Annals of Ostracism (1)—Alone in the Arctic

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Annals of Ostracism."

[a] Cool  RF

Today, I want to examine a section in Jean Briggs’s superb ethnography on her life with the Utku in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Hers is one of the first (and best) truly reflexive ethnographies, and her work combined with that of one of my teachers, Paul Riesman, and several other anthropologists doing fieldwork in the 1960s to create a movement within the discipline that would bring the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the ethnographer back into the picture. Briggs is unflinching in her description of how difficult was her transition to life in and beyond the iglu.

Although today’s passage appears about three-quarters of the way through the book, it brings to a head the perceptions she ignored and the Utku suppressed during seventeen months of fieldwork. I have already stated on Round and Square how important I think it is for anthropologists to “tell stories on themselves”—to relate moments of real frustration and pain, when they often are not at their best. I call this a “rhetoric of humility,” and it is plays a more prominent role in ethnography than in just about any other discipline. I find it to be one of cultural anthropology’s very reasons for being, and will have more to say about it as we progress.

Jean L. Briggs
Persona Non Grata: Ostracism

That incident [of confusion and frustration with outside visitors] bringing to a head, as it did, months of uneasiness concerning my volatility, marked the beginning of a new phase in my relationship with the Utku. Some days passed, however, before I became aware that I was ostracized. My work seemed somehow more difficult than usual, I felt tired and depressed; “bushed,” perhaps, I thought, in need of a vacation. There was certainly reason enough why I should be tired; the strain of the summer, the long isolation without mail, and the frustrations engendered by the presence of the unlikeable kapluna men, my impossible role as mediator—all had taken their toll. Now that the men were gone, I spent a great deal of time alone in my tent, typing notes, writing letters, and trying to analyze my linguistic data. I felt little desire for company and was grateful when the smiling faces that appeared from time to time between the flaps of my tent entrance withdrew again without entering. I noticed nothing unusual in the behavior of anyone toward me.

Realization came suddenly and from an unexpected source. Autumn was upon us. The kaplunas, fearing to be weathered in for the winter, had departed precipitously in a sudden snow squall the day after my outburst—an unfortunate coincidence, I am afraid—and the able-bodied members of our camp, released from their fascinated vigil around the kapluna camp, had gone off to hunt caribou, leaving, as usual, the infirm, the immature, and the school children behind in camp. Pala, his daughter Amaaqtuq, and I were the only adults who remained. Knowing that the school plane was expected imminently, I wrote letter after letter to send out. There might be no opportunity to send out mail again until November.

Pala also wrote a letter to be sent—to Nakliguhuktuq—and, smiling warmly, he gave it to me to keep until the plane should come: “So I won’t forget to send it,” he said. The letter was in syllabics, of course, and, moved by I know not what amoral spirit, I decided to read it—to test my skill in reading Eskimo. It had been written ten days earlier, the day the kaplunas left. It began, more or less as I had expected, by describing the bounty of the kaplunas and how much they had helped the Eskimos. Then it continued in a vein I had not anticipated: “Yiini is a liar. She lied to the kaplunas. She gets angry (ningaq) very easily. She ought not to be here studying Eskimos. She is very annoying (urulu), because she scolds (huaq) and one is tempted to scold her. She gets angry easily. Because she is so annoying, we wish more and more that she would leave.”

I pored over the crudely formed syllables for some time, unwilling to believe that I was reading them correctly. Perhaps I was inserting the wrong consonants at the ends of the syllables; the script does not provide them. But I was not. There was only one way to read the characters. So there was a reason why my work was going poorly! And my depression was not due to the fatiguing summer. What shocked me most was that, in thinking over the ten days since I had spoken to the kapluna guide, I could recall no change in the habitually warm, friendly, considerate behavior of the Utku. Though I had had few visitors, I had attributed that fact to my obvious preoccupation with typing; I had assumed that it was I who was withdrawing from the Eskimos, not they from me…

…I did my utmost to appear unperturbed, to appear not to notice. And so covert were these small withdrawals that at times I succeeded in persuading myself that they existed only in my depressed imagination. The illusion that all was well, however, never lasted for long. I felt myself in limbo, and I fumbled for a way to break out. I wanted to confront my punishers with my knowledge of their feelings toward me, and to explain why I had acted as I had toward the kaplunas, but I feared that I would only shock them the more by my directness. I considered the advisability of leaving on the school plane when it came; it was expected any day. I had not intended to leave for several more months, but since my work had come to a standstill anyway, perhaps there was no use in staying on. There were other inner voices, however, which told me to stay. I feared I had not gathered adequate data for the dissertation that was supposed to result from this field trip; and I did not wish to admit defeat before those who had said at the outset that Chantrey Inlet was too difficult a place for a white woman to live…[1]

[1] Jean Briggs, Never in Anger (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 285-289.

Bibliography
Briggs, Jean L. Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

NEXT
The Crime of Cephu
Colin Turnbull relates the cooperative nature of hunting among the BaMbuti Pygmies, and the outrage of Cephu, who went on alone.

Annals of Ostracism—Introduction

[a] Alone  RF

I have been thinking about ostracism for the past few days. I wish I had a more inventive reason for it. Some people haven’t been especially timely in replying to my e-mail messages, but I think that has more to do with calendar than calumny (I think). It so happens that I have been reviewing a number of classic ethnographies as I prepare to teach ANTH 206: Social and Cultural Theory this term, and the subject of booting people from the comfortable womb of sociability keeps appearing. So, in this series of posts, I am going to banish us to the hidden world of social anguish called ostracism. 

Here is a workable dictionary definition from Miriam-Webster (online) that we will surely begin to refine as we proceed:

os·tra·cize

verb \-ˌsīz\

os·tra·cize os·tra·ciz·ing

transitive verb

1: to exile by ostracism

2: to exclude from a group by common consent

Examples

She was ostracized from the scientific community for many years because of her radical political beliefs.

The other girls ostracized her because of the way she dressed.

Origins

Greek ostrakizein to banish by voting with potsherds, from ostrakon shell, potsherd—more at oyster     First Known Use: 1649

[b] Isolated RF

Ostracism is not easy to write about, not the least if it is one's own. If it is someone else's isolation, the problem lies "merely" in understanding the psychological, cultural, social, and often economic subtleties of the situation. But if it is us being kicked to the curb of social interaction, it is difficult to make a persuasive defense. It often sounds, well, defensive. Only a few people have done it well, and in every case they are honest with themselves and their readers. A larger point is buried here; it is important for ethnographers to acknowledge—indeed, engage—their presence in the ethnographic encounter. That the "student" is part of the social dynamic is so obvious that it hardly needs stating, right?

Wrong.

Tell that to a half-century of writers who hardly acknowledged their own presence or—this is much more common—did so in a way that gave them enormous "narrative control" (many of these ethnographies remain at the very center of the discipline, and are called "classics"). One author's works have been described as a "slide-show," implying that the main thrust of his books is geared toward what is on the screen, and not the person working the controls. This Wizard of Oz-like image is a telling characterization, and it would seem obvious that ethnographers need to write about how they felt and how they reacted in fieldwork encounters. Right?

It is obvious...except for one thing. 

The temptation to make it all about me is so great that all but just a few masters of the genre have succeeded without degenerating into id embracing ethnobabble. Suffice it to say that the writers I will be quoting in the vast majority of Ostracism posts have done this well—blending their stories with precise linguistic data and analysis of the social and cultural dimensions of the experience. 

[c] Ritual center RF

Not everyone does it well, though. I prefer not to name names here (although I am ever so sorely tempted). It takes enormous skill to write as clearly and analytically (while still telling a riveting story) as Jean Briggs, Colin Turnbull, Paul Riesman, and Carol Trosset do in the posts that will follow. Instead of describing people who do it very badly (you can imagine the hand-wringing self-absorption), I will rather retell an old anthropological joke about a postmodern anthropologist. I tell this, over-and-over, to students in my classes as I implore them to analyze, and not just to splatter their “feelings” on the page. Indeed, I warn them of my version of “(sic),” which is used (as many of you have probably noticed) to point out mistakes of grammar or syntax that are not those of the quoting author. I call my version “SIC,” and it stands for “self-indulgent-crap.” Please avoid this, I say. 

Here’s the old joke (with my expanded telling of it):

A thoroughly trained postmodern anthropologist finds a meandering path into the depths of a forest society and, in time, is introduced to rituals, dancing, and other wonders of ceremonial life. S/he watches fires crackle and listens to the feats and travails of the ancestors, who felled great beasts and painted their stories on cave walls. S/he listens, takes notes, and follows the instructions learned from many years of anthropological study, always dutifully mapping and transcribing. 

Finally, s/he can’t take it any more. S/he knows that s/he is a part of the very social fabric here. She has read her Foucault and Derrida. 

ENOUGH ABOUT YOU!, s/he shouts. LET’S TALK ABOUT ME!

[d] Apart RF

Endings (16)—Never in Anger

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series "Endings." 

[a] Arctic Sea  RF

Departures are an integral part of the fieldwork experience. Ask any anthropologist what it was like to leave—especially for the first time—and you may well hear tales about worries and goodbyes and toasts and awkward exchanges. It is a peculiar kind of "ending" for anthropologists because in many ways their work is just beginning...when they leave. For most, a long process of writing and thinking and (eventually) publishing will follow the field experience.

Although it is hardly rare, it is not particularly common for anthropologists to end their ethnographies with stories of their departures. In other words, leaving is built-in to the life experience of the ethnographer, but it is only occasionally a prominent part of the telling, the analysis, the written account of the fieldwork. It is far more common to see word portraits of the approach—the first encounters—and we have already seen one good example of this on Round and Square.

So what is leaving like? Let's just think of the process in our own lives. A flurry of emotions can be unleashed in the weeks and days approaching a departure. We've all experienced it. I remember distinctly the time in the summer of 1987, when I left Taiwan to begin my graduate studies. There were rounds of dinners and parties and gifts and goodbyes. I even got to see a ghost (a story that I am saving for later). And then I got on the plane and flew to Chicago. Only later did I learn that, almost the moment that the plane carrying me had left Republic of China soil, the government officially lifted martial law. I like to read-in a little playful cause-and-effect: "Rob's gone; it's o.k. to dance and associate freely."

[b] Icy RF

In all seriousness, though. Anthropologists tend to talk about departures more than they write about them, so it is particularly refreshing to see a full account of an "anthropological" departure. Jean Briggs gives a particularly fine one in her ethnography Never in Anger, which details with engaging "reflexivity" her seventeen months of field research among the Utku, on a remote Arctic shore. The book is a vigorous piece of writing (something I wish more anthropologists would aspire to these days), and she takes the story all of the way to the end—her departure.

Part of what gives the book its humanity and narrative tension is the difficult position in which Briggs finds herself in a society that does not value the free expression of emotion. Keeping control of her feelings—and writing intelligently about the complex process—makes for, at once, a tense and rewarding reading experience. She channels that tension all of the way to the conclusion, even amidst joyful scenes of fish gutting and caribou eating. It also contains—at the end of the penultimate paragraph—one of the most memorable "goodbye" lines in literary history.

Never in Anger
Jean Briggs (1971)

[b] Equanimity

Inuttiaq and Mannik were planning a trading trip to Gjoa Haven in early January to replenish the kerosene supply. The fuel was almost gone,and we were eking out the last gallons by burning papers, stray bits of wood, and expendable clothing in a stove made from an oil drum sawed in half. The men said they would leave as soon as we finished eating a caribou that had been fetched from one of the autumn caches. I had still not decided whether I would accompany the men, when one day I noticed that both Allaq and her sister Amaruq were absorbed in sewing. "Your traveling furs," they explained. "So they will be ready for you."

At this news, the fear that had never quite died—the fear of another change in the emotional climate—was reawakened. Did Allaq perceive that I was eager to leave, more eager than I myself knew, or was it she who wished me to leave? Watching her with the suspicious alertness of anxiety, I could not be sure. Once in a while I thought I caught a glimmer of hostility. On one or two occasions, in pouring tea for the family, Allaq forgot to fill my cup, and her laughter, when I remarked on the omission, seemed to my ear as excessively hearty as her laughter on another occasion when she had caught herself neglecting to offer Niqi a cigarette. I heard an unaccustomed stridence in her laughter also on another occasion, when I castigated myself, jokingly, as a "bad kapluna" for cutting the back instead of the belly of a fish I was gutting. On the other hand, her friendliness disarmed me, so I chided myself for letting imagination run wild. I puzzled, until one day a remark that Allaq made to Niqi tipped the balance, and I resolved, finally, to leave. Allaq and I were alone in the iglu when Niqi popped in on one of her brief visits. Allaq, standing on an oil drum by the door, was scraping the night's accumulation of frost feathers off the ice window, a morning routine, while I sat, writing as usual, on my corner of the ikliq across the way. Niqi, making conversation with me, remarked, as people occasionally did, that Utku would be unhappy (hujuujaq) after I had gone.

[d] "Cold"  RF

Such remarks were delightful to hear, and though I reminded myself that the words were probably more gracious than sincere, still I somewhat shamefacedly allowed myself to be flattered. I was taken aback, therefore, when Allaq, perched on her oil drum above Niqi, murmured: "I don't think we'll be very unhappy." After Niqi had gone, I asked Allaq, in a general way, how people felt when others went away: ought people to remain happy (quvia)? Allaq laughed. "No," she said. "People are usually unhappy (hujuujaq) when others go away, especially if they know they are not going to see them again. Of course, they are sadder at first than they are later." I pressed the question, then, indiscreetly focusing it again on myself. "You just told Niqi that people wouldn't be unhappy when I left." Allaq covered herself beautifully, as I might have known she would do. "I was joking. It's only because you are eager to leave that we won't be sad (hujuujaq); because you are growing unhappy here." She laughed. "Are you growing unhappy?" She laughed again, a merry laugh in which I joined, cooperating with her effort to assure me that she was joking. Then she continued seriously: "We will be unhappy when you leave—more at first than later. I speak truly. And I think Saarak will be more unhappy than Raigili."

We left a week later: Inuttiaq, Mannik, Ipuituq, Qavvik, and I; it took that many to carry my several hundred pounds of gear. Allaq proffered last tidbits of data even as she helped carry my things out to the sled. And when Inuttiaq's team was harnessed and the other sleds were already sliding out across the river, she came and silently, in a most unusual gesture of farewell, clasped my hand. My mind went back to the only other farewell handshake I had seen. It was the parting of the old man Piuvkaq with his adopted son when Piuvkaq had mistakenly thought the government plane was taking him away to the hospital, probably to die. I, too, might never return, though I had said I would like to, if I could.
Pala also gave explicit recognition of my departure, and, doing so, sharpened my sense of separation. "So you are going to Gjoa Haven," he said. "If you don't freeze, you should be all right (naamak). And Niqi echoed him: "Don't freeze or be cold." The other women who stood on the slope were silent. Inuttiaq motioned me to the sled and with a tug at the anchor and a sharp-breathed "ai!" released the team. We slid down the slope in the wake of the other sleds, Inuttiaq running alongside to steer with pulls and shouts. I looked back. Pala, Allaq, and the others were black shaped on the dog-stained slope with its domes of snow—motionless, still watching. "The neighbors," said Inuttiaq. He waved, and I waved, too.

[d] Parting RF

The last parting of all was with Inuttiaq. He and Ipuituq had come to visit me on their last evening in Gjoa Haven. I had just moved into one of the small stone iglus that had been built by a former priest for the use of his Eskimo parishoners. The temperature inside was still close to sixty below zero, and my primuses were both solidly frozen. Inwardly cursing at them, at my ineptitude, at the temperature, at life in general, I was struggling to discover what ailed the stoves when the door creaked open and Inuttiaq's head appeared; Ipuituq's smiling face was close behind. "Cooooold!" Inuttiaq observed. "Shall I do that?" Not waiting for my answer, he took the icy primus out of my hand and showed me how to hold it over a storm lantern until it thawed. I was astonished at the strength of the love and gratitude that I felt for him at that moment—grief, too, that next morning he was leaving. I would have left Gjoa Haven before he came back to trade again. "Eat!" I said. "Are you hungry?" They were, of course, and Inuttiaq offered Ipuitqu's services in heating up the various cans of kapluna meat that I had bought. My gratitude overflowed into words, too. "I will be sad (hujuujaq), I think, when you two leave, because you have helped me very much." The two men ate in silence, but after we had finished and were drinking tea, Inuttiaq said: "I, too, will be sad (hujuujaq), I think, when you first leave here. The iglu is going to be wide." "I, too," said Ipuituq. They recounted the purchases they had made that day and recalled the homes they had visited and what they had eaten. The teakettle was empty. "I have to pee," said Inuttiaq. "I'm going out. I'm going out, and in the morning I'm leaving." Ipuituq followed him without a word or glance.

I had letters from Back River twice before I left Gjoa Haven in March. Allaq said: "Saarak asks where you are and mistakenly thinks you will come soon." She and Inuttiaq both said: "I didn't think I'd care (huqu, naklik) when you left, but I did (naklik)."

[e] Restart RF