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?
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I find this quotation particularly interesting in light of the fact that we no longer view cannibalism in horror. Of course, we all find it repugnant and disgusting but, considering the extreme violence and downright over stimulation we experience every day, cannibalism no longer has that edgy shock value to it anymore; perhaps it has been with us too long.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it, though, is there anything worse? Systematic cannibalism, opposed to individual and hence un- "sponsored" cannibalism, goes against what we believe as a civilization; namely that the welfare of citizens is paramount. To be sure, some members are incarcerated and even executed while others live in poverty, but by a civilization agreeing to uphold the welfare of its citizens as primary, it means that it will not actively impose harm on its members unless they deserve it. For Burke and others of previous times, the social contract theory extended from civilization to government and the entire spectrum of culture; all aspects of human life.
Can you imagine, then, the shock of being faced with people who are anti-civilization? Who treat one another worse than Europeans supposedly treat their hated enemies? Now that certainly is shocking.
But it is also clever. In the chaos that is outside of Western Civilization, cannibalism correlating to anti-civilization can be reversed so that anything anti-civilization could very well be cannibalistic. If that is the case, well then, no sense in investigating those anti-civilizationers; it's simply too dangerous. Even more clever? The definition of anti-civilization is relative and can include a-civilization and differently civilized peoples. Because of this, colonial powers running into native peoples can very quickly ascribe to them the label of cannibal. After all, it must seem to western explorers, the natives lack Western Civilization, which prides itself on protecting its members. Consequently, native barbarians must not protect their members (otherwise they'd have civilization) and, considering their primitive way, not only are they unprotective but, from their limited intelligence and lack of big picture thinking, they must actively harm their own kin. Food and sex have always been intimate cousins of indulgence and sin so of course to a Western mind, the greatest harm one can inflict on another is to de humanize them by making them food for one's enjoyment or, as Burke puts it, 'nutrient.'
The SW is vulnerable to this since they are arguably the most successful native civilization to withstand Western expansion. Obviously for an 'anti-civilization' to last so long must mean they must be particularly 'anti-civilization' which means they are ferocious cannibals (their resistance to assimilation doesn't help this label either). Additionally, coupling their relative nearness to the human-sacrificing Mesoamericans with their profoundly ritualistic and mystic (read: hard to understand)existence, it's easy to see how they can receive the label 'cannibal.' Once the label is applied, justification for any cruelty done is automatic; one must rid the world of civilizations who don't have their own citizens best interests in mind. Right?
I want to begin by unpacking Burke’s quote, just to get a clearer sense of its meaning. The first thing that struck me about the quote was how strong the words are that he chose to use; i.e. “devouring”, “ferocity”, and “murdered” (188). These all invoke an animalistic image, beyond barbarism, beyond savagery, something completely nonhuman. Not only is the cannibal seen as inhuman, “it” also has an appetite for such animalistic destruction, needing this “nutrient” of human flesh, and not even that; rather it needs the “nutrient” and essence of being an animal, being a ferocious killing machine. By using such strong words, “cannibal” becomes this being incapable of controlling itself, with no human sensibility, a selfish devourer committing the ultimate sin, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteIt seems interesting to contrast this image of the cannibal with the image of the accused party, a member of the Hopi society, for example. Whiteley writes in his article of Hopi traditions or rituals in which some members of the society perform, for the other members, stories involving “eating, sexuality, and killing and the inappropriate mixture of all three” (195). These Hopi clowns, as they are called, present these performances as “negative exemplars and hilarious reflexive commentaries for the watching audience” (195). Not only do these societies starkly oppose practices of cannibalism, they make fun of it, clearly casting a negative light on such practices; in essence, they exhibit, in my opinion, one of the uppermost (and most fun and interesting) facets of civilization. Indeed—although this is a comparison that I believe should not have to be made as it may take away from such Hopi tradition—such practices of the Hopi are directly related to those of a Western society we revere to this day: the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks are known for their raucous plays and their love for theatre in general, and this is such an easy connection to make between these apparent cannibals and one of the greatest Western civilizations. By our society’s way of thinking, we should be giving the Hopi high praises for creating such civilized practices, and yet we choose discredit them as lesser people who enjoy partaking in murder and cannibalism.
It seems clear that cannibalism has become a way to discredit everything about the members of these Southwestern tribes and villages. For obvious reasons, it is something people find to be appalling (white and Native American alike), but for less obvious reasons, it is something some people (white) are so ready to believe, without question, as if cannibal and Native American are synonymous terms. Thus, cannibalism is used by some to characterize all of the violence that may exist within a Southwestern society, violence that is clearly just that which any society goes through, ours most of all. Yet we fail to change our perspective and thrust cannibalism onto ourselves, a people belonging to one of the most violent of the “developed” nations.
Whiteley describes this labeling of these societies with cannibalism as a pattern of “cathartically demonizing Otherness through the most radical attribution of antihumanity” (198). In this way we distance ourselves from such peoples in a way so as to sever any connection we may have previously had with them, psychological or biological. Seeing these people as such Others, as beings that are so inhuman, we have caused violence, both physical and mental, to be generated against the Southwestern groups. In turn, we created a system that did indeed finally point back at us, thrusting cannibalism onto ourselves, devouring the lives, spirits, and cultures of these various groups. By treating others as these sort of antihuman, animalistic beasts, we ourselves became what we feared most.
Joshua Szymanowski
This weeks readings brought one question to my mind: Is it possible that we are attempting to use the same method of suppression today that worked so well in the past? Native Americans were first called cannibals shortly after Columbus’s landing. This stereotype was one factor that facilitated the colonization process. Is it possible that today we are attempting to reinforce hegemony by reusing the technique of making a population less human by reducing them to cannibals. Native Americans are experiencing more rights now than they have previously (which is still not nearly a fair number). Could we consciously or unconsciously as a society be reacting to the realization of all of the harm previously afflicted on these people by the hands of our ancestors by demonizing their ancestors? Thereby, we are justifying past subjugation and pain caused. Is it coincidental that this new wave of using cannibalism to hurt the reputation of Native Americans is coinciding as these populations are receiving more rights and sympathy? An examination of the past situation and the present one, which is using new archeological evidence to support the claim, might shine some light on these questions.
ReplyDeleteThe term cannibal became connected to the Native Americans soon after Europeans became aware of their existence. The two dichotomous views of Native Americans portray the Indian as either the noble savage or the savage savage. The savage savage was linked to cannibalism in no time, and Whitely explains that this label was placed on the Native Americans for one reason only: to subjugate this population of people. In his work, Explanation vs. Sensation, Peter Whitely writes, “Cannibal savages are the archetypal natural man, sans roi, sans foi, sans loi: an inverse psychological projection of civilization’s ideological self-image and thus often the excuse for oppression and prejudice or the rationale for imperialism” (189). Labeling Native Americans, now or in the past, cannibals attaches a stigma to them. These people and their ancestor are forever tainted as evil, immoral, and subhuman creatures. This kind of disgrace creates an opportunity for the exploitation of these people because if they engaged in such heinous activities, or if someone to whom they are related did, then they have no claim to being a part of the human community. Therefore, they do not need to be treated as human beings with rightful claims to any land or social justice. Quoted in Karl Reinhard’s piece, A Coprological View of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism, Christy Turner, in speaking about his believe that he discovered evidence of Pueblo cannibalism, puts it best, “I’m the guy who brought down the Anasazi.” In finding possible evidence of cannibalism in the remains of these people, Turner proclaimed to have revealed a truth that negates any successes, positive attribute, or even just humanity of this population. His discovery removes the Anasazi from the society of man. He is, indeed, still in the colonizing frame of mind. Turner’s word present an us versus them mode of thinking that makes the us appear to be noble and the them look like monsters. Calling someone a cannibal make them outside the law of man and leads other people to treat them as such. This labeling is still being used today, perhaps just to create sensationalism about an exciting new discovery, but the result will always be the dehumanizing of a people for power, whether it be political, social, or economic.
Caitlin Stachon
We define our society as complex. In A People’s History of the American Southwest, Severin Fowles explains that applying the word “complexity” to a population implies “a developmental past, a series of steps away from an original state of simplicity.” Coming from the viewpoint of our own complexity, we assume that there must be an innate complexity in everything we do not fully understand. But what if this is not actually the case?
ReplyDeleteWhen we study the Bonito Phase or the Pueblo II Period as a culmination of the Chaco Period, we constantly ask: “Why all this excess? Why erect buildings up to five stories high? Why such a focus on aesthetics? Why did these people seem to consistently do more than necessary? Why this complexity?” All I can answer is “Why not?” These questions in themselves assume that pre-Columbian peoples had a reason to all of their actions. We assume that they must have been rational beings that acted in accordance to nature, in accordance to the “natural way” of things. We assume that their imaginative power was only driven by usefulness or simplicity. But what if they were just like us? What if they built grand structures for the simple, yet irrational, reason that they simply wanted to? In the early 1900s didn’t the French decide to build a massive iron structure in the middle of Paris called the Eiffel Tower? Was the Eiffel Tower built for some grand, useful or rational purpose? No. The Eiffel Tower, like so many other modern architectural structures, was built for the sake of display. In asking such questions about these prior civilizations, we are assuming that these human beings did not act for the sake of acting. We are assuming that they must have had rational reasons behind everything they did.
This brings out another problem in this archeological questioning. It seems to me that we ask these questions without realizing that all of these civilizations were made up of individuals. Societies as a whole can be studied as having a “general” purpose, a driving force. But according to me, these generalizations cannot apply to individuals. From personal experience, we all know that human beings, on an individual basis, more than often act irrationally on impulses. Why is it so difficult for us to think of The Bonito Phase as another time in history where individuals could have acted simply for the sake of acting? Why do we constantly need to find a reason, a logical explanation for everything they might have done? Maybe there is no logical or rational explanation for tall buildings, impracticality of location, or “over-engineered architecture.” This search for rationality is hypocritical considering the fact that our society itself, on a day-to-day basis, exemplifies a lack of rational reasoning in its actions and decision-making.
A recent finding has given evidence that chocolate beverages were consumed in these Great Houses. This new piece of information has created an outburst of theories and questions concerning the societal structure of these places. Why would they drink such expensive products? Why would they take the time and money to import such lavish luxury goods? Is it too naïve and simplistic to assume that maybe they just liked the taste of it? I know a few people who spend thousands of dollars on imported wines – even if this means no more shopping for a few months. To me, this type of spending is completely irrational. And yet it is common. Such spending can, on some levels reflect social standing, but I know school teachers with modest income who will save up for months just to have that moment of pleasure born from a sip of 100 year old French burgundy. We accept these actions within our own societies, so why not assume they might have happened in others? Human beings are driven by pleasure. They can find this sense of pleasure in foods, material goods, or spiritual experiences. And they often spend fortunes for just a few minutes of bodily well-being. Maybe the Chaco people drank expensive chocolate beverages for the same reasons. Maybe they were a society, like us, that did irrational things just because they felt like it.
On one hand, we study pre-columbian history in the very light of our own society. We assume that they were just an underdeveloped form of ourselves, slowly being pulled towards modern society. But on the other hand, it is so difficult for us to assume that perhaps these societies actually did function very much like our own. Paradoxically, we see them as a former reflection of ourselves and yet refuse the mere idea that they actually might have been similar to us. I guess that if we accept that these “primitive” societies might have acted just for the sake of acting, without any logical or practical reasoning to back their actions, we would have to accept a singular parallelism between our two times and cultures. Accepting this theory would reflect the way our own society functions. Thus, we would have to look upon ourselves as not all that evolved after all. Maybe we are just as primitive as we consider them to have been – except that we cover our “simplicity” and primitiveness with extensive literature, grand architectural structures, governments, and so-called “organization.” But underneath it all, we often act for the sake of acting – not governed by any rational thought. This would also help explain why within our “structured, organized, rational, and modern world” many of us still feel overwhelmed by a sense of chaos.
When Burke defined cannibalism within the context of the French Revolution, he suggested that murder to increase one’s own well-being is figurative cannibalism. Burke, an Englishman was very critical of total upheaval against the established institutions of France. He felt that the political structure of France simply needed reforming, rather than drastic change. In his use of the word “cannibalism” he hoped to discredit the violence against the French government that he saw occurring. He felt that the disruption of all traditional values would not lead to a more productive future.
ReplyDeleteCannibalism is a term that Whiteley refers to as “a dirty word”. It can be used to discredit any group associated with the label. During the French Revolution, Burke used it to shame the rebel masses. More recently anthropologists have used it to humiliate the Pueblo Indians. In a sense, the term “cannibalism” is also being used to criticize an anarchical system within this context. We do not know what the political structure of these Indians was, but there is a general stereotypical image of Indians living without any form of organized government. This is an unfair perception, since we do not really know how developed the political systems of these Indians were. Other aspects of life in Chaco canyon would suggest a high level of development among its people, but we cannot give a concrete account of their political practices.
Accusations of cannibalisms have been received in two starkly different manners. As Karl Reinhard alludes to in his article, people have a tendency to either ignore scientific facts or to over exaggerate them. He discusses how people were quick to condemn the ancient Pueblos as “cannibals” after he analyzed the one coprolite which contained evidence of humans eating other humans. Despite his insistence in telling the press that he did not believe that these people were cannibals, they continued only to print those opinions which supported the opposite. The fact that many other coprolites brought back results suggesting the Pueblos to have been mainly vegetarians did not seem to matter. Whiteley also examined this problem, comparing it to the way in which witches were tested in Europe in Medieval times. He writes that the Hopis must “show absence of consumed flesh” in order to be cleared from guilt.
The opposite response to these findings was experienced by Turner. He claimed that Americans during the 60s and 70s were preoccupied with finding a peaceful people to idolize in their history. When scientific evidence of cannibalism was found, people did not want to accept it since it would change their image of the peaceful Native American. Turner endeavored to change this misguided perception. His attempts are summed up by Whiteley who describes him as “a scientific pioneer against a fashionable political correctness”. It seems that people cannot accept that the ancestral Pueblos were simply ordinary human beings: neither brutally violent nor perfectly peaceful.
Pueblo groups today speak out against the negative connotations connected with their name. They refer to them as “derogatory academic slur”. Reinhard also points out that there is an effort by these people to separate their own image with that of the ancestral Pueblo peoples. Just as it would be unfair to blame the Greeks for some crime the Ancient Greeks committed, it is wrong to blame the Pueblos for any faults of their ancestors.
There also remains the question of whether the Pueblos even were cannibalistic at all. Reinhard’s findings definitely seem to suggest that it was incredibly unlikely even in the most desperate of times. He describes his discovery of a child that was buried during a time of severe drought. If these people had really been cannibalistic then they would have eaten the child rather than give it such a ritualized burial. There are also other suggestions that the cannibals were actually members of another tribe who terrorized the ancestral pueblos. It is possible that any evidence of cannibalism was linked to these people and not the ancestral pueblos.
It is important to remember that cannibalism is something that is deemed so incredibly evil by modern society. Although obviously a harsh form of murder, cannibalism back then was probably not regarded in the same way as we judge it now. Cannibalism or threats of cannibalism instill terror and fear in people. The terrorism of these ancient peoples is really no worse than the terrorism that we deal with today. The Hopi response to cannibalism can be seen in ancient Hopi narratives to reveal “both a horror and a fascination with transgression”. This fascination is the same fascination that we experience when we rubberneck on the highway to see the victims of a car crash. It is an innate human quality that has not changed with time.
The ‘ferocity’ to which Burke referred was the brute aggression, the inhuman assertion of power of the people over their leader. Burke views them as dropping from the civilized to the base. Equating this act of rebellion with cannibalism ostracizes the guilty from the human realm and in company with feces wielding monkeys. He claims that the rebels need murder as a life-force, as the criminals would need blood as they would need water. And the act which he deems so atrocious is that of killing their king, their leader, the human after whom they are indebted to follow. Declaring this act as one of the lowest displays Burke’s reliability to be a follower, as so many in European societies were. The civilizations of the colonists, and even of today, put the masses on par with the ability of their leader. That is to say, the belief in the people is not as strong as the belief in the one who leads, and the responsibility to drive the people towards success (read: material progress,) lies solely in the hands of an individual or a small group thereof. The belief in the ability of the masses to lead themselves, then, is deduced to nothing, and their power over their own fates becomes very limited.
ReplyDeleteThose who believed in this idea that the notability of the collective community lies in their election of a leader, then, would surely snub a collection of individuals who chose not to follow a leader. This is precisely what happens when colonists meet the anarchists of North America. These people, they believed, were surely barbarians, as they have no leader and are loosely fragmented into groups of their own volition. Instead of acquiring a leader to goad them further towards progress (read: the acquisition and collection of material richness,) these barbaric tribes chose to act in a way that was the exact reverse image of their own (Colonists : triangle :: Indians : upside down triangle.) The colonists did not have the ability to understand the people in terms other than their own, and, as a result, they equate the North Americans with cannibalism. Like Burke, they accuse those who, in their minds, have the stupidity to reject a leader (or inflict violence upon the leader,) as being so very other in being and thusly so very wrong in design.
Ashley Ellenson
The Whitely article, “The Discourse of Cannibalism at Awat’ovi,” speaks to the inherent “bloodthirsty barbarism” (188) associated with the discourse of cannibalism. By applying this connotation to the native people, it creates an obverse comparison to the colonizing Europeans. The “civilized” colonizer’s violent, and equally bloodthirsty ravaging is somehow different? I appreciated Whitely’s article when he stated that eating of the Self was a colonial 2-way street. The Westerners have been metaphorically eating the “Natives” across the globe. In my own public education I had the violent image of ritual practices of the American Indian constructed but it was not until recently that I began to question the European.
ReplyDeleteIn reading the “Discourse on Cannibalism” and thinking about the importance of language in constructing the image of the “Other” I was brought back a couple of years to Montaigne’s “On Cannibals.” On the New World, Montaigne writes, "Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country." In his work he is reacting to the reports of cannibalism in mainland Brazil, and their reaction in Renaissance Europe during the 16th century. The rhetoric and perception of cannibalism comes from trying to apply the practices of Natives to our own cultural (and linguistic) set when it really should not be. It was until this class that I even heard of Chaco Canyon. The impressive structure struck me as something that is telling how the New World and the West were separate, parallel Worlds. Therefore this discourse of comparison that has existed since Columbus’ first letter to the Crown, is highly problematic.
Sean Quinn
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ReplyDeleteIn Whiteley’s article he quotes up Turner’s claim that “as we discover and learn more about episodic mass human destruction in the prehistoric Southwest, we may have to allow that some form of institutionalized sociopathic behavior existed,” and then Whiteley goes on to point out that “cannibalism, of course, is an attention-grabbing topic” (186) and that Turner’s claims are inflammatory to those involved. Whiteley says that the Hopi are offended by Turners claims, and it is easy to see why: Turner implies that their ancestors were psychologically predisposed to episodes of violence, killing and cannibalism; implying that the image of the descendants of the Pueblo peoples should also be one of violence. The sensationalism surrounding the topic of cannibalism, and the way in which the Hopi feel that their ancestors are being slandered reminds me of the case of Kennewick man. Both situations have many parallels, including the fact that the discrediting of Native American ancestors has the potential to degrade the status of Native Americans in society today. The cannibalistic charges on ancient Pueblo people is also similar to the “overkill hypothesis” and the potential of that hypothesis to make outside groups accuse Native American ancestors of environmental degradation.
ReplyDeleteSeveral of the authors we read for this week discredit the cannibalistic charges placed on Hopi ancestors by Turner, Whiteley says “Turner’s explanation does not correspond with Hopi oral history. Turner’s inference of cannibal behavior […] has been contested by some […] in favor of an explanation that involves execution and dismemberment of witches” (186). The ethnographic information included in oral history seems to be an important factor, since from folklore we can extrapolate the importance people might have tied to certain body parts, and the relation of their bodies to the environment around them. Darling’s article especially ties the environment into expressions of cannibalism in witchcraft: “witchcraft accusations in response to a decrease in the environment’s carrying capacity […] may have led to the departure of individual families and the eventual breakup of a community” (Darling 736). But environmental factors do not seem to be a full explanation for something as deeply tied to the human body and psychology as cannibalism, torture and violence. Fowles points out that “marked social violence seems bound up in the project of being human itself, a structural aspect of all societies” (3). By equating violence with societal structures like religion and politics, could we not see violence as an integral part of the state itself? Violence seems to be just another way in which a society can control its members through social relations. Fowles says “the killing of witches must be regarded as another mode of painfully inscribing the law on society” (11), and I think acts of violence and ritual killings can be taken to the point of being a part of politics. Since it seems that the ancient Pueblo people used violence in initiation rituals and to cleanse their society of “witches” who threatened the social structure, possibly by trying to gain too much individual power, violence works hand in hand with religion and politics, blending all three social structures together.
However, I think that in some cases we, as modern Westerners, have trouble accepting the fact that violence and ritual killing could be an integral part of a society. While reading about the function of witches in pueblo society, I was struck by the fact that “the specification of a close clan member is significant, for the witch embodies transgression, chaos, and assaults on the orderliness of society, and the killing of kin as the most basic rejection of the social contract” (Fowles 11-12). This strongly reminds me of honor killings in the modern day Middle East, where family members kill each other in order to maintain the honor of their family group in the case that one member of the group might have transgressed the social norms. In this case, the killing of a close family member does not transgress social boundaries, but maintains them. I find it interesting to compare these two types of ritual killing tendencies in two very different societies.
Finally, I found Reinhard’s article to be very interesting, and perhaps the most convincing of all the evidence for and against cannibalism. Reinhard says “the ancestral Pueblo, once thought to be peaceful, have now become, especially in the lay mind, violence cannibals. Neither depiction is fair. They had a level of violence typical of most human populations—present but not excessive” (261). His evidence for an isolated incidence of cannibalism seems very concrete, since scientific investigations of human caprolites cannot be argued with. While I think that Reinhard’s cannibalistic caprolite is fascinating, I agree with him that one incidence of cannibalism does not mean that people subsisted off of human flesh. We must be careful, as seen in the cases of Kennewick man and the “overkill hypothesis” not to allow the media to blow archaeological finds, however exciting they are, way out of context and proportion, because the effects on current groups of people could be detrimental.
-Hannah Kligman
In the popular movie Sisterhood of the Traveling Paints 2, Bridget, one of four friends, embarks on an archeological dig for a summer in Turkey. The excavation techniques seemed questionable, yet the team was excited to uncover a human skull, and the professor overseeing the dig posed a very interesting question to Bridget, and though the exact wording escapes me, it was a provocative inquiry about whether a skull should be thought of as a person, or when it is okay to stop thinking of it as such. Bridget replies that when everyone who knew that person has died, a skull is just a skull. I think this is an interesting concept, especially in light of our recent considerations about Kennewick Man and a talk I attended given by Professor Zoe Crossland entitled “The Dead Body and Its Evidential Traces”.
ReplyDeleteSince going to Professor Crossland’s talk at the Wenner-Gren Foundation last Monday evening, and after reading this session’s selections about cannibalism, I have been given a lot to think about regarding different conceptions of the dead body. Among other things, Professor Crossland talked of a few different ways the dead body is viewed contemporarily, specifically, of the dead body as evidence, and of the dead body as part of a living system. It’s somewhat cliché, yet the phrase “body of evidence” used to refer to a group of factual evidence pertaining to a legal case exemplifies this ideology.
Indeed, bodies can serve to enlighten researchers and the general public, voracious for knowledge and, according to Owsley and Jantz, harboring a general ideology that it is their right to know about societies in the past and conjure a shared history. For example, from examining the mummified corpses of the pharaoh Amenophis I and his royal relatives, it can be asserted that Amenophis had the genetic disorder we now refer to as Marfan Syndrome. In this case, physical dead bodies were used as evidence to explain this pharaoh’s unusual portrayal in paintings and sculptures of the time.
The discovery of Kennewick Man’s skeleton in a Washington riverbank, also ties in to the idea of viewing the dead body in different ways. As Professor D’Altroy put it at Professor Crossland’s talk, there exist two very different “interpretants” with a stake in the Kennewick Man skeleton. Essentially, scientists and archeologists view Kennewick Man as holding a wealth of information about the time of arrival of the first humans in the Americas, for example, and from where these humans might have come. If Concomitantly, Native Americans view Kennewick Man as one of their ancient ancestors, and want him to
Even if an actual physical body is not preserved, the body can produce things like coprolites that serve as an extension of the body and as evidence of the health and lifestyle of the person. Or, as exemplified by Karl J. Reinhard’s analysis of an Ancestral Pueblo coprolite from Cowboy Wash, coprolites can shed light on an unexpected and seemingly momentous event during a lifetime: cannibalism.
With regard to our recent conundrum of supposed cannibalism among the Hopi, disregarding the debate over how widespread or intense cannibalism might have been, I wonder what kind of conception of the dead body must one have to engage in cannibalistic activities?
Mollie Lobl
In “On Torture in Societies Against the State” Professor Fowles explains “…the problem facing anthropology is not about drawing divisions between more or less violent societies, but to understand how the inevitable flow of violence has been variously canalized and diverted in the construction of the social throughout the human past” (4). In our required readings Foucault has critiqued Western society’s organizations of structural violence. Foucault writes, “[in] Western society…conformity is enforced through the panopticon of codified laws, institutionalized police or militias, prisons, and so on in a systemic organization of the means of violence” (198, Whitely). While in our recommended readings Pierre Clastres has demonstrated a stateless society’s extremely egalitarian social structure as using participatory coercive structural violence. Furthermore Clastres attempts to, “…delineate the space of the political in societies without the state” (205). Through various means the ‘primitive’ society refuses the rise of individuals as power holders. Ritual rites of passage, which inflict scars and suffering on the willing participants, serve to regulate the egalitarian creed in primitive society. This, in Clastres opinion, radically negates the need for the rise of statehood to occur as a means of organization in primitive society.
ReplyDeleteThe main key issue we deal with in our class is how to remove the implicit assumptive frameworks we analyze the human past with. When you consider Foucault’s argument that systems such as police forces and prisons are modes of systemic violence in civilized society next to Clastres examinations of primitive society’s coercive forms of collective domination, the state & non-state/primitive vs. civilized structures appear to share more similarities than primarily assumed. This point in no way diminishes the extremity of the torture rituals Clastres describes as the mechanism to reach egalitarianism within the Guarani society. It only wishes to point out that, for example, incarceration an accepted systemic structure in ‘civilized’ society to coerce conformity, would most likely be viewed with similar horror by a Guarani Indian as a Western mind views Guarani rituals.
My question then becomes how do we entangle both examples of extreme difference and surprising similarity between two organizational systems of society and emerge with a non-coercive form of society? One that does not rely on coercion or domination to maintain its functionality? Unpacking our own implicit assumptions and frameworks is one step towards this cooperative invention.
“Basically, if you’re not a utopianist, you’re a
schmuck.”
Jonothon Feldman (Indigenous Planning Times)
Peter Whiteley and Karl J. Reinhard both oppose the idea that cannibalism existed as a regular subsistence strategy among the Native Americans that they describe in their respective texts. Whiteley mainly uses a cultural approach to prove his point, while Reinhard uses scientific evidence, but both men arrive at the same conclusion: cannibalism would not have been realistic in these situations.
ReplyDeleteWhiteley describes the Hopi culture as one that discouraged cannibalism in “Explanation vs. Sensation: The Discourse of Cannibalism at Awat’ovi.” He shows that cannibalism was seen by the Hopi peoples as transgression, as something dangerous and forbidden. While Malotki and Gary use Hopi folklore to prove that cannibalism was condoned, Whiteley uses such stories to prove just the opposite. Whiteley states that Malotki’s “reading of Hopi terms and texts here is excessively literal and does not allow for the creative play of the Hopi imagination” (194). He also notes that in the Hopi clown ceremony, “clowns play with the tabooed and undesirable in part to show the chaos that ensues from an absence of cultural rules” (195). Thus, while Whiteley admits that cannibalism may have been employed by the Hopi in dire situations, he shows that such a strategy would not have given them the order that they desired in their society.
Reinhard denies the regular existence of cannibalism among the Ancestral Pueblo in “A Coprological View of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism.” His and other researchers’ studies of hundreds of coprolites show that while the Ancestral Pueblo utilized a wide variety of plants and animals for subsistence, they did not consume humans. According to Reinhard, the one coprolite that is believed to prove cannibalism could not have come from an Ancestral Pueblo person. He states, “I have looked at more Ancestral Pueblo feces than any other human being, and I do have an opinion: The Ancestral Pueblo were not cannibalistic” (256). He later notes, “Richard [Marlar] looked for human muscle indicators in the Salmon Ruin coprolites and found none” (258). Based on many coprolite findings, Reinhard shows that the Ancestral Pueblo diet would not have normally included humans.
Whiteley and Reinhard approach the issue of cannibalism among Native Americans in very different ways, but they both seek to disprove the sensationalistic notion that these groups ate humans on a regular basis. In my opinion, both men succeed in their missions. They present strong evidence supporting their claims and firmly dismiss opposing viewpoints. In doing so, Whiteley and Reinhard convey positive images of the Hopi and Ancestral Pueblo peoples.
Sarah Sommer
“like witchcraft… and incest, cannibalism is the archetypal antihuman act that confounds the social contract.” (Whiteley). Cannibalism and witchcraft can be seen as breaches of a certain social contract- an active and punishable instance of human evil. On the other hand, cannibalism can also be explained as a way of surviving periods of extreme environmental stress, a situation that would be an acceptable suspension of the social contract. Combining these two scenarios- one which severely emphasizes agency, and another which calls on the animalistic instinct for survival, transforms cannibalism into a prime example of frontier human heroism. On one extreme, cannibalism is depicted as a perverted dark act in a peoples’ history; on the other, as a tragic catastrophe of heroic stoicism. In a rhetorically situated medium between these two ends sits the point where cannibalism becomes a medicine that only the boldest and most patriotic heroes can swallow.
ReplyDeleteThe Donner Party incident of cannibalism is euphemized as a “disaster”, and the survivors (and also actors) have a legacy of epitomizing patriotic manifest destiny. Cannibalism and patriotism are not dramatically separated in this situation. Whitely explains that “cannibalism as term and idea is saturated with a surplus of signification… it is very much an over determined term. It is too ensconced in the substrates of conscious and unconscious thought to serve as anything more than- or rather, less than- metaphor.” The term itsslef is “saturated with a surplus of significance”, and this also applies to the act, since it transcends the punisher/culprit distinction. As Sev brings up, regarding the execution of witches in pre-Columbia Pueblo cultures, in his article “On Torture,” “But what of the executioners themselves? How would they have been affected by the violent excess of witch treatments? What would have gone through the mind of an individual whose priestly position required him to torture, bludgeon, deflesh, dismember, and incinerate the body of someone who may well have formerly stood in his own social position? What was it like to do this to someone who, but for the suspicious mind of one’s peers, might still be in one’s own social position?”. His questions shift the emphasis from the victim hood of the nutrients, to the victim hood of the consumers. If emphasis is placed on analyzing the fossilized fecal evidence of suspected cannibals (as in the case of the Pueblos), then the consumers will never be gilded in national parks and highways, like the Donner Party. On the other hand, if cannibalism is taken for granted as part of the human condition, and not viewed as disturbing evidence of immorality, the base monster consumers can easily transform into stoic heroes with almost superhuman qualities; the metaphor behind their consumption can be used to legitimize their act as part of a larger cause which is in line with the given social contract.
It is amazing how eager the media and many anthropologists and archaeologists are to jump to the conclusion that the ancestors of the Native groups of the American Southwest were cannibals. What makes this even more incredible is how little conclusive evidence exists to support this fact.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, as evidence, many point to the numerous examples of processed remains of human beings found in those areas, and much of it processed in the same manner as animals presumed to have been eaten. Why must this indicate that these humans were also processed in this way in order to be eaten? If the bodies were processed for other reasons besides for consumption then it would still make sense to process them in such a way that has been proven successful, as on animal remains. No alternative ways need to be created to get the same outcome, which in this case would be the defleshing of a body. Again, this behavior is not original. The Bodo Cranium, dating back 600,000 years, also shows similar signs of processing. Peri or postmortem processing of human bodies is as almost as old as Behaviorally Modern Humans. But just as in the case of the Bodo Cranium, the signs of cut marks, boiling, etc. are not sufficient enough evidence to definitively point at cannibalism. The only real proof is the single coprolite discovered in the late 1990’s. Even this is not enough evidence to support a regular practice of cannibalism, or even rare occasions of cannibalism, in pre-Colombian Pueblo society. Reinhard was quick to point out that this was a unique find and was really an exception to the hundreds of other coprolites he studied. Some have proposed that perhaps the Native Americans of the Southwest were driven to cannibalism by extreme environmental conditions, such as a severe drought, that limited the food supply. Again Reinhard questions this assumption. I think that many are forgetting that there are freak instances of individuals straying from societal norms all the time and in every situation. Recently, there have been cases where people have participated in cannibalistic activities in our own backyard, people who supposedly were a part of our society. Of course we have punished these individuals who committed such heinous acts but we cannot deny that there are these abnormal situations. Perhaps this coprolite was produced by one of these extreme exceptions to the rule. This argument may be as valid as any other put forth as far as I can see. Maybe this person felt it necessary, as Bataille would say, to transgress a cultural taboo? We may never definitively know but it should be acknowledged that this single coprolite, even when introduced among the evidence of processed human remains, cannot be used to definitively support the claim that the people of the Pueblo society as a whole had participated in cannibalism.
As we progress through time violence against the body, alive or dead, doesn’t lose its power in the human mind or perception. There is evidence to support a theory of violence in the pre-Colombian North American Southwest but what happened in the Pueblo societies is not all that alien. Violence has been a mainstay in human society for years. Of course it is something that we train ourselves to be reviled by but that is something we have to be trained to do completely. Violence is a natural part of being human. If anything, this information should go to making the understanding of ancient pueblo society not as more bizarre but as more like everyone else. Rebelling against authority is something that has happened numerous times in Euro-American history and remains a feature of today’s society as well. Look at the recent riots in Greece or even the recent sit-in protest at NYU. In fact, that these earlier people in the pueblos were able to consistently coordinate or at least apply some sort of code to their violence, like taking down those who they believed were assuming too much individual power, is something that is rarely seen today. Whether this ended in cannibalism or not is irrelevant at this point. What should be appreciated is a type of communal organization and understanding that we do not often witness in the current era. Now I am not promoting killing witches or anything of the like but if we, today, could wholly come together to remove what we deem as tyrannical and dictatorial figures of authority, that would be something to see. And as is the case, we do share some similarities with these people who many seem to think of as completely foreign and not relatable figures. For instance, we have impeachment proceedings for those in office; when the governor of Illinois was deemed unfit to continue in his capacity as a leader of the people he governed, he was peacefully deposed. But impeachment proceedings are considered acceptable in our society and are simply a different way of achieving the same goal. The Pueblo people of yesteryear got the same job done in a slightly different way perhaps. I bet that if we maybe dismembered or ate the politicians we wanted out of office, there would be less corruption, or at least less politicians (again, I am not promoting violence or cannibalism against authority, we have different, not higher or lower just different, standards).
-Shoshana Schoenfeld
Two of the readings from this week illuminated aspects of the fundamental nature of humanity that I had never before considered. In “On Torture in Societies Against the State,” Sev noted that “marked social violence seems bound up in the project of being human itself, a structural aspect of all societies, as basic as kinship, politics, economics or religion.” Peter Whiteley, in “Explanation vs. Sensation,” declared that the idea of cannibalism “is so pervasive in human cultures as even to be somatically ingrained – hardwired in human brains.” (He also quoted Goldman, who expressed essentially the same concept: “Cannibalism … might be hardwired into the architecture of human imaginative structures.”)
ReplyDeleteBoth of these statements are incredibly striking. Although I do acknowledge the inextricability of “nature” from “nurture,” I have always believed that “nurture” – i.e., our environment – played a significantly larger role in our personal and cultural development than our genes; I wholly support the notion that we are all born as, more or less, blank slates. Yet both Sev and Whiteley suggest that there are certain inclinations that are common to us all – they are “hardwired in human brains,” “bound up in the project of being human.” This language seemed rather hyperbolic to me at first. How could anything as catastrophic as “marked social violence” or as appalling as the concept of “cannibalism” be encoded in our genes?
Yet after thoroughly perusing and reflecting upon Sev and Whiteley’s articles, I realized that their claims were not overstated, because my perceptions of “violence” and “cannibalism” had been too narrow-minded. I had only considered the literal denotations of the words, and not their countless connotations or metaphorical meanings. I thought that “violence” was just a synonym for physical fighting; I hadn’t considered the fact that it can come in a multitude of different forms, each with its own target and implications – e.g., torture, or even self-imposed torture. And I certainly hadn’t ever equated violence with the creation of an egalitarian society. I was thus particularly struck by Sev’s explanation of the relationship between “torturous initiatory rites” and “small-scale societies of equals.” I had always thought of torture as a form of positive punishment, but now I realize that it can also be a form of negative reinforcement. Because it leaves a permanent mark (“both corporeally and psychologically”) on the body (“both individual and collective”), violence has the force of a law. In fact, it has more than the force of a law; it both embodies and serves to enforce laws, for humans will only conform to societal norms and repress their natural instincts if they understand the consequences of nonconformity. Paradoxically, then, violence is essential for the maintenance of order. Moreover, Sev’s contention that it is a “structural aspect of all societies” might be a bit of an understatement – for without it, there can be no structure!
I also hadn’t considered the implications of “cannibalism,” for I had always perceived it as a simple term for the consumption by one member of a species of another member of the species (i.e., I essentially equated it, in the case of humans, with “anthropophagy”). Yet Whiteley describes “cannibalism” as a “rhetorical trope evoking the threat of chaos produced by radical Otherness.” That is, it is not merely a description, but also a “derogatory accusation,” an epithet, a judgment, a “dirty word.” It is “the necessary obverse to a ‘civilized Self.’ ” This statement is remarkable, for it implies that the word “cannibal” was created to express the exact opposite of one culture’s conception of “civilization” (and not simply the eating of one human being by another). As Whiteley further noted, “identifying Others as eaters of the Self is typically a colonial two-way street” – not only do Europeans use it to classify Native Americans, but Native Americans also view Europeans as cannibals, for the two cultures are essentially antithetical. “Cannibalism” is thus a basic psychological projection of one culture’s image of what it is not (or of what it views as fundamentally opposed to the nature of humanity) onto members of another culture. Because, as Lévi-Strauss aptly contends, all cultures “define themselves through senses of Otherness,” it is only natural that the concept of “cannibalism” is hardwired into the human brain.
Cannibalism…It’s Who’s for Dinner!
ReplyDeleteTwo cannibals are sitting around the campfire eating.
“You know,“ says one, “I really don’t like my mother in law at all.”
“Well, then,” says his friend, “just push her to the side and eat your vegetables.”
Cannibalism has lost its edge. Once too heinous a taboo to name, the consumption of our species by some of its members, has lost its ability to make you want to puke and retch at the very thought. Clarisse Starling is not alone in falling for the wealthy, refined and dazzlingly brilliant Hannibal Lecter. It’s been 40 years since the administration at CU Boulder allowed the students to provocatively name the cafeteria the Alferd E. Packer Bar and Grill and decorate it with the snappy exhortation to “Have a friend for lunch!” In 2003, rebel militias in Congo were charged by a UN observer with hunting down, killing and eating at least a dozen pygmies. Jeffrey Dahmer’s freezer and recipes captured our imaginations. Even vampires, arguably a cannibal splinter group, are currently undergoing a rehabilitation if not a renaissance. Excess makes us inured to horror.
The word cannibal first appears in print in English in 1553. It is derived from “caribal” the Spanish word for Carib, brought to us by Columbus in 1492. At the time, Columbus assumed the natives he encountered were subjects of the Great Khan of China,
and they thus became known as khannibals. A post-coinage Latin etymology was also ascribed to the word, giving us cane (dog)–bal, and its resonance with a dangerous monster dog-man or man-dog. A heavily loaded word.
In 1580, Montaigne wrote the deeply influential On Cannibalism, in which he differentiates types of cannibalism; those which occur out of desperate circumstances and those which are ritual revenge. Montaigne’s essay forces us to examine who it is the cannibals really are:
I am not sorry that we notice the barbarous horror of such acts, but I am heartily sorry that, judging their faults rightly, we should be so blind to our own. I think there is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead; and in tearing by tortures and the rack a body still full of feeling, in roasting a man bit by bit, in having him bitten and mangled by dogs and swine (as we have not only read but seen within fresh memory, not among ancient enemies, but among neighbors and fellow citizens, and what is worse, on the pretext of piety and religion), than in roasting and eating him after he is dead.
Montaigne also explains otherness/alterity/barbarity and why we assign those qualities to those outside our ken:
I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation, from what I have been told, except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.
He establishes the still pervasive perception of the native inhabitants of the New World as happy noble savages existing in a state of nature as close to the Judaeo-Christian prelapsarian vision of Eden as it is possible for us, the fallen, to imagine:
These nations, then, seem to me barbarous in this sense, that they have been fashioned very little by the human mind, and are still very close to their original naturalness. The laws of nature still rule them, very little corrupted by ours; and they are in such a state of purity that I am sometimes vexed that they were unknown earlier, in the days when there were men able to judge them better than we. I am sorry that Lycurgus and Plato did not know of them; for it seems to me that what we actually see in these nations surpasses not only all the pictures in which poets have idealized the golden age and all their inventions in imagining a happy state of man, but also the conceptions and the very desire of philosophy. They could not imagine a naturalness so pure and simple as we see by experience; nor could they believe that our society could be maintained with so little artifice and human organization.
And by writing of these things –the hopes and dreams of a continent that had clearly made a total hash of things at home over many centuries, Montaigne foisted the burden of history’s collective yearning for a better place onto the back of New World, along with the coeval notion of its noble, pure and uncorrupted inhabitants. This is where Rousseau got it, and the repercussions of his reading Montaigne’s essay are felt to the present.
Cannibalism, or more precisely, the accusation of cannibalism is the McGuffin that serves as metaphor not only for the imagined brutish savagery of the Other, but also, and simultaneously, for the devouring spread of European colonization. The stigma of the accusation of cannibalism is worse than the cannibalism itself. It is a bifacial political curse applicable to both oppressor/oppressed, savage/civilized, European/Other at the same time. It surfaces in times of extreme social, economic &/or environmental hardship and is by nature political. There seems little doubt that cannibalism has existed throughout human history, for one reason or other. To deny it is simply an exercise in trying to elevate humans above other animals, to justify our perceived imperialistic right to dominate the world and all in it.
This specific use of cannibalism as political accusation is made nowhere more effectively than by Jonathan Swift in his A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. Published anonymously in 1729, this satirical essay/political pamphlet offered a solution to the Irish Problem by suggesting that the Roman Catholic Irish poor might consider improving their lot by selling off some of their too numerous young children to be eaten by their Protestant British oppressors. "A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout," Swift wrote. He described an entire economic system built on cannibalism, but succeeded so well in keeping his tongue deep in his cheek, that comments about it in the press focused not on the horror of the suggestion, but on the inaccuracies of his business model and whether it could actually function.
Sylvia V.T. Calabrese
Whiteley's idea of the stigma of cannibalism as a psychological response to unfamiliarity or fear of the other is quite persuasive. He supports his argument by citing multiple instances where one society's false label of cannibalism against another is just a symptom of the radical alterity they perceive or the intersocietal discord that they experience. For instance, Africans and South Americans feared that white people would eat them, simply because white culture was unknown to them. In fact, is this not where the term came from? Edmund Burke’s response to the otherness of a society is similar to that of these Africans and South Americans. He uses the term cannibal to cope with and signify his uneasiness with French Revolutionaries. And while he may have used this term generally or metaphorically, he still conjured the same image of devouring flesh and mangled bodies that Turner's text evinces. But if this reaction is a normal psychological response, is it inextricably linked to an assumed position of superiority, or rather, a means of derision? I would argue that it can be seen as just a psychological response, independent of the vilifying baggage that it so often is accompanied by. For example, the Hopi's had a legend of an Ogre called Tseeveyo, which can be seen as a symbol of fear of the other with no assumed superiority.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Turner and other participants in "Western discourse," seem to use the term as more than a mere psychological response. Turner, while claiming to base his work on science, surmises that cannibalism was a tool used to instill fear and establish control in Pueblo societies. While the scientific aspect and evidence of cannibalism is certainly up for interpretation (as seen in Whiteley and Reinhard's works), I wholeheartedly agree with Whiteley who denies that cannibalism was used in this manner. We must recognize the difference between cannibalism as a psychological response and cannibalism as a rhetorical device. Turner uses the scientific evidence of cannibalism to further his own claim of its use in establishing hierarchical dominance. Is this use of cannibalism in any way different than that of the Europeans who used it as a justification to assume superiority and even enslave the Native Americans? Cannibalism was a main player in maligning and stigmatizing the Carib society. Is Turner playing off of the human psychological response of cannibalism experienced worldwide to shape opinions about Pueblo violence? Or is he making purely scientific claims?
Whiteley would claim the former. Reinhard's text provides more evidence that the mere mention of cannibalism can incite a strong response and open the doors for unwanted judgments of barbarism. When the story of cannibalism playing a role in Anasazi diet hit the media, the thousands of coprolites that he had examined were overlooked at the mere possibility of such "horrible tendencies." Reinhard offers the voice of reason by steering clear of this frenzy in saying that the level Pueblo violence was probably similar to that of any other society. This is a fair assessment because what society is without violence? Professor Fowles echoes this view in pointing out, "marked social violence seems bound up in the project of being human itself" (3). I think there is a definite lesson to be learned from all of this. We cannot be swept up by the rhetoric of unfamiliar practices and we certainly cannot let them substitute scientific evidence as the basis for our judgments.
-Paul Corcoran
There are certain actions that are engrained into society’s perception and considered to be the critical taboos, and “antihuman acts” of humankind. These actions may as well have been impressed and manifested into stone, much like the Ten Commandments. In an alternate Ten Commandments of sorts “Thou shall not eat the flesh of man” would certainly be among the legislation. The word “Cannibalism” or “Cannibal” holds a stigma, beyond a label, beyond a description, beyond a mere negative connotation. “From very early on, ‘cannibal’ was synonymous with and ‘a strong term of abuse for bloodthirsty savage’” (Whitely:188). This word, unlike any other term used in science, becomes a derogatory slur, and the person assigned to it automatically takes on a character judgment equated with satanic ways. “The cannibal savage Other is the necessary obverse to a ‘civilized self’” (Whitely:189). The scandalized fascination our society holds to these actions is prevalent in our culture. Whether it be the grim, infamous image of Anthony Hopkins behind bars, with the slim, sharpened teeth glistening, as the modern incarnate of society’s super villain, Hannibal Lector, the worldwide enthrallment with serial killers and mass murderers like Charles Manson, or the popularity of television programs which display the goodness of the law triumphing over criminal evil, like Law and Order, “the simultaneous presence of disgust and fascination that marks the essential image of the cannibal is intrinsic to the meaning of the category” (Whitely: 188).
ReplyDeleteIt is this stigmatized image that makes the term “cannibal” entirely inappropriate to use in the scientific realm. It is with premeditated intent to portray people in a scandalized and savage light to use it the way Christy Turner did in her anthropological argument about the destruction of the Awat’ovi tribe. This quotation from Turner’s article “Led by a psychopath like Charles Manson…cannibal warriors with a collective mental disorder would have been a rough bunch to deal with (recall Awatovi-Polacca Wash)….In sum, as we discover and learn more about episodic mass human destruction in the prehistoric Southwest, we may have to allow that some form of institutionalized sociopathic behavior existed. Gangs and cult behavior provide potential analogues. (Turner and Turner 1999:481, emphasis added),” (Whitely:185) misinterpreting scientific evidence as well as placing a Western sensationalism on indigenous peoples, once again, draws upon the innate Western need to “define themselves through senses of Otherness, from the merely different to the unacceptable, the subhuman, and the anticultural” (Whitely: 190).
Sarah Darro
Discussing Cannibalism is one thing, but witnessing cannibalism is another thing. So when we are asked to judge the nature of cannibalism, it is understandable to argue that the nature of cannibalism has some grounds for tolerance and is not as horrific as it seems. However, when the viewer is shown the graphical nature of cannibalism, the view shifts and the strong brutality and gruesomeness witnessed surely causes the viewer to view cannibalism as a terrible, horrific event. As Whiteley states in his article on "Explanation vs. Sensation," "... the psychic horror of the cannibal image... it is the aberration such events encode that lends them their evocative power, not their supposed reference to a standardized form of political rationality"(199).
ReplyDeleteI view cannibalism as a degenerative and "ferocious" act, rather than an act arising from the State of Nature. And I disagree with Peter Whiteley's claim in his article on "Explanation vs. Sensation", where he explains that "if a 'society' genuinely existed in which violent cannibalism were engaged in at random, this would be the perfect exemplar of the 'State of Nature,' of Hobbes's war of all against all, where life is nasty, brutish, and short... Cannibal savages are the archetypal natural man... an inverse psychological projection of civilization's ideological self-image and thus often the excuse for oppression and prejudice or the rationale for imperialism..." (189) It is an act of hatred and revenge carried out by the murderer and I completely agree with Peter Whiteley's quote on page 188. Burke explains cannibalism correctly, it is act involving "ferocity" or a savage-like fury and cruelty. There is a great deal of hatred and revenge involved in it, for example killing a king or "regicide."
The act of cannibalism carries with it moralistic and religious implications. A religious group will view cannibalistic acts in even stronger horror. One who has eaten the body of another, has in essence prevented the body of the other to rest in peace and go to heaven. This implies that it is like eating one's soul. It is in no way moral or humanistic, instead the act is completely radical, inhuman and destines the one performing the cannibalistic act to go to hell. Whiteley would describe people performing "cannibalistic" acts as those characterized by "radical Otherness" that have "nonmembership in or nonadherence to the social contract" (198-199). These people are some other inferior people that are no longer part of society, don't adhere to the social
contract and are not characterized by the category of (rational) human.
Cannibalism is rhetorical and is not suitable for a rhetorical explanation. Every point of view, whether psychological, political, colonial or literate explains the term in its own way. There is a realm of imagination and fantasy inherent in it, rather than a general, analytical explanation. Cannibalism for the Hopi culture, for example, goes with witchcraft. Cannibalism is "not an explanatory field of science" and "inadequate as scientific analogy," it is like a "metaphor" and "belongs to the evocative field of rhetoric" (200).
I find it again unfair that the Native Americans are yet again judged as cannibals. Considering a simple example from Karl Reinhard's text on "A Coprological View of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism," a single fecal fossil brings about the idea that the Pueblo culture can be cannibalistic. Reinhard explains that a single coprolite, "a sample of ancient feces preserved by mineralization or simple drying-is a scientific bonanza," is used to condemn an entire culture and furthermore in other instances of native cultures the entire Native American race! This is to say that in our modern culture, if some psychopath was going to perform the same act, (consider for example Hannibal Lector's movie), an entire race in the world should deem the title too. If the majority of the Anasazi people (that is one instance out of thousands) were "peaceful people" and one coprolite came out to be different, then it shouldn't make this much difference. If the Ancestral Pueblo performed a single act of cannibalism, it was due to "environmental stress," bad harvest, drought. "Beyond a single sample, hundreds of coprolite analyses find not even a hint of cannibalism" and thus the cannibalism title for the Ancient Pueblos is unfitting and unfair.
Yauheni "Eugene" Abrazhevich
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhen Burke described the participants in the French Revolution as cannibals, he was attempting to counter their own rhetoric of being liberators with a term that would best highlight the way he saw them as destroyers of the fabric of civilization and society. The word “cannibal,” descending from Columbus’ depiction of the subhuman Carib savages of the New World, carried all the appropriate connotations. Burke was interested in showing how the French Revolution was undoing millennia of human progress, and by equating the revolutionaries with savages he emphasized both their incompatibility with civilization and order, and their inability to create the better system they claimed to be forming.
ReplyDeleteThe reemergence of the cannibal descriptor used by Turner and the popular media reflects a similarly pointed attempt at countering an equally extremist image. Just as Burke represented a sort of backlash against the “liberté, fraternité, égalité” propaganda coming out of the insurrection across the Chanel, the cannibalism discourse represents a backlash against the rigid framework of the eco-friendly peaceful people imagery surrounding Native Americans throughout the 60s and 70s.
I believe it is useful here to take a gendered reading of the evolution of anthropological interpretation. As Karl Reinhard explained in “A Coprological View of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism,” in the 60s and 70s, “modern American culture was searching for examples of nonviolent social systems” (260). In a period of American history entrenched in the masculine environment of the Vietnam War, people looked to counter-culture (according to Reinhard, “scholarly excavation camps often had the flavor of hippie communes” (260)) and Other cultures (particularly those able to exist in their own landscape) for the feminine, the nurturing, and the peaceful. To steal symbolism from author Riane Eisler, the Indians became the Chalice and the Westerners the Blade.
But extremism begets extremism. With such uncompromising labels, the only means of adjustment was a drastic change. In the 80s and 90s, elucidations of the horrible violence displayed amongst the various Others came in vogue. One anomalous fecal fossil turned the harmonious and peaceful Anasazi into a race of cannibals. What both anthropology and the media seem to have difficulty with, is offering (again borrowing from Eisler’s work) cooperation models rather than dominance models. Instead of trying to see how such new evidence might be incorporated into the existing body of research, people too-often allow new evidence to completely overturn and dominate that which came before. The cycle thus acted out epitomizes the human desire to rebel, and indeed mirrors the sort of irreverence toward the wisdom of the past that Burke sought to condemn in the late 18th century.
To illustrate another interesting parallel, it is useful to consider Peter Whiteley’s explanation of cannibalism as a sort of transgression, on par with and intimately connected to witchcraft and incest. As he explains, portrayals of cannibalism in Hopi drama, besides acting as cautionary tales, embody the human fascination with the anticultural and the terrible. It seems as though the backlash against Noble Savage interpretation from the 60s and 70s, exemplified by Turner’s “cannibalism,” displays a similar sort of play at transgression. Turner proclaimed the academically unacceptable, like a young child using a dirty word for the first time, and was met with eagerness and encouragement from an American culture that was tired of being the Evil Westerner juxtaposed with the Noble Indian. It was, as Whiteley pointed out, a rather unscholarly act of sensationalism.
However, while I understand Whiteley’s justification, his suggestion of hiding the discourse under the description of “anthropophagous practices or incidents” nevertheless uncomfortably reminds me of the U.S. government’s approach to Rwanda in 1994: afraid of the implications of calling the widespread massacres “genocide,” they only finally consented to say that “acts of genocide” had occurred. The power of language is no less potent today than it was in 1492.
-Marina Cassio
The “rhetoric of cannibalism” exhibits a multiplicity within its use as a method of social control within a culture and within the interactions of cultures, which in this case, is an interaction between colonial forces and the Ancestral Pueblo. I want to approach the topic of “cannibalism” beginning with Turner’s hypothesis. Essentially, he claims that a group of Ancestro Pueblo practiced “terror-cannibalism” as a means of intimidating and controlling populations. His claim contrasts the perspective on Native groups of the American South West as peaceful and egalitarian. However, Turner’s inference contradicts the cultural context of the Ancestro Pueblo, as well as the physical evidence. Darling approaches the issue from the cultural context, admitting that “defleshing” took place, but that the “ethnographic data” does not provide support for Turner’s conclusion. He describes the manner in which “cannibalism” and witchcraft were not socially acceptable within Pueblo society, “even during periods of stress,” he adds. Reinhard approaches the issue from the “coprolite” perspective, that is, through the study of “ancient feces preserved by mineralization of simple drying.” He argues that “cannibalism just doesn’t make sense as a pattern of diet for people so exquisitely adapted to droughts…”; thus, Turner’s claim does not match up with the reconstruction of the Pueblo diet. Within this debate, then, it seems I have to lean toward the cultural and dietary reconstructions of Darling and Reinhard, respectively. Nevertheless, I am in conflict about using "ethnographic data," although, I suppose it is because I have been trained to believe in the obvious "facts" which, ethnography is not. Ethnography is interpretation that, nevertheless, reveals truths. I think the best manner to look at this is through a synthesis of both physical and ethnographic data, so that neither is the dominant form of reconstruction and interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThe perceptions, and their origins, of “cannibalism” that both the Ancestor Pueblos and the colonialists held were means of social control. In exploring views of the Ancestor Pueblo on “cannibalism, “ it appears that the term was practically “interchangeable,” according to Darling, with witchcraft, which represented evil in Puebloan society. Therefore, as Fowles describes, the execution of witches “must be regarded as another mode of painfully inscribing the law on society.” Therefore, it was a means of avoiding complete anarchy within the Puebloan society; this idea manifests itself in the “Lullaby of Cannibal Giants” that Whiteley so appropriately uses to introduce his discourse. The manner in which this lullaby may have been used to make a child complacent (or else suffer the consequence of being taken and eaten by the “Saveyo Sendo”) parallels the manner in which the idea of “cannibalism” was used to keep people within the social boundaries. Of course, it seems, that this does not represent an extreme control within Puebloan society. Indeed, it is a boundary of moderation, avoiding the extremity of anarchy. The extremity of complete social control, though, was avoided through violence. Severin Fowles describes the role that violence plays in societal structures: “marked social violence seems bound up in the project of being human itself, a structural aspect of all societies, as basic as kinship, politics, economics, or religion.” It is a logical, then, that the violent execution of witches by the Ancestral Pueblos done by the executioners that held high positions within the hierarchy represented a sort of check on their power. In this case, violence is boundary of moderation, in which it was designed to lead away from “dominance and submission” (Fowles 2009). I find this to be one of the most interesting points I have encountered—violence as a part of societal structures rather than being a threat to the structures. It makes me question the preconceived notion that ‘society’ must be all about order—or is it that violence can, paradoxically, be a means toward order?
The ‘Western’ view of “cannibalism” is one that justified attempts at conquest and forced assimilation. With the “-ism” at the end, it makes it appear as a common social practice that was present throughout the daily lives of the Ancestro Pueblos. According to Whiteley, the perception of the “cannibal savage Other is the necessary obverse to a ‘civilized Self.’” Therefore, this extreme contrast of savagery was needed for the extremity of “savior” to be acceptable within the colonial mindset. In contrast to this perspective, though, is the Rousseauian perspective in which Native groups were peaceful and uncorrupted by societal structures. Both perspectives present an oversimplification of complex societal systems present in Native societies, including that of the Ancestro Pueblo. As Fowles points out, Clastres described the way in which these perspectives “[obscured] the very nature of politics in non-state societies…” by demonizing or romanticizing. Therefore, although the Ancestro Pueblos were not “savage cannibalists,” they were also not perfect. “Cannibalism,” then, was not a practice found among the Puebloans. Although, this is not to say that “anthropophagy” (the eating of human flesh) did not exist. Indeed, it may have been done during famines, although it is not restricted to Native groups and, has occurred in incidents across various cultures.
-Michelle Janet Ramos-Rosales
As Burke’s quote shows, cannibalism is extremely offensive to Euro/American sensibilities. When studying anthropology, we seem able to forgive every cultural practice that seems a strange to in contrast to our own culture—with the exception of cannibalism. There is a tendency to dehumanize societies or people who practice cannibalism because we cannot imagine an ordinary, mentally healthy person who would be reduced to this. It brings with it images of hysteria, extreme food shortages and madness. It is a supercharged word and as, Peter Whiteley’s assessment of Turner’s thesis on cannibalism, and Reinhardt’s analysis of the coprolite show, it is often hard to even suggest cannibalism without sounding sensationalistic. It is something that almost borders on the imaginary for us—something restricted to ghost stories and horror movies.
ReplyDeleteWhiteley explains that language is everything in anthropology when it comes to cannabalism—downplaying as much as possible anything other than neutral terminology. Turner’s thesis for example uses highly evocative language, referring to cannibals as “fanatical warrior-cultists,” who go around “terrorizing, mutilating, and murdering.” As Whiteley points out Turner is determined to go against the trend for political correctness—but this doesn’t at all mean that Turner is scientifically neutral. Instead of being like Anthropologists like Whiteley and Reinhard—who try to downplay the role of cannibalism as much as possible (not only does Whiteley criticize Turner’s language but he also calls it “scientifically inadequate and factually unstable,”187), Turner sees himself as doing a service to the scientific community by not sugar coating information. What strikes me is that no one seems to be truly impartial. They are either minimizing the role of canabalism or maximizing it.
Even the modern day Hopis view Cannibalism as so monstrous that even to suggest that their ancestors practiced it is like accusing them of some sort of historical crime. Cannibalism has a rich mythology across cultures, always defining “otherness” as cannibalistic. These days, when we believe we are finally wise enough to separate the “fact” from the “fiction,” are we really more aware of what cannibalism means and who practiced it? Or one hundred years from now are people going to look back at our beliefs and laugh at our cultural biases?
Nora Machuga
I have to admit that I found the readings on cannibalism and violence particularly interesting, much for the exact reasons that Whitely is so against: the sensationalist and exaggerated nature of the stories. I cannot help but agree with his point that the mere presence of the word “cannibal” will attract the attention of the media and the general public. It truly is, as he puts it, an overloaded word that immediately conjures up stereotypes and images that have no scientific foundation.
ReplyDeleteMy criticism of Whitely’s piece is that it seems very one-sided, albeit convincing. I read Whitely prior to reading Reinhard, and upon completing both, I could not help but notice how enduringly Whitely campaigns for the preservation of the peaceful image of the Ancestral Pueblo. Reinhard paints a much more realistic picture of a society that “had a level of violence typical of most human populations”.
It certainly seems from the readings that the cannibalistic nature of any Native groups in the American South West is largely exaggerated based on oral history and folklore. To bring the example into the present day – will our society be mistaken as superstitious and unscientific because of the prominence of Harry Potter in our literature? I would hope that future anthropologists are better equipped to form unbiased analyses of our cultural remains rather than being preoccupied with the farfetched, outmoded, incredible findings (that have practically no evidence).
As for whether cannibalism was used as a rhetorical device to discredit violence against the state – it seems hard to believe that any civilization would have so many ruling members willing to eat human flesh to remain in power. It is equally farfetched to believe that the masses would have allowed this to happen and not overthrown the first cannibal the moment it (supposedly) happened. The facility with which people embrace this idea is indicative of already-formed beliefs about ancient native groups. It should be hard to believe, and yet it is not; we already have the notion of native people as uncivilized savages engrained in our mind. Perhaps this is more telling evidence of the violence that pervades our media and news in the present day than of any violence of the past.
Cindy Huang
Reinhard writes an extremely convincing article filled with relative arguments and truly interesting material. I never thought I could enjoy an essay about ancient fecal matter nearly as much as I enjoyed "A Coprological View of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism." Reinhard took such an agreeable stance when discussing the life-altering coprolite and what it did for archaeologists. He first shows that he knows his stuff. He makes it clear that he has analyzed thousands of pieces of coprolite and has been studying the Ancestral Pueblo people and more specifically, their diet, for the past twenty years. To hear that, and then read that this seemingly common piece of coprolite “undid 20 years of my research” and even more profoundly caused "the archaeological community to rethink our perception of the nature of this prehistoric culture and to question what is reasonable and scientific proof" (Reinhard 4). REALLY? I am going to have to agree with the rest of Reinhard's article and say that the above statement is clearly absurd.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the coprolite had “none of the typical plant foods eaten by the Ancestral Pueblo” should be evidence enough to refute the idea that it came from the Ancestral Pueblo (Reinhard 256). Even with human within the fecal matter, there should have been remnants of the typical Ancestral Pueblo diet. These people were obviously not living off of human alone, and there were no similarities between this coprolite and the numerous others identified as Ancestral Pueblo, and thus, where was the conclusion made that it must be from them? But, furthermore, the best argument that can be made against the idea of labeling these people as cannibalists is that they found ONE piece of coprolite containing remnants of human. Let’s pretend for a moment that people hundreds of years from now will be studying coprolite from the present day. What if one of the pieces they found out of the tens of thousands recovered had a marble within it. That is possible right? A toddler eats a marble; it is not the normal diet of the humans of the day, but it happens. The people of the future find the coprolite containing a marble, and every newspaper headline the next day reads, “2009 New Yorkers are Marble-Eaters, must have been unintelligent and non-resourceful.” Yea, it’s laughable, but is it not essentially what is happening now? We find one piece of fecal matter containing human and we automatically label these people as a whole as violent and cannibalistic! This is a mistake on all accounts and as Reinhard says the “Cowboy Wash coprolite offers us a cautionary tale” about icons, exaggerations and perception (Reinhard 261).
The only critique I have of Reinhard’s article is that he is so defensive. He has been studying these people for a long time, and granted assuredly knows more about them than any other living person, but at some points he comes across as arrogant, and afraid of discovering something that could change what he thought he knew. Sure, the way in which Turner proclaims the Ancestral Pueblo to be cannibalistic and inhuman was not right, Reinhard was so quick to jump in there and say, No, these people are peaceful and eat only plants and small animals! Yes, they may have done some violent things, but it was nothing major, don’t worry yourselves. It is like all he wants is a pretty picture, and as a reader wanting to learn and discover, all I want is the truth.
Christina Henderson
When considering Chaco canyon it is impossible not to marvel at its complete novelty. Its relatively brief reign in the history of the Pueblo people is mysterious in itself, but the fact that it is so completely distinct from traditional Pueblo lifestyle is most confounding. Chaco’s purpose has been questioned again and again, and the hypotheses always seem to project an image of Chaco as either an economic center or a religious mecca. Arguments on either side of the issue are relatively strong. With the Great Houses looking like palaces, the ostentatious material goods, indications of feasting, and the bodily remains of overweight individuals, the evidence supporting the image of Chaco as an economic center, with an elite class, is fairly strong. However, there are many things having no evidently practical function, such as the completely straight roads that occur excessively, and these would seem to support the other hypothesis. I believe that both these hypotheses are too simple. Instead of each addressing the evidence of the other hypothesis, they seem to simply ignore it.
ReplyDeleteMy question is: mightn’t both of these hypotheses be correct in some measure? This would explain why the things left in Chaco seem to have religious, as well as, economic importance. People of religious importance could have constituted the elite class and surrounded themselves with ostentatious religious items. With the two pre-established hypotheses, the argument of impracticality can go both ways. One might argue that the Chacoans tendency to import certain items from long distances shows a kind of devotion and impracticality that only religion could induce. However, haven’t elites always been the perpetuators of impractical indulgence and pointless grandeur? If Chaco was both an economic and religious center, as I suggest, both of these arguments would make sense. Perhaps Chacoans were making a statement about the importance of their religion through the opulence of their lifestyle. A belief that says, “whoever has the best stuff has the most significant religion.” In this way the religious status of Chaco would have been directly affected by its material status and vice versa. I believe that there is no other explanation for Chaco’s purpose that includes all of its mysteries, than one that recognizes a gray area between the two currently leading hypotheses. Indeed it would not be an anomaly for Chaco’s religion and social/economic status to have had a close relationship. Peoples worldwide have defined their political, economic, and social structures by their religions. Often it is those people of religious importance that have the most prestige and material wealth. In order to understand the mysteries of Chaco it is necessary to consider all of the evidence and realize that the question of Chaco’s purpose is as complex as its architecture.
Leah Sikora
Burke posits cannibalism as a “nutrient of ferocity.” Thus anthropophagy is a key component for the growth and maintenance of cruelty and violence. Framed this way, accusations of cannibalism in Western discourse seek to discredit anarchic violence as violence for its own sake instead of as a legitimate means to subvert state authority. Such violence lacks any planning, organization or purpose and reflects the greatest deviation from the order and stability of the state.
ReplyDelete“All societies define themselves by what they are not.” (Fowles, 2009). Indeed societies may often define themselves in active opposition to groups they feel completely superior to. Civilized people do not engage in cannibalism. They may maim, torture and engage in other similarly violent acts, yet they draw the line at eating the flesh of their own species. (Since such civilized beings are rational, any violent action must of course be directed towards a goal.) Cannibals however are no longer human. They are truly primitive, succumbing to their wild nature. They lack the capacity to reason and recognize social order. They do not even eat humans to nourish their bodies. Instead their consumption further fuels their savage behavior.
The foot-severing Onate belongs to the civilized and rational group. He belongs to the state and acts with the approval of the clergy. Some speculate that the Ancestral Pueblos may belong to the latter savage group, based on findings of “processed human bone.”
Accusations of cannibalism against Native groups thus undermine their legitimacy as sovereign political entities. Reinhard’s article drew attention to the controversy after the discovery of the coprolite belonging to a cannibal, a furor that “[amounted] to an absolute attack on Ancestral Pueblo culture” (2006). The media ignored Reinhard’s opinion that the coprolite did not belong to an Ancestral Pueblo. Subsequently, they mounted a sensationalist campaign that maligned Ancestral Pueblo culture and depicted them as uncivilized instead of peaceful – though Reinhard described the Pueblo people as “gastronomically civilized” for their finesse in developing a diverse cuisine despite harsh and unpredictable environmental conditions.
The term “cannibal” is highly loaded in today’s societies. It implies a lack of humanity and complete violation of a sacred moral code. Even its association with the Ancestral Pueblos incites violent reactions. Cannibals do not have culture. They do not have society. If this is so, then the modern descendants of the Ancestral Pueblos lack a cultural heritage. Instead, they have a past to be ashamed of and one to distance themselves from.
Monica Qua Hiansen
I found Prof. Fowles essay on torture to be an interesting foray into a domain of anthropology that is often overlooked or mishandled. Violence in human society, or “man’s cruelty to man” as D.W. Griffith put it, is often misread by anthropologists who attribute peaceful qualities to “primitive societies” as a means of apologizing for European colonial atrocities, or worse yet, those who attributed an intrinsic violence to “primitive societies” as a justification for those colonial strategies. “The tendency to simply invert the savage/civilized labels,” write Fowles, “to underscore the savagery of the European and comparative civility of the Native American—leads us away from, rather than toward, a deeper understanding of the event and its reception” (3). This is certainly true. The assignment of artificial categories of violent/non-violent to different societies is an act of sweeping generalization. Which makes the study of violence all the more important. If it is indeed a universal human phenomenon, the angle of analysis for violence is of the utmost importance.
ReplyDeleteMy one criticism of this article is related to this need. I found the explanation offered for this cross-cultural phenomenon to be unsatisfying: “Marked social violence seems bound up in the project of being human itself, a structural aspect of all societies, as basic as kinship, politics, economics or religion” (3). Although this statement may be empirically correct, it constructs a pathological view of human violence which may be dangerous to agents of future social change. If one thinks of violence as an intrinsic human quality, as Hobbes did, then the groundwork is laid for political systems of hierarchical exploitation. If we think of “auto-mutilation” as a response to various inequities, then we can begin to develop an ethical program that creates social change by non-violent means. I think that this is a more productive way of reading violence.
Jacob Brunner
I was fascinated by Karl Reinhard’s article “A Coprological View of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism.” His field of study, the examination of fossilized ancient fecal matter to determine the lifestyles and eating habits of ancient American peoples, allows waste to create a picture of the culture who unwittingly left it behind, and the specificity of this specialty creates a structured and compelling composition for Reinhard’s argument. His objectivity and professionalism further facilitate his effectiveness in investigating the possibility of cannibalism among Ancestral Pueblos and in portraying the significance of this possibility.
ReplyDeleteReinhard clearly refutes the claim, based on the fecal analysis of a single sample, that Ancestral Pueblos of the American Southwest relied on cannibalism, particularly as a result of drought-based “emergency conditions.” Asserting his conviction that Pueblos maintained an omnivorous diet, never lacking in plant food sources, as determined by his survey of thousands of coprolites, Reinhard determines that the coprolite containing remnants of cannibalized remains (and absent of any vegetation) certainly does not belong to an Ancestral Pueblo individual (or at least not a typical one). He shows that even during periods of drought and trials of starvation, Ancestral Pueblos upheld their traditional eating tendencies, relying heavily on wild vegetation and they perpetually practiced traditional burial rituals, showing that starvation did not in fact initiate cannibalism. This image of a cultured and truly human society (seemingly) contrasts with his description of a sort of human “slaughter house,” a blood-splattered killing room. I look forward to studying such mysterious implementations in greater depth.
His shocked response to the media frenzy, in which journalists, news reports, magazines, and academics eagerly overthrew the previous conception of Ancestral Pueblos as “paragons of peace,” lead into an intriguing analysis of the negligent fickleness of the modern academic world. That a single scientific finding, interpreted in a single-minded manner, could completely reconstruct the Pueblo culture as one of bloodthirsty cannibals, (and the effect this can have on the perception of modern Pueblo culture) indicates the ever-present need for both the media and much of the scientific community to maintain a “noble Indian” versus “savage Redman” dichotomy.
Zoe Feld
(NOTE: I’m not exactly addressing the prompt.) In reading the prompt I thought about my own first awareness of cannibalism. I recall my mother warning me of strangers and then telling me stories of serial killers, especially ones who were said to be cannibalistic. Maybe this wasn’t exactly a typical characteristic of a caring mother, but I don’t believe any harm came to me because of it. Never was there a direct separation of murder and cannibalism, and she thought it appropriate to completely demonize cannibalism. Why?
ReplyDeleteMurder is not a necessary component of cannibalism. The definition of cannibalism only specifies the eating of (human, in this case) flesh, but the term implies that and more. The term connotes a human eating a part of another human. What of placentophagy? Why is it acceptable for humans to consume the placenta? Although it is still a taboo in some cultures, it is more tolerable than other acts of cannibalism. It is often viewed as a ritual, spiritual, or religious experience. Even the historic case of the Donner Party is treated separately because it is not associated with murder, but with survival.
Cannibalism often occurs in the animal kingdom, and I do not recall being particularly disgusted or abhorred at my first encounter of this sort. The term in the context of describing Native Americans can be used to dehumanize them, by making them more animal-like. (On a side note: What of willing victims –as in the case recently documented in Germany?) It is the Jeffrey Dahmer sort of cannibalism we see, but not necessarily the type of which Burke is speaking. Since no Europeans were among the indigenous peoples of North America for every instance of cannibalism, we cannot know the exact situations surrounding an individual or tribe’s reason(s) for consuming human flesh. And if any sort of oral history exists, it is of course deemed unacceptable. Although there are cases of a mass “slaughter” type of cannibalism in the Southwest, one cannot say that this was the case in every situation. Danger lies in all of these generalizations, and overall the term “cannibal” promotes misunderstanding.
NOTE: I’m not exactly addressing the prompt.) In reading the prompt I thought about my own first awareness of cannibalism. I recall my mother warning me of strangers and then telling me stories of serial killers, especially ones who were said to be cannibalistic. Maybe this wasn’t exactly a typical characteristic of a caring mother, but I don’t believe any harm came to me because of it. Never was there a direct separation of murder and cannibalism, and she thought it appropriate to completely demonize cannibalism. Why?
ReplyDeleteMurder is not a necessary component of cannibalism. The definition of cannibalism only specifies the eating of (human, in this case) flesh, but the term implies that and more. The term connotes a human eating a part of another human. What of placentophagy? Why is it acceptable for humans to consume the placenta? Although it is still a taboo in some cultures, it is more tolerable than other acts of cannibalism. It is often viewed as a ritual, spiritual, or religious experience. Even the historic case of the Donner Party is treated separately because it is not associated with murder, but with survival.
Cannibalism often occurs in the animal kingdom, and I do not recall being particularly disgusted or abhorred at my first encounter of this sort. The term in the context of describing Native Americans can be used to dehumanize them, by making them more animal-like. (On a side note: What of willing victims –as in the case recently documented in Germany?) It is the Jeffrey Dahmer sort of cannibalism we see, but not necessarily the type of which Burke is speaking. Since no Europeans were among the indigenous peoples of North America for every instance of cannibalism, we cannot know the exact situations surrounding an individual or tribe’s reason(s) for consuming human flesh. And if any sort of oral history exists, it is of course deemed unacceptable. Although there are cases of a mass “slaughter” type of cannibalism in the Southwest, one cannot say that this was the case in every situation. Danger lies in all of these generalizations, and overall the term “cannibal” promotes misunderstanding.
-Destiny Sullens
I wonder which is better know by common Americans: the sophistication and complexity of Pueblo Bonito or the rumors of cannibalism among the Puebloans?
ReplyDeleteIn the preface of In Search of Chaco, David Grant Noble described stumbling upon “some kind of western ghost town” characterized by “exquisite masonry, empty spacious rooms, and curious circular chambers sunk into the ground.” He did not learn until the next day that the site was not an abandoned Euro-American settlement but the nine hundred year old cultural center of the Puebloan people.
It seems we ignore the expertly engineered stone structures of the Southwest and are over-eager to believe in the base savagery of American Indians, because, as Whitely says in his article Explanation vs. Sensation, “All cultures…define themselves through senses of Otherness.” Native Americans are a convenient foil to the white conquerors that came from the East, and it is assumed that what we have, they lack, and vice versa. When Columbus and his ships landed they considered themselves to be technologically advanced, virtuous and racially superior. Therefore, Native Americans were technologically primitive, morally bankrupt, subhuman and—even worse—cannibalistic.
Of course, there is another competing stereotype popular in American popular culture: the Indian as the noble savage. This is another denial of the complexity of the prehistoric way of life of Native Americans; we —the colonizers, the civilizers— brought the inorganic to the “New World.” The learned Christian morality, mechanical violence and government again supplant their Otherness, their primal spirituality and animalistic relationship to the landscape. Like the very British Anthony Hopkins eating prison guards in The Silence of the Lambs, the “peacefulness” of the Puebloans is incongruous to accusations of cannibalism. (In a similar way, the exquisite masonry of Chetro Ketl conflicts with the perceived primitivism of Native American technical ability).
There is an exclusive duality to the way Euro-Americans approach Native American identity; the emphasis on the “simple” Indian precludes a practical understanding of their societies. They are either the pure, peaceable children of Rousseau’s Origins of Inequality, or cannibals (a “strong term of abuse for bloodthirsty savage;” Oxford dictionary definition in Whitely), and moderation does not typify either of these fantasies.
Narrative is often inimical to sense, and here the narrative has become sensationalist.
Why is cannibalism so damning in this instance?
And what of the American anthropophagus incidents that occurred among the Donner Party or in the Jamestown settlement?
How could a single coprolite (p.o.s.) become an indictment of an entire group of people?
oops! dinooooosaur is Galen Boone
ReplyDeleteThis quote from Burke is particularly striking because of the strong, vivid language that he uses. Every word invokes an image of a wild carnivorous beast. They do not simply eat, they devour, they did not simply kill they murder. This diction leaves no room for a civilized human image to be conjured in one’s mind. Instead we are left with some inhuman savage monster, which seeks out violence and tries to do harm to other living things. The consumption human flesh is something so ingrained in them and defining of their barbarous nature and fuels their savage state. Burke refers to it as a ‘nutrient of their ferocity’, which really highlights the core of what it means to be an animal. He defines cannibalism in this way to emphasize that they have no capacity for reason or human morals and sophistication. In this specific quote by Burke, he is referring to rebellious acts such as regicide (murder of a king) and similar ‘bloody horrors’ as cannibalism. By putting these rebellious acts in the same vein as cannibalism it removes them from civilized humanity and portrays them as unreasonable and uncontrollable animals. He claims that the rebels need the blood shed and murder for their nutrients and it is a necessity for their survival. In Burke’s mind when groups rebel against their leader it is just as severe and barbarous as groups who practice cannibalism. This concept of rebelling against one’s leader as being as unthinkable as cannibalism reminds me of one philosopher’s theory that the government and civilization is constructed as a body with the leader as the head of the body and the people who follow that leader as making up the parts of the body. Therefore any rebellious or violent act against the leader or other members of the society ultimately hurt all the members. To kill the leader or the head, would in essence kill the entire body. This kind of rhetoric and imagery of cannibalism serves to discourage the anarchist rebellion and discredit any forms of violence used in revolution. In the case of Native groups in the American South West, the accusations of cannibalism are as a result of observations of a seemingly unorganized society where some members act out stories with themes of eating sexuality and killing. These stories are actually serving to point out that behavior as negative and looked down upon, very similar to the way that we now tell stories of people acting in an unacceptable and shameful manner as examples of how not to act. The attribution of cannibalistic behavior to these native groups in the southwest has become a way to dishonor their tribes. Because of the common association of Native Americans with savagery, cannibalism has become for some the popular way of explaining the violence that exist within the southwestern tribes despite the fact that much of the violence is the kind that is seen throughout different societies in history across the world.
ReplyDelete-Caroline Van den Berg
Burke implies a metaphoric cannibalism, in the context of primarily European affairs such as the French revolution, where portions of French society (the bourgeoise) “cannibalized” other portions of society (the royalty and aristocrats) through murder and execution, in order to gain power and strength. In a time when royalty and aristocracy were viewed as necessary for the moral and legitimate governing of society, the elimination of such institutions must have seemed as immoral as it was radical, allowing the association of such acts with metaphorical cannibalism. In the context of European relations with Native Americans however, we can see the same thing going on in a broader more general sense, but with accusation of literal cannibalism, as opposed to metaphorical cannibalism. Instead of associating cannibalism with violence against any particular political entity, early explorers like Columbus, who set up the dichotomy of the Noble/Savage Savage, associated it with violence against what they perceived as order, civilization and religion. Such accusations legitimized violence against those who resisted subjugation to Spanish (or other European) authority.
ReplyDeleteClearly this isn’t a universal generalization among Colonial Europeans or explorers, however the association of seemingly anarchic violence with cannibalism existed and was used by some in the past, especially as a legitimizing mechanism. As Todorov points out, from our first set of readings, the Queen Isabella of Spain wanted the Noble Arawak savages, those loyal pre-christian subjects to the Spanish crown, to be protected, and thus cannibalism on the part of the savage Caribs was viewed not only as immoral and an affront to Christianity, but as a threat to the Arawaks, and thus a political threat to the Spanish crown. Perhaps more interesting is the encounter of Pizzaro and his conquistadors with Atahualpa, the Incan emperor. As one of the Spanish witnesses describes, a Spanish monk presented the Incan Emperor with a bible, which Atahualpa threw to the ground soon after. Pizzarro took this as a rejection of Christianity on the part of the emperor, and to Pizzaro, legitimized the killing of Incans in general. In this case, we see an instance of the Spanish encountering an organized state with an emperor, and upon deeming the Emperor unchristian and immoral (for rejecting the bible), the Spanish associated this lack of morality with the entire state, and used it as a justification for killing Incans in general. This fits well with the European conception at the time of the necessity of morality of the royalty for the proper governing of the state, but in this case accusation of lack of morality was used to justify violence against an organized state.
The readings describe the phenomenon of witchcraft in the Native Southwestern societies, and it’s associations with evil acts, including cannibalism. As some of the authors including Darling have argued, witchcraft in Pueblo societies was associated with power and supernatural power, and manifested itself in the misuse of such power for malevolence. This led to violence against those accused of witchcraft and cannibalism, and as Fowles argues, represents a sort of leveling mechanism whereby those with individual and sometimes political or religious power are persecuted, for use and misuse of their power. This represents an interesting reversal of the European concept, in which cannibalism was associated with anarchic violence, where as in Puebloan society, cannibalism was associated with organized political power. The interesting case in Puebloan society as noted by Fowles, however, was that those who carried out the punishments of the accused were those who has religious and political power, which made themselves vulnerable to the same sort of accusations.
Interestingly enough, the phenomenon where power is associated with evil (cannibalism, literal or metaphorical) and thus those in power accused of evil are persecuted, but by others in power, parallels itself with the French Revolution in a very real sense. In the chaos of the French revolution, there were many shifts in power among different factions. Often times the groups in power were accused of abusing that power and betraying the revolution, only to be persecuted and then replaced by another group which assumed power. This system, in which power itself made one a target, resonates with the situation in Puebloan society. The uses of these rhetorics, in European and Puebloan society, are comparable in the sense that there are some parallels between similar phenomena in both societies, but such comparisons are limited, as the notions of cannibalism and accusations of such have very different contexts in both societies.
-Samrat Bhattacharyya
When analyzing the questions surrounding the possibility of cannibalism at Awat’ovi, anthropologists focus mainly on whether or not the Hopi people actually engaged in ritual cannibalism, and if so, who would consume whom. Two prominent arguments are that Hopi warriors consumed those whom they defeated, and Hopi people consumed ritual leaders who became overly elitist. These notions of “terror cannibalism”, as Whitely calls them, are plausible, yet only when viewed under our traditional western lens of cannibalism as a violent taboo. I would like to propose the possibility that cannibalism may have been commonplace, yet not necessarily an act of violence.
ReplyDeleteWhitely states that “cannibalism is the archetypal antihuman act that confound the social contract.” True, it confounds the human contract, in that it causes us to question the implications of humanity cross culturally, yet calling it an antihuman act is to apply western notions of propriety to a civilization of the past, one that is still largely foreign to us. Turner goes so far as to compare Hopi cannibals to some of the most violent men in history – Hitler, Genghis Khan, and Stalin. Whitely, however, is hesitant to compare Hopi cannibals to these men, and these dictators were most violent as they attempted to gain power and control. Whitely says, “Yet no report I am aware of even hints that cannibalistic practices occurred during the revolt.” This statement changes the controversy significantly. If cannibalism did not occur during anarchic periods, it may have occurred under any circumstance. Perhaps consuming the flesh of another was a spiritual ritual – one of embodying the soul of another who was deeply respected, in order carry a piece of them within oneself. Many Christians, for example, consume the “body of Christ” in church for this sort of purpose. Clearly, they are not actually engaging in cannibalism, yet the idea behind the symbolic act may be similar.
I believe that violence is defined by its intention. In other words, if cannibalism was not used as a tactic of subjugation, then we cannot think of it as such simply because that is how we would view it in our society today. Lincoln explains the torture that Huguenots were subjected to on Saint Bartholomew’s Day in 1572. They were brutally beaten, decapitated, castrated, etc. These were obvious acts of violence, attempts to demoralize a population. We know this is a fact because of clear historical documents as well as the fact that this massacre happed to Europeans who are culturally more similar to white Americans, thus more accurately able to distinguish for us what is in fact torture.
I would also like to dissect this quote from Lincoln: “It is in millenarian movements, however, that the deliberate flouting of such fundamental taboos as incest, cannibalism, and abuse of the dead has been attested and most seriously studied.” First, he calls incest a fundamental taboo. This is true, in our culture. The ancient Hebrews, however, engaged in some form of incest almost exclusively, as a mean of keeping the bloodline pure and forging stronger family connections. Second, the notion of the abuse of the dead is also subjective. Ancient archaeological evidence shows bodies buried under houses, without their skulls. In fact, skulls have been found in nearby garbage areas. Yet this evidence has been analyzed as perhaps bodies lying without skulls under houses as a symbolic notion of rebirth, rising out of the ground like wheat. What makes this interpretation credible, and the idea that cannibalism is violent unchallenged?
The last point I would like to make is that Hopi narratives and folklore portray cannibalism openly, as Whitely suggests, showing that the Hopi have no squeamishness about the issue. Perhaps that is because there was simply nothing to be squeamish about. The fact that cannibalism was a blunt topic seems to be proof that it did occur at least occasionally, and with intentions that did not tie others’ stomachs in knots, yet presented an image of awe and respect.
Hadas Margulies
"The common element unifying the abysmal triad of cannibalism, witchcraft, and incest is transgression," explains Peter Whitly on page 190 of his "Explanation vs. Sensation" chapter. Despite the negative rhetoric that has been built up around cannibalism, it seems necessary to also look at transgression as a positive result, of sorts (at the very least in the minds of those societies taking part or initiating cannibalistic actions). In my reading of the word, transgression applies a movement from one world to the next. I'd like to suggest that that movement is in fact a peaceful one, at odds with the violent portrayal cannibalism has recieved in the media and in academic athropological studies. The reality is that cannibalism could have just as easily been a means of showing respect for that individual who was consumed as it could have been a method for degradation. It could have been both or either, depending on the situation. However, this idea of consumption must be reworked to encorporate a variety of notions of the consumed and the consumer. If we are to think of human flesh and blood and bone as attached to the soul of the person being consumed, it is the coming together of two bodies, not the tearing apart of cultures or even a violent act. It should also be considered that our Western notion of bad things ultimately comes down to the thought that they should not exist. We try to push the bad, the negative, and the dangerous out of our lives, but what if the bad was always though of as a necessary evil? Something that must exist to balance the good, the amicable, the positive?
ReplyDeleteIf we are to reform our image of violence or attack (or at least accept the possibility of a different thought-process than the one being thrust upon Pueblo societies by modern-day Anthropologists and historians), we can not only expand the way that we think of violence and consumption, but actually draw together what have long been deemed inconsistancies in cultures that have both peaceful and "violent" tendencies embedded into their culture and/or rituals.
Perri Goldstein
A distinguishing factor of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations was a belief in the divine appointment of their rulers. The privileges enjoyed by the elite were not procured solely by means of the cannibalistic terror Turner imagined was used on the Pueblo people by immigrants from Mesoamerica. This terror had as its foundation these religious notions of divinely appointed power. I would posit that, in addition to Whiteley’s point that, “Turner’s argument that a regime of psychopathic terrorist cannibals enforced internal social order with disciplinary anthropophagy opposes the very basis of social contract,” the absence of this hierarchical religious structure among the Pueblo weakens his already tenuous claim. Cannibalism as a terrorist tactic may have worked elsewhere, but it worked within a definite system and to transplant it to Pueblo society and expect it to garner the same results without the same supporting structure for it seems a bit rash, to say the least.
ReplyDeleteIn the selection of readings presented this week we also see reinterpretations of the evidence Turner used to build his theory, as well as new evidence arising that puts the cannibalistic Chaco picture in a less and less realistic light. Though Reinhardt’s coprolite confirms the existence of a cannibal presence, allowing for the possibility that Turner’s immigrant Mesoamerican notion is not quite so far-fetched, the evidence provided by Darling seems too strong to believe that cannibalism could have been used as a tool of state domination and intimidation. This seems even more true when we consider Darling’s point that “the practice of cannibalism (ritual or dietary) will be predicated on social norms and beliefs of the cultural system as a whole. These should, in turn, be manifested behaviorally and materially, and not solely in the human remains.” The behavioral and material evidence of a culture of cannibalism is lacking—as is the evidence of a culture that would accommodate cannibalism and allow it to be utilized as it was in Mesoamerica.
Turner’s claim is left in even more dubious waters when the oral and archaeologically supported history of witch executions among the Hopi and the Pueblo in general is considered. This history better fits the evidence. We see among the Pueblo not the hierarchical notions of their southern neighbors, notions which could mesh with cannibalism, but find instead that they fit comfortably into the structure of societies that write law onto the body, something that can be read in every exploration of witch punishment and execution that we saw this week.
Anastasia Lugo Mendez
When reading Edmund Burke's passage on cannibalism from his "Letters on a Regicide Peace" one gets a sense that the connotation of cannibalism is strongly linked to its meaning, to the extremity that the connotation becomes the denotation. Burke continues his definition of cannibalism to say "I mean... their drinking the blood of their victims, and forcing the victims themselves to drink the blood of their kindred slaughtered before their faces. By cannibalism, I mean also to signify all their nameless, unmanly, and abominable insults on the bodies of those they slaughter." Although the definition of cannibalism in its strictest and truest sense is simply "the act or practice of humans eating other humans," it has been so closely linked to imagery of subhuman savages feasting on defenseless children that the term cannibalism has taken on a sensational and judgmental meaning rather than a literal one. Much like incest (cyclops children?) and witchcraft (think green skin, warts, shrill laughter, and poisoned apples), which together with cannibalism make up the triad of unacceptable taboos, these three concepts have been influenced and transformed by psychology and literature to create epithets.
ReplyDeleteCannibalism is second to none in its ability to attract media and mainstream attention and defile reputations of entire races of people. Evidence of human myoglobin in one coprolite out of thousands transformed a peaceful group of people into violent carnivores with no problems of eating their own. Playing off of society's stance on cannibalism, the general public's feelings can easily be persuaded. We can't help but be fascinated, and as Whiteley states, "Turner's arguments about Ancestral Peublo cannibalism are little more than the academic equivalent: a vicarious transgression into a forbidden fantasy world."
The Ancestral Pueblo was once considered a "paragon of peace" used as a model for the modern American culture infused with violence and revolt. Without sufficient evidence, the Pueblo Indians were cast as violent cannibals. They went from one extreme to another, but always remaining the "Other." When American society sought more tranquil times, wild chimpanzees and the Ancestral Pueblo were studied. Once there was evidence that even the calm chimps had violent fits and acts of cannibalism, Pueblos were thought of as cannibals - subhumans acting on unacceptable impulses contrasted with the civilized behavior of humans. They were never considered as similar to "us", perhaps they were a community with bouts of violence and the oddball cannibal (Hannibal Lector?) just like every other society that exists, neither a perfectly peaceful group nor a vicious mean-eating bunch. There seems to be a need for the "Other" to remain an Other, which is done by making them an extreme, unable to be related to by all of us normal folk.
Keeping groups of people strictly as "others", those who are different from "us", creates an excuse for oppression and prejudice and justification for imperialism. It is socially acceptable to conquer savages, who are so different from us and need our guidance in reaching a state of evolution that apparently we have perfected and understand enough to teach as opposed to other people who are just like us. Whiteley quotes Goldman saying that cannibalism is the "quintessential symbol of alterity, an entrenched metaphor of cultural xenophobia."
If there was actual evidence that Native Americans of the past were indeed munching on each other in place of plants and animals, accusations of cannibalism could be accepted with less skepticism. However, we see that "the imagery of cannibalism stems in part from a denial of the very violence underlying colonizing relationships" (from Whiteley's text). and of course, there is no physical evidence that supports this notion of rampant cannibalism. Studies of thousands of coprolites have shown that 70% of Ancestral Pueblo's diet was made up of plants. There has only been one sample that contained human myoglobin, but no one even knows if it was from an Ancestral Pueblo. It could have been from a different tribe passing by, and the Ancestral Pueblos were actually a victim. And of course, signs of cannibalism such as burning and disarticulation could very well have been executions of witches, which would make them ever more similar to us, a society so eager to get rid of the Other.
On an ending note, I'm sure a part of Turner is passionate about adding truth and knowledge to academia, but I can't help but think that Turner also has a hunger for fame and acknowledgment which drives his refutable statements. Perhaps a hunger much like the impulses that such ideal and well-behaved citizens of society learn to squelch.
- Hannah Chang
Using words such as “devouring,” “ferocity,” and “murdered” certainly creates quite the animalistic image. Using such language allows the European view to look down upon self-consumption as something they would never participate in because they would never think themselves an animal. Throughout the history of archeological “study” of Native Americans, there has always been a strong tie between the current events of the time and the lens through which the Native people are viewed. This holds true with Burke’s quote regarding the regicide of the French Revolution. In a time when people are slaughtering each other using seemingly “advanced” processes such as lawful prosecution, etc, it helps if there is an icon of something worse to look at. This became apparent to me during my reading of Reinhard’s article involving the dynamic between culture and science.
ReplyDeleteReinhard goes to great lengths to explain that through his meticulous study of preserved human feces, there is certainly no evidence supporting the claim that Ancestral Pueblo people were cannibals ever, let alone a predominantly cannibalistic people. He goes through the different diets involved with times of both feast and famine and relays his findings that even in tough times cannibalism has never been used as a method of subsistence. He also notes that these people rarely had agricultural breakdown, so it is unlikely that it would have been necessary. This is one flaw that I see in his analysis; he talks about their societal subsistence and neglects to consider whether or not cannibalism was used as a ritual. He doesn’t consider it as either a rare ritual or a usual ritual. He mentions it a bit at the end but the bulk of his paper considers the average daily food intake. I found his work to be quite compelling to deter me from believing that these Ancestral Pueblo people were cannibals because of his immense research. This was effective in persuading me, however that is not the task at hand.
Reinhard’s key contributions to my argument come near the end of his article where he considers the different approaches taken by archaeologists during different time periods of study. This is where I find the link to Burke’s quote being used to put self-consumption at an animalistic level. I think Reinhard is on to something here. What he calls the “Peaceful People Concept” certainly rings true. He talks about his interaction with Turner, who argues that the archaeological approaches to characterization must be harshly analyzed as they have varied so greatly throughout the past fifty years. Reinhard then diverges into a discussion about how his work in the 1970’s was biased towards believing in a “Peaceful People.” The excavation had a taint of the counter-culture that was prevalent in these times. First hand experience of Reinhard includes excavation sites that resemble what he calls hippie-communes. To me, this is indisputable evidence of the times influencing the lens which they view through. In a time when Americans felt that we were being far too violent in Vietnam, etc, viewing the Native Americans as a far more peaceful society creates an icon for the protestors to want the US to aspire to. A model for peaceful society can be used as ammunition to say that we as a people are the murders and these people we have always considered to be inferior to be far more civilized.
Then, as this anti-war sentiment fades, there is also a sharp decline as the Mayans are proclaimed to be cannibals as well. To me, all this says is that it doesn’t matter what these ancient people were actually doing, what really matters is the message that the people conducting study desire to put forth. Those performing regicide can be compared to the savage natives of America, and those in congress can be downsized by revealing that ancient, seemingly “inferior” people are in fact civilized enough to not ruthlessly slaughter each other.
One last example I can offer, is that of Reinhard’s Salmon Ruin experience. In the past 30-40 years, there have been countless new theories proposed on why these people were killed, manipulated and burned. This backs up my view that it does not matter what actually happened because with a situation dating back countless years, there is no way to discern for certain what truly happened. The only thing that matters is how one chooses to mold the situation and evidence to support his own views. Media hysteria following the discovery of ONE SINGLE feces composed of human remains just shows that perception is everything, whether or not it is a true indicator. I would be willing to bet we could find more than one person in our country today that has murdered and eaten people. I did a research project in high school for forensic science class and studied mutilating and cannibal serial killers. There could easily have been one strange person in ancient society. Being mentally disturbed is not a new development in our species. People will see what they desire to see in a given situation, especially when there is no authority to assert the truth.
-Brendan Martin
Cannibalism has long been used as a tool to devalue Natives at large, not just uprisings and violence against the state. Christopher Columbus, and other explorers and authors like him, created this dichotomy. By creating groups within which Indians were categorized - good Arawaks and evil Caribs, for just one example - one of the groups was immediately presented as having less intrinsic value. One group could be "saved" with Christianity, and the other was only good for rough slavery and could be used or misused in any way necessary.
ReplyDeleteIn these scenarios, this categorizing that took place immediately in the New World, at least one group was allowed to retain some good traits. However, these were the groups that were seen to be the most like European cultures - just lacking some things, morally naked so to speak. Essentially, though, the classification of the one group as bloodthirsty cannibals was seen as the dominant representation of the Natives; this trait of cannibalism was used to devalue the entire Native population of America, to set them as a lower type of "Human Being" - one, perhaps, in an earlier stage of social evolution (in the words of later thinkers on the subject, one of the main arguments for which was their still "primitive" tradition of cannibalistic behavior).
It is no wonder, then, that evidence of cannibalism and other ghastly practices in a population is used to make any pursuit of these people questionable. Like Destiny said, this act is demonized above all other acts and the people themselves are demonized. Thus, any action that cannibalistic peoples initiate must be inherently bad, evil or misguided. Of course, many scholars need no other tool or path to discredit anarchic violence. Those who do, however, need another factor by which to deny the importance of violence against the state, do indeed use cannibalism as their rhetoric device. In this way, they can speak of anarchic actions within a context of a community that makes similarly "bad choices" like eating the flesh of their enemies, etc. The argument: If they are in other ways morally bankrupt, then it is not unimaginable that they could too be wrong in this instance.
I guess I am saying that we should not be surprised that this is one of the arguments. It is a oft-used and apparently successful argument (since it has weathered the test of time, and still pops up in discourse today). Cannibalism as a charge is a rhetoric device used against people to devalue them and their actions, true. Is it a new concept? No. Effective? Perhaps, but I was not convinced. Here, they rely only on moral outrage (and the like) and have not taken the time to understand cannibalism within the contexts it is found.
Halley Hair
Cannibalism seems to bring to mind two different trains of thoughts, first, that times must have been desperate and it was a necessary food source, and second, that a culture that practices cannibalism is somewhat devolved and primitively savage. There is a negative cultural stereotype that accompanies processed bones, it seems as though there is an automatic assumption that the bones (and the accompanying flesh) were used for nefarious purposes especially when addressing physical evidence tied to native peoples. As a generalization, the world is using modern cultures to dictate what happened in the past. As Reinhard states, “Because the members of extinct cultures cannot speak for themselves, the nature of cultural reconstruction easily becomes colored by the projections of the archaeological community and the inclination of the media to oversimplify or even sensationalize” (Reinhard 2006: 261). This observation seems to pervade throughout history, not only in anthropological or archaeological practices but in the history of colonization. The Native Americans can be seen as barbarous cannibals and are subjugated because of a lack of cultural understanding. These views seem to carry on in the media with the selection of narratives and images that are presented. Professor Fowles wrote of the cutting off of feet by Onate, and, in New Mexico, there was brief media coverage about a statue of Onate and the vandalism that had been occurring to it. There were two different sides to the media story, the first was that the vandalism was a bad thing and that the perpetrators ought to be punished. The second was that it was highly ironic and fully supported because the statue’s foot had been cut off. This was one of the few times where the history of behind the act was explained primarily because of the huge native influence. But even in such an area, there are still cultural assumptions.
ReplyDeleteLike cannibalism, witchery and witchcraft is an accusation that is little understood in the modern world, especially when compared to the Salem witch trials. This comparison seems to suggest that Native Americans are primitive, but that the violence within the actions are worse than those that happened in early American history. The general rhetoric seems to ignore the cultural implications, it is only once a person delves into the anthropological essays that other ideas come to the surface. Professor Fowles speaks about the image of the tortured Pueblo witch and how it has become an icon of cruelty, these icons discredit tradition and only offer a small piece of life as a generalized definition for a culture. I found the concept of witchcraft as an example of egalitarian leveling sanctions to be an interesting concept (Fowles 8). However, it is my belief that the charge of witchcraft is fundamentally rooted in social hierarchy, where torture or death is used to rid one’s political or religious enemies. While I know that this doesn’t apply in all circumstances, I feel that it is an underrated idea. In high school, we continuously heard about Salem and the fear surrounding it, yet little was heard about the political impacts. This may have been my school in particular but I wish there were greater emphases placed on how such situations create advantageous circumstances for others, especially in the history of Pueblo Indians
I think this quote commands the audience to think about wars and the ensuing deaths as cannablism and not as murder or regicide. He compares the devouring of the human flesh to being killed by the bullet of a soldier or being held as a captive of war until death consumes you as cannabilism. He sees people they have murdered as vicitims of a savage human attack where weapons are not soley responsible for the resulting deaths, more directly the person holding the gun is just as a much a rabid cannibal waiting to pounce on a human prey. The soldiers are feeding off and enjoying the blood they are shedding by the bullets and swords as if the weapons were a part of their own body and their limbs were causing all the damage.
ReplyDeleteThe accusations of cannibalism is meant to discredit the violence against the state in that it is saying that assisted violence did not take place, that this was an act of primal action. It almost removes the social aspect of the French Revolution itself. It is almost like the men are possessed creatures by the devil crawling the Earth searching for their marked victims and not just men gunning down human beings. Cannibalism has been accused among Native groups in the American South West during the battles that the US fought to obtain certain states like Texas.Cannibalism was used to make the Americans even more afraid of the Native people as if they had lost all connection to human life and civility. These acts of violence are comparable in a sense that wars due cause a lot of blood shed and broken bodies similar to the aftermath of a cannibal attack, however, you should call a shark a shark and in this case that shark is regicide. Cannibalism just downplays the complexity of the war and the social and political aspects behind it. It is above a simple primal tendency.
-Shambreya Burrell
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ReplyDeleteThe argument that the “accusations of cannibalism, in Western discourse, as a rhetorical device meant to discredit anarchic violence, that is, violence against the state,” is not entirely convincing, especially in terms of the Native Americans of the Southwest. Cannibalism was used as an excuse for unspeakable atrocities and the attempted extermination/pacification of a entire group of people, I feel as though such philosophical reasoning would not be as effective at encouraging the EuroAmerican settlers in their pursuit as the repugnant, visceral reaction the imagery of cannibalism imposes on the psyche. The imagery of cannibalistic demons presents a wholly unforgivable, inhuman enemy to the western settlers.
ReplyDeleteWhile it might be fitting for Edmund Burke to create the analogy between cannibalism and anarchy in the English court at the height of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror in France, extrapolating a systematic argument made against anarchy by “Western Civilization” in the form of cannibalism based on one excerpt from an academic work seems like a stretch. The religiosity of the settlers, their racism, and their unquenchable thirst for land seems like a much more likely cause for the atrocities visited upon the native populations of the Southwest. Not only that, but throughout western history it has been impossible to separate atrocities from ‘civilized warfare’, through the crusades, and on until World War II, the passions and hatred that fuel soldiers inevitably spill over. The philosophical argument seems to be stretch, perhaps a conspiracy designed to blame Western civilization as a whole for not only tacitly approving but also initiating a system whereby the destruction visited upon Native populations could be reconciled. In fact, it seems much more likely that the real culprit is the brutality of warfare, ignorance, racism and hatred.
I feel like during atrocities, emotions and visceral reactions are more effective at fueling the flames of chaos, and the philosophical arguments are afterthoughts being read into the situation. The comparison isn’t completely useless; it is an interesting academic analogy of the chaos of society and chaos among individuals, but I think its usefulness ends there. The act of cannibalism, eating another human being, seems much more disturbing to a western audience in the mid 19th century than that of philosophical social anarchy.
Thomas Nicholson
A rather interesting part of Whitely’s paper was his discussion of the Hopi culture’s stories of cannibalism and witchcraft. Particularly, the story about the ogres that run around the village devouring mal-behaved children resonated with me. In this way cannibalism serves as rhetoric in that stories of cannibalistic monsters were used to frighten children into behaving well. Presumably, there is a social contract between Native American children and their parents, similar to that of modern children and their parents, where good behavior is to be expected. So, bad behavior on the part of children would be considered a breaking of the social contract. The idea of cannibalism could be used as rhetoric in this way to keep children in line, and was probably more effective than the modern-day threats parents might make such as a removal of internet privileges.
ReplyDeleteTurner takes an idea like this to rather elevated levels, in his argument concerning the Pueblo II and III periods, stating that it is “quite plausible” that some “warrior-cultists using rule-breaking but example-setting cannibalism and human sacrifice as conspicuous elements of terrorism might quickly and easily dominate small farming communities” (Whitely 185). Whitely is quick to quash Turner’s notion, as Turner’s sensationalist spin is unfounded. I agree with Whitely’s analysis of Turner’s cannibalism accusations, as Whitely refers to Turner’s theory as “not science but rhetoric,” (202), since Turner’s theory does not appear to have hard, anthropological evidence to support it. Reinhard’s article refers to a single coprolite sample that may have served as evidence for cannibalism. However, he also found hundreds that did not reveal any evidence of cannibalism. Thus, science appears to be on the side that states that these Native Americans were not really cannibals. Rather, cannibals are far more likely to have existed only in the stories such as the Hopi story mentioned above used to scare children.
It’s hard to know exactly how much truth can be divined by examining samples of old, dried feces, but it seems that cannibalism as ascribed to the Ancestral Pueblos by Turner et. al. was more about deploying rhetoric against certain Native Americans than coming to a valid conclusion based upon scientific fact.
David Sims
The rhetoric of cannibalism in relation to Native Americans, as far as I'm concerned, is nothing more than sensationalism used to further devalue an already marginalized population. Cannibalism is a highly charged concept, the debate solely resting on moral standards and the concept of human decency. Considering that we live in a society in which cannibalism is considered inherently evil, to charge a group with cannibalism is to essentially charge them with being irreconcilably immoral. I find this especially interesting given the [brief] discussion we had early in the semester about how it sometimes seems as if Native Americans only exist in history---that they are not a part of the modern discourse about civilization. To charge them as a people with cannibalism---a practice that is widely viewed as primitive and "pre-modern"---not only further pigeonholes Native Americans as being savages (yes yes yes, I know that the articles we read weren't referring to ALL Native Americans per se, but as with any other minority population, the actions of a few tend to be extrapolated to the entire group) but perhaps even justifies their current level of marginalization (and. by extension, justifies European colonization). After all, society is continuously progressing, so isn't it only natural that those who do not progress with it are ultimately left behind? The sensationalistic aims of such charges are quite clear in the case of the Cowboy Wash excavation, in that all of the evidence suggesting that any possible cannibalism among the Ancient Pueblos may have been incidental rather than customary was ignored in favor of more controversial headlines. And when those who are being discussed are dead (and, on top of that, when their descendants constitute a very small portion of the population), it is very easy for sensationalism to replace truth.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I was somewhat bothered by Reinhard's tone in his article. At the end of his article, he states that "[scientists] bear a responsibility to present [their] data in a way that reduces the opportunity for exaggerations," an addendum to Christy Turner's (who is cited in the article) point of archaeologists often using their research to reproduce their own biases. While I do agree with his distaste of the media sideshow surrounding Cowboy Wash, he appears to be ignoring his own advice, as he states unwaveringly that there was NO WAY the Ancient Pueblos could have possibly been cannibals because such a notion contradicts his research. Has he ever considered that his own biases possibly influenced his research methods? Science is hardly objective, after all---the goals of scientists control what they look for, and, consequently, control what they find. He himself stated that for decades, considerations of Ancient Pueblos as being cannibals were outright banned. I tend to side with his verdict on the situation, but his methods of evaluation seem extremely narrow and self-serving.
--->Nonye Madu
As pointed out by Whiteley (2008), Hobbes’ view of the “state of nature” as “a war of all against all” has perpetuated the present-day notion of cannibalism. Hobbes considers the “state of nature” to be a time that is not only full of danger and killing, but also one which lacks the necessary restraints created by the laws of social contracts and government. Since most people cannot and can never comprehend the actions of cannibals in the ritual sphere, cannibalistic communities are seen as horrifying and terrible, lacking any moral standards, and without any sort of civilized composition to their society. The etymology of the word “anthropophagus” and its transition to “cannibal” and “cannibalism” also aid in the present-day understanding that cannibals are “bloodthirsty savages” whose societies hold no shred of morality or civility (Whiteley 2008). The current-day fascination with cannibalism, with its new connotation, has gotten so out of hand that anthropologists, such as Turner, present arguments conveying cannibalistic behavior in a certain archaic society without even having enough evidence to prove their case. Nevertheless, such speculations are accepted, believed, and often blown out of proportion because, as Whiteley and Reinhard both agree, a certain sensationalism is created by these supposed cannibalistic findings. Since cannibalism, in the form of eating other people, is not “popular” practice in current times, the alterity of this action shocks, horrifies, and comes across as wildly interesting to the masses. The idea of cannibalism is widely presented in folklore and fairytales. Whiteley mentions the brothers Grimm as a regular source of cannibalistic tales. These tales act as a foray into a “forbidden world”, yet they also often carry morals along with them. Hopi oral history also contains seemingly similar “moral stories” that shape the Hopi culture’s negative view of anthropophagus and witches, and thus their “civilized standards” for the society. Whiteley (2008) also mentions that “[Hopi] clowns play with the tabooed and undesirable in part to show the chaos that ensues from an absence of cultural rules.” This vision of Hopi past stands in stark contrast to Turner’s understanding that the Hopi were a cannibalistic people.
ReplyDeleteWhiteley and Darling believe that the evidence found that points to cannibalism, in actuality points to another direction entirely. Whiteley (2008) remarks that the Hopi oral history conveys a fear of alterity, quite similar in nature to the present-day fear: the horror of witchcraft and cannibalism. Darling says that ancestral Pueblo peoples were particularly focused on the issue of witches living among them. The remains of humans that have previously been marked as cannibalistic evidence are now thought to be the burning of witches. Reinhard (2006), on another note, writes that these bodies were most likely the result of “unknown mortuary practice rather than trauma and cannibalism”. Since it was extraordinarily difficult to prove that someone was a witch even during the Salem Witch Trials, it is infinitely more difficult to prove that the Hopi past contained witches or cannibals.
When Turner conveyed to the public that the Hopi people were cannibalistic, he not only erred by conveying too little evidence, but also brought to the public the image of the Hopi people as sociopathic brute savages. Whitely (2008), downplaying his own statement, relays that this message was “rather inflammatory”. The word “cannibal” is forever tied to a negative connotation, marking the bearers of this title as horrible savages, with an almost zero level of civilization. Stating that cannibalism exists in a people’s history is practically an accusation that these people came out of unsuitable stock and an abominable nature. This reminds me very much of the Kennewick man because the whole ruckus and ensuing trial about his remains and whether he was “white” ended up diminishing the value of Native Americans’ culture and their right to repatriation. The case of the Kennewick man and the interpretation of Hopi culture in the past as cannibalistic have taught me that anthropologists and archaeologists need to think about the politics, meaning, and potential public interpretations of their finds before they announce them to the whole world and create confusion, bedlam, and the devaluation of culture.
Lastly, Reinhard’s (2006) article has conveyed that opinions of ancient peoples can change in the present-day depending on society’s governmental status. He states that the Ancestral Pueblo were viewed as a peaceful people in the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. when there was “a time of social volatility” and the “modern American culture was searching for examples of nonviolent social systems”. However, in the 21st century, Americans view themselves as more civilized, despite the war and killing that still rages in many places in the world, and thus, it seems that we are more likely to think of fighting and killing as something good that secures and promotes our nationalism and patriotism. This new view, however, makes Americans (as well as others) blind to the destruction of human beings by other humans, a concept that really is not that far off from the current definition of “cannibalism”. Thus, we are more likely to think of other cultures as cannibalistic and think ourselves way above it. This just goes to show that the state and actions of the government and people’s view of what it does can determine the view of ancient peoples. When we are looking for a peaceful society to model ourselves after, we find it; and when we are looking for a society so far inferior to our killings as to justify them, we find that, too.
by Camille Hutt
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn his article Mass Inhumation and Witch Execution, J. Andrew Darling states that “Thus, I will argue that the cannibalism hypothesis is incorrect on two levels: first, in terms of documented Puebloan belief (which is generally accepted as relevant to understanding prehistoric Anasazi society); and second, in terms of the archaeological record” (734). These records show that cannibalism was a large part of witchcraft in Pueblo societies, and it is interesting to note the commonly use of the word “savagery” and “barbarianism” among Pueblo civilizations and how cannibalism was an accepted and somewhat typical part of their society. Darling states that “As suggested by Sanday (1986) and others, the practice of cannibalism (ritual or dietary) will be predicated on social norms and beliefs of the cultural system as a whole” (747). Cannibalism was a natural part of witchcraft and part of their society and it was also considered a type of ritual. The fact that it was part of "social norms and beliefs" shows how common it was to their society and how it was considered to be a significant part in the sacrificial part of witchcraft during this time period. Darling states that, “Pueblo witchcraft is often predicated on the performance of human sacrifice and cannibalism, so much so that the terms cannibal and witch could be used interchangeably” (737). Cannibalism can even be brought back to Hobbe’s state of nature where everyone is in competition with one another and there is a continual state of war among people for survival. When there is a great deal of competition among people for survival, then people during this time period would do anything to survive. This is unlike Locke's state of nature where there is more peace among people and the state of nature is not as competitive. Hobbe's state of nature is a good example of what was occurring in the Pueblo civilizations because people clearly were doing anything they could to survive.
ReplyDeleteEmily Brown
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to learn that the term “cannibalism” originated in a political context. When I think about cannibalism, my mind definitely does not jump to anarchic violence against the state. Rather, an image of a painted man (strangely reminiscent of a Little-Rascals-esque (not the movie, but the significantly better TV show from the forties) wild man from Borneo) gnawing away at someone’s dismembered arm comes to mind (yes, my thought is clearly a product of Western media portrayals of indigenous people). I am inclined to agree with Whiteley: Cannibalism, in the history of Western literature and folklore, has become more of a figurative term than anything else; it represents a grotesque human fantasy, the consumption of another human being solely for the purpose of one’s own nutrition and benefit. While I don’t think of it as a political term, I do think that its use carries an automatic value judgment.
ReplyDeleteAs connoted by my own instinctive thoughts and as Whiteley points out, accusations and images of cannibalism have historically been used as the “quintessential symbol of alterity, an entrenched metaphor of cultural xenophobia.” Our earlier readings by Todorov with his elucidation of the distinctions Columbus made between the “nobly savage” Arawaks and “savagely savage”, cannibalistic Caribs reinforce this idea. Connecting this concept with the figurative significance of cannibalism renders an interesting inference that Whiteley doesn’t make himself: The European imaginary, in assigning cannibalistic tendencies to native people, projected onto these people a hypothetical fantasy reflective of imaginary speculation, if not desire, of their own abilities to perpetrate such acts. It is possible to interpret their accusations of cannibalism as a grotesque conjecture about the limits and potential of their own humanity, akin (sort of) to standing on the pedestrian walkway of a bridge and wondering what would happen if you suddenly decided to push the tourist next to you over the edge, sending her plunging into the depths of the East River. Combining this idea with a Hobbesian fear of a competitive, eat-or-be-eaten state of nature, this “fantasy” can also be interpreted as a European fear of their own potential to destroy the social order and return to a state of “savagery”.
Many of the readings for this week point out that the fear of societal breakdown was reflected in the way Native groups of the American Southwest treated cannibalism as well, ranging from children’s folklore to annual customs to accusations of witchcraft. An especially interesting parallel between European and Native accusations of cannibalism is their propensity to generate atrocities that are almost comparable to the act itself: Professor Fowles speaks about this with regards to the punishment of witches by those who were in the same social position using the same methodologies of violence a witch himself would have used. The European demonization of native people, to an extent, played a part in their willingness to destroy these people, thus putting themselves in a position almost comparable to that of “cannibals.” I just find it interesting that it is possible to find such striking parallels between European and Native cultures in accusations of cannibalism, the ultimate proclamation of another group’s alterity.
Ray Katz
According to the quote from the Whiteley article, the rhetoric of cannibalism began in 1796 when Burke applied the term to the bloody horrors of the French Revolution. Of course by using the term “cannibal” in that narrow context Burke did not literally mean that the French populace consumed the actual flesh of the royals they executed; he merely meant to draw an analogy between the way in which cannibals nourish their bodies with the flesh of their victims and the way in which the French people seemed to be metaphorically “[nourishing] their ferocity” with the flesh of each kill as events spiraled out of control. Due to this distinction, however, the quote is an excellent lens through which to view our readings for this week in light of the rhetoric of cannibalism in both Western and Native discourses as well as the violence generated by accusations of cannibalism in each context. For in my summation of the readings, I was not entirely convinced that cannibalism in a literal sense was a significant practice among the Pueblo peoples at all—I found cannibalism in its figurative sense, on the other hand, to be a significant religiopolitical force.
ReplyDeleteThe absolute existence of literal cannibalism among the Pueblos is extremely hard to prove, especially given the Native discourse surrounding the loaded term. Reinhard and Darling in particular tear gaping holes in the archaeological record that serve to discredit its meager proof of cannibalism; Reinhard pits one Pueblo coprolite that shows traces of cannibalism against hundreds of others he has analyzed that characterize the Pueblos as not only non-cannibals but primarily herbivorous, while Darling explains why even piles of defleshed and possibly roasted/burned bones do not necessarily imply cannibal culprits. Ironically, it is more likely that the victims in this scenario were the “cannibals”—or at least accused of being such—for in Pueblo society, this is precisely how witches were ritually executed and the Durkheimian notion of the sacred restored from the profane. The Pueblos believed that witches had a “contractual obligation to participate in…cannibalism,” thus the terms cannibal and witch were often “ used interchangeably” in Pueblo parlance (Darling 737). When I fit this phenomenon into my own Western discourse, the parallels I see between ancient Pueblo cannibal hysteria and the Salem Witch Hysteria of the 1690s are eerie.
In Western discourse in the larger sense, accusations of cannibalism have often been equally sensationalist and embedded in falsehood. Anthropologist Christy Turner has discussed the supposed cannibalism at Awat’ovi in particular—where the chief ordered an attack on the people of his village whom he thought had become “bewitched”—as a form of terrorist social control (Fowles A 13). In this scenario, again, it is the victims and not the attackers who would have been accused of cannibalism by the Pueblo peoples. How is this centuries-old game of he said, she said to finally be put to rest—especially when it is so easy for Westerners to dismiss all “Others” as “eaters of the Self” (Whiteley 189)? Accusations of cannibalism in Western discourse can indeed be seen as a rhetorical device meant to discredit anarchism, or even more broadly as a means of denying the existence of a state itself. Westerners are too quick to put whole societies into the rigidly shaped boxes of either state or non-state. McGuire rightly proposes that dialectical thinking is necessary to resolve the contradiction between these categories themselves, and that Pueblo societies can be thought of as “complex communal societies”—necessarily both “stratified” AND “egalitarian” (McGuire 6). Cannibalization of the savage “other” goes back to the days of Columbus’ encounter with the Caribs, yet so does the notion of the noble savage as peaceful and stateless. The societies in question, however, must be viewed not as societies without states, but as societies opposed to complex states. The modern-day example is Taos—a “nation-within-a-nation” that is as staunchly traditionalist as the Puritans of “old Salem” and as such anti-state (Fowles B 6, 18). All evidence seems to point back to the comparison drawn between the Salem witch trials and the Pueblo witch hysteria. The difference here, perhaps, is that in the Zuni witch trials at the dawn of the twentieth century—Western anthropologists were able to recognize the parallels and in some cases intervene.
-Jenny Johnson
On reflecting on the material discussed in this week's readings and lectures, Burke's statements about cannibalism do not seem to recognize or take into account historical perspective or narration. Cannibalism is a descriptive term that is most often used to color fictional accounts or to illustrate a series of events that has occurred in the past and that is so intense that it seems to necessitate this polemic designation. The term, however, is obviously a poor historical and anthropologic appellation. Instead of analyzing objectively, the use of the word prompts a highly subjective retelling of the past. In this course we have confronted the problems historical narratives present repeatedly and it is appropriate then that we now are coming to terms with the repercussions this word elicits. Although cannibalism is indeed a loaded term used to narrate history, the violence it refers to has, of course, existed over the course of history. And while I would like to believe Rousseau's notion regarding the pacificity of 'man in a state of nature,' presented in his "Discourse on Inequality," I question its legitimacy much as the philosopher did himself. Similarly in his essay "On the Torture in Societies Against the State," Professor Fowles makes note of Keeley's statement that "No societies..have ever lived prior to war." What strikes about this quote is that despite of its almost undeniable validity, historians, historical narrators and even anthroplogists have the tendency to attempt to place fault on one group of people or another. Does this statement not attest to what Professor Fowles later goes on to conclude: that "Inhumanity emerges as the rather ironic product of the natural state of humanity."? In this remark, Professor Fowles rather eloquently places less drastic derivatives of Hobbesian thought in the context of the Spanish invasions of Southwestern New Mexico. Both Keeley and Professor Fowles' observations lead me to wonder at the tendency of historical narrators to at once admit to the inherent beast within all peoples and cultures and at the same time to avoid accepting culpability. Is it really impossible to admit that neither faction acted appropriately? Indeed history has proven that cultural confrontation is challenging. Can neither the Spanish conquistadors nor the indigenous people of the Southwest admit that both parties handled the 1599 confrontation badly? In the face of Keeley and Professor Fowles' observations, I again reiterate my question: why the desire to place blame? If as Hobbes argues and Professor Fowles appropriately modifies that war is a "brutal reality that [has] plagued humans prior to the emergence of the Commonwealth withs its centralized powers, laws and religion." the reader infers that European nation states are not responsible for brutality anymore than the savages of the New World, why does are we presented with the question of modernity and the progressive rise of violence over the course of history. Todorov claims that the Spanish invasions of the New World were "ultimately responsible for issuing in the distinctly modern mode of violence." Although there is some truth in this statement I would like to suggest that the modernization came not in the intensity or inhumanity of the violence inflicted - I admittedly have trouble ranking, or even systematizing, acts of violence, from crucifixions and public maimings to the electric chair - but instead emerged from the dissemination of, perhaps even the globalization, of violence from one continent to another.
ReplyDeleteBoth Whiteley and Reinhard set out to refute Turner’s findings of cannibalism amongst Pueblo and Hopi people, but Whiteley is the only one who succeeds. To lambast Turner and those who try to sensationalize small pieces of evidence towards cannibalism, but yet also ignore key findings and speak in absolutes about an entire people, also does a disservice to their history. If anthropologists are concerned with uncovering truths and destroying stereotypes and myths, they must be fully aware that truth-telling does not necessarily equate to valorizing or praising ancient peoples.
ReplyDeleteReinhard’s piece provides a good introduction to the subject, because he sets the scene and actual events surrounding the controversy. His outrage at Turner’s findings and the subsequent media coverage is genuine, his evidence to the contrary (such as his extensive knowledge and study of previous sites) is sound, and his ultimate belief (“I don’t know who killed and ate the residents of Cowboy Wash, but I am sure the cannibal wasn’t an ancestral pueblo”( 259)) is extremely persuasive. He seems completely assured of his stance—but he does not even account for any other possibility, until after he presents his argument. Then, he acknowledges an inherent bias in the way he and other anthropologists have talked about (and have been taught to talk about) these people. He realizes that Turner meant to challenge the typical conceptions, and thus, wouldn’t that be a better and more accurate truth than what he has presented? But yet he doesn’t apply this realization retrospectively, or that is to say, he doesn’t first come to this realization (which presumably happened before this paper was written) and then begin his argument. So he effectively destroys everything he tried to prove before.
Whiteley, on the other hand, may approach the subject with a more theoretical approach, but despite his lack of field references, he makes a much better argument against Turner’s idea of methodical, organized and institutionalized cannibalism, and because of this, I also saw that he refuted Reinhard as well. Both Turner and Reinhard spoke in absolutes—Turner says there were cannibals, this was an expected (albeit abominable) part of this people’s lives; Reinhard acknowledges his bias, but does not change or even leave room for a small, remote possibility that departs from peace-loving people. Whiteley doesn’t try to ignore or explain away the findings, but he tries to place them in the appropriate context—much of his essay is devoted to the explanation of “cannibalism” in other cultures and also addressing the “otherizing” of Hopi and Pueblo people. By comparing the American Indian “cannibals” to other examples of folklore, myth and even actions (for example, the French reaction to Huguenots) he challenges that idea the “other” because he roots these things in both traditions. When he concludes that yes, cannibalism could have existed in this time, along with the normal behavior, diet, and lives of these people, but it also represented a abnormal, abominable break from society. He tries to fit this within a greater world narrative, and in doing so, he proves his argument much better than anyone else.
--Cristina Najarro
ReplyDeleteMichelle Hutt (I thought this post was already up but apparently it isn't, so I guess I'll re-post it)
ReplyDeleteAs for cannibalism, I was particularly interested in Whiteley's discussion of the biases inherent in the word "cannibal". The idea of the cannibal and the Other, as the
difference between "acceptably human" and "unacceptably subhuman" sheds a new light on
the European view of Native Americans. This duality highlighted by the term cannibal
pits Native Americans as an offense to European society, breaking a taboo (like
witchcraft and incest) that seem utterly against the nature of human life. Here, I begin to find flaws and assumptions within Whiteley's argument. Never have I associated
witchcraft with cannibalism. Incest, even in modern day society, is seen as highly
amoral and against the nature of humans. Yet, with all three, arguments can be made to
suggest that they are just as natural as eating beef or marriage. Incest is even in the Bible. That is how the human species was able to grow in number. Without incest, one
might say we would never have had human civilizations. Witchcraft has a long history of irrational hunting and hatred based on not even a shred of evidence. How is witchcraft
less human than fighting in a war or allowing people to die from starvation? Witchcraft
(in principle) can be self-serving, but not to a disgusting degree. Witches would, in
theory, utilize animal and plant sources to make happen what they willed to happen. That
is no less human than a king placing his will over his kingdom.
Moreover, what place do non-cannibalistic Native Americans hold in this dual system if cannibalism is the deciding factor between civilization and the other? Relatively peaceful Native Americans were well-documented, and even slightly respected. However, to suggest that Europeans viewed them as fully human would completely disregard the level of
superiority they felt in relation to Native Americans. All were seen as sub-human.
Those who consumed human flesh (or were rumored to) were considered more amoral and more of a physical threat to Europeans; but this only separated the degrees of non-human the Europeans saw.
Marissa Grossman (This is the first time I've been able access the comments page because the website wasn't working on my computer. But I e-mailed my post to you earlier.)
ReplyDeleteIn his essay “A Coprological View of Ancestral Pueblo Cannibalism,” Karl J. Reinhard notes that “the consumption of insects, snakes and lizards brought the Ancestral Pueblo notice in the children’s book It Was Disgusting and I Ate It.” Though certainly not a pivotal point in Reinhard’s essay, the mention of this book stood out to me, as it seemed to highlight a very disturbing idea: that the Native American culture was being taught to children as something abnormal or, more simply put, as an “other.” Rather than discuss the consumption of snakes, lizards, and other animals foreign to our diets as something completely natural for a specific culture in a specific time, the book title simply refers to such nutritional items as “disgusting”—automatically distancing the Native American culture from modern American culture in a negative way.
In reading Peter Whiteley’s quote, it’s hard not to consider that accusations of cannibalism aimed at Native groups in the American South West are simply another attempt at labeling Native Americans as “other.” I believe that this desire to label the Ancestral Pueblo as “other” is what led to such a strong reaction when a single coprolite was found to show evidence of cannibalism, as discussed in Reinhard’s article. As Reinhard explains: “The articles became the focus of a veritable explosion of media pieces in the press, on radio and television, and on the Internet, amounting to an absolute attack on Ancestral Pueblo culture.” People were quick to accuse Ancestral Pueblos of cannibalism based on one relatively weak piece of evidence, despite countless scientific evidence pointing to the contrary. Reinhard himself had years of experience studying the Ancestral Pueblo diet, with all of his evidence pointing toward a “delightfully diverse” and “gastronomically civilized” diet in which “Cannibalism just doesn’t make sense.” However, such evidence doesn’t seem to matter to people who wish to sensationalize Native American culture, looking at Native groups not as people, but as an “other” to be studied. And this sensationalism is inherent in the word “cannibalism” itself, as Whitley’s definition—the “devouring, as a nutrient of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of those they have murdered”—has not a nutritional implication, but a savage one—almost as if cannibalism could have no value but that of sport. Thus, people seem more likely to accuse Native American groups of cannibalism when the aim is to paint a portrait of a “savage” and “other” people, despite, in the case of the Ancestral Pueblo, evidence that would prove otherwise.
Benjamin Velez (same story as Marissa)
ReplyDeleteAccusation of cannibalism is definitely a rhetorical device used to discredit violence against the state. History shows that those in power will always use their sphere of influence to manipulate and distort the realm of public opinion. The past week’s readings offer much insight into the practice of cannibalism, specifically amongst the Natives of the American Southwest. Andrew Darling’s essay closely examines mass inhumation and the execution of witches. He argues that, “Cannibalism represents a clear infraction against the moral order upheld by society and its representatives” (737 Darling), and is thus considered synonymous with witchcraft among the Pueblo Culture (shared by tribes such as the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni). Professor Fowles’ essay discusses the issue more philosophically. He notices that both Europeans and Native Americans use practices of pain infliction as part of their justice systems, but that a fine line exists between proper use of this torture and exceeding boundaries. He correctly infers that this notion of witchcraft inherently linked to cannibalism is a defensive strategy these societies impose on themselves. Both cultures being strongly religious, their religious leaders hold the most authority in society. However the irony is that once these authorities are considered to overstep their bounds, they are met with accusations of witchcraft, thus providing the people with a means of protecting themselves from a dictatorial figure.
But Fowles also raises an important question: are these citizens who so violently punish the accused much better than the accused themselves? Both in Pueblo and European society, there is a certain ambiguity and hypocritical ideology behind a system in which the enactors of justice must commit acts equally as savage and violent as the people they are punishing. Connecting this back to Whitely’s quote about the French Revolution, I started to wonder whether revolution in itself is a ideological contradiction. The masses come together and accuse the authorities of injustice, violence, and oppression, but must succumb to the same bloody pastimes in order to overthrow the current tyrant. In this sense, we seem to be trapped in a violent, yet futile cycle. The Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest had their highest priests brutally kill those accused as witches, knowing that sometime soon those priests might themselves be accused. I therefore argue that cannibalism, and the violence associated with it, is for the most part a mythical pastime used to engender fear in the masses. In all cultures, it represents a larger desire for power and the means by which it must be achieved, essentially coming down to “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. We might not call war “cannibalism”, but the two are essentially the same thing, man killing man and feasting on the remains of destruction for their own insatiable appetite.
(Sorry this is extra late, but since the blog was inaccessible yesterday I was tempted to expand my entry a bit instead of sending by e-mail on time…)
ReplyDeleteThe accusation of witchcraft, and even more prominently heresy, is well known as a rhetoric device used to discredit the opposition to the dominant power in medieval European politics. The idea of cannibalism being such device seems therefore very likely. Peter Whiteley’s comparison of European myths and fairytales with those of the Pueblo people and how they are used as models of explanation, illustrates a problem that appears in many of the Western interpretations, namely the idea that the Western stories are to be understood metaphorically while native stories are literal (pointed out by Greg Dening in Performances, 1996). This is how I believe the definition of cannibalism is applied differently when describing Western cultures and native cultures. As Whiteley points out, in the case of European revolutions and periods of anarchy the “devouring” is a metaphor, while Turner’s Hopi are supposed to consume their victims literally. As Severin Fowles noted, the violence against the state takes on similar characteristics but has a different objective in respectively Western and Pueblo world. While the seemingly stateless or even acephalous Pueblo societies feared witchcraft, cannibalism and other manifestations of anarchy because such transgressions empowered the transgressor. The objective of the violence was to abolish excessive power that had no place in the social order. Colonial violence towards the Pueblo people on the other hand “was designed to lead toward, rather than away from, relationships of dominance and submission” (“On Torture in Societies Against the State”, p. 14).
Unfamiliar burial rites often triggered accusations of cannibalism. Pounding of the corpses or other techniques of destroying the bodies of the deceased might seem bizarre to the Euro-American observers, but where there were traces of any form of cooking processes involved the suspicion of cannibalism was almost guaranteed. Especially if a European corpse received such treatment. The famous disposal of Captain Cook’s remains by Hawaiians is an example of this. Cook’s bones were, as Hawaiian tradition regarding chiefly burials dictated, divided between several high chiefs. The flesh was stripped of the bones by the process of cooking. When the British received (their share?) what was left of their Captain’s body, they immediately accused Hawaiians of cannibalism. This of course fits very well with Whiteley’s argument that such accusations have primarily a rhetoric function and are especially common in colonial encounters, when the colonial power feels threatened. The accounts of this presumed cannibalism, together with infanticide, in the so-called “ancient” times were further propagated by the missionaries who sought to present the pre-Christian culture as especially savage. A century after Cook’s death, Mark Twain himself enjoyed himself picking souvenirs (his words!) on an “ancient” battlefield – bones and skulls of dead warriors (see his Letters from Hawaii).
I like the idea that cannibalism being not so much a physical phenomenon of anthropophagy as rather the manifestation of fear of “otherness”, a terrifying fantasy. Many of the stories and histories about the “other” really are about ourselves. I think that Turner’s statement, “I’m the guy who brought down the Anasazi”, really encompasses all that is representative of colonial academic dominance. Karl J. Reinhard’s attempt at justification of this quote as being rather meant to be a critique of the “hippie-culture” scholars more than the actual Native Americans, supports the same dominant ethnocentrism. How can “bringing down” of one ethnocentric myth by creating another benefit our understanding of the studied culture? I see very clear parallels to Derek Freeman’s critique of “Margaret Mead’s Samoa”, where he also proudly “brought down” the Samoans in order to “bring down” Mead’s academic reputation. Of course neither the Pueblo people nor the Samoans are really present in any of the above mentioned speculations. Such academic battles combined with the sensationalistic press coverage, expose rather more about the Western culture. Is it not the true cannibalism to crave “tasty” scandals, controversies and sensations in the newspapers and academic journals? There is even a fitting terminology for these feasts – media feeding frenzy.
Paulina N. Dudzinska
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ReplyDeleteOk, this is really long...I apologize.
ReplyDeleteJason Patinkin
It seems that one of the most popular topics in anthropology is anthropology itself. Frequently asked questions include “how did we (or, another anthropologist) get it wrong?” and “what are the effects of our analyses?” However, only in rare and seemingly quickly denounced instances do anthropologists make normative judgments about their subjects. This phenomenon is probably the result of both healthy pluralism and respect for one’s subject of inquiry, as well as the product of the purely academic interest of anthropology. However, like all sectors of academia, anthropology is extremely capable of using its descriptive analyses of human actions and societies to make real and useful judgments for how we structure our own human interactions. It is in this sense that I find the discourse on Pueblo witchcraft strange, especially in relation to discourse on the Salem witch trials.
It appears that anthropological discourse on witchcraft (based on the assigned articles) approaches the issue through a minor tangent, the relation of witchcraft to cannibalism. That fact rests on the excitement cannibalism—the ultimate taboo—excites in probably almost all humans. After apparently much discussion on the problems with the term “cannibalism” and the presence and frequency of cannibalism in Pueblo society, the assigned articles present us with a more or less acceptable (if introductory) explanation of the situation as it relates to witchcraft. Thus, after cutting through past discussions on cannibalism, a topic that was probably not so important to daily Pueblo life, we reach the crux—witchcraft in an anti-state society—in Fowles’ piece.
But if previous anthropological discourse on witchcraft was excessive in its focus on cannibalism, then the current discussion—more nuanced for sure—does not engage important aspects of witchcraft, or more generally, democratically sanctioned violence, in Pueblo life relevant for our society today,. This phenomenon is especially the case when we compare examinations of the Salem witch trials, a foundational and reverberating event for the United States. It is essential to emphasize that the Salem witch trials were aberrant events taking place in a young colony seeking its identity in unfamiliar land while the witch activities of the Pueblos were a dynamic part of a civilization’s socio-religious structures that evolved for a long time in a specific environment. As such, I seek not to criticize witches or their accusers in either situation, but to look at both situations and the conditions and responses that resulted in what can only be described—in the entire Salem episode and at Awatovi—as social failures that can teach us something today.
It is my understanding that those accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials were not actually witches, but victims of false accusations motivated by jealousy. Further, the trials took place in the context of witchcraft as a sin against God and religion, not against fellow citizens. In examining Salem, attention is paid most to the accusers or to ways the innocent accused dealt with their predicament. From the standpoint of history and probably immediately after the outbreak of witchcraft accusations, the accusers are blamed and denounced. This result stems probably from a belief that the accusers were the social deviants that caused upheaval, meaning that there were in fact no witches of any consequence—the “witches” did not actually have any supernatural agency. Salem is used popularly as a perfect example of mob action gone awry, yet its syndrome—from McCarthyism to discourse on patriotism after 9/11—remain with us centuries later.
How does this treatment differ from that of the Pueblos? Looking at the Pueblos, witchcraft accusations appear to be motivated by social transgressions against the individual or community by the accused, rather than religious transgressions. The focus is on who the accused were, demographically and in terms of social position—those in power for example were accused frequently (Darling, 1999), though not on what they thought or how they coped. Moreover, in the case of Salem it seems clear that the citizens of Salem took the reality witchcraft very seriously, yet observers both today and probably immediately after the events, enter the discussion assuming that no witchcraft actually took place, or even if it did, it was absolutely ineffective—witchcraft in Salem could never be legitimate. However, in approaching the Pueblo case, this possibility is skirted entirely. Not only is the practice of witchcraft on the part of the accused unquestioned, but while not explicitly accepting the effectiveness of witchcraft, we sidestep the issue in order to understand the system from the inside. We understand the process of dealing with Pueblo witches in terms of the social effects of leveling and instruction as well as in the psychological effects on those in positions of power—the accused and accusers, however, are absent. Among anthropologists today, there appears to be few normative judgments on the practice.
These differences are reasonable for the separate purposes of each witch story. Since Salem is an important episode in the colonial history of the United States as a country that has recent analogues, it warrants continual examination and criticism. The Pueblos, however, (and other Native peoples) do not factor so prominently in the national consciousness and are not addressed as such. However, what remains unaddressed is why the Salem witch trials are seen as something to avoid, to set up educational and social systems against, while the Pueblo witch activities are viewed in no such critical light. Whether these events figure prominently into the identity or political structure of today’s Pueblo people is an important and unaddressed matter here, and it would be interesting to know if structures have been set up to avoid recurrence of such action, and how spiritual beliefs play a role in these structures. If great tragedy has been written about the witchcraft at Salem, surely the more recent occurrence of witch trials at the Pueblos figures in the consciousness of today’s Pueblo people.
Fowles points out the inherent contradiction of punishing acts of social deviance with more deviance, indicating perhaps that this violent system of justice and social conditioning only perpetuates, even if it more or less democratically codifies and directs, violence. While minor upheavals, such as increased population leading to the fission of a large Pueblo, may result in relatively few executed witches, it seems clear that the Pueblo system is imperfect in its use of violence (much less imperfect, though, than most Western and especially colonial societies). We must engage that imperfection at all levels, not only its immediate function for punishing social deviants and setting an example for the rest, but also in terms of its effect on the executioners (as Fowles discusses), and finally in the mechanisms that give rise to witchcraft, and cause people to engage in or accuse others of witchcraft. Again, who were the accusers and the accused at Zuni, not just demographically but psychologically?
Regarding Salem our scientific sensibilities and the petty basis for accusations allow us to view the possibility of witchcraft as absent and therefore judge the society in relation to our own. Regarding the Pueblos, our pluralist appreciation for what we could call an environmentally adapted egalitarian society allows us to accept the presence of witchcraft as an effective social practice in order to understand the system from the inside. However, if we are to look at the Pueblo system in relation to our own, as we immediately do with Salem, then we must apply our scientific biases. Doing so forces us to question why witchcraft would arise in a society, how it would be passed on, and why anyone would practice it to begin. Effective or not, why would individuals resort to witchcraft, and how would they do so without training? If it was common enforced knowledge that witches were deviants that must be punished, and if there were known witch families, then the Pueblos would be importantly hierarchical with the witches playing a subordinate role for the sake of ritual (of course I’m speculating a lot here). Finally, if an accusation of witchcraft was actually a proxy for reportage on deviant behavior that we would call “secular”, then why would it take place in ritual space? If the Pueblos were under normal circumstances more egalitarian and peaceful than, say, secular European societies, perhaps we can learn something about this achievement of secular function through spiritual practice.
Answering these questions first depends on understanding just how witchcraft functioned in Pueblo society, but also on the opinions of today’s Pueblo people (a voice conspicuously absent from the assigned readings). Do the Pueblo people of today look back on their ancestors witch trials with the same kind of intrigue and fear that “we” do today with Salem—as both a warning and basis for identity? Without making judgments in favor of science, has science sufficiently eliminated popular belief in witches among the Pueblos the way it has with Christians today? Or, has belief in witches become socially unacceptable as it is with most secular American Christians? If some Pueblo people today believe in the effectiveness of witchcraft, how is it dealt with (or not) without the leveling behaviors of the past? Looking upon our own society, can we gain lessons from the tense leveling activity of the Pueblos that places executioners in the dual position of power and vulnerability? Indeed, isn’t it a disturbing feature of our American system of regulated violence and power that there is no dual position for our executioner—be he a president sanctioning torture, senators making arbitrary drug sentences, or a preacher fervently and influentially advocating the death penalty—that keeps him not just legally but psychologically in check?
Consequently, once anthropology purges itself of past “sins” of misrepresentation and misuse of information—as in the case of cannibalism—it is a powerful descriptive tool. Yet, its job is not complete until it applies this description to make normative judgments on past and current societies by both understanding them from the inside and critiquing them with today’s values. Thus, it is clear that the Pueblo system is not perfect because it perpetuates violence, even if as a means to deal with social deviants. However, we see the Pueblo society is superior to our own in that it does not merely channel violence through democracy, but in its dual assignment of vulnerability and power continues to recognize that all violence is problematic. Finally, we must understand the interplay between secular ends and ritual means in the Pueblo situation. If we can learn from the differing histories of Pueblo and Salem witchcraft events, then perhaps—perhaps—we could combine the best practices and beliefs of European and Native American civilization to reduce all violence.
Jason Patinkin
(Same blog problems as above)
ReplyDeleteIs cannibalism a lost word? Do we really need another term for human eating? I think we can safely assume that revulsion rests with the concept and not solely the word. "Extreme processing" has to bury cannibalism by lumping it into a whole plethora of potential activities summed up by a world that could not be more banal. This is the same problem with institutionalized human sacrifice: how to approach a subject, when accurately and truthfully described as it was, is anathema to modern sensibilities no matter what perspective you look from. At some level, we are asked to accept this things happening because the practitioners did. But it's not as if all native people felt uniformly about those practices. Although this may not be as true for institutionalized human sacrifice, surely we can claim connection with a native contemporary who is as disgusted many are today, and did not consider it necessary and essential part of his culture and worldview. The very idea of theatrical violence does somewhat require that the majority find cannibalism incredibly dramatic and attention focusing act, presumably fearful as well. So perhaps it is simply a matter of mis-education, where the label of cannibalism is so sticky it applies to an entire society and not just the theatrical minority astounding the vast majority.
We may actually be more willing to become flexible with the concept if we recognized it's contemporary modern existence. Cannibalism connected to warfare or larger scale violence and not simply sustenance is reported in Central Africa, South America, across Asia, and the Middle East. Sometimes the acts are isolated, but some are part of a pattern; ans all are part of the larger pattern in that they continue to occur in often desperate conditions. We can't condemn all as part of the category that's never received proper western anti-cannibalism education. People who know cannibalism is horrifying were involved in these acts - not to mention sporadic but continuing examples of cannibalism's acceptance in desperate hunger circumstance. Cannibalistic instances can occur in modern society, especially when conditions approach something more familiar to the Chacoans rather than modern opulence. What's more revealing, however, is that this may simply be a revelation in the changing attitude towards cannibalism. Not from primitive acceptance to modern righteous rejection, but to shocked submission to anger and ridicule. 12th century native americans main difference in reacting to cannibalism, if it was indeed practiced by a minority as a theatrical violence or ritualistic sign of domination, was to be awed or compelled enough by it to accept its practitioners diktat or beliefs. What's changed, is that instead of being awed by a heinous act, is that the european mindset (as I know it) finds cannibalism so outside the pale to cast immediate suspicion on those who practice it. The group immediately subjects itself to suspicion and reveals itself as the ludicrous subset of a larger group by this action. "Ludicrous subset" is only a few steps way from "inhuman" and "unchristian", and fails to ask why cannibalism may be found acceptable by that few. But it does reveal that perhaps we are ready not to let the actions of a few color an entire society.
Tyson Brody
McGuire states that “every social form has within it the seeds of its own transformation” (200). The counter-cultures examined by Fowles could possibly be seen as a part of the transformative elements inherent in every social form. It may be inferred that a post-Chacoan counter-culture may not be inline with the radical violent egalitarianism Fowles also discusses (5). Could the decline in the brutal treatment of suspected witches, as seen in the Darling piece, and the decline in violence be due, in great part, to the counter-cultures realizing their transformative potential? Also, seen ritual often employed violence, does the decline of the ritualistic violence mark a shift from sincere devout ritualism to a more superficial brand of ritualism?
ReplyDeleteD. Omavi Harshaw
Burke’s original definition of cannibalism is strangely prescient when considered in the context of its modern application. Beyond the image of the cannibal that Burke clearly wishes to produce, I am most interested in his qualification of the act of devouring “as a nutrient of [the perpetrator’s] ferocity”. Here the chosen metaphorical relationship of nutrient to organism in the form of an aside diminishes the power of the action’s deliberate agency. It is really not a cannibal we find in this definition, but a being whose consumption of human flesh is incidental to the service of his or her ferocity. The implication is that the word cannibalism (christened here as a signifier) is not only inextricably bound to murderous and otherwise savage acts of revolutionary aggression, but that the action it describes is merely fuel for them; it is caught up in the larger process of ferocious escalation that largely serves as a kind of mitigating factor for cannibalism itself.
ReplyDeleteWhen Whitely categorizes cannibalism as part of a triad (along with witchcraft and incest) of “dirty words” occupying the space between the “acceptably human” and “the unacceptably subhuman”, he notes a particular cultural sense of both disgust and fascination that comes along with the territory. This sense is more than a reaction to the perceived ills of cannibalism, it is the moral response that claims culture from the primitive. This pronouncement in the form of reaction is the veiled argument within cannibalism’s birth phrase qualification: the word’s association with barbarous ferocity lies behind the disgust it invokes while that hint of remission is based on a certain fascination that finds its focus in alterity and its presence in the grotesque. If a word’s location is almost inseparable from its definition, its usage is inherently problematic, especially for anthropological application.
Julius Tedaldi
ReplyDeleteIn “The Delight Makers”, accusations of witchcraft certainly play a role in the political life of the Pueblos; however, these accusations tend to spread more from the fact that “there is nothing the Indian fears, nay hates, so much as sorcery” (36). This fearful view of witchcraft must have been a driving force that caused the community to side with the witch accusers. The link to the political life is that the initial accusation and motive of the accuser most likely would have originated from a person who had some political agenda or score to set. Tyope, for instance, planned to ruin the head-war-chief Topanashka by accusing his daughter Say of witchcraft. Moreover, he schemed to take his revenge on his “ex-wife” Shotaye. The accusations of witchcraft also to a certain extent keep the shamans and the ritual groups such as the Koshare in power by not allowing any other forms of magic to cultivate and be accepted. Shotaye’s magic, even if considered a black art, seemed to cure Say; however, it is not an accepted form of magic and thus is outlawed. If Shotaye’s magic was better than the magic of the Koshare and shamans and was not forbidden, then the political and religious system of the Pueblos would have crumbled because everyone would want her to treat their illnesses and help them. As it was, “many applied to her for relief in secret” despite, or maybe because of, the fact that “the majority of the tribe believed that Shotaye was a witch” (41). “The Delight Makers” seems to convey that the accusations of witchcraft were started for political reasons and were carried out from the fear of the rest of the tribe.
ReplyDeleteThe affiliations between different members of the tribe in “The Delight Makers” were quite interesting as Bandelier portrayed them. First of all Bandelier illustrates that there is a sort of custom used when younger members of the tribe say goodbye to their elders. This includes the younger of the two individuals breathing on the outside of the hand of the elder to whom they are saying goodbye. This tradition is not only mentioned once, but at least twice on pages 17 and 98. I really like that Bandelier includes these minute details, because they go far towards showing the real relationship and customs between the individuals of the tribe. Bandelier also remarks upon many of the little rituals that the Pueblos follow, such as appealing to the spirits before entering their home, saying prayers before they eat, and the prayer-plumes or little rock and little stick piles used for “addressing himself to the higher powers, be it for a request…or for thanksgiving” (100). Moreover, Bandelier discusses in great detail the large amount of power held by the Pueblo wives. Once married, women even have their own property – the house, plus there is a female line of descent. The husband has to live with their wife’s people. Moreover, Shotaye was able to “divorce” her husband and make him leave their abode. In many cultures even today, women do not have this power. Lastly, Bandelier describes how the family unity of the Pueblos is quite unusual. Since the married couple lives with the wife’s tribe, their children have more of a kinship with their mother, whereas the father is not a part of the wife’s tribe and remains connected to his own. Thus there is this automatic division in the family. Furthermore, “each household got its livelihood from two distinct groups of blood-relatives” because the father worked in a plot of a field given to him from his own people, while the whole family lived with the mother’s people (28).
Bandelier amplifies the power of the Koshare in “The Delight Makers” by distinctly emphasizing the fear that Okoya, Say, and Shotaye have of the Koshare. By the eleventh page of the book, Bandelier is already decrying that Okoya “might be exposed to serious danger [for not liking the Koshare], since, as he believed, those people were in possession of knowledge of a higher order, and practiced arts of an occult nature”. On the next page, the doubt and suspicion Okoya feels towards his mother which is intensified by his fear of the Koshare, reminded me at once of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Okoya starts to doubt his own mother because his terror is so great. If this does not convey the importance within society that Bandelier places on the Koshare, what will? However, Bandelier also portrays that the Koshare are not merely a ritual group, but that they are also individuals who have wives, children, and perform manual labor in the fields. From what we have learned in class, it seems like the Koshare should have less of an oppressive and prominent role over the society. Yet, the way that Bandelier describes the Koshare allows us to at least understand that the Koshare were normal people, while they held this religious and political role in society.
Lastly, Bandelier makes several statements that sound like projections of current-day views and known histories. For instance, Bandelier seems to reference Greek mythology when he relays the story of Payatyama who rides around the world on the sun each day and thus brings day and night to the land (33). The McCarthy-like fear of the Koshare also shows evidence that Bandelier must be using some of the then present-day knowledge to write “The Delight Makers”.
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ReplyDeleteCamille Hutt
Cannibalism is violence against the state in the Western mind, especially when one considers the French Revolution as did Edmund Burke writing in 1796. It is, indeed, anarchic violence, and even more so for the seemingly stateless Native American. When considering the case of the Caribs in the Caribbean who were stumbled upon by Columbus and his cohorts and discovered to participate in ritual cannibalism, the insult was threefold. Not only was cannibalism deadly violence against other (peaceful?) humans, it was illegitimate violence against God himself, which negated the rule of law in that given territory—the Caribs were, at that instant, sadistic, anarchist heathens. This stigma surrounding cannibalism can then extend itself to all types of violence practiced by native peoples, or any people considered to be of inferior cultural/intellectual/political/religious development. Violence in Western, non-radical society is only legitimate if it is perpetrated by the state or in the name of God (e.g. the Crusades), and natives lack a true form of either, so violence on their part is completely unjustified, especially against those who would “civilize” them.
ReplyDeleteRachel Wagner
rw2264