Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24

STUDIES

IN SYMBOLIC

INTERACTION

VOLUME

24

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION EDITED BY

N O R M A N K DENZIN Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA MANAGING EDITOR

M A R K NIMKOFF University of lllinois, USA EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

RUOYUN BAI JACK BRATICH HEIDI BRUSH MICHAEL ELAVSKY UMA PIMPLASKAR University of Illinois, USA

2001

JAI An Imprint of Elsevier Science Amsterdam

- London - New York - Oxford - Paris - Shannon - Tokyo

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Arthur P. Bochner

Communication Department, University of South Florida

Shing-Ling S. Chen

Communication Studies, University of Northern Iowa

Dionel Cotanda

Communication Department, University of South Florida

Gary Alan Fine

Department of Sociology, Northwestern University

Andrea Fontana

Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Elissa Foster

Communication, University of South Florida

Simon Gottschalk

Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Bruce E. Gronbeck

Communication Studies, University of Iowa

Peter M. Hall

Department of Sociology, University of Missouri

Monica Hardesty

Department of Sociology, University of Hartford

Regina Hewitt

Department of English, University of South Florida

Peter R. Ibarra

Justice Studies, Kent State University

Margarethe Kusenbach

Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

David R. Maines

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Oakland University

Reuben A. Buford May

Department of Sociology, University of Georgia ix

Joy Pierce

Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

William K. Rawlins

Communication Department, Purdue University

Laurel Richardson

Department of Sociology, Ohio State University

Efrat Tseglon

Department of Sociology, University College Dublin

Norbert Wiley

Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana.

REFEREES Lori Blewett Arthur R Bochner Tiffani Chin Martha A. Copp Norman K. Denzin Chris Dunbar Eric Eisenberg Carolyn S. Ellis Michael Flaherty Katherine Hill Linda Holmes-May Jack Katz John I. Kitsuse Dorrine Kondo Karl Kroeber Jennifer Leich Stephanie Limoncelli Dianna McCarty

David R. Maines Gwendolyn May-Barlow Bernard N. Meltzer Gil Musolf Mary Patillo-McCoy Joy Pierce Darryl Pifer Elizabeth Perea Honey Rand Monica Russel y Rodriguez Clinton Sanders Jennifer D. Slack Rob Sloane Anne Statham Debbi Storrs Marsha Vanderford Kenneth Watson

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SYMBOLIC INTERACTION AND COMMUNICATION: NCA SPOTLIGHT ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF DAVID R. MAINES Shing-Ling S. Chen and Arthur R Bochner In 1997 the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) became an affiliate member of the National Communication Association (NCA). For more than thirty years, social scientists within the NCA have focused their research and scholarship on symbolic communication and human interaction, frequently citing the influence on their work of symbolic interactionists such as Mead, Blumer, Goffman, Couch, Becker, and Denzin. The work of these symbolic interactionists, and many others, is routinely read by students of communication interested in interpersonal relations, group processes, media and cultural studies, communication theory, and symbolic studies of the self. More recently, symbolic interactionists have actively built alliances and collaborated with communication scholars and several have moved voluntarily into academic positions within communication departments. As these connections have evolved, an increasing number of graduate students and scholars in communication studies have become members of the SSSI, participating in symposia and giving papers at meetings, and publishing in journals .associated with the study of symbolic interaction. At the same time, the NCA has successfully encouraged greater participation at their meetings from symbolic interactionists in sociology. By designating affiliate member status to the SSSI, N C A institutionalizes and promotes greater recognition and visibility of the

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connections between sociologists and communication scholars, symbolic communication and human interaction. At the 1999 NCA Annual Convention in Chicago, the SSSI Affiliate presented the first in a series of "Spotlight" sessions designed to feature the works of distinguished scholars of symbolic interaction who have contributed significantly to the study of communication. The idea was to use the session to promote dialogue and engagement with the spotlighted scholar's ideas and research. Participants in the session would be distinguished scholars in their own work who were ideally positioned to react to, engage with, extend, and/or challenge the work being highlighted in the session. The inaugural "Spotlight Session" featured the work of Professor David R. Maines. The session was entitled "Symbolic Interaction and Communication: The Contribution of David R. Maines' Works In Interdisciplinary Inquiry". David R. Maines, Professor and Chair of Sociology at Oakland University, was one of the founders of the SSSI. His scholarship is extraordinarily broad in both scope and application, extending interactionist and pragmatist frameworks to the study of social organization and policy studies, the ways in which social order is negotiated, the narrative dimensions of sociological scholarship and writing, and the narrative production of social and cultural meanings. He has discussed these conceptual and theoretical issues in a wide range of specific contexts including friendship, chronic illness, industrialization, liturgy, and mathematics. Four distinguished scholars, two in Communication and two in Sociology, were invited to contribute papers to the session. Bruce E. Gronbeck traces Maines' journey from an emphasis on mesostructural analysis to rhetorical structuration and, then, to narrative modes of cultural construction. Gronbeck points to Malnes' useful attempts to suppress dualistic modes of thought while showing how difficult it can be, even for Maines, to avoid dualisms, especially when structure is viewed as the source of the problem. Gronbeck's suggestive conclusion is to reframe structure not as a context but as a tool for relating. Peter Hall extends Maines' work on temporality, narrative, and public policy processes to congruent work in the natural sciences and contemporary sociologists whose current work is impacted by these cosmological views of science and living systems. The historical, processual, and holistic approaches now emergng in these fields need, in Hall's view, to be applied to our understanding of the meanings and consequences of class, gender, race, and institutional logics. Gary Alan Fine takes Maines' writings on cultural production as his inspiration to ponder norms and their vulnerabilities. Fine theorizes an approach to understanding normative innovations at the interface of individual

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enactment and systemic expectations, one that embraces an individual's interpretive options in locally occasioned, interactional contexts, thereby rejecting a realist/materialist account of norms that fails to acknowledge the dynamic and creative qualities of interactional process in cultural formation and change. William K. Rawlins adopts a personal voice, acknowledging his long frendship with David Maines who has occupied, in Rawlins words, "an instructive and redemptive presence in my life". Rawlins attempts to bring a sense of coherence to what may seem a quite diverse and fragmented body of work, showing how some of Maine's later writings on narrative were foreshadowed by earlier scholarship that emphasized temporality and the negotiated, communicative character of social order. Showing his own talent as a storyteller, Rawlins reads Maines as a person who sees social life as "stories all the way down". The publication of these papers in Studies In Symbolic Interaction opens the conversation to present and future symbolic interactionists in sociology and communication who can and will extend, elaborate, refine, reshape, and apply Maines' work in order to better understand and cope with the world in which they live. Our goal is to keep the conversation going.

THE IDEA OF STRUCTURE AND COMMUNICATION IN DAVID MAINES' WORK Bruce E. Gronbeck I am pleased to have been asked to to provide a chapter commenting upon an aspect of David Maines' work. I've known him since the SSSI convened in Iowa City in the early 1980s, after which he and Carl Couch - undoubtedly against Carl's better judgment - asked me to formalize for a book chapter the paper that I had delivered at that conference (Gronbeck, 1985). I later joined David as an associate editor to the series on Communication and the Social Order he was overseeing for Aldine de Gruyter, and so have exchanged views and drafts of materials with him on and off for the last decade. This panel gives me a chance to construct yet another relationship with him: that of explicator-interpreter of his work. When Shing-Ling Chen asked what I wanted to think about, the word "mesostructure" came to mind immediately - a word in the title of the first of the essays he passed on to me (Maines, 1979). I initially took it as simply another piece of sociobabble, another hunk of someone else's jargon that I'd have to figure out how to use or benignly forget. Only later did I consider his arguments more thoughtfully. I now take those arguments seriously because he's convinced me that they are central to one of the key debates in 20th-century American social thought. Maines framed those debates in the following manner when writing about sociologists' misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Herbert Blumer. In exploring the ways in which sociologists have posited relationships between so-called micro and so-called macro levels of analysis, Maines nearly exploded:

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BRUCE E. GRONBECK I regard the distinction as a particularly ideological and political one rather than one that is descriptive and analytical. It is premised on long-standing dualisms (e.g. individual/ society, appearance/reality, internal/external) that the classical European sociologists imported into the field, and that became central to the agenda of modern sociology and its investigation of social facts and social processes as well as its mission to combat reductionist ontologies. The 'micro-macro line,' to build off Blumer's notion of the color line, therefore can be proposed as an ongoing set of structural relations that contains within it a set of operating dualisms and that has functioned to allocate legitimacy to sociological work. That is, it describes better how the discipline of sociology organizes itself than it does the phenomena sociology presumably is organized to investigate and understand (Maines, 1988: 52).

The Goliath, then, that this David is attempting to fell takes us to the heart of what Szacki (1979), among others, has suggested is a primary faultline sorting all American theories of sociality into two groups: dualistic vs. monist understandings of the social world. I do not wish to return to work on that faultline. But what I want to do is examine how Maines' own work especially over the last decade has labored on that line. I choose to talk about his ideas of structure because those probes show him off at his most creative and represent what sociological thought and research can contribute centrally to m y own work in rhetorical and communication studies. I am particularly interested in reprising his thoughts about social structures and communication processes: more particularly, can he maintain a consistently monistic theory of communication activity? If he can, then he is contributing to the destruction of some dualisms that likewise tend to control communication theory and research: the separation of context from communication act, of message content and the act of embodying or transmitting that content to others, and, of course, o f form and content as separable dimensions of communication processes. I will argue that David does generally suppress dualistic thought in his theorizing about social organizations and social psychology, but that he lapses back into such thinking when actually conducting research on social groups. What such a divided intellectual practice tells us about scholarship will be the topic of m y brief concluding remarks.

F R O M M E S O S T R U C T U R E TO R H E T O R I C A L STRUCTURATION Simply put, Maines has attacked the micro-macrostructure dualism, as I read him, via three strategies. In the late 1970s and early 1982, he was interested in a theory of mesostructure, which he develops most clearly in a 1982 essay in Urban Life entitled "In Search of Mesostructure: Studies in the Negotiated Order." At this stage of his thinking, Malnes was working in a direct sort of way

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out of Anselm Strauss's studies of medical collectivities - important because of the organizational and professional structures that were so clearly exhibited in such groups. Here, thought Maines (1982: 267), was a place where "symbolic interactionism as a perspective came to take matters of social organization seriously." The so-called "traditional rational-bureaucratic conception of organizational authority" (1982: 269) could be challenged by interactionists; what was thought about earlier as so-called "organizational background" (ibid.) - rules, policies, hierarchies, divisions of labor, career paths, and the like - was found to be subject to negotiation, leading to Strauss's articulation of negotiated order theory in his book Negotiations (1978). Important not only to Strauss but also to Maines were three concepts developed in that book: (1) negotiation, or types of actual interpersonal interaction; (2) negotiation context, which represents those aspects of settings that are subject to negotiation; and (3) structural context, or what Maines (1982: 270) described as "the larger transcending circumstances in which negotiations contexts exist." This was neat! In this formulation, the negotiation context - that is, whatever aspects of routine or normal procedure were under scrutiny - was a kind of mesostructure, lying between the structural context-inthe-large and the particular negotiations or interactions being undertaken. So, if the hospital staff and patients interacted regularly about, say, some hospital procedure, those interactions not only determined how staffs and patients acted toward each other but could also affect the sets of institutional rules and organizational relationships governing such collectivities. Or, in Maines' own words, "The negotiated order perspective attempts to show, on the one hand, how negotiation contributes to the constitution of social orders and, on the other, how social orders give form to interaction processes, including negotiation" (1982: 275). Here, micro and macro levels of social organization - for example, interactional analysis and structural analysis - are related to each other, he asserted (ibid.), dialectically, and hence they could be collapsed into each other in the meso-region of life processes. By the end of the essay, Maines (1982: 278) invoked another construct - interpenetration - as that which described "structure and process." Shortly thereafter, in a second stage of thought on the relationships of structure and process, Maines more or less abandoned mesostructure, that is, threw away the crutch. Throwing away that crutch was not - still is not, really easy, but through the mid- and late-1980s Maines tried to walk without the help of the idea of mesostructure, without a mediating structural construct. An essay on the negotiated order approach to the analysis of social organizations that he published with Joy Charlton (1985) eliminated the

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construct of mesostructure and more directed attacked the idea of organizational structure itself. That attack was launched after examining four case studies of negotiated orders - of the agricultural sciences, school systems, the American liquor industry, and debate over the Age Discrimination Act. What Maines and Charlton did was replace the idea of mesostructure with an enlarged theory of negotiation process. After reviewing three variables whose importance were illustrated in the case studies, they suggested that all such negotiations were dependent upon: (1) degree of consensus, (2) degree of exchange, and (3) use of communication strategies. Such an analysis led Maines and Charlton to assert that "The issue [of process] goes beyond that of simply demonstrating that negotiations take place under conditions of constraint [i.e. within structures]; rather, in the broadest sense, it is one of the extent to which social structures are negotiated social structures" (1985: 298). That is, there are not structures qua structures - that is, qua constraint - if all dimensions of relationships are up for negotiation. A second essay from the 1980s in which Maines attacked the idea of structure was, paradoxically, one (Maines, 1988) in which he was defending Herbert Blumer as a theorist of macrostructures. In that essay, Maines was out to demonstrate that Blumer was not only a micro-man but also a theorist with a developed theory of macrosociology. The macrosociological theory that he attributed to Blumer, interestingly, was one of relations. In discussing race relations, Blumer differentiated among seven forms of societal-level relations between people: formal-economic, status, preferential, ideological, attitudinal, orderly/disorderly, and manipulative or power relations (cited in Maines, 1988: 48). Such sets of relations, Blumer argued, affected definitively the impact of industrialization on race relations and are crucial to the operation of interinstitutional arrangements (pp. 49-53). Now, of course, what is interesting about such an emphasis on multifaceted relationships is that they are "fluid and unstructured" (p. 52), always subject to "political struggle and opportunities" (p. 53). Such relationships, as a matter of fact, exist "in and through communication processes," so that "sociology as a science must discover causal processes - the actual mechanisms, functioning relations, and meanings that generate, sustain, and change social forms and collective life" (p. 55). And thus, Maines' venture into the heart of negotiated order thinking drove him toward a monist theory of sociality, wherein communication mechanisms - the mechanisms of meaning making, unmaking, and remaking - are, in a sense, all that is holding human beings together in collectivities. And thus Maines was set up for his work in the 1990s--the study of the actual texts of social negotiation. I examined three pieces of his work that

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focused on narrativized relationships between social groups. The first was a study of competing narratives of land use and community development in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Maines, 1992). The second, a short response paper to a series of studies of welfare reform (Maines, 1993: 177) that analyzed cultural narratives because "the evaluation of any policy program for social change is inherently a moral assessment" and because such assessments are "made by invoking culturally sacred symbols" that "frequently take the form of cultural narratives?' The third paper was published under the title "Information Pools and Racialized Narrative Structures" (Maines, 1999). I will concentrate on that paper because it contains systematic reports of audience responses to a concrete narrative. The study is simple. African American and non-African American students were presented with a story about Church's Chicken. It was asserted that the fast-food chain was owned by the Klan and that it put special chemicals in the chicken that could sterilize black males and harm the fetuses of black female customers, leading to "domestic genocide of African Americans" (p. 379). The students were then asked a series of questions about whether they'd heard the story before, from whom, whether it was believable, with whom they'd discussed it, and how likely they thought it was that such conspiracies actually existed in the U. S. The results indicated that significantly more African Americans than non-black students had heard the story, believed it, found it plausible, had heard it more often from friends and family than institutional sources, had discussed it with other African Americans, and believed generally that such conspiracies were possible in this country. From his data, Maines sought to correct previous work in rhetorical studies on the believability and plausibility of narrative structures (esp. Fisher, 1984) and in sociology on sources of narrative content (esp. Fine, 1992). The persistence of such stories as the one about Church's Chicken Maines tied to embedded social relations - here, black-white relations of oppression - and not just to what Fisher calls narrative fidelity and probability. Furthermore, those embedded social relations, even more than what Fine identified as performance competency, account for believability. In Maines' theory (1999: 324), "Racialized narrative structures, I propose, are part of the cultural content that constitutes the gulfs of mutual suspicion and claims of mutual irrationality between black and white people in America." In other words, there exists a kind of symbolic isomorphism between narrative structure and social structure both understood, however, more as mutual constructions than as pre-existing constraints. The bases for both sorts of structures were thought about as information pools that are available within particular zones of a society.

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In this theory, while the idea of "structure" is articulated multiple times, in fact it is not a structural theory at all. The structure per se of the Church's Chicken story in no way accounts for its believability in the black community. Nor, for that matter, are structural characteristics of that community - except its perception of its oppression at the hands of white community members important to understanding how narratives do their cultural work. Malnes did not take the plot apart, nor did he do much with the structural mechanisms operative in the black community and responsible for giving the fast-food chicken story its credence. Rather, if anything - though Maines does not theorize this activity - it is in the regular performance of that story, presumably by authoritative members of one's primary groups, that provides it with plausibility, believability, and hence social power. Such performances are usefully thought of as communication acts, combining credible speakers with culturally relevant content and traditional communication forms, that function to manufacture social relations.

MAINES' WORK AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES That last point brings me to thoughts about my own field and Maines' utility in theorizing sociological contexts within which to understand human communication processes. As I noted earlier, it has been a goal, in many ways, of both sociological and communication studies to rid ourselves of dualistic thinking. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, of course, but dualisms often divide study areas in halves or thirds or quartiles, making it impossible for any of us to understand the social world in a kind of holistic way. More specifically, the dialectic often evoked when talking about "structure" and "process" makes it most difficult for sociologists to comprehend a holistic view of sociality and for communication theorists to understand human interaction in the same way. In my own field, as soon as human interaction was processually understood as an exchange flowing through time but structurally described as turn-taking between people often inhabiting or enacting social roles, then interaction came to be theorized dualistically. That dualistic conception of interaction was wonderfully machine-like and capable of producing cognitive theories of human interaction, but could not account for people's phenomenological experience of the act of talking with others in a serious, developmentally significant way. Some of the same thing, at bottom, is still happening in Maines' work. The move from mesostructural analysis to a negotiated order theory and on to a

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narrative understanding of cultural construction, maintenance, and repair is a journey from a place where structure is a separable feature of social living to a place where it is continually built anew every time two or more people attempt to communicatively coordinate their thoughts and actions. Yet, so far, Marines has not yet been able - or willing - to take the idea of "continually built anew" seriously. There are, even in his most recent research as I read it, residual theories of social structure that he cannot slough off. Until he does, he'll never be working in the most astrnctural version of negotiated order theory nor will he follow the most nuanced of contemporary narrative theorists, who view the social world as remanufactured in each telling of central cultural stories. Something approaching Giddens' hope that a theory of structuration not only makes the world comprehendible but also legitimizes the very structures in place for so consmlcting the world should be held out. That is: structure and even structuralism, per se, are not the problems. Undoubtedly the human being cannot deal with the uninterrupted flow of experience in toto. The perceptual-phenomenological world can be contemplated only with the help of beginnings, middles, and endings, with active agents who are intentioned and who are empowered to act, with symbolic constructions that make sensible the places within which human beings dwell and experience their lives. We all need ideas of structure within which to capture salient and pressing aspects of existence. But those structures need not be, simply, pre-existing, pre-ordained, and pre-legitimated. We are born into them - into family, local networks, institutionally marked environments. True enough. Yet, our communicative interactions with others bring those environments to life, making such environments themselves strategic weapons with which to make and remake our relations with others. Once the structures themselves are not simply contexts but in fact are tools for relating - strategic or rhetorical tools in the sense that I can use them as I would any other symbol to relate to the Others in my world - then dualistic conceptions of living can possibly be turned into monist theories of sociality. I hope that David Maines will continue his journey toward that goal.

Bruce E. Gronbeck is the A. Craig Baird Distinguished Professor of Public Address in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. This chapter was presented to a session honoring David Maines and assembled by Shing-Ling Chen of the University of Northern Iowa as one of SSSI's contributions to the National Communication Association Convention, Chicago, November 1999.

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REFERENCES Fine, G. A. (1992). Manufacturing tales. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case for public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51, 1-22. Gronbeck, B. E. (1985). Symbolic interactionism and communication studies: Prolegomena to future research. In: D. R. Maines & C J. Couch (Eds), Communication and Social Structure (pp. 323-339). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Maines, D. R. (1979). Mesostructure and social process. Contemporary Sociology, 8, 524-527. Maines, D. R. (1982). In search of mesostructure: Studies in the negotiated order. Urban Life, 11(3), 267-279. Maines, D. R. (1988). Myth, text, and interactionist complicity in the neglect of Blumer's macrosociology. Symbolic Interaction, 11(1), 43-57. Maines, D. R. (1993). Cultural narratives and economic inconsistencies in welfare reform. Applied Behavioral Science Review, 1(2), 173-178. Maines, D. R. (1999). Information pools and racialized narrative structures. The Sociological Quarterly, 40(2), 317-326. Maines, D. R., & Bridger, J. C. (1992). Narratives, community, and land use decisions. The Social Science Journal, 29(4), 363-380. Maines, D. R., & Charlton, J. C. (1985). The negotiated order approach to the analysis of social organization. Foundations of Interpretive Sociology: Original Essays in Symbolic Interaction. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, SuppL 1 (pp. 271-308). N.p.: JAI Press. Swingewood, A. (1984). A short history of sociological thought. New York: Macmillan. Szacki, J. (1979). History of sociological thought. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

THE MAINES-STREAM: A PRAGMATIST PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND POLICY PRODUCTION Peter M. Hall INTRODUCTION I have been charged with the responsibility of discussing the contributions of David Maines in social organization and policy studies. While certainly not an easy assignment, it has been a pleasurable one. It afforded me the opportunity to reread an entire body of work, rather than just piece by piece as in the past. Seeing it collectively allowed me to see how the works fit together, how they are related and connected, and how they move in new directions and raise new questions. Thus it became an "educational moment", a learning experience because the scholarly corpus evoked reminders, suggestions, challenges, questions, and implications. One consequence of the reading is that one can not - or, at least, I can not - simply discuss social organization and policy because they require a context, which Maines has provided, and because the texts implicate and connect to other important and relevant concepts and subjects. For over 20 years, David Maines has been enunciating and explicating a pragmatist/interactionist perspective to frame discussions of numerous topics and concepts. As part of that effort he has represented the positions of Herbert Blumer, Anselm Strauss, and Carl Couch. Maines has been the foremost

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exponent of interactionism's attention to social organization. He has synthesized and critiqued the negotiated order scholarship. Using his constructed concept of mesostructure, Maines has extended organizational analysis into larger social orders with broad implications. Concepts of temporality and communication emerge as central to social organization and Maines has written on them as well. Another important dimension of his work has been exploring the implications of narrative for the perspective, theory, and research. Finally, and more recently, David Maines has addressed policy production and practice,

applied interactionism, and critical pragmatism. It is also important to observe that Maines' contributions have occurred in many ways, multiple roles, and through diverse social relationships. Clearly he has been an archivist, historian, and (re)interpreter of the tradition. As a synthesizer/articulator he has focused attention and discussion on the perspective and particular central topics. He has been a forceful advocate, debater, and critic in arguments about what the theoretical orientation stands for and can accomplish. David Maines has also been a theorist and a researcher in formulating concepts, emphasizing implications, and demonstrating utility and consequences. But it also should be noted that he has made impressive contributions as an editor of Symbolic Interaction, special issues of other journals, a series with a publisher, and a number of important books. His introductions as editor, I would suggest, contain some of his most seminal ideas. Finally, while I will only credit David Maines here, it should be emphasized that he and we have thrived on his collaborations with students, colleagues, and many of our significant elders, too many who are no longer physically present. This has, no doubt, helped Maines carry on the conversation but it has also demonstrated his commitment to the idea that knowledge and scholarship are dialogical processes and not merely individual accomplishments. In what follows, I want to emphasize some of Maines' foci and their contributions. This is not, by any means, an exhaustive, extensive, or definitive treatment but rather a brief excursion through the scholarship. The full examination awaits another writer and another day. I also want to suggest some directions and developments that flow from his writings as well as some of my ideas that are generated by his and are compatible. Thus I will present his view on pragmatism; negotiated order, mesostructure and social organization; temporality and narrative; and policy, applied :interactionism, and critical pragmatism. Using Maines as a springboard, I want to discuss issues around "stratification", institutions, and the implications of work in biology, physics, and cosmology for interactionism.

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PRAGMATISM Over the last 25 years, Pragmatism, that distinctively American philosophy, has once again become a major presence in our intellectual, sociopolitical, and academic life. Concurrent with that renascence, interactionists in general and Anselm Strauss and David Maines in particular have more explicitly grounded our work within that tradition. That has not only reemphasized the foundations of interactionism but also made visible its connections to others' efforts (e.g. Cornel West, Richard Rorty, Kenneth Gergen). This direction has placed an emphasis on action, process, consciousness, temporality, antidualistic dialectics, context, contingency, and complexity. I would argue that this grounding has had several significant consequences broadening sources and vision, reinterpreting some of the past, and transforming our starting point. If you reread Maines' (1977) Annual Review of Sociology article on symbolic interactionism and social organization you will encounter primary references to Mead and Blumer. If you examine Maines and Charlton (1985) those references include Park and Hughes. A reading of Maines and McCallion (in press) finds references to Dewey, Addams, Thomas, and Wirth. Indeed, the pragmatist consciousness facilitates a stronger link of interactionism to Chicago sociology and much broader attention beyond social psychology. Similarly one might argue this awareness prompts broader attention to Herbert Blumer's whole corpus than merely pp. 1-60 of Symbolic Interactionism (1969). The work Strauss began with Mirrors and Masks (1959) has developed a longer trajectory and a wider perspective. Another consequence of the link to pragmatism is the foundational focus on action in contrast to communication. Maines shows some ambiguity or tension on this. For example in the 1977 Annual Review article he begins with references to communication growing out of symbolic interactionism. More recently with specific reference to pragmatism he initiates assumptions sometimes with action and sometimes with communication. Anselm Strauss (1994) makes the significance of the starting point explicit and grounds it in the work of John Dewey and G. H. Mead. He argues in the context of action and the phases of act that the sequencing assumes ongoing action that becomes blocked and is followed by deliberation about further action. For Strauss, and I concur, while communication is a form of action, too much emphasis on symbolization and interpretation may lead to decontextualization and unproductive arguments about subjectivism and atomism. Strauss' perspective directs our attention to what people are doing together and from there to social organization. -

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This orientation to a "theory of action" and thought, I believe, is reinforced by Mead's often ignored discussion of the role of the hand in the manipulatory phase of the act and its consequence for mind, perception, language, and the self (Miller 1973). Of course there is a danger of mind-body dualistic thinking that we must transcend by maintaining a dialectical processual stance. However, Ian Tattersall (2000) recently discussed the nonlinear evolution of hominids and their behavioral interaction with the environment, first through the construction of tools and later with the emergence of language. Both facilitated the triumph of the Homo sapiens over the Neanderthals. Communication is a mediating process that supports social actions and interaction. As Strauss observes, attention to meaning is always underpinned by the theory of action. It is more pragmatic to view action and social construction in that context, in both senses of the meaning of pragmatic.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION - NEGOTIATED ORDER, SOCIAL ORDER, AND MESOSTRUCTURE David Maines has focussed interactionist attention on social organization and provided direction to the scholarship by creating and promoting conceptual formulations. He was the first to articulate and argue interactionism's capability to address matters of social structure in the mainstream sociological media (1977). He also contributed an updating of the negotiated order literature, culling out some critical problems and implications (1985 with Charlton). Finally he proffered the transcendent concept of mesostructure as a powerful route to mapping societal social organization and social orders (1982). Malnes (1982) observed that this movement occurred within two phases. In the earlier manifestation which he labeled "creating an imagery", Strauss, Maines, and others focussed on professions and hospitals, on the negotiated order of those institutions, and on a general view of social organization. The second phase, "constructing a paradigm", was characterized by formulation or inclusion of concepts connected to the negotiated order, being more explicit about attention to larger social orders, and finally to constituting mesostructure as an alternative to the macro-micro dichotomy. Each of Malnes' pieces established a grounding in the tradition, emphasized key constructive ideas, and made some points which had critical implications for directing future scholarship. In the 1977 essay Malnes began his public defense of Blumer's work, distinguished interactionism from ethnomethodology, and articulated a linkage to cybernetics and open systems theory (I want

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to return to the latter at the end of this article). Moreover he drew attention to Mead's perspective on the past and its multiple implications for interaction and negotiation. He encouraged interactionists to be more attentive to the structure of constraint and not to overemphasize open-ended interaction. As a consequence of seeing Strauss' Negotiations (1978) before publication, Maines began formulating a view of systematically linked intercontextual relationships, which would eventually become a conditional matrix to Strauss. Finally he connected the ideas of structural process to compatible European views of Bottomore and Gurvitch of "social structure as permanent process". In the 1985 article with Charlton, a dialectical perspective emphatically grounded the analysis of the negotiation order literature. They noted, drawing on Mead, relationships between order and change, freedom and constraint, individual and society, structure and process, and cooperation and conflict. In addition, they encouraged an outward looking expansion to thinking systematically about social orders rather than the dynamics of negotiation episodes. The authors also explained how negotiated order expressed the simultaneity of order and change through dialectical, temporal, and reflexive processes. The dynamic ordering could be envisioned as the interpenetration of structuring mechanisms and human reflection and resistance. The authors led us in new directions by explicitly invoking mesostructure and drawing out major analytical issues for further attention - the nature of negotiation, historical processes and contexts, and the limits and consequences of negotiation. While the first has drawn limited attention, the latter two - as represented by sedimentation, power, and conditional matrices - have been utilized to much advantage. The introduction t o t h e special issue of Urban Life (1982) "In Search of Mesostructure" is the occasion for Maines to more fully develop the concept of mesostructure that he used in other places - but only with the barest statements (1979, 1985). In language that has become now almost talmudic for me, Maines saw mesostructure as the realm of the interpenetration of structure and process, of structural arrangements that exist in and through processes that render them operative, of human conduct through which social structures are processed and social processes become structured. He commented again on the inherent dialectical and temporal quality of mesostructure and the immersion of human beings in webs of significance of their own making. Maines also began to draw the following important elements - the relationship of consequences and conditions, the dual sense of contextualization, and the significance of power and resources. He argued that meso is indeed somewhere between macro and micro but is intended as a realistic and productive replacement. Finally he

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calls attention to three dimensions of mesostructure - segmentation, mediating processes, and temporal orders. Segmentation in this context was meant to refer to social worlds that develop within social orders and that organize lines of communication and define the meanings (cultures) in which structures/orders are enacted. While this clearly makes sense in terms of differentiation within say, art worlds, and in explaining different perspectives between administrators and teachers and school board members, the idea of segmentation also allows us to think about different social orders or institutions which are similarly characterized as compartmentalized social spaces (but also open). This provides a link to an underdeveloped area by interactionists - namely institutional orders, which I return to later. Maines' second dimension, mediating processes, clearly has links to segmentation and social worlds. Certainly social reality, language, knowledge and more broadly, culture provide filters, lenses that shape how context, ends, action, actors, practices, and artifacts are given meaning and how those vary by time, place, order, interests, and biography. Herein are the webs of significance spun by social actors and sustained by their networks that cohere and sanction. Yet these too exist in time and in process, in the dialectic between order and change. Thus there is the necessity as Maines was implying of exploring relationships between culture and structure as much as with structure and process. Mesostructures are always temporal orders to Maines. Human action occurs within time and through time. Therefore time must be problemafized and conceptualized as process and in the relationships between present, past, and future. In addition, that also means past actions have consequences and may condition the present. It also signifies that within social orders, humans may construct different temporalities that express different historical perspectives, different rhythms and tempos of social life, and different consciousness of continuity and discontinuity. One aspect of this on which Maines comments suggests that '°structure" is not an omnipresence or deterministic but rather has conditional relevance, which varies by time. Thus, for example, when we attend to intersection of social orders of inequality, class, gender, and race, one ordering may be seen as more or less relevant in the specific situational or institutional context. (more on this later) David Maines provided a major piece of bridging, at least for me, between the works on social worlds, negotiated orders, civilizations, and arenas with the concept of mesostructure. It provided an umbrella over which to organize those studies, the emergent central concepts, and the development of mesodomain analysis as the intersection of action, historical, and structural contexts. -

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TEMPORALITY AND NARRATIVE As is evident from what has already been said, David Maines sees temporality as a central aspect of his perspective and of interactionism in general. He marks its presence in the pragmatist foundation and makes it a major dimension of mesostructures and negotiated orders. In addition, with Mike Katovich and Noreen Sugrue (1983), he articulated and elaborated G. H. Mead's theory of the past for its sociological (and interactionist) relevance. In examining Meadian temporality, the authors underscored the relationship between continuity and discontinuity through successive action and emergent novelty. In addition, they located the centrality of presents for action and its relationship to pasts and futures. Most importantly, they develop multiple dimensions of past(s) and their complex interrelationships: (1) symbolically reconstructed, (2) social structural, (3) implied objective and (4) mythical. The first represents what actors may come to regard as the selected relevant past and how they define it depending on the nature of the particular present. The second can be thought of as sequences of contexts and activities in process that constitutes conditions for shaping but not determining behavior. The third refers to "what must have been", the existence of previous events necessary for the existence of the present-even if actors do not have records or remember them. And finally, there are those fictitious creations that are useful resources for projecting futures and facilitating presents. There are not only dialectical relationships between the present(s) and past(s) and futures; there are also dialectical relationships between the multiple pasts. In this manner, we can entertain the interactions of action, culture, history, and structure. Actors can make (new) history by their actions in present contexts that respond to their present conditions and historical pasts on the basis of their perceptions, beliefs, values, and intention for the future. The study of temporal orders and mesostructures requires a distinctive methodology. Such an approach emphasizes action, process, events, contexts, contingencies, time, and space. It needs a logic that expands our ethnographic vision beyond the "here and now" and provides for historical and structural dimensions while remaining dynamic and agentic. David Maines (1993a) has articulated that methodology through his arguments for a genuine narrative sociology. While there is much more to his argument and multiple dimensions to his narrative turn, I want to focus here on what he laid out as basic elements because they fit the lines of scholarship I am discussing (and advocating). Maines stated that the three basics of a narrative approach are the following:

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(1) relevant events are selected and described; (2) the events are transformed into a story through emplotment, contextualization, and characterization; and (3) the events are arranged in a temporal ordering that answers questions of how and why and also provides depiction of tempo, duration, and pace. While Maines was making a strong case for the interpretive nature of science, social science, and sociology, we should not conclude that he meant all is merely fictional, ungrounded, or only in the mind of the storyteller. Rather it is clear that in the pragmatic conception of truth such efforts are interactive, collective, and grounded. Moreover the approach has widespread utilization and acceptance beyond those associated with symbolic interactionism. Kevin Gotham and William Staples (1996) demonstrated vividly and persuasively how the "new" historical sociology, particularly in studies of capital-state relations and urban sociology, utilizes the narrative turn. The culmination of their effort shows how scholars combine theoretical ideas and empirical research to understand sociohistorical reality. That reality is presented as historically contingent and context-dependent but also includes multi-level structural analysis. It shows processual unfolding in ways that avoid limitations of simple-minded causality by attending to dense contextuality, the interconnections of agency and structure, and the temporality of historical events. The authors support an approach that explore sequences of events, background conditions, causes and effects, individual action and collective mobilization, practical deliberations, complications, consequences and resulting actions. In fact, the authors are responding directly to Maines in showing how historical sociology is genuinely narrative and profoundly sociological at the same time. I suspect the narrative method to some is associated with actor's voices, biographies, or life histories; witness the article by Arthur Frank (1993) that followed Maines' - on the "illness experience as narrative". However as Maines observed narratives exist at various levels ranging from the personal to the institutional or cultural. Narratives - as seen by Gotham and Staples - also need not be first person or be simply local, developed in one site, or at one time. The narrator can be the observer following actions across space and time. Gotham and Staples include mesodomaln analysis as one of the array of those using historical narrative. They would also see, I believe, Anselm Strauss' ideas about conditional matrix and processual ordering where there are sequences of conditions - actions - consequences sequences across space and time as expressing a narrative mode. This synergy represents an explicit linkage to historical understanding, larger social formations, and the interpenetration of agency and contexts across space and time. Such work I would characterize as

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both interpretive and realist. It combines observation of concrete actions, presentation of real actors' voices, historical records, and analyst interpretations of intentions, conditions, and consequences. The Gotham and Staples argument extending Maines' narrative turn has some important implications. First, it obviously takes us into the historical domain, reinforcing that orientation. In addition, at one point it combines mesodomain analysis and study of the development of the welfare state in the same paragraph. There is a compatibility and synergy between mesostructures and historical institutionalism (Benson & Martindill, 1998). Those authors argue that greater contextualization is offered by the historical institutionalists while greater evidence of agency, action, and contingency is offered by mesodomain analysts. Together, Benson and Martindill say, those perspectives mount a stronger argument for the interpenetration of agency and context across space and time. David Maines' combination of a mesostructural theoretical perspective and a narrative methodology provide a strong basis to examine social enterprises, institutions, and orders dynamically across space and time. In the next section I discuss his utilization of this framework to study the policy process in the Catholic Church.

THE POLICY PROCESS One of the consequences of David Maines career mobility has been that his work has been affected by place - by local contextual problems, issues, and responsibilities and as well by the inhabitants of those places. Thus in Detroit, Michigan Maines became interested in the Catholic Church and worked with those who have some knowledge and similar interests in that topic. There Maines focussed his energies on exploring dimensions of the policy process within the Catholic Church as it implements aspects of Vatican II changes. Drawing upon the recent interactionist works on policy and emphasizing the connections to pragmatist orientations and Blumer's perspective on social organization, Maines together with Michael McCallion (and others) (1996) explored the implementation of church policies in the Detroit diocese and in local parishes. While some of the work is still in process, Maines and colleagues have added a valuable new context for the analysis of policy processes, the Catholic Church. The results to date have been useful. They reinforced the view of policy as transformational processes as "it" moves from site to site. They demonstrated clearly that policy implementation is not an act but an interpretive process and therefore those policy implementers axe also policy makers. The research illustrated how social change generates contested situations and how goals, values, and interests that are broad, general, and

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abstract must and do become transformed to be defined and practical as specific, concrete, and local. Thus, for example, in the working out of a ritual and new policy orientation, parishioners reject the hierarchical/professional/ religious experts and opt for a practical, interpreted, and traditional method. There are, as a result, of this scholarship some valuable new additions and emphases. Malnes and colleagues, while having noted the vertical path of policy as it moves down the church hierarchy, also observed a horizontal dimension or what they term the breadth of perspective - that is, the different views of participants located at different levels and places - those who initiated Vatican II and those who teach it to students have more global and strict interpretations of the text and its meanings while looser, more ambiguous and practical perspectives occur in diocese and parish locations. As the policy process played out, these different perspectives were a major instigator of conflicts, negotiation, adaptations, and transformations of intentions. The authors also focus on the nature of the social change - not only is it intended but it is mandated change. Thus as in some (and perhaps most) public policy cases, authorities at the top have decided on some goals that are being "imposed" on subordinates to implement. This is distinct, they noted from other intended changes that are bottom-up and arise from the grass-roots. More to the point, they focused upon the contradictions and oxymoronic character of the Vatican II charge - namely that it hierarchically and bureaucratically demanded democratic participation - or what Maines and McCallion label "obligatory local empowerment". This as they observed has some ironic consequences. But what they observe is an all-too-common element - namely that intended change or policy intentions often contain internal contradictions or engage opposing tensions in contexts. Analysts, taking note from this work, should always be alert to the presence of these conditions. This topic and setting provide multiple and rich opportunities to explore the policy process which Maines and colleagues used to full advantage. In one paper (1998) they compare the implementation of Vatican in two content areas for comparison focusing on a number of significant dimensions -.scope of goals, stakes, networks, visibility, concern, agents and implementation problems. While not unexpected the results showed that problematic implementation was associated with high concern, high visibility, and diffuse, ambiguous goals. The results, however, provide indications about the conditions for nonproblematic implementation. In addition, a beginning analysis of organizational change in the archdiocese (McCallion & Maines, 1999) in response to Vatican II and local conditions which examines different sites - suburban, inner ring, center city - showed that different contexts exist for handling the policy intent - affirmation, caution, disaffirmation leading to

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different behaviors. While we await the full elaboration of this work, it is clear that it adds important comparisons, policy characterizations, and contextual elaborations. APPLIED

INTERACTIONISM PRAGMATISM

AND CRITICAL

David Maines (1997) has more recently turned his attention to examining and advocating the use of interactionist insights and scholarship to "improve the situations of actual people in the world of practical affairs". This is not an unusual step either from studying policy-mandated change or for those schooled in the history of pragmatism and interactionism. Certainly G. H. Mead linked thought, problem-solving, and science as processes to social reform. Among Mead and John Dewey (the intellectual pragmatists), those called applied pragmatists - Jane Addams and others connected with Hull House, those connected with the Chicago School - Small, Park, Thomas, Wirth, there was the belief that social science could further the development of a healthy society. Maines makes this argument and draws on these sources. In addition, Maines (with McCallion in press) drawing on more recent interactionists (e.g. Harvey Farberman 1991) locates a more contemporary notion of critical pragmatism - one that links action process to the existing and changing political economy - noting that our local situations are embedded in this larger context and that local actors may not have the awareness of the connections. One goal of an intervention would then include creating this awareness, what I call mesodomain work, and also engaging in "purposive political action" to alter the arrangements for purposes of improving community life, an ordering process of intended change. Saul Alinsky, the famous community organizer and student of Robert Park, serves as the exemplar here. The focus of Maines and McCaltion's attention is to an effort to reduce the inequality between sectors of the Detroit metropolitan area through the involvement of a regional church - based coalition. (The formula is one developed in the Minneapolis area). Stan Saxton's (1993) model of the citizen-scholar provides the specific applied interactionist role the authors have in mind. This is not theorizing or studying from a distance or being a "hired gun" to evaluate implementation of a program. What Saxton wrote of, so compellingly, drawing on pragmatist thinkers among others, was much more closely connected to the level of the grassroots community and, indeed, in conjunction with them, participatory action research. What Saxton articulated so eloquently was the commitment of the philosoph3; and its practitioners to democratic processes, to values of

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justice, fairness, cooperation, and opportunity. Saxton would strongly support Maines and McCallion's argument that critical pragmatism "merges values, research competence, education, and practical politics in pursuit of community enfranchisement and a healthier society". The return to pragmatist roots prompts the challenge to engage injustice, inequality, and antidemocratic conditions with our science, mind, soul and action.

CONCLUSION Over the past 25 years David Maines has been a catalyst for my own work. And in the same process he has utilized that work to further his own. In an effort to continue that interaction, I would like to suggest some directions for further work, some of which I am currently undertaking and some that I hope he and others will entertain. Maines (1993b) once wrote that sociology was catching up to symbolic interaction. Some of that is clear if you examine the scholarship cited in Gotham and Staples (1996) and Benson and Martindill (1998). I also believe the net is wider because of parallel developments. There are some important developments and approaches in the natural sciences which are quite congruent with some interactionist and sociological orientations. Ernst Mayr, an important evolutionary biologist, recently presented his arguments about biology as a science (1997). He explicitly challenged the positivist position by arguing against a science that propagates essentialism, determinism, universalism, and reductionism. Rather Mayr believes that the science of biology (and others as well) requires an approach that accepts emergence, probablism, chance, population thinking, pluralism (multiple explanations), and historical narratives. He believes biological forms and levels are qualitatively different than their chemical components; that interactions, contingencies, and contexts create novelty as well as probable consequences; that all units of a population are unique and vary; that there are always, at least, two important necessary explanations - bow the object of study came to be over time and what is occurring now. Finally because of these factors, the mode of telling and reporting requires a historical accounting of interactions across time and space. In addition, congruent perspectives can be found in cosmology, astrophysics, and physics being integrated and presented by what is called complexity theory (Smolin, 1997; Kauffman, 1995). Fritjof Capra (1996) offers a readable and comprehensible synthesis of this perspective. Its characteristics of living systems include the following: complex organization, open boundaries, nonlinearity, nonequilibra, irreversibility, self-organizing, relationality, network

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structures, processuality, dynamics, feedback loops, amplification, dissipative structures (order and disorder), possiblism, and patterns. What this all symbolizes, from my perspective, is a view of society as mesostructures or social orders across space and time. It encompasses the contingencies, complexity, and consequences of action and interaction but grounded in conditional contexts. It explicitly conceptualizes time and space and the concurrent presence of both order and disorder and therefore change, process, and possibilities. It does not assume integration, totality, or closed systems. It also does not seek mechanical or simple causation but probablistic patterns of intersecting influences and/or possible innovations. Natural and physical scientists have made use of this perspective. Some sociologists of note (Wallerstein, 1997; Collins, 1998) have commented on its applicability to our endeavor. Some sociologists have explicitly applied it in their theorizing and research (Eve et al., 1997). However those applications have been advanced mathematical or quantitative formulations. One scholar among them commented on the absence of utilization by interactionists (Smith, 1997). David Maines once contemplated chaos theo12¢, a compatible variant of complexity, and found it wanting (personal communication). Perhaps he will see some new openings or applications from this recent elaboration. He certainly is one amongst us with that kind of vision. With this view of science and living systems, I want to suggest areas where we might utilize this perspective and which attend to some of David Maines' suggestions. In his introduction to the special issue on "Interactionism and Practice" (ABSR, 1997), Maines commented that all of the articles implicated but did not fully discuss stratification. He posed some specific questions that flowed from those implications. Pursuant to ideas expressed elsewhere by him about studying larger social orders, I want to take on a bigger agenda and suggest that we think about exploring the interrelated and intertwined social orders of class, gender, and race/ethnicity. While interactionists have for some time addressed race and ethnicity (e.g. Blumer, Shibutani, and more recently gender, power, and inequality (Musolf, 1992), this larger project remains to be analyzed from an interactionist stance. For some time scholars have made arguments that race is socially constructed and socially produced. Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1994) have referred to these processes as racial formation. Feminists have documented the social construction of gender and the gendering of social institutions and social practices (Acker, 1992). More recently, the concept of class has been analyzed as historically contingent and socially produced (J. Hall, 1997). Moreover, there is a general consensus that these forms and orders are not separate but interrelated, interpenetrating, interdependent and mutually

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constituting (Leruer, 1997). However still unresolved is the way(s) those forms of social inequality complexly weave together. Some argue for a unitary system or a structural matrix of domination (Sacks, 1989; Anderson & Collins, 1995). Cameron McCarthy (1990), in a manner congruent with complexity and mesostructnres, offers what he calls a "non-synchronous approach" - that is that while the three are related, the extent, form, and effect are problematic, contingent, contextual, and historically variable. Reflecting concerns about connections between agency and structure, micro and macro influences, and the play of history, the social construction/production of these relationships exhibits tensions, nuances, and contradictions. While contexts are places of unequally distributed resources and differentially advantageous "rules of the game", they are also places where there are different degrees of consciousness, interests, and ends where struggle, negotiation, and change may occur. In their relations among each other and in their conscious presence or relevance, forms of inequality may flow in and out of situations and in support of or opposition among each other. In any concrete setting then, some form may not be situated at the same time and place in the same degree. The presence, meaning, and consequence of class, gender, and race are not merely objective, determining, and obvious. They require systematic empirical attention through a perspective that is historical, processual, conditional, and action-oriented. In a brief addition, I want to encourage another area for us to address, namely the concept of institutions. David Maines has taken the policy process into the domain of organized religion. He has provided a comparison to my studies of education. The American institution of education, by the way, has a unique form in comparison to other countries which clearly affects its organization, culture, practices, and purposes. Fran Pestello and Patricia Voydanoff (1991) utilized mesodomain analysis for an insightful examination of the family institution in contemporary American society. Anselm Strauss' (1993) discussion of social worlds and arenas also lays out one interactionist mode of addressing institutions. In addition, the historical institutionalists have spelled out the mediating effect of the political institution (Steinmo et al., 1992). Roger Friedland and Robert Afford (1991) have offered a view of American institutions that focuses on the different institutional logics and their potentially contradictory consequences. If we start with Everett Hughes' idea of institutions as going concerns across space and time and begin a more systematic comparative examination of institutions empirically and conceptually, I believe we can reintroduce institutional analysis in a way that clarifies the significance of a comparative, historical, contingent, conditional, processual, and action-oriented perspective.

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I c o m e to the end o f a piece that perhaps got away from me. The breadth and depth o f D a v i d M a i n e s ' w o r k has had that effect on me. As I said at the beginning, it provokes, stimulates, suggests, encourages, and challenges. However, I clearly allowed the vision to wander because, in keeping with the watery metaphor, every time I stepped into the stream, it was a different place. David Maines is always down deep the strong and continuing undercurrent o f tradition, o f pragmatism, Chicago school, and Interactionism. At the same time, his energetic flow spills over on the banks, renews dried up creeks, and starts new rapids and branches that refresh, expand, and extend the perspective. A n d in the end, as I suggested, the flow enters a large sea o f distinctive character, clarity, and currents. It has been a pleasure to float this waterway knowing the steady hand and alert sight o f D a v i d Maines was at the helm. It was fun. It was exciting even i f w e meandered, got a little wet, and disagreed about when to stop. The sun was there at the end to dry us off. A n d the colleagueship was there to offer sustenance and conversation. L e t ' s keep on doing this. A n d let's also be sure there are enough intrepid voyageurs and rafters when the veterans take to rocking chairs on porches gazing at the wind-swept waters.

REFERENCES Acker, J. (1992).Gendered Institutions: From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions". Contemporary Sociology 21, 565-568. Anderson, M., & Collins, R H. (Eds) (1995). Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Benson, K., & Martindill, M. (1998). Toward a Dialectical Approach to Policy Analysis: Linking Historical Institutionalism to the Meso-Domaln. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, San Francisco. Blumer, H. (1969), Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, NY: Prentice-Hall. Capra, E (1996). The Web of Life. New York: Anchor Books. Collins, S. H. (1998). On Book Exhibits and New Complexities: Reflections on Sociology as Science. Contemporary Sociology 27: 7-11. Eve, R., Horsfall, S., & Lee, M. (Eds) (1997). Chaos, Complexity, and Sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing. Farbennan, H. (1991). Symbolic Interaction and Postmodernism: Close Encounter of a Dubious Kind. Symbolic Interaction 14: 471-488. Frank, A. (1993). "The Rhetoric of Self-Change: Illness Experience as Narrative". The Sociological Quarterly 34: 39-52. Friedland, R., & Afford, R. (1991). Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions. In: W. Powell & R DiMaggio (Eds). The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, (pp. 232-263). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gotham, K., & Staples, W. (1996). Narrative Analysis and the New Historical Sociology. The Sociological Quarterly 37: 481-501. Hall, J., (Ed.) (1997). Reworking Class. Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press.

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Kauffman, S. (1995). At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press. Lemer, G. (1997). Why History Matters. New York: Oxford University Press. Maines, D. (1977). Social Organization and Social Structure in Symbolic Interactionist Thought. Annual Review of Sociology 3: 235-259. Maines, D. (1979). Mesostructure and Social Process. Contemporary Sociology 8: 524-527. Maines, D. (1982). In Search of Mesostructure Studies in the Negotiated Order. Urban Life 11: 267-279. Maines, D. (1993a). Narrative's Moment and Sociology's Phenomena. The Sociological Quarterly 34: 17-38. Maines, D. (1993b). Foreword. In: A. Strauss (Ed.), Continued Permutations of Action, (pp. XIIIXV). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Maines, D. (1997). Interactionism and Practice. Applied Behavioral Science Review 5: 1-8. Maines, D., & Charlton, J. (1985). The Negotiated Order Approach to the Study of Social Organization. In: H. Farberman & R. Perinbanayagam (Eds). Foundations oflnterpretive Sociology, (pp. 271-308). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Maines, D., & McCallion, M. (1998). Translating Policy into Practice: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic Ritual in the Vatican II Church. Paper presented at the Midwest Sociological Society annual meeting, Kansas City, MO. Maines, D., & McCallion, M. (In press). Urban Inequality and the Possibilities of Church-based Intervention. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, edited by N. Denzin, 23: Maines, D., Sugrue, N., & Katovich, M. (1983). The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead's Theory of the Past. American Sociological Review 48: 151-173. Mayr, E. (1997). This is Biology. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. McCallion, M., & Maines, D. (1999). Creating Vicariates and Reorganizing the Archdioceses of Detroit. Paper presented at the North Central Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Troy, ML McCallion, M., Maines, D. & Wolfel, S. (1996). Policy as Practice: The First Holy Communion as a Contested Situation. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 25: 300-326. McCarthy, C. (1990). Race and Curriculum. London: Falmer Press. Miller, D. (1973). George Herbert Mead. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Musolf, G. (1992). Structure, Institutions, Power, and Ideology. The Sociological Quarterly 33: 171-179. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial Formation in the United States. Second edition. New York: Routledge. Pestello, E, & Voydanoff, E (1991). In Search of Mesostructure in the Family: An Interactionist Approach to the Division of Labor. Symbolic Interaction 14: 105-128. Sacks, K. B. (1989). Toward a Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender. American Ethnologist 16: 534-550. Saxton, S. (1993). Sociologist as Citizen-Scholar. In: T. Vaughan, G. Sjoberg and L. Reynolds (Eds), A Critique of Contemporary American Sociology, (pp. 232-251). Dix Hills, NY: General Hall. Smith, T. (1997). Nonlinear Dynamics and the Micro-Macro Bridge. In: R. Eve, S. Horsfall and M. Lee (Eds), Chaos, Complexity, and Sociology, (pp. 52-63). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing. Smolin, L. (1997). The Life of the Cosmos. New York: Oxford University Press. Steinmo, S., Thelen, K., & Longstreth, E (Eds), (1992). Structuring Politics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Strauss, A. (1959). Mirrors and Masks. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

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Strauss, A. (1978). Negotiations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Strauss, A. (1993). Continual Permulations of Action. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Strauss, A. (1994). From Whence to Whither: Chicago-Style Interactionism. In: N. Denzin (Ed.), Studies in Symbolic Interactionism, Volume 16, (pp. 3-8). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Tattersall, I. (2000). We Were Not Alone. Scientific American 282: 56-62. Wallerstein, I. (1997). Social Science and the Quest for a Just Society. American Journal of Sociology 102: 1241-1257.

NORMATIVE TROUBLES: SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS AS CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS Gary Alan Fine

If groups are to maintain a stable social order - an order that supports social psychological needs for predictability - members must develop a robust system of expectations for behavior that allows for the actions of others within their perceptual fields to be treated as routine. These anticipations and their associated meanings constitute the group's culture. Despite the assumption of creativity in cultural production, the mundane, the ritual, and the foreseen makes a culture a collective property of individuals (Maines, 1984, 1989). The creation of shared understanding leads to the Hobbesian conundrum (the defining ur-question of sociology): how is social order possible in the face of individual interpretations and interests? This takes us to the question of norms and their vulnerabilities.

NORMATIVE TROUBLES The recognition that norms are subject to dispute poses a difficulty for the functionalist view of norms as unproblematic. If norms are given, they need not always be taken. Understanding the normative order must include both the regularities of normative action and the threats to these expectations. Norms are confronted in several ways: through vulnerability of their effectiveness, challenge to their legitimacy, and the novelty of replacement Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 33-39. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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norms. In the first case, norms are delegitimated because they no longer appear to "work"; the behavioral consensus surrounding them has broken down in a fundamental way; the community attempts to avoid "normative anarchy" - a state of Durkheimian "anomie." All norms do not break down at once, even in the most unsettled times (Swidler 1986) and so, despite the fraying, some level of social organization continues. A second case involves "normative challenge." Here social actors present an articulated challenge to behavioral expectations of a group, coupled with a narrative and/or ideological explanation of the legitimacy of the challenge and illegitimacy of the status quo. It is not only that a perception exists that the previous normative expectations are not functioning as actors believe that they should, but a counter-model is proposed. The third case concerns innovation, or normative novelties. Behavioral expectations change over time, as alternative models are presented. These innovations do not necessarily demand a critique of the previously accepted expectations, but provides new standards, often in response to new situations. Behavioral novelties may occur in the context of material, cultural, or technological innovation (e.g. the development of internet etiquette). Each of these views assumes that participants are stakeholders in the relevant community, that they believe that norms matter, and that they perceive themselves as being appropriate agents of change. These processes suggest that normative change is expected and involves a set of actors whose interests are linked to the resolution of normative troubles. Although structural constraints are important in shaping expectations, particular individuals are invested in the maintenance or alteration of behavioral expectancies. Access to cultural, rhetorical, and material resources bolster choices to defend or attack. Even if norms are often taken-for-granted, under certain circumstances they can become public issues in the community in which they had been embedded. Normative troubles can be linked to the creation of social problems by those concerned with undermining social consensus. Normative Vulnerabilities To some degree all norms are vulnerable. In reality, of course, normative behavior and expectations are often remarkably stable. Norms that reflect wellaccepted ritual behavior do not evolve rapidly. Yet, on occasion taken-for-granted norms are subject to cultural shifts. Consider, for instance, American attitudes toward the display of emotion. At one time it was far more likely and legitimate to display anger than today. Spanking a child in public was once normative, and the refusal to restrain an "unruly" child by using

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physical force might result in the public or private sanctioning of the adult for raising a "spoiled" child (Stearns & Stearns, 1986). Today this same behavior might be sanctioned by agents of social control. Likewise, yelling or other forms of loud expression were at one time a taken-for-granted feature of public life; today a scream is likely to provoke intense concern by those sharing the same auditory space. Norms, as the word suggests, are not behaviors that always occur, but rather behaviors that frequently occur and that, as a matter of routine, are expected. These behaviors are not reflexes, but behaviors that "make sense" given the immediate circumstances and social custom. When normative behaviors occur, the scene proceeds smoothly and when they are absent or subverted, problems may result; the event becomes "notable" and the absence of expected behavior may be the basis of a narrative account of improper action. The existence of behavioral expectations contributes to the collective definition of the situation. The smooth character of interaction is routinely capable of being subverted by those who violate social expectations. When violations occur, interactants search for explanations that explain the violation. In practice, explanations are often to be found, as when one points to exigencies about the occasion (the local constitution of events). Some alternative frame of meaning makes sense of what seems to be disorder. Within such situational interpretations, we often refer to some defect in the actor to explain the "disruption." In these cases we speak of "residual deviance" (Scheff, 1968), laying the blame at the feet of an individual or individuals who are incapable of understanding or performing those ritual actions that other actors take for granted. If the normative violation is sufficiently profound, labels such as mentally ill, deviant, or incompetent are common. Such claims become the basis of "moral anecdotes" that simultaneously support the social order and discredit the deviant actor. This strategy preserves the sanctity of the situation. Those who violate social expectations are normative deviants or, if the violation is both egregious and intentional, as "normative cranks." Most actors and situations can withstand some deviant or unexpected action without breaking: few occasions entirely lack flexibility, as Goffman (1974) points out. Only when the violations are frequent and systematic, and no easy explanation can be provided for the choices of the deviant actor (i.e. the actor's moral character), is the scene vulnerable. With enough threats, our sense of the morality and even the "reality" of the situation can be disputed. At times the ritualistic character of behavior must be reconsidered (Collins, 1981). Under circumstances of widespread rejection of normative action, the rules that bind a collectivity together weaken and the sense of social cohesion may falter (a claim often made of American normative struggles in the 1960s). As a

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consequence, social actors may consciously attempt to bolster legitimacy of social expectations, as group members become normative enforcers, further leading to social conflict over the legitimacy of social control.

Normative Challenges Normative challenges constitute a different type of trouble, more explicit than normative vulnerabilities. Here individuals or groups mount a conscious and deliberate attack on group expectations, often linked to social movements. While these challenges are unlikely to have immediate effects, they have the potential to provoke major normative change. A dramatic example of a normative challenge concerns public relations between men and women. The legitimacy of men holding open doors for women, whistling at attractive women, and making sexually provocative remarks has been challenged. Sexual harassment has become defined and redefined, altering behavioral expectations. I do not claim that these behaviors have vanished, but their routine acceptance has disappeared. If such behaviors are to occur, some negotiation must take place. The challenge to behavior that at one time had been judged acceptable was sufficiently effective that the presence of such behavior is now judged as putatively inappropriate (Gardner, 1995). Swidler's (1986) model of cultural change suggests that new cultural traditions (including norms) occur more frequently in "unsettled" times. One result of traditional models no longer seen as working effectively (normative vulnerabilities) is that social actors search for alternative behaviors (normative challenges) - a model not unlike that of Kuhn (1970) in describing scientific revolutions. While Swidler's model has not been definitively tested, it seems plausible that structural or institutional turmoil should lead to questioning of behaviors that had been taken for granted. In the case of these challenges, a set of normative critics present a case in words or behaviors that previous behavioral expectations must be altered. If these figures can gain support from like-minded others, can gather resources, or can make the costs of continuing normative behavior sufficiently high, normative standards can change. Systems of expectations are dynamic, particularly when movement actors choose to make an issue of behaviors that had been taken for granted, exerting collective action. Normative behavior varies in the costs of change. Some behavior is "sticky" in that the customs are sedimented culturally or in their benefits to particular groups (Busch, 1980, 1982); as a consequence change is difficult and costly, with resources used by others to block the change. Other behaviors are less consequential, and as a result change comes relatively rapidly.

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Norms represent routinized and expected behaviors that reflect group or institutional practices. As a result, we connect the analysis of normative challenge to the analysis of social problems (e.g. social constructionist theory) and social movements (e.g. resource mobilization theory). Changes in norms occur because of the motivated enactment of actors. Just as there are normative critics, other social actors, normative conservers, may vigorously defend those norms. Given the divisions in any complex and heterogeneous society, many behaviors that are taken for granted in one group may be challenged or ignored in another. To the extent that the groups are separated, alternate standards of behavior can coexist. While some norms (often proscribed behaviors, such as most killing and most incest) are universal within a society, other behavioral expectations are subcultural. Local conditions affect the evaluation of action.

Normative Novelty If norms represent the expressions of a cultural toolkit, how do we approach normative innovation: innovations that need not derive from a sense of failure of current behavioral expectations, but a belief that cultural change differentiates our identity from the past and other social categories, and that represent adjustments to material and technological changes. Again, actors who propose behavioral expectations are critical: normative entrepreneurs and normative gatekeepers. Normative entrepreneurs are those who propose changes - novelties - in standards of action. Normative gatekeepers are those with influence or with social roles involving structural centrality, permitting them to judge the validity of the proposed innovations. The acquiescence of normative gatekeepers largely determines whether novel behaviors become seen as "proper." As students of innovation have argued (Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971), social structure, networking, communication technology, and personal status influence the acceptance of novelty. Just as there exists a profound drive for continuity and tradition, a desire exists to vary that sameness - a drive for change. A break with the past reflects the essence of a differentiated identity. This process is evident in the coinage of slang, in the desire within numerous cultural worlds to create novel styles of dress and adornment, and in the continual production of fads and fashions. Although in some ways social life changes slowly, the superficial vestments of that life may alter rapidly. Norms can incorporate both behavior expressions of core values (and social instrumentalities in general) and the more epiphenomenal expressive culture. The search for the basis of innovation in behavioral expectations emphasizes the paradox that while norms are characteristics of social systems, they are

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enacted by individuals, and are performed because they appear to be "right": fight in a double sense. First, they are right in that they are validated by others, and have been learned through socialization. Second, they are fight in that they constitute an individual's identity. They contribute to how we imagine ourselves, linking to alterations that we are willing to make to our identity. As a result, normative novelty links to the plausible situated selves of targeted individuals. NORMS

AS CULTURAL

PRODUCTIONS

Norms and behavioral expectations should not be separated from the meaning systems of individuals who enact them or from interaction that occurs in local spaces in which they are enacted. I argue that the performance of norms involves a social construction based on the flaming of local context, negotiation of the interest of social actors, and the narrative depiction of behavioral rules. While I emphasize the agency of social actors to create and shape meaning, I recognize that this process is based upon an obdurate material reality and a consequential structure. Like all social construction, this depends on social actors adjusting their behavior in situ in order that interaction flows smoothly. From an interactionist standpoint, this desire for social comity provides the core motivation explaining why individuals give up their own material interests for the sake of others. Actors share a powerful desire to cause interaction to proceed without strain, and often make substantial adjustments in their behavior to ensure this result - choosing to satisfice rewards for the sake of harmony. This suggests that significant interpretive leeway may exist in response to behaviors - especially on occasions in which one's expectations are upended, but even when things go as "expected." In any social system norms are linked to culture in that violations become markers for talking about social standards (Maines 1984). The stories that we tell often become taken as the reality that ostensibly stands behind the narrative. Narratives provide accounts of what is and what should be. Postmodernists suggest that everything is a "text." Whatever this claim means in practice, it implies that stories are a means by which expectations are made concrete. Presenting a violation of social standards is the kind of notable event that individuals may reasonably share. Ultimately the normative structure presumes interpretative options, linked to the existence of a cultural toolkit. Individuals select from among a set of possibilities in responding to a particular interactional context. It is rare that a single behavior is judged to be the only appropriate option. This is particularly

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true in those situations in which formal, established rules do not exist and in which forces of social control stand behind these rules. Finally, norms are often sponsored by individuals, who become, in effect, normative entrepreneurs, helping particular norms and expectations emerge (or change). Social actors may endorse or oppose normative emergence, shaping the social order in the process. Individuals take responsibility for encouraging a particular relationship of individual to the interaction order, and encouraging certain frameworks of meaning at the expense of others. Norms are always potentially "in play," in a state of dynamic tension, being created, altered, or negated. Ultimately I reject the view of norms as something that exists - as real, material, and unchanging - separate from social life. In contrast, I argue that by conceiving norms as a part of a locally constituted interaction order and as belonging to the cultural domain, the vibrancy and vitality of norms as they are lived can be better appreciated.

REFERENCES Busch, L. (1980). Structure and Negotiation in the Agricultural Sciences. Rural Sociology, 45, 26-48. Busch, L. (1982). History, Negotiation, and Structure in Agricultural Research. Urban Life, 11, 368-384. Gardner, C. B. (1995). Passing By. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kuhn, T. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maines, D. R. (1984). Suggestions for a Symbolic Interactionist Conception of Culture. Communication & Cognition, 17, 205-217. Maines, D. R. (1989). Culture and Temporality. Cultural Dynamics, 2, 107-123. Rogers, E., & Shoemaker, E E (1971). The Communication of Innovation: A Cross-Cultural Approach. (2rid ed.). New York: Free Press. Scheff, T. (1966). Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory. Chicago: Aldine. Stearns, C. Z., & Stearns, R N. (1986). Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America's History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in Action. American Sociological Review, 51,273-286.

TELLING STORIES OF DAVID R. MAINES: AN ADMIRING FRIEND'S SAMPLER William K. Rawlins I was either reading or brooding in my office at Penn State in the gray early spring of 1987 when the phone rang. "Hello." I said. "Is this Bill Rawlins?" a voice said on the other end. "Yes." I answered. "I understand you are a symbolic interactionist." the voice suggested. "I don't enjoy labels," I replied, "and I try to avoid labeling myself as much as possible." "Well my name is David Maines, and I just asked your Department Head if there were any symbolic interactionists on the communication faculty, and he said that if anyone is, it would probably be you." "Well, if you put it like that, I'd have to say I draw a lot on the work of symbolic interactionists, and I'm a big fan of Bhimer and Mead." "I'm not far from you across the mall in the Sociology Department, do you have a few minutes to talk?" "Sure," I said, always tempted by telephone conversation. "Okay, I'll be fight over." A few minutes later there were three strong knocks on the opaque glass of my rickety old office door. "Come in." I said. You don't always know what hangs on the turning of door knobs and hinges. In this case a new character walked into my life story, altering its plot in significant ways - A Midwestern born, Missouri graduate-educated, dyed in the

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wool, American pragmatist. A scholar with few peers in knowledge about the history and theoretical contours of symbolic interactionism and its roots in pragmatism. A man on a mission to build active connections and constructive conversations between the disciplines of sociology and communication in light of his inspiring recognition of their deep lying affinities. But even more important to me, a person named Dave Maines, who has been an instructive and redemptive presence in my life. I would very much enjoy telling you about the range of experiences I have shared with David Maines from shooting baskets in my driveway to collaborating on essays and book manuscripts in various settings. Indeed, there is coherence and a consistency to his being-in-the-world-with-others that rewards close scrutiny, even as his latest thoughts or opinions might take you by surprise or otherwise challenge your complacency. But I will focus here instead on a subset of his extensive published oeuvre. In keeping with his penchant for and appreciation of a good story, I want to address briefly some examples of his work over the past decade or so concerning narrative. So I will tell a story within my story of knowing David Maines about some of his more telling stories about telling stories. When I met him, David had just published the prior fall what has come to be one of my favorite pieces of his. In a tightly argued and evidenced piece, entitled, "Reconstructive Legitimacy in Final Reports of Contract Research" (1986), Maines and his co-author, Joseph Palenski, describe the inherently rhetorical properties of writing research reports. They stridently observe that "final reports of contract research are best understood as documents embedded in a political economy rather than as objective depictions of reality" (1986, p. 573). Accomplishing for writers of contract research what Wolf (1992) would later achieve for ethnographers, Maines and Palenski demonstrate how palpably audience-centered and commodified different versions of "final" research reports can be. This piece has markedly influenced my teaching of scholarly writing since I first read it, and I have used it often to dramatize "the structural and processual dimensions of the production of distortions in final reports" (1986, p. 584). In typical Mainesian style the essay is positioned within a comprehensive discussion of pragmatist social theory. In a useful precis of Marxian and pragmatist thought, the authors state that "knowledge is not a cognitive or mentalistic phenomenon but always is a relation between the knower and the known. They cannot be collapsed into one another. Rather, they exist relationally and social organizationally, and refer to a set of practices which constitute the relations of what is 'known' about the world" (1986, p. 576). In this essay, the labor of writing is situated in time as a story of social activity in and of itself.

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In my opinion, this essay draws on previous writings and foreshadows David's subsequent work with narrative in some key ways. For one, we see him assuming an explicitly moral stance concerning the social production of knowledge, that is, the moral legacy of pragmatism that figures prominently in his nan'ative-based work is very apparent here. Second, broadly and in retrospect, it is compelling to witness how Maines' extensive prior work concerning temporality and social order as a negotiated, communicative accomplishment (see, for example Maines, 1982, 1983; Maines, Sugre & Katovich, 1983) seem to coalesce so strikingly in his emerging engagement with narrative. To my knowledge, David's first use of narrative or story in the title of a published essay occurs with his "The Storied Nature of Health and Diabetic Self-Help Groups" (1991). Here he reviews a typology of narratives and identifies "those elements which constitute stories as a form of enactment," which include 'Selecting events,' and 'Turning events into story elements" through "imposing a shape or structure on the flow of events" (1991, p. 188). The stream of social activity is given form and specified meaning through practices such as developing characters, constructing plots, and describing its settings. Maine's third element is "Temporality," which involves creating a temporal order that organizes the events and elements of a story. Though David specifies these necessary elements of narrative form in several other essays (Bridget & Maines, 1998; Maines, 1993, 1996), I like the use of gerunds in this formulation to highlight the active and ongoing nature of narrating as a situated social enterprise. Working from Mead, Dewey, and selected narrative theories, Maines wants to demonstrate how stories function as communicative tools in the continuously evolving production of human experience and social order. Keenly and comprehensively, he states an important theme for his narrative project: Stories, then, are types of communicative acts which, through their structure and use, contribute to social continuity and discontinuity. Although told by individuals, they are inherently collectiveacts. They are cultural enactments that link the private and the public, link events into temporal orders which give people a sense of historical continuity, and provide versions of reality which contribute to the flow of meaning at the heart of any society. Accordingly, stories are indispensable to societal organization insofar as they are one class of the actual practices through which such organization is created and maintained (1991, pp. 188-189). Consequently, in this field study Maines investigates in a sentence by sentence, turn by turn manner specific episodes of the exchange and co-construction of stories about health and diabetes in self-help groups. As he does so, it is important to note the persistent sociological aspirations of David Maines's

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work. While acknowledging the significance of these story-telling activities in the production of therapy, he also registers enveloping circumstances. He observes, "These groups formed themselves within a set of structural and cultural conditions pertaining to economic modes of production, urbanization, immigration, population change, technological change, and locus of administrative control which mobilized the changing conditions of personal life and health" (1991, p. 191). Although David would want to be the first to unpack how all of the concepts mentioned above are concepts, he is obviously concerned here with how these story-telling groups are situated in their enveloping material conditions. I will note below how this emphasis transmutes somewhat for Maines in later essays into a description of the situatedness of stories in enveloping narrative conditions. A classic tension persists throughout this work as Maines tries to account for how social structures get enacted by persons living on the cusps of their moments. He reflects: For structures to be structures - that is, for them to do the things we say they do (e.g., limit options, produce uniformity, guide action) - they must be coupled with a conception of agency or praxis. Structures, in other words, must be defined in terms of processes which enable them to exist and operate as structures. Stories help to do t h i s . . . (1991, p. 200).

While he finds the notion of stories helpful in this quest, the plots thicken as he works to reconcile the active and substantive discursive choices made by persons in the moment with the abstract constraints, redundancies, and narrative conventions of meaningful social participation that seem to transcend their individual lives. In 1993 in The Sociological Quarterly, David's thirst for theory and his appreciation of a good story culminate in his programmatic statement, "Narrative's Moment and Sociology's Phenomena: Toward a Narrative Sociology." When David presented an early version of this essay speaking at Purdue University in 1991, I was struck by his detailed examination of the extent to which narrative excerpts were used in the sociological classic, The Polish Peasant in Europe andAmerica (Thomas & Znaniecki, 1918-20). In this article he points out that some 800 pages of that 2200 page five-volume monograph are composed of narrative-based material. He does so in lamenting how the meaning of the term "empirical' in sociology somehow has been transformed into a preoccupation with measurement. Maines describes a midcentury forced march of quantitative social science across the former terrain of sociological inquiry and critiques the increasingly sedimented practices of mainstream sociological research. He pointedly declares: The issue of the multiple meanings of discourse was not squarely faced but was seen instead as a problem to be solved by replacing words with numbers. The issue of human

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agency fell into neglect, and the concept of structure gained currency over the concepts of process and emergence, thus moving sociology increasingly into ahistorical theories (1993b, p. 20). In the face of these tendencies, Maines presents a double-edged sticking point. First, he argues that narratives are an inherent focus of sociological inquiry, stating, "a substantial portion of sociology's phenomena is made up precisely of stories" (1993b, p. 32). Simultaneously, he asserts that sociologists themselves are narrators, storytellers of the first order, saying, "This focus would see sociologists as spinners of professional tales we call theories" (1993b, p. 32). To paraphrase Geertz (1973), David is telling us that in speaking and writing of social life, "It is stories all the way down." With this recognition, Maines brings the pragmatists' historical emphasis upon communication into bold relief. In what I take to be a veritable mandate for interdisciplinary dialogue between sociologists and communication scholars, he clarifies the intellectual heart of the narrative turn: As a construct, 'narrative's moment' objectifies the fact that the social is grounded in communication processes, that communication itself is social, and that all sociological work is communicative work. The disciplinary, and to some extent disciplined, neglect of these simple facts perhaps stems from their being so obvious that as a field sociology passes right over them. One of the great benefits of focusing on narratives is that they are one form of communication, and by conceptualizing sociology narratively, we are forced to take communication very seriously. This includes not only writing and teaching - activities that we often delegitimize as mere issues of education - but research, theory cons~uction, writing grants, consulting, administration, and most importantly, sociology's phenomena (1993b, p. 32). Quite simply, the piece issues a clarion call for an integrated view of sociological work as communicative in nature and communicative activity as socially constituted. In my judgment, this remains a crucial message that scholars from both disciplines should heed. With "Cultural Narratives and Economic Inconsistencies in Welfare Reform" (1993a), David Maines uses narrative analysis in the service of critiquing politico-economic policy and praxis. He identifies and exemplifies how various state-funded groups' experiences and life circumstances get narrativized in significantly divergent ways to the detriment of specific groups (for example, low wage earners) and to the benefit of others (for example, university professors). In some welfare analyses, narratives characterize certain individuals as moving toward self-sufficiency and therefore less eligible for continuing welfare support despite the fact that they are still quite poor. The operative concern here is that what constitutes "steady progress toward self-sufficiency" in evaluators' eyes is based on narratively accomplished depictions with worrisome consequences for poor persons' opportunities for material support.

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As frequently is the case in his other essays, in this piece you can clearly hear David Maines' voice. There is courage and plain speaking audible here that cuts through what Jules Henry (1971) once called "black sham," the kind of sham perpetrated by persons in power that sells weaker people down the river. Having already recognized and thematized sociologists as de facto narrators, in "Mythic Facts and Park's Pragmatism: On Predecessor Selection and Theorizing in Human Ecology" (1996), David Maines and co-authors Jeffrey Bridger and Jeffrey Ulmer present a narrative account of the march of theorizing in knowledge construction. Indeed, the work of sociologists (and by implication, all professional students of social life) is always a deep concern for David Maines. In his eyes, it is (or can be) honest work. In the pragmatist tradition the language of theory comprises specialized tools for getting things done, or in Kenneth Burke's happy phrase "equipment for living." "Mythic facts" is a term used in this essay to describe how original theories as tools can be dulled or even misshapen through how they are handled over time in subsequent texts. The authors are concerned with how received wisdom in a field can be based upon increasingly flawed representations of prior work that are taken as factual accounts without consulting the primary sources upon which they are based. They state, "We use the term 'mythic facts' to refer to the collective situation in which those transcendent texts, which are conventionally regarded as accurate, in fact contain consequential inaccuracies" (1996, p. 522). Similar to Burke's (1966) "terministic screens," such concepts simultaneously supply ways of seeing and not seeing. More worrisome to Maines and his colleagues, this conceptual filtering in the service of presently accepted or promoted scholarly accounts functions as a "constitutive rhetoric" (Charland, 1987) that legifimizes some work and delegifimizes other work. The authors conclude, "The constitutive power of mythic facts is that their status a s mythic facts is hidden from their consuming readers" (1996, p. 522). To support such claims, this article meticulously describes an inaccurate characterization of Robert Park's work on human ecology that has persisted as a tenacious storyline. Among other things, at issue here are competing conceptions of how theory development and knowledge production are accomplished (Camic, 1992). On one hand, there is the strategic, narrative accomplishment on an ongoing basis of the "theory growth model" that underpins much of the ethos of supposedly value-free hypothetico-deductive social science in mainstream sociology. In this story knowledge growth is a cumulative, linear process. An opposing model of theory development, the content-fit model, describes intellectual work as "politically agenfic and may be grounded in misunderstandings and the deliberate ignoring of some predecessors' work" (1996, p. 523). After carefully tracking and describing

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disparate m o m e n t s and concepts in Park's project, and then scrutinizing and documenting how they have been represented inaccurately in s u m m a r y narrative treatments, the authors conclude: By framing what in fact were mere nominal differences in focus and at best a division of labor in ecological research in terms of a temporal sequence, analysts of the field could tell a story of development of human ecology. And it was inevitably a story of progress . . . . which is the central component of the theory growth model (1996, p. 54.1). By M a i n e s ' and his colleagues' lights, the theory growth m o d e l involves the narrative a c c o m p l i s h m e n t o f selecting and deflecting prior theoretical work and thinkers and e m b e d d i n g preferred predecessors in a story o f progress that serves c o n t e m p o r a r y political purposes in the sociology o f knowledge. I dare say the concept of role is dear to the hearts and minds o f all symbolic interactionists. It is only fitting then that David would turn his attention to the intersections o f narrative and role theory at some point. H e does so in a g e m entitled, "Gender, Narrative, and the Problematics o f Role" (1996), which for m e constitutes one of the more poetic m o m e n t s in D a v i d ' s conceptual dance between structure and process with issues o f narration. H e is concerned that "Narrative theorists tend not to use the concept o f role and role theorists and researchers seem to be blind to the fact that people tell stories" (1996, p. 88). Consequently, he introduces the piece as a: Search for links between concepts which are currently victimized by disciplinary fractures; links between cultural blueprints and actual practices; links between aspects of social structure and discursive acts; links between myth and authenticity. As I have reflected on my topic, I think of this as a search which rests at the margins of choice and fate (1996, p. 87). Conceived in this way, there are breaks for David to straddle, and his bridge is narration. In this essay he will construct a folding bridge, hinging together narratives and stories as its pivotal components. A t this juncture for David, "Narratives are forms of collective stories that are implicit or e m b e d d e d in a culture or group and have some kind o f structure" (1996, p. 92). He continues: Such narratives are frameworks of meaning within which lives are configured; they are frameworks of meaning that can be told but mostly are simply tacitly believed and routinely enacted; they set limits to ordinary imaginations of the possible; and they define the boundaries of normalcy and acceptability. . . . In short, narratives are a cultural resource that in a significant measure give substance and texture to human lives (1996, p. 93). In contrast, stories "are acts o f telling. Stories are always performed, even in written texts" (1996, p. 93). He retains the elements of stories as a form of enactment, n a m e l y selection, e m p l o t m e n t and temporality, which he first

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stipulated in "The Storied Nature of Health . . . " (1991). In this way, David strives to have his narrative structure and enact it too. A n d these twin concepts are featured henceforth in M a i n e s ' narrative-based investigations. This article presents intriguing analyses of how narratives frame problematic situations of gendered identities and life choices. Persons are heard telling stories constrained by cultural narratives prefiguring their possibilities for b e c o m i n g other than who they have been and think they are supposed to be. Listening to a 48 year-old w o m a n n a m e d Lillian's reflections on the likelihood of being a mother, David reflects: Lillian tells of her struggles with a powerful gender narrative - that women should bear children - not that they can, but should. It is a moral mandate... (1996, p. 98)... Lillian can tell her life story of which struggles with motherhood and aging are things to be told about, but the tellings themselves articulate the struggle with authenticity.The problematic situations- the margins of choice and fate - in which she lives are themselves storied. Her story, that is, is not a passive, ad hoc recollection but an active, ongoing configurative attempt to create a future of authenticity. But she has been stuck in time because gender narratives have forecast futures which she cannot abide or live up to (1996, p. 99). Maines recognizes that he is speaking of a generic narrative like the one informing Lillian's story in its intact form. Yet, he believes that there are consequences when an individual consciously or unconsciously presupposes such a cultural narrative structure in telling her or his life story. In his view, such a narrative operates as a prefiguration of the life course; as a charting of sequences of meaning; as a prepackaging of personhood that can never quite deliver on its promises. Narratives such as these, regardless of their content, fate most of us to the problematicsof role because the press of actual living precludes the exact appropriation of selves and identities that are portrayed or defined in the narratives (1996, p. 99). Recently, David Maines has turned his attention to the nature and role of competing narratives in debates about public policy and decisions such as the Catholic Church closings in Detroit and other land use decisions, which affect significant numbers of people. That is, instead of scrutinizing how narrative structures may inform specific individuals' stories, such as Lillian's above, he and his colleagues are becoming more interested in the uptake and telling of stories by identified groups and communities. In "Narrative Structure and the Catholic Church Closings in Detroit" (1998), co-authored with Jeffrey Bridger, the notion of n a r r a t i v e s t r u c t u r e is fore-grounded. The authors state: Many, if not most, stories are told against the taken for granted backdrop of larger cultural paradigms. These narrative structures consist of cultural frames and ideologies that prefigure some stories insofar as group beliefs and values contain already articulatedplots. In this sense, a narrative structure is similar to Snow and Benford's concept of a master frame (1998, p. 321).

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With this apparent move towards an emphasis upon obdurate and collective narrative structures, as opposed to their ongoing and contingent accomplishment in the telling of stories, it would seem that David is going head-to-head with one of the cherished pronouncements of postmodernism, namely Lyotard's (1984) announcement of the demise of reigning metanarratives. In this work I see a return on David's part to macro-issues of social organization with narrative structure perhaps functioning to a significant degree as a proxy for social structure. As always, however, David does not make this conceptual move unreflectively. In one of his latest published essays, entitled, "Information Pools and Racialized Narrative Structures," (1999) he observes: I suspect that most good social scientists in one way or another deal with these twin facts of human living-interpretive processes and obdurate structures of collective existence. For my immediate purposes, though, they represent the sociological background for my distinction between story and narrative (1999, p. 318). Always the symbolic interactionist, and always the sociologist, David Maines continues his eloquent dance between structure and process, attuned to the traces of narrative structures and the sounds of stories worth hearing.

EPILOGUE Reading David Maines is at all times a chance to be instructed in theoretical pragmatism, applied pragmatism, and critical pragmatism. I would never presume to summarize what he has accomplished as a scholar and to render it in a neat little package. Accordingly, this essay continues some talks I have had with David about his work with narrative and hopefully proposes others. I have always admired his searching intellect and seemingly boundless capacity for inquiry, conversation, and committing ideas to paper. You will find him in places where these activities are respected, and I have always appreciated his efforts to forge links between the disciplines of Sociology and Communication. Dave Maines is a great talker and an even better listener. He is someone who encourages you to think out loud and to take risks. Even so, you'd better have your facts straight and present your arguments convincingly. Inveterate pragmatist that he is, he sees each moment as brimming with possibilities, each being he encounters as a becoming, each conversation as an opening to another world of words. I ' m thankful to know you, David, and to read your work. I wish you the best.

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REFERENCES Bridger, J. C., & Maines, D. R. (1998). Narrative structures and the Catholic Church closings in Detroit. Qualitative Sociology, 21,319-340. Burke, K. (1966). Language as symbolic action: Essays in life, literature, and method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Camic, C. (1992). Reputation and predecessor selection: Parsons and the institutionalists. American Sociological Review, 57, 421--445. Charland, M. (1987). Constitutive rhetoric: The case of the People Quebecois. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73, 133-150. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hertry, J. (1971). Pathways to madness. New York: Vintage Books. Maines, D. R. (1982). In search of mesostructure: Studies of the negotiated order. Urban Life, 11, 267-279. Maines, D. R. (1983). On time, timing, and the life course. Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology, 17, 182-193. Maines, D. R. (1991). The storied nature of health and diabetic self-help groups. In: G. Albrecht and D. R. Maines, (1993a). Cultural narratives and economic inconsistencies in welfare reform. Applied Behavioral Science Review, 1, 173-178. Maines, D. R. (1993b). Narrative's moment and sociology's phenomena: Toward a narrative sociology. The Sociological Quarterly, 34, 17-38. Maines, D. R. (1996). Gender, narrative, and the problematics of role. Michigan Sociological Review, 10, 87-107. Maines, D. R. (1999). Information pools and racialized narrative structures. The Sociological Quarterly, 40, 317-326. Maines, D. R., Bridger, J. C., & Ulmer, J. T. (1996). Mythic facts and Park's pragmatism: On predecessor selection and theorizing in human ecology. The Sociological Quarterly, 37, 521-549. Maines, D., & Palenski, J. (1986). Reconstructive legitimacy in final reports of contract Research. The Sociological Review, 34, 573-589. Maines, D. R., Sugre, N., & Katovich, M. (1983). The sociological import ofG. H. Mead's theory of the past. American Sociological Review, 48, 151- 173. Thomas, W. I., & Znaniecki, E (1918-20). The Polish peasant in Europe and America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolf, M. (1992). A thrice-told tale: Feminism, postmodernism, and ethnographic responsibility. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

MUSING AND THRASHING AROUND AT THE INTERSECTION OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES David R. Maines About twenty-five years ago, Irwin Deutscher, who was studying sociolinguistics at the time, wrote that it was rather surprising that interactionists paid so little attention to language, given its centrality to their perspective. While it struck me then that Deutscher's observation was entirely correct, perhaps he might be somewhat more pleased with the intervening developments. Indeed, from conversational analysis to cultural studies and the perspectives, like mine, that fall somewhere in between, we see increased interactionist work and focus on the communicative grounding of human group life. Shing-Ling Chen (herself trained in interactionism by Carl Couch) and her colleagues have instituted a most welcome mechanism for furthering inquiry into the common grounds of interactionist sociology and communication studies. Each year at the National Communication Association meetings, a session will be organized that will focus on the work of a single interactionist who also has contributed to the field of communication studies. The rationale for this procedure, as I understand it, is not especially to honor a scholar (although it is certainly honoring), but to use a given body of work as a heuristic. That is, the procedure is a pragmatic one, because panelists have the opportunity to discern connections, themes, tensions, and changes in a corpus

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of work that are less obvious in any single piece of it. And, of course, it is pragmatic because there are so many well-qualified scholars whose work can be examined - Norman Denzin, David Altheide, Peter Hall, Gary Alan Fine, Robert Perinbanayagam, Carolyn Ellis, Tamotsu Shibutani, Irwin Deutscher, David Snow, and Stan Lyman are among the many who immediately come to mind. The importance of these occasions clearly rests in the scholarship that comes out of them and in our improved understandings and knowledge. However, it is, of course, a great and continuing personal compliment to have had my work over the years selected for the inaugural session, which was so ably organized by Shing-Ling and chaired by Art Bochner. Having one's scholarship taken seriously by colleagues is probably as close as we get to an act of grace in intellectual work, and I indeed feel graced by the sincerity and kindness of the four panelists and their essays in this volume. In attempting to form some reasonable and I hope meaningful response to each of those essays, however, it might be useful to begin by briefly describing how I have approached my scholarly work. First, I really do believe G. H. Mead's proposition that people are never quite sure what they are doing. Certainly that has been and continues to be true of me. I tend to thrash around a lot; I always have several issues and projects before me at the same time; I jump from topic to topic; I write sentences and paragraphs in my head while walking from here to there; writing is personal and as I have gotten older I have tried to manage my emotions better when writing; when I write a bit of something I usually have to say it out loud or, if someone is around, to read it to them to see how it sounds, which sometimes is fairly worthless. In all that thrashing around, I have found that I need to "muse," as I call it - to give myself time each day looking out the window or into space to discover what my mind is doing and to sort things out so I can make some sense of them. I suspect this kind of process is common to most scholars. Second, I have never believed that such a thing as a natural interactionist subject matter exists. I refuse to be stereotyped as someone who only studies selves or socialization or small groups and thus to allow myself to be marginalized. Rather, as I think of myself, I am a sociologist first and then an interactionist, and I am an interactionist because it is the best-equipped perspective in its broad expression for studying human group life. So I have purposefully tried to move into areas interactionists have been accused of ignoring -demography, social structure, social organization, and more recently political economy, stratification, and applied sociology. One message I have always given myself as a kind of mantra is that progress is made at the edges of an area rather than at its center.

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Third, I have an abiding respect for scholars who spend their career contributing to one or two substantive areas, but I have had trouble sticking to only a few speciality areas. Years ago I thought I was merely undisciplined and weak-willed, but in musing about my lack of tenacity one day I realized that I just regard specialty areas simply as research sites. Robert Habenstein, my major professor in graduate school, taught me that scholarship ought to be guided by generic problems, which was an idea later emphasized in some of my discussions with Eliot Freidson.The generic problem I seemed to have latched onto is the dialectical relations of freedom and constraint. I think that readers can find expressions of that theme in the fairly wide array of topics I have studied - chronic illness, self-help groups, education, gender, race, urban transportation, friendship, religion, organizations, theory construction, sociology of knowledge, and narrative. While I cannot claim expertise in any of these areas, I can say that learning about them has kept my curiosity alive and has broadened my vision of how much good sociological work really does exist. Finally, and fourth, one of my true character flaws is that I have never liked seeing myself as having been caught up in a fad oi" trend. I suspect this part of me has to do with my Midwestern upbringing and some sort of myth of authenticity fostered in the Midwest. In any case, when I have started work in an area and then have noticed that others are picking up on it, I have a tendency to move onto something else. That has been sort of true of my writing on what some have called "macro-interactionism," a bit more true of my work on the idea of "mesostructure," and I sense it is becoming true of my interests in narrative. Whereas in a sense I never completely drop previous ideas, it is true that they become backgrounded to new interests, such as my cun'ent concerns with urban inequality and critical pragmatism as a form of applied sociology. My faith has been that the underlying generic problem of freedom and constraint confers a measure of consistency to all this hopping around. I will discover how much consistency there is in the book I have just finished called The Faultline of Consciousness (Aldine de Gruyter) in which I will try to tie together my theoretical and empirical work of the past twenty years. I mention these background elements, because they rest just beneath the surface of the four preceding essays. In their own ways, each author has dealt with most of them. Gronbeck clearly sees some of the tensions that run through my work, Rawlins and Hall see the continuities, and Fine privileges agency in a way similar to that found in some of my writing. All these essays can stand on their own, each is a "correct" version, and in each I have learned something worthwhile. Although Fine has an interesting perspective on norms as forms of conduct and is worth working through in more detail, I find little to comment on in his eassay in part because he and I have rather similar general viewpoints

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and in part because he has not directly addressed my work. The other three essays, however, require attention. Gronbeck is correct toward the end of his essay in suggesting a focus on structuration. I have always regarded Giddens' structuration theory as a specification of central principles of pragmatism, especially in his focus on agency and the duality of structures. Giddens, like Cooley, distinguishes dualities (two aspects of the same thing) from dualisms (two different things). My arguments over the years have been with dualisms, but in the process I have never regarded myself as embracing monism, which refers to the doctrine that reality is one unitary, organic whole. Far from it. The mesostructure idea, in my mind, refers to dialectical or at least quasi-dialectical processes in which various realities are mutually constitutive. I started thinking about these ideas in the mid to late 1970s, worked through several studies that eventually became part of the 1985 essay with Joy Charlton, and then after that wrote the 1982 essay in Urban Life. Therefore, it cannot be said that I abandoned the mesostructure idea in 1985, as Gronbeck suggests, because that paper was actually written first but the publication of the volume in which it appeared was delayed for five years. However, I can see how Gronbeck would identify a discontinuity in my rejection of macro phenomena in the mesostructure essays and then arguing that Blumer was a macro-sociologist. I have wondered about that myself. One reason for the apparent disjuncture is that ! used "mesostructure" as an ontological concept, and I used Blumer's "macro" perspective as a rhetorical concept, considering that the common view of Blumer was that he was a "micro" sociologist. Not fair to readers, I guess, but the rhetorical strategy was that by showing Blumer's macro sociology, readers could conclude that the entire interactionist perspective was far more sociologically useful that previously thought. On further reflection, I would argue that Blumer really was a mesostructural analyst insofar as quite largescale processes such as industrialization and racial stratification, in his view, are always worked out in situations (of various scales) that necessarily depended on interpretation. If it is fair to say that Gronbeck begins where I never was (monism) and ends up where I wished to be (structuration), then perhaps it can be said that Bill Rawlins begins where I hoped to be and reveals what else I have been doing. Rawlins digs directly into the various sets of dialectical-like relations in my work: narrative structures and stories, rhetoric and knowledge, myth and economics, activity and structure. He would be someone who would see those issues more clearly, with his Bateson-honed way of looking at things. But he also has detected something of my moral stance, as he calls it. I have not thought explicitly about that matter, but Rawlins is right to say that it has

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something to do with basic honesty, which probably also has to do with my Midwestern upbringing. However, in recognition that he is most likely more correct on that score than he realizes, I think I will drop the topic for now and take it up later after considerable musing. Perhaps because we have substantively mirrored one another so well over the past twenty-odd years, Peter Hall has found a great deal to write about in reviewing my work. As anyone familiar with Hall's work knows, moreover, he has developed the mesostructure idea far beyond what I could have done in what he has called "meso domain" analysis. Like Rawlins, he understands the pragmatist roots and commitments flowing through my work, and if it is true that Rawlins sees what else I have been doing, Hall sees where I am trying to go. He concludes his discussion of policy processes and applied interactionism with the suggestion that we move into the study of institutions. This is exactly one of my current problems, especially in terms of the relations of narrative structures, urban organizations, and economic and cultural institutions. I could not agree more with his suggestions, and to invoke Rawlins again, I think that an honest interactionism would more directly study matters of institutions and especially social stratification. There is no natural ending that I can appropriate and that will convey my appreciation for the work my colleagues have put into this occasion. My appreciation aside, however, the measure of the occasion's value is in the scholarship it mobilizes, and I think that everyone involved has contributed in the faith that such value will be forthcoming. As an ending, and for what it is worth, though, I append a paper I presented at the Speech (now, National) Communication Association in 1993 on the subject of interactionism and communication. The panelists included Norman Denzin, Carolyn Ellis, myself, and someone else, with Art Bochner as chair and Carl Couch as discussant. With minor editing, I reproduce it as I gave it as a statement of my convictions both then and now

"SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES". ANNUAL MEETINGS THE SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION,

OF

MIAMI, AUGUST 19, 1993 I begin with two quotes, written about fifty years apart, by two men who probably never met. Here is the first quote:

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Here is the second quote, which is quite a bit shorter: •.. the central problem of social science, which ostensibly is trying to understand human behavior, is the problem of communication. I wish to use these quotes as textual authority for the two major terms of my title: symbolic interactionism and communication studies. The first quote tells us that reality is a group property, that groups construct their realities through a process of achieving consensus, that consensus involves the validation of symbols, that knowledge is lodged in symbolic structures, and that the entire process is one of symbolic interaction. I am sure that everyone will recognize this point of view as a textbook version of the perspective known as symbolic interactionism. The second quote is a bold claim insofar as it links disciplinary pursuit and by implication its intellectual structure to an ontological claim about human conduct. Communication is central to and necessary for such conduct, the author of this quote tells us, and the scholarly disciplines that purport to study conduct must be organized in such a way that they take the centrality of communication processes into account. With this quote, the terms of my title can be joined, one term lodged in the traditions of pragmatism and the Chicago School of Sociology and the other in the traditions of speech and rhetoric, with both traditions engaging in various dialogues with Enlightenment philosophy. My title is now tidy, and our thinking about issues of common concern can be organized. But our thinking is not organized; the intellectual terrain is not tidied up by my quotes. Rather, these quotes raise questions about the relations between symbolic interactionism and communication studies. The questions should confuse us. While we understand the quotes quite well, we perhaps do not understand the authors and their relation to one another. Let me explain. The second quote - the one that sounds like it came from a communications textbook and was written to legitimize the field of communication studies was actually written by Herbert Blumer on January 5, 1939 in a seven-page, hand-written letter to Robert Park. Two years earlier, of course, Blumer had coined the phrase "symbolic interactionism," but here he was writing to Park about methodological implications stemming from the universal singularity of human communication. My guess is that Blumer did not get this idea from communication scholars, although he certainly could have since the Quarterly Journal of Speech was in volume 24 and Communication Monographs was in

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volume 5 at the time. Rather, he got it from Dewey and Mead - and he got it from his courses with Park, who in the 1920s defined society as communication - "one vast whispering gallery," as he called it in his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Society. Accordingly, we might say with some textual authority that Blumer, Mead, Dewey, and Park have grounded communication studies. Of course, we know that it hasn't quite worked out that way. On the other hand, the first quote - the one expressing the perspective of symbolic interactionism - was not written by Blumer as one might have guessed, but by C. Jack Orr, a rhetorician, in a 1978 issue of Central States Speech Journal. Orr articulates in his article a constmctionist perspective, which is one I endorse and was happy to read, and when I read the quoted passage I looked to his footnotes 4 and 5 to find which articles of Mead, Dewey, Cooley, Blumer, Park, Faris, Shibutani, Couch, Kuhn, Denzin, Strauss or dozens of other interactionists he might be drawing from. But I found no such sources in those footnotes, which surprised me, so I looked in all 79 footnotes in his twelve-page article, thinking that surely I would find some reference to the quite large body of interactionist literature. Still there were no such references to be found in the entire essay. It is as if in his text Orr had discovered symbolic interactionism, and in fact he says in a footnote that he had coined the term "consmctionism," an already-coined term, to distinguish his point of view from Jesse Delia's "constmctivism." Accordingly, we might say with some textual authority that Orr has grounded symbolic interactionism. Of course, we know that it hasn't quite worked out that way either. I ask at this point that you join me in a standard practice of all scholarly activity that I call "let's pretend." Others have called it "all things being equal" or "my assumptions are" or "my metatheoretical orientation is." Nevertheless, let's pretend that these two quotes and their texts represent homogeneous fields. Of course, they aren't, but we can pretend anyway for purposes of envisioning certain things. What these quote tell us is that so long as we don't read one another's journals, then I can speak your words and you can speak mine, and so long as you stay in your university department in your building and I stay in mine then we will never know that we are speaking one another's words and we can position ourselves ecologically and intellectually to reproduce the fiction of discovery and insight. I can write what you wrote but we won't know it. And we can do this long enough, and train enough students to do what we do, that we can even develop some different terms and concepts that mean the same thing. So, even if we would read one another's journals, our experiences would not be unlike reading a foreign language. I am thinking of the time in the summer of 1990 when it took Alan Scult and Michael McGee two hours over

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beer to explain "intertextuality" to me and my finally understanding the concept when I realized it is what sociologists call "legitimation." What all this means, extrapolated to some extreme, is that universities can be lousy places to conduct serious scholarly business. Bureaucratic structures with administratively and economically enforced boundaries and internal divisions are surprisingly effective barriers to scholarly communication. We go along with these arrangements for practical reasons, such as our needing jobs and something to do. We accept the rhetorical phrase "intellectual division of labor" (you study this part of human behavior and I'll study that part) because it's convenient to do so. It makes our work easier by reducing the demands on our memory and IQs, and it gives us a narrower and more homogeneous range of concepts and theories to master and worry about. Sociologists probably are guiltier of this than are scholars in communication studies, but in either case it is a process of structuration that reproduces pluralistic ignorance, wheels being rediscovered, and being rewarded for what Pitirim Sorokin called 'the new discoverer's complex." We become authentically excited by our discoveries and sometimes professionally and materially rewarded even though someone else in some other building, perhaps even decades earlier, already thought our thoughts, said our words, and published our publications. So along comes postmodernism, a grand scheme with some good ideas and some new words that convince some that progress is being made. I think we like postmodernism, at least those who do, for a variety of reasons - partly because it implies movement forward, partly because some have grown tired of old concepts and here are some different ones, partly because disciplines themselves become tired and need something that looks new to justify their intellectual effort. An English professor of mine tells me that cultural studies is a godsend to some English Departments, because it gives them something different to do and creates new markets for building and justifying careers. That cynicism notwithstanding, I think that postmodernism does help in opening spaces for new understanding. However, we must be careful here, because we still have not figured out how to tell the difference between a genuine and productive critique and a new fad. On this point, let me suggest that the theoretical structure of pragmatism contains most of the worthwhile insights that postmodernism has to offer. The core of pragmatism rests on two ideas the interdependency of time and space and the reality of representations. This core can include cyborgs, one of the hot topics of postmodernism, insofar as it was G. H. Mead who distinguished between subsistence and existence, and argued that things such as chimera and round squares are real. Fact and fiction blur in both pragmatism and symbolic interactionism, rationality is relative, myth is consequential, and the obdurate world is composed merely of

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sedimented interpretations. What the postmodernists offer is an attempt to articulate a historic era that is marked by changes in time-space relations mobilized by electronic technology and media. But that technology in and of itself, or assigning primacy to it, is no justification for the common positioning of pragmatism as modernist and this of little utility or currency in late 20th century society. The lesson here, I think, is that we must be careful about logics-in-use that are buried in the excitement of contemporary theorizing. In particular, it is tempting to use our words and agendas as the criteria for evaluating the adequacy of previous theories, not recognizing that the exercise itself fates previous theories as somehow defective in light of the newer ones. Such critiques therefore appear as collective acts of scholarly tautology, which in the case of the postmodernist critique of pragmatism contains the ironic possibility that G. H. Mead's theory of the past might well just describe the entire process in which his formulations are found inadequate by his critics. We must also be careful for other reasons, one of which is that when we write our words we are often writing about what people do. That is a simple and fundamental meaning of empiricism in the study of human conduct, and it is that criterion that must be the final framework for evaluation. And it is this framework that lets me speak of Norman Denzin, my friend and colleague of nearly thirty years. Norman has worked hard and diligently in recent years to articulate a postmodernist synthesis, and he wants us ultimately to be better empiricists on the grounds of his version of late modernist, corporate capitalistic, mediadriven society. Taking him seriously one day in 1990 I was reading one of his articles in which he stated that as we change the channels of our TV sets, with each channel presenting something different than on the previous channel and demanding different cognitive frames for understanding what we are seeing, that we have the experience of disjointed, fractured selves. Media technology and the world of electronic illusion, he argued, is a hegemonic structure that leads to decentered subjects. So I read Norman's sentence and reflected on it. And then I went to my TV set and turned it on and I began switching channels. And as I did so I focused on experiencing my experiences to see if the selves called out by the different programs were fractured and disjointed. I can honestly report that they were not; indeed, there was a great deal of personal continuity throughout the entire process of channel changing. So I called Norman on the phone and told him of my little empirical test and that his proposition did not hold up and that he might want to revise his statements on that score. The method of analytical induction, versions of which Norman advocates, requires the revision. But we must be careful even here, because if we were to generalize my approach to evaluating theoretical claims about

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human conduct then we all might have to join the flat earth society. After all, their central reasons for believing that the earth is flat is that they have never seen water bend and they think that pictures showing the earth as round have been faked. My bet is that Norman thinks the world is round, which doesn't necessarily mean that he thinks water can bend, but that he thinks that satellite photographs of the earth are accurate and authentic representations. And I agree with him that they are, which means that authenticity or inauthenticity is not a property of media technology but instead is in the interpretation, or what old fashioned interactionism called the definition of the situation. If this is the case, then we have a very sticky situation in which some media representations must be defined as authentic in order to argue the point that media representations in general are inauthenfic. Having identified that sticky situation, I must now move on to discuss some other ones. Symbolic interactionism has always been a radical perspective. The genius of the perspective is in its tenacious adherence to species characteristics of human beings. By virtue of having acquired symbols, the perspective maintains, humans are fated to worlds of representations and interpretation. That is its ontological genius. It's conceptual genius is in the proposition that the joint act - people doing things together - is the fundamental unit of analysis. And it is this claim that has gotten interactionism in the most trouble. American scholars seem to like dualisms - subjective/objective, internal/ external, micro/macro, author/reader, text/subject. Sociology has been constructed ideologically and administratively on the proposition that social structures cause human behavior, a dualistic proposition that gives primacy to large, transcending societal arrangements that was justified by influential misreadings of Durkheim and Marx. Symbolic Interactionism was marginalized because it took the opposite view - social structures don't act, bureaucracies don't act, social classes don't act - rather, people act. And so the interactionist proposition was that human action causes social structures. Herbert Blumer, as a case in point, was called a subjectivist and was regarded as barely deserving the name "sociologist" for insisting that the central human process to grasp and understand was the dialectic of situational demands and persons interpreting the situations with which they are faced. He and other interactionists have been critiqued in the sociological literature for insisting that social theories must be grounded in the facts of human communication, that structures and processes are mutually constitutive, and that ambiguity is normal and ubiquitous. In the face of those critiques, however, it seems that the limits of sociology's orthodoxy have been reached. Formula sociology (do a survey, run a statistic, test a hypothesis), while still prevalent, is now rather weary, and the field has

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been gradually moving toward intereactionist principles and is doing so because it never had any other choice. We find indicators of that movement in the numerous awards given for scholarly books, articles, dissertations, and papers by the American Sociological Association. In the past decade, a disproportionate number of those awards have gone to historical analyses, case studies, or ethnographies, some combining those together, with many of them using linguistic, discourse analysis, narrative, cultural analysis, and explicit interactionist theory. There is no doubt at all that sociology is becoming more compatible with communication studies and interpretive perspectives. But there is an irony here, which I will mention as a way of looping back to my earlier points and as a way of concluding. While sociology is becoming more interactionist, the vast majority of sociologists who are caught up in this trend seem rather unaware that they are expressing and advocating interactionist ideas. In the 1980s, sociologists discovered process, action theory, agency, micro-mobilization of macro-structures, and structuration, not realizing for a moment that these are core elements of pragmatism and interactionism that go back nearly a century in American scholarship. They don't know their own field, not because they don't work hard or are insincere, but because they uncritically have accepted sociology's constitutive rhetoric. When sociologists accept the proposition that only social facts cause other social facts and then they discover that interpretive human activity produces social facts, they think they have discovered something new. This kind of situation is not necessarily a novel one nor is it unique to the field of sociology, but it nonetheless is a problem for an enterprise that extols the virtues of cumulative knowledge, One way out of this morass that in one way or another we all are caught up in is to enter the analysis of ongoing human activity as Dewey described it action with no natural beginnings or endings - from the standpoint of the conversation. It is the joint, social, communicative transaction that is real. That is our empirical referent, and it gives rise both to the reality of subjectivity and to transcending social structures. And it is the conversation within which knowledge is defined as knowledge, which means that reflexivity is inherent in human studies, methodological reactivity is inevitable, theory is partly ideological, and that there is no choice for any of us in these matters but to be very aware of those consequences of human symbolic interaction. By doing so, we might have a chance at discovering and perhaps doing something about the disciplinary strictures that we tend to uncritically accept. We can discover that texts do not read authors, for instance, but instead are elements of situations that must be interpreted as people construct lines of conduct. To assert that texts read authors is to promote a constitutive proposition that is as ill-grounded in actual human conduct as sociology's constitutive proposition that only social

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facts cause other social facts. So we need one another - the interactionist and the c o m m u n i c a t i o n scholar - because we are nearly the same person. A n d if we are going to speak one another's words, we at least ought to be aware that we are doing so if for no other reason than understanding better the agendas we are trying to explicate and promote.

IDENTITY, DISPLACEMENT AND MEMORY Dionel Cotanda

ABSTRACT 1 In this article I draw from my life experiences to show how telling an exile's life story reflects a search for identity within one's memory. I also compare and contrast my experiences to the postmodern world of displacement and point to the vital role of interaction in identity formation and maintenance. I posit that there is no self without an other. Indeed, without Other, Being ends. Yo me fuf de Cuba para mantener mi libertad de critica como cubano, no para convertirme en un americano, o en un cubano-americano,un americano con gui6n [I left Cuba to maintain my freedom to dissent as a Cuban, not to become an American or a Cuban-American, a hyphenated American]. When I arrive in Miami, rumors reinforce my belief that I will soon return to Cubal Cuban nationals train in Guatemala. An invasion of Cuba is only months away. Eisenhower will not tolerate Castro's confiscation without compensation of U. S. properties. The air is thick with the fever of war. Sunday, October 9, 1960, is my second long day in the U.S.A. While I proceed to Tampa, Marina, my fiance6, stays with friends in West Palm Beach. Dusk settles as the Greyhound bus slowly moves West on Seventh Ave. We cross Fifteenth, then Fourteenth Street. We are in the heart of Ybor City from where another exile, the Cuban Apostle Jos6 Mart/, sent the signal to start the war of independence against Spain in 1895. As we turn South on Nebraska Ave., the sun sinks in the horizon and casts long shadows. I begin to notice the grimness around me. Dilapidated frame houses appear ready to tilt on

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 65-74. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN" 0-7623-0754-4 65

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DIONEL COTANDA their side and die. Listless black bodies drag their feet as they slowlymoveto nowhere. Or so it seems. Suddenly I realize everythingis strange, different. No one expects me. I do not know anyone. I feel a knot in my stomach. My hands perspire. My body shivers. Is it the strangeness, the loneliness or the memories? Perhaps, it is all of them combined. /,En que me he metido? surge en mi mente [Whatdid I get myselfinto? pops frommy mind]. The magnitude of my decision begins to surface. But I don't know it yet!

Indeed, at the time, I do not realize that identity is brought forth in conversation with others. Even when exiled, alone and in pain, there is no self without an other. We are a dialogue. On April 21, 1961, the fever of war reaches its zenith. The Bay of Pigs' Invasion is on the front page of every newspaper. Radio and television stations blare the news. I am reassured that I will be back in Cuba soon. Then, seventy two hours later, the Bay of Pigs fiasco stuns the Cuban exile community and becomes an embarrassment to President Kennedy. We resent his last minute refusal to provide air cover to the invasion forces. My belief of a short stay becomes questionable. October 1961 marks the beginning of my second long year in the U.S.A. I feel remorse for not participating in the invasion. To drown my guilt, I intensify my involvement with "el Consejo Revolucionario de Cuba", [the Cuban Revolutionary Council] an outspoken revolutionary group of Cuban exiles bent in overthrowing Castro. Through the Spanish radio, I become their Tampa spokesman. During the ensuing year, Castro's overthrow becomes my obsession. On July 12, 1962, our daughter Ileana is born, a ray of hope in our dark life as exiles. As September 1962 rolls around, I hear drums of war, rumors abound. The U.S. Government plans a new attempt to overthrow Castro. The drum beat of Spanish speaking recruiters exhorts Cuban nationals to volunteer for service in the U.S. Army, confirming the rumors I hear. They promise we will be part of an invasion force to free Cuba. I was not part of the forces that landed at the Bay of Pigs, but I know I must be part of this one. When inducted into the Army, I pledge allegiance to the Cuban and U.S. flags. 2 Ironically, the cultural sites they represent will later pull me in different directions. Every recruit is a Cuban. Every instructor is a hyphenated "American". Our basic training takes place in Ft. Knox. For the most part, commissioned and non-commissioned officers are Korean war veterans who communicate to us in Spanish. Their ethnic background is Mexican, Panamanian, and Puerto Rican. They claim we will be in Cuba soon. An invasion of Cuba appears imminent.

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U n e x p e c t e d l y , in late N o v e m b e r the missile crisis c o m e s to an abrupt end. N u c l e a r c o n f r o n t a t i o n over C u b a is avoided b y the r e m o v a l o f Soviet missiles f r o m C u b a a n d K e n n e d y ' s p r o m i s e n o t to invade or allow an i n v a s i o n of Cuba. Regardless of exiles' efforts to the contrary, K e n n e d y ' s n e w " h a n d s o f f ' p o l i c y towards C u b a c o u p l e d with S o v i e t ' s support for the n e w l y s e l f - p r o c l a i m e d M a r x i s t - L e n i n i s t r e g i m e , Castro's p e r m a n e n c y is guaranteed. In D e c e m b e r , h o m e for Christmas, as Ileana, o b l i v i o u s to our drama, p e a c e f u l l y sleeps in her arms, I tell M a r i n a , No vamos a invadir a Cuba. iPrepfirate para estar aqu/largo tiempo! No se cuando veremos a nuestros padres y herman0s, o a el resto de la familia... [We are not going to invade Cuba. Get ready for a long stay! I have no idea when we will see our parents and brothers, or the rest of our family...]. My mind drifts away to mother, father, brother, grandfather, and other relatives and friends whom I may never see again. I begin to realize the magnitude of my decision, but not how it will affect who I am, where I belong. Birthplaces evoke strong m e m o r i e s . For m o s t of us, they are a place of o r i g i n out o f w h i c h a self emerges. As geographical m a r k e r s o f genetic a n d social roots, they give us a sense of b e l o n g i n g . G e o g r a p h i c residence, as a m e t a p h o r for identity, is the d o m i n a n t m e t a p h o r for any traveler. It points to the place w h e r e o u r j o u r n e y starts. To the s o j o u r n e r it represents the place to return to; to the i m m i g r a n t , the e n d o f a j o u r n e y a n d the start o f a n e w one; to an exile, a place in heaven. A place o n e must reach after d o i n g p e n a n c e that will n o t g u a r a n t e e arrival. As an exile, I p h y s i c a l l y i n h a b i t a place to w h i c h I c l a i m legal rights, A m e r i c a , the site o f m y p r e s e n t life, the culture of m y children, who, like all n o n - A n g l o S a x o n first g e n e r a t i o n b o r n A m e r i c a n s , m u s t c o m e to grips with the q u e s t i o n o f w h e r e the self b e l o n g s - parental, birth/host culture, both, neither? October 1970 marks the beginning of my second long decade in the U.S.A. A cool stillness fills the air. After gently breaking free, deep brown reddish maple leaves slowly settle on the open patio. Marina's father and youngest step-brother discuss the latest news received from Cuba. Their efforts to bring Marina's step-mother and oldest step-brother to the U.S.A. have not been successful. Marina, together with my parents and grandfather listen in deep silence. Laughter from our two youngest daughters, Maria and Lourdes, provide a stark background to the solemn conversation. I realize Fall is upon us as I listen to Ileana, Daaddee, unos nifios en el colegio se burlaron de mi y de mi amiga porque esfftbamos hablando en espafiol [Daddy, some kids in school made fun of me and my girl friend because we were talking in Spanish]. My mind races at break away speed. What do I tell her? How do I reinforce her interest in

my language, the vehicle to my culture?

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DIONEL COTANDA Baibee,/,m puedes hablar en inglds [Baby, can you speak in English]? She is puzzled at my question and comments, Daaddee, /,que pregunta es esa? Tu sabes que yo hablo ingl6s [Daddy, what kind of question is that? You know that I speak English]. /,Los nifios que se burlaron de ustedes hablan espafiol [Do the children that made fun of you speak Spanish]? I ask. When she answers "No", I continue, Bueno, d6jame vet. Cuando ellos hablan, hablan en ingl6s y tu entiendes todo lo que ellos dicen. Cuando tu hablas en ingl6s ellos te entienden. Cuando tu hablas en espafiol, ellos no entienden lo que tu dices./,Dime, quien tu crees que es mas inteligente [Now, let me see. When they speak, they speak in English and you understand everything they say. When you speak in English they understand what you say. When you speak in Spanish, they do not understand what you say. Tell me. who do you believe is smarter?]. Suddenly, her face lights up. A big grin appears. My eyes are moist. The memory is forever embedded in my mind.

As an exile, a member of the Cuban colony in the U.S.A., born and raised in Cuba, my first cultural experiences, i.e. my childhood ontology, were within Cuban culture; 3 my later ones were diasporic, different from the ones experienced by native Cubans in Cuba today. In search of identity, I have experienced both cultures, diasporic and American, but I do not inhabit either. Identity is brought forth in conversation with others. My conversations with my parents, who live4 in the U.S.A., provide a bridge to my past and theirs; with my daughters, to my present and theirs. My identity is continually influenced by my cultural inheritance, my C u b a n i d a d . 5 However, I view my identity as a result of politics rather than of inheritance, and I live with a tension between these two sources (Clifford, 1992, p. 116). I know that American culture deeply influences who I am, but I do not inhabit it either. It is not the site I place my self in. Cuba is the site I not only call my own, but the one significant others place me in. Yet, I know the Cuban culture I left is not the one that travels with me. The one I inhabit is a different Cuba. It is more like a habitus, a set of practices and dispositions, parts of which I remember and articulate in specific contexts, the diasporic experience out of Cuban exiles' collective memory. While mental as well as bodily considerations are involved in questions of personal identity, the most important single feature is m e m o r y (Fitzgerald 1993,

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p. 23). The pain an exile feels is a collective pain, one felt by many others. The exile knows the circumstances oppressing community. Injustice becomes the collective self ever present in the exile. Regardless of an exile's personal freedom and economic success, she will not be satisfied until her country enjoys the liberty and justice lacking when she left (Aguilar Leon, 1991, pp. 104-105). This collective memory, which like all memory is always constructive, becomes a crucial element in maintaining an exile's sense of integrity (Clifford, p. 115). It is an early spring morning. The sun gently breaks through the kitchen windows. A burbling sound interrupts the morning silence. Streams of rich black coffee gush to the top of the coffee maker. The top desperately dances to the steam's rhythmic-freedomseeking efforts. Finally freed, the aroma fills my nostrils. As I sip a cup of Cuban coffee, mother mentions the letter from my cousin that arrived the day before. La Habana... LQuehan hecho de nuestro pals t/a? Ustedes los que se fueron hace mas de 30 afios, fueron inteligentes o visionarios, comprendierona tiempo. Se que el exilio es my duro, ya que separarse de su familia, de su tierra y de sus costumbres es triste, que el exilado no es feliz completamente.Pero el que se qued6 aqu/lleno de esperanzas en un mundo mejor, de mejorfas para todos, ha sido todo lo contrario y no tenemos ni siquiera esperanza ni ilusiones... [Havana... Aunt, what has been done to our country? You who left over thirty years ago, were smart or visionaries,timely understood. I know exile is hard, that to separate yourself from your family, your land, and your customs is sad, that an exile is never content. But the one that stayed here full of hope for a better world, betterment for all, has been the complete opposite and we do not have even hopes or dreams...]. Images rush forth, cousin, aunt, uncle, family gatherings, towering Australian pines silent guardians to my youthful pranks, memories forever embedded in my mind. Exile is cultural dislocation and geographical displacement - not only cultural expatriation, but also mental incarceration and isolation from significant others, a public event with private consequences. A return to Cuba requires C u b a n exiles to give up freedom to dissent (PerezStable, 1993, p. 178). Besides, "Cubans have never considered themselves immigrants. We are e x i l e s . . , making a cameo appearance here" (Arregui as quoted by Milani, 1995, p. 5-2). 6 Indeed, to become an immigrant, abandon the exile status, requires Cubans to give up their collective pain - the C u b a n identity, our Cubanismo. 7 To a large n u m b e r of C u b a n exiles, to exercise the i m m i g r a n t ' s option of belonging to neither C u b a n nation, not to Cuba and not to the exile, is even worse (Rieff, 1993, p. 40). As a Cuban exile, I am an outcast in Cuba. Since, I felt incapable to change the situation of oppression I felt in Cuba, I came to the U.S. and changed my situation. I left Cuba to maintain my freedom to dissent as a Cuban, not to be anAmerican or a Cuban-

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American,

a hyphenated A m e r i c a n . 8 M y departure was a futile act of self

definition. The summer of '89 was not dry and hot, but muggy and wet. At least it was for me on this particular morning at the University of South Florida campus. "I am not sure you should register for this class." Is it his small office, crowded with books and papers scattered on the desk and the floor, his mannerism, his beard, his casual attire, his horn rimmed glasses, his condescending voice, or his disconraging remark that makes me feel uncomfortable? Perhaps it is all of them. At the same time I ask him "Why?", I ask myself if it is because of my piercing eyes and inquiring voice, the Cuba I represent, or that I have not applied to the graduate program. "Well, business people and academia do not always get along well", he darts at me without hesitation. My clean shaven face, long-sleeve button down blue shirt, red-checkered tie, and black shining penny loafers appear to be his target. Undaunted, that afternoon I enroll in his class on therapeutic rhetoric. Later, I learned his rhetoric is not therapeutic. We cannot define ourselves to ourselves. Humans are never alone, even if isolated from other humans physical presence (Gergen 1991, p. 242). We are not self-made. W e are a dialogue, a conversation with others even when exiled, alone and in pain. The pain an e m i g r g feels is the fine line that demarcates exile from immigrant. To an exile, the immigrant status suggests disengagement from collective pain, abandonment o f cherished memories, and loss o f identity. It denies the existence o f an "original" cause for displacement, the "original sin" that led to displacement from paradise: resistance to oppressive power, not an act o f liberation but o f frustration. A n immigrant looks for a new life. Implicit is the possibility o f no return and, with it, possible assimilation, definition b y others. A n exile seeks temporary residence and does not expect assimilation. Return is not only expected, but also taken for granted. An exile refuses to be defined by others, expects to return, and, when unable to, in the end cannot prevent being defined through interactions with others in the host country.

The sense o f displacement, the essence o f exile lingers within me. Displaced, an exile remains in limbo, p l a c e - l e s s , a n o m a d restless to return while hunted b y assimilation narratives that attempt to m a k e her stay, the exile's paradox. I realize that I cannot "be taught in A m e r i c a n " and "play and fight and see and hear in A m e r i c a among A m e r i c a n s in A m e r i c a n streets and houses without b e c o m i n g an A m e r i c a n " (Okada 1976, pp. 15-16). But, I also know that I was not born an American. M y geographical markers are in Cuba and, as long as I

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remain a dissenter, they are not accessible to me. 91 must draw m y identity from memory. F r o m this constant tension of displacement and assimilation I must articulate m y own story, m y own identity. Exiles belong to the world o f displacement. Exile is about being place-less, at ease and at home nowhere on earth. Exile draws its strength from "its residence in an imaginative world o f pure feeling" drawn out o f m e m o r y (Rieff, p. 159). Displaced, separated from her geographic residence and significant others, m e m o r y is a site that an exile, an Other, must visit. M e m o r y b e c o m e s the depository o f identity. M e m o r y evoked b y conversations with others about the past and texts and artifacts to which she has access. M e m o r y travels with her, with me. Memory, m y storage of past experiences that I must recall and link together in order to establish a sense of personal continuity (Crites, 1986, p. 159), is where I belong. It is m y cultural past and will be part o f m y future. A past and a future frozen and fused to the present. However, since cultures are not frozen in time, I know there is no cultural return. There is no cultural past waiting for an exile to return to. Space and time collapse. W h a t was there then b e c o m e s what is here now, a cultural now always present, the one that traveled with m e constantly permeated by the one I now geographically inhabit. Exiles work on a different notion of time. They order where the past and the future take precedence over the present. W h a t might have been and might yet be takes precedence over the actual that could not possibly be (Rieff, p. 19). F o r an exile it is an ever changing cultural present - the tension of the past that might have been and the future that might yet be against the actual that could not possibly be but is - deeply e m b e d d e d in her that provides an orientation to inhabit meaning in a world o f might be: a dream where the future is behind and the present we live is the past w e face that cannot be but is. It is a dry spring. The early morning downpour quenches the thirsty ground. As they pounce the kitchen windows, the large rain-drops produce alternating beats, a drum call to a summer not far away. Mother has received another letter from my cousin. La Habana... Yo todavia no he interiorizado que [mi hijo] se me va, y que a lo mejor estar6 afios sin verlos [hijo, hija politica y nieto], pero es pot su bien y su porvenir aqui no hay futuro para nadie, yo quisiera que todos ellos pudieran irse aunque me quede solita, es triste vet tus hijos sin ilusiones ni esperanzas... [Havana... I have not yet internalized that {my son} is going away from me, and that perhaps I will be years without seeing them {son, daughter-in-law-, and grand-son}, but it is for their welt being and their future. There is no future for anyone here, I wish that all of them {the rest of my children}, could leave even if I am left by myself. It is sad to see your children without dreams or hopes...]. My decision to leave Cuba jumps in front of me and peers into my eyes. I cannot help but compare it to the one announced by my cousin, naked facts in front of me: conditions in Cuba have changed; yet, the political situation is the same. Displacement continues.

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C u b a n s i n a b i l i t y to d i s s e n t is n o w w e d d e d to u n m e t e x p e c t a t i o n s , l a c k o f d r e a m s a n d h o p e s , D e p r a v a t i o n f o r c e s C u b a n s to k e e p t h e i r e y e s f i r m l y f o c u s e d o n t h e p r e s e n t , w h i l e C a s t r o , to i m p o s e h i s w o f l d v i e w , c o n t i n u e s to m a s s p r o d u c e i m a g e s o f t h e past. F u t u r e is C u b a ' s b i g g e s t s h o r t a g e (Iyer, 1995, p. 133). A d r e a m f r o m t h e past, t h e C u b a n r e v o l u t i o n is n o w a n i g h t m a r e p e r p e t u a l l y f r o z e n i n t h e p r e s e n t C u b a n s face. D i s p l a c e m e n t c o n t i n u e s i n t o t h e future. Like displacement in our post modem world, being exiled creates a r h e t o r i c a l e x i g e n c y t h a t c a n o n l y b e r e s o l v e d t h r o u g h d i s c o u r s e : w e must n a r r a t e o u r i d e n t i t y i n o r d e r to a t t a c h m e a n i n g to o u r l i v e d e x p e r i e n c e s , w e must tell s t o r i e s to m a k e s e n s e o f t h e w o r l d , w e must c a r r y o n a d i a l o g u e to tell u s w h o w e are, w h e r e w e b e l o n g . October 8, 1994 marks the beginning of my thirty fifth long year in the U.S. Ileana, Maria, and Lourdes, our three daughters, no longer live with us. I am alone at home when the phone rings. The sun has set a couple of hours earlier. To my "Hello", a woman's voice I do not recognize inquires, Dionel Cotanda? My "Yes" is followed by, Congratulations! I am Dr. Pamela Kalbfleisch from the Department of Communication and Mass Media at the University of Wyoming. I call to inform you that your paper was chosen as this year's winner of the Southern States Communication Association's Bostrom Young Scholar's Award. Out of fifty papers received, your paper "The Rhetorics of the Ruler and the Exile" was rated first. She waits for my response, but I am speechless. My hands shake. "Is this a hoax?" I ponder. "Hello, are you there?" she asks. "What did you say is your name?" is all I am able to muster in a meek tone. "Pamela Kalbfleisch, K-A-L-B-F-L-E-I.. ". I am in a daze. If it is a hoax, I am going to flush it out. I ask her to hold on a minute while I reach for pen and paper. She repeats it a couple of times. My hands tremble. I do not write. Unable to make sense of the experience, I scribble. When I say thank you, she hangs up. Alone, in the darkness of the room, tears flow from my eyes as I ponder, Am I the same college student who attended La Universidad de La Habana and left Cuba to maintain the freedom to dissent as a Cuban? Thirty-four long years in the U.S.A., Cuban, exile, U.S. veteran, American daughters, corporate executive, graduate student, Bostrom Young Scholar... Tightness embraces my chest. The irony baffles me. I did not realize that ultimately, whether resistant or compliant, I was always defined through my interactions with others. I have met the Other. The magnitude of my decision becomes clear.

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NOTES 1. I am indebted to Dr. Eric Eisenberg for his insights and comments on exile and the post modern world of displacement, to fellow students Dianna McCarty and Honey Rand for their recommendations, to Dr. Marsha Vanderford for her suggestions, and to Dr. Arthur R Bochner for his continued guidance and support. 2. I wonder if my pledge unconsciously starts a new identification process. Is this the moment hyphenation begins? 3. To Carcia (1996) "Cuban culture in general was highly Americanized" (p. 15). 4. Following an uncomfortable two year existence with a malfunctioningkidney, my father departed during the summer of 1996. Nevertheless, while one may argue that they are one-sided, our conversations continue. 5. Cubanidad refers to the bond of Cuba as a place of birth and identity as a member of the Cuban nation. The term fuses the search of an affirmation of that which is Cuban regardless of ethnic background to a sense of pride, confidence, and duty (Martinez, 1994, p. 38). It combines values, customs, and traditions to a strong sense of a shared Cuban history that emerges from struggles to obtain Cuba's self-determination as a Spanish colony. 6. Colmenero (1985) claims "most Cubans have consistently resisted assimilation" (p. 107). 7. To Arregui (1995) "'Who am I?', 'Where do I belong?', the sense of identity has been and still is a very important determining factor in the art of many young 'American-Cuban, Cuban-American'" artists. Arregui is the curator for the art exhibition "American-Cuban, Cuban-American, thirty five," where five Cuban artists and one first generation U.S. artist explore "theft" Cuban roots and their new"American identity." He claims "the core of their roots is their Cubanismo." Cubanismo is the core of Cuban exiles' roots, "an inner feeling" (Colmenero, p. 6). While Cubanidad refers to the bond of being born in Cuba and identity as a member of the Cuban nation, Cubanismo refers to a particular way of being regardless of birthplace. 8. Prrez Firmat (1994) claims "Cubans have always been hyphenated Americans" (p. 16). 9. Castro "has never deviated from 'L'etat, e'est moi' (I am the state)" and "his enduring conviction, unchallenged by his colleagues, that he alone understands what is good for Cuba" (Szulc 1995, p. 175). Convinced of possessing the truth, Castro does not tolerate dissent (Perez-Stable, p. 178, Short 1993, p. 117). Thus, his regime continues to extract "a heavy price - the denial of personal and political freedoms - " from "old and new Cuban generations" alike (Short, p. 173).

REFERENCES Aguilar Le6n L. (1991). Reflexiones sobre Cuba y sufuturo. Miami, FL: Ediciones UnversaL Arregui, R. (Curator) (1995, April-June).American-Cuban, Cuban-American, thirty five. Belleair, Fl: The Florida Gulf Coast Art Center. Clifford, J. (1992). Travelingcultures.In: L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and R Treichler (Eds.), Cultural Studies (pp. 96-116). New York: Routledge.

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Colmenero, J. A. (1985). Issues and problems of Cuban identity and acculturation. (Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina.) Dissertation Abstracts International 47, 337A. Crites, S. (1986). Storytime: recollecting the past and projecting the future. In: T. R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative psychology: the storied nature of human conduct (pp. 152-173) New York: Praeger. Fitzgerald, T. K. (1993). Metaphors of identity: a culture-communication dialogue. Albany: State University of New York Press. Garcfa, M. C. (1996). Havana USA: Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida 1959-1994. Berkeley: University of California. Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self." dilemnuts of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. Iyer, P. (1995). Cuba and the night. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Martnez, J. A. (1994). Cuban art & national identity: The vanguardia painters, 1927-1950. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Milani, J. (1995, May 5). Art of Cuba from America: a half- dozen young artists explore their Cuban roots through their work. The Tampa Tribune. pp. 5-1, 5-2. Okada, J. (1976). No-no boy : a novel by John Okada. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ptrez Firmat, G. (1994). Life on the hyphen: The Cuban-American way. Austin: University of Texas Press. Perez-Stable, M. (1993). The Cuban revolution: origins, course, and legacy. New York: Oxford University. Rieff, D. (1993). The exile: Cuba in the heart of Miami. New York: Simon & Schuster. Short, M. I. (1993). Law and religion in Marxist Cuba: a human rights inquiry. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Szulc, T. (1995). Fidelismo: the unfulfilled ideology. In: Irving Louis Horowitz (Ed.), Cuban Communism 1959-1995 (pp. 173-184). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"THE SID CARTWRIGHT INCIDENT A N D MORE": A N AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE' S INTERPRETIVE NARRATIVE OF INTERRACIAL ENCOUNTERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Reuben A. Buford May ABSTRACT In this narrative I capture part of my first year experience in the doctoral sociology program at theUniversity of Chicago. I analyze entries from my U of C journal, recorded during the 1992-93 academic year, paying special attention to discussions regarding race and interracial interactions. I focus on "The Sid Cartwright Incident" - a negative encounter with a white professor - to elucidate ways in which race penetrated my everyday existence and pressed me to define sometimes ambiguous interracial interactions as unpleasant racial encounters. I reveal the complex and contradictory ways that my past experiences with racism and discrimination may have distorted my thinking about interracial encounters and at the same time invigorated my determination to move beyond those encounters. I conclude with a discussion of the cumulative impact of negative interracial encounters on African Americans.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 75-100. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4 75

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I was 11 years old when in 1976, upon the urging of one of my teachers, I began writing a daily journal. At first my journal was part of a weekly assignment. Ms. Levish, 1 in her Swedish accent, explained to me that she wanted me to write down my daily observations and give her my journal to read. She emphasized one rule for writing in my journal: avoid the constraints of formal writing. I happily accepted her invitation and began jotting down two or three notes each day. Regrettably, Ms. Levish and I were unable to establish a lasting relationship because I felt I "couldn't learn" in a Montessori school where the students, mostly white, readily disregarded normative conventions of learning, selfexpression, and creativity. My world of low income lifestyle, "peachtree" switch discipline, and black identity had never been like their world of middle class leisure, leniency, and white identity. I begged my mother to return me to a familiar school setting. After six months of "learning through exploration" my mother agreed with me and returned me to the local Catholic school, an environment of discipline I could recognize. Ms. Levish's final encouragement, however, to keep writing stayed with me. Over the years my journal became not only a place to jot down my deepest thoughts and feelings, but also a place to record the personal experiences of those with whom my life intersected. Because my life had overlapped with so many others, I had determined long ago that my journal would not be a public document. In 1992 I was accepted to the Ph.D., Sociology program at the University of Chicago. This was quite an accomplishment coming from where I had come. I wanted friends and family close to me to share in this experience. In particular, I wanted my good friend Ben, whom I felt was largely responsible for my intellectual development, to see the University through my eyes. I had met Ben, an "old white man," when I was sixteen; he was 50 years old at that time. My mother, brother, and I had recently moved to Hyde Park from the "low end" and I had taken a job as a paper boy. One morning while I was delivering newspapers, Ben and his dog Ebony stopped me to say hello. Although I regarded Ben with suspicion, I took kindly to his pleasant and seemingly sincere greeting. When I returned home that morning I told my mother, "If I should disappear while I'm delivering papers, I just want you to know that I met this strange old white man and you might want to go looking for him." My mother and I laughed. From that morning on I would see Ben almost every morning as I delivered newspapers and we would stop and talk about school, sports, my personal aspirations and his interest in reading. Even

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after I graduated from high school and left for college Ben stayed in touch. In the ten years that followed he became a close friend and mentor. When I was accepted to the University I wanted to honor Ben for his past help in challenging me to grow intellectually. He had been like a father to me. I knew Ben was an avid reader and I thought he would enjoy reading about my personal experience at the University. His support, our friendship, and my interest in sharing my experience were the impetuses for creating my "U of C" journal. My U of C journal was distinct from my personal journal. In it, I wrote about my experiences at the University rather than about my friends' and family's crises which I documented in my personal journal. Although the U of C journal was written for public view (Ben's eyes), it remained a bearing of my soul because of my close relationship with Ben. In sum, my U of C journal was an exercise in "talking" to a close friend about my life at the University. What follows is a "guided tour" through the first year of my U of C journal. It is a narrative that places my experience at the University of Chicago squarely on the shoulders of my feelings regarding race and racism. The sociological contribution of this narrative is that it elucidates how race penetrated my everyday existence and pressed me to define sometimes ambiguous interracial interactions as unpleasant racial encounters. It reveals the complex and contradictory ways that my past experiences with racism and discrimination may have distorted my thinking about interracial encounters and yet invigorated my determination to move beyond those encounters. Finally, it presents the subtleties of what Feagin et al. (1996) have identified as the "cumulative impact" of antiblack discrimination. According to Feagin et al. (1996), present day incidents of discrimination have a cumulative impact on African Americans because these incidents are shared by the victim among family and friends and are "laden with individual and group memories of centuries of racial oppression" (p. 23). Similarly, I suggest elsewhere (May, 2000), that African Americans, "through narratives about their past negative experiences with whites, develop a collective memory of racism and discrimination that is broadened with each additional story told" (202). This collective memory gives a "compounding effect" to the negative interracial experiences discussed among African Americans. Accordingly, the current narrative considers the influence that my family and friends' past negative interracial experiences may have had on my perception of race and racism at the University of Chicago. My U of C journal was written in the spirit of Ms. Levish's original requirement that my writing be free of conventional writing constraints. Consistent with this approach, the journal entries I present below remain largely unchanged with the exception of pseudonyms and spelling corrections.

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I decided against more substantive editing because I wanted to present my thoughts as I was trying to convey them in 1992. While scholarship and good grammar are lacking in my U of C journal entries, I believe they effectively capture the social dynamics of my racial identity and my relationship to the University community.

NARRATIVE In the beginning... In the fall quarter of 1992 the Sociology department at the University of Chicago (a.k.a "Chicago") enrolled one of its "largest graduate cohorts in modern experience" (Abbott, 2000). Of this diverse group of 42 students there were 9 African Americans, probably the largest group of African Americans to attend the graduate sociology program in any one year. 2 Long before I knew the demographics of my cohort I had begun to think about my future at Chicago. In addition to having the usual angst that one might get about meeting the academic challenges at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, I was also anxious about issues of race and racism. I had attended many schools in the past and in each whites had reminded me of my race in ways that devalued that part of me. Whether it was students' racially charged graffiti on school walls, teachers' condescending remarks about African Americans intellectual ability, or principals' uneven punishment of black and white students, I was always aware of my race. A few days before beginning the Ph.D. program I contemplated my strategy for handling the racism that I expected to confront. t told my mother that I had decided to take the posture of ignoringracism. This is because it takes too much energy to try and diffuse it. If people criticize me withoutjustification, then I will take this criticism as an attack on my race whichI am helpless to defend against because the attacker has this conceptionof people of color and will not readily change it. So instead of me trying to changehis thoughts about black people in general, I ignore the racial attacks by not taking them personally. My mothersaid, "I'm saying,fuck that. People who attack you for race reasons have a problem and its their problem. Keep movingon." In my 26 years of living, my experiences with racism and discrimination and those of my friends and family bad compounded in my memory to give me a sense that racial conflict was inevitable. In my thinking, every African American in their fight mind should be prepared for imminent racism. I could not walk through life oblivious to the ramifications of being black. I could not deny all of the references to "my people" as inferior. I had to be prepared to confront challenges without losing my only opportunity to grab some of the

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intellectual and material goods offered to so few. M y mother, having had many of her own negative interracial encounters, encouraged me to keep moving on if I should be confronted with such race-based challenges. With these thoughts, I began m y mental preparation for the confrontations ahead. During m y time at Chicago I would continue to reflect upon the centrality of race for how I viewed the world and how others viewed me. Beyond my concern about imminent racism I was worried about impending feelings of social isolation. Not the kind of social isolation that graduate students expect when beginning doctoral studies, but the kind of social isolation associated with being one of a few African Americans in a graduate program. A day before the sociology orientation I pondered m y social life. As I sat in the U of C cafeteria by myself I began to think of how lonely and isolated it is for a black man in a sea of white. I looked around and saw only one other black in the cafeteria. She was with a group of students. I remember growing up and going to restaurants frequented by whites and discovering that I would be the only black in there except for the hired help. Not at the U of C. The hired help is now populated by Latino workers. I am not worried about isolation, because much of my life has been in isolation. I have become accustomed to finding strength in myself. With these feelings of impending isolation, I attended the sociology department orientation. As part of the orientation the other first year students and I attended a retreat. The retreat was an opportunity for us to talk to faculty and meet one another. I was excited to discover that there were eight other first year African American students. I felt that one advantage to having such a large cohort of African Americans was that I was unlikely to be the voice of the "African American community." Perhaps whites would now be less likely to turn to me and ask, "So what do blacks think?" And I would not have to respond to myself, " H o w the hell do I know, I ' m just speaking for Reuben." Now I could be an individual and so could the other African Americans. Despite our individuality, however, I felt confident that the other African Americans in m y cohort had experienced race in a way that the white students could not. Thus, this large African American cohort would allow me to develop both a sense of individual identity and group identity. The retreat was enjoyable and informative. In addition to meeting new students and faculty, it was also an opportunity for me to re-establish contact with Professor Cartwright, w h o m I had met on a previous visit to the University. Professor Cartwright would prove to be an early supporter of m y efforts at Chicago but I would later view him as I had viewed so many other whites. He would become, to me, just another white protagonist in the many racial dramas that had unfolded in my life.

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R E U B E N A. B U F O R D MAY We spent time at the retreat talking in groups. The focus group discussed, preliminary examinations, research assistantships, first year courses, and financial matters. I had been to visit all of my other groups that had been assigned. I finally came to my last group which was financial matters. By this time the groups had dispersed somewhat and I had the opportunity to sit with three professors and two other students. Drs. Turner, Cartwright, and Dillis. I openly explained to the three of them that I had received a University Trustee Fellowship and that I had received a student loan. I also stated that I did not estimate that my funds would last me until I got to the end of the first term. Both Prof. Turner and Cartwright were quite concerned. I reminded Cartwright that I had mentioned my financial condition to him during my summer visit. I told him that I was afraid that I would not be receiving enough financial support. He told me to talk to him on Monday. Then the others left the group so that they could get ready for lunch. Cartwright asked me to remain seated and he discussed with me the opportunity to have a job that did not require much work because he realized that I was trying to lay a good academic base. He seemed very sincere. I told him that I would appreciate anything that he would be able to do and that I felt that I should at least have a fair shot at producing the kind of quality work that other students would have a chance to produce. He said, "It is difficult to concentrate when you have to deal with such distracting issues, and we would not want to lose you." For whatever its worth, he sounded sincere. Whether he is motivated to keep me in because they need me as a black or whether he is genuinely concerned about his students, it really doesn't matter to me because I believe that he will be supportive.

W h y w a s P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t so c o n c e r n e d a b o u t m e ? D i d h e t r e a t o t h e r s t u d e n t s i n this w a y ? W h a t d i d h e h a v e to g a i n ? T h e s e q u e s t i o n s w e r e f i r m l y entrenched in my mind. Somehow I had mistakenly bought into the notion that African Americans were needed (Perhaps my feelings resulted from the national dialogue around affirmative action and the need for minority r e p r e s e n t a t i o n at c o l l e g e s a n d u n i v e r s i t i e s . ) . N o t n e e d e d i n a s i n c e r e w a y b u t n e e d e d like " t o k e n s . " I l e a r n e d , h o w e v e r , t h a t a l t h o u g h s t u d e n t s w e r e i m p o r t a n t resources for professors, no specific student was needed. He or she was not essential for their work on research projects, for their assistance in the c l a s s r o o m , o r f o r t h e i r c o n t r i b u t i o n s to t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l c o m m u n i t y . O v e r t h e f o u r y e a r s I s p e n t at C h i c a g o t h i s t r u t h b e c a m e e v i d e n t as r a c i a l l y a n d ethnically diverse members of my cohort became academic, financial, and personal casualties. Once they were gone, few of us missed their specific contributions. A f t e r t h e r e t r e a t I w a s d e t e r m i n e d to find a w a y to m a n a g e m y f i n a n c i a l s i t u a t i o n so t h a t I w o u l d h a v e t h e b e s t c h a n c e o f s u c c e s s at t h e U n i v e r s i t y . I h a d little t i m e to c o n s i d e r t h e n a t u r e o f t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p I w a s to e n t e r w i t h P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t a n d t h i s m a d e m e a little u n e a s y . Still, m y f i n a n c i a l n e e d s w e r e i m m e d i a t e s o I c o n t a c t e d h i m t h e f o l l o w i n g day. I was to contact Dr. Cartwright today. I finally caught up with him in the afternoon. He told me that they had two things in the working for me. The first he said he was working on and the second one he was really excited about. The first was the possibility of the University

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providing me with a stipend to add to my funds that I was presently receiving. He told me that more people had to review my file before they could make a judgment on my award. The second thing that he had for me was a research assistant position on his research team. He was so excited because he had just got a big grant. He told me that the work would really be undemanding and that all parties could benefit. I got the sense that they both created this job for me and that they will also be supportive of my study. He assured me that they did need the help and that we all had an interest in the research. I thanked him and told him that I would be in on Monday to start my first day of work. The funny thing about Dr. Cartwright is that he hasn't once shaken my hand. I find that strange. I have never been forward enough to force this issue with him. I bet one damn thing is for sure. If Siddy boy shakes my band it will be damn sincere. A l t h o u g h I w a s r e l i e v e d to h a v e a d d r e s s e d m y f i n a n c i a l c o n c e r n s , C a r t w r i g h t ' s behavior b o t h e r e d me. I had met Professor Cartwright on three separate o c c a s i o n s a n d his f a i l u r e to s h a k e m y h a n d at a n y t i m e s t a y e d w i t h me. I h a d a l w a y s b e e n t a u g h t that a h a n d s h a k e w a s a g e s t u r e o f m u t u a l r e s p e c t . M y c o l l e g e b a s k e t b a l l c o a c h e s p e c i a l l y e m p h a s i z e d this g e s t u r e . W h e t h e r y o u d e f e a t e d y o u r o p p o n e n t or w e r e d e f e a t e d b y t h e m , it w a s t h e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y o f all i n v o l v e d to s h o w r e s p e c t t h r o u g h a h a n d s h a k e . I w a s u n a w a r e , at that t i m e , t h a t I w o u l d take C a r t w r i g h t ' s v i o l a t i o n o f this c o d e o f d e c e n c y as e v i d e n c e t h a t h e w a s racist. In t h e s e v e r a l w e e k s that p a s s e d s i n c e I b e g a n m y first a c a d e m i c q u a r t e r at the U n i v e r s i t y I h a d f o u n d t h e c l a s s e s b o t h c h a l l e n g i n g a n d i n t e r e s t i n g a n d m y professors encouraging and supportive. M y library research for Professor C a r t w r i g h t w a s also g o i n g w e l l a n d h e c o n t i n u e d to p r a i s e a n d e n c o u r a g e m e . Dr. Cartwright called back down for me and I went up to see him. We sat down and he told me that he had gone through my material and suggest that I go and copy these articles that he marked. He said that I had found some interesting things and that I was on the mark. He asked me how classes were going. I said "Fine. I hand in a mid-term tomorrow and received one today." I told him that I would have copies of the articles for him on Friday. He said, °'Don't let this interfere with your work." I said, "I know. I hesitated when I first called you on Monday to tell you that I would not be in, but I concluded that my class was more important and you had told me to concentrate on it, so I called you." He said. "When it comes to your class work and this work, this is always secondary. You could always do this over Christmas break" He then winked at me and smiled. I smiled back and said, "You don't have to worry I am going to put my school work first." As I got my things together to leave he said, "I will see you Reuben, thanks a lot." I said, "Alright Sid I'll see you Friday." I realized that I had called him by his first name. I must have felt very comfortable with him because I relaxed and became personal. I realized that I might have offended him and turned to him and said, "I hope it is not inappropriate to call you Sid." He said, "Oh no." I said, "I had this same thing come up with Dr. Rossman who told me to call her Carrie. I didn't feel comfortable because Dr. Babcock made it clear that students should call him Dr. Babcock." Sid said, "Don't worry about it. We will let things happen naturally." I left.

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REUBEN A. BUFORD MAY I felt good about the whole thing because I had done good research, I had become comfortable with Dr. Cartwright, and he was very supportiveof my studies. This makes it all a lot easier to study and complete assignments.

Although other students called Professor Cartwright, Sid, for me to do so felt counter-intuitive to what I had been taught all m y life. I remembered how m y mother had emphasized that in formal relationships, especially with whites, you keep things formal. Her thinking on this was affected by how she had viewed her own father's experiences. She used to tell m y brother and me, " W h e n we went back down south to visit, m y daddy had to plan trips so that we would only have to stop for gas. M y mother would even carry old m a y o n n a i s e jars so we could pee in them in the car if we had to go to the toilet. It just w a s n ' t safe for us to stop because we might be attacked by whites. Whenever we would travel from Chicago to Memphis my daddy would get pulled over by a white police officer. He used to say, "Yes sir officer and no sir officer," and stare down while they called him boy. Even the whites that m y father knew and thought he could trust he called Mr. so and so. He tried to keep his distance because once you get friendly you make yourself vulnerable." W h e n m y mother used to tell us this story, m y brother and I understood the sentiment she was trying to convey. Beyond providing us with details of the dangerous conditions under which African Americans traveled to visit family, she also wanted us to understand that if we kept our social distance from whites we would be able to better negotiate interracial encounters. As the first academic quarter progressed I, like most of the other students in m y cohort, began to feel "strained and drained." Most of us felt like we had more books to read and more papers to write than we had time to finish. Still, there were little reminders that I was unlike the other students. For instance, I had the following experience when I went to eat lunch and meet m y fianc6e at the often crowded Reynolds Club - a University cafeteria open to the public. This experience remained with me throughout the day. I was having lunch by myself and waiting for Marie to come. I sat watching the door. This older white woman came to my table, did not speak, did not acknowledge my presence in anyway, and then sat down directly in line of my vision facing the door. I passively leaned over the table and said to her politely, "Excuse me. Do you mind moving a little to the left so that I can watch the door, I am looking for someone." She immediately stood up, gathered her things and said, "That is just fine. I was thinking of moving out to the other side anyway" She moved determinedly to another table. I got pissed because I couldn't understand what was going on. I guess its because I figured she was upset because she had to sit next to me anyway. I don't think I am reading too much into to this because her actions were far greater than anything I could attempt to write. After being victimized for so many years by blatant and subtle racism, you learn to understand when it occurs and when it doesn't.

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This w o m a n ' s behavior was confusing to me. I had used deference and politeness but had gotten an unexpected response. Perhaps if I could have asked her, " W h a t ' s up with that behavior?" she might have told me she was upset that the cafeteria was crowded, or she misunderstood m y request, or she was on psychotropic drugs that made her respond brashly to strangers. Since we were previously unacquainted I knew she was not responding to one of m y personality flaws. I was unable to know her motive but I felt it was something about me that brought her response. I was left concluding that she had an unfavorable feeling about African Americans. Even in writing this in m y journal, I was concerned that I was "reading too much" into the encounter. After all, I had been taught as a matter of survival that I should be cautious about whites' intentions but not paranoid. Although these occurrences were happening in the larger university c o m m u n i t y there were few such irritating experiences within my department. The professors continued to encourage me, especially Professor Cartwright. I went and talked to Dr. Cartwright today about my work for him. He told me to see if I could dig up some more articles and then come by and see him on Monday. He then said, "How is everything else going." I said, "Pretty good except for Mid-terms/' [He gave me a look of anticipation] I said, "They went okay, but I didn't do as well as I expected. You could tell that I have been out of school for a while and now all I am U~gingto do is to shape things up so I can do well on finals." He looked at me and smiled and said, "You'll do it." If that wasn't encouragementthen I don't know what is. I had two pleasant surprises today and both from professors that were supportive.Thank goodness that Dr.Cortez was not the only professor that I came to see when I came to visit. I had gotten the feeling that this place was not for a black man. But again, professors have made the effort to extend the same encouragement to blacks as to other students, and the more impressive thing is that they don't seem to be straining to do it. I didn't say all professors, and I didn't say all the time. One of the reasons that I "had gotten the feeling that this place was not for a black man" was because Professor Louise Cortez had treated me poorly during m y initial visit. I had met with her during m y prospective's visit - all admitted students were encouraged to take this visit before enrolling in the sociology program. I had called and scheduled an appointment with Professor Cortez because I was interested in her research. W h e n I arrived for m y appointment, Professor Cortez kept m e waiting 20 minutes; ten of which she spent standing before me in the reception area discussing informal matters with a graduate student. She then invited me back to her office. As I sat down in the chair across from her she picked up the telephone, dialed a number, and began talking. W h e n she finished her phone call she said, "Okay, now what are you here for?" I then explained to her that I would be enrolling in the Fall quarter and that I was interested in her work. She briefly described to me, in a condescending

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manner, her research. When she finished I asked her if she knew of ways that incoming students could secure additional funding for graduate studies. She snapped, "You don't have funding? You shouldn't come here if you don't have funding. You should go and get a job until you can get funding." I was shocked. It wasn't so much what she said but the way she said it. After her remarks I thanked her for her time and departed. I felt disrespected because of the disregard she showed for my time. This was especially upsetting because Professor Cortez was both a woman and a member of an ethnic group that had seen its share of discrimination. I asked myself, "Weren't we all in this together? Didn't she understand what it felt like to be treated as if one's major life concerns were insignificant to the rest of the (white) world?" Her remarks had resurrected, in my memory, an experience my mother had when she tried to enroll in one of Chicago's community colleges in the late 60s. At that time, my mother was a single parent and my brother and I were preschoolers. Through the course of registration the white male administrator assisting her discovered she was a single parent and he said, "Lady what are you trying to do? Why are you trying to go to school? You need to go and get on public aid or work or something and take care of your kids." My mother, not easily discouraged, continued on and completed school. Although I was initially disheartened by Professor Cortez's remarks to me and her treatment of me, I determined that I would continue on to achieve my goals. Fortunately, I received what seemed to be a great deal of support and encouragement from other faculty. Perhaps it was Professor Cortez's initial rude treatment of me that later gave me an appreciation for the kindness of the other professors. As the quarter moved on I began to interact with students and faculty in social settings that I had initially determined off limits. One such place was in the gymnasium playing basketball. I had always felt that the basketball court was the one place that I was the real Reuben. I was verbally and physically aggressive, manipulative, intelligent and confident. All of these characteristics I felt could be intimidating and unwelcomed in my new setting. Still, at the urging of Cecil and Louis, both advanced African American sociology students, I joined the 7:00 am, Henry Crown fieldhouse basketball crew. This informal group of players consisted mostly of white faculty (none from sociology) and graduate students. Chancellor Stocks, a renowned anthropologist in his late 50s, had started the "group" in the early 1980s. It had grown to about 15 players ranging in age from their early 20s to late 60s. The players came together each morning to exercise and relax from the rigors of academia. These men were hardly the type of players that I thought would welcome my

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schoolyard style of play, a style I had grown up playing on the city's outdoor courts with my brother Trey and best friend Vincent. I played basketball with the Anthropology and Sociology departments this morning (7:15 am). I was easy on them because part of my playing at the University is related to peoples' perception of me as a person. I am sure that they would not understand the aggressive nature that I exhibit when I am playing with Vincent and Trey at UIC, I was enthusiastic but I did not verbally assault any other player nor did I physically clash with them in mortal combat to show the strength that me and my regular playing partners do, There was one player that tried to raise my competition level by playing solid defense, Instead of letting him have all the shit in the world I relaxed and enjoyed the fact that many of the people playing were playing for the exercise. I know that I will continue to play with Trey and Vincent as much as possible. I will get a chance to get away from the white world of U of C and relax with some down home hooping.

On the Henry Crown fieldhouse basketball court I tried to convey an unassertive personality. I thought that if I exposed the mentality I had when I played with my African American friends, then my faculty and student associates might view me as an outsider. They might also misconstrue my aggressive behavior as violent and in turn come to fear me in much the same way as they appeared to fear many of the anonymous African American men they passed on the streets of Hyde Park. These men, although only a minority of African American men who moved in and around Hyde Park, hailed from the low income neighborhoods surrounding the University. Their presence generated fear among the students and faculty. I had learned early that whites's perceived threat of black male criminality was so prevalent in Hyde Park that many residents practiced avoidance techniques when they encountered African American males. In fact, two of my professors from the Sociology department consistently failed to greet me as I passed them in the department hallway. ! felt their behavior was largely due to the fact that they had become so unaccustomed to having black men in their social space. When passing me in the hallway they saw me as a black man, immediately identified me as a stranger, and then did little further to modify their impression of me as we walked closer toward one another. Since these two professors avoided eye contact with me they could not distinguish me as someone they knew. Although I wore a coat and tie to class to demonstrate I belonged to the "intellectual community," I still felt regarded as an outsider. It was only after I greeted these professors by name that they then acknowledged me with "Oh hi Reuben." I was confused. I wondered whether they were practicing avoidance techniques that some professors use to avoid students in general. However, in witnessing these same professors interact with white students as they passed them, I concluded that I had been ignored because I was an African American male--in this context a perceived threat.

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M y perception of this posture toward black males had a profound affect on me. I soon realized that the c o m m u n i t y ' s fear of African American males had supplanted m y own confidence - a confidence I had all the while growing up - in safely sharing social space with anonymous African American males. The tricks that such an environment plays on the m i n d can have profound consequences for how one behaves. I was constantly aware of m y blackness as a "bad thing." I should have mentioned attending the U of C has changed my relation with Black males that I see walking down the street. Whites have been so preoccupied with the black male as criminal they have undermined my own security about sharing the same space with brothers. Every now and then I have to check my feelings and remember that the U of C is a wonderful place to study but is also a great bundle of fear. I had come to this conclusion by observing that the university administration posted criminal activity notices in c o m m o n areas throughout its buildings. In reading these notices I would become especially aware of m y race and gender. Standing in the corridor of the Regenstein Library I once read, "A S T U D E N T WAS R O B B E D AT G U N P O I N T . . . T H E A S S A I L A N T WAS . . . A B L A C K MALE." They were talking about someone who could look like me. As a University of Chicago student I could now understand why the neighborhood police in Hyde Park had stopped me so often when I was growing up. They had interrogated me with questions like,"What are you doing around here? What are you looking for?" With m y insight as a Chicago student, all of these questions seemed like the right ones to have asked an intruder. Still, m y newfound understanding did little to wipe away the feelings of anxiety and humiliation I remembered having each time I was stopped by the police. In fact, one particular incident continues to generate negative feelings. One early morning, when I was 16 years old, I was on m y way to school but was stopped by two police officers. "Where are you going," one officer asked. "I'm going to school early to eat breakfast," I responded. "Did you know you fit the description of a rapist seen here yesterday?" he asked. "No," I said as I became anxious. "Let me have your I.D.," the officer said, "We're going to write a contact card out on you. We'll keep the card on you for 30 days and if something happens we'll have to come and get you." I compiled with their request for my identificationcard. They returned the card to me and I walked away. As I left I felt humiliated and insecure. When I arrived at school later that morning I telephoned my mother upset and explained that I had been stopped by the police and they had written a contact card on me. My mother was incensed. She asked me for the squad car number which she had directed me and my brother to note whenever we were randomly stopped by police. I remembered the squad car number and gave it to her. That afternoon when I returned home from school I opened the door and there sat the

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two officers that had stopped me in the park. My mother had called the district police office and demanded that the officers destroy the contact card because she did not want the police to have any further reason to harass me. The two officers apologized but also explained that they were doing their job. This was one of several encounters with the police in which I had done nothing but still I was stopped, frisked, harassed, or threatened. M a n y years later, as a U o f C student, the f e e l i n g s o f a n x i e t y I had as a y o u n g m a n f r o m i n c i d e n t s o f racial profiling like this w o u l d r e - e m e r g e as p o l i c e squad cars p a s s e d m e on the street. D e s p i t e t h e s e o c c u r r e n c e s in the c o m m u n i t y I c o n t i n u e d to feel c o m f o r t a b l e w i t h the faculty and students in m y department. I b e g a n to l o o s e n the p r o t e c t i v e shell I u s e d to insulate m y s e l f f r o m i m m i n e n t racism. I was n o w w i l l i n g to share p e r s o n a l f e e l i n g s about m y life at the University, a l t h o u g h I r e m a i n e d s u s p i c i o u s o f w h i t e p r o f e s s o r s and colleagues. I talked with Dr. Cartwright briefly about my research for him. I then said,"I have a little personal aside. When I first got here I thought it would be difficult to become readjusted to going to school but the professors have been really supportive. That is of course including you." He said, "I am glad things are working out for you." [I later told my mother about this exchange, and she said that it was good that I let them know when they are doing good, because it doesn't take much for them to flick up and when they fuek up they fuck up bad. I am in agreement with this line of thinking. It's almost like encouraging children to do good. You always have to tell them they have done good so that they think less about doing bad, and you know when they finally do bad, they really do bad.] A s the first quarter c a m e to a c l o s e I was yet to c o n f r o n t r a c i s m - i m p l i c i t suggestions, or e x p l i c i t statements that A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s w e r e s o m e h o w i n t e l l e c t u a l l y i n f e r i o r than w h i t e s b e c a u s e o f their race. Perhaps I had a v o i d e d t h e s e c h a l l e n g e s , like s o m e o f the o t h e r A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s in m y cohort, b e c a u s e I had a v o i d e d i n t e r a c t i n g w i t h w h i t e students and faculty a r o u n d issues o f race. F o r instance, S S R ( S o c i e t y for S o c i a l R e s e a r c h ) , a student o r g a n i z a t i o n , was p u s h i n g an initiative for the r e c r u i t m e n t o f black, Latino, and A s i a n faculty. G l e n i c e , an a d v a n c e d s o c i o l o g y student o f F r e n c h - C h i n e s e h e r i t a g e asked m e w h y the A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n students did not participate in the d e p a r t m e n t organization. I had a conversation with the TA Glenice. She asked me why weren't any blacks getting involved with the SSR (sociology graduate organization). I told her that there is a lot of mystery around how some of the blacks got to come to U of C and we are always working to counter negative images around the issues of Affirmative Action. She encouraged me or someone else to get involved because the SSR helps make decisions on faculty hiring and other related department things. In s p e a k i n g w i t h G l e n i c e I t o o k on the i n f a m o u s r o l e o f the s p o k e s p e r s o n for the " A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n c o m m u n i t y . " I p r e s e n t e d m y p e r s o n a l f e e l i n g s as a definitive s t a t e m e n t a b o u t A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s ' c o n c e r n w i t h affirmative action.

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My statements were based on my own feelings of insecurity about my academic ability. I had heard enough questions about affirmative action, diversity, racial quotas, and leveling the playing field from whites to raise doubt in me about the ability of both myself and the other African Americans in my cohort. The truth is my African American colleagues were indeed among "the best and brightest." Many had attended Ivy league colleges and universities and graduated with honors. Some had even won national fellowships to support their graduate studies. They had been tested and proven. I, on the other hand, had not. I had attended the "moderately competitive," Aurora University, fifty miles from Chicago. I had gone on to receive my M.A. from DePaul University, a "competitive" university in Chicago. Although I had done well, I was aware of the status differences between my local education and the elite education of my black colleagues. While my African American colleagues might have failed to share my insecurity, they did seem "over" attentive to their work. On more than one occasion I had observed that the black students were more focused on their academic responsibilities, while the white students seemed to be focused on "getting together" socially. We even attended study sessions that few whites attended. I attended a study session for m y Theory course. This study group is not required and is led by a second year student who is a TA for Dr. Schleg. I enjoyed it. I discussed quite a bit, I found the exchange very helpful in terms of getting the Marx theory down. When I had first entered the study room, two African American students that I knew laughed at me. I was probably 2 minutes late. I wondered why they laughed. After the session I walked up to Tashonda and Channelle and asked why they had laughed at me. They told me that they had made the observation that the only people that attended the study group were minorities (Minority, in this context is used to mean African American, Latino, Native American (of whom I know none), and Asians.). 1 recalled that was true for the most part. There was only one white student. As we walked to m y apartment they asked me why did I think only minorities attended the session. I said that I didn't know. The following hypotheses were discussed by us: • That the other students were confident in their academic background. • That we were the only people that did not grasp the concepts and felt we needed the study (I found that not to be the case. It seemed to me that most of us had grasped the concepts and were able to apply Marx theory to very immediate things, as well as stretch his theory as far as it could go. I was surprised at the number of students who had grasped Marx. I guess I doubted our ability as a group). • That other non-minority students would attend the session as the course progressed.

It was in study sessions like these that I became aware of the individual and collective intellectual ability of my colleagues. While at that time I could began to appreciate our ability, I still had the sense that we were focused on succeeding because we wanted to represent ourselves well as African

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Americans. Fortunately, none of us suffered from "John Henryism" - the belief that as African Americans we must outwork whites in our every undertaking (Brooks, 1990). Such a belief can create mental and physical stresses - like depression and hypertension - that ultimately detract from one's ability to achieve. We were focused; but, not to death. W h e n m y first academic quarter at Chicago ended I felt more confident than I had when I started. I had survived m y classes and I had been c o m m e n d e d for the work I had been doing for Professor Cartwright. I felt comfortable around m y colleagues and I felt like m y department appreciated m y contribution to the learning environment. Still, I had yet to free the notion of i m m i n e n t racism from m y mind. I remained cautious because in the past I had tried to build m e a n i n g f u l relationships with whites but felt that most of m y attempts had been thwarted by whites's reservations about building friendships with African Americans.

"The Cartwright Incident" In m y second academic quarter I complicated m y relationship with Professor Cartwright by taking a class with him. He had been building his perception of me on the basis of the work I had done on his research project. Now he would have the opportunity to observe me in class and read my written work. I looked forward to this new relationship as an opportunity for me to get to know Professor Cartwright better and to further impress him. I have been busy working on my draft for Dr. Cartwright that I promised him by Friday. I have been working hard on it even though I know that it is a draft. I want Dr. Cartwright to be impressed with my work enough that he will consider me a good student to invest his time in. I hope that he can appreciate the fact that this is a draft. He seems real receptive. I will also be attaching a note to the front of the draft that gives him full privilege to edit as he sees fit. After I gave the first draft of m y paper to Professor Cartwright he read it and returned it to me with very few comments. I worked the final three weeks of the quarter on the paper and gave him the final draft. I thought I had done a good j o b but was unsure about m y revisions. Professor Cartwright read, graded, and returned the final draft to me. It was at this point that m y life at the University and m y relationship with Sid Cartwright was transformed by the pressures of graduate school and the underlying but constant themes of race I perceived. I got my paper back from Dr. Sid Cartwright. It was disappointing. I received a B - . It wasn't so bad that I got the B - , because I thought the paper needed a lot more work. I was surprised because when I received the paper there were extensive remarks written on every page. This is not bad in the sense that it showed that the two professors and t.a. spent

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R E U B E N A. B U F O R D MAY time reading and critiqing the paper. Furthermore, I agree with all of the remarks written. You might say to me, well you should be lucky that you got a B - if it was as bad as you say. Well, I was disappointed with Mr. Cartwright. I had given him a draft of my paper three weeks prior to the end of the term. He read the draft and wrote only one comment that said, "This is a good descriptive essay but needs to be much more analytic?' [We met and discussed it.] Well I made some adjustments taking into consideration his comments, but for the most part the paper's first section was unchanged. On the final draft he wrote, "This, 1 am afraid, does not move far from the prior version. Though it is expanded and is better written. Let's talk the paper over." Given that Mr. Cartwright did not take the opportunity to put me on the right path after reviewing my first draft, I am pissed. He was aware of the content of my paper. He could have offered more concrete written suggestions as opposed to dropping titles of books and authors. [I should have paid attention to his hidden signals which were that he had a set of authors which he felt were important to what I was writing. Unfortunately I did not agree that the authors applied after perusing their works.]

P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t ' s w r i t t e n c o m m e n t s to m e w e r e m u c h like t h o s e a n y g r a d u a t e s t u d e n t m i g h t h a v e r e c e i v e d at s o m e p o i n t i n t h e i r career. H i s w i l l i n g n e s s to " t a l k t h e p a p e r over," m i g h t a l s o h a v e b e e n c o n s i s t e n t w i t h w h a t a r e a s o n a b l e s t u d e n t s h o u l d e x p e c t . Yet, I i n t e r p r e t e d C a r t w r i g h t ' s c r i t i c i s m o f my paper with a degree of mistrust. Why would he give me extensive c o m m e n t s o n t h e final d r a f t w h e n I c o u l d h a v e u s e d t h e m o n t h e first d r a f t ? D i d n ' t h e s u p p o r t m y e f f o r t s ? W o u l d he, i f I w e r e a w h i t e s t u d e n t , h a v e g i v e n me better initial feedback? The feelings of past racism and discrimination b e g a n to b o i l i n m y b o d y a n d C a r t w r i g h t r e p r e s e n t e d t h e o b j e c t a g a i n s t w h i c h I s h o u l d rail. I felt t h a t m y " p e r s o n a l " r e l a t i o n s h i p w i t h P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t warranted that he give me more direction than he had given. I was confused and n e e d e d a n s w e r s to m y q u e s t i o n s . F o r a n s w e r s , I t u r n e d to p e o p l e w h o c o u l d r e l a t e to m y i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e r a c i a l u n d e r t o n e s o f m y e x p e r i e n c e . I a s k e d L o u i s , a n o l d e r A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s o c i o l o g y s t u d e n t , f o r a n s w e r s . To m y s u r p r i s e , L o u i s r e s p o n d e d to m y s i t u a t i o n b y f o c u s i n g o n l y o n t h e b r o a d e r e x p e r i e n c e o f g r a d u a t e s o c i o l o g y s t u d e n t s at t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f C h i c a g o . I talked to Louis Stewart yesterday. I told him about what happened with Sid Cartwright. He gave me some words of insight. First he asked me how important was Cartwright to what I had planned to do in the future. He suggested that I talk with Cartwright about my paper and find out how invested he is in my development. This would help me to determine how I would relate to him in the future. Louis also told me not to be afraid to work on Cartwright's project just for money purposes as opposed to getting involved. He also suggested that we talk with one another about my papers before I write them because he had noticed from my previous comments that people tend to say that I am not analytic enough and that I need to invest more time in that. He said that many students here are unable to elevate their thoughts from the descriptive like thoughts to a theoretical thinking and this is what sets students apart here at the university. Louis told me to be patient because relationships with professors have to grow. He also said that professors basically don't respond to you until you have proven in some way that you merit the attention that they give you. .

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It seemed that Louis and I viewed the world through two distinctly different lenses. He viewed the world through the eyes of a student familiar with the process of graduate education while I viewed the world through the eyes of a young man who had been challenged consistently by whites's racist attitudes. Still, Louis's response immediately challenged m y confidence. Was I one of those students that could not move from "descriptive-like thought to theoretical thinking?" I had no immediate answer. All the time I had worked for Professor Cartwright it seemed we were building a personal relationship. I took our relationship to be a positive indication that I belonged at Chicago and that I had done work to merit his attention. Given our relationship I was sure that he would give me the necessary guidance to be successful both in the department and in his class. However, after I received m y paper I reasoned that since he had failed to give me the kind of feedback necessary to substantially improve a paper, then how could I trust him to help guide me successfully through the program. Perhaps my distrust of Cartwright was heightened by the fact that m y mother, who had been pursuing her doctorate at a state university, was mistreated by her advisor. Her advisor, also a white male, had built a positive working relationship with m y mother. W h e n he accepted an appointment at another university he took m y mother's research data with him and published research from them. In so doing he effectively set my mother's progress toward her doctorate degree back 4 years. She ultimately became engaged in a 12 year struggle that traveled an academic path lined with discrimination. She finally received her Ed.D. in 1995, one year before I completed the Sociology program at the University of Chicago. M y new mistrust of Professor Cartwright mixed with other interracial experiences and began to press down on me. In my third academic quarter, I began taking a class on race with Professor Johnson, an African American professor who had been at the University for many years. Although he was in another department many of the African American sociology students took his course because it was an opportunity to be taught by an African American at Chicago. One day in class m y feelings - generated by m y cumulative life experience and m y immediate experience with race at the U of C - began to boil as white students in m y class discussed Afrocentric education. Today in Mr. Johnson's race class I got upset because the white students don't seem to understand what it means to be black. The more time I spend here the more I realize that they have no real concept of what it is to be black. I decided that I had enough and stood up and excused myself from the classroom before I said something that might be potentially damaging to my career. I told Saul what was up with me after class. He said that he thought that is why I left the class. As I left Professor Johnson (black) started talking about the fact that blacks had provided free labor to this country for over 400 years. This

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R E U B E N A. B U F O R D MAY line resonated in my head as I left the class. Saul agreed with me that whites don't really understand. I could have killed every white person in the class for making broad generalizations about what was wrong with "Afrocentric education". They don't know that every day of our life we are confronted with Eurocentric concepts. Nowhere in our readings do we see ourselves. We can't find a black man. Damn. Enough is Enough.

T h e frustration o f b e i n g s u b m e r g e d in w h i t e n e s s was m a n i f e s t i n g itself in a desire to " s p e a k out." Fortunately, I h a d Saul, a n o t h e r A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n student w i t h w h o m I c o u l d talk. Talking to h i m was a m e a n s o f v e n t i n g m y frustration. R a t h e r than e x p o s i n g m y " t r u e " f e e l i n g s to w h i t e s I c o u l d share m y f e e l i n g s w i t h h i m w i t h o u t losing a v a l u a b l e o p p o r t u n i t y at C h i c a g o . Saul c o u l d u n d e r s t a n d m y frustration w i t h w h i t e students w h o t o o k for granted that w h a t t h e y h a d l e a r n e d and the w a y they had l e a r n e d it was the w a y to learn it. A f t e r talking w i t h S a u l I n e e d e d yet m o r e r e l i e f and so I w e n t to v i s i t m y mother. S h e had l i s t e n e d to m e in the past and always s e e m e d to k n o w the right thing to say or do. I t h o u g h t h e r w i s d o m d e r i v e d f r o m h e r o w n e d u c a t i o n a l e x p e r i e n c e w o u l d be i n v a l u a b l e to me, at this, m y greatest t i m e o f frustration. I went by my mother's and she asked me what was wrong and I said that I had a bad class. She took that opportunity to share with me how she has had to deal with her experience at State U. She then discussed dealing with Sid Cartwright in particular. She said that the job of a white professor is to break you down. You have to learn to use their terms in their interest. She said that even my research will be for their own use and that I can forget saying how I really feel about things. It is something that I have to do in order to get through the program. She said that Cartwright along with everyone else is going to make me eat crow etc. She suggested that I do not let people know who I really am. I agreed that she had a very important point. My talk with her was strengthening and I felt good that I could turn to both her and Saul and say, "you know, this shit is some bullshit." [My mother reminded me also that white people in general do not act in the interest of blacks as individuals. She then asked me did I realize how many whites that we knew as a family that cared about us. I said Lily and Ben Stetson. She then said, "How many whites have you lived around all your life?" I said, "A lot." She said, "That should tell you something. You won't find that many white people who have your interest in mind?' M y m o t h e r had i n t e r t w i n e d e l e m e n t s o f the g e n e r a l g r a d u a t e s c h o o l p r o c e s s w i t h issues o f r a c e in a w a y that p r o v i d e d an a c c e p t a b l e p e r s p e c t i v e about w h a t I was e x p e r i e n c i n g . First, I was r e m i n d e d that g r a d u a t e students h a v e to learn to use the l a n g u a g e o f their profession, although, certain c o n c e p t s and theories w i t h i n the field w o u l d r e c e i v e v a r y i n g levels o f e m p h a s i s d e p e n d e n t u p o n the interests o f particular professors. S e c o n d , I r e a l i z e d that m o s t students w o u l d h a v e to " e a t c r o w " or " j u m p t h r o u g h h o o p s . " T h i s p r o c e s s o f l e a r n i n g as a s u b o r d i n a t e was part and p a r c e l o f the g r a d u a t e e x p e r i e n c e . Finally, I was r e m i n d e d that A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n students should e x p e c t to c o n f r o n t intensified

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levels of "crow eating" and "hoop j u m p i n g " because their situation is exacerbated by race. Given this, I should further understand that African American students should rarely share personal thoughts and feelings with their white professors, especially regarding issues of race. This notion was consistent with advice given by an older African American graduate student during a pre-orientation social for minority students. He said, "I d o n ' t sit in public and discuss m y personal politics. I would suggest that you all avoid doing this too. This place is very conservative and people might use your politics to hinder your progress." Over the next few weeks I thoughtfully considered m y family and friends' suggestions for handling the Cartwright incident. Louis and m y mother, in particular, had both suggested concrete ways I might view m y situation. Largely on their encouragement, I now felt I was prepared to meet with Cartwright regarding my paper. Yet, even with m y restored confidence I was illprepared for what he had to say. I got slammed a real nice one today. I went to talk to Dr. Cartwright about the paper from last term. He starts by saying that he was really disappointed with my work. I could feel the tension coming but I was unaware of where he was about to turn next. I told him that the comments on the paper were very good, and had I gotten comments on my first draft then I would have changed the paper more. His response was, "If you need comments on your paper at this stage in your academic career, then that does not give a good prognosis for your future here." I told him that while I could have been helped by the comments, I thought my paper was quite ambitious and that I was supposed to be being trained to think more critically and analytically. He then told me that he looked at my grades and they are about B, B - and that maybe I should think about my future and whether I should continue. I then told him that I have had to work, that I have been out of school for sometime and that I was making an adjustment. I let him know that I was not making excuses for my performance. I then told him that I know I want to be at the U of C, I know that I want to be a good student, and I know that I want to graduate a top scholar and I am willing to work at it. He indicated that because of my grades it would be difficult for me to obtain funding. I explained that I desire to achieve here and that I am willing to do whatever I have to in order to achieve. My fear of i m m i n e n t racism had been supplanted by the feeling that I had just been a victim of racism. I had interpreted m y ambiguous interaction with Cartwright within the context of so m a n y other negative experiences in which whites had mistreated me. It mattered little what Cartwright's true motives were. I felt as though in one fatal swoop the m a n w h o m I trusted, who encouraged me, and w h o m I looked forward to working with had become a white m a n trying to eradicate me from the sacred world of Chicago. With each word out of his mouth it seemed he was shouting, "Black m a n you d o n ' t belong." I thought that he used all the evidence he had available to make this assertion, including violating another level of m y trust by reviewing all of m y

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grades. It was clear to me at this point that racism was alive and well and it was in the form of Sid Cartwright. W h y had I not paid attention before? I had observed that Cartwright never shook m y hand; that the university c o m m u n i t y maintained fear and avoidance of me as a black male; and that white students and professors had dismissed intellectual ideas of African Americans during class. Yet, I failed to take seriously the possibility of their betrayal. Because of the c o m p o u n d i n g effect of racism and discrimination this one incident flew in the face of the collective benefits that Cartwright had provided me. Cartwright's words cut to the core of m y spirit. I was disheartened. I needed to talk with someone who could see the totality of the situation. I turned to Ben, m y "old white" friend who had helped me ponder, so m a n y times before, tough personal circumstances. Since Ben had been reading m y U of C j o u r n a l he was well suited to help me consider m y current situation. I went and talked to Ben Stetson, my spiritual father. Ben asked me a couple of questions concerning what I thought about Cartwright and school. Did I think we had ntis-perceived Cartwright? Did I understandthe way that other students wrote? Could I learn how to write as they do? I told Ben that I knew the difference between an A paper and a B - paper. I told him that I also thought that we had not misjudged Cartwright. It was more a case of he was not on the admission committee and he did not know me as a student and had a set way of thinking about me as a student. When I took his class he found that I was different than he had thought and this was a shock to him. Consequently,Cartwright was responding to his new-foundperception of me. I told Ben that I could in fact write as the other students had done. We both agreed that I had relied on my past experiences to dictate the way that I write. I have thought about the task ahead and my conversationwith Cartwright. I realize that my approach to this whole thing is going to have to be a full fledged attempt. Can I use my motivationand intelligence to move on in this program? We will see, We will see. After talking m y situation over with Ben I concluded that Cartwright had failed to appreciate my experience and potential intellectual contributions. Instead I believed he expected me, in his own elitist thinking, to be a carbon copy of "the best and the brightest." I felt he considered me a m e m b e r of a large cohort that included African Americans who had established themselves at "the best" schools. Because I entered the university with such a reputable group of colleagues I had to uphold their excellence and in Cartwright's eyes I had failed.

A NewAttitude M y talk with Ben had restored m y confidence in much the same way as had m y talk with Louis and m y mother. A few days after the Cartwright incident I began to develop the kind of attitude that I would carry during the remaining time I attended Chicago.

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I guess the appropriate way to end this entry is to say that solo bullshit [Cartwright's bull] will not stop me from the task at hand. Furthermoreit seems that I have support from others in the department. I wonder what bit Cartwright in his ass that he would talk to me in such a way?... Well as great a thought as it might be to make him disappear, it is not possible. The best option of the remaining options is to say, "FUCK CARTWRIGHT'. My new attitude toward Cartwright felt comfortable. I had now taken the role of the aggressor in much the same way that I had on the basketball court. I felt that I was in control of m y destiny at the University. I no longer needed Cartwright's assistance and I was determined to prevent him from "screwing me." As I began to adjust m y attitude, I also began sharing m y Cartwright story with those first year students to w h o m I felt close. I shared my story with m a n y of the African American students. One student, Rhena, made a particularly insightful statement regarding Cartwright. She said, "I c a n ' t believe that he would tell you that if you needed comments on your paper at this point in your career then you w o u l d n ' t do well here at the University. That d o e s n ' t make sense. He has m a n y people look at his own papers before he finally submits them for publication." It was sobering insights like this that helped me to move forward. Beyond several of the African American students in m y cohort, I also felt close to William Kettrick, a white male. I had met William at the beginning of the school year and we developed closer ties through our participation in the 7:00 am basketball games. William was open, compassionate, and had a sense of h u m o r equal to m y own. He was also very good at statistics and became m y study partner. W i l l i a m reminded me of a younger version of m y friend Ben, a person w h o m I could trust. I was in the library this morning mad William Kettrick asked me how my weekend was. I told him I had a nice one except for when I thought about last week. He did not pry but he asked what was up. I told him about the Cartwrightincident. He seemed to be disturbed by the whole account of events. He really tripped me out. Even though he responded in the way I expected he would. He asked me was I upset because he was. He kept saying that it was just too bad that I had to deal with this. He suggested that I stay away from Sid Cartwright [For a long time William and I talked about the incident but I did not let him know who the perpetrator was. William had told me to stay away from Cartwright before he knew that I was speaking of him]. Though I have been confused and used up before, I don't mind taking small risk on people. [This is the only way that I can justify sharing such personal information with William who is an unproven white boy who could conceivablybe partial to Cartwright's issues.l M y feelings toward W i l l i a m reflected both m y trust in h i m as an individual and the fear of trusting whites in general. Perhaps the power differential between W i l l i a m and Cartwright contributed to m y ability to risk sharing the story with William. It was easy to tell William how I felt because he could do little to

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damage my career. On the other hand, Cartwright was in a position to destroy my career if he had become aware that I had taken the "fuck you" attitude. Although I remained reliant upon Cartwright for employment, I began to distance myself from him. I was confident that I could only be "safe" if I terminated all ties to Cartwright and his project. My financial situation, however, required that I continued to work for him until other opportunities became available. Finally, I landed a job as a research assistant on another project and I made a clean break from Cartwright. On Monday I saw professor Cartwright in his office. I knocked on his door and said, "Excuse me Dr. Cartwright do you have a minute? I just wanted to tell you that I will be leaving your project in June. I wanted to thank you for the support that you have given me this first year. I really appreciated the opportunity." He said that everything was ok and that he was glad that he could help. He then asked me where I would be working and I said that I would be working with Thompson on a project and that the work is more closely related to m y main area of interest. Cartwright said, "Great. That is right in the direction that you want to go." I thought'that he was as happy to be rid of me as I was to be rid of him.

In terminating my relationship with Cartwright, I held my feelings about the incident in check. Perhaps he also had feelings he too held in check. While I restrained my feelings in order to survive; he may well have restrained his as a matter of civility.

My Redemption I finished the final quarter of my first year in good spirits. My grades had improved and I was now working with Jonathan Thompson, a preeminent scholar of studies on urban life, race relations, and poverty. Thompson, an African American, had established a research center. As I joined one of the center's research teams I felt a sense of comfort. Still, ! knew that before I could become ensconced in my new environment I had one more obstacle to clear. I would have to pass the infamous preliminary examination if I wanted to move beyond the Cartwright incident and remain at Chicago. The preliminary examination was a six-hour essay examination that all students were required to take before the start of their second year. The exam covered literature in eight subfields of sociology. We were given the entire summer to prepare but the readings were so numerous that few students, in the past, had completed them all. The department faculty urged us to form study groups of four or five students instead of attempting to read all of the text on our own. In these study groups individuals were assigned particular readings and were to provide written summaries of those readings to their group. After a summer of preparation the examination was taken and then graded

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a n o n y m o u s l y b y t h e faculty. T h e p r e l i m i n a r y e x a m i n a t i o n w a s o f p a r t i c u l a r i m p o r t a n c e to b o t h t h e f a c u l t y a n d s t u d e n t s . It w a s u s e d to d e t e r m i n e i f t h e s t u d e n t s h o u l d c o n t i n u e i n t h e d o c t o r a l p r o g r a m , t a k e a m a s t e r s d e g r e e , or b e immediately expelled. ! spent the summer preparing for the examination and working on T h o m p s o n ' s p r o j e c t . M y s t u d y g r o u p c o n s i s t e d o f Saul, C a t r i c e , W i n s t o n - all African Americans - and William Kettrick the lone white student. Since I had b e e n t h e o n l y A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n i n so m a n y s o c i a l s e t t i n g s b e f o r e I w a s s e n s i t i v e to t h e f a c t t h a t W i l l i a m w a s in t h e m i n o r i t y . W h e n w e w e r e f o r m i n g t h e g r o u p I a s k e d h o w h e w o u l d f e e l b e i n g t h e o n l y w h i t e s t u d e n t a n d h e said, " I w a n t to w o r k w i t h p e o p l e t h a t h a v e t h e s a m e a p p r o a c h I do. I k n o w h o w y o u a r e g o i n g to a t t a c k t h e w o r k . " W i l l i a m a n d I m a d e a c o m m i t m e n t to s p e n d e x t r a t i m e d i s c u s s i n g a n d r e v i e w i n g t h e r e a d i n g s . W e b o t h felt this a p p r o a c h w a s t h e b e s t f o r l e a r n i n g to i n t e g r a t e t h e i n f o r m a t i o n . I w a s e s p e c i a l l y c o m m i t t e d because I knew that the only redemption I could get from my experience with C a r t w r i g h t w a s to b e s u c c e s s f u l in s p i t e o f h i m . I n t h e fall I t o o k t h e e x a m i n a t i o n a n d it w a s g r a d e d . I really have been unable to get going in my journal because my new fmnily life and my new school year has just put me in a tight situation. I will begin now to make that special effort to write in my journal again. What better way to start than with the preliminary examination. I had been in the Sociology office at 10:00 am when Karen the office secretary told me candidly that the meeting for the professors to make decisions about the preliminary examination would take place at 11:30 am and that the grades should be out at 3:00 pm. I told her I had a meeting and that I would not be able to come to pick up my grade. I then had lunch with William Kettrick and Ben Stetson. This was their first meeting and they seemed to be comfortable with each other. After Ben left, William and I sat and talked for a good long while. I had to leave at 2:30 pm so that I could go over to the research project meeting and get prepared. On my way to the center I stopped by the sociology office but the grades were not yet ready. As I was leaving out of the building I saw Professor Cartwright. He stopped me and asked had I picked up my letter and my preliminary exam grade yet. I told him that I had not. He said they are ready. He then said, "Reuben congratulations you passed. You were solid on all sections. I was really impressed. I know I was concerned about you earlier, but you did just fine on the exam." I said, thank you and I think that at the beginning of the year I had to make adjustments since I had not been in school in such a long time. [I was trying to tell him that I had it all along.] I went back upstairs to the sociology office and got my letter then I went to the meeting and chilled. After the meeting I went to talk to Deitrns, Professor Thompson's secretary. Professor Thompson was in a meeting with Raymond Taylor the other project coordinator. When Thompson came out and saw me standing there talking to Deitrus he said, "Congratulations, on the prelim you did really well." [Both his response and Cartwright's response indicated to me that I had done very well and that there may have been the possibility that I was one of the students considered for honors.] He then told me that they had also decided to accept my Masters paper. [How much good news could one get in a

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CLOSING THOUGHTS In m y experience at the University o f Chicago I encountered challenges to m y self-confidence, dedication, and intellectual ability that were generic experiences for most graduate students. Indeed, the pressure o f academics seemed to be manifesting its weight on all o f the first year students in a personalized manner. S o m e students interpreted their personal challenges as a sign that they had m a d e the wrong career choice, as evidence of the University's reputation as an intense learning environment, or as an indication o f their own academic weaknesses. I, on the other hand, viewed similar challenges as both related to m y individual weaknesses and to racism and discrimination. W h y did I view these experiences in terms o f race? I offer two explanations. First, m y perceptions were influenced b y the cumulative impact o f antiblack discrimination toward African Americans. Second, the ongoing nature o f racist and discriminatory acts against African A m e r i c a n s reinforced m y past negative interracial encounters. The cumulative impact o f antiblack discrimination has a profound effect on the w a y that many African Americans view the world around them. A c c o r d i n g to Feagin (1991): Particular instances of discrimination may seem minor to outside white observers when considered in isolation. But when blatant acts of avoidance, verbal harassment, and physical attack combine with subtle and covert slights, and these accumulate over months, years, and lifetimes, the impact on a black person is far more than the sum of the individual instances (p. 115). Not only do such individual experiences m a g n i f y racism and discrimination over time for one African American, but they also increase the effects of racism and discrimination felt among other African Americans with w h o m the victim shares these accounts. F o r instance, central to m y interpretation o f the Sid Cartwright Incident and other interracial experiences at Chicago was the cumulative impact o f m y mother's own experiences with racism and discrimination. As she shared her narratives with m e they b e c a m e "a part of,, m y racial narrative "repertoire to be called upon in later interactions as further p r o o f of the pervasiveness o f racism and discrimination" (May, 2000, 207). These stories were grounded not only in her experience but in that o f her

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parents, family and friends as well as in the historical experiences of African Americans in general. In short, my own perceptions of racism and discrimination were the progeny of the racial oppression, subordination, and violence suffered by African Americans who proceeded me. My recollection of their experiences worked to heighten my own sense of racism and discrimination. This narrative might suggest that a heightened sense of racism and discrimination directs African Americans to erroneously interpret ambiguous interracial interactions as negative. However, the continued racial profiling of black males by police, inferior service provided to black patrons in white owned restaurants and hotels, employment discrimination by corporations with white leadership, bombings of black churches and violent attacks against African Americans by white individuals and hate groups help to justify any marginal misinterpretation regarding the persistence of racism and discrimination. In fact, if African Americans are to survive the personal challenges posed to them by some whites and maintain their sanity, then they must utilize these interpretations to understand that many of the challenges they confront may be based on their African American group identity rather than their own individual characteristics. Finally, in many ways it was irrelevant as to whether Sid Cartwright had intended to be racist in his actions toward me. The prominence of racism and discrimination in my everyday life compelled me to sort through my experience with Sid using race as a tool for interpretation. In fact, for many African Americans, racism and discrimination forces them to spend more mental and emotional energy than do whites in trying to understand their negative interracial encounters. African Americans evaluate their immediate encounter alongside a host of past interracial experiences in an effort to place that encounter within the context of their broader understanding of race and act accordingly. The very fact that African Americans are challenged to evaluate each situation in this way gives racism and discrimination a real effect. Thus, it is likely that the legacy of past racism and discrimination combined with its current forms will continue to reach out and snatch the mental fi'eedom of African Americans for generations to come.

NOTES 1. All names of people are pseudonyms. 2. At the time this article was prepared Linnea Martin, administrative assistant to the sociology department at the University of Chicago, could not confirm that the 1992 cohort had the largest number of African Americans. In response to my query she

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explained that I was "probably correct" but that the student database was only three years old in 2000 and there was no data on students's racial or ethnic identity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank G w e n d o l y n May-Barlow, Kenneth Watson, M a r y PattilloMcCoy, and Lyndel H o l m e s - M a y for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter. I would also like to thank N o r m a n K. Denzin for his continued support. Send c o m m e n t s to Reuben A. Buford May, Department o f Sociology, University o f Georgia, B a l d w i n Hall 117, Athens, G A 30602-1611 or email: c m s r m a y @ arches.uga.edu

REFERENCES Abbott, A. (2000). Personal communication, May 16th. Brooks, R. L. (1990). Rethinking the American race problem. Berkeley: University of California Press. Feagin, J. (1991). The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places. American Sociological Review, 56(1), 101-116. Feagin, J., Vera, H., & Imani, N. (1996). The agony of education: Black students at white colleges and universities. New York: Routledge. May, R. A. B. (2000). Race Talk and Local Collective Memory among African American Men in a Neighborhood Tavern. Qualitative Sociology, 23(2), 201-214.

IDENTITY, TV AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE Joy Pierce INTRODUCTION Natalie was always asking about my education plans. "I'd like to do something other than secretarial work, but I haven't decided what," she once told me. I explained to Natalie that my goal was to conduct research and teach. "Well, before you become a professor, Stuart wants you to teach another computer class," Natalie replied. "Sorry, I can't I have to prepare for my thesis defense, so I ' m gonna be pretty busy," I said. Natalie looked at me, as if a light bulb had just turned on in her head and said, "I know what it is about you - even though you don't have an accent, I guess it's because you're from the South - you lose the -ing on your words." I was quite surprised by her comment, and was even more taken aback that it appeared she really put some thought into discovering what she thought were my deficiencies. Why does Natalie think my speech and use of language is related to the South? She doesn't even really know me. Natalie was doing what so many other people throughout my life had done look at me, learn a few things about me, and then connect the links based on that information and other outside sources, such as television. My hands began to tremble, and my head was spinning. Where did I lose myself? Why is this woman getting to me after all these years of believing I had found my place in the w o r l d . . , and no one could shake me from it? Instead of having my usual talk with God during my one-hour commute home from work, I reflected on my life to make sense of the day. How could I let a person who I barely know upset me so much? Her opinion of me isn't even that

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important. I ' m not trying to win her approval or make her my best friend. What do I care what she thinks of me. Why do I feel like I ' m twelve again? Carol Rambo Ronai uses the metaphor of drawing to invoke lived experience in her essay, "The Next Night Saus Rature: Wrestling With Derrida's Mimesis." A "layered account" of lived experience is much like drawing: there are solid lines, then other lines and sketches are drawn in, and some are erased according to relative lines. According to Ronai, "Writing in layers reflects the structure of consciousness. As each layer of text is superimposed on others, each layer contributes to the understanding to the other layers as well as to the overall picture of social life that text conveys (Ronai, 1999)." "Identity, TV and Cultural Critique" is an autoethnographic text that unfolds from memory and reflection, and shifts back and forth between past and present.

August 1978: Pre-teen "You're a civilian now," my uncle said. We were Navy dependants, but my father's untimely death meant we had to leave our home on the Navy base in Illinois, and live in civilian housing. We would live with my grandmother, on a dirt road in rural Charleston, South Carolina until my mother could find somewhere else for us to live. I would share a room with my twin aunts, who are nine months my junior, and my brothers would room with my uncle. Glasses became my new permanent accessory that year, and I was going to debut them at my new school. "Gahahaah lee, gahahahaa lee," Kevin said. My brother practiced the phrase over and over. He heard it on the television show "Gomer Pyle." We had to learn to talk like Southerners if we were going to live in the South. My mother reminded us to say yes m a ' a m and yes sir when speaking to elders, "otherwise they will think you don't have any manners," she said. I hated South Carolina. The mosquitoes were the size of small birds, and it was always so hot. I knew I was not going to enjoy it there, but I would do my best to fit in. "How long is it going to take us to get to Charleston, Uncle Arthur. Where's the map?" And that's another thing Joy," my mother interrupted, "don't ask grown people questions. You should be seen and not heard." I could not find a dictionary, encyclopedia, or atlas to answer my countless questions during the five-day journey. I lost my assumed permission to ask questions. My head was about to explode. I couldn't let go of my questions, thoughts and ideas. I stared out the window of our mini mobile home for more than three days. The journey South was a long one, so I developed a one-person question

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and answer game: I asked the questions, then I answered them. My father and I played question and answer games. I would watch hours of television, and each time there was something said that I did not understand I would run outside to where daddy was working on his car and ask a question. "I know the answer, but you should go look it up," he would say. If I did not know where to begin, he would give me hints on how to start my search. I felt like a detective. On road trips, I would lean between the front seats from the back seat and ask, "where are we?" He would hand me the map, tell me to look at the upcoming road sign, and tell him the name of the next town or state that we would approach. Detective work was so much fun. "I can't wait for school to start," I told my Aunt. "Did you know I used to tutor English to Philippine students at my old school?" I was hoping I could tutor again. I needed to practice my Tagalong. My aunt Carmen just looked at me. "Why do they call it middle school here? They called it Junior High School in Great Lakes." This time Carmen looked at me as if I was speaking a different language. Collette, her twin sister interrupted. "I don't think you're gonna be speaking any foreign languages around here." The teacher introduced me as a student from the North. She then gave me the required books for sixth grade English. I sat through the class completely bored because I had already read all of the stories. "You've read all these honey?" she asked. "Well, you can go to recess every day during English this year." At first I thought going to recess early would be fun, however, I found myself sitting on the trailer-turned-classroom stairs looking out onto an empty playground with no equipment. Another problem with early recess was that I had to be quiet. Classes were in session. I usually sat on the steps and attempted to work through my math homework. Homework assignments were usually completed in front of the television at home. Although some assignments in other classes were new to me, they were simple. School was boring. The school did not offer accelerated classes, nor did anyone mention more challenging academic opportunities offered at nearby schools. I don't think I told my mother about my extended recess. She never asked about school, and I never talked to her about my school activities. Morn was always busy looking for a new house. "I looked at another house today. This one had a nice-sized family room, but it didn't have a yard," she said. Morn was always talking to me about her problems, and other things most people would talk to their closest friend about. I had to be a grown-up quickly. She needed someone to listen to her. I didn't talk, I just listened.

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"I think I ' m going to change realtors. This one keeps showing me houses in black neighborhoods in bad school districts." "That sounds good morn." "Things are really different here. It's hard to find a mixed neighborhood." "Um hum." Who cares? That's what I really wanted to say. I didn't understand half of what she was talking about - school districts, taxes, and mortgage. I just wanted her to stop talking so I could watch "The Addams Family" How come Kevin didn't have to pay attention when she talked about family business stuff? It just wasn't fair. "Joy, don't sit so close to the television• "Kevin, how are you doing in Math?" "Good mom." "Let me see your homework• Looks to me like you need to do some more problems. Go back in the kitchen and hit the books." Thank goodness she is finally leaving me alone• I can watch TV in peace, I thought• I lost my study habits in the sixth grade. The students in Charleston did not accept me like classmates had in various military base schools. My black classmates told me that I sounded like a white person and probably liked "American Bandstand." One white classmate, whom I spoke to frequently in class once told me that I didn't act like the people on "Good Times•" But, she said, " I ' m sorry you're black, because if you weren't we could play together at my house•" I was so confused. Why couldn't I play at her house? What did color have to do with anything? I wasn't sorry that I was black. The truth was, I did watch "American Bandstand" and "Soul Train•" I could do the Hustle, and knew all the words to every Shaun Cassidy song on the radio .. but that wasn't good enough for my classmates• My grand brainstorm to solve 'the problem' involved studying television programs to understand how I should act to fit in. I ' m not sure how many twelve-year-olds were faced with such a dilemma, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. •

Gary Soto (1985) used television in a somewhat different manner. His essay called "Looking for Work" tells of how he wanted his family to transform into something other than the working-class, bean-eating, Kool-Aid drinking family they were. The nine-year-old Soto wished for an uncomplicated lifestyle like the family portrayed on "Father Knows Best." This fantasy family of the 1950s indicated what a middle-class family lived like: well-dressed dinner table; polite, well-groomed family members; and civil conversation. He also fantasized about the exotic foods eaten by a Polynesian tribe he'd seen on television. It seemed that television was a form of escapism from the realities

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of his poor, Mexican life. While Soto wishes to have turtle soup like the natives, his real goal is to improve the way his family looks so that they can get along better in life. He informs his sister, that if they improved themselves, white people will like them more, or even invite them to their homes or front yard. Unlike Soto, I used television to become more ethnic, not remove myself from my culture. Given my new surroundings at the time: an all-black rural area, I wanted to blend into the crowd, not stand out. I hoped my black classmates would invite me to play with them. Since I could not play at my white classmate's house, there was no point in trying to become more like her. I could change my behavior, but not my color. The 1970s was a good time to try to do such a thing, since this was the television era of blaxploitation, bell hooks (1990) writes of how blacks were portrayed in the 1950s and 60s, and how the screen became a place of confrontation and encounter. It is from this collective critical black gaze into the resistance to overt racist discrimination that barriers were broken in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. She notes that white media people realized that despite racism, white viewers would not only accept black images in television and film, but would be captivated by them. Natalie and I often talked about entertainment. Two of her favorite topics were film and music. Out of the blue one day, Natalie asked, "Was Soul Food a good movie ?" "Yes, I really enjoyed it." "It looks like a good movie." "You should see it, it's not just a black thing you know: The movie is a story about family . . . it could be about anyone's family." Ok I thought, she's beginning to piss me off. Maybe that was enough to make her realize she sounds like an idiot, and she'll leave my desk. Instead, she changes the subject. " I'm learning the violin part for 'Planets," she says "Oh, that's a really hard piece,'" I told her. "Oh, you know it?" Natalie replied. "Yes, I used to play the viola." When I mentioned that I studied ballet for 23 years, she couldn't believe it. "Really, but do you like hip hop dancing too ? Sometimes when I'm flipping through the channels, I see those people on BET or M T V doing all those neat moves. I couldn't do that stuff," she said. "I can't do some of that either," I told her. "I'd really like to take ballroom dancing lessons." Ok, now she's really pissing me off. She looks a little uneasy as she leaves my desk - good!

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I had always been a television junkie, but not having any friends for the first time in my life forced me to make television my one true friend. At twelve, I thought I could simply do what everyone else around me was doing. Play the roles in real life that people on television played. These images were going to help me make friends. My weekly regimen for identity reformation included two television shows popular with my black community in the 1970s: "Sanford and Son" and "Good Times." On Tuesday nights I watched "Sanford and Son." A black widower and his son owned a salvage yard and lived on the same property. The audience laughed when Fred Sanford told his sister-in-law he was going to give her a knuckle sandwich, or when his sister-in-law replied: "Watch it sucka." I once told my brother he was talking too loud. He said "watch it sucka" and started laughing. "No you watch it. On second thought, you won't. No TV for a week Kevin," my mother said. "I will not tolerate that kind of language. Many black women portrayed on television during the 1970s fit into one of the four traditional images outlined by K. Sue Jewell (1993): mammy, Aunt Jemima, the bad-black-girl, or Sapphire. The situation comedy of the 1970s became the vehicle to showcase mammy and Sapphire images; the leading black female character would issue verbal put-downs in her relationship with the leading male character. Sanford's sister-in-law is a classic example of this stereotype. Aunt Jemima was seen less during this time, and the bad-black-girl (Jezebel) image was still quite popular. I certainly was not interested in mimicking any of the stereotyped images described by Jewell. In fact, my mother worked very hard to see that I not only rejected such stereotypes, but that I did not even engage in watching that type of behavior on television. She said it would be impossible for me to reach a respectable standing in life if I behaved in any manner unbefitting of a true lady. My mother defined the perimeters. We were not allowed to raise our voices, or speak what my mother termed improper English. Today, I believe it is known as black vernacular, or Ebonics. These identifying terms are ironic, since there are white suburban and innercity white teens speaking in the same manner. During an interview on CSPAN in 1995, bell hooks mentions that whites often view successful or educated blacks as race neutral. Oftentimes, one of the indicators for fitting this description is the way in which the black person speaks. It's really unfair that blacks, or any other minority group in this country are judged by different standards from whites. A suburban white teen can do all the stereotypical 'hood' things in the street: wear baggy pants, listen to rap music,

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speak in the black vernacular and still get a great job after college, yet this is not true of blacks or Latina/os. I have black friends who code-switch (speak one way at work, and another at home) in order to succeed in the business world. The most shocking experience of all was when I went to purchase a car from an old high school friend. "I'm here to see Tyrone Green please." The receptionist at the car dealership looked a little lost. "We don't have a Tyrone Green here. We have a Doug Green." "Oh, well I know his name is Tyrone. There he is, right there." Tyrone walked over and said hello. I thought maybe the receptionist was new and didn't know what she was talking about. I told Tyrone about it. "I go by Doug here. That's my middle name" "Why did you decide to change your name," I asked. "They thought Tyrone was too ethnic, I would sell better with my middle name." What a crock of shit, I thought. Ok, so I gave code-switching a try, but it was too much work. Wednesday nights were reserved for yet another comedy, "Good Times." This comedy show about a black family in Chicago provided me with lessons stressed in the theme song: "Keepin' yo head above water, makin' a way when you can . . . temporary layoffs . . . good times." JJ, the lead character was always unemployed, and his smart, attractive sister consistently had boyfriend problems. The show illustrated life in a tenement, delinquency, poor verbal skills, and catchwords such as DY-NO-MITE! I felt guilty after watching "Good Times" because I could not identify with the characters or their struggles. My life was filled with Girl Scouts, ballet lessons, and charm school.

August 1982: The Teenage Years Modeling jobs soon followed charm school, and beauty contests coincided with the modeling jobs. My mother was quite proud that I was a part of what she called the glamorous life, but baffled that it didn't follow me off the runway. By the time I reached high school, I had gotten used to being lovingly called Annie Oakley on days I wore my cowboy boots. I enjoyed dressing according to my mood, and didn't think much about adhering to the restrictions of the latest fashions. "Ok Joy, you can wear jeans to school this year since you made the cheerleading squad. I don't understand why you won't wear the kind of clothes you model, at least put on some lipstick," my mother said.

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"Mom, modeling is a j o b . . , it's not me," I replied. "Well, at least do me a favor and don't wear those tennis shoes to the mall, you never know who you'll run into," she retorted. Television studying did not stop in high school. "Charlie's Angels" was one of my favorite shows because the three woman detectives were smart and tough. They wore nice clothes too; but how do you run and karate kick people in high heel shoes? My last year in high school, a program called "The Cosby Show" aired. Alas ! I thought, a show with black people who are not acting silly or degrading - even the female characters are intelligent. This comedy featured the Huxtables: a doctor and his lawyer wife, and their five children. Many black students in my high school aspired to reach the status had by the Huxtables. We moved to a subdivision where we were the only blacks in the neighborhood. Most families were retired military officers, or transplants from Midwestern or Northern states. The school district was one of the best in the city of Charleston. Many students in my high school attended four-year colleges upon graduation. My mother and I had not discussed college, so I wasn't sure how to go about the process. By the time I went to the guidance counselor to ask for help, the admissions deadline was near. "I want to go to USC," I told the counselor. "Ok, have you taken the SAT?" "Yes." The counselor looked a little frazzled, but I wasn't sure why. It turned out, all the recruiters had visited the school two months earlier, and only students in the Advanced Placement classes, and Honor Roll society had gotten appointments. She liked me, and felt bad that I missed the opportunity to meet with the recruiter. "Well, it's a little late. Don't worry Joy, I'll make a few phone calls." She signed me up to attend a city-wide college recruitment workshop intended for juniors the following week. I told a friend that I was going to a workshop to get into college. Sharon said, "I went to that one last year." She informed me that she was visiting Washington, DC with her mother to look at the campus in two weeks. I slowly realized all my friends were prepared for college. They had older siblings and parents who were either college-educated, or hell-bent on sending their children to college. They were all g o i n g . . , with their parents' blessings. When my classmates and I attended a college recruitment workshop at the Guillard City Auditorium, I asked them what their career plans were. "I want to be a doctor like Cliff Huxtable," said my classmate Juan. Another student from a nearby private high school leaned over me and whispered to him, "that's nice but remember, it's just T V . . . it's not real." "I want to major in journalism," I told Juan.

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"Oh that's nice, you'll be on TV and become famous," he said. "A talking head? No, I want to be a writer," I replied. "Uhhoh .." said Juan. My mother chimed in later that day about my career plans. "Honey, don't you want to stay here and get married? Once again I was going to disappoint my mother. "I don't even know if I ever want to marry, Morn. I ' m going to move when I graduate, and do some traveling," I told her. "I do not want to have to rely on a man for anything." According to my mother, the usual routine was to finish high school, maybe go to the local technical college for two years - if you didn't have a boyfriend who wanted to marry you straight out of high school - then you got married after technical college. Since I did not date in high school, I was definitely headed toward the educational path. This was not by accident, but by design. I will never forget how lost my mother was when my father died. She had three children, ages twelve, eleven and five to raise, and she hadn't worked in over a decade. "Women my age depend on the man to take care of the business; my job is to take care of the children," she once told me. Her voice was trembling, and she was on the verge of tears. I felt bad for her. I could tell she didn't know what to do. I never wanted to be that lost if something happened to the man in my life. I thought she would be happy that I wanted to be independent. Morn and I argued a lot. I thought maybe it was teenage stuff, but I began to realize it was much more serious. I could do nothing right. After a while, ! just gave up. "Joy, your mouth is always going to get you into trouble," she used to say. I always knew that it wasn't a good idea to give my opinion, or go against the opinions of the majority, but I just couldn't help myself. I felt so strongly about going away to school, that I talked myself into complete independence. My mother refused to pay for any portion of my schooling unless I attended the local technical college, in which case she would not only support me, but I could also have the car of my choice. "They don't make a car that would keep me here," I told her. "If you want help from me, you'll do what I tell you to do," she responded. Two weeks later, I walked into the den and thought I had entered an electronics store. On the left was a huge big screen television, next to it was an entertainment center with a double video cassette recorder and a video camera. "You see that TV and VCR? That's your tuition money," my mother said. "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the freshman class at the University of South Carolina..." I read the letter dozens of times.

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So what that I was conditionally accepted . . . I was leaving Charleston . . . leaving home. My maternal grandmother co-signed on a car loan for me, and my paternal grandmother gave me the down payment on my dorm room, and I agreed to pay the university in monthly installments throughout the year for the remainder. And with that, I drove to the University of South Carolina alone, worked two jobs, and happily put myself through school. Ok, so I feel a little like a student with a learning disability. I was required to take certain core courses with specific instructors. The courses interfered with the journalism program, for which I would have to apply after my second year. I was being watched like a hawk in this 'special' program. The USC administrator told me the federally funded program was part of a larger program known as TRIOS. The Opportunity Scholars Program was designed for in-state students with high grade point averages and low SAT scores. I hated standardized tests. Actually, I disliked all tests that required a number two pencil and a bubble sheet. Just looking at a bubble sheet makes my stomach hurt; my mouth begins to water, and before long I ' m looking for the nearest restroom. This program was going to help me through my first year of college. I developed a special bond with the instructors and students, and relearned study skills I had lost in middle school. Many of the students I met my freshman year dropped out by my sophomore year. I realized very quickly how lucky I was to be a part of such a special program. "I was sitting where you are six years ago. Thinking about how the required math classes interfered with the Spanish classes I really wanted to take. The instructors seemed a little tough on me. I even thought that Professor Strickland didn't like me. Now I ' m very grateful to her and the TRIOS Program. And don't worry, you can get out in four y e a r s . . . I did. Just listen to the instructors, take advantage of the financial aid and tutoring resources, and plan ahead." This was the opening to a speech I gave as part of my commitment as an Opportunity Scholars mentor and board member after graduation.

August 1984: Young Adulthood There were mountains of bills during my freshman year. I had no idea how expensive college was. The only thing that motivated me through the tough times was that I was finally working toward something that I wanted. For the first time since elementary school, I felt free. No more criticisms from morn, no more snide remarks from schoolmates, no more dirty looks from the older people in the mall that didn't like how I dressed. "Joy, are you eating pork and beans and rice again?"

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My roommate, who's father was USC's athletic director, was always observing my actions. "Yep," I said. My stomach was in knots. I was hungry, and I was trying to pay bills when I didn't have the money. How was I going to pay for the repairs needed on my car? I can't go another semester without books. I could do so much better in class if I owned the books. At least I have sufficient health care. Two weeks after paying tuition, I ' m laying in a hospital bed. The doctors finally diagnosed a problem I had had since high school - endometriosis. Morn said I was being a baby when I cried out from stomach pains. So, I suffered until I sought help on my own. For the first time, I really resented her. How could she sit there and let me suffer like that? Maybe she didn't know any better. Her only advice was to not pay attention to the Tampax commercials. "Those things aren't good for you. If you want to know pain, use those," she used to say. "Crying isn't going to do you any good." My head was spinning. There were so many emotions going on at once. Ok, so now I ' m furious. I ' m told I probably won't have children because the disease wasn't caught in time. Is that her fault, or my fault? Screw this, it's time I really take control of my life. From now on, I don't give a shit what others think of me or what I do. I ' m going to live my life the way I want. My freshman year in college, I was finally able to free myself from the guilt of not adhering to the perceptions of others, and thought I was truly independent and free. I was thriving in school, and my life was my own. Boy, was I naive.

August 1996: Thirty-something My new attitude worked straight through the 9 0 s . . . until I met Natalie. Natalie relied on television portrayals to attempt to define me. She once told me, " I ' m embarrassed to admit it, but my favorite television show is the nighttime soap opera "Savannah." This drama was set in Savannah, Georgia and was "really funny because it was filled with Southern vernacular and behavior." I never had the chance to ask Natalie to explain what she meant by Southern behavior. Natalie was born in Korea. Her parents moved to Los Angeles when she was only three, and she is now an American citizen. Her weakness was cheese. She said it was unusual that she would like cheese, since it is not a common food among Koreans. I didn't find it strange at all that she would like cheese. Many varieties of cheeses are made in California, which is where she has lived most of her life.

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"Speaking of food, what's a grit? I remember Flo from the show "Alice" used to always say "Kiss My Grits," Natalie said. She really knew how to get me going. Here she was telling me how she liked something unKorean, and in the same breath, assuming that I knew the history and makeup of grits. These kinds of questions and assumptions were a daily thing with Natalie. I tried to not only answer her questions, but tactfully educate her as well. I told her that I didn't particularly like grits, but they were made from corn. I also reminded her that I did not live in the South all my life, and thus grew up the first part of my life eating Western and Mid-Western cuisine. I was practicing my Spanish with a friend recently. I told her in Spanish of Natalie's comment, and why I was so irritated that she associated my speech with the South. "All of a sudden, I felt a need to defend my home state, but I didn't know how to respond to Natalie." My Mexican-American friend responded in English, "You should have told her, I don't cut off my -ings: fuckiNG bitch." Rosa continued, "See, I'm much older than you, I've had thirty years of practice defending, not apologizing for my uniqueness." ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following people for their help and support: Norman Denzin, Carolyn Ellis, Diem-My Bui, Dalia Rodriguez and the anonymous reviewers f o r Studies in Symbolic Interaction. A portion of this chapter was presented at the Couch-Stone Symposium in Las Vegas, February 1998.

REFERENCES hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston,MA: South End Press. Jewell, K. J, (1993).From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond: CulturalImages and the Shaping of US Social Policy. New York:Routledge. Ronai, C. R. (1999). The Next Night Sous Rature:WrestlingWith Derrida's Mimesis. Qualitative Inquiry, 5, 114-129. Soto, G. (1985). Living Up the Street. San Francisco: StrawberryHill Press.

BIRACIAL LIVED EXPERIENCE: FROM ENCAPSULATED TO CONSTRUCTIVE SELF Monica Hardesty ABSTRACT This chapter presents an interpretive study of the biracial experience in contemporary America. Twenty adolescents and young adults, who have one Black parent and one White parent, participated in life history interviews exploring their lifelong racial experiences and the creative nature of self The cultural isolation of living betwixt and between racial categories initiates an existential journey of self-reflection and identity adjustment. Several themes in their lives are repeated: the experience of oneself as something other than an assigned racial identity, a tension between internally perceived and externally imposed definitions of self the desire to be authentic in one's self definitions, and the will to create one's own racial identity. To resolve the dilemmas of race, the biracial individual moves from an encapsulated to a constructive self The biracial experience of negating conventional racial formations offers the possibility of a more universal meaning of race.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 113-143. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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INTRODUCTION Contemporary biracial Americans live in an era of contradictory racial constraints over which they have little control. The fact that there are no longer legal constraints on racial identity choice does not mean that individuals are completely "free" to choose. The rule of hypodescent, a rule that defines any one who is part Black as Black, has endured for centuries in the United States and continues to this day (Harris, 1964; Waters, 1991). On the other hand, our rules of kinship tell us that we should determine our descent by both maternal and paternal lines and that all our ancestors count equally (Waters, 1990). For those with both Black and White heritages, these two ideologies act as conflicting constraints on racial choices. Nevertheless, young Black-White Americans are making new choices about how they will be defined. Not only subjects of history, they are also its agents. Among them, those who came of age after the Civil Rights Movement are much more likely to identify themselves as biracial than only Black (Korgen, 1998). Despite self-assertions of new identity forms, they confront a conundrum of choice that penetrates all levels of experience. Dilemmas of freedom and selfhood, fundamental problems of human existence, pervade the contemporary biracial experience and lead them on an existential journey for meaning. The predicament is exacerbated by society's ignorance of the biracial experience and indifference to human agency in determining racial status, especially among social science experts (Lemert, 1997). Even though the United States has become increasingly non-White and racially mixed (Fernandez, 1992; Root, 1996), the standards in social science to describe and impute racial identity are still shaped by a normative standard of monoraciat meanings and experiences (Hardesty, 2000). 1 Despite a wealth of multiracial experience to the contrary, race is generally defined in unambiguous, inflexible and static terms. 2 Any introductory text typifies race as a nominal construct and describes an individual's race as a singular status determined involuntarily at birth by society to locate every individual in every social encounter into the social hierarchy. At best, this typification of race represents a monoracial, not a universal, experience; it is totally inconsistent with the contemporary multiracial experience in America in that it ignores persons with multiple racial identities. This conceptualization of race diverts our gaze from human agency and social actors co-creating the meanings of race in our society. It ignores how race is situationally conditioned and created (Douglass & Lyman, 1976; Lyman & Douglass, 1973). When the social construction of race has been addressed, we tend to concentrate on the macro forces, namely on the actions of the majority, the

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"hegemonic elites," in shaping our racial consciousness - the categories, meanings and identity forms (Lee, 1993; Omi & Winant, 1994; Kivisto, 1995). The agency of subordinate groups in the cultural creation and reproduction of race is downplayed. Our current frames of analysis largely ignore the existence of a different racial order from the point of view of biracial actors. The monoracial identity development model we have relied upon is inadequate to explain multiracial groups in this country) When we dismiss the experiences and choices of persons of mixed-race descent as irrelevant to our general understanding of race, we prematurely foreclose understanding of how individuals make use of race as a s t r a t e g y in defining themselves and in working through their life circumstances. 4 This study seeks to remedy our narrowness of vision by employing an interpretive approach, an approach that sees humans as partially free, morally responsible, meaning-creating creatures (Lyman & Scott, 1970). Not even the least privileged among us are entirely powerless over the messages about self. Rather than an "ascribed status," race is examined as an identity process, individually and collectively experienced. The study directs attention to the phenomenon of race as it is experienced and expressed by a sentient being in the life process of identity work. In refusing to "theorize away the lived morality of the self" (Holstein & Guhrium, 2000, p. 231), I explore how biracial persons experience and express themselves in today's society and how the relationship of self to society is essentially confrontational (Fontana, 1984). This chapter examines how biracial persons claim one or more racial identifications that become seamless parts of their racial self. In this view, one's racial self is a dynamic, open-ended, interpretive and discursive project. A continual and deliberate practice of self-experiencing, self-examination, and self-expression underlies racial identity. One achieves a racial identity in any social encounter by locating oneself in our racial arena through expressive and instrumental acts. Through this interaction, the racial self becomes known, to both self and others. Like all identity claims, the discursive practice of constructing a racial identity happens through a process of d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n - making claims about one's racial uniqueness or separateness from others, and a process of i d e n t i f i c a t i o n - making claims of affiliation or membership in a particular racial group. 5 A racial identity claim requires an articulation of the local and cultural meanings of "race," such as the use of genealogy, fashion, dialect, gestures, tastes or attitudes, that others in the social situation can recognize and confirm with the particular racial claim being made.

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My interpretive and processual study of race makes use of idiographic methodology to develop constructs that reflect the unique racial history of the individual (Helms, 1994). In such an approach, every individual is more than just an individual. They are a singular instance of more universal social experiences and processes (Denzin, 1989b). In studying the biographical, one comes to understand the underlying social and historical patterns in society as a whole. Borrowing other people's experiences and reflections, we come to understand the deeper meaning of all human experience (van Manen, 1990). The experiences of mixed race persons are not only useful for building models of race, but "are quite possibly our first glimpse of a new race" (Motoyoshi, 1990, p. 89) and an answer to the broader question of "what does it mean to have a race?" Any sociology of human experience must take as its topic the marginality of self (Lyman, 1990). The "marginal man," as one "condemned" to sit between two cultures remaining a stranger in both (Park, 1928), has been a favorite topic and the biracial person its quintessential example (Hall, 1992; Williams, 1992). Many have cast the marginal experience in negative terms. A marginal person has been described as "poised in psychological uncertainty between two or more social worlds; reflecting his soul the discords and harmonies, repulsions and attractions of these worlds, one of which is often dominant over the other; . . . and where exclusion removes the individual from a system of group relations" (Stonequist, 1937, p. 8). Marginal persons are said to face emotional battles: feelings of powerlessness, isolation, anxiety, insecurity, ambivalence, self-consciousness, meaninglessness and self-doubt (Park, 1928; Stonequist, 1935; Goldberg, 1941; Dean, 1961; Shibutani, 1961). An individual who occupies the two distinct (as historically defined) racial categories of Black and White dwells among and between, not just different, but antagonistic, social worlds. Since self is social in origin, their peripheral social existence bestows an ongoing interrogation of self in relation to other. On the one hand, one experiences a complex self that is composed of assorted identifications, which are not culturally integrated. On the other hand, not fitting into a singular racial identity, one experiences an uneasy, illegitimate self, incongruent with other's histories. Locating the "real me" becomes the central quandary of experience.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY To grasp the biracial experience in contemporary America, one must bear in mind the viewpoint of biracial persons and to hear their experiences and interpretations. It requires a focus on what is problematic and on the stories of

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"experiences that radically alter and shape the meanings" persons give to their troubles (Denzin, 1989b, p. 14-15). By investigating life's trouble spots, the turning points in biography and our larger history, as well as the sources of freedom and constraint, can be learned (Mills, 1959). The analytic aim of an interpretive project is to ascertain essential aspects of life stories and to transform the participants' descriptions into a more general and universalistic expression. The analyst "mines meaning" from experiential accounts to "give shape to the shapeless" (van Manen, 1990, pp. 86 and 88) and arranges the experiences into a grander theoretical narrative (Maines, 1993). To conduct an interpretive study of biraciality specifically, one must locate biracial individuals, convince them to share their experiences, record thick descriptions as accurately as possible, and provide a framework that makes sense of a diverse set of experiences. Life History Interview Method My particular strategy for gathering narratives of lived experience is the life history method. Life histories are rich accounts that supply multiple levels of experience and being in the world. While the life history is the overarching story, there are stories within the life story. They are stories of a complex and multifaceted self. Personal life stories temporally shift with images of past, present and future selves. They phenomenologically shift with selves at different levels of self-understanding, including unaware, doubting, exploratory, confrontational and strategic selves. Life stories also reveal a social rhythm between self and other, from solidarity to anomie, of identification with and opposition to others. And they unveil an emotionality of experience, from moments of rapture to angst. In life stories, the narrator addresses existentially meaningful experiences and the problems embedded in these interactions with others (Denzin, 1989b). Accounts of interaction and the rational thoughts, deeply felt emotions and meaningful cultural elements that accompany them are laid bare. My storytellers, young biracial men and women, tell how they give meaning to their lives, how they make their own history, and how they respond to the social conditions and the history handed down to them. Through a series of probing questions about one's life experiences and the meanings of those experiences, I initiated of a storytelling episode. I utilized a progressive-regressive method of asking questions (Denzin, 1989a). First, I worked backward in time and began the interview with questions about their family histories and the conditions of their birth. From the context of their origin, we moved forward in time, from their earliest recollections of race, to

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their early family and school experiences, onto dilemmas in adolescence and young adulthood and into the present. To facilitate the "narrative moment," I provided a narrative of self that would immerse my personal story within the problematic situation alongside their story (van Manen, 1990). At the start of the interview, I disclosed that I was a single, White mother of a young biracial boy. I indicated I had personally experienced people's sensitivities to issues of race and race mixing. I told them I wanted to know more about the biracial life, about what to expect for my child and how best to raise him. I took the role of newcomer, as someone seeking to become a knowledgeable member of the community (Denzin, 1989b, p. 81). By meshing our personal stories and by placing our goals beside one another, I situated myself inside their life world. My hope was to put them at ease and give them a reason to tell me their story.6

Description of the Study Participants In order to study the phenomenon of biraciality in America, all of my study participants were American born; although a few had a West Indian parent or grandparent. To be included in the study, each participant had to be a descendant of one self-identified Black parent and one self-identified White parent. All of the participants were born after the Civil Rights Movement. To minimize the effect of cultural variation, only non-Hispanic Americans were chosen. 7 Twenty adolescents and young adults, 13-32 years of age, participated in two-hour face-to-face interviews. Eight of them were high school students, ten were college students and two were college-educated professionals. An equal number of males and females were interviewed. Owing to a proximity to the researcher, all o f the participants had spent some of their lives in the Northeast. Nevertheless, they grew up in diverse environments such as rural areas of Maine, New Hampshire and Texas; the large metropolises of New York City, Boston, Miami and San Francisco; and mid-sized towns in Connecticut and Wisconsin. Most had lived in both integrated and segregated neighborhoods.

Sampling Design The preliminary identification of who had a mixed-racial heritage was an important first step in gathering my sample. Biracial individuals are often racially ambiguous in their appearance and information about parents' racial heritage is not readily available to a social researcher. Therefore, I relied on first-hand or second-hand knowledge about a prospective participant's racial

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heritage. I personally knew a few of the participants and their racial background through contact in college classes or in the local community. These individuals were invited to participate in my study. Then, previous study participants helped to recruit future participants through referrals, a technique known as snowball sampling. At the end of each interview, participants were asked if they would feel comfortable enough to provide names of other individuals who they knew had a Black parent and a White parent. Most of them identified at least one other biracial person. These individuals were then contacted for an interview. For individuals who were under the age of eighteen, at least one parent also gave permission for the interview. After assurances of confidentiality, tape-recorded interviews took place in the homes of interested individuals. The recordings were transcribed and qualitatively analyzed to identify the essential themes of experience.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: FROM ENCAPSULATED TO CONSTRUCTIVE S E L F Mid-way through the collection of interviews I encountered, but would not recognize until much later, an important aspect of the biracial experience; namely that biraciality is a self-in-process. For one thirteen-year-old boy, the interview itself reshaped his understanding of self. His mother called me the day after the interview to report the remarkable effect of the interview on her son. She described how he was transformed, "had become a new and more confident person." She reported that the interview was very therapeutic and thanked me for my help in her son's adjustment and maturation. I recall an awkward response on my part, saying something like it wasn't my intent for the interview to have a therapeutic effect, but was glad it helped. Later I realized what his mother was telling me: the interview summoned an existential selfrevelation (Denzin, 1989a; 1989b). His self was in process of becoming something wholly new. His story was the story of all my participants - a story of self-in-process. While there is considerable variation in the events, interpretations and chosen identities among my study participants, when taken as a whole, a similar existential identity process became evident. Rather than accept traditional knowledge handed down from authorities, biracial individuals construct their self-knowledge from experience and the ever-changing contexts of those experiences. The life stories of young biracial Americans repeat several experiential themes: the experience of oneself as something other than an assigned racial identity, a tension between internally perceived and externally

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i m p o s e d definitions o f self, the desire to be authentic in o n e ' s s e l f definitions, and the will to create o n e ' s o w n racial identity.

The Existential Dilemma of Race In t h e s e tales o f soul searching, a dialectical p r o c e s s b e c o m e s v i s i b l e ( B r o w n , 1998). T h e y m o v e b a c k and forth b e t w e e n the s u b j e c t i v i t y o f s e l f and " the r a c e s " as e x t e r n a l i z e d and o b j e c t i f i e d in c o n t e m p o r a r y social thought. S e l f resides s o m e w h e r e b e t w e e n their internal e x p e r i e n c e s and historical and cultural m e a n i n g s o f race. T h o u g h c o n s t r a i n e d by o t h e r s ' definitions, the b i r a c i a l i n d i v i d u a l d o e s not r e l i n q u i s h his or h e r i n n e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g and f r e e d o m o f s e l f - d e t e r m i n a t i o n . A n d w h i l e all h u m a n e x p e r i e n c e is dialectic, the b i r a c i a l p e r s o n e x p e r i e n c e s an incessant t e n s i o n b e t w e e n internal and external definitions o f self. T h e dialectic o f s e l f - e x p e r i e n c e raises q u e s t i o n s o f authenticity. 8 D e n y i n g o n e ' s p a r e n t a g e and a r r a n g i n g o n e s e l f to fit the identity labels o f others can be e x p e r i e n c e d as inauthentic ( L y m a n & D o u g l a s s , 1973). I identify myself as an African American, but at the same time I uphold and I honor my father's history because I realize he is a part of me. He is a very important part of me. I am not denying him. But given society today, people are going to look at you and they are going to put you into a category. You have to have enough strength of self and enough pride to say, "Hey you might classify me as African American, and I am a very good one, but I also have a father who is Caucasian" (18 year old female). O n the o t h e r hand, d e f y i n g o t h e r s ' identity labels can l e a d to charges o f b e i n g inauthentic. B i r a c i a l individuals w h o do not fully e m b r a c e the B l a c k identity and fail to c o n f o r m to s o c i e t y ' s definitions are often l a b e l e d as "deniers," "passers," " s e l f - h a t e r s " or e v e n " r a c e traitors." I: Was there a time in your life when you were more argumentative or more assertive about defining yourself? R: I remember in high school I used to get into arguments all the t i m e . . . I bad a lot of Black students saying, "you are trying to be White." And 1 often told them, "if it means that I am trying to be White to work hard or if I am denying something, then I guess that is what I am doing because I am going to do something with my life and I am going to go somewhere" (19 year old female). To further c o m p l i c a t e the matter, e v e n w h e n one e m b r a c e s a B l a c k identity, biracial p e r s o n s are put to n u m e r o u s "racial litmus tests" u s e d b y g r o u p m e m b e r s to sort the authentic f r o m the f a k e (Korgen, 1998). 9 I: Have you ever felt that you had to prove your blackness? R: All my life. I think it's mostly with Black women not so much with Black men . . . When I was dating my college sweetheart he brought me home. His mother thought I was

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a little White girl that didn't have any Black culture. I don't know if it was the way that I was speaking or what. I remembershe cookedsome greens and she said, "well I won't give you these collard greens because I know you don't eat them" And collard greens are my favorite food and I told her, "hand over the bowl" and I put some greens on my plate and said, "can I have some hot sauce on top of it." And she laughed. I passed the test. But that happens all the time (26 year old female). The charges and feelings of "bad faith" (Sartre, 1956) in the lives of young biracial Americans present difficult existential choices. By the very fact of their marginality, they are never fully realized or understood as participants in social life. This marginality gives vitality to their lived experience. It becomes a "knot in the web of experiences around which certain experiences are spun and lived through" (van Manen, 1990, p. 90). "Good faith," on their part, requires that they recognize their own freedom, even if it is limited by social circumstances (Zack, 1996). To overcome bad faith, life becomes an ever-open project of self - of honoring one's subjective experience over the ascribed identity and of making choices despite constraints. The existential search for recognition and struggle for self-determination offers the possibility of eventual emancipatory self-realization (Lyman, 1990). The struggle to resolve the dialectic is rooted in the dual process selfdefinition and self-feeling. Emotionality is everywhere in the project of becoming one's authentic self (Douglas & Johnson, 1977; Fontana, 1984; Denzin, 1989b). It is present in the mood of the narrative and in the descriptions of past emotions, remembered and relived in the telling of the story. It is present in the discovery of being forced into an outdated identity category. It is present in failed attempts to assert oneself and the capitulation to societal norms. It is present in the small validations of a chosen self. Anguish is part and parcel to the biracial experience; nevertheless these feelings do not wholly define it. At some point along the journey, the marginality that has defined their past life no longer defines their future life. The biracial experience reveals how in embracing (or confronting) marginality and working though it, one becomes less trapped in it. Eventually, uneasy feelings give way to the exhilarating, breakaway feelings of the "chosen self." Bennett (1993) depicts two responses to marginality and explains that marginality does not necessitate negative experiences. She defines the two forms according to a marginal person's experiences within an oppressive culture. Encapsulated marginals are "trapped" by their marginality. Being "buffeted by their conflicting loyalties," they feel disintegrated and inauthentic as if engaging in role-playing (p. 113). The person can incorporate two worldviews, but has difficulty controlling shifts between them. Though highly self-conscious, they are less strategic in their presentations of self.

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Constructive marginals, on the other hand, embrace their marginality and thrive in their ambiguous status. When one consciously adopts the "other" identity, it shifts from a negative to a positive experience. Being a constructive marginal "requires the person to make a commitment to a value system honed from many contexts and to an identity actively affirmed and based solidly on self as a 'choice m a k e r ' " (Bennett, 1993, p. 119). Constructive marginals see knowledge o f self as constructed from context and experience, not from "truth" as given by authorities or custom. They recognize the social advantages of marginality and master the skills of identity management. They feel more authentic, more alive. In seeking an other reference group, many interracial individuals are seeking to resist, challenge, and/or transcend society's notions of the legitimacy of personal identity and community. The fact that the group they have chosen is neither recognized by society nor geographically locatable does not matter to them. In fact, such lack of recognition may serve to heighten the sense of positive alterity that interracial individuals experience by such identification. They have created and named the group, and they can locate it (and their place in it) when others cannot. Having access to a community to which others fail to see the entrance can be an exciting and liberating experience (Weisman, 1996, p. 158). Participants in m y study experienced both forms of marginality, but not as two discrete responses to marginality. Rather they occur as turning points within the larger self-in-process experience. They are existential exigencies in time; first one experiences being trapped by race, then freed from it and formed anew. In an upcoming section, I will describe this journey from encapsulated to constructive self, but first I must explain the time prior to encapsulation.

The Pre-encapsulated Self" A Colorblind Childhood The notion of races and its implication for self-definition is learned through interaction with others in the child's life. All of m y study participants remember a time free from the divisions of race, color and self; they remember a more innocent time of being faceless. At ages three, four and five, they exist in a colorblind world, unaware of how racial categories might apply to themselves and others. They express contentment with life prior to their racial awakening and recall uncomplicated interactions and simple questions. R: I grew up very colorblind. I d i d n ' t k n o w that there were races in the world. So I was about five or six, I asked m y mother "if I a m B l a c k and White, w h y a m I not gray?" I saw things in colors, not in races. I d i d n ' t understand. I: How did you see your race at five or six? R: I really didn't. I was just me. I: R a c e l e s s ? R: Yeah, I was me. I was a person. I k n e w that persons were B l a c k and that persons were White. But I d i d n ' t m e a n anything to m e (20 year old female).

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Their colorblind childhood is not much different from other young children who do not perceive races of people until four or five years of age (Holmes, 1995). Colorblindness does not last for any child in America. By the time school age approaches, children learn the categories of race and to apply them to one another and the adults in their lives. Biracial children learn to label people racially too. Initially they experience our racial categories as meaningless, illogical or arbitrary. They just d o n ' t make much sense to them. Reddy (1994) relates her three-year old son's efforts to understand both race and gender simultaneously. Her son observes that he and his Black father both have penises, and his White mother does not. Attributing the difference to race rather than gender, he asks, "Why do White people have vaginas?" Such questions reflect the child's efforts to make sense of the world and their place in it through language. It is not a task accomplished all at once. Usually they acquire the ability to categorize others before being able to regard self as a racial object. W h e n they begin to make racial assignments, they learn that a person can be one and only one race - an anti-assimilation rule dictates Black or White. Given a dichotomous m e a n i n g system, self-understanding is necessarily more difficult. With this n a m i n g task at hand, the biracial child first encounters the dictate of racial choice - the child must be one or the other, not both. Even at an early age, it troubles those who know themselves to be from one Black and one White parent when they learn a choice must be made. For example, My mother's sister, she's Black, and she used to say to me, "You're going to have to decide what you are, if you're going to be Black or White." I remember Christmas with her, like if I wanted the black Baby That Away, or a white Baby That Away. She would call up to ask, and I would say, "Okay, I want the black one." And then I would call up, "No, no, I want the white one" (22 year old female quoted in Funderburg, 1994, p. 24). To simplify matters, others frequently make these racial choices for children. In childhood, most of m y study participants recall a time when they were placed into the pre-defined category of Black. R: When I was around three or four, it was: Daddy is pink, Mommy is brown, and I am tan. I: But you didn't grow up to be a tan person. R: No.

I: So you soon learned that it was a race. R: You learn when you get older. I: Do you remember what you considered yourself to be when you started first grade? R: Tan. I: How about when you were twelve or thirteen? R: I knew I was Black (18 year old female).

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For younger children, who are accustomed to parents and other authority figures making choices for them, the assignment of racial identity may not be particularly perturbing. Identity forcing and racial overtones are not always apparent to a young individual, even though they operate in one's life (Thompson & Carter, 1997), especially if the child is still under familial influence. One young female, at the time of the interview, possessed an early form of racial awareness; that is, she recognized "races" of people, could distinguish the racial makeup o f various family members, and self-identified as "biracial" as her parents had encouraged her to do. Nevertheless, she also stated she never experienced problems with being biracial because her family taught her "not to think about color so much" and claimed "race has never been a big part of m y life" She does not, as do other adolescents in m y study, express a strong dissonance between being Black and White, communicate the feeling of being shut into an ascribed identity, or voice a desire for control over racial definitions of self. She resides in the childhood realm of the pre-encapsulated self. While, for the most part, unaware of any problematic with being biracial, in one part o f the interview, she glimpses the reality o f multiple racial identities in her life, and how this might be judged negatively. R: School is my life. I don't do a lot of things outside school. The way I live my life in school, it's not like I'm trying to forget that I am half White and half Black. This is hard to explain because I've been thinking about this lately. If I think about it, it seems that I'm living my life like I'm just Black, when I'm in school. I: Within your home it is different? R: Yeah. But it's not like it is changing all the way. When I come home I remember that I am both races. And it isn't anything bad or good, but it's just different (15 year old female). In becoming aware of the identity shift, she is reaching the end of her colorblind childhood.

The Encapsulated Self It is not until the child enters the wider realm of peer groups, and sometimes not until they move out of their parents' home during the college years, that identity dilemmas, especially racial ones, become apparent and acted upon (Espiritu, 1994). In adolescence, youngsters shift their relations with the adult world. Because adults control everything else about their lives, teenagers vigilantly guard their sense of self (Gaines, 1991). They actively strive to create and control a sense of self, separate from adult definitions and meanings. For biracial adolescents, racial identity becomes an important subject matter. The experience of being encapsulated as a racial type emerges in late childhood and

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early adolescence when the adult-child relations begin to shift and identity d i l e m m a s surface. W h e n biracial adolescents recognize and revolt against the choices that have been m a d e for them, they m o v e from a colorblind to an encapsulated self. The pressure to avow an externally i m p o s e d identity, rather than given the f r e e d o m to express an internally defined one, is c o m m o n for nonwhites (Cupach & Imahori, 1993), and b e c o m e s increasingly problematic for adolescents. This pressure is now less likely to c o m e from parents or other close family members. Korgen (1998) found contemporary biracial children are given much m o r e f r e e d o m to choose their racial identity within their family sphere. In m y study, some family m e m b e r s invest their children with a Black identity and some do not. Like Korgen, I found most contemporary parents of biracial children do not assign their child a singular Black identity. But as the child's sphere of interaction widens b e y o n d the family, m y study participants experience being defined b y others and feel it as something i m p o s e d upon them. M a n y participants recall from childhood onward into the present attempts b y others to assign to them a Black identity. My mother always told me "If you are ever asked just tell people that you are Black because your mother is Black." She didn't say it in a harsh way, "I'm Black, so you are going to be Black too." I think she did it more or less to protect me and for me to have some kind of identity (20 year old female). Regardless o f whether family m e m b e r s do or do not offer racial definitions for their child, the youngsters discover others would. As children enter school and c o m m u n i t y life, they enter a world o f contradictory demands and increased pressure to choose. M e s s a g e s about race c o m e from m a n y new sources and act to i m p o s e a racial identity on them. They find friends, teachers, distant family members, strangers and the m e d i a often advocate a singular racial identity, usually Black. As with other aspects of identity, racial identity seems to follow the same course of development; n a m e l y parents and adult figures are early influences, while peers and cohorts b e c o m e influences in adolescent years (Erikson, 1968; Helms, 1990). A s one grows older, friends play a larger role in one's racial identification. In middle school I was still mulatto. I hung out with pretty much all Black kids. They were all like, "You need to choose. You need to do this for your own good, so you are not confused. You need to choose just one. And you are not White. People don't look at you as being White. So you are Black. Look at your skin. You are Black" They were trying to do it for me . . . . Females do it more so than the guys (do) (20 year old female).

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Yet not everyone places them in the same identity category. One may be viewed as biracial by parents and viewed as Black by friends and teachers. Biracial individuals must learn to navigate the contradictory identity assignments. 1° A n existential crisis develops over these externally imposed definitions of self. As one is forced into or out of a particular racial grouping, one can feel trapped. The intensity of the feeling of entrapment varies greatly by whether one can ignore or cannot afford to ignore the placement of oneself in a particular status (Strauss, 1959). Children have a hard time ignoring and overcoming the identity when it is their superiors, such as teachers, who are imposing it. For m a n y of m y participants, elementary and middle schoolteachers who impose a Black identity are the first to be resented and "taken on." For example, one young w o m a n tells of a teacher who erases her choice of race on a school form and a confrontation over the right of self-determination follows. I: When you fill out a form, what race do you put? R: When I was in elementary school, I always put both. The teachers said, "you can only put one." But I would check Black and White. I remember in fourth grade, I had a teacher who tried to erase my paper and put Black. And I said, "I'm not Black." I: Whiteor Black teacher? R: It was a White teacher. And so she tried to erase it. I walked my paper down to the principal's office and I handed it in myself. I said, "I don't want this changed." I: Does it matter what you put? R: To me, not really. To other people, it seems like it matters. I: But it mattered in fourth grade. What really mattered there? R: Because she was trying to erase what I was. I: You wanted to make a choice? R: Yeah. She was trying to erase my choice and I thought I had enoughfreedom to make that choice. I didn't see anything wrong with that. It wasn't going to hurt anybody (20 year old female). She, like m a n y others, asserts herself into the process of social definition and rejects the identity labels of others. The forced identity is experienced intellectually as inaccurate, incomplete or overly simplistic. Wanting to be faithful to both lines of ancestry and to accurately reflect her sense of self, she tests the possibility of self-naming. Her challenge to the imposed self, like m a n y others, typically creates and escalates social tension; little wars erupt in interactions with principals, teachers and friends. Being encapsulated is experienced as a series of traps - being trapped in others' definitions of self, being trapped in negative emotions and being trapped in the dichotomies of race. Another young student refuses to fill out the race question on a form and a similar drama unfolds. R: I went through a questioning stage. It was sixth grade. It was another test I had to fill out. And for some reason I just felt different about just putting Black. I felt like checking

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the other box, but I didn't. I didn't put anything. So when I turned it in, the teacher said, "you have to fill this out" and I refused. And she said, "why?" "Well, both my parents are from different races." I said, "My morn is Black and my dad is White and I don't feel like checking either one." I: So you didn't check anything? R: Not then. I eventually ended up checking Black a couple days later. I: What happened? R: They called my parents. My father told me that I had to. He told me something like I wouldn't get to the next grade or something like that. And when I did it, I was all upset for a long while (21 year old male). Like the b i b l i c a l D a v i d w h o m e t Goliath, a sixth grader battles his oppressors with o n l y the "fact" o f his biracial existence. Here is a child d a r i n g to create a n e w self. E x h i l a r a t e d to have successfully c h a l l e n g e d his teacher, he is distraught to capitulate to his father's d e m a n d s . In this story, as in m a n y others, children a n d y o u n g adolescents, t h o u g h they diligently try, are u n a b l e to successfully appropriate alternative racial identities. W h i l e the battle is lost, a war o n s o c i e t y ' s racial dictates has irreversibly b e g u n .

Challenging the Encapsulated Self In later childhood, refuting an e n c a p s u l a t e d self b e g i n s with small tests of racial definitions and b o u n d a r i e s . In the b e g i n n i n g , these e x p e r i m e n t s have m i n i m a l success. Later, they b e c o m e m o r e significant as small victories are won. I n this c h a l l e n g i n g phase, o n e is m o r e self-aware, yet o n l y partly c o n s c i o u s o f what o n e is b e c o m i n g . K n o w l e d g e of self at this stage typically involves a s i m p l e f o r m o f k n o w i n g what o n e is not, rather than the k n o w l e d g e o f what o n e is. Biracials w h o c h a l l e n g e e n c a p s u l a t i o n m i g h t r e c o g n i z e past selves that exist "no longer," b u t do not fully c o n c e i v e the selves they are " n o t yet" (Sartre, 1956). In i m a g i n i n g what o n e is not, the biracial i n d i v i d u a l a c c o m p l i s h e s an i n t e r m e d i a r y sense o f self. Sometimes it's not easy to move between the races. I can move between them, but I wish I didn't have to. I wish it were just the human race (16 year old male). A s o n e rejects a s i n g u l a r B l a c k identity, o n e c a n m o v e toward alternate identity forms ( R o c k q u e m o r e , 1998). 21A t the t i m e of the interview, m y participants had various stances o n their racial identity. S o m e c o n s t r u c t of b o r d e r stance - a k n o w l e d g e o f self between races. I see myself as a mixture of both my parents. I don't have a problem with what I view myself as. I am proud to be mixed, a mixture of Black and White. I am half Black and half White. I never really thought I was one particular race. When someone would ask me, "What is your race?" I'd look at them funny. I don't see myself as having one race (13 year old male).

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Others c o n s t r u c t a t r a n s c e n d e n t a l stance - a k n o w l e d g e o f s e l f

beyondraces.

I am in a position where I hold no allegiance to either community (Black or White). So really I can know people as people. Not people as Black people. Not people as White people. I can play in a cynical kind of way. Because I can see people who have a disagreement and I can hold both of them in contempt. Being biracial you have a better perspective because you look at both sides of the situation. You don't assume anything because chances are you have already been generally assumed about, and you don't want to make the same mistake (19 year old male). O f t e n others do not validate their alternate identities and o n e capitulates b a c k into an e n c a p s u l a t e d status. In the early p e r i o d s o f identity choice, v a c i l l a t i o n b e t w e e n an e n c a p s u l a t e d and a c o n s t r u c t i v e s e l f is not u n c o m m o n . T h e p r o c e s s o f biracial i d e n t i t y d e v e l o p m e n t is not linear. I2 P e r s o n s often return to or m a k e use o f f o r m e r racial selves. T h e r e is i n d e t e r m i n a c y in the p r o c e s s and no o n e final identity o u t c o m e is prevalent. Instead a p e r s o n e x p e r i e n c e s several racial identities s i m u l t a n e o u s l y and e x p r e s s e s different racial identities in d i f f e r e n t social encounters. Just as o n e m a y h a v e different p u b l i c and private racial identities ( B u x e n b a u m 1996); o n e m a y also return in s o m e settings to an e x c l u s i v e l y B l a c k identity after b e c o m i n g biracial. C o n t e s t for c o n t r o l is a feature o f all identity n e g o t i a t i o n s and the identity w o r k o f b i r a c i a l is no e x c e p t i o n . W h i l e m a r g i n a l l y successful, a d o l e s c e n t s o f all sorts f r e q u e n t l y c h a l l e n g e parental and o t h e r authority figures. D e s p i t e the p o s s i b l e and actual failures o f identity work, m y participants e n j o y c h a l l e n g i n g t h o s e p e r c e i v e d as m o r e p o w e r f u l . R: In junior high, I remember we were taking a Connecticut Mastery Test and they ask you what your race was. They didn't have other on there. I looked at the teacher and I said, "well, they don't have other. They have Black and they have White." And that's the first time I started becoming aware of being half-White and half-Black. I said, "well my mother always told me to check off Black. But because my father is White, I'm White too." And she sent me out in the hallway. I: Why did she have to take you in the hallway? R: She took me in the hallway, she said, "check what you want to check. But if your mother says check Black, then maybe you should do it. If you want to check both, I don't know what's going to happen." So I checked both. I gave both my parents credit (20 year old female). T h e s e social e x p e r i m e n t s that d e f y the rule o f h y p o d e s c e n t and h o n o r dual a n c e s t r y are m e m o r a b l e ; they r e m i n i s c e the early taste o f f r e e d o m and sense o f adventure. A t first their identity c l a i m s are tried on authority figures in school, then strangers. T h e y m a y start w i t h a s i m p l e refusal to a n s w e r the s t r a n g e r ' s u b i q u i t o u s question, " w h a t are y o u ? " Sometimes I get ticked off at people that want to know and it's none of their fucking business. When I was younger I wanted to explain that I'm biracial and my mom's White.

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So that it would be easier for them. Now I don't give a fuck. I don't want to tell them. I don't have to legitimize myself in that way to them. I resent that. It's not something you can explain in a sentence (26 year old female). The social assignment of a racial identity does not end when one reaches adulthood. It continues throughout their life. The little battles o f childhood build into b i g g e r battles, usually in adolescence. They move onto reject outright others' racial assignments and definitions. F r o m challenging teachers and strangers, they m o v e onto challenge m o r e intimate others. Peers' identity assignments seem to be the last ones challenged, usually in the college years. At eighteen, my freshman year in college, I decided that it was easier to identify as Black than biracial. Not because of what White folks thought, but because of the animosity that Black people had for biracial people. Black people have always been very vocal; "Yon are Black." They want to claim you. Now, I don't accept that. I don't accept anyone, Black or White, telling me what I am. They haven't walked in my shoes. I am bicultural. I am comfortable... The tragic mulatto I am not! (26 year old female). Over time, the conviction of choice b e c o m e s stronger. The acquisition of a deeper k n o w l e d g e o f self and o f greater interpersonal skill increases the ease o f defining oneself. These identity contests, while fun, increase social tension. F o r one, they challenge others' definitions o f racial reality. For identity w o r k to be successful, one must eventually get others to adopt one's perspective and alter the other's racial views.

The Exhilaration of Identity Choice The search for self is a search for a broader and more meaningful self and existence. Racial identity is not something "in the past to be discovered, but in the future to be constructed;" it is in the process o f b e c o m i n g (Hall, 1995, p. 14). W h a t e v e r particular identity is created, whether Black, biracial or raceless, one experiences self as the choice-maker. Growing up and becoming an adult, I choose things on my own. Right now, I consider myself a biracial person. I used to consider myself Black because my mother is totally Black. She told me to call myself Black. And that's what I would tell people, "I'm Black. My father is White, but I am Black." Now I'm in college and I said I'm going to go with biracial (20 year old female), The process of moving from an encapsulated to a constructive self m a y be gradual or abrupt, but they are always unplanned or emergent passages. One male describes an evolution over a six-year period, between fourth and tenth grade, when he encounters a crisis o f racial meaning. His peers m a k e fun of his "other" status. Without a legitimate racial identity, he feels in danger of having no identity at all. Eventually, he chooses to be Black.

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R: I always knew m y dad was Black and m y morn was White, but it didn't hit me until later. I understood it more and more as I grew up. I: Did something happen that gave you this insight? R: Oh, there were things. In elementary school days, the kids treated me different. The older kids used to say "how now brown cow" and I didn't understand it was a racial reference. It was fourth grade and I didn't get it. It didn't connect because I didn't really understand how different I was. When I was older I understood. 1 could really see the difference. It was mainly switching schools in tenth grade and talking to more Black and minority kids, and not just White kids. I felt that I needed to make a decision about what I was going to be. Whether I was going to be Black or I was going to be other. I feel in no way am I an other. So I ' m Black. (18 year old male).

According to Stonequist (1935), the turmoil arises from a double looking glass self. With the marginal person it is as if he were placed simultaneously between two looking glasses, each representing a different image of himself. The clash in image cannot help but make the i n d i v i d u a l . . , conscious of the process - conscious of the two mirrors a n d . . , the two clashing images (p. 7).

In early stage of self-understanding, the mirror with two frames of reference is conflict-ridden. The conflict is further aggravated by the dictate of choice. In the early process of becoming self, one is overwhelmed in a dialectic of opposing forces. Yet, my study participants move beyond the clashing images and prescribed choice. In the constructive stage, the biracial individual experiences new forms of self-awareness. One moves beyond trapped marginality into arenas of self as choice-maker. They incorporate a dual mindset, thinking at the center and the margins. An entirely new knowledge emerges in which one simultaneously both sees and doesn't see Black and White frames of reference (Brown, 1998). With two reference groups, they develop multiple and alternating perspectives on self: being Black, being Not Black, being White, being Not White, being Biracial and being no race at all. Refusing to dissect the self into a singular identity, a new seamless self emerges. I am both White identified and Black identified . . . . I do not experience the two as sprit, but as fluid, seamless parts of who I am . . . . I struggle to find words that do not compartmentalize, words that do not divide (30 year old female quoted in Williams 1999, p. 34). It's me. I feel like I can't segment m y body. I can't segment m y heart; it's knit together (31 year old female quoted in Brown 1998, p. 136).

When one is known differently than before, when a mixed-race person develops his or her own meaning regarding the "cultural problematic" of miscegenation and moves to a new level of self-knowledge, the self is transformed (Denzin, 1987a, 1987b).

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In the discovery of a form of knowledge unknown to others, constructive biracials become social critics. The social critic "see(s) things about his culture and his times that other persons are unable to see" (Denzin, 1987b, p. 190). They acquire a mindset that monoracials cannot or will not understand. Having the ability to hold opposing thoughts simultaneously, they regard themselves as possessing a higher intellect. They embellish this "oppositional world view" as it aids their struggle to overcome and strengthens sense of self (Hooks, 1984, preface). The act of affirming an alternate identity gives life and credibility to a new self. When opposition is maintained and one no longer finds meaning in others' definitions, self transcends an empty reality. One becomes "processual, (able to stand) outside itself objectively, but subjectively aware of its own relationship with the world" (Denzin 1987a, p. 199). Transcending releases feelings of exurbuance and empowerment to have their definitions of self and reality acknowledged by others, if even provisionally. Transcending others' definitions of self occurs on two levels. One not only denies the prescribed identity choice, but also challenges the very idea that a choice must be made. For when momentarily engaged in constructing or maintaining a particular racial identity, one does not sun'ender claim to other identities. When a particular racial identity is claimed in a specific social encounter, another identity may be put aside, or recede into the background, but it is not abandoned. In other words, their choice does not involve choosing one or the other racial identity; it involves choosing more than one. The Constructive Self

Becoming a constructive self involves a more fully formed self image, one that is highly self-conscious and highly self-valued. On this plane of existence, knowledge of self is based on a more complex system of understanding of race than typically possessed by monoracials. It is knowledge borne of seamless and transcendent experiences. Biracial individuals understand as others have not that they have multiple and mutable racial selves. When a person enters this phase of self-in-process, identity choices are purposive, self-inventive and strategic. The choice to "become one's own self' is continually grounded in the individual's deepest feelings and desires. When one enters the constructive phase, there is a new emotionality of self. Choosing one's racial identity is an exciting and liberating experience (Weisman, 1996). While the breakdown of background expectations can generate uneasiness, over time it can facilitate excitement, confidence and poise (Goffman, 1959). The intellectual access to a

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k n o w l e d g e w h i c h o t h e r s c a n n o t o r will n o t r e c o g n i z e h e i g h t e n s t h e e x p e r i e n c e a n d c r e a t e s m o m e n t s o f d e l i g h t . A s p o s i t i v e e m o t i o n a l i t y is a t t a i n e d , t e n s i o n fades and interaction becomes more playful. These new emotions confirm and support the choices for greater authenticity. D e e p e r s e l f - u n d e r s t a n d i n g , r a c i a l c h o i c e a n d p o s i t i v e e m o t i o n a l i t y are p r e c o n d i t i o n s f o r a n a u t h e n t i c r a c i a l self. F o r e x a m p l e , o n e y o u n g m a n d e s c r i b e s h o w h e w a s r a i s e d as B l a c k , b u t in h i g h s c h o o l c a m e to d i s c o v e r a n d o w n h i s " n o t B l a c k self." H i s s t o r y o f s e l f - d i s c o v e r y a n d i d e n t i t y c h o i c e r e v e a l s this s a t i s f y i n g u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f self. I: When did you discover that you were racially mixed? R: I can't remember. It never really came up. They told me I was Black. I: Who are they, your family? R: The Black side of my family. My mother, her sisters and my cousins. That is how they raised me. It (being biracial) wasn't discussed in my family. I didn't learn it from my family. However, by the time of the interview, he acquired a biracial view of himself. T h e t r a n s i t i o n f r o m B l a c k to b i r a c i a l b e g i n s w i t h a n u n a n t i c i p a t e d , y e t h e a r t f e l t r e v e l a t i o n t h a t alters h i s s e n s e o f self. T h r o u g h t h e d u a l p r o c e s s o f d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n ( h e sets h i m s e l f a p a r t f r o m t h e i d e o l o g y o f h i s I s l a m i c b r o t h e r s ) and identification (he identifies with his White friends), he ends up acknowledging both heritages. I: What race do you consider yourself to be? R: I'm Black and White. With an emphasis on the "and." I: When did you change from Black to Black and White? R: Sophomore year in high school. I: What happened? R: Some of my family has joined into the Nation. I was part of the Nation of Islam. I was a member. I thought it was too restrictive. And my White friends were like, "why are you preaching to us about White devils?" I don't want to lose them. I shouldn't be losing friends like that. I couldn't accept the restrictive racial attitudes. I had White friends and I was halfWhite. I couldn't stay with that. Deep inside my heart, getting deep into the Nation meant I wouldn't have any White friends. I knew I would be straying away from them if I got more involved. I didn't want to do that, stray away from them. And Black friends got upset, those that weren't involved in the Nation. I: You felt like you were losing your friends and losing part of yourself?. R: I didn't want to. No. Because that made me realize that I really do have White friends and I really am White. That was the first time I really thought about it that I was part White. My own mind influenced me. I always thought I was Black. I think right then it dawned on me that the sophomore year in high school, I have White blood; I have White friends. A long-time White friend said, "Remember you are White too." So that's what made me think. Yeah, I am White too. From then on, I knew I was Black and White. I: Have you changed the way you fill out the form? R: Now, even if it says check one, I'llselect Black, White and Native American. Even if it says check one. I am not of one race.

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I: Does it matter what you put? R: It matters to me. I want people to know that we are out there. We are biracials (19 year old male).

When making identity claims, others express exuberance and confidence they had not known before. When they successfully defy others' attempts to mold their racial identity, feelings of relief, empowerment and even playfulness result. R: It's playful to be biracial because you can't be pigeon holed. I: You like that? R: Yes, I like that a lot. Keep people guessing. They say what they feel. You might say something about Black people thinking I am Spanish and I might say, "No, that's not true because I am half Black and a lot of Black people feel like this." And you will believe me because I might know something (18 year old female).

Over time they become more poised and self-assured as constructed selves. I think we have an advantage over other people: in how to relate to society, learning how to overcome people's ignorance about us, and learning to be assertive (21 year old female).

They move to greater challenges beyond self-determination. Having "arrived" at a more fully formed sense of self, they strike out against the stereotypes about biracial people. I see myself as biracial. Nobody in my family ever said to me this is what you are. They never pushed anything on me. They just let me feel free to choose. I didn't used to think it was a choice because people will see you as Black and you just accept that. But now I see my self as biracial. Just because the world sees me like that doesn't mean I see myself like that. So the world is just going to think whatever it wants to think. The world can go jump off a high pier if they want to, but I ' m not. People can see me as African American, and I ' m not ashamed of that, or people can see me as White. But I know who I am! . . . I confront the stereotypes all the time. I got real angry when Spike Lee did his movie, Jungle Fever. Flipper (a Black man who had sexual relations with a White woman) said, "we can't have kids. I don't want any mocha bean children running around not knowing who they are." That made me so mad! Ask me. I ' m biracial and I know who I am. I get mad when I see talk shows when the people are saying that all biracial children are mixed up and that they will never be able to find their place in society and that they will never be able to get along (18 year old female).

Once one has experienced the exhilaration of defining for oneself one's racial identity, there are attempts to reproduce these breakout moments. As one becomes more practiced at a constructive self, it becomes easier to drop or announce particular self-identifications. Some of my older study participants forge another pathway for the constructive self. They move beyond challenging an assigned identity and constructing an alternate one. They construct a fluid, mutable identity. They

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create multiple racial identities and engage in identity switching or strategically moving back and forth between identity forms (Lyman & Douglass, 1973; Rockquemore, 1998; Hardesty, 2000). Identity switching involves a higher level of consciousness (role-taking ability) and the use of more sophisticated social skills (role-playing ability). In order to switch from one racial identity to another in one social encounter to another, individuals have to be able to read the social scene, interpret the advantages and payoffs of various identities, and adopt the most beneficial one. These abilities, while less c o m m o n among adolescents, are possessed by many of the young adults I interviewed. By young adulthood, they have overcome the problem of all adolescents, learning the skills to manage interpersonal friction (Sebald, 1984). They have developed a "social radar" to inform them of the situational circumstances and "situational adroitness" to circumnavigate obstacles to identity.

Biographical Epiphanies The process of coming to terms with encapsulation and creating a new knowledge of self may occur gradually over many years or can happen more abruptly. For some, these turning points occur in climactic ways, as biographical epiphanies - those interactional moments after which a person is never quite the same (Denzin, 1989a; 1989b). Epiphanies come as abrupt moments of revelation that radically alter meaning structures; something new comes to light and displaces what was once known and understood. During the epiphany, the individual experiences a crisis and a revelation of self. One w o m e n ' s story tells of a major epiphany and its part in the dramatic journey of becoming a constructive self. Her story begins with a self-discovery, moves quickly to a crisis phase and then slowly evolves into a new identity form. The journey of self-emancipation begins without forewarning and with all the emotional drama of a made-for-TV movie. At thirteen years of age she discovers she is adopted; it immediately and unalterably sets her on a new path of knowledge, emotion and racial identity. She supplies some background information to contextualize her story of self. I: You had told me on the phone that you were adopted. R: Right. At, I think, about five months. (I was) less than a year. I: Did you spend anytime with your biological parents? R: To my knowledge, no. I was placed in foster care until five-months, and then I went on, as all adoptions are, a one-year interim basis with my adoptive parents while the legal work went through. I: So you didn't know your biological parents? Don't know anything about them? R: I know a little bit. I know that my mother was Caucasian, I believe from what I've been told, Italian. My father was Black. I was born at Fort Bliss in E1 Paso, Texas. My adoptive

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mother is very reluctant to tall about it, which helps to aggravate the race thing. I assume my father was a serviceman. I've been told that my mother was college educated. F a m i l y m e m b e r s give h e r c o n t r a d i c t o r y i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t h e r W h i t e m o t h e r . S h e b e l i e v e s o n e v e r s i o n , as t o l d b y h e r a d o p t i v e m o t h e r , h a s b e e n s t r a t e g i c a l l y d e s i g n e d to k e e p h e r f r o m e x p l o r i n g h e r W h i t e h e r i t a g e . T h e i n c o m p l e t e k n o w l e d g e o f s e l f b e c o m e s " b u r d e n s o m e " a n d an o b s t a c l e in h e r s e a r c h f o r h e r t r u e r self. R: I've been told two very different stories on the adoption. One, I've been told that my mother was married and had kids, Caucasian kids, White kids. And then she had an affair and had me and put me up for adoption. I've been told that they were young and unmarried and madly in love and her parents, you know, were like absolutely no way. You are not marrying this guy! This is 1964; this is Texas. Two very different stories which kind of plays into the whole place of race in my life and where I am at and where I was, I guess. I: And some stereotypes about why women give up babies. R: Right, right. They are two very different stories. I should say the story, the first story, about the giving me up because I was Black and all that, is the story told by my adoptive mother. The other story about the two young, star-crossed lovers, I was told by my uncle. So I have to weigh the first story with a bit of mother's own reluctance to talk about it. I think there is a very big part of her that thinks why do you want to know about her. I am your mother type thing. So if you make her (biological mother) as horribly evil as possible, then you won't want to find out about that. But it's interesting in the fact that I don't know if she was aware of it, but it (the stories of her biological mother) really came to place a real heavy burden on me as to where I fit in racially. H e r d i s c o v e r y o f b e i n g a d o p t e d n o t o n l y initiates a crisis w i t h i n t h e family, b u t also a crisis o f self. S h e b e g i n s to q u e s t i o n e v e r y t h i n g s h e t h o u g h t s h e k n e w a b o u t h e r self. L e a r n i n g that s h e h a s a W h i t e m o t h e r r a i s e s d o u b t s a b o u t h e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f h e r s e l f as b e i n g Black. S h e e x p e r i e n c e s an e x i s t e n t i a l crisis an

a l t e r a t i o n in m e a n i n g

that coincides with

an a l t e r n a t i o n in identity.

S u d d e n l y , s o m e o n e w h o w a s i r r e f u t a b l y B l a c k f o r all o f h e r t h i r t e e n y e a r s o f life is n o w s o m e o n e i r r e v e r s i b l y d i f f e r e n t , s o m e o n e " m o r e t h a n j u s t B l a c k . " S h e c o n t i n u e s to d e s c r i b e t h e actual m o m e n t o f d i s c o v e r y . R: I found out that I was adopted at thirteen in a made-for-TV movie way. I: You were adopted into an African-American family? Black mother, Black father. R: Right. I: Now, when you were told that you were adopted, were you told that you had a White mother? Was that part of the story that you were told or did that come later? When did you find out that you had a White mother? R: That whole weekend. It was this made-for-TV movie drama. It must have eighth grade, which is so ironic. I hated the eighth grade. I was working in a program; some of the gifted kids were working with handicapped kids. The kid that I had been assigned to had severe problems. The guidance counselor wanted to make sure that the students understood, so the parents had to go in and meet, blah, blah, blah. My little brother went (with her mother) because he was four at the time. Later that night at dinner, I'm trying to recall this

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accurately because I wonder sometimes if I made it more dramatic in my memory, I said, "so what did Mrs. Paul say?" you know, blah, blah, blah, "about me working with Mason." And my brother, who was in the room apparently during this meeting, blurted out, "did you know that you are adopted?" At which point, I dramatically ran down the hall. "You don't understand?' You know, the whole drama thing. And that whole weekend we talked about it and it came out in that whole weekend. They told me. My father, I think, told me more than my mother did. T h e r e v e l a t i o n o f h a v i n g a W h i t e ( b i o l o g i c a l ) m o t h e r is a life a l t e r i n g experience. Even though she has never met her White family, she cannot release the White part of herself. Her subsequent identification with her White heritage brings about a protracted conflict with her Black (adoptive) mother. W i t h t h r e a t s o f s p i n s t e r h o o d , h e r m o t h e r e n c o u r a g e s h e r to d e n y h e r m i x e d h e r i t a g e . H e r m o t h e r m a k e s n u m e r o u s a t t e m p t s to f o r c e h e r b a c k i n t o t h e p a s t , back into the Black identity she has always known. She won't cooperate and a s s e r t s h e r r i g h t to c h o o s e . S h e u n d e r t a k e s t h e m o n u m e n t a l t a s k o f r e - e d u c a t i n g her mother. R: My mother has real issues. She would die a thousand deaths right now if she knew that I was talking about it. It's just in the last five or six years that I have openly talked about being adopted and being biracial. Identifying myself as being biracial. She's learning to get use to that type of thing. Maybe it was a form of independence on my part. But I had been told at thirteen, "don't tell people that you are adopted and particularly men. They won't want to marry you because men want to marry somebody whose background they know." You know, like it was gene error to have these little shames. My mother tends to be very old fashioned and pretentious. My mother is very much a Yankee, and old school. I think in some respects she sees my being adopted as a reflection on her being unable to conceive type of thing. I've gone through a lot about this adoption and the race thing and all. We've been in therapy and all that. I tried to explain to her how important it is for me to know: I need to know these things. I think she really sees the adoption as something she did, as if signing a mortgage or buying a piece a property. Not that she sees me as property, but this was her business. And I'm prying by asking these things. It was funny. I: Is it as a mother, you are fully hers? R: Right, right. I: And if you raise these questions i t . . . R: Challenging her, right, "why are you questioning me?" I think much of it for my mother is "why do you need to know about her? I'm your mother." You don't need her type of thing. And I respect that. W h i l e s h e c o n c e d e s to u n d e r s t a n d i n g to raised by two Black parents, she should s e a r c h , s h e d o e s n o t a c c e p t it f o r h e r s e l f . n o t e n d ; s h e a t t e m p t s to l o c a t e h e r W h i t e

her mother's perspective that being consider herself Black and end the Her search for self-knowledge does m o t h e r , e v e n at t h e r i s k o f v i o l a t i n g

h e r a d o p t i v e m o t h e r ' s trust. I: Do you think you will look for your biological mother? R: I have. I have registered with ALMA, which is the Adoption Liberation Movement Association. The problem with that is it's kind of hit or miss. Unless she's looking for me,

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we're not going to have a match. My brother and I broke into my mother's safe and got some papers and my mother is meticulous with her records. This is all confidential. The envelope that said final adoption papers was missing and there was a date, like October 1992, she recorded the date that she took them out. It happened around the time I was more and more vocal about this. So I've gotten some information. I mean I know the social worker who handled it. I know the lawyer who handled it. That type of thing. I: The curiosity must be strong. R: It is. It is. S h e b e c o m e s r e f l e c t i v e o n h e r f o u r t e e n - y e a r j o u r n e y o f crisis a n d selfd i s c o v e r y , o n e t h a t is n o t y e t c o m p l e t e . It is kind of difficult. But what happened, in addition to being thirteen and all that entails, finding out that I was adopted, and finding out that I was half White was a lot. Unfortunately, my immediate family is stoic. Well, I've always been told even before I found out that I was adopted, I was too sensitive. They're very stoic. So there wasn't a lot of talking and processing. It was just dumped on me. And then that was it. Which caused a lot of problems for me. I was thirteen when I found out, and I was close to twenty-six or twenty-seven when I choose to really understand or accept or celebrate the fact that I was biracial. Now I tell my students, ' T m just as much White as I am Black." S h e c o n t i n u e s to w o r k t h r o u g h racial i d e n t i t y i s s u e s as s h e h e l p s o t h e r b i r a c i a l c h i l d r e n i n t h e h i g h s c h o o l w h e r e s h e t e a c h e s . U n l i k e t h e early y e a r s , s h e n o w approaches the subject of race with confidence and humor. R: Each year I found more and more biracial students. I got a letter from one student, Reese. Very good girl, good student, beautiful, blah, blah, blah, blah. She wrote to me over the summer and said how much it meant to her to have a teacher who was biracial who talked about it and was open about it. Because she was biracial and she felt she had someone to identify with and I was thrown by that. She never mentioned it the whole year in school. I: You are a role model. Did that help you to then tap in more to that part of you? R: Yeah, it does. It made me feel good that she saw me as a role model and I could help beyond the academic text book type of things. We still write to each other. The last letter I got asked me about hair. She's like, "what do you do in the summer? It is driving me crazy." I used to say to people who ask, "well if you could find your parents what would you ask them?" I would kind of laugh it off and say, "well, I would want to find out which one of them gave me this messed up hair" (32 year old female). Her story reveals the dramatic m o m e n t w h e n what was a certain and core selfd e f i n i t i o n , that s h e w a s B l a c k , w a s i n s t a n t l y t o r n apart w i t h t h e d i s c o v e r y o f h e r adoption. A fourteen year search for self began, interrogating the meaning of self, o t h e r s a n d race. H e r d e c o n s t r u c t i o n a n d u l t i m a t e r e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f s e l f a n d s o c i a l r e l a t i o n s call for t h e r a t i o n a l a n d e m o t i o n a l i n t e r v e n t i o n o f therapy. E v e n t u a l l y h e r p a t h l e a d s to a n i n v e n t i o n o f a n e w a n d e n t i r e l y d i f f e r e n t racial s e l l t h a t s h e is biracial. O n c e a c c o m p l i s h e d she, like o t h e r p a r t i c i p a n t s , s o u g h t

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support for their non-normative racial identities. Through significant interactions, such as the partner they choose to date or by seeking out other biracial persons, they find support for their newly constructed selves. CONCLUSION Biraciality involves a dialectic of experience involving a transformation of thought, emotionality and self. Persons of mixed-race descent experience, in varying degrees of intensity, a fundamental tension with a social world that tries to fit them into a pre-constructed mold that they feel does not allow them to be who they really are. It is a story of self, of coming to terms with society's dictates and persevering to find authenticity despite the constraints. Biracial individuals show a determined spirit to attend to and nurture their inner understandings; they do not relinquish the freedom of self-determination. By questioning others' definitions of racial reality and moving beyond the racial divide, abrogating feelings of doubt, confusion and uneasiness, typically associated with the "tragic mulatto," are met head on and transformed into the positive emotionality of confidence, play and exhilaration. Their story is set in the enduring, yet ever-changing, drama of American race relations. For mixed-race persons, finding an authentic place in the negative drama of race is not an easy task. Their social positioning is an important site for racial contestation, interpersonally and structurally, as it involves questioning the larger rhetorics of race (Williams, 1996). Their countervailing articulations of self elucidate one way subordinate groups play a role in the cultural creation of race. When biracial persons cross our once-impassable racial divide, when they speak with multiple identifies (expressed in degrees, rather than all or none) and from multiple positions within our racial politic, they confirm, as Herbert Blumer noted long ago, that the "color line" is not static and can move within institutional and personal encounters (Lyman, 1984). Drawing upon situational cues to construct their identities, they make evident the local and contingent meanings of race. That is, their lives demonstrate race is not always automatically "structured" into everyday life in predictable ways and reveal how race is not as salient, recognizable, and enduring as previously thought. Through their accumulated lived experience, biracial Americans shed light on our larger "crisis of racial meaning" (Omi & Winant, 1994) and advance a different theory of racial formation. They reject any quasi-biological definition of race that assumes the visible aspects of a person - hair texture, skin color, or eye, nose and lip shape - are the signatures of one's race. While keenly

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aware that others use their appearance to "code" them racially, they do not capitulate into these racial placements. In seeking to construct a sense of self as outside one's physical traits, young biracial Americans speak to abolish the assumed equivalence between how people look and who they are racially. Other conventional notions of race are challenged. The American custom of differentiating groups into mutually exclusive, phenotypic categories called "races" has always implied a social hierarchy that places Blacks at the lowest position (Spickard, 1992). As the most stigmatized race, Blacks have been singled out for exclusion from assimilation models of mixed identity forms. Now young biracial Americans cast aside the rule of hypodescent in forming their sense of self. In merging Black and White together into a seamless self, Blacks are no longer excluded from blended identity forms and become on par with other racial and ethnic minorities. The underlying sentiment of a separate and unequal status between Black and White is contested. In claiming Whiteness as part, but not all, of their identity, they disregard the boundaries between Black and White and reject the dominance of one social world over another. In doing so, they deny our central organizing rationale for racial stratification. Yet casting off certain racial conventions does not mean the abandonment of all social customs. While some young biracial Americans may speak of abolishing all notions of races of people, the construct is nevertheless alive in their identity formations. However, there is an important shift in their use of race. Biracial individuals embrace a more familial and cultural notion of race. Their racial formations are traced first and foremost through lineage and family ties. Acknowledgments are given to both mother and father and the racial lines they represent, following our kinship rules that dictate that all lines of ancestry should be affirmed in one's racial/ethnic identity. Racial identities axe further refined through the degree of one's identification with the cultural practices, beliefs, and values of those various racial groupings. A cultural, rather than a biological, conception of race is upheld, as race operates more like an "ethnic option". Our societal definitions of race cannot be sustained separate from the life and meanings of the individuals who constitute races. When biracial members of society oppose accepted rhetorics of race and invest our awareness with a multiracial subjectivity, the static, dichotomous and deterministic imagery of race becomes obsolete and the social hierarchy built upon this ideology is threatened. An analysis of race as an interpretive practice demands our social science practice to recognize these alternative realities of race and to build greater indeterminacy and flux into our racial constructs. When biracial

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Americans refute and deconstruct accepted modes of racial classification, they give possibility to a new, more universal knowledge of race.

NOTES 1. In the 1990 U.S. Census, nearly a quarter million people "wrote in" a multiracial designator to the race question. 2. For a similar discussion of the misguided tendency to define ethnicity in static and ascribed terms, see Douglas and Lyman (1976) and Waters (1990). 3. Not all researchers of single race groups have treated race as a static, monolithic construct. There are some notable exceptions which ponder the creation and uses of multiple racial identifies among Asian-Americans (Espiritu, 1994), Caribbean Blacks (Hall, 1991), and African-Americans (Waters, 1991). 4. There are excellent exceptions, in particular the Root (1992, 1996) readers. 5. Hewitt (2000) called these two processes of identity formation personal identity and social identity, respectively. 6. I found my "what is it like to be you?" style of interviewing to be quite successful. Many interviews lasted much longer than anticipated as the stories went on and on. Some participants told me they found themselves telling me things they had thought about a lot, but had never disclosed fully. 7. Hispanics generally do not construct race in the mutually exclusive categories of Black and White, as has been historically the case in the dominant American culture. 8. I use the term authenticity, not as an uncovered universal truth, but rather as a situational state of being which is subjectively experienced and discursively recognized as "true" (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000). 9. According to Korgen (1998), biracial Americans with lighter complexions are more likely to be tested. These tests are significant to the process of identity construction as "there are serious repercussions for failing the racial litmus test. Some are driven from the communities in which they find themselves tested" (p. 66). 10. Unlike Storrs' (1999) biracial subjects, none of my participants resolved their identity dilemma by choosing to stigmatize Whiteness. This may be due to the regional differences of race relations in the Northeast where my participants reside and the Northwest where her participants reside. Although in a similar fashion, none chose an all-White identity. 11. Rockquemore (1998) explicates a border identity as one that lies between predefined racial categories, a mutable identity as one that shifts between predefined racial categories, and a transcendent identity as one that lies beyond predefined racial categories. 12. My model of biracial identity bears a resemblance to Helm's People of Color racial identity theory (1990, 1995). Both are nonlinear models of identity development. Both models view race as a dynamic, lifelong, and circular identity process. Both recognize persons possess different racial self-perceptions over time. However, Helm's analysis is limited to monoracials whose identity work involves negotiating the boundaries of self within a particular racial group. My biracial participants negotiate the boundaries of self among and between racial groups and in doing so challenge those very racial groupings.

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REFERENCES Bennett, J. M. (1993). Cultural marginality: Identity issues in intercultural training. In: R. Paige (Ed.), Education for Intercultural Experience, (pp. 109-135). Yarmouth: Intercultural Press. Brown, L. H. (1998). '7 Can't Segment My Heart:" A Phenomenological Investigation of Biracial Identity Construction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio University. Buxenbaum, K. U. (1996). Racial Identity Development and its Relationship to Physical Appearance and Self-esteem in Adults with One Black Parent and One White Biological Parent. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey. Cupach, W. R., & Imahori, T. T. (1993). Identity management theory: Communication competence in intercultural episodes and relationships. In: R. L. Wiseman & J. Koester (Eds.), Intercultural Communication Competence, (pp. 112-131). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Dean, D. G. (1961). Alienation: Its meaning and measurement. American Sociological Review, 26, 753-758. Denzin, N. K. (1987a). The Alcoholic Self. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K. (1987b). The Recovering Alcoholic. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K. (1989a). Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K. (1989b). Interpretive Interactionism. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Douglas, J. D. & Johnson, J. M. (1977). Existential Sociology. London: Cambridge University Press. Douglass, W. A., & Lyman, S. M. (1976). Ethnicity: Structure, process, and saliency. Cahiers Internationaux de SocioIogie, 23, 197-220. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton. Espiritu, Y. L. (1994). The intersection of race, ethnicity, and class: The multiple identities of second-generation Filipinos. Identities, 1 (2-3), 249-273. Fernandez, C. (1992). La raza and the melting pot: A comparative look at multiraciality. In: M. Root (Ed.), Racially Mixed People in America (pp. 126-143). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Fontana, A. (1984). Introduction: Existential sociology and the self. In: J. Kotarba & A. Fontana (Eds.), The Existential Self in Society (pp. 3-17). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Funderburg, L. (1994). Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity. New York: William Morrow & Co. Gaines, D. (1991). Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids. New York: Pantheon Books. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Goldberg, M. M. (1941). A qualification of the marginal man theory. American Sociological Review, 6, 52-58. Hall, C. C. I. (1992). Please choose one: Ethnic identity choices for biracial individuals. In: M. Root (Ed.), Racially Mixed People In America (pp. 250-264). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Hall, S. (1991). Old and new identities, old and new ethnicities. In: A. D. King (Ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, (pp. 41~58). Binghamton, NY: State University of New York. Hall, S. (1995). Negotiating Caribbean identities. New Left Review, 209, 3-14. Hardesty, M. (2000). New frontiers in racial identity formation among biracial Americans, unpublished manuscript.

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Harris, M. (1964). Patterns of Race in the Americas. New York: W. W. Norton. Helms, J. E. (1990). Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice. Westport, CT: Praeger. Helms, J. E. (1994). The conceptualization of racial identity and other "racial constructs" In: E. J. Trickett, R. J. Watts & D. Birman (Eds.) Human Diversity: Perspective on People in Context (pp. 285-311). San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Helms, J. E. (1995). An update of Helm's White and People of Color racial identity models. In: J. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki & C. M. Alexander (Eds.) Handbook of Multicultural Counseling (pp. 181-198). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hewitt, J. E (2000). Self and Society: A Symbolic Interactionist Social Psychology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Holmes, R. M. (1995). How Young Children Perceive Race. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Holstein, J. A. & Gubrium, J. E (2000). The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World. New York: Oxford University Press. Hooks, B. (1984). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press. Kivisto, E (1995). Stanford M. Lyman's sociology of race and ethiaic relations: Conundrums of color and culture. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 8(4): 597-613. Korgen, K. O. (1998). From Black to Biracial: Transforming Racial Identity among Americans. Westport, CT: Praeger. Lee, S. M. (1993). Racial classification in the U. S. Census: 1890-1990. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16, 81-84. Lemert, C. (1997). Social Things. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield. Lyman, S. M, (1984). Interactionism and the study of race relations at the macro-sociological level: The contribution of Herbert Blumer. Symbolic Interaction, 7(1), 107-120. Lyman, S. M. (1990). Civilization: Contents, Discontents, Malcontents, and Other Essays in Social Theory. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. Lyman, S. M., & Douglass, W. A. (1973). Ethnicity: Strategies of collective and individual impression management. Social Research, 40, 344-365. Lyman, S. M., & Scott, M. (1970). A Sociology of the Absurd. New York: Appleton. Maines, D. R. (1993). Narrative's moment and sociology's phenomenon: Toward a narrative sociology. Sociological Quarterly, 34(1), 17-38. Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford. Motoyoshi, M. M. (1990). The experience of mixed race people: Some thoughts and theories. Journal of Ethnic Studies, 18(2), 77-94. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. Park, R. E. (1928). Human migration and the marginal man. American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881-893. Reddy, M. T. (1994). Crossing the Color Line: Race, Parenting, and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Rockquemore, K. A. (1999). Race and Identity: Exploring the Biracial Experience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Notre Dame. Root, M. P. P. (1992). Within, between, and beyond race. In: M. Root (Ed.), Racially Mixed People in America (pp. 3-11). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Root, M. P. P. (1996). The multiracial experience: Racial borders as a significant frontier in race relations. In: M. Root (Ed.), The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier (pp. xiii-xxviii). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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Sartre, J. E (1956). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Consciousness, translated by Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Philosophical Library. Sebald, H. (1984). Adolescence: A Social Psychological Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, N J: PrenticeHall. Shibutani, T. (1961). Social change and personal growth. In T. Shibutani (Ed.), Society and Personality (pp. 567-596). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Spickard, R R. (1992). The illogic of American racial categories. In: M. Root (Ed.), Racially Mixed People in America (pp. 12-23). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Stonequist, E. (1935). The problem of the marginal man. American Journal of Sociology, 40, 1-12. Stonequist, E. (1937). The Marginal Man. New York: Russell and Russell. Storrs, D. (1999). Whiteness as stigma: Essentialist identity work by mixed race women. Symbolic Interaction, 22(3), 187-212. Strauss, A. (1959). Mirrors and Masks: The Search for Identity. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Thompson, C. E., & Carter, R. T. (1997). An overview and elaboration of Helm's racial identity development theory. In: C. E. Thompson & R. T. Carter (Eds.) Racial Identity Theory: Applications to Individual, Group, and Organizational Interventions (pp. 15-32). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching Lived Experience. London: The State University of New York Press. Waters, M. C. (1990). Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Waters, M. C. (1991). The role of lineage in identity formation among Black Americans. Qualitative Sociology 14, 57-76. Weisman, J. R. (1996). An "other" way of life: The empowerment of alterity in the interracial individual. In: M. Root (Ed.), The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier (pp. 152-164). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Williams, C. B. (1999). Claiming biracial identity: Resisting social construction of race and culture. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77(1), 32-35. Williams, T. K. (1992). Prism lives: Identity of binational Amerasians. In: M. Root (Ed.), Racially Mixed People In America, (pp. 280-303). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Williams, T. K. (1996). Race as process: Reassessing the "what are you?" encounters of biracial individuals. In: M. Root (Ed.), The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier, (pp. 191-210). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Zack, N. (1996). On being and not-being Black and Jewish. In: M. Root (Ed.), The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier (pp. 140-151). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

SALT FEVER: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE IN FOUR SECTIONS Andrea Fontana ABSTRACT This is an ethnographic narrative describing a subculture from different perspectives and the process of achieving membership by a neophyte: Andy. The narrators tell their tale (cf Smith, 1993) to the audience (be it a live audience or a distant academic audience through the printed version of this narrative). The fledgling member, Andy recounts his learning experiences in becoming a member of the racing subculture. Kirk, an 'old timer' of these events, fills in the details about the past and present context and history of Bonneville Speed Week. Finally, Andy, in his academic role as Dr. Fontana, (role played by a graduate student in the live version), acts as the "Greek Chorus", providing a commentary concerning the sociological insights to be found in this narrative. Narrators: Professor Fontana, the sociologist:

Don Stewart (dressed in blue blazer and khaki pants)

Andy, the crew member:

Andrea (Andy) Fontana (dressed in blue jeans, a colorful racing T-shirt sporting a Bonneville 1999 participant logo, straw hat and dark sun glasses)

Kirk, the 'old timer': 1

Dressed exactly like And5,, but with a long scraggly beard, and occasionally chewing tobacco.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 147-163. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4 147

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Setting: The town of Wendover at the border between Nevada and Utah, in fact the border line is painted inside the old State Line Hotel and Casino. On one side drinking and gambling is legal, on the other it is not. Also, six miles up the road from Wendover is a vast, dry salt lake named the Bonneville Salt Flats. The thin, rock-hard salt crust provides an unparalleled surface for racing. The smooth surface, the traction, and the wide open spaces allow for very high speeds, while the salt deflects the radiance of the sun remaining cool under the friction of screaming tires. The speed potential of the salt fiats was realized as early as 1914 when the first race took place. Racers from Europe and America became increasingly attracted to this site. In 1935 Sir Malcom Campbell (U.K.) ran the first 'flying mile,' setting a world land speed record of 301.13 miles per hour. The first Bonneville Speed Week, sponsored by the Southern California Timing Association took place in 1949. Cars (and motorcycles) got bigger and faster until in 1960 the Flying Caduceus became the first jet-powered car, fitted with a 17-stage J79 jet engine. Craig Breedlove brought national attention to Bonneville when his jet-powered car broke the 600 miles per hour barrier in 1965. Racing has continued to our days, with an ever increasing number of contestants from as far as Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and much larger crowds of spectators. The speed reached is getting unbelievable - A n d y Green's jet-propelled car last year broke the speed of sound. The racers, their crews and the fans stay in Wendover, either at the numerous motels and casinos that line Main Street or in RVs or even tents pitched wherever they can find an empty space. To get to the race grounds one must drive five miles out of town, get past the official check point, then drive another few miles on the actual salt flats, pass another check point and arrive at the race site, well in the middle of the salt fiats. Professor Fontana: (looking stiff and pontificating) This is a story about membership. A great concern of postmodern-informed interactionists has been to let the members speak for themselves - a polyphony of voices (Marcus & Fischer, 1986). Yet, postmodernists have not discussed the fact that not all members are equal. There are different levels and categories of membership; not all members share the same knowledge of the situation and not all members are equally important. I am sure you are all familiar with Shakespeare's Hamlet, the tragedy of the brooding prince of Denmark. I don't know how many of you are also familiar with the play Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are two courtiers, two minor characters in the play. Stoppard writes the tragedy of Hamlet from the point of view of the two

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Fig. 1. Andy at checkpoint 2

and the readers gain a totally different perspective. Let's move from literature to sociology and from the castle in Denmark to the salt flats of Utah and we can write "salt fever" from the perspective of fledgling member - Andy. 2 Andy: (slurring his speech a bit, the result of mixing sun heat and Budweiser) Weeell, I know very little about cars. I have never changed my oil, and going too fast scares me. I know even less about motorcycles, in fact I can't even ride a bicycle. Yet, I was invited by a close friend to help him crew for Don, a buddy of his from California, who was going to attempt the break a class speed world record with his Harley-Davidson. I got on the Internet to find out where Wendover was located and it seemed an interesting drive across all of Nevada, so I accepted. The Internet informed me that besides a week of madness, called "Speed Week", Wendover was where the Enola Gay pilots had trained for their drop on Hiroshima - the heroic members of the 509th Composite Group who had worked on the secret "Manhattan project". 3 My friend, Steve, flew in from Maryland and off we were in a rented Buick (as I learned later, never, ever drive your own car on the salt flats unless you plan to take it completely apart afterward, to remove the very intrusive and corrosive granules of salt).

Professor Fontana: Andy is recreating his week at Bonneville by telling a story about it. Reality about Andy's experience becomes a practical

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accomplishment achieved in his selective telling (Gubrium & Holstein, 1998). The chaos of colors, sounds and people is being given coherence (Denzin, 1989) by Andy's post-hoc accounts of what transpired, melding together his viewpoint as a neophyte with his recollections as a sociologist, as told by me. The story will be told by addressing four elements in separate sections: the people, the wait, the race, and hanging around. Kirk: You know, Andy was going to meet a new colorful subgroup of hot rodders, learn a new language about cars - starters, carburetors, manifolds, inline four cylinders, flathead V8s, overhead valve conversions, small blocks, and big blocks and he was going to be taught the importance of humidity and weather conditions. Professor Fontana: Andy did not realize it at the time but he was an apprentice learning a new career, that of crew member at a speed racing track. This experience has close parallels to Erving Goffman's notion of 'total institutions.' There are no confining walls around Wendover, but it's an isolated small town in the middle of nowhere and for "Speed Week" only one role is important: participant in the event. As Goffman points out (1961), apprentices

Fig. 2. Andy, Steve and the Buick

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learn a new career; only this one was not forced upon Andy, he stumbled upon it unwittingly. Andy: Yeah, it was immediately clear that, as participants, we were on top. After driving out to the salt flats we were given a red tag by an usher from the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), and assigned a spot in the pits, a large square portion of empty salt, which became our home for the next week. Later, Don gave us each a "participant" T-shirt and that sealed our membership. No one stopped us at checkpoints; they waved us through while quickly sharing a comment about the day with us as we slowed down. Fans often came up to us and asked us questions. They knew all about our driver and his records; they just wanted to know details about the bike, to touch it and marvel.

THE PEOPLE Andy: (leaning back in his chair) After driving north, hour after hour, through empty rural Nevada, Wendover is a strange sight. On one side of the border, there are casinos and neon lights, on the other side gas stations and convenience

Fig. 3. Andy and the Harley

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Fig. 4. Don and the Crew

stores. But what strikes the eyes is all of the people milling around. Most everyone is wearing colorful T-shirts and if it weren't for the esoteric, sleek cars being towed around and parked all over town one could guess that this was an AARP meeting. It was a shock! I always imagined these racing events to be peopled with young rednecks talking about their pistons as if they were an extension of their penis ! Instead the hot fodders turned out to be mostly white males in their fifties and sixties, many of them professionals and some comfortably retired. Kirk: Well, yeah, it takes money and wits for this enterprise; it's a matter of fine tuning an expensive machine against the track and the weather - in fact, each morning before racing some of the smart crews use a portable gizmo, you know, a computerized contraption to read the weather so you get an edge on the other guys. Professor Fontana: (raising his index finger) The subculture found by Andy was largely composed of males. In fact for many years women were not allowed to race at Bonneville. The race officials denied women competition licenses citing reasons of safety, but the truth is that it was the egos of the hot rodders which would have been severely bruised if a woman had beaten them.

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Kirk: Oh, I do recall Paula Murphy; she was the first woman to drive a jet, in 1964, and despite being clocked at 277 mls per hour by the officials, was snubbed by the old boys, you know, the 200 MPH club. Today there are a handful of female drivers, but most of the women are volunteers, family members, and hangers on. Andy: Most of the drivers know each other, they've been doing it for so long and sometimes they'll crew for each other. Royce came up with Don from L. A. and blew up his bike on the first run, just tough luck! So he stayed on and helped us crew, great for us to have his experience and savvy. You talk to the folks in the pits next to you and share tools and gasoline or whatever. Some of them are the top drivers and they wear their 200 MPH club T-shirt, which means they averaged over two hundred miles per hour in two official consecutive runs.

Professor Fontana: This is more than another race, it's a yearly ritual with the flavor of "same time next year"; people look forward to coming back and the participants and the crews develop a powerful feeling of "gemeinschaft', albeit they're together for only a week. There is nowhere else to go or nothing else to do in Wendover, the race event is all-consuming, that's all that is done, lived, and talked about. New members who show interest and eagerness, like Andy, are welcomed to the 'family'. Andy: Why, was I ever a rookie! I sat drinking beer, getting familiar with a circle of new friends in our pit, when this heavy set fellow in his sixties introduced himself and shook my hand: "Hi, I ' m Bill Summers"; little did I know that in 1965 Bill's brother Bob, broke the world land speed record here at Bonneville for a wheel driven vehicle, going at 409.227 miles per hour, a record that still stands today.

Professor Fontana: Andy found different subgroups of people. Hierarchically, the most important were the drivers, from famous ones like the Summers', Andy Green, A1 Teague, and Don Vesco to the new ones like Don. Then there were the crews, varying from a small group of friends pitching in to large professional crews of over twenty people, running vehicles with heavy financial sponsoring, all wearing the same outfit and working around the clock to fine tune their machine. Then there was a large cadre of volunteers; no one gets paid to run Speed Week, they are all volunteers who have been coming for many years, some of them run the booths, others are judges, others are ushers, most of them belong to the SCTA. Kirk: Oh, and don't forget the media: from ESPN, from the cable network, from Japan, from Sweden, from all over the place, with cameras and recorders.

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Fig. 5. Don and the media

They interview the drivers fight there on the starting line as the engines roar in anger or they show up in the pits at five in the morning as we're still waking up and fumbling around in the dark. And there are two local commentators on the CB radio, announcing and describing each run, who is running, the time splits, and whatever else comes into their minds. Andy: (grinning broadly) In fact, I knew I was becoming one of the 'guys' when we were in the van, racing after Don, who was on his first run, listening to the CB. One of the commentators, after detailing Don's name, class, records to beat, etc. went on:" One of Don's crew members is Aitalian, I like that! Aitalian/amore!" Boy, that did my heart good! Kirk: (putting a pinch of tobacco in his cheek and getting serious) There are two courses at Bonneville, the three mile run and the five mile course for cars or bikes going over two hundred miles per hour. You are timed on your best split for one mile. To qualify you have to beat the previous record; if you do, the judges check your vehicle to make sure there was no illegal tinkering and your gas tank is still sealed (no additives if you're in the gasoline class) and they impound it until the next morning, when you race for the record. The speed of the two miles is averaged out. There are almost infinite categories out

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there; in fact, someone has a record for a farm tractor. Others run diesel trucks at over two hundred miles per hour. Basically you have roadsters, lakesters (which are roadsters with uncovered wheels) and streamliners (which are long, sleek, fully enclosed vehicles). Then you have engine categories from A to D, and categories on whether you're using straight fuel or using additives to enhance the oxygen intake. Finally, you have wheel driven cars or jet propelled contraptions which are really earth-bound jets. Andy Green, who is little more than a kid, holds the jet record at 763 miles per hour, faster than the speed of sound.

THE WAIT Andy: Don ran the three mile course with his stripped down lO00cc Harley. We all got up at four, had breakfast at the hotel, drove across the salt lake in the dark, a pretty slushy high-speed ride. Steve taught me what to do; he'd sold bikes for twenty odd years in California and knew the game, gave me an extra set of wool gloves - you can grip strongly with them and don't get burned by hot metal parts. He gave me enough sun block and lip balm that I felt like a seal. The sun reflects off that salt and burns you to a crisp very fast; I actually put sun block on my eyelids. The first day I made one of my rookie mistakes, I left my sunglasses at the pit when we got in line for the time trials, (it was dark when we left the pit), and as the sun got up my eyes hurt so much I'd open one and close the other; people actually experience salt blindness in that white sparkling reflection. Got the weather check, cleared as much salt as we could from the bike, started the bike by shoving a starting machine against its rear tire - my job was to block the bike from moving forward; we warmed the bike up then turned it off. Loaded into in the trailer, we got pretty fast about that, and went to the end of the line for the short course. Kirk: (using his hands to make the point) The lines for the two courses start side by side then they veer apart. The track is smoothed before the time trials by a truck pulling a drag. There are perhaps forty to fifty vehicles in each line; there are more in the morning, the track is fresh, the humidity down, but if you're busting your butt to repair or re-tune your vehicle you run when it's ready, no choice on time, that's all. Professor Fontana: The wait is a time to socialize; people ask you about your vehicle, what modification you've made, what record you're going after. There are no fans or outsiders in the waiting line, just racers and theh" crews. Many of them have been coming for many years and this is the time to fill in their

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Fig. 6. 777 moving out fast

racing history since last year - where you've raced, the successes, the failures, the hopes. Andy: Of course, old crusty me told an 'old timer' we were running a 100cc Harley, his eyes got real big but he didn't say anything. Turned out he knew Don well and I heard him whisper to Don what I'd said but neither of them laughed, I was green but I was trying! The waiting was great, we slowly moved up the line as the sun slowly came over the horizon. The dry lake looked filled with water in the sun's rays as the sky turned deep blue. The bright light came upon us but we were done well before the heat of the day. Don qualified yesterday without much trouble, but today is different; it's all hanging on this run. Yesterday I wasn't really sure what was going on, just a day later, I know what's at stake, I know what to do, it's my record too, I am part of it. Kirk: The wait is a time to meet up with old buddies, wish each other good luck, learn what's new with their vehicles, what new tricks they've got or special parts they're using. Most everyone is friendly, helpful, low keyed.

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Fig. 7. Don qualifying

Judges and inspectors mingle with the crews and the drivers, family members and friends hang around, and the media is not too much of a nuisance. Occasionally, somebody's stupid dog gets loose and has to be chased down and put back in the truck. You look around and see all types of vehicles being towed, pushed by another car or towed with a line; some are impressive machines, others are just odd looking. Andy: Most of the folks were friendly as if they'd always known you, but we did not like this tall fellow, dressed in a red leather outfit from the neck down. He came and looked at Don's bike but spent most of the time boasting about his records. He had a powerful new black Japanese bike that could go close to 200 miles per hour, but it was stock. Uncrate the box, fill it with gas and ride it! It just doesn't seem right, where is the whole art of tinkering and adjusting? He did get his record at about 194 miles per hour but when he got back to the judges' compound for the post-race inspection they took half his engine apart "to check it" and let him put it back together. Professor Fontana: As any other subculture, this one has its unspoken rules. An important one is that of being low keyed, modest and to show care and interest in the other members of the 'family.' To strut around and be egotistical just isn't done and informal sanctions are applied.

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THE RACE Kirk: The time comes when months and months of preparation are about to be distilled to a burst of speed down the blinding white track, racing alone against time. Riders are pretty tight by now; they start their vehicle as they get close to the front of the line, revving it up a few times. The vehicles have no starter of their own to reduce weight, so cars are pushed by trucks and bikes using small starting machines. Andy: Steve and I grab the starter out of the van and Steve cranks it up. I help Don straighten up his leather outfit, give him his gloves and helmet. Then I put all my weight on the front wheel so it won't inch forward while Steve pushes the starter up against the back wheel. The Harley suddenly roars and Don revs it up. We're almost ready. Don hooks his dead man's switch to his wrist so if he is thrown off the switch will cut the power off. I've heard blood-curdling stories, told over a beer, about drivers being dragged for miles by a runaway bike at full speed!

Kirk: Don is up to the line, another biker is waiting his turn thirty feet to the right. It's a young driver fiddling with a tank of nitrous oxide he's using to gain extra speed out from his engine. Cameramen are down on the ground trying to get the best angle to capture a clean shot of the start. Jim, the official starter, comes up to Don, counts down and Don is off in a roar.

Fig. 8. Going after the record

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Andy- Don pretends to be listening to the official but the noise is too deafening to hear anything. He is just looking at the man's fingers - three, two, one, GGooo! He's got to be careful now, can't shift too fast or the bike will skid, it happened to Royce yesterday, despite the fact that he is sixty and has been riding forever. O. K. he shifts now; he is up to the first mile, he puts his head down to avoid wind drag, he is out of sight. From now on Don will look at the ground sideways, not straight-ahead, to cut down the wind drag. Royce has the van moving, we load the hot starter and grab on to the sides of the van; we're off at full speed down the side of the track, listening to the CB, Don is picking up speed, soon the announcement comes - he's made it, 150 miles per hour, all right. We quickly stop at the timing boot and get our slip recording the time. After months of preparation, thousand of hours and of dollars spent this is the only reward, no trophy, no speech, just this little piece of paper telling the story. Kirk: Don has gone beyond the curvature of the earth. As drivers gain speed they can't see beyond the first mile marker as the earth seems to curve down. After the third mile marker you've got to slow it down to a stop. The faster cars have drag chutes to help them, although it don't always work. Breaks have failed and people have reached the very edge of the lake, some miraculously surviving their ordeal while others didn't make it. Once Don Vesco got flipped upside down by the wind as his chute opened prematurely - that son of a gun had a run at 252 miles per hour, but it wasn't sanctioned as he didn't have the rubber side down.

Andy:

We spot Don waiting by the bike, he can see by our wide grins he's made it but wants to know how fast he was going. We take a few pictures, making sure the sponsor's logo appears in them and we go back for the final inspection of the bike. We're done. Don has a headache, his head kept pounding against the wind-breaking shield throughout the run. Soon he is thinking of running in another category but it's all gravy now, we can relax, watch the others, and not everyone makes it. We see a car careening out of control in circles until it stops. A big truck takes off in a burst of noise and speed but soon it turns into a cloud of smoke from its engine. We're suddenly hungry and wonder when they'll begin serving lunch.

HANGINGAROUND Professor Fontana: There are different levels of hanging around, depending on which group one belongs to. The fans position themselves along the tracks to see the racers or mill around taking pictures of streamliners and belly

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Fig. 9. Mugging for the sponsor

tankers. Participants and their friends set up a portable canopy in the pits and sit in folding chairs, drinking beer (by now it's mid-afternoon and it's well over 100 degrees with no wind and the salt reflecting white heat onto the people). Some of the drivers, like Don, double as judges and sit in the impound area checking bikes and cars. Others work at booths selling souvenirs and T-shirts to make the money needed to run the event. Andy: And some do the cooking - burgers and hot dogs and cokes. Do they ever work! There was this long line at lunch and the "chef " and his young helper were flipping burgers and serving people. This group of Hell's Angels were in line waiting impatiently. They looked really out of place but the allure of bikes knows no boundaries. Their leader, a huge bearded man, got into the helper's face, the boy was about eighteen and 140 pounds, and angrily told him he'd served some people who were behind them in line. The boy looked nonplussed. The " c h e f " without stopping flipping burgers said: "He can't hear you, he is deaf and mute." You should have seen this huge man shrivel and actually hug the young boy saying: "I'm sorry, man." Kirk: Everybody gets along and you see no fights, no boozing, and no littering. Sitting around under the canopy is a time to chew the fat about the old

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days, talk about new things, you know, technical improvements, and we've got to gossip about who is doing what to which roadster. Don, as a volunteer judge, hangs around the impound place and learns what is new in cars, bikes and rules, as well as getting to check first hand the vehicles that have just broken a record. Andy: After you've got your record or you throw a rod, there is little to do but to hang around. It's great to see a crew of twenty frantically getting a streamliner ready to race. As we sit and talk we watch the track from the corner of our eyes but only pay attention when someone starts spinning around out of control or when someone famous is up on the line. Being new, I have to be told who is who and what is going on. As a small, yellow streamliner starts doing circles on the salt, Royce tells me: "That's Bob Harper, he is a young guy and too impatient, when you shift you transfer the weight of the car on the axles and if you shift too fast the weight will lock your wheels, that's what he just did."

Kirk: Another place to hang around is the bar back at the hotel. By around five o' clock, unless you're still fixing your vehicle, you're back talking to old and new friends over a few beers. There are no more tourists or outsiders; everyone here is a part of the group of racers, judges, crew and volunteers. No one really drinks too much and dinner is an early matter because everyone is up at the crack of dawn or before, the next day. Professor Fontana: By now Andy has graduated to full-fledged member; it's the end of the week and his driver has beaten two records. His membership has been achieved under the tutelage of Don (and his success), along with his eagerness and hard work. Bonneville Speed Week has engulfed Andy, who for this week has been learning to be a crew member, nothing else. Apart from a fleeting comment about Andy's being Aitalian, no one cared about Andy's other roles outside of Speed Week and neither did he. Again, there is a similarity with Goffman's notion of learning a career in total institutions, with the difference that this is a temporary career and the separation from the rest of the world is self-imposed, not forced upon the members. Andy: By the last couple of days I had gotten to know quite a few folks and they knew me and that I was with Don. I did not drive that Harley but I had crewed for two world records: you can actually find my picture on the Internet next to Don and the bike. Steve and I left with a real feeling of accomplishment but with sorrow for parting from our new friends and that small town out in the middle of nowhere. We spent a good hour at a self-car wash trying to remove at least some of the salt from the rented Buick and took off toward the south. In the back of our mind, there was an idea beginning to g r o w - - w h e n are next year trials? We didn't really know it then, but we had caught salt fever.

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Fig. 10. Salt Fever

NOTES 1. The part of Kirk was not in the live performance. Kirk is a fictional character, a composite of various 'old timers' used here as a repository of knowledge about Bonneville Speed Week. 2. For information about Bonneville this essay relies on "Landspeed" Louise Ann Noeth, Bonneville Salt Flats. Osceola, WI: MBI Publishing Co, 1999, whom I met as she was finishing her book at Bonneville. 3. I am paraphrasing since my information came from surfing through a number of entries on the Intemet.

REFERENCES Denzin, N. (1989). Interpretive Interactionism. Newbury Park, CA.: Sage. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylum. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Gubrium, J., & Holstein, J. (1998). Narrative Practices and the Coherence of Personal Stories. The Sociological Quarterly, 39, 163-187. Marcus, G. E., & Fischer, M. J. (1986). Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, A. D. (1993). Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities. Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor.

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CODA

Morning at Bonneville Speed Week You come to it from wherever you are, east, west, south, north. You come to it to see speed. You come to it in the dark light of pre-dawn, from the only way that leads to it. You drive along the thin, long dark asphalt tongue suspended in the sea of white salt. Past checkpoint, you leave the road and civilization and submerge in the sea of salt. You glide over the slushy crust aiming for the faint light of the east, you speed as speed is what you came to see. Eerie feeling, silent dark cars speeding abreast toward a common point, with no road, no restraints, no guidance, no light. The dark suddenly breaks and the cloak of night gives way to the sparkling white, brilliant, blinding shining of the salt. The horizon breaks into a shimmering, swimming, bluish, white light; it feels as if you're driving into the lake that was here centuries ago--past and present submerged in the crystal sparkling of the sky and the salt lake. You came to it, from north, south, east, west, to find speed. You've found past, present and future. You're humbled by the shimmering white, cutting into the blue of the sky, not a race track but the earth beyond time and space. Hurry now, the cool waves of light will soon turn into blinding rays of heat. We must race now.

ABSENCE AS PRESENCE Laurel Richardson

I knew I would not be able to attend the Midwestern Sociological Society Meetings 2000, but Norman Denzin prevailed upon me to submit a paper anyway so that - as he put it - "the record of our Cultural Studies Sessions would not be disrupted". Strange, how quickly I agreed to his request; strange that we who have welcomed the disruption poststructuralism has brought into our disciplines, nonchalantly resist disruption of our own rituals. Perhaps, not strange at all. So much else is up for grabs - so much has changed in our understandings of the cultural world and of our places within it - including for some of us the severing of the familiar departmental tie - that the desire for continuity, surreptitious repetition, linking, validation, live interaction, is more intense than we had imagined. In the April 2000 Preservation magazine, I am reading about small town squares - well maintained ones surrounding courthouses, thick with greenery, brick walkways, fountains and benches (Ehrenhalt, 2000: 42-51). "You can sit comfortably on one of those benches at any time of the day, and the odds are overwhelming that you can do so in utter privacy; the place is empty in the morning, empty at noon, empty at dusk" (p. 43) The businesses that could once depend upon walk-in customers have relocated to the outlying mall; the coffee shop is gone; the whittling rocks for sharpening knives are gone, too, and the foot high piles of wood shavings. Everywhere the signs of human presence is absent. The casual social encounter that has marked small town life is absent, and with it the opportunities for nourishing relationships. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 165-169. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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I think of my university sociology department. It is located on the third floor of the administration building and is classroomless. If the hallways were curved, the layout would be like a Mobius strip, with offices - thirty-five or so along the inside and outside curves. The main offices are neatly tucked-in next to the elevator; the computer lab right next to the staircase. Everyone has alternative routes to their offices, and can, if they chose, avoid passing most of the other offices. Sometime in the late 1980s, I noticed that there was never anyone in the hallways. Maybe it was because the drinking fountain's lead pipes encouraged faculty to keep bottled water in their offices and before long, coffee makers and little refrigerators to hold their carrots and yogurt, eliminating the need for lunch breaks, which were time-wasters, incompatible with the Dean's decree "more, faster". To that end each of us were outfitted with a computer, printer, and email access to each other removing any need to leave our offices; knock on any door, closed, of course. Once I yelled down the hall, "Anyone here? No one answered. Yet, I knew that although everyone was "present" in their offices, everyone was "absent". -

I am reading the "On Language" column by William Satire in the February 6th, 2000 edition of The New York Times Magazine. Across the entire top of the page in one-inch blurry-blue lower-case lettering is the single word: squeezewords. It seems there is a new form of digital technology that snips out pauses in speech, shortens the silences, speeding up the recorded speech, increasing the number of words per minute. Rush Limbaugh was horrified - and his fans furious - when they learned that his speech had been digitally sped up in order to make more radio-time available for commercials. The "pregnant pause", a trademark of Rush Limbaugh's radio philosophizing, had been technologically deleted. Rush's signature, so to speak, had been erased. Absence of speech had been defined as absence of presence rather than as a sign of the speaker's awareness of co-presence, the co-production of meaning by speaker and audience. When I give a paper at meetings, I think of it as giving a speech. I write the paper for oral presentation, building in pauses, silences, accents, cadences through literary devices such as sentence length, partial sentences, unauthorized punctuation, puns, playfulness, alliterations and so on. I write in and for my voice; my style; my persona. Me. I hear myself speak as I write. Yet, being understood by my listeners is paramount.

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"Do you understand me? Do you get what I am saying?" my eyes will ask as I pause and make eye-contact with members of the audience. "No?" Ah, then I'll have to wing it, ad-lib, leave my carefully constructed text - if only there is time to do so, which so seldom there is at the sessions. I am reading my email: From Norman Denzin: "remember you have seven minutes for your paper . . . so they'll be plenty of time for discussion". From Bettie St. Pierre, who has won the University of Georgia's Teaching Award for untenured professors: "I've learned everything I know about teaching from you, Laurel". When I am teaching seminars I invite long silences; actually I demand them; I make them happen. I like taking time to think, to model listening, considering, holding back, accepting the communal space that silence offers. I don't want students to "Rush" in (here hear my wordplay? - if I were at the meetings I'd be pausing, nodding and smiling with those who heard the pun); I want students to deliberate and ponder. In the absence of talk, I feel our presence to each other. Perhaps instead of writing a paper for MSS, I should send an audio tape with my allotted seven minutes given over to silence! I am reading a tape-transcript of The Reverend Mark Belletini's service at a Unitarian-Universalist Church. He invites the congregation into the silence for a few moments, and then out again asking them to name aloud or not those whom they love or don't, people carried in their hearts into the sanctuary, for all of them - alive or not - are here together with us, whether we will or no. Because I would not be at the MSS meetings, I thought "Absence as Presence" was a good title. I know about the power of rituals to bring to consciousness non-present people. But writing purposefully to make my presence known despite my absence . . . now, that felt like a challenge. I like writing challenges. I am reading Gayatri Spivak's A Critique of PostcoIonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (1990); she has been reading Derrida. The postmodernist theory group has spent two luxuriously intense hours discussing two pages of Spivak's discussion of Derrida. Hang with me

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now for a bit while I do what Spivak calls an "interested (mis)reading(?)", making it useful for me, now - and understandable to those who have spent their time, perhaps more profitably, than decipering Spivak. There is no such thing as presence in language. When reading something we understand that the origin, the "author" of the text is absent. In speech, though, we tend to be fooled by the bodily "presence" of a speaker into thinking we are hearing the "origin" of the speech. The bodily presence helps the speaker "finesse" - suppress - that the origin of their speech - language codes - is absent (p. 321). In theory, then, there is no way to privilege speech over writing on the grounds that the speaker is "present". Further, there can be no such thing as "absent presence" because there can be no such thing as "presence". All we can have is the "mark" - evidence, sign, trace - of the "absent presence" and that we find only (?) in writing (and I suppose other forms of material culture). Theoretically, then the writing problem I had set myself is a non-problem. Because I am not there in my body, I don't have to finesse my self-presence. Rather, the writing marks the "absent presence", just as the "I am r e a d i n g . . . " sections of this text mark the "absent presence" of other authors; a veritable impingement of authors. Totally foreign to my usual writing practice, I read the first section of this text to my husband, Ernest, then the first section again with the next section and so one until he's heard most of the writing seven or eight times. I need reassurance. "How does this sound?" ! ask. "Is it working? I'm working hard on the text's structure, the interplay of reading and writing. Does it concretize for the listener a theory of absence? The human practice of taking lines of flight? going off on tangents, that really aren't tangents at all but integrative contingencies, moves toward being present?" I am having lunch in Yellow Spring with my friend, Marilyn. I tell her my paper. "The title sends me thinking", she says. "Into my own world". "So", I say, "a title suffices". So, perhaps Norman will decide to only read the title of my paper. Although high theory says that my physical presence would further suppress attention to the code by which knowledge is created, nevertheless, I feel sad not to be peopling the Empty Square with you, speaking with you without digital editing, saturating our communal silent space with memories of "absent presence".

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REFERENCES Ebaenhalt, A. (2000). The empty square. Preselvation (March/April), 42-51. Satire, W. (2000). On language: squeezewords. New York Times Magazine (2/6), 28. Spivak, G. C. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

HURRICANES" A NARRATIVE OF CONFLICT CYCLES IN A DISTRESSED MARRIAGE Elissa Foster ABSTRACT "Hurricanes" is an autoethnographic narrative account of conversations between a husband and wife in the weeks leading up to their separation. The primary theme explored in the narrative is the cyclic nature of relational communication and the patterns that emerged during this couple's conflict about their marriage. The narrative provides a detailed description of the couple's conversations and emotions as they attempt to define and make sense of their relationship. In its conclusion, the chapter discusses the writing process and frames the narrative within a broader context of relational research.

HURRICANES in all hurricanes and stories, the beginning was not really the beginning. Sifting through the years of their relationship, there were signs of the approaching tempest in countless words, looks, and thoughtless remarks. Each wave of transgression had its consequences and the tension kept mounting and mounting. Today, when the hurricane made landfall, the foreshadowing signs were all there, adding to the intensity of the storm. As

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 171-193. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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ELISSA FOSTER Day One - Landfall

"I hate my job. I ' m going to ask for my old job back", Brett announced to Deborah as he walked into their new apartment. Deborah fell silent. Her stomach constricted with anxiety. "You won't even consider looking for another job here in Houston?" she asked, quietly. "Maybe", Brett replied. "Maybe I could do that". But that's not what you want to do, is it? Deborah thought as she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Her mind swam as the water pounded her head and body. This was an old conversation by now. Still, every time, her world collapsed beneath her. How typical that he would do this today, the second day in her doctoral program. Three years ago, they had met in graduate school in Tennessee and begun dating. After six months, Brett finished his program and moved to Savannah, then Deborah joined him a year later. At the time, she rationalized her decision to postpone her studies, believing that her relationship with Brett was too new for her to insist that he move across the country for her sake. After a year together in Savannah, Deborah had planned to begin her doctoral studies in Texas when Brett asked her to marry him and stay for one more year. He had just started a new job and didn't want to leave until he'd given it a full year. He would also have time to prepare himself to leave his home and community. Savannah was not his birthplace or his family home; it was more than that. It was home to his soul. Strangely, after resisting the move for so long, Brett found a job in Houston fight away, which dictated that he leave before she did. At least in terms of timing, she was the one to follow him once again. Or at least she was preparing to when he called late one night from Houston, a few days before she was due to move with all their belongings. Brett's voice was hard and defensive over the telephone. "I hate my job. I've made a terrible mistake in coming down here. I want to ask for my old job back, in Savannah, but it's too late. ! have no options. I ' m in a job I hate and I have no options. The applications for my old job close tomorrow". "Of course you have options", Deborah was angry. Fuck him, she thought. I've had enough. I will not beg him to stay. "You could call Kathy up tonight and ask her for your job back. They won't want to go to the trouble of training someone new when they could have you back. You're just painting yourself into a corner so you don't have to make the choice. If you want to move back, MOVE BACK". I don't care, she thought. As she gripped the phone, her mind was racing. I haven't signed the contract f o r the movers yet. Perhaps I still have the brochure from the university and I

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could live on campus. I could call the church down in Houston and they could help me find a roommate. Then, she burst in on what he was saying. "I told Tom we'd be moving out on the 5th but our lease doesn't run out until the 15th. You could ask to spend those few days here until you find yourself a new place. We'd lose the $200 deposit on the Houston apartment, but at least we haven't signed the lease yet". She was trying to establish her future without him. Like running through an emergency procedure, she focused on practicalities• In minutes, she had it all worked out, even how they would divide up the furniture and the wedding gifts, barely a year old. His words broke in on her plans. "Honey, you know I love you but I've always had my doubts about this relationship. I know you moved to Savannah to be with me, and you postponed your studies and everything, but I ' m not willing to make sacrifices like you have. I don't think that's fair, b u t . . . Maybe if it was meant to be then I would feel differently". They'd had so many conversations like this in their relationship, even before they were married. Brett continued, "You've said I don't have any goals for this relationship, and you're right. It would be a lot easier if I did. The only thing I've ever been sure of is that I want to live in Savannah and now I feel like I ' m never going to get back there. I guess I didn't really think it t h r o u g h . . ". and here they were again, less than three weeks after that conversation. A few unopened boxes and bare walls the only sign that they were newly moved-in. The day after his late-night call, Brett had called again to let her know that he wanted to stick it out. He had spoken to his mother who pointed out that he had been in his new job less than a week and that he was now contemplating divorce based on a few stressful days spent alone in a hotel room. She also told him not to make the biggest mistake of his life. Brett had also called his old boss, Kathy, and found out the door was still open for him at his old job - at least for the time being. He felt more optimistic when he knew he had the option to go back and, perversely, he then felt more positive about staying in Houston to give his new job a chance. He always wants one foot out the door, Deborah thought. Deborah responded to BreWs news with detached ambivalence. After his first call, she had cried on the shoulder of a girlfriend who helped her put together a plan to move on her own. Having convinced herself to go on alone, Deborah did not feel particularly relieved by Brett's decision to stay. Many times before, she allowed herself to see such a change of heart as a turning point in their relationship: a new beginning, perhaps. Now, with experience, she perceived it as a cycle of instability. Brett would get frustrated, blame her or • . .

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their marriage for his unhappiness; she'd feel responsible and hurt; a few days later he'd have a change of heart - until the next crisis came. Now, squeaky clean from a shower she hadn't needed, Deborah felt ready to face the latest storm. "When I ' m with you, it's wonderful", Brett said, "You're the most precious, loving, giving person I've ever known. But when I feel frustrated with my job, or anything, my mind goes back to the past and I feel like I've made a terrible mistake". "But you keep making it". Deborah stood, tense, her long arms barricading the swelling tempest in her chest. "This would have been so much easier to deal with three weeks ago, before I moved down here. YOU decided you wanted to stay in Houston. You told me that staying with me was much more important to you than living in Savannah. That's why you took a job down here in the first place. You wanted to be here for me, to support me". You picked M E (she wanted to scream). You always pick me, so how can you - W H Y do you keep tormenting me by changing your mind like this?! "It's just t h a t . . , when I do something that takes me away from what I want, I can't handle it - particularly when I think someone else convinced me to do it. I know this must hurt you, but you're my best friend so I feel I have to tell you what I ' m thinking or I wouldn't be being honest", Brett said. Deborah paused. "It really hurts when you talk this way about feeling taken away from what you w a n t . . , because I know you're not referring to me. I ' m not what yon want - I ' m what's standing in your way". Why can't I accept that he doesn't want me ? She thought. Brett's face briefly recognized her pain, then he continued on his train of thought. "All I can think about at work is whether the things I ' m doing there can get me back into my old job. But the things I ' m taping for the hospital look like shit because it's not broadcast quality. It's not a job for a videographer at all! In two or three years I'll be using the same reel to get a job back in Savannah that I used for this job. I don't care about these people. I have to talk to these doctors every day who are just ass-holes; they treat me like s h i t . . . " Brett's tone weakened. "I was doing what I wanted to do, where I wanted to do it, with people I care about, in my c o m m u n i t y . . . I feel like I ' m lost. When I ' m away from there, I ' m lost. You're my best f r i e n d . . , and I keep hurting you. I don't know what to do because it hurts me so much when I cause you this pain, but I don't know . . . what to do". Deborah watched as his face did something she'd never seen before - it crumbled, unable to hold back the tide of his feelings. A storm surge engulfed them, changing the emotional landscape. Oh my God, she thought, what have I done?

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She sat beside him and held his hand. She saw he was in pain and deeply unhappy, and her own anger, pain, and frustration dissipated. From feeling powerless and out of control, she suddenly felt relieved to focus on his needs. She knew how to make him feel better. She was good at that. At least that was something she could do. She said, "I married you because I wanted to make you happy, and you're not, are you?" She asked herself, I've tried to be the perfect girlfriend, the perfect wife. Have I actually been oblivious to who Brett really is, to what he really needs ? Brett spoke again. "I know that if I go back to Savannah, it will be bad for us. I know it will hurt so much". "Brett, if you are true to yourself and you have to leave, then I won't blame you for it. I've said this from the beginning. Don't stay with me because you think it is the right thing to do or because you're afraid of hurting me". Her pride flared to protect her. I'm not a charity case, she thought. Brett wiped his face. "That's not what I meant. It also hurts me to hurt you. Isn't that what it means to love someone?" I don't know, she thought. "Listen", she said, "you need to make this decision on your own - I can't help you. I think you should go and talk to a counselor, soon, to try to get some clarity. We can't keep doing this". I can't keep doing this, she thought. I never know from one day to the next if he's going to be in my life or not. I can't move forward. After he left, she sobbed until she had to run to the bathroom to vomit. She sank to the floor, breathing hard, caught off-guard by the way her body had reacted to this latest confrontation. Well, I've never done that before, she thought. Day Two - Barricades "I want to hear about your appointment, but only if you can tell me. Don't worry about it if you can't". Her calm tone belied her feeling of urgency. Brett had responded to her request that he see a psychotherapist, a "counselor" as she put it. He had just returned from his appointment and, although she wanted to respect his privacy, Deborah was deeply invested in what had transpired. They were walking in the dark as Brett spoke and she listened. Deborah remembered many walks like this, clouded by painful conversations. Many were at the beach, beside an ocean that reflected the churning emotions and

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pounding head she felt compelled to conceal beneath a stony gaze. Tonight, like crashing waves through the tide of Brett's words, his statements about their relationship rushed out to buffet her, one after another. "I told her how we met in graduate school, and how we got married primarily for convenience . . . I told her how every month or so I would bring up something about your weight to try to motivate you to do more exercise, be more fit and toned, and I know that hurts you a l o t . . . I told her we're starting to do more things together like swimming and riding our bikes; she seemed big on having mutual i n t e r e s t s . . . I said you always knew you wanted to be with me but I just tended to take the path of least resistance, so I never really decided if I wanted you or n o t . . . "I told her how my morn, my relatives, and everyone we know thinks we're the perfect couple. She asked me if I thought I could be right and all those people could be wrong about us. I told her, 'Yes, they could be wrong'. She asked 'Why?' and I said, 'Because it's m e ' . . . . We talked about the time I broke up with you three years ago. I told her I wasn't unfaithful, but I did let myself get emotionally attached to someone else. I got back together with you because it was Christmas time and it didn't seem right to break up with you then. She said it sounds like I didn't think it through enough . . . . When she asked me if I would put a hundred dollars down right now on whether I would stay or go, I said, 'Listening to this conversation, I'd bet that I would g o ' . . . . She asked me if my love for you had grown since we got married and I said, 'Yes'. I think that surprised her. She said, 'That's one sign of a strong relationship, that it g r o w s ' . . . . " They stopped at a water fountain. Deborah drank the tepid water, tasting rust. Strengthened by anger she hadn't been able to express the day before, she looked Brett square in the face and asked, coldly, "Do you think for one minute that I would be standing here fight now if you hadn't convinced me time and time again that you desperately wanted to be with me?" Brett paused, "No. I don't". "Then how in the hell do you reconcile that with the fact that you say you have never made a decision about us? Were you lying all those times you persuaded me you wanted me and asked me for another chance?" "No", he replied. "I meant those things when I said them. I really felt that way. But my negative thoughts are true, too. I don't know what I want. I ' m a drifter, I guess. Have I ever pretended to be anything else?" Deborah was outraged. "You say you don't know what you want, that you're a drifter, but you sure as hell know when you're NOT getting what you want. If you were really a drifter, you'd be a lot more flexible, go with the flow, you wouldn't have so much trouble adapting to what I want", Deborah said.

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"Maybe you're right", Brett replied. They had turned and were retracing their steps towards home. "Maybe all I have to do is go with the flow. Learn to appreciate what I have instead of obsessing about all the things I don't have. I guess I don't appreciate the pain ! put you through, but one day I'll grow, I'll realize what I've done, and it will be terrible. I'll finally realize that pain, but you may not be around any more when I finally wake up. You are such a blessing to me, you love me, and you understand and accept me for who I am. Why can't I accept that? I want to be able to give to you the way you give to me. You give me so much when I don't even deserve it. I can only imagine what it would be like if ! actually opened myself up. I could even imagine being happy to move for you." "I've done this in every important relationship I've ever had - I take what I have for granted. I broke up with Anna three times until she finally wouldn't have me back again. I ' m doing the same thing with you. I know that if I ' m ever going to change my attitude, I have to stay with you and work through it. I don't want to keep hurting you". Deborah softened a little, but she was still defensive - barricaded against the storm of an all-out confrontation. She said, "Okay. I do appreciate what you're saying, but tonight you told the therapist that you would bet a hundred dollars that you're going to leave me, and an hour later you're saying that you want to stay and change your attitude?" Brett looked as if he had been drenched in ice water. "I also told you that I ' m stupid and I've done this with every other aspect of my life, so what's to stop me from doing it again?" He went to bed without saying good night. Week 2 - Turning Into the Wind

A few days later, Brett was in a buoyant mood. As they both got ready for work, Brett spoke from the shower while Deborah applied her makeup with controlled, deliberate movements. She was still wracked with anxiety about their marriage and she marveled at Brett's ability to turn off whatever anguish it was that drove him to want to leave her. After almost four years together, she was skeptical of any optimism in Brett. She knew that he was either repressing his negative feelings, or he was experiencing a temporary shift in attitude. It wouldn't last. "You know, honey", he said. "I've been thinking about our situation and I've decided to stay here with you. I ' m not going to ask for my old job back".

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Deborah said nothing as she created her public face, smearing her lips with a rich color, concealing the dark circles under her eyes, which seemed more noticeable every day. "I know what a wonderful person you are and I know we could be happy if I can just change my attitude", he continued. "I'11 start trying to find another job and I'll work on being more positive. I realize that what I've been doing is emotionally abusive and I'm not going to do it any more. I love you, honey, and I just know that if I go back to Savannah now, I'll really regret losing you". Brett emerged from the shower, pleased that he had made a decision, almost triumphant. Deborah hesitated just a second before taking her shot. "Don't I have a say in this?" she asked. "What do you mean?" Brett asked, caught off guard. "Of course you do", he amended. Deborah put down her mascara and turned to him. "Since the beginning of the year - well, really, since the beginning of our relationship - you've been telling me that you want to leave me, so I've had plenty of time to think about it. Right now, given this pattern, I know that I will be quite okay if you leave and our marriage ends. But, the fact is, I don't know any more if I will be okay if you stay. If we keep relating the way we have in the last year, I know I won't be okay". "You don't trust me any more", Brett suggested. "That's right. I don't". Deborah replied. Not as far as I could throw you, she thought. Brett paused for only a second before responding. "Well, if you're going to decide you want me to leave, I'd appreciate knowing that in the next couple of days. I'll need to know so I can make arrangements". Brett walked out of the bathroom. Deborah noted with curiosity the gritty feeling of satisfaction she experienced watching Brett feel rattled, uncertain about their future, out of control. Yeah, she thought as she watched Brett leave, How does it feel when the wind shifts? What does it feel like to have your plans collapse beneath you? Scared? She followed him into the bedroom. "Brett, I'm not going to tell you to leave if you truly want to stay. My only point is that there is no point if there's no change in our relationship. I will not continue with this cycle indefinitely. Something's got to change". "Well, what do you want me to do?" Brett asked. "I've already talked to you about this!" Deborah was frustrated. When it came to these discussions, she was either the silent party being dumped on, or

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she suddenly found herself in charge. Why couldn't they meet in the middle? Why weren't they partners? "The only way I think you're going to change and feel better about your life is if you commit to seeing a therapist regularly until you make some decisions. And you should be prepared that your counseling will solidify your decision to leave me. It's also possible that you will become happier about us - but I want you to decide what you really want". "I guess I don't have the confidence in this process that you do, but I ' m willing to give it a try", Brett replied. "I'll make another appointment for this week". Deborah was relieved to have some things out in the open, but she was also disappointed. She was honest when she told Brett she would not be okay if they stayed together. Although she believed in the power of therapy to help people grow and change, she knew it could be a long and painful process and the outcomes were uncertain. It would be so much easier if he just made up his mind to leave, she thought. She was becoming exhausted. Week 4 - Stagnating

During the last two weeks, the uncertainty of their future had permeated almost every moment of their lives, mostly bubbling up through innuendo or implicated in subtle avoidances. This was how it happened now: Brett vented his anger and frustration, Deborah felt hurt and inadequate, then later she felt angry but dealt with it alone, silently. Today, they walked by the river. It was a long drive from their house to the beach, so they walked beside the swampy water. It reminded Deborah of their marriage: messy, dark, unfathomable, and filled with hidden creatures that could strike at any time. As usual the topic turned to Brett's job and his desire to return to his old life without Deborah. "So, do you have any goals for the future that actually include me?" Deborah finally asked. "When I think about staying married", Brett said, "I can see you finishing your Ph.D. and getting an academic job somewhere far away. I see a house and children - but I don't see myself in that picture". Deborah felt like she had been punched in the stomach. "What do you see?" she asked. "I don't know", Brett continued. "I can't imagine being happy anywhere but where I was, and I see staying married to you as one move after another. Like I said, I can see your future - probably because you have such a clear idea of what you want - but I can't see myself there".

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"Well, what were you thinking when we got married?" Deborah was clutching at straws, trying to find a positive feeling in Brett, trying to palliate her pain and anger. She felt worthless. Brett's tone was flat, emotionless. "Like I've said before, I got married to avoid having to make a decision about letting you go or moving to be with you. That's all". "But what about the wedding and our vows?" Deborah had heard Brett's version of their marriage before, but she wouldn't accept it. "I don't believe you could have stood up in front of our friends and family, and not had any sense of what those promises meant to you". "You're right", Brett said, "I guess I ' m just an asshole". Brett was good at this kind of response: designed to stop the conversation or elicit a supportive, positive reaction from Deborah. This time, she did not take the bait. After a few minutes, she tried a new tactic. "If you really believe that you will be happy in Savannah, working in your old position, then you must go back", she said. "Do you understand me? If that is really your place, your only way to be fulfilled, then that is your decision. You're admitting that anything else would be a waste of your life and I don't want to be a part of that". "But what about our relationship?" Brett countered. "You've said you don't think the long-distance thing would work for us, so I'd essentially be turning my back on our marriage". "Brett, if you decide to go back to Savannah, you will be doing it for yourself. Which is fine. But, if you leave, it will be because you're not fulfilled in our marriage. What's more, from your actions I'll understand that you're not willing to be flexible for our relationship. If that's true, then we shouldn't stay married". "So, you're essentially saying that if I take my old job back in Savannah, I will be ending our marriage", Brett replied. "Judging your current level of commitment, I don't see how we would be able to build a stronger relationship while living apart". Deborah was sure about this. She still felt pangs when she remembered Brett's announcement when they had dated long-distance, that he wanted to date someone else, someone who lived in the same city. No, she thought, I have no faith in our ability to endure that. We'd never hold it together. Better to make a clean break.

After a few minutes of shared silence, Brett announced, "I can't do it. It's too drastic". "What are you talking about?" Once again, Deborah felt dragged back to square one. Despite the talking, there had been no change, no breakthrough. They were stuck.

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"I've picked up the phone to call Kathy and ask for my job so many times in the last couple of weeks . . . . But the thing that stops me is that, with one phone call, I could change everything forever. I can't do that. What if it's the wrong thing? What if you really are my soul mate? I can't have all that riding on a single phone call". "All right", said Deborah, "I understand. But if it's really what you want, then there's no way it can be the wrong decision - unless you convince yourseff later that you made a mistake and make yourself miserable". They continued to walk and the following question formed itself in Deborah's mind: Why have I chosen to commit m y life to a man who doesn't want to commit to me? When will it end? Week 5 - Fighting the Fury

A real hurricane was coming. Brett loved hurricanes. A couple of weeks earlier, he was depressed because a hurricane hit Savannah and he was not there to enjoy it - one more source of dissatisfaction. Deborah did not love hurricanes. In the summer right before she moved to be with Brett, they were travelling together when a hurricane hit Savannah. Brett was beside himself with frustration because he wasn't there. Deborah was more concerned about the beachfront house they had rented, particularly when it took several days to find out if it was still standing. It was. But a few weeks later, only 36 hours after they moved in, another Category 3 hurricane hit that same beach and took half the house with it. Looking back, she appreciated the way she and Brett cooperated and supported each other through that experience. It was actually quite a fond memory and she had seen it as a sign that they were ideal partners, able to survive a hurricane . . . . Today, making hurried plans to sandbag their ground floor apartment, Deborah was not prepared for another confrontation. "They gave my job away", Brett announced as he arrived home from work. "What are you talking about?" Deborah was slow to shift gears from the lists of grocery and emergency items she was preparing. "I got an e-mail from Kathy today telling me that they had offered my job to someone else. Of course, the guy took it. It's a great job". Brett did not hide his bitterness. "Did you think they were just going to hold the job open indefinitely? You told Kathy more than once that you weren't going to come back, that you had

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made a decision to stay with me". Deborah was astounded that they were having this conversation - again. "Of course I knew they were going to fill the position", Brett replied, impatiently, "I just didn't know how I was going to feel about it". Grow up and live with it, Deborah thought angrily as she hauled plants off the back porch. Brett continued, "I think while the job was still open and was still an option for me, I felt better about being here . . . . and now I've lost my chance. I ' m stuck". Yeah, stuck with me, Deborah thought. Jesus Christ, how much of this do I take? Gripping the wheel of emotional control, she said, "Look, we have to get down to the fire station for those sandbags. We don't have time to talk about it now". After negotiating their way through traffic to the fire station, Brett could no longer contain himself. "I've made a terrible mistake. I should have taken back my job when I had the chance". His voice was marked by intractable certainty, and clouded with disappointment. "Well, why didn't you? !" Deborah was at breaking point. Brett looked at Deborah, then looked away. "Oh my God, I knew it. I should have gone back. I've made a big mistake". Deborah lost it. Her anger made it difficult to articulate. "I am so angry with you fight now, I could . . . ". Every muscle in her body was tense. "You are NOT going to do this. No matter what decision you make you turn around and fixate on whatever it was yon didn't choose. You've . . . WE'VE spent weeks talking about this. You made your choice for whatever reason and now you're going to forget all that and make us both miserable". Deborah slammed her way out of the car just as the rain started to come down. Side by side, she and Brett filled and lifted 50 pound sand bags as the rain fell and their wet shirts stuck to their backs. Brett's mood lifted as he engaged in the physical activity and the surprisingly good spirits of the group gathered around the sand pile. Deborah used her anger to keep up a good pace with the shovel. When they finally got back in the car, wet and covered with grey-black sand, Brett apologized. " I ' m sorry. I didn't mean to dump all that on you. It was just the shock of having my job given away, I need some time to adjust". "I just wish you'd think about what you say and the kind of negative rubbish that invades your mind. And take some fucking responsibility for your choices", Deborah seethed.

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More and more, anger was beginning to characterize Deborah's conversations with Brett. She was starting to see the futility of trying to change Brett's attitudes. Week 7 - Taking Cover

As the uncertainty in her marriage continued, and the stresses of her first semester back at school mounted, Deborah began counseling on her own. She began to reflect upon her own role in the patterns in her marriage, and recognized her tendency to retreat into herself and abandon her own feelings in order to take care of Brett. She tried to translate each new realization into new ways of behaving. She discussed many of her therapy sessions with Brett, hoping they could share an understanding of the dynamics between them. But it is one thing to understand the habits of a relationship and quite another to break free of familiar cycles, no matter how painful they may be. Week 9 - The Abyss

In an urgent desire for contact, an attempt to recover the connection between them, Brett reached out for her in the darkness, his movements laced with intent. Needing to believe in her own desirability and wanting to deny him yet one more source of dissatisfaction with their marriage, Deborah responded, her mind an abyss. Afterwards, lying in the darkness, she cried silently, the burning tears streaming from a primal place too deep for her mind to grasp. She wanted him to kiss her one more time to taste her tears and understand but the thought that he would penetrate her loneliness terrified her. H o w can he understand? In the end, his arms enfolded her and he gently stroked her face. She held her breath until she realized that her tears had remained a secret. At first glad that she would not have to share her misery with him, Deborah then realized his relaxed tenderness was a sign that he believed all was well and her initial fear of discovery turned to anger and frustration. H o w can he be so close to me and not know? H o w can he N O T know?!

As she stared wide-eyed into the darkness, she recognized her investment in the wall that now stood between them, and sensed its role in eroding their relationship. Like the effects of a sea wall built to protect the beach from the ocean, she knew that the waves of anger, disappointment, and resentment would eat away at the foundation of their marriage. Inevitably, the forces of disintegration would win.

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Still, she was relieved that she could barricade herself from the painful truth of their relationship, even if her tactic would only postpone the approaching fall. Week 11 - Breakdown

It was a couple of weeks since they last talked about their relationship outside their marriage counselor's office. They had started couples' counseling at the suggestion of Deborah's therapist, and Brett had been making a concerted effort to be positive, loving, and affectionate. He even surprised her one night with a romantic, candle-lit dinner, complete with her favorite album on the c.d. player. By this time, though, Deborah was so starved for affirmation that she started crying before she took a bite of her food. The stark contrast between this dinner and the usual climate of their marriage simply overwhelmed her. She could not let go of her anxiety and skepticism - she had come to depend on it. Tonight, it all came pouring out. Deborah spoke. " I ' m so unhappy and frustrated. I hear you tell me that you don't want me and you don't want to be in this relationship and I can't believe that I've committed my life to a man who doesn't want me. I know that you did not take our wedding vows seriously, but I did! I keep thinking of how I stood up there in front of my friends and my family, with all that love, that beautiful day, and I can't understand how you could have treated it as a farce. "You tell me that you want to understand how I ' m feeling, but any human being with any kind of sensitivity hears the kinds of things you say to me and feels my pain. Why don't you? Why can't you understand why what you say is so hurtful to me? "I can't believe I am committed to you, but I am! Do you understand? I let you keep hurting me. I keep forgiving you. I've never told you what I want: I've never asked for what I need. "I want to be able to talk to you about the future, to build a future, to talk about children and moving. More than that, I want to talk about building the kind of relationship that will sustain us throughout our lives. I want to grow with you. I want to talk about what kind of husband you want to be. "I want to feel loved, and cherished, and precious to you - but I ' m not! You're supposed to be my soul mate, closest to me in all the world, my supporter and my encourager - but you're not. You're too busy thinking about how miserable you are with m e . . . " Deborah's tears overcame her. After a while, Brett said, "I'd like to be able to do those things. But before I can talk about what kind of a husband I want to be, I think I'd better decide if I even want to be a husband".

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It's taking too long. Deborah's body was screaming with pain. I can't keep doing this week after week. When 's it going to end? Unexpectedly, from deep inside her, a wave of emotion swelled and she heard herself whisper, "Please". As fresh tears streamed down her face, '°Please DO something". She cried silently for what seemed like a long time until finally, helpless, Brett said, "Don't you ever think you deserve someone better?" She paused, and her mind took over. "No", she replied, "I just deserve to be treated better". Her eyes were burned and swollen and her head and stomach ached. Definitely a migraine on its way, she thought. Brett looked almost as miserable as she did. She had suddenly had enough and got up to go to school to do some work. It was already late at night and she had plenty of work to do at home, but it was time to get out of there. As she packed her bags and prepared to leave, Brett followed her. "You know, honey", he said, "if I could just stop looking at other women, then I reckon we'd have a marriage". My God, she thought, he's saying this to make me feel better? It was almost funny. Almost. Her movements were sharp and angry, and her head screamed with the approaching migraine. "No", she said, "that's total bullshit. If you felt committed and fulfilled and positive about our marriage, then this wouldn't be an issue. It's not the looking that's the problem. Everybody looks. Everybody feels desire in some sense. But you see other women and you resent the fact that you're not free to date them. You resent it so much that you see your desire for them as evidence that our relationship is inadequate and THAT'S the problem". Deborah noted again Brett's ability to stab her in the heart then step fight over her body, oblivious, without even blinking. She was also angry with herself for continuing to be vulnerable to his words. Jesus, she thought, I've heard this enough times. You'd think I'd build up a little immunity, t Instead, she knew she would repeat Brett's words to herself a hundred times in her head "other women", "other women", - and use this to undermine her already shaky self-esteem. "I don't know when I'll be back", she said as she walked to the door. "I love you", Brett said as she closed the door behind her. The next day, Deborah took up smoking and stopped eating - vices she thought she had conquered years ago when she left her adolescent insecurities behind her. The smoking made the hunger easier to bear. Controlling the physical pain of her hunger provided a sense of control over everything. It's

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only temporary, she told herself. I'll deal with it once I f e e l more secure about everything.

Week 12 - The Cycle Repeats

In the car again, on their way back from a university event, Brett began. "I want to ask you something but I'm not sure of the best way to put this. How would you feel a b o u t . . ". Oh m y God, she thought. H e ' s going to tell m e he's moving out but he wants us to stay married, or he wants to separate so he can start dating someone else.

Deborah braced herself for the gamut of painful proposals. Even as she did so, part of her was exhilarated by the thought that this might finally be the end. "How would you feel about me not making any drastic changes soon, but staying on in the relationship to see what happens, to give it a chance", Brett said. "Not particularly happy", Deborah replied in classic understatement. In fact, she was furious. What kind o f a revelation is this? Is this the decision he's been working on ? She replied, "I would feel vulnerable and scared. When you say, 'make no drastic changes soon', I hear that I would continue living in this limbo, not knowing when you were going to make a decision, to go or to stay. Not knowing when you were going to come through the door again and blindside me". "I guess I understand that you would be scared - you don't trust me any more", Brett said. "But I want to do something to try to make this work out". They continued their discussion inside the apartment. "I know I'm responsible for causing you all this pain, and I really want to know - Do you think this relationship's worth saving? Is there anything left to salvage?" Brett asked. "First of all", Deborah began, "you have to stop feeling totally responsible for this state of affairs. If you haven't been giving enough to me or to the relationship, it's partly because I haven't been demanding it, and that's MY responsibility. Second, it's not that I don't think you can learn to be more understanding of who I am, it's just that I know I can't teach you that. What's more, I don't know if I can handle being around long enough to find out if you do change". Brett looked totally downcast. "You couldn't bring me up to your level so I drag you down to mine. Interesting", he said, dryly.

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He's blaming himself again, she thought, and moved to sit next to him on the couch trying another tactic. "Listen, you don't seem to understand that I have had some responsibility in this, too. I was egotistical enough to think that I had enough love, enough patience, and enough personal insight for the both of us. I thought that I could make up for what was lacking in the relationship, at least long enough for you to come around and make a commitment. I never demanded anything of you. I never really thought about what I needed, or even that I needed anything". "When I say mean things to you, why don't you just put up a wall? When anybody says something bad about me, I just put up a wall. Fuck them. Why don't you do that with me?" Brett asked. "Because you're my significant other", Deborah replied, impatient because they were going over the same ground again. "I left my family, my home, my education, to give our relationship a chance. You are my family now". "So you don't put up a wall because you made all these sacrifices?" Brett tried to understand. "No. It's because you are special and meaningful to me; that's why I care what you say to me. The sacrifices I made axe just a sign of how much I care. I still believe in that person everybody meets and likes on sight. I still believe in the man I met, who nobody could say a bad word about". "But now you know a different story", he said looking depressed. "Yes, I guess I do - Relationship Brett", she joked, weakly. A moment of silence hung between them. "Look, Brett", she said, "I just want you to know that if you want to build your home in Savannah, with some woman who never wants to leave there, then go in peace. I give you your freedom with my absolute blessing". Deborah suddenly realized that she was looking forward to that moment - at least something would finally change and peace would return. Brett looked even more depressed. "Why are you saying this to me now?" Hadn't she been telling him this in one way or another for months? The repetition was making her nauseated. She struggled to control her temper, "Before we were married, I gave you a chance to back out. When you called me from Houston three months ago, I told you to ask for your old job back. Haven't I been encouraging you to decide what it is you really want with every conversation? This is not new, Brett, this just might be the first time you've taken me seriously. You're not doing me any favors by staying around here being miserable and taking out your frustration on me". "I can't make this decision. I ' m too afraid I'll make a mistake", he said. Perhaps that's it. Deborah thought. I'll be the one to make # f o r him.

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When the moment of truth finally came, it was not earth shattering; in fact, the scene was sickeningly familiar. Brett came in from work and began to talk about how close he came that day to quitting his job. He told her he had never been more miserable and depressed in his whole life, that there was only a small part of him that could see himself being happy in their marriage in the future. The only way he could foresee getting himself back on the fight track was by returning to Savannah to start again. We're back to square, fucking, one, AGAIN. t Deborah thought - and something snapped. She accepted Brett's apologies the next day but they had little effect. In her mind, his vows became fused with dozens of past promises in a box labeled "broken". It was time to do something. It was time to get out. She quietly prepared herself to move, to separate their finances, their belongings, their memories. By the time their lease ran out in February, she was ready to move to a new home, a new life - a life alone. When they talked about separating, it was in terms of giving each other the space to think and make decisions. It wasn't until weeks later that Deborah realized how drained she had become by trying to talk through their problems. In so many ways, the talking had become the problem. The repetition of their words had eaten away their meaning, like the waves in the rising tide consume a sandcastle. Hurricane season was over.

REFLECTIONS ON THE WRITING PROCESS "Hurricanes" is an autoethnographic study in which I strove to reflexively enter my own experience to write a concrete and emotionally truthful account (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) of the events I was living. As a scholar of interpersonal communication both living through and examining these events, I was truly a "vulnerable observer" (Behar, 1996). In August of 1999, I performed an earlier version of "Hurricanes" at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. I was surprised when the audience laughed, not so much because they laughed (I had been warned that people would find it funny) but because I heard it as a genuine and appropriate response, a paradoxical combination of recognition and disbelief. Twelve months earlier, I had found no humor in my predicament; and yet, I appreciated the audience's wry laughter during the performance. Afterwards, as I took my seat and listened to the respondent and audience members' comments, I realized that I had just

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performed some of the most excruciating conversations I had ever had, and I'd done it for an audience of academics, most of whom were strangers. As the comments and observations about the relationship - my relationship! - became more and more personal, I wondered, "What on earth possessed me to do this?" For scholars who have embraced personal narrative as a mode of inquiry, this is not a new question, but it is one worth applying to my own "confessional tale" (Van Maanen, 1988). In this section, I clarify my reasons for choosing to write in and retain the third person - a choice that may raise questions for the reader - and offer some observations about the contribution of this narrative to the current research in relational communication. One reason I wanted to write a personal account of the events surrounding my separation was to record the conversations as they oecurred, to capture the internal sense-making behind the conversations, and to evoke my feelings of living through the interactions. "Hurricanes" and other relational narratives such as Dan Franck's (1993) Separation, may address the gaps left by the nomothetic claims of quantitative researchers by providing detailed and evocative descriptions. Narrative moves the conversation from general claims about 'the way things are' to specific declarations about 'the way things were for me' (Freeman, 1997a). As well as providing an epistemologicat alternative for understanding patterns in relational conflict, the process of writing this narrative facilitated my own ability to understand myself and my marriage. Frank (1995) uses the term "chaos narratives" to describe stories of illness where events are experienced as a non-plot of "and then and then and then" (p. 99). I believe many, if not all, moments of personal crisis and epiphany (Denzin, 1997) are lived this way, and the feelings expressed by the audience at the conference suggested that "Hurricanes" evokes this aesthetic response of chaos and frustration. By writing the story as I lived it, I also found coherence in the midst of the chaos. Frank (1995) states, "To turn the chaos into a verbal story is to have some reflective grasp of it" (p. 98). The distance required to make sense of events is often presumed to be temporally acquired through reflection on past events once their outcome is known (Freeman, 1997b). However, in this case, I did not know the outcome of these conversations at the time I recorded them; the use of the third person opened up a reflexive space and allowed me to write about chaotic events as I lived them. I originally wrote in the third person to distance myself from the events, because the feelings were too close, too raw, to write myself into the story so directly. Most of the conversations were recorded within twenty-four hours, and none were written more than three days after they occurred. Although the descriptive sections have been revised, the locations changed, and subheadings added, for the most part I left the dialogue as it was first recorded. I chose the

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pseudonyms the first time I sat down to write, and I included the metaphors of storms and water as a way to focus my feelings about the relationship. By using the third person, I was able to think "academically" about the subject matter a distressed marriage - and focus on the requirements of writing an evocative account. Unlike my process of writing personal journal entries by hand, I typed "Hurricanes" while sitting at the computer, which helped to frame the writing as part of my work - as research. Sometimes the writing process was cathartic, and I was able to write through the emotions that I so skillfully and foolishly avoided in conversations with my husband. However, I also used the writing to ease my way into momentarily forgetting that I was actually writing about myself, my marriage, and what I perceived to be a series of failed encounters. In subsequent revisions, my eye turned towards the literary characteristics of the story as I endeavored to clarify the language, images, and emotions for the reader - an approach that (for better or worse) further distanced me from the subject matter. Once the narrative was complete, I could have chosen to replace the pseudonyms with the "real" names and locations. Certainly, no one at the SSSI Conference had any illusions as to whose story this was! Almost by chance, however, I discovered another benefit of retaining the third person in the narrative when a colleague presented "Hurricanes" as required reading to her advanced interpersonal relationships class. The students were invited to e-mail me after reading the piece, and I was surprised that they asked me questions about "Brett" and "Deborah" instead of asking me directly. The kinds of questions they asked (e.g. "What was Deborah thinking when . . . " ) indicated that they knew "Hurricanes" was an autoethnography, and yet they clearly felt more comfortable asking questions from the disengaged perspective that the third person provided. Their curiosity could have been construed as prying, their questions too personal. However, their interrogation of my relationship became sanctioned as legitimate, academic inquiry through the use of the third person, which shifted our gaze "outwards" to a fictionalized "Deborah". To use an analogy, it was more comfortable for them to stare into the eyes of a photograph than it was to make direct eye contact with me. More than a year after the events of the story took place, as I revised this manuscript, I once again faced the question of whether or not to re-write "Hurricanes" in the first person so that it would be more expressly autoethnographic. But I was reluctant to tamper with the story for this reason. When I read "Hurricanes" now, I really feel that I am reading about someone else's life - and, in many ways, I am. I feel estranged from the silent woman who would not speak her mind, who struggled to maintain a veneer of calm rationality while her emotions spun and churned inside her. In fact, I sometimes

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feel angered and frustrated by the patterns in the story and "Deborah's" inability to perceive and break out of them. I want to shake her! I also know that the process of writing the story involved a rigorous investigation of myself, and conscientious attention to the details of the conversations as I tried to accurately record what transpired between my husband and me. It is the memory of that process and my respect for the story as an artifact of that time that moves me to recognize that Deborah is me, as I was. Even as my current reading of "Hurricanes" highlights the differences between us, I cannot escape myself in the story - nor do I want to. There is one question that was raised at the SSSI Conference, by students in the interpersonal class, and by others who have read this piece and that is, why didn't "Deborah" leave "Brett" sooner? Research by Vangelisti et al. (t999) identified that women tend to report fewer negative feelings about their relationships than men, perhaps because they feel responsible for the relationship. I believe this was true for me. Specifically, it was easier for me to accept the consequences of "being left" than it was to become the kind of person who leaves, who gives up, who breaks a promise. In terms of the relationship, my sense of identity was committed to this idea: "If my partner is sorry and asks for another chance, it is only fight that I give that to him. I am not the kind of person who holds a grudge to punish someone I care about". For "Deborah", leaving her marriage meant a radical re-writing of her identity and a re-evaluation of what it means to be a good person and a good partner. Marital communication and conflict are well-represented in interpersonal communication research, and many studies shed light on the relational patterns in "Hurricanes" (e.g. Johnson & Bradbury, 1999; Karney & Bradbury, 1997; Noller, 1985; Ptacek & Dodge, 1995; Sabourin, 1995; Vangelisti et al., 1999; Vangelisti & Crnmley, 1998). In particular, Johnson and Bradbury (1999) note the importance for relational research to observe couples' interactions, particularly during "discussions of relationship issues" (p. 19). Research that analyzes relational patterns - such as dominance, avoidance, or hurtful messages - demonstrates that conversational dynamics are often highly predictive of marital distress. However, the interactions that provide the data for much of this research are generated in response to a questionnaire or following a prompt from the researcher (e.g. Karney & Bradbury, 1997; Noller, 1985; Sabourin, 1995). Laboratory conversations are unlikely to capture couples' interactions as they would occur in a naturalistic context. Certainly, once these conversations are taped, coded, and analyzed, the emotional details and particularities of the relationship are lost. One way to recover such particularities is the use of autoethnographic research to record the emotional experience of life as a couple from a perspective inside that relationship.

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"Hurricanes" offers an understanding o f marital conflict, but is not the story of variables, correlations, and probability; rather, it brings with it the gifts of narrative. "Hurricanes" is about someone trying to find meaning, to make sense of painful events through the telling o f the story. The narrative is, therefore, both the record and the journey. Coles (1989) suggests that when stories take us into the heart and mind of another person, we are invited to examine our own lives and the ways we relate to fellow humans. Narrative speaks not only to our way of knowing, but also our way of being. As Freeman (1997b) suggests, the struggle to achieve narrative integrity is about finding what it means to live a good life and to be a good person, even when that may mean, as it did in m y case, letting go of a marriage. "Hurricanes" invites readers to learn by reflecting and feeling w i t h the story of Brett and Deborah rather than simply thinking a b o u t relationships in general. This, I believe, is the gift that personal narrative and autoethnography brings to the discussion o f marital conflict.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Art Bochner for his careful and insightful critiques, and Dylan Lee for his generous support as this chapter was developed for publication. An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, Chicago, August 1999.

REFERENCES Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston: Beacon. Coles, R. (1989). The call of stories: Teaching and the moral imagination. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. (2000). Researcher as subject: Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity. In: N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Franck, D. (1993). Separation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Frank, A. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Freeman, M. (1997a). Why narrative?: Hermeneutics, historical understanding, and the significance of stories. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 169-176. Freeman, M. (1997b). Death, narrative integrity, and the radical challenge of self-understanding. Aging and Society, 17, 373-398. Johnson, M. D., & Bradbury, T. N. (1999). Marital satisfaction and topographical assessment of marital interaction. Personal Relationships, 6, 19-40. Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. H. (1997). Neuroticism, marital interaction, and the trajectory of marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1075-1092. Noller, R (1985). Negative communications in marriage. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2, 289-301.

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Ptacek, J. T., & Dodge, K. L. (1995). Coping strategies and relationship satisfaction in couples. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletim 21, 76-84. Sabourin, T. C. (1995). The role of negative reciprocity in spouse abuse: A relational control analysis. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 23, 271-283. Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vangelisti, A. L, Corbin, S. D., Lucchetti, A. E., & Sprague, R. J. (1999). Couples' concurrent cognitions: The influence of relational satisfaction on the thoughts couples have as they converse. Human Communication Research, 25, 370-398. Vangelisti, A. L. & Crumley, L. E (1998). Reactions to messages that hurt: The influence of relational contexts. Communication Monographs, 65, 173-196.

FEELING THE FIELD: TRACKING SHIFTS IN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH Peter R. Ibarra* and Margarethe Kusenbach ABSTRACT Although interest in the emotional aspects of practicing ethnography has increased in recent years, little attention has been paid to how the fieldworker's feelings express and are embedded in the research process. This chapter, based on an analysis of the authors' fieldnotes, examines how the researcher's changing experiences of ethnographic space, self and stance are rooted in the emotional dynamics of doing fieldwork. We conclude by discussing the implications these shifts pose for fieldwork practice.

E m o t i o n has only recently gotten a foot inside the academy and w e still d o n ' t k n o w whether w e want to give it a seminar room, a lecture hall, or just a closet w e can air out now and then. Ruth Behar ~

* Authors are listed in alphabetic order, both contributed equally to this chapter.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 195-221. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4 195

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Over the last three decades, fieldwork has been the subject of much reflexive inquiry as, first, anthropologists and then sociologists began paying more attention to the circumstances of their authorship, z At the heart of this reflexive turn was the insight that ethnographic findings cannot be separated from the techniques employed in their representation: Stated most boldly, how we write in fieldnotes, papers, and monographs - deeply constitutes what we find. Sociologists and anthropologists adopting this view were now situating ethnographic knowledge in their writing practices, deconstructing the rhetorical and poetic conventions of ethnographic texts. The importance of this project cannot be underestimated; it has enhanced the quality of fieldwork in many respects. However, the scope of reflexivity in fieldwork has been, until recently, unnecessarily limited by its predominant emphasis on language and discourse. In that sense, reflexive ethnography has exhibited the same cognitive bias that remains prevalent in the social science disciplines. The sociology of emotions, a relatively new field propelled by the work of scholars such as Arlie Russell Hochschild and Thomas Scheff, disclosed the central importance of emotion to our conduct, identity and cultural reproduction - leading to a much enriched understanding of how human beings interact and make sense of the world, themselves, and one another. Surprisingly, the reflexive trend in ethnography and the emergence of the sociology of emotions occurred without much cross-fertilization. We consider this unfortunate; more research and theorizing connecting these two areas of inquiry are necessary. What, for instance, does emotion contribute to the structuring of ethnographic research? How do changing feelings express the "natural history" of a fieldwork project? What role does emotion play in ethnographic findings, independent of the poetic conventions of ethnographic reportage, and independent of psychological factors~ These and other questions provide the impetus for this study. Gone are the days when fieldworkers considered a diary the only appropriate venue for writing down one's feelings. The shocking contrast between Malinowski's utterly opinionated private self (as displayed in his infamous diary) and his dispassionate scientific persona was made possible by the institutionally sanctioned segregation of emotion from inquiry, to its discredit. Now, the realist paradigm exemplified by Malinowski finds itself challenged by approaches that incorporate the researcher's subjective standpoints and "forsake the mantle of omniscience" (Behar, 1996: 12). For example, Emerson (1983) posits the ethnographer's self as the instrument through which fieldwork is done, thus inseparably intertwining it with her work. -

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At the core of fieldwork is not the collection of "facts" or the controlled observation of "objective events," but rather a deeper holistic experience of learning about the lives, behaviors, and thoughts of others. Much fieldwork is at least potentially a deeply personal and transformative experience as the fieldworker's self, providing the major research instrument, is often fundamentally affected by and perhaps changed in the process (Emerson, 1983: 15). In this view, ethnographic fieldwork is shaped by the nature and extent of the researcher's personal immersion in it. The implication of this conception is that ethnographic research cannot be fully understood nor properly evaluated without an account of the researcher's unfolding emotional life. Ideally, such an account would cover the entire career of the research project since data are always produced in situ. Affective underpinnings act as skeleton keys for understanding one's data and thus the substance of one's findings. Yet for all the focus on the reflexive constituents in ethnography, up until recently, little has been written about exactly how emotion functions in the lived experience of doing fieldwork, although ethnographers frequently and informally talk about these issues among themselves. By reconstructing and situating our own experiences, this paper develops a framework that others, especially novice fieldworkers, might find helpful. However, we consider it an open question whether our discussion is more pertinent to the emotional reality of novice rather than veteran ethnographers. This is an issue to which we will return in our conclusion.

THESTUDY The challenges and opportunities fieldworkers confront are structured by the local qualities of their fieldsites and their choice of methods. This chapter draws upon a recently concluded, three year research project - an ethnographic study of how residents in five Los Angeles neighborhoods perceive local problems, including crime and disorder, and how their daily activities and social interactions relate to those understandings. 3 We each studied two neighborhoods, all of which were distinctive in terms of the racial, ethnic, class, and life-style diversity among their residents. We were doing overt research, meaning we identified ourselves to our informants as UCLA researchers, describing our study in as much detail as they desired to hear. As is typical of urban residential neighborhoods, there was no formal organization, nor were there gatekeepers or special membership requirements that would make "getting in" exceptionally difficult. Moving into and/or near our study areas helped us tremendously in making contacts with the locals. Over the time of the study, we became part of the various communities,

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developing ties with the individuals whose lives we simultaneously documented. In each area, we conducted approximately thirty in-depth interviews with local residents. We accompanied our informants, many of them repeatedly, on "go-alongs" around the neighborhoods, attended community meetings in residences and at the local police station, participated in local activities, observed street and business life, and interviewed police officials and politicians. We were primarily interested in our informants' biographies and local everyday lives. Striving for reciprocity and mutual trust, we also disclosed aspects of our personal lives to them. Since ours was a "naturalistic" community study in the tradition exemplified by Whyte (1943), Gans (1962), and Suttles (1968), we carefully consulted these and other urban ethnographies to learn about the interactional and emotional challenges we might (and did) experience in the field. Granted, the lessons to be absorbed from the classic community studies are considerable, we nonetheless found that they did not address the emotional complexities generated by our fieldwork. Urban ethnographies in this tradition are not concerned with charting or situating the fieldworkers' feelings - in fact, they display an attitude that Gubrium and Holstein (1997: 59) characterize as "concertedly neutral" - thus we looked elsewhere for insight into the issues.

NOTABLE PRECEDENTS The emotional experiences associated with doing fieldwork have been addressed within the literature at varying levels of abstraction. Manuals on conducting fieldwork represent the more practical end of the literature, while discussions of feelings in ethnographic monographs situate the issues in the context of specific research projects. More recently, a small but growing number of papers and essays have appeared that are devoted exclusively to this topic. In addition, ethnographers have been challenged by new paradigms in social thought to take stock of the importance of emotion. Fieldwork Manuals. Most ethnographic handbooks either ignore feelings completely or simply recommend that they be left at home (for example, Spradley 1980). Two important (and recently updated) fieldwork manuals that have the merit of including discussions of emotion pertinent to the ethnographic experience are those by Lofland and Lofland (1995) and Hammersley and Atkinson (1995). The Loflands devote one section of their book (1995, 46f.) to a discussion of the "emotional stresses" that researchers typically encounter in the field and offer advice on their appropriate handling. The authors claim that simply knowing about the emotional complexities that await novice fieldworkers

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might "lessen their impact" - a position suggesting that feelings can dilute or even contaminate fieldwork and should thus be minimized. The Loflands advise their readers to discuss troublesome emotional issues with fellow researchers and friends, or, following Malinowski, to keep a diary. Although they are highly attentive to the succession of practical tasks that comprise the history of ethnographic projects, the Loflands do not address emotion as an evolving companion throughout this process, much less an active shaper or facilitator of fieldwork. They discount the systematic analysis of feelings in fieldwork, arguing that such investigation could do more harm than good: There is obviouslyno way to catalog every source of emotionalor psychologicaldifficulty ever encountered by fieldworkers. Such a cataloging probably would not be very useful anyway and would certainly discourage many people from even attempting naturalistic research (Lofland & Lofland, 1995: 47). A more appreciative approach to emotional issues in fieldwork is taken by Hammersley and Atkinson (1995). Though focusing primarily on feelings of marginality, they are mindful of how fieldwork can produce rewarding emotional experiences as well. The authors are also attentive to the emotional changes that occur over the duration of fieldwork projects. For example, they discuss the "culture shock" befalling ethnographers upon entering the field, and the complex emotional dilemmas that often challenge fieldworkers upon exiting.

Fieldwork Monographs. Authors of ethnographic monographs occasionally, but increasingly, include emotional narratives in the introductions, conclusions and appendices of their books (for instance Howell, 1972; Horowitz, 1983; Duneier, 1999). These and other authors sincerely reflect on the relevance and accountability of their conduct and standpoints. However, a criticism of this writing strategy has been made by Kleinman and Copp (1993: 16), who call such introductions, conclusions and appendices the "back door" through which ethnographers sneak in emotional confessions to emphasize that they were "really there. ''4 Further, they argue that ethnographers typically select only those "success stories" believed to be undamaging to their professional reputations. Likewise, Fine comments that no one wishes to look 'bad', and as a consequence, much information - nx~nown to the reader - is censored by a self-concernedethnographer5 (Fine 1993: 282).

Recent Developments. As indicated above, scholars increasingly address emotions in fieldwork with more depth and breadth, reflecting the growing acknowledgment of this issue among ethnographers. Sanders, for instance, reminds us that "emotional experience is, in fact, central to doing ethnography" (1998, 185). The author's discussion of how he identified and empathized with

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his subjects not only signals deep immersion into the fieldsite (a veterinary clinic), Sanders also claims that emotional identification deepened his understanding of his subjects, himself, and "social interaction.''6 The narratives in Sander's predominantly descriptive paper highlight interesting emotional shifts that occurred throughout his fieldwork. Young and Lee (1996) provide a more analytical account of ethnography and emotion. They situate fieldworkers' feelings within three alternative methodological paradigms: neo-Chicagoan, existential, and feminist. These paradigms' various emphases (respectively, "involvement," "comfort," "identification") spell out distinctive feeling rules and demand different types of emotion work. Ethnographers' emotional difficulties typically result from their affiliation with more than one methodological paradigm, thus creating conflict. The emotionwork that is done in researchis best seen as an attemptto manage the feeling rules implicitin different methodologicalperspectives. (Young& Lee, 1996:111; italicsin original) Novice ethnographers in particular struggle with gaps between what they actually feel and what they think they should be feeling, as relayed by the tenets of the various methodological paradigms. Young and Lee convincingly demonstrate how important and revealing it is to ground fieldworkers' feelings in their tacit paradigmatic affiliations. We do not, however, agree that all, or even most, emotional difficulties in the field stem from internalized feeling rules concerning fieldwork, nor do we consider it sufficient to situate the complex emotional experience of fieldwork in terms of rules and their conflicts. 7 Similar to Young and Lee, Kleinman (1991) and Kleinman and Copp (1993) trace ethnographers' emotional difficulties back to conflicting rules about how they are supposed to feel. Fieldworkers are trapped between an obligation to identify and empathize with their informants while also having to maintain the neutral, dispassionate stance of a scientist. Caught in this and other double binds, ethnographers tend to embrace "positive" feelings without critical scrutiny, while typically suppressing and ignoring "negative" feelings towards their subjects. Much of Kleinman and Copp's interesting text is devoted to illustrating how such reactions can be detrimental to fieldwork. Although their volume and Kleinman's earlier paper draw attention to an important issue, we did not find that feelings in the field primarily revolve around negative or positive judgments of informants - though such sentiments are certainly influential in affecting fieldwork processes and outcomes. Feminist approaches have increased researchers' reflexivity across many disciplines, including ethnography. Writings in this diverse body of literature often touch on emotional issues, challenging ethnographers to critically inspect

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their "positionality" by reflecting upon sources of bias, privilege, and motive. Such introspection is aimed at advancing, rather than obstructing, the ethnographic enterprise. 8 To the charges that the researcher brings her own biases, quafitative feminist researchers would reply that bias is a misplaced term. To tile contrary, these are resources and, if the researcher is sufficiently reflexive about her project, she can evoke these as resources to guide data gathering or creating and for understanding her own interpretations and behavior in the research (Olesen, 1994: 165).

Provocative and inspiring as authors in this tradition can be, they often seem to assume that ethnographers are (and should be) burdened by a general sense of guilt, derived from fieldworkers' complicity in exploitative socio-economic hierarchies. Emphasizing structural concerns, feminist ethnographers are especially sensitive to their responsibilities and obligations towards their informants, thus privileging guilt as the most telling fieldwork emotion. Though surely a very important feeling, in our view, guilt is not always the most prevalent or pressing emotional challenge fieldworkers face. "Auto-ethnography" is an unorthodox movement within ethnography that has emerged since the early 1990s. Generally speaking, authors of autoethnographic texts (for example, Ellis 1993, 1995, 1998; Ellis & Bochner, 1996; Moreman, 1999) passionately probe their intimate knowledge of their personal lives and experiences, seeking to evoke deep understanding and empathy in the reader (Ellis 1991). Such inquiries, however, do not tend to locate the authors' emotional lives within the context of carrying out naturalistic fieldwork. We are inspired by recent writings in auto-ethnography, though we do not claim to be practicing it. The personal fieldnotes on which this study is based were collected along with interviews and observational data, and initially not meant to be analyzed independently. In our effort to analyze the situated "doing" (and "feeling") of ethnographic research, our position is also influenced by phenomenological and ethnomethodological ideas.

FIELDWORK AS AN EMOTIONAL JOURNEY Following Freud, Hochschild argues that emotion is best understood as an embodied "sense" that gives shape and meaning to the coordinates of our subjectivity. We feel. But what is a feeling? I would define feeling, like emotion, as a sense, like the sense of hearing or sight. ( . . . ) Like the sense of hearing, emotion communicates information. It has, as Freud said of anxiety, a "signal" function. From feeling we discover our own viewpoint of the world (Hochschild, 1983: 17).

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Such a view does not reduce emotion to a tool of, or barrier to, cognition; it recognizes that emotion has an active, independent role in shaping our positioning and conduct in the world. Feelings are not merely reactions to, but constitutive of, what we perceive and do. As our feelings change, so do our experiences of the world and how we locate ourselves in it. The sense of emotion is intertwined with the other senses and cannot be neatly separated from them. In line with this view, fieldworkers' feelings key changes in how they filter and create the reality of the field, including how they define the field as an investigable site, understand their own presence, and adopt a stance toward locals and local events. Research tactics and goals are imbued by emotional dynamics as much as by cognitive ones. Feelings, like the other senses, are productive in fieldwork because they help generate the corpus of evidence from which we build our ethnographic findings. An important aspect of emotionality that is rarely addressed is the relationship between feelings and time. Fieldwork has a temporal structure to it: ethnographers are not in the "same place" on the last day of their research that they were on the first. It is a sequentially ordered process embedded in, and reflective of, researchers' emotional lives. Accordingly, the ethnographers' senses go through various transformations over the course of their research; each may be analyzed for its emotional underpinnings and methodological implications. Drawing upon a selection of our fieldnotes, we describe and discuss these transformations as shifts in ethnographic space, ethnographic self, and ethnographic stance. These interrelated shifts illustrate how emotion is productive in fieldwork, including giving fieldworkers cues about what and how to investigate, document, analyze, and, ultimately, write up.

1. Shifts in Ethnographic Space The researcher's very definition of "the field" as a topic of inquiry, a network of social relations, or a physical territory, is not an a priori concept, but emerges and changes under the influence of emotion. That is, ethnographic space, or the domain referred to as "the field," undergoes transformations rooted in her feelings. As the researcher encounters various emotional issues and circumstances, corresponding shifts occur in how she frames and comprehends the field. The relationship between emotion, ethnographic space, and fieldwork practice is apparent in those moments where the ethnographer experiences the field in a visceral way. 9 Consider our first example, drawn from fieldnotes Peter wrote soon after moving into the neighborhood he inhabited for three years. In

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it, he d e s c r i b e s a n i g h t t i m e w a l k to the n e a r b y r e s i d e n c e o f one o f his first interviewees. As I walk down the street, I move forward with some trepidation. This is the first time that I walk out here at night, aside from going out to get my car, which in any case is usually parked in the back of the apartment building, in the garage. The lighting strikes me as insufficiently bright, leaving too many bushes unilluminated. The traffic on this particular street travels at a fast pace, and I don't feel any of the sort of protective covering that big trees can provide against wayward automobiles. In addition, I feel like something of a moving target. I am thinking that local thugs, if any there be, will, because of my appearance, construe me as a traveling salesman, and consider me easily mugged because of the slim chance of my encountering them again. I conjure scenarios of attack and escape as I make my way up the street. P e t e r feels u n c o m f o r t a b l e - not in control, fearful o f w h a t m i g h t happen, in spite o f his a d o p t i o n o f a k i n d o f p r o f e s s i o n a l a r m o r via his c a r e f u l l y c h o s e n attire. His state o f m i n d is alive to w h a t h e u l t i m a t e l y w r o t e about: sources o f d a n g e r that m a y lie j u s t b e y o n d his v i s i b l e grasp. P e t e r ' s p r e o c c u p a t i o n w i t h p e r s o n a l safety - his i m m e r s i o n in w h a t G o f f m a n (1971: 248ff) discusses as the " U m w e l t " - d o m i n a t e s his e x p e r i e n c e o f m o v i n g t h r o u g h this street in his w o r k i n g class n e i g h b o r h o o d . H e c o n j u r e s v i c t i m i z a t i o n scenes f r o m the p e r s p e c t i v e o f s o m e o n e w h o does not yet b e l o n g in this space. H e e x p e r i e n c e s h i m s e l f as an o u t s i d e r w a l k i n g into m e n a c i n g territory, t h e r e b y p r o d u c i n g the t h r e a t e n i n g reality o f the field. N o w c o n s i d e r P e t e r ' s f e e l i n g s and p e r c e p t i o n s o f the s a m e street ten m o n t h s later. O n c e a g a i n h e is w a l k i n g at night, on his w a y to the h o m e o f a l o c a l r e s i d e n t to c o n d u c t an interview. T h i s time, h o w e v e r , P e t e r ' s sensual orientation to the situation is quite different: he feels safe. I walk over to Roberto and Alfredo's house on Williams. They are next door neighbors of Maria, and they have agreed to be interviewed. I wanted to get there before nightfall, but for one reason after another it is after dusk when I make my way over there. My reasoning was that I would seem less threatening to whoever greeted me at the door if they could get a look at me in the light. There are a number of people out along Jefferson and Williams streets, which is the path I take to make it to their house. I see fathers scooting along children on their bikes and skates; boys playing ball; four different groups of grown men, mostly Latino or Latinolooking, standing around shirtless on their front yards drinking beer; a few pairs of women seated on their stoops, including Clara, taking in the sights on this very warm late summer evening. Another decision I made was to stay dressed in my informal garb, rather than put on my "interviewer drag," as I call my ensemble of black slacks and shoes, belt, and dress shirt. I think that it can seem a bit intimidating to show up dressed this way, or if not intimidating, then at least kind of strange. P e t e r ' s sense o f safety and b e i n g in control h a v e c r e a t e d a qualitatively different e x p e r i e n c e o f the i d e n t i c a l location, h e n c e a different inscription o f its

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reality. B y n o w he has gotten to k n o w m a n y residents, and he has d i s c o v e r e d that t h e y are v e r y k n o w l e d g e a b l e about their neighbors. C o n s e q u e n t l y , P e t e r w a l k s t h r o u g h the area w i t h the e a s e o f s o m e o n e w h o can b e v o u c h e d for as a " r e s e a r c h e r " w h o s e j o b it is to o b s e r v e and take n o t i c e o f others, i n c l u d i n g p e o p l e w h o w o u l d h a v e a l a r m e d h i m on the earlier o c c a s i o n h a d he o b s e r v e d them, but w h o m he n o w d e s c r i b e s in a neutral tone. His p r e o c c u p a t i o n w i t h his o w n safety has abated. I n s t e a d o f f e e l i n g like the p o s s i b l e target o f i n v i s i b l e assailants, he is n o w w o r r i e d that others m i g h t see him as a source o f danger. 1° T h u s h e has a d j u s t e d his outfit to s o m e t h i n g he feels is less j a r r i n g to others and m o r e in k e e p i n g w i t h the style o f the w o r k i n g - c l a s s locals at leisure. T w o years later, towards the end o f his research, P e t e r ' s p r a c t i c e had c h a n g e d a g a i n considerably. B y n o w he a c t i v e l y s o u g h t to p l a c e h i m s e l f d i r e c t l y in situations that others, i n c l u d i n g the p o l i c e and l o c a l residents, defined as d a n g e r o u s . W a l k i n g and d r i v i n g the l o c a l streets late at night, P e t e r was e a g e r to d i s c o v e r firsthand w h a t e v e r dangers actually existed in the area. P o t e n t i a l l y t h r e a t e n i n g situations had b e c o m e o p p o r t u n i t i e s to e x p l o r e rather than a v o i d or master. Six shots are fired in rapid succession as I am sitting in my car, waiting to make a left turn onto the boulevard. It is dark, and the lighting is not that great, but when I look over toward the source of the sound, I see a bulky man, dressed in a white T-shirt and tennis shoes, slumped over in a wheel chair. He is about 50 feet away from me. Two young men in their 20s, dressed similarly, with shaved heads, but thinner, are shaking him. I can't tell what they are doing: are they trying to assault him? Are they trying to lift him out of the chair? Are they trying to wake him up? (...) One of the cholos is holding what appears to be a cell phone, though at first I think it is a gun. I feel my heart pounding, eager to see what will happen next, and excited to figure out what just happened. I turn left and park down the boulevard at the mini-mall and get out of the car. I already hear the police car with its siren and the police helicopter arriving, Rushing back, I can only get within 30 feet of the slumped over body in the wheelchair - the police tape is already going up. In front of the dead guy is an opened and partially emptied out 12 pack of Miller; the other guys have left. As I see it, the guy was out drinking with his buddies, the other cholos I routinely see hanging out in this spot, in front of a Mexican restaurant, night after night. Another motorist who has also stopped asks me if I saw what happened. I tell him that I didn't and he tells me what he saw. Apparently, two young cholos came up to the middle of the boulevard and fired into the group of men, most of whom were partially sheltered by vehicles parked between the sidewalk and the spot where the assassins stood. According to the other witness, the gunmen fired 5 or 6 shots (which is what I also heard) and then ran back down the side street. A s this i n c i d e n t unfolds, P e t e r is aware that a stray bullet m i g h t h a v e e n d e d his life, h a v i n g b e e n so n e a r b y w h e n the shots w e r e fired. H e also understands that h e is p l a c i n g h i m s e l f at risk b y r e m a i n i n g at the s c e n e as a witness to a p o s s i b l e g a n g killing. Interestingly, his a w a r e n e s s o f d a n g e r does not l e a d P e t e r to feel fearful; it leads h i m to a state o f e x c i t e d curiosity. E x c i t e m e n t s i g n a l e d to h i m

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this was a unique ethnographic occasion, an opportunity he could not pass up before exiting the field for good. His first impulse was to stay and talk to eyewitnesses in order to get their emerging interpretations of the incident. He was thus able to expand the scope of his data to include first-hand observations of violent crime and the locals' reactions to it, rather than being limited to their post-hoc recollections and interpretations. In the introduction to her neighborhood study Urban Danger (1981), Sally Engle Merry also describes a transformation of ethnographic space, albeit retrospectively. In the early phase of her research, Merry (like Peter) was wary and "felt oppressed" by having to be constantly vigilant. Her "feelings of vulnerability" were "significantly reduced" as she made contacts with local residents. But, towards the end of her research, she observed: As my visits became less frequent, [I felt] less safe and less comfortable in the laundromat and project grounds. Some of my original uneasiness returned. Although I never felt as frightened as I had in the initial phases of the research, I had lost the comfortable, safe feeling I experienced in the middle of the research period (Men2¢, 1981: 29). Merry's account indicates that as the ethnographer becomes more knowledgeable of the people and customs in her field, she usually transcends her initial fears and discomforts. 11 It is insufficient to say that her feelings concerning the social and physical environment have changed, or that she reacts with different emotions to what she perceives. Closer to the lived experience of the ethnographer is that she is now moving through a qualitatively different ethnographic space, thus generating the conditions under which she works. Although not trivial, such shifts may easily be overlooked because they often come about gradually, with subtle, cumulative effects. Feelings should therefore be disclosed alongside contemporaneous descriptions of the environment. Post-hoc recall will invariably misrepresent the emotionally situated experience of ethnographic space. A second pair of fieldnotes illustrates a different aspect of this type of emotional shift, here related to the problem of navigating and negotiating the boundaries of ethnographic space rather than its experiential qualities. In this fieldnote, composed at the beginning of her fieldwork, Maggie writes: I have been working on the project for about six weeks and I feel that I haven't been progressing as quickly and successfully as I wanted. In fact, I feel that I haven't really been "in the field" at all. This frustration and the feeling of being "outside" rather than "inside" has to do with my uncertainty about what my field really is. A difficulty with a neighborhood study, perhaps any ethnographic study in which work life and private life occur at the same location, seems to be the issue of boundaries. At what time am I at work, at what time am I not? This ambiguity is always present, at home, where I have to separate "chunks of space, time, identity" (Zerubavel) into private life and work life, but also

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outside, when 1 walk around the area; going shopping, running errands, following m y own life and being "on mission" for our project.

At this early point in her fieldwork, Maggie reports confusion and frustration about not being able to successfully manage the boundaries between her private life and her research. She is irritated because she cannot rely on the customary time and space markers that distinguish work from non-work, leading her to feel "outside" rather than "inside" the field, or vice versa. Fieldwork practice requires straddling a symbolic threshold irrespective of specific times or places, lz Maggie is trying to make rigid distinctions; she is not yet comfortable or familiar with the blurred and complex nature of doing fieldwork out of one's home. Nine months later, Maggie moved six blocks further east to the block on which most of her informants lived. It was now even more difficult to keep work and private life separated from each other. While inside her apartment, events occurring in the neighborhood regularly caught her attention; by now, however, she had grown accustomed to the constant overlap of work and private life. She now felt that being at home was identical with being at work, that there was, technically, no time-out from the field. Maggie understood that she potentially needed to redefine every private moment as an ethnographic occasion. It is a sunny November afternoon, around 2 p.m. Like always, my windows are wide open. I am talking on the phone with m y parents and sisters in Germany, we are all very sad. They called to tell me that my grandmother peacefully passed away a few hours earlier. Although this news was expected, I am hit with the reality of it. ( . . . ) While talking with my fanaily on the phone, I hear a helicopter outside. Afterwards, I leave Greg [her partner] and a friend brief messages at work. While I do some "business" calls, I realize that the helicopter is still circling over our area which is becoming a little unusual. ( . . . ) When Greg returns m y call around 3 p.m., the helicopter is still there. It is so loud now that I almost can't hear what he says. Instead, we both hear an amplified voice, coming from overhead, shouting commands like: GET O U T OF THE CAR! STAND ON THE SIDEWALK! LOOK FOR A POLICE CAR! DROP YOUR GUN! RAISE YOUR HANDS! LET GO OF THE WOMAN! WAIT FOR THE POLICE CAR! Over the phone, Greg advises me strongly to lock m y door and stay away from the window. I say that I would like to go out and see what is happening, that I should probably check it out, but Greg tells me to absolutely not do that. I agree to stay inside but 1 do not close the windows. I also feel the need to get away from all this and we agree that we will meet at his house in about two hours. ( . . . ) After hanging up, I hear that m y neighbor Jenny, a single woman, locks her front door from the inside. I also realize that I don't hear Aaron's children playing in the yard across the street anymore. It seems like their mother took them into the house a while ago. ( . . . ) An hour after the amplified voice Stopped, two helicopters are still circling over the area, now a little further away and a little higher too. I decide that it is safe to leave the house

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and get ready to drive over to Greg's house, still feeling very sad. I take all the photographs of my grandmother that I have with me, I want to show them to him again. The helicopter incident was an important field event] 3 It occurred while Maggie was coping with the news of her grandmother's death. Although she wanted to get away to grieve, Maggie postponed taking leave to make fieldwork-related calls and observe what was happening outside. In spite of her sadness, she had the presence of mind to minutely document the unfolding events and its effects on the locals. For instance, she notices her neighbor lock her front door, and the sudden absence of another neighbor's children from the front yard. The fieldnote illustrates that Maggie's orientation to the field coexists with, if not takes priority over, a significant event in her personal life. Accustomed by now to the constant overlap between her private world and the field, Maggie does not emotionally resist or struggle against it, as she did eariy on. She now regularly postponed dealing with personal issues until she could be in a different, less permeable place. Maggie found that removing herself from the neighborhood was a necessary, yet insufficient, act for leaving behind the field and its emotional and practical demands. Joseph Howell, in Hard Living on Clay Street (1972) describes similar feelings of ambiguity about the boundaries of ethnographic space, and reports adopting a similar distancing strategy. One of the difficulties involved in a participant observation study is that one is never too sure when he is working and when he is relaxing. For this reason, Embry and I found it very important to leave the neighborhood at least once or two times a week when, to the amazement of most of our neighbors, we would go into Washington to see friends, go to a movie, or have dinner (Howell, 1972: 400). Only when physically away from the field do neighborhood ethnographers have the chance to fully relax and enjoy private relationships. These time-outs and get-aways make it possible to feel "inside" the field in the first place, and to be, cognitively and emotionally, oriented towards fieldwork as a constant priority. 14 Emotion, by positioning her in the field, is central to how the researcher acts in ethnographic space. It creates the reality of the field, thus directing the ethnographer's practice--especially how, when, and where she negotiates ethnographic space, be it a physical territory, a network of social relationships, or an imagined realm.

2. Shifts in Ethnographic Self Emotional shifts tied to the researcher's identity are also consequential for ethnographic practice. Over time the ethnographer finds herself feeling

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differently about her identity as a researcher. To illustrate shifts in this "ethnographic self,''15 we look, first, at how feelings o f competence and confidence altered our impression m a n a g e m e n t strategies, thus organizing our interactions with informants. Then, we turn to the emergence o f a "cooler" ethnographic self as illustrated by two instances o f rejection, one early and one late in the research. Initially, the ethnographer might find herself invested in various crutches or props to help her "pass" as a competent, trustworthy professional. 16 As a researcher's feelings and understandings o f herself change, so does the meaning of passing as a "professional." Two excerpts from M a g g i e ' s fieldnotes illustrate this phenomenon. The first one describes the situation right before her first interview. I sit down on some stairs one block away from Berta and Richard's house for about ten minutes to review my notes and our interview checklist. Frantically shuffling through the papers, I decide at the last minute that I will restructure the interview: I will start with their life history, then ask about the risks of the area and after that ask about events and stories connected to crime, police and the neighborhood association; before going into more general aspects of their everyday life, their 'map' and a typical day. I hope this structure works, I feel nervous. This excerpt shows M a g g i e struggling to gain absolute control over the u p c o m i n g interview situation, making last minute changes to the interview schedule, and feeling nervous. She fumbles with her seven page long interview schedule that spells out all the questions that might p o s s i b l y c o m e up. This crutch, ironically, turned out to be m o r e hindering than helpful, and M a g g i e soon replaced it with an index card that merely listed the themes she needed to explore. The following note was written eight months after her first interview. "Let's start with the interview, do you mind if I tape-record this?" I ask Winnie after talking to her for about ten minutes. No she doesn't. My sense is that she doesn't even notice the tape recorder. Suddenly, I realize that I left my interview guideline at home, the little flash card, though I put it out on my desk. Well, it's too late to go back now and I know the questions by heart anyway. It doesn't matter. This will become an exercise in doing a "freehanded" interview, it surely doesn't feel like a problem anymore. M a g g i e no longer needs any kind o f interview schedule - not as a crutch for herself and not as a prop to display in front o f her i n f o r m a n t s - - t o feel competent and professional. Not only does she now feel in control o f the interviewing routine, she is even somewhat curious about deviating from the regular process, interpreting it as an "exercise." Towards the end o f the research, M a g g i e completely jettisoned the index card and conducted her interviews in a much freer manner. Over time, then, we stopped relying on props and dress to m a k e us l o o k and feel professional, 17 and b e c a m e increasingly relaxed and self-confident in our abilities.

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A second aspect o f how emotional shifts in our ethnographic selves altered our approach to fieldwork is encapsulated by the growth of what we call "professional cool." The d e v e l o p m e n t of professional cool is apparent in the contrast between how we reacted to problematic situations at varying points in time. Concerns with being rejected often structure the direction o f fieldwork, especially in its early stages. F e a r of the field can be a powerful obstacle, leading one to postpone entry, quit early, or never even start the research. In the initial phases o f our fieldwork, both of us took rejection in the form of declined interviews very personally. This is apparent in one o f Peter's early fieldnotes, written about six weeks into his research. Margery, an elderly lady in his building who had previously agreed to be interviewed, withdrew her consent at the door when he showed up for their appointment. [Peter]: "Huh, what's the problem?" Margery: "I spoke to my daughter and she doesn't think I should be questioned." [Peter]: "But why, I mean, what is her concern?" I am pretty speechless and flabbergasted by this news, and I want an explanation. Margery simply says: "I'm sorry, my daughter doesn't think I should be part of any research, and I listen to her about everything. I'm sorry." I'm left saYing: "But..." as she closes the door on me, which makes me feel strange since I have spoken to her so many times before, even been inside her apartment to help her turn off the shower nozzle which had gotten stuck on her one morning. I walk back to my apartment next door, rejected and depressed, and reminded of how difficult research can be, how disappointing. I wonder whether in the fiature I will be able to speak to this woman, whether she will speak to me that is, or whether what had once been a friendly neighbor has been irrevocably transformed into an estranged relation, simply because a conversation I wished to have with her was called "research." Peter feels disappointed, depressed and rejected. He even becomes resentful, trivializing a two hour long tape-recorded research interview as a mere "conversatiOn" between neighbors, and ignoring the fact that m a n y of the topics he would have pursued with her were quite personal. Peter glosses over the intrusion and risk that M a r g e r y (and her daughter) probably perceived in being interviewed. D i s a p p o i n t e d and pitying himself, Peter dwells on the hardships o f fieldwork, over-dramatizing what turned out to be a rare event. He learned the hard w a y that carefully cultivating relationships with informants need not lead to success. Dreading another rejection, Peter withdrew from actively recruiting informants for a few weeks, and he directed his energies to the less emotionally risky task o f observational data gathering. C o m p a r e this early incident with how Peter reacts to another declined interview, six months later. W h e n he arrives at the door o f Alfredo, his prospective informant, at the arranged time, no one opens the door or seems to be home. However, Alfredo picks up the phone ten minutes later when Peter calls h i m from his apartment. A s k e d about what happened, A l f r e d o makes

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several excuses about why he had been out, and why he would not be able to do the interview today, tomorrow, or in the near future. Alfredo asks me for my number and says that he will call me when he has a day off work. I think my frequent and aggressive silences encouraged him to continue to keep me hanging on, rather than to just say "I don't want to do the interview?'I feel that this is what he means but I am curious about why he doesn't just say it. I give him my number and we hang up. I wonder about his documentation status and whether this accounts for his apparent fear. As Peter expected, Alfredo never called. Instead of feeling depressed or personally rejected after this episode, Peter concludes his note by wondering about his informant's motives and fears, taking on the role of the other to discern his definition of the situation. By now, Peter had made m a n y contacts and conducted a large n u m b e r of successful interviews. He was not as dependent on this particular informant to provide h i m with good data or to boost his self-confidence, there were m a n y other options he could explore barring Alfredo's participation. Thus, Peter was now in a very different emotional state - he had developed a much "cooler" outlook, allowing him to deal with rejection in a professional way. Rejection now represented an interesting data opportunity rather than the loss of a "friend." Towards the end of the research project, as we were wrapping things up, the cooler self often took an even more disengaged form. The following note from late in Maggie's research illustrates this side of the cooler outlook. In general, I am kind of "too relaxed" about the interviews at this point, I think. I did the last three interviews with attention and care, but I didn't put myself through a lot of pain asking people for referrals or walk alongs. Still, these are not bad interviews. Maybe this is a sign that I really have it down by now and don't get so nervous anymore. I feel a lot more in control of my work than in the beginning. I'm not as anxious to find people anymore, not as anxious to make the good impression necessary for referrals. On the other hand, I feel sometimes that I don't dive into the difficult topics anymore, the map section and the typical day section are both very washed down at this point. I am more rational and try to cover the topics, rather than following up on the details of everything. Clearly, Maggie is now less willing to get personally involved with her informants, and m u c h less concerned about making a good impression. She is primarily interested in moving through all the interview topics, rather than getting caught up in emotionally "difficult" issues. Disengagement is typical of, and perhaps necessary to, the late stages of fieldwork, providing an emotional cue to the researcher that her work is through. We found that we often experienced very dramatic, polarized emotions during the early stages of our research, ranging and quickly changing from euphoria to depression. But as we grew more comfortable and successful with our work, our feelings about ourselves as researchers "cooled off" significantly.

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Consequently, our reactions to events in the field b e c a m e more tempered. This is not to say that we no longer had emotional reactions to what occurred during our fieldwork, m e r e l y that our reactions were not quite as dramatic. In sum, the changing feelings concerning our ethnographic selves shaped how we framed situations and interacted with our informants.

3. Shifts in Ethnographic Stance The third shift in fieldwork that is m e d i a t e d through emotion concerns the researcher's evolving ethnographic stance. A chronological reading o f our fieldnotes reveals a clear pattern shift, whereby we m o v e d from being primarily p r e o c c u p i e d with ourselves and the demands of the researcher role, to b e c o m i n g absorbed in our informants and their experiences, to distancing ourselves from them and facing our scientific audience. The term "ethnographic stance" thus refers to the fieldworker's shifting balance o f emphasis on herself and others. The distinctive quality o f this dimension o f fieldwork is that it often involves " m o r a l i z e d " emotions (Katz 1988) such as shame, betrayal, guilt and respect. These feelings stem from d i l e m m a s familiar to all ethnographers: W h a t exactly am I doing here? W h a t is the meaning o f m y presence to others? W h a t harm or g o o d do I do? W h o s e side a m I on? For w h o m do I write? Answers to these questions are necessarily provisional and situated; hence, moralized emotions related to these dilemmas are rarely fully transcended or cleanly resolved. The following series of fieldnote excerpts documents M a g g i e ' s reactions to four interviews conducted at various stages o f her research. The distinct emotions mentioned in these notes clearly express underlying shifts in her ethnographic stance. M a g g i e wrote the following note after interviewing a y o u n g w o m a n n a m e d Camille, less than eight weeks into her research. I feel sad and frustrated. Today was the first day that I was almost disgusted with myself about sneaking into people's life as a "researcher." I guess it is because of the difference between them as private people, in their homes, in their free time, and me as a researcher, at work. (...) I really feel personally involved in the research right now. Last night the "date" situation with Sammy in which I had to make sure that we are "just friends", and today the interview with Camille. I was so moved by her entire story. She was also the first woman I interviewed who is my age, someone who really felt like a peer to me, someone I could compare my own experiences with. M a g g i e is absorbed in how she feels after the interview - sad, frustrated, deceitful, involved and m o v e d - but pays no attention to C a m i l l e ' s feelings. A t this point early in her research, she is developing personal relationships with some informants for the first time. Unexpectedly, this intimacy produces in

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Maggie a heightened sense of frustration and guilt. For she is certain that her informants would be appalled to discover that their "nice time together" was actually a sort of theft, with Maggie in the role of the thief and the informant in the role of the victim. S a m m y ' s and Camille's apparent comfort is not taken as such, it only increased Maggie's guilt and concern with herself. The thought that being an informant could be a rewarding and valuable experience did not cross Maggie's mind, so much did she believe that being studied was genuinely exploitative - increasingly so, the deeper her personal involvement with her informants. Over time, we stopped worrying so much about ourselves as researchers and opened up to our informants' personal struggles with issues like poverty, loneliness, abuse, addiction, illness and death - as well as the sources of joy in their lives. As mentioned above, we also began deviating from the semistructured interview schedule, allowing for more flexibility and intuition. Thus we gradually adapted the research to the perspectives of those we studied. This is apparent in the following note Maggie took after interviewing a young informant named Jimmy, about six months into her fieldwork. I asked Jimmy almost all the project-related questions that I could think of, but our conversation became much more interesting and deeper once we began talking about more personal matters, for instance his relationships with others, including his mother. The most profound parts of the interview were those where we discussed his spiritual beliefs, and how he sees himself at this point in his life. I deeply enjoyed talking to Jimmy; he answered all my questions with honesty, clarity and care. I feel that I captured something substantial about someone's life. But, on the other hand, I don't think I really gathered a lot of "thick" data from Jimmy that is relevant to our study. Maggie here talks about enjoying this very personal interview without noting any emotional torments. We realized that we had reached a different, less "egocentric", phase in our research when our informants' fears and concerns were becoming more interesting and more important than our own, indicating a deeper level of empathy and identification. At times, informants said to us things like: "You know more about me than anyone else!", or: "Is there anything else about myself I can tell you?", or: "I have never talked so much about myself before." Consequently, many of our informants sought to sustain a relationship with us beyond our interviews, for who other than a friend could possibly know, or want to know, this much about you? We were now comfortable with their interest in us, which mirrored our interest in them, thus achieving a temporary peace of mind. But ethnographers can only remain in this equilibrium for so long. Soon the constant demands on their personal lives become overwhelming and unrealizable expectations take root from this friendship approach to research. During

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the most active and engaged phase o f our research - when we were intensely focused on recruiting informants, doing interviews, and participating in the local social life - the costs o f b e c o m i n g emotionally invested in our subjects mounted. M a g g i e wrote after an interview about two-thirds into her research: There is a fear of disappointing expectations, of "letting a friend down"; the dreadful feeling of leaving without having "resolved" the fieldworker-subject relationship. Often, you leave nothing behind other than an open-endedness, "wounds", potential friends and contacts. Most of my flies end with me saying 'Tll call you next week", but I never really do. I feel guilty towards some people because I wasn't able to continue our relationships, although I had previously indicated that I might. M a g g i e b e c o m e s intimately reacquainted with how ethnographic fieldwork produces feelings o f guilt, yet unlike those she experienced earlier. As ethnographers, w e sincerely want to get close to our informants as individuals, but because of the depth o f emotional investment that is needed, maintaining intimate bonds with a large number of informants b e c o m e s unmanageable and counter-productive. Towards the end of our research, w e reconsidered our commitments and the purpose o f our presence in the field while reverting to an egocentric perspective. We knew that we were about to reduce and eventually withdraw our presence from the areas, and we realized that w e had to cut ties to most o f our informants. We now had to fill the gaps in our data, approach certain types o f people m o r e aggressively, and eventually focus entirely on transcribing, coding, analyzing and writing. Thus, we had to phase out the kinds o f emotional investments w e had been making, as is apparent in the following note, written after one o f M a g g i e ' s last interviews. I am getting less emotionally involved with the people, I am not that open about myself anymore, I don't volunteer as much information as I did before. I am aware that I am in the closing phase of my research and it is good that I will be finished with interviewing soon. It is time for me to move on, I think sometimes, and do something new. A c c e p t i n g the finality of the research is not always easy, nor is the realization that it is necessary to get over it. S o m e ethnographers put off this realization by throwing themselves c o m p l e t e l y into the local c o m m u n i t y for a last time: they "go native" for fear o f letting go, as Peter did temporarily when he i m m e r s e d h i m s e l f in the long-term organizing efforts o f residents. G o i n g native, however, only postpones the inevitable distancing and egocentricity that marks the final stage o f in situ fieldwork. During his final weeks in the field Peter wrote: I'm out in front of my porch, getting my mail, when I run into Sharon, an AfricanAmerican woman. After chatting a bit, she asks me today, as she has asked me before, "are you going to be sticking around for good?" In the past, when she asked me this, I always said that I would. Today, as other professional prospects loom, I evasively mumble "We'll

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see" and add "See you later Sharon!" as I back up into the front door of my apartment. Back inside the apartment, I feel a strange sense of disconnectedness. After previously convincing h i m s e l f that he would stay in the neighborhood following the completion o f his study, Peter eventually realized that this was unlikely to occur. He now faced the emotionally challenging p r o b l e m s o f having to announce his imminent departure from the neighborhood, and admitting to h i m s e l f that his relationships with his informants had been, in the end, o f limited scope. For the past week or so I have been letting local contacts in on the news of my taking leave from the neighborhood. Although I had known that I would be moving to Ohio since April - three months ago - I had refrained from letting my informants know about my move, partly because I didn't want them to think that I was abandoning them, especially when I would still be around for some time, and because I didn't want them to make a fuss about my leaving. On the other hand, I was worried that some of the people who I assumed would be saddened by my departure might in fact think that it was no big deal, causing a bruise to my sense of importance in their lives. In short, I assume that different people will react to my leaving in different ways, and I don't want to expend the emotional energy in dealing with these different reactions. I had an instrumental concern as well: if they thought I was not staying in the area, perhaps they would see any further entreaties for data as exploitative. This note clearly reveals how egocentric concerns, like being considered unimportant or exploitative, m a k e their w a y b a c k into Peter's actions, feelings and strategies at the conclusion o f his fieldwork. These concerns were also expressed through various other forms o f withdrawal, such as turning down opportunities to interview people, or avoiding certain meetings and scenes that had previously been excellent sources of data. F o r example, Peter now routinely entered and exited his apartment through the b a c k door in order to avoid chance meetings with neighbors. The irony is that this sort o f encounter is precisely what researchers w e l c o m e and seek early on in their projects. In precluding interactions with locals, we felt once again that w e were acting sneakily and secretively. Yet, our genuine interest in (and in some cases, patience with) our informants had waned, even though they still believed that we were thrilled to be continually updated on the mundane details o f their lives. Sadly but necessarily, our friendships with most informants waned according to our professional schedule; we were no longer "in love" with the mundane aspects o f their lives. Instead, long suppressed personal agendas were re-taking center stage. This again p r o d u c e d guilt, which in turn accelerated the process o f distancing ourselves from the field and its inhabitants. In some cases, our distancing was also eased and fortified because the neighborhoods grew m o r e and m o r e alien to us. Over time, p e o p l e we knew

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well moved out, were evicted or died; new people - strangers - rented or bought the apartments and houses that we knew as the former homes of our informants. We felt indifferent toward these newcomers and strangely loyal to those who moved away, leading us to maintain a distance from our new neighbors. These on-going changes brought about feelings of nostalgia for the communities that once were, thus also facilitating and contributing to our emotional withdrawal. In the exiting stage, the return to ego-centric concerns converges with the ethnographer's increased awareness of the audience for her research, thus indicating yet another consequential shift in the ethnographic stance emblematic of the process of fieldwork.18 In sum, an analysis of the moralized emotions in fieldwork reveals that various subjects fill the hearts and minds of the ethnographer throughout her research, including herself, her informants and her audience. CONCLUSION In the preceding analysis, we identified and examined shifts in ethnographic space, self, and stance, each of which exhibits distinctive emotional dynamics and related cognitive concerns. Although we found it helpful to analyze these issues separately, we stress again that they mutually influence each other, and that they are intertwined in the lived experience of doing fieldwork. These shifts act as prisms through which all self-reflexive fieldnotes might be viewed. It is thus no coincidence that many of the above examples denote more than one shift at a time. The significance of the trajectories we have identified can be considered in several ways. Most generally, they show that emotion is an indispensable, routine part of fieldwork. Feelings are not mere side effects, nor are they something that researchers should try to avoid. They are normal and even functional, rather than something that compromises the scientific worth of fieldwork products. Moreover, emotion emerges from, and reflects, the dynamic process of doing ethnographic research. It would be too simple to conclude that a fieldworker's feelings change over time. More correctly, her changing feelings correlate to the changing reality of the feld; indeed, they constitute it in the first place. There are a number of different ways in which feelings actively determine the direction and content of fieldwork. First, the ethnographer's willingness to expose herself to particular situations in the field hinges on her sense of security or vulnerability. These feelings greatly influence the field's definition and shape. Our feelings and ideas concerning the boundaries of fieldwork determine what is part of the field and

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what is seen as part of the outside world. The boundaries of the field are not merely spatial but primarily emotional in nature; they will shift and adjust accordingly. Moreover, the experiential qualities of the field clearly depend on one's feelings and comfort levels. The field literally changes under one's eyes, depending on the embodied emotions that shape one's views. Second, the fieldworker's sampling and contacting strategies, especially when there is a large pool of possible informants, are also affected by her varying emotion. How prepared the ethnographer is to face rejection or risk embarrassment determines who she will contact and who she will not, and how easily she will be discouraged in her efforts. Most of us stay away from possible informants who we feel uncomfortable with, for various (and often purely imagined) reasons, rendering them invisible to our readers and inconsequential to the processes and events in the field. How and whether a researcher will pursue or avoid certain topics with an informant will be influenced by her feelings - by her reading of the emotional bond that she has, so far, developed with her subject. Upon exiting, most fieldworkers leave behind potential but never contacted informants, potential but never explored topics, potential but never followed leads. And the logic of selection at work behind these choices is, at least partially, an emotional one. Third, the researcher's shifting emotional stance follows a predictable cycle, thus functions as an indicator of "where you are" in the research process. This is not to say, however, that feelings are something to be overcome, or waited out. We should appreciate how the emotional processes of fieldwork shape our views, produce phenomena, and obscure issues that would be "obvious" under other circumstances. Furthermore, the variety of data produced under different emotional circumstances may enhance our understanding of the substantive issues at the foreground, in our case "fear of crime". The varying feelings embedded in her data are a valuable resource to the ethnographer; they represent multiple standpoints from which she can access the unfolding social processes and the diversity of perspectives she has been documenting. Paying attention to emotional shifts therefore mitigates a common tendency among researchers to reify the field as a homogeneous experiential world, or to freeze the field in some monolithic mold. We gradually developed a heightened awareness of crime and disorder phenomena, which helped us understand the perspectives of more vulnerable groups such as parents, seniors, and undocumented immigrants. In short, evolving emotional states may reflect more than the research process: they may also model the social processes in, and the social diversity of, a setting like an urban neighborhood. Taking the fieldworker's emotional shifts seriously counters the common tacit claim that her later understanding of

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the field is superior to an earlier one. But it also challenges Goffman's view that the first day in the field is always the most revealing (Goffman, 1989). In these and possibly other ways, feelings leave their imprint on what fieldwork ultimately yields. The shifts we considered above can also be viewed as points on a continuum of "emotional socialization." As practicing ethnographers grow familiar with the emotional conundrums involved in fieldwork, they learn how to anticipate, manage, and incorporate those feelings into their practice in ways unforeseeable earlier in their careers. They are less likely to take them personally and more likely to appreciate their "structural" nature. While emotional socialization certainly occurs over the course of one's many projects as an ethnographer (cf. Wolcott 1995), however, there are also trajectories of emotional socialization that structure any given project. Doing fieldwork is not simply a matter of reaching into and using tools from the fieldworker's toolkit. We believe every ethnographic project poses emotional challenges of the sort we described for ethnographers at all stages in their careers, though the terms of those challenges will differ in their particulars. If feelings, whatever their origins, truly play such a substantial role in fieldwork, in what sense are data collected at various stages of a research project, and by more than one researcher, still comparable? In giving emotion such a prominent position, don't we silently waive all claims to the reliability and validity of our work? The reflexive turn in ethnography has convinced us that objectivity is not achieved by finding and taking the correct position. The field is not simply "out there;" its processes and events are not mere objects ready for the picking. As many have noted, only a clear statement of one's standpoint, including an account of one's changing emotions, provides the context readers need to fully understand and compare our ethnographies. Analyzing feelings in fieldwork does not obstruct the goals of the ethnographic enterprise, but rather promotes them. As the record shows, emotion can be expunged from ethnographies, but it cannot be uncoupled from fieldwork. NOTES 1. Behar (1996: 16). 2. See, for example, Clifford and Marcus (1986), Geertz (1988), and Atkinson (1990). 3: Our research project "Everyday Perceptions of Disorder, Self-Protection Against Crime, and Community Policing" was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ 95-IJ-CX-0078). Jack Katz was the Principal Investigator and the third member of our research team.

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4. Anthologies on fieldwork methods also represent a kind of back door. Edited volumes like Fieldwork Experience (Shaffir, Stebbins & Turowetz, 1980), Contemporary Field Research (Emerson, 1983), In the Field (Smith & Kornblum, 1989), Experiencing Fieldwork (Shaffir & Stebbins,1991), and Doing Field Research (Grills, 1998) congregate reflexive papers that retrospectively contemplate emotion and ethics in fieldwork. Goffman, who never adopted a confessional writing style in his published work, spoke disdainfully of the "intimacy trophies" that were often trotted out in such presentations. 5. Fine notes that Goffman's recommendation to the ethnographer - that she be willing to look like a "horse's ass" (Goffman, 1989: 128) - is "easier said than done, particularly as advice coming from one whose own self is carefully hidden in his ethnographies" (Fine, 1993: 282). 6. Sanders realizes that, over time, some of his initial, "normal" emotional reactions were "dulled" by regular exposure to troubling or unpleasant situations. A second emotional turn occurred when he increasingly "followed his heart" after seeing pets being treated cruelly by their owners and intervened. Taking action made him "feel better" because "in the final accounting, the goal of doing what one can to help is far more superior to collecting data" (Sanders, 1998: 195). 7. Heritage (1984: 120ft.) provides an ethnomethodological account of the "essential insufficiency of rules in the determination of conduct." 8. See Olesen (1994) and Wolf (1996). Balsamo (1990), DeVault (1993), Hertz (1996), and Richardson (1997) provide insightful overviews and examples of these debates. 9. Our use of "space" as a meaningful and changing environment is similar to the concept of "place" developed in recent work in the symbolic interactionist tradition. See, for instance, Altman and Low (1992) and Milligan (1998). 10. The shift from being absorbed by one's own feelings, to becoming concerned with what others might feel is discussed at length in the section on "ethnographic stance." 11. Researcher's feelings of fear are not restricted to physical threats in high-crime environments. Ethnographers whose fields are less risky and more predictable are likely to encounter a similar cycle. Researchers' fears can grow out of concerns with being rejected, not fitting in, tampering with the field, and losing one's access. All of these fears can be transformative of ethnographic space. 12. See Zerubavel (1991) and Nippert-Eng (1995) for a phenomenological inquiry of boundaries and ritual transitions in everyday life. 13. The varied reactions of residents to the helicopter incident proved to be a rich source of data in both neighborhoods during the following weeks and months. 14. It is important to stress that leaving the physical territory of the field need not guarantee peace of mind and emotional relief. Nippert-Eng (1995) discusses the complex challenge and practices of mentally, emotionally and physically separating home and work. 15. Fine (1995: 270) posits the "ethnographic self" as the self the ethnographer presents to her colleagues, rather than to her informants. "There always is a reader looking over a writer's shoulder" (1995: 283), he notes. 16. It can be difficult to see the wisdom in "playing dumb" when you actually feel dumb, which is an entirely different ballgame. 17. Compare Peter's first two fieldnotes in the previous section.

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18. See, for example, Fine (1993) and Behar (1996) for discussions of how scientific audiences affect what and how we write.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1999 meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) in Chicago. The authors would like to thank Tiffani Chin, Norman K. Denzin, Katherine Hill, Jack Katz, John I. Kitsuse, Jennifer Leich, Stephanie Limoncelli, the anonymous reviewers, and especially Martha Copp for their valuable comments and criticisms. The research on which this chapter is based was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ 95-IJ-CX-0078); the views represented herein are strictly those of the authors. REFERENCES Irving A., & Low, S. M. (1992). Place Attachment. New York: Plenum Press. Atkinson, E (1990). The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Construction of Reality. New York: Routledge. Balsamo, A. (1990). Rethinking Ethnography: A Work for the Feminist Imagination. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 11, 45-57. Behar, R. (1996). The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press. Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. DeVault, M. (1993). Different Voices: Feminists' Methods of Social Research. Qualitative Sociology, 16, 77-83. Duneier, M. (1999). Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ellis, C. (1991). Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience. Symbolic Interaction, 14, 23-50. Ellis, C. (1991). "There Are Survivors?' Telling A Story of Sudden Death. The Sociological Quarterly, 34, 711-730. Ellis, C., & Flaherty, M. (1992). Investigating Subjectivity. Newbury Park: Sage. Ellis, C. (1995). Final Negotiations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. (1996). Composing Ethnography. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press. Ellis, C. (1998). "I Hate My Voice?' Coming to Terms with Minor Bodily Stigma. Sociological Quarterly, 39, 517-537. Emerson, R. M. (1983). Contemporary Field Research. A Collection of Readings. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Emerson, R. M., & Pollner, M. (1983). The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Fieldwork Relations. In: R. M. Emerson (Ed.), Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings (pp. 235-252). Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. Fine, G. A. (1993). Ten Lies of Ethnography. Moral Dilemmas of Field Research. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 22, 267-294.

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Gans, H. J. (1962). The Urban Villagers. New York: Free Press. Geertz, C. (1988). Works and Lives. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Grills, S. (1998). Doing Ethnographic Research. Fieldwork Settings. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Goffman, E. (1989). On Fieldwork. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 18, 123-132. Gubrium, J., & Holstein, J. A. (1997). The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York: Oxford University Press. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (1995). Ethnography: Principles in Practice. New York: Routledge. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hertz, R. (1996). Ethics, Reflexivity and Voice. Qualitative Sociology, 19, 3-11. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Horowitz, R. (1983). Honor and the American Dream. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Howell, J. T. (1972). Hard Living on Clay Street. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil New York: Basic Books. Kleinman, S. (1991). Field-Worker's Feelings: What We Feel, Who We Are, How We Analyze. In: W. B. Shaflir & R. A. Stehbins (Eds.), Experiencing Fieldwork: An Inside View of Qualitative Research. (pp. 184-195). London: Sage. Kleinman, S., & Copp, M. A. (1993). Emotions and Fieldwork. Newhury Park, CA: Sage. Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. (1995). Analyzing Social Settings. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Merry, S. E. (1981). Urban Danger. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Milligan, M. (1998). Interactional Past and Potential: The Social Construction of Place Attachment. Symbolic Interaction, 21, 1-33. Moreman, S. (1999). The Terms of My Latino Identity. An Exploratory Auto-Ethnographic Narrative. Studies in Symbolic Interaction 22, 65-75. Nippert-Eng, C. (1995). Home and Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Olesen, V. (1994). Feminisms and Models of Qualitative Research. In: N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research, First Edition (pp. 158-174). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Sanders, C. (1998). Animal Passions: The Emotional Experience of Doing Ethnography in Animal-Human Interaction Settings. In: S. Grills (Ed.), Doing Ethnographic Research: Fieldwork Settings (pp. 184-198). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Shaffir, W. B., Stebbins, R. A., & Turowetz, A. (1980). Fieldwork Experience: Qualitative Approaches to Social Resources. New York: St. Martin's Press. Shaffir, W. B., & Stebbins, R. A. (1991). Experiencing Fieldwork. An Inside View of Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Smith, C. D., & Komblum, W. (1989). In the Field. Readings on the Field Research Experience. New York: Prager. Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Suttles, G. D. (1968). The Social Order of the Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolcott, H. F. (1995). The Art of Fieldwork. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Wolf, D. L. (1996). Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Boulder: Westview Press. Whyte, W. E (1943). Street Corner Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Young, E. H., & Lee, R. M. (1996). Fieldworker Feelings as Data: 'Emotion Work' and 'Feeling Rules' in First Person Accounts of Sociological Fieldwork. In: V. James & J. Gabe (Eds.), Health and the Sociology of Emotions (pp. 97-114). Cambridge: BlackweU. Zerubavel, E. (1991). The Fine Line. New York: Free Press.

STOCKYARDS BOYHOOD Norbert Wiley INTRODUCTION I wrote these verses for my kids and a few friends. They are an attempt to capture the high points and feelings of my Chicago boyhood, expressed through the eyes of a child. The Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood and St. Augustine's parish in particular were wonderful places at that time, roughly the 1930s and 1940s. And, while I remember my boyhood as very difficult, in retrospect it seems sort of romantic and picturesque. The people in particular seem just great. Some of these poems are attached to pretty private experiences, like my yen for my cousin, Donna Jean, or the time I actually swung on our ice box door (and knocked it over on me). But that's boyhood for you. I'll bet they're all pretty private in their high points. Also I have several poems about my Dad (not all included here) and none about my Morn. Yet I was crazy about my Mom and very angry at my Dad, as he seemed toward me. Sorry Ma! There was also loads of sex and violence. The heavy lid on sex made it even more present than if things had just happened naturally. But what the heck. It was what it was and we are what we are. Actually I began these during a mid-life crisis about twenty-five years ago, when I was trying to figure out what it was all about. Now I ' m calmed down, and I've been in a great marriage for 17 years. That makes the Catholic boyhood seem a lot nicer.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 223-242. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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NORBERT WILEY To a Little Boy

Full of bubbles full of glee moving faster than you know growing faster than you run feelings that you've never had smile that reaches from your true doing what I'd never do hand that touches what it loves eyes so clean that they can see blood that rushes like a stream joy that smiles so readily little boy agush with life little boy come back to me

Bedtime

Oh Daddy give a double twist I've been so good you promised that you would when I got into bed and ready for the time of darkness time of dreams of risks I can't forget but now my face is clean my mouth alive with peppermint my liver oil unpuked into my tummy all unpacked for bed am I and now you pick me up such shovel hands you had your smile the easiest at bedtime pick me up and throw me in the air with just a little twist that makes me rotate like a Ferris wheel

Stockyards Boyhood 1999

I fly up to the ceiling almost hitting always tuming coming down and landing on my ass the mattress shoots me up again I fly a smiling Daddy grinning Nobby winning loved you best the moment of the double twist

Please don't water me

Rainy days remind me of wet diapers not my kids' but my own the sweetness of release bringing a warmth at first, and then a heavy wet that gradually got cold till you shook with goose pimples and had to scream to get the damned things off the pins keeping them on Rainy days remind me of dull Sunday afternoons with Dad wrapped around the radio listening to Father Coughlin's phony oratory about Jews and money and me feeling guilty about little Jesus and having nothing to do Rainy days remind me of picnics in the basement without games, of sunny baseball afternoons shriveled by dark clouds, of girls who didn't come to meet me in the park at night though I was there getting wet

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NORBERT WILEY Sunny days are fine but I remember rainy days the best.

Knocking over the Refrigerator Have you ever swung on an ice box door and pulled it over on the floor just missing you? I did when I was eight or ten one sweaty summer evening looking for a bit of pleasure lump of sausage nip of pie wash it down with something white pulled the bastard over on me gently swinging on that door what's the fuss and why the wonder people running in a hush see me lying on the floor where's the blinking ice box door had it here a minute by me swung across the jungle scene all at once the tree came falling tarzan went a tumbling

To a Weeping Lady When boys pick whips from trees to slash at butterflies and cut the tops off flowers as a lady looking out a window weeps they do not know they hurt and steal the life of others but only that they weep a lot themselves at what they do to flowers, butterflies and ladies

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 Street Games children's games on Chicago's streets bright at night with pulsing runs and victories made you scream to be alive to chase the everything of evening life and secret happiness when darkness hit the games got darker quieter as more of you came out kid games on sultry summer nights Chicago

Corner Stores in the thirties in Saint Augustine's parish there were little grocery stores every block of so feeding clumps of families ladies shopping everyday but these weren't morn and pop establishments for pop was working in the Yards and Ma would mind the store and mind the kids and mind the store running from back to front to back She'd do it all these little plucky heroines these tough-ass Polish ladies

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To the Rats in my Alley City boys who live in alleys dream in garbage cans and sift the trash that filters dreams when they're awake and ruling alleys hate the rats who steal the smelly air and sear the dreams in playgrounds that w e love we city boys befoul the life of city alleys filthy rats we smash in cartons splash with bricks and fight the rats who take our alleys take our turf to cloud our dreams to kill the rats and yet they come some more we city boys

Getting Felt It's disappointing when you're ten and men are always acting friendly like your uncle acting interested in what you think and as you tell them animated by the audience you feel the mousy mousy fingers on the muscles of your thighs

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 and then you know or almost know that men who like us boys are worse than those who don't and then you wonder if a simple friend is anywhere and what the secret is for boys like us

Mack the Cop In Sherman park Chicago stockyards style there ruled a man so cruel and brutal Mack the cop they said his name that kids were shocked a gray haired grampa kicked your shins and slapped your face and told you not to curse again in this fine Catholic park He ruled in summer busting kids for swimming in the cool lagoon (till Freddie Novack drowned we watched it happen) and he ruled in winter taking to ice skates when law required bullying the skaters (We cheered when he fell, but he whacked Willy Abend who'd cheered too loudly)

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NORBERT WILEY This pistol packing parish priest is what he was and those were days like it or not you knew where power was and what would get your head besmattered one of your limits and you stayed as far away as possible that rotten bastard Mack the cop.

The Bakery Stairs sitting on the bakery stairs with guys I loved on summer nights was always sweetly flavored with the flow of Meister Brau a trickling down our greedy mouths from holes that opened at the top of lusty bottles half a gallons fat and tall that lined the sidewalk as we talked of baseballs not quite caught and girls more succulent than willing bottles rocking in our arms another five half gallons Rose I have the money here a pile of nickels gathered from the guys who got them where they could and would you get twelve bags of pretzels for the hunger in our hearts

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 so we can nibble as we drink the dreams of manhood scoring touchdowns hitting runs with girls a watching boys a strutting children cheering slugging Meister on the summer bakery stairs

The Park The park by day the world boys ruled territory ours where ball was played with lots of push and knockouts mixing the everygame we lovingly bled into trees were climbed overhanging the lagoon till branches tipped to the water and tarzan faced the alligators there were fish in these murky waters and kids would go home with stringers of bullies and carp to please Polish mothers and shanty Irish dads and make a dinner. I fell through the ice once always thin under the bridges and only a bragging fool would skate that close the shivvers walking home more embarassed than scared

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NORBERT WILEY the boys did rule but Mack the cop the mean mick who'd spoil all fun would have to be avoided though he crept around spying on boys like the billy goat he was he found two eighth graders naked sticking it into each other guys I knew and beat them bloody till they swore they'd only stick it somewhere else to come at evening getting dark on summer nights when girls would stroll in twos and threes these raw boned juicy girls and boys would sit on benches taunting hinting tagging after till couples lie on grassy hills and night came with the darkness of desire always the lagoon a touch of mystery in this ethnic jungle telling us that there was more than we could see somewhere and telling too of danger freddie novack drowning just a little swim but seaweed dragged him down as we were watching disbelieving

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 growing in the park where Catholic kids could find their own and beat each other silly make a little life the world was ours the sin and shame and shadow casting light so we could see the world was ours.

Dead Man's Hill I went to the park one winter's day to ride my sled my thoughts away shoot down the hill hold on I will and glide across the ice so still across the black lagoon I slide its deadly depths beneath my ride the day grows dark the snowlight stays I lose my thoughts I lose my ways I I I I

am the park am the gaze am the night find my ways

Smiling Milkman Louey the milkman smiling chubby face bringing bottles of stuff I liked to guzzle and staying to talk with Morn on Saturday collection

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NORBERT WILEY I worked for you a year lugging bottles to third floor back porches doing half the Saturday work and loving you for the quarter you paid once an old lady tipped me a nickel in honor of the Blessed Virgin and once you tipped me a quart of chocolate but Ma made me stretch it with milk Why didn't I tell you about the man in the park the morning I ran to work terrified You smiled too much for that and I tried to smile but the look on his face and his hand holding my shoulder and what he told me to do would not let me free you didn't tell me much either, Louey this boy of ten needing you and lots of you and always looking up to you when you lost your leg under a car the night you fell all drunk I wanted you to cry and tell me how it hurt to walk on crutches but that was not to be or ever that you should speak to me or I to you about the things that burned the screams we didn't yell the things that couldn't be the you and me

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 The Bottle Squad here's my discharge papers my combat medal my holy name society card and my brother's a judge but I ' m a drunk so don't turn out like me but Frank you and the other guys who drink in this alley sitting on this loading dock fight where we play baseball rock on the dock and do our kind of dreaming are pretty nice to us boys talking to us as equals giving us your empties for the deposit and warning us from the cops there's musical mike with flecks of shit on his cuffs doing a dance and humming a tune musical could have been big but for that wound at Belleau Woods and this killer wine and you yourself were a politician moving up fast shoving the competition till you got caught and had to pay more than you had just to sit on this dock you guys got blamed for burning down the barn we did it roasting potatoes too close to that match box

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NORBERT WILEY and skies were bright for blocks the bottle squad did it we said disloyally yes Frank you got caught but that judge fixed it and your war pension held and you drank pints of gutrot till you joined that great bottle squad in the sky and we grew up almost forgetting the little pleasures of sharing this alley and taking what you had our own Catholic drunks our beloved squad To Donna Jean

cousin of my childish dreams why did you die aborting your life so silently I loved you soft as cousins will graduation parties eyes meeting with a thrill wishing you more of you those eyes caresses accidentally given breathlessly received just cousin stuff but how I dreamt and then

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 much later afraid to tell what you had done you died so quietly forever seventeen still a mystery falling in love with Donna Jean my beautiful forever cousin

Yocky Docky's Daughters The Whitely girls started out ugly and worse than that polluted being the daughters ofYocky Docky the neighborhood lush and the sisters of Tippy who liked to put turp on cat's asses to see them run and always had a twisted smile Their Mom could cook wonderfully though her blueberry muffins a neighborhood legend which helped a bit These two doomed little girls somehow against miserable odds both turned out to be beautiful in mid-teens a bit promiscuous but almost breath taking in that land of lumpy Slavic faces tree-stump German physiques and pointy Irish noses

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NORBERT WILEY And to this day I cannot understand whey they always looked ugly to me

Early Girl sublimated sex says Freud is the root of love spreading thin like wild honey over everything the other touches talks about says with eyes a theory nowadays in disrepute among scholars but I recall a girl all bud and promise of flower in the schoolyard and lolling on her porch who gave me sweet infinity with glance and sound of voice and love was mine never to be used never to go away

Man's best friend I had a dog his name was Tim I envied him detested him he wasn't mine this hunting dog this hunter's dog

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 who ran a beauty licked the platter clean competed with me oh so well the hunter pets him combs the brambles from his hair and feeds him from his plate (detested him)

Discovering Rachmaninoff and Something Else listening to Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto in Vilk's record store stockyards chicago long ago could make you perspire schoolbooks stacked in the comer of the booth and heavy winter coat filling the chair steamy air of the stockyards and Vilk's overdoing radiators combined with something else a heat that came from the blood and from my father's and grandfather's blood stored for a century to be opened by this Russian piano softening warming perspiring in the record booth in Vilk's

Catholic Girls in the Forties they don't make girls like they used to on the south side of Chicago in the nineteen forties catholic girls of course

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NORBERT WILEY protestants smelled funny and you couldn't talk with them what few there were and jews were only in the bible in this land of macho priests and rosary praying football teams and starchy titty-bobbing catholic girls who wouldn't do much but could knock your block off with what they did and how they did it catholic girls jitter-bugging giggle-bobbing giving you the aches and not much else but still those catholic girls in the forties

Polish Wedding A Polish wedding feeds you till you almost pop away a bubble of kilbasee chicken soup some slabs of pot-roast dumplings full of chewey things a hunk of duck and such a cabbage tasting sweet You stuff it in when you're a teen-age boy just come to eat and drink the night an uninvited guest who knew where pleasure lie around

Stockyards Boyhood 1999 Another high-ball mister busy barman pouring whiskey as you pour concrete all week getting razzed by glassy cousins getting smiles that don't know what they mean from tipsy wives another high-ball for the bubble of kilbasee leaning heavily against the bar as any Polish guest would do Such tits that girl whose laughing in a sweater smells so sweet don't I know you from a time when we were swimming in the park or after church or was it shopping you and I have met before So it's Wanda sure I know you want to Polka for a while happy fingers living fingers touching Wanda all my might hot in here let's find it cooler take a walk I need you now touching lips the tits are pouring down my chest I point my feelings at my chest my hands go crazy getting slapped Another high-ball mister barman I ' m a Polack to the end lotsa goods and not a nickel could you find a better bargain for a boy of five and ten there's a girl she looks familiar see you later gotta dance

First Date I knock on the door please don't be her father friendly Morn answers sweet smelling budling almost ready

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NORBERT WILEY sitting on the street car discussing the street car most of the money goes for the show just enough for carfare and two coca colas no more what if she wants more? good cowboy movie holding sweaty hands kissing a lot she smiles and calls me rubberlips is that good? how about a coke? she goes for the coke the evening is mine now getting her home and not meeting her father rubberlips doing his trick on the stairs good night and thanks to you too, first date

THE GREENING OF IDENTITY: THREE ENVIRONMENTAL PATHS Simon Gottschalk 1. I N T R O D U C T I O N We argue that the individual in society, his or her subjectivity, sense of selfhood, and experience of a life world, all have an ecological dimension. We all experience our selves as being in a relationship with an ecology, and we all express our selves in a conversation with this web of connections. We orient ourselves to non-human others as well as human others and reference groups. We are all essentially grounded in, and bonded to, a nonhuman world ... Life and meaning are fundamentally ecological. This has radical implications for the ways we theorize society, culture, communication, and the self (Jagtenberg & McKie, 1997, pp. 122-123). On reconngtit la vraie rationalitg ~ sa capaciti de reconnaftre ses insuffisances [You can recognize true rationality by its ability to acknowledge its own insufficiencies] (Morin & Kern, 1993, p. 188 - my translation). The problem of how to transmit our ecological reasoning to those whom we wish to influence in what seems to be an ecologically "good" direction is itself an ecological problem (Bateson, 1975, p. 504). L o c a t e d at the fertile i n t e r s e c t i o n w h e r e a p o s t m o d e r n s y m b o l i c i n t e r a c t i o n i s m m e e t s e c o l o g i c a l thought, this c h a p t e r invites the r e a d e r to c o n s i d e r the e c o l o g i c a l d i m e n s i o n o f identity b y e x p l o r i n g three paths w h i c h m i g h t h o p e f u l l y g u i d e this endeavor. B e f o r e p r o c e e d i n g any further, let m e e m p h a s i z e that I do not p r o v i d e h e r e a b s o l u t e solutions or final answers to the c o m p l e x topics o f i d e n t i t y and e c o l o g y . M y aims are m o r e m o d e s t and consist in calling the r e a d e r ' s attention to r e c e n t insights in e c o - t h e o r i e s o f identity and to e n c o u r a g e s y m b o l i c interactionists and others to further d e v e l o p them.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 245-271. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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The issue of identity has admittedly become increasingly complex in the wake of the post-strnctural turn, a turn which has produced a bewildering number of arguments about the meaning and very existence of this slippery concept (Gergen, 2000, 1991; Hall, 1996). Rather than offering grand conclusions about this voluminous and multidisciplinary literature, I will begin by suggesting that any theoretical statement about identity - the present one included - ultimately articulates and reproduces subjective experiences, cultural assumptions, ideological orientations, matters of ability and choice. As Jagtenberg and McKie (1997, p. 124) put it, in the final analysis, statements about identity always communicate about "who we think we are". And since pronouncements about who we think we are vary so greatly across time and space, it would seem prudent to approach any statement about identity equipped with both flexible intellectual parameters and critical self-reflexivity. For example, while we are busy trying to rationally support or categorically reject the idea of an ecological self who is in constant interaction with an autonomous environment, we tend to overlook that, for most of history and in most cultures, such an idea was understood as plain common sense (see Egri, 1997; Gottlieb, 1996). Bateson (1975, p. 484), for example remarks that: Anthropologically, it would seem from what we know of the early material, that man in society took clues from the natural world around him and applied those clues in a sort of metaphoric way to the society in which he lived. That is, he identified with or empathized with the natural world around him and took that empathy as a guide for his own social organization and his own theories of his own psychology. As French sociologists Morin and Kern (1993, p. 61) also remind us, "while the mythology of every civilization has located the human world squarely in nature, Homo occidentalis was, up until the middle of the 20th century, completely oblivious and unconscious of his cosmic and terrestrial identity." (my translation) From an ecological perspective then, it is not the ecological self which should be approached as a bizarre and odd phenomenon requiring extensive theoretical justification and compelling empirical evidence. Rather, what really begs analysis is a self and a discourse of the self which ignore or deny this ecological dimension. As ecopsychologists suggest (and the argument is rather seductive), spending more than 90% of our lives indoors, we might have developed "indoors thinking" (Cohen, 1998) - particular ways of knowing which literally frame our experiences and theories of identity, as well as our theories of the world around and within us. More problematically however, since "who we think we are" not only shapes our experiences of identity but also inevitably guides our daily practices, acknowledging the ecological dimension of identity - or failing to do so - has real consequences which reach well beyond the symbolic realm of theory, the

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concrete walls of academia, the printed page, and our relatively short individual biographies. Whether we perceive them as real or don't. Accordingly, while an indoors epistemology is (philosophically, historically, psychologically) a fascinating development in the history of human consciousness, it is also a dangerously maladaptive one in need of urgent transgression. To quote Bateson again, (1975, p. 485,487): Epistemological error is all right, it's fine up to the point at which you create around yourself a universe in which that error becomes immanent in monstrous changes of the universe that you have created and now try to live in ... I believe that this massive aggregation of threats to man and his ecological system arises out of errors in our habits of thought at deep and partly unconscious levels. Lately, a small but growing number of social scientists of various persuasions have begun to give the natural environment increasing attention. But while the multiplying number of eco-sociological journals, organizations, sections, books, courses and programs attest to a (still pale) "greening" of sociology, this ecological dimension has remained largely ignored in theories of identity (postmodern ones included), 1 or constructed in problematic ways. In most of our writings, it seems, the environment is either ignored, marginalized as the backdrop against which important human actions take place, or reduced to social construction. For example, although usually flexible, dynamic, and willing to face new intellectual challenges head on, postmodern symbolic interactionism has remained largely hesitant to acknowledge the important insights various ecological theories could contribute to its distinctive approach to social phenomena. Accordingly, since the concept of identity is so central to symbolic interaction theory, the topic of an ecological identity seems to constitute a particularly strategic point of entry, a fruitful terrain where those theories can converse and inform each other. In Jagtenberg and McKie's (1997, p. 125) words: The idea of an ecological self is manifestly not simply a problem for deep ecologists and New Age philosophers. The whole modernist paradigm of self-perception - its glorification in individualisms that cut across gender, class, and ethnic sensibilities - is challenged by any broadening and recentering of the self across non-human territories. Pushed beyond the topic of identity, this argument also suggests that since nature exists beyond our social constructions, it therefore constitutes a challenging new intellectual terrain, a new perspective from which we can reassess our theoretical assumptions.

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AFTER

POST-STRUCTURALISM

For most of its history, psychology has located the me within human persons defined by their physical skin and their immediate behavior. The subject was simply the me in my body and in my relations with other subjects. Over the past 20 years all this has been scrutinized, dismantled, and even junked. Postmodernism has deconstructed continuity, self, identification, identity, centrality, gender, individuality. The unity of the self has fallen before the onslaught of multiple personalities (Hillman, 1995, p. xx). The self, however, like nature and the universe, is a category that is never exhausted of meaning (Jagtenberg & McKie, 1997, p. 125). We can decide to limit [our self] to our skin, our person, our family, our organization, our species... The ecological self, like any notion of selfhood, is a metaphoric construct and a dynamic one. It involves a choice (Macy, 1994, p. 293, 298). The post-structural intervention in the social sciences has profoundly challenged our theories, and such challenges have encouraged symbolic interactionists, critical social psychologists and others to develop new understandings o f identity. F o l l o w i n g the post-structuralist dismantling o f the Cartesian subject and its positing o f the continuous discursive construction o f identity across multiple positions, m a n y theorists are increasingly asking themselves "whether the individual self, sui generis, actually exists" (Spears, 1997, p. 15; see also Davis, 1999; Featherstone, 1999; Gergen, 2000, 1999; Grodin & Lindloff, 1996; Hall, 1996; Kvale, 1992). Suggesting that a surface analysis is best, m a n y reject depth-theories o f drives, inner-structures, personality traits and attitudes, or conclude that the subject is best left untheorized altogether. Instead, they approach identity as an ongoing narrative a c c o m p l i s h m e n t - stories which organize our everyday experiences and structure our accounts - and propose that the focus o f inquiry should switch from inner psychological processes to discursive practices. F o r example, in his introduction to Questions of Cultural Identity, Stuart Hall, (1996, p. 4) remarks that actual identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not "who we are" or "where we came from", so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves ... not the so-called return to roots but a coming to terms with our "routes". Although in general agreement with Hall's essay, his dismissing o f roots in favor o f routes is unfortunate as it reproduces problematic assumptions. M o r e precisely a project o f identification which ignores our ecological roots - and eschews ecological thinking generally - while remaining focused on discursive resources will remain intellectually stimulating but inevitably incomplete. F r o m an ecological point o f view, we should first acknowledge our roots in the

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natural environment before p r o c e e d i n g any further onto the routes we might follow across p o s t m o d e r n landscapes. W h i l e identities are constructed with "the resources o f history, language and culture," they must still be rooted within natural environments. In other words, while subject positions change across time, space, and interactional contexts, our positioning as biological "natural" organisms remains universal and constant. Additionally, while this dismantling o f the modern subject has p r o d u c e d farreaching and liberating insights about the importance o f discursive practices in the constitution, reproduction and fragmentation of identity, it has also led m a n y to a sense of political paralysis, cynicism, abstinence and a reluctance to formulate a solid epistemological position. Decrying this situation, Spears (1995, pp. 17-19) argues that we need a theory of the self to know which side we are on, both epistemologically and politically. Epistemologically, we need to know who we are in order to a c t . . . Selfhood therefore provides perspective and a sense of identhy which are necessary for conscious agency . . . A theory of the subject in these terms, then, would seem to be an important ingredient for a critical social psychology if it is to have bite, and allow us to descend from the fence... Formulating a theory of the subject provides agents and agency that can be the vehicles of resistance and change. Motivated partly b y the desire to contribute, however modestly, to the greening o f sociology, this paper does not claim to have found final answers to the question o f ecological identity, but invites readers to approach the project o f an ecological identity along three paths (ecopsychology, ecological symbolic interactionism, and deep ecology) and to explore the insights these paths reveal. F o l l o w i n g B a t e s o n ' s position (1975, p. 505) that "the ecological ideas implicit in our plans are m o r e important than the plans t h e m s e l v e s . . . " , this p a p e r is openly partisan, and m y wandering along these three paths is thus also a means to other ends. These are: (1) to p r o b l e m a t i z e the anthropocentric bias in poststructuralism, (2) to p r o m o t e an ecological dimension to the projects o f identity-construction and identity-theory, and (3) to advocate ecological thinking.

3. BEYOND TEXTUALISM AND ANTHROPOCENTRISM How do we speak of that which is not reducible to the mode in which we speak - both acknowledging the mode in which we speak and that which asserts itself apart from having a "voice"? There is an earth after all. Species do die out. Rains do come down. Toxic waters do damage. Organisms do attach to place (Bertland & Slack, 1994, p. 2). Anthropocentrism means human chauvinism. Similar to sexism, but substitute human race for man and all other species for woman... When humans investigate and see through their layers of anthropocentric self-cherishing, a most profound change in consciousness begins to take place (Macy, 1994, p. 292).

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Clearly, even without the stimulus of new social movements, the symbolic interaction that occurs between self and other often involves nonhuman life forms and their ecologies. Yet we have still to develop the theoretical tools that will allow an ecological self to be adequately expressed in social theory and general philosophy (McKie and Jagtenberg 1997, p. 25). One first limitation ecological thinkers (Shepard, 1996; Spretnak, 1991, for example) charge post-structuralism with is its excessive textualism - the emphasis on the textual construction o f identity, society, and reality. Accordingly, the very mentioning o f the environment in the context o f poststructuralism is problematic since, from such a perspective, the environment is but textual constructions and can only have meaning through the various discourses we deploy about it - from Congressional Acts to E a r t h F i r s t ! newsletters. In other words, Nature is here just "nature". F r o m an ecological perspective, however, such an approach to the environment is not significantly different from a m o d e r n one. Thus, while a modern-materialistic discourse positions nature as the alien Other o f Western culture and imposes a fundamental hierarchy between the two, thereby promoting violent domination and exploitation (the "mine and d u m p " view), the post-structuralist one also attempts to colonize and silence nature, but b y reducing it to a mere effect o f h u m a n symbolic activity. W h i l e the first approach constructs nature as a warehouse o f raw resources for economic exploitation, the second one reduces it to a warehouse o f raw resources for symbolic manipulation. In their respective ways, though, both approaches deny nature an autonomous existence, a will o f its own, an essential value independent o f h u m a n needs whether economic or symbolic. As Shepard remarks in this context: the genuinely innovative direction of our time is not the final surrender to the anomie and meaninglessness or the escape to fantasylands but in the opposite direction - toward affirmation and continuity with something beyond representation... To argue that because we interpose talk or pictures between us and this shared immanence, that it therefore is meaningless, contradicts the testimony of life itself (1996, pp. 160-162). Thus, while the deconstructionist impulse would "dispute the existence o f any independent reality b e y o n d the stories we tell, or at least ones w e can get at in any meaningful sense" (Spears, 1995, p. 5), a more realist argument w o u l d advance that if "reality is always constructed b y its users, this does not necessarily mean that r e a l i t y . . , is o n l y socially constructed." Quoting Mead, Weigert (1997, pp. 39, 47) reminds us that meaning is in nature . . . Natural meanings always, everywhere, and necessarily ground social and symbolic meanings. Social meanings exist, as it were, only within a spacesuit or spaceship, that is, within a narrow band of the tremendous range of physico-chemico-bio variations that exist in interaction in the cosmos ... Recognizing these realist limits

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prevents analysts from a linguistic turn into the symbolic fallacy that reduces meaning to semiotic structures, contingent cultures, or virtual universes... For ecofeminist Spretnak (1991) also, our enthusiasm with deconstruction has led us to a rather bleak intellectual dead-end which conceals the idea that there is something beyond and outside our texts. To state the obvious, all human acts (and hence all social constructions) always require certain objective conditions which are simply physico-bio-chemical, and which we systematically fail to take into consideration when discussing identity, its dispersion, fragmentation, and discursive construction. Although our symbolic constructions vary widely over time and across space, our essential need for fresh water, a fragile mixture of gases, 2 protection against extreme temperatures, and constant access to other organisms we transform as food does not. As deep ecologists and ecopsychologists ceaselessly remind us, we are not only in nature but we are still organically - of nature, from nature, in a certain sense we are nature. Like every other organism, we are suspended in webs of complex ecological processes before we are suspended in webs of complex symbolic meanings, and as Weigert (1997) astutely remarks, we can never be celxain that the meanings we weave about these processes really capture what they are about. Anthropocentrism, a second limitation of post-structuralism derives from and reinforces its textualism. More specifically, while the daring and welcome post-structuralist deconstruction of Euro-phallo-andro-logo-helio-hetero-centric discourses has radically transformed our understanding of central sociological concepts and has informed new and important political projects, it has remained generally reluctant to tackle anthropocentrism - the metanarrative which spawned all these discourses in the first place. In other words, by positioning humans and their discursive practices at the center and horizon of its project, the post-structuralist deconstructive 61an reaffirms anthropocentrism and human exemptionalism. While post-structuralism has deconstructed Man, it has not decentered the human. As a result, modernist hierarchies distinguishing human from nonhuman and culture from nature quietly return through the back door (and between the lines) of even the most radical deconstructionist work (see Cheney, 1995; Michael, 1997; Spretnak, 1991). Post-structuralism is certainly neither the sole nor first discourse guilty of anthropocentrism, but given its attention to the power of metanarratives in both the constriction and construction of cognitive maps, this silence about anthropocentrism is, to say the least, surprising. For deep ecologist Shepard (1996, pp. 160-161), the assumption that there is nothing outside the text is itself "the articulation of the profound arrogance of humanism which fails to be critically reflexive with regard to this meta-narrative". As Jagtenberg and McKie conclude (1997, p. 127), °'in the final analysis, neither materialist

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dialectics nor poststructural textual analysis are ecological theory - they are resolutely h u m a n c e n t e r e d . . . " Ecological theorists submit that, among other effects, excessive textualism and stubborn anthropocentrism inhibit our progress towards a necessary social, intellectual and psychological (r)evolution by: (a) encouraging an emotional and moral autism vis-a-vis the natural environment, (b) limiting our understanding of identity as solely an effect of textual and social constructions, and (c) reproducing problematic binarisms. Accordingly, by transgressing these obstacles, an ecocentric perspective could: (a) cultivate qualitatively different emotional and moral responses towards the natural environment, (b) ground or at least align our continuous project of identity more firmly (and more humbly) with/in the natural environment rather than in social and textual constructions, and (c) nurture new forms of critical thought, validate radically new "ways of knowing", and transcend long-established but inappropriate dichotomies. As they also suggest, these developments will then hopefully guide our daily practices as well as inspire life-enhancing social and political projects (see Z i m m e r m a n 1994). Summarizing these ideas, Jagtenberg and M c K i e (1997, pp. 123-124) explain that: An ecocentric shift also encourages new transgressive thoughts - such as the idea that identity and self-awareness are ecological in essence. Self can now be seen as socially constructed a n d sustained in community with an enormous number of interconnected others along with their ecologies and habitats. As soon as community is extended beyond the human sphere, a number of significant barriers are crossed: The dualisms of natureculture, reason-emotion,mind-matter,male-femaleare, in practice, all transgressed by life and nature itself. For m a n y ecological thinkers, the development of an ecological identity constitutes one - some say t h e m o s t - important step in this evolution from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective.

4. BRINGING IDENTITY DOWN TO EARTH: THREE PATHS Ecological consciousness,ecosophy, the ecological self, the ecological unconscious: these are just a few of the metaphoricalterms that have been used to formulate an epistemology of mind and ecosystem... In other words, they offer a new synthesis of knowledge, based on a comprehensive reappraisal of various normative views of the world (Thomashow, 1995, pp. 18-19). It is important to look at ideas we hold about the self in a changing world because our notions of self and the symbols we deploy will be of direct relevanceto the worlds we build in the future. The way we refashion our ecosystems will emerge fundamentallyfrom the structurallyconstraineduse of our symbols of self-expression.The breadth and diversityof

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all that we identifywith self and subjectivitywill clearlydetermineour abilityto deal with difference,otherness,and multiplicity... (Jatenberg& McKie, 1997, p. 148). The past two decades or so have witnessed a small but stimulating number of works scattered across the human sciences which have been developing the idea and project of an ecological identity. As many note, this ecological identity constitutes an important process that fosters significantly different ways of relating to the environment (and of relating per se) and an inspiring source of environmental activism (see especially Ingalsbee, 1996; Thomashow, 19951; Weigert, 1997). Although the precise features of this identity, self or consciousness are still much contested in different branches of ecological thought, most agree that it is characterized by several important tendencies. Synthesizing findings generated through a variety of experiments, therapeutic encounters, theoretical developments, and pedagogical practices, several ecotheorists (Cahalan, 1995; Fox, 1990; Greenway, 1995; Harper, 1995; Sewall, 1995; Thomashow, 1995) advance that ecologically-informed shifts in the definition/experience of identity often produce significant and enduring changes in individuals' experiences of self, and of human and non-human others. Characterized by mutuality, reciprocity, cooperation, compassion, a nurturing ethic, complementarity, empathy, the experience of permeable boundaries between inner and outer processes, and feelings of solidarity with both human and non-humans, such tendencies not only seem inherently desirable and adaptive, but on a more theoretical level, seem especially resonant with the project of an "affirmative" (Rosenau, 1992) postmodern symbolic interactionism, and a spiritually-inclined one (Denzin & Lincoln, 2O00). But how does one go about developing this ecological identity? For the purpose of this paper, I want to explore three paths which might guide this project. These paths originate in ecopsychology, in an ecologically-informed symbolic interactionism, and in deep ecology. Although these three paths proceed in different directions, they also intersect as they all: (a) emphasize the primordial importance of the natural environment which exists outside, beyond, and in spite of our social constructions, (b) challenge the repression, exclusion, and misconstructions of the natural environment in our theories and experiences of identity, (c) advance that an ecological identity is an important step in developing an ecological perspective and, hence, ways of thinking which can more effectively evolve beyond anthropocentrism, and (d) suggest that an ecological identity is often informed by epiphanic, emotional, and even spiritual experiences and insights with/in the non-human environment. These non-rational experiences are of course enormously problematic since they cannot be logically demonstrated or even adequately communicated to others

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who have not shared them and who would deny their validity b y relying on modern-scientific criteria or post-structuralist ones.

The Wild and Visceral Path: Ecopsychology's Ecological Unconscious The Ecological Self is an identity practice that involves the deconstruction of the externality of Nature. It leads to an expansive identification of larger interconnected Self The Wild Within our selves is repressed into the subconscious by reigning discourses of modernist technocratic society; to release the Wild Within is considered a subversive, counter-discursive activity (Ingalsbee, 1996, p. 269). An ecologically harmonious sense of self and world is not the outcome of rational choices. It is the inherent possession of everyone; it is latent in the organism, in the interaction of the genome and early experience... Beneath the veneer of civilization, in the trite phrase of humanism, lies not the barbarian and the animal, but the human in us who knows what is right and necessary for becoming fully human... We have not lost, and cannot lose the genuine impulse• It awaits only an authentic expression (Shepard, 1995, pp. 39-40). •

.

.

Originating in Freudian and neo-Freudian discourses, e c o p s y c h o l o g y approaches the development o f an ecological identity accordingly. R o s z a k - a leading figure in this approach - suggests that we are all the bearers of an ecological "voice" which is a source o f visceral and intuitive w i s d o m about self and environment. Calling this voice the "ecological unconscious", R o s z a k locates it at the most fundamental level o f human sensory experiences, preceding even F r e u d ' s id. Unfortunately, he argues, this ecological unconscious has been repressed and atrophied through a socialization process which has effectively resulted in "the permissible repression o f cosmic empathy, a psychic numbing we have labeled ' n o r m a l ' " (Roszak, 1995, p. 11). F o r psychohistorian Shepard also, the history o f the human species is the history o f a gradual and violent severing - physical, social and psychological - o f a fundamental connection between humans and nature, between psyche and ecology. In his view, children growing up in contemporary Western society reproduces this tragic severing in their own biographies and cannot, as a result, develop as healthy individuals. In the e c o p s y c h o l o g i c a l perspective, the ecological unconscious is such an important aspect o f identity because it allows us to directly access and experience the link between psyche and ecology - a link which is cosmic, evolutional, physico-chemical, cellular and thus often hard to define. A s R o s z a k explains (1992, p. 320), (1) The core of the mind is the ecological unconscious• For ecopsychology, repression of the ecological unconscious is the deepest root of collusive madness in industrial society; open access to the ecological unconscious is the path to sanity.

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(2) The content of the ecological unconscious represent, in some degree, at some level of mentality, the living record of cosmic evolution, tracing back to distant initial conditions in the history of time... (3) Just as it has been the goal of previous therapies to recover the repressed contents of the unconscious, so the goal of ecopsychology is to awaken the inherent sense of environmental reciprocity that lies within the ecological unconscious. Other therapies seek to heal the alienation between person and person, person and family, person and society. Ecopsychology seeks to heal the more fundamental alienation between the person and the natural environment. As he hopes, once this powerful link is re-experienced and assimilated, we will re-assess the self-environment relationship and reorganize our identity according to a logic which is much m o r e attuned to and informed b y the natural environment. Anticipating the disbelief and criticism such ideas were likely to ignite, he remarks that (1995, p. 7): In our culture, listening for the voices of the Earth as if the non-human world felt, heard, spoke would seem the essence of madness to most people. Is it possible that by asserting that very conception of madness, psychotherapy itself may be defending the deepest of all our repressions, the form of psychic mutilation that is most crucial to the advance of industrial civilization, namely, the assumption that the land is a dead and servile thing that has no feeling, no memory, no intention of its own? Additionally, ecopsychologists criticize traditional p s y c h o l o g y and psychiatry for their failure to recognize that ultimately, our relation to self and others cannot reasonably be healthy as long as we remain so alienated from, and destructive of, our environmental roots - an assumption which "stone-age psychiatrists" have always held as self-evident (Roszak, 1995). As R o s z a k also put it, developing theories o f human behavior b y observing individuals interacting in urban environments is not unlike developing theories of wild tigers' sociation patterns by watching them nervously pace in their zoo cages. F o r ecopsychologists and deep ecologists, the provincialist reduction of nature to m e r e matter or symbolic construction already articulates and reproduces a fundamental alienation from nature. 3 Although ecotheorists do not generally agree on the original cause of this alienation (physical dislocation, patriarchy, gerontocracy, monotheism, the advent o f horticultural society, the agricultural revolution) they have drawn interesting parallels between our treatments o f n o n h u m a n external nature and o f human internal nature - one's mind, experiences, consciousness, the (always embodied) mechanisms o f identity, subjectivity, and meaning-construction. As ecopsychologists propose, the pathological behaviors we (un)consciously and routinely visit upon the natural environment, those we collectively manifest as a society, those we privately experience as individuals (White, 1998), and those we c o m m i t in our epistemologies (Bateson, 1975) all articulate each other.

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In this view (already advanced by Marcuse in 1972), the technological colonization of nature out there complements the logical-rational domination of nature in here. The extinction of species out there is matched by the elimination of psychological possibilities and insights in here, the brutal mutilation of nature out there is coordinated with the violent distortion of nature in here. The list could go on indefinitely, but this idea was perhaps best articulated in Native-American leader Black Elk's few words: "What man does to the earth, he does to himself and to others." As ecopsychologists insist, the awakening of the ecological unconscious or "voice" is a vital means and ends of digging out the psychosocial roots of our assault on the environment and of healing ourselves (see also Berry, 1988). While Roszak insists that "ecology needs psychology and psychology needs ecology," (1995, p. 5) it seems clear that the same can be advanced with regard to sociology, to social psychology, and Western epistemology generally (see Bateson, 1975). Having located the source of an ecological identity in the pre-id ecological unconscious, ecopsychologists promote various strategies to awaken this "voice" and to listen - with one's body, senses, emotions - to the insights it communicates. One particularly interesting form of intervention they propose in order to awaken the ecological unconscious is the "wilderness" experience4 a literal "walk on the wild side". In line with their attempts to transcend inner/ outer, civilized/primitive, and human/nonhuman dualisms, ecopsychologists maintain that experiencing the wild "out there" - in natural, uncultured spaces - will awaken the wild "in here" - in mental and sensory ones (see especially Greenway, 1995; Harper, 1995). As they point out, the recovery, experience and validation of the "wild" within us can reawaken the "animal-instinctual" self (Harper, 1995, p. 196), can provide much-needed insights about the biological/ ecological basis of identity, and can make us more human in the full (and ecological) sense of the term. Although wilderness therapies may, at first, sound somewhat narcissistic and self-indulgent, they have also been shown to promote epiphanic shifts in identity-formation, and in some cases also, to translate into enduring commitment to ecological activism (see Greenway, 1995; Ingalsbee, 1996; White, 1998). Underneath the neo-Freudian terminology, ecopsychologists also reiterate what the main founders of the American environmentalist movement had each discovered, described and realized in his and her own way: David Thoreau's experience with/in wilderness at Walden Pond, John Muir's in the high Sierras, Rachel Carson's on East Coast beaches, and before them, Jean Jacques Rousseau on his solitary nature walks (1968). All developed farreaching intuitive ecological insights and discovered new dimensions of their -

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selves (and the modern human condition) by finding themselves in wild places. 5 At the same time, ecopsychologists remark that most people having experienced this ecological shift in identity will inevitably "cross back" from wild natural and mental spaces to urban ones, and as a result, the extent to which the voice and insights of the ecological unconscious can survive in such unnatural spaces remains unclear. Still, although difficult to sustain in urban settings, ecopsychologists believe that ecological insights encountered in wild places will permanently alter one's sense of identity and relation to the natural environment. Ecopsychology's stepping stones (the ecological unconscious, the "voice of the earth", the earth's psyche) generate quite a bit of resistance, and are often dismissed as essentialist at best, and ridiculous at worst. Yet, while critics would be quick to point that individuals experience the psyche-ecology link only because they believe in it and discursively construct it, ecopsychologists would retort that individuals the world over and throughout history believe in this link because they have experienced it, and because this experience occurred prior to~outside of representation. Thus, while it is certainly true that we can "only know the environment through human templates" (see for example Fine, 1992, p. 162), this does not necessarily mean that these templates are always or only limited to cultural-linguistic ones. As such, to follow the ecopsychological path by relying on traditional logico-positivist or constructionist maps can only lead to a dead-end because this psyche-ecology link cannot be demonstrated to be either "real" (in the logico-positivist sense) or to exist beyond representation. 6 As Roszak also notes, our very insisting that this link between psyche and ecology be somehow demonstrated is already a tragic symptom of the depth of our alienation from both. In other words, finding oneself in nature necessarily evokes different perspectives. To reduce these new perspectives and insights to mere linguistic constructions reproduces (ecologically) problematic assumptions about self, nature, and meaning. Thus, while we have little trouble appreciating Simmel's insights about the profound effects of urban "jungles" on our mental, emotional, behavioral and social dispositions, we find it difficult to grant wild forests a similar effectivity (Rolston, 1998). In the same vein, while the suggestion of a psyche-ecology interpenetration is readily dismissed as absurd, fuzzy, irrational, and even just "Californian" (anonymous, personal communication), the belief in interpenetration between psyche, body and simulational technologies have already become clich6 in most postmodern circles. As deep ecologists and ecofeminists of various camps (Merchant, 1994, 1992; Salleh, 1995; Zimmerman, 1994) point out, our difficulty to acknowledge this "natural" interpenetration between

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psyche and ecology is intellectually puzzling, psychologically interesting, but ideologically suspect. The R a t i o n a l - M o r a l Path: G e n e r a l i z e d E n v i r o n m e n t a l O t h e r a n d Transverse Interaction

Selves are meanings we realize in our actions and in the responses we and others, including nature, makes to our actions (Weigert, 1997, p. 161). All landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper, "I am watchingyou - are you watching yourself in me?" (Dun'ell, 1971, quoted in Devall, 1988, p. 65). It is possible for inanimate objects, no less than for human organisms, to form parts of the generalized.., other for any given human individual, in so far as he responds to such objects socially... Anything - any object or set of objects, whether animate or inanimate, human or animal, or merely physical - towards which he responds, socially, is an element in what for him is the generalized other; by taking the attitudes of which toward himself he becomes conscious of himself as an object.., and thus develops as self (Mead, 1934, p. 154, in Weigert, 1997, pp. 172-173). In S e l f Interaction, a n d N a t u r a l Environment: R e f o c u s i n g o u r Eyesight, Weigert (1997) traces a second path to the ecological identity by developing an ecological turn to two central concepts of Symbolic Interaction theory: the generalized other and symbolic interaction. Following this turn, Mead's generalized other expands to the Generalized E n v i r o n m e n t a l Other, and his symbolic interaction becomes subsumed under Transverse Interaction. In this approach, if our sense of identity develops through increasingly more complex role-taking skills with others (real, present, implied and imagined), then a central blind spot of much symbolic interactionist work on identity has been to restrict this other to h u m a n dimensions. Weigert's fist step, the Generalized Environmental Other, propels role-taking skills to a more complex level that now includes the n o n h u m a n realm and the ecosphere at large. Following the familiar symbolic interactionist logic, the "voice" of the environment becomes incorporated into the repertoire of others we spontaneously activate as we mentally rehearse actions, self-reflect, and anticipate responses from an environment that is both h u m a n and not. As Weigert explains (1997, pp. 164169), The generalized other is a mental construction of collective reality that informs personal thinking and motivation. It is not a physical individual we see or touch... So, too, each of us has a generalized understanding of the physical environment, a Generalized EnvironmentalOther. My personal General EnvironmentalOther frames the way I see and decide about interacting with the earth ... A new environmental self emerges as self interacts with an object that orients self's actions to the organized responses of ever more inclusive ecosystems as a GeneralizedEnvironmentalOther. Jagtenberg and M c K i e (1997, p. 136) also elaborate on this idea:

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Despite Mead's apparent consensus orientation.., there is no a priori reason to exclude ecological considerations from the field of self in post-Meadian theory. With a broader understanding of the social construction and identifications of self, we can allow ecological others to be significant points of orientation in decision making and other routine activities, such as the stories we tell to sustain our identifies. Just as Mead argued for the social necessity of a Generalized Other - the internalization of organized community responses which allow for the constitution of a moral and normal social s e l f - so too, Weigert posits the moral and simply self-evident necessity to think, act and self-reflect in relation to a Generalized Environmental Other: "an integrated set of internalized expectations of the systemic reactions of the natural world to individual and collective action." Although often met with disbelief and reservations, this orientation towards the natural environment as a meaningful co-interactant is taken-forgranted in many societies we call "indigenous" (see especially Abram, 1997). As Devall (1988, p. 47) reminds us, the Koyukon of Alaska, for example, live in a world that watches. The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified. They feel. They can be offended. And they must, at every moment, be treated with respect. Research in a variety of spiritual traditions ranging from Native American ecosophies to Eastern religions (Gottlieb, 1996) also indicate that such an approach to the environment appears to be the rule rather than the exception. While such a broad cross-cultural and trans-historical consensus cannot of course prove the claim that the environment is indeed an autonomous and selfconscious interactant, it should at least motivate an honest re-assessment of our own approach to the environment which constructs it as inert, conscience-less, and passive. In other words, if we insist that the only environment that matters is the socially constructed one, we should be prepared to courageously submit our own anthropocentric assumptions to (ecocentric) scrutiny and deconstruction. In order to better develop and integrate this Generalized Environmental Other, Weigert suggests his second step: expanding our focus from interhuman symbolic interaction to transverse interaction. This term refers to humanenvironment interactions - those routine and daily actions we, consciously and not, perpetrate on the natural environment (my daily consumption of large quantities of natural resources including other organisms, production of waste, dangerous chemicals, etc.). As we now realize, the individual and combined outcomes o f such routine actions are often unknown and unknowable, invisible to the naked eye, can only be detected by relying on complex technologies, and manifest themselves with much delay. But, as Weigert insists,

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For the first time in history, modem selves are self-consciously aware of the need to analyze their actions as transverse interaction within the world that is there for all humans . . . Whatever else we think we are doing, we necessarily affect the environment. Such transverse interaction has routinely been out-of-focus, forgotten or denied... (p. 159) Following these two intertwined ecological steps with even a m i n i m u m o f selfawareness, the environment takes on a very different presence in our mind, in the ongoing process o f self-reflection so central to the development of identity, and hence to the very meaning one attaches to identity. The incorporation o f the Generalized Environmental Other as a meaningful voice now prompts entirely new categories o f questions and provides a new perspective from where to interpret m y and others' e v e r y d a y actions. A s I reflect on m y transverse interactions from its i m a g i n e d point o f view, m a n y behaviors I once believed to be inconsequential or simply failed to notice I now interpret as harmful, cruel, disrespectful, wasteful, or suicidal. Incorporating the Generalized Environmental Other as a voice in m y internal audience now also raises new questions about who I think I a m as I for the first time attend to m y transverse interactions, ask m y s e l f what sorts o f social p s y c h o l o g i c a l disposition these articulate, and compare m y interactions with the environment to m y interactions with humans. The natural environment, the non-human, thus b e c o m e s a new "Other", a new mirror in which I see m y own reflection. As I increasingly experience it as part of me, I also b e c o m e increasingly aware o f m y interactions with/in it, and what those indicate about me: Redefining the other is part of self-redefinition . . . Self is empirically constituted by networks of others with whom or with which self interacts. Networks of interacting selves provide what Peter Berger calls "plausibility structures," that is, groups of confirming others who validate self in context of a group's world view and the personal identities realized within that world view. The new environmental self explicitly includes organic and physical others within its plausibility structures. An integrated view of the social-natural world includes frames for experiencing self, perceiving others, seeing the world, and motivating action with an environmental identity (Weigert, 1997, pp. 163, 170). Pushing this point further, Weigert also asserts that this Environmental Other should be given a more compelling voice than the societal one. Thus, i f o n e ' s societal groups have, up until now, constituted the main sources o f the social self, an environmental identity is also importantly "based on the realization that the meaning o f social action is primarily environmental and universal, and secondarily societal..." (p. 161) In other words, while the meanings o f m y interactions m a y vary greatly across contexts, the consequences o f m y daily transverse interactions do not - whether I am aware o f them or not, whether I interpret them correctly or not. 7 A l t h o u g h it is certain that the voice o f this Generalized Environmental Other is polyphonous, ecotheorists still maintain that our shared human biological and genetic m a k e u p will tend to communicate

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certain understandings rather than others. As anthropological and historical evidence suggests (Bateson, 1991, 1979, 1975; Gottlieb, 1996), certain fundamental ecological meanings have almost universal recognition and currency - p r o b a b l y because they are m o r e attuned to the logic organizing the natural environment, life in general, and hence our own (human) nature. W h i l e R o s z a k ' s ecological unconscious is already within us and awaiting to be awakened, W e i g e r t ' s ecological self requires cognitive incorporation, conscious attention and moral development. W h i l e R o s z a k promotes a withdrawal from the "socialized" or cultured self in order to access the nonrational ecological unconscious and the instinctual self, Weigert presents role-taking with the environment as a quasi social-moral duty. As such, although enormously useful for the development of a more ecologicallysensitive identity in symbolic interaction theory, Weigert's path still tends to reproduce a certain dualism between human self and an ecological Other which acts b a c k on us in ways which are difficult to grasp, feel, or visualize. In addition, his justification for environmental accountability, role-taking, and moral responsibility still remains somewhat anthropocentric as he emphasizes that such developments are ultimately essential not for nature's own sake, but for the sake o f future human generations. But those weaknesses can also be seen as opportunities. By ecologizing familiar symbolic interactionist concepts and models, Weigert's sober approach can appeal to individuals who are interested in exploring ecological identity but who might be uncomfortable with the n e o - F r e u d i a n physical and nonrational path characteristic o f e c o p s y c h o l o g y or with the m o r e ecocentric and spiritual one distinctive of deep ecology.

The Spiritual and Transcendental Path: Deep Ecology's Ecological Self How do we develop a wider self? What ldnd of process makes it possible? One way of answering these questions: There is a process of ever-widening identification and evernarrowing alienation which widens the self. The self is as comprehensive as the totality of our identifications. Or, more succinctly: Our Self is that with which we identify. The question then reads: How do we widen our identifications? Identification is a spontaneous, non-rational, but not irrational process through which the interest or interests of another being are reacted to as our own interest or interests (Naess, 1985, p. 261). It is through this process of self-realization, based on identification, that we being to widen our sense of identification from sell family and friends, and community and nation to include the natural world surrounding u s . . . (Frodeman, 1995, p. 13t). D e e p E c o l o g y is among the most radical branches o f the environmental movement, and its association with Earth First! and other eco-activist groups has contributed to such a categorization. Believing that the ecological crisis is

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at basis a crisis of character and culture, deep ecologists stress that reforming existing practices (decreasing pollution, pesticides, etc.) without changing self and culture will not suffice in the long run. Ultimately, although urgently needed, such reforms only address the symptoms of ecological devastation not its roots. For Sessions - an important figure in the movement - "an ecologically harmonious social paradigm shift is going to require a total reorientation of Western culture." (Zimmerman, 1994, 31-32). In contrast to visceral experiences or rational role-taking with the environment, deep ecologists suggest that the path to an ecological identity should include an expanded identification with the natural environment, an identification which is cognitive, emotional, ethical and even spiritual (Devall, 1985; Egri, 1997; Spretnak, 1991). As developed by philosopher Arne Naess, and strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism, Native-American traditions, American environmentalism, and various currents in Western philosophy, deep ecologists posit the two fundamental and interrelated axioms of SelfRealization and Biocentric Equality:

(a) Self-Realization Self realization refers to the unfolding of a self whose identification capabilities expand beyond the notion of the isolated ego striving primarily for hedonistic gratification or salvation. While in many traditions, spiritual growth requires that we cease to understand ourselves as isolated and competing egos and begin to identify with other humans (from our family and friends to, eventually, our species - Devall & Sessions, 1985, p. 67), the deep ecological path requires that identification extends beyond humanity to include the non-human world, the "organic whole", and beyond that, what they call the great Self, the Absolute, a sacred spiritual force or presence which creates and permeates all that exists. Central to this notion of self-realization is the understanding that there are no real boundaries between humans and non-humans as everything that exists is a manifestation of the same agency: Warwick Fox, an Australian philosopher, has succinctly expressed the central intuition of deep ecology: "It is the idea that we can make no finn ontological divide in the field of existence: That there is no bifurcation in reality between the human and the non-human realms . . . to the extent that we perceive boundaries, we fall short of deep ecological consciousness" (Devall & Sessions, 1985, p. 66)

Summarizing common ecological insights found in various traditions, Spretnak (1991, pp. 207-208) also notices that in many, we find the ideas that: Perceptual boundaries between the 'inner and the 'outer' dissolve, and an intense awareness of the whole as a benevolent and powerful common is present . . . . One comes to understand the person as a unique but integral manifestation of the social whole and the

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cosmological whole . . . [ a n d ] since interbeing is the nature of existence, measures of reciprocityare the 'internal logic of life'." As deep ecologists also suggest, since this identity is rather difficult to achieve, it is best to speak of process of identification which is informed and energized by ecological awareness, meditation, a variety of ecological practices, and political activism.

(b) Biocentric Equality When the realized self experiences the illusory nature of the boundaries between self and non-self, human and non-human, inner and outer, Biocentric Equality - the second principle of Deep Ecology - is a logical corollary. It posits that "all things in the biosphere have an equal fight to live and blossom and to reach their own individual forms of unfolding and self-realization within the larger Self-realization" (Devall & Sessions, 1985, pp. 67-69). Given this identification which collapses the self-Other and human-non-human distinctions, all moral exhortations to protect nature become irrelevant as "care will naturally flow from humans to nature." Following the deep ecological path, humans' self-realization is intimately connected to the self-realization of all other species and the ecosphere. In other words, one becomes impossible without the other, and one is the precondition for the other. As identification with nature extends the boundaries of the self to other species, the environment, and the ecosphere, the sense of identity becomes radically transformed: "Emphasizing our commonality and continuity with the natural world rather than the differences allows us to reinterpret our sense of self-interest in terms of others, our community, and the natural world" (Frodeman, 1995, p. 131). As they also add, since there are no boundaries and since "everything is interrelated.., if we harm the rest of Nature then we are harming ourselves." But insofar as we perceive things as individual organisms and entities, this insight draws us to "respect all human and non-human individuals in their own rights as parts of the whole without feeling the need to set up hierarchies of species with humans at the top." (Devall & Sessions, 1985, p. 68). Starting from these two fundamental axioms of Self-Realization and Biocentric Equality, the deep ecological path proceeds along these eight following principles: (1) The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on earth have values in themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes (2) Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

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(3) Humans have no right to reduce the richness and diversity except to satisfy their vital needs. (4) The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease. (5) Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive and the situation is rapidly worsening. (6) Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. (7) The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living, There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great. (8) Those who subscribe to the foregoing point have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes. While the deep ecological belief in a spiritual Absolute or the principle of selfrealization for all organisms has been rejected by social constructionists and others as metaphysical and theoretically untenable, it has also been the recipient of much criticism on the part of cultural ecofeminists who see the ecological identity advanced here as suffering from "ideological pollution". More precisely, one main criticism charges that it reproduces a male subjectivity and psychology by "seeking either a vampirish absorption or an infantile fusion with nature" (Zimmerman, 1994, p. 286). As such, deep ecology is accused (not always justifiably) for promoting a sense of identity with non-human Others rather than respect for radical difference, and for failing to recognize that "women's experience could provide an immediate 'living social basis' for this new consciousness" (p. 276). Deep ecologists (Devall, 1988) as well as a few voices in cultural studies (Bertland & Slack, 1994; Whitt & Slack, 1994) and ecological postmodernism (Cheney, 1995) also point at community, "bioregion" or local geography as the optimal space for enabling an ecological identity, and as the most strategic terrain of necessary political projects. As they suggest, the development of an ecological identity must be grounded in "storied residence.., bioregional ways of dwelling that are informed by narratives arising from experiences in a particular place and the relationships with specific beings" (Zimmerman, 1994, p. 297). Promoting a postmodern ecological orientation, Cheney for example suggests that:

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The fractured identities of postmodemism.., can build health and well-being by means of bioregional contextualization of self and community. The voices of health will be as various and multiple as the landscapes which give rise to them . . . The notion of socially constructed selves gives way to the idea of bioregionally constructed selves and communities. In this way, bioregionalism can "ground" the construction of self and community without essentialization and totalization typical of the various "groundings" of patriarchal culture... Self and geography are bound together in a narrative which locates us in the moral space of defining relations... Mindscapes are as multiple as the landscapes which ground them (1995, pp. 131, 138). A l t h o u g h the idea o f a b i o r e g i o n a l identity certainly constitutes a logical step or stage o n the deep ecological path, I believe that it suffers f r o m two limitations. First, such an identity is predicated o n a certain p e r m a n e n c e in a n d a t t a c h m e n t to "place" - a relationship to space w h i c h is charged with historical, cultural, e m o t i o n a l a n d e v e n p h y s i c a l investments, a n d w h i c h m a y " n a t u r a l l y " foster care a n d a sense o f responsibility. However, the i n c r e a s i n g geographical m o b i l i t y characterizing the c o n t e m p o r a r y A m e r i c a n lifestyle, and the accelerati n g v i r t u a l i z a t i o n o f e v e r y d a y life, interactions, a n d n a t u r e itself (Weigert, 1997) m a y seriously incapacitate the d e v e l o p i n g a n d s u s t a i n i n g o f such a relationship. Second, b i o r e g i o n a l i s m c o u l d also, u n d e r the "right" c o n d i t i o n s and subtle slogans, e n c o u r a g e e x c l u s i o n a r y dispositions towards w h o m e v e r h a p p e n s to be c o n s i d e r e d an " a l i e n " or "stranger" at a n y particular p o i n t in t i m e a n d place. Still, the m e r g i n g of eco-activism, b i o r e g i o n a l i s m , m u l t i c u l t u r a l spiritual traditions, a n d the p r i n c i p l e of b i o c e n t r i c equality provide a richly m u l t i l a y e r e d path that can p r o b a b l y appeal to a wide variety o f people, as well as offering diverse possibilities for a m u c h - n e e d e d d i a l o g u e b e t w e e n sociology, ecology, a n d spirituality. CONCLUSIONS:

THE

ECOLOGICAL

IMAGINATION

There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself. It branches out like a rooted parasite through the tissues of life, and everything gets into a rather peculiar mess (Bateson, 1975, p. 484) Ecological thinking.., requires a kind of vision across boundaries. The epidermis of the skin is ecologically like a pond surface or a forest soil, not a shell so much as a delicate interpenetration. It reveals the self ennobled and extended rather than threatened as part of the landscape and the ecosystem, because the beauty and complexity of nature are continuous with ourselves (Shepard, 1996, pp. 112-113). As images of "human nature" becomes more problematic, an increasing need is felt to pay closer yet more imaginative attention to the social routines and catastrophes which reveal

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(and shape) man's nature in this time of civil unrest and ideologicalconflict(Mills, 1959, p. 15). In this chapter, I have briefly explored three different paths guiding the development of an ecological identity. Although following different directions, all three paths bypass the modernist conception of identity, follow the poststructural turn pointing at its textual construction, but attempt to proceed beyond the anthropocentrism still present in post-structuralism. They all emphasize that there is something beyond or outside the text. That something is nature, the ecological, the environment - a dimension which exists before, after, around and inside us, a dimension which we represent in our discourses but which also exists beyond our representations. In their own way, each of these paths suggests that nature (both external and internal) cannot be reduced to its anthropocentric modem (see Bateson, 1975) and postmodem constructions. They all stress that the experience and practice of identity must expand and involve the nonhuman, and that, paradoxically, such an expansion can only enrich our humanness, deepen it, and root it in the ground that matters most the one that provides the resources necessary for the survival of all species, the source of all that exists. All three paths also maintain that developing an ecological identity constitutes an urgent social, psychological, moral and political project. Although they each suffer from shortcomings, I believe that they still point to new and necessary directions which traditional theories of identity do not (or refuse to) acknowledge. And while theoretical spats are not infrequent among scholars following these different paths, I see them as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. In some sense, they each trace different points of access or even consecutive stages 8 in the process of ecological identification. Since the concept of an ecological identity utilized by many of the thinkers discussed here contradicts post-structural insights about the discursive construction, fragmentary nature, and constant recombination of multiple identities, one way of resolving this contradiction might consist in replacing the concept of identity by identification - a position which is especially pronounced in deep ecology. In contrast to identity which connotes a stable entity, sameness, a fixed and static presence, identification evokes the ideas of process and movement, but also of compassion, empathy, and solidarity. It bespeaks of relationships - a term of considerable importance in ecological thought. Following this logic, ecological identification is not a fixed label we apply to our self but is perhaps best conceived as an ecologically-informed process. Viewed in this manner, ecological identification informs who we think we are, questions the limits of our capabilities for role-taking and empathy, guides how we act, invites us to develop a different epistemology, and

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encourages us to reposition our sense of self in relation with the natural environment rather than in social or semiotic structures. Yet, even this move from identity to identification does not resolve a certain tension between ecological and post-structural discourses because, while poststructuralism might suggest that an ecological identification informs one among many subject-positions, ecological thinkers will respond that we are first and foremost biological organisms, terrestrial creatures, part of nature. Although this position can be doubtlessly labeled as essentialist, it still seems that, in contrast to every other basis of identity-construction, our essential ecological origins (and ultimate destination) cannot, at this point, be reasonably deconstructed. As a last thought, one particularly interesting idea promoted by ecotheorists posits that humans are the earth's "central nervous system" (Berry, 1988), consciousness, or "risky experiment in self-conscious intelligence" (Roszak, in Zimmerman, 1991, p. 79), and there are obvious parallels between this positioning of humans as the planet's self-awareness and the positioning of sociology as society's self-awareness. Following ecotheorists' call for an ecologically-informed revolution in our ways of thinking, the concept of an "ecological imagination" seems especially fruitful. Although this topic can only be briefly introduced in the space remaining here, I believe that there is much to be learnt by ecologizing Mills' canonical Promise (1959). For example, if "the sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society," (p. 6), the ecological imagination will posit that "neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding" the complex relations of both with/in their natural environment. Accordingly, an ecological "quality of the mind" cannot be limited to self-reflection from the point of view of environmental activists, 9 recycling plastic bottles, a yearly Earth Day celebration, or thinking about the ecology. The "quality of the mind" characteristic of the ecological imagination will require that we start thinking ecologically - that we develop thinking patterns that transcend the immediate human milieus of our biography, that surmount anthropocentric limitations, and that align psychosphere with ecosphere, epistemology with ecology. To quote Bateson one last time (1975, 502) Ideas, to survive and to ensure survivalmust developsimilar characteristicsas organisms trying to adapt to their environments. If the understanding of biography-in-society is a primordial insight in the development of the sociological imagination, an understanding of identity-

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with/in-environment might very well be the critical step in the flowering of the ecological one.

NOTES 1. For an insightful critique of the absence of the ecological in Cultural Studies and Symbolic Interactionism, see especially Jagtenberg and McKie (1997) and Whitt and Slack (1994). 2. As an anonymous author once put it, what would our social constructions be like if we were breathing helium or nitrous oxide instead of air? 3. See Marcuse (1972), Merchant (1994), Metzner (1995, 1992), Roszak (1995), Salleh (1995), Sessions (1985), Tobias (1985), Zimmerman (1994), for example. 4. Although ecopsychologists criticize traditional psychotherapy for its anthropocentrism and urban logic, there are still interesting parallels between traditional psychoanalysis and this "wilderness" therapy. Of course, this does not mean that all the therapies offered by ecopsychologists will occur in wild places and will aim at uncovering the ecological unconscious. 5. Although not referring to ecological thought, Neumann's study (1992) of new experiences of the self by Grand Canyon hikers provides concrete and more recent illustrations of these transformations. 6. As a tangent I find hard to resist, since grasping the ecological unconscious and the psyche-ecology link is most successfully accomplished through in situ personal experience, this project exhibits interesting parallels with self-reflexive ethnography: It requires that we leave our eric-anthropocentric-textual assumptions behind, that we get our feet wet (or muddy), that we go to "the field" (the forest, the canyon, the mountain, the desert), immerse ourselves in it, develop empathy with its members, sensitivity to its dynamics, attentiveness to its sounds and fluctuations, and notice how these transform our own subjectivity. In both cases, there is no substitute for actually doing it. In both cases also, there is always much more going on than we could ever faithfully transcribe, cogently represent and convincingly communicate. 7. An addendum to this idea suggests that I am also always influenced by environmental forces (gravity, sound, electromagnetic fields, light, micro-organisms, thermal fluctuations, smells, ultraviolet rays, seasonal cycles, radiations, air and water composition, altitude, vegetation, barometric pressure, etc) whether I am aware of them or not, whether I interpret them correctly or not. 8. There are, for example, interesting parallels between, on the one hand, Freud's id, ego and superego and, on the other, the visceral ecological unconscious (in ecopsychology), the rational-moral self-reflection and self-monitoring (in ecological symbolic interactionism), and the transcendental self-realization through spiritual identification with the ecosphere (in deep ecology), respectively. 9. This solution was suggested by an anonymous reviewer.

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REFERENCES Abram, D. (1997). The Spell of the Sensuous: Language and Perception in a More-Than-Human. New York: Vintage. Bateson, G. (1975). Steps to an Ecology of the Mind. New York: Ballantine. Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E. E Dutton. Bateson, G. (1991). A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of the Mind. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Berry, T. (1988). The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Bertland, J., & Slack, J. D. (1994). Introduction: On Environmental Matters. Cultural Studies, Vol. 8(1), 1-4. Best, J. (1998). Murray Bookchin's Theory of Social Ecology. Organization & Environment Vol. 11(3), 334-354. Bookchin, M. (1986). The Modern Crisis. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Bookchin, M. (1989). Remaking Society. New York: Black Rose Books. Cahalan, W. (1995). Ecological Groundedness in Gestalt Therapy. In: T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes & A. D. Kanner (Eds). Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (pp. 216-223). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Cheney, J. (1995). Postmodem Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative. In: M. Oelschlaeger (Ed.). Postmodern Environmental Ethics (pp. 23-42). Albany: SUNY Press. Cohen, M. (1998). Project Nature Connect. Institute of Global Education. http://www. Ecopsych.com. Davis, J. (1999). Healing the Postmodern Self. The Hedgehog Review. Vol 1: 47-54. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (2000). The Seventh Moment: Out of the Past. In: Y. Lincoln & N. Denzin (Eds). Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 1047-1064). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Devall, B. (1988). The Ecological Self. In: B. Devall (Ed.), Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology (pp. 39-72). Salt Lake City: Pregrine Smith Books. Devall, B., & Sessions, G. (1985). Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books. Egri, C. E (1997). Spiritual Connections with the Natural Environment. Organ&ation & Environment, 10(4), 407-431. Featherstone, M. (1999). The Citizen and Cyberspace. The Hedgehog Review. 1, 63-70. Fine, G. A. (1992). Wild Life: Authenticity and the Human Experience of 'Natural' Places. In: C. Ellis & M. G. Flahert (Eds), Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience (pp. 156-175). Newbury Park: Sage. Fox, W. (1990). Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism. Boston & London: Shambala. Frodeman, R. (1994). Radical Environmental and the Political Roots of Postmodernism: Differences that Make a Difference. In: M. Oelschlaeger (Ed.), Postmodern Environmental Ethics (pp. 121-135). Albany: SUNY Press. Gergen, K. (1991). The Saturated Self New York: Basic Books. Gergen, K. (1999). The Self: Death by Technology. The Hedgehog Review. 1, 25-34. Gergen, K. (2000). The Serf: Transfiguration by Technology. In: D. Fee (Ed.), Pathology and the Postmodern (pp. 100-115). London: Sage. Gottlieb, R. S. (1996). Spiritual Deep Ecology and the Left: An Attempt at Reconciliation. In: R. S. Gottlieb (Ed.), This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment (pp. 516-531). New York: Routledge.

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Grodin, T., & Lindlof, R. (1996). Constructing the Self in a Mediated World. London: Sage. Greenway, R. (1995). The Wilderness Effect and Ecopsychology. In: T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes & A D. Kanner (Eds), Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (pp. 122-135). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Hall, S. (1996). Introduction: Who Needs Identity? In: S. Hall & E DuGay (Eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (pp. 1-17). London: Sage. Harper, S. (1995). The Way of Wilderness. In: T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes & A. D. Kanner (Eds), Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (pp. 183-200). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Inglasbee, T. (1996). Earth First! Activism: Ecological Postmodem Praxis in Radical Environmentalist Identities. Sociological Perspectives, 39(2), 263-276. Jagtenherg, T., & McKie, D. (1997). Eco-lmpacts and the Greening of Postmodernity: New Maps for Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, and Sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kvale, S. (1992). (Ed.) Psychology and Postmodernism. London: Sage. Macy, J. (1994). Toward a Healing Self and World. In: C. Merchant (Ed.), Ecology (pp. 292-298). Merchant. New Jersey: Humanities Press. Marcuse, H. (1972). Counterrevolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon. Metzner, R. (1995). The Psychopathology of the Human-Nature Relationship. In: T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes & A. D. Kanner (Eds), Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (pp. 55-67). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Merchant, C. (1992). Radical Ecology. New York: Routledge. Michael, M. (1997). Critical Social Psychology: Identity and De-prioritization of the Social. In: T. lbanez & L. Iniguez (Eds), Critical Social Psychology (pp. 241-259). London: Sage. Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Morin, E, & Kern, A. B. (1993). Terre-Patrie [Earth-Country - untranslated]. Paris: Seuil. Naess, A. (1985). Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes. In: M. Tobias (Ed.), Deep Ecology (pp. 256-270). San Diego, CA: Avant Books. Neumann, M. (1992). The Trails through Experience: Finding Self in Recollections of Travel. In: C. Ellis & M. Flaherty (Eds), Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience (pp. 176-201). Newbury Park: Sage. Rolston, H. III. (1988). Values Deep in the Woods. American Forests (May/June). Roszak, T. (1992). The Voice of the Earth. New York: Simon & Schuster. Roszak, M., Gomes, E., & Kanner, A. D. (Eds), (1995). Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Rousseau, J. J. (1968). Les Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire. Lausanne: Editions Rencontre Rowe, S. J. (1994). Ecocentrism: the Chord that Harmonizes Humans and Earth. The Trumpeter 11(2), 106-107. Salleh, A. (1995). Class, Race, and Gender Discourse in the Ecofeminism/Deep Ecology Debate. In: M. Oelschlaeger (Ed.), Postmodern Environmental Ethics, (pp. 79-100). Albany: SUNY Press. Searles, H. E (1960). The Nonhuman Environment. New York: International Universities Press. Sessions, G. (1985). Ecological Consciousness and Paradigm Change. In: M. Tobias (Ed.), Deep Ecology (pp. 28-44). San Diego: Avant Books. Sewall, L. (1995). The Skill of Ecological Perception. In: T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes & A. D. Kanner (Eds), Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (pp. 201-215). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Shepard, E (1992). Nature and Madness. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Shepard, P. (1996). Traces of an Omnivore. Covelo, Ca: Island Press.

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Spears, R. (1997). Introduction. In: T. Ibanez & L. Iniguez (Eds), Critical Social Psychology (pp. 1-26). London: Sage. Spretnak, C. (1991). States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Thomashow, M. (1995). Ecological Identity. Cambridge: MIT Press. Tobias, M. (1985). Humanity and Radical Will: Reflections from the Island of Life. In: M. Tobias (Ed.), Radical Ecology (pp. 2-27). San Diego: Avant Books. Weigert, A. J. (1997). Self Interaction, and Natural Environment: Refocusing our Eyesight. Albany: SUNY Press. White, R. (1998). Psychiatry and Ecopsychology. In: A. Lundberg (Ed.), The Environment and Mental Health: A Guide to Clinicians (pp. 205-212). Mahawah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Whitt, L. A, & Slack, J. D. (1994). Communities, Environment and Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies 18(1), 5-31. Zimmerman, M. M. (1994). Contesting Earth's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

ON RECONCILING PAST A N D FUTURE: SOME EFFECTS OF LANDOR'S IMA GINAR Y CONVERSATIONS Regina Hewitt INTRODUCTION In the process of researching Walter Savage Landor, a once familiar nineteenthcentury author now seldom read even by members of English Departments, I have been prompted to reflect on the ways in which disciplinary norms construct topics of inquiry, making a given subject possible (or impossible) to study. While I realize that this observation is by now almost a clich6 and that the conditions of knowledge production have been much analyzed, I betieve that my particular experiences with Landor's Imaginary Conversations can help us further understand and meet the challenges of scholarship in a postmodern age. T h e following essay tells how and why I take Landor's Imaginary Conversations as a topic to be studied. Briefly, I argue that Landor's blatant disregard for distinctions between fact and fiction, history and literature, should interest those of us who are grappling with those very distinctions. Moreover, I posit that our questioning of those distinctions makes it possible for us to study Landor in ways that we could not when lines between lived and imagined experience had to be maintained. A look at unsuccessful efforts to organize scholarship on the Imaginary Conversations a few decades ago reveals that they foundered on the assumed need to separate the accurate reports from the inventions in the texts.

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To approach Landor today, I begin with the question Stanford Lyman recommends in Postmodernism and a Sociology of the Absurd (1997, pp. 2 8 29) - i.e. I ask not whether Landor's version of history is valid but what his version of history enabled him to do. Drawing on Meadian notions about the use of the past, I answer that it enabled him to make advocacy of political change continuous with avoidance of revolution and thus to overcome an obstacle - fear of anarchy and tyranny - that loomed large in the path toward reform during an era shaken by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. In conclusion, I suggest that studying Landor's treatment of the competing claims of reform and conservatism should make it easier for us to recognize and sympathize with such competing claims in our own postmodern disciplines.

CONDITIONS FOR STUDYING LANDOR Studying Landor, or any author, within the current field of "literature," is likely to require some attention to the political implications of his or her position(s), both as they are represented in and by the texts as well as in the author's life and circumstances. Moving out of the closed literary field characterized by its attention to texts-in-themselves, scholars now try to locate themselves and their objects of study within larger cultural contexts. Although contextualization of literary objects is not in itself a new method, recent approaches to the practice differ from earlier ones in their sense of the permeability of texts. Earlier approaches usually placed texts against a background of events and issues that helped to explain their implications but that remained outside of the texts themselves. Recent approaches place both texts and contexts in the foreground, looking for ways in which surrounding events and issues impinge on the statements in the texts. Examples include treating "paratextual" elements (such as prefaces to a work, different versions of it, or pieces printed near it if it appeared in a journal or newspaper) as part of the text under consideration; other examples include a range of "new historical" approaches that use context to supply references to events and issues that texts may have strategically omitted, suppressed, or distorted. 1To date, contexts chosen have been primarily political. While a good deal of variety exists among the various approaches, they share an assumption that texts must be read as parts of some larger cultural statement. As our sense of what constitutes a text has expanded, so has our sense of the number of texts and writers available for study. Instead of concentrating on a canon of privileged genres and authors, we are now as likely to analyze diaries,

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tracts, and other "non-fiction" prose as we are to examine poems, novels, and plays; as likely to read works by women and minorities as by white men. In short, the field has been profoundly affected by questions about the nature of texts and their relation to their writers and readers - questions that are also altering other disciplines and fostering interdisciplinarity, if, as Norman Denzin argues, all experience is textualized (1997, pp. 3-5, 33), then all of us in literary studies, history, sociology, anthropology, and other qualitative disciplines are engaged in versions of each other's work. According to the Program Director for a recent Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference, few of the 294 proposals received fit within any one established field; most were multi-faceted studies of culture. 2 The conditions prevailing within literary studies - the trend toward the recovery of marginalized authors, along with a sensitivity about their political situation, and the trend toward treating all genres, including "non-fiction" prose, equivalently - are conducive to the revaluation of Walter Savage Landor, a traditionally "minor" author of much poetry, prose, and generically hybrid works. Previously, Landor fit into the canon as an "'other' writer," in the sense that Alan Richardson uses that term: "'Other' writers are held to belong to the [given] category (or c a n o n ) . . , by virtue of their proximity to the prototypical examples" (1997, p. 2), which are in this case the "major" writers of the period. The "'other' writers" are satellites, foils, figures of comparative interest. An example contemporary with Landor would be Robert Southey, whose recovery Marilyn Butler launched by making him an example in her argument "for an open literary history" (1989). Predictably, new attention to Landor has focused on the politics of his early poem Gebir, which records in its different editions his changing attitudes toward Napoleon and which treats settings, characters and themes of interest to those studying Orientalism and colonialism (Sharafuddin, 1994; Bainbridge, 1995). 3 Attention has not, however, extended to Landor's Imaginary Conversations - works which strain any familiar definitions of history or fiction and which therefore are signally important for current inquiry.

W H A T A R E THE IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS? The Imaginary Conversations consist of 156 invented discussions among characters drawn from history. Landor began publishing them in five volumes between 1824 and 1829, republished them with additional conversations in a collected edition in 1846, and continued to compose such pieces, some published during his life and some posthumously, in later years. 4 Most of the

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speakers in the Conversations are recognizable political or literary figures (e.g. Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Dante, Machiavelli, Queen Elizabeth I, Milton, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin), though some are not now well known (Bishop Shipley, Arnold Savage, Lord Peterborough) and some are not specifically identified (a Dominican, a Florentine Visitor). Landor and his friend Robert Southey speak in a few, and Landor editorializes in notes to a few others. The historical characters come from all eras between antiquity and the nineteenth century, but the Conversations are not sequential or connected by narrative. Each discussion is independent from the others. Except for a volume of Conversations among Greeks and Romans published in 1853, Landor did not organize the pieces by speakers, nationalities, or eras as some later editors have done. While structurally episodic, the Conversations are thematically repetitive. They center on the criticism of authoritarian rule and the endorsement of republican principles. Landor did plan that theme. According to his correspondence, his motive for writing the Conversations was his desire to expose "the conspiracy of kings, first against republics, now openly against all constitutions "'5 Landor often defied authority and opposed authoritarianism, as is most dramatically illustrated by his involvement in the Peninsular War during the Napoleonic Era. After welcoming the French Revolution and even the rise of Napoleon, Landor became disillusioned by the Consul's, to say nothing of the Emperor's, self-promotion. He renounced Napoleon, joining the Spanish fight against him in the Peninsular War. For his efforts, he was made an honorary colonel in King Ferdinand's army, but he would not keep the commission because he believed the King's government was not sufficiently constitutional (Super, 1954b, pp. 11-16, 63-67, 85-90). Clearly, Landor meant the Imaginary Conversations to be written counterparts to his more active interventions, yet it is not easy to connect the texts with Landor's goals. The combination of explicit historical references and equally explicit fictionalizing is the most problematic factor. It sets up competing expectations that we are only now learning to deal with. The Conversations rely heavily on what Mead would call the "accepted past" (Mead, [1932] 1980, pp. 29-30), or in the phrase of later interactionists, an "implied objective past" (Maines, Sugrue & Katovich, 1983, p. 164). This concept refers to a "consensus about the facts of the past," i.e. it involves our sense of what "must have been" in the past for the present to be as we experience it (p. 164). Though consensus gives facts "situational ontology" rather than transcendent status (p. 164), we habitually treat facts as if they were absolutes. The Imaginary Conversations contain a good deal of material from

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the "accepted past" - not only because their characters are historical figures that readers know, or could know, from other sources but because they present the characters in plausible settings for their historical referents' time and circumstances. Discussions occur between characters from the same historical eras: meetings are not arranged across centuries; when meetings are chronologically impossible, the timing in question involves months or a few years. The figures also maintain predictable political positions: monarchs do not become republican sympathizers. The outcomes of wars and trials are not changed. Coinciding with much in the "accepted past," the Imaginary Conversations raise expectations about accuracy that are usually associated with "non-fiction" prose. The Conversations then violate those expectations by consisting of discussions not otherwise known to have occurred. This invented dimension associates the works with fiction, raising the expectation that the characters' significance lies outside their particular instantiation. In other words, they are expected to reveal something about human nature that does not depend on their historical situations - or even their actual existence. The Conversations, however, lack the narrative framework and details of plot and characterization that would ordinarily serve as interpretive guides. They therefore have not been constructed as literary objects comparable to Scott's historical novels. They also lack the focus of allegories, fables, or philosophical dialogues. While they raise issues of sovereignty, civil rights, justice, and power, they do so in a rambling, digressive manner. Landor deliberately chose this format to approximate the way people actually talk to each other instead of the way philosophers set up dialogues. 6 On the whole, the Imaginary Conversations seem to be neither fictions interpreting experience nor accounts recording it but a pastiche of allusions and fantasies. It is in this very contradictoriness that we can witness the convergence of the imagined and the accepted, fiction and "non-fiction," future and past. Not surprisingly, the contradictoriness troubles readers who value the separation of these concepts. As I detail in the next section, studies of the Conversations between the end of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth show an increasing preoccupation with resolving the contradictions, with sorting out the facts from the fictions. The pattern corresponds with the ascendency of the separate disciplinary norms we now question. It thus tells us as much about the value-laden construction of the Imaginary Conversations as a topic to study as about the Conversations themselves. After examining early constructions of the topic, I offer a new one conditioned by the interdisciplinary values of the present.

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EARLY CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE TOPIC Efforts to produce an annotated edition of the Imaginary Conversations began before the end of the nineteenth century. The aim was to identify and verify the historical elements in the pieces, distinguishing them from the imaginary ones. The first such edition, annotated by Charles G. Crump, appeared in 1891. That Landor and his contemporaries apparently saw no need for such an apparatus has been attributed to their greater erudition: they knew more history than later generations, so they could make the distinctions with less help (Crump, 1891, vol. 1, p. xxvi; Proudfit, 1969, p. xvii). Significantly, this hypothesis assumes the value of making the distinction. Annotations were omitted from the Conversations in what was intended to be the "standard" edition of Landor's works (Landor 1927-36). The editorial defense of this decision as consistent with Landor's cultivation of an educated audience has been criticized as careless and irresponsible (Super, 1966, pp. 227-29; Prasher, 1966, pp. 3, 152). Crump did not strive for exhaustive or even thorough coverage in his annotations. He wished simply "to give just that information without which the reader might fail to f e e l . . , at home" with the works (1891, vol. 1, p. xxvii). The notes stem from a concession to "the gap between the days when literature was written by learned men for learned men and the days now come when literature is written by anybody for everybody else" (1891, vol. 1, p. xxvi). In keeping with this attitude, Crump glosses the identities of figures he thinks readers may not recognize and explains in a few sentences the works they wrote or deeds they performed that are relevant to the particular conversation. What I find significant about Crump's annotations is their concern with proving or disproving Landor's accuracy. Even when Crump sees no need to identify the characters or to suspect that Landor got the history "wrong," he makes an effort to confirm the issues and incidents central to the conversation. For instance, on "Steele and Addison," in which the speakers discuss the sale of Steele's furniture to pay his debts, Crump cites a biography of Steele to confirm that the incident occurred. The citation provides double confirmation, as it quotes the biographer who quotes a letter as "the most trustworthy account" (Crnmp, 1891, vol. 4, p. 352). When Crump cannot corroborate Landor's representation, he reports the discrepancy. On "William Penn and Lord Peterborough," he states that "Landor is more than usually wrong in his chronology" because allusions in the conversation place the meeting in 1699 when Peterborough is unlikely to have been able to travel to America. After trying and failing to place the meeting in 1682, Crump concludes that the report of Peterborough's visit is probably "apocryphal." He then abruptly constructs

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the conversation as a literary object: "the conversation is one of Landor's best. The characters are well drawn" (1891, vol. 3, p. 9). Separating fact from fiction is a step in determining how the given object may be studied. Two purposes are served by Crump's procedure. First, the distinction between fact and fiction, history and literature, is maintained in its own right. The maintenance of this distinction was important to the formation of the modern disciplines. Secondly, the distinction becomes a means of constituting objects for study within separate fields. Facts can be placed outside of literary texts in a supportive but unintrusive background; this area can be made the province of history. The imaginative remainder can become the material for literary study. Having determined that inaccuracies disqualify Landor's work as an historical object, Crump constitutes it as a literary object based, in this instance, on the criterion of characterization. "William Penn and Lord Peterborough" emerges as better than "Steele and Addison" because the speakers are more imaginatively (and less accurately) presented. Neither Crump nor the later editors I address below succeed fully in constituting the Imaginary Conversations as objects for literary study. The connections with the "accepted" or "implied objective" past in the Imaginary Conversations overshadow the use of novelistic or dramatic conventions. A great deal of the work must be discounted if the historical material is presumed irrelevant. As Crump's analysis of the dates for Lord Peterborough's trip shows, Landor's departures from record are seldom extreme or obvious. Violations of chronology identified by later editors are even more subtle: Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt could not have talked in prison, as Landor maintains, because Lisle "was executed more than a month and a half before Elizabeth Gaunt was convicted" (Proudfit, 1969, p. 85); Cromwell would not have advocated regicide so unequivocally in a 1648 conversation as there is evidence of his ambivalence until the end of that year (Prasher, 1966, pp. 683-85). These findings show that the Imaginary Conversations have a complex and intricate relationship to history, but that relationship cannot be explained within a disciplinary or epistemic system that segregates fact from invention. The observation by one of Landor's later editors that we have avoided studying Landor's works because we cannot easily classify them (Proudfit, 1969, p. xx) is true in a way that extends far beyond the literary genres to which the remark refers. Landor's works cross the line between the real and the imagined on which our knowledge system has been based. They defy the very use and value of separate categories for history and literature, lived and invented experience, past and present. They therefore became even more difficult to study in the twentieth century when disciplinary distinctions prevailed.

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Two projects were begun in the middle of the twentieth century with the hope that they would lead to a fully annotated modern edition of the Imaginary Conversations, though neither editor expected to complete the task her or himself. That expectation is itself significant, showing that the task of annotation had grown into a large and daunting one. In many features, the projects are quite different from each other: one is a dissertation (Prasher, 1966), which necessarily has the aim of demonstrating scholarly ability as well as exciting interest in Landor; the other is a volume of selected Conversations prepared by an established scholar to make Landor accessible to colleagues, students, and other readers of nineteenth-century literature (Proudfit 1969). Despite these differences, both Prasher and Proudfit regard Crump as an important predecessor whose annotations are not sufficient for modern needs, and both define their tasks in terms of sifting fact from fiction. According to Prasher, the greatest challenge in editing the Imaginary Conversations is tracking down Landor's sources and determining what he knew about the figures and topics covered (1966, p. 4). Because of the amount of research involved, Prasher annotates only eight Conversations; her selection of the first eight in the first volume Landor published allows her project to lay the foundation for a systematic revisiting of the works. The dissertation consists of three volumes: the first reviews the composition and criticism; the second gives the texts and variants of the eight conversations; the third provides the annotations. In reviewing scholarship on Landor, Prasher ranges over ways in which the Imaginary Conversations have been attached to literary conventions or genres, but she finds that the ties do not hold well: Landor was not primarily interested in characterization (pp. 71-74); he "was not influenced to any great extent by the dialogue tradition" (p. 107). Prasher's annotations are exhaustive, providing elaborate glosses on the persons and issues involved in or referenced in the eight conversations. Her notes identify Landor's departures from historical records and thus shape the conversations for study within a divided disciplinary and epistemic system. Insofar as her elaborations often dwell on literary issues (such as how Landor's making Elizabeth I wish to be remembered favorably develops what we know about her character [p. 762]), they add to efforts to construct the Imaginary Conversations as an object for study within a literary field. Contrasting with Prasher's multi-volume work, Proudfit's consists of a single, medium-sized book. It contains the texts and notes for eight conversations from Landor's third volume (1829) chosen "to present a broad sampling" of the whole (1969, p. xx). The motive for the volume is Proudfit's "belief that an annotated edition of Landor's prose [will] make his acquaintance both possible and pleasurable to a much more extensive audience than he has

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enjoyed in the past (pp. xix-xx). To that end, Proudfit strives to provide the information that m o d e m readers "need" to comprehend Landor's references (p. xvii). Proudfit goes beyond Crump or Prasher in constituting the Imaginary Conversations as an object for literary study, and he does so by emptying the historical component of significance. One of the best examples comes from his introduction to "Lucullus and Caesar." After stating that Landor's portrayal of Lucullus's character seems more positive than portrayals in historical sources and that the conversation alludes to events subsequent to the given date of the meeting, he concludes that the discrepancies do not matter: Landor's Romans are creatures of his own desire, and in no way are they meant to be accurate historical representations . . . . Landor's interest in creating an air of historical exactness is that of the dramatic artist rather than the scholarlyhistorian, for he makes little attempt to present an accurate chronology (p. 17). 7 Proudfit's conclusion constructs the topic as a literary object based on dramatic criteria, but it raises questions about the "need" he asserted (p. xvii) for knowledge of the historical dimension, In considering Prasher's and Proudfit's studies unsuccessful attempts to organize scholarship on Landor, I mean no criticism of their impressive, thoughtful, and enthusiastic works. They did succeed in studying Landor within the limits of the disciplinary and epistemic system of the modem academy, but they did not reach their own stated goals of encouraging widespread interest in Landor and in prompting completion of a comprehensively annotated edition of the Imaginary Conversations. A glance at a new bibliography of scholarship on nineteenth-century literature shows how little work on the Imaginary Conversations follows Prasher and Proudfit: it simply states that an earlier bibliography - Super, 1966 - still provides adequate coverage of work on Landor's prose (Morrison, 1998, p. 341). I believe that this state of affairs reveals how important and pervasive the assumed distinction between lived and invented experience has been across the disciplines. Prasher and Proudfit take it for granted that we must be able to distinguish between Landor's facts and fictions, though they do not explain why we must be able to do so. In retrospect, we can see that the distinction was a condition for studying Landor within the prevailing system, and the limited success of those studies shows how strongly disciplinary norms influence what we know. Study of the Imaginary Conversations could not go very far forward because the construction of that work as a topic to know was problematic within the given system. Now that the system itself no longer dominates our thinking, it ought to be possible to look at the Imaginary Conversations in a different way. Moreover, the exercise of constructing the topic differently ought

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to provide an opportunity for reflection on the interactive relationship between fact and fiction, past and present, experience and invention. I turn to a new construction in the next section.

A NEW CONSTRUCTION OF THE TOPIC My approach to Landor owes a debt to Stanford M. Lyman's Postmodernism and a Sociology of the Absurd, which shows how intellectual inquiry can be carried out in a postmodern age that has lost all certainty about "true" knowledge of "reality." Lyman offers an alternative to what he sees as the dominant and dangerous responses to the condition - an overemphasis on knowledge as a construct serving those in power or an uncritical reversion to traditional paradigms (1997, pp. 11-22). Alternatively, Lyman posits that a constrnctivist notion of meaning can be an intellectually and socially productive concept. He calls for studies that examine how people use their beliefs and ideas instead of studies that worry about what their beliefs and ideas "really" are. For example, instead of worrying about the validity of Marx's historical dialectic, a researcher should ask what responses it provokes: Does the communist cell member befieve that the party must undertake actions to overthrow the governmentby force and violence now, before the word about the death of the Marxist discourse becomespublic knowledge? Or does he or she believe that all is lost and the party should cease and desist from any and all insurrectionary activity? (Lyman, 1997, p. 29). Lyman pursues this mode of inquiry in studies of race, ethnicity, and gender, and ending with "a commencement rather than a conclusion," he invites readers to extend his approach to other areas (p. 265). In applying such an effects-sensitive method, I ask what the Imaginary Conversations allowed Landor to do and how they allowed him to do it. I posit the following answers: they allowed him to intervene in British politics during a crucial period for Parliamentary reform; they allowed him to model behavior conducive to the kind of reformed, republican government he advocated, behavior marked by the habitual questioning of authority; they allowed him to reconcile advocacy of political reform with fear of revolutionary implications and thus to overcome an obstacle to change erected by memories of the excesses and tyrannies devolving from the French Revolution. To explain these answers, I put the Imaginary Conversations back into the political-historical context from which previous inquiries took them. Specifically, I argue that the work participates in the rise of popular contention that Charles Tilly (1995, 1997) has identified as a catalyst for Parliamentary reform. This argument takes the concept of conversation as the most significant feature of the work; in other

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words, the fact that speakers are talking to each other is at least as important as anything they say. 8 Looking at Landor's situation with respect to reform, I discover why political change was problematic for him and other former revolutionaries, and drawing on Mead's ideas about uses of the past, I examine how Landor's interaction with history offers a solution to the problem. If texts are involved with, not separate from, lived experience, then studying them should involve some effort to place them in context. The context of Parliamentary reform is crucial to the Imaginary Conversations. As I have indicated above, Landor's writing of them was motivated by a desire to challenge authoritarian rules. It was also motivated by a desire to stimulate political discussion in England. Since 1814, Landor had been living on the Continent, where he went to escape debts and lawsuits over his attempted restoration of a Welsh abbey (Super, 1954b, pp. 109-55). During this period, he wrote in Latin and Italian, and he cultivated European publishers (Super, 1954a, p. 26). By the 1820s, when he planned the Imaginary Conversations (according to his earliest known reference to the project, a letter dated March 9, 1822, quoted in Super, 1954b, p. 158), he wished to return to his own country, and he took a new interest in English affairs. He resolved to write the Imaginary Conversations in English and to seek an English publisher, thus departing significantly from his recent practices (Super, 1954a, pp. 31-55; 1954b, pp. 158-241). The Imaginary Conversations, then, were designed for an English audience at a crucial time in the nation's history--the decade leading up to the granting of civil rights to Roman Catholics (1828) and Protestant Dissenters (1829) and the reform of Parliament itself (1832). Landor favored Catholic Emancipation, despite his personal prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church, and Parliamentary Reform, but his politics bear the scars of the French Revolution he had once supported. His enthusiasm for participatory government was qualified by a fear that too much direct participation would lead to anarchy or to authoritarian reaction. In his clearest statement (a Letter to Emerson) about his own mature position, Landor identified himself as a conservative republican: I was always a Conservative;but I would eradicate any species of evil, political, moral, or religious, as soon as it springs up. . . . I would not alter or greatly modify the English Constitution . . . . Democracy,such as yours in America, is my abhorrence. Republicanism far from it; but there are few nations capable of receiving, fewer of retaining, this pure and efficient form. Democracy is lax and disjointed; and whatever is loose wears out the machine (Landor, 1927-36, vol. 12, pp. 195-96).9 Landor's attitude is typical of many Englishmen who were disillusioned by the French Revolution and/or the Napoleonic Wars and/or the Italian and Greek movements for independence during the 1820s. 1°

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However vague Landor may have been about the best system for republican government, he was sure about the fundamental premise on which it should rest. The fundamental republican act is tyrannicide - literally and figuratively. Landor did believe that citizens should rise up and kill a dictator, though he distinguished that act of self-liberation from assassination carded out through foreign intervention, of which he did not approve (Super, 1954b, p. 449). Figurative forms of tyrannicide consist of verbal and written opposition to the consolidation of an individual's or group's arbitrary power over others. In other words, figurative tyrannicide occurs through contention. The importance of contention in Parliamentary reform has been identified by Charles Tilly (1995, 1997). Tilly examined newspaper accounts of more than 8,000 "contentious gatherings" - defined as meetings in which at least ten people "outside the government gathered in a publically accessible place and made visible collective claims bearing on the interests of at least one person outside their own number" - in England from 1758 to 1834 (Tilly, 1997, p. 223). The examples ranged from riots to revivals, but significantly, violent gatherings decreased while non-violent gatherings increased during the period. According to Tilly, the increase in non-violent gatherings corresponds to the increasing importance of Parliament in national affairs (1997, pp. 223-28, 233-39). Violent gatherings were more common when people were expected to rely on local squires to fulfill their needs and resolve their problems. The justice available from such local patronage systems was personal and uneven. When collective claims could not be even fully articulated much less satisfied, frustration erupted in violence. Non-violent gatherings became more common when people were able to direct their concerns to larger governing bodies with expectations of more uniform treatment. Confident that government would eventually respond to them, people could turn frustration into the useful activities of petitioning, electioneering, or organizing social movements. Popular contention gradually pressured Parliament into recognizing citizens' claims, and by recognizing them, Parliament legitimized popular contention (Tilly, 1997, pp. 223-28, 233-39). The 1820s legislation that expanded civil rights for Catholics and Dissenters and the 1830s reforms of the representative system show the correlation between effective claims-making and republican government (Tilly, 1997, pp. 239-42). By their use of conversation itself, Landor's Imaginary Conversations participate in the rise of popular contention. The conversations represent contention as the habitual mode of social life: they show people routinely engaged in discussion of all human, and particularly political, affairs; routinely making claims and testing each other's claims on any and every issue. The

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habit of questioning the authority of any claim is crucial to republican government. It effects figurative tyrannicide - the non-violent removal of unwarranted claims. The Imaginary Conversations model the contentious behavior that facilitated Parliamentary reform. They reflect Landor's sensitivity to English public life during the period and his interest in finding, understanding, and encouraging a responsible form of republican government. Even when we understand the Imaginary Conversations in the context of Parliamentary reform, their historical dimension remains puzzling. The work models in the past behavior that Landor saw in the present and would cultivate for the future. One might think that contemporary models (which do figure in a few conversations featuring Landor and his friends as speakers) would be more effective. The historical dimension becomes meaningful when we understand it in light of Mead's notion about the creation of the past as a problem-solving exercise ([1938] 1977, p. 323). Mead sees activity in the present as depending on a sense of continuity: people assume that what they are doing at any given time follows logically from something that occurred at some previous time. The sense of continuity distinguishes lived experience from a "mere juxtaposition of events" (Mead, [1929] 1964, p. 346). The past is a notion we create in the present to establish meaningful connections between succeeding events. All notions of the past "exten[d]... present demand": they result from our "spreading backward what is going on so that the steps we are taking may . . . [appear to] advance [us toward our] goals" (Mead, [1929] 1964, pp. 347-49). We treat this past as a "working hypothesis" about previous events that is valid until something unexpected occurs (Mead, [1938] 1977, p. 323). The "novel event" breaks the sense of continuity and halts present action. People "repair" the break in the present by incorporating the novel event into the past where its satisfactory location reestablishes continuity and makes activity possible again. The result is a "new past" that becomes acceptable or valid if and for so long as it gives meaning to present pursuits (Mead, [1929] 1964, pp. 350-52; [1938] 1977, pp. 323-24; [1932] 1980, pp. 9-12, 29-30). In short, the construction of the past is a problem-solving exercise; it is the removal of some obstacle to forward motion in the path from present to future. Two novel events had emerged in Landor's present. First, the contentiousness that was by the 1820s a prominent feature of English public life disrupted the traditionally authoritarian narrative of history. In Landor's experience of history, revolutionary challenges to a dominant rule had been aberrant gestures that brought on anarchy or tyranny rather than genuinely representative government. Authority always reasserted itself. The growing success of popular

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contention promised that reformist challenges might succeed where revolutionary challenges had failed. Secondly, fear of the anarchic or tyrannical consequences of revolution disrupted advocacy of political change. Losing faith in the possibility of remaking government, revolutionaries joined the Establishment, retreated into private life, or sought non-political means of social engagement. These disruptions severed the past, conceived as a time of authoritarian norms and revolutionary interruptions, from the future, conceived as a time of representative norms and reformist maintenance. However much they might still wish for political change, Landor and his peers could not simply go forward as revolutionaries. Landor rewrote history to solve the problem. The Imaginary Conversations depict the habit of contention as a prominent, normal feature of the past. Thus incorporated into the past, the contentiousness in Landor's present was not a novel event disrupting the otherwise authoritarian course of history. Rather, it became the norm itself, with authoritarian episodes reduced to aberrations against which contention has always, albeit not always quickly or easily, prevailed. With a sense of contentiousness as normal and viable behavior, erstwhile revolutionaries could manage fears of anarchy and tyranny and move forward as reformers. In effect, the Imaginary Conversations provided a "new past" for a present marked by increasingly representative government. H

ILLUSTRATION Because the Imaginary Conversations are quite repetitive, almost any selection from among them would illustrate Landor's procedures. Instead of an entirely random sampling, however, I present below some examples from conversations featuring the colonial American speakers William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. These figures remain familiar to contemporary American readers. The less familiar participants - Charles Mordannt, Earl of Peterborough, and Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of Llandaff and Asaph - can be identified from the Dictionary of National Biography (Stephen and Lee 1959-60, vol. 13, pp. 840-50; vol. 18, pp. 110-12). The three selected conversations contain a good deal of material from the still accepted past reference to the founding of Pennsylvania and Quaker influences there; Franklin's role as an international diplomat; Washington's skill in leading his troops; Peterborough's instrumentality in bringing William of Orange to the British throne; Shipley's objections to the British Establishment's treatment of its colonies. They do not, however, center on or give a coherent account of the founding of the colonies, the course of the war for independence, or the lives -

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of the key participants. Rather, they present the contentions of their speakers over the nature of good government. The most extensive of the conversations I have selected takes place before the separation of the United States from England as William Penn leads Lord Peterborough on a tour of the new territory of Pennsylvania at the end of the seventeenth century. By devising the tour through unfamiliar country, Landor puts the customarily commanding figure in a subordinate position. Lord Peterborough, leader of military campaigns and political conspiracies, is here led by a Quaker who advocates non-violent ways of governing. Landor uses the setting as a springboard for a political discussion. When the two travelers reach an impenetrable forest, Peterborough exclaims that Pennsylvania amounts to a "prison" kept "for the sake of liberty"; he announces his preference for the more "open" countries of England and France (Landor, 1868, vol. 1, p. 517). 12 In response, Penn describes Peterborough's perception of freedom in Europe as an illusion: there property laws block movement as surely as nature blocks it in Pennsylvania. Penn finds nature the better barrier (vol. 1, pp. 517-18). From this beginning, the speakers proceed as friendly antagonists, sparring with each other over the feasibility of establishing a small republic in Pennsylvania. Peterborough tries repeatedly to convince Penn that such a scheme is not viable, that it is the product of a mind "too visionary for this world of matter and realities," the dream of a "Quixote of orders grey" (vol. 1, pp. 531, 555), but Penn always defends the practicality of his venture. He believes that reason and sympathy can prevail over envy and ambition in a system of government that gives everyone "the means of living both honestly and at ease" (vol. 1, p. 530). The speakers both marshal detailed arguments for and against equal distribution of property, equalization of social ranks, labor policies that allow workers as much as eight hours of sleep a day, and the elimination of prisons and wars in domestic and foreign policies. They also pursue associated points on decorative arts, theater, and horticulture. In keeping with Landor's desire to avoid the constraints to philosophical dialogues, the presentation does not so much develop the speakers' arguments as juxtapose their statements. It also does little to modify the cynicism of the one speaker or the idealism of the other, and their differences are often extreme. Peterborough, for instance, believes that people, like dogs, "slaver and whimper in fretful quest of the highest" company and rewards, and so they will never accept a system of equality (vol. 1, p. 550). By showing at length the contentions of two such opposite figures, Landor makes the conversation a means of fully airing and exploring differences that might otherwise isolate people from one another, smolder as suppressed resentments, and erupt into violence or intrigue.

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Discussion can thus serve a purpose even when, as in this case, it does not produce a simple resolution. Despite their differences on many points, Penn and Peterborough nevertheless become allies against monarchy as they discover that they both object to established churches, privileged aristocrats, and hereditary rulers. This discovery grows out of their conversation in an elaborate horticultural metaphor. Penn asks Peterborough, "ff the gardener had pruned thy fruit-trees improperly, wouldst thou not admonish him or dismiss him?" After Peterborough answers that he would, Penn continues: Howbeit, supposehe [the gardener] should struggle and prevail against thee, and asseverate that not only he himself would continue to manage thy fruit-trees as beliked him, but that furthermore his son and grandson should do likewise, whether they had acquired a knowledge of horticulture or not; for that, as his father had been thy father's gardener, it was undeniable that he ought to be thine, and his elder son thy elder son's; waiving which argument, he would throw up a worm in thy face, and inform thee triumphantly, that if antecedently no fitness of reason had existed, yet both reason and fitness sprang up fullgrown when he overthrew and smote thee (vol. 1, pp. 550-51). Penn's metaphor, of course, refers to and ridicules hereditary rule. He uses it to rebuke Peterborough for serving a government (being "the liveryman of this gardener" [vol. 1, p. 551]) that he does not support in principle, for Peterborough has been more outspoken than Penn in his criticism of king, court, and church. It is Peterborough who expresses a wish "to see reduced to the condition o f . . . lackeys the proudest of our priesthood and our peerage," though his desire stems from his belief that men of action, like himself, should have more official powers, rather than from a belief, like Penn's, in the dignity and equality of all people (vol. 1, p. 522). By giving Penn and Peterborough a common contempt for unmerited prerogatives, Landor suggests that philosophically disparate parties can cooperate in resisting arbitrary authority and in making claims for those unrepresented (or underrepresented) in a given power structure. Tyrannicide can occur while people are still in the process of contending with each other about the best alternative form of government--or when they have discovered that the process of contending is the alternative form of government. In another exemplary conversation, the speakers try to determine why tyranny occurs and how it might be prevented. According to Benjamin Franklin and Bishop Shipley, the problem and the solution lie in education. Future rulers are taught to admire violence; they are taught "that a reign is made glorious by a successful war" (vol. 2, p. 43), so they aspire to be conquerors and tyrants. If they were taught to see conquest differently in childhood, they would act differently as adults. Franklin proposes strictures against schoolmasters who

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teach the glories of war: "You shut up those who are infected with the plague," he reasons; "why do you lay no coercion on those who are incurably possessed by the legion devil of carnage?" (vol. 2, p. 43) Some urgency attaches to Franklin's and Shipley's speculations. Their conversation takes place in England on the eve of the Revolutionary War, and they are rushing to get on a ship before they are overtaken by a mob that would stone them for their advocacy of American independence. Unlike the Conversation between Penn and Peterborough, which pairs two speakers with different philosophies, this Conversation pairs speakers who agree with each other. Franklin's American sympathy fits his position in the colonies; his friend Shipley's does not fit his position as an Anglican bishop. Landor takes advantage of this historic misalliance to rearrange antagonisms along conceptual rather than national lines. The pertinent opposition is between those who attack problems with words, represented by Franklin and Shipley, and those who resort to violence, represented by the mob, the king, and all those in power who practice warmongering. The latter group are characterized by their lack of political vision: George III, says Franklin, "can see no difference between a review and a battle. Such are the optics of most kings and rulers"; Parliament contains only two "clear-sighted politicians, Chatham and Burke," who would find a peaceful solution to the hostilities; and the Church of England is filled with clergy whose "blindness" to the immorality of war grieves Shipley (vol. 1, p. 44). To this group, Franklin and Shipley would bring the light of republican government, making "every chief magistrate . . . an arbitrator and umpire in all differences between any two, forbidding war" (vol. 1, p. 43). Similarly, Landor brings the value of negotiated settlements to readers' attention by this restaging of Revolutionary Era oppositions. For a final example of Landor's emphasis on deliberation, I cite a Conversation between Washington and Franklin who meet soon after the American Revolution to discuss how best to sustain the new republic. According to Washington, tile country has already reached the pinnacle of greatness by separating itself from England, for "no nation is ever greater than at the time when it recovers its freedom from under one apparently more powerful" (vol. 1, p. 126). The post-revolutionary challenge is preventing any one person or faction from seizing power. Franklin worries particularly about people's inclination to trust a benevolent dictator, for he finds such figures more dangerous than their openly oppressive counterparts: Where princes are absolute, more tyranny is committed under the mild than under the austere: for the latter are jealous of power and entrust it to few. The mild delegate it

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considerately to many: and the same easiness of temper which allows them to do so, permits.., those under them to abuse the trust with impunity (vol. 1, p. •26). Franklin advocates republicanism because "in a republic, the tyrannical temper creates a check to itself in the very person next it . . . . I shall believe that a king is better than a republic, when I find that a single tooth in a head is better than a set" (vol. 1, p. 126). The speakers discuss other threats to republicanism posed by everything from armies to national churches, and they trust that a written constitution will provide adequate safeguards (vol. 1, p. 133). As in the conversation between Franklin and Shipley, education emerges as a crucial issue. Again, Franklin complains that schools teach children to admire "those who have offered the greatest violence to reason and humanity. Destroyers of freedom are more celebrated than its f o u n d e r s . . , just as we hear more of him who burns a house than him who builds one" (vol. 1, p. 132). Washington agrees that "the right course of education" serves as "the best preventive laws against tyranny" (vol. 1, p. 132). This emphasis on an educated citizenry points to the importance of analysis and debate in representative government. In their serious and extended discussion, Washington and Franklin model appropriately, contentious behavior. Indeed, they seem to have met for the purpose of political organizing. The Conversation has no particular setting, and no dramatic events occur. The focus is entirely on two people discussing the claims of others. Even from just three examples, it can be seen how the Imaginary Conversations were a problem-solving exercise within the context of Parliamentary reform. Breaking the authoritarian narrative of history into episodes of discussion, they created a contentious past that could be continuous with Landor's contentious present and lead to the goal of a more representative government in the future. The exercise was useful even after the landmark date for Parliamentary reform (1832) as the success of reform depended on ongoing contention. Hence the reforms of 1832 were greeted almost immediately with calls for further reform, and Landor continued to write, publish, and republish Imaginary Conversations into the middle of the century. CONCLUSION The new construction of the topic makes it possible to account for the interplay between fact and fiction, past and present, in the Imaginary Conversations. Landor relied heavily on the "accepted" or "implied objective" past because he was, to borrow phrasing from Mead, formulating a hypothesis about "what must have been" to account for the present experience of contention. To succeed, the conversations had to fit contention into familiar events as a

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plausible component of history. Radical departures from consensus about previous persons and events or obvious violations of chronology would have reduced his work to mere fantasy and rendered it ineffective in grappling with the problem. The appearance of accuracy was integral to the project. The prominence of the "accepted" past in the Imaginary Conversations serves to familiarize the novel. With the topic thus constructed, studies of the Imaginary Conversations need not begin by sorting out their accuracies and inaccuracies. Instead, they can discover the ways in which Landor inserts contention into the past. While the conversations are repetitive, there are, as my illustration has shown, variations within and among them, particularly in the pairing of speakers. Further study of how Landor represents interactions among these antagonists and allies (and those who are both) could yield many insights into the nature and processes of contention as a mode of experience. We can study Landor's representations irrespective of whether we can correlate them with other accounts, and perhaps we can notice more about what he does if we are not overly worried about whether his presentation is "right." The new construction of the topic also conduces to greater understanding of the relationship between literature and lived experience. This aspect of the topic reaches back to Landor's original reviewers and forward to potential future readers. Surveying early reviews of the Imaginary Conversations, Prasher notes that the reviewers are more sensitive to the political content of the pieces and less focused on their historical accuracy than she is (1966, pp. 3452). 13 Though she attaches little significance to this pattern, she does assume that the reviewers' opinions are conditioned by independent recognition of Landor's allusions (pp. 46-47). Her position is thus consistent with Crnmp's and Proudfit's belief that the Imaginary Conversations were more intelligible to earlier, more learned readers. From a postmodern position, the theory that earlier, learned readers automatically sorted out Landor's allusions appears to be a construct of modern thinking. Recent work (Roe, 1997; Magnuson, 1998) on the highly politicized nature of reading and writing in the nineteenth century suggests (in the application I would make) that Landor's original readers expressed less concern over his accuracy because they did not value that concept as modern readers did. Roe and Magnuson have been able to investigate the different priorities of earlier readers and writers because they have not had to construct their objects in exclusively literary terms. They have been able to read texts and reviews of texts as elaborations of larger cultural concerns. The growth of the contextual study of literature should make the Imaginary Conversations more available as topics for inquiry by scholars in any field that treats human experience.

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Since interest in the relationship between lived and textualized experience has been growing in the fields we used to call the social sciences, Landor's future readers might well include sociologists and anthropologists. In recent work, Norman Denzin (1997) has taken imaginative texts as productive of social knowledge, reading James Joyce's works, novelistic journalism, and detective stories for what they reveal about the relationships among subjectivities in the world. He thus makes an unconventional body of writings central to the most important work of contemporary ethnography - understanding "how our subjectivity becomes entangled in the lives of others" (1997, p. 27). The value of the texts in research and the insights gained from them are no less genuine because of their fictional nature. TM As we learn to revise our definitions of the real and the imaginary, we may find former literary objects more often made sources in the interpretive process Denzin describes. In that process, texts are sites for the exchange of meanings: readers both take meaning away from and add meaning to them (1997, pp. 234-35). I have already shown how modern readers added their concerns about historical accuracy to the Imaginary Conversations. I suggest that postmodern readers can add meanings involving our relationship with the past. The Imaginary Conversations could then be part of the solution to the problem of discontinuity that plagues postmodernism. In general postmodernism emphasizes discontinuity. To quote Lyman, it is the "triumph of arbitrariness," the rejection of all "metanarratives" that purport to connect events into meaningful sequences (1997, p. 55). This emphasis on discontinuity is in part a reaction to and a correction of the emphasis on continuity that characterized modernism. During the modern era, we often read history for evidence of progress or development; we abstracted literary texts from history. Now, having become acutely conscious of the shortcomings of attempts to impose unity on experience, we are eager to break away from the past, to notice the disjunctions in history and literature, and to question the motives of those who would fill in the gaps. Both of these orientations miss the interdependence of continuity and discontinuity in present experience. As discontinuity lies beneath many modern glosses, so continuity informs many postmodern projects. Efforts to expand canons of writers to be studied, for instance, often proceed by comparing new candidates to established figures, in the manner Richardson has theorized (1997, p. 2). Even if we wish to repudiate traditional canons, we continue to use them as negative reference points. To quote Denzin, "earlier historical moments [are] still operating in the present, either as legacy or as a set of practices that researchers still follow or argue against" (1997, p. 19). Contact with the past is no less prominent in daily interaction. Research by Katovich

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and Couch (1992) has shown how people often need to establish a shared or common past before they can act together in the present. Continuity thus remains relevant in the postmodern age. A Meadian perspective on the passage of time can help to account for the importance of both continuity and discontinuity. In taking discontinuity as the hallmark of experience, postmodernism misses what Mead calls the "inevitability" of continuity: The inevitability of existence is betrayed in its continuity. What follows flows from what was. If there is continuity, then what follows is conditioned by what was. A completebreak between events would remove the character of inevitability . . . . If there were bare replacement of one experience by another, the experience would not be that of passage. They would be different experiences,each wrapped up in itself, but with no connection, no way of passing from one to the other. ([1929] 1964, pp. 349-50). We do not, even during eras of great disruption, experience isolated events. We create a past to explain the novelties that have broken in on the present (in the manner I have elaborated from Mead earlier in this essay), and thus we experience a passage of time rather than a random occurrence of events. The postmodern exaggeration of discontinuity (or the modern of continuity) distorts the nature of present experience, which depends on both concepts. However important it may be to separate ourselves from past practices we now consider unethical or past beliefs we now hold untenable, it is equally important to establish some sympathetic connection with the past. Our emphasis on discontinuity has resulted in the intellectual paralysis that Lyman deplores (If "any and every metanarrative of history exemplifies arbitrary hegemony[, w]hat then, is left? 1997, p. 24) as well as in bitterness and factionalism within our departments and professional associations. The extra effort Landor made to connect with the past at a crucial time of change and the value of the project in facilitating forward motion should inspire us to try harder to rewrite disciplinary history in continuous terms. Attention to continuity can be found in Lyman's work. By tracing constructivist notions of meaning to the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophies to which they are more often opposed, Lyman defines his bold program of effectssensitive inquiry as continuous with earlier attempts to understand human behavior (1997, pp. 45-65). His historical inclusiveness in no way compromises his contemporary commitments. In the preceding essay, I have tried to make the Imaginary Conversations a tool with which to reconcile the competing claims of innovation and tradition in postmodern scholarship. We need to move forward, but for reasons explained by Mead's theory, unqualified repudiation of the past will not facilitate that passage. Some measure of continuity is needed. Continuity can

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be established, without reverting to modernist assumptions, through sympathetic investigations of previous constructions of knowledge. In such investigations, we see a topic existing in two systems. It becomes an object in what Mead calls the "passing present." In passing, the object belongs to "both the old and the new," and it "carr[ies] over into its process of readjustment in the new system something of . . . the old" ([1932] 1980, pp. 51-52). Moving the topic from system to system allows us to understand and value the work of predecessors without sharing their assumptions, and it allows us to study the topic in our own terms with greater awareness of the assumptions we value in the inquiry. In my work on Landor, I have examined the Imaginary Conversations in both modern and postmodern systems. I have tried to establish productively sympathetic connections with the past by understanding the ways in which previous assessments of the Imaginary Conversations have been conditioned by the disciplinary and epistemic systems in which they took shape. By proposing a new construction of the topic, I am not "correcting" Crump's, Prasher's, or Proudfit's "errors" or repudiating their work. I am, rather, continuing their investigations of the topic within a new system that shapes knowledge differently. My essay is meant to spur interest in the ways that interaction with the past can enrich scholarship in the future.

NOTES 1. Magnuson (1998) offers the most extensive illustration of the paratextuai approach; Liu (1989) exemplifies attention to suppressed content by reading reference to Napoleon into Wordsworth's presentation of the power of imagination in The Prelude (pp. 24--31). 2. This information was reported by Suzanne Johnson Flynn, 1999 Program Director, at the Board Meeting held during the NCSA Conference, Philadelphia, PA, March 18, 1999. 3. In addition, Bicknell (1996) calls for attention to Landor's Latin works. Though seemingly anomalous, this article fits the trend insofar as it points out that works written in Latin were often exempt from libel laws, thus making the language an attractive tool with which to criticize people in power. 4. I take my final count from the Table of Contents in the Crump edition (1891). Because there is some doubt about the authorship of a few other conversations attributed to Landor by twentieth-century editors (Super, 1966, p. 228), I exclude them from my total. A reprint (Landor, 1868) shows that the collected edition of 1846 contained 124 Imaginary Conversations. 5. The letter is quoted in Prasher, 1966, p. 109. Landor's letters have not been collected into a reliable edition. 6. An Imaginary Conversation between Landor and Southey includes criticism of philosophical dialogues. Landor says that he will voice whatever thoughts come into his

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mind as they talk, adding "as you perceive I have frequently done in my Imaginary Conversations and as we always do in real ones." Southey endorses Landor's practice and criticizes dialogues that "collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiffs of some rhetorical charlatan" (Landor, 1868, vol. 2, pp. 58-59). 7. Becker (1938) precedes Proudfit in foregrounding biographical connections between Landor and his characters. Becket's argument, that the speakers are "mouthpieces" for Landor's own political statements (p. 454), uses an expressive criterion to make the Conversations an object for study, but this approach is problematic for several reasons. It does not make the Conversations amenable to study in the modern literary field because it defines them, at best, as a form of the personal essay and thereby leaves them in the gray area of "non-fiction" prose. Even if the approach were more effective, it would succeed only by discounting a good deal of the works: monarchical characters do not speak for Landor, and sometimes characters whose separate statements echo those Landor made elsewhere contradict each other in their discussions. Finally, the approach must assume that Landor's prefatory note to the Conversations, directing readers "to avoid a mistake in attributing to the writer any opinions in this book but what are spoke under his own name" (1868, vol. 1, p. 1), is simply disingenuous. 8. Chandler remarks that the Imaginary Conversations may evidence "a new, culturally exemplary role given to conversation in this period" (1998, p. 282, n. 13), but he does not elaborate on this cryptic footnote. 9. The "letter" is actually a pamphlet prepared for publication in response to Emerson's statements about Landor in English Traits. Landor's political position arguably fits within the range of "English Republicanism" defined by Worden (1991). 10. Studies situating a number of Landor's contemporaries with respect to revolutionary events and attitudes include Liu (1989), Bainbridge (1995), Hewitt (1997), Roberts (1997), and Chandler (1998). 11. Since Landor rewrites history to give contention a power and prominence that it does not have in most other versions, he might be charged with inventing a "mythical past." A "mythical past," according to Maines, Sugrue and Katovich who educed the concept from Mead, is a fictitious history created to give some group an advantage over others (1983, pp. 164, 167-68). If all pasts are constructed, however, the line between mythical and legitimate pasts is quite faint. Recourse to an "implied objective dimension" does little to sharpen it. A clearer separation may be made by asking the question I have adapted from Lyman: what does such a past allow someone to do? Mythical pasts allow deception. They are constructed and deployed solely to promote the interest of one group over others (Maines, Sugrue & Katovich, 1983, pp. 164, 170). Though the past in Landor's Conversations is designed to give an advantage to those favoring republican government over those favoring more authoritarian regimes, it is not an instrument for deceptive self-promotion. 12. To avoid repetition, I omit "Landor 1868" from subsequent citations in this section to the Imaginary Conversations; all volume and page numbers given refer to that edition. 13. Pre-publication controversies over the Imaginary Conversations centered on potential publishers' objections to statements that could be construed as libelous, seditious, or blasphemous and to the use of vulgar language (Prasher, 1967). 14. I am reminded of a related argument by Dadlez (1997), who maintains that the emotions aroused by stories are no less genuine because of their fictional origin.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT I a m grateful to N o r m a n D e n z i n and D a v i d M a i n e s for t h o u g h t f u l and t h o u g h t p r o v o k i n g c o m m e n t s that led to the r e v i s i o n o f this artcle; I a m also grateful to Karl K r o e b e r for a d v i c e and e n c o u r a g e m e n t on earlier drafts.

REFERENCES Bainbridge, S. (1995). Napoleon and English Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press. Becker, G. J. (1938). Landor's Political Purpose. Studies in Philology, 35, 446-455. Bicknell, T. (1996). Calamus Ense Potentior Est: Walter Savage Landor's Poetic War of Words. Romanticism on the Net 4 (November): 9pp. (http://www-sul.stanford. edu/mirrors/ romnet/landor.btml) Accessed 1998 March 2. Butler, M. (1989). Repossessing the Past: The Case for an Open Literary History. In: M. Levinson (Ed.), Rethinking Historicism: Critical Readings in Romantic History (pp. 64-84). Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell. Chandler, J. (1998). England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Crump, C. G. (1891). Imaginary Conversations of Walter Savage Landor with Bibliographical and Explanatory Notes by Charles G. Crump. 6 vols. London: J. M. Dent. Dadlez, E. M. (1997). What's Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA, andLondon: Sage. Hewitt, R. (1997). The Possibilities of Society: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Sociological Viewpoint of English Romanticism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Katovich, M. A., & Couch, C. J. (1992). The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated Action. Symbolic Interaction, 15(1), 25-47. Landor, W. S. [1846] (1868). Works of Walter Savage Landor. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall. Landor, W. S. (1927-36). Complete Works of Walter Savage Landor, E. Welby & S. Wheeler (Eds). 16 vols. London: Chapman and Hall. Liu, A. (1989). Wordsworth: The Sense of History. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lyman, S. M. (1997). Postmodernism and a Sociology of the Absurd: And Other Essays on the "Nouvelle Vague" in American Social Science. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. Magnuson, R (1998). Reading Public Romanticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Maines, D., Sugrue, N. M., & Katovich, M. A. (1983). The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead's Theory of the Past. American Sociological Review 48, 161-173. Mead, G. H. [1929] (1964). The Nature of the Past. In: A. K. Reck (Ed.), Selected Writings: George Herbert Mead (pp. 345-354). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Mead, G. H. [1938] (1977). History and the Experimental Method. In: A. Strauss (Ed.), George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology (pp. 319-327). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Mead G. H. [1932] (1980). The Philosophy of the Present. Edited by A. E. Murphy. Preface by J. Dewey. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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Morrison, R. (1998). Essayists of the Romantic Period. In: M. O'Neill (Ed.), Literature of the Romantic Period: A Bibliographic Guide (pp. 341-363). Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford University Press. Prasher, A. L. (1966). Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations: A Critical Edition of the First Eight Conversations in Volume One. (with) Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen. The First Volume. (1824). Dissertation (unpublished) Northwestern University. Prasher, A. L. (1967). "The Censorship of Landor's Imaginary Conversations." Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 49, 427463. Proudfit, C. L. (1969). Selected Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen by Walter Savage Landor, C. L. Proudfit (Ed.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Richardson, A. (1997). Romanticism as a Cognitive Category. Romanticism on the Net 8(November): 13 pp. (http://www - sul.stanford.edu/mirrors/romnet/cognitive/html) Accessed 1999 May 8. Roberts, H. (1997). Shelley and the Chaos of History: A New Politics of Poetry. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Roe, N. (1997). John Keats and the Culture of Dissent. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford University Press. Sharafuddin, M. (1994). Islam and Romantic Orientalism: Literary Encounters with the Orient. London: I. B. Tauris; New York: St. Martin's. Super, R. H. (1954a). The Publication of Landor's Works. London: Bibliographical Society. Super, R. H. (1954b). Walter Savage Landor: A Biography. New York: New York University Press. Super, R. H. (1966). Walter Savage Landor. In: C. W. Houtchens & L. H. Houtchens (Eds). The English Romantic Poets and Essayists, (pp. 223-53). New York: New York Univ. Press. Stephen, L., & Lee, S. (Eds). (1959-60). The Dictionary of National Biography. 22 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tilly, C. (1995 ). Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tilly, C. (1997). Roads from Past to Future. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Worden, B. (1991). English Republicanism. In: J. H. Burns & M. Goldie (Eds), The Cambridge History of Political Thought (pp. 44348). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

REVISITING THE SPECTATORIAL GAZE IN FILM Efrat Tse~lon INTRODUCTION "Is the gaze of cultural representation male?" one may ask rephrasing the title of Ann Kaplan's 1983 article. She posits the question against a backdrop of feminist literature based on the comfortable binary assumption of a male voyeur and a female object of vision. Binary notions, even in the academe, have an irresistible appeal. And they certainly prove a popular currency in the culture at large. Time and again they survive critical attempts to deconstruct, problematise, or destabilise them. The present article is one such attempt at rethinking woman and the gaze. Its starting point is an examination of the role of the visual in the construction of female subjectivity. My focus is twofold: I use the term subjectivity to denote both the experiential self, and representational identity. The distinction, however, is not clear-cut as modes of experiencing one's own self hinge on expectations, habitual practices, and discourse which are social in origin, even if experienced as being very personal. I will start by examining the experiential self in order to move on to a certain variant of the representational identity: that which is reflected in the cinema. Freud placed the gaze at the centre of the formation of gender identity, and Lacan privileged the gaze in the formation of the ego. The psychoanalytic mode of interpretation was widely adopted in v,isual culture studies (art, fashion and film). Do the central assumptions of film criticism with regards to gender construction still apply? In

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this essay I'll revisit an analysis I wrote some years ago on the cinematic gaze, to offer some different conclusions. In many studies and interviews I conducted with women on clothes and personal appearance (TseElon, 1989), I came across a prevailing sense of the crucial importance attached to the visual in self formation. This sense could not be simply reduced to concern with clothes, or with making the fight impression in certain contexts, or conforming to expectations. Self conception (and selfworth) seemed to be sensitive to the quality of the gaze the woman felt subjected to. There seemed to be two types of gaze: the impersonal and the scrutinising. The former was almost incidental, the latter deliberate. The impersonal gaze occurred in contexts where the woman felt approved, accepted confident and secure, in short, invisible. The scrutinising gaze occurred in contexts where the woman felt examined, invaded, overshadowed by other people's better presentation, judged, and threatened, in short, visible (TseElon, 1995). This observation was further supported by the results of statistical analysis, multidimensional scaling, which transformed individual criteria offered by different women about their clothing concerns, onto a dimensional space. The solution (see Fig. 1) suggested that the underlying grouping principle was the visibility/anonymity dimension. (The upper left part of the space is made up social situations of the "visible" threatening type; the lower right part of the space lists situations of the secure, "invisible" type). TRADITIONAL

EXPLANATIONS

But how can we explain the constitutive role of the gaze in the woman's self conception? Part of the reason lies with the long standing Western tradition of female representation. John Berger (1972), and feminist art historians (e.g. Pollock, 1988) noted that centuries of Western art have made the female body an object of aesthetic pleasure for the male spectator. More recently, the cinema has been shown to operate similar mechanisms resulting in a reproduction of the woman's specular role. Gaze theory (known as Screen theory, or Apparatus theory) dominated film theory in the 70s. Gaze has been used both literally and metaphorically. Literally it refers to positionality of the camera and the audience. Metaphorically, it refers to subjectivity and identity: a subject position from which a specific individual can speak, look, write, identify or experience pleasure. Gaze theory used a psychoanalytic mode of interpretation as an analytical tool for deconstructing the patriarchal gaze. This was

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influenced by Laura Mulvey's celebrated article (1975) which offered a paradigmatic breakthrough to analysing the relations between gender, pleasure and looking. This article set the tone to developing an orthodoxy of a gendered gaze which is eroticising and controlling. According to Mulvey the cinematic gaze is male on account of the feminine image it constructs, and the mode of pleasure it offers the female viewer (Tse~lon, 1995, p. 68). Mulvey argued that the options of spectatorial pleasure are limited by the nature of the cinematic medium. The viewing of a film, like peeping through a keyhole is an act associated with a voyeuristic pleasure, while the positioning of the image of the woman as an object of male desire in the classic Hollywood cinema (to be idolised, and either conquered or destroyed) - is a form of fetishism. Voyeurism is a conversion of exhibitionistic tendencies from passive pleasure (displaying one's body) to active pleasure in looking. The voyeuristic sadistic look is characterised by a distance between spectator and image allowing the spectator power over image. It is curious, inquiring, demanding to know. Fetishism is one solution to castration anxiety. Trigerred by the sight of female genitals, the threat of female lack is compensated for by a symbolic "penis substitute" (body part or clothing that belongs to the desired person). The fetishistic look does not wish to inquire further, it is captivated by the display and the spectacular. Through a mixture of affirmation and denial, it transforms the object into a satisfying physical beauty. Both fetishism and voyeurism are sexual male perversions representing solutions to unconscious conflicts (Freud, 1927), but as spectatorial positions both exclude the female viewer. Mulvey later revisited her original analysis and concluded that the woman has another spectatorial position available to her: that of a man in woman's clothes (1981). The notion of masquerade to denote the position of the feminine invokes the idea that femininity is a reassuring disguise that the woman assumes in order to disarm the male fear of her power (Doane, 1982; Riviere, 1929). And if the female body is locked into the "masquerade of femininity", the male body is similarly locked into the contrary "masquerade of masculinity". Analysing the Hollywood genre of the Western, Neale observed that no cultural or cinematic convention allows the male body to be displayed solely as an object of visual pleasure. The specular male body is never coded as an object of erotic display. The male body is a spectacle of fear, hatred, or aggression. As soon as it is made into a spectacle of desire, it is marked in the slot reserved for the effeminate and the gay (1983). The assumptions of Gaze theory were initially based on classical Hollywood cinema, but were eventually essentialised paradigmatically to all cinema. Assuming a totalising voice that speaks for the category of "woman" and "man", and a "unitary subject", Gaze theory theorised all desire as male heterosexual, and the woman as just an

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object devoid of a spectatorial position, except in drag. In recent years, such a monolithic, homogenising and heterosexual model of spectatorship which says that the woman can adopt either a male or a transvestite position - came under attack (e.g. Williams, 1994). Most of the critique was articulated from within the psychoanalytic framework. CRITIQUE

OF TRADITIONAL

GAZE THEORY

Critics wondered whether the characterisation of a Hollywood genre can be extended to all cinematic representations, ignoring more specialised niche markets, or indeed, if a perversion can be used metaphorically as a model for psychic functioning in general. Some were concerned about a practice which, seeking to speak in the name of an assumed "idealised" spectator, is leaving out marginalised audiences who are neither male nor white, nor heterosexual, and not middle-class (hooks, 1992; Mayne, 1994). Others suggested that the change in modes of address from cinematic viewing to domestic (TV, video) viewing (where the aesthetics of the glance is replacing the aesthetics of the gaze) has altered the terms of the cinematic experience as to render its effects as obsolete, with the spell of illusionist absorption of the viewer having been broken by a fragmented and contextualised viewing experience (Hansen, 1994). Another issue is fantasy. Fantasy, says Zi~ek (1998), serves as a screen against the direct intrusion of the horror of the Real, conceptualised as the reenactment of the impossible scene of castration: the primordial loss, (through prohibition of incest) of that (mother) which the subject never possessed in the first place. The nature of fantasy, it was argued, cannot be reduced to the literalist assumptions of Mulvey's model (that women can only identify with female screen figures, black men with black male screen figures, etc.). Drawing on "fantasy and the origins of sexuality" by Laplanche and Pontalis (1968/1986) it had been pointed out that fantasy is not confined to a fixed character or position - and it is not the enactment of a single character's desire. Its pleasure comes from the fluidity of moving between a range of desiring positions simultaneously. One of the pleasures of fantasy (Mayne, 1994) (as well as pretend play (Bettelheim, 1972) and transgressive fashion (Tse~lon, 1998) which are absent from Gaze theory, is the secure space from which to act out unacceptable desires (ranging across sadism and masochism) without being socially penalised for them. Queer theory has shown that even the genre of horror movies allows the spectator to shift identification between the passive masochistic spectatorial position (through identification with the female victims) and the voyeuristic sadism (through identification with the monster whose gender identity is ambiguous) (Berenstein,1996; Clover, 1992).

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Also missing from Gaze theory are complex forms of identification, multiple identifications, the plurality, contradiction or resistence that exist among feminine spectators, an active female gaze, and feminist erotica (female pleasure in looking outside of male structures) (e.g. Betterton, 1985, p. 7; Kuhn, 1982, p. 65; Myers, 1988). Finally, the assumption was questioned, that other forms of spectator identity (race, class, age, sexuality) are always built upon the model of sexual difference (Mayne, 1994). Consequently, it has been argued that the analysis of desire needs to be extended beyond heterosexual erotic desire. This would apply to films where the look is constructed between two female characters (Stacey, 1988), or the maternal gaze of mutuality and intimacy (Kaplan, 1983, p. 336) which offer different pleasures to the spectator from those criticised by Mulvey. It would also apply to films where desire is understood outside the strictly erotic scene: for example a desire to see and to know. Indeed, even Mulvey herself has recently allowed the female spectator the active investigative look as a way forward out of the binary impasse (1996). Most of the critique is still framed within the terms of the psychoanalytic equation. So compelling has its paradigmatic gendered assumption of pleasure and control been, that it generated few attempts to move outside it. Transcending Mulvey's formulation requires replacing the binary with the dialectical, the essential with the constructed, and the single with the multiple. As a result, we might be searching for shifting/unstable positions of identity and looking, as well as a wider range of looks than the binary sadistic/ masochistic, active/passive or controlling/controlled.

BINARISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS Elsewhere (TseElon, 1991) I noted that in the distinction that is proposed between the man who is looking and the woman who is being looked at, there is a structural assumption that one position, that of the onlooker, is inherently more powerful than the other. However, a careful examination of the use of 'invisible' and 'visible' shows it to encompass a dialectical rather than a unilateral meaning: invisible as ignored, trivialized = powerless invisible as the source of gaze (i.e. the one who is looking without being looked at) = powerful Similarly visible as objectified = powerless

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visible as prominent, dominant = powerful This formula is very similar to the one produced by Gaze theory where: observer = subject, desiring, masculinised, controlling observed = object, eroticised, feminised, controlled That the power gaze does not inherently belong to the man is best illustrated in the context of courtly love, where the lady is subject to the gaze of her husband and the troubadour. Both males, the meaning of their gaze is nonetheless very different. The gaze of the socially superior husband is that of powerful surveillance. The gaze of the admirer, the troubadour, who is her social inferior is that of the powerless unconsummated desire (Duby, 1992). The challenge to the objectifying gaze can be mounted from other sources. We might ask: is self conception in the light of the look of the Other a uniquely female condition as feminist theory argues? For Mead (1934) and Sartre (1966), we become selves, or subjects, by virtue of our reflexive capacity to become objects to ourselves, to view ourselves from the standpoint of the Other. For Lacan (1973/1981) the gaze represents an object cause of desire (the Other's desire). It is an illusion of wholeness founded on the repression of reality of a split subject. Moreover, it is not a specific Other, but a generalised Other whose gaze we internalise (Lacan's "gaze from the blind spot", Zi2ek, 1996). The generalised Other reflects back to us the imaginary gaze of our reference group. Once we have internalised the gaze of the Other, all of human behaviour can be seen as acting for an audience, and all subjectivity as performance (as Goffman (Tse~lon, 1992) and Performance theory (Butler, 1990; Case, 1992; Hart & Phelan, 1993) would have it). It is only by being an object to the Other's gaze that I become a subject. This is a different notion of objectification from the one advanced by feminist theory where objectification of the woman is viewed as a technology of oppression in patriarchy "female subjectivity is most fully achieved . . . when it is most visible" (Silverman, 1988, p. 164; see also Betterton, 1989; Doane et al, 1984; Kuhn, 1982). Clearly, there is a need for a distinction between two conceptions of objectification that get muddled in feminist theories of spectatorship. One is a conception of objectification which is not just a demeaning state exclusive to women, but a precondition to subjectivity, and which applies to men and women. The other is objectification as a technology of commodity fetishism. "To see objectification in essentialist terms is to deny the possibility of any alternative practice within the representation of women" (Myers, 1988, p. 205).

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FOUCAULDIAN PERSPECTIVE The feminist discourse on the objectifying gaze is premised on Foucault's analysis of the disciplinary gaze articulated in Discipline and Punish (1975). It examines the technology of surveillance developed from the eighteenth century modelled on Bentham's Panopticon (a tower surrounded by a ring of cells. The cells are open to the scrutinising gaze of the supervisor, who is invisible in the tower). The Panopticon principle introduced a new element into power relations. It reversed the principle of the dungeon. Instead of power which is seen, and displayed - a disciplinary conception of power emerges based on invisibility of the subject of power. Can the Panopticon serve as a model for the male gaze? Such analogy has to be qualified. There is nothing to imply that the inspector who occupies the observing function in the tower is permanently lodged there. On the contrary. As a metaphor, the Panopticon is a dynamic figure because while "subtly arranged so that any observer may observe, at a glance, so many different individuals [it] also enables everyone to come and observe any of the observers" (1975, p. 207). And it is Foucault's other conception of power as being inherent not in hegemonic or sovereign power but in relations between groups that is more appropriate for the dynamic conception of power and looking. Power, says Foucanlt operates from multiple positions in the "interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations"(1980, p. 94). It is dynamic "the moving substrate of force relations" (p. 93), and ad-hoc "it is produced from one moment to the next" (ibid). Appropriating this conception of power Denzin goes as far as to broaden the category of the voyeur to include multiple desires (erotic, political, scientific, medical, investigative, criminal, personal) and forms: clinical gaze of the medical practitioner, the psychoanalyst, and the scientist (including archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, physicists, etc.); the accidental, unexpected gaze of the innocent by-stander (including the child); the curious, peering gaze of the tourist; the inquisitive gaze of the apparatus of the law (including the crime detective, the private investigator and the spy); the informational gaze of the journalist (including the reporter and the photographer); the erotic gaze, the violating and violent gaze of the sexual pervert, the stalker, the psychopath, the murderer, and the rapist. Applying his analysis to the category of films he designates as reflexive, he notes that "The trajectory of a gaze, male or female, varies by the context in which it is framed. The emotions produced by the gaze (for the onlooker) range across indifference, shame, pride, fear, hysteria, humility, adoration, pleasure, sexual desire. Looks

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can be open or secretive, commodify or personalise, exalt or dismiss" 1995, p. 5).

SOME EXAMPLES A few years ago, I analysed, together with Kaiser, two films in order to challenge the monolithic notion of power/gaze implied in Gaze theory and to illustrate the gaze as a dynamic concept which implies a two-way mechanism. For that end, we drew on two films which take the theme of the male gaze literally through a depiction of a male voyeur (for details, see Tserlon and Kaiser, 1992; Tse~lon, 1995). These films, Stakeout (1987) and Monsieur Hire (1989) were not produced as feminist films. Even so, we read them as examples of the dynamic essence of the voyeuristic gaze. The analysis of the above movies which I regard as paradigmatic because they actually depict the male voyeur literally (through the male character) can still be criticised. It can be subject to the charge that to read a text against the grain (oppositional or resistive reading) is merely a meaningless intellectual exercise of the privileged few, if performed outside a social context (see Bordo, 1993 pp. 258-265; hooks, 1990). In the remainder of this essay I would like to analyse a contextualised film whose reflexivity and self referentiality are not just projected by the critics, but are actually suggested by the director, and his style. Contemporary filmmaking, says Doane (1991, p. 166) addresses itself to the activity of uncoding, decoding, and deconstructing the habitual coding of filmic images. The Spanish cult movie director Pedro Almod6var is an example par excellance of this kind of reflexive cinema, by his own evidence, that of his critics, the audience who votes with their feet, and of course, the films themselves. I have chosen his film Tacones Lejanos (High Heels) (1991) (although I could have chosen any of his other movies), because as a viewer it elicited in me contradictory emotions towards the characters, and created a space from where I can experience simultaneously identification and distance, absorption and irony. As such, it captures most powerfully the subversive potential inherent even in mainstream cinema. Indeed, as Paul Smith points out (1994), no film by Almod6var has received such contradictory responses as High Heels. The subversive goal of this film is to marshal melodrama's full emotional excess, to eroticise and empower it for those traditionally marginalised under patriarchy, and to liberate the maternal from the dreaded image of the repressive patriarchal mother. The socio-historical context of Almod6var's films is the fault line between Francoist and post-Franco Spain. In that period (since 1975) the country has undergone profound political and social transitions. From social and sexual

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repression that constructed Franco's seamless iconography of monolithic values, to a postmodern deconstruction of those values. Almod6var's films are a product of the history of the youth culture movement Movida which emerged in Madrid after the death of Franco. Almoddvar challenges the conventional family unit, and the morality of the police and the church - the trinity that constituted the bedrock of Francoist mythology (D'Lugo, 1995; Vernon & Morris, 1995). He uses comic selfreflexivity, tongue in cheek humour, absurdity bordering on the grotesque, and irony as a distancing strategy that parodies the spectator's desire for pleasure (and closure), and does not allow to fix any illusion. Juxtaposition of styles and genres, and shots that suspend the narrative flow, is used as a technique for deconstructing fundamental values (Morris, 1995). The motif of sexual ambiguity, that runs through all his work, and the motif of masquerade that run through High Heels problematise gender-based assumptions that form the basis of patriarchal culture. He manages to create a coherent sentimental fiction, while disrupting this coherent fiction's seamless transition from the real to the melodramatic or the surreal. Structurally, it consists of fast-paced fluidity from one genre to another: melodrama, crime detective novel, comedy, soft porn, horror (where the monster signifying the dissolution of sexual difference and stable gender traits is neither man nor woman), musical (the dance routine in prison), and Women's films. Thematically, it contains too many disguises, imitations and masquerades to allow anyone any stable and consistent viewing position. It is thus subtly reflexive. This subtlety was lost on some of Almod6var's critics, who accused him of appeal to misogynistic reproduction of patriarchal stereotypes (neurotic career woman and sacrificial mother) harking back on the melodramatic maternal woman's films from the first half of the century (Kaplan, 1987). But it has been picked up by others who applauded it for its feminist deconstruction of gender categories (Smith, 1994). (Almod6var himself explains: "It's very dangerous to see my films with conventional morality. I have my own morality. And so do my f i l m s . . . I don't try to be realistic, it's very abstract, so you don't feel identification with the things that are happening... I try t o . . . get emotional identification with the problem . . . which lies behind the facade of absurdity" Kinder, 1987, p. 42, 39). However, the sophistication of his themes and techniques was not lost on his audience, certainly not the Spanish audience. His spectacular success (internationally but especially) in Spain is particularly significant. Despite reluctant official backing, unenthusiastic critical reception, a film industry in crisis, and habitual consumption and preference for American films, he gradually managed to occupy a mainstream mass entertainment position for

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work which initially appealed to more selective artsy audiences (Rolph, 1995). The secret of his success appears to be the touching of a real chord in his contemporary audience "I think my films are contemporary" says Almod6var. "They represent more than others, I suppose, the new Spain, this kind of new mentality that appears in Spain after Franco dies" (Kinder, 1987, p. 36). The contemporary tone is characterised by resisting marginalisation, by the mixture of humour and surrealism, and by apolitical characters who are pursuing hedonistic pleasure rather than power (ibid, p. 34). Almod6var does not only engage in deconstuction and problematisation: he also reformulates cultural and sexual identities and values as well as rewriting the social and moral logic of the past (D'Lugo, 1995). This he achieves by appropriating the language of the old order and turning it against against itself to constitute a new Spanishness: the family, the church, the police the embodiment of traditional patriarchal order are now the agents of ushering in new cultural desires. Thus his "new sensitive policeman" is the androgynous hero, just as in his other films the cops are untypically tender-hearted souls who identify with those marginalised under patriarchy. In this way, Almod6var subverts dominant ideology by realigning the centre with the marginal.

HIGH HEELS The film is about a reunion in Madrid of Rebecca, a TV news anchor in a station owned by her husband Manuel, and her absentee actress and singer mother Becky, who abandoned her 15 years previously to pursue her career in Mexico leaving a gaping hole of betrayal and longing in the midst of Rebecca's psyche. It is structured around a theme of parting and loss: a mother who breaks away, a daughter who adores and longs for intimacy and closeness. Becky is marked through self possessiveness that is expressed in her greater concern with her appearance and needs than with the emotional well-being of her daughter, or in making love to Rebecca's husband, who is an old flame of hers. On the night of her arrival, Becky accompanies Rebecca and Manuel to a cabaret show of femme Letal who impersonates Becky's pop period. Letal, it turns out, is a friend of Rebecca who used to watch his performances whenever she missed her mother. After the show, Rebecca goes backstage with him and they make love. Soon after, Manuel is found shot in his bed, and Judge Dominguez who investigates the case interrogates three women who visited him on the night before the murder: Becky, Rebecca, and Isabel (who 'signs' the news for the deaf with Rebecca on TV). All three women deny the charge.

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Later, when reading the news R e b e c c a confesses the murder on-air, is arrested, and following a confrontation with her mother where she blames the murder on her, she is released. W h i l e in prison, she also discovers that Letal is a drug dealer, Hugo, who befriends w o m e n and deserts them. She also learns that he is actually a police informer. In the end Judge D o m i n g u e z turns out to be Eduardo, who disguises as Letal and Hugo as part o f his investigative police work. H e proposes to Rebecca, who is already pregnant with his child. Soon after, Becky collapses on the stage during a performance from a heart disease that she concealed for years. On her death-bed, having learnt that R e b e c c a was the murderer, B e c k y decides to give her daughter a gift o f life: her fingerprints on the gun that killed Manuel after confessing to his murder. She dies in her childhood flat where she asked to be taken into, just as R e b e c c a is recounting the meaning of high heels for her: the reassuring sign from her childhood, that her mother was back home. R e b e c c a collapses on the b e d beside her dead mother, crying. The film is replete with examples of gaze episodes which m o c k filmic conventions. The object o f the gaze is constantly shifting, sometime looks back, in disguise, and viewing positions keep changing. The first e x a m p l e in the airport, and later in the taxi illustrates the different meanings that R e b e c c a and B e c k y attach to the public anonymous gaze. For B e c k y who is performing all her waking time, the public gaze is constitutive, for R e b e c c a it is intrusive. W h e n B e c k y arrives glamorous in a red wide b r i m m e d hat, she is very concerned to know if the m e d i a is present. Her long absence from her daughter seems like a secondary concern. Making her face up her image is blurred in the mirror, she asks: Becky: a prop6sito hay muchos periodistas afuera? (by the way, are there many journalists outside?) Rebecca: ni uno, no te preoccupes, no he querido que nadie se enterara del da en que llegabas. (don't worry, not a single one. I didn't want anyone to bother you on the day of your arrival) Becky: (with surprised indignation) porque? no soy una apestada (why not? I'm not infectious) Rebecca: pens6 que preferirias que no hubiera foll6n (I thought you'd prefer not to have commotion) Becky: pero hombre, no todos los das regresa una a su pas despu6s de tantos afios, no todos los das me pongo un sombrero como 6ste, esperaba un poco m~isexpectaci6n (but really, not every day that one returns to one's country after so many years, not every day that I wear this hat, I was expecting a bit more excitement) Rebecca: Yo te esperaba con mucha expectacidn.

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(I was waiting for you with a lot of excitement) Becky: Ah! es verdad tesoro, perd6name, es el jet-lag. (Oh, of course, forgive me, it's the jet-lag) Next in the taxi, when she comments how the city has changed Rebecca says Rebecca: Hay partes que no vas a reconocer (there are parts that you will not recognise) Becky: Ya veo, ya. lo que me preocupa es que esta ciudad no me reconozca a mr. (I've already seen. What concerns me is that the city will not recognise me) Becky is clearly validated by the public gaze of recognition and adulation, and its absence, where she has made an effort to be a spectacle is annoying to her. In the absence of this gaze she feels obsolete, non existent. Her image in the mirror is similarly blurred. The theatre director Peter Brook defines the relationship between actors and audience as "it is hard to understand the true function of spectator, there and not there, ignored and yet needed. The actor's work is never for an audience, yet always is for one. The onlooker is a partner who must be forgotten and still constantly kept in mind" (1968), p. 51). Her daughter's gaze, despite the apologetic rhetoric she uses, is not the kind of gaze she courts. Next, in the taxi, Rebecca realises that her mother's agent is taking notes of their conversation for Becky's autobiography that she is writing. Rebecca is concerned Rebecca: salgo yo? (am I in it?) Becky: pues claro, eres mi hija. porque preguntas eso? (well of course, you are my daughter, why do you ask?) Rebecca: no me gustar~a clue mJ vida salga en un libro que qualquiera puede leer. (I don't like my life to be in a book anyone can read.) In many places the staple voyeuristic poses are twisted, moved about and recast in a different mold. I'll mention two examples of straight-forward gaze scenario, and two metaphorical ones of the voyeur as inquisitive. The first two are Letal's drag show and Rebecca's TV newsreading. The last two are of the inquisitive look of the representative of state control (investigating judge) and church control (confessional priest). Both are institutions that Almod6var critiques habitually. For example when Letal performs on stage as Becky, three sets of eyes are gazing upon him rather differently. Manuel's look is of derision of the m o c k Becky and desire of the real Becky. Becky is absorbed in the music in a narcissistic fascination. Rebecca's look is a combination o f pride (in her friend), approval seeking (of her mother) and apprehension as she casts her glance from m a m a to Manuel having detected the illicit liaison between them. After the show when Letal joins them, Manuel is clearly ill at ease. W h e n Rebecca introduces him to Letal he inquires

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Manuel: Letal es masculino o feminino? ("Letal" is masculine or feminine?) The camera follows his gaze to Letal's crotch. Letal notices, slowly and emphatically closes his legs together and straightens his skirt in a stated "feminine" gesture. The camera then follows his look which is cast on Manuel's belt at the point where he hid his own revolver. Manuel moves his hand uncomfortably to conceal the weapon behind the lapel of his jacket. Only after this mutual exchange of gazes which reveals Manuel to be just as vulnerable (if not more so) as Letal to the penetrating gaze, Letal delivers his ambiguous reply Letal: depende, para tf, soy un hombre. (depends. For you I am a man) He straightens his hair in a feminine manner, tilts his head slightly and downcasts his eyes demurely while gazing steadily which is showing him to be evidently in control. The next type of gaze scenario feature Rebecca's newsreading. Women reading the news is a problematic issue in a patriarchal society because so often women's right to speak in public is diverted by attention to their looks. Framed within her femininity she cannot help being poised for the pleasure of the onlooker. A woman signals sexuality, subjectivity and triviality which represent the antithesis of news values, and detract from the objective authoritative news discourse (Holland, 1996, p. 440). There are two episodes where Rebecca reads the news, in both of them she uses the medium inappropriately, confirming the stereotype of the woman who trivialises the medium by bringing in emotionality and domesticity. Rebecca does just that, but with a difference. In the first episode her nervousness that her mother may be watching her causes her to giggle in the most inappropriate places. Here the power of the gaze that matters is that of a judgemental mother. It is not the newscaster anxious about presenting herself as a spectacle. It is about the newscaster worried about not living up to her mother's expectations. In the second episode she is again misusing the medium, turning it into an instrument of personal message, confession and manipulation. The sequence starts off on a serious note, and ends with the grotesque. Rebecca first reads the news in an objective detached "newsreading manner", soon she begins to depart from the script, and abolishes the distance between her and the viewers by talking about the murdered station owner as "her husband". Finally, she reestablishes distance by recasting herself as the Other. She confesses on-air to his killing and proceeds to show photos she took of the house as mementoes. But by disrupting the news reading in such a manner and by being arrested on

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the scene in front of the viewers, she herself becomes part of the news. In some sense, she thus assumes control of the entire situation, and command of the look. She forces the medium to acknowledge her not as a passive newsreader but as an active newsmaker. Two types of voyeurs represent the institutions of old regime that Almoddvar's comic portrayal targets. Almod6var positions the once traditional centre powers in marginalised spaces. Thus the church and the police are mobilised to valorise those (once decadent, frowned upon) sexual activities and marginalised social behaviour they once were instrumental in repressing. Their gaze is intercepted by being forever inverted, destabilised, ridiculed. The official gaze of the judge, for example, is parodied in the scene where together with two police reporters they try to agree a version describing Manuel's body. The scene starts with a twist on the the murder mystery narrative where female dead body is a ubiquitous trope. Many films hinge on an investigative process triggered by the discovery of a dead female body, a metaphorical investigation of the enigma of the woman. In Almod6var's High Heels, however, this trope is parodically inverted when the dead body is male, and the police reporters act in a non-gendered typed manner. (A similar comic device has been employed by the director David Lynch in Twin Peaks where he places the police photographer who has to shoot the body of Laura Palmer in an inappropriately emotional space. On recognising the murdered, the photographer bursts in tears and has to be calmed down by the police inspector to be able to carry out his job). In High Heels the image of the corpse is not available for the fetishistic gaze so typical of murder mysteries of female murder cases (Bronfen, 1992, identifies the popularity of an aesthetic unity between a beautiful woman and death as part of the cultural fascination with the maternal body coded as both a site of visual pleasure, and as a threatening lack. The image of the beautiful dead woman masks the horror of death and functions as a form of defence, a fetishistic denial of the fact of our mortality). Instead, we hear the policemen argue about the description of the corpse without actually seeing it . They examine the dead body in order to corroborate a report. The judge starts with a statement that: Judge: E1 cad~iverde Don Manuel S~inchezyace sobre la cama en posici6n de cfibitolateral Tiene el pelo castafiooscnro. (The cadaverof Don Manuel Sfinchez lay on his bed in position decubito lateral... It has dark brown hair). Policeman 1: castafioclara, sefiorJuez, (light brown, your honour) •

.

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Judge: Castafio clara con entradas, (light brown with receding hairline) Measuring the body with his eyes he estimates Judge: mide aproximadamente un metro ochenta (approximate height one metre eighty) Policeman 1: algo menos, es uno setenta y ocho (slightly less. one meter seventy eight) Policeman 2: Yo creo que algo m~is. (I think slightly more) the judge considers a happy medium Judge: pues uno ochenta (well, meter eighty then) y estfi vestido con un pijama de seda roja (and is wearing a pyjamas of red silk) Policeman 1: de sat6n cereza (cherry-coloured satin) Judge (agrees): sat6n cereza What creates the comic effect is not just the contrast between the lax method of verifying facts (e.g. height) and the argument about minute details of measurement. It is also the fact that it is the policeman who is placed in a space usually reserved for the feminine: attention to details, and fine observation of colour tones and hues. The other official voyeur represents the church: he is the confessional priest who is rushed to Becky's bedside in a scene which starts serious and ends ironical. But he is unable to enforce on her the ordinary power equations. She confesses, but does not regret. Thus the gaze of the confession priest comes up against a mirror which reflects back to him the vacuousness of his values and assumptions. W h e n the priest tries to alert her to the seriousness of her daughter's crime and her own cover-up, she diffuses his logic by maintaining that she wishes to be absolved of the misery she caused others, not the one good thing she has committed. She adds that it fills her with joy to be helpful to her daughter in her death, given that she was so useless for her in her life. Becky thus returns the priest's moralising gaze by offering a pragmatic criterion for morality that judges an action by its intentions and consequences, not by some rigid absolute criteria that pass for piety. In High Heels problematising of gender categories, traditional institutions and practices are encapsulated by the figure of the judge (whose "real" name is Eduardo) ambiguously positioned in the simultaneous space of the maternal, the sexual, and the legal: all in disguise. His close alignment with the masquerade goes beyond his drag act. "for me there is ambiguity in justice" says Almod6var "and that's why I have given it to the character of the judge. I d o n ' t know what the face of justice is - sometimes it's masculine, sometimes

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it's feminine - that is where ambiguity resides: in questions of morality" (Morgan, 1992, p. 29). Eduardo does not allow the viewer the comfort of a stable viewing position. He assumes many incompatible identities: the representative of law and order, a deviant (drug dealer), and a marginalised one (drag artist). In the official capacity (the investigative judge) he is a state official voyeur, in the deviant capacity he is an official under-cover voyeur (police informers) who gazes at people when they are unaware. In the female capacity he is an object of a gaze, with a twist. Having revealed his multi-persona to Rebecca and asked her to marry him, she responds, confused Rebecca: Me quieres explicar qu6 significa todo esto? (Can you explain to me all this?) Eduardo: He venido para eso, para explicarte. Para pedirte que te cases conmigo. (I've come to explain to you, to ask you to marry me) Rebecca: (slapping his face only to remove his false beard, cries in frustration) con quien? con Hugo? con Letal? con el juez? (with whom? with Hugo? with Letal? with the judge? Eduardo: Con los tres (with all three) Not only is it indicated that Eduardo actually enjoys his string of impersonations (as is evident, for example, from the fact that he identifies with them). In response to Rebecca's question with w h o m she should marry he answers: "con los tres") - we are even denied the illusion that the judge is the stable identity that anchors the slippage of all others. In the "disclosure" scene it turns out that even for his "real" identity he wears a false beard, a mask that he assumes in front of his mother as well. Nor can we be sure about his gender identity. He represents the law but he is a sensitive maternal kind of detective. W h e n he impersonates Becky advertising himself as "the real Becky" one wonders who is more real, the mother whose incessant acting aligns her with the feminine, whose narcissism aligns her with the child, but whose career preference over her parental role aligns her with the masculine? To confound matters further, Becky's facial features are more "masculine" than Letal's "feminine" gentle ones, which makes her look more of a parody o f a woman, than he does. He is a mixture of the feminine and the masculine. Eduardo is a surprising kind of police detective, subtle, sensitive, trusting, humane. His investigative gaze is far from being intrusive: he seems to accept on mast very absurd alibis, and to ignore indicting ones. When Rebecca says that the two contradictory versions she gave (that she killed, and that she didn't kill Manuel) are both true, he responds by saying that he is not a psychiatrist,

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and does not probe further. When he asks her about the threats to Manuel's life that she mentioned in her public confession, Rebecca answers, quite comically, that they were from her. He ignores this information in the same dignified manner that he takes on face value what the other two suspects say in the investigation. Becky says that one wouldn't murder one's daughter's husband two days before one's gala performance, and Isabel, similarly concerned about her publicity, says that it is one thing to go to bed with a man and quite another matter to kill him. His investigative gaze is neither curious and voyeuristic, nor fetishistic. The figure of the judge is further complicated by the allusion to the (inversion of the) uncanny "double". The double is the literary and mythologic expression of one's gaze upon oneself. In Freud's reflections on the uncanny (1926), the familiar stranger, one meets someone exactly like oneself, the encounter with one's double, and the encounter turns out to be fatal. "The double displays the ambiguity of narcissistic recognition: the mirror image is simultaneously self and other. It is close to the core like "self' and is threatening like "other". Dolar calls it "the dissociation of the gaze and recognition" (1996, p. 136). I cannot recognise myself and at the same time be one with myself. The pleasure of ultimate wholeness can be achieved by unity with the double, by privileging the most perfect narcissistic object, myself, to "objective" (non narcissistic) reality with its imperfect substitutes. As long as I love myself most, I cannot love others. But merging with one's double means death, as in the myth of narcissus. In High Heels, Letal is a parody on the double of Becky, herself a parody of narcissism. He existed for Rebecca as an imperfect mother substitute (Lacan's "objet petit a") as long as Becky was away, but he makes a comeback for one last performance, this time dressed as the current Becky. Textually, the emergence of Letal (whose name means "lethal") spells lethal consequences for Becky. The scene where he sings to Rebecca "Piensa en mi" (the romantic love song Becky dedicated to her) as a prelude to proposing to her, is framed between a scene where Becky is making up in preparation for getting on stage, and between the announcement of Becky's collapse on stage during that performance (which would lead to her subsequent death, a few days later). The double, says Dolar, produces two kinds of effects: he arranges things so they turn out badly for the subject, (like turning up at the most inappropriate moments), but on the other hand realises the subject's hidden or repressed desires. In the end, the relation gets unbearable so the subject is compelled to kill the double, and in so doing kills himself (Dolar, 1996, p. 136). Was Letal Becky's alter ego in his treatment of Rebecca, or did he represent her secret desires?

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These interpretations take us into the literary and the symbolic, but they, too, reiterate the point that the gaze in this film is never simple or straight-forward; rather it is complex, multi-perspectival and highly contextual, one that resists fixity and escapes closure. The authenticity and stability of the gaze are undermined alongside the very identity of the characters. Every character in the movie inhabits simultaneously more than one speaking position ranging from the powerful to the powerless, and from the observer to the observed. Almod6var's challenge to the equation of power and gender with gaze renders it ever more tenuous. So the answer to the question with which I started this article is that the filmic gaze seems to evade easy binary fixing of spectatorial positions. This is evident not only in oppositional readings (as a pure intellectual indulgence on the part of the reader), but also in the craft of filmmaking itself, especially (but not exclusively) in reflexive cinema. This can be easily discernible in the shift of the gaze for whom the object of desire is staged in drag. If classic transvestite movies such as Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire or l~ctor/Victoria never destablised the heterosexuality of its characters, in The Crying G a m e this comfortable position is disrupted (see van Lenning, Maas & Leeks, forthcoming). What I tried to argue by using Almod6var's film(s) as an exemplary case is that the practice of disrupting ideological visual habits is not simply a reading offered by the critic, but is part of the director's stated aim, and the spectators too.

REFERENCES Berenstein, R. J. (1996). Spectatorship-As-Drag:Re-Dressing Classic Horror Cinema. In: Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema

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Denzin, N. K. (1995). The Cinematic Society: the Voyeur's Gaze. London: Sage. D'Lugo, M. (1995). Almod6var's City of Desire. In: K. M. Vernon & B. Morris (Eds). PostFranco, Postrnodern: the Films of Pedro Almod6var (pp. 125-144). (Contributions to the study of Popular Culture, no. 43). Greenwood. Doane, M. A. (1982). Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator. Screen, 23, 74-87. Doane, M. A., Mellencamp, P., & Williams, L. (Eds.), (1984). Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Fi#n Criticism. Los Angeles: American Film Institute. Doane, M. A. (1991). Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Dolar, M. (1996). At First Sight. In: R. Salecl & S. Zi2ek (Eds), Gaze and Voice as Love Objects (pp. 129-153). Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. Duby, G. (1992). The Courtly Model (translated by A. Goldhammer). In: C. Klapisch-Zuber (Ed.), A History of Women in the West, Vol. 2: Silences of the Middle Ages (pp. 250-266). London: Harvard University Press. Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. NY: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1977). Language, Counter-Memor3; Practice. Translated by D. E Bouchard and S. Simon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1980). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Translated by R. Hurley. NY: Vintage. Freud, S. (1926). The 'uncanny', Standard Edition, vol 17: 219-252. Freud, S. (1927). Fetishism, Standard Edition, vol. 21, 152-157. Hansen, M. (1994). Early Cinema, Late Cinema: Transformations of the Public Sphere. In: L. Williams (Ed.), Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (pp. 134-152). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Hart, L., & Phelan, P. (Eds). (1993). Acting Out: Feminist Performances. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Holland, P. (1996). When a Woman Reads the News. In: P. Morris & S. Thornham (Eds), Media Studies: a Reader (pp. 438-445). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. hooks, b. (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation. London: Turnaround. hooks, b. (1990). Yearning. Boston: South End Press. Kaplan, A. E. (1983). Is the Gaze Male? In: A. Snitow, C. Stansell & S. Thompson (Eds). Desire: the Politics of Sexuality (pp. 321-338). London: Virago. Kaplan, A. E. (1987). Mothering, Feminism, and Representation: the Maternal in Melodrama and the Woman's Film 1910-40. In: C. GledhiU (Ed.). Home is Where the Heart is (pp. 113137). London. Kinder, M. (1987). A Conversation with Pedro Atmod6var, Film Quarterly, 41, 33-44. Kinder, M. (1995). From Matricide to Mother Love in Almod6var's High Heels. In: K. M. Vernon & B. Morris (Eds). Post-Franco, Postmodern: the Films of Pedro Almod6var (pp. 145153). (Contributions to the study of Popular Culture, no. 43). Greenwood. Kuhn, A. (1982). Women's Pictures: Feminism and the Cinema. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lacan, J. (1981). The Line and Light and What is a Picture. In: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (pp. 91-119). Translated by A. Sheridan. New York: Norton. Laplanch, J. & Pontalis, J-B. (1968) (1986). Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 1-18. Reprinted in V. Burgin, J. Donald & C. Kaplan (Eds), Formations of fantasy. London: Routledge.

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