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Theory of Cultural Performance

Rite,
ò R & r m ,

f e s t i v a l ,

spectàcLe
Rehearsals Toward a Theory of
Cultural Performance

Edited by
John J. MacAloon
Based on the conviction that cultural per­
form ances are “more than entertainment,
didactic formulations, or cathartic indul­
gen ce s,” this fascinating collection of
studies examines performative events as
distinct systems of meaning and as modes
by which cultural and historical orders are
constituted and reworked. Reflecting the
new possibilities for collaboration among
social scientists and humanists brought
about by studies of performance, the ten
contributors— including renowned anthro­
pologists, historians, and scholars of litera­
ture and drama— here consider a wide
variety of forms and events. These range in
type from exorcisms to stage plays, cha­
rivaris to detective stories, carnivals to ath­
letic competitions, and in setting from
medieval Japan, seventeenth-century
France, and Elizabethan England to pres­
ent-day Pueblo Indian, Sri Lankan, Brazil­
ian, and American Jewish communities.
Building on the classic contributions of
Victor Turner, Milton Singer, Kenneth
Burke, Gregory Bateson, and Erving Goff-
man, the contributors take up fresh theoret­
ical questions such as the effect of genre on
experience, reflexivity among actors and
audiences, and relationships between text
and performance as cultural objects and
root metaphors of interpretation. Each
 Rite, Drama,
Festival, Spectacle
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 R ite,
Drama ,
Festival ,
Rehearsals Toward a Theory of
Cultural Performance

Edited by
JohnJ. MacAloon

I_ L

A Publication of the
Institute for the Study o f Human Issues
ISHI Philadelphia
This book is dedicated to the memory o f
Harold Rosenberg and Victor W. Turner

Copyright © 1984 by ISHI,

Institute for the Study o f Human Issues, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
N o part o f this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means including information
storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
brief passages in a review.
Manufactured in the United States o f America
12 3 4 5 88 87 86 85 84

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:
Rite, drama, festival, spectacle.
Papers from the 76th Burg Wart£nstein Symposium,
sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthro­
pological Research.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Festivals— Congresses. 2. Rites and ceremonies—
Congresses. I. M acAloon, John J. II. Institute for
the Study o f Human Issues. III. Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research. IV. Title: Cultural
performance.
GT3930.R57 1983 790.2 83-8516
ISB N 0-89727-045-2

For information, write:

Director o f Publications
ISHI
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
U .S .A .
 Contributors

B arbara A. B a b c o c k is Associate Professor of English at the University of

Arizona. She received her advanced degrees in com parative literature from
the University of Chicago, where she was also a Special Fellow in A n ­
thropology. She has been a W eatherhead Fellow at the School of American
R esearch and a M em ber of the School of Social Science at the Institute of
A dvanced Study. H e r publications on narrative theory, modes of reflexivity,
ethnoaesthetics, and folk art include The Reversible World: Essays in S y m ­
bolic Inversion (1978), Signs A b o u t Signs: The Semiotics o f Self-Reference
(1980), and Clay Changes: Helen Cordero and the Pueblo Stoiyteller (1983).
R oberto D a M is Professor of Anthropology at the M useu Nacional in
atta

Rio de Janeiro. H e has also taught at H arvard, w here he took his Ph.D ., and
at W isconsin-M adison and Berkeley. His fieldwork among the Ge-speaking
peoples of Brazil has resulted most recently in A Divided World: A pinaye
Social Structure (1983). An English translation of his Carnavais, Malandros
e Herois will shortly appear from Cambridge University Press, and he is
currently featured in a television series, “We the Brazilians.”

N atalie Zemon D is H enry Charles L e a Professor of H istory at

avis

Princeton University. She is the author of Society and Culture in Early

M odern France (1975), The Return o f Martin Guerre: Im posture a n d Id e n ­
tity in Sixteenth -C entu iy Village (1983), and of numerous essays on the
social and cultural history of early modern Europe.
B ruce K is Foundation Professor of Anthropology at the U niver­
apferer
sity of Adelaide, Australia. He has done extensive fieldwork in Central
Africa and South Asia and has published numerous essays on social theory
and cultural forms. His recent books include Transaction and M eaning
(1976) and A Celebration o f D em on s (1983).
H ilda K is Em eritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of
uper

California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. from the London School of
Economics and carried out extensive research in Swaziland and a Durban
Hindu com m unity in the Republic of South Africa. She is the author of A n
African Aristocracy: R a n k A m o n g the Sw azi (1947), Bite o f Hunger: A

v
VI Contributors
N o v e l o f Africa (1965), an anthropological play A Witch in M y Heart
(1970), and So b h u za II, N g w e n y a m a and King o f Swaziland (1978).
J o h n J. M is Associate Professor of Social Sciences at the U niver­
acA loon

sity of Chicago, w here he received his Ph.D. He has been a Danforth F o u n ­

dation and Mellon Foundation Fellow and has also taught at the University
of California, San Diego. He is the author of This Great Sym bol: Pierre de
Coubertin a n d the Origins o f the Modern Olympic G am es (1981) and of
essays on international sport, cultural performance theory, and the an­
thropology of the nation-state.
S o p h i a S. M holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the U niver­
organ
sity of Michigan and has taught com parative literature and semiotics at the
University of Colorado. A native of Greece, she has lectured extensively on
literature, semiotic theory, and Italian and French Renaissance painting.
She is the author of The L e g e n d o f A lexander o f M acedon, a critical study
and translation of the epic, and her articles have appeared such journals as
Fifteenth Century Studies and East European Studies.
B arbara M yerhoffis Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Southern California. She took her advanced degrees from the University of
Chicago, where she was a W oodrow Wilson Fellow, and the University of
California, Los Angeles. She is co-editor, with Sally Falk M oore, of S y m b o l
an d Politics in C o m m u n a l Ideology (1975) and Secular Ritual: Form and
M eanings (1977), and the author of Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey o f the
Huichol Indians (1974) and N u m b e r Our Days (1978). With Lynne Littman
she won an A cadem y Award for the docum entary film N u m b e r Our Days.
V W. T u r n e r was William R. K enan Jr. Professor of Anthropology at
ictor
the University of Virginia. He served as chairman of the Committee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago and also taught at Cornell
University and the University of M anchester, where he received his Ph.D.
Among his works are The Forest o f S ym bols (1967), The Ritual Process
(1969), D ramas, Fields, and M etaphors (1974), Im age and Pilgrimage (with
Edith Turner, 1977), P ro c e ss , P e rfo rm a n c e , and Pilgrimage (1980), and
Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (1982).
F rank W. W a d s w o r t h is Professor of Literature at the State University of
N e w York at Purchase, where he was for many years Vice-President for
Academic Affairs. He has also taught at the University of California, Los
Angeles, at Princeton University, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is
currently Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the W enner-Gren F o u n d a ­
tion for Anthropological Research. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has
published works on Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists as well as
on modern literature.
 Contents

Introduction: Cultural Performances, Culture Theory

John J. MacAloon

I
SO C IA L D RAM AS & STAGE D RAM AS

Liminality and the Performative Genres

Victor Turner
Charivari, Honor, and Community in Seventeenth-Centiuy
Lyon and Geneva
Natalie Zemon Davis
“Rough M usic” in The Duchess o f Malfi: Webster s Dance o f
Madmen and the Charivari Tradition
Frank W. Wadsworth

II
TEXTS & PERFORM ANCES

Borges's “Im mortal”: Metaritual, Metaliterature,

Metaperformance
Sophia S. Morgan
Arrange Me into Disorder: Fragments and Reflections on
Ritual Clowning
Barbara A. Babcock
The Diviner and the Detective
Hilda Kuper
V lll

III
A C T O R S , A U D IE N C E S & REFLEX IV IT Y

A Death in Due Time: Construction o f S e lf and Culture in

Ritual Drama 149
Barbara G. Myerhoff
The Ritual Process and the Problem o f Reflexivity in
Sinhalese Demon Exorcisms 179
Bruce Kapferer
Carnival in Multiple Planes 208
Roberto Da Matta
Olympic Games and the Theory o f Spectacle in Modern
Societies 241
John J. MacAloon

Acknowledgments

1 would like to thank Lita O sm undsen for her judicious organization of the
Seventy-sixth Burg W artenstein Symposium and for her technical assistance
during the preparation of this volume. All of the contributors are grateful to
the W enner-G ren Foundation for Anthropological Research for awarding a
grant to assist its publication. Throughout our discussions at Burg W arten ­
stein, John O sm undsen enlightened us with relevant materials from the natu­
ral sciences, and Beverly Stoeltje served ably as rapporteuse. Victor and
Edith T urner hosted a followup meeting that clarified our collective goals,
and T anya Sugarman MacAloon and Sophia S. Morgan gave me valuable
editorial advice. Finally 1 extend thanks to the Institute for the Study of
H um an Issues and to the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, University of
Chicago, for their editorial and clerical support.

John J. M a cA loon
 Introduction: Cultural Performances,
Culture Theory

Jo h n J . MacAloon

This volume is the result of the Seventy-sixth Burg W artenstein Symposium,

sponsored by the W enner-G ren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
As a record of the proceedings, this book is incomplete, for the contributions
of Paul Bouissac, Alfonso Ortiz, Mihai Pop, Jerom e Rothenberg, Richard
Schechner, and Beverly Stoeltje are not included here. M oreover, we have
not discovered a way to reproduce the staged and spontaneous perfo rm ­
ances created and witnessed by the participants away from the more familiar
setting of the conference ta b le.1
Goethe once w rote that “the man of action is always ruthless, only the
ob server has a con sc ie n ce .” Impressed upon us day after day at Burg W a r­
tenstein were the jarring ruthlessness and the moral illumination p roper both
to active perform ance and to sober academic reflection on the perform ances
of others. This exploration of intellectual topics in deed as well as in word
made this symposium unique for most of us. With com m endable foresight
and imagination, the organizers, Barbara Babcock, Barbara Myerhoff, and
Victor Turner, designed this unusual approach into the agenda for delibera­
tion.
We were asked to assume that cultural performances “are more than
entertainm ent, more than didactic or persuasive formulations, and more
than cathartic indulgences. They are occasions in which as a culture or
society we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths
and history, present ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in
some ways while remaining the same in o th e rs .” The conferees were asked
to consider cultural perform ances in such a way as to bridge and transcend
such conventional dichotomies as oral and written, public and private, doing
and thinking, primitive and modern, sacred and secular, “p o p ” and “ high,”
ludic and tragic. We were challenged to develop typologies and historical
sequences of performative genres, to judge the possibility of cross-cultural
comparison, to evaluate existing analytical concepts, and to search for new

1
2 Introduction
conceptual tools for the investigation of performative events. Finally, we
w ere urged by our conveners to keep in mind the need to relate expressive
culture to ongoing and emergent processes of social action and relations.
Such a program would have been daunting enough for a small group of
investigators with shared regional, temporal, or topical expertise. O ur group
was anything but this. Together with Lita O sm undsen of W enner-G ren, the
organizers assem bled a sizable international group of anthropologists, liter­
ary critics, folklorists, a historian, a semiotician and impresario, a dramatist
and stage director, a novelist, poets, and an ethnopoetician— participant
observers and o bserver participants preoccupied with many kinds of cultural
perform ance.
All of the conferees share a commitment to the contem porary un der­
standing of culture as a “ system of symbols and their meanings” .2 On more
particular theoretical and methodological grounds, however, there is much
variation in approach. On the focal topic, we are in accord that perform ance
is constitutive o f social experience and not something merely additive or
instrumental. But exactly how and how much it is constitutive remain for us
subjects of feverish and fertile debate. Its expansive design and heterogen­
ous m em bership meant that the symposium could not aim at theoretical
synthesis. M ore importantly, how ever, the conferees recognize that the
study of cultural perform ance is in, as yet, a “preparadigmatic” stage. Our
goal was to serve general theory precisely by avoiding prem ature closure on
any issue. We took cross-fertilization rather than final harvest as the m ea­
sure of success.
One such “germinal c ro ss ” is represented in the subtitle of this book.
Richard S c h e c h n e r’s insistence on the importance of the rehearsal process
caused the anthropologists at the meeting to rethink their discipline’s tradi­
tional emphasis on the finished perform ance.3 An analogous process takes
place in theory-building. While each of the essays in this volume is a
“finished” treatm ent of a particular genre, episode, or style of expressive
culture, as an aggregate they represent rehearsals toward a general theory of
cultural perform ance. They aim to present insights that can contribute to a
general theory in the future.
Yet despite their diverse subject m atter and their theoretical caution,
we believe the reader will discover a striking continuity in these essays. We
take this convergence as further evidence that much “out th e re ” in the world
responds distinctively to the cultural performance approach. Dell H ym es
has coined the phrase “breakthrough into perform ance” to describe the p as­
sage of hum an agents into a distinctive “ mode of existence and realization.”4
“ B reakthrough into perform ance” equally well configures certain initially
independent intellectual developments in the 1950s that have served as foun­
dations for the now rapidly expanding and coalescing interests in the study
of cultural forms exemplified by this volume. No historian of ideas has yet
attended to the complicated history of the performative approach. The fol­
lowing remarks are meant only to orient the unfamiliar reader to the issues,
Cultural Perform ances, Culture Theory 3
problems, and themes treated by the contributors to this volume and to
suggest a few of the paths that crisscross their essays.

CULTURAL PERFORMANCE:
CONCEPT A N D CONTEXTS

In Schism and Continuity, his now classic monograph on the N d em bu p e o ­

ple, Victor T u rn er proposed the concept of “ social d ra m a ” as a useful d e ­
scriptive and analytical tool when used in conjunction with more orthodox
techniques of social a n th ro p o lo g y / In this work, as T urner later described it,
“a cultural form [the stage drama] was the model for a social scientific
co n c e p t”6 that in turn configured social disturbances and disputes taking a
regular processual course: breach, crisis, redress, reintegration, or schism.
As “a limited area of transparency in the otherwise opaque surface of regu­
lar, uneventful social life,”7 the social drama, T urner argued, enables the
observer to perceive the array of social structural principles and arrange­
ments and their conflict and relative dominance over time. In N dem bu ritual
performances, T urner dem onstrated, social dramas involving latent conflicts
of interest and otherwise obscure kinship ties were especially manifest.
At first, T urn er writes, “ I did not think [the social drama] a universal
type, but subsequent research . . . has convinced me that social dramas, with
much the same temporal or processual structure as I detected in the N d em b u
case, can be isolated for study in societies at all levels of scale and com p lex ­
ity.”8 To get at them, Turner moved first to comparative studies of the ritual
process.9 Building on the insights of van Gennep, Turner argued that ritual
universally involves a dialectic betw een “ stru ctu re” and “a n tistru ctu re.” By
organizing and managing the passage of persons from one set of normative
positions, roles, rules, and social states to another, ritual serves social order
and continuity. At the same time, when ritualists enter the state of liminality,
all m anner of unexpected, dangerous, or potentially creative things may
happen. This em b eddedness of ordering, disordering, and reordering in the
same performance process is what makes ritual so apt a vehicle for the
making and unmaking of social dramas.
Subsequently, T u rn er has turned to a variety of sociohistorical fields
(twclfth-century England, nineteenth-century Mexico, con tem po rary
France and Ireland) and investigated additional genres of cultural perform ­
ance. In the essay that opens this volume, T urn er reviews his anthropolog­
ical pilgrim’s progress and continues on to feudal Japan, where he explores
the relationships between The Tale o f Genji, and N o h theater, as well as
their respective social settings in the Heian court and the Muromachi period.
His general position is that “ in our daily life, social dramas, w hether in small
groups or large, continue to emerge— offspring of both eulture and nature—
but the cultural ways we have of becoming aware of them— rituals, stage
plays, carnivals, anthropological monographs, pictorial exhibitions, films—
4 Introduction
vary with culture, climate, technology, group history, and the demography
of individual gen ius.” All of the contributors to this volume acknowledge
debts of one kind or another to Turner, and several of them com m ent e x ten­
sively on issues raised by his work.
Milton Singer cam e the other way round in making his seminal contribu­
tion to the study of cultural performances, a phrase he is responsible for
popularizing. Seeking means of configuring the colnplex, literate civilization
of India, Singer m oved from the great tradition to the little community, from
Redfield’s “generic conception of a structure of tradition to particular
v a riants,” and from performative events to underlying social arrangements.

Since a tradition has a culture content carried by specific cultural media as well
as by human carriers, a description o f the ways in which this content is orga­
nized and transmitted on particular occasions through specific media offers a
particularization o f the structure o f tradition complementary to its social or­
ganization. These particular instances o f cultural organization, e.g. weddings,
temple festivals, recitations, plays, dances, musical concerts, etc., I have
called “cultural performances.”10

T he English phrase “cultural p e rfo rm a n c es,” Singer argued, accurately

m aps a category recognized by and salient to South Asians. In an oft-quoted
passage, Singer wrote:

Indians, and perhaps all peoples, think o f their culture as encapsulated in such
discrete performances, which they can exhibit to outsiders as well as to them­
selves. For the outsider these can conveniently be taken as the most concrete
observable units o f the cultural structure, for each performance has a definitely
limited time span, a beginning and end, an organized program o f activity, a set
o f performers, an audience, and a place and occasion o f performance."

While T u rn er began with the implicit m etaphor of stage dram a to

configure diffusive social processes, then showed the consolidation and
transform ation of these in the explicitly dramatic performances of N d em b u
ritual, Singer focused from the outset on Indian cultural performances and
was led immediately to describe them in “dramatistic” language (“dramatis
p e rs o n a e ,” “cultural stages,” “perform ers”). Turner came to insist that ritual
perform ances be u nderstood as “phases of social relations,” whereas Singer
spoke o f a “double structure of tradition,” of analogies and formal and
methodological “parallelisms” betw een a generic social structure abstracted
from persisting relations among roles and statuses and a generic cultural
structure derived operationally from “persisting relations among media,
texts, themes, and cultural c en te rs.” Their positions, however, seem ulti­
mately convergent, especially in more recent w o r k .12 Their differences in
approach seem to be occasioned less by theoretical disagreement than by the
locations of their initial field study. The apparent “gaps” betw een expressive
culture and social organization yawn before the interpreter of complex
societies to a greater extent than before the investigator of small-scale,
Cultural Perform ances, Culture Theory 5
“tribal” societies. Therefore, a different point of departure may be required.
This question of starting point and of kinds of evidence in diverse social
fields recurs throughout the essays in this volume.
In their early works, neither Singer nor T urner cites K enneth Burke,
though Singer's catalog of the distinctive features of cultural perform ances is
very like B u rk e ’s “dramatistic p e n ta d ” of act, scene, agent, agency, and
purpose. Burke claims that any discourse on human motives and c o m m un i­
cation is com posed of these five e lem e n ts.13 Dell H y m es has written that “ it
is through the study of performance that folklore can integrate its scientific
and humanistic aims in a forward-looking w a y .” 14 Several of the papers
illustrate, and all of the contributors to this volume believe, that not only
folklorists but also broad er communities of scholars will discover in the
performance approach an answ er to that most important intellectual chal­
lenge of the next decades: the opening of new lines of contact betw een the
humanities and social sciences. In this effort, K enneth Burke will repeatedly
appear as a patron saint.
It is not accidental, how ever, that Burke is the progenitor of the drama-
tistic approach least often cited in the pages of this volume. This neglect is
not limited to the social scientists among us, so something more than narrow
training and ideological myopia is involved. B u rk e ’s corpus needs to be
sifted. His concern with creating a unified discourse about literary texts,
conceptual systems, social arrangements, and individual behavior is the
essence of the contem porary project. But he ranges so widely— a P ro ­
metheus or a Proteus, depending on the point of view— and bounds w here
lesser minds must shuffle that it has proved difficult to distill from his in­
sights paradigms for further research. His emphasis on motives, even as
embodiments of thought, is no longer fashionable among many an th ro p o lo ­
gists and literary scholars, who prefer these days to focus directly on m e a n ­
ing making. N ew knowledge of non-W estern systems of thought has yet to
be brought to bear on B u rk e ’s philosophical assumptions. But, above all, his
attempt to understand all forms of human activity, from literature to “bits of
gossip offered at ra n d o m ,” as dramatistic is an obstacle for those who would
more narrowly define the concept of cultural performance.
This brings us to Erving Goffman, who is, in many respects, the K e n ­
neth Burke of social science. G offm an’s studies of the social psychology of
everyday life are the most important to appear in a generation. He is at once
a brilliant ethnographer of Anglo-American life and a generator of concepts
so prolific that his readers are often left exasperated and grumbling like the
overly blessed herdsm an in M a rq u e s ’s A H un dred Years o f S o litu d e , “ Cease
cows, life is short!”
Many of the authors in this volume note their indebtedness to Goff­
m a n ’s investigations of performance, particularly in the m atter of “fram es”
and “fron ts.” In these studies, Goffman articulates G. H. M ead's theories of
symbolic interaction, Gregory B ateso n’s classic insights into m etaco m m un i­
cation, and his own taxonomies of stereotyped behavior. But Goffman, like
6 Introduction
Burke, conceives the category of perform ance more broadly than do most of
the m em bers of this symposium. Goffman defines “perform ance” as “all the
activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continu­
ous presence before a particular set o f observers and which has some effect
on the o b s e rv e rs .” 15 E v e n with the added features of “dramatic realization”
and “idealization,” this definition is so inflated as to include potentially all
interaction under the category of performance. In many of G offm an’s em pir­
ical studies, m atters turn out ju st this way. This leaves Goffman open to a
general criticism m ade by Hymes: “If some grammarians have confused
m atters by lumping w hat does not interest them under ‘p e rfo rm a n c e ,’ cul­
tural anthropologists and folklorists [and social psychologists] have not done
m uch to clarify the situation. We have tended to lump what does interest us
under ‘p e rfo rm a n c e .’ ” 16 In recent work, Goffman seems to sense the
difficulty, and he is beginning to w ork with a notion of performance “in the
restricted s e n s e ,” for which the explicit paradigm is the theater. “Perform ­
a n c e ,” he now asserts, is “that arrangem ent which transforms an individual
into a stage p e rfo rm e r.” 17
But this leaves unsolved another problem with generalizing G offm an’s
w ork cross-culturally, namely, the association of performance with play­
acting, of social roles with theatrical roles. G offm an’s preoccupation with
“the arts of impression m anag em ent” and with performances as “fostered
a p p e a ra n c e s ” leads him to take “cynical” and “ sincere” performances as the
polar extrem es of the ty p e . 18 “As m em bers of an aud ience,” he writes, “it is
natural for us to feel that the impression the performer seeks to give may be
true or false, genuine or spurious, valid or ‘p h o n y .’ ” '9 “N atural for u s ”
becau se we inhabit a culture in which “a p p ea ra n ce ” and “reality” are dis­
tinct and fundamentally separate categories, but this is apparently not so
“n atu ral” in oth er cultures. The Shokleng people of Brazil, as Greg U rban
noted, find descriptions of W estern theater silly and incomprehensible. In
Shokleng cultural perform ances, the individual does not have to “implicitly
request his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before
th e m ,” as Goffman claims is the case for Euro-A m erican performers. In the
context of ritual, at least, traditional N dem bu are similar to the Shokleng in
this regard. As T u rn er notes in his essay, his use of the word “d ra m a ”
inadvertently suggested an imputation of theatricality to critics like R ay ­
m ond Firth, w hereas T u r n e r ’s restated position is that “ social dram as are
the raw stuff out o f which the theater comes to be created as societies
develop in scale and com plexity.”
The first three essays in this volume present rich evidence for this
proposition. In his essay, Turner shows how the social tensions of the Heian
court are reflexively embodied in Lady M urasak i’s novel, whose contents
are later ritualized in the theater of N o h , itself likely tied to the troubled
social transform ations o f the M uromachi period. Natalie Zem on Davis
shows how the a c to r s ’ em beddedness in the urbanizing and modernizing
world of seventeenth century L yo n and G eneva influenced their roles in
Cultural P e r fo rm a n c e s , Culture Theory 1
charivari performances that broke down into violence, and she offers an
important case study in the transition from festive forms of popular social
control to centralized, jural procedures. In a master example of the sort of
creative alliance betw een social scientists and humanists one hopes will
multiply in the future, Frank W adsw orth draws on Davis's insights to c o n ­
front one of the great enigmas in seventeenth-century English drama. He
argues that the m adm en scene in W e b s te r’s D uchess o fM a lf i is to be u n d er­
stood precisely as a charivari brought onto the stage, “giving, the ritual
pattern aesthetic actuality," (the reverse of N o h drama, as T urner sees it).
W adsw orth shows not only the dramaturgical consequences of this solution,
and the way in which it realigns centuries of literary controversy, but also
how W e b s te r’s stage dram a may stand “ in the tradition of social dram a." By
appropriating the charivari tradition— as in France, still performed but under
attack and in decline— W e b s te r’s dram a likely provided a social m e ta c o m ­
mentary on the changed urban world of the groundlings and the petty
bourgeoisie w ho'w ere its audience.
Taken together, these essays suggest that in cultural fields like feudal,
courtly Japan and Renaissance France and England, where the relation b e­
tween appearance and reality is thought to be problematic and where the
theater has emerged as a discrete performative genre, general models of
cultural performance based on the stage dram a may be adequate. It remains
to be seen w hether or not this is true for all performance types in all modern
or “ modernizing" societies. To answ er such questions, investigators must
pay closer attention to the concept of the self in the culture under study.
G offm an’s formulations, for example, are based on a W estern notion of
the p e rso n .20 While persistently (and creatively) ambiguous on w hether he
thinks some stable “ inner c o re ’’ is to be found “underneath" the W estern
individual’s shifting matrix of social roles (as psychoanalysts and most ego
psychologists insist), Goffman brilliantly dem onstrates again and again the
preponderance among W esterners of oppositions betw een authenticity and
pretense, nature and expression, on the level of social roles and personas.
There is much new work on the quite different ethnosociology of the
person in India.21 M cKim Marriott writes: “ In contrast to the generally
closed, hom ogenous, and enduring mental integrations attributed to adult
persons in the West, the cognitions implicit in Hindu routines of daily life
and the propositions made explicitly by reflective Hindu texts . . . agree in
positing adult persons who are open, com posed of exogenous elements,
substantially fluid and divisible (therefore, dividual, not ///dividual), and thus
necessarily changing and interchanging in their n a tu re s."22 Monisha Roy has
pointed out that while American women believe that their actions may not
reflect their natures and, therefore, they cannot help wondering “ Who am I?
Which of my roles, if any, is really me?" Bengali women believe that they
change their natures as they fill different roles.2'
Such findings have immediate implications for a concept of cultural
performance restricted enough to be useful, yet sufficiently sensitive to cul­
8 Introduction
tural presuppositions to be broadly applicable. Singer is himself profitably
reinterpreting Indian cultural performances in light of these new analyses of
the H indu conception of the self. In her essay, Hilda K u p er contrasts the
cultural assum ptions, social types, and m odi operandi of Swazi diviners and
W estern detectives in a way that illuminates each. Bruce K apferer d e m o n ­
strates how detailed knowledge o f indigenous cosmology, theology, and
psychology alters our understanding not only of Sri L ank an exorcism rites
but also of ritual perform ances generally with regard to the dynamics of the
audience. His contribution is a singular one in that the audience is the least
studied feature of cultural performances.
Dell H y m es contrasts “perform ance” with “culture” and “b e h av io r.”
On the first of these contrasts, he reminds us of the distinction betw een the
“ k n o w able” (interpretable a n d / o r reportable) and the “doable,” (repeatable)
“the distinction b etw een knowledge w hat and knowledge h o w .”24 Though
knowledge and perform ance of tradition are interdependent, they are hardly
identical. Cultural perform ances are culture “in action ,” and this is a distinc­
tion that makes a great difference. By focusing on linguistic com petence and
treating perform ance as residual, mechanical, or inferior, transformational
grammarians p rev en t themselves from saying much about language as social
action. Just so, culture theorists who content themselves with abstract struc­
turalist models o f cultural com petence, miss what is essential about cultural
perform ances. N o t only is perform ance “ something creative, realized,
achieved, even tra n scend ent of the ordinary course of e v e n ts,”25 it is often
the very “condition of survival” of tradition itself. This is equally true for
essentially conservative peoples undergoing rapid change and stress as it is
for W estern artistic and revolutionary elites w hose project H arold R o se n ­
berg shrewdly styled “the tradition of the n e w .” E m erson once w rote that
“perhaps all that is not perform ance is preparation, performance that shall
b e . ”26 “C ulture” and “cultural perfo rm an ce” ought to be neither statically
equated nor mechanically divorced, and the study of cultural performances
confronts culture theory with the proposition that all that emerges or sur­
vives as cultural tradition, cultural com petence, is performance that m u st
be.
On the other side, H ym es argues, perform ance must not be identified
with the categories of behavior (“ simply anything and everything that h a p ­
p e n s ”) or conduct (“behavior under the aegis of social norms, cultural rules,
shared principles of interpretability”). Performance, says H ym es, is a par­
ticular class or subset of behavior in which one or more persons assume
responsibility to an audience and to tradition as they understand it. H ere 1
would prefer to reinstate the older philosophical conception of hum an activ­
ity as a continuum stretching from “behavior”— relatively routine, habitual,
unself-conscious, even “natural” activity in which agency predominates
over agent— to “action”— relatively spontaneous, atypical, self-conscious,
creative activity in which agent predominates over agency.27 This scheme
makes it easier to incorporate conventional performances and those of
Cultural Perform ances, Culture Theory 9
idiosyncratic genius within the same conceptual field and in a way that cuts
across “primitive" and “ m odern" cultures. (The former, after all, have their
M uchonas, the latter their Billy Grahams.) It also brings out more clearly
certain distinctive features of cultural performances as forms lying betw een
behavior and action on the continuum of human activity.
All cultural performances proper have something of the routine about
them in that they follow, or are believed to follow, some sort of preexisting
script. As Singer puts it, cultural performances always incorporate “an orga­
nized program of activity." W hether that program is flexible or fixed, co n ­
scious or unconscious, consensual or conflictive, or, as is usually the case, a
little of each, there is no performance without pre-formance. Yet, in other
respects, performances are anything but routine. By acknowledging resp on ­
sibility to one another and to the traditions condensed and objectified in the
“ scripts," agents and audiences acknowledge a risk that things might not go
well. To agree to perform is to agree to take a chance.
This element of open risk incorporated into the dialogue betw een the
“w hat" and the “how" is universally present in cultural performances, and it
separates perform ance from most of everyday behavior. In G offm an’s
terms, cultural performances are problematic (“ something not yet decided
but about to b e ”), consequential, fateful, and “where the action is.”28 This
subjective sense of “action” is occasioned not only by the presence of o p p o r­
tunity and risk but also by the processual dynamics of the form. “Action
seems most p ron ounced when the four phases of the play— squaring off,
determination, disclosure, settlement [identical to T u r n e r’s phases of social
drama]— occur over a period of time brief enough to be contained within a
continuous stretch of attention and e x p erience.”29 This is scripted action
and, therefore, it is as different from “action” in the philosopher’s sense as it
is from everyday behavior. B orges’ struggle in his parable “The Library of
B abel,” for all of its uniqueness, self-consciousness, and courage, is not the
same thing as B orges’ struggle in the national library in Buenos Aires during
and after the dictatorship. This special, “mixed" kind of action is the truly
universal dramatic or “dram atistic” feature of cultural performances, not the
sense of “play-acting" or theatricality which is culture-bound.
F ear and pity, the opposition of individuality and fate, may also be
limited to W estern “tragic" cultures (as T u rn er notes, Noli plays begin where
E uropean tragedies end). But there is no culture without its own versions of
cathexis and catharsis. Proust wrote: “We feel in one world, we think, we
give names in another. Between the two we can establish a correspondence,
but we cannot overcom e the interval." In cultural performance, we do typi­
cally overcom e the interval. The investment of resources in preparation,
anticipation, transportation, and admission, the social interests composing
the perfo rm a n c e ’s purpose, and the dramatic character of its form all c o n ­
tribute to the excitement already embodied potentially in its contents. “ E x ­
citem ent" here means a particular kind of attention, attention especially
aroused, concentrated, and generalized, the attention that flows, so to
10 Introduction
speak, from attention. As Freud has shown, this mobilized attention is the
medium through which the affective meanings (the feelings of “thinking and
giving n a m es”) of powerful symbols are communicated, though the specific
emotions vary with the culturally prescribed ideations embodied in those
symbols. F o r example, K apferer shows in his essay how the attentional
focusing of the audience creates the conditions for the domination of the
demonic at a particular phase of Sri L an kan exorcism rites. Intention and
attention are indissolubly bound in cultural performances. W h atever p e r­
form ances do, or are m eant to do, they do by creating the conditions for, and
by coercing the participants into, paying attention. Catharsis also may be
seen as a universal property of cultural performance, not in the sense of
purging the participants of intrusive social duty, individual conscience, or
emotional reflection (again, culture-bound), but in the more general sense of
releasing the “perfo rm an cers” from scripted activity with “a definitely lim­
ited time sp an ” and the involuntary concentration of attention, back into the
unm easured or less m easured realms of behavioral routine or spontaneous
action.

G E N R E A N D R E F L E X IV IT Y

Routine behaviors and “naked little spasms of the self”30 are, for the most
part, also nameless and frameless, w hereas cultural performances are collec­
tively typified. They come in genres. Genre theory has, of course, a long
history in literary studies, where the “radical of presentation,” in N o rth ro p
F r y e ’s phrase, is the written text. Cultural anthropologists, on the other
hand, have devoted little theoretical attention to indigenous genre m arkers
or to the use of genres as analytical constructs. Folklorists, whose discipline
mediates among these other scholarly traditions, have lately been forced to
consider the topic of genre in detail, because folklore materials present
themselves at once as texts, oral or written, and as performances, w hose
radical of presentation includes setting, style, gesture, and the manipulation
of material symbols. Dan Ben-Amos distinguishes four meanings give to the
term “genre” in folklore research: classificatory categories, p erm anent
forms, evolving forms, and forms of discourse (“ontological entities with
defined sets of relations betw een language, symbols, and reality”).31
In literature and folklore alike, many critics find genre theory sterile
because it distracts investigators from the claims of the particular case m ate­
rials before them. M embers of this symposium generally concur that genres
of cultural perform ance are “evolving form s” and “forms of discourse” and
“not merely analytical constructs, classificatory categories for archives, file
cabinets, and libraries . . . but distinct modes of com m unication.”32 This
view is especially forced upon those contributors who deal with case studies
of “m etaph rasis,” which H ym es defines as the interpretive and performative
transformation of genre.33 As the reader will note, however, the contributors
Cultural P e r fo rm a n c e s , Culture Theory 11
differ on the amount of energy they find worth expending on the formal
analysis of the genre types they treat.
Roberto Da Matta, in his provocative account of the Brazilian social
universe and national ideology seen through the medium of Carnaval, treats
this cultural performance interchangeably as ritual and as festival and thus
stands with the “lumpers" among us. On the other hand, he strictly distin­
guishes processions, parades, and desfiles as modes or subgenres of per­
formance; he thus allies himself with the “ s p litte r s /’ MacAloon distinguishes
game, rite, festival, and spectacle as discrete performative genres and finds
this of major importance in understanding the symbolic pow er of the O lym ­
pic Games. M yerhoff deals with one of the most moving events ever re­
ported by an ethnographer. Jacob, an important patriarch in a community of
Jewish elderly, dies in the middle of his birthday party. M yerhoff analyses
the event as a ritual of “tamed d e ath ” rather than as a dialectic betw een the
two genres of birthday party and ritual because, as she claims, “the affair
was called a birthday party, but in fact this was a m e tap h o r.”
The issue of the metaphorical and categorical use of genre markers is an
added complication taken up in several essays. MacAloon finds it crucial to
distinguish “ spectacle” as a root m etaphor and literary trope from “ specta­
cle” as a genre of performance, the better to question their mutual, historical
relations. The issues of performance m etaphor and genre metaphrasis are
raised most strikingly in Sophia M org an’s interpretation of B orges’ “The
Im m ortal” as metaritual. H er essay is a brilliant example of the uneasy
“c ra b d a n c e ” betw een contem porary literary theory and anthropology over
the nature of “te x ts .” In her opening remarks, Morgan leads us through
familiar claims about literature and ritual— that literature developed from
ritual sources, that literature often takes ritual as its subject matter, that
literature is the functional equivalent of ritual— to more striking assertions:
that there is a modality of performance peculiar to literature, that ritual
constitutes the inner space of literature, and that there are “ ritual experi­
e n c e s ” in literature. Tories among us, anthropologists and critics alike, may
choose to understand her metaphorically, but to maintain this view one must
rethink the sort of received wisdom about the differences between texts and
performances M organ's essay sees through. Babcock carries the awareness
of genre furthest of all. Following N ietzsche's lead, she deconstructs the
genre of the academic essay itself, then assembles and presents as aphoristic
“ perform ances” texts about Pueblo ritual clowning in order to recapture and
express the nature of sacred humor.
A nother of the major themes echoing through these essays is reflexivity.
“ Reflexivity” is that capacity of human beings to distance themselves from
their own subjective experiences, to stand apart from and to comment on
them. As G. H. Mead argued, it is the ability of individuals to take the
attitude of the other that allows them to become objects to themselves.
Kapferer, following Mead, rephrases this in performative terms: “ reflexiv­
ity” is the act of becoming an audience to oneself. Philosophers have long
12 Introduction
dealt with reflexivity as an individual phenom enon. Anthropologists have
lately pointed to corporate forms of “metasocial com m en tary ”34 and “plural
reflexivity,” which T u rn er describes as mom ents in which groups “ strive to
see their own reality in new ways and to generate a language, verbal or
nonverbal, that enables them to talk about w hat they normally talk.”
This is the general sense in which the term “reflexivity” is understood
and used by the authors of this volume in their investigations of singular and
plural styles of reflexivity. But on more particular grounds there is diver­
gence. Som e insist upon making a distinction betw een reflexivity and reflec­
tion. Of N arcissus, B abcock has written: “H e is reflective, but he is not
reflexive— that is, he is conscious of himself as an other, but he is not
conscious o f being self-conscious of himself as an other, and hence not able
to detach himself from, survive, even laugh at this initial experience of
alienation.”35 O thers treat any reflection on social life that is critical, inver­
sive, unusual, or simply thoughtful as “reflexive.” A host of problems u n d e r­
lies this theoretical vacillation. M ust reflexive thoughts and actions be
rational, self-conscious, and discursive? Or may they belong to w hat
Michael Polanyi calls the domain of tacit knowledge? W adsw orth, for one,
allows for reflexivity as a less rational, preconscious, and intuitive p h e n o m e ­
non. Is reflexivity an enduring and stable propensity of all adults in all
cultures at all times? Or are there, as Turner claims for any particular soci­
ety, M yerhoff for the particular lifestage of old age, and M acA loon for the
particular cultural context of the spectacle, more or less reflexive periods in
group history?
T urn er believes that it is in social dram a that plural reflexivity begins,
but also that “the redressive machinery of spontaneous social dramas . . .
attains only a limited degree of reflexivity,” necessitating cultural perfo rm ­
ances like ritual. Some of the contributors see ritual as generically reflexive,
because it everyw h ere transports its participants outside of their everyday
lives. Others, like Kapferer, qualify this view. Rituals, he writes, are reflex­
ive to the degree that they directly “reflect back on other contexts of m e a n ­
ing . . . in the social and cultural world out of which ritual e m erg es.”
M oreover, K apferer dem onstrates in his essay that reflexivity is differ­
entially and sequentially created or destroyed depending on the phases of
ritual action, the succession of ritual purposes, and the variety of ritual
roles. On the face of it, these findings contradict M y e rh o f f s absolute claim
in her essay that “things must be kept moving along in ritual; if a lapse
occurs, self-consciousness may enter and the mood may be lost.” H ere again
is the problem of self-consciousness and reflexivity. K apferer himself voices
doubts about w h eth er rituals are more reflexive, in this sense, to anthropolo­
gists or to natives.
Perhaps self-conscious reflexivity is always a post facto ph en o m en o n in
perform ances that go according to plan, only appearing in the midst of
perform ances interrupted or breached. But even this view is too simplistic.
Davis shows that the inhabitants of the Place Bellecour and the local au ­
Cultural P e r fo rm a n c e s , Culture Theory 13
thorities were certainly left in a highly reflexive state in the aftermath of their
murderous charivari, but how reflexive were they in the course of its un­
happy unfolding? And one wonders about the leading actor, Le Provençal,
likely much too preoccupied with his escape to reflect with any distance on
his crime. Certainly, as W adsworth asserts, increased reflexivity is a co n se­
quence “ when any form of social protest oversteps the bounds of its own
peculiar d e c o ru m .” But when, how, and for whom such reflexivity is o c ­
casioned turn out to be questions every bit as complicated in the study of
breached performances as in cases of normative ones.
The fact that charivaris are always and explicitly forms of social protest,
whereas many rites confirm or celebrate the status quo (though conflicts
often arise unbidden in their performance), raises the issue of the relation­
ship betw een genres and reflexivity. Are some genres of cultural perform ­
ance intrinsically more reflexive than others? Several contributors refer to
B a te s o n ’s classic paper on the “play fra m e .” Play, Bateson argues, is by
nature paradoxical,36 and therefore, it seems, reflexive to an unusual degree.
Is this true of ludic performances cross-culturally? H ow can this view be
related to the finding that play is typically an organized release from the
responsibilities and anxieties of reflexivity? This problem suggests a further
proposition; genres that embody reflexivity in their frame markers and
“m etam essa g e s,” in their specifications, so to speak, may thereby create
contexts that decrease, diffuse, or defuse reflexivity in the actual perform a­
tive experiences of the participants. Quite a different interaction betw een
genre frame, perform ance content, and contextual culture is thus set up
com pared to what is the case with certain species of ritual. M acAloon argues
that spectacle is just such an intrinsically reflexive genre, and he also follows
B ate so n ’s lead in noting the transformation of indicative frame markers
(“This is ritual”) into the interrogative (“ Is this ritual?”), a shift likely to
introduce greater degrees of reflexivity into previously consensual perform ­
ances. Such claims point again to the need for more careful studies of “em ic”
typologies of cultural performance and for closer attention to just what
natives mean when they typify a performance as “ritual” or “festival.”

STAG ES A R E M AD E OF BO ARD S

Reflexivity is more than an analytical construct. It is a value enshrined

among members of certain social classes, religious traditions, ideologies,
and occupational groups. Perhaps nowhere is excessive reflexivity more
celebrated, encouraged, and rewarded, and its terror better known, than in
the W estern academic subculture. What biases and insights are thus in­
troduced into the essays in this volume the reader will decide. As for our
symposium as a performance, the following notes are offered as an invitation
and a warning.
Reference was earlier made to the variety of intellectual identities and
14 Introduction
research interests of the conferees. Our^cultural backgrounds, ideological
and political com m itm ents, and individual personalities and styles vary even
more widely. Ordinarily, such matters are relegated to the “private sp h e re ,”
find no place in the official doings of an academic conference, and are rarely
mentioned in the introduction to a scholarly book. 1 suspect that few operate
these days with any crude notion of value-free research, being rather alive to
what W eber called “value relevance” in scholarly life. But we are also
habituated to the formal conventions of that genre of cultural performance,
the academic meeting, in which such matters are typically “framed o u t.”
At Burg W artenstein, the usual boundaries of the academic meeting
were expanded to include for examination as official business the poetry,
storytelling, theater exercises, dancing, film criticism, recreation, even the
dreaming of the participants. This led, unwittingly, to a jarring aw areness of
ju s t how fragile is the performance of the self. Our essays discuss reflexivity
as a cause and a consequence of “frame-breaking.” As we tossed in a sea of
hyper-reflexivity at Burg W artenstein, alternately afraid, delighted, and
angered by the absence of consensual frames for our engagements, we b e­
came convinced existentially of w hat our essays sought discursively to d em ­
onstrate. Turner, w hose leonine efforts to deliver reflexivity back to
reflection more than anything else kept us together, spoke for many w hen he
noted in his closing remarks that, “performative genres o f the kind we have
been discussing live on the edge of volcanoes. . . . This w eek has convinced
me that liminality has darker valences and potentials that have to be un d er­
stood rather better if they are to be ta m e d .”
N o one would have been a better guide through the darker and the
lighter reaches of our corporate liminality than Harold Rosenberg. H e was to
have joined us at Burg W artenstein, but failing health and his faultless in­
stincts of loyalty and intellectual priority kept him behind to write the
catalog for a major retrospective of another great cultural observer, Saul
Steinberg. H ad he been present, Harold might well have recalled to us, with
a grin, something he once wrote about H am let:

Each time the spade strikes into the ground another skull is turned up. Why is
the graveyard so crowded? Because Denmark is a small country? Rather b e­
cause the world is a stage, and a stage is made o f boards and is without depth,
so there is no room on it to dispose o f anything. All that [this] horseplay about
“lugging the guts” o f Polonius around.37

H arold R osenberg died in July 1978, and Victor Turner in D ecem b er 1983.
As colleagues, students, and admirers, we dedicate this book to them.

NOTES

1. Beverly Stoeltje, “Cultural Frames and Reflections: Ritual, Drama, Spectacle,”

C urrent A n t h r o p o l o g y 19:450, 1978.
2. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation o f Cultures ( N e w York, 1973), pp. 44-54,
89; David M. Schneider, “N otes toward a Theory o f Culture,” in K. H. Basso
Cultural Perform ances, Culture Theory 15
and H. A. Selby, eds.. M e a n in g in A n th r o p o lo g y (Albuquerque. 1976). pp. 197—
198. “
3. Richard Schechner. “Collective Reflexivity: Restoration o f Behavior." in J.
Ruby. ed.. A Crock in the Mirror (Philadelphia. 1982). pp. 41 —47, 69-74.
4. Dell Hym es. “Breakthrough into Performance." in Dan Ben-Amos and K. S.
Goldstein, eds.. Folklore: P e r fo rm a n c e a n d C o m m u n ic a tio n (Paris. 1975), p.
19. ‘
5. Victor Turner, S c h is m a n d Continuity (Manchester, 1957), p. 92.
6. Victor Turner, D r a m a s , Fields a n d M e t a p h o r s (Ithaca, 1974), p. 32.
7. S c h is m a n d C o n ti n u i t y , p. 93.
8. D ra m a s , Fields a n d M e t a p h o r s , p. 33.
9. Victor Turner, The R itua l Process (Chicago, 1969).
10. Milton Singer, e d . .Traditional India: Structure a n d C h a n g e (Philadelphia,
1959). p. xii.
11. Singer, p. xiii. See also, “The Cultural Pattern o f Indian Civilization," The Far
E astern Quarterly 15:23-36, 1955.
12. Cf. Singer, W hen a G reat Tradition M o d e r n iz e s (N ew York, 1972), and Turner,
D r a m a s , Fields a n d M e t a p h o r s (Ithaca, 1974).
13. Kenneth Burke. A G r a m m a r o f M o tiv e s (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1945).
14. Hymes. p. 11.
15. Erving Goffman, The Presentation o f S e l f in E v e n 'd ax Life (N ew York, 1959),
P- 22. ..........................................
16. Hym es. p. 13.
17. Erving Goffman, F ra m e A n a lysis (N ew York, 1974), p. 124.
18. P r esen ta tio n o f Self, pp. 17-18.
19. P resen ta tion o f Self, p. 58.
20. Clifford Geertz. “From the Native's Point o f View." in K. H. Basso and H. A.
Selby, eds.. M e a n in g in A n th r o p o lo g y (Albuquerque. 1976). p. 225.
21. McKim Marriott and Ronald B. Inden. "Toward an Ethnosociology of South
Asian Caste Systems," in K. A. David, ed.. The N e w Wind: C ha n g in g Identities
in S o u th A s ia (Chicago, 1977); Ronald B. Inden and Ralph Nicholas. B en g ali
Kinship (Chicago, 1978).
22. McKim Marriott. “The Open Person and the Humane Sciences" (unpublished
paper, Chicago, 1979). pp. 1-2.
23. Monisha Roy, B en g a li W o m e n (Chicago, 1975).
24. Hymes, p. 69.
25. Hymes, p. 13.
26. Martin Duberman, “ Divided Consciousness: the Emersonian Campus of the
Seventies," Liberation, Fall 1977. 9-14.
27. Hannah Arendt, The H u m a n Condition (Chicago, 1958).
28. Erving Goffman. Interaction Ritual (N ew York, 1967), pp. 153-194.
29. Interaction Ritual, p. 185.
30. Interaction Ritual, p. 270.
31. Dan Ben-Amos. ed.. Folklore Genres (Austin, 1976).
32. Ben-Amos. p. xxxi.
33. Hymes. p. 20.
34. Geertz. Interpretation o f Cultures, p. 448.
35. Barbara A. Babcock, "Reflexivity: Definitions and Discriminations," in B. Bab­
cock. ed.. S ig n s about Signs: The S e m io tic s o f S e lf-R e fer e n c e ( N e w York:
1980). ' • • •
36. Gregory Bateson, S te p s to an E cology o f M in d (N e w York, 1972).
37. Harold Rosenberg. "The Stages: A Geography of Human Action." Possibilities
1:47, 1948.
 /

SO CIAL DRAM AS & STAGE DRAM AS

 Liminality and the Performative Genres

Victor Turner

M embers of our species are peculiarly festooned with prepositions, with

relational and functional connectives. If we are, visibly, islands, we are
genetically and culturally linked by ties of love and hate, by the pleasure
bond, by the pain bond, by the duty chain, by noblesse oblige, or by innate
or induced needs for dominance or submission. We are for, against, with,
toward, above, below, against, within, outside, or without one another. If
we could make a psychosom atogram of a mem ber of our species, it would
not be smoothly nude but sprouting with prepositional lines and plugs, and
pitted with prepositional holes. And if this m etaphor has androgynous impli­
cations, these would be supported by genetics and depth-psychology. The
culture that encom passes speech and the speech that em braces prepositional
forms are attributes of a two-sexed species, each of whose sexes is a trans­
formation of the other. I do not intend to follow up this line of enquiry here,
however. My present intention is to discuss what have been varyingly d e ­
scribed as performative genres, cultural performances, modes of exhibition
or presentation— such as ritual, carnival, theater, and film— as co m m en ­
taries and critiques on, or as celebrations of, different dimensions of human
relatedness. My work as an anthropologist has been the study of cumulative
interactions over time in human groups of varying span and different cul­
tures. These interactions, I found, tend to amass toward the emergence of
sustained public action, and given my W estern background, it was difficult
to characterize these as other than “dram atic.'1 When the prepositions
“ with" and “against” involved enough people in dichotomous factions, there
was a public outburst of opposition, involving the mounting of symbols of
exclusivity and inclnsivity, which led to a sequence of stages in public life,
where breach of some crucial bond to which the whole group was committed
by its written or unwritten constitution to maintaining (made evident by
some signal violation, rejection, or disregarding of a rule of behavior, moral
conduct, or etiquette) was followed by a mounting crisis in the g ro u p ’s
affairs that, if not resolved, would grow to the point of dividing it in two,
instead of leaving it with gradations of opinion. The resolving process in­
volved an attem pt, wholehearted or fainthearted, to get the affair into a law

19
20 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
court or similar redressive assembly of grave, elders or responsible re p re ­
sentatives of the group, from village to district to nation to international
forum. Som etim es, I found, nothing short of a religious solution was deemed
necessary, with ritual procedures instigated to press the antagonists to ­
gether. L a st scene of all, to close this strange and eventful history (which is
yet a history familiar to all of us), is the outcom e of the redressive, conciliat­
ory, or reconstitutive action: what happens to all those people preposi­
tionally interconnected or divided? Do they stay together in spatial and
psychological proximity (with reservations, of course), or does some n u m ­
ber of them, some subgroup, unable to accept the elders’ verdict, “opt
o u t”— seek a new territory, move away a mile or two, or even go to a new
continent, like the Pilgrim Fathers and those who made them a paradigm?
This processual form, “breach-crisis-redress-outcom e,” I previously
called, social drama. It was hardly a “natural” form, since it was heavily
dependent on the cultural values and rules by which human conduct, as
distinct from behavior, was assessed. Often, indeed, it seemed to be a matter
of nature versus culture, of human drives transgressing cultural c o m m a n d ­
ments. But even m ore often it was a question of one cultural rule opposing
another. M a n ’s “original sin,” perhaps, is the plurality of equally valid rules
he imposes on himself, so that w h atev er virtue he may display in obeying
one is negated by the fact that he is in all honesty transgressing another.
Original sin is perhaps not merely a mistake in logical sorting but in m a n ’s
status as an evolving life form. If man is forever “on the m o v e ” develo pm en­
t a l ^ , clearly w hat was appropriate even a hundred years ago is no longer
apropriate to w hat man has culturally becom e in the interim. The problem is
not so m uch cultural relativism at a given time as the fact that we do, as a
global species, learn by experience and the experience is som ehow , though
perhaps always allusively arid enigmatically (hence the need for h e rm e n e u ­
tics), com m unicated in the symbolic actions and forms of our varying cul­
tures.
One of the best w ays of learning by experience is through our perform a­
tive genres. In our daily life, social dramas, w h eth er in small groups or large,
continue to emerge— offspring of both culture and nature— but the cultural
ways we have of becoming aware of them— rituals, stage plays, carnivals,
anthropological monographs, pictorial exhibitions, films— vary with culture,
climate, technology, group history, and the demography of individual
genius. I began with a linguistic analogy: prepositions; I continue with
another: the moods of verbs. F o r language has something to say about
deeply founded hum an regularities— particularly grammar. After all, we are
linked and separated most significantly by coded sounds and the rules of
their arrangement. .
M ost cultural performances belong to cu lture’s “subjunctive” mood.
“ Subjunctive” is defined by W ebster as “that mood of a verb used to express
supposition, desire, hypothesis, possibility, etc., rather than to state an
actual fact, as the mood of were, in ‘if I were y o u .’ ” Ritual, carnival, fes­
tival, theater, film, and similar performative genres clearly possess many of
 Liminality and the Performative Genres 21

these attributes. The indicative mood of culture, viewed as cultural process

rather than as abstract systems ingeniously derived from social life's flow,
controls the daily arenas of economic activity, much of law and politics, and
a good deal of domestic life. The indicative mood, according to W ebster, is
used to express “an act, state, or occurrence as actual, or to ask a question
of fact," as in legal or scientific interrogation. It is perhaps significant that, as
the Concise Oxford Dictionary puts it, “ subjunctive = a verbal mood, o b so ­
lescent in English, named as being used in the classical languages chiefly in
subordinate or subjoined clauses." The subjunctive domain of culture has
lost its former validity; the verbal mood is waning with it. Recent d e­
velopments in the theater and cinema, however, seem to be aimed at restor­
ing the fading subjunctivity of these genres. '
I would now like to relate cultural subjunctivity to what I have called
liminality, following Arnold van Gennep, the great Franco-D utch folklorist
who divided rituals associated with passage from one basic human state or
status, individual or collective, to another into three stages. These were:
separation from antecedent mundane life; liminality, a betwixt-and-between
condition often involving seclusion from the everyday scene; and reaggrega­
tion to the daily world. Such passage rites were of two broad types: (1) those
performed to mark and, in the view of performers, to effect transitions from
social invisibility to social visibility, as in birth rites; from juniority to senior­
ity, as in circumcision and puberty rites; of sociosexual conjunction, as in
nuptial rites; and of the passage from visible to invisible social existence, as
in funerary rites converting a corpse or ghost into an ancestor; and (2) those
marking a whole g ro u p ’s passage from one culturally defined season to
a no ther in the annual cycle, where solar, lunar, planetary, and stellar cycles
may be involved. Such rites may be extended to include collective response
to hazards such as war, famine, drought, plague, earthquake, volcanic e ru p ­
tion, and other natural or man-made disasters. I have discussed both of these
main types elsewhere. Here I merely want to call attention to the relation­
ship of the second type to the genres of performance, which are the main
focus of this essay.
Life-crisis rituals usually involve a liminal phase of seclusion from the
centers of daily action: novices are initiated into adulthood or into the m y s­
teries of a cult in hidden places— caves, lodges sequestered in the forest, far-
off or covered places. Rituals of the second type, which are public in general
orientation, have their liminality in public places. The village greens or the
squares of the city are not abandoned but rather ritually transformed. It is as
though everything is switched into the subjunctive mood for a privileged
f period of time— the time, for example, of Mardi Gras or the Carnival
Careme. Public liminality is governed by public subjunctivity. For a while
almost anything goes: taboos are lifted, fantasies are enacted, the low are
exalted and the mighty abased; indicative mood behavior is reversed. Yet
there are some controls: crime is still illicit: drunken bodies may be moved
off the sidewalks. And ritual forms still constrain the order and often the
V style of ritual events.
22 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
Liminality itself is a complex phase or condition. It is often the scene
and time for the emergence of a society’s deepest values in the form of
sacred dram as and objects— sometimes the reenactm ent periodically of cos­
mogonic narratives or deeds of saintly, godly, or heroic establishers of m o ­
rality, basic institutions, or ways of approaching transcendent beings or
powers. But it may also be the venue and occasion for the most radical
skepticism— always relative, of course, to the given culture’s repertoire of
areas of skepticism— about cherished values and rules. Ambiguity reigns:
people and public policies may be judged skeptically in relation to deep
values; the vices, follies, stupidities, and abuses of contem porary holders of
high political, economic, or religious status may be satirized, ridiculed, or
contem ned in terms of axiomatic values, or these personages may be re­
buked for gross failures in com m on sense. In general, life-crisis rites stress
the deep values, which are often exhibited to initiands as sacred objects,
while the com m en tary on society and its leading representatives is assigned
to cyclical feasts and their public liminality. As dramatic genre, tragedy
perhaps departs from the former, com edy from the latter— though I am well
aware that the m atter is far more complex than this simple statement sup­
poses.
Public liminality and subjunctivity lead me to some of Gregory B ate­
s o n ’s most stimulating ideas: metalanguage and metacommunication. B ate­
son begins with propositions, expressions in which the predicate affirms or
denies something about the subject, the predicate being an assertion or
affirmation based on given facts. Propositions flourish best in the indicative
mood of the cultural process. They depend upon conventions of
codification, verbal or nonverbal, most of which lie below the threshold of
conscious aw areness of members of a given group, and upon tacit agree­
ments betw een speakers that they be true. But some propositions are not in
these cultural codes but about them. They are liminal, in the sense that they
are suspensions of daily reality, occupying privileged spaces where people
are allowed to think about how they think, about the terms in which they
conduct their thinking, or to feel about how they feel in daily life. H ere the
rules are themselves the referent of the knowing; the knowledge proposi­
tions themselves are the object of knowledge. ^
As M ary B. Black has written: “ Bateson has pointed out that while tradi­
tionally science has proceeded by abstracting out one level or another for
analysis, ignoring for the moment the effect of context, he has been doing
the reverse, and focusing his attention on the relationships and influences
betw een levels.” 1My view is that prescientific cultures have, in their liminal
settings (predominantly ritual ones), been doing precisely this, and have
given us many examples of metacommunication and the learning of m e ta p a t­
terns. M etapatterns are akin to what some call frames, the metaphorical
borders within which the facts of experience can be viewed, reflected upon,
and evaluated, though some see frames on the level of experience as sorting
out different types. A cyclical ritual is a frame within which members of a
given group strive to see their own reality in new ways and to generate a
Liminality and the Performative Genres 23
language, verbal or nonverbal, that enables them to talk about what they
normally talk. But it must not be thought that ritual metalanguage is e ssen ­
tially cognitive or philosophical. It is, as D. H. Law rence said, “a man in his
wholeness wholly attending." In the plural this would be rendered “men and
women, of a given group and culture, w'holly attending, in privileged m o­
ments, to their own existential situation." Emotion and volition, as well as
cool cognitiveness, encom pass their metasituation. O ther scholars use the
term “ reflexivity" for similar processes, again, ransacking language for its
metaphors. A reflexive act implies an agent's action upon himself, indicating
the identity of subject and object. When the subject is plural and human, and
hence a cultural entity, the agent's action is motivated by and with reference
to cultural definitions of who it is that acts and to whom action is directed.
Since culture is fed by affectual and volitional as well as cognitive sources,
and since these may be unconscious in great part, the terms and symbols of
plural reflexivity may be suffused with desire and appetite, as well as in­
volved with knowing, perceiving, and conceiving.
This brings us back to drama. It is in social dramas that plural reflexivity
begins. If social dram a regularly implies conflict of principles, norms, and
persons, it also implies the growth of reflexivity: for if all principles and
norms were consistent, and if all persons obeyed them, then culture and
society would be unself-conscious and innocent, untroubled by doubt. But
few indeed are the human groups whose relationships are perpetually in
equilibrium, and who are free from agonistic strivings. I have been criticized
for assigning the term “dram a" to regular courses of events that become
publicly visible through some breach of a norm ordinarily held to be binding,
a norm that is itself a symbol of the maintenance of some major relationship
betw een persons, statuses, or subgroups and held to be a key link in the
integrality of the widest group recognized as a cultural envelope of solidary
sentiments. This first course of events moves on to what I call the phase of
crisis, the second phase, when people take sides or are in the process of
being induced, cajoled, or threatened to take sides by those who face one
another across the revealed breach as prime antagonists. A crisis has some
of the characteristics of a plague; it is extremely “contagious." Members of a
group, w hether it be in an African village, an American university d e p art­
ment, a trade union local, a church club, or the cabinet of a major nation­
state, remember, when crisis strikes, previous crises— where they stood
then, how they felt about the positions adopted by other group members;
and nonrational considerations become prominent— temperamental hos­
tilities, unconscious sexual attractions, reanimated infantile anxieties, and
the like. The breach is thus likely to expand by including more and more
grounds of opposition. All that is why the third stage, the application of
remedial procedures, is so often considered necessary. O rder is threatened;
remedial courses of action, the “antibodies" of the group, are produced in
response to that gro up 's contact with a sociocultural “antigen," interpreted
by the representatives of the group's ideal solidarity and continuity as the
“ toxins" of particular interest and ambition. This third stage is perhaps the
 24 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
most “reflexive” phase of the social drama. The group, acting through its
delegates or representatives, bends back upon itself to measure what its
m em bers, or some of its members, have done against its own standards.
Processes m ediated by procedures, established ways of doing things, are set
in train, the aim of which is to defuse tension, assess irrational deeds against
standards of reasonableness, and reconcile conflicting parties— having c o n ­
vinced them, through showing them the damaging effects of their actions on
group unity, that it is better to restore a state of peace than to continue in a
state of hostility. The fourth phase is the action initiated by the outcom e of
the third. My experience in Africa led me to see this as a bifurcation; either
there was an overt reconciliation of the conflicting parties, or there was
social recognition that schism was unavoidable and that the best solution
was for the dissident party or parties to separate, spatially if possible, from
z the group of the party or parties adjudged to have the better case.
As I mentioned earlier, certain scholars, R aym ond Firth among them,
have rebuked me for calling this pattern a social drama. They would reserve
the term “d ra m a ” for “theatrical presentations”— that is, for “a portrayal of
some aspect or sector of the human condition in a conventional, stylized
form, involving selection and abstraction from observation or from an imagi­
native range of id e as.”2 But my formulation involves “selection and a b strac ­
tion from o b serv a tio n ,” for this is precisely w hat happens in the third, the
# redressive, stage. I should mention that among redressive procedures we
should reckon ritual as well as legal action. Among the N d em b u of Zambia,
“rituals of affliction,” performed to placate ancestral spirits or exorcise
witchcraft familiars, every often take place precisely in the midst or wake of
the second phase (crisis) of a social drama. It was a fact of observation that
more people becam e ill in various ways during crises than w hen life had an
even tenor. In such cases, their kin go to a diviner who tells them, in the
course of a more or less elaborate séance, w hat has caused the affliction and
what type of ritual should be performed to remedy it. During the p erform ­
ance of such rituals, persons divided in the factional struggle of the crisis
phase are often united by having to cooperate in ritual tasks and by the
injunction to cast out of their “livers” any bad feelings they might harbor
there against anyone in the ritual situation. F irth ’s notion of an “imaginative
range of ideas” comes into play here, too, for the senior adepts in such ritual
perform ances often display individual virtuosity in the symbols they select
and in the ways in which they control the proceedings and the actors.
My contention is that social dramas are the raw stuff out of which theater
comes to be created as societies develop in scale and complexity and out of
which it is continually regenerated. F or I would assert that the social dram a
form is, indeed, universal, though it may be culturally elaborated in different
ways in different societies. In some societies, crises, for example, may be
m uted to all appearances, as in Burmese villages; in others, as in many
African villages, crises may be overt. The degree of force employed may
vary; the tem po may be fast or slow; the rhetoric passionate or restrained;
Liminality and the Performative Genres 25
the motivation to produce an unambiguous outcome highly variable. Some
societies may regularly favor legal, others ritual, modes of redress. Class,
gender, status, and age, as well as cultural traditions, may affect the style as
well as the vehem ence of social dramas. Types of issues, w hether serious
matters of communal survival or debate about how to decorate a house, also
affect the aesthetic shape of social dramas.
When all is said, however, both the indicative and subjunctive (and
perhaps the optative) moods of society and the reflexive forms are present in
live relationship in the unfolding of the social drama. This is the “natural
unit" (in terms of “human nature") of societas, seen as a process with some
systematic features, rather than as modeled on an abstract organic or m e­
chanical system. The liveliest confrontation of indicative and subjunctive
processes occurs during the redressive phase, for the judicial process seeks
to establish the facts by means of the cross-examination of witnesses and the
assessm ent of conflicting evidence in terms of “as-if" models. Max Gluck-
man has pointed out how the standard of the “reasonable man" is used in
Africa, as in the West, to determine the virtual truth of a plaintiff's, defend­
a n t's, or w itness's statement: how would a reasonable man behave if he
caught his wife in flagrante delicto with the deceased? Of course, “re aso n ­
ableness" becom es alloyed with status and role, for evidence is measured by
the yardsticks of “reasonable husband," “reasonable fa th e r,” “ reasonable
citizen," “ reasonable subchief.” In any case, narratives are placed in such
“as-if” frames, in order to move from the subjunctive mood of “it may have
happened like this or that" to the quasi-indicative mood of “these would
appear to be the facts, m 'lud ." The subjunctive is even more evident in ritual
procedures, from divination to shamanistic or liturgical curative action, in
which many invisible causes of visible afflictions are put forward by ritual
specialists as they try obliquely to assess the main sources of discord in the
communal context of each case of illness or misfortune.
In any event, the social drama is the major form of plural reflexivity in
human social action. It is not yet an aesthetic mode, for it is fully embodied
in daily living. But it contains the germs of aesthetic modes, both in its jural
and ritual operations. Ritual, in tribal society, represents not an obsessional
concern with repetitive acts but an immense orchestration of genres in all
available sensory codes: speech, music, singing: the presentation of elabo­
rately worked objects, such as masks: wall paintings, body paintings: sculp­
tured forms; complex, multi-tiered shrines; costumes; dance forms with
complex grammars and vocabularies of body movements, gestures, and fa­
cial expressions. Ritual also contains plastic and labile phases and episodes,
as well as fixed and formal ones. It is only by the dism em berm ent of tribal
ritual that modern religious and neurotic rituals have become specialized and
distinct from their multidimensional performative original. W hether such an
original matrix can ever be restored, short of the extinction of those pow er
sources that sustain complex modern econom ies— short of, therefore, “ re-
tribalization"— is a moot point. 1 am not happy about certain attempts to
26 Social D ram as & S tage D ram as
m ake theater regress to ritual, for such a regression is at the same time a
resynthesis of that which the division of labor has decisively put asunder.
And perhaps no man can wittingly do this. After all, who can unwind the
winding path? Though our species could easily, albeit unwittingly, bring it
about by destroying the economic bases of its civilized structures.
Plural reflexivity, as represented in the genres of performance, includ­
ing judicial processes, differs from singular reflexivity in that it involves
several persons in dramatic interaction. Prince- Hamlet could brood on his
own motives, but the play H a m le t reflects upon the rottenness not merely
“in the state of D e n m a rk ” but in the early modern world as old feudal values
came to stink in new Renaissance nostrils. It is the total set of interactions
that constitutes this m etacom m entary. The pattern of divination-therapy
abides throughout the whole brood of genres released by the division of
labor from the jural-ritual performative types found in the less complex
societies. D ram a heals; art cures; music soothes; the novel is therapeutic.
Getting to know oneself is to put oneself on the way to healing oneself. T h e 1
kind o f self-knowledge that produces despair is inadequate self-knowledge,
and may, indeed, be a crisis of the disease— as D ostoevsky has so repeatedly
shown us.
The social drama, then, endures, while the genres that cultural d e ­
velopm ent has detached from it, and thereafter elaborated, multiply in a
m anner consistent with Kurt G o d el’s theorem on the impossibility (under
certain circumstances) of formalizing a consistency p roof for a logistic sys­
tem (here in the sense of a system of symbolic logic) within that system.
Such a p ro of dem ands a metalanguage for talking about the system in terms
not derived from it. Similarly, the redressive machinery of spontaneous
social dramas, judicial and ritual, attains only a limited degree of reflexivity,
lying as it does, on the same plane as the agonistic events being scrutinized.
V

Other scrutinizing procedures, other languages or metalanguages, nonverbal

as well as verbal, are required— particularly w hen societies advance in scale
and complexity, often with sharp increases in the rates o f spatial and social
mobility. Such languages and procedures have antithetical qualities to the
spontaneous dramas they have to deal with. They have not only to recapitu­
late the sequence of agonistic events but also to scrutinize and evaluate
them. The reenactm ent is framed as a performance, but it is a m etaperform ­
ance, a perform ance about a performance.
And so we find performances about performances about performances
multiplying. O f course, as Goffman and other have shown, ordinary life in a
social structure is itself a performance. We play roles, occupy statuses, play
games with one another, don and doff many masks, each a typification. But
the perform ances characteristic of liminal phases and states often are more
about the doffing of masks, the stripping of statuses, the renunciation of
roles, the demolishing of structures, than about putting them on and keeping
them on. Antistructures are performed, too. But, still within the liminal
frame, new subjunctive, even ludic, structures are then generated, with their
Liminality an d the Performative Genres 21
own grammars and lexicons of roles and relationships. These are imagina­
tive creations, w hether attributed to individuals or to traditions. These b e­
come the many performative genres under discussion in this book. They are
also within what Gregory Bateson has called the play frame, which is one of
the frames found in liminality. It is a frame that, as he justly remarks,
encom passes a special combination of primary and secondary processes,
and is likely to precipitate paradox. In a primary process, the thinker is
unable to discriminate between “some" and “all," and “ not all" and “ none,"
whereas it is of the essence of secondary thinking, a more conscious mental
process, that such distinctions be made. In a dream or fantasy, the subject is
usually unaware that he is dreaming. But in play he is made aware that “this
is play." It is this peculiar union of primary processes, where subjectively
the actor is in what Csikszentmihalyi calls flow, where action and awareness
are one and there is loss of the sense of ego, and secondary processes, where
cognitive discriminations are made, that constitutes the distinctive quality of
performative genres. The actors, to do their work well, must be in flow; but
the script, scenario, or message they portray is finally shaped by discrimina­
tive reflexive secondary processes— the a u th o r’s m etastatem ents are p o w er­
fully animated by the a c to r ’s absorption in primary process. W hether the
script is by an individual playwright or is “ tradition" itself, it usually c o m ­
ments on social relationships, cultural values, and moral issues. The actors
do not take part in the formulation of the a u th o r’s messages; rather, they
activate those messages by the flow quality of their performance— a flow
that engages the audience as well, impressing on its members the “message"
of the total production.
I would like to illustrate this argument by examining not the W estern
cultural tradition but the Japanese. It is unimportant that I am no scholar in
this literature, since I am concerned with only a few very general variables.
Two expressive genres are involved— the novel and the theater— and I shall
also discuss a subtle m etacom m entary on the actor's art by Zeami Motokiyo
(1363-1444), a great actor, writer, and theorizer of the N o h drama. Many of
the plots of the N o h dram a were taken from what has sometimes been called
the world's first real novel (though it was not the first Japanese novel). T h e
T a l e o f G e n j i . Murasaki Shikibu, a court lady of the Heian period, wrote this
masterpiece in the few years after her husb and 's death in 100!— after only
two years of marriage and before she entered the e m p ress's service in 1007. I
shall consider a set of episodes in the novel that formed the basis of the plot
of the N o h play A o i n o U y e ( P r i n c e s s H o l l y h o c k ) , ascribed by tradition to
Zeami's son-in-law, Zenchiku Ujinobu, and known to have existed in so m e­
thing like its present form in the middle of the fifteenth century. The novel
form and the drama form represent a frame each: each frame encloses not
only a narrative or plot but also an explicit and implicit com m entary on the
social life of the times in which it was written. M urasaki’s standpoint is
aesthetic rather than religious; that of the N o h play is the reverse— though
the stagecraft is supremely aesthetic. But aesthetics and religion both dis-
28 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
tance the authors from the stream of events they describe and evaluate, and
put their scenarios under the sign of reflexivity. Zeam i’s essay is about how
the actor should handle this situation, and still put the audience into a state
of flow through the verisimilitude created by his performance.
I am convinced that social anthropology should intertwine with history,
like the snakes in H e r m e s ’ staff. Therefore, if I were to make a detailed
study of the relationship betw een the novel and the play, I would ground
M u rasa k i’s w ork in what we know of H e ia n 'c o u r t society, culture, and
religion, and set the N o h play in the mid-Muromachi period, that turbulent
time of rival em perors and feudal lords, within whose autonom ous domains,
nevertheless, there was comparative tranquility and prosperity. The artisans
and m erchants throve under the protection of the daimyo. Diplomatic rela­
tions and trade were opened with Ming China. In this age, called sengoku
“country at w a r ,” replete with social “dramas of living” (to use K enn eth
B u rk e ’s phrase) and yet with many enclaves of high culture, the N o h dram a
was born, to reflect upon the past and present by means of a vocabulary of
concepts draw n largely from Buddhism and to call any “p re se n t” into q u es­
tion. In the M urom achi period, the m oney econom y spread everyw here and
the more powerful lords protected the developing m erchant class in their
%

domains. Trading areas were enlarged and many of them encom passed more
than one feudal lo rd ’s domain. In this period, not only did the N o h theater
prosper un der the patronage of the Ashikaga shogunate but so also did
Chinese studies, pursued by the Zen monks of the five major temples. The
tea cerem ony and the art of flower arrangement also originated in this period
of general restlessness and uncertainty. Such periods in complex cultures
often provoke reflexivity.
M urasaki was a m em ber of a cloistered, sophisticated court, in which
the powerful Fujiwara family ruled through a powerless em peror at K yoto.
Court w om en were peculiarly well cloistered, cut off from fresh new experi­
ences and throw n back upon their own circles of gossip, elegance, and royal
ceremonies. One of the things they busied themselves with was the copying
out of pictorial novels, which combined pictures with narrative in long
scrolls. They were so many M esdam es Bovary, dissatisfied with real life.
But L ady M urasaki was a most singular person— for any age or culture. H er
diary tells us that her father, a considerable scholar in Chinese literature,
had her elder bro ther taught to read the Chinese classics. She writes, “I
listened, sitting beside him, and learned wonderfully fast, though he was
sometimes slow and forgot. Father, who was devoted to study, regretted
that I had not been a son, but I heard people saying that it is not beautiful
even for a man to be proud of his learning, and after that I did not write even
so much as the figure one in Chinese. I grew clumsy with my writing brush.
F o r a long time I did not care for the books I had already re a d .”3 Later, such
was the obloquy that fell upon bluestockings in the H eian court that we
encounter the pathetic spectacle of Murasaki clandestinely teaching the
empress the works of the great Chinese poet Li T ’si Po. W omen should be
Liminality and the Performative Genres 29
lovely and trivial, not learned. A truly learned woman in that court was
indeed a liminal figure, though many were literate enough to occupy th e m ­
selves with volumes of romance and fantasy. Escapism was all right, but
classical genius all wrong.
Murasaki created a reflexive, subjunctive world of characters, who, as
she writes at the very beginning of her novel, “lived at the Court of an
Em peror (he lived it matters not w hen).“4 But unlike the other ladies, she
had a theory of the novel, which she made explicit in one of its episodes.
This theory suggests that the world of fantastic stories is not so far removed
from real life as it may appear. By a singular irony, the episode consists of a
homily on the pictorial novel delivered by the principal character of
M urasaki's novel, Prince Genji, to T am akazura, who is the daughter of
Yugao, who appears in the N o h play we will examine. There is additional
irony in the fact that T am akazura considers herself to be Genji’s daughter
born out of wedlock. Genji, himself an e m p e ro r’s bastard, knows that she is
the daughter of an other court noble. To no Chujo. Yugao, with whom Genji
had a brief, passionate love affair in his youth, though of good birth was
thought by Genji at the time to have been a woman of the people. H er death,
as we shall see, was due to the jealousy of one of G enji’s lovers, a highborn
court lady, though in a way weirdly deviant from what we would take to be
everyday reality— yet Murasaki supposes that this death was part of the
novel's everyday reality. As you must be beginning to picture, we are al­
ready in a hall of reflecting mirrors, some of them distorting mirrors.
Genji, half-enamored of his late inam orata's daughter, now his ward,
visits her and finds her copying out a pictorial novel. He exclaims, “What a
nuisance! It looks as if ladies were born into this world only to be deceived
by others, and willingly too! They surely know there is very little truth in
those stories and yet they allow their minds to w ander into fantasies and
deceits as they read them in the hot, humid weather, even forgetting that
their hair is in tangles.”' Murasaki adds that “ he said this to Tam akazura and
laughed.”
But Genji is no male chauvinist, though his sarcasm aims at the c o n te m ­
porary stereotype of women as unable to distinguish between fact and
fiction. Genji is M urasaki's own vehicle as well as the occasional butt of her
feminist critique of male behavior. For he goes on to say, with a flash of
empathy, “ Indeed, without those old tales we would have no way by which
to kill our hopelessly tedious hours''6. But he then goes on to make a p o w er­
ful case for the “ reality” of the subjunctive mood of culture as conveyed in
the Japanese tradition of the novel. “Yet among such make-believe things
there are some which, having truly convincing pathos, unfold themselves
with natural sm oothness. We know they are not real, but still we cannot help
being moved when we read th e m .”’ Genji goes on to tell Tam akazura that the
way to sift out the “g o od ” from the “b a d ” novel is to rem em ber that the
former “does not simply consist in the auth or's telling a story about the
adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the
30 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
storyteller’s own experience of men and things, w hether for good or ill— not
only w hat he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only
witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that
he can no longer keep it shut up in his he^art. . . . He cannot bear to let it pass
into oblivion. There must never come a time, he feels, w hen men do not
know about it . . . clearly, then, it is no part of the storyteller’s craft to
describe only what is good or beautiful. . . . Anything w hatsoever may
become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane
life and not in some fairyland beyond our human k e n .”8 The novel is thus
concerned with the possible and not the impossible; if not with the factual,
then with the “ may b e ” and “might have b e e n ,” but not with the “may not
b e ” and “never have b e e n .” Genji admits that different cultures— China and
Japan, for exam ple— have “different methods of com position,” different
“outw ard fo rm s.” And that there are “lighter and more serious forms of
fiction.”9 But he goes on to say that even in M ahayana Buddhism there is a
difference betw een w hat is called “factual tru th” and “adapted tru th ,” that
is, fictional stories about the Buddha. Both fact and edifying fiction aim at
teaching the L aw , which leads to Enlightenment. In the same way, historical
truth— such as Genji claims may be found in the Chronicles of Japan (N ihon
Shoki)— and imaginative truth differ only in the way in which they grasp
reality. They are the indicative and subjunctive moods, in the terms I have
suggested, of presentational culture. The great aesthetic and ethical issues
are posed in fiction as much as in religious discourse. Real feeling is in the
novelist, and he deals with abiding ethical issues, with the codes that assign
meaning in terms of good and evil to deeds. He may invent plots, situations,
characters, scenery; but imaginative truth underlies fiction.
I m entioned that Prince Genji was talking to his dead lov er’s daughter.
The lost lady was named Yugao, literally Moonflower, and the tale of her
rom ance with Genji is perhaps the most poignant episode in the novel. Let
us admire M u ra sa k i’s subtle “double ta k e .” Genji, who was himself a p ro­
tagonist in a tale of M urasak i’s that has “truly convincing p a th o s ,” reflects
upon the nature of the novel, which should convey ju s t this quality, in the
presence of Y u g ao ’s child. W hat makes the matter even more complex is
Genji’s enthusiastic mention of his literary talks with the girl to his wife,
whose name is also Murasaki, and who had been first raised from infancy,
then w ooed and seduced by Genji in his palace. Murasaki is annoyed when
Genji calls T a m a k az u ra a “w om an of the world” with a “brilliant future
before h e r.”

From his manner Murasaki instantly saw that his interest in Tamakazura had
assumed a new character. “I am very sorry for the girl,” she said, “she evi­
dently has complete confidence in you. But I happen to know what you mean
by that phrase, ‘a woman of the world,’ and if I chose to do so, could tell the
unfortunate creature what to e x p e c t.” . . . “But you surely cannot mean that I
shall betray her confidence?” asked Genji indignantly. “You forget,” she re­
plied, “that I was once in very much the same position myself. You had made
up your mind to treat me as a daughter; but, unless I am much mistaken, there
Liminality a n d the Performative Genres 31
were times when you did not carry out this resolution very successfully. . . . ”
“H o w clever everyone is!” thought Genji, much put out at the facility with
which his inmost thoughts were read. . . . Murasaki, he reflected, was not
judging this case on its merits, butm erely assuming, in the light o f past experi­
ence, that events were about to take a certain course. . . .
To convince himself that Murasaki had no ground for her suspicions he fre­
quently went across to the side wing and spent some hours in Tamakazura’s
c o m p a n y .10

Prince Genji consistently turned his life into a fiction and gave his love
affairs a certain aesthetic style. H e framed them in m om ents of anticipatory
beauty like so many pictures illustrating a novel of the period. Often he
paused in the moonlight to watch the cherry blossoms round Y u g ao ’s door—
m ore exquisite than her subsequent seduction. But her death after a clandes­
tine tryst had a m acabre quality. It followed Genji’s vision of a tall and
majestic w om an w ho “made as though to drag the w om an from his side.”
Yugao becam e limp and died. The menacing hallucination came again on
various occasions to trouble Genji. And it is on this figure that both
M urasaki and the N o h drama play for ethico-religious ends; yet behind both
is a pervasive Buddhist world view that stresses compassion and enlighten­
ment, rather than condem nation and revenge.
The supernatural figure in the novel is not a ghost but the apparition of a
living woman. In H eian times— and even today in rural areas— the Japanese
believed that as sustained vehem ent passion of love or jealousy could bring
about the translocation of the passionate spirit, either to possess the object
of its jealousy or to menace the object of its love. In many cultures this
would be called witchcraft. In most cases the afflicting agent is a w oman and
she is unconscious of her own malevolence. In The Tale o f Genji, the living
ghost is one L ady Rokujo, widow of the old e m p e ro r’s elder brother who
died young. Genji, illegitimate son of the old emperor, became the target of
her ardent feelings long pent-up by prem ature widowhood. He was seven
years older than the dead prince, w hose beauty and charm made him every
w o m a n ’s favorite in the court circle. F o r Genji, the affair soon becam e
painful; “the blind intoxicating passion that had possessed him while she was
still unattainable had almost disappeared. To begin with, he was far too
sensitive, then there was that disparity of their ages, and the constant dread
of discovery which haunted him during those painful partings at small hours
in the morning. In fact, there were too many disadvantages.” "
Normally, Genji would have ended the affair with his usual charm and
consideration that left the lady still his friend. But Rokujo was highborn,
proud, and developed a fierce jealousy for all of Genji’s women, and hers
was a jealousy she would hardly admit to herself. It took the form of project­
ing her living ghost against rivals. I am sure that Lady Murasaki used this
widespread belief for the purpose of psychological exploration, though she
clearly regarded the vengeful spirit as a reality. F or example, some time
after Y ug ao’s death, G enji’s first wife, Aoi, “ Princess H ollyhock,” is u n d er­
32 Social D ram as & Stage D ramas
going a protracted labor. Genji has rounded up the abbot of Tendai and other
V.

great ecclesiastics to pray round her bed.

. . . meaning to cheer her, [Genji] said, liC om e, things are not so bad as that.
You will soon be much better. But even if anything should happen, it is certain
that we shall meet again in worlds to come. Your father and mother too, and
many others, love you so dearly that between your fate and theirs must be
some sure bond that will bring you back to them in many, many lives that are to
be!” Suddenly she interrupted him: “N o , no. That is not it. But stop these
prayers a while. They do me great harm,” and drawing him nearer to her she
went on, “I did not think that you would come. I have waited for you while all
my soul is burnt with longing.” She spoke wistfully, tenderly; and still in the
same tone recited the verse, “Bind thou, as the seam o f a skirt is braided, this
shred, that from my soul despair and loneliness have sundered.” The voice in
which these words were said was not A o i ’s; nor was the manner hers. He knew
som eone w h o se voice was very like that. Who was it? Why, yes; surely only
she— the Lady Rokujo. Once or twice he had heard people suggest that s o m e ­
thing o f this kind might be happening; but he had always rejected the idea as
hideous and unthinkable, believing it to be the malicious invention o f some
unprincipled scandalmonger, and had even denied that such “p o sse ssio n ” ever
took place. N o w he had seen one with his own eyes. Ghastly, unbelievable as
they were, such things did happen in real life.12

Behind this lies the Buddhist notion of the binding pow er of passion.
Rokujo so coveted Genji’s attentions that she dispossessed the souls of his
women. Besides, status was involved. Yugao seemed to be a lowborn
maiden— actually she was of good birth, but this was unknow n both to Genji
and Rokujo. In the highborn princess A o i’s case, Rokujo had fancied herself
to be slighted by her at the recently performed K am o festival at which
R o k u jo ’s daughter was to be installed as a vestal virgin at the Shinto temple
at Ise. A o i’s carriage and those of her ladies had been m aneuvered by her
grooms into a front-row position, while R o ku jo’s was pushed back “among a
miscellaneous collection of carts and gigs where she could see nothing at
all.” This was not A o i’s fault— she is portrayed as a very good-natured,
though som ew hat uninteresting, person— but that of her grooms, who, “al­
ready the worse for liquor,” would not let R oku jo ’s old-fashioned carriage—
the m ark of “an exalted personage,” they thought, “who did not want to be
recognized”— move to the front. Later, Rokujo, hemmed in, was partly
forced and partly desired to watch a procession of “magnificently a p ­
parelled” noblemen ride by, among them Prince Genji. Murasaki writes:
“The humiliation of watching all this from an obscure corner was more than
Rokujo could bear, and murmuring the lines, T h o u g h I saw him but as a
shadow that falls on hurrying waters yet knew I that at last my hour of
utmost misery was c o m e ,’ she burst into tears. It was hideous that her
servants should see her in this state. Yet even while she struggled with her
tears she could not find it in her heart to regret that she had seen him in all his
glory.” 13
The irony of this situation is as usual poignant in the extreme; Rokujo
Liminality a n d the Performative Genres 33
had come ostensibly to see her unmarried daughter renouncing the world
and actually to catch a glimpse of her lover. H e r lo ver’s wife, in her view,
shut her off from the religious c erem ony and compelled her to see Genji in all
his glory “from her obscure c o rn e r.” N o n e of this was Lady A o i’s fault— she
was described as “exquisitely well b re d ”— yet she was the victim of Roku-
j o ’s rage, spurred on by “the pangs o f disprized love.” Rokujo, how ever,
was not conscious of her jealousy; “of hostility tow ards Aoi she could find
no trace at all. Yet she could not be sure w h ether som ew here in the depths of
a soul consum ed by anguish some spark of malice had not lurk ed .” 14
Murasaki is a great artist; she does not make value judgm ents. She uses
them es and motifs of religion and folk belief for their aesthetic and p sy ch o ­
logical effect. It is generally agreed that the Buddhism of the H eian period
had b ecom e superficial, a matter of cerem ony and prestigious participation
in rituals presided o ver by aristocratic priests and abbots. But by the time we
com e to the M urom achi period, Buddhism has undergone a major revival,
and it is in this revitalized frame that the N o h play based on R o k u jo ’s
preternatural attack on Aoi in childbirth takes on its central meaning— the
salvation of R o k u jo ’s soul. She is not condem ned as a witch or villainess but
is seen as one bound in demonic guise to the karmic wheel by her passionate
longing for Genji and her passionate hate of those he loves independently of
her.
W hereas M u ra s a k i’s novelistic genius was to create an expressive
frame revealing the ethical complexities of the hum an condition even within
the constraints of the H eian court, swinging betw een b oredo m and seduc­
tion, in full accordance with K ie rkeg aard’s definition of “the a esthetic,” the
genius of the N o h dram a was to consider social and interpersonal process
with regard to eternity in the Buddhist salvific mode. But since Japanese
culture can never escape the aesthetic entirely, this dimension in its
plenitude migrated to the performative aspects of the N o h dram a— its stage
setting, its music, and above all its acting techniques.
A few w ords about the form of the N o h play are in order. It took its
present shape in the fourteenth century as a synthesis of several p erform a­
tive genres, including dance, poetry, music, and mime. Some speak of its
roots in ritual. In any case, it represents scenes from the cerem onious life of
the Japanese feudal aristocracy. N o h plays were produced at festival sea­
sons, in sequences of five plays interdigitated with farcical, popular plays
know n as K yogen. T w o men, K w anam i and Zeami M otokiyo (father and
son), mentioned earlier, wrote nearly half the plays in the repertory o f those
produced today. Hardly any o f the 240 still seen have been written since
1600.
There are five types o f N o h plays, but almost all have the following
processual form. They are in two parts: part one shows the leading c h a ra c ­
ter, or shite, in a humble, human disguise; in part two, he or she appears as
the deity or hero or heroine he or she really is, though if as a human being,
almost always as a ghost. When a ghost, he or she endures penance for a
34 Social D ram as & S tage D ram as
violent action committed in mortal life. By a species of paradox, therefore,
this ghost is essentially more real than the humble human he or she had
pretended to be in part one. In this manifestation, the ghost rem em bers and
repents of the violent earth-binding passion of love or hate that prevents
release. Both Buddhist and Shinto ideas help to frame the second part and
assign meaning to it. This focus on religion in the scenario is counteracted by
an extraordinary appeal to aesthetic sensibility in the acting. Zeami, as we
shall see, has striking things to say about this relationship betw een the
religious and the aesthetic. ^
The stage setting imposes all kinds of constraints that it is the a c to r’s
task to surm ount— a limited frame for an illimitable “flow.”

The stage is a square, nineteen feet, five inches, raised two feet, seven inches
above the floor o f the auditorium, into which it projects on three sides. To the
rear is a panel on which an aged pine tree is painted. To the left extends a
bridgeway, the H a sh iga ka ri, leading to a curtained doorway, the entrance and
exit for the principal characters. The stage is covered with a roof supported by
four corner pillars fifteen feet high. Three small trees are stationed at regular
intervals along the bridgeway. In a shallow backstage entirely visible to the
audience are seated four musicians, from left to right players o f the horizontal
drum, the large hand drum, the small hand drum, and the flute. The corner of
the stage adjoining the front o f the bridgeway is known as the station for the
shite, or principal actor. Beside the pillar diagonally opposite is the station for
the secondary actor, or waki. The juncture between the rear o f the bridgeway
and the back of the stage is known as the k y o g e n ’s seat. This man serves as
stage attendant and may speak informally, giving what may be described as
program notes between the two parts o f the play. . . . The ceremony proceeds
to formula, from its prelude to its obligatory conclusion. The manner is stylized
to the highest possible degree. The shite is masked, so are his immediate
followers, if there are any such persons. Other actors have mask-like make-up.
Costumes are lavish and symbolical. In two-part plays, that o f the shite is, of
course, changed during the brief interval. . . . The play’s style is refined and
precious almost to the point o f being cryptic. Verse is used in the more
elevated and lyrical passages, where spiritual and emotional qualities are at
their height. Prose serves for the simpler speeches. . . . Much o f the dialogue is
. . . quoted from Chinese and Japanese classical poetry. Many phrases are
repeated. A chorus, seated on the right o f the stage, sings, speaks for or as the
leading actor, moralizes, and narrates. It commonly sings as the shite mimes
the imagined action. Often it completes a sentence com m enced by the shite, or
the shite concludes a phrase com m enced by the chorus. Two or more charac­
ters often speak in unison. Thus the text is treated more in the manner o f an
oratorio than in that o f a Western play.15

This ritualized form has the effect of limiting the expression of individu­
ality and presenting a generalized dram a of salvation or damnation. Such a
dram a has its source in history or literature, where individual characters
abound, but its aim is to transcend these and evaluate events and behavior in
the light of Buddhist criteria. Thus, in the play A o i no Uye (Princess H olly­
hock), Lady Rokujo is no longer treated as a unique person but as a ghost
bound upon the w h e e l.16 Early in the play she is “made visible” by the chant
Liminality a n d the Performative Genres 35
of a miko, a term that may be translated either as “a maiden in the service of
a shrine” or as “w itch,” and laments:

This world *•
Is like the wheels o f the little ox-cart;
Round and round they go . . . till vengeance com es.
The Wheel o f Life turns like the wheel o f a coach;
There is no escape from the Six Paths and Four
Births. We are brittle as the leaves o f the b a s h o f
A s fleeting as foam upon the sea.
Y esterd a y’s flower, to d a y’s dream.
From such a dream were it not wiser to w a k e ? 17

Imagery of wheels, coaches, and carts pervades the play and clearly
refers to R o k u jo ’s experiences of humiliation in the novel. F o r not only does
the play mention the scuffle betw een A o i’s and R oku jo ’s coachm en, but it
also alludes to an episode in which Rokujo sees a coach, from which all
badges and distinctive decorations have been stripped, standing before
Y u g ao ’s door. She learned that this was G enji’s and he was on a clandestine
visit to his Moonflower. The wheels associated with her earthly obsession
with Genji are identified with the Wheel of Passion, which binds ignorant
mortals to the earth in an endless sequence of rebirths, unless they learn
B u d d h a ’s way of release through Enlightenment.
In the play, Rokujo, thus materialized, cannot but relive her hatred for
Aoi. E ven after admitting that “in this Saha World that is, of appearances
w here days fly like the lightning’s flash/N o ne is worth hating and none
worth pitying,” and that she has “come to clear my h a te ,” she is again
overm astered by passion and “ strikes” not once but again and again a folded
cloak on the stage representing the bed of Aoi.
She then dons a female d e m o n ’s mask, grasps a mallet, and is concealed
by two attendants behind a robe she has taken off, representing her invisibil­
ity. A m essenger is dispatched to the Little Saint of Y okaw a of the Tendai
sect, probably because its mountain headquarters at Hieizan near K yoto
were the monastic and scholastic headquarters of all Japanese Buddhism in
the H eian period, in which the play is set. The saint is also an adherent of
Shugendo, a religious m ovem ent organized during and after the H eian p e ­
riod, which em phasized pilgrimages to the mountains for ascetic retreats. Its
practitioners, or yam ahushi, were instrumental in spreading the charm s and
incantations of esoteric Buddhism (mixed with Taoistic charm s and Shinto
elements) to the people. The saint promptly begins his incantations to e x o r­
cise the demonic manifestation of Rokujo. Eventually, w hen he cites the
H annya K y o , a sutra that is believed to have a particular influence over
female dem ons (also called ha nn ya s), Rokujo suddenly drops her mallet and
presses her hands to her ears. F o r she has heard the words:

*A plant with banana-like leaves w hose spirit in feminine form is the subject o f
another N o h play with the message that “even plants may attain Buddhahood.”
36 Social D ram as & S tage D ram as
They that hear my name shall get Great Enlightenment;
They that see my body shall attain to BuddhahOod.

The play concludes: N

When she heard the sound of Scripture

The d e m o n ’s raging heart was stilled;
Shapes o f Pity and Sufferance,
The Bodhisats descend.
Her soul casts off its bonds,
She walks in Buddha’s W a y . 18'

H ere there is a strange mixture of exorcism and conversion— Shinto and

Shugendo intermingled.
If we briefly com pare the novel and the play, we find that both “fram e”
behavior, but in different ways; the novel is flexible and closely in tune with
the a u th o r ’s feelings and experience, whereas the play imposes on itself a
stylized, even ritualized, form. Both are metacommentaries. Murasaki sel­
dom moralizes, she lets her tale tell itself, but there is, nevertheless, always
a subtly ironical presentation of masculine egoism and obtuseness.
M urasaki, too, is the reflexive voice of a civilized court and a veiled critique
of the alternating boredom and seductiveness of the aesthetic mode when it
is allowed to dom inate daily life. There is, however, an undercurrent of
Buddhist evaluation, even in the portrayal of beautiful things and people.
These mutabilities are sad in their essence. Only the monastic life can pre­
pare the way for that enlightenment which draws the sting of the fleetingness
of the world, even when it is lovely; both Rokujo and Genji eventually
renounce the world for the religious life. The N o h play, like most members
of its genre, is more explicitly religious. This may have been at least partly
due to the troubled state of Japan in the M uromachi period; such “liminal”
periods in history often direct the public’s attention to meaning conferring
(and hence “red ressive”) institutions, which themselves acquire new forms
and contents in reflexive interaction with the turbulent and complex social
process. Perhaps, too, the rigid form and allusive content of N o h are dialec­
tically related to the flux and conflict in the political and cultural life on
which this type of dram a obliquely commented.
W h ate v er may have been the case, it is certain that the framing of N oh
was highly stylized, and that this th e a te r’s rules were minute and precise.
The message thus framed had to be presented by the actors in ways that
transcended the limits almost ascetically imposed. Zen Buddhism, a product
of the even m ore turbulent K am ak ura period (1155-1333), influenced the
disciplinary fram ew ork. It also influenced the thinking of Zeami, theorist of
this theater, son of Kw anam i Kiyotsuga, a priest of the Kasuga temple near
N ara (the old capital) who later left the priesthood to take up acting and
virtually founded the N o h theater.
Zeami M otokiyo wrote and acted in many plays, but he was also a
brilliant theorist. One of his major concepts, set out in several of his twenty
Liminality a n d the Performative Genres 37
essays written at various times in his long theatrical career, is yugen, a term
that contains the notion of mysterious depth as a counterstroke to the e x ter­
nal limitations of N o h conventions. Yugen is what the N o h actor should
primarily seek to convey to the audience. N o h exemplifies what the poet
Rilke once described as the “circumspection of human g e stu re” found in the
greatest art.
M akoto U eda derives yugen from yu, signifying “deep, dim, or difficult
to s e e ,” and gen, “originally describing the dark, profound, tranquil color of
the universe [it] refers to the Taoist concept of tru th .” 19 “Zeami perceived
mysterious beauty in cosmic truth; beauty was the color of truth, so to
sp ea k .”20 Since hum an life is fleeting, like cherry blossoms, m a n ’s destiny is
sad, from the viewpoint of this world. The skill of the actor is to em body not
only the elegant beauty but also the pathos of life in time. Zeami quotes a
poem that, in his view, creates this effect:

, Tinted leaves begin to fall

From one side o f the forest
As it rains in the evening
And drenches a deer
L onesom ely calling for its mate.21

But the suprem e skill of the N o h actor is to transcend the im perm a­

nence that envelops the world. Zeami, being of a systematic cast of mind,
classified all theatrical effects into nine categories.22 These are in three
groups of three. The first three, which he calls (1) Roughness and Aberrance,
(2) Strength and R oughness, and (3) Strength and Delicacy, lack the quality
of yugen. Yugen begins with the fourth style, Shallowness and Loveliness,
and the true N o h actor should begin right there. It is w hen he m asters the
fifth to the ninth that he should come down and m aster the first three, which
can only be made interesting by a great actor who knows y u g e n , even if still
only a shallow kind. W hen the actor grasps the fifth style, B roadness and
M inuteness— that is, depth and versatility— he is farther along the w ay— and
Zeami likens yugen for the actor to Tao for the man or w om an of religion; it
is his “Way of ways [which is] not an ordinary w a y .”23 At this point the actor
can tell through his performance of a role “all about the heart of the object he
is im personating.”24
The “Style o f a Right F lo w e r” is the highest of the middle ranks of
acting skills. “ F lo w e r” means here an impressive theatrical effect, a moment
of deep or dazzling beauty in an a c to r ’s performance. Zeami uses a poetic
m etaphor for this: “The spring haze brightens in the setting sun. All m o u n ­
tains in sight are gleaming in crim son.” The “flower” is perhaps the aesthetic
summit of acting.
But beyond it are the three ranks that M akoto U ed a calls sublime,
quintessential yugen. H ere the Zen view that it is quiet, subdued beauty, as
in the tea cerem ony, that is truly sublime prevails. The “ Style of a Calm
F low er” is the lowest of the final triad. Its essence, Zeami wrote, is in the
38 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
Zen saying “Snow is piled in a silver b ow l.” As opposed to the earlier flower,
this is a flower without color— one might almost say an antistructural
flower— the beauty o f pure whiteness. Snow, the purity of nature, is held
within silver, the beauty of culture. Art and nature are united virginally in
this austere style, harm ony unblemished.
The eighth style is the “Style of a Profound F lo w e r.” Zeami again refers
to a Zen saying: “ Snow has covered thousands of mountains. Why is it that a
solitary mountain tow ers unwhitened among th e m ? ”25 E veryone must have
seen this effect in great mountain ranges— a black peak rising among snow-
invested mountains. Something exceptional, unique, aberrant, irrational has
happened. As M akoto U eda writes, “The other world has now begun to
invade the world o f the ordinary senses. . . . [There is] a strange kind of
beauty perceptible only to those suprem e artists who are endow ed with
extraordinary sensitivity.”26 An actor who can realize this “F lo w e r” can put
his audience into a kind of trance.
The ninth and suprem e style Zeami entitles the “Style of a Mysterious
F lo w e r.” H e illustrates it by an other Zen epigram: “In Silla the sun shines
brightly at m idnight.” W hat does this mean? Silla is part of K orea, east of
China. While it is still dark in China, the sun is already brilliant in Korea. If
som eone could overco m e the limitations of space and time, he could live in
China in darkness and yet be in brightness in Korea. W hat seems to be a
contradiction in space and time is not a contradiction w hen seen from a
higher perspective. A truly great N o h actor, “through the Style of a M ysteri­
ous Flower, makes us visualize such a transcendental world, a world of
higher reality lying beyond our ordinary senses. . . . At its sight we are
struck with the feeling of austerity,”27 that is, the very essence of yugeri.
With this notion o f a transcendental referent, practically everything in
N o h becom es symbolic. Actually, N o h is a hyperliminal form. Its protago­
nists are often deities, spirits, ancestors, and ghosts who have seen the other
world as well as this one. W here a W estern tragedy would end— with the
death of the protagonist (the shite)— a N o h play begins. The transcendental
being, materialized in some way, recounts the history of the passion that
does not allow him to escape from the limen betw een the worlds. His co n ­
fession becom es an analysis, and the analysis an evaluation in which he is
assisted by the deuteragonist (the waki), who is often a Buddhist monk or
saint. Som etim es the protagonist appears to the monk in a dream. H ere I
would like to recall to you what I have said about the liminal being largely in
the subjunctive mood. A whole world of wishes and hopes is opened up, as
well as a world of moral reflexivity, in which the protagonist’s actual b ehav­
ior is related to how he ought to have acted. But there is a subtle interfusion
o f the indicative (“ norm al”) and subjunctive (“aesthetic”) moods in N o h
drama. W here these fuse, we find magic; where the “might have b e e n ” is
conceded to have indicative power, we have performative acts or magical
spells. Thus, the Little Saint’s incantation is portrayed as having an actual
effect on Rokujo, releasing her from her demonic obsession.
Liminality a n d the Performative Genres 39
It is the art o f the actor that communicates these metam essages e m ­
bodied in the scripts and scenarios of N oh. This art is the source of the
apparently spontaneous “flow” that catches up both actors and audience into
itself. The sensorily perceptible^symbols and images that convey the m e s ­
sage— the colorful manifold of scenery, costume, dance, music, singing,
poetic utterance, gestural language— must emerge from the a c to r ’s limpid
singleness of being, something only attainable by much study of his craft and
by experience of life as well as art. Zeami puts all this supremely well:

The seed of the flower that blossom s out o f all works o f art lies in the artist’s
soul. Just as a transparent crystal produces fire and water, or a colorless cherry
tree bears blossom s and fruit, a superb artist creates a moving work of art out
o f a landscape within his soul. It is such a person that can be called a vessel.
Works o f art are many and various, some singing of the moon and the breeze
on the occasion of a festival, others admiring the blossoms and the birds at an
outdoor excursion. The universe is a vessel containing all things— flowers and
leaves, the snow and the moon, mountains and seas, trees and grass, the
animate and the inanimate— according to the seasons o f the year. Make those
numerous things the material o f your art, let your soul be the vessel of the
universe, and set it in the spacious, tranquil way o f the void. You will then be
able to attain the ultimate of art, the Mysterious Flow er.28

Zeami is referring specifically to the a c to r ’s art. The actor is the “crystal

vessel”— the “N on-B eing,” in Buddhist language— that brings to life, even
engenders, the “heterogeneous m a tte rs” of fire and water, contraries that
underlie the active manifold and manifest of “Being.” N o h theater, in c o n so ­
nance with this stress on what lies beyond, is deeply musical; all the lines are
recited in rhythmical speech, with the accom panim ent of orchestral music.
Zeami even said once that “music is the soul of N o h ” The auditory symbols
assist the limpid flow o f the visual action and drive the religious message in
deep.
To show precisely how M u rasa k i’s novel and the N o h play A o i no Uye
represent m etacom m entaries on the social processes of their respective core
communities would require detailed study of historical docum ents. But we
might be able to make a few programmatic suggestions here. One would be
to stress the contrast betw een the Heian and M uromachi periods.29 Both
novel and play are refined art forms intended for an elite class. But the
former, written by a woman, with a male protagonist, uses material drawn
directly from her observations, whereas the latter, probably written by a
man (Zenchiku, Z e a m i’s son-in-law) who has played female roles and a d ­
vised on how they should be played by male actors, uses material drawn
from myth, historical chronicles, and classical literature. Murasaki writes
for and about the royal court at Kyoto; the N o h dramatists write for the local
landed warriors who were supplanting the once powerful and wealthy court
aristocracy. Indeed, there were “two rival Mikados, one in the north and one
in the south, who held impotent and dwindling c o u rts .”30 The real pow er was
in the hands of the young Shogun whose family held absolute power. This
40 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
man, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, regarded himself as a patron of the arts and
letters, and was also influenced by the recently introduced (from China) Zen
form of Buddhism. He loved the theater and even gave a fief in Yam ato to
Z e a m i’s father (K w anam i Kiyotsugo, 1333-1384), the major founder of the
N o h theater. The combination of feudal militancy with Zen spiritual disci­
pline (K w anam i was once a monk) probably had much to do with the N o h
th e a te r’s use of stirring battle scenes from the preceding, even more turbu­
lent K a m a k u ra period as its main narrative staple. The past had two uses: on
the one hand it represented a model of ideal conduct— men were more
chivalrous, w om en more virtuous than in the present age; on the other hand,
the segmentary oppositions of the present— for example, the contem porary
division betw een the two Mikados and the contradiction betw een the
M ik ad o ’s status and that of the Shogun (rex versus dux, in De Jo u v en a l’s
terms)— were displaced on to the quasi-legendary struggles betw een the
mighty M inamoto and Taira clans (who, betw een them, ended the relative, if
decadent, peacefulness of the Heian age).
Thus M u ra sa k i’s m etacom m entary on her time was, like Jane A u s te n ’s, a
psychological one— an ironical portrait of court people, and especially men,
within the purview of her restricted physical experience— while the
m etaco m m en tary of the N o h plays was a politico-religious one, responding
to changes in the major social structures of Japanese society. M u rasaki’s
com m entary is the work of a universal genius, while K w a n a m i’s and
Z e a m i’s perspectives were elaborated by wonderfully talented re presen ta­
tives of a great, but particular culture.
Let me return, in concluding, to my view that any society that hopes to
be imperishable must carve out for itself a piece of space and a period of time
in which it can look honestly at itself. This honesty is not that of the scien­
tist, who exchanges the honesty of his ego for the objectivity of his gaze. It
is, rather, akin to the supreme honesty of the creative artist who, in his
presentations on the stage, in the book, on canvas, in marble, in music, or in
towers and houses, reserves to himself the privilege of seeing straight what
all cultures build crooked. All generalizations are in some way skewed, and
artists with candid vision “labour well the minute particulars,” as Blake
knew. This may be a metalanguage, but all this means is that the “m e ta ” part
of it is not at an abstract remove from what goes on in the world of “getting
and spending,” but rather sees it more clearly, w hether more passionately or
dispassionately is beside my present point. W hether anthropology can ig­
nore this incandescent objectivity and still lay claim to being “the study of
m a n ” I gravely doubt.

NOTES

1. Mary B. Black, “Belief S y s t e m s ,” in J. J. Honigman, ed., H a n d b o o k o f Social

a n d Cultural A n th r o p o lo g y (Chicago, 1973), p. 533.
Liminality a nd the Performative Genres 41
2. Raymond Firth, R eview o f D ra m a s, Fields a n d M e t a p h o r s by Victor Turner,
Tim es Literary S u p p le m e n t, September 13, 1974.
3. Donald Keene, A n A n t h o lo g y o f J a p a n e s e Literature (N e w York, 1956), p. 155.
4. Arthur Waley, trans., The Tale o f Genji (N e w York, 1960), p. 7.
5. Makoto Ueda, Literary a n d A r t Theories in Ja p a n (Cleveland, 1967), p. 29.
6. Waley, p. 30.
7. Waley, p. 30.
8. Waley, p. 502.
9. Waley, p. 502.
10. Waley, pp. 487-488.
11. Waley, p. 59.
12. Waley, p. 165.
13. Waley, p. 158.
14. Waley, p. 163.
15. Henry W. Wells, “N o h , ” in J. Gassner and E. Quinn, eds., The R e a d e r ’s
E n c y c lo p e d ia o f W orld D r a m a (N e w York, 1969), pp. 603-604.
16. Arthur Waley, N o h Plays o f J a p a n (N e w York, 1920), pp. 179-189.
17. N o h Plays, p. 182.
18. N o h Play.s, p. 189.
19. Ueda, p. 60.
20. U eda, p. 61.
21. Ueda, p. 62.
22. Ueda, pp. 64-67.
23. Ueda, p. 65.
24. Ueda, p. 66.
25. Ueda, p. 67.
26. Ueda, p. 67.
27. Ueda, p. 67.
28. Ueda, pp. 68-69.
29. See Peter Duus, F e u d a lis m in J a p a n (N e w York, 1969).
30. N o h Plays, p. 19.
 V

,
Charivari Honor and Community ,
in Seventeenth-Century Lyon and Geneva *
Natalie Zemon Davis

At best, a charivari in its boisterous mixture of playfulness and cruelty tries

to set things right in a community. We can thus imagine, say, the first
Sunday of Lent in the rural canton of Geneva, when the youths stood o ut­
side the house of a recently wed but still childless couple, singing and m a k ­
ing a racket until sweets were thrown out to them. The husband and wife
were reminded of tHeir duty without too much loss of face; the young were
fed; and the fertility of the whole village was helped by the fire ritual that
usually ensued.' But a charivari is a hazardous instrument of social control.
W hen neighbors or villagers disagreed strongly about the conduct of d o m e s­
tic life, or about the rights of folk justice, then the clamorous crowd could
shatter the com m unity and leave even violence and death in its wake. Envy
or fury could push the social ritual of mockery beyond its usual bounds.
In this essay, I will examine four charivaris in which, to varying d e­
grees, something went wrong, that is, charivaris that ended in a criminal
prosecution— and not ju st because the authorities heard about a rumpus and
decided to punish a competing folk jurisdiction, but because victims lodged a
complaint. Two of the charivaris took place in the rural area of the canton of
Geneva: in 1626 in Corsinge, where the target for humiliation brought the
governm ent to her side; and in 1631 in Chêne, where violence and threats
continued for months. The other two occurred in an urban, artisanal setting:
in 1668 in Lyon, w here a man was wounded and ultimately died, and in 1669
in Geneva, w here an outraged victim demanded punishment of the neighbor­
hood revelers.2
Unusual though these four charivaris may be in their denouem ent, they
originated in classical w ay s.3 One was sparked by a widow remarrying, the

*A French translation of this essay has appeared in Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude
Schmitt, eds., L e Charivari (Paris: Mouton, 1981). The author is grateful to the
Committee on Research of the University of California, Berkeley, for funds aiding
this research.

42
Charivari, Honor, a n d C om m unity 43
others by the beating of husbands by their wives. Two were led by young
unmarried males; two had Abbeys o f Misrule as their organizational instru­
ment. Through these examples we can explore how charivaris were started,
the range of participants, and thé variety of dramatic techniques used for
public ridicule. They can tell us something of how seriously the m atter of
ho nor and reputation was taken by villagers and artisans in the seventeenth
century and of the strength of the bonds that held together communities.
And finally, because they ended up in prosecutions, they may be able to
indicate how committed people could be, in this period of continuing polit­
ical centralization, to local folk justice as a source of control, of amusement,
and of solidarity.

SE TTIN G , O C C A S IO N , O R G A N IZ A T IO N , L E A D E R S

N o rth e ast of Geneva, Corsinge was so small that it had no resident pastor
and the villagers had to walk to nearby Jussy for Sunday Mass. Though new
spouses came into the hamlet from G eneva and from far away as Gex in
Savoie, many of the people married closer to home, the Cham bets and the
Guyons being especially successful in providing parents for the next genera­
tion. At least one o f the households had a resident servant, and the local
netw ork of communication spread upward to include a landowner, always
referred to respectfully by the villagers as the “Sieur D a d a .” H ere, not long
before M ay Day in 1626, word spread that Jean Salla had let himself be
beaten by his wife. N either of them was apparently kin to the central families
of Corsinge.
Chêne was a little different. Within two h o u rs ’ walking distance from
G eneva, the village was a more populous place, supplied both with its own
hostelry and its own pastor. H ere, not long before Hallowmas in 1631, rum or
had it that B esançon D aussy had been beaten by his wife. He was probably
not born in the area (“B esan çon ” was a name virtually unused in Geneva
after the Reformation) and was quite well-off for a peasant. Perhaps the
famine of 1628-31 had intensified the villagers’ envy of his possessions, this
in turn contributing to the tone of the charivari.4
The reactions to these reversals of family order were similar in the two
communities. The traditional Abbeys of Misrule were sum m oned by their
abbots, in both cases men native to their village. “You will have to pay a fine
if you d o n ’t c o m e ,” the Sieur D ada reminded Corsinge peasants who seemed
reluctant to follow A bbot André C ham bet on their way back from Mass at
Jussy. In Chêne, a loud drumming com peted with the catechism bell to call
all the unmarried male teenagers and young adults, like the hotheaded
Nicolas Bonnet, aged about 20. In Corsinge, perhaps because of its small
population, married householders aged 30 to 35 were part of the parade, and
the Sieur D ada and his Flemish friend had no objections to marching along­
side the farm servant, Mamad.
44 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as

D R A M A T IS P E R S O N A E

First Charivari S\e c o n d Charivari

Scene: the hamlet o f Corsinge Scene: the village of Chêne
Canton o f Geneva Canton o f Geneva
April-M ay 1626 October 1631
Jean Salla, peasant Besançon Daussy, peasant
Wife to Salla Wife to Daussy
Sieur Dada, a notable Jacques Brassier, peasant and Abbot
A Fleming, his friend of Misriile
André Chambet, peasant and Abbot Nicolas Bonnet, young peasant in
o f Misrule service, member o f the Abbey of
Nicolas Guyon, peasant, his Misrule
companion Other young male peasants
Other male peasants The Minister o f Chêne
Parents, w ives, and neighbors Parents and neighbors
Young wom en o f Corsinge Sergeants o f Geneva

Third Charivari Fourth Charivari

Scene: the quarter o f the Place Scene: the quarter o f the Temple de
Bellecour, Lyon Saint Gervais, Geneva
September 1668 June 1669
Florie Nallo, carter, newly remarried Abdias Fillion, master lace-trimming
Etienne Tisserand, carter, her second maker
husband Danielle Genou, wife o f Fillion
Jacques Collombet, master saddler, Francois Boucher, apprentice to
next-door neighbor to Nallo Fillion
Marie Guerin, wife to Collombet Pierre Mermillod, master
Le Provençal lace-trimming maker
journeymen to
Le Poitevin Etienne Borsalet, his companion
Collombet
Le Rochelois Comrades to Mermillod and Borsalet
Claude Feron, apprentice to A miller
Collombet ' Neighbors to Fillion
Lauvergnat, sculptor’s journeyman
Other journeymen
Neighbors to Nallo and to Collombet
Nicolas Beaujollin, innkeeper and
sergeant
A surgeon

H o w can we explain the persistence of these old festive forms almost a

century after the Calvinist Reformation had tried to stamp out pagan misrule
and had insisted that any kind of marital problem be judged by elders, not by
neighbors? Only a detailed study of each community could give us a c o m ­
plete answer. The pastors sent out from G eneva to “the fields” and their two
local assistants (gardes d ’église) were evidently less successful in winning
the inner assent of their villagers to Reformed standards than was the urban
consistory with its hold more firmly established in its neighborhoods.
G eneva had not yet even dispatched schoolmasters to the Jussy area— the
Charivari, Honor, a n d C o m m unity 45
first one would arrive only in 1631— and few if any of the peasants could sign
their names. (Indeed, the name of the farm servant M amad was not sup­
posed to be used in any form in the canton, for it had been declared “idola­
tro u s” in 1546.)5 N ot surprisingly, therefore, a young Chêne peasant did not
care what G eneva and its officers thought: “This [charivari] is merrymaking
(une gaillardise). To assemble the A bbey of Misrule is a custom practiced
everyw here and a particular right that we have here in C h ê n e .”
As for family order itself, male peasants could not count on Reformed
pastors to defend their dominance in every regard. The G eneva consistory
always enjoined wives to obedience, but it was wife beaters rather than
husband beaters who were likely to be denied the L o r d ’s Supper. Possibly
the contem poraneous trials of females for witchcraft nearby in Jussy and in
Savoie deepened fears about female p o w er.6 In any case, the Abbeys
thought they should take matters into their own hands.
The urban charivaris some forty years later drew upon other forms of
social organization and reflect additional kinds of community tension. That
of G en e v a in June 1669 took place in an artisan quarter around the Temple of
Saint Gervais, on the right bank of the Rhone, across from the main part of
the city. The central actors were makers of lace trimmings (passementerie),
a trade ju st then undergoing innovation and expansion in Geneva.
One Abdias Fillion, a master, and his spouse, Danielle G enou, w ere the
offenders. A native of the Pays de Gex, M aster Abdias had been settled in
Saint Gervais parish since at least 1656, w hen he had married the G enevan
Danielle. Over the years they had had three daughters, but now supposedly
Abdias had been so thoroughly beaten by his wife that he had had to escape
to Rolle, more than halfway to Lausanne. N o Abbey of Misrule bruited this
news about— in the shadow of the Temple of Saint Gervais it would have
been unlikely to survive. Fillion’s fellow craftsmen simply went through the
streets inviting men of all ages to come see him being paraded on an ass— “ to
come do honor to Fillion,” or “to go to Fillion’s h o n o r.” Since M aster
Abdias was later to insist on the “peacable and God-fearing” character of his
household, it may be that some craft rivalry was behind the plan for his
humiliation. But it is certain that M aster Pierre Mermillod (himself a young
married man and recent father), Etienne Borsalet, and their accomplices did
look at the occasion as a festive one. “ Send for wine for the c o m ra d e s ,” they
told Fillion’s apprentice, and seemed to think that his em ployer would be
quite willing to go along with their scenario.7
The L yon charivari of the year before occurred in a city growing to
90,000 souls, five times the size of Geneva. The Place Bellecour, however,
held only a tiny fraction of that population. In 1668 it was not yet the
splendid square that it would be at the end of Louis X I V ’s reign, but it was
already the locale for an elegant prom enade and had attracted some aristo­
cratic residents, who were much in contrast with the artisans on its northern
periphery. Molière had thought of establishing a theater on a street nearby,
and indeed the charivari that occurred at Bellecour could have been written
46 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
by Molière except for its tragic d é n o u em e n t.8 At the Rhone end of the Place
and on adjacent older streets, such as the rue Bourgchanin, clustered tailors,
cabinetm akers, furriers, coopers, saddlers, and gunsmiths; their families
enjoyed a certain affluence, but even among these there were men and
w omen who could not sign their names.
H ere sat the c a rte r’s establishment of the widow Florie Nallo, inherited
from her husband and now administered by her; and here sat the saddler’s
shop of her next-door neighbor, the successful Jacques Collombet, a native
of a village in the Velay and now married to the young Lyonnaise Marie
Guerin. On S eptem ber 5, 1668, Florie took as her second husband the carter
Etienne Tisserand, possibly younger, but certainly poorer, than she—
“ having nothing to leave m e ,” Florie was later to say. Indeed, he may have
been in her service. A few hours after the newlyweds had settled themselves
in Florie’s house and blown out their candles, a “grand charivary” began
outside their door. It was led by a group of unmarried jo u rn ey m en , three of
whom w orked for the saddler Collombet and a fourth who w orked for a
master sculptor on the Place Bellecour. The young men were all immigrants
to Lyon, and were known to everyone, even to their employers, only by
their nicknames: Le Provençal, Le Poitevin, Le Rochelois, and Lauvergnat.
A hundred years before, a Misrule A bbey headed by the “Ju dge” of the
rue Bourgchanin had jurisdiction over neighborhood affairs like F lorie’s
marriage. N o w it was the jo u rneym en who took the initiative, perhaps using
a clandestine organization (c o m p a g n o n n a g e ) to spread the word, but surely
talking the m atter up at their favorite haunt, the nearby Golden Well
T a v e rn .9 At the last minute, they increased their numbers by beating a drum
and making a hullabaloo through the streets on their way to F lorie’s house.
W ere the jo u rn e y m e n alone in instigating the charivari? Florie and her
neighbors thought M aster Jacques, the saddler, had stirred them up (just as
the Sieur D ada had stirred up the peasant Abbey at Corsinge). N o w it is
certain, as we will see, that Collombet had much to do with a second
charivari the next night; but it is unclear w hether he incited the de m o n stra ­
tion right after the wedding. I think probably he did not. But like the sergeant
of the quarter who visited Collombet the morning after the first uproar,
Florie could not believe that subordinates could go out without license from
their superiors. French law ordinarily made the same assumption about
servants as it did about children— and about wives. An alternate conception
of social relationships was offered by Marie Guerin when later trying to
extricate herself and her husband: “If servants do foolish things, their m as­
ters are not responsible.”
The jo u rn e y m e n were quite willing to take responsibility at least for the
first charivari, and like the peasants of Chêne, they perceived the festive
practice as their right. “W e ’re rejoicing,” they explained to Florie’s h u s­
band, Etienne. “W e ’re amusing ourselves,” they explained to the sergeant,
“why do you w ant to stop u s? ” And finally: “The first person who tries to
keep us from playing will get hit.”
Charivari, Honor, and C om m unity 47
In contrast to the peasants of rural Geneva, however, the L yo n jo u rn e y ­
men did not need a holiday season or a Sunday break to bring on a festive
mood. The charivari at the Place Bellecour began on a W ednesday evening
after work and after supper. What counted was the occasion: a remarriage,
specifically, that of a widow who had married downward. N ot long before,
C ollom bet’s jo u rn e y m e n had taken part in a similar dem onstration on the
nearby rue Mercière, “at the home of the widow Chaslon, the candlemaker,
who had married her serv a n t.” In sixteenth-century Lyon, the most common
target of the domestic charivari had been the husband beater and her spouse,
with a rum pus also being raised (so an observer noted in 1604) “when a
widow or widower remarried, or when a man took his wife from another
quarter, and then brought her back to his neighborhood.” Such events may
have been triggering charivaris in the next decades as well— I have no infor­
mation one way or another— but the uproar over Florie’s wedding shows a
link among the three types. A widow would surely dominate a young and
dependent spouse. H er sexual appetite was thought to be either insatiable or
ridiculous. As a B ordeaux citizen had com m ented in 1638, a charivari should
be m ounted against a young man who marries an old woman, “to laugh at
w hat the old w om an will shout in undergoing the carnal consum m ation of the
m arriage.” Would such a union have issue?
The jo u rn e y m e n of Jacques Collombet might well be sensitive to ques­
tions of fertility, female sexuality, and female power. Dam e Florie had taken
a fellow jo u rn e y m a n in marriage. She had a teenaged daughter surviving
from her first marriage, but, well past her prime, was unlikely to have chil­
dren from her second. N ext-door, the m aster saddler had married upward,
into the family of a L yon merchant. His 18-year-old wife was now nursing
their first child, but already it was rumored that she was unfaithful to Col­
lombet. Probably younger than the jou rneym en, Marie dared to tell them
what she thought. “Y o u ’re not doing anything worthw hile,” she cried from
the doorw ay during their a n tics.10

THE SC E N A R IO OF THE C H A R IV A R I

The charivari has a typical form. It begins with a mood of laughter and
m ockery and with noise that may be sustained throughout. It usually in­
cludes a procession or parade of some kind, and may involve costuming. It
moves to a reckoning with the victims, and, if all goes well, ends in the
withdrawal of the crowd, which then turns to drinking and expansive rev­
elry. Our four charivaris supply details for this scenario and suggest why it
was sometimes not played out according to plan.
The rural charivaris seem to have made the least racket, partly because
they involved fewer men than those in the cities (only about 15 in Corsinge).
In Chêne one heard drumming and shouting; in Corsinge, bells on the pro­
cessional horse and the rattling of weapons. In Geneva, it was the laughter of
48 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
the crowd assem bled in the early morning before Fillion’s door that was
noted; one ob server thought that as many as 300 men were present.
In L y on , w here noise was the main w eapon of humiliation in the wake
of the wedding, the crowd of 30 to 40 men had emptied out kitchens and the
shops of smithies and saddlers for equipment. Pots, pans, kettles, caldrons,
iron covers, and horseshoes were clashed; mule bells were rung; and ket­
tledrums beaten; and heavy iron chains were dragged across the cobbled
streets. Laughter, derision, and hooting were alternated with the chanting
“Charivari, charivari! Pour Dam e Florie et son mari!”
The traditional way of ridiculing beaten husbands and their domineering
wives was mounting and parading them, and this was the goal of the three
G eneva dem onstrations. In the villages the gentler device of stand-ins was
used. There, people saw a young Chêne peasant riding backw ard on a horse,
holding the tail for a bridle— a centuries old form of humiliation." Following
after was ano ther young man dressed as a w om an (that is, as Besançon
D a u s s y ’s wife) and holding a distaff, the presum ed instrument of attack.
Over in Corsinge, one of the Cham bet men rode backw ard on the Sieur
D a d a ’s horse, a bridle of straw attached to the tail. E veryone knew he was
substituting for Jean Salla. Led by their abbot with his great cross, the
equipage m oved through the hamlet and over to the nearby villages of Gy
and Meinier.
In G en ev a the crowd actually expected Abdias Fillion to “take courage”
and let himself be mounted. “Come on d o w n ,” the leaders shouted. “H e r e ’s
the ass all ready. C om e quickly. We want you to m o u n t.” M aster Abdias had
no intention of playing their game, refused to show himself, and the crowd
finally dispersed without having extracted a forfeit of wine, but also without
violence. M uch later that day the leaders were merrily dining with a m aster
lace-trimming m aker and laughing over “a defamatory song” against Fillion
and his wife. They proceeded to sing it though the streets until midnight.
The village charivaris moved further toward a settlement. In both cases,
the Misrule A bbey seized a cow belonging to the victims (surely a co n v e ­
nient object for extracting ransom, but perhaps also symbolic of the wife).
At Corsinge, Salla’s wife finally redeemed it for 2Vi ducattons. The men then
went off to am use themselves: a bite at the Sieur D a d a ’s, supper at Abbot
C h a m b e t’s, card playing, and finally dancing and singing before the a b b o t’s
house with some local girls. N eedless to say, such license was not approved
by the Reformed Church.
At Chêne, things went awry. Having seized a cow, the abbot and his
young band went to an inn and spent 45 florins in food and drink. (This
would have paid a d a y ’s wages for 27 agricultural laborers in G eneva in
1631.12 W here did they get the money?) They then returned to Besançon
D a u s s y ’s house and, either because he refused to come out or because they
had some special grudge against him, or both, they began to stone his doors
and windows and shout “witch, bugger,” (sorcier, bougre) and other “odious
insults.” The following day, O ctober 31, involved more of the same; and the
Charivari, Honor, and C om m unity 49
day after that, w hen the youthful leaders learned that D aussy had com ­
plained to the Seigneurs of Geneva, they threatened to “treat him and his
wife as w itches.” F o r the next two months the Misrule A bbey continued its
attacks. They sold the D a u s s y ’s cow illegally, and ate and drank up the
profit. They seized a sow about to farrow. They smeared excrem ent on
D a u s s y ’s door. They lay in wait for him on the highway, and broke into his
house and beat him and his wife. And, especially, they continued their
threats to denounce the couple as witches with connections with the devil if
the D aussys did not abandon efforts to prosecute them. “W e ’ll set up a stake
in the middle of Chêne and burn you. E very family in Chêne keeps a dog and
w e ’ll set them on you and have them eat y o u .” Ironically, they then menaced
Daussy in ju st the same way a witch might: damaging his crops, cutting
dow n his vines, and setting loose his cattle.
This transformation of charivari victims into “w itches”— witches to be
punished by local folk justice, not by the authorities at G eneva— illustrates
the tenacity with which communities could hold on to their traditions of
autonom y. E v en worse than the marital “disorder” in the D aussy household
was the refusal of this prosperous farm er to recognize the village customs for
self-correction. D aussy was perhaps a very recent arrival: why else would
his persecutors inform him that everyone in Chêne had a dog? In any case,
could you trust a man who turned toward the Magnificent Seigneurs of
G eneva and ignored “the particular right” of the youth abbey of Chêne?
The conversion of the L yon charivari into physical violence had more
complex origins, for Florie Nallo and her new husband did not refuse to
m eet with the revelers and did not immediately seek the aid of sergeants.
T ow ard 10 p.m ., after an hour of noise and circling round the house, the
jo u rn e y m e n burst in and talked to the carter Etienne. Speaking as befitted
his new status as master, he told them they were doing wrong and that
charivaris were forbidden, but still offered them 20 or 25 sous to go off and
drink. This am ount would hardly slake the thirst of 30 to 40 men, and may
have seemed especially stingy since, as befitted a second marriage, the
Tisserands had given no wedding feast. At any rate, the jo u rn e y m e n dis­
missed the offer with a contem ptuous “We have more m oney than y o u ” and
left, promising to return the next night.
The following morning Florie Nallo accosted the jo u r n e y m e n ’s master,
Jacques Collombet, and insulted him in public. To the jo u r n e y m e n ’s high
spirits w ere now added the anger and hatred of their master. Collombet
ignored the sergeant o f the Place Bellecour, who told him he must forbid his
men to go out, and instead abetted the second dem onstration against his
neighbor. Again there was the drumming and extraordinary noise after sup­
per; again a crowd assem bled, this one somewhat smaller than the night
before. Then Tisserand appeared on his doorsill with a stick and a couple of
friends. C ollom b et’s jo u rn e y m e n and his apprentice rushed back to the sad­
dle r’s shop and armed themselves with tools (a large pair of scissors and a
fork), halberds, clubs, and a pistol. One cried out, “W h oev er budges to
50 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
prevent us from amusing ourselves will get hit.” Tisserand again offered
them m oney for drinks, this time a paltry 15 sous. “ We want a pistolle,”
someone punned, w hereupon L e Poitevin shot Etienne Tisserand. “ I am
d e a d ,” shouted the new husband, but“ there was more to be done. The
jo u rn e y m e n beat him and left him bleeding, running back to C ollom bet’s
shop in terror at their act. Two weeks later he died of his wounds at the
Hôtel-Dieu, and Florie Nallo was left a widow again.

THE VIC TIM S A N D THEIR D E F E N S E OF H O N O R

W hether new or old residents of their community, the targets of these four
charivaris emerge as independent and strong personalities, unwilling to al­
low themselves to be shamed. In three of the marriages, the wives appear to
have had the mettle, if not to dominate their husbands all the time, at least to
hold their own. And, it appears, seventeenth-century artisans could think as
much about their honor as could aristo crats.13 They felt either that their
neighbors w ere lying about their domestic and sexual conduct or that their
conduct was being wrongly interpreted and judged.
In Corsinge it was Salla’s wife, the m other of two half-grown daughters,
who did all the negotiating with the Misrule Abbey. The Sieur Dada had
three times asked if she would pay to prevent the parade; three times she
refused, “using insulting language” against the servants of this local notable.
Later, when redeeming her cow, she refused to be intimidated and
threatened to complain to G eneva to gain satisfaction.
Of course, she did so, as did Besançon Daussy in Chêne, the latter
standing firm through two months of harassment. D a u s s y ’s wife was not
cowed, either: w hen the young men broke into her house and started to
attack her husband, she stopped kneading bread and ju m ped into the fray to
protect him. '
L ater, in G eneva, Danielle Genou may have lived up more fully to the
prescriptions for the dutiful wife. She did little but agree with her husband
that the allegation that he had let himself be beaten by her was “a pure
calum n y.” M aster Abdias was incensed that anyone would dare utter “ such
an atrocious insult against his honor and reputation.” Without his having
given his neighbors any cause, he had been asked to ride an ass through
town. H e protested first to the consistory and then to the civic court that
reparation must be made— a solemn humiliation of those who had w anted
“to do ho no r to h im ,” as they called it. H e insisted that Mermillod, Borsalet,
and their consorts must say with their own lips that they had spoken and
acted badly; ask pardon of God, the court, and Fillion; and state that they
regarded him as “a man of decency and h o n o r.” Finally, given the enormity
of their insults and contempt, they should pay a fine and be imprisoned.
The Catholic Florie Nallo cared as much about her reputation as did the
Protestant m aster lace-trimming maker, but her techniques of self-defense
Charivari, Honor, and C om m unity 51
were more rooted in the world of charivari. She appears as a leader among
the netw ork of w om en in her street; one can imagine what her tart tongue
had said about the young m e rc h a n t’s daughter who had moved in next-door
the year before. The charivari was a “ scandal,” she told a female neighbor
after the first night; she would prevent another one by keeping the candle lit
(charivaris after a wedding often began w hen the couple got into bed) and by
holding the door. Then, sighting Jacques Collombet going by her house with
a friend, she went out and accosted him, speaking so loudly that the neigh­
bors could hear:

I am a wom an o f honor, not a woman o f evil life. H ow could you suffer

your journeym en to mock me and do a charivari against me? I’ve given you no
cause for displeasure. In fact, I’ve inconvenienced m yself for you, leaving my
carts outside during the night so that yours could be inside the yard. You
recognize badly your obligation toward me.

Florie than sang a few couplets of a song that struck at C ollom bet’s social
pretensions and called him a cuckold:

Tu portes de belles dentelles, Collombet

Et de belles cornes sur ton bonnet. . . .

W hat Collombet suspected about Marie Guerin we do not know (he was
12 years older than his 18-year-old wife), but Dame Florie had insulted him
directly and publicly— a counter-charivari.14 He replied angrily that those
who had sung the song were drunks and jealous; they would repent, or it
would cost them more than 2000 livres. He would send his men against
them , not against her and her husband. But later at his saddler’s shop he
plotted revenge against Florie and Etienne.
That night w hen the jo u rn e y m e n returned, Florie was as vigorous in
defense of her marriage as was Etienne. She disarmed some of the attackers,
held one of them by the hair, and scratched the face of another, so as, she
said, to be able to identify the man who had assassinated her husband. The
next day, while her husband nursed his wounds, she took the case to the
authorities.

NEIG H BO RS A N D AU TH O RITIES

O ur four charivaris can serve as indicators of the extent of community

agreement about how married people should act and about how neighbors
were to deal with trouble or disorder in their midst. The villages show the
most cohesion, especially Corsinge, and also the greatest reluctance to ac­
cept the intervention of local political authorities, a reluctance som ew hat in
contrast to rural attitudes expressed during witchcraft trials about the same
time. The urban districts show conflict, but of a different kind.
52 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
In Corsinge, to begin with, none of the peasants tried to put a stop to the
parade or to any of the youth a b b e y ’s actions during the day— not even those
parents and wives who testified that their kin,had participated only because
the Sieur D ada had directed them to. They all just stood in front of their
houses and w atched, and later gossiped about the seizure of the cow and the
dancing. N o kind word was said about the Salla family during the course of
the G en ev a inquiry the following week; a 50-year-old widow volunteered
that Salla’s wife had insulted the Sieur D a d a ’s servants. Indeed, while laying
the blame on the Sieur D ada for mobilizing the Misrule Abbey, the villagers
were also protective of their local notable. Salla’s wife had claimed that
w hen she had threatened to report the matter to the Seigneurs o f Geneva,
D ada had spoken contem ptuously of them and had sworn. All others testify­
ing, both witnesses and participants, denied this language, which, if e sta b ­
lished, would have left the man in serious difficulty with the Seigneurs. “The
Sieur D ada responded that Messieurs were such fine seigneurs that th e y ’d
find nothing to say and the Justice would never meddle with such an a b b e y .”
E veryo ne in the hamlet but the Sallas seems to have wished that that had
been the case.
At Chêne, the final picture is harder to discover since testimony of
individual witnesses has not survived. W hat is clear is that the presence of a
resident pastor introduced some divergent views into the village: he spoke of
the affair from the pulpit, and in a serm on given three weeks after the
charivari, he exhorted the Abbey to return the cow to Besançon Daussy. He
found little support. N o one was reported to have helped the Daussys, not
even w hen things turned ugly. Though an investigator was sent to Chêne on
N o v e m b e r 1, 1631, two days after the first “scandal,” and though insults and
offenses against the Daussys continued, no arrests were made until January,
1632.15 The A bbey sold the cow “without formality o f ju s tic e ,” but had no
trouble in finding buyers. W hen the sergeants finally came to seek the young
leaders, their parents did not withhold information about their whereabouts,
but offered no criticism of their sons. As for Nicolas Bonnet, so strongly did
he feel about “the particular right” of the A bbey of Misrule that he shouted
that the sergeants w ere “robbers, thieves, brigands, and evil m e n ,” threw
stones at them, and chased them with a sword. Bystanders finally restrained
him. Only after considerable interrogation did he beg for mercy for having
threatened the sergeants and having offended the government. E ven so, it is
not certain that he took his regrets back to Chêne with him.
At first glance, this situation seems easy enough to understand. Villa­
gers present a solid front in defense of their family values and their local,
festive techniques of control. Victims are families on the periphery of the
village, and turn to G eneva because they have no other source o f support.
Yet only a few months after the Corsinge charivari, a witch from nearby
Jussy was co nd em ned to be burned, on the basis of local accusations; four
years later ano ther was denounced to the authorities for killing babies by
occult means. H ere the situation was reversed and the villagers were quite
Charivari, Honor, a n d C om m unity 53
willing to turn to the central government for help against the dangerous old
woman. We might assum e that Chene and Corsinge would likewise turn to
G eneva if they suspected a true witch in their midst. They could take care of
mere offenders against domestic order and most other local cases by their
own devices, but witches in league with the devil were another matter. The
latter were shameless; the devil and witches rode backw ard by preference.
The charivari’s noise would fall on deaf e a rs .16
In contrast with the villages, in the quarter of the Temple de Saint
Gervais, there was genuine disagreement about the plan “to do honor to the
Fillions.” A few witnesses said they had never heard before that the Fillions
were angry with each other and got along badly; one man insisted that they
had “a very good family life together.” Several master lace-trimming makers
who were invited to join the cerem ony did not do so, but simply w atched and
listened from a distance. A miller from whom Borsalet and an accomplice
tried to rent an ass refused when he learned it was for mounting Fillion, and
w arned them that they would repent. N o n e of these persons tried to prevent
the affair, how ever, or went to see Fillion before it occurred. N o r did his
wife Danielle have any female friends rush to her aid. The neighboring
m aster craftsmen looked out their windows and watched events on the
street, but they remained apart. Perhaps they expected the Elders of the
quarter, appointed by the consistory, to take care of it. M eanwhile, some of
the males in the quarter did turn out to join in the fun. One of B o rsalet’s
friends, the m aster craftsman to whom he had sung the song “defaming”
Fillion, tried to cover for him and limit his responsibility in the affair. As for
the leaders themselves, they did not repent before consistory and court, but
pretended they were innocent. It was even rumored that one of them had
tried two days later to mount Fillion on an ass again.
In all likelihood, the quartier of the Temple of Saint Gervais escaped
serious quarreling and violence because it was not a very cohesive neighbor­
hood. The people involved were indeed bound both by ties of residence and
occupation, and Mermillod and A b d ia s’s wife had been born right in the
parish. But only Fillion was truly outraged. The perpetrators of the charivari
themselves took the affair rather lightly. Only a close local study could
unearth the reasons for this relative social detachment. In my view it could
be explained in part by the stress placed by Reformed on the household as
the important arena for religious and moral life and on the citywide consis­
tory as the only allowable arena for confrontation and the expression of
conflict.17
The situation was markedly different in the Place Bellecour, w here the
residents were constantly looking in windows and doors, eavesdropping on
conversations, visiting back and forth betw een houses and in the streets, and
gossiping about each other. The netw orks at the corner of the square were
intense, even while geographical, vocational, and social diversity made dis­
agreem ent and opposition likely.
On the one hand, the saddler’s jo u rn e y m e n did attract enthusiastic par­
54 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
ticipation from other young workers in the quarter. M aster Jacques Collom-
bet had at least one friend outside the family, a lawyer, who tried to give him
an alibi that would absolve him of any complicity in the violent charivari.
One the other hand, the jo u rn e y m e n were not acting as the voice of their
neighborhood; they were newcom ers with strong solidarity among th e m ­
selves, but with little connection to local elders and none to local ancestors.
Indeed, some of the young males of the quarter heard the noise only from the
dinner table or from bed: so testified a 17-year-old furrier’s jo u rn ey m an , a
14-year-old c a r te r ’s son, a 14-year-old student, and a 17-year-old tailor’s
jou rn eym an. “M ost of the quarter took offense at the m ockery and hooting,”
com m ented a 45-year-old tailor’s wife about the first night of the charivari.
According to some, “they were not doing the right thing as [Florie] was a
w om an of h o n o r.” A 35-year-old gunsm ith’s wife tried to get Le Provençal to
stop the racket right then and there: “They are not people with a bad life.”
He touched her hand and promised insincerely not to come back.
In short, Dam e Florie had neighbors who respected her so much that
they considered her remarriage dow nw ard an event that should pass un­
noticed. But they made no critique of folk justice or of festive humiliation as
such, and several of them enjoyed Florie’s public ridicule of the alleged
cuckold Collombet the next morning. The only person to redefine “a m u se ­
m e n t” was the sergeant of the street, Nicolas Beaujollin, the keeper of the
Inn of Saint Carle. H e also said Florie was “a woman of h o n o r,” but even
more he told the jo u rn e y m e n after the first night that “charivaris are forbid­
d e n .” He explained, “A m usem ent is all very well, so long as no one is
offended.” Charivaris had in fact been forbidden in Lyon for 200 years, and
the prohibition had been routinely ignored. What is notew orthy about this
conversation betw een a 50-year-old illiterate innkeeper and a young sad­
dler’s jo u rn e y m a n is the attempt to restrict the traditional mocking uses of
laughter.
Neighbors helped the newlyweds in other ways, too. W omen came over
the morning after the first “ scandal” to visit with Florie. Two or three men
stood with stocks to try to protect Etienne during the second charivari.
Others ran over w hen they heard the gunshot and E tie n n e ’s cry, including
the gu nsm ith’s wife, who reportedly confessed that at first, “fear having
seized her, she was afraid to get near them too so on .” A youngster found one
of the w eapons in the street and turned it over to Florie for evidence. A silk
m erchant fetched a surgeon from the Hôtel-Dieu to treat Tisserand.
F rom this point on, Collombet could count little on his community and
had to turn to kin. All his jo u rneym en and the jo u rn e y m e n of his friend
Perra, the m aster sculptor, disappeared the morning after the violence. At
least one of them, Le Provençal, was concealed in the house of C ollom bet’s
father-in-law in the adjacent parish of Saint Nizier. W hen Etienne died two
weeks later, Le Provençal fled Lyon as well.
Until the following summer the case remained in the courts, being heard
primarily by the judge of the local jurisdiction belonging to the old B enedic­
Charivari, Honor, an d C om m unity 55
tine abbey of Ainay, which was several streets away from Bellecour. It is the
only one of our four cases that we can follow through to the end. The
jo u rn e y m e n w ere never found, but M aster Jacques was imprisoned, ques­
tioned, then freed on bail furnished by his father-in-law (Florie’s lawyer
protested). Jacques and his wife claimed total innocence: they knew noth­
ing, saw nothing (“even though your shop window is only 12 steps away
from the T isse ra n d ’s d o o r? ” “I was eating supper in the b a c k ”), and heard
something only at the very end of the second uproar. C ollom bet’s 19-year-
old apprentice, whom all witnesses had identified as beating the drum for a
time, also could report nothing.
The court did not believe Collombet and his wife and apprentice, and
determined that Collombet had not only failed to stop the second assault but
also had incited the killing of Tisserand “out of hatred of the song” sung by
F lo rie.18 Le Provençal, L e Poitevin, L e Rochelois, and Lauvergnat were
condem ned to be strangled to death in front of the houses of Collombet and
Tisserand. In their absence, they were executed in effigy. Collombet was
condem ned to pay 200 livres: 100 to the government, 40 to the vestry of the
parish church of Saint Michel, 10 to the priests there to pray for the soul of
Etienne Tisserand, and 50 to the Hôtel-Dieu for T isseran d’s surgical treat­
ment. (The total was not too high a fine; it would have covered the m aster­
ship fee, say, of 10 nonnative silk w o rk ers.)19 Claiming “notorious p o v e rty ,”
D am e Florie had asked 3000 livres in damages from Collombet, but was
awarded nothing.
As for the other jo u rn e y m e n of the Place Bellecour known to have
participated in the charivari but not in the beating, they were never ques­
tioned or sought. To the civic and royal authorities, such a neighborhood
squabble must have seemed insignificant in comparison with the fiscal riots a
few decades before or with the constant fear of grain riots. (They may have
forgotten to ask w h eth er the spirit of charivari could grow into a riot.) In
some sense, the popular right to “a m u se m e n t,” the popular use of noisy
laughter to constrain domestic behavior, had been left unchallenged, and
despite the death o f Etienne Tisserand, this was by no means the last
charivari to take place in L y o n .20

NOTES

1. “Die Kinderlosen im Genser Fastnachbrauch,” S c h w e ize risc h e s A r c h iv f u r

V o lksku n d e 7:161-162, 1903; Paul-F. Geisendorf, La vie q u o tid ie n n e au te m p s
de l ’E sc a la d e (G eneva, 1952), p. 80; Arnold Van Gennep, M a n u e l de fo lk lo re
fr a n ç a is , vol. 3 (Paris, 1943—49), pp. 1007 and 1048.
2. Archives d ’Etat de G enève, Procès Criminels, ser. 1, nos. 2704, 2883; ser. 2,
no. 2712. (I am grateful to E. William Monter for calling these p r o c è s to my
attention, and also for helpful suggestions about the G eneva context.) Archives
départementales du Rhône, 11 G 252. All quotations from and discussion of
these cases are based on these texts. Som e evidence about the actors has also
been found in parish records and will be referred to in the appropriate notes.
56 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
3. For background and bibliography, see N . Z. Davis, “The Reasons o f M isrule,”
in S o c ie ty a n d Culture in Early M o d e r n F rance (Stanford, 1975), chap. 4; and
Jacques Le G off and Jean-Claude Schmitt, eds., L e Charivari. A c t e s de la table
ronde o rga n isée à Paris (25-27 avril 1977) p a r l’Ecole des H a u t e s E tu d e s en
S c i e n c e s S o c ia le s et le Centre N a ti o n a l de la R e c h e r c h e Scientifique (Paris,
1981).
4. Willy Richard, U n te r s u c h u n g e n zur G enesis der reformierten K ir c h e n te r ­
m in o lo g ie des W e s ts c h w e iz u n d F rankreichs (Romanica H elvetica, 57; Berne,
1959), pp. 153, 172, 209, 216; Anne-Marie Piuz, A ffa ire s et politique. R e ­
c h e rc h es sur le c o m m e r c e de G e n è v e au X V I I e siècle (Geneva, 1964), p. 360;
A rchives d ’Etat de Genève [henceforth AEG ], Etat-Civil, Jussy, 2: Baptisms
from Corsinge, Feb. 8, 1601; Oct. 26, 1601; Dec" 19, 1613 (Mamad, fils o f Jean
Chambet dit Baud o f Corsinge and Susanne R enechon o f Geneva): N o v . 25,
1621; D ec. 25, 1621; Jan. 27, 1626; N o v . 10, 1633.
5. Geisendorf, Vie q u o tid ie n n e , pp. 79-80; Histoire de G e n è v e des origines à 1798,
vol. 1 (Geneva, 1951), p. 348; Richard, K ir c h e n te r m in o lo g ie , pp. 85-86; A E G ,
Etat-Civil, Jussy, 2, April 11, 1621: N icolas, son o f Ami Guyon o f Corsinge,
marries Robelle Ravoire o f Chervens; their daughter Jaquema, born seven and a
half months later, N ov. 22, 1621. The records for Chêne begin several years
after the charivari o f 1631, but include numerous persons with the last name of
Brassier, the family of the Abbot o f Misrule (AEG. Etat-Civil, Campagne,
Chêne).
6. E. William Monter, W itchcraft in F ra n c e a n d Switzerland: The Borderlands
during the R e f o r m a t i o n (Ithaca, 1976), pp. 43—45, 63-64.
7. Piuz, A ffa ire s, pp. 379-80; Alfred Perrenoud, L a P opu la tio n de G e n è v e du
s e iz iè m e au d é b u t du d ix -n e u viè m e siècle. E tu d e d é m o g r a p h iq u e , vol. 1
(G eneva, 1979), pp. 159-60; A EG , Etat-Civil, Ville, Saint Gervais, BM 7: Mar­
riage o f Abdias Fillion and Danielle Genou, March 16, 1656; Baptism o f their
daughters, Jan. 18, 1657, Sept. 18, 1659, Jan. 11, 1662; BM 6: Baptism o f Pierre
Mermillod, D ec. 26, 1643; BM 8: Marriage o f Pierre Mermillod, D ec. 1, 1665,
and baptism o f his daughter, Sept. 16, 1666.
8. Perrenoud, P o p u la tio n de G en ève, vol. 1, p. 30; A. Kleinclausz, ed., H istoire
de L y o n , vol. 2 (L yon, 1948), pp. 121-22; André Latreille, ed., Histoire de L y o n
et du L y o n n a i s (Toulouse, 1975), pp. 258, 272; Maurice Garden, L y o n et les
L y o n n a i s au X V I I I e siècle (Paris, 1970), pp. 28-34; A. Bleton, Molière à L y o n ,”
R e v u e du L y o n n a is , 30 (5th se r .):3 1 5 ^ 0 , 1900.
9. L ’Ordre tenu en la c h e v a u c h e f a i c t e en la ville de L y o n (Lyon, 1566), reprinted
in A r c h iv e s historiques et statistiques du d é p a r tm e n t du R h ô n e 9:419, 1828-29;
D avis, S o c ie ty a n d Culture, pp. 110—14. On journeym en ’s rituals in sixteenth-
century L yon, see N . Z. D avis, “A Trade Union in Sixteenth-Century F rance,”
E c o n o m i c H i s t o j y R eview , 19:48-68, 1966; in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, see Emile Coornaert, L e s c o m p a g n o n n a g e s en F ra n ce du m o y e n age
à nos j o u r s (Paris, 1966), and Garden, L y o n , pp. 561-71.
10. D avis, S o c ie ty a n d Culture, pp. 106-107, 116-17; Claude de Rubys, Histoire
veritable de la ville de L y o n (Lyon, 1604), pp. 500-501; Jean de Gaufreteau.
C hro n iq u e b o r d e lo is e , vol. 2 (Bordeaux, 1878) p. 251.
11. Claude N oirot, L ’Origine des m a s q u e s , m o m m e r ie s , bernex, et re v e n n ez es
jo u r s gras de c a re sm e p re n a n t, m e m e z sur l ’a sn e à rebours et charivary
(Langres, 1609); Ruth Mellinkoff, “Riding Backwards: Them e o f Humiliation
a n d S y m b o l o f E vil," Viator 4:153-76, 1973.
12. Piuz, A ffa ires, p. 362, n. 6.
13. On this w hole matter, see J. G. Peristiany, ed., H o n o u r a n d S h a m e : The Values
o f M e d ite r r a n e a n S o ciety (Chicago, 1966); see especially Julian Pitt-Rivers,
Charivari, Honor, an d Com m unity 57
“Honour and Social Status,” pp. 21-77. See also Y ves Castan, H o n n e t e t e et
relations sociales en L a n g u e d o c , 1715-1780 (Paris, 1974), pp. 162-201.
14. On the public insult and losing face, see Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social
Status,” and Erving Goffman, Interaction R itu a l (N ew York, 1967); see e sp e ­
cially “The Nature o f D eference ^nd D em eanor.”
15. Jacques Brassier, the Abbot o f Misrule o f Chene, died som etim e after the initial
parade and charivari, and this may have affected the course o f the inquiry and
the timing o f the arrests.
16. Monter, W itchcraft, pp. 63-4. On the “sh a m eless,” see Pitts-Rivers, H onour,”
pp. 40-1. Mellinkoff, “Riding B ackw ards,” pp. 166-7; Albrecht Durer, The
Witch (engraving, ca. 1500); and Hans Baldung Grien, The W i t c h e s ’ S a b b a th
(woodcut, 1510) depict the witch riding backward on a goat. See H. Backlin-
Landman, ed., S y m b o l s in T ransform ation: A n Exhibition o f Prints in M e m o r y
o f Erwin P a n o f s k y (Princeton, 1969), nos. 82, 84.
17. For som e interesting speculations on the implications o f Catholicism and Prot­
estantism for the character o f networks, see Jeremy Boissevain, Friends o f M y
Friends, N e t w o r k s , M a n ip u la to rs a n d Coalitions (Oxford U niversity Press,
1974), pp. 79-82.
18. Interestingly enough, those doing the official interrogation o f Collom bet re­
frained from singing the line about the “horns” (well known to them from much
testimony) w hen directly questioning him about his reaction to the song, but
simply sang the opening words. Thus the judge took seriously the strength o f
the insult to C ollom bet’s face.
19. K leinclausz, H istoire de L y o n , p. 61.
20. Kleinclausz, pp. 37-8, 90-2; Garden, L y o n , p. 441. For further discussion on
the political u ses o f charivari, see Davis, So c ie ty a n d Culture, pp. 119, 123, 307,
n. 86-7, 309, n. 106.
 "Rough Music” in TheDuchessofMalfi:
Webster's Dance of Madmen and the
Charivari Tradition *
Frank W. Wadsworth

Of those Elizabethan dramatists who lurk in the shadow of William Shake­

speare, none is more mysterious or puzzling than John W ebster, a play-
wright-poet w hose w ork has always been “caviar to the general.” Writing in
the first quarter of the seventeenth century, W ebster seems to epitomize all
the cynical misery of that unhappy time, and his plays, too corrosively bitter
ever to be truly popular, yet remain too powerful to ignore. Although his two
major tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess o f Malfi, have struck
some critics as deeply flawed and even meretricious, they have seemed to
many more to achieve a unique kind of greatness, uneven though they may
be. The D uch ess has been central in this dispute, for it more than any of
W e b s te r’s other works reflects both his artistic virtues and, as many critics
would have it, his vices. With lines of unforgettable poetry and characters of
vivid theatricality, it has a plot burdened with apparent contradictions and
improbabilities, including a fifth act that to W eb ste r’s detractors seems not
only anticlimactic but filled with gratuitous horror. The critical question that
the tragedy has long posed for the dram atist’s admirers as well as his deni-
grators is a simple one, H ow can anyone write so beautifully and so badly at
the same tim e?1
The tra g e d y ’s stage history suggests that W e b s te r’s contemporaries
would have found the question less puzzling, and that literary critics, like
modern audiences, may be missing something, failing in some fundamental

*This essay is not meant to be an exhaustive treatment o f the subject. Rather, it is a

response to som e o f the ideas the author encountered at the Wartenstein conference,
indicative if nothing more o f the manner in which one student o f literature responded
to the excitem ent o f these interdisciplinary meetings. A lso, it reflects some o f the
dilemmas faced by participants in such meetings: how to deal with information that is
familiar to one group o f scholars but not to another, and how to cope with sophis­
ticated ideas and professional terminology that are alien to o n e ’s own experience.

58
“R o u g h M u s ic ” in The D uchess o f Malfi 59
way to react to a play that spoke differently to the seventeenth century than
it does to us. If we can believe the laudatory front matter of the first quarto,
the tragedy met with considerable initial theatrical success. It had numerous
performances prior to and after the Restoration, before languishing in the
library until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the resourceful
Samuel Phelps revived it in greatly altered form at Sadler’s Wells. Since that
time it has had a good many performances, which have enjoyed a mixed
reception both critically and at the box office. Interestingly, almost every
revival has been based on a significantly altered text— the kind of acting
script that Restoration play-doctors liked to call “im proved” when adapting
Shakespeare.
Thus the fact that modern literary assessm ents of The D uchess reflect a
similar unwillingness to accept W ebster as an organic or holistic artist is not
surprising. E ven for those critics who would rank him next to Shakespeare
as a tragic poet he remains a puzzlingly fragmented writer. To admirers like
Charles L am b , A.C. Swinburne, Rupert Brooke, or T.S. Eliot, W ebster was
a m aster of atm osphere. At the same time their view of him was atomistic,
for while praising parts of his dramas, they seemed unable to find a consist­
ency either of artistic technique or of moral vision. M ore recent critics,
taught by the holocaust o f World W ar II that W e b s te r’s deep pessimism
could have roots in reality rather than simply in his own troubled psyche,
have searched with increasing diligence for evidence of a consistent, bal­
anced moral outlook in the plays. But their efforts, while bearing testimony
to the enduring vitality of W e b s te r’s writing, have failed to produce any
significant agreement. Thus the charge that The D uchess is more m elodra­
matic than tragic still haunts W e b s te r’s tragedy.
If the Romantic L am b thought that W ebster could “move a horror skill­
fully,” his contem porary William Hazlitt found the horrors in The D uchess
overpowering, and the m adm en scene, for example, to exceed “the just
bounds of poetry and tragedy.” F o r William A rcher a century later, W ebster
was not only a poor craftsman but a writer whose tragedy could ultimately
only be described as a “b u tc h e r’s bill.”2 George Bernard Shaw called W eb­
ster a “Tussaud la u re ate .” More recently, W.A. Edw ards and Ian Jack, in
articles appearing in the influential Scrutiny, similarly found W eb ster to be
primarily a purveyor of gratuitous horror, Jack describing his tragedies as a
“trifle ridiculous” and their author as a mere “d ecad en t” creator of “w ax­
w o rk s .” Although W e b s te r’s most recent defenders have primarily occupied
themselves with trying to dem onstrate the existence o f some sort of moral
coherence, of some kind of organic unity based upon a reasonably whole
view of life, in The Duchess, the tragedy remains for many critics a m elodra­
matic sequencing of theatrical but essentially meaningless events in which
brilliant poetry and powerful characterization cannot obscure the fact that
W ebster seems primarily interested in creating horror for h o rro r’s sake.
The purpose of this rather long prologue is simply to make clear that any
critical approach that can suggest a quality of structural and thematic integ­
60 Social D ram as & S tage D ramas
rity in The D u chess o f Malfi might contribute significantly to the attem pt to
dem onstrate that S h a k e sp e are ’s gloomy contem porary was something more
than a mere G rand Guignol sensationalist. As I listened during the days and
nights of the W artenstein conference to the discussion of various rituals
ranging from self-consciously structured literature to liminally patterned c ar­
nival, from “primitive” to “ sophisticated,” from solitary performance to
mass participation, the notion kept growing that W e b s te r’s notorious h or­
rors (along with similar “exce sse s” on the part of many of his fellow
Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists) could represent an effort at giving
“the ritual pattern aesthetic actuality,” to u s e 'C .L . B a rb e r’s phrase, thus
enriching the content of the dramatic action by appealing not ju st to the
sp ec ta to r’s sense of reality by a theatrical distortion of it but also to those
deeply em bedded responses that are part of the collective consciousness
that he shares with others in the audience.3 In particular, there seemed to me
to be an affinity betw een the notorious dance of madmen, which is one of the
theatrical highlights of The D uchess (Act IV, Scene ii), and the charivari,
which Professor D a v is ’s essay treats so perceptively.
The D uchess o f Malfi dramatizes in sensational fashion the fate of a
young noblew om an who defies her brothers, the nameless Cardinal and
Ferdinand, “the great Calabrian D u k e ,” by secretly marrying her steward,
the virtuous but plebian Antonio. W hen through the agency of the villainous
Bosola the marriage is eventually discovered, the Duchess and Antonio are
forced to flee the b ro th e rs ’ wrath. After separating from her husband in
order to protect their children, the Duchess is captured as a result of
B oso la’s treachery. She is then subjected to various forms of torment before
she, her maid, and her children are strangled. The play then continues on
another act, during which Ferdinand, Bosola, and Antonio are killed in a
confused night of indiscriminate slaughter. The horror of W e b s te r’s final
“b u tc h e r’s bill,” it should be noted, comes not from his having achieved a
statistical breakthrough in the num ber of corpses on stage (Act V of H am let
has only one less) but from the pow er of his artistry— his language, his
theatricality, and above all the sense of purposelessness that seems to
characterize the frenzied action.
In the scene I now wish to discuss— described by a modern critic as
“central in the interpretation of the play” and one that “may, indeed, be
regarded as a key to the w hole”4— the Duchess is tortured by a “wild c o n ­
sort” of m adm en sent by her “Tyrant b ro th e r,” Ferdinand, just before she is
strangled by his agent, Bosola, and his accomplices.5 The madmen, who
include such mem bers of the professional establishment as a lawyer, doctor,
astrologer, and priest, first sing a “deadly-dogged how le” to the accom pani­
ment of “a dismall kind of M usique.” They then engage in a grotesque
colloquy during which, as they slander their professions, they engage in
obscene sexual innuendo (e.g., the Priest’s comment that “I will lie with
every w om an in my parish the tenth night: I will tithe them over, like hay-
“R o u g h M u s ic ” in T he D uchess o f Malfi 61
c o ck e s”). After they have torm ented the Duchess with their scurrilous chat­
ter, they conclude with a grotesque dance “with music answerable
th e re u n to .”
At this point it is helpful to rem em ber that John W ebster was, even for
an Elizabethan dramatist, an unusually shameless rifler of other m e n ’s
w o rk s.6 M any of his most famous lines and effective theatrical moments
represent thinly disguised borrowings, and it is undeniable that W ebster was
an extremely derivative writer, reading widely, if at times apparently
superficially, and cramming his plays with the results of that reading. N ot
unexpectedly, therefore, the game of source hunting has always been attrac­
tive to W ebsterians. Predictably, his borrowing has been taken by less sym­
pathetic readers as yet another indication of his readiness to throw together
odds and ends of theatrical material to form a dram a of superficial brilliance,
rather than as evidence of a desire to create a cohesive w ork of profound
intelligence. Thus, the m adm en and their antics have traditionally been seen
as an unsuccessful attem pt to exploit the popularity of the court masque, or
m ore precisely of the antimasque, that comic grotesquerie which relieved
the often cloying propriety of the masque proper, and which could appear
without seeming incongruity in the midst of even the most saccharine w ed ­
ding masques. F o r W e b s te r’s detractors the scene is thus one more example
of the thoughtless and insensitive piling up of horror— of his morbid com pul­
sion to “upon h o rro r’s head horrors accu m ulate.”7 This point of view led to
Victorian perform ances in which the m adm en were kept offstage and the
audience heard only their howling from the wings. The result was a theatri­
cal effect not unlike that of the mood music in a popular horror film; an
a tm osphere of morbid terror was maintained with a modicum of artistic
decorum , but without the effect’s contributing to the thematic meaning of
the dram a in any w a y .8 E v en W e b s te r’s recent admirers have had difficulty
with the scene, and their explanations of it are usually concerned with the
d ram atist’s d em onstrated appetite for other m e n ’s ideas. If it is not an ex­
ploitation o f a fashionable dramatic convention, then it must represent an
almost automatic reaction to something encountered in the playwright’s
predacious reading— perhaps a suggestive bit of action in Sidn ey’s Arcadia
or a passing reference to “Mad and Bedlem p erso ns” in P ain ter’s translation
of Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques, both putative sources for the tragedy,
or some other similar kind of borrowing. Unfortunately, such thoughtless
inspiration seems even more disturbing artistically than a seemingly m e­
chanical utilization of the convention of the court masque. Efforts to d e m o n ­
strate the dramatic functioning of the scene have not been wholly
persuasive, particularly given their frequently contradictory nature. For
some the scene simply deepens the horror, for others it provides a bit of
comic relief—grotesque because t h a t ’s the kind of guy “b a rb aro u s” John
W ebster really was, or because madness was primarily funny to an
Elizabethan audience in a m anner that it presumably is not to our enlight-
62 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
ened age. Others have labored to find precise relationships betw een the
m a d m e n ’s dialogue and the D u c h e s s ’s dramatic situation: for example, b e­
tw een the a strolog er’s confession of insomnia and the D u c h e s s ’s impending
death. N
The critics’ ambivalence about the madmen episode has continued to
reflect itself in the theater. In our own day the scene is typically omitted or
drastically cut. W hen performed, it is usually to the em barrassed laughter of
the audience. This laughter, at least in my own theatrical experience, comes
in large part from the a c to rs ’ attempting to play the scene too literally or
realistically, as though they were giving a demonstration of abnormal p sy ­
chology for an attentive but restless class. Burdened with a Victorian combi­
nation o f inherited scientific rationalism and conservative social decorum
that the popularity o f absurdist dram a has only recent begun to erode, the
performers I have seen have roared and whined, crawled and tumbled, all
with reckless abandon but at the same time with acute self-consciousness.
Their own em barrassm en t is communicated quickly and inevitably to the
audience, which responds with uneasy titters. For both performers and audi­
ence the aw kw ardness comes from the fact that neither knows what is sup­
posed to be going on; as a result, the a c to rs ’ uncertainty simply reinforces
the s p e c ta to rs ’ confusion, and the theatrical illusion upon which such dra­
matic action depends is swiftly broken.
It is possible that for performers and spectators familiar with the co n ­
ventions of the court masque the scene would appear less awkw ard, even if
they perceived it as artistically gratuitous. But when the madmen episode
can be understood only as another example of W e b s te r’s lack of dramatic
propriety, o f horror for h o rro r’s sake, it becomes disruptively embarrassing
precisely because W ebster is not a simple theatrical charlatan but rather a
powerful and compelling poet w hose seeming lapses from decorum are made
all the more disquieting by the fram ew ork of his obvious talent. It is a matter
ultimately of artistic expectations—-just as we can easily accept the m elodra­
matic excesses of many popular motion pictures, but may feel awkw ard at
the apparent tastelessness of an episode in a serious film, so the madmen
scene em barrasses a modern audience, not primarily because of what it is
(i.e., its essential nature), but because it seems to serve no valid dramatic
purpose. The question that we must put to ourselves, therefore, is; Can one
find a justification for the scene that is not only theatrical but dramatic as
well?9
Some tw enty years ago Inga-Stina Ekeblad offered an interesting argu­
ment for believing that the madmen might represent not simply an effort to
add to the plenitude of horrors but also an attempt to strengthen the thematic
coherence of the tragedy as a whole. In an article entitled “The ‘Impure A r t ’
of John W e b s te r,” she dealt in some detail with the relationship betw een the
m adm en episode and the structure of the court masque, arguing that “the
dance . . . acts as an ideograph of the d/s-unity, the m-coherence, of the
D u c h e s s ’ w o rld.” 10 She then went on to suggest that the “ m a sq ue” also
“R o u g h M usic ’ in The D uchess o f Malfi 63
contained “a nucleus of folk tradition” in that certain features of it were not
dissimilar from the charivari, “charivari” being the French term for an an ­
cient and popular form of marriage-baiting Indus that E .K . C ham bers nicely
described as being “on the borderline betw een play and ju ris p ru d e n c e .” 11
E k e b la d ’s suggestion was largely ignored by Websterians. John Russell
Brown, in his excellent Revels edition of the tragedy, dismissed it out of
hand in a brief footnote, stating only that it “is doubtful if the folk tradition
persisted in this w a y .” 12 G unnar Boklund, in The D uchess o f Malfi: Sources,
Themes, Characters, also reserved his com m ent for a footnote, conceding
only that Ekeblad “argues persuasively” before dismissing the interpretation
as “very d an gerou s.” 13 Each was willing to accept the analogue of the court
masque but resisted the idea of folk influences. But Professor E k e b la d ’s
suggestion strikes me as neither “doubtful” nor “d angero us,” and I should
like, therefore, to try to develop it a bit further, for I believe that the
charivari tradition offers insights into W e b s te r’s artistic intention that can
help to resolve basic critical questions about his dramaturgy.
The charivari (like all folk “p lay,” too elusive to define easily) is a form
of communal jural com m ent or punishment widely know n in E u r o p e .14 Its
origins go back to antiquity and it has lasted into our own c e n tu r y .15
Charivaris take many forms, but that which most interests us is essentially a
kind of boisterous, noisy serenade, more or less formally structured, with
which certain aggressive members o f a restricted or local social group mock
what Julian Pitt-Rivers has called “a manifestation o f anti-social s e x .” 16 Al­
though it could be aimed at more fugitive liaisons, the charivari typically
concerned itself with some aspect of a marriage relationship of which the
group disapproved (in the cities it was sometimes used for purposes of
political satire as well). While it was primarily a vehicle for social-sexual
com m entary on the part of peasants and tradesmen, both rural and urban, it
was not unknow n to court society, and historians are fond of reminding us of
the unfortunate example of Charles VI and his courtiers at St. Pol, whose
participation in what appears to have been a charivari aimed at the rem ar­
riage of a lady-in-waiting resulted in a fire that killed most of the performers
and cost the king his w its.17 The charivari performance took many forms,
ranging from a street procession, in which a henpecked husband (or a neigh­
bor representing him) might be paraded backw ard on an ass for all to see and
deride, to midnight visitations by groups of young men marching to some
n ew ly w eds’ house in order to serenade them with a cacophony of noise and
jeering comment. In the latter instance particularly, the tone of the perform ­
ance would bear a direct relationship to the imagined offense, so that the
mocking could range from the relatively lighthearted serenading of a young
bridal couple in connection with their marriage festivities or wedding night
to the brutal and continued tormenting of persons felt to have defied in one
way or another the mores of the particular group. Depending upon the
provoking circum stances and upon w hether the event was taking place in a
populous city or a sparsely settled countryside, the performance could draw
64 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
more or fewer interested spectators whose attitude toward the charivari’s
victims could be derision or sympathy or both, according to the seriousness
of the purported offense and the nature and tone of the criticism explicit and
implicit in the charivari action. v
It is difficult to describe a “typical” charivari. Certain general character­
istics may be noted, however. Charivaris involve derisive dialogue aimed at
the victims by a num ber of participants or “p erform ers,” and this verbal
abuse often takes the form of scurrilous songs and verses. Charivaris fre­
quently include an element of costuming on the part of the participants, at
times with some form of disguising or masking. They are usually c harac­
terized by a high degree of physical action, either a parade or procession, or
various unsophisticated kinds of mimicry, or both. Very frequently they
take place at night. And most importantly, they invariably involve noise,
ranging from shouting, singing, and chanting to distortions of sound based
upon the ringing of bells, beating of drums, banging of pots and pans and
other utensils, rattling of weapons, and so fo rth .18 In other words, the
charivari, w hatever its form, was typically noisy, active, and, significantly
for our purpose, grotesque, representing a distortion of reality that moved
the events out of the world of structured everyday activity into the liminal
realm of ritual behavior. While it is easy to find elements not unlike those of
the literary or court masque in the charivari, its roots are firmly fixed in the
traditions of the folk. Both its forms and its communal purpose would seem
to go far back in time, and its concern with sexual offenses could well be a
reflection of buried instincts for group welfare, for its frequent utilization in
situations involving a village’s rejection of a suitor from a neighboring c o m ­
munity or the disapproval of marriages in which there was a great discrep­
ancy in ages would seem to relate it, how ever distantly, to the problem of
economic survival. The burden of social com m entary carried by the per­
form ance resided not wholly in its direct or expository aspects— in the
shouted obscenities and strident cacophonies— but in its ritual implications
with their indirect or symbolic meanings. Only in the most immediate and
superficial sense was the charivari concerned with “p ro p e r” behavior; in its
ritualistic aspects it reflected those deeper cultural imperatives, such as the
need for secure structures of marriage and reproduction, that may dominate
the actions of social groups even when group members are unaware of them.
The charivari in one form or another was to be found across Europe,
and the local terms (Cencerrada in Spain, Scam p an ate in Italy, K a tz e n ­
m usik in Germany) often pay tribute to its discordant nature. But its popular­
ity was probably greatest in France— “It suits the malicious turn of mind” of
the “esprit gallois,” noted one scholar'9— and as late as the seventeenth
century it was a familiar social phenom enon. And it was, of course, far from
unknow n in England, where it went by a variety of names, among them
Riding Skimmington or Skimmerton, Riding the Stang, Low-belling and
Stag-hunting. The term most frequently used today, however, is Rough
Music, which, although historically attached to that part of the performance
“R o u g h M u s ic ” in T he D uchess o f Malfi 65
which consisted primarily of assaults on the ears, is now often used, like
“charivari,” to encom pass a range of related but not wholly similar ac­
tivities.20 Familiar enough in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to be an
accepted part of English culture, British forms of the charivari lasted into the
twentieth cen tu ry .21 The evidence indicates not only that the continental
charivari would have been known to those members of a Jacobean audience
who w ere reasonably literate and worldly, but that for the petty bourgeoisie
and for the groundlings, as historians like to call them, for whom the English
Channel was a cultural as well as a physical barrier, a knowledge of
“foreign” custom s would not have been necessary in order to recognize an
allusion to this particular social ritual. W hatever parallels W e b s te r’s dance
of m adm en may have with the court masque (or with the comic antimasque),
it seems not unreasonable to conclude that his original audiences would have
been aware of the e p iso d e ’s similarity to the charivari or, to use their own
term, to rough music. The grotesque nature of the “D au n c e ” itself, the
“musicke answ erable th e re u n to ,” the “ song,” the taunting howls of the dia­
logue— “What hideous noyse was th at?” asks the Duchess before the m ad­
men enter— the torch-lit darkness, the element of “dressing u p ” or
costuming implied by the emphasis on the separate occupations of the m ad­
men (enhanced by the distinctive “occupational” nature of sixteenth- and
early seventeenth-century clothing), above all the constant cacophony of the
scene— these far from subtle characteristics could hardly have failed to
strike a chord of recognition in the minds of the spectators, w hether at the
Blackfriars or the Globe.
That such must indeed have been the case is further suggested by the
traditional targets of the charivari performance. This “ludus turpis,” to em ­
ploy Du C an g e ’s disapproving phrase, was frequently used to express social
displeasure at marriages that seemed to violate accepted rules of behavior.
Among the favorite targets of the charivari performers w ere liaisons that
involved a w id o w ’s remarrying, a disparity in age betw een bride and groom,
or a marked difference in the social status of husband and wife. Without
arguing (as in fact I believe one could) that W e b s te r’s Antonio seems to be
older than the youthful Duchess, it can be confidently stated that the
D u c h e s s ’s steward is of a noticeably lower social station than the Duchess,
and it is a fact that she is recently widowed. Thus, the m adm en episode not
only has itself many of the characteristics of the traditional charivari, but it
also occurs in a dramatic context, that of a recently widowed w om an rem ar­
rying beneath herself, which reflects perhaps the most popular real-life
target of this particular social ritual. From these two historical facts we can
draw two important conclusions: first, that W eb ste r’s audience could hardly
have been unaw are of a familiar ritual pattern in this particular dramatic
episode; second— p a ce W e b s te r’s detractors— that the congruity of sub­
stance and context in the scene suggests strongly that the episode serves
something more than the mere purpose of piling horror upon horror.
The possibility that W ebster did have the charivari, or rough music, in
66 Social D ram as & S tage D ramas
mind w hen he w rote The D uchess o fM a lf i is of considerable significance. It
suggests a way of looking at the tragedy that reinforces the view that W eb ­
ster was a complex and thoughtful writer. It also suggests'that the D u c h e s s ’s
tragic dilemma can be seen in the larger context of social conflict as well as
in the more limited focus of personal revenge. The question of ju st exactly
how one should view W e b s te r’s heroine has always bothered critics. Is she a
totally innocent victim of the Aragonian b re th re n ’s intemperate revenge, a
“model of ‘g o o d n e ss’ ” as a recent critic puts it?22 Or is she a flawed character
who, having violated the mores of her society, deserves to be chastised?
Should we ask, W hy is she being punished? Or simply, Does the b ro th e rs ’
brutal punishm ent fit the crime? One of the most eloquent spokesm en for the
second or more judicial point of view has been Clifford Leech, a sensitive
and persuasive critic of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English drama.
M ore than 25 years ago he criticized The D uchess as blurred and a “tangle of
ideas,” arguing that W ebster “did not fully realise the significance of his
plays.”23 Fundam ental to his argument is a reading of W e b s te r’s tragedy as a
kind of fortuitous (i.e., W ebster did not really know what was going on)
“warning to the rash and the w an to n ” in which the Duchess, like the Cardi­
nal’s whorish mistress Julia, is a w om an “who prepared her own violent end
by a rash defiance of the accepted c o d e .” Webster, L eech argued, disap­
proved of the actions of his heroine— at least on the “surface” of his mind—
and saw her as not unlike the adulterous Vittoria C orom bona, the White
Devil of his other major tragedy. What sympathy W ebster does reveal for
her in the tragedy is more or less unintentional, according to Leech, who
saw the D uchess as guilty of two “crim es,” each of which resulted from her
w anton lust for Antonio. One was violation of the “conventional thought”
that widows should not remarry; the second was violation of the principle of
degree in marrying beneath her station. L eech supports his arguments by
reference to a contem porary comedy by George Chapman, a religious trea­
tise, Jerem y T a y lo r’s H oly Living, and W eb ste r’s own “c h ara c ters” (i.e.,
generalized character sketches)— “An ordinarie W iddow ” and “A vertuous
W idd ow .”24
Some years after the appearance of L e e c h ’s important study (the first
m onograph on W eb ster since Rupert B ro o k e ’s in 1916), I argued that W eb ­
s te r’s view of his heroine was indeed quite different from L e e c h ’s:
In fact, when we exam ine her case on its own merits, there are indications that
W ebster’s attitude towards his protagonist was diametrically opposed to what
Dr. L eech assum es it to have been. These are, first, the efforts on W ebster’s
part to convince his audience that the D u c h e ss’ m otives are praiseworthy and
respectable (i.e., love rather than lust); and second, his attempts to show that
the object o f her choice was, in spite o f his birth, an ideally acceptable hus­
band.”

At that time I based my case on an analysis of contem porary ideas about

marriage and remarriage as revealed, not by religious polemics, but by p op u­
lar writings on the subject: namely, the various manuals on social behavior
“R o u g h M u s ic ” in T he D uchess of Malfi 67
that functioned partly like Emily P o s t’s handbooks on acceptable conduct,
partly as reflections of popular attitudes of (rather than formal ecclesiastical
exhortations to) moral behavior. My conclusion was that W ebster had com ­
posed his tragedy within a social-moral climate that allowed for a significant
variation in behavior. I argued that W ebster did not have to assume that his
audience would immediately and automatically have condem ned the
D uchess for remarrying, as L eech and others had assumed. To employ a
modern analogy: to the same extent that an audience today would not, as an
undivided group, automatically and unthinkingly condem n two adults for
living together out of wedlock, but would instead react to the psychological
motivations and behavioral styles that the playwright represented dra­
matically, so too W e b s te r’s audience would have been inclined to judge the
D uchess on the merits of her own particular case, rather than mechanically
on some inflexible a priori theoretical assumptions.
My present purpose, however, is not to try to defend my earlier argu­
ments, much less to try again to refute L e e c h ’s.26 It is rather to attem pt to
dem onstrate how a somew hat cavalierly discarded interpretation of a key
episode in W e b s te r’s tragedy can, if taken seriously, help to illuminate the
dram a and, as a result, raise the possibility— if not the probability— that the
play has a more intellectually unified structure that critics have traditionally
been willing to admit. The question I would ask, therefore, is, W hat are the
implications dramaturgically, particularly in terms of theme, if one accepts
the idea that the m adm en and their grotesque behavior are meant to suggest,
at least partially, that folk ritual known as charivari? Would the audien ce’s
recognition of this relationship, either consciously or in some deeper, less
rational, more reflexive manner, have clarified and enriched the dramatic
action, or would it simply have added to the confusion of a play that acco rd­
ing to L eech “is blurred in its total meaning . . . a collection of brilliant
scenes, w hose statements do not ultimately c o h ere” ?27
In attempting to answ er this, let me emphasize again that the charivari
was not only closely identified with marriage in general, but was typically
critical of some real or imagined socially unacceptable aspect of a particular
relationship. The perform ance might consist of a group of jolly neighbors
serenading a bride and groom on their wedding night— satirizing with crude
hum or either a hypothetical excess or deficiency of nocturnal activity— or
conversely a less friendly group directing their venomous barbs at some
presum ed violation of social decorum or morality. Certainly the antics of
W e b s te r’s m adm en address themselves directly to a marriage viewed as
unsatisfactory by those representatives of the social establishment, the
Aragonian brethren, Ferdinand and the Cardinal. Therefore, it does not
seem far-fetched to conclude that the dance of madmen, even if recognized
only in a subconscious way as being part of a familiar folk tradition, would
have “made sen se” to the spectators at the Blackfriars and the Globe. The
m a d m e n ’s capers, w hether viewed as comic or frightening, or as some com ­
bination of both, would not have seemed gratuitous or unrelated to what had
68 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
gone before. Rather, in a play in which the catalyst for the dramatic action is
a marriage, their actions would have appeared as logical and pertinent. The
audience would have seen F e rd in a n d ’s punishment of his sister not as sa­
distic and aimless cruelty but as a relevant, if excessive, com m entary on her
behavior, with the fact that a favorite target of the charivari was the rem ar­
riage of widows, particularly w hen there was some unusual dissimilarity
betw een the two persons involved, such as age or social status, serving to
emphasize the pertinency. In other words, I am suggesting that in the m ad­
men episode W ebster made dramatic use of a folk ritual that would have
been quickly recognized by most if not all of his-audience as representing a
traditional m ethod for communal social criticism of the actions of individuals
felt to have violated accepted decorum. In addition, many in the audience
would not have been unaware of the connection betw een the charivari and
what Professor Davis calls “the character of M isrule,” a quality of license
typical of both the long tradition of youth-abbeys and other examples of
formal ritualized folly and the more spontaneous simple rough music born of
boredom and antiauthoritarianism.28 Implicit in W e b s te r’s having Ferdinand
choose this particular form of punishment is a subtle criticism of his and his
b ro th e r’s motives— charivaris were the result, not of careful, thoughtful,
judicial processes, but rather of relatively heedless perceptions. And these
perceptions w ere typically based upon a rigid social conservatism that was
the true motivating force for the performance, no m atter how disguised this
conservatism might be by the apparent iconoclasm of boisterous ludic b e ­
havior with its characteristic status reversal. W hether by means of a self­
conscious cognitive process or an intuitive, reflexive recognition,
F e rd in a n d ’s charivari would have been understood as representing a familiar
kind of social punishment, one typically perceived by the more sophisticated
members of the audience as being thoughtless, crude, and co nservative.29
It is important also to rem em ber that charivaris were not always mere
fun and games. While usually good-natured, the performance could all too
frequently becom e savage and dangerous, as Professor Davis points out in
her e ssay .30 W hen this transformation occurred, what had started out as a
joke, an example of rough but not cruel humor, developed into something
akin to a lynching, with unthinking action engendered by mob hysteria. No
longer a kind of game playing, with physical force substituted for verbal
satire and invective, the charivari became an example of real rather than of
simply apparent irrationality, substituting fury for laughter, violence for
verbal abuse. This metamorphosis could and often did result in serious
material damage, physical injury, and even death.31 As the “perform ance”
became increasingly dangerous to its victims, the spectators (the watching
but nonparticipating members of the community) would be forced to
reevaluate the events that had originally provoked the ritual protest in the
light of a punishment no longer seen as condign. W hen any form of social
protest oversteps the bounds of its own peculiar decorum , the onlookers
begin to see the victims in a quite different light from that intended by the
“R o u g h M u s ic ” in T he D uchess o f Malfi 69
protesters. As a result they must reassess and often modify their own critical
stance tow ard the events they are beholding. To the extent that the charivari
changed from a rough but not innately vicious form of social satire to an
unthinking and brutal harassm ent, the sympathies of the onlookers were
certain to undergo modification. That they might, after the fact, close up
ranks and refuse to criticize publicly the actions of their friends and neigh­
bors does not, in my opinion, argue against the inevitability of this em b ar­
rassment, a reaction familiar from accounts of private as opposed to public
responses to lynchings.
Certainly the brutality of the torment visited upon the Duchess by F e r ­
dinand ’s “wild c o n so rt” of madmen, while not directly physical, is in excess
of her social error, her defiance of social custom, even if there had been at
that time any general agreement about the impropriety of w id o w s’ rem arry­
ing. Consequently, the savage harassm ent of the Duchess by her brother
would have served to raise questions about the social motives that lay b e­
hind it, ju st as the savage actions of an American lynch mob serve to q ues­
tion, and ultimately undermine, the social conservatism that spawns them.
The charivari form of F e rd in a n d ’s punishment would have caused W e b s te r’s
audience to consider not only the unhealthy psychological motives underly­
ing his irrational savagery but also the social imperatives that he used to
justify his actions. In the same way that the torch-lit grotesqueness of an
American lynching provokes a reconsideration of their social attitudes on
the part of its passive spectators, so the torch-lit terror of W e b s te r’s m ad­
men is meant to force an audience to sort out its own values, seeing the
conservative social premises upon w7hich the frightening action is justified in
the new light of the p u n ish ers’ own irrational behavior. Thus for W ebster the
charivari episode becom es a form of authorial comment, shifting the focus
from the obvious incestuous anger of the D u c h e s s ’s brother to the less
obvious but larger world of social co m m en tary .32
It is the social com m entary implicit in W eb ste r’s use of a traditional
form of folk ritual that provides a center of unity or, as L eech would call it,
coherence for W e b s te r’s tragedy. It is no longer necessary to view the
tragedy as merely superior melodram a— as W eb ste r’s least sympathetic
critics would have us do. Even more importantly, we do not have to accept it
as the simplistic vision of a confused and bitter existentialist for whom the
pleasures of life are but the mom ents of an ague and life only an aimless
jo u rn e y in which human beings— good, bad, or indifferent— are crushed
indiscriminately. Instead, it is possible to see The Duchess, in spite of its
uniquely W ebsterian qualities, as being to some extent in the tradition of
social drama, dealing in a somber yet excoriating m anner not only with the
D u c h e s s ’s relationship to her brothers but also with her relationship to soci­
ety. H er actions in remarrying, in marrying her steward, in defying the
conservative strictures of her brothers, are put into the larger context of
social values by the charivari ritual. W ebster was asking his audience to
judge her not ju s t in terms of the irrational anger of her torm entors, but in
70 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
terms also of the shifting and ambiguous standards of contem porary c o n ­
duct, which were, w hatever some cultural historians may tell us, as inconsis­
tent then as now. W e b s te r’s charivari of madmen becom es a multivocal
m etaphor of “folk” judgm ent, as well as an instrument o f private torture for
Ferdinand. W h eth er by a self-conscious act of ratiocination or in some o b ­
scure reflexive way, members of the audience would have been impelled to
react to the social param eters that governed both F e rd in a n d ’s and the
D u c h e s s ’s actions, and the scene, while retaining its primary dramatic func­
tion of developing the act of private revenge, would also function to raise an
important social-moral question. Its inappropriateness to the presum ed
crime, like Professor D av is’s charivaris gone wrong, would have neces­
sitated a more profound reassessm ent of the D u c h e s s ’s actions and motives,
with the result that the audience would have been forced, how ever indi­
rectly, to view her in the light of contem porary attitudes toward marriage
and remarriage, not merely in the light of F e rd in a n d ’s feral revenge. R ather
than appearing solely as the victim of private vengeance, she would also
have been app rehended— much more interestingly— as the victim of conflict­
ing social attitudes. Thus, when she is strangled later in the same scene— and
it is not irrelevant that her death follows immediately upon the madmen
episode, while this larger com m entary is still very much with the spectator—
the m urder partakes of the quality of a public lynching as well as of a private
feud, becoming an example of social as well as of individual injustice. That
her children and Cariola, her maid, are killed with her adds further to the
lynching-like quality of the scene, for their deaths also function as symbols
of the blind fury with which society strikes out when protecting itself against
changes in the status quo. Similarly, F e rd in a n d ’s famous com m ent when
Bosola shows him the body of the D uchess— “Cover her face: Mine eyes
dazell: she d i’d yong”— is more than sentimental theatrical rhetoric. By
emphasizing the D u c h e s s ’s youth, W ebster reminds us of the uncertainty of
human existence. But by relating this uncertainty to the imperatives of social
structures as well as to the idiosyncrasies of individual psychology, the
dramatist underscores a Renaissance dilemma that caused the early seven­
teenth century much doubt and despair, namely, the conflict betw een the
traditional pessimistic view of man as incapable of reasonable self-direction
and the optimistic belief in a good life based upon collective as well as
individual intelligence.
In addition to gaining in thematic importance, the m adm en scene, when
viewed as a version of charivari or rough music, also becomes more artis­
tically effective in purely theatrical terms. The episo de’s autochthonous
laughter no longer need be a source of critical or histrionic em barrassm ent.
It has been custom ary on the part of W e b s te r’s admirers in dealing with this
problem to remind us that the E lizabethan s’ reaction to insanity was fre­
quently less sentimental than ours. Therefore, what might seem pathetic to
us could well have seemed comical to the seventeenth-century audience. As
F .L . Lucas, editor of the standard edition of W ebster, puts it: “The modern
“R o u g h M u s ic ” in The D uchess of Malfi 71
reader has to re m e m b er in the scene that follows that to the audiences of the
Globe m adness was primarily fu n n y .”33 I think that Lucas and the many
others who remind us of the s c e n e ’s comic overtones are quite right and that
W ebster did indeed want us to regard the “ severall sorts of m ad-m en” as
“fu n n y .” Significantly, the servant who announces the m a d m e n ’s ap pear­
ance to the D uchess states that “I am come to tell y o u ,/Y o u r brother hath
intended you some sp o rt,” and he repeats the word “ sport” four lines later.34
But w hat Lucas does not explain, except to note offhandedly that the scene
is used to “deepen tragic pity and te rro r,” is why the dramatist would want
to write a “fu nn y” scene at this important and tragic m om ent in the play, ju st
before the D uchess is strangled to death by her executioners.35 Yet the
theatrical explanation (as distinct from the dramatic or thematic) is also to be
found in the ep iso d e ’s affinity to the traditional charivari. W ebster meant the
scene to be comic as well as painful, to draw em barrassed laughter as well as
to excite simple horror; in other words, to have precisely the effect that it
achieves in production, but to have it by design, not by the accident of
histrionic ineptitude.
The particular ritual that we have been discussing had its roots in ludic
play, in rough hum or, which by means of laughter directed at the victims
becam e the vehicle for correcting or chastising an assum ed violation of the
social code. But w hen the charivari got out of hand and its self-conscious
social purpose was overw helm ed by intense and angry feelings, then the
hum or turned black and became m arked with a bitter savagery similar to that
found in to d a y ’s absurdist theater. W hat characterizes absurdist theater is
farce, not the mindless farce of the traditional vaudeville routine, but the
cruel jok e that is dramatically speaking sui generis, neither p roper comedy
nor p roper tragedy but something paradoxically often more disturbing than
either. It is precisely these absurdist qualities-—grotesqueness, savagery,
cruel hum or— that characterize W e b s te r’s scene and make it not only th e ­
matically but theatrically right. The dance of madmen is in fact a charivari
gone wrong. The uncomfortable laughter it produces not only adds sub­
stance to W e b s te r’s moral vision but contributes to the artistic unity of the
tragedy as well.
The focus of this essay has been upon one key episode in The D uchess
o f Malfi. But there are other W ebsterian “h o rrors” that might seem less
gratuitous in the context of folk tradition. The scene ju st before the dance of
m adm en, in which the Duchess is torm ented by being shown the wax effigies
of Antonio and his children (which she mistakenly thinks are their corpses),
m ay also owe something to the charivari. F e rd in a n d ’s nocturnal “jo k e ” and
B oso la’s cynical hectoring of the Duchess are both in the same tradition, and
the effigy of Antonio could represent an ironical reversal of a conventional
element, for as Natalie Davis has pointed out, one purpose of a charivari
involving remarriage was to placate the form er spouse who “was sometimes
present at the charivari as an effigy.”36 F o r an audience aware of this tradi­
tion, the substitution of Antonio for the D u ch e ss’s dead husband could have
72 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
created a subtle complexity of horror. Equally interesting is another possible
connection suggested by Professor D avis’s description o f the final events of
a charivari involving a w id ow ’s remarrying beneath her station at L yon in
1668. Davis notes in her essay that the four jou rneym en held to be responsi­
ble for the m urder of the w ido w ’s second husband were first condem ned by
the court to death by strangulation, then, because of their successful escape,
executed in effigy. At the point in the play when A nto nio ’s effigy is dis­
played, he too has successfully escaped the “punishm ent” that Ferdinand
would w reak on him. From a quite different tradition, but also suggestive, is
a superstition flourishing when W e b s te r’s play was com posed that the hand
of a dead man possessed curative powers, especially if it was a criminal’s
hand. Just before she is shown the w axen figures of her family the Duchess is
given what purports to be a dead m a n ’s hand by Ferdinand. H ere again are
possibilities of latent ironies that a modern audience can never grasp unas­
sisted.37
I cite these admittedly tenuous relationships merely to suggest that
W ebster may be more indebted to folk ritual than we realize and that his
plays could prove as fertile a field for investigation as Shakespearean co m ­
edy has been for Professor B arb er.38 N o r need we stop with Webster. What,
for example, can we make of the comic subplot of M iddleton’s and R o w ley ’s
The Changeling if we consider it from the perspective of the charivari? Or of
H am let, as Professor Davis herself has asked?39 Historians of the English
drama have charted its artistic development in impressive detail: its litur­
gical beginnings, its homiletic traditions, its classical influences. But they
have made far less sense out of its folk origins and even when, like that great
chronicler of British d ra m a ’s growth, E.K . Chambers, they are fascinated
with minstrelsy and folk plays, they have usually failed to relate their o b ser­
vations to a serious concern for literary theory. Thus many of the questions
that need to be asked remain unasked. Elizabethan playwrights might have
been short on formal dramatic theory but they were absorbed by and in
social ritual. Rough music was but one of many ritual forms that enriched
their lives, and by enriching their lives, their literature. Perhaps, in spite of
centuries of critical and scholarly study, Elizabethan dram a still has a few
surprises in store for us if we try to look at it in new and different ways.

NOTES

1. The vagaries o f W ebster’s literary reputation are treated at length by Don D.

Moore in J o h n W e b ste r a n d H is Critics, 1617-1964 (Baton Rouge, 1966). Moore
also com m ents more briefly on the stage history o f W ebster’s two tragedies.
Specific citations are given only when the information is not to be found in
Moore.
2. William Archer, “The D uchess o f Malfi,” The N in e t e e n t h Century A n d A f t e r 87:
127, 1920.
3. C.L. Barber, S h a k e s p e a r e ’s F estive C o m e d y (Princeton, 1972), p. 15. Barber’s
“R o u g h M u s ic ” in The D uchess o f Malfi 73
important book, first published in 1959, demonstrated the relationship betw een
S hakespeare’s early com edies and “saturnalian” social custom s.
4. C.W . D avies, “The Structure o f The D u c h e s s o f Malfi: An A pproach,” English
1 2 :9 0 -9 1 ,1 9 5 8 .
5. Citations o f The D u c h e s s are from F .L . Lucas, ed., The C o m p le te W orks o f
J o h n W e b s t e r , vol. 2 (London, 1927).
6. See R.W . Dent, J o h n W e b s t e r ’s Borrowing (Berkeley, 1960).
7. The phrase is L am b’s, but his intended praise was seen by many later com m en­
tators as a telling if unwitting criticism. See Charles Lamb, S p e c i m e n s o f E n ­
glish D r a m a ti c P o e ts (London, 1808), p. 217, n. 68.
8. See Frank W. W adsworth, “Som e Nineteenth Century Revivals o f The
D uchess o f Malfi,” Theatre S u rv e y 8:77, 1967.
9. The distinction made here is betw een theatrical, as pertaining to stage language,
action, and business that hold the audience’s attention only or primarily be­
cause they create an immediate, independent emotional or intellectual re­
sponse; and dram atic, as referring to those same elem ents used to elicit a
spectator reaction based upon the elem en ts’ relationship to the play as a whole,
with the result that they contribute organically to an understanding o f a work of
art that is serious in intent, whether it be labeled tragedy, com edy, drama, or
whatever.
10. Inga-Stina Ekeblad, R e v i e w o f English S tu d ie s 9:253-267, 1958. The phrase is
E liot’s: “The art o f the Elizabethans is an impure art.”
11. E .K . Chambers, The M e d ie v a l S tage, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1967), p. 152.
12. John Russell Brown, ed., The D u c h e s s o f Malfi (Cambridge, M ass., 1964),
p. xxxvi, n. 1.
13. Gunnar Boklund, The D u c h e s s o f M a lfi: S o u rces, Them es, C haracters (Cam­
bridge, M ass., 1962), p. 182, n. 2.
14. See A. Van Gennep, M a n u e l de fo lk lo r e f r a n ç a i s c o n te m p o ra in , vol. 1, pt. 2
(Paris, 1946), pp. 614—28; Violet Alford, “Rough Music or Charivari,” Folklore
70:505-518, 1959; and especially Natalie Z. D avis, “The R easons o f M isrule,” in
S o c ie ty a n d Culture in Early M o d e r n F ra n c e (Stanford, 1975).
15. For English exam ples, see Alford, pp. 511-12, and Enid Porter, C a m b r i d g e ­
shire C u s t o m s a n d Folklore (N ew York, 1969), pp. 8-10. Van Gennep (M anuel,
p. 617) describes a French occurrence in which “D es automobiles furent
m obilisées pour aller chercher des manifestants très loin .” John Myers in his
novel o f early eighteenth-century frontier life in the United States, The Wild
Yazoo (N ew York, 1947), describes an American form o f shivaree, as it was
known in the Old West.
16. J.A. Pitt-Rivers, The P e o p le o f the Sierra (Chicago, 1961), p. 174.
17. See Enid W elsford, The Court M a s q u e (N ew York, 1962), pp. 43-4; also Ekeb­
lad, p. 261, n. 3; Alford, p. 512; and The C a m b rid ge M e d ie v a l H istory (Cam­
bridge, 1964), vol. 7, p. 375. The king, o f course, had been intermittently
deranged before this episode.
18. “Ludus turpis tinnitibus et clamoribus variis,” according to the seventeenth-
century scholar, Charles du Fresne Du Cange (G lossarium m e d ia e et infimae
latinitatis, Paris, 1842), under Charivarium. Du C ange’s several related entries
also stress the noisiness o f the ritual.
19. Alford, p. 512.
20. See Alford and especially Edward P. Thom pson, “ ‘Rough M u sic’: Le Charivari
anglais,” A n n a le s : E c o n o m ie s , Sociétés, Civilisations 27:285-312, 1972.
Thom pson notes that the O xford English Dictionary indicates that the term was
first used in the “charivari” sense in 1708.
21. See above, n. 15.
74 Social D ram as & Stage D ram as
22. Robert Whitman, “The Moral Paradox of W ebster’s Tragedy,” P M L A
90:897,1975. Whitman, rejecting simple dichotom ies o f good and evil in the
tragedy, sees the D u c h e ss’s personality as “ambivalent” (p. 902).
23. Clifford L eech, J o h n Webster: A Critical S tu d y (London, 1951), especially
Chapter 2.
24. L eech modified som e o f his strictures in a later study ( W e b s te r : The D u c h e s s o f
Malfi, London, 1963), but his view o f the tragedy and its protagonist remained
essentially unchanged.
25. Frank W. Wadsworth, “W ebster’s D u c h e s s o f Malfi in the Light o f Som e C on­
temporary Ideas on Marriage and Remarriage,” Philological Quarterly
35:407,1956. -
26. Incidentally, he found my case unpersuasive.
27. L eech , J o h n Webster, p. 65.
28. D avis, “The R easons o f M isrule,” p. 107. Barber notes that the D uchess laugh­
ingly refers to Antonio as “a Lord o f M isse-rule” earlier in the play (III, ii, 9), an
ironic foreshadowing of the action to com e.
29. It seem s significant to me, also, that Ferdinand’s madmen are not the symbolic
figures described by Victor Turner as “structurally inferior or ‘marginal’ ” ( The
R itu a l P ro cess, Chicago, 1969, p. 110), who-traditionally exercise moral power
in the com m unity, but are rather exemplars o f traditional structure who are not
“naturally” motivated as in the real charivari but instead unnaturally “ordered
u p,” as it were, by a member o f the establishment.
30. “Charivari, H onor, and Community in 17th-Century Lyon and G en ev a .”
31. Thom pson emphasized the restraint imposed upon hostile em otions by the co n ­
straints o f the ritual form, noting that hostility “s ’arrête juste avant le lynchage,
et n ’en arriva que rarement à la violence physique.” Without trying to argue
either the prevalence o f physical violence or the exact point at which a ritual
b ecom es a lynching, I think w e can accept the fact that when the charivari
reflected “l’antagonisme le plus complet dans la com m unauté,” it ran a risk o f
becom ing dangerously violent and unthinking.
32. Gilbert Murray’s studies o f “the formation o f drama out o f ritual” com e to mind
here, particularly his argument for the relationship betw een the ritual o f the
“E niautos-D aim on” or Year-Daimon and Euripides’ B a c c h a e . See “Excursus
on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy,” in Jane Ellen Harrison,
T h e m i s : A S tu d y o f the Social Origins o f Greek Religion, 2nd ed. (Cambridge,
1927), pp. 341-363; and Èuripides a n d H is A g e (N ew York, 1913), especially pp.
59-66 and 179-195. In Euripides a n d H is A g e , Murray, while sensitive to the
ritual elem ents o f medieval drama, found Elizabethan drama “merely an enter­
tainm ent.” H ow ever, in “Hamlet and Orestes: A Study in Traditional T y p e s”
{Proceedings o f the British A c a d e m y , 1913-14, pp. 389-412), he argues that “we
finally run the Hamlet-saga to earth in the same ground as the Orestes-saga; in
the prehistoric and world-wide ritual battle o f Summer and Winter . . .” (p. 408).
33. Lucas, C o m p le te Works, vol. 2, p. 181. Cf. D avies (p. 91): “W ebster certainly
based the effect he finally obtained on the fact that lunatics were regarded as
am using.”
34. “Sport” was not the pale, emasculated word in W ebster’s time that it is today.
Consider Shakespeare’s rich use o f it, or Marvell’s well-known lines in “To His
Coy M istress” : “N o w let us sport us while we m a y ,/ And now, like am ’rous
birds o f p rey ,/ Rather at once our time devour/ Than languish in his slow-
chapped p o w er.” See Du C ange’s “ludus turpis” (n. 18).
35. One thing it is certainly not intended to be is “com ic relief.”
36. D avis, “The R easons o f M isrule,” p. 106.
37. S ee Christina H ole, ed., E n c y clo p a e d ia o f Superstitions (Chester Springs, Pa.,
1969), under “Dead H and.” Even more suggestive is the traditional belief that a
“R o u g h M usic ’ in T he D uchess o f Malfi 75
dead m an’s hand prevented childbearing (Porter, C am bridgeshire C u sto m s,
p. 10). The D u ch ess proves, in A ntonio’s words, to be “an excellent Feeder o f
ped egrees,” and Ferdinand is clearly obsessed with her “Cubbs” and “young
W o lffes,” as he calls her children (IV, i, 40; IV, ii, 275). W ebster’s audience
would presumably have understood a folk allusion more easily than a reference
to a som ew hat similar episode in H erodotus, as argued by Mario Praz in a letter
to The Tim es Literary S u p p le m e n t (June 18, 1954).
38. The stage history o f The D u c h e s s too might be illuminated by a consideration o f
the ritualistic elem ents o f particular productions. I find Victor Turner’s remarks
on the rituals o f humility and hierarchy, particularly his com m ent that “both
these types o f rituals reinforce structure” {The R itu a l P rocess, p. 201), most
interesting in the context o f the unprecedented stage popularity o f The D u c h e s s
during the third quarter o f the nineteenth century. The British and American
acting texts were so altered as to change radically W ebster’s pessim istic view o f
life; this is especially true in the American productions, which reveal significant
contamination from the popular dramatic versions o f Uncle T o m ’s Cabin and
end, like Mrs. S to w e ’s dramatized novel, with an “apotheosis” showing the
D uchess and her family reunited in H eaven. A s a result the tragic suffering o f
the nineteenth-century versions becom es not a vehicle for W ebster’s own view
o f human existen ce, but a kind o f ritualistic imposition that enables the
tragedy’s morbid exploration o f the dark areas o f human behavior to function
primarily to highlight the face o f innocence in distress. Nineteenth-century
versions “hum ble” the protagonists in order to reinforce the moral values o f
middle- and upper-class Victorian existence— to reassert the validity o f a par­
ticular structured society, not to deny it. See F.W . W adsworth, “ ‘Shorn and
A b ated’: British Performances o f The D u c h e s s o f M a l f i T h e a t r e S u rvey
10:89-104, 1969; and “ ‘Webster, Horne and Mrs. S to w e ’: American Perform­
ances o f The D u c h e s s o f M a l f i T h e a t r e S u rv e y 11:151-166, 1970, for detailed
descriptions o f nineteenth-century performances.
39. D avis, “The R easons o f M isrule,” p. 123.
 /■

II
TEXTS & PERFORMANCES
 Borges's “Immortal”:
Metaritual, Metaliterature,
Metaperformance *
Sophia S. Morgan

Ritual, reflexivity, and performance constitute three of the most fundam en­
tal concerns of contem porary literary theory and are at the very basis of the
historical shift from a traditional criticism to the modern problematic of the
text. My purpose here, how ever, is not to annotate extensive bibliographies
or to take up aspects of these problems in the abstract. Instead I will look at
a single story and let literature itself speak to the questions of interest. That
story is “The Im m o rtal” by Jorge Luis Borges. Because Borges is a complex
writer, it will be necessary to look at certain theoretical matters first, in
order to make some elementary distinctions concerning rituals and literary
texts and as a means of defining the particular theoretical emphasis of the
analysis.
Rituals and narrative literature are alike in that they are both symbolic
activities. M oreover, they either tell or dramatize a story. They both unfold
in “ spaces” clearly differentiated from those of everyday discourse or ac­
tion; they are both inscribed within the realm of possibility and make-
believe; they both constitute, in a phrase of Victor T u rn e r’s, “that eye and
eye-stalk which society bends round upon its own condition.” 1 They are
both, in other words, reflexive artifacts or performances through which a
society may look at itself, reaffirm its values, or criticize its practices. R e­
cent and not so recent literary analyses have revealed complex filiations
betw een the two and have often taken for granted the ritual function of

*The original version o f this essay contained an analysis o f two more stories: Julio
Cortazar’s “Sim ulacra,” from C ronopios a n d F a m a s (N ew York; 1969), and David
Jauss’s “A Docum ent Concerning A p o th eo sis,” which appeared in P u erto del So l
(N ew M exico State U niversity, vol. 14, no. 2, Summer 1976). English citations o f the
Borges story are from Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, edited by Donald Yates and
James E. Irby (N ew York, 1964).

79
80 Texts & Perform ances
literature. N o rth ro p Frye has called ritual the very origin of all narrative,
and even Roland Barthes calls literature “a ritual s p ac e.”2 With respect to
their ritual modalities, however, all literary narratives may be divided into
two general categories depending on w hether the ritual pattern in them is
what allows them to speak or is what they speak about. In the first type,
ritual, while constituting the narrative pattern, is neither presented as an
“object” within it nor problematized. An obvious and classic example is the
O d yssey , in which Odysseus and Telemachus can be seen as enacting ritual
jo u rn e y s of various sorts. T e le m ac h u s’s story, for one, is a repetition, at a
different register, of an initiation ritual. But the epic does not present this
fact as a problem in its own right. The status of ritual and the problems it
creates by turning experience into text and vice versa are not issues ex ­
plicitly treated in the Odyssey.
The second type of literary narrative is that for which such ritual repeti­
tion posits a problem. The ritual pattern in this instance is not only part of
the invisible structure of the work, but what it invites us to look at explicitly,
what it itself talks about, what it dramatizes as part of its content. This is the
case with Don Quixote and all subsequent “quixotic” literature— of all litera­
ture that deals with the endlessly open question of ritual repetition, imita­
tion, and the relationship which links experience to its representations.3 In
Don Quixote, while the knight does all he can to live his life as if it were the
ritual incarnation of the romances of chivalry, the narrating voice which
constitutes a first frame of the inner action constantly undermines the link
which the D on tries to effect betw een action and text by persistently focus­
ing on the frames which in reality keep them separate.
Thus, w hereas in the first of these two types of literature the ritual
formula is used “invisibly,” unproblematically, and “piously,” in the second
it comes to the foreground of the action and turns the very activity of writing
into a paradox. For here the text sets out to undermine what precisely allows
it to speak. In the first case, the status of the ritual formula is of the order of
the signifier and does not enter the problematic of the work as a signified. In
the second case, it is of the order of both signifier and signified and, as such,
is one of the key factors in the metatextual function of the text.
It is in this respect that rituals, which cannot perform this second func­
tion at the level of the text, differ from literature. Both rituals and literary
narratives are reflexive: through them a society cuts off a piece of itself for
inspection. Both, m oreover, may also be self-reflexive, as when a ritual
repeats the ritual pattern within itself through redundant devices. One may
call the first kind an exo- and the second an endo-reflexivity. In the first, the
narrative or performance, even when critical or subversive, mirrors struc­
tures and processes allegedly existing in the society; in the second, it mirrors
structures or other elements that exist in itself. (Of course, a work may do
both.) Endo- or self-reflexivity, however, may in turn be of two kinds: what
is reflected may be part of what the text presents as the content of its
narrative, or it may concern the telling. Here too, as in every case of reflexiv-
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 81
ity when the work reflects its own narrative voice, it may either reaffirm it or
question it. W hy a literary work cannot do this without becoming metatextu-
ally ironic cannot be discussed here. But what, in any case, is involved is a
deconstruction of a certain textuality, a process through which the very
notion of text is presented as problematic. Nonliterary ritual cannot do this.
It is true that the efficacy of ritual may at times be challenged, that rituals
may be changed to reflect current problems, or that they may “go b a d .” But
in such cases either the content of ritual is changed or its structure and form
are demolished; it is not and can never be deconstructed as happens in the
literary types that interest us here. N either its textual strategies nor its
ideological foundations, nor its experiential or spiritual validity can be criti­
cally questioned if ritual is to remain ritual. W ere it to pass to this level of
metatextuality, ritual would become literature.
Barbara M yerhoff has argued that rituals are paradoxical: “because
they are conspicuously artificial and theatrical yet designed to suggest the
inevitability and absolute truth of their messages. [They are] dangerous
because w hen we are not convinced by a ritual, we may becom e aware of
ourselves as having made them up, thence on to the paralyzing realization
that we have made up all our tru th s .”4 To exorcise the danger and the
paradox, ritual on the one hand anchors itself in tradition, and on the other
hand minimizes as much as possible the perceptual, cognitive or emotional
distance betw een the participant and the text reenacted. It can neither ar­
ticulate the arbitrariness of the text nor allow any disturbance of the partici­
p a n t’s immersion in it. F or this reason, no matter how great the
uncertainties, fears or hesitations of the shaman or initiate, there is one
existential m om ent that cannot be contained in ritual: the m om ent— a c o m ­
mon topos in literature— at which the hero stops to ask “W hat shall I say
now? W hat is my text? W hat is the next step of this jo u rn e y ? ” Even if such a
m om ent were ever to appear in ritual, by virtue of its necessarily being a
ritual m om ent its function could only be to affirm the efficacy of the text. It
would be there to dem onstrate the merely momentary w eakness of the par­
ticipant, with tradition and spiritual help then coming to his aid— consoling,
directing, infusing with meaning, leading him back to significance. It is in
cases where such a “re tu rn ” is impeded by extraneous causes that a flawed
ritual ensues: a passage, a cure or a feast that goes bad. Thus, even though
ritual is a privileged space of liminality, there is one type of liminal mixing
and mingling that it can neither w arrant nor perform without destroying
itself—that categorical trespassing in which the work becomes the object of
its own discourse, and which is the space proper of literature. Ritual may be
capable of presenting and dramatizing both structure and anti-structure, as
T u rn er argues, but this final metatextual modality in which the text turns
into an anti-text is closed to it.
An additional reason for this lies in the difference betw een ritual and
literature with respect to sources. Ritual may be considered a kind of
“ speech a c t,” an act of communication. In its totality, however, it is an act
82 Texts & Perform ances
without a source, an origin or an “a u th o r.” This is why its origin is always
linked to mythical beginnings, to gods or demigods. Tn literature, on the
contrary, the source or author is always visible even when not ostensibly
present. Ritual cannot tolerate this visibility, which turns the “a u th o r” into a
contingent, personal, idiosyncratic, or subjective voice. Thus, even though
both ritual and literature are fr a m e d , their frames are very different. The
function of ritual frames is to guarantee the non-arbitrariness and even the
sacrality of ritual as text and performance, whereas the literary frame, even
when it serves to establish the a u th o r’s authority, is much more fragile,
much more problematic and unstable. It constantly shifts place, only to be
reappropriated by the content in the te x t’s endless attem pt to ground the
authority which speaks it: the n a rra to r’s voice. If it is of the essence of ritual
to present itself as Truth, and of the essence of literature to admit that it is
illusion, one reason for the difference is to be found in the mode of truth or
authority which they set forth or take for granted. To “ speak” w hatever
truth is theirs, ritual relies on faith, while literature plays with its own built-
in mechanism of the lie. If both take place in the realm of make-believe, the
quality of that belief is very different in each case.
Given this kinship among literature, the lie, and illusion, it is natural
that “p o e try ” has appeared in need of defense ever since Plato launched his
great attack on it in the Republic. But from Aristotle’s dictum that poetry is
more philosophical than history (and, therefore, closer to truth) to the re ­
lated idea that literature lies in order to tell the truth, all such defenses are
attempts to safeguard or reassert the authority of literature and to make sure
that it never be invaded by an inflated, superfluous, and empty signifier.
N evertheless, this mask without a face, this empty text, has been the object
and concern of literature no less than of the theoretical discourses w oven
round and about it. Since the Renaissance and, more so, since Romanticism
(that shorthand name for the crisis of the Tradition, the Subject, and the
Text), literature persistently takes up again and again the question of its own
relationship to reality and to other texts, to repetition, imitation, illusion,
and tru th .5 Ritual creates or reaffirms models of the world; the literature that
is of interest here asks how it is possible to create models.
Ritual is framed through the participants’ knowledge that the ritual text
and perform ance belong to a type of discourse and action distinct from those
of the everyday, that upon entering ritual space they enter a domain distinct
from the quotidian and do so in order to reenact an ancient story or pattern.
Ritual entertains complex relations with what is outside it. But this
bracketing, this existence within quotation marks, is clearly a serious,
categorical bracketing that cannot be tinkered with. Literature, on the other
hand, is by its very nature the great “tinkerer” in this affair. Janus-like, it
looks both inside and outside the space of texts and ritual repetition, creating
its own brand of liminality by trespassing against those very quotation marks
on which ritual depends. Both the “inside” and the “outside” of ritual consti­
tute the inner space of literature, and, in this sense, literature is metaritual.
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 83
We may recall M y e rh o f f’s apt observation concerning the danger inherent in
ritual. Even though literature too requires a suspension of disbelief, it is
clear that this danger and the “paralyzing realization” that the truth has been
made up are not things that literature eschews, but are the very ground,
dangerous and paradoxical, upon which it unfolds and the landscape to
which it points.
I do not mean to suggest that all modern literature, from Don Quixote
on, belongs to the second type previously discussed, that distinguished by
the problematization of the signifier. In recent times especially, there have
been num erous writers who would like to place literature beyond this
paradox and danger. Explicitly or implicitly, these writers have tried to
equate the function of literature with that of ritual or have maintained that
literature is or should be the myth and ritual of the post-industrial world.
Thom as M ann provides a paradigmatic example of a Jungian version of this
outlook,6 while at its other extreme we find pleas by novelists and theoreti­
cians for a committed or “engaged” literature. But these attitudes are only
tw o sides of the same coin: attempts to validate once more the authority of
literature, its right or duty to speak the truth through something larger than
itself. The first does it by linking literature to the archetype; the second by
linking it to “im m ediate” or “unm ediated” experience. B etw een the two— or
beyond them— is a type of literature that inscribes itself within the distance
that separates the two solutions, becoming thus both the critique of modern
literature and the exemplification of its agonies.
Having characterized this type o f literature theoretically, I turn now to
an analysis of a m aster example of it from Borges. This analysis will suggest,
too, that literature is not ju s t a kind of surrogate performance, as many have
seen it, a mere substitute that talks about ritual and non-ritual performances
actually or allegedly enacted elsewhere. R ather there exists a modality of
perform ance that is peculiar to literature. There is something that literature
can perform, dramatize, give us to see that can be performed now here but on
the printed page and yet is a performance in its own right. I believe this
perform ance is none other than the metatextual activity of the literary text.
Metaritual and the m etatext are a form of performance.
Like several of the other short stories o f Borges, “The Im m ortal” is a
narrative within a narrative, built on a deceptively simple series of frames.
The inner narrative— a story that may be characterized as fantastic or mythi­
cal— is found in manuscript, we are told, in the last of six volumes containing
P o p e ’s translation of the Iliad. This is a first, realistic and literal frame of
sorts. The second, circumstantial and situational, is the occasion o f the
discovery of the manuscript: in 1929, the princess of Lucinge bought the six-
volume set from a Jew of Sm yrna and later found the said story in it.
There is nothing unusual or implausible about either of these two
frames. And yet, finding a manuscript in a book (that is, a text within another
text) is not quite like finding one in any other place— in a bottle, for example.
The manuscript in the book becomes (as its counterpart in the bottle can
84 Texts & Perform ances
never be) a connotative exemplification of the fact that this will be a story
within a story. (It is also the first, subtle, and perhaps irdnic instance of self-
referentiality or reflexivity in the narrative.) This em beddedness, m oreover,
necessarily suggests the possibility of a relationship betw een the two texts.
The story within the story may be a story about stories, or about the rela­
tionship betw een stories, or about what it means to tell or retell stories, and
so on. After all, the six volumes are P o p e ’s retelling of H o m e r ’s story, and
therefore a reincarnation of the ancient myths. Is the J e w ’s addendum re­
lated to all this? If so, how? Can it be, coming as it does at the end of the first
epic— the epic o f w ar— an avatar of the second— the epic o f homecoming? Is
it a kind o f Odyssey related to that of H om er in ways similar to the ways
P o p e ’s Iliad is related to H o m e r ’s? Is it both similar to and different from
them? Does it reaffirm the old story or negate it? Does it, above all, consti­
tute a type of com m entary on its predecessor, or does it use its predecessor
as a set of footnotes to itself? To put this last question differently, Which of
the two texts has the primacy here? Which of the two, if either, enfolds and
contains the other? All of these questions and their possible answers begin
now to take shape within the realm of reader expectation.
Similar considerations arise with respect to the second frame. The en ­
counter of the Jew with the Princess, the place, date, and transaction are
perfectly consonant with literary conventions designed to place a fantastic
narrative within a realistic setting. But the encounter of the two has an
additional and more important function. Although we are never told that the
manuscript was either written or owned by him, the description of the anti­
quarian and the information concerning his death and burial indicate that, in
the course of the story, a connection betw een him and the manuscript will
becom e evident.
Law s governing textual coherence require that em bedded elements (or,
as in this case, narrative segments) fit an overall schema, structure, or
significance: the m anuscript found in a bottle, the map in code, the e m ­
bedded story all have to connect to the fictional reality that surrounds them.
Textual coherence is proportionate to the num ber of links betw een ele­
ments: the greatest coherence is the result o f the greatest num ber of links
betw een elements. The expectation that the antiquarian be connected to the
manuscript in other than merely accidental and circumstantial ways is dic­
tated by the dem and for greater textual coherence. Thus the first frame
promises that “The Im m ortal” will be a story about stories and about rela­
tionships betw een stories, and the second frame creates the anticipation that
these stories will ultimately be related in turn to the significance of a specific
biography— to a real life.
We are on promising ground: the problem of epics, myths, ritual pas­
sages perhaps; that of texts and how they relate to each other and to transla­
tions, annotations, footnotes, quotations, and repetition— all this will be
connected to the life and death of a real individual who lived in many places
and was buried in Ios. H ere once more, as in most of his stories, Borges
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 85
reopens the question of the relationship betw een life and its representations:
betw een the book and the world. But even in this relatively unproblematic
transaction betw een the Princess and the Jew, we already discern a strange
disorder. This flesh-and-blood, book-selling mortal, this Jew , is not ju st any
faceless and anonym ous Smyrniot. H e is Joseph Cartaphilus; he is Joseph
the L o v e r of Texts; he is the Wandering Jew; he is a legend.
The symbolic space of the narrative is, thus, invaded by ghosts from the
very start. F o r nothing is more ghostly than fictional, legendary, or mythical
figures when encountered in the light of everyday reality. N ext to our p ro ­
found conviction concerning the identity of the self—that rational belief that
“I” cannot be “a n o th e r”— nothing is as certain as that the worlds of fiction
and reality do not mix. Nothing constitutes a more radical trespassing of
categories than that D on Quixote or H am let should be roaming our streets.
B o rg es’s story mixes these two domains— legend and reality— from the be­
ginning. The book, the legend, penetrates “real life” in flesh and blood: not
only does Cartaphilus sell books in Sm yrna, he inserts his m anuscript in a
volume of Pope. The translator-poet might as well have had his labors an­
notated by Achilles himself.
There is nothing strange in so m e o n e ’s having inserted an autobiographi­
cal fiction betw een the pages of a volume of the Iliad. But that this someone
may in fact be a figure from legend, that he may be no less than the magical
old man who is destined never to die until the Second Coming, and that this
legendary figure may be part and parcel of our contem porary historical
reality (But isn ’t that what the legend precisely affirms: that he does circu­
late among us from time to time?) goes against all realistic conventions as
well as against our com m on sense. The story trespasses against realism.
Well and good. It still preserves the truth of the legend; we must take it, too,
as a fiction.
But it also trespasses against the legend. F o r the legend tells us that
Cartaphilus cannot die, but the story begins with the announcem ent of his
death. Multiple categorical transgressions “celebrating paradox and wel­
coming ambiguity” place us squarely within that space out of which rituals
and literature weave their cloth, and within that crisis which will lead to
action and perhaps to resolution.
And with this it is time to turn to the inner narrative.

With the exception of the short editorial “preface” above and an equally
brief postscript, the rest of the story— all five sections of it— is taken up by
the first-person narrative of one Marcus Flaminius Rufus, military tribune of
a Roman legion quartered at Berenice at the time of Diocletian.
This is the narrative of a quest. Rufus is met one day at dawn by an
“exha usted and bloody h o rsem an ” from the East who has been seeking “the
86 Texts & Performances
secret river that cleanses men of de ath ;” before the man dies, he mentions
the w ondrous city of the Immortals, which rises on the far bank of the river.
Like a runner receiving the torch from a fellow athlete, Rufus determines
then to find the city and its river. He makes inquiries, converses with
philosophers in Rome, and finally receives from Flavius, proconsul of
Getulia, 200 soldiers for the undertaking. These, together with his m er­
cenaries, and very like the prototypic companions of numerous other epic
journ ey s, either succumb to the perilous jou rney or desert. Completely sepa­
rated from civilized humanity, M arcus Flaminius then penetrates barbarous
regions in which all is horror and everything presages death. Cut off from
human society, and with the preliminary part (section one) of his jo urn ey
over, Rufus can now enter the space of liminality, of danger and contradic­
tion— the space proper of ritual.
His jo u rn e y follows an initiatory schema of suffering, death, and resu r­
rection— the archetypal pattern of all mysteries, be they of puberty or entry
into a secret society. H ere, too, one can say, Rufus dies unto himself to be
reborn into an other life. Eliade observes that “the man of the archaic
societies strove to conquer death by according it such an importance that in
the final reckoning, death ceased to present itself as a cessation and became
a rite o f p a s s a g e .”1 In this case, however, the rite is not ostensibly one that
aims at integrating the subject into another state of greater wisdom or “of
sacred and creative know ledge” but rather the very quest of immortality.
Quest, rite, and the theme of the w ater of life are fused into one. Thus, what
is at stake here is a myth. And not any myth at that, but a symbolic repre­
sentation, or rather dramatization, of the ritual process itself. F or if the
function of all ritual is to bring the initiate or participant into contact either
with the divinity or with a higher spiritual reality, the myth of the quest for
immortality is in a sense a symbol of them all. If ritual is the negation of
human finitude, this particular myth is a myth of ritual. As ritual goes, this is
metaritual. *
The narrative begins by situating Rufus historically and geographically,
and also— most importantly— by defining his particular space-time as one of
war and death. But he himself, not being given a chance to participate in the
strife, is untouched by it all. And it is the pain of this “privation”— the pain
of being unaffected by the pain of war, and not a desire to put an end to the
pain of war— that sends him out on his quest for the city of the Immortals.
This is probably the first Borgesian reversal in the story: Rufus, who would
have liked to get “a glimpse of M a rs ’ cou nten a n ce ,” sets out on the quest for
immortality begun by a man now dead— a man who was to die seeking the
river, or who was seeking the river because he was dying. (Rufus also starts
out as he might for war. The other was “probably” fleeing from it.)
The jo urn ey , in its broad outlines, follows familiar— one may say arch e­
typal— patterns. The departure from Arsinoe constitutes the first separation
from the quotidian, and once more the use of the actual place name, like that
of Thebes H ekatom pylos, marks unambiguously the opposition betw een the
B o r g e s ’s “Im m o r ta l” 87
real, secular space of history and the desert— the timeless space of the
monstrous or of the sacred. Opposed both to nature and culture, this desert
is a space “where the earth is m other of m on sters” and all custom the
reverse of human law. Here “in the corrupted water of the cisterns some
men drink m adness and d e a th .” And it is here that Rufus thirsts, not for the
w ater he originally set out to find, but for plain, natural w ater that sustains
mortal life.
Since this is the reverse of the secular world he left behind, it is not
surprising that life in this desert should be impossible. Cut off from the world
of Diocletian as well as from the society of men, Rufus loses consciousness
from thirst while dreaming of a j a r of water in the center of a labyrinth. And
with this almost literal but also primarily symbolic death, the first stage of his
mythic journey comes to an end, at the very moment when he most resem ­
bles the bloody, thirsty horsem an from the East. The first m a n ’s end, which
is the s e c o n d ’s beginning, replays itself in another beginning that is also an
end.

II

The second stage of the jou rney is acted out among the troglodytes. Either
because of the laws of narrative, which set everything into motion and turn
all situations into their opposite, or because of the laws of ritual, which
dictate that a “d e a th ” be followed by entry into an “o th e r” condition, we
may have expected Rufus to wake up in a world unlike the desert one.
Symmetries, redundancies, and reversals of this sort are the hallmark of
ritual jo urn ey s as much as they are of literary composition. The pattern of
a sc e n t/d e s c e n t, lo ss/rec o v e ry , d e ath /reb irth, defilement/cleansing—
ancient formulas of storytelling as well as of living— prepare us to expect a
reversal of fortunes and a shift in the register of so much darkness. But that
is not the case here. On the contrary, the troglodytes among whom Rufus
finds himself are of the same race as others encountered earlier in his career.
They cannot speak and they devour serpents.
W hen, in this second phase of his adventures, Rufus regains conscious­
ness, he is lying with his hands tied, “in an oblong stone niche no larger than
a com m on g ra v e.” The symbol is a complex one: it stands for the ritual death
of the hero (begun in section one with his loss of consciousness and the
hallucinatory dream of the labyrinth); it signifies the end of his mortal exis­
tence (since he will emerge from it to drink of the water of immortality); and
it points, ambiguously and paradoxically, in two directions at once: toward
his life up until the present moment (which may be seen as only a kind of
death com pared to immortality), but also toward his new life as an Immortal,
which, as the troglodyte Immortals dem onstrate, may only be a kind of
death com pared to mortal life. Of course, in addition to these two, the stone
88 Texts & Perform ances
grave may also be the emblem of the passage from one mode of existence to
the other: among symbolic spaces, graves are rarely surpassed for liminal
concentration and richness.
Rufus awakes at the very foot of N the City of the Immortals; he drinks
(though at the time he hardly suspects it) of the waters of the long sought
River of Life, and even enters the city. It would seem, then, that this should
constitute the highest point of the jou rney, the fulfillment of all desire, the
justification of all previous suffering, the cessation of horror and disposses­
sion, the healing and wholeness that come with the profound understanding
born of the contemplation of the divinity and its signs. H ere, if anywhere, is
the place for the hierophany to happen. Structurally, too, the moment has
been prepared as if it were going to happen: in that antecham ber to the
liminal among the troglodytes, Rufus has passed his “te sts .” Breaking the
bindings, stealing the detested portion of serpent flesh, and dragging himself
to the dirty w ater to drink are all acts qualifying him for the next stage,
which, there is good reason to expect, will be nothing less than a trem endous
mystery. M oreover, his hallucinatory itinerary through the labyrinthine city
consists of both a descent and an ascent. The darkness and hopelessness of
the descent lead the reader to expect a change. For one of the strongest laws
of ritual and narrative jou rneys is that “everything happens for a good rea­
so n .”
Borges, how ever, constantly defers the moment of illumination. Just as
there was no relief from the monstrous spaces of section one to those of
section two, here also the horror of the descent into the subterranean pas­
sages of the city is only a foretaste of what Rufus will experience w hen he
comes out again. This part of the story, which is typical Borges and very
beautiful, requires a careful reading. While describing his attempts to find a
way to penetrate the city, Rufus says:

Toward midnight, I set foot upon the black shadow o f its walls, bristling out in
idolatrous forms on the yellow sand. I was halted by a kind o f sacred horror.
N ov elty and the desert are so abhorred by man that I was glad one o f the
troglodytes had followed me to the last.

Rufus then discovers a pit with a stairway, which takes him down into
the foundations of the city:

I w ent down; through a chaos o f sordid galleries I reached a vast circular

chamber scarcely visible. There were nine doors in this cellar; eight led to a
labyrinth that treacherously returned to the same chamber; the ninth (through
another labyrinth) led to a second circular chamber equal to the first. I do not
know the total number o f these chambers; my misfortune and anxiety multi­
plied them. The silence was hostile and almost perfect; there was no sound in
this deep stone network save that o f a subterranean wind, w hose cause I did
not discover; noiselessly, tiny streams o f rusty water disappeared betw een the
crevices. Horribly, I becam e habituated to this doubtful world; I found it
incredible that there could be anything but cellars with nine doors and long
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 89
branched-out cellars; I do not know how long I must have walked beneath the
ground; I know that I once confused, in the same nostalgia, the atrocious
village o f the barbarians and my native city, amid the clusters.

W hat Rufus finds in this vestibule to the city is horrible— and d ou b t­

lessly no longer within the aura of sacred horror— because it consists of
nothing but meaningless, purposeless repetition. Nothing means, nothing
signifies, nothing speaks here. “The silence was hostile and almost pe rfe ct.”
If novelty and the desert are abhorrent, as Rufus says, that is because
they defy our pow ers to interpret them. Before them we are dispossessed of
all the codes, structures, relationships, and blueprints with which we give
meaning to the world. Before novelty (true and absolute novelty) the
existing codes are not sufficient; before the desert they are too num erous or
superfluous. Novelty and the desert are the two poles of the monstrous.
B etw een them or beyond them, senseless, endless repetition— this treacher­
ous return to the same or to another cham ber equal to the first— is a m o n ­
strosity surpassing either of the other two because it combines their two
fundamental properties: it is like novelty because, though manifestly ar­
ticulated, it serves no signification and has no purpose; and it is like the
desert because it is nothing but meaningless uniformity. Liminal spaces are
those that bring together and mix contrary or incompatible but meaningful
categories. But the foundations of this liminal edifice are built upon the
conjunction of the two poles of the meaningless and the monstrous. Thus
far, R u fu s’s jo u rn e y has been the story of a series of losses: loss of co m p an ­
ions, of m emory, of the sense of time, of purity— of all that he had or was.
And now he is witness to and affected by a loss so terrible that no words can
express it. In this state all previous moments of desperate dispossession
seem desirable: “I know that I once confused, in the same nostalgia, the
atrocious village of the barbarians and my native city.”
From this mute horror, Rufus emerges only to enter another variety of it
equally divorced from rationality or the sacred. F o r when he finally succeeds
in climbing up to the “resplendent C ity,” he finds it to be so monstrously
meaningless as to lack even the finality of labyrinths— structures com ­
pounded to confuse men. N o t only is this not one of the labyrinths that have
been used in myth and ritual to symbolize the passage from blindness to
enlightenment, it is not even one meant to confuse. Before it, Rufus thinks,
“This palace is the fabrication of the go d s.” And then, “The gods who built it
have d ied.” And finally, “The gods who built it were m a d .”
W hat then is this city? Judged by the place it occupies in the narrative
and by the fact that it represents the ultimate object of desire, it ought to be
at least the locus of a hierophany. But not only does the city have no truths
and no mysteries to reveal, it constitutes merely by existing the ultimate
derision and the ruin of all hierophanies: “All long as it lasts, no one in the
world can be strong or h a p p y .” F o r the truth that it publishes, even from its
secret desert, is the truth of the absence of Truth, of the absence of a Logos
90 Texts & Perform ances
eternally present, though hidden, in all signs. And as long as the city lasts, its
meaningless complexity “contaminates the past and the future and in some
way even jeop ardizes the stars.” As long as it lasts, the city confronts all the
other labyrinths constructed by men (or gods— the Immortals are precisely a
ju n c tu re of the human with the divine), all the other attem pts— from religion
to science and philosophy— to build the model of the order of the world. For
by its mere existence and perm anence, it negates order, annihilates systems,
ruins significance, and reduces to a pitiful heap of rubbish that “H ouse
Beautiful . . . w h ic h ,” in Walter P a te r’s words, “the creative minds of all
generations are always building to gether.”8 Novalis characterized philoso­
phy as the longing for the great homecoming: the longing to be everyw here
at home. The city turns this longing into a fool’s dream and every other
habitable “h o u se ” into an illusion.
There is only one defense against its poison, and this Rufus uses: he
tries to dispossess himself of the city that has robbed him of every possibility
for significance: he tries to forget it:

I do not remember the stages o f my return, amid the dusty and damp hypogea.
I only know I was not abandoned by the fear that, when I left the last labyrinth,
I would again be surrounded by the nefarious City o f the Immortals. I can
remember nothing else. This oblivion, now insuperable, was perhaps volun­
tary; perhaps the circum stances o f my escape were so unpleasant that, on
som e day no less forgotten as well, I swore to forget them.

So, too, the man of religious or scientific faith may choose to forget both
this city and the possibility of its existence. But whenever, as in essays such
as this, we reopen the question of w hether structure and significance abide in
the object of our study or in our metalanguages, it is the possibility of the
city that casts its shadow on our words.
I spoke earlier of B orges’ use of the pattern of ritual to create
metaritual. One could a d d h e r e that the first two parts of the story not only
constitute an implicit com m entary on ritual strategies but also form a kind of
antiritual. For although some of the prototypic formulas of ritual are m eticu­
lously followed through, the content of ritual as illumination, homecoming,
reintegration, or recovery is negated. This is a nihilist’s ritual: beyond the
thirst and the near death there was no truth, no harmony, and no purpose—
only chaos.
He who had sought the sacred fount of the w ater of life, and dream ed of
it at the heart of a labyrinth, finds at the end of his jo urn ey a dead and sterile
city, a space symbolic of the absolute absence of all meaning, as poisonous
as the corrupted cisterns in which one drank madness and death in the
beginning of the journey. The river and the city had been linked together
from the start. They are correlates of each other and are yoked together as
symbols of that other ubiquitous opposition: natu re/cu ltu re. To find the
waters that cleanse men of the stigma of death would have as its corollary
finding a celestial city inhabited by perfect human beings. But the city this
time was death. The ritual dying that this military tribune had to submit to
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 91
did not lead him to an epiphany. Dante, who knew his ritual patterns well,
would have found this an incomprehensible error or a blasphemy.
But the story is not yet finished. Borges, who may not be a nihilist at all,
despite the claims of some critics, persistently defers the moment of illumi­
nation. Is not such deferment precisely the essence of a labyrinth?

Ill

N o method of text analysis will ever be able to convey as well as do the

original words the tension and the release from horror expressed in the
opening sentence of the next section: “Those who have read the account of
my labors with attention will recall that a man from the tribe followed me as
a dog might up to the irregular shadow of the walls.”
At the m om ent of the return, after the second crossing of the limits of
the liminary, Rufus meets at the mouth of the cave the man who had fol­
lowed him. The man traces rudimentary and indistinct signs, “like the letters
in our d re am s” , which seem “on the verge of being understood and then
dissolve.” At the m om ent of reintegration, the initiate encounters once more
two things: humanity and the word. Until now, all three stages of the jo u rn e y
have been marked by silence: the troglodytes, ignorant of verbal com m erce;
the labyrinth, with a hostile and almost perfect silence; the resplendent city,
beyond nature or culture, silent in still another way— as the absence of all
signification.
But w hat Rufus finds outside is merely a promise of humanity, merely a
promise of language: the troglodyte’s tracings on the sand are not real signs,
and without language he can only subsist in “a world without m em ory and
without tim e.” The days that “go on dying, and with them the y e ars” , do so
in monstrous undifferentiation and in a silence that the R om an tries to c o m ­
bat by bringing language to the savage (another test in which teacher and
pupil are equally tested). But they both fail, until the miracle of the rain.
Like the color of the moon in the garden at Thebes, this rain must mean
more than all the symbolism we can read into it. Certainly it is opposed to
the symbolic river or the symbolic jar, and is more powerful than they
simply because it is real and also, perhaps, because it is both a baptism and a
communion. The tribe receives it in ecstasy and behaves “like Corybantes
possessed by the divinity.” Perhaps its power, for the reader, lies in the fact
that it accomplishes w hat the ritual jo u rn e y up to now has failed to a cc o m ­
plish: a true epiphany and a union (but with what? with man? with joy ? with
just water?). Perhaps there is also the feeling that this epiphany, which takes
place not within the space of the sacred but in the everyday, natural world, is
as untranslatable, as ineffable, as any of the other kind. Perhaps this
“primordial” scene shows us precisely the birth of a divinity, the “transla­
tion” of a presence (which is also the object of a desire) into a Presence— a
god.
One may see this d ow np ou r in the desert— this sudden gift of life from
92 Texts & Perform ances
above— as a kind of miracle, the very embodiment of the unexpected, the
extraordinary, and the sacred. One may also see it as an instance of what is
endlessly repeated and experienced in quotidian space. And one may see it
as both things at once: the eternal alternation of human want— of thirst,
isolation, or loss— with the recurring moment of the rain— natural symbol of
a m anna that restores life to all things; miracle that always happens, here and
now, within everday space. It is the miracle of communion and com m unica­
tion, and of the recovery of a past now lost, but which memory, stam m er­
ingly, reshapes. ^
Again, the miracle is perhaps that this experience, which words cannot
translate, is somehow , magically, captured in words. Once more, forgotten
words are set into motion. The distance betw een the words stamm ered by
Argos, the troglodyte who has followed, and the rain is both immense and
infinitesimal. (What analytical rod can measure it? Only patterns are m easur­
able.)
At this point one realizes that the incident of the rain retroactively
restructures the pattern we have been reading. R u fus’s encounter with what
we had expected to be the sacred was a failure of enlightenment and an
absence of signification. But now the dow npour reveals the jo u rn e y into the
labyrinth to be only a preliminary stage leading up to the rain. Before we
witnessed the d e sc e n t/a s c e n t into the sacred becom e a jo u rn e y into horror
without enlightenment and reintegration, but now we are given reintegra­
tion, community, and communion in enlightenment all at once.
Argos, I cried, Argos.
Then, with gentle admiration, as if he were discovering something lost and
forgotten a long time ago, Argos stammered these words: “Argos, U ly s s e s ’
d o g .” And then, also without looking at me: “This dog lying in the manure.”
We accept reality easily, perhaps because we intuit that nothing is real. I
asked him what he knew o f the O d yssey. The exercise o f Greek was painful for
him; I had to repeat the question.
“Very little,” he said. “L ess than the poorest rhapsodist. It must be a
thousand and one hundred years since I invented it.”

The search for a truth never before heard has led to the contemplation
and recovery of a text everybody knows, and to the miracle of memory.
Borges has retold in many ways that ancient tale (which one may read as an
apologue of ritual journeys) of the man who goes on a long voyage in search
of treasure. H e learns from his jailer in a distant land that he (the guard) also
has dream ed of a treasure in another land. The jailer describes this treasure
as being buried next to a certain well, under a certain fig tree, in a certain
garden. . . . The man recognizes the garden, the tree, the well as his very
own at home, and returns to discover the treasure in his own back yard.
Ritual patterns are symmetrical; liminal spaces jux ta p o se irreconcilable
or contrary pairs of concepts. The narrative or the ritual jo u rn e y moves in a
spiral: each successive step incorporates the previous ones in an ever w iden­
ing curve of retroactive validation. The absence and loss of section two can
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 93
now be seen as only the first “d a rk ” station of a ritual progress toward an
illumination that would be accomplished, not in the monstrous and sacred
space of the city, but within the natural, the profane world of rain, joy, tears,
and words. So, too, in many nonliterary rituals from many places, one finds
horrifying masks w hose purpose it is to mediate the initiate’s return to the
sacred in the profane, that is, to lead to the contemplation of the true nature
of the profane, which is perm eated by the divine. “Pro-fanum ,” after all, is
the mode of existence before an epiphany.
The story, therefore, is no nihilist’s antiritual. The ritual pattern is not
complete before the end of section three, and it is here that the narrative
p rop er comes to a halt. The opening sentence of the next section (“ev ery ­
thing was elucidated for me that d a y ”) confirms this and leads us to expect
only pure m etacom m en tary in what follows.

IV

There are tricksters in rituals and there are tricksters in literature. But there
are also trickster texts. B orges’s story is not only a labyrinth that constantly
displaces its own closure but also a genuine trickster that persistently shifts
the locus o f its own telling. What at first we thought was m etacom m entary at
the end of a ritual cycle soon turns into another station, another liminal
peninsula within the same jo urney toward illumination. This, too, was an
illusion and a trick the text has played on us. The jo urney has not ended yet;
the return not of Rufus among the troglodytes, nor of them all back to
language, but of the Immortals to mortality and to life (or death) is still to
come.
This does not negate the ritual pattern. If anything, it affirms it. But by
displacing the point of the illumination outside the labyrinthine city, by
letting the illumination take place not at the moment of confrontation with
“the m y stery ” but in the exchange of a few ancient, fragmented words
betw een Argos and the narrator as well as in their joint m etacom m entary,
the narrative reveals a river of immortality very different from the one we
had seen before. That river is the text itself. R u fu s’s exchange with H o m er
and the latter’s teachings are the true communion, in which they both p ar­
ticipate and within which each thing— the troglodytes, who are the Im m or­
tals, the rivulet, which is the river sought by the horsem an— finds its true
identity.
I believe it is here that B org es’s story reaches its most lucid metaliterary
as well as metaritual moment. Ritual quests provide the seeker with the
treasure of which fables speak— the magical or sacred object, helper, knowl­
edge, or power. B org es’s story subsumes all of them and shows the “trea­
su re” to be, not some arbitrary symbolic object, but rather the immersion
into the river of repetition— the repetition of repetition. And that is ritual.
Looking at the hieratic procession of proper names from the beginning
of the story, we find in the opening epigram Salomon, Plato, and Francis
94 Texts & Perform ances
Bacon echoing one another; then Pope repeating H om er; M arcus Flaminius
Rufus reenacting the jo u rn e y of uncountable legendary heroes. The contours
of fictions and realities blur and merge with each other: life cites and mirrors
fables, to be cited and mirrored in turn by them. R ufu s’s story is a mythic
jo u rn e y that also faithfully repeats “The M onstrous Journey of A lexander”
from The L e g e n d o f Alexander o f M acedonia— that anonym ous medieval
epic which probably postdates R u fu s’s adventures. Borges has Rufus, in
section three, briefly mention the return of a goldfish to the waters of a river.
But this is the same fish that, in The Legend, indicates to Alexander that he
has ju st crossed the river of immortality, the same fish that years later was to
pass into the sacred pages of the Koran. “Real” life becom es legend. Legend
merges with the reality of holy writ. The one “cites” the other, to be cited in
turn. . . . R u fu s’s story is to the L e g e n d o f A lexander and to the K oran what
in an other register Francis Bacon is to Salomon and Plato. The river of
immortality, to which the goldfish was returned, is the river of rem em brance
and com m em oration. It is the river of citations. It is natural, then, that the
narrative of M arcus Flaminius (this imaginary character created by a real-
life auth or who is none other than the legendary Wandering Jew) has as its
highest, most profound moment of revelation the moment when Argos re­
m em bers another remembering in Homer. And he who metaphorically is
O d y s s e u s ’ dog in a narrative many times removed from H o m e r ’s is also the
H o m e r who invented, forgot, and once again rem em bered the story— in
much the same way as Argos rem em bers his master. (Which text embraces
which? Which has the nonchronological primacy over the other?) All these
names, all these historical and imaginary figures that envelop and are e n ­
veloped by one another com m unicate— rather, “take c o m m un ion ”— within
the text that speaks them: like shadows from the world of shades who need
an offering of ritual blood to come to life once more, Argos, Rufus, but also
Plato, and Bacon come back to life (and to language— but the two are one) as
they com m une within the text, the way the tribe comes back to mem ory and
its own humanity through the communion of the rain.
If the function of all ritual is to bring the participant into contact with a
higher spiritual reality, the myth of the quest of immortality is in a sense a
symbol of ritual itself. Further, if ritual is a negation of human finitude, this
particular myth is a myth of ritual and, therefore, a kind of metaritual.
B o rg es’s story, however, not only constitutes a replay of the quest for
immortality but raises this quest at least one meta-level up by shifting the
focus from the particular content of such a myth (e.g., the river) to the
vehicle of all myth and ritual: the river of language.
I used the word “te x t” earlier to refer to the abstract, archetypal pattern
of the Great Journey, the primal formula of ritual (and perhaps all narrative)
which dictates that darkness and ignorance always turn in the end to enlight­
enment. I was also referring to the fragmented and yet continuous p a tch ­
work of texts woven together by Borges, the composite of other jo urneys
from ancient epics and legends which exemplify the formula. I said that the
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 95
text restores to the troglodytes, to the river, to Rufus, their true identity.
And it is the text, which is the house of being, that will restore even to the
mad city of the gods what it had lacked at first: significance. Seen as the last
symbol to which the Immortals had condescended before retreating into
pure thought (a Platonic experiment certainly, but one w hose Platonism will
also be negated as it has been affirmed), the city loses its horror. It becomes
no m ore than a jo k e on the part of the Immortals— a joke like H o m e r ’s when
he sang of the mice and the frogs— a kind of parody or inversion and also
temple of “the irrational gods who govern the world and of whom we know
nothing, save that they do not resemble m a n .” H o m e r ’s explanation restores
to the edifice finality and a history, and at the same time turns it into car­
nival: parody, inversion, irrationality. It is in this trinity that man most
resembles the gods.
H o m e r ’s com m entary is the very opposite of mystery. It razes to the
ground once m ore the monstrous city of the Immortals, ju st as the Immortals
razed to the ground ano ther city to build this one. We can see this, too, as a
m om ent of ritual deconstruction. But as before, the deconstruction is only a
preliminary step to yet another mystification. In the present instance, what
is built in words after this demolition is no less monstrous than before. For
the text— in which H o m e r ’s words mix and mingle with those of the nar­
rator, and w here we are given fragments of texts by others who have quoted
others . . . and so on is no less confusing, frightening, and self-contradictory
than the edifice it replaces. The word gives back to everything its being and
identity, and in its plenitude alone presence is manifest. But at the same
time, texts, and not ju st the text of carnival or horror, rob all things of what
p oor identity is theirs and change all things into their opposite.
Traditionally, ritual leads through ancient texts— through language— to
a contemplation of ineffable mystery. H ere the ineffable m ystery itself leads
us back to the contemplation of the mystery of language. And within that,
the “vision” it shows us is language— the m other of order— spinning out of
its infinite cocoon disorder and monstrosities of thought.
Like H o m er, “like a god who might create the cosmos and then create a
c h a o s ,” language and the text create an antitext for every text. At the next
turn of the narrative spiral, precisely within the m etacom m entary that per­
haps explains the monstrosity of the city, we shall find monstrosity reposited
once more, but at a different level. A moment ago we were told that the city
was a kind of parody or inversion: the carnival of the Immortals. As such, it
occupied only a marginal position beside that other one they had razed,
which is not described, and which Rufus never saw, but which we may
imagine as the epitome of beauty, order, and rationality. N ow , with the
m etaphor of the Hindustani cycles, the m onstrous edifice reenters the stage,
no longer the partial, carnivalesque image of the world, but as the model of
all models: the only one that houses all possible models and the possibility of
their negation as well. This time the city becom es, not ju st a space within
which paradox and ambiguity forever find their true home, but the set of all
96 Texts & Perform ances
sets, w h ether they contain themselves or not, w hether they contradict them ­
selves or others, or not. It houses and contains the world.
Naturally, this labyrinth has no exit. And here we may rem em ber
R u fu s’s premonition that when he left the last labyrinth, he would again be
surrounded by the nefarious city of the Immortals. This is a true prem oni­
tion. In this lawless space, the only law is the doctrine (“of small theoretical
im p o rtan c e,” we shall ironically be told— but then is the statem ent really
ironic?) that says that for every law there is another law that negates it, for
every text its antitext, and for the river “whose waters grant immortality
another whose waters remove it.” This law enables Rufus to return to mortal
life. But by the same token, this law, while he moves within the river of the
infinite text, deprives him of his own individuality: “Like Cornelius Agrippa,
I am god, I am hero, I am dem on and I am world, which is a tedious way of
saying that I do not exist.”
Religious rituals are processes that bestow being and identity to indi­
viduals and their world. They are, as many have said, solutions to ontolog­
ical, existential problems. Section four shows the ritual m ovem ent of this
narrative progressing toward a penultimate vision of a world in which e v ery ­
thing eventually becom es all things— which means that identity or sameness
is only illusion.
In going through.a ritual the initiate changes both name and identity. He
sheds one identity to acquire another, and his new name is the sign that such
a transformation has taken place. The ritual Rufus goes through, namely,
traversing not some symbolic space but the very space where symbolic
spaces are created (the text), deprives him of w hatever identity he had
without giving him back another.

In section five are mentioned some of the numerous existences through

which Rufus passes— existences that rob him of an identity by letting him
have too many. At this point we could argue that the demolition of the
ontological problem that R u fu s’s com m entary performs may be valid for
Immortals, or w hen one looks at the world sub specie aeternitatis, but that
within finite time, and as far as mortal life is concerned, identity is no illusion
at all. Only if we postulate an infinite period of time does “R ufus” turn into
“Cornelius A grippa.”
But R u fu s’s account anticipates the objection and points out that som e­
thing even graver than these successive immortal existences is the matter. In
section four, he wrote a com m entary on his adventures, consisting of A r­
g o s ’s explanations and his own addenda to them. N ow he changes levels
once more in order to create, on yet a higher level, a m etacom m entary of
another kind: a critical examination of his own account as a docum ent pur­
porting to relate the truth. Rufus, who was the hero and narrator in his own
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 97
narrative, now becom es its reader and critic. H ere the anomaly becom es
apparent through such a reversal of roles.

After a year’s time, I have inspected these pages. I am certain they reflect
the truth, but in the first chapters, and even in certain paragraphs o f the others,
I seem to perceive something false. This is perhaps produced by the abuse o f
circumstantial details, a procedure I learned from the poets and which contam i­
nates everything with falsity, since those details can abound in the realities but
not in their recollection. . . . I believe, how ever, that I have discovered a more
intimate reason. I shall write it; no matter if I am judged fantastic.
The story I have n a rra te d s e e m s unreal b e c a u se in it are m ix e d the e v e n ts o f
two different m e n . In the first chapter, the horseman wants to know the name
o f the river bathing the walls o f Thebes; Flaminius Rufus, w ho before has
applied to the city the epithet o f H ekatom pylos, says that the river is the
Egypt; none o f these locutions is proper to him but rather to Hom er, w ho
makes express mention in the Iliad o f Thebes H ekatom pylos and w ho in the
O d y s s e y , by w ay o f Proteus and U ly sse s, invariably says Egypt for N ile. In the
second chapter, „the Roman, upon drinking the immortal water, utters som e
words in Greek; these words are Hom eric and may be sought at the end o f the
fam ous catalogue o f the ships. . . . Such anomalies disquieted me; others, o f an
aesthetic order, permitted me to discover the truth. They are contained in the
last chapter.

Ritual and the passage through liminal spaces entail a confrontation of

the self with the other; of the “m e ” with the “not-m e.” They create a mixing
of categories, which provides the ground for the identity crisis necessary for
the eventual illumination of the subject, the integration in w hose nam e the
jo u rn e y has been undertaken. But Rufus never seems to be existentially split
in this m anner during his sojourn in the land of the troglodytes. H e sees there
the whole world split and irrationally fragmented— words, gods, language,
and history catastrophically fractured— but his own sense of identity is not
disturbed. E ven after having drunk the w ater of immortality, and still later
w hen he finds its antidote, he remains an integral “ I.”
It is only in this last, metacom m entarial and metatextual part of the
story, w hen he reads his own words as a critic, that the catastrophic c o n ­
frontation of the “I ” with the “o th e r,” of the “m e ” with the “n ot-m e” will
take place. And in this case, in this final liminal station that involves neither
ascent nor descent, and that plays itself out on no other space but the
distance of the eye from the page of script, the “o th e r” or the “not-m e” will
be discovered in the “I ”— that “I ” which has now becom e text. F o r the
anomaly does not consist in a m a n ’s having lived many successive lives, nor
does it concern the content of this m onstrous biography. It has relatively
little to do with what is being told, and is the direct result o f something
disturbing in the telling.
Until now there was one narrator, one “I” of the story. N ow a voice,
which “after a y e a r’s tim e” has “inspected these pag es,” tells us that in what
he has narrated are mixed the events of two men: Flaminius Rufus and
H om er. But how many men are these? H o m e r is at least double. Splitting
98 Texts & Perform ances
amoebalike, masks multiply and identities explode. H om er, who is two—
one of the Iliad and the oth er of the O dyssey— splits once again into Proteus
and Ulysses. Just as the R om an has been said to be two men because his
words repeat those of H om er, so too can H o m e r be said to be dual (at least)
w hen through him speak the voices of two individuals. To call them indi­
viduals, how ever, is a philosophical error: Proteus and Ulysses are both
symbolic loci within which the individual is negated. B etw een U ly sse s’ “no
o n e ” to P r o te u s ’ “e v e ry o n e ,” the individual, in its philosophical unity, has
no place to be. G raver still, w hen H o m e r receives his being from his own
creations, not only identity but existence, too, becomes problematic.
In the new myth and the new ritual jo u rn e y that Borges creates, none of
the monstrosities encountered in the physical liminal spaces of the ritual
passage com pares with this: the split of the “ I” and the “m e ,” not in the face
of the e n co u n te r with the “o th e r,” but at the m om ent when the “o n e ”
realizes the “o th e r” (when the “I ” encounters the “m e ”) as utterance, as
m em ory of an utterance, as fuzzy ghost vacillating betw een truth and lie. In
this part of R u fu s ’s (but is it still R u fu s’s?) narrative, the speaker splits into a
multitude, changes position from the active to the passive pole, becomes
spoken through the mere act of quoting himself.

Such anom alies [those concerning the identity o f the narrator] disquieted
me; others, o f an esthetic order, permitted me to discover the truth. [But were
the anomalies o f anything but an aesthetic order in the first place? Perhaps . . .]
They are contained in the last chapter; there it is written [by whom ? the first or
the second speaker?] that I fought at Stamford Bridge, that I transcribed in
Bulaq the travels o f Sinbad the Sailor and that I subscribed in Aberdeen to the
English Iliad o f Pope. [But is the “I” that cites the same as the “I” that is cited?
Is Rufus still writing this?] One reads inter alia [and inter alia the narrator-hero
has in this sentence becom e “o n e ” : most impersonal o f subjects, and here
subject and object at the same time— reading and being read]: “In Bikaner I
professed the science o f astrology and also in B oh em ia.” N o n e o f these te s­
timonies are false; what is significant is that they were stressed.

Is this a veridical docum ent recounted by a liar, or one that lies while
being scrutinized by a truth-telling man? R u fus’s text recreates the paradox
of the liar and echoes the confessions made by Don Q u ix o te’s narrator-
tra n slato r/sc rib e about the veracity of his narrative. But if what motivated
that impossible C retan has been lost in the sands of time, here the speaker is
explicit: w hat generates this impression of untruth is the “abuse of circum ­
stantial details, a procedure . . . learned from the poets and which contam i­
nates everything with falsity, since those details can abound in the realities
but not in their recollection.” In other words, (1) matters of an aesthetic
nature contam inate everything with unreality; and (2) matters of an aesthetic
nature allow one to discover the truth. We are thus back in the city. To
speak, to write, to read what one has written— to engage in the most elem en­
tary form of “let me say what it was like”— engages one in the most complex
labyrinth of all and in an endless “ritual” process from which the only exit,
B o r g e s ’s “I m m o r ta l” 99
the only return, is the annihilation of identity. Language, which is the house
of being, is also its tom b and executioner.
Just as other rituals aim at an experience of the sacred in the profane,
B o rg e s’s story leads to that other vertiginous experience in which we c o n ­
template experience in its representations; in which, through successive
mirrorings, we no longer know which is the mirror and which the object; in
which the frame and the framed constantly shift places until the latter e m ­
braces the former. The text has becom e the world.
Borges changes ritual pattern in two fundamental ways, relative to other
uses of it in literature. The first and m ost important way is through the ritual
pattern that structures the story. This is not merely a tripartite one that leads
from a lack to the unambiguous fulfillment of that lack, in order unavoidably
to come to a stasis and a closure at the end of the fulfillment. H ere the
displacement of the liminar and the consequent restructuring of the pattern
result instead in a spiral and nonlinear progression that creates an infinite
semiosis. E ach stage of the jo u rn e y , each illumination, in some way or
an other is negated, deconstructed by the next, which in turn . . . and so on.
So that in spite of all repetitions— and they are indeed num erous and
varied— the constantly changing, shifting context does not allow us ever to
speak of the “ s a m e .” “Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am
philosopher, I am dem on and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying
that I do not ex ist.” But Cornelius Agrippa, who is not I and only like w hom
I am, who is he? F o r he is still Cornelius Agrippa, he who was. It is through
the identity of the name that identity disperses itself into nonidentity.
The second way in which Borges changes ritual pattern is through the
use of m etaco m m en tary to generate the displacements I have spoken of.
This m etaco m m en tary operates in two ways: it occupies the very center of
the ritual jo u rn e y — it has usurped, in other words, the space of the function
of unmediated spiritual illumination— and at the same time it frames both
each individual narrative segment and the entire narrative as a whole. The
story is placed betw een a double (perhaps triple) editorial preface and a
double (perhaps multiple) editorial postscript. Thus, ju s t as the hero of the
story moves from identity to identity in order finally to becom e “no o n e ,” so
too the ultimate voice of the telling becom es dispersed into an absolute and
irrevocable anonymity.
The voice that generates the text— R u fu s’s voice— is only an illusion,
since it is fictional. The true author of the jo u rn e y we are reading is Joseph
Cartaphilus, the man condem ned to immortality by Christ, three hundred
years before the time of Rufus and Diocletian. But Cartaphilus is in turn the
name Rufus turned into after he became immortal, the “I” that writes section
five and informs us that this “I” is double.
Both inside and outside the text— the way the m etacom m en tary is both
at the center and at the borders of the ritual— this speaking subject splits into
two, into many, through m etacom m entary, just as it splits through ritual.
And through or beyond all these named and anonym ous subjects, betw een
100 Texts & Perform ances
the names of the Bacon citation and the “no o n e ” of the final footnote, the
writer of this do cu m ent disappears as an identity in order to leave instead a
jo u rn e y of transformations: from the desert to the m onstrous, from the
m onstrous to the divine, from that to carnival, from carnival to a game, from
game to text. And from text to footnote. All of which is a way of participat­
ing in the ritual jo u rn e y of the text and as a symbol of the act of reading
itself. Reading is both the jou rney and the river that Borges has symbolized.
T hat infinitely sad, poetic phrase that sums up the story (“ ‘W hen the
end draws n e a r , ’ wrote Cartaphilus, ‘there no longer remain any re m e m ­
bered images; only words re m a in ’ ”) is also the phrase that sums up the
inexhaustible pleasure, the jo y of being text becoming text.
It may be that B orges’s story is, as some say, a demythicization of ritual
and a deconstruction, and that it stands above all ritual and transcends it.
A nd it may be that this incessant H eraclitan becoming, which the reverse of
the visible surface that his narrative gives us to read, is an illusion. In that
case, the opening quote from Bacon should be read literally, and B o rges’
story becom es an authentic ritual experience in literature.
It may also be that the literal meaning of the quote from Bacon is not
what the quote says (namely, that Plato and Salomon are saying very much
the same thing). Once quoted, the meaning of those words is no longer to be
found in their referent alone but is also found in the incessant m ovem ent
be tw ee n the “ saith,” the “is,” the “h a d ,” the “re m e m b ra n c e ,” and the “o b ­
livion,” betw een the stasis that it speaks and the m ovem ent that speaks it—
the infinite distance that no ritual jo u rn ey , no incantation, and no exorcism
can reduce to unity. There are many ways in which B o rges’s story could be
seen as the representation of a performance. But this last— the m ovem ent
from words to w ords— which it “dram atizes” and gives us to see in a most
intense metaliterary experience, is a performance that can be enacted upon
no other stage but mere paper.
B o rg e s’s story does not— as has been sometimes maintained about
m yths— resolve a fundamental contradiction. H e merely presents the con­
tradiction anew but in another intonation. The problem now becom es to
define the difference in intonation betw een U ly sse s’s and B o rges’s “no
o n e ” . And it may not be futile to try to rem em ber the answ er to that question
at another place and another time.

NOTES

1. Victor Turner, “Frame, Flow and Reflexion: Ritual and Drama as Public Limin-
ality,” in M. Benam ou and C. Caramello, ed s., P e r fo r m a n c e in P o s tm o d e r n
Culture (M adison, 1977), p. 40.
2. Northrop Frye, “The A rchetypes o f Literature,” in J. Vickery, ed., M y t h a n d
Literature: C o n te m p o r a r y Theory a n d Practice (Lincoln, N e b ., 1966), p. 93;
Roland Barthes, L e degré zéro de l ’écriture (Paris, 1953), p. 8.
B o r g e s ’s “Im m o r ta l” 101
3. Marthe Robert, L ’ancien et le n o u v e a u : de D o n Q uichotte à K a fk a (Paris, 1967).
4. Barbara Myerhoff, N u m b e r Our D a y s (N ew York, 1979), p. 86.
5. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc N an cy, L ’absolu littéraire (Paris, 1978).
6. Thom as Mann, “Freud and the Future,” in E s s a y s o f Three D e c a d e s (N ew York,
1947).
7. Mircea Eliade, M y th s , D r e a m s , a n d M y ste rie s (N ew York, 1960), p. 226.
8. Walter Pater, A p p r e c ia tio n s (London, 1889), p. 243.
 Arrange Me into Disorder:
Fragments and Reflections on
Ritual Clowning *
Barbara A. Babcock

The play o f communicating and approaching

is the business and force o f life;
absolute perfection exists only in death .1
One must still have chaos in on eself
to be able to give birth to a dancing star.2

Since 1872, w hen Darwin observed that “many curious discussions have
been written on the causes of laughter with grown-up p e rso n s ,” many more
curious and tedious discussions have been written on the same subject.
While we acknowledge that all forms of creativity, especially clowning,
involve a “disconfirmation of familiar fo rm s,” rarely are we willing to carry
this disconfirmation into our scholarly practices. Unfortunately for those
w ho make us laugh, “analysis has a way of failing to participate in the very
spirit which it would analyse, and therefore not only involving itself in an
ironic self-contradiction, but in a violation and negation of that to which it is
attempting to do ju s tic e .”3 But can analysis participate in the comic spirit?
Can one do w hat one describes?
After some years of writing conventional academic papers about a s ­
sorted deconstructive phenom ena, I can no longer deny the temptation to
try. M oreover, my subject bespeaks fragments and motley and “artfully
ordered co nfusion,” and the philosophers and poets to whom I have turned
to make a different sense of clowning em body their ironic aesthetic or
m etaphysic in unconventional, subversive, and self-mocking forms.
W h eth e r Kierkegaard or N ietzsche, Barthes or Derrida, Socrates or Zen

*In addition to Carmen del Rio, to whom this assemblage is dedicated, my thanks to
Barbara Myerhoff, B everly Stoeltje, A lfonso Ortiz, and Keith Basso. My title is
drawn from A. R. A m m o n s’s 1966 poem , “M u se .” The English orthography o f cer­
tain Pueblo words has been standardized.

102
Arrange M e into Disorder 103
masters, hierarchical and dialectical reasoning is displaced by playful, “hori­
zo ntal,” paralogical thought, and logical argument is eschew ed in a p a rad o x ­
ical and paratactical discourse of fragments and aphorisms, dialogue and
pastiche. “ Kaleidoscope logic,” “radical discontinuity,” “inversive irregu­
larity,” “metaphysical free association,” Zen “ smashing” or “running side­
w a y s ” : these are all forms of meditation on play that remain in the realm of
play, and I cannot separate this reading from my writing.
W hat is written here may or may not be “ scientific” or “valid” e th n o ­
graphic interpretation. It is a speculation, accomplished through rearranging
a motley of written and unwritten cultural texts about clowning. Such a
reading of readings may promise nothing more, and nothing less, than a few
new tropes and concepts to enlarge the intelligibility of the text— ritual
clowning— and to give its interpreters a little more room to play in, an open
space of questioning, paracriticism as an attem pt to recover the art of mul­
tivocation.4
W hat does philosophical pastiche have to do with Pueblo clowns, or
K ierkegaard with koyemci? By the philosop her’s own definition, both may
be described as “realities of decre a tio n ,” as hypothetical and subjunctive
modes of culture. Both are forms of play (as classically defined by Huizinga:
occasions of questioning, speculation, self-commentary) and of w hat
N ietzsche called “gay science” (wisdom + laughter). But too few have
taken clowning seriously enough to realize that “the deepest source of
knowledge involved in the perception of the ludicrous . . . is metaphysical,
as having to do with the structure of truth and reality.”5 Unfortunately, with
the growth of naturalism, the interpretation of the comic, particularly among
“primitive” peoples, has increasingly lost its connection with rational
thought. Yet all men “have an inclination, perhaps a need, to think beyond
the limitations of knowledge, to do more with this ability than to use it as an
instrument for knowing and doing.”6 In this sense, both clowning and
philosophizing are liminal p h en om ena in their respective sociocultural c o n ­
texts: “realms of pure possibility w hence novel configurations of ideas and
relations may arise,” involving “the analysis of culture into factors and their
free recom bination in any and every possible pattern, how ev er w eird .”7 Both
are marginal notes, parenthetical and paratactical to surrounding syntax and
primary texts. Com edy, w hether in written discourse or ritual drama, may
be regarded as “an exercise in understanding, a planned confusion created in
order to be clarified.”8 Com edy may be a spiritual shock therapy which
breaks up the patterns of thought and rationality that hold us in bondage and
in which the given and established order of things is deformed, reformed,
and reformulated; a playful speculation on what was, is, or might be; a
remark on the indignity of any closed system.
Since such planned and playful confusion involves donning masks and
costum es of motley, it is not insignificant that it is in Sartor R esa rtu s that
Carlyle defines philosophy as “a continual battle against custom ; an ever-
renew ed effort to transcend the sphere of blind c u s to m .”9 Those who engage
104 Texts & Perform ances
in thinking “are transported from the world of appearances to the invisible
world of ideas w here previous allegiances to established codes of conduct
are gradually dissolved and everything stable is set in motion and rendered
open to question. In short, thinking makes us aware of another order of
reality than the one we had thoughtlessly taken over from sense experience
and from our fellows. It undermines ‘all established criteria, values, m ea­
surem ents for good and evil.’ ” 10 Like clowning, theoria is “an activity that
defies all existing canons of the ‘useful’ or the ‘realistic,’ “perverting good
sense and allowing thought to play outside the ordered categories o f resem ­
b la n ce .” (Foucault 1970:898). Despite the various uses to which interpreters
put his activity, the clown like the thinker must hold out in the accursed bliss
of his futility, for only

by posing the unanswerable questions o f meaning [doj men establish them ­

selves as question-asking beings. Behind all the cognitive questions for which
men find answ ers, there lurk the unanswerable ones which seem entirely idle
and have always been denounced as such. It is more than likely that men, if
they should ever lose this appetite for meaning which w e call thinking and
cea se to ask unanswerable questions, will also lose not only the ability to
produce those thought-things which w e call works o f art but also the faculty o f
asking all the answerable questions upon which every civilization is fo u n d ed .12

The form that such “thought-things” often take brings me back to p as­
tiche and parataxis and something of an explanation and justification of my
ow n m ethods— a pretext for the texts I ’m getting to. W hether by artist or
theologian, clown or philosopher, seriously playful self-interpretation and
c om m en tary on the oth er do involve “the analysis of culture into factors and
their free recom bination” in weird assemblages of “orts, scraps, and frag­
m e n ts .” The obvious example is the fool’s costum e of motley which “c o n ­
fuses and garbles the neat patterns o f rationality and order and value that we
use to organize ex perien ce” 13 and “characteristically contains chaotic and
disproportionate elements . . . expressing both the emergence of form and
meaning out of chaos and their reversion to it.” 14 Such tattered garb implies
an aesthetic and m etaphysic of discontinuity, indeterminacy, and fragm enta­
tion com m on to various media and types of discourse. In theology, Clement
o f A lex an dria’s most mature work was a poetic and aphoristic R a g Bag
(Stromata). H e insisted on the aphoristic, patchw ork form of theology be­
cause “all things that shine through a veil show the truth grander and more
imposing; as fruits through w ater and figures through veils, which give ad ded
reflections to t h e m . ”'5 Similarly in Zen religion, art, and literature there is “a
preference for anecdotes and abbreviated discourse, if not simply shouts and
exclamations . . . for an am orphousness and an ambiguity that represent an
order of being and knowing that lies before and beyond all duality and
hierarchy and intellection.” 16 And in our own century and culture, David
Miller has argued convincingly for a “theology of play” and H arvey Cox for
a “theology of ju x ta p o sitio n ,” of disrelation based on Surrealism ’s collage
Arrange M e into Disorder 105
principle. And in philosophy from Heraclitus to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein
to Derrida, the critique of metaphysical imperialism has involved the d econ­
struction of logical argument, and philosophical analysis regarded as most
serious w hen most playful, embodying an attitude of contemplative celebra­
tion. One of the important moral philosophers of our time, H an nah Arendt,
was heiress to an aphoristic technique. She collected quotations, stories,
fragments of the broken tradition which she reworked, rewove into a collec­
tion o f significant objects of reflection and understanding— a new, dynamic,
illuminating collage or mobile. In visual art, ironic self-commentary takes
many forms, most notably the collage or assemblage and the notion that the
painting’s surface should be an impartial collector of images— an aesthetic of
process rather than product. Long before the G erm an Romantics dignified
an aesthetic o f mixed genres, pastiche was an accepted mode in both litera­
ture and music. The notion that every creation is but a new arrangements of
existing elements is a com m onplace in literature. It is perhaps even more
significant that the oldest forms of literary criticism were the dialogue and
the satura. The R o m an satura (a plate of mixed fruit) was the traditional
vehicle for literary as well as social criticism and consisted of a mixture of
genres, prose and verse, and inversive parodies. It is from this as well as the
word satyr that satire derives.
As the preceding implies, the practice of criticism as pastiche and free­
play was not recently invented by Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida,
despite the rem arks of some outraged com m entators. They have, however,
resum ed the old game and said some very interesting things about what
th e y ’re up to and why. Talking about himself (in both first and third persons)
in his recent reflexive assemblage, Barthes has this to say about fragments:

To write by fragments: the fragments are then so many stones on the perimeter
o f a circle: I spread m y self around: my whole little universe in crumbs; at the
center, what?
His first, or nearly first text (1942) consists o f fragments; choice is then justified
in the Gidean manner “because incoherence is preferable to a distorting order.”
Since then, as a matter o f fact, he has never stopped writing in brief bursts. . .
H e already regarded the wrestling match as a series o f fragments, a sum of
spectacles, for “in the ring, it is each moment which is intelligible, not the
duration” (M y t h o lo g i e s ); with amazement and predilection he watched this
sportive artifice, subject in its very structure to a sy n d e to n and a n a c o l u t h o n ,
figures o f interruption and short-circuiting.
N ot only is the fragment cut off from its neighbors, but even within each
fragment parataxis reigns. This is clear if you make an index of these little
pieces; for each o f them the assem blage o f referents is heteroclite; it is like a
parlor game: “Take the words: f r a g m e n t , circle, Gide, wrestling m a tc h ,
a s y n d e to n , p ainting, discourse, Z e n , interm ezzo; make up a discourse which
can link them together.” And that would quite simply be this very fragment.
The index o f a text then is not only an instrument o f reference; it is itself a text,
a second text which is the r e lie f (remainder and asperity) o f the first: what is
wandering (interrupted) in the rationality o f the sentences.
106 Texts & Perform ances
Liking to find, to write beginnings, he tends to multiply this pleasure: that is
why he writes fragments: so many fragments, so many beginnings, so many
pleasures (but he d o e sn ’t like the ends: the risk o f rhetorical clausule is too
great: the fear o f not being able to resist the last w o r d ).11
\

M any years ago F ranz Boas said something similar about N orth A m eri­
can Indian mythology: “ It would seem that mythological worlds have been
built up, only to be shattered again, and that new worlds were built from the
fragm ents.” 18 M ore recently, Lévi-Strauss has described creation by frag­
ments— bricolage— as characteristic of mythical thought and governed by a
logic very different from, but every bit as rigorous as that of science. The
logic of bricolage is that of the kaleidoscope in which structural patterns are
realized by means of bits and pieces— patterns produced by the conjunction
of contingency an d constraint. Like the myth and the kaleidoscope, the
perform ance and dress of the clown or the pastiches of the philosopher are
constructed out of oddm ents of cultural debris and involve a mirror princi­
ple.
What all this implies and what this essay attem pts to argue both for­
mally and substantially is that metalanguage or reflexive statement can be
other than a sustained and systematic discourse about another discourse.
Motley, I and my authorities suggest, is a significant type of second-order
discourse, a form of self-commentary characteristic of a great variety of
cultural perform ances, both singular and plural. Such expressive assem ­
blages involve an interrogation of, a dialogue with a culturally constrained
set of materials and tools. The “freeplay” (infinite substitutions in the clo­
sure of a finite ensemble) and “decentering” of bricolage is, Derrida points
o u t , 19 a discourse on method not only of mythologizing, but also of Lévi-
S tra u s s ’s own intellectual activity and of signification in general. In the
choices he makes among limited possibilities, the bricoleur both makes a
formal and sociocultural critique as well as gives an account of his p ersonal­
ity and life.20 Using L év i-S trau ss’s example, both Derrida and G enette argue
that bricolage is essential criticism, especially literary criticism. In discus­
sing the organization of his data in N aven, Bateson similarly argues that an
arrangem ent is an interpretation. The noted critic Walter Benjamin would
seem to concur, for he once suggested that the perfect critical essay would
consist entirely of carefully selected and arranged quotations, “the craziest
mosaic technique imaginable.”21 Yet people today, as N ietzsche rem arked in
his 1887 Preface to the Genealogy o f Morals, have difficulty with the ap h o r­
istic form because they do not take it seriously enough.
The temptation to construct a critical argument entirely of footnotes is
more than an urge to parody the repressive structures of academic dis­
course. R ather it suggests a desire to foreground the fact that thinking and
writing always involve a dialogue with other texts, that “all knowledge is
knowledge of a complex and interwoven textuality.”22 Quotations, H annah
A rendt once said, are the modern equivalent of ritual invocations, recalling
Arrange M e into Disorder 107
or representing voices from the past. But more than invocations of a u th o r­
ity, the quotation and the footnote are the means of transforming a monolog­
ical perform ance into a dialogue, of opening o n e ’s discourse to that of
others. They are also the literate .way of interrupting and commenting on
o n e ’s own text, of acknowledging that reading and writing, like any cultural
perform ance, involve appropriating, absorbing, and transforming the texts
of others. “Quotations in my work are like robbers by the roadside who
m ake an arm ed attack and relieve an idler of his convictions.”23 Interestingly
enough, these notions of the literary and critical text as dialogue and as
satura have been reformulated in Julia K riste v a ’s concepts of dialogisme
and intertextualite, developed in response to B akh tin ’s masterful study of
Rabelais and medieval carnival. Clowning— on the ancient stage, under the
big top, in the Pueblo plaza— exemplifies these very principles and creates a
space w here texts can talk to each o th e r.24 The clo w n ’s perform ance is a
parabasis and a prataxis that disrupts and interrupts custom ary frames and
e xpected logic and syntax and creates a reflexive and ironic dialogue, an
open space of questioning. It is “as if a social function of circuses were to
clarify for patrons what the ordering and limits of their basic frameworks
a re .”25
All o f this suggests two directions for consideration: that ritual clowning
is much more than a functional steamvalve and should be considered in
term s of its aesthetics and m etaphysics as well as its pragmatics; and, c o n ­
versely, that criticism, w hatever the discipline, should be considered as
com edy, reminded of its playful origins, and reinvested with a comic p e r­
spective. Both clowning and criticism are “ sanctioned disresp ect,” w ays in
which society paradoxically institutionalizes doubt and questioning. Both, I
suggest, are also forms of irony: “the great comic means by which various
factions within the self and the community question one another, thus u n ­
covering the magic and m ystery which lurks in every social b o n d .”26 U n fo r­
tunately, our emphasis on clowning as childlike and un-serious, and on the
primitive as simple has generally precluded our seeing ritual clowning as a
sophisticated form of sociocultural self-commentary, as irony writ large.
Further, it has blinded our own interpretive enterprise to the fact that “the
comic frame m akes man the student of h im s e l f ’ and therefore “provides
m axim um opportunity for the resources of criticism.”27 Some four decades
ago in discussing the “planned incongruity” and “gargoyle thinking” of his
own work, K enneth Burke declared that “w hatever poetry may be, criticism
had best be c o m ic.”28 More recently, Harold Rosenberg has asserted that
sociology needs to bring com edy into the foreground, including “an
aw areness of the com edy of sociology with its disguises,” and, like Burke
and Duncan, he has argued that com edy provides “the radical effect of self­
knowledge which the anthropological bias exclud es.”29
W hat follows are reflections and speculations— my own and those of
others— in both these directions at the sam e time. If a dialogue is “a chain or
garland o f fragm ents,”30 then this is a dialogue about dialogues. And if Cox is
108 Texts & P erform ances
right that “a festive occasion has three essential ingredients: (1) conscious
excess, (2) celebrative affirmation, and (3) ju x tap o sitio n ,”'31 then this is also a
festive occasion. It is also an attem pt to argue by arranging and to write
criticism “that is fragmentary both in form and content, simultaneously c o m ­
pletely subjective and individual, and completely objective and like a n eces­
sary part in a system of all the sciences.”32 U ndoubtedly this is quixotic and
ironic. I hope so, for “cheerfulness— gay science— is a reward: the reward of
a long, brave, industrious and subterranean seriousness.”33 The double vi­
sion is deliberate, for irony is “not merely a m atter of seeing a ‘tr u e ’ meaning
beneath a ‘false’; but of seeing a double exposure on one p l a t e .”34 The
meaning is as transitional as it is transitory: in betw een, in the interplay; in
the interconnections, the disjunctions; at the intersections, the crossroads;
in the jo u rn e y , not the arrival. The danger as well as the significance of
certain deviant acts is “that they undermine the intelligibility of everything
else we had thought was going on around us, including all next acts, thus
generating diffuse diso rder.”35 My only defenses against such charges of
diffuse order are that my subject dem ands it and that “ self-consciousness
about modes of representation (not to speak of experiments with them) has
been very lacking in anthropology.”36 One must rem em b er that writing by
fragments is “a way of perceiving reality and of experiencing reality, of being
real, and not ju s t any parlour witticism, clownish caper or c o m ed ia n ’s
trick.”37

I know o f no other manner o f dealing

with great tasks than as play; this . . . is
an essential pre-requisite.38

TEXTS PARATEXTS
They chased after her, carried her back
and threw her dow n in the center o f the
plaza, then while one was performing
coitus from behind, another was doing
it against her head. O f course, all was
simulated, and not the real act, as the
wom an w as dressed. The naked fellow
performed masturbation in the center
o f the plaza or very near it, alterna­
tively with a black rug and his hand.
E verybody laughed.39
A disgusting rite . revolting . . .
abominable dance . vile ceremo-
nial.40
Arrange M e into Disorder 109
They were drinking urine out o f bowls
and jars used as privies on the house
tops, eating excrem ent and dirt.41

Bourke [like Bandelier] solved the

problem o f what to do about a scatolog­
ical rite he w itnessed in Zuni in 1881 by
relegating it to a place near the bottom
end o f a simple scale o f m an’s cultural
evolution.42
The appearance o f the six men who
have just tumbled into the arena is not
merely strange, it is positively disgust­
ing. They are covered with white paint,
and with the exception o f tattered
breech-clouts are absolutely naked.
Their mouths and ey es are encircled
with black rings; their hair is gathered
in knots upon the tops o f their heads,
from which rise bunches o f corn husks;
fragments o f fossil w ood hang from
their loins; and to the knees are fas­
tened tortoise-shells. Nothing is worn
with a view to ornament. These seem ­
ing m onstrosities, frightful in their ug­
liness, m ove about quite nimbly, and
are boldly impudent to a degree ap­
proaching sublimity. . . . If one o f the
spectators has the misfortune to dis­
play immoderate enthusiasm , forthwith
he is made the target o f m erciless jeer­
ing. One o f the merrymakers goes up to
him and mimics his manners and ac­
tions in the crudest possible way. The
people on the terraced roofs exhibit
their jo y by showering down corn-
cakes from their perches, which the
performers greedily devour. These
things are delightful according to In­
dian notions, and are well fitted to
show how much o f a child he still is,— a
child, how ever, it must be rem em ­
bered, endow ed with the physical
strength, passions, and appetites o f
adult mankind. . . . The pranks o f these
fellow s are simply silly and ugly; the
folly borders on imbecility and the ug­
liness is disgusting, and yet nobody is
shocked; everybody endures it and
laughs. . . . To the K o s h a r e nothing is
sacred; all things are permitted so long
as they contribute to the delight o f the
tribe.43
110 Texts & Perform ances
Funny as these are to the natives, h o w ­
ever, they have elicited only em otions
o f repugnance and disgust from even
^the ethnologist.44

People think that the clown is just noth­

ing, that he is just for fun. That is not
so. When I make other masked dancers
and they do not set things right or they
ca n ’t find out something, I make that
clow n and he never fails. Many people
w ho know about these things say that
the clow n is the most powerful.45
The purpose o f our cerem onies is not
entertainment but attainment; the at­
tainment o f the Good Life. Our
dramas, dances, songs are not per­
formed for fun; no, they are more than
that: they are the very e ss e n c e o f our
lives; they are sacred.46
I would only believe in a god who could
dance.47
To us the clow n is som ebody sacred,
funny, powerful, ridiculous, holy,
shameful, visionary. He is all this and
then som e more. Fooling around, a
clow n is really performing a spiritual
cerem ony. H e has a power. It com es
from the thunder-beings, not the ani­
mals or the earth. In our Indian belief, a
clow n has more power than the atom
bomb. This power could blow the dome
off the Capitol. I have told you that I
once worked as a rodeo clow n. This
was almost like doing spiritual work.
Being a clow n, for me, cam e close to
being a medicine man. It was in the
same nature.48
Tw o grotesques, swinging lariats and
singing, came in on the w est side o f the
court and, seeing the wom an, drop on
their hands and knees and crawl toward
her, each loosening his breechclout and
displaying a false penis made o f a gourd
neck. When she finishes washing an old
fringe o f rags, she w ashes her legs, dis­
playing a great false vulva so that all
the spectators can see it and laugh at
her. The grotesques and the two
clow n s— all whitened with clay—
finally converge on her, and as she sits
on the sacred shrine they propose
Arrange M e into Disorder 111
copulation with her. She points to the
presence o f her boy as an obstacle. The
clow ns send the boy to get a ja r o f w a­
ter and then proceed upon the shrine
either to copulate or to imitate copula­
tion with the utmost grossness. The
boy returning, rushes among them,
thrashes his immoral mother, and a
general brawl ensues amid loud
plaudits.49

And what happens w hen an interpreter such as Levine does take clowning
seriously, as in the preceding scene from S te p h e n ’s H o pi Journal?

The release from ego control o f archaic

impulses in the service o f the pleasure
principle is achieved, in a contagion o f
hilarious mirth, by regression to infan­
tile or progressively more primitive
stages o f abandon. . . . The function o f
humor in permitting the acting out of
otherwise strictly prohibited regres­
sive, infantile-sexual, and aggressive
behavior is illustrated by such an­
thropological accounts o f American In­
dian ceremonials. Its social value is . . .
periodic catharsis and sublimation from
a ritualistic return o f the repressed
without individual guilt and fear o f ret­
ribution or disruption o f communal
life.50

The “phallacies” proliferate. W hether by missionary, psychologist, or an­

thropologist, most descriptions and interpretations of ritual clowning are
denigratingly ethnocentric and refuse to understand clowning within its own
cultural context. Clowns are rarely asked what th e y ’re up to, and seldom
listened to when th e y ’re asked.

Well, white man, you want to see what

goes on, d o n ’t you? You have spoiled
our prayers and it may not rain. You
think this business is vulgar, but it
means something sacred to us. This old
katcina is impersonating the Corn
Maiden; therefore w e must have inter­
course with her so that our corn will
increase and our people will live in
plenty. If this were evil w e would not
be doing it. You are supposed to be an
educated man, but you had better go
back to school and learn something
more about Hopi life.51
112 Texts & Perform ances
Seemingly vulgar antics can be sacred. In many cases, such as the pa n ­
tomine described above, they are associated with fertility and rain, with
societal and cosmic regeneration and renewal. Clowns are sacred beings
whose existence and behavior are sanctioned in their creation myths, who
mediate betw een spirits and men, and who heal and enable as well as delight.
Longing for something to make her
laugh, Iyatiku (Corn Maiden) rubs her
skin and covers the ball o f epidermis
with a blanket. From underneath
com es K o s h a r e to make fun and make
people forget their troubles. Iyatiku
makes an arch [the rainbow] for him to
climb up and d o w n .52
Gods enjoy mockery: it seem s they
cannot suppress laughter even during
holy rites.”
The humorist p o sse sse s the childlike
quality but is not p ossessed by it, co n ­
stantly prevents it from expressing it­
self directly, but lets it only shimmer
through an absolute culture.54

For a long, long time they journeyed;

but the land o f sunshine was not
reached. On, on they marched till their
food supply becam e scanty and their
blankets becam e worn out. Then one
by one they died o f cold and hunger.
For a while those w ho survived kept up
courage even under adverse condi­
tions. . . At last, their numbers being so
depleted, they becam e despondent and
wished all to die. »
At this juncture the mother god, the
M oon, prayed to her husband, the Sun,
to save the remnant o f men, their chil­
dren. So the Sun took one o f the sur­
vivors to our people, painted his body
in transverse black and white bands,
decorated his hair with corn husks, and
suspended eagle feathers behind each
ear.
As soon as he was painted and d e c o ­
rated, this man becam e a “funny man”
and began to dance, cut capers, and
make grimaces. So interested did the
people becom e in his performing that
they forgot their sorrows and becam e
glad. Then they resumed their journey,
which they continued till they reached
A rrange M e into Disorder 113
the Rio Grande confluence. Here in this
valley they ceased their wanderings
and took up their abode.55

Yet even the best ethnographers have little to say about the clowns and are
given to simplistic explanations. Literary critics do little better, despite their
lack of concern with social function. The criticism of com edy lags far behind
that of tragedy, for the cultural biases are too strong.

. . .that divine malice without which I

cannot imagine perfection: I estimate
the value o f human beings, o f races,
according to the necessity with which
they cannot understand the god apart
from the satyr.56

Judaeo-Christian religion is essentially tragic. Comedy is the business of

devils, m adm en, children. At least since Augustine, we have forgotten or
denied that play is vital to the work of the gods; that there are divine forms
of subversion. R ather we insist on a dichotomy betw een serious and ludic,
good and evil, and value the former. Without a sense of irony and a p e rsp e c ­
tive beyond good and evil, however, these sacred buffoons are incom pre­
hensible and their com edy little more than a farce providing rebellious
release. The absence of such a perspective is equally apparent in the target­
ing of Indian clowns by the Bureau of Indian Affairs “religious crimes c o d e ”
in the 1920s, and in the sterile and reductive functionalist interpretations of
clowning by intellectuals, even those who grant its religious significance.

The highest earnestness o f the religious

life is recognizable by the je s t .57

What is here called “utility” is ulti­

mately also a mere belief, something
imaginary, and perhaps precisely that
most calamitous stupidity o f which we
shall perish som e day.58

C om edy is a complex, miscellaneous genre, embracing a plurality of

impulses: farce, satire, irony, and so on. It is hazardous to declare that it has
a single meaning or function, and yet its interpreters are prone to doing so.
W hen, w hatever the discipline, clowning is regarded as a means of catharsis
and control, it is limited to simple farce or satire. Its complexities as a ludic
genre of cultural performance are lost in its reduction to palliative remedies,
substitute gratifications, or therapeutic reprieves from the oppressions of
“reality.” W hether in the terms of Arnold, Freud, or Gluckm an, comedy
seen simply as an escape from the pain and perplexity of life implies an
identification of civilization with moral responsibility, spiritual seriousness,
and social utility. The Indian, through his clown, is kept a child.
114 Texts & P erform ances
Silly they were, yet wise as the gods
and high priests; for as simpletons and
the crazed speak from the things seen
o f the instant, uttering belike wise
words and prophecy, so spake they,
and becam e the attendants and foster­
ers, yet the sages and interpreters of
the ancient dance dramas o f the
kci’ka. . . . And they are the oracles of
all olden sayings o f deep meanings;
wherefore they are called the kay-
e m a s h i (husbandmen o f the k a ' k a ); and
they are spoken of, even by the fathers
o f the people, as the alshi tse w a sh i
(sages o f the ancients). And most pre­
cious in the sight o f beings and o f men
are they !59
[The cockfight] provides a metasocial
commentary upon the whole matter o f
assorting human beings into fixed
hierarchical ranks and then organizing
the major part o f collective experience
around that assortment. Its function, if
you want to call it that, is interpretive:
it is a Balinese reading o f Balinese e x ­
perience: a story they tell them selves
about th em selv es.“

Like Balinese cockfighting, Indian clown performances involve the

paradoxical m etacom m entary that B ateson61 and G eertz find characteristic
of all forms of play. Pueblo ritual clowning has its own aesthetic, philoso­
phy, and self-conscious awareness thereof.

Of burlesque and caricature generally,

it can be said that they best permit in­
sights into Pueblo m odes o f conception
since they reveal what the Pueblos find
serious or absurd, baffling or wrong,
fearful or com ical about life and about
other people. When these center about
the lives o f other people, they can be
particularly instructive. The wonder is
that this has gone almost com pletely
unrecognized by ethnographers.62
One o f the best w ays to understand a
people is to know what makes them
laugh. Laughter en com p asses the limits
o f the soul. In humor life is redefined
and accepted. Irony and satire provide
much keener insights into a group’s
Arrange M e into Disorder 115
collective psyche and values than do
years o f research.63

The oldest form o f social study is com-

„ edy. . . . If the com edian, from Aris­
tophanes to Joyce, does not solve
so cio lo g y ’s problem o f “the participant
observer,” he does demonstrate his ob­
jectivity by capturing behavior in its
most intimate aspects yet in its widest
typicality. Comic irony sets whole cul­
tures side by side in a multiple e x p o ­
sure, causing valuation to spring out o f
a recital o f facts alone, in contrast to
the hidden editorializing o f tongue-in-
cheek ideologists.64

We say that the disrelatedness of festive com edy leads to

“clarification/’ to a “heightened awareness of all forms of re latedn ess.”65 We
must not deny K o y e m c i or Koshare the perspective that we applaud in
Shakespeare, C ervantes, or the buffo of commedia dell’arte. Any refusal of
the possibility of detachm ent and double statement to “a people w ho can
truly stand apart from themselves periodically, take an objective look and
laugh”66 is a bitter irony in itself. Pueblo ceremonialism is as complex, ab ­
stract, and powerful as any known, and its sacred clowning epitomizes the
“transcendental buffoonery” and “beautiful self-mirroring” that Schlegel
defined as irony.

Public rituals are the most important

aesthetic expression o f the Zuni people
. . . a formal statement o f Pueblo civili­
zation.67
The com ic frame should enable people
to be observers o f t h e m s e l v e s , while
acting. Its ultimate would not be p a s ­
siveness, but m a x i m u m c o n s c i o u s n e s s .
One would “transcend” him self by not­
ing his own foibles. The com ic frame is
one o f acceptance but carries to c o m ­
pletion the translative act. It considers
human life as a project in “co m p o si­
tion,” where the poet works with the
materials o f social relationships. C om ­
position, translation, also “revision ,”
hence offering maximum opportunity
for the resources o f c r itic is m ,68

The Hopi new sp ap er Quatoqti carries two koyala clowns on the m ast­
head and at the head of the editorial column. This may seem strange since
clowns and everything they do and say are regarded as kahopi, that which is
116 Texts & Perform ances
opposite of hopi, but things are in terms of what they are not. The social
constructions of everyday life are perhaps most clearly seen when d e co n ­
structed. F o r literate Hopi, as well as for their ancestors, clowning is a most
significant form of sociocultural com m entary.

Laughing at something is the first sign

o f a higher psychic life.69
When we laugh w e are free o f all the
oppression o f our personality, or that
o f others, and even o f God, who is in- '
deed laughed a w a y .70
W hoever climbs the highest mountains
laughs at all tragic plays and tragic
seriousness.71

The A co m a say of the first clown, Koshare, that he is different from

hum ans, never frightened, regarding nothing as sacred, able to go
ev eryw here because “he knows something about himself.”72 Because he
knows himself so completely, he can transcend himself: in his laughter is
detachm ent, and in his detachm ent, freedom. Like all forms of reflexivity,
clowning is paradoxical in that it involves a simultaneous subversion and
transcen den ce of itself.

Humour is not all innocence and play,

how ever. At a more sophisticated and
self-conscious level it stands more im­
mediately within the sphere o f duality,
and in sensitivity to its conflicts and
tensions, its alienations and anxieties.
Here it is not a humour which leaves
, behind the world o f dichotom y and ra­
tionality in a holiday o f innocent aban­
don, but is a humour which m oves
within the terms and delineations o f the
objectified self in com ic response to
them. . . . On the one hand it becom es
an act o f w ithdraw al from that which is
ordinarily taken as serious and sacred.
And on the other hand it becom es an
act o f aggression against that which is
ordinarily taken as sacred and serious.73

Mystics, radical philosophers, and theologians have long regarded

laughter as a higher form of consciousness, a way of confronting the higher
realities on which the whole of existence rests. The things that make life
celebrative are the same which make life contem plative.74 In Zen, for e x am ­
ple, satori (awakening, enlightenment) is reached through both meditation
and laughter. “Enlightenment is frequently accompanied by laughing of a
Arrange M e into Disorder 117
transcendental kind, which may further be described as a laughter of sur­
prised approval . . . at the m om ent of laughing something is understood; it
needs no further proof of itself.”75

The question o f the legitimacy o f the

com ic, o f its relationship to the reli­
gious, o f whether it does not have a
place in the religious address itself—
this question is o f essential significance
for a religious existence in our times
. . . It is certainly unjust to the comical
to regard it as the enem y o f the reli­
gious.76
Precisely because w e are at bottom
grave and serious human beings—
really more weights than human b e­
ings— nothing does us as much good as
the fo o l’s cap: we need it in relation to
ourselves— w e need all exuberant,
floating, dancing, mocking, childish,
and blissful art lest we lose th q f r e e d o m
a b o ve things that our ideal demands o f
us. It would mean a relapse for us, with
our irritable honesty, to get involved
entirely in morality and, for the sake o f
the oversevere demands that w e make
on ourselves in these matters, to be­
com e virtuous monsters and scare­
crows. We should be able also to stand
a b o v e morality— and not only to s ta n d
with the anxious stiffness o f a man who
is afraid o f slipping and falling at any
moment, but also to f l o a t above it and
play. H ow then could w e possibly dis­
pense with art— and with the fool?77

But we have forgotten religion as a festive art. We have made both our
religious celebrations and our contemplative moments serious. In such co n ­
texts, laughter is regarded as inappropriate, subversive, and diabolical. This
is not the case in other religions w here a sanctioned, even prescribed rela­
tion is maintained betw een the serious and the ludic; w here joking or clow n­
ing occurs in the most sacred moments of ritual. Pueblo ritual dram a reveals
this genius that can encom pass impossible contradictions, illogicalities, and
absurdities; can make them ring true in a synthesis reflecting reality in a way
that rational discourse does not know.

By revealing the arbitrary, provisional

nature o f the very categories o f
thought, by lifting their pressure for a
moment and suggesting other w ays o f
structuring reality, the joke rite [or
118 Texts & Perform ances
clown performance] in the middle o f sa­
cred m om ents o f religion hints at un­
fathomable m ysteries.78
We have in [Ndembu rites of]
fihihamba the local expression o f a uni­
versal human problem, that o f ex p ress­
ing what cannot be th o u g h t of, in view
o f thought’s subjugation to esse n c e s. It
is a problem which has engaged the
passionate attention o f ritual man in all
places and ages. It is a problem, fur­
thermore, which has confronted artists,
musicians, and poets w henever these
have gone beyond the consideration o f
aesthetic form and social m anners.79

It is likewise the project and problem of the clown. The sacred c lo w n ’s part
in expressing that which cannot be thought of suggests that he is in touch
with higher m ysteries, alternative realities. And indeed, he is so regarded by
the Pueblos. The creation myths state this; his role and behavior in ritual
dram a enact it. H e is the funniest an d the most sacred of their priests, a
delightmaker a n d a fearsome creature. K o y e m c i are the most frightening of
all katcinas.

While thinking I am not where I actu­

ally am; I am not surrounded by se n se ­
objects but by images which are
invisible to everyone else. It is as
though I had withdrawn into som e
never-never land, the land o f the invis­
ibles.80

In T ew a ritual dram as such as the Raingod cerem ony, clowns are the
“bringers of K a tc in a s ,” bringing them from the mythological lake of
emergence in the north. K ossa can see what no one else can perceive, that
is, the invisible; they “ see” and announce the approach of the katcinas.
Invisible them selves, they have the pow er of summoning the katcinas or
sending them home. Further, they alone can understand the gestural lan­
guage of the katcinas which they translate and interpret to the people during
the d a n c e .81

The Hopi often regard clow ns as per­

sonages w ho say and do things that are
the o p p o site o f normal expectancy; this
inevitably links them with the realm of
the dead, where conditions are fre­
quently thought to be the opposite o f
those that prevail in the world o f the
living. . . . K o y e m c i often appear in
Arrange M e into Disorder 119
stories pertaining to the home o f the
dead. . . . T hey are called “fathers” of
katcinas. . . . They frequently appear
with katcinas, w ho represent spirits o f
the dead; and, like those in the other
world, they often behave in reverse
fashion from the living.82

Any form o f transgressive discourse, o f

anti-language, implies an alternative re­
ality.83

The co m m onest form of reverse behavior is “talking b a c k w a rd s:” saying the

opposite of what one means. K o yem ci are named “not with the names of
men, but with the names of mismeaning.”84 From his birth the A com a
K oshare “talked nonsense, talked b a c k w a rd .”85 The first Zuni N e w e k w e
talked all the time, but “what he said was all the same to him; he did not care
about the effect.”86 The clown through his language expresses a world behind
and beyond words.

The dance serves to reaffirm the basic

tenets o f the Hopi world view and fuses
it with the Hopi ethos while the clow ns
remind the audience-participants that
this, after all, is only life that we are
living, and that like life everyw here it is
fraught with all sorts o f paradoxes, un­
certainties, and outright contradic­
tions. B etw een the k a tcin a s and the
clo w n s, w e obtain a well-balanced por­
trayal o f what the Hopi know about liv­
ing; the k a tcin a s remind men that if
they but join their hearts periodically in
these rites o f mass supplication to the
ancestral deities, life will continue as
before in abundance and harmony; the
clow ns, by injecting a bit o f the mun­
dane and the com m onplace, the ludi­
crous and the whim sical, into these
m ost solemn o f occasion s, remind the
people that this other side o f life, too, is
their own and that it must not be forgot­
ten in the com m itm ent to an exacting
calendar o f religious observances. Per­
haps one cannot go so far as to claim
that the sacred clow ns fuse the sacred
and profane dim ensions o f existen ce,
but they do at least serve to make the
sacred relevant to the ev ery d a y .87
In Hopi theory, the regions o f the living
and o f the dead make up a single un­
120 Texts & Perform ances
iverse, and the inhabitants o f both
realms must cooperate if a cerem ony is
to su c c e e d .88 v

Translation betw een the realms o f the living and the dead, betw een
visible and invisible worlds, between the people and the katcinas is but one
form of dialogue in which the clowns engage. Performing as they do betw een
the seasons and betw een the acts and in the margins of Pueblo ritual drama,
clowns are mediators par excellence betw een all types of cosmic, natural,
and social dualities, betw een inside and outside, self and other, creation and
destruction, order and chaos. The latter dialogues are exemplified in the
very structure of ritual dramas in which the clowns interrupt and burlesque
the solemn and orderly patterns of the masked and unm asked dancers, and
in the juxtaposition of elegant and orderly dress with the c lo w n ’s “holiday
mongrel c o stu m e ” of odds and ends. They are also expressed in the c lo w n ’s
double ceremonial role of maintaining order and disrupting it in the fashion
of the Italian buffo. Like the buffo, the clowns “are in many ways responsi­
ble for creating and guiding an audience. They are constantly organizing;
they create entrances which assemble and attract an audience, or they may
physically gather an audience. Clowns constantly work to include, interest,
and amuse the spectators, and their exits often provide theatrical and e m o ­
tional finality and relief after a Katcina perfo rm an ce.”89

If reality is the structure o f facts c o n ­

sensually agreed upon in a given stage
o f knowledge, actuality is the leeway
created by new forms o f interplay.
Without actuality, reality b ecom es a
prison o f stereotypy, while actuality al­
ways must retest reality to remain truly
playful. To fully understand this we
must study for each stage o f life the
' interpenetration o f the cognitive and
the affective as well as the moral and
the instinctual. We may then realize
that in adulthood an individual gains
leew ay for himself, as he creates it for
others; here is the soul o f adult play.90
A m an’s maturity consists in having
found once again the seriousness which
one had as a child at play.91
The comical is present in every stage o f
life . . . for wherever there is life, there
is contradiction, and wherever there is
contradiction, the comical is present.92
It is contradiction that distinguishes
men from angels, animals, and ma­
chines.93
Arrange M e into Disorder 121
Romantic irony, which takes many
forms, is concerned essentially with the
feeling that the human self both is a n d
is not a part o f the world in which it
exists. Further, [it] is concerned with
" the feeling that art is designed both to
absorb the observer or reader co m ­
pletely and at the same time to create in
him a wariness or skepticism about the
art object itself.94
Humor deals with being and nonbeing,
and its true essen ce is reflection.95

C ontrary to the denunciations of many critics, neither ritual clowning

nor irony can be dismissed as nihilism or infinitely regressive negativity.
R ather both are special forms of negation: what Burke calls “aesthetic
negativity” ; what D errida defines as “deconstruction” ; what Colie describes
as “p a ra d o x ” ; w hat Jam es labeled the “law of dissociation” ; and what
Arendt describes as “thinking.” “All critical examinations must go through a
stage of at least hypothetically negating accepted opinions and ‘v alu es’ by
searching out their implications and tacit assumptions, and in this sense
nihilism may be seen as an ever-present danger of thinking.”96

Gravity is the love o f the object that

falls for that which it falls toward.97
Irony is the handler o f gravity.98

Science is irony. . . . At every point o f

its progress, science accepts implicitly,
notes in its own margin, the possibility
o f contradiction, the progress to
c o m e .99
Irony is the contradiction o f existing in
terms o f a contradiction, and this co n ­
tradiction is precisely the awareness,
on the one hand, o f being a finite crea­
ture com pelled by and subject to the
demands o f the world and, on the other
hand, o f being a free, responsible being
who can never be com pelled or sub­
jected by any external force. The irony
is that one is a contradiction, one exists
dialectically [or better, dialogically].100

At base the clown, the ironist, is really an ethicist. Aesthetic negativity

involves a double negation in which “any moralistic thou-shalt-not provides
material for our entertain m en t” and our reflection as we applaud and co n ­
sider the antics of “deviants who, in all sorts of ingenious ways, violate the
very D o n ’ts of o u r/th e ir society.” 101
122 Texts & Perform ances
Irony is a synthesis o f ethical passion,
which infinitely accentuates inwardly
the person o f the individual in relation
to the ethical requirement, and o f cul­
ture, which infinitely abstracts exter­
nally from the personal, as one finitude
among all the other finitudes and par­
ticularities. . . . Irony is a specific cul­
ture o f the spirit, and therefore follow s
next after immediacy; then com es the
ethicist, then the humorist, and finally
the religious individual.102
The clow n, his job . . . is to make p eo ­
ple think right . . . all night.103

As Klein has said, comparing D errida’s project to N ie tz s c h e ’s, “ It is

[an] illusion to think that we can merely step outside the house of m etaph ys­
ics and dance freely in the sunlight. . . . The only possible strategy is the
much more patient and laborious one . . . by which the foundations of the
structure may be carefully but decisively deconstructed, displaced, disor­
ganized— giving rise, not to a new space outside the old enclosure, but to
new angles, new possibilities of organization within it. The process requires
that one use the elements of structure against the structure.” ’04 This is the
way the clown uses his language or his ash house.

Redirecting thoughtful attention to the

faulty or limited structures o f thought,
paradoxes play back and forth across
terminal and categorical boundaries—
that is, they play (serio ludere) with hu­
man understanding, that most serious
o f all human activities. . . . All
paradoxes share with that mystifying
. dialogue (the P a r m e n i d e s ) respect and
concern for the techniques they ques­
tion or d e fy .105

Sacred clowning and other liminal aspects of ritual are deconstructive.

As both T urner and Wallace argue, the factors of o n e ’s culture are learned
by experiencing them confused, inverted, rearranged. But more than simply
reinforcing traditional relations and structures, such displacements and co n ­
tradictions prompt speculation about, reflection on, and reconsideration of
the order of things. Both authors invoke William J a m e s ’s law of dissocia­
tion: what is associated now with one thing and now with another tends to
becom e dissociated from either, and to grow into an object of abstract c o n ­
templation. Similarly, Piaget argues and B erlyn e’s experiments confirm that
disequilibrium or discomfort arising from inconsistency and uncertainty
motivates mature ways of organizing thoughts and perceptions.
Arrange M e into Disorder 123
D ecom posing and superimposing . . .
this double negation produces an
affirmation which is never conclusive
and which exists in perpetual equilib­
rium over the void . . . a work that
turns in upon itself, that persists in de­
stroying the very thing it creates. The
f u n c t i o n o f irony now appears with
greater clarity: its negative purpose is
to be the critical substance that impreg­
nates the work; its positive purpose, as
criticism o f criticism, is to deny it and
so to tip the balance onto the side o f
myth. Irony is the e le m e n t which turns
criticism into m y t h . l06

As both Socrates and the Zen masters dem onstrate, there must be a
frustration and confounding of the intellect for thinking to occur. And in
both Zen and Pueblo clowning, hum o r is “fully developed and self­
consciously employed as an integral part of both a pedagogical m ethod and
an enlightened outlook— both as one of the strategems for realizing enlight­
enm ent and as one of the consequences of enlightenm ent.” '07

108
Irony is permanent parabasis.
Philosophy is the true hom e o f irony,
which might be defined as logical
beauty: for ‘ w herever men are
philosophizing in spoken or written dia­
logues, and provided they are not en ­
tirely system atical, irony ought to be
produced and postulated; . . .compared
to the lofty urbanity o f the Socratic
m use, rhetorical irony is like the splen­
dor o f the most brilliant oratory co m ­
pared to ancient high tragedy. In this
respect, poetry alone can rise to the
height o f philosophy . . . there are an­
cient and modern poem s which
breathe, in their entirety and in every
detail, the divine breath o f irony. In
such poem s there lives a real tran­
scendental buffoonery. Their interior is
permeated by the m ood which surveys
everything and rises infinitely above
everything limited, even above the
p o et’s own art, virtue, and genius, and
their exterior form by the histrionic
style o f an ordinary good Italian
b u ffo .'09
124 Texts & Perform ances
Because they have not taken clowning seriously, Schlegel’s interpreters
have been greatly perturbed by his describing the Italian buffo as the ulti­
mate expression of irony and by his comparing clowns^ antics and Socratic
irony. His parabases, like the K o s h a r e ’s with their mocking and explicit
burlesque of their role, the play and thse audience, interrupt the illusion of
fiction and upset theatrical convention. As such, they epitomize the very
Socratic capacity of discourse to deconstruct and to com m ent upon itself.
This is the capacity we call irony.

The trope o f irony is a linguistic

paradigm o f a mode o f thought which is
radically self-critical with respect not
only to a given characterization o f the
world o f experience but also to the very
effort to capture adequately the truth o f
things in language. . . . In irony, the
figurative language folds back upon it­
self and brings its own potentialities for
distorting perception under question.
[Hence it is] metatropological, “the
trope o f tropes.”110
The ironist is like the circus clown on
the tightrope. First the ordinary tight­
rope walker [or katcina] performs his
feats seriously. Then the clow n, sent
aloft by the ring-master, pretends to be
afraid o f heights, pretends to fall, per­
haps falls, but the wire catches him by
one o f his enormous buttons, recovers
him self and runs the rest o f the way
quickly; but all the time he is much
more skillful than his fellow acrobat.
He has raised tightrope walking to a
higher power, in that he is performing
at two levels simultaneously— as a
clown and as a tightrope walker, and
demonstrating at the same time both
the possibility o f tightrope walking and
its sheer im possibility.111
Freedom is not knowledge but what
one has becom e after knowledge. It is a
state o f mind which not only admits
contradiction but which seeks it out for
its nourishment and as a foundation.
The saints do not laugh nor do they
make us laugh but the truly wise men
have no other mission than to make us
laugh with their thoughts and make us
think with their buffoonery.11’
Arrange M e into Disorder 125
When a people can laugh at them selves
and laugh at others and hold all aspects
o f life together without letting anybody
drive them to extrem es, then it seem s
to me that that people can su rviv e.113

With irony the subject is negatively

free . . . and as such hovering, because
there nothing is which binds him. It is
this very freedom, this hovering, which
gives the ironist a certain enthusiasm,
for he becom es intoxicated as it were
by the infinity o f possibles; and should
he require consolation for all that has
passed away, then let him take refuge
in the enormous reserves o f the p o ssi­
b le.114

Objections, digressions, gay mistrust,

the delight in m ockery are signs o f
health: everything unconditional b e­
longs in pathology."5
For people w ho are as poor as us, who
have lost everything, w ho had to en ­
dure so much death and sadness, laugh­
ter is a precious gift. When we were
dying like flies from the white m an’s
diseases, w hen w e were driven into the
reservations, when the Government ra­
tions did not arrive and we were starv­
ing, at such times watching the pranks
o f a h e y o k a (Sioux ritual clown) must
have been a b lessin g .116

NOTES

1. Friedrich Schlegel, D ia lo g u e on P oetry a n d Literary A p h o r is m s (University

Park, Pa., 1968), p. 54.
2. Friedrich N ietzsch e, The Portable N i e t z s c h e (N ew York, 1954), p. 129.
3. Conrad H yers, Z e n a n d the C o m ic Spirit (Philadelphia, 1973), p. 18.
4. Ihab H assan, P aracriticism s: S e v e n S p e c u la tio n s o f the Tim es (Urbana, 1975),
p. 25.
5. Marie C. Sw abey, C o m ic L a u g h te r : A P hilosophical E s s a y (N ew H aven,
1961), p. 11. '
6. Hannah Arendt, Thinking (N ew York, 1978), pp. 11-12.
7. Victor W. Turner, The F o re st o f S y m b o ls : A s p e c t s o f N d e m b u R itu a l (Ithaca,
1967), p. 97; D r a m a s , Fields, a n d M e t a p h o r s (Ithaca, 1974), p. 255.
8. Harry Levin, R e fra c tio n s: E s s a y s in C o m p a r a tiv e Literature (N ew York,
1966), p. 128.
9. Thom as Carlyle, S a rto r R e s a r tu s (N ew York, 1970), p. 237.
126 Texts & Perform ances
10. Arendt, p. 175; Arien Mack, ed., “Hannah A rendt,” S o cia l R e s e a r c h 44(1):47,
1977.
11. H arvey C ox, The F e a s t o f F ools (N ew York, 1969), p. 70.
12. Arendt, p. 62.
13. H yers, p. 55. •
14. W. Willeford, The F o o l a n d H is S c e p te r (Evanston, 1969), pp. 18-19.
15. Clement of Alexandria, S elections f r o m the Protreptikos (N ew York, 1962),
V. 9.
16. H yers, p. 71.
17. Roland Barthes, R o l a n d B a rth e s (N ew York, 1977), pp. 92-94.
18. Franz B oas, “ Introduction,” in James Teit, “Traditions o f the Thom pson River
Indians, British Colum bia,” M e m o ir s o f the A m e r ic a n Folklore S o c ie ty 7:18,
1898.
19. Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the D iscourse of the Human
S c ie n c e s ,” in R. M acksey and E. D onato, ed s., The L a n g u a g e s o f Criticism
a n d the S c ie n c e s o f M a n (Baltimore, 1970), p. 254ff.
20. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The S a v a g e M i n d (Chicago, 1966), p. 21.
21. Walter Benjamin, Illum inations (N ew York, 1969), p. 8.
22. Geoffrey H. Hartman, “Crossing Over: Literary Commentary as Literature,”
C o m p a r a tiv e L itera tu re 28(3):266, 1976.
23. Benjamin, p. 38.
24. S ee Paul B ouissac, Circus a n d Culture: A S e m io tic A p p r o a c h (Bloomington,
1976).
25. Erving Goffman, F r a m e A n alysis: A n E s s a y on the O rganization o f E x p e ri­
en ce (N ew York, 1974), p. 31.
26. Hugh D. D uncan, C o m m u n ic a tio n a n d the S ocia l Order (N ew York, 1962),
p. 386.
27. Kenneth Burke, A t ti t u d e s to w a rd H istory (B oston, 1961), pp. 171, 173.
28. Burke, p. 140.
29. Harold Rosenberg, “Community, Values, C o m ed y ,” in D iscovering the P r e s ­
ent: Three D e c a d e s in Art, Culture a n d Politics (Chicago, 1973), p. 151.
30. Friedrich Schlegel, L u c in d a a n d the F r a g m e n t s (Minneapolis, 1971), p. 170.
31. C ox, p. 22.
32. Schlegel, L u c in d a , p. 170.
33. Friedrich N ietzsch e, On the G en e a lo g y o f M o ra ls a n d E c c e H o m o (N ew
York, 1969), p. 21.
34. Allan R odw ay, “Terms for C o m ed y ,” R e n a i s s a n c e a n d M o d e r n S tu d ie s 6:113,
1963.
35. Goffman, p. 5.
36. Clifford G eertz, The Interpretation o f Cultures (N ew York, 1973), p. 19.
37. H yers, p. 20.
38. N ietzsch e, G e n e a lo g y o f Morals, p. 65.
39. A d olf Bandelier, in Charles Lange, Cochiti (Carbondale, 111., 1968), p. 303.
40. John G. Bourke, The Urine D a n c e o f the Z u n i In d ia n s o f N e w M e x i c o (pri­
vately published, 1920), pp. 5-6.
41. Lange, p. 304.
42. A lfonso Ortiz, N e w P ersp e c tive s on the P u eb lo (Albuquerque, 1972), p. 139.
43. A d olf Bandelier, The D elight M a k e r s (N ew York, 1971), pp. 134-140.
44. Julian H. Steward, “The Ceremonial Buffoon o f the American Indian,” P apers
o f the M ic h ig a n A c a d e m y o f Science, A rts, a n d L e tte rs 14:199, 1931.
45. A pache M edicine Man, quoted in Morris E. Opler, A n A p a c h e Life-w ay: The
E c o n o m ic , S o c ia l a n d R eligious In stitu tio n s o f the Chiricahua In d ia ns (N ew
York, 1965), p. 276.
Arrange M e into Disorder 127
46. Pueblo m edicine man, quoted in Vera Laski, S e e k in g L ife (Philadelphia, 1958),
p. 2.
47. N ietzsch e, The P o rta b le N ie tz s c h e , p. 153.
48. Richard Erdoes and John Fire, L a m e Deer: S e e k e r o f Visions (N ew York,
1971), p. 236.
49. Alexander M. Stephen, H o p i J o u r n a l o f A le x a n d e r M. S te p h e n (N ew York,
1936), p. 331.
50. Jacob L evin e, “Regression in Primitive C low ning,” The P s y c h o a n a ly tic Q u a r­
terly 30(1):75, 81, 1961. "
51. D on C. T alayesva, quoted in L eo W. Sim m ons, e d ., S u n Chief: The A u t o b i o g ­
raphy o f a H o p i Indian (N ew H aven, 1942), p. 190.
52. Laguna creation myth, cited in Elsie Clews Parsons, P u e b lo Indian Religion
(Chicago, 1939), p. 246.
53. Friedrich N ietzsch e, B e y o n d G o o d a n d Evil: Prelude to a P h ilo so p h y o f the
F u tu r e (N ew York, 1966), p. 233.
54. Soren Kierkegaard, Con clu d in g Unscientific P o stscrip t (Princeton, 1941),
p. 490.
55. Jem ez creation myth, cited in Albert B. Reagan, “N o te s on Jem ez Ethnog­
raphy,” A m e r i c a n A n th r o p o lo g is t 29(4):723, 1927.
56. N ie tz sc h e , G e n e a lo g y o f Morals, p. 244.
57. Kierkegaard, p. 235.
58. N ietzsch e, The G ay S c ie n c e (N ew York, 1974), p. 300.
59. Frank H. Cushing, “Outlines o f Zuni Creation M yth s,” Thirteenth A n n u a l
R e p o r t o f the B u r e a u o f A m e r i c a n E th n o lo g y (Washington, D .C ., 1896),
p. 402.
60. Clifford G eertz, “D eep Play: N o te s on the Balinese Cockfight,” D a e d a lu s
101:26, 1972.
61. Gregory Bateson, “The Position o f Humor in Human C om m unication,” in
J. L evine, ed., M o tiv a tio n in H u m o r (N ew York, 1969), “A Theory o f Play and
F an tasy,” in S t e p s to an E c o lo g y o f M i n d (N ew York, 1972).
62. Ortiz, p. 147.
63. Vine Deloria, Jr., C u ste r D ie d f o r Your Sins (N ew York, 1969), p. 148.
64. Rosenberg, pp. 149-150.
65. C .L . Barber, S h a k e s p e a r e ’s F e s tiv e C o m e d y : A S t u d y o f D r a m a tic F o r m s a n d
Its R e la tio n to S o c ia l C u s to m (Princeton, 1959), p. 3.
66. Ortiz, p. 159.
67. Ruth Bunzel, In tro d u c tio n to Z u n i C erem o n ia lism (Washington, D .C ., 1932),
p. 509.
68. Burke, pp. 171, 173.
69. Nietzsche, B e y o n d G o o d a n d Evil, p. 232.
70. Zen student, quoted in N ancy Wilson R oss, The World o f Z e n (N ew York,
1960), pp. 184—185.
71. N ietzsch e, The P orta b le N ie tz s c h e , p. 153.
72. M. Stirling, Origin M y t h o f A c o m a (Washington, D .C ., 1942), p. 45.
73. H yers, pp. 170-171.
74. C ox, p. 104.
75. H yers, pp. 163-164.
76. Kierkegaard, pp. 459, 465.
77. N ietzsch e, The G ay S cien ce, p. 164.
78. Mary D ouglas, “The Social Control of Cognition: Som e Factors in Joke Per­
cep tion ,” M a n 3(2):374, 1968.
79. Victor W. Turner, C h ih a m b a , the White Spirit (M anchester, 1962), p. 87.
80. Arendt, p. 85.
128 Texts & Perform ances
81. Laski, pp. 3, 13ff.
82. Mischa Titiev, “Som e A spects o f Clowning Am ong the Hopi Indians,” in
M. Zamora et al., ed s., T h e m e s in Culture (Quezon City, 1971), pp. 327-334;
The H o p i In d ia n s o f Old Oraibi: Continuity a n d C h a n g e (Ann Arbor, 1972),
p. 229. .
83. M .A .K . Halliday, “Anti-Languages,” A m e r ic a n A n th r o p o lo g is t 78(3):572,
1976.
84. Cushing, p. 401.
85. Stirling, p. 33.
86. Elsie C lew s Parsons, “N o te s on Zuni,” M e m o ir s o f The A m e r i c a n A n ­
thropological A s s o c ia tio n 4:229-230, 1917.
87. Ortiz, p. 160. .
88. Titiev, “Som e A spects of C low ning,” p. 334.
89. Seym our K oenig, ed., H o p i Clay, H o p i C e re m o n y : A n Exhibition o f H o p i A r t
(Katonah, N .Y ., 1976), p. 45. '
90. Erik H. Erikson, “Play and A ctuality,” in Maria W. Piers, ed., Play a n d
D e v e l o p m e n t (N e w York, 1972), p. 165.
91. N ietzsch e, B e y o n d G o o d a n d Evil, p. 83.
92. Kierkegaard, p. 459.
93. Octavio Paz, M a r c e l D u c h a m p , or the Castle o f Purity (London, 1970), p. 41.
94. Gordon Mills, H a m l e t ’s Castle: The S tu d y o f L iterature as a S o cia l E x p e r i­
en ce (Austin, 1976), p. 171.
95. Schlegel, L u c in d e , p. 206.
96. Arendt, p. 182.
97. O .K . B ouw sm a, P hilosophical E ssa y s (Lincoln, N e b ., 1965), p. 22.
98. Paz, p. 32. >
99. D .C . M uecke, The C o m p a s s o f Irony (London, 1969), p. 129.
100. Thom as Hanna, The Lyrical Existentialists (N ew York, 1962), pp. 281-282.
101. Kenneth Burke, L a n g u a g e as S y m b o lic A c tio n : E s s a y s on Life, L it e r a tu r e ,
a n d M e t h o d (Berkeley, 1966), p. 13.
102. Kierkegaard, pp. 448-450.
103. Roy Quay, Cibecue Apache, quoted February 10, 1978.
104. Richard Klein, “Prolegomenon to Derrida,” Diacritics 2(4):31—32, 1972.
105. Rosalie Colie, Parcidoxia E p id em ica : The R e n a is s a n c e Tradition o f P a r a d o x
(Princeton, 1966), pp. 7-8.
106. Paz, p. 32.
107. H yers, p. 33. '
108. Paul de Man, “Lecture on Irony,” University o f T exas, March 25, 1977.
109. Schlegel, D ia lo g u e on P oetry a n d Literary A p h o r i s m s , p. 126.
110. H ayden W hite, M e ta h isto ry : The Historical Im a g in atio n in N in e te e n th -
C entury E u r o p e (Baltimore, 1973), p. 37.
111. M uecke, pp. 198-199.
112. Paz, pp. 41-42.
113. Deloria, p. 168.
114. Soren Kierkegaard, The C o n c e p t o f Irony (Bloomington, 1968), p. 279.
115. N ietzsch e, B e y o n d G o o d a n d Evil, p. 91.
116. Erdoes and Fire, p. 237.
 The D iv in e r a n d the D etective *

Hilda Kuper

Glancing through my notebooks in search of a theme appropriate to a discus­

sion of ritual, drama, and spectacle, I unearthed references to a strange case
of m u rder that not only contained some intriguing elements but also sug­
gested some avenues of speculation, structured and unstructured, that might
be more suitable for an audience of broad interests and sympathy for leaps of
the imagination than for more discipline-bound colleagues.
In 1936, Sobhuza II, Ingw enyam a (Lion) of the Swazi, acknowledged as
king by his subjects and as param ount chief by the British colonial au ­
thorities of the time, suggested that I go to N am ah a sh a in northw estern
Swaziland to study tinyanga temitsi (specialists in herbs, the traditional
curers) and, more particularly, tangom a (diviners or shamans). The more
general curers, whose treatm ents pertained to a wide range of misfortunes
afflicting hum ans, cattle, and crops, practiced throughout the country, but
diviners who w ere consulted about more tragic and mysterious events
operated primarily in isolated or frontier areas.
N a m a h a sh a was an obvious choice. It was wild, mountainous, remote
from developm ent, and its northern boundary was so arbitrarily drawn that
subjects of a single Swazi chief were separated under three different foreign
governments: British in Swaziland, Portuguese in M ozambique, and Af­
rikaner in South Africa, each with its own official language and separate
legal system. I had been directed by Sobhuza to stay in Swaziland, at the
village of a Mahlalela chief a few miles south of the Portuguese border. I
arrived there late one afternoon by foot, having had to abandon my car after
attempting to cross the Lutoja mountain by a foothpath, a “ sho rtcu t” sug­
gested by my assistant, rather than driving the long and devious route via
M ozam bique and entering from the Portuguese side.

*This essay was written during a year spent at the Center for Advanced Studies in the
Behavioral S cien ces, financed in part by the National Endowm ent for the
Humanities. I would like to express my special appreciation to James Freeman,
Ronald Cohen, and George Stocking for their lively interest and helpful criticism.

129
130 Texts & Perform ances
While it was very easy, albeit illegal, to walk across the border, to cross
by car was ano ther matter. One dirt road, or rather track, into Swaziland
w ound through the little town of N am ahasha, w here all vehicles were
stopped for inspection. There, the Portuguese were represented by a chef-
de-poste; the British by a Swazi police sergeant, whose main duty seemed to
me to see that wines and other liquors available for purchase by anyone on
the Portuguese side were not smuggled into Swaziland, where by British
colonial law they were prohibited to Africans.
My arrival was unexpected and unwelcome. A few weeks before, a
terrible thing had happened. The chief, Sidloko Mahlalela, had been m u r­
dered. Several versions of the dram a were represented to me, with details
incredibly contradictory and confusing, and since they are not pertinent to
the main theme of this essay, I will omit them and simply present a few stark
and more or less indisputable facts; for obvious reasons, apart from that of
the murdered victim, all names are fictitious.
Sidloko and a few companions had apparently driven on a spree to
Lourengo M arques (now Maputo), the main city and capital of Mozambique.
W hen they returned, the Swazi policeman, Sergeant Myeni, stopped the car
and asked, “H ave you any white m a n ’s drink with yo u ? ” Sidloko replied
disdainfully, “W ho are you speaking to ? ” The sergeant repeated the q ues­
tion, and when someone in the car told him to move out of the way, said, “1
will see for m yself.” He then leaned forward, peering into the car, holding a
spear in his right hand. The driver put his foot on the accelerator, the car
lurched forward, and the spear “en tered ” the body of the chief.
The chef-de-poste rushed Sidloko to the nearest Portuguese hospital,
which was some thirty miles away. The c h ie f’s companions were sent home.
F o r his own safety, Myeni was put into a one-person cell in the jail at
N am ah a sh a , and stayed there until fetched by a Sergeant van den Byl of the
Swaziland police force stationed at Stegi, roughly twenty miles due south of
N a m a h a sh a but several hours by car.
W hen representatives of Sidloko’s kin came to the hospital to inquire
how he was getting on, they were told they could not see him. On returning
two days later, they were informed that he was dead and buried. He had
been given a p a u p e r’s burial, thrown into a com m on grave. This horrendous
treatm ent was reported to the Swaziland government, and Sergeant van den
Byl was sent to investigate and was instructed to try to get back the body.
The atm osphere in the village was thick with sorrow, fear, and suspi­
cion. A p roper funeral is the right of every person. Without it, there is a
danger that the spirit of the deceased will wander, lost, angry, and hostile. It
is the duty as well as the desire of kinsmen to give “their o w n ” an honorable
and appropriate burial. The rituals mirror rank and status differences, and in
this case it was also essential to recover from the corpse a bangle, symbol of
chieftainship, to place on the arm of his successor. The Portuguese refused
“for health re aso n s” to dig up the grave. This would not be the first case in
which a corpse was not in evidence at a burial— the families of men who died
The Diviner a nd the Detective 131
working in South Africa, including those killed in accidents in the gold
mines, could not see their dead and had to be satisfied with performing
m ortuary rites over their belongings. It was naturally an adaptation that was
deeply resented and lamented. M oreover, it was rumored that if the bangle
w ere retrieved, it would be kept by the police, together with the spear and
other exhibits, as evidence in the trial that was being prepared in Swaziland
against Myeni.
But none of the Swazi to whom 1 spoke believed that justice would or
could be done by arresting Myeni, charging him, or even hanging him. It was
in some w ays similar to the assassination of a Bobby K ennedy or a Martin
L u th e r King. The killer of the form er was caught red-handed, the killer of
the second confessed, but the question remained, Did he act alone, or was
he part o f a conspiracy? But unlike the reaction to the deeds of Sirhan or
Jam es Earl Ray, in the case of Sidloko there was no doubt in the minds of the
Swazi that Myeni was not the real m urderer but an innocent and unwitting
agent, and that any information he might provide would throw little or no
light on the involvement of others, the truly guilty. My suggestions, made to
a few close friends, that Myeni might have been bribed by a rival eager for
the position of chief, or even that he might have nursed a personal grudge
against the deceased, were listened to and discussed. They were finally
rejected with the question, H o w could a policeman in governm ent employ
really benefit by killing a chief in front of so many witnesses? W hen I
expostulated that surely if he w ere not acting alone he might be able to tell
w ho had made him do it, I was confronted with a rather stony silence. W hen
I asked bluntly, why, then, did he do it, my assistant answered impatiently,
“ H a v e n ’t you yet learned our customs? D o n ’t you know how batsakatsi
work? Myeni knew nothing: he was lunjiwe.” Only then did I realize how
obtuse I had been.
B atsakatsi are evildoers with unnatural pow ers associated the world
over with witches and sorcerers. In Swazi culture their pow ers are almost
unlimited, and their techniques range from diret poisoning to the throwing of
death from a d ista n c e .1 Lunjiwe was a type of witchcraft. I have since read
Wilkie Collins’s The M o o n s to n e , and in writing of the episode of Sidloko, I
recall the dramatic effect of the statement of Police Sergeant Cuff: “N o one
stole the d ia m o n d .” In that classic, the disappearance of the fatal stone was
unwittingly performed by the hero under the influence o f opium adminis­
tered to him without his knowledge at a time when he was suffering from
intense anxiety. In the Swazi case it was witchcraft, not opium, that was
believed to have guided the hand of Myeni to commit the crime, and to have
provided the real villains with defenseless humans as their tools.
B ecause of these beliefs, it was clear that evildoers could only be d e ­
tected by those with equivalent power. So while Sergeant van den Byl
assisted the police in working up a case of accidental homicide, Sidloko’s
clansmen, the Mahlalela, carried out their own investigations. These were
more difficult, more controversial, and more dangerous. For they knew
132 Texts & P erform ances
things that the police did not, and if they had would probably have dismissed
as irrelevant and irrational as well as illegal. They “k n e w ” that the killing of
the chief was no accident but rather the deliberate end o f a particular life in a
series of conflicts at different levels and betw een shifting factions. The
Mahlalela were among the oldest clans incorporated into the Swazi nation;
at different times in their complicated history, and more especially since the
boundary divided their people into Portuguese and British subjects and lim­
ited their available land, there had been sporadic outbursts of violence,
triggered by incidents that, if not trivial, were not serious enough to account
for the depth of reaction. Incidents such as a w opian’s adultery, the trespass
of a herd of cattle into a field of maize, a fire in a hut, the smuggling of a few
bottles of liquor across the border— these were immediate, not ultimate,
causes of dire misfortune. Similarly, the mere presence of a chief did not
signify internal unity or harmony. The appointment of a successor did not
necessarily heal old breaches; more frequently it simply gave his supporters
greater tem porary power. The appointment of every chief in Swaziland had
to be confirmed by the king. Thereafter, those who still opposed the choice
had to hide their antagonism. W hen a disaster such as the m urder of a chief
occurred, it was essential to uncover the underlying antagonism expressed
by persistent enemies.
The Mahlalela investigations were as clearly prescribed by Swazi codes
of justice as any written into a constitution. But in Swaziland, as in other
colonies, under a Witchcraft Ordinance drawn up by enlightened W estern
laywers who dismissed beliefs in magic as irrational, divination was p ro ­
hibited and the diviner, labeled a witch doctor, was subject to dire penalties.
The diviner’s search for witches, the real evildoers, the batsakatsi, was
equated with the crime of doing evil by witchcraft itself, so that there was a
com m on saying among the people: “ U nder the white m a n ’s law good men
are hanged and witches th riv e.” The Mahlalela went to work, without of
course informing the police. Several decisions had to be made, including the
choice of representatives to be sent to seek “the tru th” and which diviners
were to be consulted. Five senior men, four of them relatives, the fifth a
local governor, were selected. They left unobtrusively and crossed the b o r­
der into M ozam bique by foot, after dark. They were directed to consult two
diviners whose reputations even I had heard of while at the capital. They
deliberately did not consult a diviner equally well known who was within
half a mile of their own village. It was logical to believe that in foreign
territory they had a better chance of finding a diviner who would not be
influenced by any particular faction, and they would face less risk of being
discovered by the police of the country.
The first diviner the Mahlalela consulted used a very well known te ch ­
nique of “throw ing” several symbolic objects onto the ground, interpreting
their relative positions, and extracting verbal responses throughout the per­
formance. This diviner pointed out three specific relatives of the deceased;
laHlophe (a classificatory mother of Sidloko); her natural son; and a half
The Diviner a n d the Detective 133
brother w hose ow n m other was dead. The consultants knew that laHlophe
and her son w ere embittered by the fact that marriage cattle given for her
only daughter had been used by Sidloko to take a wife for himself. He
claimed this as his right since three head of marriage cattle received by his
father for his (Sidloko’s) sister had been included in the bride price for
laHlophe. While some m em bers of the family considered Sidloko, therefore,
to have the legal right to the d a u gh ter’s cattle, they criticized him for e xer­
cising it at that particular time: he already had three wives, but his half
brothers had none. Two of the consultants were very satisfied with the
diviner’s findings. The remaining three were not.
The second diviner gave a dramatic performance in a state of being
“p o s s e s s e d ,” an equally widely practiced technique. H e appeared in exotic
costum e, and though very old danced vigorously to the accom panim ent of
strange chants by his followers. H e normally spoke in a quiet voice, but
w hen he divined his voice was high-pitched and his words were cryptic. H e
alluded to quarrels— quarrels through jealousy, quarrels through malice,
quarrels through hatred— and to competition for wives, for cattle, and for
position. H e did not commit himself to any specific persons, but his ambigu­
ously diplomatic p ron ouncem ents confirmed the divided suspicions of all
those present. Both diviners received a fee for their services.
The consultants later returned to the second diviner and asked him to
use his pow ers for revenge upon those who had killed Sidloko, in return for
which he would receive additional payment. “R evenge” can be w orked by
magic, know n as lizekwa, which like lilumba (with which the policeman had
allegedly been bewitched through the powers of lunjiwe) is not physically
administered; it is retaliation sent from a distance. But whereas lilumba is
used for evil purposes and is forbidden, lizekwa is believed to bring onto
evildoers a punishment that they deserve, and is accepted by the Swazi as
legitimate and moral.
A greem ent to the successor to Sidloko had not been reached by the time
the case against the policeman cam e before the high court at M babane, the
administrative capital of Swaziland. The companions who had been with
Sidloko were among the witnesses, and several others of the Mahlalela went
with them in a hired lorry to hear the procedures. On a winding hill, the lorry
overturned. Three people were killed. One of the dead was the half brother
m entioned by the first diviner. The two other casualties had not been m en­
tioned by name but fitted the general pattern of discontent and disharmony
described by the second diviner. The policeman was exonerated by the
court, and transferred to ano ther district. It was argued, convincingly, that
he had acted un d e r provocation by the deceased. According to George
Steiner,

Murder incarnates disorder; the discovery and punishment o f the assassin

restore the structure o f the community to equilibrium. The instruments o f
discovery can be those o f direct exposure by the gods or furies. The clan or
134 Texts & Perform ances
com m unity may hunt as a vengeful pack. The killer may reveal him self through
error or remorse. Often the avenger must identify and track down his own
quarry. The history o f law is that o f the delegation o f vengeance; through
gradual division o f labour, the mob becom es the night w atch.2

The real-life dram a summarized above hinges on concepts and te ch ­

niques outside the experience of the average tw entieth-century W esterner,
in w hose society the detective appears as the professional equivalent of the
diviner. The similarities and the differences betw een the two representative
figures not only raise a num ber of general sociological questions on such
issues as modes of recruitment, levels of techniques, and the nature of
evidence, in different historical contexts, but also relate at a deep er
philosophical level to problems of causality and perspectives of reality.
Fortunately or unfortunately, while some of my best friends are divin­
ers, and divination is a topic explored with insight by many of my col­
leagues, my knowledge of detectives, w hether through personal
acquaintance or through the anthropological visiting card of participant o b ­
server, is nonexistent. To com pensate for this, however, I, like you, have
perm anent access to scripts in the form o f memoirs and diaries, and to that
extensive corpus of fiction know n as detective stories, as well as to the
com m entaries thereon by social historians and literary critics.3 According to
these scholars, the genre reflects social and historical conditions, as well as
portraying, with different degrees of skill, mysterious situations and fas­
cinating if unreal characters. Sergeant Cuff, Auguste C. Dupin, Sherlock
Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Marple, H ercule Poirot, Sam Spade, and
Charlie C han are famous throughout the W estern world; their extravaganzas
appear more credible and more familiar than trips with Carlos C a s ta n e d a ’s
D on Juan, or sessions of penetrating symbol exegesis by Victor T u r n e r ’s
mentors, Sandom o and M uchona the H ornet, or even the routine perform ­
ances of the anonym ous diviners consulted in the Sidloko case. Perhaps
detectives in real life may be compared to flesh-and-blood diviners, and
detectives in fiction to their anthropological representations.
There is an increasingly rich, beautiful and wonderful literature on di­
viners and their close spiritual kin, variously described as shamans,
mediums, clairvoyants, or psychics.4 In this brief essay I will restrict my
ethnographic references mainly to the Swazi, treating the sa ngom a as a
specific example of a more general category of specialists identified by the
essential quality of experiencing, not only believing in, communication with
guiding pow ers within their universe. Diviners express through their p e r­
form ances a way of thinking about and perceiving reality beyond that of the
visible and tangible.
The initial, and crucial, distinction betw een diviner and detective is the
mode of induction into their respective professions. Tangom a (plural) b e­
lieve that they are chosen or “called” to a vocation by spirit forces or powers
beyond their control and for which they require a unique initiation and
The Diviner a n d the D etective 135
training; detectives have only themselves to praise or blame— they make the
choice themselves, albeit from limited career possibilities. Swazi tradition
states that from the beginning ancestral spirits “e n tered ” the bodies of
selected earthly descendants, male or female, giving them wisdom to reveal
the causes of misfortune and death, and imbuing them with pow er to show
the way to security, health, and prosperity. This experience entitled them to
be both more respected and more feared than other tinyanga (“ specialists”)
who apprenticed themselves of their own volition. Possession is not a m eta­
physical concept of the spirit world; it is spirits themselves in their most
obvious manifestation.5
A short text based on two interviews with Sipiwa N kam bule, whom I
had know n as a teenager in the 1930s and again in 1966, illustrates the type of
situation and general process involved in becoming a sagom a.
After I married I w ent to visit my m other’s brother and while I was there he
slaughtered a beast for me. H e was a very good and generous man, but his wife
w as very jealous and I didn’t stay long. On my return hom e I heard my uncle
had died. I began to sleep very badly. His spirit kept on calling me. I did not
want to eat. I refused food. All my body ached. I got terribly thin. My shoul­
ders shook and my head split like a twig. I could not sleep. Every night I
dreamed. They were terrible dreams. My husband called one in yanga after
another to treat me. They could not help. My own mother was dead. Then one
night I saw Mahube (a s a n g o m a ). I had never seen him before, but I knew
where to find him. My husband fetched him and brought him to our home. He
said, “A spirit has entered into your wife. It must be brought out. It must
express itself.” I went with him to his village and he treated me. There were
others there, also seeking to tw asa (be reborn). I stayed there many m oons. I
thought I was mad. I did not want people, I did not want to speak. One night I
ran away. I heard a song; it was my song, a song that my u n cle’s spirit gave me.
I w ent along singing. People remembered seeing me and say they fed me, but I
cannot remember any o f this. I remember only that I came to a pool betw een
overhanging rocks. It was deep and still and I went inside. I have never been
able to swim, but I went down, dow n, down. And at the bottom I cam e across a
python and was not afraid. I took it in my hands. It looked at me. I was very
happy. And I found this in the pool! [She show ed me a shell tied around her
neck.] I cam e back to Mahube and told him all. H e too was happy for me. He
taught me how to look after m yself as a diviner. Then I was ready to p o tu ia (do
the final purification) and twasa.

Sipiwa grew from a healthy, cheerful girl into a strong, self-assured, h a n d ­

some w om an and a very successful sangom a. H er case history is typical of
the sequence of episodes that culminates in a person becoming a diviner. An
apparent illness is an essential initiation; the person is not sick but p os­
sessed; fulfillment requires training to maintain that connection.
A relatively high proportion of Swazi diviners have some physical ab ­
normality— a blind eye, a squint, a nervous twitch, a shrunken limb. Origi­
nally I interpreted this as a predisposing symptom, but I later realized that
apparent deformities were frequently subsequent effects brought about d u r­
ing the experience itself and that there were many diviners who w ere— and
136 Texts & Perform ances
remained— perfectly normal in appearance, and a few who were extremely
good-looking. A nother anthropologist, whose work I admire, has stated ex ­
plicitly that diviners are marginal men “through physiological abnormality,
psychological aberrancy, or social-structural inferiority or o u tsiderho od ,”
and has concluded that many exhibited psychotic or “paranoid tend encies.”6
The Swazi material does not support this conclusion; diviners may indeed be
marginal, but to describe them as psychotic or paranoid would be to equate
belief in the existence of the ancestors and their manifestations with
paranoia or psychosis. It would be more accurate to follow D u rk h e im ’s
insight that “no religion is false,” and to include among the believers the
formal representatives— the diviners and other practitioners— who express
the accepted belief. Swazi diviners act in response to appeals by clients, and
it is only during that period that they are conspicuously distinguished or
distinctive. Their calling imposes restrictions on their daily life that necessi­
tate self-discipline, aw areness, and control. Tangom a are in some respects
exceptional, and in this sense marginal, but they are not sick in the technical
sense of that term. Their clients, who are not fools, often include skeptics
w hose skepticism does not extend to a general disbelief but only to suspicion
about the qualifications of particular practitioners.
Despite the fact that the profession inspires respect and is often lucra­
tive, most Swazi do not wish to follow it, and political leaders and members
of the royal clan are positively discouraged from qualifying. To stop the
spirit, to “close the w a y ” to the call, how ever, is considered dangerous since
it may leave the person permanently delicate and deranged, an object of
spite not only by the spirit that has been rejected but also by others angered
at the reception given one of their kind. Several reasons were given to me for
not wanting to accept the call. Most informants expressed a traditional co n ­
servative Swazi attitude to individual ambition: to be exceptional and c o n ­
spicuously successful evokes jealousy; it is better to be “o rdinary” and
average. Others pointed out that a diviner’s life is circumscribed by taboos
on sex, food, and general behavior and, in the case of political figures, these
would interfere with their administrative duties. A few said that it is e x h au st­
ing to submit to the dem ands of a spirit stronger than oneself and to shoulder
the responsibilities of others. Underlying these explicit reasons (or rationali­
zations) is an aw areness of the dangers of the experience of communication
with “deep p o w e rs,” powers that are evil as well as good, that can be used to
send misfortunes as well as combat them.
The Swazi word for “p o w er” or “p o w ers” is emandla; ema- is a plural
prefix, and emandla, of which there is only the plural form, is co n ce p ­
tualized as all-inclusive. The king, as Ingwenyama, is believed to have
deeper pow er than any of his subjects and is reputed to be the greatest of all
diviners even without undergoing preliminary possession; pow er through
communication with ancestral spirits is part of the sanctity of kingship.
C ontact with societies driven practically, as well as metaphorically, by
mechanized means of pow er restricted but did not eliminate ta n g o m a . The
The Diviner a n d the Detective 137
Sidloko case illustrated how, during colonial rule, they continued to operate
illegally. Since independence in 1968, traditional specialists, including tan ­
gom a, have been openly recognized; new specialists are also on the scene,
and inevitably the social process of historic change has affected traditional
practices and standing. Tinyanga in general are members of a growing class
of entrepreneurs. Originally, in the preindustrial period, paym ent was lim­
ited and prestige dominant, but in recent years there has been runaw ay
inflation and m any tinyanga are now demanding exorbitant fees. To try to
protect the public from exploitation, Sobhuza called a meeting of alltin-
yangain May 1977, at which he asked them to approve a charter spelling out a
code of professional conduct and a scale of fees. It is possible that tangom a
will receive special consideration, and also be subjected to extra scrutiny;
diviners who have not been through a full training have often been criticized
as e m a h u m u s h i (“fra u d s”) by traditional believers. The myth of the diviner’s
sacred origin persists; ordinary curers may learn their trade by practice, but
diviners en ter it through suffering and illumination. Once qualified, they may
be called to serve the establishment, but they are not initiated, as are polit­
ical appointees, into their office. Divination is one of the few professions in
which independent, individual com m oners are able to gain special recogni­
tion, and to build up their reputations by demonstrable achievements.
Very different from this is the historical background of the detective and
the qualifications required for success. His profession is relatively recent,
his validation m undane, his ancestry commonplace, his thinking profane. He
was a p roduct of the city in a period of increasing violence. His motive was
generally profit, pure but not always simple. Greed, ambition, curiosity, and
excitem ent were factors that entered into his calculations. The man gener­
ally regarded as the first official detective in England was Captain Thom as de
Veil, a F ren c h Protestant refugee, who in the early part of the eighteenth
century acted as an agent for men of wealth and later becam e the first
perm anent magistrate at Bow Street, where he indulged in w hat was known
as trading ju stice— or, bluntly, selling protection to those who could afford
to pay him. The lesser officials were known as thief-takers. Without honor
and without shame, they were typified in Fielding’s novel (published in
1743)based on the life of Jonathan Wild, self-styled “Thief-taker General of
Great Britain and Ire la n d .” F a r from being the scourge of the underworld,
Wild was its most powerful member, a virtuoso criminal who ended his
career as thief-taker and thief-maker on the gallows in 1725.
C on tem po rary fiction reflected and embellished fact. In the gripping
story of Caleb Williams, originally titled Things as They Are (published in
1794), William Godwin portrays among his rich gallery of characters, one
nam ed Gines, who as a thief “not from choice but necessity” shifted from
thief-taker to thief and back again. He is presented as a most vile creature,
the evil, rapacious animal behind the mask of civilized man. Caleb, h o w ­
ever, regarded by critics as the first important detective in the English novel,
starts as a country boy of humble and honest parentage, trained in truth and
138 Texts & P erform ances
integrity. Obsessive curiosity even more than direct greed drives him to
penetrate a tragic m ystery in the life of his good master; in the triumph of
vindicating his own honor, Caleb destroys himself as well as his benefactor.
Historically, de Veil, Wild, Gines, and Caleb are no more unique to
Britain than tangom a to Swaziland. Their best known cross-cultural cousin
in crime, Francois Eugene Vidocq, was a product of France. Vidocq served
long periods in prison, but he so successfully mastered the m ethods o f the
villains o f the underworld with whom he associated that he was accepted, in
1809, into the service of the French police, where he rose to the position of
chief o f Sûreté (with a team of ex-convicts under his immediate command).
H e retired from this office in 1827 to start a business venture of his own, and
w hen this failed returned to the police, where he was given a more adminis­
trative role. In endeavoring to reinstate himself as a detective, he organized
a spectacular theft. His double role, however, was discovered; he was dis­
missed in disgrace and died in 1851 in poverty. His dangerous personality
and exotic career are perpetuated through literature. His early life is re­
corded in M é m o ir e s , published in 1828 under his name; later events are
reported by LeD ru (1857). His image also lurks behind the frightening figure
of B alzac’s Vautrain and, less distinctly, the enigmatic M onsieur Dupin of
E dgar Allan Poe, whom H ow ard Haycraft calls “the authentic father of the
detective story as we know it to d a y .”
O ver the years the detective became increasingly respectable and the
profession increasingly bureaucratized and “ scientific.” Thus in Britain, Sir
R obert Peel introduced a regular constabulary in 1829, which was supple­
m ented in 1842 by a special branch devoted to detective work; this replaced
the Bow Street R unners and laid the foundation of the Criminal Investigation
D epartm ent of Scotland Yard, which served as the model for many other
nations of the world.
Writing of the system in 1955, a form er chief, C om m ander Hugh Young,
presents an analysis of a highly complex organization of specialized d e p art­
m e n ts.7 H e describes the men simply as “neither imbeciles nor superm en,
but ordinary hum an beings with no occult pow ers of divination, who must
ho w ever possess such qualities as common sense, patience, training, experi­
ence, tenacity” (p. 48).
Allan Pinkerton, one of the more literate as well as more respectable
American detectives of the late nineteenth century (and founder of the
agency that still carries his name), declares in The Spiritualists and The
D etectives (New York, 1876)— a case study aimed at exposing spiritualists
as dangerous humbugs— that “all his life he had one steady aim and that has
been to purify and ennoble the detective service.”
Descriptions of Sherlock Holmes, probably the most famous fictional
detective, span some forty years (1887-1927). Holmes is developed into a
hero of the late Victorian and Edw ardian middle class: an upholder of justice
and morality, the perfect gentleman, with many accomplishments, som e­
what reserved and never crude, an am ateur violinist, and reader of good
The Diviner and the D etective 139
fiction. M ore recent heroes of fiction are drawn from all rungs of the social
ladder. At one end is Dashiel H a m m e tt’s Sam Spade, the tough, hard-boiled,
aggressive hero of The M altese Falcon, who speaks and acts in the idiom of
those to w hom m urder is real and bloody. At the other end is Dorothy
S a y e r’s creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, the epitome of snobbery and the
finely honed public school intellect, a man with little lust for life, an incom ­
plete man, imperfect by his perfection. Som ew here in betw een is Agatha
C hristie’s M onsieur Hercule Poirot, a man of Belgian extraction who talks in
a literal translation of schoolboy French, messes around with his “little gray
cells,” and solves improbable m urders by equally unpredictable operations.
These detectives, how ever, are not really a part of the established
fram ew ork of society; they belong neither to the police, the official
guardians of the law, nor to the closed circle within which the plot develops.
There is much to be said for the argument that “in fiction the detective is the
extra-legal superm an who is called in to accomplish by extraordinary m ea­
sures w hat is impossible within the traditional organization of society.”8
Though the detective of fact or fiction is not stereotyped as paranoid or
psychotic, nor as visibly marked by specific physical abnormalities, he may
be described as “marginal” in the sense that he is compelled by the nature of
his profession to cross established boundaries into the dangerous world of
evil and misfortune, so that in spite of the improvement of his image over
time, the imprint of his practical and profane origin remains.
E ach society has its appropriate list of misfortunes and crimes that
shape the paths of social dramas and underwrite individual tragedies.
Though misfortunes are not identical with crimes, the two overlap and in
formal structural terms both have been shown to indicate strains and c o n ­
flicts betw een groups and principles.9 W hereas the diviner’s role is more
narrowly ritualized, his services extend beyond the d e tec tiv e ’s field of
crime, partly because in the belief system in which the diviner works there is
no duality betw een mind and matter, and the diviner’s training intensifies his
perception.
The contrast betw een the involuntary inspirational recruitment of the
diviner and the deliberate empiricism of the detective is reflected in their
respective m o di operandi. Their clues are drawn from different levels of
reality; the medium is indeed the message. The diviner uses symbols (“o b ­
jects pregnant with meaning”)— the detective, empirical signs.10 Both articu­
late patterns of thought conditioned by particular types of social interaction.
Techniques of divination are extraordinarily varied. Some seem very
simple, others highly complex; they may be ranked in a hierarchy (like
courts of appeal), or be alternatives and equal, but even the superficially
most simple and “m echanical” are infused with the emotive and expressive
quality of ritual. T he diviner’s selection of pieces (stones, roots, bones) is
not arbitrary, and their positioning in a “th ro w ” is not considered random or
attributed to chance. His attitude is different from that of the gambler th ro w ­
ing dice or the croupier at the roulette table, and it is even more different
140 Texts & P erform ances
from the com m on-sense approach expected by the W estern empiricist. It is
in the condition of possession that the expressive element of ritual is most
dramatically obvious. '
Drawing again from my own notes, I extract my first impression of a
s a n g o m a to whom my assistant introduced me fairly soon after I had ar­
rived. Since we did not approach his hom estead in a way that would indicate
that we had come for a consultation, but simply as visitors, we were taken
into a hut w here he was sitting with a couple of cronies. I was surprised, and
a little disappointed, to find him insignificant in appearance— without
m arked physical blemish or charisma. H e was quite short and terribly thin,
his legs and arms like sticks; his voice was soft, his face calm, his eyes deep-
set and rather close together, almost expressionless. During this visit the
only behavioral peculiarity I noted was that he inhaled tobacco snuff fre­
quently and sneezed loudly and vigorously. He did not partake o f the beer
that the rest of us enjoyed. The only visible sign of his profession was a
necklace of small horns, but he wore a ragged jack et and could easily have
passed unnoticed in any crowd.
The next time I saw him he was transformed. We had come to consult
him officially and had earlier sent a message of our in ten t.11 We were taken to
an open courtyard and asked to wait. After about half an hour we heard
strange singing. Then he emerged, preceded by a small chorus of women.
W hen the song ended, my assistant opened the consultation with the for­
malized phrase “ Father, we beg the h e a d ” and placed on the ground a two-
shilling piece. H e picked it up casually without looking at us; I could not take
my eyes from him. In addition to the necklace I noted earlier, a strange array
o f animal-skin amulets adorned his arms and ankles; draped across his bare
chest were strips of hide and pouches of snakeskin attached to a cord d e c o ­
rated with shells and feathers of different birds. A young boy held a hemp
pipe for him and he inhaled deeply. Then he began to dance, or rather leap
around in a sort of controlled frenzy, his legs like springs. His eyes shone
like coals. In his right hand he held a switch decorated with beads and made
from the tail of a wildebeest: a strange animal reputed to have horns while
still in the womb. The tail is said to be sensitive to “the approach of an
e n e m y ,” and is rendered even more potent by being dipped in concoctions
that include the ground-up beak of a hawk (believed to “ smell” a carcass
from afar), the fat of the elusive, hardbacked armadillo, and the eye of the
powerful lion. H e shook the switch to and fro as he danced. After about half
an hour, he stood still and shouted in a high voice “ A gree.” The w omen
stopped their chanting and chorused “We agree,” and looked to us to take
our part. Then he began to speak. His voice had a metallic, ventriloquist’s
ring. H e m oved his head around as if he were hearing voices that did not
com e from us. He seemed to be far away, speaking in part to himself, in part
to people unseen. Yet every now and then he threw a quick glance in our
direction. H e had hit immediately on the general reason for our visit. “So m e­
thing is lost,” he said. My assistant responded with obvious approval, “We
The Diviner a n d the Detective 141
a g ree.” “ It is lost by th eft.” My response was soft, my a ssistan t’s loud.
“W hat is it?” Subsequent clues drew conflicting responses; he reduced the
stolen object to a “d eco ratio n” and put the blame on a visiting stranger, a
white person beyond his reach.
My assistant, an intelligent,, questioning person, com m ented to me
afterward that this diviner was much more successful in finding cattle that
had strayed or been stolen than he was in “ seeing” or finding a golden
brooch. My a ssistan t’s faith in divination was not destroyed, though his
confidence in that particular diviner was diminished. Though I have p re­
sented the case som ew hat cynically, subsequent interviews convinced me
that he was not conscious of deception, that during possession he “felt”
intensified awareness; he also admitted that he thought his own pow er was
on the decline and attributed this to the fact that he had not “re n ew e d ” his
medicines according to custom and had deviated from the “right” way of the
diviner.
The case for the detective rests on a rationality within a system of
logical and limited empiricism. In “A Study in Scarlet,” Holm es eloquently
elucidates this approach:

From a drop o f water . . . a logician could infer the possibility o f an Atlantic or

a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great
chain, the nature o f which is known w henever w e are shown a single link o f it.
Like all other arts, the Science o f Deduction and Analysis is one which can
only be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any
mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.12

W atson says of the great master:

H olm es is a little too scientific for my tastes— it approaches to cold ­

bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch o f the latest
vegetable alkaloid, not out o f m alevolence, you understand, but simply out o f a
spirit o f inquiry in order to have an accurate idea o f the effects. To do him
justice, I think that he would take it him self with the same readiness. He
appears to have a passion for definite and exact k n o w led g e.13

After World W ar I there is a change in C onan Doyle and in his creation.

In his autobiography there is a sense of the larger world beyond the control
of the individual or even of human reason. Holmes the detective cannot
solve the riddles of the universe. Conan Doyle himself became preoccupied
with spiritualism and wrote on it, but nowhere does he attribute H o lm e s ’s
unusual intuition and intelligence to this medium. Holmes was also depicted,
how ever, as both a cocaine addict and a m aster violinist (who played his
instrument to himself). Drugs and music are ancient ways of crossing the
boundaries of the ordinary into the realm of visions— extraordinary experi­
ences of the illusion of Reality.
Training o f m odern, real-life professional detectives, given in special
government-controlled colleges, is empirical and practical. The “official
142 Texts & P erform ances
w a y ” does not recognize insoluble mystery, though there are detectives in
real life as well as fiction who speak of “intuition,” and the extraordinary
successes of Albert Seedm an, chief of the N ew York City Police, in solving
crimes is attributed even by his colleagues to a “ special instinct.” 14
While it is easy enough to recognize a diviner at work, it is often deliber­
ately made difficult to “ spot a detective.” Occasionally he appears in uni­
form— not in costum e— and more often he is a plainclothes man maintaining
an anonymity rather than radiating a sacred identity.15 If he wears a mask, it
is as a disguise, easily put on and lightly discarded. As a rule the dram a is in
the situation, not in his performance, and though particularly in fiction the
great detective may behave as impressively as a'diviner, his instruments are
more “objective” and less symbolic.

“I,” says H olm es, “have not had time to exam ine this room yet, but with
your permission I shall do so n o w .”

A s he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass

from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the
room, som etim es stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat that he
appeared to have forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to him self
under his breath the w hole time, and little cries suggestive o f encouragement
and o f hope. A s I watched him I was irresistibly reminded o f a pure-blooded,
well-trained foxhound, as it dashes backward and forward through the covert,
whining in its eagerness, until it com es across the lost scent. For twenty min­
utes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the m ost invisible to
me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incom prehen­
sible manner. In one place he gathered up very carefully a little pile o f gray
dust; he examined with his glass the word upon the wall, going over every
letter o f it with the most minute exactness. This done, he appeared to be
satisfied, for he replaced his tape and his glass in his p o ck et.16

H o lm e s ’s colleagues, particularly those who belonged to the lower

breed of police detective, pursued false clues, albeit equipped with equally
“ scientific” tools. But Holmes knew the true from the false. H e was c o m ­
pletely self-confident. There was no problem he failed in the end to solve. It
was, after all, “elementary, my dear W atson, elem en tary.”
Diviners who are recognized as successful also boast excessively, and
those who use symbolic objects build up the confidence of others by re­
counting w ondrous tales of how they were acquired and what they might
mean. But they attribute their skills to unseen spirits, and their failures to
more powerful people with evil intentions. A ware of the hazards and
tragedies of the human condition, diviners also have the easier way out of
being able to blame failures on agents other than the self.
It should be obvious by now that diviner and detective do not look for
identical evidence in their pursuit of “the tru th .” Once people believe that
killing can be committed without close physical contact or connection with
the victim there is little point in an alibi. Even if there were no visible signs
of foul play, the verdict could be death by murder. It is the K oestler situa­
The Diviner a n d the Detective 143
tion, in which intent is action. The diviner who uncovers motives and inter­
prets them as deeds exacts revenge by similar means. The generalized
underlying pow er is linked to events in the lives of real people, providing a
theory of causality that, though couched in an idiom of personal relation­
ships, transcends the limited vision of natural causes provided by the em pir­
ical approach in contem porary science. In a world in which simultaneous
events impinge at m om ents of disjointed time, in which new characters
appear and old characters reappear, the diviner seeks to interpret conflicting
intentions as an essential element in a continuing process. The detective
begins his investigations with “the b o d y ” or the actual scene of the crime;
time is often crucial, and though motives are investigated, action is evi­
dence. E ven so, in many cases the detective, moving step by step, testing,
interrogating, observing, is unable to find the criminal. The deeper he digs,
the darker it gets.
Divination and associated practices and beliefs have often been dis­
missed as attem pts to explain the inexplicable and to deal with the un co n­
trollable in societies with limited technological knowledge. Misfortunes and
conflicts are multiplying throughout the contem porary world, and in spite of
longer life expectancy there are also more ways of dying— or of being
killed— than ever before. Though there is evidence that certain magical p ro ­
cedures are being replaced by procedures that are more empirically based
(“ scientific”), there is also evidence that diviners not only persist in third
world countries that are acquiring more effective technological expertise,
but are also growing in strength of numbers in sections of W estern societies
deluged by new technological gadgetry. Empirical science may do more than
it can explain.
Anthropologists have m oved beyond the early evolutionary approach to
“religion, magic, and science” and its essential, albeit obvious, functionalist
correctives to more theoretical analysis of styles, models, and levels of
“ stru c tu re s,” and the elusive forms of process. But questions of “m eaning,”
of values, continue to be asked because hum an beings, by being human,
think, feel, and articulate, and the answers continue to be controversial.17
In this essay I have avoided placing diviner and detective in the con ce p ­
tual fram w ork of ritual/science, irrational/rational, but have focused delib­
erately on performers and their perform ance in dramas that belong to real
life and its fictions (the boundary between them is not always clear). The
process of interaction continues after the particular denouem ent is reached
or the curtain rung down on a cast; we can only surmise what will happen
next; an end is inconclusive, the finale is not final.
I would suggest that detective and diviner represent not only two genres
of performers but two ways of thinking, distinguished in the words of J.
Robert O ppenheim er as “the way of time and history and the way of eternity
and timelessness, both of which are part of m a n ’s effort to com prehend the
world in which he lives. N either is com prehended in the other nor reducible
to it. They are, as we have learned to say in physics, com plem entary views,
144 Texts & Perform ances
each supplementing the other, neither telling the whole story” .18 The ordi­
nary detective engages in a type of thinking based on sense perceptions,
which by their very nature give information of the external world of physical
reality only indirectly; the diviner’s thinking is encom passed in the world­
view of Einstein: “Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the
empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in
it. Propositions arrived at by pure logical means are completely e m p ty ” .19
The diviner is not a primitive detective, not a prototype but an a rch e­
type, a being of a different quality and a different faith, with other powers of
perception and execution. His resources are sacred, his source is inspira­
tion, his actions are based on a coherent s y s te n r o f belief validated by faith.
In the m odern W estern world his apotheosis could be an O ppenheim er or an
Einstein; his netw ork of relatives extends not only to spiritualists and th e o ­
logians but boundary-breaking scientists; “intuition” is a mirror image of
inspiration or possession. The detective, who is more earthbound, more
narrowly pragmatic, operates directly within restrictions of “common
sen se ” in the public political arena. His less influential kin are to be found in
the ordinary police force, his more influential kin in a D epartm ent of Justice
or a Federal Bureau of Investigation. Detectives cannot eliminate diviners,
though they have various techniques of discrediting or manipulating them.
The diviner and detective who operate in the same existential world
may reach similar conclusions by different means, and different conclusions
by apparently similar means. In the Sidloko case, the diviners started off
with a set of assumptions that led to their finding other m urderers than the
policeman; the detectives of thepolice force exonerated the same man on
completely different grounds. Diviners and detectives are not mutually ex ­
clusive, nor does one necessarily replace the other psychologically or struc­
turally. Though they move in separate directions, their paths cross at dark
and critical intersections. A direct confrontation may evoke suspicion, fear,
or anger. They may pretend not to see each other, but they still know that
the other is there, and recognize a part of the self in the other.

NOTES

1. In Swazi culture, no linguistic distinction is drawn betw een witchcraft and

sorcery, though som e people are believed to be born with the evil or injected
with it, and others practice it deliberately through medicines or have specialists
bring destruction on their behalf. See Hilda Kuper, A n A fric a n A risto c ra c y
(N ew York, 1947), pp. 172-176.
2. George Steiner, In B l u e b e a r d ’s Castle (N ew H aven, 1971), p. 141.
3. A m ong the more com prehensive are Howard Haycroft, ed., The A r t o f the
M y s te r y S to ry (N ew York, 1946), and Ian Onsby, B l o o d h o u n d s o f H e a v e n
(Cambridge, M ass., 1976).
4. The growing literature includes Mircea Eliade’s S h a m a n i s m : A r c h a ic T e c h ­
niques o f E c s ta s y (Princeton, N .J., 1970); W eston La Barre’s The G h o st D a n c e
(Garden City, N .Y ., 1970); Claude L évi-Strauss’ The S a v a g e M i n d (Chicago,
1966); and I.M. L e w is ’ E csta tic Religion (Harmondsworth, England, 1971).
The Diviner a n d the Detective 145
5. There are several types o f p ossession. Among the Swazi possession by spirits o f
animals or foreigners is diagnosed as harmful and such spirits must be exorcised
(see Kuper 1947, pp. 163ff).
6. M ost notably, Victor Turner, R e v ela tio n a n d Divination in N d e m b u R itu a l
(Ithaca, 1975), pp. 23-24. Eliade and Lew is are among those w ho reject the
notion o f diviners as psychotics pr paranoid.
7. Hugh Young, M y F orty Years in the Yard (London, 1955).
8. William O. A ydelotte, “The D etective Story as a Historical S o u rce,” Yale R e ­
view 39: 76-95, 1950.
9. The ideas o f Evans-Pritchard in his pioneering study Witchcraft, Oracles a n d
M a g ic a m o n g the A z a n d e (Oxford, 1937) have been developed, elaborated, and
challenged. Writers w ho put the emphasis on bounded structures include M eyer
Fortes, Max Gluckman, Jack G oody, Max Marwick, George Park, and M onica
W ilson. A m ong those w ho are placing more emphasis on ideology are Edmund
L each, John Beattie, Mary Douglas, Tom Beidelman, and Victor Turner.
10. For a brilliant discussion o f divinatory sym bolism , see R e v ela tio n a n d D iv in a ­
tion, pp. 207-246. Follow ing Jung’s distinction betw een symbol and sign, Tur­
ner argues that the more esoteric a m an’s knowledge, the more sym bols
approximate to the status o f signs. “They becom e objects o f cognition and cease
progressively to be objects o f emotion. The more they are known, the more
they are mastered. The less they are known, the more they exert mastery. The
prestige and influence o f the ritual expert depend on the simple fact. N e v e r ­
theless in N dem bu society, even for diviners, the figurines and substances they
use never becom e true signs. This is because their meanings rest ultimately on
axiomatic beliefs in the existence o f mystical beings and fo rces” (pp. 208-209).
11. Examining the question o f why som e cases are taken to diviners and others to
officials in courts of law, Gluckman argues that “occult beliefs and practices
have a strong moral com ponent and are most significant when som e major
ambiguity [of principles] is present in social life, while other breaches o f moral­
ity can be dealt with in a straightforward rational secular manner.” Looking at it
as an outsider— not as an insider— he concludes that the occult belief “conceals
the conflict and disharmony it in fact produces” (Max Gluckman, The A l l o c a ­
tion o f R esp o n sib ility, M anchester, 1972). But all cases indicate som e moral
ambiguity, and choice o f techniques and tribunal are often arbitrary.
12. Sir Arthur Conan D o y le, The C o m p le te S h e r lo c k H o l m e s (N e w York, 1930),
p. 13.
13. Conan D o y le, p. 17.
14. Albert Seedm an and Peter Heilman, C h i e f ( N e w York, 1974).
15. Hilda Kuper, “Costum e and Identity,” C o m p a ra tiv e S tu d ie s in S o c ie ty a n d
H istory, 15(3): 348-367, 1973.
16. Conan D o y le, p. 31.
17. See for exam ple the essays in Bryan R. W ilson, ed., R a tio n a lity (N ew York,
1970).
18. J. Robert Oppenheimer, S c ie n c e a n d the C o m m o n U n d e rsta n d in g (N ew York,
1954), p. 69.
19. Lawrence L eShan, The M e d iu m , the M ystic, a n d the P hy sic ist (N ew York,
1966), p. 76.
 T il
A C T O R S , A U D IE N C E S , &
R E F L E X IV IT Y
 A D eath 'in D u e Time:
Construction o f S e lf a n d C ulture in
R itu a l D ram a*

Barbara G. Myerhoff

“W hen the fig is plucked in due time it is good for the tree and good for the fig.”

H um ankind has ever chafed over its powerlessness w hen facing the end of
life. Lacking assurance of immortality and insulted by the final triumph of
nature over culture, humans develop religious concepts that explain that, if
not they, someone or something has pow er and a plan. Thus death is not an
obscene blow of blind chance. N o religion fails to take up the problem,
sometimes affirming hum an impotence thunderously. N evertheless, people
yearn for a good death, timely and appropriate, suggesting some m easure of
participation, if not consent. Occasionally, a subtle collusion seems to occur
w hen human and natural plans coincide, revealing a mysterious agreement
betw een mankind, nature, and the gods, and providing a sense of profound
rightness and order that is the final objective of religion, indeed of all cultural
designs. Belief and reality are merged at such times and death is more
p artner than foe. The questions o f supremacy and pow er are rendered irrele­
vant, and an experience of unity and harmony prevails.
This essay describes such an event, tracing its origins and its co n se­
quences over a period of several m o n th s .1The entire sequence is treated as a
single event, a dram a of several acts. It is a social dram a in Victor T u r n e r ’s
sense, but it is more strikingly a cultural drama, illustrating how a group
draws upon its rituals and symbols to face a crisis and make an interpreta­
tion. It handles conflicts, not of opposing social relationships, but of opposi­
tion betw een uncertainty and predictability, powerlessness and choice. A

*1 am much indebted to many people who helped me in various w ays, including

Andrew Ehrlich, Laura Geller, Walter Levine, Riv-Ellen Prell-Foldes, Beryl Mintz,
Morris R osen, Chaim Seidler-Feller, and Dyanne Simon.

149
150 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
final reconciliation is achieved w hen the community selects from and
modifies its prevailing conceptualizations, using some traditional materials,
improvising and developing others, until it has made a,m yth of a historical
episode and found messages of continuity, hum an potency, and freedom
amid threats o f individual and social obliteration.
s

DEATH A S A CULTURAL DRAMA

Jacob K ovitz died in the middle of the public celebration of his ninety-fifth
birthday, among friends and family gathered to honor him at the Aliyah
Senior C itizens’ Community Center, which had become the focus of life for
a small, stable, socially and culturally homogeneous group of elderly Jews,
immigrants to America from Eastern Europe. The case is remarkable for
several reasons: it illustrates the use of ritual to present a collective interpre­
tation of “reality,” and it dem onstrates the capacity o f ritual to take account
of unplanned developm ents and alter itself in midstream into a different
event. Further, it illuminates how one man can make himself into a co m m en ­
tary upon his life, his history, and his community, mirroring his social world
to itself and to himself at the same time. The case is an example of the
transformation of a natural, biological event— death— into a cultural drama,
shaped to hum an purpose until it becomes an affirmation rather than a nega­
tion of life.
Though quite rare in our times, such deaths are not unprecedented. The
French social historian Philippe Aries2 refers to ritualized, ceremonial deaths
as “ta m e d ,” and points out that in the Middle Ages, knights of the chanson
de geste also tam ed their deaths. Forew arned by spontaneous realization of
imminent departure, the dying person prepared himself and his surrou nd ­
ings, often by organizing a ritual and presiding over it to the last. Death was
a public presentation, often simple, including parents, children, friends, and
neighbors. Tam ed deaths were not necessarily emotional. Death was both
familiar and near, evoking no great fear or awe. Solzhenitsyn, too, as Aries
notes, talks about such deaths among peasants. “They d id n’t puff th e m ­
selves up or fight against it and brag that they w e r e n ’t going to die— they
took death calmly. . . . And they departed easily, as if they were ju st moving
into a new h o u s e .” Death was not romanticized or banished. It remained
within the household and domestic circle, the dying person at the center of
events, “determining the ritual as he saw fit.”3
Later, as the concept of the individual emerges, distinct from the social
and communal context, the moment of death came to be regarded as an
opportunity in which one was most able to reach— and publicly present— a
full awareness of self. Until the fifteenth century, the death cerem ony was at
least as important as the funeral in W estern Europe.
In reading these historical accounts the anthropologist is reminded of
A D eath in Due Time 151
similar practices in preliterate societies. H ere is a description of a death
c erem ony among the E skim o s:4
In som e tribes an old man wants his oldest son or favorite daughter to be the
one to put the string around his neck and hoist him to his death. This was
always done at the height o f a party where good things were being eaten, where
everyone— including the one w ho was about to die— felt happy and gay, and
which would end with the a n g a k o k [shaman] conjuring and dancing to chase
out the evil spirits. At the end o f his performance, he would give a special rope
o f seal and walrus skin to the “execution er,” w ho then placed it over the beam
on the roof o f the house and fastened it around the neck o f the old man. Then
the tw o rubbed noses, and the young man pulled the rope. . . .”

All the elements of a tamed death are present also in the case of J a c o b ’s
birthday party: his foreknowledge of death, its occurrence in a public cere­
mony, which he directed, his attitude of calm acceptance, his use of the
occasion to express the meaning of his life, and the presence and participa­
tion of those with w hom he was intimate.
Unlike the Eskim o or the medieval knight, Jacob constructed his death
alone, without support of established ritual and without expectation of c o o p ­
eration from his community. This was his own invention, and his only p a rt­
ner was M a la k h -h a m o v e s , the Angel of Death, who cooperated with him to
produce a trium phant celebration that defied time, change, mortality, and
existential isolation. Through this ritual, Jacob asserted that his community
would continue, that his way of life would be preserved, that he was a
coherent, integrated person throughout his personal history, and that som e­
thing of him would remain alive after his physical end.
It is not surprising that this accomplishment was achieved through
ritual, which is unique in its capacity to convince us of the unbelievable and
make traditional that which is unexpected and new.

THE W O RK OF R ITU AL

Ritual is prominent in all areas of uncertainty, anxiety, impotence, and

disorder. By its repetitive character it provides a message of pattern and
predictability. In requiring enactm ents involving symbols, it bids us to par­
ticipate in its messages, even enacting meanings we cannot conceive or
believe; our actions lull our critical faculties, persuading us with evidence
from our own physiological experience until we are convinced. In ritual,
doing is believing. Ritual dramas especially are elaborately staged and use
presentational more than discursive symbols, so that our senses are aroused
and flood us with phenomenological proof of the symbolic reality which the
ritual is portraying. By dramatizing abstract, invisible conceptions, it makes
vivid and palpable our ideas and wishes, and, as G eertz has observed, the
lived-in order merges with the dream ed-of o rd e r.5 Through its insistence on
152 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
precise, authentic, and accurate forms, rituals suggest that their contents are
beyond question authoritative and axiomatic. By high stylization and ex tra ­
ordinary uses— of objects, language, dress, gestures, vand the like— ritual
calls attention to itself, so that we cannot fail to see that its contents are set
apart from ordinary affairs. .
Ritual inevitably carries a basic message of order, continuity, and pre­
dictability. E ven w hen dealing with change, new events are connected to
preceding ones, incorporated into a stream of precedents so that they are
recognized as growing out of tradition and experience. Ritual states enduring
and underlying patterns, thus connecting past, present, and future, abrogat­
ing history and time. Ritual always links fellow participants but often goes
beyond this to connect a group of celebrants to wider collectivities, even the
ancestors and those unborn. Religious rituals go farther, connecting m an­
kind to the forces of nature and purposes of the deities, reading the forms of
m acrocosm in the microcosm. And when rituals employ sacred symbols,
these symbols may link the celebrants to their very selves through various
stages of the life cycle, making individual history into a single
phenomenological reality.
Ritual appears in dangerous circumstances and at the same time is itself
a dangerous enterprise. It is a conspicuously artificial affair, by definition not
of m undane life. Rituals always contain the possibility of failure. If they fail,
we may glimpse their basic artifice, and from this apprehend the fiction and
invention underlying all culture.

Underlying all rituals is an ultimate danger, lurking beneath the smallest and
largest o f them, the more banal and the most ambitious— the possibility that we
will encounter ourselves making up our conceptions o f the world, society, our
very selves. We may slip into that fatal perspective o f recognizing culture as
our construct, arbitrary, conventional, invented by mortals.6

Rituals then are seen as a reflection not of the underlying, unchanging nature
of the world but of the products of our imagination. When we catch o u r­
selves making up rituals, we may see all our most precious, basic u n d e r­
standings, the precepts we live by, as mere desperate wishes and dreams.
With ritual providing the safeguards of predictability, we dare ultimate
enterprises. Because we know the outcome of a ritual beforehand, we find
the courage within it to enact our symbols, which would otherwise be p re ­
posterous. In ritual, we incorporate the gods into our bodies, return to
Paradise, and with high righteousness destroy our fellows.
What happens when a ritual is interrupted by an unplanned d e ­
velopment, when it is not predictable, when accident rudely takes over and
chaos menaces its orderly proceedings? What do we do if death appears out
of order, in the middle of a ritual celebrating life? Such an occurrence may
be read as the result of a mistake in ritual procedure, as a warning and
message from the deities, or as a devastating sign of human impotence. But
there is another possibility. The unexpected may be understood as a
A D eath in D ue Time 153
fulfillment of a different, loftier purpose, and a new, higher order may be
found beneath the appearance or may take account of reality and thereby
fulfill its purposes. Thus a new meaning and a new ritual emerge, made from
older, extant symbols and rites.

E T H N O G R A P H IC SETTING

Before describing the birthday party, some social and historical background
is necessary. At the time of this study, the relevant community consisted of
about 4,000 people at the most. These individuals were spread over an area
of about six miles around the Aliyah Center; the center m embership in­
cluded 300 people, about 200 of whom were present at the birthday party.
The great majority of people belonging to the center were betw een 85 and 95
years old. M ost had been residents in the neighborhood for 20 to 30 years.
N early all of them had lived as children in the little Jewish towns and
settlements of E astern E urope known as shtetls. Yiddish was their mother
tongue and Yiddishkeit, the folk culture built around the language and c u s­
toms of the shtetl, was a major emotional and historical force in their lives,
though their participation in and identification with it varied in intensity
throughout the life cycle. In great numbers, these people and others like
them had fled their original homes, intent on escaping the extrem e antisemit­
ism, intractable poverty, and political oppression, which were becoming
increasingly severe around the turn of the century.
As adolescents and young adults, they came to the N ew World and
w orked as small m erchants, unskilled laborers, craftsmen, and artisans in
the E a stern industrial cities of America. On reaching retirement age, with
their children educated, married, and socially and geographically remote,
they drifted into their present community, drawn to the mild climate, the
ocean, and the intense Yiddishkeit of the area. N o w they were isolated and
old, but freed from external pressures to be “A m erican .” In this condition
they turned more and more toward each other, revived Yiddish as their
preferred language, and elaborated an eclectic subculture, which combined
elements from their childhood beliefs and customs with modern, urban
A m erican practices and attitudes, adapting the mixture of their present
needs and circumstances.
These circum stances were harsh. Family members were distant or
dead. Most of the group were poor, very old, and frail, suffering from social
and communal neglect, extrem e loneliness, and isolation. As a people, they
were of little concern to the larger society around them. Their social, polit­
ical, physical, and economic impotence was pronounced, and except on a
very local level, they were nearly invisible.
A dded to these afflictions was their realization that the culture of their
childhood would die with them. The Holocaust wiped out the shtetls and
nearly all their inhabitants. The center members clearly apprehended the
154 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
impending complete extinction of themselves as persons and as carriers of a
culture. The group was entirely homogeneous in age, and except for c e re m o ­
nial occasions, no real intergenerational continuity existed. Their own m em ­
bership were being depleted constantly, and there was no others to replace
them. Death and impotence were as real as the weather, and as persistent.
M oreover, the social solidarity of the group was weakened by the m em ­
b e r ’s ambivalence toward one another, due in part to enforced association
and perhaps, too, to displaced anger. Their cultural traditions inclined them
to a certain degree of distrust of nonkin, and despite the stability,
homogeneity, and distinctiveness of past experiences, their circum stances,
and extensive time spent together, they had less than entirely amiable feel­
ings for each other. Factions, disagreements, and longstanding grudges
m arred their assemblies, most of which took place in secular and sacred
rituals within the center building and on benches outside it.
But despite their ideological discord they were united by their common
past. This was expressed as Yiddishkeit, in reference to the local customs,
language, and beliefs that characterized these p eople’s parental homes and
early life in the shtetl. Very few were orthodox in religious practices. They
had broken with strict religious Judaism before leaving the Old Country. A
great many were agnostic, even atheistic and antireligious. But all were
passionately Jewish, venerating the historical, ethnic, and cultural aspects of
their heritage. M ost had liberal and socialist political beliefs and had been
active at one time or another in the Russian Revolution, various w o rk e rs ’
m ovem ents, labor unions, or similar political activities. Since the H olocaust,
all were Zionists, despite some ideological reservations concerning national­
ism. F o r them Israel had becom e an extension of their family, and its p e r­
petuation and welfare were identified as their own. This constellation of
beliefs and experiences— the childhood history of the s h tetl, Yiddish lan­
guage and culture, secular and ethnic Judaism, and Zionism— were the sa­
cred elements that united th e m .7
The subculture the grpup had developed comprised several distinct lay­
ers of historical experience: that of Eastern Europe, where they spent their
childhood; of E astern America from the turn of the century until the 1930s
and 1940s, w here they lived as adults; and of the California urban ghetto of
elderly Jews, w here they spent the latter part of their lives. Though there
were many discontinuities and sharp disruptions during these 80 to 95 years,
there were some notable cultural and social continuities, particularly be­
tw een childhood and old age. These continuities seem to have helped them
adapt to their co ntem po rary circumstances. N ot surprisingly, many of their
rituals and symbols emphasized those situational continuities.
It is likely that the elders would not have elaborated this subculture had
they remained em bedded in a context of family and community. Their very
isolation gave them much freedom for originality; they improvised and in­
vented, unham pered by restraints of their original traditions and social dis­
approval of authorities. They had only themselves to please. For the first
A D eath in D ue Time 155
time since coming to America, now in old age they were able to indulge fully
their old love of Yiddish and Yiddishkeit without fear of being ridiculed as
greenhorns by their sophisticated, assimilated children. N ow living again in
a small, integrated community that emphasized learning, and where Yiddish­
keit flourished and individual freedom and autonom y were exercised in iso­
lation from mainstream society, they were able to revive their earlier
responses to conditions they had known before. Their present poverty, im­
potence, physical insecurity, and social marginality repeated shtetl exis­
tence. Such continuity is adaptive despite its painful contents. People who
have always know n that life was hard and fate unreliable, if not downright
treacherous, are not surprised to encounter these hazards again. They know
how to cope with them and are not discouraged. They never expected life to
be easy or happy. “H a p p in e ss,” said Sarah, “happiness is not having a
broken leg.”

D R A M A S OF E X ISTE N C E , A R E N A S FOR A P P E A R IN G

Ritual is a form by which culture presents itself to itself. In ritual, not only
are particular messages delivered, but the ritual also creates a world in
which culture can appear. Further, rituals create a setting in which persons
can appear, by appearing in their culture, by devising a reality in which they
may stand as part. In their rituals, we see persons dramatizing self and
culture at once, each made by the other. There is a satisfying replication:
Jacob made up himself and his interpretation of his life through his autobio­
graphical writings. H e performed the final chapter w hen he died. C enter
mem bers make up a world, which they enact. They enact their own exis­
tence as individuals as they participate in that world. J a c o b ’s death
strengthened the center m e m b e rs ’ construction by making it more real, and
by implying through his aw esom e performance that their constructed world
was validated by divine or at least supernatural approval.
Center life, though vital and original, was conspicuously made-up. It
was an assembly of odds and ends, adaptations and rationalizations built out
of historical materials that were used to deny that their present life was an
accom m odation to desperate circumstances. It was further strained by the
necessity of binding together people who had not chosen to be with each
other, who were rejected by their kin, and who had lost most of those peers
whom they regarded as truly like-minded. All culture is an invention, made-
up in this sense, but greater depth of time and few er contradictions often
make its work easier than it was here. Only continual and protracted c ere ­
monies could keep center mem bers from appreciating their differences; only
regular, elaborate rituals could convince them that their way of life was
real— a given and not a construct.
The center provided a stage for the dramatization of their collective life,
and also a place in which they could dramatize themselves as individuals. In
156 A c to r s , Audiences, & Reflexivity
it, they could appear, becom e visible, as continuing, living people. Without
the center they were so cut off from human contact that it was possible to
doubt their own existence. They needed each other as^ witnesses, particu­
larly because in extrem e old age the senses no longer give powerful m es­
sages of vitality. F o r many, sight, hearing, taste have faded. Wakefulness
has merged into dozing. M emory has overtaken the present and blended
with dream. There is no one to touch them or w hom they touch. They must
reassure themselves of existence by receiving verification from outside their
bodies. Their peers are only minimally useful in this: first, because they too
are less acute and responsive; second, because they are in competition with
each other for attention and often withhold or manipulate it to control one
another.
The desire for attention is the dominent passion or dynamic force that
gives the community its unique form. The attention of outsiders in general,
and younger people in particular, is eagerly sought. The center people turn
to them in an attem pt to make a record of their existence and to leave behind
with ano ther a record that they have been here. Having a photograph taken,
being interviewed and tape-recorded, even being listened to by someone
who will return to the outside world and who will rem em ber them after they
are gone is urgent. By these activities the center people create arenas for
appearing. Being overlooked is worse than being regarded as difficult, fool­
ish, irrational, or selfish. Neglect is more unbearable. Naturally, if they can,
they prefer to be seen as worthy and important, but in this they require
certain u ncom m on attributes: a willing audience, a com m and of themselves,
and dem onstrable accomplishments.
Lacking assurance that their way of life will continue, finding no con so ­
lation that a God would rem em ber their name, unable to draw on their own
bodies for evidence of continuing vitality, they turn to each other as unwill­
ing but essential witnesses to their dramas of existence. In their ceremonial
life they created themselves, witnessed each other, proclaimed a reality of
their own making.
Jacob was one of the most fortunate members of the community. He
had the wherewithal to stage a drama not merely of existence but of honor.
With his large, successful family, his accomplishments, and his com m and of
himself, he was able to mount an exalted, ambitious proclamation on the
meaning and value of his life.
F o r many years, birthdays had been celebrated by the members in their
small, dilapidated center. These were collective occasions, grouping to ­
gether all those born within the month— modest, simple affairs. Only Jacob
K ovitz had regular birthday parties for him alone and these parties were
great fetes. This reflected his unusual standing in the group. He was a kind of
patriarch, a formal and informal leader of the group. He had served as its
president for several years, and even after leaving the community to live in a
rest home, he returned frequently and had been named president emeritus.
He was the oldest person in the group and the most generally venerated. No
A D eath in D ue Time 157
one else had managed to provide leadership without becoming entangled in
factional disputes. Jacob regarded himself, and was generally regarded by
others, as an exemplar, for he had fulfilled the deepest wishes of most people
and he embodied their loftiest ideals.
Jacob K ovitz enjoyed the devotion of his children, four successful,
educated sons, who de m o n strate d their affection by frequently visiting the
center and participating in many celebrations there. At these times they
treated the m em bers with respect and kindness, and they were always gener­
ous, providing meals, entertainm ent, buses for trips, and other unusual kind­
nesses. M oreover, w hen the sons came they brought their wives, children,
and grandchildren, many of whom showed an interest in Judaism and Yid-
dishkeit. Family was one of the highest values among all the old people, and
here was a family that all could wish for.
Jacob himself had been a worker. He had made and lost money, but
never had he lost his ideals and concerns for charity and his fellows. Without
a formal education he had becom e a poet and was considered a Yiddishist
and a philosopher. H e was not religious but he had religious knowledge and
practiced the life of an ethical and traditional Jew. Jacob was a courageous
and energetic man. After retirement he became active in organizing senior
citizens’ centers, and he drew the attention of the outside world for what his
people regarded as the right reasons. All this he managed with an air of
gentleness and dignity. Without dignity, no one was considered worthy of
esteem by them. Without gentleness and generosity, he would have aroused
sufficient envy to render him an ineffective leader. He was accepted by
everyone in the group, a symbol and focus of its fragile solidarity.
Jacob also symbolized a good old age. He advised his followers on how
to cope with their difficulties, and he dem onstrated that old age was not
necessarily a threat to decorum , pleasure, autonom y, and clarity of mind.
Following the program suggested by M oore and M yerhoff,8 the ritual of
J a c o b ’s p arty-m em orial is described in three stages: (1) its creation, (2) its
perform ance, and (3) its outcom e, sociologically and in terms of its efficacy.

C R E A TIO N OF THE C E R E M O N Y

The explicit plan in the design of the cerem ony specified a format with
several ritual elements that had characterized J a c o b ’s five preceding birth­
day parties. These were: (1) a brocha, here a traditional H eb rew blessing of
the wine; (2) a welcome and introduction of important people, including the
entire extended K ovitz family, present and absent; (3) a festive meal of
kosher foods served on tables with tablecloths and flowers and wine, paid
for mostly by the family but requiring some donation by members to avoid
the impression of charity; (4) speeches by representatives from the center,
sponsoring Jewish organizations under which the center operates, and local
and city groups, and by each of the Kovitz sons; (5) entertainm ent, usually
158 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
Yiddish folk songs played by a m em ber of the family; (6) a speech by Jacob;
(7) a donation of a substantial sum to the center for its programs and for
Israel by the family; (8) an invitation to those present to make donations to
Israel in honor of the occasion; and (9) a birthday cake, songs, and candles.
The form at had a feature often found in secular ritual dramas. Within it
fixed, sacred elements alternated with more open, secular aspects, as if to
lend authenticity, certainty, and propriety to the open, more optional sec­
tions. In the open sections, modifications, particularizations, and innova­
tions occur, tying the fixed sections more firmly to the situational details at
hand, together providing a progression that seems both apt and traditional.
In this case, for example, the brocha, songs,' donations, and toasts are
predictable; they are unvarying, ritual elements and symbolic acts. The
personnel, as representatives, are also symbolic, signifying the boundaries
of the relevant collectivities and the social matrix within which the event
occurs, but the specific contents of their speeches are less predictable, al­
though they inevitably repeat certain themes.
In this case the repeated themes of the speeches touched on the c h arac­
ter, accom plishm ents, and personal history of Jacob; the honor he brought
to his community and family; the honor the family brought to their father and
their culture; the im portance and worth of the attending center m em bers; the
beauty of Yiddish life; the commonality of all those individuals, organiza­
tions, and collectivities in attendance; and the perpetuity of the group and its
way of life.
The style of the cerem ony was another ritual element, familiar to all
those who had attended previous parties, and familiar because it was drawn
from a wider, general experience— that of many public festivities among
strangers and mass media entertainment. It reached for a tone that was
jovial, bland, mildly disrespectful, altogether familiar, and familial. It was
set by a master-of-ceremonies (a son, Sam) who directed the incidents and
the participants, cuing them as to the desired responses during the event,
and telling them what was happening as the afternoon unfolded. Despite a
seemingly innocuous and casual manner, the style was a precise one, reach­
ing for a particular mood— enjoyment in moderation, and cooperation, un­
flagging within the regulated time frame. Things must always be kept moving
along in ritual; if a lapse occurs, self-consciousness may enter, and the mood
may be lost. This is especially important in secular rituals, which are at­
tended by strangers or people from different traditions, to w hom the sym ­
bols used may not be comprehensible. Ritual is a collusive drama, and all
present must be in on it.
In this case specific direction was unusually important. The old people
are notoriously difficult to direct. They enter reluctantly into someone e lse ’s
plans for them; for cultural and psychological reasons, they resist authority
and reassert their autonom y. F or biological reasons they find it hard to be
attentive for extended periods of time and cannot long delay gratification.
Programs must be short, emotionally certain and specific, skillfully inter­
A D eath in D ue Time 159
spersing food and symbols. The people can be engaged by the calling of their
names, by praise, and by identifying them with the guest of honor. But their
importance must not be inflated overm uch for they are quick to perceive this
as deception and insult. F urtherm ore, the old people must not be too greatly
aroused, for many have serious heart conditions. Perhaps it was the intense
familiarity with their limits as an audience or perhaps it was the uncertainty
that underlies all secular ceremonies that caused the designers to select as
the m aster of ceremonies a directive leader, who frequently told the audi­
ence what was occurring, what would come next, and reminded them of
what had occurred, reiterating the sequences, as if restatem ent in itself
would augment the sense of tradition and timelessness that is sought in
ritual.
The affair was called a birthday party, but in fact this was a metaphor.
The son Sam said in his speech, “Y ou know, Pa d o e s n ’t think a birthday is
worth celebrating without raising money for a worthy Jewish c a u s e .” The
event had a more ambitious purpose than merely celebrating a mark in an
individual life. The birthday party m etaphor was used because it symbolized
the p e o p le ’s m em bership in a secular, modern society. But as only a birth­
day, it had little significance to them. N one of them had ever celebrated their
birthdays in this fashion. Indeed, it was the custom to rem em ber the day of
their birth by reckoning it on the closest Jewish holiday, submerging private
within collective celebrations. More importantly, the event was a simcha, a
yontif, a m itzva h— a blessing, a holiday, a good deed, an occasion for cul­
tural celebration and an opportunity to perform good works in a form that
expressed the m e m b e r s ’ identity with the widest reaches of community,
Israel and needy Jews everywhere.
Its most important message was that of perpetuation of the group b e ­
yond the life of individual members. This was signified in two ways, both of
which were innovations and departures from K o v itz ’s usual birthdays. First,
temporal continuity was signified by the presence of a group of college
students, brought into the center during the year by a young rabbi who
sought to prom ote intergenerational ties. It was decided that the young
people would serve the birthday meal to the elders as a gesture of respect.
That a rabbi was there with them was incidental and unplanned, but turned
out to be important. Second was J a c o b ’s announcem ent that he was d o n a t­
ing funds for his birthday parties to be held at the center for the next five,
years, w hether he was alive or not. Occasions were thus provided for people
to assemble for what would probably be the rest o f their lives, giving them
some assurance that as individuals they would not outlive their culture and
community.
A nother of the repeated ritual elements was the personnel involved.
Most o f these have been identified, and reference here need be made only to
two more. These were the director of the center and its president. The
director, Abe, was a second-generation assimilated American of Russian-
Jewish parentage. A social worker, he had been with this group a dozen
160 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
years and knew the people intimately, usually functioning as their guardian,
protector, interpreter, and mediator. He, along with Jacob and his sons,
developed the form at for the cerem ony and helped conduct it. The presi­
dent, M oshe, was a man of 82, with an Hasidic background.9 He was a
religious man with a considerable religious education, and a Yiddishist. It
was to him that questions about Judaism and its customs were likely to be
referred. After Jacob he was the most respected man in the group, and one
of J a c o b ’s closest friends.
Symbols carry implicit messages, distinguishable from the overt ingre­
dients intended by the designers of a ritual; they are part of its creation but
not clearly planned or controlled. W hen they ,are well chosen and un d er­
stood, they do their work unnoticed. The following are the symbols within
the planned cerem ony. Others were spontaneously brought in when the
cerem ony was interrupted and they will be taken up later.
M any of the symbols employed have been mentioned. Every Yiddish
word is a symbol, evoking a deep response. The man Jacob and his entire
family were significant symbols, standing for success, fulfillment of Judaic
ideals, and family devotion. The dignitaries and the publics they re p re ­
sented, too, were among the symbols used. The birthday m etaphor with
cake, candles, and gifts was a symbol complex along with “M .C .,” “Guest of
H o n o r ,” and the tone of the program, which incorporated American, con­
tem porary secular life. Also present were symbols for the widest extension
of Judaic culture and its adherents, in the form of references to Israel and
m itzvot of charity and good works. The attendance of small children and
young people symbolized the continuity and perpetuity of Judaism. The
traditional foods symbolized and evoked the m e m b e rs ’ childhood experi­
ences as Jews; they were the least ideological and possibly most powerfully
emotional of all the symbolic elements that appeared in the ritual.

A N T E C E D E N T CO N TEXT OF THE R IT U A L

E v ery one at the center knew that Jacob had been sick. F o r three months he
had been hospitalized, in intensive care, and at his request had been re­
m oved by his son Sam to his home so that he could be “properly taken care
of out of the unhealthy atm osphere of a hospital.” Before Jacob had always
resisted living with his children, and people interpreted this change in at­
titude as indicative of his determination to come to his birthday party. The
old people were aware that Jacob had resolved to have the party take place
w hether he were able to attend or not. People were impressed, first, because
Jacob had the autonom y and courage to assert his opinions over the reco m ­
mendations of his doctors— evidently he was still in charge of himself and his
destiny— and second, because J a c o b ’s children were so devoted as to take
him in and care for him. But most of all they were struck by his determ ina­
tion to celebrate his birthday among them. They were honored and awed by
A D eath in D ue Time 161
this and waited eagerly for the daily developments about the celebration:
details concerning J a c o b ’s health, the menu for the party, the entertain­
m ent— all were know n and discussed at length beforehand.
As the day grew close, much talk concerned the significance of the
specific date. It was noted that the celebration was being held on J a c o b ’s
actual birthday. The party was always held on a Sunday, and as the date and
day coincided only every seven years, surely that they did so on this particu­
lar year was no accident. Again, they noticed that the month of March was
intrinsically important in the H ebrew calendar, a month of three major holi­
days. And someone said that it was the month in which M oses was born and
died. H e died on his birthday, they noted.
A w eek before the event, it was reported that Jacob had died. M any
who were in touch with him denied it, but the rum or persisted. Two days
before the party, a young w om an social worker, a close friend of J a c o b ’s,
told the college group that she had dream ed Jacob died immediately after
giving his speech. And she told the people that J a c o b ’s sons were advising
him against coming to the party but that he would not be dissuaded. N othing
would keep him away.
The atm o sp here was charged and excited before the party had even
begun. Abe, the director, was worried about the old p e o p les’ health and the
effects on them of too much excitement. There were those who insisted that
on the birthday they would be told Jacob had died. J a c o b ’s friend M anya
said, “H e ’ll come all right, but he is coming to his own funeral.”
A nd w hat were J a c o b ’s thoughts and designs at this point? It is possible
to glimpse his intentions from his taped interviews with a son and a gran d­
daughter. In these, com m on elements emerge: he is not afraid of death but
he is torm ented by confusion and disorientation w hen “things seem upside
w a y s ,” and “not the way you think is real.” Terrible thoughts and daydream s
beset him, but he explains that he fights them off with his characteristic
strength, remarking, “I have always been a fighter. T h a t ’s how I lived, even
as a youngster. I ’d ask your opinion and yours, then go home and think
things over and come to my own decisions.” H e describes his battles against
senility and his determination to maintain coherence by writing, talking, and
thinking. H e concludes,

I was very depressed in the hospital. Then I wrote a poem. Did you see it? A
nice poem . So I’m still living and I have something to do. I got more
clearheaded. I controlled myself.

Jacob had always controlled himself and shaped his life, and he was not
about to give that up. Evidently he hoped he might die the same way. “I ’ll
never change” were his last words on the tape.
It was difficult for Jacob to hold on until the party and to write his
speech, which seemed to be the focus of his desire to attend. Its contents
were notew orthy in two respects: first, his donation and provision for five
162 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
m ore parties; and second, his statement that whereas on all his previous
birthdays he had important messages to deliver, on this one he had nothing
significant to say. W hy, then, the desperate struggle to make this statement?
The message, it seems, was that he could and would deliver it himself, that
he was still designing his life and would do so to the end. The preparations
for and the m ann er of the s p e e c h ’s delivery conveyed and paralleled its
message.

THE P E R F O R M A N C E OF THE R IT U A L

The day of the party was fair and celebrants came streaming toward the
cen te r out of their rented rooms and boardinghouses down the small streets
and alleys, several hours too early. That the day was special was clear from
their appearance. The w om en came with white gloves, carrying perfectly
preserved purses from other decades, and wearing jew elry, unmistakable
gifts from their children— golden medallions bearing grandchildren’s names,
“T ree of Life” necklaces studded with real pearls; Stars of David; a gold
pen dant in the form of the letter Chai, H ebrew for life and luck. All were
a n n o un cem ents of connections and rem em brance. Glowing halos from u m ­
brellas and bright hats colored the ladies’ expectant faces. Men wore tidy
suits polished with use over well-starched, frayed shirts.
The cen ter halls, too, were festively decorated and people were for­
mally seated. At the head table was the Kovitz family and around it the
dignitaries. Jacob, it was learned, was behind the curtain of the little stage,
receiving oxygen, and so the cerem ony was delayed for about half an hour.
At last he came out to applause and took his seat. Music called the assembly
to order and people w ere greeted with shalom, H ebrew for peace. The guest
of hon or was presented, then introsuctions followed, with references to the
K ovitz family as m ispoche (“kin”), the term finally being used for the entire
assembly. By implication, all present were an extended family. Each m em ­
ber of the K ovitz family was named, even those who were absent, including
titles and degrees, generation by generation. The assembly was greeted on
behalf of “Pa, his children, his children’s children, and even from their
children.” The religious brocha in H ebrew was followed by the traditional
secular Jewish toast L e ’ Cheiim. Sam set out the order of events in detail,
including a specification of when J a c o b ’s gift would be made, when dessert
would be served (with speeches), when the cake would be eaten (after
speeches), and so forth. The announcem ent of procedures was intended to
achieve coordination and invite participation. The audience was apprecia­
tive and active. People applauded for the degrees and regrets from family
m em bers unable to attend, and recognized the implicit messages of co n ­
tinuity of tradition, respect from younger generations, and family devotion
that had been conveyed in the first few moments.
The meal went smoothly and without any public events, though pri­
A D eath in D ue Time 163
vately Jacob told the president, M oshe, that he wished people would hurry
and eat because “M a la kh -ha m o ves [the Angel of Death, G o d ’s messenger] is
near and h a s n ’t given me much tim e .”
As dessert was about to be served, Sam, acting as m aster of c e re ­
monies, took the m icrophone and began his speech, in which he recounted
some biographical details of J a c o b ’s life and certain cherished ch aracteris­
tics. H e em phasized his fa th e r’s idealism and social activism in the Old
C ountry and in America, and spoke at some length about the courtship and
marriage of his parents. Though his m other had died 24 years ago, she
remained a strong influence in keeping the family together, he said.
During S a m ’s speech, Jacob was taken backstage to receive oxygen.
People were restive and worried, but Sam assured them that Jacob would
soon return and the program continue. Eventually Jacob took his seat, lean­
ing over to tell one of the young people in English, and M oshe in Yiddish,
that he had little time and wished they would hurry to his part of the p r o ­
gram, for now, he said, “Ich reingle sich m utten M a lakh-ham oves. “I am
wrestling the Angel o f D e a th .”
The program was interrupted briefly when all those in charge recog­
nized J a c o b ’s difficulty in breathing and gave him oxygen at his seat. A
pause of about ten minutes ensued. The thread of the ritual lapsed entirely
while people w atched Jacob being given oxygen. M oshe and Abe w ere w o r­
ried about the impact of this sight on the old people. The previous year
som eone had died among them and they had been panic-stricken. But now
all were rather quiet. They talked to each other softly in Yiddish. At last Sam
took the microphone again and spoke extem pore about his fa th e r’s recent
life, filling the time and maintaining the ritual mood until it becam e clear that
Jacob was recovering. Sam told the group that m aybe his wife’s chicken
soup— proper chicken soup prepared from scratch with the love of a Yid-
dishe m am a— had helped sustain Jacob. This was received with enthusiastic
applause. M ost of those in the audience were w om en and their identity was
much bound up with the role of the nurturant, uniquely devoted Jewish
mother. In fact, the earlier mention o f the importance and rem em brance of
the K ovitz m other had been received by many w om en as a personal tribute.
They also appreciated the appropriateness of a daughter-in-law showing this
care for a parent, something none of them had experienced. Sam w ent on to
explain that since leaving the hospital Jacob had “em barked on a new career,
despite his old a g e.” He was teaching his son Yiddish and had agreed to stay
around until Sam had mastered it completely. “ Since I am a slow learner, I
think h e ’ll be with us for quite awhile.” This too was full of symbolic
significance. The suggestion of new projects being available to the old and of
the passing on o f the knowledge of Yiddish to children were important
messages.
Sam went on, extending his time at the microphone as he waited for a
sign that Jacob was able to give his speech. By now Sam was improvising on
the original form at for the ritual. H e made his an no un cem en t o f the gift of
164 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
m oney, half to the center for cultural programs, half to Israel, reminding the
audience that Jacob did not believe a birthday party was worth celebrating
unless it involved raising funds for deserving Jewish causes.
Still Jacob was not ready, so the microphone was turned over to Abe,
who improvised on some of the same themes, again and again, touching
important symbolic chords. He, like Sam, referred to Jacob as a stubborn
man and to Jew s as a stiff-necked people, tenacious and determined. He
reassured the assem bly that they were important people and would be re­
m em bered, that outsiders came to their center to share their sim cha and
appreciate their unique way of life. They, he said, like Jacob, would be
studied by scientists one day, for a better understanding of the indivisibility
of mental and physical health, to see how people could live to be very old by
using their traditions as a basis for a good and useful life. He finished by
emphasizing J a c o b ’s most revered qualities: his devotion to his people, his
learning and literacy, and his courage and dignity. He was an example to
them all. “A n d ,” he went on, “you, too, you are all exam p les.”
At last the sign was given that Jacob was ready. Abe announced the
revised sequence of events: J a c o b ’s speech in Yiddish, then in English, then
the dignitaries’ speeches, then the cake. Jacob remained seated but began
his speech vigorously, in good, clear Y iddish.10 After a few sentences he
faltered, slowed, and finished word by word. H ere are selections from his
speech in translation:

Dear friends: Every other year I have had something significant to say, some
meaningful m essage w hen we came together for this yontif. But this year I
d o n ’t have an important m essage. I d o n ’t have the strength. . . . It is very hard
for me to accept the idea that I am played out. . . . Nature has a good way o f
expressing herself w hen bringing humanity to the end o f its years, but w hen it
touches you personally it is hard to comprehend. . . . I do have a wish for
today. . . . It is that my last five years, until I am 100, my birthday will be
celebrated here with you . . . whether I am here or not. It will be an opportunity
for the members o f my beloved center to be together for a s im c h a and at the
same time raise m oney for our beleaguered Israel.

T he message was powerful in its stated and unstated concepts, made even
more so by the dramatic circumstances in which it was delivered. J a c o b ’s
passion to be heard and to complete his purpose was perhaps the strongest
communication. H e was demonstrating what he had said in the earlier inter­
views, namely, that he sustained himself as an autonom ous, lucid person,
using thinking, speaking, and writing as his shields against self-dissolution
and senility.
Jacob finished and sat down amid great applause. His and the audi­
e n c e ’s relief were apparent. H e sat quietly in his place at the table, folded his
hands, and rested his chin on his chest. A moment after Sam began to read
his fa th e r’s speech in English, J a c o b ’s head fell back, wordlessly, and his
m outh fell open. Oxygen was administered within the surrounding circle of
A D eath in D ue Time 165

his sons as Abe took the microphone and asked for calm and quiet. After a
few m om ents, his sons lifted Jacob, still seated in his chair, and carried him
behind the curtain, accom panied by M oshe, Abe, and the rabbi.
Soon Abe returned and reassured the hushed assembly that a rescue
unit had been called, that everything possible was being done, and that
Jacob w anted people to finish their dessert.

Be assured that he knew the peril o f coming today. All w e can do is pray. H e ’s
in the hands o f God. His sons are with him. He most o f all wanted to be here.
R em em ber his dignity and yours and let him be an example. Y ou must eat your
dessert. You must, w e must all, continue. We go on living. N o w your dessert
will be served.

People complied and continued eating. There w ere many who quietly
spoke their certainty that Jacob was dead and had died in their midst. The
conviction was strongest among those few who noticed that w hen the rabbi
and M oshe left Jacob behind the curtain, they w ent to the b athroom before
returning to their seats. Perhaps it was only hygiene, they said, but it was
also know n that religious Jews are enjoined to wash their hands after contact
with the dead. H en ce the gesture was read as portentous.
The room was alive with hushed remarks:

H e ’s gone. That was how he wanted it. He said what he had to say and
finished.
It w as a beautiful life, a beautiful death.
T here’s a saying, w hen the fig is plucked in due time it’s good for the fig and
good for the tree.
Did you see how they carried him out? Like Elijah, he died in his chair. Like a
bridegroom.
He died like a t z a d d i k .“
M o ses also died on his birthday, in the month o f N is a n .12

O rder was restored as the dignitaries were introduced. Again the ritual
themes reappeared in the speeches: J a c o b ’s w ork among senior citizens, the
honor of his family, his exem plary character, and so forth. A letter to Jacob
from the m ayo r was read and a plaque honoring him proffered by a council­
man. T hen a plant was given to his family on behalf of an organization, and
this seemed to be a signal that gifts were possible and appropriate. One of
the assem bled elderly, an artist, took one of his pictures off the wall and
presented it to the family. A w om an gave the family a poem she had written
honoring Jacob, and an other brought up the flowers from her table. The
m o m entum of the ritual lapsed completely in the face of these spontaneous
gestures. People were repeatedly urged by Abe to take their seats. The
artist, H eschel, asked what would be done about the birthday cake now that
Jacob was gone, and was rebuked for being gluttonous. With great difficulty
166 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
Abe regained control of the people, reminding them sternly that the cere­
m ony had not been concluded. There remained one dignitary who had not
yet spoken, Abe pointed out, and this was insulting to the group he repre­
sented.
Abe was improvising here, no longer able to utilize the guidelines of the
birthday m etaphor. The cerem ony theatened to break apart. In actuality,
A be was worried about letting people go home without knowing J a c o b ’s
fate. It would be difficult for him to handle their anxieties in the next few
days if they w ere left in suspense. N o one w anted to leave. The circum ­
stances clearly called for some closure, some provision of order. The last
dignitary began to talk and Abe w ondered w haM o do next. Then the phone
rang and everyone was still. The speaker persisted, but no one listened. Abe
cam e forward and announced what everyone already knew.

God in His w isdom has taken Jacob away from us, in His mystery He has taken
him. So you must understand that God permitted Jacob to live 95 years and to
have one o f his most beautiful moments here this afternoon. You heard his last
words. We will charter a bus and go together to his funeral. He gave you his
last breath. I will ask the rabbi to lead us in a prayer as we stand in solemn
tribute to Jacob.

People stood. A bout a dozen men drew yalm ulkes out of their pockets and
covered their heads. The rabbi spoke:

We have had the honor o f watching a circle com e to its fullness and close as we
rejoiced together. We have shared Jacob’s wisdom and warmth, and though
the w ays o f God are mysterious, there is meaning in what happened today. I
was with Jacob backstage and tried to administer external heart massage. In
those few m om ents with him behind the curtain, I felt his strength. There was
an electricity about him but it was peaceful and I was filled with awe. When the
firemen burst in, it felt wrong because they were big and forceful and Jacob was
gentle and resolute. He was still directing his life, and he directed his death. He
shared his w isdom , his life with us and now it is our privilege to pay him
hom age. Send your prayers with Jacob on his final journey. Send his sparks up
and help open the gates for him with your thoughts. We will say Kaddish.
” Yitgadal v e y ita k a d a s h s h m e h rabba . . . [Sanctified and magnificent be Thy
Great N a m e ].” 13

The ritual was now unmistakably over but no one left the hall. People
shuffled forward tow ard the stage, talking quietly in Yiddish. M any crossed
the room to em brace friends, and strangers and enemies em braced as well.
A m ong these old people physical contact is usually very restrained, yet now
they eagerly sought each o th e rs ’ arms. Several wept softly. As is dictated by
Jew ish custom , no one approached the family, but only nodded to them as
they left.
There were m any such spontaneous expressions of traditional Jewish
mourning custom s, performed individually, with the collective effect of
transforming the celebration into a commem oration. Batya reached down
A D eath in D ue Time 167

and pulled out the hem of her dress, honoring the custom of rending o n e ’s
garments on news of a death. Som eone had draped her scarf over the mirror
in the ladies’ room, as tradition requires. Heschel poured his glass o f tea into
a saucer. T hen Abe took the birthday cake to the kitchen, and said, “ We will
freeze it. We will serve it at J a c o b ’s memorial when we read from his book.
He w o u ld n ’t want us to throw it away. He will be with us still. You see,
people, Jacob holds us together even after his d e a th .”
Finally, the center had emptied. People clustered together on the
benches outside to continue talking and reviewing the events of the
afternoon. Before long, all were in agreement that Jacob had certainly died
among them. The call to the rescue squad had been a formality, they agreed.
Said M oshe,

You see, it is the Jewish w ay to die in your community. In the old days, it was
an honor to wash the body o f the dead. N o one went aw ay and died with
strangers in a hospital. The finest people dressed the corpse and no one left him
alone for a minute. So Jacob died like a good Yid. N o t everybody is so lucky.

O ver and over, people discussed the goodness of J a c o b ’s death and its
appropriateness. M any insisted that they had known beforehand he would
die that day. “ So why else do you think I had my yalm ulke with me at a
birthday p a rty ? ” asked Beryl. Sam com m ented, “After a scholarly meeting it
is custom ary to thank the man. Jacob was a scholar and we thanked him by
accom panying him to H eaven. I t ’s good to have many people around at such
a time. It shows them on the other side that a man is respected where he
came fro m .” B essie’s words were “H e left us a lot. N o w the final ch ap ter is
written. N o? W hat more is there to say. The book is closed. W hen a good
man dies, his soul becom es a word in G o d ’s b o o k .” It was a good death, it
was agreed. Jacob was a lucky man. “Zu mir gezugt “It should happ en to
m e ” was heard from the lips of many as they left.

SO CIO LO G ICAL C O N SE Q U E N C E S

Two formal rituals followed. The funeral was attended by most of the group
(which, as promised, went in a chartered bus), and a shloshim or thirty-day
memorial was held at the center, w hen the birthday cake was indeed served,
but without candles.
At the funeral, the young rabbi reiterated his earlier statem ent c o n c e rn ­
ing the electricity he had felt emitting from Jacob just before he died, d e ­
scribed how Jacob used his remaining strength to make a final affirmation of
all he stood for, and revealed that, at the last m om ent of his life, Jacob—
surrounded by all the people he loved— believed in G o d . 14 In his eulogy,
J a c o b ’s son Sam said, “In our traditions there are three crow ns— the crow n
of royalty, the crow n of priesthood, and the crow n of learning. But a fourth,
168 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
the crow n of a good name, exceeds them all.” Spontaneously, at the
graveside, without benefit of direction from funeral officials, many old men
and w om en cam e forward to throw a shovel of earth on the grave, som e­
times themselves tottering from the effort. Each one carefully laid down the
shovel after finishing, according to the old custom. Then they backed away,
forming two rows, to allow the Angel ofvDeath to pass through. They knew
from old usage w hat was appropriate, what m ovem ents and gestures suited
the occasion, with a certainty that is rarely seen now in their lives. M oshe,
one of the last to leave, pulled up some grass and tossed it over his shoulder.
This is done he explained later, to show that we rem em ber we are dust, but
also that we may be reborn, for it is written: “May they blossom out of the
X

city like the grass of the e a rth .”

A month later, the shloshim was held. In it a final and official interpreta­
tion of J a c o b ’s death was forged and shared. He was a saint by then. He
must be honored, and several disputes w ere avoided that day by people
reminding one ano ther of J a c o b ’s spirit of appreciation and acceptance of all
of them and his wish for peace within the center. The cake was eaten with
gusto as people told and retold the story of J a c o b ’s death.
Funeral and shloshim were the formal and public dimension of the
ou tcom e of J a c o b ’s death. Informal, private opinions and interpretations are
also part of the outcom e. These were revealed in subsequent individual
discussions, informal interviews, casual group conversations, and a for­
malized group discussion on the subject. On these private, casual occasions
people said things they had not, and probably would not, express in public,
particularly about matters that they knew might be regarded as old-
fashioned, un-American, or superstitious. In confidence, several people e x ­
pressed w o nd er at and some satisfaction in w hat they regarded as the divine
participation in the event. One lady said with a chuckle, “You know, if the
Lo rd God, Himself, would bother about us and would come around to one of
our affairs, well, it makes you feel m aybe you are som ebody after all.” Said
Bessie,

You know, I w ou ld n ’t o f believed if I didn’t see with mine eyes. M yself, I d o n ’t

really believe in God. I d o n ’t think Jacob did neither. If a man talks about the
Angel o f Death when h e ’s dying that d o n ’t necessarily mean anything.
E verybody talks about the Angel o f Death. It’s like a saying, you know what 1
mean? But you gotta admit that it was not a regular day. So about what really
went on, I’m not saying it w as God working there, but w ho can tell? You could
never be sure.

Publicly the subject was discussed at great length. A debate is a c h er­

ished, traditional form of sociability among these people. And this was cer­
tainly a p roper topic for a p ilp u lP A kind of pilpul was held with a group in
the cen ter that had been participating in regular discussions. One theme
considered by them in detail was the young social w o rk e r’s dream , in which
she anticipated the time and m anner of J a c o b ’s d e a th .16 D ream s, they
A D eath in D ue Time 169
agreed, must be carefully evaluated, for they may be sent by God or the
dem ons, and as such are not to be taken as prophecy on face value. After
much discussion one of the learned men in the group said that perhaps the
young w om an should have fasted on the day after the dream. This assures
that the previous night’s dream s will not come true. Sam quoted Psalm 39, in
which King David prayed to God to know the measure of his days. The
request was denied because G od decreed that no man shall know the hour of
his death. Could it be that God granted Jacob what he had denied King
David? W hy had the girl had the dream? She knew nothing of these matters.
W hy had it not come to one of them, who understood the significance of
dream s? After an hour or so of disagreement only two points were clear.
First, that the news of the dream had received widespread circulation before
the birthday party; and second, that it added to p eop le’s readiness to partici­
pate in a com m em oration instead of a party. It made what happened more
mysterious and more acceptable at the same time. Did it convince anyone
that G od had had a hand in things? Some said yes and some no. Perhaps the
most general view was that expressed by M oshe, who on leaving said,
“ Well, I w o u ld n ’t say yes but on the other hand I w o uld n’t say n o .”
A n o th e r aspect of the ritual’s outcome was the impact of the day on
various outsiders. The attending dignitaries were included in the m om ent of
c o m m u n ita s that followed J a c o b ’s death, and were duly impressed. Before
leaving, one of the Gentile politicians told the people around her, “I have
always heard a lot about Jewish life and family closeness. W hat I have seen
here today makes me u nderstand why the Jews have survived as a p e o p le.”
This praise from an official, a stranger and a Christian, to a group that has
always regarded Christians with distrust and often deep fear, was a source of
great satisfaction, a small triumph over a historical enemy, and an unplanned
but not unim portant consequence of the ritual.
The events of the day were reported widely, in local new spapers and
soon in papers all over the country. M embers of the audience were given
opportunities to tell their version of w hat happened w hen children and
friends called or w rote to ask them, “Were you there that day . . .?” The
impact on the center m em bers of the dispersion of the news to an outside
world, ordinarily far beyond their reach, was to give them a tem porary
visibility and authority that increased their importance, expanded their so­
cial horizons, and accelerated their communication with the world around
them. These, along with their heightened sense of significance, were the
ap paren t sociological consequences of the ritual.

THE E F F IC A C Y OF THE R IT U A L

H o w shall the success of a ritual be estimated? H ow is one to decide if it has

done its work? These are among the most complex and troublesom e q u es­
tions to be faced in dealing with this topic. It is not impossible to examine
170 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
efficacy in terms of the explicit intentions of the performers. But it is n eces­
sary to go beyond this and inquire, too, about its unintended effects and the
implicit, unconscious messages it carries. Then, one may ask, for whom did
it work? F o r there may be many publics involved. In religious rituals even
the deities and the unseen forces are addressed and, it is hoped, moved by
the performance. The official plan for a^ritual does not tell us about this.
M any levels of response may be specified, for this is not given by the formal
organization of a ritual. Sometimes audiences or witnesses are more engaged
by watching a ritual than are its central subjects and participants. W hen we
inquire about conviction, it is necessary to ask also about the degree and
kind of conviction involved, since a range of belief is possible, from objec­
tion and anger if the ritual is incorrectly performed, through indifference and
boredom , to approval and enjoyment, and finally total and ecstatic convic­
tion. The long-range as well as immediate effects of the event must be taken
into account, since rituals have consequences that reach past the moment
when they occur; their outcom e is usually to be known only in due time. It is
impossible to take up all these questions. The fieldworker never has such
complete information. And the symbols dealt with in ritual are by definition
inexhaustible in their final range of referents. Subjects cannot verbalize the
totality of their apprehensions in these areas because so much of their re­
sponse is unconscious. Inevitably there are blanks in our inquiry, and ulti­
mately the fieldworker interested in such questions takes responsibility for
inference in explanation, going beyond the observed behavior and “h a rd ”
data; to do otherwise would mean losing all hope of understanding the issues
that make ritual interesting in the first place. In discussing ritual, an analysis
of outcom e is always an interpretation and an incomplete one.
All rituals are efficacious to some degree merely by their taking place.
They are not purposive and instrumental, but expressive, communicative,
and rhetorical acts. Their stated purpose must be regarded not as an illustra­
tion of a piece of life but as an analogy. N o primitive society is so unempir-
ical as to expect to cause rain by dancing a rain dance. N ot even Suzanne
L a n g e r’s cat is that naive. A rain dance is, in B u rk e ’s felicitous phrase, a
dance with the rain, the dancing of an attitude. The attitude is the one
described earlier— collectively attending, dramatizing, making palpable un­
seen forces, setting apart the flow of everyday life by framing a segment of it,
stopping time and change by presenting a perm anent truth or pattern. If the
spirits hear and it rains, so much the better, but the success of the ritual does
not depend on the rain. If a patient at a curing cerem ony recovers, good, but
he or she need not do so for the ritual to have successfully done its work. A
ritual fails w hen it is seen through, not properly attended, or experienced as
arbitrary invention. Then people may be indifferent enough not to hide their
lack of conviction; their failure or refusal to appear to suspend disbelief is
apparent and the ritual is not even efficacious as a communication.
In the case of J a c o b ’s death, matters are complicated because two
rituals must be considered: the intended birthday party, a designed, directed
A D eath in D ue Time 171
secular affair with nonreligious sacred nuances, transformed spontaneously
by a collectivity into a nonplanned, fully sacred religious memorial.
The birthday party, as far as it went, was a success. It is hard to imagine
how it could have failed to make its point and achieve its purposes, which
were entirely social. It was convincing to all concerned and received by the
audience with appreciation and cooperation. It dem onstrated social co n n ec ­
tions and implied perpetuity of a collectivity beyond the limited life span of
its central figure. It honored the man Jacob and his friends, values, and
traditions. It reached beyond its immediate audience to include and allow for
identification with a wider, invisible Jewish community. The goals of the
birthday party were relatively modest and not unusual for secular cere­
monies of this sort. The turning point occurred w hen Jacob died; the m es­
sage and impact of the d a y ’s ceremonies took on a new dimension, and the
sacred ritual replaced the social, more secular one.
In dying w hen he did, Jacob was giving his last breath to his group, and
this was understood as a demonstration of his regard for them. His apparent
ability to choose to do what is ordinarily beyond hum an control hinted at
some divine collaboration. The collective and spontaneous reversion to tra ­
ditional religious death rituals was hardly surprising. Death customs are
always elaborate and usually constitute one of the most long-lasting and
familiar areas of religious knowledge. According to some authorities, saying
K addish makes one still a Jew no matter what else of the heritage one has
relinquished.17 The saying of Kaddish makes palpable the community of
Jews. According to the rabbi at the party-memorial, the Kaddish always
includes not only the particular death at hand but all a p e rs o n ’s dead beloved
and all the Jews who have ever lived and d ied .18 M ourners coalesce into an
edah, a community, connected beyond time and space to an invisible group,
stretching to the outerm ost reaches of being a people, K ol Israel—the a n ces­
tors, those unborn— and most powerfully, o n e ’s own direct, personal experi­
ences of loss and death.
F o r religious and nonreligious alike that day the Kaddish enlarged and
generalized the significance of J a c o b ’s death. At the same time, the Kaddish
particularized his death by equating it with each p e rs o n ’s historical, subjec­
tive private griefs, thus completing the exchange betw een the collective and
the private poles of experience to which axiomatic symbols refer. W hen this
exchange occurs, symbols are not mere pointers or referents to things be­
yond themselves. A transformation takes place” : symbols and object seem
to fuse and are experienced as a perfectly undifferentiated w hole.” 19 Such
transformations cannot be planned or achieved by will, because emotions
and imagination, as D. G. Jam es observes, operate more like fountains than
m ach ines.20 Transform ation carries participants beyond words and word-
bound thought, calling into play imagination, emotion, and insight and, as
Suzanne L anger says, “altering our conceptions at a single s tro k e .” Then
participants conceive the invisible referents of their symbols and may
glimpse the underlying, unchanging patterns of human and cosmic life, in a
172 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
triumph of understanding and belief. F ew rituals reach such heights of inten­
sity and conviction. W hen this occurs, all those involved are momentarily
draw n together in a basically religious, sometimes near ecstatic mood of
gratitude and wonder. That J a c o b ’s death was a genuiiie transformational
m om ent was attested to by a profound sense of com m u nita s and fulfillment
that people appeared to have experienced'with the recitation of the Kaddish.
We are interested in the unintended, implicit messages conveyed by
ritual as well as the planned ones. Therefore, in this case it must be asked,
W hat were the consequences of the set of items that suggested uncanny,
inexplicable factors— J a c o b ’s references to the presence of the Angel of
D eath, his seeming ability to choose the moment of his death, and the
prophecy of his death in the form of a dream ? The questions are particularly
im portant becau se ritual is supposed to deliver a message about predictabil­
ity and order, and here w ere intrusions beyond hum an control and therefore
disorderly and unpredictable.
Paradoxically, these very elements of the uncanny, mysterious, and
unpredictable made the ritual more persuasive and more convincing rather
than less so. All these surprises were clothed in a traditional idiom, and
while perplexing were not unfamiliar. There w ere well-used accounts for
such matters; there w ere precedents for prophetic dream s, the presence of
the Angel of Death, the deaths of the tzaddikim, and of Moses. Conceptions
existed for handling them, and if most people involved did not deeply believe
in the dogma, they were not unwilling to consider the possibility that expla­
nations previously offered, though long unused, might have some validity
after all.
R enew ed belief in God at the end of life is hardly rare, and indeed it
might even be that people w ere more reassured than frightened at the turn of
events of the day. W hen a man dies, as Evans-Pritchard reminds us, a moral
question is always posed: not merely, W hy does man die? But why this man
and why now? In our secular society, we are often left without an answ er,
and these celebrants, like most who have abandoned or drifted away from
their religion, w ere ordinarily alone with these questions, dealing with ulti­
m ate concerns, feebly and individually. The result of J a c o b ’s death, h o w ­
ever, was the revival of the idea, or at least the hope and suspicion, that
sometimes people die meaningfully; occasionally purpose and propriety are
evident. D eath in most cases may be the ultimate manifestation of disorder
and accident but here it seemed apt and fulfilling. M ore often than not death
flies in the face of human conception, reminding us of our helplessness and
ignorance. It finds the wrong people at the wrong time. It mocks our sense of
justice. But here it did the opposite and made such obvious sense that it
cam e as a manifestation of order. It helped fulfill the purposes of ritual,
establishing and stating form drawn forth from flux and confusion.
R em arkably enough, in this ritual the distinction betw een artifice and
nature was also overcom e. The ritual, though unplanned, was not suscepti­
ble to the danger of being recognized as human invention. Ironically, be­
A D eath in D ue Time 173
cause no one was clearly entirely in control— neither Jacob nor the designers
and directors— and because it unfolded naturally, the ritual was received as
a revelation rather than as a construction. It did not suffer the usual risks of
ritual, displaying the conventional and attributed rather than intrinsic nature
of our conceptions. H ad there been no intimations of the supernatural, the
death would probably have been.frightening, because it would have exag­
gerated mortal pow ers beyond the credibility of the people participating.
The hints o f mystery suggested powers beyond J a c o b ’s control, making a
religious experience of one that otherwise might have been simply bizarre.
Despite the party and the resultant radical change of course, the celebration
that occurred had that very sense o f inevitability and predictability of ou t­
com e which is the goal of all hum an efforts in designing and staging a ritual.

R I T U A L , TIM E , A N D C O N T I N U I T Y

Any discussion of ritual is also a discussion of time and continuity; w hen the
ritual in question deals with death and birth, the them es of time and co n ­
tinuity are throw n into high relief. Ritual alters our ordinary sense of time,
repudiating meaningless change and discontinuity by emphasizing regu­
larity, precedent, and order. Paradoxically, it uses repetition to deny the
empty repetitiveness of unrem arked, unattended human and social experi­
ence. F ro m repetition, it finds or makes patterns, and looks at these for hints
of eternal designs and meanings. In ritual, change is interpreted by being
linked with the past and incorporated into a larger fram ew ork, w here its
variations are equated with grander, tidier totalities. By inserting traditional
elements into the present, the past is read as prefiguring what is happening in
the here and now, and by implication the future is seen as foreshadow ed in
all that has gone before. Religious rituals are more sweeping than secular
ones in this elongation of time and reiteration of continuity. The latter u su­
ally confine them selves to rem em bered hum an history, w hereas the form er
transform history into myths, stories with no beginning and no end. Then
time is obliterated and continuity is complete.
To do their w ork rituals must disrupt our ordinary sense of time and
displace our aw areness of events coming into being and disappearing in
discrete, precise, discontinuous segments. This discontinuous experience is
our everyday sense of time, used to coordinate collective activities; it is
external in origins and referents, and does not take into account private
responses, stimulation, states of mind, or motivation. Public chronological
time is anath em a to the mood of ritual, which has its own time. Rituals
sweep us away from the everyday sense and from the objective, in strum en­
tal frame of mind that is associated with it. By merely absorbing us
sufficiently, ritual, like art, lets us “lose ourselves” and step out of our usual
conscious, critical mentality. W hen successful, ritual replaces chronolog­
ical, collective time with the experience of flowing duration, paced a c c o rd ­
174 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
ing to personal significance; sometimes this is so powerful that we are
altogether freed from a sense of time and of awareness of self. This is ritual
time, and it must be present to some degree to mount the mood of conviction
concerning the messages contained in a ritual.
But ritual is still a social event, and it is necessary that, within it,
individuals’ temporal experiences are coordinated somewhat. They must be
delicately synchronized, without obliterating the individual’s sense of an
intense personal experience. Ordinary time is suspended and a new time
instituted, geared to the event taking place, shared by those participating,
integrating the private experience into a collective one. These m om ents of
com m unity built outside of ordinary time are rare and powerful, forging an
intense com m union that transcends awareness of individual separateness.
Continuity among participants prevails briefly, in a sometimes euphoric co n ­
dition, which T u rn er has described at length as a state of c o m m u n ita s ,21 and
which B uber calls Zwischenm enschlichkeit.
Continuity of self may occur in rituals, especially rites of passage m a rk ­
ing stages in the individual life cycle, and this produces yet another experi­
ence of time. Personal integration is achieved when the subject in a ritual
retrieves his or her prior life experiences, not as past memories, but as
events and feelings occurring in the present. Then the person is a child or
youth once more, feeling one with earlier selves, who are recognized as
familiar, still alive, coherent. Coherence of the “I , ” a sense of continuity
with o n e ’s past selves, is not inevitable, as James Fernand ez points o u t.22
The choas of individual history, especially when that history has been great
and often m arked by num erous social and cultural separations, may be
acute. The burden of memories weighs heavily on the elderly: the necessity
for integration of a life is often a strong impulse. Reminiscence among the
old is not merely escapism, nor the desire to live in the p a st.23 It is often the
reach for personal integration and the experience of continuity, and for the
recognition of personal unity beneath the flow and flux of ordinary life.
Because ritual works through the senses, bypassing the critical, c o n ­
scious mind, it allows one to return to earlier states of being. The past comes
back, along with the ritual m ovements, practices, tastes, smells, and sounds,
bringing along unaltered fragments from other times. Proust was fascinated
with this p ro c e s s .24 His work examines how the past may sometimes be
recaptured with all its original force, unmodified by intervening events. This
may occur when the conscious mind with its subsequent interpretations and
associations is bypassed. Experiences of past time come back unaltered,
often as spontaneous responses to sense stimuli; as Adam Mendilow d e­
scribes this process, it occurs when the chemistry of thought is untouched
by intervening events and the passage of time.25 These numinous moments
carry with them their original, pristine associations and feelings. This is
timelessness and the past is made into present. It is, says Mendilow, a kind
of
A D eath in D ue Time 175

hermetical magic, sealed outside o f time, suspending the sense o f duration,

allowing all o f life to be experienced as a single moment. . . . These are pin­
points o f great intensity, concentrations o f universal awareness, antithetical to
the diffuseness o f life (p. 137). '

These pin-points of timelessness are beyond duration and change. In them

one experiences the essence of life— or self—as eternally valid; simultaneity
has replaced sequence, and continuity is complete.
Conceivably, any kind of ritual has the capacity to retrieve a fragment
of past life. Rituals associated with and originating in childhood are more
likely to do so, and these especially carry opportunities for finding personal-
historical continuity. Tw o characteristics of these rituals are salient here:
first, their intensely physiological associations; and second, their great
pow er and immediacy, coming as they do from the individual’s first e m o­
tional and social experiences. They are absolutely basic, arising in the con­
text of nurturance and dependence, evoking the familiar, domestic domain,
utterly fundamental, preceding language and conception. In our world of
plural cultures, the first domestic nurturant experiences are often associated
with ethnic origins, bound up with first foods, touch, language, song, folk­
ways, and the like, carried and connoted by rituals and symbols learned in
that original context. Ethnic ritual and symbol are often redolent of the
earliest, most profoundly emotional associations and it is often these that
carry one back to earlier times and selves.
C onsider the statem ent made by one of the old men present at J a c o b ’s
birth-death ritual.

W henever I say Kaddish, I chant and sw ay, and it all com es back to me. I
remember how it was w hen my father, may he rest in peace, would wrap me
around in his big prayer shawl. All that com es back to me, like I was back in
that shawl, where nothing bad could ever happen.

The Kaddish prayer was probably the most important single ritual that
occurred the day of J a c o b ’s death. It was the most frequently and deeply
experienced aspect of Jewish custom for the people there, the m ost ethni­
cally rooted moment, sweeping together all the individuals present, c o n nect­
ing them with earlier parts of self, with Jacob the man, with each other, and
with Jews who had lived and died before. The life of the mortal man Jacob
was made into a mythic event, enlarging and illuminating the affairs of all
those present. H ere is ritual achieving its final purpose of transformation,
altering our everyday understanding in a single stroke. Ultimately, we are
interested in ritual because it tells us something about the human condition,
the mythic condition, and our private lives all at once. It dem onstrates the
continuity betw een one human being and all humanity. It does more than tell
us an eternal tale; it sheds light on our own condition. J a c o b ’s death did this.
Jacob, when the celebration ended, had become a point from which
176 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
radiated the enlarged meanings of his life and death, as well as the immediate
ones, the grand and the minute, the remote and the particular, all implying
each other, until continuity had become tptal unity.
J a c o b ’s death could not change the harsh realities. But if people lived
only by harsh realities there would be no need for rituals, for symbols, or for
myths. The pow er of rituals, myths, and symbols is that they can change the
experience we have of the world and its worth. J a c o b ’s death rites may be
considered an extraordinarily successful example of ritual providing social,
cultural, biological, and spiritual continuity. M ofe perpetuation, more co n ­
nection, more interdependence, more unity existed when the day was over,
making the oblivion of an individual and his way of life a little less certain
than anyone had thought possible that morning.

NOTES

1. The m ethods used to gather information for this essay included participant
observation, interviews, tape recording, group discussions, films, and still pho­
tography. I taped and photographed the event described and later had access to
8-mm film footage taken during the celebration by one o f those attending. I
interviewed Jacob K ovitz many times before he died, and interviewed members
o f his family before and after. The final interpretation I developed was dis­
cussed with the family, w ho had no objections to it, though it varied in som e
points with their own. All names used, including that o f the center, have been
changed.
2. See Philippe Aries, W estern A ttitu d e s to w a rd D e a th f r o m the M id d le A g e s to
the P r e s e n t (Baltimore, 1974).
3. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, C a n c e r W ard (N ew York, 1968), pp. 96-97.
4. P. Freuchen, B o o k o f the E s k im o s (Cleveland, 1961), pp. 194-195.
5. Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural S y ste m ,” in M. Banton, ed., A n ­
thropological A p p r o a c h e s to the S tu d y o f Religion (N ew York, 1966).
6. Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, ed s., S e c u la r R itu a l (Amsterdam,
1977), p. 22.
7. Here I am distinguishing betw een “religious” and “sacred” and treating them as
categories that may exist independently or be joined. Where ideas, objects, or
practices are considered axiomatic, unquestionable, literally sacrosanct, they
are “sacred ,” with or without the inclusion o f the concept o f the supernatural.
Their sacredness derives from a profound and affective consensus as to their
rightness; their authority com es from their em beddedness in many realms o f
tradition. Over against the sacred is the mundane, which is malleable and negot­
iable. When sacredness is attached to the supernatural, it is religious a n d sa­
cred. When sacredness is detached from the religious, it refers to
unquestionably good and right traditions, sanctified by usage and consensus.
8. Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, S y m b o l a n d Politics in C o m m u n a l
Id e o lo g y (Ithaca, 1975).
9. Hasids (Hasidim) were, and are, a deeply religious, semi-mystical group prac­
ticing a vitalized, fervent form o f folk Judaism originating in Eastern Europe
during the mid-eighteenth century.
10. All these people are com pletely multilingual and use different languages for
different purposes, with som e consistency. For exam ple, political and secular
A D eath in D ue Time 177
matters are often discussed in English; H ebrew is used to make poem s, reminis­
c en ces, and arguments and bargaining. Yiddish, the m a m l o s c h e n , punctuates
all the areas, but appears most regularly in times o f intense em otion. It is also
used most in conversations about food, children, cursing, and gossiping. For
som e, Yiddish has connotations o f inferiority since it was associated with fe ­
male activities, dom estic and familial matters (in the shtetls, few were educated
in H ebrew and so Yiddish dominated the household). It was the language o f
exiles living in oppression and, later, o f greenhorns. For others, the Yiddishists
in particular, it is a bona fide language to be treated with respect and used
publicly. Careful pronunciation, proper syntax, and avoidance o f Anglicized
words are considered signs o f respect for Yiddishkeit. On the w hole, Jacob was
always careful in his Yiddish, and this was seen as an indication o f his pride in
his heritage.
11. A tzaddik in Hasidic tradition is a saintly man o f great devotion, often possessing
mystical powers. It is noted that important Hasids som etim es died in their
chairs, and it is said that they often anticipated the dates o f their death. There is
also a suggestive body o f custom surrounding the sym bolism o f the chair, which
figures importantly in at least two Jewish male rites o f passage. In Hasidic
weddings it is custom ary for the bridegroom to be carried aloft in his chair. And
an empty chair is reserved for the prophet Elijah at circumcisions; this is to
signify that any Jewish boy may turn out to be the M essiah, since Elijah must be
present at the M essiah ’s birth.
12. In fact, M oses died on the seventh o f Adar. He did, how ever, die on his
birthday; he was allowed to “com plete the years o f the righteous exactly from
day to day and month to month, as it is said, the number o f thy days I will fulfill”
(Talmud Bavli Kaddushin 38A). H ence the tradition in folklore that the righ­
teous are born and die on the same day. Elijah did not die in his chair, how ever.
He is believed to have “been taken up by a whirlwind into H e a v e n ,” passing out
o f this world without dying. His “passage” was not a normal death in any event,
and this is probably w hy his death was brought up in this discussion. These
points were clarified in personal communication by Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller
o f Los Angeles.
13. In Jewish m ysticism , represented in the Kabbalah, a person’s soul or spirit is
transformed into sparks after death. “Kaddish” is a prayer sanctifying G o d ’s
name, recited many times in Jewish liturgy; it is known also as the M ourner’s
Prayer and recited at the side o f a grave.
14. Others disagreed with this and were certain that Jacob died an agnostic. They
did not confront the rabbi on the matter, however; said H esch el, “If it makes
the rabbi happy, let him believe it.”
15. Literally, pilpul means “pepper” and refers to the custom o f lively scholarly
argument about religious texts.
16. Dreams were very significant among shtetl folk, being elaborately discussed and
much used in pursuit o f sym bolic meanings and ritual usage. Indeed, four m em ­
bers o f the group ow ned and used dream books, which they had brought with
them from the Old Country.
17. Joseph Zoshin, “The Fraternity o f M ourners,” in J. Riemer, e d . , J e w ish R e f l e c ­
tions on D e a th (N ew York, 1974).
18. The rabbi was in attendance fortuitously that day, in his capacity as leader o f
the young people. Without him the Kaddish would not have been said. His
unplanned presence was subsequently interpreted by many as another sign that
the memorial was meant to take place when it did.
19. Suzanne K. Langer, P h ilo so p hy in the N e w K e y (N ew York, 1942).
20. D .G . James, S c e p tic is m a n d P oetry (London, 1937).
178 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
21. Victor Turner, “An Anthropological Approach to th ev Icelandic S aga,” in
T. Beidelm an, ed ., The Translation o f Culture: E ss a y s to E.E. E va n s-P ritc h a rd
(London, 1971).
22. James Fernandez, “The M ission of Metaphor in Expressive Culture,” Current
A n th r o p o l o g y 15(2): 119-133.
23. See R .N . Butler, “The Life Review: An Interpretation of Rem iniscence in the
A g e d ,” in B .L . Neugarten, ed., M iddle A g e a n d A g i n g (Chicago, 1968), for a
discussion o f the therapeutic functions o f reminiscence in the elderly.
24. For further discussion o f this process, see Barbara G. M yerhoff and Virginia
Tufte, “Life History as Integration: Personal Myth and A ging,” Gerontologist
15:541_543. '
25. Adam A. M endilow , Time a n d the N o v e l (London, 1952).
 The R itu a l Process a n d the Problem o f
R efle x iv ity in Sinhalese D em o n Exorcisms*

Bruce Kapferer

The ritual gathering has been relatively neglected in much anthropological

analysis of ritual performance. Discussion has focused on particular ritual
roles, especially those which are central to the enactment of specific ritual
episodes, rather than on those other individuals gathered at the ritual o cca­
sion. In so doing, anthropologists run the risk of impoverishing the analysis
and understanding of ritual occasions. Such an approach reduces the c o m ­
prehensiveness of ethnographic description and docum entation of ritual as
performance. I do not use the term “perform ance” in its restricted sense as
enactm ent, the carrying into action of specific ritual events central to the
recognition of a particular kind of ritual by cultural members. Instead, per­
form ance, in my usage, is an inclusive term that focuses on how the relation­
ships of all those gathered at a ritual occasion, the dynamics of the formation
and re-formation of these relationships, are both constituted and ordered
through the ritual. A concern with performance in this sense and a focus on
the ritual gathering as a whole, especially with an attempt to integrate in to
analysis those m em bers of a ritual gathering who appear to be outside or
apart from the central ritual events, raises important questions about the
analysis of ritual and could extend our understanding of ritual occasions.
Tw o analytic concerns have dominated much recent anthropological
discussion of ritual. The first relates to the analysis of the dynamics of ritual,

*The research for this essay was carried out during successive field trips to Sri Lanka
betw een 1971 and 1977. I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council o f Great
Britain and the Universities o f M anchester and Adelaide for supporting this research.
A sp ects o f this essay were discussed with my friend and colleague Don Handelman
o f the H ebrew University, and I am most grateful for his encouragement and stimula­
tion over the years. R oy Fitzhenry and Tom Ernst have always been willing to
discuss and listen, and I am particularly grateful to them both. In my revision o f this
essa y , I have benefited particularly from discussions with Charles Altieri, Renato
R osaldo, Paul Riesman, and John M acAloon.

179
180 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
its process and the way it achieves a variety of transformations. The second
and related concern involves the general problem of meaning in ritual event
and action, and includes such issues as the way ritual orders and com m uni­
cates experience.
Both of these broad problems can be addressed through a closer a tte n ­
tion to the ordering of mem bers of the ritual gathering in the central episodes
of the ritual. The work of Van G ennep and more recently of T u r n e r1 have
already indicated this. Van G ennep records generally that various stages in
rites of passage are marked by ritual subjects and other members of the ritual
gathering standing in differing relationships to each other and to the central
ritual events. T u rn er has expanded on this observation. He has argued that
certain ritual symbols and their arrangement in ritual action are associated
with particular modes of participation by members of the ritual gathering;
these modes produce specific kinds of ritual experience and reflection. Both
Van G ennep and Turner, however, subordinate the problem of the differ­
ential engagement of members of the ritual gathering to other concerns, in
T u r n e r ’s case, the motivating and experiential properties of symbols and
symbolic arrangem ents. A slightly different perspective on the ritual process
(which nonetheless could be combined with that of Turner) is that developed
by G ee rtz 2 in his study of the Balinese cockfight. G eertz is specifically
concerned with the cultural and social properties of the performance con­
text, which generates an engagement and focusing of members of a gathering
on the central action of the performance. H e distinguishes betw een “deep
play” and “ shallow play,” the former referring to a situation where those
assem bled are deeply experientially and emotionally engaged in the central
action, and the latter referring to a situation where many of those assembled
are relatively inattentive to the central action and not deeply committed to
its process.
The following analysis is aimed at extending the above approaches
through concentrating more explicitly on the ritual gathering as a whole and
the factors relating to the differential engagement of ritual participants. I will
posit that the ritual process, its progression through various stages, is in
large part effected through the dialectical interplay of the organization of
symbol and action in the central ritual episodes with the changing integration
of those individuals assembled in these episodes. 1 will also argue that the
meaning and experience of ritual object and event, and transformations in
these, are dependent on the way individuals gathered to the rite are ordered
in relation to it. I am also concerned with the reflexivity of rites, particularly
in relation to m em bers of the ritual gathering themselves rather than to the
anthropologist as an outside observer. In the terms of this analysis, rituals
achieve reflexivity in two related ways. First, rituals promote reflexivity by
enabling individuals to objectify their action and experience in the context of
the rite, and to stand back or distance themselves from their action within
the rite so they can reflect upon their own and o th e rs ’ actions and un d er­
standings. Second, rites promote reflexivity to the degree that they reflect
The R itual Process and the Problem o f Reflexivity 181
back on other contexts of meaning in the performance setting or in the social
and cultural world out of which ritual emerges.
The following discussion is based
/
on a study of Sinhalese dem on exor-
cisms. Sinhalese have available to them a great number of healing rites,3 but
it is in the large-scale dem on exorcisms (yak tovil) that the complex interplay
betw een the enactm ent of central ritual events and m em bers of the ritual
gathering can be best examined.

THE O R G A N IZ A T IO N OF S IN H A L E SE E X O R C ISM S

The four most complex and elaborate major exorcisms are the M a h ason a
S a m a y a m a , Sanni Yakkuma, R a ta Yakkuma, and the S u n n iy a m .4 E ach of
these rites is perform ed over a 12-hour period from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. (or 30
hours in the traditional Sinhalese time scheme). Sinhalese exorcists (edura)
conceptualize them as being divided into three main periods: the evening
w atch (sende yam a), the midnight watch (madu y a m a), and the morning
w atch (aluyama). E ach of these periods corresponds to a different phase in
the enactm ent of the rite. Thus, the evening watch is characterized by the
giving of offerings to ghosts, demons, and deities, the midnight watch by
elaborate dances, and the morning watch by extended dramatic sequences,
which involve exorcists-actors in the roles of demons or legendary or mythi­
cal figures. All these rites, with the exception of the R a ta Y a k k u m a ,5 can be
perform ed for male or female patients. Most patients, how ever, are women,
though there is a m arked tendency for the Sunniyam to be performed for
male patients.6 The decision to hold a major exorcism normally follows on a
complex process of the definition of illness and the recognition that one
dem on in particular is responsible for a patient’s affliction.7 While each rite is
perform ed under the primacy of one specific demon (or class of demons),
which gives its name to the rite, all major rites in fact are addressed to a
greater variety of ghosts (preta) and demons. The Sinhalese, theory co n ­
cerning the nature of demonic attack rests on a humoral conception of illness
and disease, both demonic and nondem onic.8 This humoral theory posits
that the healthy body of a human being constitutes an equilibrium of the
three humors (tri dosa), wind (vata), blood/bile (pita), and phlegm (sem a).9
Specific dem ons are associated with each of the humors. Attack by one of
these demons not only causes an imbalance in the particular hum or co n ­
cerned but also throws the other humors out of balance, producing a general
physical disequilibrium. This often necessitates the treatm ent of the patient
in relation to a host o f demons other than the one primarily responsible for
the illness.
D em ons are marginal figures. Their presence is strongest, and they are
most dangerous, at night, in places away from human habitation— at village
edges, crossroads, river crossings, and cemeteries. Myth relates that they
were banished by the Buddha from the world of human beings to their own
182 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
separate world (yaksha loka). H ere they were put under the general control
and overlordship of Vesamuni or Vaisravana (the god of the northern q uar­
ter). They were explicitly forbidden to pursue their form er activities of kill­
ing and eating hum an beings but were permitted to cast their gaze (yaksha
disti) upon the hum an world. W hen they attack human beings, dem ons are
understood to fix them in their gaze. Demons are most likely to take hold of
a victim w hen he or she has come into contact with sources of impurity or
when he or she is physically or psychologically “alone.” The Sinhalese term
for psychological aloneness (tanikama) is a lso 'a synonym for demonic ill­
ness (tanikam dosa).
Demonic attack manifests itself in a variety of physical, behavioral, and
mental s y m p to m s .10 Of central importance is the way the victim (aturaya) is
understood to conceptualize his or her relation to the supernatural. H ealthy
hum an beings are understood typically to construct a cosmic unity headed
by the Buddha. Below the Buddha are placed various categories of deities,
followed by hum an beings, and below human beings are demons and then
ghosts." They are essentially arranged in accordance with their degree of
purity or impurity, with the most pure at the top and the most impure at the
bottom. Dem onic victims, it is believed, do not conceive of the cosmic
reality in this way. Rather they are understood to conceive of dem ons as
having escaped from their lowly position in the hierarchy and from their
subordination to the Buddha, the deities, and human beings. Thus freed,
dem ons enter the world of human beings, control their every action, and
give vent to their naked, natural and “uncivilized” passions— lust, greed,
anger, hunger for human flesh, and so on. In serious cases of demonic
illness, the patient is thought to see reality as populated by malicious d e­
monic forms and all social action as controlled and influenced by their
malevolence.
Designed generally to vtransform the patient from a state of illness to
health, major exorcisms are directed, from the point of view of exorcists, to
achieve the following results. First, the object of the ritual is to sever the
real, magical, connection betw een the patient and demons, which is cultur­
ally typified in the belief that the patient is caught in their g a z e .12 The goal is
achieved by summoning the demonic world, entering it, ensnaring the d e­
mons, and banishing them from the patient and the p atien t’s household.
Second, exorcisms are organized to transform the way the patient c o n ce p ­
tualizes reality. If the patient maintains a demonic perspective upon reality,
he or she is, in the view of exorcists, susceptible to renewed attack by
demons. The patient must be brought to a realization of the “no rm al,” a c ­
cepted view of the rightful place of demons in the cosmic order. The patient
must understand that demons are subject to control by human beings and to
the control of the Buddha and various deities. Third, in the course of p e r­
form ance patients are shown that not all objects and actions in the social
world can be related to the supernatural, let alone the malign supram undane,
The Ritual Process a nd the Problem o f Reflexivity 183
but simply can have everyday, mundane reference. In effect, the patient
must be aware of the multiple realities of the everyday world as others
un derstand and act within it. Symptomatic of the p atien t’s transition to
health in the course of an exorcism in his or her demonstration of the c ap ac­
ity to discriminate betw een a num ber of possible responses to objects and
actions in changing contexts and situations modeled upon everyday life. A
final objective of exorcisms is to change the perspective others have of the
patient as one afflicted. Isolation or aloneness is one of the preconditions of
demonic attack, and unless the patient is brought into social interaction with
“norm al” and healthy others, the illness is likely to continue. M em bers of
the ritual gathering must accept a redefinition of the patient as cured if the
p a tien t’s identity is to be transformed successfully from one of illness to one
of health. It is w hen the identity of the patient is changed in the course of the
ritual that healthy others can “normalize” their interaction with the patient.

R IT U A L SPAC E A N D THE A R R A N G E M E N T OF THE

RITU AL A SSE M B L Y

M ajor exorcisms are held at the house of the patient. Usually they are
perform ed in public view at the front of the house. The physical layout of an
exorcism rite— the location of ritual objects and structures— dem arcates the
perform ance area. The performance space typically extends outw ard from
the house veranda, covering an area, depending on the space available,
ranging from 100 to 200 square feet. This area, known as the sirnava midula,
is bounded by a variety of ritual structures. Offering “tables” (mesa,
katarikki) to the four Sinhalese guardian deities (Saman, N atha, Vishnu,
Kataragama) are placed one at each corner of the performance arena. There
are other, more elaborate, structures as well (e.g., an offering table to the
B uddha and the other guardian deities or mal y a h a n a v a ), including, in some
cases, structures to specific demons, such as the pilluva for the sorcery
demon Sunniyam. The most important and imposing structure, how ever, is
the yakka vidiya, the “palace” of the major demon or demons afflicting the
patient. In the course of the night, exorcist dancers and actors will emerge
from it to perform before a patient and the assembled gathering. Behind the
vidiya, and outside public view, is a small area, in which the exorcists don a
variety of costum es for their performance. The yakka vidiya faces the house:
thus the household of human beings confronts the “h ou sehold” of malevo­
lent demonic forces. The space betw een the house and the yakka vidiya can
be conceptualized as liminal, “betwixt and betw een ” the “w orld” of human
beings and the “w orld” of the malign sup ram u n d an e .13
The audience that gathers at an exorcism is seated on mats and chairs,
arranged at either side of the performance arena, betw een the house and the
yakka vidiya. Close kin of the patient will normally sit on the v eranda not far
184 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
from the patient. Some mem bers of the ritual gathering collect inside the
house. Male and female mem bers of the ritual gathering tend to be sepa­
rated. Male m em bers of the ritual gathering will sit outside, whereas female
m em bers will generally congregate inside the house. They huddle around the
doorw ay or peer out through iron-grilled windows at the demonic scene that
unfolds before them.
The ideas and principles that structure everyday Sinhalese social life are
thus displayed in the formal arrangement of the ritual gathering. Factors that
divide, differentiate, stratify, and separate Sinhalese in their daily experi­
ence govern the organization of the ritual audience. Chairs, for example, are
reserved for high-status and influential members of the community. While
the ostensible purpose of a rite is to return a patient to a state of health, the
rite is also often an occasion for the definition of the hou seh old ’s social and
political place in the wider community. It might be said that the occasion of a
healing rite accentuates a sense of the structural order of everyday Sinhalese
society and is a “celebration” of it. This is evident in the way the ritual
gathering relates to the host household.
R ank and status are a daily concern of Sinhalese. Individuals who rec­
ognize clear status distinctions between themselves will address each other
by different pronouns indicative of gradations of respect. There are rules,
connected with status, that govern entrance into the private social space of
houses. M em bers of low castes and individuals of low status might only be
allowed entry as far as the front gate or porch. Others of higher or equal
status will be invited into the main living area and perhaps given a meal.
Status is mediated by the m ovem ent through social space and in the content
and structure of food transactions, as in many regions of South A sia.14 In Sri
L an ka individuals who define each other as equal in caste rank or status
typically exchange and share in food of similar type. Those of unequal status
give and receive food of unlike nature. Thus, a low-status family will send
fruit to higher-status mem bers of their community and may receive cooked
curries in return. This pattern of food transactions is linked to an ideology of
“ purity” and “im purity.” Fruit is a food that has not been contaminated by
cooking, nor had its edible flesh brought into contact with the impurity of
human breath and hands. Such an ideology is legitimated in the domain of
religious and ritual practice. F o r example, supernaturals and their rank in a
hierarchy are defined by the nature of the offerings given to them. Deities
receive flowers and fruit, w hereas demons and ghosts receive cooked curries
and such pollutants as marijuana (ganja) and even fecal m a tte r.15
Those who gather outside the house of an exorcism are relatively undif­
ferentiated in term s of the food that is distributed to them. Normally, they
will be offered cups of tea, fruit, biscuits, and a variety of sweetmeats. In
this context the household does not communicate any sense of inferiority or
superiority, and is behaving in accordance with the everyday tenets of hospi­
tality. But when individuals from the audience are invited inside the house,
The Ritual Process and the Problem o f Reflexivity 185

the symbolic significance of food and commensality as a means of status

distinction and definition is evident.
E veryd ay meals are usually eaten in priv ate,16 and with the exception of
S'

major religious rituals or social events such as weddings, it is not generally

know n with w hom one eats. Meals in the house of an exorcism are co n ­
ducted before a public gathering, and make assertions about status and
define patterns o f social differentiation. It is com m on for a num ber of sittings
for meals to occur at a rite. These typically begin after the initial offering
stages of the rite and after the house has been purified. The sittings will
occur at various intervals throughout the night. Only certain members of the
ritual gathering are invited inside the house for a meal. Those who are
invited first will be senior m em bers of the community with recognized high
status. The best food will be served, and if the senior male of the house is not
o f equal status to his guests, he will serve the meal. After the meal has been
eaten, others will be invited inside; perhaps this time, if not before, the male
head of the household will sit with the guests and be served by the
womenfolk. Exorcists will also be served food. Because they are generally
of lower caste than the household at which the exorcism is performed, they
will not be invited inside the house. They will eat during pauses in the
perform ance, seated on mats in the middle of the perform ance arena.
It is tempting to view these aspects of the organization of the ritual
gathering as simply another instance of the use of ritual for the presentation
of household claims to social status. While this is undoubtedly a feature, the
public enactm ent of status and social differentiation among m em bers of a
ritual assembly bears a direct relation to the structure o f the ritual itself and
the achievem ent of its goals.
T he definition of a patient as suffering from demonic illness threatens the
everyday world as it is socially and culturally typified by Sinhalese. The
patient represents an alternative mode of ordering reality, an ordering that
asserts the dom inance of demons over human beings. In this alternative
reality, dem ons have broken free from the control of the Buddha, the deities,
and hum an beings. Through the patient demons gain entry to the world of
human beings and threaten to gain control of others. Immediately en ­
dangered are the other mem bers of the p atien t’s household and other kin.
Their own action already is controlled to some extent by the patient’s d e ­
monic mood. Social interaction with the patient cannot be based on the
principles of rational action that govern everyday social intercourse; the
healthy and the patient must interact in terms of the demonic frame of
reference. Culturally it is recognized that to adopt the patient’s mental per­
spective is to becom e vulnerable to demonic attack. Exorcists reduce this
danger to household mem bers by mediating betw een the demonic world of
the patient and the everyday world of healthy others. Individuals outside the
household tend to limit their visits to the afflicted house and thus protect
their own vulnerability to demonic attack.
186 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
While the presence of a patient constitutes a threat, the exorcism is
even more threatening. Exorcists conjure up the myriad ghosts and demons
that crowd the terrifying reality of the patient. Dem ons enter into the midst
of the ritual gathering. The boundary o f the performance arena affords some
protection to the unafflicted members of the gathering, for it is marked out
with ritual objects and structures that magically confine the m ovem ent of
malign spirits. The organization of members of the ritual gathering in the
setting of an exorcism further safeguards its members from the threatening
reality that is created before it. The ordering o f relationship among those
gathered to the rite constitutes a heightening of the everyday, its ideas and
structural principles, in the face of an alternative reality. Insofar as the
m em bers of the gathering are engrossed in activity framed by the reality of
the everyday world, they are distanced and thus protected from having their
thoughts and actions com m ented on and directed by the hellish world of
demons. Many scholars, writing of healing rites in other ethnographic c o n ­
texts, have com m ented on the role of those who come to witness them as
providing social support for a patient. But there is another possibility, at
least for exorcisms in Sri Lanka. This is that as long as the ritual gathering is
organized according to the ideas and typifications that govern the everyday
world, it is providing support and protection for itself—for its own members.
An exorcism provides a setting in which m em bers of the ritual gathering
have objectified before them aspects of the everyday world in which they
live and act— in the seating arrangements, the invitations into the house to
eat, and so on. Brought face to face with one or another aspect, they are led
to examine their experiences and events in the everyday world. To this
extent they reflect upon it. The events of the ritual performance and the
reality it constructs, how ever, are not necessarily active agents of this reflec­
tion. That one of the m em bers of the ritual gathering, in the person of the
patient, should be attacked by demons motivates others to examine aspects
of their everyday world and to determine a possible contributory cause. This
is the most an exorcism ritual for much of its performance is directly in­
volved in the promotion of reflexivity— in the sense that the reality of the
demonic com m ents on and relates to the reality of the everyday— among
those who gather about it. We can now examine how m em bers of a ritual
gathering are progressively related to the central events of ritual in such a
way that the events becom e an active element in their reflection upon self
and other.

D ISTAN C E A N D REFLEXIVITY

All those who gather at a rite can be regarded as participants in it. They are,
how ever, participants in a great variety of different senses. Thus they can be
ritual subjects, or the focus around which the ritual events revolve, p er­
formers or spectators. These imply different gradations of distance, both
The Ritual Process an d the Problem o f Reflexivity 187
physical and experiential, from the central ritual events. Although I will
examine all the forms of participation outlined above, I will concentrate on
the role of the spectators, for reflexivity— the ability of the demonic to
com m ent upon the everyday— is highly dependent on the ability of the p a r­
ticipants in ritual to assum e the role of audience, that is to be distanced from
their own actions and the actions of others.
The term “aud ience” refers to the degree participants are distanced
from the enactm ent of central ritual episodes. Most rituals can be con ce p ­
tualized as possessing a form, a set of rules and acts defined in relation to a
specific fram ew ork of meaning; these rules are essential for defining its type.
That many ethnographers can describe various ritual types purely on the
basis of the statem ents of informants outside a perform ance context is testi­
mony to this fact. The enactm ent of ritual roles and behaviors in a particular
setting constitutes a minimal definition of performance.
The participants in a ritual occasion are differentially placed according
to the degree to which they stand apart from the action and function as an
audience. Individuals and groups in nearly all action situations are at one
and the same time actors in particular roles and audiences to them. My
argument here is closely allied to M e a d ’s 17 theory of the self and to that of
others who share analytical concerns similar to those of M e a d .18 Individuals
have a self and an aw areness of consciousness of it; in other words, they
reflect upon it if they take the attitude of the “o th e r” and respond in a cc o rd ­
ance with a set of social and cultural typifications, what M ead called the
“generalized o th e r” .19 Fundam ental to participation in everyday social life,
to communication and meaning, is the act of reflexivity, w hereby individuals
can engage in a conversation with self and with “o th e r.” The self is co n ­
stituted out of the interaction betw een the “I” and the “m e ,” the latter
articulating the “I” with the “o th e r.” The “m e ” is to a large extent emergent
from the interaction of the “I” with the “o th e r” and in turn comes to mediate
this relation. It is through the “m e ” that the individual becom es an audience
to himself.
A self can be negated or transcended, transcendence here being a spe­
cial form of negation. In both instances, the individual fails to objectify a
“m e ,” either as a result o f the loss of distance betw een the “ I” and the “m e ,”
w hereby the “m e ” becom es totally absorbed into the “ I,” or by a loss of
distance betw een the “m e ” and the “o th e r.” The “m e ” becom es identified
with the “o th e r” so that the individuality of the “I ” is lost entirely. E ither of
the two can involve a process of reification or extreme objectification,20 but
the form er constitutes reification by reduction and the latter reification by
adduction. E xam ples of these processes result in their extrem e mani­
festation in the negation or transcendence of self and are a variety o f the
ritually induced trance. Thus, the demonic possession of a patient and the
m om ent of the extrem e objectification of the demonic, w hen the patient
becom es totally entranced, in fact, “b eco m es” the demon, is an instance of
self negation through reduction. The multiple selves of a “norm al,” healthy
188 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
individual becom e reduced to a single demonic mode of being. The demon
assum es complete control over the patient and determines the p atient’s
every action. The dem on comes to the patient and establishes a relationship
of domination. This coming together of patient and demon asserts a situation
of relevance not shared by others gathered around, for whom the role
typification of dem on is not part of their own understanding of self. O ther
trance states, particularly those where the individual is understood to enter
into com m union with a godhead or the world of deities, might be better
understood as transcendence through adduction: There is a drawing together
of the multiple selves of the subject in terms of fundamental culturally
valued and shared cosmic principles that underlie them; the individual rises
above a self, becom es one with the deity, and through a sense of the deity
unites with others in this oneness. Self negation through reduction is an
individual ph enom enon leading to separation from others. Self negation
through adduction is most regularly a group phenom enon establishing a
unity with others but above the level of the self.
The achievem ent of a total negation or transcendence of self involves a
loss of reflexivity. In either instance there is no longer the objectification of a
“m e ” that allows individuals to enter into a dialogue with themselves. In a
sense, reflexivity as a process can lead to its own negation. This is most
evident in certain contexts of meditation by Sinhalese Buddhists. Meditation
employs the reflexive capacity of human beings to achieve the negation of
self, which is an ultimate goal of the devout Buddhist.
Reflexivity, or the capacity to think about and to reflect upon o n e ’s own
actions and the actions of others, is promoted, or mediated, by the struc­
tures that organize action and that establish contexts of meaning. Ritual
performance affords individuals the opportunity to stand apart from th em ­
selves, to objectify their own experience and that of others, to be an audi­
ence to themselves and tQ others, and to act reflexively. The efficacy of
ritual to effect transformations of experience and identity, and to provide
participants with deeper insight into the nature of their cultural and social
life, depends on the ritual performance generating conditions for reflexive
action.
Ritual participants can be arranged along a continuum in terms of their
behavior in the action setting of a ritual. At one extreme of the continuum
are participants who are totally engaged in the action. To engage participants
to the full potential of their structured integration to the central action of the
rite is to render them relatively unreflexive and unconscious of the meaning
and purpose of their action at the moment of their engagement in it. The
normal everyday social self of participants is suspended, negated, or tran­
scended, so that they are consumed by, and have their actions determined
by, the identity they assume. At the opposite end of the continuum are
participants who are disengaged and who might be relatively inattentive to
the central action of the ritual performance. In this instance, participants
might conceivably not be in the position of audience, in the sense of being
The Ritual Process an d the Problem o f Reflexivity 189
attentive or witness to the ritual action. We need, therefore, to look at the
degree to which the organization of ritual performance influences the partici­
pation of individuals and groups and distributes them along a continuum
betw een total engagement and disengagement.

E X O R C IS M P E R F O R M A N C E , FRAM ES, A N D THE

S T R U C T U R IN G OF P A R T IC IP A T IO N

The rules of ritual enactm ent contain instructions on the sequencing of ritual
episodes, the symbolic actions and objects that must be presented, the mode
of presentation itself, the m anner and content of music, song, dance, and
acting, the categories of persons who must take performative roles, and so
on. The rules of perform ance establish what I term a ritual frame. By
“fram e” I refer to that often invisible boundary around activity which defines
participants, their roles, the “ sense” that is accorded those things included
within the boundary, and the elements within the environment of the activity
that are rendered outside and irrelevant to it. This notion draws on a similar
usage by B ateso n 21 and o th e rs.22 The rules organizing the ritual frame operate
in a m anner similar to those that Goffman has termed transformational rules,
which control the form and character of activity in focused gatherings: they
“tell participants what they must not attend to . . . and . . . tell them what
they must recognise,” and advise “what modification in shape will occur
w hen an external pattern of properties is given expression”23 inside the
frame.
The organization of those who gather at an exorcism changes in the
course of the performance. The main categories of individuals who attend
the rite are the patient, the m em bers of the patient’s household and other
close kin, the exorcist-performers, and finally a more diffuse category of
persons including more distant relatives, neighbors, friends, and acquaint­
ances. The changing nature of the integration of sections of the ritual gather­
ing into the central action corresponds broadly with the phasing of the main
ritual events into the evening, midnight, and morning periods.
The evening watch lasts from approximately 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Its start is
signaled by the ritual seating of the patient (leda vadi karanava) and the
singing of verses (namaskaraya) in honor of the Buddha and the four guar­
dian deities (Vishnu, K ataragam a, Saman, and Natha). The events of this
period are enacted within a relatively small part of the whole performance
arena, directly before the patient. The action orchestrated by the exorcists is
oriented completely to the patient, members of the patient’s household, and
other close kin who are gathered around the patient. Usually a senior male
m em ber of the household sits beside the patient and occasionally assists
with the giving of offerings to the ghosts and demons.
T he evening watch summons to the ritual site those malign spirits who
are principally involved in the p a tien t’s illness. An important objective of the
190 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
exorcists is to ensnare ghosts and demons in specially constructed offering
baskets (tattuwa), in which are placed offerings to them, and to remove or
cut (kapanava) their influence over the patient. Essentially the period of the
evening w atch is designed to construct the hellish, demonic world that is
understood by exorcists and concerned others to have consumed the p a ­
tie n t’s total being. Through the ritual construction of a demonic reality,
exorcists and others are enabled to enter both the world of the patient and
that of dem ons, to intervene on the patient’s behalf, and to restore a sense of
“well-being.” -
There is a barrier betw een the patient and the world of demons as it
ritually unfolds. This is marked by the placement of various ritual objects
immediately in front of the patient, on the mat upon which the patient is
seated. One of the objects is a wooden pestle (mol gaha) with an iron tip.
Dem ons are understood to be frightened of iron, and the w ooden pestle itself
symbolizes the “walking stick” of M aha Brahma, the creator, which, as
myth relates, he used to batter and control the capricious demons. During
the evening watch the patient is still part of the everyday cultural and social
reality as typified by others. In this period, the patient will be exhorted by
exorcists and m em bers of the household to contemplate the life and thought
of the B uddha as personal protection against demonic attack. The patient is
expected by exorcists and others to be conscious of and attentive to the
ritual activity. Any tendency of the patient to enter a trance is strongly
resisted. Should this occur the exorcists will employ a variety of ritual
devices to draw the patient back into a conscious state. In a sense, patients
are, in this early part of the rite, capable of being an audience to their own
actions and the actions of others. But the m anner of their integration to the
central ritual action is likely to lead to a precarious hovering betw een a
consciousness of or reflection upon a malevolent demonic reality and vari­
ous other realities. The patient at this point in the ritual proceedings gener­
ally indicates, through his or her behavior, that he or she is balanced on the
threshold of a trance. This is promoted by the rules of ritual performance,
which specify the nature of patient activity.
The patient must remain seated throughout the ritual action and face the
ritual performers. Patients are restricted to certain permissible movements
and actions. They cannot get up and move among and talk with friends and
acquaintances in the ritual gathering; their movements are restricted to the
placing of offerings. While patients are exhorted by exorcists and others to
think about an alternative reality, their overt actions are limited to, and
organized within, the opposing reality of the demonic. I suggest that one
conseq uen ce of this is that it leads patients to reflect increasingly upon the
demonic in terms of the demonic, and not to reflect back upon the nature of
their own everyday life, except in terms of the order of the demonic world as
this is constructed in the ritual action. The patient as audience is only m ar­
ginally so, and tends toward the “total engagem ent” end of the distance
continuum.
The Ritual Process a n d the Problem o f Reflexivity 191
At greater distance from the central events are the m em bers of the
p a tien t’s household and other close kin. While they will occasionally enter
its action context, as w hen giving offerings, they typically engage in activity
directed to keeping dem ons at bay. Thus, at the end of each offering se­
quence, they will utter cries designed to prevent dem ons from totally e n ­
veloping the patient. They express their own psychological and emotional
distance from the demonic world. Furtherm ore, they are firmly confined to
activity that is part of the reality o f everyday life. They will greet and
converse with friends and acquaintances, and move around the perform ance
arena to discuss daily concerns. Although integrated into the central action,
they are audience, spectators to it, potentially highly conscious of alterna­
tive ways of ordering reality other than that structured by the demonic.
At the furthest distance from the ritual action, in a way disengaged from
it, are the great majority of friends, neighbors, and acquaintances who at­
tend the rite. Their attention is hardly focused on the ritual activity at all.
They drink, play cards, gossip, and continually move around the perimeter
of the perform ance arena. Occasionally some will enter the arena and even
cross betw een the patient and exorcists en route to the house. They can be
seen actively to distance themselves from the ritual action and are firmly
com m itted to acting in contexts of the reality of the everyday world. This is
prom oted by the organization o f performance set within the developing
ritual frame. The perform ance rules, organizing the ritual frame during the
evening watch period, do not accord rights of entry into the central action to
m em bers gathered at the rite, other than the patient and m em bers of the
p a tien t’s household or close kin. Most of those who gather at the rite have a
restricted view o f the ritual proceedings. They are presented with the backs
of the performing exorcists, who cluster tightly around the patient, further
limiting visual access to the ritual. Indeed the organization of perform ance
and o f the ritual frame actively operates to exclude most of those who gather
from the ritual action, rendering them outside and irrelevant to the d e ­
veloping theme of the rite. Friends, neighbors, or acquaintances who might
at times pass betw een the patient and performing exorcists are in effect not
there at all.
In the setting of an exorcism during the period of the evening watch, the
meaning constituted by the central ritual action exists side by side with the
action and meaning of the param ount reality of everyday life. The two
realities do not generally mix and are treated as independent and mutually
exclusive orderings. Individuals can move betw een the two, but the set of
understandings o f one mode o f ordering reality does not mix with the other,
contradictory mode. The separation of the two is carefully orchestrated by
the exorcists. Their own actions express both their bridging or mediating
role betw een the two realities and their own degree o f distancing, or audi­
ence attitude, in relation to the central ritual action.24 Their activity facili­
tates both the elaboration of the demonic and the developm ent of the
everyday reality that surrounds it. Thus exorcists continually move betw een
192 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
their performance roles and action of the everyday sort in the environment
of the rite. W hen not “on stage,” they converse among themselves and jok e
and discuss daily events with the guests. E ven when engaged in a specific
ritual task such as drumming, some exorcists will engage in this type of
byplay. The very m anner of exorcist participation in the early phases of the
rite indicates that they are both involved in, yet stand apart from, the terrible
reality they are in the process of creating. Thus, during the initial offering
sequences, exorcists will perform short dances. These are not the highly
acrobatic, leaping, swirling dances to be seeru later, but rather involve a
slight swaying, rocking motion from foot to foot, perhaps punctuated by the
slow marking of the more complicated and energetic dance movements to
come. Although the exorcists create the demonic, they also collaborate in,
and help to maintain, the reality of the everyday.
I have already argued that the demonic contradicts and is inconsistent
with the “norm al” understandings and cultural typifications of nondemonic-
ally afflicted Sinhalese. W hat is problematic in an exorcism is that it must be
developed in a context where everyday understandings already dominate.
The rules of performance, by excluding many of those gathered from the
central action, prevent those understandings by which healthy others organ­
ize their action, from entering into and subverting, prematurely, the
fram ew ork of meaning within which an exorcism develops.
The exclusion of a large section of the ritual gathering from the central
ritual events is not only positive in that it enables the meaning of the rite to
be elaborated; it is also positive in that it allows a further elaboration of the
param ount reality of the everyday world. This is important for at least two
reasons. First, as I have already indicated, reflexivity depends upon the
ability of individuals to enter at once a reality as others construct it and,
also, to stand apart from it, to “look a t” it from within the perspective of
another context of meaning. The evaluation from another standpoint p re su p ­
poses the existence of alternative standpoints. Where alternative stand­
points are not available, or are in some way denied, the evaluation of o n e ’s
own behavior and that of others is limited. A major concern of exorcists is to
authenticate and to legitimate the fact that a patient is indeed ill because of
the malign attack of specific ghosts and demons that they (and often m em ­
bers of the household as well as the patient) have already defined as being at
the root of the patien t’s distress. Exorcisms are held in a community situa­
tion where the meaning contexts of the everyday world in the environm ent
of the demonic allow those gathered to compare and docum ent their own
behavior in relation to the patient, and to recognize the patient as indeed ill
according to the given terms. Second, through the elaboration of the
param ount reality of the everyday world along with that of the demonic, the
reality the patient must perforce enter, and in terms of which his or her
action must be organized in order to realize a transformation from illness to
health, is made copresent and evident in the environment of the rite.
The Ritual Process a n d the Problem o f Reflexiv ity 193
In the subsequent period of the midnight watch, changes in the perform ­
ance rules radically alter the relationship of the ritual gathering to the central
ritual events. These changes are accompanied by further developments in
the style and content of the performance of the ritual and lead to a situation
w here the finite meaning province of the demonic dominates and suppresses
other contexts of meaning.
It is during the midnight watch that elaborate and magnificent dances
are performed. Exorcists, and often the patient, will assume most clearly the
guise of some of the afflicting demons. The patient enters totally the realm of
the demonic and is no longer partly held by a context of the everyday. The
process of the total entry o f the patient into a frightening reality is begun in
the earlier watch. The exorcist-performers, dressed as demons, will
occasionally cross the barrier betw een their world and that of the patient and
gather the patient up into their embrace. During the midnight watch, the
envelopment of the patient by the demonic is represented by the patient
entering a trance. The patient rises from where he or she is seated and
dances possessed toward the dem on palace. In effect the patient crosses the
physical space that separates the everyday world of the household from the
malign supram undane. The patient has no self as this is culturally and so­
cially constituted in the param ount reality of everyday life. The patient is no
longer able to reflect on the demonic, to “look a t” the world being created.
The patient is the situation, is the demonic, and often speaks in the demon
tongue; he or she is addressed by exorcists by the name of the dem on whose
identity the patient has a ssu m ed .25 Interviews with patients after they have
com e out of a trance indicate that they have no consciousness of their own
action during this period. Their minds are blank.
The patient who enters a trance will usually do so toward the close of
the midnight watch, at the height of the performance of the major dance
sequences, which cover the entire performance arena. The world of the
demonic is carried through the medium of dance to those w ho have hitherto
been almost completely distanced and separated from the central section.
All who gather at the rite are now enjoined to focus their attention upon it.
This focusing produces a change in the organization of the ritual gathering.
Although mem bers of the assembly are still internally socially differentiated,
the focused attention of the gathering on the central ritual events, on the
dancers and the patient, subverts the structures in which everyday meanings
are elaborated and set. Before the enactment of the major dance sequences,
the m em bers of the ritual gathering can be conceptualized as being engaged
in what Sch ütz26 terms a “w e ” relationship. The occasion of the exorcism
produces an opportunity for them to engage in direct interaction. Through
gossip and talk, individuals share information about self and other and ex ­
plore each o th e r ’s biographies and experience. This is disrupted, however,
by the elaborately performed dance. The ritual gathering becomes less a
differentiated and structured collectivity and becomes more a collection of
194 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
individuals who are not engaged in interaction with each other yet who are
united in their com m on focus upon the performance and'in their concern for
the patient.
The focusing of the ritual gathering propels those who were before
excluded and separated from the ritual action into the role of audience. The
reduction in distance, due to the change in the organization of the perform ­
ance and the use of performance space, brings members of the assembled
gathering to the margin of the p atient’s world, and places them in a position
similar to that of the members of the p atient’s household and close kin,
achieved in the earlier ritual phases. The p atient’s reality is further d e ­
veloped and held up for inspection. In this process, also, the spectators are
brought within the experiential range of the demonic.
A critical element in the recognition of a n o th e r’s experience as a u th en ­
tic is the understanding that this o th e r’s experience is potentially a part of
o n e ’s own. In essence what members of the ritual gathering see before them
now threatens to enter into their own subjective experience. A major
m etacom m unicative element of the midnight watch is the growing realiza­
tion among the spectators that the barrier betw een the reality of everyday
life and the demonic world of the patient is fragile— a realization often visible
in the responses of the guests. Thus, on occasion, I have witnessed spec­
tators enter a trance and dance possessed in the performance arena. C onsist­
ent with T u r n e r ’s27 observations concerning the character of liminal periods,
exorcists and nonspecialists alike consider the period of the midnight watch
as the most dangerous. It is dangerous not simply because the demonic in all
its terrifying aspects is present, fully constituted in the midst of the everyday
world of hum an beings, but also because it threatens to enter the subjective
reality of “h ealth y,” “norm al” others, namely, the spectators and even the
exorcist-performers. During the midnight watch the finite meaning province
of the demonic comes to dominate and override all other contexts of m ean ­
ing. Indeed, it threatens the dissolution of those meaning contexts of the
everyday.
The process of focusing the ritual gathering separates the spectators
from mutual interaction within which the everyday can be sustained. Now,
insofar as they interact among themselves, they do so only indirectly and
through the demonic created before them. There is no free m ovem ent among
mem bers of the ritual assembly; gossip ends and card games are broken up.
Individuals, it can be assum ed, retain a conscious sense of the everyday
from their participation in these contexts before the ritual and during its
early phases. They also know that the project of the exorcism is to restore
the param ount reality of the everyday in the patient. Their focus on the
perform ance, how ever, disengages them from interaction within which the
everyday is realized, and involves them with the demonic, actualized before
them. Thus, the focusing of all members of the ritual gathering creates the
necessary condition for the domination of the demonic.
The domination of the demonic over other contexts of meaning is rein­
The Ritual Process an d the Problem o f Reflexivity 195
forced by a second process— the style of the ritual presentation and the
emergence of symbolic types from within the context of a presentational
symbolic mold. I suggest that where ritual is performed within a presenta­
tional symbolic medium, which also occasions the emergence of symbolic
types consistent with the meaning established within it, ritual statements
becom e unambiguous. Such moments in rites can be particularly frightening
in exorcisms where the demonic is created as certain. The formation of
symbolic types within the context of presentational symbolism produces a
suspension or denial of the relevance of other frameworks of meaning, and
negates the ability of ritual statements to reflect explicitly upon other co n ­
texts o f meaning. In fact, the capacity for ritual to act reflexively upon the
world external to it is greatly impaired.
Presentational symbolism, and the emergence of symbolic types, is inte­
gral to much of that which anthropologists study as ritual. These symbolic
forms resolve contradictory meanings arising in the param ount reality of
everyday life through their ability to deny or suspend the relevancy of these
meanings, or by their ability to impart a greater resiliency to the ritual frame
w hereby external elements can be introduced but subordinated and orga­
nized in relation to the dominant meaning set.
Essentially I follow L an ger28 in the use of the phrases “presentational
sym bolism ” and “presentational symbolic m old.” By them, I refer to the
property w hereby symbolic acts and objects are tightly interwoven so that
each imparts a similar sense and meaning to the other. The presentational
symbolic mold o f an exorcism performance is established in the period of the
evening w atch and elaborated and extended during the midnight watch. The
utterance of words in magical incantation (m antra) and song (kavi) is a
significant aspect of the early phases of the rite. The language used, h o w ­
ever, is not that in normal everyday use in the village or town. M antra and
song variously employ Tamil, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Sinhala, and even P er­
sian w o rd s.29 F urtherm ore, mantra and song are combined simultaneously
with music and dance. W ords, music, dance, the manipulation of ritual
objects, color, and smell form a tightly integrated whole so that each imparts
meaning to the other and, in turn, reinforces the other in the realization of
the demonic world emerging from their integration. Separately, each sym­
bolic element of the performance is probably capable of a considerable
connotative range, but the medium of presentation and the overall presen ta­
tional mold reduce the connotative range. This reduction and the drawing
together of the elements within the presentational symbolic mold of the
perform ance result in an internally coherent and consistent finite province of
meaning relating to the bloodthirsty and terrifying demonic world.
The major dance episodes of the midnight w atch further elaborate the
presentational symbolic mold and the demonic. The dance celebrates the
actual arrival at the ritual site of the demon or demons under whose primacy
the exorcism is being performed. The exorcist-dancers themselves represent
the demons. On occasion, they, as well as the patient, becom e possessed by
196 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
demons. They hold lighted torches against bared chests to dem onstrate their
magical powers. They swirl around the performance arena, moving ever
faster to the rising, rhythmic beating of drums. The motions of the dance,
and particularly such gravity-defying actions as balancing, wheeling, leap­
ing, tumbling, and circling, organize body action into a symbolic form that
indicates control over the body by powers that do not normally condition
body m otion.30 Set within the time structure of the dance, the world and
powers of dem ons are made visible and confront— almost engulf—the audi­
ence. '
It is in conjunction with the creation of the demonic through the medium
of presentational symbolism that demons as symbolic types emerge. The
concept of “ symbolic ty p e s” has been elaborated by a num ber of au th o rs.31
Symbolic types are constituted above the level of social roles as these are
usually described. Symbolic types differ from social roles in that the latter
have their role correlates (e.g., father-son, student-teacher), which emerge
in situations of reciprocal, face-to-face interaction. Symbolic types, of
course, have their correlates as in dem on-nondem on, but these are abstrac­
tions existing outside the reciprocal typifications of ongoing social action.
Further, symbolic types are usually accompanied by extremely stereotyped
action patterns and are rem oved from a schema in which they have a status
relative to o th e rs.32 Demons presented in the rite by exorcist-actors fit this
description, for they have broken free from a lowly position in an ordered
hierarchy. Social roles can be further distinguished from symbolic types: the
form er are continually modified by the mutual tending of the role performers
to each other; by the biographical knowledge individuals have of one
another; and by the mutual awareness that each possesses other social iden­
tities potentially relevant in their interaction. Symbolic types define c o n tex ­
tual relevances and link them together, subsume them, with their own form.
F o r example, the symbolic type of ‘fool’ makes the context of action a
foolish one. Individuals who act as symbolic types have their action largely
determined by the symbolic type.
G r a th o f f 3 argues that symbolic types are likely to emerge in situations
of social inconsistency or when some scheme of classification fails to main­
tain a unity of context. Rituals, as finite provinces of meaning outside of and,
in the case of exorcisms, opposed to the param ount reality of everyday life,
are occasions when social inconsistency threatens and everyday cultural and
social typifications might fail to maintain a unity of context. It is, therefore,
in ritual that symbolic types can be expected to emerge. Symbolic types tie
individuals into the meaning context of ritual and force a unity upon it.
The emergence and efficacy of symbolic types are illustrated in e x o r­
cisms during the period of the evening watch. After the initial offering se­
quences, the exorcist-performers begin to act out the symbolic types of
demons. A white cloth is held before the patient. This cloth is symbolic of
purity, and its absence of color is understood by exorcists to produce an
emotional calm in the patient. The patient is, thus, briefly separated from the
The Ritual Process a n d the Problem o f Reflexivity 197
action, and thereby experiences a reduction in the senses by which human
beings can apprehend their contexts of action. The cloth is suddenly swept
away by an exorcist as demon, who plunges through the barrier (marked by
a variety of symbolic objects) that separates the patient from the demonic
world. This action, which is often repeated in the course of the rite, re p re ­
sents the nature of the demonic attack— sudden, unexpected shock. H ere
the symbolic type of dem on further integrates the patient into the demonic.
The dancers in the major dance periods of the midnight watch have a
similar effect in relation to the members of the ritual gathering as well as the
patient. As symbolic types, they threaten to cross the thin dividing line
betw een the horrifying world of demons and that of everyday reality and
effect, partially at least, an integration of the ritual gathering into the reality
of the demonic. During the midnight watch, the focusing of the ritual gather­
ing on the central ritual events, the elaboration of the presentational sym ­
bolic mode through dance, and the clear emergence of demons as symbolic
types integrate all those in the environment of the rite into the province of
the demonic. Organized within the fram ew ork of this reality, members of the
ritual gathering can reflect upon it, but only in terms of the demonic and not
primarily with reference to alternative meaning contexts that lie outside it.
In this sense, the organization of the performance facilitates their participa­
tion in the demonic and their experience of it. Insofar as they act reflexively,
that is, maintain a social self, a “m e ,” in the context of the demonic, m e m ­
bers of the ritual gathering are constrained, by the very nature of their
organization into the rite, to reconceptualize a self in terms of the demonic—
in effect, to deny their social .self. It is this which renders the period of the
midnight watch dangerous and frightening in the ritual assembly.
During the midnight watch, therefore, both the greater elaboration of
the presentational symbolic mold of the rite and the further development and
reification of symbolic types within it create the potential for a heightened
sense o f the demonic. Further, the distance betw een the ideas and actions
expressed in the central events of the ritual and the mem bers o f the ritual
gathering is reduced. The patient, by entering a trance, becomes one with
the demon, and becom es, in fact, the personification of the symbolic type of
the demon. Kin and those others hitherto outside the sense and meaning
established in the ritual frame becom e tied to the finite meaning province of
the demonic. They come to experience the demonic and, I suggest, begin to
lose their capacity to reflect on the demonic in terms of the reality of
everyday life. This is largely achieved by the development of a greater
consistency within the ritual frame, which overwhelms the alternative
nondem onic reality of mem bers of the ritual gathering.
It is important to stress that the alternative realities of the everyday are
not destroyed and that the distancing of the members of the ritual gathering
is not so reduced that their capacity to act as audience— to reflect— is d e­
stroyed. The exorcist-dancers overelaborate their performance; they engage
in what G offm an34 term s role-distance. Occasionally, they will “acciden­
198 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
tally” drop a lighted torch and will complicate a dance m ovem ent so that
their limbs becom e hopelessly entangled, and in the middle of a swirling
dance they will trip and fall. The “flow” of the dance— of the demonic— is
broken. In a sense they begin to play with the demonic in the context of the
demonic. Through play they communicate the m etam essage that the terrible
world of the dem ons has no determining necessity.35 As the period of the
midnight w atch draw s to a close, special dances (adaw) are performed for
selected individuals, usually the household head and other prominent p e o ­
ple, in return for small cash payments. Through these actions, the exorcists
begin a process of reconstituting the everyday— the elements of its structure
and the principles upon which it is based.
The emergence of play and the introduction of aspects drawn from the
everyday occur near the conclusion of the midnight watch, after the e x or­
cists, in their opinion, have magically severed the “gaze” that binds the
patient to the malign supernatural. It remains for the patient to be made
conscious of this and to be made aware also that action can be co m ­
prehended in terms of realities other than the demonic. The play element
w eakens the internally consistent ritual world of demons, and makes possi­
ble the em ergence and realization of other ways of constructing reality. The
change in the perform ance rules that allows members of the ritual gathering
to join in the short datices (adaw) while maintaining their identities in the
reality of the everyday begins a process in which the m undane is elaborated
within the context of the demonic. There thus develops an increasing incon­
sistency within a ritual world that demons in their aw esom e aspect have
hitherto dominated.
A fundamental assumption guiding this analysis is that rituals, while
they are occasions for the realization of inconsistencies and contradictions,
nonetheless attem pt to resolve them and strive to establish an overall unity
of context in meaning and action. Transformations occur in the symbolic
representations elaborated by the ritual and the meaning conveyed through
them, so that consistency can be reestablished within a ritual frame that the
everyday now invades. These transformations and changes in the relation of
ritual subject, performers, and other m em bers of the ritual gathering to the
central ritual events are effected in the closing sequences of the rite, in the
period of the morning watch.
The ritual sequences of the morning watch, in large-scale exorcisms, are
characterized by extended periods of masked comic drama. They begin after
a long break in the ritual, known as the maha te (“big te a ”), when food and
refreshm ents are served. By means of this break the param ount reality of
everyday life is reestablished in the setting of the exorcism. M em bers of the
ritual gathering, with the exception of the patient, gossip and talk among
themselves. The sense of “w e ” is regenerated and organized in accordance
with the schem ata of the everyday. W hen the ritual resumes, however, the
everyday world is not separated from the world of demons. The world of
menacing apparitions and dem ons and that of everyday, m undane life co ex ­
The R itu al Process and the Problem o f Reflexivity 199
ist in the one context o f action and meaning. In the course of the comic
dram a, an exorcist-actor appears in the guise of successive apparitions and
demons. E ach dem on emerges from the demon palace and twirls a boxlike
rectangular structure (kapala kuduva), which has been erected directly in
front of the palace. This structure represents an ordered cosmic unity as a
Sinhalese should conceive it. At the top is the world of deities (deva loka), in
the middle the world of human beings (minissu loka), and at the bottom the
world o f dem ons (yaksha loka). The twirling and shaking of the structure
represents the chaotic potential of dem ons— their threat to the cosmic order.
The first dem on to enter, a torch-bearing apparition (pandam paliya), howls
and shouts as it enters the arena but otherwise does not utter a word. It
circles the perform ance arena, glowering at members of the ritual gathering
and at the patient. At intervals, billowing clouds of orange flame rise from
the torches it holds in its hands. The presence of the demon momentarily
suspends the sense of the everyday and recreates the awful, horrifying real­
ity developed in the preceding sequences of the ritual.
The appearance of P a n d a m paliya is brief and is immediately followed
by a succession of other demon representations. They enter a context in
which the everyday, as well as the demonic, receives elaboration.Each d e­
mon engages in extended dialogue with an exorcist, who takes the role of a
“ straight m a n ”— o f a normal, healthy human being. Occasionally, the demon
will address the patient and exchange words with other members of the ritual
gathering. The discourse is centered on the exorcist “ straight m a n ” and
couched in the everyday language of the marketplace, village, and town. It is
a discursive symbolic m o d e36 distinct from the presentational symbolic mode
of the ritual in the preceding periods. In a discursive symbolic mode, word
and action are no longer tightly interrelated; they are freed to combine in a
variety of ways to explore and realize an extensive connotative range relat­
ing to the realities both of the supernatural and of the everyday. Through the
discursive medium of the comic drama, carefully controlled by the exorcist-
actors, the sense and meaning attached to object and action becom e increas­
ingly inconsistent, and the contradiction betw een the terrifying reality of the
patient and that of normal healthy others is made apparent.
It is important at this point to consider further some of the properties of
symbolic types raised earlier. Symbolic types have the property of pro du c­
ing a coherency and consistency of meaning context. They do this by
limiting and reducing the set o f contextual relevancies. They can also absorb
into themselves the meaning and sense o f context elaborated for their em er­
gence. W here symbolic types emerge, they becom e highly durable. In such
situations, there is extrem e redundancy, and a condition is established
w hereby symbolic types can operate freely and independently of the sym ­
bolic medium in which they have been created. Symbolic types that are fully
constituted and internally consistent have the ability to recreate the unity of
sense and meaning o f context from which they emerged. Thus, successfully
constituted and completed, they are em pow ered to carry over the meaning
200 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
and sense derived from one context to another, possibly alternative and
contradictory context of meaning. The liminal period of rites of passage or
transformational rituals, such as exorcisms, provides a context in which
symbolic types can emerge.
Symbolic types are similar to what T urner has characterized as liminal
symbols. T u rn er argues, however, that liminal symbols contain inconsistent,
contradictory, and ambiguous meanings, and this enables them to bridge
alternative contexts of meaning. T u r n e r’s argument can be modified and
extended in relation to Sinhalese exorcisms. Symbolic types are, in my
argument, only potentially ambiguous or inconsistent. Their contradictory
or inconsistent quality is a consequence o f their linking alternative meaning
contexts, rather than a reason for their use in bridging such c o n tex ts.37
Fu rtherm ore, w hen symbolic types or liminal symbols realize internal c o n ­
tradictions and inconsistencies in themselves as they are presented to, and
b ecom e apparent to, ritual participants, this constitutes an aspect o f their
process of dissolution or transformation. The appearance of inconsistencies
within symbolic types signifies their inability to maintain a unity of context,
and, like H um p ty D um pty, they fall and shatter and cannot be put together
again— at least not in the same form as before. In such a situation, either of
two things can happen. The symbolic type can be reconstituted in such a
way that its elements form a new, transformed arrangement that enables a
unity of context to be achieved. Alternatively, the failure o f one symbolic
type might lead to the successive formation of others until one is discovered
that successfully unifies the context and resolves contradictions. A num ber
of factors can cause symbolic types to lose their efficacy or can lead to their
transformation. Further, an understanding o f how symbolic types or liminal
symbols are transform ed or negated is crucial for comprehending how rites
are transformative.
T he processes of transformation and negation of symbolic types of de­
mons are evident in exorcisms. The drama of the morning watch is organized
through a discursive symbolic mode. The exorcist “ straight m a n ” elaborates
and expands around the dem on contexts of meaning relating to both super­
natural realities and the everyday. The demons appear as unable to tie
together a rapidly diversifying meaning context. They cannot speak proper
Sinhalese. They are disrespectful to ideas and objects that Sinhalese hold
sacred in normal life. They insult the Buddha. Their actions becom e inter­
preted in terms o f the everyday. The “ straight m an ” derides and abuses
them. H e traps them in skillful repartee. The demons are shown to be u n ­
civilized, filthy, and uncouth as they fart and stumble around the perform ­
ance arena, uttering obscenities. These former objects of terror are reduced
to role types that can be com prehended in terms of everyday typifications.
Thus they assum e the identities of a town tough, a police sergeant, a govern­
ment bureaucrat, a politician, a flighty and em barrassed young woman, and
so on. The dem ons absorb into themselves a great variety of meanings
draw n from the supernatural and the everyday, and they thus becom e incon­
The R itu al Process a n d the Problem o f Reflexivity 201
sistent, absurd, comic figures. The absurd, ridiculous aspect of demons is
validated by the response of mem bers of the ritual gathering, who laugh and
otherwise express their am usem ent at the ponderous antics of dem ons as
they try to make sense of the everyday world into which they are projected.
D em ons express inconsistencies and impossible juxtapositions of meaning in
their own form and action. The realization of these inconsistencies and
impossibilities by mem bers of the ritual gathering is a realization o f the
comic. The dem ons cannot maintain a unity of context in their mode as
horrible, terrible figures of the earlier ritual episodes. If they are to maintain
a consistency with the organization of reality as it is now developing around
them, their terrible aspect must be reduced. The jo kes in the dramatic
episodes achieve this reduction and dem onstrate that their horrifying aspect
has no necessity in the everyday world. As terrifying specters, demons are
shown to have no place in the param ount reality of daily life. Dem ons only
make sense in terms of the everyday typifications of “norm al,” healthy
Sinhalese if they are recognized as lowly, filthy and uncivilized creatures,
distanced from the world of human beings and subordinate to them as well as
to the B ud dh a and the deities, who exercise legitimate control over them. In
an important sense, demons becom e comprehensible if they are no longer
seen as symbolic types that determine and draw together the diverse realities
o f the everyday world.
D estroy ed as symbolic types capable of unifying context, the demons
retreat from the perform ance arena. As they do so, they express their dis­
tancing from the m undane world of human beings and the fact that they have
no place in it. They are transformed, and with them the reality they have
hitherto summarized; they are relocated in their proper position in the
cosmic order as defined by healthy hum an beings. W here they once domi­
nated, they are now themselves dominated. They are made comprehensible
and consistent in terms of other symbolic types— the B uddha and the deities.
As they leave the arena, they acknowledge the superiority of the B uddha
and obey the com m ands of hum an beings to return to their own world.
The discursive medium of dram a allows the param ount reality of
everyday life to flood into and overwhelm the sense and meaning hitherto
constructed in the course of ritual event and action. The patient becomes
progressively isolated in a reality as others see it. The patient is also sepa­
rated from the support of close kin. They leave the patient’s side and adopt
the attitude of others in the ritual gathering, who laugh derisively at the
behavior of the actor as demon. As with other members of the gathering,
close kin becom e completely distanced from the terrifying world of demons.
If the patient is serious and distressed, he or she is believed to be still
dominated by demonic thoughts. Such an attitude means there is inconsist­
ency in the sense and meaning com m unicated within the ritual frame. C o n ­
sistency can only be achieved by the patient adopting the attitude of those
others now engaged actively within the organization of ritual event and
action. W hen the patient laughs or otherwise shows am usem ent, he or she
202 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
has becom e distanced from the world of demons, has reconceptualized them
in terms o f the “ no rm al,” healthy typifications of others, and looks upon
dem ons for what they are. Complete consistency in a transformed context of
meaning is achieved when the patient laughs, and from this m om ent the
exorcism rite hurries to a close. The patient, like the demons, engages in acts
that acknowledge the superiority of the Buddha and the deities and the
legitimacy of everyday typifications in accordance with which daily life is
organized. The ritual is concluded with the destruction of various structures
and objects used in the rite. They are heaped in a pile away from human
habitation, often in undergrowth at the margins of the village or neighbor­
hood. With this, the ritual gathering disbands and individuals resume their
daily tasks.
The ritual action orchestrated by exorcists stands in a dialectical rela­
tion with those who gather at the occasion. Thus the changes in the relation
of members of the ritual gathering to the performance and to each other both
mark transitions in the ritual process and actively contribute to the establish­
ment, negation, and transformation of the meaning context contained within
the ritual frame. F o r example, the exclusion during the early phases of most
of those who gather at an exorcism from entry into the central ritual action
allows the demonic to be constructed in the midst of alternative, contradic­
tory and potentially disruptive understandings. At the same time, this exclu­
sion facilitates the elaboration of the everyday among those who are kept
apart from the demonic and its action and meaning context. The ritual p roc­
ess that leads to the focusing of the members hitherto excluded has the
consequence of breaking down and disrupting the face-to-face interaction
betw een m em bers o f the gathering. In essence, this focusing changes the
internal organization of the ritual gathering and removes the structural bases
w hereby the meaning contexts of the everyday can be sustained. This per­
mits the demonic to invade the everyday and to begin to dominate it. In such
a way mem bers of the ritual gathering are brought within close experiential
range of the demonic, which might be essential to their understanding of the
plight of the patient. The ideas and structures of the everyday that reside
with the members of the ritual gathering constitute a resource, which, when
organized into the central action of the rite through the discursive medium of
drama, transforms the meaning and sense of the demonic. The exorcists
draw on the everyday knowledge of the gathering, objectify it, and organize
the responses o f the gathering.

C O N C LU SIO N : PE R F O R M A N C E A N D R E F LE X IV IT Y

M any anthropological analyses of ritual concentrate on the central acts and

participants while neglecting others who gather for the occasion. The p re s­
ence o f guests or spectators is often regarded as marginal to the major aims
of the rite. In the major dem on exorcisms o f the Sinhalese, however, the so-
The Ritual Process and the Problem o f Reflexivity 203
called spectators are found to be integral to the ritual process, that is, to the
various transformations in individual understanding and the structuring of
context achieved in the course of the rite. I have stressed the dialectical
properties of ritual perform ance— the dynamic interplay of ritual act and
symbol— with the members of the ritual gathering. The rules governing the
enactm ent of particular ritual events, and the mode of symbolic ordering of
these events, produce a structuring or differential engagement of members
of the ritual gathering with the central events. This enables the sustaining of
particular ways of ordering reality responsible for much of the transform a­
tional efficacy of the rite. But this observation only emphasizes one side of
the dialectic. Again, this structuring of the gathering creates the conditions
for a further empowering of the meaningful and experiential possibilities of
ritual act and symbol. In addition, it establishes conditions for the trans­
formation of context. Thus the bringing of those hitherto kept apart from
much of the central action into relations that engage them more immediately
within it facilitates the transformation of the symbolic ordering and the
meaning o f the demonic world.
M ost anthropologists argue that rituals make m etacom m entaries, and
thus are reflexive upon the nonritualized, param ount reality of everyday life.
But the anthropologist is in a position that would lead to such an o b serv a ­
tion: the anthropologist is never completely part of the culture being studied,
but always apart from it. The subjects of research, the people, are also
objects; and this is dem anded by the nature of the anthropological discipline.
The anthropologist, in a sense, assumes the role of a critic, for particular
events are placed in the context of other events, are interrelated, contrasted
and evaluated. Therefore, while rituals might typically be regarded as refle­
xive events by anthropologists, it does not necessarily follow that they will
be similarly regarded by participants. This is a question that deserves much
fuller and more careful analysis than it has heretofore received.
In this essay I have been centrally concerned with the extent to which
rituals do or do not lead to reflexivity for those engaged in them. A ritual
leads to “reflexivity” when the context of performance sustains different
modes of ordering reality and accents upon these realities. This is a potential
structural property of a ritual as a performance, but it is not always present
and, w hen it is, it is critically dependent on the way m em bers o f the gather­
ing are ordered with respect to the central events. Rituals move individuals
through different positions (spatial and experiential) in relation to the ord er­
ing of act and symbol in the central events. A fundamental aspect of the
ritual process, in the sense I suggest, is that it can shift the standpoint from
which the individual interprets and experiences the meaning and the reality
o f the central events. The standpoint might be such that members of the
ritual gathering are hindered in standing apart from, and reflecting upon, the
action in terms o f alternative contexts of meaning and action. This is so for
the patient in the evening watch of an exorcism, who is positioned in such a
way that he or she is progressively enveloped by the demonic. The p a tien t’s
204 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
standpoint is one in which alternative ways o f ordering reality are system ati­
cally excluded. This is not so for other mem bers of thè gathering, who are
located in the reality of everyday and who are able to look in upon the
demonic from alternative perspectives. In the midnight watch, how ever, the
mem bers of the ritual gathering, by focusing on the central action, change
from being onlookers to being active participants. In the structural process
of the rite they are no longer simply an audience to their own action and the
action of others. They are the action and the situation of the demonic. In the
morning watch, through the medium of the comic dram a alternative realities
are presented. T he com edy of major exorcisms is in itself highly reflexive.
Indeed, in exorcisms, reflexivity is the very essence of the comic. Through
the com edy, individuals are enabled, and in fact enjoined, to adopt alterna­
tive perspectives on the demonic. They are redistanced in the order of the
rite as audience. Their reflection on the meaning of the demonic is
facilitated, and the pow er of the demonic to control action in the world is
denied. Thus, in exorcisms, reflexivity comes and goes in an ordered se­
quence that is essential to the efficacy of the rite.
T he approach I have developed here, albeit in a limited way, suggests
some possible extensions and modifications of the important contributions
other scholars have made toward the analysis of ritual performance. At the
start o f this discussion, I referred to G e e rtz ’s distinction betw een deep play
and shallow play. According to Geertz, it is in performances that can be
characterized as deep play that the full and varied cultural resonances o f a
society are portrayed. The perform ance involves mem bers o f the gathering
in fundamental cultural and social ideas and relationships, the perform ance
itself becoming a reflexive m etacom m entary on the lived cultural world of
the participants. In certain respects, deep play is to shallow play what deep
structure is to surface structure in structuralist analysis. But there is an
important difference in that in structuralist analysis the surface structure can
be generated from the rules or principles located in the deep structure: there
is a definable relation betw een deep structure and surface structure. In con­
trast, G e e rtz ’s deep play and shallow play are separate, almost independent,
possibilities of performance. My own analysis, however, indicates a closer
relation— an interdependence. Shallow play exists together with deep play in
Sinhalese exorcism rites, and this interdependence is vital to exorcism as a
reflexive event, both for the participants and for the efficacy of the rite in
effecting certain transformations in identity, meaning, and experience.
T here are mom ents in exorcism of deep play, when members of the ritual
gathering com e to live those cultural and social worlds they construct or
have constructed around them. But during these moments they do not nec­
essarily reflect on life as they live it. Paradoxically, it might be in those
m om ents in performance that G eertz calls shallow play, w hen those who
gather at an occasion are relatively distanced from the central events, that
participants com e to realize and com prehend their social and cultural
realities. E xorcism s, and most rituals for that matter, provide m om ents of
The Ritual Process a n d the Problem o f Reflexivity 205

deep play and shallow play. Through this play, individuals can experience
the world of their construction and then stand back and reflect upon its
various meanings. Exorcism s constitute their meaning and transformations
in meaning both through experieiicing and through reflection upon this e x p e ­
riencing.
B oth G eertz and Turner, in their analyses of ritual symbols and action,
draw attention to the wide range of meanings that can be attached to them.
T u rn er writes of the multivocality of symbols. F o r him this multivocality is
an inherent property of symbols. He stresses that the particular valencies of
meanings of symbols that becom e apparent through performance are d e p e n ­
dent on their use and their positioning in a relational context com posed of
other symbols. The perspective I have tried to develop here indicates a
possible extension or at least a modification of this view. This is that the
multivocality of symbols, or the variety of culturally meaningful interpreta­
tions that can be placed upon them by those gathered at a perform ance, is at
least partly a function of the num ber of perspectives made possible by the
structuring o f standpoints within the ritual process. The extension or co n ­
traction of the meaningful properties of ritual symbols and symbolic acts is
both emergent from and a product of the range of standpoints structured into
the perform ance context in the course of the enactm ent o f the ritual events.

NOTES

1. Victor Turner, The F o re s t o f S y m b o l s (Ithaca, 1967); The R itu a l P ro c e ss

(Chicago, 1969).
2. D. Geertz, “D eep Play: N o tes on the Balinese Cockfight,” D a e d a lu s 101: 1-37,
1972.
3. P. Wirz, E x o r c is m a n d the A r t o f H ea lin g in Ceylon (Leiden, 1954). A full
discussion o f exorcism ritual and its social and political context is to be found in
B. Kapferer, A Celebration o f D e m o n s (Bloom ington, 1983).
4. I have excluded one major exorcism from consideration here— the Ira M u d u n
S a m a y a m a (the gathering time o f the midday dem on), which is held for the
B lood D em on (riri yaka). The rite is held over the midday period, usually
betw een 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The organization o f the early offering periods is
similar to that in the other large-scale exorcism s. There is also a major episode
o f dance, during which the patient frequently b ecom es entranced, which consti­
tutes the climax o f the rite. The exorcism ends with the burning o f an effigy—
representative o f the patient and the illness. There are, how ever, no extended
dramatic seq uences, as in the other major exorcism rites.
5. The R a t a Y a k k u m a is only performed for female patients. It deals specifically
with female-related disorders— menstrual difficulties, barrenness, pregnancy
problems, and so on. If the cause o f the sickness o f a child is traced to the
mother, a R a ta Y a k k u m a will also be held. The R a ta Y a k k u m a is performed for
Kalu Yaka (the Black D em on), who mainly attacks w om en.
6. Most o f the patients I observed w ho had the S u n n iy a m performed were rela­
tively successful local entrepreneurs. The difficulties they encounter in their
business are readily attributed to witchcraft and sorcery.
7. G. O beyesekere, “The Ritual Drama o f the Sanni Demons: Collective Repre­
206 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
sentations o f D isease in C ey lo n ,” C o m p a ra tiv e S tud ies in So c ie ty a n d H isto ry
11: 175-216, 1969; B. Kapferer, “Entertaining D em on s:'C om ed y, Interaction
and Meaning in a Sinhalese Healing Ritual,” M o d e rn Ceylon S tu d ie s 6: 1-55,
1976 (republished in S o cia l A n a lysis 1: J 08—52, 1979).
8. Traditional Sinhalese naturalistic medicine (ayurveda) is also based on a
humoral theory and, indeed, the practice o f exorcists (yaksha bfiuta vidyava) is
one o f its subdivisions.
9. The humors are related explicitly by exorcists to the elemental substances
(m a h a b h u ta s ) out o f which all matter is constituted. An excellent account o f the
Buddhist conception o f the m a h a b h u t a s is to be found in Y. Karunadasa, “The
Buddhist Conception o f Mahabhutas as Primary Elem ents o f M atter,” Univer­
sity o f Ceylon R e v ie w 22: 28—47, 1964.
10. Kapferer, “Entertaining D e m o n s,” p. 108-52.
11. M. A m es, “Ritual Presentations and the Structure o f the Sinhalese P antheon,”
in M. N ash, ed., A n th r o p o lo g ic a l S tu d ies in Theravada B u d d h i s m (N ew H aven,
1966), pp. 27-50; G. O beyesekere, “The Buddhist Pantheon in Ceylon and Its
E x ten sio n s,” in M. N ash, ed., A n th r o p o lo g ic a l S tu d ie s in T heravada B u d d h is m
(N ew H aven, 1966), pp. 1-26.
12. By “typification” I refer to the culturally objectified ideas in terms o f which
Sinhalese organize their interaction. The usage o f this term relates explicitly to
that em ployed by Berger and Luckmann in The Social Construction o f Reality.
13. The term vidiya is derived from the Sanskrit vithi vithika, which means “street”
or “house in a street.” Indeed the y a k k a vidiya is conceptualized by exorcists as
com posed o f a number o f streets that intersect. In one sense it could be under­
stood as a place o f crossroads. The vidiya, as a street or a place where streets
intersect, is a place for the representation o f disorder. While the vidiya is a
house, it is also the place where the disorder o f the street intrudes.
14. M. Marriott, “Caste Ranking and Food Transactions: A Matrix A n a ly sis,” Vik­
ing F u n d P u b lica tion s in A n t h r o p o lo g y 47: 133-71, 1968; L. Dum ont, H o m o
H iera rch icu s (Chicago, 1970); N . Yalman, “On the Meaning o f Food Offerings
in C ey lo n ,” S o cia l C o m p a s s 20: 287-302, 1973.
15. O beyesekere, “Ritual D ram a,” 1969.
16. Yalman, “Food Offerings,” 1973.
17. G. H. Mead, M ind, S e l f a n d S o ciety (Chicago, 1934).
18. W. James, Principles o f P s y c h o lo g y (London, 1891); A. Schütz, The
P h e n o m e n o l o g y o f the S o cia l World (London, 1972).
19. B. Kapferer, “Mind, S elf and Demon in Dem onic Illness: The Negation and
Reconstruction o f S e lf,” A m e r ic a n E th no lo g ist 6: 110-33; 1979; A Celebration
o f Demons.
20. P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction o f R eality: A Treatise
in the S ocio lo g y o f K n o w l e d g e (London, 1971).
21. G. B ateson, “A Theory o f Play and F antasy,” P sychiatric R e s e a r c h R e p o r ts 2:
44, 1955.
22. E. Goffman, E n c o u n te r s : Two Studies in the S o cio lo g y o f Interaction (In­
dianapolis, 1961), p. 20; D. Handelman and B. Kapferer, “Forms o f Joking
Activity: A Comparative A pproach,” A m e r ic a n A n th r o p o lo g ist 74: 293-9, 1972.
23. Goffman, E n c o u n t e r s , p. 33.
24. D. Handelman and B. Kapferer, “Symbolic T ypes, Mediation and the Trans­
formation o f Ritual Context: Sinhalese D em ons and T ew a C lo w n s,” S e m io tic a
30: 41-77, 1980.
25. Kapferer, “Mind, S elf and Dem on in D em onic Illness,” 1979.
26. A. Schütz, The P h e n o m e n o l o g y o f the Social World (London, 1972).
27. V. Turner, The F o re st o f S y m b o ls, 1967; The R itu a l Process, 1969.
The Ritual Process a n d the Problem o f Reflexivity 207
28. S. K. Langer, P h ilo so p h y in a N e w K e y (Cambridge, 1951).
29. S. J. Tambiah, “The Magical Pow er o f W ords,” M a n 3: 175-208, 1968.
30. S. K. Langer, Feeling a n d F o r m (London, 1954); Kapferer, “Em otion and
F eelin g,” 1979.
31. O. E. Klapp, S y m b o l i c Lea d ers, Public D r a m a s , a n d Public M e n (Chicago,
1964); R. H. Grathoff, The S tru cture o f Social In c o n sisten cies : A Contribution
to a Unified Theory o f Play, G a m e a n d S o cia l A c tio n (The Hague, 1970);
E. Burns, Theatricality: A S tu d y o f Convention in the Theatre a n d in Social Life
(London, 1972); Handelman and Kapferer, “Sym bolic T y p e s,” pp. 41-77.
32. Grathoff, p. 122.
33. Grathoff, p. 123.
34. Goffman, E n c o u n te r s , 1961.
35. B ateson, “A Theory o f Play and F antasy,” 1955; M. Douglas, “The Social
Control o f Cognition: Som e Factors in Joke P erception,” M a n 3: 361-76, 1968.
36. Langer, P h ilo so p h y in a N e w K e y , 1951.
37. Handelman and Kapferer, “Sym bolic T y p e s,” 1980.
 s

C arnival in M ultiple Planes *

Roberto Da Matta

In previous works I have examined the Brazilian Carnaval in its general and
globalizing aspects. H ere I wish to consider Carnival in its regional character
and to discuss a group of problems related to the transformation of the
everyday world into an “inverted universe.” I shall take as a basis certain
fundamental categories of the Brazilian social universe and certain p ro c ­
esses of ritualization and symbolization.
In Jorge A m a d o ’s O Pais do Carnaval (The Country o f Carnival),1 the
central character, Paulo Rigger, says at a crucial moment, “I only felt Brazil­
ian twice. Once, in Carnival, when I danced the samba in the street. The
other w hen I beat Julie, after she deceived m e .” The quotation is filled with
significance. First, at the time of this novel, the nation was searching for the
essence of what was truly Brazilian. In this context, Paulo Rigger’s outburst
(or discovery) is as highly provocative as it is revealing. To be Brazilian for
him is the equivalent of “dancing the samba in the street” (sambar na rua)
and adopting the patriarchal behavior— typically heavy-handed and authori­
tarian— of “beating French m istresses” every time they deceive one. And, I
should add, Julie deceived Paulo, the individualist son of a planatation
ow ner, with one of his employees— a virile and muscular black who never
experienced the existential dilemmas of his boss.
The quotation implies a certain tragedy in discovering oneself as a B ra­
zilian. In other countries self-identification raises questions of a civic nature,
referring to flags, hymns, crowns, or heroic struggles, but for our character,
who is here a paradigm, to be Brazilian is to dissolve oneself in the mul­
titudinous disorder of dancing the samba in the streets and in savagely

*1 should like to thank Gilberto Velho, E. V. de Castro, Anthony Seeger, Luiz de

Castro Faria, Y vonne Leite, Myriam Lem le, and Otavio Velho for the discussion o f
certain important points. Professor Manuel D iegues, Jr., and the Department o f
Cultural Affairs provided resources for fieldwork. Joao Poppe, Marco Antonio
M ello, Julia L evi, and Celeste Da Matta were my assistants during the 1977 carnival,
and for this I thank them.

208
Carnival in Multiple Planes 209
beating a E u ro pean mistress. Thus, in the case of Brazil, the process of
identification brings to the surface Carnival and the control of feminine
sexual favors.
✓

THE H O U SE A N D THE STREET

Paulo Rigger’s identification as a Brazilian involves two social domains. One

of them is evidently the street, where the hero danced the samba (his partner
was a mulatto woman). The other is the domain of the house— of the b e d ­
room, to be precise—-where the deceiving French mistress was eventually
beaten. The opposition betw een street and house is basic and can serve as a
powerful instrument in the analysis of the Brazilian social world, and above
all in the study of its ritualization.
The category “ street” indicates the world with its unpredictable events,
its actions and passions. The category “h o u se ” pertains to a controlled un­
iverse, w here things are in their proper places. The street -implies m o v e ­
m ent,novelty, and action, while the house implies harmony, w armth, and
calm. F urtherm ore, in the street one works; at home one rests. The social
groups that occupy a house are radically different from those of the world of
the street. In the home we have associations ruled and formed by kinship
and “blood relations.” In the street, relationships are those of patronage and
have an indelible character of choice, or imply the possibility of choice. In
the house, relations are ruled “naturally” by the hierarchies of sex and age,
with males and the elderly taking precedence. In the street some difficulty
may be encountered in localizing and discovering the hierarchies, as they are
based on other principles. Although both domains should be governed by a
hierarchy based on re sp e c t,2 the concept of respect in the Brazilian social
universe is above all characteristic of the relations betw een parents and
children, especially in the relation betw een father and son.
As a consequence of this, in the street one must take care not to violate
unknow n or unperceived hierarchies. Similarly, care must be taken to avoid
the circle of people who would trick, mislead, or dominate one, since the
basic rule of the street is to deceive and to take advantage of others. Malan-
dragem — taking advantage of others— is the Brazilian art of using the a m ­
biguous as an instrument for survival. In the street the world is seen as a
H obbesian universe, w here everybody tends to be in some kind of com peti­
tion against everybody else, until some form of hierarchy can appear and
impose order.
But in the house everything is the inverse. H ere space is rigidly d e m a r­
cated, divided into verandas, parlors, dining rooms, kitchens, bathroom s,
bedroom s, and invariably the serv a n ts’ area and service areas. Space is
dem arcated in such a way that the house as a whole is a grouping of spaces
where greater or lesser intimacy is permitted, possible, or prohibited.
The opposition of street and house separates two mutually exclusive
210 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
domains. Yet they can be interrelated in a complex way, since they may be
expressed both in the form of a clear opposition and in tefms of gradations in
a continuum. The spatial division of the Brazilian home itself suggests the
possibility of gradation, of compromise^and mediation. The veranda is an
ambiguous space betw een the house and the street, generally facing the
street. The parlor, although within the house, is also an intermediate space,
since it is where visitors are received. Also ambiguously situated between
the interior and exterior worlds are the windows. From these one can
see the street, with its movement, its constantly parading figures. It was
from the windows that the girls of the house could enter into visual contact
with their boyfriends, as Thales de A zevedo3 has observed. It is evident that
certain areas of the house permit the world within to communicate with the
world without, and thus the feminine (which is always under control) with
the masculine.
In addition, the kitchen is a special place, exclusively feminine and,
even today, in this era of modernization and change, an area separated from
the rest of the house and generally hidden— as opposed to the kitchen in
N orth American and E urop ean houses. Still another ambiguous precinct is
“the service a rea ” or the “ s e rv a n t’s area” (dependencias da empregada).
This space relates the world of the house with the street, and with work,
poverty, and marginality.
Such observations lead to the plans of Brazilian cities and, by e x ten ­
sion, of cities of the Latin or Mediterranean world, since there appears to be
a homologous relationship betw een the spatial organization in the house and
the spatial organization of the city.4 At the level of the city, the “ street” is a
category that has several subdivisions. Thus we have “my street” or “our
stre et” in opposition to “ street” in general. In addition, the street is the place
w here one has o n e ’s house, while the plaza constitutes an area of e n c o u n ­
ters, a kind of urban parlor.
Plazas in the Latin world are always marked by geometrical and well-
tended gardens, in contrast to the parks of the Anglo-Saxon world. In addi­
tion, M editerranean houses have an internal patio, an area that functions as
a kind of stage. (This occurs also in the villages of the Indians of the Ge and
Bororo language groups in central Brazil.) This central area serves as a focal
point for collective activities, above all rituals, and for m ovem ent from one
part of the house to another.
The distinctive feature of the domain of the house seems to be control
over social relations, which implies a greater intimacy and a lesser social
distance than elsewhere. The house is the seat of “ my family,” “my people,”
or “ mine o w n ,” as people say colloquially in Brazil, but the street implies a
certain lack of control and a distancing between self and others. It is the
locale of punishment, of “life’s toils,” and of work. The street is where one
encounters what the Brazilians call the hard realities of life. It is an area of
confusions and novelities, where robberies occur and where it is necessary
to walk carefully, suspicious and alert. In sum the street, as a generic cate­
Carnival in Multiple Planes 211

gory in opposition to the house, is a public place, controlled by the govern­

ment or by destiny— those impersonal forces over which we have minimal
control.
In this sense the street is equivalent to the category scrub land (mato) or
forest (floresta) of the rural world, or to the “nature” of the tribal world. In
each case we are speaking of a partly unknow n and only partly controlled
domain peopled with dangerous figures. Thus it is in the street and in the
forests that the deceivers, the criminals, and the spirits live— those entities
with w hom one never has precise contractual relations.5
The category “ street” thus expresses both a particular place and a c om ­
plex social domain. One says in Brazil: “I ’m going to the street” thus indicat­
ing that one is going to the commercial heart of the city, or to a city in the
case of a person who lives in a town or on the limits of an urban area. In the
same way the expressions “ street kid” (moleque de rua) and “out on the
street” (jd para a rua) are very powerful and offensive expressions, desig­
nating in the first case a person without any family roots or moral scruples
and in the second anyone without a precise social position. H ence, to throw
som ebody “out of the h o u se” is synonymous with removing that person
from a precise social netw ork or from a group of marked moral positions. To
leave o n e ’s house in Brazil is a difficult choice, even a punishment, d e p en d ­
ing upon the situation.
The category “ street” can be divided into two others: the dow ntow n
area (centra) and the plaza. In fact, in the Brazilian urban world, we always
have the house (as a term referring to the place where one engages in greater
intimacy), the plaza, and the dow ntow n area. The plaza represents the
aesthetic aspects of the city: it is a m etaphor of its cosmology. In it are
located the gardens and the buildings most basic to the social life of the
com m unity— the Church, representing religious power, and the governm ent
offices, representing political power. In contrast, com m erce is centralized
dow ntow n, in the area where impersonal transactions take place. Evidently,
in many cities the do w ntow n coincides with the plaza. W hat is basic, h o w ­
ever, is to maintain a separation betw een the domain of pow er (temporal and
religious) and the domain of the economy. The spheres may be com plem en­
tary; they are not identical.6
The domain of the plaza is an arena for encounters, a place where
various social segments may or may not appear in a structured way as in
civic rituals. In the d ow ntow n area of a city, in opposition to the plaza, the
rules of encounter, of hierarchial complementarity, are not obeyed. Instead,
it is the locus of individualism, born of the impersonal and competitive laws
that regulate supply and demand.
The duality of street and house is confirmed by the existence of c o m ­
plete sets of roles, objects, and actions that must appear in one or the other
domain. Beating and scolding, for example, are actions that should occur in
the private part of the residence, where this kind of intimacy can occur. The
opposite is the case in political conflicts, which, in principle, should occur in
212 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
the streets and above all in the plazas, near the governm ent buildings. Sleep­
ing, eating, bathing, sexual relations, and other modes of obtaining physical
satisfaction should occur in the universe of the house, where people re cu p e r­
ate from the w ear and tear of daily life. Everything that pertains to the use,
care, and recuperation of the body, and as a consequence implies rest and
renewal is related to the domestic world. Actions that speak more of the
external aspects of social life are related to the public world, the world of the
street.
In Jorge A m a d o ’s book, Paulo Rigger beats his mistress in the house
and participates (brincar, literally, “to play”) in the Street Carnival. “ S treet”
here refers to the streets of the dow ntow n area of the city. But the more or
less perplexed tone o f his observation permits us to say that in this case we
are confronting a strong opposition. In fact, the place of a mistress is in the
street, not in the house. And the place to sing and dance the samba, particu­
larly in the case of the upper class, is in a house or a club, never on the
street. In the characterization of O Pais do Carnaval we can thus see that
Jorge A m ado is using an inversion, removing objects that should be in the
house to the street (dance and song), and putting objects that should be in
the street in the house. Thus Julie, the French mistress, comes to have a
perm anent relationship with the hero. The inversion is so symmetrical that
we cannot avoid seeing it as an intuitive and commonplace dramatization.

D IALECTICS, SYM B O LIZA TIO N , A N D R IT U A L IZ A T IO N

“H o u s e ” and “ street” as sociological categories imply opposition and also

gradations, as in the case with the segmentary oppositions of the N u er in the
classic description by E vans-Pritchard.7 Thus the street itself can be seen
and manipulated as if it were an extension or a part of the house, ju st as parts
of a house may be considered under certain circumstances as part of the
street. As an example o f the first case we can consider the houses of some
sections of Naples or the squatter settlements (favelas) of Rio de Janeiro,
where it is difficult to dem arcate the boundaries of the houses and the
streets. The same problem occurs with the old Brazilian custom, still to be
seen in many cities, of putting rocking chairs on the sidewalks at dusk. For
the second case, we can refer to the verandas and parlors, where the family
places its procelain and china in special display cabinets. On the walls of the
parlor the portraits of ancestors used to hang, immobile and somber. The
parlor was thus really an intermediary world betw een the house and the
street. In fact, the only way to understand correctly the dichotomous o p p o ­
sition is to see it in its own logic, in the articulation of the domains; for it is
through their dialectic— their reciprocal relations— that we can escape the
conceptual rigidity that frequently leads to a typically formalist and tax ­
onomic view.
We have seen that these domains of street and house mark more than
Carnival in Multiple Planes 213
mere discrete spaces. They also allow us to perceive social roles and
ideologies, actions and specific objects, since all of these constituent ele­
ments of a society and a culture are not independent or individualized in the
social structure. On the contrary^ they are always associated in such a way
that for each domain there are corresponding social roles, ideologies and
values, appropriate actions and specific objects, some invented especially
for that domain of the social world. Thus, all roles articulated into a su bstan­
tive (or substantial) ideology, and consequently linked to body and blood (as
with roles related to kinship and affinity), should occur in and be engendered
by the house. But all of the roles involving choice and will (these things of
“ soul” and “morality”), as in the case of voluntary associations such as
clubs, political parties, and other forms of civil corporation, are part of the
public world, of the domain of the street. The same association occurs with
objects and actions, since no one expects to encounter beds, kitchens, and
clothes closets in an office, in the same way that in a house everything that is
related to the domain of work should be located in a circumscribed, and
probably special, space. Dislocations of objects, like the appearance of so­
cial roles outside their respective domains of origin, are responsible for the
clues (which end up leading us to the criminals) and for “ scandals,”
“ sc e n e s ,” “d ra m a s,” and “dirtiness,” since they provoke an acute co n ­
sciousness of the interference of one domain in a no ther.8 Social systems with
differentiated spheres or domains presuppose a gram m ar or logical ordering
among themselves. In general, we pay a great deal of attention to social roles
as individualizing elements in the social system, like phonem es in a lan­
guage, ignoring the possibility of seeing them as parts of specific systems and
subsystem s of the social world. But social roles form, jointly with other
elements, clear sets that mark and are marked by their original domains.
D isplacement and passage from one domain to another are responsible for a
variety of processes, and it is through passage that the elements may be seen
as inverted, reinforced, or even neutralized.9 If an object or role passes from
one domain to ano ther quite rem oved and contradictory in terms of a given
social system (says, the domains of life and death among ourselves), this
object tends to be the focus of strong allusions. The effort needed to make it
return to the sphere of its origin will probably determine the strength of its
evocative power. The distance between domains calls attention to the o b ­
je c t, transforming it. A skull is nothing more nor less than a skull w hen it is
in a grave, for that is its place. It comes to represent much more in the hands
of a man or in a drawer. In the same way, the implements and tools of
peasants and w orkers, such as the sickle and the hammer, which in a shop or
in the field are inoffensive objects and entirely functional, completely lose
their operational function and gain in evocative pow er when they are placed
on a flag and transformed into weapons of social revolution. In the field or
shop they were tools. On a flag they are clues (pistas) and, as dislocated
objects, symbols.
The heart of the symbolizing process is thus the passage of an object or
214 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
its appearance in a different domain. This would seem to be important be­
cause we speak about symbols but in general do not specify the conditions
that transform a mere object— a piece of leaf, a stone, a gesture, a book, an
animal— into a symbol. But the change or passage of an element from one
domain to ano ther is the fundamental part of the process of symbolization.
Van G ennep raised the important question of rites of passage, but I believe it
is important for us to retain the concept of movem ent, process, and disloca­
tion, inherent in this perspective, rather than cling to the categorical term
ritual. U nderstanding dislocation as the critical mechanism in the tran s­
formation of objects into symbols is basic to the understanding of what is a
rite. This perspective permits us to see ritual as something that is created
and no longer to see it simply as a finished and definitive type of social
action, as is com m on in social anthropology. If, as I suggest, we must ask
ourselves how a given object has become a symbol and under what condi­
tions this was possible, we must also ask under what conditions a given set
of social actions is transformed into a ritual.
Through the w ork of Victor Turner we know that the processes of
symbolizing and ritualizing are interrelated and “go together.” I suggest that
in both processes we have a phenom enon of consciousness, that is, of being
aware. This is, in fact, the only common denom inator that I can see in the
so-called world of ritual, constituted, as it is, by an infinite num ber of
qualifications. In this way to ritualize—ju st as to symbolize— is fu nd am en ­
tally to dislocate an object from its place, a process that brings a clear
consciousness of the nature of the object, of the properties of its original
domain, and of its adaptation to its new locale. Thus dislocations bring on a
consciousness of all the reifications of the social world, w hether arbitrary or
necessary. F o r this reason the world of theater, with its artificiality and
arbitrariness, is able to move us. Through the artificial, we end up being
m oved by and, ourselves, mobilizing the real world, which is completely
dislocated on the stage through the agency of actors. In the same way, we
are perplexed and highly conscious of a mental disorder when we see som e­
one washing his hands in a complusive and systematic manner. H ere, as in
all cases of dislocated gestures, the washing of the hands ceases to be a
functional gesture and has only an allusive, symbolic content. It is the dislo­
cation of the gesture (to wash the hands without “ritual” or “hygienic”
necessity) that makes us perceive the mental d e rang em ent.10 Victor T urn er
raises this problem in his reflections on rites of passage and the use of masks
on these occasions. H e observes that in Central African masks the size of
everything is disproportional. All of the objects are characterized by exag­
geration. H e then asks, “W hat is the point of this exaggeration amounting
sometimes to caricature? It seems to me that to enlarge or diminish or
discolor in this way is a primordial mode of abstraction.” " To abstract is to
be able to com pare and distinguish objects, relations, and social domains.
Thus the exaggeration, as T u rn er implicitly emphasizes, is a privileged way
of making the novices conscious of certain basic features of their society.
But how is this realized? The mechanism is clear: there is a dislocation of
Carnival in Multiple Planes 215

objects (the junction of man and animal through masking), a passage that
allows one to com pare and thus synthesize different planes o f the same tribal
reality. T u rner is quite clear as to the importance of the process of making
things conscious in ritual, although he does not take it as the central process.
H e says, “M onsters startle neophytes into thinking about objects, persons,
relationships, and features of their environment they have hitherto taken for
g ra n te d .” 12
It is important to call attention to the process of dislocation since e v ery ­
thing would indicate that through it we can exaggerate (or reinforce), invert
(or dissimulate by changing their positions), and also neutralize (or diminish
or omit) qualities, and thus becom e conscious of basic processes and social
spheres. It is also important to rem em ber that passage and dislocation are at
the heart of the ritual process, even in complex societies with social domains
far rem oved from one another. Thus, instead of having systems w hose basic
characteristic is the interrelationship of complementarity of domains, as
occurs in the tribal world or in traditional societies, in industrial societies we
have competition, conflict, and contradictions among the diverse spheres of
social reality. Dislocations here are visible and nearly always involve the
contamination of all the domains by only one of them. That is what happens,
for example, with rituals of sport when everything related to physical culture
comes to dominate the social system. In the tribal universe things tend to
occur in the inverse m anner, with dislocations in the sense of individualizing
relations, persons, or social categories, since here we have systems w here
everything tends to be related to everything e lse .13 Dislocations of objects in
complex societies— the ritual process in industrial societies— always create
symbols that should be dominant, serving as points of reference for the
contamination of the entire system. It is not accidental that nearly all of
these symbols are objects that, in their original domains, are associated with
altitude and elevated things: the eagle, the cross on the top of the hill, the
stars, moon, and sun; or with pow er or strength: the lion, the griffin, or the
sword. The symbolism of our flags, and our symbolism in general, is the
dramatization of p ow er as a totalizing element in a system that frequently
lacks a center and is fragmented in its readings o f experience. Our m etaphor
of p ow er is thus made through the joining of the high with the low, as if
elevation (or the use of an object from above in a social context) could
provoke a union of all and consequently end differences among the diverse
domains that constitute our social experience. In the tribal world, on the
other hand, the dialectic appears to be much more that of equivalent
spheres, related horizontally, as is the case of the world of nature and of
society. H ere, as I have already said, the problem would appear to be that of
individualizing, which is equivalent in these societies to curing.
Clearly one o f the critical problems raised by the dialectic of street and
house is to know which objects pass from one to the other domain and under
what circum stances this occurs. One should ask when it is possible to m od­
ify the domestic world or the public world, w hether to transform one of
these domains into the other, or simply to emphasize one o f them. Here,
216 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
w hen we raise the problem of dislocation and of mediation, we are seeking
the m etaphor— the essential and critical link betw een these domains within
the basic code that governs Brazilian culture. In this way we can suggest that
there are situations in which the house,extends itself into the street and into
the city in such a way that the social world is centralized by the domestic
metaphor. On the other hand, we could have inverse situations, w hen the
street and its values tend to penetrate the private world of the residence,
with the world of the house being integrated into the m etaphor of public life.
It is also possible for the two worlds to be related through a “double
m e ta p h o r,” with the domestic invading the public and, in turn, being invaded
by it. In this case, society creates a special space and time, truly inter­
mediate betw een the intimacy of the house and the respectability of the
street. We shall see how this occurs in the case of the Brazilian Carnival.

BA SIC FO RM S OF D ISLO C ATIO N

A basic relationship exists betw een social domains and the roles, ideologies,
gestures, and objects contained in them. The basic concern is to discover the
points of origin of a few of the social dislocations. We know that a complex
society is filled with diverse m ovem ents and passages. In everyday life these
passages are indelibly m arked by the dialectical rhythm of home and work.
We call this frenetic m ovem ent rush hour. W hat we mark and are conscious
of is not the m om ent of passage but rather the impulse to move on— the rush.
W hat is important is the leaving or arrival.
In the daily world, then, what we consider basic is what occurs either at
w ork or at home. The dialectic is really that of the poles standing in opposi­
tion and in frank comparison, competition, or reciprocity: when we are at
w ork we think about our home, our beer, and our favorite chair, w hereas
w hen we are at home we talk about our work and our coworkers.
In the ritual world, or rather in the dislocated world of ritual and c o n ­
sciousness, there is a fundamental difference: it is the travel that becomes
important. In this context the leaving and arrival are less important than the
m o vem ent itself, which becom es the ritualized element and, for this reason,
is raised to consciousness. We have, therefore, a continuum that goes from
the most unconscious and banal travels (such as our frequent rush hours) to
the quasi-epic jo u rn e y s, the wanderings of a pilgrimage, w here the funda­
mental thing is to travel and p ro gress.14 Daily travel is functional, rational,
and operational, since it has a specific aim: work, shopping, business, or
study. But in ritual travel, or rather in the conscious travel of ritual, the aim
and the travel itself becom e more or less the same. Thus the normal daily
dislocation is inverted, since one no longer concentrates only on the goal but
also on the travel itself. In ritual travel, what one looks for at the point of
arrival is nothing concrete, palpable, or quantifiable, but instead blessings,
cures, and signs of faith.
Carnival in Multiple Planes 217
Within the Brazilian social world there are other kinds of jo urn ey s, in
addition to pilgrimages, each kind clearly expressing the point of departure
and point of arrival and, thus, each capable of creating (or inventing) diverse
ritual moments. In pilgrimages, as I said above, a man transforms himself
into a pilgrim. He leaves his house, where he is personalized by a netw ork of
kinsmen, compadres, and friends with w hom he has relations of com plem en­
tarity, and goes to en counter his diffuse companions of faith. The intention
o f the jo u rn e y seems to be gradually to replace ties of substance with social
and political ties of a more universal order, provided by religion. The p ro b ­
lem is thus to transform the son of so-and-so into someone much more
generalized, such as “ son of G o d ” and brother of all the other pilgrims, no
m atter how bad his material, moral, and spiritual condition may be. The
pilgrimage implies a dislocation, a jou rney that relates the most intimate with
the most universal until one can return again to intimacy, since w hen the
travel is successful, one has again reached a formerly lost intimacy with God
and through that with all the rest of mankind, including o n e ’s family.
The second type of jo u rn e y is the procession. In this way of moving we
have a basic variation of the pilgrimage. F o r while in the pilgrimage it is we
who go, as Turner has said, to the encounter with the center, here it is the
center (represented by the image of the saint) that leaving its sacred niche,
comes to encou nter us. Therefore, we may or may not leave our houses, and
if we do so, we take part in an orderly group with a clearly defined center,
namely, w here the saint and the authorities are located.
In the Brazilian case, processions— like military parades— take familiar
trajectories, sanctifying streets and alleyways of residential neighborhoods
or the periphery of the city. Generally, processions avoid the commercial
centro, a universe profane to the point of being in competition with the
values and ideals of faith. Thus the procession passes through streets where
families can see and thereby receive the saint in their residences. In the
procession, it is the sacred that enters into the houses and, according to the
religious specialists, into the hearts of each of the spectators and participants
in the procession. This being the case, a procession is a m om ent in which the
saint, being above everyone, overcom es the dichotomy o f house and street,
creating his or her own social domain. Carried on a litter and raised higher
than the surrounding crowd, the saint is actually elevated and above others,
uniting the believers into a brotherhood as they transfer (often with sincere
and perturbing emotion) their sentiments of filiation during the moment of
passage. Thus the saint, in passing, creates relationships that are often
sparked by the faith-filled gaze of the devotees. The corporality of the saint
grows and crystallizes during the very moment of the passage. As the saint
passes and is seen, the faithful may transfer temporarily their group, class,
or social loyalties to this new focus. This is what occurs, perhaps, when
people say they were blessed by a saint. What is involved is a redefinition:
group and other loyalties are dissolved in favor of an intimate, visual, pene­
trating, and affective relationship. Further, by means of the saint, a relation­
218 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
ship develops that includes all of those who are following as well as those
who are w atch ing .15 It is precisely in these moments that miracles and favors
from the saint may appear in the world of men.
H ere the streets are transformed and the frontiers betw een street and
house are w eakened. In processions, no one refuses water to the partici­
pants, and the whole space is occupied by those who are related to the saint.
The atm osp here is one of the transferring of loyalties and of opening oneself
to the sacred domain. Thus windows and doors should remain open. C u r­
tains and the best embroidered linen, as well as festival vases of flowers, are
placed in the windows and on the verandas. All this is done so that the saint
can “ see” the house, in a dramatization of opening and of the relational
domain that should pertain among men and their saint, even in their resi­
dences, where people have their strongest loyalties. We have, thus, the
sacred, the saint, entering and being received into the houses.
The procession raises the question of “ sacrifice,” even when it is a
festival to com m em orate a saint’s day. In this context, to sacrifice oneself
signifies the use of o n e ’s body for the saint. To follow the procession, re­
gardless of w hether it is difficult, implies this sacrifice, in which the body
ceases to operate as an instrument of pleasure in order to serve the sacred.
The transference of loyalties, now on the most intimate level, implies the
expression of corporate loyalty through the use of the body itself. The social
field of a procession is thus an intermediary domain, where the body as­
sumes a central position. Clearly, it is for this reason that the saint can cure
sickness and festering sores. It is as if the “body of the believers” has lost its
frontiers and, in the most fervent moments, can join itself with the body of
the image, giving it life. It is during this moment, when the public and private
lose their meaning, that cures become possible. The climate is one of ex ­
treme tolerance for the destitute and the weak in general. In fact, all are with
and for the saint, w hose social existence is assured exactly because he or she
is able to transcend all of the divisions and differences. This is the proof that
the sacred is truly above u s .'6
A second form of procession is the military parade. H ere, too, men walk
as in a procession, with one person behind the other, all going forward. But
it is curious that we use the expression parade (Portuguese parada, from the
verb parar “to sto p”) to designate this form of the relationship betw een the
world of the house and the public universe. There are two starting points in
parades: the soldiers begin from their barracks and the onlookers from their
residences. The dramatic moment of a parade is the demonstration of force,
w hen the men who are armed and prepared for w ar present themselves in
uniform with their formations completely coordinated, and are applauded.
In contrast with processions and their open and emotive m ovem ents, there
is an absolute control of movements in the parade. In parades there is also an
emphasis on division and separation. This is a fundamental point: in a p ro­
Carnival in Multiple Planes 219
cession people can enter or leave the whole because it is formed of a nucleus
surrounded by a fluctuating, diffuse area. But in parades this never occurs.
In this kind of event there are only two camps: those who are qualified to be
inside the order and the rigid hierarchy of the event and those who are
outside the isolating ropes and can only see what goes by in the street. The
dramatization of the military parade is thus the hierarchical separation of
positions. In the case of Brazil and other peripheral countries, the Armed
Forces ap pear as the most crystalline personification of the state in its most
ordered, disciplined, obedient, and powerful aspect. Perhaps for this reason
parades in Brazil nearly always occur in the very heart of the city. The
people who take the com plem entary role to the m archers— the onlookers—
must leave their homes to see the parade. We have, then, the superordered
military on the march, all clearly differentiated by their corporations, armed
and uniformed, silent and absolutely solemn. And on the other hand, sepa­
rated by ropes, we have the people as a crow d— undifferentiated, talking,
moving about, impressed by the military and the discipline of the m o v e ­
ments, and accom panied by their most precious possessions: their adm ira­
tion, their obedience, and their children, who are having their first lessons in
practical citizenship.
During a parade the center of the city is reconquered by order and
molded in a civic and moralistic way, losing in the process the ch aracteris­
tics of its daily life of highly individualistic economic transactions. The
important figures in the parade are the authorities, motionless in a reviewing
stand, watching the contingents pass by. The focuses are the flag and the
other national symbols, incarnate in the persons who occupy high places in
the structure of p o w er that is the state. The rigid separation betw een the
m assed crowds of onlookers and the authorities and soldiers clearly reveals
the skeleton and the dram a of a society: the street and the plaza are taken
from the people and becom e the domain of soldiers who, armed and uni­
formed, are renewing their ties of loyalty with the authorities. H ere the
opposition betw een house and street is mediated by a rigid social body,
strongly divided, with the houses being virtually dragged into the public
world that recruits them, as it did with the soldiers. W hereas the participants
act as “b ro th e rs” in the religious procession, here they are “fellow citizens,”
some of w hom occupy high places in order, while others fill the hum bler
roles of undifferentiated onlookers. Still others, the soldiers, are the third
part and the key to the setting: they are materializations of pure power, or
rather of po w er in its most instrumental and open— or brutal— form: armed
and prepared for war. And in this case, to make way for the parade is, in
fact, to keep the people far from the plazas and streets, reaffirming that in
this social world the role of the masses is that of onlooker.
Finally, a third form of procession is the desfile, which literally means to
“walk in a file.” It is applied primarily to the processions in Carnival.

t
220 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity

THE IN V E N T IO N OF C A R N IV A L

One of the characteristics of the Carnival desfile is that it is part of the so-
called Street Carnival. This is opposed to the closed forms of Carnival,
which occur in private clubs. These latter are in fact “H o u s e ” Carnivals
(carnaval caseiro): before balls in private clubs becam e popular, around
1840 in Rio de Ja n e iro ,17 Carnival took place in private houses without any
public observation. It was a family and neighborhood festival, very similar
to its original form, the famous entrudo from Portugal. The Street Carnival,
s

in contrast with a Club Carnival, is a classic segmentation. In the street,

Carnival assumes the form of an open encounter, in Rio de Janeiro domi­
nated by the desfile of the Samba Schools. In the clubs the ambiance is more
clearly defined, since the physical space itself is private. To view this seg­
mentation as rigid, however, would be a mistake. In fact it takes only a little
reflection to see that there is a correspondence betw een street and club.
They both repeat in their respective contexts the same oppositions. Thus, in
the open street Carnival, the desfiles of the Samba Schools or blocos involve
a closure of the Carnival space since they are clearly defined associations of
persons who come together to perform a desfile. W hen they pass by there is
a clearly defined public that only w atches the performers who display th e m ­
selves. And here, too, there are gradations.
By the same logic, in the Club Carnival, the closure is relative for two
reasons. First, one must purchase admission to the balls, a typical feature of
Carnival e v e n ts .18 Second, inside the club, a structure is created that again
represents the opposition. In the clubs there is a stage where the orchestra
sits. There is a large hall w here people individually or collectively participat­
ing in Carnival can enter and leave as they wish. Finally, along the walls of
the hall there are tables and chairs and, raised above the tables on a plat­
form, the “b o x e s .” These are closed spaces with tables and chairs. There is
thus a repetition of the logic of the Street Carnival with more or less well
ordered spaces and planes. In the hall, which is the arena of the festival, the
plane is either individual or collective. H ere we have an open structure, like
the street itself, with a perm anent desfile of celebrants (called folioes, “crazy
people”), “playing” alone, in couples, or collectively. They circulate slowly
around the hall in such a way that everyone is seen by everyone else,
including those who are at the tables and in the boxes. The space occupied
by the tables and boxes is a much more private and less open plane, for here
there are corporate groups of people, usually families or groups of couples
who are friends. The area of table and box thus symbolizes the house, the
place from which people observe the others passing by. In the case of the
boxes, the space is even more closed, and people there can be seen even
better by those who are on the floor of the hall or elsewhere in the club.
From the box, to the table, to the hall we have a perfect continuum. The
continuum can always be reformulated in terms of “play in the hall” in
opposition to “play in the b o x .” Here we can observe the same oppositions
we have seen betw een street and house. In addition, at the tables and in the
Carnival in Multiple Planes 221

boxes one can rest: drinking, eating, and ceasing to dance and sing in the
characteristic way that is “playing Carnival.” To renew the body at the table
thus brings this area still closer to the features of the house as a social
category. The hall, then, is like the street— a place where energy is spent to
be later renewed at a place of rest.
Thus Carnival, like daily life, has two fundamental planes: the street
and the house, but each has the central elements of the desfile. In the club
people circulate in the hall; in the street people are incorporated in groups.
There is a true equivalence betw een the closed space of the clubs and the
similarly closed space of a corporation. The more closed a Carnival c orp ora­
tion, the closer it is to the reality of the hall of a club because the greater will
be its capacity to use a part of the street for itself alone.

A Special S p a c e

W h ether it be in the street, alley, plaza, avenue, club, school, or home,

Carnival requires its own space. E ven in the club, with its own closed space,
it is necessary to prepare that space. To this end the walls are decorated with
motifs related to Carnival. A South Seas beach, Rio in an earlier era, designs
that recall paintings by Picasso, or even a D a n te ’s Inferno, transform the
club. Thus, even w hen space is clearly dem arcated, within it another space
is created, designed exclusively for Carnival.
The same thing happens with urban space. The commercial center of
the city is closed to traffic so that people, w hether or not they are associated
with the typical corporations of Carnival such as the blocos and Samba
Schools, can occupy it without difficulty. The street or avenue is thus d o ­
mesticated. M ost of the time, the streets of Rio and other Brazilian cities are
deadly areas, with automobiles moving at high speeds. During Carnival,
how ever, these tense, high-speed areas take on the aspect of a medieval
plaza, where people walk in place of cars, watching or taking part in the
festivities. The business district is transformed into a place for all the en ­
counters and dramatizations typical of Carnival.
The center of the city becomes really the center in spite of the holiday.
In Rio de Janeiro and other cities the normal movements of holidays are
inverted during Carnival. Instead of people leaving for the beaches or the
more festive and leisure-oriented neighborhoods, they move toward the c en ­
ter of the city, ju s t as they do on a workday. Further, during Carnival the
actual process of going to the city center is festive (and highly conscious),
with people singing, dancing, and beating samba rhythms in the buses and
trains. Such an event is obviously not due to a sudden improvement in urban
transport during Carnival, but to the fact that the interior space of the
transport is transformed into a Carnival space. The bus o r train is no longer
transporting workers who must be in the office or factory at a fixed hour, but
celebrants who ensure that things will begin only when they arrive. The
moment of passage into an overloaded public transport, in the everyday
222 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
world considered one of the most hellish of urban infernos, becom es a
moment of great creativity during Carnival. It is a moment to be lived in­
tensely, through smiles, jo k es, and body contact. It is conscious movement
from place to place, and for precisely ttiis reason it is highly ritualized and
inverted. This is very different from the travel to work, which cannot be
“enjoy ed ” because during it we are in an empty moment of time, time that
has to be killed.19
The urban world is set aside for Carnival. But that is not all. This area
itself has many spaces within it. Entire streets take on an almost private
aspect, similar to the houses along them. With thfeir own lighting and d e co ra­
tion, these streets open themselves to the houses and have their own desfile
and costum e competitions. Similarly, the entire city is reordered in such a
way that the d ow ntow n becom es a multitude of small niches, little plazas,
where people can meet and have their own small carnivals. The m a y o r’s
office undertakes the decoration of the city, creating these spaces by erec t­
ing stands on the corners of certain avenues and contracting musical groups
to play on them. Rio de Janeiro, seen as a megalopolis in the everyday
world, is suddenly changed into a great num ber of Carnival subdivisions,
each with its own stand, band, and celebrants. The usually impersonal and
unarticulated city becom es personal, communitarian, and, above all, c rea ­
tive, allowing for the differences of neighborhoods, classes, and social c ate ­
gories. But all of this variation is within a single style: the Carnival style.
The m ovem ent of Carnival does not differ from other ritual m ovem ents,
since all require a special place for their realization. The clear contrast,
how ever, betw een the Carnival desfile and military parades and religious
processions is in the size of the area and its period of occupation. In parades
and processions the public space (streets, avenues, alleys, and plazas) is
occupied for a few hours— a morning or an afternoon. In Carnival, however,
this occupation lasts for at least three days. There is also a long period of
preparation. F o r this reason a special transit plan, which requires c o n ­
siderable elaboration (especially in a large city like Rio de Janeiro) is devised
and implemented. In addition to the smaller platforms mentioned above, a
gigantic grandstand is erected to enable people to watch the desfile of the
Sam ba Schools on Sunday. The grandstand holds a total of 60,000 people,
and includes bathroom s and medical services for the onlookers. Seats in the
grandstand are hierarchically divided by price. There are also expensive
boxes for small groups of persons and places for the press and for visitors.
The space here is clearly marked, with the street itself being occupied by the
com m on people, who come to live in it. The desfile, involving about 12,000
people in the case of the Sam ba Schools of the first group, occurs inside a
virtual canyon of watchers.
Instead of frenetic and deadly rides in automobiles, we have in Carnival
an inverted m ovem ent, without goal or single direction. The peripatetic
m ovem ent of Carnival is highly ritualized because it is highly self-conscious.
It is not very important where one wishes to go or how one gets there, what
Carnival in Multiple Planes 223
becom es important is simply the act of going without direction, enjoying the
act of walking, occupying the streets of the commercial heart of the city, the
locale of impersonal and inhuman laws of transit in the daily world.
In the Carnival o f 1977, I §aw people sleeping, urinating, and making
love on the benches in the little plazas in the center of the city. I also saw
people with their families, including wives and children, cam ped out in the
middle of the city. Seated in collapsible aluminum chairs with bottles of
w ater and coolers of beer, they unself-consciously watched the steady file of
groups of celebrants and Carnival blocos. N earby, children were sleeping in
the family car. It was like an inverted picnic, taking place in the middle of the
savage and devouring asphalt, which was for the time transformed and d o ­
mesticated. Rio Branco A venue, the Brazilian Wall Street, was transformed
into a row of houses, with the spirit characteristic of streets in the small
tow ns of Brazil. I noted this same transformation on Cinelàndia, a plaza
located at the end of Rio Branco Avenue. In the everyday world this is a
meeting place for homosexuals and is therefore normally avoided by
families.
On Rio Branco A venue, w here people usually walk rapidly, p re o c ­
cupied with the act of arriving, I met people walking without the least signs
of preoccupation. N o one was looking for anything or hurrying to reach an
appointm ent, concerns that make us forget the pleasure of the act of moving.
On the contrary, everyone becam e part of a single unit with the com m on
goals of Carnival. During Carnival one looks for “hap piness,” “a smile,”
“m u sic,” and sexual pleasure in these moments. The thousands of people
becom e a single crowd called simply “the people” or “the m a ss e s.” They
search together for these goals, which still elude the politicians and the
urban planners. Fundam entally people pursue pleasure and luck, happiness
and well-being. It is precisely this that impedes corporate precision and
leads to the remarkable openness that ends up uniting (as in a truly religious
moment) the people as simple celebrants— as members of a single human
species in its eternal search for happiness and as Brazilians. The social roles
of family m em ber, resident of a neighborhood, or m em ber of a race or an
occupational or social category are sifted to leave only the pure truth: we are
all this, but only this: men and w omen looking for pleasure within a certain
style, and because of this, we are equally Brazilians.

A Multiple S p a c e

On Rio Branco A venue and Cinelàndia the street becomes the stage of a
theater whose perform ances have no fixed text. Spontaneous dramatizations
are improvised by those in costume. There is an intense participation be­
tw een the “a cto rs” and “ s p ec ta to rs.” Everyone can mix and change places
in the modification of fixed social positions that, for Bajtin, characterizes
truly popular spectacles, where the people represent th em selv es.20 Here,
too, the roles of actor and spectator are spontaneously questioned. One sees
224 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
the maternal figure, the ideal housewife who cares for her husband and her
children by day and at night watches a soap opera on television. W oman is
seen as a generic category in the Brazilian culture, strongly (though p a ra ­
doxically and simultaneously) associated with the world of sin (by means of
the prostitute) and with that of purity (by means of the Virgin Mary). All of
these characters are represented by men— some homosexuals, some not—
dressed as women. So dressed, they arouse both envy and condescension. It
is com m on for onlookers to shake their heads in disapproval, but to watch
closely these men who, dressed as women, bring into play the basic figure of
the world of the house. One of these men was dressed as a pompous grande
dame, with jew els, furs, and makeup incapable of hiding her age, bringing
into play both social class and femininity. Another, elsewhere in the plaza,
brought to the fore (through inverted and grotesque imitation) the mysteries
and complications of feminine physiology: feigning menstruation and reveal­
ing to the onlookers the proper means of indicating that condition. Others, in
groups, provoked the onlookers, involving them in moral harangues and
com m entaries on the enorm ous number of homosexuals in the modern
world. At play were two opposite domains. On the one hand there was the
universe of the street, to which the homosexuals belong. On the other hand
there was the universe of the house, anchored in its strict customs and
morality of the family, where there is only room for the dichotomies that
guarantee the reproduction of the system: man and woman, elderly and
young.
On the other side of the street, a few meters farther along, and within
the same space, two young women were walking. They were dressed as
seducers, wearing clothing that did not cover, but instead revealed. There,
in the middle of the multitude they were not assaulted. On the contrary, they
assaulted the men, the Brazilian m achos who during Carnival let their masks
fall and showed themselves to be incredibly and surprisingly timid in sexual
encounters. F a rth e r along ,were four or five youths dressed as Arabs. Each
had a long robe and carried a briefcase. Their faces were serious and they
carried on their backs a sign that read Owners of the World. At another
corner, an elderly gentleman solemnly puffed a pipe and looked on the
passing spectacle with a grave face. He was an executive, with his c h aracter­
istic briefcase. But he had no pants. And thus he dem onstrated, as Bajtin has
shown, that Carnival is the glorification of things that occur from the waist
down, in opposition to the repressive and hierarchical world of the
bourgeoisie, w here the soul has a hypocritical primacy.
Faced with all of this, we are obliged to forsake our traditional roles. We
cease to be and instead live the moment of com m unitas.21 In Carnival, in its
typical space, the instant overcom es time and the event becomes more than
the system that classifies it and gives it a normative meaning. It is for this
reason that the word most often heard is “craziness” (loucura). “This is
crazy!” we say to each other, looking upon the scene. It is crazy because all
space is inverted, dislocated, and everything is called into question. Crazy
Carnival in Multiple Planes 225
because we are in the street and it has suddenly becom e a secure and human
place. Crazy, finally, because our social world, which is preoccupied with
hierarchies and the logic of knowing o n e ’s place, is offering more openings
than we can possibly take advantage of.

A R ite w itho ut a P atron

In addition to creating this space, which generates a carefree ramble, w ith­

out goals and highly conscious, ritualized, and euphoric, Carnival is a m o­
ment without a patron. It is for everyone. This appears to be basic, for in a
society such as Brazil everything is normally under the rigid control of
dominant codes. As a consequence one cannot (perhaps, one should not)
allow a festivity without a patron, a subject, a center, or an owner, as is
commonly said in the rural and urban regions of Brazil. In fact, it is c o m ­
mon, w hen speaking of ritual moments, to say “W ho is the ow ner of the
festival?” or “ F o r w hom is this festival?” Reunions of a collective character
(above all, those that are programmed) should have a center, a subject, or a
destiny for which they take place. This is precisely what occurs in religious
processions, w hen homage is presented to a saint, commem orating the date
of his or her birth, death, or passion. It is also what happens in military
parades, w hen a national or regional hero is com m em orated on the date of
his birth or of his heroic act. The same occurs in pa ssea tas (“protest
m a rc h e s ”), w here the purpose of the march is to dem onstrate against some
attitude considered unjust by the marchers, here called manifestantes, a
w ord with negative connotations in Brazil, kingdom of conformity. As in the
religious processions and the parades, the intention of the group is clear: to
com m em orate and to protest. In sum, the meaning of the festival, the march,
the reunion is known. It is precisely this that provokes people to congregate,
to gather together, and finally to incorporate themselves; individuals must
have a com m on goal in order to transform themselves into a body, a group,
or an association.
If a ritual has a subject or an owner, that becomes the focal point. It
provides at the same time a motive, meaning, and unity. But who is the
ow ner of Carnival? To this people reply, “E ach plays Carnival as he c a n ,”
because “Carnival belongs to ev ery b o d y .” Carnival is perhaps the only na­
tional festival without an owner.
In the innocence of the sayings above, there is a strong distributive,
democratic, and naturally com pensatory content. This in a society ex ­
tremely devoted to the imposition of forms and fixed formulas— largely with
a definite juridical form at— on ways of doing, reproducing, commemorating,
and ritualizing. Both in the street and at home the Brazilian is normally
subject to fixed rules that demand a constant relationship betw een him and
his group. The intention of the Brazilian social order is to make the indi­
vidual dissolve and disappear. W hen faced with a conflict betw een his indi­
vidual will and a course of action dictated by norms and rites, the Brazilian
226 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
oscillates, conciliates, and interprets. He is never the true controller of
himself but rather is controlled by laws, norms, and decrees.
At home he is subject to the rigid code of love and respect to his family,
a group seen as inevitable and inescapable, in which he is a perpetual d e p e n ­
dent and in which his individuality is frequently dissolved. Yet it is within
the family that one learns to be “som eb od y” and becom es a person,
specifically, an integral m em ber whose absence would be felt by the group
through “longing” (sa u d a d e , from the Latin solitate, solitude). The world of
the family and of the house is focused on the complementarity betw een rules
and men, events and classifications, elderly and young, masters and ser­
vants, men and w om en, parents and children, respect and obedience, blood
and social relations.
The world of the street is the opposite. H ere the individual is torn loose
from his moral and com plem entary group and subjected to the impersonal
codes of traffic, of supply and demand, of the municipality and the state. It is
not an accident that in this hostile world, which is nearly always lacking in
hierarchy and complem entarity, the Brazilian uses rites of distancing and
reinforcement. These are implied in the expression “Do you know to whom
you are talking?” which is used w henever anyone feels himself being
crushed by impersonal norms and wishes to dem onstrate that, after all, he is
“ s o m e o n e .” ,
In Brazil, therefore, it is essential to ritualize every passage betw een the
domains of house and street. To prepare to leave the house is a way of
making reflexively conscious (thus ritualizing or dramatizing) this passage
from a secure place, w here complementarity and hierarchy reign, for
another, far more individualistic place, where one is anonymous. Dress and
appearance (which includes the way of walking, speaking, and gesturing)
help to maintain o n e ’s position as the m em ber of a house. The preoccupation
with clothing and appearance, above all in the act of going (or being) in the
street, dem onstrates the desire to mark the body with social indicators. This
prevents anonymity and serves as an instrument to permit the establishment
of hierarchy and to create spaces where each person can perceive and know
“with whom he is talking,” especially in the individualized universe of the
street.
To remain outside of some encompassing and hierarchical totality
leaves the person subject to definition by impersonal laws: religion (as with
the law of hum an charity) or the state (by means of laws that protect the
individual).22 But neither the law of charity nor the laws of the state link the
individual to a concrete and present social group. On the contrary, they link
him as an individual to abstract entities, such as H umanity or the People. To
be in this anonym ous situation, in the middle of the “ lonely c ro w d ,” is a
situation that every Brazilian seeks to avoid. The pattern is rather to d e m o n ­
strate systematically that one is confronted with a special case, by a person
who is not o n e ’s equal. To accept the contrary profoundly threatens a per­
Carnival in Multiple Planes 221
s o n ’s self-esteem. The Brazilian multitude thus always looks for the axes of
hierarchy and complem entarity, attempting to avoid impersonal submission
to more general norms that make individuals equal to one another.
We can therefore say that all social situations have some ow ner in
Brazil. If it is not a concrete person, it is a saint. If not a saint, then a hero, or
even some abstract social domain itself. Always some code must be imposed
so that the situation can be read and classified.
But in Carnival the laws are liminal. It is as if a special space had been
created away from the house and above the street, where everyone could be
without their preoccupations with their groups of birth, marriage, and o c cu ­
pation. Being above and away from the street and the house, Carnival en­
genders a festival outside of the everyday social world without the individual
being subjected to the fixed rules of belonging or of being somebody. F o r
this reason everyone can change groups and everyone can cut in and create
new relationships and unsuspected solidarity. In Carnival, if the reader will
permit a paradox, the law is to have no law. This is the inverted ideology of
the festival.
Obviously this does not mean there are no regularities or fixed p ro c e ­
dures in Carnival. The general principle of no law is homologous with refus­
ing to treat the celebration as belonging exclusively to a certain group,
segment, or social class.23 Because of this, Carnival is multiple and permits
the exercise of an extrem e degree of social creativity. In it we celebrate
diffuse and inclusive things, such as sex, pleasure, happiness, luxury, song,
dance, and joking. All of this is summarized for us in the expression “to play
C arnival.” If Carnival celebrated sexual union (and not sex), it would be
centered in a structure and would be the festival of couples and of union.
The ow ner or patron would be the institution of marriage (this routine of sex;
this machine o f social reproduction). If, on the other hand, Carnival cele­
brated belonging to a perm anent group— for example, through commensal -
ity— it would have the family as its owner. Its world would then be that of
the house and it would be limited to an exclusive group. Similarly, if C ar­
nival w ere a festival of wealth— and not luxury— it would have as a subject a
social class. F urtherm ore, if Carnival were centered in discursive speech
and on walking— instead of on song and dance— it would be a ritual of order,
a cerem ony of reinforcement and structure. But the focal point of this ritual
is the human universe at large, with its perennial suggestion of inclusiveness
and community. F o r all of these reasons, Carnival cannot have an owner.
This claim makes possible the observation that all other festivals in the
Brazilian social world have an ow ner or a patron. In the same way, a festival
without an ow ner is primarily a festival of the destitute and of the dom i­
nated, for in the daily world they possess nothing (except their bodies and
their labor, their mystical powers and their hunger to live). They can only be
the center of an inverted and paradoxical festivity, one that does not involve
law and owners but that can be possessed only by those who have nothing. It
228 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
is for this reason that Carnival can be the subject of all the social projections.
It appears, therefore, as an immense social screen, where multiple visions of
social reality are projected simultaneously.

Carnival G roups

In Brazil there is a general belief that during Carnival anything that happens
is not serious. It is a curious belief, because in fact many civil institutions
have changed and disappeared while these poor, imprecise, and unpretenti­
ous Carnival groups continue with their old vigor, giving an impression of
the perpetuity characteristic of a corporation.
In fact, class associations, schools, clubs, political and scientific
ideologies, religious creeds, government orgaizations, and political parties
have an ideology of perm anence, while nearly always defining themselves as
revolutionary. In fact, they have risen and died with a frightening velocity in
our social scene. In the end we are left with the traditional things: family
(and the house) and work (and the street), paradoxically maintaining the
soccer clubs, carnivals, and the illegal gambling networks that receive the
bets of our “game of the animal” (jogo do bicho).24 Everything that is defined
as being neither serious nor bourgeois remains. The rest, subject to the
waves of enthusiasm, and the ideological ecstasy of the elites and the well­
born, always changes and disappears.
In Carnival, then, we already have an organizational inversion. The
groups arranged in order to “play” (to dance the samba and sing), that is, the
groups of “inconsequentiality,” to employ G offm an’s expression,25 assum e a
frightening perm anence. Further, such organizations are based on imprecise
ideas, bringing together people who, in addition to being uneducated (or
even illiterate), are— as the middle class says— politically alienated. But the
truth is that, ju st as occurs in religious brotherhoods (permanent groups with
a long history in some Brazilian cities), we have here precisely that which
the petty bourgeois critic frequently forgets, despite its being the heart of
any organization: the interest born from within that obeys the genuine im­
pulse of the person or group itself. In this sense Carnival groups are among
the most authentic and spontaneous forms of association. They do not fol­
low any external model. They did not originate in any political or sociolog­
ical handbook. They were not implemented through a specific and conscious
plan of development. Furtherm ore, they did not come from those imitated
countries, France and England. Thus they are not the means of responding
to a world that certain groups believe exists as an absolute and unique
reality. On the contrary, they are a way of opening a dialogue with the
structure of social relations operating in Brazilian reality. This is where their
authenticity and perm anence reside.
A general overview of these groups is revealing. In Rio de Janeiro, it is
widely believed (especially among the elite) that Carnival is above all the
desfile of the Sam ba Schools. Yet there are, in fact, many other groups that
Carnival in Multiple Planes 229
share the Carnival space. Thus, in addition to the great desfile of the first­
group Samba Schools, there are also the desfiles of other organizations—
such as the blocos, grupos de frevo, grandes sociedades, the ranchos, and
the Sam ba Schools of the second and third groups. Since all these desfiles or
presentations imply a judgm ent and a competition, their relationships to
each other are dynamic and possess notable consequences, such as a
dramatization of certain aspects of Brazilian society. This being the case,
although the great desfile is a paradigm of Carnival,26 the Samba Schools,
ranked hierarchically into groups, already have a complex relationship
among themselves. In the first group there is a total of 12 schools, each with
4,000 participants in the desfiles by 1969. Since 1969, however, the A ssocia­
tion of Sam ba Schools of the State of G uanabara (now the State of Rio de
Janeiro) has limited the maximum num ber of participants in the desfile of
each Sam ba School of the first group to 2,500. In the second group there are
18 schools with a som ew hat smaller num ber of participants. Finally, the
third group is com posed of 14 Samba Schools, with a maximum of 700
participants in the desfile.
In addition to this internal division, the Samba Schools are in a constant
process of intercommunication. Each year some schools pass from one
group to another, depending upon their position in the desfile of the year
before. T hus, for example, the desfile of the schools of the first group is
always open to the school that obtained the second place in the desfile of the
second group the year before. In the same way, as A m aury Jorio and Hiram
Araujo have indicated,27 the last two schools of the first group participate in
the desfile of the Sam ba Schools of the second group in the following year.
The same rules operate in the schools of the second group with respect to
those of the third group. The system of Samba Schools is thus clearly
hierarchical but equally perm eated with slow, gradual reclassifications, so
that it is possible for any school to rise or descend. And the time for this is,
of course, the m om ent of Carnival, when the society opens itself to a series
of competitions and judgm ents, or rather to reclassification. The effort made
to reconcile the original position of a school with its performance in a given
desfile is highly dramatic. This includes not only the evaluation of each
school during a certain m om ent (the desfile) but also the determination of its
position within a given group. There is nothing more dishonorable for a
group than to be “declassified,” that is, placed in an inferior g roup.28
In addition to the Sam ba Schools there are blocos carnavalescos. The
name bloco gives the idea of something compact, solid— of corporation and
synchronization. In fact, the same occurs with the term “ Samba School,” a
group that arises corporately and is invested with the functions of “teaching”
the “ S a m b a ”— dance, sex, and happiness.
In Rio de Janeiro there are three types of blocos: the blocos de enredo
or desfile, blocos de embalo or empolgagao, and the blocos de sujo. In the
Carnival of 1977, about 137 blocos de enredo paraded in desfiles, each with
about 1,000 participants; 31 blocos de embalo paraded, each with about
230 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
1,500 m em bers; and about 24 blocos de sujo, each with about 100 persons,
also paraded. Adding these to the samba schools, the grupos de frevo,
ranchos, grandes sociedades, and so on, we have a highly expressive n u m ­
ber of people and of organizations, even for a city the size of Rio de Janeiro.
The difference betw een blocos and the Samba Schools is immediately
apparent in their names. The bloco, as the word indicates, is something like
Le B o n ’s multitude: large, powerful, dominating, but without the necessary
internal order to elaborate and portray a dram a capable of making an impact
or clearly expressing a certain point of view. The bloco orders itself in a
much freer way than does the Samba School and has, as a consequence, a
simpler desfile. The bloco is powerful and animated, but not very refined in
internal order either during the desfile or during the rest of the year. Thus
they are called blocos de embalo (or empolgaqao) and blocos de sujo. The
words embalo and empolgagao clearly indicate the sense of the “pow er of
the bloco” w hen it is able, during thQjdesfile, virtually to possess, rock, or
incorporate the spectators, integrating them with the members of the bloco,
thus abolishing the separation between the paraders (desfilantes) and the
onlookers.
The name of the third type of bloco (sujo) evokes a fantasy without a
definite form. The m em bers are “dirty” (sujo), as if reduced to an embryonic
social material, like the novices in the initiation rituals which Victor T urner
analyses. The sujos thus ask to be reborn socially, since in the everyday
world they represent the pariahs, the lowest of,the low, those at the end of
the line socially, w here nature and culture, uterus and colon, sewer and the
basem ent are confused. Only in Carnival can they be represented in a co rp o ­
rate way. H ere, in addition to being able to threaten everyone with their
appearance, which does not allow for distinctions of sex or age, they intimi­
date also by doing “dirty” things (sujeira)—-jokes in bad taste, aggressive and
practical jokes.
The term “school,” designating associations of people who are destitute
in the everyday world, raises a different paradox and inversion typical of the
Carnival world. The name is fixed by time for groups acknowledged to be
ignorant, systematically persecuted by the police, and resident in the squat­
ter settlements on the hills of Rio de Janeiro.29 Those who, in the everyday
world, live learning rules and occupying kitchens and factories appear now
as professors, teaching the pleasure of living brought up to date in the songs,
the dance, and the samba. They reveal a fantastic vitality and love of life
behind a surprising pow er of regimentation and order. All this is translated
by the generosity that is typical of systematically exploited groups.
The fact that the blocos are organized in a far simpler way than the
Samba Schools makes it possible for the former to distinguish themselves
from the latter by saying, among other things, that the schools “ no longer
obey the Carnival tradition,” that they are racially and socially mixed (that
is, full of people from outside; from other neighborhoods and social seg­
Carnival in Multiple Planes 231
ments), that they are “for the tourists” and not for the people, and that the
schools do not parade spontaneously but put on a “ sh o w .”
The blocos are expressions of much purer Carnival values, oriented
tow ard ritualization of the solidarity of their neighborhoods— as with the
famous Carnival Cor does of old Rio.
T he blocos see themselves as supporters of neighborhoods and neigh­
borliness, ph en om ena that many tend to see as irrelevant in the m odern
urban world. The blocos reproduce distinctions of family, race, education,
and occupation and unite all o f their members in a single corporation,
“tribe,” or bloco. Thus their desfiles have a simpler choreography, often
based on dramatization of “a ttac k s” and “defenses,” with the men attacking
the w om en of the bloco itself.
The blocos redivide the city, taking as a central point their residence in
a c om m on area (the phenom enon of neighborliness and neighborhood). The
sam ba schools frame their corporate unity in the possibility of creating a
space that, although linked by an umbilical cord to the “hill,” th z fa v e la , and
poverty, allows the addition, for Carnival, of the rich, white, and wellborn to
the p o o r and black. T he schools focus on social segment and class but
prom ote a systematic integration of these classes in their highly complex
desfile.
According to the vision of the participants in the blocos, the schools are
m uch m ore universalist and oriented toward the outside, while the blocos
are particularist and oriented toward tradition and the neighborhood.
A n o th e r evident level of contrast is that the blocos participate in Carnival
without the elaborate costum es or important internal divisions characteristic
of the Sam ba Schools. In fact, the internal structure of the blocos always
presents a binary character. Thus there is a com issáo de fr e n te (a group that
opens the desfile and is the “visiting c ard” of the bloco), in contrast with the
m em bers of the bloco in general. Some members of the bloco sing and
dance, in contrast to the percussion band (bateria). And finally there is the
division into alas (minimal internal segments). H ere they are divided in a
very simple way: into “richer” alas and “p o o re r” alas. In the Samba
Schools, by contrast, the internal organization for the desfile (and even
outside of it, in the everyday world) is extremely complex. The schools
consist of dozens of alas with appropriate names, in addition to the
com issóes de fr e n te , alas of w omen in Bahia dress (obligatory in Samba
Schools and traditional in Rio de Janeiro), and the famous and meaningful
destaques (people who ap pear alone, set apart, in the desfile).
To understand further this organizational complexity, we will examine a
Carnival society that paraded in 1977, in Niteroi, a city in the greater Rio de
Janeiro area. This school, as is the general rule, presented a relatively elabo­
rate story. Its them e was a tribal myth, based on the story of Atlantis and
entirely made up by the intellectual m entor and Carnival “director” o f the
school. The school dem onstrated in its desfile an urban and extremely elabo­
232 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
rate version of tribal groups. The school prepared itself for the desfile with
the following elements or dramatic units: alas de evolugdo (dancers who
move in synchronized movements), alas de passistas (dancers of the
samba), destaques (isolated persons, richly dressed, generally w om en and
homosexuals), figuras de enredo (basic characters for the theme that the
school was presenting), allegorical floats (relatively large constructions rep­
resenting objects related to the theme), and finally the porta-bandeira and
mestre-sala (obligatory persons who carry the school flag and dance). These
latter are dressed as figures in the court of Louis XIV.
The school presented 100 different “ scenes” in a procession. It dis­
played 17 destaques (all homosexuals and women), 42 alas de evolugdo (all
individualized by means of names, costumes, and special choreography), 34
alas de passistas (with individual costumes but uniform dance steps), 17
figuras de enredo (also highly individualized) and 4 allegorical floats. The
elements were ordered to permit the creation of an appropriate climate for
the presentation of the theme and the aud ience’s understanding of it, to
awaken the em pathy of the spectators for the school through its presentation
of song, rhythm, theme, and to avoid provoking a feeling of tedium during
the long desfile. The internal division into alas allows diversification and
contrasts the constituent com ponents of the organization, thus “telling the
s to ry .” But in this form of presentation the basic elements are processes of
the massing and the individualizing of the performers. Since the school is
obliged to represent a “Brazilian th e m e ,” it always chooses to give it an epic
treatment. Thus the individual (the mythical or national hero) is opposed to a
mass (of slaves or commoners).
The dialectic of massing and individualizing is basic, even beyond the
presenting of themes. The percussion band of the school is a mass, since it
parades as a group in a uniform costume. Yet the percussion band produces
what is most individual about the school, its tradem ark in opposition to the
others: the music that accompanies the song sung by the mem bers of the
school. The alas present the same process. The alas de passistas generally
allow an individualization of their members through their abilities in dancing
the samba. The alas de evolugdo can be more massive, with their m em bers
making uniform m ovem ents. But it is necessary to stress that each of the
alas has its own name and is, by definition, individual and treated as such
within the school. This individualization is never left entirely free, since it is
framed within a large presentational scheme in which it must perform a role
and thus contribute to the whole. And here, it seems to me, the organization
of the Sam ba Schools repeats, or reflects, the polarization of the Brazilian
social world betw een the house and the street, the individual and the mass.
The Sam ba School is a collective organization, but one that allows the
destaque, or setting apart, an extreme form of individualism. In the same
way the school is divided into alas that may or may not grow, multiply, or
disappear, and also may enter into open competition with other semi­
independent units. Everything indicates, however, that the Samba School in
Carnival in Multiple Planes 233
the Carnival desfile tends to present an individualistic ideology, w here
everything has its own mark, a touch of distinction and personality, a d e sta ­
que. If in the everyday world the school suppresses individualities and is
powerfully ordered around the authoritarian pow er of its president, as
Leopoldi stresses,30 in C a rn iv afit allows the freeing of the individuals: first,
by its own individuality as a corporate group in opposition to other groups of
the same kind, and second, as a group that is com posed of a certain num ber
of nam ed units with a certain autonomy. Each of these units prom otes its
own individuality within this dual code. Occasionally this corresponds to a
single person who, in the m om ent of the desfile, becom es a celebrity (the
suprem e m om ent for all participants in the desfile). Sometimes the individu­
ality consists of an ala de passistas that dances the samba in synchrony. The
Sam ba School, in its desfile, expresses the association betw een the collec­
tive and the poor, in opposition to the individual and the rich. F o r everything
that is rigorously collective in the school (such as the percussion band) is
poor and uniform. But everything that is set apart is luxurious and rich.
This m ore detailed study of the structure of the Sam ba School confirms
w hat we have already mentioned. In the blocos the order is given in a binary
and com plem entary scheme (based on the division betw een musicians and
participants, men and women, alas of the “rich” and the “p o o r”). But in the
Sam ba Schools the internal division into multiple alas allows an enorm ous
flexibility. The alas can grow, diminish, create their own rules and styles,
have their own names, and present their own innovations. F o r this reason
the sam ba schools can join rich and poor, blacks and whites, employers and
em ployees, those “inside” and those “o utside” (sam bistas and sambeiros).
In fact, the entire organization of the Sam ba School is based on these
sem iautonom ous and powerfully articulated groups. Thus in the Samba
Schools we have a formal structure, com posed of a president, vice­
president, and various administrative sectors. This fixed structure organizes
the daily routine of the group and is its center, completely linked to the local
roots of the organization. In the period of preparation for Carnival (begin­
ning in August) ano ther structure is added to the nucleus, like the tail of a
comet. It is m uch m ore open and unites a Carnival group, presidents of the
alas, and com ponents in general. As Leopoldi dem onstrated, the two struc­
tures are superim posed and articulated. The center nucleus catalyzes and
holds together the tail, which is far more diffuse and which operates with
hum an resources from outside. There is thus a complex binary division, with
a nucleus controlling the daily routine and commanding all the operations,
but opening the way for another structure during the organization of car­
nival. We have, therefore, as G oldw asser31 and Leopoldi have pointed out, a
tension betw een the managers of the everyday and the managers of the
talent.
The Sam ba School seems to have a distinct organizational order. In its
center there is a nucleus of people strongly linked by kinship ties, residence,
skin color, and general conditions of social existence. These are the
234 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
“ o w n e rs ” or “p a re n ts ” o f the association: its founders, creators, and moral
sustainers. Around this center there is another, much more flexible and
diffuse order oriented to the exterior world. H ere people enter and leave, not
having the same kinds of basic loyalties as those who are at the center. This
is the area of the “m e m b e rs,” the “a d e p ts,” the “ sym pathizers,” or “clients”
of the system. These are the people who pass through the school using its
services. B etw een the groups there is a clear hierarchy, although all are
m em bers of the same “association.”
This point is basic to the social definition of associations form ed in
societies with a strong sense of hierarchy. Thus in the Brazilian case, the
sam ba school, bloco, tenda espirita or umbandista, charitable associations,
religious sisterhoods, soccer clubs, and even political parties are institutions
m arked by an egalitarian and sometimes inspiring individualistic ideology
superim posed on a familial, patronal, and authoritarian nucleus— the real
center of the so-called association. In this nucleus, however, the ideology is
clearly hierarchical, with age, kinship ties, neighborhood, and friendship
constantly operating on the egalitarian framework. F rom this perspective,
we see that such associations are not societies in the classic and liberal sense
of the term, that is, associations of individuals with the same rights before a
set of rules (or laws) that they themselves instituted for their own govern­
ment. But despite the self-definition of such groups as “associations,” they
are, in fact, familial or patronal groups in which the space generated by the
group transforms the individual into gente, or person. It is thus the group
that makes the person, not the egalitarian union that makes the group. Once
the group is formed and legitimized, it separates itself from its mem bers,
being reified in its laws. It finally operates in this internally divided fashion.
It is difficult to say w hether this is a general phenom enon to be found in
all Brazilian associations, or if it only occurs in the “popular” institutions
form ed by low-status groups, such as Samba Schools, blocos, and tendas
espiritas. I suspect that the phenom enon of the “c o m et” type of internal
division is generalized. If this is so, one could say that Brazilian institutions
are always m arked by an ideology of openness to the inclusive society. As
long as the central nucleus is always strong, they have nothing to lose by
inclusive generalization. This being so, their ideology will always be that of
diffuse causes.
In societies like Brazil, the study of Carnival groups reveals an e n or­
mous difficulty with closure. The internal structure of the group itself makes
it difficult for it to be transformed into an instrument of neighborhood,
segment, or class, because it allows everyone to be part o f it, w h ether on the
practical or on the ideological plane. The intention of a Sam ba School is
never to transform itself into a closed institution, or a total institution, in the
sense of G offman,32 but rather to “ seduce” the largest num ber of people
possible, above all those of the dominant class. Thus the members are im­
prisoned in a social and political paradox. To the extent that they could be
political instruments due to their pow er of penetration, they have to open
Carnival in Multiple Planes 235
themselves to all groups of the society. Their success and popularity result
in their ceasing to be truly representative of a single group. This being the
case, such low-status group associations have in their divided internal order
values that result in their diffusion and linking to the upper-status groups of
the society. A nd this, as we saw, occurs without the risk of losing their
center. Conciliation is once again the central point of the social dynamics of
these groups and of the society of which they are a part. Because of this
Sam ba Schools (and many other similar institutions) serve as arenas of
mediation betw een social segments with conflicting social and political inter­
ests.
It would appear that in Brazil total institutions have been relegated to
minimal areas of the social system. It is as if there were a prejudice against
groups precoccupied with defining their external and internal frontiers
through a strong group ethic. The Church and the armed forces are the only
groups in Brazil that act on the national level as true total institutions. The
others, w hen they have a strong ethic and a preoccupation with the
definition of frontiers, are judged to be antipopular or antidemocratic. The
notion of dem ocracy itself tends to becom e confused with a position of
preventing the closure of social groupings in Brazil, which impedes the
formation of interest groups with political representation, and consequently,
politically powerful groups. In this two-party “c o m e t” system, which is
capable of joining the house (the nucleus) with the street (the periphery, the
others), lies the root of political movements. An example is popularism, that
kind of Carnival of p ow er in which everything and nothing is simultaneously
represented and, apparently, resolved. This form of structuring is an impedi­
ment to the formation of total, individualizing, and therefore representative
institutions.
In the Brazilian social scene, we encounter the creation of institutions
situated halfway betw een closure and openness, such as the soccer club.
Although the club is evidently closed, the group of fans is always open,
allowing the accumulation of thousands of sympathizers. Brazilians sy stem ­
atically create situations in which a social inversion is possible, for there will
always be an e n co unter of values and objects situated in social domains
distant and antagonistic in the everyday world.

C O N C L U SIO N

In the course of this essay I have tried to show how Carnival redefines the
Brazilian social world. F o r this it was not enough simply to show that during
Carnival the world is inverted. It was necessary to indicate the course or
orientation o f this inversion, since both the rule and the cultural domains and
objects on which the rule operates are basic.
This being the case, I began with the opposition betw een street and
house. The Brazilian social world molds itself around this complex and
236 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
segmentary dichotomy. The ritual sphere elaborates these domains, either in
an attem pt to transcend or in an attempt to separate or reinforce the two
worlds. In religious processions the house is invaded by what happens in the
plaza, in the churchyard, and in the street, while in military parades the
house simply disappears as a category,s since the event occurs in the very
center of the city, necessitating a dislocation and transforming all the m em ­
bers of a family into Brazilian citizens. In Carnival, everything occurs as if
society were finally able to invent a special space where street and house
encountered each other. The festival has public aspects (such as the desfile
and formal groups), but it also allows a num ber of gestures and social actions
that in general occur only in the house.
This dislocation of objects (social roles and values) from one domain to
an other allows the elaboration of a few basic hypotheses on the definition of
symbol, ritual, and drama, as well as on their fundamental principles.
The ritual universe (as well as that of drama) is that of visible things, of
correct things (prescribed, even if shocking or uncommon) and therefore of
things that are set apart and dislocated. It is on stage that open and cruel
m u rder is allowed; in the stadium that— through highly individualistic and
fair competition— a hierarchy is established; and in Carnival that we allow a
confusion of the rules of hierarchy. Thus, if the ritual world has a grammar,
it is certainly not that which governs the sequence of actions in the everyday
world. The sequence of ritual could be created on the consistent and obsti­
nate use of three well-known social principles (and consistency and obsti­
nacy are two characteristics always necessary for a “ritual action”):
inversion (which engenders joking), reinforcement (which leads to respect),
and neutralization (which leads to avoidance or social invisibility). Each
allows the dilation, recutting, exaggeration, and turning inside out of the
routines of the daily world—just as do good directors of theater or cinema,
these shamans of the contem porary world. Because of the necessary co n ­
sistency in the application of a rule (activated in an absolute and obsessive
way), rituals frequently need special spaces, programmed and established
beforehand. Ritual thus demands a preparation (which helps its consistency)
and obviously a high degree of understanding of what will happen, while the
routines of the daily world simply occur: they are seen as “natural” and thus
tend to becom e automatic. In rituals the routine is interpolated, inverted,
and reinforced. The aim is a search for consistency that, in fact, is never
obtained in “real life”— w hether because actors are never pure instruments
of rules and of society (they also have their own interests), or because the
rules themselves are contradictory. This is why we speak of daily life as
“h a rd ,” “difficult,” and “deceiving.” And the way these contradictions are
confronted is through locating their institutionalization at the level of “na­
tu re ” through an enorm ous and systematic automatization and reification.
In ritual, how ever, everything happens differently. H ere it would seem
that we wish for the consistency that all the idealized versions of the social
world appear to reveal. F o r this reason rituals demand preparation— as do
Carnival in Multiple Planes 237
spectator sports, cinema, and theater. And since we want a consistent
world— opposed to the automatization of the everyday— we radicalize life in
rituals, making it take on again a shine, rigor, certainty, and contrast. We
create, then, a special space where the routines of the daily world are broken
and w here it is possible to observe, discuss, or criticize the real world seen
standing on its head. F o r this reason, rituals should always be studied in
contrast to the everyday. Both are part of the same structure, like the two
faces of the same coin, and expressions of the same social principles. In fact,
rituals are equally part of the social world, but they are m om ents in which
sequences o f action are broken, dilated, or interrupted through the disloca­
tion of gestures, persons, ideologies, or objects.
Take, for example, the case of an ordinary man during Carnival. In the
morning he remains in bed, recuperating from the events of the preceding
night, w hen he enthusiastically celebrated in the street or in a club until the
small hours. H e thus ceases to prepare himself for w ork or for leisure (for
Carnival is not a com m on holiday). At noonday he eats very little, since
Carnival does not m ark the meal through special foods, as occurs in many
Brazilian rituals. On the contrary, it is time to eat little and celebrate a lot, in
a typical attitude of “castigating” the body. After all, the w ord “carnival”
comes from a Latin phrase meaning literally ”to take away the m e a t.” In the
same way it is precisely because there is no special food that families are
isolated. Carnival does not prom ote family reunions in the houses, but rather
reunions of individuals in the streets. Thus there is nothing to hold a person
at home. In the afternoon our actor takes a bath (an essential operation for
leaving the house) and goes to the street, w here he will stay until the next
day. A sked w here he is going, he will say simply that he is going to see
Carnival. In fact, the whole point of the festival is precisely in not knowing
w hat will happen in a world where adventure is finally radicalized because
petty bourgeois social life (constructed on small contrasts betw een right and
wrong, sin and virtue, certainty and uncertainty) is suspended and inverted.
The actor does not cease sleeping, eating, relating to others, entering and
leaving the house, changing clothes, and so on. But now his world comes to
be lived with a clear element of decision and consciousness. And more, life
comes to be evaluated through such motivations as “to have to have fu n ,”
“to have to have a d v e n tu re ,” “to make something h a p p e n ,” which are
paradoxical because opposed to the daily world. If in the real world I look
for certainty, in Carnival I am radically convinced that I will en counter
uncertainty. This, without a doubt, is one of the paradoxes of the ritual
world. Ritual and film reveal that what is important is not “rationality” or
“know ledge” or “moral basis” or the moment o f arrival. W hat is important is
the m eans, the way, the journey.
The sequence is thus dislocated. Our actor no longer wakes up to rush
to work in the “natural” sequence of his daily shuttling betw een house,
work, and house, since he leaves the house to take part in a Carnival desfile.
The street w here he celebrates, the commercial heart of the city, the onlook­
238 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
ers who observe and applaud— the whole world around him is turned into his
house. The order of things is dislocated and everything becomes full of
emotion, allusive, symbolic, and representational. While the daily desfile is
painful and functional, since it has definite objects and its means are equal to
absolutely precise ends, the ritual desfile is pleasurable, open, and without
rigidly defined objectives, in the first case, what is important is to leave and
to arrive, regardless of how one arrives. In the second, inversely, what is
basic is how one goes, never where one arrives. This is what characterizes
the “ symbolic w andering.” It is like a curing ritual. After all, why cure if
everyone does? The basic object of the cure is to make the patient live. And
to live is to be subject to everything. W hen some theoreticians of ritual ask
why such a complex mode is developed only to relate such a simple m es­
sage, they forget that at the rational, intellectual, distant level, which is
uninterested in symbolic march, everything really is painfully simple. It is as
if the researcher were only interested in the entrances and exits, never in the
heart of things, the centers, the disproportions betw een means and ends.
This disproportionality is precisely what characterizes the logic of the sym ­
bolic.

NOTES

1. Jorge A m ado, O Pais do Carnaval (Sao Paulo, 1970).

2. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “O D evido R esp eito ,” Programa de Pos-
Graduacao em Antropologia Social, Museu Nacional (Rio de Janeiro, 1975).
3. Thales de A zev ed o , N a m o r o a A n tig a : Tradicao e M u d a n c a (Salvador, 1975).
4. In Brazil it is a sign o f poverty to reside in a space undifferentiated internally or
externally, since w hoever resides in that w ay is certainly subject to the confu­
sions o f mixture, a sign o f great social inferiority. In a word, houses o f a single
room can lead to “m ix-ups” (bagunca), a typical state o f “dirtiness” or social
confusion. Many Brazilians are shocked, therefore, at the lack o f fences b e­
tw een houses in U .S . cities.
5. For a study o f these entities in the A m azon region, see Roberto Da Matta, “O
Carnaval com o um Rito de Passagem ,” in En sa io s de A n tr o p o lo g ia Estrutural
(Petropolis, 1973).
6. The implications o f this point are important and have been considered by Max
W eber and Louis Dumont. For the Brazilian case, see Simon Schwartzman,
S a o P a u lo e o E s ta d o N a c i o n a l (Sao Paulo, 1975) and Otavio Velho,
C apitalism o A utoritario e C a m p e s in a to (Sao Paulo, 1976).
7. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The N u e r (Oxford, 1940).
8. See Mary Douglas, Purity a n d Danger: A n A n a ly s is o f C o n c e p ts o f Pollution
a n d Taboo (N ew York, 1966). Elaborating on the notion o f dirt, Douglas sug­
gested the idea o f the dirty as an object out o f place.
9. For an exposition o f the three mechanisms basic to ritualization, see Roberto
Da Matta, C arnavals da Hierarquia e da I g u a ld a d e (Rio de Janeiro, 1975).
10. Freud is responsible for the example. I am thus trying to show how the notion o f
dislocation is basic to the world of sym bols. In addition I want to demonstrate
how o b sessiv e gestures and “automatic things” are really dislocated.
11. Victor Turner, The F o r e s t o f S y m b o ls (Ithaca, 1967), p. 103.
12. Turner, p. 105.
Carnival in Multiple Planes 239
13. Max Gluckman, “Les Rites de P ssa g e,” in E s s a y s on the R itu a l o f Social R e l a ­
tions (M anchester, 1962).
14. Victor Turner, D r a m a s , Fields a n d M e ta p h o r s (Ithaca, 1974); Victor and Edith
Turner, I m a g e a n d P ilgrim age in Christian Culture (N ew York, 1978).
15. Durkheim speaks o f the symbol as the true mediator o f individual c o n scio u s­
ness. Although I believe his theory o f the totem as symbol to be wrong when
applied to societies in which the individual is not a moral or social category,
Durkheim was correct in projecting what he saw in his society on that o f the
tribal world. Thus, for Durkheim, symbols have the function o f linking sepa­
rated individuals and, as such, should be above them all. O bviously, he is
speaking o f a sym bolic world that is typical o f individualistic societies where the
domains are linked only by means o f strong dislocated images. (See Emile
Durkheim, The E le m e n ta r y F o r m s o f Religious Life, chap. 7.)
16. Isidoro Maria A lves made a thorough study o f Cirio de N azaré in Belém do
Pará, probably the largest religious procession in Brazil, and many o f these
ideas were developed in discussion with him, as well as from seeing his films o f
the procession.
17. Eneida, H istoria do Carnaval Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, 1958), p. 29.
18. In contrast to the ball o f the daily world, the Carnival Ball is a source o f profit
for many clubs. This being the case, they “op en ” up during Carnival. The Yacht
Club o f Rio de Janeiro, for exam ple, which is a closed association o f the upper
class, in Carnival promotes its famous Hawaiian Ball, usually open to anyone
w ho can buy an entrance ticket.
19. Erving Goffman, Interaction R itu a l (N ew York, 1967).
20. Mijail Bajtin, L a Culture P o p u la r en la E d a d M e d ia y R e n a c im i e n t o (Barcelona,
1974).
21. Victor Turner, The R itual Pi 'ocess (Chicago, 1969).
22. Louis D um ont, “A Fundamental Problem in the Sociology o f C aste,” C o n trib u ­
tions to Indian S o c io lo g y 9(3): 17-32, 1966; H o m o Hierarchicus (Chicago, 1970).
23. I recall here the classic thoughts o f Florestan Fernandes (O N e g r o e o M u n d o
dos B ra nc o s, 1972) on the paradoxical Brazilian prejudice o f not having any
racial prejudice. It appears to me that this is another case in the nearly intermi­
nable series o f labyrinths existing in Brazilian society, where assumption o f
social and political responsibility is simply impeded (and not desired). In this
way the case o f nonprejudice as prejudice belongs to the same group o f facts
mentioned above, where there is a celebration w hose law is not to have law.
Everything indicates that by proceeding in this way, society regards basic social
and political mechanism s as natural processes.
24. This is a kind o f game where a number, which is drawn with the state lottery, is
associated with an animal, one o f a list o f 25 bichos or animals in alphabetical
order. The totem ic association o f the number with the animal allows dreams to
have greater suggestion, since it translates the impersonal (the number) into a
highly personalized system (the animal). At the same time it is exactly this
association, and what it allows in terms o f the calculating o f strategy to encircle
the animal and “hit it” (in a language typical o f the hunter o f luck), that gives the
j o g o do bicho its enorm ous popularity. Curiously, the game is illegal, although it
is played without the least problem in all large Brazilian cities.
25. Goffman, p. 149.
26. Roberto Da Matta, “Constraint and License: A Preliminary Study o f T w o Bra­
zilian National Rituals,” in S. F. Moore and B. Myerhoff, eds., S ecu la r R itu al
(Amsterdam, 1977).
27. Amaury Jório and Hiram Araújo, E sco la s de S a m b a em Desfile: Vida, P a ixa o e
S o r te (Rio de Janeiro, 1969), p. 25.
28. I observe that the word “declassification” has terrible social connotations in
240 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
Brazil. To say that som eone is “declassified” signifies that he is an “individual,”
a person torn from his group, som eone without class or principles— in sum,
marginal.
29. For the origins o f the Samba Schools, see Edison Carneiro, F o lg u e d o s Tra-
dictionais (Rio de Janeiro, 1975); Sergio Cabral, A s E sc o la s de S a m b a (Rio de
Janeiro, 1974); and Maria Julia G oldw asser’s O Palacio do S a m b a . (Rio de
Janeiro, 1975).
30. Jose Savio Leopoldi, “E scolas de Samba, Ritual e S o cied a d e,” Programa de
Pos-Graduacao em Anthropologia Social, Museu Nacional (Rio de Janeiro,
1975).
31. Maria Julia G oldw asser, O Palacio do S a m b a .
32. Erving Goffman, M a n ic o m io s , Prisoes e C o v e n to s (San Paulo, 1974).

1
 O lym pic G am es a n d the T heory o f Spectacle
in M odern Societies *

J o h n J . MacAloon

In merely eighty years, the Olympic G am es have grown into a cultural

perform ance of global proportion. Participants in the G am es— athletes,
officials, dignitaries, press, technicians, support personnel, as well as artists,
performers, scientists, and world youth campers attending ancillary c o n ­
gresses and exhibitions— now number in the scores of thousands and are
draw n from as many as 151 nations. Two or three million persons w atch the
events live, and the broadcast audience is staggering. According to rea­
sonable estimates, 1.5 billion people— approximately one out of every three
persons then alive on the earth— watched or listened to at least a part of the
proceedings at M ontreal through the broadcast media. Adding a “guessti­
m a te ” of the n e w spaper audience and of those interested in the G am es but
prevented by political censure or the lack of facilities from following them,
the figure rises to something like half of the w o rld ’s population. H ad the 1980
M oscow G am es not been truncated by boycotts, the television audience
alone might have exceeded two billion.
The faces of entire cities have been permanently altered by the Games,
and their impact on regional and national economies is considerable. Total
expenditures in M ontreal reached $1.5 billion and the ensuing debt, $990
million. The volume of symbolic exchange— interpersonal, national, and
cross-cultural— defies quantitative description, but is even more prodigious
and remarkable. Throughout their modern history, the Olympics have vari­
ously rejuventated or destabilized political regimes. The first G am es in

*1 ow e a special debt to each o f my colleagues at Burg Wartenstein and to the

Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. This essay was read by
several additional persons w hose encouragem ent, criticisms, and suggestions have
benefited it. A m ong them are D on Handelman, Donald L evine, Michael Schudson,
Carl Pletsch, Janet Harris, Thomas Buckley, Elihu Katz, Daniel Dayan, Jorunn
Jacobsen, and Robert Stark. To Victor and Edith Turner, who nurtured my fascina­
tion with the Olympic G am es, I ow e particular gratitude.

241
242 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
Athens in 1896, helped topple two consecutive Greek g o v e rn m e n ts.1 More
recently, an American president convinced much of his'nation that, short of
sending a bomb or an army, the most serious political step that could be
taken against the Soviet Union was n ot sending an athletic team to “their”
Games.
N ot a few individuals have had their lives taken or saved, their pockets
lined or emptied, their happiness ensured or stolen from them by the Olym ­
pics. F o r many, many more, the routines of daily life grind to a halt for two
weeks every four years. Weddings are postponed, crops go untended, work
is interrupted, and the Olympics crowd most other topics out of c o n v ersa ­
tion. In short, the Games are an institution without parallel in nature and
scope in the twentieth century. Insofar as there exists, in the Hegelian-
Marxian phrase, a “world-historical p ro c e s s ,” the Olympics have emerged
as its privileged expression and celebration.

THE G E N R E S OF OL YM P ISM

As a self-consciously de novo enterprise born with few precedents into a

world assum ed by the R én ov ateu r Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) to be
skeptical, if not hostile, O lym pism ’s charter texts and official ideological
statements are full of explicit consideration of various forms of symbolic
action. Judgments on the qualities of performative genres are a central part
of Olympic ideology itself. As Ernst Gombrich has argued for pictorial art,
so is it also with the Olympic G am es.2 Form and purpose cannot be dis­
sociated from one ano ther if the Games are to be understood as dynamic
sociocultural p ro c e sse s.3
N either will it do to subsume the entire Olympic phenom enon und er one
traditional rubric— for example, “ritual.” If it is true that genre theory is
today moribund in literary studies, R aymond Williams is surely correct that
this sort of “cram m ing” is in large measure to blam e.4 Such a tactic will also
shatter the performative approach to cultural studies before it has the o p p o r­
tunity to consolidate. At the same time, unchecked multiplication of p er­
form ance categories will sacrifice accumulated anthropological knowledge
and will have a similarly crippling effect that Williams also notes in the
history of literary criticism.
The genres discussed below— spectacle, festival, ritual, game— by no
means exhaust the roster of performance types found in an Olympic Games.
But they are semantically and functionally the most significant. The order in
which they are discussed reflects a passage from the most diffuse and ideo­
logically centrifugal genres to the most concentrated and ideologically c en ­
tripetal. Spectacle and game appeared earliest, festival and ritual
consolidated later, in Olympic history.5
Olympic G am es an d the Theory o f Spectacle 243
S p e c ta c le

Of all of the genres of cultural performance, the spectacle is the least well
know n by anthropologists. The ethnography of particular spectacles is in its
infancy and comparative studies do not yet exist.
The following attem pt to catalog the distinctive features of the spectacle
is to my knowledge the first.
1. The English word “ spectacle” derives from the Latin intensive spe-
cere “to look a t,” and ultimately from an Indo-E uropean root spek “to o b ­
serv e .” The dictionary definition echoes this etymology, defining
“ spectacle” first of all as “ something exhibited . . . a remarkable or n o te w o r­
thy sight.” Spectacles give primacy to visual sensory and symbolic codes;
they are things to be seen. H en ce we refer to circuses as “spectacles,” but
not orchestral performances.
2. N o t all sights, how ever, are spectacles, only those of a certain size
and grandeur, or, as the dictionary puts it, “public displays appealing or
intending to appeal to the eye by their mass, proportions, color, or other
dramatic qualities.” F o r example, only films employing a “cast of
th o u s a n d s ,” impressive scenery, and epic historical or religious them es are
designated as spectacles.
3. Spectacles institutionalize the bicameral roles of actors and audi­
ence, performers and spectators. Both role sets are normative, organically
linked, and necessary to the performance. If one or the other set is missing,
there is no spectacle. Thus, in a strict sense, it is not the case that “most
ceremonies and rituals are spectacles,” as Max and M ary Gluckm an have
claim ed.6 Certain rituals require no audience, and though rituals involve
grand interests and are often visually impressive, the congregation is rarely
free simply to watch and to admire. If its attention to the altar, catafalque, or
dance plaza is characterized by no more than “distanced o bservation ,” it is
typically thought guilty of bad faith, sacrilege, or hypocrisy likely to threaten
the efficacy of the performance. N o r does ritual usually permit the optional­
l y generic to the spectacle. Ritual is a duty, spectacle a choice. C o nse­
quently, we speak of ritual “degenerating” (“de-genre-ating”) into spectacle:
E a ster into the E a ster Parade.
O f course, “exotic” rituals may be perceived as spectacles by outsiders
who happen upon them— explorers, tourists, or anthropologists. But these
outsiders commit a “genre e rro r” analogous to what Gilbert Ryle has called a
“category e rro r,” and Clifford G eertz an error in “p erspective.” Since their
roles as observers are not built into the structure of the perform ance itself,
o u tsid ers’ typifications of ritual events as spectacles are at best m etap ho r­
ical, or rhetorical, as with Freud adjuring his readers to call up before their
eyes “the spectacle of a totem m eal.”7
Just as one c u lture’s rituals may be erroneously taken for a n o th e r’s
spectacles, so too unfamiliar styles of native ritual participation may seem
244 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
like “ simply w atching” to an outside observer, as w hen Evans-Pritchard
w rote of a N u e r exorcism: v

It w as very noticeable during the cerem ony how those present, as is often the
case in N uer cerem onies, chatted among them selves, asked for tobacco, and so
on. They evidently, especially the children, enjoyed the spectacle. . . . [The
p o ssessed man] him self s h o w e d little concern for what w as going o n .8 (empha­
sis added)

In his brilliant analysis of Sri Lankan exorcism, Bruce K apferer shows how
unwise it is to make such judgm ents without reference to the cultural deter­
minants of audience style and the behavior of the afflicted. O ther societies
most certainly have their spectacles, and, as I shall show in this essay,
rituals may be nested within true spectacles. But unless the genre is recog­
nized as analytically and performatively discrete, and unless attention is
paid to “em ic” categories and norms, neither ethnographers nor culture
theorists will find any coherent place for the spectacle within their accounts.
M etaph or will overw helm analytical precision in the theory of the spectacle
in just the same way as it did Frobenius and Huizinga in their important early
studies of play.9
This is not to say, how ever, that the metaphorical uses of the word
“ spectacle” are without interest in our own cultures. Our English trope
“making a spectacle of on e se lf” (in French, se donner en spectacle) reflex­
ively confirms the first three distinctive features of the genre by inverting
them. W hat is private or hidden becomes publicly exhibited; w hat is small or
confined becom es exaggerated, grand or grandiose w hen we make a specta­
cle of ourselves. And our comrades or strangers are forced into the role of
spectators to our unusual behavior. In recent times, behavior so described is
always untow ard and embarrassing, and the trope is accusing and deroga­
tory. But as recently as the turn of the century, “making a spectacle of
o n e se lf” could be a noble act. Here is William J a m e s ’s description of the
death of a friend and colleague:

Poor Frederick M yers died here a fortnight ago, in great suffering from his
breathing, but a superb spectacle, awakening especially the admiration o f his
doctors, o f the indifference to such temporal trifles which the firm conviction of
continued life will give a m an.10

The reasons for this shift in the history of speaking are as fascinating as they
are unknow n. Certainly, they must be discovered before a complete theory
o f the spectacle can be offered, and later I will speculate on the problem.
4. Spectacle is a dynamic form, demanding movem ent, action, change,
and exchange on the part of the human actors who are center stage, and the
spectators must be excited in turn. Certain plastic artw orks, like C hristo ’s
“Running F e n c e ” or S m ith so n ’s “Spiral J e tty ,” are visually spectacular, but
are not spectacles. And though “ spectacle” is often confused in com m on
Olympic G am es a n d the Theory o f Spectacle 245
speech with aesthetic categories like K a n t’s “ sublime,” the use of the former
to describe natural ph en om en a is metaphorical, as the sixteenth-century
Swiss humanist K o n ra d G essner recognized when he wrote of the Alps: “It
is such a pleasure for the mind to admire the immense masses of the m o u n ­
tains, like a spectacle, and to lift up the head almost into the clou ds.” 11
The Olympic G am es do not merely fulfill these criteria, they are specta­
cle par excellence, a type case against which all others may be compared.
The G am es are irreducibly visual. Quite literally, they must be seen, and
seen in person, to be believed. Though it has played a capital role in the
spectacular quality and growth of the Games, television, even of the highest
technical standard, reduces the spectacle to constricted little rectangles of
color and form, systematically impoverishing the spectacle’s gifts to the
hum an eye. The crowds streaming toward vast stadiums of concrete and
glass, enclosing vibrant patches of brilliant green or burnished hardw ood
upon which athletes and officials in richly hued uniforms parade, process,
and compete; the city transform ed by banners and emblems, sidewalk art
shows, impromptu dancers, singers, clowns, and street musicians; the
haw kers of souvenirs and drinks, the scalpers of tickets, spilling over into
the streets, calling their bids in a dozen languages; the hundreds of ushers,
police, and civic authorities attempting to keep order among the thousands
of tourists and fans milling about or congregating in bunches to exchange
gossip, rumors, names, stories, and, lately, badges and emblems: the sheer
scale and intensity of it all mock the puny efforts o f the television cam era to
capture it in two-dimensional images. The Olympic Games have inspired a
wealth of written and spoken com m entary, and symphonic, balletic, and
plastic artworks. Often these are rich and provocative, but they are c o m ­
mentaries on the spectacle, interpretive glosses that cannot capture the vi­
sual ecstasies and terrors of the original. Only film effectively translates the
spectacle into another medium, and only two films of the scores that have
been made— Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia of 1936 and K on Ic h ik a w a ’s film of
the 1964 Tokyo G am es— have really succeeded in capturing the epic visual
quality in the G a m e s .12
As for the spectators, their role is secure, and often predom inant in
organizational matters. Every effort is made to accom m odate them in the
choice of host cities, the design of stadiums, and the arrangem ent of the
program. In the eleventh-hour controversy over w hether to cancel the
M ontreal Games because of C a n a d a ’s unprecedented refusal to admit the
Taiw anese team into the country, even though it was recognized by the
International Olympic Committee, the public statements of I.O.C. mem bers
expressed as much concern for the disappointment of the spectators as for
that o f the athletes. Fanciful proposals that the G am es be conducted without
spectators, proposals put forward occasionally in response to abuses, are
taken by the I.O .C. to show fundamental ignorance of the aims o f the Olym­
pic m ovem ent, for, as Coubertin wrote in 1910, “the crowd has a part to
246 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
play, a part of co n se cratio n .” 13 Moreover, the m ovem ent is now utterly
dependent upon television revenues, that is, upon the 'spectators, for fiscal
viability.
Finally, it seems unnecessary to dwell on the dramatic character of the
focal performances that bring spectators and participants alike to the
Games. The athletic contests do not merely involve dramatic movem ent,
they are pure m ovem ent dramatized.

S p e c ta cle a n d F estival
Additional features of the spectacle can be highlighted by contrasting it with
the related genre of festival. Again, etymology is enlightening. The English
w ord “festival” derives from the Latin fe stivu s “gay, merry, lighthearted”
and from the noun f e s t u m “festival” or “festival tim e.” The latter is used
specifically for the great Roman feasts, such as the Lupercalia, Lemuria,
Saturnalia, and Vestalia. Congruently, the dictionary defines “festival” as
both a certain “jo y o u s m o o d ” and as “a time of celebration marked by
special observances . . . a program of public festivity.”
Spectacle, by contrast, denotes no specific style or mood aside from
diffuse w onder or awe. Rather, a broad range of emotions may be intensified
or generated in the spectacle. We speak of “fearful spectacles” as well as
“jo y o u s spectacles.” M oreover, festivals are less bound externally to calen­
dars and internally to fixed programs of “ special o b se rv a n c e s.” Spectacles
tend to be irregular, occasional, open-ended, even spontaneous, and the
ever aggrandizing ethos of the spectacle, with its generic maxim “more is
b e tte r ,” tends to destroy the symmetries of balance, harmony, and duration
that distinguish traditional festivals. H ence the genres of spectacle and fes­
tival are often differently valenced. While we happily anticipate festivals, we
are suspicious of spectacles, associating them with potential tastelessness
and moral cacophony. We tend, for example, to associate the R om an circus
games rather than the medieval tournam ent with the term “ sp ectacle.” In
festival, the roles of actors and spectators are less distinguishable than in
spectacle, where the increased emphasis on sight, often at the expense of
other modes of participation, seems to increase the threat of oversight. The
following review, which appeared in a Chicago newspaper, makes the point
with regard to cinematic spectacles, in this case A lexander the Great (1966).
“Richard B urton (in blond hair) makes a good Alexander, but this attem pt to
film an intelligent spectacle mainly proves that an intelligent spectacle is a
contradictory proposition.”
Again we find that w hen individual experience is characterized through
reference to the performative genre of spectacle, intellectual and moral am ­
biguity reappears. C hristopher Ish erw o o d ’s retrospective account of his
Berlin days includes this passage:
Only a very young and very frivolous foreigner, I thought, could have lived in
such a place and found it amusing. H adn’t there been something youthfully
Olympic G am es and the Theory o f Spectacle 247
heartless in my enjoyment o f the spectacle o f Berlin in the early thirties with its
poverty, its political hatred, and its despair?14

In H erm an n H e s s e ’s parable of 1919, “Z a ra th u stra ’s Return: A Word to

G erm an Y o u th ,” the moral content of the trope is inverted. Yet this inver­
sion too depends for its ethical surprise on the preexistent moral ambiguity
and skepticism that surround the term “ spectacle” for the reader.
Z arathustra comes upon a demagogue haranguing the crowd from atop a
vehicle. W hen the speech is finished, the young men rush up to Z arathustra
to plead for leadership and salvation in their day of greatest affliction.
Z arathustra rem arks how pleased he is to see them “play-acting,” for men
are “never so honest as th e n .”

The young men heard him and exchanged glances; they thought there was too
much mockery, too much levity, too much unconcern in Zarathustra’s words.
H ow could he speak o f play-acting when his people were in misery? H ow could
he smile and be so cheerful when his country had been defeated and was facing
ruin? H o w could all this, the people and the public speaker, the gravity o f the
hour, their own solem nity and veneration— how could all this be a mere specta­
cle to him, merely something to observe and smile at? Should he not, at such a
time, shed bitter tears, lament and rent his garments?15

Again, it must be noted that such reflexive, intentionally negative, or

unself-consciously skeptical literary uses of the term “spectacle” as we have
seen in the quotations from H esse, Isherwood, and Evans-Pritchard, resp ec­
tively, w ere not at all typical of the middle and late nineteenth century. To
the example of William Jam es that of Ernest Renan may be added. Renan,
we are told by a biographer, wished that his death and funeral would be “one
of the finest moral spectacles of our age.” 16 Are we to understand the literary
image as a metaphorical reference to real cultural perform ances? Does the
striking alteration over time of the meaning and moral valence of the trope
depend upon and give evidence for parallel changes in public spectacles
themselves? W hat contem porary performances do these writers have in the
backs of their minds as models? Or is the m atter historically more co m ­
plicated than this? Are the developments of the trope and of the perform a­
tive genre both responses to a larger and more complicated skein of social
and cultural changes in the modern world? G eertz has argued from the case
of the Balinese cockfight that cultural performances may be understood as
“ stories a people tell about th em selv es.” 17 Perhaps the growth of the specta­
cle genre in the modern world is to be understood as a public form of
thinking out, of telling stories about certain growing ambiguities and am biva­
lences in our shared existence. In their performances, our poets reflect our
spectacles back to us in single figures of speech.
F o r the m oment, one thing is clear. Just as the word “festival” could not
be substituted for “spectacle” in any o f the texts cited, so too the perform a­
tive genres o f festival and spectacle are in frank opposition to one another.
While the Olympic G am es are our grandest spectacle, they are simulta­
248 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
neously a festival, and much of the character and history o f modern Olym­
pism is contained in the dialectic betw een these two genres of cultural
performance. The same forces that have precipitated their spectacular qual­
ity are responsible for much o f the global popularity o f the Games. Yet the
hierarchy of the Olympic m ovem ent has persistently declared itself against
spectacle and for festival.
Coubertin called the Games “a festival of human unity” and, by 1935, he
had grown worried that they might become “only theatrical displays, point­
less sp ectacles.” 18 Successive generations of Olympic officials have followed
the fo u n d e r’s lead by banishing the word “spectacle” from the official lexi­
con in favor of “festival,” which is endorsed and self-consciously pursued.
F o r example, M onique Berlioux, former French swimming champion, press
attachée to Georges Pompidou, and executive director of the I.O .C ., created
a storm in Montreal when she complained to the press that the Games there
lacked “a sufficiently joy ou s and festive a tm o sp h e re .” She cited the forbid­
ding size of the facilities, the omnipresent security forces, and the paucity of
colorful Olympic banners around the city. Candidate cities are conscious of
the I . O .C . ’s concerns and often include in their proposals promises to
minimize the spectacular character of the Games. Munich, for example,
pledged itself to an “intimate Olympics.”
The official end orsem ent of the festival genre includes both mood and
program. In 1918, Coubertin wrote, “If anyone were to ask me the formula
for ‘Olympizing’ oneself, I should say to him, ‘the first condition is to be
jo y fu l.’ ” 19 Yet as they have gained prestige and scope, the Games have
becom e increasingly troubled by political, economic, and organizational
struggles. The M oscow imbroglio, the huge Montreal debt, the Munich m as­
sacre, the South African and Rhodesian questions, the repression of the
M exican students, the ritual protests of black Americans, the cold w ar bat­
tles of Russia and the United States, and H itler’s attem pt to co-opt the
Games: these are the most recent, dramatic, and familiar examples. The
joyfulness of the Games has become increasingly problematic. And on the
microsocial level, for those spectators who take little interest in politics and
for w hom ever grander arrangements are made, the cautions of the ancient
Stoic Epictetus are still salient today.

But som e unpleasant and hard things happen in life. And do they not happen at
Olympia? D o you not swelter? Are you not cramped and crowded? D o you not
bathe badly? Are you not drenched w henever it rains? D o you not have your
fill o f tumult and shouting and other annoyances? But I fancy that you bear and
endure it all by balancing it off against the memorable quality o f the sp ectacle.20

F o r most participants and spectators, at least enjoyment and probably

jo y have been the dominant moods during the Games. Personal discomforts
and surrounding controversies retreat from the mind in medias res. “ Let the
Fun Begin” read a banner headline in a Montreal new spaper on opening day
Olympic G am es a n d the Theory o f Spectacle 249
in 1976, expressing the anxious wishes of millions. But these days a strong
foreboding remains about the fate of the Games in general and about the
likelihood of joyfulness persisting from one day to the next within each
Olympics. The immediate causes vary from one Games to the next, but the
overall shift is steady and unremitting. The emotional unpredictability of the
spectacle has challenged, and perhaps now supersedes, the more reliable
affective structure of the festival.
On the formal, programmatic level, the I.O .C. attempts to fix and to
maintain the external and internal boundaries of space, time, and intention
that distinguish the festival from the more centrifugal, diffusive, and p e rm e ­
able spectacle. The Games are bound to a calendar, occurring once, and
only once, every four years. Indeed, the Olympic m ovem ent has its own
calendar.21 The I.O .C. has waged a persistent legal and rhetorical battle to
protect its m aster symbols and emblems (the name “Olympic G a m e s ,” the
five-ringed flag, the motto Citius, Altius, Fortius, the Olympic medals, the
sacred flame) from unauthorized u s e .22 Self-consciously conservative with
its symbolic resources, the hierarchy accedes to very few of the hundreds of
requests it has received for patronage and support.23 The I.O.C. has re­
peatedly rebuffed proposals that it decentralize and expand. Since 1915,
w hen Coubertin chose Switzerland as the appropriately symbolic home for
himself and for Olympism, the m ovem ent has been centered in L au sanne,
w here a paid staff of less than twenty labors in a municipally donated
chateau. Though National Olympic Committees have bureaus in each m e m ­
ber nation, the I.O .C. refuses to open any branch offices and has resisted
other sorts of bureaucratic elaboration.
Olympic officials have sought not only to regulate the boundaries b e ­
tw een the “outside w orld” and the festival but also to preserve balance and
harm ony within it. Long before the Games had attained their mass popular­
ity and had begun their genre shift into spectacle, Coubertin worried inces­
santly about their “e u ry th m y .” In 1906, he wrote:

The crowd o f today is inexperienced in linking together artistic pleasures o f

different orders. It is used to taking such pleasures piecem eal, one at a time,
from special fields. The ugliness and vulgarity o f settings do not offend it.
Beautiful music thrills it, but the fact that it sounds amid noble architecture
leaves it indifferent. And nothing in it seem s to rise in revolt against these
wretchedly banal decorations, these ridiculous processions, these detestable
cacophonies and all this frippery which com pose what nowadays is called a
festival— a festival where one guest is always missing, taste.24

Coubertin saw the fragmentation of public celebrations not merely as a local

problem for the Olympic Games to solve but as something diagnostic of
modernity itself. In 1910, he asserted that:

The men o f old p o ssessed the feeling for collective m ovem ent which w e have
lost. . . . They had acquired and developed their superiority through -
custom . . . . It must be admitted that the singularly human character o f the then
250 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
prevalent cults facilitated this acquisition and developm ent. N ow ad ays
scarcely any public cult is possible and its manifestations,could in any case
scarcely take a similar form. A s for lay festivals, nobody has anywhere su c­
ceeded as yet in giving them an appearance o f true nobility and eurythm y.2-
N

The concern for order, nobility, and taste underlies most of the regula­
tions issued by Coubertin and his successors. Among them are the statutory
limitation of the festival to seventeen days or less, a maximum of three
national entries (or one team) for each event, strict criteria for adding new
sports to the program and concerted efforts to reduce the present num ber of
competitions, representation by nation-states only, severe contractual re­
strictions on the powers of the host city and the organizing committee,
minute supervision of rites and ceremonies, and a close watch on ancillary
cultural programs. The more-is-better ethos of the spectacle, “gigantism” in
Olympic vocabulary, is the sworn enemy in all this, even as the festival
reaches out to encom pass the whole world.
While spectacle and festival are in opposition to each other, at the same
time they share a key feature. Both are, in fact, “m egagenres” or
“ m etag enres” of cultural performance. N either specifies directly what sort
of action the participants will engage in or see. Instead, each erects an
additional frame around other, more discrete performative genres. There are
religious festivals, dram a festivals, commercial festivals, opera and film fes­
tivals, arts and crafts festivals, even culinary festivals, as well as com bina­
tions of these. So too with spectacles. These metagenres are distinguished
by their capacity to link organically— or as Coubertin would have it, to
reunite historically— differentiated forms of symbolic action into new
wholes by means of a com m on spatiotemporal location, expressive theme,
affective style, ideological intention, or social function. In each of these
ways, Olympism attem pts to marry the genres of ritual and game.

' R itu a l

F rom the earliest years of the movement, Coubertin emphasized the impor­
tance of Olympic ritual. In 1910, he wrote:

It will be realized that the question o f the “cerem onies” is one o f the most
important to settle. It is primarily through the cerem onies that the Olympiad
must distinguish itself from a mere series o f world championships. The O lym ­
piad calls for a solem nity and a ceremonial which would be quite out o f keeping
were it not for the prestige which accrues to it from its titles o f nobility.26

Ritual is usually distinguished from other forms of ceremonial behavior

in two ways. Ritual invokes and involves religious or sacred forces or, in
Paul Tillich’s phrase, the locus of a p eop le’s “ultimate c o n ce rn .” And ritual
action effects social transitions or spiritual transformations; it does not
merely mark or accom pany them. These two features are intimately related
Olympic G a m es and the Theory o f Spectacle 251
in the ritual process. As the works of Victor T urner have amply shown, the
efficacy of ritual within the ongoing process of group life is dependent upon
the ritual’s capacity to place actors into direct, relatively unmediated co n ­
tact with the very ground of structure itself. Or, as Terence T urn er puts it,
“the basic principle of the effectiveness of ritual action. . . . is its quality as a
model or em bodim ent of the hierarchical relationship betw een a conflicted
or ambiguous set of relations and some higher-level principle that serves, at
least for ritual purposes, as its generative mechanism or transcendental
g ro u n d .”27
The “transcendental ground” of Olympic ritual is the idea of human-
kind-ness. In Olympic rituals, the symbols of generic individual and national
identities are assem bled and arrayed in such a way as to model, or to attempt
to model, the shared humanity that is both the ground of the structural
divisions the symbols condense and portray as well as the ultimate goal of
Olympic ideology and practice. T he experiential truth of the model, and,
therefore, the efficacy of the rituals, is dependent upon experiences of what
Victor T urner calls com m u nita s within the ritual performances. In Olympic
ritual, at least in official and many unofficial interpretations of it, the “higher­
order principle” discussed by Terence T urner and the sought-for experience
stressed by Victor T u rn er are one and the same thing.
Coubertin insisted repeatedly on the religious character of the Games.
H e w rote in 1929 that “the central idea” of the Olympic revival was that
“m odern athletics is a religion, a cult, an impassioned soaring.”28 But only
Olympic athletics, by virtue of their “titles of nobility,” could be fully c o n ­
nected with the worship of humanity. Coubertin belonged to the tradition of
F ren ch social thought that D. G. Charlton has called the search for a “ secu­
lar religion.” Coubertin challenged the dualism of the conservative Catholi­
cism in which he was raised and objected to the supernaturalism of the
Church and its antagonistic attitudes toward the liberal political and social
currents of the day. At the same time, he retained from Catholic practice the
stress on ritual evocation of religious sentiments as against the elaboration of
intellectual dogma. In 1897, he wrote:

In reality, there is no such thing as a really rational religion. A really rational

religion would exclude all idea o f worship, and would consist only in a set o f
rules for upright living. . . .Reason, which the Frenchman so readily o b ey s, has
finally established the n ecessity o f the religious sentiment. Science has shown
that it is pow erless to take its place. If one glances about him, he perceives how
profound is the religious sentiment o f our ep o c h .29

It took Emile Durkheim rather longer to arrive at this conclusion. The Olym ­
pic G am es can be seen as an answ er in action to D u rkh eim ’s call for “new
feasts and c erem o n ies” to guide m ankind.30
C o u b ertin ’s class background, his personality, and his early identity
struggles committed him throughout his life to the individual as the unit of
hum an moral being, and he bequeathed this stance to Olympism. At the
252 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
same time, as a French patriot and a political historian, he took the nation­
state to be the most salient unit of modern social organization and solidarity.
Olympic rituals incorporate the three structural identities of individual, na­
tion, and humankind and, officially at least, recognize no other social units.31
C o u b ertin ’s vision of a world community was based upon a philosoph­
ical anthropology. Anticipating distinctions later made by Marcel M au ss,32
Coubertin discriminated betw een “cosmopolitanism” and “true inter­
nationalism” in 1898.33 The former view derides and devalues the
significance of nationality and discrete cultural traditions and calls for a
world citizenry in which all such differences are overcom e and finally a b an ­
doned. The latter, “true internationalism,” understands cultural differences
as an enduring and marvelous feature of the human landscape and argues
that world peace depends upon the celebration of human diversity and not
the eradication of it. This was C oubertin’s position. “H u m a n k in d ” exists, he
thought, not in spite of, but because of social and cultural diversity, and the
task of revived Olympism was, in Ruth B enedict’s phrase, to make the world
“ safe for differences.” Generalizing from his own life, Coubertin insisted
that internationalism is not incompatible with patriotism, at least with p a­
triotism “rightly u n d e rsto o d .”

Properly speaking, cosm opolitanism suits those people who have no country,
while internationalism should be the state o f mind o f those who love their
country above all, w'ho seek to draw to it the friendship o f foreigners by
professing for the countries o f those foreigners an intelligent and enlightened
sym pathy.34

In emotionally evocative ways, Olympic symbols condense and Olympic

rituals model these broad and broadly modern social processes and p sy ch o ­
logical configurations.
In earlier studies I have subjected Olympic rituals to extensive proc-
essual symbolic analysis. H ere I can only point out that Olympic rituals are
organized around the classic schema of rites of passage first recognized by
Arnold van Gennep. The opening ceremonies, including the lighting of the
sacred flame at Archaia Olympia and its relay to the “N ew Olym pia,” are
rites of separation from “ordinary life,” initiating the period of public liminal-
ity. The opening ceremonies stress the juxtaposition of national symbols and
the symbols of the transnational, Olympic, “h u m a n ” community. The a th ­
letes and officials process into the stadium in national groups marked by the
flags, anthems, emblems, and costumes of their motherlands. The p roces­
sion and arrangem ent on the field expresses cooperative unity, though a
unity of ordered segmentation. In the second stage of the rite, a liminal
period reduplicating the overall liminality created by the opening cerem ony
as a whole, the Olympic flag is carried into the stadium and lifted above all
the national flags, the Olympic anthem is played, and the sacred flame ar­
rives to consecrate the festival. The president of the I.O.C. invites the chief
of state of the host nation to pronounce the formula opening the Games. In
Olympic G a m es an d the Theory o f Spectacle 253
each of these ways, the symbols of the Olympic community are positioned
hierarchically over and above the symbols of the nation-states, but without
contravening them. The third stage or phase of the opening cerem ony has
lately consisted of a highly choreographed and visually alluring pageant of
dance and music that shifts the mood from the excited expectation and high
solemnity of the first two phases to the jo y that is prescribed as the dominant
m ood of the festival.
F o r the spectators, the games themselves and the victory ceremonies
are rites of intensification, whereas, according to much official exegesis,
they are rites of selection and initiation for the athletes. H ere a third level of
identity comes to the fore, that of the individual, represented by the indi­
vidual athlete. In the victory ceremony, the individual’s unique achieve­
ment, iconically symbolized by the athlete’s body, is first honored with the
symbolic rew ards of the Olympic community— the medals and the olive
fronds cut from the grove of Zeus in the sacred precinct of Archaia Olympia,
handed over to or draped upon the victorious athletes by a presiding mem ber
of the I.O .C . Then the nations of the victors are honored by the raising of
their flags and the playing of the ch am p ion ’s national anthem. Simulta­
neously, according to official exegesis, the nations, through their m aster
symbols, are offered the opportunity of honoring the victors, presented now
in their double identities as native sons and daughters and as initiated rep re­
sentatives of a wider hum an community, which, through them, these nations
are sum m oned to recognize. The sight of heretofore stoic and “Olympian”
athletes weeping under the immense symbolic weight of the victory rite is
surely one of the most powerful and evocative images generated by the
m odern world.
The closing ceremonies are rites of closure and reaggregation with the
normative order. H ere the role of the national symbols is altogether reduced.
Only the anthems of G reece and of the present and of the subsequent host
nations are heard. The flags and name placards of each country are sepa­
rated from the athletes and carried into the stadium in alphabetical order by
anonym ous young w om en recruited from the citizenry of the host country.
Since 1956, the athletes “m a rc h ” in a band, not segmented by nationality,
dress, event, or degree of Olympic success.35 This is offered as a ritual
expression of the bonds of friendship and respect transcending barriers of
language, ethnicity, class, and ideology that the athletes are said to have
achieved during the festival. At the same time, it is a symbolic expression of
the hum ankindness necessary and available for all men and women, a final
display and emotional “p r o o f ” that patriotism and individual achievement
are not incompatible with true internationalism but are rather indispensable
to it. After the Olympic flame is extinguished and the Olympic flag lowered
and solemnly carried from the stadium, moments during which I observed
w idespread weeping in the stands at Montreal, the assembled thousands and
the space that they occupied are released into an extraordinary expression of
spontaneous c o m m u n ita s .36
254 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
O f course, there are other kinds of “typical” Olympic ritual experiences
than those I have described, ju st as there are many unofficial exegeses of
Olympic ritual symbols. Olympic rituals have been the staging place for
international quarrels, chauvinistic episodes, intranational conflicts, and
egotistical displays. Indeed, the Games have produced a debate over the
social efficacy o f public ritual that is in certain ways unique in the modern
world, a debate that inevitably recalls for the anthropologist the famous
c ontroversy betw een Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown over the anxiety-
reducing and anxiety-producing character of traditional rites.
T he fantastic release of human joy in the Olympic Games is intimately
related to the festival frame that surrounds these solemn rites. But there is as
well a terrifying fear, an omnipresent sense of tragic consciousness that
haunts an Olympic Games. It has to do with the fate of ritual and festival
experiences w hen they becom e em bedded within a spectacle.

Games

Anthropologists have recently begun to appreciate the immense importance

of games and sports in modern life.37 In this they have lagged behind p sy­
chologists and behavioral scientists. A nthropology’s traditional emphasis on
“primitive” societies, w here adult games tend to be irreducibly bound up
with religious, mythic, or sociostructural processes, has impeded awareness
of the discrete role games play in societies such as our own. Mutatis m u ta n ­
dis, games and sports have been taken for granted as features of the modern
landscape w hen, in fact, organized sport as we now observe it is a re m a rk ­
ably recent innovation, barely a century old. W hen Coubertin called for the
resurrection o f the Olympic Games in 1892, he had simultaneously to win
over a mass public to the concept of international sport itself.38
Even m ore than disciplinary priorities and historical myopia, the nature
of the phenom eno n itself has frustrated anthropological understanding.
Gam es, and play-forms in general, are perhaps the most paradoxical of all
cultural processes within societies with such value structures as our o w n .39
In what follows, I present a condensed summary of the apparent paradoxes
with which any study of W estern play-forms must necessarily begin, aware
of many phenomenological and conceptual complexities I ignore.
1. As fo r m a l structures, games always involve fixed and public rules,
predeterm ined roles, defined goals, and built-in criteria for evaluating the
quality of the performance. The rules are for the most part nonnegotiable
and internally coercive. As long as they are respected, the game is a social
system without deviance. And yet now here have adult games and sports
made greater inroads than in cultures typified by individual autonom y, o p ­
tional and diversified role choice, contempt for coercive norms or for the
voluntary acceptance of such norms, cultural pluralism, and class and status
stratification. M oreover, game rules circumscribe an artificial and distinc­
tively narrow subset of potential human actions. N evertheless, games come
Olympic G am es an d the Theory o f Spectacle 255
to be “as large as life” (“Is chess like life? Chess is life!”— Bobby Fischer)
typically in those societies that provide their m em bers with unprecedented
am ounts and kinds of information about how varied human existence can be.
2. Certain affective I experiential qualities of games seem to conflict
with the hidebound ch aracter of the rules, particularly in cultural milieus
w here “fu n” is associated with deviance. M oreover, the affective spectrum
of play is itself curiously polarized. Games are fun, “entertaining,” “enjoy­
a ble,” “lighthearted.” And yet games regularly carry off the players into
states of utter earnestness and commitment, at times becoming a rapture or a
sickness unto death.
3. On the m otivational Ifu n c tio n a l levels, games are the veritable type
of free, voluntary activity. As Sartre has written: “As soon as a man ap­
prehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom, . . . then his activity
is play.40 G am es are autotelic, intrinsically interesting, self-rewarding, self-
actualizing. One plays for the experience of play. Games are, in and of
themselves, “good for nothing” with respect to extrinsic rew ards of self­
esteem, money, status, and power. Yet games can and do have important
psychological, economic, social, and political consequences of which the
players and the larger audience are quite aware. Indeed, “playing gam es”
has becom e a root m etaph or and analogue for the generative process in
science, art, warfare, com m erce, and politics precisely in cultures that are at
the same time derisive of “mere gam es” as standing apart from or in opposi­
tion to “the serious life.”
4. As s e m a n tic !s y m b o lic !c o m m u n ic a tiv e systems, games at one level
seem absolutely simple. If one knows the rules, one can readily play across
linguistic or even species lines. The meaning of games, however, is deeply
paradoxical.
Gregory Bateson has draw n an elegant analogy betw een the semantic
structure of games and E pim en ides’ classic logical paradox (1972:184ff.).
The m etacom m unicative message “this is p lay,” which com poses the play
frame, has the following logical structure:41

All statements within this frame are untrue

I love you
I hate you

And on the communicative level of the actual contents of the frame, ludic
symbols not only share multivocality and polysemy with other dominant
cultural symbols but also tend to embody to an extrem e degree what Victor
T u rn er calls “polarization of meaning.” Athletic body symbols, in particular,
are at once highly iconic and have a rich variety of metonymic referents at
the “ sensory-orectic pole” and at the same time may take on an extraordi­
nary perfusion of metaphorical referents at the “cognitive-ideological
p o le.”42 Athletic games, often on the evidence of the Olympics, have re­
256 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
peatedly been described as a universal language. The word “universal”
clearly will not d o .43 But if one limits the claim to m o d e r a a n d “modernizing”
societies, there is some irrefragable truth to it on what semiologists would
call the level of the code. But on the level of the “dialect” it is something else
again.44 And on the level of the “m essage,” there is often Babel in the a b ­
sence of consecutive translation.45
There are as many routes through these dilemmas as there are theories,
ideologies, and cultural contexts of play. Certainly, no full account of the
G am es can be made without considering the range of interpretations made of
them. H ere I can only sketch C o ub ertin’s, which he bequeathed to genera­
tions of orthodox followers in the I.O .C .46 Coubertin was profoundly
discomfited by w hat he saw as the rigidification and spiritual desiccation of
his contem poraries. His visions at A rchaia Olympia and in the Chapel of
Rugby School led him to the ancient Greek and British schoolboy athletes as
contrasting models of human wholeness, of the integration of mind and
body, effort and discipline, ambition and loyalty, self-sacrifice and joy. He
asked:

Is an individual a man in the full sense o f the word if he is forever worried about
husbanding his strength and limiting his initiatives, and takes no pleasure in
expending him self beyond what is expected o f him? But at the same time is an
individual a man in the full sense o f the word if he does not take pleasure in
investing the intensity o f his effort with smiling calm and self-mastery, and in
living within a framework o f order, equilibrium, and harmony?47

Students of French thought and character will recognize in these lines the
enduring tension betw een the values of prouesse and ordre et mesure in
French social history.48 Prowess is a value particularly associated with the
French aristocracy. The marginality of the aristocracy in Third Republic
Fran ce caused men like Coubertin to seek new realms in which to enact the
traditional values in which they had been raised. Coubertin found a solution
to his own marginal social identity in athletic games. So, too, he saw in them
both an expression of the vibrant forces of the modern order and a
therapeutic inversion of its deficiencies, an instrument of renewed hope and
reform on a societal scale.
By contrast with the stultifying routines of modern life, game rules are
freely and joyfully accepted. Because of, rather than in spite of, the rules, a
“healthy drunkenness of the blood,” an “ impassioned soaring which is c a p a ­
ble of going from play to heroism ” is made possible. The game invites,
indeed dem ands, w hat “ordinary life” inhibits— individual initiative beyond
what is merely required— in contrast to both the sickly conformism and the
antinomian excesses masquerading as “individualism” that Coubertin saw as
characteristic of his contemporaries. In his study of Carnival, R oberto Da
M atta has argued, following Dumont, that in hierarchical societies, to
dram atize is to equalize; whereas, in ideologically egalitarian societies, to
dram atize is to produce hierarchy. Athletic games do both at once, which is
Olympic G am es a n d the Theory o f Spectacle 257
one reason why both hierarchical and egalitarian societies find Olympic
contests dramatic and entrancing. As contests with winners and losers,
games model hierarchical social arrangements. At the same time, and here
Coubertin placed his stress, games model egalitarian social systems. W here
the rules are know n and accepted, they are equally binding on all, and a
p e r s o n ’s status or wealth has no direct bearing on the outcom e of the game.
In the Republic of Muscles, as Coubertin called it, the only inequalities
recognized are those of achievem ent and not of ascription. Games are c om ­
petitive, but they are also cooperative, voluntary competitions. M oreover,
they produce events, not objects that can be bought and sold.
“In my opinion,” Coubertin wrote in 1925, “the future of civilization
rests at this m om ent neither on political nor on economic bases. It depends
solely on the direction which will be given to education.”49 By “education”
he m eant both schooling in the narrow sense— the reform of pedagogy being
his first concern—-and, in a wider sense, the education of m ank ind ’s vision of
itself. Coubertin passionately believed with his contem porary Durkheim that
a society is “above all the idea it has of itself” and that the “revivification [of
ideals] is the function of religious or secular feasts and ceremonies . . .
m om ents [which] are, as it were, minor versions of the great creative m o ­
m e n t.”50
At the turn of the century, athletic games enjoyed a political and c o m ­
mercial irrelevance by comparison with what was to follow. Games struck
C oubertin as peculiarly apt vehicles for delivering man from the constricting
vision of h o m o econom icus. The athlete devoted his extraordinary effort and
discipline for no other reason than the love of the game itself, and only
am ateurs were to be admitted to Olympic competition. The G am es would
therefore provide, so Coubertin thought, dramatic evidence that men are
not, and need not be, dominated by material interests in order to achieve
moral status and collective approbation. So, too, I.O .C .m em bers were to be
sportsm en who donated their time and resources without material reward,
and as unelected “trustees of the Olympic Id e a ,” were to owe allegiance to
no political unit but to the world community. Drawn from many nations,
their corporate activity would model, as would that of the athletes, the belief
that the capacity to recognize and to celebrate different ways of being human
is a precondition for the notion of “human being” to have any meaning at all.
G am es provide, Coubertin thought, a universal dramatic form and a univer­
sal language through which otherwise distant and uncommunicative peoples
might ap pear and speak to one another.

To ask the peoples o f the world to love one another is merely a form o f
childishness. To ask them to respect one another is not in the least utopian, but
in order to respect one another it is first necessary to know one another. . . .
Universal history is the only genuine foundation o f a genuine peace. . . . To
celebrate the Olympic Games is to appeal to history.51

Coubertin wrote volumes of “universal history” and meant the phrase in its
258 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity

i-------------------------------------------- (THIS IS S P E C T A C L E ) --------------------------------------

n
‘ ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME ARE GRANDILOQUENT AND ALLURING BUT MERIT SUSPICION,
THIS IS FESTIVAL

ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME ARE SUBJECTS OF JOY AND HAPPINESS,

__________________________THIS IS RITUAL ___________________________

ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME ARE TRUE AND REPRESENT

THE MOST SERIOUS THINGS.

THIS IS GAME

ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME ARE UNTRUE.

WE ARE THE SAME.
WE ARE DIFFERENT.

________ THIS IS THE T R U T H _________

WE RESPECT EACH
OTHER BECAUSE WE
ARE THE SAME IN
OUR DIFFERENCES.

WE RESPECT EACH OTHER.

WE DISPARAGE EACH OTHER.

Figure 1. The Olympic performance system: orthodox form.

French academic sense, but in the context of the Olympic games it takes on
a new meaning, which he understood but could not quite formulate. The
Olympic Games provide a kind of popular ethnography. Lured by the in­
trinsic appeal of games and the desire to back o n e ’s national champions, the
spectators are additionally presented with a rich mosaic of cultural imagery
in a festival designed to entertain and to delight, but also to educate and to
inspire.

O LYM P IC G AM ES: A R A M IF IE D P E R F O R M A N C E TYPE

The preceding sketch of the distinctive features of the four central performa­
tive genres of the Olympic Games ought to make clear why lumping the
entire performance system under the single rubric of sports or creating some
new bastard category like ludic secular ritual will not do. These genres are
distinctive forms of symbolic action, distinguished from one another by
athletes, spectators, and officials alike. While certain features are shared
Olympic G a m es a nd the Theory o f Spectacle 259
betw een genres, others are in tension or in opposition, both categorically
and in context. On the level of official ideology alone, we have seen that only
three of the four genres are legitimated. The spectacle is regarded as intru­
sive. M oreover, we have noted in passing that official com m itm ent to and
confidence in the marriage of game, rite, and festival does not always w ork
out so “happily” from the I . O .C . ’s own perspective. This, we may be cer­
tain, has as much to do with the nature of the genres as it does with the
potentially explosive them es and social arrangements performed differ­
entially within them. At the same time, the Olympic Games form a single
perform ance system. The genres are intimately and complexly intercon­
nected on all levels: historically, ideologically, structurally, and performa-
tively. Thus we are forced to recognize that the Olympic Games represent a
special kind of cultural performance, a ramified performance type, and we
are forced to seek for new models and methods of analysis that will allow us
to understand the relationships betw een the various forms of symbolic ac­
tion without losing sight of their distinctive properties.
In w hat follows, I suggest such an approach, displayed figuratively in
the form of two diagrams that draw their initial inspiration from the insight of
Gregory B ateson already discussed. N ot only play-forms, but all established
genres of cultural perform ance can be seen to have specifiable, metacom-
municative frame markers that organize the variable contents o f the frames
into semantic fields within their contextual cultures. In Figure 1, I propose
such m etam essages for the frame markers “This is ritual” and “This is fes­
tival,” and I suggest the metacom m unication that now seems to accom pany
the emergent genre o f spectacle. The visual metaphors of the diagrams—
rectangles— preserve the original m etaphor of the frame and iconically
model the way in which Olympic genres are “n e ste d ” within one another.
Three-dimensional representations would, in other ways, be more suitable.
F o r example, one may visualize the diaphragm of a box camera, telescoping
inward toward m ore focused performances and more defined insights. S y m ­
bolic themes (“images” in this metaphor) that recur throughout the Olympics
(expressions of social identity, for example) would then be seen to occupy a
virtual space on the long, undifferentiated axis through the center of the
apparatus. Only in cross-section would specific instances of the recurrent
“image” be located as to genre (the folds of the diaphragm in the metaphor).
Or one may think of a set of Chinese boxes. This representation has a double
advantage. The set of boxes may be initially presented disassembled, with
one or several of its mem bers missing. The recipient may happily toy with
the boxes at hand without ever suspecting that the set is incomplete.
This is exactly the situation of millions of television viewers who de­
pend upon the program decisions of television executives for their knowl­
edge of the Olympic Games. In the past, the American netw orks have
typically covered the games and the rites, but have paid almost no attention
to the festival. In my own fieldwork in Montreal, I found time and again that
longtime Olympic fans who were seeing the Games in person for the first
260 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
time were altogether surprised to discover the mass street festival within
which the athletic performances were embedded. E ven .more surprisingly,
my interviews with Olympic athletes have turned up examples of c o m ­
petitors w ho w ere so restricted by their physical and psychological training
regimens at the G am es that they too were mostly unaware of the vast festival
surrounding the athletic competition. Indeed, in actual ethnographic cases,
my findings suggest that very few Olympic actors or audiences are operating
with a full set of “ Chinese (Olympic) b o x e s.”
In addition, the three-dimensional visual m etaphor of the Chinese boxes
allows us to configure the nature of performative “fram es” in a more sophis­
ticated way. As Goffman recognizes in Fram e Analysis, which builds upon
Bateson in a very creative way, frame markers provide more than metacom-
municative rules for evaluating the actual and variable contents of the p er­
form ance enclosed within the frame. In and of themselves, frames have the
additional properties of pretypifying and “inducing fitting actions.”52 For
example, the frame m arker “This is ritual” not only delivers the metacom-
municative message that “all statements within this frame are true and re p re ­
sent the most serious things,” it also orders us to expect reverential
d em eano r from the actors within the frame and to conduct ourselves a cco rd­
ingly. Exactly w hat constitutes “reverential d e m ea n o r” is dependent on the
actual contents of the performance and on the sociocultural context in which
it is performed. In the “Chinese b o x es” model of a ramified performance
system, the perim eter of each box represents the metacom m unicative m e s­
sage associated with each frame, while the vertical edges represent these
additional specifications of the frame, specifications that include, inciden­
tally, aspects of each m em ber of K enneth B u rk e ’s “dramatistic p e n ta d .”53
It is precisely this capacity for elaboration in the face of ethnographic
and theoretical complexity that makes this model so useful in the analysis of
complicated phen om ena like the Olympic Games. I will retreat, how ever,
into two dimensions for my diagrams and, for the m oment, into the relatively
simple problem of mapping the semantic fields of the Olympic Games as they
were intended by the founder and as successive generations of Olympic
officials have attem pted to maintain them. This map is to be found in Figure
1.
The outerm ost frame, that of the spectacle, is pictured as a dotted line
to represent the I . O . C . ’s awareness of its existence as well as its m e m b e rs ’
persistent attem pts to keep it from coalescing. I have altered the contents of
“ B a te s o n ’s b o x ,” the game frame, to better represent C o ub ertin’s vision. As
noted above, Coubertin found the language of love and hate utopian, prefer­
ring to speak instead of respect and disrespect of the peoples of the world for
one another. In their public documents and speeches, I.O.C. hierarchs have
never deviated from this ideological course set by the founder, so I have
included it as content of the game frame. As we also saw, the Olympic
athletic contests were intended as well to model the philosophical anthropol­
ogy upon which Olympic ideology is based, and I have included these
Olympic G am es a nd the Theory o f Spectacle 261
them es (“We are the sam e” / “We are different”) in the game frame. I have
also included an other space within it— a frame of revelatory truth. While
Coubertin recognized and appreciated certain of the ambiguities and
paradoxical qualities of games, their aspects of pretense and make-believe
that form the phenomenological bases for the metamessage “All statements
inside this frame are false,” others he did not. And, in any case, he believed
that in the “deep play” of the Olympic Games paradoxes would be resolved
and a dramatic revelation of higher-order, noncontradictory truths would
o c cu r.54
This model makes it possible to formulate a paradigm: participants (ac­
tors and audiences) en ter the performance system through festival, ritual, or
game; in play the “tru th ” is revealed; once the truth is revealed, it is co n se ­
crated by ritual; then it is enjoyed through festival.* A second process now
occurs. Since the same themes, symbolic types, and social identities co m ­
pose the contents of the ritual and the festival frames, the peripheries are
now revealed to be identical with the center, and the sudden recognition of
the unity of the perform ance system adds renew ed experiential p ro of for
unity of the truth. In the course of particular Olympic Games, these p ro c ­
esses may be repeated many times over. Within the boundaries of the fes­
tival, within its liminal space and time, the “tru th ” is experienced in the
indicative mood, as an absolute “is.” U pon reaggregation with the normative
o rder at the close of the Gam es, the contrast betw een the “elementary forms
of the Olympic life” and the diffuse and complicated forms of “ordinary life”
is made painfully manifest. The truth is preserved by its transformation out
of the indicative and into the subjunctive. It becomes a great “could” and
“o u g h t.” F o u r years later, it will again be renewed. Though far more self­
conscious and explicit than any account to be found in official or semiofficial
Olympic literature, this paradigm accurately represents, as an ideal type, the
meaning of the Olympic Games as desired and experienced by their
hierarchs and orthodox partisans.
But genres and frames have histories. The model presented in Figure 1
is abstracted from history in three ways. First it models the Olympic Games
in their developed form. Even as an ideal type, it does not model the Athens
G am es of 1896 or the St. Louis Games of 1904. Second, it makes only
implicit connections betw een Olympic genres and frames and those same
genres and frames elsewhere in cultural process. Third, it isolates orthodox
paradigms and exegeses from variant understandings of the Olympic Games,
understandings influenced by the fate of these same genres and frames in
wider cultural ahd historical contexts. The first of these problems is co n ­
sidered in This Great Symbol, where I provide a historical account of the
developm ent of the Olympic performance system. H ere I will consider only
key aspects of the second and third problems.

*Don Handelman has helped to clarify my thought here and to formulate this
paradigm.
262 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity

_______________________________________ THIS IS SPECTACLE ________________________________________

ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME ARE GRANDILOQUENT AND ALLURING BUT MERIT SUSPICION.

IS THIS FESTIVAL?
N ”

ARE ANY STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME SUBJECTS OF JOY AND HAPPINESS?

___________________________ IS THIS RITUAL? ____________________________

ARE ANY STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME TRUE? DO ANY OF THEM

REPRESENT THE MOST SERIOUS THINGS?

__________________ IS THIS GAME? _________ ____________

ARE ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THIS FRAME UNTRUE?

WE ARE THE SAME.
WE ARE DIFFERENT.

--------IS THIS THE T R U T H ? ---------

WE RESPECT EACH
OTHER BECAUSE WE
ARE THE SAME IN
OUR DIFFERENCES.

WE RESPECT EACH OTHER.

WE DISPARAGE EACH OTHER.

Figure 2. The Olympic performance system: a transformation.

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, cultural history had, so to speak,
caught up with the Olympic movement. Until that time, the semantic b o u n d ­
ary “This is play” had remained more or less intact around the games of the
Olympic Games. In turn, this protected the festival frame as well, and it
afforded Olympic rituals a certain serenity within which to condense and
elaborate. But largely due to the success of the Olympics themselves, a mass
efflorescence of organized sport, first in Euro-American cultures, then
worldwide, drew down upon the Games of the twenties and thirties ideolog­
ical, political, and commercial interests of every sort. What Goffman calls
frame breaking and out-of-frame behavior, or persistent threats of these,
have troubled the G am es increasingly ever since. The professionalization of
sports and the transformation of atheletes into celebrities, the growing num-
ber-fetishism and specialization in athletics, the increased role of technology
and of hy perextended training periods in sports success, the growth of ath­
letic bureaucracies, the recognition of sp o rt’s importance and the incorpora­
tion of sports success by the dominant world ideologies, the takeover of the
selection, preparation, and financing of the teams by national governments
Olympic G am es and the Theory o f Spectacle 263
and corporate interests, the counting of medals as propaganda and ersatz
warfare, the attem pts to co-opt the Games for chauvinistic purposes by host
nations, and their use as a stage for “jock-strap diplom acy,” saber rattling,
regime building, and, finally, terrorism by insiders and outsiders alike: these
developm ents represent in a general way the penetration of the “ stuff of
ordinary life” into the public liminality of the Games. And as ordinary life
has changed, so have the Games been forced to change.
These developm ents have produced semantic shifts in the frames of
Olympic performances. I have diagrammed these shifts in Figure 2. The
most notable o f them has been the transformation of the frame markers from
the indicative to the interrogative mood. B ateson has theoretically antici­
pated the concrete, observable shift in the Olympic play frame. He writes of
“a more complex form of play” in which “the game is constructed not upon
the premise ‘This is p la y ’ but rather around the question ‘Is this p la y ? ’ ”55 He
adds in passing that this form of interaction has its ritual forms too. The
question “Is this ritual?” marks a general uncertainty as to w hether Olympic
rites do em body “ultimate c o ncerns” or are instead “mere p ag eantry,” and
as to w hether or not they are truly efficacious processes through which
actors and audiences gain passages to and through novel realms of meaning,
nonordinary states of being, and liminal statuses and roles. And if joyfulness
cannot be reliably anticipated, either because of chronic disputes and inter­
ruptions or because of the moral ambiguities of the events themselves, the
third frame also becom es questionable: “Is this festival?”
This brings us again to the spectacle with which we began. In Figure 2,
the spectacle frame is fully drawn in. Since the 1930s, the Olympic Games
have grown into the m odern spectacle par excellence. On the one hand, this
is in spite of the best efforts of the I.O.C. to prevent it. On the other hand,
the desire of the hierarchs to reach a mass audience (e.g., television) and
their willingness to renegotiate certain key structural principles (e.g.,
amateurism) in order to accom m odate as many nations as possible and to
ensure the quality of the performances have made the edging into spectacle
inevitable. The coalescence of the spectacle frame occurred simultaneously
with the transform ation of the other frame markers into the interrogative
mood. Together with the changes in the contextual meanings of games previ­
ously discussed, the arrival into spectacle is the principal cause of this
transformation. As noted earlier, the aggrandizing ethos of the spectacle
attacks the unities ordered by the festival frame, and the licensing of passive
spectatorship contravenes the ritual com m and that all be engagé. Games
too, insofar as they are em bedded within a spectacle, tend to be taken as
“mere g a m es,” “mere entertainm en ts,” rather than as “ metaphors that are
m e a n t.” The more diffused and optional attention becom es, the less clearly
defined, noticeable, and corporate are the frame boundaries and the pas­
sages betw een semantic fields. N ew institutions like the tourist agency and
additional performances like the television commercial invade the Olympic
perform ance system and reduce the sharpness of the boundaries between
Olympic space and time and daily life.
264 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
On an other front, the elaboration of the spectacle may be seen as a
response to the same external social conditions that make festival, ritual,
and game already less defined and consensually delimited in the contextual
cultures. It has been well known since the early work of Durkheim that in
. . . s . . . . .
complex, industrialized societies, culturally pluralistic and ethically indi­
vidualistic in fact or in value, the collective representations tend to be so
abstract and even vague that either they have little force in ordering group
behavior or else offer reliable expectations solely on the level of “least
com m on d e n o m in ato r.” At the macrosocial level of the nation-state, this
view is still a commanding one. H ow much more true must it be at the
megasocial level of the Olympic “world com m unity” that includes some 151
nations, among them capitalist and collectivist industrial states, d e m o c ­
racies, fascist and socialist dictatorships, theocracies, monarchies, and all of
the transitional types lumped under the unhappy term “developing n ations.”
The inability to count on festival joy, to agree on ultimate concerns and
therefore share a sufficiently concrete exegesis of Olympic ritual symbols,
and the inability to trust that Olympic Games are really games all promote
the growth of the spectacle. At the same time, the spectacle’s satisfaction
with entertaining and pleasing the eye at the expense of stimulating the
mind, piquing the conscience, or exciting the body turns persons further
away from festival, ritual, and game.
In Figure 2, I have also placed the contents of the innermost box into
the interrogative. I.O .C. conservation o f its traditional mission has kept the
symbol vehicles and the ideological themes of the Olympic G am es constant
under the new regime of the spectacle. The abstract issues of hum an kin d­
ness and mutual respect remain at the center of each Olympic Games. But
the exigencies of the spectacle now offer such persistent distractions and so
many contradictory messages that if participants “arrive at the c en te r” at all,
the truth they find revealed there may be no more than a question. Returning
outw ard, participants find no assurances. Rituals that may not be rituals
cannot consecrate; festivals that may not be festivals cannot cause one to
en-joy. And, in any case, in an already too doubtful world, what does the
consecration and enjoyment of questions add to the “ stuff of everyday life” ?
Perhaps a great deal if the questions are provocatively focused, dramatically
presented, and resolutely engaging of o n e ’s affective and moral resources.
But these are exactly the qualities of cultural performances that are most
endangered by the shifts in the frame markers mapped in Figure 2. H ere, as
in the first paradigm, the center may be experienced as finally identical with
the periphery: the skepticism embedded in the metamessage of the spectacle
frame has been found to inhabit every locale within the performance system.
The Gam es, it is then said, are “idealistic,” by which is meant that they ask
the “ same old” questions about world peace and human understanding, in
grandiose and “naive” (spectacular) fashion, and produce not answers, “just
sym b ols.” This last phrase is a widespread and distinctively modern W est­
ern expression. It suggests another set of shifts in the frame markers of
festival, ritual, and game associated with the rise of the spectacle.
Olympic G a m es a nd the Theory o f Spectacle 265

Spectacle, at least with regard to its metamessage, is a reflexive genre.

In the tw entieth century at least (recall the evidence of the changes in the
spectacle trope), the spectacle invites what it simultaneously cautions
against: delight in its contents. Its contents are images— grand, alluring,
unusual, epic images— but “mere images.” The metacommunication of the
spectacle frame says “admire but do not be d eceived .” The interrogative
markers “Is this festival?” “Is this ritual?” and “Is this gam e?” are also
reflexive, albeit in a different form. In this new way, it is not surprising to
observe the correlation betw een the coalescence of the spectacle frame
around the G am es and the transformation of the frame markers of Figure 1
into those of Figure 2. The performance system is now left in a hyperreflex­
ive state, a state that is, as we know, a most unpleasant one for human actors
and audiences. It is a state not long tolerated, for it not only destroys simple
entertainm ent but soon produces great anxiety. One way for Olympic p a r­
ticipants to mitigate that anxiety is to regain “flow” by returning to (or for the
first time gaining) credence in one or more of the indicative (reflective, but
unreflexive) frame markers portrayed in Figure 1. But another way is to
reduce reflexivity by adopting instead a new set of indicative, though highly
qualified frame markers. Our contem porary cultural contexts supply just
such a set: “This is mere enjoyment (festival),” “This is mere ritual,” “This is
mere (just a) g a m e .” In this transformation of the Olympic performance
system, one of two things may be expected to happen to the innermost
frame. If participants issue from cultural contexts that permit the association
of revelation with P lato ’s “noble gam es” but oppose it directly to “mere
g a m e s ,” no revelation is likely to occur, and the innermost frame in effect
disappears. O r else, as Donald Levine has suggested, the inner revelation
becom es a resonance of the frame itself: “We are all one because we are all
game pla y ers.”

TOW ARD A TH EO RY OF SPECTACLE

As we have seen, Olympic officials have consistently regarded spectacle as

an unfortunate accretion onto the Olympic performance system. In their
view, spectacle is associated with tastelessness, gigantism, moral disorder,
and the surrender of the high purposes of the Games to mere entertainment.
As a general ju dg m en t on spectacle, this view is now widely shared through­
out m odern cultures, anyw here an ethnography of speaking reveals the co m ­
plex o f “m e re s” (symbol, ritual, game, image, model, entertainment).
M oreover, there is ample evidence to be drawn from the history o f the
Olympics and of other tw entieth-century spectacles to support this verdict,
and it would be justifiable as well as fashionable to leave matters at this. To
do so, how ever, would deprive us of exactly the insights into contem porary
social and cultural life that contemplation of the spectacle uniquely affords.
To get at these insights two questions must be explored: H ow is the e m er­
gence o f ramified performance types to be understood and situated in cul­
266 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
tural history? W hy is it the spectacle and not some other genre that appears
to have trium phed? V

Olympism is a m aster example of what Victor T urn er calls ideological

c o m m u n ita s , a claim and a plea for “ seeing through and behind” the polit­
ical, racial, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries that divide humans from one
another, not by erasing them from the consciousness of the actors, but by
demonstrating a deeper commonality that undergirds the normative order
and makes it possible. T u rn er writes that the boundaries of the model of
human interconnectedness described by ideological co m m unitas are “ideally
coterm inous with those of the human species.”.56 The ideology of Olympism
is an empirical case of this general proposition, and a more significant case
than its philosophical rivals because of the extraordinary practical success of
the G am es that attem pt, at least, to em body the ideology in action.57 In
T u r n e r ’s many writings on the topic, com m unitas has been intimately linked
with liminality and with a structural and historical theory of cultural p e r­
form ance genres. T urner first associated com m unitas with the liminal phase
of rites of passage in traditional societies. Subsequently, he extended the
linkage to isomorphic moments wherein the actors find themselves in pas­
sage betw een social states. Lately he has introduced a distinction betw een
liminal and “liminoid” (liminal-like) phenom ena, including genres of cultural
perform ance, in his partition.
The developm ent of liminoid genres of cultural perform ance is variously
represented by T u rn er as a fragmentation, a fissioning, and a differentiation
of liminal perform ance types (especially, ritual) that formerly governed the
lives of entire peoples.

In com plex, modern societies both types coexist in a sort o f cultural pluralism.
But the liminal— found in the activities o f churches, sects, and m ovem ents, in
the initiation rites o f clubs, fraternities, masonic orders and other secret
societies, etc.— is no longer societyw ide. N or are liminoid phenom ena, which
tend to be the leisure genres o f art, sport, pastimes, gam es, etc., practiced by
and for particular groups, categories, segm ents, and sectors o f large-scale in­
dustrial societies o f all ty p e s.58

Spectacle, according to T u r n e r’s criteria, seems to be an excellent example

of the liminoid, and he so regards it. The spectacle has emerged in ju st those
social types he finds to be the hearths of the liminoid, and it has grown to
preem inence in industrialized societies, w hether capitalist or collectivist.
Spectacles are, for the most part, disconnected from calendrical and social
rhythm s, and participation in them is voluntary, not obligatory. The in­
stitutionalized role of the spectator seems to contrast with liminality, and the
mass quality of the spectacle seems to preclude the actors from sharing in
concerted ways the interpretation of the event. Thus the spectacle appears
to be a privileged m arker of the differentiation of social units and solidarities
and of the fragmentation of liminal performance genres. W hatever spon tane­
ous co m m un itas experiences happen within the spectacle must then have
only an idiosyncratic or small-public character and be unlikely to “add up
Olympic G am es a n d the Theory o f Spectacle 267
to ” anything more. Therefore, since Olympism is an ideology of com m unitas
and the G am es were designed to provide predictable co m m unitas experi­
ences on a broad scale, the hostility of Olympic officials toward the consoli­
dation of the spectacle seems to be canny and wise. This would hold w hether
or not spectacle is responsible for the weakening of festival, ritual, and
game, or w h eth er both trends are coeffects of the same external social
evolution.
And yet, this analysis of the spectacle seems somehow skewed and
incomplete. If, instead of taking spectacle exclusively as the break do w n and
“heterogenization” (“hetero-genre-ization”) of prior cultural conditions, we
ask in addition w hat spectacle points toward, w hat generative potentials and
auspicious beginnings might lie within it, certain facts previously mentioned
emerge in a new light.
The Olympic spectacle is in several ways unlike other examples of the
genre. It is practiced by and for particular social segments and groups; it is
calendar-bound and attuned to biological rhythms through its emphasis on
youth; it is concerned with such global social crises as racism, terrorism, and
world war, in an active as well as a reactive w a y .59 M oreover, the idea of
“world c o m m u nity ” is no longer simply a humanistic pipe dream , but in­
creasingly a set of facts and challenges. The interlocking of national
economies to the point where “national eco n o m y ” is losing its meaning,
worldwide commodity and energy shortages, shifts in the balance o f pow er
tow ard the so-called Third World, global pollution, nuclear proliferation,
mass tourism, the spread of the electronic media, as well as the steady
m arch of urbanization and industrialization: though unevenly perceived and
unequally salient in the various corners of the world, these are facts forcing
their ways into the consciousness of multitudes of hum an beings. As they
do, new institutions (e.g., multinational corporations, the E u ro pean E c o ­
nomic Com m unity, the Trilateral Commission, the Conference of
Nonaligned N ations, the Pan-African Congress) and new m etaphors (the
“Global Village,” “ Spaceship E a r th ”) are simultaneously generated. The
Olympic G am es are the only venue other than the United Nations w here the
majority of the w o rld ’s nations meet on a regular basis to engage in self­
consciously co m m o n activity. A few more nations are represented at the
U .N . than in the G am es, but the Olympic audience is far larger, in no small
part because of the U . N . ’s failure to generate evocative ceremonials.
I would speculate that the size o f the Olympic audience owes as much to
the felt need for living, dramatic images of the “o th e rs” with w hom we are
increasingly conscious of sharing a biosphere and sets of political economies
and ways of living as it does to the intrinsic interest in sport or to patriotic or
chauvinist loyalties. From a subjective standpoint,the world has not shrunk,
as we like to say, it has immeasurably expanded. Spectacle may be that
genre which most reflects and refracts this social expansion, this extension
of vision, this opening of the “e y e .” More than the worship of “bigness” for
its ow n sake, more than cheap thrills and decadent pleasures is required to
account for the triumph of the spectacle as an organized genre of cultural
268 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
perform ance. If, in our daily lives, we must increasingly take account o f the
“ size” of the earth, then our performances must surely take account of it too.
Spectacle may be society in action, groping on the level o f expressive cul­
ture, tow ard a new order in a changing world.
But spectacle, as I have labored to show, is only one of the genres
composing the Olympic performance. That system is of the special sort I
have labeled a “ramified performance ty p e .” In T u r n e r’s terms, the liminoid
genre o f the spectacle encloses other liminal genres such as festival and
ritual within the Olympic Games. But this is more than simple addition or
accretion, more than a simple reframing. The genres act and react upon one
a no ther in intimate and ordered ways. The system is ramified, not simply
laminated, and it is a system .60 Why spectacle in particular, and what does
the discovery of ramified performance types suggest for T u r n e r’s theory of
the fragmentation and constriction of the liminal in the modern world?
Spectacle has destructive effects on genres like festival, ritual, and
game, genres that reduce in their various ways the distance betw een actors
and audiences, that dem and that all take active roles in the perform ance, and
that all agree at some level on the typification and transcendental ground of
their actions. These are powerful effects and must not be underestimated. At
the same time, how ever, in cultures that already emphasize individuality,
minimize the sense of obligation and responsibility for collective action, and
inbreed hostility toward, for example, ritual, spectacle may have an unanti­
cipated “positive” effect. The spectacle frame erected around ritual may
serve as a recruiting device, dissembling suspicion toward “mere ritual” and
luring the proudly uncommitted. Those who have come simply to w atch and
to be w atched, to enjoy the spectacle or to profit from it, may find th e m ­
selves suddenly caught up in actions of a different sort at levels of intensity
and involvement they could not have foreseen and from which they would
have retreated had such participation been directly required or requested of
them. In this connection allow me to introduce two cases that illustrate the
recruitm ent of persons by spectacle into ritual and game.
A young American w oman who w orked for three years at the I.O.C.
headquarters in L a u san n e told me:

I just came to work here because I needed a job. All I knew about the Olympics
was that they were “the greatest spectacle in sport,” as Jim M cK ay, the televi­
sion guy, says. And then everyone around here, well most o f them, really laugh
about all that Coubertin stuff, world peace and all that. When Munich came
along, I decided to go over though I didn’t feel terribly excited or anything. I
was sitting in the Opening Ceremony and I couldn’t believe it. W hen the
torchbearer cam e into the stadium and the crowd roared, I suddenly began to
cry. I remember thinking, “So this is what it’s all about!” I d o n ’t think I’ll ever
forget that m oment as long as I live.

A businessm an from N ew York City, whom I happened to sit next to in the

stadium early in the track events at Montreal, told me that he did not follow
sports very much and knew nothing about track, but that he and his wife
happened to be passing through Montreal on vacation. “W e ’re ju st tourists,”
Olympic G am es a n d the Theory o f Spectacle 269
he said, “and thought we shou ldn ’t miss this so we could tell our friends
back in the city we were h e re .” As the afternoon wore on, he began to forget
about the ticket prices and the quality of the hot dogs. He barraged me with
questions about track, the competitors, and Olympic history. W hen two
A m ericans came first and second in the 400-meter hurdles, he was ecstatic
and visibly m oved during their victory ceremony. His vacation plans were
shortly forgotten and his one-day stay turned into a week. I saw him twice
again, once arguing about communism with some French students in the
plaza outside the stadium, and again at the closing ceremonies, which he
said “were like being in ch u rch ” and “choked me up when they took down
the [Olympic] flag.”
I have collected many such case materials that dem onstrate involve­
ment in spectacle as a recruitment agency for festival, ritual, and gam e.61
This leads to an oth er coding of the semantic frame of spectacle than the
skeptical “mixed m essage” of Figure 2. Spectacle additionally gives the
m etam essage “all you have to do is w a tc h ,” thus liberating individuals to
want to, to be free to do more than watch. Thus spectacle, taken in isolation
as a single perform ance type, represents a further differentiation of the
liminoid from the liminal. But em bedded in the context of the Olympic
perform ance system, it emerges as a sort of servom echanism for the liminal
genres nested within it, Taken as a whole, with its system of interacting
genres, the Olympic G am es represent a complex performance type that
stands historically betwixt and betw een two cultural moments: the fragmen­
tation into “liminoidality” of liminal genres once capable of transporting
entire societies outside of their ordinary boundaries of space and time (and
of providing society wide co m m u nitas experiences), and the developm ent of
neoliminal genres out of the liminoid to provide such experiences for e m er­
gent social units w hose outlines we can now but dimly foresee. Indeed, the
study of the Olympic G am es leads us to risk a general hypothesis about the
cultural future. Neoliminality in the modern world will lie, not in the a p p ear­
ance of some single, novel genre of cultural performance, but precisely in
the em ergence of ramified performance types of the sort exemplified by the
Olympic G a m e s.62 In other words, having passed from the one to the many,
we shall regain the one only by embodying the many within it.

S p e c ta c le a n d the R ea lly R e a l

But again, w hy the spectacle? W hy did festival not suffice as a metagenre

promoting the (re-)joining of ritual and game in Olympic history? So far, the
following answ ers have been offered. By requiring joyfulness, the festival
frame cannot incorporate the very unjoyous, saddening, alienating, som e­
times tragic events that have come to be part of Olympic experience. Specta­
cle can do so for it specifies no further affect than diffuse w onder or awe.
Festival dem ands engaged participation, leaving little room for dispassionate
behavior. Spectacle, on the other hand, licenses such behavior in the mode
o f distanced observation— spectatorship. By prescribing only watching,
270 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
leaving the rest to the dialogue betw een the observer and the “ sights,”
spectacle accom m odates the optionality and individual choice, which are
widespread m odern values. M oreover, the Olympic project commits itself to
bringing the G am es to the whole w o rld’s attention. Since only a handful of
millions can attend the Gam es, this has m eant television. There may be
media festivals, but a festival by media is a doubtful proposition. Festival
means being there; there is no festival at a distance. Though television
constricts, reduces, and cheapens the spectacle, often turning it from an
event into a commodity, the two “m edia” share many essential properties.
Certainly there is no fundamental contradiction betw een them.
But these answ ers to the question “Why spectacle?” are as yet incom ­
plete. The spectacle frame implies more than distance and optionality. It
specifies doubt, skepticism, reflexivity, moral ambiguity and ambivalence as
well. W hence these? To seek an answer, we must turn outw ard to the
cultural contexts that have given birth to the spectacle and continue to
nourish it. As my earlier remarks on spectacle as a literary trope and as a
performative genre were intended to suggest, the spectacle has a history and
is itself part of a larger and more complicated epoch of historical change in
the self-perception of persons and peoples. In its every aspect— from the
etymology of the word, to the m etam essage of the frame, to the sensory and
symbolic codes it activates, to the behaviors it prescribes— the spectacle is
about seeing, sight, and oversight. The spectacle produces and consists of
images, and the triangular relationship betw een the spectacle, its contents,
and its contextual cultures is “a b ou t” the relationship betw een image and
reality, appearing and being.
My claim is that this same theme is a predominate one throughout Euro-
A m erican (and doubtless other) cultures. M oreover, and more especially, I
suggest that the question of the relationship betw een appearance and reality
has becom e a peculiarly vexing, even obsessive preoccupation of modern
men and women. We seem to have lost our way with it in a fashion and to a
degree that the problematic now seems distinctive, even diagnostic of
“m o dernity” itself. Certainly, philosophers, poets, prophets, and dramatists
have made the troubling relationship betw een image and reality their special
province since the recorded beginnings of W estern cultural history. But at
least since the fifteenth c en tu ry ,63 and still more after the Industrial R evolu­
tion, this question of questions has ceased to be the property of intellectual
elites and has becom e the stuff of everyday life for masses of people. In The
German Ideology, M arx wrote that “in ordinary life, every shopkeeper is
very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and
what he really is.” It is doubtful that this was true in 1846; it is certainly not
true today. F ew of us— shopkeepers, shop stewards, shop owners, shop­
pers— seem any longer so confident in our abilities to tell the apparent from
the real. Many of us, to hear us talk, even seem to doubt the existence of a
“reality” itself.
It is not possible here to mount a full argument for this thesis, one
Olympic G am es a nd the Theory o f Spectacle 271
fraught with the dangers of truism and cant. Instead, I offer as illustrations of
the arguments that might be made two important pieces of kulturkritik, a
genre of great and underappreciated interest for social scientists seeking
landmarks in uncharted territory. These are Daniel B oorstin’s The Im ag e: a
Guide to P seudo-E vents in A m erica and Guy D e b o r d ’s The Society o f the
Spectacle
Stranger bedfellows could not be imagined. Boorstin is, of course, a
conservative, a renow ned historian whose books are read by many
thousands, and presently Librarian of Congress. D ebord is a radical French
situationiste w hose rose to political prominence with that neo-Marxist, sur­
realist m ovem ent in the course of the “ev en ts” of May 1968 in Paris.65 The
Society o f the Spectacle was published in 1967 and was immediately d e­
nounced by both the right and the “old left” as anarchist, adolescent, and
nihilist. The Im a g e appeared in 1961 (though very much a book of the 1950s),
and was celebrated in the urbane and liberal press in the U .S. Their conclu­
sions also differ in the extreme. Debord calls for a revolution of sorts;
Boorstin pleads for a return to the traditional verities of the American
dream. The incongruity of this pair makes all the more remarkable, even
shocking, their general agreement on the nature of modern disorder.
Boorstin speaks for both w hen he writes, “We have used our wealth,
our literacy, our technology, and our progress to create a thicket of unreality
which stands betw een us and the facts of life.” M oderns are victimized by
m anufactured imagery, addicted to pseudo-events (Boorstin) and pseu d o ­
enjoym ent (Debord), and deprived of standards of reality to guide them
through the hall of mirrors that is modern life. Boorstin argues that we have
substituted media happenings for events, celebrities for heroes, tourism for
travel, credibility for truth, public relations for public improvements, stars
for actors, images for ideals, and polls for political discourse. Thus, says
Boorstin, “It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of
disease, of illiteracy, of demagoguery, of tyranny, though these now plague
most of the world. It is the menace of unreality [that confronts u s].”
B o orstin’s description of contem porary life is compelling, especially for
an American, but there is a false step in it (pointed out to me by Michael
Schudson). In his discussion of “that first modern m aster of p seu d o-even ts,”
P. T. Barnum, Boorstin writes: “Contrary to popular belief, B a r n u m ’s great
discovery was not how easy it was to deceive the public, but rather, how
much the public enjoyed being deceived. Especially if they could see how it
was being d o n e .” This view, it seems to me, comes nearer the truth than the
portrayal of the m odern public as simple dupes and victims that dominates
B oo rstin ’s book. M oreover, the formulation can be taken a step further:
people enjoy their skepticism, doubt, and sense of illusion w hen they know
that u nd erneath they really believe. The point is that at all levels of the social
hierarchy Americans, and not only Americans, are highly suspicious of, and
at the same time playful with, the very illusions Boorstin catalogs. The
image of the passive victim will not now do. Great numbers of m odern men
272 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
and w om en are highly reflective, even reflexive, about their own loss of
consensus about “what is real and what is n o t.” And they are active agents in
the creation of events and performances that, how ever much they deepen
the quandary, stand also as public forms of condensing, displaying, and
thinking it out. W hat Boorstin denounces as the appeal of “the neither true
nor false” may indeed be a sophisticated recognition that some things are
neither true nor false, or “not yet tru e ,” or “ought to be false.” This leads us
to D ebord, to his false step, and again to the spectacle.
While less sanguine about class war, poverty, and political oppression
than Boorstin, D ebord too stresses the subjugation of “all reality to a p p ea r­
ance, which is now [social labo r’s] product . . . where the commodity c o n ­
templates itself in a world it has c rea te d .” Once alienated “only” from the
products of their labor, men and w omen are now additionally alienated by
the replacem ent of objects with fetishized images (“ image-objects”), and by
“pseu d o -n e e d s” and “pseudo -abu nd an ce” created, m arketed, and consum ed
by still new er capitalists engines. Aside from a passing rem ark on natives
w ho “ spectacularize their festivals” for tourists, and despite precedents in
the tradition of social criticism he is continuing, Boorstin does not use the
language of spectacle.66 In D e b o rd ’s text, however, the use of “ spectacle” as
a trope reaches its logical extreme: society itself, the whole of it Debord
claims, has becom e spectacle. But Debord refuses to recognize the
metaphorical nature of his use of the term, and time and again he draws near
to acknowledging spectacle as a discrete cultural genre only to retreat each
time in order to preserve his more grandiose claim.
D e b o r d ’s thesis is marred by his refusal to distinguish spectacle as an
organized genre of cultural performance from the ways in which social life in
general is like a spectacle and affords an environment within which the
spectacle grows. N ot only is the claim that all society is a spectacle cheap
wisdom, but it contradicts the very program of the situationists. As Alain
Touraine noted in 1968, “The situationists . . . make use of street theatre and
spontaneous spectacles to criticize society and denounce new forms of al­
ienation.”67 H ow does one cure the disease with another dose of the disease?
D ebord does not explain, or even seem to notice the contradiction.
The resolution lies in recognizing the properties of spectacle as a dis­
tinct genre. The spectacle is, in itself, neither good nor bad, neither libera­
ting nor alienating. Its moral value resides in the complicated interaction
betw een the spectacle frame, its contents (which, as I have shown, may
include other frames), and its sociocultural context. In other words, in the
evaluation of particular spectacles.
But we can go farther and make a more general claim. N o one is any
longer even remotely suspicious of the view that the rise of the novel as a
distinct cultural genre in the eighteenth century was intimately connected
with the disrupting efflorescence of individualism in that period. Just so,
may we doubt that the growth of the spectacle as a discrete genre is an
immediate response to the problematic of image and reality that Boorstin
Olympic G a m es an d the Theory o f Spectacle 273
and D ebord, I think rightly, insist is the m aster cultural confusion of the
present era? The forging of a new genre of cultural performance out of
diffuse cultural them es and anxieties is nothing else than an attem pt to gain
control over them. This is what spectacle means in the m odern world, for the
clients o f Barnum , for F ren ch radicals creating their “ situations,” and for the
millions o f partisans and antagonists of the Olympic Games.
But an attem pt at control is not the same thing as control; cultural
adaptations are not always adaptive. Do the presuppositions of the genre
frame of spectacle, even in a ramified performance system like the Olympic
Gam es, necessarily ov erpow er the realities they symbolically express and
manipulate, reducing them to mere appearances? Does the spectacle n eces­
sarily produce, in H an nah A re n d t’s term, the “banalization” of both good
and evil? Ought not the Olympic hierarchy be less concerned with p rev ent­
ing the “interference” of “outside” political and economic interests and more
caring that these “realities” be treated forthrightly within the spectacle—
treated as more than unfortunate givens to be “tra n sce n d ed ” ?
Boorstin excuses am ateur sport from his critique, calling it “one of our
few remaining contacts with an uncontrived reality: with people really strug­
gling to win, and not merely to have their victory reported in the p a p e rs .”
D ebord does not discuss it.68 N either mentions the Olympic Games, but my
own fieldwork convinces me that their critiques pierce to the heart of Olym ­
pism. If the images of shared humanity generated by the Games simply
ignore the structural realities that separate men from one another; if they
encourage actors and spectators to take “life as but a gam e” ; if our rom ance
with a Romanian gymnast, awe at a C uban sprinter, and admiration of a
C anadian high ju m p e r lead to thoughts of state socialism and capitalist d e ­
m ocracy as “all the sam e ” ; if our delight as white Americans, English, or
F ren c h in the victories o f black countrym en is taken uncritically as evidence
for racial progress at home— then the spectacle has made us victims o f the
m ost dangerous illusions. If so, then the language of Olympism is a lexicon
of deceit, and the G am es are a theater of self-delusion.
This sort of thing happens all the time in and through the Olympic
Games. Simultaneously, how ever, the Games generate completely contrary
experiences. Spectacle, at least Olympic spectacle, is full o f events that
make us notice and heed moral and social boundaries that have becom e
blurred and banal in daily life. Our daily existence is fraught with illusions.
We regularly mistake having read about something or having seen it on
television for having really experienced it. Often in the Gam es, we en ­
co unter the genuine article. As much as they are a bourgeois theater of
delusions, the G am es are equally full of sudden shocks, like B re c h t’s “thea­
ter of p roblem s” or A rta u d ’s “theater of cruelty.”
Take the most striking and tragic of recent examples, the Munich m as­
sacre. Terrorism was nothing new in 1972. Who had not read about it or
w atched it on TV? One might even say that it had come to be taken for
granted in the con tem porary world as “something we ju st have to live w ith .”
274 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
But at Munich, terrorism was yanked out of the banal and burned into the
hearts and minds of millions across the earth. The Games provided the
ultimate stage for the terrorists, and the rest of the world an avenue by which
terrorism was “re-bo un ded,” returned from a “fact of life” to a fact. H ere is
the speech of Willi Daume, president of the Munich Organizing Committee,
delivered at the Olympic memorial service for the dead.

For us w ho planned these Games o f the 20th Olympiad with confidence in the
good will o f all men, today is a day o f immense mourning. Even in the world o f
crime, there are still som e taboos, a final limit o f dehumanization beyond which
one dares not go. This limit was crossed by those guilty o f the attack on the
Olympic Village. They brought murder into this great and fine celebration o f
the peoples o f the world, this celebration that had been dedicated to p ea ce.69

The only word appropriate to describe the killings was “ sacrilege” ; it

fell from the lips of the most diverse individuals— I.O.C. members, athletes,
Golda Meir, and sportswriters across the world. “Sacrilege,” “ta b o o s,” and
“all the values that make life worth living” : C o ub ertin’s claim that the Olym ­
pic G am es are a cult, and Olympism a religion seemed suddenly not so far­
fetched. In the most tragic of ironies, the m assacre reflexively revealed the
enorm ous emotional and spiritual investment the world has in the Gam es, an
investment usually concealed behind the bickering and skeptical disclaimers
that accom pany the spectacle. Again, ironically, the m assacre generated the
most profound mass co m m unitas experience in Olympic history. A shaking
G ustav H einem ann, president of the G erm an Federal Republic, took note of
both in his memorial speech.

The Olympic Idea lives on. Our commitment to it is more powerful than ever.
In the events that we have just lived through, there is no line dividing North
from South, East from W est. Where the break com es is betw een the brother­
hood o f all men w ho wish for peace and hatred o f those w ho exp ose to the
worst o f dangers all the values that make life worth living.70
s

The example is admittedly extreme and never, one wishes, to be re­

p eated .71 But in less frightening and provocative ways, the reimagining and
reencountering of structure, of the ordinary, goes on continuously at and in
and through the Olympic Games. Are capitalists predatory sharks out solely
for themselves and the almighty dollar? Are communists all robots under
mind control? Are black people physically superior to whites? Do athletes
have underdeveloped personalities? Are w omen athletes sexually th re a ten ­
ing or attractive to men? Is love possible between rivals? Are the Japanese
inscrutable? The French pompous? The Germans boors? The Americans
ignorant? The Italians feckless? The Indians haughty? The Brazilians gay?
The Mexicans m ach o?72 Is there such a thing as humankind? Or are there
only humans? As much as they are an antistructure, the Olympic Games
create a sort of hyperstructure in which categories and stereotypes are co n ­
densed, exaggerated, and dramatized, rescued from the “taken for gran ted ”
Olympic G am es a n d the Theory o f Spectacle 275
and made the objects of explicit and lively awareness for a brief period every
four years.
While spectacle takes the “realities” of life and defuses them by co n ­
verting them into appearances to be played with like toys, then cast away, it
simultaneously rescues “reality” from “mere a p p earan ce” and re-presents it
in evocative form as the subject for new thought and action. The Olympic
G am es offer a m aster example of this strange double dynamic. As ethnog­
raphers of the spectacle we must describe both of these processes. As an ­
thropologists we must attempt to understand the characteristics of the genre
that make such contradictory effects possible. As humanists— and human
beings— w ho must evaluate the societal effects of such perform ances, we
must decide which dynamic is the dominant one.

NOTES

1. John J. M acA loon, This G rea t S y m b o l: Pierre de Coubertin a n d the Origins o f

the M o d e r n O ly m p ic G a m e s (Chicago, 1981).
2. Ernst Gombrich, “Form and Purpose,” Lecture given at the U niversity o f
Chicago, May 1978; The S e n s e o f Order: A S tu d y in the P s y c h o lo g y o f D e c o r a ­
tive A r t (Ithaca, 1979), pp. 145-148.
3. This is what makes the Olympic Games especially suited for the culture-as-
performance approach. What distinguishes cultural performances from other
kinds o f cultural facts, and this approach from others, is the indivisibility o f
form and purpose.
4. Raymond Williams, M a r x is m a n d Literature (Oxford, 1977), pp. 180-182.
5. M acA loon, pp. 269-271.
6. Max and Mary Gluckman, “On Drama, Gam es, and Athletic C on tests,” in
Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, ed s., S e c u la r R itu a l (Amsterdam,
1977), p. 227.
7. Sigmund Freud, T o te m a n d T aboo (N ew York, 1950), p. 140.
8. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, N u e r Religion (Oxford, 1956), p. 37.
9. L eo Frobenius, K u ltu r g e s c h ic h te A frikas (Zurich, 1932); Johan Huizinga,
H o m o L u d e n s (B oston, 1955).
10. Ralph Barton Perry, The T h o u g h t a n d Character o f William J a m e s , vol. 1
(Boston, 1935), p. 439.
11. E. Maeder, The L u r e o f the M o u n ta in s (N ew York, 1975), p. 8.
12. Riefenstahl’s O lym p ia is arguably the greatest documentary film ever made.
The Games have played an important role in the creation o f new artistic genres,
such as Xalita Indian “tourist art” after M exico City; in the revitalization of
peripheral branches o f artistic tradition, such as public sculpture and stadium
architecture; and in the spread o f electronic media, especially television. The
first commercial transmission o f any magnitude took place from the stadium in
Berlin in 1936, and several other television firsts have been connected with the
Olympics. Even now the sale o f new TV sets rockets around the world every
four years.
13. Pierre de Coubertin, The O lym pic Idea: D iscourses a n d E s s a y s (Stuttgart,
1967), p. 32.
14. Christopher Isherw ood, The Berlin Stories (N ew York, 1963), p. x.
15. Hermann H e sse , “Zarathustra’s Return: A M essage to German Y o u th ,” in I f
276 Actors, A udiences, & Reflexivity
the W ar G o e s On: R eflectio n s on War a n d Politics (N ew York, 1971), pp. 88­
89.
16. H. W. Wardman, E rne st R e n a n : A Critical B io g ra p h y (N ew York, 1964),
p. 206.
17. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation o f Cultures (N ew York, 1973), p. 448.
18. Coubertin, p. 131. s
19. Coubertin, p. 57.
20. H. W. Pleket and M. I. Finley, The O lym pic G a m e s : The First T h o u s a n d Years
(N ew York, 1976), p. 54. While the site of ancient Games was fixed in Elis, and
while there are periodic calls within the m ovem ent for a stable venue, the
modern Gam es remain a traveling show. Each host city is thought o f as a “N e w
O lym pia,” connected symbolically to the ancient tradition by the celebration of
the festival. “People meet at O lym pia,” wrote Coubertin, “to make both a
pilgrimage to the past and a gesture o f faith in the future.” The resem blances
betw een religious pilgrimage and journey to the “N e w Olympia” are marked. As
Victor and Edith Turner have noted, modern pilgrims and tourists (and Olympic
“fans”) are more closely related than w e think.
21. Borrowed from the ancient Greeks, the Olympic calendar divides history into
“O lym piads” and “Olympic Eras.” An Olympiad is a four-year period opened
and closed by the celebration o f the Games. The succession o f Olympiads from
1896 to the present com pose the “Modern Olympia Era,” whereas the period
betw een 776 B.C . (traditionally the first Olympic Games) and A .D . 393 (the
edict o f T heodosius I banning pagan festivals, including the Olympic Games)
com posed the “Ancient Olympic Era.” Coubertin quaintly referred to the inter­
vening centuries as “The Dark A g e s .” If an Olympic Games cannot be held
because o f war (1916, 1940, 1944), the Olympic clock nonetheless keeps ticking.
The period 1940-44, for example, is officially referred to as “an Olympiad
during which no Games were held.” The Olympic calendar is unlikely to surpass
the Christian in salience, but it is more than a historical conceit. Several o f my
informants recall significant events in their lives by spontaneously placing them
in reference to the Olympic Games. Moreover, the psychological and behav­
ioral times o f Olympic officials, top-class athletes, and devoted fans are very
much organized into quadrennial rhythms by the Olympic calendar.
22. This effort has been surprisingly successful. Since international law is backward
and offers little assistance in this matter, this success has to be attributed in no
small part to the voluntary forbearance o f would-be usurpers. The I.O.C. does
permit the Gam es Organizing Committee o f the host nation to sell the rights to
its emblem to corporate sponsors, a controversial decision.
23. This reticence extends even to events conceived o f as ancillary com ponents o f
the festival, like the 1976 International Congress o f Physical Activity Sciences
in Q uebec City. Even the International Olympic A cadem y, located at Archaia
Olympia and dedicated to promulgating the orthodox Olympic gospel, required
years to win I.O.C. patronage.
24. Coubertin, p. 17.
25. Coubertin, p. 34.
26. Coubertin, p. 34.
27. Terence Turner, “Transformation, Hierarchy,and Transcendence: A Reformu­
lation o f Van G en n ep ’s Model o f the Structure o f Rites o f P assage,” in Sally F.
Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, eds., S e c u la r R itu a l (Amsterdam, 1977).
28. Coubertin, p. 118; cf. John J. M acAloon, “Religious Them es and Structures in
the Olympic M ovem ent and the Olympic G am es,” in Fernand Landry and
W. A. R. Orban, ed s., Philosophy, Theology a n d H istory o f S p o rt a n d o f
P h y s ic a l A c tiv ity (Miami, 19780.
Olympic G a m es a nd the Theory o f Spectacle 277
29. Pierre de Coubertin, The Evolution o f F ra n ce u n d er the Third R e p u b lic (B o s­
ton, 1897), pp. 303-304.
30. Emile Durkheim, The E le m e n ta r y F o r m s o f the R elig io u s L ife (N ew York,
1965), p. 474ff.
31. It is not surprising that ritual protests at the Olympic Games are typically made
in the name o f ethnic, racial, o f ideological groups, such as the protests o f black
Americans in 1968 and 1972. Gender distinctions are also formally represented,
though they are understood by those concerned to be biological, not social
categories.
32. Marcel M auss, Oeuvres, vol 3 (Paris, 1969), pp. 573-639.
33. M acA loon, This G reat S y m b o l, pp. 262-269.
34. Pierre de Coubertin, “D o es Cosmopolitanism Lead to International Friend­
liness?” A m e r i c a n M o n t h l y R e v i e w o f R e v ie w s 17:429-434, 1898.
35. In Olympic folklore, this innovation is attributed to an anonym ous Australian
schoolboy o f Chinese descent w ho wrote to I.O.C. president A very Brundage,
pointing out to him the sym bolic appropriateness o f the gesture. Until that time,
Brundage is said to have feared the “disorder” such a change would introduce.
The boy recognized the order in disorder that the old man could not see.
36. In Montreal, hours after the television cameras had been turned off and the
officials had gone “h o m e ,” indeed far into the night, thousands remained exult­
ing together on the field and in the streets, hugging and kissing com plete stran­
gers no longer com pletely strange, holding impromptu races and long-jump
contests in the suddenly liberated play spaces, cheered in a dozen languages by
“com m on folk” now occupying the q u een ’s box. E veryw here, persons e x ­
changed flowers, seat cushions, pieces o f clothing, photographs, currency,
souvenir shards o f pottery and splinters o f w ood broken from the equestrian
apparatus left lying about. Athletes were seen to ask spectators for their auto­
graphs, and a harlequin in whiteface, who for two w eeks had wandered through
the festival wearing a sign reading The Olympic Clown, for the first time was
seen to smile. Only at long last, and reluctantly, did this “holy riot o f identities,”
this mass delight in “species-being,” wind to an end as people drifted out to find
their cars or a train back into the city.
37. For a useful historical review o f this subject, see H elen Schwartzman, Trans­
f o r m a t io n s : The A n tr o p o lo g y o f Ch ild ren ’s Play (N ew York, 1978). Much ink
has been spilled on the definition o f sport. I prefer the simple taxonom y o f
Guttmann (F r o m R itu a l to R e c o rd : The N a t u r e o f M o d e r n Sports, 1978). The
relationship betw een “play” and “gam e” is more complicated. Many take the
position that the tw o categories are fundamentally disjunctive, arguing that play
is spontaneous and free, while games are distinctively rule-bound. I believe this
position is overstated and agree with Grathoff that play and game have a “co m ­
mon sym bolic ty p e .” On the matter o f rules, the difference is in their nature, not
in their presence or absence. While game rules are explicit, con sciou s, corpo­
rate, and jural, play rules are often tacit, preconscious, individual, or natural.
For exam ple, the law o f gravity is certainly a rule in the “free play” o f kicking a
ball around or gamboling in the park.
38. See Eugene W eber, “Pierre de Coubertin and the Introduction o f Organized
Sport in F ran ce,” J o u rn a l o f C o n te m p o r a r y H istory 5:3-26, 1970; and Jacques
Ulmann, D e la g y m n a s t iq u e a u x sports m o d e r n e s (Paris, 1971).
39. Richard H. Grathoff, The S tructure o f Social In c o n sis te n c ie s (The Hague,
1970).
40. Jean-Paul Sartre, B e in g a n d N o t h i n g n e s s (N ew York, 1957), pp. 580-581.
41. This wonderful formulation itself invites playing around with. For exam ple,
change it to “all statements inside this frame are true; I love you; I hate y o u ”
278 Actors, Audiences, & Reflexivity
and one has a blueprint for psychological ambivalence and an invitation to
rethink and to revise Freud’s theory o f play as “repetition co m pu lsion.” Place
the statement “all statements within this frame are untrue” outside the frame
and one gets something else again, something also rather interesting.
42. S ee Victor Turner, The F o re st o f S y m b o l s (Ithaca, 1967), pp. 59-91, and Mary
D ouglas, N a t u r a l S y m b o ls : E xplorations in C o s m o lo g y (N ew York, 1970), pp.
65-81, for contrasting accounts.
43. For exam ple, the Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua, M exico, are widely known
to be the finest long-distance runners in the world, judged according to empir­
ical criteria o f physiological performance. Repeated efforts made to enlist
Tarahumara for the Olympic Games have failed. A w ay from their canyons, fed
strange food, and enjoined to run around a flat ground o f cinders, with no ball to
kick and without the bracing ministrations o f their sorcerers, all in service to a
watch: this apparently made little sense to the Tarahumara. The w orld’s finest
distance runners could not “speak the language” o f Graeco-European distance
running.
44. Team handball “sa y s” little to an American; baseball says little to a Bulgarian.
45. When Alberto Juantorena said that he won his Montreal victories “for the
Cuban revolution,” his American interlocutors understood what he meant.
When he said that he won “because o f the Cuban revolution,” that did not
com pute. It is said that once a group o f American sportswriters were granted an
interview with Fidel Castro. Seizing their chance to “confront him ,” they asked,
“Mr. Castro, isn ’t it true that in your country sport is entirely mixed up with
politics?” “Mixed up with politics?” Castro responded. “N o ” (winks and con-
piratorial elbowing all around), “sport is politics!” The reporters were dumb­
struck; something in their cultural wires shorted out.
46. See M acA loon, This Great S y m b o l, for a full account.
47. Coubertin, The O lym pic Idea, p. 55.
48. Jesse Pitts, “Continuity and Change in Bourgeois France,” in Stanley Hoffman,
ed., In S e a rc h o f F rance (Cambridge, M ass., 1963).
49. Coubertin, The O lym pic Idea, p. 99.
50. Durkheim, E le m e n ta r y F o rm s, p. 470; Sociology a n d P hilo so p hy (G lencoe, 111.,
1953), p. 92.
51. Coubertin, The O lym pic Idea, p. 118.
52. Erving Goffman, F r a m e A n a ly sis (N ew York, 1974), p. 247.
53. Kenneth Burke, A G r a m m a r o f M o tiv e s (Englewood Cliffs, N .J., 1945), p. xv.
54. In one sen se, it is not fair to Coubertin’s view o f things to portray the matter as I
have, for many o f his writings suggest that he did not see this revelation as
something other than play, a new frame or genre, but the hidden core o f play
itself. But other Coubertin texts seem to justify this formulation. O f all the
ancient com m entators, Pindar was his favorite: “The Gods are friends to the
G a m es.” Coubertin cherished what Bowra has called Pindar’s interest in “the
part o f experience in which human beings are exalted or illumined by a divine
force . . . a marvelously enhanced con sciou sness [which for Pindar and for
Coubertin] was the end and justification o f life” {The O des o f Pindar, 1969, pp.
xii, xv i-x v ii). Like Pindar, Coubertin was perfectly accustom ed to discovering
that “marvelously enhanced c o n scio u sn ess,” as well as the particular revelation
at issue here, elsew here than at the center o f games. Therefore, it seem s
justified to include revelatory truth as a separate frame (a frame, incidentally,
without a m etam essage) within the others. A conscious and explicit sense o f
noncontradictory, revelatory truths concealed within the apparent paradoxes of
play may be more typical o f non-Western play-forms in cultures that have no
functional equivalent o f the Puritan ethic, for example, Chinese wan play, Zen
Olympic G am es a n d the Theory o f Spectacle 279
archery, or Pueblo ritual clowning. It is worth recalling the contemporary flirta­
tion with a “theology o f play” among such Western Christian theologians and
comparative m ythologists as Moltmann, Miller, N eale, K een, Cox, and Volant,
work that attempts to turn the Christian mythos and Christian practice in this
direction. The general point is that the presuppositions o f B a teso n ’s box are
culturally determined. "
55. Gregory Bateson, S te p s to an E co lo g y o f M in d (N ew York, 1972), p. 182.
56. Victor Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid in Play, Flow , and Ritual: An E ssay in
Comparative S y m b o lo g y ,” R ic e University S tu d ies 60:82, 1974.
57. Like most ideologies, Olympism fails to recognize itself as such. Indeed, it
proclaims itself an “anti-ideology” with respect to social formations, political
creeds, ethnicity, and religion. Sports, it says, ought to be (and therefore can
be) transcendent o f their social and cultural contexts. This is, o f course, an
ideology like any other, and no matter how true it b ecom es in practice for three
w eek s every four years, for all but a few persons it loses out in the interims to its
more particularistic rivals. Metaphorically speaking, the Olympic family is vast
indeed; sociologically speaking, it is rather small when explored outside o f the
context o f the festival itself.
58. Turner, “Liminal to Lim inoid,” pp. 84-86.
59. While the suspension o f the Games because o f the two world wars had little
sym bolic effect in itself, the resumption o f the Games after those wars provided
powerful sym bols o f the world com e back to its senses. Similarly, the first
reappearances of Germany and Japan in the Games were widely discussed and
experienced as rites o f reincorporation o f these nations into the world com m u­
nity. This process can even today be reexperienced through film. The w hole
devastating period o f the Second World War is bracketed betw een two over­
whelming images: the torchbearer carrying the sacred flame toward the stadium
in Berlin in 1936 in Riefenstahl’s “Olym pia,” and the torchbearer carrying the
flame through the ruins o f Hiroshima in 1964, shot from a helicopter by Kon
Ichikawa. The first appearance o f Soviet Russia in the Helsinki Games o f 1952
was another sym bolic marker o f great importance, as was the presence o f the
Games in M o sco w in 1980. The Munich massacre was all the more disastrous
sym bolically, given G erm any’s unstated but deeply felt concern to exorcise on
the playing fields o f Munich the residual memories o f other events ten miles
aw ay in Dachau. This was brought home to me in an interview with the editor of
a well-known German newspaper. After first treating my questions about the
“entertaining diversions” of Munich with polite indifference, she suddenly
changed emotional frequencies, becam e another person, and recalled with
growing passion the entry o f the German team into the stadium. “Germans
marching in rank and order, those terrible memories. But these were athletes,
not soldiers, young people full o f jo y , so joyous! The day was so bright and the
pageant so colorful, I was quite overcom e when I saw it.” The subsequent
massacre destroyed all this, she said. “It was another terrible tragedy for the
German p e o p le .” The banishing o f Rhodesia and South Africa from the Olympic
m ovem ent must also be mentioned. The extreme concern o f these regimes to
regain admission to the Games has had practical consequ en ces for apartheid
and is one further indication o f the instrumental as well as the expressive power
o f the Games as sym bolic action.
60. In the sense that changes in any part o f the system are apt to produce changes in
all its other parts, not in the sense that it is self-contained, and without conflict,
contradiction, and “v a ca n cy .” Like all “natural” cultural entities, the Olympic
performance system displays what Sally Moore aptly termed “the indetermi­
nacy principle.”
280 Actors, A u d ie n c e s , & Reflexivity
61. M acA loon, This Great S y m b o l, pp. 208-275.
62. This is why scholars o f cultural performances must avoid the Scylla and
Charybdis o f genre lumping and genre splitting, for substantive as well as
methodological reasons. The pervasiveness o f these two approaches has been
responsible for the failure to recognize the existence o f ramified performance
types.
63. Johan Huizinga, The W aning o f the M iddle A g e s (N e w York, 1954).
64. Daniel Boorstin, The I m a g e : A Guide to P s e u d o -E v e n ts in A m e r i c a (N e w York,
1961); Guy Debord, The S o c ie ty o f the S p e c ta c le (Detroit, 1977).
65. See Bernard E. Brown, P ro test in Paris (Morristown, N .J., 1974), and the
anonym ous work, The Blind M a n a n d the E lep h a n t (Berkeley, 1975).
66. Robert Park, still a reporter and not yet the pioneer o f American sociology,
wrote in the 1890s: “Walking on upper Broadway or down to the Battery on a
bright afternoon, or watching the oncoming and outgoing human tide as it
poured morning and evening over the Brooklyn Bridge, was always for me an
enthralling sp ecta cle.” Schudson has excavated this and several other illustra­
tions o f the widespread perception that “the cities o f the late nineteenth century
were sp ectacles” in his provocative social history o f the American newspaper,
D isco verin g the N e w s (N e w York, 1978).
67. Quoted in The Blind M a n a n d the Elephant.
68. See Jean-Marie Brohm, Sport: A Prison o f M e a s u r e d Tim e (London, 1978), for
the split in the French Left over sport.
69. Serge Groussard, The B lo o d o f Israel (N ew York, 1975), p. 438.
70. Groussard, p. 441.
71. I would argue that the Games have becom e a sort o f collective divination about
the fate and condition o f the world. At Montreal the fact that the Games took
place at all and that terrorists did not strike produced an audible sigh o f relief
and renewed hope after the shattering experience o f Munich. Despite the fact
that the “show usually goes o n ,” the w eeks prior to the Games since the early
part o f the century are full o f claims “that this will be the last o n e .” It is
impossible to understand this except as a nervous dramatization o f our hopes
that the ensuing divination will be reassuring and that the Games will go on
forever.
72. Such popular ethnography o f stereotypes is not a new thing. Jack G oody re­
prints a marvelous eighteenth-century chart o f Austrian stereotypes o f ten
European peoples. (See Jack Goody, The D o m estic a tio n o f the S a v a g e M ind,
Cambridge, 1977, pp. 154-155.) Indeed, though anthropology has been slow to
perceive it, there is no people without its images o f the “others.” Their role in
internal social life remains to be systematically explored. This Great S y m b o l
considers the precedents and role o f popular ethnography in the origins o f the
modern Olympics (pp. 44-47, 134-136, 236-241, 262-269).
(CONTINUED FROM FRONT FLAP)

essay deals, in a different key, with the

them e of play and oppression or death, and
together they address the problem of what
is cross-culturaliy invariant, contextually
unique, and individually created in per­
formance structure and style.
As a state-of-the-art demonstration of
the contribution of cultural performance
studies to general culture theory, the book
will attract the interest of students and
scholars in many fields. In its effort to tran­
scend such conventional dichotomies as sa­
cred and secular, primitive and modern,
ludic and tragic, “high” and “p o p ,” or oral
and written, this collection is sure to be
widely imitated.
Contributors to Rite, Drama, Festival,
Spectacle include Barbara Babcock, R o­
berto Da Matta, Natalie Zemon Davis,
Bruce Kapferer, Hilda Kuper, Barbara
Meyerhoff, John J. MacAloon, Sophia
Morgan, Victor Turner, and Frank W.
Wadsworth.

About the Editor

John J. MacAloon is Associate Professor of
Social Science at the University of Chicago
as well as an associated faculty member of
the D epartm ent of Anthropology and C o­
Director of the Center for Curricular
Thought. A form er Danforth Foundation
and Mellon Foundation Fellow, he has also
taught at the University of California, San
Diego. Professor MacAloon is the author of
This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin
an d the Origins o f the M odern Olympic
G am es (1981) and of essays on interna­
tional sport, cultural performance theory,
and the anthropology of the nation-state.
Recently he was chosen to lead an interna­
tional team of anthropologists in a study of
intercultural relations at the 1984 Los
Angeles Olympics.
O ther Books o f Interest ~

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