Re-Writing Culture

Author(s): Paul Stoller

Source: Etnofoor, Vol. 21, No. 1, Writing Culture (2009), pp. 45-59
Published by: Stichting Etnofoor
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25758150
Accessed: 11-11-2016 19:18 UTC

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Re-Writing Criture
Paul Stoller
West Chester University

There is a wonderful Sufi story, first told in the ninth
century, about the confrontation of water and sand.
The waters of The River, which had been flowing
joyously downstream toward their ultimate destination,
suddenly confronted the sands of The Desert. Seeing
that the sea of sand absorbed its waters, The River
despaired:
'How will I ever cross these sands? What will
become of me? Will I become a marsh of dead water?
Will I completely disappear into the sands?'
Just then, The River heard a whisper, the voice of
The Desert. 'Why do you despair, my friend/ The
Desert said.
'Because/The River said, 'I have all this water and I
need to cross to the other side of you. If I cant do that,
I will disappear/
'You worry too much/The Desert said. 'What is the
essence of water?'
'To flow to a destination/The River answered. 'How
can I get my waters across the desert?'
'There is no reason why you cannot reach your
destination, my friend/
'How can that be/ The River protested. 'As soon as
my waters flow upon your sands, they are absorbed/
'Yes/ said The Desert, 'that is true. But there is more
than the flow of water, is there not? Water can evapo
rate over my sands and be carried up into the sky. There
the water can form clouds, and the clouds can be
pushed by the wind to a place on the other side of my
sands. There rain can fall and water can flow again/
'But that is not my way/ complained The River, 'I
only know how to flow. I know nothing of clouds, wind
and rain. Clouds, wind and rain are not my essential
nature/
'Well, my friend/ said The Desert, 'you can remain
as you are and you will, indeed disappear. Or you can

Etnofoor, Writing Culture, volume 21, issue 1,2009, pp. 45-59

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accept a broader view of things and let your waters find
their way to the lands beyond my sea of sand where
they will fall and flow once again (Shah 1993).
Like most Sufi stories, this one has wide applicability. It
speaks to the deathly dangers of existential rigidity as
well as to the richly restorative powers of imaginative
adaptability. The story, of course, has great relevance for
contemporary anthropology. Is there only one way to do
anthropology? Or, as my teacher, Adamu Jenitongo, a
renowned healer among the Songhay people of Niger
used to tell me, are there many paths we can follow to
our destination? Like The River, have we confronted a
disciplinary desert that threatens to absorb our words
and deeds, making them irrelevant or, worse yet, invis
ible to future generations of scholars? Or, is there a way
for us to get beyond the sea of desolate desert sand?
Adamu Jenitongo took the more flexible approach to
living in the world. What matters in life, he used to tell
me, is less the record of our deeds than the capacity to
pass on what we know to those who choose to follow us.
They are the ones, he would say, who will refine what
we have taught them and make the world a better place.
In this essay I discuss the tension between institu
tional constraint and representational creativity, which,
like the confrontation between water' and 'sand/
triggers a tension that has defined the history of many
academic disciplines, including, of course, that of
anthropology. In general, those who control institu
tions define what is important, which means they
decide what kind of projects get funded, what kinds of
books and articles get published and who gets rewarded
for their efforts. If you find yourself outside the
paradigm, which designates a certain way of doing
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things, you find your way cluttered with roadblocks.
And yet, as I attempt to demonstrate in this essay, the
tension between institutional constraint (water) and
individual creativity ('sand') can sometimes be a
productive one.
Academic institutions usually approach the produc
tion of knowledge from a short-term perspective.
Following the lead of my mentor, Adamu Jenitongo, I
prefer to use a long-term approach to the production of
knowledge. What will people say about books published
this year - or, for that matter, this essay - 50 or 75 years
from now? By recounting my own struggles with the
productive tension triggered by the confrontation of
institutional constraint and individual creativity, I
attempt to demonstrate that what matters in anthro
pology - or any other academic discipline - is not so
much the theories we espouse as the stories we tell -
stories that have the narrative breadth to capture the
complexities of contemporary social relations. If those
stories create a connection between writers and readers,
they will be remembered, savored and used to refine
our comprehension of increasingly complex social
worlds - a re-writing of culture.
Structuralist stresses
I was once a structuralist. Yes, I admit it. Its true. You
see, in the early 1970s I began my graduate studies in
linguistics. Back then, scholars believed that by using
the powerful theories of social science, they could
uncover universals that could explain the great mysteries
of cognitive development (Chomsky's notion of trans
formational grammar, for example, as in Aspects of the
Theory of Grammar), understand the dynamics of social
change (Marx s theories of historical materialism and
dialectical materialism applied to sociology and anthro
pology), or comprehend the mysteries of the human
mind (as in Levi-Stausss The Savage Mind). Under
lying these disparate theories was a deeply embedded
rationalism, forged during the Enlightenment, in
which (social) scientists used the precise tools of their
trade (mathematics, statistics, logic, experimental
observation) to transform the chaos of observed reality
into some kind of orderly, even formulaic order (see
Tambiah 1994; Stoller 1997a, 1998, 2008). And so
when, with a masters of linguistics in hand, I began to
study cultural anthropology the linguistic underpin
nings of Levi-Strausss brand of 'structural anthro
pology ' resonated with my linguistic sensibilities. In
short, I thought, the Levi-Straussian approach could
refine our comprehension of human cognition, which,
in turn, would take of us a step closer to explaining the
whys and wherefores of human nature.
My sense of intellectual enthusiasm was not an
isolated one. During the 1970s French structuralism
triggered much excitement among social scientists and
literary scholars. Given this climate, it was not too
difficult for me, a Levi-Strauss-inspired starry-eyed,
and (not to forget) exceedingly poor graduate student,
to receive generous funding for both doctoral and post
doctoral research. My doctoral research took place in
the Songhay-speaking areas of the Republic of Niger. I
gathered data on the use of language in local-level
politics and began a long-term study of Songhay
religion, including research on Songhay myth, sorcery,
and spirit possession - subjects that lent themselves to
structuralist analysis.
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Having dutifully played by institutional rules, my
'theoretically sophisticated' proposal received funding
and my dissertation won the hard-fought approval of
my doctoral committee. Having been granted a
doctorate and wishing to continue my research, I
applied for a postdoctoral grant to study myth and
healing among the Songhay people from, as you might
have guessed, a structuralist perspective. Imagine my
elation when I discovered that I had been awarded a
postdoctoral fellowship to work in Paris at Claude
Levi-Strauss's Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale (LAS).
Finally, I told myself, I'd be able absorb structuralism
from its source. Such a rich intellectual environment
would help me to understand the difficult ontological
problems I had faced as a student of Songhay sorcery.
After several months of heady seminars, including
those of Claude Levi-Strauss, I became disillusioned
with structuralism. Granted, the analytical framework
that I began to understand with some degree of nuance,
was intellectually elegant. But the logical gymnastics of
structuralist analysis seemed far removed from the
vexing realities that I had confronted among Songhay
sorcerers. Can you actually smell a witch? How can
great sorcerers carry in their stomachs a small metal
chain? How can cowry shells 'speak' to a diviner? How
can words change behavior? As one sorcerer once said
to me: 'You look but you don't see. You listen but you
don't hear. You touch but you don't feel.' This man
claimed that if I were to understand Songhay sorcery I
would have to learn 'see,' 'hear,' and 'feel' and that such
learning might take as long as 20 years of apprentice
ship (See Stoller 2004,2008; Stoller and Olkes 1987).
Arcane structuralist debate did not provide answers to
these fundamentally existential issues.
47
 Phenomenal phenomenology
My disillusionment with French structuralism did not
devolve from its intellectual contours but rather from
its analytical distanciation from the imponderables of
lived experience. The seemingly inexplicable power of
my sorcerous experience among the Songhay people
compelled me toward phenomenology, which Levi
Straus found a troubling exercise that attempted to fuse
reality and experience. For him those two domains
should remain discontinuous. In the early 1980s only a
handful of anthropologists had embraced a phenome
nological orientation to anthropology. With critics like
Levi-Strauss and Pierre Bourdieu (1990), it was diffi
cult to justify, given the aforementioned institutional
constraints, a research project, let alone an essay or
book, based upon phenomenological principles and
methods. Even so, it made sense - at least to me - that
research and writing on sorcerous practices should
foreground rather than background lived experience.
The specter of phenomenology in the social sciences,
of course, did present a number of epistemological
problems. In its classic Husserlian version, phenome
nology focused mostly on a multi-step method, the
epoche, as a way for the observer to apprehend the pure
immediacy of the observed object - getting back to the
things themselves' (Husserl 1970: 12). As Michael
Jackson put it, phenomenology '...is an attempt to
describe human consciousness in its lived immediacy
before it is subject to theoretical elaboration or concep
tual systematization (Jackson 1996:2). Although many
scholars appreciated Husserls philosophical break
through, many philosophers of a more sociological
persuasion worried that Husserls approach was inat
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tentive to how a person lives in the everyday world.
And so scholars like Alfred Schutz attempted to extend
Husserls phenomenological insights to the study of
life in what Schutz called the paramount reality' -
everyday life.
Having immersed myself in this literature (espe
cially the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty), which I
first broached as an undergraduate student of philos
ophy, I now had at least a partial answer how I might
learn to 'see,"feel,'and 'hear.T came to understand that
apprenticeship in Songhay sorcery was an embodied
experience in which one learns not through texts or
analysis but through the body itself. That revelation
convinced me that a more sociological phenomenology
had to be an embodied act - an immersion in 'things
themselves.' If field research on sorcery - or anything
else - was a phenomenologically embedded act, how
might I represent such experience? I tried to write
essays about Songhay sorcery using institutionally
sanctioned plain style - the bloodless prose of the
natural and human sciences. Like structuralism and
Husserlian phenomenology, such a textual tact seemed
incongruous; it smoothed the rough textures of my
experiences as a student of sorcery. And so I began to
experiment with alternate textual styles and structures.
I played with narratives, weaving them into scholarly
analysis. Many senior anthropologists, whose opinions
determine the fate of an essay, quickly rejected these
experiments,' suggesting that scholars would not be
interested in reading 'stories' in a scientific journal. A
few of these essays eventually found their way into
print, but I learned a fundamental institutional lesson.
If you follow the institutional rules on theoretical ques
tions, research methodology, and conventions of repre
sentation foundations are more likely to fund your
research project, major journals are more likely to
accept your scholarly essay, and major publishers are
more likely to publish your book. If you don t follow the
rules, institutional constraints make it difficult for your
research project to receive funding or for your manu
script to get published. Grants and publications, of
course, are key determinants of institutional advance
ment - finding academic employment and then
climbing the ladder of the professoriate. Faced with
this institutional reality, I tried to play by the rules and
muddled my way along the anthropological path.
Writing culture
In the early 1980s, when I was struggling with ways to
represent the inexplicable realities I had encountered
among Songhay sorcerers, I, like many anthropologists
in my cohort, began to read what was to be called
'theory.' Theory first beguiled me during my postdoc
toral fellowship chez Levi-Strauss. While I found Levi
Strauss s seminars to be fascinating, I was inspired by
the lectures of his College de France colleagues, Michel
Foucault and Roland Barthes. Foucault's lectures on
sexuality and Barthes s course on photography spurred
me to read a broad range of French theorists - post
structuralists, psychoanalysis, as well Derrida, who, I
suppose, deserves his own category.
The attraction of theory eventually drew of group of
well-known ethnographers to the School of American
Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico to attend an
advanced seminar on the representation of culture, the
papers of which eventually got transformed into the
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transformational volume, Writing Culture. Along with
George Marcus and Michael Fischers important
volume, Anthropology as Cultural Critique, Writing
Culture shifted the anthropological sands - a produc
tive confrontation of water* and 'sand/ After those
critiques of the 1980s, according to Marcus, '...the
agendas of anthropological research became almost
wholly shaped and defined by the interdisciplinary
movements with which it associated and which inspired
it: feminist studies, media studies, postcolonial and
subaltern studies, sciences studies, etc. - all fueled by
theoretical surges during the 1970s and 1980s coming
from France and transmitted largely through literary
studies wanting to become cultural studies' (Marcus
2008: 3).
Several important institutional changes occurred.
The four-field approach to anthropology, which
broadly incorporated cultural, linguistic, biological and
archaeological studies, became less relevant. The
concept of culture eventually lost its centrality to the
discipline's self-identification. Discussion of the philo
sophical ramifications of representation, including, of
course, the dynamics of its political power, filled the
pages of both scholarly journals and books. These
changes expanded the scope of anthropological
research. Review panels of senior scholars now approved
research projects focusing upon media, feminist, post
colonial and sciences studies. Readers for the major
journals and most prominent academic presses began
to recommend for publication more reflexive essays
and books in which narrative and sensuous description
played a more significant role.
Much has been written about Writing Culture.
Anthropologists have derided it as a text of post
49
modern pabulum that seriously undermined the disci Writing on the mind-boggling feats of Songhay sorcery
pline s scientific foundation. Others marked Writing necessitated - at least for me - a memoir-like text of
Culture as a signal moment in anthropology's evolu cool prose that represented a hot subject. Work on
tion, making the discipline more textually accessible spirit possession, which among the Songhay is a social
and politically accountable. phenomenon of operatic complexity, called for a mix of
Much of these debates focused on the writing of narrative (about mediums, spirit priests, and deities),
ethnography, the core product in the production of ethnographic description (of ritual dancing and music,
anthropological knowledge. Much of these debates, in praise-poetry and sacrifice, and ritual symbols and their
turn, consisted of extensive writing about writing/ For cultural referents), and cultural analysis (of the relation
an ethnographer struggling to write about sorcery, of spirit possession to cosmology and the texture of
these epistemological debates seemed less important Songhay experience in the world). Essays on the
than the institutional shift that would enable the publi anthropology of the senses, a more theoretical pursuit,
cation of narrative ethnographies. This exciting climate conformed more strictly to the conventions of scholarly
of change and creativity encouraged me to write my texts. No matter the intended audience of these essays,
first book,/;* Sorcery's Shadow (Stoller and Olkes 1987), however, I used storytelling - and sometimes humor -
not as a direct anthropological study of Songhay as a way to attract readers to the text - a writerly conceit
sorcery, but as a memoir in which detailed ethnography rather than rather an academic one (see Stoller 1989a,
was described through narrative. 1989b, 1992, 1997a). The more ethnographic works
Some critics loved In Sorcerys Shadow; others hated attracted a larger audience of readers than the more
it. I learned two lessons from publishing my first book scholarly essays on the senses. The scholarly essays,
as an experimental ethnography.' First, I realized that which were much less imaginative works, received more
from an institutional perspective, it was more impor disciplinary attention. Given the aforementioned insti
tant to write about writing narrative ethnography than tutional priorities, this trend did not surprise me.
to actually produce one. Second, I learned that writing In the early 1990s when I began to conduct research
narrative ethnography made serious anthropology in New York City among West African immigrants, I
accessible to a much more diverse audience of readers. thought I had found a good professional niche. The use
Given the force of institutional priorities, I tried to find of narrative gave my works the possibility of reaching
a way of writing that would not only make intellectual wide audiences, which meant that a diverse group of
contributions to the discipline, but also reach a wide readers might consume the fruits of my research.
audience of readers. And so tried to write subsequent Meanwhile, the more scholarly works I produced spoke
texts in which narrative was fore grounded in some to a more narrow range of theoretical issues that in
way. In so doing I discovered that there was no tried some way contributed to disciplinary debate. In some
and true way of writing culture. Each set of materials, I way, then, I felt that emphasizing different genres -
came to realize, required distinct textual strategies. narrative ethnography and the scholarly essay - I had

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met my professional obligations as both a writer and an
anthropologist.
New York City
Ethnographic fieldwork in New York City turned my
anthropological world upside down. In Niger, I focused
on a narrow band of interests, the traditional religion of
the Songhay people to the exclusion of such important
factors as Islam, the power of the state, multi-ethnic
conflict and social class. What's more, in Niger I was
ethically but not politically accountable. The President
of the Republic had authorized my research and his
letter gave me license to insert myself in the social life
of Songhay villages, the inhabitants of which felt
compelled, whether they liked it or not, to answer my
incessant questions. Few of these people, most of whom
were illiterate, would read the results of my ethno
graphic research (see Stoller 1997b, 2002). In New
York City, field conditions changed considerably. I was
a white ethnographer working on the streets of Harlem,
a sacred space in the African American imaginary. On
125th Street, the major thoroughfare of Harlem and the
site of a West African market, my whiteness aroused
suspicion.
'Who is this white man?' Harlemites would often
ask the West African street traders who had became
my friends.
'He's our friend,'they'd say. 'He lived in our country
and he comes here to talk and eat African food.'
By the same token, the questionable immigration
status of my West African friends and the fact that
their economic practices often violated city regulations
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and trademark and copyright statutes made many of
them wary of my ongoing presence. This wariness
compelled me to take a gradual approach to fieldwork,
provided enough time for me to earn the respect of my
friends. While I engaged in the spirited market banter
that would one day lead to relationships based upon
mutual trust, I also realized that if I were to understand
West African immigrants I'd need to broader my
ethnographic scope. In Niger, I focused, quite narrowly,
on the traditional religious practices of Songhay people,
excluding study of Islam, the power of the state,
economics, and social class.
In New York, I would need to grasp the ethno
graphic particulars of West African immigrant life, but
also understand the geographic, economic and legal
aspects of their lives. In this way, I would have a more
refined comprehension of the multi-national networks
they had constructed to make their way in America. I
soon discovered that my West African friends, whose
social and cultural resilience had inspired me, confronted
a world of staggering economic and personal complexity
(Stoller 1997b, 2002,2008).
Consider the complexity of Boube Mounkaila's
personal life. Boube has been living and working in
New York City for more than 15 years. Departing
Niger to make his way in a new world, he left behind a
new wife and a baby. In his early New York years, he
sold knock-off handbags from a blanket he positioned
on a 34th Street sidewalk in the Times Square area of
Midtown Manhattan. After the police confiscated his
goods several times, he decided to try his luck on 125th
Street, the major thoroughfare in Harlem, where he
sold leather' handbags and baseball hats from table on
Harlem's wide sidewalks. When Rudolf Giuliani shut
51
down the 125th Street market in 1994 he moved his calligraphy. On Saturdays, they study the Koran at a
operation to an unheated store front near Canal Street Harlem mosque where they are learning to write and
in Lower Manhattan. Since 1995, he has sold his wares speak Arabic. In the summer of2008 Boube's daughter
from a market stall in the Malcolm Shabazz Harlem will spend more than two months in Japan where she
Market where he runs an enterprise called The Kuru will live with her aunt and grandmother. Although
Store. Boube is happy with the Muslim education of his son
Like many West African immigrants in New York and daughter, he would like to send his American
City Boube sends money home to his family, funds children to a cultural center, where they would learn
which aid his parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, many Songhay language and culture. So far he hasnt found
of whom live in Karma, a village along the east bank of such a center. 'I want them to speak my language and
the Niger River some 40 kilometers north of Niamey, know my customs/ Boube told me recently. 'If I am
Niger's capital. When he first lived in New York, he able to send them to Niger, Inshallah, my relatives will
had roommates with whom he shared an apartment teach them our ways. Maybe they will go there when
and expenses. His frugal life allowed him to invest in they are older. For now they are American kids who
inventory and send even more money home. When his speak English like New Yorkers/
business developed through the construction of a Like the social realms of most West African traders
multi-national and multi-cultural network of business in New York City, Boube s world, is, to say the least,
associates, Boube moved out his one room 127th street socially and culturally complex. To make his way in
dwelling and found a three-room space on Lenox New York, he speaks several languages (English,
Avenue between 126th and 127th streets. This apart French, Songhay, Hausa, Bamana, and some Spanish)
ment, which is situated above the well-known Harlem to function successfully in his economic, social and
eatery, Sylvias, has been Boube's home for more than cultural networks, all of which have a transnational
ten years. character. He works long hours so that he is able to
Boube's initially spacious apartment has become meet multifaceted economic expectations: school fees,
more and more crowded. In the late 1990s he met a rent, utility costs, clothing purchases, business expendi
Japanese tourist who moved in with him. In time they tures, tax obligations, a YMCA membership for his
had two children, a girl and a boy and built a truly children, a Bally's Gym membership for the mother of
multi-cultural household. The children speak Japanese his children. In addition, he regularly wires money to
to their mother, who works nights at a Midtown Niger to meet social obligations to his wife, child, aunts,
Japanese restaurant and English to their father and uncles and cousins. Boube, as my West African friends
friends. The children, now 10 and 7 years old, attend a like to say, is a 'New Yorkais/and the social and cultural
public school for gifted students. On Tuesdays the complexity of his situation is not uncommon among
children take Japanese lessons at a Midtown cultural his West African brothers and sisters, all of whom are
center, where they refine their Japanese and learn part of a complex, transnational network. If this kind of

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 transnational and trans-cultural social complexity is
the rule rather than the exception, what is a scholar of
the African Diaspora to do? How do we write this
culture?
After more than eight years of fieldwork in New
York City, I frankly did not know how to write about
my friends in Harlem. Then one day as I sat in a dank
Manhattan warehouse where West African art
merchants stocked their masks and statues, an art
trader named Yaya Oumarou had a conversation with
me. I had been looking at some beautiful West African
blankets and told him I had been thinking about
Songhay weavers.
Ah, the weavers/ he said with enthusiasm. 'They are
great artists.
They say that they weave the world/
'That's what Ive heard,T stated. I then explained to
him the expository difficulties I had been facing.
Yaya smiled. 'Why don't you write about us the way
a weaver weaves a blanket? Why not weave the world
with words?'
Yaya Oumarou provided the innovative spark that
enabled me to write Money Has No Smell (Stoller 2002)
as if it were a Songhay blanket. I produced a text in
patterned strips and once those strips had been crafted,
I tried to weave them together. The warp and weft of
the strips foregrounded the stories of three West
African traders, whose compelling tales of creative
adaptation to the alienating quandaries of transnational
New York, I hoped, would give the text a humanistic
texture. Here were stories of men who walked on a path
of cultural adventure that cut through a strange and
complex landscape. How did they make their way from
rural Niger to New York City? How did they construct
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multi-national trading networks? What was the role
that Islam played in their way of trading? How did they
respond to American racism? How did they adapt to
the alienating aspects of contemporary American
culture, especially as it orchestrates itself in urban New
York? Those strips revealed a complex pattern, and yet
the strips had to be connected in order to weave a
complete blanket - to weave the world. And so, I
attempted to use social analysis - of transnationalism,
of the West African culture of trade, of contemporary
immigration, of American state power in its local,
regional and national aspects, of the social alienation of
Muslim West Africans in the secular United States.
The result was a book in which I tried, like the Songhay
weaver, to connect the individual to the group, the
neighborhood to the world, and the narrative to its
larger context. That, as Yaya Oumarou would argue,
was my attempt to rearrange a tangle of ethnographic
data in order to weave the world. This tack was a
creative and institutionally acceptable path to describe
complex urban communities in a transnational world
(Stoller2008).
Stranger in the village of the sick
And yet, there is no such thing as a perfect blanket that
can be used for all occasions. In time the threads of any
blanket eventually wear down. In that circumstance,
you can try to mend the blanket, which means you use
new threads to produce the same pattern. Placed in a
scholarly context, you may find yourself using slighdy
different words, but end up saying the same thing - an
occupational hazard for scholars!! Sometimes, though,
53
you find yourself caught between patterns that have
lost their power to bind the story That's when you can
no longer mend the blanket. That's when you begin to
weave a new work and tell a new story
In my case, being diagnosed with and treated for
cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma to be specific, rede
fined my relationship to myself and to the world.
Facing your mortality compels you to focus on what is
important in your personal and professional life. Indeed,
I quickly learned that the personal and the profession
are not separate domains of experience. For one thing,
the embodied experience of a deadly disease as well as
a horrific regime of treatment made me reconsider my
study of Songhay sorcery (see Stoller 2004). When I
began a regime of chemotherapy and immunotherapy,
I realized that my previous comprehension of sorcery
as the deadly exercise of power had been a superficial
one. Like Renato Rosaldo's confrontation with 'Grief
and the Headhunter's Rage' at the tragic accidental
death of his wife, I hadn't had the necessary set of
embodied experiences to 'understand' the lessons that
Adamu Jenitongo taught me 25 years earlier. After
coming close to death myself, I gained the existential
perspective to understand finally what he had taught
me: that sorcery for Songhay people, is first and
foremost a way to carry yourself in the world, a way to
respond to adversity with dignity, a way to be comfort
able in your skin, a way to see as well as look, a way to
hear as well as listen, a way to feel as well as touch.
Experience with lymphoma also changed my sense
of scholarly obligation. Cancer swept away my concern
with institutional constraint. Obscure debate still
interested me and I continued to read about theoretical
developments in journals, anthologies and book-length
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studies. But after a brush with death, I wondered why
we spent so much time debating theories and develop
ments that seemed far removed from the concerns of
the world? With time in the world so short, why waste
it on arcane debates that only a few people would find
interesting? I became convinced that my principal obli
gation as an anthropologist was to transform my
particular set of ethnographic experiences into stories
the lessons of which readers could use to make their
world just a little sweeter. I wrote Stranger in the Village
of the Sick (Stoller 2004) not as an anthropological
treatise, but rather as a story of how I used the princi
ples of Songhay sorcery to confront the specter of
cancer in my life. I wrote that memoir as a rather
straightforward story so that cancer patients who
happened to read the work might, if they so desired,
use some of the principles in their own struggles in the
space between the health and illness. I had taken on the
obligations of the storyteller (see Benjamin 1968;
Taussig 2006).
Imagination and the power of stories
In the human sciences, storytelling - and storytellers -
is given short shrift. The central elements of narrative
- the description of place, the construction of character,
the patter of dialogue - are often seen as out of place or
worse yet, unscientific. These elements do not conform
to the aforementioned plain style that has been the
foundation of scientific discourse for centuries. As
Michael Taussig 2006: viii) recently put it, you can ..
lay bare what goes on in anthropological fieldwork as a
prolonged encounter with others fraught with misun
derstandings that actually open up the world more than
do understandings.' Even so, the forces of modernity -
and of social (scientific institutions) - have brought on
the decline of storytelling.
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because
the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. This,
however, is a process that has been going on for a
long time. And nothing would be more fatuous than
to want to see in it merely a 'symptom of decay,' let
alone a 'modern' symptom. It is, rather, only a
concomitant that has quite gradually removed
narrative from the realm of living speech and at the
same time is making it possible to see a new beauty
in what is vanishing (Benjamin 1969: 87).
And yet, storytelling is a powerful force. Storytellers
.. .reach back to a whole lifetime (a life, incidentally,
that comprises not only his own experience but no
little of the experience of others; what the storyteller
knows from hearsay is added to his own). His gift is
the ability to relate his life; his distinction, to be able
to tell his entire life. The storyteller: he is the man
who could let the wick of his life be consumed
completely by the gentle flame of his story This is
the basis of the incomparable aura of the story
teller... (Benjamin 1969:108-09).
Extending Benjamin's insights on how stories have
mediated bourgeois and peasant, civilized and primi
tive, Taussig reflects critically on the importance of
stories in anthropology.
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This mediation between bourgeois and peasant has
of course been crucial to the stories that anthropolo
gists have built all their work on since E.B., Tylor
published the path breaking Primitive Culture in
1872, if only because in the field (that sonorous
term) it is always by means of stories (occasionally
termed 'cases') that 'information/ whether on
'kinship' or on 'mythology' or 'economics' or whatever
is in fact transmitted to the investigator.. .whose job
it is to further mediate to the bourgeois readers.
Anthropology is blind to how much its practice
relies on the art of telling other people's stories?
badly. What happens is that those stories are elabo
rated as scientific observations gleaned not from
storytellers but from 'informants' (Taussig 2006:
62).
You have to be imaginative to recount a story that
connects a storyteller to her or his audience.
The late Jean Rouch, the great documentary film
maker and anthropologist, used to tell me to play with
my imagination. He urged me to take risks. He certainly
did so by producing creatively structured anti-racist
and anti-colonial films. His critics damned him for
creating 'radically original films that challenged the
unabashed racism that dominated the political and
social discourse during the colonial epoch' (See Stoller
2002, 2008). Rouch's view of the imagination links it
with artistic creativity. From this vantage, the imagina
tion, in all of its artistic permutations, enables us to
approach the world afresh. Inspired by the imagination,
art enables us to weave the world, to design a new
blanket. As Jean Rouch would say, the imagination
enables us to tell stories, which give birth to new stories,
55
which generate, in their turn, more stories. In the end,
the imagination always brings us back to the story.
Dogon delights and the re-writing of
culture
In the words of the late Germaine Dieterlen, one of the
greats of 20th century French anthropology, the Dogon
people of the Bandiagara Cliffs in Mali are 'the philoso
phers of West Africa/Indeed, if you read the transcrip
tions of Dogon songs and sayings, it becomes evident
that they have long pondered the mysteries of life and
death. But it is through the Sigui ceremonies, held every
60 years, that the Dogon dramatize their most profound
thoughts about imponderables of life and the nature of
death. Although anthropologists like Marcel Griaule
had written authoritatively about the Sigui, no anthro
pologist had ever witnessed a Sigui ceremony Given the
prospect of a new sequence of Sigui ceremonies that
would begin in 1967, how should anthropologists
approach this complex ceremony? Jean Rouch, who had
conducted fieldwork among Dogon as well as the
Songhay, thought that film, rather than a more accept
able' textual evocation, might be the medium to probe
the deep philosophical mysteries of the ceremonies.
Overcoming a variety of obstacles, Jean Rouch and
Germaine Dieterlen filmed the entire sequence of Sigui
ceremonies between 1967 and 1973. In 1967 Rouch,
Dieterlen, Gilbert Rouget, an ethnomusicologist and
Guindo Ibrahim, a sound technician, traveled to Yougou
to film the first of the seven yearly ceremonies. Shaded by
a giant baobab tree, the Sigui initiates, all men naked to
the waist, danced in a serpentine procession. Rouch wrote:
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I will always remember this sequenced pan...of
several minutes, where I discovered the Tai square
overrun little by little by a serpentine line of men,
classed strictly by age ranks, all dressed in indigo
cotton trousers, bare-chested, wearing on their
necks and ears and arms their wives'or sisters'adorn
ments, their heads covered by white embroidered
bonnets...carrying in their right hand a fly whisk,
and in their left hand the dunno, the T-shaped chair,
and singing to the rhythm of the drums: 'The Sigui
takes off on the wings of the wind' (Rouch 1978:
17-18).
Like the Sigui, Rouch and camera took off on 'the
wings of the wind' and flew for seven years.
Prior to the film, the Dogon had a particularistic view
of the Sigui They knew how to stage the Sigui ceremo
nies celebrated in their own villages. Using the filmed
images of the entire ceremonial sequence, which
included symbolically distinct footage from seven
villages along the Bandiagara cliffs, Rouch and Diet
erlen could interpret the Sigui from a broader perspec
tive. From this vantage, they discovered that the Sigui
was fundamentally about life, death and rebirth. During
the first three years of the cycle, the ceremonies,
performed in Yougou,Tyougou, and Bongo, evoked the
whys and wherefores of death-in-the-world. The final
four ceremonies, performed in Amani, Ideyli, Yami,
and Songo, evoked themes of life-in-the-world. The
sixty years between ceremonial cycles represented the
sixty-year life span of the first human being, Diounou
Serou. The Sigui, in fact, is the seven-year celebration
of Diounou Serous immortal reincarnation as a great
serpent. The serpent, symbolized by the serpentine line
 of dancers described above, flies on the wings of wind.
The Sigui takes off in Yougou. After a seven-year
journey that winds like a snake through the major
Dogon villages, the Sigui returns from Songo to the
place of his death and rebirth, Yougou where, after
another 60 years, the cycle will repeat itself and the
world will be reborn - in 2027.
Like the Dogon who live between the 60-year cycles
of the Sigui, between death and rebirth, Rouch tapped
these unstated tensions to confront the complex issues
of power and race. He did so by making provocatively
imaginative films, films of what he called ethno
fiction.' These included Jaguar (1957-67), Les maitres
fous (1955),Moi, un ;20/V(1958) andLtfpyramid'humaine
(1959), Chronique d'un ete (1960), and the wonderfully
humorous Petit a petit (1969). In all of these films,
Rouch collaborated significantly with African friends
and colleagues. By situating himself in the indetermi
nacy of active collaboration, which involved all aspects
of shooting and production, Rouch used the camera -
an instrument between the filmmaker and the filmed
- to participate fully in the lives of the people he filmed.
This collaboration resulted in a new kind of film that
provoked a wide range of audiences into imagining
new dimensions of socio-cultural experience. Many of
the films of this period cut to the flesh and blood of
European colonialism, compelling us to reflect on our
latent racism, our repressed sexuality, and the taken
for-granted assumptions of our intellectual heritage.
Through his provocative films, Jean Rouch unveiled
how relations of power shape our dreams, thoughts and
actions. He used film as a medium to bridge the spaces
between things, spaces that empowered him to take
risks in order to tell his stories, stories that enabled the
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dead to live again, stories that empowered the young to
connect with their past and imagine their future. Such
is the work of ethnography. Such is the legacy of story
telling. Such is the anthropologist s gift to the world.
Anthropologists have usually wanted to 'write
culture' as if culture can be written up dispassionately
- a text untainted with imaginative prose. Given the
complex nature of contemporary social worlds and the
representational challenges we confront, perhaps we
need to re-write culture in the same way the artists
continue to re-work their expressive imagery to capture
varying perspectives of a complex reality. For anthro
pologists such a tack means employing a variety of
genres - ethnography, memoir, fiction, drama - all to
create bonds between our anthropological conscious
ness and that of an ever-expanding audience in every
increasing need of cross-cultural knowledge.
For the epilogue to my first book, In Sorcery's Shadow,
I chose a favorite aphorism from Wittgensteins Philo
sophical Investigations (1953): 'We see the straight
highway before us, but of course we cannot use it,
because it is permanently closed.' The straight highway
is a tempting path. You make good time traveling to
your destination and there are few, if any surprises,
along the way. Although our experiences 'in the field'
may take us on a 'being-there' detour, our 'being-here'
institutions lead us back to the tried and true highway
- the institutional highway - that often bypasses the
wonders of the inexplicable.
And yet, there is something irreducibly powerful
about the social worlds we confront on the anthropo
logical path. Despite my best efforts at systematic
explanation, the Songhay worlds of sorcery and spirit
possession have resisted the reductive force of theoriza
57
 tion. The complex social forms constructed by West
African immigrants in New York City have also defied
theoretical reduction. Although the power of these
fundamental social phenomena pushed me toward the
side roads of experience, my intellectual socialization
always lured me back toward the straight highway, the
place where disciplinary contributions - and reputa
tions - are made. Even though I tried to represent my
ethnographic experiences in various ways - fiction,
essays, ethnography, and memoir -1, like most scholars,
still wanted to produce a theoretical treatise that
colleagues would cite in their disciplinary debates.
The lessons of a life lived in anthropology suggest
that theoretical treatises, the hallmark of the institu
tion, are not that important. For many years I sought
concrete answers to the quandaries of the human
condition. Such intellectual work is exceedingly impor
tant, but in the end its sinuous path has led me not to
some grandiose conclusion about the nature of human
being but rather to accept the ultimate impermanence
of things. It has led me not to semi-conscious travel on
the straight highway but to passionate flight on the
wings of the wind.' Like to the waters of The River, it
has led me to confront the sands of The Desert, where
conditions have forced me to adapt to an ever-changing
impermanent reality. Between sand and water there is a
space of obligation in which we might attempt re-write
culture such that traces of our knowledge will be left
for the next generation of scholars - to use, if at all, in
their own fashion.
E-mail: PStoller@wcupa.edu
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Acknowledgments
This essay is based upon 30 years of experience in
anthropology. I am indebted to many institutions that
have supported my research and have given me time to
write. These include West Chester University, the
National Science Foundation, The National Endow
ment for the Humanities, The John Simon Guggen
heim Foundation, The Wenner-Gren Foundation, The
American Philosophical Society, and The School of
Advanced Research. The essay is adapted from my
book, The Power of the Between: An Anthropological
Odyssey (2008), in which the issues here considered are
developed in much fuller and sometimes humorous
detail.
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