Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom: Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner [1st ed.] 9783030419943, 9783030419950

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv
The Foundations of Experiential Performance Pedagogy (Susan Brownell, Pamela R. Frese)....Pages 1-20
Points of Contact Between Anthropology and Theatre, Again (Richard Schechner)....Pages 21-37
Performing Ethnography (Victor Turner, Edith L. B. Turner)....Pages 39-52
Revisiting the Past for the Present: The Wedding Ritual Performance in the Turners’ Seminar (Pamela R. Frese)....Pages 53-66
Structure, Anti-structure, and Communitas in the Classroom: Notes on Embodied Theory (Susan Brownell)....Pages 67-82
Bridges to the Ancestors: Engaging Students with Ethnographic Performances in the Classroom (Pamela R. Frese)....Pages 83-99
The Smell of Smudge, the Work of Smoke: Reenacting Native American Ritual in an Anthropology Course (Edmund (Ned) Searles)....Pages 101-116
Grotto Water and Potato Chips: Turnerian Ethnographic Performance as Pedagogical Resistance (Michelle C. Johnson)....Pages 117-134
Dance Lessons: Performance as Engaged Experiential Embodiment (Jonathan S. Marion)....Pages 135-150
Pedagogies of the Imagination: Toward a New Performative Politics (Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston)....Pages 151-168
Cultivating Empathy by Performing Migration (Lauren Miller Griffith)....Pages 169-185
Moving Forward (Pamela R. Frese, Susan Brownell, with an essay by Edith L. B. Turner)....Pages 187-191
Back Matter ....Pages 193-216

Citation preview

Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner

Edited by Pamela R. Frese Susan Brownell

Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom “I can’t wait to adopt Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom. As indicated by its subtitle, the book recapitulates and updates the Turner’s foundational work on the subject of ritual and performance. Each new generation of cultural scholars returns to ritual as a focus of study, and for good reason; ritual allows tacit cultural truths, contradictions, and conundrums to be artfully embodied and spectacularly performed. And there are no two scholars more qualified to bring us this timely text. Pam Frese and Susan Brownell were students of the Turners and they have continued to advance the field. Supplementing seminal essays by Victor and Edith Turner are chapters by ritual scholars who share their own time-tested teaching techniques, each of which is either adapted or adaptable to the contemporary world in which our ritual experiences are almost always electronically/digitally mediated in some form or fashion. Frese and Brownell share their wealth of research and teaching experience as well, drawing essential connections between field and classroom while demonstrating the integral relationship between ritual theory and methodology. In reading this book, we remember not just how to teach ritual, from an intellectual perspective, but why to do so, drawing on the entire body and full range of senses. I often quote the line “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” in my classroom. Frese and Brownell remind us that “dancing about architecture” is not only reasonable and common, but that ritual and performance are at the heart of what it is to be human. The book is also a reminder that not all things can be reduced to “text.” At a time when all disciplines seem to be rediscovering care and affect, scholarly writing on those subjects often remains as dry, cold, and dispassionate as ever. Frese and Brownell’s writing is refreshingly clear, substantive, and insightful. Their book will be as useful to the seasoned professor as it is accessible for undergraduate and graduate students. The latter will benefit not only through learning about the history, theory, and ethnographic methods as applied to ritual, but also they will gain directly applicable knowledge as instructors-in-training. Trained mostly through text and talk, graduate students often need a great deal of coaxing and scaffolding in order to experiment with embodied, multimodal, multimedia, and performative forms of expression, communication, and research. Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom will help students to move beyond their comfort zones in order to reinvent the future of ethnographic research and teaching.” —Mark Pedelty, Professor of Communication Studies, Affiliate Professor of Anthropology, and Fellow at the Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, USA

Pamela R. Frese Susan Brownell •

Editors

Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner

Editors Pamela R. Frese Department of Sociology and Anthropology College of Wooster Wooster, OH, USA

Susan Brownell Department of Anthropology and Archaeology University of Missouri-St. Louis St. Louis, MO, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-41994-3 ISBN 978-3-030-41995-0 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: nespyxel/Moment/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

We dedicate this volume to Vic, Edie, and Roy, and the other inspirational faculty at the University of Virginia who shared in the spirit of invention that enriched our lives and offered up a new pedagogy to students like ourselves who, as Edie put it, “no longer need cold description, but the eager spirit itself.”

Contents

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The Foundations of Experiential Performance Pedagogy . . . . . . . . Susan Brownell and Pamela R. Frese

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Points of Contact Between Anthropology and Theatre, Again . . . . Richard Schechner

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Performing Ethnography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Victor Turner and Edith L. B. Turner

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Revisiting the Past for the Present: The Wedding Ritual Performance in the Turners’ Seminar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pamela R. Frese

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Structure, Anti-structure, and Communitas in the Classroom: Notes on Embodied Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan Brownell

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Bridges to the Ancestors: Engaging Students with Ethnographic Performances in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pamela R. Frese

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The Smell of Smudge, the Work of Smoke: Reenacting Native American Ritual in an Anthropology Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Edmund (Ned) Searles

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Grotto Water and Potato Chips: Turnerian Ethnographic Performance as Pedagogical Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Michelle C. Johnson

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Dance Lessons: Performance as Engaged Experiential Embodiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Jonathan S. Marion

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10 Pedagogies of the Imagination: Toward a New Performative Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston 11 Cultivating Empathy by Performing Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Lauren Miller Griffith 12 Moving Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Pamela R. Frese and Susan Brownell, with an essay by Edith L. B. Turner Appendices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Further Notes: Additional Readings—Intellectual Descendants of Turnerian Performance Ethnography by Susan Brownell and Pamela R. Frese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Notes on Contributors

Susan Brownell is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. While an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, she took part in ritual reenactments organized by Victor and Edith Turner as part of the famous weekly seminar held in their home. She is an internationally-recognized expert on Chinese sports and Olympic Games, and traces her interest in the intersection between sport and ritual back to the first paper she wrote on the topic in Turner’s seminar. She is co-author (with Niko Besnier and Thomas F. Carter) of The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics (2018). Pamela R. Frese is Professor of Anthropology at the College of Wooster. She was a graduate student of Victor Turner, who served on her Ph.D. committee, and worked on many projects with Edie Turner over the course of 32 years. Pam’s contribution of her Ph.D. work to Victor Turner’s graduate seminar led to her ongoing use of ethnographic performance in most of her classes. Her research and publication interests include ritual performances in Mexico and in contemporary United States, the use of wedding ritual food in the United States since the colonial period, museums and archaeology in Latin America, New Age religious specialists, and gender in the US military. Lauren Miller Griffith is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Texas Tech University. She studies performance and tourism in Latin America and the United States, with a focus on the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira. Her work has been published in Annals of Tourism Research, the Journal of Sport and Tourism, and Theatre Annual. She is the author of In Search of Legitimacy: How Outsiders Become Part of the Afro-Brazilian Capoeira Tradition (Berghahn Books, 2016) and (with Jonathan S. Marion) Apprenticeship Pilgrimage (Lexington Books, 2018). Her newest work is on capoeira and social justice. Michelle C. Johnson is Professor of Anthropology at Bucknell University, with a specialty in religion and ritual in Africa and the contemporary African diaspora. She has conducted fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and with Guineans in Portugal and has

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held grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Department of Education, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She is the author of Remaking Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon-Mecca-Bissau (Indiana University Press, forthcoming) and co-editor of a volume on reciprocity in anthropological fieldwork, to be published by Lexington. She received the 2019 Class of 1956 Lectureship Award for Inspirational Teaching. Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston is Associate Professor of Theatre at York University. Her book, Staging Strife (2010), was awarded the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Outstanding Qualitative Book Award and the Canadian Association for Theatre Research Ann Saddlemyer Book Prize (2011). Her article, “quiet theatre: The Radical Politics of Silence,” was awarded the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR) 2019 Richard Plant Prize, granted annually to the best English-language article on a Canadian theatre or performance topic. She is a co-founding member and co-curator of the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE), and winner of the 2019 New Directions Award of the American Anthropological Association’s General Anthropology Division. Jonathan S. Marion is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the VIS (vision/image/sense) Lab at the University of Arkansas. His primary research foci are (1) interrelationships of performance, embodiment, gender, and identity; and (2) issues of visual research ethics, theory, and method. A past president of both the Society for Humanistic Anthropology and the Society for Visual Anthropology, his publications include Ballroom: Culture and Costume in Competitive Dance (2008), Visual Research: A Concise Introduction to Thinking Visually (with Jerome Crowder, 2013), Ballroom Dance and Glamour (2014), and Apprenticeship Pilgrimage: Developing Expertise Through Travel and Training (with Lauren Griffith, 2018). Richard Schechner is University Professor Emeritus, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, and founding artistic director of The Performance Group and East Coast Artists. He has directed plays and/or conducted performance workshops in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. He is editor of the Enactments Book Series for Seagull Books. He is author of many books including Environmental Theater, The End of Humanism, Performance Theory, Between Theatre and Anthropology, The Future of Ritual, Performance Studies—An Introduction, and Performed Imaginaries. His honors and awards include Guggenheim, NEH, Asian Cultural Council, Leverhulme, and Erasmus Mundus fellowships, three honorary doctorates, and several “lifetime achievement” awards. Edmund (Ned) Searles is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bucknell University. His primary research interests include Canadian Inuit identity, human-environment relations in the Arctic, and local responses to food insecurity in Nunavut, Canada. His work has appeared in

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Anthropology and Humanism, Études/Inuit/Studies, Food and Foodways, and most recently, Hunter Gatherer Research. He is currently co-editing Reciprocity Rules: Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters (Lexington Books, forthcoming). Among the courses he teaches regularly at Bucknell are The Anthropology of Native North America and Culture, Nature, and Place. Edith L. B. Turner (1921–2016) received little professional recognition until, at 62, she set forth on a solo career after her husband’s death, publishing The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa (1987), The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence among a Northern Alaskan People (1996), Heart of Lightness: The Life Story of an Anthropologist (2006), and Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy (2012). A founding member of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, she edited Anthropology and Humanism from 1992 to 2010. Its Edie Turner First-Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing commemorates her mentorship of junior scholars. Victor Turner (1920–1983) was the William R. Kenan Professor of Anthropology and Religion at the University of Virginia from 1978 to 1983. During this time, his collaboration with Richard Schechner produced the creative synthesis between anthropology and theater that resulted in From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (1982) and posthumous publications, including The Anthropology of Performance (1986), The Anthropology of Experience (co-edited with Edward M. Bruner, 1986), and chapters in multiple books. The Society for Humanistic Anthropology awards an annual Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing that best exemplifies the humanistic approach in anthropology.

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3

Nesting of frames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stealing the “bride’s” garter; original image from the 1982 publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minister, best man, groom, and father of groom waiting by altar in the Turners’ “kiva” downstairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . University of Virginia faculty and students in the receiving line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The bride and groom cut their wedding cake before sharing it with the “guests” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The lucky man who caught the garter standing with the groom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The two decorated “brides” toasting in front of the bride’s cake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The groom’s cake at the 2019 AAA workshop, “Performing Gender in the Classroom: Ethnographic Performance of a Bridal Shower and Bachelor Party”; the theme of the meetings was “Changing Climates” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edie demonstrates how “The Hands Feel It” while signing a student’s copy of the book at the 2003 AAA meetings . . . The altar for the 2019 Dia de Los Muertos showing students’ ofrendas and educational posters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This sign identifies the origin of Bucknell University’s Tree of Peace and is located adjacent to the tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bucknell University’s Tree of Peace, October 14, 2019 . . . . The Senior Man performs the sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theory in Anthropology students perform the ritual circumambulations at a Victor Turner shrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Grotto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 11.1

List of Figures

Seen here performing at Dance Legends 2013, World Professional Latin Ballroom competitors Stefano di Filippo and Dasha Chesnokova perform their versions of masculinity and femininity according to genre specific aesthetics and values quite different from ballroom dancers competing in the Standard Ballroom dances (e.g., waltz, foxtrot, and quickstep), and from partner-dance genres such as West Coast Swing, Argentine tango, Salsa, Bachata, and Brazilian zouk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An abandoned tree trunk swing encountered by students in the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plastic bag suspended on tree shrubs found by students in the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands . . . . . . . . . . . . . Griffith records the decisions made by the students during each round of the activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

The Foundations of Experiential Performance Pedagogy Susan Brownell and Pamela R. Frese

I’ve long thought that teaching and learning anthropology should be more fun that they often are. Perhaps we should not merely read and comment on ethnographies, but actually perform them. (Victor Turner 1979, 80) Just as theater is anthropologizing itself, so anthropology is being theatricalized. This convergence is the historical occasion for all kinds of exchanges. (Schechner 1985, 33)

Our goal in this book is to recuperate for the twenty-first century the lines of thought that were pursued over three decades ago by Victor and Edith Turner, Richard Schechner, and their friends and colleagues during a tremendously creative time when they explored experiential and performative anthropology. Our focus is on how “ethnographic performance”—the performed re-creation of ethnographic subject matter— may be used in a classroom setting as a pedagogical tool to facilitate learning about the diversity of cultures and ways of being in the world. The Turners conducted many ritual re-enactments in the seminar that met in their home at the University of Virginia. These re-enactments were the fruit of a line of serious theoretical inquiry that had been explored by the Turners beginning in the late 1950s and Schechner since the late 1960s, leading to their collaboration beginning in the late 1970s. The Society for Humanistic Anthropology was established in 1974 at an AAA meeting in Mexico City, centering around Victor Turner and “his work on ritual, performance, and theater that, of course, is a staple in the discipline of anthropology” (Society for Humanistic Anthropology, n.d.). Edie came into her own as a scholar after Victor’s death, helping to re-shape the society’s journal into Anthropology and S. Brownell (B) Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] P. R. Frese Department of Anthropology and Sociology, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_1

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Humanism, which she edited from 1992 to 2010. Edie continued to teach experiential and performative anthropology at the University of Virginia until her retirement in 2016. Schechner became the first professor of performance studies when New York University created a Department of Performance Studies in 1980; he launched the influential journal TDR/ The Drama Review; and he established Performance Studies International in 1997, an active international organization that sponsors annual conferences. Because our model of classroom ethnographic performance is deeply embedded in Turnerian performance theory, our primary focus is on ritual re-enactments (described by Pamela Frese in Chapters 4 and 6, Susan Brownell in Chapter 5, and Edmund (Ned) Searles in Chapter 7). Other performance genres may also be utilized, such as social drama (described by Susan Brownell in Chapter 5, Pamela Frese in Chapter 6, and Lauren Griffith in Chapter 11), pilgrimage (Michelle Johnson, Chapter 8), festival (Susan Brownell, Chapter 5), dance (Jonathan Marion, Chapter 9), or theater (Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston, Chapter 10). However, in our pedagogical model, the performance must be informed by and framed within Turnerian theory in order to have the specific kind of impact that we describe, because Vic and Edie’s ritual theory pinpointed specific techniques that they believed enabled rituals to do certain kinds of “work.” Based on our experiences in performing ethnography in our classes over several decades, we maintain that the performance facilitates a form of “embodied learning,” transforming more traditional anthropological and ethnographic perspectives on society and culture into special kinds of experienced realities. The contributors to this volume both describe and theorize their classroom learning activities, contending that these exercises in “engaged learning” can greatly enhance students’ understandings of themselves and of the very real people described in ethnographic texts, facilitating experiential and imaginative ways of learning that move beyond more traditional forms of pedagogy. The editors of this book were both students at the University of Virginia: Pam was a Ph.D. student of Victor Turner and Susan took his seminar while an undergraduate. What we took away from our experiences is described in our individual chapters. Both of us maintained contact and collaborated with Edie in the decades after Vic’s passing in 1983. With Edie’s passing in 2016, we began to fear that anthropology was in danger of losing something of value that is needed now more than ever. It is hard to articulate precisely what is slipping away to the younger generation of anthropologists, who never experienced the intoxicating creativity that flowered in this branch of cultural anthropology during the 1970s and 1980s. It was an intermediate era sandwiched between the wild energy of the psychedelic sixties and the conservative neoliberal turn of the nineties that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Turner-Schechner collaboration partly tamed the creativity of the sixties and harnessed it toward addressing rigorous theoretical questions, but by the late 1980s anthropologists were under pressure to tone down their psychedelic tendencies. The turn toward postmodernism, the critique of colonialism, and the rejection of universalist “grand theory” opened up aspects of the Turnerian project to criticism. Nevertheless, Turnerian theory continued to expand into many different disciplines.

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The contributors dedicate this volume to Vic and Edie Turner and Roy Wagner, taking what we have learned from our intellectual forbears seriously and seeking to share this knowledge with our own students. The teacher-scholars who share their work here represent different generations of intellectual “children” of the fertile workshops and conferences in which Turner, Schechner, and other scholars honed their perspectives on the performance of ethnographic texts. Our diversity in approaches would be applauded by Vic and Edie, as they would be delighted that their own experiential pedagogy has produced so much fruit. In this volume, we offer new ways in which to share ethnographic experiences and embodied knowledge with our students. The unique Turnerian approach synthesizes an awareness of the power in “performance” with an engagement with ethnographic “experience” and an understanding of the concepts of liminality, anti-structure, communitas, and social drama. The sharing of these elements of ethnography with Schechner and other scholars in the late 1970s and 1980s ultimately led to the Turners’ introduction of ethnographic performance in the classroom. With this book, we hope to introduce the tradition to those who are not familiar with it, and re-energize those who are familiar with it, by sharing our inheritance of experiential knowledge and pedagogical skills.

Cultural Performance and Turner Before the Schechner-Turner Alliance Turner’s mother was a founding member and actress in the short-lived Scottish National Theatre in the 1920s, while his father was an electrical engineer. As Vic wrote, “My training in fieldwork roused the scientist in me—the paternal heritage. My field experience revitalized the maternal gift of theater. I compromised by inventing a unit of description and analysis which I called ‘social drama’” (1982, 9). The tension between art and science, the two irreconcilable “cultures” represented by his parents, who divorced when he was eleven, preoccupied him throughout his career. He strove to reconcile humanistic approaches, focused on the power of symbols in human communication and the expression of cultural differences, with scientific approaches that applied universal categories to human behavior in order to make it intelligible across cultural boundaries. But he was always concerned that “the general theory you take into the field leads you to select certain data for attention, but blinds you to others perhaps more important for the understanding of the people studied” (Turner 1982, 63). He felt that the “objective” scientific approach eliminated the humanity of the ethnographic subjects because of its inadequacy in capturing human experience—“the whole human vital repertoire of thinking, willing, desiring, and feeling… A cognitive Occam’s razor,” he wrote, “reducing all to bloodless abstractions, would simply make no sense here” (1986, 35). This concern, of course, also informed his search for ways to teach ethnography that combined objective and universalistic science with a humanistic attention to meaning and difference—a concern that also underpins this book.

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The concepts of cultural performance and performance genre were developed by Milton Singer, an anthropologist of India who conducted fieldwork in the 1950s. He argued that public events such as weddings and temple festivals, along with music, dance, and drama performances, could serve as basic units for the study of a culture. Singer’s When a Great Tradition Modernizes (1972) is often cited as the starting point for anthropological studies of performance, and Turner’s conceptualization of cultural performance largely reflected Singer’s (Beeman 2002, 94). Also in the 1950s, sociologist Erving Goffman had conducted what he called a “dramaturgical analysis” of everyday life, in which he used theater as a metaphor to show that people alter the ways in which they present themselves to other people based on the time, place, and audience. The title of his book, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (1959), indicated his focus on performances with a lowercase p (behaviors that are daily activities) rather than cultural Performances with a capital P (special events). This distinction is useful for this volume, which focuses on planned, intentional, Performances, while recognizing that they form a continuum with mundane performances (Lewis 2013, 1, 2). Turner’s attempt to reconcile art with science drew him back to his early exposure to theater. During his field experience among the Ndembu, the artist in him began to feel that there was a theatrical potential in social life, and that something like drama was constantly erupting from the even surfaces of social life. To describe this, he invented a unit of description called social drama in his first book (Turner 1957). He felt that social tensions everywhere tend to follow the same processual structure when they erupt into public: (1) public breach, (2) crisis, (3) application of redressive machinery (juridical process, religion, sacrifice, ritual, etc.), and (4) either reconciliation or permanent schism. Because redressive machinery—institutionalized actions mobilized to resolve the crisis—typically involves rituals of various kinds, the third phase is where ritual liminality comes into play. While cultural performances condense and express cultural meanings in a more or less intentional and crafted manner, social drama more or less unintentionally reveals relationships among categories of people, individual character, rhetorical style, moral and aesthetic differences, choices, and the power of symbols in human communication (Turner 1982, 9). This early foray into the intersection of anthropology and theater would eventually lead to his collaboration with Richard Schechner two decades later. The Turners’ exploration of performances drew heavily on the theories about ritual that they had already developed based on fieldwork among the Ndembu of Northern Rhodesia (today’s Zambia) in the 1950s. In particular, their brand of performance theory drew on the theory of liminality. Rituals—as well as cultural performances— typically pass through three phases: (1) spatial, temporal, and symbolic separation from the flow of everyday life and normal social structures; (2) liminality, or a state of being “betwixt and between” states; and (3) reincorporation into the normal social structure. The liminal period is the middle of the event, when the routine structures of everyday life have been left behind, the participants are freed from normative rules, and they have not yet rejoined the quotidian world. This freedom from the normative social structure is anti-structure.

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Liminal periods often evoke a heightened feeling of communitas among the participants—a generalized human bond or sense of communion. Indeed, frequently rituals as well as cultural performances are intentionally designed to do so. In addition, they may provide an occasion when the “passengers,” temporarily freed of normative constraints, reflect back on the status quo and perhaps question it. This is called reflexivity, and it results from the fact that rituals present the “as if,” the “world as we want it to be” rather than “the world as it is.” While rituals generally function to reinforce the existing social structure, the reflexivity and the solidarity experienced by co-travelers may also lead to challenges to the status quo. Thus, rituals possess revolutionary potential and are frequently surrounded by a great deal of social tension and anticipation as the people involved wonder how they are going to turn out. For both Edith and Victor Turner, a crucial idea was that rituals “do work”; that is, they accomplish social transformations. A Ndembu boy who has undergone the mukanda circumcision ritual returns to the village as an adult, and now occupies a different social role and is treated differently. Turner did not attribute such an unambiguous power of social transformation to cultural performances, and thus did not acknowledge performative genres such as literature, theater, music, or sport as fully “liminal” in character. He preferred the label “liminoid,” a distinction that was later largely abandoned by scholars utilizing Turnerian theory. This also seems to contradict his experiments in ritual re-enactment as potentially transformative, but perhaps the way to explain this seeming paradox is to acknowledge that at the time of his untimely death at the age of 63, these theories were still in the formative stage and he had not yet fully resolved the contradictions. Certainly, Turner and Schechner were aware of work by other scholars who had been considering the role of performance in folklore, linguistics, sociology, and other disciplines since the 1960s (Abrahams 1977, 1986; Alland 1967; Bauman 1977; Ben-Amos and Goldstein 1975; Hymes 1964, 1975; Turnbull 1979). Increasing numbers of scholars shared an understanding of cultural performances as “temporally condensed” moments when participants consciously represented and evaluated social values, roles, and institutions. Clifford Geertz did not cite this work in his widely read essay, “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” but a much-quoted phrase in that essay captured the essential point that cultural performances are “a story [people] tell themselves about themselves” (Geertz 1972). Singer and Geertz saw cultural performances as reflections or condensations of cultural meanings. Turner went much further; he argued that the relationship between cultural performances and mundane social life was not just unidirectional; it was reciprocal and reflexive. Cultural performances were a “text in context,” a dialectic between dramatic and sociocultural processes in a given place and time. In fact, he argued that cultural performances often contained revolutionary or transformative potential due to their liminal character (Turner 1988, 21–22, 29).

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The Wenner-Gren Symposia and the Collaboration with Schechner The foundation of what we know today as an experiential, performative anthropology was laid in the 1970s. A series of four symposia funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research probed the potential of interpretive and symbolic approaches to illuminate cultural performances. Wenner-Gren, the premier grant agency for the discipline of anthropology, never funded as many as four symposia for another core group of scholars, demonstrating the importance that the discipline assigned to these explorations. Max Gluckman, Sally Falk Moore, and Victor Turner organized the first in 1974 under the title “Secular Rituals Considered: Prolegomena Toward a Theory of Ritual, Ceremony and Formality.” It included many luminaries of the time, such as Erving Goffman, Jack Goody, and Terence Turner. The symposium explored the idea that some rituals are not fundamentally religious. The participants asked what a theory of ritual would look like if the supernatural element were stripped away from it; were there other defining features that sufficed to define ritual? While the participants generally agreed that “secular ritual” existed, there was debate about how far the category could be extended (Moore and Myerhoff 1977). The second Wenner-Gren symposium, held in 1977, has gone down into the history books as the occasion that launched the legendary collaboration between Turner and Schechner. Schechner remembered, “I was happily drawn into Turner’s net in the Spring of 1977” when Turner invited him to participate in a Burg Wartenstein Symposium; he tells the story in Chapter 2 in this volume. “Cultural Frames and Reflections: Ritual, Drama and Spectacle,” organized by Turner, Barbara Myerhoff, and Barbara Babcock, was held at Burg Wartenstein, the castle in Austria that had been bequeathed to the foundation by its benefactor and namesake, Axel WennerGren. While Turner and Schechner had been aware of each other’s work before then, it was in preparation for that conference that they met for the first time. The symposium was “a performance in itself” (Stoeltje 1978, 51), bringing together “anthropologists, literary critics, folklorists, a historian, a semiotician and impresario, a dramatist and stage director, novelist, poets, and an ethnopoetician – participant observers and observer-participants preoccupied with many kinds of cultural performance” (MacAloon 1984b, 2). Interwoven with the conference papers were poetry readings, dramatic techniques, storytelling, and viewings of Fellini’s La Strada and the film version of Dionysus in ’69, the avant-garde play that had established Schechner’s reputation in theater. The resulting edited volume, Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance (MacAloon 1984a), could only capture a fraction of what went on; the more important legacy probably derived from the fact that, rather than answering the original questions, the symposium altered the models of reality that the participants brought to the table in the first place (Stoeltje, 451), and each of them returned to their work at least slightly transformed. In 1978, the Turners, along with Barbara Myerhoff and Erving Goffman, joined an intensive, two-week summer workshop of about a dozen anthropology and drama

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students and teachers organized by Schechner in New York. Schechner believed, “This intense summer workshop…laid the groundwork for what Turner and his wife Edith called ‘performing ethnography’” (1990, xv). The students re-wrote the social dramas described in Turner’s ethnography of the Ndembu as scripts to be performed in the class. However, Turner admitted that for him, crafting a “play” from ethnographic experience was not easy: Particularly since I had no skill or experience in direction, the task of communicating to the actors the setting and atmosphere of daily life in a very different culture proved quite formidable. In one’s own society an actor tries to realize “individual character,” but takes partly for granted the culturally defined roles supposedly played by that character….These roles are made up of collective representations shared by actors and audience, who are usually members of the same culture. By contrast, an actor who enacts ethnography has to learn the cultural rules behind the roles played by the character he is representing. How is this to be done? (1979, 85)

The final two Wenner-Gren symposia were fully devoted to exploring the intersection of anthropology and theater as the outcome of the bond that had developed between Turner and Schechner in the 1977 symposium. The first, “Yaqui Ritual and Performance,” was a symposium on Yaqui deer dancing held at the Oracle Conference Center and at the Pascua Pueblo near Tucson in 1981. By this time, the stated goal of the meetings had evolved so as to “approach the genres of theatre, dance, music, sports, and ritual as a single, coherent group, as performance, where it was hoped that the conferences would lay the groundwork for proposing general principles or ‘universals of performance’” (website of Wenner-Gren Foundation). The final symposium in 1982 in New York City, “Contemporary Japanese Theater: Wadeda Shogekiji” included a welcoming ceremony by a Korean shaman, a Japanese noh drama, and an Indian kutiyattam drama held at the Japan Society. The participants also attended other events, including a church service at the Institutional Church of God in Christ in Brooklyn, an experimental theater performance in a 23rd Street storefront theater, and “A Chorus Line” on Broadway. The two symposia were published as By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual (Schechner and Appel 1990). Turner and Schechner crafted an innovative perspective on performing ethnography that laid the foundation for a critical exploration of all kinds of performative behaviors: we examine the relationship between the two modes of acting – in “real life” and “on stage” – as components of a dynamic system of interdependence between social dramas and cultural performances. Both dramatistic and textual analogies then fall into place. (Turner 1990, 16)

Turner borrowed an image for the relationship between life and stage that Richard Schechner had developed, a figure eight laid on its side, or an infinity symbol. One loop represented social drama and the other stage drama, connected in the center by a processual flow from the implicit and hidden to the overt and manifest, and back again: Stage drama contributes aesthetic models that implicitly shape how social dramas “play out” (to use a theatrical pun), and social dramas contribute social processes that implicitly shape the dramatic plotlines of plays (1982, 73–74). The

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never-ending and double-sided loop was also reminiscent of a Möbius strip, another way of envisioning (uppercase) Performance and (lowercase) performance as two sides of a single social process. We should observe at this point that a parallel, yet unconnected lineage of scholarship integrated the study of performance and anthropology in the same period. In 1976, the director Peter Brook, then a “theatrical cult figure,” created a play adaption of anthropologist Colin Turnbull’s The Mountain People, an ethnography of the displaced Ik tribe in Uganda. While the play had a mixed reception and left many viewers “puzzled” (Weinraub 1976), it did alert Victor Turner to “the possibility of turning suitable ethnographic data into playscripts” (1979, 82): That experiment persuaded me that cooperation between anthropological and theatrical people was not only possible but also could become a major teaching tool for both sets of partners in a world many of whose components are beginning to want to know one another.

Nathan Garner, a trained actor and professor of theater studies, was in the audience for the opening night of The Ik, and had a very different response from the New York Times critic. Although he had attended the rehearsals, he was “thoroughly captivated” by the way the play made “that which was remote and inaccessible both relevant and attainable” (Allen and Garner 1997, 3). One year after the workshop organized by Schechner in New York, Garner collaborated with Turnbull to co-direct a Humanities Institute at George Washington University on “Anthropology, Drama and the Human Experience: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Social Values” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (Turnbull and Garner 1979). Some years later, Turnbull reflected on the need for a relationship between anthropology and theater in his review of Schechner’s The End of Humanism: Writings on Performance: Those of us who do not follow theatre intensively are deprived of a fresh and exciting look at a vitally important part of human behavior to which we as anthropologists have given far too little attention. Too often we either dismiss theatre as entertainment, or force entertainment into our conceptual framework by removing it from that category and treating it under some such rubric as “ritual drama.” (1985, 84)

The statement seems to indicate that Turnbull disagreed with Turner’s melding of theater with ritual theory; we should note, however, that Turner himself did not use the phrase “ritual drama,” and the reference is left vague. It appears that there was little or no cross-fertilization between the two groups. The collaboration between Schechner and Turner is not mentioned, even though Turnbull acknowledged in his review of Schechner’s book that he had “been experimenting with a new technique that enables us not only to bring life to our teaching, but also gives students and teachers room to explore and experiment” (Turnbull 1985, 84–85). The TurnbullGarner lineage produced a separate body of works melding theater with anthropology in the classroom using a somewhat different approach, as discussed below.

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The Cultural Critique of the Eighties The eighties were an important time in many disciplines as critical inquiry in the humanities and social sciences changed the trajectory of research methods and their written products (see Clifford 1983, 1986, 1988; Geertz 1983, 1986). Turner’s career was forged during high modernism, but he prefigured postmodernism. He was “a genuinely transitional figure working in a significant period of colonial/ethnographic change [and] it appears that Turner occupied the threshold between modern and postmodern thought” (St. John 2008, 12). The postmodern turn raised several challenges to Turnerian theory that are relevant to ethnographic performance in the classroom. These are considerations that the authors in this volume take seriously in their own teaching and that reflect issues in today’s social and cultural contexts.

The Problem of Cultural Appropriation Along with the postmodern critique of colonialism and imperialism, a strengthened criticism of cultural (mis)appropriation emerged—the adoption of the cultural symbols and elements of a disadvantaged minority culture by members of a dominant culture who use the symbolic forms, detached from their original context, to serve their own interests. Although the label cultural appropriation was not common in the late 1970s, it is evident in Turner’s account of that first workshop conducted with Schechner that he was concerned about the potential difficulties of performing the Other (Victor Turner 1979). Struggling to respond to the theater students’ demand to be “put in the right mood,” he and Edie first led the students in a dancing circle to a Yoruba record brought by one of the students, and then staged an impromptu version of the name-inheritance rite. Although he worried that the performance must have seemed “artificial and inauthentic,” the students told them the next day that they had discussed it for hours, and that it was a turning point that had helped them understand the affective structure of the social drama as well as the tension between factionalism and a sense of belonging to the village. With this understanding, they proceeded to stage the ritual dramas, but not until after some of the female students, empowered by Edie’s reading of a poem she had written about a girl’s puberty ritual, questioned whether Vic’s ethnography might have been tinged by a male bias. Turner felt that the feminist intervention did not work because it “lent a contemporary political tinge to the proceedings,” and regretted that time ran out before they had properly portrayed the situation of Sandombu, the (male) lead character (pp. 85–90). His pedestrian conclusion that “this may have pedagogical merit insofar as it motivates the student/actor to read more widely in the literature on the culture” (p. 90) seems to indicate his fixation on making the reenacted performance accord with the ethnography.

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Turner’s doubts did not earn sympathy from a 1992 essay in The Drama Review by theater studies scholar James Worthen, who criticized his conceptualization of authenticity, arguing that Turner believed the “performance” should be faithful to the offstage authority of the “authentic” Ndembu ritual (and, one might observe, to the ethnography of it that he himself had written). Worthen points out that at the moment that the ritual became truly intercultural and intertextual, when “the rituals of NYU and the Ndembu finally deconstruct one another, subvert[ing] notions of authorized performance altogether,” the ritual loses interest for Turner because the “authentic” other has disappeared and been replaced by a performance whose only source of authority lies in the performance itself (Worthen 1995, 22–23). The difference of opinion between Turner and Worthen is perhaps partly the difference between an anthropologist and a professor of English and theater. However, from the perspective of years of experience with classroom re-enactments, we believe that both of these men missed the same point. It appears that what transpired through the feminist action of the women was an expression of precisely the power of liminality that Turner theorized. It was a revolution from below in the midst of a workshop led by two powerful and charismatic men. It was inspired by the poetry reading by Edie (who, after taking her place as a scholar in her own right after Vic’s death, did possess a remarkable ability to inspire women). In the liminal context of the workshop space, the female graduate students felt empowered to link arms and encircle the men in dance, simultaneously symbolizing the way in which the matrilineal kinship structure encompassed male action among the Ndembu and their own sense of empowerment. (This “double liminality” is discussed further below and in Chapter 5.) Turner rightfully became uncomfortable, because it was an example of the revolutionary potential of ritual that he himself had theorized, and it was partly a rebellion against his own authority—but his account of the occurrence makes it seem that he failed to make the connection. We have seen many such moments of empowerment in our classroom performances—of women, minorities, international students, and many others. In his later experiments, Turner became more sensitized to this potential of performed ethnography. Still, if intercultural understanding, and not just personal actualization, is our goal, then we must be attentive to the issues of authenticity in the rituals themselves. Many authors have addressed the possible ethnocentric and hegemonic lenses that may be used by students, even unconsciously (see Barker 1995; Bharucha 1990, 1996; Marker 1998; Peters 1995; Singer 1998; Johnson 2013). Mark Pedelty, based on his experiences with ethnographic performances in the classroom, observes, it is quite possible for intercultural performance to be counterproductive… engendering a very shallow sense of empathy that has little or nothing to do with the referent culture. …Intercultural performance also is counterproductive if it leads to cultural appropriation. …What was intended as respectful exploration may come off as parody. (Pedelty 2001, 250)

His answer to the potentially troubling dynamic is to incorporate the problems of cultural appropriation and ethnocentrism into the course, making them central both to inquiry and to the analysis of the performance itself (p. 250). We also advocate for

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the explicit discussion of these issues in preparation for a classroom performance as well as in the post-performance debriefing and written analysis by the students. A range of strategies may be incorporated in order to mitigate the issue of cultural appropriation, which are discussed by the authors of this volume. Ned Searles discussed his planned re-enactments with members of the Onondaga Nation whose ritual and symbols he would employ, and received their permission. Susan Brownell organized two performances in which international students acted as “elders” advising the other students in re-enacting a ritual that they themselves had undergone. Pam Frese, relying on Vogt’s actual script for the “Great Seeing” ritual from Zinacantán, framed her first classroom performance in 1984 with the advice of a Zinacantecan woman. Frese does not require cultural experts to create a script for her re-enactment of an Anglo-American bridal shower and bachelor party, as these are celebrations that are usually familiar to students, either through their own experiences, through popular culture, or through family stories.

The Empowerment of “Human Subjects” and Ethical Research An issue that did not confront the Turners or other researchers in the late 1970s and 1980s was the need to conform to federal and university guidelines concerning the ethics of research on human subjects. Today, instructors who wish to craft classroom performances should be informed about the relevant regulations at their universities. The Practical Guidelines provided at the end of this volume address some of these considerations in more detail. Official regulations aside, there is also an ethical issue involved in conducting classroom performances that may have strong emotional effects on students. Instructors should take seriously the aspect of Turnerian theory that allows that such activities might be “transformational.” They should be attentive to the emotional states of the students and respectful of issues or concerns they may raise. Of course, education itself is supposed to be transformative, and all forms of education run a similar risk. However, performance ethnography may condense emotions to a greater degree than other, more conventional classroom activities. As Pedelty acknowledged, there is also “the danger of further inhibiting students who are already deathly afraid of performing” (249). Students should be encouraged to discuss their fears and concerns with instructors. Sometimes, however, performance ethnography may help them overcome their fears. We have had students who got over their fear of public speaking through the process of a ritual re-enactment.

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The Problem of Ritual and Power The resurgence of Marxist theory led scholars to question whether cultural performances are an “opiate of the masses” that elites utilize to dupe subordinate classes into accepting their subordination. Scholars questioned whose interests are served by the symbolism in cultural performances, and whether communitas is an overly optimistic concept that fails to recognize that not every participant and spectator is equally vested in the event. Actually, the Turners were no strangers to Marxism (they had been Communist Party members in their youth), and Turner’s first book was about the contested nature of ritual, describing the ultimately unsuccessful effort of a Ndembu elder to establish himself as a village headman by organizing a ritual (1957). The title of the book, Schism and Continuity, expressed Turner’s recognition that rituals could result in either schism or continuity by forcing people to take sides. Simplistic applications of Turnerian theory have tended to emphasize that rituals strengthen solidarity, but ethnographies that focus on the organizational work leading up to such events, as Turner did, can bypass the criticism of ritual theory by demonstrating that, while elites will try to ensure that rituals reinforce the status quo, the liminal nature of ritual always makes the outcome somewhat unpredictable. The relations of power manifested in the liminal state also allow for structural reversals to occur, which can give a voice to the oppressed and subaltern, albeit only within that space and time.

Turnerian Theory in Performances of Ethnography in the Classroom The Turners’ discussion of the “state of the art” of ethnographic performance in the classroom is reprinted as Chapter 3 in this volume. After accumulating several years of experience, the Turners understood that this form of pedagogy engaged students in a humanistic and embodied understanding of other cultures, as well as in a reflection on their own position in the world. Goffman’s book, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (1974), was on the reading list for the Turners’ seminar at Virginia. Frame analysis identified the “frames” with which people make sense of strips of experience; a frame is essentially the answer to the question, “What is it that’s going on here?.” Turner incorporated frame analysis into his discussion of the wedding ritual that Pam directed in one of his seminars (discussed in Chapter 3), an important insight into the process of the ethnographic performance. The “frame” connected the notion of performance as the dramaturgy of everyday life with the notion of Performance as a collective event imbued with cultural meaning. Turner was more interested in the latter. He justified this preference by referring to the notion of experience. The word has two meanings. On the one hand, “experience” may refer to the passive endurance and acceptance of an unending stream of events;

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on the other hand, an experience has a distinguishable beginning and ending, and stands out from the repetitive stream of chronological time because it forms and transforms us (Turner 1986, 35). In a personal communication to Edward Bruner, he explained that Experience always seeks it [sic] “best,” i.e. most aesthetic expression in performance – the vital communication of its present essence, though always in a dialectical dance with what it conceives to be its semiogenetic, meaning-begetting past. Cultures, I hold, are better compared through their rituals, theaters, tales, ballads, epics, operas than through their habits. For the former are the ways in which they try to articulate their meanings – and each culture has a special pan-human contribution for all of our thinking, remembering species. (Turner 1986, 13)

Indeed, the Turners’ perspective intersected at that time with the emergence of an experiential and reflexive anthropology later represented by the volumes edited by Jay Ruby (1982) and Bruner (1984, 1986). For if experience is most vitally communicated through these genres of performance, then it follows that actually experiencing such performances is a better way of understanding cultures than simply reading about them. The Turnerian approach is best applied to events of limited duration which have a processual structure—an isolable beginning, middle, and end (uppercase Performance). Since the 1980s scholars in many disciplines have extended the concept of ritual to many kinds of behavior that do not fit these criteria, sometimes regarding much of mundane life as consisting of everyday rituals or ritualized behavior (lowercase performances). This approach is diametrically opposed to Turner’s definitions of performance, experience, and ritual, which centered around experiences that erupt from or disrupt repetitive, routinized behavior. In fact, they create such a break in the flow of time that they provoke a sense of shock and evoke emotions drawn from past experiences (Turner 1986, 35). It is precisely this character that makes them “teachable moments” both in human life and in the classroom. Liminality is as central to performing ethnography in the classroom as it is to an initiation rite because students leave behind the safety and security of the normative classroom social structure and enter into unknown territory. The everyday routine of pedagogy—the desks lined up in tidy rows with the authoritative teacher at the head of the classroom—is disrupted, the hierarchical social structure has been temporarily suspended, and the outcome is unpredictable. The theory of liminality is central to our model of performative ethnography. Thus, our model involves activities with a processual structure, i.e., an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. Any event with a processual structure is appropriate, including ritual, social drama, pilgrimage, festival, and more. Activities that do not have a clear beginning and end do not evoke the same effects and are peripheral to the core concepts of this book. For example, a role-playing project in which students take on different roles in a kinship structure over a period covering many class meetings does not have a clear processual character. It might be used in combination with a ritual re-enactment by having students play the roles in the ritual that they had been assigned in the role-playing exercise; this might even facilitate a more effective re-enactment, but straightforward role-playing would not as easily generate liminality as a singular organized event. On the other

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hand, social drama does have a processual structure, and it does contain a liminal period when a crisis has openly erupted but has not yet been resolved. As described above, the Turners’ initial foray into the use of theater in the classroom involved re-enacting social dramas. The liminal period is crucial for facilitating the experiential learning that we seek. During the disruption in the classroom routine, students may reflect back on the status quo; they may even reflect back on their own pasts and feel emotions related to past experiences. As Turner predicted, this liminality can also be dangerous, because students may decide to question the hierarchy of the classroom. The solidarity that is created by communitas may result in challenges to the authority of the professor. Brian Kelly and Aimee Wodda observe, “For students, the limen can be a scary space… the ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner 1969) quality of the limen can make performance pedagogy unnerving as we negotiate boundaries between ourselves and our students” (2016, 46). It is not unusual that classroom dynamics are changed by these projects, and that students become more attentive to each other and less attentive to the instructor. These projects should only be undertaken by instructors who are secure in their role in the classroom and wish to empower students and foster their creativity.

The Turners’ Interest in Altered States of Consciousness and the Brain If Vic had reservations when he first conducted ritual re-enactments, by the time of the performances in their home in Charlottesville they were no longer apparent. One reason might have been a shift in their own framing of “what was going on” in the rituals. In the last few years of his life, Vic and Edie became interested in the relationship between the liminality of cultural performances and the neurobiology of the brain. Perhaps this interest in neurobiology began in that fertile collaboration at NYU where, among other scholars, Columbia University anthropologist Alexander Alland (1967, 1972) contributed to a deeper understanding of the relationship between theater, ritual, and performance. Turner wrote, I sometimes talk about the liminal phase being dominantly in the “subjunctive mood” of culture, the mood of maybe, might-be, as-if, hypothesis, fantasy, conjecture, desire, depending on which of the trinity, cognition, affect, and conation (thought, feeling, or intention) is situationally dominant. We might say, in terms of brain neurobiology, that here right-hemispheric and archaic brain functions are very much in evidence and probably culturally triggered by ritual action. (Turner 1990, 11)

Edie discusses this “turn” in performance and experience in anthropology in her wonderful combination of Vic’s unpublished work on the neurobiology of the brain and performances with her own contributions to an experiential, humanistic anthropology (E. Turner 1985). Of course, the interest in altered states of consciousness was a hallmark of the “psychedelic sixties” out of which performance anthropology

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and performance studies emerged. Anthropologists played a role in the emergence of psychedelic culture through their publications about the use of hallucinogens by indigenous peoples. Carlos Castaneda became a leading figure with cult-like status, while Michael Harner helped launch both new age shamanism and a global movement to revive indigenous shamanism through his Foundation for Shamanic Studies. An interest in “non-ordinary reality” and experimentation with hallucinogenic substances was common among anthropologists. The first blow to psychedelic culture was administered by the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, which was not only the first salvo in the War on Drugs, but also an attempt by the Nixon administration to repress the popular movement against the Vietnam War. As we have seen, this did not immediately affect the wildly creative experimentation going on in theater and anthropology. However, seen from this perspective, the slow turn against such experimentation that occurred in the 1980s might have been an outgrowth of this clampdown and its aftermath as much as a result of the postmodern turn, the end of the Cold War, and the triumph of neoliberalism. In the early 1980s, this turn of events had not reached its extreme, and the Turners were very interested in the research on the neurobiology of trance, which suggested to them that rituals, with their music, dance, and sensory overload, could induce a trance state in the participants that might partly or wholly explain some of the features of liminality. As he put it, staged ethnographic performances engage “all the senses of participants and performers … they hear music and prayers, see visual symbols, taste consecrated foods, smell incense, and touch sacred persons and objects” (Turner 1981, 158). This interest continued after Vic’s death with “vision quests” led by Edie and Roy Wagner at the Turners’ home for many years. And so the ritual re-enactments in the Turners’ home were conducted in a spirit of inquiry into the question of whether rituals had the capacity to affect the mental states of the participants in a consistent manner, regardless of whether the participants shared the culture from which the ritual was borrowed, or indeed whether they had much knowledge of the ritual’s cultural background at all. This was a big shift in focus away from Vic Turner’s original concern with authenticity. Looking back, we suspect that the scientific focus on neurobiology helped to bypass the knotty problems of authenticity and cultural appropriation; science won out over art in the end. The neurobiological approach also helped to sidestep the postmodern critique of the use of rituals by elites to serve their own interests. In the postmodern critique, the power of the elites is the only operative power; but the Turners believed that rituals in and of themselves possess a certain power that comes from the processual structure and experience of the ritual. In the postmodern model, the people in power control the ritual; in the Turners’ model, the power of the ritual can be harnessed by any person or group that can mobilize enough social support. Obviously, each theoretical stance has implications for performed ethnography; since we follow the Turners’ position, we hold that ritual possesses equalizing and revolutionary potential.

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Theater and Anthropology: The Theater-Dominated Paradigm vs. The Ritual-Dominated Paradigm The divergence between the Turnbull-Garner lineage and the Turner-Schechner lineage manifests a bigger pattern in which the nature of classroom exercises is shaped by the relatively greater or lesser influence of the theater approach as compared to the anthropological approach. Anthropologist Patricia C. Rice was a participant in the NEH Institute organized by Turnbull and Garner in 1979, and she went back to West Virginia University where she conducted exercises for many years in her classes. In 1985, she published an article with detailed guidelines for what she called “ethno-improvisation” to teach cultural emotions in Anthropology & Education Quarterly (1985). Students are assigned background ethnographic material. On the day of the assignment, they are given roles, background context, and clues and are asked to begin improvisational role-playing. With prompts from the instructor, they are guided through three one-hour sessions per week for three weeks. In this model, props are not used because they will distract from the focus on emotions and encourage a “reliance on physical surroundings” (p. 282). Rice was very influential in the teaching of anthropology as co-editor, with David W. McCurdy, of Strategies in Teaching Anthropology (2000), which went into six editions (Rice et al. 2011). The volume is a compendium of teaching strategies and “tricks of the trade,” and includes many different improvisational and role-playing exercises, including a kula ring exercise. However, demonstrating a divergence with the Turnerian tradition, there is no re-enactment of a ritual (there is a mock court trial). The second influential member of the Turnbull-Garner lineage was Catherine J. Allen, an anthropologist, who collaborated with Garner to create an “ethnographic drama” intended for performance in the classroom (1995, 1997). Their co-authored book, based on Allen’s ethnographic research in the Peruvian Andes, contained ethnographic notes and comments, photographs, and a glossary of Quechua terms. For Allen and Garner, ethnographic performance in the classroom was a form of embodied learning that encouraged students to read the ethnographic literature and “learn a way of being in the world which they express with words, organizations, and artifacts, but first and foremost with their bodies” (1997, 123). It would be foolish to think that North American actors can …“become” Andean. Nevertheless, whatever its end product, the process of experiential learning is valuable because it impels the whole self to explore a different way of being in the world. This helps us experience our basic humanness as a vast (but not limitless) field of potentiality, in which many scenarios are possible. (p. 123)

Scholars operating within a theater-dominated paradigm tend to rely on reading ethnographies and talking with representatives of the culture to “create” scripts that employ specific dramatic and acting techniques drawn from the repertoire of theater studies, whereas the Turnerian tradition emphasizes ritual theory and its associated concepts of liminality, communitas, social drama, and so forth. The theater tradition tends to highlight emotion and “becoming” another, while the Turnerian tradition

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tends to highlight embodied experience embedded in social and cultural contexts. Thus, in Rice’s ethno-improvisation project, reliance on props and physical surroundings is considered detrimental to the goal of the project, while in Turnerian re-enactments the space and props are central because the props provide sensory stimulation with their colors, smell, taste, and texture. The surrounding space creates the spatial structure that separates the profane from the sacred, and processions from one space to another symbolize the journey of the liminal “passengers.” Notwithstanding Allen’s and Garner’s assertion that their exercises lead students to learn “first and foremost with their bodies,” Turnerian theory asserts that these more concrete bodily experiences and actions are essential to “embodied learning.” Ritual actions such as movement through space, the handling of ritual paraphernalia, and the eating of a celebratory meal infuse the symbolic structures into the bodies of the participants. For these reasons, the Turnerian approach often incorporates a more allencompassing physicality than the approaches more strongly grounded in the theater paradigm. For example, Strategies in Teaching Anthropology includes a kula exercise that differs from the one described in Chapter 5 in that the instructor distributes candies to the students that are then traded; this contrasts with Brownell’s request that students bring a meaningful object to class and tell its story. This is intended to emotionally engage the students and demonstrate the point that a gift possesses the spirit of its donor, facets that are absent in the exercise design by Renee Gralewicz (2000). Both the theater-based and ritual-based approaches share the use of classroom exercises to explore anthropological ethics, along with a critical and experiential understanding of the role that participant observation and interviews play in ethnographic research and the resulting products.

Foundations of a Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century The dramaturgical view of social life that underpinned the use of performance ethnography in the classroom flourished in the subsequent decades after the foundations were laid. The Turners’ and Schechner’s pioneering blend of theater and anthropology gave birth to performance studies and reinvigorated other disciplines, such as folklore, communications, linguistics, and education, developments that helped to sow the seeds for today’s performance anthropology. The blurring of performance genres continued to produce a critical, embodied, experiential perspective on human culture. The ethnographic performances discussed in this volume are rooted in a deep appreciation for the beliefs and practices that are being enacted within the classroom as a way to facilitate students’ understanding of the diversity that enriches the world. In summing up Turner’s contribution to performance theory, J. Lowell Lewis articulated two pivotal dimensions of Turner’s work with continuing importance today: He demonstrated how the study of performative events serves as a method for the understanding of cultural patterns in general, and he advanced a perspective that the anthropological category of culture should best be understood as a process

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or even a series of performances (Lewis 2013, 1). We believe that the contributors to this volume would join Lewis in contending that “the sense that one is part of something larger is only enhanced when one can feel the weight of past generations in the performance of a ritual or other traditional event” (p. 149). In the Appendix, we present an annotated bibliography of Additional Readings by scholars who have utilized ethnographic performances guided by the TurnerSchechner tradition in their teaching from the 1990s to the present. Readers interested in further exploring the vast range of ways in which this tradition has been practically employed in classroom settings will find further inspiration there. As Turner reflected on this ground-breaking approach to teaching, he acknowledged, This may be a humble step for [hu]mankind away from the destruction that surely awaits our species if we continue to cultivate deliberate mutual misunderstanding in the interests of power and profit. We can learn from experience – from the enactment and performance of the culturally transmitted experiences of others – peoples of the Hearth as well as of the Book. (Turner 1982, 19)

References Abrahams, Roger D. 1977. “Toward an Enactment-Centered Theory of Folklore.” In Frontiers of Folklore, edited by William Bascom, 79–120. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ———. 1986. “Ordinary and Extraordinary Experience.” In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 45–75. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Alland, Alexander. 1967. Evolution and Human Behavior. New York, NY: Natural History Press. ———. 1972. The Human Imperative, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Allen, Catherine J., and Nathan C. Garner. 1995. “Condor Qatay: Anthropology in Performance.” American Anthropologist 97 (1): 69–72. ———. 1997. Condor Qatay: Anthropology in Performance. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Barker, Clive. 1995. “Possibilities and Politics of Intercultural Penetration and Exchange.” In The Intercultural Performance Reader, edited by Patrice Pavis, 247–256. New York, NY: Routledge. Bauman, Richard. 1977. Verbal Art as Performance. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Beeman, William O. 2002. “Performance Theory in an Anthropology Program.” In Teaching Performance Studies, edited by Nathan Stuck and Cynthia Wimmer, 85–97. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Ben-Amos, Dan, and Kenneth S. Goldstein, eds. 1975. Folklore: Performance and Communication. The Hague: Mouton & Co. Bharucha, Rustom. 1990. Theatre and the World: Essays on Performance and Politics of Culture. New Delhi, India: Manohar Publications. ———. 1996. “Somebody’s Other: Disorientations in the Cultural Politics of Our Times.” In The Intercultural Performance Reader, edited by Patrice Pavis, 196–215. New York, NY: Routledge. Bruner, Edward M. ed. 1984. Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society. Washington, DC: The American Ethnological Society. ———. 1986. “Introduction: Experience and Its Expressions.” In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 3–32. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Clifford, James. 1983. “On Ethnographic Authority.” Representations 1 (2): 118–146.

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———. 1986. “Introduction: Partial Truths.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 1–26. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ———. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1972. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus 101 (1): 1–37. ———. 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York, NY: Basic Books. ———. 1986. “Making Experiences, Authoring Selves.” In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 373–380. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Anchor. ———. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Gralewicz, Renee M. 2000. “Quizzing the Kula Way—With Persuasion.” In Strategies in Teaching Anthropology, edited by Patricia Rice and David W. McCurdy, 106–112. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hymes, Dell. 1964. “Introduction: Toward Ethnographies of Communication.” American Anthropologist 66 (6): 1–34. ———. 1975. “Breakthrough into Performance.” In Folklore: Performance and Communication, edited by Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein, 11–74. The Hague: Mouton & Co. Johnson, E. Patrick. 2013. “Introduction: ‘Opening and Interpreting Lives.’” In Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis, edited by E. Patrick Johnson, 1–14. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Kelly, Brian L., and Aimee Wodda. 2016. “Composing an Aesthetics of Performance Pedagogy.” Groupwork 26 (2): 33–50. Lewis, J. Lowell. 2013. The Anthropology of Cultural Performance. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. MacAloon, John J., ed. 1984a. Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia, PA: Institute of the Study of Human Issues. ———. 1984b. “Cultural Performances, Culture Theory.” In Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle, edited by John J. MacAloon, 1–15. Philadelphia, PA: Institute of the Study of Human Issues. Marker, Michael. 1998. “Going Native in the Academy: Choosing the Exotic Over the Critical.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 29 (4): 473–480. Moore, Sally F., and Barbara Myerhoff, eds. 1977. Secular Ritual. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. Pedelty, Mark. 2001. “Teaching Anthropology Through Performance.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32 (2): 244–253. Peters, Julie Stone. 1995. “Intercultural Performance, Theatre Anthropology, and the Imperialist Critique: Identities, Inheritances, and Neo-Orthodoxies.” In Imperialism and Theatre: Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Performance, edited by J. Ellen Gainor, 199–213. New York, NY: Routledge. Rice, Patricia. 1985. “Ethno-Improvisation: A Technique for Teaching Cultural Emotions.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 16 (4): 280–287. Rice, Patricia, and David W. McCurdy, eds. 2000. Strategies in Teaching Anthropology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rice, Patricia, David W. McCurdy, and Scott Lukas, eds. 2011. Strategies in Teaching Anthropology, 6th ed. London, UK: Pearson. Ruby, Jay, ed. 1982. A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 1990. “Concerning Victor Turner.” In By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual, edited by Richard Schechner and Willa Appel, xv. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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Schechner, Richard, and Willa Appel, eds. 1990. By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Singer, Eliot. 1998. “Ceremonial Access.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 29 (4): 481–486. Singer, Milton. 1972. When a Great Tradition Modernizes. New York, NY: Praeger. St. John, Graham. 2008. “Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance: An Introduction.” In Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance, edited by Graham St. John, 1–37. New York: Berghahn Books. Stoeltje, Beverly J. 1978. “Cultural Frames and Reflections: Ritual, Drama and Spectacle.” Current Anthropology 19 (2) (June): 450–451. Turnbull, Colin. 1979. “Anthropology and Drama: The Human Perspective.” In Anthropology, Drama and the Human Experience, edited by Colin Turnbull and Nathan Garner, 1–14. Washington, DC: The George Washington University. ———. 1985. “Theater and Anthropology,” Review of Richard Schechner, The End of Humanism: Writings on Performance, in Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 10 (3): 84–85. Turnbull, Colin, and Nathan C. Garner, eds. 1979. Anthropology, Drama and the Human Experience: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Social Values: Essays and Exercises by Participants in a Humanities Institute Held at George Washington University with the Support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, June 4 to July 2, 1979. Washington, DC: The George Washington University. Turner, Edith. 1985. “Prologue: From the Ndembu to Broadway.” In On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, edited by Edith L. B. Turner, 1–18. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Turner, Victor Witter. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. ———. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. ———. 1979. “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and Reflexive Anthropology.” Kenyon Review 1 (3) (Summer): 80–93. ———. 1981. “Social Dramas and Stories About Them.” In On Narrative, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell, 137–164. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York, NY: PAJ Publications. ———. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 33–44. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1988. The Anthropology of Performance. New York, NY: PAJ Publications. ———. 1990. “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” In By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual, edited by Richard Schechner and Willa Appel, 8–18. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1982. “Performing Ethnography.” TDR/The Drama Review 26 (2): 33–50. Weinraub, Bernard. 1976. “‘The Ik,’ Staged by Brook In London, Puzzles Many.” The New York Times, January 27. Accessed January 9, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/1976/01/28/archives/ the-ik-staged-by-brook-in-london-puzzles-many.html. Worthen, W. B. 1995. “Disciplines of the Text/Sites of Performance.” TDR/The Drama Review 39 (1) (Spring): 13–28.

Chapter 2

Points of Contact Between Anthropology and Theatre, Again Richard Schechner

I don’t want to forget that anthropology as an idea, a practice, an epistemology (of “other” cultures) began as, and in service to, both capitalist-colonial expansion and aggressive Christian missionaryism. The colonial powers and corporations had to “know” the “natives” they were ruling and exploiting, and the churches wanted to expand their belief-reach, perhaps to save souls, but more pertinently to transform populations from “strange” (Verfremdung, in Brecht’s sense) to “familiar,” the better to manage. This is not to deny that many, if not most, individual anthropologists were “good people,” sympathetic to those they were investigating, determined to “improve” their standards of living, and so on. It was not the first time, nor the last, that good soldiers were enlisted in a bad war. There are points of contact linking anthropology to theatre.1 Performance is a broad spectrum of actions including but far surpassing the performing arts. The spectrum ranges from secular and sacred rituals, play, and arts to politics, sports, popular entertainments, business, government, medicine, and the activities of everyday life. In what ways are acting, shamanizing, marketing, ruling, competing, healing, and presenting ourselves socially and personally expressions of the same process? What is this process? It is imagination, the human ability to pretend, the human capacity to be self and other simultaneously, to exist in the here and now as well as in the enormously diverse possibilities of wherever, whenever, and whomever. The six “points of contact” discussed in Between Theatre and Anthropology were: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Transformation of being and/or consciousness Intensity of performance Audience-performer interactions The whole performance sequence Transmission of performance knowledge How are performances generated and evaluated?

R. Schechner (B) Tisch School of the Arts, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_2

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These points of contact are just that: arenas of human imagination where performance theorists and practitioners hailing from the arts and anthropologists find common concerns. In this regard, anthropology is not a quantitative problem-solving “science” in the STEM sense, but a creative “art,” thinking that is imaginative, that creates its objects of study by studying them, that (if you will) plays “deeply” in Clifford Geertz’s sense of taking risks (1972). Where do I stand today on these points of contact? Paradoxically, even with the advent of big data and algorithmic “solutions” to so many problems, the points of contact are valid. Even further, I would add three more which I think would please the Turners: 1. Embodiment. Epistemologies and practices which enact the unity of feeling, thinking, and doing. This work follows from the Turners’ theories and practices of “performing ethnographies” of the 1970s-80s (more on these later in this essay). It critiques classical “objective” scholarship and respects indigenous theory-in/as-action. 2. The sources of human culture are performative. What makes humans “different,” if not unique? Upright stance and bipedal locomotion, thumb and finger dexterity, controlling fire, tool making, clothing, metaphoric language, story-telling, depicting and enacting fantasy? No single biological, behavioral, or cultural trait sets humans apart. It is the confluence of them all, the incredible diversity and complexity of the package, that marks Homo sapiens. This package is “performativity”: the ability of humans to “twice behave,” to play with behavior. 3. The brain as a performance site. What do trance performances, catharsis and empathy, mirror neurons, and emotional training techniques such as “rasaboxes”2 have in common? To what degree can the brain be “tuned” by rhythm, music, dance, and song? This was the bundle of ideas Victor Turner was exploring in “Body, Brain, and Culture.” (V. Turner 1983)

Twice-behaved behavior is restored behavior (Schechner 1985, 35–116): a broad spectrum of entertainments, arts, rituals, politics, economics, and person-to-person interactions. Everything and anything can be studied “as” performance. Let me now look in a little more detail at each of the new points of contact. Embodiment. Experience as the basis of indigenous knowledge that is shared through performing. Virginie Magnat begins her essay, “Conducting Embodied Research at the Intersection of Performance Studies, Experimental Ethnography, and Indigenous Methodologies”: Embodiment, lived experience and intersubjectivity are key to experimental approaches articulated at the intersection of performance and ethnography. […] Since embodied experience eludes and possibly exceeds cognitive control, accounting for its destabilizing function within the research process potentially endangers dominant conceptions of knowledge upon which the legitimacy of academic discourses so crucially depends. (2011, 213)

Magnat demands that we take seriously not only the world views but the epistemologies-methodologies of “indigenous” peoples (see Denzin et al. 2008). As Manulani Aluli Meyer writes: “knowing is embodied and in union with cognition. […] Genuine knowledge must be experienced directly” (2008, 224). This “genuine knowledge” is the indigenous knowledge that Candomblé and Capoeira practitioners—and the practitioners of hundreds of other kinds of performances all around the world—experience. Is this kind of knowledge any less

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“genuine” than what a person learns via books, lectures, classroom study, or over the Internet? And who is “indigenous”? We are each and all “indigenous” to someone else. It used to be that everyone not-Western, not following the dictates of the Enlightenment, was outside the pale of knowledge. Knowledge itself was deemed to be Western. This conclusion went hand-in-glove with the work of missionaries, colonialists, and the plyers of global trade—including especially the massive slave trade that brought millions from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. The enslaved brought their cultures with them. Almost from the very start of the invasion-settlement of the Western Hemisphere, the European was infused on the one side by African practices and on the other by Native American theories and practices. Over time some non-Western literate cultures—of India, China, and Japan especially—were admitted to the superior “Club of Us” while cultures whose knowledge was expressed via orature (Thiong’o 1998, 2007), shamanizing, music, dance, costume, masks, and visual arts were relegated to the “Club of Not Yet.” With globalization— a circulation of ideas, objects, people, and performances—it is no longer feasible to separate out these clubs. Especially in the world of arts where people are working in/from New York or Sao Paulo or Tokyo or Shanghai or Dubai or Lagos or Capetown … and on through a very long list, the notion of “native” or “indigenous” as distinct from “cultivated” or “cosmopolitan” has evaporated along with notions of “wild” or “wilderness.” All that’s left are reserves, parks, and zoos. To put it bluntly, “nature” no longer exists on its own; it is dependent on Homo sapiens. In all this dispersal of the indigenous, of embodied knowledge, a profound collaboration between performative and anthropological thought is entrained. But, for all that, is knowledge really equal? Anthropology still, and correctly in my opinion, depends on a positivist discourse. But where do we house the “truths” of religions ranging from the Big Five (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) to the myriad other belief systems accounting for the physical and spirit worlds? Not to mention Creationists, Scientologists, Wiccans, and hundreds of other—what shall I call them—“cults”? Is the knowledge danced at a Candomblé terreiro to be given equal weight to the existence of the Higgs boson, “a long-sought particle that is a key to understanding why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe”? (Overbye 2012). Are the Large Hadron Collider’s work and discoveries less mysterious than the trance dancing of Shango or the other orixa? In terms of people’s daily lives, which has more effect? Edith Turner continued this work. Near the end of her 2012 book, Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy, she writes: Communitas–what is it? […] Communitas is activity, not an object or state. Therefore, the only way to catch [communitas is] in the middle of its elusive activity, in process. […] It is the space between things that makes communitas happen. (2012, 220–221)

Is this kind of work “objective” scholarship? Does objective scholarship exist? Ought it exist? The sources of human culture are performative. Early Homo sapiens—anatomically modern humans—arrived in Western Europe about 50,000 years BP replacing Neanderthals but also interacting and even inter-breeding with them. These modern

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humans were not farmers or villagers; they were hunter-gatherers. Their bands didn’t stay rooted in one spot, but neither did they wander aimlessly. Each band had its own circuit: a more or less fixed route through time/space. This route was determined by seasonal vegetation and the movement of prey. Ceremonial centers were used over and over for vast stretches of time, millennia. Cave art evidences these centers, but maybe there were also fresh-air sites, long obliterated. The cultural level of these early modern Europeans—at least in terms of painting and sculpting—was very high: The masterpieces of the caves of Southwest Europe and the mobile art of Eurasia are testimony enough. Cave art from far back exists in many parts of the world. In fact, the earliest known depictions are from Indonesia (Price 2019). Of course, this art was not objects-to-be-collected-and-sold or “art for art’s sake.” The cave art, footprints of adolescents moving in a circular pattern, and bone flutes are the remains of what were complex ceremonial-ritual practices. That the art was part of or accompanied performances and was not designed for relaxed viewing as in museums or art galleries is clear from what the caves were: pitch-dark except for animal-oil lamps and torches; some are cold and wet; much of the art is difficult to access, made in cramped, out of the way spaces—almost as if part of the “message” is the effort, almost ordeal, necessary to come face-to-face with the re-presentations. A sunken river guards the fearsome Tuc d’Audoubert, two hundred long underground feet of which one breasts or boats upon before the first land; then comes a precarious thirty-foot steep shaft up ladders placed there and slippery pegs [neither probably there in paleolithic times]; and next a crawl through claustrophobic low passages, to reach the startling footprints of ancient dancers in bare feet and the models of copulating bisons, in clay on the floor beyond. (La Barre 1972, 397)

Certainly, this is not the Louvre, or any venue where people stand back and admire works. And, don’t forget, there was a lot more going on in the caves than image-making. The shamans were performers. They danced; they initiated the youths whose footprints remain on cave floors. No doubt people sang stories through long dark nights. As Homer reminds us: “These nights are endless, and a man can sleep through them, or he can enjoy listening to stories” (The Odyssey XV, 392–393). The ability to story-tell—to weave a single narrative fabric of truths, lies, and fantasies—is one of humankind’s most impressive and unique accomplishments. Part of the great cultural leap forward of the paleolithic was the integration of story-telling, dancing, and singing. This performative was transferred from one event to another: The style, if not the substance, of the narrations, choreographies, melodies, and rhythms was known by makers and partakers. Were there any spectators as such? The performances were taught by one group, or shaman-artist, to the next. As the word “tradition” denotes, performance knowledge was passed on by means of cultural trade. Furthermore, there were scripts—not carved in stone or inscribed on parchment, but embodied “known” scenarios that pre- and-post-dated every particular enactment: a what to do and a way to do it. Each specific evanescent performance kept and transmitted the script which was more important than any single re-presentation. The scripts are performance knowledge, life-sustaining

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knowledge—knowledge that later would be called “sacred.” And, when so, the performances would be called “rituals.” But at first there were no such categories. People did these things for many reasons, including entertainment, which must not be thought of disparagingly. Keeping the scripts intact guaranteed the efficacy of the rites; abandoning the scripts endangered the cultural continuity of the group. In other words, in paleolithic ritual performance, as today, doing is a manifestation more than a representation. At least some of the caves were theatres. We probably will never know with certainty what the functions of the cave art were. Indeed, the functions may have changed over time. Some caves were in use for millennia. Mostly, scholars focus on the visuals, the paintings and sculptings, plus some enigmatic dots and other signs and handprints, are what survives. But what happened in the caves is as important—if we can find it out—as the visual traces. I believe that what actually grabbed people at the time was experiential: the sounds and movements enacted within caves, probably with an emphasis on the sounds. As John Pfeiffer writes: caves are wonderful places for acoustic as well as visual effects. Underground ceremonies must have been designed to take advantage of and shatter the silence as well as the darkness, to bombard the ear as well as the eye with a variety of sensations planned to arouse and inform. […] Imagine the sound of bullroarers nearby in an underground labyrinth, the sound of flutes rising high and clear as a human cry or a bird from some place impossible to locate. (1982, 183)

In 2009, a bone five-finger hole flute dated 35k BP was discovered in the Hohle Fels cave, Germany; in 2012, flutes from the nearby Geissenklösterle cave were dated to 42–43k BP. Pfeiffer notes that: archeologists digging at a site on a tributary of the Dnieper River northeast of Kiev unearthed a set of mammoth bones painted red which they believe served as percussion instruments: hip-bone xylophone, skull and shoulder blade drums, and jawbone castanets. […] The highstepping, bison-horned man in Trois Frères seems to be playing an instrument which has been interpreted as a pipe or musical bow. (1982, 180)

Theatres are what Yann-Pierre Montelle thinks the caves were. Montelle reminds us that in Latin cava, meaning “cave,” is etymologically related to cavea, the auditorium of a theatre, or the theatre itself. The link is in the sense of a “cavity” or hollow space. Montelle theorizes that the continuity between the paleolithic caves and ancient theatre is not in narrative patterns but in theatre architecture. Of course, the flaw in his reasoning is that ancient Greek theatres were outdoor open spaces, while caves are concealed, dark, “indoor” spaces. But Montelle’s notion that “theatricality”—rather than ritual, shamanism, etc.—is what we should be looking for in the paleolithic is worth paying attention to. Montelle says the essence of theatricality is a space providing a locale for alterity, a site in which to frame “otherness.” Indeed, the power of transforming the habitual into a constructed otherness seems to have been with us all along and has always been a powerful (while undeniably transgressive) tool. (2009, 3)

Montelle points out that this paleolithic theatricality—though clearly present in Europe—is seen also “in the Americas, Australia, China, India, Central Asia,

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[Southeast Asia], and the Middle East. This global phenomenon helps confirm the emergence and ubiquity of theatricality on a global scale” (2009, 4). The brain as a performance site. Recent studies of the brain, supported by fMRI imaging, lead in two contradictory directions. First: the case is being made for the biological basis of a wide range of behaviors and social problems once thought to be moral or psychological matters. In the law, neuroscientific knowledge is being presented as a challenge to notions of free will and personal responsibility, and biologized notions of morality are being offered through the use of fMRI in courtroom settings. In evolutionary psychology the brain has been marshaled to support conservative ideas about social roles. (Pitts-Taylor 2010, 636)

On the other hand: […] there is also much public excitement about brain plasticity. Brain plasticity or neuroplasticity refers to the capacity of the brain to modify itself in response to changes in its functioning or environment. (Pitts-Taylor 2010, 636)

Not so long ago it was thought that the brain is “set” early in life; that neural learning was an early-life phenomenon. But now scientists know that the brain changes throughout life. Not only does it deteriorate, as in Alzheimer’s and similar dementias, but, more importantly for what I am discussing, new neurons are created, new synaptic connections made, and older connections weakened or strengthened. In other words, the brain can be trained throughout life. Such training can proceed “automatically” or in response to conscious control. A brain able to learn and rewire itself challenges biological reductionism. “The plastic brain is a situated brain, culturally, biologically and socially. […] Each brain responds to its environment and also to its own workings over the lifespan” (Pitts-Taylor 2010, 637). To date, most neural experiments and brain studies deal with the “brain in the head,” what is encased in the skull. But there is also a very important second brain, a “brain the belly.” This brain is the enteric nervous system (ENS). The ENS is about 400 million neurons—about the same number as in the spinal cord—lining the esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, pancreas, gallbladder, and biliary tree; the nerves within the muscles of the gut’s wall; and the nerve fibers that connect these neurons to each other. The ENS operates more or less independently from the brain to which it is linked by the vagus nerve. Vagus—meaning wandering (as in vagrant)—goes from the brain stem through the neck, thorax, and digestive system affecting breathing, digestion, and heartbeat. About 90% of the vagus nerve sends messages from the ENS to the brain informing the brain about what’s going on “down there.” About 10% of the vagus nerve sends regulatory messages from the brain back to the belly (and other organs affected by the vagus). The ENS is a complex neuronic network able to act independently, learn, remember, and, as the saying goes, produce gut feelings (see Blakeslee 1996, C1). I learned about the ENS while developing rasaboxes, a psychophysical training method I devised linking Sanskrit performance theory as expounded in the Natyasastra, a manual of theatre training from about 2000 years ago, to modern theatre practice, and my own work in actor training. The rasabox work organically linked the

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ENS, Asian martial arts, and actor training. Rasa theory in Natyasastra states that aesthetic experience—both from the performer’s and from the partakers’ experience—is of tasting and sharing the flavor, the “juice” (rasa), of what is performed. Aesthetic experience is not so much visual as it is visceral. The Asian martial arts speak often and in detail about the region between the pubic bone and the navel as the center of the body’s energy. My rasaboxes work concentrated on exploring the connections between these realms of knowledge. I wrote to Michael Gershon, a leading expert on the ENS (see Gershon 1998). He replied: Thank you for your letter. You touch a bit of raw nerve. You are certainly correct in that we in the West who consider ourselves “hard” scientists have not taken Eastern thought very seriously. The problem with a great deal of Eastern thought is that it is not based on documentable observation. You cannot quantify ideas about strong feelings or deep power. We therefore, either ignore Eastern ideas about the navel, or take them as metaphors, which are not very different from our own metaphors about “gut feelings”. On the other hand, I have recently become aware of quantifiable research that establishes, without question, that vagus nerve stimulation can be used to treat epilepsy and depression. Vagus nerve stimulation also improves learning and memory. Vagus nerve stimulation is something physicians do and is not natural, but 90% of the vagus carries ascending information from the gut to the brain. It is thus possible that vagus nerve stimulation mimics natural stimulation of the vagus nerve by the “second brain”. […] In short, I now take the possibility that the gut affects emotions very seriously.

Rasabox training explores the deep empathy confirmed by the observation of “mirror neurons”: when someone performs an action and/or feels an emotion, specific neurons fire—and when spectators watch performances in life, dance, theatre, film, etc.—the same neurons fire in the observers’ brains as in the performers. In other words, spectators perform in their imagination along with the performers they observe. This is true not only visually, but with regard to all the senses. In fact, smell and taste are more powerful and “primal” than sight and hearing in this regard. It all goes to demonstrate that emotions are physical, embodied, and contagious. I do not have the space here to go into detail about rasaboxes training. The important point is that both brains—the one in the head and the other in the belly—can be trained. What’s needed are more systematic efforts at enhancing and enlarging the communication between the two neuronic systems—and further explorations of our complicated neuronic networks connecting people to each other. Our bodies do not end with our skin but extend beyond into the brains of others. Where do anthropology and performance come in? If the brain is plastic, if it is shaped by the environment and can be trained, then we can envision new ways of understanding how culture actually “inhabits” the brain. Many traditional rituals—especially those using trance—operate performatively by means of repetition and rhythm (drumming, singing, dancing). The psychotropic effects of trance are well known (Rouget 1985; Castillo 1995; Kawai et al. 2001; Oohashi et al. 2002; Schmidt and Huskinson 2010). The paradox of trance is that for those who know or have learned how, entry into trance is willed and controlled; but once a person is “in” trance, the expected or normative trance behavior takes over. The gateways to

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trance—whirling, singing, meditating: there multitudinous ways to induce trance— are consciously controlled; but once in trance, a mind-brain state similar to that of dream-sleep takes over. Trance may be thought of as a kind of “lucid dreaming,” dreaming where the dreamer to some degree controls the trajectory of the dream. As Richard Castillo notes: Parallel to the example of sleep, I suggest that trance is a behavior based on a narrowed focus of attention, which with repeated experience will result in its own unique tuning of the CNS [central nervous system] with its own related psychophysical characteristics contrasting to those which sustain the usual experience of consciousness, and, thus, the environment and the self. I suggest this process can be intentional and based on culture-based behavioral norms such as religious practices. I further suggest that through repeated behavior, alternative neural networks can be strengthened, extended with new learning and associations (so-called “state dependent learning”), and even (at the extreme) developed into integrated, alternative conscious entities capable of independent thought and action (dissociation). (1995, 27)

Trance, of course, is performance, a physical doing, a powerful way of injecting cultural practices deep into brain structure, actually altering the brain. Obviously—but sometimes the most powerful truths have been out there staring us in the face—trance performing is both a cause and a result of retrained brains. Masters of trance—shamans, Candomblé performers, and other traditional performers, and some artists—have trained their bodybrains using traditional methods. It is time now to investigate and characterize these methods—to treat them as embodied knowledges. The old-fashioned opposition between “rational” and “instinctual” thought/action needs to be discarded in favor of holistic studies that treat master performers not as “objects of study” but as partners in research. This approach is in harmony with rapidly developing digital technologies that are erasing what separates the “inside” from “outside,” as Brian Rotman writes: […] artifacts, from windowed screens to hypertexts are rewiring the very brain/minds that imagined them. In this way we are facilitating the emergence of a larger – collectivized, distributed, pluralized – “intelligence” by allowing ourselves to become more “othered,” more parallelist, more multi, less individualized – able to see, think, enjoy, feel, and do more than one thing at a time. (Rotman 2000, 74)

As you might expect, there is a counter-narrative to this neuro-triumphalism. The ultimately flexible and trainable brain can also be regarded as a neo-liberal, postFordist, value-added object: “the ultimate biological resource […] the brain is seen as a smarter, better version of any man-made high tech tool” (Pitts-Taylor 2010, 642). As in the industrial epoch when bio-mechanics translated people into machines, in our digital epoch, computers and brains converge. In a time when everything biological is for sale—organs, blood, human eggs, genes, etc.—Catherine Waldby’s (2000) “biovalue” comes into play. The flexibility without limits of the trained— and retrained—brain is equivalent to outsourcing, breaking up what once were unified made-to-order or at least manufactured all in one place things into the widely dispersed multi-focused processes of post-Fordism. In my opinion, both possibilities are actualities. The brain is trainable, and performances in their broadest sense, including indigenous methodologies, are excellent

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examples of such training as well as models for how-to-do-it; what is done with this knowledge is another question. The deep fetches evidenced by paleolithic performances are what Jerzy Grotowski researched during his Art as Vehicle phase from 1986 to his death in 1999. This work continues today guided by Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini of the Grotowski Workcenter in Pontedera, Italy. As Dominika Laster writes, “Grotowski examined the role of the body in the transmission of transgenerational collective memory” (2016, 21). In Grotowski’s words (as quoted by Laster): Memories are always physical reactions. It is our skin which has not forgotten, our eyes which have not forgotten. What we have heard can still resound within us. (2016, 21–22) It is not that the body remembers. The body itself is memory. That which has to be done is the unblocking of body-memory. (2016, 25)

Grotowski devised extremely detailed and precise ways of “unblocking” bodymemory. He sought collective memory in Haitian Vodou (Kolankiewiecz 2012),3 Islamic dhikr, and the Baul songs of Bengal. He guided Richards—whose grandfather was Jamaican—toward his Caribbean roots. Richards himself describes the process: What I did was to enter a process of questioning. I remember through action. It is an approach that can lead to an alive doing, because I am not trying to produce an effect, a result – also I am not trying to reproduce the effect of yesterday. […] Grotowski often said: “You need to be looking for.” To keep looking for. Even when you are finding keep looking for. (Laster 2012, 215–216)

Richards looked in Afro-Haitian vibratory songs. Sometimes he walks holding a stick, a very old—an ancient—man; his voice is both deeply resonant and limpidly fluid. Grotowski’s life-work, if it can be summarized, is parallel to what anthropologists—in their own way, with their own methodologies—seek. As Laster notes: Grotowski’s lifelong work was deeply engaged in the potentialities of performance as a form of embodied transmission. In attempting to decode the performative artifacts of ancient ritual practice, Grotowski sought to penetrate the embodied knowledge of ancestral traditions connected with precise structures, or yantra, which facilitate a method of deep knowing. Grotowski sought to revalorize oral and embodied transmission. (2016, 36)

Respecting oral tradition, Grotowski walked the walk. Grotowski wrote very little. He spoke and we listened. He insisted that people not audio-record or even take notes at his lectures. Grotowski explained that “note-taking […] prevents participants from being fully present and attentive to the moment” (Laster 2016, 36). Zen. This kind of work connects to the brain’s ability to mirror and project. As James K. Rilling writes: Another of the remarkable aspects of human cognition is our ability to project ourselves into other times and places so that we are not limited to thinking about the immediate here and now. In other words, we can simulate alternative worlds that are separate from the one being directly experienced. We can project ourselves into the past to remember things that have

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R. Schechner happened to us, into the future to formulate and rehearse plans, and even into the minds of others to understand their mental states. How do they feel? What do they know? (Rilling 2008, 22)

Grotowski believed that in addition to this “horizontal ability” to connect with others there was also a “vertical ability” to connect with the past and with “higher powers.” I do not share Grotowski’s belief in higher powers, or even know exactly what he meant: He was not an orthodoxly religious man. But I do respond to his sense— shared by tragedians of several cultures that human life is to some degree “shaped” by gods, genes, history, ecology, other human beings—who knows for sure? Here I end, not conclude. What performance does is create worlds or—if you accept at face value what masters of sacred ceremonies aver—performance gains admittance to other worlds and interactive relations both with other people and with nonhuman beings. Is what physicists do at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) less mysterious than the trance dancing of Candomble’s Shango or the other orixa? The dancers I experienced near Rio in July 2012 located their Higgs boson. Isn’t our job as anthropologists and artists—as human beings with big brains—to foster actual and respectful communication between those possessed by the orixas and those possessed by the Large Hadron Collider?

After the End Ultimately, for me, the strongest “point of contact” is personal: my relationship with Victor Turner and with Edith Turner from 1977 to Vic’s death in 1983 and Edie’s in 2016. From 1977 to 1982, Victor and I collaborated on four conferences and one twelve-day workshop delving into performance. “Cultural Frames and Reflections: Ritual, Drama and Spectacle” (August 27–September 6, 1977, Burg Wartenstein, Austria) was my first extended face-to-face work with Turner. The second—a workshop on ritual and theatre (June 12–23, 1978, The Performing Garage, New York)— was a course offered by the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. The third was a conference on Yaqui Ritual and Performance (November 19–24, 1981 at New Pascua and the Oracle Conference Center, Arizona); the fourth a conference on Contemporary Japanese Theatre (May 19–24, 1982, Japan Society, New York). The fifth, the culmination of the series, was the International Symposium on Theatre and Ritual (August 23–September 1, 1982 at several locations in New York). The goal of these conferences was fully articulated only after they were history: to approach the genres of theatre, dance, music, sports, and ritual as a single, coherent group as performance. The underlying question became whether or not the same methodological tools and approaches would be used to understand a noh drama, a football game, a Yaqui deer dance, a Broadway musical, a Roman Catholic Mass, an Umbanda curing ritual, a Yoruba masked dance, and a postmodern experimental performance? We knew that very few people qualified as “comparative performatologists” and so the basic question would have to be dealt with genre by genre, culture by culture. We hoped that the conferences would lay the groundwork for proposing general principles or, as Turner called them, “universals of performance.”4 (Schechner and Appel 1990, 3)

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Only Turner and I were present at all five, but several others attended more than one: Lita Osmundsen5 (4), Edith Turner (3), Barbara Myerhoff6 (3), Jerome Rothenberg7 (2), Phillip Zarrilli8 (2), Herbert Blau9 (2), Paul Bouissac10 (2), and Willa Appel11 (2). A total of 71 scholars and artists plus 27 students in the NYU workshop participated, a total of 98 people. Most of the sessions were closed to the public, but a few were open and well attended. To my knowledge, two books and several articles have dealt with these conferences and workshop.12 Turner and I first met face-to-face after he phoned me in the spring of 1977. “I am in New York to introduce a lecture by Clifford Geertz at Columbia,” Turner said. “Why not you and I go out for a beer after?” Knowing Turner’s writing, I was eager to meet him. When we did, what should have been a 45-minute getting-to-know-you chat turned into a 3+ hour seminar-of-two. Really, we were made for each other: inquisitive, good sense of humor, wide-ranging interests, not afraid to go out on a limb, rampant with appetites. And, of course, performance. What Vic called “process” I called performance. It was social drama, liminal-liminoid, communitas, ritual, and more. Vic’s mother was an actress; theatre was in his upbringing. He had an urgent belief in the efficacy of human enactment, and a delight in it also. At that first meeting, Vic asked me to participate in the Wenner-Gren Symposium on Cultural Frames, etc. From then till his all-too-soon death in 1983, Vic and I were in continuous contact. Through Vic, I met his “star group” of anthropologists and culture-workers, Edith Turner, Barbara Myerhoff, Barbara Babcock, John MacAloon, and Paul Bouissac, among a group of about 25. Here I want to share a few notes and recollections. First, of the 1978 two-week summer workshop convened at my theatre, The Performing Garage (home of The Performance Group, which I founded) and sponsored by the School of the Arts,13 New York University. The workshop brought together 27 graduate students, professors, performers, and devisers of performances to work with the Turners, Alexander Alland, Erving Goffman (for a few days, three I think), and me. The modus operandi of the workshop was interaction. We talked, performed, partied (some), took a weekend trip to Baltimore for a theatre festival, and dove deep into each other’s ideas and felt experiences, past and present. The key information in the workshop’s announcement was: This is an intensive workshop – two sessions daily, 5 days per week with all faculty participating in most of the sessions so that there will be maximum interaction among faculty and among faculty and students. The workshop will explore the interface between ritual and theatre. […] The aim of the workshop is to shatter boundaries between performance and social sciences and between art and cognitive studies. […] participants will be selected to ensure a balance between artists, scholars and scientists.

The group of 16 women and 11 men fulfilled that mix; the individual sessions were lively, sometimes moving, often emotionally and intellectually risky. In a letter I wrote to the three instructors on 1 May 1978, I followed Vic’s lead for the program: Victor suggested the following skeletal scheme for our workshop […] and I think it’s a good idea, and so I pass it on for your acceptance, revision, transformation: 1. Students work in teams (2 or 3) and these teams are […] interdisciplinary. Each team takes a classic ethnography – either from nonWestern or Western (i.e., urban) culture, and

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R. Schechner they transpose […] this data into a theatrical script. They discuss the staging, costuming, preparations, role playing. In fact, they tell how they would stage this event if they were to stage it and/or film it. […] And/or all social events may be, as Goffman says, understood as performances. […] 2. Sometime during the 2 weeks each of us presents our own most current work. […] 3. Some field work take [sic] into account the unique environment of NY: in the summer especially the parks are full of various street entertainers; certain neighborhoods have strong personalities as total environments: Times Square, Little Italy, Chinatown, West Village, etc. Also that we see several performances of a more formal kind in theatres, nite-spots […], discos. I realize that this is a lot to cover in 2 weeks, but at the same time from the applications […] we will have a rich diversity of students. […] Should be a good show.

It certainly was that, and a lot more. I made more than 50 pages of notes.14 These tell me of vigorous discussions among Turner, Goffman, Alland, and I—especially during the days Goffman was there. Later in the workshop, Vic and Edie devised their first “performed ethnography,” described in detail in Victor’s 1979 article (so I won’t say anything about it here) (V. Turner 1979). From my notes, let me give you a precious three of Vic’s remarks, out of context but in character: Every society creates a pod where ludic activity goes on, is privileged to go on. A society that doesn’t cut out of itself a piece of itself – where every part of itself can be taken out and examined – this society is likely to die. **** In Africa, a great performance by a great performer – and each dancer is good at a particular dance – elicits power. In the West, it is enough that the ceremony be performed – even a decrepit priest can do it. But in Africa, the performance itself elicits power. ***** The great archesymbol of the ineffable is to destroy all that is constructed. It’s who can transgress superbly. When Julius Erving goes up in the air with his back to the basket – what makes that kind of arc? What makes a superstar?

Turner was a transgressive superstar for sure. The takeaway, 41 years later, from that workshop is a flash of memories. Sitting in a circle on the second floor of The Performing Garage in SoHo. Participating in, evoking, and responding to Vic’s ebullience, brilliance, jouissance, and appetite to go where few if any anthropologists have ventured. This in contrast to Goffman’s profound skepticism and irony and Alland’s academic probity. And to recall that Edie was there with Vic, coaching and coaxing, sometimes critiquing, never passive, a player. After the NYU workshop, two more conferences. Then, in early fall 1983, Vic was struck by a massive heart attack. On December 18 that year, shortly after breakfast, a second attack killed him.15 His funeral in Charlottesville, Virginia, took place on December 21, the winter solstice. Being Roman Catholic, there was a Mass

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and a solemn procession. Then family, friends, colleagues, and students—about 50 people—gathered at the Turners’ Carrsbrook Drive home. In December 2019, I wrote to Vic’s youngest son, Rory, asking him about the ceremony. Rory replied and passed my email on to his siblings Robert, Frederick, Alex, and Irene Wellman. Here is a composite of the Turners’ responses to me: There were two funerals, the requiem Mass in the Holy Comforter Church in Charlottesville and the basement ritual based on the Ndembu chief’s funeral ceremony. Roy Wagner, great anthropologist now departed [1938-2018], donned a home-made Ikishi16 mask, built according to traditional specifications by Vic’s students, and danced. Rory powerfully played the necessary drums. Fred’s seven-year-old son Benjamin was made the Lord of Misrule, a role he played with remarkable awareness. There were many readings from books that Vic loved, including a passage from the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings that brought many of us to tears. Two years later, I [Robert], Edie, and Rene (with Rene’s daughter Rose and Fred’s son Daniel) came to Scotland with Vic’s ashes, and we made the complicated journey to the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, a place Vic regarded as our family’s ancestral home. We climbed with some effort to the peak of its mountain, Heaval, in high winds, mist and rain, and gave Vic’s ashes to the wind and heather, as Edie knew Vic would have wanted. I scratched Vic’s initials and dates deeply with a stone into the lid of the container that had held the ashes, and buried it on the peak of Heaval as a memorial for him. As we descended the mountain the clouds suddenly lifted, and we could see the peak clearly where we had laid the old man to rest.

My own memories of the ceremony in the Turner home are of an Ndembu seclusion hut, built by I don’t know whom, but definitely supervised by Edie. She went into the hut and we collectively performed the rite for the passing of a headman. I could hear Edie weeping, wailing, suffering her enormous loss. Outside, people were telling jokes, singing, dancing, describing Vic, enticing Edie to step from her isolation and rejoin her community. To transform mourning into celebration; to combine the two; to enact the ritual process. Wife of 40 years, mother of five, anthropologist, and now widow, Edie brought herself and the Victor she both lost and incorporated from the hut back into the world. Notes 1.

2.

A version of this essay, called “Points of Contact Between Anthropological and Theatrical Thought,” was the first chapter of my pointedly titled Between Theatre and Anthropology (1985, 3–33). Published two years after Victor Turner’s death, I wanted “between” to announce my intention of further extending Turner’s ideas about liminality into the then almost-brand-new field of Performance Studies whose first academic department had come into existence at New York University in 1980. I revised the essay for my Performed Imaginaries (2015, 151–182), where it was the last chapter. At hand is still another version. Rasaboxes is a performer training technique I developed in the 1990s—and which is practiced and further developed today. Rasaboxes combines South Asian and Western theories and practices. See Mee (2014) and Bowditch et al. (2020, forthcoming). I will discuss rasaboxes later in this essay.

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Grotowski’s interest in Haitian vibratory songs is part of a fascinating network of people and practices. One aspect of this network is the Polish soldiers who were part of a force dispatched by Napoleon to Haiti in 1802 to suppress the revolution of the slaves. The campaign failed; Haiti won independence in 1804. Some Poles joined the revolution and in gratitude were offered Haitian citizenship. About 240 accepted and their descendants are known today as Polone-Ayisyens. In 1980, Grotowski came to Haiti in search of possible relatives. He invited one man, Amon Fremon, a houngan (Voodoo priest), to Poland for the Theatre of Sources. 4. Turner lectured on “universals of performance” at Smith College in 1982. After his death, the lecture was published as the Epilogue of his On the Edge of the Bush (1985), edited by Edith Turner. “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” (V. Turner 1985) synthesizes much of the work Turner and I explored together. 5. The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research sponsored these meetings, except for the 1978 workshop which was under the auspices of NYU. Lita Osmundsen (1926–1998) of the Foundation was instrumental to the convening of the conferences and therefore to the development of performance studies. 6. The books of very close friend and colleague of Victor Turner, anthropologist Myerhoff (1935–1985), include The Peyote Hunt (1974) and Number Our Days (1978). She won an Academy Award in 1977 for Documentary Short Subject for the film Number Our Days. 7. Jerome Rothenberg (b. 1931) is a poet, performer, and anthologist whose work connects the avant-garde with tribal poetries, especially that of Native North Americans. See Rothenberg (1968, 1972 [2014], 1983, 2008). 8. Phillip Zarrilli (b. 1947) is a performance theorist and theatre director. See Zarrilli (1984, 2012, 2019). 9. Herbert Blau (1926–2013) was a performance scholar, theatre director, and professor. He was co-founder of the pioneering San Francisco Actors’ Workshop, co-director of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center, Dean of Theatre and Dance at the California Institute of the Arts, and founder of KRAKEN, an experimental theatre. See Blau (1964, 1982a, b, 1990, 1992, 2011). 10. Paul Bouissac (b. 1934) is a semiotician whose specialty is circus. See Bouissac (1976, 2010, 2015). 11. Willa Appel (b. 1946) worked closely with Victor Turner and me in developing the program for the Arizona and New York conferences. She and I co-edited By Means of Performance 1990, a continuation of the work of the 1981 and 1982 conferences. See Appel (1985). Currently, she is the Executive Director of the New York Structural Biology Center. 12. Papers from the 1977 Burg Wartenstein Symposium formed the basis for MacAloon (1984), and V. Turner (1979) deals with aspects of the 1978 NYU workshop; Victor and Edith Turner (1982) continues the discussion of “performing ethnography”; the 1981 and 1982 conferences are the subject of Schechner and Appel (1990).

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13. After a gift from Lawrence A. and Preston Robert Tisch, renamed in 1982 the Tisch School of the Arts. 14. Since the 1950s, I’ve written and drawn in notebooks. The 1978 NYU workshop is described in Notebook 59, February–August 1978. 15. For two moving celebrations of Victor Turner at the point of his death, see Babcock (1984) and Turner and Turner (1985). 16. Most probably a Makishi mask used in initiation rites. Robert Turner emailed me: “We kids used to know it as ‘Ikishi’, which might have been local dialect— but it corresponds to the Makishi mask that you describe” (29 December 2019).

References Appel, Willa. 1985. Cults in America: Programmed for Paradise. New York: Henry Holt & Company. Babcock, Barbara. 1984. “Obituary: Victor W. Turner (1920–1983).” The Journal of American Folklore 97 (386): 461–464. Blakeslee, Sandra. 1996. “Complex and Hidden Brain in the Gut Makes Cramps, Butterflies, and Valium.” The New York Times, 23 January, C1–C3. Blau, Herbert. 1964. The Impossible Theatre. New York: Macmillan. ———. 1982a. Take Up the Bodies. Champagne: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1982b. Blooded Thought. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1990. The Audience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1992. To All Appearances: Ideology and Performance. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2011. As If: An Autobiography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bouissac, Paul. 1976. Circus and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2010. Semiotics at the Circus. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ———. 2015. The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning Rituals of Transgression and the Theory of Laughter. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Bowditch, Rachel, Paula Murray Cole, and Michele Minnick, eds. 2020. The Rasaboxes Sourcebook: Inside Richard Schechner’s Performance Workshop. London and New York: Routledge (forthcoming). Castillo, Richard J. 1995. “Culture, Trance, and the Mind-Brain.” Anthropology of Consciousness 6 (1): 17–32. Denzin, Norman K., Yvonne S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, eds. 2008. Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Geertz, Clifford. 1972. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus 101 (1): 1–37. Gershon, Michael. 1998. The Second Brain. New York: HarperCollins. Kawai, Noriel, Manabu Honda, et al. 2001. “Catecholamines and Opioid Peptides Increase in Plasma in Humans During Possession Trances.” Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology 12 (16): 3419–3423. Kolankiewiecz, Leszak. 2012. “Grotowski in a Maze of Haitian Narration.” TDR/The Drama Review 56 (3): 131–140. La Barre, Weston. 1972. The Ghost Dance. New York: Dell. Laster, Dominika. 2012. “Embodied Memory: Body-Memory in the Performance Research of Jerzy Grotowski.” New Theatre Quarterly 28 (3): 211–229. ———. 2016. Grotowski’s Bridge Made of Memory. Calcutta, London and New York: Seagull Books.

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MacAloon, John J., ed. 1984. Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Magnat, Virginie. 2011. “Conducting Embodied Research at the Intersection of Performance Studies, Experimental Ethnography and Indigenous Methodologies.” Anthropologica 53: 213–227. Mee, Erin. 2014. “Rasa Is/As/And Emotional Contagion.” In The Natyasastra and the Body in Performance: Essays on Indian Theories of Dance and Drama, edited by Sreenath Nair, 157–174. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Meyer, Manulani Alui. 2008. “Indigenous and Authentic: Hawaiian Epistemology and the Triangulation of Meaning.” In Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, edited by Norman K. Denzin, Yvonne S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 217–232. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Montelle, Yann-Pierre. 2009. Palaeoperformance: The Emergence of Theatricality as Social Practice. London, New York and Calcutta: Seagull Books. Myerhoff, Barbara. 1974. The Peyote Hunt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1978. Number Our Days. New York: Simon & Schuster. Oohashi, Tsutomo, Norie Kawai, et al. 2002. “Electroencephalographic Measurement of Possession Trance in the Field.” Clinical Neurophysiology 113: 435–445. Overbye, Dennis. 2012. “Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe.” New York Times, July 4. Accessed January 4, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicistsmay-have-discovered-higgs-boson-particle.html. Pfeiffer, John. 1982. The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion. New York: Harper & Row. Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. 2010. “The Plastic Brain: Neoliberalism and the Neuronal Self.” Health 14 (6): 635–652. Price, Michael. 2019. “Cave Paintings Suggest Ancient Origin of Modern Mind.” Science 366 (6471): 1299. Rilling, James K. 2008. “Neuroscientific Approaches and Applications Within Anthropology.” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 51: 2–32. Rothenberg, Jerome, ed. 1968. Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ———. 1972. Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Third edition published in 2014. ———. 2008. Poetics & Polemics 1980–2005. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Rothenberg, Jerome, and Diane Rothenberg, eds. 1983. Symposium of the Whole. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rotman, Brian. 2000. “Going Parallel.” Substance 91: 56–79. Rouget, Gilbert. 1985. Music and Trance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schechner, Richard, and Willa Appel, eds. 1990. By Means of Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, Bettina E., and Lucy Huskinson, eds. 2010. Spirit Possession and Trance. London and New York: Continuum. Thiong’o, Ng˜ug˜ı Wa. 1998. Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2007. “Notes Towards a Performance Theory of Orature.” Performance Research 12 (3): 4–7. Turner, Edith. 2012. Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Turner, Edith, and Frederick Turner. 1985. “Victor Turner as We Remember Him.” Anthropologica 27 (1–2): 11–16. Turner, Victor. 1979. “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and Reflexive Anthropology.” Kenyon Review 1 (3) (Summer): 80–93. ———. 1983. “Body, Brain, and Culture.” Zygon 18 (3) (September): 221–246.

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———. 1985. “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” In On the Edge of the Bush, edited by Edith Turner, 291–304. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1982. “Performing Ethnography.” TDR/The Drama Review 26 (2) (Summer): 33–50. Waldby, Catherine. 2000. The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine. London and New York: Routledge. Zarrilli, Phillip. 1984. The Kathakali Complex. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications. ———. 2012. The Psychophysical Actor at Work. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2019. Toward a Phenomenology of Acting. London and New York: Routledge.

Chapter 3

Performing Ethnography Victor Turner and Edith L. B. Turner

Anthropological literature is full of accounts of dramatic episodes which vividly manifest the key values of specific cultures. Often these are case-histories of conflicts between lineages or factions, spreading into feuds, vendettas, or head-hunting expeditions. Frequently, they describe how criminal behavior is defined and handled. Other accounts describe how illness and misfortune are ascribed to witchcraft or ancestral affliction and reveal tensions and stresses in the social structure. Such descriptions are richly contextualized; they are not flat narratives of successive events for they are charged with meaningfulness. The actors commonly share a world-view, a kinship network, economic interests, a local past, and a system of ritual replete with symbolic objects and actions which embody a cosmology. They have lived through hard times and good times together. Culture, social experience, and individual psychology combine in complex ways in any “bit” or “strip” of human social behavior. Anthropologists have always favored the long-term, holistic study of a relatively small society, examining its institutions and their inter-connections in great detail, locating the links among kinship, economic, legal, ritual, political, esthetic, and other sociocultural systems. When they study, say, a particular performance of ritual, they are on the look-out for expressions of shared cultural understandings in behavior, as well as for manifestations of personal uniqueness. Nevertheless, while it may be possible for a gifted researcher to demonstrate the coherence among the “parts” of a culture, the models he presents remain cognitive. Cognizing the connections, we fail to form a satisfactory impression of how another This article is reprinted with permission of the MIT Press, originally published as: Victor Turner and Edith Turner, “Performing Ethnography.” TDR/The Drama Review 26(2) special issue on Intercultural Performance (Summer 1982), 33–50. The photos and sketch in the original have been deleted except for Fig. 3.1. Different photos from the wedding reenactment at U.Va. in 1981 are found in Chapter 4. V. Turner (B) · E. L. B. Turner (B) University of Virginia, Virginia, USA

© The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_3

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culture’s members “experience” one another. For feeling and will, as well as thought, constitute the structures of culture-cultural experience, regarded both as the experience of individuals and as the collective experience of its members embodied in myths, rituals, symbols, and celebrations. For several years, as teachers of anthropology, we have been experimenting with the performance of ethnography to aid students’ understanding of how people in other cultures experience the richness of their social existence, what the moral pressures are upon them, what kinds of pleasures they expect to receive as a reward for following certain patterns of action, and how they express joy, grief, deference, and affection, in accordance with cultural expectations. At the University of Virginia, with anthropology students, and at New York University, with drama students, we’ve taken descriptions of strips of behavior from “other cultures” and asked students to make “play-scripts” from them. Then we set up workshops—really “playshops”—in which the students try to get kinetic understandings of the “other” sociocultural groups. Often we selected either social dramas—from our own and other ethnographies—or ritual dramas (puberty rites, marriage ceremonies, potlatches, etc.) and asked the students to put them in a “play frame”—to relate what they are doing to the ethnographic knowledge they are increasingly in need of, to make the scripts they use “make sense.” This motivates them to study the anthropological monographs—and exposes gaps in those monographs insofar as these seem to depart from the logic of the dramatic action and interaction they have themselves purported to describe. The actors’ “inside view,” engendered in and through performance, becomes a powerful critique of how ritual and ceremonial structures are cognitively represented. Today, students of social science are familiar with Bateson’s concept of “frame,” and Goffman’s, Handelman’s, and others’ elaborations on it, including Goffman’s notions of “framebreaking,” “frame slippage,” and “fabricated frames.” To frame is to discriminate a sector of sociocultural action from the general on-going process of community’s life. It is often reflexive, in that, to “frame,” a group must cut out a piece of itself for inspection (and retrospection). To do this, it must create—by rules of exclusion and inclusion—a bordered space and a privileged time within which images and symbols of what has been sectioned off can be “relived,” scrutinized, assessed, revalued, and, if need be, remodeled and rearranged. There are many cultural modes of framing. Each of them is a direct or indirect way of commenting on the mainstream of social existence. Some use special vocabularies, others use the common speech in uncommon ways. Some portray fictitious situations and characters which nevertheless refer pointedly to personages and problems of everyday experience. Some frames focus on matters of “ultimate concern” and fundamental ethics; these are often “ritual” frames. Others portray aspects of social life by analogy, including games of skill, strength, and chance. Other modes of “play” framing are more elaborate, including theater and other performative genres. Some social events are contained in multiple frames, hierarchically arranged, frame within frame, with the ultimate “meaning” of the event shaped by the dominant, “encompassing” frame. Frames, in other words, are often themselves “framed.” But let’s not speak of “meta-frames,” except in a play frame! Nevertheless, ribaldry may be the most appropriate “metalanguage” for today’s play frames—as Bakhtin argued in his great

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defense of Rabelais and the “Rabelaisian language” he drew from “the people’s second world”—in order to reinstate human good sense in a literature bedeviled by the cognitive chauvinism of intellectual establishments, secular, and sacred. Framing frames perhaps makes for intensified reflexivity. In 1981, one of our Virginia graduate students, Pamela Frese, who has been studying marriage (culturally, structurally, and in terms of social dynamics) in the Charlottesville area—usually in the official role of photographer—elected to cast the entire anthropology department as participants in a simulated or fabricated contemporary Central Virginian wedding. Edith and Victor Turner, for example, were the bride’s mother and father, and the bride and groom were identified primarily because they were not in the least a “romantic item.” The rest obtained kinship or friendship roles by drawing folded strips of paper from a hat—each slip describing a role: bride’s sister, groom’s former girlfriend, groom’s father’s father, bride’s drunken uncle, and so on. A Department of Religious Studies graduate student was cast as the minister. Both faculty and students were involved. A “genealogy” of the families was pinned up in the department office several weeks before the event. Almost immediately people began to fantasize about their roles. One of the faculty members declared, as father of the groom, that his “side” of the wedding represented $23 million of “old New England money.” This figure, he remembered, was what the heiress whom he nearly became engaged to at Yale was alleged to be worth. Victor Turner was an old proletarian Scots immigrant who made vulgar money by manufacturing a cheap, but usable, plastic garbage can, and who quoted Robbie Burns, often irrelevantly. The Levi-Straussian principle of “binary opposition” was clearly in evidence. The “wedding” took place in the large basement of our house at Charlottesville— the “kiva,” some called it. Afterward, there was a “reception” upstairs with a receiving line, real champagne, and festive foods. At subsequent sessions, students were asked to describe, or if they wished, to write down their impressions—partly as seen from their own “real” viewpoint. The data is still coming in. Several people took photographs of the different stages of the event. Others taped conversations and registered variations in the decibel level of the group during the reception. All the materials would add up to several full-length papers. Pam Frese, the original researcher, will “write up” the whole enterprise. Here, let’s consider just the “nesting” of “frames” involved. 1. The encompassing frame is a pedagogical one—“everything within this frame is data for anthropological analysis.” The formula is “let us learn.” 2. Within (1) nests a play frame, with Batesonian “metamessages.” (a) The messages or signals exchanged in play are in a certain sense untrue or not meant; and (b) that which is denoted by these signals is non-existent. The formula is: let us make believe (Fig. 3.1). 3. Within (1) and (2) nests a ritual-script—the preparations for the wedding and a Christian form of the wedding service. If this frame had not itself been framed by the override “all this is play,” the ritual frame would have had its wider cultural “moral function.” Ritual says “let us believe,” while play says, “this is makebelieve.” Without the play frame, there would have been a real danger that, in

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Fig. 3.1 Nesting of frames

terms at least of Catholic theology, a real marriage would have taken place, for here it is the couple who are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage, not the priest, whose basic role is to confer the blessing of the Church on the couple. Since ritual is “transformative,” the couple would have transformed their relationship into that of spouses by the performative utterances of the nuptial liturgy. Truly to “play at” performing a ritual drama is, without suitable precautions being taken, to play with fire. But it was clear that the “serious” ritual frame was being desolemnized and demystified by its own containment in the wider play frame. A reminder of play was the reciting of a poem—an epithalamion by Sappho, in fact—before the service proper began, by a stranger to the group, though a close friend of the “bride.” Of course, in a real marriage the couple’s intentions are all-important. They must seriously “intend wedlock.” 4. Within this frame of fabricated marriage, ritual was the frame of the parapolitical structure of the University of Virginia’s Department of Anthropology. This frame was covert but genuine, fabricated like the other frames. At the “wedding reception,” it was clear in the behavior of the pretended kin and friends of the groom and bride what the extant pattern was of cleavages and alliances, oppositions and coalitions, between and among faculty and students—a delicate situation we won’t dwell on here. However, these artificial rufflings were minor indeed, hardly troubling a genial group of scholars. But under the protection of

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the play frame and simulated wedding frame, in words, gestures, conversational style, and dress, in reversals of “real-life” roles and manners, one saw everyday departmental politics as a “projective system.” As the evening progressed, frame slippage occurred more and more frequently, and people reverted to their ordinary “selves,” though for a few “peak moments”— for example, when the champagne cork popped—there was the sort of “ecstasy” that E. d’Aquili et al. in The Spectrum of Ritual (1979) write about—the simultaneous “firing” of cerebral and autonomic nervous systems, right brain and left brain, sympathetic and parasympathetic. It was interesting, too, to observe which persons “stayed in role” longest and who could or could not suspend disbelief in order to play their roles properly. Some, it became clear, thought there was something sacrilegious, some profanation of their own cherished values, in enacting what for them was a religious sacrament. Others, atheists or agnostics, introduced a note of parody or irony, into the ritually framed episodes. We were surprised at the wholeheartedness with which some anthropology students played their conventional roles—for example, the “bride,” who in real life was having reservations about her own marriage, sewed her own bridal gown. We were also astonished at how well the students understood what phenomenological sociologists would call the “typifications” of American culture, how almost “instinctively” and “automatically” they “knew what to do next” and how to do it, in fact, how “natural” many people find it to act “ritually” given the proper stimuli, motivations, and excuse. It was interesting, too, for us to observe how some participants were almost shocked into recognizing buried aspects of themselves. Others were taken over, “possessed” by what Grathoff and Handelman have called “symbolic types”—priest, bride, bridegroom, and so on, in the domain of ritual liminality; Drunken Uncle, Pitiful Lean, and Slippered Pantaloon in the play domain (the “bride’s grandfather”—a student played this senile type; in the middle of the service he shouted, “Battlestations! Battlestations!” reliving old wars.) A few comments on this performance: In practice, the hierarchical nesting of frames (as shown in the diagram) was overridden by the subjective responses of the actors, who evidently selected one or another of the frames as dominant. For example, the “bride” caught herself on numerous occasions following the performance talking about her “wedding” as though it was real. Others remained resolutely within the play frame; enacted creative fantasies pivoted on their chosen cultural roles. One woman remained consistently “dotty” throughout the whole ceremony, denouncing the sexual innuendoes of Solomon’s Songs of Songs in loud tones, and remaining generally objectionable during the subsequent reception and “wedding breakfast.” Others kept on shifting frames, both during the performance and for some weeks afterward; some remained “in frame” for several months and continued to call each other by kinship terms derived from the fabricated genealogy. Most participants told us that they understood the cultural structure and psychology of normative American marriage much better for having taken part in an event that combined flow with reflexivity. Some even said that the fabricated marriage was more “real” for them than marriages in the “real world” in which they had been involved.

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Fig. 3.2 Stealing the “bride’s” garter; original image from the 1982 publication (Pamela R. Frese)

The fabricated marriage was not our first attempt to “play” ethnography. At the University of Chicago, in seminars we ran in the Committee on Social Thought, our students put on several performances. One was a simulation of the midwinter ceremony of the Mohawk Indians of Canada, directed by David Blanchard, which involved the use of “False Face” masks, “dreaming,” trancing, and prophesying. Another “ritual” was a deliberate construct of our students, led by Robert Abernathy, using van Gennep’s Rites of Passage and Victor Turner’s Ritual Process and Forest of Symbols as “cookbooks” or “how-to” protocols. This “ritual” expressed in terms of symbolic action, symbolic space, and imagery, the anxieties and ordeals of Chicago graduate students. It was divided into three stages, each occupying a different space. Each participant brought along a cardboard box in which he/she had to squat, representing his/her constricted, inferior social status. There were episodes, of a sadomasochistic character, representing registration, in which the actors were continually referred between different desks, monitored by sinister rhadamanthine bureaucrats, who continually found fault with the registrants. Another scene, using multi-media,

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portrayed a typical student, being harangued from a lectern by an “anthropology professor” spouting technical gobbledygook (actually excerpts from published texts), while he was typing his dissertation to the accompaniment of a series of rapid slides of familiar architectural details of the University of Chicago. Finally, he “died” and was solemnly buried by a group of his peers clad in black leotards. The scene then shifted from a room in the students’ activities hall to a yard in the campus, where the constraining boxes were placed so as to represent a kind of Mayan pyramid which strongly resembled the new Regenstein Library, scene of many painful graduate attempts at study. The whole group danced around the pyramid, which was set on fire. This “liminal period” was followed by a final rite in another room of the hall, where student papers that had been unfavorably commented upon by faculty were cremated in a grate; the ashes were then mixed with red wine, and two by two the students anointed one another on the brow with the mixture, symbolizing “the death of bad vibes.” Finally, all joined together in chanting “Om, Padne, Om,” representing a “communitas of suffering.” This production involved music, dancing, and miming, as well as dialogue. Many of the participants claimed that the performance had discharged tensions and brought the group into a deeper level of mutual understanding. It had also been “a lot of fun.” There was one curious further “real-life” development. Victor Turner was contacted by a notorious dean in charge of student discipline, who inquired whether a series of small harmless fires, started in odd corners of the Regenstein Library, could have resulted from the “ritual.” He even suggested that some of the participants should be hypnotized by a university psychiatrist to elicit information about “wild-looking” people who participated in the fire dance around the symbolic Regenstein Library. Turner said it was unlikely that one of the actors was to blame for the small fires, since ritual theory suggested that such “rituals of rebellion” (in this case, a “play” rebellion) were cathartic, discharging tensions and allowing the system to function without serious contestation. He then invited the dean to the next seminar, which was an explanation by a Benedictine nun of a new script she had devised for the clothing ceremony of a postulant who would be taking her final vows. This evidently proved too much for the Irish American dean, who no doubt disapproved of Vatican II and all its “liberating” consequences including taking liberties with the script of traditional ceremonies. Turner never heard from him again. We have described, in some detail, in a Kenyon Review article, “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and Reflexive Anthropology” (1980, 1, 3; reprinted as Turner 1982), how we experimented with the performance of a social drama described in Victor Turner’s books, Schism and Continuity (1957) and The Drums of Affliction (1968), with a mixed group of drama and anthropological students at New York University. This was our contribution to an intensive workshop devoted to exploring the interface between ritual and the theater, between social and esthetic drama. In subsequent sessions at NYU, we have experimented, mainly with drama students, in performing Central African and Afro-Brazilian rituals, aided by drummers drawn from the appropriate cultures or related cultures. These ventures emboldened us to experiment further at the University of Virginia with the rendering of ethnography in a kind of instructional theater. Our aim was not

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to develop a professional group of trained actors for the purposes of public entertainment. It was, frankly, an attempt to put students more fully inside the cultures they were reading about in anthropological monographs. Reading written words kowtows to the cognitive dominance of written matter and relies upon the arbitrariness of the connection between the penned or printed sign and its meaning. What we were trying to do was to put experiential flesh on these cognitive bones. We were able, fortunately, to do more than this, for we could draw upon the recent first-hand experience of returning fieldworkers. We therefore cast in the roles of director and ethnodramaturg anthropologists fresh from immersion work in, for example, New Ireland and the American Northwest Coast. Students were encouraged to read available literature on these areas and were then given roles in key ritual performances of the cultures recently studied by their returned colleagues. One of the performances we tried to bring off was the Cannibal (Hamatsa) Dance of the sacred winter ceremonials of the Kwakiutl Indians.1 Here the director was Dr. Stanley Walens, an authority on the Northwest Coast, whose book, Feasting with Cannibals: An Essay on Kwakiutl Cosmology (1981), was published shortly after the performance. Walens condensed the long series of rituals composing the Hamatsa ceremony into a short script (see Appendix). My students prepared the ceremonial space, which, again, formed part of the extensive cellarage of my house. Under Walen’s guidance they made props, and improvised costumes and body decoration, including face-painting. For speeches, invocations, homilies, myth-telling, ridicule songs, and occasional bursts of competitive dialogue, Walens used Franz Boas’s translations of Kwakiutl texts. Walens acted as narrator, chorus, and coordinator throughout. A similar format was used by Mimi George, the ethnographer who had just returned from her study of Barok ritual in New Ireland. We have no space to discuss these performances in detail, but it might be useful for those who contemplate doing something similar to quote from comments made subsequently by Walens and others. Both, we think, indicate the high reflexive potential of ethnographic performance as a teaching tool, essentially as a means of raising questions about the anthropological research on which they are based, but which the performances transform in the process of dramatic action. First, then, Walens’ commentary: The most obvious aspect of putting on the cannibal ritual was perhaps the continual feeling that it was play. The actual ritual must have been far more serious, more cataclysmic in its experiential effect on native observers than it could possibly be on non-natives. The ideas behind the ritual are so cosmic that without the associations that a native makes between those overweening social and cosmic forces, the symbols and actions of the ritual must lose much of their impact. At the same time, the reactions of the students to the ritual did seem to imply that they picked up on the tenor and timbre of the actual ritual. The sense of aggressiveness, conflict, the controlled display of hostility and destructiveness did come across despite the constant messages from the actors that these were amateurs playing. Of course, there is a dual element of seriousness and play in all drama; one might even wonder about the use of the word “play” to refer to dramatic presentations. Indeed, rituals often seem to focus on the revelation that reality is merely a fiction, a presentation that humans make for one another. Vast secrets are

3 Performing Ethnography revealed as being mere mechanical tricks; the spirit in the mask turns out to have the same birthmark behind his left knee as does Uncle Ralph. We may marvel at the technical ability of an Uncle Ralph or a Laurence Olivier to make us temporarily suspend belief that we are watching them (indeed that may be the most cogent marvel of drama as a whole) and for a moment to see only a Hamlet, or a cannibal bird, or a Willie Loman. We might ask why that most cosmic of modern plays, Waiting for Godot, seems to be one in which the action consists solely of play activity, activity in which all the conventional dramatic moments are negated by statements of their irreality. Contrast how Beckett handles suicide with the way Chekov or Ibsen do. In short, the problems encountered in putting on an ethnographic performance are not by nature different from those that an opera or drama director would face. In fact, while preparing the Kwakiutl ritual, I was continually made aware of just how much preparation, training, rehearsal, how many years of stockpiling the paraphernalia, the foods for the feast, the validating gifts, how much patience in achieving the requisite status, must have gone into such native ceremonies. Kwakiutl ceremonies are long—the winter ceremonial season lasts as long as four months, consisting of daily ritual activities in hundreds of varieties, all complexly interrelated, and all of which alter the statuses of the participants so that subsequent rituals must take account of the newly acquired or divested statuses of everyone else in the society. We prepared only a minimal amount of food and paraphernalia, and had only the merest mote of performance, yet the amount of preparation time and rehearsal time was tremendous. The amount of camaraderie that arose among us was also astounding; I was not particularly friendly with the people who helped with the preparations before the class, but since then have felt much closer toward them. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of dramatic presentation is the way in which the mutual performance of a fiction unites all its creators. Another matter is that of performers versus audience. In one sense, we were all the audience for this ritual. The Hamatsa ritual now exists only in a printed form; we tried to approximate this form as much as possible. It was therefore quite unlike the production of a play, where there is a movement toward breathing new life into a form. By nature, living rituals seem to be ever changing. To perform a ritual the same way twice is to kill it, for the ritual grows as we grow, its life recapitulates the course of ours. It becomes the symbol for the society itself. Just as the experimental theater directors of the sixties and seventies rebelled against the strictures of our society by contravening those strictures in their performance texts, so do Kwakiutl see the cannibal ritual as a symbol of the life and death of their culture, and mourn the demise of their culture in mourning the demise of its ceremonies. Our play presentation then can be seen as a representation of the modern view of primitive ritual as a whole—that it is slightly if not completely foolish, that it is primarily a social act, that it is play-acting. We imagine our own view of the Kwakiutl is the same as their view of themselves. The meaning of the ritual for them is forever unapproachable by us. We experience only the ritual we perform, the one that actually takes place between a group of students, colleagues, and friends in the basement of a house in Charlottesville in December 1981. If we rejoice in our common experience, well and good. We have put on a play, we compare notes, and wait for the reviews. As in any play, we reaffirm, through this particular fiction communally performed, truths communally experienced. We must also question the validity of that experience. The situation is not unlike that in which a Plains Indian presents his vision, gained on a solitary quest, to a committee of elders who review it and give it their stamp of approval, or when a ritual of fecundity is given validity through subsequent bestowal of approval by the relevant deific elders. The reviews are important, as important as the production itself, for they define the commonality of the experience. I wonder if I would have asked these questions about the nature of performance if I hadn’t had to put one on. I certainly feel much more aware of the nature of performance per se than I did before. It becomes easy to see the messages embedded in rituals that

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V. Turner and E. L. B. Turner remind the audience that this is a performance—the little skits in the cannibal ritual, or the overblown speeches, the constant revelations by dancers of their human identities. There is an interesting paradox here—in Western drama, the performer’s technique should be so good that he conveys through the maximum of artifice the greatest amount of naturalness to his stage character. Both poor mastery of technique and overpresentation of the emotions themselves (“hamming”) detract from the illusion of balance between contrivedness and spontaneity that makes for convincing dramatic presentation. Since stage gestures bear no relation to everyday gestures, having by nature to communicate over distances far greater than those normally used in gestural communication, the illusion of naturalness is possible only with carefully controlled artifice. In the cannibal dance too there must be this balance— the cannibal dancer must convey through the balanced use of gesture and action the feeling that he is going to destroy the people in the room. He must make them fear for themselves—is this not the purpose of all drama—by striking a balance between natural human motion and alien motion. I have often wondered how to convey to my classes an emotion that would be similar in character and degree to that which the audience at a cannibal dance might feel when the cannibal first appears. How do you convey to people that the instrument of their own deaths is present in the room? My classes know me as a cream puff, so I could never begin to pretend to be the type of psychopathic villain that might, in our society’s mythology, strike fear into their hearts; I have not prepared them to expect it from me, nor do I possess the acting ability to convey it to them. I think this the most important facet of the cannibal dance—the confrontation each person has with his own death in a living embodiment—and can only feel that it was not conveyed in our play ritual. Douglas Dalton, one of the participating students, giving a somewhat different view, wrote: “As the ceremony progressed I felt not so much the antagonistic rivalry that was overtly expressed in the ceremony between the bear clan and the killer whale clan, but the fact that we were collectively doing something really important—something essentially correct. There was so much power flowing all over the place in the longhouse (the Charlottesville basement) that night! The spirits were really at work that evening and we had to keep everything in line so all that power wouldn’t destroy everything!” The Kwakiutl used to enhance the destructiveness of cannibal dancers, putting on demonstrations of death by using masks, bladders full of blood, and the like. To the audience these must have been very effective; and of course, there were times when people were really killed. I keep coming back to this one issue—the nature of artifice and fiction in play performance. I think this is what people in the seminar were most aware of, a universal of drama, not the particular ritual we performed. I also think the questions that lie at the foundation of theatre and theatrical performance lie at the foundation of ritual and ritual performance— questions about the relationship of actors to text, of actors to audience, or fiction to fictive reality, and so on. I have no doubt that the students see some of the dramatic nature of the cannibal ritual—dramatic in both senses of the word: it is effective and it is theatre— and that they can now read ethnography and introject those feelings of theatre into the dry accounts of dances and songs and spirit names which anthropologists have written down. I have breathed life into Kwakiutl ritual just as a director breathes life into a play—but I have done it independently of the intentions of the Kwakiutl authors, just as a play production is independent of the intentions of the play’s author. One has the feeling that rituals are magical, that for some reason as yet unknown to science they can communicate to people, not despite their artificiality, but because of and through their artificiality. Rituals are efficacious and we wonder how. Just as we know that a good stage magician is performing tricks—that is, really not levitating that elephant or sawing that woman in half —we still marvel at the beauty of the illusion and the mastery

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with which it is presented; so we marvel at the mastery of illusion in ritual while we reaffirm its illusionary nature. It’s obvious from all this that I’ve been thinking about the question of doubt, in an Augustinian sense, as the basis of ritual. In the chart of frames, each of the inner levels presents more doubt of the outer levels, each contravenes and obviates the outer levels. It is not that religion is so much a statement of belief but that at its most effective it enables us to suspend disbelief in the things that are larger than ourselves, whether they be deities or nature or history or the sacred corpus of anthropological theory. Just as at a ritual we may have a momentary inkling that there was something greater present than simply a bunch of people playing at ceremony, so in our acting of the cannibal dance we have an inkling of something which transcends the limitations of a particular moment in the history of the anthropology department at the University of Virginia. Compare this finale with Dalton’s leap into what he took to be the Kwakiutl view of the Hamatsa ceremony: “The potlatch ended, in fact, with the assurance that the Kwakiutl would continue to keep the world in order in a pledge for next year’s ceremony. The bitter rivalry that was expressed in the early parts of the ceremony gave way to a final reconciliation and a true feeling of oneness with the forces of the universe.” Perhaps this is the critical difference between esthetic theatre and ritual—the actors on a stage must always seem to be the characters they portray or they have failed; the ritualist must always seem to be nothing other than what he is, a frail human being playing with those things that kill us for their sport. Stage drama is about the extrapolation of the individual into alien roles and personalities; ritual drama is about the complete delimitation, the total definition of person.

Unlike Walens, Mimi George insisted that the participants in the Barok initiation ritual were not to be instructed in the culture and social structure, but rather assigned ritual roles without preparation. This, in the words of one of the participants, JeanJacques Decoster, “provided the feeling of magic that prevailed most of the evening. We went through a rite, and didn’t just enact a ‘savage ritual.’ When I went home that evening and my housemates asked me about the stripes painted on my face, my answer was: ‘I have just been initiated.’” Mimi George, the director, dramaturg, and fieldworker who prepared the scenario, told us that despite the alienness of the context, the students were “caught up into the meaning and worth of the ritual.” Indeed, she was surprised by the similarity of their performance to its Papuan original. However, she felt that she had not given the actors sufficiently detailed guidance and was continually beset by the cry, “What do I do now?” What this ritual did bring off was a kind of existential “double-take.” At one point, the “initiands” beat the Tubuan masked figure. It was then revealed that inside it was merely a human being (in this case Victor Turner). But later, in the garden, in darkness and simulated firelight, the Tubuan glided in unexpectedly to the beat of drums. The demystified “spirit” was dramatically remystified. Decoster notes, “The moment of greatest intensity was the outdoor ceremony… I felt definitely uneasy when we initiands were lined up and facing away from the entity, and it was not Eric (the dancer within the Tubuan) I was turning my back upon, but truly the Tubuan, an unknown and decidedly scary being. In a curious way, the ritual flogging (administered to the initiands by the ‘elders’) worked as a tension reliever.” Other “initiands” commented on how close they felt to one another as against the uninitiated and already initiated. We have a thick file of such comments on these and other performances of ritual in other cultures. On the whole, they are enthusiastic and encouraging, though not a few echo Walens’ skepticism about whether any culture can be adequately translated

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into action-language of another. For our own part, we have not reached any definite conclusions as to the merits of this performative approach to ethnography. Whenever our classes have performed scripts based on our own fieldwork among the Ndembu of Zambia in Central Africa, we have undoubtedly learned something about that culture that we failed to understand in the field. For example, when we enacted the girl’s puberty ceremony (in which the novice is wrapped completely in a blanket, laid at the foot of the symbolic “milk tree,” and is compelled to remain motionless for a long period of time, while a large group of initiated village women dance and sing around her), we were later presented with the following account of her subjective impressions by Linda Camino, the student taking the role of Kankang’a (novice, initiand, literally, “guinea fowl”). Around and around they danced, again and again with punctuated cries and claps. Beneath the blanket I lay still and quiet, firm and “cool,” patiently awaiting the next stage, which I knew would be to escort me to my seclusion hut. Then a strange thing happened. Time lengthened, expanded, and my wait seemed interminable, for as the singing and cries of the women grew lustier, as the pulsation of their feet and hands quickened to the driving beat of the insistent drums, I began to fear that they had quite forgotten all about me, guinea fowl. They were having fun; I was not. The drums beckoned me. Their wrenching beats filled my muscles with tension, demanding a response, a response I could not give as guinea fowl. The women’s enthusiasm and boisterous cheers challenged me to spring out from the blanket to join them. At this point, a desire to be like those other women, a desire to move my body freely to the sounds of the drums overwhelmed me. I longed to be a woman—alive, vital, responding, moving; not a dull guinea fowl, still before a tree, unseen, stationary, alone.

We were aware of the ambivalence with which pubescent girls had regarded the passage to adult social status, but Camino’s comments suggested a hypothesis about how the ritual might have motivated a real Ndembu novice not merely to accept but to strongly desire her new status-role and membership in a community of wives and mothers. Such a hypothesis would have to be tested out, of course, in further field research, but the fact that a simulated ritual could raise it is at least one persuasive argument in favor of performed ethnography. In our experience, the most effective kind of performed ethnography is not the simulation of a ritual or a ceremony torn from its cultural context, but a series of “acts” and “scenes” based on detailed observations of processes of conflict. Rituals, like law cases, should not be abstracted from the frameworks of the ongoing social process in which they were originally embedded. They have their source and raison d’etre in the ceaseless flow of social life, and in the social dramas within which communities seek to contain that life. By posing the functionally familiar against the culturally exotic in the dynamics of social drama, we can make our students vividly aware both of innate commonalities and cultural differences in relation to a wide range of human societies. Our recommendation, then, is this: If we attempt to perform ethnography, let us not begin with such apparently “exotic” and “bizarre” cultural phenomena as rituals and myths. Such an emphasis may only encourage prejudice, since it stresses the “otherness of the other.” Let us focus first on what all people share, the social drama form, from which emerge all types of cultural performance, which, in their turn, subtly stylize the contours of social interaction in everyday life. In practice, this means setting apart a substantial block of time to familiarize students with the culture and

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social system of the group whose dramas they will enact. Such instruction should be interwoven with what Richard Schechner might call “the rehearsal process.” The resultant instructional form could be a kind of synthesis between an anthropological seminar and a postmodern theatrical workshop. The data should be scripted; costumes, masks, stage settings, and other props should be made carefully, with an eye to cultural authenticity (though heavy-handed realism may not be appropriate). It is highly desirable, whenever possible, to bring in a member of the group studied as a dramaturg or director—or someone in the group who has done fieldwork should be dramaturg or director. We have found that students greatly enjoy these detailed, technical preliminaries. We have also found that nearly all the rituals we have performed involve at least one episode of feasting. If possible, the foods used in the original setting should be provided, cooked in the traditional ways. Foods, food taboos, and ways in which food is shared and exchanged make up a kind of cultural grammar and vocabulary which often give clues, when their symbolism is decoded, to basic attitudes and values of the group and to its social structure. At least one session should be allocated to a close review of all aspects of the performance seen in retrospect. This should include subjective statements by the actors, the director, the dramaturg, and members of the audience if an audience was thought necessary. Much of the emphasis will be found to be on cultural differences, and the difficulties and delights of playing roles generated by cultures often far different from our own. In these occasions of intercultural reflexivity, we can begin to grasp something of the contribution each and every human culture can make to the general pool of manifested knowledge of our common human condition. It is in dramatics and dynamics most of all that we learn to coexperience the lives of our conspecifics, “our brother man and sister woman,” to quote the great bard of Victor Turner’s own Scottish culture, Robert Burns. [The script for the Potlatch and Hamatsa rituals is found in the Appendix.] Note 1. Anthropologists now call the Kwakiutl by the name that they themselves prefer, Kwakwaka’wakw. In this reprint, we retain the 1980s usage employed by the Turners.

References (no references were provided in the original; the editors have generated this list from the sources cited in the article) d’Aquili, Eugene G., Charles E. Laughlin, and John McManus. 1979. The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Turner, Victor Witter. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

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———. 1968. The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. ———. 1980. “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and Reflexive Anthropology.” Kenyon Review 1 (3) (Summer): 80–93. Reprinted in From Ritual to Theatre by Victor Turner. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. 1982. ———. 1982. “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and Reflexive Anthropology.” In A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology, edited by Jay Ruby, 83–97. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Walens, Stanley. 1981. Feasting with Cannibals: An Essay on Kwakiutl Cosmology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 4

Revisiting the Past for the Present: The Wedding Ritual Performance in the Turners’ Seminar Pamela R. Frese

I was introduced to ethnographic performance as a class exercise through my experience with this form of pedagogy in Vic and Edie Turner’s seminars. The Turners’ reflections on those and other ethnographic performances as successful ways for increasing participants’ awareness of “how people in other cultures experience the richness of their social existence” are recounted in the essay reprinted as Chapter 3 of this volume (p. 40). These seminars relied on the research conducted by seminar participants recently back from their field research. But ethnographic performances as forms of pedagogy were not limited to the “other”; I contributed the performance of the Anglo-American wedding to the seminar based upon what I had learned in my Ph.D. research. Directing the performance of a “typical” wedding for the seminar was an amazing experience for a graduate student in the process of writing her dissertation. In this chapter, I reflect on the Turners’ analysis of the wedding performance that I first cast and directed in their seminar in 1981. I share the ethnographic exercises that emerged from that experience, which I incorporate into my classes today, and I include thoughtful comments on this experience shared by my students. In addition, Susan Brownell (co-editor of this volume), Abigail Adams, and I organized a workshop for the 2019 American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings in Vancouver on “Performing Gender in the Classroom: Ethnographic Performance of a Bridal Shower and Bachelor Party.” This successful event, designed to explore the pedagogy we are offering in this book, bore a great deal of resemblance to the learning outcomes in my classroom, even if the participants were not undergraduate students. I incorporate a brief discussion of this workshop and share some of the comments offered by these participants as well.

P. R. Frese (B) Department of Anthropology and Sociology, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_4

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Revisiting the Wedding Performance Through Text and Memory The overview of the pre-performance preparations for the wedding performance that the Turners provide in Chapter 2 is mostly correct, but as the graduate student director and producer of this experience, I have a slightly different perspective since my memory overlaps with the Turners’ writing through a different lens. A month before the wedding in the Turners’ basement, two graduate students who were friends of mine agreed to act as the bride and groom for the ceremony. A graduate student in Religious Studies who was also enrolled in the seminar agreed to play the role of the marrying official. I asked a friend from my work at a local bar/restaurant to participate as the groom’s ex-girlfriend. As the Turners explain, I then solicited participation by other students in the seminar, the U.Va. anthropology faculty, and other graduate students in the Department of Anthropology to play the roles of friends and family of the bride and groom, roles assigned after they drew a name from one of two bags labeled as “male” or “female” that then identified their relationship with the bride or the groom (e.g., sister of the bride, best friend of the groom). In addition, I created a kinship chart on a large poster board that was placed in the general anthropology office weeks before the performance. Vic and Edie noted that participants immediately began “constructing” their stories to reflect their relationship to the bridal couple. As a graduate student pretty oblivious to department politics at the faculty level, I was honored and appreciative that most faculty and fellow graduate students agreed to participate. Vic and Edie played the role of the bride’s parents and hosted the wedding and reception in their home, our regular classroom. The Bride and Edie helped me make the wedding cake and the Bride agreed to make her wedding gown. Everyone was to bring the bride and groom “gifts” written down on a piece of paper that were appropriate given their relationship to the couple. We discussed this event in the following class period after the couple opened their “gifts” (see Figs. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4). As I remember this later discussion, we didn’t dwell on important Turnerian concepts of communitas, liminality, or the multivocal symbols that were so important to my dissertation. I had no idea that Vic and Edie were going to write about this classroom experience. The Turners used “framing” in their analysis of the classroom performance in the article reprinted in this volume as Chapter 2, perhaps because Vic was on my dissertation committee and he knew I was working with his other concepts of multivocal symbols and the ritual process.

Reframing the Ethnographic Performance The Turners’ take on the “framing” of the wedding I directed as a gendered ritual performance in the early 1980s was much easier than it would be if I attempted to analyze it today. The contemporary awareness of “positionality” in ethnographic research,

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Fig. 4.1 Minister, best man, groom, and father of groom waiting by altar in the Turners’ “kiva” downstairs (Pamela R. Frese)

Fig. 4.2 University of Virginia faculty and students in the receiving line (Pamela R. Frese)

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Fig. 4.3 The bride and groom cut their wedding cake before sharing it with the “guests” (Pamela R. Frese)

the detailed understanding of the complexity of gender and sexuality through issues associated with LGBTQ&A identities, and a consideration of today’s nuanced understandings of hegemonic structures within and beyond the classroom would make “framing” this performance a very detailed and complicated endeavor. Indeed, in the late 1970s and early 1980s these ideas were first working their way into scholarly discourse. Gazing back at this event today, I understand that Vic and Edie viewed and analyzed the event through the eyes of senior scholars and were certainly more aware in their interpretations of the “factions” and “schisms” within the faculty than a naïve graduate student. But they apparently were unaware of graduate students’ knowledge of relationships between graduate students and between graduate students and faculty (at least who was “talking to” whom in today’s terms). Indeed, this does really complicate the erection of an accurate set of frames when trying to deconstruct an ethnographic performance. The wedding performance illustrated several things to me as a student in this seminar relying on the important understanding of multivocal symbols and the liminal dimension of all rites of passage—a liminal time and space that engenders danger,

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Fig. 4.4 The lucky man who caught the garter standing with the groom (Pamela R. Frese)

power, and reversals for the ritual participants. One of the most obvious dimensions of this liminal experience was the reversal of social roles that emerged through the performance of the ritual and the embodiment of reversals as faculty and students came together as “fictive kin,” temporarily erasing hierarchical power relations within the department. Accompanying this reversal was the emergence of “communitas” as an outcome of enacting this performance with others. As the Turners note in their analysis of the event: some remained “in frame” for several months and continued to call each other by kinship terms derived from the fabricated genealogy. Most participants told us that they understood the cultural structure and psychology of normative American marriage much better for having taken part in an event that combined flow with reflexivity. (p. 43, this volume)

Crafting a kinship chart for the “actors” really enhances their experiences of the event and what they remember for the future. I continue to find that communitas emerges when fictive kinship is evoked, especially when a kinship chart is incorporated into the exercise. See my discussion of Zinacantán in Chapter 5. “Liminality” does enhance an understanding of the many actions that expressed the “danger” and “power” that emerged during this performance event. For Vic and Edie, the wedding ritual performance was nested within a play frame and without that the “ritual frame would have had its wider cultural ‘moral function.’ … and there would have been a real danger that…a real marriage would have taken place” (p. 42). Liminality works better for me to understand the ritual as potentially very powerful, with elements of “danger” associated with the possibility that the bride and groom were “really” married; they did joke about this afterward since they really were a

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“thing” as my students would say today. The Turners apparently didn’t realize this at the time, but their relationship was why I asked them to play the role in the first place. Liminality explains the emergence of other incidents throughout the ceremony. Vic and Edie explain these examples as the way that “atheists or agnostics, introduced a note of paradox or irony, into the ritually framed episodes” (p. 43). But if my memory of the “disruptions” that occurred during the ritual refers to the same individuals that Vic and Edie cite, religion didn’t play a role for these individuals. Understanding these examples through the lens of liminality works much better. For example, why would a friend and fellow graduate student (she wore black of all things!) stand up and interrupt the “actual ceremony”…venting anger at the couple right before the bride and groom exchanged their vows in the ritual? And why did another graduate student and friend, acting as a senile old man waving his cane, suddenly erupt with angry outbursts exchanged with invisible people during the ceremony? (He is pictured in the Turners’ article sleeping during the reception.) They were endangering the success of the event!! But were they? Now in hindsight, these unplanned, improvisational acts actually created a more successful ritual performance than I originally planned and illustrate well what liminality can engender. The Turners explain these examples of my friends and colleagues’ performances as actors embodying “symbolic types” and I, too, was amazed at the cultural constructions of social roles that were reinvented in the ritual and reception that followed. For example, when I went to pick up my friend from work to take her to the “wedding” as the groom’s old girlfriend, she surprised everyone (including me) by appearing for her role in a risqué red dress. She “fit” the role of an ex-girlfriend out for revenge perfectly, a role she and I had discussed in “fun” before the event. The colors that reflect what we refer to now as the traditional “binary” construction of gender were most definitely reflected in the “symbolic types” referred to by Turner. She hadn’t taken anthropology and knew no one else at the event, so how did she know that black (associated with the formal and civilizing properties of the groom), white (reflecting the purity of the bride), and red (associated with lust and sexuality) had been identified by Vic as the ultimate colors appearing in all cultures (Turner 1966)? Red, except at Anglo-American weddings around Valentine’s Day or Christmas holidays, and black at any time were inappropriate colors for women to wear to a wedding in the 1980s. The article by the Turners, published right before Vic’s death, reflects the beginnings of reflexive and experiential anthropology (see Frese, forthcoming). Vic heralded the interplay between these emerging discussions and ethnographic performances when he reminded us that “The group or community does not merely ‘flow’ in unison at these performances, but, more actively, tries to understand itself in order to change itself. This dialectic between ‘flow’ and reflexivity characterizes performative genres” (Turner 1979, 93). The application of different theories to ethnographic material celebrates different dimensions of the ethnographic experience. How I teach today owes a great deal to Vic and my dear mentor and friend Edie. I have found that when students are enacting ritual performances from their own culture, symbolic types constantly emerge.

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My classroom exercises today are interwoven with the Turners’ perspectives and with contemporary considerations of positionality and reflexive considerations of hegemonic structures inside and outside the classroom. The exercises provide students with a critical reflection on the interplay between “tradition” and contemporary reality, as discussed further below.

Engaging Memory and Ancestors in the Classroom Today My classroom performance exercises are ritualized social dramas that may affirm an existing social structure while also providing a means to critique its form on a number of levels. Here I expand on an extension of my wedding research into two rituals—the bridal shower and bachelor party rituals—that support the AngloAmerican wedding itself as symbolic enactments of gender, social and biological reproduction, and family relations. These two rituals lead up to the wedding ritual; they are performances that reveal the power of gendered hegemonic structures as they are expressed through ritual forms today. My students who have experienced these performances view their participation as an eye-opening glimpse of their own roles in perpetuating the gender binary and as a way in which to question their place in contemporary US society. These two examples of ethnographic performance resonate with most of my students before they enact it in class, as the traditional Anglo-American bridal shower and bachelor party are performed in the United States in many different venues, from personal experience to movies and other forms of popular culture. So students don’t necessarily craft a new identity for this performance, they may enact “themselves” as members of US society or as international students visiting the United States for education. I provide below a brief description of each ethnographic performance and include some reflections my students shared on what they learned from these experiences. Overall, my students appreciate participating in these events.

Bridal Showers and Bachelor Parties in My Classrooms For over thirty years, I have offered this ethnographic performance most frequently in Peoples and Cultures of Contemporary United States. All students are expected to have successfully completed Introduction to Anthropology as a prerequisite. Early on in the semester, students read the germinal work by Annette Kolodny (1984), who addresses the establishment of the gendered binary associated with the early colonization of the New World by Europeans. I also lecture on my own research that first appeared in 1981, which of course addressed the binary and the hegemony of Anglo-American culture (Frese 1991). In this class, before we perform these celebrations, students also have learned about historical and contemporary cultures of the Navajo, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Chinese Americans

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in the US. As we approach this section of the course, so as to understand these practices rooted in Anglo-American traditions since the colonial period, we have already covered crucial concepts including “ethnocentrism,” “cultural relativity,” “colonialism,” “hegemony,” and “positionality,” especially in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, religion, socio-economics, and politics. I call for volunteers to play the bride and the groom since these roles will require a student to take on a more prominent role. Students then elect to work on either the bridal shower or the bachelor party and are sent out to do their own research, drawing on their own experiences or on those recommended by family, friends, etiquette books, bridal magazines, and now, the Web. After providing guidelines for the exercises (please see Appendix), I cede the crafting of these parties completely to my students. Each student group responsible for the bridal shower and the bachelor party is split into three smaller groups which are responsible for one of the following in terms of gender: decorations, food, and games. In the past, students have elected to hold the bridal shower in a bright sun-lit room in the student union, where comfortable chairs and small couches were arranged around a low coffee table on which sat a tremendous fountain of spring flowers, surrounded by prescribed ritual foods. The bachelor party is frequently held in the common space within a dormitory, with windows looking over athletic fields, a stone fireplace, and dark wood-paneled walls with deep carpeting on the floor. We have also held these performances in a large classroom where the space is divided in half and each side is devoted to one of the events. The organizers for the bridal shower become guests at the bachelor party and vice versa. Guests at the bridal shower play games that in the past have included a contest for best wedding dress (made from toilet paper), a “guess what kitchen utensil this is,” and “What do you know about the bride?” Winners take home goodie bags of personal comfort items (where the name of the item is written on a piece of paper). In addition, all guests bring a gift, reflecting their relation to the bride as a family member or friend, written on a piece of paper and “opened” at the end of the party. Gifts are frequently associated with the “theme” of the bridal shower, such as gifts for a “kitchen,” “bath,” or “lingerie” party. The bachelor party games are much more sexualized and almost always include a [root] beer pong tournament, the smoking of cigars, and at least one sexually oriented card or board game. I was even surprised one year when a “stripper” showed up, a student not enrolled in the class, who was nevertheless happy to fill the stereotyped role. Although this person did not engage in the activity for which they were “hired,” their mere presence was more than enough. Students responsible for the food for each event cut pictures out of magazines that feature the appropriate foods to be served and glue them to paper plates. I provide edible cakes for both events, using a local baker’s “most common cake ordered” for each celebration within the community. Students very much love these “parties” and definitely bond in new ways that remain in place for the rest of the semester, manifested frequently through “joking relationships.” All students had different reactions to the prescribed gender symbolism enacted in these performances that reflect their positionality, especially their

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gender identity. And given the nature of these events, students explain that the experience works to identify and perhaps help them to avoid gendered stereotypes in the future, stereotypes that became much more obvious as they were embodied by the students during these performances. Student reflections shared after these performances illustrate the value of embodied learning as pedagogy and the ways in which performance enhances their knowledge of the ethnographic materials. In addition, students invariably act out “symbolic types” as discussed by the Turners. Students shared that the event played upon the different expectation of the genders through history such as women expecting to be “pure”, “virginal”, and “dainty”. The men are expected to be w/multiple women, violent, interested in lots of alcohol. You get insight, even if it is a slice, into what we were taking about [in class]. It is easy to just read about something and put it on a test, but performing it adds a level of understanding that sticks with you. this experience provided insights into issues explored this semester. In this case, the presence of the gender binary in all aspects of life. Performances enhance the learning materials because to me the best way to actually learn is to get involved and be hands on with your material. Actually experiencing these celebrations through performance implicates us in these hegemonic celebrations that many of us take part in or hear about and don’t question. the bachelor and bridal shower allowed me to experience the gendered differences of each celebration. For the bachelor party, it is like one last go of it for the men and a time for them to be dudes and drink w/ games. For the bridal shower, it is when close friends and family help the bride to assume her role. They might share recipes or gift kitchen ware. The experience absolutely enhanced the material because it is more likely than not that we are going to remember an experience we had in class than an article we read on our own outside of class. I thought that it was very interesting to see how the stark binaries engrained into wedding rituals played out in real life. While we were all pretending I noticed how easy it was for me to fall into the role of a friend during the bridal shower. The whole party felt pretty natural to me especially after watching my cousin do this over the summer. The bachelor party however, while funny, was an unnatural feeling. I wouldn’t quite know how to act in that environment (I identify as cis female). I found these experiences to be a strength of the class, because we were able to connect the material with our own personal lives. I think the planning for this experience really highlighted the gender binary of women/nature and men/civilization [discussed by Kolodny 1984]. Acting out the events further solidified my understanding of the event and I found myself feeling uncomfortable participating in these types of events knowing what I know now. I am a very visual learner (which translates to kinesthetic learner usually too). So being able to see these traditions/celebrations helps me understand their significance and makes the facts I have learned about the events more memorable. I think being able to actively partake in the activities (instead of just reading them) helped me gain a greater understanding and had me aware of my gender performances. I love experiential learning. I think I learn more that way. It leaves a lasting impact and reinforces ideas that are not conscious to us. Without participation in addition to the lecture I would not have been able to understand how I, myself, reproduce and embody gender constructs. (emphasis in original)

The last time I taught this class in the Fall of 2018, there was a specific reaction to the food at the bridal shower. Earlier that semester we had read a book on Mexican

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American migrant farmworkers whose plight had become firmly identified by my students with the foods these workers harvested under oppressive conditions. When these foods showed up in the bridal shower, especially strawberries, there was a serious discussion regarding a lack of knowledge about what we eat in the United States and who is involved in getting it to our table. Students are now aware of how many people participate in these gendered rituals without thinking about the connection of these prescribed performances to a larger social and cultural reality. The comments shared by participants in a performance of a bridal shower and bachelor party at the 2019 AAA workshop reflect similar experiences to those of my students, even if the AAA participants are professionals and it was a “pretend” classroom. I began the workshop with a 30-minute presentation on the historical and ethnographic contexts of these two performances and then all participants “performed” gender by playing the “decorate the bride” game. This game involved using rolls of white toilet tissue and costume accessories to decorate two individuals who volunteered to serve as the “brides” for the competition, one of whom identified as cis male (i.e., assigned a male identity at birth and self-identified as male gender). The “official bride” (also a volunteer) had to choose which of the two brides won the contest after all “decorations” of the brides were completed. While the two brides were being “dressed,” the “real” bride shared an image on her phone of two individuals also dressed in toilet tissue from her own recent bridal shower. This link to other similar events was really interesting for all of us as she showed the photo around to other participants. We also shared two cakes, both gendered according to traditional wedding etiquette. The workshop began as any traditional presentation might at the AAA meetings. I introduced an overview of my own research into Anglo-American wedding traditions and the related ritual foods. The audience of graduate students and professors was attentive. Then we reversed the traditional format and entered into a liminal time and space. I asked for volunteers for two brides for the “decorate the bride” game and another “real bride” to decide which decorated bride should win. I divided the participants into two groups, each responsible for “dressing the bride” for the contest. As these strangers transformed into “friends and family” to decorate the bride in this liminal space, communitas emerged, amidst giggles and discussions of appropriate dress for “their” bride. I found myself having to ask for their attention as energy in the performance effervesced and, like my “real” students, they were a bit out of control. The entire event was a great deal of fun and a very successful ethnographic performance (see Figs. 4.5 and 4.6). On the survey distributed at the end of the workshop, participants wrote that they had benefitted in several different ways from this form of pedagogy. All participants believed that this form of pedagogy provided them with a successful learning experience and mentioned that the event was “fun” “with lots of giggling” and that “learning in action” companioned with “a great learning experience with the presentation” “helped to put history and theory into an applicable current setting,” and contributed to the success of this event. As the Turners predicted, a ritual performance as “play” engenders reflexivity, liminality, and communitas.

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Fig. 4.5 The two decorated “brides” toasting in front of the bride’s cake (Susan Brownell)

One participant wrote that the experience provided a beneficial embodied learning exercise: “it gets participants actively engaging in the lesson, builds relationships (like these events are designed to do in real life), and teaching about the practical & embodied processes at play. It also made us talk about & articulate otherwise implicit rules.” Like my students, the workshop participants also explored the hidden dimensions of the experience as a reflexive act: I was quite nervous to participate at first, but it was really good fun once everyone relaxed into the activity. Personally, I felt slightly uncomfortable being part of the bachelorette ritual of dressing the bride, because it reinforces that heteronormative culture that I’ve participated in throughout much of my life, but often felt uncomfortable with. Discussing this afterwards with other participants was really enlightening.

Another added that “I had never given too much thought to how assumptions about gender are actually physically manifested within these rituals, despite attending plenty of bridal showers in my life, so it was an illuminating experience.” Several participants, also teaching faculty, commented on how they planned to take this kind of experience back to their classrooms. One wrote “it’s so incredibly useful to have such an interactive learning experience like this. I’m really excited to try using this technique in my own teaching back home in the UK.” Another appreciated the exercise as embodied learning:

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Fig. 4.6 The groom’s cake at the 2019 AAA workshop, “Performing Gender in the Classroom: Ethnographic Performance of a Bridal Shower and Bachelor Party”; the theme of the meetings was “Changing Climates” (Susan Brownell)

It was great! Very fun, engaging and imaginative. An important aspect of the process is students doing things collaboratively to explore gender in a ritual context. It is very rare to see students engaging with ritual objects and ritual process through multisensory ways. Nowadays, everything is based on digital technologies so this was a nice reprieve.

Certainly, this exercise provides different ways of learning. As Rose Wellman, Vic and Edie’s granddaughter and an amazing anthropologist wrote after participating in the workshop, thinking back to college, I remember the courses that incorporated cultural performances. I remember each ritual in vivid detail. I remember what I learned. I do not remember the specifics of theories or articles nearly as well. This is what sticks. We learn through moving our bodies, performing, acting, and doing.

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Participants agreed with Rose that “experiencing the performances brought all the knowledge about gender constructions (that the facilitators were sharing) alive. I don’t think I’ll ever forget some of the new things I learned this morning!” Another added: “The lecture describing the performance & its context was incredibly interesting. It made the familiar strange, but also explained the actions. Also, doing this is something I will not easily forget.” The liminal nature of the event, an experience in which danger, power, and reversals can occur, emerged in the workshop as well. Here, in a liminal space and time, participants were able to critique gender constructs and “Not only were the activities fun and helped uncover how gender is practiced, they spurred conversations about our own experiences outside the classroom. I really loved how we were able to ‘play’ with gender too!” Another participant added that the dressing of the male “bride” was “silly, fun, shocking, man in frilly dress is gender punking.” Reflecting the underside of the liminal, a participant acknowledged that “initially they seem all in good fun, but the constraining implications gave them a heavier tone.” We couldn’t have planned for a male to volunteer to act as one of the “brides” who would be dressed for the event. But because he volunteered, more examples of the liminal nature of the game, especially in critiquing gender constructs emerged. As our male “bride” wrote about his experience “It foregrounds the gender binary very strongly. As the only cisgender man in the room, it was an experience of becoming hyperaware of my own gender performance.”

There were several reactions to his participation, especially when the group of people responsible for dressing him decided that he needed to undergo “medical intervention” and add toilet paper roll “breasts” to be a “bride.” This addition to the event provoked thoughtful discussions about gender. As a participant wrote: “Did he need them in order to be ‘the bride’? Speaks to larger gender binaries & norms.” Overall, the event sparked many questions. One participant voiced some considerations that always arise in class and also arose here at the AAA: “Do you ask your students if learning these western norms changes how they think about gender? Or how or whether they accept these stereotypes? I think Changing Climates theme applies to marriages too!!” Overall, the workshop was an unforgettable experience that encouraged the participants to reconsider the gender constructions with which they were familiar in ways they can envision sharing with their own students. I was especially appreciative of one participant contextualizing the workshop as a learning experience within the entire AAA meetings: “I was surprised to be so engaged in a session at a conference that has been on the hole very didactic. I wish there were more sessions like this at the AAA. Thank you for bringing performance ethnography alive for me.” Working on this volume, especially on this chapter, takes me back to the seminars I so enjoyed with the Turners; seminars that brought ethnographies to life. Performing ethnographic material enhances memory in ways other kinds of learning do not. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to pass this form of pedagogy and my memories of the Turners’ seminar on to my own students.

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References Frese, Pamela R. 1991. “The Union of Nature and Culture: Gender Symbolism in the American Wedding Ritual.” In Transcending Boundaries: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to the Study of Gender, edited by Pamela R. Frese and John M. Coggeshall, 97–112. New York, NY: Bergin & Garvey. ———. Forthcoming. “In the Spirit of Experience, Reflexivity and Growth: Exploring the Ancestral Roots of Performance Anthropology.” In The Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance. edited by Jonathan S. Marion and Lauren Miller Griffith. New York, NY: Routledge. Kolodny, Annette. 1984. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Turner, Victor. 1966. “Colour Classification in Ndembu Ritual.” In Anthropological Approaches of the Study of Religion, edited by Michael Bandon. 47–84. London, UK: Tavistock Publishers. A.S.A Monograph No. 3. ———. 1979. “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and Reflexive Anthropology,” Kenyon Review 1 (3) (Summer): 80–93. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1982. “Performing Ethnography.” TDR/The Drama Review 26 (2) (Summer): 33–50.

Chapter 5

Structure, Anti-structure, and Communitas in the Classroom: Notes on Embodied Theory Susan Brownell

At the Feet of the Master In 1981–1982, my senior year as an undergraduate major in anthropology at the University of Virginia, I took Edie and Vic Turner’s famous seminar. I had registered for the seminar and took it for credit and a grade. I had only a vague idea of what the seminar was about—I just knew that I had become infatuated with Victor Turner’s theories when Fred Damon had introduced me to them in Anthropology 101 in the second semester of my first year, that Vic was revered in the department, and that I wanted to learn from the person himself. I already knew Pam Frese because I had been a student in the first course she ever taught as instructor of record, a course on the peoples of Latin America. I arrived at the Turners’ home on the first class meeting date on the official U.Va. schedule only to find that the group had already been meeting. I suppose that Vic set his own schedule. The previous week, Pam had organized the wedding reenactment discussed in Chapter 4. I could only sit there, bewildered, as Vic quizzed Pam and the participants about their experiences of the event. Later I experienced the reenactment of the Northwest Coast potlatch, when I was scandalized to see my linguistic anthropology professor make obscene remarks about the gourds hanging from her staff, which she found to be shaped like large testicles. The reenactments were interspersed with meetings during which Turner would sit in his armchair and read a paper, or another participant would read a paper, and the group would discuss it. People came from all over the state to attend these events. As one of only two undergraduate students, I considered myself at the All student names in this chapter are pseudonyms to protect student identities. Quotations from student papers have retained the original errors of grammar but spelling errors have been corrected. S. Brownell (B) Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_5

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bottom of the social scale and, since there was not enough seating, dutifully took a place sitting cross-legged on the floor. The shortage of chairs meant that people were literally sitting at the feet of the master, and I was one of them. I purchased all of the books on the reading list and did my best to read them. I wrote my first paper on sport, “The Running Race as a Rite of Passage,” for “Dr. Turner” (there was no way I would have called him “Vic”), and received an “A,” but nevertheless finished the semester, and the following semester, when I audited the seminar, almost as foggy as I had begun. This was despite the fact that I had three years of an excellent anthropology education behind me, which had exposed me to wildly creative thinking. I had taken Roy Wagner’s course on “Castaneda and Don Juan” the first time he taught it. It would become a legendary and popular course on campus. Roy was there for the Turner’s ritual reenactments and Pam and I intended to invite him to write a recollection for this volume, but he passed away in September 2018. His departure along with Edie’s passing in 2016 left Pam and me feeling that a tremendously creative generation of anthropologists was now leaving us, and we decided to compile this volume to ensure that their legacy is passed on. My bond with the anthropology of experience and ritual reenactments was thus somewhat unusual because it was forged when I was an undergraduate. It demonstrates the force of this experience that my graduate education led me in completely different directions, and yet the seminar had sown a seed. In subsequent years, as I progressed through graduate school, there were many moments when understanding would seemingly well up from somewhere deep in my being, and I would think, “So that’s what he was talking about!” A decade later I decided to try a ritual reenactment while I was a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle, during my second year of teaching in the years when I was trying to land a tenure-track job. The course was an upper-level course in Anthropological Aspects of Communication. Looking for a way to occupy the copious time allotted to a five credit-hour course, and avoid writing even more new lectures, I decided to try some experiential activities. In my previous year as a visiting assistant professor at Middlebury College, I had encountered the kula ring project organized by David Napier. I developed my own version of that project and combined it with a ritual reenactment. Michelle Johnson was an undergraduate anthropology major in that class. Michelle and I did not keep in touch with each other, and unbeknownst to me she went on to the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Illinois, where her dissertation advisor was Alma Gottlieb, a student of Turner. Years later she came up to me at the AAA meetings and that is how I discovered that Michelle was also using ritual reenactments in her teaching. And so there is a line of descent that actually passed through undergraduates, not graduate students. It illustrates the Turners’ notion that there are other ways of learning besides written texts, that the seeds of understanding that can be planted by “experience” are very different from those planted by texts, and that those seeds can be more fruitful than conventional text-based learning.

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Using Ritual Reenactments to Teach Theory After my initial experiments in 1992, I did not try another ethnographic performance until nearly a decade later in 2001. I was reluctant to take any risks that might generate negative student evaluations because I needed good teaching evaluations for my tenure case. I also did not feel that my students at the University of Missouri-St. Louis were engaged enough to make a ritual reenactment work. By 2001, I had taken over teaching our upper-level course for majors, History and Theory of Anthropology, and I decided to revisit the kula ring as a way of teaching theories of reciprocity and gift exchange, and a ritual reenactment as a way of teaching Turner’s theories about ritual and liminality. After that, I incorporated both projects as a regular component of the course over the next decades. Perhaps deriving from my own undergraduate experience with ritual reenactments experienced within the mists of theory dimly comprehended, I have always connected reenactments tightly with theory rather than with ethnography. My approach is different from that outlined by Turner in his writings, and from that of Pam Frese; they emphasize that reenactments of social drama and ritual are a more humanistic way of teaching ethnography, as we discussed in our Introduction to this volume. However, that was not how they were performed in his seminar, at least not from my point of view. I was not a member of the inner circle of faculty and graduate students who prepared and organized the reenactments. No background reading of ethnography was assigned and I had no ethnographic information other than the brief introduction we received before the ritual began. I had the impression that Vic was less interested in how the reenactments complemented ethnographic texts and more interested in whether the ritual itself had an impact on the participants even if they were not immersed in the culture from which it came. This was an extension of his theories, which assumed that rituals in all times and places shared certain features, and that the temporal and symbolic structures of the ritual itself generate liminality and communitas—irrespective of the cultural background. This kind of universalizing “grand theory” is precisely what later went out of fashion with the postmodern turn in the 1980s. It was connected with his interest in the neurobiology of ritual trance; The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis (d’Aquili et al. 1979), was on the seminar reading list. I felt that he regarded the reenactments as a kind of experiment after which he could interview the participants about what they thought and felt in order to assess whether they had experienced liminality, communitas, and other features that confirmed his theories. This is the spirit in which I organize my classroom projects, and it is how I explain the exercise to my students. I tell them that we will be testing Victor Turner’s ritual theories. The guidelines for the assigned paper request an analysis of whether their experiences fit the theories or not. And so I present a different approach from other authors in this volume, except for Michelle, who also utilizes ritual reenactments in a theory class. In what follows I will tease out the implications of grounding the classroom exercises in theory.

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Kula Ring Reenactment Project In the first few weeks of class, I launch a gift exchange project modeled on the Trobriand Island kula ring. Students read selections from Marcel Mauss’s The Gift (2016), Bronislaw Malinowski’s description of the kula ring in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), and Annette Weiner’s discussion of the identification of certain kula gifts (kitomu) with owners in Women of Value, Men of Renown (1983). We start with a class session in which each student brings an object of special personal meaning to class. The desks are arranged in a circle and we go around the circle, with each student telling the story of the object. Sometimes the stories bring the tellers and audience to tears. A Korean student once teared up when telling the story of a ceramic figurine that had been given to her by her grandmother before she left Korea to come study in the United States, which represented her bond with her family and Korean traditions. Each student then chooses to join one of the islands that made up the kula ring. Every two weeks I set aside 15–20 minutes at the end of class when the islands make deep-sea expeditions to visit each other. Intra-island trading is also allowed. Students negotiate trades with other students, or islands may pool their resources. Unlike the kula ring described by Malinowki, the objects are not divided into two classes that move in different directions around a circle of islands, which proved to be too complicated to be workable. In the paper at the end of the project, students are asked to analyze which objects ended up being most prestigious and sought after, which traders ended up being most prestigious, and why. The project continues until the end of the semester and culminates in a debriefing and a short paper. When I interviewed Michelle for this chapter, I was astounded to hear about what had gone on outside the class. Michelle had seriously studied Tarot for two years and was therefore determined to join the island of Dobu, famous for its black magic. She persuaded her group to use magic to try to attract the most high-status objects, the ones with compelling stories, to their island. They also pooled their money to buy small “solicitory gifts,” such as tropical fruits, to entice holders of high-status objects to trade with them. She recalled that money was so tight for her in those days that she had to skip meals. “From my perspective as a total anthropology nerd,” she explained, “I was willing to go hungry. I was on full adrenaline.” There were three or four students in her group who were nearly as invested as she was. They held multiple meetings to create their magical incantations and to strategize about how, when, and where to perform them. To this day, her main memory of the project is of how much time she invested, and the pressure and stress she felt to obtain the high-status objects. She recalls, You think about how much fun it will be. Then there’s the realization of how much work goes into the ritual. You read it without understanding that this takes hours and hours of preparation. I probably wasn’t the only one to sacrifice food. Ritual is work. We read about ritual as play – it’s performative, it’s dramatic. Then we did it. It’s an investment.

In that first endeavor, I stated that the grade would be partly based on success in obtaining the high-status objects, which were ranked by the class. I later abandoned

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this component because in practice the status of some objects was under debate, and in general most students had at some time possessed one of the high-status objects. If Mauss’s gift theory is correct, receiving and temporarily possessing an item with its own story and a strong emotional attachment to its owner should create a spiritual bond between the giver and receiver. At UW, two students became romantically involved and joked that they had found their “lifetime kula partner.” However, until talking to Michelle, I had the impression that, despite the intense emotional attachment that some owners have to their objects, and despite Mauss’s pronouncements about the gift bearing the spirit of the donor, the kula exercise does not affect the students as strongly as the ritual reenactments. However, the kula project left a more indelible impression on Michelle than the ritual reenactment. In fact, she has never conducted a kula reenactment in her classes even though she tells her students the story of her undergraduate experience—because she is afraid that she would be disappointed if her students were not as invested as she and her group were.

Organization of the Ritual Reenactment The kula exercise creates social solidarity among the class members, laying the groundwork for the ritual reenactment. In the second half of the course, we read Turner’s From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (1982), and sometimes a chapter or two from The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969). These are supplemented by lectures on Turnerian theories of social drama and ritual with powerpoints and handouts (see the Appendix for my handout on Turnerian theory). I facilitate a discussion in which the class decides on the ritual that they will reenact, with the final decision made by elimination-round voting until there is a final vote between two rituals. If there is no clear majority, I will ask the advocates of the finalist rituals to do further research and come back and make their case in the next class period for the final vote. At UW, we reenacted a Lotuka (Sudan) boys’ initiation ritual, chosen because a student in the class had himself undergone it. UMSL students have chosen to reenact a Japanese funeral, a Dobuan yam magic ritual, a Wiccan initiation, a Haitian zombie-making ritual, an Ndembu wubwang’u twin ritual, a Mesoamerican Day of the Dead, and a Japanese setsubun festival. In addition, as recounted below, there was one semester in which I selected the ritual for them, a Swazi incwala kingship ritual. The students choose to join one of approximately five groups: ethnographic research, material culture (costumes, props, food, and drink), script, role assignments, and theory. The ethnographic research group is responsible for describing the relevant historical and cultural background. The theory group is responsible for introducing the relevant theory and contributing theoretical insights to the debriefing. One class period is devoted to oral presentations by each group. That presentation is the opportunity for students to learn about the ethnographic context. The ethnography group may circulate readings, and they also act as consultants to the groups creating the props, script, and roles.

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The reenactments are held during the scheduled 75-minute class period, in the classroom or another suitable space. If the rituals involve processions from one space to another, I commandeer a stairway landing or request a second classroom. The class meeting after the reenactment is devoted to a “debriefing,” a discussion that focuses on the students’ “experience” of the ritual (Turner and Bruner 1986). The project concludes with a 2000-word paper with three parts: (1) overview of the relevant Turnerian theory, (2) ethnographic description of the ritual, including a description of the student’s experience, and (3) assessment of whether the description fits the theories or not. The guidelines for this paper are in the Appendix. I prefer that the ritual is one that a member of the class has personally participated in, so that this student may act as an “elder” to guide the others. I encourage students with relevant experiences to volunteer to serve as the elder. Having a native elder helps to overcome the issue of cultural misappropriation. In my first endeavor, our reenactment of a boy’s initiation ritual was led by a member of the Lotuka ethnic group who had himself undergone the ritual—only this time he was the elder, not the initiate, a role reversal that seemed to give him a sense of empowerment. We reenacted the celebration of the boys’ triumphant return to the village after months of isolation in the bush, during which they had been circumcised (which was not included in our reenactment). I still remember that we heard a knock at the classroom door and I opened it to find a staff member from one of the offices down the hall who was there to complain about the noise. She found herself looking past me at a row of male warriors, who were stripped to the waist, painted, and holding javelins (a legacy of my days as a track and field athlete). I apologized for the noise and said I could do nothing about it because we were conducting a class project, but it would be over soon. Our Lotuka elder seemed to take it as a sign of respect that his fellow students had thrown themselves into this ritual so wholeheartedly. In our debriefing, he told us emphatically that we should understand that what we had done was not an imitation of the ritual, it was the ritual. It was very moving. As the other “elder” in the class, I played his wife in the ritual. Several years later, he wrote me a letter in which he told me that in his mind I was still his wife. I think what he meant was that, at least for him, the emotions evoked by the ritual were as real as his original experience of the ritual had been.

Theory vs. Ethnography Although my ritual reenactments are not primarily constructed as a way to teach ethnography, student comments indicate that they usually achieve this goal anyway. Emphasizing theory over ethnography has some advantages. It is important that students must approach the ritual with an attitude of respect: a disrespectful attitude would be counterproductive to the pedagogical goal and could result in a ritual that is a bad example of cultural misappropriation. Grounding the practice in theory helps to evoke this respect by lending the gravitas of “science” and “theory” to the activity. I describe it as an experiment, and they know that they will be required to write a paper

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afterward that applies Turnerian theory to the course of events and their experience of it. Knowing that “it will be on the test” helps to ensure that they respect the process. Without the theoretical context, such practices run the danger of being high-school like activities. My approach could be criticized for prioritizing universalizing “science” and “theory” over cultural empathy and understanding, but the student papers indicate that students do feel empathy and understanding. I review the issue of cultural misappropriation in the preparatory lectures and discussions, but I find that many of my students are already sensitized to it. For example, one student wrote about the Japanese funeral, I was apprehensive at first about doing a ritual enactment. This feeling did not come from thinking it a waste of time or dumb. I felt rather that in doing the ritual we would not give it the appropriate level of appreciation or encompass the nuance aspects. As Satoko [our Japanese elder] pointed out, there were things she saw which were either different or would not have been seen in an actual Japanese funeral. However, I feel we were able to come to an understanding of a different culture’s ritual better than if we had read about it. It is for this reason that I feel the ritual reenactment was necessary and appropriate.

Another student had even stronger misgivings about the Japanese setsubun ritual, but the theoretical knowledge that she gained ultimately overrode them: We adopted a ritual from another culture, butchered it, then dramatized it as if it had been part of our culture all along. I struggled with this ethically throughout the week and finally concluded that though it is cultural appropriation, it was for educational purposes. But, then, that opens a whole new can of ethical violations. If we as anthropologists cannot see the injustice in a simple class reenactment, then what hope do we have that the rest our species will acknowledge them in everyday activities? Despite my misgivings in regards to “borrowing” this ritual from another culture, I enjoyed reenacting the Setsubun ceremony and learning about the many phases that rites and societies pass through during reenactment. I recognize that rituals serve a specific function within a society that may not be evident on the surface but is a critical tool for reinforcing or maintaining community norms and mores and social structures. I also recognize the importance of communitas and liminality and the power these two concepts have on societies and cultures. It is fascinating that a social group can create communitas but that it does not always last as one might think it should. My experience with this project will lead me into a keener understanding of social complexities in reference to rituals.

Self and Other Frequently students experience flashes of insight about themselves and their own culture, an example of the “reflexivity” that Turner sees as a product of liminality. One student put this well: “There should always be a safety zone in which the actors distinguish reality from performance, but create enough emotional reaction to develop a better understanding of the culture that the ritual is associated with.” During our Dobuan yam magic ritual, a student found that she had gained greater insight into conflicts within her own family. The Japanese exchange student who

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led our Japanese funeral had lost her father a few years previously—which she had not revealed when she proposed and agreed to lead the organization of a Japanese funeral. In her write-up, she shared that our funeral had helped her better understand her father and resolve a conflict that had existed between them when he was alive. One student overcame her fear of public speaking because, within the safety of the written script and the liminal moment, she had realized that she could do it. I would be concerned if this learning about the Self seemed to overwhelm the learning about the Other to the point that the power of the project is being harnessed only toward self-realization, but student comments have assuaged my concerns. Furthermore, learning about Self and Other is not independent: as Sun Tzu once wrote in The Art of War, it is not enough to only know the Self or to only know the Other; only those who know both Self and Other are invincible in battle (Sun Tzu 1910, III.18). Turner and Schechner conceived of the relationship between the liminality of social drama and stage drama as a kind of Möbius strip in the shape of a figure eight. There is a symmetry between everyday life and ritual, the “liminal double” of everyday life (Turner 1982, 150). A “double liminality” is generated by ritual reenactments because the “society” in which they are actually grounded is the little society of the everyday routine of the classroom, not the Other society that owns the ritual. Likewise, anti-structure primarily emerges when students leave behind the normative structures of the classroom. I do not mention this to students ahead of time. I then bring it up in class after I have graded the papers, when we do our final summing-up. Some students get it in their papers and some don’t. One student who did get this point observed of our Haitian zombie-making ritual (described in detail below), At first I was really uncomfortable reenacting a ritual I knew little about. How can I do justice to a ritual I have never even seen before? I started to get angry and had a difficult time distinguishing our class work from the “armchair anthropologists” of the past. Then finally with the help of some postmodern concepts, I started to identify the role of the anthropologist as a filter and the subjectivity of their work. My classmates and I were anthropologists, not of Haitian voodoo but of United States culture. A culture rooted in colonialism and cultural insensitivity. […] We grew up with zombie films and in time Hollywood has altered the plots and the actors to acclimate to the different eras. Our in-class zombification ritual was an attempt to understand the US cultural fascination with voodoo and zombies.

Embodiment Even students who have strong critical feelings against cultural misappropriation usually end up acknowledging that ritual reenactments generate human empathy in a way that they can support. The physicality of reenacting a ritual has an impact that reading a text does not, illustrated by one student’s description of the impact of touching the corpse in the Japanese funeral: “To read about touching the deceased’s body is not as powerful as acting it out because reality sets in on how it may feel to

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wet the lips of someone from your family. It is emotional, much more so than reading it from a book.” Students also comment on sensory experiences such as the colors and shapes of the clothing and props, the scent of incense, and the taste of food.

Harnessing the Transformative Potential of Liminality and Generating Communitas Turner argues that moments “in and out of time” and statuses “betwixt and between states” are moments of detachment from normative everyday life. Liminal periods offer an opportunity for reflection upon the existing social order and contain revolutionary potential for innovation and social transformation. Experiential learning in the Turnerian tradition seeks to create these liminal moments in the classroom and release their transformative potential. The most striking thing that all of my ritual reenactments have had in common is that when students are removed from the structure of the everyday class routine, most of them have complex emotional and intellectual responses that are unexpected, by both them and me. As the ritual begins, they are typically very uncomfortable, with nervous laughter. There is often a lot of confusion during the ritual. Many complain about it, stating that they wanted a clearer script or more preparation time. Feeling that their sense of chaos and discomfort with the lack of structure is actually part of the process, I have decided not to extend the amount of time devoted to the project. Too much structure can be detrimental to the process. We choose the ritual and assign the groups four weeks ahead of the reenactment, but only some of the intervening class time is devoted to discussion and preparation. The groups are expected to do most of the preparatory work outside of class: the instructor’s handing off of this work is an important part of the process of student empowerment, which eventually contributes to the anti-structure of the ritual. Ritual passengers in a liminal stage often share communitas, a feeling of a common human bond. As mentioned, I begin by trying to create solidarity through our kula ring gift exchange. In order for communitas to form, it is necessary that the instructor relinquishes her usual dominant position and allows anti-structure to emerge during the ritual. I instruct my students to assign me a role and I do not influence their decision. It is interesting that they often, entirely on their own, assign me a lowly role in the social hierarchy or otherwise try to humiliate me. I have been a yam, a grandmother spirit, and the town drunk. Although I was a priest in the setsubun ritual, the scriptwriters wrote into the script that I would suddenly do several jumping jacks in the middle of the ritual in order to lighten up the atmosphere. They were unaware that they had spontaneously created a ritual of reversal until it was pointed out to them in the debriefing. It is important to consider that the transformative potential of liminality can be both positive and negative. The instructor gives up her authority over the class and it could have negative effects on her authority. This has always been my greatest fear

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during these rituals, for by creating communitas among the students the instructor increases their power relative to her. Afterward, I usually feel that my authority has been slightly lessened and my control over the class reduced. This does weaken my ability to demand high-quality work from the students, since they may be more likely to challenge my authority. However, at a university that is largely a commuter campus, it is rewarding to notice that the students are hanging out together more in the student lounge and have formed relationships outside the class. If there are students in the class who are already alienated, the project can further alienate them by strengthening the bond between the other students. In one case, an alienated student wrote that she was disappointed by our Wiccan initiation because she hoped things would change and they did not. However, sometimes an alienated student can be brought into the community as well. Multiple testimonies indicate that most of my students feel that communitas is generated by the project.

Accommodating Christian Students with Objections Students who are strong Christians may have objections to participating in ritual reenactments—it is ironic that this is because, in a sense, they take them more seriously as rituals than the other students do. The Wiccan initiation was resisted by several students who felt it was a form of Satanism. Through discussion, we arrived at a plan in which they were assigned to research connections between Wicca and Satanism and present their arguments to the class for discussion in the research part of the project, and during the ritual they played the role of bystanders. In the Haitian zombie-making ritual, a Christian with objections was assigned the role of the outsider anthropologist. This role turned out to be very successful for both him and the ritual, as he not only made a creative video, but also gained interesting insights into what it is like to be an anthropologist observing practices that challenge his own worldview, as described further below. This turned out to be so beneficial that I have offered it as an option in subsequent reenactments. Some students prefer the anthropologist’s role even though they have no objections to taking a role as a native participant; I suppose that for them this is a way of enacting an imagined career as an anthropologist. They have a different experience of the ritual and may feel left out, so they may have some regret about their decision later and should be warned of this possibility.

The Haitian Zombie-Making Ritual Reenactment At the time, the reenactment of the Haitian zombie-making ritual, involving 24 students in fall 2004, had been, for me, a low point in my ritual reenactments. I agreed with the student criticisms evident in the following excerpts from their papers. The scriptwriters had been particularly devious in making me the town drunk and

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instructing me to shout out obnoxious comments during the ritual, but my role was not written into the official script because they intentionally tried to create a situation in which I might irritate the other students in order to see how they would react. It was not until I reviewed my collections of student papers in order to write this essay that I realized how complex and interesting that reenactment had been, precisely as a result of its defects. I offer a snapshot below in order to portray this complexity. A general complaint was that, as Matthew put it, “it was difficult to collect the quantity and quality of information required to accurately reenact the ritual.” Wade Davis’s sensationalistic trade book The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist’s Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic (1985) had been a major source that was inadequate to the task—demonstrating the value of more conventional ethnographies, as dry as they might be to our students. Miranda, the mother of the zombie, wrote, “I wasn’t sure how to feel about making someone into a zombie. I, personally, think that we should have a done a ritual that pertained to us and our culture. The zombification did turn out to be fun though. It did end up being quite interesting.” Irene concluded that Our class knowledge on voodoo and Haitian religious rituals are superficial and misunderstood. … The writers of the script encouraged improvisation; therefore, whoever, was improvising clearly used their United States as a frame of reference. Turner explains the incorporation of oneself in drama as, “persons will desire and feel as well as think, and their desires and feelings impregnate their thoughts and influence their intentions.”

The scriptwriting group struggled to create a plotline. Having read that conflicts over land ownership frequently flared up in Haiti, they constructed a social drama around a family conflict over land. The breach occurred during a town hall meeting, provoking the brother to seek out a bokor, sorcerer, to request the zombification of his greedy sister. The greedy sister was given a potion that made her appear dead, and a funeral was held. The bokor then went at night with his zombie assistants to dig her up, conduct the zombie-making ritual, and add her to his crew of zombie workers. The script ended abruptly. Ellen, the greedy sister and soon-to-be zombie, had been taken aback when she received the script. Demonstrating again the Möbius strip-like relationship between reality and reenactment, she was mortified to discover that I was to be the one turned into a zombie, which entailed having one of the main roles. Moreover, I was to play the role of the heartless and selfish woman whose greed was starving the village. At this point, I questioned whether I really was being punished for some unknown wrong I may have committed in the past. Turner’s notion of the liminal was already being thrust upon me as it seemed an underlying social drama might be unfolding. It could have been phase one of the social drama in which a conflict is brought out into the open and I was uncertain about where it might lead.

She was somewhat reassured by the fact that in the class meeting after she received the script, students did not seem to express animosity toward her. However, knowing the class dynamics, I myself was not sure that there was no animosity behind the role assignment.

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The first phase began with the town hall meeting in which the greedy woman was accused of violating the land rights of her kin. “This was when things started to really get interesting,” Ellen wrote. The script was followed for a line or two and then Dr. Brownell started yelling things out that were not on the script. I had no idea what was happening. I started laughing because that was the last thing I expected to happen. I continued to say my parts, trying to figure out why she was doing that.

Miranda wrote that she “was unsure of how to take your role in the ritual. At first, I thought you were yelling out things because we weren’t getting into the ritual enough for your liking.” Illustrating the desire for order and predictability that I mentioned above, she said, “I think that we would have understood more about your role if everyone was told about your role and what it was.” My unexpected outburst had the opposite effect on other students. Madison, the herb doctor, confessed, “The last-minute addition of the town drunk helped to set me at ease. The ritual of reversal within the reenactment seemed to add an element of play, and it is this more than anything that helped me identify more with the ritual.” Daniel extracted broader insights. “Dr. Brownell seemed to secretly have been enacting a ritual of reversal because she was acting like she was the town fool or drunk, rather than an authority figure. Like a medieval jester, she blurted out what was really going on and what people were thinking but would not say. Her behavior helped to inspire a sense of fun and energy that might have been a wooden recitation of lines otherwise.” However, Alexandra disapproved of the comedy and complained about the students who were giggling and whispering to each other during the performance, concluded that “the majority of the students completely missed Turner’s point” because “they did not take the ritual as serious as they should have.” The anthropologist felt himself to be a distanced observer. “Acting as an anthropologist in the ritual reenactment of a voodoo zombie creation,” he observed, “I could be simultaneously involved and separate. My original plans disintegrated as the reenactment proceeded, but as they did much more interesting replacements formed in their place. I never imagined learning what I eventually did.” He further elaborated, I felt lonely, left out, and incapable of being understood…As I peered at them through a camera, glances from them suggested that I was intimidating and unwelcome. To intensify the issue, I was dressed in normal, street clothes while I was free to roam around among them as I pleased, while they were neither. The actors were engulfed by the newness of their circumstances, and were seemingly inattentive and uninterested in my commonplace familiarity. Even worse than that, some acted as if my presence and participation made them truly uncomfortable.

Confirming his suspicions, Miranda wrote, “There was one thing that made me uneasy. That was the camera. I see why it was something necessary for the anthropologist to have and record all his data. I think that made a few other people uncomfortable also.” Understandably, the end of the ritual was particularly unsatisfying for the zombie. “I was made into a zombie which made me a permanent outcast of the community.

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The script ended there, but it can be assumed that the rest of the community would feel a sense of reaggregation or completion with the removal of their problem.” She continued, On another level, the awkwardness of ending the ritual on such a note proved intolerable, as we have such rites of passage in our own culture and they do not end with the second phase followed by an assumption. After going through the whole ordeal, the group needed some form of reaggregation, since the ritual was one of permanent schism. It was at this point that John, the Bokor, gave a little interview to the anthropologist, Austin. It was really less of an interview and more of a small stand-up comedy routine. This provided the entire group with a sense of aggregation as well as relief.

At the end of her paper, I wrote by hand (in the days before I had gone digital), “Did you feel reaggregated or did you continue to feel like an outcast zombie? I worried that there was no plan to de-zombify you.” Matthew also pointed out, Because the process of zombification does not include a true redressive ritual, during which the community has the opportunity to come together and openly confront its problems, it was not possible for the actors to share the experience of communitas. As a result of these two facts, the ritual reenactment performed by the Anthropology 4301 class lacked the rich detail required to re-create real life, and had little or no effect on the actors involved.

Alexandra shared this negative assessment, asking, “Was Turner’s method of learning effective within this group of anthropological students?” She answered, No, however, in my opinion it would have worked if the script had been better planned/written and a part in which the three stages would have been completed. Victor Turner’s theory is brilliant and should be used as a method of learning.

Since I shared this negative assessment, I was surprised to read that other students had completely different experiences. Two wrote that they had fully entered the state of “flow,” the merging of action and awareness that results from acting with total involvement, a concept that Turner (1982, 55–56) had borrowed from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1975). As Jacob described it, When I was looking back at the readings it struck me that there was a distinct period during the reenactment during which I was in this state of “Flow.” As the scripted play came to a finish our group began to simply improvise more into the context of the play. At this point I began to feel as if I were completely consumed in my role, as Turner describes, my actions and awareness seemed to merge into one. This was the point that I experienced a sense of communitas as I had completely entered into a state of anti-structure which seemed to be present throughout the entire group.

Daniel was a drummer during the ritual, for which we had borrowed drums from the department’s African drum collection: After the reenactment was over, I came to a few realizations I was not expecting. First and foremost, I found that the idea of flow pertained to my experience. My role in the reenactment was playing the drums during the rituals, and periods when it seemed proper. Due to my part not being an acting role, I did not feel that I was necessarily part of the ritual as a human presence. Once I thought about it, I felt more like I was the drum, or I was the sound emanating from the instrument. I understand that I was not literally the drum itself, but I felt

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The class was divided as to whether the experience had produced communitas. Daniel shared that The other insight that I felt was overwhelming in this reenactment was the period of communitas that was created. […] During this period of liminality, we were also able to create a role reversal that allowed everyone to be equal to one another. In our reenactment, we turned the role of the teacher (normal position of authority) into the town drunk (lowest position of authority), in essence, our communitas served to eliminate all normative structure that promoted unequal standings. The interesting thing was we did not consciously create the art to reverse roles; rather, it was done subconsciously.

Jacob agreed, citing a different stimulus. “The sense of communitas was created as a result of the humor that was present in our play.” With this reenactment following on the heels of the Wiccan initiation, I was annoyed at the students’ choices of ritual, which clearly expressed more interest in American pop culture than in learning about other societies. I decided that the following year I would select the ritual and assign the readings. I chose the incwala ritual to mark the installation of a new king among the Swazi, both because it was a dynamic ritual that could be viewed on YouTube, and because it and the Swazi had been well-documented in the classic thin ethnography by Hilda Kuper (1963). However, in retrospect that ritual struck me as a bit too structured. As I write this now, my annoyed reaction to the zombie ritual seems a bit reminiscent of Turner’s reaction to the feminist takeover of his reenactment of the Ndembu social drama, discussed in Chapter 1. I was willing to go only so far in abdicating control to the students, and the Haitian ritual provoked me to reassert my control. Upon re-reading the student papers, I see that it was not the failure that I remembered. Further, there may be some benefit to a little chaos, because the discomfort provokes insights. I think it is fitting that I should give the anthropologist, Austin, the last word because, after all, he actually did the research, interviewing the participants and conducting participant observation. As the actors engaged together and proceeded in the reenactment I observed a manifestation of intangible communitas – students consistently clustered tightly (though informally) together sharing whispered advice, insight, and guidance on their present and future circumstances. They were acting as one actor playing the simple role of “just getting through this.” It was, in contrast to the mundane, the extreme flexibility and equality in the situation which coagulated the freshly loosed actors into a formative whole – a new, but temporary community.

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Conclusion: Control and Chaos, Structure and Anti-structure The successes and failures of the Haitian zombie-making ritual illustrate some of the lessons I have learned over nearly three decades. Ritual reenactments may be used to teach both theory and ethnography. If the students have learned the relevant theories and concepts, they can gain theoretical insights from a ritual whose ethnographic context they do not understand well. They can even gain insights into the culture itself when the ethnographic background is very thin, but it is preferable that they have a competent mastery of the cultural setting. Reenactments are more effective when they have clear phases. In ritual reenactments, those are separation, liminality, and reaggregation. In social drama, the phases are breach, crisis, redressive action (typically a ritual), and reintegration. The reaggregation is important for solidifying communitas and is most effective if accompanied by celebratory eating and drinking. The impact of these exercises on the students is so complex, unpredictable, contradictory, and surprising that it is impossible to come up with many generalizations about them. My overall conclusion is that reenactments are not trivial: they tap into deep and powerful forces. Different students will interpret and experience the same event differently; some are more strongly affected and others less so, but even those students who claim that they were unaffected often write insightful papers that seem to indicate the contrary.

Epilogue The goal of the real Japanese setsubun festival, practiced at the beginning of spring, is to drive out the evil oni spirits for the coming year. The week after our reenactment of the setsubun festival, when the class reconvened for the debriefing, the motionsensitive lights in the room kept flickering extremely rapidly for no reason, unrelated to any motions by us, in a way they had never done before. It was as if the oni spirits were causing mischief in order to let us know that they were still there. I was concerned that this would happen for the next class meeting because it was the final exam, but they behaved. I feared that oni spirits had taken up residence in the room, but since I had no more class meetings there, expelling them was someone else’s problem. It reinforced my own belief that we are dealing with powerful forces in these practices, which should always be treated carefully and with respect. We do not fully understand them. I am sure Edie would have agreed (Fig. 5.1).

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Fig. 5.1 Edie demonstrates how “The Hands Feel It” while signing a student’s copy of the book at the 2003 AAA meetings (Susan Brownell)

References Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1975. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. d’Aquili, Eugene G., Charles E. Laughlin, and John McManus. 1979. The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Davis, Wade. 1985. The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist’s Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Kuper, Hilda. 1963. The Swazi: A South African Kingdom. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mauss, Marcel. 2016. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Edited and translated by Jane I. Guyer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. First published 1923–1924. Sun Tzu. 1910. The Art of War. Translated by Lionel Giles. London: Luzac & Co. Republished by The Internet Classics Archive, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Accessed December 8, 2019. http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html. Turner, Victor Witter. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York, NY: PAJ Publications. Turner, Victor, and Edward M. Bruner (eds.). 1986. The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Weiner, Annette. 1983. Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Chapter 6

Bridges to the Ancestors: Engaging Students with Ethnographic Performances in the Classroom Pamela R. Frese

I first cast and directed an ethnographic performance in one of Victor and Edith Turner’s seminars at the University of Virginia in 1981 as I discussed in Chapter 4. Since then, this form of pedagogy introduced to eager students by the Turners has become an integral part of my own teaching. This embodied, experiential learning provides students with an opportunity to explore a shared humanity and to critically reflect upon their own positionality in a global hegemonic system, especially in terms of gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, etc.; those social variables that have for so long identified an individual’s identity within a larger social and cultural matrix. I provide my students with learning experiences that are more memorable and fun than relying on readings, lectures, and videos alone. And they love it. Ethnographic performance in anthropology really emerged as a recognized genre through the interconnected work of the Turners and Richard Schechner as discussed in Chapter 1 in this volume. The Turners wrote, right before Vic’s death, that through this important “dramatic” dimension of teaching they “were trying to … put experiential flesh on these cognitive bones” (Victor and Edith Turner 1982, reprinted as Chapter 3 in this volume, p. 46). The ultimate goal of these classroom performances for the Turners was to “make our students vividly aware both of innate commonalities and cultural differences in relation to a wide range of human societies” (p. 50). The Turners’ approach to pedagogy intersected at that time with the emergence of experiential and reflexive anthropology as represented by the volumes edited by Ruby (1982) and Bruner (1984, 1986). These interwoven perspectives in anthropology inform our roles as ethical researchers and teachers and contributed to the development of the protections for those who are a part of our research, which are contained in the ethical code of the American Anthropological Association. The late 1970s and early 1980s also saw the significant addition of gender as an important issue in research and publication. These intellectual roots feed today’s conversations P. R. Frese (B) Department of Anthropology and Sociology, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_6

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about performance anthropology in general, and especially performing ethnographic materials in a classroom (for a more detailed discussion of this dynamic time in the anthropology of performance, see Frese, forthcoming). Turner’s initial use of Goffman’s “frame analysis” to understand ethnographic performance in the classroom has transformed into a much more complicated awareness of “positionality” today. I always remind students that these ethnographic performances reflect not only the beliefs and practices associated with the society in which the social drama was originally studied, the identity of and the role played by the researcher, and the original ethnographic present in which the research was conducted and in which the ethnographic material was published, but also the moment in time and space in which the students are enacting the ritualized social drama. This obviously requires that the students reflect on their position in their own culture, their relationship to the culture performed, the relationships of students to other students within the classroom, and the faculty/student dynamic within the classroom. The frames also extend to include the class itself within departmental offerings, and so on until we can even speak to the position of the college or university in a much wider global system. Indeed, the performance of a ritualized social drama embedded within multiple overlapping frames, enhanced by a dimension of “play,” generates a liminal time that encourages students to build bonds with each other and with an imagined version of a culture in an informed way. The important concepts from the Turners’ work that continue to inform my students’ performances of ethnographic material include an understanding of “framing,” “social drama,” “communitas,” and the danger and power inherent in a “liminal” time. Liminality emerges while performing ethnography in the classroom as students are asked to step outside of a traditional classroom environment and explore new ways of learning. The Turners did caution that great care must be taken not to encourage prejudice against “exotic” and “bizarre” dimensions of the culture being “performed” during this liminal time that particularly portrays “the otherness of the other” (Chapter 3, 50). However, when students have spent time learning about the ethnographic contexts for the performance and when they are provided with the means to develop an understanding of the contemporary culture and people who live it, the performance provides a successful tool through which to better appreciate the cultures they read about and to better comprehend their own position in the world. The two exercises I discuss below are embedded in upper-level anthropology courses for which all students are expected to have successfully completed the Introduction to Anthropology as a prerequisite. I find that the performances work best if they appear later in the semester, after a solid foundation in theory advanced by Vic and Edie Turner, and a careful reading of related ethnographies has been completed. A discussion of the problems of cultural appropriation and ethnocentrism should be embedded in the course, making them central both to inquiry and to the analysis of the performance itself. These issues and those of “positionality,” “hegemony,” and “authenticity” must be a part of the conversation from the beginning, as Pedelty (2001) has recommended. Several interconnected preparations are required well ahead of an actual performance. The script for a performance may exist in scholarship (i.e., Vogt’s work

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discussed below) and/or emerge from the instructor’s personal research experiences, carefully crafted to maintain an awareness of the pitfalls associated with inventing a ritual or other performed social drama based on another culture’s own practices. Because each student will respond to the performance experience in a different way, casting individuals for the specific ethnographic performance must be done carefully to ensure that students are comfortable with their participation. If they are not, the faculty member must work to provide other ways in which they may participate with which students are comfortable and that can be evaluated equally with the class based on the same course materials. Time must be devoted to the construction of “props” including costumes, “stage sets,” and prescribed foods. Following the Turner’s advice, all senses should be engaged in these experiences: sound, taste, smell, and movement of the body. As the Turners explain, “if possible, the foods used in the original setting should be provided…Foods, food taboos, and ways in which food is shared and exchanged make up a kind of cultural grammar and vocabulary which often give clues…to basic attitudes and values of the group and to its social structure” (p. 51). And after the performance, time must be set aside for reflection during which “all aspects of the performance [are] seen in retrospect…. In these occasions of intercultural reflexivity, we can begin to grasp something of the contribution each and every human culture can make to the general pool of manifested knowledge of our common human condition” (p. 51). I discuss two specific examples of ethnographic performance in the classroom: a Muk’ta Pilel or “Great Seeing” healing ceremony from Zinacantán, Chiapas, and a Dia de los Muertos (Day of Death), a Mexican and Mexican American tradition. I provide a brief description of each class exercise and include some of the student responses to their experiences of each ethnographic performance. These responses consistently fall into two overlapping categories: embodied experiences vs. traditional learning in the classroom and the emergence of empathy and an awareness of a shared humanity. Obviously, each performance provides students with different perspectives on these important issues. And each “ritual performance” manifests many different kinds of social dramas, dramas reflected in multiple framed identities ranging from reasons for the patient’s illness in Zinacantán to a performance to honor obligations to family and ancestors in my students’ own lives.

Muk’ta PIlel (The Great Seeing Ceremony) My “Peoples and Cultures of Latin America” focuses on preconquest and contemporary cultures of Mexico and Guatemala. Enrollment for this class over the last thirty years has ranged from 16 to 45 students. My students have learned about the Olmec, Aztec, Mixtec, Huichol, and the Zapotec before we turn to understanding the Toztzil Maya of Zinacantán. Extensive research has been conducted with these people since the late 1950s, primarily through generations of anthropologists trained in part by Evon Vogt. My students read Vogt’s The Zinacantecos of Mexico: A Modern Maya

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Way of Life (1970) supplemented by contemporary journal articles focusing on issues of gender, tourism, migration, and global trade involving Zinacantecans today. I draw directly from his chapter on “Rituals of Affliction” in Tortillas for the Gods: A Symbolic Analysis of Zinacanteco Rituals (1976), which includes detailed descriptions of the ritual foods, the ritual plants, the ritual process for the Great Seeing, and an actual script for the entire ceremony. Students “become” Maya and bring knowledge of their culture and society to their roles in the performance of the healing ritual. Given the time period of Vogt’s work, I remind students that the world of the Maya that Vogt describes is more like that of their Maya grandparents. This provides a more historical context in which to view current issues discussed in assigned journal articles, forms of popular culture and videos on YouTube. Each student begins the process of “becoming” Maya as they pick their “names” from a bag and then locate their Maya name on a complex kinship chart that illuminates their connections to each other as “family.” When the students discover that some of their “family” is absent from class (i.e., a name wasn’t selected when identities were drawn but appears on the kinship chart), they must explore reasons to explain the absence of that relative based upon their knowledge of contemporary Maya life in Zinacantán. Students must craft an invented identity based upon the complex social and cultural matrices in which they “live.” The creation of this narrative engages them in a very personal way with other individuals. Several class periods are dedicated to small group discussions as students meet with their snas (patrilineages) and work to create these interlocking narratives. Students rely on these connections to help them understand their life as a Maya person and their roles in the curing ceremony. In addition to writing stories about their family and kinship ties, students must address other parts of their life. For example, based upon what they have learned about compadrazgo (godparent) relationships, they are required to establish one of these relationships with someone else in class and a discussion of this “fictive kin” relationship is included within their narratives. Students also discuss their position in the cargo system and with Catholic saints in these narratives, as well as their relationship to the patient. The reasons for the patient’s illness in our class are never identified before the ritual. As Vogt discusses, the patient’s healing occurs when “the patient’s relationship with his social world is reordered and restored to equilibrium by the procedures of the ritual” (1976, 61). Students learn that such illnesses may be the result of many things. Perhaps the patient has angered the ancestor-deities or has experienced susto, or soul loss. The patient may be ill as a result of the actions of others, like witchcraft or envy manifested through mal ojo; all possible reasons can be related to social life as a member of the Zinacantecan community. A number of activities occur before the actual performance of the healing ritual. In class, the women spend a day making costumes for the members of their family, and on another day, the class devotes a day to making tortillas with the assistance of a friend of mine from the local Mexican American community. The day before the ritual, two “old” women (based upon their position on the kinship chart) wash the patient’s clothes outside of our classroom. And the shaman appoints two men to

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collect water from six sacred water holes around campus based on “cold” and “hot” qualities, qualities that are usually syncretized by my students between Maya beliefs and actual water sources on campus, like residence halls or gender neutral restrooms in academic buildings. This engenders discussions about the various choices around campus based on gender when we all come together to discuss the event afterward. Following Vogt’s script, the ritual reenactment begins in the household of the patient, at the household shrine with extended family, ritual assistants, and the shaman and his wife. The shaman diagnoses the cause of the illness and then the group composed of the shaman, male ritual assistants, and the patient travels single file to pray in “churches” and at calvarios or “mountain top shrines” located two floors above the classroom, or to the top level of pews in the multi-tiered campus chapel. The ethnography explains that these are syncretic shrines, an arrangement of three crosses related to Christianity that also connect to the ancestor deities of the Maya in Zinacantán. The women remain in the classroom preparing for the ritual meal and “to protect the patient’s koral from blows from the ancestral gods and from demons who might approach while the curing party is away” (p. 75). The koral bed is created with a mat and flowers and evergreen branches to symbolize the koral on the ancestral mountain where individuals’ souls are protected by ancestors. The class concludes the ceremony back in the home of the patient, as they are placed in the koral for healing. This sacred healing ceremony features copal incense, herbs and other sacred plants, the sacred water, and a special ritual meal. All participants engage in the ritual exchange of pox, a fermented drink, in a specific order that relies upon the social hierarchy based on gender and age that students must figure out based upon their position on the kinship chart. Of course, in class, students shared my version of pox, a non-alcoholic wine mixed with water. The patient also consumes artificial chicken blood (my “secret” mixture of catsup and pox that I present as “blood”) as they are ritually connected to the sacrificial chicken in order to be healed. When the ritual is completed, the women provide everyone with a serving of the ritual stew. The stew is made from ingredients significant to the Maya in religious contexts and in terms of what the ingredients are believed to contribute to curing illness and disease, both spiritually and physically. A Zinacantecan woman was present for my first classroom performance of this ritual in Texas in 1984 and provided me with a hand-written recipe for what she told me was the appropriate ritual food, a meal we still share at the end of the ceremony. I hold this now faded and stained notebook paper up to show students the long history of this ritual performance in my class. Initially, I had a very hard time getting access to some of these ingredients after I left Texas and moved to Ohio. But this is no longer the case, thanks to the availability of ingredients online. For the last 10 years, I have had to make two different stews, since students more readily acknowledge food restrictions or preferences that prevent them from eating the ritual food consisting of corn meal in chicken broth. There is no real “audience” for any of these ethnographic performances, a state of affairs that may distinguish anthropological creations from those in theater. Sometimes, though, when the students leave the classroom to visit the various “mountain shrines” in the classroom building and pass through study areas on their way up

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and down two flights of stairs, other students not enrolled in our class will observe them and may not really understand what is going on. I also have invited colleagues in anthropology or archaeology who do research with the Maya to attend the class on the day of the performance as an “ethnographer.” In general, these observers help students understand how indigenous peoples may experience an event when anthropologists and/or tourists gaze upon the ceremonial ritual pilgrimage through the hamlet. I evaluate the success of this exercise through an in-class exam and a narrative of their life as a “take home” component turned in with their exam. The students’ narratives reflect their overall knowledge of their position in Zinacantán society and illustrate their knowledge of the cultural beliefs and practices that we have worked to understand throughout the course. I share some of the narratives created by my students from several different classes to help illustrate the manner in which their identities are experienced. Please refer to the appendix for guidelines to guarantee protection for students’ candid comments on these experiences. Given the safe environment in which my students explain their experiences, their narratives from several class performances reflect honest assessments about what they are learning: I imagined myself as a Zinacantecan woman, as Maruch [Ciku?] C’upak. I am 57 years old. I have three brothers, but two of them have passed on. I honor them on Dia de los Muertos…. In order to prepare for the “Great Seeing,” us women made tortillas and cooked a ton of food for everyone. A few of us older women…had to wash the patient’s clothing for the ritual in order to purify them, so that she is able to be healed….What had she done to incur the deities’ punishment? I had to think about the answers to these questions based on the way that a woman like Maruch would think, and so I had to look at the “great seeing” through the lens of Maruch’s experiences. Shunka Cikup, my wife’s sister, possesses chamel or sickness caused by soul loss, or through the neglect of her ancestors and as a result her spirit animal is loose on Elder Brother Mountain…As a ritual advisor, I gathered a gourdful of water from each of the seven sacred waterholes around Zinacantán Center. Before the ritual, I “sweep” the household and mountain shrines, replace the dried pine tree needles and construct the Koral, an enclosure with poles and palm leaves standing around the patient’s bed. The ritual was successful and the head shaman was able to guide her chamel back to the supernatural corral on top of the Mountain. Ritual ceremonies do not occur every day; therefore, my typical day consists of much different tasks. Since I’ve become older, I struggle to do my daily chores that I once did. Luckily, my sons and compadres help me with growing and harvesting crops in order to feed my family. My name is Marush [Baz’toh] C’upak. I am part of the largest sna of our waterhole. I am 51 years of age and have lived a very long and hard, but blessed life… Unfortunately, my godparents were killed in the 1994 Chiapas conflict. My elder sister who was married and living with her husband’s sna and myself are the only ones of our family to survive. I am thankful for my daughters and I believe the ancestors and my patron saint are protecting us.

Students explain that this experience was beneficial to their understanding of the class materials. Overall, I find that their responses fall into two overlapping categories. First, students appreciate how the use of embodied experience provides them with an enriched understanding of the life of an individual in a society and within a culture different than their own in ways that relying only on books and lectures do not.

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And students acknowledge their increased awareness of a shared humanity and the experience of communitas.

Embodied Learning and Experience Enriching Cross-Cultural Understanding Students appreciate that this performance provides them with another way to learn and to “view the world differently” from the perspective that only relying on books and lectures provides. As one student wrote “[the ritual performance] recognizes the difference between an intellectual understanding and acceptance of a culture [through books] and a more emotional, from-the-heart understanding and acceptance.” Another was very excited and wrote: “This was by far one of the most unique experiences I have had here at Wooster. Re-enacting the ritual enabled the class material to come to life. It is one thing to listen to a lecture about a healing ceremony, but to actually take part in one is completely different, and a far more vibrant way to learn about it.” Most students echoed these thoughts and believed that this was a particularly successful way for them to learn as one commented: I definitely believe that performing the ritual…was an engaging way to take another step into learning . … anyone can read the ethnography and ‘try’ to understand the culture, but it’s hard to understand and put yourself into someone else’s shoes when you are just reading it. However, when you are given a Maya name and working with other members of the class to explain why people are missing or dead in terms of that culture [today], it makes it so much more understandable.

Students frequently noted the impact of this learning experience on all of their senses, especially in ways that the costumes, copal incense, and food helped them to “become” a member of another culture, even if it was in “play”: When I arrived I put on my costume, starting the shift of mindset to that of a Zinacantecan. Then the smell as we entered the space where the ritual would take place took the shift further. When we walked in and there was a “tourist” watching it, I felt slightly uncomfortable which gave me a new perspective on rituals performed in public that I had never thought of before …. For me, eating the food and drinking the pox was the most impactful, when I was tasting the food I tried to really feel the texture of the food in my mouth and taste every flavor and think about how this is maybe what the Zinacantecos feel and taste at this point of the ritual. It made the whole experience feel more real and concrete instead of it being only something I have read about.

Another student echoed this perspective on an embodied form of learning and looked forward to our upcoming performance of Dia de Los Muertos: I think that the ritual and the preparation for the ritual was a fantastic way to help students understand and remember.. .The visual quality of it as well as the food, music, clothing, and social ranking order all helped me recognize the differences in their culture and helped me learn through the use of all five senses instead of just hearing information and having to remember it for the sake of a test. The process of preparing the clothing and hearing you discuss the preparation and medicinal qualities of the food combined with the fact that we

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If the performance works to enhance learning of the course material, the experience also opens doors to understanding other people and their cultures in an embodied way.

A Shared Humanity and the Bonds of Communitas Most students appreciated that the ethnographic performance encouraged an awareness of human ties in all societies. As one student shared, we spent time crafting a narrative … This allowed me to linger longer on what daily life and family relations are actually like for the Zinacantec[an]s. Reading the book, you are given a few concrete examples, but with the addition of this portion of the class, I think we received a better understanding of how there is a great diversity of stories among the Zincantecos. They do not all have uniform lives that directly map on to the ones in the book.

Overall, my students appreciated a glimpse into the lives of others. As a student pointed out, “this style of anthropological education is beneficial because it connects students with the people they are studying and give[s] depth to understanding a culture by recreating traditional customs in a respectful way to better understand a different perspective of life.” We spend considerable class time in discussing ethnocentrism and cultural relativity in terms of our performance. Some comments explicitly addressed these concepts as they related to this experience: I think it’s important in making us less ignorant. It’s easy for us to read…how some of the kids in the community died early and how some women just disappeared and when we had to write our narrative, I was forced to see from their viewpoint. My family chart said I lost a kid, while this might be fictional…While I never really became Mayan, I had to think within their structural constraints and I think this certainly made me more empathic…In essence it helps to dispel your ethnocentrism.

Another student acknowledged the success of the ritual in spite of their initial reservations: I did not want to mock a ritual that still holds significant cultural meaning for a thriving community of people. The way the class and the professor handled this, however, proved my initial qualms to be unfounded. We approached it with reverence, realizing that as nonZinacantecans we cannot truly emulate their experiences but at the same time we can gain a deeper understanding how cultural issues like class, gender, and kinship affect and fit into the rituals central to the lives of the peoples we study…the performance helped me to be less ethnocentric and to understand that we are all connected.

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These experiences also put the student into the role of the anthropologist. One student succinctly summarized one of the major reasons for why I do these exercises in an upper-level anthropology class: For a student of socio-cultural anthropology, first-hand participant observation is a necessity. It is only through living and sharing in the daily lives of others that the social, religious, economic, and political facets of the society can be fully understood. We had, in a sense, become the people we would have otherwise been observing. By receiving a new identity I became immersed in the Zinacante[can] culture. I believe that this type of learning is perhaps the best form available in terms of its ability to reinforce class readings. Classes should spark students’ interests and give them a solid foundation upon which they can apply their own personal readings and later experiences. The goal of [the college] should not be to turn out students who learn simply to spit out the lectured information on the next exam only to lose it a few days later, but instead produce well-rounded, involved, and inquisitive young people.

Students appreciate these kinds of exercises in part as a break from more traditional forms of pedagogy but students also mention that they formed relationships with their classmates that engendered a new way of perceiving the entire class and their membership in it. The performance helps to build this communitas within the classroom, as one student illustrated: “the individuals in our class fostered a safe and comfortable environment for the ritual to occur and I think that truly was wonderful and helped to build a good dynamic in the classroom throughout the rest of the semester.” Another added that “we also formed real-life bonds between our snas and fictive family members.” These bonds frequently continue for my students well after the performance. We discuss our “positionality” through several interconnected “frames” in terms of the characters the students become and in acknowledgment of our own diverse identities sitting in a classroom in a private liberal arts college in the Midwest throughout the preparation, performance, and final conversations of reflection. The impact of embodying the experience of “the other” provides students with increased insight into their own positions in their own society. For example, the ritual foods that included meat might have been a much-anticipated sacred meal associated with this ceremony in Zinacantán. And many individuals living in water hole groupings outside of Zinacantán center would most likely not have refused the meal containing gluten and/or meat. We certainly discuss the fact that I must make two different stews for my students and how their privileged positions allow them to expect this option. Students are also aware that traditional gender domains for the Maya and for students at the College of Wooster are very different. But that didn’t stop one female student from explaining that she should be allowed to experience her role in the ritual from a different and more entitled position than those whose lives we were enacting: In terms of my experience in the ritual as a learning tool I think it helped to enhance my understanding of the complexities and intricacies of this kind of ritual. As a younger woman I missed out on seeing many parts of the ritual up close…Perhaps it would be possible in the future to film the parts of the ritual that everyone cannot hear and play it in class the next day. That way young women are still observing their role in society without missing out on any information.

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She echoed a student from a different class who thought it was unfair that the women “only” made the clothes and the tortillas and were not allowed to go with the procession to all the special churches, altars, and mountain top shrines with the men. These are always great talking points in every class as we explored gender constructs and positionality cross-culturally. An unexpected outcome of this exercise involves what “patients” have told me after the ethnographic performance is finished. Obviously, since students volunteer for the role of “patient,” there may be a good reason for why they volunteered to be healed. The patients in this ritual over the years have shared their feelings of “catharsis” and a kind of “release” at the end of their ritual healing. One year, a student confided to me after the performance that the ritual marked the one year anniversary of a serious motorcycle accident in which they almost died. After their participation in the ritual, they felt that their recovery was complete. In another class, the patient shared that the caring support by her “family” and community in the ritual helped to heal her of the trauma of a sexual assault. And one student wrote eloquently of her experience in her personal narrative: The costumes were awesome. Seeing the colors and the fascinating hats with ribbons was cool. I felt slightly weird dressed [as the patient]…but it made me feel like I was in a holy place and performing a true transition from one state of being to another. The pox and ‘chicken blood’ was not my cup of tea taste wise, but I was not myself at the time so I drank it down as best I could. The ritual food was delicious and was much better than what I had imagined when we talked about it. These things can seem so taboo and weird until you personally experience them. They become real instead of just a far off culture in a country I have never been to. The coolest part of the ritual for me was that the insomnia I had been experiencing for almost a month seemed to disappear. Suddenly I could sleep again. It may have been the ritual, it may have been a coincidence, but either way the timing was pretty awesome. I had also been going through a rough patch in a relationship and things resolved peacefully the evening after the ritual and are better than they had been. Maybe it gave me the confidence to be more honest or maybe I got the part of my soul back that was preventing me from fully expressing myself to my partner.

I most certainly cannot guarantee that classroom performance focused on a healing ritual will successfully heal the “patient,” but liminal times do engender and support reversals and symbolic transformations. If a healing does “work,” a cure is an added benefit to this class exercise. As I learned from Edie, ethnographic ritual performances frequently can “work,” even if the ritual is not a part of the patient’s own culture. This highlights another dimension of this liminal exercise. Every time I introduce this experience into this class, I worry that in some way the performance will be perceived by my students as an inauthentic appropriation of another culture’s beliefs and practices. The ritual performance resonates with most of my students in different, yet welcome ways. As one student explained, coming from a Mexican culture in which we practice healing rituals, I thought I knew what to expect, but I was blown away by the detail and preparation it took… and the respect it showed…this was a great learning tool that no book can provide. Professor Frese is amazing. The activities she incorporates into the lectures really keep us engaged.

Responses like this are also common in the performance of Dia de Los Muertos embedded in several different classes I teach every fall semester.

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Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) This ethnographic performance has been offered every Fall semester for over twenty years, either in “Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion,” and/or in one of two courses taught in rotation: Peoples and Cultures of Latin America or Peoples and Cultures of Contemporary United States, since this celebration successfully crosses the border between Mexico and the United States. In all classes, students read Norget’s ethnography Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca (2006). Our performance is based upon this reading and on my own research with and connections to local Mexican American communities. I work with the Latinx student organization on campus to construct the altar every year early in the morning on October 31 or on November 1 depending upon which day of the week the class meets. For the last 14 years, the altar is erected in the space shared with the coffee shop embedded in the middle of my academic building. I bring pan de muerto (Dead Bread) from a local Mexican grocery store for these students and they usually bring a mix of coffee, cinnamon, and chocolate to share with all. I light the copal incense that burns while we work and the students provide the music that plays in the background. For the last two years, at the request of this group, the campus minister has prayed over the altar when we are finished. The students in my class spend a week learning about the holiday in preparation for their “ethnographic performance” of placing an ofrenda (offering) on the altar. During the class period before the actual event, students each decorate a sugar skull I provide. On the day of our celebration, they take this skull, a picture of the person they wish to honor, and an object important to that person to the altar as their ofrenda. Students take turns placing their ofrendas on the altar in small groups, while the class is sharing tamales and listening to festive mariachi music. On this day, my friend “Maria” visits class and shares memories of this celebration from her childhood in Mexico and her practices today in Ohio. She always displays several images from her phone taken of her family’s altar in Mexico that year. After class, my students are also required to visit the area of the altar and spend 30 minutes just sitting there, thinking, listening, and watching others view the space. The altar and related performance events are open to unique issues related to this important celebration, in part because of its overlap with the celebration of Halloween in the United States. Day of the Dead costumes and decorations are widely available online, in card and party outlets, and at costume chains across the United States. To help counter this possible commodification and ethnocentrism related to our altar, I display educational posters featuring the important beliefs and practices associated with the altar, and the Latinx student organization creates a poster to explain their organization. The altar as a liminal, ritual space takes on a special feel for all of us; the warm sunshine and candle light illuminate the fall harvest of pumpkins, corn stalks, apples, and squash intermixed with the ofrendas. Images of La Katrina, photos of deceased family and friends, and sugar skulls are nestled in between blooms of chrysanthemums in all shades of orange and yellow (see Fig. 6.1).

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Fig. 6.1 The altar for the 2019 Dia de Los Muertos showing students’ ofrendas and educational posters (Pamela R. Frese)

Students who are not comfortable with participating are certainly excused, but they must explain their non-participation in relation to issues we have discussed in the respective class. For example, in Magic, Witchcraft and Religion, a student opted to not participate because their own religious traditions made them uncomfortable in imagining that the soul of a person was not “at rest in Heaven” as they had always been taught. This student’s additional comments did mirror those of the rest of class when they shared that the entire exercise had been very insightful for them to learn the ways others experience their own religion and traditional beliefs. And in Peoples and Cultures of Contemporary United States, a student didn’t participate in our class altar because as a Mexican American they always set up an altar in their dorm room, and that is where they chose to place their ofrenda. For this student, the total class experience was very beneficial to them as well as they wrote in their essay: “without our class celebration, I wouldn’t have had a skull for my ofrenda. I felt much better about displaying it in the privacy of my room, but I remember my family doing this more public display in a market in San Antonio. It was all good.” As I do for the Maya curing ritual exercise, I test my students on their knowledge of the material in this section of the course both through an in-class exam, and through an essay that requires them to examine this practice through concepts we have learned in class. In one class of 40 students, I also asked for three words that came to mind when they thought about our performance. The responses fell into four major categories: an important act for honoring deceased family members, loved ones, and heritage; a syncretic creation and liminal time of celebration, joy, and comfort; the physical aspects of the space that included color, ofrendas, calaveras (skulls), candles and light; and, as a significant learning experience that was meaningful, creative, and

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interesting. More detailed responses fall into similar categories as did those with the Maya healing ritual discussed above.

Embodied Learning and Experience Enriching Cross-Cultural Understanding Moving beyond a textbook and making this ethnographic performance into a personal experience were especially valuable as many students explained: There was something so tangible and personal about making the skull and putting her [the student’s grandmother] skull and photo on the altar. I felt close to her, like I was honoring her and I also felt that she was with me for those few days. The altar was so beautiful and so many people were honoring their dead that I couldn’t help but feel like something special was happening. That sort of feeling can’t be captured in a book, especially to students with an anglo[-American] understanding of death. The same goes for actually talking to an immigrant and a person who celebrates this holiday. It normalizes and humanizes it. The celebration of Dia de los Muertos gave me a better understanding and appreciation of the event. I was at first hesitant…The visiting of the dead and the idea of spirits is not something I believe in. My ofrenda allowed me to reflect on the loved one I chose and it opened a door to them in my life. While I may not believe in the physical manifestation, I was given a chance to remember my loved one in a new way that was more intense than just a memory. The first-hand accounts from “Maria” and the creation of the ofrenda allowed me to experience my own syncretized celebration of the day. I learned a lot about myself, as well as others.

Students are especially receptive to this performance because all of their senses are involved. As one student explained, “the smells, the sounds…The altar sure does change the feel of the space, its amazing to imagine it full of spirit, or spirits…I sure feel connected to my family members who have passed on, in a really good way.” Overall, students appreciated the experience of the altar and the knowledge they gained. Many students had encountered this holiday before through a Spanish language class. But in their responses to our class performance, they realized that they had never “experienced” it because they had not really understood what it means for those who practice it: In high school and college I had taken Spanish classes that had taught about Dia de los Muertos, but never celebrated or participated through hands on activities. By reading about a tradition so much, the lens is one that is desensitized to the cultural and spiritual aspect one feels through direct participation. For myself, I felt a spiritual awareness and connection when I made my skull to honor a loved one and by sitting near the ofrenda.

A Shared Humanity and the Bonds of Communitas This embodied learning experience helped students appreciate a special cultural practice while developing communitas with classmates and/or with a deceased family

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member or friend. A student appreciated that “seeing people visit their ofrendas and set them up together brought people together and created community in the class.” Another shared that “this class experience gave me the chance to set my beliefs aside and participate in a group healing ritual…the collective energy of the entire class focusing on remembering their loved ones was powerful and brought to me a sense of peace and fulfillment.” The students in my class, and hopefully the members of the campus community who utilize this space as a coffee shop, benefitted from this experience. The altar erected in the Fall of 2019 was perhaps the most beautiful and amazing one yet. Fifty-seven students enrolled in my class “Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion” made ofrendas for the altar. My class was very diverse with students from many different cultures and ethnicities. In general, responses from my students in this class are consistent with all other reflections from years past. This year, several students from class were also members of the Latinx student organization and were a part of this group who appeared at 5:30 am to construct the altar. One eloquently wrote in her reflective essay: I am Latina and I have gained a new cultural perspective on this holiday that I did not know a lot prior to our class exercise. I helped set up the ofrenda at 5:30 am…For me personally, setting up the altar that morning gave me a new sense of community that I have never really had back home. I also had just recently lost my grandma over the summer and putting her picture on the altar and honoring her made me feel a little better. And I know that she would be proud of the ofrenda and all the hard work that was put into making this a successful and memorable class exercise.

Another student shared I found this activity to be very valuable for me. As a Hispanic person myself, learning more about cultural elements proximal to me and getting the chance to honor a loved one who had passed was both enlightening and spiritually resonant. Experiential learning that connects information with direct activities is both interesting and effective in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed making an ofrenda and sitting by the altar afterwards. [The space] was embued with a sense of calm and a rich cultural awareness that I appreciate seeing on campus and believe everyone can learn from.

The altar in Fall of 2019 was an especially rewarding experience, as the Latinx student organization extended the celebrations that began at 5:30 in the morning into the afternoon/evening with an open mic event held in front of our altar. Here, Latinx students read poetry and shared their own experiences with the special holiday. As one of my students from class who attended this event explained: It is important to respectfully view, or participate if you are able to, in other cultural practices. The only way to truly understand other cultures is to try to live in their shoes for a bit. I was moved by the beauty of the altar and the poems read during the open mic night. I think it was a great way to experience the holiday.

Another student from my class wrote that they “also appreciate the fact that making the ofrenda promotes a student group on campus. I have friends in [the Latinx student organization] and they love that a whole class gets to learn about this holiday and learn what happens.” The altar remains an educational experience for all students, especially if they are in my class, as the comments above indicate.

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Overall Reflections on This Form of Pedagogy The “ethnographic performance” genre of embodied learning introduced by the Turners has continued to evolve since its “birth” toward an increased appreciation of a shared humanity and an awareness of the role that “positionality” and multiple forms of hegemonic powers play in all societies. I totally agree with Magnat’s re-discovery of the power embedded in ethnographic performances in the classroom as she argues that we need to “reclaim Turner’s conception of performance in order to practice performance ethnography as a process that brings meaningful actions to completion, so that our work may strengthen and sustain the welfare of relationships upon which our survival, as a performing species, so crucially depends” (2012, 36). Vic and Edie admitted in 1982 that “For our own part, we have not reached any definite conclusions as to the merits of this performative approach” (Chapter 3, p. 50). We don’t know what Vic would have thought about the developments in this area over the last 36 years, but Edie forged ahead and continued to offer great insight into performing ethnographies in the classroom. I have included Edie throughout this chapter, not only for her important contributions to the seminars at U.Va. where I met her, but also for how she carried on Vic’s spirit after his death and added her own contributions to a humanistic, experiential anthropology (see Dubisch 2008 for more on Edie’s contributions to Turnerian anthropology). My experiences with Edie since I met her at U.Va. taught me that there is more potential to our research and teaching in an anthropology “of a different kind.” Many of us have been a part of the African drumming celebrations in the Turners’ home, or participated in “vision quests” led by Edie and Roy Wagner, during which our brains attained a state in which we could “envision” alternate realities. With Edie I learned so much about spirit and experiencing performance, and I aim to expose my students to the potential experiences that are available in the world if one is open to the numinous. I participated in several performances in Edie’s classes at U.Va. after Vic died. The most memorable one for me was a two-week long workshop I organized for Edie’s class on Shamanism and Healing. Students had been reading about shamanic practices in many cultures, and I shared with Edie’s class my research with a paranormal investigator, Mary Ann Winkowski (on whom the CBS television series “The Ghost Whisperer” was based). Then we “performed” a curse removal workshop in which Edie and I “removed negative energy” from willing students and/or their “cursed” objects as Winkowski outlines in the last chapter of her book (Winkowski 2007). While I have participated in many of Mary Ann’s seminars, this was the first time I participated in this form of healing as a performance in a classroom setting. Students who volunteered to be “healed” all shared at the end of class that they actually “felt” something leave their body with our cleansing. The class exercise “worked” in part because Edie had encouraged her students to view performance as a way of knowing, and as a means to achieve cross-cultural understanding.

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Not all teachers will feel comfortable employing ethnographic performance in their classroom. And perhaps not all teachers should engage in this form of pedagogy. There is a tension, a fine line over which we must not step, that involves terribly important considerations of lurking ethnocentrisms and potential cultural appropriations that must be discussed openly and honestly in all class performances. And some faculty may be hesitant to approach the “liminal” and experiential dimension of this work. The setting aside of a special time and place in which to experience a ritualized social drama engenders liminality. A liminal time and space is full of the potential for danger and great power with an added possibility for reversals of many kinds. But for those who are willing to encounter the liminal, to invest time and energy into providing an experience that their students will never forget, the performance is definitely worth it. I endeavor to pass on to my own students what I have learned from the Turners and Roy Wagner: to engage an experiential anthropology that welcomes the numinous and encourages the search for spirit that unites us all. Teaching can become part of that special sharing of lives that is involved in embodied experience, the sheer joy of playing/living…laughing and dancing through the educational process, in a catholic (little c) uniting of spirit.

References Bruner, Edward M. 1984. “Introduction.” In Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society, edited by Edward M. Bruner, 1–18. Washington, DC: The American Ethnological Society. ———. 1986. “Introduction: Experience and Its Expressions.” In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 3–32. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Dubisch, Jill. 2008 “Challenging the Boundaries of Experience, Performance, and Consciousness: Edith Turner’s Contributions to the Turnerian Project.” In Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance, edited by Graham St. John, 324–337. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. Frese, Pamela R. Forthcoming. “In the Spirit of Experience, Reflexivity and Growth: Exploring the Ancestral Roots of Performance Anthropology.” In The Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance. edited by Jonathan S. Marion and Lauren Miller Griffith. New York, NY: Routledge. Magnat, Virginie. 2012. “Can Research become Ceremony?: Performance Ethnography and Indigenous Epistemologies.” Canadian Theatre Review, 151 (Summer): 30–36. Norget, Kristin. 2006. Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Pedelty, Mark. 2001. “Teaching Anthropology Through Performance.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32 (2): 244–253. Ruby, Jay ed. 1982. A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1982. “Performing Ethnography.” TDR/The Drama Review 26 (2) (Summer): 33–50. Vogt, Evon Z. 1970. The Zinacantantecos of Mexico: A Modern Maya Way of Life. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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———. 1976. Tortillas for the Gods: A Symbolic Analysis of Zinacanteco Rituals. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press. Winkowski, Mary Ann. 2007. When Ghosts Speak: Understanding the World of Earthbound Spirits. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing.

Chapter 7

The Smell of Smudge, the Work of Smoke: Reenacting Native American Ritual in an Anthropology Course Edmund (Ned) Searles

A Burning Tobacco Rite It’s the Monday following the long weekend of Thanksgiving break, and students are anxious about their upcoming exams as the end of the semester approaches. To help alleviate that anxiety, I decide it’s time to perform a ceremony that honors a sacred tree and provides students a chance to experience the smell of tobacco, sweetgrass, sage, cedar, and juniper. After assembling in our classroom, the students and I walk to the lower end of the campus, where we gather around a tree. An inconspicuous sign near the tree indicates that it is a Tree of Peace and that Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse team donated the tree, a white pine—P. glauca, on May 5, 1990 (see Fig. 7.1). The tree is located 50 feet south of the main entrance to the Kenneth Langone Athletic and Recreational Center (KLARC), a long building that forms part of the northern edge of the campus. The tree is approximately 25 feet tall, and its many branches radiate outward, beginning at ground level (see Fig. 7.2). I explain to my students that Bucknell University was built on lands once occupied by at least two different groups of Native Americans. Historical records indicate that an Iroquois-speaking people known as the Susquehannocks lived here until the late 1600s. While some historians claim that they left the region to gain better access to European trade goods, others argue they fled out of fear of conflict with their enemies to the north, the Iroquois (Minderhout 2013b, 87–89). Settling in abandoned territory, the Iroquois built a prosperous village in what is now the neighboring town of Sunbury. Beginning in the late 1700s, non-Native settlers grew more numerous and intensified their long quest to rid the area of its Native presence through direct conflict and treaties. Weakened by war and disease, many Iroquois left their homes in Pennsylvania to seek refuge in more sparsely settled regions of upstate New York. In E. Searles (B) Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_7

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Fig. 7.1 This sign identifies the origin of Bucknell University’s Tree of Peace and is located adjacent to the tree (Ned Searles)

1784, a group of Iroquois chiefs signed the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, thereby “relinquishing any Iroquois land claims in Pennsylvania” (Minderhout 2013a, 48). Today the Iroquois refer to themselves as the Haudenosaunee (“People of the Longhouse”), a group of six indigenous nations that own reservation lands in New York and Ontario. The Great Tree of Peace is a key symbol in Haudenosaunee culture and history. One of the origin stories of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is the Dekanawidah myth. For many generations, the original five Iroquois nations were at constant war with each other until Hiawatha, a powerful warrior, brought peace. The legend states that Hiawatha confused his own reflection with that of Dekanawidah, a god born of a virgin, thereby joining their two spirits together (Wallace 1969, 97). Channeling the words and thoughts of Dekanawidah, Hiawatha made it his mission to convince the leaders of the other Iroquois nations to plant a Great Tree as a symbol of their commitment to peace and unity, “I am Dekanawide, and with the Five Nations’ confederate lords I plant the Tree of the Great Peace” (Parker 1912, 612). Under the roots of the Tree warriors cast all their weapons, and in the shade of this Tree the warring Haudenosaunee clans agreed on a peace settlement that formed the basis of a confederacy of nations that remains intact to this day. The five nations became six after 1722. Bucknell’s Tree of Peace symbolizes the friendship that unites the Haudenosaunee community with Bucknell’s. This friendship began in 1964 with the arrival of Sid Jamieson, an enrolled member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. He later became Bucknell’s first men’s lacrosse coach, a position he held until his retirement in 2005. Sid coached and mentored hundreds of Bucknell student-athletes, including many

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Fig. 7.2 Bucknell University’s Tree of Peace, October 14, 2019

Haudenosaunee, becoming one of the most successful lacrosse coaches in NCAA history. Lacrosse originated from an indigenous Iroquois game, a codified version of which became popular among Europeans in North America beginning in the midnineteenth century (see Vennum 1996). Sid received his first lacrosse stick when he was born, “a Haudenosaunee tradition,” he told me. To prepare for the ceremony, which takes place over a 52-minute class period, students read chapters from Frank Speck’s Midwinter Rites of the Cayuga Long House (1995, originally published in 1949) and Elizabeth Tooker’s Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands (1979), two works that describe traditional Haudenosaunee religion and ritual. Both Tooker and Speck are renowned for the quality and accuracy of their anthropological studies on Haudenosaunee spirituality and history. Trained by Boas, Speck witnessed and documented many Iroquois ceremonies and mentored future generations of anthropologists studying Iroquois culture past and present (Fenton 1995). Tooker, writes another famous scholar of American Indians, “has chosen from the best translations [of Iroquois texts about ceremonies and rituals]” (Sturtevant 1979, xv).

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I then unpack the contents of a smudge purification kit I purchased online from Terre de L’Aigle (Earth Eagle Products) a store owned and operated by the members of the Huronne-Wendat First Nation in Wendake, a suburb of Quebec City. According to the store’s Web site, Vincent Levesque founded the company in 1998 (Terre de L’Aigle 1998–2014). The company describes itself as 100% autochtone (“indigenous”), and its mission is to offer its customers one hundred percent natural products to be used in purification rituals and in the everyday care of the body and soul, as prescribed by the wisdom of ancestral traditions and recipes (translation mine). The pamphlet accompanying the smudge kit indicates, “Smudging being a holy act, the remaining ashes are sacred and consequently should be given back to the earth in a respectful manner.” Like the Haudenosaunee, the Huronne-Wendat speak an Iroquoian language. They refused to join the confederacy, however, as they sided with French forces against the Mohawk and Senecas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see Dickason 1997). Despite their warring ways, which all but disappeared in the nineteenth century, the Huronne-Wendat and Haudenosaunee share similar ideas about cosmology, creation, and the ritual function of smoke in traditional healing and thanksgiving ceremonies. I visited Terre de l’Aigle several times when I was a postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval in Québec from 1999 to 2002 and purchased my first smudge kit there. Each kit contains an abalone shell six inches long and four inches wide, a braided strand of sweetgrass about two feet long, and three one-ounce packets of powdered sage, juniper, and cedar. A pamphlet describes the spiritual qualities of the plants and how to use them. I also remove a pouch of 100% organic tobacco that I purchased the day before at a local Puff store. Following Speck’s description of the throwing tobacco rite, I build a tiny fire in the abalone shell with twigs and leaves I’ve gathered on the grounds of the university and in the backyard of my home a half mile away (Speck 1995 [1949]). To the fire I add pinches of powdered sage, cedar, and juniper as well as larger clumps of the tobacco. As the fire dies down, the pile of debris continues to smolder, producing smudge (i.e., smoke). I continue to feed the smudge with tobacco. As I blow into the shell, a huge billow of smoke engulfs me and everyone within a ten-foot radius. I remind students that many Native Americans consider tobacco to be a gift of the Creator and therefore sacred. I also inform them that participation in the ceremony is optional. I pass the shell to a student and ask him to hold it a foot from my face. I demonstrate the art of smudging by cupping the smoke with my hands and washing it over my head and body as if I were performing an ablution, repeating the motion several times. The student then returns the shell to me and repeats my actions. After he is done, I invite the rest of the students to follow our lead. While some drench themselves with smoke, others wave at the shell from a safe distance. The next phase of the ceremony involves reading a Cayuga thanksgiving prayer that accompanies the burning tobacco rite (Speck 1995 [1949], 132–133). I pass around paper copies of the prayer to thirteen volunteers. Each copy has a different paragraph highlighted and numbered so each student knows which portion of the

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prayer to read. While the students read, I tend to the smudge by blowing on new additions of tobacco, sage, cedar, and juniper. When the prayer is complete, I tell the students that it is important to dispose of the remaining tobacco by smoking it or by burying it in the ground. The pouch of tobacco is usually about three-quarters full, and invariably one or two students volunteer to consume another third by rolling cigarettes using the papers accompanying the pouch. As the students pass the cigarette around, I ask one to pass it my way and I take a long, deep inhale. The smoke burns my lungs, causing me to cough, but the blast of nicotine makes me feel light, dizzy, and happy. “Now this is a ritual,” I say to my students, and several laugh at the sight of their professor lighting it up with his students. This moment resembles the “play frame” described by the Turners in their analysis of Pam Frese’s “fabricated contemporary Central Virginian wedding” (discussed in Chapter 3, 41). A play frame sends a message to the participants that this purification ceremony is pedagogical but not meant to perform the same “moral function” as the actual ritual it resembles. It is meant, rather, to enable students to experience Haudenosaunee spirituality with all of their senses. At this point, I tell the students that smudge has purified them so that their prayers and petitions can reach the Creator. Barring any student questions, I conclude the ceremony by thanking them for participating. Around the base of the tree, I make a hole with my hands to bury the remaining contents of the abalone shell and the tobacco pouch. “The earth is sacred, too,” I tell the students who linger as I prepare to return to my office across campus.

Bucknell University’s Tree of Peace In the fall of 2003, Oren Lyons, the Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, one of the six nations that constitute the Haudenosaunee, visited the Bucknell campus to participate in a ceremonial celebration of the Tree of Peace that had been planted over a decade earlier. Sid Jamieson joined the ceremony as well. He invited two other faculty members and me to be present, along with Oren Lyons’ grandson, who was a Bucknell student at the time. At the ceremony, Oren Lyons gave thanks to the Creator for the Great Tree of Peace and explained its significance in giving rise to the confederacy. Oren and his grandson also uttered several loud “whoops” at several points during the ceremony, to catch the attention of the Creator, he told those in attendance. Haudenosaunee continue to plant trees throughout their territories and former territories to commemorate the symbol’s power as a signifier of Haudenosaunee culture and identity. Sid Jamieson and Oren Lyons indicated that students, faculty, and staff need to continually honor this tree by remembering and celebrating the legacy of Native Americans in the area and the ties that connect Bucknell students and staff to the Haudenosaunee. When I asked Sid if it was appropriate for me to perform a Cayuga ceremony in one my classes to honor the tree, he said yes and urged me to proceed. My ceremony thus has the approval of the only self-identifying Haudenosaunee member employed at

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Bucknell. I regularly invite him to give guest lectures in one of my courses, and he understands that my interest in learning and teaching about the Haudenosaunee is sincere and respectful. Sid graciously declined several offers to join our ceremony celebrating Bucknell’s Tree of Peace. “You just do what you do,” he said, “and that’s fine by me.” As I began to read about Haudenosaunee religion and spirituality, I learned that since the early 1800s they conducted all of their traditional ceremonials in a Longhouse. Without a Longhouse on campus, I decided to create a ritual to take place around Bucknell’s Tree of Peace that borrowed elements from rites and ceremonies documented by Speck (1995 [1949]) and Tooker (1979). I learned about the portability of spiritual smudging while attending a series of meetings hosted by the Canadian government in Ottawa in 2000. Statistics Canada recruited a Mohawk elder to begin each meeting with a smudge ceremony in the room where we deliberated. He lit sage leaves in an abalone shell, fanned them with an eagle feather, and asked us to participate in a short prayer of thanksgiving to the creator. He then gave each of us the opportunity to purify with the smudge. In the early 1800s, a Haudenosaunee warrior named Handsome Lake had visions that instructed him to abstain from alcohol and to keep “up the ceremonies decreed by the Creator” (Underhill 1965, 174; see also Wallace 1969). He revitalized spiritual practices that were no longer being practiced, including a number of thanksgiving ceremonies. To this day, Haudenosaunee continue to recite the Code of Handsome Lake several times a year in Longhouses located throughout upstate New York. Wallace describes the Code as “a gospel transmitted by word of mouth from preacher to preacher and memorized so that it can be chanted by a man standing in a longhouse filled with the noise of bustling people, slamming doors, and rattling stove grates, hour after hour, for the mornings of four days” (1969, 7). It is “a catalogue of sins and their punishments, a description of heaven and hell, a definition of the good way of life, a description for the proper ceremonies to be performed in the longhouse” (Wallace 1969, 8). Appointed preachers recite parts or all of it during the annual cycle of six ceremonies that take place in Haudenosaunee longhouses today. I have yet to experience the ritual myself. Thinking about a suitable ritual exercise for my class, one that celebrated the history and meaning of the Great Tree of Peace, I decided it would be too difficult to re-enact a major ceremony described by Speck. They span several consecutive days—too long for a semester-long course—and they involve dances and songs that should not be performed without Haudenosaunee approval or supervision. Speck describes a tobacco burning rite performed at the beginning of the seventh day of the Midwinter Ceremony that lasts less than an hour and that involves objects— tobacco and a container for smudging—that are widely used in contemporary Native American religious rituals (1995 [1949], 131). The main part of the rite is a thousandword prayer that illustrates the mythopoetic nature of Haudenosaunee beliefs. The prayer thanks the Creator for all the blessings of the earth and sky. The blessings include medicine “that would help the people at times whenever some people get sickness,” plants and animals that produce food, “all that he has made grow on earth for people, and whatever the people plant,” and the “thunder of the west that guides

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things on earth” (1995 [1949], 132). The prayer also thanks grandmother moon and her helpers the stars, whom the Creator instructs to teach humans how to live right. In a surprising syncretic twist, Speck writes that his informants believe that the Creator is Jesus Christ (1995 [1949], 127).

Cultural Celebration or Appropriation? Even though Sid authorized me to conduct the ceremony, I am conflicted when I perform it. I am mindful of the critique of “whiteshamans”—poets and artists who appropriate American Indian spirituality for personal gain. Wendy Rose writes that whiteshamans supplement their performances by burning sage, and by chanting and beating drums, aspiring to become the “real” Indian even when actual native people are present (1992, 405). Rose is not opposed to non-natives representing native practices, so long as such practices do not replace or simulate a native perspective. Conceding that many non-Indian people have “written honestly and eloquently” about topics that Native peoples hold sacred, it’s only a problem when a non-native poet attempts to produce “an Indian perspective… in an Indian way” (1992, 416). In addition to Rose’s concerns about whiteshamans, I am also troubled by the critique of another indigenous scholar, Audra Simpson (2014). She accuses anthropologists of creating texts that misrepresent the experiences and perspectives of native peoples themselves (2014, 74). She would probably not approve of our ceremony because it is based on ideas about Iroquois social history, politics, and experience she feels are problematic and immoral (2014, 76). My response to this critique is to limit how much I expose my students to the ethnographic literature on Haudenosaunee spirituality. I also make it clear to my students that we are not playing Indian: We’re trying to simulate different experiences of the world, including those intended by a ceremony honoring Bucknell University’s Tree of Peace. There is no simple resolution to the ethical problems when a non-indigenous instructor leads a ceremony that simulates elements of indigenous spirituality. While it is important to respect concerns about cultural appropriation and misrepresentation, they pose challenges for those who desire to teach about indigenous cultures in contexts where few, if any, indigenous people live. The community of Bucknell University seldom acknowledges its ties to indigenous communities. Bucknell’s Tree of Peace would be just another tree on campus without a ceremony to honor it; few, if any, on campus would even be aware of the Tree’s existence, much less its history and its connection to Iroquois history and spirituality. Given the absence of a local Haudenosaunee community, it seems more ethical to perform a ceremony that exposes students to the historical significance of the Tree than to perform no ceremony at all. I respond to the critique of misrepresentation by asserting that the ceremony we perform is not intended to reproduce contemporary Haudenosaunee spiritual practices (which adds another layer of challenge—one student wrote in her endof-semester evaluation of the course that she wanted to experience a real Native

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American ritual). It simulates healing rites practiced by Native peoples throughout North America (see Pflüge [2001] for a detailed description of the use of tobacco and prayer for healing among the Odawa, an Algonkian-speaking people of the Great Lakes region). I designed the ceremony to evoke features of contemporary Native American spirituality in ways that textbooks and writing assignments cannot. I am not alone in my struggle to teach ethically and respectfully about Native American spirituality. Paula Gunn Allen describes her ambivalence about teaching Ceremony, a novel that reveals practices and beliefs many Pueblo believe are offlimits to non-Pueblo, “I remember being told a person who told those stories might wake up dead in a ditch” (1998, 63). At the same time, she believes that when she teaches the book, her students are entitled to information about Pueblo prayers, rituals, and spiritual activities referenced in the novel if they ask for it “Ethically, as a professor, I see this kind of methodology as necessary; but ethically, as an Indian, I can’t do it” (Allen 1998, 63). Allen continues, “Contemplating my dilemma in cold, hard prose here, I begin to despair; no, I begin to understand some of the reasons for my extreme ambivalence in doing what I do, some of the reasons I find teaching Native American Studies so painful, and some of the reasons why some poems and fiction I’ve been working on for years is stymied” (1998, 63). Considering concerns that our ceremony appropriates Haudenosaunee spirituality in a way that privileges non-indigenous, settler perspectives over indigenous ones, I have learned that it is better to treat these concerns as an opportunity to engage my students more deeply with the kinds of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation that indigenous peoples face everywhere. I also take solace in the fact that not all Haudenosaunee share the belief that non-indigenous people should avoid learning or teaching about Haudenosaunee spirituality. Christopher Ronwanièn:te Jocks, a member of the Mohawk Nation (one of the founding members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy), believes it is possible to teach about indigenous spirituality in a way that avoids the abuses of the past and present, especially when it involves the “sharing of spiritual practices and knowledge… among equals, in a discourse of mutual respect, with permission of both parties” (Jocks 2000, 62). Discussing my ethical concerns with my students about reenacting a Native American rite provides a fruitful context for exploring broader questions about what constitutes cultural appropriation and why.

Performing Rituals Is Productive Pedagogically Performing rituals in class is good pedagogy; they provide students with a set of embodied experiences that texts, class discussions, and films cannot reproduce. Rituals provide an effective means of teaching students about culture and religious experience around the world (see Bell 2007). To quote Mark Wallace, a scholar of religious studies who has designed some of his courses around a series of rituals, “Performance activities rooted in particular cultural traditions provide students with a mediated experience of time-honored practices that enhance and deepen

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text-based learning” (2007, 79). Rituals enacted in the context of a classroom create a theater-like atmosphere, producing “processes of displacement, transformation, exaggeration, repetition, and rhythmicity” (Schechner 2007, 25). They create a double consciousness for both the student and the teacher: One part is consumed by the process of participating while another part remains outside, watching the doing, observing a set of embodied practices that are familiar and strange (Schechner 2007, 24; cf. Turner and Turner’s notion of “intensified reflexivity” in Chapter 3, 41). As students become engrossed in a live performance, learning becomes a co-production of body and mind, head and heart, soul and intellect. As a junior faculty member at Bucknell, I witnessed the pedagogical efficacy of embodied performance in a first-year seminar I teach annually, titled Hairdos, Piercings, and Tattoos. I planned the course around different ways of analyzing the mind-body-self connection. One of my regular guest lecturers, Arlyne, practices shiatsu therapy in her home in central Pennsylvania. She uses qi to help her clients manage and even overcome physical pain and emotional trauma. According to the Tao Te Ching, one of Taoism’s sacred texts, qi (or ch’i) is life (or mind) energy that flows through all living creatures (Saso 1997, 238–239). Centered in the center of the head, qi “governs the power of intellect, imagination (visualization), and the projection or circulation of qi energy during meditation” (1977, 239). Arlyne demonstrates her ability to manipulate qi in a class exercise in which she uses mental imagery to weaken a student volunteer’s physical strength. The demonstration involves several steps. First, she recruits a volunteer willing to have their qi altered. Next Arlyne tests the student’s strength by pressing down on her outraised arm. Once Arlyne has shown the class that the student is strong enough to resist her pressure, she stands a foot away from the student and asks her to relax. Arlyne stands motionless as she silently reverses the student’s qi. After 15 seconds, Arlyne asks the student to hold out her arm only to find that she is unable to resist Arlyne’s pressure. In all the years I have witnessed Arlyne perform this demonstration, she has always succeeded in pushing down the student’s arm with ease. As the rest of the class appears dazed and confused, Arlyne assures her volunteer that her strength will soon be restored. Arlyne repeats the steps, only this time she returns the student’s flow of qi to its natural state, and she is once again able to hold up her arm against Arlyne’s pressure. Arlyne’s demonstration has a deep impact on the way my students approach non-Western ideas about the connection of body, mind, and self and inspires them to start rethinking their own taken-for-granted notions about the mind-body connection. There were other contexts in which I witnessed the power of embodied performance to enhance the intellectual and personal growth of students. Professor Michelle Johnson, my wife, a fellow anthropologist in my department, and author of Chapter 8 in this volume, incorporates a memorial sacrifice and a pilgrimage to a Catholic Marian shrine in several of her courses. I heard many of her students claim that not only did they learn a great deal about the anthropology of religion through these rituals, but also they had a profound influence on their entire academic experience at Bucknell. Michelle also teaches the required qualitative research methods course in our department. Beginning about 10 years ago, she began inviting me to give a guest

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lecture on an article I wrote about conducting ethnographic research in the Canadian Arctic (Searles 2000). I decided to introduce the main concepts of the article by opening the class with an exercise designed to simulate the experience of conducting research with people who do not to greet familiar faces who come into their homes and who are comfortable with prolonged periods of silence in the presence of guests. After Michelle introduces to me, I remain silent and expressionless at the front of the classroom. Although the students do not know it is an exercise, I give them several minutes following its completion to reflect on their experience via an in-class writing exercise. As was the case with Frese’s performance of central Virginian wedding, the episode of silence creates a frame (simulation of the instructor’s ethnographic experience) within a frame (guest lecture in a class) and generates moments of “intensified reflexivity.” I inform the students that the goal of the exercise is to help them experience what it is like for an anthropologist to research a world in which silence is how one greets another person. Professor Johnson tells me that she regularly observes a noticeable change in the quality of the students’ field notes after the exercise; they begin to grasp the idea that ethnography involves identifying and documenting the full range of emotions and experiences that accompany moments of co-presence in the field. Despite the initial success of this exercise (which has become a tradition in the research methods course), I was still reluctant to incorporate rituals into my courses dealing with indigenous spirituality. As a graduate student studying the damaging effects of colonialism on the lives of Inuit adolescents in Nunavut, Canada in the mid1990s, I observed Inuit participate in ceremonies that I assumed were instruments of assimilation. Michelle and I participated in many of them ourselves—church services on Sunday, birthday parties in the homes of our Inuit friends, and municipal feasts on national holidays. Because of non-indigenous origins, I assumed that they undermined the integrity of Inuit culture and local autonomy. I began to reconsider my position on ritual’s relationship to indigenous culture after teaching a series of ethnographies on the religion and spirituality of several North American indigenous groups. Tim Buckley’s Standing Ground (2002), an ethnography of the contemporary Yurok peoples of northern California, presents ritual as the foundation of Yurok cultural survival. One dance that he describes lasts ten days: Fasting, thirsting, waking, singing–people are cheerful, glad to be there in the heat of the sun, the smoke of the fire, the air rich with burning angelica root. “Don’t say it’s hot,” says an elder, “say it’s a wonderful day!” The prayers build–medicine man’s, the dancers’, the women’s prayer in the camps, the spectators’ prayer, witnessing. On the last day girls join the men and boys who have already danced for nine days, and by the end of the last dance of this tenth day all of the dancers are in the pit at once with the very best of all of the regalia. Finally the single great prayer rises up and hangs in the sky above the river, luminous and powerful. Then everybody dances, maybe a hundred people, from the dance grounds and down across the road, along the gravel bar by the river. (p. 5)

Buckley helped me to realize that rituals play a key role in the experience of indigenous peoples in the Americas, and that spirituality plays a key role in how indigenous peoples maintain their identities, cultures, and communities. This insight inspired me

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to rethink the literature on ceremonies and rituals in the North American Arctic (see Bodenhorn 1993; Dorais 2002; Laugrand and Oosten 2002; Nuttall 2000; Turner 1996). Closer to my own research experiences, Edith Turner’s ethnography of healing and spirit presence among the Iñupiat of Alaska argues that a community-wide Thanksgiving meal is a modern adaptation of an ancient ritual of sharing, prayer, and feasting honoring the souls of all the animals killed by hunters in the previous year (Turner 1996). After an animal dies, its soul enters its bladder, each of which is saved by the hunter and hung from a rope during the Bladder Festival. After the Festival, which involves much dancing and feasting, the bladders are released into the ocean, where they will be reincarnated as animals who will return to be caught by hunters and feed the community. Although Iñupiat no longer hang animal bladders, the Thanksgiving feast resurrects core features of that ritual: “The [participants] echoed the random generosity of nature in the scattering of feathers in the spinning top divination; by a scattering of candy over the whale boat before the hunt; in the leap of the captain in the festival toss,” and in a plate of food filling up with raw, frozen fish and muktuk (whale blubber). “We don’t hang up a bladder now,” says one of her Iñupiat interlocutors, “Just the same we’ve turned Thanksgiving into a Bladder Festival” (Turner 1996, 77–78). Turner also experienced the revival of a ceremony banned by missionaries in 1908, a four-day event called the Messenger Feast. It features the competitive dances of visiting villages and “a great deal of gift exchange” (Turner 1996, 94). Its purpose is to promote and celebrate Iñupiat culture, community, and identity, and “it succeeded in transmuting actual competition and conflict [among the villages] into a colorful, generous, and often very funny performance” (1996, 94). The singing, feasting, dancing, and playing associated with a Christmas festival in Barrow, Alaska, are all “conversations about being an Inupiaq adult with all the connections that generates” writes anthropologist Barbara Bodenhorn (1993, 210). The feast expresses one’s way of being a real Iñupiat person by eating real Iñupiat food (Bodenhorn 1993, 210). According to Laugrand and Oosten, the Christmas (known by Canadian Inuit as Quviasukvik—“the time and/or place of joy”) that missionaries introduced on Baffin Island in the late 1800s resembled their own midwinter ceremony. Like Christmas, the ceremony included rituals of gift exchanges and competitive games designed to rekindle friendships, release tensions, and renew the world itself (2002, 221). Thanks to the insights gained from Edith Turner and others, I began to reconsider the indigenous meanings of rituals I documented among the Inuit of Baffin Island. In my field notes, I describe a birthday party of a young Inuit girl that is both familiar and strange. The parents blindfold their five-year-old daughter with a black cloth and hand her a bowl of candy. The daughter throws handfuls of candy over her shoulder, and what follows is paqlatsiti (Briggs 1998), a ritual in which the birthday girl and her guests crawl on the floor grabbing as much candy as possible. Like the first catch ritual, in which every Inuit child gives away her first catch of fish, seal, or caribou to a relative, paqlatsiti reminds Inuit children of the “random generosity of nature” (Turner 1996) and that sharing, like smudging, is sacred (see also Nuttall 2000).

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These rituals reproduce and reaffirm indigenous identities and values in ways that blend old ways with the new. I decided to try to teach this important insight through the performance of a ceremony honoring Bucknell’s Tree of Peace.

Playing with Fire: Frame Slippage In October 2010, a steady rain forces me to move our tobacco burning rite to a sheltered space under the awning of a nearby building. The flashing blue light and horn of a campus safety vehicle near us cause us all to turn away from our ceremony and watch it speed down the road and screech to a halt fifty yards from us. The officer exits the car and walks swiftly toward our circle, hand poised above the handle of revolver tucked in a holster. “What are you doing?” he says as he watches me tending the smudge. “We are performing a ceremony as part of a course I am teaching on Native American spirituality,” I answer as my students look on in amazement. My response convinces him we are no longer a threat, and his hand moves away from his holster. He issues me a citation for building a fire on campus without a permit. He also states that he confused me with a person suspected of setting fire to three homes several blocks away in the past week. “You can remain here,” he says, “so long as you put out that fire.” Although I agree to douse the smudge, I refuse to end the ceremony as I ask my students to continue reading the prayer. Paralleling the Turners’ claims that “to ‘play at’ performing a ritual drama is, without suitable precautions being taken, to play with fire” (Chapter 3, 42), the interruption caused by the Public Safety Officer revealed the power of performance to create moments of intensified reflexivity and critical thinking. The slippage between frames helped my students better relate to the violence and oppression many indigenous people feel is targeted at their religion. Although we were “playing at” performing ritual, we were also playing with fire literally and figuratively, tapping into a ritual revered as well as feared for its ability to purify, heal, and empower all kinds of people and places. “You’ve done nothing wrong Professor Searles” says one student, which prompts me to tell them how Native Americans who consume peyote as part of their religion risk arrest and imprisonment. Although members of the Native American Church are legally allowed to consume peyote for religious purposes, proving that one is a member of the Native American Church isn’t as straightforward as it appears. Teaching about Native American religion is difficult. Since its inception, the US government has worked to eliminate indigenous religious and spiritual practices by military force and by legislation. In the class students learn about a Ghost Dance tradition founded by Tavibo, the father of the Northern Paiute of Nevada in 1889. Tavibo believed that performing the dance would result in the return of the old way of life, the return of the buffalo, and the expulsion of Anglo-Americans from Native Lands (Irwin 2000, 300). Instead, it led to the massacre of 146 Lakota men, women, and children by four companies of the US Army’s 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee in

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December 1890 (Churchill 1992, 165; Irwin 2000). In Irwin’s analysis, this event had a “shocking, suppressive force on all native religious practices” (2000, 300). In my class students also learn about the false promises associated with the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIFRA) passed by Congress in 1978. Two Supreme Court cases, Lyng vs. Northwest Indian Cemetery Association (108 S. Ct. 1319 [1988]) and Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon vs. Smith (110 S. Ct. 1595 [1990]), “have stripped American Indians of the protection of the federal courts and the American Constitution insofar as the practice of traditional religions is concerned” (Deloria 1992, 267). Although receiving a citation for violating campus rules pales in comparison with the level of persecution faced by Native American groups, there was one significant overlap. Both involve the criminalization of religious practices. In addition, Bucknell University’s current policy prohibits the smoking or burning of tobacco within 25 feet of all academic, residential, and administrative buildings. To his credit, the public safety officer informed me that I could obtain a permit to build a fire on university grounds, so long as it was confined to an approved container such as a portable charcoal grill. I now inform Public Safety in advance when and where I will conduct the ceremony, and they do not bother us. But the larger question about the protection of religious freedom persists; the university determines the conditions by which tobacco can be used on campus even if that use is for religious purposes.

Maximizing the Ambiguity, Playfulness, and Fecundity of Ritual I was slow to perform a religious ceremony drawing on elements of Native American spirituality in my courses at Bucknell, but when I did, I learned that it improved the quality of my courses on several different levels. First, it provides students with a set of sensory experiences that cannot be reproduced by texts, films, and conventional classroom exercises. Second, it exposes students to Native American concerns about the myriad forms of cultural appropriation. Finally, ritual performances create nested frames of meaning in which the scripted and unscripted come into direct contact, border zones of frame slippage that lead to moments of intensified reflexivity, high impact teaching, and engaged student learning. In the spring 2019 version of Anthropology 256, “The Anthropology of Native North America,” I added a “ritual analysis” assignment in which students write a one to two page analysis of the ceremony from an anthropological and personal perspective, using concepts and theories from the class. I also asked them if they would let me use their essays as data for this chapter so long as I kept their identities confidential, and all of them consented. A number of themes emerged in the responses. For most of them, the ceremony evoked powerful emotions, some positive and some negative. One student wrote that he became “infuriated” when several students laughed following one of the “whoop”

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cries the instructor (me) uttered during the ceremony; he thought it was a sign of disrespect, poking fun at a solemn ritual. Later, however, the student “felt peace” when he experienced his Azteca spirit helper as the wind blowing through the branches of the Tree and when the smudge reminded him of the teas his father prepared for him when he was sick as a child (the student self-identifies as an indigenous person whose ancestral heritage lies in contemporary Mexico). Another effect of the ceremony was that it inspired students to reflect on the place of spirituality in their own lives, an example of the “intensified reflexivity” described by the Turners (Chapter 3, 41). One student expressed skepticism about participating “in an act of devotion [the student] felt no connection to.” Later, however, the student wrote, “at the end of the prayer I noticed that the wind picked up ferociously, and the tree whooshed around as if the spirits, the creator, and the [ceremony] participants were communicating… through the twists of nature’s language.” A number of students commented on the fact that this ceremony made them more aware of the problems of the cultural appropriation of Native American culture and identity. One student wrote that what she thought was innocent fun at the summer camp she attended as a child—being assigned to a Native American tribe—was actually cultural appropriation. She also expressed pride in the fact that Sid Jamieson and Oren Lyons approved Bucknell as a place for a Tree of Peace to be planted and celebrated. After reflecting on whether or not I should use the ceremony as an entry into a larger component on Haudenosaunee history and spirituality, I’m hesitant to do so for two reasons. Not only am I not an expert on these topics, but even if I tried to be, I would have to rely on a canon of non-indigenous authored texts that scholars like Audra Simpson find unethical. The other reason I am reluctant to have my students do more research or analysis in conjunction with the ceremony is that it might adversely affect their memory and experience of it. Instead of experiencing the ceremony as an opportunity for experiential learning, they might become too concerned about how I would assess their analysis of it. I fear the ceremony would lose its spontaneity and ambiguity, as Victor Turner argues is the essence of another kind of ceremony, the carnival: The true carnivals are true to ambiguity. Once they become clearly defined, once they move into the indicative cultural mood of binary oppositions, mediations, and the like, they cease to be true to themselves, to be true to the bared human condition they so signally express and enigmatically represent. The politicization of the festive spirit of ambiguity and its channeling towards goals or approved by power hierarchies, secular or sacred, destroys this fecund ambiguity and makes of carnivals its own sanctimonious ghost. (1983, 188)

The burning tobacco rite continues to empower students to experience with all of their senses aspects of Haudenosaunee spirituality as it is connected to the Great Tree of Peace. Also, the frame of the smudge ceremony—and its slippage into and out of other nested frames (i.e., the world of wind, rain, and public safety officers; the world of teaching and learning)—inspires my students to use all of their senses and themselves to understand Native American spirituality. Acknowledgements I thank Sid Jamieson for his ongoing support of my teaching about the Haudenosaunee; Arlyne Hoyt for her permission to write about her in-class qi workshops for my

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students; my students for their willingness to share their insights into what a smudge ceremony means to them; and Michelle Johnson, my wife and colleague, for inspiring me to include a ritual in my class in the first place. Finally, I thank the two editors of this volume, Susan Brownell and Pam Frese, for their generosity, support, and incredibly helpful editorial comments and suggestions.

References Allen, Paula Gunn. 1998. “Special Problems in Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.” In Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing about American Indians, 55–64. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Bell, Catherine, ed. 2007. Teaching Ritual. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Bodenhorn, Barbara. 1993. “Christmas Present: Christmas Public.” In Unwrapping Christmas, edited by Daniel Miller, 193–216. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Briggs, Jean L. 1998. Inuit Morality Play: The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Buckley, Thomas. 2002. Standing Ground: Yurok Indian Spirituality 1850–1990. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Churchill, Ward. 1992. “The Earth is Our Mother: Struggles for American Indian Land and Liberation in the Contemporary United States.” In The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 139–188. Boston, MA: South End Press. Deloria, Jr., Vine. 1992. “Trouble in High Places: Erosion of American Indian Rights to Religious Freedom in the United States.” In The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 267–290. Boston, MA: South End. Dickason, Olive Patricia. 1997. Canada’s First Nations. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Dorais, Louis-Jacques. 2002. “Le temps de Fêtes à Quaqtaq.” Études/Inuit Studies 24 (2): 139–150. Fenton, William N. 1995. “Introduction to the Bison Book Edition: Frank G. Speck: American Ethnologist (1881–1950).” In Midwinter Rites of the Cayuga Long House, edited by Frank G. Speck, 1–9. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. First published 1949. Irwin, Lee. 2000. “Freedom, Law, and Prophecy: A Brief History of Native American Religious Resistance”. In Native American Spirituality, edited by Lee Irwin, 295–316. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Jocks, Christopher Ronwanièn:te. 2000. “Spirituality for Sale: Sacred Knowledge in the Consumer Age.” In Native American Spirituality, edited by Lee Irwin, 61–77. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Laugrand, Frédéric, and Jarich Oosten. 2002. “Quviasukvik: The Celebration of an Inuit Winter Feast in the Central Arctic.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 88: 203–255. Minderhout, David J. 2013a. “Pennsylvania’s Native Americans: History Timeline.” In Native Americans in the Susquehanna River Valley, Past and Present, edited by David J. Minderhout, 45–50. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield and Bucknell University Press. ———. 2013b. “Native Americans in the Susquehanna Region: 1550 to Today.” In Native Americans in the Susquehanna River Valley, Past and Present, edited by David J. Minderhout, 77–112. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield and Bucknell University Press. Nuttall, Mark. 2000. “Becoming Hunter in Greenland.” Études/Inuit Studies 24 (2): 33–46. Parker, Arthur C. 1912. “Certain Iroquois Tree Myths and Symbols.” American Anthropologist 14 (4): 608–620. Pflüge, Melissa A. 2001. “Pimadaziwin: Contemporary Rituals in Odawa Community.” In Native American Spirituality: A Critical Reader, edited by Lee Irwin, 121–144. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

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Rose, Wendy. 1992. “The Great Pretenders: Further Reflections on White Shamanism.” In The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 403–421. Boston, MA: South End Press. Saso, Michael. 1997. “The Taoist Body and Cosmic Prayer.” In Religion and the Body, edited by Sarah Coakley, 231–247. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schechner, Richard. 2007. “Living a Double Consciousness.” In Teaching Ritual, edited by Catherine Bell, 15–28. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Searles, Edmund. 2000. “‘Why Do You Ask So Many Questions?’ Dialogical Anthropology and Learning How Not to Ask in Canadian Inuit Society.” Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement 11 (1): 175–202. Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Speck, Frank G. 1995. Midwinter Rites of the Cayuga Long House. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (First published in 1949). Sturtevant, William C. 1979. “Preface.” In Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands: Sacred Myths, Dreams, Visions, Speeches, Healing Formulas, Rituals, and Ceremonials, edited by Elisabeth Tooker, xi–xvii. New York, NY: Paulist Press. Tooker, Elizabeth, ed. 1979. Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands: Sacred Myths, Dreams, Visions, Speeches, Healing Formulas, Rituals, and Ceremonials. New York, NY: Paulist Press. Turner, Edith. 1996. The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence Among a Northern Alaskan People. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Turner, Victor Witter. 1983. “The Spirit of Celebration.” In The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary Cultural Performance, edited by Frank E. Manning, 187–192. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press. Underhill, Ruth M. 1965. Red Man’s Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Vennum, T. 1996. “Lacrosse.” In Encyclopedia of North American Indians, edited by F. E. Hoxie, 323–324. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1969. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Wallace, Mark I. 2007. “Experience, Purpose, Pedagogy, and Theory: Ritual Activities in the Classroom.” In Teaching Ritual, edited by Catherine Bell, 73–88. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 8

Grotto Water and Potato Chips: Turnerian Ethnographic Performance as Pedagogical Resistance Michelle C. Johnson

Introduction As an undergraduate student at the University of Washington, I took an unforgettable course taught by Susan Brownell, who was then a visiting assistant professor. In addition to a midterm and final paper, Susan’s course incorporated two Turnerian ethnographic performances, as she describes in Chapter 5 in this volume: the kula ring from the Trobriand Islands and a Lotuka boy’s initiation ritual from Sudan. The course solidified my burgeoning interest in symbolic and interpretive anthropology and, more specifically, in Victor Turner’s work on African ritual. Participating as a student in those ethnographic performances was transformative. My classmates and I pooled our extra cash to purchase materials for our costumes and spent hours writing and rehearsing our lines. It was through performing these rituals—rather than reading about them in scholarly texts—that I learned that all rituals are performances. I also understood how much physical and emotional work they require and how meaningful they are for their participants. A decade after I took Susan’s course, I saw her at the American Anthropological Association meetings. I told her that performing the rituals in her class remained entrenched in my memory, in living color, as if it happened yesterday. But it was only after I became a professor and used Turnerian ethnographic performances in my own courses that I realized the extent to which this pedagogical form had shaped me as a teacher-scholar. I learned that Susan’s experience had been similar. Today, I routinely incorporate Turnerian ethnographic performances in my courses at Bucknell University. Theory in Anthropology students perform the Victor Turner Memorial Sacrifice, a West African-style sacrifice in honor of Victor and Edith Turner. In 2013, when the Department of Sociology and Anthropology was relocated away from the original shrine in the heart of campus, Religions in Africa M. C. Johnson (B) Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_8

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students undertook the semester-long project of establishing a new shrine at Academic West, the Department’s new home, using specifically assigned sections from Marion Kilson’s book, Dancing with the Gods (2013), which they modeled. Students in a second class, Anthropology of Religion, read the Turners’ work on pilgrimage and later “walk the way of the pilgrim” at the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Turnerian ethnographic performances teach my students and me about religion and ritual specifically, and about life and learning more generally. This form of engaged learning enhances students’ understanding of religion in our increasingly secular society and rapidly changing world. As a form of resistance to conventional pedagogies, ethnographic performances destabilize the centrality of the text, engage the body and senses, and disrupt normative structures of knowledge and power. In so doing, they honor the people with whom anthropologists work, for whom embodied, experiential ways of knowing and learning are the norm rather than the exception (Jackson 1989).

The Victor Turner Memorial Lecture and Sacrifice When I joined Bucknell’s faculty in 2002, one of my charges was to teach the required theory course for anthropology majors, Interpreting Culture (now Theory in Anthropology). The class had a reputation for being “difficult,” and students often complained in course evaluations about the “dry” readings. When I asked the department chair why the word “theory” did not appear in the course title, she told me that the word would scare away non-majors and that the course was already under-enrolling. My task was clear: Find a way to make anthropological theory more exciting for students. It is interesting that, like Susan, I first utilized such exercises in a theory class, not an ethnography class, perhaps that is because it is the way that I first encountered them. I hand-selected the most interesting selections from each theorist’s body of works. Students in pairs researched and presented on the personal lives of the theorists we read, exploring their childhoods, personal and professional challenges, and how these may have shaped (or been shaped by) the theories they produced. I devised non-traditional assignments, such as “personal letters” about a theorist written to a relative or friend. Inspired by David Spain, whose riveting theory course I took at the University of Washington, students prepared “crib sheets” for use during exams, and I awarded prizes to the most creative and rigorous ones. Finally, I incorporated the Victor Turner Memorial Sacrifice, a Turnerian ethnographic performance in honor of Victor Turner (and Edith Turner after her death in 2016), which has earned the course its off-beat reputation. Unlike the ethnographic performances I use in my other courses for which students spend considerable time on preparations, Theory in Anthropology students know nothing about the Sacrifice before they perform it, beyond the fact that something different will happen on this day. Students do know, however, that Victor Turner’s writings inspired me to become an anthropologist, and that he was my intellectual

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“grandfather”: My graduate school mentor, Alma Gottlieb, studied with him at the University of Virginia and dedicated her first book to him. On the day of the Sacrifice, I divide the students into two groups based on gender. They identify the oldest person in each group, whom I appoint as the “Senior Man” and the “Senior Woman,” both of whom will play major roles in the Sacrifice. Although students can opt out, so far no one ever has. The Senior Man dons a Fulani Hat, which my husband bought in 1997 on our trip to Mali. He also holds the sacrificial bottle, a beer bottle decorated with African amulets and Catholic scapulars and filled with water, which Anthropology of Religion students bring back from the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Senior Woman drapes African fabric (a gift from a graduate school classmate from Burkina Faso) around her shoulders and holds the Sacred Calabash (purchased in Tanzania by a friend and given to my husband and me as a wedding gift). The Senior Woman appoints two assistants to collect flower petals or leaves and store them in the Calabash until the appropriate time in the Sacrifice. As petals and leaves are scarce in winter, we sometimes use generic-brand potato chips, which the Turners allegedly served their students during ethnographic performances. I appoint a student to photograph the ritual, another to read the Victor Turner quotation, one more to hold a “bejeweled” picture of him, and two “sweepers,” who will keep evil spirits and curious passers-by away from the ritual space, using either bundles of sticks or “fly-whisks” (which I purchased in Cape Coast, Ghana). Once all the roles have been allocated, we proceed as a class to the nearest Turner shrine. The shrines are located at the base of several trees spread around campus and are particularly beautiful in the spring when they are in full bloom. We gather around the shrine in a circle, with the ritual participants—the Senior Man, the Senior Woman and her assistants, the quotation reader, and the presenters—standing in front of the shrine. In a spirited voice, I tell the Senior Woman’s assistants to run quickly to gather flower petals or leaves. As they run, the class cheers them on. When they return, the appointed students give short presentations on Victor Turner’s life and work. The quotation reader then reads a (slightly edited) passage from Victor Turner’s Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Thought (1975, 31–32): After many years as an agnostic and monistic materialist I learned from the Ndembu that ritual and its symbolism are not merely epiphenomena or disguises of deeper social and psychological processes, but have ontological value … I became convinced that religion is not merely a [childhood toy], to be discarded at a nodal point of scientific and technological development but is really at the heart of the human matter. Deciphering ritual forms and discovering what generates symbolic actions may be more germane to our cultural growth than we have supposed. But we have to put ourselves in some way inside religious processes to obtain knowledge of them. There must be a conversion experience.

The Senior Man performs the sacrifice, pouring the water from the bottle onto the ground at the base of the tree. The Senior Woman sprinkles the flower petals, leaves, or potato chips over the water. The entire group then performs the ritual circumambulations, the men walking clockwise around the shrine three times and the women walking counterclockwise around it four times. Throughout the entire

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performance, the sweepers whisk the air of evil spirits and chase away passersby and the photographer documents the performance. At this point, the Sacrifice is complete and we return to our classroom to discuss Turner’s chapter, “Liminality and Communitas,” from The Ritual Process (1969). Within a few days, the photographer sends me the pictures of the Sacrifice, which I share with the entire class by e-mail or post on our Moodle site. Before her death, I occasionally sent a few to Edith Turner (Figs. 8.1 and 8.2).

Reflections on the Sacrifice I: The Professor’s View As professors of anthropology, our primary goal is to render other people’s worlds intelligible to our students. This is especially challenging when we focus on “exotic” religious practices, such as secondary burial (e.g., Schiller 1997) or spirit possession (e.g., Stoller 1997), two themes I explore in the Anthropology of Religion. How can anthropologists best help their students comprehend other worlds enchanted by ancestor spirits and witches within the confines of the classroom and the secular academy? Turner’s (1975, 32) statement that we must “put ourselves … inside religious processes” in order to understand them underscores the fact that reading about religious phenomena in texts and experiencing them with our bodies (Stoller 1989)

Fig. 8.1 The Senior Man performs the sacrifice (Appointed student photographer)

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Fig. 8.2 Theory in Anthropology students perform the ritual circumambulations at a Victor Turner shrine (Appointed student photographer)

are very different experiences. Of course, when students read about sacrifice, they learn something about this religious practice, but their learning is distanced and disembodied. When they perform a sacrifice, their learning is enhanced: They feel what it is like to commune with ancestors, asking them for help with life’s challenges. After the semester is over, I know that Theory in Anthropology students will probably forget the difference between Radcliffe-Brown’s and Malinowski’s versions of Functionalism, but they will remember Victor Turner’s theory of Communitas, because they experienced it during the Sacrifice. Beyond the benefits of experiential learning, Turnerian ethnographic performance disrupts structures of power and authority in the classroom. Specifically, it demands that professors relinquish control, embrace ambiguity, and remain open to the unexpected. One example stands out in my mind. Several years ago on the eve of the Sacrifice, I received an e-mail from one of the students, who was scheduled to present on Victor Turner. She informed me that she and her partner were going to do “something different” and encouraged me to “go with it.” Intrigued, I thanked the student for warning me. The next day, I allocated the roles for the Sacrifice and we walked as a class to the shrine. Once the Senior Woman’s assistants returned with flower petals, we gathered around the tree for the presentation. The female student began presenting, but after a minute or so stopped and said: “I can’t do this anymore; I can’t pretend that this is okay.” She accused her partner of not doing his share of

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the work. He responded defensively, asserting that he had done his part; the problem was that she had “micromanaged” the project. I watched intently and did nothing. As I glanced around the circle, many of the students’ eyes met mine. They clearly felt uncomfortable and anticipated my reaction. The presenters began to yell, their conflict escalating until the female presenter fell to the ground and broke down, crying. A student motioned for me to do something, but I did not react. Finally, a female student stepped forward and said: “It’s okay, you guys; it’s just a presentation,” at which point the female presenter stood up and explained Victor Turner’s theory of the social drama, as if nothing had happened. The other students smiled or laughed, obviously relieved. The Turners’ discussion of “framing” is at work here: One frame (the play social drama) was nestled within the larger frame, the ethnographic performance. The Turners state that framing creates “a bordered space and a privileged time within which images and symbols of what has been sectioned off [are] ‘relived,’ scrutinized, assessed, revalued, and, if need be, remodeled and rearranged” (Chapter 3, 40). Framing heightens reflexivity. Even though I knew that the play social drama was part of the presenters’ plan, I felt anxiety and self-doubt. As the other students turned to me, expecting my leadership in the crisis, my cheeks flushed and I began to sweat: “What if this was for real?” “Should I step in?” When the play social drama ended, I felt as relieved as the other students. What to make of this experience? First, I know that the students will never forget Turner’s theory of the social drama. After the Sacrifice, we discussed the matrilineal puzzle and how the Ndembu, unable to resolve the inherent conflict between matrilineality and virilocality, performed it instead. We likened this to the play social drama: Group work often results in conflict due to differing personalities, work styles, expectations, and levels of engagement. But whether students love or hate group work, they sometimes must do it in college. Performing this dilemma helped blow off steam. The theory stuck like never before. While relinquishing power and control in ethnographic performances often alters a class dynamic permanently by creating communitas, suspending my authority during the play social drama produced especially dramatic effects. Bucknell is a small liberal arts university where the largest classes in the social sciences are capped at 35 students, so professors come to know their students well over the course of a semester. Although the female presenter was doing well on assignments, before the Sacrifice she seemed distant and did not participate in class discussion. But on the night before the Sacrifice, she came alive. The opportunity to take learning beyond conventional text-based pedagogies inspired in her a new level of engagement and creativity. It also provided her a new way of relating to her fellow students, who never again saw her in quite the same way.

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Reflections on the Sacrifice II: Students’ Views As a class, we do not prepare ahead of time for the Sacrifice, nor do we discuss the experience of performing it afterward. Instead, I allow it to be what it is: something out of the ordinary, a unique pedagogical moment, a break from the routine. The atmosphere post-Sacrifice, however, generally feels different: It is lighter and students seem more “bonded.” But before writing this chapter, I administered an IRB-approved seven-question, open-ended survey to my Fall 2018 Theory in Anthropology students to solicit formal feedback on the experience, including what they learned from the Sacrifice, what it felt like to perform it, and whether they found anything problematic about it. I distributed the survey after class on the day of the Sacrifice and accepted completed surveys until the end of the semester. Six of the twenty-five enrolled students completed the survey. Four others wrote about the experience in their “Personal Letter” assignment and gave me permission to use the relevant sections for this chapter. As my goal was not to generalize from a representative sample, I was pleased that forty percent of the students gave me permission to include their personal experiences in this chapter. Several students wrote that performing the Sacrifice enhanced their learning of the day’s reading, Victor Turner’s “Liminality and Communitas.” One wrote, for example, that the Sacrifice helped him/her understand the difference between dominant and instrumental symbols, a point that later appeared on the exam. Another student asserted that performing the Sacrifice allowed him/her to “understand Turner’s main ideas in a real setting.” Performing the Sacrifice inspired in another student the desire to learn more about Victor Turner’s life and work. It increased his/her motivation for learning, something that reading texts does not always do. All but one of the students identified the ritual circumambulations as the most memorable part of the Sacrifice. They explained that walking around the shrine turned everyone—not only those cast in specific roles—into participants. “Circling the tree gave us all a chance to participate,” one student wrote. Another remarked that “everyone was engaged in the same motion.” One student, who played one of the Senior Woman’s assistants, identified “finding and gathering elements of nature” (i.e., leaves), as the most memorable part of the Sacrifice: “I felt like I played a pivotal role. The Sacrifice wouldn’t have been as successful had I not done this,” she wrote. Students explained that the Sacrifice demanded everyone’s engagement and the need to work together, with everyone playing his or her specific part. In performing it, they became part of something larger than themselves. One student wrote: “All of our differences were shed and we came together and worked together to ensure [the ritual’s] success.” This comment is reminiscent of Turner’s theory of liminality, or “anti-structure,” and the feelings of communitas that emerge from it. Indeed, Turnerian ethnographic performances have a leveling power, as this student noted, where (some) differences among students are shed and all attention is focused on the shared purpose of performing the ritual. As one student put it: “I felt like [this] was the first Bucknell experience of mine in which we were all the same.”

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In explaining what it felt like to perform the Sacrifice, a few students wrote that they initially felt “out of place” or “outside of their comfort zone,” but that this eventually gave way to a feeling of “happiness” or a “sense of accomplishment.” One student wrote: “At first, [performing the Sacrifice] made me feel kind of silly, but as it went on and I started thinking more deeply about the meaning of what we were doing, it felt exciting to be part of such a thing.” One student who played the role of the Senior Woman’s assistant described feeling empowered: “I felt like my status in the class had elevated…and like I had the respect of everyone.” In the past, the “sweepers” have often described to me their feelings of responsibility and empowerment as they “protected” the ritual space. One particularly dramatic example occurred in Spring 2014 when Bucknell’s president and two high-level administrators walked by and the sweepers whisked them away from the shrine. One student, who self-identified in the survey as an Atheist, wrote that the ritual “lacked any sort of transcendent meaning or feeling.” This student later explained, however, that performing the Sacrifice evoked a “familiar sense of tradition,” similar to being made to sit through Catholic Mass as a child. When asked to describe the experience of performing the Sacrifice in one word, this student used two: “meaningfully meaningless.” Other students chose “unusual,” “different,” “inclusive,” or “unified.” These words highlighted the range of emotions and varying degrees of “belief” that one can find among participants in ritual or other religious phenomena anywhere (see Gable 1995). When commenting on whether they found anything problematic about performing the Sacrifice, one student was annoyed that several students were on their phones, which he/she felt was “distracting” and “took away from the experience.” Another student was bothered by the gender binary that pervaded the Sacrifice, remarking: “considering our student population has people who do not belong in this binary, it may be conflicting for them to participate in the ritual.” This criticism is particularly noteworthy and underscores the power of Turnerian ethnographic performance to disrupt normative categories, raising awareness and encouraging professors and students alike to check (by a non-traditional means) their varying degrees of power and privilege. I have always been proud of my ability to foster an open and inclusive classroom environment in which students feel free to express themselves and even openly disagree with me. But in performing the Sacrifice in class for over seventeen years, I never thought twice about the pervasive gender binary until Fall 2018, when an openly non-binary student forced me to re-think the usual performance of the Sacrifice. About a week before the Fall 2018 Sacrifice, I reached out to this student, who had informed me early in the semester that they (their preferred pronoun) were in the early phases of transitioning from female to male. I shared with them my concerns about the gender binary in the Sacrifice and asked what I should do to make them most comfortable: Have them simply choose the male or female group or add a third, non-binary group, both of which had the potential of making them feel uncomfortable. They opted to join the male group and thanked me for asking them. On the survey, however, this student encouraged me to find a novel way of incorporating non-binary students in the Sacrifice.

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Sacred Water, Mystic Stone: Performing Pilgrimage In Spring 2004, my second year at Bucknell, I inherited the anthropology of religion course, Ritual, Myth, and Meaning, from my (now retired) colleague, Marc Schloss. Not only had Marc participated in seminars with Victor Turner as a graduate student at the University of Virginia, but the back jacket of his book, The Hatchet’s Blood (1988), features a blurb for Edie Turner’s memoir, The Spirit and the Drum (1987). I considered both “signs” and excitedly began crafting the syllabus. Inspired by the Turners’ legacy of experiential and performative anthropology yet again, I renamed the course Pilgrimage, Prayer, and Purity: The Anthropology of Religion and formulated its primary learning objective: “to bridge the gap between the objective study and lived experience of religious phenomena.” In 2015, it was featured on Bucknell’s website for its innovative exploration of religious ritual, emotion, and the “taboo” subject of death. The article highlighted the class field trips to the cemetery and the Grotto. After exploring theoretical and methodological issues in the anthropology of religion, we focus on three topics: genital cutting, pilgrimage, and death. For the section on pilgrimage, we read Victor Turner’s chapter, “Pilgrimage as Social Processes” in Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors (1974), selections from his and Edie’s Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978), Jill Dubisch’s work on pilgrimage in Greece (1995) and her co-edited volume with Michael Winkelman, Pilgrimage and Healing (2014), and selected chapters from Ellen Badone and Sharon Roseman’s coedited volume, Intersecting Journeys (2004). Finally, we take our study of pilgrimage beyond texts by traveling together to the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The Grotto is a replica of Lourdes in France, where the Virgin Mary was believed to have appeared to Bernadette Soubirous eighteen times over six months in 1858 (Turner and Turner 1978, 230). Students “walk the way of the pilgrim” at the site, performing the major acts that pilgrims to the shrine perform, including meditating along the Way of the Cross, touching the Grotto stone, lighting a candle and making a vow, and collecting sacred spring water. Along with the Grotto itself, which features a statue of the Virgin Mary and candles, the water taps and the Grotto stone are the site’s key features. As the Grotto’s website explains, priests (as well as an archbishop from Baltimore) have blessed the taps. Upon request the Grotto chaplain also blesses water that pilgrims collect on site, rendering it, as the Grotto website explains, for use in the “blessing of persons, places and objects, or as protection against evil or danger.” The website further explains that pilgrims to the site believe that the water is “cleansing and healthy for the body and soul” and states: “Although there are no documented miracles, many have reported favors and graces from drinking the Grotto Water” (National Shrine Grotto of our Lady of Lourdes, n.d.). The website also explains that in December of 2007, Jacques Perrier, bishop of Tares and Lourdes in France, presented the grotto stone as a gift during his visit to the site. The stone was excavated near the miraculous spring at Lourdes, where the Virgin Mary is believed to have told St. Bernadette to dig and find water. The stone’s

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purpose, explained the bishop, is to “spiritually connect the two sites,” Lourdes in France and the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in the United States. Anthropology of Religion students conclude the experience by visiting St. Bernadette’s Shoppe, the gift shop, where they can purchase icons, rosaries, or souvenirs or simply look around. As a way of thinking through their experiences, students are required to take field notes, in which they record their ethnographic observations, conversations with people at the site, and their own sensory experiences of the Shrine. They then write a final paper in which they describe their journey to the Shrine, analyze at least two major symbols using Turnerian theory, and report their emotional reactions to “performing pilgrimage.” In contrast to Theory in Anthropology students, who have no knowledge of the Sacrifice before they perform it, Anthropology of Religion students spend one-third of the semester studying the anthropology of pilgrimage in preparation for their experience at the Grotto. Aside from reading about pilgrimages in Asia and the Americas, they study several major European Catholic pilgrimage sites, including Lourdes in France, Fatima in Portugal, and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Every semester, I invite returned pilgrims from one of these sites to share their experiences with the students. I also encourage the students to explore the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes’s website before the trip. Students thus have considerable knowledge about pilgrimage before their journey to the site and are to some extent prepared for what they might experience. Considering the explicit link between course content and “experiencing pilgrimage” at the Grotto, Anthropology of Religion students learn more about pilgrimage than Theory in Anthropology students learn about sacrifice (Fig. 8.3).

Reflections on Performing Pilgrimage As part of the course requirements, Anthropology of Religion students reflect formally on the experience of “performing pilgrimage” in their final papers, which I have the pleasure of reading every semester. Because of this, I know what students think about and gain from this engaged learning experience. In Fall 2018, however, I sought permission from the IRB and the students to use excerpts from their final papers in this chapter, as well as to solicit more specific student feedback through a survey similar to the one I used in my Theory in Anthropology course. I asked students, for example, what they learned from the experience, how they felt as they “walked the way of the pilgrim,” and whether they deemed anything problematic about the experience. Five of the fifteen enrolled students completed the survey, and all fifteen gave me permission to use their final papers and the photographs they took at the site in this chapter. The final papers, which were seven double-spaced pages in length, included: (1) an ethnographic description of the journey and site; (2) an analysis of three of the site’s major symbols; and (3) reflections on their own journey and experience. The guidelines for the paper are found in the Appendix.

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Fig. 8.3 The Grotto (Tanya Zamaray-Rosati)

I was a little disheartened to receive so few completed questionnaires. This may have partly been a result of the fact that, in compliance with the IRB, I gave no incentive, such as extra credit, and I also assured students that their participation (or lack of it) would not affect their grade or my view of them, since I would not analyze the data until after I submitted grades. When I shared with a few students my disappointment that so few had participated, they told me that students are “overcommitted and stressed out.” If I could repeat the process, I would have built in class time for willing students to complete the survey. I have edited slightly the following excerpts to correct misspellings and improve conciseness and clarity, being careful not to alter the meaning. Several students wrote that “performing pilgrimage” helped them better understand the course content. Specifically, it clarified the definition and meaning of pilgrimage, what it means to be a pilgrim, and the complicated intersections between anthropology, pilgrimage, and tourism. Other students wrote that it helped them understand more fully the relationship between religion, belief, and community. When reporting how they felt at the site, responses varied according to religious identity and degree of religiosity, though many students, irrespective of these factors, described the experience as “peaceful,” “relaxing,” or “powerful.” One Catholic student wrote: “Being able to go to a Catholic shrine as a Catholic myself was very meaningful, especially in a class where not many people identified with any faith at all.” Another Catholic student wrote, “Visiting the Grotto Shrine was an enlightening

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and eye-opening experience for me, as I have never really explored my Catholic faith beyond the walls of my church.” One student described feeling “a bit strange” as a non-Catholic, a sentiment that other non-Catholic (and non-religious) students echoed. But while several students initially felt apprehension about the experience, they eventually found it meaningful. Consider these comments: Although I was raised Greek Orthodox, I wouldn’t consider myself very religious and was thus initially skeptical about how I would feel embarking on a pilgrimage to a place that was so deeply religious. After my experience at the Grotto, however, I realized that you don’t have to be religious to find meaning on a pilgrimage… The combination of the silence, nature, walking, and places for reflection creates the perfect balance of senses to let your mind go on its own journey. As someone who is Jewish, I didn’t expect to get much out of a Catholic pilgrimage site. However, I was very wrong about that assumption. All different people seemed to come here to find peace. I sat on a small bench for a moment and reflected on what was happening in my life. I looked around at the trees with streaks of sunlight shining through them and took note of all the others around me doing similar things. For me, this was almost healing. Though I don’t have a religious connection to this place, it doesn’t mean that it can’t impact me. It’s so rare that a college student takes the time to just stop, think, and reflect.

Struck by the multicultural dimension of the Grotto, a Buddhist student wrote in the final paper that the Grotto was reminiscent of pilgrimage sites from his/her home country, Vietnam: It brought pilgrims closer together, and closer to those above, creating communitas. Seeing even people from Vietnam visiting this place, I actually thought to myself, “the world is small, after all.” The lesson I learned from the trip was not really religious but rather the more mundane satisfaction of knowing that we are all so similar to one another.

Several students wrote that the Grotto seemed “open to interpretation” and they appreciated the opportunity the experience provided them to engage in “self-reflection.” Indeed, students highlighted the most meaningful aspects of the “pilgrimage” as the freedom to interpret the experience however they wanted, the “bonding” the experience fostered, and the opportunity to experience nature. Some students appreciated that, despite the background information they received, they were allowed to experience the Shrine independently, to freely “take it all in.” As one student explained: “I was able to interpret the site however I wanted without anyone telling me what it meant.” Another student appreciated “being able to independently explore the Grotto Shrine [while] also exploring and strengthening my own faith.” Another student wrote: At the end of the experience, I came to see that it’s not about what I believed in, the Grotto was about feelings, thoughts, reflections, and space to think. I realized that [religious places] are not like school where you’re told what you need to know and are tested on it; you can interpret what you see at your own pace and however you like and no one else needs to understand it but you.

Several students appreciated how the experience allowed them to forge relationships with their classmates and their professor beyond the classroom. As one student put it:

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Walking around the Grotto was very meaningful as a Catholic, but getting to sit down at lunch and talk with people I never would have talked to was also very meaningful. Seeing the Grotto allowed me to connect with my faith, but [having lunch] allowed me to connect with my classmates.

Another student appreciated that performing pilgrimage created a unique space for students to talk about their lives and share stories, especially at lunch when everyone sat together at a single table: “Above all else, the trip brought us closer together. I found out a lot about my classmates, which in turn helped me understand their point of view regarding [what] we talked about in class.” This was echoed by a student who wrote: Being at the Grotto was a real chance at self-reflection and it allowed me to put into perspective my own life and the lives of those around me. I believe this is true for most if not all of the people who went on the field trip.

Many students in both their final papers and the survey commented on how much they enjoyed sharing a meal as a class and engaging in conversation that was not mediated by their professor, as class discussion often is. On one particularly memorable trip, a few students shared their remarkable stories of love and loss, with one student announcing to the group her recent engagement. One student recalled, Even though many of my classmates have disclosed personal and painful accounts of their experiences with death and spirituality [in class], there is an impenetrable degree of formality in our routine class location in Academic West 212. […] I genuinely enjoyed conversing with my classmates about their hometowns, majors, experience abroad, and love lives.

In their book, How College Works, Chambliss and Takacs (2018) highlight the importance of student–professor relationships, especially those that “blur the distinction between professional and personal” (p. 57) and endure beyond a single semester. They contend that even in the classroom, “the transformative effects of relationships…may matter more than even the cumulative effects of learning new material” (2018, 47). Even one visit to a professor’s house during the students’ four years significantly increased their positive feelings toward their college experience (p. 58). When as a young professor I brought my husband and young children on the pilgrimage, I worried that students might see this as unprofessional, but student comments reminded me that students view the opportunity to meet and interact with their professor’s family positively. Lunch was one of the most important parts of our pilgrimage. The conversation started out superficial but quickly progressed to topics that would have been impossible to discuss in class. We talked about our families, our hometowns, our religions, and everything in between. While we bonded with our classmates on a deeper level, we did the same with our professor, who brought her son on the field trip. We learned more about her life, so our relationship with her transcended the normal student-teacher relationship and allowed for a more enjoyable and meaningful field trip. The deeper-level conversations and bonds that were formed during lunch really set the tone for the rest of the field trip and enhanced our learning experience from the pilgrimage in general.

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In Fall 2017, not only did my husband and children accompany the class to the Grotto, but so did my 86-year-old mother-in-law, who conversed with the students and even opted to sit next to one on the bus ride home. I was stunned to see how many students mentioned “Granny” in their final papers, and how much they appreciated the opportunity on the trip to interact with children and the elderly, two age groups that students are distanced from during their four years of college and often miss. The “bonding” that sharing food and storytelling on the trip create routinely spill over into class. If the atmosphere in the Theory in Anthropology class feels different after performing the Victor Turner Memorial Sacrifice (a 52-minute experience), then it is virtually transformed in the Anthropology of Religion post-pilgrimage. As one student remarked: The next day, I found myself looking forward to class in a new way, truly excited to see my classmates and hear about the 17 hours since I last saw them. This feeling continued throughout the semester. I found myself excited for class each day because I truly enjoyed the people I was with. After the trip, people talked more honestly in class, we laughed and chatted before class started, we stayed after for a few minutes just to hear more about one another’s lives. After this experience, I truly felt as though our class was a community, and that was so beneficial to me throughout the rest of the semester.

Like the Victor Turner Memorial Sacrifice, “performing pilgrimage” at the Grotto constitutes an engaged, sensory learning experience that is difficult to create in class. The smell of burning candle wax and the sounds of chirping birds figure prominently in the students’ final papers. In “allowing their senses to be penetrated by the world” (Stoller 1989, 39), students opened themselves to the Grotto’s multiple meanings and to the power and possibility of religious experience. As I watched people touch and drink the holy water from the fountain, I became fully immersed in the experience. The water was cool to the touch and made me feel one with my surroundings, included in a community of strangers seeking peace. It was a cold and cloudy day, the dark skies creating an eerie yet beautiful setting as we walked through the shrine surrounded by an endless forest of majestic-looking trees. The only noises were the crickets chirping, the wind blowing, and the soft chitter-chatter of the small children running around. …I placed my hands beneath the icy, rushing water, and washed them. I then took a small pool of water in my hands and rubbed my face and neck. Immediately, the icy cold of the water on my face made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I immediately felt different. I cannot describe the feeling more than it was a sensation of cleansing, a feeling of relaxation and calmness.

The visceral immersion in religious practice that characterizes students’ experiences at the Grotto allows them to engage with faith in ways that are not possible in the classroom, where the conventions of the secular academy demand a degree of objectivity and distance. Understandably, this affected students differently. Some experienced anger or skepticism toward their own religious tradition or religion in general. As one student wrote: “I was not looking forward to our ‘pilgrimage’ to the Shrine. While I don’t doubt that the class field trip for some of my peers was undeniably a religious and cultural pilgrimage, our journey to the Grotto was, for me, no more than experiential learning.” For others, the experience evoked

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nostalgia for their childhood, when they practiced their religion uncritically. As one student explained: “Being at [the Grotto] made me feel reminiscent of my younger self, who loved and embraced the rituals of Catholicism, and found great comfort and solace in prayer.” For yet others, the trip constituted a conversion moment of sorts: a rekindling of faith, a deepening of spirituality, a desire to believe (again), or a different way of thinking about religion. Consider these comments: Because I grew up with no religion in my house, I have become increasingly envious of the communities that religious groups provide. Faith provides another dimension to our identity and the ability to share a faith or religion with a complete stranger is an intimate connection that creates an extended sense of belonging. Pilgrims from all walks of life accompanied us on the journey. Many spoke other languages, others were families with small children. Young and old, people gathered there bound only by their common faith. The people surrounding me represent what religion is. They don’t need proof or validation, they just believe. I think that is what was so magical about the Grotto. The physical things that I brought home from the trip were few: field notes, some pictures of important areas of the grounds, water from the spring, a rosary and rosary pouch, and a prayer coin. What I brought home spiritually, however, was much more important—a sense of community and healing.

But if explicitly linking course content and ethnographic performances intensifies students’ learning about the religious phenomenon at hand, it also increases the potential for religious conflict. On a few occasions, for example, Catholic students have questioned the appropriateness of non-Catholic students lighting candles and making vows at the Grotto without genuine religious intent. Most of the time, this concern inspired lively class discussions about the boundary between “religious” and “secular” action and the place of skepticism in faith. On one occasion over a decade ago, a more serious conflict arose when I invited, as was my custom at the time, the Grotto chaplain to speak to the students on site about the history of the shrine. Initially, he respected my wishes to keep his lecture “academic,” but then he began telling us with graphic imagery what awaited us if we failed to pray and attend (Catholic) Mass. Following the lecture, I learned that he deeply offended several students. I apologized and explained to them the chaplain’s positionality as a Catholic priest specifically and the unpredictability of field-based experiences more generally. Fortunately, the students accepted my apology and further processed the event by writing about it in their final papers. This conflict revealed that it is essential to frame the experience as a playful and temporary immersion in order to provide the students a sense of safety, but if the frame is hijacked and the experience becomes too “real” or “serious,” the sense of safety is lost. In their survey responses, students mentioned words such as “peaceful,” “comfortable,” “meaningful,” and “beautiful” to describe their experience at the Grotto. Two students claimed they needed more than one word, describing it as “one of the most surreal and special experiences I had all semester” and “a truly life-changing experience.” Only one student described “performing pilgrimage” at the shrine as problematic: He/she was disappointed that students slept rather than discussed the experience on the bus ride home. Some negative comments, however, appeared in the

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final papers. They focused on the “commercialization” of the shrine, especially the donation boxes scattered throughout the grounds, named benches, or statues given by individuals in memory of someone, and the fact that one had to pay to light a candle. One student felt strongly that charging money for lighting a candle constituted “taking advantage of belief for profit,” which he/she deemed “disrespectful.”

Turnerian Ethnographic Performance as Pedagogical Resistance Engaged learning has taken on a new meaning and importance in the technological era. Digital pedagogies and on-line courses are becoming routine in American education at all levels, and liberal arts institutions are not immune. About six years ago at Bucknell, the Provost called a meeting to discuss this reality and its possible consequences and encouraged faculty members to reflect on the value of the liberal arts, residential campuses, and face-to-face learning environments “before it’s too late.” While, in the past, many tuition-paying parents considered these qualities central to a “good” education and were willing to spend a lot of money on them, these once taken-for-granted qualities are now being thrust into doubt. According to the Provost, we needed to brainstorm new ways of “packaging” these qualities and “marketing” them to students and parents alike to restore their faith in them. In recent years at Bucknell, there has been considerable grant money available for flipped classrooms and digital pedagogies, but it has gotten harder to justify funding for embodied experiences, such as field trips, face-to-face (rather than Skyped-in) guest speakers, and ethnographic performances. Thankfully, this is not (yet) the case in my own department, Sociology and Anthropology, where we have a budget line and a generous pool of donor money to fund such experiences. I have never encountered resistance from any of the four department chairs I have had both pre- and post-tenure, and committee members and administrators alike have commented favorably on my use of Turnerian ethnographic performances, field trips, and other embodied learning techniques. On one occasion during my fourth-year review when I saw the Provost at a local grocery store, she told me: “The next time you go on the Grotto trip, I want to come along.” There has been some pushback to the disembodied learning trend. Inspired by the Slow Food movement, the Slow Education movement has challenged the effects of corporate culture on higher education, including its obsession with speed and productivity. For example, in his Slow University: A Manifesto, Brian Treanor (2006) invited professors to schedule “slow hours” into their workday, during which personal reflection and conversations with colleagues and students would replace productoriented work. In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber (2017, xvii) argue that “adopting the principles of Slow into our professional practice is an effective way to alleviate work stress, preserve humanistic education, and resist the corporate university.” Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Vassar

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College offer “slow classes,” in which students “set aside their phones and careerism” (Whitford 2018) and attempt to rediscover the joy of learning through the close reading and active discussion of a single book over the course of a semester. It is not surprising that “slow classes” focus exclusively on texts given our culture. Perhaps Turnerian ethnographic performances and other forms of embodied learning might find a permanent home in such courses, inserting the body into learning and thus further enhancing the “slow learning” experience. Part of the power of Turnerian ethnographic performances, and the power of ritual more generally, is their inclusivity and their ability, as James Green puts it, to make “everyone a stakeholder in some larger scheme of things” (2008, 32, drawing on Bell 1997). Students do learn from text-based studies of religious practices around the world, especially when these texts incorporate narrative and are written for an undergraduate or even non-academic audience. But when students experience or perform religious practices with their bodies and senses, the material they learn becomes unforgettable. It is in this way that Turnerian ethnographic performance, I argue, constitutes a form of pedagogical resistance: It rejects the centrality of the text and puts the body and the senses at the center of learning. Turnerian ethnographic performances also play with the boundaries between students and professors and disrupt normative structures of gender, race, and power. These and other distinctions momentarily dissolve in these performances, producing Turnerian moments of liminality (or “anti-structure”), and communitas. In so doing, they make professors more aware of the effects of normative structures on learning environments, inviting students and professors alike to “check” biases and remain open to creativity, innovation, and change. Finally, Turnerian ethnographic performances remind us of the transformative power of teaching and learning when these transcend the classroom and even affect people in their daily lives beyond college. A few years ago, I received an e-mail from a former Anthropology of Religion student that contained a “selfie” of her at the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. She told me that she visits the Grotto whenever she can on her way to Washington, DC for work. She explained that even though it had been six years since she had “performed pilgrimage” with her classmates, she remembered the experience as if it were yesterday, and that the Grotto had become one of her favorite places to sit and reflect. Acknowledgements I presented early drafts of two sections of this chapter at the 2004 and 2018 American Anthropological Association meetings (Johnson 2004, 2018). When my daughter was born and I was unable to travel to the 2004 meetings, Josh Fisher kindly presented my paper for me. At Bucknell, I would like to thank Debby Abowitz for negotiating a budget line for the Grotto field trip and the Provost’s Office for funding lunches for the students when enrollment exceeded 25 students. My heaviest debt, of course, lies with the students I have been privileged to teach over the years in the three classes I discuss in the chapter. I am forever inspired by their creativity, their enthusiasm, and their willingness to do something different. Without our powerful, shared experiences of 17 years of ethnographic performances, this chapter would not have been possible. I would especially like to thank those students in Theory in Anthropology and Pilgrimage, Prayer, and Purity: The Anthropology of Religion in Fall 2018 who completed the survey and gave me permission to include their responses and photographs in the chapter. Finally, I would like to acknowledge Ned Searles, my loving partner in ethnographic performance and life.

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References Badone, Ellen, and Sharon R. Roseman. 2004. Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Berg, Maggie, and Barbara K. Seeber. 2017. The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Chambliss, Daniel F., and Christopher G. Takacs. 2018. How College Works. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dubisch, Jill. 1995. In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dubish, Jill, and Michael Winkelman. 2014. Pilgrimage and Healing. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press. Gable, Eric. 1995. “The Decolonization of Consciousness: Local Skeptics and the ‘Will to Be Modern’ in a West African Village.” American Ethnologist 22 (2): 242–257. Green, James. 2008. Beyond the Good Death: The Anthropology of Modern Dying. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Jackson, Michael. 1989. Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Johnson, Michelle. 2004. “Grass Skirts and Virgin Shrines: Experiential Anthropology and the Academic Life Course.” Paper Presented (Delivered by Josh Fisher) at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Atlanta. ———. 2018. “Grotto Water and Potato Chips: Classroom Ritual Reenactments as Forms of Pedagogical Resistance.” Paper Presented at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose. National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. No Date. Official Website. Accessed on July 25, 2019. https://www.nsgrotto.org. Schiller, Anne. 1997. Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cultural Identity among the Ngaju of Indonesia. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Stoller, Paul. 1997. Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Treanor, Brian. 2006. Slow University: A Manifesto. Online essay. Accessed December 11, 2019. http://faculty.lmu.edu/briantreanor/slow-university-a-manifesto/. Turner, Edith. 1987. The Spirit and the Drum: A Memoir of Africa. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1975. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Whitford, Emma. 2018. 7 Hours a Week on Existential Despair. Inside Higher Ed, October 23. Accessed December 11, 2019. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/23/severalprograms-are-encouraging-students-slow-down-and-think-about-life-outside?utm_source= naicu.

Chapter 9

Dance Lessons: Performance as Engaged Experiential Embodiment Jonathan S. Marion

His fingers lightly brush through her hair as the music starts, her hands on his chest. Slowly, they hug, eye contact broken as they close their eyes and touch foreheads. Starting to shift weight slowly, they eventually look into each other’s eyes again, softly and adoringly smile at each other, and still softly hugging begin a series of sinuous undulating movements seemingly oblivious to the people seated all around them in the gazebo or the cameraman circling them. Their bodies sway, wave, bend, and snake, and her head and hair slowly trace circles in space. With still slow music, they start to shift in and out of their hug, sometimes facing each other, sometimes front to back, as she tilts, leans, and melts in and out of the shapes he creates with his body. Slowly the tempo of the song builds, and almost as if from nowhere their bodies accelerate, with her spinning, dipping, bending, and rebounding at seemingly impossible speeds, but somehow always seeming free from tension, fast yet soft, and both of them entirely connected and present with each other. The acceleration, flow, and speed of constantly changing liquid shapes decelerate quickly yet smoothly, both of them breathing heavy as the pace picks up a little again, returns to quieter again, and ends with them once again hugging with foreheads touching. The dance being described here is a demonstration of Brazilian zouk, as danced by Brenda Carvalho and Anderson Mendes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= QdkAlYXQJs0). It provides no explicit information about the dance’s genesis, history, development, or practice. Yet seeing it conveys a wealth of information and insight about the dance itself, as well as how it differs from other partnered dance forms. When I started to research performance, embodiment, identity, and gender in salsa and competitive ballroom in the late 1990s, it was clear almost from the start that words alone would never suffice for ethnographic explication. Embedded in Western scholarship, however, most of anthropology is a discipline of words, with articles, books, conference papers, and lectures the mainstays of academic discourse and dissemination. Predicated on the value of showing what cannot simply be told, J. S. Marion (B) University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_9

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this gave rise to my work in visual anthropology, as much of “culture can be seen and enacted through visible symbols embedded in behavior—gestures, body movements, and space use” (Ruby 2000, 240). Indeed, I can easily show the different versions of masculinity and femininity being performed in Standard (e.g., waltz, foxtrot) versus Latin (e.g., cha cha, rumba) ballroom dances in photographs (see Fig. 9.1). Yet despite the utility of visual representations, “so much of what goes on in dance cannot be observed” (Williams 2004, 7, original emphasis). This is why direct engagement, actually doing, matters so much, and why I have tried to create different performance-based activities to use in the classroom.

Bringing Performance to the Classroom Deeply learning a dance form is a long-term process, making one or two in-class dance lessons ineffective for facilitating new understandings (with dance and related movement classes being an obvious exception). In fact, asking students to move and interact with bodies—both their own and others—in ways that may be unfamiliar and even uncomfortable can convey impressions quite contradictory to the experiences and understanding involved for regular participants. For instance, the degree of intimacy described in the example of Brenda and Anderson is likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for most students. As such, they would feel the exact opposite of security and comfort between experienced dancers. Speaking to this issue at a zouk teachers’ training course in Rio de Janeiro in January 2018, one Finish instructor explained how they started their dance students at an arm length hold, and only over time and with familiarity brought them closer together. In response, Renata Peçanha—one of the originators of Brazilian zouk, and the organizer of the teachers’ course—countered, and referencing the Brazilians’ warmth and propensity to even hug a stranger in greeting, said “well, for me, I explain that they are here to learn a Brazilian dance, so need to learn it the Brazilian way.” Renata’s response speaks to how different movement forms embody different cultural ways of being in the world as seen in work concerning capoeira (Downey 2005, 2008), Senegalese Sabar (Bizas 2014), and court dance in Java (Hughes-Freeland 2008) to name just a few. Given this importance of bodily learning, especially in conveying content inimical to textual representation, I employ a variety of often-brief classroom exercises to help facilitate my students’ own embodied engagement. Exercise #1: “I Am Confident” Please stand up. Now scrunch your shoulders up and forward, collapsing your chest down and pulling your sternum back towards your spine, letting your head and neck fall forward. Now say “I am confident.” What tone of voice did you use? What volume? Now, instead, stand up straight, with pressure through your legs into the floor, your shoulder blades pulled slightly back and down, your chest pulled slightly forward and up from your breastbone, your head high and straight, and again say “I

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Fig. 9.1 Seen here performing at Dance Legends 2013, World Professional Latin Ballroom competitors Stefano di Filippo and Dasha Chesnokova perform their versions of masculinity and femininity according to genre specific aesthetics and values quite different from ballroom dancers competing in the Standard Ballroom dances (e.g., waltz, foxtrot, and quickstep), and from partner-dance genres such as West Coast Swing, Argentine tango, Salsa, Bachata, and Brazilian zouk (Jonathan S. Marion)

am confident.” The words may be the same, but how you say them, and with what meaning—to yourself and others—will have been different. I use this quick exercise in the first day of my Body and Identity course, as a primer for attending to the body in cultural contexts. In my directions, I never tell the students anything about what volume of voice to use, yet inevitably the second

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utterance is always louder and more clearly articulated. At the most basic level— and in less than a minute—students directly experience how physical posture and related uses of the body inform how they engage and interact with the world around them. From here, I ask students for related examples, and they most typically note differences in how men and women sit and stand, especially in public spaces (the binary construction of sex is something we deconstruct later in the semester). Other examples that get mentioned have included topics ranging from different athletics to going to the bathroom, eating, and crossing the street in different countries. As a very brief exercise on the first day of class, I use this as a jumping-off point to introduce them to a variety of related theoretical frameworks which we will be discussing throughout the semester, including techniques of the body (Mauss 1973), physical mannerisms (e.g., Levy 1973), practices (e.g., Bourdieu 1977), proxemics (e.g., Hall 1988), and gender (e.g., Butler 1990) to name just a few key categories. Demonstrating a link between posture (body) and utterance (mind), I also find this exercise a helpful opening point for critiquing Cartesian dualism. The immediate effects of this exercise are twofold. First, in getting students out of their chairs and engaging with their bodies—even if only for a moment—this shared experience introduces bodily engagement as part of the scholarship ahead in this class. Second, student journal entries often note that as a change of pace from usual classroom activity this exercise helps them realize the importance of not only theoretical learning but also bodily learning. Longer term, the “I am confident,” exercise shows up in journal entries throughout the semester, linked to other examples the students think of relative to the weekly materials or their individual term projects. Since it gets mentioned from time to time—both in class and in journal entries—I feel confident that it provides a helpful primer for thinking not only about but also with the body. Exercise #2: “Greetings” First giving examples such as shaking hands, hugging, and bowing, I assign groups of five or six students to each create their own new, non-verbal greeting. (In longer class periods, I have them go off to design these, and then return, whereas in shorter class periods this is assigned as homework.) Returning to class, students are asked to use their new greetings without any speaking with everyone else in the class from the other groups, one person at a time, until they can each return everyone’s greetings. Once this has been completed, I get volunteers to show the whole class the greetings from the other groups (i.e. not their own). Other non-group members get to weigh in on “correct” executions, and then finally the originating group. I first encountered a version of this exercise in a Brazilian zouk dance workshop, highlighting how easy it is to take for granted everything involved in establishing the physical connection (most often in the form of the frame/hug) when starting each dance with a different partner. I adapted it into the exercise described above, first for my Culture and Medicine course when discussing non-verbal communication in medical settings (which we read about in Sobo and Loustaunau 2010, chapter 7 and Galanti 2008, chapter 2), and most recently for my course on the Anthropology of Activity and Performance. In both cases, I use it for a number of complimentary

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purposes. First, it helps highlight the constructed nature of different greeting systems. A handshake, a hug, and a bow—or anything else—are all equally viable when they are recognized as serving the social function of “a greeting.” Since all such forms serve the exact same purpose, and none accomplish this task any better (within each one’s own context), this also provides an opportunity to revisit the issue of ethnocentrism, and the problematic conflation of “normal” as a statistical measure with “normal” as a value judgment. In this case, for example, students realize that while shaking hands may be (statistically) “normal” for them, other greetings—such as bowing, or giving a kiss on the cheek—serve just as well wherever practiced. For the Culture and Medicine class, this exercise also provides students with a small taste of trying to negotiate interactions in settings where non-verbal codes and customs differ, and they cannot rely on common verbal language. When students try to demonstrate the greetings devised by their classmates, issues of individual variation and cultural transmission are foregrounded. Did each person from the original group execute the greeting in exactly the same way? Were there any variations in individual’s delivery? Did someone move in a certain way so that something “extra” was considered part of the greeting? And, when later re-enacted by students not from the originating group, is there a difference in what other students think constitutes the greeting versus the originating group? Here are excerpts from students’ reflections on this exercise in Fall 2019: Student 1:

I see this exercise as a way to showcase that certain actions mean different things to a particular group of people while these same actions could mean absolutely nothing to a different set of people.

Student 2:

I felt lost when other groups were expressing their gestures… It was also awkward and slightly uncomfortable to show other groups my greeting and vice versa because it’s a stranger coming towards my personal space and expressing some sort of physical greeting that I have no idea how to respond.

Student 3:

Each group performed their greeting with the same knowledge, but the members greeted in unique manners.

Student 4:

After completing the exercise I began to think about what may appear to be normal to one group of individuals may not seem normal to the other group of individuals. Asking myself the question who defines normal? Because what may seem to be my normal may not be another individual’s norm and vice versa however, is it right or wrong? This exercise reminded me that we are all different and what may be viewed as normal in one culture may be different from yours.

Student 5:

The nonverbal greeting exercise we performed in class gave me a much greater appreciation for how nuanced and subjective are the norms that govern basic human interactions. I found it particularly interesting how uncomfortable and awkward it was to interact with someone who greeted you in an unfamiliar matter, even if their greeting was unobtrusive and objectively uncomplicated.

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Student 6:

To take a daily unconscious performance done worldwide and bring it into a classroom, in a way, shrunk the globe. I thought it was really interesting, because I experience the awkwardness of not knowing which greeting to choose all of the time…I loved the nonverbal greeting exercise, because it made everyone take a small example like that and use it to broaden their knowledge on the world.

Student 7:

The nonverbal exercise was a really interesting way of showing the difficulties of language and custom barriers…The idea of changing a greeting to account for societal changes is something I have never considered… The concept of society shaping the way these signs are used is super cool, because each society interprets signs differently.

Student 8:

I also thought about how these greetings that I know so well would be completely foreign to anyone who is unfamiliar with my culture, and how their greetings would be meaningless to me…We’re shaped by our surroundings, experiences, opportunities, and most importantly the people around us…We bounce things off each other and change and grow, but we always do it together. It amazes me to think about how powerful the socialization process actually is.

Student 9:

It was very awkward and uncomfortable to present our nonverbal greeting towards someone who had no idea what we were doing and we had no way to communicate to them the significance of our greeting or why we did it. It made me think about peoples of different cultures meeting each other and having similar disconnects with regard to how they might greet each other. Both groups of people might initiate their greeting as a gesture of positivity and warmth, but the meaning would get lost in translation as neither understands the other’s culture in a fundamental way and presumably neither could reconcile these differences through conversation due to a language barrier. Ultimately, I think this activity is important to show that instead of viewing other peoples’ cultural practices and norms as strange or weird we should be trying to better understand the cultural significance behind these norms and greetings so that we can see that they were not strange or insignificant, just different than what we were used to.

Student 10: The exercise caused me to recognize that the movements we choose to make are not arbitrary or random, even if they become so second nature that we take their initial meaning for granted. It also reminded me that these meanings are learned and culturally agreed upon. The smallest and simplest movements might communicate or confuse more than we realize. As these reflections reveal, this activity facilitates a wealth of insights—especially pertaining to themes of cultural socialization, shared conventions, individual variation, and shared humanity—that is significantly richer when compared to the class

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comments I received before I adopted this exercise. I measure the success of the exercises via student feedback in journals and written comments on class evaluations, as well as my own experience of how quickly and how well students understand the concepts being presented. In every case, my students have understood the same materials faster and better when I use some type of performative activity. Exercise #3: “Seeing as Understanding” I bring a suitable (i.e. expert) partner to class and demonstrate non-choreographed social dancing of salsa, competitive ballroom, or Brazilian zouk. Most recently I had Nelly Caldeira, a Brazilian zouk dancer I met in Rio de Janeiro in January of 2018, come to my Fall 2019 Anthropology of Activity and Performance class to help me with an improvised demonstration of this dance form, after which I provided some ethnochoreological background and we both participated in a question and answer session with the students. On the surface, this may not seem like a participatory activity. As Schechner highlights, however, “partakers” (2003, 340–358; 2013, 250–253) are part of the performance process (along with sourcers, producers, and performers), just as V. Turner’s model of communitas (e.g., 1969) involves those who participate through their presence at certain events, and not only the primary actors. Fans at a sporting event, congregants at a place of worship, and attendees of a political rally all exemplify this dynamic. Similarly, Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of legitimate peripheral participation highlights how such roles provide low-risk thresholds for participating in communities of practice. For instance, being a sports fan is being part of a sports-based community at a far more accessible level than as an athlete, coach, or official. In this context, seeing an in-class demonstration provides low-level entry into that dance community (i.e., someone who has seen a live demonstration is closer to the center than someone who has not). Perhaps more importantly, however, such demonstrations provide a model of what could be. For practitioners of the same form, this could range from better technique to employ now up to skills that will require years of training to achieve. For non-practitioners, however, such modeling can be even more powerful: revealing entirely different, perhaps never even conceived, possibilities. As such, I use this demonstration both to demonstrate another way of bodily-being at the time, and as a shared example we can revisit later in the semester. As far as introducing a different way of bodily-being, from my own experiences as a dance student, I know that my execution is limited by my existing ability, comfort level, and understanding. Since this is also true for my students, simply teaching students dance movements can quickly run us into stone walls of ingrained habits and even grave discomforts regarding movement, bodies, touch, gender, aesthetics standards, and the like. Indeed, without sufficient time (of which even a full semester may not be enough) and personal motivation (which may not come hand in hand with class enrollment), asking for performative participation can trigger defensive entrenchment of extant values rather than the new insights and perspectives intended. In these circumstances, rather than being tasked with performing, seeing something performed can be invaluable given the interrelationships between “visual perception

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and bodily engagement in the process of cultural learning and emotional embodiment” (Postma and Crawford 2006, 6). For instance, Nijland’s (2006) work on such relationships foregrounds (1) the neurological links between visual perception, action, and emotion; and (2) Neuroestheticist Semir Zeki’s contention that “it is no longer possible to divide the process of seeing from that of understanding” (see Nijland 2006, 38). We can see this play out in the following analogy: Based on someone’s expressions and gestures we can see whether someone considers the food they are eating to be delicious. Most importantly, though, this is independent of whether we ourselves would agree (i.e., have the same taste preferences or not). In part, then, this is what is achieved through demonstrations: We are provided a glimpse into and understanding of others’ experiences. We can see the comfort of two people moving together, even when that would not be comfortable for us. We can appreciate dancers’ skill, speed, trust, and balance, even when it’s beyond our skill level. We can appreciate the musicality of their movements, even when that’s far beyond our current capacities. We can see the emotional connection between dancers, even if we cannot understand how that is possible without romantic connotations. In all these ways—and many more—students build their understanding of another way of physically-being-in-theworld from seeing these enacted. Indeed, since everyone has their own understanding and experience of bodily living, in-person demonstrations quickly elicit comments, questions, and observations regarding differences from students existing perspectives/understandings. For instance, in a class discussion of the demonstration, one student commented on not being comfortable having other people too close to him, so the comfort with physical proximity and touch had really stood out to him.

The Performance Process More than as a one-off, however, I used the demonstration as a shared example later in the semester, when discussing Schechner’s 10-part performance process spanning the three-phase sequence of proto-performance, performance, and aftermath (e.g., Schechner 2013, 225–250). First breaking students into small groups (typically four or five per group), they analyze the demonstration using Schechner’s system, after which we discuss this and fill out the example as a full class. In this case, a bare-bones version of the analysis went like this: Proto-performance • Training: the dance classes and associated cross-training taken by both Nelly and myself; • Workshop: the time we had each spent social (i.e., partnered improvisation) dancing; • Rehearsal: any time we had previously social danced together. Performance

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• Warm up: a brief overview of the history and development of Brazilian zouk, Nelly quickly stretching, both checking their shoes were tied tight enough, checking how much slide/grip there was for their shoes on the classroom carpet, hooking Nelly’s phone up to a Bluetooth speaker supplied by a student (which was better/louder than the one she had on hand), selecting the song. • Public performance: a 3:40 improvised demonstration of Brazilian zouk at the front of the classroom; • Events/contexts: physical classroom setting, course topic of Anthropology of Activity and Performance, specific music being used; • Cooldown: both briefly catching our breath at end of song, Nelly putting her hair up, Q&A with students about Brazilian zouk, our backgrounds and experiences with it, and about Brazil in general. Aftermath • Critical response: journal entries reflecting on the performance, follow up questions/comments in future class meetings; • Archives: video taken of class demonstration, the physical items involved (dance shoes, speaker, etc.); • Memories: what the students remember, i.e., what they recall, what stood out to them. Interestingly, when discussing these phases in class over a month later, when we got to the “cooldown” phase, over half the women in class recalled Nelly tying up her hair into a loose bun through some “hair magic” whereby she wound it and tucked it into itself. Of the five men in class, the only one who remembered this had long hair until only recently. This seemingly inconsequential detail sparked a robust discussion of domain relevance, the incompleteness and fallibility of memory, and the difference between archival records and memories of the same event. After walking through this example as a class, I have the students return to their groups and then apply the same analysis to an (abstract) “political debate,” where I also ask them to identify the personnel involved according to Schechner’s model of the performance quadrilogue between: sourcers, producers, performers, and partakers (e.g., 2013, 250–55). Following group time, we discuss as a class, and I then assign them, as homework, to do the same analysis for whatever activity they are focusing on for their individual term projects. A final consideration here concerns the break in frame for students, when their anthropology professor is performing a dance. Some of the students know about my background researching competitive ballroom and salsa and have asked (in other courses) if I dance myself. In an online class journal, one of these students commented “It was fun to see you dance too after hearing so much about your ballroom background.” In an informal conversation a different day, another student familiar with my dance background noted that while not surprising to them, they were conscientious of the frame break involved. For students unfamiliar with my background, however, the frame break was more significant. As one student related:

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Reflecting upon the Professor dancing in the classroom a few weeks ago, it was something hard to equate inside my head. When you have a teacher, you set them permanently within that setting of classroom and school. So, when we got a show of who our Professor is outside of the classroom it felt odd in a way. However, it captivated me all the more. To know that your professor does something like dance outside of the classroom had me wanting to watch and see who this other “person” the professor was. The moment the music began, and they danced, he became a different person and it left me awed.

This comment, and others like it, was brought into our class discussion of Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). Indeed, my break of frame served as an important example of how performing different roles is entirely different from “faking.” I act differently as an anthropology professor than I do as a dancer—just as students act differently at home, at work, and just hanging out with their friends—but none of these are “make believe.” On a final related note, while I do not have any explicit feedback regarding any changes to my classroom authority or shifts in the student-teacher relationship, if anything, my experience of this is that dancing in front of the class seems to have bolstered my authority as an expert given the course topic of Anthropology of Activity and Performance. Exercise #4: “Ethnography-Based Performances” Building on the pedagogical success of my dance-inspired exercises, I have also started to organize non-verbal ethnography-based skits more in line with the ethnographic performances that are the main focus of the book. These skits have both similarities and differences with dance-based exercises in the classroom. One of the most successful versions I have used is as follows: Having read Margaret Mead’s ethnographic classic, Coming of Age in Samoa, I break students up into small groups, ask them to prepare a brief silent skit of what they consider the most important issues/themes/topics/insights, and then have each group perform their skit for the class.

While tremendously successful, I actually developed this activity on the spur of the moment while teaching my university’s upper division anthropological theory class, History of Anthropological Thought. Since it was a 3-hour once per week class, there was enough time to do this in one class session, but the same thing could be accomplished over multiple shorter class meetings or with preparation assigned as homework. When I first started teaching this class, I assigned brief student facilitations for the start of each unit. Alas, despite encouraging student creativity, these tended to be dry lecture-style presentations. While there were occasional standouts—such as “Functionalism Jeopardy”—I started shifting to brief daily in-class group activities as a more effective means of engaging students with the materials and breaking up the long three-hour class. I was sensing low energy levels as students were entering the classroom the day we were to discuss Coming of Age in Samoa, and this skit activity was born. Scrapping my previous plan for the day on the spot, I tasked the students with preparing and performing whatever they considered key to, and from, this ethnography. So, what happened? In short, the exercise couldn’t have gone better, and it is now part of my plans from day one for the next time I teach the course. How and why did

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this prove so efficacious? Certainly, some skits were more creative and captivating than others, including one that had pairs of students going behind and rattling a portable whiteboard to convey sexual dalliances, and one student crawling out from under a chair, between the legs of a seated student to convey birthing. Other groups had “Samoans, missionaries, and a lone ethnographer,” and so on. The synergistic effect of having an entire set of skits, however, depended on the open-ended nature of how each group of students could choose to enact this assignment. Based on an in-class debriefing at the end of the period, students noted that because each group could pick what to focus on and how they wanted to depict it, they quickly saw both (1) the common themes and trends between skits, and (2) the attention to different details and/or different means of depicting the same issue. Translated into the practice of doing ethnography, this helped open up a discussion of the search for patterns, and how we could recognize various depictions as being “true” (i.e., representative) without committing to them being “fact.” Recognizing that just as with different skits, different ethnographic representations could all ring true facilitated the important tripartite insight that: (1) Various depictions could be “true”; (2) no one version was ever “the truth”; and (3) many versions could be “untrue.” This provided fantastic material to use throughout the semester in various discussions concerning anthropology’s crisis in representation, post-modernism more broadly, and reflexivity. Another important facet of this exercise was the non-verbal nature of the skits, highlighting the importance of paying attention to physical activities, gestures, expressions, and the whole range of non-verbal communication in ethnographic settings. There is a reason, after all, that as a discipline anthropology eschews the use of questionnaires, surveys, and interviews alone and has long relied on first-hand observations. The complement, to this, is that in preparing, performing, and watching these skits, students quickly become familiar with performance as a viable and valuable means of ethnographic representation. While I borrowed the non-verbal dynamic of this class activity from my dancebased exercises, it is different in notable and important ways. Most importantly, with an ethnography as the source material these classroom performances were driven by a pre-existing narrative. As such, the performances were mostly outward directed, intending to interpret and depict existing content for their classmates watching these performances. This is very different from the inward directed dance-based exercises, which are more geared toward experiential exploration of using the body in different ways. This distinction closely parallels the contrast Ingold posits between enculturation as “an internalisation of collective representations” and enskillment as “‘Understanding in practice’… in which learning is inseparable from doing” (2000, 416). Following this distinction, and because so much of this book already explores a variety of ethnographic performances, I want to unpack what is different about dance and dance-based performance exercises.

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Not Just Dance Lessons: Dancing Lessons Dance lessons are never movement instruction alone: Rather, they are engaged experiences of dancing. Indeed, as Wulff notes on the very first page of her book on professional ballet dancers, “learning to dance and dancing are muscular experiences that never go away completely” (1998, 1). Just as the non-dancer learns and develops new bodily awareness along their journey into becoming a dancer, they also develop their body anew. It is not only muscular awareness that develops, but new muscles. It is not only new conceptualizations of bodily control and movement that develop, but new neurological linkages. “Dancers,” as Wulff points out, “can remember steps for years, saving them in their ‘muscle memory’” (1998, 104). Indeed, in two of the most interesting cases I encountered, dancers who had suffered some type of brain trauma and struggled to learn new information easily recalled steps and patterns learned long ago. Similarly, several dancers whose bodies could no longer execute new physically demanding choreography could still perform even more taxing movements learned decades past. But dancers do not simply arrive at this point. It is a gradual process of growth and development of contextually valued ways of moving, inhabiting, displaying, and presenting the dancer’s body (e.g., Marion 2008, 2014, 2016). Indeed, despite its sometimes-gradual progression, the physical changes brought about in a dancer’s body should not be underestimated (e.g., Blackmer 1989, 70–74), especially since dancers not only use their bodies when they dance but, as Wulff aptly points out, “also use their bodies differently than other people when they do not dance” (1998, 102). Fitting Ingold’s theory of enskillment which suggests that cultural variations between groups of people is primarily differential skill development (e.g., Ingold 1991, 2000), this deeply ingrained learning, embedding, and automation of bodily techniques and processes is what many athletes know of as “muscle memory,” what Wacquant refers to as “bodily capital” (2004, passim), and what one of my early salsa mentors called “sweat equity.” While all addressing the training of bodily processes, however, there are different connotations and implications for these three terms: muscle memory, bodily capital, and sweat equity. The term “muscle memory” helps highlight the automation of bodily responses that is the goal of ongoing practice. On the competition floor, for example, the ballroom competitor neither has the time nor can afford the conscious attention to all of the elements of technique that are being judged. Simply stated, it is not possible to keep all of the aesthetic factors involved in ballroom dancing consciously in mind all at once. And, to whatever extent any of these values is the subject of conscious thought, attention is taken away from others, such as the floor, one’s partner, the audience, judges, other competitors on the floor, and the music one is dancing to. Yet if “muscle memory” accounts for the automation of physical practices, and “bodily capital” for their physically embedded nature, the term “sweat equity” best captures the role and importance of physical skills as behaviors and movements acquired and developed in use and practice. My use of the term “sweat equity” is meant to capture how real-world ability cannot come from dance classes and lessons,

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but only from the time actually invested and put in on the floor, actually dancing. “Sweat” thus reflects and represents the very real bodily effort of physical practice, while “equity” signals the investment-like dynamics of these efforts; the accumulation of skill that can then be drawn against in all future enactment. The underlying point is that in-class knowledge and ability does not, automatically, transform into the on-the-fly ability of the experienced dancer to adjust to one’s partner and surroundings in the moment; a skill that can only be developed via experience in the very setting for which that skill is being developed. Physical skill is best understood, then, as a complex of bodily change, awareness, and ability, wherein each of these elements is inter-implicated in the others. Wacquant (2004) provides powerful insight regarding the bodily understandings (based on his sociological explication of training in a boxing gym in a black neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side) that underlie terms such as muscle memory, bodily capital, and sweat equity. In Wacquant’s words: Theoretical mastery is of little help so long as the move is not inscribed within one’s bodily schema; and it is only after it has been assimilated by the body in and through endless physical drills repeated ad nauseam that it becomes in turn fully intelligible to the intellect. There is indeed a comprehension of the body that goes beyond—prior to—full visual and mental cognizance. Only the permanent carnal experimentation that is training, as a coherent complexus of “incorporating practices” can enable one to acquire this practical mastery. (2004, 69)

As Wacquant argues, practical mastery and theoretical mastery are far from one and the same, and only bodily practice generates the experience required for practical mastery of a physical skill. A dance teacher may have “an eye” for dance, seeing how technique can be fixed or improved, but actual physical experience and practice is needed in order to develop a dancer’s own dancing. It is not for lack of words that dance teachers physically manipulate their students’ bodies, after all, but because the correct positioning, alignment, and engagement of joints and muscles must be felt if a student is to truly understand them. Learning movement in dance is not only—or even primarily—about learning movements but, rather, about (practically) learning a way of moving. As Wacquant makes clear: Training teaches the movements—that is the most obvious part—but it also inculcates in a practical manner the schemata that allow one to better differentiate, distinguish, evaluate, and eventually reproduce these movements…Every gesture thus apprehended-comprehended becomes in turn the support, the material, the tool that makes possible the discovery and thence the assimilation of the next. (2004, 118)

For physical practices, then, movements are trained as a model for movement. The reason to start with easier patterns and skills is not simply to match the beginning students’ lower ability levels, but to help them learn how—that is build both physical capacity and correlating neural pathways—to move in a manner that more difficult elements are based not only on, but also in. The point of all of this is that dancers are not simply people who do dance, but people who have trained themselves to dance. If the dance training involved is implicated in global processes of development and transmission—as is indeed

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the case with contemporary competitive ballroom, salsa, and Brazilian zouk—then these dancers are not only those who dance according to standards impacted by globalization, but are persons who have trained themselves, recognize each other, and share in common forms and identifications according to these globalized standards as well. Just as athletes immersed in a game share a certain unity of identity—at least in the moment—so too with dancers in their shared dancing. As much as the image presented by the accomplished dancer is one of supreme ease and effortlessness, in fact intense dedication, effort, and training underlie this image; dedication, effort, and training that change a dancer’s body at the same time as it changes their awareness. The “bodily” part of Wacquant’s “bodily capital” is straightforward enough, although the significance of this element should not be underestimated. As with boxers (Wacquant 2004) or capoeiristas (Downey 2005), “dancers are totally dependent on their bodies” (Wulff 1998, 103). What the “capital” part of Wacquant’s “bodily capital” gets at then, is the practice-specific value that accumulates—almost as if by accretion—in the body of the practitioner. It is not only skill that develops with practice after all, but task-specific patterns and articulations of skin, muscle, tendon, and bone as well. A dancer’s bodily capital is not only their knowledge of dance, or even the automation of movement stemming from his or her muscle memory, but also the embedded patterning, development, and linking of body and practice as learning, development, and practice of posture, movement, and attitudes ramify onto identity and identification. In sum, then, it is neither skill nor body alone which is developed through a dancer’s physical practice but, rather, the dancer’s skilled body. “Dancing ability is not just a meaning constructed on the body,” as Wade notes, “but a material product of working through the body…the motor skills of the body are altered, changing the person’s embodied physical capital during his or her lifetime” (2000, 22). Whether framed as Wade’s “embodied physical capital” or Wacquant’s “bodily capital,” the point is that physical practices, such as dance, are about physically embedded skills which cannot be reduced to knowledge alone.

Doing as Learning From the outset of my research into competitive ballroom, salsa, and now Brazilian zouk, it has always been clear that only some of the experiences and understandings from these lived worlds can be represented in words and text. This is exactly what led me into visual anthropology (e.g., Marion 2008, 2010, 2014) which enabled me to show things that could never be captured by words alone. Even as I published and got tenure based on my work in visual anthropology, however, my experiences in the lived dance worlds constantly reminded me that there were still elements of lived bodily engagement lacking representation and “voice” in my scholarship and teaching. Thinking about this is what led me to start introducing various participatory activities into my classroom teaching, with different activities geared toward different learning objectives in different courses.

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As Mauss (1973) made clear, techniques of the body are never simply physical: They always encode cultural values as different possibilities are privileged relative to others. Far from simply being utilitarian, physical mannerisms, practices, and proxemics (e.g., Levy 1973, Bourdieu 1977, and Hall 1988, respectively) are integral elements of sociocultural discourse. Expanding on these communicative facets of bodily enactments, Butler pointed out that gender is constituted via its enactment (1988, 1990). Making a broader point, Foster recognized “bodily reality, not as a natural or absolute given but as a tangible and substantial category of cultural experience” (1996, xi). So, while never separate from physical bodies, how the body is used and viewed always arises in feedback with the values and understandings by and through which it is attended. Indeed, Ingold’s work on enskillment highlights how culture functions through the education of attention, i.e., not only via explicit directives, but also by modeling what deserves attention (2000, 37). My early work with competitive ballroom dancers exhibited exactly this, as what judges and other experts considered “best” often involved criteria of which newcomers weren’t even aware (let alone demonstrating proficiency). More than just new ways to think about and understand how to do things, then, performative participation also recruits and develops both physical and neurological capacities as well. As Paul notes of her experiences learning karate, “[it] is not only thinking on one’s feet, it is also thinking with one’s feet” (2006, 403, original emphasis). This is the same idea Downey (2005) explores for how capoeira training ultimately informs practitioners’ perceptions and social interactions outside of capoeira contexts as well as within them. And, as Bourdieu noted, “What is ‘learned by the body’ is not something that one has, like knowledge, that can be brandished, but something that one is” (Bourdieu 1990, 73). What persons actually do, and how, matters. This is why even brief performance exercises—as engaged experiential embodiment—can have profound impacts on students’ learning. The exercises I describe here are geared to different course content and learning objectives, but each is an example of how such activities can be brought into the classroom in order to facilitate new understandings.

References Bizas, Eleni. 2014. Learning Senegalese Sabar: Dancers and Embodiment in New York and Dakar. Oxford, NY: Berghahn. Blackmer, Joan Dexter. 1989. Acrobats of the Gods: Dance and Transformation. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40 (4): 519–531. ———. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Downey, Greg. 2005. Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. “Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira: Physical Education and Enculturation in an Afro-Brazilian Art.” American Anthropologist 110 (2): 204–213. Foster, Susan Leigh, ed. 1996. Corporealities: Dancing Knowledge, Culture and Power. London and New York: Routledge. Galanti, Geri-Ann. 2008. Caring for Patients from Different Cultures. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Anchor. Hall, Edward T. 1988. “Proxemics in the Arab World.” In Ourselves Among Others: Cross-Cultural Readings for Writers, edited by Carol J. Verburg, 611–620. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia. 2008. Embodied Communities: Dance Traditions and Change in Java. Oxford, NY: Berghahn. Ingold, Tim. 1991. “Becoming Persons: Consciousness and Sociality in Human Evolution.” Cultural Dynamics 4: 355–378. ———. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. New York, NY: Routledge. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levy, Robert I. 1973. Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Marion, Jonathan S. 2008. Ballroom: Culture and Costume in Competitive Dance. London, UK: Berg. ———. 2010. “Photography as Ethnographic Passport.” Visual Anthropology Review 26 (1): 25–31. ———. 2014. Ballroom Dance and Glamour. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. ———. 2016. “Becoming Popular: The Impact of Contemporary Media on the World of Competitive Ballroom Dance.” Anthropology Now 8: 115–124. Mauss, Marcel. 1973. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2 (1): 70–88. Mead, Margaret. 2001. Coming of Age in Samoa. New York, NY: HarperCollins. William Morrow Paperbacks. First published in 1928. Nijland, Dirk. 2006. “Ritual Performance and Visual Representations.” In Reflecting Visual Ethnography: Using the Camera in Anthropological Research, edited by Metje Postma and Peter I. Crawford, 26–49. Leiden: CNWS Publications. Paul, Annie. 2006. “Body Wisdom: The Way of Karate.” South Atlantic Quarterly 105 (2): 397–407. Postma, Metje, and Peter I. Crawford, eds. 2006. Reflecting Visual Ethnography: Using the Camera in Anthropological Research. Leiden: CNWS Publication. Ruby, Jay. 2000. Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Schechner, Richard. 2003. Performance Theory. New York, NY: Routledge. ———. 2013. Performance Studies: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Routledge. Sobo, Elisa J., and Martha O. Loustaunau. 2010. The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine. New York, NY: Praeger. Turner, Victor Witter. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. New York: Oxford University Press. Wade, Peter. 2000. Music, Race, and Nation: Musica Tropical in Colombia. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Williams, Drid. 2004. Anthropology and the Dance: Ten Lectures. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Wulff, Helena. 1998. Ballet Across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers. New York, NY: Berg.

Chapter 10

Pedagogies of the Imagination: Toward a New Performative Politics Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston

Performance, Memory, and the Body That sound must come from the depths of you—because it’s in you. It’s an impossible sound. Explore the unpredictable registers… Let the body find it… Start from that impossibility… Turn towards it… Feel it! Then you will find death. Death is impossible for you, it’s incomprehensible, so try going from there—but use your body, don’t overthink… because how else do you understand someone else’s death?

These were words of advice from Józef Szajna, an internationally renowned Polish theatre artist and Auschwitz survivor, to an actor during a rehearsal of Replika 8, which I was directing for Vancouver’s Festival of Jewish Culture, Chutzpah!, in 2001. The play was an adaptation of Szajna’s Replika, a physical and highly disturbing performance about a post-Auschwitz world, originally staged in Warsaw, Poland, in 1973. I was investigating physical performance as an ethnographic approach to the study of embodied memory and was honored that Szajna had travelled to Vancouver to oversee the production’s final rehearsals and attend its premiere. At the rehearsal, Szajna asked an actor who played a concentration camp victim to utter a sound of death while emerging from a heap of debris representing the rubble of the past. The actor protested that he found it “impossible” to voice death, because he did “not know what death sounded like.” Szajna advised the actor to start approaching death by feeling that impossibility in voicing death, arguing that even if death is certain for us all, it remains entirely incomprehensible. Actors cannot draw on their own personal experience of death, as they might do with other experiences and emotions (such as hunger or fear); instead, Szajna suggested, they might “find that meaning for themselves” through improvisation. Szajna’s advice clearly departed from the psychological realism of Russian theatre director and actor Konstantin Stanislavski (1989, 168), who argued that actors needed M. Kazubowski-Houston (B) York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_10

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to evoke their “emotion memory”—“that type of memory, which makes you relive the sensations you once felt … feelings you have already experienced”—to faithfully represent a character on stage. Emotion memory, in Stanislavski’s view, was the foundation of an actor’s creative skill, as it enables an emotional connection, allowing the actor to feel sympathy and empathy for their character. This notion has become a staple of actor training in theatre conservatories across the world. But Szajna’s acting style was more closely aligned with that of Polish theatre director and theoretician Jerzy Grotowski, who argued that an actor accesses their creativity by tapping into their “body-memory,” visceral memory activated by enacting a physical gesture and finding a corresponding association (Grotowski 1979, 12–137). Ultimately, a Grotowskian actor initiates the process of remembering through the body; similarly, Szajna’s “impossible sound” enacts the unconscious body-memory, or body-feeling, that “finds” the meaning of death by associating it with incomprehensibility. This chapter examines performance ethnography as an approach to a critical pedagogy concerned with social justice, and one that meshes well with a reliance on embodied improvisation. This is an ethnographic research practice that uses performance not only to represent and communicate research findings (e.g., Conquergood 1988; Schechner 1985; Denzin 2003; Turner and Turner 1982 in Chapter 2, p. 34) but also to conduct research, by approaching performance itself as an ethnographic process (Culhane 2011; Fabian 1990; Irving 2011; Kazubowski-Houston 2010, 2011, 2016, 2017, 2018a, b; Madison 2010). Since Victor and Edith Turner’s and Richard Schechner’s explorations of performance ethnography in the 1980s, which used performance to stage ethnographic data, performance ethnography within anthropology has, for the most part, been conducted primarily at the representational level, using performance to stage interview transcripts, field notes, and/or ethnographic texts in order to communicate research findings in embodied and sensory ways to diverse academic and non-academic audiences. Methodological experimentations involving the ethnographic process itself— which do not specifically rely on the staging of pre-existing ethnographic data—have been rare. In anthropology, Johannes Fabian (1990) employed theatre performance as a form of ethnographic participant observation, addressing research questions by collaboratively developing a theatre performance with research participants. Fabian (1990, 19) advanced a “performative,” as opposed to “informative,” ethnography, where the ethnographer—no longer an investigator—becomes a “co-performer” who “work[s] with, not on, the people with whom he interacts.” I situate my latest work in the context of what has come to be known in recent years as “imaginative ethnography” (Elliott and Culhane 2016)—a concept and research practice developed by the Centre of Imaginative Ethnography (CIE), of which I am a co-founding member and co-curator (http://imaginativeethnography.org/). In my practice of imaginative ethnography, I have been concerned with the intersection of performance, ethnography, and imagination at the level of ethnographic process (Kazubowski-Houston and Magnat 2018). As our political, economic, and environmental futures become increasingly uncertain, imagination has gained cachet in anthropology and cognate fields, with scholars turning toward the imagination as an entry point for studying and intervening in

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futures (Salazar et al. 2017). Anthropological approaches have considered the imagination as an intersubjective capacity connected to embodied experience, expression, perception, cognition, and emotion that is constitutive of and constituted by the material world (Elliott and Culhane 2016; Kazubowski-Houston and Magnat 2018; McLean 2007). But traditional ethnographic methods—largely relying on observation and verbal expression—are not always adequate to study imaginative lifeworlds, which may be more internal and elusive. Anthropologists and scholars in cognate fields have begun experimenting with research modalities that are multimodal, experiential, creative, metaphoric, and embodied; they may employ creative writing, photography, film, performance, visual arts, and digital technologies to gain insight into how people imagine their futures (Elliott and Culhane 2016; Irving 2011; Kazubowski-Houston 2010, 2011, 2016, 2017; Madison 2010). Performance, in particular, has emerged as an important approach in these experiments because of the ways it can set up the conditions for the construction of ethnographic knowledge through the interactions between and among performers, the ethnographer, and the audience, and the interplay of dramatic text, speech, action, the body, image, and sound (Kazubowski-Houston 2016, 2017, 2018b; Kazubowski-Houston and Magnat 2018; Sjöberg 2018). Performance has the potential to provide embodied and affective “routes to knowing” (Hogan and Pink 2010, 158) how futures are lived, imagined, produced, and disrupted in people’s everyday lives. In recent decades, anthropologists and scholars in cognate fields have lauded performance ethnography as a particularly valuable way to engage students politically, thanks to its collaborative, participatory, affective, and embodied potential. Here, I analyze challenges I have recently encountered in my radical, performance-based pedagogy of the imagination, and propose how we might rethink the role of performance ethnography in pedagogical contexts. Can performance ethnography be mobilized even further, to rethink the very notion of pedagogical politics?

Performance-Based Pedagogy: Conditions for Knowledge Construction My radical, performance-based pedagogy uses autoethnographic performance as an approach to engage students in reimagining and intervening in futures (KazubowskiHouston 2017). Autoethnographic performance employs a reflexive ethnographic process and style of representation that draws upon the ethnographer’s own life story and experiences in the field, and critically interrogates the conditions that underlie the project’s construction of knowledge (Kazubowski-Houston, 2010, 2017). Central to my approach are Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s ([1970] 2005) “pedagogy of the oppressed,” performance studies, and anthropological approaches to engaged inquiry, as well as insights drawn from my longtime research in the field of performance ethnography. Freire ([1970] 2005, 71–79), writing from the Global South and from a Marxian perspective, formulated the pedagogy of the oppressed

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in response to the dominant colonial model of education—what he called “banking”—which, he argued, imagined the student as an empty vessel to be filled with the teacher’s knowledge. For him, this hierarchical model of education supported oppressive regimes and limited the agency of the oppressed through indoctrination, stifling their ability to imagine the world otherwise. In response, Freire developed an approach that encourages students to question the status quo through a dialogical process of inquiry based on egalitarian student-teacher relations. My approach is also inspired by performance studies scholar Jan Cohen-Cruz’s (1998, 1) notion of “radical performances,” meaning “acts that question or re-envision ingrained social arrangements of power.” Anthropology has also recently embarked on reimagining itself as an engaged, collaborative, reflexive, and interventionist practice (Osterweil 2013; Salazar et al. 2017).

“Nothing Seems Possible”: Imagining Futures with Students Working in the field of performance ethnography for nearly two decades, I have frequently used performance-based pedagogy to engage students in a politics of imagining alternative futures. I have employed performance-based pedagogy in anthropology, cultural studies, and theatre and performance studies courses for both undergraduate and graduate students in universities in Canada and Poland. I have also conducted performance ethnography workshops at anthropological, qualitative research, and theatre and performance studies conferences and symposia in Canada, the United States, and Europe. My performance ethnography workshops usually accommodate 10–15 students of various backgrounds in anthropology and ethnography. In the last few years, however, I have found this pedagogy to be increasingly challenging. In workshops that I recently conducted in Canada and Poland, students, both undergraduate and graduate of various disciplinary backgrounds, expressed an overwhelming and pervasive sense of impossibility, a feeling that we live in a present with no future. When I asked them to develop performance ethnographies that would speculate possible futures, even dystopian ones, many were reluctant. At York University, one undergraduate theatre student remarked dejectedly, “I can’t even go there:” in light of impending environmental catastrophes, they continued, “nothing seems possible anymore. … It is too late, and there is no going back.” MA anthropology students at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, echoed this sentiment, jadedly insisting that their performance “could only be satirical” and that it was “hard to imagine a future in a country where there is none.” When I asked them to go out into the streets of Kraków to collect what I called “found remains” of the past—objects, images, actions, sounds, and smells—in order to imagine different futures, they were reluctant to leave the classroom. But most of them eventually did and returned with compelling objects, including rocks, magazine clips about Polish folklore, ring-shaped bread sprinkled with salt and poppy seeds

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(“obwarzanek,” a regional delicacy sold from street carts in Kraków), an old brick, and propaganda posters from Poland’s nationalist government denouncing the use of the term “Polish death camps” when referring to Nazi concentration camps in the international press. They then spent several hours working in small groups to develop short performance ethnography pieces based on these objects to address their research question, “How can the found objects of the past help us reimagine different futures?” They discussed among themselves why they had chosen their particular objects, what stories the objects told about the past, and how they inspired them to think about the future. Next, they improvised their performance’s spoken text and choreography. Finally, they presented their performances in class and discussed the lessons learned in the ethnographic process. Even though the students developed interesting performances that imagined Kraków’s potential future, for example, by contrasting its nationalist present with its totalitarian past, the enthusiasm in the workshop was low, and many students remained apathetic and/or sarcastic about the work they had created. I encountered similar responses in a performance ethnography workshop I conducted with first-year theatre students at York University, where I asked them to conceptually develop a short performance ethnography piece entitled “Disrupting Futures” in response to the question, “How might we disrupt the future in ways that create a more just and sustainable world?” During the workshop, the students split into groups led by the teaching assistants and me, and ventured out of the classroom to collect or photograph objects that would inspire them to “disrupt” futures. As I walked with my group through campus, one student commented that, although “the exercise was fun and it was nice to get out of the classroom,” they were not sure “what this kind of performance would change,” as politicians would not listen to them anyways. Many students agreed with this sentiment, and some even wondered if it made sense for them to be pursuing education when it was clear that an “environmental disaster was around the corner.” A few admitted that they wondered whether “doing theatre was a luxury” or “a distraction” from the fact that “we were all doomed.” My experience with such pessimism is not unique. The June 15, 2017, issue of The Guardian, for example, reports that in the past hope belonged to the young, but pessimism has taken its place (Butler). Research also backs up this observation, noting that young people in the United States—those who came of age in a post-9/11 era framed by virulent neoliberal politics—display “a kind of numbness about political life,” even if some have organized impressive movements like Occupy or Black Lives Matter (Ehrenfreund 2016; Miller 2014). The students’ reluctance to participate in these performance ethnography workshops, I believe, cannot be attributed to a possible discomfort with performative approaches, as most students had a background, or interest, in the creative arts. Nor can their pessimism be explained in terms of Freire’s ([1970] 2005, 29) notion of political paralysis—born from a lack of critical consciousness—as the students were generally astute critical thinkers. They knew the world needed changing but saw any activism as meaningless in the face of rising fascism, impending environmental catastrophe, and the climate denialism of political elites.

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In retrospect, I find that these students’ resistance to participate in performance ethnography projects that sought to imagine the future, at least to a certain extent, may be understood as a “politics of impossibility,” a strategy of refusal or at least resistance against the demands of neoliberal academia. Cultural theorist Noah De Lissovoy (2018, 188) argues that neoliberalism has reorganized not only politics but also subjectivity, foregrounding competitiveness, individualism, and autonomy as responses to the overwhelming anxiety resultant from neoliberal precarity, deregulation, and privatization. The corporate model of education creates a climate where “students, teachers and schools [are pitted] against each other in a struggle for higher scores and superior rankings” (De Lissovoy 2013, 423). In this context, the neoliberal subject endlessly works to build and maintain the sprawl of identities needed to remain competitive in the neoliberal economy. For young people, this can manifest as a constant pressure to perform and outperform others through the accumulation of academic and professional accolades (De Lissovoy 2018, 196). Placing the students’ responses in this neoliberal academic context, one can argue that they may have been exercising freedom of choice by resisting participation in my workshop. Perhaps they believed that my project’s social justice goals masked the advancement of neoliberal, entrepreneurial goals and agendas. This was intimated in some of the comments students made, such as: “To think that there was still any future left would be a complete and sickening denial of reality;” “Work for the cause of social justice might be important, but what is social justice anyway, when we are still burning fossil fuels?” and “Social justice has become a slogan for academics but, in the end, has little material effects for marginalized groups.” This politics of impossibility could be seen as akin to what anthropologist Audra Simpson (2014)— writing about the relations of the Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke (a reserve community in southwestern Quebec) to the settler state—has called a “politics of refusal.” Simpson argues that refusal, unlike resistance, which seeks to undermine the dominant authority, rejects any recognition of, or engagement with, that authority’s structures and regimes of power. Although none of the students in the performance ethnography workshops that I conducted had outright refused to participate, I nevertheless argue that their resistance constituted a form of “soft” refusal. Trained well by the neoliberal university in calculating strategic orientations in a world of continuous risk, they engaged in a meaningful political act. Yet, how is one to address such resistance—even if it is a political commentary on the impossibility of change—when it surfaces in pedagogical contexts? I tried to afford the students as much ownership over the development of their projects as possible and introduced them to a variety of multimodal approaches to ethnography that would account for their diverse interests and creative skills. But these strategies did not raise their enthusiasm. One course on performance ethnography, however, which I conducted at York University in the fall of 2017, may provide some clues into how we might approach the politics of refusal in the classroom.

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Performed Walking In that course, a group of MA and PhD students employed performance ethnography to explore silence as an interventionist and imaginative ethnographic method. Initially, I intended the workshop to focus on futures and sustainability in the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands that run through the York University campus. These parklands are the eastern boundary of an underserved, high-density, low-income neighborhood in North Toronto,1 which is inhabited by many visible minority immigrants and refugees, and which has been stigmatized by the media as one of the most dangerous areas of the city. While walking through the deserted parklands prior to the start of the course, I was struck by the silence engulfing the area, despite its proximity to major roads, and I decided that the course should ethnographically explore this silence. I asked the students to focus on the silence not solely as absence, deficit, or pathology, but also as a wellspring of the uncertain, the possible, and the speculative. I posed the following research questions for exploration: What constitute “traces of silence” in the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands? Where can they/can they not be found? What do these traces feel, smell, look, and sound like? What can they tell us about possible futures? Prior to commencing the project, I also asked the students to conduct archival-documentary research about the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands and read ethnographic texts that engaged with silence (e.g., AchinoLoeb 2005), and performance and imaginative ethnography (e.g., Elliott and Culhane 2016; Irving 2011; Kazubowski-Houston 2010). When the students arrived at the parklands, they were also enchanted by the silence. We decided that our ethnographic process would consist of performed walking through the parklands, rehearsals to develop performance ethnography pieces, and staged performances. “Performed walking” draws on anthropological and performance studies approaches that conceptualize walking as an emplaced, embodied, affective, and relational performance of self; with it, we combined photography, object collection, and reflection (Irving 2011; Moretti 2015; Pink 2008; Sotelo 2010, 59). This methodology is akin to what performance studies scholar Luis Carlos Sotelo (2010, 63) refers to as a performative “being-in-movement” methodology. While walking, the students did not become characters in a conventional theatrical sense, nor was their walk a re-enactment of earlier fieldwork; it was a performed ethnography because it relied on the kind of “position[ing] of the self and others” (Lehmann 1999, 60) that characterizes certain forms of postdramatic theatre and performance. While such postdramatic forms eschew dramatic plot, character, and acting by having actors perform themselves and draw on their own life experiences, they still place the body and its surrounding environment in a performance context. Similarly, in our performed walking exercise, the students walking through the parklands engaged with one another and the environment through their bodies’ senses and emotions, paying heed to what was silenced and what was absent along the trails. I kept the research process flexible, so that the students could make their own decisions about which paths to follow, who to walk with, or when to engage in conversation. In other words, improvisation and chance took the lead. While walking, the students

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and I collected, photographed, filmed, drew, and recorded whatever we deemed to be “traces of silence,” which we “found” in objects, places, actions, gestures, images, sounds, feelings, and sensations. The project did not involve community members, as I felt that it would be ethically questionable to seek people’s commitment to a short-term course project. Thus, the students reflected on what the found traces of silence could tell them about their own engagement with the parklands. Returning to the classroom, the students worked in groups to devise three-minute performance ethnography pieces based on their found silent traces. They were asked to keep in mind questions of ethnographic reflexivity and positionality and refer back to class readings that tackled these issues. Most performances incorporated a variety of multimodal strategies, including performance, spoken poetry, image/video projection, and digital soundscapes. One group of students used their smartphones to record sounds and images while walking through the parklands. They then reviewed each other’s photographs and recordings in order to identify common themes. They noted that, in one way or another, everyone’s images captured objects and things that could be categorized into different dichotomies, such as synthetic/organic, nature/culture, seen/unseen, registered/unregistered, known/unknown. Subsequently, guided by a chapter on creative and sensorial ethnographic writing authored by Denielle Elliott (2016), they decided to write autoethnographic poetry to explore their experiences of walking through the parklands and the dichotomies captured in their photographs. One student’s poem addressed the synthetic materials she had found floating in the river: Synthetic, human-made, disposable. How did you get here? Who did you belong to? How do you feel now that you are running in a river in Canada’s largest city? Did you think this would be your life? How does your skin feel being passed over this body of water? By the rain, by the mud, by the wind, sun? You respond in silence. To be expected. Stories were eclipsed by these synthetic discards. Synthetic discards happy to be in such nice company. Quiet garbage. Calm synthetic. … Does a lack of life mean a lack of care? Maybe I’m jealous. You are disposable but not so easily rid of. Your final resting place is this river. I wish I could rest in a river. I guess I’m happy for you. It’s quite a nice place to rest for the next two hundred years. (Workshop recording, Alanna Dunlop 20172 )

Another student wrote and performed a poem that spoke from her feet’s perspective: My feet know what to do. They are on the path. They have a purpose… they have a walk, they know where to go. They know because someone…who?… maybe something told them? Or left no choice… this paved path forcing its order onto the chaos around it has told my feet where to go, where to step, where to go, where to run, and where to turn, but… they feel awkward, they don’t stop, they float on the concrete path, they… wanting their soles to stay, not wanting their soles to stay in one spot for too long. The feet want to keep going, keep searching, keep looking, keep finding, something unknown, something new, something new in a place filled with old things. This journey they are on is really the only thing they know. They know to stop and look because there are signs. What are they saying? Well, conflicting things… something about road pipelines, danger, land, the order of life, saving lives, saving people, saving society, saving land with one big orange hula-hoop? The known we know is forced by the unknowns we don’t think of. And each thing we think of opens new holes, new things to know, each thing I touch has secrets in it, around it, on it, touch it, look at it, photograph it, it moves, it turns, and it changes as soon as you do. It’s all unknown, but it’s far from silent. It speaks, it growls, it screams, it talks. It’s just that it does so in a language

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perhaps that I don’t know, and you don’t know, and maybe they don’t know. But someone does, someone… Where are you? (Workshop recording, Anna Lytvynova 2017)

In their performed ethnography, these two students approached synthetic materials and feet in the Bakhtinian sense, as the superaddressees to whom they voiced their thoughts and feelings (Bakhtin 1986). A sense of impossibility—provoked by the environmental degradation of the parklands—was still very much part and parcel of this workshop. The eeriness of the silence that enveloped the area seemed to be foreshadowing a future that may never be. Students commented that the voracity of capitalism, its disregard for the earth, and climate change denialism will make nature inaccessible to future generations. They also noted that unpolluted nature is already inaccessible to the residents of underprivileged neighborhoods, such as the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands, which are largely neglected and treated as a garbage dump. They also wondered what it means to be living in a time with no future. But this sense of impossibility and futurelessness never turned into disengagement, as it did in my other performance ethnography workshops. The students maintained a keen interest throughout the project and their performance ethnography presentations ended up addressing— directly or indirectly—the question of “futures.” To elucidate what may have been different in this workshop, I return to the rehearsal of Replika 8 with which I opened this chapter. In that rehearsal, Szajna instructed the actor to turn toward the impossible—toward the incomprehensibility of death—and explore it with the body. My workshop on silence had avoided creating an immobilizing sense of impossibility for the students because it encouraged them to turn toward the impossible and it required them to engage on a visceral level. The topic of silence—its intangibility and ephemerality—may have aided this process. Although I chose the topic of silence because this is what attracted my attention while walking through the parklands, it also seemed to resonate with the students. And my choice to frame the topic as “traces of silence” may have further aided the process. The two terms are an oxymoron, as “traces” imply materiality whereas “silence” implies ephemerality. This clash forces one to listen with curiosity, as it is not immediately transparent what “traces of silence” might be. In this way, the conditions for the construction of ethnographic knowledge set up by our workshop, rather than creating a hopeless sense of impossibility for the students, created a sense of curiosity instead. It was likely this curiosity that prevented disengagement and pessimism from seeping into our project. The students noted that “wondering about what ‘traces of silence’ might be, made [them] interested in finding such traces” and in “active[ly] listening,” and, further, that “searching for traces of silence made the unknown palpable,” “made [them] look at the world differently,” and “queered [their] thinking towards spaces and people.” They also wondered, “what kind of ethnography this was” and “how they might best approach it.” One can even argue that this ethnographic orientation toward “traces of silence,” which inspired curiosity, made the familiar strange. Theatre director, playwright, and theoretician Bertolt Brecht, a Marxist, sought to politicize audiences by defamiliarizing their everyday reality through a multitude of

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illusion-breaking strategies (actors step in and out of character, actors shift roles and play more than one character, and actors offer commentary on the play’s action); this encouraged audiences to question and critique. In our project, this process of defamiliarization proceeded by way of active and embodied listening, in an engagement with the environment. Similarly, Szajna’s approach shows that an embodied feeling in a performative context can be a result of or a starting point for defamiliarization. As the students walked through the parklands and curiously listened for “traces of silence,” this multisensorial process of walking and listening also defamiliarized their surroundings. Their attention could thus be directed to “silent objects,” which under different circumstances they may have missed: a plastic bottle impaled on a stick, a piece of garbage floating in the river, a caution tape, a decomposing body of a squirrel, a red ribbon tied to a tree branch, an abandoned swing made of a tree trunk, a plastic bag suspended on the shrubs, a white T-shirt lying in the grass, a texture of a tree bark, a crooked “no swimming” sign, a decaying “in memory” plaque on an old memorial bench, or a concrete walking path. One student, for example, commented that while she was walking through the parklands and listening for traces of silence, “the presence of synthetic materials and plastics jumped out at her” from the silence in which they were engulfed. Many students spoke of the objects’ presence as being “out of place,” “surprising,” “curious,” or “impossible,” raising questions such as, “Where had these objects come from? How did they get here? Who had placed them there?” (Figs. 10.1 and 10.2). The traces of silence can also be seen as what Polish theatre director and visual artist Tadeusz Kantor calls “impossible objects;” these arrest attention through their impossible existence, questioning their own reality and the reality of their surroundings (Kantor 1993, 2000; Kobialka 2007, 93). In particular, Kantor was interested

Fig. 10.1 An abandoned tree trunk swing encountered by students in the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands (Photo credit: Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston)

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Fig. 10.2 Plastic bag suspended on tree shrubs found by students in the Humber River-Black Creek Parklands (Photo credit: Megan Johnson)

in objects of “the lowest rank,” those things that become invisible, forgotten, and abandoned when not performing their usual function, such as an umbrella, a piece of clothing, or an envelope; he called these “emballages” (Kantor 2000, 245; Kobialka 2007, 88, 89). In his plays, The Return of Odysseus (1944) and Today Is My Birthday (1990), Kantor employed abandoned objects from World War II, including a cartwheel covered in mud, a crumbling loudspeaker spewing out war updates, and a piece of an iron bridge damaged during the war (Kobialka 2007, 82, 83). In his view, when such objects are placed in a theatrical space outside of their original context, they enter a state of fluidity “not defined by the use-value assigned to them by a convention” (Kobialka 2007, 87). This is a state of impossible existence “of being and not being at the same time” (Sosnowska 2016, 73). The silent objects that the

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students found in the parklands, like Kantor’s emballages, also existed in an impossible way, as their everyday function appeared to be removed from them. While they were not emballages in the strict Kantorian sense, because they were not placed in a theatrical space, they nevertheless seemed out of place in their surroundings. The students noted, for example, that the silence of a dead rat or of a decomposing body of a squirrel “stuck out” in their unwanted and abandoned presence, and that they were literally deprived of their original function: life. An abandoned memorial bench, engulfed in silence, was also an impossible object, deprived of its function. It seemed that no one had sat on the bench for a long time; as one student observed, the “in memory” sign evoked the memory of the bench itself, rather than that of the person it was originally meant to commemorate. A T-shirt lying on the grass or an abandoned child’s swing suspended on a tree—devoid of bodies—also stuck out as impossible objects. These impossible objects not only engaged the students critically—inspiring them to question the surrounding reality—but also in embodied and sensorial ways. The student who focused on synthetic materials scattered across the parklands remarked that they “radiated a restless peace,” which generated sensory response and curiosity, which then demanded “the restless attention of her Canon lenses.” Another student commented that the walking path was “pulling him in,” orchestrating his movements, and that his body fought to resist “the idea of the path” by orienting itself toward the “flows of water” or “the flows of the animals.” Searching for traces of silence, he argued, had placed him in a position of “a sensory apprenticeship”; drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s (2014) notion of “sweaty” forms of knowledge construction, he noted he was pursuing other ways of knowing through “sweaty” ethnographic work. The student who wrote a poem addressed to her feet reported that the first “object” that caught her attention was her own feet coming in contact with the path. While walking, she had concentrated on the purpose of her feet, the awkwardness with which they were touching the ground, “their desire to… look for something new in a place filled with old things.” She noted that her feet knew where to go because there were signs planted on the path—warning about oil pipelines, danger, or saving lives (a lifebuoy)—that directed the feet in particular ways. These signs, in turn, directed her attention toward “something else” that “was full of secrets,” that inspired her to “explore it, touch it, and photograph it.” Yet her encounter with silence was ultimately an encounter with absence, as she had never found any traces of silence. This was the case, she explained, because the various signs along the way “spoke to her loudly about saving earth or saving land.” Finally, another student reflected that while there was a “physical path” on which he was walking, “there was also the path of your thoughts,” and wondered whether that “second path” reappeared in his creative writing.

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The Generativity of Performed Walking Various theorists have commented on the productive and interactive possibilities brought about by performed walking. Not only does it involve the entire body and senses but it is also a form of place-making (Pink 2008, 180), one that can attune the walker to their own and other embodied and affective ways of knowing and being (Moretti 2015, 20; Pink 2008, 17). Sotelo (2010, 61) argues that walking, ultimately, “is generative: it gives birth to things” because, when we walk, the body and the space on which it walks undergo a transformation. When we are walking, our “body temperature rises, the heart rate quickens and a number of other conscious and unconscious operations take place” (61); we are also forced to decide how we are going to walk, where, and at what pace (61). Sotelo (2010, 61) writes that the environment also engages the walker, it “calls out to the walker, and the walker responds with physical actions and decisions. There is an interaction between the path, environment and being-in-movement (the walker).” Understood as such, performed walking contests impossibility. This is particularly the case when walking with others, which—by facilitating a process of collective imagining—can encourage social action (Appadurai 1996, 7). The notion of collective imagination is not without problems, as we clearly do not have insight into other people’s imaginative lifeworlds; however, we can think of collective imagination as “entangled individual imaginations, inspired by the same verbal discourses, written texts, phenomenological contexts and material reality” (Pink 2008, 183). In our project, the process of collective walking and imagining allowed students to “produce spatial auto-biographical narratives by which they position[ed] the self and others” (Sotelo 2010, 60). Walking together through the parklands placed the students in the presence of each other and the landscape and, consequently, facilitated dialogue: When we approached a swing made of a tree trunk, we discussed to whom it belonged. When one student approached it, the rest of us followed. We wondered about who might have used the swing and why there were no children around. And we wondered why the swing was largely hidden from view and who had made it. This, in turn, encouraged discussion about how people living in the underserviced areas may not be able to enjoy parks, as these parks are generally not maintained or easily accessible by foot. Some students pointed out that some people likely have to work several jobs to make ends meet and that leisure time may not be an option for them. This led some to declare that areas such as the parklands should have more affordable housing and community centers offering outdoor programs for children. Combining walking with digital technology, creative writing, and staged performance also further aided the students’ curious engagement with the environment and a process of critical reflection. According to Sarah Pink (2008, 188), the method of the video tour “offers ethnographers a focused, mediated and documented means of collaboratively exploring material contexts and imagined futures and of reflexively analysing the multisensorial knowledge produced through the research encounter” (emphasis in original). Pink (2008, 188) further states that reviewing video footage not only connects one to a material reality and its diverse meanings but also inspires

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viewers to imagine different possibilities. One student commented: “It was a really interesting process to go back and look at all those images, and listen to all those sounds, and kind of reflect on all of that, and then put it all together in this sort of digital narrative … how that kind of takes you back to that sensory place.” Another student was struck by how diverse the collected images were and how different presentations could be, even though they were based on the same material. Other students concurred that viewing different photographs of the same surroundings inspired them to examine the reality from varying perspectives, “learn new things,” and “show how each of [them] had [their] own perspective on this walk.” The collective nature of the process was critical to another student’s engagement, who said: “When we were talking about things—when we were saying, ‘Let’s go through the pictures, like, let’s say something.’ And how, how you are inevitably influenced what other people were saying, not necessarily like a bad way, but more like, ‘that’s what I felt,’ ‘that’s the word for it,’ that kind of a thing.” The student who used her camera to document traces of silence noted that, while photographing materials scattered throughout the parklands, she became aware of the “sensory conditions of the day, wind, chill, smell of the river, damp, earth,” which inspired her to question the nature/garbage dichotomy and further dichotomies. In doing so, she began to reflect on the encroachment of garbage into the natural environment and how its presence compromised the peace surrounding the parklands; she mentioned a “sense of nostalgia over what was lost.” Yet this nostalgia, she observed, generated insights into the conditions of synthetic plastic pollution, which then inspired imaginings of what futures were still possible. Performed walking, thus combined with digital technology, creative writing, and performance “through its entanglements with the pathways of others, gather[s] memories, imaginings and the immediate present” (Pink 2008, 193) in ways that are attuned not only “to just one person’s experiences but also to a wider social, economic, and cultural processes and structures” (Moretti 2015, 20). Moreover, this multisensorial ethnographic engagement also inspired students to critically reflect on the potential of creative ethnography. One student remarked, “I think another aspect we were trying to tell… was the not-knowing of ethnography. So we kind of began and ended with the idea of not knowing, questioning. … We were kind of expert not-knowers, like posing questions, like more questions than answers.”

Toward a Performative Pedagogical Politics What insights can we glean from this workshop on silence for the larger project of critical pedagogy? We come to our projects with political commitments and with particular understandings of pedagogy. For me, a performative pedagogical politics has always meant engaging students in imagining and intervening in possible futures. But what if imagining the future is not the positive, potentially transformative activity that I, like many others, have assumed it to be? Anthropologists have long conceived of the imagination as an essentially positive capacity, based on nineteenth-century

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romantic ideas of it as a Dionysian and Promethean force that opens up possibilities (Sneath et al. 2009, 10). But, at least early on, my focus on imagining possible futures alienated students who saw no future on the horizon. Ignoring the realities of our classroom and overestimating the power of pedagogical activism does not help our students and might only serve the neoliberal forces in academia that have usurped the language of social justice, community activism, and transformation to promote their entrepreneurial agendas (Kazubowski-Houston 2018a). Radical change can sit in the strangest of places, such as disengagement, apathy, and inaction; in those places, too, it demands our attention. A radical performative pedagogy may be less concerned with the strategies we adopt to effect change, and more with being attentive to the unpredictable ways that politics might play out in our pedagogical projects. The “traces of silence” project improvised its politics by working with the body, encouraging students to observe their own visceral responses, and then, rather inadvertently, orienting them affectively toward curiosity and the impossible. With a method guided by improvisation and not knowing, one that bridged embodied and affective methods of performed walking, the workshop crafted a politics not only at a more conscious level of inner dialogues, feelings, sensations, moods, and urges, but also at a more pre-reflective level of subliminal impulses, bodily feelings, sensations, and moods (Irving 2011). Perhaps the workshop on silence, which engaged the students’ bodies, helped bypass their rational brain’s censor, which may have transmuted their feelings of impossibility into affects of apathy and disengagement. Crafting politics at this visceral level seems to have turned the politics of impossibility into a one of possibility, as the students actively engaged with their surroundings, questioned what they had heard and seen, critically reflected on their experiences, and performed their insights. Students also reflected on how this process of knowing piqued their curiosity about what was possible: Chelsea:

I was gonna say it was interesting too, like I experienced as sort of like going from – like as an academic right now in this semester being like, “Let’s think about it in a creative writing style.” Like that was a very different switch. But also very interesting and enjoyable in terms of accessing sort of a different line of possibilities that you don’t necessarily get to …

Christina: Like is this an autoethnographic project… is this about nature… is it about a tree, is about the people here? And I found that really disconcerting, because there wasn’t a clear subject? Uhm, but … I felt like was sort of a positive reframing of that not knowing, because he said something around the unknowns or what helped out shape the knowns? What if, then, in our performative pedagogical projects, we approached politics entirely differently? What if, instead of coming to performance ethnography projects with predetermined goal-oriented strategies for practicing politics, we instead mobilized the affective, embodied, and sensory attributes of performance to improvise the meanings and practices of politics collaboratively with our students? Such an improvisational politics in pedagogical contexts would employ experiential, creative, metaphoric, and embodied research modalities and, most importantly, would

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choreograph itself through “a learning body,” as one of my students phrased it, one that stumbles across abandoned swings and decaying memorial benches. Such a politics would spring up from the feet walking on a paved path that only know “this journey they are on.” And perhaps, as such, it could offer, in one student’s words, “a better way of looking” where “not knowing is helping frame what is” and, in the process, imagining what may be. Notes 1. City of Toronto Open Data Catalogue based on the federal government’s 2016 census data: https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/ neighbourhoods-communities/ward-profiles/44-ward-model/ward-profilesward-8/. 2. Throughout this chapter, I have used pseudonyms when referring to workshop participants, except when citing their poems, as this was the students’ preference.

References Achino-Loeb, Maria-Luisa (ed.). 2005. Silence: The Currency of Power. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Ahmed, Sara. 2014. Willful Subjects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Butler, Patrick. 2017. “Young People Losing Hope Over Life Chances, Social Mobility Tsar Says.” The Guardian, June 15, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/15/young-peoplelosing-hope-over-life-chances-social-mobility-tsar-says. Cohen-Cruz, Jan. 1998. Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology. New York, NY: Routledge. Conquergood, Dwight. 1988. “Health Theatre in a Hmong Refugee Camp: Performance, Communication, and Culture.” The Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies 32 (3): 174–208. Culhane, Dara. 2011. “Stories and Plays: Ethnography, Performance and Ethical Engagements.” Anthropologica 53 (2): 257–274. De Lissovoy, Noah. 2013. “Pedagogy of the Impossible: Neoliberalism and the Ideology of Accountability.” Policy Futures in Education 11 (4): 423–435. ———. 2018. “Pedagogy of the Anxious: Rethinking Critical Pedagogy in the Context of Neoliberal Autonomy and Responsibilization.” Journal of Education Policy 33 (2): 187–205. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02680939.2017.1352031. Denzin, Norman K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ehrenfreund, Max. 2016. “A Majority of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows.” Washington Post, April 26, 2016. Elliott, Denielle. 2016. “Writing.” In A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies, edited by Denielle Elliott and Dara Culhane, 23–44. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

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Elliott, Denielle, and Dara Culhane (eds.). 2016. A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Fabian, Johannes. 1990. Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations Through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Freire, Paulo. 2005. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York and London: Continuum. First published in 1970. ´ Grotowski, Jerzy. 1979. “Cwiczenia.” Dialog 12: 12–137. Hogan, Susan, and Sarah Pink. 2010. “Routes to Interiorities: Art Therapy and Knowing in Anthropology.” Visual Studies 23 (2): 158–174. Irving, Andrew. 2011. “Strange Distance: Towards an Anthropology of Interior Dialogue.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 25 (1): 22–44. Kantor, Tadeusz. 1993. “Milano Lessons: Lesson 1.” In A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944–1990, translation and critical commentary by Michal Kobialka, 208–213. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ———. 2000. “Okolice zera.” In Metamorfozy, 245. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena. 2010. Staging Strife: Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. ———. 2011. “Don’t Tell Me How to Dance! Negotiating Collaboration, Empowerment and Politicization in the Ethnographic Theatre Project ‘Hope.’” Anthropologica 53 (2): 229–243. ———. 2016. “Performing.” In A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies, edited by Denielle Elliott and Dara Culhane, 113–133. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 2017. “Agency and Dramatic Storytelling: Roving Through Pasts, Presents, and Futures.” In Anthropologies and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds, edited by Juan Francisco Salazar, Sarah Pink, Andrew Irving, and Johannes Sjöberg, 209–224. London, UK: Bloomsbury. ———. 2018a. “Quiet Theatre: The Radical Politics of Silence.” Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, Special Issue 18 (6): 410–422. ———. 2018b. “An Elephant in the Room: Tracking an Awkward Anthropology.” Anthropologica 60 (2): 413–426. Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena, and Virginie Magnat. 2018. “Introduction: Ethnography, Performance and Imagination.” Anthropologica 60 (2): 361–374. Kobialka, Michal. 2007. “Tadeusz Kantor: Collector and Historian.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 12 (4): 78–96. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 1999. Postdramatic Theatre. London, UK: Taylor and Francis. Madison, D. Soyini. 2010. Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. McLean, Stuart. 2007. “Introduction: Why Imagination?” Irish Journal of Anthropology 10 (2): 5–9. Miller, Joshua. 2014. “‘Millennials’ Cynical About Politics.” Boston Globe, April 29. Accessed December 11. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/04/29/millenials-cynicalabout-politics-new-harvard-poll-year-olds-finds/7f6e3tRFBS2GioZvkf71XL/story.html. Moretti, Cristina. 2015. Milanese Encounters: Public Space and Vision in Contemporary Urban Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Osterweil, Michal. 2013. “Rethinking Public Anthropology Through Epistemic Politics and Theoretical Practice.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (4): 598–620. Pink, Sarah. 2008. “An Urban Tour: The Sensory Sociality of Ethnographic Place-Making.” Ethnography 9 (2): 175–196. Salazar, Juan Francisco, Sarah Pink, Andrew Irving, Johannes Sjöberg. 2017. Anthropologies and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds. London & New York: Bloomsbury. Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sjöberg, Johannes. 2018. “An Epistemology of Play: Provocation, Pleasure, Participation and Performance in Ethnographic Fieldwork and Film-Making.” Anthropologica 60: 403–412. Sneath, David, Martin Holbraad, and Morten A. Pederson. 2009. “Technologies of the Imagination: An Introduction.” Ethnos 74 (1): 5–30. Sosnowska, Dorota. 2016. “Impossible Is Real: Tadeusz Kantor at the Seashore.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 21 (2): 70–78. Sotelo, Luis Carlos. 2010. “Looking Backwards to Walk Forward: Walking, Collective Memory and the Site of the Intercultural in Site-Specific Performance.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 15 (4): 59–69. Stanislavski, Constantin. 1989. An Actor Prepares. Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. New York, NY: Routledge. First published in 1936. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1982. “Performing Ethnography.” TDR/The Drama Review 26 (2) (Summer): 33–50.

Chapter 11

Cultivating Empathy by Performing Migration Lauren Miller Griffith

Unlike some disciplines that focus almost exclusively on content knowledge, cultural anthropologists often endeavor to have their students master affective goals as well. It is my goal as a teacher to help my students appreciate that in order to really understand someone’s actions, we have to take into consideration the interconnected social fields in which those actions are embedded. Ideally, students should emerge from my courses able to practice cultural relativism in all social situations so they can avoid unfairly judging others whose practices are different from their own. Students should learn to value diversity in all of its forms and to defend the rights of others to practice their traditional lifeways. Furthermore, they should develop a curiosity and love of learning that lasts well beyond their college years. These kinds of lessons are difficult to instill through lectures alone; assuming the identity of a character and performing in that role leads to more durable learning outcomes. In my course, Introduction to Latin American Cultures, I designed an ethnographic performance for students in which they make decisions about migration as if they were an Ixil Maya who lived through Guatemala’s Civil War. My goal is to help them develop empathy and a more nuanced understanding of contemporary debates surrounding migration. In their pedagogical exercises, the Turners aimed to “put experiential flesh on [the] cognitive bones” supplied by ethnographic texts (Chapter 3, 46). Their performances involved detailed preparation on the part of the students who read ethnographic reports about the culture to be performed, prepared scripts, built props and scenery, etc., all of which culminated in the performance itself. The preparatory work I have my students do is diffused across the weeks of the semester and I script the potential directions our performance will take, but the

L. M. Griffith (B) Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_11

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activity nonetheless aligns well with the Turners’ vision of getting students to vicariously inhabit the cultures about which they are learning. Performing ethnography is a useful tool not only for thinking critically about ethnographic texts or for generating new hypotheses about social processes (see Chapter 3, 40, 50), but also for cultivating empathy, particularly when teaching about populations such as Latin American migrants that are often dehumanized in public rhetoric.

Simulations as Social Justice Pedagogy In addition to being influenced by the Turners’ concept of performing ethnography, my pedagogical approach has been informed by the broader literature on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Performing ethnography is a distinctly Turnerian tradition; however, it has much in common with other kinds of instructional simulations and role-playing assignments. I turn to this literature to support my claim that performing ethnography cultivates empathy; however, I maintain that performing ethnography is distinct from most forms of simulations in terms of both its playfulness and its dialogic relationship with ethnographic texts. Instructional simulations—like the Model UN or mock trials—have a long history within higher education, dating back to at least the 1960s (Adelman et al. 2016). Active-learning techniques such as simulations tend to result in an increased retention of course material, and they are typically enjoyed by students (Paino et al. 2017). Victor Turner himself worried that students who only read about other cultures would miss the point of anthropology as a discipline that celebrates the lived experience of the Other (see Turner 1979). In fact, he once wrote: “I’ve long thought that teaching and learning anthropology should be more fun than they often are” (Turner 1979, 80). I couldn’t agree more. Some instructors—myself included—have additional ideological commitments that drive their selection of active-learning techniques. Like performing ethnography, engaging in simulations enables students to imagine themselves in social roles much different from those they have inhabited all their lives (see Paino et al. 2017). Granted, students may need to be coached so that they don’t reproduce stereotypes or caricatures of the people represented in the simulation (see Norman 2004, see also Chapter 3). But when done with careful preparation—like that undertaken by the Turners and their various collaborators (e.g., Richard Schechner) in their dramatic workshops and more modest classroom exercises—students can reap extraordinary benefits that are generally unattainable in a lecture-only environment. The “empathy-building orientation of feminist pedagogy” (Adelman et al. 2016, 1451) has made simulation an attractive tool for educators who want their students to become active in social justice work. Activities involving performance can be particularly useful when teaching privileged students about topics that make them uncomfortable or trigger resistance (Norman 2004; Goodman 2011). Norman, who has used simulations in her Aboriginal studies course, has found that “the first and critical task is to bring students around to a more considered and less defensive

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position” (Norman 2004, 20). With a few carefully researched and implemented modifications, even a simple board game can become a powerful learning tool. For example, Paino et al. (2017) had students play Monopoly, a board game familiar to most American students, from a variety of different positionalities that came with different advantages and disadvantages. Students who were playing from a white male’s position often forgot about their privileged starting point and the disproportionate rewards they received during the game; students who were playing as women or people of color felt the stress that comes with being disadvantaged. Simulations are useful in moving students toward more thoughtful and less defensive positions because they allow students to identify with a wide range of stakeholders (Norman 2004, 17), and they give students the freedom to explore a position as if they embodied a different social role. As they settle into the role they are playing, they transition into the “not-not-me” state. According to Turner, Schechner borrowed this phrase from child psychologist Donald Winnicott and used it often to refer to the act of a biological entity, the “me,” entering into a liminal state that is neither completely oneself nor completely artifice (Turner 1979, 84). While playing a role in a play, one is no longer herself because she is enacting a character (the not-me), but neither is she entirely not herself. The students have not become the other, but at the same time, by taking on the role of that character, that (real or fictional) character is no longer entirely separate from them. Our society places a high value on the individual; one of the downsides of this orientation is that it often prevents us from seeing how we benefit from being members of privileged groups. We are lulled into thinking we earned everything we have because of who we are as individuals without recognizing that we (and here I write as a member of a historically privileged group) have many unearned advantages that give us a leg up in life (see Goodman 2011). Within this context, our “victim-blaming culture undermines concern for those in disadvantaged positions and reduces the perception that the current system needs to change” (Goodman 2011, 54). Disadvantaged people find themselves in a double bind. Oftentimes their entire identity group is disparaged, and their subordination made to seem natural while at the same time each individual is blamed for not being able to pull him or herself up “by the bootstraps.” Simulations help students experience what it is like to be a member of a different identity group, which gives them insight into just how unrealistic it is to think of our society as a meritocracy. It is easy for an outsider to make proclamations about what people should do to get out of an oppressive situation; it is another matter entirely to act on these commonsense solutions (see Adelman et al. 2016). I—presumably like many readers—was taught as a child to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” before making any judgments. But how often do we really do that? As an anthropology professor, my job is to model and engage students in critical thinking, to find a way to push students beyond platitudes and the regurgitation of sound bites that they get from their families, peers, the media, and other social institutions. Like other researchers (e.g., Chen et al. 2015), I have found that students become more empathetic toward others when they subjectively identify with those individuals in active-learning exercises. Given the contemporary vitriolic discourse surrounding immigration and border walls, the

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ability to empathize with potential migrants and their families—even if one continues to support tightened security measures—seems a worthy goal.

Performing Ixil Maya Migration In the spring of 2018, I taught Anthropology of Latin America as a 300-level special topics course at a research-intensive university that has recently been identified as a Hispanic Serving Institution. Of the 18 students in the class, the majority were anthropology majors and approximately half had taken a class with me previously. The majority were white. This ethnographic performance took place in the fifteenth week of a 16-week semester and the class had built a high level of rapport by that point in the term. As is common in my classes, one of the implicit themes for the semester was exerting agency in the face of oppressive circumstances. Prior to our performance, students read I, Rigoberta Menchu (Menchú 1984), which dealt with the experiences of Maya peoples in Guatemala prior to the Civil War. They also read Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s (1992) Death Without Weeping, which, although it is about Brazil rather than Guatemala, prepared students to discuss the difficult choices individuals must make in order to provide for their families in desperate circumstances. Students were also primed for this activity by watching a film that explores the neoliberal exploitation of the Global South (Diaz 2010) and reading multiple articles on migration (e.g., Tsuda 1999; Massey et al. 2006) and other topics facing the Latinx community today. I also referenced my own experiences with Maya communities in Belize whenever possible to help them understand course concepts. In this activity, small groups of students assume the role of an Ixil Maya from Nebaj who lived through Guatemala’s Civil War. The six characters I developed for the performance are all composites based on David Stoll’s (2013) El Norte or Bust! I chose this ethnography as the basis for my characters because Stoll focuses on the broader context that informs an individual’s choice to migrate or stay in Nebaj, which gave me enough material to help students understand migration as a dynamic cultural process. Stoll also provides a wealth of detail about many different individuals, making it relatively easy to construct a tree-diagram showing what might happen if an individual made certain choices in his or her life. I also chose this ethnography because reading Menchú’s (1984) first-hand account of the social conditions affecting Maya people in the years leading up to and during the Guatemalan Civil War during the first month of the course gives students a relatively strong basis for understanding the conditions that might affect an individual’s choices regarding migration from this region rather than, for instance, Mexico or Honduras. I created all of the characters for the performance myself and tell students that the things that happen to these people are all based in reality, but no single individual experienced all of the things that are associated with their character in the performance. As in Frese’s 1981 performance of a simulated Central Virginian wedding (see Chapter 4), the students in my class drew slips of paper describing their roles. In the 2018 iteration, students worked together in teams of three to make decisions

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as if they were that character. For example, one of the teams received this character profile: You trained to be a schoolteacher, but you lack the government connections to get a job. You were among the first Ixil Maya to migrate to the U.S. Because you were willing to accept lower wages than Mexican immigrants, you found work quickly, remitted $500 per month to your parents and returned with a small savings of your own. However, due to inflation, land prices have risen sharply.

One of the benefits of working as a team—rather than having each student play his or her own role—is that students have to discuss their options with their teammates. Not only does this help them probe and articulate their thoughts about why the potential migrant should make particular decisions, but their deliberations become public knowledge. The other students tend to eavesdrop, which gives them a window into how their peers are approaching this problem, and it allows me the chance to informally assess their abilities to draw on course content and their anthropological imaginations. I describe this activity as a form of ethnographic performance because they assumed a character and made decisions from that positionality based on what they have learned from their readings and course lectures about the values, traditions, and experiences of indigenous peoples in Latin America. However, it is worth noting that an outside observer might not understand this as performance according to common assumptions about theater, dance, or other staged events. This is an example of performing culture rather than cultural performance (see Griffith and Marion 2017). The students did not wear any costumes, nor were there any props or sets. The students in this iteration of the course already sat at tables positioned in a large square and simply moved their chairs closer together to confer with their collaborators. In other classrooms, I have had students move their desks together with others in their groups to facilitate their deliberations. No other special preparations are needed other than creating a chart on the board to record the decisions made by each group for the entire class to see. The activity has three rounds. In each round, I read a scenario pertaining to the character aloud. At the end of the scenario, the character is presented with a choice related to migration (e.g., pay a coyote to be smuggled across the Mexico-US border or mortgage one’s home to start a taxi company in Nebaj, Guatemala). The students representing that character deliberate and make their choice, which is to be recorded on the board. Once all the characters have made their initial choices, they will be told the consequence of that choice. These consequences reflect real experiences reported in Stoll’s ethnography. Then, the students will be presented with a new set of choices. The same pattern is followed for round three. At the end of the performance, students are told the ultimate fate of their character (Fig. 11.1). Many of the situations are quite bleak. For instance, one of the characters is a woman living in Nebaj whose husband has gone to the United States illegally. He sold a parcel of their land so he wouldn’t have any debt to a coyote. However, he’s been gone six months and the woman hasn’t received any remittances. Her son is 17 and her daughter is 12. She grows some crops in her garden but needs money to buy

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Fig. 11.1 Griffith records the decisions made by the students during each round of the activity (Lauren Griffith)

what she can’t grow and to pay school fees, purchase seed for the garden, and cover other immediate expenses. She is faced with the choice of taking out a micro-loan at two percent monthly interest or investing roughly 100 USD into a USAID sponsored weaving cooperative as a way of making additional income. If she chooses the latter, she will find that this project was a scam and the alleged USAID volunteer ran off with her money. She can then write this off as a learning experience and go back to subsistence farming or pay a shaman who says he can get money for her by making offerings at a sacred volcano nearby. If she takes the first path, she will find out in the next round that her daughter has fallen ill. To care for her daughter, she must decide between sending her son to the United States and organizing a group of women to take out a collective loan. If students decide to send the woman’s son to the United

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States, they will find out that he is caught and deported without earning anything so now the family has even more debt than before the performance began. The atmosphere in the room tends to be an interesting blend of conviviality and nervousness, which is not surprising if we recall the different frames that tend to be embedded within performance ethnography (Chapter 3, 40–43). The entire activity is situated within a ludic frame and, as I will discuss below, students find it fun. At the same time, however, their nervous laughter and the comments they make while debating each decision suggest that they know the game is rigged. Even though there is no score associated with the activity, they often allude to the fact that they know they can’t “win” because of the difficult social position occupied by indigenous people in Guatemala and undocumented migrants in the United States. After the performance ends, which takes approximately 40 minutes, I give the students an opportunity to see what might have been if they had made different choices. This is a useful opportunity to debrief, as it helps students realize that none of the choices are ideal, and no matter which choices they made, their character was most likely going to struggle to stay afloat economically. We also then discuss how migration affects families and community life. In the spring of 2018, I administered a survey in the class period preceding the activity to assess students’ initial attitudes toward illegal immigration. The survey asked: (1) What factors do you think factor into a person’s decision-making process when thinking about migrating to the United States? (2) In what instances—if any—do you think undocumented immigration is justified from the migrant’s perspective? (3) What is a fair consequence for someone caught in this country without proper immigration documentation? The students completed the survey again after the assignment. The second survey included two additional questions: (4) How did this activity affect your thoughts and feelings on this issue? (5) Do you think a lecture would have been a more or less effective teaching tool for this topic? Why?

Assessing Student Outcomes The most common answers to what might factor into a potential migrant’s decision-making process when thinking about coming to the United States were “money/opportunities” and “family.” This is not surprising. For one thing, public discourse portrays Latinx migrants as being in search of something (e.g., economic resources that one can use to support his/her family) that they presumably cannot attain in their home countries, even if that narrative is vastly over-simplified (see Ryo 2013). For another, the texts we read over the course of the semester dealt with issues like domestic migration from the countryside to larger cities in order to find work as well as the challenges of providing for a family in materially strained circumstances. That “family” and “money/opportunities” frequently co-occur suggests that many students see them as intertwined. However, students tend to write “family” as if that in and of itself is a complete explanation for why someone might migrate to the United States. What they are not explaining in this answer is what they picture when they

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think of family. Are the students envisioning that migrants come to the United States in order to join family members that are already here, are they talking about earning money so they can send remittances home to family members that remain behind, or do they mean that migrants come here seeking opportunities for their dependents who may accompany them to the United States? Any of these interpretations could be supported by the texts we read during the semester; however, it seems that “family” is such an important trope that they do not apparently feel the need to explain what they mean or why this would be a powerful motivator to migrate even though on closer inspection it is a very ambiguous answer. Aside from family and money, there was little consistency in terms of what students thought might factor into a potential migrant’s decision making. Three students on the pre-performance survey and four on the post-performance survey did mention the status of any pending immigration applications as something that a migrant would probably consider. However, this represents only a third of the students who completed the activity. The majority of students (10/13) showed a more nuanced understanding of what goes into a potential migrant’s decision-making processes after the performance. In the majority of cases, this manifests itself in longer, more detailed answers. However, one of the more interesting things to appear in the post-performance answers, which do not appear at all in the pre-performance answers, is the idea of cost/benefit analyses. In response to the question about what goes into a potential migrant’s decisionmaking process, five individuals offered responses having to do with weighing the potential gains against the sacrifices and risks of migration. By adopting the role of a potential migrant who had to make difficult choices about economic survival and the well-being of their (imagined) family, the students gained an understanding of how difficult those decisions can be and that there are many factors that go into that decision. It also helped them appreciate that migrating to the United States does not always have a positive outcome, and even if it is heralded as “the land of opportunity,” coming to the United States is a gamble. Another small shift was in the number of students who thought that potential migrants would consider the resources and time needed to attempt migration. Before the performance, three students suggested that this is something migrants would consider. Only one student mentioned this in the post-performance survey, and specifically mentioned that the migrant would have to consider whether or not they had enough money to pay a coyote to smuggle them across the border. Furthermore, in the pre-performance survey, four individuals cited safety as a consideration for migrants whereas only one considered this in the post-survey. This sample is too small for me to feel comfortable making any guesses as to why these changes happened; however, considering them together suggests the possibility that the performance helped students to see migration as a last resort rather than the preferred option for many people. Two students explicitly made statements to this effect in their reflection as to how the performance affected their view of migrants. One student wrote: “it made me realize that it often seems like they don’t have any other choice because of their circumstances…” Another said that the performance “…makes you really feel that migrants have no choice sometimes but to come to the U.S.”

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Justifications for Illegal Migration The second question on both the pre- and post-performance surveys asked students to reflect on how they thought the migrants might justify the illegality of their entrance into the United States without official permission. There was far less engagement with this question than with the previous one. The most common answers—cited by seven students in the pre-survey and eight in the post-survey—had to do with concerns over health, safety, and well-being. In other words, more than half of the students were able to appreciate that there are forces pushing people to leave their home countries, but the performance did not have much of an effect, if any, on how many students understood this. In the pre-performance survey, six students thought that people migrating to the United States without proper documentation would justify their actions in terms of seeking more opportunities for themselves and/or their family; however, in the post-test, ten students cited some variation on this theme as a way in which migrants justified breaking the law.

Consequences for Illegal Migration The third question on the survey asked students what they thought a fair consequence would be for being caught in the United States without proper documentation. The question was intentionally ambiguous and left open the possibility that a student might be prescribing punishment for a legal resident who simply did not have their residency paperwork on them at the time of their interaction with police or immigration officials. Only one student seemed to pick up on this ambiguity. This student was far more tolerant of illegal immigration and one of the few students on the preperformance survey to acknowledge that many people would like to migrate legally but lack the resources to be able to do so. This student refused to articulate any particular punishment for being caught without proper immigration documentation, saying instead that their punishment should “[depend] on if they actually did something wrong other than existing.” In her phrasing, she cleverly avoids addressing the question of whether or not the hypothetical person without “papers” illegally crossed the border. Although she does not go into this specifically, her vague response suggests that children and other dependents who were brought to the United States without their legal consent should not be punished for being here illegally. In the pre-performance survey, many students suggested deportation as a fair consequence for being caught without documentation. One of the students that recommended deportation had, in a previous question, said that she personally thinks that illegal immigration is justifiable when the well-being of one’s children is at stake. She does not include in her answer to this question any sort of leniency for parents, nor does she reflect on how being deported might affect family units (e.g., separating a parent from his or her children who might remain in the United States) or an individual’s ability to provide for his or her family. She did, however, say that

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the deported migrant should be given information on how to migrate legally. In cases such as these, the student’s commitment to the authority of the law outweighs her compassion for the individuals trying to maneuver within these systems. In her postperformance response, this student still recommended deportation, but added that the migrant should be “helped to find the correct resources to [migrate legally].” Of course, one of the things missing here is any engagement with how being deported would affect the individual’s chances of being legally allowed into the country at a later date. Nonetheless, it demonstrates a slight shift in her attitudes toward migrants. In the pre-performance survey, another student (who is not an anthropology major) added a note so that I would understand that his answers were about how the migrant justifies illegal immigration and that he “personally [thinks] you should come via legal channels.” In answer to the next question, he initially takes a very hard line on deportation. He then backpedals a bit, however, and advocates leniency for people who have come to the United States—albeit illegally—for “the right reasons.” He does not specify what those reasons are. He also thinks kids, the elderly, and the infirm should be treated with leniency even if they can’t contribute to society. Viewed together, these statements suggest that the student is struggling between his moral commitments and his belief in the authority of the state. After the performance, he put a new option on the table: making work visas easier to get. He still says that he doesn’t support “amnesty for illegal immigrants” and believes that “criminal illegals should be deported,” but his stance has seemed to soften. Although he claimed that the activity did not change his opinions on immigration, the way he discussed punishment and the reasons why someone might come to the United States illegally are certainly more nuanced in the post-performance survey. Most of the students did not drastically change their position on what constitutes a fair punishment for someone being caught in the United States illegally. However, three individuals suggested additional pathways to citizenship that were not included in their pre-test. An additional four students moved to a slightly more compassionate stance in how the punishments are dealt to those caught in the United States without proper documentation. One of these students originally proposed deportation as the fair consequence, but in his post-test, he did not mention deportation at all and narrowed his focus to how legal proceedings should be conducted. Three students who mentioned deportation in their pre-test (including the one described in the previous paragraph) included in their post-test some permutation of the recommendation that immigration officials help those without documentation not only understand the law, but assemble the required document necessary in order to complete a successful citizenship application. On the post-performance survey, there was more ambiguity in some of the answers to the question about what constituted a fair consequence for being caught without documentation. Three students gave answers that basically equate to “it depends” whereas only one student had taken a similar stance in the pre-performance survey. There was a marked drop in the number of students recommending deportation. In the pre-performance survey, six recommended deportation. Only three held that view after the performance.

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The suggested consequences students offered in lieu of deportation were not always realistic or legal according to our current framework. For example, one student (in the pre-performance survey) said that people caught without documentation should be warned, but not deported. It is not clear exactly what this student envisions happening as a result of that warning. Is she imagining that the migrant will suddenly acquire the legal right to be in the United States, or does she think the migrant will return to their country of origin without having to go through the process of deportation? In the post-performance survey, she still recommended a warning…but added that the migrant should be given the opportunity to meet with a United States official who could help the migrant navigate the pathway toward legalization. In the pre-performance survey, five students suggested that migrants caught without documentation be required to navigate official pathways to citizenship as their consequence. At the time of the post-performance survey, that number had risen to six. This in and of itself does not seem like a significant shift, but the ways that they discussed such pathways had changed. Whereas the pre-performance answers mandated an outcome (i.e., get citizenship), the post-performance answers suggested various ways to accomplish that goal (e.g., offer to help them get the documentation, expand work visa programs). These suggestions unfortunately do not reflect an understanding of how difficult it is for migrants to navigate the legal pathways that are currently available, pointing to a gap in their understanding of how the immigration process actually works, something that could (and should) be addressed in course lectures, readings, etc.

Benefits of Performing Ethnography to Teach About Migration The post-performance survey repeated the three questions that were on the first survey, and also asked students to reflect on (a) how the activity affected their thoughts and feelings on the issue; and (b) how the performance compared to lecture as a teaching method. Although the course did include a number of micro-lectures scattered throughout the semester, discussion was the primary pedagogy and there was no formal lecture on migration preceding this performance, so the question was a hypothetical one. Eleven of the 13 students said that they thought the performance was more effective than a lecture would have been. Various students argued that the performance “got everyone involved,” exposed them to the “hard choices” people have to make, making it “easier to experience” what migrants go through, and was “more memorable” than a lecture would have been. One of the students said that he typically prefers lecture and slides, and claims that he doesn’t retain as much information from discussion as he does from these more common pedagogies; however, he thinks the performance was an effective teaching tool for this particular topic because it forced students “to put [themselves] in [the migrants’] shoes.” This, I believe, gets at the heart of what makes performative

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pedagogies so effective, particularly when the intended learning outcome is more of an affective goal than a cognitive one. During a lecture, the professor mediates the experience of the individuals who are actually enmeshed in a cultural phenomenon, whether that experience is a historical event like the Guatemalan Civil War or something extremely current like NFL players having to choose between ideological and economic concerns while the national anthem is being played. Students may “check out” or remain emotionally distant during a lecture. Even when reading an emotionally gripping ethnography or first-hand account like those I assign in class, it is possible for students to be disengaged, not connecting with the characters on a personal level. During a performance, however, a student must identify with the character they are playing in order to make decisions and keep the activity moving. Consider this statement from another student: I liked the activity because we were “forced” to make decisions that these people were forced [to make] in real life. Learning the outcome really hit home when you felt you were making a good choice and it affected you negatively.

When comfortably removed from the actual outcomes of hard choices between long-term investment in one’s future and day-to-day survival, it is very easy to judge others for being short-sighted. But as this student learned, sometimes using the strategies so often advocated by middle- and upper-class Americans spells ruin for a family barely surviving at the margins. There were no incentives or consequences tied to a group’s performance in the performance; nonetheless, knowing what realworld consequences their character might have received as a result of their decisions left a strong impression on the students. What comes across most clearly in response to the survey question about how the performance affected them was the emotional dimension. Three said they enjoyed the activity itself, and it is designed to be “fun”—as one student said—even if it deals with a very serious matter. It gave them an “inside perspective” as another said, which they will not necessarily get from a lecture. One student explicitly said that it made her “upset” because of how many people are being deported or jailed. Far and away, however, the most common reaction to the performance was empathy. Six of the 13 students made comments about how this activity affected their thoughts and opinions about migration that I coded as “empathy.” For example, one student—who incidentally was preparing for a career of service to the government— reported that it “made [her] more understanding of the hardships migrants have to face.” Another wrote that the performance “made [her] realize how hard it is to migrate to a different location.” Another said it made him realize that some people go through “very troubled situations to find a better life.” Another said it gave her a “deeper understanding” of migrants’ experiences and “more sympathy” for them. Yet another student said she already had a sense of why people might migrate, and she sympathized with them. However, “after feeling the pressure of making these decisions, even if only for performance, [she] now even more [empathizes] with these peoples. It’s not enough to ‘understand’…sometimes putting yourself in someone else’s shoes can change even the coldest hearts.” So even students with preexisting empathy toward migrants found value in subjectively identifying with them via

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performance. This may be the first time some of my more privileged students, particularly white students, have tried to put themselves in the shoes of Latinx migrants. The performance may also be validating for students who have themselves been migrants and I recall one student at a previous institution thanking me for creating the activity because it captured her own family’s experiences so well. One of the answers coded as empathy is worth quoting at length and considering in more detail: This activity allowed me to see the more personal plight of people who immigrate to the U.S. Prior to this activity, I did not personally know the stories of those who immigrated illegally. After the activity I had a better ability to understand the plight of parents trying to provide for a family.

Here it is important to note that the performance was not just about parents, so it is interesting that this student focused specifically on this demographic group. This particular student is non-traditional in terms of age and is a parent—as were two other members of the course. Are migrant parents more deserving of empathy than those without children because of their need to care for vulnerable dependents? This was not a question we engaged with at all during our discussion, and I in no way anticipated the much-publicized separation of parents and children at our southern border in the summer of 2018 that was just weeks away from making national headlines at the time of the performance. Read in light of those events, however, this comment suggests that the students who completed the performance may have better equipped to compassionately consider the plights of these parents (not just the charismatic child victims) and what they are experiencing in real life.

Reflections I vividly remember the first time I encountered the Turners’ idea of performing ethnography. In one of Richard Bauman’s graduate seminars at Indiana University, a lively debate erupted with most of my peers arguing that staging a ritual—even as an experiential learning opportunity done under the guidance of an experienced ethnographer—risked distorting the culture in question. They maintained that no amount of preparation could enable someone to experience a ritual in the same way that someone from that culture, with a lifetime of enculturation, would. With the familiar hubris of graduate students, they ignored that the Turners themselves recognized the potential limitations of trying to recreate a Ndembu ritual in a Greenwich Village theater, but argued that the participants in their workshop still found the experience to be meaningful as it helped them to better understand the dynamics of political life in this African society (Turner 1979). Stanley Walens made a similar argument in his reflections about the staging of the Hamatsa Dance with the Turners’s students (Chapter 3, 46–49). As one of the lone voices in the seminar defending the practice of performing ethnography, I reminded my classmates that since our work always involves partial truths (see Clifford 1986), there was no harm in adding a conceptual

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tool to our repertoire that might allow us to generate additional hypotheses—based on our experiences of performed ethnography—that could be further investigated in the field. In particular, I recall some of my fellow students being bothered by the actors’ use of “inauthentic” props like a mop and bucket standing in for a sacred tree during the simulated ritual. What I think some of my classmates failed to grasp was that the goal of performing ethnography was not to recreate a ritual for the sake of performance itself or even for the experiential value of participating in something they would otherwise only read about; rather, the goal was to understand the role of ritual in an unfolding social drama. The performance matters, of course, and when possible the Turners did have students invest time and energy in creating appropriate props and sets, but from my perspective, the most important thing is for the students participating in ethnographic performance to understand how the ritual or scenario being enacted fits into broader social processes. My goal in using performance ethnography is for my students to empathize with the characters, and to develop an understanding of how difficult it is to make the “right” choice for yourself and your family when your agency is constrained by factors outside of your control. This is an affective goal in most of my classes, but performing ethnography works particularly well in this course because migration as a social process lends itself to the dramaturgical lens provided by Victor Turner. Both the Guatemalan Civil War and aggressive neoliberal economic policies have created a breach in traditional Maya society; migration is one form of redress individuals are using to try and reestablish order in their lives. It, in turn, creates new cleavages within the community. Although migration may not look like ritual in the way we often conceive of it, the social actors involved are reenacting strips of behavior that have been passed down to them by previous migrants, coyotes, etc. My students’ survey responses support my claim that this is an effective pedagogical strategy; however, it would be naïve to claim that a 50-minute activity can help globally privileged college students understand the exact thoughts and feelings of someone from an economically marginalized group in another culture. It is possible that students may walk away from the performance with some mistaken assumptions about migration, which should be examined and addressed. For example, whereas four students initially mentioned concerns over personal safety as something that would most likely factor into a potential migrant’s decision-making process, only one student mentioned this in the second survey. This is somewhat surprising considering how many migrants are coming to the United States because of the violence they experience at home, and I would have expected students to be more likely to cite this as a factor after the performance; however, this can perhaps be explained by the relative absence of immediate safety concerns experienced by the particular characters in the performance. Manipulating the character profiles in order to achieve a better learning outcome (e.g., having students understand that gang violence motivates many adolescents’ migration) is tricky because I have based the characters on real individuals from an ethnography, but it is worth consideration. Future iterations of the performance could blend characters based on Stoll’s ethnography with characters fleeing gangs in Honduras or another country plagued by violence.

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The abovementioned issue is a potential limitation of the pedagogy itself, but my classroom research also had limitations. There were 18 students enrolled in this iteration of the course, with 13 completing both the pre- and post-performance surveys. I have used this performance with four different classes at three different institutions, but I did not develop a survey to systematically analyze the learning outcomes of the performance until 2018. Anecdotally, however, the outcomes have been very similar across all four classes and I would expect the major finding—that performances increase students’ abilities to empathize with people from different backgrounds and to have a more nuanced understanding of their motivations for acting—to be replicated elsewhere.

Final Thoughts As an antidote to the alienation of “just reading,” Victor Turner wanted “to turn the more interesting portions of ethnographies into playscripts, then to act them out in class, and finally to turn back to ethnographies armed with the understanding that comes from ‘getting inside the skin’ of members of other cultures…” (1979, 81). Some of Turner’s interdisciplinary collaborations with theater directors and actors were quite elaborate, and beyond the scope of what I can do in my current position; however, others were more modest and lend themselves quite well to a variety of institutional settings. I believe the relative simplicity of the performance I developed for my students may be an asset. While I would love to have the time and institutional freedom to explore innovative partnerships such as the one that developed between Victor and Edith Turner and Richard Schechner or between Colin Turnbull and Peter Brook (see Turner 1979), at this stage in my career it is more feasible to create a short performance that can be executed in one to two class periods without the assistance of an elaborate cast of characters and support staff. Assuming that many readers will find themselves working under similar constraints, what I have presented here is a flexible model derived from the Turnerian ideal that can be implemented in a variety of institutional types. Victor Turner argued that “to perform ethnography…is to bring the data home to us in their fullness, in the plenitude of their action-meaning” (1979, 82). Representation of ethnographic data in textual form as supporting evidence for a theoretical claim all too often strips away the vibrancy of cultural processes (see Turner 1979). Turner is, of course, not the only one to have noted this and proposed alternatives—and his work in many ways anticipated the crisis of representation that would soon shake the field—but he and Edith were unique in terms of how they proposed to restore the life of ethnographic representations, especially for students of anthropology. I have occasionally been met with surprise when I assign four or five full-length ethnographies in class rather than a textbook, both by students and by fellow faculty, but I believe this kind of reading is essential for future anthropologists. Reading alone, however, is not sufficient, especially if our students lack the skills to do so critically.

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I agree with the Turners that there should be a dialectic relationship between learning about a culture and performing it. Given some of the gaps in students’ understanding of migration, I even added an additional ethnography—Seth Holmes’s (2013) Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies—to the course for Fall of 2019. Even so, the students may walk away with some unresolved questions about migration…and I am largely okay with that. It is entirely possible that performing ethnography may raise more questions than it answers, and may even cast doubt upon the authority of the ethnographer; “[h]owever, this very deficiency may have pedagogical merit insofar as it motivates the student/actor to read more widely in the literature on the culture” (Turner 1979, 90). Performing ethnography is a pedagogy that is purposefully vexed by ambiguity, which, rather than making students feel like they already know all there is to know about a topic, should spark their curiosity and inspire a habit of lifelong learning.

References Adelman, Madelaine, Karen E. Rosenberg, and Margaret Hobart. 2016. “Simulations and Social Empathy: Domestic Violence Education in the New Millennium.” Violence Against Women 22 (12): 1451–1462. Chen, Aleda M. H., Mary E. Kiersma, Karen S. Yehle, and Kimberly S. Plake. 2015. “Impact of an Aging Simulation Game on Pharmacy Students’ Empathy for Older Adults.” American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 79 (5): 65. Clifford, J. 1986. “Introduction: Partial Truths.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 1–26. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Diaz, Philippe, dir. 2010. The End of Poverty? Burbank, CA: Cinema Libre Studio. Goodman, Diane J. 2011. Promoting Diversity and Social Justice: Educating People from Privileged Groups. New York: Routledge. Griffith, Lauren Miller, and Jonathan S. Marion. 2017. “Performance.” In Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, edited by Nina Brown, Laura Tubelle de González, and Thomas McIlwraith, 382–406. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association. Open access publication, http://perspectives.americananthro.org/Chapters/Performance.pdf. Holmes, Seth. 2013. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. California Series in Public Anthropology. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Massey, Douglass S., Mary J. Fischer, and Chiara Capoferro. 2006. “International Migration and Gender in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis.” International Migration 44 (5): 63–91. Menchú, Rigoberta. 1984. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. London: Verso Books. Norman, Heidi. 2004. “Exploring Effective Teaching Strategies: Simulation Case Studies Indigenous Studies.” The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 33: 15–21. www.atsis.uq.edu. au/ajie/docs/200433015021.pdf. Paino, Maria, Matthew May, Lori A. Burrington, and Jacob H. Becker. 2017. “Intersectionopoly: A Simulation of the Wage Gap.” Teaching Sociology 45 (2): 177–186. Ryo, Emily. 2013. “Deciding to Cross: Norms and Economics of Unauthorized Migration.” American Sociological Review 78 (4): 574–603. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Stoll, David. 2013. El Norte or Bust! New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Tsuda, Takeyuka. 1999. “The Motivation to Migrate: The Ethnic and Sociocultural Constitution of the Japanese-Brazilian Return-Migration System.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 48 (1): 1–31. Turner, Victor Witter. 1979. “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and Reflexive Anthropology.” Kenyon Review 1 (3) (Summer): 80–93.

Chapter 12

Moving Forward Pamela R. Frese and Susan Brownell, with an essay by Edith L. B. Turner

We created this volume so as to re-envision the original moment when the “performance stone” dropped into the pond and the groundbreaking ideas began diffusing out into these many different realms, to focus on what the original intention was, and to carry on a line of inquiry that was not fully explored to the limits of its potential within the discipline of anthropology. As James Peacock, a former president of the American Anthropological Association, stated in his introduction to a 2018 book on The Intellectual Legacy of Victor & Edith Turner, One cannot imagine anthropology and many other fields as well as many actions and endeavors without the Turners, and we can be inspired to build on their work as we pursue our own efforts to comprehend and to sustain existence as we know it and envision it into our future. (Peacock 2018, xii–xiii)

We believe the time is right, because this experiential and embodied learning is uniquely responsive to contemporary social and cultural pressures. Universities in the United States are feeling these pressures acutely at the start of the third decade of the new millennium, amid a divisive political atmosphere and attacks on the tolerance of cultural diversity. Now, more than ever, we need a radical pedagogy that instills in students a real and concrete sense of a shared human bond. The usefulness of these perspectives for many disciplines is demonstrated by the diversity of the scholarship that evolved out of the Turners’ and Schechner’s germinal exploration of the intersection between theater and anthropology into an experiential, performative anthropology (see the bibliography of Additional Readings in the Appendix for a list of relevant works). And because these performances are taught P. R. Frese (B) Department of Anthropology and Sociology, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Brownell Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0_12

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in a classroom, the knowledge that students gain from these learning environments will contribute to a deeper, more humanistic experience and knowledge of the world and of Others. This connection to humanistic anthropology is as significant today as it was in the 1980s. As discussed in Chapter 1 of this volume, the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) was founded in 1975 around the significant contribution of the Turners’ work. Just before taking over as the new President of SHA in 2015, Kristen Ghodsee revisited, with anthropologist Rose Wellman, Edie’s granddaughter, the important role that SHA has played within the discipline in the section’s column in Anthropology News. They recalled, “SHA was once about much more than just creative writing; it had a vested interest in what we now call public anthropology and a deep commitment to making anthropological research widely accessible to those outside of the discipline” (2014, online). They observed that the SHA was born in an era of both Cold War politics and professional politics. The Vietnam War had just ended—yet one more example of the American imperialism of which anthropologists had become increasingly critical. However, the discipline of anthropology was still largely dominated by positivism, with most anthropologists considering themselves social scientists (the widespread challenge to positivist science would not occur until the postmodern turn in the 1980s). Cultural relativism, a fundamental philosophy of the discipline based on the positivist assumption that true objectivity is possible in social research, had created what many considered indifference to the moral and ethical issues of the time. The SHA was intended to counteract these trends through an emphasis on humanism: “In its celebration of common humanity, it was also an engaged anthropology that challenged both the aggression born of cultural imperialism and the apathy born of cultural relativism” (Ghodsee and Wellman 2014, 22). In 1976, using words that, tragically, remain pertinent today, one of the cofounders of SHA and the founding editor of Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, Bruce Grindal, wrote, The continued presence of poverty and human inequality and the possibility of ecological catastrophe has led to a questioning of the previous value of social scientific research and understanding. We have become aware of the ideological implications of our discipline; the fact that anthropological thinking is a product of the times and that as educators we have impact upon the minds of others. The world has become exceedingly complex, and along with it anthropology has grown both in the direction of greater specialization and toward diminishing agreement as to what is the purpose of inquiry. What is needed, therefore, is some guiding value by which to define meaningful research and to assess its human consequences. (Grindal 1976)

This book counterposes this humanist agenda against the “divisive present” that eerily echoes Grindal’s description of a bygone period over four decades ago. Oppression of women and of gendered and minority identities continues in part through introducing students to the canons of the discipline without critiquing the impact of heteronormativity and colonial forms on the discipline and, more broadly, on today’s educational system. These ongoing discussions about humanistic anthropology remain relevant to the contemporary time period with a new twist: The last

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decade has seen the permeation of higher education by neoliberal principles, with an accompanying emphasis on quantified measures and pseudo-scientific language (e.g., “learning objectives”). Our book fulfills an important need in today’s educational system for pedagogical methods that combine science with art so as to reach more deeply into the being of our students and touch “the whole human vital repertoire of thinking, willing, desiring, and feeling” (V. Turner 1986, 35). The Turners emphasized that humanist pedagogy should encourage empathy toward the rich diversity of humanity, a goal they felt was served by performing ethnography. While they recognized at a theoretical level that ritual could serve as a form of resistance to oppressive and unfair power structures, this generally took a backseat to their humanist agenda. Our response to the postmodern turn and the rise of activism in anthropology is to remind our audiences of the second part of the equation by emphasizing that ritual reenactments can teach students to shape their individual forms of resistance to oppressive and unfair power structures as they explore their own place in a hegemonic world system. This book’s new contribution is to point out that the old pedagogical model contained possibilities that became even more germane in the twenty-first century. In the second most-read feature article in Anthropology News in 2019, “Upsetting the Canon: From 1969 to 2019” (Anthropology News Website 2019), Mariam Durrani calls on all of us to recognize and upset the “canon” of patriarchal and colonialist perspectives. She argues for kairos, or the recognition of forms of knowledge that are “crucial” for this moment in time, a moment ripe for new actions to empower all scholars. With Durrani, we ask, “If we think of teaching as a critical intervention, what should twenty-first-century students be learning from anthropology?” (2019). This volume does indeed revisit scholarship originally established forty years ago, at a time when suggesting a reflexive, experiential, and anti-structural revisioning of anthropology challenged many anthropologists to rethink their research and their teaching methods. At the same time, it contributes to a movement going forward for a diverse group of teachers and students. Contributors to this volume reflect some of the possible forms of teaching through which all voices may be empowered, forms that stimulate participants to reflect on their own positions in the world while simultaneously learning about other ways of living. Embodied learning provides an awareness and appreciation of the social and natural environments in which all humans live. This form of pedagogy can also help advocate for change and social justice and equity in communities around the world. Since we seek to make this kind of work accessible to a broader set of scholarinstructors, we include explicit guidance for instructors in how to craft performances of social dramas and ritual and create moments of rupture that forge new meanings for all students. In addition, our Appendix includes guidelines and handouts that we have developed for our classroom assignments along with an annotated bibliography of works by scholars who have used these forms of pedagogy to celebrate the best dimensions of today’s legacy of the Turner-Schechner collaboration. We would like to conclude this work on ethnographic performances in the classroom by allowing Edie Turner the last word. Following is an essay written in 2013

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in which she reviewed the evolution of pedagogy that occurred from the lectures that characterized Vic’s classes in the 1960s to the ethnographic performances that she utilized in the final decade of her own teaching. It was edited by Rose Wellman and published in Anthropology News in 2013.

A Different Kind of Classroom Edith L. B. Turner1 It was the year 2003 when the performance of ritual first became the style of my classes on shamanism and healing. I had developed this style, even earlier, from Victor Turner’s old lecture classes between 1964 and 1968 on symbol, myth, and ritual. Then, the performance of ritual took place in classes. The class, moreover, was patterned on the “rite of passage.” That is, the students gave their own presentations, followed by a liminal break outside when anything could be said. Finally, the reaggregation of the class took place with its own conclusions. As we know, Victor Turner’s work on rites of passage was actually an introduction to connectedness itself. Such moments have been called liminal time, or, the time that is no time, the place that is no place, a crack in the mirror. They evoke a release, the sense of the person without the structural trappings and without clock time. Turner himself often referred to Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” to give a sense of one’s unmediated relationship; or, in other terms, the power that flows in “communitas.” From here, we began to recognize communitas as more than a good feeling but as positive threads of connectedness joining everybody at the time. In the classroom, an awareness of communitas allowed for an awareness of that vitality: the entry of real spirits. So it was evident in 2003 that the students no longer needed cold description (e.g., rote lecture) but the eager spirit itself. Anthropology had changed so much that this was possible. The students were going to rule themselves. They were to choose. It was in this manner that the course Shamanism and Healing came into being. The academic work itself was and continues to be less a series of lectures by the teacher with a syllabus and more the selection made by the students from a number of books from which they may take turns to teach the rest of the class. This adds democracy and responsibility. Each one of them has their time at the forefront of the class. As for the organization of the meetings, some students help to chair the meetings or exchange chairs in the middle. The primary designated teacher is there to be no more than the “tree stem” around which the whole thing rises. There is an accelerating effect in these classes. The more they learn from each other, the more they want to teach each other. The students also have some of the soundest books in anthropology, Robert Desjarlais, Larry Peters, Paul Stoller, Viveiros de Castro, Stephen Friedson, George Mentore, Barbara Babcock, Carl Jung, Michael Harner, and Roy Wagner, for example. They discover the faculty of which we are all are aware but don’t think about very much.

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Even more, students are given the chance to experience the shamanic spirit journey for themselves or enact other rituals they develop an interest in. They can lie on the floor to the sound of a drum. They will invite the coming of a power helper from above, or an animal helper from below, whichever is easier. Or the student may attempt to use healing hands to extract harmful intrusions from a class-mate in the manner of some people. Or they may find and replace the lost spirit of a sick or depressed or criticized person. “We students can’t express how thankful we are,” a student said of this different kind of course. Another added, “I want to say… this has historic potential. There is so much alienation in this whole mess. This kind of anthropology in hundreds of small ways has an influence that will make a better world. It is a sympathetic and compassionate anthropology.” The students remember such courses. They learn differently. A student concluded: “My eyes have been opened to a whole new world that I had not realized was there. I will forever cherish all that I have experienced.” Note 1. Turner, Edith L. B. 2013. “A Different Kind of Classroom.” Anthropology News 54 (8) (August): 56. Reprinted with permission.

References Anthropology News Website. 2019. “Top Articles of 2019.” December 20. Accessed January 9, 2019. https://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/12/20/top-articles-of-2019. Durrani, Mariam. 2019. “Upsetting the Canon: From 1969 to 2019.” Anthropology News online, April 8. Accessed January 1, 2020. http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/04/08/ upsetting-the-canon. Ghodsee, Kristin, and Rose Wellman. 2014. “What Is Humanistic Anthropology?” Anthropology News 55 (7) (July): 53–54. Grindal, Bruce. 1976. “Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly.” Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 1 (1) (April): 1. Peacock, James. 2018. “Introduction.” In The Intellectual Legacy of Victor & Edith Turner, edited by Frank A. Salamone and Marjorie M. Snipes, vii–xv. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Turner, Victor. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience.” In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 33–44. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Appendices

Chapter One: Practical Guide for Ethnographic Performances in the Classroom by Pamela R. Frese and Susan Brownell There is no “right” way to craft a classroom exercise incorporating embodied, experiential learning. As the contributors to this volume illustrate, the opportunities to embed a performance within a class are varied and will reflect, in part, the disciplinary contexts in which the class is offered. There are, however, several common features that we believe should be incorporated into ethnographic performance in the classroom. 1. IRB Approval and Ethics—According to the federal regulations current as of 2019, educational activities that are not intended as research do not require review and approval by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). However, if those same activities (classroom performances and students’ responses) are analyzed and published as research (as we have done in this volume), they do require IRB approval. Working out a way in which to protect students’ contributions to the research project (through photos, written materials, dance or acting) is essential. Instructors should think carefully about the discussions with students that critically explore this form of pedagogy, because if they can be viewed as research, then IRB approval should be sought. Ethical issues related to protecting contributors do come into play if you wish to collect student feedback from classroom performances, even if these responses are not destined to inform research. 2. Maintaining Confidentiality—Whether the performance is going to be used as research and published or not, to ensure that student comments on their experiences are candid and that their grade will not be affected is very important. One way to handle this is to provide a way for students to thoughtfully reflect on the experience and write a narrative that is submitted anonymously after the exercise is completed. They should all write at the top of the paper whether or not they © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0

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are willing to have their comments used in a publication. Then all students turn in the papers. This will ensure that the identity of a student who may not want to have their comments published will not be flagged by the class for not passing their paper in with the others. Later the faculty member can read all of the responses and learn how the students engaged with the material, then separate out the papers on which students gave permission for their work to contribute to a future publication. This format is very useful whether or not the material will be incorporated into future research, as it guarantees as much as possible that a student is able to be honest in their responses to their participation in the ethnographic performance. Anchor the Classroom Exercise in Theory and/or Ethnographic Context— Students must be well grounded in the relevant theories and ethnographic contexts for the ritual, social drama, or other forms of performance related to a specific culture. Allot time early on to address difficult issues such as commodification, appropriation, and the hegemonic dimensions of the performed ethnographic piece. Ensure That Students Are Comfortable with the Exercise—The faculty member must ascertain whether students feel comfortable in performing within the classroom experience. If not, find a way for the student to engage in the materials, perhaps even reflexively addressing why they are not comfortable with participating in terms of the topics covered in the class. Create a Script—Scripts can be drawn from the teacher’s ethnographic experiences, directly from ethnographic texts, or crafted with students to engage them in the performance from the beginning. Construction of Props and Costumes—If the performance relies upon costumes, props, and ritual foods associated with the culture on which the performance is based, time must be allocated to ensure these are ready for the event. Obviously, care must be taken that all students are aware of the ingredients in the foods and offered the option to abstain from eating or drinking. Follow Up with a De-briefing—Time should also be set aside after the performance to allow students to reflect on the process of the event, its connection to class materials, students’ experiences, and students’ positionalities in relation to the culture that was re-enacted, to others in the class, and to the larger social and cultural frames in which the classroom is located. Evaluating the Learning Experience—There are many ways in which to evaluate the knowledge that the students take away from this experience. Assessment of what the students have gained from the exercise will obviously reflect the faculty member’s teaching style and the type of course in which the performance is enacted. Some examples might include an oral or written narrative of the student’s experiences linked to the class objectives and knowledge of the culture being performed; an exam with a reflective section in which the student is empowered to express what they have learned; or a paper in which the concepts “acted out” in the performance are explained and connected to theories discussed in class. Please see the Appendices by Brownell, Frese, and Kazubowski-Houston that illustrate how to evaluate the pedagogical success of these performances.

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Chapter Three: Scripts for Potlatch and Hamatsa (Cannibal) Ceremony by Victor and Edith Turner Potlatch Script Greetings Guest—host host—guest Small distribution of some food Telling of myths Guest—return speech Story of potlatch falling—shame taken by man-eater raising totem pole Selling of copper guests’ chief gives speech announcing intention to buy host’s chief acknowledges willingness to sell price offered is too low; admonishments not to be afraid to pay a lot; price is brought up by increments to be much more than the previous price much telling of myths—calling upon ancestors ridicule songs Insult of Haida through skit Small distribution of food (To hamatsa dance)

Hamatsa (Cannibal) Ceremony Follow meals and covenantal songs Cries and whistles heard from woods (hamatsas and all helpers) Ghost dancer appears mentions death, excites old hamatsas and spirit retinue Hamatsas enter from all over—dance four times around fire new initiate appears—enters excitedly, circles fire four times; he is very wild, dressed only in hemlock, with no restraining clothes; comes from upper level People try to encircle hamatsa; he is too wild, enters sacred room, sheds some hemlock branches—burned

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Discussion of why hamatsa has escaped confession of sins and analysis of ceremonial errors; must be corrected by pledging potlatches, becoming a hamatsa’s victim, or becoming an initiate; records are kept of who agrees to be a victim. Adjournment—repurification through smoke Setting of trap for hamatsa hemlock neck ring made; all carry hemlock old man put in center as bait hamatsa escapes three times—on fourth time all join hands and he is captured all sing taming songs Family of hamatsa is on steps of house—acknowledge their pledges Hamatsa will not enter house—women dance before him enticingly to no avail, entice him with bones and mummified flesh Screen is set up—hamatsa goes to sacred room Hamatsa returns goes counterclockwise four times around fire, each time holding a victim’s arm in his mouth and pulling him along; more taming songs, unsuccessful All hemlock removed, burned Distribution of property; display of coppers All spirits appear to dance—faces black; eagle down in their hair and put around the room (carried in dishes like food) Hamatsa appears dances around fire—reappears dressed in cedar bark clothing, a new piece added each time he reappears House is totally shut up, no chinks or light from outside Burning of cedar bark smoldering bark passed over head of dancer; everyone says “hoip, hoip”; much loud drumming, very rhythmic Hamatsa dances, squatting and turning Four more days of ceremony follow, during which time no one enters or leaves the house; no food is served; there is constant singing of power songs Hamatsa appears wearing cedar bark only a simulacrum of him is washed and ritually treated, then smoked Hamatsa still trembles women sing their most powerful songs simultaneously while men sing songs of wildness

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A bloody menstrual napkin from the hamatsa’s mother is burned he is made to inhale the smoke; he immediately collapses and has to be carried from the room Someone has to pledge next year’s ceremonials The ceremonials end

Chapter Five: Victor Turner—Handout on Key Theoretical Terms by Susan Brownell Rites of passage: indicate transitions between states—legal status, profession, rank, degree, or culturally recognized degree of maturation (Arnold van Gennep, Rites of Passage, 1909). Rites of passage are the rites that accompany every change of place, state, social position, and age. (In secular US society: marriage, death, graduation. In other societies: birth, puberty, etc. There are also group rites that indicate transitions from unclean to clean, one place to another, famine to plenty, etc.) 3 phases of a rite of passage: 1. separation—detachment from a fixed point in the social structure 2. liminality—ambiguous; passage 3. reaggregation (reincorporation, reintegration)—passage is consummated.

Liminality: the period of being “betwixt and between” states. Mary Douglas (Purity and Danger, 1966) pointed out that the unclear is the unclean. The concept of pollution is a reaction to protect cherished categories. Transitional beings are polluting, since they are neither one thing nor another. Initiates in a puberty rite, for example, are often said to be sexless. They possess no property, no status, no insignia, no secular clothing, no kinship position, etc. Liminality is frequently likened to death, being in the womb, invisibility, darkness, bisexuality, the wilderness and to an eclipse of the sun or moon. The liminal period is characterized by equality, comradeship. This is communitas. Structure (societas) vs. communitas: There are two models for human relations, and social life is a type of dialectical process between the two: (1) society as a structured, differentiated, often hierarchical system—societas, structure; (2) an unstructured or relatively undifferentiated community of equal individuals—communitas (Latin “community”), the communion of equals. Communitas is a generalized social bond. It is spontaneous, immediate, concrete—not like society, which is governed by norms and is institutionalized, abstract.

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Institutionalized communitas is found in the great world religions, especially monasteries and those who take vows of poverty. Hippies were also an example. They opt out of the status-bound order. Social drama: the eruption of social tensions into public episodes, which take on a dramatic structure as they proceed toward either resolution or schism. Social conflicts expose fundamental aspects of society that are normally overlaid by the customs and habits of everyday life. People have to take sides, and the choice is predominantly made on the basis of loyalty and obligation, not rationality. The conflict takes on a processional form that shares features with dramatic plotlines in theater. Thus, social drama manifests a dramatic form (i.e., a human aesthetic form) in the process of social time. 4 phases of a social drama: 1. breach—of regular, norm-governed relations within a society or community 2. crisis—the escalation of a breach until it divides the entire society 3. redressive action—informal or institutionalized mechanisms are brought into operation to address the crisis, commonly legal mechanisms, and/or the performance of a public ritual (a public court proceeding may be considered a ritual) 4. reintegration—either the disturbed group is reintegrated, or there is social recognition of an irreparable schism that will result in social reorganization.

Turner vs. Radcliffe-Brown’s Structural-Functionalism Turner was trained in the Radcliffe-Brown school of Structural-Functionalism, which views society as a structure of positions, an arrangement of positions or statuses. It cannot explain change because it assumes that society consists of a prearranged order of things. But there is another dimension of society—communitas. Communitas is found where structure is not found. It contains a potential for change; communitas generates symbols and metaphors and comparisons, and produces art and religion rather than political structures. Society possesses both structure (societas) and communitas. Structure consists of everyday life, of the normative social life. Communitas is found in periods of transition when the normative social structure is questioned. One of the reasons for the neglect of the communitas dimension of society is that anthropologists have tended to think that “society” is the same as “social structure.” There are aspects of society that stand outside of social structure. The social world is a world in becoming, not a world in being. Society is a process rather than a thing—it has alternating phases of structure and communitas. Studies of social structure as such are irrelevant; Turner takes a processual view of society, also called a dramaturgical view. Social structure is something that is constantly being acted out.

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Turner vs. Levi-Strauss’s Structuralism In the liminal phases of ritual, one often finds an elimination of social structure in the British sense and an emphasis on structure in the Levi-Straussian sense. Social relationships are simplified, but myths and rituals, with all their oppositions and structures, multiply. Turner’s analysis of ritual draws heavily on Levi-Straussian structuralism. However, he differs from Levi-Strauss in that he says these conceptual schemes are all very well and good, but what is really important is the feelings that these symbols evoke. The symbols not only order the Ndembu universe, but they are also a set of evocative devices for rousing, channeling, and domesticating powerful emotions. It is almost as if, by manipulating these symbols, the Ndembu think they can arrange and concentrate these emotional powers like laser beams. Religious beliefs and practices are something more than “grotesque” reflections or expressions of economic, political, and social relationships; rather are they coming to be seen as decisive keys to the understanding of how people think and feel about those relationships, and about the natural and social environments in which they operate. (The Ritual Process, p. 6)

Chapter Five: Guidelines for the Write-Up of the Ritual Reenactment Paper by Susan Brownell Format Requirements: Your paper should be no more than 2000 words. The References Cited section is not counted. It should be written according to the separately posted Style Guide. Assignment Requirements: Begin with a brief introduction that tells the reader what the paper is about. Then the assignment should consist of three relatively equal parts, in whatever order you feel works best. You can write them up in separate sections, or you can try to integrate the theory with the description if you wish. • One part should be the theory from Victor Turner that guides the reenactment, along with other theorists. It must touch upon the following notions of Turner: – – – – –

the 3 phases of ritual liminality structure/anti-structure communitas experience

There may be other ideas that you would like to draw upon as well, such as Turner’s views about using ritual reenactments as a means of cross-cultural understanding,

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the relation between ritual and theater, the role of ritual in social drama, liminal vs. liminoid, and so on. In addition, chapters dealing with ritual, religion, and cultural performances in your textbook may present some useful ideas, such as the ones by Emile Durkheim, Max Gluckman, Claude Levi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, and Clifford Geertz. The ideas that you choose to use will be in part dictated by your experience; some ideas may seem more relevant than others. • A second part is the ethnographic description. It should summarize the specific background research that you and your group did for the ritual. You should also include a description of the ritual from your point of view as a participant observer. It should summarize your experience (your feelings, emotions, thoughts, reactions, etc.) of the reenactment. It should also describe the key symbols (beliefs, objects, actions, colors, etc.). This part must include at least one graphic image or chart, such as a diagram of the spatial or temporal organization, a chart illustrating a structuralist symbolic analysis, a taxonomy, etc. • A third part should assess whether the phenomena described in the second part fit the theories or not. Did the theories that you summarized above accurately predict the unfolding of the event and your experience of it? Was anything left unexplained? Did anything “break through the frame” and surprise you? Did the ritual reinforce the pre-existing social order, or was anything changed? In this part, be sure to analyze the effectiveness of the symbols used in the ritual; did they channel emotions like laser beams? Assess why the events fit the theories, or why not. Finish with a brief paragraph that summarizes everything. Follow it with your References Cited.

Chapter Six: Handout for The Zinacantecos of Mexico and Guidelines for Narratives and Related Ethnographic Performance of a Maya Curing Ceremony by Pamela R. Frese These questions help students to understand the important ethnographic information they will need to benefit from this exercise. These questions also prepare students for the in-class exam and provide them with the important concepts that need to be a part of their narratives on their Maya identity. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Describe the syncretized world view of the Zinacantecos (the universe, surrounding landscape and deities). Discuss the Earth Lord as a syncretized deity. What role does he play in myth and reality? Discuss the Zinacantecos view of the soul (include a discussion of the two kinds of soul, soul loss, and illness). Discuss the concept of hot and cold for someone from Zinacantán.

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

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What are the four levels of social-political organization in Zinacantán? What is a ritual advisor? What is the importance of the fictive kin name these people are given? How does a person become a shaman? How is the political organization of Zinacantán center reflected in the supernatural organization within Senior Large Mountain? Discuss the cross as a multivocal symbol. How does the Zinacantán image of Christ reflect their reality? Discuss the Great Seeing as a rite of passage. Give two examples for each phase. Discuss the “Concept of Limited Good,” witchcraft, and illness for the Maya of Zinacantán. What are the considerations used in acquiring compadres?

Take Home Part of Exam: Narrative on Maya Identity Think about the “Great Seeing” ritual we performed. Now explain your life as a person from Zinacantán. Make sure to include the following: • a discussion of your patron saint • your animal spirit companion • your family members (consanguineal and affinal) • one godparent relationship • your role in the ritual • your relation to the person who is ill (based on kinship chart and group narratives) • general, overall discussion of your life in Zinacantán on an average day.

Chapter Eight: Experiencing Pilgrimage: From Performance to Paper—Fieldtrip Essay Guidelines by Michelle Johnson ANTH 229: Pilgrimage, Prayer, and Purity: The Anthropology of Religion Bucknell University, Professor Michelle Johnson If you went on the “performing pilgrimage” field trip to the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, the Fieldtrip Essay will serve as your final project for the course. Your essay should be approximately 7 pages in length, double-spaced, 12pt. font (excluding photographs and a References Cited page). It should include: (1) an ethnographic description of the journey to the Grotto and of the Grotto itself; (2) an analysis of at least 3 of the site’s major symbols and their meaning, using the Turners’ work we read in class as your guide; and (3) reflections on your own personal experience of the site. What did the experience reveal to you about

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anthropology and/or religion? In writing your essay, consider the following possible themes and/or questions: • Sensory experiences (What did you see, smell, hear, and taste at the site?) • Emotional reactions (How did you feel at the site? Did anything surprise or disturb you?) • Ethnographic observations (What did you observe people doing at the site?) • The site’s major symbols (You must analyze at least 3, discussing possible meanings, based on what we’ve studied in the course, people you consulted/interviewed [e.g., experts on or off campus, pilgrims at the site you spoke with or interviewed, or scholarly sources you consulted]). • Connections to course materials (Did anything at the site make you think of our course materials, whether articles, films, books, class discussions, or guest speakers? Did your experience at the Grotto change the way you think about anything we’ve studied over the course of the semester?)

Grading Criteria (30 Points) I will use the following criteria to evaluate your essay: Ethnographic Description (8 points): The student “thickly” describes the experience of “performing pilgrimage,” including the journey to the site, the site itself, and observations at the site. The student “makes scenes come alive on the page,” incorporating sensory detail. Symbolic Analysis (8 points): The student identifies at least 3 of the site’s key symbols and analyses them, suggesting possible/multiple meanings. The student appropriately incorporates analytical material, from either class readings or conversations with pilgrims and local experts (e.g., a chaplain or professor). The student links the experience to the anthropological study of religion, asking: “What does it all mean?” Personal Reflections (8 points): The student discusses his or her own subjective experience of the pilgrimage, including emotional reactions, issues of observer/observed, and reflections on the objective study of religious phenomena and the subjective experience of them. Creativity (3 points): The Fieldtrip Essay demonstrates effort and creativity. The student takes risks, through either creative writing or incorporating fieldnotes, sketches, or photographs. Style and Mechanics (3 points): The paper is well written (i.e., it is coherent and consistent in style/tone, it is well-organized, demonstrates command of grammar and spelling, and ideas are presented in a clear, thoughtful, and engaging manner). The paper is creative and engaging and demonstrates genuine effort. The paper was turned in on time or the student sought an extension that was approved by the professor.

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Chapter Ten: Performance Ethnography Development Strategies and Exercises by Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston Performance Ethnography Development Strategies There are many different ways of approaching performance ethnography in the classroom. You can employ performance as an ethnographic product, process, or both. The performance-as-product approach dates back to work by Victor and Edith Turner and Richard Schechner in the 1980s; in this method, theater performance is a way of staging fieldwork data and/or ethnographic text. This approach seeks a more experiential, embodied, affective, and sensory exploration of ethnographic texts and a more accessible and engaging form of pedagogy. It can be more traditionally theatrical, based on a dramatic text developed from ethnographic data, or it may employ other forms of performance, such as street performance, dramatic storytelling, devised performance (a collective improvisation), clowning, puppetry, or multimodal performance as described in Chapter 10 in this book. To use this approach, first engage students in writing a dramatic script based on relevant ethnographic materials that they then will develop into a staged performance in rehearsals. Or, rather than writing a dramatic script, students could improvise a performance based on ethnographic materials through a devised theater approach. Then, assign students the roles of actors, directors, designers, and the backstage crew and commence developing the performance’s spoken text, blocking (actors’ positions and movement on the stage), choreography (detailed movements, gestures, and facial expressions), and the stage/costume/lighting designs. If, instead, you want to use performance as a way of conducting fieldwork (performance as process), you would need to engage students in a performed activity that may incorporate performance, performed walking, creative writing, and/or multimodal approaches (e.g., combining sound, photography, video, or art installation). Then ask students to come up with a research question, such as “What constitutes gender-based violence on campus?,” and develop a performance to address it. Students assume the roles of both ethnographers and interlocutors, and reflexivity and autoethnography should remain central because students will be drawing on their own experiences and understandings of the field. In this approach, all stages of the performance development process constitute a form of ethnographic participant observation in which the ethnographer addresses their research questions by writing or improvising the performance’s spoken and physical texts in collaboration with interlocutors. Finally, students should be encouraged to conduct an analysis of all of the stages of the performance development process (e.g., script writing, rehearsals, staged performances, and audience discussions if applicable). Workshops or courses can also be partnered with a local community, giving students an opportunity to learn about collaboration, participation, and community engagement. In any project that involves community members from outside

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of academia, it is important to consider how the project may benefit the collaborators, an important aspect of any ethnographic undertaking. Any approach to performance ethnography may, but does not need to, be staged for an audience. The mere process of developing a performance—either from pre-existing ethnographic data, or in response to a specific research question—in and of itself provides important ethnographic insights.

Performance Ethnography Exercises 1. Performance as ethnographic product: Divide students into small groups of 4 or 5. Assign an ethnographic text that you would like them to stage. Ask the students to brainstorm what the performance development process might look like: Would they want to begin by writing a dramatic script first, and then develop the performance’s blocking and choreography in the studio; or would they rather devise the performance through improvisation without writing a script? a. If students choose to write a script, you can ask them to begin by deciding on the central theme to be explored, as well as images, characters, locales, metaphors, and symbols. There is no one correct way to approach the writing process, as it always depends on students’ individual preferences. Students may choose to write different sections of the script individually, or they can write collaboratively as a group. b. Once the script is written, the development process moves into the studio. Here, students will need to further brainstorm the central images, metaphors, and symbols of the performance and improvise its choreography. They should also discuss the performance’s designs. When the performance is ready for staging, the next step is to embark on dress and technical rehearsals. Divide the roles and responsibilities among the students before commencing the final stages of the project development process. c. Students may instead choose to improvise the performance in the studio without writing a script. There are many different ways to approach theatrical improvisations in a context of performance ethnography (see KazubowskiHouston 2011; Madison 2018). 2. Performance as ethnographic process 1: Divide students into small groups of 4 or 5. Ask them to formulate a research question that they feel passionate about. Alternatively, assign a research question yourself based on the specific needs of your course. Ask students to develop a performance in response to this question. As in the first exercise, ask them to brainstorm the performance’s central themes, images, metaphors, and symbols. Students can write the script collaboratively or improvise it in the studio, and they will need to choose specific roles: actors, directors, designers, and playwrights. Even if the project is carried out collaboratively as a devised, collective creation, there will need to be specific

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people assigned to oversee different aspects of the project. You can utilize different approaches to ethnographic performance; for example, students may venture outside of the classroom and collect, photograph, film, draw, and record found objects, images, and sounds to seek inspiration for the performance development process. Ask the students: What do these objects make you think, feel, sense? How can they help you engage with your research questions? How can you use these objects as inspiration during the performance development process? How can you incorporate these objects into your performances as projected images, sounds, or props (objects used by actors on stage)? Ask students to keep detailed fieldnotes and journal entries on each aspect of the performance development process. It is imperative to remind them to record not only their observations and thoughts but also their feelings, sensations, interior dialogues, etc. They can also conduct post-performance audience discussions and interviews, which could involve participant observation of audience responses during a performance and/or conducting large audience discussions and interviews after a performance. 3. Performance as ethnographic process 2: This is a highly improvisational approach to performance ethnography and an instructor should have a background and training in theater-making practice. Divide students into small groups of 4 or 5. Introduce them to a wide range of improvisational exercises. Ask students to choose an image or sound and use it as a starting point for improvising the performance. After students complete their improvisations, ask them to brainstorm to identify the ethnographic insights they have gleaned from this process, and what the process has revealed about their own positionality and authority as academic researchers. You can extend the students’ improvisations further by adding different prompts (objects, images, metaphors, stories, news clips, etc.) to inspire their improvisations. Accompany the improvisations with discussions on ethnography not as a process of discovery but as a mutual co-construction of knowledge by the ethnographer and interlocutors. Recast research as a kind of encounter, in which the ethnographer acts as a co-performer rather than an inquisitor (see Fabian 1990; Kazubowski-Houston 2010). Once students complete their projects, ask them to consider the following questions: • What did you learn about the potentials and challenges of theater and performance as an ethnographic approach and methodology? • What can performance offer to ethnography? Here, consider issues related to reflexivity, ethnographic authority, ethnographer-interlocutor relations, collaborations, ethnographic intervention within and beyond the academy, and the politics of representation. • How did you navigate the ethnographic versus aesthetic choices in your performance ethnography? • What is the relationship between ethnography and fiction in performance ethnography? Can the use of fiction contribute to performance-based research? • What are the similarities and differences in how performance used as an ethnographic process and performance used as an ethnographic product could potentially facilitate the construction of ethnographic knowledge? What are the potential risks inherent in the two approaches? How can they be addressed?

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• How, in your view, has the field of performance ethnography developed since the seminal work of Victor and Edith Turner and Richard Schechner in the 1980s? What new directions in the field have been forged since then?

Texts • Conquergood, Dwight. 2013. Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis. Edited by E. Patrick Johnson. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. • Denzin, Norman. 2003. Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. • Fabian, Johannes. 1990. Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations Through Proverbial Wisdom and Theatre in Shaba, Zaire. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. • Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena. 2010. Staging Strife: Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. • Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena. 2011. “Thwarting Binarisms: Performing Racism in Postsocialist Poland.” Text and Performance Quarterly 31 (2): 169–189. • Madison, D. Soyini. 2010. Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Madison, D. Soyini. 2018. Performed Ethnography & Communication. London and New York: Routledge. • Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. 1982. “Performing Ethnography.” TDR/The Drama Review 26 (2) (Summer): 33–50.

Other Resources Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE): https://imaginative-ethnography.com.

Further Notes: Additional Readings—Intellectual Descendants of Turnerian Performance Ethnography by Susan Brownell and Pamela R. Frese

Alexander, Bryant Keith. K. 1999. “Performing Culture in the Classroom: An Instructional Ethnography.” Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (4): 307–331. ———. 2005. “Performance Ethnography. The Re-enacting and Inciting of Culture.” In Handbook of Qualitative Inquiry, 3rd ed., edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 411–441. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. First published 2000. ———. 2006. “Introduction: Performance and Pedagogy.” In The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies, edited by Judith Hamera, 143–150. London and New Delhi: Sage. Bryant Alexander, a professor of communication and performance studies, explores autoethnography and critical pedagogy, reinforcing Turner’s position that “cultural performances are active agencies of social change, representing the eye by which culture sees itself and the drawing board on which creative actors sketch out what they believe to be more effective or ethical ‘designs for living’” (24). He promotes what he calls a critical and democratic pedagogy while supporting interdisciplinary studies that include anthropology. Beeman, William O. 2002. “Performance Theory in an Anthropology Program.” In Teaching Performance Studies, edited by Nathan Stuck and Cynthia Wimmer, 85–97. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. William O. Beeman’s work brings together theater, folklore, and anthropology in the mode of the lineage we outline in this book. His combination of performance and anthropology stemmed from his dual career as an anthropologist with expertise in the Middle East and a professional singer. He incorporated the four fields of anthropology into classroom performances as a form of experiential learning to understand broad questions raised by the discipline of anthropology. He integrates performance pedagogy with an awareness of anthropological methods in his classes. His goal in using performance “is to bring students to the realization that performance is the © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0

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means—perhaps the principal means—through which people come to understand their world, reinforce their view of it, and transform it on both the small scale and the large scale. …When students see this clearly, their ability to analyze and understand ongoing social and political events in their own lives becomes greatly enhanced” (95–96). Conquergood, Dwight. 1982. “Performing as Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance.” Literature in Performance 5 (2): 1–13. ———. 2013. Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis. Edited by E. Patrick Johnson. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. One of the first influential voices to emerge from the Turner/Schechner collaborations, his assertion that ethnographic performance offers a critique of contemporary cultural politics is cited by scholars in theater, anthropology, and many other disciplines. In addition to Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in communication and a Ph.D. in performance studies at Northwestern University, he took courses with anthropologist Mary Douglas. He later returned as a faculty member at Northwestern and became chair of the Department of Performance Studies. He acknowledged Turner as the “undisputed founding father” of performed ethnography. Conquergood’s pedagogical method involved transforming cross-cultural interviews conducted during his field research among Hmong refugees and tenement residents in Chicago’s “Little Beirut” into classroom performances, using them to advocate for the powerless and potentially to engender painful self-reflexivity for both the audience and the ethnographer. He also explored issues that continue to frame today’s use of performance pedagogies in the classroom. He argued that “moral issues of performance are more transparent when the performer attempts to engage ethnic and intercultural texts, particularly those texts outside the canon and derived from fieldwork research” (1982, 2). Denzin, Norman K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Norman Denzin, a sociologist whose work intersected with communication and media studies at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, is known for his work in symbolic interactionism and qualitative research methods. This book lays out a theoretical argument for the use of performance in what he calls “critical pedagogy” that is often cited in performance studies. It is a call for a radical pedagogy that utilizes performances to evoke a shared emotional understanding between performer and audience, challenging the authority of the scholarly article. The book is a manifesto for the author’s agenda of “militant utopianism,” a notion that Vic and Edie Turner might support in the abstract. However, at the concrete level, his focus is rather different from this volume. Denzin’s focus is less on ritual in the Turnerian conception and more on performance genres such as “autoethnographic performance,” “personal experience story,” “personal histories,” and “testimonio” (a personal testimony with a political message) (37–39). The pedagogical power of ritual, as a performance genre, is largely ignored; instead, the focus is on “theaters” that

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can be located anywhere—from university classroom to church basement to street corner. Donelan, Kate. 2002. “Embodied Practices: Ethnography and Intercultural Drama in the Classroom.” NJ: Drama Australia Journal 26 (2): 35–44. Kate Donelan, a Professor at the Melbourne Graduate School for Education, explores ethnographic performances as embodied practices in her work. She explores the promising intersection of “intercultural performance” and contemporary ethnography to encourage embodied learning to understand the experiences of other cultures. Harrop, Peter, and Dunja Njaradi, eds. 2013. Performance and Ethnography: Dance, Drama, Music. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Peter Harrop introduces this co-edited volume by placing performance ethnography at the confluence of scholars in folklore, anthropology, and ethnology and argues that the “practice” of performance studies, rooted in the canonical collaboration of Richard Schechner with Victor Turner, “brings together theatre and anthropology, privileging ethnography over spectatorship and process over product. The idea of ‘embodied ethnography’ is never far away in these chapters” (1). Dunja Njaradi, originally trained as an anthropologist, explores new points of contact between performance and anthropology through ritual and magic. Referring to the Turner and Schechner collaboration as “theatre anthropology,” she advocates for the “transformative vitality” of ethnographic and performance practices through “the event of ritual performance seen through the eyes of an anthropologist looking through the lenses of performance studies, thus reconnecting performance and anthropology” (24). Hriskos, Constantine. 1996. “Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft: On Performing Ethnography in the Classroom.” Anthropology of Consciousness 7 (1): 20–27. Constantine Hriskos, an anthropologist with a specialty in Chinese shamanism, asserted the value of role-playing in getting students “to enter into, posit and understand other ways of seeing and being that are radically different from their own” (20). Hriskos’ students work in small groups assigned to present ethnographies assigned from several perspectives and begin every session with an emic presentation which often turns out to be an ethnographic performance. Like others in this volume, he saw value in the period of “double liminality” when students are “betwixt and between” their classroom Selves and the ethnographic Other, while also being suspended in the liminal period of the performance itself: The idea is to position oneself with regards to another tradition … suspended between, mediating between what he/she is coming to understand and who he/she was before encountering the other…Requiring students to “play” at taking on the roles and beliefs of the other is one way of creating a space in which transference of knowledge becomes possible. Through this play, we can come to “sympathize” with others in an imaginative manner that is not so far removed from the experiences of the ethnographer. (Hriskos 1996, 25)

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Lewis, J. Lowell. 2013. The Anthropology of Cultural Performance. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. J. Lowell Lewis reflects contemporary concepts related to understanding culture today, such as embodiment, habit, practice, process, and performance. His book avoids the “omnibus approach” in summarizing the intellectual traditions that are the bases for today’s performance theory, but rather aims to fashion a coherent synthetic approach that will build something new (2). His distinction between Performances (with a capital P) of special events and performances (lowercase p) that are daily activities in his discussion of the power of performance was useful for this volume. Magnat, Virginie. 2011. “Conducting Embodied Research at the Intersection of Performance Studies, Experimental Ethnography and Indigenous Methodologies.” Anthropologica 53: 213–227. ———. 2012. “Can Research Become Ceremony? Performance Ethnography and Indigenous Epistemologies.” Canadian Theatre Review 151 (Summer): 30–36. Significant work in the Turner-Schechner lineage of performance studies has emerged in Canada, including by Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston, a contributor to this volume, and her sometime collaborator, Virginie Magnat. Magnat has led the way into new areas of inquiry, utilizing critical scholarship that examines the intersection of embodied research and hegemonic politics in ethnography. Magnat relies on Turnerian interpretations of performance as “experiential, reflexive, and intersubjective” (2012, 31) and advocates for performance as “vital to the embodied transmission of traditional knowledge, [which] significantly informs the decolonizing research methodologies developed by Indigenous scholars and activists” (2012, 33). Her work intersects with experiential ethnography, indigenous research methodologies, and performance studies. Pedelty, Mark. 2001. “Teaching Anthropology Through Performance.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32 (2): 244–253. Mark Pedelty is an anthropology Ph.D., professor of communications at the University of Minnesota, and composer of music. In “Teaching Anthropology through Performance,” he complained that “ethnographic texts alone often fail to fully engage students and motivate critical cultural exploration,” thus defeating the paramount purpose of undergraduate anthropology courses, which should be to challenge students’ ethnocentrism (244). He explains, “Performance requires at least some level of empathy and identification with the character, role, and culture. In other words, it is more difficult to apply ethnocentric distinctions when adopting an ‘inside’ position” (246). His student evaluations and other student feedback indicated that students were more interested and engaged in the courses in which he had utilized performance as compared to traditional lecture and seminar courses.

Index

A Adams, Abigail, 53 Alexander, Bryant Keith, 207 Alland, Alexander, 5, 14, 31, 32 Allen, Catherine J., 8, 16, 17 Anglo-American, 11, 53, 58–60, 62, 112 Anthropology as a creative art, 22 of a different kind, 97, 191 and ethics, 17, 83 of experience, 14, 68, 126, 130, 132, 201 experiential, 1, 2, 6, 13, 14, 58, 83, 97, 98, 125, 187, 189, 207 performative, 1, 2, 6, 45, 125, 187 reflexive, 13, 45, 58, 83, 189 Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 16 Anthropology and Humanism, 2 anti-structure, 3, 4, 67, 74, 75, 79, 81, 123, 133, 199 appropriation, 10, 92 assessment, 72, 79, 88 learning, 79, 88 authentic/authenticity, 10, 15, 51, 84 autoethnography, 203, 207 autoethnographic performance, 153, 208 autoethnographic poetry, 158

B bachelor party, 11, 53, 59–62 Barok initiation, 49 Becker, Jacob H., 79, 80 Beeman, William O., 4, 207 Berg, Maggie, 132 Bodenhorn, Barbara, 111

bodily-being, 141 bodily capital, 146–148 bodily learning, 136, 138 body in cultural contexts, 137 bodybrains, 28 and trance, 28 brain, 14, 22, 26–30, 43, 97, 146, 165 as performance site, 22, 26 Brazilian zouk, 135, 136, 138, 141, 143, 148 bridal shower, 11, 53, 59–63 Brook, Peter, 8, 183 Brownell, Susan, 2, 11, 17, 53, 67, 78, 117, 194 Bruner, Edward, 13 Buckley, Tim, 110 Burrington, Lori A., 170, 171

C Camino, Linda, 50 Carvalho, Brenda, 135, 136 Castaneda, Carlos, 15 Castillo, Richard, 28 Catholic Mass, 30, 124 cave art, 24, 25 as cavea, 25 as early theater, 4, 25 Cayuga, 104, 105 Centre of Imaginative Ethnography (CIE), 152 ceremony, 7, 32, 33, 43–45, 49, 50, 54, 58, 73, 85–87, 89, 91, 101, 103–108, 111–115, 196 Chambliss, Daniel F., 129

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. R. Frese and S. Brownell (eds.), Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41995-0

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212 Christian beliefs, 21 Chutzpah!, 151 colonialism, 60, 110 capitalist-colonial expansion, 21 critique, 2, 9 Coming of Age in Samoa, 144 commodification, 93, 194 and appropriation, 194 and authenticity, 104 communitas, 3, 5, 12, 14, 16, 31, 45, 54, 57, 62, 69, 73, 75, 76, 79 assists in forming relationships, 91 Conquergood, Dwight, 152, 208 constructs, 25, 32, 44, 54, 58, 65, 72, 77, 85, 88, 93, 96, 138, 139, 148, 153, 159, 162, 172, 194, 205 gender, 58, 61, 65, 92 contexts, 5, 9, 10, 17, 32, 49, 50, 64, 65, 73, 79, 87, 107–109, 139, 141, 143, 149, 152, 153, 156, 157, 160, 161, 163, 165, 171, 172, 193, 194, 204 ethnographic, 62, 71, 81, 84, 194 historical, 62, 86 copal, 87, 89, 93 critical pedagogy, 152, 164, 207, 208 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 79 cultural appropriation, 9–11, 15, 73, 84, 98, 107, 108, 113, 114 (mis)appropriation, 9 and misrepresentation, 107, 108 cultural performance, 3–7, 12, 14, 50, 64, 173, 200, 207 cultural relativity/relativism, 60, 90, 169, 188

D Damon, Fred, 67 dance, 2, 4, 7, 10, 15, 23, 27, 30, 135, 147, 148, 173 competitive ballroom, 135, 141, 143, 148, 149 dance ethnography, 110, 145 Day of the Dead, 71, 90, 93 De Lissovoy, Noah, 156 Denzin, Norman K., 152, 208 Dia de los Muertos/de los difuntos, 85, 88, 89, 92, 93, 95 digital pedagogy, 2, 83, 91, 98, 108 digital technology, 163, 164 disembodied learning, 132 Dobuan yam magic, 71, 73 Donelan, Kate, 209

Index drama, 4, 30, 40, 42, 45, 112 social, 2–4, 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, 31, 40, 45, 50, 59, 69, 71, 74, 77, 80, 81, 84, 85, 98, 122, 182, 189, 194, 198, 200 stage, 7, 49, 74 dramaturgical view of society, 198 Dubisch, Jill, 125 Durrani, Mariam, 189

E education, 90, 132, 149, 154–156, 170, 189 and performance, 11, 17, 59, 209 embodied knowledge, 3, 23, 28, 29 embodied learning, 2, 16, 17, 61, 63, 89, 95, 97, 132, 133, 187, 189, 209 embodiment, 22, 57, 74, 80, 135, 149, 210 empathy, 10, 22, 27, 73, 74, 85, 152, 189 cultivated, 169–184 generated in performance, 210 empower/empowerment, 10, 72, 112, 124, 189 student, 9, 10, 14, 75, 114, 194 enactments, 149 symbolic enactments of gender, 59 engaged learning, 2, 118, 126, 132 enteric nervous system (ENS), 26, 27 and Eastern thought, 27 and rasabox training, 27 ethical research/ethics, 11, 83 ethnocentrism/ethnocentric, 10, 60, 84, 90, 93, 139, 210 ethnodramaturg, 46 ethnographic performance, 1–3, 9, 10, 12, 15–18, 46, 53, 58, 59, 62, 69, 83–85, 87, 90, 92, 93, 95, 97, 98, 117–119, 122, 124, 131, 132, 144, 145, 169, 172, 173, 182, 189, 205, 208, 209 ethnographic present, 84 ethnographic representation, 145, 183 ethnographic text(s), 2, 3, 203 exercises, 2, 16, 17, 59, 60, 81, 84, 91, 113, 118, 136, 141, 144, 145, 149, 169–171, 205 ethnographic, 53 experience/experiential anthropology, 1, 2, 6, 13, 14, 68, 83, 97, 98, 125, 187 embodied, 17, 22, 88, 98, 108, 118, 132, 153 ethnographic, 3, 7, 58, 110, 194 lived, 22, 125, 170 performance, 14, 30, 145, 149

Index sensory, 75, 113, 126, 202 unforgettable, 65 experiential learning in action, 62 co-production of body and mind, head and hear, soul and intellect, 109 counters conventional text based, 68 engaged, 126 as a form of resistance to convention pedagogies, 118 kinesthetic, 61 transformative, 75, 133

F Fabian, Johannes, 152, 205 fictive kin/kinship, 57, 86, 201 flow, 4, 7, 13, 43, 50, 57, 58, 79, 109 folklore, 17, 207, 209 and performance, 5 Foundation for Shamanic Studies, 15 frame analysis fabricated frames, 40 frame slippage, 40, 43, 113 framebreaking, 40 hierarchical nesting of frames, 43 pedagogical frame, 2, 41 and reflexivity, 41, 122 Freire, Paulo, 153–155 Frese, Pam, 11, 41, 67, 69, 105

G Garner, Nathan, 8, 16, 17 Geertz, Clifford, 5, 9, 22, 31, 200 gender binary, 59, 61, 65, 124 “genuine knowledge”, 22 George, Mimi, 46, 49 Gershon, Michael, 27 Ghodsee, Kristen, 188 Goffman, Erving, 4, 6, 12, 31, 32, 40, 84, 144 Gottlieb, Alma, 68, 119 Great Tree of Peace, 101, 102, 105, 106, 114 Grindal, Bruce, 188 Grotowski, Jerzy, 29, 30, 152 Grotto, the. See National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, 125 Guatemala, 85, 169, 172, 173, 175 Gunn Allen, Paula, 108

H Haitian zombie-making ritual, 71, 74, 76, 81

213 Hamatsa ritual, 47 Harner, Michael, 15, 190 Harrop, Peter, 209 Haudenosaunee, 102, 104–107 religion and spirituality, 103, 105–108, 114 hegemony/hegemonic, 10, 59–61, 84, 97, 189, 194, 210 global system, 83 structures, 56, 59 Homo sapiens, 22, 23 Hriskos, Constantine, 209 humanism, 3, 12, 69, 97, 188 humanity, 3, 188, 189 shared, 83, 85, 89, 90, 95, 97, 140 human subjects, 11

I identity/identities, 59, 62, 84–86, 88, 91, 105, 110–114, 127, 131, 135, 137, 148, 156, 169, 171, 188, 194 gendered, 61, 83 imagination, 21, 22, 27, 109, 152, 153, 163, 164, 173 imperialism, 9, 188 “impossible objects”, 160, 162 indigenous knowledge, 22 Institutional Review Board (IRB), 126, 127, 193 instructional simulations, 170 intercultural understanding, 10 and reflexivity, 85 intersubjectivity, 22 Inuit, 110, 111 Iñupiat, 111 invasion-settlement of the Western Hemisphere, 23 Ixil Maya, 169, 172, 173

J Japanese funeral, 71, 73, 74 Japanese setsubun festival, 71, 81 Jocks, Ronwanièn:te, 108

K Kantor, Tadeusz, 160, 161 Kilson, Marion, 118 kinship chart, 54, 57, 86, 87, 201 Kolodny, Annette, 59, 61 kula ring, 16, 68–70, 75, 117 Kwakiutl, 46–49, 51

214 L lacrosse, 101–103 Laster, Dominika, 29 Latin American migrants, 170 Latinx students, 96 learning embodied, 2, 16, 17, 61, 63, 89, 95, 97, 132, 133, 187, 189, 209 experiential, 14, 16, 61, 75, 83, 96, 114, 121, 130, 181, 187, 193, 207 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 41, 199, 200 Lewis, J. Lowell, 4, 17, 18, 210 lifeworlds, 153, 163 liminal/liminality and elements of danger, 14, 56, 57, 65, 84, 98 engenders reflexivity, 62 potential for innovation and transformation, 75 reversals, 12, 57, 65, 92, 98 ritual, 4, 43, 69, 93, 199 liminoid, 5 linguistics and performance, 5, 17 Lotuka (Sudan), 117 initiation ritual, 71 Lyons, Oren, 105, 114 M MacAloon, John A., 6, 31 Magnat, Virginie, 22, 97, 152, 153, 210 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 70, 121 Marxism, 12 Mauss, Marcel, 70, 138, 149 gift theory, 71 May, Matthew, 77, 79 meal, 17, 87, 91, 111, 129 ritual, 87 Menchú, Rigoberta, 172 Mendes, Anderson, 135 migration, 86, 169, 172, 173, 175, 176, 179, 180, 182, 184 Montelle, Yann-Pierre, 25 Muk’ta Pilel, 85 muscle memory, 146–148 Myerhoff, Barbara, 6, 31 N narratives, 24, 25, 39, 86, 88, 90, 133, 145, 163, 164, 175, 193 forms of assessment of performance, 88 student, 86, 88, 194

Index National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, 118, 119, 125, 126, 133, 201 Native American spirituality, 108, 112–114 Ndembu, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 33, 50, 80, 119, 122, 181, 199 wubwang’u twin ritual, 71 neurobiology of the brain and performance, 14, 22, 26 and ritual, 69 and trance, 15, 22, 28, 69 Nijland, Dirk, 142 Njaradi, Dunja, 209 nonverbal communication, 138 Norget,Kristen, 93 Norman, Heidi, 170, 171 “not-not-me state”, 171 O ofrenda(s), 93, 94, 96 Onondaga Nation, 11 P Paino, Maria, 170, 171 “partakers”, 24, 27, 141, 143 Peacock, James, 187 Pedagogy, 2, 3, 12–14, 53, 61, 62, 65, 83, 91, 98, 152–154, 164, 165, 179, 183, 184, 187, 189, 190, 193, 203, 207 embodied, 61 experiential, 3 Pedelty, Mark, 10, 11, 210 performance, 3, 10, 210 performance (uppercase) vs. performance (lowercase), 8 performance genre, 2, 4, 17, 208 performance(s) ethnography as a broad spectrum of actions, 21 classroom, 10, 12, 13, 17, 84, 85, 97, 193, 203 critical pedagogy concerned with social justice, 152 cultural, 3, 7, 40, 50, 154, 173, 207 embodied, 2, 12, 17, 22, 97, 152, 153, 157, 209 ethnographic, 1–3, 9, 10, 12, 15–18, 46, 53, 58, 59, 62, 69, 83–85, 87, 90, 92, 93, 95, 97, 98, 117, 118, 121–124, 131–133, 144, 169, 173, 189, 208, 209 gendered, 54 participation transformative, 117, 194 ritual, 54, 58, 85, 209 as a way of knowing, 97

Index wedding, 53 performance event, 57, 93 performance studies, 2, 15, 17, 153, 154, 157, 207–210 Performance Studies International, 2 performance theory, 4, 17, 26, 210 Turnerian, 2, 9, 12, 126 performative genre, 5, 40, 58 performed walking, 157, 163–165, 203 performing culture, 173 performing pilgrimage, 125–127, 129–131, 201, 202 Pfeiffer, John, 25 Pilgrimage, 2, 13, 88, 109, 118, 125–129, 202 Pink, Sarah, 153, 157, 163, 164 Pitts-Taylor, Victoria, 26, 28 “play frame”, 40, 42, 43, 57, 105 “points of contact” Between theatre and anthropology, 21 politics, 21, 22, 43, 54, 60, 107, 154, 155, 165, 208 “politics of impossibility”, 156, 165 positionality, 54, 59, 60, 83, 84, 91, 92, 97, 131, 158, 173, 194, 205 postmodernism, 2, 9 potlatch, 40, 49, 196 preparations, 32, 41, 118, 173 interconnected, 84 pre-performance, 54 processual view of society, 198 projects, 14, 69, 138, 143, 156, 164, 165, 205 classroom, 69 proto-performance, 142 psychedelic culture, 15

Q qi (ch’i), 109

R Radcliffe-Brown, E.R., 121, 198 radical pedagogy, 187, 208 rasaboxes, 22, 27 as psychophysical training, 26 re-enactments, 10, 11, 67, 69, 72, 73, 75–81, 157, 200 ritual, 1, 2, 13–16, 68, 69, 71–76, 78–80, 87, 189, 199 as strips of performance, 182 as transformative, 5 reflexive anthropology, 13, 83

215 reflexivity, 5, 43, 51, 57, 58, 62, 73, 85, 145, 158, 203, 205 in framing, 41, 122 intensified in performance, 41, 109, 110, 112–114 restored behavior, 22 Rice, Patricia C., 16, 17 Rilling, James K., 29, 30 rite of passage, 190 ritual analysis, 113, 199 as ritual drama, 8, 9, 40, 42, 112 exchange, 87 lowercase, 13 performance, 18, 25, 39, 46, 49, 54, 57, 58, 62, 85, 87, 92, 117, 190 uppercase, 8 ritual circumambulations, 119, 123 role-playing, 13, 16, 170, 209 Rotman, Brian, 28 S sacred, 17, 21, 25, 30, 41, 46, 104, 114 sacrifice, 4, 119, 121–124, 126, 176 Schechner, Richard, 1–9, 17, 22, 30, 51, 74, 83, 109, 141, 142, 152, 170, 171, 183, 203, 209 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 172 script, 7, 11, 16, 24, 32, 45, 46, 50, 51, 71, 75, 78, 79, 84, 87, 169, 203, 204 as performance knowledge, 24 Seeber, Barbara, 132 seminar, 1, 44, 45, 51, 53, 54, 56, 65, 68, 69, 97, 125, 181 Turners, 2, 12, 53, 67, 83 senses, 27, 85, 89, 95, 105, 114, 118, 128, 130, 133, 157, 163 all used in performance, 15 food, 15 setsubun festival, 71, 81 settler perspective(s), 108 shaman, 7, 24, 28, 86–88, 174 shamanism, 15, 25, 97, 190, 209 shrine(s), 87, 92, 117, 119, 121, 123–126, 128, 130–132 household, 87, 88 silence, 25, 110, 128, 157–160, 162, 165 Simpson, Audra, 107, 114, 156 Singer, Milton, 4 smudge ceremony, 106, 114 social drama, 2–4, 7, 9, 14, 16, 31, 40, 45, 50, 69, 71, 74, 77, 80, 81, 84, 85, 122, 182, 189, 198, 200

216 as ritual/ritualized, 13, 59, 98, 194 social justice, 152, 156, 165, 170, 189 social solidarity, 71 Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA), 1, 188 solicitory gifts, 70 Sotelo, Luis Carlos, 157, 163 Speck, Frank, 103, 104, 106, 107 Stanislavski, Konstantin, 151, 152 stereotype(s), 61, 170 gendered, 61 Stoll, David, 172, 182 structuralism, 199 Swazi incwala kingship ritual, 71 sweat equity, 146, 147 symbolic types, 43, 58, 61 Szajna, Józef, 151, 152, 159, 160 T Takacs, Christopher G., 129 TDR/The Drama Review, 2, 10, 39 teaching, 1, 8, 9, 16, 18, 62, 63, 68, 69, 83, 97, 98, 106, 108, 110, 112–114, 133, 141, 144, 148, 155, 170, 179, 189, 190, 194 high impact, 113 a more humanistic way, 69 Terre de L’Aigle, 104 thanksgiving prayer, 104 theater/theatre, 1–10, 13–17, 21, 25–27, 30– 32, 40, 45, 87, 151, 152, 154, 155, 181, 183, 187, 198, 200, 203, 205, 207, 208 in the classroom, 14, 109 Tooker, Elizabeth, 103, 106 “traces of silence”, 157–160, 162, 164, 165 trance, 15, 22, 23, 27, 28, 30, 69 Treanor, Brian, 132 Tubuan masked figure, 49 Turnbull, Colin, 5, 8, 16, 183 Turner, Edith (Edie), 1–3, 5, 9, 10, 14, 15, 23, 30–33, 41, 53, 54, 56–58, 64, 67,

Index 68, 81, 83, 84, 92, 97, 111, 117, 118, 125, 152, 183, 189, 203, 206, 208 Turner, Victor (Vic), 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 22, 30, 32, 33, 41, 44, 45, 49, 51, 53, 54, 56–58, 64, 67–69, 79, 83, 84, 97, 114, 117–119, 121–123, 125, 152, 170, 182, 183, 190, 199, 203, 206, 209 Tzotzil Maya, 85

V Victor Turner Memorial Sacrifice, 117, 118, 130 Vietnam War, 15, 188 Vodun/Voodoo/vodou, 29, 74, 77, 78, 80 Vogt, Evon, 11, 84–87

W Wacquant, Loïc, 146–148 Wade, Peter, 148 Wagner, Roy, 3, 15, 33, 68, 97, 98, 190 Walens, Stanley, 46, 49, 181 Wallace, Mark, 108 Wedding(s), 4, 12, 41, 43, 54, 56–59, 61, 67, 172 Anglo-American, 53, 58, 59, 62 Weiner, Annette, 70 Wellman, Rose, 64, 188, 190 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 6 Burg Wartenstein Symposia, 6 “whiteshamans”, 107 Wiccan initiation, 71, 76, 80 Winkowski, Mary Ann, 97 Worthen, James, 10 Wulff, Helena, 146, 148

Z Zinacantán, 11, 57, 85–88, 91