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The perception of change depends on the recognition of difference, which, in turn, requires some sort of comparison. But what to compare?
I briefly considered asking Art to come up with six new rules-of-thumb for social science inquiry that he would be willing to presently endorse. With these guidelines in hand, I could have then highlighted the ways his thought and practice have shifted in the last quarter century.
A good plan, but I didn’t want to impose on him. Surely, I figured, he’s busy enough as it is. And, quite frankly, I worried that instead of coming back to me with a list, he’d write me a story. What on earth would I do with a damn narrative?!
So instead of trying to get something from Art, I, presumptuously enough, took up the challenge myself. What follows is my (ahem) state-of-the-Art list of six Bochnerian rules of thumb for how to conduct compelling research, a list that I hope captures something of Art’s current approach to scholarship. If I’m even partway right in my sketch, you should be able to juxtapose each new rule with its earlier counterpart, thereby bringing stereoscopic depth to your recognition of the evolution of Art’s work.
I guess I should warn you before getting started that I ended up needing a seventh rule. If the first six mark Art’s inspired traveling along and then bushwhacking beyond the Batesonian path he originally charted, the seventh is a Batesonian meta-cairn that simultaneously erases the preceding markers and erases itself, such erasure allowing the un-erasure of them and itself, which makes possible the re-erasure of them and itself. How else could I grab hold of Art’s mischievous, cybernetic, Zen mind? Here then are the six-plus-one guidelines: (For a one-to-one comparison, click here)
I am delighted to be here today, not only because Art’s scholarship so obviously deserves the sort of recognition a panel such as this can provide, but because Art deserves it. I read a book recently that quoted the poet David Whyte, who said, “The opposite of exhaustion is not necessarily rest. It is wholeheartedness” (O’Hanlon, 2003, p. 43). Art is the most wholehearted man I know. When I read his work, my exhaustion disappears; I come alive in the warm embrace of his words.
My mother died a few weeks ago, and while I was living through, and with, her dying, I read Art’s piece on his mother dying, and it brought tears of compassion—a “feeling together”: tears of communion. Social science doesn’t typically have this effect on me.
One of the criticisms leveled at autoethnography is that it is self-absorbed, and I’m sure you’re all familiar with the cartoon of the post-modern ethnographer who says to his informant, a few minutes into their first interview, “Well, enough about you, let’s talk about me.” Despite Art’s autoethnographic explorations and his post-modern sensibility, his participation in personal and professional relationships contradicts these stereotypes. I know him to be a generous, curious, respectful, deeply feeling, loving human being.
These qualities have allowed Art to put community back in communication. Most social scientists would still consider “wholehearted scholarship” an oxymoron. Not Art. His work speaks with emotional-and-intellectual depth and expanse, with body-and-mind openness and wisdom. He moves people; he moves me. He spins us in circles and sends us on our way, no longer exhausted, enlivened by his wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestoried approach to asking questions of himself, his experience, his field, his world.
