2016 | Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (2): 345–387
SPECIAL SECTION COLLOQUIUM
A figure game
Jason J. Price, University of California, Berkeley
This piece inhabits the history of anthropology in a nonteleological way to index (and
advocate for) the joyfulness in prefiguration.
Keywords: prefiguration, figuration, configuration
a figure game
his work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Jason J. Price.
T
ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau6.2.021
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I.
Modernist anthropology begins with two magic words . . .
Myth! She cries.
Oh no . . .
II.
Under what conditions would writing a joyful history of anthropology be relevant?
Joyful as defined as intensity of engagement, not a simple affirmation.
Disenchantment, she replies.
Apathy? I say.
Indifference, she replies.
Boredom, I say.
But boredom and monotony are essential to the enterprise, I add.
Yes, she says.
I miss that, she adds.
Malinowski dancing with Amparita on the shores of the Western Pacific? I say.
But she bored him, and he drank himself to sleep with vermouth, right? She asks.
You sound like Lévi-Strauss, I say.
Well, boredom is not the same as indifference, she says.
Yes, I say, maybe that’s the trick . . .
What is the meaning of torpor? She asks.
A good question, I say.
How to achieve a profound boredom then? She asks.
Yes, I think I get it, I say.
Never do that! She exclaims.
Why? I say.
Contact zones, unruly edges—remember? She says.
Oh yes, but . . .
But what?
G is worried, I say.
G is always worried, she says.
That’s not fair, I say.
Oh come on, she says.
Don’t you think the postmodern moment was an utter, spectacular political failure?
I ask.
Does it matter? she asks.
What about the hyperprofessionalization of the discipline? I ask.
It’s a game, she says.
III.
Let’s play a game then.
What kind of a game?
A figure game.
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IV.
A figure game
There is a certain agreeable occupation of mind
which, from its having no distinctive name, I
infer is not as commonly practiced as it deserves
to be; for indulged in moderately—say through
some five to six per cent of one’s waking time,
perhaps during a stroll—it is refreshing enough
more than to repay the expenditure. Because it
involves no purpose save that of casting aside
all serious purpose, I have sometimes been halfinclined to call it reverie with some qualification;
but for a frame of mind so antipodal to vacancy
and dreaminess such a designation would be
too excruciating a misfit. In fact, it is Pure Play.
Now, Play, we all know, is a lively exercise of one’s
powers. Pure Play has no rules, except this very
law of liberty. It bloweth where it listeth. It has
no purpose, unless recreation. The particular
occupation I mean—a petite bouchée with the
Universes—may take either the form of aesthetic
contemplation, or that of distant castle-building
. . ., or that of considering some wonder in one
of the Universes. . . . It is this last kind—I will
call it musement . . .
—Charles Sanders Peirce
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V.
More like castles made of sand!
She jokes.
Is that all you can see?
I ask.
You need to grow up.
She remarks.
No, I don’t—I’m an anthropologist—this is the point!
I insist.
What about militancy?
She demands.
You mean militant banality?
I retort.
Can we begin?
She asks.
Let us.
I say.
But I only have a few minutes.
She reminds me.
I know. But remember: we are here to vex each other.
I remind her.
That sounds familiar.
She remarks.
It should.
I reply.
You are permitted to be bored but not indifferent, ok?
I say.
Is that a rule?
She inquires.
There are no formal rules really.
I explain.
Then how will I know how to play?
She asks.
You’ll figure it out on your own.
I continue.
How?
She asks.
Practice. Trial and error.
I respond.
And how will I know when the game begins?
She wonders.
To some extent, this is entirely up to you.
I say.
This is a strange game.
She says.
Yes.
I say.
Is this really necessary?
She asks.
An important question.
I say.
Wait, that’s my phone. Give me a minute.
She looks down.
. . .[00:09]
Ok, and who will be the judge?
She asks.
Some don’t think it’s necessary.
I say.
To judge?
She asks.
No—to play—remember?
I say.
Are you joking?
She asks.
Of course not!
I maintain.
Can you please be legible?
She demands.
That doesn’t make any sense.
I protest.
Why?
She injects.
The field is blunt, rounded . . .
I explain.
So the game is to straighten things out?
She suspects.
Not really. Not anymore.
I argue.
Then how to win?
She exhales.
As opposed to lose?
I quip.
What?
She asks.
Here’s a hint—
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A figure game
VI.
Fig 2. “The blank page is only a pane of glass to which
representation is attracted by what is excluded.”
—Michel de Certeau
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VII.
That’s a hint?
Yes.
I told you to be legible.
You’re missing the point—I don’t want to be violent!
There’s nothing there.
That’s untrue.
You mean the Certeau quote?
Yes.
I wish I could have shown you the frog totem.
Unchichera?
It’s difficult to get my points across about representation without this image.
Why not just show it to me then?
Sacrilege!
So have we begun?
It’s up to you.
Can you show me more?
Yes and no.
Another hint then?
Ok—Cantor Dust.
Seriously?
Musement, remember?
Yes, I remember.
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A figure game
VIII.
An everyday scene, showing groups of people at their ordinary occupations. 1922
Pounding acorns
1925
Parching caterpillars
Chipping a bowlder
1929
Women in the water collecting shells.
Cutting the white lily leaves
Lousing.
MEN IN FULL FESTIVE ATTIRE
The Megalithic culture of Western Europe
1930
A burial
1934
Beehives
Fowl pen
A half-finished school.
Supporting pillars, longitudinal beams.
1935
Completely cleared ground
The first row of potatoes and greens ready to be covered
1936
with a row of heated stones.
Suckling children sleep with their mothers
A man debating.
The war-like gestures of the transvestite women.
The oldest son of a man recently dead
1938
A country village
Cattle traveling
1940
August shower
Girl in a millet garden.
Thread-crosses as roof top decorations.
Milaraspa singing to the doves
1950
Day-dreaming1955
Youth1956
Movement in wedding dance.
Pipe
Windscreen
Prophet
Planting seed cane
1960
Weighing produce in a local store
Rain chart for Port Darwin.
1962
Taking snuff
1963
Huge trumpets
Fire drills
The gourd system
1966
Toucans
Street vendor in Mexico City selling sliced pineapple,
oranges, jicama, and coconut.
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1968
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A sheath decorated with gummed feathers and provided with
a pennant made of stiff straw.
1969
Women fetching water
The larvae
The roof
1972
1976
1973
A young housewife in Sefrou.
Making silk buttons at home.
1977
1978
A student of the Quran.
A young pupil studies a passage from the Koran while his
teacher weaves a mat.
1981
The Comoro Islands
Mid-morning breakfast with a worker
Handclapping patterns
Winnowing
A moment’s release from the winnowing
An independent old woman with her niece
Rubber Stations of the Putumayo
The postcard the soldier sent his mother, with his portrait
inserted in the top corner.
1986
1987
Woman and her niece making
tea on a kerosene burner with a
windbreak made of an old olive
oil tin.
A lunch room for workers in a cigar factory in Pittsburgh
Joining hands in a circle around the fire
A woman crosses herself.
1989
Abi and his younger brother carried by their mother.
Ana and her mother making string out of bark.
Suela inspecting the contents of her net bag.
Abi playing with an ax while Suela looks on.
1990
Maggie’s bedroom altar
Fearless, hardworking Biu.
1992
Checkerboard cloth.
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A figure game
Chase Manhattan’s flexible credit card.
Friday prayer at the Sebi mosque
Omi and Shanti.
1994
The stuffed animals arranged by the former superintendent
of this abandoned building.
1996
Several photographs of Cristina Sánchez performing the kill.
1997
Contemporary netbags.
Rudolph’s “corduroy” surface.
The Roman maze at Pula.
Tina showing off her bunda
Mabel preparing dinner for herself and her boyfriend.
The buying power of Zambian exports
A typical bicycle
The prize baby
The mechanics who repaired our Toyota
Crude death rates
A girl playing with dolls in front of the house
Equipment in an abandoned fish cannery
At a lardo festival.
Education booths in the control unit
A research doctor in the computer room behind shielded glass
Gray scale differences.
Schizophrenia extremes.
Carvings in the ravine wall at spring
Nigerian oil revenues
José on his way to the fields
Drawing of the Great Serpent Mound of Ohio
Felling of a fig tree
Jim’s Dog
Flying across the landscape
The remains of the 1974 plane crash
Embassy protestors demanding global inclusion
Latino maintenance man at a Palm Springs, California, golf course.
Frog making a survey
A classic thermostat circuit
that uses a bimetal coil
and a mercury switch
to turn a furnace
for heating a room
on and off.
El in his studio making beats
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1998
1999
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2010
2011
2012
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IX.
Chronological?
What?
From chronos to kairos.
Or vice versa.
Is that the same frog?
Isn’t that the point?
I hadn’t thought of that.
Yes! Thinking in configurations!
But what about science?
You want to pretend?
We can pretend,
but it’s only pretense.
“Let us pretend,”
like grace before our actions.
The pattern as mind trap.
Yes!
Glide reflection!
Figure-ground reversal!
I didn’t mean it that way.
No?
This is why images are dangerous.
Why are you saying it like that?
Stop that.
This is crazy.
It can’t be.
I don’t have time for this.
What problem?
Maybe.
Fine.
May Be.
May Be . . .
May Be.
May Be.
Repeat after me: “May Be.”
This is part of the game.
Flexibility, remember!
That’s part of the problem.
The problem of joy!
May Be.
May Be.
May Be.
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X.
The Case of The Cow’s Four Limbs
The Case of His Uncle’s Bed
The Case of The Diminished Following
The Case of Redressing the Balance
The Case of The Independent Sister
The Case of The Ambitious Nephew
The Case of The Strong European “Medicine”
The Case of The Gambler’s Folly and “The Slaughtered Beasts”
The Case of The Greedy Son
The Case of A Notorious Witch
The Case of The Inedible Children
The Case of The Virtuous Sister-in-Law
The Case of The Jealousy of the Barren
The Case of The Repossessed Garden
The Case of The Carpenter’s Tools
The Case of The Chief Who Judged His Own Case
The Case of The Revenge through First Aid
The Case of The Youthful Impudence Punished by Death
The Case of The Death of the Disease of the Dogs
The Case of A Disappointed Candidate’s Revenge
The Case of A Maternal Uncle’s Schemes Foiled
The Case of A Sawyer’s End
The Case of A Refusal to Divide
The Case of Not Merely Chicken-Pox
The Case of A Mother’s Invention
The Case of Money from Johannesburg
The Case of The Disappointed Widow and The Backsliding Christian
The Case of A Sister’s Treachery
The Case of A Poison Ordeal Long Ago and The Coveted Cattle
The Case of Children Shouldn’t Tell Tales and The Game that Ran Away
The Case of Three Possible Causes and The Live Hare
The Case of The Pretended Brother
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XI.
This is the game that ran away.
May Be.
Stop that!
Just kidding.
What’s that one about?
Which one?
“The Game that Ran Away.”
I forget.
How do you remember?
The figure, full of joy.
What figure?
That’s the game.
The game that ran away?
No, ours.
Wait a second. Let me just . . .
That’s cheating!
There are no rules!
Oh yes.
Ohhh. . . . I see now.
Research!
Thank God for Google.
Formalized curiosity.
Poking and prying with a purpose.
But what’s the purpose?
Resisting death, in all its possible forms.
Agreed.
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A figure game
XII.
The Moon Goddess
with rabbit. Incised
on obsidian from
sub-stelae caches.
XIII.
That’s lovely.
Myth!
I suppose I deserve that.
Yes.
The rabbit is so important.
Lest we forget.
But this won’t challenge the hyperprofessionalization of the discipline.
Probably not.
So what’s the use?
“A bird that behaves normally is just a bird,” my dear.
Not a flock?
XIV.
The spider covers up the taytu,
Thy open space, the open space between thy branches, O taytu,
the spider covers up.
Thy soil, O taytu, the soil between thy vines, the spider covers up.
The dry branches, O taytu, the dry branches on the trees left over from
cutting, the spider covers up.
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XV.
Still, I’m beginning to like these somehow—the image and the joy are entwined,
suspended, thrown away into the imaginal. The absence indexes a perpetual interiorization, the lost joy turned onto itself.
Yes, something like that. That’s why the blank page.
Right, but it’s still pretty obtuse.
That’s the word—obtusus!—he called it a miracle.
This is the happiest I’ve seen you in a while.
JOY!
Game over then. You’ve won, right?
We’ll see.
Just a few more ok? I do have to go.
Sure.
But this time no linearity or repetition.
Too easy?
And you run the risk of fatalism.
As always.
So—Possibility—ok?
Yes—Variety, Interchange—got it.
Another way of telling.
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A figure game
XVI.
A young man puts on a decorated comb at the kwaya of the combs.
Coincidence detection.
Bespelled leaves
House in a newly opened clearing.
Town diversions and the corruptions of youth.
Concentrations of cesium-137 in the air.
Oil revenues
Magical money
Frog making a survey
The Wolf Man’s Dream
A wooden club for killing fish.
The rise and fall of the Sobat River.
Gifts set atop logs over the grave of a young girl.
Eyebrows coated with wax.
A man poisoning his arrows.
A woman crosses herself.
Active Human Brain
A set of do-don’t messages.
Brain slices
Brain slice angles
Instruments, incision, sutures, and bandages
A stitched gourd resonator
An obento cookbook shows strategies for reimagining food: ribboned carrots, sausages made into crabs or worms, an apple designed into a pineapple, a flower-tomato, carrots converted into a pair of shoes.
Rudolph’s “corduroy” surface.
Detail of chintz.
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Breadth of face
Breadth of face
Breadth of face
Breadth of face
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Cattle grazing on ridge. | Women fetching water. | Sugarcane in bloom.
Perhaps no place on earth more clearly
represents the realities of the industrial
revolution—the
consequences
of
progress—than does the city of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The “gaping wound” of the plaza:
unbuilt tower.
The doors that seal the pods.
The coil reflected
as an unfolded
icosahedron.
An unusual type of symmetry
Tiger and Snoop in inverted roles
Don Chu Chu
Saint Michael
Richard at ease in the Oliveraie, the last French bar in Sefrou.
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A figure game
Prepared
human
head
with
animal
teeth
set
in
eye
sockets
and
a
suspension
cord
hanging
from
the
mouth
The sacred crocodile of Mokwa
Black cats and white rats.
A haunting history.
The alchemy of blackness.
Roger Casement in the Congo
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Screenshot of Utopia
Handclapping patterns
X-ray record of Little Richard, “Tutti Fruttti”
Tina showing off her bunda
B = Light Blue,
G = Dark Green,
P = Pink,
R = Red,
S = Sooty Black,
W = White,
Y = Glossy Pale Yellow.
Rivulets from the surrounding heights
carve ever changing channels
during the torrential season
the penis sheath
the penis is eliminated
debonair assurance; sadness; reserve; self-abasement
computer engineers dance the maypole
Beehives
Toucans
Alphabet of birds
Bird of prey with a sparrow,
representing a parakeet,
dangling from its beak.
The broad end of a lalang wisp, or a palm leaf,
is pulled through
the interstice
between two frame rods.
It is then folded back and pulled through
the next interstice
below
The herd takes off in wild flight.
One of the hunters runs after it.
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A figure game
Woman and her niece making tea on a kerosene burner with a windbreak
made of an old olive oil tin.
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Simple oversewn coil
Tone combinations: high, middle, low.
Who sits above?
Who sits below?
The hawk is held for throwing
A hawk held ready for throwing
Rim-shapes, painted ware bowls.
Diamonds zigzags diamonds
Self-portrait of Luiz: “Begging.” Happy to be alive!
False-face Doctor rubbing his rattle on a pine stump.
Modern trappings, vials and bottles.
Car bonnet re-used as a signpost.
Bannerstones
Rain-stones.
Women fetching water.
Women in the water collecting shells.
Thirty years beyond, I went back to look ahead.
A final scrutiny of the rough form.
Flyers at a Moscow bus stop advertising dormitory accommodations.
Milaraspa singing to the doves.
A Kutenai berry-basket.
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XVII.
A figure game?
Yes.
How did you settle on that one?
Just felt right I guess.
Can you describe it?
I don’t think I could do it justice.
That’s the point, right?
Ok, well . . . It’s pretty grassy. We’re in an opening in a village. (Or how I’ve
come to think of a village, right?) And there are some huts in the background
and some palm trees. And there’s this man at the center of the frame. And
he’s whipping this kid around. Spinning him around in the air by his leg. It’s
spectacular. The kid is just there, hovering, mid-air. Suspended, aloft. The man’s
body is completely tense. He’s smiling, but it’s a focused smile, a weighty smile.
And the kid is smiling too, but it’s completely different. He looks totally light,
completely free.
Musement!
Yes. {smiles}
Is it just the two of them?
No, there’s a crowd of children behind them. Some are crossing their arms, others are crossing their legs. Some are leaning left, others are leaning right. A few
of them are holding one another sweetly. There’s a man on the left approaching
the scene too. (I always imagined him as the boy’s father or uncle, though there’s
no real way of knowing.)
No women?
At the very edge of the frame (of course!) standing before one of the huts. She’s
very hard to see at first. She may be pregnant. There’s a toddler waddling toward the scene too, and what looks like two small dogs.
A figure game.
Yes, a figure game.
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XVIII.
A FIGURE GAME
[Ch. IX, I]
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XIX.
What were those two words by the way?
What two words?
At the beginning, when I cut you off . . .
Oh yes, “Imagine yourself . . .”
Of course.
Imagine
Imagination
Image
We could go on forever.
In many ways.
Where does it come from?
ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French, from Latin imago; related to imitate.
Imago.
1 Entomology—the final and fully developed adult stage of an insect, typically
winged.
Cool.
2 Psychoanalysis—an unconscious, idealized mental image of someone, especially
a parent . . .
I saw that coming.
I prefer the first as well.
So we should aspire to be insects, winged insects . . .
Without stingers of course.
No! Very much with!
If a bird that behaves normally is just a bird what is one who behaves abnormally?
It’s regarded as likely to be a spirit.
Enchanting.
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XX. AUTHOR’S FOREWORD1
How to compose a joyful visual history of anthropology without the use of actual
images? This became the question. By way of an answer, I turned to the caption.
Ephemeral and relative, captions frame the imaginal. They link figures to
grounds. The word derives from capere, to take or seize. This is the work of
the caption: to seize, shape, and ground affective responses engendered by the
precarious, arresting potential of the image. But what work might a caption do
if relieved of that duty? What matter does it become when discovered out of
place? What if we read captions autonomously? Or exclusively in light of one
another? What kind of images or ideas might such an arrangement produce?
These questions in mind, I revisited the desktop folder where I had collected
hundreds of images from the history of anthropology and began to transcribe
those captions that struck me as joyful. A curious catalog emerged—a series of
rich, fleeting, referential fragments. I noticed trends, styles, types, and tropes. I
came to appreciate the caption as a kind of microgenre in anthropological writing.
Bronislaw Malinowski and E. E. Evans-Pritchard were lyrical—the former wistful,
the latter shrewd.2 Victor Turner and Gananath Obeyesekere were illustrative
within the context of process.3 Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Michael Taussig
appropriated speech to infuse voice and animation.4 Nancy Munn and Lila AbuLughod occasionally code-shifted into the melodic—sometimes offering captions
that simply begged to be read aloud.5 It was delightful. I felt like I had discovered
a cipher long hidden in plain sight.
Visual anthropologists, unsurprisingly, have been quietly conscientious of the
epistemological prospects of the caption for some time. Sarah Pink notes that, in
some cases, “the caption aims to provoke readers to question their interpretations
of the photograph, and the ‘traditional’ symbol it represents” ([2001] 2013: 175).
Similarly, David MacDougall (in a passage that strikes a chord with a central
premise in this piece) highlights the form’s latent fertility:
1. This is a playful piece. As Johan Huizinga notes, “the exceptional and special position
of play is most tellingly illustrated by the fact that it loves to surround itself with an air
of secrecy” ([1944] 1980: 12). To insert an introduction at the beginning, therefore,
runs the risk of spoiling the game.
2. “She is loving him, one of the few intimate attentions allowed in public between
husband and wife” (Malinowski [1929] 1987: 25); “Ox with tassels hanging from its
horns” (Evans-Pritchard [1940] 1968: 30–31).
3. “Doctor applies castor oil with the butt of his rattle to the exposed taproot of an
ikamba daChihamba tree” (Turner 1975: 124); “Penitent hanging on hooks on a
movable scaffold at Kataragama in fulfillment of a vow, uttering prophecies to other
supplicants” (Obeyesekere 1981: 90–91).
4. “Can you give me some help so I can have these two refilled?” (Scheper-Hughes 1992:
201); “Do you want to see something incredible?” (Taussig 1987: 339)
5. “A garden specialist plants bespelled leaves next to a house post during the Bibira rite”
(Munn [1986] 2007: 93); “Woman and her niece making tea on a kerosene burner
with a windbreak made of an old olive oil tin” (Abu-Lughod 1986:192).
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How are we to describe the difference between the words “A leopardskin chief,” the caption for the photograph in Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer,
and the photograph that accompanies it, attributed to F. D. Corfield?
[Figure 23.] Or the caption “Youth (Eastern Gaajok) fastening giraffehair necklace on friend” and its photograph? [Figure 24.] Each could
be the seed of a large work: the caption might grow into a book, the
photograph into a film. The caption presents us with the written code for
something one might say, an ostensive (or demonstrative) definition of
the sort: “This is a Nuer youth.” (1998: 251–52)
The subjunctive mood evoked in experimenting with floating captions—most of
which I swear you saw6—has the capacity to evoke a shared imaginal history that
I hope might function as a resource for the plotting of joyful futures, provided
we engage in the kind of aesthetic contemplation that comes with play (in the
Peircean sense). This is my answer to the question regarding what it would mean
“to enliven our relation to the history of anthropology” (Singh and Guyer 2014).
The nonteleological way I inhabit the history of the discipline—an
experimental assemblage of floating captions set within the context of a quasihistorical polyphonic Batesonian metalogue masquerading as a game that only
arose from the imagined constraint of copyright—could be understood, to some
extent, as “prefigurative.” In “Anthropology and the rise of the professionalmanagerial class” (2014), David Graeber offers prefiguration as a means to
recover a kind of latent lost joy:
A prefigurative approach, it seems to me, would most of all mean
abandoning the nervous defensiveness of the hyperprofessionalized
academic entrepreneur, and admitting to ourselves that what drew us to
this line of work was mainly a sense of fun, that playing with ideas is a
form of pleasure in itself, and that the deal we are tacitly being offered in
the process of professionalization, that we must make a ritual sacrifice of
everything that most gave us joy about the prospect of undertaking an
intellectual life in order to have a chance of achieving even a modicum of
life security, is itself violent and unnecessary. (2014: 86)
Because this piece demanded I bracket “nervous defensiveness,” because its core
method has been that of play, and because its arrangement has been full of joy,
I do think “A figure game” can be read as an unwitting response to Graeber’s
call to begin to “act as if we were already free” (2014: 85). But this wasn’t really
what I had in mind at the outset. The affective register that precipitated this
engagement is probably more akin to sentiments outlined in a letter written
nearly a century ago by Edward Sapir to Robert Lowie that is featured in Richard
Handler’s book chapter, “The dainty and the hungry man” (1983). It deals with
the relationship between Sapir’s art and anthropology, his desire for beauty of
6. To borrow a phrase from Michael Taussig (2011), but also to loop in Marilyn
Strathern’s notion of disciplinary deja vu: “Perhaps the sense of deja vu is also a sense
of habitation in a cultural matrix” ([1991] 2004: xxv).
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form, and his concern for the experience of captivation.7 “Sapir’s dilemma,”
according to Handler, “was that he was drawn to aesthetic phenomena (form) in
an affective way” (1983: 215). I sympathized. And I suspect this is what drew me
to the joyful provocation that frames the special section in this volume. I read it
as an invitation to rejuvenate through an embrace of form as possibility within a
register of joy, broadly conceived.
* * *
I initially proposed to craft a joyful history of anthropology as a discipline of
images. Debates regarding the status of the image in anthropology have almost
always been intense, so what better way to reimagine a collective past than
via the polysemic instability of the image? I collected all manner of images at
first. Photographs, illustrations, film stills, diagrams, charts, graphs, maps, and
fieldwork sketches were all fair game. I began at home, removing volumes from
shelves, leafing through them, reading passages, and collecting and collating
images that struck me as joyful. I then shifted to the university library, named
in honor of George and Mary Foster. Moving through the stacks in search of
genuine surprise was strangely invigorating, almost nostalgic. (When was the
last time I explored the shelves of an actual, material research library without a
narrowly defined objective? It felt positively Borgesian.) The green hardcovers
that bind old journals in annual intervals were my favorites. Most of these are
now digitized. No one appeared to have taken them off their shelves in ages. (The
dust itself was reminiscent, the scattered remains of a predigital universe.) I was
especially struck by how the sheer presence of images ebbed and flowed through
the anthropological past. A comprehensive timeline tracing anthropology as a
discipline of images was possible,8 I suspected, but not in the limited time horizon
I had for this project. What, then, to do with the collection of images I was
amassing in a desktop folder labeled, “JOY”?
John Berger and Jean Mohr’s Another way of telling (1982) offered a practicable
and inspired way forward. Faced with the problem of communicating experience
using only images and text, Berger and Mohr draw on the ambiguity of the
photograph to suggest “another way of telling.” The book’s central story evokes a
peasant woman’s life in the French Alps. It consists of a sequence of 150 images
intuitively arranged and void of text. The experimental assemblage encourages
readers to “play a game of inventing meanings” (1982: 86). Instead of relying
on some fixed external narration, readers are invited to develop their own
coherences. In the process, an ever-evolving stream of new ideas is meant to
spring forth from what Berger calls “the half-language of appearances” (1982:
129). The result struck me as eminently joyful, so I set out to follow their method.
7. Particularly within the context of the kind of everyday bureaucratic violence that
troubles Graeber and that Ann Cvetkovich recognizes and resists in her critical
narrative, Depression: A public feeling (2012).
8. Something in the vein of Tristan Partridge’s “Diagrams in anthropology: Lines and
interactions” (2014).
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My aim was to produce “another way of telling” the history of anthropology.
But not long after I began, an impasse. Craig Campbell is the Director of the
Intermedia Workshop at the University of Texas, Austin and one of the curators of
Ethnographic Terminalia. His “archival degenerator,” an experiment in surrealist
archival science, plays with imaginal juxtapositions in a manner consistent with
Berger and Mohr. As I was preparing my sequence, I had occasion to speak
with him about the project. He listened closely and asked, “But what about the
copyrights?” I was crestfallen. We discussed fair use, but I feared it would slow
down the process, or simply not apply. What to do? (I would have to imagine
ways to refer the reader to images despite their absence.) This is when I shifted
to captions. I remained faithful to Berger and Mohr’s method but with one key
reversal: substituting framing texts for images “not available” (to borrow a phrase
found in many digital archives).
The work of imagination that emerged—a montage of text conjuring absent
images possibly once seen—is obtuse, a reality “I” admits (and embraces) in the
text: “That’s the word—obtusus!—He called it a miracle.” The “He” here is Roland
Barthes, who, after reflecting on the way Eisensteinian film stills had the uncanny
capacity to “hold” him, argued for the reality of an obtuse level of meaning
beyond the mere informational or symbolic:9
As for the other meaning, the third, the one “too many,” the supplement
that my intellection cannot succeed in absorbing, at once persistent and
fleeting, smooth and elusive, I propose to call it the obtuse meaning.
The word springs readily to mind and, miracle, when its etymology
is unfolded, it already provides us with a theory of the supplementary
meaning. Obtusus means that which is blunted, rounded in form. . . . An
obtuse angle is greater than a right angle: an obtuse angle of 100, says the
dictionary; the third meaning also seems to me greater than the pure,
upright, secant, legal perpendicular of the narrative, it seems to open the
field of meaning totally, that is infinitely. (1977: 54–55)
This “third meaning” has no objective existence, according to Barthes, and is
best understood as a feeling: “The obtuse meaning carries a certain emotion.
Caught up in the disguise, such emotion is never sticky, it is an emotion which
simply designates what one loves, what one wants to defend: an emotion-value,
an evaluation” (1977: 59). Reflecting on this piece, Barthes might encourage us
to ask what feelings it engenders and what emotion-values and evaluations it
defends. The answer to the former would be highly subjective, of course; but it
is my hope that an answer to the latter might be something like: “the promise of
anthropology as a discipline that resists death in all its possible forms.”10 This is
the common ground where “I” and “she” finally meet in the metalogue, after all.
9. Taussig (2011: 6–7, 9, 11) writes of Barthes’ third meaning, linking it to surrealism
and Walter Benjamin.
10. I introduced the phrase, “resisting death in all its possible forms” (Deleuze 1998: 19,
in Biehl 2011: 22) in section XI.
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* * *
A metalogue is a method and a literary form developed by Gregory Bateson in the
service of his work toward an ecology of mind. He described it as “a conversation
about some problematic subject [that] should be such that not only do the
participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole”
(Bateson [1972] 2000: 1). The problematic subject here is announced at the
outset: “Under what conditions would writing a joyful history of anthropology be
relevant? Joyful as defined as intensity of engagement, not a simple affirmation.”
The value of a metalogue, according to Peter Harries-Jones, is that it can
“reveal that any message is meaningless until it is related to a classifier or context
which limits what the message can be about” (1995: 92). That tension was crucial.
I had initially thought this piece would only be an experimental assemblage
of sequenced captions (section VIII), but that approach failed to confer the
affirmative joy I had experienced in wrestling with the challenges of its execution
(or, if it did, was far too muted). How then to infuse the work with the same kind
of joy that constituted its production?11
During a round of free-writing, a dynamic dialogue emerged between a pair
of figures: “I” and “she.” The exchange proved to be a useful Barthesian vehicle
for the obtusus of the assemblage. “Useful” because, as Barthes explains, “what
the obtuse meaning disturbs, sterilizes, is metalanguage (criticism)” (1977: 61).
Planting the obtusus in the fertile ground of metalanguage, then, became a way
to produce an ironic tension that, I believe, generates the Peircean musement that
reflects the joyful experience of its arrangement.
Being half-finished (or written in a half-language, or partially blank) makes
success precarious, but this is a condition of the game. As Harries-Jones writes of
the metalogue writ large, “like poetry [it] does not necessarily lead anywhere. It is
its own circle” (1995: 92). And this is precisely what “A figure game” actually is in
Malinowski’s ethnography—a shared, invigorating, circular repetition that does
not necessarily lead anywhere.
* * *
An important question that surfaces throughout the game deals with the point of
playing.
Johan Huizinga famously noted that we can approach play in one of two ways:
“as a contest for something or a representation of something” ([1944] 1980: 13).
Malinowski’s functionalism meant that he read Trobriand games through the lens
of reproduction. This is an excellent demonstration of the classic weakness of
functionalism. There’s little space for thinking “outside the purely physiological”
(Huizinga [1944] 1980: 9), no opportunity for “spoil-sports in their turn to make
a new community with rules of its own” (12).
If there was a set of questions I would offer at the outset (or at the end) of
this piece, then, it would be: What might be at stake in this figure game? What
11. A common question we ask ourselves as we write our ethnographies.
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might its play generate more broadly? And how might we respond to such formal
experiments in our posteverything age?12
* * *
The history of anthropology is a history of configuration. It has been violent. We
have done some work in coming to terms with this violence. We must continue
to do so. But we should also not blind ourselves to prefigurative wells that might
enliven our engagements with the world.
Thomas O. Beidelman once concluded that “anthropology as a discipline is a
peculiar hodgepodge, manifesting shreds and patches of sociology, psychology,
history, philosophy, linguistics, and comparative criticism of art and literature.
This bridging of disciplines touching many but probably mastering none, makes
anthropologists valuable synthesizers or sometimes jesters in the court of
academe, outside and yet inside the more normative disciplines” (1993: 214).
Can we get back in touch with this kind of vision of ourselves and of our field,
only stripped of the contemporary bitterness and nervous defensiveness that
constitutes so much of our affective relation to ourselves, one another, and the
world?13
In his poem, “A pair of tricksters,” Sapir writes of two classic figures in Native
American folklore (the raven and the bluejay): “one is a mind and one is a
heart / And the two are a trickster pair; Croaker and screamer—each has an art /
Of escaping from despair” ([1919] 1986). This is the art (and the great joy) of
anthropology—escape from despair.
12. In this respect, Roberte Hamayon’s Why we play ([2012] 2016) is useful. Discussing
play and games within the context of Siberian and Mongolian ritual actions, Hamayon
asserts that “far from being a gratuitous and free amusement, [games] had to have a
positive ‘effect’ on the state of things to come” ([2012] 2016: 6).
13. I pose this question as someone who is by no means immune from bitterness or
nervous defensiveness. Cvetkovich’s Depression: A public feeling (2012) allowed me
to appreciate how those feelings (which often felt so singular) were constitutive of
broader “Public Feelings” endemic to academia. Her faith in “forms of flexibility or
creativity” (2012: 21) as antidote to the depression, blockages, and impasses germane
to the professional managerial class and corporate and market cultures was an
important force that kept me moving through this project.
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Sources
Being a game, I do not include in-text citations. Sources are listed below. Quotations refer to my text. Some are direct quotations, others are paraphrased.
I.
“Myth!” (Puett [2012] 2016: xv)
II.
“Joyful . . . as intensity of engagement, not a simple affirmation.” (Singh and Guyer 2014)
“Malinowski dancing with Amparita . . .”(M. Young 2004: 117)
“But she bored him, and he drank himself to sleep . . .” (M. Young 2004: 117)
“boredom is not the same as indifference” (Taussig 2004: 61)
“What is the meaning of torpor?” (Taussig 2004: 63)
“profound boredom” (Haraway 2008: 367–68, Taussig 2004: 61)
“Contact zones, unruly edges” (Haraway 2008: 367–68)
“the postmodern moment was an utter, spectacular political failure” (Graeber 2014: 81)
“the hyperprofessionalization of the discipline” (Graeber 2014: 82)
IV.
This quotation from Peirce (1960) appears in footnote 6 in Daniel (2013: 106–7).
V.
“No I don’t. I’m an anthropologist. This is the point!” (Graeber 2012)
“militant banality” (Barthes [1975] 1989: 175)
“we are here to vex each other” (C. Geertz [1973] 2000: 29)
“bored but not indifferent” (Haraway 2008: 367–68)
“figure it out on your own” (e.g., Marcus 1998: 109; Wolcott 2008: 4)
“Practice” (e.g., Ortner 1984)
“This is a strange game” (e.g., Simmel 1950; Powdermaker 1966; Agar 1980)
“Is this really necessary?” (e.g., Hymes [1966] 2002: 3–4)
“The field is blunt, rounded . . .” (Barthes 1977: 55)
VI.
“The blank page is only a pane of glass . . .” (Certeau 1984: 152)
VII.
“I don’t want to be violent” (Barthes 1977: 55)
“I wish I could have shown you the frog totem” (Taussig 1992: 124)
“Cantor Dust” (Strathern [1991] 2004: xviii–xxv)
VIII.
“An everyday scene . . . ordinary occupations.” (Malinowski [1922] 1984: 16–17)
“Pounding acorns” (Kroeber [1925] 1976: Bulletin 78/Plate 60)
“Parching caterpillars” (Kroeber [1925] 1976: Bulletin 78/Plate 61)
“Chipping a bowlder” (Lowie 1929: 96)
“Women in the water collecting shells.” (Malinowski [1929] 1987: 444–45/Plate 80)
“Cutting the white lily leaves” (Malinowski [1929] 1987: 252–53/Plate 44)
“Lousing” (Malinowski [1929] 1987: 444–45/Plate 70)
“MEN IN FULL FESTIVE ATTIRE” (Malinowski [1929] 1987: 124–25/Plate 14)
“The Megalithic culture of Western Europe” (Forde 1930: 28)
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“A burial” (Redfield and Rojas 1934: 183–84)
“Beehives” (Redfield and Rojas 1934: 64–64)
“Fowl pen” (Redfield and Rojas 1934: 41–42)
“A half-finished school.” (Redfield and Rojas 1934: 40–41)
“Supporting pillars, longitudinal beams.” (Malinowski [1935] 1978: 258)
“Completely cleared ground” (Malinowski [1935] 1978: 64)
“The first row of potatoes and greens ready to be covered . . .” (Ross 1936: 356–57)
“Suckling children sleep with their mothers” (Bateson [1936] 1958: Plate XV/B)
“A man debating.” (Bateson [1936] 1958: Plate VII/B)
“The war-like gestures of the transvestite women.” (Bateson [1936] 1958: Plate VI/B)
“The oldest son of a man recently dead” (Herskovits 1938: 384–85)
“A country village” (Herskovits 1938: 384–85)
“Cattle traveling” (Evans-Pritchard [1940] 1968: 186–87)
“August shower” (Evans-Pritchard [1940] 1968: 120–21)
“Girl in a millet garden” (Evans-Pritchard [1940] 1968: 104–5)
“Thread-crosses as roof top decorations.” (Lindblom 1940: 105)
“Milaraspa singing to the doves.” (Schmid 1950: 83)
“Day-dreaming” (Lévi-Strauss [1955] 1997: 262)
“Youth” (Evans-Pritchard [1956] 1977: title page)
“Movement in wedding dance” (Evans-Pritchard [1956] 1977: 112–13)
“Pipe” (Evans-Pritchard [1956] 1977: 36)
“Windscreen” (Evans-Pritchard [1956] 1977: 132–33)
“Prophet” (Evans-Pritchard [1956] 1977: 306–7)
“Planting seed cane” (Mintz 1960: 192–93)
“Weighing produce in a local store” (Mintz 1960: 192-93)
“Rain chart for Port Darwin.” (Lévi-Strauss [1962] 1967: 92)
“Taking snuff ” (Steward 1948: 759)
“Huge trumpets” (Métraux 1948: 410–11)
“Fire drills” (Métraux 1948: 435)
“The gourd system” (Lévi-Strauss [1966] 1973: 470)
“Toucans” (Lévi-Strauss [1966] 1973: 366)
“Street vendor in Mexico City . . .” (Schrœder 1968: 82)
“A sheath decorated with gummed feathers . . .” (Lévi-Strauss [1964] 1983: 62)
“Women fetching water” (Hallpike 1972: 102)
“The larvae” (Marshall 1976: 149)
“The roof ” (Cunningham 1973: 214)
“A young housewife in Sefrou.” (Rabinow [1977] 2007: 60)
“Making silk buttons at home.” (Geertz, Geertz, and Rosen 1979: 244–45/Illustration 62)
“A student of the Quran.” (Geertz, Geertz, and Rosen 1979: 244–45/Illustration 1)
“A young pupil studies a passage . . . while his teacher weaves a mat.” (Lambek 1981: 24)
“The Comoro Islands” (Lambek 1981: 1)
“Mid-morning breakfast with a worker” (Dwyer 1982: 249)
“Handclapping patterns” (Berliner [1981] 1993: 115)
“Winnowing” (Dwyer 1982: 250)
“A moment’s release from the winnowing” (Dwyer 1982: 251)
“An independent old woman with her niece” (Abu-Lughod 1986: 151)
“Rubber Stations of the Putumayo” (Taussig 1987: xi)
“The postcard the soldier sent . . . in the top corner.” (Taussig 1987: 340)
“Woman and her niece making tea on a kerosene burner . . .” (Abu-Lughod 1986: 192)
“A lunch room for workers in a cigar factory in Pittsburgh” (Martin 1987: 99)
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“Joining hands in a circle around the fire.” (Danforth 1989: 228)
“A woman crosses herself.” (Danforth 1989: 33)
“Abi and his younger brother carried by their mother.” (Schieffelin 1990: 51)
“Ana and her mother making string out of bark.” (Schieffelin 1990: 218)
“Suela inspecting the contents of her net bag.” (Schieffelin 1990: 226)
“Abi playing with an ax while Suela looks on.” (Schieffelin 1990: 227)
“Maggie’s bedroom altar” (Brown 1992: 247)
“Fearless, hardworking Biu.” (Scheper-Hughes 1992: 53)
“Checkerboard cloth.” (Napier 1992: 13)
“Chase Manhattan’s flexible credit card.” (Martin 1994: 151)
“Friday prayer at the Sebi mosque” (Gibbal 1994: 70–71)
“Omi and Shanti.” (Raheja and Gold 1994: 120–21)
“The stuffed animals . . . of this abandoned building.” (Bourgois 1996: 9)
“Several photographs of Cristina Sánchez performing the kill.” (Pink 1997: 163)
“Contemporary netbags.” (Clifford 1997: 184)
“Rudolph’s ‘corduroy’ surface.” (Desjarlais 1997: 49)
“The Roman maze at Pula.” (Gell 1998: 89)
“Tina showing off her bunda” (Kulick 1998: 72)
“Mabel preparing dinner for herself and her boyfriend.” (Kulick 1998: 119)
“The buying power of Zambian exports” (Ferguson 1999: 9)
“A typical bicycle” (Hunt 1999: 16)
“The prize baby” (Hunt 1999: 230)
“The mechanics who repaired our Toyota” (Verrips and Meyer 2001: 154)
“Crude death rates” (Mueggler 2001: 189)
“A girl playing with dolls in front of the house” (Stoler 2002: title page)
“Equipment in an abandoned fish cannery” (Orlove 2002: 152)
“At a lardo festival.” (Leitch 2003: 453)
“Education booths in the control unit” (Rhodes 2004: 212)
“A research doctor in the computer room behind shielded glass” (Dumit 2004: 58)
“Gray scale differences.” (Dumit 2004: 92)
“Schizophrenia extremes.” (Dumit 2004: 101)
“Carvings in the ravine wall at spring” (H. Geertz 2004: 49)
“Nigerian oil revenues” (Apter 2005: 26)
“José on his way to the fields” (Vivanco 2006: 22)
“Drawing of the Great Serpent Mound of Ohio” (Trigger 2006: 188)
“Felling of a fig tree” (Riley 2007: 479)
“Jim’s Dog” (Haraway 2008: 4-5)
“Flying across the landscape” (Boellstorff 2008: 11)
“The remains of the 1974 plane crash” (Piot 2010: 27)
“Embassy protestors demanding global inclusion” (Piot 2010: 167)
“Latino maintenance man at a Palm Springs, California, golf course.” (Starn 2011: 82)
“Frog making a survey” (Taussig 2011: 99)
“A classic thermostat circuit . . . on and off.” (Deacon 2012: 117)
“El in his studio making beats” (Feld 2012: 367)
IX.
“From chronos to karios” (Collu, D’Arcy, Ng, and Price 2015)
“Thinking in configurations” (Jane I. Guyer, personal communication, May 3, 2010)
“We can pretend, but it’s only pretense.” (Rabinow [1977] 2007: 152)
“‘Let us pretend,’ Like grace before our actions.” (Achebe [1988] 1989: 151)
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“The pattern as mind trap. . . . Glide reflection! Figure-ground reversal!” (Gell 1998: 80)
“This is why images are dangerous.” (Taylor 1996)
“May Be.” (Feld 2012: 200–04)
“Flexibility, remember!” (e.g., Martin 1994; Ong 1999)
X.
All cases found in Marwick (1965).
XI.
“Formalized curiosity. . . . Poking and prying with a purpose.” (Hurston [1942] 2006: 143)
“Resisting death, in all its possible forms.” (Deleuze 1998: 19, cited in Biehl 2011: 22)
XII.
“The Moon Goddess with rabbit . . .” (Guillemin 1968: 14)
XIII.
“Myth!” (Puett [2012] 2016: xv)
“The rabbit is so important.” (e.g., Boyle 1973)
“the hyperprofessionalization of the discipline . . .” (Graeber 2014: 82)
“A bird that behaves normally is just a bird,” (Firth 1966: 10, in West 2007: 95)
XIV.
“The spider covers up the taytu . . . the spider covers up.” (Malinowski [1935] 1978: 152)
XV.
“the image and the joy are entwined . . . the lost joy turned onto itself ”
(Ashwak Hauter, personal communication, August 2015)
“obtusus!—He called it a miracle” (Barthes 1977: 54)
“Possibility. . . . Variety, Interchange” (Guyer 2009: 360)
“Another way of telling” (Berger and Mohr 1982)
XVI.
“A young man . . . at the kwaya of the combs.” (Munn [1986] 2007: 210)
“Coincidence detection.” (Dumit 2004: 73)
“Bespelled leaves” (Munn [1986] 2007: 93)
“House in a newly opened clearing.” (Stasch 2009: 58)
“Town diversions and the corruptions of youth.” (Sharp 2002: 228)
“Concentrations of cesium-137 in the air.” (Petryna 2002: 42)
“Oil revenues” (Apter 2005: 26)
“Magical money” (Apter 2005: 43)
“Frog making a survey” (Taussig 2011: 99)
“The Wolf Man’s Dream” (Taussig 2011: 16)
“A wooden club for killing fish.” (Lévi-Strauss [1955] 1997: 250)
“The rise and fall of the Sobat River.” (Evans-Pritchard [1940] 1968: 53)
“Gifts set atop logs over the grave of a young girl.” (Stasch 2009: 222)
“Eyebrows coated with wax.” (Lévi-Strauss [1955] 1997: 263)
“A man poisoning his arrows.” (Marshall 1976: 150)
“A woman crosses herself.” (Danforth 1989: 33)
“Active Human Brain” (Dumit 2004: 20)
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“A set of do-don’t messages.” (Hunt 1999: 270)
“Brain slices” (Dumit 2004: 75)
“Brain slice angles” (Dumit 2004: 76)
“Instruments, incision, sutures, and bandages” (Martin 1987: 81)
“A stitched gourd resonator” (Berliner [1981] 1993: 23)
“An obento cookbook . . . carrots converted into a pair of shoes.” (Allison [1996] 2000: 101)
“Rudolph’s ‘corduroy’ surface” (Desjarlais 1997: 49)
“Detail of chintz.” (Taussig 2009: 162)
“Breadth of face” (Boas [1894] 1940: 143–145)
“Cattle grazing on ridge.” (Evans-Pritchard [1940] 1968: 200)
“Women fetching water.” (Hallpike 1972: 102)
“Sugarcane in bloom.” (Mintz 1960: 128–29)
“Perhaps no place on earth . . . the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” (Napier 2003: xvii)
“The ‘gaping wound’ of the plaza: unbuilt tower.” (Desjarlais 1997: 50)
“The doors that seal the pods.” (Deacon 2012: 22)
“The coil reflected as an unfolded icosahedron.” (Napier 2003: 260)
“An unusual type of symmetry” (Danet 2001: 263)
“Tiger and Snoop in inverted roles” (Starn 2011: 88)
“Don Chu Chu” (Taussig 1987: 470)
“Saint Michael” (Taussig 1987: 207)
“Richard at ease in the Oliveraie, the last French bar in Sefrou.” (Rabinow [1977] 2007: 12)
“Prepared human head with animal teeth set in eye sockets . . .” (Horton 1948: 282–83)
“The sacred crocodile of Mokwa” (Nadel 1954: 22–23)
“Black cats and white rats.” (Jackson 2001: 48)
“A haunting history.” (Jackson 2001: 47)
“The alchemy of blackness.” (Apter 2005: 63)
“Roger Casement in the Congo” (Taussig 1987: 12)
“Screenshot of Utopia” (Boellstorff 2008: 41)
“Handclapping patterns” (Berliner [1981] 1993: 115)
“X-ray record of Little Richard, ‘Tutti Fruttti’” (Yurchak 2005: 184)
“Tina showing off her bunda” (Kulick 1998: 72)
“B = Light Blue . . . S= Sooty Black . . .” (Wickler and Seibt 1995: 395)
“Rivulets from the surrounding heights . . . during the torrential season” (Linñe 1951: 144)
“the penis sheath” (Lévi-Strauss [1955] 1997: 246)
“the penis is eliminated” (Allison [1996] 2000: 157)
“debonair assurance; sadness; reserve; self-abasement” (Messing 1960: 560–61)
“computer engineers dance the maypole” (Martin 1994: 220)
“Beehives” (Redfield and Rojas 1934: 64–65)
“Toucans” (Lévi-Strauss [1966] 1973: 366)
“Alphabet of birds” (Lévi-Strauss [1962] 1967: 148–49/Illustration 5)
“Bird of prey with a sparrow . . . dangling from its beak.” (Mueggler 2001: 220)
“The broad end of a lalang wisp . . .” (Malinowski [1935] 1978: 257)
“The herd takes off in wild flight. One of the hunters runs after it.” (Marshall 1976: 138)
“Woman and her niece making tea . . .” (Abu-Lughod 1986: 192)
“Simple oversewn coil” (Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland 1951: 275)
“Tone combinations: high, middle, low.” (Arewa and Adekola 1980: 193)
“Who sits above? Who sits below?” (Toren 2007: 287)
“The hawk is held for throwing” (Rosner 1960: 424–25)
“A hawk held ready for throwing” (Rosner 1960: 424–25)
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“Rim-shapes, painted ware bowls.” (Kidder 1920: 325)
“Diamonds zigzags diamonds” (Boas [1927] 2010: 54)
“Self-portrait of Luiz: ‘Begging.’ Happy to be alive!” (Scheper-Hughes 1992: 241)
“False-face Doctor rubbing his rattle on a pine stump.” (Parker 1909: 183)
“Modern trappings, vials and bottles.” (Janzen 1978: 106–7/Plate 12)
“Car bonnet re-used as a signpost.” (D. Young 2001: 49)
“Bannerstones” (Baer 1921: 446)
“Rain-stones.” (Seligman 1932: 282)
“Women fetching water.” (Hallpike 1972: 102)
“Women in the water collecting shells” (Malinowski [1929] 1987: 444–45/Plate 80) “Thirty
years beyond, I went back to look ahead.” (Richardson 1998: 11)
“A final scrutiny of the rough form.” (Herskovits 1938: 96-97)
“Flyers at a Moscow bus stop advertising dormitory accommodations.” (Reeves 2013: 515)
“Milaraspa singing to the doves.” (Schmid 1950: 83)
“A Kutenai berry-basket.” (Kissell et al. 1909: 530)
XVII & XVIII.
“A figure game” (Malinowski [1929] 1987: 284–85/Plate 53)
XIX.
“Imagine yourself ” (Malinowski [1922] 1984: 4)
“If a bird that behaves normally . . . likely to be a spirit.” (Firth 1966: 10)
“Enchanting.” (Huizinga [1944] 1980: 10)
Acknowledgments
I owe a great debt to Special Section Editors Bhrigupati Singh and Jane I. Guyer for
their inspiration and encouragement in this unorthodox project, to the anonymous
reviewers of Hau for their critical insight and willingness to take an unconventional work seriously, to the editors of the journal for their flexibility in inviting
its publication, and to Michelle Beckett for her extraordinary work in copyediting.
Publication made possible in part by support from the Berkeley Research Impact
Initiative (BRII) sponsored by the UC Berkeley Library. A version of this piece
was presented at the Anthropological Inquiry Working Group at UC Berkeley on
September 15, 2015. I thank Julia Sizek, David Thompson, and Max Waterman
for organizing, and Lawrence Cohen for his joyful reading as discussant. If the
Experimental Ethnography Working Group at UC Berkeley had not invited Craig
Campbell to campus on March 13, 2015, I never would have been captivated by
the caption. Thank you to Annie Danis, Annie Malcolm, and Lisa Sang Mi Min
for their industry and passion. No one read as many drafts of this piece or offered
as much motive force in moving it forward as Ashwak Hauter. Her heart and soul
are inscribed in the text in ways I have only begun to realize. A handful of colleagues at Berkeley agreed to play this game with me—shuffling pieces, premises,
and landscapes on the board in brilliant turn after turn. Samuele Collu, Michael
D’Arcy, Sam Dubal, Emily Ng, and Jerry Zee, you are the ravens and bluejays of my
lifeworld. Future archaeologist and intrepid work-study librarian Charles Morse
offered invaluable access in the George and Mary Foster Library and generously
2016 | Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (2): 345–387
Jason J. Price
380
reshelved stacks of volumes I leafed through day after day. Without the support of
David Eaton, Daniel Fisher, Rebecca Howes-Mischel, Anna West, Brenden Willey and, as ever, Ya-Hsuan Huang, I would have fallen prey to the bitterness and
nervous defensiveness ever looming. The arrival of Khora Huang Price during the
revision process reminded me of the depth and necessity of pure play, musement,
prefiguration, and most of all, enchantment. Lastly, with their trust and patience,
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Stanley Brandes opened up a space that allowed me
to follow a path of genuine curiosity to its conclusion—a rare and invaluable gift.
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Un jeu de figures
Résumé : Cet article revisite l’histoire de l’anthropologie d’une manière nontéléologique de sorte à évoquer (et exprimer une préférence pour) le bonheur de la
préfiguration.
Jason J. Price is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of California,
Berkeley and a filmmaker.
Jason J. Price
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley
232 Kroeber Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
[email protected]
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