Ontological disobedience - definitely! {maybe}1

Steve Woolgar

In Stephen P Turner and Alan Sica (eds) A DisobedientGeneration (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005) 309-324

Laudisi: All I’m trying to say is that your curiosity…isinsufferable. If for no other reason than it’squite pointless.

Sirelli: Pointless?Laudisi: Pointless!….Mrs Cini: Pointless? Our trying to find out?Laudisi: Forgive my asking…find out what? What can we really

know about other people? Who are they? What sort ofpeople they are? What they do? Why they do it?(Pirandello, 1962 [1913]: 21)

1. Introduction: how to respond to this exercise?2

The construction of this little piece has been astruggle, not least because the exercise of writing

1 This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Sheila McKechnie (1948-2004), a self professed “fully paid up member of the awkward squad”, who purveyed an admirably influential and fruitful form of disobedience.2 For their comments and suggestions I thank Catelijne Coopmans, PaulDrew, John Holmwood, Janet Low, Daniel Neyland, Alan Sica and Steve Turner. And also my therapist.

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autobiographically poses several temptations. First, Ihave to overcome the intuition that an exploration of mypersonal background and experiences is a conceit. Who onearth could be remotely interested in my personalbiography? I myself find it pretty boring. Second, mytraining (qua sociologist) tells me to be suspicious ofnarratives which overly individualise personalexperiences. The temptation is to fashion instead anarrative which stands as “an account of anyone”. Thenarrative options here include generalised historical andsociological forms – please understand everything relatedhere as typical of “the period” or of “the generation”.Sometimes the tension between the personal and thegeneral is addressed through the classic compromise ofthe lucky witness - I just happened to be in the rightplace at the right time - as classically found in thefalse modesty of Nobel prize acceptance speeches andAcademy Award ceremonies. Third, we need to avoid thetemptation of retrospective reconstruction, the writingof Whiggish histories which re-populate the past withjust those events which must have happened in order tolead to the present.

Characteristic of all these temptations is the concept of“influence”. The editors invite us to identify, reflectupon and discuss “influences” upon our position, approachor perspective. So the biggest temptation of all, a sortof meta temptation if you will, is to present a story ofthe past which embodies this orthodox view of therelation between influence and action. Anethnographically sceptical treatment of “influence”starts from the view that there is no clear connectionbetween influences and outcomes. Yet trying to resistthis temptation is especially difficult because itrequires going against ingrained conventions of narrativeconstruction. These conventions not only enact andsupport the idea of influence; they also reaffirm thebasic premises of causal relationships and explanations(for example, that influences gave rise to a view,perspective or action).

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We could try to reject the tyranny of “influences” eitherby adopting a form of “post modernist” exposition, a kindof radically alternative narrative form3 or, in contrast,by espousing a purportedly more “rigorous scientific”procedure for identifying the actual causal connections.Both responses are inadequate because they in effect“jump out of” the problem frame. The preferredalternative is to stay engaged with the problem whileremaining sceptical. In a sense this merely follows afamiliar anthropological mode of managing being aninsider and an outsider at the same time. One issimultaneously a member of and a stranger to one’s (own)argument, so that one produces (what looks like) a“conventional” text that at the same time develops andadvances its own critique. The aim here is to see if wecan produce an unstable argument which needs to be takenseriously, an argument which also constitutes its ownethnography, a text which is simultaneously at rest withand critical of itself4.

So let us be clear that this whole project is nuts5. Theeditors invite contributions to a volume which documentsthe influences upon the early careers of socialscientists. Are they really asking us to present anaccount of knowledge activities, career moves,intellectual direction in terms of the “influences” whichgave rise to them? They clearly fail to understand that akey article of disobedience, at least to this member of“the generation”, is the rejection of just this kind ofproposition. Come on, give me a break, surely6 one of thekey achievements of the disobedient generation was the3 No, it’s okay this is not one of those weird post modern pieces. I fully subscribe to the argument that we have never been modern (Latour, 1991) let alone postmodern.4 Sorry about this last cliché. “Sounds very much like a ton of lit crit stuff I’ve read over the last 20 years” (Sica, 2004). But I do think the aspiration is correct. It’s just that during all those years nobody bothered to try to work out what it means. 5 “Nuts”? There, after all these years, such an exalted standard of erudition.6 “Surely”? One of my school teachers impressed me with the observation that a speaker’s use of “surely” is a (sure) sign that the speaker is about to lose the argument.

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disavowal of precisely this kind of conventional style ofargument. This means, then, that our response should takethe path of itemising the long list of problems with theeditors’ expectations. This list would constitute apretty much watertight case for not going along with theeditors’ request.

And yet….

This whole project is delightful. The whole point ofdisobedience is non compliance. The editors invite usrepresentatives of a “generation” to reflect upon our ownnon compliance while still compliantly operating withinthe editors’ framework. To be truly disobedient, and sodeserving inclusion in this volume, one would have torefuse to be included. In a nice inversion of the oldGroucho Marx joke, one could only really qualify as afully paid up member of the disobedient generation byrefusing to become a member. So the very nature of theproject admits and encourages explorations of a series ofcomplex contradictions and reflexive loops. Of course,some objectivist philosophers still depict these issuesin terms of “inconsistencies” or as “aporias”. They areviewed as “logical traps” to be avoided lest theythreaten the entire basis of reasonable (?) argument. Bycontrast, for the rest of us, these same issues offer agreat opportunity to lift ourselves from the hum drumhagiographies of linear retrospective flat textautobiography.

2. Two kinds of disobedience

Did the disobedience of our generation lead merely to thedisplacement of the status quo by an alternative, butstable project? Or did it open the way to more lastingcritique? The contrast is simple but important. Crudelyexpressed, it is a contrast between disobedience designedto bring about change, and in particular a move to analternative stable state – which we can call instrumentaldisobedience – and disobedience which takes the form of anenduring restlessness, discomfort, dissatisfaction andscepticism – which we shall call dynamic or ontological

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disobedience. The first kind is an instrumental means forarticulating and achieving an alternative position; thesecond is more a kind of credo, an attitude andperspective for sustaining a form of life.

The first sense of disobedience is directed against anexisting orthodoxy. But it is limited in the sense thatit often seems destined merely to usher in another,alternative orthodoxy. As is widely documented in theanalysis of political change, from George Orwell toNelson Mandela, yesterday’s protesters become members oftoday’s establishment. The radical terrorists who succeedcommonly go on to assume positions of orthodox politicalpower. In Tony Benn’s apt phrase even the most heinousenemies of the state frequently end up “taking tea withthe Queen” (Benn, 1995). In respect to the politicalprotests of “our generation” such transformations giverise to ironic renditions of the “fate” of the radicalstudent revolutionaries of the 1960s. Under newspaper andjournal headlines such as “Where are they now?” we learnthat a prominent student radical figure on the barricadesin 1968 Paris – “Danny the Red” – is now selling lifeinsurance. Ironic treatments of radical theoretical andintellectual change in the social sciences are lesscommon. A noteable exception is Mel Pollner’s (1991) wellknown account of the institutionalisation ofethnomethodology. The radical reflexivity of earlyethnomethodology, writes Pollner, has now “settled downand moved out to the suburbs”. Did the apparently radicaldisobedience of 1967 ethnomethodology – the bete noire ofmuch traditional sociology at the time - merely presagethe routinised, formulaic, normal science practice ofconversational analysis? Or, to take another example, hasthe angry relativism of early sociology of scientificknowledge – which throughout the 1970s and 1980s sentlegions of objectivist philosophers of science spinningin their graves – now given rise to a tamed formula forrepresenting the social dynamics of scienceentrepreneurship and science policy? Has the provocativedisobedience of later calls to flatten the ontologicallandscape, to advance a symmetry between the attributesof humans and non humans as a heuristic starting point,

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now merely lead to the mechanical application of actornetwork “theory”?7

By contrast, dynamic or ontological disobedienceenvisages a form of continual revolution. The centralquestion here is what sustains persistent disobedience.If the target is less specific than in instrumentaldisobedience, the related question is why is persistentrevolution necessary or desirable? The disobedienceenvisaged here is intended to be constantly unsettling,challenging, destabilising, but with no specific end inmind. It provides a reservoir of continual questioningbut for what purpose? Where does it end? And if it isindeed “without purpose” does not continual disobedienceimply a kind of petulance, a form of disobedience for itsown sake?

For ontological disobedience, merely to ask thesequestions is already to embrace unwarranted compromise.For ontological disobedience there is no end. Rather,there is a constant injunction to be disturbing andchallenge. This also begins to account for an importantdifference between the instrumentality of many forms ofpolitical radicalism and the open ended-ness of dynamicdisobedience. Ontological disobedience is far moreradical than mere political disobedience. It isespecially important to note that the former alsochallenges the presumption of the latter that politicalaction necessitates objective commitment (see for exampleHerrnstein Smith, 1997).

7 These questions raise further questions about the nature of instrumental disobedience. If this kind of disobedience inevitably gives rise to the appropriation and institutionalisation of radical ideas, in what sense was it ever truly radical? No sociologist sensitive to the problems of essentialism and its attribution would want to claim that ideas are intrinsically (essentially) radical. This alerts us instead to inquire about the nature of the social dynamics and the sets of social relations that sustain perceptions ofdisobedience; and how these relations change so that disobedience becomes attenuated. Fortunately, there is insufficient space here fully to examine the processes of retrospective construction of “Steve Woolgar” as a disobedient theorist.

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This simple contrast enables us to discern some importantconstraints endemic to our task. For the very phrase“disobedient generation” connotes a form of instrumentalrather than ontological disobedience. It does so becauseit ties the nature of the disobedience to a socialcategory (a younger generation) which is directed againstits contrastive pair part (the older generation). Thisimplies a lot about the kind of disobedience. It is thevoice of the child raised against the dominant parentalauthority, a parental authority that can be played outalso in the guise of the state, government or scientificauthority. But there is more than a suspicion oftemporary, limited disobedience about it. Children, afterall, are just like that. It’s just a generational thing.In the end the disobedient generation will grow up8.

3. Some autobiographical origins of ontologicaldisobedience

So in autobiographical terms, where does this leaningtowards dynamic disobedience come from? I went on some ofthe marches in central London in 1967 and 1968. I don’tmuch recall feeling especially politicised nor that somepolitical motive was my reason for going. But I do recallbeing impressed by the volume and raucousness of thecrowd, by the power and energy of the protest. Especiallyimpressive was the look on the faces of the police andthe passers by. They seemed to be looking at us in awe ofdisobedience itself, not because they feared theperspective of specifically left wing politics, orwhatever. I remember thinking that maybe “anarchy” was aninteresting idea, and struggled with one or two worthybut seemingly opaque tracts on the topic.

But this was also the time of satire. A school trip wasorganised to a West End Theatre where I watched aproduction of Behind The Fridge, itself a parodicsuccessor to Beyond The Fringe, the shows which brought8 The same grown ups sometimes evince disappointment that their own offspring are insufficiently disobedient. Harking back to his own disobedient teenage treatment of texts with which he disagreed, my famous French friend is concerned that his teenage son “is yet to burn his first novel”.

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Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and JonathonMiller to prominence, the precursor to traditions ofirreverent British humour including That Was The WeekThat Was, David Frost and Monty Python. Again, it seemedto me, the vitality of the protest, the extent of thetrouble and unnerved reaction which it provoked, was muchmore impressive than any specific, let alone coherent,political standpoint that prompted the protest in thefirst place. At school, a brave friend started an“underground” magazine entitled “Yellow Socks”. Bravebecause these very garments of clothing had recently sentour headmaster into paroxysms of rage when one of theboys was discovered wearing them. A clearly deliberateviolation of the rules of school uniform (a uniform“royal” blue from head to toe). The whole school wasbrought to a special assembly to have the matterexpurgated. What seemed both delightful and absurd wasthe vehemence of “their” reaction to this episode. In andthrough the reaction to it, the behaviour became agesture of defiance. One could dress up this episode, soto speak, as a(nother) manifestation of the more generaleruption of a whole generation of youth in the face ofstifling post war orthodoxy. But it didn’t seem that wayat the time.

Of course, this was also “the time” of significant newmusical trends. Many such as Baez and Dylan wereassociated with protest and anti war movements. Althoughthese were clearly worthy sentiments, to me they seemedrather dull compared to the shock value of The PrettyThings, The Rolling Stones and The Velvet Underground.Again, although it is possible in retrospect to enrolthese latter forms of expression into an account ofcultural upheaval aimed at prevailing politicalorthodoxy, the notably striking effects at the time werethe outrage and consternation generated by these newmusical forms. They seemed to me, to the extent that Icould then articulate the feeling, to promise an engineof continual disruption and challenge, more than aninstrument for targetted political change.

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So the emerging sense of disobedience here is one ofbeing awkward or difficult in the face of orthodoxy –dynamic or ontological disobedience. These latter termsseem to capture my experiences of disruption andchallenge much better than the idea of “rebellion” –instrumental disobedience - with its rather earnest,steely Leninist overtones and associated suggestions ofpolitical (re)organisation.

If I was looking for a forum for articulating my sense ofthe intrigue and challenges of awkwardness anddisobedience, the move from a minor public school toCambridge did not at first seem promising. The Cambridgedegree course in engineering afforded few possibilitiesfor disobedience. On the whole my fellow engineeringundergraduates seemed grey (as I no doubt also seemed tothem), we attended lots of lectures, experiments,practicals and demonstrations, while our contemporariesseemed to have lots of time to engage in more excitingdiversions. We seemed over concerned with the dullaspects of mechanical science, our rooms bore few of theflamboyant, colourful posters and decorations of fellowstudents in the arts and humanities. When one of theLecturers on the introductory thermodynamics course madea joke about the operation of the internal combustionengine - “everyone knows that to start a revolution youneed a crank” - he seemed to embody a kind of engineeringmindset that casts aspersions on political figures. I wasintrigued to learn that engineering students at oneuniversity on the other side of the world (Simon FraserUniversity I think it was) wore bright red jackets with“engineering” emblazoned across the back and operated asa kind of vigilante force for breaking up studentdemonstrations. Not surprising that few Cambridgeengineers turned out for the demo against the junta atthe Greek Restaurant; very surprising to me that someminor damage to property was subsequently transformedthrough media descriptions into the “the Garden Houseriots”.

The lack of disobedience seemed enshrined in the degreecourse organisation. Interminable practicals required

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routine but uncommitted engagement. They needed to getdone, not to be thought about. It was shocking todiscover that many investigations were simply copied fromreports submitted by previous year’s students. Thereseemed little intellectual challenge. One was notencouraged to wonder and reflect, just to get through;and to do so by means of ferocious organisation.Engineering seemed the scientific/technical equivalent ofwhat I imagined to be a training in the law. Stamina andorganisation, rather than curiosity and challenge, werethe necessary virtues.

But a great virtue of Oxbridge was (and is) itsinterdisciplinarity, founded on the enduring conceit ofthe Renaissance Man, that if you are clever andknowledgeable about any one subject, you are potentiallyclever and knowledgeable about many others. This view isinstitutionalised through the college system thatencourages undergraduates to mix lives and socialactivities irrespective of their degree course. In thiscontext, one Cambridge friend, John Holmwood, provided mewith an introduction to social science, or at least toone image of it. Social science was clearly aboutargument. John argued with gusto, great seriousness,determination, intensity and enormous conviction. Thingsin the world beyond engineering were clearly black andwhite but, strikingly, they needed to be argued that way.It was enormously impressive to experience John in fullflow: this was bravado intellectual performance. Forsomeone unenculturated into this (social science) mode ofargument it was also intriguing to notice thecatastrophic effect of interjecting the occasional flatdenial. These were moments when I am sure I just cameacross as being difficult.

John subsequently spent a year as a Teaching Assistant atUCLA Department of Sociology. Before he went, hepresented me with a copy of Studies in Ethnomethodology(Garfinkel, 1967). On his return a year later, he gave mesome incomprehensible notes he had taken from a Garfinkel

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lecture (circa 1972)9. The book and the notes joined myembryonic, eclectic collection of obscure sources that Ifelt I should one day try and make some sense of. I putconsiderable energy into investigating alternatives to athird year of undergraduate engineering, even arrangingto transfer to a medical sciences degree course, beforefinally signing up for the “management option” of theEngineering Tripos. Academic management at Cambridge atthat time comprised sociology of organisations andindustrial relations, mathematically based operationsresearch and statistics. I suddenly discovered I enjoyedreading the sociology books and writing essays, to theextent that I was invited to stay on to do a PhD.

After a year, my Cambridge PhD supervisor Mike Mulkaymoved to take a position at York, “a real university” andsuggested I follow him. I joined a “real” Department ofSociology but headed by a strange bloke called LaurieTaylor, who always seemed to be away in London appearingon the radio and television. Laurie had made hisreputation as a leading light in the new wave ofsociology of deviance. It was curious to observe some ofthe more politically radical graduate students at Yorkaccusing Laurie of backsliding on issues such as whetheror not IMG should join forces with student movements inopen rebellion on the streets. Another newcomer to theDepartment was Paul Drew (see photograph). Paul taughtgraduate classes in ethnomethodology and purveyed anespecially impressive, well honed version of scepticismdirected at just about every known form of traditionalsociological theorising. This was high churchethnomethodology and conversational analysis at itsascetic best. It involved the articulation of difficultand devastating questions which could be addressed to anyconceivable sociological claim. My neophyte attempts atflat denial in the face of sweeping sociological argumentnow admitted some minor refinement. I learned to ask9 It took some time to realise that these were actually: “notes on anincomprehensible Garfinkel lecture”. As a comparatively junior academic, I was surprised when Garfinkel turned up in Oxford some tenyears later and gave exactly the same lecture. A version of it appears in the discussion of “hearably summoning phones” in Garfinkel(2000).

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“exactly what do you mean by …..?” I also learned that“the social”, in so far as it could be said to existanywhere, was achieved and accomplished as part of theenormous richness and complexity of everyday, ordinary,commonsensical, mundane, practical activities. Paul and Ishared a house for a year, during which I struggled over(what I later recognised as) the enormous and profoundawkwardness of our everyday, ordinary, commonsensical etcexchanges:

((Paul is vacuum cleaning the stairs))Me: “What are you doing Paul?”Paul: ((gives me a fixed stare, 5 seconds silence,clutching vacuum cleaner))

Or

((Phone rings))Paul: ((Picking up the phone)) “Yes”

There is no question that this, the lived experience ofthe actual whatness10 of the everyday, ordinary (etc)enormously aided my subsequent appreciation of Garfinkel.In particular, it became clear that the famous “breachingexperiments” are actually paradigmatic exercises indisobedience. They are awkwardness generating practiceswhich show up our profound reliance on order andstructure. The awkwardness arise because they profoundlychallenge what we take for granted. And the programmewhich they suggest is in principle unlimited in itspotential application to all areas of activity. Arguably,the ontological disobedience at the heart of these andother features of early ethnomethodology has since beenlost in the move to institutionalise a formulaic,“scientific” perspective on practical actions. Thus aresulting institutionalised response to what was called“traditional sociology” is the “science” ofconversational analysis. The profound scepticism to befound in early Garfinkel has since been rewritten as aform of merely instrumental disobedience11.

10 The technical term for whatness is “quiddity”.

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My path through ethnomethodology reached its apogee a fewyears later when I joined the unsung elite who had been“ripped off by Harold”. When the great man visited Oxfordon sabbatical, he persuaded me that the glittering prizesawaited just those sociologists who could bring to bear aunique perspective on the work of science. My thesis workon the discovery of (radio) pulsars had involved myacquiring from the American Institute of Physics an audiotape recording of the first optical pulsar discovery. Thediscoverers had unwittingly left the audio channel oftheir recording equipment running as they tried to makesense of the observations unfolding before them. Throughan analysis of the actual whatness of the night’s work,Garfinkel explained to me, and in virtue of the uniqueadequacy of our methods, we would have access to the verykernel of what is special about scientific discovery. Heshould “get me to California” to work with him and histeam on this. I handed over the tape. The next time Iheard of it/from him was when he presented a paper on itsanalysis at a Toronto conference in 1980 (Garfinkel etal, 1981).

I had previously met Bruno Latour at a 1976 conference on“The Use of Quantitative Methods in the History ofScience” in Berkeley. Who knows what either of us wasdoing at that meeting? I was invited on the strength ofmy first ever publication, a sustained whinge about thetheoretical paucity of some contemporary quantitativeanalyses of science (Gilbert and Woolgar, 1974), to speakabout the emerging field of social studies of science inthe UK. In the context of the feeling that US,predominantly Mertonian inspired sociology of science,had yet to take seriously the emerging British traditionsin the sociology of scientific knowledge, I had entitledmy conference paper, with what I imagined to be tellingirony, “News from Nowhere”. Bruno was there because hewas just starting work at the Salk Institute, on aproject which set out to research the careers of great11 While this reading of the radical origins of ethnomethodology is contentious, it is underpinned by the memory of various aphorisms offered to me by Garfinkel along the lines that “everything is programmatics” or that “conversational analysis is the jewel in the crown of ethnomethodology but we don’t believe a word of it”.

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scientists. I was probably the first person fromcivilisation - by which I mean the world of socialstudies of science - to visit him there among his tribe.In giving me an initial tour of the laboratory heintroduces me to the equipment (not the people) thatpopulates the spaces in and around the laboratory. Hegently picks up a pipette and explains to me: “This, theybelieve, is something which measures what they call a‘volume’ of liquid”. Such delightful disrespect for thegiven, such wonderful ethnographic distance, such promiseof ontological disobedience!

I had only barely heard of Mary Douglas’ (1978) famousdistinction. Yet the danger associated with thinking alonglines similar to Garfinkel and Latour seemed much moreattractive than the aspirations to purity associated withattempts to establish safe explanatory formulae asoffered, for example, by the strong programme in thesociology of scientific knowledge or SSK. The greatdisappointment of the latter, it turned out, was that itsdisobedience led merely to replacing one relativelystable system of explanation with another. Meanwhile, atYork, the emerging dynasty of Mike Mulkay’s postgraduatestudents began a series of workshops exploring thedangers of discourse and reflexivity.

3. On sustaining disobedience (and concealment)

Sirelli: You’ll forgive my asking, but what do youhope to achieve with all this rigmarole?(Pirandello, 1962 [1913]: 24)

This is all very well. My account has thus far offered afew characterisations of “the time”, which are looselytied to my emerging analytic proclivities. I’ve tried toorganise these observations around a distinction betweeninstrumental and ontological disobedience. Are youkidding? Only two kinds of disobedience? Are they reallyso distinct? Can we so easily categorise some forms ofpolitical protest as merely instrumental, and others asdynamic? Can we not argue that the disobedience ofmusicians is often instrumentalised as part of their

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marketing?12 For example, the brothers Gallagher achievedfame to some extent for being disobedient13. Artists likeEminem thrive on their reputation for disobedience. Butdoes this kind of notoriety necessitate ontologicaldisobedience? Whether or not forms of disobedient actionand behaviour are ontological or instrumental presumablyhas a lot to do with how these behaviours areappropriated and reformulated. And, in any case, is thenon enduring, finite quality of instrumental disobediencealways such a bad thing? What about the clear benefits oftemporary disobedience, for example in the emergingargumentative genre of the “rant” (Osborne, 2002)? Bycontrast, is not enduring disobedience sometimes rathernegative, one thinks for example of the embarrassingspectre of the Rolling Stones still carrying on after allthese years?14 And is not a key feature of disobediencethat responses will vary between audiences and over time?Disobedience for whom, how and when?

Surely?

So the central question is still left hanging: whatorigins might eventually lead an aspiring engineer tobecome a quasi Garfinkelian arch reflexive tropistontologically disobedient Chair of Marketing?15

To dig a bit deeper we need to follow a different tack: Imust now reveal that the biggest influence on my earlythinking was undoubtedly the playwright Luigi Pirandello.But to be entirely consistent with the earlier pointabout the problematic nature of influences, I should makeit clear that Luigi didn’t realise this at the time. Moreto the point, nor did I. Indeed it was only many yearslater that I realised this influence, when I first met

12 Come to think of it, just about every Rolling Stones record I’ve heard includes an instrumental break.13 Thanks to Catelijne Coopmans for reminding me that Oasis released a1994 album entitled “Definitely maybe”.14 I owe this example to Daniel Neyland.15 A yet more central question, of course, if we take seriously anything about ontological disobedience, is how can we begin to address this former question without taking into account the kind of answer with which the person in question would feel comfortable?

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him through a popular revival of his play - Absolutely{perhaps}16 - in London’s West End.

A popular conception of social action derives fromGoffman’s (1990) dramaturgical vision of social playerson the stage. But Pirandello proposes some verycontrasting views. For Pirandello, the settled,fathomable outcome of narrative and plot is anathema.Absolutely {perhaps} is built around two characters each ofwhom says the other is mad. The play revolves around themorally charged efforts of the other characters to settlewho is right. The playwright “intrigues us into chasingas excitedly as the neighbours after the solution to themystery; and he leaves us, as he leaves them, with themystery returned to [us]” (Browne, 1962: 8).

Mrs Ponza: ….I am just whoever you think I am!(Pirandello, 1962 [1913]: 87)17

Pirandello is precisely concerned with the absence of asolution to puzzles about the relation between the actand its underlying reality, between imagination andreality. But this is much more than mere games playing.

Mine is a serious theatre. It requires the totalparticipation of that moral entity – man. It is notcomfortable theatre. It is a difficult theatre, evena dangerous one. (Pirandello, 1935)

By “the total participation of that moral entity – man”,I think Pirandello means to articulate and exploresituations where there is no escape, no boundaries whichcan keep the phenomenon being discussed safe, dividedoff, stable, contained. Indeed, towards the end of theplay, several presumed boundaries are shown not to bewhat they appear. The distinction between actors andaudience dissolves when several “members of the audience”16 Written in 1913, Cosi e {se vi pare!} has been variously translated as And That’s The Truth in 1925, as Right You Are (If You Think So) in 1962, as Absolutely! {perhaps} in 2003 and as Definitely! {maybe} in 2004 . 17 Surprisingly, it turns out that Pirandello was also a major influence on Eminem: “I am whatever you say I am” (Eminem: the Marshall Mathers LP, 2000).

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start to join in the discussion with those on stage. Thedistinction between actors and playwright breaks downwhen it eventually becomes apparent that the centralcharacter of the Professor (ahh!) is actually (playing)the playwright. Right at the end the principals huddletogether to form an impenetrable circle around which wenow see has flowed the whole course of accusation andcounteraccusation of madness, consternation andirresolution.

I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonerybecause we need to deceive ourselves constantly bycreating a reality (one for each and never the samefor all) which from time to time is discovered to bein vain and illusory (Pirandello, 1935)

In Pirandello, then, the instability and unresolvabilityof the reality/illusion couple is paramount18. SoPirandello injects a fluidity and uncertainty into theidea of social action that far surpasses Goffman. A signof our post-modern times? Well, no, since Pirandellowrote Absolutely {perhaps} in 1913! So was he “ahead of histime”? A post modernist stuck in the 1900s? Perhaps thereis something in this since he is now hailed as aforerunner of existentialism, the theatre of the absurd,and Ionesco, and direct lines are drawn from him throughsurrealist comedy to Monty Python.

The importance then of Goffman type models of socialaction is not (just) that they provide another convenientway for analysts to divide up the world, but that insuggesting that the world is other than it seems, theysignal a moment of uncertainty, and instability, ofsuggesting that what seems to be the case is not thecase. On the whole, we respond to these moments ofuncertainty by trying to get through them as quickly aspossible, to get to the other side, to return to a normalorder. Indeed the extent of our dependence on order andnormality is indexed by the extent of consternation

18 This is of course perfect for a Chair of Marketing, to whom issues of the relation between reality and illusion are paramount (cf Woolgar and Simakova, 2003).

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(alarm, upset, or humour) associated with disruptivemoments. But the point of the Pirandellan, as opposed tothe Goffman, reading is that we glimpse the possibilityof constant consternation and hence appreciate thecontinual work needed to maintain and renew social order.

Consideration of Pirandello underscores the differencebetween relatively static (or stipulative) and relativelydynamic (or technographic) models of social action. Thisdifference maps well on to our earlier distinctionbetween instrumental and ontological disobedience. Theformer stresses stability and certainty whereas thelatter encourages us to emphasise the uncertaintiesassociated with interpretation.

4. Conclusion

We can conclude that the forms of disobedience whichdifferentially inform our perspectives as social analystsdefinitely have profound consequences for the nature andkinds of inquiry which we perform. Whereas instrumentaldisobedience is aimed primarily at the safe displacementof one orthodoxy with another, ontological disobedience(maybe) encourages a much more theoretically dangerousattitude.

If our own (social scientific) theatre is unidimensional,static, predictable, safe, we will doubtless continue topull in the crowds. Audiences may be attracted, perhapsby the promise of becoming better informed about thenature of the (social) world. But if we also want to makethem think, to disturb existing preconceptions andassumptions, our theatre will have to espouse a form ofdisobedience which is much more dynamic, unpredictable,unstable, provocative and, above all, dangerous.

The audience was outraged at the play’s conclusion.They were shocked by it. There had never been anending like that in the history of drama. It brokeall the rules. At the curtain call when the authorappeared some of the audience cheered. But some ofthem yelled obscenities. One irate customer tore his

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theatre seat from its moorings and hurled it onto thestage. It narrowly missed Pirandello’s head(Zeffirelli, 2003)

Clearly, some members of the audience concluded that theplaywright had wilfully concealed the very informationthey were expecting from him.

5. References

Benn, Tony (1995) The Benn Diaries (Arrow Books: London)

Browne, E Martin (1962) “Introduction” to Pirandello(1962)

Douglas, Mary (1978) Purity and Danger: an analysis ofthe concepts of pollution and taboo (Routledge: London)

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