Cultural Death
To have your culture comprehended, narrated, and documented by someone who essentially does not belong to your culture, is perhaps the epitome of your cultural death. Natives from across the world experience this cultural death when their culture is reflected by the lens of a scholarship which is not theirs. This reflection leads to the infantilized, mythicized, and stereotyped renditions of native culture, which inextricably influence our understanding of this world, and how we tend to orientate ourselves to it. It is of no coincidence that indigenous people from geographically distinct parts of the world, such as Australia, America, New Zealand etc are collectively clumped in the bracket of "native." Neither is it a coincidence that both Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus, two men vastly separated by time, context, and geography share exactly the same representations of submissive and superstitious natives, embracing the Europeans as their messiahs and saviors. This is precisely because the world of the natives is drawn and perpetuated by European imagination. In 'Apotheosis of Captain Cook,' Gananath Obeyesekere highlights the inconsistencies and prejudices within European scholarship to depict that epistemic violence conflates with colonial discourse, to create a native culture, which is essentially the brainchild of European imagination. This is to say that we do not know of a native culture, except for the one portrayed by the Europeans. Therefore, alienation of the natives from the representation of their culture is invariably their cultural death.
When their culture is presented through an ethnocentric lens, it harnesses preconceived notions and presumptions, and reinforces certain stereotypes. The word "native" evokes imagery of a ritualistic, barbaric, and intellectually inferior set of people guided by myths and superstitions. We associate their culture with rigid sign-systems and folktales, and tend to observe strict dichotomies between European and non-European. While the former is ascribed with logos, which is to say rationality, logic, and improvisation, the latter is ascribed with mythos, rigid cosmologies and mythologies. Obeyesekere refers to Todorov's Conquest of America in order to demonstrate this. Aztec culture was "over-determined" by signs, and gave precedence to ritual over improvisation. He further implies that in Aztec culture, individuals did not exist as such, and rather they existed as a total, collective entity, thus hijacking the space for human agency and subjectivity. Obeyesekere challenges Todorov's description by questioning the source of his information. Todorov relies on Spanish accounts pertaining to the brutal nature of the Indians, so in this sense, Todorov's account is a continuation or a by-product of the sixteenth century Spanish representations of the stereotyped Other. It is accepted without hesitation, as it feeds into the existing narrative that Indians are superstitious, irrational beings governed by signs, and the European ability to master signs paved the path for their defeat. However, the world of the Indians was not as fatalistic and ritualistic as Todorov painted it to be, as shown by contradictions within his own account. The Indians expressed emotions on instances of sacrifice, which shows that they did not silently resigned to their fate. Secondly, the rituals were so complex and complicated in themselves, that their creation and perpetuation did require a certain level of human agency. Lastly, the Indians were also able to utilize their sign-systems to meet political ends, which is a further example of their improvisation, and a proof of the fact that they were not thoughtless, primtive-minded people bound by rituals.
Obeyesekere further challenges the stereotypical representation of native culture by emphasizing that both economics and warfare necessitate human agency and improvisation of sorts. Certain practices transcend mere cultural boundaries. For example, human sacrifice in Polynesia was essential for warfare, while anthropologists only delve into its cosmological significance. Cultures are not free of what Obeyesekere refers to as "practical rationality," and to assume that they are is to stereotype and flatten them in essence.
These instances and their explanations serve as examples of the cultural death of natives. By portraying their culture through the vision of someone who is essentially isolated from their culture, we unwaveringly return to the question of epistemic violence. We realize that the regimes of knowledge and the so-called "truth" fail to honestly understand the natives. Their reflections pertaining to their culture are wracked with biases, politics, and assumptions. This leads to a very narrow, selective, and stereotypical representation of their culture, more often with negative connotations. The ghost of colonialism still haunts the present when the European imagination afflicts the present-day accounts of history, biographies, memorials and so on. We uncritically and unquestioningly accept this European imagination as the only imagination, European history as the only history, European memory as the only memory. The native, and the native culture is irrevocably lost.
When their culture is presented through an ethnocentric lens, it harnesses preconceived notions and presumptions, and reinforces certain stereotypes. The word "native" evokes imagery of a ritualistic, barbaric, and intellectually inferior set of people guided by myths and superstitions. We associate their culture with rigid sign-systems and folktales, and tend to observe strict dichotomies between European and non-European. While the former is ascribed with logos, which is to say rationality, logic, and improvisation, the latter is ascribed with mythos, rigid cosmologies and mythologies. Obeyesekere refers to Todorov's Conquest of America in order to demonstrate this. Aztec culture was "over-determined" by signs, and gave precedence to ritual over improvisation. He further implies that in Aztec culture, individuals did not exist as such, and rather they existed as a total, collective entity, thus hijacking the space for human agency and subjectivity. Obeyesekere challenges Todorov's description by questioning the source of his information. Todorov relies on Spanish accounts pertaining to the brutal nature of the Indians, so in this sense, Todorov's account is a continuation or a by-product of the sixteenth century Spanish representations of the stereotyped Other. It is accepted without hesitation, as it feeds into the existing narrative that Indians are superstitious, irrational beings governed by signs, and the European ability to master signs paved the path for their defeat. However, the world of the Indians was not as fatalistic and ritualistic as Todorov painted it to be, as shown by contradictions within his own account. The Indians expressed emotions on instances of sacrifice, which shows that they did not silently resigned to their fate. Secondly, the rituals were so complex and complicated in themselves, that their creation and perpetuation did require a certain level of human agency. Lastly, the Indians were also able to utilize their sign-systems to meet political ends, which is a further example of their improvisation, and a proof of the fact that they were not thoughtless, primtive-minded people bound by rituals.
Obeyesekere further challenges the stereotypical representation of native culture by emphasizing that both economics and warfare necessitate human agency and improvisation of sorts. Certain practices transcend mere cultural boundaries. For example, human sacrifice in Polynesia was essential for warfare, while anthropologists only delve into its cosmological significance. Cultures are not free of what Obeyesekere refers to as "practical rationality," and to assume that they are is to stereotype and flatten them in essence.
These instances and their explanations serve as examples of the cultural death of natives. By portraying their culture through the vision of someone who is essentially isolated from their culture, we unwaveringly return to the question of epistemic violence. We realize that the regimes of knowledge and the so-called "truth" fail to honestly understand the natives. Their reflections pertaining to their culture are wracked with biases, politics, and assumptions. This leads to a very narrow, selective, and stereotypical representation of their culture, more often with negative connotations. The ghost of colonialism still haunts the present when the European imagination afflicts the present-day accounts of history, biographies, memorials and so on. We uncritically and unquestioningly accept this European imagination as the only imagination, European history as the only history, European memory as the only memory. The native, and the native culture is irrevocably lost.
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