Blog Entry 3: Violence, Anarchy and the Rhetoric of Cannibalism (Session 11-12)

Blog Entry 3: Violence, Anarchy and the Rhetoric of Cannibalism (Session 11-12)

Due Date: Saturday, Feb. 28 (by midnight).

As in all your blog entries, we ask for your critical reflection on the themes discussed in lecture and in your readings. If you have strong personal reactions, critiques, or praise to offer one or more of the texts in question (or if you want to argue against a point made in lecture) please do follow your interests. Each week, however, we will be offering a suggested prompt that you may also choose to address.

As always, we are looking for an engaged and critical response to the course materials. Be bold, smart, and opinionated.

Suggested Prompt:

Consider this quote from Peter Whiteley --
Cannibalism was first used as a generalizing term by Edmund Burke in 1796: "By cannibalism, I mean this devouring, as a nutrient of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of those they have murdered". Burke was speaking polemically of regicide and its accompanying bloody horrors in the French Revolution (Whiteley 2008, 188).

How might thinking about this quote help us to think about our readings this week, and the questions of violence (against the state) and the (rhetoric of) cannibalism? Can we think of accusations of cannibalism, in Western discourse, as a rhetorical device meant to discredit anarchic violence, that is, violence against the state? If so, what are the philosophical/theological underpinnings and historical (colonial) encounters behind such rhetoric? What role have accusations of cannibalism played among Native groups in the American South West? Are these rhetorics, and the violence they generate, comparable?

Blog Entry 2: First Americans (Sessions 5-8)

Blog Entry 2: First Americans (Sessions 5-8)

Due Date: Sunday, February 15 (by midnight)

Assignment: As in all your blog entries, we ask for your critical reflection on the themes discussed in lecture and in your readings. If you have strong personal reactions, critiques, or praise to offer one or more of the texts in question (or if you want to argue against a point made in lecture) please do follow your interests. Each week, however, we will be offering a suggested prompt that you may also choose to address.

Suggested Prompt: 

The discovery of 9,400-year-old human remains—now known alternately as "Kennewick Man" or the "Ancient One"—eroding out of a river bank in Washington state in 1996 sparked a vigorous debate in North American archaeology. The skeleton is among the most complete and best preserved of those from the early occupation of the continent, and many archaeologists look upon the find as a rare opportunity to further our understanding of the Paleoindian period. Native American groups in the region (and many archaeologists), however, view the find quite differently; to them the Ancient One is an aboriginal ancestor in need of a proper reburial. The result of these conflicting viewpoints has been an often-heated debate over the conflicting rights of scientists and Native Americans to exert control over archaeological remains. As such, the Kennewick Man debate has become the foremost venue in which the revolutionary 1990 repatriation legislation known as NAGPRA has been examined and critiqued.

Should the remains have been reburied? How are we to draw the lines between the rights of archaeologists, the non-Native public, and Native America communities in this and future confrontations?

Please consult the two recommended readings in courseworks for Session 8 as well as the following link to the Umatilla Tribe: www.umatilla.nsn.us/ancient.html