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Bezig met laden... Race and the Crisis of Humanismdoor Kay Anderson
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The idea that humankind constituted a unity, albeit at different stages of 'development', was in the 19th century challenged with a new way of thinking. The 'savagery' of certain races was no longer regarded as a stage in their progress towards 'civilisation', but as their permanent state. What caused this shift? In Kay Anderson's provocative new account, she argues that British colonial encounters in Australia from the late 1700s with the apparently unimproved condition of the Australian Aborigine, viewed against an understanding of 'humanity' of the time (that is, as characterised by separation from nature), precipitated a crisis in existing ideas of what it meant to be human. This lucid, intelligent and persuasive argument will be necessary reading for all scholars and upper-level students interested in the history and theories of 'race', critical human geography, anthropology, and Australian and environmental studies. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)305.89Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Ethnic and national groups ; racism, multiculturalism Other GroupsLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I'm glad I read it, because it introduced me to apparently vast scholarly conversations about race and racism, and about the history of people's understanding of what a human being is, among other things. Its central argument is something like: let's agree that the concept of innate differences between people of different 'races' was developed over the last couple of hundred years, and had the function of rationalising the genocidal brutality of nineteenth century colonialism; but describing its function isn't a full explanation of where it came from; European thinkers took their own specific society to be a universal human condition, and as they encountered different-looking and differently organised peoples their understanding of what it means to be human was challenged; rather than change that understanding they found a series of 'scientific' ways to define the new people as lesser versions of human. Something like that -- but a lot more carefully argued, and more interesting. Kay Anderson brings a coldly analytic eye to some fairly monstrous pieces of writing, all the more monstrous because I recognise in a lot of them a kind of full-blown, explicit version of ideas that still float around today, some that were presented as simple fact in my childhood education.
At some points in the book, I felt an almost physical pain at the absence of Aboriginal voices. As the European scholars -- few of whom had ever visited Australia -- argued back and forth about the status of 'the Tasmanians' and 'the Australians', collecting their skulls and measuring them obsessively, it was almost impossible not to think of the deep satisfaction of a man and woman in a recent Awaye program describing sleeping in the same room as ancestral remains reclaimed from a European museum before loading them onto a homeward-bound plane. As the scholars pontificated about the inevitable 'extinction' of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, I recalled James Boyce's account in /Van Diemen's Land/ of the machinations, negotiations, lies and evasions of the British Governors who oversaw the massacres. As they rabbited on about the 'unimproveability' of the Australians, I was glad to have read Inga Clendinnen's meticulous attempts to retrieve from the colonisers' own records an account of the first years of contact in New South Wales from the point of view of the invaded. And once or twice, when something felt personal about someone I know, I almost shouted out loud, 'Shut up! Just shut up!' Kay Anderson has a much stronger stomach that I do: she actually goes in and tries to understand where the vile stuff comes from. ( )