Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians

Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians. Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast (Duke University Press, 2005).

As somebody who received his previous degree in North Russia in a program related to Northern European history, I know how complicated scholarly writing can be when it comes to ethnic minorities which had for many decades been an object of different types of modernist projects aimed at “civilizing” them.  In the Northern European context, this ethnic minority are Sami (known under derogatory names as Laplanders or even “Self-Eaters,” Samoyeds, in Russian), whom Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Russian political and cultural elites constructed in the same manner as Native Americans were the object of social engineering on behalf of White Canadians and Americans. 

In this respect, Prof. Raibmon’s writing seems to me nearly perfect in the way she manages to return agency to the people who had been regarded by the previous academic traditions as mainly devoid of such. Her analysis of performers at the Chicago World Exhibit, of hop pickers in Washington and of Aboriginal residents of Sitka is exemplary in the way that she manages to demonstrate how Native Americans used resources provided by the new socio-economic environment to reach their own social or economic ends. This approach, far from deterministic, makes her explanatory model more complex and, thus, more credible.

My questions to the author are related to some aspects of the same relationship (Native American – White population) which is the object of her research. I wonder to what degree accommodation to stereotypes and patterns of behaviour imposed by the dominant culture was part of this relationship, as it is obvious that resistance or reconceptualization of dominant social norms was not the only possible strategy for Native Americans as social agents. My second question would be about the other side of this relationship. The White population of American and Canadian West coast was, obviously, far from homogeneous in social or political terms, and its response had to be also diverse. To what degree this White-Native relationship changed the White communities of the West Coast and how accommodation of Whites (in form of mixed marriages, for example) itself changed the nature of this relationship.

Gregory Blue, China and Western social thought in the modern period

Gregory Blue, “China and Western social thought in the modern period,” Timothy Brook and Gregory Blue (eds.), China and Historical Capitalism. Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 57-109.

Blue starts by listing different political usages that invocation of China served in the European political philosophy since the 16^th century. In particular, he discusses how Chinese religious and moral norms were appealed as an example by Protestants and Catholic groups to reach their ends. By the turn of the 19^th century, the “orientalist” view on China would dominate, but before that, European knowledge of China had been more multi-faceted. Also, China played an important role in the development of the European tastes for material culture.

He then speaks of a drastic change in the European “balance of opinions” in respect to China from the mid-18^th to the mid-19^th century. Interestingly, this is exactly the same period which Koselleck labelled as “Sattelzeit,” i.e. the period when all basic political concepts in Europe were redefined. Blue’s explanation deals with the final establishment of European colonialism, capitalism and mercantilism. It is, however, strange that he treats the entire spectre of political opinion in Europe as something homogeneous. As Blue writes, in a quite essentialist way, in regard to knowledge:

And whether the general level of knowledge among Western social thinkers about "China" as a historical civilization was higher in the nineteenth century than it had been in the eighteenth, as Tocqueville asserted, is not so easy to say. (77)

He then makes a statement that, in fact, there existed varying views on the Chinese in the 19^th century in regard to their mental and physical capabilities, and even the British government considered China favourable when it came to its anti-Russian role in the Big Game. Yet the “Yellow Peril” and scientific racism were dominating the intellectual landscape of Europe. Although, the main material is taken from British sources, as if the British had a monopoly on the knowledge about China at that time. I remember Bret Harte’s story Wan Lee, the Pagan, an 1876 story, which probably reflected rather universal views on anti-Chinese sentiment as something inappropriate.

After the WWI, the racist consensus in the West was gradually coming to an end.

He then moves to analyzing categories employed by European thinkers in their attempts to conceptualize the history and presence of China, starting with “historical stability.” In the 17^th century, the latter was looked at as a positive sign of its sound state order. This was reverted by Montesquieu, who argued that balance of powers was required for a successful state, something one could hardly find in the Chinese model. Here, he clashed with Voltaire who depicted China as a model of civilized government. Gradually, however, the perceived historical stability of China becomes linked with new ideas of “national and racial character” (91) – a favourite stick to beat China during the 19^th century. Marx and Engels invoked these racist prejudices of the Orient when they coined hardly coherent concept of the Asiatic mode of production.

In the beginning of the 20^th century, Max Weber carried out his analysis of the Chinese social evolution, which for him was, actually, a means to conceptualize the specific features of the Western capitalist social development. He emphasized the resistance of Chinese bureaucracy to social change and labelled China as a stagnant society. However, he was more attentive to subtle social complexities, such as different types of private property.

Finally, Blue explores the nature of early Soviet scholarly disputes about the Asiatic mode of production. Here, his argument seems quite weak, as he is unable to read Russian and is forced to interpret early Soviet sources interpreting Chine on the basis of later interpretations (he quotes mainly works: Degras 1956-59, Nikiforov 1970, Barber 1981). So: his interpretation – based on post-war interpretation – of early Soviet interpretation – of Marx’s, Engels’s and Weber’s interpretations – of China’s socio-economic model. Blue, consequently, concentrates on his attempt to narrate the complex web of arguments of Soviet Marxists, and he is lost, as he is unable to give the background of their ideas in terms of discourses they operated.

So, summarizing my concerns about his analysis: his is mostly the history of ideas in the form that Lovejoy introduced it in the 1920s and 1930s, as if “unit-ideas” flow from one intellectual environment to another in a pure form.

He concludes by asserting that the European scholarship aspired to explain the historical process in distinct countries by trying to find universal categories. But what if this desire was only a manifestation of a deeper one: to impose certain vision of the future upon one’s own society in order to find the most effective means for “appropriate” social construction – as in the case of Soviet Marxists, for whom this was not a scholarly debate based on empirical evidence, but rather a political debate related to struggle for power in the academic community and influence among the political leadership.

P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr William, Asia and the Progress of Civil Society

Chapter 5, “Asia and the Progress of Civil Society,” P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr William, The Great Map of Mankind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 128-154.

The authors give an account of European views on Asia as a stable and unchanging society/civilization. Initially, until the 18^th century, the seemingly stable Asian societies were used by different political groups in Europe in political debates over the visions of their national futures: many, e.g., including Jonathan Swift, regarded China as an exemplary society, while rapid social change in England was deemed as something negative. In the 18^th century, however, the general views on Asian societies among intellectuals start to change, as more and more regard lack of social/political/technological progress in them as a negative sign. The authors then focus on environmental explanations of the slow social progress in Asia and take Montesquieu’s writing as an example, as he thought Asia lacked moderate climate like in Europe and lived between two extremes of harsh Northern and lavish Southern climates which did not encourage progress. From the very beginning, however, Montesquieu’s environmental explanation was challenge both by empirical data and other philosophers like Hume, who emphasized moral factors—namely, despotism as the form of government. Yet even this view was challenged from the very beginning, as Voltair and some others claimed that despotism was much less common than commonly believed in Europe.

Yet despite diverse opinions, the one about Oriental despotism ultimately came to dominate in the 18^th century. On p. 142, the authors show that the common knowledge among European intellectuals was that universal despotism was the reason of Asian stagnation. Traditional religions (Islam, Hinduism) were regarded as another factor for stagnation in Asia. In trying to explain the same things for China, the religion was replaced with collectivism. Finally, unrestrained sexuality of Orientals was regarded as yet another factor of stagnation.

The authors conclude the chapter by arguing that the Orient, and China in particular, was “sometimes” used as an example “of what Britain should avoid.” (p. 150). Yet it seems more likely that the entire body of writing about the Orient was one huge speech act aimed by its authors to shape the future of their nations in an “appropriate” way. The Orient mattered only as long as it was an instrument to understand European societies.

Carla Nappi, Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China

Carla Nappi, Monkey and the Inkpot : Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Some time ago, the Helsinki University announced a conference on the Sino-Russian relations after 1991. The title of the conference was advertised as The Dragon and the Bear (it was held in November 2011), and I wondered if the organizers realized that by using animals as metaphors for naming these countries, they invoked a very powerful mode of conceptualization and classification: that of a menagerie. Or, once these creatures were metaphorically, i.e. by application of Western scholarship, dissected, examined and, thus, made safe, that of a cabinet of curiosities. It gives a clear idea that that this conference—a product of contemporary scholarly knowledge created by dozens of leading scholars in the field of international relations and political science and legitimized by the authority of Finland’s best university—and, indeed, contemporary academic scholarship in any field is just as an arbitrary scheme of “things” and artefacts, as an early modern intellectual project of a Chinese medical doctor, Li Shizen.

Li Shizhen’s “textual cabinet of natural curiosities,” as Prof. Carla Nappi characterizes Bencao Gangmu, a major source of medical knowledge in Early Modern China, seems to be an excellent example of how a certain branch of scholarship (which was obviously syncretic in Li’s case, combining medicine, natural philosophy and some other disciplines) employs specific modes of logic, visuality, empirical evidence and argumentation in order to shape a wide combination of objects and artefacts into knowledge—or, rather, Knowledge, the one which is socially reliable, credible, trusted and to such a degree that it becomes the basis for reproduction of this kind of scholarship. As Prof. Nappi writes:

This book uses an intimate reading and analysis of Li’s major encyclopedia of materia medica to reveal the epistemic commitments in this textual cabinet of natural curiosities, investigating the ways Li gathered and stored information, distinguished between trustworthy and unreliable sources of knowledge, and identified basic principles of observation and experience. (Nappi, Carla. Monkey and the Inkpot : Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 2009. p 7.)

During the course of the book, Prof. Nappi looks at intellectual operations which Li Shizhen used to make sense of the natural world around him and to appropriate it into a coherent body of medical knowledge. This analysis allows for a discovery of what Prof. Nappi calls “modes of logic, or of reasoning” (p. 7) and what French Annalists would have called “mental structures”—those universal patterns of thinking which existed independently of individuals but were employed by them to deal with the surrounding reality. What is important, Monkey and the Inkpot does restrict itself to a study of rational thinking, but goes deeper into examining the ways human bodies, as well as medical gaze and other senses, shaped the creation and change of natural history and medicine in the Chinese society.

My main question to this work (and to its author) is related to the social nature and function of this knowledge. When Prof. Nappi discusses the discipline of natural history, she concentrates on the way it organized the systematic knowledge of the world, but this discussion misses another important question: for what purpose it is produced. Obviously, certain social, cultural and political implications can be found behind the writing, printing, distribution and, finally, reading of Li’s Bencao.

A related question: as Prof. Nappi examines in detail “a complex, living, and conflicted picture of Ming views of the natural world,” (p. 67),  a question arises: to whom these “Ming views” belonged – to the entire society, or they were used in a manner similar to medical knowledge in Early Modern Europe, to discipline the bodies and societies of citizens, or in a somehow different way? Similarly, can Li’s desire to discover the rules which stand behind the metamorphoses in the surrounding world be interpreted as an attempt to control them through knowing them?

Also, I had a feeling—perhaps, an incorrect one—that the “natural history” which includes (through cultural intertextuality) Li’s Bencao has a strong connection to the Chinese cuisine, inspired by those excerpts in which Li discusses the preparation of drugs or when he discusses the taste as an important tool for acquiring knowledge, as in the excerpt below:

Like the “heat” of qi, the five flavors (wuwei) were at best loosely correlated with the flavors or tastes of modern parlance. The five wei were a standard set within which each drug was characterized: sour (suan), salty (xian), sweet (gan), bitter (ku), or pungent (xin). (Nappi, Carla. Monkey and the Inkpot : Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 2009. p 63).

Finally, I was curious by the role of aesthetics in structuring Monkey and the Inkpot. Prof. Nappi organizes her material not only through a rational categorization, but—at least, from my perspective—in the way that it looks and reads “nice” (which is an evident advantage of the book).

Bernard Lewis, The Question of Orientalism

Bernard Lewis, "The Question of Orientalism," The New York Review of Books (June 24, 1982)

A friend of mine once said: if you need to write about something to which you have a strong personal disliking, you should be double careful in your writing, otherwise emotions will prevail upon reason, and your criticism will be simply not that effective, as it will be based on emotional argument which is less appealing in academia than rational. This is the case with Bernard Lewis who is, perhaps, the most biased person to write about Said, and as he was unable to cope with his emotions, he’d better avoid that. His very first analogy – that of imagined critics of classical studies – is false, because in case of Greece, Europeans never dealt with the Other. In case of the Orient, they did. He also distorts Said: in no place in his book Said says that Europeans should not study the Orient or praises Islam radical leaders. His message is very different. Or when Lewis discusses that by omitting Edward Lane’s main work, the Arabic-English lexicon, Said intentionally distorts his academic legacy (“On this Mr. Said has nothing to say”), he once again reveals his total misunderstanding of Said’s research agenda. 

Lewis also loses his temper a number of times – when he thinks he ironizes upon Said, he actually reveals his anger: as, e.g., when he speaks of Said’s “projected sexual phantasies.”

But let’s come back to Lewis

What did the word mean before it was poisoned by the kind of intellectual pollution that in our time has made so many previously useful words unfit for use in rational discourse?

 What does he mean by “useful words,” I wonder. “Negro”? “Racial superiority”?

Basically these early scholars were philologists concerned with the recovery, study, publication, and interpretation of texts. This was the first and most essential task that had to be undertaken

From what Lewis writes is clear that he still believes in pure knowledge which is unbiased and not based on irrational things. He also thinks that Said seems to be concerned with the nominological nature of Orientalism, and goes in detail discussing the shifts in meanings of this and relevant terms.

When Lewis switches to Said and starts to discuss assumption upon which Said’s work is based, it becomes obvious that Lewis had missed a HUGE new wave of historiographic tradition, initiated by Michel Foucault’s writing. This makes his review a sort of attack of a supporter of Newtonian celestial mechanics at Einstein’s relativity theory.

For Mr. Said, it would seem, scholarship and science are commodities which exist in finite quantities; the West has grabbed an unfair share of these as well as other resources, leaving the East not only impoverished but also unscholarly and unscientific.

This is exactly Said’s point, and would be a point gladly supported by Foucault.

Sometimes he doesn’t bother to read Said carefully at all: when he attacks the statement that “Britain and France dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from about the end of the seventeenth century on,” he doesn’t see that Said speaks of European nations.

In general, his attack on Said is the worst kind of academic criticism one can expect to read: “worst” because of its poor scholarly quality. In this, Lewis resembles of Ebenezer Scrooge, shouting each time he encounters Said and his vision of Orientalism: “Bah! Humbug!” One could only wish that the three spirits of Orientalism had visited Lewis before he wrote this ill-fated essay.