Recapitulations: A Memoir

by Vincent Crapanzano

A distinguished anthropologist tells his life story as a wistful novelist would, watching himself as if he were someone elseThis memoir recaptures meaningful moments from the author’s as his childhood on the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, his psychiatrist father’s early death, his years at school in Switzerland and then at Harvard in the 1960s, his love affairs, his own teaching, and his far-flung travels. Taken together, these stories have the power of a nothing-taken-for-granted vision, fighting those conventions and ideologies that deaden the creative and inquiring mind.

Genres: Anthropology, Memoir

401 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 17, 2015

About the author

Vincent Crapanzano (Dist Prof, Anthropology and Comparative Literature, City University of New York) graduated from the Ecole Internationale in Geneva, received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard, and his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. He has taught at Princeton, Harvard, the University of Chicago, the University of Paris, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the University of Brasilia, and the University of Cape Town. He has lectured in major universities in North and South America, Europe, Hong Kong, and South Africa.

Reviews

[Yules · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir was written by a professor of mine whose thinking has greatly influenced my own. Crapanzano is an anthropologist whose work often deals with limits and errors of knowledge, of both self and other.

"It was only when I started to think seriously about myself — actually, when I started conversing with myself — that I was confronted not just with the opacity of the self but with the fact that the core of my self — anybody’s self — was unknowable."

"Might not an anthropology, indeed a sociology or a psychology, focused on misunderstanding be more realistic than one that stresses mutual understanding?"

I often felt like the author himself was out of frame (he talks about in-framing and out-framing in the memoir), but he moved us right up to the edges of it and the experience of trying to read past that edge was illuminating. He pushes the reader "to accept the mystery that is inherent in social life" and talks about "the complexities of human behavior that are ignored, if not denied, by the social, psychological, and cognitive sciences that have adopted an impoverished — a robotic — image of the human."

I like the cognitive sciences and, as much as I may not like to admit it, I do harbor some seriously reductionist tendencies. Maybe that's why Crapanzano is one of my favorite professors: I benefit from that corrective.

[Penelope Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adventurous memoir of anthropologist Crapanzano

Although I had not spoken to Vincent Crapanzano for over forty years, he and his wife Jane were people that I most highly regarded. How delighted I was to see his memoir for sale online. My anticipation made the few seconds of download seem unduly long. Overnight I read it with great relish. The book is packed with Vincent's stories, observations, adventures and, most importantly, questions. Presented as a journey of flashbacks, flash forwards and asides, it meanders gracefully and purposefully throughout his life. Travel around the world with Vincent and you'll meet many unforgettable souls.
I am, from page 205, "Wicky’s babysitter Penelope entering a borie — a stone hut where French shepherds once sheltered their flock — and emerging with a baby, Wicky, a symbol of regeneration. She was barely a year old. Julien said that he preferred Penelope to Jane because she looked more like Wicky’s mother than Jane did."
This book will be treasured, and re-read many times.

[versarbre · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and touching