Between One and One Another

231 Pages·2012·1.64 MB·English

by  Michæl Jackson

B E T W E E N O N E A N D
O N E A N O T H E R
Michael Jackson
university of california press
Berkeley Los Angeles London
BETWEEN ONE AND ONE ANOTHER

B E T W E E N O N E A N D
O N E A N O T H E R
Michael Jackson
university of california press
Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished
university presses in the United States, enriches lives around
the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social
sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported
by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic
contributions from individuals and institutions. For
more information, visit www .ucpress .edu .
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, En gland
© 2012 by Michael Jackson
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Jackson, Michael, 1940–
Between one and one another / Michael Jackson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978- 0-5 20- 27233- 0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978- 0- 520- 27235- 4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Philosophical anthropology. 2. Ethnopsychology.
3. Intersubjectivity. 4. Self- perception. 5. Other minds
(Th eory of knowledge).
I. Title.
BD450.J235 2012
128—dc23
2011025178
Manufactured in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally
responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has
printed this book on 50- pound Enterprise, a 30 post-
consumer- waste, recycled, deinked fi ber that is pro cessed
chlorine- free. It is acid- free and meets all ansi/niso
(z 39.48) requirements.
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our
relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our
separateness, but any part ic u lar person is not a necessary part of our
being.
—R. D. Laing, Th e Divided Self
All of being is in touch with all of being, but the law of touching is
separation; moreover, it is the heterogeneity of surfaces that touch
each other. . . . Th ere is no mi- lieu (between place). It is a matter of
one or the other, one and the other, one with the other, but by no
means the one in the other.
—Jean- Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural

CONTENTS
1. P reamble 1
2. Th e Phi los o pher Who Would Not Be King 22
3. Hermit in the Water of Life 33
4. Writing Workshop 59
5. How Much Home Does a Person Need? 69
6. Clearings in the Bush 79
7. Th e Gulf of Corinth 94
8. It’s Other People Who Are My Old Age 110
9. Objects in Mirror Are Closer Th an Th ey Appear 116
10. I Am an Other 131
11. Yonder 141
12. Reading Siddhartha to Freya at Forest Lake 156
13. On the Work and Writing of Ethnography 167
Acknowledgments 189
Notes 191
Index 215

chapter 1
Preamble
Lived experience is always simultaneously present to itself and absent from itself.
—Jean- Paul Sartre
In the late 1930s, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead did pioneering eth-
nographic fi eldwork in a Balinese village, using still and movie cameras to
capture some of the “intangible aspects” of Balinese culture and everyday
life, including trance, eating, gesture, mourning, family interactions, children’s
play, art, and shadow- play puppets. In her introductory essay to their 1942
monograph, Mead speaks of a Balinese passion for being part of a noisy, fes-
tive crowd. Whether a marketplace, temple court, theatrical event, elaborate
carving, or close- packed array of off erings on an altar, “the crowd preference
is seen everywhere in Balinese life.”  Women are said to love crowds and
crowdedness even more than men, “and to be less able to stand the silence of
empty fi elds.”  However, every four hundred days, Bali falls silent for the new
year. At this time, the roads are deserted, families withdraw to their houses,
markets are closed, and no music is heard. Th is change from convivial bois-
terousness (rame) to silence and calm (njepi) echoes another change that
Bateson and Mead document in compelling photographic detail—t he Bali-
nese “habit of withdrawal into vacancy— letting themselves suddenly slip
into a state of mind where they are, for the moment, no longer subject to the
impact of inter- personal relations.”  One photo shows a carver who, having
completed a diffi cult piece of work, sits staring into space, “utterly empty and
spent.” Other photos show children, with dreamy and absentminded expres-
sions on their faces, sitting or standing close to a parent. Entitled Awayness,
this page of photographs also includes a “psychopathic vagrant” sitting incom-
municado in the anthropologists’ compound.
1