“Malarial and Diffident”: The Vision of Clifford Geertz

Abstract

The essay “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” famously appearing in Clifford Geertz’s collection The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, is iconic, as evidenced by its ubiquity in this edited volume celebrating Geertz. But it is the opening sentence of the first section (“The Raid”) of the essay that, more than any other aspect of its rich social and cultural exegesis, has stayed with me over the years: “Early in April of 1958, my wife and I arrived, malarial and diffident, in a Balinese village we intended, as anthropologists, to study.”¹ The specificities of time and place and protagonists immediately draw the reader in. But the almost parenthetical phrase, “malarial and diffident,” just as immediately gives the reader pause. Of course, being malarial might well make one diffident—but there is clearly something more to the appearance and combination of these adjectives. There is something that merits a pause and a second look at the adjectives and the introduction in which they appear.