Harold and Agnes: A Feminist Narrative Undoing

Abstract

Harold Garfinkel's story of Agnes (1967a, pp. 116-85, 285-88) has been accorded the status of a double sociological classic. It gives a pure ethnomethodological account of the social production of gender (Kessler and McKenna 1978, pp. 112-15; Lester 1984; P. Atkinson 1988, p. 459; Plummer 1983, p. 88). It also is taken to be an exemplar of the ethnomethodological method, which shows how people produce stable, accountable practical activities in everyday life (Atkinson 1988, p. 459; Garfinkel 1967a, p. 185). In other quarters, postmodern Marxist literary critics such as Jameson read Garfinkel's more broadly conceived ethnomethodological project, along with the anthropology (e.g. Geertz 1988),' as examples of the new textual model in the human sciences which challenges an older referential or realistic positivism (Jameson 1975-76, p. 19). Garfinkel's text turns back on itself in his famous Appendix to Chapter 5 (1967b, pp. 285-88), where it is revealed that Agnes lied throughout the investigation. This text cries out for rereading. Indeed, Garfinkel invites such a reading when he informs the reader that he plans to redo the article in light of Agnes's confession (1967b, p. 288). My intention is to offer a deconstructive, feminist, narrative analysis of Story of Agnes. My title, which links Harold with Agnes, anticipates my conclusions: I intend to show that these two names signify a relationship that should be uncoupled, if Agnes's story is to be told. I will show, however, that it cannot be uncoupled because Harold and Agnes are one and the same in Garfinkel's text. The phrase feminist nar-