35 pages • 1 hour read
Keith H. BassoWisdom Sits in Places
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapter 4-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Wisdom Sits in Places”
Basso opens Chapter 4 with a reflection on the role of place in creating a sense of self, and how that self goes on to imbue places with meaning: “they yield to consciousness only what consciousness has given them to absorb” (108). Having established the chapter’s framing of the relationship between self and place, Basso describes a scene in which three Western Apache horseman are sitting in a grove of trees after a long day of sorting cattle. A young man named Talbert Paxton joins them. Paxton is well-liked by the group but is at risk of being ostracized by the community for his bad behavior following a failed love affair. The three older men offer a series of seeming non-sequiturs in response, and although everyone seems comforted by the exchange, Basso is baffled. With the help of Dudley Patterson, a man universally liked in the community, but more importantly, known as wise—Basso comes to understand that the exchange, which references a place called Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills, where a character behaved foolishly because of beautiful women, allowed the older men to chastise and pardon Talbert without insulting him.
Under Patterson’s tutelage, Basso comes to understand how this instance illustrates the idea that “wisdom sits in places.” By examining the linguistic features of Patterson’s statements on wisdom, Basso learns that places serve the development of wisdom by showing the mental features required for someone to be wise. Chief among these is smoothness of mind, which Basso likens to a cleared plot of ground that allows an individual to see trouble ahead.
This smoothness is a product of resilience and steadiness of mind. Basso writes that learning the Apache names of places is crucial to cultivating these three features of mind. While anyone can become wise in this way, Basso notes that few succeed, as many people end up distracted by the weaknesses of the human mind and the daily business of living. This is especially true of young people, fewer of whom are following the path modeled by Dudley Patterson and other wise individuals.
Epilogue Summary
In the Epilogue, Basso explains that Cibecue has changed since he first saw it in 1959, as paved roads and modern technology have opened up the community to the rest of the world. He suggests, however, that the practice of naming places is likely to continue, as long as there are stories to remember.
Chapter 4-Epilogue Analysis
In Chapter 4, Basso elaborates on another relationship between place-names and culture: the ways in which place-names serve to develop selfhood. The section opens with a scene of a young man who is welcomed back into a group after misbehaving in the eyes of the community. This story conveys some of the themes of the previous section, exploring the relationship between place-names and Western Apache codes of politeness and respect. As Basso revealed in Chapter 3, Western Apache cultural norms can make outright criticism of someone’s tactless behavior. However, just as place-naming made it possible for those gathered at Lola Machuse’s home to sanction and offer advice on the conduct of someone who was not present without seeming rude, place-names provide an opportunity for a group of older men to chide a non-related younger one for his behavior without being condescending.
This story also informs the narrative structure for the chapter: Basso proceeds from confusion over an exchange to dawning understanding thanks to ethnographic research—primarily in the form of guidance from a member of the community. This approach also overcomes some of the deficits Basso sees with anthropology, in which scholars have neglected to sufficiently examine people’s sense of place. In Chapter 4, Basso examines this oversight through the notion of “dwelling” as developed by Martin Heidegger. To dwell in a place is to maintain a relationship with it—a relationship that itself comes from moments of awareness, whether brief and unselfconscious or fully and actively self-conscious. This self-conscious awareness means that reflecting on place is also a means of reflecting on oneself. In this observation, Basso is foreshadowing a point he’ll develop throughout the section: that sustained contemplation of place-names leads individuals—ethnographers and Western Apache alike—to wisdom.
To more fully explore this point, as with other sections, Basso focuses on one individual—in this case, Dudley Patterson. Patterson plays a particularly important role in this chapter because, in addition to serving as a guide to Basso’s investigations on the nature of wisdom, he also exemplifies how one becomes wise, according to Western Apache theory.
In his instruction to Basso, Patterson intersperses abstract reflection with stories to illustrate his points, a structure Basso follows in the section and, indeed, has applied through the whole book. In this way, we learn how individuals develop “mental smoothness”—the product of mental resilience and steadiness—through sustained self-reflection prompted by contemplation of places. Here, Basso also employs linguistic analysis to demonstrate the outcome of this process; by examining the prefixes that modify adjectives in the Western Apache language, Basso presents a precise picture of how mental smoothness and resilience are akin to a cleared patch of ground and a sturdy basket.
As Basso tells us, attaining this state isn’t easy, and Dudley Patterson’s example shows how difficult the process of becoming wise actually is, requiring a lifelong dedication to contemplation of places. This practice is becoming less popular with time; as Basso notes, fewer Western Apache young people are following Patterson’s path: “they travel less extensively, learn smaller bodies of cautionary narratives, and subscribe with mounting conviction to the imported belief that useful knowledge comes mainly from formal schooling” (147).
Given changing traditions among the Western Apache, Basso closes the book by offering a possibility for the future of place-naming: Through his descriptions of the ways modern subdivisions have been given names, Basso suggests that even if the context is different, the act of naming places will continue as long as there are important stories to remember.
