Theorizing the Standoff: Contingency in Action (review)

Theorizing the Standoff: Contingency in Action. By Robin Wagner-Pacifici. Cambridge University Press, 2000. 276 pp. Cloth, $64.95; paper, $24.95.

Each action in the world, including the standoff, is constituted by gestures, props, and words. There are "ur-texts" (treaties, the Constitution, the Bible, criminal codes, the Magna Carta, standard operating procedures); "texts-in-action," signified by summonses, warrants, liens, sermons, flag-raisings, holstered guns, the deployment of tanks, and negotiations; there are also journalistic accounts of these "texts" and the testimonies of witnesses at congressional hearings; and finally, there is this book, which reconstructs all of the above in a fourth-level narrative, using the tools of literary criticism, with its metaphors, metonymies, synecdoches, and diachronic vs. synchronic grammars. As Jacques Derrida might say, there is nothing to a standoff outside the texts that inscribe it. Words point to no thing "out there," but only to other words. For one accustomed to equating sociology with the study of human beings in action, and standoffs with bloody violations of human flesh, this notion can be challenging.

Wagner-Pacifici deals with the texts of seven recent standoffs which together report a total of 123 fatalities. The author cites four linguistic "cues" that separate these events from "normal" affairs: rumors of unusual kinship practices and arcane dogmas, allegations about guns, and secessionist claims. Given the preoccupation in American culture with territorial issues (as opposed to history, as in Europe), secessionist issues tend to differentiate American standoffs from those staged elsewhere. As a result they routinely take place in vast, wild places, far from the civilizing restraints of the city: in Boundary County, Idaho; Jordan, Montana; Pine Ridge, South Dakota; the badlands of west Texas.

He who defines a situation controls it. It follows that every standoff is in essence a "contestation" over time and place. There is the "official time" of bureaucracies vs. the "apocalyptic time" of the antagonists. If these do not comport, tragedy may ensue. There are "ritual times" vs. "media deadlines"; "holds," where events are "frozen in time," interspersed with "progress," as measured in increments of "talks." Space is also negotiated, and banners are hoisted to confirm the outcomes of disputes. Is it to be "Justus Township" or "farmer Bliss's ranch?" "The Republic of Texas" or "Texas, of the United States?" "Ranch Apocalypse" or "suburban Waco?" Standoffs are replete with spatial metaphors: "perimeter," "blockage," "door," "bridge," "insertion," "pilgrimage," "home arrival." Messengers cross "no man's land."

The author is to be lauded for her artful free associations. Potentially dangerous vocabularies too often glossed-over and taken-for-granted are highlighted here, particularly agency discourses. Furthermore, the suggestion that conflict managers use "linguistic improvisation" to help break through impasses is very much on point. This might be done by avoiding the binary oppositions proffered by one side or the other, and by refusing to use absolutist terms. Instead, the author urges peacemakers to construct linguistic common ground through textual "hybridization," by offering new, conciliatory readings of the antagonists' favored ur-texts. Nevertheless, I am wary of Wagner-Pacifici's embrace of the idea of standoffs as "aesthetic emergencies" with their own "pleasures." I understand the difference between walking and dancing, and between reading "Have a light?" as a practical request or as a "poem," to be analyzed in terms of beauty. But Walter Benjamin once warned us of the dangers of aestheticizing politics. We don't want to lose sight of lived-component of the standoff in our enthusiasm for the structures of its texts. While texts do disclose some elements of the standoff, they also can veil the felt righteousness, suspicion, betrayal, rage, terror, and pain underlying the texts.

This book is recommended for graduate libraries in communication studies, popular culture, conflict management, and semiotics.

James Aho, Idaho State University

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