The Dilemmas of Appreciation

"Proper" histories of disciplines tend to imply that issues and -isms develop unilineally and from within. An alternative notion of movements and receptions highlights "charmed circles"—constellations of expatriates, émigrés, amateurs and professionals ("Native" and "Stranger" alike) engaged in dislocated writings and performances.

—James A. Boon, "About a Footnote" (1999:x)

James A. Boon stands for careful reading and never-ending rereading. The texts he interprets are as various as menstruation (drifting or stable, as spotted in the work of Ruth Benedict), The Ring Cycle (by Wagner), the cousin category (perpetually and systematically contradictory), vertigo (the movie and its condition), pigs with ornate tusks (a bit like fancy cars), and things multiply-mediated (such as opera). In this endeavor, Boon listens to the plurality of accents, the play of movement and countermovement, the asides, and the "resonant details" (Boon 1999:65). He turns the idea that any text always contains surprises into a way of being in the world. As he puts it, "The straight…is crooked too: and so is the crooked" (1999:97). He also stands for careful writing (see Boon this issue). And then, he tells us that the two processes are to be joined, as in writing-to-read and reading-to-write. The texts he writes therefore respond with a reciprocal plenitude, striving toward the mutual giving-and-receiving of extremes that constitute possibility.

He also loves a good one-liner. Consider the following quotations from his corpus in the form of phrases, captions, or bits of prose: "why museums make me sad" (Boon 1999); "…for tastes there is no accounting—despite the best efforts of Bourdieu and company, intent on diagnosing distinctions" (1999:xvii); anthoreaupology (see "extra-vagance," below); "Coca-Colocalization" (a theory-slogan, trademark pending in Appalachia and beyond; 1999:304); "Not an engraver, I have traced, with apologies to Thurber, the representation of C. H. Waddington's famous photograph of Margaret Mead (left) and Gregory Bateson (right), precisely as reproduced on p. 248 of the Pocket Book edition of Blackberry Winter (1975)…Proprietary rights in photographs have inhibited my including an 'original,' the age of mechanical (electronic) reproduction notwithstanding" (1999:172).

At the beginning of our tribute to one who resists abridgment, we therefore propose not one but a whole series of aphorisms, conjuring a trunk without limit, or perhaps one with many. Whatever the case, here are the facts:

1. 1. Boon's command of anthropology—and its associated social and anti-social theories—is unparalleled. It is also unprecedented

2. 2. If Boon were read more, anthropology (and those influenced by it) would be better

3. 3. Theory shows up in the darndest places. Sometimes, it comes in the form of what we nowadays call "literature." It might even show up in the United States (rather than Europe), or in a musical, to boot. Marilyn Ivy notes that on hearing her analysis of the Japanese town of Tono as an uncanny homeland, Boon commented "Home is the place there's no place like" (1995:107). Finding wisdom in Dorothy's-incantation/lament-with-Judy-Garland's-performed as guileless-inflections bespeaks Boon's way of listening (see Boon 2000).

4. 4. The lowly (say, musical numbers or slang) always has something to say to the high (say, theory and other high-falutin' languages).

5. 5. The cutting-edge might well be old-fashioned. Consider the anthropocene, the sensorium, infrastructure, globalization, and even the late capitalism that may well end up having been "middle-period," or possibly even "early." Déjà-vu.

6. 6. Go against the grain of the canonical take on whatever you're reading. "Straight" readings tend to elide generative contradictions, swerves, and subtleties, as well as the sheer strangeness of a text. (Why do diverse readers persist in simplifying Benedict? Why must Lévi-Strauss be a polarizer? Why is Boon himself, in his frequent quotation with seemingly-quirky juxtapositions, "post-modern"? The answers provide clues to common expectations about simplification, culture, practices of reading, and social categories such as gender.)

7. 7. Sometimes, you should let your interlocutors do the talking, though (maybe even because) they...