Goulet.pdf

Guy Lanoue
There are, however, problems with this formulation. Situating the
moment of epiphany in the field ignores the dimension of time. Aside
from suggesting that understanding is generated in an atemporal di-
mension, that the flash of insight is not the result of a cumulative pro-
cess, situating sudden insight in the field experience reproduces some
of the essentialisms that anthropologists have tried very hard to iden-
tify and confront over the last several decades, especially the notion
that “the field” is a special instance of space and time. It is different,
true, but to what extent do the differences noted by anthropologists
transform the field experience into a special, bounded instance of
space and time? Is it possible that anthropologists project their later,
post-fieldwork interpretations onto the past, thereby canceling not
only the present but also the evolutionary process by which they ar-
rive at understanding? I think the answer is yes, and the result is the
further exoticization of “fieldwork time” and therefore of “the field”
as a special space, a separate instance in time, when in fact the experi-
ence is better described as a moment in the developmental continuum
of our lives. I think that the intellectual value of the special moments
in which we are “out of our minds” in the field is something we can
discover only much later, since epiphanies act on our emotions much
more than on our alleged understanding of events by means of intel-
lectual struggles within a well-established body of doctrine (no matter
how critical and self-reflexive it may be). By situating “understand-
ing” in intellect and in time, we recreate the very boundaries between
Us and Them that we otherwise work so hard to overcome.
There is another essentialist dimension attached to the fiction of
fieldwork as a special time. Anthropologists often think we need to
ask the “proper” questions to get answers, and that the special times
when we are “out of our minds” will yield better, more insightful
questions, to which we will receive richer answers. Undoubtedly, this
is true in some cases. This, however, precludes instances in which di-
alogue is not a normal or even respected form of interaction (for ex-
ample, see Basso’s well-known article on silence among the Apache,
1990 ), no matter how precise the initial hypotheses may be. Asking
questions, no matter how insightful or provocative the answers they
evoke, is sometimes so inappropriate that it will tacitly frame the