To honor someone for the contributions of their life’s work is never a small thing. And for us, as ethnographers, it is perhaps an activity that draws us into that which we do so well, and with so much passion—reviewing the real life evidence of meaning in the patterns of behavior and relationship, the communication of significance, and the seeming contradictions that contribute to the order of a coordinated life. As an ethnographer, my task as the organizer of this symposium of scholars gathered to discuss the influence of Arthur P. Bochner on the scholarship in ethnography in communication was to seek those persons whom traditional ethnography would call “key informants.” Each of these individuals would reflect a particular standpoint, would provide a perspective on the epistemology of Arthur P. Bochner, and help us all to appreciate exactly why we were called to gather to honor him. My role, as the organizer of this “field work,” was to inspire cooperation with the project, and then, once all data were compiled for presentation, to provide for you an introduction to the collage of material you are about to enjoy. I must confess that in this situation, unlike many ethnographic scenarios in which I have found myself, the task of finding willing “informants” was most delightful, with the challenge facing us being one of having far too many stories to share and having to decide which ones would serve best to express why we wanted to honor Professor Arthur P. Bochner, “Art,” as we so lovingly know him.
In 1983, I first met Art Bochner when I was a doctoral student at The University
of Texas at Austin, studying interpersonal communication, with a deep interest
in the culture of medicine and its effects on doctor-patient communication. Art
had been invited as one of a series of leading scholars in interpersonal
communication, to teach a week of a doctoral seminar. He was selected because
of his work in the area of family communication. I remember vividly the dismay
among my professors and fellow graduate students as Professor Bochner addressed
us in the stuffy seminar room in the Jesse Jones Communication Building on 26th
and Guadalupe on the UT campus. Art shared with us the first real
confessional tale I had heard from a member of our discipline. He told us he
had reached a point in his life as a scholar where he needed to be honest about
the work he had been doing. It was meaningless, he said. He critiqued sharply
the nature of the work that we call “empirical” and spoke with passion so
heartfelt that the anguish he had felt in coming to this point was palpable. He
spoke of the search for meaning in the study of human communication to which he
was committed, and I felt my own heart find a beat that worked with its own
nontraditional syncopation. I quickly volunteered to be one of a group of
graduate students who would spend time talking with Dr. Bochner, by taking him
to lunch and dinner while he was in Austin.
I remember enjoying my tuna
nicoise at a French café on 6th Street, while he listened
intently to my personal reasons for wanting to understand why brilliant young
men and women who become physicians seemed to lose their ability to connect to
other human beings while in medical school. I wanted to talk to them, not study
them at a distance. Art understood this, and in those moments, he joined the
ranks of my mentors and friends, Stan Deetz, Robert Hopper, and Larry Browning.
However, Art Bochner was not my mentor; I would soon come to see that in fact,
he became for me the classic anti-mentor.
For the next several years I would seek out the enigmatic Professor Bochner at national conferences, hoping to glean from him any small bit of direction or guidance I might use in shaping my work. After all, that was the model that functioned all around us. What I got instead, was the epitome of paradox. I would have deeply engaged interactions with Art about the work I was doing, but when I walked away from them, I often felt I had no idea what I was doing. It was incredibly disconcerting, and not something I shared with anyone. It seemed that interactions with Art Bochner were of the sort that forced a confrontation with my own shadows, those cast darkly by the constructions of self that academic socialization encouraged our every thought to reflect.
When
I talked to Art Bochner, he did not reach out to me in the way of a Greek
mentor, rather, he was more like the deities of the Aztec tradition which loomed
behind a large part of my own cultural history. Like Tezcatlipoca, of the
smoking mirror, I was left gazing not into a bright shining reflective surface
showing me what I was becoming, but rather, found my gaze descending into the
depths of black obsidian, taking me into the hidden secrets of what truly
motivated my inquiry and insight. You realize, of course, that during these
early years when I was attempting to force Dr. Bochner into a more traditional
mentoring role in our interactions, he was not involved with ethnography.
But I was. And the model of courageous public self-interrogation that Arthur Bochner provided for those of us who were fortunate enough to know him during our most impressionable years as scholars shaped my work profoundly. And through my work and pedagogy, it continues to influence my own graduate students, whom I present with their own smoking mirrors.
In an unexpected
manner,
Arthur
Bochner led me to my ancestors’ wisdoms by demonstrating to me that the icons
and indexes of wisdom that had been paraded before me were perhaps not motivated
or constrained by the same creative and divine forces of meaning
that I was seeking to uncover. He led me by not leading me-- on a
semiotic hunt through my own motivations. He served unwittingly as the
place-holding human index of an experience of knowing that was deep, subjective,
rich and revealing. 
It was a knowing that kabbalists would call “da’at,” the combination of wisdom
and understanding, of lived experiential knowledge and that
which comes from study. From such a vantage point, one is able to access the
heart more readily, and it is from the heart that our courage comes.
This courage can help us to confront and defy the forces and structures that tell us our work must look a certain way to be considered knowledge. This courage is not a sentimental heartsong, but a resounding chorus of the heart’s memory of what is true.
It is precisely this sort of courage that enabled Arthur Bochner to shapeshift in the utmost of mystical traditions into a leader of the ethnographic tradition, and to partner with his illustrious soul mate, Carolyn Ellis, to unite our many ethnographic voices into the Division of Ethnography for the National Communication Association. By using his wisdom and understanding, his da’at, key avenues for our scholarship to be viewed prominently have been opened. But as the classic anti-mentor, we must remember that it is up to us now to look deep into the smoking mirrors of our own identifications to find the heart courage to create something worthy of the distinction we have attained thus far. This journey that Arthur Bochner has modeled for us is not a journey of ego or slick emulation; it is one of transcendent rigorous originality. As we honor Art for his contributions, I sincerely hope we will continue to honor him by not succumbing to the institutional pressures to conform or sell out.
My gift to my anti-mentor is an obsidian blade held by a turquoise-colored image
of the Aztec deity of love. One of the faces of this deity was called
Tlacolteutl (or Tlazolteutl, in some sources), and she was known as the devourer
of filth while at the same time being the patroness of childbirth and romantic
love.
The obsidian blade was used in the ritual sacrifice of the heart, one that required no looking back, no looking forward, but living with conviction in the present.
The obsidian blade sharply honed could create incisions that would leave no scars, and it is precisely this sort of incisive reflection that is the gift I believe Arthur Bochner has given to us as a tradition of ethnography in human communication. It will leave no scars, but will bring great healing and understanding. That is love, and only a deep love and conviction of truth could sustain the 20 years of persistence and insistence that supported Art’s work from the talk I heard in 1983 to the creation and ongoing development of a new ethnographic tradition within the discipline of study of human communication. I am very grateful to Professor Art Bochner, and extremely honored to introduce the stories that follow. These stories create the ethnographic record of the formal birthing of our new tradition.
Thank you, Arthur P. Bochner.
Sarah Amira De la Garza
The Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University
