CHAPTER 2

      Concealments and Revelations in Ethnographic Research

      I wrote this chapter in a state of emotional anxiety, but also one of great relief. It relates to the relationship with one of my closest informants/friends, Jeff, whom I had met at CBST twenty years earlier. He assumed the role of a dedicated guide and taught me about the inner life of gay men and their popular sex venues. Although in a very different ethnographic world, I could compare him with Mochuna, Victor Turner’s admirable teacher of Ndembu society and culture (1967b). Jeff’s personal history, his demeanor, and his ideas about gay life are presented in other chapters (Chapters 1 and 10 in particular). The following quotes suggest the complexity of research engagements in what seems to be a common phenomenon of secrets and revelations that anthropologists confront in their work:

      This is the inner life of the individual with whom we interact. He may, intentionally either reveal the truth about himself to us, or deceive us by lie and concealment. (Simmel 1969 [1908]: 310)

      In much ethnographical writing, the treatment of secrets constitutes a criterion for how the text and the ethnographic work behind it will be evaluated. The ethnographer’s ability to penetrate the secrets of his or her objects becomes a major stake in the ethnographic quest. (Lovell 2007: 57)

      Secrets and silences operate, and are made, through all relational contexts and interactions. How is one to write about them, then, if they are so ubiquitous and of the ordinary? (Nast 2008: 395)

       Anthropologists: Decoders of Secrets

      From a young age we learn the art of keeping and sharing personal, family, and communal secrets. That skill is among the elementary assets of sociability that children acquire in most societies (Taussig 1999: 267–71). Since anthropologists try to penetrate the lives and culture of their subjects in societies both far and near, one might define ethnographic fieldwork as the art of secret-decoding.

      Anthropologists long ago studied cultures of secrecy, men’s secret societies in particular (Morgan 1851). I mention Herdt’s more recent studies (1981, 2003) of male secret initiation rituals in precolonial New Guinea. Pitt-Rivers, in his study of the Sierra people, represented a different category of a cultural ethos of secrecy and deception: “Andalusians are the most accomplished liars I have ever encountered” (1971: xvi). But as suggested above by Lovell, beyond gaining entry into institutionalized secret societies or cracking the cultural codes of deception, anthropologists believe it is their special skill and privilege to penetrate the personal inner-life territory of the individuals they study and breach their sealed areas of behavior, beliefs, and sentiments. This assertion certainly calls for a measure of caution lest mainstream anthropologists be seen as stepping into the role of psychotherapists.

      Particularly famous are the practitioners whose ethnographies revealed sensitive intimate details of sexual, spiritual, or mental health conditions. Examples include Oscar Lewis’s (1967) portrayal of the life of Fernanda, a Puerto Rican prostitute, and her close family members, as well as Crapanzano’s (1980) rendering of Tuhami, a Moroccan tilemaker who believed himself married to a camel-footed she-demon. We know, however, of a few cases of mutual antipathy that tainted the relationship of ethnographers with their subjects, the latter resentful of the researcher’s intrusion or offended by the manner in which the published text revealed their private lives (e.g., Turnbull 1973; Scheper-Hughes 2000).

      I usually considered myself lucky to enjoy the collaboration and often the liking of my subjects at the various field sites of my research. My conviction about that advantage was reinforced in particular during my study of gay people, who shared with me many intimate details of their personal lives. Actually, I came to believe that gay people were exceptionally open in exposing intimate life experiences not only in the company of close friends, but also when participating in groups wherein they engaged with many strangers, as evinced in the chapters of this book.

      My present discourse does not relate to the more usual situation of first entry into a new field site, when the ethnographer might confront subjects’ objections to efforts to infiltrate their public and private spaces and their withholding of sensitive information from his intrusive gaze (e.g., Geertz 1973; Godelier 1999; Kalir 2006). I intend in this context to expose the gray areas in our endeavor, the “shadow side of fieldwork,”¹ when we may not comprehend the reluctance of the apparently welcoming subjects to share with us some confidential information. The observer might reach this embarrassing realization long after assuming he/she had won the confidence of close informants who surely considered the ethnographer a safe haven for their happy or painful secrets.

      Just recently the belief about my privileged position as ethnographer, one who could confidently rely on his subjects’ true reports about their life experiences, was shaken. This embarrassing discovery involved an informant whom I considered open to me and trustworthy beyond doubt. As the story of deception unraveled before me over a period of several months, I also learned the reason for and feeling behind the concealment of some sensitive information and the conditions under which secrecy is maintained even among intimates, the ethnographer included. My discussion, which seems to highlight a major issue of ethnographic methodology, is deeply interwoven with the existential conditions and predicaments of gay life. However, the ethnographer is not immune to the pains and stigma that affect his gay informants or invulnerable to the strategies of concealment they employ in their relationships with other people.

      The question and professional dilemma I tackle stir up a broader issue than this specific ethnographer’s “trauma”: whatever the excuses for particular concealments, how does the discovery of a close informant’s hiding a major piece of personal information reflect on the quality of the ethnographer’s work? I remind the reader of Lovell’s assessment quoted above: “The ethnographer’s ability to penetrate the secrets of his or her objects becomes a major stake in the ethnographic quest.” Are anthropologists nowadays expected to prove a level of “truthfulness” in their fieldwork journey and their later reporting on their subjects’ lives, comparable, for example, to the thorough documentation of a lawsuit? A similar quandary concerning the ethnographer’s authority at presenting her data from the field, assumed by her readers to be guided by certain rules of evidence, was raised by Wolf (1992) comparing the construction of ethnographic portrayals with the writer of fiction, who is in total control of the “information” presented.

      Except for a few famous cases, such as the Redfield-Lewis and Mead-Freeman debates or the Yanomami controversy, the issue of truthfulness or the reliability of ethnographic accounts has rarely been addressed in ordinary professional public discourse.² It has become a nonissue, particularly since anthropologists have given up the positivist framework of earlier generations. True, one occasionally hears rumors about the shallow or dubious fieldwork venture conducted by colleagues or their students, but only under exceptional circumstances might a controversial ethnographic report necessitate official scrutiny. However, the lone anthropologist is usually the single witness to report to readers on his/her performance in the field, ascribing full authority to the accumulated field notes and the published text. Although the position of the subjects as readers and commentators has been enhanced in recent years (as expressed in writings on reflexivity in anthropology), they have not yet assumed the role of public critics in the real sense of the term (see, for example, Brettel 1993). Moreover, the subjects are not necessarily in a better