Hermes' Dilemma and Hamlet's Desire: On the Epistemology of Interpretation

404 Pages·1992·16.535 MB·English

by  Vincent Crapanzano

Hermes Dilemma and Hamlet’s Desire
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Hermes’ Dilemma
and Hamlet’s Desire
On the Epistemology of
Interpretation
Vincent Crapanzano
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
1992
Thomas J
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Copyright © 1992 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 987654321
This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials have been
chosen for strength and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crapanzano, Vincent, 1939—
Hermes’ dilemma and Hamlet’s desire : on the epistemology of
interpretation / Vincent Crapanzano.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-38980-8 (alk. paper).—ISBN 0-674-38981-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Ethnopsychology. 2. Ethnology—Philosophy. 3. Psychoanalysis.
4. Hermeneutics. 5. Language and languages—Philosophy. I. Title.
GN502.C74 1992 91-15215
305.8'001—dc20 CIP
For Jane Kramer

Acknowledgments
My thanks to many people for their help, inspiration, facilita¬
tion, and critical reading: to Lila Kalinich who organized the
symposium, Language and the Unconscious, for the Columbia
Psychoanalytic Center in which “Centering” was first given;
George Marcus and James Clifford who asked me to participate
in the seminar at the School of American Research in Santa Fe
for which "Hermes’ Dilemma” was written; James W. Stigler,
Richard A. Shweder, and Gilbert Herdt for inviting me to con¬
tribute "Self-Characterization” to the Chicago Symposia on Cul¬
ture and Human Development; Mrs. Abram Kardiner and the
organizers of the Kardiner Lecture for giving me the opportunity
to deliver “Talking (about) Psychoanalysis”; and to the mem¬
bers of the Kroeber Society at Berkeley for whom I prepared
“Glossing Emotions.” I am particularly grateful to Benjamin
Lee for inviting me to present “The Self, the Third, and Desire”
at a conference at the Center for Psychosocial Studies in Chi¬
cago, for many other invitations to the Center, and for innumera¬
ble, critical telephone discussions of many of the ideas in this
book. I am also grateful to Bernard Weissbourd, the Center’s
President, for creating one of the most exciting intellectual fora
in which I have had the privilege to participate. I owe special
thanks to Tullio Maranhao and the Rice Circle for encouraging
me to write “Dialogue,” and to Alcida Ramos and the students
and faculty in the Department of Anthropology at the University
of Brasilia for patiently listening to me develop my ideas on
dialogue and hermeneutics; to Vivian Garrison who edited with
me Case Studies in Spirit Possession in which“Mohammed and
Dawia” first appeared, and to the real Mohammed and Dawia
and countless other Moroccan friends who graciously shared
their lives with me; to Hans Peter Duerr for asking me for "Sym¬
bols and Symbolizing”; to Bryce Boyer for insisting that I write
“Rites of Return”; and to Mme Claude Briquet who introduced
me to Hamlet. I should also like to thank Marc Auge, Gilles
viii Acknowledgments
-♦-
Bibeau, Ellen Corin, Michael Fischer, Stephen W. Foster, Wlad
Godzich, Frangoise Heritier, John Lucy, Paul Parin, Goldy
Parin-Matthey, Richard Parmentier, and Burton Pike. I am espe¬
cially appreciative of the students at Princeton, Harvard, the
University of Chicago, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales, the University of Paris at Nanterre, the University ot
Stockholm, and the Graduate Center at the City University of
New York for their critical reception of many of the ideas in this
book. To Michael Silverstein I am especially indebted for his
help in organizing this book and finding a title for it. His relent¬
less analysis of language’s several functions has been the source
of my rather promiscuous metaphorizations of these functions
for which I cannot in any way hold him responsible. To Dorothy
Reisman who typed and retyped many of these essays, to Anita
Safran who patiently corrected them, and to Lindsay Waters
who encouraged me to collect them I am particularly grateful.
To my daughter, Wicky, and my wife, Jane Kramer, I owe my
greatest thanks, for they have had to live with me as I wrote and
propounded.
The following is a list of the original titles, places, and dates
of publication of essays that appeared elsewhere. They are
listed in order of publication and are reprinted by permission
of the publishers.
“Saints, Jnun, and Dreams,” Psychiatry, 38 (1975): 145-159.
“Mohammed and Dawia: Possession in Morocco,” pp. 141-
176, in Case Studies in Spirit Possession, ed. V. Crapanzano and
V. Garrison (New York: John Wiley, 1977).
“Rites of Return: Circumcision in Morocco,” The Psychoana¬
lytic Study of Society, 9 (1981): 15-36.
“The Self, the Third, and Desire,” pp. 179-206, in Psychoso¬
cial Theories of the Self, ed. B. Lee (New York: Plenum, 1981).
“Text, Transference, and Indexicality,” Ethos, 9 (1981): 122—
148. Reproduced by permission of the American Anthropologi¬
cal Association.
“Einige Bemerkungen fiber den Symbolismus,” pp. 71-81,
in Sehnsucht nach deni Ursprung, ed. Hans-Peter Duerr (Frank¬
furt/Main: Syndikat, 1983).