t have any experience walking over such distances in the bush. A few say no, they don’t think that they would ever want to do such a thing as that. All responses are duly noted by the interviewers. Time elapses. It is now late February of the following year. When the new cohort of thirty first-year students have assembled for their first Theater/ Media class, they are reminded of when, during the audition and interview process, they were asked if they were prepared to go camping and take a thirty-kilometer bushwalk. Buzz, buzz amongst the neophytes. The lecturer tells them that this is what they will be doing at the conclusion of the third week of classes, so the message is that they are to keep this weekend free for this particular activity. At this first meeting, they are also told that they will need to organize sturdy walking shoes, clothing that will keep them warm and protect them from the sun, a pack, four liters of water, a sleeping bag, and enough food to feed themselves on an overnight camping trip. This is to be a special event for first-year students only. They are going to walk for thirty kilometers along the historic Bridle Track to the old goldmining town of Hill End.1 At this juncture, the first-year students usually ask questions about the second- and third-year students. The answer is straightforward: “No, you’re on your own. The second-years have their ‘circus camp’ on the Turon River a kilometer or so downstream from the village of Sofala, and the third-years are contributing entertainments to the ‘community lantern event’ that the people who live in the hamlet of Turondale hold at this time every year.” In giving this response, the lecturer is deliberately misleading the first-year students. But this dissembling enables each staff member and all of the students to openly discuss their preparations for the three different events that will take place at the end of the third week of the autumn semester. Discussion with first-year students then turns to initial advice about safety issues such as foot care, dehydration, sun protection, snakebite, the danger posed by old abandoned mines, and the need to stay together and not stray from the track. Before the end of the class, the discussion shifts to address the learning purposes that shape the nature of their participation in this weekend retreat into the bush. We explain that we are interested in exploring the unmediated interpersonal dimensions of theater-making through storytelling, songs, and jokes. We explain that we are also vitally interested in creating conditions wherein they can discuss their personal poetics as theater-

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makers, and why they were motivated to seek admission to this particular course of study. Before the first class concludes, we explain that the cohort will be split into four groups of “Walkers.” The lecturers will select who walks with whom. Each of these groups is to meet at a specified time on the designated Saturday morning, at the loading dock of our building on campus. One of the lecturers will drive them in a bus to a location along the Bridle Track some fifty kilometers from Bathurst. Each group will set off on the Bridle Track at a different time. They will be given a map and a schedule that details when and where they are to stop for rests and lunch. They will camp overnight in a well defined campsite that has pit toilets. Each of the campsites is between the Bridle Track and the Macquarie River. They are told that each person is to rehearse two stories, two songs, and two jokes, and that they are to be prepared to perform these for their walking companions during the two-day trek to Hill End. Between this first class and their next class during week two, they are to think about the stories, songs, and jokes that they will tell. They are advised to keep their choices a secret, but to start work on their performances right away. They are urged to get their feet and muscles used to walking, and to start assembling the equipment that they will need by the end of week three. Notices for production meetings to plan these events begin to appear on the bulletin boards around the Theater/Media building on campus. But these notices, being part of a deliberate ruse, are designed to mislead the first-year students. The second- and third-year students are indeed having numerous meetings. But their discussions have nothing to with a “circus camp” at Sofala, and there is no “community lantern event” for third-year students at Turondale. What is going on here? And what does it have to do with Victor Turner? Before reflecting on these connections, a little more background information is necessary in order to explicate the constituent elements of this weekend immersion event.

BEGINNINGS AND PURPOSE The annual Hill End event began in 1989 and continues into the present time. In the context of Australian higher education, it represents a unique learning and teaching initiative. It derives from the recognition that storytelling in natural settings can provide a framework for understanding the fundamental basis for all theater-making.

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During the late 1980s, I was teaching a first-year unit of study called, “Drama as a Group Activity.” Part of its curriculum focused on play-building and storytelling. One day in late November 1988, my colleague Bill Blaikie came into my office and suggested that I should take these first-year students out along the Bridle Track so that they could tell their stories as they walked to the historic gold rush town of Hill End. I thought that his concept was brilliant. My affirmation of Bill’s proposal was immediate, and my own “add” took but a few moments to formulate. I blurted it out: I was concerned that such a project would call for a very significant effort on my part, and that the return for this investment of time, energy, and money would be realized only as learning yields amongst the first-year students. What we needed, I said, was to use second- and third-year units of study to provide a basis for the simultaneous participation of all Theater/Media students in this single weekend event. At that time, third-year students had a core unit of study called “Alternative Theatre.” My idea was that they could camp along the river and experiment with site-specific performances, after dark, with the first-year Walkers as their audience. The purpose of this interaction would be to demonstrate that imaginative theatrical performances can take natural environments as their inspiration. Doing so would provide a means for the third-years to experiment with the types of imagistic performance that they were reading about in Engineers of the Imagination: The Welfare State Handbook (Coult and Kershaw 1983). They could exercise their imaginations and practice their skills with non-electrical illumination, site decoration and storytelling while breaking down artificial separations between themselves and the first-year students. In like fashion, the second-year students had a compulsory unit of study called “Devised Theater.” Their role could be to prepare a celebratory feast in Hill End. Bill agreed and told me about the last remaining pub in Hill End, the Royal Hotel (circa 1876). He would contact the proprietors and see if they would be willing to let us use their premises. This arrangement would enable the second-year participants to design a variety of ceremonies to mark the successful conclusion of the walk by the first-year students, to experiment with the theatricalized presentation of the food that they would prepare, and to organize games and entertainments in the backyard of the pub. Our excitement mounted as we collaborated to further enlarge the constituent elements of this scenario. This weekend of theater-making was beginning to take shape as a strikingly singular experience that held great promise for stimulating new types of learning, and an opportunity for forging new forms of collaborative interactivity amongst and between each of the three cohorts of Theater/Media undergraduates. In this moment, Bill and I were having an experience of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi 1991; Turner

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1982). On this particular day we had few pressing affairs, for the semester had concluded and grades had been submitted. Therefore we were in a relaxed and receptive mood, each ready to focus on what the other was saying. We were able to regard our discussion as a game of ideas with a powerful goal that focused our attention on the larger purposes to which we, as educators, were dedicated. Because we each have an extensive background in improvisation, we also brought a playful, open-minded willingness to surrender to the process of the discussion so that we might better understand what the other was trying to communicate. In improvisational terms, this enabled us to take on the point of view of the other and then propose a new “add” that would enlarge upon the previous “offer.” The conceptual dimension of the Hill End Project was swiftly fleshed out, a process eased by the quality of our “flow” experience. The work that lay before us related to the organization of a plethora of logistical concerns. There would be nearly ninety participants whom we had to transport and provide with rudimentary equipment to support our camping and theatermaking purposes.

THEORETICAL INFLUENCES Throughout our professional association, Bill Blaikie and I have both been keen to explore how permaculture design principles can inform the ways in which we think about curriculum development and the use of resources to which we have access. In a 1995 paper to the International Drama Education Association, Bill cited three key permaculture principles (Mollison and Slay 1991: 5) that most clearly express the underlying values that inform the ways in which we think about the multiplicity of resources and energies that are present within the context of our educational collaborations. At the practical, day-to-day level of conceiving and running the course there are [some] basic principles that we attempt to adhere to. These are: 1. That every placement serve two or more functions; 2. That every function be served in two or more ways; 3. That we hold on to the energy that comes into the system for as long as we possibly can. (Blaikie 1995: 9)

In the context of the Hill End Project, the “placements” of the third-year and second-year participants have multiple “functions” that result in multiple “yields” for the investment of the different types of energy that it takes to secure their presence amongst the first-year Walkers along the Bridle Track (Mollison 1990: 55; Mollison and Slay 1991: 5).

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We want all of the first-year Walkers to understand, through their experience of the variety of theater-making activities throughout the weekend, that they can claim the right to be the authors of their own transforming presence in the world. They do not have to go into a building in order to experience resonant theatrical performances. They do not have to wait for a playwright to author the words that define the situational conflict in which a narrowly defined assortment of fictional characters struggle, and they do not have to join the ninety-five percent of Australian actors who are unemployed for the great majority of their available time. Rather, the opposite is the case. They will not have enrolled in the BA Communication (Theater/ Media) program to train as actors. We make this abundantly clear at the time of their interview and audition. They will have come to Bathurst because they want to enlarge their capacity to innovate using the principles of performance, of physical theater, of video production, and of educational drama. We want them to experiment with a language that can be learned and then applied in new ways, as a “critical praxis” of “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire 1994: 33). During the early years of the Hill End Project we were far more concerned with developing these types of understanding, and realising particular curricular objectives relating to the students’ specific units of study, than we were with investigating what Victor Turner (1990) meant by achieving “communitas” through “rites of limen” within “ritual processes.” That specific concern became an educational aim only eight or so years after the first event, when, in 1997, I began to use Turner’s (1967) “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” and “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” (1990) as a basis for stimulating discussion about developing a more critical attitude and transformational approach amongst the continuing students in relation to pre-production preparations for their interactions with the first-year Walkers. What is particularly useful, so far as I am concerned, is how these theoretical inputs can be posed as questions to the theater-makers. Such as, “If we accept Turner’s definitions, what types of ‘threshold crossings’ can you design within the context of the theatricalized experiences and social interactions that you are creating for the Walkers?” During the early years of the Hill End Project, our attention was more attuned to enlarging the students’ capacity to generate site-specific celebratory events (Fox 1991; Coult and Kershaw 1983) by using the design principles that informed Bill Mollison’s (1990) vision about maximizing diverse yields from minimal energy inputs. These concerns and points of view are not inconsistent with the attention given to “rites of limen” (Turner 1990: 10), which aim at altering the knowledge of initiates.

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So how are the “rites of limen” experienced by the first-year Walkers? Much of their “threshold crossing” undoubtedly occurs through their experience of dissonance between their expectations prior to setting out from Bathurst and what actually transpires, in both physical and psychological terms, during the next thirty-five hours. Before leaving the campus they are given hand-drawn maps and schedules for stopping along the Bridle Track to rest, eat, tell their stories, sing their songs, and sleep. Over the years many students have reported a feeling of unease at the apparent paucity of instructions and the fact that the map, though perfectly accurate in terms of distances and walking times, is hand-drawn. Despite rather detailed briefings about the weekend activity in terms of safety and discussions about camping, many of the first-year Walkers are discomforted by the actuality of fronting up for their departure and by the fact that, in contrast to most previous educational excursions in their life, they will be beyond the close supervision of a “responsible adult.” These feelings are mixed with a sense of anxiety about being placed in groups of people that they do not know very well and then driven into a bushland setting about an hour outside of Bathurst. We stop the bus at a point about three kilometers above the valley of the Macquarie River, where the immediate landscape is quite uninhabited and distinctly unlovely. The Walkers are let out of the bus and simply told to stick together, follow the schedule, stay on the path, tell their stories, and enjoy themselves. We give them extra water, make sure that everyone has applied their sunscreen and put on their hats, and tell them that we will probably drive past them on the track sometime during the day, but will definitely be there to pick them up at the Royal Hotel on Sunday afternoon in Hill End. And off they do go.

ENTERING A LIMINAL LANDSCAPE What they don’t know is that, despite the sun-blasted aspect of their immediate departure environment, they are only an easy twenty-minute walk away from the sylvan, shade-dappled stretches of the Bridle Track as it wends its way alongside the Macquarie River. Just out of sight, within a deep, dramatic fold in the earth, there are vistas that are utterly different from where they now stand. Within a few moments their own feet will have carried them into an environment that will alter the way they think and feel about the nature of this journey. But in the glare and heat of their jump-off point they cannot guess how quickly their experience of the landscape will change. Nor can they guess how differently they will feel twenty-four hours later, after their nighttime camping experience, when in the light of a new day they

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will have to toil and sweat their way upward, for seven kilometers, through switchback after seemingly unending switchback as they walk out of the steeply contoured valley of the Turon River. This ordeal will test their physical strength, their mental endurance, and their capacity to stay focused on an attainable goal while maintaining a socially pleasant demeanor as a member of a group. Tomorrow they will discover the reason why gold miners and nineteenth-century travelers called this place Hill End. On this Saturday afternoon, however, as their feet carry them forward along the Bridle Track for the first time, they are entering a psychic, social, and geophysical zone that is “betwixt-and-between the structural past and structural future,” a territory in which they will meet with theriomorphic imagery, with “maskers and clowns, gender reversals, anonymity, and many other phenomena and processes” that define “unique structures of experience . . . in milieus detached from mundane life and characterized by the presence of ambiguous ideas, monstrous images, sacred symbols, ordeals, humiliations, esoteric and paradoxical instructions” (Turner 1990: 11). The presence of the third-year participants has been concealed from the first-year Walkers. What they discover when they arrive at their designated campsite is something quite different from what they were led to expect. The third-year people have been at their campsites since the previous Thursday afternoon. They have an agenda of their own that is designed to transform the natural site through the selected use of earth, air, fire, and water in order qualitatively enhance the “subjunctive mood” (Turner 1990: 11–12) of the first-year Walkers. Their initial objective is to shift the normative expectations of the Walkers into a “subjunctive mood” through surprise and the unexpected delight of being welcomed and served by those whom they regard as their seniors within a social hierarchy that they presume is not unlike what they recently experienced in high school. But the third-year participants are consciously attempting to subvert this assumption on the part of the first-year Walkers so that they might begin to open themselves up to points of view that embrace the “maybe, might-be, as-if, hypothesis, fantasy, conjecture, [and] desire” (Turner 1990: 11)—especially those that attend their most cherished hopes for the three years that they will spend in Bathurst. To demonstrate that considerable thought and care has been taken to welcome the first-year Walkers to their riverside campground, the third-year participants prepare the site by using earth, air, fire, and water to: • artistically define its entry point and boundaries; • imaginatively and securely shape a very large tarp to shelter both themselves and the first-year Walkers;

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• prepare extra food and drink that can be shared communally and thereby supplement the food carried by the Walkers; and • devise and develop a physically separate area for storytelling—one that is out of sight, away from the camp, requiring that all journey through the darkness to reach that site and return from it. Moreover, the third-year participants are enjoined to reflect upon their own poetics as theater-makers by discussing the ways in which their thinking has changed and developed since their first-year when they were the Walkers traversing the Bridle Track to Hill End. “The energy saving and releasing benefits of this exercise are worth considering. It encourages the third-years to remember their own first year, what their reasons for doing the course were, and are, and how much they have learnt or developed in the past two years. It is a time marker for them. It reminds them that they are in their final year. It allows them to meet the first-years in a non-institutionalized site, and to discover the new skills, talent and energy coming into the course” (Blaikie 1995: 4). We use four campsites within the wilderness area along the Macquarie River. Each has enough intervening space to remain out of sight of the others even if loud vocalizations and drumming can be heard through the night air. Usually, the third-year participants confer some sort of small, defining signification upon the first-year Walkers when they arrive at the campsite. A 2003 Walker reported her impression that “their camp was an oasis, we had journeyed to somewhere else, and by sharing this experience with other members of our year, we had formed a lifelong bond.”2 An outward manifestation of their inward experience of “spontaneous communitas” (Turner 1982: 47–48) is often expressed through the use of colored markers such as feathers, beads, headbands, or scarves that symbolically join everyone to the site itself, including the third-year campers. A Walker from 2004 reflected on his experience of site-specific performance at the “Native Dog” campsite in the following terms. “Performance” he says, “doesn’t have to take place in traditional performance spaces . . . sometimes the most moving theater is a bunch of people with dog ears (that they made themselves) welcoming you to your place of rest for the evening. In the end, the theater is about the audience, for the audience.” Often these markers of “belonging to the site” feature iconic devices that are also mirrored in rock and wooden formations, or cloth banners, designed by the third-year campers. Spirals, vortexes, flames, ears, and wings are examples of the types of identifiers that have been used to signify their sense of community within the campsite, as they gather in the dusk around the fireside and, later, beneath the starry dome of the night sky.

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The performance event that the third-year participants enact for the first-year Walkers typically begins after dark, when, as the Walkers relax after dinner, one after another the third-years quietly slip away to engage in their appointed tasks. The Walkers’ sense of ease is disturbed when they are interrupted by illuminations, music, and a trickster-styled guide who leads them away from the known area of the bounded campsite into the unbounded, inchoate darkness of the terrain beyond the light of their campfire. Once again, the third-years use earth, air, fire, and water as their tools to affect a theatricalized rite of passage that has the power to transform the Walkers from a random aggregation of recent high school graduates into members of the Theater/Media course who “can assess the growth and skills of the thirdyears at close quarters as a measure of what the course will expect them to be able to achieve in the next two years” (Blaikie 1995: 4). A Walker from 2004 expresses this same sentiment when he reflects on his realization that: It made me recognize that I was a unique and needed part of a greater cohesive whole. T/M [the Theater/Media course] is a place to let go of our fears and build up our skill sets and emotional/spiritual awareness to allow and encourage peer-based learning.

The effectiveness of their interaction with the first-year Walkers lies in the capacity of the third-years to demonstrate that evocative and meaningful performances can be collaboratively planned, cooperatively developed, and effectively enacted by any member of the Theater/Media course within any sort of environment. Anywhere can be a site for theater-making. But more than this, the first-year Walkers must come to an understanding that in order for them to enter into the collaborative spirit that underlies theatermaking endeavors of this sort, it is absolutely necessary for them to transcend their sense of self-importance by acknowledging their present fears and releasing them, and by defining their hopes for the future and resolving to pursue them. Through their engagement with the performative interactions proposed by their third-year “elders,” this transformation is symbolically accomplished in a variety of ways. In some cases they write down their fears and set them adrift in little paper boats on the river. Later, they are called upon to disclose their reasons for wanting to gain admission to this course and asked to articulate their hopes for the future. In other cases they confide their fears by telling them to trees or prominent rock formations and then immerse themselves in the river, are cleansed with eucalyptus smoke, or mask themselves with daubs of earth and walk along the path of a large spiraling maze of firepots upon the ground in order to recenter themselves at a new axis mundi. In other cases, they write down their fears and their hopes, then cast

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these writings into a fire. In any case, they are beginning to understand that their time in Bathurst represents a journey of self-discovery and they can now, after only three weeks, see a horizon of experience that lies in a future that they can envision, for they now know that they will be returning to the Bridle Track, in two years’ time, with new points of reference, knowledge, and understanding—just as they will now withdraw from the performance space and return to their campsite as differently-minded persons from those who left that fireside a short time before. The first-year Walkers are subjected to a wide laterality of performancebased experience by their third-year “elders.” The use of the immediate, site-specific landscape and the creative employment of earth, air, fire, and water are common denominators amongst all four encampments. So is the use of story-making imagery that takes the site itself as the prime source of inspiration, for the third-year campers have been instructed to let the site “speak” to them so that the storyline that they develop for their performative event emerges from the ways in which they, the third-years, join their imagination to the “spirit” that they discern in the specific locality of their riverside encampment. A Walker from 2004 expressed her riverside experience in the following terms: It opened up my mind about the possibilities available in the environment. The river, trees, open space and river banks, were all transformed into a magical performance space where music, fire, and storytelling were interwoven to create a unique atmosphere. One standout moment for me was a violin player standing in the rapids. The juxtaposition of the natural and artificial was very potent.

Yet these diverse threshold crossing “rites of limen” are designed by the third-years to use the evocative power of their performance event to help the first-year Walkers confront themselves and make self-determined affirmations about what they hope to accomplish through the investment of three years of their lives in a university course that has taken them away from their homes, their family, their friends, and everything that has hitherto been familiar and predictable. These performance events are never merely something that happens to the first-year Walkers. They must take an active role in its unfolding through the physical journey that everyone makes to the performance site, the way(s) in which they accept the variety of gifts and talismanic markers of their changing status, and the ways in which they think about and express their present fears and hopes for the future. One Walker reflected upon the transformative power of this experience as she shared her thoughts about the experience that she and her group had with the third-year theater-makers along the banks of the Macquarie River in 2004.

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Discovering that these people had gone to so much trouble to welcome me, and arrange celebratory rituals—well, it moved me beyond words. I started to think, maybe I do belong, maybe I do have something to contribute. The ritualistic “burning of our fears,” for me, seemed a key [moment of] transformation. They were trying to help transform our thinking from attitudes of fear, insecurity, [and] doubt to courage and a sense of being valued, appreciated, and free to try new things.

Their return from the performance site to the campsite marks the beginning of a new phase in their lives as members of the Theater/Media course. All wear signs of their unity and identification with the “spirit” of their campsite. The “spirit” of this site has now been impregnated with the transforming presence of a microcommunity that exemplifies the “dialectical nature” of liminal experience, “which moves from structure to anti-structure and back again to transformed structure; from hierarchy to equality; from indicative mood to subjunctive mood; from unity to multiplicity; from the person to the individual; from systems of status roles to communitas, the I-thou relationship, and Buber’s ‘essential We’ as against society regarded as ‘It’” (Turner 1986: 127–28). In returning to their campsite, they continue to be served by the third-years. But it is not yet time for sleep. They are asked by the third-years to share their stories, tell their jokes, and sing their songs, and to enjoy together the comradeship that comes with eating, drinking, and sleeping together near a fire beside a river that runs into the darkness of the night and murmurs in the background of their dreams. In the morning they are fed breakfast by the third-years and everyone is given additional sustaining trail food, along with an individual gift that has been made for them by the third-years. They are told to stay on the track, follow the schedule, enjoy the walk, and “stick together on ‘The Hill’!” And off they do go. “Good-bye! Don’t rush! Stick together!”

CELEBRATING THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE WALKERS Meanwhile, the second-year participants have been camping together in one location on the outskirts of Hill End since Friday afternoon. Their job is to design a sequence of performative moments that celebrate the achievement of the Walkers when they finally arrive at the Royal Hotel. During their three weeks of preparation, the second-year participants research and identify a coterie of character types that would have peopled Hill End during the gold rush era. They make decisions about the personas that they will assume and then begin to assemble their costumes and decide upon the na-

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ture of the interactions that will take place between these characters and the Walkers when they arrive in town on Sunday afternoon. In conducting this dramaturgical research they are particularly looking for stories of the daily concerns of the people of those times. Their contributions, as theater-makers, include the use of music, circus, and the preparation and presentation of food, as well as a variety of games and whimsical performances for the entertainment of all. There are some specific moments throughout the Sunday afternoon that mark our celebration of the achievement of the Walkers. In particular, a rousing reception in the street in front of the Royal Hotel uses song and physical theater to welcome the Walkers to Hill End. They are relieved of their packs and run through a gauntlet of applause and expressions of welcoming from staff, current students, and returning graduates. This facilitates their transition from the street in front of the pub to the courtyard at the back of the hotel. At the end of this symbolic birth channel, they are given a gift of beer and taken by second-year “harlots,” “preachers,” “undertakers,” and other character types into the shade of a row of peppercorn trees. There they have their feet washed and receive foot, leg, and back massages while they drink their beer. Meanwhile, other second-year participants are completing the food preparation, organizing games such as horseshoes or badminton, and playing music as they move about from group to group of participants. One Walker from 2004 reflected upon this experience in the following terms: I think the second-years were trying to strengthen the sense of community that the third-years had introduced us to, by dressing up as a community of Hill End settlers and as we arrived we were each greeted individually by a second-year which gave us the feeling that they had made an effort to get to know who we were! Also, as they washed our feet, massaged our backs, and gave us beer and food, they were showing us how a community is not only there to work together collectively but also to take concern and care for each member of the community individually.

Approximately one hundred people associated with the Theater/Media course are present for this afternoon celebration. As well, there are an equal number of local onlookers and curious tourists. What follows is a feasting phase for which the second-year students have devised a well-focused theatricalized presentation of the food using song and parade to organize its distribution, starting with the first-year Walkers and ending with the lecturing staff. After this, the second-year people use live music, acrobatic balancing, tumbling and/or unarmed combat to focus the attention of all participants on a more formal entertainment phase of the celebrations.

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This is the moment when the second-years provide ironic metacommentary on the arrival of the Walkers and our shared return to Hill End. Usually they find ways to gently lampoon the lecturing staff and then call upon those who have been walking and camping along the Bridle Track to present short performances that reflect on the character of their experience. Here, the second-years act as interlocutors to introduce the short performances that have been specifically devised by each of the four groups of Walkers. Their walking schedule for Sunday includes the request that they come up with some sort of song and physicalized performance that expresses the nature of their group’s experience over the past twenty-four hours. The second-year presenters also call upon the four groups of third-year campers to perform their own ironic commentary on their interaction with the first-year Walkers who arrived in their camp. In this way, all the cohorts of participants are empowered to express “sentiments of social solidarity” through pithy songs and physical comedy that enable all participants to enact a story that “tells itself about itself” (Turner 1982: 104, quoting Geertz 1980). One Walker from 2004 expressed her sense of “social solidarity” when she and her fellows completed the long climb up “The Hill” only to discover a new thresholdcrossing experience. The second-years again surprised us. Our feelings of the journey ending as we reached the top of The Hill were only momentary, and suddenly we realized in fact the journey was just beginning. They welcomed us with music and dance. They knew our names and gave us presents. No matter who we were they were all around us making us feel so much a part of the TM [Theater/Media] group.

A Walker from 2003 reported feelings of elation that were echoed in the remarks of the majority of her peers. It made me consider the aspects of theater as celebration. Previously theater had just been [an experience in] a black box for me. I hadn’t been part of an unaware audience before. I felt the kind of surprise and wonder that I hadn’t felt since the Christmases of my childhood. At the moment of greeting at the Royal Hotel, I was overwhelmed by the sheer excitement that these strangers had about greeting me and celebrating my achievement.

The dispersal phase of the celebration begins with a comic farewell song by the second-year celebrants and directions for everyone to pack their belongings into the assembled cars and buses. The second-years carefully clean the site and return the backyard of the Royal Hotel to its original appearance, and then follow the cavalcade back to Bathurst. The students

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stow their gear and organize a meeting at a local pub to share stories and chat with one another about what happened amongst their different groups throughout the weekend.

REFLECTING ON PURPOSE AND PROCESS Our specific intentions have always been to effect a shift in the participants’ perceptions about their capacities to think and act as creative innovators and to recognize that they do not need to wait for others to write their scripts. We use this immersion event as a rite of passage that demonstrates to everyone involved that we must claim artistic agency as theater-makers who can collaborate with others to create original entertainments and meaningful cultural performance events. This is the sensibility that lies at the heart of the design intentions that we, the academic staff, had in mind when we created this weekend immersion event as a rite of passage within a higher education setting. It is this value that is held to be “sacred”—and all the tasks that are undertaken by each cohort of undergraduates are meant to challenge them to clearly communicate their ideas to one another and collaborate effectively to enact the “performative” events (Kershaw 1999: 12–20; Carlson 1996: 195) that are designed to affect a shift in thinking amongst the firstyear Walkers. The efficacy of this transformation lies in the degree to which we can foster new ways to assist them in having regard for their own creativity and recognizing that the potential for theater-making is an open horizon of possibility. For all members of the course the purpose of this immersion event is to nurture the realization that they too have the right, indeed the duty, to “follow their bliss” to use the language of Joseph Campbell (1988: 120). There is general consensus amongst the Walkers that what is “shown,” “done,” and “said” (Turner 1967: 102,103) during this weekend immersion event enables them to reflexively examine and test their own creative capacity to generate resonant theatrical experiences. The reflections from two 2004 Walkers are instructive on this point: I was very used to associating the theater with a professional stage, costumes, etc., and being “separated” from it [the performance] as an audience member. I was very moved by the third-years’ performance because it was all about the audience; it formed itself from the surrounding nature and thus was very raw and beautiful. It also taught me that theater can come from anywhere. The weekend opened my mind to the potential for performance as a site-specific event and a celebratory and cathartic experience. . . . Because of its intimacy, and alien context, the third-years’ night performance was very inspiring in cre-

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ative terms. The second-year performance gave added points to this experience and overwhelmed me to the point of mesmerizing awe. Their site-specific characterization placed me personally in an historical context, which reminded me that I now belonged to a very old and wise culture of performance/theater whose power was and can be evoked in any other performance.

Our more recent emphasis upon Turner’s ideas concerning the “rites of limen” as outward manifestations of “ritual processes” within “genres of cultural performance” (1990: 14) has enabled us to explicitly discuss the different types of physical, psychic, and social threshold crossings that are embedded within the Hill End Project. While the transformative aims and intentions of this project were always present, right from the very first event in 1989, in those earlier years we explained what we were doing in different terms, for Turner’s schema was not our original inspiration. In those days, we were much more likely to discuss what we were attempting to do in terms of making experiments with the sorts of community-building experiences that could be promoted through story-based celebratory performances of the type exemplified in the work of Welfare State International (Coult and Kershaw 1983; Fox 1991). Yet, the fact that we did not consciously construct and explain the Hill End Project as a “liminal” experience does not, of course, obviate its potency as a transformative journey that is taken in the company of others. Each of the elements of a “rite of passage” (Turner 1982, 1990) is present within the processual unfolding of the experience undergone by each cohort of Theater/Media undergraduates from the time they leave Bathurst until the time they return to their beds on Sunday night. With our departure from Bathurst, everyone, including the academic staff, is “irreversibly” immersed within a liminal experience whose sequence of activity—though particularized to specific cohorts of individuals—evidences a “unidirectional movement [that] is transformative” (Turner 1982: 80). Throughout this period of “separation” the individuals within each cohort experience a type of “liminal communitas” that places them within an “experience of egalitarian solidarity and spiritual integration, especially typical of initiatory rites of passage” (Lewis and Dowsey-Magog 1993: 201, referring to Turner 1969). This chapter has discussed how, within this liminal landscape, decisions must be collectively negotiated and then expressed through symbolic role-taking whose purpose lies in theatricalized social communication. These communication initiatives represent deliberate attempts to both subtly and explicitly mark moments in time when the Walkers must “cross” a variety of psychosocial and physical thresholds. In all cases—whether walking and storytelling, or creating a decorated campsite and a site-specific performance alongside the river, or orchestrating the festive welcome that

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celebrates the the Walkers’ achievement at the historic Royal Hotel in Hill End—each cohort of students is immersed in a weekend of theater-making challenges that cannot properly be concluded until these symbolic activities have taken place prior to their reintegration into their erstwhile “normal” lives in Bathurst. These “rites of limen” are cohort-specific, but each interaction with the first-year Walkers emphasizes new ways in which the older students welcome the initiates into the true community life of the course. These performative acts demonstrate how and why this course is different from other undergraduate courses within the larger community of students at the university. At the conclusion of the event, Walkers have a changed status as people with new knowledge—and a special bond—with the other students and the staff of the Theater/Media course. Their final welcome, as full members of the course, takes place through a type of informal debriefing about what they have all just experienced during the Hill End immersion weekend. Typically, this is transacted over a few beers at a local pub upon their return to Bathurst, when all three years of students can mingle to share their stories about the weekend experience and to ease themselves back into the life of their local community in a provincial university town.

CONCLUSIONS The Hill End Project finds its most important expression as a type of “neoliminal engagement” (Lewis and Dowsey-Magog 1993: 207) amongst likeminded individuals who seek a type of liberation through symbolic forms of expression. It gains a significant degree of its power from the way in which everyone’s “neo-liminal” experience of seclusion in the company of their year-specific cohorts facilitates theatricalized communication initiatives that are “particularly conducive to ‘ludic’ invention” (Turner 1982: 31–32). Here, their experience of “anti-structure” lies in the way that they report their growing awareness that powerful theatrical experiences can take place in spaces that transcend the limitations of “black box” theater. As this awareness grows, they begin to experience the realization that there are a vast diversity of sites and events that call forth new potentialities for theatricalized human expression and that these represent opportunities that “can generate . . . a plurality of alternative models for living, from utopias to programs, which are capable of influencing the behavior of those in mainstream social and political roles . . . in the direction of radical change” (Turner 1982: 33). These expressive acts transpire within a spirit of “communitas” through which participants redefine themselves as innovative theater-makers, and thereby claim a new type of relationship to Australian society through their

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exercise of artistic agency. The “performance efficacy” (Kershaw 1992) of the Hill End Project lies in the degree to which the participants subsequently seek to use their talents in order to exercise a humanizing influence upon “the historical evolution of wider social and political realities” (Kershaw 1992: 258). This is happening, through the work of the graduates of the course, but it is a story that will continue to unfold through the evolution of their generation’s contribution to the social capital of Australian life.

NOTES 1. The hyperlink below is among the better ones for the early Hill End collection maintained by the New South Wales State Library. It offers hundreds of images taken at the zenith of the nineteenth-century gold rush in Hill End. Many of these images now appear upon interpretive plaques that have been erected along the streets of contemporary Hill End. The plaques usually appear at the sites of long-gone dwellings or public buildings. (accessed 6 July 2005). 2. On Wednesday, 2 March and Thursday, 3 March 2005, I surveyed the two cohorts of undergraduates who were first-year Walkers during 2003 and 2004. At the time of the survey, they were preparing to undertake their appointed tasks as second- and third-year participants in the 2005 Hill End Project. All respondents gave written permission to use all or part of their responses in articles intended for publication. This permission was given on the understanding that whilst they identified themselves and gave signed authorization for me to use their written reflections, this authority stipulated that they would not be identified by name. I have retained all responses and intend to use the survey data as the basis for a qualitative longitudinal study that will be based upon a five-year sample.

REFERENCES Blaikie, Bill. 1995. The Theatricalisation And Dramatisation Of Course Structure In The BA Communication Theatre/Media Degree At The Mitchell Campus Of Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, NSW, Australia. A paper presented at the 1995 International Drama Education Association (IDEA) Conference. Brisbane, Queensland: n.p. Campbell, Joseph, with Bill Moyers. 1988. Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Ed. B. S. Flowers. New York: Doubleday. Carlson, Marvin. 1996. Performance: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. Coult, Tony, and Baz Kershaw. eds. 1983. Engineers Of The Imagination: The Welfare State Handbook. London: Methuen.

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Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1991. Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. Fox, John. 1991. A Plea For Poetry. Open Letter/Paper submitted to the National Arts and Media Strategy Unit of Great Britain. London: n.p. Freire, Paulo. 1994. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. Rev. ed. New York: Continuum. Geertz, Clifford. 1980. “Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought.” American Scholar (Spring): 169–179. Kershaw, Baz. 1992. The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London: Routledge. ———. 1999. The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard. London: Routledge. Lewis, J. Lowell, and Paul Dowsey-Magog. 1993. “The Maleny ‘Fire Event’ Rehearsals Toward Neo-liminality.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 4, no. 3: 198–218. Mollison, Bill. 1990. Permaculture—A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future. Tyalgum: Tagari Publications. Mollison, Bill, and R. M. Slay. 1991. Introduction to Permaculture. Tyalgum: Tagari Publications. Turner, Victor. 1967. Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1986. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1990. “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” In R. Schechner, and W. Appel, eds., By Means of Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PART III

{ Contemporary Pilgrimage and Communitas

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Chapter Ten

Of Ordeals and Operas: Reflexive Ritualizing at the Burning Man Festival Lee Gilmore

{ At summer’s end in the Black Rock Desert, over 50,000 revelers seeking an alternative to the ordinary will gather in this remote corner of northwestern Nevada for an eclectic annual celebration of art and fire known as Burning Man. For one week, this temporary community—termed Black Rock City— becomes the fifth largest metropolis in the state of Nevada before fading back into the dust, as all physical traces of this momentary habitation are completely eliminated at the festival’s conclusion. Participants—collectively known as “Burners”—dwell in tents and imaginatively designed shelters laid out along a carefully surveyed system of streets that form an arch of concentric semicircles surrounding an open central area, where an extraordinary assortment of interactive and often monumentally scaled art installations are constructed. At the center of it all stands the “Burning Man” effigy itself—an imposing, forty-foot high wooden latticework figure atop a fanciful platform, lit with multicolored shafts of neon and filled with explosives designed to detonate in a carefully orchestrated sequence when it meets its fiery demise at the festival’s climax. Ostensibly genderless and void of any stated “meaning,” this icon—affectionately known as “the Man”—is ultimately offered up in blazing sacrifice with each annual incarnation of the event. After spending up to a week camping in the desert, and perhaps looking forward to and preparing for this dramatic rite all year long, par-

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ticipants greet the Burn with considerable fervor and enthusiasm. Once the flames have transformed the Man into a heaping pyre, the celebration rages throughout the night until daylight returns and the time comes to pack up for the inevitable return to the banal routines of everyday life—or, as some Burners term it, the “default” world. This festal pilgrimage resonates in some fairly clear ways with Victor Turner’s (and Arnold van Gennep’s) understanding of the basic tripartite structure of passage rites. Participants leave behind their everyday lives and mundane contexts (separation), journey to a distant, unforgiving wilderness, and enter into the carnivalesque setting of Black Rock City (liminality), and often return home with a changed perspective or renewed understanding of themselves in relation to the world (aggregation). While numerous theories could be invoked to help interpret the significance of Burning Man’s rites, Turner’s in particular have a strong resonance with some aspects of this event.1 Nor am I alone in my inclination to look to Turner in analyzing this event, as a number of other scholars (Hockett 2004, 2005; Kozinets 2002; Pike 2001) have also gravitated toward Turner’s ideas as a theoretical model by which to structure their analyses of this festival. However, this is not to say that Turner’s theories perfectly encapsulate Burning Man, let alone that they are universally applicable to such events. There are numerous ways in which “competing discourses” (Eade and Sallnow 1991: 5) clearly abound, as will be demonstrated below. Something more interesting, complicated, and reflexive is happening here. I believe the congruity of Turner as a theoretical model for Burning Man is attributable not so much to any inherent or essential accuracy of these theories, although their explanatory power cannot be easily dismissed. Rather, this power stems in part from the fact that both Turner’s theories (at least in part) and Burning Man’s rituals have emerged from within a Western cultural, and popularly “countercultural,” context. Furthermore, having itself inherited a good deal from those counterdiscourses and their antecedents, Burning Man’s ritual structures also in part reflect the extent to which Turner’s ideas about liminality, communitas, and ritual process have themselves now filtered into popular culture, such that they have come to shape contemporary ideas about what ritual is and how it should transpire. With this dynamic in mind, this essay intends not only to demonstrate the applicability of Turner’s work to this festival, but to do so in a way that problematizes those theories, situating these ideas as reflexive discourses in which this festival participates. I base my assessment on eleven years of participant observation within this festival community, including numerous formal and informal interviews, and an extensive online survey.

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HISTORY AND OVERVIEW The Burning Man festival began in 1986 as an impromptu gathering on a San Francisco beach when a man named Larry Harvey decided to construct a wooden effigy and burn it on the eve of the summer solstice.2 Initially inviting a handful of others to join in, he was delighted to discover that once the hastily constructed eight-foot sculpture was ignited, the spectacle attracted onlookers from all up and down the beach. As Harvey tells the now oft-repeated tale, someone began to strum a guitar, others began to dance and interact with the figure, and a spontaneous feeling of community came upon those gathered. Harvey decided to repeat the event the following year, and with each subsequent iteration both the crowd and the sculpture grew substantially in size. By 1988, approximately 150–200 people joined in, and the figure, now thirty-foot tall, was officially dubbed the “Burning Man.” By 1990, with approximately 800 in attendance, nearby residents called in the local park police to halt the combustion of this now forty-foot effigy. As the crowd grew restless and unruly, it became clear that the event was no longer sustainable as a free-for-all beach party. Undaunted, Harvey teamed up with compatriots from the San Francisco Cacophony Society, a loose-knit confederation of self-proclaimed free spirits and pranksters who orchestrate absurd public performance “happenings” and private underground art parties, several of whom were in attendance at these initial beach Burns.3 Assisted by the organizational efforts of these “Cacophonists,” it was determined to take the Man out to the desert to meet its fiery destiny on the following US Labor Day weekend (that is, the first weekend of September). Located approximately a hundred miles northeast of Reno, Nevada, the dominant feature of the Black Rock Desert is a 400-square mile prehistoric lakebed—an utterly flat, bone dry, hardpan alkali plain known as “the playa.” The climate here is harsh: temperatures in late summer can range from below forty to well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, fierce dust storms occasionally rage with winds as strong as seventy-five miles per hour, and dehydration is a constant threat in this intensely arid environment. Yet as the austere emptiness of the desert invites the imagination to populate its open terrain, participants produce a mind-boggling array of expressive projects, creating a visual contrast between emptiness and abundance. The desert also evokes deeply ingrained narratives of hardship, sacrifice, mystery and limitlessness that help set the stage for transformative experiences. Fewer than one hundred participants made the trek out to the first desert iteration of Burning Man. As one of these original travelers later described the experience:

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In Cacophony, we called these adventures a “Zone Trip.” The Zone was some other dimensional place, it could be the past, the future, something weird, it didn’t matter. We were going there, and we would challenge it and be better for it. . . . We all got out of our cars as one member drew a long line on the desert floor creating what we accepted as a “Zone gateway.” This was one of our Cacophony rituals, for the zone as we defined it took on many forms. . . . Today it was the base of a mountain range in Northern Nevada. We crossed the line and knew we were definitely not in Kansas anymore. (Brill n.d.)

In this initial rite of crossing a threshold into an “other dimensional Zone,” the metaphors of liminality are readily apparent. While Harvey and his team of organizers have consistently denied that Burning Man should be understood as constituting a “religious” movement, the traces of ritualization have long been present in such references.4 There are many more such parallels—some quite explicit, as we will see below. In the decade and a half since this initial adventure, Burning Man has grown into an increasingly elaborate production with tens of thousands in attendance. Black Rock City features basic civic amenities such as professional medical and emergency services, an internal volunteer peacekeeping force called the Rangers, a central café, several daily newspapers, dozens of low-frequency radio stations, an array of interactive artworks and “theme camps” (which are creatively constructed and embellished encampments, functioning both as interactive entertainment venues for the festival populace and as hubs for their own extended communities), and hundreds of regularly serviced chemical toilets. This endeavor is organized by a yearround staff of about two dozen individuals assisted by over 3,000 volunteers, and is funded almost exclusively by sales of tickets ranging in price in 2007 from USD 195 to 350 each (depending on time of purchase).5 Yet while the ticket price required to support this elaborate production is high, participants and organizers alike embrace an anticommodification ethos. Vending is prohibited within the festival itself and all offers of corporate sponsorship are refused, in contrast to many other such events. The café, which sells only coffee and chai, functions as a core community hub and, along with an ice concession, is the only place where money is exchanged within Black Rock City limits. Organizers instead promote the idea of a gift economy, in which participants are encouraged to freely share their resources and creativity while also promoting radical self-reliance, requiring attendees to bring all of their own supplies including food, shelter, and water. Furthermore, many participants bring not only everything they need to survive for up to one week in a challenging desert setting, but also go to considerable expense and effort to transport the materials needed to create monumental art and imaginative performances. This is in turn tied to another primary mandate

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encouraging radical self-expression. A related core principle is the injunction to participate in some way, with the corollary that there should be no spectators. Consideration for the environment necessitates another of the event’s primary mandates—leave no trace. This entails scrupulously cleansing the playa surface of all physical traces of the event at its conclusion, down to the last pistachio shell and boa feather, which means that Black Rock City must be built from scratch each year. A final key value embraced within this context is community, as will be further examined below.

PARALLELS AND DISJUNCTURES In my own quest to understand and analyze the ritual dimensions of Burning Man, I first looked to Turner’s examination of Christian pilgrimages, in which he came to see these phenomena as neatly mapped to the tripartite structure of rites of passage, and as thereby eliciting the qualities of communitas and liminality that he saw as inherent within all such rites. Noting that the traditional liturgy and sacraments of his own Roman Catholic faith offered little in the way of the sort of liminal experiences that he identified in his fieldwork in Africa, Turner (in collaboration with his wife, Edith) looked to the phenomenon of pilgrimage in the Christian world, where he perceived the processes of liminality, antistructure, and communitas in action. In the ritualized journey and hardships encountered through a pilgrimage, they identified “some of the attributes of liminality,” including: release from mundane structure; homogenization of status; simplicity of dress and behavior; communitas; ordeal; reflection on the meaning of basic religious and cultural values; ritualized enactment of correspondences between religious paradigms and shared human experiences; emergence of the integral person from multiple personae; movement from a mundane center to a sacred periphery which suddenly, transiently, becomes central for the individual, an axis mundi of his faith; movement itself, a symbol of communitas, which changes with time, as against stasis which represents structure; individuality posed against the institutionalized milieu; and so forth. (Turner and Turner 1978: 34)

On first reading this passage, I was struck by the number of qualities that Burning Man similarly evinces. Yet on further consideration, I also began to recognize numerous ways in which Burners’ experiences also do not exhibit these traits. For example, in leaving behind the “default” world of their daily lives—and in framing their sense of separation with such language—Burners experience a release from mundane structures. In this journey from the urban en-

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vironments that most call home to the remote and inhospitable wilderness of Nevada desert, Burners also move from center to periphery. The playa itself evinces an apparently otherworldly and “liminal” quality—with Black Rock City poised distinctly “betwixt and between” its raw nature and domesticated civic space. Burners have even adopted their own term that parallels the aggregation phase—decompression—a reference to the difficulty many participants experience in reorienting to their ordinary lives following the event. Yet the separation here is not total. As different as Burning Man or the playa itself may be from the “default” world, Black Rock City is a para-urban environment that consciously recreates a familiar “civic” infrastructure. In addition, many set up reasonably comfortable camps and also often travel in the company of friends and family, thereby diminishing the severity of separation. The Turners also identified ordeal as among the core qualities of pilgrimage, and Burning Man generally does not disappoint in this regard. Participants must be prepared to endure a degree of physical hardship and moments of trial in the harsh environment of the desert. The shared experiences of extreme heat, cold, wind, and dust can serve as visceral reminders of the fragility and limits of this human body we inhabit. Burners also often commit enormous amounts of time, energy, and money well above the non-trivial expense of admission and supplies in order to create elaborate art projects and theme camps, and this “gift” to the community can become a kind of a personal sacrifice. However, these elements of adversity are also mitigated by many of the amenities of modern living—automobiles, RVs, ice chests, and the ability to truck in ample water being chief among them. In comparison, I think of the pioneers en route to the Oregon territory not much more than a century ago, who would occasionally make an ill-advised turn late in their truly arduous journeys and find themselves in the Black Rock Desert. Some died, while others sacrificed all but what was absolutely needed for survival, leaving their possessions alongside the trail in an attempt to avoid perishing.6 Yet for Burners, their trip to the playa is a choice—a vacation, even—and the technological advances of our contemporary world have made surviving, and even thriving, in this forbidding realm ultimately quite manageable (indeed, part of the fun of “playa living” can be to attempt to live as decadently as possible). The collective emphasis on community invites a consideration of and comparison to Turner’s concept of communitas. Burners’ notion of “community” often references emotional sentiments of connectedness, egalitarianism, and unity that bear similarity to what Turner intended by “communitas.” A feeling of connection to others (or to an “other” realm) was referenced by numerous participants who reported experiences of social, emotional, and

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cognitive liberation within this event, and the collective desire for this sense of “oneness” tends to peak during rites such as the Burn. This valorized sense of community, situated in critical opposition to social hegemonies, also includes a pervasive sense of egalitarian ideal and social leveling. There is a very real sense in which the playa becomes a level playing field—inviting the homogenization of status—as many of the standard roles individuals play in the “default” culture fall away at Burning Man by means of the shared experiences all must undergo in order to arrive at and survive in the desert (although in this context participants’ shared condition is more typically marked by flamboyant and eccentric dress and behavior, rather than simplicity). Burning Man also provides opportunities to reflect on the meaning of basic religious and cultural values as they relate to negotiations of self, others, identity, boundaries, community, nature, and spirituality. Roughly three-quarters of the hundreds of participants I queried in the course of my research affirmed that Burning Man had, in various ways, changed their life or perspective on these realms, supporting Turner’s assertion that through experiences of liminality individuals can undergo profound experiences of transformation. Yet the parallel between the ideal of communitas and Burners’ sense of community is limited for on a pragmatic level the term “community” is at times employed here to refer simply to the physical dimensions of both person and place. Furthermore, Burning Man is deeply heterogeneous, as manifested in the multitude of ways in which participants frame and construct their experiences of the event. Indeed, while participants and organizers alike may strive to achieve an ideal of utopia on the playa by means of a carefully formulated ideology, participants in turn vocally criticize the event whenever it fails to live up to that ideology. In this critique, Burners express their desire for the utopian ideal of communitas, while simultaneously rendering the space a heterotopia—that is, Foucault’s concept of a space “capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible” (1967)—through their polyvocal discourses on the event’s meanings and aspirations.7 For many, Burning Man may be a profoundly life-changing and perhaps spiritual experience, while for others it is only a grand party, an excuse for debauchery and a license for transgressive behavior that is disconnected from any overt sense of the sacred, or any occurrence of significant change in one’s life or perspective. Of course, these aspects need not be viewed as mutually exclusive. Indeed, many Christian pilgrimages were historically associated with simultaneously occurring festivals, which were often the real attraction for many pilgrims, as the Turners themselves noted (Turner and Turner 1978: 36). With its strong emphasis on playfulness and a healthy dose

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of decadent display, the carnivalesque aspects of Burning Man can certainly be seen to function within that legacy. Still, there remains an extent to which Burning Man participants inevitably replicate society’s class structures and other differences within this context, thus undermining the ideal of communitas. For example, some can afford to travel and stay in RVs, others cannot; some have the resources to create large, technologically complex art projects, others do not. The expense of the event also renders the festival mostly inaccessible to those without sufficient middle-class incomes.8 Finally, there is also a differentiation in status at the event between more experienced Burners and first-time attendees, sometimes (semidisparagingly) called “newbies.” These differences can become sources of tension on the playa. In a similar vein, for many longtime attendees the once extraordinary experience becomes almost routine and the festival loses its initial enchantment. Even those who have experienced significant life or perspective adjustments through this festival often outgrow what was once a deeply radicalizing experience, as the opportunities to see the world and one’s position in it from a different vantage point may not be ongoing. Many formerly avid participants have stopped attending or “burned out,” and chosen to move on to new interests and other life experiences. Others who do keep attending often do so primarily for that sense of common community it provides: their time in Black Rock City becomes a “family reunion” of sorts in the opportunity to spend quality time with good friends. This phenomenon is related to the propensity of a growing number of longtime participants to criticize various aspects of the event as increasingly lacking in whatever quality of magic it was that initially, and repeatedly, drew them to the event in the first place. In this regard, we can see that Burning Man is what anthropologists John Eade and Michael Sallnow described as “a realm of competing discourses” (1991: 5). Burning Man evinces a plethora of diverse voices and attendant discourses that are deployed as participants seek to frame their individual experiences of the event. Most prefer to conceive of the event as “whatever you want it to be.” Burning Man has changed a great deal since its initial spontaneity and anarchistic flavor drew many to the event in its earlier days. It has had to negotiate the concerns of the State in its various institutionalized aspects and thereby become more safe and sustainable. This is in turn reflected in the tone of the event, down to its most basic rituals. For example, both the dynamic and aesthetic of the culminating rite of the Burn have changed noticeably over the years. What was once a simple and stark humanoid figure alive with flame against the night sky is now elevated on increasingly elaborate platforms (initially devised primarily as a way to increase visibility for the ever larger crowds) and accentuated with increasingly professional

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and ostentatious pyrotechnic displays. There is also a qualitative difference between stepping across a physical threshold etched upon the surface of the playa, as the first attendees did, and waiting in a long line of cars to have one’s ticket checked at the gate, as is now the shared experience of entry. In this regard, Burning Man can be traced to Turner’s differentiations between spontaneous, normative, and ideological communitas (1974: 169). At its inception in the late 1980s, friends and strangers spontaneously gathered on the beach to create and burn an effigy for the simple and immediate joy of doing it. More recently, as population growth has necessitated the ever more highly systematic, professionalized, and bureaucratic organization of the event, a normative structure has been created to support free expression at what was once a much wilder event. Finally, in promoting and performing a distinct and consciously articulated ideology—keynoted by the ideals of community, participation, radical self-expression, etc.—the event provides a quasiutopian social model, in keeping with Turner’s concept. The successes and failures of Turner’s theoretical model can in large measure be accounted for by his tendencies to broadly constitute ritual in general (and pilgrimage in particular) as fitting into a universal model. In this light, Turner’s theories must be cautiously employed, for despite the relative ease with which his ritual theories are applicable to this festival, numerous other discourses clearly operate within Burning Man as participants seek to disrupt traditional and popular perceptions of community, culture, self, ritual, and spirituality. Furthermore, although the ideal of spontaneous communitas may have at times dissipated in this context, participants are thereby compelled to critique its absence, pointing to the extent to which communitas remains a fundamental desire within the dynamic and multifaceted experiences of this festival. However, in addition to these generalized parallels and disjunctures, Turner’s theories are also in evidence in a handful of specific ritual performances that have been features of this festival, in which references to the concept of liminality, the imposition of a threefold structure, and the adoption of terms from his theory of social dramas have been explicitly deployed. Most conspicuous among these was a performance piece held in 1999 called Le Mystere de Papa Loko, which was one among a series of ritualistic “operas” that were prominent features of the festival from 1996 to 2000.

THE OPERA Beginning in 1993, San Francisco artist Pepe Ozan began sculpting conical towers at Burning Man from rebar and wire mesh, covering them with dried

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mud from the playa’s own clay-like surface, and dubbing them “lingams” after the sacred phallic symbols of the Hindu Lord Shiva. Each hollow spire would then be filled with wood and set aflame—forming a lovely glowing, crackled chimney. After a few years of progressively more complex and elaborate versions of these lingams, Ozan began to produce elaborate “operas” to accompany his sculptures. Each of these operas—which were scripted and scored by Ozan and a team of collaborators, and then enacted by dozens of participants who rehearsed for several weeks beforehand—flirted with a variety of religiously and culturally embedded symbols. The first was entitled The Arrival of Empress Zoe and loosely merged thematics from both the Byzantine Empire and Dante’s Inferno. In 1997, Temple of Ishtar continued this tradition with a Mesopotamian “sacred marriage” motif, and in 1998, a Hindu theme was adopted for The Temple of Rudra. Although participation in the operas was theoretically open to all who committed to rehearsals in advance, a clear boundary between audience and performers was maintained. This conflicted with Burning Man’s primary ethos that one should be a participant, not a spectator, such that the operas became a topic of controversy among those who disliked being passive audience members in this context. Ozan responded by devising a way for some members of the audience to interact with the performances. Thus, for Le Mystere de Papa Loko in 1999—which adopted a Vodou theme—many audience members were guided into the performance space, where they passed through a “portal of life and death” between the structure’s two towers (Ozan and Fülling 1999). In order to research Vodou for this production, Ozan and a few of his associates traveled to Haiti, where they met a Vodou priestess and priest and wound up unexpectedly being guided by these individuals into a week-long initiation rite. One of these travelers wrote of his experience: “Once the ceremony began, I was immediately struck [by] the beauty of the songs, dance, and drumming. The sense of community was overwhelming. Seems to me that one of the most important aspects of Voodoo is that it is the glue that holds the community together. Everyone is connected. All are one. Kinda like Burning Man” (Twan 1999). The emphasis here is the writer’s own, and his description of this overwhelming sense of “community” seems to speak quite clearly of “communitas.” The similarity noted in his narrative between this encounter and his experience of Burning Man is also noteworthy. Taking their experiences in Haiti as inspirational fodder for that year’s “opera,” Ozan and his collaborator Christopher Fülling set about writing the script for Le Mystere de Papa Loko. They described the performance as a “rite of transformation” in which performers, or “devotees,” as they were referred to in the script, passed through three familiar stages (Ozan and Fülling 1999). The first was called the Requiem for Time, in which devotees were

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“taken out of the world of time, responsibility, and individuality.” The second stage was the Breach, described as a “liminal stage [in which] devotees are betwixt and between the positions assigned by life and society. This ambiguous state is likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to bisexuality and to darkness.” Finally, came the Ordeal: “In order to emerge from the liminal stage deprived of all information, the devotees rip off their clothes and throw them to the fire along with altars, flags and objects of adoration as their last step towards total liberation from the past and from their identities. They are reborn at the time of the origin of man, naked and bewildered ready to descend into their ancestral subconscious” (ibid.). With language and framework both unmistakably lifted from Turner’s work on liminality, tripartite rites of passage, and social dramas, Le Mystere de Papa Loko directly appropriated elements of this ritual theory into its structure, providing a particularly conspicuous example of the recursive mirroring of popular scholarly theories in this context.9

TURNER AND CULTURAL REFLEXIVITY The above examples have not been provided simply as evidence that Turner was either spot-on accurate or dead wrong in his assessment that ritual dynamics necessarily hold to some universal structure. Yet while an idealized or narrowly applied notion of communitas breaks down quickly here—as there is a lot more going for people emotionally, experientially, and conceptually in this event—there remains a clear and intriguing resonance to be untangled here. The first piece of the puzzle is that, on a metalevel, Turner was often writing more about his own cultural milieu than about the tribal African societies that were ostensibly his subject matter. Turner’s interpretations of indigenous rites were inseparably embedded in his own Western cultural worldviews, and thus at times inevitably imposed Western perspectives and frameworks onto the expressions and enactments of non-Western “others.” Furthermore, it is surely no coincidence that Turner was writing some of his most important work amid the turbulent social world of the 1960s and 1970s. While his data emerged primarily from his fieldwork with the Ndembu of Zambia, he also on occasion referred to pop-cultural themes of the day, such as “hippies” and “dharma bums,” as well as figures like Allen Ginsburg, Bob Dylan, and Malcolm X (Turner 1969: 113, 164, 1974: 168–169). These references are in turn reflected in his conceptualization of communitas as emanations of anti-authoritarian, antistructural, and subversive sites of free expression and love, an analogy that renders his theories particularly seductive.

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The extent to which Turner drew on the contemporary “social dramas” of his day reflects the extent to which his theories were reflexively in dialogue with the world around him. I believe that a primary reason he perceived the existence of “liminoid” events pervading numerous cultural and historical contexts was that he was deeply intellectually and emotionally engaged with these concepts. Thus, he began to see the processes of liminality and communitas in all the social phenomena he studied, from the contemporary hippie sub-culture to Catholicism and its history, and these events in turn influenced his theoretical conceptualizations.10 Ritual theorist Ronald Grimes, a one-time student of Turner, also noted this cultural reflexivity, stating “some would say Turner absorbed it from his students in the 1960s; others would say his students of the 1960s absorbed it from him. The truth is probably that the relations between culture and counterculture are circular, or systematic” (Grimes 1990: 21). From this perspective, it can been seen that both scholarly and popular constructions of ritual’s “inherent nature” or its capabilities are reflexively constructed in resonance with particular understandings, visions, and issues that are being negotiated within the cultures from which they emerge. The second piece of the puzzle was observed by another contemporary ritual theorist, Catherine Bell, who—in arguing that ritual is best understood as a category of analysis that has been specifically constructed, or “reified,” by Western scholars—noted that people are now looking ever more explicitly to ritual theorists like Turner for models by which to create “new” rituals, or what Grimes referred to broadly as “nascent ritualization” (1995: 60). As she stated: There are few ritual leaders and inventors these days who have not read something of the theories of Frazer, van Gennep, Eliade, Turner, or Geertz, either in an original or popularized form. Turner, in particular, by identifying a “ritual process” weaving its way through micro and macro social relations and symbol systems, has been the authority behind much American ritual invention. . . . For modern ritualists devising ecological liturgies, crafting new age harmonies, or drumming up a fire in the belly, the taken-for-granted authority to do these things and the accompanying conviction about their efficacy lie in the abstraction “ritual” that scholars have done so much to construct (Bell 1997: 263–264, emphasis added).

We saw this popular recourse to the authority of ritual theory most clearly with Ozan’s Papa Loko. Yet even where this appropriation is not made so explicit, Turner’s ideas appear to have subtly filtered into popular culture so that they not only serve as apt descriptions of Burning Man, but have also helped to define the context in which such an event has taken shape. For example, the phrase “rite of passage,” introduced by Arnold van Gen-

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nep back in 1908, now enjoys widespread use in the English vernacular. But in extending van Gennep’s initial insights—and, I strongly suspect, being generally more widely read in most college classrooms—Turner was almost certainly a primary force behind the popularization of this term. As Bell noted, Turner is not the only scholar whose theories have been popularized and adopted as models for ritualization. For example, Burning Man contains both implicit and explicit references to Eliadian concepts of sacred space and time. The Man itself can be perceived as an exemplar of Mircea Eliade’s (1959) axis mundi—a symbolic manifestation of the sacred center of the cosmos and the location of hierophany, the eruption of the sacred into the profane world. Here, the Man forms the axis around which time and space are fixed—time because the Burn is generally perceived as the festival’s climactic zenith, and space because the Man forms the event’s locus, around which streets are laid in concentric semicircles and in relation to which most of the other art is placed. In 2003, this longstanding correspondence was at last explicitly acknowledged when the Man’s central locale was labeled “axis mundi” on a Black Rock City map.11 Some of the correspondences between Burning Man and ritual theories are due in part to director Larry Harvey’s conscious efforts to imbue the event with both subtle and overt ritual intentionality. In this endeavor, he carefully designs “annual themes”—such as The Inferno (1996), The Wheel of Time (1999), The Floating World (2002), and Beyond Belief (2003)—for each iteration of the event. Ostensibly advanced in order to furnish some common ground for the event’s artistic expressions, Harvey draws upon various cultural and psychological theories in conceiving and articulating these themes. A highly intelligent and well-read individual, Harvey has named scholars such as Mircea Eliade, William James, and Heinz Kohut (among others) as special influences on his thinking about how to frame this festival from year to year. However, Harvey had not read Turner until two of Turner’s sons, Rory and Alex, actually contacted the Burning Man organization some years back in order to find out whether or not the festival had been in any way intentionally modeled after the elder Turner’s theories.12 Unfortunately, neither Harvey nor the Turners could recall further details of this encounter. But this story serves to underscore the ready association of this event with Turner’s most compelling ideas.

CONCLUSIONS Turner’s theories can be criticized for their tendency to universally ascribe qualities such as liminality or communitas to rites of passage or pilgrimages,

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and for giving insufficient attention to the ways in which these frameworks may—at various times and in various contexts—be inapplicable. Yet despite the importance of viewing it through a critical lens, Turner’s work remains seminal for the study of ritual and performance, as the existence of this volume demonstrates. In this regard, part of my project here has been to recover some of Turner’s fundamental insights by situating them within more nuanced contexts and discourses. Certainly, if one tries to apply many of his ideas in straightforward or universalistic ways, they rapidly break down as the complex and polyvocal reality of human cultural expression emerges. But clearly in Burning Man, the concepts of communitas and liminality are important aspects of the discourse—that is, they are among the qualities that participants most frequently reference in framing their experiences of this event—even as other, “competing” discourses are also at play. By tracing some of the elements of Burning Man that both reflect and trouble Turner’s theories, this chapter has sought to unpack both how and why Turner shows up in general and specific ways in this context. Because on a metalevel Turner was saying as much, if not more, about Western culture in general and popular “countercultures” in particular, his ideas often speak in visceral ways to those embedded in those contexts. Thus, even where the aspects of Burning Man that invite comparison to Turner’s theories have been unconsciously adopted, these scholarly frameworks aptly, reflexively, and dialogically help to explain some of the appeal and transformative power of this festival. Burning Man bears witness to the recursive absorption of ritual theory in contemporary quests to create unconventional or innovative rites that are ideologically positioned outside of more traditional religious contexts. In this regard, we can see that theories of religion, ritual, and culture not only reflect, but also shape our cultural conceptions of what “ritual” should be, thus serving to outline the context in which an event like Burning Man comes to life as an alternative to conventional religion.

NOTES 1. For other scholarly perspectives on Burning Man see Gilmore and Van Proyen (2005), and Gilmore (forthcoming). 2. Harvey credits his friend Jerry James, who withdrew after 1991, with cofounding Burning Man. A great deal more about the history of this festival can be found in Doherty (2004). 3. For more on the Cacophony Society, see http://www.cacophony.org; accessed 17 March 2005. 4. It is also worth noting that, despite the rejection of the term “religion,” the Burning Man organization does explicitly describe its mission as, in part, to

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“produce positive spiritual change in the world.” See http://www.burningman. com/whatisburningman/about_burningman/mission.html; accessed 15 April 2005. A minimal portion of Burning Man’s revenue derives from sales of products such as t-shirts and calendars, as well as a percentage of proceeds from independently produced books and videos. For more on the organization’s finances, see http://afterburn.burningman.com; accessed 30 January 2005. For analyses of Burning Man’s paradoxical relationship to the market see Kozinets (2002) and Kozinets and John Sherry (2005). The Black Rock Desert was declared a National Conservation Area in 2000, in part as a recognition of the historical value of these emigrant trails. See http://www .nv.blm.gov/Winnemucca/blackrock/NCA%20Act%20of%202000.pdf; accessed 20 February 2005. For a more in-depth analysis of Turner’s concepts of limen and communitas as modified by Foucault’s heterotopia, see Graham St John (2001). The Burning Man organization does make small number of low-cost “scholarship” tickets available. The introduction of this language into the script can be credited to Christopher Fülling, a professional opera singer and director who holds a BA in anthropology, and a MFA for which he studied with a former student of Richard Schechner, Mady Schutzman. Personal communication with Christopher Fülling, 27 March 2005. This likely accounts for a certain tendency toward circularity in some of his theoretical constructions—i.e., “these phenomena illustrate my theory of communitas because they exhibit features of communitas.” See http://www.burningman.com/themecamps_installations/bm03_theme.html; accessed 23 October 2003. Personal communication with Larry Harvey, 8 January 2005. Also personal communication with Rory Turner and Alex Turner, 22 March 2005.

REFERENCES Bell, Catherine. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brill, Louis. n.d. “The First Year in the Desert.” Available online at: http://www .burningman.com/whatisburningman/1986_1996/firstyears.html (accessed 15 April 2005). Doherty, Brian. 2004. This is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground. New York: Little, Brown and Co. Eade, John, and Michael Sallnow. eds. 1991. Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. London: Routledge. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

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Foucault, Michel. 1967. “Of Other Spaces.” Available online at: http://foucault.info/ documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html (accessed 15 April 2005). Gilmore, Lee. forthcoming. Theatre in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gilmore, Lee, and Mark Van Proyen. eds. 2005. AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Grimes, Ronald. 1990. Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. ———. 1995. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Hockett, Jeremy. 2004. “Reckoning Ritual and Counterculture in The Burning Man Community: Communication, Ethnography and the Self in Reflexive Modernism.” PhD diss., University of New Mexico. ———. 2005. “Participant Observation and the Study of Self: Burning Man as Ethnographic Experience.” In Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen, eds., AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man, pp 65–84. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Kozinets, Robert V. 2002. “Can Consumers Escape the Market?: Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man.” Journal of Consumer Research 29: 20–38. Kozinets, Robert V., and John F. Sherry. 2005. “Welcome to the Black Rock Café.” In Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen, eds., AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man, pp. 87–106. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Ozan, Pepe, and Christopher Fülling. 1999. “Le Mystere de Papa Loko.” Available online at: http://www.burningmanopera.org/opera99/script.html (accessed 15 April 2005). Pike, Sarah M. 2001. “Desert Goddesses and Apocalyptic Art: Making Sacred Space at the Burning Man Festival.” In Eric Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy, eds., God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, pp. 155–176. New York: Routledge. St John, Graham. 2001. “Alternative Cultural Heterotopia and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at ConFest.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 12, no. 1: 47–66. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Twan. 1999. “Mystical Journey.” Available online at: http://www.burningmanopera .org/history/opera_99/page_1/mystical/mystical.html (accessed 15 April 2005). van Gennep, Arnold. 1960 [1908]. The Rites of Passage. Transl. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chapter Eleven

“Shopping For a Self”: Pilgrimage, Identity-Formation, and Retail Therapy Carole M Cusack and Justine Digance

{ RELIGION TRANSFORMED: SECULARIZATION, INDIVIDUALISM, AND CONSUMER CAPITALISM Since the mid nineteenth century Western society has been characterized by rapid change that has significantly affected the understanding of self, society, and religion.1 Bruce (1998: 23–32) argues cogently that the process of secularization, whereby “sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols” (Berger 1967: 107), and the related rise of individualism have altered the religious context of the West by creating a marketplace where adherence or nonadherence depends on personal taste and inclination, rather than family or community allegiance. This is manifested in the declining influence of the Christian churches and the rise of new religious movements, particularly since the 1960s. These new religions will never achieve the numerical dominance and cultural centrality previously accorded to Christianity in the West, but they are significant because their continuing existence testifies to the power of the religio-spiritual consumer, who demands variety in available products. Secularization is still a somewhat problematic concept, as originally it was assumed that it would result in the inevitable decline of religion. If this was the case, the rise of the religious consumer presents something of a problem for the theorist of secularization. However, the concept is still use227

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ful if it is acknowledged that “much of what we usually mean by speaking of secularization has to do not with the disappearance of religion but its commodification, the ways in which churches have grown by participation in the market, or more specifically how religious influences established themselves in the forms of commercial culture that emerged in the nineteenth century” (Moore 1994: 5). Moore does not analyze the manifold interrelationships between this transformed religious context and consumer capitalism, but the work of other scholars, such as Loy, make explicit the role of economics as a secularized theology, with consumption as a form of salvation (Loy 2000: 18), delivering us from unhappiness and discontent. Loy therefore touches on the way in which the acquisition of consumables is understood to affect the Western individual’s identity. This theme has been articulated most powerfully by Zygmunt Bauman, who asserts that for contemporary Westerners, the dissolution of community and the dominance of consumer capitalism make consumption the “cognitive and moral focus of life, the integrative bond of society, and the focus of systemic management” (Bauman 1992: 49). People therefore think of themselves less as members of a particular family or holders of particular values, and more as wearers of certain logos and frequenters of certain restaurants, resorts, and other temples of consumption. This creates a more plastic sense of self, with identities being “more flexible, amenable to infinite reshaping according to mood, whim, desire and imagination” (Lyon 2002: 92). The centrality of the self to the contemporary spiritual quest is manifested in all varieties of religion and spirituality. Forms of Christianity that are vital and growing (chiefly Pentecostalism) stress personal experience, empowerment, and worldly success as signs of spiritual advancement and God’s favor. This sense of self is also found in secular contexts. Harold Coward observes: “[t]hose of us shaped by a modern Western upbringing and cultural context tend to experience our personal identity as created by being a chooser of options. This is the modern liberal concept of individuals as choosers. Our identity in a liberal society is a construct of the choices we make or fail to make. We see ourselves first and foremost as consumers or as constructors of options” (Coward 2000: 44). Within the New Age movement, this concentration on the choosing self results in the core concept that the primary religio-spiritual process is self-actualization, what Carl Jung called “individuation” (Tacey 2001: 188). The New Age therefore views life as a pilgrimage of self-discovery and self-fulfilment, albeit one that resembles a touristic journey (Heelas 1998) filled with diversions and entertainments. Advertising promotes the choosing self as the purchaser of products. Religion, like other lifestyle choices, “becomes a private leisure-time pursuit,” and money “is just spiritual energy” (Aldred 2002).

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Transcendent experiences may now occur in places quite outside traditional religious territory. Chidester (2000) nominated three aspects of American popular culture: baseball, Coca-Cola, and rock and roll music, as “secular” phenomena through which people experience the sacred via, respectively, ritual and the community, the commodity fetishism of a global icon, and the ecstatic salvation offered by music. This experience of the sacred in the everyday has been made possible by the uncoupling of the sacred and religion, formerly regarded as intrinsically linked. Demerath suggests that definitions of religion should be substantive, where definitions of “sacred” and “secular” should be functional. The result of this uncoupling is that “religion becomes only one possible—albeit one very important—source of the broadened conception of the sacred” (Demerath 2000: 4). These changes in the fundamental nature and perception of religion have posed problems for scholars, who struggle to reconcile the characteristics of modernity already discussed (change, consumption, pluralism, and individuality) with traditional religious concerns. Sophisticated arguments have been developed to explain how apparently profane activities may actually be sacred (Bauman 1995). There are two aspects of these arguments that are relevant here. The first is that the traditional religion of the West, Christianity, has also been transformed by secularization, individualism, and consumption, and has embraced things that it formerly rejected, such as marketing, material prosperity, and the pursuit of this-worldly fulfilment. Hoover’s study of the Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago is a case in point (Hoover 2000: 145–159). The second pertinent aspect is that there has been a blurring of the category “religion,” with what was formerly regarded as religious often taking place in nonreligious contexts, and what was formerly regarded as nonreligious being embraced by the religious marketplace. Among the former might be counted Christmas television specials, which are usually scarcely religious at all (Thompson 2000: 44–55). Chief among the latter is consumer behavior. As Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry observe, “[c]onsumption can become a vehicle of transcendent experience; that is, consumer behaviour exhibits certain aspects of the sacred” (1989: 2). This is a consequence of the uncoupling of religion and the sacred, discussed above.

TURNER’S RITUAL THEORY AND CONTEMPORARY WESTERN RELIGIO-SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY It is in this context that the theory of ritual developed by Victor Turner, and further adumbrated in collaboration with his wife Edith, retains vitality and

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relevance for the study of contemporary religio-spiritual ritual, particularly pilgrimage. Drawing on the pioneering work of Arnold van Gennep, Turner proposed that religious pilgrimage was a ritual fitting the typology of a “rite of passage,” where the pilgrim, when separated from his/her community, enters a liminal phase in which the sacred is experienced, and in which s/he participates in communitas, a special fellow-feeling that arises between groups of pilgrims (Turner 1972: 191–192). When reintegrated into the community, the pilgrim (like the initiate) manifests a changed status as a result of the ritual process. Turner further distinguished three types of communitas, which he designated existential or spontaneous, normative, and ideological (ibid.: 193–194). These are as follows: existential communitas, which happens spontaneously and generates emotional recognition of human fellowship; normative communitas, which develops over time and binds groups pursuing collective goals; and ideological communitas, which involves models or programs for instituting a perfected society (ibid.). Since the 1980s criticism of Turner’s analysis of rituals and pilgrimage has focused mainly on the essentializing tendencies of his model and its diminution of cultural particulars. Other critics questioned his assertion concerning the centrality of liminality to the ritual process. Liminality for Turner is a state that temporarily frees individuals from “the hierarchical secular roles and statuses which they bear in everyday life” (Eade and Sallnow 1991: 4). Eade and Sallnow claimed to find no evidence of this fluidity of roles during pilgrimages, rather detecting “the reinforcement of social boundaries and distinctions” (ibid.: 5). However, it could be argued that these were largely studies of traditional societies that were stable and fixed, and that Turner’s theory fits best with experiences within an individualistic, modern Western mentality and a social setting that is considerably less structured. Ronald Grimes has incisively argued that: “[e]specially important is Turner’s identification of sacrality with liminality and secularity with social structure. The two equations were consonant with some of the values of the 1960s and 1970s inasmuch as they reversed the earlier equation of sacrality with structure and secularity with transition. When sacrality came to be identified with liminality, a new view of ritual was possible” (Grimes 2000: 265). This is a crucial realization upon which an accurate interpretation of most disputed contemporary “religious” behavior can be founded. It also offers a way into the problem of whether change, consumption, pluralism, and individuality can be “religious,” given the Western traditional understanding of religion as changeless, eternally true and, institutional. It also rescues the modern West from being misunderstood as a society that has abandoned ritual; on the contrary, a rich variety of cultural performances can be identified.

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Liminality, thus understood, is the realm of the possible, rather than the certain. The openness of liminality means that activities where the possible is emphasized (such as tourism, shopping, and other varieties of cultural consumption) become the sites of spiritual experience (Cohen 1979). Turner further claimed that rituals were transformative; the individual was irrevocably changed by the experience (Turner and Turner 1978: 8–9). This resonates with the emphasis on self-transformation found in the postsecular West, where traditional Christianity, new religions, and quasireligious phenomena are all geared to the task of individuation. Where once-only initiation traditionally guaranteed a mature identity and place in society, the ongoing process of “shopping for a self” (Lyon 2002: 73–96) means that contemporary people, secularized but not desacralized, undergo initiatory ritual through consumption constantly, in mini-pilgrimages to the sites of potential transformation. Selves are acquired and discarded, and communitas, though fragmentary, is detectable in these patterns of consumption. This paper argues that Turnerian liminality is fundamental to understanding contemporary manifestations of the sacred, and also fundamental to modern Western self-understanding. The “plastic self” discussed above is essentially a liminal self, open to possibility and not fixed. There is evidence that Western people are more likely to assert that their “real” self is manifested in liminal states (such as backpacking in Asia or at dance parties and techno clubs) rather than in the structured zones of life, such as the workplace or the home. It is important to recognize that travel and recreational activities such as clubbing are consumables, and that relationships too have shifted from long-term to short-term. The limen, that experiential “realm of pure possibility,” is also congruent with the possibility inherent in consumption, now a major Western identity-formation process (Bauman 1992). Finally, the sacred experienced in contemporary Western culture may take various forms. Demerath (2000) argues that the sacred is always confirmatory or compensatory, marginal or institutional. This offers four possible scenarios: collective, integrative, quest, and counterculture. The sacred as collective most resembles traditional Christianity, an institutional version of confirmatory sacredness. The sacred as counterculture includes institutions that compensate, such as political and activist movements. The sacred as integrative is the marginal experience of compensatory sacredness, which he calls “that great array of rituals that bring individuals out of the cold and into the warm embrace of the social unit” (Demerath 2000: 5). Finally, the sacred as quest “involves compensatory marginality or attempts to seek new meanings and experiences for those who find the old inadequate” (ibid.). For this paper, the final two manifestations of the sacred are the most important, as isolated individuals experience communitas through shopping (rec-

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ognition of tribal identifiers, including logos on clothing and shopping bags, etc) and consumers regard shopping as a quest for contemporary answers to perennial problems (identity, the purpose of life), having rejected traditional solutions to these conundrums.

MALLS AND TEMPLES: WESTERN SHOPPING SHRINES The shift in Western culture caused by secularization, individualism, and consumerism has also changed the way that Westerners experience place and time. The local community has given way to the global economy, and regional distinctiveness has been weakened by the “spread of national and even global cultures (especially those that emanate from Hollywood and Disney World)” (Zukin 1991: 12). The rise of mall culture intensifies the ambiguities of place and time for the consumer; shopping malls, initially an American phenomenon, are now found throughout the world. Malls exist to sell products, and they rely on the inexhaustible human desire for transformation (Thorpe 1994: 26–28) to create the need for these consumables. As the shopping mall developed over time, it incorporated other cultural institutions, such as hotels, museums, and galleries, becoming a virtual world (Crawford 1992). Malls and theme parks, such as Disneyland, have much in common, as they collapse time and space, rendering all times and places consumable. Lyon notes that “[if] nostalgia can be generated and tourism stimulated, then history can be created, customized, and consumed” (Lyon 2002: 125). The rise of mall culture has facilitated shopping as an identity-constructing activity. There are clear links between Turnerian liminality, which leads to transformation, and the characterization of consumption as the pleasurable realm in which new selves can be “tried on” (Lyon 2002: 79–80). Shopping and other financial locations have become liminal spaces (Zukin 1991: 41), and there is intense competition to attract customers by both the creation of a distinctive shopping environment and “[a]n emphasis on individualized products that can be identified with individual cultural producers” (Zukin 1991: 45). This “branding” (Klein 2000) creates a relationship between consumers and commodities that “is as transcendent as religious faith: non-rational but authentic, passionate, real” (Dee 2004). The liminality of shopping complexes and their relationship to the attenuation of history in the West is reinforced by the fact that such complexes often involve “the redevelopment of a historically significant building situated in a depressed urban area” (Reekie 1992: 179). In the study of contemporary pilgrimage, the notion of shopping as a religio-spiritual activity is rarely canvassed. Sense of place, consecration of

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the site by the use of ritual, and a journey or visit that is redolent with meaning are examples of indications of what Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry (1989) describe as “consumption sacredness.” Malls are deliberately constructed as sacred liminal spaces, contrasted with the profane spaces of everyday life. This is particularly true since the introduction of the enclosed shopping mall, with “suspended space, time and weather” (Crawford 1992: 16). For medieval Christians entry into the cathedral offered a prefiguring of heaven, in that it was sealed off from the dirt, smells, and poverty of everyday life and its beauty was more powerful due to this contrast (Frayling 1995). Because the mall exists to sell goods, its design exists to “control the flow of consumers” in “orderly processions” (Crawford 1992: 13–14) recalling the labyrinth of Chartres cathedral, which the faithful walked to obtain spiritual merit (Swaan 1984: 89, 128). In destinations of traditional religious pilgrimage, place is consecrated by history, institutional authentication, the sense of participation with those who have gone before, and the association of the site with holy people or sacred events. For those within the religion, the shrine constitutes a “center” in the Turnerian sense (Turner 1972). In the secularized West, ephemeral “elective centers” arise in the attempt to recenter the world (Cohen, Ben-Yahuda, and Aviad 1987: 323–324). Here the transformative potential of consumption pilgrimage is explored in the context of the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) in central Sydney, Australia, which is a powerful elective center for shopping pilgrims. In terms of the previous discussion, it is a redeveloped heritage building that had been derelict, and a cathedral-like quasisacred space, its separation from the everyday pronounced by the slogan found on its glossy brochures, “A Beautiful Way to Shop.”

THE QUEEN VICTORIA BUILDING AS A SACRED SITE FOR SHOPPING PILGRIMAGE Certain world cities have achieved iconic “honey pot” status as tourist attractions: New York, London, and Rome spring to mind. Since the 2000 Olympic Games Sydney has joined this elite list of cities that tourists flock to in order to feed on their mix of tourist attractions, the most recent accolade coming via the readers of America’s biggest-selling travel magazine Travel and Leisure, which rated Sydney as the world’s top city for the third year in a row (Benns 2004: 43). Tourism NSW’s most recent marketing campaign reinforces this notion under the banner of “Sydney – a World Class City.” Since World War II and the rise of mass tourism, shopping has joined the ranks of “must see and do” tourist activities in cities such as Sydney, New York, and London.

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The Queen Victoria Building (QVB) is a heritage-listed Waverley sandstone landmark occupying an entire city block (190 m long and 30 m wide) in the center of Sydney, situated opposite the city’s ornate Town Hall. It is an enclosed shopping mall with galleried arcades and walkways, a glass room engendering a sense of openness, particularly on the third-floor, high-end retail precinct. Originally designed as a fresh produce market spread over four levels, it is constructed in the American Romanesque style noted for its use of large columns, triple sub-arches, and stained glass wheel windows. The crowning glory is the roof with its large central cupola, surrounded by “pavilions or towers, surmounted by small domes, the intervening lengths of the fronts being relieved by small sub-towers capped by metal domes” (Sydney City Council website 16 July 2004). Both externally and internally (particularly under the central dome, where diffused light streams in through tinted green and purple windows) the building engenders a cathedral-like atmosphere around the mundane, commercial activities taking place within its walls. As is true of places of worship, to enter the mall is to be cocooned from the secular, sullied hubbub outside; it offers a zone for “time out” to romantically indulge one’s fantasies whilst seeking another, higher Self. As Campbell notes, there is a close relationship between romanticism and consumption, with romanticism viewing the individual as a self “liberated through experiences and strong feelings” rather than as a character “constructed painfully out of the unpromising raw material of original sin” (Campbell 1983: 286). Designed by George McRae and constructed between 1893 and 1898 (Stirling 1998: 28), the fortunes of the building waxed and waned, and by the 1960s its owner, the Sydney City Council (SCC), was faced with the dilemma of what do to with it, as much of the building stood empty, serving as a depository for SCC records. Many called for it to be demolished and replaced with a civic square, but after much public debate the council approved Ipoh Garden Berhad as the successful tenderer to fully restore the site as a shopping center. Opened to the public in November 1986, the building now draws over thirty million visitors annually (pers. comm. John Klein). Before the QVB is discussed as a secular pilgrimage site, a few additional points should be noted. First, the entire site has over 200 shops (including over twenty eateries) on its four levels, which offer a range of diverse shopping experiences. The underground level serves as a busy commuter concourse from Town Hall station to other nearby shopping precincts, and in 2000 the basement opened, after standing empty for sixty-six years, as a popular homewares store. In its role as a shopping pilgrimage site, Ipoh’s publications claim that “[t]he QVB seems to be able to meet any need—mind

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or body” and promise that shoppers will, through their patronage of the QVB, experience “something extra [that] attracts the rich and famous” (Stirling 1998: 81). Besides shopping, the three above-ground levels offer an eclectic mix of attractions (largely tourist oriented), with the Royal Clock on Level Two drawing more than two million visitors annually (QVB website 16 July 2004). Because the QVB is a heritage-listed historic building and has largely been restored to its original design (including intricate tiled floors, but with the addition of twentieth-century escalators), it has limited functionality. Like many similar buildings around the world that were designed and constructed with different means and ends, the owners, lessees, and tenants daily face logistical challenges in doing business in the twenty-first century. Even the most minor of structural changes to the building must all be done with SCC approval. This is interesting in terms of recent research on urban renewal, particularly in the United States. The lavishness of the QVB restoration is everywhere in evidence, and Zukin has suggested that: “[i]n the new era of capital investment in the center, downtown emerges as a key liminal space. Institutionally, its redevelopment straddles public and private power. Visually the redevelopment process eliminates or incorporates the segmented vernacular into a landscape of power . . . Downtown mediates the social transformation initiated by capital flows and public policy” (Zukin 1991: 195). The liminal transformation of derelict urban landscapes into glittering temples of consumption can be read as an externalization of the internal transformation modern Westerners long for. It is no accident that heritage and restoration are perceived as middle-class in orientation. It is affluent, educated people whose self-needs drive the spiritual agenda of contemporary society, and whose desires for their environs drive the heritage and marketing agenda of their cities. Time and space compression are liminal experiences in postmodern revitalized heritage sites such as the QVB. Shoppers are betwixt and between the two worlds: the Victorian ambience is recreated to imitate another era, but without sacrificing the advancement of hedonic consumption activity. Finally, Sydney’s battle to save the QVB in the latter part of the twentieth century means that the majority of its four and a half million residents have a strong sense of ownership of this building. This sense of ownership is important because the civic hubris invested emotionally in the site explains why some locals consider it to be a secular pilgrimage site, and why there is an aversion to any form of change even though it might be considered “progress.”

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THE SCHOOL FORMAL FASHION PARADES AND SHOPPING PILGRIMAGE: FIELDWORK AT QVB, JULY 2004 As noted in the preceding discussion, consumption and consumerism is a new mode of spirituality and could even be described as the paradigmatic postmodern religious activity, as well as the primary cultural performance for Westerners. If this is accepted, then shopping centers such as the QVB are indeed the cathedrals of consumption. Both writers attended the QVB’s annual Formal Fashion Spectacular on the weekend of 24/25 July 2004. The methodology underpinning our research was qualitative, including interviews with center management, selected retailers, and customer service officers as well as participant observation throughout the site in late July 2004. The Visitor Book entries from October 2002 to November 2003 were also accessed, and center management made available two recent market survey reports. It is important to position QVB’s unique appeal as a center of consumption sacredness. Its cathedral-like interior and historic status set it apart from newer shopping centers, and the museum-like collection of attractions exhibits the blurring of time and place discussed above. Some attractions are historically verifiable, such as the Jade Carriage, but others are what Brown calls “genuine fakes” (for example, the replicas of the Crown Jewels and the chimes of the Royal Clock). He suggests that the “genuine fake is not just the object itself but the relationship between visitors and presenters which the object mediates” (Brown 1996: 33-34), and that such fakes “arouse deep and genuine feelings” (Brown 1996: 33). The core importance of genuine fakes is that they reinforce authenticity, rather than detract from it, and authenticity is the source of the QVB’s strong appeal: Sydney people resist the idea of changing the site, imparting a ritual quality to visits. The site has been “consecrated” and there is great investment in maintaining the authenticity of the QVB. These attitudes link to the nostalgia evidenced in Visitor Book entries and the self-consciously “British Empire” attractions. As one visitor from San Jose (USA) reflected in the QVB’s Visitor Book on 25 October 2002, “We have malls: you have one with class”; thus the QVB symbolizes Sydney’s world-city status of economic meritocracy, where society’s ability to accumulate wealth is a much prized achievement (de Botton 2004). The Formal Fashion Spectacular (targeted at high school leavers in the fifteen to eighteen age group) was staged in the Tea Room, which occupies the uppermost corner on the third aboveground level of the building. Formerly the Concert Hall, which during the 1917 renovations was sliced in two to become the City Library (Shaw 1987), it has been restored to its former glory, complete with 15 meter-high Victorian pressed metal ceilings. The Tea Room is open to the public for morning and afternoon teas and lunches,

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and is also used for special functions. There were four free parades per day on Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 July 2004, the room swathed in white drapes to transform the restaurant into a theater-style auditorium. The audience for this special event was comprised chiefly of teenage girls and their mothers, with a smattering of boyfriends and fathers, from Sydney and regional New South Wales. The atmosphere of glamor was heady, and the girls’ yearning for the perfect dress, shoes, jewelry, makeup, and partner to transform them into Cinderella for their school formal night was palpable. Those attending the event were made to feel special and privileged; preregistration was mandatory, with many being turned away weeks before the event. Whilst corralled outside the Tea Room, cordoned off from other visitors by a scarlet rope, a strolling classical violinist soothed their wait time, situating the parades in a time and place apart. In this special atmosphere everything was presented as an achievement for the girls: queuing for tickets, completing more than a decade of primary and secondary schooling, and the school formal itself. QVB also offered door prizes and $50 gift vouchers for each girl who spent a minimum of $300 on fashion, jewelry, and accessories with QVB retailers before 31 August 2004. The “hostess” for the parades was Chloe Maxwell, a minor celebrity in her twenties who was both glamorous and famous enough to excite the girls and pique their envy, yet close enough to them to provide a role model with whom they could identify. School formal nights are ritualistic ceremonies that function as rites of passage from secondary school to either undertaking matriculation studies, or exiting to the employment marke. Coming to the parade signified to those attending that the time was nigh for this transitional, transformative stage in life’s journey: liminal time had already begun when they entered the QVB, and attending the Formal Fashion Spectacular represented an important step. For the QVB, the girls represent the future, and what is promised in the romantic atmosphere of the Tea Room is a relationship between each girl as consumer and seeker, and the QVB as shopping destination capable of fulfilling their dreams. The event is a pilgrimage for all, although those coming from farther afield were more excited by being at the sacred site, which many had not visited before or had been to only on special occasions. One journalist covering the event saw it as yet another rite of passage, describing it as the new teen wedding, where “retailers (are) cashing in on the one rite of passage guaranteed to the modern schoolgirl” (Byrnes 2004). That is was held on the upper level also suggested that attending the event fulfilled a self-actualization need akin to the fifth and final level of Maslow’s much vaunted hierarchy of needs (Maslow 1954). Press coverage around the time of the QVB parades included those formals that had already occurred,

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and the transformatory and ritualistic nature of the event was clearly revealed. “Mothers go all-out for their daughters, each according to her means. Some hire personal stylists, others fly their girls interstate to buy the gown no-one else will have. Anything to ensure ‘impact arrival’ for their princesses” (Laurie 2004: 16).

A TURNERIAN ANALYSIS OF THE QVB FORMAL FASHION SPECTACULAR As has been argued, the Turnerian conception of ritual in general (and specifically pilgrimage) is that it is a process involving a transitional liminal stage. The net result of going on pilgrimage, for the pilgrim, is self-discovery, fulfilment, and self-transformation (Turner 1972). Contemporary expressions of religion and spirituality in the West have been radically transformed by the process of secularization, the growth of individualism, and the allpervasive culture of consumption that characterizes the present era, which is sometimes designated “postmodern.” This is well expressed by Heelas: “[R]ather than authority and legitimacy resting with established orders of knowledge, authority comes to rest with the person. . . . The process is of individualisation. It involves, among other things, the decline of the institutional determination of life choices, and instead the reflexive reconstruction of identity” (1998: 4–5). Thus, it seems reasonable to amplify Grimes (2000) in arguing that liminality survives as Turner’s greatest contribution to the theory of ritual, in that the contemporary West now lives in flux and change rather than stability, and liminality and self-transformation are thus constant processes, rather than once-only or rarely experienced conditions. The girls attending the QVB’s Formal Fashion Spectacular are implicated in this, as their youth indicates that they are still experimenting with identity formation. The heritage and retail aspects of the QVB configure it as a sacred site, and the promise of transformation (in the manner of Cinderella and other fairy tales) is present in the gowns, jewelry, shoes, and beauty treatments that they can purchase. School formals are rituals that act as rites of passage, and there is a perception that each girl needs to successfully complete this ritual for the sake of her future opportunities. Moreover, it is a ritual in which generations have participated, so that as they outfit their children, the parents recall the dreams they themselves has as they entered adulthood. The QVB has tapped into a rich seam of life experience with the Formal Fashion Spectacular, while also consolidating a consumer experience. For the girls, communitas is manifested

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in a number of forms: their comradeship in the audience of each parade is an example of spontaneous communitas, but normative communitas (which, as noted earlier, develops over time and binds groups pursuing collective goals) will unite them over time as they shop for selves throughout their adulthood, confirming Bauman’s contention that consumption is now the basic social relationship and participation in wider society (Bauman 1992). Finally, ideological communitas offers these young, fledgling, consumers of products, ideas, and spiritualities the model of a perfected “Self” which is the aim of all contemporary seekers, of whose “individuation” Jung spoke. As the preceding analysis has demonstrated, this aim represents a spiritual goal for the majority of Westerners, and the experience of the sacred, detached from institutional religion, is a strong part of the process. The perfected Self is a dream of Cinderella, not for one night, as is the case with the school formal, but forever. That it is a chimera is of no consequence; it will be the Holy Grail quested for throughout their lives, and consumption the performance through which the quest is manifested.

NOTE 1. The writers would like to thank the staff of QVB Centre Management (particularly John Klein and Katrina Seeto) and selected retailers without whose assistance this research would not have been possible.

REFERENCES Aldred, Lisa. 2002. “‘Money is Just Spiritual Energy’: Incorporating the New Age.” Journal of Popular Culture 35, no. 4: 61–74. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge. ———. 1995. Life in Fragments. Oxford and New York: Blackwell. Belk, Russell, Melanie Wallendorf, and John F. Sherry, Jr. 1989. “The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behaviour: Theodicy on the Odyssey.” Journal of Consumer Research 16, no. 1: 1–38. Benns, Matthew. 2004. “Americans Vote Sydney World’s Best – Again.” The SunHerald, Sunday 25 July, 43. Berger, Peter. 1967. The Social Reality of Religion. London: Faber and Faber. Brown, David. 1996. “Genuine Fakes.” In T. Selwyn, ed., The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, pp. 33–48. Chichester: Wiley. Bruce, Steve. 1998. “Cathedrals to Cults: The Evolving Forms of the Religious Life.” In Paul Heelas, ed., Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, pp. 1–32. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Byrnes, Holly. 2004. “Why the School Formal is the New Teen wedding.” The SunHerald, Sunday 25 July, 3. Campbell, Colin. 1983. “Romanticism and the Consumer Ethic: Intimations of a Weber-style Thesis.” Sociological Analysis 44, no. 4: 279–295. Chidester, David. 2000. “The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock’n’Roll.” In Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan, eds., Religion and Popular Culture in America, pp. 213–231. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Coward, Harold. 2000. “Self as Individual and Collective: Ethical Implications.” In Harold Coward and Daniel C. Maguire, eds., Visions of a New Earth: Religious Perspectives on Population, Consumption, and Ecology. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cohen, Erik. 1979. “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences.” Sociology 13: 179–201. Cohen, Erik, Ben-Yehuda, Nachman, and Aviad, Janet. 1987. “Recentering the World: The Quest for Elective Centers in a Secularized Universe.” Sociological Review 35, no. 2: 320–346. Crawford, Margaret. 1992. “The World in a Shopping Mall.” In Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, 181–203. New York: Hill and Wang. de Botton, Alain. 2004. Status Anxiety. Camberwell, Vic.: Hamish Hamilton. Dee, Liam. 2004. “Perspective.” ABC Radio National, 25 May. Transcript online at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/perspective/stories/s1114823.html. Demerath, N. J. 2000. “The Varieties of Sacred Experience: Finding the Sacred in a Secular Grove.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39, no. 1: 1–11. Eade, John and Michael Sallnow. 1991. “Introduction.” In John Eade and Michael Sallnow, eds., Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. London and New York: Routledge. Frayling, Christopher. 1995. Strange Landscape: A Journey Through the Middle Ages. London: BBC Books. Grimes, Ronald L. 2000. “Ritual.” In Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, eds., Guide to the Study of Religion. London and New York: Cassell. Heelas, Paul. 1998. “Introduction: On Differentiation and Dedifferentiation.” In Paul Heelas, ed., Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, pp. 1–18. Oxford: Blackwell. Hoover, Stewart M. 2000. “The Cross at Willow Creek: Seeker Religion and the Contemporary Marketplace.” In Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan, eds., Religion and Popular Culture in America, pp. 145–159. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Klein, Naomi. 2000. No Logo. New York: St Martin’s Press. Laurie, Victoria. 2004. “Tamara and Louise Go To The Ball.” Weekend Australian Magazine, 17–18 July, 16–19. Loy, David. 2000. “The Religion of the Market.” In Harold Coward and Daniel C. Maguire, eds., Visions of a New Earth: Religious Perspectives on Population, Consumption, and Ecology. Albany: State University of New York Press. Lyon, David. 2002 [2000]. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Oxford: Polity.

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Maslow, A. 1954. Motivation and Personality. New York: McGraw Hill. Moore, R. Laurence. 1994. Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Queen Victoria Building Website: http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/hs_hb_queen _victoria_building.asp. Reekie, Gail. 1992. “Change in the Adamless Eden: The Spatial and Sexual Transformation of a Brisbane Department Store 1930–90.” In R. Shields, ed., Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption, pp. 170–194. London and New York: Routledge. Shaw, John. 1987. The Queen Victoria Building 1898–1986. Sydney: Wellington Lane Press. Stirling, Suzanne. 1998. QVB: An Improbable Story. Sydney: IPOH Ltd (with Helen Ivory). Swaan, Wim. 1984 [1969]. The Gothic Cathedral. London: Omega Books Ltd. Tacey, David. 2001. Jung and the New Age. Hove and Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge. Thompson, Robert J. 2000. “Consecrating Consumer Culture: Christmas Television Specials.” In , Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan, eds., Religion and Popular Culture in America, pp. 44–55. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Thorpe, Doug. 1994. “The Mall of America.” Parabola (Summer): 25–29. Turner, Victor. 1972. “The Centre Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal.” History of Religions 12, no. 3: 191–230. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Zukin, Sharon. 1991. Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press.

Chapter Twelve

Turner Meets Gandhi: Pilgrimage, Ritual, and the Diffusion of Nonviolent Direct Action Sean Scalmer

{ Protests cross national boundaries. Campaigns often gain fresh recruits in foreign lands. Causes are joined, tactics borrowed, symbols recycled, alliances fashioned, and new methods applied. This is a venerable process. The diffusion of collective action extends back several centuries. It shaped the language of “revolution,” the technology of the barricade, and the ferment of 1848. It brought Marxism to Russia and Leninism to the world. In the contemporary period, global diffusion happens with particular frequency and ease (Meyer and Tarrow 1998: 11). Over the last few years, the anticapitalists of Seattle have inspired their comrades in Prague, Genoa, and Melbourne; “human shields” have travelled to Baghdad from four continents; wharfies in Sydney have helped dockers in Liverpool; and the “global day of action” has become the most familiar routine. Today, the export of protest often passes without comment. But how does it happen? How does diffusion unfold? This question has long been ignored. Traditionally, students of social movements focused on the development of collective performances (rather than on their circulation). Early attempts to understand diffusion treated it as a simple reflection of “appropriateness” and political utility (Tarrow 1998: 103). Those who dug a little deeper thought that it followed from the direct 242

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experience of activists (Traugott 1995), or that it was only possible when the “transmitter” and “adopter” of a new performance were structurally alike (Strang and Meyer 1993). Recently, this view has been complicated. A new perspective suggests that diffusion rests upon two further processes. First, a political technique must be translated (Scalmer 2000). An unfamiliar and foreign behavior must become comprehensible by being restated in the local idiom (McAdam 1995; Snow and Benford 1999). Translators in their attempts to rephrase the language of protest, foster a sense of kinship and identification across national boundaries. Their work makes the alien familiar and thereby the unknown possible. Second, foreign political techniques are not simply copied: they are actually reinvented (Chabot 2000). Local campaigners tinker and experiment with the tools that they have taken from overseas (Scalmer 2002a). As they improvise with the elements of a new performance and remake its political rhythms, discoveries invariably occur. Therefore, diffusion is never imitation. It is a creative, difficult, and exploratory act. But if these processes are central to diffusion, then this centrality only raises further questions. Among them: How, precisely, are “translation” and “reinvention” organized and performed? Where do “translators” come from? What prepares them for their work? When does “reinvention” begin: and what makes it possible? So far, these questions have not been answered. There are few detailed studies of “translation,” and none of “reinvention.” This chapter offers a response. It presents a detailed study of the diffusion of Gandhian Satyagraha (or nonviolent direct action) from India to Britain.1 The indebtedness of the British pacifist movement to Gandhi has perhaps been overshadowed by residual Eurocentrism, or by a preoccupation with the Gandhian antecedents of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the African-American movement for civil rights. British actions also deserve attention. Beginning with Harold Steele’s 1957 attempt to disrupt nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean, British pacifists gained international celebrity with their adoption of “direct action” techniques against nuclear weaponry. In 1958 the Easter march to the Aldermaston nuclear reactor helped give birth to a distinctive “New Left” (Kenny 1995). By 1960 the Committee of 100 was using civil disobedience in central London, and thereby helping to create a new era of “independent social protest” (Hanagan 1999: 25). Together, these activists developed a different kind of social movement for the West: theatrical, nonviolent, network-based, outside of the party system. Although they eventually attracted a broad following, these campaigners were initially led by a group of pacifists directly inspired by Gandhi’s example. Both key participants and subsequent histories have emphasized the importance of

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Gandhi’s distinctive methods and career (Brock and Young 1999; Randle 1987; Taylor and Ward 1983). Clearly, this is a case of “global diffusion” that had important long-term consequences. The circulation of Gandhism to Britain opens a valuable window on the roots of contemporary political activism. However, my intent is not simply to learn about this particular diffusion. It is also to develop a deeper understanding of the forces that shape “translation” and “reinvention” in other contexts. To this end, I draw upon the writings of Victor Turner in some detail. Briefly, I suggest that Turner’s ideas around “pilgrimage” offer important insights into the nature of diffusion. Translation is often the work of pilgrims. Reinvention relies upon the unity gained through public ritual. Understanding these activities therefore helps us to understand the wider process of “global diffusion.” Turner’s work illuminates many of the mysteries that have plagued students of contemporary social movements over the last decade or so. When Turner meets Gandhi, we gain a fuller comprehension of the dynamics of recent political protest.

TRANSLATION, TURNER, AND THE PILGRIM What was happening in India? What was Gandhi doing? The censorship of Indian newspapers made it difficult for Westerners to find out (Hobhouse 1941). Gandhi’s own writings offered one important source (Brailsford 1951), and his public appearances in Britain another (n.a. 1931a). Both were insufficient. Western audiences were often unconvinced by Gandhi’s oratorical style (e.g., n.a. 1931b), and his publications were sometimes hard to locate (n.a. 1942). In 1946 one British pacifist surveyed the local situation: Gandhi’s autobiography and central writings had been read by “surprisingly few”; key commentaries were out of print or had “curiously little impact”; Gandhi’s newspaper, Harijan, could be considered only a “negligible” influence. In sum: “To say that Gandhi is available in English is an overstatement. . . . The British pacifist movement has no deep insight into the Gandhian approach; it has made no systematic study of his actual campaigns, and still less has it understood the thought and vision that inspired them” (Walker 1946: 747– 748). Not surprisingly, when Gandhi’s example was contemplated during these years, it was invariably misquoted or misunderstood. As Richard Fox has recently argued, Gandhian protest was typically mistranslated through either the distorting lens of “Orientialist hyper-difference” or the shallow framework of “Western over-likeness” (Fox 1997). “Hyper-difference” posited a great gulf between the Indian and the British. It suggested that the differences between the Mahatma and John Bull

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were so substantial that a British version of Satyagraha would be frankly impossible. This version of Gandhism which drew upon a wealth of “orientalist’ images, was most associated with the translation of Gandhi’s critics. According to such an account, Gandhi was a representative of “Oriential reaction” (MacInnes 1925: 124) whose personality was “framed to baffle the Western mind” (n.a. 1922: 746). Gandhi’s methods were based on the “the mystic faith of the East” (Fuller 1931: 174) or the “instinctive Buddhism of the East” (n.a. 1921: 670). They expressed the primacy of “feeling and the emotions.” The British were different, because their political system was apparently based on “reason” (Bolton 1934: 15). As a result, they had nothing to learn from this “strange little brown man” (Fisher 1932).2 Conversely, “over-likeness” exaggerated the commonalities between the Indian and the British. This kind of translation was most associated with co-campaigners, who were anxious to build support for the struggle of Indians but not deeply informed about its precise characteristics. This rendering emphasized Gandhi’s status as a religious figure, presenting him as a “great saint” (Jameson 1950: 5), perhaps the “Greatest Christian today” (n.a. 1937a: 3). His lessons embodied “the spirit of Christ” (S. Jones 1948: 12); his approach represented “the method of the Cross” (Hoyland 1950: 3), or “the New Testament method against evil” (Hoyland 1952: 7). Put simply, Satyagraha was a “Christian thing” (Hoyland 1931: 111). Understood in these terms, Gandhi’s techniques lost their distinctiveness. They offered nothing more than the simple message of the carpenter from Galilee. As a result, there was no need to contemplate their direct application in Britain. Christian pacifists were already tilling this ground. In this environment, how could Gandhi’s words ever be heard or understood? Here, “pilgrims” played a role. Pilgrims were students of Gandhi’s distinctive practice. They traveled to India, sought an audience with the Mahatma, sat at his feet, conversed, gained instruction, stayed, learned, sometimes befriended him, pondered, and tried to understand. Often, they wrote of their experiences. From the United States came African-American leaders like Howard Thurman; from Australia, A. B. Piddington. British visitors who wrote of their journeys included J. C. Wigham, Lionel Fielden, Edmund Harvey, Muriel Lester, Kim Christian, Horace Alexander, Reginald Reynolds, and many more. The process continued after Gandhi’s death, extending to important memorial gatherings at his ashram, such as the World Pacifist Meeting of 1949. What made these visitors “pilgrims”? Victor and Edith Turner have described the defining elements of this activity within the Christian tradition: “A pilgrim is one who divests himself of the mundane concomitants of religion—which become entangled with its practice in the local situation—to

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confront, in a special “far” milieu, the basic elements and structures of his faith in their unshielded, virgin radiance” (Turner and Turner 1978: 15). The pilgrim quests for religious enlightenment. The full lineaments of pilgrimage are outlined in other parts of Victor Turner’s oeuvre. First, pilgrimage is a voluntary act, a deliberate choice (Turner 1979: 129, 1974: 177). Second, it is a liminoid or “quasi-liminal” state, betwixt-and-between routine social interaction (Turner and Turner 1978: 253). The pilgrim crosses a threshold and leaves behind the structures of conventional life. The thrill of movement opens a new world: playful, experimental, fragmentary, and subversive. Ordinary rules do not apply (Turner 1979: 115–116, 132). Third, the pilgrimage is marked by an experience of “communitas.” This is a feeling of kinship and equality with others, laced with lowliness, sacredness, homogeneity, and comradeship (Turner and Turner 1978: 250). Pilgrims reject the complex hierarchies of their previous social lives and greet each other as simple equals (Turner 1979: 122). Finally, the journey changes the pilgrim. The act of pilgrimage gives the devotee a special status in the world of religion: “It is true that the pilgrim returns to his former mundane existence, but it is commonly believed that he has made a spiritual step forward” (Turner and Turner 1978: 15). Turner’s account maps the adventures of the Gandhians of Britain. Their journeys were voluntary. Ordinary pacifists were already a marginal presence in the United Kingdom. Enthusiasts for Gandhi’s treasonous and mysterious politics were even more eccentric. The middle-class of the 1930s still toured the colonies, but the children of Kensington and Hampstead did not stop at the Sabarmati ashram. Gandhi’s devotees made an independent and difficult decision that isolated them. This was a free choice. Their pilgrimage expressed a hunger to understand, like Labour M.P. Wilfred Wellock’s: Every few weeks I sent to Indian publishers for parcels of books. In one of these parcels was a badly-printed pamphlet on very cheap paper, entitled “Indian Home Rule,” by Gandhi. The cost was a few coppers. I read it greedily. I still have it, marked on almost every page. I knew at once that I had discovered a seer and a prophet, and set out to learn all I could about him. From that time, I have followed Gandhi’s comings and goings. I have corresponded with him and several times conversed with him, in order to discover the essence of his transformed being. (Wellock 1948: 2)

What did they discover, upon their arrival in far-flung India? For many visitors, this country’s “violent” contrasts of colour, politics, race, religion, and history could overwhelm (Brittain 1951: 261). Gandhi’s disciples made their way to an ashram in the center of this land. In the 1940s, this was Seva-

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gram (the village of service) in Wardha, seven miles along a dusty road from the nearest train station (Raman 1943: 3). For the prim Westerner, the ashram was a magical and contradictory space. Even the India Office conceded that it was off-limits: “holy ground” (Tottenham 1942: 49). Here, Europeans were rare, and privacy nonexistent (Reynolds 1951: 2, 18–19). The preeminence of Western politics was questioned, and its key actors unknown (Lester 1931: 25). Liberalism was challenged; religion and politics commingled. An austere discipline regulated the day (Skaria 2002). The ashram combined living, training, propaganda, and action (Wellock 1952: 10). Tweedy intellectuals learned to spin and weave (Reynolds 1951: 7). Greenwich time did not apply. For those who had made the journey, a threshold had been crossed. A new world beckoned. Living in the ashram opened the pilgrim to friendship and fellowfeeling. Horace Alexander remembered “close sympathy” and “delighted” greetings at Sevagram (Alexander 1928: 372). Muriel Lester recalled ardent questions and Gandhi’s warm face, glowing with “delight” (Lester 1931: 54). Friendships developed (M. Jones 1947a, 1947b). Differences melted away; everywhere, new similarities with the people of India were discovered. This thrilling emergence of communitas is most fully relayed in the words of the Quaker and socialist Reginald Reynolds. Already an intimate of Gandhi in the 1930s (when he acted as an emissary for the Mahatma), Reynolds returned to India in 1949. This time, he journeyed on the Indian liner Jal Azad with thirteen other delegates to the World Pacifist Meeting. Reynolds remembers this pilgrimage as a journey of sharing. As the Jal Azad cut through the ocean, excited travelers began to share their personal experiences. At first, this was intimate and irregular. Soon, however, forty people were gathering every night to listen and narrate: “The Talks”, as they came to be called, were given in English; but it soon came to light that a young Punjabi was giving translation of what was said to about a dozen others. . . Our speakers did not talk theoretical pacifism, but discussed their work and their personal experiences. They invited questions, and invariably had so many that the meetings were only broken up by the supper bell. (Reynolds, 1951: 102)

Reynolds’ diary continues the story, noting that as the evenings passed, so old social barriers and rules began to drop away: Slowly, too, as the group—roughly the same nucleus every evening—becomes more coherent, the character of “The Talks” themselves is changing. Those who were at first silent listeners are now active participants, and this evening we dispensed with any prearranged speaker or speakers. (Reynolds 1951: 102–103)

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Finally, a sense of comradeship and closeness began to prevail. The pilgrimage brought a new unity. Human sympathy and closeness seemed to overflow: Among the fourteen delegates there is a great sense of exhilaration – a sense that the work of our [World Pacifist] Conference has begun here and now, among a strange variety of people whom chance has thrown together. Friendships on board a ship are notorious for their superficiality; but we are all convinced that here we have found something deeper. (Reynolds 1951: 103)

Reynolds’ sensitivity was rare; his experience was common. The act of pilgrimage brought forth the hand of friendship. Differences were forgotten; unities grasped; smiles widened; communitas ruled. In this environment, Gandhi’s ideas did not seem remote or foreign. The Indian and the Englishman formed a family. Nothing was alien. Why wouldn’t Satyagraha work in London? What force could oppose the power of love? Victor and Edith Turner note that pilgrims return to conventional life strengthened and enriched, their status enhanced. This is certainly true of those who studied under Gandhi or traveled to his ashram. Direct contact with the Mahatma brought genuine prestige. It suggested authority. Reginald Reynolds was often described as the man “chosen by Gandhi as his emissary to the Viceroy” (e.g., n.a. 1932), and the passionate Quaker was not above deploying this friendship for his own purposes, either. The claim “I know the Mahatma’s own views on the subject well enough to say that . . .” was sometimes known to pass from his lips (Reynolds 1930). Other pilgrims justified their practice of vegetarianism and support for social revolution in similar terms (n.a. 1937b; Wellock 1950). Intimates of Gandhi were bathed in a reflected glory; their words therefore carried a special power. But why does all of this matter? So what if Gandhi received his share of pilgrims, or if their lives were often changed? What can it tell us about the process of “global diffusion”? What do Turner’s ideas contribute to this wider question? Pilgrimage is worth consideration because those who delighted in its rigors were to become central figures in the translation of Gandhism. Because they had drunk from the Mahatma’s well, his disciples avoided the snares of “over-likeness.” They understood that Gandhi’s ideas were novel and distinct. For them, Satyagraha was more than the New Testament. Equally, because they had undertaken the journey of pilgrimage, these pacifists also identified closely with devotees of Satyagraha in India and elsewhere. Kinship implied cooperation. Communitas inspired them with the power of love. If comradeship was universal, then so was Gandhism. They denied that non-violence was an oriental mysticism; they felt sure that it offered lessons for the West. Not surprisingly, pilgrims therefore became Gandhi’s

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most devoted missionaries. From the 1930s to the 1950s they interpreted, championed, explained, and experimented with the tools of nonviolent direct action. Where did these pilgrims come from? Richard Gregg traveled from the United States, and then penned the most influential commentary on Gandhi’s methods, The Power of Non-violence (1934). British pacifists were most impressed with this work (n.a. 1937c; Morrison 1962: 18), but they also produced their own accounts. In the British weekly Peace News, they authored more than three hundred articles on the relevance of Gandhi’s methods for the West (Scalmer 2002a). Pilgrims passed on messages and addressed meetings. They composed pamphlets on “non-violent resistance”; went on lecture tours; and encouraged local action (e.g., Alexander 1957; Barr 1955; Lester 1934). In short, they acted as translators, converting, rephrasing, and outlining the teachings of the Mahatma. Such translations involved more than a dictionary and a glib tongue. They often echoed beyond the study, as pilgrims also acted to apply Gandhism in the West. Mary Barr made a nonviolent journey into East Germany (n.a. 1951). Reginald Reynolds traveled to Georgia to join the battle for civil rights (Reynolds 1956). Muriel Lester led a silent protest against a military pageant at Hendon (n.a. 1931c). Hallam Tennyson walked through the villages of England and Wales, collecting funds for the “land gift” movement of Vinoba Bhave (n.a. 1956). These were tentative actions, often cautious and groping. By the early 1960s they would appear laughingly timid and old hat, but to the midcentury Gandhians, they were daring, provocative acts. They not only eased the process of translation, they also pointed toward a process of experiment and reinvention.

REINVENTION, RITUAL, UNITY Even when Satyagraha was widely understood, British Gandhians faced a new challenge. Nonviolent protest was difficult. Fear was an enemy. The British, of course, were rightly famed for their self-consciousness. For some pacifists, it could be a genuine ordeal just to yell “Peace News—only fourpence!” (n.a. 1954). To address a meeting could be torture itself. To participate in a ‘sit-down’ demonstration? Impossible. British Gandhians shared this uncertainty. Their first protests were diffident, timid affairs. They began in earnest in 1952, when a group of pacifists organized a squat in London, under the official name of “Operation Gandhi.” This was not a confident gathering. The squatters’ leaflet began with a nervous admission: “We know we look silly” (n.a. 1952a). Neither did these fears dissipate. When the members

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of Operation Gandhi launched another protest, more than a year later, their earlier doubts were still clearly evident. On this occasion Tom Wardle’s public address was guarded, watchful: “We want you first to understand that we are not cranks and not exhibitionists. We don’t like carrying posters. We don’t like being laughed at, and we don’t like being turned back by police” (cited in n.a. 1953a). Even participants in later demonstrations admitted that they were fearful of stirring up a “hullabaloo” (C. Jones 1953), or sometimes confessed to “cold feet” on the eve of squatting (C. Jones n.d.). Applying Satyagraha was a challenging, stomach-churning task. Perhaps this diffidence was well placed. After all, how could pacifists hope to challenge the might of the British state? In the early 1950s, the nuclear age was only a few years old. Military operations were cloaked in secrecy. As late as 1952, many pacifists did not know a thing about the Aldermaston nuclear reactor (C. Jones 1952). When Operation Gandhi tried to block the main gate at the Mildenhall aerodrome, the military simply used another, hidden one (n.a. 1952b). When protestors came to the Porton research establishment (touted as the site of research into “germ warfare”), they were filmed as they were greeted with barbed wire (n.a. 1953b, 1953c). In the villages around such settlements, the London pacifists were similarly regarded as strange interlopers. Apprentices marched behind them mockingly (n.a. 1953d), local farmers mused about releasing their old bulls, and then enjoying the carnage (n.a. 1953a), speeches were met with jeers and with the clanging of bells (n.a. 1953e). How could middle-class Britons conquer this hostility? How could they develop the courage to sit on the steps of the War Office, to march on the gates of Aldermaston? Those who hoped to apply nonviolence needed confidence as well as unity. But how could they attain it? Where would these reserves come from? Victor Turner provides an answer. As Turner notes, unity flows from communitas. This, in turn, emanates from public rituals (such as pilgrimage). If the Gandhians of Britain were to develop their own unity, then they needed to organize their own rituals. Only then would confidence develop and courage grow. The success of Satyagraha in Britain precisely fulfils these expectations. Nonviolent direct action blossomed in the last years of the 1950s. This was when the antinuclear movement improvised new forms of dramatic, public display. Central here was the annual march to Aldermaston. It was the performance and repetition of this ritual that changed the political environment and triggered the rise of a Gandhism attuned to Britain. In 1958, the “Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War” announced a fresh initiative. Over Easter, protesters would march from the center of London to the far-off streets of Reading. From there, they would

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march on to Aldermaston, and stage their protest against a nuclear reactor closely associated with the atomic bomb. The first march to Aldermaston was a dazzling success. Rapidly, the march attained the support of the newlyformed “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.” It caught the imagination of the otherwise apolitical (Gardiner 1958a), and was confidently identified as a “new development” in contemporary politics (Soper 1958). As the small band set off in crisp, autumnal weather, an air of expectation prevailed. Students mixed with bank clerks; West Indians with Welshmen (Gardiner 1958b). There were skiffle-groups and dancers, bright scarves and beribboned hats (M. Jones 1958a). Then, as the group approached the nuclear reactor, a silence descended. The drama was obvious, as Claud Coltman described: “Even the youthful exuberant elements in the procession were exalted and restrained by the sacredness of the cause and the terrible issues at stake. The people walked in silence, and were received in silence, for the onlookers themselves seemed put to silence by the sheer number of the demonstrators, their calm and sober bearing, their human appeal” (Coltman 1958). Mervyn Jones thought the silence apt. This was a reflective movement suggesting a new approach to public protest. But what made it different? For Jones, the silent marchers evoked a loving, dissenting intelligence: “[T]his is a campaign that urges people to reflect, not to destroy; to march a silent mile, not to shout; to dissent, not to obey; to be themselves, not to take sides; to love, not to hate; to live and let others live, not to kill or die” (M. Jones 1958b: 199). The road to Aldermaston was a pilgrimage of love. Those who took it had created something new. Jones was sure that the march was different from “any other demonstration I have known.” Satyagraha had arrived in the British Isles. A fresh kind of politics was in the air. A ritual involves the standardized, repetitive use of symbols (Kertzer 1988: 9). Aldermaston became a ritual in 1959, when the march was organized for the second time. Now the protesters began in Aldermaston and set out for London. Again, bands played and people smiled. Participants recalled a familiar, spontaneous comradeship: “We laughed, talked, sang, made new friends, shared food and drink—we seemed part of a new spring, a real rebirth” (Collins 1992: 237). Amidst these footsore and devoted demonstrators, the normal political divisions did not apply. Instead, marchers detected a special atmosphere: “In what other parade would you find the banner of the National Secular Society (“Atheism – Secularism – Freethought”) held bravely aloft between those of the Church of England Pacifists and of the Christian Socialist Movement (London branch)?” (“The Doctor” 1962) By 1959, however, there was a sense of repetition. This time, the successes of the previous year hung in the air. The hard road had been walked before. Friendships had already bloomed; silences had already descended

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and spirits had lifted. Those who suffered and grinned were now conscious of their precursors. Newcomers were joining an established political tradition. The “Aldermaston generation” was being born: “The more unpleasant it became, the higher rose the spirits of the marchers, the louder and longer the songs, the more strident the trumpets and clarinets of the band. ‘I don’t mind the rain,’ said one [marcher]. . . ‘This is what we came for.’” (n.a. 1959) By 1962, it was clear that Aldermaston was a major event. Some socialists admitted that it now outranked May Day (n.a. 1962). A year later, it was openly described as an “annual pilgrimage” (Brewood et al. 1963). By 1964, the name “Aldermaston” suggested a political movement for peace, not a place devoted to the perfection of atomic weapons (n.a. 1964). By 1972, it was memorialized as “one of the great social occasions of the year” (Levin 1972: 278). Those who protested were acutely conscious of their achievement. The success of the march triggered other adventurous and radical acts. The campaign against nuclear weapons mushroomed. Satyagraha—“non-violent direct action”—energized British politics. Thousands participated in civil disobedience in Trafalgar Square (Walker 1961). A few years after the first Aldermaston, it was clear that a British Gandhism had been made; the era of “sixties protest” was about to begin.

CONCLUSION: TURNER, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, CONTEMPORARY PROTEST Social movements are an insurgent force in contemporary culture. They proclaim new values, fashion novel theories, shake up the powerful with artful display. Their presence bewitches the media and shocks the respectable (see Scalmer 2002b). Their actions suggest new ways of being, and a different kind of world. Those devoted to the study of social movements have learned much about their subject. Over a number of decades, they have plumbed the insights of group psychology worried about “resource mobilization” and contemplated the vicissitudes of the “political process.” More recently, European students have analyzed the remaking of culture, and the work of Americans has taken a “relational” turn. Powerful scholarship continues to appear. Disappointingly, though, most scholars have been slow to digest the importance of ritual and performance. Some influential figures have explicitly rejected “dramatic metaphors” (e.g., Melucci 1996), others have applied them in mostly descriptive ways (e.g., Tilly 1998). Only a very few writers have begun to study the relationship between ritual and emotion (e.g.,

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Kiecolt 2000; Berezin 2001). The relevance of recent political anthropology has gone unrecognized (e.g., Kertzer 1988; Rothenbuhler 1988; Handelman 1990). The work of Victor Turner has been almost completely ignored. This chapter offers a small response. It ponders the global diffusion of collective action, focusing on the particular movement of Gandhian Satyagraha. It suggests that Turner’s insights into pilgrimage and ritual illuminate that movement in a fresh and surprising way. Recent studies of diffusion have emphasized the importance of “translation” and “reinvention.” Protest forms must be culturally rephrased. In the case of Gandhism, this translation was especially difficult. “Orientalism” caricatured the example of Gandhi; Christian goodwill occluded its challenge. As a result, it relied upon a band of pilgrims to grasp Gandhi’s originality, understand his relevance, and justify his export. Pilgrimage underpinned translation. Without these journeys, Gandhism might have remained a purely Indian phenomenon. The possibilities of Satyagraha in Britain might never have been grasped. The “reinvention” of protest requires additional confidence and courage. Demonstrators court scandal and risk arrest. In Britain, those inspired by Gandhi faced initial derision. Their tools seemed ineffectual; their chances of success, slim. This situation changed only in the late 1950s. The Aldermaston march unified protesters in dramatic silence, and thrilled them with success. Over a number of years, it became a political ritual that created confidence and instilled hope. In its repetition and elaboration, a political tradition was born. This helped a new generation to grasp the possibilities of nonviolent direct action. In the process, Gandhism was remade to suit local circumstances, and the politics of the 1960s were born. Turner explains diffusion. Doubtless, too, his work can also be applied to other sides of social-movement activity. After all, most demonstrations (not just those involving pilgrimage) are “liminoid”; political campaigns invariably feed upon and solicit communitas (whether they are Gandhian or otherwise); and protest cycles routinely follow the arc of the “social drama.” When Turner meets Gandhi, the intellectual sparks fly. Students of social movements should take note. Those interested should organize new meetings. Who knows the crackling discoveries that these might inspire?

NOTES 1. The term “Satyagraha” was coined (in a competition organized by Gandhi) as an alternative to “passive resistance.” It has been variously rendered in English as “soul force,” “holding fast to truth,” nonviolent resistance, and nonviolent direct action. 2. It should be noted that Fisher is actually critical of this view.

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REFERENCES Alexander, Horace G. 1928. “Mr. Gandhi’s Ashram: Some Impressions.” The Friend 68, no. 18 (4 May): 372. ———. 1957. Resisting Evil Without Arms. Northern Friends Peace Board. Barr, F. Mary. 1955. “Goa: Is This the Way?” Peace News, 28 October: 5. Berezin, Mabel. 2001. “Emotions and Political Identity: Mobilizing Affection for the Polity.” In. Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, pp. 83–98. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bolton, Glorney. 1934. The Tragedy of Gandhi. London: George Allen and Unwin. Brailsford, H. N. 1951. “Saint Gandhi.” New Statesman and Nation (12 May): 540–541. Brewood, Douglas, Robin Davis, Ian Hutchison, Mike Lesser, Nick Ralph, Jon Tinker, Mary Tinker and Ken Weller. 1963. “Beyond Counting Arses.” Hannan C100 Papers Commonweal Archives, J. B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford, Bay F, Box 1, L/100/63/23: 4. Brittain, Vera. 1951. Search After Sunrise. London: Macmillan and Co. Brock, Peter and Nigel Young. 1999. Pacifism in the Twentieth Century. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Chabot, Sean. 2000. “Transnational Diffusion and the African-American Reinvention of the Gandhian Repertoire.” Mobilization: An International Journal 5, no. 2: 201–216. Collins, Diana. 1992. Partners in Protest: Life with Canon Collins. London: Victor Gollancz. Coltman, Claud M. 1958. “The Field of Aldermaston.” Reconciliation 35, no. 5 (May): 90. “The Doctor.” 1962. “The Two Converts.” Sanity (May): 1. Fisher, Frederick Bohn. 1932. That Strange Little Brown Man Gandhi. New York: R. Long and R.R. Smith. Fox, Richard G. 1997. “Passage from India.” In Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn eds., Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest, pp. 65–82. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Fuller, J. F. C. 1931. India in Revolt. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. Gardiner, Llew. 1958a. “The March of Our Time.” Tribune, 28 March: 8. ———. 1958b. “Man, this march—it’s Beautiful.” Tribune, 11 April: 6. Gregg, Richard. 1934. The Power of Non-Violence. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. Hanagan, Michael. 1999. “Social Movements: Incorporation, Disengagement, and Opportunities—A Long View.” In Marco G. Giugini, Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly, eds., From Contention to Democracy, pp. 3–30. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Handelman, Don. 1990. Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Hobhouse, Stephen. 1941. “India’s Message to the World.” Peace News, 7 February: 2. Hoyland, John. 1931. The Cross Moves East: A Study of the Significance of Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’. London: George Allen and Unwin.

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———. 1950. “Gandhi’s Message for the West.” Peace News, 28 April: 3. ———. 1952. Gandhi: The Practical Peace Builder. London: Peace Pledge Union. Jameson, A. K. 1950. “Gandhi’s Early Years.” Peace News, 15 December: 5. Jones, Connie. 1952. Letter to Hugh Brock, 14 February. Hugh Brock Papers, J. B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford, Bay D, Box 2, Folder: “Aldermaston 1952.” ———. 1953. “A Spot of Non-Violent Resistance.” Non-Violent Resistance Group Newsletter no. 12 (5 December): 2. ———. n.d. Letter to Hugh Brock, Hugh Brock Papers, J.B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford, Bay D, Box 2, Folder: “Mildenhall.” Jones, Margaret. 1947a. “India-British and Indian.” Peace News, 12 December: 3. ———. 1947b. “I Stayed with Gandhi.” Peace News, 19 December: 3. Jones, Mervyn. 1958a. “Stop and Think.” Tribune, 11 April: 7. ———. 1958b. “The Time is Short.” In Norman MacKenzie, ed., Conviction, pp. 183– 201. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Jones, Stanley E. 1948. Mahatma Gandhi: An Interpretation. London: Hodder and Staughton. Kenny, Michael. 1995. The First New Left: British Intellectuals After Stalin. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Kertzer, David I. 1988. Ritual, Politics and Power. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Kiecolt, K. Jill. 2000. “Self-Change in Social Movements.” In Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens and Robert W. White, eds., Self, Identity, and Social Movements, pp. 110–131. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Lester, Muriel. 1931. My Host the Hindu. London: Williams and Norgate. ———. 1934. Letter to Sir Samuel Hoare, 29 August, India Office, British Library, L/ PO/6/65 (i). Levin, Bernard. 1972. The Pendulum Years: Britain and the Sixties. London and Sydney: Pan Books. McAdam, Doug. 1995. “‘Initiator’ and ‘Spin-Off’ Movements: Diffusion Processes in Protest Cycles.” In Mark Traugott, ed., Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, pp. 217–239. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. MacInnes, C. M. 1925. The British Commonwealth and its Unsolved Problems. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Melucci, Alberto. 1996. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meyer, David S. and Sidney Tarrow. 1998. “A Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century.” In David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow, eds., The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century, pp. 1–28. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Morrison, Sybil. 1962. I Renounce War: The Story of the Peace Pledge Union. London: Sheppard Press. n.a. 1921. “The Revolt of Passivity.” Nation and Athenaeum, 6 August: 670–671. n.a. 1922. “The Problem of Mr. Gandhi.” Nation and Athenaeum, 18 February: 746–747.

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n.a. 1931a. “Concerning the Fellowship.” Reconciliation 9, no. 12 (December): 485. n.a. 1931b. “Concerning the Fellowship.” Reconciliation 9, no. 10 (October): 445. n.a. 1931c. “Peace Witness at Hendon.” Reconciliation 9, no. 8 (August): 407. n.a. 1932. “The New General Secretary.” The New World 3, no. 4, (October): 6. n.a. 1937a. “Gandhi—‘Greatest Christian.’” Peace News, 1 May: 3. n.a. 1937b. “Friends of India on Gandhi’s Way.” Peace News, 16 October: 5. n.a. 1937c. “Training for Non-Violent Life.” Peace News, 25 July: 6. n.a. 1942. “The Current of Affairs.” The Christian Pacifist, no. 3 (March): 43. n.a. 1951. “Non-Violence Commission.” PPU Journal, no. 66 (October): 9. n.a. 1952a. “‘Operation Gandhi’—A Call To You.” Peace News, 18 January: 3. n.a. 1952b. “Pacifists Demonstrate at Mildenhall Air Base Gates.” Bury Free Press, 4 July: n.p. n.a. 1953a. “Pacifists’ Demonstration Halted by Barricade.” Salisbury Journal, 20 March: n.p. n.a. 1953b. “Barbed Wire Bars Way for Pacifists.” Birmingham Post, 16 March: n.p. n.a. 1953c. “Security film is taken of Germ-War Protest.” People, 15 March: n.p. n.a. 1953d. “A Parade of Pacifists.” Reading Mercury, 25 April: n.p. n.a. 1953e. “Protest at Atom Plant.” Peace News, 24 April: 1, 6. n.a. 1954. “Strengthening Self-Discipline.” Peace News, 2 July: 5. n.a. 1956. “Walking Through Britian to Help India.” Peace News, 1 June: 1. n.a. 1959. “Wet and Footsore, but Morale Higher than Ever.” Guardian, 30 March: n.p. n.a. 1962. “Two Marches.” Solidarity: For Workers’ Power 2, no. 2: 1. n.a. 1964. “Easter 1964.” Sanity (January): 6. Raman, T. A. 1943. What Does Gandhi Want? London: Oxford University Press. Randle, Michael. 1987. “Non-violent Direct Action in the 1950s and 1960s.” In Richard Taylor and Nigel Young, eds., Campaigns for Peace: British Peace Movements in the Twentieth Century, pp. 131–161. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Reynolds, Reginald. 1930. “Pax Britannica and the North-West Frontier.” The New World 1, no. 8 (December): 9. ———. 1951. To Live in Mankind: A Quest for Gandhi. London: Andre Deutsch. ———. 1956. “What are Pacifists Doing?” Peace News, 17 August: 5. Rothenbuhler, Eric W. 1988 “The Liminal Fight: Mass Strikes as Ritual and Interpretation.” In Jeffrey C. Alexander, ed., Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Scalmer, Sean. 2000. “Translating Contention: Culture, History, and the Circulation of Collective Action.” Alternatives 25, no. 4: 491–514. ———. 2002a. “The Labour of Diffusion: The Peace Pledge Union and the Adaptation of the Gandhian Repertoire.” Mobilization: An International Journal 7, no. 3: 269–286. ———. 2002b. Dissent Events: Protest, the Media and the Political Gimmick in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Skaria, Ajay. 2002. “Gandhi’s Politics: Liberalism and the Question of the Ashram.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 4 (fall): 955–986.

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Snow, David A., and Robert D. Benford. 1999. “Alternative Types of Cross-National Diffusion in the Social Movement Arena.” In Donatella della Porta, Hanspeter Kriesi and Dieter Rucht, eds., Social Movements in a Globalizing World, pp. 23–39. London: Macmillan. Soper, Donald. 1958. “My Faith in the Future.” Tribune, 11 April, 6–7. Strang, David, and John W. Meyer. 1993. “Institutional Conditions for Diffusion.” Theory and Society 22: 487–511. Tarrow, Sidney. 1998. Power and Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Richard, and Kevin Ward. 1983. “Community Politics and Direct Action: The Non-Aligned Left.” In David Coates and Gordon Johnston, eds., Socialist Strategies. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Tilly, Charles. 1998. “Social Movements and (All Sorts of) Other Political Interactions – Local, National and International – Including Identities.” Theory and Society 27, no. 4 (August): 453–480. Tottenham, Sir Richard. 1942. “Gandhi’s Detention: Policy and Plans, August 1940– July 1942.” India Office Records, British Library, R/3/1/290. Traugott, Mark. 1995. “Barricades as Repertoire: Continuities and Discontinuities in the History of French Contention.” In Mark Traugott, ed., Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, pp. 43–56. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ———. 1979. Process, Performance and Pilgrimage: A Study in Comparative Symbology. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. Walker, Roy. 1946. “Reflections on Non-Violence (1).” The Christian Pacifist, no. 49 (January): 746–749. Walker, Derek. 1961. “Satyagraha in St. James Park.” British Weekly, 9 February, 3. Wellock, Wilfred. 1948. “The Key to Peace.” Peace News, 13 February, 2. ———. 1950. “Civil Disobedience, Plus. . .” Peace News, 12 May, 6. ———. 1952. “Next Steps to Peace.” PPU Journal no. 69 (January–February): 10–12.

Chapter Thirteen

Dramas, Fields, and “Appropriate Education”: The Ritual Process, Contestation, and Communitas for Parents of Special-Needs Children Margi Nowak

{ In his book Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, Victor Turner notes, in agreement with Freud, “that disturbances of the normal and regular often give us greater insight into the normal and regular than does direct study” (1974: 34). He develops this point further, acknowledging the “tragic quality” of the course of events likely to take place in a social drama (which, by definition, is full of disturbances of the normal and regular) where so much pressure bears upon loyalty and obligation. “Conflict,” he says, “seems to bring fundamental aspects of society, normally overlaid by the customs and habits of daily intercourse, into frightening prominence. People have to take sides in terms of deeply entrenched moral imperatives and constraints, often against their own personal preferences. Choice is overborne by duty” (1974: 35). As far—in distance and theme—as the subjects of Turner’s initial Ndembu fieldwork and post-African scholarship may be from the topic of this essay, his insights about the temporal structure of conflict situations brilliantly illuminate many of my own observations of cultural performances in a very different fieldwork setting. For the past decade and a half I have been working as a participant-observer, interacting, both face to face and online, with parents of children who have invisible disabilities that affect their ability to succeed in school. In particular, my work has focused on the all too frequent 258

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contestations that occur between these parent-advocates (in the United States) and the school district in which their child is a student. These conflicts typically involve what I have elsewhere called an almost unwinnable (even if not formally declared) battle between two competing camps of “experts”: the bureaucratically and hierarchically organized school system, fighting to break even if not win a numbers game against the scarce resources and limitations of budget, space, personnel, technology, training, and even taxpayers’ good or ill will toward public education, versus the comparatively tiny, desperately pieced together, much less “legitimate” circle of people who, for reasons of love, commitment, and sometimes money (for those families who can afford it), act as advocates for such a student. (Nowak 1999)

Such contestations can certainly be analyzed and interpreted in the light of postmodern insights regarding the construction (and perhaps also the re-negotiation) of expertise and authority as wielded by opposed interest groups. Yet a Turnerian treatment of social dramas, applied to the type of battle I have just described, would hardly conclude by celebrating communitas at the expense of conflict and complexity. Rather, without denying the possibility of communitas, a Turnerian approach to this situation would certainly notice contestations for power, as Turner himself makes clear in defining his terms for such a discussion: In the present context, “fields” are the abstract cultural domains where paradigms are formulated, established, and come into conflict. Such paradigms consist of sets of “rules” from which many kinds of sequences of social actions may be generated but which further specify what sequences must be excluded. Paradigm conflict arises over exclusion rules. “Arenas” are the concrete settings in which paradigms become transformed into metaphors and symbols with reference to which political power is mobilized and in which there is a trial of strength between influential paradigms-bearers. “Social dramas” represent the phased process of their contestation. (Turner 1974: 17)

This kind of framework for research—focusing on paradigm conflict in a specific setting—fits my fieldwork well, for the arena of the K–12 (kindergarten through twelfth grade) public education system in the United States is inextricably affected by the larger American society’s simultaneous but ambivalent affirmation of two conflicting paradigms: equality and meritocracy. More to the point, while all children who are students in the educational system will, at times, get caught up in the impossible demands of trying to be “just like everyone else” while still trying to be “the best,” those children who have disabilities that are invisible (such as attention priority disorders,

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autistic spectrum disorders, and other sensory processing difficulties) are, much more than “typical” children, truly unable to succeed in this setting without some sort of accommodations and/or services. Unlike children with obvious disabilities, these children, who have become, along with their parents, my research priority, typically look “normal” even if they do not always behave so, although these behavioral deviations from the norm are rarely if ever seen by others as positive or neutral. So, these children, unless (and sometimes, even after) they receive a formal medical or educational label identifying for the school bureaucracy their problematic condition (e.g., “neurologically impaired,” “learning disabled,” or “other health impaired”) are very likely to be informally labeled by teachers, fellow students, and the other children’s parents (if not their own) as “troublesome,” “lazy,” “bad” kids. Despite United States laws guaranteeing that “free, appropriate public education” (FAPE) will be provided for individuals with disabilities up to age 21 or until high school graduation, the special case of children with invisible disabilities (such as those mentioned above) is complicated. Unlike a child with a motor impairment, or even such largely invisible disabilities as juvenile diabetes or seizure disorders, the children who are central to my research are likely to lack any official diagnosis before their entry into the school system. A young child whose behavior is “quirky” or even “difficult” in family or neighborhood settings may, for example, be handled with more individualized attention in those settings than is possible in school. Once such child enters the much more regimented world of the educational system, however, his or her behavior is likely to be severely criticized. When this happens frequently and the parents begin to realize that all those reprimands could not possibly be the child’s fault alone, they are very likely to seek some other reason—usually medical—for the upsetting behaviors. Yet the process of getting such a “troublesome” and “abnormal” child properly diagnosed, and, following that, properly accommodated in the school system, is fraught with innumerable possibilities for error, particularly if the causative neurological differences are complex and tangled, and the ultimately agreed-on diagnostic label and its implications are relatively unknown to school staff. At this point, then, what the concerned parents need even more than the most brilliant neurologist or neuropsychologist is an empathetic guide to help them begin to make their way through the morass of labels and acronyms that will probably be applied, correctly or not, to their child. Such parents, frightened of the unknown but determined to help their child, are in many ways not very different from the neophytes of Turner’s Ndembu work. Like the bewildered and frightened young initiates who know they must go through the initiation process to be regarded as

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adults, these parents come to realize that their personal, subjective knowledge of their son or daughter is not sufficient to enable them help their child navigate the school system successfully. Hence they will often seek out “wise elders”—other parent-advocates whose children have the same or a similar diagnostic label, and who have managed to learn enough of the discourse of the educational, medical, and sometimes even the legal system in order to aid such students. However, unlike the wise elders van Gennep and Turner described in their classic studies of rites of passage, these mentoring parents are far more likely to be highly critical, rather than supportive of, many aspects of the established social order (Nowak 2003). Especially because of these more experienced parents’ perception of the tremendous imbalance—between the power of bureaucratically sanctioned experts who have dealt with thousands of children who are “not like this one,” and, on the other hand, the structurally insignificant position of the experts who are “only” parents, but who have much more experience trying to guide precisely “this one”—the mentoring parents, unlike the initiating elders of traditional societies, begin to train their “neophytes” not to uphold “the way things have always been” but to become, at least in this area, social critics and agitators (ibid.). The focus of their criticism of the American K–12 educational system indeed involves paradigm conflict over exclusion rules, although the type of exclusion these parents fight is more complex and subtle than simple denial of entry. Children with invisible, behavior-affecting disabilities (hereafter referred to as “these children”) are indeed included in the larger population of children with disabilities eligible for a free public education. However, the second term in the acronym FAPE (“free, appropriate, public education”— referring to the guarantees made by US education law to all school-age children with disabilities)—sets the stage for battle, because the “trial of strength between influential paradigm bearers” (Turner 1974: 17) is nowhere seen so clearly as in those disagreements that can occur between parents and school officials over what is “appropriate” for this or that particular child. To be sure, special education law also affirms that every disabled child who qualifies as such should be a recipient of an “Individualized Education Plan” (IEP), which should be specifically designed and periodically reevaluated so that it is individually suited for the specific child for whom is it constructed. But on the other hand, as Max Weber long ago showed us, any large bureaucracy will be deeply suspicious about highly individualized exceptions to “normal policy.” What this means, even for those smaller, internally “nested” bureaucracies that, by definition, focus on exceptionalities (such as special education programs within the larger school bureaucracy), is that the reason for the exceptions (in this case, the existence of a disability)

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must be unquestionably obvious to any would-be critics of the entire system. Since this obviousness is precisely what is so lacking in the case of children with invisible disabilities, the inclusion of these children in disability-friendly programs is problematic. Hence their parents, first as neophytes and then as “initiated” advocates, are involved in social dramas, or as Turner might put it, in “the phased process of their contestation.” For Turner, social dramas typically involve four such phases: 1) a breach of regular, norm-governed social relations, (2) an escalation of the crisis, (3) redressive action aimed at limiting the spread of the crisis, and finally (4) reintegration of the dissenting group or legitimization of irreparable schism between the contesting parties (1974: 38–41). Such a scheme of interpretation can certainly be used to examine my own findings, over the past fifteen years as a participant-observer among such parents, of the contestations that are very likely to take place between parents of children with invisible disabilities and their respective school districts.1

BREACH OF REGULAR, NORM-GOVERNED SOCIAL ACTION At the most obvious level of interpretation, it would seem to be the child whose brain is wired differently who is the first to breach the norm-governed expectations of behavior in the school setting. A child who cannot sit still during story time, who cannot stand in line without flailing out at others nearby, who cannot tolerate the noise and flicker of classroom fluorescent lights, who hears perfectly but does not seem to obey—these and hundreds of other examples that could be given certainly seem to suggest that “the breach” occurs when the child does not act “normally.” But this superficial conflation of “breach” with “abnormality” misses so much else that is going on in this phase of the drama. How, to use Turner’s words, might the particular “disturbances of the normal and regular” in such cases serve to “give us greater insight into the normal and regular”? What else—beside the child’s teacher, classmates, administrator, parents, and classroom routine—is being “disturbed” when such a child acts in ways that can only be tolerated if it could be definitely established that “the child can’t help it”? Turner points to some possible answers to these questions in his discussion of the first, or “breach,” stage of a contestation, noting how it involves “persons or groups within the same system of social relations” (1974: 38). For the subjects of this essay—the parents of children with invisible disabilities—one very significant group of persons within the same circle of social

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relations would be the other parents—those who have children in the same school setting as “the troublesome ones.” While most ethnographies of the special education process focus mainly on the two primary sets of players who must try to come up with an appropriate educational plan for the child, namely, the child’s parents and the particular school and school district, it is instructive for our purposes to consider the impact that “disturbances of the normal and regular” are likely to have on those other families whose children attend school with these children. What these parents of other children will hear, from their own child’s lips as well as from other parents who might be volunteering or otherwise in a position to observe the child in a school or playground setting, is how “different” such a child is from the “regular kids.” Whether or not such a child’s diagnostic label is known publicly,2 it will certainly be the case that he or she will be much less likely than age-peers to get invited to sleepovers or birthday parties or otherwise be an unquestioned part of an age-grade cohort. As one mother of an autistic boy put it, “on the surface he could pass for any little boy, but underneath he is as complex as an underground mine, with tunnels going everywhere, leading nowhere sometimes, other times leading to places unknown.” And no one who is not a loving, committed parent/ guardian of such a child (or an exceptionally sensitive onlooker or specialist who would understand how to accept these tunnels) will likely know how to enjoy being in this child’s presence. The breach, then, is a painful one. The parents of the “different child” feel stung every time they witness or hear about their child’s rejection from the world of “normal” age-peers. But at the same time, the parents of the “normal” kids are pricked by at least a vague unease too, for the specter of abnormality, even if not “theirs,” reminds them how fragile are the dreams they as parents once held for their own newborn child, now an age-peer of “the difficult one.” What they still might see in that problematic child—who is not, thankfully, their own—is a reminder of how badly we all want to belong and be “like everybody else.” And yet, as much as this egalitarianism is part of American ideology, the counterbalanced ideology—“I want my child to be the best”—also fuels emotions. The child who, because of a behavioraffecting invisible disability, is a “problem,” will most likely never garner the rewards of a meritocratic educational system (exemplary grades, scholarships, recommendations, connections to ever more prestigious programs), even if he or she also happens to be gifted.3 For parents who witness and feel stricken by the way a meritocracy works for those who are not the norm, that platitudinous American expectation—“doing well in school will lead to success in later life”—must necessarily be questioned.

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ESCALATION OF THE CRISIS For such parents, experiencing this breach between the naïvely accepted ideal they held in the past (education leads to success) and the painful reality they now face in the present and future (my child is not likely to succeed in this system) is certainly a processual experience, with realization dawning and growing differently for each individual depending on the twists and turns of a particular child’s passage from undiagnosed to “properly labeled.” One of the key issues to be faced at this stage (if it has not already been faced earlier) is the need, for both family and school, to have the child’s diagnosis acknowledged and legitimated in the school setting. While a diagnosis from a medical professional outside the school system may be accepted by school officials, it is important to note that the school district already has at its disposal its own trained professionals (typically, educational psychologists who specialize in testing and test result variations) whose job it is to take (if not make) the child’s diagnosis and then use it to develop an individualize education plan. If the parents have already heard warnings about this process from the “tribal elders” in their disability community, that is, if they have met with other parents whose children have similar problems and perhaps even the same diagnosis, it is quite likely that the war stories of the “older” cohort of parents will crystallize the vague fears of the “new” parent advocates. In my work with a support group for children with Tourette’s Syndrome, for example, both “old” and “new” parents would speak up at meetings, telling the group their impassioned stories of how this or that teacher or administrator had treated their child with ignorant cruelty. For “new” parents who have only very recently been made aware that their child’s “differences” constitute a disabling condition that will make school a very difficult setting—such stories are first terrifying, and then infuriating to hear. It is perhaps at this point, for these parents, that the “separation” (similar to that ritual separation of initiates envisioned by Van Gennep and Turner) from their old, naïve beliefs about children and the beneficent education system is complete. As their crisis escalates beyond the point where they can “go back” to earlier, uncomplicated ideas about school being “good” for their child, they might also be seen to enter a liminal state where the other parents in the support group become, at this point in their lives, more significant to them than any other group on earth. It is in these support groups, both those that meet in person and those online, that these parents can finally feel themselves part of a “we” group that understands. It is here, either in some meeting room in some public building, or on some listserv devoted to the disability, that the stories these

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parents have lived through now come tumbling out in words. Talking and listening, listening and talking, in huge chunks of conversation fueled by intense commonality of experience, parent teaches parent in a sad-but-still hopeful version of communitas. The discourse employed here exposes participating parents to a steady diet of “advocacy talk,” as the more experienced parents share from their rich supply of “confrontation stories” and knowledge of special education law and relevant case histories, thereby giving encouragement to “newer” parents while helping them to gain a basic fluency in this mode of expression. Even in cases where the “new” parent’s protest is never going to shake the foundations of the school district, the impact of a strong support group on such a person is often sufficiently powerful to keep her or him from ever going “back.” Rather, such a parent will have crossed an irrevocable line, never again able to believe, in a simple, unqualified way, the platitudes of the education system.

REDRESSIVE ACTION AIMED AT LIMITING THE CRISIS From the perspective of a school district that has to deal with “contentious” parents advocating too stridently for a genuinely “individual” education for their special-needs child (as seemingly promised by special education legislation), the redressive actions it can take to try to limit this potential crisis of authority are themselves limited, though ultimately decisive. The most likely “field” of battle, if parents and school disagree on what constitutes an “appropriate” education for the child, will be the child’s IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meetings, which should, according to US education law, involve the parent as a member of the child’s “multidisciplinary team” (or “special education committee”)—which is the group empowered to create and monitor the implementation of the IEP document. It is important to point out that the likely participants (in addition to the child’s parents) at such a meeting—a representative of the special education staff in the school and at least one classroom teacher, as well as other specialists such as the school psychologist or occupational therapist—are, in the vast number of cases, concerned professionals who sincerely try to do the best they can with “square” kids in the “round holes” of the educational system. Nevertheless, it is all too often the case that parents’ suggestions that are not already in the school’s repertoire of strategies for dealing with such students will be met with resistance on the part of school personnel, not simply because the school is demonstrating its authority over uncredentialed “outsiders,” but even more importantly, because a truly individualized answer to each and every “exceptionality” in a bureaucracy such as a school system would

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contradict the very principles (expediency and accountability in particular) upon which a bureaucracy is based. So the redressive action likely to be taken by the school district in this drama—to keep other such parents from getting similar ideas at least as much as to quash innovations that might be problematic—is simply to deny parent-proposed strategies that could be too “exceptional.” From the other perspective, that is, from the viewpoint of at least some of those parents who see their position against the school district as utterly hopeless, their “redressive action” will aim not simply to limit, but rather to stop permanently the problems their child faces in his or her present educational setting. For these parents, who see nothing but crisis upon crisis ahead of them if they stay in the school system, the answer is clear: they leave. While money is needed to seek out an alternative school (and this may be no solution anyway, because private, unlike public schools, are not obliged to take in or keep “troublesome” students), those parents who are able to spend time during the day with their child can, in the United States, homeschool their child and thereby more or less permanently end their problems with “the system.” For many good reasons, this is not an option that is open to all parents of such children, so homeschooling as a tactic to limit the crisis of dealing with an inflexible school system is never going to be a widespread threat to K–12 public education. Nevertheless, when a parent or guardian of a child with an invisible, behavior-affecting disability is, in fact, able to embark enthusiastically on this course of action, the schism between family and school system may well prove to be irreparable.

REINTEGRATION OR LEGITIMIZATION OF IRREPARABLE SCHISM The majority of children with invisible disabilities will not, however, end up formally outside the public education system. In some case, reintegration will take place simply because some of these children will, at last, mature neurologically as well as socially, essentially “outgrowing” the problematic behavioral ramifications of their disability that were so troublesome in the past. Other cases of reintegration occur because the trajectory followed by students in their K–12 years naturally becomes more forgiving of some kinds of differences at the very end of their high school career. Students who drove their peers crazy in the elementary grades because of their inability to stop talking about their specialized interests in, for example, computer games, may now, in high school, find a positively accepted niche for themselves as technophiles. The “acting out” students of a regimented primary school

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may blossom into genuine actors in a high school drama program, and the bright but “uncooperative” child who never finished worksheets may end up winning a National Merit scholarship. For such students, the possibility of attending college—which seemed so impossible years ago—now beckons as a very real option, so in the last years of high school they are quite happy to be reintegrated into the system as college-bound teenagers. Such happy endings are, unfortunately, not at all common. For a child with invisible, behavior-affecting disabilities, to move from being a “troublesome” (undiagnosed) primary student to becoming a (probably stigmatized) special education student, to becoming, at last, a “regular” student preparing for college requires, among other things, such a highly exceptional combination of years of the right kind of help from key school personnel along with intense and never-ending family and extended family support that, for most, such a journey is next to impossible. Parental worries and exhaustion, coupled with the family’s constant need for money (for private testing and therapies, for trying all possible extracurricular activities to find some venue in which the child might experience some public success, for relaxation activities that the child, probably friendless, can take part in alone) constantly threaten to deplete the family’s will and ability to keep on fighting and believing in the child’s future. While many parents, especially those with only minimal resources, might never take their child out of the school system formally, they may withdraw in other ways, emotionally and psychologically, thereby giving a kind of default legitimization to the irreparable schism that has come between themselves and those other parents who still believe in the platitudes of the education system.

COPING WITH SCHISM: ONLINE COMMUNITAS FOR PARENTS OF SPECIAL-NEEDS CHILDREN In his essay “Communitas: Model and Process,” Turner distinguishes immediate, existential, and “spontaneous” communitas from the more structured and routinized “normative” and “ideological” modalities of communitas (in 1969: 132). Throughout my participation on several listservs concerning children with invisible, behavior-affecting disabilities, I have witnessed examples of spontaneous communitas in these online communities: the highly emotional and immediate sharing of intense experience (e.g., “Today my son was beaten on the playground because of his tics”; or “Please help! The school has just told me they want me at a meeting about my daughter tomorrow”). Yet it is the more perduring pattern of concerned but lower-key conversations online—involving normative and ideological communitas—

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that provides inspiration for parent advocates while it keeps alive the relationships that interconnect members of the group. It is indeed this latter modality of communitas—involving participants’ repeated references to the small details of their “normal” lives (however much theirs might deviate from the lives of “really normal” families untouched by disability)—that offers participants such an important reassurance against the suspicion that is likely to arise in most other virtual communities: what if we are all lying to each other? The constant sharing of narratives of vulnerability (e.g., “I was so worried/ashamed/furious when that happened”), replete with details that all the other parents will instantly recognize (e.g., “It all started when he was randomly assigned to do group work in class”), makes it highly unlikely that the question of deceitful communication would ever come up on this forum. In this type of cultural performance—sharing narratives about one’s child online with a group of other parents in very similar situations—the computer used to type and transmit the message might be located in a well-endowed home or in a public library; the words used might be beautifully crafted or clumsily linked and misspelled, but none of this matters. What rings true, in this sharing of narrations and interpretations, is not the form of the emails shared with the list, but rather, the content of the vignettes shared with listmembers. For example, the word “meltdown” connects instantly with these parents: they need no definition for the furious rage that can possess their child like a powerful demon, lasting far longer than “normal” tantrums, amenable to no intervention for long, agonizing minutes or even hours. They can ruefully laugh about the inventive strategies they have used to get their child, who might have an unbearably sharp sense of smell or sensitivity to texture, to eat enough to stay alive, and without literally gagging, while visiting or traveling. They share their tales of being criticized, over and over again, for being so “permissive” with their “bratty kid”; they love to share stories of triumphs that “no one else would get” (e.g., a preadolescent who finally picks up and answers the phone after being terrified of talking on the phone all her life); and they sadly and fearfully recognize that some of their children will try to commit suicide before they are out of their teens. As one woman wrote on such a list, We are the cutting edge. The importance of the members of this list just hit me. . . . The educational systems are wallowing in ignorance which we all know is bureaucratically covered up with a flat edged shovel. . . . Our shared knowledge and its application in our kids’ IEPs, services, public awareness (such as telling others, workshops, support groups, autism awareness activities) in general is helping the rest of the Aspergers population, and that is something important to me personally.

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In a similar vein, another mother, noting how the more casual emails of the summer months had changed as the school year got underway, gave examples of some of the dramatic and urgent subject headings that were now appearing on the list, admitting that she too was “waiting for three phone calls from the school that morning.” But she also added the following: I’m SO proud of us all! We’ve got folks sending books and papers to each other, digging up addresses and important websites, meeting one another in person, offering shoulders to cry on, giving good advice, challenging with new ideas, offering congratulatory pats on the back, and more. We’ve got tons of questions, lots of answers, too many horror stories but also some great success stories (first dance, new jobs, good class days, that special teacher who understands, getting a label changed, etc.). I guess what has really hit me about the importance of this list happened a couple of days ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I saw two posts, one after the other – [one mother’s] “bunch of questions” and [another mother’s] questions about her adult son and his new job. It just hit me—one parent at the beginning of the odyssey, trying to get a hold on her young son’s issues, with many of the parents helping her along, and another parent . . . trying to learn how and when to let go and being coached by the . . . adults on this list [who have the same condition as the children and who voluntarily participate on the list for the benefit of the next generation of people like them]. Wow. I’m just suddenly bowled over by the enormity of the tasks and the enormity of the contribution our list is making, one child at a time.

To reword this mother’s heartfelt and perceptive observations in both Turnerian and postmodern terms, both spontaneous as well as normative modalities of communitas are operative in such a virtual community, connecting and encouraging unique, historical, idiosyncratic individuals in such a way that their shared convictions about their children and the world can lead to actions that chip away at prior arrangements of the knowledgepower nexus. Without completely dethroning medical and educational specialists—who still wield enormous influence, for better or worse, over the lives of these children—the parent participants of such listservs, by treating adult survivors of their children’s diagnostic conditions as highly respected experts, reframe the components of expertise, thereby giving more weight to what Michael Fischer calls “the experiential, relational world of social relations and cultural mapping” (1999: 249). Ethnographies that move into cyberspace, according to Fischer, do this as well. By taking seriously the experiential wisdom of, for example, those adults with invisible disabilities who contribute to these listservs, we who create and read such ethnographies add to the sense of possibility before

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us all. “It is within this sense of possibility that we might strive with our future-looking but present capabilities, making ourselves open to the ear and desire and positioning of the other, facilitating social institutions that are flexible and reflexively modern rather than brittlely hierarchical, dogmatic, and univocally normative” (Fischer 1999: 247). The institution of formal education in our modern societies has hardly been “open to the ear and desire and positioning of the other” when “the other”—for reasons of disability, ethnicity, class, or gender—calls too much embarrassing attention to the way the educational reward system merely reproduces past or existing social relations. The social dramas that take place within this field, involving parent advocates who are struggling with their school districts for what they believe is an “appropriate” education for their special-needs children, most definitely involve the kind of conflict that Turner describes as “disturbances of the normal and regular.” Normally and regularly, parents give birth to children who enter and exit the school system without their parents feeling anguish at the unfairness of it all. For the parents of “other” children, however, the previously taken-for-granted role of the education system—educating all students while affirming the US ideal of egalitarianism—now appears transparently false, with the other US ideal, affirmation of society’s meritocratic basis, now looming before them with what Turner calls “frightening prominence.” And so these parents, gaining strength from their online collaboration with other parents in similar situations, “have to take sides in terms of deeply entrenched moral imperatives and constraints” (Turner 1974: 34). Passing through the stages of scared neophyte, rapidly learning initiate, and experienced advocate in their virtual communities, these parents need and use the communitas they find there to fuel their will and ability to contest those aspects of the educational system that they passionately, and with experience, judge as unfair to their own children, and by extension, to even more of those students who are positioned in this setting as “the other.”

NOTES 1. While it is important to acknowledge that school districts and personnel are not, simply by definition, the villains in such tales, and that indeed, some parents of children with invisible disabilities would hardly qualify as concerned and knowledgeable advocates on their child’s behalf, the fact remains that meetings between parent-advocates and even the most sympathetic and committed school personnel are tense affairs, with the parent, as law professor and parent advocate David Engel has pointed out, bringing nothing but rights and needs to the table, while the school controls the resources (see Engel 1991, 1993).

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2. While identification of a child’s diagnostic label to other parents is strictly against US education laws protecting students’ privacy, informal talk can certainly spread some sort of label describing the child, even if it is not the official or even the accurate one. A partial list of such diagnostic labels would include attention priority disorders, anxiety disorders, Asperger’s Syndrome, autism, auditory processing disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, dyscalcula, dysgraphia, dyslexia, executive function disorder, face blindness (prosopagnosia), nonverbal learning disability, obsessive compulsive disorder, sensory integration disorders, and Tourette’s Syndrome. 3. See Nowak (2001) for a discussion of the special problems of gifted children with learning disabilities.

REFERENCES Engel, David M. 1991. “Law, Culture, and Children with Disabilities: Educational Rights and the Construction of Difference.” Duke Law Journal, no. 1, 166–205. ———. 1993. “Origin Myths: Narrations of Authority, Resistance, Disability, and Law.” Law and Society Review 27, no. 4: 785–826. Fischer, Michael M. J. 1999. “Worlding Cyberspace: Toward a Critical Ethnography in Time, Space, and Theory.” In George E. Marcus, ed., Critical Anthropology Now: Unexpected Contexts, Shifting Constituencies, Changing Agendas, pp. 245–304. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Nowak, Margi. 2001. “Double Inequity, Redoubled Critique: Twice-Exceptional (Gifted + Learning Disabled) Students, the Equality Ideal, and the Reward Structure of the Educational System.” Unpublished paper presented at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting. ———. 1999. Updated 20 April 2004. “Pain, Waste, and the Hope for a Better Future: ‘Invisible Disabilities’ in the School System.” New Horizons for Learning. Accessed 24 August 2004. Available online at: http://www.newhorizons.org/ spneeds/inclusion/information/nowak1.htm. ———. 2003. “When to Trust the System and When to Shift Gears: Parent-to-Parent Mentoring and the Development of Critical Consciousness among Parents of Children with Special Needs.” Unpublished paper presented at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting. Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine.

PART IV

{ Edith Turner

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Chapter Fourteen

An Interview with Edith Turner Matthew Engelke

{ The following interview is taken from a much longer life history conducted over the course of several months in 1997 as a project sponsored in part by the Historical Archives Program of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.1 The original motivation for that project was to explore the life and writing of Edith Turner, her marriage to Victor Turner, and how the dynamics of gender and marriage affect the production of anthropological work. This interview has been framed to touch briefly on the issues raised in the longer work. In a few instances, we have found it necessary to write transitional paragraphs in order to give this interview a more coherent form, but we have tried to keep the tone, ideas, and progression of the original conversations intact. ME: When did you and Victor Turner meet? ET: In 1942. At Carfax in Oxford, which is the main crossroads, right in the middle of Oxford. That’s where Vic and I arranged to meet, an arrangement made by my brother Charlie. ME: Was it a blind date? ET: It was through Charlie, but it didn’t have the feeling of a “blind date.” Charlie had been at university in Oxford, and then he was drafted into the army, into the same unit as Vic. In this unit there was lots of lifted literary talk, and talk about politics. The unit consisted entirely of men who

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were conscientious objectors to the war. Nevertheless, they were drafted and doing noncombatant work of various kinds. My brother Charlie said, “You ought to meet Vic,” meaning something like “My god, he’s interesting. He’s the most interesting guy in this group, and you should meet him.” ME: So it was out of an interest in conversation and literature. ET: Yes, that’s right. It was so fascinating. But I don’t think we even thought of ourselves as being literary, you know? I was busy doing Land Army work, and Charlie and the other conscientious objectors were all reading as fast as they could. I was doing the same sort of reading at the gardens where I worked. I would read at lunch hour and get in trouble with my workmate for not talking to her. It was just a spontaneous thing. We weren’t being literary or anthropological, or trying to find lovers, or anything like that. ME: What were you reading? ET: I had been reading Bernard Shaw and Henri Bergson. Vic had been reading Kierkegaard, and he was also reading the symbolist poets of France: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Malarmé. I was reading stuff I used to get out of the library. There was a whole series of Penguin books out, the “New Writing” group of writers. We were reading those like mad, in addition to the new poets. There was a conscious effort to keep poetry and the arts going in the war. In fact, a little later a group from Vic’s army unit was formed to publish our writing. It was called Oasis because we were an “oasis” in the desert. We regarded the war scene as a sort of great patriotic desert. Rimbaud called what he was doing “The reasoned deregulation of all the senses.” We didn’t go that far, but what Rimbaud saw was the immense beauty of the world if you weren’t hedged in by conventions. This is more or less what it was like for us. My mother-in-law later called me a bohemian. Vic and I married in 1943, six months after we met. For me, finding him was like the discovery of poetry. So, it hadn’t been a blind date but I fell in love anyway. And later he said that after two weeks he knew I was the one. After the war Vic went back to University College, London, to resume where he had left off in his studies before being called up. But during the war we had discovered anthropology through the books of Margaret Mead and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. So, after the war Vic changed his course from literature to anthropology, which was under Darryl Forde at the time. We moved down to Hastings, south of London, to where Vic’s mother, Violet, was living. He used to take the train into London for his seminars.

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Vic used to read out all of his assignments to me while I was doing chores around the house, and so I was getting a course under quite an interesting person who was a budding professor himself. Though now I feel I’d have given anything to have gone in and written papers myself. I could not because I had three young kids on my hands. But at home it was one long seminar all the time, day and night. We were thinking of anthropology all the time. And then, Vic came back from London University one day and said, “I’ve met Max Gluckman, and he wants me to put in for the Rhodes-Livingstone grant. He wants me to get my PhD at Manchester.” Vic was very enthusiastic about this offer. Max was a bit of a Marxist and was interested in the Hegelian dialectic, which was a new thing in anthropology. Any kind of idea which could encompass change was new at the time, because British structuralism was the fashion. Max was an innovator, and Vic could see this. With all the political work we’d been doing, we thought it was a great chance to do research into the very heart of human society in Africa. It looked just right. A lot of good things did indeed happen in Africa, and a lot of them happened because Vic was the kind of person he was and just ate up hard work. Vic worked for a year as a research assistant in Manchester, attending seminars, and I also audited seminars occasionally. Later on in Manchester, Max would show his delight that he’d got Vic around. ME: When you were preparing to go to Africa, how were you feeling about your role in the whole trip? ET: Vic’s getting a grant and going to Africa and my getting travel money to go, too, simply confirmed that we would go on doing this collaboration. I knew I could do fieldwork among the women, taking for granted I would do so. I was extremely hopeful. It was a matter of not even wondering if I would fit in. I don’t remember there ever being any question or doubts or fears or anything like that. It was a matter of “Now we have a chance to do our proper work.” We knew how important fieldwork was in anthropology. And, well, I had this marvelous husband, so I wasn’t nervous. ME: What did you expect as a family and as anthropologists in this first trip to the field? ET: I think we had the old fieldworker’s guide, Notes and Queries. Yeah, we had that. Max [Gluckman] didn’t run fieldwork preparation classes. In fact, I still don’t think they do enough of that in anthropology.

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Vic plunged into his research with vigor, at a tremendous rate, and grew familiar with the little enclave of villages around the rest house where we stayed for the first three months. I made friends with a woman called Fatima, who took me to rituals. I saw the girl’s “ripening ceremony,” Nkang’a. We saw the girl coming out dancing. I was writing rapidly. I had a clipboard, and Vic had a clipboard. We were at it as hard as we could, with no tape recorders. We just simply wrote down rapidly everything that happened. And I was taking a lot of photographs, being the main photographer. At night we would write up the fieldnotes. Sometimes I typed out Vic’s fieldnotes for him. Sometimes we just collated numerical material of various kinds. ME: In The Spirit and the Drum, you write about your research assistant, cook, and friend Musona/Kasonda a lot. He also appears in some of Vic’s early work, especially Schism and Continuity. Did he always travel with you? ET: Yes, he did. He regarded it as his “labor migration.” We never really went that far from Mukanza [his home village], and we kept on going back there because it was a center of ritual activity. Musona brought his three wives and children with him wherever we were. ME: Did you talk to the women more than the men? ET: Yes, on the whole, although there wasn’t a lot of sex segregation. I often used to go to the gardens, and we’d talk there. I used to ask the women what it was like to be in a polygamous marriage. The first wives would say, “It’s great, it’s a good life.” And the second and third wives said, “No, it’s not a good life. More or less we don’t get much of a look-in.” And the young third wives, who were usually kankang’a [having just gone through the puberty ritual], would be married off to wealthy older men whether they liked it or not. In one case there was a man about fifty or sixty years old, and his young wife ran away. I thought that she ran away because she found him disgusting. But she ran away, you see, because he couldn’t get it up! And I liked that, to hear that, because these girls were really glowing with sexuality. They were superb young women. That was where I caught on to the marvelous sexuality of African life. The Ndembu loved sex. The most pleasant and cheerful conversations were about sex, and their only fears were of witches who were “hot” in their sex lives—too fast and sudden. The women liked it chovu, which means gently and quietly. They liked sex to come up gently. Boy, they loved it. ME: How did having children in the field influence the dynamics between you and the Ndembu?

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ET: What do you think, for heaven’s sake? ME: Well, I would think it would make things a lot easier. ET: Yes, of course! Obviously! Freddie, Bobbie, and Rene all got along with the Ndembu children. Freddie and Bobbie would run off in the afternoon with their gangs—hunting for little animals or just playing around. We would spend each morning on lessons from a correspondence course that I sent away for in Salisbury, but these lessons always seemed to get sidetracked. For Vic and me, having our children made us more human in the eyes of the adults. ME: So what was the RLI plan of study? ET: One year in the field and one year back for finding out what you don’t know, then one year in the field again to fill in what you don’t know, and then one year for write up. ME: I’m curious to know what you were reading at the time, and what types of issues from the first field trip stuck out for you and Vic as needing more exploration during the second. ET: Well, we were reading a lot of Meyer Fortes. This was the big thing then. Vic was also reading Marcel Griaule around that time. We were interested in what the French were doing, but Vic was very critical because they didn’t have a sense of social interactions and social contexts that the British always had. And he was then, as always, very proud of what the British were doing. He thought French anthropology was superficial because it was not alive in human interaction, and that is what Vic was talking about. His version of political anthropology was local-level politics and the actual political rivalries, like those he was to write up later in Schism and Continuity. We were also both reading Henri Junod, and I was very fond of his work. We were encouraged by conversations with Max in the Manchester interim. There were several rituals going on when we got back [to Mwinilunga], and Vic was then fully able to put them in the proper setting of kinship and political rivalries. As I said, Meyer Fortes’ work was very useful to us because we realized those concerns overlap each other and influence each other, just as Meyer had shown among the Tallensi. But we felt this was even more so among the Ndembu, because the concerns weren’t only kinship and clanship; they consisted of local political rivalries and illnesses and curative cults and the new influences from the British government and the

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march of colonial development—all kinds of forces were playing there, doing their work, creating a present, the now. So we went into the field again, and this time we arranged to stay in Mukanza [Kajima] village for the whole period because it was at the crossroads of many different influences. This was when our trips out to the Mukanda ritual, the boys’ initiation involving circumcision, started. It became clear that these rituals were performed by people who had complex motivations and rivalries and conflicts, which is described in the piece “Mukanda: Rites of Circumcision,” in the Forest of Symbols. Certain people had more power because they were earning money building a new road, and others were the old-fashioned type. In the end it was the old-fashioned type, Nyaluhana, who did the circumcising. He just took it over, and pushed by everyone else as they laid the boys out. He was there with his knife and did the cutting. They had to hold down the boys because they were only six or seven years old, some of them, and they just wouldn’t stay still. So the men played drums loudly to drown out the crying. Rituals quickly became the focal point of all that we did. I remember that at the beginning of a twin ceremony once, my friend Nylakusa came out of her hut yelling cheerfully, “Let’s go!” I can see her now. Ritual is fun, and her shout captured something. I don’t know what’s the matter with us anthropologists. For instance, as Vic analyzed the twin ceremony in his writing, it was scholarly and showed the detail of the symbolism. I myself would like to have described the ritual in a different way; to have showed something of the swing of the whole thing as a kind of a great event. I’m interested in capturing what that woman felt when she said “Let’s go!” You know? And that’s what I feel is missing in anthropology. Many people have felt it incumbent upon themselves to write with deadly seriousness. It must be said that Vic was needing to write a foolproof PhD, because he had a wife and three children to support. The blame falls squarely on the coldness of academic demand. Spending a whole year and a quarter in Mukanza village was just the right thing to do. It was tempting to us to go from place to place as we had done in the first tour, but the richness of the material was there in Mukanza—the intimate knowledge of personalities, people, the friendships. These were of the essence in this kind of fieldwork. Other disciplines regard much of anthropology as a string of anecdotes and don’t think highly of it, because they value statistics and think such results are the truth, produced according to the real scientific method. But when you’re staying in a village like Mukanza for a length of time, getting to know an intimate little place, even though it’s only a tiny spot on the map of Africa, somehow or other you get

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in-depth documentation and understanding. Human sympathy with what’s “on the ground” is what the anthropologist is talking about. The stuff of life is difficult to bring into relation with a comprehension of the whole human scene, but I think we have to do it. So, Vic goes back to Manchester University with these cases, with the Kamahasanyi Ihamba case and so on, and Max Gluckman says, “Don’t do the ritual first. Do the social structure and make that your dissertation.” Vic was, for better or for worse, linked irrevocably with Manchester for his PhD, so he wrote Schism and Continuity, which is in great part the statistical picture of a matrilineal people, including plentiful case material and a discussion of the implications of marriage locality. Max had thus set Vic an exercise in describing a social system as a preliminary to his writing on ritual afterwards. So we built up these statistics. But there was an occasion in a pub in North Manchester, which I’ve discussed in the introduction to On the Edge of the Bush, about the social drama. Vic was in the pub with Bill Epstein, wondering what it was about anecdotes, episodes, and trouble cases that was so important. There was “process” going on here, and not just “social process” but a special form of “ritual process.” We had been thinking about what happened in the second field trip, when Sandombu/Samutamba had terrible rows in the village when he was drunk, blaming his wife for not having any children, and his mother-in-law for being a witch. Sandombu would roar out the frightful words, “Wanza weyi!” “Dirt under your foreskin!” He was furious, and this was a real curse. That scene and the quarrels that followed and the trouble that came up in episode after episode, as documented in Schism and Continuity, meant that the very roots, the vital existence of the village, was trembling and tottering all the time. This was in front of our eyes during the second session in the field. Vic couldn’t look at these events as just anecdotes, or mere trouble cases. He strung them together later in Schism and Continuity, but while still in the field he was taking notes, massive notes, paying attention because of this hunch which he hadn’t yet articulated—not until the pub in Manchester with Bill Epstein. The hunch in Manchester was the concept of the social drama and its definable form: breach, crisis, redress, and reconciliation. After the pub conversation, Vic wrote it all down and turned it in to Max as the major chapter in his dissertation. And Max liked it. There are other stories important to that early work. Once during the second field period we were walking over an old village site, a bit north of Mukanza village, just taking a walk. The old village site had ghosts because people had died in those huts. You would hear voices, and they were talking about you, and they would tell you not to eat the bananas. As Vic and I were walking over this place we were talking, and we came on to the subject

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of Sigmund Freud, whose work had become very important to us in the field. Vic had got hold of The Interpretation of Dreams in the field, and it all came out in 3-D for him. During that walk I, too, saw the curious imagery in dreams as echoing everywhere in Ndembu consciousness. We were both excited. Decades later I experienced dreams, as Native Americans do, as truly prophetic. This time, however, the ghosts decided Freud should rule! The Interpretation of Dreams powered Vic’s work on symbolic analysis and was a real breakthrough in the field itself. So this all came out at that time and we discussed it night and day, and it was marvelous for us. I loved it. When we returned from the field, we had to get to business and write, get this dissertation through. We reckoned it was from the September term to the spring that Vic would have to do the work, while the grant lasted. We had all these figures to deal with and recheck, and also consider which tables would be useful, perhaps introduce some other ones, too. Vic was dealing with the field notes and the main series of cases, the social dramas. We were busy in our rented house in North Manchester, going in to the department very often, and because the children were in school it was possible for me to take part. ME: So you went into the department a lot? ET: Yes, I went in a lot. Wonderful seminars were being held, and we had library research to do. But we did a great deal of work at home. Vic kept all his main materials and his typewriter and books at home. He didn’t have an office at the university. And we began to build up the dissertation, chapter by chapter, very carefully, starting with the geography, means of subsistence, political systems and history, etc. Nowadays, I discourage students who want to do their write-up that way. I tell them to start at something which is at the heart of the topic, which begins to breathe real life into the piece. But those were the days when the old conventions still reigned, and you simply did it this way. Vic handled the main writing. There was only one typewriter. I did the editing throughout, and the tables and the photographs, working all the time. Max Gluckman, when he finally got a complete draft in his hand, with great painstaking care went through every word of it, copyediting in detail. I liked this work a lot because we used to talk about the subject matter all the time, plus Bill Epstein was writing his dissertation on the political process in Northern Rhodesia. I did the maps for Vic. These details are important to know, but they don’t get very much regarded. And so we were all working. Vic’s mother came up when Vic got his dissertation and it was quite an occasion. I was immensely proud, and I bought myself a new hat.

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ME: Is there any part of Schism and Continuity that you and Vic kept coming back to, as something to argue over, agree on, or revel in? ET: Yeah, the social dramas were all of those. They were the great events in the villages that affected us all. And we wrote it all down, and took great pains to record them all in photographs in the dissertation. And yet I felt there was no sense that there was a spirit being passed down in the book, but Vic said there was, because of the Chihamba ritual given at the end. I regarded that analysis of Chihamba as being tailored to fit the theme of the book as a whole—emphasizing the unifying effect of the cult of Chihamba throughout that vicinage. It’s too sociological, although there are hints in the analysis that there’s more to Chihamba than what’s written, and it did lead on to Chihamba, the White Spirit. So OK, there were these differences of opinion. What I was pleased about was the fact that in Schism you could see the Ndembu ritual system in action. It was set “in time.” And then of course there was my manuscript “Kajima.” I was writing myself while doing all this dissertation work with Vic, because I couldn’t not do it. Africa had had such an effect on me, and I missed the people so much. I had a vivid dream about them, and I just simply had to get the events down the way I personally saw them and experienced them. ME: The manuscript “Kajima” has always fascinated me. It was eventually to become The Spirit and the Drum, some thirty years after it was originally written. But I’ve always wondered about how you thought of it when you wrote it. Did you think of it as anthropology? How did you and Vic talk about it? ET: He was supportive about my doing this, but it wasn’t a part of the department’s research. I never read any of it in the department; it was private writing. I didn’t expect that anything I wrote would be given in the seminars. ME: Why? ET: Because no wives ever did this, unless they were university trained. And that was that. Otherwise you were just going to be a bother. As one professor at [the University of] Chicago later said, “We don’t want all these Hyde Park housewives around here.” Thanks, you know? I’m very angry still. Such a dictum was taken for granted in England at that time, and probably universally. I did go and sit in on the seminars, but the possibility of my contributing simply didn’t come up. But Manchester was a comfortable atmosphere,

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and so much went on outside of the seminar setting. Elizabeth Colson used to do her knitting at the seminars. It was very human, and I was extremely glad to be there at all. The manuscript stayed in a drawer and we were busy thinking out what was going to come next. In the late 1950s, a very important thing happened in our lives: we joined the Catholic Church. It was at St. Joseph’s, in Manchester. We had been knocking around in Manchester for a few years after the field, a little depressed for a number of reasons. The Communist Party, which we had joined after the war in Hastings, and which informed a good deal of our first fieldwork, had lost all appeal. African ritual had taken its place. And I suppose that for us there was something of this ritual fever in the Catholic Church. It would be hard to fully explain—or understand—the reaction we got in the Manchester Department. A lot of our friends were card-carrying members of the CP, and almost everyone in Anthropology was a left-leaning atheist. Joining the Catholic Church was probably the worst thing we could have done. It didn’t end friendships, but it did cause tensions with some people. In any case, we wanted to get out. Vic was very devoted to Max, but also wanted to get out from under his thumb. So, in 1960 Vic took an offer from the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California, to spend a year there. Soon after that, he got an offer from Cornell University to come as a full professor, which was very rare—especially given his age. So, in 1964 we moved to Ithaca, and Vic started teaching at Cornell. ME: It seems that when Vic was at Cornell, your research interests began to expand. I’m thinking here of the Morgan Lectures Vic gave at Rochester during that time. ET: The Ritual Process, which was based on those lectures, were the key to the Cornell period. It was partly a recognition of the developing hippie era, and of the demonstrations and love-ins at Cornell. We had transferred the pub discussions of Manchester with the likes of Bill Epstein to Cornell, although it was in our house rather than a pub. We developed a liminal system in our seminars. Somebody gave a presentation—this was the structured part. Then the interval, the liminal time, when we all got cans of beer and had a break. Then we came together afterwards for the “reaggregation,” to say more on what we’d been talking about in the beer interval. We would have a discussion and people would be able to hear each other. That system worked like a treat, one that we also used in Chicago and Virginia. At least twelve heads of departments have resulted from those seminars, and students with many, many publications. I can’t count

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the number of books that have been written by students who have been to those seminars. Within a short time the Chicago offer turned up. That appointment was for the Committee on Social Thought, with a joint appointment in anthropology, but Vic was to be paid by the committee. Without much hesitation Vic said yes, because he liked some of the faculty a lot. He was also interested in the liberty that the committee might offer, because he could teach outside of anthropology; courses on Dante and Blake, or whatever caught his fancy. We had been in Cornell four years and felt that we could move on. We didn’t necessarily want the beauty of nature and the quiet life that Ithaca offered. We wanted to be where the action was. At the time, Vic’s reputation was rising. He and I were producing a lot of work. These books were popping out like mad and people were reading his papers in different collections. Maybe if Chicago had been like the Virginia department—if it had had the same ethos—it would have been a permanent affair for us. But there was something about the University of Chicago; a kind of tough, bitter steel from the city itself that had gotten into the fabric of the school. The first impressions in Chicago were of Hyde Park itself. When we first arrived the place was in an absolute uproar because of the 1968 elections and what was happening at the Democratic Convention. The police were so jittery. I thought, my Lord, this place is very upset. Very, very upset. Vic and I felt for the students a lot. We wanted to be identified with them. Most of the faculty at Chicago didn’t feel this way, and there were some ugly rows. But I always thought that the students were like your children, and how could you betray your children? Anyway, this is part of what we plunged into when we first reached Chicago. I know these events played a big role in how we thought about our work in anthropology from then on. ME: Did you two carry the seminar format developed at Cornell on to Chicago? ET: Yeah. That seminar went on. It was known as “Victor Turner’s midnight seminar.” It would start at eight o’clock on Thursdays and just go on and on. The gathering just couldn’t stop. Vic and I would wake up late on Friday, about nine or ten, and go along to Walgreens and have some coffee and sweet rolls. And Vera, the waitress, would always come to our table and we’d feel totally at peace. We would walk around the Point, out near the Lake Michigan, and then come and have our coffee, talking about what had been going on in the seminar. Those were great days. It was the students who helped us think through everything.

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The seminars were the heart of that Chicago period, but Vic also gave courses to students who were interested in Durkheim. He gave lectures on Kierkegaard, William Blake, Dante, and other figures. He was able to do this in the Committee on Social Thought, you see, and he relished it because at University College, London, he had gone deeply into literature. Plus he and I were continually exploring literature, the various Greek poets, the French symbolists, the American visionary romantics, and so on. It was a very busy time in Chicago, nine years in all. ME: Did faculty come to the seminars at your house as well? ET: Some faculty, yes. I wouldn’t say a lot. Maybe they were there more than I realized. Fred Eggan was often there. Not many anthropology faculty. Jamie Redfield was there sometimes. Who else? If there were South Asian themes, it would be A. K. Ramanujan and Ralph Nicholas turning up, depending on the topic on which a student was presenting. The only regular was Fred Eggan. ME: At this point I wonder if we can talk about when you started to work on the journal Primavera. I’m also interested in hearing about your experience of the women’s movement, and how feminist sentiments were coming into the university. ET: At the time I was more caught up in it than in anything else. I hadn’t been totally aware of feminist issues. When I was a little kid I was kind of a feminist, but I didn’t attach myself to it because I was so busy with Vic’s work and his thinking. Primavera was actually pointed out to me by Vic in The Maroon, the university’s student newspaper. Vic said, “There’s this ad calling for people to work on a literary journal, why don’t you do it?” It was his suggestion that legitimized it for me. I would have loved to do it anyway, but since it was coming from him that meant, “OK, that’s a go-ahead.” There were more than a dozen of us working on this journal. Some of us were associated with the university, and some weren’t. We published poetry and articles. I wrote “Girl into Woman” for one issue, which was the first thing I published on the N’kanga ritual. I liked working in a literary style very much. I worked hard on Primavera, to such an extent that Vic started to feel he wasn’t seeing much of me. But the journal work continued right until we left Chicago. We had a break for one year in Princeton when Vic was at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was there during the 1975–76 school year, and then back to Chicago until 1977.

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ME: Well, I wonder about the progression of all this. You were writing a lot in the 1940s, and we’ve talked about the work in Oasis. And then in the 1950s, after the field, you were writing both with Vic and on your own. But then, in the 1960s, when you got to America, you mention editing more than writing. And then, in the 1970s, with this literary journal, writing comes up again. How do you see this history? Were you always thinking as a writer? ET: On and off, yes. I can see the uneven development in any writer’s life. And incidentally, about the Oasis poetry: I much admired Vic, who was writing very precise poetry. It was almost like every line came out in balance, and I liked that. Of course that was one of the reasons I fell for him. But I tended to regard my own writing as this kind of fly-away stuff. I admire Walt Whitman because he has a free style. And I felt that probably mine was not gifted poetry because others had said it was sort of wild. But the works of the hippie poets actually encouraged me a lot; Alan Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and the others. Ginsberg just let it all hang out, and that was encouraging for me. ME: This was also the time that you and Vic started getting into the pilgrimage work, which resulted in your first officially co-authored book together, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture [1978]. But that work strikes me as being of a very different nature from the Ndembu work, and more a continuation of the latter chapters in The Ritual Process. How did you do the work for that project? ET: It was different from standing with a clipboard in the middle of the bush, writing about medicines and ritual. For the pilgrimage work, we did do “traditional fieldwork” in the sense that we went on pilgrimages ourselves. But a lot of it was textual analysis. We looked a lot at writing by devotees, which was an important part of the project. And then of course the experience of going on the pilgrimages as Catholics was personal as well as observational. We were worshiping at the shrines, although this did not get into the writing very much. But it did creep in a bit here and there. So, we used more historical material and less straight ethnographic material about what the pilgrims said to us. In hindsight, I feel like we didn’t have enough time to do any consistent following-up of specific groups of pilgrims. That’s why I went back to the field in Zambia after Vic died, because I’d been missing that sort of thing—integration with what the people were actually doing. ME: Looking back on the course of your work together and trying to situate the different projects, how do you think about the question of authorship?

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ET: There’s not much difference—is there?—in what we did together. It was just a matter of the political climate of the age. In the 1970s you could begin to say, “OK, this was a collaborative effort.” But it was about the same before. For example, in Drums of Affliction, Vic had a big chapter on the girl’s initiation, Nkang’a. A large amount of that was my material, and the ideas were from our collaboration, but it was a book by Victor Turner, published by Clarenden Press. So it’s a matter of the politics of the time. The fact that feminists in the 1970s could raise these issues is very important, and I do thank them. To a certain extent I wish there was more of my stuff in the work, but then, in a way, there is indirectly. But, you know, it’s actually hard to collaborate in writing. It requires you to slow, and we were both in full-tilt with what we were doing, you know? We liked it that way and we liked the fast pace. ME: You’ve mentioned to me before that when you two went on your pilgrimage research trips, you started to write fieldnotes in your own style, which was different from how you approached fieldnotes with the Ndembu. I wonder if you can talk a little more about the process of writing fieldnotes— from the early days with the Ndembu to your latest work in Alaska and Ireland. ET: In Mwinilunga, my fieldnotes were not as academic as Vic’s, but they were running accounts of what people did as I watched rituals. I did not give any emotional reactions of my own at all. I tried to get the account objectively but my emotional reactions were running through my head, and that’s why I wrote “Kajima” [The Spirit and the Drum], because I wanted to get it before the feelings disappeared. I didn’t regard that as academic; I regarded it as a narrative account that I wanted to do because I liked doing it. So, OK, I was writing what happened as a report of various rituals and so on, and I always reckoned they probably weren’t as complete as Vic’s and that he would be aware of social processes going on that I wouldn’t because of his training. He had a good eye for antagonisms in the village, and the curious tangle of personalities that he wrote about in Schism and Continuity. I wasn’t up to writing on the intricacies, or so I thought at the time. And so, OK, I wrote these reports. ME: Did you think of yourself as an anthropologist in Africa? ET: I felt that I was a junior anthropologist, yes, but a strange one because I hadn’t been shaped in the mill at University College. I was freewheeling a bit. My thinking wasn’t shaped in the professional way, although I had

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been fairly close to it. And believe me, I had a deep respect for it, or else I wouldn’t have helped Vic with all those books. I was a sort of an anthropologist, and an anthropologist’s assistant one hundred percent. ME: When you moved to Virginia in 1977 for Vic to take up the Kenan Professorship in anthropology and religious studies, you delved even further into the realm of literature by enrolling in English and creative writing courses. I imagine this all fits in to the trajectory you’re describing. ET: I found myself in this new place and I was getting more and more interested in writing. I felt I could do a degree, and since there are extraordinary writers in Charlottesville, people like John Casey and Greg Orr, and others visiting, I felt I could take some courses in English and the symbolist literature. I was hoping and thinking that maybe one day I would learn how to write what was going to be The Spirit and the Drum, you see. I wanted to do it right. Eventually, when I did take courses, John Casey helped me a lot. He looked at that manuscript, once I had done quite a bit more to it, and he gave me a great deal of help. I eventually decided to enroll full time at the University of Virginia, in English. I was accepted to the MA program, despite the fact that I had never earned a Bachelor’s degree. There was a question of whether I should do it in anthropology or in English. Of course Vic and I had been writing poetry and reading great literature, which is a kind of passion in our family. So, OK, I felt I did not want to learn what Vic had been teaching me all the time, and take classes on what was prevalent then, which was solid structuralism. I felt that if I did, there would be something slightly invidious about it, like nepotism or something. My hesitation was mainly because I had been living in the element of anthropology all the time, and I had my own rather strong ideas about it; about liminality not being subsumed under structure. ME: How did it feel being in school at sixty? ET: Oh fine. I could cope much better than most of those graduate kids because I had been with Vic doing a lot of writing. I was more mature. And they were trying, I felt, to get the grades with more or less the least trouble they could. I guess it was a little strange to be in school because I was older than the others, but as you get older you find things less strange anyway, you know. And I felt capable and experienced. One of the professors gave us Henry Miller to study. You know, Tropic of Capricorn; real way out stuff, and I did the best of all on that.

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ME: And the administration didn’t mind about this whole issue of your not having been to college? ET: Well, they counted my being a co-editor of Primavera as pretty important. They also saw other pieces I had written, and there was a very liberal attitude toward women at that time, and women that came into studies later in life. And they knew I had done the editing of Vic’s books, and that I had been collaborating with Vic all this time. ME: Did you ever think about a PhD? ET: Yes, obviously. But I was very involved in Vic’s work so it didn’t seem possible. Of course I remember the occasion when the possibility came up and in a way I regret it, and yet I knew that I couldn’t. After Vic died in 1983 I was appointed a lecturer in the anthropology department at UVA, which was appropriate, I think. It was only part-time and I immediately had a lot more on my plate. It was as if a great deal of what Vic was doing was suddenly put on my plate. So the part-time lectureship gave me time to deal with all this. ME: Many of your former students have told me about the “performance” seminars at Virginia that you and Vic led, which is also something I want to touch on, because it seems like the move to performativity was carried out most thoroughly at Virginia. ET: We were trying to convey an understanding of ritual in a way that reading and writing can’t capture. This was something that Vic always talked about in his work—that a lot of ritual couldn’t be put into words. We’d try to get the students in the spirit of it, and they very quickly couldn’t resist. There were strategies to facilitate this. In these settings, you’re not getting the structural relationships: “hot and cold,” or whatever it is. You have those as well, but you get a sense of the progression, the process, the body. And one has to “suspend disbelief” as old Wordsworth said, and flow with it. Flow is so important—the actual pacing and sense of being right in the thick of things. You can understand through the nonverbal. And when people go to the field, having done anthropology without having tried any performance, they see people fooling around and they don’t know what the hell they’re at. They write it down and get the structural relationships, but they remain on the outside, because they would have to drop that criticality to understand. If you go in the field and you haven’t performed ritual before, and you see “the natives” acting like that, you look for signs of the social con-

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struction of reality and you find them, because you find what you’re looking for. There are always people running the temple and doing accounts, so to speak. There are always people at pilgrimage centers selling zillions of blue plastic virgins, plastic bottles with “Knock Shrine” written on them, and so on. So then you have your social construction of reality and its workings and all, but that isn’t much, and it isn’t always interesting. ME: This makes a lot of anthropologists uncomfortable. ET: Oh, yeah. It used to make me uncomfortable. ME: When was the switch for you? ET: Well, after we joined the Catholic Church. You see, there are various ways in which Vic wrote. Very hard-headed, but then sometimes—what’s the word?—experiential, and with an infinite respect for what was going on. Such is the way he wrote in Chihamba, The White Spirit. And in not a very different era he wrote The Drums of Affliction, in which he practically analyzed away the true meaning of the Ihamba ritual. These two things were going side by side. I was usually in the same mode as him. I often saw him responding in this double way to the anthropological material. To forestall the critiques of this, he took a great deal of trouble with scholarship. This is what has kept the discipline in deep respect of Vic’s work. I know I’m not the scholar that Vic was, but still, I’m perhaps even more of a maverick than he. I don’t give much of a damn, perhaps acting like the naughty one of the family. ME: That’s your favorite role, I think. ET: Oh, yes, you’ve got it. ME: All of this brings us to some key themes in anthropology. Do you go native? ET: As much as I bloody well can! To me that’s the point. There is a slight limitation, but human beings are extraordinarily pervious to each other. As Vic said, there are these prepositional plugs in everybody—to, for, from, against, by, with, of, within, out. Everyone has these plugs and they plug into other people. I’m a woman. In a bygone era, the man took initiative, and the woman would be trying to work along with the man. I knew this from the environment I was in, and I had quite a lot of practice in it. A part of me would

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say, “Well, if I’m going to be flexible and take on other people’s views—a husband or whatever—I’ll take on a lot of other people’s views. What the hell is the difference?” This is something of the way my mind argued. I went the way of Vic being a Catholic. He got the sense of it first and I did afterwards. Although, when I was given the original sense it was very strong to me. So in whatever we did, I delighted in getting alongside others with their agenda. And “getting” it, if I could. ME: That’s an interesting connection, I think, and an interesting crossover between the personal and the professional. Can you say more about how you approached the idea of a relationship with Vic in that sense? My sense is that it was a very complicated mix. You and I have talked a lot about how you contributed to Vic’s work, and how it was very much a collaborative effort. And everyone I’ve talked to who knew you both has said the same thing, without fail. And certainly the two of you had profound impacts upon one another about how you wrote things up. It’s this very complicated mix of give-and-take. There are moments when I think you assert your position within this all, and make a point of claiming that partnership and a very active role. I think this is important and an accurate sense of the give-and-take. But the way in which you just described it now, and this ties into other ways you have described it, was taking on his mission; adapting yourself to his culture. So it’s curious to me in what ways you see yourself adapting to Vic and in what ways you see yourself as a point of reference. That’s kind of a convoluted way to ask a question. ET: Yes, it is. But I think I know what you’re getting at. I think it’s to do with the fact that in my consciousness I understood what Vic’s agenda was, and as it developed I understood it. I don’t think there was any point at which I didn’t understand it. He’s not here to ask, but I think he’d say he was doing a lot of things in reference to me. He was testing things off of me to a certain extent. He would frame things in a way that I could absorb, and this is rather sexual, actually. Because I was there, he would do things in a certain way, or frame things in a certain way. I didn’t have to tell him what to say, I didn’t have to direct. But he knew I was receptive to certain things, and he knew how my mind was moving and was perhaps telepathic. So he would do this, and I would suggest to him what he was thinking, too. You see? And then he would develop it, and vice versa. This was the collaboration. But then, when you look at the collaboration, as you’ve insisted upon, you see this thing from his point of view. And if he were here, which he isn’t, he would be showing this himself, you know? But I was very conscious in this social world that I was not trained at University College, London,

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and all the rest. Therefore, I valued very much this part of me that was interacting with Vic, and looking at myself as the adaptable person. I was, in a way, determined to develop this like an art form. I would think about this. And therefore, well, I think he translated this into communitas. It was there. It was conscious, but he didn’t look at it as a woman would. It wasn’t so personal to him, as it sometimes isn’t with men. But he did know what communitas was, and he loved it. So, I think this is how it was. And there is such a thing as being a woman and a man. It’s absolute rubbish to say there are just human beings, because one is very much sexualized. And true, this is structured in our society. A conscious person knows they have to live in this world and will adapt as they can. That’s what was going on. Does that answer your question? Or is there something more? ME: I think that gives me a sense of where you’re coming from, and the connections you see between the two of you and even “going native.” Let’s talk more about these ideas of “the man” and “the woman” and the different roles, perceptions, and attitudes. I think talking about these as concrete, essential realities is another strong characteristic of your work, something that you don’t shy away from. It’s also something that a lot of anthropologists would be critical of—not seeing these as categories that can be broken down. You talk about religion in these terms, too. It’s something that’s not a social construction, which is a very nonanthropological viewpoint. ET: Absolutely. I’m very conscious—highly conscious—of this. I’ve been working away at trying to shift this from all kinds of angles. Yes, I’m quite aware of what I’m feebly trying to do. ME: So tell me something about your latest work, from The Spirit and the Drum and its thirty-year history to what you’ve been doing in Ireland over the past five years. ET: I got the manuscript for The Spirit under control in the summer of 1985, when I was on my own, and there wasn’t anybody in the house at all. There were some places in it that I was bothered about, and I had a chance from that May onwards to have a look at it. And I saw that what I’d got was centered on four rituals; the boys’ and girls’ initiation, the Tukuka healing ritual, and the Chihamba. In the 1980s, the material was more vivid to me. I was more convinced, for instance, that Manyosa had gone into trance. I was more sure of the symbols, more sure that these were a force in themselves

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in this situation; symbols that were playing their own symphony, as it were. I didn’t have any qualms about the way it was written. I cared if people read it, but I didn’t want to put it into an academic frame, really. I didn’t care for that. So I thought about it in much the same terms as I had originally written it in the 1950s, but by the 1980s the material was much richer to me. All the work that Vic and I had done over the years confirmed what I wanted to do, confirmed my own sense of the human story, and it is portrayed in The Spirit and the Drum. ME: The reviews of that book are interesting because most of the reviewers obviously didn’t know about the history of the book—that it was first conceived and executed in the 1950s. I’m thinking particularly of George Marcus’s review in Parabola, where he said that it was a first-rate account of the postmodern approach to writing narrative anthropology. When I read Marcus’ review I thought this was a wonderful instance of how the categories we use are tricks to define ourselves. Do you think of that book as a postmodern text? ET: I think of it, as well as Experiencing Ritual, as evidence that this is where anthropology might be going. The richer the better. Human material is almost impossibly rich, and so we have a mandate now to go ahead and unfold the full richness of humankind to the best of our ability. It’s there, and we should all try to show it. It’s a marvelous field, anthropology. And I see Experiencing Ritual fitting somewhere into all of this. Whether it’s postmodern or not, I want to recount the relevant details to whomever will listen. There should be an accumulation of these pieces to engage the academic stages of theory-making. ME: When I read Experiencing Ritual I was struck by the different ways in which you referred to Vic throughout the text. There are ways in which you phrase passages that create a sense of intimacy, and there are ways you phrase passages that create a sense of scholarly distance. In some passages it’s “Vic” or “my husband,” and in others it’s “as Turner argues . . .” and so on. ET: The fat and the thin Vic, really. It’s like Philip Kabwita, who had a fat and a thin side. Vic had a lean and muscular mind, and rather a fat body! You had to respect that lean and muscular mind in the writing, and also the other side. ME: I assume that the specific ways you referred to him were strategically placed.

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ET: Of course. To engage with the academic side of anthropology has meant engaging with the canon, and so I’ve had to think of him in that way. But he was also a very full human being. These were dialogues of a sort. ME: I have another question; to do with the Ihamba ritual you describe and the tooth you saw. I think there would be a lot of anthropologists who would say that it’s all a bit crazy, your seeing a spirit form. ET: Yes, yes. Some people, including some anthropologists, think this is crazy. I’ve been helped by Roy Wagner in this. The tooth is a peculiarly strong thing, and so, was this going around the veins? And the concept of a spirit tooth is also somewhat strange. It’s like Jesus, who said, “Put your fingers in the holes in my hands and you will believe.” This is a spirit figure, coming after the crucifixion. And yet this poor guy Thomas was able to feel it. And people say this is a myth. How could it be? I was certain it happened to me. I didn’t actually see a tiny little tooth coming out of the skin. I saw the spirit object, a gray blob, come out. I don’t know whether a concrete tooth came out of the vein, or a spirit tooth as a gray blob came out. But I saw it, whatever it was. And one does not retract things like that, you know? I know it’s hard for people, but if they begin to take in a little of the reports they hear (like Evans-Pritchard walking in the Azande village and seeing a spirit light) then we can get somewhere. We haven’t sufficiently grappled with these issues, and yet they don’t go away. There are always more coming up. It stays like a tooth in our veins, if I can put it that way. We don’t know what to do. I just like to go on with this study on the quiet. It’s the same with my work in Point Hope, Alaska and in Ireland. I will always try to get into the thick of things in this way, whether it’s the whale spirit in Alaska or visions of Mary at Knock Shrine in Ireland. Sometimes I wonder what Vic would think of me now. What would he think of me running shamanistic sessions? How would he think of my Catholicism, in which I say, “God the Mother Almighty?” There’s a certain feminism in this. What I’m doing now is an extension of the Chihamba, the White Spirit side of Vic. Not The Drums of Affliction side. I obviously take off from the spiritual side of thinking. But I don’t get any visions or flashes about what Vic would think. But I’m grateful to that guy. And, God, the communitas. The conversations with Vic were marvelous. We would get breakthroughs right and left. Those were great times. I think we can go on with Victor Turner’s work. My work, of course, is relatively obscure, but it does affect a small range of people, and I think there’s a certain communitas in it. I always hope we might get some breakthroughs.

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NOTE 1. Reproduced with permission from Current Anthropology 41, no. 5 (2000): 843–852.

WORKS DISCUSSED Freud, Sigmund. 1955. The Interpretation of Dreams. Transl and ed. James Strachey. New York: Basic Books. Marcus, George. 1987. Review of Edith Turner The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa, Parabola 12, no.3: 116–118. Miller, Henry. 1965. Tropic of Capricorn. New York: Grove Press. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 1951. Notes and Queries on Anthropology. 6th ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Turner, Edith. 1987. The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1996. The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence Among a Northern Alaskan People. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Turner, Edith, with William Blodgett, Singleton Kahona, and Fideli Benwa. 1992. Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 1962. Chihamba, the White Spirit: A Ritual Drama of the Ndembu. Manchester: Manchester University Press for the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute. ———. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1968. The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes Among the Ndembu. Oxford: Clarenden Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1985. On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience. Ed. Edith Turner. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1986. The Anthropology of Performance. Preface by Richard Schechner. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chapter Fifteen

Woman/women in “the Discourse of Man”: Edie Turner and Victor Turner’s Language of the Feminine Barbara A Babcock

{ I think that in the imaginary, maternal continuity is what guarantees identity. -–Julia Kristeva (1985: 23, in Moi 1986: 14)

In 1970, I was a postgraduate fellow in anthropology at the University of Chicago, completing my doctorate there in comparative literature. I’d heard much about Victor Turner’s “Myth, Ritual, and Symbol” seminar, but what I experienced on those Thursday nights was beyond anything I could have imagined. In the first place, it was in his home—something that no other professor at the University of Chicago did in those days. There were Rory and Alex in their pajamas on the stairs, and there was Edie back and forth between the seminar, the kitchen, and putting children to bed. Soon, some of us students, mostly women, took to coming early to help put out food and drink, and staying late to clean up, and those conversations were no less a part of the seminar than listening to Vic, a visiting professor, or a fellow student present a paper, and engaging in academic discussion. It was all of a piece—as Virginia Woolf said, “Spinoza and the smell of sausage cooking”; and for the first time in my life, I really understood what she meant. 297

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Much later, I realized that that was what was different about this anthropology. “The discourse of man” as produced by the Turners not only involved man and woman writing and talking in the field and in the home but also the process of “gynesis,” defined by Alice Jardine as “the putting into discourse of ‘Woman’” (1985: 25). It is no wonder that many of Victor Turner’s anthropological colleagues had trouble with his writing—it was decidedly too feminine as well as eclectic, indeterminate, and subversive—or that his prose stumbles when he struggles to control its “semiotic” flux in the language of science and in etymological genealogies, for clearly he valued the underside of reason, civilization, and progress—“communitas [after all] wears a skirt” (Turner 1978: 289). How could it be otherwise? As an infant, Vic listened to his actress mother, Violet Turner, reciting Shakespeare while feeding him in his high chair; as a graduate student, he read anthropology to Edie in their Manchester kitchen while she fed both him and the children and drew the maps and charts and tables for his dissertation. As Edie recalled in talking to Matt Engelke (this volume), “at home it was one long seminar all the time, day and night.” While Victor Turner does not, like Jacques Derrida or Julia Kristeva, speak explicitly about “the deconstructive role of the feminine” in Western culture, all of his anthropology is about indeterminancy, liminality, communitas, antistructure, and process, and the generative metaphors such as “seedbeds of cultural creativity” (Turner 1974: 60) in which they are described are unmistakably feminine: Liminality can perhaps be described as a fructile chaos, a fertile nothingness, a storehouse of possibilities, not by any means a random assemblage but a striving after new forms and structure, a gestation process, a fetation of modes appropriate to and anticipating postliminal existence. It is what goes on in nature in the fertilized egg, in the chrysalis, and even more richly and complexly in their cultural homologues. (E. Turner 1985: 295)

Moreover, by arguing that structure is secondary to and dependent upon process, and that the antistructural condition of liminality is the “generative” source of culture and structure, Turner deconstructed received wisdom in anthropology. In addition to the gynesis of his anthropology, Turner also differed from most of his male colleagues in incorporating and acknowledging as well as appropriating many actual female voices, from his mother to Edie and from Dorothy Emmett to myself. After Vic died, I was asked to write several obituary essays, and I began rereading and remembering countless Turner books and essays. It was then that I really noticed the gynesis of his prose as I never had before, and vowed that someday I would write about “Victor Turner and the language of the

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feminine.”1 My remarks here are but the beginning of that discussion, and a very brief introduction to the “women” in his anthropology, especially Edie, and the “Woman” in her discourse as well as his. As I’ve already implied, “Woman” as a new rhetorical space, the feminine as a point of disruption or range of possibilities, as a sign of the crisis of the rational subject, is inseparable from the most radical moments of many contemporary disciplines. There is, as well, critical recognition of a long Western tradition in which disorder and unreason are feminine by definition—a tradition well documented and analyzed by Carole Pateman (1988, 1989), Genevieve Lloyd (1984), and Rosi Braidotti (1991, 1994), among others. As Turner points out in The Reversible World (Babcock 1978) regarding Natalie Davis’s “Women on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and Political Disorder”: I have suggested in The Ritual Process that in male-dominated politico-legal systems, social links through women, and by abstraction, femininity itself, tend to become associated with communitas, as opposed to formal hierarchical structures. Often, when structures begin to break down in periods of major socioeconomic change, communitas emerges from its small enclaves into public space. In male-dominated societies communitas may wear a skirt, or appear as nature, Mother Nature, versus culture, Father Culture. (1978: 289)

Davis is one of several political and social historians and feminist theorists, including those mentioned above, who examine the binary oppositions inscribed in early modern Europe, and the subversion thereof in everyday life and performance genres. Gendered inversions and masquerades clearly involve much more than disguising one’s identity. From the early 1980s, Davis was involved in conferences, symposia, and publications that Turner organized, and Vic frequently referred to her work in his own writing. In “Frame, Flow and Reflection: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality,” he discusses her work on the Abbeys of Misrule at length and remarks: “The subversive potential of the carnivalized feminine principle becomes evident in times of social change when its manifestations move out of the liminal world of Mardi Gras into the political arena itself” (1979: 105). While Davis was important to Vic’s understanding of the rituals of early modern Europe, the person who introduced both Vic and Edie to African tribal ritual, and to whom The Forest of Symbols (Turner 1967) is dedicated, is Monica Wilson. It was she who did not share the bureaucratic vision of her Africanist colleagues and their separation of the social and the symbolic, who encouraged the Turners’ interest in ritual and symbol, and from whom Edie took a course on rites of passage. Wilson encouraged ethnographers to collect native interpretations of ritual symbols and regarded rituals as “the key to an understanding of the essential constitution of human societies” (1954: 241).

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While a majority of male social theorists recognize, in the words of Stuart Hall, that “either/or alternatives are seriously disabling at a theoretical level” (1980: 340), both Victor Turner and feminist theorists see them as dangerously consequential. Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement (1986) and Luce Irigaray (1985a, 1985b), among others, argue that the conceptual oppositions that undergird Western thought, such as mind and body or form and matter, inscribe power relationships in terms of which hierarchies are constructed, expressed, and maintained, and that male versus female is the primary, unspoken dichotomy underlying all the others. Not surprisingly, twentieth-century feminists from Elsie Clews Parsons to Julia Kristeva have regarded “classification [as] nine-tenths of subjection,” and have seen in woman “something that cannot be represented, something that is not said, something above and beyond nomenclatures and ideologies” (Parsons 1916: 5; Kristeva 1981: 137). Given Vic’s desire to subvert and critique these primal oppositions, it is not surprising that his concept of liminality, Mary Douglas’s notion of “dirt” and pollution, Kristeva’s elaboration of “abjection,” and the unexpected conjunctions of radical feminist strategies from Virginia Woolf’s “androgyne” to Gloria Anzaldua’s “borderlands” to Donna Haraway’s “cyborg” are strikingly similar. As Turner argued, “[Liminality] is ritualized in many ways, but very often symbols expressive of ambiguous identity are found cross culturally: androgynes, theriomorphic figures, monstrous combinations of elements drawn from nature and culture, with some symbols such as caverns, representing both birth and death, womb and tomb” (1986: 41–42). When Donna Haraway lauds the ironic ambivalence of the cyborg as “a self that feminists must code” and describes her manifesto as “a myth about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities” (1991: 154), I write liminality in the margin. Obviously, I disagree with Catherine Bynum’s assertation that liminality “is applicable only to men” (1984: 118). While that might have been the case in late medieval times, it is certainly not the case in the borderlands and interstices that women have inscribed in recent decades.2 “The disorder of women” is, however, a space that male critics and philosophers have appropriated and, ironically, one that real women cannot easily claim, write, speak for themselves. As Gayatri Spivak says of Derrida’s 1979 Spurs: “the discourse of man is in the metaphor of woman” (1983: 169). Spivak is but one of many noted feminist critics who have been quite vocal in pointing out this rhetorical violence and accusing their male colleagues of “critical cross-dressing” and of becoming “academic Tootsies.”3 While Turner may not be cited by contemporary feminists, even those who use the term liminality, his friend and contemporary, Africanist colleague

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and fellow British cultural anthropologist, Mary Douglas, is. Her Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966) has been reprinted several times, most recently in 2002 as a Routledge Classics Edition. Like Turner’s The Forest of Symbols (1967) and The Ritual Process (1969), her analysis of borders, betwixts-and-betweens, ambiguities, and “dirt” is heavily antistructural and very much a product of the 1960s. The Turner-Douglas exchanges, both personal and professional, continued until his death in 1983. In fact, he left the University of Chicago and the Committee on Social Thought in 1977 over the refusal of the Department of Anthropology to give her an appointment. Many feminist students read back to Douglas from Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), which cites Douglas at length. Abjection, which is “above all ambiguity,” might be regarded as “dirt” or “liminality” from a psychoanalytic perspective. In the words of Elizabeth Grosz, “Abjection attests to the perilous and provisional nature of the symbolic control over the dispersing impulses of the semiotic drives, which strive to break down and through identity, order, and stability. . . . [Abjection] is, as it were, the unspoken of a stable speaking position, an abyss at the very borders of the subject’s identity, a hole into which the subject might fall” (1990: 86–87). Although Turner defines communitas as a “regenerative abyss” (1969: 139), he rarely focuses on the dangerous and negative aspects of the antistructural world that he had conjured up and plunged into. In an essay on Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts (Babcock 1990), I critique liminality from this more balanced and negative conception of “abjection.”4 In Law as Process (1978), anthropologist Sally Falk Moore, one of the last of Max Gluckman’s students, saw social reality as “fluid and indeterminate,” and law and ritual as “regularizing processes.” Vic quoted her and her formulation of indeterminancy frequently after the “Secular Ritual” conference in 1974 and the subsequent book that she organized and edited with Barbara Myerhoff, her University of Southern California colleague (1977). In the early 1970s, when Myerhoff entered the Turner circle, she was writing and talking about Huichol peyote ritual; by the end of the decade, her focus had shifted to elderly Jews in Venice, California. After participating in many of the same Turner-centered conferences with Natalie Davis, John MacAloon, and myself—including “Cultural Frames and Reflections,” a 1977 WennerGren conference that she co-organized with Turner and me—and reading my dissertation on narrative reflexivity (1975), Myerhoff turned her attention to that aspect of elderly storytelling and self-construction. While the dimension of reflexivity was implicit in Turner’s earliest formulations of liminality,5 only in the later 1970s does he speak about it frequently and explicitly.6 Vic was always more interested in process than structure—an interest engendered for him by the “Manchester School” of British Anthropology,

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as it was for Sally Falk Moore. In addition to Max, Marx, and the dialectic, however, Turner was also influenced by Manchester philosophy professor Dorothy Emmett, who viewed society as process, rather than “an integrated system like an organism or a machine” and advocated what Turner later called “processual analysis” (Emmett 1958: 293). Edie was unquestionably the indicative mother of Vic’s children and much of his work—field and library research, writing and editing; she was also “the subjunctive mother” of the work, obviously contributing to “the putting of woman into discourse” and reinforcing the “gynesis” of his anthropology, in which Mother is omnipresent as both subject and verb. One cannot talk with Edie without realizing that she certainly never edited out all those “conceits of conception.” Although Edie was never officially a coauthor of Vic’s publications until their Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978), she was always and indispensably there. In reviewing On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience (E. Turner 1985), Ed Bruner discusses this relationship and remarks: “In a real sense, Victor Turner’s life oeuvre was the result of a lifelong collaboration” (1991: 197). As her own books attest, Edie has always known that “the process of knowing involves the whole self” (Rosaldo 1989: 181) and has long chafed at the restrictive conventions of “objective” ethnography. She is all too aware of her own and other female subjectivities and knows without high theory that the maternal body is “the ground of all representations,” and that women’s stories are inseparable from women’s bodies.7 Edie was, however, able to write anthropology with this whole self only when she wrote alone, rather than when writing for or with him. The titles alone of Edie’s books—The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa (Turner 1987), Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing (Turner et al. 1992), and The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence among a Northern Alaskan People (Turner 1996)—signal, as she says, that “this is a different kind of anthropology” (Turner et al. 1992: xi). In describing what The Spirit and the Drum is, Edie says, I would like to call it advocacy anthropology in the female style, that is, speaking on behalf of a culture as a lover or a mother. I decided to use all the observations, knowledge, and field material that I and Vic had collected, and form them—these actual facts of fieldwork, not imaginary material—into a coherent story, adding my own blood of motherhood, as it were, to feed the embryo so that it might grow in its own true way. (1987: x)

Clearly, there is no question about where the feminine, the body, or the woman (and Woman)—are in this text. As Julia Kristeva suggests in her preface to Desire in Language: “It was perhaps necessary to be a woman to attempt

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to take up the exorbitant wager of carrying the rational project to the outer borders of the signifying venture of men” (1980: x). When I think about “the new woman” Edie and read what she modestly describes as a “different kind” of anthropology, I think about something that Elsie Clews Parsons said about women, as well as something that was said about her. In Social Rule, after pointing out that “classification is nine-tenths of subjection,” Parsons goes on to say: “The more thoroughly a woman is classified, the more easily she is controlled. The new woman means the woman not yet classified, perhaps not classifiable; the woman new not only to men, but to herself” (1916: 5, 55). Finally, it was said of Elsie and should surely be said of Edie, that she is “a hazard to definitions.” And that’s a good thing!

NOTES 1. In the 1980s, I presented, but did not publish, several papers related to issues of gender, “gynesis,” and liminality: “Specular Play: Reflections and Rever(Her) sals” (1984a) was presented in a symposium on “Forms of Play in the Early Modern Period”; “Communitas Wears a Skirt: Cross-dressing in Performance” (1985) was presented in a lecture series at St. Cloud State University in memory of Victor Turner, “Humanity as Creator: The Performance of Culture.” In 1988, “Liminalities: Working/Playing In-Between” was presented as a faculty lecture at Brown University. In 1991, I was persuaded to organize a collection of my liminal essays for publication. The last essay in the book, Liminal Necessities: Selected Essays, which I have yet to write, is “The Subjunctive Mother: Victor Turner and the Language of the Feminine.” This will incorporate material from the aforementioned presentations, especially Babcock (1988). For more on the relevance of Victor Turner’s work for cultural criticism, see in addition to the essays in Ashley (1990), Mae G. Henderson (1995). In the past decade, I have also taught much of this material in a graduate seminar, “Theory, Play, Anomaly: Clowning and Cultural Critique,” and learned much from student comments and essays. 2. For more on the congruencies between Victor Turner’s discourse and feminist theorists, see Babcock (1990). 3. In addition to Spivak (1983) and Jardine (1985), also see Braidotti (1991), deLauretis (1987), Donaldson (1988), Gubar (1981), Robinson (1990), Showalter (1983), and Waller (1987). 4. For more on the relationship between liminality and reflexivity, see Babcock (1984a, 1990) and Babcock and MacAloon (1987). 5. As expressed in the following: Liminality may be partly described as a stage of reflection. In it those ideas, sentiments, and facts that had been hitherto for the neophytes bound up

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in configurations and accepted unthinkingly are, as it were, resolved into their constituents. These constituents are isolated and made into objects of reflection for the neophytes by such processes as componental exaggeration and dissociation by varying concomitants. . . . [With such liminal figures as the man-lion monster,] the relation between man and lion, empirical and metaphorical, may be speculated upon, and new ideas developed on this topic. Liminality here breaks, as it were, the cake of custom and enfranchises speculation. (1967: 105– 106) In the last fifteen years, feminist critics have focused increasingly on the relationship between women’s bodies and women’s writing, between the female body and representation, and between the maternal body and reproduction in every sense. As Edie Turner demonstrates, acknowledging the body in the production of knowledge makes not only for a crisis of reason, but an “anthropology of a different kind” (Turner et al. 1992: xi). There is much more to be said about this “different kind of anthropology,” corporeal feminism, and the maternal imaginary. A few of the many relevant texts are Curti (1998), Gatens (1996), Grosz (1989, 1990, 1993, 1994) Jacobus (1995), Kirby (1991), and Lloyd (1984). There is another essay to be written on Edie Turner’s anthropology in relation to a growing literature on “woman writing culture,” largely by feminist anthropologists, in response to Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Clifford and Marcus 1986). The texts that I have consulted, but not had time to discuss in this essay are Behar and Gordon (1995), Hastrup (1995), James, Hockey, and Dawson (1997), John (1996), Kirby (1989), Mascia-Lees and Sharpe (1993), Okely and Callaway (1992), and Visweswaran (1994).

REFERENCES Ashley, Kathleen M., ed. 1990. Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Babcock, Barbara A. 1975. “Mirrors, Masks, and Metafiction: Studies in Narrative Reflexivity.” PhD diss, University of Chicago. ———. ed. 1978. The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1984a. “Specular Play: Reflections and Rever(Her)sals.” Paper presented at the symposium “Forms of Play in the Early Modern Period.” Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, 22 March. ———. 1984b. “Dancing on the Interstices: Liminality, Reflexivity, and the Spaces in Between.” Paper presented in “The Work of Victor Turner: Past and Into the Future,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, 17 November. ———. 1985. “Communitas Wears a Skirt: Cross-Dressing in Performance.” Paper presented in “Humanity as Creator: The Performance of Culture,” a lecture

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series in memory of Victor Turner at St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN, 9 May. ———. 1988. “Liminalities: Working/Playing In-Between.” Faculty Lecture, Brown University, Providence, RI, 8 March. ———. 1990. “Mud Mirrors and Making Up: Liminality and Reflexivity in Between the Acts.” In Kathleen M. Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 86–116. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Babcock, Barbara A. and John J. MacAloon. 1987. “Victor W. Turner (1920–1983).” Semiotica 65, nos. 1–2: 1–27. Behar, Ruth, and Deborah Gordon, eds. 1995. Women Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Braidotti, Rosi. 1991. Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy. Transl Elizabeth Guild. New York: Routledge. ———. 1994. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Bruner, Edward M. 1991. “Man Alive, Woman Alive: A Review of On the Edge of the Bush.” Reviews in Anthropology 16: 195–201. Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1984. “Women’s Stories, Women’s Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality.” In Robert L. Moore and Frank E. Reynolds, eds., Anthropology and the Study of Religion, pp. 105–125. Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion. Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cixous, Helene, and Catherine Clement. 1986. The Newly Born Woman. Transl. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Curti, Lidia. 1998. Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity and Representation. New York: New York University Press. Davis, Natalie. 1978. “Woman on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and Political Disorder in Early Modern Europe. In Barbara A. Babcock, ed., The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, pp. 147–190. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. de Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1879. Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles. Trans. Barbara Harlow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Donaldson, Laura E. 1988. (ex)Changing (wo)Man: Towards a Materialist-Feminist Semiotics. Cultural Critique 11: 5–23. Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge. Emmet, Dorothy. 1958. Function, Purpose and Powers: Some Concepts in the Study of Individuals and Societies. London: Macmillan Engelke, Matthew. 2000. “An Interview with Edith Turner.” Current Anthropology 41, no. 5: 843–852.

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Gatens, Moira. 1996. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. New York: Routledge. Grosz, Elizabeth A. 1989. Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. ———. 1990. “The Body of Signification.” In John Fletcher and Andrew Benjamin, eds., Abjection, Melancholia, and Love: The Work of Julia Kristeva, pp. 80–103. New York: Routledge. ———. 1993. “Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason.” In Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies, pp. 187–215. New York: Routledge. ———. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gubar, Susan. 1981. “Blessings in Disguise: Cross-Dressing as Re-Dressing for Female Modernists.” Massachusetts Review (fall): 477–508. Hall, Stuart. 1980. “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance.” In UNESCO, eds., Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, pp. 305–345. Boston: UNESCO Press. Haraway, Donna J. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. pp. 149–181. New York: Routledge. Hastrup, Kirsten. 1995. A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory. New York: Routledge. Henderson. Mae G., ed. 1995. Borders, Boundaries, and Frames: Essays in Cultural Criticism and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge. Irigaray, Luce. 1985a. Speculum of the Other Woman. Transl. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1985b. This Sex Which is Not One. Transl. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jacobus, Mary. 1995. First Things: The Maternal Imaginary in Literature, Art, and Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. James, Allison, Jenny Hockey, and Andrew Dawson, eds. 1997. After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology. New York: Routledge. Jardine, Alice A. 1985. Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. John, Mary E. 1996. Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory, and Postcolonial Histories. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kirby, Vicky. 1989. “Capitalizing Difference: Feminism and Anthropology.” Australian Feminist Studies 9 (fall): 1–29. ———. 1991. “Corpus Delicti: The Body at the Scene of Writing.” In Rosalyn Diprose and Robyn Ferrell, eds., Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and Spaces, pp.70–87. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Leon S. Roudiez. Transl. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leo S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

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———. 1981. “Woman Can Never Be Defined.” In Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms: An Anthology, pp. 137–141. New York: Schocken Books. ———. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Transl. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1985. “Interview with Julia Kristeva.” Les Cahiers du GRIF 32: 23. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mascia-Lees, Frances E. and Patricia Sharpe, eds. 1993. “Constructing Meaningful Dialogue on Difference: Feminism and Postmodernism and the Academy.” Theme issue of Anthropological Quarterly 66, nos. 2–3. Moi, Toril, ed. 1986. The Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Moore, Sally Falk. 1978. Law as Process. London: Routledge. Moore, Sally Falk and Barbara Myerhoff, eds. 1977. Secular Ritual. Leiden: Van Gorcum. Okely, Judith and Helen Callaway, eds. 1992. Anthropology and Autobiography. New York: Routledge Parsons, Elsie Clews. 1916. Social Rule: A Study of the Will to Power. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1989. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Robinson, Sally. 1990. “Deconstructive Discourse and Sexual Politics: the “Feminine” and/in Masculine Self-Representation.” Cultural Critique 13: 203–227. Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Showalter, Elaine. 1983. “Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists and the Woman of the Year.” Raritan 3, no. 2: 130–149. Spivak, Gayatri. 1983. “Displacement and the Discourse of Woman.” In Mark Krupnick, ed., Displacement: Derrida and After, pp. 169–195. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Turner, Edith, ed. 1985. On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1987. The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. ———. 1996. The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence among a Northern Alaskan People. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Turner, Edith, with William Blodgett, Singleton Kahona, and Fideli Benwa. 1992. Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, Victor W. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine.

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———. 1974. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” Theme issue, “The Anthropological Study of Human Play,” ed. Edward Norbeck, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3: 53–92. ———. 1978. “Comments and Conclusions.” In Barbara A. Babcock, ed., The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, pp. 276–296. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1979. “Frame. Flow and Reflection: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality.” In V. Turner, Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage: A Study in Comparative Symbology, pp. 94–120. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. ———. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In V. W. Turner and Edward Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 33–44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Turner, Victor W., and Edith Turner 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. Visweswaran, Kamala. 1994. Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Minnneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Waller, Marguerite. 1987. “Academic Tootsie: The Denial of Difference and the Difference It Makes.” Diacritics (spring): 2–20. Wilson, Monica. 1954. “Nyakyusa Ritual in Symbolism.” American Anthropologist 56, no. 2: 228–241.

Chapter Sixteen

Faith and Social Science: Contrasting Victor and Edith Turner’s Analyses of Spiritual Realities Douglas Ezzy

{ Clem flunked history at high school because he gave Iñupiat history in his assignments instead of the White history of Alaska (Edith Turner et al. 1996: 45). It’s true that I once had an experience of religion, after which I didn’t see the point of disbelieving other people’s experiences (Edith Turner 1992: xiii).

INTRODUCTION Academics engage in a form of reflexive sequestration of religious experience in which they silence their own religious experiences, and the experiences of those they write about. The social sources of this silencing are not hard to identify. As Edith Turner herself notes, at the time that Victor Turner was working on his PhD in the 1950s “almost everyone in anthropology was a left-leaning atheist” (Engelke 2000: 847, the interview is reproduced in this volume). The successful completion of Turner’s PhD required that he sequester his interests in, and accounts of, religious experience. In other words, an endemic methodological atheism has been central to anthropological theory and writing as a consequence of the constraining power of atheistic beliefs of key anthropologists, rather than a product of the irrelevance of religious experience to the cultures that anthropologists have studied. 309

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This chapter examines some of Edith and Victor Turner’s key publications to analyze the social processes that shape published academic accounts of religious experience. I make some reference to some aspects of the interactions between their professional lives, the development of Victor and Edith Turner’s personal understanding of religious experience, and their publications. However, Engelke’s interviews with Edith Turner have already provided a wealth of information on this more personal aspect (Engelke 2002, 2004; Deflem 1991). This chapter is broader in scope, drawing on the Turners’ work to illustrate a more general difficulty with the academic study of religious experience and ritual. In this chapter I take issue with the false dichotomization of anthropological analysis and religious/philosophical belief, and the implied value statement contained within this dichotomy—as if one is objective science and the other subjective and therefore less worthy. Deflem (1991: 19), for example, argues that “there was a shift in Turner’s work from anthropological analysis sensu stricto to philosophical belief.” I argue that anthropological analysis is a form of philosophical belief, and while I accept that there is a transition in Victor Turner’s published work, I disagree with Deflem’s implicit evaluation of this transition. Turner’s later work does tend to provide more sympathetic readings of religion, although these are also present in his earlier work. However, I do not think this represents, as Deflem (1991: 18) suggests, the influence of “his own personal convictions (he remained a devoted Catholic after his conversion)” on his previously unbiased anthropological work. Rather, it represents the movement from one interpretative frame to another, both equally influenced by subjectivity and rigorous scientific analysis. Turner’s own method can be applied reflexively: “Exegesis for Turner is part of ritual, while commentaries associated with ritual are in structuralism treated as implicit mythology” (Deflem 1991: 11). If the anthropological study of religious ritual and belief is itself a ritual, then religious belief, or unbelief, as a form of exegesis or commentary, is integral to the rituals of academic anthropologists, not separate from them, as some would argue. That is to say, while anthropological practice does not typically entail belief in the supernatural, it does entail beliefs about the supernatural. Specifically, anthropological and sociological monographs have systematically denied the existence of religious beings and forces. This denial is not “unbiased” or “objective.” Rather, methodological atheism is equally a product of the influence of “personal convictions” and “philosophical belief.” In addition, it is a form of cultural imperialism that has resulted in the systematic misinterpretation of religious practice. Victor Turner (1975: 22) makes the thrust of this argument: “We must not dismiss what cannot be framed within our own cognitive traditions as ‘non-sense.’”

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The chapter begins with a recounting of the Ihamba tooth ritual, providing an empirical example that illustrates the two approaches to religious experience present in the Turner’s work. This is followed by a more general discussion of the oscillation between methodological atheism and the credibility of religious experience in the Turners’ work. I identify one social source of methodological atheism in the atheistic culture of academia. I also suggest that Victor Turner tends to privilege religious experience among the Ndembu that he sees as consistent with, or an intimation of, his own Christian beliefs, whereas he tends to sociologically explain away other aspects of Ndembu religious experience. I briefly indicate the importance of embodied knowing in the Turners’ later work and suggest that more discussion of the role of altered states of consciousness in religious experience is required. The chapter concludes with an argument that academics must develop an academic culture that respectfully interprets religious experience if we are to grasp many of the insights to be gained from religious experience.

IHAMBA The Ihamba affliction runs like this: the patient has been bitten by the tooth of a dead hunter, an object normally kept as an amulet helpful for hunting. When the tooth is neglected, so the Ndembu told us, it enters someone’s body and travels along the veins, biting and inflicting a unique disease. This thing is both a spirit and a tooth, as the actions of the doctors attested. It is removed by means of cupping horns after a lengthy ritual (Edith Turner et al.1992: 2).

The Ihamba tooth ritual of the Ndembu of Zambia is discussed at length in both Victor Turner’s (1968) The Drums of Affliction and in Edith Turner’s (1992) Experiencing Ritual. Both books draw on the Turners’ observations and notes from the early 1950s. Victor Turner’s account of the Ihamba ritual provides an excellent example of the atheistic strand in his work. Edith Turner (1992: 8) reports that Victor “regarded the symbolism of Ihamba as a mixture of moving poetry and undoubted hocus pocus.” She also notes that in The Drums of Affliction Victor Turner “practically analyzed away the true meaning of the Ihamba ritual” (Engelke 2000: 850). This “analyzing away” takes the form of an emphasis on the social meaning of the ritual that portrays religious interpretations as epiphenomenon: “If one considers its alleged attributes carefully, it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusions that the Ihamba epitomizes the aggressive drives in human nature . . . Ihamba may be said to represent the turning of aggression against oneself instead of against others . . . In a society living at bare subsistence level, anybody who does not pull his or her weight in food-production, and running of vil-

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lage affairs . . . causes a much greater disturbance than would be the case in European urban society . . . the person who hates his kin and retreats from social intercourse feels guilty, and may well believe that his minor ailments are signs of punitive affliction by shades” (Victor Turner 1968: 182). The difference between Victor Turner’s account and Edith Turner’s is also clear in their explanation of what is being drawn out in the ritual. After describing the use of the cupping horns that are placed over small incisions that draw blood, Victor Turner (1968: 172, emphasis added) wrote: “I felt at the time that what was being drawn out of this man was, in fact, the hidden animosities of the village.” Victor’s analysis turns on framing the Ihamba as a ritual mechanism for dealing with socially generated tensions among the Ndembu. This may be part of the significance and function of the ritual. However, Victor Turner gives the impression that once the social dimensions of the ritual have been examined, the religious dimensions can be discounted. In 1985, after the death of Victor Turner, Edith Turner returned to the same locale and again observed the Ihamba ritual. However, her experience the second time round was substantially different: “In the second one I participated instead of merely witnessing. At the climax of the second one, to my surprise, I saw with my own eyes a large afflicting substance, some six inches across, emerge from the body of the patient under the doctor’s hands” (Turner 1992: 2). Edith reports that the Turners had not seen an Ihamba spirit in their 1950s observations, and that a social psychological explanation of the ritual was the only one they could find to make sense of what they were observing. At the end of her later account of the Ihamba ritual, Edith Turner (1994: 94) argues: “It is time we recognize the ability to experience different levels of reality as one of the normal human abilities and place it where it belongs, central to the study of ritual.”

VICTOR TURNER’S INCONSISTENT METHODOLOGICAL ATHEISM Victor Turner’s interpretations and approaches to ritual are not always consistent. Sometimes he demonstrates respect for religious realities, and this respect seems to become stronger in his later publications, although it is also present in his early work. At other times he seems to explain away religious experiences. For example, Edith Turner notes that Victor Turner’s account of the revelatory Chihamba ritual in 1962 demonstrates sympathy for, and understanding of, the religious dimensions of this ritual. However, his later account of the Ihamba ritual is much more dismissive of the religious

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dimensions. “Vic oscillated all the time from one philosophical position to another using psychology, social drama, and religion in an incessant dialogue” (Turner 1992: 9). Edith Turner (1992: 29) understands these inconsistencies as reflecting “the ambivalence of anthropology itself, ever swaying between rationalization and deep understanding.” When Turner analyzes religious ritual in terms that emphasize solely the social structural functions of religion, the underlying assumption is that ritual is rational from the point of view of the Ndembu, but that they are epistemologically mistaken and ethically inferior. Rituals are “symbolic compensations” (Turner 1968: 197) in the absence of secular processes to deal with social conflict and adversity. Social structure is described as “actually existing” (ibid.: 26), whereas Ndembu paganism is “epistemologically” subordinate or “naïve” in comparison to Western understanding. For example, in The Drums of Affliction, after describing the importance of ritual to the Ndembu, Turner (1968: 22) stresses that his sympathetic account should not be misunderstood: “This is not to imply that Ndembu paganism is on an ethical or epistemological parity with the great world religions.” It is somewhat ironic that on the next page Turner charts the destructive effects of Western individualism in Central Africa, reporting that wherever it “crops up,” it results in a self-centered obsession with money and possessing consumer goods. As a consequence, “people, or rather the customary ties between people, become less important” (Turner 1968: 23). Perhaps, Turner suggests, new religious movements or nationalism will replace this lost sense of social obligation, but he does not seem optimistic. As one Ndembu put it to Turner (1968: 23): “For Europeans, things are more important than people, for us, people are more important than things.” I am not so sure that Turner’s assertion of the ethical superiority of the Christianity of Europeans would be convincing to this Ndembu. Turner’s privileging of anthropological analysis implicitly denigrates the religious beliefs of those he is discussing. This is integral to the anthropological approach of his time, which sought to identify social and structural patterns in societies around the world. It is a form of cultural imperialism and “fundamentalist secularism” (Edith Turner 1994: 91). In these passages Victor Turner does not try to write from within the religious worldview of the Ndembu, but rather attempts to translate the cultural practices and rituals into the worldview of Western secular anthropology. However, Turner’s anthropology held much that was extremely valuable for the development of a more respectful understanding of religious ritual. Turner’s processual approach to ritual as social drama provided the theoretical groundwork for both deeper respect and understanding of religious ritual. He argued that “society is a process rather than an abstract system,

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whether of social structural relations or of symbols of meanings” (Turner 1969: vii). Edith Turner (1992, 1996) repeatedly emphasizes the value of Victor Turner’s processual approach to anthropology, noting that her understanding of religious experience developed out of this approach.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ACADEMIC ATHEISM The methodological atheism endemic in anthropology and sociology is not a product of careful analysis, but the product of systematic culturally produced and socially sanctioned bias (Ezzy 2004; Stark and Finke 2000). Academic accounts of the social sources of this bias often surface in monographs on religious experience. For example, Tanya Luhrmann points to the pressure to produce an atheistic anthropology in her account of the magical beliefs of the contemporary Witchcraft movement. Luhrmann (1989: 321) reports: “I stood to gain nothing by belief . . . but I stood to loose credibility and career by adherence.” There are now a growing number of ethnographies that include accounts of researchers’ religious experiences, yet do not attempt to explain away religious experience (for a list see Edith Turner 1996: xxv). However, the proclamation of religious belief or practice by the anthropologist or sociologist of religion remains controversial, and still carries the risks identified by Luhrmann. Even members of dominant Western religious traditions such as Christianity or Judaism have been encouraged to provide academic accounts that sequester their religious experience (Ezzy 2004). Peter Berger, for example, felt that his sociological account of religion (1967) could be misread as “counsel for despair for religion,” and so wrote a further text that defends the “possibility of theological thinking” (Berger 1970: 9), in which he defends the plausibility of his Christian faith. In other words, the methodology of anthropologists and sociologists can be applied reflexively to identify the social construction of academic atheism. In Peter Berger’s case he identifies his training in Weberian “value free” sociology, as the source of the atheistic implications of his sociology. Although Berger remained committed to the principles of Weberian sociology, he struggled against the implications for religious belief. The secondary information about Turner’s anthropological training suggests similar social processes were at work. Victor Turner’s PhD research was supported by the Rhodes-Livingston Institute. Deflem (1991: 2) reports that: “[t]he members of the Rhodes Livingston Institute paid little attention to the ritual activities of the African tribes they were studying, and at first Turner, who was a research officer at the Institute, was no exception.” Further, it is not surprising that Turner

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largely ignored ritual and religion. It was not simply the academic focus on “political and legal systems, urbanization, labor migration, and social and economic organizations” (Deflem 1991: 4) that produced this devaluation of ritual. It was also that uniformity with the neo-Marxist line was carefully policed: “Deviants and turncoats were treated with great ferocity internally” (Kuper 1983: 129). Edith Turner’s (in Engelke 2000: 845) reference to the “coldness of academic demand” that shaped Victor Turner’s reporting of religious experience takes on new significance in this light. Victor Turner, like Peter Berger, resisted the atheistic implications of structuralist anthropology.

TURNER’S CHRISTIANITY AND NDEMBU PAGANISM In Dramas, Fields and Metaphors, Turner (1974: 57) describes two anthropological approaches to religion. One approach views religion as “akin to a neurotic symptom or cultural defence mechanism.” The other approach would “regard religious symbols as reflecting or expressing social structure and promoting social integration.” In contrast to these two approaches that both treat symbolic behavior and actions as “an epiphenomenon,” Turner says, “I try to give it ‘ontological’ status.” What does it mean to give symbolic behavior “ontological status”? In particular, what does this mean with reference to the symbols of religious experience? Turner argues that to take religious experiences seriously is to recognize that religious symbol systems may have something to tell us about the nature of “reality,” something at least as important as what can be learned through the discussion of these experiences within the context of anthropological or sociological theory. In particular, Turner (1974: 258) argues that the religious symbols that represent the liminality of communitas have a real referent in that experience. “Here I would say that if the cultural form of communitas—as found in liminality—can correspond with an actual experience of communitas, the symbols there presented may be experienced more deeply than in any other context.” However, Turner’s argument that symbolic behavior be given ontological status seems to apply only to certain types of religious experience. The reason for this is that Turner develops an argument that communitas and its associated antistructural character is an intimation of his own Christian understanding of deity: In the language of the German mystic, Eckhart, communitas may be regarded as the “Godhead” underlying Emile Durkheim’s “God,” in the sense that Dur-

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kheim’s “God” was a shorthand for all social-structural actualities and possibilities, while “Godhead” (although not too distant from Durkheim’s “effervescence”) is the performative communitas reality from which all social structures may be endlessly generated. . . . Communitas is the primal ground, the urgrund of social structure. Chihamba is an attempt to transmit to Ndembu the inherited wisdom of their culture about this primal ground of experience, thought, and social action and about its fitful intrusions into the ordered cosmos which native models portray and explain. (Turner 1975: 23)

In a similar way, Eliade (1972) projected his own Christian understandings onto the practices of shamans. Wallis (2003) points out that earlier interpreters had described all shamanism as “backward,” and Eliade’s analysis is more respectful than the earlier interpreters’. However, Eliade emphasized those aspects of shamanism that he saw as consistent with his own Christian beliefs. In particular, Eliade sought “to authenticate his belief that all shamanistic religions displayed a global Ur-Christianity” (Wallis 2003: 37). Similarly, Turner’s justification for accepting the reality of the religious experience in the Chihamba ritual is not, as Turner (1975: 196) himself suggests, that he went “to school with the Ndembu . . . prepared to accept the fruits of simple wisdom with gratitude.” Rather, the argument is that Chihamba is “the local expression of a universal human problem, that of expressing what cannot be thought of, in view of thought’s subjugation to essences” (Turner 1975: 187). The influence of Christianity on Turner’s anthropology is clear in Turner’s (1975) book Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Turner grants ontological status to the revelatory Chihamba ritual because he sees it as an intimation of the experience of communitas described by mystical Christians such as Eckhart. By contrast, in the second half of the book, when he discusses the divinatory rituals, he reverts to a sociological explanation that, in his own words, reduces the ritual action to “a mere species of social action, and the qualitative distinctions between religious and secular custom and behavior [are] obliterated” (Turner 1975: 186). The divinatory rituals that identify the sources of misfortune, loss, and death in Ndembu life involve a diviner utilizing a set of divinatory symbols for the identification of potential sorcerers and witches, who may be among a group of relatives seeking a divination about the cause of a person’s death or illness. Turner (1975: 229) acknowledges that the basis of the diviner’s craft is “rooted in his mystical beliefs, and he is himself a believer.” However, Turner is unwilling to grant any ontological reality to the diviner’s mystical beliefs: “On the face of it, divinatory symbols seem to be primarily fashioned under the influence of explicitly human purposes.” While the Ndembu believe that some relatives may be witches, Turner (1975: 214) ob-

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serves that “[i]n reality, as the diviner well knows, it [the group of relatives seeking a divination] may contain rival factions, one of which may stand to benefit by the death of the sick person.” Turner justifies his secular sociostructural explanation of the divination rituals somewhat awkwardly, observing that while the diviner may genuinely believe in supernatural beings and forces, “social anthropologists and depth psychologists would try to reduce [these] to rational terms” (Turner 1975: 231). I am not arguing here that the social forces and processes that anthropological investigation can discover are irrelevant. Nor am I suggesting that Turner was entirely comfortable with this sociostructural reductionism. However, Turner chooses to privilege secular anthropological discourse as “reality” in the case of divination, but in the case of the revelatory Chihamba, he allows the religious beliefs to sit side by side with the social analysis. The reasons for this distinction may lie in part in the echoes of his own Christian beliefs that he sees in the Chihamba, but not in the divinatory practices, or in the fact that he did not directly experience the divinatory rituals, obtaining accounts second-hand. Further, the divinatory rituals reflect religious symbols associated with “darker” aspects of life, such as death and misfortune, that may have seemed inconsistent with Turner’s (1975: 196) understanding of “religious truths” as “full of light (whiteness).” In Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, Victor and Edith Turner (1978) try to avoid all forms of the reduction of religious experience to social process. As they explicitly note in their preface, they instead attempt to “uncover the institutional structures and ‘implicational meanings’ of pilgrimage behavior.” For example, they take seriously the claim that “the good dead, but not the damned, may and do (as official reports of numerous devotions attest), communicate with the living through apparitions, visions, dreams, and the like, and intercede with God to work miracles on behalf of the living” (Turner and Turner 1978: 204). The spiritual beliefs and practices are engaged anthropologically, but without too much skepticism. However, the ideal of “objectivity” and “neutral” observation remains the dialogical other that the Turners engage in this work. They “hope” that their anthropological training will help them to avoid partisanship, ensure “objectivity,” and attain “neutrality” (Turner and Turner 1978: vx). That they question the possibility of neutral observation is indicated by their use of scare quotes around “neutral” in the preface. I argue that a genuine respect for of religious accounts of religious experience must go beyond the privileging of anthropological accounts as in some way “objective” or “neutral.” Rather, social researchers require a more sophisticated understanding of different types of accounts. Both anthropological and religious accounts are given by people with vested interests and in different social locations, and provide

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different types of information that may be more or less useful for a variety of purposes.

(DIS)EMBODIED KNOWING Western science contains at its heart an arrogance that assumes that only the Western scientific method can understand truth. This is a secularized descendent of the Christian doctrine that only those who believe will be saved. All other ways of understanding the world are ultimately misguided. It also has its roots in a Cartesian dualism that separates body and spirit, subject and object, us and them (Turner 1982: 100). Another source of traditional anthropology’s failure to understand religious experience is a logocentric arrogance that ignores nonverbal and embodied forms of communication. Edith Turner argues that anthropologists who have not experienced performance typically fail to understand rituals in their fieldwork, focusing instead on structural relationships. These structures are important, argues Turner, but alongside this is also required “a sense of the progression, the process, the body” (Engelke 2000: 850). In her discussion, Turner links an appreciation of the nonverbal with the “suspension of disbelief,” arguing that anthropologists have to “drop that criticality to understand” (Engelke 2000: 850). Victor Turner’s early emphasis on process and drama provides the groundwork for his later emphasis on embodied religious experience (Turner 1982, 1987). Feminist spirituality has similarly argued that the body needs to be taken seriously as a location of religious experience (Raphael 1996; Griffin 2000). As Edith Turner (1996: 232) puts it, to try to describe in words the nature of spirit may be to miss the point: “it is very nearly beyond words. . . . But the hands feel it.” Or as Victor Turner himself puts it, “Feelings and desires are not a pollution of cognitive pure essence, but close to what we humanly are; if anthropology is to become a true science of human action, it must take them just as seriously as the structures which sometimes perhaps represent the exhausted husks of action bled of its motivations” (Turner 1982: 86).

ALTERED STATES AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE In his impressive analysis of religious experience and magic mushrooms, Letcher (2004) points out that there are three possible ways of interpreting the influence of ingesting psychoactive mushrooms on consciousness. The first argument, typical of prohibitionist discourses, is that magic mushrooms

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impair consciousness and introduce nothing of value. Second, psychological and recreation discourses suggest that magic mushrooms “rearrange already existing aspects of the mind in unpredictable ways.” However, it is Letcher’s (2004: 23) third discourse that is most interesting: “mushrooms genuinely impart innovatory concepts and experience, whether in the form of revelations and theophanies (the entheogenic discourse) or animaphanies (the animistic discourse).” Letcher argues that altered states of consciousness whilst under the influence of magic mushrooms can be interpreted as an experience of God within (in the Christian framed entheogenic discourse) or as an experience of other-than-human persons (in the Pagan animistic discourse). Both treat mushroom-generated experiences as providing important, and in some senses “true,” information about the nature of reality. Western science has privileged non-altered states of consciousness as providing “objective” ways of understanding the world, assuming that altered states of consciousness simply impair understanding of truth. Both Letcher and Edith Turner reject this understanding. Edith Turner’s account of her vision of the Ihamba spirit should be read in this context. In her endnotes, Turner describes her vision of the Ihamba spirit as “an opaque plasma” that one Ndembu referred to as a “bad ghost musalu” (Turner 1992: 219). She then goes on to note the Ndembu believe that: “Munginju medicine makes musalu visible. You can only see musalu, which comes in smoke or mist, when you drink pounded leaf medicine.” It is clear that Edith Turner drank something that altered her state of consciousness during the Ihamba ritual: Singleton began to medicate his chiyanga doctors. Each drank a cupful of the leaf medicine; a cup was handed to me and I drank the liquid, which tasted pleasantly of fresh leaves. Immediately, my head fired up and swam. The drink contained no alcohol, but I felt the same recognizably loosening effect as before. Nevertheless I went on writing my field notes with no change in legibility. (Turner 1992: 131)

It is within this context that Edith Turner has her experience of a visible spirit form: Suddenly Meru [the patient] raised her arm, stretched it in liberation, and I saw with my own eyes a giant thing emerging out of the flesh of her back. This thing was a large gray blob about six inches across, a deep gray opaque thing emerging as a sphere. I was amazed - delighted. I still laugh with glee at the realization of having seen it (Turner 1992: 149).

The methodology here implicitly, cautiously, suggests that experiences in altered states of consciousness may actually represent something “real.”

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As Edith Turner (1994: 204) argues, the symbols of religious rituals reference actual spirits. Or, as Letcher (2004: 18) puts it: “mushrooms . . . do not alter perception but adjust what it is possible to perceive, and therefore under the ‘animistic discourse’ the spirits and beings occasioned by mushrooms are not hallucinations nor some aspect of the self, but genuine beneficent discarnate entities or intelligences, with whom the practitioner attempts to forge relationships.” Shanafelt (2004: 319) points out that while a variety of researchers have “embraced sorcery, shamanism and other occult practices and beliefs as real . . . [this research has] not yet much influenced the textbooks.” I suspect that the acceptance of the role of altered states of consciousness, and the psychoactive substances involved, is even further away from influencing the textbooks.

TOWARD RESPECT FOR RELIGIOUS ACCOUNTS The methodological atheism of structuralist anthropology is a form of intolerance, deriving from an unwillingness to acknowledge the limited and ethnocentric nature of Western ways of understanding the world. Turner makes this point succinctly in his later reflections on his earlier research: When I wrote Schism and Continuity, I tried to exclude these “narratives” [of the participants] from my analysis, and instead made my own narrative of the events I saw . . . I did not understand, then, that my narrative was just as tendentious, that is, “stretching” things (from the Latin, tendere), as those of local storytellers . . . I did veritably believe, as a structural-functionalist, that my “formal” analysis of the social structure of the community concerned in the social drama “explained” how individuals acted (Turner 1987: 40).

At a more general level, Western philosophy and science are integrally bound up with their Semitic religious heritage (Garfield 2002). It requires a particular form of postcolonial racism to argue that other, more explicitly religious, worldviews are systematically inferior ways of understanding the world. The greater respect for religious experience that gradually develops throughout the Turners’ writings is also a reflection of their more general tolerance for diversity in theory, interpretation, and worldview. The implications of both Victor’s and Edith Turner’s argument for, and practice of, respect for religious experience and belief has profound consequences. One of these is a requirement that anthropologists respect the reality of spiritual beings. Turner (1982: 79) argues that ritual should not be reduced solely to its social and cultural components. Rituals reference beliefs in invisible beings and powers. While the social and cultural compo-

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nents frame the ritual process, through the performance or enactment of the ritual, “the ritual process transcends its frame [and] . . . something new may be generated.” Religious symbols are not “merely reflections of expressions of components of social structure” promoting social solidarity (Turner 1982: 82). Rather, whatever the sociological framings of the event, it is possible that the experiences within a ritual are “indeed informed with powers both transcendental and immanent” (Turner 1982: 80). As Turner argues, most anthropological studies of ritual, including his own, have failed to take this into account. A second implication of the Turner’s approach requires a profound rethinking of the ontological and epistemological framing of anthropology. In particular, it requires a movement away from the idea that there is a singular, “one true” interpretation of the world. Deflem (1991: 12) observes: “In Turner’s approach, religious belief seems to correspond with the nature of reality itself.” I would take issue with Deflem’s choice of the small and seemingly insignificant definite article “the” in this sentence. It contains an implicit Western imperialism that privileges Western ways of understanding the world in which there is one god, one truth, one reality. Deflem (1991: 13) wants to reduce the reality of religious truth to “the eye of the believer.” Deflem falls into the trap of treating observations as either objectively true, or only true for the believer. What he fails to note is that we are all believers of one sort or another. Atheistic and secular anthropologists are just as influenced by subjective beliefs as are religious believers. Truth is always both objective, and external to the observer, and subjective, a product of imagination and belief. Such an approach to anthropological and sociological practice requires a rejection of both simple subjectivism and objectivism (Jackson 1989). It requires an acceptance of the inevitable hermeneutics of the interpretive process as an attempt to engage with the complexities of multiple realities (Ezzy 2002). Edith Turner (1992: 12) argues that “[w]e may even have to begin to regard the field subjects’ criterion of truth as a fundamental one.” Further, “[w]e might yet grant traditional peoples credit for their own kind of religion instead of translating it away” (Turner 1992: 16). She asserts that in “this treatment of Ihamba I am taking the statements of the protagonists as truth, and now that I have become accustomed to it, it looks strange when anthropologists do differently” (Turner 1992: 72). This leads her to argue that beliefs in spirits is not simply a crystallization of structure, as Lévi-Strauss or Durkheim might have argued. Rather, “the ritual builds the symbols, and not vice versa” (Turner 1992: 16). Again, it is Edith Turner’s own Catholic faith that facilitates her acceptance of the reality of the tooth spirit. She asks: “Was the tooth the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual

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being—albeit the somewhat concrete bulky spiritual being of my old friend Sakutoha?” (Turner 1992: 82). The phrase “outward and visible sign” echoes the words of Roman Catholic teaching on sacraments, which asserts that spiritual realities and visible physical realities are identical. These points are, of course, profoundly sociological points. It is not simply an experience and understanding of performance that is required for an anthropologist to make sense of ritual performance. Anthropologists require cultural resources to make sense of religious experience. This can either be derived from a “conversion” to the culture being studied, or through reference to the anthropologists’ own religious culture and experience. Anthropologists and sociologists are like ravers. Hutson (2000) observes that whether individual ravers interpret their experience as spiritual or not depends on whether they have found a religious tradition within which to frame their experience. In a similar way, anthropologists and sociologists will interpret religious experience as meaningful only when social scientific theory provides a respectful interpretative frame. It is not surprising that some academics explain away religious experience, as there is often no other way of explaining it within anthropological and sociological discourse. Edith Turner (1992: 73) makes this point precisely in describing Victor Turner’s response to the extraction of the tooth spirit: “Vic himself felt the ‘drawing out’, then he put it in social and psychological terms.”

REFERENCES Berger, Peter. 1967. The Social Reality of Religion. Harmondworth: Penguin. ———. 1970. A Rumour of Angels. Harmondworth: Penguin. Deflem, Mathieu. 1991. “Ritual, Anti-Structure, and Religion: A Discussion of Victor Turner’s Processual Symbolic Analysis.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30, no. 1: 1–25. Eliade, Mircea. 1972 [1964]. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Engelke, Matthew. 2000. “An Interview with Edith Turner.” Current Anthropology 41, no. 5: 843–852. ———. 2002. “The Problem of Belief.” Anthropology Today 18, no. 6: 3–8. ———. 2004. “‘The Endless Sonversation’: Fieldwork, Writing, and the Marriage of Victor and Edith Turner.” In R. Handler ed., Significant Others: Essays on Professional and Interpersonal Relationships in Anthropology. History of Anthropology, pp 6–50. vol. 10, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Ezzy, Douglas. 2002. Qualitative Analysis. New York: Routledge. ———. 2004. “Religious Ethnography: Practising the Witch’s Craft.” In J. Blain, D. Ezzy, and G. Harvey, eds., Researching Paganisms, pp. 113–128. Alta Mira Press.

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Garfield, Jay. 2002. “Philosophy, Religion, and the Hermeneutic Imperative.” In J. Malpas, U. Arnswald, and J. Kertscher, eds., Gadamer’s Century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Griffin Wendy. 2000. ed., Daughters of the Goddess. New York: AltaMira Press. Hutson, Scott R. 2000. “The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Modern Western Subcultures.” Anthropological Quarterly 3, no. 1: 35–49. Jackson, Michael. 1989. Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kuper, Adam. 1983. Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School. Rev. ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Letcher, Andy. 2004. “Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic Consciousness.” Paper presented at the “Exploring Consciousness” conference, Bath, June 2004. Luhrmann, Tanya. 1989. Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft. Oxford: Blackwell. Raphael, Melissa. 1996. Thealogy and Embodiment. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Shanafelt, Robert. 2004. “Magic, Miracle, and Marvels in Anthropology.” Ethnos 69, no. 3: 317–340. Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith. Berkeley: University of California Press. Turner, Edith. 1994. “A Visible Spirit Form in Zambia.” In D. Young and J. Goulet, eds., Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, pp. 71–95. New York: Broadview Press. ———. 1996. The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence Among a Northern Alaskan People. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Turner, Edith, with W. Blodgett, S. Hakona, and F. Benwa. 1992. Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1975. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1981 [1968]. The Drums of Affliction. New York: Cornell University Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1987. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Turner, Victor and Edith Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1987. “Performing Ethnography.” In V. Turner, The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 139–155. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Wallis, Robert. 2003. Shamans/Neo-Shaman: Ecstasy, Alternative Archeologies and Contemporary Pagans. New York: Routledge.

Chapter Seventeen

Challenging the Boundaries of Experience, Performance, and Consciousness: Edith Turner’s Contributions to the Turnerian Project Jill Dubisch

{ In her essay “Works and Wives: On the Sexual Division of Textual Labor,” Barbara Tedlock comments on the fact that “[u]ntil recently, it has been mainly women who have published experiential fieldwork materials. Where husband and wife worked in the same region, it was usually the woman who adopted the narrative mode and the man the expository one” (1995: 267). She goes on to discuss some of the ways in which the wives of anthropological husbands (whether they themselves were trained as anthropologists or not) have contributed to, yet effaced themselves in, their husbands’ research, and, when writing themselves, have written from a highly personal and nonauthoritative stance. In such writings, women reveal themselves in the first person, note their own (sometimes embarrassing or disturbing) emotions and reactions to events, and blur, or at least make uncomfortable, the boundaries between observer and observed. At first glance, Edith Turner appears to fall into such a category of “anthropological wife.”1 While she published little under her own name during Victor Turner’s lifetime,2 since Victor’s death she has published several books and a variety of articles (see bibliography) and presented a number of meeting papers under her own name, many of which fit the format described 324

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above by Tedlock: narrative, personal, participatory, and revealing—in other words, experiential and, in this respect, “experimental” (Clifford 1986; Behar and Gordon 1995). What I will argue here, however, is that such appearances are deceptive. My arguments are based not so much on biographical and autobiographical materials that reveal the highly collaborative nature of the Turners’ thinking and research (though these are not irrelevant; see Engelke 2000, 2004), but rather on what I perceive to be the radically “subversive” nature of Edith Turner’s writings. This “subversiveness” carries Turnerian theories of ritual, communitas, social process, and liminality into new realms of understanding and at the same time challenges those very theories—and particularly our understanding of ritual and spirituality—in ways that both extend and transcend Victor Turner’s own work. Indeed, Edith Turner’s work brings us face to face with the limits of conventional anthropological analysis. It thus suggests a rethinking of the anthropological enterprise, drawing us toward a “re-enchantment of the world,” a world in which spiritual presence forms part of experience for both native and anthropologist, and more significantly, by extension toward an enlargement of the boundaries within which anthropological analysis must take place. Thus, although wonderfully written and a pleasure to read, Edith’s first-person accounts of her fieldwork experience, such as The Spirit and the Drum and The Hands Feel It, have theoretical implications that transcend (or, perhaps more accurately, are embedded in) both the material and style of her narratives. Such implications may easily be overlooked precisely because of Turner’s particularizing and personal, and above all highly readable, writing style. This is a highly personal narrative style once mostly characteristic of female anthropologists, including anthropological wives, and as Edith herself puts it, “a more intimate style than in older anthropological writing” (E. Turner et al. 1992: 16). But what is most intriguing, and most radical, about Edith’s writing is not this style but the ways in which it is deployed to illuminate and expand our understanding of some of the basic features of Turnerian analysis: communitas, ritual, symbol, social process. In Edith’s approach, social process becomes not something to be described but something experienced, with a consequent understanding of what such process means and how it comes about.

“EMBEDDED” THEORY AND FIRST-PERSON NARRATIVES In her article “The Gender of Theory,” Catherine Lutz argues that what is considered to be theory tends to be “masculine”—abstract, “objective,”

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generalizing, and a more important form of academic work than “mere” data gathering and reporting. Additionally, Lutz notes, theory is signaled by certain styles of writing—writing that is impersonal, technical, generalizing, and in most cases more difficult to comprehend than nontheoretical writing. Thus “theory,” by the very mode in which it is written, carries a message of elitism—it is not for everyone (Lutz 1995). Recent anthropological work, particularly work by postmodernist and by feminist writers, has challenged such conventional “masculine” approaches to theory.3 Far from separating experience and theory, such writers assert that “the personal is theoretical” (Dubisch 1995). Dorinne Kondo, for example, in her account of her research in Japan, seeks through the richness and specificity of her narrative to work toward “a strategy that expands notions of what can count as theory, where experience and evocation can become theory, where the binary between ‘empirical’ and ‘theoretical’ is displaced and loses its force” (Kondo 1990: 8, emphasis in original). Kondo goes on to note that “experience, and the specificity of my experience . . . is not opposed to theory; it enacts and embodies theory” (1990: 24; emphasis in original). The experience/theory separation, itself a reflection of body/mind Cartesian dualism, thus dissolves in an anthropology of experience that is personal, participatory, reflexive, and, in many cases, sensual. That is, it is richly informed with the feel of doing fieldwork: the sights, sounds, tastes, temperature, smells, and so on that pervade everyday life (see, e.g., Stoller 1989). Such an approach is exemplified in Edith Turner’s work, and particularly in her book about her experiences with the Iñupiat of Alaska, The Hands Feel It, the very title of which reveals both its ethnographic truth of tactile experience and the relationship of that truth to the “non-rational” and the experiential worlds of spirituality and healing. This work, like others among Edith’s writings, far from being atheoretical, is a reframing of the form and context of theory. “Data” are not separated from analysis/theory (cf. Dubisch 1995); rather they form an interactive process, so that the boundaries between them, like the boundaries between the mundane world and the spiritual, between the “real” and the supposedly “unreal,” begin to blur, and even to disappear. This dissolving of boundaries is a process that the reader can see unfolding in The Hands Feel It, which is written in the form of a journal of daily events. Turner does not simply record the events that strike her, however, but also attempts to understand them as they occur: “I would write many comments on anthropological theory and make new theoretical explorations as they became relevant in the day to day work. These appear in the text at the date they were written because they were part of the development of the enterprise” (E. Turner 1996: xxi). Thus theory is processual, part and

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parcel of experience, just as experience, in turn, is part of theory. Narrative and analysis, far from being opposed, are integral to the same process. Moreover, Turner’s focus on the spirit world and the ways in which it is experienced both by the Iñupiat and by herself carries implications for the ways in which we conceptualize theory itself, for it offers not just new ways of describing/framing old realities but rather suggests new realities to be described.4

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF WHOSE EXPERIENCE? The term “the anthropology of experience” has come to be associated with both Victor and Edith Turner, but the differences between their approaches points the way to what I consider to be some of the most important contributions of Edith’s own work. In his introduction to the book he co-edited with Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Experience, Edward Bruner contrasts “experience” with “behavior,” the latter implying “an outside observer describing someone’s actions” and “a standardized routine that one simply goes through” (Bruner 1986: 5). In contrast, “an experience is more personal, as it refers to an active self, to a human being who not only engages in but shapes an action” (ibid.). “The anthropology of experience,” Bruner continues, “turns our attention to experience and its expressions of indigenous meaning. The advantage of beginning the study of culture through expressions is that the basic units of analysis are established by the people we study rather than by the anthropologist as alien observer” (1986: 9). Conventional anthropological fieldwork has tended to filter out the anthropologist’s own experience in the collection of data, Bruner observes, and then reintroduce it in an effort to add color and vitality to our ethnographic accounts. “We systematically remove the personal and the experiential in accordance with our anthropological paradigms; then we reintroduce them so as to make our ethnographies more real, more alive” (1986: 9). The problem, however, as Bruner goes on to note, “is that we can only experience our own life, what is received by our own consciousness” (1986: 5). Increasingly, however, anthropologists (or some anthropologists, at least) are questioning the limitations implied by this last statement (see, e.g., Desjarlais 1992; Goulet 1994; Jackson 1989; Young and Goulet 1994). In Edith Turner’s case, according to her own accounts, experience was always more direct than in conventional anthropological fieldwork. She credits this to her own personality and personal circumstances, as well as to her having received most of her own learning about anthropology through her husband, in an informal and nonhierarchical fashion, and through their experiences

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together, leading her to be less bound by academic categories and orthodoxies (E. Turner 1992: xi; see also Engelke 2000, 2004). As she puts it, “The result was that anthropology was peculiarly alive for me, never dead” (E. Turner 1992: xi). Her direct engagement with the peoples with whom she lived, both as partner in Victor’s fieldwork and later on her own, is evident in many of Edith’s writings. It is also clear from her accounts that Edith feels comfortable in entering into direct and even intimate relations with the people among whom she has lived, however different their ways of life might be from hers. Her acceptance of those ways of life, combined with her delight in both the differences and similarities she discovers, are part of what make her ethnographic accounts both engaging and insightful. Edith seems to have made a deliberate decision to take a particular approach to fieldwork, one that was experiential, personal, and particularistic, as a means of continuing with her and Victor’s interest in social process. In describing her return to the Ndembu after Victor’s death, she states “what I decided to do when I returned from my 1985 research was simply to describe what I saw, my own reactions, and the reactions of others . . . to the events they were bringing about, and their reactions to my presence. It was clear that the events had their effect upon me—such anthropological events are full of echoes back and forth creating new situations as they progress. This effect has been called ‘reflexivity.’ Echoes, reflections, and transformation are surely the stuff of social process” (E. Turner 1992: 4). What stands out in Edith’s work, then, is her willingness to use her own experience, to take it seriously rather than omitting or obscuring what does not fit with conventional understandings, or confining the recitation of anomalous incidents to the shared confidences with other anthropologists in the less risky and more informal contexts of drinks at the hotel bar at an academic conference or in anthropology departmental hallways.5 (Indeed, her own lack of formal anthropological training and her position outside the initiatory rituals and hierarchies of academia has left her freer in this regard—see, e.g., Engelke 2000, 2004). At the same time, Edith is cautious, as well as analytic, in her usage of such experience. Far from assuming that her experience is necessarily isomorphic with that of the peoples with whom she has lived, Turner’s approach more closely resembles Renato Rosaldo’s concept of “overlapping circles,” shared responses to experience that overlap, rather than coincide, but that allow one insight into the meaning of another’s world (Rosaldo 1989). Phrasing this process in a somewhat different way, Edith observes in her account of Ndembu healers that “my own consciousness sometimes seemed to be on the same continuum as their own consciousness” (E. Turner 1992: 16). And in The Hands Feel It, she speaks of “coexperiencing” as an essential element

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of her own approach to research (E. Turner 1996: xxiii). At the same time, Edith Turner does not mistake her own consciousness for “their” consciousness, nor her own experience for their experience. Rather, she suggests that such coexperiences enable one to connect to some reality (if one may use such a term) that is beyond the cultural constructionism of an interpretive or phenomenological anthropology. Turner’s approach brings the ethnographer squarely back into the anthropological enterprise, not simply as the “instrument” nor even as the ambiguous “participant observer,” but as experiencer, engaging in what has been referred to as “thick participation.”6 In this, Edith’s research follows what she feels Victor Turner’s work, both published and unpublished, seemed to say to her: “Go by experience. Think about what you experience. Develop your ability to experience in different ways” (ibid.: xxii). At the same time, Turner does not see any such experience, however apodictic, as beyond our analysis or understanding. Speaking of the healing activities of Claire, one of her Iñupiat informants/friends, whose healing she acknowledges as “different,” she says, “yet I do not call her healing ‘outside the world,’ ‘transcendent.’ No. That ‘different’ world is amenable to our understanding; it is susceptible to the inquiries of the scholar of natural history; both worlds are within the purview of the researcher – but such a researcher has to have eyes suitable for what she or he is researching, and use those eyes” (E. Turner 1994: 108–109). In this respect, then, Turner moves beyond Rosaldo’s “overlapping circles,” experiencing, both in these rituals and in the rituals she and Victor Turner enacted with their students (see Engelke 2004), something she terms “a common human birthright,” one she suggests has been “taboo” to anthropologists, but which “we no longer need to forgo” (E. Turner 1992: xiii). It is in this spirit (or perhaps with such spirits—see below) that Edith proceeds in her own writing.

THE RITUAL OF EXPERIENCE, THE EXPERIENCE OF RITUAL The implications of Edith Turner’s approach can be seen in her treatment of ritual, a topic that was a central focus of both her and Victor Turner’s work. In her book Experiencing Ritual, Edith recounts step by step, day by day, her involvement in an Ndembu healing ritual undertaken after she returned to the field in 1986. This account juxtaposes some of Victor’s own analysis of Ndembu ritual with a deeper understanding based upon her own experience. For example, she discusses Victor’s emphasis on the importance of “sociorevelation,” of the “coming out” of tensions and problems in group relations as essential to the ritual. In her own discussions of the ritual with

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the healer himself, Edith began to piece together a string of elements in the ritual to form “a battery of signification,” meaning to “come out” (E. Turner 1992: 89), and goes on to observe that “[a]t the time of the discussions, these powers did their work on my own consciousness” (1992: 89). The method of words clearing the air (mazu) also worked for Edith in her writing: “the method of mazu was also the best way for myself as an anthropologist to lay out the forces within the ritual, that is, to treat the events intimately as they felt to me in the course of experiencing them” (1992: 90). In this manner, then, the anthropologist’s experience, the rituals she observed/participated in and her description/analysis of them are intimately and inextricably intertwined. Theory is experienced, what is experienced becomes theory, and the lines between them are dissolved in the art of the narrator. But Edith Turner’s contribution to the Turnerian study of ritual goes beyond the deployment of experience to describe and understand ritual more deeply.7 She also offers a view of ritual that not only emphasizes process but also offers a challenging analysis of the ways in which ritual proceeds and how it “works.” As she states in Experiencing Ritual, “in the hands of a skilled ritualist the ritual’s needs make themselves known, the source of selection being the ritual itself. That is, the ritual builds the symbols and not vice versa” (E. Turner 1992: 17). She further distinguishes different kinds of symbols: representational, spirit triggers that “jolt” the ritual, and “sacramental objects that are the numinous—they are the spirit and do not stand for it” (17). In a healing ritual, such as the ones the Turners observed and participated in among the Ndembu, and in the events described in Edith’s narrative of living among the Iñupiat (as the title of her book about the latter indicates), “the hands feel it”: “the healer can feel where the spirit is, what is going on inside the body . . . This is the ritual process that Victor Turner was striving to touch” (E. Turner 1992: 179). She goes on to speak of “a ritual process that can actually be sensed” (1992: 180), one in which the anthropologist’s analysis must sometimes take a back seat to her experience. Thus after her encounter with the visible spirit of the Ihamba in Zambia, as participants are discussing what they saw, Turner notes: “I was in no mood to become analytical. . . . When the keystone of the bridge is put into position and everything holds, you tend to just look on with your mouth hanging open. This is what happened to me. If I had become analytical at that moment I would have had to be a different person from the one that saw the spirit form” (1992: 150, also 2004). Edith refers to rituals such as this, and to the various experiences with spirits among the Iñupiat, as “sites of culture’s becoming.” These rituals and spirits are not to be categorized or “frozen” by anthropological description; they exist in the moment of their manifestation—and in their lingering ef-

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fects, effects that also, as the Turner quote given earlier indicates, manifest themselves in the anthropologist as well. Therefore, Turner is telling us, they should also manifest themselves in anthropology. In Edith’s analysis, then, the communitas that occurs during ritual is not structure or antistructure or event. Rather, it is the consequence of the connectedness by which the human world’s meshing with the nonhuman world both becomes possible and manifests itself.

NEW AGE ENERGY HEALING AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF EXPERIENCE: A VISIBLE SPIRIT IN PHOENIX, ARIZONA The implications of Edith Turner’s approach to ritual and to spiritual matters are multiple. Perhaps most significantly, her approach does not simply allow or require us to become experiencers in the area of ritual. It goes beyond this to suggest that we should allow ourselves to incorporate, even if we do not fully understand what to make of them, experiences we have had in the course of fieldwork.8 It is with such permission in mind that I now present an account of my own experience with the spiritual world. My most recent research has taken place within the loose networks of New Age healing, and particularly energy healing in the form of Jin Shin Jyutsu® and Reiki.9 Both of these systems are hands-on approaches to healing based on concepts of “energy” and its balance within the body and between the body and the larger energetic world. Both are associated with larger cosmological systems, and both originated in Japan. The Reiki healing system, however, is based on a model of the body and energy systems that has ties to Indian cosmology, particularly through its emphasis on the chakras, while Jin Shin Jyutsu has affinities with traditional Chinese medicine’s system of meridians and acupuncture points. Both of these healing modalities also incorporate elements of other spiritual systems, including Christianity, at least in the ways they are taught and practiced in the United States. Both emphasize the idea of balancing the body’s energies as the process by which physical, psychological, and spiritual health are restored and maintained. Such balancing may be done by the laying on of hands upon oneself or by another, or, in the case of Reiki, through distance healing. My own experience with these systems comes through various classes and sessions in which these were taught and practiced, and in all of these I was fully an experiencer—as student and practitioner—as well as anthropologist.10 And although I shared a general cultural background with most of those with whom I studied and interacted, I also had to learn a new culture, in which models of the body very different from the Western models were taken for

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granted, and such things as energy, spirits, astrological influences, etc. were real and active. In Jin Shin Jyutsu, in which the practice of healing consists of laying on of hands upon specific points in the body (called “safety energy locks”) in patterns determined by one’s particular disharmonies, I have experienced some of the same sorts of feelings that Turner reports for herself and the Iñupiat in their own healing: sensations of heat, sense of body disharmony and harmony, etc. As Turner reports, “the hands feel it.” The Jin Shin Jyutsu cosmology, however, does not include belief in spirits,11 nor have I experienced any in my own practice. In Reiki, on the other hand, while the actual healing process involves laying on of hands on the various chakras or energy centers of the body, Reiki cosmology also includes a flexible and eclectic pantheon of “Reiki spirits and guides,” spirits and forces that become the supporters of individuals in their spiritual/healing work. These guides are revealed in various ways— during Reiki initiations or “attunements,” in guided spiritual journeys, in visions and dreams, and so on. Unlike Jin Shin Jyutsu, in which the teachers of the art while they may be charismatic, pass on the knowledge of the art through their direct teaching and practice, and not through any spiritual connections per se, Reiki, through the series of “attunements” that pass the Reiki power from Reiki master to initiate, contains a strong spiritual element that manifests itself in a variety of ways. With this brief background, then, I will describe some of my own, rather startling, experiences with Reiki, and then try to connect my attempts to understand these experiences to some of Edith Turner’s work. Shenayda, the Reiki Master who initiated me into the first three levels of Reiki,12 like many spiritual practitioners reported by anthropologists around the world, is a person with a powerful presence and considerable skill in creating a spiritual atmosphere, even in the rather sterile setting of the classrooms, with their tile floors and institutional chairs, in which these sessions took place, and in the less-than-exotic (to me at least) setting of Phoenix, Arizona. After our introduction to Reiki in the Reiki I class, when we were ready for our first attunement, I did not know what to expect. With the lights dimmed, soft music playing, and the room energetically cleared for the attunement, I sat with the other initiates in my chair, eyes closed, waiting for I knew not what. But as Shenayda moved around the room, attuning each of us in turn, I found myself experiencing visions that were both vivid and powerful. Among other things, I saw a variety of colors swirling around me and a path winding up a mountain, a stone building like a temple standing at the path’s end. After our initiation, each initiate spoke of what she or he had seen, but I did not mention the temple-like building. Later, Shenayda spoke of her own

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first attunement, and how she had a vision during the attunement of being inside a stone temple. When I told her later of my own vision, she said that “it sends shivers down my spine.” Later, when I was taking a Reiki Master class (highest level of Reiki training) with someone else, I came across a Reiki publication that depicted as its logo a lighted temple at the end of a winding path, very similar to the building in my own vision. (Note that in neither case had I any exposure to such an image in connection with Reiki before my own attunement.)13 Another vivid encounter of a somewhat different kind occurred during my Reiki II (second level) class, also with Shenayda. After our attunements for this Reiki level, the students did Reiki treatments on each other. In such treatments, hands are placed on the body from the head chakras down through the various chakras to the feet. As I held the feet of the woman I was working on, I had the strangest sensation of a being standing immediately behind my left shoulder. I both felt its presence and at the same time saw it, even though it was behind me. It had the form of an archangel, a white robed being with incredibly tall and powerful wings. (Even as I write, I can still sense the power of those wings rising behind me, my most vivid and lasting impression of this event.) This sensing/vision was startling not only in the strength of its manifestation but also in its form. Why an archangel? It did not at all fit what I would have expected from a spiritual guide or helper who would have appeared to me, for angels and such had played no part in my own background. (The woman I was working on, who had done Reiki on me before this, reported seeing a female figure with long hair and flowing robes at my head as she was working on me. Such a vision was more what I would have expected for myself, yet I had no sense of such a being while I was receiving or performing Reiki.) Seeking to make sense of the experience, at first I interpreted my vision as some sort of energetic manifestation that I was picking up from the person to whom I was giving Reiki. However, further reflection, and reading of Edith’s work, has led me to see my experience as similar to some of hers, especially her experiences among the Iñupiat.14 There is a belief among New Age practitioners and energy healers that strong energy and its various manifestations (such as visions and spiritual presences) are present and can be felt when practitioners come together, and particularly when they are doing Reiki or other energetic/spiritual activities. I suggest that this is similar to Turner’s own immersions among the Ndembu and the Iñupiat (though the settings I have described are of a more fleeting and situational nature). Does one experience these things because one is immersed in a particular “cultural reality”? Or is it the case that in such contexts other realities become more accessible to us? Here is where

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an anthropology of experience leads us both to expand what we consider the boundaries of our research universe and also, as Edith makes so very clear in her writing, to develop a deeper understanding of anthropological concepts such as ritual, communitas, and spirituality.

CONCLUSION: THE REALITY OF OTHER REALITIES It would be easy to see Edith’s narratives as reflecting a naïve acceptance of the “reality” of what she experienced and of what others have told her of their experiences: that a tooth really does circulate through an ill person’s veins, that the whale killed by the hunters is reincarnated in another whale, that Satan really has appeared to Iñupiat in the cold landscape of their arctic home, that the spirit of a dead Iñupiat friend really did come to sit by her in church upon her return visit to the village. Yet my reading of her accounts is that she is suggesting something else, something both more subtle and more profound, treading a path between a rationalist and positivist analysis that would either dismiss such accounts as illusion or psychologize them into other, more conventionally acceptable forms, and an account that simply takes them at face value. Rather, what Edith takes seriously is peoples’ experience of such things, including her own experience. She does not simply say “the Ndembu believe that . . .” or “the Iñupiat believe that. . . .” Rather, she makes it clear that this is what they experience, and that, because they experience things, we need not only to take such experience seriously, but to take experience seriously (cf. Laughlin 1994), and to ask what taking it seriously implies both for our particular anthropological concepts and for the larger framework within which anthropological analysis takes place. This is a subtle path to follow, and Edith seems to move along a path that skirts both believing in the absolute reality of what her informants experience and taking an agnostic position toward both hers and other’s experience, a position that involves, as she puts it, “the non-denial of and a positive interest in the existence of spirits” (E. Turner 1996: xxii). Thus she seeks neither to rationalize nor to explain her own experiences in frameworks other than that in which they occur, nor to do the same with the experiences of her informants by reframing what they tell her in terms other than their own. “Do not call what we tell you ‘stories,’” the Iñupiat tell her. For to them, their “myths” are history and their accounts of spiritual experiences are descriptions of the real world in which they live. What emerges from Edith Turner’s work, then, is more than an anthropology of experience; it is an anthropology through experience. And it is more than an anthropology of the body and senses, but rather an anthropology

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through the body; not just an anthropology of ritual, but an anthropology through ritual. Most significantly, it is more than just an anthropology that describes other realities: it is an anthropology that acknowledges at least the possibility of other realities and considers the implications of such a possibility for the work we do. In these ways, Edith’s work both continues the Turnerian project and carries it in directions that Victor Turner himself suggests but did not go, although, I believe, he would surely have approved of them.

NOTES 1. Although Edith Turner prefers to be called “Edie” by those she knows, I will refer to her as “Edith” throughout this essay. 2. The jointly authored Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978) is the major exception. 3. It has been argued that postmodernists’ own prose often reflects a certain elitism as well (see Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen 1989). 4. I do not mean to imply here that Edith Turner has been the only, or even the first, to do so. What I am exploring here are the implications of her so doing for Turnerian concepts. 5. Sex in the field is the other taboo topic in anthropological experience, one that has received even less attention in the anthropology of experience than have spiritual experiences; see Kulick and Willson (1995). See also E. Turner (1992: 4). 6. Laughlin (1994), drawing on Given (1993). 7. And of course she is not the only anthropologist to suggest this as an approach. 8. As Rustum Roy has pointed out, a true scientific approach does not exclude what it cannot explain (Roy 2004). 9. Jin Shin Jyutsu is a registered trademark of the Jin Shin Jyutsu organization in Scottsdale, Arizona, and all training takes place through their auspices. Although there are some organized forms of Reiki training, Reiki itself is not a trademarked or regulated practice, and there are a variety of forms. 10. I am a certified practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu and a Reiki Master. Achieving each of these statuses requires a certain sequence of experience. In Jin Shin Jyutsu, it is the completion of three of the official five-day seminars. In Reiki, one is initiated by a Reiki Master through a series of “attunements” that transmit the Reiki energy and its healing powers. In addition, I have also taken classes in Shiatsu, meridian theory, and ancient Chinese medicine. 11. It does not specifically exclude them, but they do not play a direct role in Jin Shin Jyutsu practice. 12. Reiki levels are Reiki I, Reiki II, Reiki III or advanced Reiki training (ART), and Master. Unlike Jin Shin Jyutsu, Reiki involves a certain amount of esoteric knowledge that should not be revealed to noninitiates (though not all Reiki practitioners adhere to this) (cf. Goulet 1994).

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13. There were other experiences of a powerful nature that occurred during this particular class, but I do not have space to discuss them here. 14. My experience fits with Laughlin’s concept of pure apodicticity (Laughlin 1994).

REFERENCES Behar, Ruth, and Deborah A. Gordon, eds. 1995. Women Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bruner, Edward M. 1986. “Experience and Its Expressions.” In Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 3–32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Clifford, James. 1986. “Introduction: Partial Truths.” In James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, pp.1–26. Berkeley: University of California Press. Desjarlais, Robert R. 1992. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dubisch, Jill. 1995. In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Engelke, Matthew. 2000. “An Interview with Edith Turner (1).” Current Anthropology 41, no. 5: 843–859. ———. 2004. “‘The Endless Conversation’: Fieldwork, Writing, and the Marriage of Victor and Edith Turner.” In Richard Handler, ed., Significant Others: Interpersonal and Professional Commitments in Anthropology, pp. 6–50. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Given, Brian. 1993. “Zen Handgun: Sports, Ritual, and Experience.” Journal of Ritual Studies 7, no. 1: 139–161. Goulet, Jean-Guy A. 1994. “Ways of Knowing: Towards a Narrative Ethnography of Experiences Among the Dene-Tha.” Journal of Anthropological Research 50, no. 2: 113–139. Jackson, Michael. 1989. Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Enquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kulick, Don, and Margaret Willson, eds. 1995. Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork. London: Routledge. Laughlin, Charles.1994. “Apodicticity: the Problem of Absolute Certainty in Transpersonal Ethnology.” Anthropology and Humanism 19, no. 2: 115–129. Lutz, Katherine. 1995. “The Gender of Theory.” In Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, eds., Women Writing Culture, pp. 249–266. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mascia-Lees, Frances E., Patricia Sharpe, and Colleen Ballerino Cohen. 1989. “The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective.” Signs 15, no. 11: 7–33.

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Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Roy, Rustum. 2004. “Preface.” In Rustum Roy, ed., Science of Whole Person Healing: Proceedings of the First Interdisciplinary International Conference, pp. ix– xiv. New York: iUniverse, Inc. Stoller, Paul. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Tedlock, Barbara. 1995. “Works and Wives: On the Sexual Division of Textual Labor.” In Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, eds., Women Writing Culture, pp. 267–286. Berkeley: University of California Press. Turner, Edith. 1987. The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1994. “A Visible Spirit Form in Zambia.” In David E.Young and Jean- Guy Goulet, ed., Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, pp. 71–98. Ontario: Broadview Press. ———. 1996. The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence Among a Northern Alaska People. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. ———. 2004. “Drumming, Divination, and Healing: The Community at Work.” In Michael Winkelman and Philip M. Peek, eds., Divination and Healing: Potent Vision, pp. 55–80. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Turner, Edith, with William Blodgett, Singleton Kahona, and Fideli Benwa. 1992. Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. Young, David E., and Jean-Guy Goulet, eds. 1994. Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. Ontario: Broadview Press.

Contributor Biographies

{ Barbara A Babcock is Regents Professor of English and of Cultural Studies, and founding Director of the Program in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies at the University of Arizona. She has also taught at the University of Texas and Brown University, where she was Director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Trained in both comparative literature and anthropology at the University of Chicago, Professor Babcock has published widely in folklore, symbolic anthropology, literary criticism, and feminist studies. Her publications include The Reversible World: Essays in Symbolic Inversion (1978), The Pueblo Storyteller: Development of a Figurative Ceramic Tradition (1986), Daughters of the Desert: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest, 1880–1980 (1988), Inventing the Southwest (1990), Pueblo Mothers and Children: Essays by Elsie Clews Parsons, 1915–1924 (1991), The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway with Marta Weigle (1996), and Subject to Writing: The Victor Turner Prize and the Anthropological Text (1999). In 2003 and 2004, she chaired the committees to select the Victor Turner Prize for ethnographic writing awarded by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. Gerard Boland is course coordinator for the BA (Communication Theatre/ Media), and post-graduate course coordinator for the MA Communication (Cultural Performance) and Graduate Certificate/Diploma of Cultural Event Management, in the School of Communication at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, NSW Australia. He studied physical theater with Carlo MazzoneClementi at the Dell’Arte School of Mime and Comedy in Blue Lake, California; and drama in education with Dorothy Heathcote at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Thirty years as a performer and educator have afforded him the opportunity to work at many festivals and in numerous primary, secondary, and tertiary settings in Australia, the United States, and in the United Kingdom. In 2007, the Hill End Project was recognized by the 338

Contributor Biographies

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Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education with a national award for its outstanding contribution to student learning. Michael Cohen is an Honorary Research Associate at the Department of Performance Studies, University of Sydney, where he graduated in 2002 with a PhD investigating cultural representation in major public events. He received a postgraduate award at the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland (2002) and has written about physical theater (Australasian Drama Studies, #41), the Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremony (Unstable Ground. Performance and the Politics of Place, 2006) and site-based performance (About Performance #7, 2007). He is also a physical theater practitioner of sixteen years’ professional experience. For ten years he was Co-artistic Director with Theatre Kantanka (Sydney) and is currently Programme Director of Live Sites, an annual cultural events programme in the city of Newcastle, Australia. Mihai Coman is Professor and founding Dean of the College of Journalism and Communication Studies at University of Bucharest, Romania. He earned an undergraduate degree in Modern Literature (1976) and a PhD in Philology (1983). He was visiting professor at Universite de Quebec à Montreal (1993), Universite de Paris XIII (1996), Universite Stendhal-Grenoble (1998) and Dortmund Universitaet (2000), and Fulbright scholar at California State University-Chico (1999) and University of Oklahoma (2005). He published, in Romania, seven books devoted to popular mythology (among them The Romanian Mythologically Bestiary) and three books devoted to journalism and mass communication. He has published articles in scientific journals (including Communications, Reseaux, Gazzette, Journalism Studies, Ethnologie Francaise) and chapters in books published in France, Germany, Canada, US and Polland. He is the author of Pour une anthropologie des medias (Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2003) and co-editor with Eric Rothenbuhler of Media Anthropology (Sage, 2005). His areas of interests include cultural anthropology (myth, ritual, religion, anthropology of modern societies), media studies (sociology of the news room, reception studies, media and social change), media anthropology, and post-communist transition. Simon Cottle is Professor of Media and Communications, Director of the Mediatized Conflict Research Group and Deputy Head of the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC) at Cardiff University. He was formerly Director and Inaugural Chair of the Media and Communications Program at the University of Melbourne (2002–2006). He holds honorary professorships at the universities of Melbourne and Tasmania in Australia and is a visiting Faculty Fellow at the University of Yale and is the

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2007 Burda Scholar at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He has published 70 plus articles and chapters and eight books: TV News Urban Conflict and the Inner City (Leicester University Press, 1993), Television and Ethnic Minorities: Producers’ Perspectives (Ashgate, 1997), Mass Communication Research Methods (co-author, Palgrave, 1998), Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries (editor, Open University Press, 2000), Media Organization and Production (editor, Sage, 2003), News, Public Relations and Power (editor, Sage, 2003), The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence: Media Performance and Public Transformation (Praeger, 2004) and Mediatized Conflict: New Directions in Media and Conflict Studies (Open University Press, 2006). He is currently writing Global Crisis Reporting: Journalism in the Global Age (Open University Press, 2008) and is Series Editor of the Global Crisis and Media series for Peter Lang. He is committed to rendering research and theoretical discussion accessible for student and wider readerships and ensuring that research addresses important real-world concerns. Carole M Cusack is Senior Lecturer in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney. Her chief academic interest is religious transition, particularly from paganism to Christianity in the Late Antique and Early Medieval period, and away from Christianity and towards secularisation and diversity after 1900. She is the author of Conversion among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell, 1998), The Essence of Buddhism (Lansdowne, 2001), and has co-edited two volumes (with Peter Oldmeadow) in the Sydney Studies in Religion series, This Immense Panorama (1999, a Festschrift for Prof. Eric J. Sharpe) and The End of Religions? Religion in an Age of Globalisation (2001). Justine Digance lectures in tourism and sport management in the Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport Management at Griffith University’s Gold Coast campus. Her research interests are tourism management, business event tourism, and pilgrimage. Her doctorate (University of Sydney) was based upon research into modern secular pilgrimage, with a recent article in Annals of Tourism Research [Vol 30(1)] exploring pilgrimage at contested sites. Jill Dubisch is Regents’ Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She received her BA from Reed College and her PhD in social anthropology from the University of Chicago. She has done research in Greece and the United States, focusing on gender roles, migration, religion, pilgrimage, nationalism, and identity. Her published works include the edited volume Gender and Power in Rural Greece (Princeton 1986), In a Different Place: Gender, Power, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (Princeton 1995), Run

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for the Wall: Remembering Vietnam on a Motorcycle Pilgrimage (with Raymond Michalowski; Rutgers 2001), and Pilgrimage and Healing (edited with Michael Winkelman; Arizona 2005) in addition to numerous articles and book chapters. She has served on the Executive Board of the Modern Greek Studies Association and the Board of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion and as president of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe. Her current research is focused on New Age and energy healing systems and on New Age pilgrimage to Europe. Paul Dwyer is a lecturer in the Department of Performance Studies, University of Sydney, where he teaches courses on theater/performance and social change; performance analysis; and ethnographic approaches to rehearsal studies. His current research deals with elements of performance in various legal systems. He has also worked as an actor/facilitator on many youth and community theater projects in NSW. Matthew Engelke is lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. His first major fieldwork was in Zimbabwe on Christian religious movements, and resulted in the monograph, A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church (California). He has also conducted research on the history of anthropology and is currently engaged in ethnographic work on the British and Foreign Bible Society. He also runs the Prickly Paradigm Press with Marshall Sahlins. Douglas Ezzy is an Associate Professor and Head of Discipline in Sociology at the University of Tasmania, Australia. His research is driven by a fascination with how people find meaning and dignity in contemporary life. His publications include Teenage Witches (with Helen Berger, Rutgers University Press, 2007), Qualitative Analysis (Routledge, 2002) and Narrating Unemployment (Ashgate, 2001). He has also published articles and book chapters on contemporary Witchcraft, spirituality, illness experiences, identity theory, and research methodology. Lee Gilmore completed her PhD at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and has taught at the University of San Francisco and Holy Names University, among other institutions. Her book Theatre in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man is forthcoming with the University of California Press, and she was also co-editor of AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man (University of New Mexico Press, 2005). She currently serves on the steering committee for the Ritual Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion.

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Laura Ginters lectures in the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. She has a doctorate in Performance Studies and Germanic Studies and her translations of German plays have been both published and performed: most recently she translated Brecht’s Threepenny Opera for Company B Belvoir Street. Laura continues to practise as a dramaturg and script assessor, and her current areas of research include historical and contemporary rehearsal practices and the development of the New Wave in Australian theater. She has had articles published locally and internationally in the areas of feminism and theater, translation, performance and rehearsal analysis, radio drama, and Indigenous theater. J Lowell Lewis is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Washington (Seattle) in 1986. His dissertation research was on the Brazilian martial dance form capoeira, which resulted in the publication of Ring of Liberation: Deceptive Discourse in Brazilian Capoeira (Chicago 1992). He arrived in Australia in 1991, and subsequent publications have included work on Aboriginal dance, popular folk festivals, and aspects of Brazilian culture. Recently he contributed the concluding chapter for the collection Unstable Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place (Peter Berg 2006), the culmination of a long-term interdisciplinary seminar. He is now completing a manuscript entitled The Anthropology of Cultural Performance, which will be a contribution to performance and cultural theory. Amie Matthews is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Sciences, University of Newcastle. With a background in sociology, a personal interest in backpacking and professional experience in the tourism industry, her research focuses on youth travel as a contemporary rite of passage and alternative avenue for identity construction. In particular, she is concerned with the articulations between discourses of authenticity and freedom, local and global and self and other within the backpacker culture. To date, her main interests include youth cultures, contemporary spiritualities and religion and the representation of ‘journeying’ in literature. Ian Maxwell is Chair of the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. He is the author of “Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes” Hip Hop Down Under Comin’ Upper (Wesleyan, 2003), and a contributor to Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA (Tony Mitchell, ed; Wesleyan 2001) and Popular Music Studies (David Hesmondalgh and Keith Negus, eds; London Arnold, 2002). His current research interests are in the phenomenology of place, and theories of acting.

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Margi Nowak is a cultural anthropologist and author of several works on ‘liminal’ types of people in society (e.g. refugees and persons with disabilities). These include Tibetan Refugees: Youth and the New Generation of Meaning (Rutgers University Press, 1984), and “Powered by Modem: New Challenges to Old Hierarchies in Special Education”, Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies 20(1). She also served as the founding editor of Connections, the newsletter of the Washington State Tourette Syndrome Association. She teaches at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington, USA. Sharon Rowe is a philosopher, poet and dancer. She is currently an Associate Professor of Humanities, teaching Philosophy and Dance at Kapi’olani Community College. Her research and writings have appeared in Environmental Ethics, Asian Culture Quarterly, and Hawai’i Review, with forthcoming work to appear in Dance Research Journal. Sean Scalmer is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne. He is the author of one book on Australian social movements, Dissent Events (2002), and the co-author of another, Activist Wisdom (2006). He is currently writing a book on the global circulation of Gandhian nonviolence. Graham St John is a Research Associate at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland and at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has research interests in youth subcultures, electronic dance music cultures, the anthropology of ritual and performance and alternative religious movements. Graham has published widely in the fields of anthropology, cultural, youth and religious studies. He edited Rave Culture and Religion (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), and has two forthcoming books: Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Berghahn) and Global Trance Culture: Religion, Technology and Psytrance (Blackwell).

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MacCannell, D. 1989. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken Books. Manning, Frank. 1990. “Victor Turner’s Career and Publications.” In Kathleen Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 170–177. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London and New York: Routledge. Moore, Sally and Barbara Myerhoff. eds. 1977. Secular Ritual. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. Olaveson, Tim. 2001. “Collective Effervescence and Communitas: Processual Models of Ritual and Society in Emile Durkheim and Victor Turner.” Dialectical Anthropology 26: 89–124. Peirce, Charles 1931–1958. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rappaport, Roy. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Rothenbuhler, Eric. 1998. Ritual Communication: From Everyday Conversation to Mediated Ceremony. London: Sage. Sallnow, M. 1981. “Communitas Reconsidered: The Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage.” Man 16: 163–82. Schechner, Richard. 1976. “From Ritual to Theatre and Back.” In Richard Schechner and Mady Schuman, eds., Ritual, Play and Performance, pp. 196–222. New York: Seabury Press. ———. 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. ed. 1987a. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1987b. “Victor Turner’s Last Adventure.” In Richard Schechner, ed., The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 7–20. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 2002. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Stoller, Paul. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. St John, Graham. 1997. “Going Feral: Authentica on the Edge of Australian Culture.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8, no. 2: 167–189. ———. 2001a. “Alternative Cultural Heterotopia and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at ConFest.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 12, no. 1: 47–66. ———. 2001b. “Australian (Alter)natives: Cultural Drama and Indigeneity.” Social Analysis: Journal of Cultural and Social Practice 45, no. 1: 122–140. ———. 2006. “Electronic Dance Music Culture and Religion: An Overview.” Culture and Religion 7, no. 1: 1–25. St John, Graham, ed. 2004. Rave Culture and Religion. London: Routledge. Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1997. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambrige: Harvard University Press.

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Tramacchi, D. 2000. “Field Tripping: Psychedelic Communitas and Ritual in the Australian Bush.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 15: 201–213. Turner, E. 1985. ed. On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985. “Prologue: From the Ndembu to Broadway.” In Edith Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 1–15. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1986. “The Genesis of an Idea: Remembering Victor Turner.” Zygon 21, no. 1. pp. 7–8. ———. 1986. “Encounter with Neurobiology: The Response of Ritual Studies.” Zygon 21, no. 2: 219–232. ———. 1987. The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1990. “The Literary Roots of Victor Turner’s Anthropology.” In Kathleen Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 163–69. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1992. ed. Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1992. “The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study?” The Anthropology of Consciousness 3, no. 3: 9–12. ———. 1994. “A Visible Spirit Form in Zambia.” In D. Young and J. Goulet, eds., Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, pp. 71–95. New York: Broadview Press. ———. 1996. The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence Among a Northern Alaskan People, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press. ———. 2004. “Drumming, Divination, and Healing: the Community at Work.” In Michael Winkelman and Philip M. Peek, eds. Divination and Healing: Potent Vision, pp. 55–80. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 2005. Among the Healers: Stories of Spiritual and Ritual Healing Around the World (Religion, Health, and Healing). Praeger Publishers. ———. 2006. Heart of Lightness: The Life Story of an Anthropologist. New York: Berghahn. Turner, Edith, with William Blodgett, Singleton Kahona, and Fideli Benwa. 1992. Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, Fred. 1990. “Hyperion to a Satyr: Criticism and Anti-Structure in the Work of Victor Turner.” In K. Ashley, ed., Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, pp. 147–62. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 1962. Chihamba, the White Spirit: Ritual Drama of the Ndembu. Rhodes-Livingstone Institute Papers, 13. Manchester: Manchester University Press for the RhodesLivingstone Institute.

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———. 1967. “Betwixt and Between: the Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, pp. 93–111. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1967. “A Ndembu Doctor in Practice.” In V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, pp. 359–393. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1968. The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes Among the Ndembu of Zambia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine. ———. 1971. “An Anthropological Approach to the Icelandic Saga.” In T. Beidelman, ed., The Translation of Culture: Essays to E. E. Pritchard, pp. 349–374. London: Tavistock. ———. 1973. “The Center out There: Pilgrim’s Goal.” History of Religions 12, no. 1: 191–230. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1975. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1977. “Variations on a Theme of Liminality.” In Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff, eds., Secular Ritual, pp. 36–52. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. ———. 1978. “Encounter with Freud: The Making of a Comparative Symbologist.” In G. and L. Spindler, eds., The Making of Psychological Anthropology, pp. 558–83. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1983. “Carnival in Rio: Dionysian Drama in an Industrialising Society.” In Frank Manning, ed., The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary Cultural Performance, pp. 103–124. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Press. ———. 1984. “Liminality and the Performative Genres.” In John J. MacAloon, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Towards a Theory of Cultural Performance, pp. 19–41. Philadelphia: Institute for Study of Human Issues. ———. 1985. “Process, System, and Symbol: A New Anthropological Synthesis.” In Edith Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 151–173. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985. “The Anthropology of Performance.” In Edith Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 177–204. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985. “Experience and Performance: Towards a New Processual Anthropology.” In Edith Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 205– 226. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985. “Body, Brain and Culture.” In Edith Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 249–273. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1985. “The New Neurosociology.” In Edith Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 275–289. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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———. 1985. “Are there Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” In Edith Turner, ed., On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, pp. 291–301. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: an Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In Victor Turner and E. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience, pp. 33–44. Champaigne: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1987. “Images and Reflections: Ritual, Drama, Carnival, Film, and Spectacle in Cultural Performance.” In Richard Schechner, ed., The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 21–32. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1987. “Social Dramas in a Brazilian Umbanda: The Dialectics of Meaning.” In Richard Schechner, ed., The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 33–71. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1987. “Performing Ethnography.” In V. Turner, The Anthropology of Performance, pp. 139–155. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1992. “Morality and Liminality.” In Edith Turner, ed., Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols, pp. 132–62. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Turner, Victor and Edith. Turner. 1955. “Money Economy Among the Mwinilunga Ndembu: A Study of Some Individual Cash Budgets.” The Rhodes-Livingstone Journal 19: 19–37. ———. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1982. “Religious Celebrations.” In Victor Turner, ed., Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual, pp. 201–19. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. van Gennep, Arnold. 1960 [1909]. The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge and Kegan. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin E. 1986. The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weber, Donald. 1995. “From Limen to Border: a Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner for American Cultural Studies.” American Quarterly 47, no. 3: 525–553.

Index

{ Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre, 81 Aboriginal Land Rights movement, 81 Aboriginal Tent Embassy, 81 Abrahams, Roger, 66, 176, 187 “parent advocates,” 24, 259, 261ñ62, 264, 268, 270, 270n1 Aldermaston nuclear reactor, 244, 250 generation, 252 march, 250–53 Aliwa, 20, 81–83, 91n4 anergic-ludic, 143, 144. See ludic anthropology of experience, 11, 326–27, 331, 334, 335n5 anthropology through experience, 28, 334 antistructure, 4, 16, 41–42, 44, 62, 67, 82, 84, 128, 145, 145–46n5, 156, 161, 179, 186, 215, 298, 331 Anzaldua, Gloria, 300 apodictic/apodicity, 329, 336, 336n14 authenticity, 22, 151, 160, 180–84, 186, 236

Bastide, Roger, 29n7, 153, 168 Bateson, Gregory, 6, 31, 46, 56, 66 Bauman, Richard, 66 Bauman, Zygmunt, 152, 168, 176, 184, 188, 228–29, 231, 239 Bell, Catherine, 9, 15, 31, 50, 56, 159, 168, 222–23, 225, 334 Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, 81–83, 91n4 Berlin, Isaiah, 150, 158 Blaikie, Bill, 193–94, 198–99, 207 Boland, Gerard, 22–23, 190–208 Brecht, Bertolt, 69, 71 British pacifist movement, 243–44, 249 Brook, Peter, 66 Bruner, Edward, 1, 6, 31, 302, 305, 327, 336, 344 Burke, Kenneth, 66 Burning Man, 23, 149, 166n9, 211–26, 341 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 251 Canetti, Elias, 65, 75, 344 Captain Cook, 86–87 Carlson, Marvin, 65–66, 69, 204, 208 Cartesian dualism, 318, 326 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham, 16, 150, 159 ceremony, 99, 110, 220, 278, 280 funeral ceremony, 76, 101 Olympics, 96. See Olympics

Babcock, Barbara, 1, 3, 11, 26–27, 29n3, 31, 52, 56, 297–308, 338, 344–45 backpacking, 22–23, 174–189, 231 as authentic freedom, 182–83, 187 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 7,13, 42–43, 65, 75, 344 Barba, Eugenio, 66 351

352

Chihamba, 7, 27, 29n8, 283, 293, 312, 316–17 Chihamba, the White Spirit, 26, 35, 283, 291, 295, 296, 348 clubbing (dance clubs), 149–51, 154, 157–60, 165n2, 165n5, 231 Cohen, Michael, 18, 76–93, 339 Coman, Mihai, 20, 94–108, 339 communitas, 7–8, 13–14, 19, 21, 22–24, 26–28, 29nn5–7, 30n13, 42, 52–55, 60–61, 63, 65–66, 71, 90, 96, 101, 104, 110, 115, 121, 128, 145, 145–46n5, 154–58, 161, 166n10, 177–79, 185–87, 195, 201, 205–06, 212, 215–24, 225n7, 225n10, 230–31, 238–39, 246–48, 250, 253, 258, 265, 267–68, 270, 293, 295, 298–99, 301, 315–16, 325, 331, 334 ideological, 8, 17, 61, 219, 230, 239, 267 fragmentary, 24 heterogeneous, 179–80, 187 normative, 8, 22, 29n5, 61, 219, 230, 239, 267, 269 psychedelic, 157 spontaneous, 7, 13, 17, 30n13, 61, 84, 104, 155, 162, 179, 198, 219, 230, 239, 267, 269 online, 267 Company B, 81, 91n4, 342 ConFest, 149, 178 conflict. See social drama Conquergood, Dwight, 70 consumption, 15, 24, 230–39 Corroboree 2000 marches, 79, 90 Cottle, Simon, 20, 109–124, 339–40, 345 Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, 79, 85, 92 counterculture, 14, 22–23, 29n5, 150, 152, 154, 157, 159, 161, 166n12, 222, 231 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi, 27, 62–63, 153, 193

Index

cultural drama, 5–6, 20, 29n4 Cusack, Carole, 15, 24, 227–241, 340 cyberspace, 269 Dallas Winmar, 81 D’Andrea, Anthony, 153–54, 157–59 Da Matta, Roberto, 43, 153 Davis, Natalie, 299, 301 Digance, Justine, 15, 24, 227–241, 340 Dingo, Ernie, 88 disabilities, 24, 258–71 invisible disabilities, 258, 260, 262, 266, 269, 270n1 dis-membering, 95, 99, 103–104 DJ, 150, 155, 157, 160, 163, 166n14 Douglas, Mary, 301 Dramas, Fields and Metaphors, 155, 258, 315 Drums of Affliction,The, 3, 288, 291, 195, 311, 313 Dubisch, Jill, 27–28, 324–37, 240–41 Durkheim, Emile, 43, 100, 102, 110, 321 Dwyer, Paul, 18, 76–93, 341 ecstasy, 64, 153, 165n6, 166n10 Ecstasy (MDMA, or E), 153, 157, 165nn4–5 EDMC (electronic dance music culture), 21, 149–52, 154, 156–59, 164, 165, 165n2, 167n22, 343 educational reward system, 270 egalitarianism, 177, 216–17, 263, 270 Emmett, Dorothy, 298, 302 Engel, David, 270n1 Engelke, Matthew, 7, 25–26, 29n3, 30n16, 155, 275–96, 309–11, 315, 318, 325, 328–29, 341 entheogen (entheogenic), 157, 160, 166n11, 167n14, 319 Epstein, Bill, 281–82, 284 ergic-ludic, 21, 142, 143, 151 ergic-ludic vs anergic-ludic, 21, 132, 141, 14

Index

eufunctionality, 61, 68, 70 Exodus Festival, 159, 163, 165n1 Experiencing Ritual, 26, 294, 302, 311, 329–30 expressive cultural genres, 110, 118, 122 Ezzy, Douglas, 27, 30n12, 309–323, 341 Falk Moore, Sally, 301–302 flow, 62–63, 290 Formal Fashion Spectacular, 24, 236–38 Fortes, Meyer, 279 Foucault, Michel, 14, 17, 217, 226n7 “freak/s” , 152, 153–54, 156, 158–159 games, 136, 139, 142, 144, 145n2, 193–94, 202, 259, 266. See Olympic Games Gandhi, Mahatma, 29n5, 243–49, 253, 253n1 Gandhian Satyagraha, 24, 243, 253. See nonviolent direct action Gandhians of Britain, 246, 249–50, 252 Gandhism, 244–245, 248–50, 253 Gauthier, François, 29n7, 158, 160–61, 166n12 Geertz, Clifford, 6, 77, 80–81, 203, 222 Gilmore, Lee, 14, 23, 149, 166n9, 211–226, 341 Ginters, Laura, 19, 76–93, 342 globalizing media ecologies, 109 Gluckman, Max, 145n3. See Turner, Victor Goa Gil, 157, 161–63 Goa, India, 150, 157–58 Goa trance, 150 Goffman, Erving, 66 Grimes, Ron, 2, 10, 19, 128, 130. See Turner, Victor Grosz, Elizabeth, 301, 304n6 Grotowski, Jerzy, 9, 66, 69 Guattari, Felix, 17–18

353

Handelman, Don, 14, 16, 43, 51, 151, 253 Hands Feel It, The, 302, 318, 325–26, 328, 330, 332 Haraway, Donna, 300 Hero Girl, 85–88 heterotopia, 14, 23, 178, 180, 217, 225n7 Hill End Project, 22, 194–95, 205–7, 207n2 Hitler, Adolf, 59, 64 Howard, John (Howard Government), 20, 78–79 Huizinga, Johan, 46 Hymes, Dell, 66 Ihamba healing ritual, 26, 281, 291, 295, 311–12, 319, 321, 330 Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, 302, 317, 335n2 indicative mood, 4, 9, 16–17, 42–43, 66, 153, 201, 302 Indigenous theater, 20, 81, 83–84, 90, 91n5 Indigenous performance, 90 individualism, 21, 23, 177, 180, 184–85, 227, 229, 232, 238 Individualized Education Plan, 261, 265 institutional racism, 111, 118, 120, 122 Jane Harrison, 81 Kajima village (Mukanza), 26, 280, 283, 288 Kershaw, Baz, 19, 76, 80–82, 193, 195, 204–5, 207 Kondo, Dorinne, 326 Kristeva, Julia, 297–98, 300–302 leisure, 8–12, 17, 21–22, 132–33, 137, 141–143, 145n2, 150–51, 158, 163, 165, 176–77, 183, 228 leisure genre, 6, 48, 131, 151 work vs leisure 27 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 4, 42, 48 141, 321

354

Lewis, J. Lowell, 14, 18–19, 21, 41–58, 77, 90, 149, 164, 205–6, 342 liminal, 4–5, 8–10, 15–16, 18–21, 23–24, 46, 48, 59–62, 67,71, 76–77, 80, 84–85, 90, 95, 98–105, 115, 117, 152, 156, 158–59, 162–63, 167n14, 177–78, 196, 201, 205, 215–16, 221, 230–33, 235, 237–38, 264, 284, 299 counterculture and,15 deliminalization, 9, 142, 164 hyperliminal, 159 limen, 1, 4–5, 13–18, 30n15, 49, 150, 164, 176, 178, 186, 195–96, 200, 205–6, 225n7, 231 liminality, 5, 7, 9–13, 15–17, 19–21, 26, 29n4, 30n10, 30n15, 48–49, 52, 59–60, 70–71, 77, 84–85, 94–98, 100, 102–106, 110, 127–30, 134, 140–45, 145n4, 145–46n5, 150, 153, 155–56, 158, 160–61, 164, 175, 177–80, 212, 214–15, 217, 219, 221–24, 230–32, 238, 289, 298–301, 303n1, 303nn4–5, 304n5, 315, 325 and pilgrimage, 95, 178 the liminal norm, 16, 19, 69–71 liminal symbols, 9 Liminal Village, 166n9 liminal vs. liminoid, 9, 17, 21, 41, 90, 144–45, 150, 163, 165 the liminate, 16 liminautical, 17–18 liminoid, 8–14, 17–18, 21–22, 41, 46, 48, 50, 55, 60–63, 71, 84–85, 89, 90, 95–96, 104, 150, 152, 163, 165n3, 177–78, 181–82, 184–87, 222, 246, 253 liminoidal liminalities,164 liminoid genres, 77, 84–85, 90, 150 liminoidity, 61 neoliminal, 22, 90, 164, 206 permanent liminality, 29n5 postliminal, 60, 177, 298

Index

postliminoid, 186 postmodern liminality, 152 reliminalization, 164 sport and liminal/liminoid,127–148 television as liminal ritual, 98 travel and liminal/liminoid, 174–89 as virtual, 13, 15, 17 woman, and, 298–99 LSD, 154, 157, 166n11 ludic, 5, 104, 128–30, 141, 151–53, 206. See anergic-ludic, and ergic-ludic Lutz, Catherine, 325–26 Mabo, 78–79 MacAloon, John, 3, 29n3, 47, 52, 56n4, 70, 78, 85, 89–90, 164, 301, 303n4 Maffesoli, Michel, 16, 29n7, 164 Matthews, Amie, 22–23, 174–89, 342 Maxwell, Ian, 3, 14, 19, 59–75, 77, 342 McKenzie, Jon, 3, 16–19, 60, 67, 70–71, 77 media, 12–13, 15, 18, 20, 29n10, 109–124, 131, 150, 158, 185, 252 mass media, 20, 94–106 media consumption, 95–98, 105 media events, 15, 20, 94–102, 105, 109 media rituals, 20, 97, 99, 102, 105 media spectacles, 20, 109 media studies, 15, 20–22, 94–108, 190 new media, 9, 13, 96 mediation, 45, 54, 61, 88, 96, 106 mediatization, 20, 99, 101, 109–124 mediatized public crisis, 123n1 mediatized public ritual, 20, 123n1 mediatized social drama, 20, 110–11, 122, 123, 123n1 meritocracy, 236, 259, 263 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 53 methodological atheism, in anthropology, 27, 309–11, 320 moral solidarity, 110, 118 Myerhoff, Barbara, 43, 301

Index

N’kanga ritual, 286 National Black Theatre, 81 Native Title, 78 Ndembu, 1–2, 6–7, 16, 25–27, 46, 78, 90, 221, 253, 260, 278–79, 282–83, 287–88, 311, 313, 315–16, 319, 328–30, 333–34 neotribal (neotribalism), 158, 164 New Age, 222, 228, 333 healing, 331, 333 ritual, 15 Traveller, 149, 157 New theater (new theatre), 10, 68 news, 97–99, 101, 104 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 65 nonviolent direct action, 24, 242, 243, 249–50, 253, 253n1. See Gandhian Satyagraha Nowak, Margi, 24, 258–71, 343 Nuremberg (rallies), 59, 64 Olympic Games (Olympic), 50, 77, 84–85, 90, 135–36, 138–39, 164, 233 Spectacle, 77, 84–85, 90 Sydney, 2000, Closing Ceremony, 86 Sydney, 2000, Opening Ceremony, 20, 85–89, 92n7 Sydney 2000, Welcome to Country, 89 paradigm conflict, 259 Parsons, Elsie Clews, 300, 303 particularized publics, 122 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 43, 52, 54, 55n1, 56n5 People’s Walk, Sydney, 20, 79–80, 82 Performance Studies, 2–3, 15–16, 19, 41, 60, 65, 69–71, 77 performativity, 55, 118, 120, 290 pilgrimage, 13–14, 23–24, 25, 49, 99, 104, 151, 157, 162, 178, 212, 216, 227, 230, 233–38. See Turners and pilgrimage

355

symbolic pilgrimage, 15 pilgrims as pacifists, 242–57 and tourism, 175 play, 1, 9, 12, 18, 41, 46–48, 50–51, 54–55, 62, 66, 140–43, 146n11, 150–55, 176, 181, 217, 303n1. See ludic political techniques, reinvention, 243 political techniques, translation, 243 psychedelic, 150, 156–157, 166n7, 166n11, 167n14 psytrance (psychedelic trance), 21–22, 149–173 public drama, 116 Queen Victoria Building, 24, 233–34 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 43, 276 Rappaport, Roy, 50, 161–63 raves (ravers, raving), 14–15, 64, 149–50, 152–54, 156–60, 162, 164, 165n2, 166n13, 167n16, 322 RAVE Act, 165n5 reconciliation, 20, 77–93, 101, 111, 163, 166n8, 281 re-enchantment of the world, 325 reflexivity, 110, 117, 120 cultural, 110, 120, 122, 221 institutional, 110, 120 Reiki, 28, 331–33, 335nn9–10, 335n12 remembering, 10, 95, 99, 103 Reynolds, Reginald, 245, 247–49 Riefenstahl, Leni, 64 rites of passage (rites de passage), 4–6, 10, 16–18, 21–23, 49, 67, 70, 94–95, 98, 127, 143, 159, 166n14, 174–189, 199, 204–5, 212, 215, 221–23, 230, 237–38, 261, 264, 299 ritual ritual studies, 2, 19 decline, 9–10 divinatory, 316–17 media ritual, 97, 102 ontological status, 2, 16, 27, 315–16

356

performance/enactment, 68–69, 77, 80, 143, 110, 219, 322 revitalization, 9–10 symbols, 1–2, 11, 299 syncretic ritualizing, 166n13 theory, 3, 6, 9, 12–13, 15–18, 23, 46, 30n11, 103, 164, 166n9, 221–22, 224, 229–32 Ritual Process, The, 4, 8, 145n4, 155, 284, 287, 299, 301 Ritual to Theatre, From, 3, 12, 67 ritual process, 3, 16, 19, 42, 60, 95–96, 103, 115, 166n14, 195, 205, 212, 222, 230, 281, 321, 330 protest ritual, 79–84, 242 rituals of disappearance, 166n13 Romanticism, 234 Rosaldo, Renato, 302, 328–29 sacra, 6, 17, 151, 163 sacred, the, 9–10, 12, 22, 24, 121, 217, 220, 223, 229–31, 237, 239, 251 Sandombu, 281 Scalmer, Sean, 24, 242–57, 343 Schaefer, Kerrie, 73–74 Schechner, Richard, 2–3, 19, 28, 29n9, 30n11, 41, 47, 60, 65–71, 76–77, 80, 90, 151, 225n9 Schism and Continuity, 26, 28n1, 42, 278–79, 281, 283, 288, 320 school formal, 236–39 secularization, 10, 133, 227–29, 232, 238 seeker, 239 self-transformation, 48, 231, 238 Sherry, John, 16, 152, 225n5, 229, 233 Shields, Rob, 15, 175, 178, 180, 242 shopping, 15, 24, 227–41 Singer, Milton, 65 social drama, 6, 12, 19–20, 25, 27, 41–46, 66–67, 77–78, 80, 90–91, 100,109–124, 131–33, 146n7, 156, 219, 221–22, 253, 258–59, 262, 270, 281–83, 313, 330

Index

breach, 5–6, 44, 60, 67, 110–14, 181, 221, 262–64, 281 conflict, 6 crisis, 19, 44, 60–67, 95, 100, 103, 110–15, 117, 119, 123n1, 262, 264–66, 281 ebbing/revivification, 20, 110, 120–122 redress, 6, 16, 18–20, 44, 46, 60, 66, 76–77, 79–80, 110–11, 113, 115–119, 131, 262, 265, 266, 281 reintegration/resolution, 6, 21, 78, 110, 118, 262, 266 schism, 6, 21, 44, 70, 110–11, 118, 262, 266–67, 278 Songman, 86–88 sorry business, 19, 76–93 special events vs. everyday life, 18, 43–48, 50, 54–55 Spirit and the Drum, The (Kajima), 8, 25–26, 278, 283, 288–89, 293–94, 302, 325 Spivak, Gayatri, 300, 303n3 sport, 6, 10, 14, 18, 21, 47–48, 50–51, 54, 62, 97, 99, 127–48, 150–51, 164, 165n3 ancient vs modern, 133 St John, Graham, 1–37, 77–78, 149–73, 175, 178–80, 225n7, 343 Stolen, 20, 81–84, 90, 91nn4–5 Stolen Generations, 78–79, 91n6 strategic claims-making, 111 structural processualism, 4, 12 subculture, 61, 154, 165n2 youth subculture, 16, 154 subcultural capital, 151 subjunctivity, 1, 10, 12, 17, 20, 27, 43, 77, 102, 110, 115, 122, 150, 165 subjunctive mood, 4–5, 17, 42, 95, 102, 121–22, 129–30, 150, 153–54, 197 Sutton-Smith, Brian, 47, 61 Sydney Front, The, 73–74, 74n1 techno-tribe, 167n22

Index

Tedlock, Barbara, 324–25 television, 6, 20–21, 86, 88, 96–98, 101, 104, 117, 138, 145n2 film and television studies, 21 terra nullius, 78, 86 Thamer, Hans-Ulrich, 64 theater (theatre), 3, 6, 22, 65–69, 74, 77, 95, 130, 145n2, 164, 190–208 Aboriginal (Indiegnous), 20, 81–84, 90, 91n5 experimental (new), 2, 10, 29n9, 145n2 Forest of Symbols, The, 280, 299, 301 tourism, 12, 158, 176, 181–83, 228, 231–32 and pilgrimage, 175, 233–35 Tramacchi, Des, 155, 157, 166n10, 167n14 Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl), 64 Turner, Edith (Edie), 1, 3, 5, 25–28, 29n3, 156, 275–337 anthropology of consciousness, 25–26 children, 27, 278–82, 285, 298, 302 Ihamba spirit, 26, 291, 295, 311–312, 319, 321, 330 interview with, 26, 275–96 Primavera, 286, 290 radical methodology, 26–27, 302–3, 304n6 relationship with Victor, 25, 275, 292, 302, Turner, Victor, 94–95, 100, 102, 104, 105 atheism (methodological atheism), 27, 309–12, 314, 320 Barbara Babcock, on, 1, 26–27, 297–308 becoming, 1, 4 Bennetta Jules-Rosette, on, 12 bibliographies, 29n3 British structural-functionalist training, 2–3, 42–43, 80, 320 C. Flanigan, on, 4, 13, 42 Catherine Bell, on, 9, 222

357

and Catholicism (Christian influence), 2, 7, 13, 25, 157, 215, 222, 284, 287, 291–92, 295, 310, 322 Chicago period, 286 and comparative symbology, 2, 8 contemporary influence, 11–18 Cornell period, 284 counterculture influence, 7, 13, 155–57, 224, Donald Weber, on, 11, 14, 155 Durkheimian influence, 26, 164, 286, 315–16 Edith Turner. See Edith Turner, relationship with French anthropology, critique, 11, 26, 279 and Freud, 11, 29n8, 258, 282 gynesis of his anthropology, 26, 298, 302, 303n1 and Henri Bergson, 8, 276 John Eade, on, 14, 212, 218, 230 Jon McKenzie, on, 3, 16–19, 60, 67–71, 77 and Jung, 11, 30n11, 239 and Kenelm Burridge, 8 liberatory vision, 55 and Manchester School of British Social Anthropology, 2, 29n1, 277, 279, 281–84, 301–2 Marx, influence, 2, 16, 146n11, 302 and Max Gluckman, 2, 26, 277, 281–82, 301 Michael Sallnow, 14, 212, 218, 230 midnight seminar, 285 mother, 5, 27, 282, 298, 302 multivocality, 11, 53, 55 neurosociology, 13, 30n11 and new theater. See experimental theater and pilgrimage, 8, 13–15, 23–24, 29n5, 95, 157, 178, 215–16, 230, 232–236, 244, 246, 250, 287–88, 291, 302, 317, 335n2

358

poetry, 2, 6, 276, 286–87, 289 and post-structuralism, 16, 18 processualism, 1, 3 and Richard Schechner, 2–3, 19, 28, 29n9, 30n11, 41, 47, 60, 65–71, 76–77, 80, 90, 151, 225n9 and ritual studies, 2 and Roger Caillois, 47, 167n19 Ron Grimes, on, 3, 13, 222, 230, 238. See Grimes, Ron S. W. Foster, on, 11 symbolist poets, 276, 286, 189, 296 Vincent Crapanzano, on, 13 ultimate concern, 22, 50–51, 56n4, 78 urban renewal, 235

Index

Van Gennep, Arnold, 4, 27, 49–50, 94, 128, 159, 166n14, 212, 222–23, 230, 261, 264, vibe, the, 13, 22, 149, 154–60, 163–64, 167n15 Wandjina, 88 War on Terror, 91n2 Weber, Max, 53, 261, 314 Welfare State International, 205 Wesley Enoch, 84, 90, 91n5 Wilson, Monica, 299 Woolf, Virginia, 297, 300, 301 youth culture, 174