Human Studies 20: 383389, 1997.

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What Readers Read in A World Without Words

DAVID GOODE
College of Staten Island and CUNY Graduate Center, Staten Island, New York, NY 10314, USA

After I received a bad manuscript review while a graduate student at UCLA, Garnkel told me Nietzsches aphorism about writing. He said, Writing is like a magic mirror. If an ape looks in, a saint will not look back. A beauty of the following collection of reactions is that Fran Waksler, who initiated and put together this symposium, has invited a panel of particularly qualied readers to look into A World Without Words (WWW). Each reection is illuminating as a retrospective account of what I did. My task is to respond and while this poses great difculty within the space available, I will sketch my reactions and in the order in which the authors appear in the symposium. Maureen Connelly rst presents a very reasonable, accurate summary of the content of the book, for which I am indebted. In her reections on the book Connelly describes the writing as an intellectual and personal journey to which she could relate personally and professionally (she works with special children in Canada). That is what I had hoped the book would be for readers in the eld. Connelly is interested in WWW as both a methodological discussion and as a display of a phenomena. Methodologically she is impressed with its relentless critique and questioning, which I think are characteristic of most forms of ethnomethodological inquiry. Another reader called WWW brutally self-critical. I take both remarks as compliments, even though such an orientation is usually absent in scientic writing. As an inquiry into the world of deaf-blind children and human intersubjectivity, Connellys conclusion resonates with how I think of WWW. I see the work as a step in a direction of inquiry that is required of an embodied sociology, but just a small step. WWW is an initial heuristic that may be helpful in discussing some somasociolgical matters. Since Connelly is also a practitioner in human services, her nding WWW useful may indicate its having actually captured something about the orderliness of everyday life with such children, the ultimate goal of any ethnomethodological inquiry.

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Gary Kielhofner and Trudy Mallinson provide a deep and provocative consideration of the implications of WWW for a clinical discipline like occupational therapy (OT). Kielhofner was involved in the initial writing while he was at UCLA in the 1970s and contributed through discussions with the author. OT has always been a person-centered discipline, and it is no accident that these authors begin with a deep appreciation of and empathy for Chris and Bianca, acknowledging these childrens faithfulness to their own being in the face of the onslaughts of socializing efforts. What a true and wonderful image! Kielhofner and Mallinson are taken with the childrens resilience, with their not having become totally demoralized within institutions designed to take away the cogency of their own bodily experience. They are deeply disturbed that the children had no voice in what happened to them, that no one ever gured out what their lives as persons with rubella syndrome were about, and they are thus led to the clinical questions of how we think about persons bodies and how conceptions of the body constitute assumptions of clinical work. They observe that most clinical work relies on mechanistic, objective versions of the body. But there is a literature, of which WWW is part, that argues strongly for a conception of the subjective, lived body in clinical work. Here the role of the occupational therapist would be to take seriously an embodied persons taking up an existential position in the world. It is upon such a conception of the body that clinical work, especially with persons of highly unusual countenance or cognition, should proceed. From a clinical perspective the value of WWW is primarily as an exemplary clinical narrative, demonstrating methods that allow access to unusual persons worlds. I hoped that clinical readers of WWW would not become offended by what some could read as criticism of professionals contained within. I wanted them to see the kind of critical description utilized in the book as continuous with and helpful to the clinical enterprise, and am gratied by the way these occupational therapists have received this work. If I have any concern at all with Kielhofner and Mallinsons call for new methods that give entry into subjective, lived bodies it is that this kind of work is not easily done, nor easily incorporated into the clinical enterprise. In the case of the Smiths, an appreciation of the natural history of their situation, of the various constructions of Bianca and how they differed from one another, or of the details of family communication with her, did not mitigate in any serious way the conict that existed between school and family. Such an appreciation undoubtedly lets us understand the social situation of the family and child more deeply, and is clinically relevant, but it does not directly suggest clinical or organizational xes to the kinds of issues that existed in this case. I would hate to see a

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rash of qualitative studies of dubious distinction used to ground inappropriate clinical intervention. Mike Lynch was with Garnkel during the years while I was at UCLA and knowledgeable of my work with the deaf-blind. His reactions to WWW are both sympathetic and critical. Unfortunately his remarks have been excerpted from a much longer piece and have taken on a certain hard-edged quality that we both agree does not appear in the original text, where the criticisms are embedded in more complex discussion (available on request). Even with the reduction, anything more than an outline to my responses would be well beyond the scope of this writing. Lynch describes WWW as insufciently indifferent. He felt that my advocacy for certain accounts or descriptions in WWW might not have been in accord with ethnomethodological indifference (EI) and that this . . . may be worth looking further into. As stated in WWW, EI is an ethnomethodological research maxim to be employed in the discovery of radical phenomena. EI is an ideal and never entirely achieved. I accept that I failed to fully achieve and observe this principle during my research, for one reason, as Lynch notes, because of the acultural, inhuman status afforded these children. It is true that abstaining from consideration of the value, consequentiality and practicality of members descriptions/practices on the ward was difcult to maintain in the face of the horrendous, heart-rending conditions of life at State Hospital. In this sense, the deep humanism described by Lynch may color, and perhaps cloud, some of the analytics in the study in ways not available to me. Sensitivity to these conditions of research are also at least partially responsible for what Lynch describes as an inappropriate construction of psychologized children (see below). Nevertheless, through Garnkel and Pollners regular and careful review of data, the analytic part of the work was done in the spirit and under the practical requirement of EI. This does not mean I was always or even often successful in producing data meeting EIs requirements (here I might go hunting into virtually anyones work to show how this might be true but to exactly what end?). But after I had written up the research, I tried to utilize what I think I had learned by doing ethnomethodological research to benet the deaf-blind children. This action research orientation is extremely rare in ethnomethodology, possibly related to EI, but if so, as I see it, on a misinterpretation of that analytic maxim. EI is an analytic maxim. It is not a guide to ethical conduct and does not in any way refer to what an ethnomethodologist or any analyst might do with what he learns. In this sense my application of ethnomethodologically informed knowledge did not violate EI any more than

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Dave Sudnow by starting a school of home piano study (such applications being analytically irrelevant). In this sense ethical EI has been too long used by the ethnomethodologist as a facile excuse for not exercising any form of responsible citizenship. The ethnomethodological ethic has been like The Prime Directive in televisions Star Trek: Conduct research and contaminate (affect in both positive and negative senses) the planet as little as possible. I admit that changing the society through studying it can make observing analytic EI even more difcult and that the human conditions of WWW made such indifference more problematic. And I would not argue a general ethical responsibility of researchers to engage in action research. That is a matter of a citizens choice. In the case of WWW I could not rationalize ignoring what I had learned as a basis for ethical conduct. EI is attempted in everyday life settings that differ radically from one another in many dimensions. For example, the State Hospital and the microscopy lab differ considerably in the human consequentiality of observed members practices, although human consequentiality per se is not the exact issue. Sudnows observation of hospital death dealt with very consequential practices but without any call to application. For Sudnow, practices were available as observable, organizational matters that could more or less not be affected by him, whatever he might have done or said. For me, treatment of children were matters that I could directly effect, and these humanly consequential members practices were perceived in that way. The ethics of these situations differed. Lynch writes that I rationalize and intellectualize these childrens behavior to an absurd extreme and construct psychologized children endowed with private lives. Regarding rationalization, I agree that some of the terms are poorly selected, obtuse, and probably having more to do with studying ethno at UCLA while trying to earn a degree in sociology than with deaf-blind children. But Lynch misses the point of the example he uses, which I believe actually demonstrates the opposite, i.e., that I neither psychologize Christina nor rationalize her behaviors to produce skill through a language game. The passage cited about Chris use of the rattle if anything is, as acknowledged by Lynch, a bit behavioristic and with the exception of the words for the apparent purpose entirely free of reference to inner life or psychologizing. As a matter of observation, the rattle practices described in this note are an accomplished set of practices, not in the sense of Wittgensteins dog reading (the example actually shows the exact opposite in that Chris skillfulness has nothing at all to do with playing the rattle), but because her exploration of it was the result of a long series of encounters with rattles, allowing her to become in some ways expert at their oral/tactile/olefactory investigation. This artfulness is in some sense a magical transformation performed by my words in as much as the words stand on behalf of my learning to appreciate

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in this instance artfulness in Christinas terms. Put simply, Lynch reies a very traditional notion of disability in creating the gure the in the last instance really profoundly retarded Christina and thus the grounds for what he calls magic through language on my part. Lynchs observation about having described children with deep inner lives is true about Chapter 6. I believe he is correct in attributing some of the romanticizing and overtly constructive theorizing to my attempts to compensate for the childrens position in life. (There are also other reasons it appears in this chapter). But, as Lynch writes, Goodes humanism is beside the point. That is, the analytic phenomena located and described, the indexicality of bodily expressions as the basis for achieved intersubjectivity among those observed, is separable, and should be separated, from whatever political motivations may have crept into the writing. In chapters 2 and 3 where the data and analysis appear, I neither romanticize nor endow either child with rich or inner psychological lives. When writing about their subjective experiences, I did not intend them as psychological or inner any more than Garnkel intended Agnes motives and thoughts to be so interpreted. People have lively inner states associated with everyday action, and some of these can be quite private but nonetheless thoroughly social forms of participation. WWW endorses EI as a maxim for and requirement of ethnomethodological research and should not be taken in any way as a statement against it. In my attempt to describe and analyze the lived orderliness of intersubjectivity between seeing, hearing and speaking persons and those without these attributes, readers need to nd the ways I was unable to observe analytic EI as instructions for how to observe it better in their own research. Lynch writes there are a number of ways to do ethnomethodology. I would extend this even further. There are only instances of ethnomethodological work, rightly and wrongly so-called, and what ethnomethodology could come to on these occasions will and should obviously reect the organization of everyday life in the places studied. In this sense WWW is an instance of ethnomethodological analysis that displays the insensitive, inhumane and even brutal treatment of many of the children who were studied. Melvin Pollner notes that he had several roles in the writing of WWW. His continued involvement with this work until its publication is testament to a professional and personal support of the highest caliber. As my teacher he helped ground my initial work and has helped sustain my interest in it over the years. We have been through many versions of this material together. Pollner explicates WWW substantively and methodologically. Substantively he sees it as a contribution to the sociology of disability and the sociology of intersubjectivity. He describes its methodology as an extension and reex-

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ive critique of certain forms of naturalism in sociology and as an exemplar of ethnomethodological ethnography. He also writes WWW entails reconsideration of the languaged methods of most ethnography. That is worth comment. Normally, he describes, ethnography as matter of seeing and saying. For me and for Biancas parents this ethnomethod was altered and even seriously interrupted at times. One might say that ethnography for us became a matter of sometimes seeing and not saying or seeing and not saying, and then saying. In this sense the ethnography of WWW throws into relief the practices of normal accounting with speaking subjects. For Pollner, an important way to look at WWW is as a contribution to a sociology that privileges languages role in the constitution of social reality generally, and intersubjectivity particularly. As he describes, sociology produces essentially languaged versions of social actors (or collectivity members). I also concur with his observation that as an experienced phenomenon, primordial (embodied) intersubjectivity in some sense is not as fragile as members situated production of language-based meaning. Pollner is taken with the relationship between the world with words and the world without words. He writes Goode provides insights into practices and prejudgments of practitioners of the word. . . . I agree with this, although WWW is obviously and thoroughly a product of documentary method and wholly an object of a world with words. I offer no solution to the essential languagication of experience that writing and analysis requires, so it is more that I point to these practices and prejudgments without being able to ameliorate them. But of all the reactors in the symposium, Pollners explication of the intent of this work and its contribution to sociology is most similar to my own, perhaps due to his intimate knowledge of the research and researcher. For analytic reasons, I will very briey mention three reviews not appearing in this symposium due to limitation of space. One was by Britt Robillard, also a student of Garnkel, and who has the additional credential as a reader of having quite a severe disability. He is unable to move or speak. In his reaction to WWW, he brought up a most intriguing possibility regarding the study of embodied intersubjectivity. He wrote, If we live within the dasein of perceiving knowing-reacting bodies, and have interpretational rules that see other bodies reacting to our bodies in close time sequence as communication, then we have the properties of formal communication. Robillards formulation summarizes what many parents of alingual children have told me, that in their view indexical forms of bodily communication have language-like properties. Could such a language ever be articulated, described and formalized? Would it have semantic and syntactic structures similar to other formal languages? Are the structures of bodily expressivity and involvement as coordinated

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mutually concerted activity part of what we call a societys ethnomethods? In accounting for the perceived orderliness of everyday society these are central sociological problems. They are researchable as issues in a somatic sociology. Fran Wakslers reaction to WWW emphasized it as a contribution to understanding the sociology of children and some of the similarities between her own qualitative research on children and WWW. This is another intellectual thrust of the book that I think deserves recognition and it is heartening that Waksler, a non-disability child sociologist, found such value in WWW. Finally, I want to call attention to a reaction written by Ernst Kristoffersen, a Danish friend and parent of Thomas, a young man with severe disability. Writing in a Danish journal, what most impressed him about WWW was that it was a way to further our understanding of persons with severe disabilities, and that professional lack of understanding of what it is all about from a parents perspective is still widespread. He describes WWW as pointing to tools t for working at [this problem]. Such a parental endorsement is more than one can hope for from such a research-oriented book. For me these reactions to WWW collectively illustrate how it has been found valuable to readers trying to understand the bodily nature of human society in the deepest ways, as well as to those trying to change society. I regard this as a particular success of WWW since there presumably should be some relationship between these activities.