How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For ExampleWhen Western scholars write about non-Western societies, do they inevitably perpetuate the myths of European imperialism? Can they ever articulate the meanings and logics of non-Western peoples? Who has the right to speak for whom? Questions such as these are among the most hotly debated in contemporary intellectual life. In How "Natives" Think, Marshall Sahlins addresses these issues head on, while building a powerful case for the ability of anthropologists working in the Western tradition to understand other cultures. In recent years, these questions have arisen in debates over the death and deification of Captain James Cook on Hawai'i Island in 1779. Did the Hawaiians truly receive Cook as a manifestation of their own god Lono? Or were they too pragmatic, too worldly-wise to accept the foreigner as a god? Moreover, can a "non-native" scholar give voice to a "native" point of view? In his 1992 book The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, Gananath Obeyesekere used this very issue to attack Sahlins's decades of scholarship on Hawaii. Accusing Sahlins of elementary mistakes of fact and logic, even of intentional distortion, Obeyesekere portrayed Sahlins as accepting a naive, enthnocentric idea of superiority of the white man over "natives"—Hawaiian and otherwise. Claiming that his own Sri Lankan heritage gave him privileged access to the Polynesian native perspective, Obeyesekere contended that Hawaiians were actually pragmatists too rational and sensible to mistake Cook for a god. Curiously then, as Sahlins shows, Obeyesekere turns eighteenth-century Hawaiians into twentieth-century modern Europeans, living up to the highest Western standards of "practical rationality." By contrast, Western scholars are turned into classic custom-bound "natives", endlessly repeating their ancestral traditions of the White man's superiority by insisting Cook was taken for a god. But this inverted ethnocentrism can only be supported, as Sahlins demonstrates, through wholesale fabrications of Hawaiian ethnography and history—not to mention Obeyesekere's sustained misrepresentations of Sahlins's own work. And in the end, although he claims to be speaking on behalf of the "natives," Obeyesekere, by substituting a home-made "rationality" for Hawaiian culture, systematically eliminates the voices of Hawaiian people from their own history. How "Natives" Think goes far beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research on Hawaii, it is a reaffirmation for understanding difference. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Captain Cook at Hawaii | 17 |
Cook after Death | 85 |
Historical Fiction Makeshift Ethnography | 117 |
Rationalities How Natives Think | 148 |
Historiography or Symbolic Violence | 191 |
What the Sailors Knew | 199 |
Literalism and Culture | 203 |
Clark Gable for Cook? | 227 |
Blurred Images | 230 |
Cookamamie | 232 |
Priests Sorrows Womens Joys and Stereotypic Reproduction | 241 |
Divine Chiejs oj Polynesia | 252 |
Priests and Genealogies | 256 |
On the Wrath oj Cook | 264 |
The Language Problem | 275 |
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Common terms and phrases
according to Obeyesekere akua ali'i ancestors apotheosis appear atua Beaglehole 1967 believe breadfruit British Bulmer Burney canoe Capt Captain Cook ceremonies concepts Cook and King Cook was Lono Cook's death cultural deification deity divine Ellis empirical ethnographic European evidence gods Haole Hawai'i island Hawaiian Hawaiian language heiau Hikiau temple historical Holoa'e human ibid James Cook January journal Ka'awaloa Kahananui 1984 Kahiki Kalani'ōpu'u Kamakau Kamapua'a Kamehameha Kaua'i Kaumuali'i Kealakekua Bay Keli'ikea king's Koah Kumulipo land Ledyard Lieutenant King Lono priests Lono's Lonoikamakahiki Lonomakua luakini Makahiki image Malo Maui missionary Mooolelo Hawaii myth natives Ni'ihau O'ahu object observed offered Omeeah Orono Pa'ao Polynesian practical rationality red tapa Rickman rites ritual Rono royal ruling chiefs Sahlins Samwell says sense ships Śiva specific supposed tabu tapa cloth things tion tradition Valeri Vancouver voyage waiian warrior Watman Western worshipped