Capturing the Imagination: An Interview with James W. Fernandez
David E. Sutton and James W. Fernandez
James W. Fernandez has made a lasting impact on the theoretical approaches of anthropology through his work on metaphor and other tropes that shape human experience. He has been a leading figure in interpretive and symbolic anthropology for over 5 decades, and he has developed key concepts around the notions of tropes and figurations, and their impact on our understanding of ritual, kinship, consensus and conflict and other domains of social life. These include the notion of the “Return to the Whole” in the understanding of ritual practice, as developed in his Magnum Opus on the subject Bwiti. Another key concept is his understanding of metaphor in anthropology as “the predication of an image on an inchoate subject.” Jim’s early work on topics of consensus (cultural and symbolic) and synesthesia are critical in delineating a more-than-literary approach to tropes, one that recognizes the role of the senses and material practice in the negotiation of everyday life. He continues to work through the implications of his approach in recent work on what he calls “pronomialism.”
In this interview I sat down with Jim in March of 2020 to reflect on his career in anthropology. We discuss his introduction to anthropological thought in his teen and college years, key influences (including Kenneth Burke, Albert Schweitzer and his 10th grade English teacher) mentors (including his dissertation chair, Melville Herskovits) and colleagues and interlocuters (including Victor Turner, Terence Turner, Raymond Fogelson and Paul Friedrich). Jim reflects on the importance of the imagination, storytelling and gossip in making us human, as well as some of the key concepts that constitute his contribution to anthropology over the past 50+ years. He reflects on the personal and theoretical reasons that led him to multiple early field sites in Africa (Gabon, Ghana, South Africa) and more recent fieldwork in Spain (Text by David E. Sutton).
References
Some Relevant (selected) Bibliography
1965 Symbolic Consensus in a Fang Reformative Cult. American Anthropologist 67(4): 902-929
1966a Unbelievably Subtle Words--Representation and Integration in the Sermons of an African Reformative Cult. Journal of History of Religions 6(1): 43-69.
1966b Revitalized Words from the Parrot's Egg and the Bull Who Crashes in the Krall. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society for 1966: 53-64.
1969 Microcosmogeny and Modernization in African Religious Movements. Occasional Papers, Center for Developing Area Studies. Montreal: McGill University, 35 pp.
1972a Persuasions and Performances: Of the Beast in Every Body . . . and the Metaphors of Everyman. Daedalus 101(1): 39-60.
1972b Fang Representations Under Acculturation. In: Curtin Ph D (ed.) Africa and the West: Intellectual Responses to European Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 3-48.
1973 Analysis of Ritual: Metaphoric Correspondences as the Elementary Forms. Science 182(4119): 1366-1367.
1974 The Mission of Metaphor in Expressive Culture (With Comments and Rejoinder). Current Anthropology 15(2): 119-145.
1976a Observing Some Critical Transactions. New Literary History 7(2): 416-427.
1976b La Poesía en Moción: Siendo Desplazado por Diversiones, por Burlas y por la Muerte en el País Asturiano. In: Lisón Tolosana C (ed.) Temas de Antropología Española. Madrid: Akal, pp. 131-157.
1977a The Performance of Ritual Metaphors. In: Sapir JD and Crocker JC (eds.) The Social Use of Metaphor. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 100-131.
1977b Poetry in Motion: Being Moved by Amusement, by Mockery, and by Mortality in the Asturian Countryside. New Literary History 8(3): 459-483.
1977c Symbolic Anthropology Evolving. Reviews in Anthropology 4(2): 133-142.
1978a African Religious Movements. Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 195-234.
1978b "Comment" on Beck BEF “The Metaphor as Mediator between Semantic and Analogic Modes of Thought”. Current Anthropology 19(1): 89-90.
1979 Syllogisms of Association: Some Modern Extensions of Asturian Deepsong. In: Dorson R (ed.) Folklore in the Modern World. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 183-206.
1980 Edification by Puzzlement. In: Karp I and Bird ChS (eds.) Explorations in African Systems of Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 44-59.
1982 The Dark at the Bottom of the Stairs: The Inchoate in Symbolic Inquiry and Some Strategies for Coping with It. In: Pierre Maquet JJ (ed.) On Symbols in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Harry Hoijer, 1980, Malibu, CA: Undena, pp. 13-43.
1984 Convivial Attitudes: The Ironic Play of Tropes in an International Kayak Festival in Northern Spain. In: Bruner, EM (ed.) Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society, 1983 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society, pp. 199-229.
1985a Exploded Worlds — Text as a Metaphor for Ethnography (and Vice Versa). Dialectical Anthropology 10: 15 26.
1985b Macrothought (Review Article). American Ethnologist 12(4): 749 757.
1986a The Argument of Images and the Experience of Returning to the Whole. In: Turner VW and Bruner EM (eds.) The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp.159-187.
1986b Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
1988 El dominio del tropo: Poesía popular y convivencia social. Gracián y Costa en el campo. Anales de la Fundación Joaquín Costa 5: 21-35.
1989 The Lively Potential of Dead Metaphors, Reply to Roger M. Keesing, "Exotic Readings of Cultural Texts". Current Anthropology 30(4): 470-471.
1991a Preface and Introduction. In: Fernandez JW (ed.) Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology. Stanford: Stanford Univ Press.
1991b (with Durham D) Tropical Dominions: The Figurative Struggle Over Domains of Belonging and Apartness in Africa. In: Fernandez JW (ed.) Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology. Stanford: Stanford Univ Press, pp. 179-208.
1996a Amazing Grace: Meaning Deficit, Displacement and New Consciousness in Expressive Interaction. In: Cohen AP and Rapport N (eds.) Questions of Consciousness (ASA Monograph 33). London: Routledge, pp: 21-40.
1996b Patrolling the Border: Experiments on the Frontiers of Poetics. American Anthropologist 98(4): 853-856.
1997 Vitalidad Cotidiana, Recursos Léxicos y Lenguaje Expresivo (Un enfoque especial en el asturiano moderno), CONFERENCIA INAUGURAL. In: Rodríguez Campos X (Coord.) As linguas e as identidades: Ensaios de etnografía e de interpretación antropolóxica. Santiago: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, pp. 23-43.
2005 Trope. In: Horowitz MC (ed.) New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Vol. 9). Thomson Gale: Detroit, pp. 2378-2380.
2006 En El Dominio del Tropo: Imaginación Figurativa y Vida Social en España. Velasco HM (ed.). Madrid: UNED.
2010 Pronominalism. History and Anthropology 21(1): 63-71.
2016 Una vida entre vidas: Diversidad y Realidad en La Etnografia de Asturias. In: Fernandez JW, Cátedra M and García JL (eds.) Los inicios de la antropología en Asturias. Tres testimonios autobiográficos. Gijón: Museo del Pueblo de Asturias-Red de Museos Etnográficos de Asturias, pp. 15-33.
2018 “With Our Tongues in Our Cheeks” — Ethnographic Familiarity and the Work of Friendship in An Age of Irony. In: Girke F, Thubauville S, Smidt WGC (eds.) Anthropology as Homage: Festshrift for Ivo Strecker. Koln: Rudiger Koppe Verlag, pp. 50-72
Cite As
David E. Sutton and James W. Fernandez (2020) Capturing the Imagination: An Interview with James W. Fernandez. Anthropological Theory Commons. Url: http://www.at-commons.com/2020/10/27/capturing-the-imagination-an-interview-with-james-w-fernandez/
About the author(s)
David Sutton is Professor of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University. His research, inspired by Jim Fernandez's mentorship as well as his famed garlic soup, focuses on food, memory and the senses.