In our readings over the last few weeks, we have been exposed to several perspectives on the history of the global cultural encounter--Sahlins, Zhang, Todorov, Greenblatt, Eco. From the vantage of these interpreters we have learned that the encounter was far more complex than allowed within the conventional interpretative frame of challenge/response, or civilized/uncivilized, or West/East, or transgressor/victim, or domination/subjection. All cultures are active agents at the point of their encounter In our most recent reading in the "New Historicism" of Stephen Greenblatt, we have been encouraged to abandon the conventional lenses through which the encounter has been viewed and to attend to the primary documents of particular historical moments, such as Columbus's expedition. The purpose of this reorienting of our vision is to invite questioning and, later, disestablishment of the colonial discourse underlying the conquest of the "New World."
Scholars like Eco recast the dialectic of domination and subjection as a culturally productive misunderstanding and in this way mitigate the savagery of the historical record. Chinese was not actually the originary language of Adam, of course, but from this mistaken presumption, an imaginative cultural braid was begun joining Europe with Asia. This is the confluence narrative that Eco has called "exchange." (p. 54) Yet, there is no denying that it was conquest and cultural pillage that determined the course of the Great Encounter we have studied. Greenblatt, like Sahlins and others, is keenly aware of this fact, and he wishes for us to obtain a better understanding of the role that literature and humanist culture played in Eurocentric global expansion between 1300 and 1700. The concept of the marvelous or wondrous, standing in as it does in accounts from Columbus's diaries for "gold" or some other credible material wealth, joins both the barbaric and the humanistic urges of the colonialist. It is not so easy to segregate these motivations, still there has been a habit among some scholars (Todorov for example) of identifying colonialism as the problem and humanism as the solution.
What I would like you to reflect upon and write about in the days ahead is the curious simultaneity of barbarism and humanism in most all of the works we have read. Consider how the humanist impulse to understand and appreciate the other is fully implicated in the outrages of the worst of the European adventurers. One way of working through this reflection would be to take up Carl's observation from class of the salient disparity in the observations and conclusions of Columbus and La Casas. How could there be such a dramatic difference in perception (and thus treatment) of the natives by two Europeans living among them at the same time and place?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
In Dr. J’s blog prompt, he asked us to “consider how the humanist impulse to understand and appreciate the other is fully implicated in the outrages of the worst of the European adventures.” My immediate impulse here is to question what it meant to be a European explorer and a humanist. When I think of Columbus encountering Native Americans, I do indeed think of someone who is intensely curious about the native society; we have seen through Columbus’s observations that he was interested in reporting on contact with Native Americans and on their appearances and customs. Yet, to me, the part of Columbus that is a humanist is not justifying the Native culture by his observations. As he writes about the natives, he still writes that they have “no religion” and that they would be easily converted to Christians. In other words, he is interested in native culture, but he still thinks his culture is better.
This is not to condemn Columbus or to suggest that he shouldn’t have favored his own culture or religion. Religion can be a pretty singular thing for believers. My point is only that Columbus’s (and presumably other explorer’s) humanistic impulses probably did not prevent them from believing in the superiority of their own culture or religion. When explorers bring this conviction to the table, the point of encounter can easily turn violent. Despite the humanistic impulse and some effort to breach the alterity between cultures, there is still an underlying belief in the superiority of one’s own way of life, and this belief is something that many people and nations have thought was worth fighting for.
Columbus and Las Casas’ disparate actions in regards to the natives can be attributed to their “background books”, their preconceptions. When Columbus first arrives in the New World, he sees “no great diversity in the appearance of the people or in their manners and language” (Greenblatt 92). Even though the natives have many diverse tribes, Columbus just recognizes their foreignness – he does not look beyond the unfamiliarity to see variations. On subsequent voyages he realizes they are different, but this initial overconfidence and tendency to make hasty judgments pervades all his actions in the New World. He assumes they understand his language and gestures and actions even though it is improbable that they have the same set of symbols in their culture. He does not initially resort to violence, but his overconfidence leads to oppression. When the natives refuse to do what Columbus tells them (via the translator), he acts violently because he views the natives as purposefully disobedient or lazy, when in reality they have no idea what Columbus wants them to do.
However, to give Columbus some credit, in his own mind he was rightfully possessing the land with his formal declaration because he “was not contradicted.” Obviously the natives could not understand his language, but the fact that he acknowledges there could be contradiction leaves room for a fairer outcome if the natives had somehow shown disapproval of his declaration. When relations with the natives subsequently deteriorate, Columbus quickly resorts to violence because he already gave the natives their chance to speak up and then he viewed them as his official subjects that he had to control.
However, Las Casas is the complete opposite of Columbus, he does not arrogantly assume everyone understands Spanish; Las Casas recognizes the complete foreignness of the natives – he knows they cannot possibly understand his language or actions. Thus, he believes it is inhumane to act with violence towards the innocent natives. Columbus is an explorer meant to claim land and glory and riches for Spain, while Las Casas is more of a passive bystander, an intellectual observer. Las Casas had a different role in coming to the islands so he could afford to be more rational about the circumstances; he was not as driven as Columbus.
I agree with the explanations that both Jeff and Hannah gave as to the humanist side of Columbus. I also do not believe it is fair to call Columbus an oppressor during his first encounter with the natives. He has his own view as to the role that the natives should play in his plans of conquest and exploration, just as the natives have their own views about Columbus (although they were probably more confused as to how Columbus fit into their culture).
As for the difference between Las Casas’ views and Columbus’ views, they can be related to the thought that “things seen are things as seen.” The whole reason for conflict between cultures is that the two sides do not see everything in the same way. Similarly, the way that this expansion seems more humanist to Columbus and more oppressive to Las Casas is due only to the fact that both individuals have their own respective viewpoints. To say that one party is wrong while the other right is not the correct way to go about studying this particular event. Rather, we should focus more on the reasons why these two individuals saw the same events so differently.
I think that some of the atrocities and violence present in these encounters may result from misunderstandings. That is, attempts at cultural understanding and subsequent rejection of these attempts. I want to point to an encounter highlighted in Greenblatt, between Cortes and the natives in Mexico. On page 136, Greenblatt writes:
“The creation of blockage at this sight is directly linked to the repeated occasions in The Conquest of New Spain in which the Spanish attack the Mexican idols and substitute their own symbolic representations of the deity.”
He proceeds to describe how Cortes discovers a chamber full of ‘false idols’, explains to the natives the error of their ways, and when they don’t immediately see the error of their ways, he orders his men to smash the idols and roll them down the temple steps to the natives (page 137).
There is an attempt at understanding, where the Spaniards identify symbols belonging to the native Americans as idols, and they are correct insofar as they are idols, even if they do not understand the symbolic importance of those idols. But then there is the subsequent cultural rejection, ‘blockage’ as Greenblatt calls it, because the idols conflict with Spanish cultural values. Christianity says that ‘thou shall have no false idols,’ and thus, rather than allowing for their own cultural concepts to adapt, Cortes orders his men to smash the idols of the native Americans instead, rejecting their culture. Where a less culturally conscious man like Las Casas might have overlooked the importance of the native Americans having idols, both Cortes and Columbus were men who did not overlook matters of such religious importance, leading to actual acts of destruction and violence.
I think then that barbarism follows humanism in the sense that when attempts are made to understand the Other, and cultural conflicts are identified, steps must be taken to rectify those conflicts. A brief attempt was made in this particular scenario to allow the natives to rectify their mistake, by immediately accepting a Christian God, even if this attempt seems extremely unreasonable in retrospect. Thus, the barbarous scenario that followed was just the Spaniards doing what Europeans had learned to do in dealing with cultural conflicts, (the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.).
I think there is something to be said about Greenblatt’s example of Montaigne and his servant; that through the unprincipled eyes of the sailor or the servant an entirely different picture of the New World was being drawn then through the eyes of the educated men in charge, like Cortes and Columbus. This would account for the different perspectives taken by men like Columbus and Las Casas viewing the same issue.
I believe that there are two types of duality that are relevant to this discussion: the differences in the interpretations formed by two individuals placed in the same situation (i.e. Columbus and La Casas) as well as the differences that can exist within a single interpreter. Both of these can lead to the drastic “disparities in observations and conclusions” that Carl pointed out in class.
The differences in interpretation that arise from different people observing the same encounter are the result of each interpreter viewing the encounter through a different set of assumptions. While it might seem strange to “view” something through a set of assumptions, our assumptions, or “interpretive frameworks,” shape how we perceive the world around us. An example of this appears in last week’s reading from Umberto Eco. Eco describes how two different interpreters, Kirchner and Leibnitz, each viewed the Chinese writing system with very different interpretive frameworks. Kirchner approached Chinese writing from a Christian linguist’s perspective; he looked at Chinese writing as a means of proving his theory that there was a universal language dating back to the time of Adam and Eden. While Kirchner found convincing (at least by his standards) evidence of this in Chinese characters, it is doubtful that another observer would have reached this same conclusion. Leibnitz most certainly did not. Instead, Leibnitz approached Chinese characters with a mathematical interpretive framework. He found the I Ching to be an early form of binary calculus and used it confirm his work in the field. This insight was not apparent to Kirchner or other observers of the time. The Chinese, who actually used the characters in their daily life, were unaware of either of these ways of thinking about their writing. So what we can learn from Eco’s example is that radically different interpretations of the same phenomenon can arise from two observers simply because they have different interpretive frameworks. Interpreters can even find “proof” of things that aren’t necessarily there. Columbus, since he was leading the “conquering” expedition, is obviously inclined to present his expedition in a favorable light. Las Casas had much less to gain from a positive view of Columbus’s expedition; he was more concerned with the well being of potential Christian converts. In Marvelous Possessions, Greenblatt even concedes that Bernal Diaz, a figure very similar to Las Casas, had to be “something of an outsider, a modest failure” to espouse such an anti-expedition view. (Diaz wrote against the violence of Cortes’ expedition.) This is how both humanist and imperialist interpretations of Columbus’ journeys can appear simultaneously from firsthand observers. Their different interpretations stem from their different cultural frameworks.
One curiosity of different frameworks leading to different interpretations can occur when one individual possesses more than one framework with which to interpret his actions. An example of this occurs in a work we read earlier this year, Conrad’s the Secret Sharer. The captain finds himself caught between two different identities and the interpretive frameworks that come with them. At the climax of the novel, when the captain helps Legatt escape the ship, he has to constantly reevaluate his decision of how close he can come to the beach in light of his responsibilities as a captain and as Legault’s ally. What his crew perceives as an foolish risk (since they interpret his actions with the ship’s interest in mind), is actually a generous act for Legault.
To add on to Kyle's comment that "we should focus more on the reasons why these two individuals saw the same events so differently," Columbus behaves in the way he does because of his roll. As both Jeff and Hannah state, Columbus is an explorer who's goal is to claim new lands. To him, his language and actions are "obvious"; he does not grasp the concept that another group of people, the Native Americans in this case, cannot understand his orders and requests. The thought never occurs to Columbus that perhaps the Native Americans were not pleased with his claim to their land. Columbus was simply playing the roll he was assigned. Las Casas plays his roll as the observer and bystander. As a scholarly preist, he spent more effort in interpreting the reactions of the natives. European society has placed such an emphasis on social rolls in life, that Columbus could not stray from his duty as an explorer of land, while Las Casas remained true to his own roll as explorer of people.
It seems to me the most potent example of the juxtaposition of barbarism and humanism in the works we have read this semester may be found in Kurtz of the Heart of Darkness. In the narrative building up to meeting Kurtz in the flesh, he is portrayed as the ultimate humanist. His rivals hate him for his new ideas of bringing civilization to the darkness in the heart of the Congo, while his admirers praise him for this same quality. However, when we actually encounter Kurtz we find a brutal dictator with a complete disregard for the value of human life. As I interpret Conrad’s work, this contradiction is portrayed as a result of the corrupting power of the darkness and primitiveness of the Congo on Kurtz once he arrives. He goes in with the full intention of bringing reform for the better to the natives, but in becoming integrated with the degrading influences of the jungle, the end result is the scrawled message, “exterminate all the brutes,” which overshadows all the preceding eloquence, making Kurtz’s humanism seem hollow and empty in retrospect.
Although this principle applies to the fictional character in Heart of Darkness, I don’t see this same corruption in the classic encounter between European man and native people in the “New Worlds” as embodied by Columbus, Cortez, and others. It seems the motives of these explorers conflict even before they set sail. Necessarily professing allegiance to those that fund the voyage (usually monarchies), their effort to live out the motives encouraged by these powers (possession and conquest, for example) conflicts sometimes with their own underlying inclinations. In Colombus’s case he was clearly affected by the inherent value he placed on discovery and the acquisition of knowledge in and of themselves. However, his patrons were not moved as easily by these motivations, and he finds himself attempting to justify his presence in the New World by the appropriation of lands and conquest of people. These conflicting motivations contribute at least partly to the seeming contradiction between the simultaneous hues of barbarism and humanism seen in European exploration.
Columbus’s explorations represent an embodiment of both barbarism and humanism. It is in his explorations, his desires to learn what is outside of him, that both of these forces meet, intermingle, and ultimately produce a result in the New World.
Columbus’s first encounters in the island are filled with the marvels of the lands and peoples. He is impressed with the natural beauty of the place, only able to describe it as something wondrous. He attempts to interact with the natives, and believes that he does actually communicate with them. Initially, Columbus intends to go to the New World to achieve a goal of reaching China. This however, is overtaken by the desire to obtain wealth.
It is once this desire overcomes the other objective that barbarism replaces humanism and violence ensues. As Columbus and his men claim the lands for Spain, the natives are ignored, exploited, and eventually destroyed. This occurs as a result of miscommunication between the two parties of the encounter. The violence can be seen as the only plausible form of communication where dialogue cannot exist.
At the point of this encounter between the Spaniards and the natives, both barbarism and humanism intertwine and act upon the situation. It is only at the point of misunderstanding that barbarism overtakes humanism and results in a violent outbreak.
I agree with all the comments made before me about how Columbus and Las Casas are different because of their different backgrounds and readings, but would like to pick up more on the connection between humanism and barbarism. I agree that both can identify themselves with one of the three ways that Eco says cultures can meet and understand each other, and see the difference between them is a difference between perception and reality. At the outset of any of the first European journeys to the “New” world, it was never the intention to go out and exploit the indigenous people of the newly discovered countries. Even in Columbus’s first expedition he does not seem to have greed or lust for material goods, but rather a tendency to see the difference in the natives and ultimately create a cultural exchange as Eco would say. However, if you would consider the three types of Eco’s meetings as a ladder with cultural exchange at the top, Europeans seem to move down the ladder as time goes on. It seems that the rich and powerful using their superior intellect reason that these humans are the long lost inhabitants of a lost Eden. They can’t stand to have their people put on the same level as the natives, so they marginalize them as pre-evolutionary, inferior beings. This moves them back down to Cultural Pillage, where one culture exploits another as a holder of an “unknown wisdom”. The more they learn about these new people, the more it does not match up with what the Europeans initially thought. When it turns out they aren’t a lost Eden, that they could just be another culture on the same footing as every other culture in the world, the Europeans reach a point where something has to give. Rather than change their viewpoint, they prove how inferior the natives are by conquering them and bringing “progress”. This is where the link between humanism and barbarism comes. It starts as a humanist approach to the natives, but over time the inside rots and becomes hollow as the misconceptions of those in power lead to the brainwashing of countless people in Europe.
When asked to consider the seemingly contradictory elements of barbarism and humanism found in the works that we have studied thus far, I immediately thought of the character of Kurtrz, a man who embodies both cruelty and humanity. At first, Kurtz attempts to introduce the natives to the “civilized” way of life; however, as good as his intentions may be, the practices he uses are barbaric. From the heads on the stakes to his reference of the natives as “brutes,” Kurtz can be seen as a truly barbaric human, one who possesses little regard for humankind. In contrast to this aspect of his character, Kurtz begins his time in the Congo wanting to aid the natives. He has obvious success with this in the beginning, for the inhabitants of the region regard him with a tremendous amount of respect, verging on worship.
This same juxtaposition of humanism and barbarism can be found in the works of the explorers, in particular Columbus. Columbus does not arrive in the New World to conquer the natives, rather he wishes to spread Christianity throughout the native tribes. Originally, Columbus is filled with a sense of marvel and wonder when he first sees the differing elements found in the New World. However, as time progresses, this desire to introduce the natives to his religion is lost among the conquering mindset and his desire to gain wealth. As these examples demonstrate barbarism and humanism can be found in the same person, and are used by the explorers during their discovery of foreign lands.
I agree with the idea that whatever humanistic impulses Columbus may have had were overshadowed by his “background books” and by his role in the expansionist European culture. Columbus does have a humanist side—he is clearly curious about the natives and their customs. However, his role as an explorer and his belief in Christian and European cultural superiority take precedence.
Las Casas is able to look at the natives from a different perspective in part because he is an observer, rather than a participant in this conquest. However, since most other European observers seem to more closely share Columbus’s view, additional reasons are required to more fully explain Las Casas’ divergent outlook. I would argue that Las Casas was able to view the natives differently because, as an intellectual, he was an outsider in his own European culture. As a lifelong scholar, Las Casas would not have been part of mainstream European society but part of the fringe occupied by the intellectual elite. From his position on the erudite edge of European culture, Las Casas would have been less bound by the “background books” of his society, and therefore free to look at the New World natives from a more truly humanistic perspective than Columbus ever could have managed.
When considering Dr. J's question, (namely: "How could there be such a dramatic difference in perception (and thus treatment) of the natives by two Europeans living among them at the same time and place?"), I find it strange that no one thus far has noted the most simple explanation to account for this discrepancy.
The difference in perception between individuals is by no means unique to the examples of colonialism; rather, it is, quite obviously, a facet inherent to humanity by nature. There is no universally homogeneous perception of the other in any case nor has there ever been. Each individual perceives the world and its components as a result of differing circumstances, experiences and environment. Additionally, the expression of each perception is constricted and changed by the limits of language.
Is it strange to think that Colombus should perceive and, therefore, treat natives differently than La Casas, two men from the same nation, given how differently two people from the United States may treat an African American or a homosexual? Disparity in perception is normal, if not natural. Two people brought as witnesses to a crime often give totally different accounts of what occurred.
Perhaps it's only me, but, for the reasons I listed, I have no problem with the differences in perception, discussion and treatment of natives by Columbus and La Casas. The separation between self and other itself causes perception to skew from a unanimous opinion or view.
It is important to recognize that an oversimplified barbarism/humanism dichotomy permeates most all retrospective analyses of any multicultural intersection’s ‘structure of the conjuncture’. In Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” for example, natives are persistently classified as savages incapable of meaningfully interacting with the civilized man – a point of view which, in light of the manner in which Africans were treated by their colonial masters, seems likely to well represent the mindset of the imperialist. Yet Marlow approaches the natives with a sort of nascent humanism, and although he frequently uses the vocabulary of the imperialist (terms with connotations of barbarism, like ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’), it is clear through various instances that Conrad’s protagonist finds the simple doctrine of civilized superiority invalid. Most significantly, he dismisses his aunt’s naïve impression that colonialism encompasses the noble mission of delivering God to the natives; that façade of humanist intention was intended to justify the colonial process to those who would never encounter its darker, even barbaric side. And so through the novella, barbarism is developed to the point at which it may be applied both to the colonized and the colonizer, lending depth to the empty dichotomy which unrealistically classified the civilized as above barbarism and the native as barbaric. Conrad espouses instead the humanist impression that barbarism binds the civilized man to the native; figuratively, barbarism is the heart of darkness common to all humans and amplified within the post-barbaric man once he is removed from the stability of his civilization and forced to interact with his native counterparts. By comparison to “Heart of Darkness”, the accounts of the early European explorers display less pessimism; Columbus and his contemporaries did not cling to the conception of natives as barbaric and themselves as superior nearly as firmly as do Conrad’s colonial characters. Humanism played an integral role in their understanding of the other, and they searched intensively for similarities between themselves and their native counterparts as documented by Eco, Greenblatt, and Zhang. However, they retained their tendency to view the civilized as inherently more valuable than the native, especially on the small scale. And thus, while cross-cultural exchange was explicitly encouraged to some extent, the competing ideologies of barbarism and humanism within the mind of the colonizer led in part to myopic action and gross misinterpretation of the native life.
Mr. Keeler brings up an eminently valid point; namely, that difference in perspective is an individually based phenomenon, rather than a result of membership in a particular group. That Las Casas and Columbus see their [apparently similar] situations so differently need not seem so extraordinary. The informal survey in class today validates this position. Among the 20-odd class members, all of whom are Americans, Notre Dame students, and honors students within the school of engineering, there were startlingly different perspectives of identity. Carl saw himself as a citizen of the world, whereas Brendan voiced some opposition to that stance. Even if one chalked that difference up to geographic differences—a hard position to make, as geography is becoming less and less a factor in these analyses—the half dozen or so students from the Chicago area ran the gamut in their perspectives. This reality would seem to suggest that one’s perspective when encountering the other is nearly impossible to predict from such trivial factors as one’s place of origin. Each person has a singular perspective, one shaped by an innumerable number of factors. Even taking the most extreme example of twins, who are often raised under seemingly identical factors, there are multitudinous examples in which the siblings have incredibly varied perspectives on a range of issues.
What complicates things more in an encounter with the other are the prejudices which each party carries with him. Beyond differences of circumstance which may have led to a different way of viewing a new experience, expectations of what that experience may consist of will also alter the outlook of the traveler. Columbus expected certain things from the voyage, some of which were not ultimately true(i.e. where he actually landed at versus where he expected to land). Yet, like most humans, he was loth to accept his mistake at first and continued to operate, for a time, under his original prejudicial judgments.
Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the world is not split up into good and evil people, barbarism and humanism. That they would coexist is no more extraordinary than that good and evil may be found in the same man. All men seek to do what is good in their own eyes. Where humanism deviates into barbarism is when the good they pursue is not a true good, or when they begin to act under the impression that the ends justify the means, and therefore assume they may use evil in an attempt to reach that good end. As Kerry noted, Kurtz had good intentions at first, yet his justification of evil means ultimately led to some startlingly cruel and inhumane behavior on his part. In the last analysis, the humanism/barbarism duality is analogous to that of good and evil. What is important is whether or not one chooses to ‘listen to the better angels of one’s nature.’
Post a Comment