Goulet.pdf

Jean-Guy A. Goulet and Bruce Granville Miller
Geertz maintains that since “we cannot live other people’s lives, and
it is a piece of bad faith to try,” it follows that as ethnographers in-
terested in the meaningful lives of others “we can but listen to what,
in words, in images, in actions, they [others] say about their lives”
( 1986 , 373 ). Notwithstanding his stated interest “in the meaning-
ful lives of others,” to which most anthropologists would subscribe,
Geertz exemplifies a commonly shared methodological assumption:
that it is possible “to understand [a] native religion and yet remain
outside of it” (D. Tedlock 1995 , 269 ). In a similar vein, Fabian argues
that if early explorers, and after them ethnographers who espoused
a positive view of their activity, “seldom ever sang, danced or played
along” with their companions and hosts, it is because “their ideas of
science and their rules of hygiene made them reject singing, dancing,
and playing as source of ethnographic knowledge” (Fabian 2000 ,
127 ). This rejection leads to impoverished understanding of human
lives and social institutions. Perhaps the widespread reticence among
anthropologists to sing, dance, play, and pray with their hosts stems
from the recognition that “performing rituals might eventually lead
to personal commitment to religious ideas and doctrines” (Kawano
2005 , 1 – 2 ).
To subscribe to the sort of anthropological investigation advocated
by Geertz is to ignore native views on epistemology and to privilege
limited Eurocentric canons of investigations (Goulet 1998 , 253 ). This
is fundamentally why Victor Turner differed so profoundly from Geertz
on these matters. He does not claim that we can live other people’s
lives, nor do we. He knows however, as we do, that we can do more
than interview people outside or after their involvement in a given ac-
tivity, ritual or other. As demonstrated in our papers, we know first-
hand the merits and benefits of learning rituals “on their pulses,” “in
coactivity with their enactors,” making ourselves “vulnerable to the
total impact not just of the other culture but of the intricate human
existences” of others with whom we come to share time and interac-
tion (V. Turner 1985 , 205 ). Implicit in this approach is the notion of
the body as becoming mindful through interaction with others, the
idea of the body that literally embodies thoughts and ideas (Lock and
Scheper-Hughes 1987 ).