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Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil's
Frying Pan
Article  in  The Senses and Society · November 2009
DOI: 10.2752/174589209X12464528171897
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Senses & Society VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3
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Senses&SocietyDOI10.2752/174589209X12464528171897
Fearless Trembling:
A Leap of Faith into
the Devil’s Frying Pan
Patrick Laviolette
ABSTRACT Phenomenologically
and reflexively influenced, this paper
investigates an experiential conception of
the imagination through an exploration of
an extreme bodily act. Foremost, it sets the
scene for a conceptual consideration of
dangerous practices such as cliff jumping.
This potentially pushes the level in which
we can reflect upon such a thing as an
existential or embodied imagination. Here
modernity’s leveling of the docile body is
challenged. Hence, in focusing on those
sub-cultural practices that involve the
extreme use of landscape, I propose an
alternative scenario in which to consider
the creativity of the body. Such a framework
situates hazardous activities beyond the
level of much contemporary thinking within
the anthropology of sport or the sociology
of risk, to a more far-reaching – perhaps
“extremist” position – where they come
Patrick Laviolette
teaches in the School of
Visual & Material Culture
at Massey University
where he is Director of
Postgraduate Studies.
He has published a
dozen journal articles
and presented 45
papers in 15 different
countries. This piece is
an extended précis of his
forthcoming book, ‘Not a
Hap-Hazardous Sport’.
p.laviolette@massey.ac.nz
Senses&Society304
Patrick Laviolette
+
across as existentially poignant, performative acts
of the social imagination.
KEYWORDS: embodied imagination, cliff jumping, extreme
landscapes, existential anthropology
long live the dance in the whirl of the infinite;
long live the wave that hides me in the abyss;
long live the wave that hurls me up above the stars.
(Kierkegaard [1843] 1983)
This passage by Søren Kierkegaard provides an apt
introduction to a paper on the relationship between
the imagination and extreme acts such as cliff jumping,
especially since it is taken from his book Fear and Trembling. Fitting
because the sensations of fear and trembling are important parts of
the experience of staring down at the waves that crash against the
rocks while contemplating, from high above the cliff face, the idea of
leaping into the sea. But this is a different type of “landscape of fear”
to that which the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan had in mind in his volume
of the same name. Rather, it is one where his concept of “topophilia”
– of a deep empathy with the environment – equally applies (1980;
1974).
The notion of fear and trembling that I consider here is therefore
part of a sensuous reflexivity. As the present article reveals, the
ethnographic game can indeed be taken to several extremes. These
not only involve imaginary and genuine risks for informants and
researchers alike, but, equally, an existential challenge to the notion
of performance, the nature of the imagination and even the character
of ethnographic research. Hence, through the practice of cliff jumping
in Cornwall UK, this paper explores the conceptual link between a
prospective anthropology of the imagination and a reflexively based
existential phenomenology (Jackson 2005; Karl and Hamalian
[1963] 1973; Tilley 1994). In reflecting upon an embodied imagination,
I suggest that engaging with the very practices of research
in the social sciences, in all their forms, is in itself part of taking a
figurative – and as this article demonstrates – sometimes also a
literal “leap of faith.”
The Devil’s Frying-Pan is a locally famous cove in Cornwall where
young people engage with such leaps on a regular basis. This site
is owned by the National Trust and is located near the village of
Cadgwith on the east side of the most southern tip of the Lizard
peninsula. For my informants in the village of Mullion, roughly 6 miles
away, it is perhaps the quintessential cliff jump in the area, to which
most new-coming practitioners are eventually introduced once they
have gained a bit of experience and developed a certain bravado
Senses&Society305
Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil’s Frying Pan
Figure 1
The Devil’s Frying-Pan,
Cadgwith, Lizard Peninsula.
from easier jumps. “Trust me, ya need to build up to this one. It’s not
called the Devil’s Frying-Pan for nothing,” states Ally (aged twentyseven),
who boasts having made the jump twice in her “youth” but
would not dream of doing it again now. She continues,
I think it gets its name from the actual shape of the cove and
the way the water actually swells up and bubbles like oil in a
frying-pan ... that’s the worst part of this jump ’cause even if
it’s a safeish jump, it’s still a really eerie and sinister kinda place,
no fooling.
My first face-to-face encounter with the Devil’s Frying-Pan really was
a leap of faith on many levels. Firstly, because it was a complete
ordeal just to rally the enthusiasm to be taken by my friends. It
was like pulling teeth. In May of 2003, I had tried to convince the
“Mullion Crew” to take me to the Frying-Pan but they were simply not
interested. They kept saying I was too old to be engaging in these
types of crazy teenager activities. “The advantage of reaching your
thirties is that you don’t have to do stupid things like that anymore ...
you clearly don’t want to get any older do you? Mid-life crisis already
Senses&Society306
Patrick Laviolette
old boy?” These were the types of comments that Ally’s partner Mike
kept making.
So I never made it that time, but I was determined to go during
a later visit at the end of July 2003. Upon leaving the pub one night,
I thought I had convinced Mike to go on Thursday afternoon, after
his work. I rang him after lunch and got more banter about being
insane. He then said that he had scheduled a band rehearsal. I was
beginning to think that this Devil’s Frying-Pan thing was cursed. But
somehow I eventually convinced him to go the following day. Five
of us – plus baby and dog in tow – set off from Mullion on Friday at
midday. They were Ally, Mike, and their dog with their friends Ron,
Julie, and their daughter Coral (who is the only person in this article
not to appear under a pseudonym).
The Pan would not give up its secrets that easily, however. This
notorious jump also became a leap of faith because once we arrived,
we had considerable problems in physically accessing the site. There
was overgrowth of gorse, nettles, and thorns all around. It was sheer
determination and even obsessiveness which allowed me to reach it,
driven by my conviction that I had to do this jump and protected by a
wetsuit which allowed me to pile through the otherwise impenetrable
thicket of bushes. The Frying-Pan seems to be such an important
and symbolic jump partly because of its many barriers. Conquering
the physical obstacles made the experience quite significant in my
own limited biography of jumping. But the barriers were also social.
Indeed, not being easily put off by the reticence of my informants
was important. It is worth noting that all of them stipulated that the
site had changed considerably over the past decade since they were
last there, perhaps, one of them even suggested, as a National Trust
deterrent to the practice of cliff jumping.
Not only was this jump a leap of faith for me because the others
were themselves not prepared to participate but also because, given
the difficulty of access, they were not even able to spectate either. In
fact, no one saw me jump. So one has to take it on good faith that
I actually did. Though if you ask any of my four companions, I am
sure that there is no doubt in their minds to the contrary. For one
thing, they would testify, as they did to me, that they clearly heard the
incredibly loud splashes when I hit the water. Given that I was upwind
from them, they also explained how they distinctly heard my screams
of terror, particularly on my second jump, which I felt I should mark
out by yelling something. Since I could not think of anything clever I
simply shouted, leaving them slightly worried, especially when I did
not hear, and thus did not reply to, their inquiries as to my well being.
My point here is that even though they never saw my jumps, the
other senses have provided indications of the validity of my claim.
Given that there was no one present to witness this jump or
capture it on film, I was clearly doing it as a challenge to myself
– for the pure experience factor. This was highlighted to me by Ron
once we arrived on site. He jested that it was surely enough that I
Senses&Society307
Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil’s Frying Pan
had now seen the place and had taken some photos: “So you don’t
actually have to go through with it, we won’t tell anyone, no one will
know the difference right? Let’s go then.” He was of course been
facetious. But he was also touching on the importance that I needed
to overcome the access barriers if I really wanted to understand what
this was all about. The gauntlet was down.
Similarly, the jump was again a leap of faith because my friends
were not immediately present to reassure me, and be reassured,
that everything was going well. Nor were they able to encourage
me or share any strategic information about the site. Not having
anyone there to “spot me,” jumping blind as it were, was rather
stressful. Hence it was much more part of an existential rather than
an un-reflexive experience. There is a definite feeling that more
things can go wrong when jumping alone, but also that it is a more
individualistic, even liminal, moment. In a sense, then, even if it was
not my initiation into jumping, I nonetheless felt that this was a type
of ritual process.
In the end, all my jumps lasted a few seconds in total, a quarter
of an hour with the climbing. Nevertheless, the event itself lasted
several hours. It is worth noting that this type of solo jumping means
nobody is there to share the actual experience with you on the day.
Consequently, I could not find out from anyone else other than myself
what the experience was like in situ. Ethnographically this is a strange
turn of events. I was participating in something in which my informants
were not. But actually this did not matter so much because I now
had their “respect,” and had potentially achieved a level of embodied
empathy. I had done something that was once a significant part of
their lives. And, maybe more importantly, the afternoon’s jumping
provided a good means of accessing certain social memories as
well as soliciting loads of jumping stories afterwards. The vignette
above demonstrates certain methodological aspects in studying
cliff jumping from a phenomenological perspective. You can always
contrive a situation to talk with and interview people about this activity,
but it is not until it becomes a natural topic of conversation based
on the day’s events that you really arrive at a level of understanding
of how the imagination exists in and through this fleeting embodied
experience (Hunter and Csikszentmihalyi 2000).
Sensuous Leisure
Cornwall is the most south-westerly peninsula of mainland Britain.
With over 240 miles of coastline, tourism, fishing, and other seaside
activities are central to this territory’s socioeconomic identities (Busby
and Laviolette 2006; Ireland 1989). Despite a rich and diverse social
history – which are sources of distinction for many – this constituency
is still one of Europe’s poorest, having received European Objective
1 level funding in 1999. To an extent, this economic impoverishment
results from the area’s rapid de-industrialization, sociopolitical
marginality, and dependence on a fluctuating and seasonal tourist
Senses&Society308
Patrick Laviolette
trade. Perceptions thus clash as to whether Cornwall exists as a land
apart or as a quintessentially British periphery.
It is not unusual for people to appropriate marginalized landmarks
by personifying them with vernacular names and therefore
associating them with their own particular causes. This gives special
relevance to a site and the issue. By ascribing their own experiences
to such locales, they are projecting onto them a stylized sense of
the region as they think it should be (Crang 1997). As Setha Low
and Denise Lawrence-Zuniga (2003) remind us, place becomes an
agent, an embodied surrogate for values, desires, and dreams. The
imagination is a crucial factor for understanding these processes.
Yet it is still usually seen as images and dreams engendered in
the mind through cognitive and cerebral processes. This article
challenges such a conception, perhaps even turns it on its head
in a way reminiscent of the recent work of Fernandez and Huber
(2001). Thinking along these lines, the aim here is to emphasize the
embodied nature of imaginative events.
Gaston Bachelard is an obvious point of reference for any concern
with the anthropology of the imagination. Given the basis of the
present research, as well as the phenomenological and reflexive
caveat that I have outlined above, we particularly need to consider
his groundbreaking exploration of the material imagination through
his reflections on the elemental substances of fire, water, air, and
earth ([1938] 1987; [1942] 1983; [1943] 1988; [1947] 1988). Indeed,
Bachelard bears witness to the imaginative human freedom whereby
we are asked to lay aside or suspend preconceptions. Instead we
are encouraged to cultivate a capacity for awe and wonder. But he
nonetheless falls into a Husserlian phenomenological perspective
which prefaces the transcendence of our cognitive faculties (Husserl
1931). That is, Bachelard still views the originality of the poetic
imagination as an opening up of ourselves to the revelations of
the image as opposed to an opening up to experience. Or even
more radically, where the image or experience would open up the
potential for the imagination itself to be possible. Consequently,
Bachelard suggests that our experience of the world does not guide
our imagination but rather is guided by it.
Significant though his contributions are, and indeed heavily relied
upon in what follows, I nevertheless want to open up some of these
normative Bachelardian perspectives concerning the cognitive
imagination. Conversely, I propose that the interaction of body,
landscape, and danger is an experiential and existential arena in
which the imagination can be acted out. The practice of stretching
the mind and body to the limits – and of playing with life and death
– establishes an ontological basis for an embodied creativity, for a
creativity of the body.
Before addressing such theoretical issues explicitly, it is important
to describe ethnographically the situation of cliff jumping in Cornwall.
Also sometimes referred to as tombstoning, coasteering, and deep
Senses&Society309
Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil’s Frying Pan
water soloing, cliff jumping is becoming increasingly popular as an
extreme practice in Cornwall and in the UK generally. Although the
activity is not unique to Cornwall most of my informants very strongly
believe that it is enshrouded in the Cornish peninsula’s own particular
seaside and surf culture. In relation to the materiality of waves in the
context of this aspect of Cornish culture, I have elsewhere examined
the relationships between sewage and surfing, protest and pleasure
(Laviolette 2006b).
Despite being among the most unregulated of extreme sports,
cliff jumping now seems to be crossing over into a more formal
and accepted public arena through competitions and corporate
advertising. The basic premise is simple: to dive, or most often, jump
feet first into the sea from as many different places and heights as
possible. According to many avid enthusiasts, the Cornish coast
provides an ideal scenario for jumping. It is scenic, with hundreds of
isolated coves, bays, and steep rock faces that line a shore of relatively
clean water, kept fairly warm by the area’s characteristically mild and
“Riviera-esque” climate (Thornton 1993). Equally important to them,
this coastline is relatively accessible, both in its physical proximity as
well as because it is not particularly residential or industrial – that is,
not built up or overcrowded and access is not restricted.
As far as the social profile of those who jump is concerned,
it ranges from those with a privileged upbringing to those from
family backgrounds with much lower levels of economic, social,
and cultural capital. As regards gender, I would estimate that even
though women do figure less prominently than men, the ratio is more
balanced than might be expected, perhaps 3:1. The most common
inhibitory factor is age. Indeed, for some jumping starts when they
are children (ten or twelve years of age) and drops dramatically after
the teen years. In some cases people continue to jump into their
thirties and forties, although this is less usual.
Part of the corporal significance of this activity is perhaps not so
much that it permits an intense adrenaline rush as that it allows for
the engagement and exploration of all the physical senses. Touch
(to a great degree, but filtered through the wetsuit), sight, sound,
smell, and the taste of salt water are all essential to the safe and
successful enjoyment of the experience. Jumping is therefore in part
about enhancing the potential for a full synesthetic experience, in
which one can merge the sensation of free falling with an endearing
encounter of body, air, land, and sea.
There is, therefore, an intermingling of our physical senses. More
interestingly, however, it is not the phenomena of synesthesia as
such that is most importantly at work here. Instead we should talk of
some anomalous form of aesthesia – a combination or hybridisation
of dysesthesia and kinesthesia. In other words, take into account the
distortion, transformation, and acceleration of the senses rather than
their blurring or blending (Bell and Lyall 2001). Indeed, particularly
underwater, the experiences of touch, smell, taste, sound, and sight
Senses&Society310
Patrick Laviolette
are not what we normally perceive them to be. Water as a medium
actually alters our physical perceptions. It gives us a different type
of experiential exposure. Furthermore, the activity of cliff jumping
distorts our conventional notions of time and spatial perception.
Events are rushed up or slowed in a disproportional way so that our
sensation of time shifts temporarily. Schutz refers to this empathic
and mimetic inversion of experience as a type of “reciprocity of
perspectives” (1970: 183).
This sensorial confusion and overdrive is a significant justification
put forward by many participants. Moreover, it is frequently this
distorted modality of experience that is excessively sought by those
participants who seek to engage in extreme sports during moments
where they have altered their states of mind through drug or alcohol
use (Lyng 1990). The words of one informant in his early forties
sums up this “work hard play harder” ethos, commenting on his own
lifestyle motto: “Contrary to popular belief I don’t live on the edge, I
live on the ledge over the edge”.
One of the things used to distinguish cliff jumping from many
other extreme practices is that this activity has a minimal reliance on
equipment, especially safety gear. This is a significant factor in the
relative lack of regulation of tombstoning in comparison to similar
dangerous games: “cliff jumping is unique in that it’s a mish-mash
of many sports. At the end of the day though, I’d say it was most
like sky diving with a big watery crash matt instead of a chute”
states Rick (aged twenty-seven) from Porthleven. This minimal
use of equipment demonstrates that jumping from cliffs is often
about reducing restrictions and maximizing the potential for a fully
embodied euphoria. As Rick claims,
Figure 2
Piskie Cove, Praa Sands.
Senses&Society311
Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil’s Frying Pan
there’s something quite primeval, primitive, even animalistic at
work. Of course you have to have all your wits about you but
really jumping is one of those acts where your instincts take
over almost completely ... it’s about letting loose and relying
on gut reactions.
A more radical seasoned jumper recounts,
I myself have been cliff jumping now for almost four years. My
opinions vary to other jumpers as far as equipment goes. I am
more the traditional jumper, wearing only a pair of shorts and
a vest. This, I find, is much more natural and the pain is more
intense.
Cliff jumpers have much difficulty in describing the feeling they get
from this practice. They claim that it is beyond the sensation of
most adrenaline rushes. In Sharky’s words, “It’s just a euphoric
feeling when you’re in mid-air, knowing there’s no guaranteed safety
mechanism to help you and no way back.” Nonetheless, here is a
passage from my field notes on the sensation of my first jump:
June 6, 2003
My thoughts on this first jump is that it feels quite unnatural.
This is not a normal or regular thing to be experiencing or
feeling. So it’s an interesting juxtaposition to be having this
“exploration of nature” element as a significant part of the
experience and discourse when really this physical sensation
is completely at odds with what one would actually find as
natural. I’ve never fallen from such a height before. Even as a
youngster I never jumped from the 10 meter diving board in
our local pool. I would not describe cliff jumping as anything
close to a near death experience and yet this type of free fall
was one of the most unusual and unnatural sensations I’ve
ever had. Perhaps this is because it was so contrived from the
outset. I was studying cliff jumping months before ever actually
doing it. Or perhaps this is because it was my first initiation to
jumping. But I’m assuming at this stage that one would have
to jump almost every day for quite some time before one felt it
was a natural sensation. Free falling is not socially mundane.
Surely most people don’t experience this sensation with much
frequency or on a regular basis.
My jumping mates began doubling the number of jumps
that I was doing. I was trying to absorb it all, take it all in. Also,
to be honest, I was rather bewildered by the whole thing. I
started showing obvious reserve and even felt myself shaking
somewhat even though it wasn’t out of fear as such. More like
I started over-analyzing things. Some water from our wetsuits
had accumulated on the run up to the take off point and I
Senses&Society312
Patrick Laviolette
started worrying that without shoes or booties like those that
the others were wearing, I might slip on take off.
Maybe the reason I started worrying was that I had been introduced
to cliff jumping through narratives about it. Stories like this one:
There was this one time, on a big(ish) jump, where I slipped just
before take off and so went hurtling, almost head-over-heels,
downwards ... I hit the water with almighty force; jamming my
jaw, chipping a tooth and spraining almost every muscle in my
back. That was the most frightening experience of my life, but
even with many less dramatic near-death experiences like that;
I’m not put off. People love to hear these stories and the feeling
of success is too great for me to stop, even though I know I’m
going to feel pain every time I pull on my wetsuit.
This passage by Dom (aged twenty-four) one of Rick’s mates from
Helston highlights a significant relationship between performance,
pleasure, and pain. Indeed, if you knew him and read between
the lines, you would realize that he means “girls love to hear these
stories.” An interesting facet of the physicality and embodiment
of the Cornish coast is the relation of place to the body, risk, and
sexuality. The extreme sports circles are very much related to the
club, rave, and art scenes. During the 1960s and 1970s, St Ives
artists generated numerous links between the human figure and the
hazards or sexuality of the Cornish landscape. This has reinforced a
hedonistic conception of leisure that especially marks the mood of
the Cornish seaside as a place where adventure and reinvigoration
as well as sexual promiscuity and fornication have become holiday
sub-themes. Surfing hotspots like Fistral beach and the Watergate
Bay in Newquay, or the nudist coves near Porthcurno and at St
Austell’s Carlyon Bay allow for these types of celebrations of the
body, so that they have become synonymous with both risk and the
risqué.
This is perhaps not all that surprising, especially when we consider
that such relationships are reflected in a lot of the contemporary
literature on bodily risk which is often related to the threats and
dangers associated with certain sexual practices and behavior
(Douglas 1992; Caplan 2000). Hence, John Fiske has produced a
model of the beach that defines it as an ambivalent and unpredictable
zone that encompasses “a physically anomalous category
between land and sea ... Nature/Culture” (1989: 44–5). As I have
commented elsewhere, extreme sports provide an erstwhile poorly
explored example about the relationships between the search for
freedom, risk taking, the celebration of the body, and feelings of local
pride and community (Laviolette 2007). The following quotation from
Ben (aged twenty-six), from Harlyn, supports this when he describes
this activity as
Senses&Society313
Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil’s Frying Pan
not for the faint-at-heart, but if done “safely”, not naively by
some (mostly tourists), then there is no other feeling like it that
I have encountered yet ... I have heard stories of those who
have ripped open their skin on entry... Maybe this is a myth
set up by a group of mates to keep others away from what
they like doing.
Cliff jumping is thus related at some level to a feeling of local identity
and belonging. Participants are often very protective of jumping
spots and the local knowledge associated with the practice. Cliff
jumping also suggests that extreme sport enthusiasts are not bound
to place in some static sense. Even if they might in reality regularly
be returning to the same coves and shorelines these beach loiterers
strongly associate such activities with freedom and movement.
Additionally, they are playing in what the sociologist Tim Dant (1998)
calls a transitory surf zone that emphasizes fluidity, change, danger,
and ecstasy. Besides, the majority of these participants rarely
restrict themselves to specific spots. They share a general feeling
of wanderlust and hunt the coast for the best conditions or the least
crowded beaches.
Most cliff jumpers therefore feel that they are part of the same
euphoria-seeking subculture – similar to, but also very different
from, that inhabited by skateboarders and BASE jumpers. As is the
case with frozen waterfall climbers (Ferrell 2001), each community
of jumpers has a lexicon of names given to specific places or those
people who have jumped in a remarkable way. For example, we have
Andy’s Arse Flop, Lad Cove, Point X, Sharky’s Echo, Dominic’s Seal
Squisher, Seagull Gully, the Beth Style Streaker, Piskies Cove, and
so forth.
Hence, cliff jumping is significantly about creating sociality
(Abramson and Laviolette 2007). One interesting aspect of this
sociality and conviviality, which seems to push even further the
level of danger involved, is when people jump together as pairs or
even three or four at a time. The sharing of fun and fear, as well as
the increased potential for collision with each other, reinforces the
trust between cliff jumpers. Further, it binds them together in more
than just a shared experience, it unites them through a socially
constructed group narrative – a mutual experience that embodies
the imagination – and where the imagination is embodied.
Disembodied Free Fall: Death and the Politics
of Jumping
But what about the disembodied free fall of the imagination? The
importance of the sea for Cornwall’s economy is extensive. But the
sea has also been the taker of life through the perils of fishing and
ship wrecks. Further, it has been the vehicle by which emigration was
made possible in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Hundreds
of boats carried thousands of people to Australia, California, Canada,
Senses&Society314
Patrick Laviolette
New Zealand, and South Africa. Cousin Jack and cousin Jane were
taken away by the sea. Elsewhere I have discussed at more length
the links between death and Cornish identity through the material
metaphors concerning emigration, immigration, heritage tourism,
and the hazards of Cornwall’s industries (Laviolette 2003; 2006a).
Indeed, the Cornish peninsula has often been seen as one informant
states: “as a place where places end but never begin.” Britishness,
Englishness, and Cornishness reach their final destination in many of
the duchy’s places, no less at Land’s End, the most western point of
the “nation.” As Alfred Tennyson says in his personal travel journal,
“Funeral. Land’s End and Life’s End” (Tennyson, in 1949, quoted in
Martin 1980: 320).
Given these linkages and my focus on existential anthropology, I
want to elaborate on the associations between danger, death, and
jumping. One informant I spoke to about cliff jumping told me that at
least one death per year is caused by the sport. He said it was the
most hazardous activity practiced by the young people in the region.
Indeed, on June 22, 2003, while I was doing fieldwork on this very
topic, a twenty-four-year-old youth did not resurface from jumping
into a flooded mine quarry at Kit Hill, Callington.
My first exposure to jumping was also at a flooded mining site,
on Carn Marth near Redruth, during the total eclipse of the sun on
August 11, 1999. From 11:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., three men stripped
down to their shorts and started jumping into the quarry. This
eclipse provides a telling example of the confusion of appropriation
by different groups within the Duchy, most specifically a confusion
between commodified leisure pursuits and the cultivation of a local
Figure 3
Group of quay-side
jumpers, Newquay.
Senses&Society315
Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil’s Frying Pan
aura of mystery. The esoteric nature of the eclipse meant that an
emphasis on creativity, rusticity, prehistory, and folklore took shape.
By highlighting these themes, the promoters of and participants in
the eclipse event were often unwittingly and sometimes consciously
involved in a process of producing a regional aura of distinction
– reinforcing the creation of social difference – elevating Cornwall to
an otherworldly status. Jeff, an informant in his late thirties who was
raised on the outskirts of Newquay and visits regularly from London,
spoke for many when he said, “The eclipse is all about dying and
being reborn. Unlike other artificial occasions, it’s a natural form of
emptying the old and bringing in the new. Time to start again, a once
in a lifetime chance at self-purification.”
The eclipse presented a chance to see something extraordinary
and to be seen in extraordinary circumstances. Cornwall thus
entered a quasi-liminal state for several days. If a pattern emerges
from this disjointed discourse, it is perhaps that the eclipse helped
reinforce the relationships between healing, death, society, and place.
Indeed, the themes that conveyed themselves most coherently at
the time orbited around how the moon’s shadow over Cornwall for
two minutes would provide the opportunity for a turning point at
both personal and social levels. Considering this existential tension
between death and rebirth, one could argue that these jumps were
ceremonial – maybe even part of a pseudo-ritual. Partially at least,
it seems that the jumps on this day were undertaken as a kind of
symbolic social offering – or, as Stebbins (2007) would say, a form of
leisure that is far from frivolous but is instead absolutely serious.
Of course, an alternative scenario could be proposed: that people
jump off cliffs for little reason, simply because they are bored. In
other words, that it is a meaningless act. The reply is itself simple
– is not boredom a condition of existential angst that people strive
to overcome? If people are lead to jump off cliffs because of their
ennui, are they not engaging their social imaginations in some kind of
ultimate search for a freedom from boredom? This brings up the idea
of seeking “freedom” as in the term “free fall.” Indeed, Bachelard’s
description of accession dreams and oneiric flight indicates the
emancipatory potential of liberating oneself from earthly constraints:
“A human being in his youth, in his taking off, in his fecundity, wants
to rise up from the earth. The leap is a basic joy” (Bachelard [1943]
1988: 63).
Conversely, in The Fall Albert Camus (1956) points out how the
action of falling is metaphorically entangled with many fundamental
anxieties. For instance, the phenomenologist Mike Jackson (1996)
illustrates how such idioms as “to loose one’s footing,” or “to be up in
the air” figuratively convey insecurity and instability. We are thus led
to question the kind of freedom the jumper is seeking. To a degree, I
suspect that they are searching for the sensation of ultimate liberation
of which such authors also speak. Hence, the goal of the cliff jumper
can be seen to fit with the philosopher Bertrand Russell’s maxim
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Patrick Laviolette
of living without certainty while avoiding the paralysis of hesitation
(Russell in Slater 1997).
This is where Bachelard comes in again because it is not air that
is dangerous to the jumper but the cliffs and the water. In another of
Bachelard’s influential works, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the
Imagination of Matter ([1942] 1983), he provides a psychoanalytic/
phenomenological framework for the understanding of water as
a mediating substance between many things like life and death,
surface and depth, the known and the unknown. The anthropologist
Stuart McLean’s (2003) recent work on bog mires in Ireland draws
out some interesting ethnographic descriptions about the symbolism
of water, some of which is reminiscent of Bachelard’s observations.
Indeed, in the present context, I am particularly compelled to
elaborate on how they describe water as ubiquitous. If, as Bachelard
suggests, the admixture of water and earth is one of the fundamental
schemes of matter and materiality, is this not precisely because
everything is in a fluid-like flux? Indeed, for Merleau-Ponty, the world
and our bodies as perceived through the senses are also creative,
shape shifting entities (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). We can thus
perceive water through its metaphorical potential. Consequently, in
the context that I have described in this article, it might be relevant
to replace Merleau-Ponty’s analogous connection that links the flesh
of the body with “the flesh of the world,” to an analogy in which our
body as fluids connects with the fluids and the fluidity of the world.
Does this not point to a relationship with the healing properties of
water? (Anderson 2002). Least we forget, of course, its possibilities
for harm. Clearly these issues are important here. The fact that water
surrounds most of Cornwall’s borders alludes to a powerful visual
metaphor about the role of crossing over water to reach the end of
life. In this sense, many elderly migrants who take their retirement
in Cornwall are often anticipating and preparing for death, crossing
a threshold and embarking on a pilgrimage to the great beyond.
Alternatively, what might be at work here is the fighting off of death.
Since the confrontation with death is an ultimate condition of
existence, the relationship that cliff jumping has with death marks
it out as a true existential act. In this sense, some people might be
reminded of the act of jumping to intentionally end life. In both the
case of jumping to live and jumping to die, the jumper is taking a
risk of failure – the extreme sports enthusiast runs the risk of failing
to execute the jump properly. Suicidal individuals also run the risk
of failing to kill themselves. On a simple level, then, there could be
two strands of jumps. In the first you have the young person who
wants to feel life at its extreme, that is, jumping off a cliff for the pure
rush and exhilaration. Some of the exhilaration comes once the
jumper realizes that he or she has survived and they have proved
to themselves that they are alive in the extreme. The antipode is the
person for whom life itself has become too extreme. So much so that
he or she can no longer stand to be alive; that is, no longer wants
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anything to do with the “extremity of life.” Interestingly, reports of
failed suicide attempts nevertheless suggest that a kind of euphoria
comes over the person, perhaps given the knowledge or through
the sensation that life is ending. Consequently, at the heart of each
individual action there is a meeting point – existential extremity.
In both cases, a lot of planning can be involved. Yet spontaneity
and a blurring of the distinction between accidents, jumping to live
and jumping to die are frequently involved. Of particular relevance
here is the engraving “The Suicide” by Thomas Rowlandson in
the volume The English Dance of Death (1814–16). Brown (2001)
describes this aquatint as an allegorical depiction. In it, Death sits
passively and relishes the fact that his victims are doing his work for
him – a man drowned in his attempt to save someone while his lover
hurls herself into the turbulent sea to join him in death. Indeed, she
chooses to kill herself but this choice is thrust upon her.
Jumping off high bridges or high structures in order to commit
suicide or “show off” is an activity that has a rich history. Brown
mentions the famous case of a daredevil in the nineteenth century
who jumped off the Tower Bridge in London as a stunt and did
not survive. More recently, the documentary The Bridge (2006) by
Eric Steel also depicts the “popularity” of jumping as a means of
attempting suicide. The filming at San Francisco’s Golden Gate
Bridge during 2004 reports an average of one person every fortnight
jumping off the 220-feet-high suspension span with the intention of
killing themselves. The Golden Gate remains the most frequent site
for suicides in America, and thus ranks among the most prominent
in the world, along with such places as the Aokigahara Forest at the
base of Mount Fuji, Niagara Falls on the US/Canadian border, Paris’s
famous Eiffel Tower, the cliffs of Beachy Head in Sussex, and Brunel’s
Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol (the site of the first modern
bungy jump on April 1, 1979 by the Dangerous Sports Club).
The public imagination was also caught by the well-known tragedy
of “the falling man,” whose image was depicted time and again.
Hundreds of people jumped or were blown out of the Twin Towers
on September 11, 2001. Of course, in these circumstances, we are
no longer talking of suicide. Rather, it is a clear example of being
pushed by circumstance. Some might even say that when faced
with the inevitability of death, these jumpers were making a type of
leap of faith, either for the unlikely chance of survival, or to catch
one last breath, to live one last moment. This level of the absurd
perhaps illustrates part of what Camus in The Fall ([1956] 1957) and
Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness (1956) are addressing in
their own way. Given that at least one person was killed by being hit
by such a falling victim during 9/11, we see an ironic paradox in the
actual result of the jumps, not that I am suggesting the possibility
of foresight in this case. Also, interestingly, we encounter some
people’s rejection of the possibility that their loved ones could have
given up hope and actually “deliberately” leapt.
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Patrick Laviolette
Conclusion: A Leap of the Imagination
In thinking about how Bachelard informs us on an anthropology of
the imagination, I am much more in accord with his position on the
dynamic imagination. With regard to the materiality of the elements,
he shows a greater concern for the potential of an imagination that
is embodied and embodying. Given the focus of this article on freefall
jumping into water from cliff faces, I am especially drawn to his
evocations of verticality:
it is in the act itself, lived as a unified whole, that dynamic
imagination must be able to experience the double human
destiny of depth and height. Dynamic imagination unites the
two poles. It allows us to understand that something within
us rises up when some action penetrates deeper – and that,
conversely, something penetrates deeper when something
else rises ... to stay closer to pure imagination – we are the
strongest link between earth and air ... the earth and the air
are, for a dynamized being, indissolubly linked. (1988: 108–9)
I would, of course, add, given the present context, that “the earth
and air and water are, for the dynamized being, indissolubly linked.”
In terms of Merleau-Ponty’s use of metaphorical embodiment,
cliff jumping is thus a bodily metaphor for existence and identity.
It provides a fleeting resolution of an existential struggle between
locality and the global, freedom and constraint, modernity and nature
(Lewis 2001). The body is rarely more unregulated than during these
few moments of free-fall. So it is both the most natural and unnatural
sensation since being truly free is unnatural.
As an event related to the creation and contention of identity and
sociality, cliff jumping is clearly about performance. The dynamics
governing cliff jumping are far more complex than that, however,
since it is also about an intentional search for freedom through
danger. There is a deliberate juxtaposition of a double reflexivity in
the approach I have described. Hence, it is the study, writing, and
narrating of the event that pushes cliff jumping beyond performance,
to the level where it is a creative and imaginative act. An extreme
practice of ontological and existential awareness.
No longer is jumping simply seen to be about performing identity
or because it is just fun. Now jumping takes on relevance in relation
to overcoming life’s absurdities. It gives meaning and subverts the
abstraction of the body. Additionally, given that it is dismissed by
passed practitioners, jumping is a type of rite of passage, from youth
to maturity, from insecurities to being settled. If, as Freud (1919)
points out, the liberation of sexual repression is to die a little, then so
too is the existential act of moving from adolescence to adulthood
through the practice of cliff jumping. That is, jumping is also to die
a little – to engage in a gradual process of sacrificing one’s youth
– one’s adolescence.
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Fearless Trembling: A Leap of Faith into the Devil’s Frying Pan
In addition to the obvious relation to Merleau-Ponty’s work on
the phenomenology of the body, the practice of cliff jumping fits
in nicely with the context of what Marcel Mauss calls “techniques
of the body” ([1934] 1992) – corporal ways of being that become
natural or normativized, but are also contingent, malleable, and allow
for a creative physicality. Jumping is thus a material, symbolic, and
imaginative act, a means of liberation and freedom, a search for the
unknown. This brings forth the idea of appearance and aesthetics
in jumping and falling. Here we can recall the television broadcast of
“Jump London” on Channel 4 on September 9, 2003.
The processes of incorporating these techniques may be experienced
as disciplining or punishing, as in Michel Foucault’s (1977)
description of the body: “they ... mark it, train it, torture it, force it
to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.” Indeed,
the modern body is one that recent scholarship often portrays as
mechanized, surveyed, patrolled, and unintentionally subjected to
risk thus never more regulated. Nevertheless, such techniques of the
body can also be seen as therapeutic and emancipatory – vehicles
for transporting the imagination. Hence, we need to ask whether
corporeal regimentation is the only result of modernity, the only
framework in which to consider risk taking? Or is there something
else that is possible here? An alternative scenario that ethnography
– perhaps inspired by multi-sited, postmodern, or phenomenological
approaches – can pursue. A scenario in which the hazardous use of
landscape when linked to positive encounters with danger, allows
extreme acts to be interpreted beyond even the notions concerning
performance, to a more far-reaching – perhaps “extremist” – position
where some of them can be understood as existential acts of the
social imagination (Laviolette forthcoming).
So, to come back to Kierkegaard, then, who has suggested that,
when reason or poetics reach their logical extreme or creative end
– when we are confronted with an intellectual impasse or an thwart
of the imagination – a complete and all encompassing existential
insecurity, we are forced into making some type of “leap of faith.”
That is, of devising an ontological means of continuing ([1843] 1983).
The act of cliff jumping, as it exists in the realm of an embodied imagination,
provides such a platform from which to take such creative
leaps of faith.
Social scientists should thus be stretching the leaps of faith
that we take in our interpretations, theorizing, and methodological
approaches, especially with regard to the uncharted terrain of the
role of the imagination in formulating our social and bodily identities.
This means truly accepting that ethnographic practices are themselves
inherently grounded in reflexivity, educated guesses, and
calculated risks that allow us and our disciplines to survive, both
in the perilous arenas of academia and in the hazardous world out
there. In dealing with the interviewing, participation, and observation
of such fleeting moments of euphoria that extreme activities provide,
Senses&Society320
Patrick Laviolette
the researcher has necessarily reached a new methodological
frontier. One of the most established ways we have of exploring this
horizon is by the ethnographic practice of repeated participation,
as well as the phenomenological process of detailed experiential
description. These are indeed part of a more existentially based
anthropological process of taking a fateful leap. In this case, such
a leap is into the realm whereby landscape and nature, identity, the
body, and the imagination come together through the cultural act of
jumping off cliffs into water.
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper were presented on three occasions:
at the Engaging Imagination conference on June 21, 2003 at DBS
University College Dublin; at the Social Anthropology and Material
Culture Seminar Series on December 3, 2003, University College
London; and at the Sport and Anthropology Seminar, December 4,
2004, De Montfort University, Leicester. Thanks to the participants
of these events for their suggestions. For their comments on earlier
drafts, I am also grateful to Allen Abramson and Jean-Sébastien
Marcoux.
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