„The Black Box" by George Stocking

Abstract

Three years before his death on July 13, 2013, George William Stocking, widely regarded as the discipline's "greatest historian of anthropology," wrote an autobiography and memoir entitled Glimpses into My Own Black Box: An Exercise in Self-Deconstruction(2010). The book was published as part of the famous History of Anthropology (HOA) edition, which Stocking started at The University of Wisconsin Press (1983) and edited for two decades. This paper is based on the understanding of the American theoretician of autobiography, William Howarth, who posited that autobiography in literary (and scientific) writing is akin to what self-portrait is in painting. In the introductory chapter of the work, biographical data are presented that bring the character and work of George William Stocking closer to the domestic, Serbian readership (his second marriage to the sociologist Carol Bowman; their stays in Yugoslavia). This is followed by a description of the two main phases in Stocking's life and work: the formative period in his intellectual development and the mature age, known as the "Chicago years", spent in the Departments of History and Anthropology. Bearing in mind the main elements of the autobiographical strategy – character/self-portrait, technique (rhetoric and writing style), and the theme presented by the author's work-text – Stocking's book thematizes the life story, professional and scientific history (history of anthropology) from the position of both a witness and the one of the creators of written histories of the discipline and biographies of its practitioners and theorists. His writing technique is characterized by self-reflection and scientifically argued discussions on anthropological, historical and political topics and problems. Despite the significant influence his writing and edition of the HOA has had in anthropology, social sciences and humanities, the autobiographer problematizes his relationship to the two disciplines that shaped him as a scientist, highlighting his ambivalent position within them. In spite of the objective indicators of professional success, such as prestigious recognitions, awards, a secure position at the University and the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a comfortable civic life filled with trips, conferences and guest appearances at important American and British scientific research institutions, the subjective experience of "double non-belonging" or rather, liminality, is the leitmotif that colors his self-portrait and the meaning of the text as a whole. The main features of the work, such as its discursive style of narration and description, striving for objectivity and honesty (self-disclosure and „self-deconstruction“), anxiety regarding one's own place, role and importance in science, as well as, at times, a resigned or elegiac tone, especially at the end of the book, i.e. towards the end of his life, provide the basis to include Stocking's strategy in a hybrid type with elements of those two categories that Howarth calls "rhetorical" and "poetic" confession.