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On Presence
Minima Ethnographica, which builds on Buddhist teachings to some
extent. These teachings, indeed, are often slated into prefabricated
rubrics concerning such esoteric-sounding phenomena as shamanis-
tic, supernatural, and mystic. That’s why, at least in university con-
texts, they are often regarded with great suspicion, ridicule, or trep-
idation. Again, at best they are the objects but not subjects of study.
For example, I have a friend who is currently writing on South Afri-
ca’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee and would love to use the
writings of Pema Chödrön, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, for her explica-
tions. Alas, she feels that in the academy these writings might be, yet
are not, part of the accepted interpretative record. More often, they
are part of that New Age science and religion that academics, my-
self included, love to criticize. Self-respecting academics rarely like to
think of themselves as spiritually too far out.
In this essay, I want to turn some of these academic conventions on
their head. I am asking what it means to be out of one’s mind, second
kind, not only for academic research and practice but, perhaps more
generally, for one’s life. The guiding metaphor for this exploration is
the notion of the presence. Presence is a term with which I became
familiar in the context of the Zen teachings that I mentioned before.
It is a notion that does not dwell on the future or the past but reveals
what is (this is it!) in the presence, the moment, the now. I have found
this notion both inspiring and useful for examining more closely what
keeps me often out of my mind, first kind. These are worries, anxiet-
ies, and fears, often emerging out of a (personal) past and translating
into my interpretation of the present, or anticipations of the future
in which my mind paints frightful scenarios and images, scenarios in
which I fail, always falling short of one thing or other. It is the pres-
ent, the kind that keeps one in one’s mind without letting it run the
show, that I seek. And I am asking why, in this case related to a few
research issues, this seems often so hard to do.
This essay is divided into three parts. Part I tells the story of an ar-
ticle that I published a few years ago and whose afterlife continues to
engage me. The article was generally well received, but also consid-
ered, at least by some, as too romantic. I am asking how and why this
was the case. Romanticism may be everything: a well-worn feature,
indictment, and allegation in anthropological circles, but it can also
