Myerhoff B - Life History Among the Elderly

Life History among the Elderly:Performance, Visibility,and Re-membering

Slowly it comes out from them their beginning to their ending, slowly youcan see it in them the nature and the mixtures in them, slowly everythingcomes out from each one in the kind of repeating each one does in thedifferent parts and kinds of living they have in them, slowly then thehistory of them comes out from them, slowly then any one who lookswell at any one will have the history of the whole of that one. Slowly thehistory of each one comes out of each one.

—Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America

Karl Mannheim observed that "individuáis who belong to the samegeneration, who share the same year of birth, are endowed, to thatextent, with a common location in the historical dimensión of thesocial process" (1969:290). Often, however, membership in a commoncohort is background information, like grammatical rules, more inter-esting to outside analysts than members. Outsiders find and wantexplanations where the subjects continué unself-consciously in the habitsof everyday life. Sometimes conditions conspire to make a generationalcohort acutely self-conscious and then they become active participantsin their own history and provide their own sharp, insistent definitionsof themselves and explanations for their destiny, past and future. Theyare then knowing actors in a historical drama they script, rather thansubjects in someone else's study. They "make" themselves, sometimeseven "make themselves up," an activity which is not inevitable orautomatic but reserved for special people and special circumstances.It is an artificial and exhilarating undertaking, this self-construction.As with all conspicuously made-up ventures (rituals are perhaps the bestexample), acute self-consciousness may become destructive, paralyzingactors in a spasm of embarrassed lack of conviction. But occasionallyself-consciousness does not interfere with personal and cultural construc-tion; rather it provides another, fuller angle of self-understanding. Then

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232 Remembered Lives

the subjects know that their knowing is a component of their conduct.They assume responsibility for inventing themselves and yet maintaintheir sense of authenticity and integrity. Such people exercise power overtheir images, in their own eyes and to some extent in the eyes of whoevermay be observing them. Sometimes the image is the only part of theirUves subject to control. But this is not a small thing to control. It maylead to a realization of personal power and serve as a source of pleasureand understanding in the workings of consciousness. Heightened self-consciousness—self-awareness—is not an essential, omnipresent attain-ment. It does not always come with age and is probably not critical towell-being. But when it does occur, it may bring one into a greaterfullness of being; one may become a more fully realized example of thepossibilities of being human. This is not small compensation in extremeoíd age.

The group described here is such an acutely self-conscious one, makingitself up, knowing that this is going on, doing it well, and appreciatingthe process. This is a subtle but distinctive state of consciousness,revealed in their personal and collective concerns. Many factors enhancethis self-consciousness, not the least of which is their sense of bearingwhat Támara Hareven calis "generational memories." She uses this termto refer to "the memories which individuáis have of their own families'history, as well as more generational collective memories about theirpast" (1978). The subjects of this paper are heirs to a set of memoriesof a culture and society extinguished during the Holocaust. Very oídand cióse to death, they realize that there will be no others after themwith direct experience of their natal culture. And because intergenera-tional continuity has not been sustained, there are no clear heirs to theirmemories. The oíd people's sense of being memory bearers, carriers ofa precious, unique cargo, heightens generational memory and intensifiescohort-consciousness, giving a mission to the group that is at once urgentand at the same time unlikely to be realized. Their machinations toaccomplish their task, delivering themselves of their memories, estab-lishing, then making visible their own identities, illuminates several mat-ters: the nature of performed individual and collective definitions, theuses and kinds of witnesses needed for these performances, and the natureand uses of memory. Life histories are seen here as giving opportunitiesto allow people to become visible and to enhance reflexive consciousness.

For the very oíd, in this population in particular, this may be construedas work essential to the last stage in the life cycle.

Life History among the Elderly 233

Self-Presentation and Performing: Becoming Visible

The oíd people with whom I worked were a group of elderly Jews whohad emigrated from Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century. Theywere an invisible people, marginal to mainstream American society, animpotent group—economically, physically, and politically. But they knewthey were irreplaceable and their consciousness of being the people whoremembered a culture destroyed by the Holocaust fed their determinationnot to be extinguished until the last possible moment. Nevertheless, theyknew they would lose in this struggle. Death, impotence, invisibilitywere omnipresent threats. But the atmosphere in the community wasnot one of defeat or despair. On the contrary, in it there was intensityand vitality, humor, irony and dignity. Always the people exuded a senseof living meaningful lives. Despíte the evidence of their insignificanceoffered by the outside world, they were quite clear about their ownimportance. It is my interpretation that their self-consciousness, pro-moted by collective performances and prívate self-narration, theirrecounting of stories and life histories, influenced and nourished theirsuccess as oíd people.

Cultures include in their work self-presentations to their members.On certain collective occasions, cultures offer interpretations. They tellstories, comment, portray, and mirror. Like all mirrors, cultures are notaccurate reflectors; there are distortions, contradictions, reversáis, exag-gerations, and even lies. Nevertheless, self-knowledge, for the individualand collectivity, is the consequence. These portraits range from delicateand oblique allusions through fully staged dramatic productions in thecourse of which members embody their place in the scheme of things,their locations in the social structure, their purposes and natures, takingup the questions of who we are and why we are here, which as a specieswe cannot do without. Such performances are opportunities for appear-ing, an indispensable ingredient of being itself, for unless we exist inthe eyes of others, we may come to doubt even our own existence. Beingis a social, psychological construct, made, not given. Thus it is erroneousto think of performances as optional, arbitrary, or merely decorativeembellishments as we in Western societies are inclined to do. In thissense, arenas for appearing are essential, and culture serves as a stageas well as mirror, providing opportunities for self- and collective proc-lamations of being.

Since these constructions are intentionally designed, they are not only


reflections of "what is"; they are also opportunities to write history asit should be or should have been, demonstrating a culture's notion ofpropriety and sense. History and accident are not permitted to beimposed willy-nilly, those badly written, haphazard, incomplete record-ings of occurrences that are so unsatisfactory. Rather performances areshaped and groomed justifications, more akin to myth and religión trianlists of empty externa! events we cali history or chronicle.'

The performative dimensión of culture seen most often in rituals,ceremonies, festivals, celebrations, and the like is properly understood

as both instrumental and expressive. It blurs our overstated dichotomiesbetween art and science, myth and reality, religión and work, subjectiveand objective.

When such performances are successful, we receive experience ratherthan belief. Then the invisible world is made manifest, whether this isa prosaic affair such as demonstrating the fact of a rearranged socialrelationship, or a grander more mysterious presentation involving super-natural beings or principies. In all events the performed order is explicit,realized, and we are within it, not left merely to endlessly wonder ortalk about it.2 Any reality is capable of being made convincing if itcombines art, knowledge, authentic symbols and rituals, and is validatedby appropriate witnesses.

Cultural performances are reflective in the sense of showing our-selves to ourselves. They are also capable of being reflexive, arousingconsciousness of ourselves as we see ourselves. As héroes in our own

dramas, we are made self-aware, conscious of our consciousness. Atonce actor and audience, we may then come into the fullness of ourhuman capability—and perhaps human desire—to watch ourselves andenjoy knowing that we know. All this requires skill, craft, a coherent,consensually validated set of symbols, and social arenas for appearing.It also requires an audience in addition to performers. When culturesare fragmented and in serious disarray, proper audiences may be hardto find. Natural occasions may not be offered and then they must beartificially invented. I have called such performances "Definitional Cere-

monies," understanding them to be collective self-definitions specifically

1. Charlotte Linde distinguishes between "narrative" that implies an evaluativedimensión and "chronicle" a list of events that does not imply evaluation (1978).

2. For a fuller discussion of the capacity of ritual to redefine social relation-ships, see Myerhoff and Moore (1977).


intended to proclaim an interpretation to an audience not otherwiseavailable. The latter must be captured by any means necessary and madeto see the truth of the group's history as the members understand it.Socially marginal people, disdained, ignored groups, individuáis withwhat Erving Goffman calis "spoiled identities," regularly seek oppor-tunities to appear before others in the light of their own internallyprovided interpretation.

Attention was the scarce good in the community I studied. Everyonecompeted for it with astonishing fierceness. The sight of a camera ortape recorder, the mere possibility that someone would sit down andlisten to them, aroused the members' appetite to have themselves docu-mented. One of the members was heartbroken when she was not electedto the Board of Directors. "How will anyone know I am here?" sheasked. If possible, the attention should come from outsiders who weremore socially prestigious and therefore more capable of certifying theirexistence. And if possible, these should be younger people, because peerswould soon be gone. Who then would be left to recall their existence?What Sir Thomas Browne said in 1658 is still true. The threat of oblivionis "the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man."

Performance is not merely a vehicle for being seen. Self-definition isattained through it, and this is tantamount to being what one claims tobe. "We become what we display," says Mircea Eliade in discussing thetransformative power of ritual performances. The imposition of meaningoccurs when we select from the myriad possibilities a particular for-mulation that summarizes and epitomizes. Enactments are intentional,not spontaneous, rhetorical and didactic, taming the chaos of the world,at once asserting existence and meaning.

Meaning and "Re-membering"

The necessity for meaning is probably ubiquitous. In the Center popu-lation it was elevated to a passion. The oíd people were ¡nclined naturallytoward self-consciousness by their tradition's emphasis on their uniquestatus as a Chosen People. The historical facts since the dispersión fromthe Holy Land exacerbated this tendency, since Jews have spent so muchof their history as a pariah people surrounded by hostile outsiders. TheHolocaust further intensified their awareness of their distinctiveness andpromoted among survivors a search through the events of their privateand collective lives for an explanation of their destiny. Lifton has

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suggested that survivors of mass destruction often become "seekers afterjustice." They carefully examine events for evidence of something asidefrom chaos to account for their sufferings. Indications of a moral andsane universe become imperative to ward off despair. Sense must beresurrected by means of an explanation. Any disaster becomes morebearable once it is named and conceptualized, once support is found forthe belief in the "relatively modest assertion that God is not mad," toparaphrase Albert Einstein's minimum definition of religión (cited inGeertz 1973:100-101). Lifton speaks of survivors of the Holocaust andof Hiroshima as restoring sanity to themselves through "the formulativeeffort. Any experience of survival—whether of large disaster or intímatepersonal loss . . . involves a journey to the edge of the world of the living.The formulative effort, the search for signs of meaning, is the survivor'smeans of return from that edge" (1967).

The survivors of catastrophe, like the victims of disaster, must accountfor their escape. Job-like, victims petítion the gods to know their sins,asking for explanations as to why they deserved their fate. But we oftenoverlook the fact that those who are not afflicted when all around themare also ask the gods, "Why me?" The sorting through collective andprívate histories for answers was for some Center oíd people nearly anobsession, and often exceedingly painful. But the members were com-mitted to it nonetheless. "The one who studies history loses an eye," saidMoshe. "The one who does not loses two eyes." More formally, WilhelmDilthey says, "Both our fortunes and our own nature cause us pain, andso they forcé us to come to terms with them through understanding.The past mysteriously invites us to know the closely-woven meaning ofits moments" (Hodges 1952:274-75).

Surviving and survivor's guilt, then, can serve as transformative agents,taking the base materials of ordinary existence and disaster and workingthe alchemical miracle upon them until they result in consciousness. Theconsequence is a development of the capacity to lead an examined life.This includes the construction of an explicable, even moral universedespite crushing external evidence to the contrary. The Center membershad achieved this, and their use of rituals and ceremonies to enliven andinterpret daily life was remarkable. Every day, even every minute, wasfocused in the light of all that had been extinguished and lost. "If welose ourselves now, if we give up our traditions, if we become likeeveryone else, then we finish ourselves off. We finish Hitler's work forhim," said one of the oíd women. They felt that they owed living fully


to their beloved—always the "best of us"—who had perished. Thus weredespair and depression held at bay. The oíd people also felt a certainsense of triumph at having persisted despite the attempts of so many toextinguish them. Outliving their enemies was a personal accomplishmentfor which they took responsibility and in which they took pride, flavoredoften as not by bitterness.

Overcoming physical handicaps and poverty were also moral accom-plishments. The ability to remain independen! and take care of them-selves was closely attended and valued collectively by the,elders. Senilityand loss of autonomy were more feared than death. Their accomplish-ments were finely calibrated, nearly inconspicuous to younge-r, healthyoutsiders. Basha succinctly stated her sense of achievement, even power,when she said:

Every morning I wake up in pain. I wiggle my toes. Good. Theystill obey. I open my eyes. Good. I can still see. Everything hurtsbut I get dressed. I walk down to the ocean. Good. It's still there.Now my day can start. About tomorrow I never know. After all,I'm eighty-nine. I can't live forever.

Center members' attitudes toward time were colored by extreme age,the closeness of death, their sense of accomplishment at outliving catas-trophe, and an often righteous determínation to be themselves. Theywere alone and angry at being alone. They were no longer willing totrouble themselves to picase others or pretend to be what they were not.Decorum, grace, and courtesy were not for them; truth was permittedto this stage of life. Time was an issue that flickered in and out ofdiscussions often. On the one hand, the elders felt they had plenty ofit, due to their enforced leisure. But pn the other, every remaining daycounted. This was illustrated by an exchange between some of the mem-bers díscussing the existence of God.

Nathan: If we start to talk about God now we'll be here for fivethousand years. These questions you could keep for posterity.

Sonya: Have you got better to do with your time than sit here andtalk?

Sadie interrupted and began to talk about her ailments. . . "Eventhe doctors don't know how I survive. I could list for you all my

238 Remembered Uves

sicknesses." Nathan retorted: "For this we don't have enough time."

Jacob Kovitz, the Center's president emeritus, often wrote essays onthe proper way to age and use time. His writings included a piece called"Ten Commandments for the Elderly." Gentle irony and a delicate senseof the preciousness of time remaining are apparent. No future exists, sotime should be neither rushed ñor rigidly saved—the sense is there offully using what is left but not expecting or demanding more.

Dress neatly and don't try to save your best clothes, because afteryou leave this world you won't need them anymore. Keep yourhead up, walk straight, and don't act older than your age. Remem-ber one thing: If you don't feel well, there are many people whoare feeling worse. Walk carefully, watching for the green light whencrossing. If you have to wait a minute or two, it doesn't make anydifference at your age. There is no reason to rush.

Time is abolished not only by myth and dream but occasionally alsoby memory, for remembering the past fully and well retains it. Lifeexperiences are not swept away as if they had never been. They arerewoven into the present. Memory was problematic very often andforgetfulness experienced as very painful. Forgetting a person, an inci-dent, even a word was often a torment. Shmuel explained the seriousnessof this. "You understand, one word is not like anocher. . . . So whenjust the word I want hides from me, when before it has always comealong very politely when I called it, this is a special torture designedfor oíd Jews."

Memory is a continuum ranging from vague, dim shadows to themost bright vivid totality. At its most extreme form, memory may offerthe opportunity not merely to recall the past but to relive it, in all itsoriginal freshness, unaltered by intervening change and reflection. Allthe accompanying sensations, emotions, and associations of the firstoccurrence are recovered and the past recaptured. Marcel Proust morethan anyone analyzed how this process works and how exceedinglyprecious such moments are. The process does not involve will, volition,or the conscious, critical mind. It cannot be forced. Such moments aregifts, numinous pinpoints of great intensity. Then one's self and one'smemories are experienced as eternally valid. Simultaneity replaces


sequence, and a sense of oneness with all that has been one's history isachieved.

These moments very often involve childhood memories, and then onemay experience the self as it was originally and know beyond doubtthat one is the same person as that child, still dwelling within a much-altered body. The integration with earlier states of being surely providesthe sense of continuity and completeness that may be counted as anessential developmental task in oíd age. It may not yield wisdom, thedevelopmental task that Erikson points to as the work of this stage oflife.3 It does give what he would consider ego integrity, the opposite ofdisintegration.

Freud (1965) suggests that the completion of the mourning processrequires that those left behind develop a new reality which no longerincludes what has been lost. But judging from the Center members'struggle to retain the past, it must be added that full recovery frommourning may restore what has been lost, maintaining it through incor-poration into the present. Full recollection and retention may be as vitalto recovery and well-being as forfeiting memories.

Moments of full recollection are often triggered by sensory events—taste, touch, smell. Often physical movements, gestures, and actions—singing, dancing, participation in rituals, prayers, and ceremonies rootedin the archaic past—are also triggers. Actors in the method school usetríese devices to re-arouse emotions, speaking of this as "kinestheticmemory." The body retains the experiences that may be yielded, even-tually and indirectly, to the mind. Often among Center members it waspossible to see this at work. In the midst of a song, a lullaby that hadbeen sung to the oíd person as a child, a dance that seemed to dancethe dancer, the past became present and produced changes in posture,a fluidity of movement or sharply altered countenance in which youth-fulness was mysteriously but undeniably apparent. And Center memberswere articúlate about these experiences. When reciting the ancient prayerfor the dead, one oíd man brought back the entire experience of theoriginal context in which he first heard the prayer: Once more he felthimself a small boy standing cióse to his father, wrapped snugly in thefather's prayer shawl, cióse against the cold of the bright winter morning,weeping, swaying over an open grave.

3. See especially Eriksons discussion of oíd age in "Reflections on Dr. Borg'sLife Cycle" (1978).


To signify this special type of recollection, the term "re-membering"may be used, calling attention to the reaggregation of members, thefigures who belong to one's life story, one's own prior sel ves, as well assignifican! others who are part of the story. Re-membering, then, is apurposive, significant unification, quite different from the passive, con-tinuous fragmentary flickerings of images and feelings that accompanyother activities in the normal flow of consciousness. The focused uni-fication provided by re-membering is requisite to sense and ordering. Alife is given a shape that extends back in the past and forward into thefuture. It becomes a tidy edited tale. Completeness is sacrificed for moraland aesthetic purposes. Here history may approach art and ritual. Thesame impulse for order informs them all. Perhaps this ¡s why Mnemosne,the goddess of Memory among the Greeks, is the mother of the muses.Without re-membering we lose our histories and our selves. Time iserosión, then, rather than accumulation. Says Nabokov in his auto-biography, " . . . the beginning of reflexive consciousness in the brain ofour remotest ancestor must surely have coincided with the dawning ofthe sense of time" (1966:21).

The process is the same when done ¡n individual lives or by a cultureor a generational cohort. Prívate and collective lives, properly re-membered, are interpretative. Full or "thick description" is such ananalysis. This involves finding linkages between the group's shared,valued beliefs and symbols, and specific histórica! events. Particularitiesare subsumed and equated with grander themes, seen as exemplifyingultímate concerns. Then such stories may be enlarged to the level ofmyth as well as art—sacred and eternal justifications for how thingsare and what has happened. A life, then, is not envisioned as belongingonly to the individual who has lived it but it is regarded as belongingto the world, to progeny who are heirs to the embodied traditions, orto God. Such re-membered lives are moral documents and their functionis salvific, inevitably implying, "All this has not been for nothing."

The extraordinary struggle of survivors to recount their histories isexplicable in this light. Again and again concentration camp literaturadescribes inmates' determination to come back and tell the living theirstories. This is seldom with the expectation of bringing about reform orrepentance. It is to forge a link with the listener, to retain one's past,to find evidence of sense—above all it is an assertion of an unextinguishedpresence. The redemption provided by re-membering is well understoodby the storyteller Elie Wiesel, who struggled back from hell to recount


the voyage. In the dedication of his book on Hasidism (1973) he says;

My father, an enlightened spirit, believed in man.My grandfather, a fervent Hasid, believed in God.The one taught me to speak, the other to sing.Both loved stories.And when I tell mine, I hear their voices.Whispering from beyond the silenced storm.They are what links the survivor to their memory. ,

A young actress, Leeny Sack, working with the histories of her parentsas concentration camp survivors, has recently developed a theater piece.The recurrent phrase that punctuates her narrative begins, "My fatheitold me to tell you this. . . . " The substance was unbearable, but sheexplained the only pain worse than recollection was the pain of consid-ering the possibility that the stories would be untold.4 His anguish, wemay assume, was assuaged by capturing his daughter as audience andgiving her the task of transmitting his account. The usual feelings arousedin the teller are gratitude and relief.

A student working with one of the Center members noted this whenshe completed a series of life history sessions with one of the oíd women.The oíd woman was illiterate and completely alone. She never envisionedan opportunity to find a proper listener. When the project was complete,the younger woman thanked the older profoundly, having been excep-tionally moved by the older woman's strength, the range of her struggles,her determination to rise to the challenges of her life. The older womandeclined the thanks saying, "No, it is I who thank you. Every nightbefore I fall asleep here on my narrow bed, I go over my life. I memorizeit, in case anyone should ask."

The prospect of death for many of these elderly was often less fearsomethan that of dying without having had an opportunity to unburdenthemselves of their memories. Their stories did not have to be completeor accurate. They realized that younger listeners who could pass themon would not be capable of comprehending what they had not livedthrough. But the mere remembering that there had been a history, a

4. Ms. Sack presented her work-in-progress to a session of the seminar on"Performance and Anthropology," conducted by Richard Schechner at New YorkUniversiry.

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people, a culture, a story, would suffice. Characteristically, Shmuel madethis point by telling a story. He recounted a parable concerning thefounder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov.

When the great Hasid, Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the GoodÑame, had a problem, it was his custom to go to a certain partof the forest. There he would light a fire and say a certain prayer,and find wisdom. A generation later, a son of one of his discipleswas in the same position. He went to that same place in the forestand lit the fire but he could not remember the prayer. But he askedfor wisdom and it was sufficient. He found what he needed. Ageneration after that, his son had a problem like the others. Healso went to the forest, but he could not even light the fire. "Lordof the Universe," he prayed, "I could not remember the prayer andI cannot get the fire started. But I am in the forest. That will haveto be sufficient." And it was.

Now, Rabbi Ben Levi sits in his study with his head in his hands."Lord of the Universe," he prays, "look at us now. We have forgottenthe prayer. The fire is out. We can't find our way back to the placein the forest. We can only remember that there was a fire, a prayer,a place in the forest. So, Lord, now that must be sufficient."

Upon completing a recording of his life history, Shmuel reflected onwhat it meant for him to face his death knowing his recollections of anentire way of life would be lost. His town in Poland that he had lovedin his childhood no longer existed; it was destroyed in the Holocaust.

. . . It is not the worst thing that can happen for a man to growoíd and die. But here is the hard part. When my mind goes backthere now, there are no roads going in or out. No way back remainsbecause nothing is there, no continuation. Then life itself, what isits worth to us? Why have we bothered to live? All this is at anend. For myself, growing oíd would be altogether a difieren! thingif that little town was there still. All is ended. So in my life, I carrywith me everything—all those people, all those places, I carry themaround until my shoulders bend.. . . Even with all that poverty and suffering, it would be enoughif the place remained, even oíd men like me, ending their days,would find it enough. But when I come back from these stories

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and remember the way they lived is gone forever, wiped out likeyou would erase a line of writing, then it means another thingaltogether to me to accept leaving this life. If my life goes now, itmeans nothing. But if my life goes, with my memories, and allthat is lost, that is something else to bear.

The Life History Classes

Not long after I began my work in the Center, I began tq look for someappropriate means of reciprocating the members for the time they spentwith me often talking about what I wanted to learn. It was soon evidentthat providing them with an opportunity to be heard, to recount theirhistories and tell stories, was ideal. This would constitute another arenain which they could appear in their own terms, and I would serve asaudience, conspicuously listening and documenting what was said. Ihoped also that some satisfaction would come to them from listening toeach other in formal circumstances, that they would valídate one another'saccounts, and at the same time stimulate and encourage each other'smemories. These hopes were fully realized in the form of a set of "LivingHistory" sessions, as the members called them. Members were invitedto attend "a class" that met for two hours or more each week. The seriesran for five months, broke for the summer and resumed for four months.Before long a rather stable group of about twenty people formed itselfand attended regularly.

There were few rules. People were required to abstain from inter-rupting each other. Everyone would have some time to speak at eachsession, even briefly. Any contení was acceptable. I reinforced the appro-priateness of anyone's offerings, discouraging the members from chal-lenging the speakers on matters of accuracy. The content discussed variedgreatly but loosely fell into four categories: Being Oíd, Life in the OídCountry7 Being a Jew, Life in America. In time, people's offerings grewmore emotionally varied and less guarded. They brought in dreams,recipes, questions about ultímate concerns, folk remedies, book reports,daily logs, and the like. I encouraged them to keep journals, providingnotebooks and pens, and many did so with considerable pleasure.

Their Life History sessions paralleled the Definitional Ceremonies intheir presentational formal. They were intended to persuade, and enact-ments were inserted as often as possible. Illustrations of points peoplewanted to make were taken to class in the form of objects. They brought

244 Remembered Uves

mementos, gifts, plaques, awards, certificares, letters, publications, andphotographs from all periods of their and their familíes' lives. Onewoman brought her sick husband who had grown senile and could nolonger speak coherently. She spoke for him, recounting his stories, andalong with them, the place he had filled in her life. Another womanbrought her retarded grandson "to show you what I am talking aboutwhen I tell you about him." He was a kind of badge of honor, for shehandled him with dignity and patience, an injury transcended but forwhich she wanted credit. Still another man brought in a yellow felt starbearing the word "Jude." It circulated throughout the room in silence.Words were not needed. The star dramatized a major facet of his exis-tence. A number of the women regularly brought in food, demonstratingtheir claimed skills as cooks. Songs were sung, and from time to timethere was dancing. Poems were recited frequently in many languages,demonstrations of erudition and memory. Learned quotations, of Marxand Talmud, folk and fine literature also adorned people's accounts. Thesessions, then, were not merely verbal. Insofar as possible they weremade into performances. People displayed the qualities they wanted seenas much as they could and became what they displayed.

The importance of storytelling and a strong oral tradition among theCenter members were significant factors in accounting for the vitality ofthe Life History sessions. Though profoundly literate, the oral traditionamong Jews is also highly developed, particularly in those exposed toHasidism. The recognition that words spoken aloud to another personhave particular power is a notion that weaves in and out of Jewish culture.Shmuel spoke of the esteem for the "wonder rebbes," the Hasidic teacherswho traveled from one town to another in Eastern Europe.

Oh the stories they would tell us, full of wisdom, full of humor.It was immense. . . . All of us, little boys by the dozens, wouldfollow them when they carne into the town. You could always tellthem by the chalk on their caftans, this they carried to mark aroundthem a circle of chalk that would keep out the spirits. My fatherdid not approve of me listening to them, but I would sneak outwhenever I could, because what they brought you was absolutelymagic. This experience was developing in me a great respect fortelling stories. This is why it is important to get just the rightattitude and just the right words for a story. You should get every-


thing just right because no matter how pleasant, it is a seriousthing you are doing.

The sessions were not cosmetic. Catharsis occurred and often morethan that. Re-evaluations were clearly being undertaken, too. Havingwitnesses to this work proved essential. The elders found it hard toconvince themselves of the validity of their interpretations without someconsensus from the listeners. In time, they became better listeners.Though they knew their audience of peers was going fo die out withthem, members of the same generational cohorts have advantages aswitnesses. They knew the reality being discussed through direct expe-rience. Less had to be explained and described to them, but the workof persuasión was often all the more difficult because deception was lesslikely to be successful. When Jake quoted his father to demónstrate thelatter's wisdom, one of the members promptly corrected him. "This youare getting not from your father. It comes from Sholom Aleichem." "Anddon't you think Sholom Aleichem learned anything from ordinary peo-ple?" he persisted. But no one was impressed.

A story told aloud to progeny or peers is, of course, more than a text.It is an event. When it is done properly, presentationally, its effect onthe listener is profound, and the latter is more than a mere passive receiveror validator. The listener is changed. This was recognized implicitly byRabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, who ordered that all written records of histeachings be destroyed. His words must be passed from mouth to ear,learned by and in heart. "My words have no clothes," he said. "Whenone speaks to one's fellows there arises a simple light and a returninglight." The impact of the stories told by the oíd people to outsiders whowould stop to listen was consistently striking. Among those oíd peopleembarked on the deep and serious work of re-membering, strugglingtoward self-knowledge and integration, it was especially clear that some-thing important was going on. Sensitive young people, students, andgrandchildren, often found themselves fascinated by the oíd people's lifehistories. The sociological shibboleth that claims in a rapidly changingsociety the elderly have nothing more to teach must be reconsidered.Anyone in our times struggling toward wholeness, self-knowledge basedon examined experience, and clarity about the worth of the enterpriseexerts a great attraction on those searching for clarity. In the company

246 Remembered Liues

of elders such as these, listeners perform an essential service. But theyget more than they give, and invariably grow from the contact.

When the sessions were at their best, the oíd people were consciousof the importance of their integration work, not only for themselves butfor posterity, however modestly represented. Then they felt the highsatisfaction of being able to fulfill themselves as individuáis and as exem-plars of a tradition at once. Then they were embodiments of the sharedmeanings—true ancestors—as well as individuáis in full possession oftheir past. Rachel described such a moment most eloquently when shetalked about what the sessions had meant to her.

All these speeches we are making reminded me of a picture I havefrom many years ago, when we were still in Russia. My brotherhad been gone already two years in America. I can see my motherlike it is before me, engraved in my head. A small house she goesout of in wintertime, going every morning in the snow to the postoffice, wrapped up in a shawl. Every morning there was nothing.Finally, she found a letter. In that letter was written, "Mamalch,I didn't write to you before because I didn't have nothing to writeabout." "So," she says, "why didn't you write and tell me?"

You know this group of ours reminds me of that letter. WhenI first heard about this group, I thought to myself, "What can Ilearn? What can I hear that I don't know, about life in the OídCountry, of the struggles, the life in the poor towns, in the biggertowns, of the rich people and the poor people? What is there tolearn, I'm eighty-eight, that I haven't seen myself?" Then I think,"What can I give to anybody else? I'm not an educated woman.It's a waste of time."

That was my impression. But then I carne here and heard allthose stories. I knew them, but you know it was laid down deep,deep in your mind, with all those troubles mixed. You know it'sthere but you don't think of it, because sometimes you don't wantto live in your past. Who needs all these foolish stories?

But finally, this group brought out such beautiful memories, notalways so beautiful, but still all the pictures carne up. It touchedthe layers of the kind that it was on those dead people already. Itwas laying on them like layers, sepárate layers of earth, and all ofa sudden in this class I feel it coming up like lava. It just meltedaway the earth from all those people. It melted away, and they


became alive. And then to me it looked like they were never dead.Then I felt like the time my mother got that letter. "Why don't

you come and tell me?" "Well, I have nothing to say," I think. ButI start to say it and I find something. The memories come up inme like lava. So I felt I enriched myself. And I am hoping maybeI enriched somebody else. All this, it's not only for us. It's for thegenerations.

o

1 WHAT 15 PERFORMANCE 5TUDIE5?

Introducing this book, this field,and me

The book you hold in your hand is "an" introduction to

performance studies. There will be others, and that suits

, me just fine. The one overriding and underlying assumption

of performance studies is that the field is open. There is

no finality to performance studies, either theoretically

or operationally. There are many voices, themes, opinions,

methods, and subjects. As I will show in Chapter 2, anything

and everything can be studied "as" performance. But this

does not mean performance studies as an academic discipline

lacks specific subjects and questions that it focuses on.

Theoretically, performance studies is wide open; practically,

it has developed in a certain way, which I will discuss in thischapter.

Ñor does openness mean there are no valúes. People

want, need, and use standards by which to live, write, think,

and act. As individuáis and as parts of communities and

nations people particípate and interact with other people,

other species, the planet, and whatever else is out there. But

the valúes that guide people are not "natural," transcendent,

timeless, God-given, or inalienable. Valúes belong to ideology,

science, the arts, religión, politics, and other áreas of human

endeavor and inquiry. Valúes are hard-won and contingent,

changing over time according to social and historical

circumstances. Valúes are a function of cultures, groups, and

individuáis. Valúes can be used to protect and libérate or to

control and oppress. In fací, the difference betvveen what is

"liberty"and what is"oppression"depends a lot on where you

are coming from.o

This book embodies the valúes, theories, and practices of

a certain field of scholarship as understood by one particular

person in the eighth decade of his life.This person is a Jewish

Hindú Buddhist atheist living in NewYork City, married, and

the father of two children. He is a university professor in the

Performance Studies Department of NewYork University

and the Editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. He

directs plays, writes essays and books, lectures, and leads

workshops. He has traveled and worked in many parts of the

world. Who I am is not irrelevant. I will be leading you on a

journey.You ought to know a little about your guide.

Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

open to new possibilities, no one can actually grasp its totality

or press all its vastness and variety into a single book. My

points of departure are my own teaching, research, artistic

practice, and life experiences. But I am not limited by these.

I will offer ideas far from my center, some even contrary to

my valúes and opinions.

The boxes

Before going on, I want to point out a feature of this book.

My text includes no quotations, citations, or notes. Ideas are

drawn from many sources, but the written voice is my own.

I hope this gives the reader a smoother ride than many

scholarly texts. At the same time, I want my readers to hear

many voices. The boxes offer alternative and supplementary

opinions and interruptions.The boxes open the conversation

in ways I cannot do alone. The boxes are hyperlinks enacting

some of the diversity of performance studies. I want the effect

to be of a seminar with many hands raised or of a computer

desktop with many open windows.

What makes performance studiesspecial

Performances are actions. As a discipline, performance

studies takes actions very seriously in four ways. First,

behavior is the "object of study" of performance studies.

Although performance studies scholars use the "archive"

extensively - what's in books, photographs, the archae-

ological record, historical remains, etc. — their dedicated

focus is on the "repertory", namely, what people do in the

activity of their doing it. Second, artistic practice is a big

part of the performance studies project. A number of perfor-

mance studies scholars are also practicing artists working in

the avant-garde, in community-based performance, and

Documents

Myerhoff B - Life History Among the Elderly