A, B, C

9

The indirect nature of communication, which we so easily mistake for direct exchange (because it is all we know), especially at the indistinct and misunderstood level of discourse, is the seat from which cultural misunderstandings rise up to rage and shake our fists against an uncomprehending Other. The understandings required are best gained by exposure and participation in the conditions of life (now covered — though clumsily — by the notion of social construction), rather than through observations and explanations of them. Lacking that, the best textual aid is description of the conditions in the form the anthropologist Clifford Geertz called “thick description,” where the scribe endeavors to avoid imposing her or his own notions of what’s important and what’s not. But even this hurls us into the realm of chance. Experience is still all important. But language must organize experience before experience can reorganize language. If that was not the case, there would be nothing or little to reorganize.