Table Of ContentVICTOR TURNER AND
THE CONSTRUCTION OF
CULTURAL CRITICISM
VICTOR TURNER AND THE
CONSTRUCTION OF
CULTURAL CRITICISM
Between Literature and Anthropology
EDITED BY
KATHLEEN M. ASHLEY
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
© 1990 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Victor Turner and the construction of cultural criticism :
Between literature and anthropology / edited by Kathleen M. Ashley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-253-31003-2 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-20594-8 (pbk.
alk. paper)
1. Literature and anthropology. 2. Turner, Victor Witter.
3. Literature—History and criticism—Theory, etc. I. Ashley,
Kathleen.
PN51.B45 1990
801'.95—dc20 89-46338
CIP
1 2 3 4 5 94 93 92 91 90
CONTENTS
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VU
INTRODUCTION ÎX
Kathleen M. Ashley
Part I: Cultural Theory and Literary Studies
Experiencing Murder 3
Ritualistic Interpretation of Ancient Texts
Mieke Bal
Aesthetics, Romance, and Turner 21
David Raybin
Liminality, Carnival, and Social Structure 42
The Case of Late Medieval Biblical Drama
C. Clifford Flanigan
Narratives of Ritual and Desire 64
Thomas Pavel
Liminality and Fiction in Cooper, Hawthorne, Cather, 70
and Fitzgerald
Robert Daly
Mud, Mirrors, and Making Up 86
Liminality and Reflexivity in Between the Acts
Barbara A. Babcock
Symbolism and the Problematics of Postmodern 117
Representation
Stephen William Foster
Part II: Turner’s Theory and Practice
Victor Turner’s Definition, Theory, and Sense of Ritual 141
Ronald L. Grimes
“Hyperion to a Satyr” 147
Criticism and Anti-structure in the Work of Victor Turner
Frederick Turner
vi Contents
The Literary Roots of Victor Turner’s Anthropology 163
Edith Turner
Victor Turner’s Career and Publications 170
Frank E. Manning
CONTRIBUTORS 179
INDEX 181
PREFACE AND ACKNOW LEDGM ENTS
This volume had its inception at a 1983 NEH Summer Seminar on Symbolic
Anthropology conducted by Professor J. Christopher Crocker at the Univer
sity of Virginia. Not only did we read the most important work of Victor
Turner, but the Turners themselves spent a memorable afternoon with our
seminar group talking about a recent trip to Israel.
After Victor Turner’s death that winter, I organized an ML A Special Ses
sion on the implications of his work for literary studies. Papers from that
session form the nucleus of this book. In finding other essays for the collec
tion, I would especially like to thank Professor Thomas Pavel, who recom
mended several contributors.
Shannon Toner and Johnette Lundy gave many hours to the preparation
of the manuscript, always cheerfully and efficiently. They continue to be
models of collegiality, hard work, and grace under pressure. The Dean’s
Office of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern
Maine, under Deans Hatala, Reno, and Davis, supported the manuscript
preparation with grants and the original research with Harvard borrowing
privileges. I am grateful for this important assistance.
Finally, no words can convey my appreciation for the many kinds of sup
port offered me by Jack, who has seen me through all the vicissitudes of the
project.
The bibliographic essay by Frank E. Manning, “Turner’s Career and Publi
cations,” originally appeared under the title “Victor Turner: A Tribute” in
Recherches Sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 4:2 (1984), 195-201, and is reprinted
by permission.
The essay by Mieke Bal, “Experiencing Murder: Ritualistic Interpretation
of Ancient Texts,” was originally published as “Speech, Murder, Tricks, and
Gender: Judges 4 and 5” in Recherches Sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 7:2 (1987),
127-151, and is reprinted by permission.
IN T R O D U C T IO N
Kathleen M. Ashley
The Discourses of Interdisciplinarity
In the current attempts to redefine literature as social “artifact” or social
“discourse,” and to situate literary studies within cultural criticism, an indis
pensable role has been played by those who take society and culture as their
primary subjects—sociologists and anthropologists.
Cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz has identified a recent develop
ment that he calls “blurred genres”—the destabilizing of traditional bound
aries between the social sciences and the humanities. Anthropologists have
borrowed analogies and imagery from the humanities with an alacrity that
both intrigues and alarms Geertz. His conclusion is that “as social theory
turns from propulsive metaphors (the language of pistons) toward ludic ones
(the language of pastimes), the humanities are connected to its arguments
not in the fashion of skeptical bystanders but, as the source of its imagery,
chargeable accomplices” (1980:171). Meanwhile, on the other side of the
crumbling wall, literary study has been adopting concerns and strategies
from sociology and anthropology. As Richard Macksey notes, “The recent
disciplinary promiscuity among social scientists of Geertz’s persuasion looks
. . . like chastity itself when compared with the concupiscence of literary
critics in search of models and methods, not to mention texts, to abduct from
other disciplines” (312).
The proliferation of journals devoted to some form of cultural criticism is
only one sign of the growing interest in situating literature within a larger
social discourse. Collections of essays have also explored the interdisciplinary
terrain between the social sciences and literary studies. The Spring 1988
issue of Critical Inquiry grappled with how a sociology of literature (which
grew out of nineteenth-century realist and Marxist ideas of literature as a
“mirror” of society) might be redefined in contemporary theoretical terms.
Another collection, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography,
examines appropriate tools from textual criticism and discourse theory
for the processes of cultural representation in the post-modern era. In
his “Introduction,” James Clifford argues that the essays are “post-
anthropological” and “post-literary” in their conception of ethnography as
both fiction and mode of cultural criticism.
This collection of essays on anthropology and literature is in the first place,
therefore, a contribution to an interdisciplinary project that is simulta
neously refiguring social thought and acculturating literary activity. Al
