Chaos in the Contact Zone: Unpredictability, Improvisation and the Struggle for Control in Cultural Encounters 9783839433898

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
The Emergence and Domestication of Chaos in the Contact Zone
The “Jewish Indian Theory”
On the Cultural Coding of Skin Colour in Early Modern Contact Zones
Islands in the Maelstrom
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Walking Backwards to the Future, Facing the Past
Many Worlds, Many Stories
The Contingency of Cultural Negotiations in Cross-Border Networks
Unexpected Outcomes of the Portuguese Encounter in Sri Lanka
Enriching Repertoires
From Early Country Blues to Rap
Authors

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Stephanie Wodianka, Christoph Behrens (eds.) Chaos in the Contact Zone

Stephanie Wodianka, Christoph Behrens (eds.)

Chaos in the Contact Zone Unpredictability, Improvisation and the Struggle for Control in Cultural Encounters

This volume is the result of the annual symposium (2015) of the graduate school »Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scholarship« at the University of Rostock that was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2017 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Vasily Kandinsky Composition 8, July 1923, Oil on canvas, 55 1/8 x 79 1/8 inches (140 x 201 cm), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 37.262. Copyediting: Susannah Ewing Bölke (Hamburg); Setting: Dr. Tanja Schwan, Jule Stein, Julian Ihling Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3389-4 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3389-8

Table of Contents

The Emergence and Domestication of Chaos in the Contact Zone “The Rusty Giant from Rostock” or the “Koloss von Züros”

Stephanie Wodianka | 7 The “Jewish Indian Theory” The Problem of the Origin of the American Populations

Nathan Wachtel | 19 On the Cultural Coding of Skin Colour in Early Modern Contact Zones

Peter Burschel | 43 Islands in the Maelstrom East German Families’ Coping with Chaos in the Unification Contact Zone

Olaf Reis | 59 Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood Stories of Misunderstandings, Concepts of Culture and the Process of European Expansion

Christina Brauner | 81 Walking Backwards to the Future, Facing the Past The Conception of Time in Andean Philosophy

Josef Estermann | 109 Many Worlds, Many Stories Towards a Multiplication of Perspectives on Early Modern Cultural Encounters

Sünne Juterczenka | 133 The Contingency of Cultural Negotiations in Cross-Border Networks The BRICS Case

Yvette Sánchez | 159

Unexpected Outcomes of the Portuguese Encounter in Sri Lanka Innovation and Hybridity

Shihan de Silva Jayasuria | 179 Enriching Repertoires Code-Blending and Linguistic Transfer in the Contact Zone

Anja Voeste | 201 From Early Country Blues to Rap

Uwe Zagratzki | 221 Authors | 249

The Emergence and Domestication of Chaos in the Contact Zone “The Rusty Giant from Rostock” or the “Koloss von Züros” S TEPHANIE W ODIANKA

R ÉSUMÉ Ces réflexions introductoires se basent sur l’analyse du projet d’art »Zürich transit maritim«. Il nous servira d’exemple pour démontrer les interrelations entre improvisation et contrôle dans le contexte d’une rencontre qui résulte dans un »chaos arrangé« : La grue rostockienne au Limmatkai de Zurich crée un lieu de contact entre le maritime et l’alpine, le socialisme et le capitalisme, l’art et le pragmatisme, entre »Heidiland« et »Ostseeküste«.

In her path-breaking book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), Mary Louise Pratt1 introduced the resonant term “contact zones”, which she defined as social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination – like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today. (4)

The work across disciplines on contact zones, borderlands, transculturation, migration, cultural and commercial traffic have expanded the term far beyond

1

Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992.

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Pratt’s original formulation, and the focus on contact zones is indeed gaining new attention these days through the migrations to Europe. With our book “Chaos in the Contact Zone: Unpredictability, Improvisation and the Struggle for Control”,2 that originated at the eponymous conference at the Graduate School “Cultural Encounters and Discourses of Scholarship” (Rostock University), we aim to accentuate a special aspect of contact zones: the interrelations between and the staging of control, unpredictability and improvisation. Cultural encounters are repeatedly depicted as experiences of uncontrollability and unpredictability par excellence, but also as challenges to planning and predicting. The history, the different forms and the consequences of this phenomenon shall be at the heart of the articles. In contact zones and in the discourse about them, narratives and interpretive schemes design cultural encounters in the way that they predict confrontations with the unpredictable. On the one hand, the (paradoxical) prediction of the unpredictable may give way to a potential threat; on the other hand, it helps actors to declare a state of exception that legitimizes their behaviour. For the travelled and travellers, the explored and explorers, the contact zone becomes a topos of probation, in which improvisation seems to be the key skill in the struggle for control. In the same way, narratives and images that illustrate individual and collective abilities to cope with the unpredictable influence such interpretive and evaluative retrospectives on cultural encounters. Cultural encounters continually elicit an impulse or represent a laboratory for control, prudence and planning. This concerns, for example, strategies in diplomatic encounters or warfare, medicine and genetics, educational concepts and legislation, travel guides and oracles. The prescient or retrospective struggle for control can also take on forms that are unpredictable and unexpected and thus cause chaos. Chaos and control are not mutually exclusive in the contact zone; on the contrary, they stand in relation to each other – be it as a phenomenon, a competence or an interpretive scheme. Our book seeks to understand the cultural evaluation of chaos and control, (un-)predictability and improvisation. In order to closely examine topical and contemporary role allocations – for example the roles of imperial ‘benefactors’

2

The coordination of the conference in September 2015 was realized by Dr. Andrea Zittlau and Jakob Peter, thank you so much for your engagement! Without the precious, competent and reliable editorial assistance of Dr. Tanja Schwan, Julian Mark Ihling and Jule Stein the publication of this volume would not have been possible. Furthermore, we want to thank Susannah Ewing Bölke for the highly professional and thorough proofreading.

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and the opposing ‘conquered’ – it is necessary to integrate culturally specific codes and interpretive schemes into our reflections and to ask for different perspectives. Whether ‘random’ cultural encounters gain or lose value through their lack of planning and prediction depends on their culture-historical evaluations and aesthetic representations. Moreover, the prophetic or teleological framing of narratives of cultural encounters may lead to re-evaluation and legitimacy as well as devaluation. Connotations of chance and planning, spontaneity and predictability, are culturally and historically diverse. I will give an example for this – a recent one which is connected to our university town, to Rostock: the art project “Zürich transit maritim”.3 As everybody will notice upon entering the city, the harbour loading cranes characterize our region’s maritime landscape and are symbols of two things: one the one hand they represent both the marine heritage of our Baltic city, so that local and regional associations have their sights on preserving the coastal landscape in its natural and ecological aspects, as well as its maritime infrastructure, that is, those port facilities that represent Rostock’s military and particularly economic importance thanks to the city’s location at the Baltic Sea. That these facets are likely to be basis for conflict is obvious. The protection of the coast and its landscape collides frequently with the interest of preserving or restructuring the harbour facilities. On the other hand, Rostock’s loading crane symbolically represents a nostalgia for the former GDR or, au contraire, memories of the economic and ideological downfall of its regime and its shipyards at the Baltic Sea: the crane in Rostock’s Neptun shipyard is rusting away, is not moving and working any more; it is unemployed just like many of workers who used to be employed at the shipyard. It is a memorial for them, some of whom are not quite sure anymore, thinking back, whether the Turnaround improved their lives or made them worse. Often, such a ‘heritage’ both fulfils the function of cultural memory and embodies underlying values, norms and identities. It connotes a certain relation to time, that is, a special relation to the past and to the future, and the wish to withstand and resist time. The familiar sense of inheriting something or someone establishes contact between people: sometimes it is the occasion for a family to reunite, sometimes it invokes conflicts. The same is true for cultural heritage: it can be the starting point for cooperation, but also the reason for conflict, compe-

3

See the documentation of the project on “Zürich Transit Maritim.” 6 October 2016. http://www.zurich-transit-maritim.ch/de/ahoi/ and “Zürich Transit Maritim.” 6 October 2016. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zürich_Transit_Maritim.

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tition and even destruction. The duty to preserve, the right to preserve, the object of preserving and the question of how to preserve well, can give reasons for ‘chaos in the contact zone’. Heritage is not a fact, but rather always a personal, legal or cultural construction of being involved in or connected to something. In this sense, heritage is always ‘invented tradition’. Heritage brings not only people and cultures, but also facts and fictions together: and that is why art is an important agent of memory, and of ‘controlling’ the past or of making it unpredictable. In 2014, while the local inhabitants of Rostock were arguing whether the harbour cranes were worth being preserved as maritime heritage or whether they were just eyesores preventing nature from naturally growing over the GDR past, the Swiss artist, Jan Morgenthaler, had one of the 90-tonne, rusty cranes transported from Rostock to Zurich and rebuilt in the core of the city at the Limmat Quay in front of the Town Hall Café. The costs of the project were about 700,000 Swiss francs. The crane added a new aesthetic dimension to Zurich, a dimension that did not fit obviously into the heritage of Heidi’s home country. Rostock’s newspapers as well as national and international ones reported about it as “Der Koloss von Züros”4 and the “Rusty Giant of Rostock”. “Zürich transit maritim” is the name of this project which founded a fictional and factual SwissGerman, maritime-alpine contact zone.

4

“Koloss von Züros: Rostiges aus Rostock polarisiert.” Baublatt 23 April 2014. 6 October 2016. http://www.baublatt.ch/aktuelles/news/koloss-von-zueros-rostiges-ausrostock-polarisiert.

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Illustration 1: “Im Gegenlicht der strammen Grossmünstertürme: Zürichs Hafenkran”

Source: Bühler, Urs “Zürcher Hafenkran ist errichtet. Er steht.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung 17 April 2014. 13 February 2017 https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/er-steht-1.18285953.

The crane was not all, though. Six months before, four huge bollards had been embedded in concrete – or as they say ‘archeologically laid open’ and from the roof of a 126-meter high-rise building a horn had been roaring every other day at a volume of 143 decibels and a reach of 17 km. This sonorous sound turned the stomach of Zurich’s inhabitants and appeared to announce the arrival of a deepsea ship. The website and open-air events invited renowned scientists and experts to declare the maritime objects (bollard, horn, crane) to be finds from an almost forgotten past: a pseudo-archeological background had been uncovered, which, at the same time, founded an archaeology of the future. According to the initiators of the project, mysteries of the past were not to be solved, but surprises could be expected. The artist affirmed that the project did not answer the question of when ships sailed to Zurich, but raised the question of when ships will come in. The ‘predicted unpredictability’ was part of the project from its beginnings. On the one hand side, the project draws on Zurich’s prehistoric sea location: some 30 millions years ago, the region around Zurich was covered by a sea. On the other hand, it brings up Zurich’s function as entrepôt, which existed until the end of the 19th century.

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These attempts to make Zurich an entrepôt between the North Sea and the Mediterranean were most influential in the 20th century (Teuscher)5, evoking pseudo-archeological explanations, thus the project’s title: “Zürich transit maritim”. In the 1920’s and 30’s this vision did not back away from almost anything, as a historical photo collage from 1938 shows. Black smoke is emitting from an ocean steamer that is approaching Zurich’s old city centre. Without any irony or explanation of how the steamer got there, the caption says: “He who has no part of the sea, has no part of the world’s best things.” In the transcultural context between Rostock and Zurich, the title word “transit” in the name of the art project connotes not only the maritime visions of the 1930s but also something different that is linked to our current interest: “transit” was nearly impossible in the GDR, and especially at Rostock Port where the crane originally stood – it was a highly controlled contact zone. From 1961 to 1989, the area around the port was hermetically fenced off in order to demarcate borderland. At the same time, it was one of the few intercultural places in GDR. The installation thus shows: maritime heritage changes according to its location, to its cultural context and in transcultural transition. It is able to link two seemingly opposing worldviews. In Rostock, the crane represents maritime heritage as well as the bankrupt GDR shipyards and unemployed workers; in Zurich, the crane is maritime heritage that was ‘excavated’ thanks to Swiss multi-millionaires.6 The Zurich crane is an Ossi, a citizen of the ex-GDR: as a three-legged socialist in the capitalist capital of banks, the crane led to many conflicts. Discussions about the loading crane from Rostock gained unpredictable dynamics and an intensity that not only surprised the artist himself, but also went beyond every expectation the art project had aimed for: is it art, or is it dust? How far can art go? What is art allowed to do? Does it destroy Zurich’s cityscape? Is it justified to spend so much money on a rusty object? Is this maritime ‘Ossi-object’ able to put into question all the values that Switzerland stands for? Is it a ‘guilty’ object, because of its use in the weapons industry? All these questions fired the discussion about the “rusty giant from Rostock” or the “koloss von Züros”.

5

Teuscher, Andreas. Schweiz am Meer. Pläne für den ‘Central-Hafen’ Europas inklusive Alpenüberquerung mit Schiffen im 20. Jahrhundert. Zürich: Limmat Verlag, 2014.

6

The Stadtrat Martin Waser invested 120.000 Franken to make the project safe. The relevant SMS-communication with his wife is public, cf. “Zürich Maritim eine Liebesgeschichte” 6 October 2016. http://www.zurich-transit-maritim.ch/de/ahoi/zurichmaritim-eine-liebesgeschichte/.

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But in the end the harbour crane disappeared from Zurich. “Zürich transit maritim” was an ephemeral project. All the archaeological finds were intended from the beginning to disappear again in 2015. As planned, the portal crane in Zurich’s city centre was dismantled – on January 19th, 2015 it disappeared from the cityscape. With the help of several construction cranes and experts from Rostock, it was scraped and melted down. That was to be expected. As a work of art, as a performative contact zone, it is still expressing a potential, a tense atmosphere of unpredictability and struggle for control. By the way, also the Eiffel Tower in Paris was intended to be demolished after the World Exhibition of 1889. Sometimes the motivation for artistic creation is not to last for eternity, but rather to address destruction, to domesticate it by controlled demolition planning it. The ephemerality is also part of the professional and profitable merchandise campaign of ‘Zürich transit maritim’, which by selling souvenirs overcomes its own paradox: inhabitants and tourists who care to preserve this cultural heritage can purchase coat hooks and handles in the shape of miniature bollards, paper cranes for home crafting and sea salt. A Swiss columnist7 comments on it: Devant la grue de Rostock, l’occasion peut-être de se demander pourquoi les Zurichois ont une telle envie de prendre le large [...] pour un moment, pour jouer. Seraient-ils saisis d’un léger ennui à l’idée de céléber ad vitam aeternam le modèle helvétique figé dans la perfection? Qu’ils prennent garde cependant: les saltimbanques troublent parfois les certitudes.8

The project took on a momentum of its own and received surprising reactions: a motion submitted by the national conservative, right-wing populist party SVP kept the city of Zurich busy for weeks. According to the motion, any port material such as cranes, bollards or horns should be legally and forever forbidden to enter the city again; the ‘maritime’ should never again be a fictional or a factual part of the cityscape; tabula rasa for further maritime-alpine cultural contact: struggle for control. Shortly after, Zurich’s inhabitants voted on the motion.

7

Pilet, Jacques. “La chronique de Jacques Pilet: Zurich sur mer.” L’hebdo 13. March 2014. 20 November 2016. http://www.hebdo.ch/hebdo/opinions/detail/zurich-transatmaritim-projet-artistique.

8

“In front of the crane, you have to ask yourself why the Zurichers feel so much like taking to their heels […] for a moment, as a game only. Is this supposed to mean that they are bored with celebrating ad vitam aeternam, the Swiss modell of perfection? They should be a careful: entertainers do sometimes unsettle certitude.” (Translation: Christoph Behrens)

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In a panel discussion that took place at the end of the art project in order to again summarize the different positions, a second incident happened that represents potential of “Zürich transit maritim” and the relation between control and improvisation. The artist Jan Morgenthaler was subjected to a vehement verbal attack because of his art project by SVP president Mauro Tuena. Morgenthaler did not reply to the insults nor did he argue with him, au contraire: he spontaneously thanked Tuena for his passionate resistance during the previous months. He and his party had become part of “Zürich transit maritim”. You were like a lighthouse for us, Mr. Tuena, a reliable companion. It is something unique, Mr. Tuena, you became a work of art yourself. Whatever you may say, you are part of the project. (Rohrer)9

Art is not only able to evoke unpredictable, dynamic discussions, art is also able to domesticate the momentum of its own critics by appropriating their critique. In this case, opponents became teammates in the board game called contact zone that revolved around the harbour crane. Art – in its literary, performing, painted or musical forms – sets the stage for unpredictability, improvisation and control. Improvisation has indeed become the expression of artistic genius since the 19th century: one who plays an instrument very well knows how to improvise. In Germaine de Staël’s novel Corinne ou l’Italie from 1817, there is a very famous scene, to such an extent that Francois Gérard and many others have painted it: the main character Corinne, a poeta laureata, comes to painfully realize that her intercultural love to the English Lord Oswald of Nelville is impossible because the latter has already given his promise to an English lady and Corinne, herself half Italian, half English, seems not to fit into the cultural conventions. Corinne’s struggle for control in her intercultural love relation within a contact zone is an improvised lyre-song at the Cap de Misène. Improvisation becomes in this way an expression of the desire for the unpredictable, and at the same time for utmost domestication and control – even and especially in contact zones.

9

Rohrer, Jürg. “Die Heftigkeit überraschte alle.” Tagesanzeiger 14 January 2015. 20 November

2016.

http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/stadt/Die-Heftigkeit-ueber

raschte-alle/story/14134381.

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I will leave my art perspective on our topic here to prepare the stage for the variety of other perspectives represented by the articles of this volume: The importance of narratives of origin as hermeneutic instruments of control in contact zones is shown by Nathan Wachtel (Paris). The confusing new geographical knowledge and the encounter with the unknown American people led Europeans of the age to integrate them into biblical narrations: the “Theory of the Jewish Indian” offered an explanation for the existence of the ‘discovered world’ and its inhabitants by declaring the Native Americans to be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The American population became part of the narrated and predicted history of humanity in the holy scripture. This colonial appropriation of the New by the Old World is on one hand a typical and sad example of colonial hegemonies. On the other hand the “Theory of the Jewish Indian” is – compared to scientific discourse since the middle of the 19th century – a narrative that accorded some dignity to the Native Americans, often negated by the successive social theories and their established hierarchies of races and cultures. The early modern theories proposed to explain the origins of the Andean populations are also in the centre of interest of Peter Burschel’s (Göttingen/Wolfenbüttel) article. His starting point is the book “Miqweh Israel” (“The Hope of Israel”), written by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israël in 1650, which identifies the inhabitants of America as descendants of the Hebrews. Burschel focuses here on a special phenomenon: the interpretations of their appearance and the attribution of ‘whiteness’ and ‘purity’. He demonstrates that the perceived reliability of the narrated cultural, ethnic and religious continuity was basically grounded on the white skin of the supposed Hebrews which seemed to make evident a ‘pure’ cultural reproduction. Olaf Reis’ (Rostock) starting point is the contact zone that came into existence when the wall came down between East and West Germany. As he shows in his article “Islands in the Maelstrom – East German Families Coping with Chaos in the Unification Contact Zone”, many East Germans experienced this kind of social change as ‘chaos’ requiring new cultural practices. The interviewbased analysis of family narrations focuses on parent-child relations and on the impact of the balance of relatedness and separatedness between the family and society. The article shows the functionality and variety of family relationships and their narratives for the struggle for control in the unification contact zone. The retrospective interpretation of cultural encounters as an experience of misunderstanding is the focus of Christina Brauner’s (Bielefeld) work. Cultural misunderstanding can be functionalized as a narration which permits cultural and communicative practices of exclusion: the “communauté de rire”. The com-

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munity is stabilized in its identity by the laughter about narrations of cultural misunderstanding. The article presents a typology of misunderstandings in historiographic fields. Two examples in the contexts of Portuguese expansion and of the Enlightenment show the varieties of misunderstandings between fate and intention – and their functionalization as well as their early critique in the context of colonisation. Josef Estermann (Luzern) also discusses cultural misunderstanding, here with a focus on the conception of time in Andean philosophy. In contrast to western conceptions of time, Estermann characterizes the Andean time concept and worldview via the metaphor of “walking backwards into the future, facing the past”. He calls for mutual respect for the otherness of worldviews and philosophies of time to make cultural encounters fruitful and to avoid ‘chaos in the contact zone’. The underlying problematic opposition between “western” and “non-western” time concepts illustrates the inherent risk of postcolonial approaches as a special way of ‘controlling’ the interpretations of cultural encounters: In order to deconstruct binary constructions of non-western otherness, it sometimes leads back to the construction of a homogeneous entity of western culture – and to narratives about the incompatibility of cultures. Sünne Juterczenka (Berlin) shows in her article “Toward a Multiplication of Perspectives on Early Modern Cultural Encounters” the necessity of innovative historiogra-phic approaches. The special challenge here is the often fragmentary and unilateral source material and the contradictory interpretations and perspectives (of historical agents as well as between historical agents and scientists, and between academics and non-academics). This ‘chaos in the contact zone’ should not be homogenized by master narratives or hegemonic interpretations. Juterszenka pleads for historiographic approaches and forms of representation that give space to this heterogeneity and contradiction – for example through innovative forms of narration or by exploring alternative sources. Yvette Sánchez (St. Gallen) shows in her paper that transcultural contact situations involve a permanent negotiation process, which entails contingent (in Giorgio Agamben’s sense), thus unpredictable outcomes. The zone itself is a concept that favours subversive chaos and escapes clear, separating boundary lines. Several transareal (Ottmar Ette) scapes (Arjun Appadurai) show a marked network character. Sánchez illustrates those entanglements by bringing up such cases as the highly diverse BRICS grouping. The member states are tentatively negotiating some sort of cohesive control, not only on the economic and political, but also on the cultural floor, while their bonds of former times may certainly be called either chaotic or nearly non-existent.

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Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya (London) shares this interest in the contingency and unpredictability of cultural encounters and their outcomes. She focuses in her paper on the material and popular cultures to explore phenomena of the cultural encounters of the Portuguese with South Asians in Sri Lanka, generally perceived through written and archival historical sources. She shows that in this contact zone innovative ‘hybrid’ artist forms emerged. The chaos of colonial cultural encounter generated not only instability and disorder: luxury ivory objects and baila music testify to artistic domestications of the unknown. As cultures are not stable entities, the results of a cultural encounter cannot be predicted as a 50/50-mixture, but can only be interpreted retrospectively (and by doing this ‘controlled’) by scholarly description. The article “Enriching Repertoires. Code-Blending and Linguistic Transfer in the Contact Zone” by Anja Voeste (Giessen) focuses on the (un)predictability of language contact. She shows via different examples (for example the grammatical errors of Silvia, Queen of Sweden, Bantu languages in southern Africa, hearing children of deaf adults in the U.S) the difficulty of predicting the linguistic outcomes of cultural encounters. As linguistic behaviour is always influenced by manifold factors such as emotions, groups and identities, the scholar’s ‘struggle for control’ has to be conscious of the dynamics of culture and the limits of scientific ‘predictability’. Performative unpredictability is addressed by Uwe Zagratzki (Szczecin): American black music is characterized by flexibility, adaptability and performativity. Its different music styles (blues, jazz, soul, rap) represent encounters between Afro-, Euro- and Latin-American cultures from the 19th century to the current day. The article shows how improvisation has here become a strategy of controlling the ritual. Improvisation in black American music is a subcultural bricolage in different historical contexts combining musical transformation and conservation – by the narrative of unconventional order. This book aims to show the variety of “Chaos in the Contact Zone” – not as a fact, but in its narrative, performative and dynamic potentials for cultural encounters and for scholarly discourse.

The “Jewish Indian Theory” The Problem of the Origin of the American Populations N ATHAN W ACHTEL T RANSLATED FROM F RENCH BY C HRISTOPH B EHRENS AND C HRISTINA L IPKA

R ÉSUMÉ La découverte de l’Amérique bouleversa les représentations traditionnelles en révélant l’existence d’une humanité radicalement autre, jusqu’alors insoupçonnée. Comment ce continent avait-il été peuplé ? Quelle est l’origine des Indiens ? Pendant près de trois siècles, l’une des théories les plus répandues fut celle qui en faisait des descendants des Dix Tribus perdues d’Israël. Cette explication fut d’abord développée dans le monde hispanique par des auteurs tels que Diego Landa, Diego Duran, et surtout Gregorio Garcia et Diego Andrés Rocha. Puis le relais fut pris, au milieu du XVIIe siècle, dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, aux Pays-Bas et en Angleterre, à l’occasion notamment du récit fait sous serment par le nouveau-chrétien Antonio de Montezinos, qui aurait découvert les Dix Tribus d’Israël, ou une partie d’entre elles, dans la Cordillère des Andes (en Colombie actuelle) : le débat fut alors marqué par les œuvres de Thomas Thoroughgood et de Menasseh Ben Israël. La »Théorie de l’Indien juif« continuait à être défendue encore au début du XIXè siècle par Edward Kingsborough, mais elle ne pouvait que perdre toute crédibilité dans le nouveau contexte du progrès des connaissances scientifiques et du positivisme.

20 | NATHAN W ACHTEL Our world has lately discovered another (and who will assure us that it is the last of its brothers, since the Daemons, the Sybils, and we ourselves have been ignorant of this till now?), as large, well-peopled, and fruitful as this whereon we live and yet so raw and childish, that we are still teaching it it’s A B C. MONTAIGNE, ESSAYS, BOOK III, CHAP. 6

Montaigne’s vivid, figurative style summarizes best the intellectual revolution that the extraordinary exploration of an unknown continent provoked. It was rendered such an extraordinary event that Christopher Columbus himself was, as far as we know, convinced until the end of his life that the island of Cuba, that he reached during his first journey, was the eastern coast of the Asian continent. It was only after his third and fourth voyage, during which he explored the Gulf of Paria and the Coast of Isthme, that he suggested the existence of “another world” (Crouzet 354f.). Indeed, on the map attributed to his brother Bartolomeo, dated to 1503-1505, a continuation between “Asia” and the mainland can be seen that expands far to the southeast, trespassing the equinoctial line, and named “Mondo Novo” (354f.).1 However, the overthrow of traditional representations was not only limited to geographical knowledge; the exploration of an unknown continent was not only a matter of islands, capes and lands. As the course of events repeatedly confirmed the existence, indeed, of a “fourth part” of the world, the Occident also discovered another radically different human culture that they had never expected before. And urgent questions arose: where did these savages come from, to whom, due to the original Colombian error, the name “Indians” was given from the very beginning? Did these human beings really have a soul? Was it permitted to lead a “justified war” against them, to legitimately reduce them into slavery? Had we reached the frontiers of a world inhabited by monsters? Staggering questions – the stunning news at first led to a kind of chaos. In order to establish an understanding of the newly discovered world, it was necessary to find explanations that were able to bring it nearer to the known world, to tradition, to the ancient order. Questions followed one after another in a kind of mise en abyme. In 1537, the papal bull of Paul III., Sublimus Deus, proclaimed “that the Indians as they are real human beings [...] are able to receive the Christian belief.” (Saupin 172) Thus recognized as full human beings, part of human

1

See Illustation 1 at the end of the article.

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kind, they became descendants of Adam and Eve. But how to retrace their history? How was the American continent populated? Did the Christian word remain unheard on this continent, or had an apostle already travelled it? Chronographers, theologians and cosmographers suggested many answers to these questions, sometimes surprising ones, often based on a strict and rigorous argumentation. Thus, the population of the American continent was said to be the result of extremely diverse migrations: for example of Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Vikings, Tartars, and even of Chinese. Nevertheless, the widespread ‘theory’, the most popular and persisting one over at least three centuries, was the one that declared Native Americans the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. * The “Jewish Indian Theory”2 reconnected the American peoples not only to the Old World, but also directly to the Holy Scripture. The Ten Tribes in question were those who formed the Kingdom of Israel and who, after the Syrian conquest in 722 BC, were deported by Salmanassar to the remote lands of Medes. The original text can be found in the Second Book of the Kings (17, 6, 23): In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and deported Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, and also on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. [...] So Israel was deported from their own land to Assyria ‘till this day.

The deportation of the Ten Tribes of Israel is a result of a divine punishment for their fall back into idolatry. The course of the story is related in one of the apocryphal texts, the Fourth Book of Ezra: being deported, the members of the Ten Tribes decided to return to the Mosian commandments, and to follow them faithfully from then on. Thereafter they took the decision to depart to an even more remote region, “where mankind had never lived” (IV, Ezra, XIII, 41). Ezra continues by narrating some notable incidents during their renewed migration, then making a promising prediction: [43] And they went into the narrow passages of the river Euphrates. [44] For at that time the Most High performed a miracle for them, and stopped the channels of the river until

2

Cf. as pioneer article Popkin, Richard H. “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory.” Menasseh Ben Israel and his World. Eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henri Mechoulan, and Richard H. Popkin. Leiden: Brill, 1989. 63-82.

22 | NATHAN W ACHTEL they had passed [45] But, to reach that region there was a long way to go, a journey of a year and a half; and that region is called Arzareth. [46] Then they dwelt there until the end of time; and now, when they are about to return, [47] the Most High will again stop the channels of the river, so that they may be able to pass.

The first exile that was imposed by Salmanassar is thus prolonged to a new exile in ever more distant and less accessible regions, that is, an exile within an exile. What will the Ten Tribes become hereafter? The continuation of their story is unknown, their traces are lost; henceforth, they represent a silent and evanescent diaspora, spread across different, undetermined places. There, they are protected by a stream, which during the centuries to come will give rise to the legend of Sambatyon: during six days of the week the river becomes a raging stream that carries with it huge blocks of stone that render it insurmountable; it runs deep on Sabbath (hence the name), but the Ten Lost Tribes cannot surmount it then either precisely because of the rule that forbids them to move on that day. Thus the tribes are at the same time protected and imprisoned by the Sambatyon, whose strangeness is part of their mystery.3 The diaspora of Israel stands in sharp contrast to the destiny of its neighbour and rival Judah. We know that they were defeated by the troops of Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, who destroyed the temple of Jerusalem. After this disastrous event, a significant number of the Judean elite was deported to Babylon. Even before this exile, there were several exiled groups of merchants and soldiers from Judah, a different kind of diaspora, particularly in Egyptian territories along the Nile delta, in Upper Egypt, in Nubia. Babylon and Egypt: the places of the Judean exile are known, visible and geographically located ones and can be connected to one another; in other words: a diaspora with familiar aspects, in contrast to the exile to the unknown experienced by the Ten Tribes. When Isaiah announces the return of the exiled in one of his prophecies, he does so in different terms: “And on that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were exiled in the land of Egypt will come and kneel down to worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.” (Isaiah, 27, 13) Whereas the Judeans are dispersed in neighbouring countries, the Israeli Tribes are “lost”, out of reach, they have disappeared in the immensity of the Assyrian empire that reaches to the end of the world (Ben-Dor Benite 44f., 70f.). There is even more to it than that. Another essential difference is that only some 40 years later, due to the fact that the dominion became Persian and thanks

3

Concerning the Sambatyon cf. also Ben-Dor Benite 82, 89.

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to Cyprus’s magnanimity, the Judeans exiled in Babylon could return to Jerusalem in 546 BC. This (partial) return is marked by the construction of the Second Temple. In contrast, the Ten Tribes exiled in Assyria (and even further away) have never returned. They are irreversibly exiled and lost, hidden in some unknown deserted places. Accordingly, the Ten Tribes of Israel become the symbol of exile in its essence, of loss in its strongest sense; they connote lack, absence, and dereliction. We saw that Ezra called the unknown region where the Tribes found refuge “Arzareth”, “the place where humankind has never lived”. In doing so, he certainly alluded to the terms that were used in the Book of Deuteronomy to refer to the Hebrew exile as a place without name: the expression “Eretz Aheret”, here contracted to Arzareth, designates “another land”, another place radically different from all that is known (Ibid. 62ff.). There was already ‘another world’ some thousand years before Christopher Columbus, convinced that he was approaching paradise, would wonder about the mouth of the Orinoco River. The close association of the Ten Tribes with the ideas of loss and dereliction strongly charges the story with messianic potential. For according to Isaiah the Tribes will not reappear before the end of time, then to rejoin the Judeans in Jerusalem, the centre of the universe. In the apocalyptic visions they will form either peaceful crowds or dreadful troops fighting against the forces of evil. These visions reinforce the power of the myth that, for centuries, influenced the Jewish and later the Christian representations of space (where are the Ten Tribes?) and time (when will they reappear?). The least sign announcing the return of the Tribes would be interpreted as the manifestation of the divine plan and, as such, as the announcement of the end of time. According to some particularly widespread Jewish beliefs, redemption will come when the diaspora has spread to all parts of the world, even to its remotest parts. According to Christian beliefs, the messianic age will be accompanied by the conversion of all Jews to Christianity. Consequently, discovering the traces of the Lost Tribes on the American continent was more than surprising news: it announced, and this time it was certain for both groups, the imminence of the end of time, provoking great fear and hope at once.

T HE “J EWISH I NDIAN T HEORY ”

IN THE

H ISPANIC W ORLD

Several Spanish chronographers of the 16th century, most developing a similar argumentation, identify the Native Americans with descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. This is for example the case with Diego de Landa, whose The Relation of the Things of Yucatan (written around 1566) represents the oldest in-

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sight of extraordinary ethnographical quality into the Maya culture. Among other things, he reports that some of the older people living in Yucatan reported that they had been told by their elders that their land had been occupied by a human race which had come from the East, and which God had led there by opening up twelve routes across the ocean. If this was true, the consequence would necessarily be that all the inhabitants of the Indies have descended from the Jews. (Katz 132)

These translations of indigenous narratives into a biblical style can also be found in the work of the Dominican Diego Durán, History of the Indies of New Spain (finished in 1581). From the second sentence onwards the author proclaims his conviction that the natives are “Jews and part of the Hebrew people” (Durán). He also insists on the factuality of their “long and painful migration from unknown and furthest regions, until they took possession of this land” (Ibid.). Through following a method of meticulous comparison between Native Americans and Jews, he reveals obvious similarities concerning “the way of life, their ceremonies, their rites and superstition” (Ibid.). Among all these common traits, Durán focuses on “the penchant for idolatry”, the reason why God initially punished the Ten Tribes with exile and long itinerancy. * In The Origin of the Indians of the New World, published in 1607 and the first work to treat this topic systematically, the Dominican Gregorio García presents a complete and annotated inventory of the multiple answers that so far had been given to this question by numerous authors, already a vast body of work. His study strongly rejects the opinion of José de Acosta (whose knowledge of Greek is doubted by García). Acosta’s argumentation involves for example a discussion of Atlantis, a large island that gave its name to the ocean where it sank, and whose existence was most notably affirmed by the irrefutable authority of Plato. Furthermore, Gregorio García suggests that the ancients were perfectly able to perform maritime voyages, even though the compass and the astrolabe did not yet exist.4 Considering these conditions, it is possible to propose that, by following the coastline of Atlantis, numerous migrants were able to cross the ocean and

4

“Todo lo qual es argumento, que antiguamente se engolfauan, y esto con arte particular: [...] se metieron en alta mar, hizieron nauegaciones y viajes largos y prolixos; assi tambien lo pudieron hazer los primeros pobladores de las Indias Occidentales.” (García 44)

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reach America: groups of Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Egyptians, Romans, and very probably also Hebrews, like those who were transported by the fleet of King Salomon that was sent to Ophir.5 One of the pieces of ‘evidence’ developed by García is based on an etymological commentary that may seem naive to us, but in fact represents a nearly scientific rigour (which one frequently finds in the same work). For example, “in the Mexican language the word that means water contains the letters ‘ATL’ [...] which are exactly the first three letters of the word Atlantis [...].” “There is no other language”, he adds, “Among all the nations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and not even in the New World [...] that that uses the two letters ‘TL’ as often as the Mexican language does.”6 Hence the link between the contemporary inhabitants of Mexico with the Atlantic Ocean is established, the more so as the names of the Gods testify the same, for example Quetzalcoatl. Among the dozen of theses he examined with impressive thoroughness, the one of the Jewish origin of the Native American population is given the most important place and fullest attention. The thesis is based, as we already heard from Diego Durán, on an inventory of similarities between Native Americans and Jews, including many aspects: their appearance, clothes, gestures, language, their customs, their timid character, and even their penchant for idolatry. For example: The stories from Peru tell us that, when discovering Peru, Francisco Pizarro and Don Diego de Almagro arrived in an Indian province whose inhabitants had jewish gestures, long noses, and spoke in a way and with an accent as if most of the sounds they uttered were glottals.7

5

“De la nauegacion que la flota de Salomon hazia a Ophir” (Ibid. 30); “[...] que los Indios proceden de los Cartaginenses” (Ibid. 84); “Como de las Islas de Barlouento fueron pobladas de gente Española en tiempo de Hespero Rey de España” (Ibid. 411); “[...] que los Indios proceden de Griegos” (Ibid. 466); “[...] que los Indios proceden de Fenicianos” (Ibid. 473); “[...] que los Indios proceden de Chinos y Tartaros.” (Ibid. 477)

6

“[...] en la Nueva España en lengua mexicana el agua tiene este nombre ATL [...] Y cierto [...] que nos ai lengua en todas las Naciones de Asia, Africa, y Europa, y aun en el Mundo Nuevo [...] que tanto use de estas dos letras TL como la Mexicana.” (Ibid. 357)

7

“Las historias del Piru nos cuentan como quando Francisco Pizarro y don Diego Almagro andauan descubriendo el Piru, llegaron a vna provincia de Indios, los quales tenian los gestos ajudiados, narizes muy grandes, y hablauan de tal manera, y con tal pronunciacion, que las mas de las letras pronunciauan gutturalmente.” (Ibid. 199)

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While the original Hebrew language had changed over time and dispersal, the Native Americans nevertheless preserved that characteristic pronunciation that “hurts the glottis”.8 The same etymological arguments appear as well. The root “Mexi-” in the word “Mexicans” derives from Hebrew “Messiah” (García 292; Ben-Dor Benite 164). The name of “Peru is Hebrew and means fertile land, because it stems from the verb para that means to fructify.” (García 293) Other resemblances can be found in the realm of architecture: García expresses his admiration of the Inca monuments “whose stones were so well polished and assembled with such an art that in many places you could hardly see the junctures of one with another.”9 It follows that this art is the same art the Hebrews practised in Jerusalem where “the stones of towers and walls, as Flavius Joseph describes it, were assembled in a way that you could not see their junctures anymore.”10 When it comes to rites and customs, it is an even bigger surprise when García affirms that circumcision is widespread within the Indian population, particularly in Yucatan, as well as “amongst the Tonakos and the Mexicans from New Spain”.11 As far as the Ten Tribes’ penchant for idolatry is concerned, García cites the prophet Ezekiel and the adoration “of high mountains”,12 omnipresent among the Indians in Peru.

8

“los que son de la provincia Quichua, cuya cabeça es el Cuzco, a quien es materna la lengua general del Piru, llamada vulgarmente de Inga, pronuncian muchas letras por la garganta, en los qual convienen todos estos con los Hebreos, que muchas de sus letras las hieren en la garganta.” (Ibid. 200)

9

“Edificios de aquesta manera huuo en el Piru, y aun hasta aora han perseuerado en el Cuzco, donde estaua la casa real de los Ingas, y el Templo del Sol [...] han tambien perseuerado algunos pedaços y pieças enteras cuya labor es estraña, y para espantar: [...] y con todo esto estan tan pulidamente labradas, y juntas con tal artificio, que en muchas partes apenas se ven las junturas de vnas con otras.” (Ibid. 223)

10 “Iosepho Iudio dize, que las piedras de las torres y muros de Hierusalem estauan tan artificiosamente puestas, y juntas vnas con otras, que con ser las piedras de marmol, no se parecian las junturas.” (Ibid. 222) 11 “Esta ley guardauan los Indios en algunas partes, como fue en Yucatan y en la Isla de Acuzamil donde se circuncidauan por religion, y los Indios Totones de la Nueva España, y los Mexicanos hazian lo propio” (Ibid. 264); “[...] como en algunas prouincias se circuncidauan Los Indios.” (Ibid. 308) 12 “Quien leyere al Propheta Ezequiel, vera como los Hebreos adorauan en los altos montes y leuantados, lo qual [...] hazian sin faltar un punto los Indios del Piru [...] mi intento solo es prouar como en esto se parecen los Indios y los Hebreos.” (Ibid. 215)

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How were the Ten Tribes then able to get to America? Over the centuries there have been many responses to the question of where to locate them. Originally, to reflect the biblical narrative, they were situated in a region in the Middle East, above the Euphrates, in Medes. However, they would move over the centuries to inhabit many different places: in Arabia, central Asia, Mongolia, and even Africa, in Ethiopia and the Sudan. Taking into account the latest geographical understanding, Gregorio García reconstitutes the Ten Tribes’ itinerary. Over the centuries, geographical knowledge had been altered and expanded not only by maritime discoveries at the coasts of the West and East Indies, but also through land expeditions that enabled deeper insights into the Asian continent. Cartography, the art and science of map and globe making, made spectacular progress. And it is in this context that for the first time in history the name of Arzareth, the undetermined place where according to Ezra the Ten Tribes would finally find their refuge, appears on a map. The map in question is titled “Asia in present times”, painted in 1544 by the German theologian and cartographer Sebastian Münster, professor for Hebrew at the University of Heidelberg and author of the Biblica Hebraica, the first Protestant translation of the Bible (Ben-Dor Benite 142f.). Münster situated “Asare” in the very northeast of the Asian Continent, beyond the Scythian Sea. This piece of land forms a peninsula that is surrounded by oceans in the north and south, and bordered by a major river in the west (that could correspond to the famous Sambatyon). In situating Arzareth on a map, Münster transformed a millennial mythical tradition into a geographical fact; at the same time it seems that the issue of the Lost Tribes was not only a Jewish matter anymore, but a matter in which Christians were becoming involved as well (Ibid. 144, 148). Twenty years later, in 1564, the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius in his Theatrum Orbis Terrum adopted Münster’s established location for Arzareth, and now ensured a broad diffusion (Ibid. 148-51). Ortelius not only confirmed the proximity of Tartary to Arzareth, but he moreover added an essential detail in the south of the Ten Tribes’ last refuge: the region “Anian”, which gave name to the narrow “Strait of Anian” that separates the Asian continent from “America or the New Word” (Ibid. 148-51). Drawing on this geographical knowledge, the latest of his time, García retraces the route that the Ten Tribes followed: he reminds us of their deportation into Medes, then their refuge in Arzareth; after that they continue their migration, on land, to Mongolia and other borderlands of the Asian continent, from where they cross the Strait of Anian and arrive on the American continent (where, in contrast to Ortelius, García situates the “Kingdom of Anian”). He portrays a criss-crossing of immense importance as the tribes of Israel move from

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one continent to another, from Asia to America, from the Ancient World to the New World. Gregorio García paves the way for a decisive and specific step in the direction of what we could call the globalising of the myth of Ten Lost Tribes. The strait in question, now called Bering Strait, was discovered around that time by Lorenzo Ferrer de Maldonado, who wrote in a letter to Phillippe II in 1588: “The Strait of Anian metes fifteen leagues and, thanks to low water, is free for six hours, and this low water is very fast.” (Ibid. 164) The velocity of the low water can be perhaps seen as a reference to the strong currents of the river Sambatyon. When reconstructing their itinerary, García does not fail to mention the cultural influences they certainly experienced during their peregrinations: Step by step, they gained Great Tartary over land, where they seemingly passed through and adopted certain of the customs and rites that were observed in these provinces and kingdoms, for the Tartars, as well as their neighbouring countries, adored the sun. [...] From Great Tartary they could wander to Mongolia, and from there they crossed the Strait of Anian, which is very narrow, then reached the kingdom of Anian, which is already part of the dry land of New Spain, deserted and partly frozen, because it is situated at sixty five degrees of latitude. From there they could reach the kingdom of Quivara and inhabit New Spain, Panama, and other provinces and kingdoms of the West Indies.13

Gregorio Gracia mentions another itinerary by referring to another contemporary author, the French archbishop Gilbert Génébrard, orientalist and Hebraist, author of a chronography of Jewish history published in 1567. Its second edition (1587) contains some additions concerning the Tribes of Israel and the regions of the Great Septentrion.14 The author, just as García does, combines theological con-

13 “[...] pudieron yr poco a poco por tierra a la gran Tartarea, por donde parece haber passado, y que tomaron algunas costumbres y ritos que en este Reyno y Provincias se guardan. Porque los Tartaros, y otras naciones circumvezinas adoran el Sol, y tienen otras cosas de los Indios occidentales. De la gran Tartarea pudieron yr por tierra hasta Mongul, y de aqui passar al estrecho de Annian, que es bien breue, y yr al Reyno de Annian, que es ya tierra firme de Nueva España, aunque desierta, y parte della muy frigida, porque esta en sesenta y cinco grados de latitud al Norte. Deste este Reyno se pudieron venir al de Quiuira, y poblar la Nueva España, Panama y las demas Provincias y Reinos de las Indias occidentales.” (Ibid. 180f.) 14 “[Genebrardo] da a entender que Arsareth, a do fueron a parar es la gran Tartarea [...] y de aqui a aquella tierra hazia la Isla Groenlandia, porque de aqui a aquella parte se dize la America descubierta, y sin mar [...].” (Ibid. 181; Ben-Dor Benite 156)

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sideration and spatial representation in order to suggest an itinerary that led the Ten Tribes from Tartary to “an unknown land”, and from there to Greenland, described as an island near the American continent. The intersection of biblical exegesis and geographical knowledge thus suggests several possible itineraries for the Lost Tribes that do not exclude each other. In fact, the diversity of the manifold explanations reinforces the theory of the Jewish origin of the Native Americans. That is, they originate either from a migration wave linked to the voyages undertaken by King Salomon, by way of Atlantis, or from later migration waves of the Ten Tribes, originating from Tartary and following different routes: westward going past Greenland, and eastward crossing the Strait of Anian. At the end of his work, after having meticulously examined eleven different ‘opinions’ on the origin of the Native Americans, García dedicates a last chapter to his own personal opinion, presented in the form of his conclusion.15 The composition of the book itself and the final discussion of the different responses bear witness to his firm belief in the Jewish origin of the Native Americans. Just as the thesis of the Jewish origin consists of differing suggestions for the itineraries followed, Gregorio García admits in a conciliatory summary the possibility of different origins, of different migration waves that do not exclude each other. There was no single voyage from the Ancient World, but many, at different times, by water and by land.16 Therefore the American populations descend not only from the Ten Tribes, but also from Carthaginians, Phoenicians, people of Atlantis, or from Tartary or China (García 486). Consequently, multiple origins are combined and give rise to reciprocal exchanges as well as to complex phenomena of borrowing, rejecting, transforming and innovating. “That is why amongst the Native American peoples there is such a diversity and variety of languages, laws, ceremonies, customs and clothing.”17 These diverse elements definitely point to a vast number of métissages, to a long series of losses, and to

15 “Capitulo ultimo de la ultima opinion, a do el autor declara su parecer acerca del origen de los Indios.” (García 482) 16 “[...] los Indios [...] ni proceden de sola vna nacion de gente [...] ni tampoco caminaron, o nauegaron para lla los primeros pobladores por el mismo camino y viaje, ni en vn mismo tiempo, ni de vna misma manera, sino que realmente proceden de diversas naciones.” (Ibid. 485) 17 “[...] hallar en estos indios tanta variedad y diuersidad de lenguas, de leyes, de ceremonias, de ritos costumbres, y trages” (Ibid. 486); “los Indios por su comunicacion y trato amigable, o por uia de conquista y guerra se fueron mezclando de tal manera que en el linaje, costumbres, lenguas y leyes han escapado mestizos de diuersas naciones.” (Ibid. 487)

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the creation of collective identities. García concluded his work by pointing out that similar processes of hybridization had already been at work in metropolitan Spain itself. * In the synthesis that Diego Andres Rocha, auditor at the court of Lima, published in 1687 under the title Tratado Unico y Singular del Origen de los Indios, he too meticulously enumerates the findings of his precursors and although, on the whole, he repeats García’s conclusions, he adds some distinct corrections to them. In fact, Rocha considers the identification of Native Americans with Jews a commonly accepted opinion “from the beginning of the discovery up until today”, which signifies that it was “inspired by God”.18 “What proves that the Indians of America are the seed of the sons of Israel and descendants of the Ten Tribes is that they greatly resemble the Jews [as is shown] by their gestures, their bodies, their noses and their pronunciation of many sounds in the glottis”.19 We also find in Rocha a linguistic argumentation. For example, in Jamaica and Cuba, “they speak a broken Hebrew”;20 “Peru” is a Hebrew word;21 as far as the terms “Jew” (judio) and “Indian” (indio) are concerned, they are identical: it suffices to substitute the “n” in “indio” with “u”.22 Similar to García and his precursors, Rocha describes further resemblances in the following domains: architecture, customs, clothing, rites and ceremonies, etc.; and he also does not fail to observe that circumcision is a widespread practice amongst the Native Ameri-

18 “[...] de esto nacio la voz comun de casi todos, desde el principio del descubrimiento, i que oy se continua, en que todos vulgarmente dicen en este Reino, que los Indios descienden de los Tribus perdidos, y siendo vos comun, se puede decir, que es vos inspirada de Dios.” (Rocha 48r) 19 “Prueba tambien el ser estos indios americanos semilla de los hijos de Israel, i descendientes de los dies Tribus, por ser mui parecida esta gente a los Hebreos en los gestos, cuerpos, narices, i en pronunciar muchas letras con la garganta.” (Ibid. 48r) 20 “[...] en las primeras Islas de Jamaica, Cuba i adjacentes, hablan un hebraico corrompido.” (Ibid. 44r) 21 “Pone primero este nombre Piru, i dize que es Hebreo i que significa tierra fertil, deribado del verbo Parà que quiere dezir lo mismo que fructificar.” (Ibid. 44v) 22 “Haze tambien alguna prueva para entender que los Hebreos y Americanos sean de un origen, el ver que esta palabra Indio vuelta la n arriba, dize Iudio, i es mui facil esta transmutacion.” (Ibid. 56r)

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cans, particularly among the northern peoples.23 Some other similarities include the rule that widows are obliged to marry the brother of their deceased husband, the custom of tearing one’s clothing as sign of grief, and the penchant for idolatry (Rocha 49r-53r). Even though Rocha fully confirms the theory “of the Jewish Indian”, he corrects an important point. In fact, he observes that among all the American nations, some have brave warriors whereas the others are “shy” and “fearful”. (Ibid. 49r) How to explain this contrast? According to Rocha, the brave warriors can only have descended from the Spanish, whereas the other natives, weak and cowardly, must be descendants of the Ten Tribes. He then precisely describes the chronology of their migrations and their itineraries. The Spanish, in the epoch of Tubal, only shortly after the Flood 3500 years ago, were the first to inhabit the American continent, passing by Atlantis (or navigating along its coast).24 The migration of the Ten Tribes could not have followed the same way, since “the island of Atlantis” had already sunk centuries before. Indeed, as Rocha explicitly points out, Salmanassar deported the Ten Tribes “in 767 BC.”25 The author has them follow the way already indicated by Gregorio García: from Samaria to the north of Assyria, passing by Armenia, Turkestan, Tartary, to Arzareth, and in the end, across the Strait of Anian to the kingdom of Quivira on the American continent. This is how the Toltecs, “seed of the Ten Tribes” (even the word “Toltec” being Hebrew)26 were the first to come and inhabit New Spain.27

23 “En quanto a la circuncision, tengo dicho en muchas partes de esta obra, como en muchas naciones de estos Americanos, en especial en la America Septentrional, se circuncidaban.” (Ibid. 78v) 24 “[...] las primeras entradas a la America fueron de Españoles, poco despues de Tubal, i de los mismos en tiempo de Hespero, que todo esto sucedio mas ha de tres mil i quinientos años, quando no se auia anegado la Isla Atlantica.” (Ibid. 73r) 25 “[...] i entonces no pudieron venir por esta Isla [Atlantica] los diez Tribus: porque su transmigracion fue mucho despues de averse tragado el mar de la Isla Atlantica, i sucedio su fuga en el año 3195 de la Creacion del Mundo, antes del Nacimiento de nuestro Saluador, 767 [...]; quando persistia la Isla Atlantica fue pocos años despues del Diluvio Universal, quando se començo a poblar España, i de ella vinieron muchos siglos antes los Españoles a esta America.” (Ibid. 65r) 26 “[...] los Tultecas, primeros pobladores de la America Septentrional, o Mexicana [...] i esta palabra Tulteca es mui verisimil que sea Hebrea.” (Ibid. 67r) 27 “[...] los diez Tribus vinieron a la tierra de Mexico, i la comenzaron a poblar [...] los primeros pobladores de la Nueva España fueron los Tultecas” (Ibid. 53v); “[...] i estos

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Furthermore, the chronology of migration obeyed a divine plan. If the Spanish travelled to America and started to occupy it in the first place, it was because they had been “chosen” to convert the “refugees from Israel” and the other migrants that would follow them to Christianity.28 Later, when Christopher Columbus discovered (actually re-discovered) the continent, God confirmed the “choosing” of the Spanish: their monarch is appointed to be “the second Moses for the conquest of the Indies”, who themselves represent the “Promised Land”.29 In addition to legitimizing Spanish sovereignty on the American territory, a profoundly messianic aspiration can be traced in Rocha’s Tratado by means of his biblical analogies. At the same time, his sense of chronology and his will to accomplish the divine plan make him insist surprisingly and emphatically on one characteristic of the Ten Tribes: their innocence. In his eyes, they are not at all guilty of deicide, as they had already left Palestine seven centuries before Jesus Christ was crucified. Instead it was the Judeans and not the Israelites (nor the Native Americans) who are supposed to have Christ’s blood upon them: If it is true that the Jews are impure and rightly excluded from all honours, this comes from those who approved, and took part in the death of our Redeemer Jesus Christ [...]. But those who did not participate in this infamy, as was the case for the Americans and the Ten Tribes, who more than a thousand years before the birth of our Saviour had come to America after the deportation by Salamanasar, they are not fouled with any infamy.30

[los Tultecas] fueron los mas immediatos descendientes de los diez Tribus, i gastaron mas de cien años en venir poblando hasta llegar a Mexico [...] haziendo habitables aquellas dilatidissimas Regiones, desde Arzaret hasta Mexico.” (Ibid. 62r) 28 “que las naciones en que puso Dios su estandarte para esta dilatada jornada i conquista de las Indias son las naciones españolas [...] i los tenia Dios elegidos para que reduxesen a los profugos de Israel, mesclados ia por tantos siglos con otras iguales i propias naciones.” (Ibid. 37v) (marked by author) 29 “Dixe arriba como avia Dios eligido a los Españoles, i a nuestro Monarcha, como segundo Moyses para esta conquista de las Indias, i hallo en ella muchas señales de aquellas estaciones, que hizieron los Israelitas a la tierra de promision.” (Ibid. 46r) (marked by author) 30 “Engañanse los que piensan, que solo por descender mucha parte de estos Americanos de los Tribus, por este origen contraen infamia [...] porque aunque es uerdad, que estan justamente notados los Iudios, i excluidos de todas honras, esto se entiende de aquellos Iudios que concurrieron y aprobaron la muerte de nuestro Redemptor, y señor Iesus Christo. [...] Pero los que no concurrieron en esta infamia, como fueron estos Americanos, i los diez Tribus que mas de mil años antes del Nacimiento de nuestro

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Moreover (and here again Rocha refers back to García), the Jewish origin of the Native Americans, descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes, therefore of Jacob, offers them an eminent dignity: they are worthy of being called “nobles”.31

T HE “J EWISH I NDIAN T HEORY ” AND E NGLAND

IN THE

N ETHERLANDS

Thirty years before Rocha’s Tratado, the work of Menasseh ben Israël, Hope of Israel, published in 1650 in Amsterdam, had an immense impact, foremost in northwestern Europe. It should be pointed out that the Dutch Republic and the United Kingdom in a way took over from the Iberian countries as promoters of the “Jewish Indian Theory” to its highest degree. However, this marked effect can only be understood when contextualizing Israël’s book in the messianic enthusiasm in these countries, notably in the United Kingdom under Oliver Cromwell (Israël 54-65). The transition between the two cultural areas, Iberian and northwestern Europe, is embodied by Israël himself, born under the name of Manoel Diaz Soeiro in Lisbon in 1604, in a New Christian family, victimized by the Inquisition. He immigrated to Amsterdam at a very young age, and in 1627, thanks to his brilliant talent, he was designated rabbi. Having published the first part of his Conciliador, in which he strove to illuminate and reconcile the apparent contradictions of Scripture, he gained international reputation very quickly, within both the Christian elite and the Jewish milieu. In doing so, he established himself during the years of 1630-50 as a reputed intellectual authority, respected by members of different confessions: he played the role of a frequently consulted interlocutor in theological debates, and appears to have initiated the dialogue between Jews and Christians. As such, Israël was repeatedly referred to in an affair that caused a sensation in the 1640s. It is the story that the traveller Antonio Montezinos, identified as “of Portuguese nationality and of Jewish religion” (Ibid. 130), told him in the presence of witnesses. Montezinos himself was a New Christian, born around 1609 in Vilaflor. He embarked just like thousands of other migrants on a journey to the West Indies, and, working in different enterprises, eventually found him-

Redemptor avian venido a esta America por el destierro de Salmanasar, estos no contraen alguna infamia.” (Ibid. 57r-57v) (marked by author) 31 “[...] i por razon de descender de los Tribus, i de Iacob, antes se tienen por nobles.” (Ibid. 57v, marked by author)

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self in the kingdom of New Grenada (nowadays Columbia). His “extraordinary story” is nothing less than the discovery of the Ten Lost Tribes (or at least some of them) in the Cordillera Mountains. Antonio Montezinos narrated the voyage that he undertook from Porto de Honda, at the river Magdalena, in the direction of Quito, accompanied by indigenous donkey drivers who worked under a native known as Francisco, “whom the other Indians called cacique [native chief].” (Ibid. 108) Certain incidents on the way offer occasion for the donkey drivers to express their hatred against the Spanish people. The cacique Francisco then alludes to an act of vengeance that will be visited upon the latter “thanks to the intervention of a hidden people.” (Ibid. 109) Montezinos does not pay attention to these words at first. But later, upon arrival in Cartagena of the Indies, he is arrested and incarcerated in the gaol of the Inquisition. During his confinement he remembers some of the incidents during his travels and all of a sudden realizes: “These Indians are Hebrews!” (Ibid. 109) Luckily, Montezinos is released for lack of evidence. He immediately goes back to Honda, where he finds the cacique Francisco; he leads him out of the city in order to divulge his Marrano secret to him: “I am a Hebrew from the Tribe of Levi, my God is Adonaï, and everything else is a lie.” (Ibid. 109) Francisco is at first reticent but than suggests undertaking a long and difficult journey into the mountains. They walk for a whole week, rest on Saturday, then continue to a major river, where Francisco announces to Montezinos: “It is here that you will see your brothers.” (Ibid. 110) Only a short time later, some men and women arrive by canoe and honour Montezinos; then two men, after taking him between them, recite the Shema prayer. Afterwards, they convey a mysterious message to him, a message that contains nine propositions, one of which announces that in the near future some of them will leave their refuge. Montezinos is still not allowed to cross the river, but for three days the canoe shuttles to and fro and brings nearly 300 people to visit him. He describes them precisely as follows: These people were a little bit tanned, some of them had their hair to their knees, others had it short, some had it cut just like us. They were tall, handsome, and proud-looking. Around their heads they wore a scarf. (Ibid. 112)

After three days, Montezinos and Francisco return, heavily loaded with presents. On their way back, Francisco gives some explanation he had learned from “the tradition” to Montezinos: the “sons of Israel” arrived first on this land; then the Indians came, Francisco’s ancestors, who led a bloody war against those who preceded them but themselves suffered from heavy losses. The mohanos (sorcer-

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ers of the native people) thus decided to end the war, and foresaw: “The God of the sons of Israel is the true God [...] , these sons of Israel will leave their refuge and will become the masters of the world, re-establishing their erstwhile sovereignty.” (Ibid. 113) After having told this story in Amsterdam, Antonio Montezinos returned on a journey, this time to Recife, Brasil, under Dutch occupation, where the first Jewish community of America was founded. He lived there for only two years, always insisting on the veracity of his story: “on his deathbed, he took the same oath again, Menasseh ben Israël wrote, in a moment when you would better not commit perjury.” (Ibid. 131) From a Jewish perspective, the extraordinary story of Antonio Montezinos could not fail to arouse a strong messianic resonance. The sensational resurgence of the Lost Tribes clearly represented the beginning of the re-gathering of the exiled; it announced the end of time. But the rumours that the surprising news brought provoked an equally strong resonance among Christians, because it met with an already existing, very vivid messianic hope. If the coming of the end of time, according to the Christian tradition, were to be preceded by the conversion of the Jews, the identification of the Native Americans as descendants of the Lost Tribes would also mean that their evangelisation would have directly contributed to the arrival of the messianic age. * Moreover, at the same time, the millenarian English Puritans received news of great success from the American colonies concerning the conversion of Native Americans. This news was presented as the work of the missionary John Eliot of Massachusetts (Ibid. 73).32 In 1648, in the same context, Thomas Thoroughgood, pastor in Norfolk, circulated an opuscule with the explicit title: Jewes [sic] in America, or the Probability that the Indians are Jewes [sic] (Thoroughgood). In this text, like in those of the Spanish authors, the similarities between Native Americans and Jews can be found under linguistic, ceremonial, clothing, and ritual (alimentary rules, “frequent” practice of circumcision, etc.) aspects. However, there is also a special way of thinking in Thoroughgood’s work based on the idea that the Ten Tribes are the radical incarnation of exile and loss in its essence; drawing from this, he alludes to Ezra “[...] A land where man had never lived, what could this land be if not America? [...] These Ten Tribes are com-

32 Cf. also Popkin 69 and Katz 84, 150-4.

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pletely lost, and in which place could they be found, if not in America?” (Ibid. 37, marked in the original) After reading Thoroughgood’s work, two Puritan theologians, John Dury and Nathanael Homes, both of them burning millenarians, each separately addressed Menasseh ben Israël to ask him for his opinion. (Israël 66, 71ff.; Katz 104f., 1514) These responses gave rise to his trilingual (Hebrew, Latin and Spanish) Mikveh Israel, or Hope of Israel. Two different questions were asked: 1. Is Antonio Montezinos’ story credible? 2.What is the origin of the Native Americans? Are they descendants of the Ten

Tribes of Israel? His answer to the first question was positive: there is no reason at all to doubt Montezinos’ story after he swore the same oath on his deathbed. Israël’s opinion is also based on an exhaustive knowledge of the vast literature dealing with the Ten Tribes (including the Hebrew texts). The resurgence of the Lost Tribes in America confirms the messianic hopes made explicit in the title of the same work, Hope of Israel: the exile of the Jewish people seems to be spread to the remotest regions, just as their punishment was described in the Book of Deuteronomy (28, 64): “Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other.” (Deuteronomy, 28, 64) According to Jewish belief, redemption will come when the diaspora has reached its broadest expansion. What is more, to the presence of the Ten Tribes of Israel on the American continent is now added the presence of the descendants of the other tribes, Judah and Benjamin, with the recent creation of the Jewish community “Zur Israel” (since 1636) in Recife, Brazil, by Dutch immigrants – where Menasseh ben Israël had dreamt of moving as well: A supplementary piece of evidence of the imminence of our redemption can also be found in the promise of the Lord to reunite the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, which are dispersed to the four corners of the world. The prophet calls them ‘disseminated’; from this one can deduce that in order for the reassembly to happen, there has to be a previous dispersion into the four corners of the world [...]. And this prophecy became true in our days when the American Synagogues were founded. (Israël 172)

This idea of an exile that is coming to an end becomes Israël’s project to achieve the readmission of Jews to England, where they have been absent since expulsion in 1290. In medieval Hebrew literature, England had also been designated

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one of the four corners of the earth;33 England was thus the last “corner” still devoid of Jews. The return of the Jews to this corner of the world is therefore one of the prerequisites for the beginning of the messianic era. It should be noted that the English translator of Israël’s work, the devout millenarian Moses Wall, added to the 1651 and 1652 editions of Hope of Israel an appendix he wrote himself in which he called for the readmission of the Jews to England (from the translator’s viewpoint the messianic era would have started with the general conversion of the Jews to Christianity) (Katz 186-9; Popkin 68f.). In 1655, Menasseh Ben Israël decided to travel to England in order to suggest his project directly to Oliver Cromwell. The negotiations were long and difficult. Israël died in 1657, but the final decision to readmit the Jews to England, taken in 1664, was to a great extent his success. Eventually, Israël concluded that the presence of the Lost Tribes in the Cordillera Mountains attests that “the Israelites coming from Tartary [...] were the first inhabitants of America.” (Israël 176) Concerning the itineraries, he adopts the conclusions of his precursors, notably that of García (whom he abundantly cites): from Medes to Arzareth, passing through Tartary, from Arzareth to the American continent, crossing the Strait of Anian, perhaps even with dry feet. Furthermore, Israël brings forward the plausible hypothesis that “northern America” could have been connected to Asia in ancient times. (Ibid. 177) He comes up with the supposition that “this strait once was dry land.” This hypothesis resolves one major difficulty: “[...] on this same way the Israelites took, the animals arrived in America.” (Ibid. 179f.) In summary: “The Ten Tribes were able to easily pass over from Arzareth or Tartary to the Kingdom of Anian or Quivira, and, by that time, populated the continent of the New World, a territory as vast as Asia, Europe and Africa together.” (Ibid. 123) Moreover, Israël attributes to the first arrivals on the American continent, that is to the Israelites of the Ten Tribes, the construction of monumental buildings whose remains can still be admired today: “We can suppose that the great constructions that the Spaniards recently discovered in different places are the work of the Israelites before they hid in the mountains.” (Ibid. 132) Israël describes for example the site of “Tiahuanacu in the mountain range of Collao”, where there was a huge hall “dedicated to the creator of the universe.” (Ibid. 132) “(S)ince the Indians were idolators and did not know how to use iron tools

33 “The classical name for England in medieval Jewish literature is qeseh ha-‘ares, the ‘end of the earth’ an over-literal translation of ‘Angleterre’.” (Katz 147)

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to break stone”, they could not have been the constructors: rather, “we could suppose that it was a synagogue built by the Israelites.” (Ibid. 132) There is even more to it: Israël insists on the fact that the Ten Tribes never wandered all together. “Just as the Ten Tribes were held in captivity at different times, we can also presume that they did not reunite in one and the same region, but rather that they settled down in many different ones.” (Ibid. 134) Some groups remained at some place at some point in time, while others continued their peregrinations, so that one can find small groups of them everywhere. This brings Israël to the conclusion “[that] the Ten Tribes are disseminated and not located in one single place.” (Ibid. 174) In other words, their diaspora spread into every world region: we “can situate the Lost Tribes in the Western Indies, in China, at the borders of Tartary, beyond the Sambatyon River and the Euphrates in Medes, and in Ethiopia at the borders of Abyssinia.” (Ibid. 151) Reconciliation then led Israël to develop an inclusive conception of the Lost Tribes’ dispersion, according to which they could now be anywhere and anybody could claim to be a descendant. Here the globalising process of the Lost Tribes reaches its highest level of fulfilment. (Ben-Dor Benite 181) The second question asked about the origin of the Native Americans: are they in fact descendants of the Ten Tribes? In spite of his all-inclusive conception of dispersion, Israël’s response was resolutely negative. In addition, he denied the common strain of Iberian thinking: “The Spaniards who live in the West Indies generally believe that the Indians draw their origin from the Ten Tribes; they are manifestly wrong.” (Israël 121) Actually, the Native Americans originate from the Asian Tartars who followed the Israelites, meaning that they also crossed the Strait of Anian. Israël cannot avoid mentioning the whole range of similarities between Native Americans and Jews that fill an exhaustive bibliography. How to account for them? Israël’s solution is imitation: When you compare certain laws of the two peoples, you can find similarities in many points, so that you could easily conclude that the Indians borrowed them from the Jews while they lived among them, or received them from some of those who stayed while their coreligionists were hiding in the mountains. (Ibid. 124)

If the Native Americans on the one hand had the chance to adopt some customs or rules of Jewish origin, one is on the other hand not in a position to apply the reverse hypothesis, namely that the members of the Ten Tribes underwent a process of degeneration, and fell into paganism and barbarism. Actually, the differences between Natives and Jews are too many, the oppositions are insurmountable, and thus the least idea of a common origin is not conceivable:

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Evidently, it is wrong to believe that the Israelites could have lost their rites and ceremonies because the Jews [...] were the most gifted people in the world, in their bodies and in their minds. How could one identify the Jews with the Indians who in opposition to them are ugly and small-minded? And how to admit that they could have lost their own language entirely, the Hebrew letters and their religion that one preserves with even more zeal when one is far away from home? [...] The Americans are idolators and their customs are so barbarous that they resemble more the rude and crude ancient Tartars. (Ibid. 176f.)

Hope of Israel’s impact can be seen in the many editions and translations of it in which Menasseh ben Israël kept repeating the exalting announcement of “the imminence of our redemption”, of “the evidence that the end of time is near.” (172f., 160, 164) He also contributed, some fifteen years later, to the enthusiastic welcoming of the messianic movement of Sabbataï Zvi into the Jewish community of Amsterdam.

E PILOGUE

AND

C ONCLUSIONS

Despite Israël’s firm and reasonable refutations, the “Jewish Indian Theory” continued to be very popular, particularly in the Anglophone world. William Penn wrote in 1682 into his journal: “As far as the origin of these extraordinary people is concerned, I cannot help thinking that they are of the Jewish race, I would say that they originate from the Ten Long Lost Tribes.” (Ben-Dor Benite 142)34 In 1775, James Adair in his History of the American Indians continued to develop the argument of linguistic similarities: “the Indian dialects, like the Hebrew language, have a nervous and emphatic style of speech [...]. Their style is decorated with images, comparisons, strong metaphors, as in Hebrew.” (Ibid. 97) Elias Boudinot, an eminent patriot during the War for Independence and author of A Star in the West, or, a Humble Attempt to Discover the Long Lost Ten Tribes of Israel (1816), whose messianic dimension is inscribed into the current of the American and French revolutions, ardently supports the thesis of the Hebrew origin (Ibid. 182f.; Popkin 172ff.). Last but not least, we must recall (and honour) the passionate research of Lord Edward Kingsborough, who, in order to show that the Native Americans truly descended from the Ten Lost Tribes, dedicated his life and fortune to the acquisition of a magnificent collection of Mexican Codices and to the admirable publication Antiquities of Mexico (1st volume

34 The Quaker William Penn was the eponymous founder of Pennsylvania and its largest city Philadelphia.

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published in 1831). The author died completely ruined in 1837, imprisoned for debt. (Kingsborough; Ben-Dor Benite 183ff.; Popkin 76) Only to keep it in mind, I will mention here The Book of Mormon, the holy scripture of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, published in 1830 by Joseph Smith. Its origin is attributed to Meso-American prophecies originating from the Tribes of Israel. The latter are said to have immigrated to America after the destruction of the first Temple, and Jesus Christ is said to have appeared to them after his resurrection. The Amerindian populations, now degenerated, are not exclusively of Hebrew origin; everyone who remains of the Ten Lost Tribes lives hidden, but will, at the end of time, join the believers around John Smith. (BenDor Benite 79) * From the mid 19th century onwards, it became more and more difficult to support the thesis of the Hebrew origins of the Native Americans. What put an end to the “thesis of the Jewish Indian” was evidently better ethnographical knowledge of the indigenous societies. It was not sustainable anymore and stood in contradiction to the newly gained knowledge that there indeed should be many similarities between Native Americans and Hebrews regarding customs, languages, rites, etc. At the same time, the criteria for the reliability of ‘evidence’ changed: the Holy Scripture was not the basis of truth anymore, for objective observation had become the method of gaining primary truth, that is, from the incontestable priority of the biblical authority we passed to that of scientific positivism. While authors such as Gregorio García, Diego Andres Rocha or Menasseh ben Israël had developed an extremely rigorous argumentation – their arguments were lined up very rationally – they cannot convince anymore because basing their arguments on biblical premises did not give them an auspicious start. Henceforth, these premises are not accepted anymore; religious explanations are rejected in order to be replaced by so-called ‘scientific’ ones. I use ‘scientific’ here in quotation marks because we must keep in mind that in the middle of the 19th century the development of physical anthropology was primarily based on craniometry: in the United States Samuel Morton became an authority for many decades. In 1839 he published Crania Americana, or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America, measuring some hundreds of skulls, their forms, profiles, and volumes. These methods enabled him to evaluate intelligence based on volume, in order to consequently define the distinct characters of different human races, and, at the same time, to establish their hierarchy. The Native Americans also in-

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spired the beginnings of social anthropology in its founding researcher Lewis Henry Morgan, who worked on kinship systems (fieldwork among the Iroquois). Morgan dedicated his further research to establishing an evolutionist theory according to which the history of human societies followed different stages from savagery, to barbarism, to civilisation, ruled by an internal law that is oriented towards progress. To put it another way, be it physical or social anthropology, the scientific discourse of the time was imbued with the idea of a hierarchy of races and cultures, and the Native Americans were poorly situated. They now found themselves (together with Blacks) at the bottom of scale: they are classed as an inferior race and their societies are called “primitive”. This is a decree of mid-19thcentury science. The “Jewish Indian Theory” was certainly erroneous, but at least it had accorded dignity to the Native Americans that our social sciences didn’t recognize yet. Illustration 1: “Map attributed to Bartolomeo Colombo, 1503-1505”

Source: Crouzet, Denis. Christophe Colomb. Héraut de l’Apocalypse. Paris: Payot&Rivages, 2006, 354.

R EFERENCES Ben Israël, Menasseh. Espérance d’Israël. 1650. Trans. Henri Méchoulan and Gérard Nahon. Paris: Vrin, 1979. Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi. The ten lost tribes: a world history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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Crouzet, Denis. Christophe Colomb. Héraut de l’Apocalypse. Paris: Payot&Rivages, 2006. Durán, Diego. Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme. N.p., 1581. García, Gregorio. Origen de los Indios del Nuevo Mundo e Indias occidentales. Valencia, 1607. Katz, David S. Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England. 1603-1655. Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1982. King James Bible online. 19 October 2016. http://kingjamesbibleonline.org. Kingsborough, Edward King. Antiquities of Mexico: Comprising Fac-Similes of Ancient Mexican Paintings and Hieroglyphies. London, 1830-1848. Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Vol. 3, Chap. 6. Trans. Charles Cotton. N.p., 1877. 13 February 2017. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600h.htm. Morgan, Lewis Henry. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Washington, 1871. ---. Ancient Society, or Researches in the Line of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization. London, 1877. Morton, Samuel. Crania Americana. Or: A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America. Philadelphia, 1839. Popkin, Richard H. “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory.” Menasseh Ben Israel and his World. Eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henri Mechoulan, and Richard H. Popkin. Leiden: Brill, 1989. 63-82. Rocha, Diego Andres. Tratado Unico y Singular del Origen de los Indios Occidentales, del Piru, Mexico, Santa Fê, y Chile. Lima, 1681. Saupin, Guy (eds.). La péninsule Ibérique et le monde. 1470-1640. Rennes: Presses Univ. de Rennes, 2013. Thoroughgood, Thomas. Jewes in America, or the Probability that the Indians are Jewes. London, 1650

On the Cultural Coding of Skin Colour in Early Modern Contact Zones P ETER B URSCHEL

R ÉSUMÉ L’article a pour sujet un livre publié en 1650 très reconnu à l’époque: Miqweh Israel, The Hope of Israel. Son auteur, Rabbi Menasseh ben Israël, vécut et enseigna dans la première moitié du 17ème à Amsterdam. En s’appuyant sur plusieurs sources ce livre met en exergue une thèse irréfutable: les habitants des Indes étaient les descendants des Dix Tribus Perdues d’Israël (voir l’article précédent de Nathan Wachtel), et isolés dans les montagnes, ils avaient gardé leurs mœurs et leurs rites, et avant tout leur apparence. L’article examine les stratégies argumentatives qui ont rendu crédible une continuité culturelle, ethnique et religieuse – en tant qu’identité exclusive. Quelles étaient les garanties de leur crédibilité ? Sa réponse : Ce fut exclusivement la peau blanche des »Hébraïques« qui semblait prouver au 17ème siècle une reproduction culturelle »pure«.

I. W HITE 1 When I began exploring the history of purity, my attention was drawn to one observation in particular.1 The following reflections result from this observation. As I considered the relationship between sacred and ethnic purity in Jewish diaspora communities in early modern Europe, I came across a book by the scholar and Sephardic Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, who lived and taught in Amsterdam

1

About the background to this interest: Burschel, Reinheit. Also cf. Burschel and Marx, “Einleitung”.

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during the first half of the 17th century.2 Published in 1650 in Spanish, Latin and English, this book is entitled Miqweh Israel and is subtitled Esto es Esperança de Israel and Hoc est Spes Israelis. Or in the English version, upon which my reflections are based: The Hope of Israel.3 The book recounts discussions that Menasseh ben Israel conducted with Antonio de Montezinos, a Jew of Iberian origin, who arrived in Amsterdam in 1644 after a voyage from South America, where he announced that he had discovered descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel in the Andes. (Israel 105-11) Menasseh ben Israel supplemented the report with similar tales (Ibid. 60-95) and concluded that there could be no doubt: the people in the Andes about whom Montezinos and others had reported were indeed the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel who – and I now come to the mentioned observation – had preserved their old virtues, at least remnants of the Hebrew language, their customs and rites, and above all their appearance in the isolation of the mountains: “Israelites whom God preserves in that place against the day of redemption.” (Ibid. 120) For, according to Menasseh ben Israel, these people were “white”, “of white colour” like the “Spaniards” – and not “brown”, “of brown colour” like the “Indians”. Many of them had “yellow hair”, and the men wore long beards: “as the Spaniards have.” (Ibid. 122) At the same time, Menasseh ben Israel (one is tempted to say: proto-ethnographically) dismissed the ‘theories’ that had been circulating since the 16th century that all ‘Native Americans’ were of Hebrew origin.4 The ‘Indians’ had learnt from the Jews, he argued, before the latter withdrew to unknown mountain regions. In particular, they had learnt ritual practices; however, they were not actual descendants of the Jews. (above all: Ibid. 118-20) After all, everyone knew “that the Indians are deformed, dull, and altogether rude. And we have abundantly shown with how great study and zeal the Israelites have kept their language and religion out of their country.” (Ibid. 161) To leave no room for doubt: historical research and not least religious and cultural studies are quite familiar with the rabbi’s book, which was widely circulated at the time. There is for example no lack of studies that show quite plainly how it encouraged hopes of redemption, which in the 17th century had been swept up in many Jewish communities – because its publication appeared to

2

About Menasseh ben Israel here merely: Kaplan, Méchoulan, and Popkin.

3

Further versions followed in the 17th century; a Hebrew translation was published in 1698. The hereinafter used edition of the English text of 1652 with detailed introduction and commentary appeared in 1987.

4

When it comes to these ‘theories’, the following remains seminal: Huddleston. Cf. within this context also Powell. In this volume, cf. Wachtel.

O N THE CULTURAL CODING

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E ARLY M ODERN CONTACT ZONES | 45

have definitively proved for once and for all that the tribes of Israel and of Judah had been scattered throughout the world. This could mean only one thing: that the return of the Messiah was nigh.5 It was therefore nothing if not consistent that Menasseh ben Israel also expressly demanded that the Jews be readmitted to England, the “land at the end of the world” of medieval Hebrew. (Ibid. 99f. and passim)6 However, other studies – and these are very much in the majority – endeavour to show how the book was warmly received in Christian circles, and above all in Puritan circles, where it engendered expectations of redemption that were closely linked to the revitalisation of missionary hopes (and activities). This also demonstrates how closely Christian-Puritan and Jewish concepts of history and salvation were interrelated.7 However, to make one thing absolutely clear: the actual reason why Menasseh ben Israel declared that these people, in their isolated mountain settlements, were indeed direct descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel has not been addressed by academic research to date. Or, to be more specific: the question of skin colour, above all of the unaltered skin colour of the putative Hebrews, has not been posed to date. Nor has the question of whether there is a link between the skin colour of this group and the unchanged virtues, morals and rites that were said to characterise them. These are precisely the questions I wish to explore in the following – and above all for one reason: by endeavouring to demonstrate that these people living in isolation in the Andes were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, Menasseh ben Israel has unwittingly presented us with a rare opportunity to learn something about how it was possible in the early modern period to make credible a cultural or religious and ethnic continuity that stretched far back – in the form of an exclusive identity.8 However, this also means: whoever attempts to take the opportunity that Menasseh ben Israel offers here will also need to address the question of what guaranteed the credibility of this continuity as identity, or to be precise, what it was that made this seem irreducible.

5

Reference is made here only to the relevant passages in two ‘classic works’: Scholem

6

Concerning the political, social and mental context: Katz; Holmberg; Rauschenbach,

7

Examples: Popkin; Jewish Messianism; The Lost Tribes; Hartlib; Brunotte 111-7;

8

Cf. within this context Livingstone.

as well as: Yovel. here above all chapters 5 and 6. Metzger 133-8.

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II. W HITE

AND

B LACK

One statement crops up particularly frequently and regularly throughout the Hope of Israel: that the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes are white; white like the Spaniards, as Menasseh ben Israel repeatedly states, without ever having had contact with Spaniards, as he equally often stresses; (example: Ibid. 119) above all, however, white like the “Hebrews of old” were, from whom they descended. (programmatic: Ibid. 112f.) What does this finding signify? Menasseh ben Israel does not provide an answer himself, at least not explicitly. The beards of the putative Andean Jews are remarked on in his rendering of Antonio de Montezinos’ report. However, Montezinos appears not to have mentioned their skin colour, unless Menasseh ben Israel wanted to hold this information back from his readership. (Ibid. 108) References to relevant (Biblical) lineage narratives are also notably absent, for example, the genealogical lists and geographical attributions assigned to Noah and his three sons Ham, Sem and Japhet9 – which in the 17th century were enduringly ‘ethnicised’ through the expansion of the slave trade and its need for legitimacy. Whereby in particular the ‘Africanisation of Ham’ and consequently his ‘blackening’ (along with his descendants) acquired increasingly interpretive power: “By the nineteenth century, the connection of Ham with Africa had been so deeply embedded in European consciousness that it was seen as the correct reading even when it was clearly a later addition.”10 Incidentally: in the 16th century it was certainly not the case that Africa as a whole was associated with dark skin. For example, the originally Greek adage “Aethiopem dealbas” or “Aethiopem lavas”, in the sense of wasted effort, that Erasmus von Rotterdam popularised in his Adagia, related solely to Ethiopia, and did not mean that Ethiopia signified Africa (Massing). And it is certainly no coincidence that other ‘blackening’ processes also materialised geographically (and ethnically) only in the late medieval period. The third of the Three Wise

9

When Noah and his sons are mentioned, then in a different context: Menasseh ben Israel 101, 163 – as well as: Braude, “Les contes persans”.

10 Braude, “The Sons of Noah” 119. Cf. also McKee Evans; Haynes; Goldenberg; Kidd 54-78; Whitford.

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Men is a good example of this11, as is the history and adoration of black Madonnas.12

III. W HITE

AND

B ROWN

To reiterate, therefore: what is the meaning of the declaration, which Menasseh ben Israel repeatedly emphasises, that the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes were white? Or to put it circumspectly: what might this be thought to signify? If all relevant evidence is viewed in its entirety, then it becomes apparent that the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes described in the Hope of Israel were not merely white like their ancestors, white like the “Hebrews of old”, but were also white like the Spaniards – and that they are more or less consistently described as being white when it comes to comparing them with the “Indians” or with individual specified indigenous groups, who are consistently described as being brown. How does this observation help to answer the opening question? In my view, it does one thing above all: it shows how important it was to Menasseh ben Israel that the contact between Jews and Indians was limited to the early and one-sided cultural transfer process that I mentioned in the introduction. Whereby he uses skin colour as a distinguishing mark.13 To be precise: in his portrayal of the chromatic self-descriptions and world-descriptions provided by Europeans in South and Central America, Menasseh ben Israel follows the patterns that became more or less firmly established during the course of the 16th and early 17th century. To sum up this process, one could take a comparative look at two reference (and moreover high-profile) texts that describe the encounter between Christopher Columbus and his crew with inhabitants of Guanahaní Island on 12 October 1492: one in the journal of the admiral’s first “America” voyage, and one in the Historia de las Indias of Bartolomé de las Casas, that sets out a version of the journal entry drawn up around forty years later.14 While Columbus, in his journal entry, merely compares the skin colour of the inhabitants of Guanahaní with the skin colour of the inhabitants of the Canary Isles, the final port-of-

11 It was only from the mid-15th century onwards that Balthasar increasingly came to be depicted with black skin: Kaplan; Beer et al. 12 Schreiner 240 (and other places). For the context and beyond: Biller; Bindman, Dalton, and Gates, Jr. 13 Concerning the term “distinguishing mark” (Differenzmarkierung) in brief: Bähr, Burschel, and Vogel. 14 Cf. also: Hulme, “Tales of Distinction” – as well as: Sweet.

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call before the great Atlantic crossing: “they are of the colour of the Canarians, neither black nor white” and “none of them are black, but of the colour of the Canary islanders” (Columbus 66, 68),15 las Casas also includes a reference to the white skin of the Spaniards – and does so as a medium of perception and interpretation of the islanders themselves: The Indians, who gathered in large numbers to watch, were amazed when they saw the Christians, and were afraid of their beards, their clothing and their white skin; they approached the bearded men in great trepidation, the Admiral in particular. Because of the imposing stature and authority of his person, and because he was dressed in scarlet robes, they assumed that he was their commander. They touched the beards of the Spaniards and were astounded, for they did not have beards themselves, and they carefully inspected the white skin of their hands and faces. (Las Casas 553)

IV. W HITE 2 Against this backdrop, to return to the opening question, it is possible to state: by endeavouring to convince his readers that their white skin colour distinguished the Andean Jews from their Indian – brown – neighbours, Menasseh ben Israel is referring to a fundamental process. During this process the European perception of skin colour – instead of primarily skin markings, as had been the case in the Middle Ages16 – increasingly began to influence the European perception of the non-European ‘alien’. Indeed, one may even state that it was only during the course of the 16th century that skin colour became the ‘supra-individual’ distinguishing characteristic that made it possible to structure, to classify and not least to hierarchise intercultural encounters chromatically.17 This in turn shows that this process was not merely about the perception of skin colour per se, but instead always also addressed the question of who was white, and who was not.18 A question that Columbus had not yet posed himself, but that only one generation later had become so important for las Casas that he had the indigenous Tai-

15 On the contextualisation of this comparison: Aznar Vallejo. 16 Valentin Groebner’s work remains seminal to this distinction. “Haben Hautfarben eine Geschichte?”; Der Schein der Person 68–84, 98f.; “Maculae”. 17 For a trenchant (and imaginative) analysis of this process: Groebner, Der Schein der Person 85-108 – and (with a different accent), “Mit dem Feind schlafen”. 18 A question that ever since the transition from the 15th to the 16th century has been present – at least ‘subcutaneously’ – in all relevant European hierarchy discourses.

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nos themselves answer it. A question, not least, that from the middle of the 17th century also began to play an increasingly important role in North America. In the words of Winthrop D. Jordan: From the initially most common term Christian, at mid-century there was a marked shift toward the terms English and free. After about 1680, taking the colonies as a whole, a new term of self-identification appeared – white. (Jordan,52)19

Or in the words of Nancy Shoemaker: One of the first racial labels to be applied to any of the world’s peoples was negro or, in English, black. White emerged later, long after the death of Christopher Columbus who, like his European peers, identified himself foremost as Christian. The earliest claims to a white identity appear to have originated in major slaveholding regions. In the early 1700s, Carolina colonists, many of whom had emigrated from Barbados, already divided their world into white, black, and Indians. (Shoemaker 129)

However, this also means: Menasseh ben Israel sets out his ‘tale of discovery’ in the form of a colonial narrative of collective visibility.20 A narrative that ‘whitens’ a group in an intercultural context that since the 15th century in Europe itself had increasingly been described as dark-skinned.21 It was therefore only consistent that in the Hope of Israel he repeatedly also described this group as having long beards. Beards just like those worn by the Spaniards; beards which were also mentioned by las Casas. For it was the beard, from the Middle Ages on, that was considered the ‘badge of honour’ of the free (and white) man. And it was the beard that the – brown and later red – inhabitants of the “New World” were commonly said to lack.22

19 Cf. also Jordan, White over Black, and Vaughan. 20 Still leading the field in the analysis of colonial narratives (irrespective of provenance): Hulme, Colonial Encounters. 21 Nirenberg, “Conversion, Sex, and Segregation”; “Was there Race before Modernity?” here in particular 245 (note 27); “Anti-Judaism”, chapters 6 to 9, above all 229-37. 22 Schiebinger 120–5 (“That Majestic Beard”).

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V. W HITE

AND

P URE

I would like to return, once again, to the question with which I began. The Andine descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes in the Hope of Israel are white like the Spaniards – and now we know why. However, they are also white like their Hebrew forefathers – and consequently find themselves in a (not solely) chromatic continuity, in respect of which I would like to draw some conclusions. It has already been pointed out that skin colour has been a collective medium of ethnical and consequently of economical classification since the transition from the 15th to the 16th century – that is to say since the European intensification of slave trading.23 In the Middle Ages, skin colour was still considered a body colour that was determined by a person’s ‘complexio’ – by the different and changing blend of the respective individual bodily juices, whereby the mixture ratio was caused by factors such as climate, nutrition, age and gender. To put it simply, an ‘ideal’ or ‘well-tempered’ complexion arose when the bodily juices had a well-balanced ratio between the extremes of great heat and aridness, of great cold and moisture that corresponded to the skin or body colour black on the one hand, and white on the other.24 To cite another apposite example: ever since their discovery during the first half of the 14th century, the Canary Islands were considered especially ‘happy’ or ‘lucky’. This was not least because their inhabitants were said (inter alia by Boccaccio) to possess an ‘ideal’ skin colour between black and white (Padoan). When the inhabitants of the Canaries were taken into slavery in large numbers following the Spanish conquest towards the end of the 15th century (Aznar Vallejo), they also lost their ‘ideal’ skin colour attribution in a ‘blackening’ process. They became dark brown.25 During the course of the 16th century, however, the mediaeval concept of ‘complexio’ was discarded in medical, physiognomical and not least natural philosophy circles. Complexion “migrated”, as Valentin Groebner has said, from the invisible, internal and individual mixture of juices to the outward appearance of the body, and changed to become something essentially visible: something that was located on the skin. The term appeared in documents in the late 16th and early 17th century as a

23 Cf. via the literary sources named in notes 17 and 18, on an exemplary basis McKee, Uncommon Dominion; Bartlett; Epstein 185-90; McKee: “Inherited Status and Slavery”; Bethencourt, chapters 5, 6 and 10 as well as passim. 24 Cf. again the carefully delineated works of Valentin Groebner: “Haben Hautfarben eine Geschichte?”; Der Schein der Person 99-102; “Mit dem Feind schlafen” 330-3. 25 Examples: Groebner, Der Schein der Person 95-7.

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formula for the general physical constitution and in particular for skin colour. It expressly came to be used in these texts as a ‘natural’, innate, immutable category. (Groebner 101)

If, within the context of this development, one views Menasseh ben Israel’s attempt to construct a cultural or religious continuity through skin colour as an exclusive ethnic identity, then it may firstly be assumed that the rabbi was confident that this approach would encounter broad acceptance. For him – as for many of his contemporaries – complexion, skin colour must have been something that could not be changed. At any rate, the mediaeval concept that Ethiopians who settled in northern climes would change their skin colour in only a few generations, as Jean Bodin wrote in 1566 in his (undoubtedly influential) work Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, was certainly no longer widely accepted from the mid-17th century onwards. (Tooley) But what guaranteed the credibility of this continuity? It has frequently been noted in the academic field that in the Middle Ages a variety of different routes existed, to quote David Nirenberg, with which to transmit “cultural characteristics across generations”. These included, for example “pedagogy and nurture, which did not necessarily invoke nature, inheritance, or sexual reproduction.” (Conversion, Sex, and Segregation 255) In the 15th century, though, these avenues became increasingly disregarded. Starting with a “genealogical turn” on the Iberian Peninsula, the concept became increasingly established throughout Europe “that the reproduction of culture is embedded in the reproduction of the flesh.” (Ibid. 255, 257)26 At the same time, there is agreement that this process of the naturalisation of ancestry was also a process of naturalisation of purity (or of impurity). This is illustrated paradigmatically above all by the notion that contemporaries called limpieza de sangre, the “purity of blood”.27 This concept aimed primarily to allow the scope of ecclesiastical heresy laws to be widened to include the descendants of converted Jews and Muslims. This, on the one hand, equated apostasy with heresy, and on the other – contrary to the Pauline principle of equality before God within the Christian faith – assumed that heretical propensities were inherited through blood. Quite simply, it ignored the meaning of baptism. (Walz, here in particular 342-59) It was moreover a notion that anthropologized and popularized with its new meaning a term (and concept) that

26 The work is (at least mostly) also available in German: “Das Konzept von Rasse“, here 68f.; cf. “Race and the Middle Ages”, here inter alia 81. Exemplary for a panEuropean perspective: Teuscher; as well as summarising: Burschel, Reinheit 50-2. 27 On the limpieza de sangre as discourse and practice – going beyond David Nirenberg’s studies – here merely Kamen; and above all Hering Torres.

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until the transition from the 15th to the 16th century had been used more or less exclusively to describe the lineage of dogs and horses: the term “race” – raza, razza, Rasse.28 In other words: whosoever enquires about patterns of body colour or skin colour perception and interpretation since the late Middle Ages, is always also investigating cultural reproduction processes. These became increasingly anthropologized and biologized during the early modern period, as is evidenced by the rather extraordinary and moreover remarkably tenacious popularity of purity discourses, purity models and purity practices. One may argue whether this popularity makes it possible to say that purity was ‘invented’ in the early modern era. Or to be more precise, perhaps: that purity was invented as a “cultural code” in the early modern era. However, it remains beyond contention, I believe, that this epoch’s obsession with purity strove to draw internal and external boundaries. The goal was to create one condition above all – unambiguity.29 This search for unambiguity is also at work in the Hope of Israel. After all, this work needed to make the exclusive and continuous transmission of the virtues, customs and rites of the Hebrews “of old” seem credible. Even in the mid17th century, however, this could almost only be effected through the agency of skin colour, whose socially impregnating force must also have been as familiar to the convert Menasseh ben Israel30 as the increasing stigmatisation of people with brown or ‘mixed’ – i.e. impure – as well as black skin colour.31 A stigmatisation that in the 18th century caused the inhabitants of the Americas to become ‘red’32 while those of East Asia became ‘yellow’ (Demel; Keevak) – not least within the context of earlier race theories.33 Against this backdrop it is also beyond question that the supposed Andine descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel could only be white, as their ancestors had been.34 For in the 17th century

28 de Miramon; Nirenberg, “Was there Race before Modernity?” 248-57. 29 For example Burschel, Reinheit 20-2, 56-8. 30 On the topic of ‘social impregnation’ by colour: Schausten 14f. 31 Cf. e.g. Katzew; or alternatively (from a very different perspective) Slanička, “Der zweifarbige Bastard”, and for an overview, the relevant chapter in: Bethencourt. 32 Shoemaker, “Indians”; ibid., A Strange Likeness; Kirchberger. 33 Cf. in addition to the literature cited in note 32 Demel; Keevak; Benthien 169-78 – and taking a broad perspective: Becker. Also always worth reading in this context is Böckelmann. 34 It goes without saying that the relevant traditional Judaeo-Christian significance of colour (including the skin colour) “white” needs to be considered in this context. Cf.

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only this skin colour still guaranteed the exclusive ethnic continuity, without which, even for Menassah ben Israel, an unaltered, a ‘pure’ ‘reproduction of culture’ had become unimaginable.

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in this conjunction e.g. Epstein 18-24; Bennewitz and Schindler; Meier and Suntrup 39-78.

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---. “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods.” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 103-42. Brunotte, Ulrike: “‘New Israel’ in der Neuen Welt und der Ursprung der ‘Indianer’. Zur millenaristischen Ethnographie des frühen amerikanischen Puritanismus.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 8 (2000): 109-24. Burschel, Peter, and Christoph Marx. “Einleitung”. Reinheit. Eds. Peter Burschel, and Christoph Marx. Wien/Köln/Weimar: Böhlau, 2011. 7-13. Burschel, Peter. Die Erfindung der Reinheit. Eine andere Geschichte der frühen Neuzeit. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014. Columbus, Christopher. The “Diario” of Christopher Columbusʼs First Voyage to America 1492-1493. Abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. Eds. Oliver Dunn, and James E. Kelley, Jr. Norman/London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. Demel, Walter. “Wie die Chinesen gelb wurden. Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Rassentheorien.” Historische Zeitschrift 255 (1992): 625-66. Epstein, Steven A. Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Goldenberg, David M. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. Groebner, Valentin. “Haben Hautfarben eine Geschichte? Personenbeschreibungen und ihre Kategorien zwischen dem 13. und dem 16. Jahrhundert.” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 30 (2003): 1-17. ---. Der Schein der Person. Steckbrief, Ausweis und Kontrolle im Europa des Mittelalters. München: Beck, 2004. ---. “Maculae. Hautzeichen als Identifikationsmerkmale zwischen dem 14. und dem 16. Jahrhundert.” Micrologus 13 (2005): La pelle umana/The Human Skin: 345-58. ---. “Mit dem Feind schlafen. Nachdenken über Hautfarben, Sex und ʻRasse’ im spätmittelalterlichen Europa.” Historische Anthropologie 15 (2007): 327-38. Haynes, Stephen R. Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Hering Torres, Max Sebastián. Rassismus in der Vormoderne. Die “Reinheit des Blutes” im Spanien der Frühen Neuzeit. Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 2006. Holmberg, Eva Johanna. Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination: A Scattered Nation. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Huddleston, Lee Eldrige. Origins of the American Indians: European Concepts, 1492-1729. Austin/London: University of Texas Press, 1967.

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Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 14921797. London/New York: Routledge, 1986. ---. “Tales of Distinction: European Ethnography and the Caribbean.” Implicit Understandings. Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and other Peoples in the Early Modern Era. Ed. Stuart B. Schwartz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 157-97. Jordan, Winthrop D. White over Black. American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968. ---. The White Man’s Burden. Historical Origins of Racism in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Kamen, Henry. “Race, limpieza et noblesse dans l’Espagne du XVIe siècle.” Sociétés et Idéologies des Temps Modernes. Hommage à Arlette Jouanna. Eds. Joël Fouilleron, Guy Le Thiec, and Henri Michel. Vol. 2. Montpellier: PULM, 1996. 721-30. Kaplan, Paul H.D. The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Research Press, 1985. Kaplan, Yosef, Henry Méchoulan, and Richard A. Popkin (eds.). Menasseh ben Israel and His World. Leiden: Brill 1989. Katz, David S. Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603-1655. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Katzew, Ilona. Casta Painting. Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2004. Keevak, Michael. Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011. Kidd, Colin. The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kirchberger, Ulrike. “Nordamerikanische Indianer und britische Kolonisten im Siebenjährigen Krieg.” Der Siebenjährige Krieg (1756-1763). Ein europäischer Weltkrieg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Ed. Sven Externbrink. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011. 127-39. Las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de. Obras Completas. Vol. 3: Historia de las Indias. Eds. Miguel Angel Medina, Jesús Angel Barreda, and Isacio Pérez Fernández. Vol. 1. Madrid: Alianza, 1995. Livingstone, David N. Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Massing, Jean Michel. “From Greek Proverb to Soap Advert: Washing the Ethiopian.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 58 (1995): 180-201. McKee, Sally. Uncommon Dominion: Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

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---. “Inherited Status and Slavery in Late Medieval Italy and Venetian Crete.” Past and Present 182 (2004): 31-53. McKee Evans, William. “From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: The Strange Odyssey of the ‘Sons of Ham’.” American Historical Review 85 (1980): 15-43. Meier, Christel, and Rudolf Suntrup (eds.). Handbuch der Farbenbedeutung im Mittelalter. 2nd Part: Lexikon der allegorischen Farbendeutung. Köln/ Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2011 (advanced version on CD-ROM). Menasseh ben Israel. The Hope of Israel. English translation by Moses Wall, 1652. Ed. Henry Méchoulan, and Gérard Nahon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Metzger, Hans-Dieter. “Heiden, Juden oder Teufel? Millenarismus und Indianermission in Massachusetts 1630–1700.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27 (2001): 118-48. Miramon, Charles de. “Noble Dogs, Noble Blood: the Invention of the Concept of Race in the Late Middle Ages.” The Origins of Racism in the West. Eds. Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 200-16. Nirenberg, David. “Conversion, Sex, and Segregation: Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain.” The American Historical Review 107 (2002): 1065-93. ---. “Das Konzept von Rasse in der Forschung über mittelalterlichen iberischen Antijudaismus.” Jüdische Gemeinden und ihr christlicher Kontext in kulturräumlich vergleichender Betrachtung von der Spätantike bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. Eds. Christoph Cluse, Alfred Haverkamp, and Israel J. Yuval. Hannover: Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2003. 49-72. ---. “Race and the Middle Ages: The Case of Spain and Its Jews.” Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires. Eds. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. 71-87. ---. “Was there Race before Modernity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain.” The Origins of Racism in the West. Eds. Miriam EliavFeldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 232-64. ---. Anti-Judaism. The Western Tradition. New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. Padoan, Giorgio. “Petrarcha, Boccaccio e la scoperta delle Canarie.” Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 7 (1964): 263-77.

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Popkin, Richard H. “Jewish Messianism and Christian Millenarism.” Culture and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment. Ed. Perez Zagorin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. 67-90. ---. “The Lost Tribes, the Caraites and the English Millenarians.” Journal of Jewish Studies 37 (1986): 213-27. ---. “Hartlib, Dury and the Jews.” Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation. Studies in Intellectual Communication. Ed. Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 118-36. Powell, Joseph F. The First Americans: Race, Evolution, and the Origin of Native Americans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Rauschenbach, Sina. Judentum für Christen. Vermittlung und Selbstbehauptung Menasseh ben Israels in den gelehrten Debatten des 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2012. Schausten, Monika. “Die Farben imaginierter Welten in Literatur und Kunst der Vormoderne und der Neuzeit.” Die Farben imaginierter Welten. Zur Kulturgeschichte ihrer Codierung in Literatur und Kunst vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Monika Schausten. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012. 11-29. Schiebinger, Londa: Nature’s Body. Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Boston: Rutgers University Press, 1993. Scholem, Gershom. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676. London: Routledge&Paul Kegan, 1973. Schreiner, Klaus. Maria. Jungfrau, Mutter, Herrscherin. München/Wien: Hanser, 1994. Shoemaker, Nancy. “How Indians Got to Be Red.” The American Historical Review 102 (1997): 625-44. ---. A Strange Likeness. Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Slanička, Simona. “Der zweifarbige Bastard. Exemplarische Mischlinge im Mittelalter.” Bastard. Figurationen des Hybriden zwischen Ausgrenzung und Entgrenzung. Eds. Andrea Bartl, and Stephanie Catani. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010. 49-65. Sweet, James H. “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought.” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 143-66. Teuscher, Simon. “Flesh and Blood in the Treatises on the Arbor Consanguinitatis (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries).” Blood and Kinship. Matter for Metaphor from Ancient Rome to the Present. Eds. Christopher H. Johnson et al. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013. 83-104.

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Tooley, Marian. “Bodin and the Medieval Theory of Climate.” Speculum 28 (1953): 64-83. Vaughan, Alden D. Roots of American Racism. Essays on the Colonial Experience. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Walz, Rainer. “Die Entwicklung eines religiösen Rassismus in der Frühen Neuzeit. Die Exklusion der Conversos.” Integration – Segregation – Vertreibung. Religiöse Minderheiten und Randgruppen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel. Eds. Klaus Herbers, and Nikolas Jaspert. Berlin 2011: LIT Verlag. 337-62. Whitford, David Mark. The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era: The Bible and the Justification for Slavery. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Spinoza and Other Heretics. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, 1992.

Islands in the Maelstrom East German Families’ Coping with Chaos in the Unification Contact Zone O LAF R EIS

R ÉSUMÉ La contribution décrit des stratégies de navigation des familles de l’Allemagne de l’Est dans le chaos après la réunification. Presque du jour au lendemain, l’Allemagne de l’Est est devenue une zone de contact dans laquelle il fallait apprendre les pratiques culturelles de l’Ouest. En se basant sur la théorie de l’individuation qui décrit les relations sociales selon les deux concepts de »relationnalité« et de »separation«, nos analyses des stratégies de contact montrent que ce ne sont pas seulement les individus qui s’individualisent l’un de l’autre, mais aussi les familles par rapport au monde extérieur. Les relations intra- et extrafamiliales forment un ensemble à la base duquel les différentes formes de contact entre les différents membres de la famille et le monde extérieur peuvent être prédéterminées. Notre recherche s’est portée sur la question de savoir pourquoi le changement social qui résultait de la chute du mur a affecté certaines familles plus que d’autres. Les réponses ont été trouvées dans l’histoire familiale. Le contact avec le chaos post-unificateur auquel les familles ont été confrontées, dépend en majeure partie de leur »niche«. Cette dernière prédit comment les familles ont affronté le changement. Pendant que les familles naviguaient dans le chaos, elles changeaient aussi leurs habitudes de contact.

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1. I NTRODUCTION The concept of the ‘contact zone’ bears much fruit when looking at the history of Germany, in the recent past as well as the more ancient. For centuries, as the geographical centre of Europe, Germany has been a place where cultures met and clashed, where narratives of superiority and inferiority, of segregation and assimilation, and of uniformity and variety, formed a culture between (more western) ideas of individualism and (more eastern) ideas of collectivism. This schism reached its peak in 1961 when Germany was divided by an inimical wall separating the spheres of interest of the victorious powers of World War 2. Almost overnight, intra-German contact was reduced to a minimum. Contact between East and West Germans became more or less unidirectional along the wall, which is why I coined the term “os(t)mosis”. West German relatives, gift packages and television shows somehow passed the wall easily, but there was almost no chance for the other way around. I was born into the first East German generation to experience the wall as a preexisting fact despite my father’s idea to go from West to East, against the mainstream of refugees in 1960. When the wall came down in 1989 I started to conduct developmental research within a postsocialist contact zone of a special kind. As today, a flood of refugees demanded quick action. Action was taken by negotiating the unification treaty during the summer of 1990. Compared to Poland, Hungary, or Romania, East Germany experienced a much softer landing in global capitalism. But still, it faced tremendous social change. With the unification treaty, 777 new legal regulations came into effect. (Winkler; cf. Merten and Otto) 237 legal regulations of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) ceased to be in force on October, 3d, 1990. During the time ‘between the systems’ (March-October 1990), 300 new laws and legal regulations were enacted. Institutions were dissolved and replaced; job markets, housing markets, and partner markets changed and created all sorts of proximal unification stressors (Silbereisen and Pinquart), challenging traditional ways of coping or participating for East Germans. As two participants of the Rostock Longitudinal Study (ROLS) introduced above put it: M: [...] our plans failed very often, now after the unification. People just pretend to be successful, I guess (P5:179)1. P: [means his sister] [...] she always was difficult, spoiled, a school-dropout [...] she became a victim of the unification. My brother, too [...] was imprisoned and all that, taken

1

Quotation mark, refers to original text (hermeneutic unit).

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into custody. It was in the newspapers. No education anymore, my father let things slide. He does not want to have anything to do with anything. (P106:52-8) M: The unification, that was a shock, I have to admit [...] everything was turned down, everything was bad all of a sudden. (P117:107, 109)

A new de-industrialized contact zone emerged, consisting of a system that migrated from West to East. This kind of system-migration confined East Germans’ participation to establishing a copy of West German administrative democracy. Narratives developed quickly of superiority and inferiority of ideas, social systems, practices, and persons – and produced a climate of disappointment, insecurity and alienation for many East Germans. The stereotypes ‘Ossi’ and ‘Wessi’ were born, indicating a “nation within a nation” (Anderson), determined “by the style in which they were imagined”. In the words of Pratt, East Germany became a space “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of power.” (34) This new kind of society called for different practices of participation, which are of a “cultural nature”. (Rogoff) Naturally, different generations of East Germans were differently endowed to face this contact. The “generational entelechy” (Mannheim) for older East Germans was the establishment, defense, or survival of the GDR, while for many – certainly not all – younger East Germans ‘escape’ defined theirs. Escaping the totalitarian system meant emigration, either the hard way via an application to leave the GDR or the easier way inwards. Topics like these framed different sorts of ‘contact’ between the family and the communist system of the GDR. Contact patterns developed into cultural practices which were used by families to navigate not only the reality of a totalitarian society but also the “chaos” after the unification. The purpose of this paper is 1) to introduce the theory of individuation and the concept of the ‘niche’ to define patterns of cultures or ‘contact’ between social agents, such as parents and children, but also between families and the outer world, and 2) to provide insights into mechanisms of ‘contact’ after the wall – about their nature and their intersystemal associations. In the end, I hope to show that the practices families used to navigate the contact zone after the wall depend on other contacts, such as the family niche they come from, or the kind of relationships parents and children have with each other.

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2. A T HEORY ABOUT C ONTACT R EGULATION : I NDIVIDUATION The term ‘individuation’ stems from psychoanalysis where it describes the process of becoming oneself, often by achieving personal autonomy from parents. While C.G. Jung and others centered their views on children, later approaches focused on adolescents (Blos; Sullivan) and were adopted by American social psychologists during the 1980s. Studies like the ones of Youniss and Smollar or Grotevant and Cooper developed the theory of individuation into a twodimensional approach describing not only autonomy, but also relatedness. (Reis and Buhl) ‘Relatedness’ is characterized by a sense of obligation, respect, selfdisclosure and attachment. Autonomy or ‘separateness’ denotes independence from the other’s authority and/or the construction of a separate self. Those ideas were complemented by concepts of ‘social distance’ and ‘agency’ to describe contacts between parents and children in different cultures. (Kağitçibaşi) Buhl described individuation in emotional, cognitive and behavioral dimensions, finding that separateness and relatedness are expressed differently in different dimensions. For my purposes, which were to describe intersystemic contacts on levels higher than those between generations (e.g. institutions), I extended the individuation theory. (Reis “Nischen”) As for contacts, my general hypothesis is that contacts on different systemic levels affect each other, be it in a top-down or a bottom-up direction of influence. Moreover, drawing on Rogoff's ideas about changing cultures I assume that these kinds of intersystemic contact “produce” social change or vice versa. (Reis “Nischen”)

3. C ONTACT BETWEEN AN I NTRUSIVE S TATE AND F AMILIES IN E AST G ERMANY : N ICHES For the description of intergenerational individuation in East German families we used the data of the Rostock Longitudinal Study (ROLS). The ROLS started as a study looking into the life-long influence of perinatal (birth-related) factors in 1970 with the births of about 300 children in Rostock, a harbor town in northern East Germany. Data about individual health, social risks, and personality development were collected before and after the German unification in 1990 (Ihle et al.). In 1998, quantitative data were complemented by a qualitative approach. 34 children (aged about 28 years) and their parents (aged between 45 and 65)

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from 17 conflictual and 17 non-conflictual families2 were asked to report on their relationships throughout time, from 1970 to 1998. Interviews were transcribed into 3.500 pages of text which were coded by a team of four raters. After a period of grounded coding (Glaser and Strauss)3, individuation codes were added. Individuation codes addressed all sorts of social relations or ‘contacts’, such as parent-child, but also family-school, family-welfare center, and the like. After this coding scheme was established it was applied to the whole text wherein parents or children spoke about all sorts of contact. These contacts were rated as either separateness or relatedness, and for many more different dimensions (time, social agency, relation to social change, and others). When we analyzed statements about parent-child-relations during communist times (1970-89) we were puzzled by quotations like this one: P: I did not have the right attitude, that’s what he said [meant father], because – military and party member and all that, then children have to do well in school. I: Your father was in the military? P: Yep. Sergeant. Here party, there army, of course, at home it had go the right way. (P106:38)

Here, the son constructs a relation between his contact to his father and his father’s contact to the outer world, here the communist party and the military, where the father works as a sergeant. We scanned our codes for institutions that were named in interviews regarding the family and found all sorts of institutions (see Figure 1) and contact patterns.

2

Conflicts within families were identified by using quantitative longitudinal data about parent-child relationships, then were modelled as latent constructs turned into scales. Where parents and children both described their relationships as tense across several points of measurement (high scores on latent construct), the family was coded as “conflictual”. If both agreed on low scores, the family was classified as “nonconflictual”.

3

Grounded coding describes a basic process of understanding narratives, wherein the content of the text itself is turned into codes. This kind of coding differs from theoryguided coding wherein the statement fits some assumption made by the person reading the text.

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Figure 1: Intra- and extrafamilial contacts in East Germany

Families had to navigate their way through a totalitarian network of intrusive institutions. By ‘intrusive’ I mean that these extrafamilial systems tried to penetrate familial borders. For instance, young students were asked by their teachers how the clock on their television looked. If children described a particular kind of clock the ‘system’ knew that parents were watching West German television. The ‘system’ was defined by a sinister network of spying that connected all sorts of extrafamilial systems (Figure 1, light grey). The information that a family was watching West German TV ‘somehow’ reached the enterprises where parents worked, perhaps excluding them from benefits. This ‘nexus of information’ had to be faced and families constructed their ‘contacts’ in different ways. We developed codes for this kind of family-system-interactions according to the individuation theory. In the end, we determined three ‘types’ of contact which we described as “niches” (cf. Reis “Families”). The concept of the “niche” was previously used in anthropological research (Super and Harkness) but also in journalistic work about East Germany (Gaus). As described elsewhere, our typology followed a topological approach. (Reis “Families” 416) “Niches” were classified along a continuum based on how they balanced separateness with relatedness.

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Figure 2: A topology of family niches within East German society (cf. Reis “Families”)

We called the first type of contact the “related/open niche”, which meant that individuation was skewed towards relatedness. At least two of the following criteria had to be true for this kind of contact: a) family borders were rather “open”, with some members holding positions close to the system, e.g. functionaries, military officers. b) values claimed by the parents were congruent with the official ideology of the communist system, c) significant functions of the family, such as education, were voluntarily outsourced to institutions. This strategy was often accompanied by separating children from ‘invidualistic influences’, such as West German television or kin. 14 of 34 families were classified as being ‘close to the system’4, i.e. “related”. The second type of contact was called “balanced”, because for this niche contacts were evenly balanced between separateness and relatedness-constructions. Families used institutional benefits, such as vacation spots provided by mass organisations, but without internalizing the values promoted by these institutions. Children from these families learned to differentiate communication inside and outside the family. In order to maintain their private lives, families flexibly adapted their strategies and borders. Often they endorsed a defined family paradigm (Reiss and Olivieri), such as proud craftsmanship, often supported by cultural and/or physical capital. Using these criteria, 11 families were classified as belonging to “balanced” niches. The con-

4

The term ‘close to the system’ (systemnah) was also used within legal reconditioning procedures after the wall. Persons designated as close to the system were often excluded from responsible positions in politics, education, or the military, but not in the economy.

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tacts of “separated” niches (see right in Figure 2) were skewed towards separateness. Here, parents rigidly refused to adapt to pressures from the intrusive society. Parents often forbade their children to join youth organizations, or to participate in public practices, such as rites de passage (Jugendweihe). They often tried to control their children’s relations with other children or the school. Parents from these families more often reported being traumatized by the system, e.g. by losing relatives to “disappearances” during the early decades of East Germany (1950s and 60s). For instance, one mother reported how she and her husband were expelled from the university during the early 1950s for getting involved in a church community. Both parents were forced into lower-level professions to ‘prove their value to the society’. In two cases intrafamilial conditions obliged families to close their borders to institutions (mental problems, homosexuality). In addition, family paradigms of being isolated within a hostile world were sometimes coupled with deep religiosity. Five out of 32 families, all of them with long-standing conflicts, were classified as separated. As shown elsewhere (Reis “Families”), these ‘contact paradigms’ affected the way parents and children interacted with one another after the wall, when their niches were framed by completely different social structures. Both parents and children viewed their relationships and the change around them as connected in many ways. (Reis “Wandel”)

4. S TRATEGIES

FOR

C OPING WITH “C HAOS ”

4.1 Unlearning and Learning ‘Contact’ An important part of social change after unification was a narrative of victorious capitalism. Naturally, niches which were closer to the communist system were more severely affected. Military officers were dismissed or downgraded, party officials lost their jobs and power, academics were scanned for their ‘system affinity’, and the like. P_97:65: I destroyed my personnel file [...] it was from 1975, what should I‘ve done with it? [...] but then they accused me of impeding investigation. Thus, I did not get my pension. That is how they wanted to get rid of the old squads.

Many of the parents of the ROLS took advantage of early retirement, took on lower-level work and/or retreated into privacy. All participants were asked how

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they adapted to the change, what kind of strategies they had to unlearn, and what kind of strategies they deemed necessary. When asked for strategies they had to unlearn people answered all sorts of things. Many of these strategies regarded contacts. Codes were classified into three broader categories of contact. “Openness” means that either parents (first number in cells of table 1) or children (second number) reported having to overcome their openness and becoming more suspicious toward non-family members, institutions etc. “Ostalgia” means that participants reported that they refused to change their practices and they tried to stick with their image of the good old days in East Germany. Their statements addressed “a sense of belonging”, “solidarity in society”, or “collegiality”. “Naivety” means families lost their trust in all kinds of everyday business, such as buying things at the door, buying insurance (from relatives), or buying (used) cars. Table 1: Number of families unlearning contact strategies after German unification. First number – parents, second number – children. Families not classified not reported here; extract from a bigger table reported in (Reis “Nischen”).

Type of niche balanced related separated

Openness 0/1 5/1 0/0

Ostalgia 3/0 5/3 0/2

Naivety in business 3/2 3/0 0/2

In general, families from related niches had to unlearn contact strategies more often than families from balanced or separated niches. Those families experienced the new system as “intrusive” and stuck to older ideas of socialism being the ‘society which cared’. Interestingly, those parents often used knowledge and narratives about ‘capitalism’ they had learned before the unification. M: No, I did not want capitalism, I mean I have studied economics and even negotiated with capitalists my whole life. [...] there is no way for unification, one succeeds, one loses, that’s all, unification, that’s idiocy. (P123:140)

Parents from related niches were more stubborn in doing so compared to their children (ratio 5/1). Trusting business regulations however, was a strategy that almost everyone had to unlearn. Parents from separated niches however, did not report unlearning contact strategies at all. For them, their seclusiveness had

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worked for socialism and was somehow transferred to the new system. A mother from a separated family explains this: I: [...] so your husband refused to recognize the system? M: Completely. I: and now he is [...] M: Now everything is wonderful [...]. one day we might even join the CDU [a political party], finally, but no. (P7:128)

This mother expresses her husband’s joy about having been right all along. He considers joining the Christian-Democratic party but cannot get over the practice of distancing he is used to. Table 2: Number of families learning new contact strategies after German unification. First number – parents, second number – children. Families not classified not reported here, extract from a bigger table reported elsewhere (Reis “Nischen”), some interviews not classified.

Type of niche balanced related separated

Democracy 1/1 0/3 0/1

Autonomy 0/4 2/8 0/4

Egoism 0/0 3/3 0/1

The pictures changed somewhat, when new strategies to be learned were examined. Many more practices that needed to be learned were coded than practices that needed to be unlearned. Practices to be learned dealt with “modern things”, such as using a personal computer, preparing for new kinds of jobs, or travelling to distant countries. Some of the strategies regarded contacts, such as “learning autonomy”, “learning democracy”, or “learning to optimize your benefit in interactions” (egoism). First of all, children more often reported learning new strategies of participation. The idea that democracy has to be learned affected young adults more often than their parents. A 28-year-old girl from a related niche said: P: [...] I learned that, holding myself back a little, and when our talk degenerates into a discussion – I put an effort into understanding the other one [she means her parents]. [...] I affirmed the old state, having ideals, I know [...] but my friend and his family acted as counterparts, being more critical now. (P116:64/65)

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Here, the young woman describes practices that individuation theory suggests – reciprocity is learned in contexts outside the family and then transposed to it afterwards (Youniss and Smollar). Still, she understands a “discussion” as “degenerated talk”, signaling her origins in a non-discursive culture. Utterances about “learning autonomy” often reflected the special position of the children’s generation in time. For them, the start of adulthood merged with the start of a new system. “Autonomy” means following changes actively and constantly qualifying. P: I think it’s a little bit this generation, these ‘children of the unification’ [in German language: Wendekinder], half formed by the GDR, and now we have to upgrade our adulthood to a capitalist level. [...] for the ones coming after us it has been easier. They did not experience the GDR, they did not compare so much. They were trained to think critically [mitdenken] and to teach themselves from the beginning. (P156:158)

Again, the communist society is described as a caring one, but also a place where it was hard to learn to think autonomously. “Egoism” denotes strategies that participants described wherein they learned to place themselves at the expense of others. P: [...] I could imagine now working for a real estate company and switching to the other side. Why not? I need to earn my money [...] nobody knows what the company requires [...] to bamboozle customers, to negotiate contracts that put others at disadvantage [...]. That remains to be seen. But I am open now for everything [...]. (P98:132) M: Yes, I became more self-confident, even more than I was before, I tell myself ‘You have to do this’, my husband, well, he does not go along with me, he lags behind. [...] sometimes I think I am turning into a women’s libber [...]. I: What do you think a women’s libber is? M: [...] a woman only being woman, only thinking about herself, not listening to anyone, just being solid as a rock [...] but that’s not me, perhaps. (P123:129)

In both cases, participants express their uneasiness with being “egoistic”, but they deem it necessary to behave this way in global capitalism. In sum, cultural practices on the family level, here called ‘niches’, defined ‘contacts’ between family members and the totalitarian society of the GDR. Depending on their starting points, families changed at different speeds and depths. Families from ‘system-affine’ niches had to unlearn more of their strategies. A major part of coping with change was a change in strategies for how to approach society. Regulating the relationship with institutions and markets however, was often embedded into a re-negotiation of intrafamilial roles, as has been shown in

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other examples of rapid social changes, such as the Great Depression (Elder), the Iowa farm crisis (Conger and Elder) or the 1980s economic crisis in Germany (Walper). 4.2 Changing Niches Families from open niches more often reported strategies of “closing borders”, of unlearning “trust in others”, and the like. The question arose if they would change their type of niche in order to deal with chaos. To find the answer, all 11 families of this type were examined for their extrafamilial individuation after the wall. As Figure 3 shows, families from related niches developed different patterns of contact with the chaotic society. Three families remained “open” to the outer world (upper part of figure). Families and children here stayed in civil service, being taken on by new governmental institutions. For them, adapting to new institutional values posed no difficulties. Other families from related niches looked at those scornfully as ‘turncoats’ (in German language: Wendehals). Four of 11 families developed more balanced constructions. Here, families retained some of their values but adapted to the new free-market society and took advantage of new opportunities. In other words, they behaved as balanced families had during communism. This kind of construction could take on strange appearances. F: And our son, although he works in X [West Germany, as a building contractor], he still is a member of the PDS [successor party of the former communist party], [...] I stay a member, he says [father is moved]. M: They don’t need us, financially, I mean [...] I: But your son, we wouldn’t tell the others about the PDS-membership, would he? F: No, no [laughs], his party card stays here with me [points to a closed cupboard]. He should do his work now, being lucky, having a job. [... ] my other children, they are not politically involved anymore. The worst thing was my oldest daughter, calling us about religion. She wanted to send her children to school [in West Germany], but there was only a religious one [...]. They asked her what religion she has [...] some kind, any kind, Lutheran, Catholic, Muslim [...] something [...]. M: So, she calls us [laughs] to get advice which religion she should report [...] F: If it’s right if she signs as Lutheran, yes I say, those are not as strict, don’t take it all too seriously, now she is Lutheran [laughs]. (P_115:74ff.)

For this family, Christmas was a special kind of feast. Children returned from West German places of residence to their parents’ home in the East. While girls

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decorated the tree, boys sat with their father in the kitchen playing cards and having a beer. After that, the family gathered in the kitchen to read the newspaper while the women prepared the meal. The newspaper was the successor of the old communist press. Together, they would discuss articles from Neues Deutschland in order to understand ‘life under capitalism’. Interestingly, this kind of collective gathering around ‘the party’s voice’ is a cultural practice deeply rooted in totalitarian German society. In the Third Reich, families gathered around the radio (Volksempfänger, ‘the Führer’s voice’). In East Germany people came together for television news (Aktuelle Kamera) or ‘were gathered’ to read the newspaper (in mass organizations). As the father put it, ‘Christmas started’ with this kind of meeting (Zeitungsschau). During these kitchen gatherings, children living in West Germany (the ‘goers’) tentatively started to correct the views and values of the ‘stayers’. Such family gatherings contained many interwoven elements of balancing intra- and extrafamilial individuation. Parents were still regarded as ‘authorities’. Figure 3: developmental pathways of families from related niches. Square – niches (light – related, light grey – balanced, dark grey – separated), circles – families (light – no conflict, grey – parent-child-conflict), numbers – interviews in the parent (above) and children generation (beneath).

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They were asked for appropriate or adaptive strategies for dealing with “chaos”. Traditional gender roles stayed mostly unchanged. Roles were, however, expanded in order to adapt to capitalism. One boy and one girl worked as ‘exploiters’, holding higher positions in the capitalist job market. However, one worked as a ‘good exploiter’, still being a secret member of the post-communist party. Another child staged a ‘Christian’ religiosity in order to place her children well in a ‘wolfish’ society. Like balanced families in East Germany, this family developed strategies to differentiate sharply between inner and outer worlds. Old knowledge and practices were augmented with new ones and merged into hybrid cultural practices. Five out of 11 related families moved into separated niches (lower part of Figure 3). Here, parents retreated completely into their private lives and separated themselves from a society that was no longer theirs. In one example both parents felt dishonored by the ‘chaotic’ change because they lost their ranks and superior positions as military officer and prosecutor. The father tried to comprehend this downfall by writing an autobiography about the East German navy.5 However, he still felt attached to his old values and in the end refrained from publishing the book. Like many other former officials, he got a job with a security firm. I: Did you meet your subordinate officers when you worked for the security firm? F: You know what? I met my superiors! Admirals [...] a very dark chapter of German history [...] it was not about the money. I have more money today than ever before. [...] It is about social relegation. It‘s bottomless [...]. (P147:57) [...] I could not publish the book, for several reasons. [...] because I changed my mind after learning all those things about the GDR. If I wanted to write the truth about the Volksmarine [the Navy] I would have to be very critical, it would look like fouling my own nest [...] I cannot do this. [...]. (P147:47)

Figure 3 does not only display the pathways families from related niches took. It also shows different intrafamilial patterns of contact. Grey circles stand for families with long-standing conflicts between parents and children. White circles sig-

5

This father became part of a ‘writer’s movement’ producing a special kind of narrative within the post-unification contact zone. East Germany today is crowded with publishing houses wherein former party officials sell their memories to anyone who wants to listen to them. This way the ‘reading country GDR’turned into a ‘writing country’, which merits scientific investigation. Titles are telling: “My years in the East German navy” or “In the maelstrom of the unification”, for example.

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nal more balanced parent-child relationships. Families from related niches but with more balanced intrafamilial patterns of contact were more likely to fit into balanced niches after the wall. Four out of five families moved through the contact zone this way. The family quoted above had a long-standing conflict between father and daughter. After the father had placed his daughter in a wellpaid job as a secretary at a party-office in the GDR, she began to rebel. She started a second career as a model for underwear and lingerie, much to her father's disapproval. German unification however, ended both careers, hers on the catwalk and her father’s on the command bridge. At this point, the daughter remembered her first training and started as a secretary again, now at a command center of the NATO, upsetting her father again. At the time of the interview both had learned to talk to each other again, but friction remained. One non-conflicted family moved into a separated niche but changed the intrafamilial pattern of individuation. Here, parents retreated but somehow lost their children along the way – this family ended up being a conflictual one. As described earlier, the input of children played a major role in shaping the path the family took. In the last section I will elaborate on how this worked. I will describe a very special kind of parent-child relationship, which I call “reversed learning”. 4.3 Intergenerational Reciprocity and Reversed Learning The classical theory of individuation describes how children and parents reconstruct their relationships towards mutuality, symmetry, and reciprocity. (Buhl, Scholwin and Noack; Youniss and Smollar; White et al.) In the cases we studied, ‘reciprocity’ comprised more than ideas and words. Between generations, all sorts of capital were exchanged, reciprocally or unilaterally. Parents handed to their children all sorts of physical capital: privately owned houses were signed over to the children while parents still lived there as tenants, firms were sold, apartments were taken over, loans were safeguarded by the other generation, cars ‘stayed in the family’, inheritances were assigned early, and the like. Parents also delivered social capital which often turned into physical capital. They took care of the grandchildren, helped their children in building their careers, even started to work in their children’s enterprises. In return, children helped their parents, sometimes with physical capital (loans), social capital (advice and guidance with bureaucracy or the media) or building identity capital (reconstruction of the past, conversations about the communist past, making plans for the future). In many cases, different types of capital were transformed

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into others or were exchanged. Table 3 shows the different kinds of ‘gifts’ generations made to support one another. Table 3: (Areas of) intergenerational exchanges Capital given to other generation

Parents

Children

physical

money, car, apartment, vacation, work in child‘s enterprise

money

social

care for grandchildren, organizing family gatherings, vacations

meaning: competence as grandparents, navigating bureaucracy and markets

cultural

assertion, identity capital

new values, self-confidence, assertion, empathy, support for ‘retreat into privacy‘, partmaintaing of ‘authority‘, identity capital

The advisory help of children turned into pension benefits for parents, parental money turned into closer relationships. In some cases, one generation ‘paid’ with money and was rewarded with other gifts, such as family feasts or vacations taken together. In some cases, inter-generational exchange was not bidirectional but benefited one generation only. To describe that sort of exchange participants had to answer the question “How did you help each other to cope with new circumstances?” Families were classified into either “reciprocal”, “unilateral towards parents/children” or “no exchange”. The last type was coded if no quotations about exchange were found or participants had answered “I had no help from my parents/children”. Classifications were based on memos written about the family by two raters, such as

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Memo P001/P002: Relationship reciprocal, P helps parents with public authorities, talks to mother about problems, no other quotations. Mother attends grandchildren on a regular base, gives advice in family matters, no other quotations.

Associations of types of reciprocity with types of niches (see above) and types of parent-child-relationship (conflictual vs non-conflictual) were analyzed via contingency tables. Types of niches were not associated with patterns of reciprocity (table not shown), but the conflict status was (Table 4). Table 4: Patterns of intergenerational reciprocity and family history of conflict

conflict family nonconflict family

Parents giving 9

balanced reciprocity 2

Children giving 1

dysfunctional

4

9

1

0

4

Intergenerational reciprocity was strongly associated with the conflict state of the family (tested with Freeman-Halton extension of Fisher’s exact test, 0.023 < p < 0.040). In two cases children were giving only because their parents were facing poverty. In all other cases, financial circumstances would have allowed for other sorts of reciprocity. Usually, both parents and children were making their living, thanks to the generous welfare system overtaken from West Germany. For these cases it becomes clear that long-standing conflicts between parents and children constitute a major risk in coping with chaos by exchanging capital. Dysfunctional families with no exchange (n = 4) were all suffering from deep fractions. A balanced way of giving and taking was much more likely for families without conflicts. A special case of reciprocity is given when children teach their parents about ‘new times’. About 50 years ago this kind of intergenerational learning was described by the anthropologist Margaret Mead as “prefigurative”. The German unification, as said above, was a sudden coupling of a formerly retarded country to modernism, globalisation and digitalisation included. Like today in many parts of the modern world, youngsters became authorities for new kinds of participation. Individuation theory assumes that these new competencies enter mutual processes of individuation without endangering the balance of relatedness and separateness. The following utterance illustrates how this could work.

76 | OLAF R EIS P: Yes, my parents are helping me, but this is more about life experience, more abstract so to say. When it comes to everyday life it is completely different, it’s reversed now. (P152:54)

In other words, individuated children did not demolish their parent’s authority completely when showing them things. Parents remained authorities – for some parts of life. However, in some cases reversed teaching meant more than just how to operate a computer. P: Yes, so it is with my mother – when I am writing up her documents, [...] with the PC for example, then I am teaching her how to do this. And then I started to give her the job ads, again and again. (P002:42)

Here, a daughter not only teaches her mother new cultural practices, such as applying for a job. She also teaches her not to give up, to envision her applications as a perhaps never-ending story, but still to perservere. Job applications frightened parents, because they not only mistrusted their education but also felt unprepared for this kind of ‘wolfish’ job market in which everybody had to “praise” himself. M: [...] that was very unfamiliar to me, to praise yourself. Terrible. And my children were saying, you have to do this this way or that way, see? They had done it themselves and knew how to appear at job interviews. (P097:47)

In another case a mother had to learn that her husband had worked as an ‘informal spy’ for the secret service of East Germany.6 After divorcing him she relied on her daughter’s help in many ways. M: [heavily breathing] [...] support from my daughter [...] yes, she helps me to view this more positively, with all the opportunities we have now [...] travelling, not being afraid [...] and that I needed to learn English now [...]. (P009:32)

6

This sinister network of the totalitarian system had thousands of informal employees of the secret service (Stasi). These informal employees received benefits for professional denunciation but remained in their original professions. In some cases, the denunciators reported on proximal persons, such as partners, children, parents, or friends.

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Again, new cultural practices, such as learning the English language, are combined with advice for life. In another case a daughter taught her mother how to navigate the new partner market. She not only showed her how to use a PC; she also placed a partnership advertisement for her and even checked up on potential candidates. P: [...] my sister in law and I said, we were saying ‘Mum is getting peculiar’ and placed the ad. The second guy was already a stroke of luck. [...] she was saying ‘Heʼs the one’, but I was suspicious, all he talked about was cycling, cycling [...] my mother had never had a bicycle in her life [...] you know what? Now she is cycling about 5000 km a year, she is a proxy of a bicycle club and works on a PC after we gave her one. That turned out nicely. (P110:43)

Utterances like the ones above were coded as “transfer of knowledge”. Again, it was coded who was the giving and who the receiving part. Codes were counted and cross-tabulated with the type of parent-child-relationship. Table 5 displays a significant association between reversed learning and type of family (χ2 = 4.236, df = 1, p = 0.040). Reversed learning is twice as likely in functional families. In conflict families parents learned from their children, too, but more often appeared as teachers themselves. Table 5: Intergenerational learning and family history of conflict

conflict family non-conflict family

Children as teachers 27 64

Parents as teachers 40 50

In other words, in more functional parent-child relations children were more often constructed as ‘experts of change’ who knew better how to deal with the chaos of modernization. Job applications, tax declarations, digital media of all kinds, foreign languages, professional education, partnership, even questions of style – those were topics wherein children taught their parents some ‘modernity’. This kind of learning was independent of the niches’ construction but strongly correlated to the ‘contact’ between parents and children. Most importantly, it was embedded into a bigger picture of reciprocity wherein parents still had ‘something to give’. Intergenerational motivation in both directions was part of this process. When children taught their parents, they were in turn rewarded by the latter being proud of them. Within balanced families parents had less trouble perceiving the younger generation as ‘experts for the future’ who knew much about the ‘contact zone’.

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5. S UMMARY My purpose was to show how East German families navigated the contact zone after the wall came down. A “nation within a nation” all of a sudden came into contact with the “brave new world” many East Germans had heard and read about, but never experienced. Many of them experienced this kind of social change as “chaos”, requiring new cultural practices of participation. The basic assumption was that social change might produce a generational conflict, because generations would be differently equipped to face this kind of chaos. We started our study in 1998 with the idea of differentiating between changeinduced and long-standing conflicts within families. The whole set of quantitative data of the Rostock Longitudinal Study was used to identify 17 families with long-standing conflicts and 17 matched families without conflicts. All children from these families were born in 1970/71 and were about to become adults just at the time when the German unification interrupted their plans. For our interview study, children and their parents were asked to talk about their relationships over time. The content of all interviews was transformed into categorical data via grounded and theoretical coding. Our understanding of the family narratives was guided by the neo-sociologist individuation theory which describes strategies of constructing relationships on two basic independent dimensions, relatedness and separateness. From the data we learned that relationships between parents and children were sometimes portrayed by participants as related to relationships outside the family. Then we started to look into this kind of relationship or ‘contact’ and learned that families constructed their place in society in different ways. These constructions were called “niches” and described as balances of relatedness and separateness between the family and society. When chaos struck, these constructions were challenged. Our analysis of the data revealed that families which were formerly ‘closer to the system’ changed in a more drastic way than families which were not. Members of these families more often reported new practices, such as “learning democracy”, “being less open to others”, and the like. Moreover, many of them searched for a new kind of “niche” they considered appropriate. Some found their way into new niches, some did not. Within this process of changing the way of participation children played a major role. Functional relationships between parents and children turned out to be a major resource for dealing with chaos. Within functional families, stories of giving and taking emerged, describing reciprocal directions of learning. So called “prefigurative” ways of learning wherein children teach their parents turned out to be highly effective in navigating post-unification society. In other words, when the chaos of modernism emerges, it is good have expert children who teach you

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some lessons to be learned. Within individuated families with functional balances of relatedness and separateness, parents did not entirely lose their expert roles. Roles within the family themselves changed according to challenges from the outer world, but not completely. Thus, the navigation practices used turned out to be hybrid, an adaptive mixture of old and new kinds of participation.

R EFERENCES Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Natinalism. 2. ed. London: Verso, 2006. Blos, Peter. “The Second Individuation of Adolescence.” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 22 (1967): 162-86. Buhl, Heike Maria. “Development of a Model Describing Individuated Adult Child-Parent Relationships.” International Journal of Behavioral Development 32.5 (2008): 369-71. ---, Berit Scholwin, and Peter Noack. “Individuation in Adult's Family Interactions: An Observational Study.” Journal of Adult Development 22 (2015): 100-11. Conger, Rand D., and Glen H. Jr. Elder. Families in Troubled Times: Adapting to Change in Rural America. Social Institutions and Social Change. New York: de Gruyter, 1994. Elder, Glen H., Jr. Children of the Great Depression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Gaus, Günter. Wo Deutschland Liegt. Gütersloh: Hoffmann & Campe, 1976. Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. Grounded Theory. Strategien Qualitativer Forschung. 2. ed. Bern: Huber, 2008. Grotevant, Harold D., and Catherine R. Cooper. “Individuation in Family Relationships.” Human Development 29 (1986): 82-100. Ihle, Wolfgang et al. “Prevalence, Course, Ad Risk Factors for Mental Disorders in Young Adults and Their Parents in East and West Germany.” American Behavioral Scientist 44.11 (2001): 1918-36. Kağitçibaşi, C. “Autonomy and Relatedness in Cultural Context.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 36.4 (2005): 403-22. Mannheim, Karl. “Das Problem Der Generationen.” Wissenssoziologie. Ed. Wolff, Kurt. Berlin: Luchterhand, 1964. 509-65. Mead, Margaret. “Culture and Commitment. A Study of the Generation Gap.” National History Press (1970).

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Merten, Roland , and Hans-Uwe Otto. “Rechtsradikale Gewalt Im Vereinigten Deutschland: Jugend Im Kontext Von Gewalt, Rassismus Und Rechtsextremismus.” Rechtsradikale Gewalt im vereinigten Deutschland. Jugend im gesellschaftlichen Umbruch. Eds. Otto, Hans-Uwe and Roland Merten. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1993. 13-33. Pratt, Mary Louie. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession (1991): 33-40. Reis, Olaf. “Families as Niches During Communism in East Germany: Consequences for Parent-Child Relationships During Times of Change.” International Journal of Behavioral Development 32.5 (2008): 412-21. Print. ---. “Sozialer Wandel Und Intrafamiliale Individuation in Ostdeutschen Familien.” 20 Jahre Deutsche Einheit - Facetten einer geteilten Wirklichkeit. Eds. Brähler, Elmar and Irina Mohr. Gießen: Psychsozial, 2010. 108-23. ---. Nischen Im Wandel - Ostdeutsche Familien Im Übergang. (in prep) Gießen: Psychosozial. Reis, Olaf, and Heike M Buhl. “Individuation During Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood - Five German Studies.” International Journal of Behavioral Development 32.5 (2008): 369-71. Rogoff, Barbara. The Cultural Nature of Human Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Silbereisen, Rainer K., and Martin Pinquart. “Soziale Wandel und individuelle Entwicklung.” Individuum und Sozialer Wandel. Eds. Silbereisen, Rainer K. and Martin Pinquart. Weinheim: Juventa, 2008. 7-36. Sullivan, Harry Stack. The Interpersonal Nature of Psychiatry. New York: Norton, 1953. Super, Charles M., and Sara Harkness. “The Developmental Niche: A Conceptualization at the Interface of Child and Culture.” International Journal of Behavioral Development 9 (1986): 545-69. Walper, Sabine. Familiäre Konsequenzen Ökonomischer Deprivation. München, Weinheim: Psychologie Verlags Union, 1988. White, Kathleen M. et al. “Adult Development in Individuals and Relationships.” Journal of Research in Personality 24.371-386 (1990). Youniss, James, and Jaqueline Smollar. Adolescent’s Relations with Mothers, Fathers, and Friends. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Print.

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood Stories of Misunderstandings, Concepts of Culture and the Process of European Expansion C HRISTINA B RAUNER

R ÉSUMÉ Le malentendu et en particulier le malentendu culturel jouent un rôle important dans les discussions sur les zones de contact et les rencontres interculturelles. L’article analyse la construction des malentendus culturels dans les sources produites à l’époque de »l’expansion européenn« et dans leurs interprétations scientifiques actuelles. Ce type de construction est indissociablement lié aux concepts de »culture« et de »communication«. Les récits de malentendus, loin d’être des représentations neutres, servent souvent de puissants instruments d’interprétation, notamment en ce qu’ils permettent d’établir une »communauté de rire« (Lachgemeinschaft) exclusive. Nous esquissons une typologie des malentendus dans le champ historiographique et de leurs fondements épistémologiques. Le premier cas, lié aux débuts de l’expansion portugaise, est étudié au regard des interprétations scientifiques divergentes qui en ont été proposées et qui couvrent une palette allant du malentendu presque inévitable au désaccord intentionnel. Le second est le récit d’un malentendu datant de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle qui a servi à construire une situation de first encounter. Le processus de réception par deux auteurs des Lumières transforme le récit du malentendu en une critique du colonialisme européen.

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1. I NTRODUCTION There is no such thing as a simple misunderstanding. What we are used to calling misunderstandings are always misunderstandings already understood or, to be more precise, believed to have been understood. Identifying a misunderstanding requires that we assume understanding, of both the misunderstanding itself and the misunderstood issue in question.1 ‘Misunderstandings’, thus, result from observation and judgment. Inevitably accompanied by allusions to ‘understanding’ (or, more emphatically, to ‘the right understanding’), diagnoses of misunderstandings serve to reinforce and confirm interpretations of situations, utterances or texts. This effect may be particularly strong when ‘the right understanding’ is not even discussed as such but only appears ex negativo as the obvious, matter-of-course ‘truth’.2 Hence, identifying misunderstandings is neither an innocent nor a disinterested act. On the contrary, it is fundamentally linked to issues of power – that is, the power to define what is right and what is wrong, the power to draw boundaries between the normal and the deviant, the power to postulate universals and standards. Exposing misunderstandings can be used as a means of empower-

1

This is what Johannes Fabian has referred to as the most obvious aspect of misunderstandings: “By the time they have been made to serve as examples, misunderstandings have been understood.” (“Misunderstanding” 41) Cf. also the definition by Bilmes: a misunderstanding is “best viewed as an interactional stance, something that can be claimed and disputed or agreed upon, rather than an objective phenomenon existing independently of participants’ claims and noticings.” (96) Though mostly viewed as a thoroughly interdisciplinary topic, most of the scientific work devoted to misunderstandings comes from the field of linguistics, communication studies, and psychology: for a survey of the literature cf., e.g., Hinnenkamp, Mißverständnisse; House, Kaspar and Ross.

2

Such an approach that studies misunderstandings in terms of communication has been suggested, among others, by Niklas Luhmann. He conceptualizes ‘understanding’ as including everything the respective system takes to be ‘understanding’. Thus, misunderstanding, too, is understanding: “What else should it be? The difference of understanding correctly/incorrectly is articulated via understanding” (“Auch Mißverstehen ist mithin Verstehen. Was sollte es denn auch anderes sein? Die Differenz von richtig/falsch Verstehen wird am Verstehen artikuliert.” 85f.).

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ment, as a gesture of superior knowledge, staging the very act of enlightenment (see below, 4).3 This ‘power dynamic’ is, not least, due to the fact that stories of misunderstandings are often connected with humour and laughter – at least for those who tell them. They can contribute to creating a community of laughter, ridiculing and excluding the party ‘guilty’ of the respective misunderstanding.4 Though bearing no more than a mildly teasing character in everyday family communication, this pattern can also help to reinforce basic racist or otherwise discriminatory discourse. One example is the stereotype of the so-called Hosenneger (that is, literally, “trousers negro”), a popular racist caricature in Wilhelmine Germany which denounces ‘false’ adoptions of European clothing habits to establish and re-confirm fundamental racial boundaries.5 As their association with power relations implies, the identification and construction of misunderstandings is a social phenomenon, drawing on established categories of plausibility and adequacy. Viewed from such an angle, studying misunderstandings as social facts can bring about crucial insights in the fundamental role cultural constructions and what some like to discard as ‘mere’ language games play in the social constitution of the ‘real world’ – from awkward silences in an ongoing conversation to more severe events like plane crashes and violence.6 Besides, one should not overlook another dimension involved in identifying misunderstandings: referring to a communication problem or even a conflict as a ‘misunderstanding’ can sometimes also be an attempt at face-saving and provide an ‘exit’ strategy for all involved.

3

For a sociolinguistic approach to the ‘strategic’ character of misunderstandings cf. Hinnenkamp, “Misunderstandings” esp. 70ff., who especially stresses the interactionalist perspective.

4

On the concept of “communities of laughter” cf. Röcke and Velten, Lachgemeinschaften; for humor and laughter in European ethnographic discourse cf., e.g., Verberckmoes esp. 274ff. Verberckmoes draws attention to apparent differences in European representations of laughter and mockery, comparing depictions of Indians and Africans respectively. (Verberckmoes 282ff.)

5

Marx emphasizes the connection between the stereotypical Hosenneger and the rejection of transgression of colonial and racial boundaries by the so-called “half-breeds” and westernized elites (Marx 94), similarly cf. Nederveen Pieterse 97ff.

6

Cf. Hinnenkamp, Mißverständnisse Ch. 1 for the part misunderstandings played in a 1990 plane crash. Cf. also the broad panorama provided by a 2008 exhibition: Didczuneit.

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This article focuses on the construction of cultural misunderstandings in early modern texts and today’s scholarly interpretations. Scripts of misunderstandings relating to cultural encounters, I argue, are equally meaningful and powerful instruments to make sense in the chaos of the contact zone they appear to represent. What follows, thus, is not so much an exercise in identifying misunderstandings and evaluating the success or failure of intercultural communication, using ‘misunderstanding’ as category of analysis.7 It is instead an attempt at second-order observation, that is, describing how actors experience and attribute (mis)understandings, thereby analysing how these relate to more general assumptions about culture and history in general. Firstly, different historiographical constructions of misunderstandings and their epistemological foundations are examined (2). Taking a much discussed episode from the early days of the Portuguese expansion as an example, I show how different readings proposed by different scholars are linked to their respective concepts of culture and an ex post perspective on encounters (3). Finally, and with a particular focus on the role of laughter, I analyse an eighteenthcentury story about a misunderstanding during a ‘courtly encounter’ (4). Discussing its reception by two enlightenment authors, the relation between misunderstandings, power relations and critique is scrutinized.

2. M ISUNDERSTANDINGS IN H ISTORIOGRAPHY : T YPES AND E PISTEMOLOGICAL F OUNDATIONS Identification of misunderstandings is a traditional and not uncommon pastime in historiography. With no comprehensive list or typology intended, two of the arguably most important types of general misunderstanding are briefly discussed here before I turn to cultural misunderstandings in particular. In the comparison of these selected types, however basic insights in the epistemological framework can be gained. The seemingly simplest type addresses historical misunderstandings of the ‘natural world’ in terms of insufficient knowledge and inadequate information, with the current state of knowledge serving as the basis of judgment. It also is part of a fundamental criticism of source, labelled by Johann Gustav Droysen the “critique of the correct” (Kritik des Richtigen), and is thus related to procedures establishing the trustworthiness of sources. (Ibid. 402, §28) Explicit elaborations

7

On cultural (mis)understandings in history, esp. in the wake of the so-called “European Expansion”, cf., e.g., Schwartz; Häberlein and Keese; Osterhammel, “Wissen”.

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of this ‘they got it wrong’-type of misunderstanding are especially popular in the realm of biological, astronomical, geographical or medical phenomena, as e.g. discussions about ‘what disease really caused his/her death’ or ‘what they actually saw’ demonstrate. A case in point is the once much-discussed attempt to explain medieval blood miracles as a misunderstanding of the so-called Hostienpilz, that is a fungal infestation causing red marks on damp bread, namely the Host.8 Though a matter of course at first glance, such a procedure is in fact undeniably anachronistic. From an epistemological point of view, it amounts to an outright schizophrenic attitude towards sources and their ontological status, trying once more to separate false ‘interpretations’ from correct and seemingly unchanging ‘observations’, expressing a fundamental distrust of their value whilst at the same time relying on it as the only possible basis for the historian’s own interpretation.9 A second type of misunderstandings focuses on questions of communication, especially on intentions of the actors involved.10 A famous instance is C.L.R. James’ “Black Jacobins” (original ed. 1938), in which he portrays Toussaint Louverture, a leading figure (if not the leading figure) in the Haitian Revolution, in a mainly positive light. James attests that Louverture committed “only one serious mistake, the one which ended his political career”, by “misjudging” the intentions of a certain person. (224f.) He neither elaborates on his assessment of these intentions (and on the sources used) nor does he reflect on the limits of contemporary information. Thus, a strong assertion of objectivity is implied here – even amounting to the claim of understanding historical persons’ actions better than they themselves did and presupposing once more the existence of ‘one true understanding’ and one ‘right course of action’. Identifying historical misjudgements cannot be separated from the temporal distance between the events in question and the observing historian – indeed, statements like James’ critique of Toussaint’s “misjudgement” fundamentally depend on information only available in the aftermath of events. Drawing on the ‘outcome’ of the respective situation or development to evaluate behaviour, interpretation, or action, they tend to neglect the contingency of historical processes. Neither was such knowledge by any means accessible to the historical actors nor was the outcome of the situation

8

Cf. the explanation given by Döring 605 and the discussion in Walker Bynum 50f., n. 17. Cf. also Staubach 2009 on both modern and medieval critics of miracles and visions.

9

Cf. Kempe; Lorenz esp. 28-35 and below, after 30.

10 That makes it a “hearer-” or “recipient-based” type of misunderstanding, cf. House, Kaspar and Ross 3f.

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already determined during the course of action. Sometimes this kind of reasoning may even amount to a post hoc ergo propter fallacy.11 Similar problems can be identified with regard to the particular type of misunderstandings in focus here, that is, cultural misunderstandings. Take Tzvetan Todorov’s equally masterful and heavily criticized account of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, one of the most prominent stories of cultural misunderstanding, as an example. Describing the conquest as encounter of two semiotic systems, Todorov’s narrative is characterized by an ex post perspective in several regards. Firstly, the impact of misunderstandings is attributed unevenly – whereas the Aztecs appear inevitably caught in their static worldview and the resulting belief that Cortés is the returning God Quetzalcoatl, Cortés himself is cast as the clever manipulator of the Aztecs’ misunderstandings in favour of Spanish tactics. This assessment is obviously influenced by Todorov’s (and his reader’s) knowledge about the outcome of the process of European expansion in general and the Spanish-Aztec encounter in particular. Secondly, the very sources Todorov draws upon were, as Inga Clendinnen has demonstrated, already written in temporal distance to the events described. Above all, the story that Europeans are identified as gods became popular only in the wake of (not during) the conquest, providing a more or less honourable explanation for why the mighty Aztec empire had given in so quickly to the comparatively small Spanish force. Next to this problem of retrospective interpretation and teleology, diagnoses and narratives of cultural misunderstandings are fundamentally linked to the respective conceptualization of culture. Although the number of such definitions is nearly infinite, one can identify, as Jürgen Osterhammel has shown, two basic lines of thought about culture influencing scholarly discourse on intercultural misunderstandings (“Wissen” 242ff.): Firstly, he points to what he calls the “enlightened model” of culture. Its proponents assume that intercultural understanding is not only possible, but rather the normal state of affairs. Presupposing actors’ willingness to learn and to adapt, misunderstandings appear situational, transient and finally removable. In contrast, the “romantic model” assumes that interculturality is intrinsically tied to misunderstandings. Whereas the “enlightened model” relies on a strong notion of cultural commensurability and translatability, the “romantic model” imagines cultures as closed, homogenous entities clearly marked off against one another. According to this view, prominently propagated by Edward Said and Tzvetan Todorov, misunderstandings are not

11 Lorenz characterizes such approaches as “teleological” variant of hermeneutic interpretations, cf. esp. Chs. 6 and 7 for a critical review of intentionalist positions in historiography and their implications.

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transient phenomena but firmly rooted in the fundamental characteristics of cultures. To put it bluntly: adherents of the “romantic model” firmly believe in the necessity of chaos in the contact zone. Disavowing the existence of a single truth, one right understanding and tooeasily drawn conclusions about cultural incommensurability, poststructuralist approaches have brought about a surge of interest in the potential productivity of ‘misunderstanding’. Hence, notions like ‘creative’ or ‘productive misunderstanding’ have become increasingly popular. (e.g. Collet) Linked not only to a more elaborate understanding of ‘understanding’ but also drawing on a more complex concept of culture, this position confirms the normality of misunderstandings in everyday interactions.12 Richard White, widely known for his study of cultural encounters and the emergence of a “Middle Ground” in early modern North America, suggests: “Biased and incomplete information and creative misunderstanding may be the most common basis of human actions.”13 Apart from his assertion that ‘misunderstanding’ is the rule rather than the exception, he also raises serious methodological doubts about the scholarly diagnosis of misunderstanding in historical encounters. Therefore, it remains open to question why he in fact retains the term ‘misunderstanding’ with its inevitable normative implications as an analytical category. Nonetheless, the notion of ‘creative misunderstanding’ is useful and thought-provoking as it draws attention to the fact that the ‘outcome’ of encounter can hardly be measured against the ‘correctness’ of understanding shown by the actors involved. It can, too, serve as a reminder that cultures are dynamic and undergo a continuous process of change.

12 Cf. also Subrahmanyam, Encounters, esp. Introduction and id., “Incommensurablité”. 13 White, “Creative Misunderstandings” 13, cf. id., Middle Ground. For a similar view from a linguistic perspective cf. Hinnenkamp, Mißverständnisse, esp. Ch. 2 and from a philosophical and exegetical perspective Hadot, “Philosophie” 337f. Cf. Force esp. 30ff. on the connection to Hadot’s reception of Wittgenstein and the question of misunderstandings.

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3. M ISUNDERSTANDING OR D ISAGREEMENT ? O NE S TORY AND F OUR I NTERPRETATIONS In the summer of 1445, two Portuguese caravels reached Cape Verde, which had been ‘discovered’ by Dinis Diaz the year before.14 Gomez Pirez and his companions found the “marks of conquest” Diaz had set up by cutting the royal arms into trees.15 The ensuing encounter between the Portuguese and the Cape Verdeans is described by Gomes Eanes de Zurara in his “Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea” (Crónica dos feitos notáveis que se passaram na conquista da Guiné por mandado do infante D. Henrique, 1453) as follows:16 And because there were so many of those blacks on land that by no means could they disembark either by day or night, Gomez Pirez sought to show that he desired to go among them on peaceful terms, and so placed upon the shore a cake and a mirror and a sheet of paper on which he drew a cross. And the natives when they came there and found those things, broke up the cake and threw it far away, and with their assegais [a local kind of spears] they cast at the mirror, till they had broken it in many pieces, and the paper they tore, showing they cared not for any of these things. ‘Since it is so,’ said Gomez Pirez to his crossbowmen, ‘shoot at them with your bows that they may at least understand that we are people who can do them hurt, whenever they will not agree to a friendly understanding. (Chronicle vol. 2, c. 63, 192f.)17

As a rather abrupt break in the story indicates, the fight did not end well for the Portuguese: from a description of the Africans’ weapons Zurara suddenly turns

14 For the early Portuguese expansion in general cf. Newitt and Russell. 15 This technique was presumably a precursor to the padrãos erected from the late 15th century onwards; cf. Seed 131-4 and 141f. 16 On Zurara and his writing on Africa, cf. Blackmore and Gomes. 17 Portuguese original: “E porque em terra eram tantos daquelles Guineus, que per nhũu modo nom podyam sayr em terra de dya nem de noite, quis Gomez Pi[re]z mostrar que querya sayr antre elles per bem; e pos na terra hũu bollo, e hũu spelho, e hũa folha de papel no qual debuxou hũa cruz. E elles quando vierom, e acharom assy aquellas cousas, britarom o bollo, e lançaromno a longe, e com as azagayas tirarom ao espelho, ataa que o britarom em muytas peças, e romperom o papel, mostrando que de nehũa destas cousas nom curavom. Pois que assy he, disse Gomez Pi[re]z contra os beesteiros, tiraaelhe a as beestas, se quer que conheçam que somos gente que lhe poderemos fazer dano, quando per bem com nosco nom quiserem convivir [...].” (Chronica c. 63, 304f.)

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to botanical details. After having learned about the enormous size of local trees and the occasional occurrence of parrots the reader is surprised to note the sudden departure of the Portuguese from Cape Verde, without any further explanation provided. Given the scarcity of sources relating to the early days of Portuguese exploration of Africa, it is probably no wonder that this episode has enjoyed some scholarly attention so far.18 Whilst all interpretations agree that it is an instance of failed communication, they differ remarkably in the way they describe and explain this failure. Not least, it has been interpreted as a ‘misunderstanding’: Ivana Elbl, for example, in her 1992 article on “Diplomacy and Trade in Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-521”, describes the difficulties the Portuguese encountered south of the Senegal River where they could not yet rely on interpreters. She presents the encounter between Pirez’ party and the Cape Verdeans not only under the heading of “misunderstanding” but as an example of such misunderstandings even being “compounded” by “attempts at nonverbal communication.” (“Cross-Cultural Trade” 169)19 As the reference to the lack of interpreters indicates, Elbl generally presumes that intercultural understanding is possible. Linguistic skills and translation, however, are presented as necessary pre-conditions for successful communication across cultural boundaries whereas communication not based on language appears, in contrast, as necessarily problematic. A similar but probably even more profound distrust of non-verbal communication is expressed by linguist Joan Fayer, who refers to the episode in an article on African interpreters in the slave trade. Depicting the encounter as an example of misunderstanding and unsuccessful intercultural communication, she describes sign language as the ‘last resort’ in intercultural communication and stresses its doubtful efficiency. (281ff.) Furthermore, Fayer concludes: “The meaning of the symbols and objects were not familiar to the West Africans but nevertheless Gomez Pirez ordered them to be shot at with arrows [...].” (283) Though it is the violence exercised by the Portuguese that forms the main and legitimate target of Fayer’s critique, this

18 On sources for the early history of Portuguese ‘expansion’ cf. Elbl, “Archival Evidence”. 19 An earlier analysis by Paul E.H. Hair similarly uses this episode to draw attention to the necessity of interpreters and linguistic skills. However, he gives it a different twist by pointing to the “pathetic” character of Zurara’s narrative (11). Hair also remains altogether skeptical of the possible success of communication even with the help of interpreters.

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statement actually builds on a fundamental epistemological asymmetry: while cultural limits to the understanding of symbols and objects are conceded as far as the Africans are concerned, the critique of the Portuguese implicitly draws on their own lack of insight in cultural relativism.20 Interestingly, if one turns from current scholarly interpretation to an early modern account of the encounter, there, too, a critique of the Portuguese can be found. However, it is put forth from a quite different perspective, as Francisco José Freire interprets the episode not as a misunderstanding but as a disagreement. Hence, he introduces a rational motive for the Cape Verdeans’ behaviour, thus asserting that it resulted from deliberate decision-making. According to him, they reacted as they did because they knew about earlier Portuguese raids in the area (Geschichte 99f.; Vida 283ff.). For this explanation Freire draws on another passage from Zurara’s chronicle describing the Cape Verdeans’ encounter with yet another Portuguese, called Alvaro Fernandez, which ended in the capture of several locals.21 A similar interpretation was first proposed by João de Barros in the Década Primeira da Ásia (1552), the first part of his monumental chronicle of the Portuguese exploration of Asia. (Barros c. 13, fol. 26v)22 Lately, Freire’s (and Barros’) interpretation of the encounter as a deliberate disagreement has re-appeared in scholarly discourse, though in a quite different fashion: in 2005, Herman L. Bennett has explained the destruction of the gifts as a symbolical “obliteration” of the Portuguese presence. Presenting the Cape Verdeans as competent manipulators of signs who decode and reject Portuguese colonial ambitions, he thus emphasizes indigenous agency and indigenous resistence to European intrusions. (Bennett 29f.) Similarly, Josiah Blackmore views the destruction of the gifts as an “inversion of the ‘attack on representations’ that in the New World will be carried out by Europeans against native idols” (“The Moor” 108) as prominently analysed by Stephen Greenblatt.23 As elegantly phrased as this interpretation certainly is, it remains thoroughly unclear what ontological status this “inversion” can have – as it refers to an “attack” which was due to happen only several decades later, as

20 Cf. also Subrahmanyam, Encounters 30 on the attribution of agency and “cosmopolitan” insights in cross-cultural encounters. 21 Zurara, Chronicle vol. 2, c. 75, 225ff.; id., Chronica c. 75, 352ff. Here, once more, Zurara ascribes the initial attack (or, at least, plans of attack) to the Africans. 22 Cf. Blackmore, Moorings, 63ff. on Barros’ usage of Zurara. 23 Cf. Greenblatt esp. Ch. 5.

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Blackmore himself admits.24 Actually, it dissolves the lines between narration and historical event. Here, once again, the problem of retrospective interpretation is fundamental: not only do certain topical stories and plots (like the “attack on representations”) achieve the quality of travel narratives detached from the course of events. In addition, the scholarly discourse on cross-cultural encounters is so deeply entangled with a critique of European colonialism that the latter is sometimes even discovered in situations where European superiority is, if at all, barely more than a claim. As Anne McClintock has put it: If the theory [i.e., post-colonial theory; C.B.] promises a decentering of history in hybridity, syncreticism, multi-dimensional time, and so forth, the singularity of the term effects a re-centering of global history around the single rubric of European time. Colonialism returns at the moment of its disappearance. [...] The term confers on colonialism the prestige of history proper; colonialism is the determining marker of history. Other cultures share only a chronological, prepositional relation to a Euro-centered epoch that is over (post-), or not yet begun (pre-). (McClintock 85f.)

The different interpretations of the Gomez Pirez episode are linked to what the respective scholars expect to result from cultural encounters and the conceptualization of culture they draw upon. On the one hand, the more recent interpretations clearly have one fundamental similarity: they explain the encounter in terms of culture, cultural difference and/or symbolical systems. In contrast, Freire and Barros interpret it in terms of experience and politics and do not mention culture as a factor at all. Whereas this observation may lead to more general reasonings about an overall change in the role attributed to “culture” (or “civilisation”) between early modern and modern times, a different picture emerges if one focuses on the question of assumed intentions: while Freire, Blackmore and Bennett use the pattern of resistance and, moreover, subversion to make sense of the encounter, Fayer and Elbl depict it in terms of failing communication. Where Fayer and Elbl diagnose a misunderstanding, Bennett, Blackmore, and Freire detect a disagreement – which actually presupposes an understanding of the other’s position in the first place.25

24 One should, however, not disregard that Blackmore elsewhere reflects upon the terms “imperial” / “empire” and “colonial” and addresses the need to historicize postcolonial concepts in order to apply them to pre-modern phenomena: Blackmore, Moorings, Introduction, esp. xix-xxiii. 25 Hans Rott has emphasized the importance of this differentiation; cf. Rott.

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Applying Osterhammel’s typology sketched above, one finds that none of the authors can be identified as a proponent of a fully-fledged “romantic model”. Fayer’s and Elbl’s interpretations, however, bear some resemblance to this model, as they apparently assume misunderstandings to be an expected by-product of cultural encounters. By referring to the absence of interpreters and attributing the misunderstanding to non-verbal communication, they implicitly confirm the power of language to transcend cultural boundaries and avoid misunderstandings. What to do with this variety of diverging interpretations? Obviously, the encounter is no ‘clear’ misunderstanding at all. The starting-point of the interpretations, in fact, is not the “chaos of the contact zone” nor the encounter itself but a historical account of it, that is, a particular and necessarily partial interpretation. Remarkably, Blackmore is the only one of the authors discussed so far who comments on the text itself and its author, its possible motives and strategies, its functions and previous knowledge. When one actually considers these factors, it appears that, despite the fragmentary ending and the ambiguous description of power relations, Zurara’s typecast is quite clear-cut: the Africans are the aggressors whereas Pirez and his companions only resort to violence when their initial offer of friendship is rejected.26 Thus, the story basically legitimizes the use of violence by its Portuguese protagonists who are, lest we forget it, depicted as the true lords of the country. Zurara draws on a universal grammar of gift-giving as is frequently applied in various accounts of exploration and encounter. From Columbus to Cook, we read about gift exchange as the basic mode of establishing a relationship (or even ‘friendship’, where medieval and early modern accounts are concerned).27 Against this background, destroying gifts offered is a strong refusal of peaceful relations. Zurara describes the rejection of gifts by the Cape Verdeans as a deliberate rejection of friendship, as a disagreement, and not as a cultural misunderstanding. This was his attempt to make sense of a seemingly ambiguous situation. The variety of interpretations demonstrates, though, that the text can assume multiple meanings and is far from being unambiguous in itself. In any case, it is necessary to see Zurara’s writings in their own context and politics when analysing what seems to be described in them. Still, even when doing so, both practical and theoretical difficulties would emerge if one wished to conclude whether cultural misunderstandings or inten-

26 Blackmore locates the aggression described in the “hostility of Moorish culture toward Portuguese sign-making” which is “at once” discerned by Pirez (“The Moor”, 108f.). 27 Cf. Brauner, Kompanien Ch. 3 with references to further literature.

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tional disagreements are involved here (a question that is deliberately not the focus of this article): from the viewpoint of traditional source criticism, there are no other sources available that would allow for closer contextualization, juxtaposition or other methods. More fundamentally, a considerable methodological dilemma opens up as the diagnosis of past misunderstandings is necessarily based on historical understandings. Or, as Richard White captured it vividly: Historians know of the distant pasts of many colonized people largely through their interactions with colonizers. If the colonizers could not find common ground or meaningfully communicate with the people they lived among, traded with, fought with, and had sexual relations with, then on what grounds can historians make such a claim? If scholars assert that colonizers didn’t get it, is it the assumption that modern historians somehow know the it that their own sources got wrong? If the colonizers had no valid knowledge of the other and never produced a common world, then how can modern historians, who, in effect, look into the colonizers’ eyes and see the Indians reflected there, claim to know much better? (“Misunderstandings” 12f.)

4. C OMMUNITIES OF L AUGHTER AND S WITCHING P ERSPECTIVES . AN E ARLY M ODERN S TORY OF M ISUNDERSTANDING AND ITS R ECEPTION Early modern stories of misunderstanding and failed communication are more often than not connected to situations of first encounters or at least to situations depicted as first encounters. Such constructions are often used to make a claim of incomprehensibility appear more plausible. When W.V.O. Quine, for example, refers to a scene in eighteenth-century Madagascar as the beginning of a “radical mistranslation”, he fashions it as a situation of first encounter though it obviously was part of a prolonged series of interactions.28 A particular group of those stories is set in the context of audiences, which are, as Peter Burschel has recently pointed out, especially prominent situations of encounter (Burschel, “Einleitung”). One could even argue that their highly ceremonialised character made audiences particularly prone to problems of communication. (cf., e.g., Flüchter, “Thomas Roe”) Furthermore, the intimate link between audiences and the (re)staging of rank and status required especially elaborated textual politics in (re)presenting these acts; here, the attribution of

28 Cf. Quine et al., “General Discussion” 500 and Quine, Word Ch. 2 on “radical translation” in general; cf. the critical account by Hacking 157f.

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‘misunderstandings’ could serve to save face in situations. Finally, audiences themselves could provide a special framing for stories, not only by their clear dramaturgy but also by their prominent typecast and their clear-cut binary structure centred around the encounter of two persons or groups (though the reality of court life and diplomacy, of course, was more complex). Describing an audience announced as “particularly amusing [latterlig, i.e. ridiculous] and worth recording” right from the beginning, the story analysed in the following assumes a deliberately anecdotal tone. It is a tale about a courtly encounter in the Hinterland of the Gold Coast, set in a period of political turmoil: in 1730, Akyem defeated Akwamu, till then the dominating power on the eastern Gold Coast. Akwamu had served as “landlord” to the European forts in Accra that now had to come to terms with the Akyem as the new regional overlord. As there were three Akyem “kings”, the three forts – the Danish Christiansborg (nowadays used by the government of Ghana), the Dutch Fort Crèvecoeur and the English James Fort – were divided amongst them. When Christiansborg was assigned to “king” Frempung the Danes quickly entered negotiations with him, not least about the monthly tribute the company had to pay.29 While these negotiations were being conducted by the company’s indigenous brokers, Frempung finally demanded to see a “White”.30 This is what Ludewig Ferdinand Rømer, a former employee of the Danish trading company resident on the Gold Coast for several years, reports in his Reliable Account about the Guinea Coast (Tilforladelig Efterretning om Kysten Guinea, 1760).31 According to Rømer, Frempung “had heard earlier that all the Europeans were fearful sea animals” and wanted to take a look himself in order to verify these rumours.32

29 For Akyem, cf. e.g. Affrifah; on the Danish role in regional politics, Hernæs. 30 There is an event registered in the correspondence of the Danish company that bears some resemblance to Rømer’s anecdote: in December 1732, bookkeeper Reinholt Kamp was sent to meet “Bang Quantyn” (i.e. Baa Kwante), one of Frempung’s coregents, in order to assure him of the Danes’ “friendship”. This audience is mentioned in a letter by governor Wærøe et al. to the directors of the Danish Africa Company, dd. 19 February 1733. In: Justesen vol. 2, no. IX.36, 461ff.; cf. also Hernæs 46f. On possible archival sources unearthed but unfortunately not explicated by Carl Reindorf cf. Winsnes’ edition: Rømer, Account 142, n. 104. 31 On Rømer cf. Winsnes. 32 Rømer, Efterretning 61-163; for an English translation with critical commentary cf. id., Account 141f. The contemporary German translation interestingly formats the sto-

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When Danish bookkeeper Niels Kamp arrives at Frempung’s place of residence he is immediately granted an audience. Though the king is sitting on a low chair like everyone else, Kamp manages to recognize him and greets him politely by taking off his hat and bowing deeply: Frempung, never having seen such compliments before, thought Kamp was only bowing to spring at his head, like any wild monkey, and he hastily threw himself flat on the ground so that Kamp would spring over him and not injure him, and he called on his wives for help. (Rømer, Efterretning 163 resp. id., Account 141)

The Danes’ indigenous broker, Jancon, reassures Frempung of Kamp’s peaceful intentions and convinces him to continue the audience, with a guard of women remaining in place. The problems, however, continue as Frempung’s suspicion is drawn by Kamp’s clothes which he mistakes for parts of his body. Kamp’s pigtailed wig evokes particular irritation as the king “[thinks] that the pig-tail [is] the Whiteman’s tail”. Once more, Jancon tries to explain and ease the situation. But in the end, Frempung wants to have positive proof: first of all, he has food brought to test if Kamp is able to eat it. Furthermore, he desires that Kamp undress himself, in order to examine the shape of his body. When the women leave the site Kamp indeed fulfills this wish, too, and takes off his clothes. Frempung touches him and “burst[s] out in wonder with these words: ‘You really are a human, but as white as the devil.’” In the end, Kamp is endowed with precious gifts and granted a “fine farewell audience”. The story constructs several ‘clear’ misunderstandings, for the most part attributed to the African side. In order to make them emerge as misunderstandings in the first place, Rømer assumes the role of an omniscient narrator, presenting both Kamp’s and Frempung’s perspectives. However, even within this narrative construction, some inconsistencies remain: Rømer obviously aims to construct a first encounter situation while he has to admit, at the same time, that quite close relations were already established and exchanges were going on. Within the anecdote, it is above all the figure of Jancon who bears witness to the exchange – his role as a competent, clever and – for the most part – successful cultural broker does not fit into the picture of such a first encounter situation.33 Indeed, in

ry as a paragraph of its own, thus marking it off even more clearly: id., Nachrichten § 38, 137-40. 33 An employee named “Jancon” is mentioned several times in the surviving correspondence and administrative documents of the Danish West India Company left behind: cf. Justesen, vol. 1, no. XI.46, 673ff. (1745) and vol. 2, no. XII.20, 877ff.

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1730, as Dutch sources demonstrate, Akyem traders had already been frequenting the forts at Accra for several years, diplomatic contact with the Dutch West India Company having been maintained since 1700.34 Nevertheless, the anecdote also contains some elements which appear consistent with independent records in several other contexts: the association of the colour “white” with the sea and sacredness and/or death, for instance, is mentioned in historical sources from early modern times as well as more recent anthropological accounts.35 Thus, the extremely loaded “white devil” motif at least appears quite plausible in local context. Besides, astonishment at the physical appearance of European visitors features among the most prominent elements in all reports on Africans’ reaction to Europeans, as David Northrup has shown.36 All in all, Rømer’s anecdote is characterized by a mixture of details derived from local knowledge, plot elements which appear plausible to all readers of contemporary travelogues, clear exaggerations and a narrative drive which, seemingly, smooths over the inconsistencies of the setting. A very important raison d’être of the anecdote is that it is intended to be funny: by the contrast of ceremonial expectations with the unexpected royal behaviour, by its comical reference to the body, by its vivid style37 and not least by inverting the usual European imagery, most evidently in the “white devil” Frempung invokes in the end. It aims at the creation of a ‘community of laughter’ that is, unsurprisingly, decisively European. (cf. Velten and Röcke) Rømer, though, passes it off as universal by presupposing an overall comprehensibility of ceremonial gestures – as usual in European discourse on courtly encounters in West Africa since the 15th century. To make such courtly encounters a subject of mockery, however, is a habit especially prominent from the mid-18th century

(1753), passim. Jancon is characterized as the governor’s “boy” in 1745 and as “drummer” in 1753 (here, said Jancon’s disappearance during a journey to Akwamu is reported, dating back to 1750). 34 WIC director-general Wilhem de la Palma and council to Heeren X, dd. 5 Sept. 1705, Nationaal Archief (NA), Den Haag, TWIC 98; council minutes, session 9 April 1704, NA, TWIC 124; cf. also ibid., session 10 March 1700: “Advis door Jacobus Rohart”. 35 There are several 17th century stories of “whites” being mistaken for returned “dead people” on the Gold Coast; cf., e.g. Focquenbroch 168, and Hemmersam 29f. Cf. Law esp. 9-20, on parallels in the case of the BaKongo MacGaffey 257f. 36 Northrup 12. He points, e.g., to Mungo Park’s account of his late 18th-century explorations which features quite similar situations of encounter (14f.) 37 Literary style can function as a powerful tool of authentication in ethnographic discourse, as Fabian has pointed out: Fabian, Tropenfieber esp. 336f.

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onwards.38 Next to the increasingly influential discourse of despotism, nearly carnivalesque accounts of haughty princes wearing nightgowns as costly robes and drunken kings complaining about European table manners served to exclude Africans from supposedly universal conceptions of kingship and civilized politics.39 By telling a tale of clear misunderstandings, Rømer symbolically reassumes control over encounters in an insecure and ambiguous situation in which Europeans had to submit to the dynamics of local politics – epitomised here in the tribute they were required to pay to the Akyem rulers. The tale itself, thus, less reflects the chaos of the contact zone than expresses the struggle for control. If one defines texts and their reception, too, as “contact zones”40, the momentum of openness and unexpectability appears once again as Rømer’s readers and recipients transfer his story to quite different contexts. This holds true at least for the probably most prominent readers we know of: Johann Gottfried Herder and Heinrich Zschokke. The former published an annotated extract of the story analysed in the Teutscher Merkur in November 1783 (reprinted in later editions of his Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität).41 This extract presumably served as inspiration for Heinrich Zschokke’s tale “Der König von Akim”. (“The King of Akim”, 1818; Zschokke 5) Zschokke, a German-Swiss author and politician, enjoyed great popularity among contemporary readers with his numerous novels, dramas, pamphlets and treatises and is sometimes even said to be one of the most widely read authors of the nineteenth century; he has, however, received far less attention in today’s scholarship and his writings are mostly dismissed as those of an epigone.42 Both Herder and Zschokke integrate the story into what one may call the Lettres Persanes-paradigm, elaborating on the change of perspective implicit in re-

38 Indeed, a significant part of the stories about African rulers Rømer includes in his account have a “mocking” tone, to say the least – African “kings” compete, if we believe him, over the right to wear stockings or boast of their (assumed) universal power. Cf. also Winsnes 41f. and 45. Winsnes, however, points out that there are implicit hints of a different attitude when Rømer mentions personal acquaintances. 39 Cf. also Brauner, Kompanien esp. 112f. and 172-8. 40 For the concept cf. Pratt, Imperial Eyes. For an analysis of early modern German writing on India as a “discursive contact zone” cf. Flüchter, Vielfalt. 41 Herder, “Exemplare”; id., Briefe vol. 2, 93-102. Herder had obviously borrowed a copy of Rømer’s account from his friend, the Weimar Hofrat Christian Gottlob Voigt: cf. Mix 202f. 42 On Zschokke cf. e.g. Dainat.

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alizing a misunderstanding.43 Whereas Herder gives an introductory comment and presents a basically uncorrupted excerpt from the German translation of the travelogue, Zschokke enriches the plot with references to other travelogues (e.g. Mungo Park’s 1799 Travels), beautiful African girls, and a good deal of irony. Moreover, it is told in a nearly Montesquieuesque mode of describing one’s own world through foreign eyes. Both adaptations, thus, are firmly situated within the context of enlightenment discourse, using the very gesture of exposing a misunderstanding as a tool in criticizing European colonialism and eurocentrism.44 However, at the same time, they implicitly re-assert the existence of a hierarchical order of mankind, drawing on popular parallelisations of cultural difference and stages of life.45 When they cast “Negroes” in the role of “natural children”46 but hold a mirror up to ‘civilized’ Europeans both authors clearly rely on concepts of the ‘noble savage’ and the idealisation of the simple and natural widely propagated in enlightenment discourse. Herder, for instance, explicitly addresses the paradoxical character of misunderstandings in this regard: “the utmost follies, stupidities, vices and oddities are often the most instructive representations.” (“Die äußersten Dummheiten, Thorheiten, Laster und Sonderbarkeiten sind oft die lehrendsten Darstellungen.”) He explains: I am most interested in new information about how foreign nations see us, what they think about our culture and religion, about our customs and mores. Here, among the greatest follies, naïvités emerge which could not be more true. The pious ingenuity of a savage, the absurdity of a negro, the simplicity of an East or West Indian frequently says more than great deductions and evidence. (“Exemplare” 178f.)47

43 Cf. Weißhaupt. 44 For a recent and thought-provoking approach to understand “enlightenment” as “discursive practice” cf. Pečar and Tricoire. On the development of a critique of European colonialism cf. Stuchtey esp. 81-8 on Herder. 45 Cf. Gisi, “Parallelisierung”, cf. esp. 52-5 on Herder. Cf. also the insightful article by Schaller and Struck on temporalization and parallelization of European and extraEuropean ‘Others’. 46 This expression is used by Zschokke 20, in describing the Akyems’ astonishment at Kamp’s usage of snuff. 47 “Am meisten interessiren mich die Nachrichten, wie fremde Nationen uns ansehen, was sie von unserer Cultur und Religion, von unsern Sitten und Gebräuchen denken. Da kommen, bey den größesten Dummheiten, Naivitäten zum Vorschein, die nicht treffender seyn könnten. Der fromme Einfall eines Wilden, die Absurdität eines Negers, die Simplicität eines Ost- oder Westindiers [sic] sagt oft mehr als grosse Deduc-

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Zschokke situates the story he borrows from Rømer (and/or Herder) in the broader context of the European ‘discovery’ of Africa and European expansion in general. By describing the latter as an attempt to turn the whole world into a “haberdashery” (“Krämerbude” or “Kramladen”) he gives his tale a critical and ironic tone right from the beginning. A heavy usage of oxymorons is also characteristic for the account of “Akim” (Akyem) that follows: A large part of the Gold Coast is made up by the Kingdom of Akim. Fortunately, it is situated half a hundred miles off the shore. Hence, the pious and wise Europeans could not ravage it so quickly and wreak havoc on it. In the meantime, the King of Akim, named Frempung, had heard about the white sea-monsters. This name was given to us friendly Europeans by the ignorant Negroes in a very impertinent manner. (“Akim” 5)48

Whilst openly or ironically exposing the bigotry of European colonialism in general and Europeans’ doings in Africa in particular, Zschokke emphasizes the wise politics and the shrewdness of Frempung and other Akyems. In several instances, he tries to render the African point of view as not only understandable but even superior. It is worth noting that in doing so, Zschokke once more relies on thoroughly European comparisons otherwise often used to exclude and denigrate Africans. He describes, for example, Kamp’s first appearance at the Akyem court as extremely strange, linking both African aesthetics and appearance to classical ideals: [...] among the naked, slender, strong negro bodies, Master Kamp in his Danish frock coat [literally “Bratenrock”, that is, a derisive term for frock] now indeed made as curious a contrast as a French dancing master next to a charming statue of Apollino; or as a Frederick the Great, with a large tricorne, a soldier’s frock coat with lapels, tight trousers and

tionen und Beweise.” Cf. also Mix on Herder’s critique of European civilization in his Neger-Idyllen. 48 “Einen großen Teil der Goldküste füllt das Königreich Akim aus. Es liegt zum Glück aber wohl ein halbes Hundert Meilen vom Seeufer. Daher konnten es die frommen und weisen Europäer nicht so schnell verwüsten und elend machen. Inzwischen hatte der König von Akim, Namens Frempung, von der Erscheinung der weißen Seeungeheuer gehört. So nannten die unwissenden Neger sehr unverschämt uns liebenswürdige Europäer.”

100 | CHRISTINA B RAUNER knee-length boots, next to an Achilles; or as a short, fat, small-hatted Napoleon in infantry uniform next to the dignified posture of an Alexander. (“Akim” 18)49

Although Zschokke even adds some more comical elements of misunderstanding – like the attempt of an Akyem grandee to probe into Kamp’s fearfulness by poking him with a stick like any “good naturalist”, the overall message rather points to the possibility of successful intercultural communication when goodwill is given on both sides and efforts at translation are made. Thus, both in Herder’s and Zschokke’s adaptations, Rømer’s story is firmly linked to enlightenment ideas: a critique of European colonialism and civilization in general and a firm belief in the possibility of (peaceful) human relations by means of open and reasonable communication. Here, exposing misunderstandings on the one hand and demonstrating their naïve but fundamental truth on the other becomes a gesture of enlightenment and self-critique par excellence.

5. C ONCLUSION Not to be misunderstood: by asking how stories of misunderstandings are constructed and what role they play(ed) in power relations, this article does not seek to disprove the existence of misunderstandings as social facts. Nor does it take a stance of radical relativism, doubting the possibility of judging interpretations (etc.) as more or less adequate and plausible. To my mind, logical as well as semantic criteria can surely be used to demonstrate differing qualities of ‘understandings’ or, from a more pragmatic approach, communication situations may qualify as more or less problematic – even without considering the respective intentions involved. It is indisputable, too, that misunderstandings as social facts have had a crucial impact in the history of cultural encounters. However, the analysis of historical sources as well as scholarly accounts continues to reveal severe difficulties yet in establishing what a ‘misunderstanding’ is. Firstly, scrutinizing varying interpretations of one single episode has demon-

49 “Unter dieser Voraussetzung machte Herr Kamp in seinem dänischen Bratenrocke nun freilich neben den nackten, schlankgeformten, kräftigen Negergestalten ungefähr einen eben so komischen Abstich wie ein französischer Tanzmeister neben der reizenden Götterbildung eines Apollino; oder wie ein Friedrich der Große, mit dreieckigem großen Hut, Soldatenrock mit Aufschlägen, verschrumpften Hosen, und Stiefeln über die Knie, nebst einem Achilles; oder wie ein kurzer, dicker, kleinhutiger Napoleon in Infantrie-Uniform neben der edeln Haltung eines Alexanders.”

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strated to what extent scholarly constructions of ‘misunderstandings’ depend on the respective conceptualization of culture, retrospective information and historiographical points of view. Secondly, even if there are good reasons to assume a ‘misunderstanding’ in a certain historical situation, its impact is still far from defined. Tempted to apply retroactively what is only evident to today’s observers, scholars often explain conflicts or catastrophic developments as outcomes of ‘failed communication’. Whereas it is plausible that ‘failed communication’ played a part in such developments, the underlying assumption of a necessary causal connection is problematic.50 Even more so when the diagnosis of failed communication is based on the observation of a conflict in the first place – that is, the latter serves at the same time as evidence of the existence of a possible cause and proof of the connecting causal relation. Framed within broader narratives about colonization and conquest, cultural misunderstandings, in particular those related to encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans, seem to be even more prone to such anachronisms. Paradoxically, this tendency partly stems even from the very critique of European colonialism. Thirdly, a feature shared by both scholarly and historical accounts of misunderstandings is the tendency to construct them in terms of first encounter situations – this not only carries the implied distance between the two sides to extremes but also endows the encounter with a symbolic and prognostic significance, standing pars pro toto for the relations between the cultures involved. Fourthly, this radicalization of difference similarly feeds into the association with laughter and humour that stories of misunderstandings frequently assume. Rømer’s story about the audience in Akyem can function as a funny story because the situation is staged as a ‘first encounter’ despite more complex preceding relations. Rømer apparently uses the anecdote to establish a “community of laughter” directed against the ignorant African, thus making use of the power dynamic of such stories in a politically tense situation. The reception of his text attests that the power dynamic can also be inverted, as it is appropriated by Herder and Zschokke in order to expose European ignorance and colonialism, although in different ways. What the two authors share is the gesture of exposure associated with the identification of misunderstandings – an emblematic gesture particularly in the context of enlightenment discourse.

50 Lorenz chs. 9-11 on different modes of constructing causation (“oorzakelijkheid”) in historiography; cf. Froeyman for an overview of some central philosophical conceptualizations of causation and their application in micro- and macrohistorical approaches. Cf. also Kempe for an instructive typology, taking the longstanding debate on the fall of Rome and its causes as an example.

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Whilst scholarly accounts often tell us less about the chaos in the contact zone than about respective expectations regarding cultural encounters, historical stories of misunderstandings equally tell us more about strategies of interpretation and attempts at constructing disambiguity. Indeed, if one is set on investigating problems of communication in intercultural encounters it would probably be best not to focus (at least not mainly) on such stories. A promising approach to such a question could focus on particular breaks within narratives and ambiguities within written records.51 So one aim of the article is, to return once more to the imagery of this volume’s title, to bring back a little more chaos and contingency to the contact zone – even beyond the expected chaos.

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51 Cf. e.g., my own attempt at such a venture in Brauner, “‘König’”.

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Burschel, Peter. “Einleitung.” Die Audienz: Ritualisierter Kulturkontakt in der Frühen Neuzeit. Eds. Peter Burschel and Christine Vogel. Köln/ Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2014. 7-15. Clendinnen, Inga. “‘Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty’: Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico.” New World Encounters. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 12-47. Collet, Dominik. “Creative Misunderstandings: Circulating Objects and the Transfer of Knowledge within the Personal Union of Hanover and Great Britain.” German Historical Institute London Bulletin 36.2 (2014): 3-23. Dainat, Holger, ed. Heinrich Zschokke: Deutscher Aufklärer, Schweizer Revolutionär, Publizist – Volkspädagoge, Schriftsteller – Politiker. Bremen: Edition Lumière, 2012. Didczuneit, Veit, ed. Missverständnisse: Stolpersteine der Kommunikation. Heidelberg: Edition Braus, 2008. Döring, Alois. Art. “Hostie/Hostienwunder.” Theologische Realenzyklopädie. 1986. Droysen, Johann Gustav. “Grundriß der Historik (1857/8).” Ed. Peter Leyh, vol. 1. Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977. 395-411. Elbl, Ivana. “Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441–1521.” Journal of World History 3.2 (1992): 165-204. ---. “Archival Evidence of the Portuguese Expansion in Africa, 1440–1521.” Discovery in the Archives of Spain and Portugal: Quincentenary Essays, 1492–1992. Ed. Lawrence J. McCrank. New York: Haworth Press, 1993. 319-57. Fabian, Johannes. “Ethnographic Misunderstanding and the Perils of Context.” American Anthropologist N.S. 97.1 (1995): 41-50. ---. Im Tropenfieber: Wissenschaft und Wahn in der Erforschung Zentralafrikas. München: Beck, 2001. Fayer, Joan M. “African Interpreters in the Atlantic Slave Trade.” Anthropological Linguistics 45.3 (2003): 281-95. Flüchter, Antje. “Sir Thomas Roe vor dem indischen Mogul. Transkulturelle Kommunikationsprobleme zwischen Repräsentation und Administration.” Im Schatten der Macht. Kommunikationskulturen in Politik und Verwaltung 1600–1950. Eds. Stefan Haas and Mark Hengerer. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2008. 119-43. ---. Die Vielfalt der Bilder und die eine Wahrheit: Die Staatlichkeit Indiens in der deutschsprachigen Wahrnehmung (1500–1700). Habilitation Thesis, ms., Heidelberg, 2012.

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Force, Pierre. “The Teeth of Time: Pierre Hadot on Meaning and Misunderstanding in the History of Ideas.” History and Theory 50 (2011): 20-40. Freire, Francisco José. Vida do Infante D. Henrique. Lisbon: Francisco Luiz Ameno, 1758. ---. Geschichte der ersten portugiesischen Entdeckungen. Halle: Verlag des Waisenhauses, 1783. Froeyman, Anton. “Concepts of Causation in Historiography.” Historical Methods 42.3 (2009): 116-28. Gisi, Lucas Marco. “Die Parallelisierung von Ontogenese und Phylogenese als Basis einer ‘anthropologischen Historie’ im 18. Jahrhundert.” Naturforschung und menschliche Geschichte. Eds. Thomas Bach and Mario Marino. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011. 41-59. Godschalck van Focquenbroch, Willem. Afrikaense Thalia. 1678. Ed. Jan Helwig. Deventer: Sub Rosa, 1986. Gomes, Rita. “Zurara and the Empire: Reconsidering Fifteenth-Century Portuguese Historiography.” Storia della Storiografia 47 (2005): 56-89. Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Häberlein, Mark, and Alexander Keese (eds.). Sprachgrenzen – Sprachkontakte – kulturelle Vermittler: Kommunikation zwischen Europäern und Außereuropäern (16.–20. Jahrhundert). Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010. Hacking, Ian. “Was There Ever a Radical Mistranslation?” Id. Historical Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. 152-8. Hadot, Pierre. “Philosophie, exégèse et contre-sens,” Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses für Philosophie. Vol. 1, Wien: Herder, 1968. 333-9. Hair, Paul E.H. “The Use of African Languages in Afro-European Contacts in Guinea, 1440–1560.” Sierra Leone Language Review 5 (1966): 5-26. Hemmersam, Michael. West-Indianische Reißbeschreibung / de An. 1639 bis 1645. Nürnberg: Paulus Fürst, 1663. Herder, J.G. “Exemplare der Menschheit in Vorstellungsarten, Sitten und Gebräuchen.” Teutscher Merkur 4 (1783): 178-91. ---. Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität. Re-ed. Johann von Müller, vol. 2. Tübingen 1810. 93-102. Hernæs, Per O. “African Power Struggle and European Opportunity: Danish Expansion on the Early 18th-Century Gold Coast.” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana N.S. 7 (2003): 1-92. Hinnenkamp, Volker. Mißverständnisse in Gesprächen: Eine empirische Untersuchung im Rahmen der interpretativen Soziolinguistik. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998.

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---. “Misunderstandings: Interactional Structure and Strategic Resources.” Misunderstanding in Social Life: Discourse Approaches to Problematic Talk. Eds. Juliane House, Gabriele Kasper, and Steven Ross. Harlow: Longman, 2003. 57-81. House, Juliane, Gabriele Kaspar, and Steven Ross. “Misunderstanding Talk.” Misunderstanding in Social Life: Discourse Approaches to Problematic Talk. Eds. Juliane House, Gabriele Kasper, and Steven Ross. Harlow: Longman, 2003. 1-21. James, C.L.R. Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1963. Justesen, Ole, ed. Danish Sources for the History of Ghana, 1657-1754. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2005. Kempe, Michael. “Untergänge Roms. Zufall, Kausalität und Emergenz als Problem der Geschichte.” Rechtsgeschichte 5 (2004): 58-75. Law, Robin. “West Africa’s Discovery of the Atlantic.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 44.1 (2011): 1-25. Lorenz, Chris. De constructie van het verleden: Een inleiding in de theorie van de geschiedenis. Amsterdam: Boom, 1987. Luhmann, Niklas. “Systeme verstehen Systeme.” Zwischen Intransparenz und Verstehen: Fragen an die Pädagogik. Eds. Niklas Luhmann and K.E. Schorr. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1986. 72-117. MacGaffey, Wyatt. “Dialogues of the Deaf: Europeans on the Atlantic of Africa.” Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era. Ed. Stuart B. Schwartz. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 249-67. Marx, Christoph. “Siedlerkolonien in Afrika – Versuch einer Typologie.” Rassenmischehen – Mischlinge – Rassentrennung: Zur Politik der Rasse im deutschen Kolonialreich. Ed. Frank Becker. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004. 82-96. McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘PostColonialism’.” Social Text 31/32 (1992): 84-98. Mix, York-Gothart. “‘Der Neger malt den Teufel weiß’. J.G. Herders NegerIdyllen im Kontext antiker Traditionsgebundenheit und zeitgenössischer Kolonialismuskritik.” Das Europa der Aufklärung und die außereuropäische koloniale Welt. Ed. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006. 193207. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

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Walking Backwards to the Future, Facing the Past The Conception of Time in Andean Philosophy J OSEF E STERMANN

R ÉSUMÉ Une des raisons expliquant le chaos dans la zone de contact culturel est la conception souvent incompatible de temps et les pratiques culturelles qui résultent de ces visions sur le monde. L’article mène un exercice dans l’herméneutique diatopique entre le concept dominant de temps dans la modernité occidentale et l’expérience vécue du temps dans les cultures andines. La conception moderne du temps dans l’occident est ‘un mariage impossible’ entre, d’une part, la conception du temps sémitique qui accentue l’historicité, la linéarité et la contingence, et, d’autre part, la conception du temps hellénistique, gréco-romaine qui se focalise sur la détermination, la circularité et l’éternité. De nos jours, les deux conceptions s’entremêlent à cause de la mondialisation de l’économie néolibérale, en se convertissant dans l’inévitabilité de la croissance délimitée ainsi que dans l’historicité et la linéarité du progrès et de l’utopie. La conception de temps andine, au contraire, se base sur de profonds principes de relationnalité et de circularité qui visent la qualité, la réversibilité et la discontinuité de temps, d’où la métaphore du »retour au future en regardant au passé.«

Quite a lot of intercultural misunderstanding and dis-encounter have to do with time and its different cultural and civilizational connotations. In the “contact zone” of people with different cultural backgrounds, we frequently find ourselves dealing with problems due to different conceptions of time and attitudes. These attitudes are generally based on underlying and for the cultural practition-

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ers mostly sub-conscious presuppositions concerning time but manifest themselves in concrete phenomena. When somebody comes ‘too late’ to a meeting in Northern Europe, we tap our fingers on our watches and make clear that the person in question has arrived ‘too late’, conduct which is not accepted within this specific cultural framework. When I invite friends in Bolivia to a social gathering, and one of them comes exactly at the time stated, he is ‘too early’, and his or her conduct is considered ‘inappropriate’ or even ‘asocial’. But it is not just individual behaviour which causes problems in our intercultural encounters or dis-encounters, it is also underlying ideas about the importance of ‘progress’, ‘future’, ‘development’ and ‘history’ which can contribute to interpretations of a cultural encounter as a symbolic and philosophical ‘clash of civilizations’. Due to colonial practices and economic globalization, Western thought tends to ‘universalize’ its cultural and philosophical presuppositions to such an extent that any alternative way of thinking and conceiving the world turns out to be inconceivable, impossible or at least undesirable. This is also the case concerning the conception and the practice of time.

1. D OMINANT C ONCEPTION OF T IME 1 IN W ESTERN C IVILIZATION Although Asia is the cradle of almost all great philosophical and religious traditions, even of Christianity and Western philosophy,2 most scientific and technological progress, philosophical systems and theological reflections are attributed

1

I am fully aware of the fact that ‘Western civilization’ is an abstractive reduction, in the Weberian sense of an Idealtyp, of a rich and quite heterogeneous cultural and social human tradition, in both the diachronic (history) and the synchronic (cultural plurality) sense. In order to make clear and highlight the specificity of ‘western’ conception of time and history in contrast to non-western ones, it is however methodologically helpful to reduce this existing heterogeneity to some kind of dominant basic presuppositions.

2

All principal world religions have their origins in Asia, some of them (Hinduism and Buddhism) in the core of old and established civilizations, others (the monotheist religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam) at the margins of ancient realms or even in European colonies on Asian soil (Palestine). The same can be said of Western philosophy which has its roots in the extreme occidental part of Asia, in the Greek colonies in what nowadays is Turkey. Apart from the Asian roots, there are also ‘African roots’ of Western philosophy, mainly from Egypt and Ethiopia. Cf. James; Olela; Onyewuenyi.

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to Europe. Both Semitic spirituality and Abrahamic monotheism on the one hand, and philosophical emancipation from mythological thinking on the other hand, have their origins in Asia, more specifically in the extreme western part of the Asian continent, called in Eurocentric terminology the ‘Near East’.3 Because of the colonial and marginalized situation of Ionia (nowadays the Turkish west coast) and Palestine, both religious and philosophical innovations were absorbed by the colonial powers Greece and Rome in a comparably short time in such a way that they almost entirely lost their Asian roots. The forced use of the colonial languages Greek and Latin (and not the native languages Phoenician or Aramaic) is in this context quite eloquent: the newly established Christian religion was documented from the very beginning in the language of the dominant culture of the time (Greek), although Jesus did not speak a word of Greek or Latin. This peculiar situation and process formed the ideological and civilizational background of what later would be called Western civilization and European culture: a mixture of Semitic4 constructs and parameters with Greco-Roman presuppositions, philosophical insights and legal frameworks. In other words, Semitic religion and philosophical roots (in Asia and Africa) were ‘baptized’ by the two European colonial powers dominant at the time of the beginning of our calendar to become the prototype of ‘European’ culture and civilization. This specific mixture, called in cultural anthropology hybridization and syncretism, became, by means of colonial expansion, the Occidental mainstream. Although Enlightenment and positivism sought to eradicate the spiritual and religious heritage of modern European culture, most of our dominant conceptions, stereotypes and presuppositions go back to that ‘impossible’ marriage between the Semitic and Hellenistic5 spirits and cultural paradigms. I attempt to exemplify this very idea by means of the conception of time.

3

One of the purposes of de-colonial studies is to deconstruct Eurocentric geographical denominations, such as ‘Near East’, ‘Middle East’, ‘Far East’, but also the very notion of the ‘West’ which reflect the Eurocentric position of Western ideology. This includes the intercultural deconstruction of most of the world maps still used, mainly in the Mercator projection. Cf. Estermann, Más allá de Occidente.

4

The notion ‘Semitic’ does not refer to Judaism, as it is often used (‘anti-Semitism’), but to a cultural identity shared by the peoples of the Arabic Peninsula, Mesopotamia, the extreme eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea (‘Near East’) and even parts of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea). Semitic languages are (with many sub-divisions) Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Old South Arabian and South Semitic languages.

5

Greco-Roman philosophy and culture reached its peak in the era of Hellenism, reaching from Aristotle to Neoplatonism (about 300 BCE and 529 CE), being the ideologi-

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Semitic culture and religion (both Judaism and Christianity)6 stress the importance of ‘history’, ‘progress’ and the eschatological perspective of an ideal to be realized in a distant future or even beyond history. Time is conceived as a line that reaches from a beginning (in religious-metaphorical language creation) to an end (final judgment and paradise), passing along a long and meandering historical path of improvement, development and evolution. The linearity of time is associated with irreversibility and progressivity: this means that time is like a stream that flows in one direction, increasing constantly in terms of the perfection of humankind. What in religious terms has been the history of salvation that reaches from the alpha of God’s creation to the omega of paradise or God’s kingdom, for science and technology has become the human history of progress and development, reaching from the Big Bang to a utopian ideal of a society without classes, a consumerist paradise, a never-ending pleasure park or however it is conceived.7 ‘History’ is closely associated with human freedom and metaphysical contingency. History opens the field of ‘trial and error’, of human projects and planning. Time is conceived as a container that can be filled up, as an empty blackboard that can be written with ideas, as a pathway that can be taken and walked, as the unconscious condition of realization and auto-realization of the human being. History is, at the same time, the emancipation from determinism and the blind destiny predetermined by some cruel divinities or dynastic blood-lines. The Semitic conception of time is mainly an emancipatory one which has at its very core the concept of freedom and liberation. Secularization and revolutions, social contracts and utopia have been established not in spite of, but rather thanks to the Abrahamic religions and their emancipatory and liberating potential.8

cal background of the constitution of Christianity and the dogmatization of its doctrine, but in general the cradle of what would become ‘European culture’. 6

Islam did not play an important role in the Hellenistic era, but contributed substantially to European culture and civilization through its influence on the Iberian peninsula, in Western medieval philosophy and through the transfer of sciences as mathematics and medicine. Concerning the conception of time, classical Islamic philosophy more represented a theologically motivated determinism than stressed contingency and open history. In this respect, it is quite atypical for a Semitic religion and culture; but the same can be said of, for instance, Calvinism in Christian tradition.

7

For the secularization of the history of salvation, cf. Estermann “Zivilisationskrise”,

8

Judeo-Christian traditions (to some extent also Islam) are world-oriented religions, in

especially Chap. 2. spite of the later tendencies of escapism and other-worldliness, due to the influence of

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But this is only one part of the story, i.e. one part of this ‘impossible marriage’ which was still under great tension in the Middle Ages, but recovered from all crises to become much stronger than its godfathers (Paul of Tarsus; Constantine; Augustine; Thomas Aquinas) could have imagined (there were no godmothers). The other part has to do with the Greco-Roman heritage of European civilization and culture. Regarding time concepts, this part has passed down to European and Occidental culture and science the paradigm of determinism and absolute changelessness. The Greco-Roman conception of time is embodied in the metaphor of the circle, considered as the most perfect of all movements, mainly of the super-lunar world of the divine.9 In the circular conceptualisation of time, change and ‘progress’ do not really occur, but turn out to be mere appearance and illusion. The famous paradoxes of Zenon to prove the theses of his master Parmenides serve as an illustration of the basic ideas of the Greco-Roman time conception.10 Even Plato and Aristotle, known as the intellectual founders of metaphysical and physical movement and change, could not escape, in the long run, the determinist consequences of this circular time conception: everything happens by necessity, as if it were the ‘constant repetition of the same’. Even time-indexed

(neo-)Platonism. The biblical tradition stresses the ‘secular’ condition of all created beings, astronomical phenomena (stars, planets, sun, and moon) as well as political systems and powers. It is critical to monarchic or dynastic systems and blood-lines and interprets the world as the field of improving human existence by means of justice and peace. The freedom of human beings and the contingency of the created world are prerequisites for this religiously inspired worldview which has been fully secularized in European modernity, especially through the Enlightenment. 9

This paradigm had such an influence on science that even beyond the Middle Ages it was inconceivable that the planets did not have perfect circular orbits. One of the main arguments against the heliocentric thesis defended by Copernicus rooted in the stability and immutability of the Earth as an absolutely fixed place determined eternally by God. In the Greco-Roman worldview, the supra-lunar world was considered the realm of the gods, who governed in an absolutely immutable and fatalist manner; the infralunar world participates in this ‘eternal’ world insofar as the fates of human persons were connected directly to the behaviour and decisions of the divinities. Greek tragedy is one of the most famous examples of this metaphysical fatalism.

10 As is well known, Zeno of Elea wanted to prove that time and changeability were just human illusions, and didn’t really exist; his master Parmenides defended the doctrine that all existing beings have been the same for all eternity, that there is in the strictest sense only one immutable being, and that diversity and change are just appearances.

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facts and events can be interpreted, within the framework of the Greco-Roman time conception, as inevitable occurrences. While Parmenides (and Zenon) denied the very existence of time and change, Plato and Aristotle accepted their empirical reality, but interpreted them within the framework of determinism and fatalism. In other words: Greco-Roman philosophy and culture deny contingency and, therefore, human freedom. The fatum of the Greek and Roman pantheon and its reflection in human tragedies (Homer’s Odyssey as a paradigmatic example) later became absolutism and determinism in philosophy, religion and sciences.11 Modern European civilization and culture are, therefore, the fruit of this ‘impossible marriage’ between necessity and contingency, fatalism and freedom, predetermination and planning. Lovejoy talked about “glaring inconsistencies” (Lovejoy 155) that make up the very foundations of Occidental civilization and culture. One of these inconsistencies is the conceptualisation of time: European (and a fortiori Occidental) time conception somehow contains both the circular and the linear paradigms, i.e. historical and social determinism and historical and social openness (indetermination). How can this apparent contradiction be reconciled? How can Greco-Roman determinism and Semitic contingency be brought together?

2. C ONTEMPORARY P ARADOXES I could show, along the time line of the centuries, the concrete manifestations of this ‘fruitful inconsistency’ and the paradoxes it produced in society, religion and sciences, but I will limit myself to the contemporary forms of contradictions inherent in our understanding and practice of time. My main thesis runs as follows: the Greco-Roman time conception has become dominant in the fields of science, technology and economy, while the Semitic time conception has been very influential in the personal and individual fields of ethics, spirituality and arts. There are fields of human life that fall ‘in between’: politics, social life, religion and psychology.

11 This determinist root of European culture is even present in contemporary economic theories which maintain that “there is no alternative” to a capitalist free market economy and where the ‘invisible hand of the market forces’ are a metaphor quite similar to the destiny determined by the Greek gods. Another strong impact of the determinist paradigm can be observed in science, where the ideal of immutable eternal laws became the norm for scientific nature in general.

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René Descartes is the modern founder of this dichotomy and the father of the modern European conception of time (among other important concepts). While the res extensa, i.e. the natural and material world, is considered the “reign of necessity” which obeys absolute and unchangeable laws, the res cogitans, i.e. human spirit is characterized as the “reign of freedom” which makes and interprets political and ethical laws.12 In the realm of natural sciences and technological ‘progress’, Greco-Roman determinism and fatalism have the last word; in the realm of human life and artistic creativity, Semitic contingency and indeterminacy do. But these two paradigmatic systems are in fact intertwined in the field of the human interpretation of reality and history. On the one hand, history is interpreted mainly by idealist philosophers (Hegel, Fichte, Leibniz) as the result of human planning, creativity, great spirits and ideas, i.e. a history of human freedom and spontaneity, but on the other hand, the philosophy of history, whether materialistic or idealistic13, tries to explain history as the ‘necessary’ consequence of certain determinative laws and power structures, in such a way that the historical process and the ‘end of history’ are conceived as the fatal result of complex but in fact comprehensible principles and axioms at work.14 The Greco-Roman fatum is replaced by the necessity of dia-

12 Although it would be German idealism (Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel) which established the metaphysical contraposition of spiritual and material world in the sense that the first is governed by spontaneity and freedom and the second by eternal and immutable laws, Descartes set the foundations to this dichotomy by interpreting the whole realm of the material world (res extensa) as subject to immutable natural laws (animals are seen as ‘automata’ or ‘machines’) and spiritual substance or res cogitans (soul) as subject to free and spontaneous will. In Part V of his Discours de la Méthode, Descartes states that animals are “comme une machine qui, ayant été faite des mains de Dieu, est incomparablement mieux ordonnée [...] qu'aucune de celles [...] inventées par les hommes.” (Adam and Tannery, “Œuvres de Descartes” VI 56; Haldane I i 6) 13 In this respect, idealist and materialist philosophy (represented by Hegel and Marx) do not differ in principle, because both propose to be able to discover universal and necessary rules determining history. In the case of idealism, these rules have to do with the dialectical unfolding of absolute spirit, and in the case of materialism with the dialectical unfolding of matter. Both hold as absolute the principle of plenitude which leads, in ultimate instance, to metaphysical determinism. For this idea, especially the principle of plenitude, cf. Lovejoy 99-143, passim. 14 In philosophy, we would talk about the reducibility of empirical propositions to analytical ones, an idea developed and analysed thoroughly by Leibniz. Hegel carried this

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lectical processes (Hegel, Marx, and Engels), the inevitability of scientific advance and progress (Comte) and the neoliberal economic “end of history” (Fukuyama), while Semitic contingency and freedom give way to postmodern indifference, hedonism and artistic creativity.15 In the contemporary Western world (from 1980 to today), the paradox mentioned is to be found mainly in the fields of economics and politics. Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, neoliberal capitalism has conquered nearly every part of the globe, to such an extent that almost all sectors of human life have been ‘monetised’, i.e. have become commodities with a market value. In spite of its misleading name, the ‘free market economy’ has become the realm of the unavoidable, the necessary, and the destiny of humankind.16 “There is no alternative” (TINA), a slogan attributed to Margaret Thatcher, condenses this new economic determinism which expresses itself in an almost metaphysical pressure to grow, the fatal obligation to consume and waste, the uniformity of preferences and lifestyle patterns. Economics has become a second order fatum which is manmade, but which at the same time is religiously legitimised (the ‘invisible hand of the market’) and socially compelling. Politics, on the other hand, has changed from a power to design social life and construct just and inclusive societies to a handmaid of economic ‘necessities’ and fatalism (Realpolitik). In the Western world, almost all parties adopt some kind of neoliberal politics, making themselves hostages of economic determinism and unavoidability.17 At the same

enterprise in his philosophy of history to the extreme position of absolute evidentialism: “all that is real is rational, and all that is rational, is real”. Cf. Vos 1981, passim. 15 Fukuyama; for the philosophers of the 19th century, cf. Lovejoy, passim. 16 Perhaps this is the most prominent example of the ‘inner inconsistency’ and tension between the two paradigms of time conception mentioned before: free market economy aims to liberate economic activities in the tradition of classical liberalism from all kinds of restrictions and regulations; on the other hand, market mechanisms become a new kind of fatalism because they are a kind of destiny no longer dependent on human decisions. Our perception of the stock market and financial turbulence is one of fatalism and impotence; the “invisible hand” (Adam Smith) has become a supra-human anonymous force. 17 Noteworthy is the change from classical ‘liberalism’ to economic ‘neoliberalism’ in the sense that the former stressed human freedom from all kinds of authoritarian determination and understood itself mainly as a political process of emancipation, while the second one (‘neoliberalism’) focusses on economic freedom which turns into its very opposite, the dictatorship of growth, maximization of profit and progress. Almost

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time, they undermine the very principles of democratic life that imply freedom, self-determination and ethical values. Our discussion of ‘time’ is very symptomatic in this respect. We say that ‘time is running out’, that ‘there is no time left’, that ‘time is money’, that we have a ‘time-budget’ or that we are ‘short of time’. These expressions deal with time as if it were some kind of resource or capital that we can use, waste or even accumulate (we can ‘gain time’ or have a ‘time credit balance’). This conception of time which is dominant in modern and even postmodern actual Western societies18 is a ‘monetised’ time conception which goes back, in the long run, to the Greek god Chronos and the determinist conception of time and change underlying Greek mythology. The chronometer and modern watches are the most eloquent symbols of time as a quantitative and determinist framework of human and non-human activities. Just as the big hand of the watch showing the seconds advances constantly and inevitably, in the same sense technology, economic growth and progress are supposed to advance without any alternative: we are condemned to ‘progress and growth’. The Semitic time conception, which has been relegated to second place in contemporary Western societies, stresses the dynamic and linear character of time, but at the same time underlines the ‘open’ character of historic processes and the qualitative aspect of time. It is symbolized in another Greek symbol and divinity, namely Kairos.19 It refers to the non-determinist, rather qualitative and open character of time which finds manifestations in our talking about time in a sense different from the ‘monetised’ one: we say ‘it is time’, ‘have a good time’,

a century ago, Walter Benjamin called this metaphysical nature of capitalism “religion”. 18 Postmodernity has changed the dominant modern conception of time (determining mainly the 19th and part of the 20th century) in the sense that Einstein’s relativity theory has been applied to social and cultural life, but without changing the dominance of the quantitative and monetised ideas of time. In my opinion, postmodernity is not an intercultural, but rather an intra-cultural criticism of Western mainstream philosophy and its value system. See the opposite position in Pegrum. 19 While Chronos (Χρόνος) was in Greek mythology the god of time and was present before all in the speculative poetry of Orphism, Kairos (Καιρός) was conceived as the appropriate moment in time and was personified in mythology as a god who didn´t play a very prominent role. Still, while there was never a considerable cult to Chronos in Antiquity, and most of the representations result from the 14th century, there was a cult to Kairos in Olympia, and the poet Posidippos of Pella memorialised him in one of his hymns.

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or ‘the time has come’. In particular, the (Western) concept of ‘free time’ (in most Indo-European languages, ‘leisure’ is expressed by a combination of ‘time’ and ‘freedom’: Freizeit, temps libre, tiempo libre, vrije tijd, tempo libero, tempo livre). The division of our activities in ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ reflects quite accurately these two time conceptions intertwined in modern European societies: time as quantity and compelling process, mainly in economics, technology and sciences (‘work’), and time as quality and open process, mainly in ethics, spirituality and arts (‘leisure’). The most problematic effects of this division are the separation of economics both from politics and ethics, and the pressure ‘monetised’ time has on all of our activities. Even ‘leisure’ (or ‘free time’) is becoming more and more subject to ideals of competence, pressure and quantification.20

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We consider the Western conception of time in our societies as a relatively homogenous and quite consistent bundle of intuitions and presuppositions, in spite of a very conflicted and even contradictory history of two mutually exclusive paradigms. There are still patterns of behaviour stemming from traditional agrarian cultures, mainly in southern and eastern Europe, which resist the dominant time conception of modern philosophy and stick to cyclical and reversible ideas of time and history. Migration has brought major diversity into an apparently homogeneous conception of time in Western societies. But notwithstanding, in most aspects of European Leitkultur, the idea of time fostered by philosophical rationalism and market economy prevails and continues to determine the common conception of time. This has to do with the predominance of the main features of the Western time conception even in the ‘postmodern’ era: linearity, irreversibility, progressivity and quantification. Metaphorically speaking, we see our future ‘before us’, i.e. in front of our eyes, we ‘walk’ towards the future and leave the past behind. There is no way back to the past, except in our memory and the huge bulk of archives and data based history. In spite of our increasing knowledge of what occurred in the past, our view of time is constantly getting narrower and shorter; we live as if the present nunc stans filled up all the possi-

20 In the context of ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘degrowth’, there is an interesting debate going on about a new (and old) appreciation of leisure in the sense of the Greek banausi as liberation from work and earning money. Cf. Braun.

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bilities of human history.21 We are no longer aware of the huge time segments necessary to shape the world as it is today. Fossil fuel was generated over millions of years, but has been consumed in less than a hundred years. The postmodern sense of time is the simultaneity of any event, of any culture and historical era. And this is the very expression of an extreme determinism: all that has happened, is happening and will happen is concentrated in a single point, the eternal present.22 Among the Aymaras of the Andean Altiplano (Highlands), there is a saying that confronts us with a totally different conception of time: Qhip nayr uñtasis sarnaqapxañani – “watching the past in order to walk forth to the future”. Or, as I put it in the title of this paper: “walking backwards to the future, facing the past”. The Aymaras are, together with the Quechuas, one of the indigenous peoples who form what is called Andean culture and civilization.23 Although both

21 This phenomenon is called the ‘instantaneity’ of our lifestyle and can be summed up in the slogan ‘here, immediately and everything’. This ‘instantaneity’ has been made possible thanks to the cyberworld, in which all information, all events and all interpretations of these events occur at the same time, in the very present. This supposed simultaneity of moments, spaces and cultures which dominates postmodern feeling and living makes us forget the great non-simultaneity existing between cultures, civilizations and human histories. The postmodern ‘instantaneity’ is a powerful illusion fostered by the capitalist market economy. 22 If we project the circular movement of the (determinist) circular conception of time onto an angle of 90 degrees, we get a line and a pendular movement going to and returning from one point to the other; and if we project this line again onto an angle of 90 degrees towards us, there remains one single point, and all movement has come to a full stop. 23 Aymaras and Quechuas belong to the same ethnic group, although in the past, they fought each against one another. The Quechuas form the majority (about 10 million Quechua speaking persons) and can be found nowadays from the south of Colombia to northern Chili and Argentine; the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) with Cusco as its capital was almost coextensive with the Quechuas. The Aymaras (about 2.2 million Aymara speaking persons) seem to be older than the Quechuas and settled near Lake Titicaca; nowadays they live in western Bolivia, the very southern part of Peru and the very northern part of Chili. They resisted for a long time invasion by the Incas, who intended to eradicate their language, religion and social organization, but did not succeed. When the Spanish conquerors appeared in the Andean Altiplano, the Aymaras allied with them against the Incas, hoping to preserve their independence. The Quech-

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ethnic groups have been subjugated by the Spanish conquerors, they have preserved the main features of their ‘cosmovision’, i.e. their philosophical, mythological, religious and cultural identity. This is neither Semitic nor Hellenistic, but of another kind of rationality. People from abroad who spend part of their lives in the context of Andean thinking, tourists passing through the Andean countries or business men and women, experts of international cooperation and scholars who want to establish their projects and conduct their research, sooner or later come into contact with this ‘strange logic’ and even stranger habits and customs. If you ask somebody in the countryside of the Andes when you will arrive at the village, people do not look at their watch (because they don’t have one) nor give an indication in minutes or hours, but describe relative proximity: “just here” (acacito)24 or “behind the next hills”. The same can happen in town, and when tourists hear “just two blocks from here”, they think that this is an exact quantitative answer to their request for a description of how long the walk will last. But in fact, the village is not “just here”, nor is the place in town to be reached within two blocks. The indication of distance and time reflects a ‘felt time’, in this case a time that is very short in the abundance of time people live in. For the foreigner, time is something to calculate carefully, a ‘scarce commodity’ which has to be handled with parsimony and planning. We plan to arrive at the village (e.g. as the project manager of an irrigation project) at 11 a.m. in order to be back in town at 4 p.m.; as time is a ‘limited resource’, we cannot take more than the planned time to achieve our objectives. Traditional Andean people (not influenced heavily by Western thinking) live within time, and do not ‘have’ time as if it were some kind of capital to spend or to save.25

ua and Aymara languages share about one third of their vocabulary and more than 80% of their grammatical structures and rules. 24 The use of diminutives (acacito: “just here”; ahorita: “just now”) not only reflects the structure of the native languages Quechua and Aymara, but also reveals the subjective and relational character of time and space indications. To tell somebody that your objective or goal is “just here” or that the meeting will start “just now” – although it can take hours to get where we want to or up to an hour until the meeting will start – means that the speaker in fact wishes the interlocutor to remind him or her: ‘everything has its specific rhythm and on the background of a human life, one hour is nothing’. 25 Neoliberal capitalist economy is constructed upon the ‘scarcity’ of resources, goods, energy and capital; as anything is scarce, it has a price. For a long time, water and air didn’t have a price, and even land was available for a long time in abundance; but as these elements became ‘scarce’ they got a price, became commodities and were intro-

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Another notorious example of intercultural misunderstanding and conflict is the almost proverbial ‘unpunctuality’ of Latin Americans in general and Andean people in particular. Again, time is not determined by the hands of watches, by an artificial instrument invented to calculate and manage time, but by a complex network of relations. When someone comes ‘late’ to a meeting – and ‘late’ does not mean five or ten minutes, but half an hour, one hour or even more – there must have been something more important than this very meeting, i.e. some social or personal duty or commitment that had priority. If I, on my way to a formal meeting, bump into a friend or a relative, it is important to talk to him or her, to ‘take time’ for our relationship, to ask after the (extensive) family, health, plans etc. and to listen carefully to the stories my interlocutor tells me. And in this case, it does not matter if this conversation lasts one hour or even more: my social and familiar obligations have priority over ‘punctuality’ and formal obligations on the work floor or in business. These are just a few examples to show the concrete manifestations of an underlying worldview and philosophy which are totally different from what we understand in our Western cultural traditions. First of all, in the native Andean languages Quechua and Aymara, there is no word for ‘time’. The Spaniards were indeed stunned and helpless when they discovered that the indigenous people could not understand what they meant with their notion of ‘time’. So they introduced the Spanish word tiempo, which has been adapted to the phonetic peculiarities of the native languages as timpu and, as a loan word, become part of the native vocabulary. But it still refers to a ‘foreign’ state of experience and does not reflect the proper cultural feeling and comprehension of ‘time’. The fact that there is no specific word for ‘time’ in the native languages does not mean that time does not exist, but rather that it is a phenomenon which cannot be conceived and expressed by one single expression. There is a word, both in Quechua and in Aymara (it is a quechumara word), that has to do with the basic sense of time Andean people have: pacha. Pacha is a very important concept in Andean philosophy and has almost the same place and function as ‘being’ in Western philosophy.26 Pacha means space and time at

duced in the economic market mechanism. For economies of abundance (such as the Andean one), nothing has a price, and everything can be used by anybody; this implies that the concept of private ownership did not exist until the conquest and is even nowadays rather the exception than the rule in indigenous economies. Cf. Estermann “Zivilisationskrise”; Más allá de Occidente, 129-51. 26 For further information and analysis, cf. Estermann “Diatopische Hermeneutik”; specially 33-8.

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the same time (what a paradoxical expression!), in such a way that time is a kind of space, and space is a kind of time. The expressions for ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’, for instance, are related to space categories: nayra pacha (Aymara) or ñawpapacha (Quechua) are used to indicate ‘past time’, but mean literally ‘the time-space of our eyes (nayra/ñawi)’. Aka pacha (Aymara) or kay pacha (Quechua) are used to indicate ‘present time’, but mean literally ‘this timespace’ and are related to one of three pachasophical realms.27 Qhipa pacha (Aymara) or qhepa pacha (Quechua) is used to refer to ‘future time’, but means literally ‘the time-space in the back/behind’. Pacha also means ‘universe’, ‘world’, ‘cosmos’, i.e. the ordered reality in past, presence and future; so the temporal expressions are at the same time spatial or cosmic expressions: the ‘past world’, the ‘present world’ and the ‘future world’, as we express them in Western culture as well. There is one crucial difference to the Western time-space-continuum: in Andean philosophy, the ‘past world’ is not in ‘the back’ or ‘behind’, but ‘in front’ of us, ‘in front of our eyes’, and ‘future time’ is not ‘in front’ of us, but rather in ‘the back’ or ‘behind’. As we know what has happened and what people have told us, we can better direct our attention (‘eyes’) to the ‘past’ than to an unknown future. But there is another aspect which makes the whole story of time even more complicated: ‘past’ and ‘future’ are not just ‘happened and closed’, or ‘not yet happened and open’ states of affairs, but are some variants of that interrelated reality called pacha. The principal feature of Andean philosophy is not substantiality or individual existence, but rather relationality28 and holistic coexistence.

4. R ELATIONALITY

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C YCLICITY

Our intercultural clashes in the conflict zone of overlapping or coexisting cultural and civilizational paradigms can only be understood and interpreted properly

27 I use the notion pachasophy or pachasophical as an expression to replace Western philosophy with an indigenous notion, composed from a Quechua-Aymara (pacha) and a Greek word (sophía). See for this point: Estermann Filosofía Andina; there is no English version available so far. 28 In my works on Andean philosophy, I have coined this word (relacionalidad; relationality) as the abstract expression for the fact that relations and their various interconnections and networks form the basis of the indigenous Andean worldview. Cf. Estermann Filosofía Andina.

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by way of what I call “diatopic hermeneutics”. In our case, the dominant Western time conception is one topos, and the Andean time conception is another one. Intercultural hermeneutics oscillates between (dia) these two topoi in order to find “homeomorphic equivalents”29, i.e. concepts and notions which have the same or at least a similar function in two or more different cultural universes. Could the Western notion of ‘time’ (chronos/kairos) be a homeomorphic equivalent for Andean pacha? I doubt it, because the semantic field of European ‘time’ implies a bundle of characteristics that are not involved in the Andean pacha, and the other way round. To find homeomorphic equivalents could be helpful for translation purposes, but even so, ‘time’ and pacha are not just inter-lingual synonyms as are, for instance, time and Zeit. There has to be a procedure like interparadigmatic translation which presupposes not only the efforts of diatopic hermeneutics, but also the deep understanding of the ‘philosophical’ backgrounds of worldviews underlying cultures and civilizations. In the case of the Andean time conception, this is Andean philosophy or, better and more accurately: Andean pachasophy. For Andean philosophy (and general popular intuition), the guiding axiom is the principle of relationality. This means that neither substances nor individual beings are the ultimate foundations or ‘bricks’ of reality, but ‘relations’. From a Western perspective, we would say, quite paradoxically, the relation (relation) comes first; the related beings (relata) come merely in second place. For Aristotle (and most of Western tradition), ‘relation’ is an ‘accident’, i.e. something which is ‘added’ to a long-existing substance.30 To put it more concretely: before

29 Raimon Panikkar coined the concept of “diatopic hermeneutics” as a means of intercultural understanding: the process of interpretating cultural peculiarities has to go forth and back between two cultural ‘places’ (topoi), in the search of “homeomorphic equivalents” (equivalentes homeomórficos). Panikkar: “I call it diatopic hermeneutics because the distance to be overcome is not merely temporal, within one broad tradition, but the gap existing between two human topoi, ‘places’ of understanding and self-understanding, between two – or more – cultures that have not developed their patterns of intelligibility [...]. Diatopic hermeneutics stands for the thematic consideration of understanding the other without assuming that the other has the same basic self-understanding. The ultimate human horizon, and not only differing contexts, is at stake here.” (Panikkar 1979, 9) For a philosophical reflection on diatopic hermeneutics, cf. Estermann “Diatopische Hermeneutik”. 30 According to Aristotle, any aspect or reality which is not a (primary) substance, has only ontological value insofar as it ‘inheres’ in a (primary) substance (Categories

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two persons can enter into contact and become friends or even lovers, they are necessarily two separate and autonomous individuals or ‘substances’. That sounds very familiar to us, but is not as universally valid as we might think. In Andean philosophy, it is just the other way round: in order to become truly fullfledged individual personalities, two human beings have always been related to one another. That means that the world or reality is not constituted by ‘substances’ or ‘atoms’, but by a very complex structure of ‘relations’ or ‘energy’. Relations or energy are not ‘things’ or substances, but rather a fluidum of some specific constellations or states of affairs. Drawing on the quantum mechanics of the nature of light, one could compare Western philosophy with the corpuscular theory (Gassendi, Hobbes, and Newton) and Andean philosophy with the wave theory (Huygens, Planck).31 According to the principle of relationality, relation is the primordial ‘being’ or reality (in principio erat relatio) both ontologically and temporally. Everything is interconnected with everything, and there are no gaps between individual separate beings which are perceived as autonomous and physically separated one from the other, but which in fact are interrelated and connected by means of a complex network of relations. This understanding can be expressed also as the principle of holism or the pre-eminence of the whole (holos) over the particular individual being. This principle is universal in the sense that it is valid for cosmic as well as human features, for ethical as well as physical characteristics. One example from anthropology: in the Aymara language, the expression translated into European languages as ‘to marry’ is jaqichasiña and means literally: ‘to become mutually person or human being’. The vital relationship of a (heterosexu-

2a34); ‘relation’ is one of the nine ‘accidents’ which determine the main category of ‘substance’ as the first category. Cf. Hood. 31 Javier Medina, a Bolivian philosopher and intellectual, applies quantum mechanics to three main civilizations: Western civilization represented by the fermionic paradigm, Oriental civilization (more or less coextensive with the Semitic one), and indigenous Andean civilization as the balanced and harmonious combination and complementarity of both. The fermion particles of an atom, characterized by Fermi-Dirac statistics, obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle and include all quarks and leptons, as well as any composite particle made of an odd number of these, such as all baryons and many atoms and nuclei. Fermions differ from bosons, which obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Bosons make up one of the two classes of particles, the other being fermions. For Medina cf. Medina Suma Qamaña.

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al) couple is the basis for the two parts to become full human persons with all rights and duties.32 Applying the principle of relationality to our issue of ‘time’, we can conclude that time in Andean perception is above all a relation and not a quantity. It has a qualitative aspect, as kairos has in the Western tradition: time is not a ‘neutral’ measure or some kind of container or receptacle. Time is always ‘spaced’ and related to the ordered world (pacha) as a whole of relations and vital connections. As in most nature-based worldviews, the Andean time conception is related intimately to the great astronomical, meteorological and agrarian cycles which find their parallels in human life and the life cycles of history and individual biography. There are ‘dense’ moments or periods of time, especially at the end of one and the beginning of a new cycle. These ‘passing zones’33 are precarious, and require ritual and religious guiding and support. The so-called “rites of passage” (rites de passage) deal with these ‘dense’ moments of time at the transition from one to another cycle. Solstices or the change of moon phases, the change between rainy and dry seasons, between sowing and harvesting, birth and death are ‘dense’ and precarious moments which need to be accompanied by different rituals. Most Andean rituals have to do with this kind of chakanas, i.e. pachasophical ‘bridges’ between one realm and another, one cycle and another.34

32 This does not mean that a single or a homosexual is not a full human being; it is rather the completeness of ‘person’ involved in the Aymara concept jaqi and the Quechua one of runa. The complementary relationship between chacha/qhari (man) and warmi (woman) is the necessary presupposition for completeness (con-plenus), which indeed has social and political consequences. In the Andes, only ‘married’ people (not in the Western sense of the word, but as joined in the Andean sense) can take on social and political responsibilities in their communities and even on a national level. The fact that the actual president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, was considered single was interpreted by indigenous people as an impediment to the presidency; but as he has children, he is considered a full-fledged jaqi. 33 In anthropology, they are known as ‘transition zones’, i.e. phenomena which have a precarious character because of their topological position. The best known and documented ‘transition zones’ and their corresponding rituals (rites de passage) are those which are in between one life-cycle and another, e.g. youth and adult life, but also birth and death. But there are also non-anthropological ‘passage zones’ in the fields of astronomy, meteorology, agriculture and history. 34 Like pacha, chakana is another very important concept in Andean philosophy. The Quechua-Aymara word chakana means literally the connection of the thighs and is expressed in a metaphorical sense as a ‘bridge’ (with two pillars). In Andean cosmol-

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In contrast to the dominant modern Western conception of time, the Andean time conception stresses quality, cyclicity, reversibility, discontinuity and stability. The metaphorical image is neither the (Greco-Roman) circle nor the (Semitic) line, but rather the spiral, which has some familiarity with dialectical thinking of the Western tradition. Most of the Andean ‘utopias’ have their ‘place’ in the past and not in the future which is home to those of Western thinking. This does not mean that we aim to ‘return’ to a glorious past in pre-colonial times, but that the past has the germens and the blueprint of an ideal way of life we can only achieve ‘walking backwards’ into the future which is not necessarily better than the present or the past. ‘Facing the past’ does not mean being obsessed with what has been irreversibly lost, but rather being inspired by the energy and the exemplary experience of former generations and cycles. For Andean people, their ancestors are not just present in remembering and retelling their stories, but in fact as sources of energy and orientation. Most Andean rituals ‘make present’ (represent) the ancestors, as well as all kinds of spiritual beings and relations; they live among us, as the ‘souls’ of our beloveds do. ‘Reversibility’ means that the ‘past’ is not really past, but that it is still present and can be remodelled and ‘perfected’. In contrast to deterministic time conceptions – like the Greco-Roman one – the Andean time conception has a notion of progression and change, but not in the sense of the modern dominant Western time conception. There is a genuine discontinuity in history and the establishment and reestablishment of ‘good living’ (Vivir Bien)35 and cosmic balance; there are cosmic cataclysms (pachakuti) which form the necessary rupture and continuation between one and the other historical cycle. A pachakuti – the word means literally ‘returning of pacha’ – establishes a dramatic endpoint of some ‘development’ or ‘evolution’, some kind of qualitative jump (in dialectical thinking), due to the deterioration of the holistic network of relations and the cosmic balance supporting pacha. A pachakuti occurs if and when reality has become disordered, imbalanced and disharmonious, i.e. when vital relations have been interrupted to such an extent that life is threatened and the damaged relations cannot be ‘healed’ by the auto-healing processes of pacha and the ritual

ogy, the Southern Cross is called Chakana (with capital letters), and the Andean cross has the same name. Cf. Estermann “Der Mensch”, “Jesucristo”, Si el Sur fuera. 35 One of the best known concepts of Andean philosophy and wisdom recognised in the last ten years is the concept of Vivir Bien or Buen Vivir (in Aymara: suma qamaña; in Quechua: allin kawsay of sumaq kawsay). In European languages, it is translated normally as ‘good living’ or ‘good life’, but it is quite the opposite of Aristotelian or postmodern ‘good life’. Cf. Estermann “Zivilisationskrise”.

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and ethical reciprocal activities of human beings. In such a case, there is no other way out than the dramatic rupture of the present cycle and the beginning of a new one. In Andean perspective, one of these pachakuti occurred with the Conquest of Abya Yala, and another one – the idea exists that one historical cycle lasts 500 years – is imminent, because of climate change, the crisis of globalized capitalism and the irruption of indigenous peoples.

5. “W ALKING B ACKWARDS F ACING THE P AST ”

TO THE

F UTURE ,

Is there “chaos in the contact zone” between Western and Andean concepts of time? One of the elements of this supposed chaos is an incompatibility of two philosophies and the subsequent principles and intuitions. The frustration and helplessness of Western tourists and co-workers in development projects when facing notorious ‘unpunctuality’ or ‘inefficient’ time management in meetings reveal this unconscious and even suppressed ‘chaos’ as a fundamental incompatibility. Indeed, it is more difficult for Westerners than for Andeans, because the former are trained by Aristotelian bivalent logic to consider such inconsistencies and incompatibilities ‘impossible’ and unbearable: tertium non datur (there is no third way). For Andean inclusive and polyvalent logic36, Western and Andean perspectives of time can coexist, as for Max Planck the corpuscular and wave theories of light (or the fermionic and bosonic structure of atomic particles) can

36 Concerning polyvalent Andean logics, there are a series of publications, most of them in Spanish. A summary in Spanish by Omar Félix Campohermoso Rodríguez can be found at: http://www.revistasbolivianas.org.bo/scielo.php?pid=S165267762015000 200019&script=sci_arttext. 27 January 2017. The main founder of trivalent Andean logics is Iván Gúzman de Rojas, cf. Problemática, Logical and linguistic problems, Lógica aymara. In German, there are several contributions by Jorge Miranda-Luizaga who did his Ph.D. in Aachen and dealt intensively with the issue of an Andean alphabet, but also with the polyvalent Andean logic. Cf. Schrift der Andenkultur, Sonnentor, Andine Mathematik. Another aspect is the so called Andean ‘tetralectics’, cf. Molina Rivero, Tetraléctica, Los fundamentos de la tetraléctica; cf. also: “La tetralectica andina.” 27 January 2017; Post from 12 August 2012: https://www.facebook. com/309149169142724/photos/a.309152209142420.72328.309149169142724/40526 7992864174/.

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coexist without inconsistency or incompatibility.37 But Westerners have the almost natural impulse to ‘resolve’ the chaos by reducing the apparent incompatibility to their preferred and understandable worldview, namely the Western one: all participants of our meetings have to stick to the criterion of punctuality imposed by the clock. Although it is probably not possible for us to fully understand what is meant by the Andean slogan “walking backwards to the future, facing the past”, we can do two things. The first thing, which is a presupposition of intercultural understanding and dialogue, is simply to have and demonstrate respect for cultural and human alterity. The second one is to try to put oneself in the shoes of the other and to understand (at least partially) the philosophical and cultural framework of cultural behaviour. The experience of chaos can be very helpful and even creative (‘creative strangeness’), if we are able to see it as a moment of questioning our own certainties about the world and ourselves.38 Thanks to their inclusive logic and holistic worldview, Andean indigenous people have survived the many attempts of the Western world to eradicate their cultural, religious and philosophical alterity. An Andean native who works with an international organization will adapt for some time to the European requirement of ‘punctuality’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘analyticity’, but will drop these principles as soon as he or she returns to a native context. This is, for instance, very striking in the phenomenon of iskay uya, translated as ‘double face’ and often seen as some kind of hypocrisy or ambiguity. Andean people can tell you one thing and later, in another context and with other interlocutors, the very opposite. The problem is – in spite of postmodern diversity and polyvalent rationality – on the side of Western mainstream science: we seek unambiguity, clarity, a single truth, either-or. We do not tolerate ambiguous situations; we have a classification-mania and try to label each phenomenon with a single notion and name. We have a kind of inherent phobia about chaotic situations and try to resolve and overcome them as soon as possible, reducing the apparently inconsistent or in-

37 The Bolivian philosopher Javier Medina tries to demonstrate the basic complementarity between Western and Andean (indigenous) philosophy and civilisation (as he calls them) referring to Max Planck’s quantum theory. Cf. Medina Diálogo de sordos. 38 Even at this point, we can detect different cultural perceptions and sensibilities: while for most Westerners, ‘chaos’ is something to avoid or at least to overcome rapidly, for non-Western cultures, ‘chaos’ can be considered relatively ordered (an ‘ordered chaos’) or even just the real condition of life. Western ‘chaos theory’ has discovered the ‘proper rationality’ of chaotic features of reality; ‘chaos’ is not just ‘irrational’, but rather hetero-rational.

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compatible phenomena to a single unambiguous one. Perhaps it has to do with the substantialist framework of the dominant Western worldview: one and the same ‘thing’ (substance) cannot be another. For Andean relationality, there is no such problem; relations are always ambiguous, as life in general is. To respect the otherness or alterity of another culture, behaviour, custom or belief, starts with ourselves insofar as it presupposes a relativization of our own standpoint and perspective. When I respect the other and his or her worldview, it could be that I am wrong or at least that my own standpoint is not the only and universally valid one. This is the point where eurocentrism or ethnocentrism in general is at stake. Any cultural or ethnic centrism presupposes the (universal) validity of its own presuppositions and, confronted with cultural alterity and chaos, tries to reduce this alterity and chaos to the logical and rational framework it is accustomed to, i.e. its own. This is the most frequent strategy of tourists and other persons, as well as Westerners as non-Westerners, confronted with incomprehensible and ambiguous phenomena in strange cultures.39 But it impedes learning from the other and revealing the blind points of one’s own worldview and cultural framework. Concerning our issue of time, it is not less mythical and magical to believe in unlimited growth and on-going progress than to insist that the future is behind us. Both are metaphors of two different conceptions of time, which is in fact a very ambiguous phenomenon. This mutual respect is thus the necessary presupposition for the second thing to do: try to understand the other’s logic and rationality without judging or reducing it to one’s own. And this is the most exciting and fruitful adventure in the semantic jungle of the “contact zone”.

39 Facing incomprehensibility and chaos, there is a kind of human ‘invariety’ among people from different cultures to stick to the well known hermeneutical framework to explain the ‘unexplainable’. It can be seen as well in the strategies of science to adapt new phenomena as long as possible to the established theories and worldviews and give up this framework as a whole only when an explication or understanding within the own ‘paradigm’ is not possible anymore. Thomas Kuhn called this step a “paradigm shift” or a “paradigmatic revolution”, as it occurred for example at the transition from the Newtonian to the Einsteinian worldview. (Kuhn 1962) I think that in intercultural understanding, something similar happens: as long as we can explain ‘strange’ cultural phenomena within the framework of our own worldview and cultural paradigm, we will not change it, but when the ‘chaos’ becomes too prevalent, we look for a new paradigm.

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R EFERENCES Adam, Charles, and Paul Tannery (eds). Œuvres de Descartes. Vol. 1-13. Paris: Cerf, 1897-1913. Neue Ausgabe : 1964-1973. Benjamin, Walter. “Kapitalismus als Religion [Fragment]” Gesammelte Schriften. Eds. Tiedemann, Rolf, and Hermann Schweppenhäuser. 7 vols., Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991, vol. VI. 100-2. Braun, Anneliese. “Konkrete Utopie jenseits der Arbeit?” Marxistische Erneuerung 38 (1999): 88-100. 27 January 2017. http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/arbeit/Braun.html. Estermann, Josef. “Der Mensch als Chakana (Brücke): Identität als Relationalität.” Menschwerden im Kulturwandel: Kontexte kultureller Identität als Wegmarken interkultureller Kompetenz. Ed. Thomas Schreijäck. Luzern: Exodus, 1999. 343-61. ---. Filosofía Andina: Estudio Intercultural de la Sabiduría Autóctona. Quito: Abya-Yala, 1998; new extended edition: La Paz: ISEAT, 2006. German translation of the first edition: Andine Philosophie: Interkulturelle Studie zur autochthonen andinen Weisheit. Frankfurt a.M.: IKO, 1999. ---. “Jesucristo como chakana: Esbozo de una cristología andina de la liberación.” Bajar de la Cruz a los Pobres: Cristología de la Liberación. Ed. Comisión Teológica Internacional de la Asociación Ecuménica de Teólogos/as del Tercer Mundo ASETT. Mexico: Dabar, 2007. 89-98. ---. Si el Sur fuera el Norte: Chakanas interculturales entre Andes y Occidente. Quito: Abya Yala, 2008. ---. “Diatopische Hermeneutik am Beispiel der Andinen Philosophie: Ansätze zur Methodologie interkulturellen Philosophierens.” Polylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren 27 (2012): 21-40. ---. “Zivilisationskrise und das Gute Leben: Eine philosophische Kritik des kapitalistischen Modelles aufgrund des andinen Allin Kawsay / Suma Qamaña.” Concordia. Revista Internacional de Filosofía 63 (2013): 19-48. ---. Más allá de Occidente: Apuntes filosóficos sobre interculturalidad, descolonización y el Vivir Bien andino. Quito: Abya Yala, 2015. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. Gúzman de Rojas, Iván. Problemática lógico-lingüística de la comunicación social con el pueblo aymara. New York: International Development Research Centre, 1982. ---. Logical and linguistic problems of social communication with the aymara people. New York: International Development Research Centre, 1985.

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---. Lógica aymara y futurología. La Paz: Santin-Offset Color, 2007. Haldane, Elizabeth S., and George R.T. Ross (eds.). The Philosophical Works of Descartes. Rendered into English. Vol. 1-2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911-2. New edition: London 1967. Hood, Pamela M. Aristotle on the Category of Relation. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004. James, George. Stolen Legacy: Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy. New York: Philosophical Library, 1954. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Lovejoy, Arthur. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936. Medina, Javier. Diálogo de sordos: occidente e indianidad: una aproximación conceptual a la educación intercultural y bilingüe en Bolivia. La Paz: CEBIAE, 2000. ---. Suma Qamaña: Por una convivialidad postindustrial. La Paz: Garza Azul Editores, 2006. 27 January 2017. http://lareciprocidad.blogspot.com/2011_01_16_archive.html. Molina Rivero, Jorge Emilio. Fundamentos de la tetraléctica. La Paz: NAIRA, 1992. ---. La Tetraléctica de los números perfectos. La Paz: Producciones CIMA 1999. Miranda-Luizaga, Jorge. Das Sonnentor: Vom Überleben der archaischen Andenkultur. München: Dianus-Trikont, 1985. ---. Andine Mathematik und Kosmologie. Aachen: Technische Hochschule RWTH, 1991. ---. Die Schrift der Andenkultur. Aachen: Technische Hochschule RWTH, 1991. Olela, Henry. “The African Foundations of Greek Philosophy.” African Philosophy: An Introduction. Ed. Richard A. Wright. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984. Onyewuenyi, Innocent C. The African Origin of Greek Philosophy: An Exercise in Afrocentrism. Nsukka: University of Nsukka Press, 1994. Panikkar, Raimon. Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics. New York: Paulist Press, 1979. Pegrum, Mark. “Stop all the clocks: The Postmodern Assault on Time.” Mots pluriels 1.1 (1996). 27 January 2017. http://motspluriels.arts.uwa.edu.au/MP197mpeg.html. Vos, Antonie. Kennis en Noodzakelijkheid: Een kritische analyse van het absolute evidentialisme in wijsbegeerte en Theologie (Knowledge and Necessity:

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A critical analysis of absolute evidentialism in philosophy and theology). Kampen: Kok, 1981.

Many Worlds, Many Stories Towards a Multiplication of Perspectives on Early Modern Cultural Encounters S ÜNNE J UTERCZENKA

R ÉSUMÉ Inspiré par de nouvelles approches de l’histoire culturelle, d’une historiographie »polyphone« imprégnée par différents points de vue, quelquefois même contradictoires, l’article plaide pour une multiplication des perspectives sur les rencontres culturelles des 16ème et 17ème siècles. D’abord, nous résumerons les développements principaux du champ de recherche par une relecture critique d’Urs Bitterli. Le processus de diversification a mené à la mise en considération d’aspects internationaux et transdisciplinaires ainsi que de l’Histoire globale. Ensuite, nous donnerons un aperçu des problèmes méthodologiques de l’analyse des rencontres culturelles. Les plus grands défis sont les sources fragmentaires et la question de la représentation adéquate. Ils touchent à la divergence des positions historiques et contemporaines souvent marquées par des conflits mais aussi aux divergences entre les interprétations académiques et extra-académiques. L’article plaide pour une adaptation des méthodes issues d’autres champs de recherche et pour des narrations fragmentaires, innovatrices qui évitent tout grand récit.

Natalie Zemon Davis’ triple biography Women on the Margins begins with an imaginary conversation between the author and her seventeenth-century protagonists. Set in “Thoughtland”, this prologue showcases typical pitfalls in historians’ work. For example, it is easy to forget that we often use ex post categories: “Gender hierarchies?” the three women ask indignantly, “what are gender hier-

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archies?” (Zemon Davis 3) Similarly, it can be tempting to project our own aims and aspirations into the past: they vehemently reject Davis’ assessment of their lives as “adventurous”; one of them declares, “it sounds to me, historian Davis, as though you’re the one who wanted adventures.” (Ibid. 4) As Davis poignantly reminds us, however sympathetic a historian is, she can never really step into her protagonists’ shoes – not even if she shares their “hopes for a paradise on earth, for remade worlds.” (Ibid. 4) The Catholic nun and missionary Marie Guyart de L’Incarnation, the Jewish businesswoman Glickl bas Judah Leib, and the Protestant naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian protest resolutely the juxtaposition of their biographies in the book. Our only hope, Davis seems to suggest, rests in being honest about what we would like to find out, and in laying open the specific historical standpoint of our inquiry. She tries to explain: In my day it is sometimes said that women of the past resemble one another, especially if they live in the same kind of place. I wanted to show where you were alike and where you were not, in how you talked about yourselves and what you did. (Ibid. 2)

Still, the three only agree in their disagreement. Of the many similarities that the author lists in her attempt to justify her approach and to reconcile them with each other, they grudgingly concede only that they all “loved to describe” their “world” (Ibid. 4). The prologue hints that it is a rather doubtful endeavour to try to speak for people from the past. Indeed, Davis seems to advise, we should beg their forbearance for availing ourselves of those descriptions of their bygone “worlds” with the intention of finding answers to our twenty-first-century questions. “Give me another chance”, she pleads, “read it again.” (Ibid. 4) As we try to reconstruct and understand those “worlds” from a distant past, we realise how different they were from our own and, consequently, how much our interpretations of those “worlds” may differ from (or, indeed, oppose) their inhabitants’ own interpretations. But Davis also highlights contemporaneous distances and differences, such as those the three women experienced within and outside of Europe – or indeed, such as those they might have experienced, had they ever met in real life, in each other’s diverging religious traditions: relentlessly, Marie lambasts the two others as “godless”, “hard-hearted”, “proud”, and “haughty” (Ibid. 1f.). If there is a moral to Davis’ prologue, it is surely that despite all the differences, most people share a desire to tell their own stories. Davis seems to insist that we should take that desire seriously, no matter how we, as professionally trained and critically minded historians, believe those stories ought to be told, and even if they are in tune neither with our objectives nor with each other.

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In this essay, I will reflect on how best to meet that challenge in one specific field of research: that of early modern cultural encounters between Europeans and people from other parts of the globe. Peter Burke provides the first clue by advocating a “polyphonic” approach to cultural history. He observes a “multiplication of the voices” in the humanities at large, listing an increasing “concern with ‘perspectivism’”, a “plurality of approaches to the past”, and interdisciplinary exchange as signs of a “‘polyphonization’ of history” (Burke 479f.).1 Following this clue, I will first discuss the beginnings of this field of research in the German-speaking context. The second part of my essay is a research report that illustrates how certain kinds of ‘multiplication’ have been particularly formative in the development of this field. In the third part, I will outline some specific methodological problems – most of which are connected, in one way or another, to the primary source material that both enables and compromises the reconstruction of encounter situations, or to the representation of such situations in historians’ narratives. I will finish by suggesting potential options for future directions in the field. Since cultural encounters potentially occur in all spheres of life, they are touched upon in a broad spectrum of historical research, which it would be impossible to summarise in this essay. Rather, I will take a specifically cultural historical perspective and focus mainly on German-language scholarship. This also means that I will deliberately abstain from quoting a vast amount of (mostly English-language) works highly relevant to the field.

1. In 1976, the Swiss historian Urs Bitterli presented an overview of what he regarded as a seminal field of research in early modern history: the “history of European-overseas encounters.” (Bitterli, Die ‘Wilden’) Drawing on early modern travelogues, Bitterli had already completed his habilitation thesis on The Discovery of the Black African. Together with a few other scholars, he was ahead of his time: ‘overseas history’ (Überseegeschichte) as a whole, including the early modern period, still led a marginal existence in the 1970’s. It was mainly practised in the context of the history of the European expansion, extra-European his-

1

Burke adapts his metaphor from the Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. Closer to the subject at hand, and using somewhat similar imagery, Gayatri Spivak broaches the issue of voices suppressed in scholarly discourses (“Can the Subaltern Speak?”). While this issue is not at the heart of my considerations, it has, of course, been in the background of many recent developments that I recapitulate.

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tory, and specialised regional studies. The first textbook and collections of sources in German were published in the eighties (Reinhard, Expansion; Bitterli, Entdeckung; Schmitt).2 Bitterli, moreover, chose an approach which focused on Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte (this can only be translated inadequately as ‘the history of ideas and mentalities and cultural history’) rather than Ereignisgeschichte (‘the history of events’), political, or economic history, which were more usually favoured at the time. Last but not least, he chose a rather specific conceptual framework for his study, based on the distinction between “cultural contacts”, “collisions”, “relationships”, and “acculturation and entanglement”. The publication proved timely and was favourably received. In fact, Bitterli’s model was quoted so widely that it was eventually included in German school curricula (Kerncurriculum für das Gymnasium im Fach Geschichte). It thus became part of a canon of descriptive tools in historiography as well as part of a broader canon of general education. It even received some attention further afield when Die ‘Wilden’ und die ‘Zivilisierten’ and his next book, Alte Welt – Neue Welt, which largely used the same typology, were translated into various languages. (Menninger, Das Eigene; Robertson) Given the broad reception of this framework, a reappraisal in the light of more recent research seems a worthwhile exercise. The construction and use of typologies are firmly established in German historiography. Useful in framing concepts, reducing complexity, and generalising from specific findings, typologies highlight what is significant by limiting themselves to the essential. They are considered “methodically controlled operations” guaranteeing a degree of “objectiveness” (Havelka 624), albeit with some reservation since the notion of “objective historiography” came under fire from various directions (Conrad and Kessel). Introductory courses and introductory literature treat typologies as standard historiographical devices. (Emich; Sellin; Jaeger) To be sure, typologies serve as a means in certain kinds of analysis, but are not an end in themselves, and they do not pretend to represent an exact copy of reality. Without going into the intricate methodological and theoretical considerations advanced by earlier generations of philosophers like Wilhelm Dilthey, sociologists like Max Weber, and historians like Theodor Schieder, it should be clear that they are selective approximations. (Havelka; Schwemmer) There is always a risk that phenomena for which there is no position in a typology are excluded from the outset. Taken on their own, typologies can hardly encompass the diversity, changeability, and the manifold nuances that we encounter in the

2

On an institutional level, the Arbeitskreis für außereuropäische Geschichte within the German Historians’ Association did not form until 1980, and the Gesellschaft für Überseegeschichte was only founded in 1986.

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sources; in fact the intention is precisely to highlight the differences between “ideal” and hence narrowly delimited types (Idealtypen), as Weber amply elaborated. Accurately defined, the ideal type can serve as an analytical yardstick for assessing more varied empirical findings. In this kind of pragmatic analytical operation, historians are rarely bothered that typologies reflect culturally specific conceptions of knowledge. Michel Foucault has famously made this point, quoting from an essay by Jorge Luis Borges in the preface to The Order of Things. Borges’ typology of animals from a “Chinese encyclopedia” lists the following: animals “(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tamed, [...] (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,” and “(n) that from a long way off look like flies.” (Borges 17) Our spontaneous amusement at such a seemingly random and absurd catalogue of criteria for categorising animals demonstrates how the conditions for the possibility of knowledge formation depend upon the particular epoch and the particular culture we live in. The epistemological preconditions that form the basis for such classifications and other forms of knowledge representation (episteme), according to Foucault, remain largely unconscious and hence mostly unarticulated. This is certainly true in Bitterli’s case. He neither discusses such preconditions, nor does he refer to any of the scholars mentioned above. Instead, he takes his inspiration from contemporary anthropologists like Felix M. Keesing, Michael Banton, and Jean Poirier. (Bitterli, Die ‘Wilden’ 446) He readily acknowledges, however, that history “never reveals these basic types in a pure state.” (Cultures 20) Appreciating that Bitterli’s thinking informs a great deal of the research in German-speaking countries, I will discuss three aspects of his typology. I believe that this framework, while it certainly facilitated an initial valorisation of the field, effectively helped to preclude different and conflicting stories about early modern cultural encounters until a ‘multiplication’ of concepts and approaches brought these to the fore during and after the 1990ʼs. It should be stressed at this point that while Bitterli was perhaps the first to label cultural encounters as such, these had also been investigated in those other contexts of ‘overseas history’. Such early work yielded impressive results and formed the basis of a substantial body of research. The European expansion, in particular, has for a long time occupied a prominent place in German historiography, and has even gained in significance as a fundamental process characterising the early modern period as a whole. (Dürr, Engel, and Süßmann, Eigene und Fremde Frühe Neuzeiten; Burschel and Juterczenka 7) While it is not within the scope of this essay to do justice to the broad spectrum of early research, it would be inaccurate to portray Bitterli as its main representative. Instead, my approach in the

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following discussion will be to use his method and conclusions as an initial gauge in assessing the level of theoretical reflexion and in taking stock of the empirical results that have since been achieved. Firstly, Bitterli was under no illusions that the situations that he was analysing were characterised by hostility, power imbalances, and violence. Indeed, he frequently condemns atrocities (Cultures 22f., 27, 32-5) and criticises partisan accounts (Ibid. 27, 29, 30). But he remains calmly aloof from what he describes, and his framework seems to invest the study with that objectiveness generally associated with the typology. In stark contrast with Davis’ more recent attempt at invoking the differing and potentially conflicting “worlds” of her protagonists, Bitterli positions himself firmly outside the hotchpotch of contemporary cultural encounters. In contrast also with her self-conscious musing over her own narrative mindset, he embraces the attitude of an omniscient narrator as a matter of course. If Davis’ prologue raises the possibility that interpretations of encounter situations (both in the past and in the present) may not only differ but in turn generate conflicts, Bitterli’s detached perspective leaves his account unaffected by such a possibility. On closer inspection, however, the claim to objectiveness implicit in the typology and the narrative aloofness are undercut in several respects. This becomes most palpable where Bitterli generalises: for example, he refers to European colonial powers as “the Europeans” (Cultures, passim) and to individual European countries as “the home country” (Ibid. 28), while nonEuropean countries, more often than not, are “alien.” (Ibid. 44, 51, 175) Furthermore, his overall assessment of the effects of the encounters is unequivocal: he leaves no doubt that non-Europeans merely reacted to the changes imposed on them. They “acculturated” (Ibid. 39), “assimilated” (Ibid. 26), or “accepted” European influences (Ibid. 44); they underwent a “mental re-orientation” in order to “cope with the arrival of the European.” (Ibid. 27) “Western culture”, by contrast, was able to “absorb”, “transform”, or “reject” the “alien influences” and to gain in the process “an astonishing capacity for change and renewal.” (Ibid. 51) In the light of more recent research, this assessment has revealed itself as an understatement of the capability of individuals from all cultures to resist, to appropriate, and, not least, to tell their own stories (“agency”). Even where the scope of action of such individuals was extremely limited, as for instance in slavery, which Bitterli thought “we should regard [...] as a special form of collision,” (Ibid. 29) research has brought forward a wide variety of evidence illustrating this capability (Strickrodt; Zeuske). Still, it would be foolish to claim that historians have finally succeeded in ridding themselves of biases and preconceptions. On the contrary: many scholars explicitly take sides with the enslaved, some are even emphatic in comparing

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present-day slavery to that of the past. (Zeuske) Rather, I think, the aim of reducing complexity inherent in the typology has given way to that of acknowledging complexity by exploring the minutiae of interaction. This has revealed such a varied picture that, even leaving aside the prevailing skepticism of the Eurocentric bias, it has simply become impossible to make the kind of wholesale judgement that Bitterli made in his synthesis. The term ‘European expansion’, inspired by the (often ferociously aggressive) European initiative and by the long-lasting effects of European colonial rule, has become contentious partly because it downplays the significant bandwidth of mutual influences. The process itself is no longer viewed as a one-way street, but increasingly conceptualised as “global interaction.” (Burschel and Juterczenka 9f.) Our knowledge about different contact situations has become considerably, if not bewilderingly, more detailed. This brings me to my second point. Bitterli includes a chapter about the eighteenth-century British and French expeditions to the Pacific. (Cultures 155-77. Here as elsewhere, Europeans encountered a positively bewildering diversity of natural environments and human societies. In his assessment of the “scientific challenge” that this posed, Bitterli points out that historians of science have bemoaned the “merely additive accumulation of material” which “gave a new and deplorable lease of life to such artificial ordering principles and static concepts as the ‘great chain of being’ or the ‘constancy of species’.” Eighteenth-century naturalists allowed their “anxiety to garner specimens” to distract them “from the task of interpreting” those “materials scientifically” – a task that was not tackled until the nineteenth century, when theoretical thinkers like Charles Darwin entered the scene. (Ibid. 163) Since Bitterli wrote this, the role of “measuring the world” in the process of colonisation has become much clearer. Ordering schemes like typologies have played a crucial role in this context. European scholars developed these to help integrate the new information into previous bodies of knowledge. Various examples from different countries and disciplinary contexts spring to mind: Montesquieu’s climate theory, Linnaeus’ and other scholars’ biological taxonomies, the various ‘stadial’ or ‘conjectural’ models of socio-economic development that flourished in the enlightened intellectual milieu, and the racial distinctions postulated by eighteenthcentury anatomists and anthropologists like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. These schemes helped to assert European supremacy and to legitimise European dominance over other parts of the globe. Scientists, bureaucrats, military personnel, and ‘explorers’ who strove to perfect measuring techniques and documentation procedures under the auspices of the Enlightenment contributed to the cementing of the European hegemony. (Despoix; Schwartz; Angster) The meticulous and “merely additive” gathering of information and “specimens” could ac-

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tually serve as a kind of scientific smokescreen disguising colonial interests. (Pratt) Knowledge, indeed, became one of the most important instruments in colonial rule. (Burghartz, Christadler, and Nolde; Brendecke; Lüsebrink) Classificatory thinking which sorts people and their social, economic, and cultural institutions into (hierarchical) ordering schemes is thus part of an intellectual heritage that was shaped during the same era of intense cultural encounter which Bitterli describes. The reception of his books may well have profited from the general appreciation of thinkers like Weber, who looms large in the theoretical repertoire of German historians. But Bitterli’s analysis also builds on this broader intellectual heritage from the early modern period. Although it would of course be impossible to establish a direct lineage, there is one immediate link in the sources he uses, namely, those travelogues and ethnographic descriptions that formed the basis of a comparative “history of mankind” in the eighteenth century. Drawing on these sources, Bitterli thirdly detects a certain development in the quality of cultural encounters between 1492 and 1800. In his introduction, he stresses that his types are not meant to represent consecutive stages that unfold according to a predictable pattern. Instead, they mingle and interpenetrate, displaying peculiarities and complexities that result both from the variations of time and place and from the differing mental structures of the participants in the encounter. Nor does any one of these types lead necessarily to any other. (Cultures 20)

However, in the course of the book, he concludes that while the earliest encounters were “generally” non-violent “contacts” (Ibid. 22), “the commonest form of encounter between European and non-European peoples” subsequently changed to “collision in its manifold variations.” (Ibid. 40) In the eighteenth century he discovers a “new climate of inter-cultural tolerance” (Ibid. 166) that favoured the third type: peaceful “relationships” that benefited both sides. Combined with the overwhelmingly “scientific” interests of the “explorers”, these made this century a “phase” in which the “dominant mode was one of mutual harmony, to an extent very seldom seen in the entire course of colonial history.” (Ibid. 174) John H. Parry dubbed this “phase” the “second age of discovery”, a term that Bitterli and others readily adopted. Recent studies that show how scientific practices buttressed colonial appropriation and domination, however, made such a characterisation of “phases” of cultural contact according to the degree of manifest violence seem less plausible. In addition, despite his merits in debunking early modern clichés regarding non-Europeans, Bitterli seems to buy into some stereotypes that Europeans used to mask their own and to denounce others’ geopoliti-

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cal ambitions. He repeatedly confronts sixteenth-century accounts with eighteenth-century critiques of that earlier era of exploration and expansion. It is true, such critiques encouraged “explorers” and voyaging naturalists to stick to the new scientific rules set out in instructions and questionnaires, but they also joined in with current tendencies of nationalist self-adulation in a climate of geopolitical competition. (Ibid. 172) Thus, Bitterli quotes the French scholar Joseph-Marie de Gérando, who hoped that whereas “the cruel adventurers of Spain brought only destruction before them”, the French would “spread only good deeds.” (Ibid. 172) These critiques were crucial to eighteenth-century anticolonial writing (Stuchtey). In the context of Pacific exploration, however, the French and the British also revived centuries-old anti-Spanish sentiment. Accounts of Spanish cruelty during the conquista contrasted conveniently with the scientific disinterestedness and humanitarianism that they claimed for themselves, all the while planning to establish trading posts, military bases, and even new colonies in the Pacific region. Though standards of scientific rigour and precision doubtless improved during the eighteenth century, it seems questionable now that this really contributed to a climate of “intercultural tolerance”. Indeed, global historians have emphasised the role of inter-European rivalries as one precondition for and a concomitant of European expansionism. (Dürr, Engel, and Süßmann, Expansionen) Similarly, inter-African power-relations have been recognized as an important precondition for the establishment of the Atlantic slave trade and a vital ingredient in the cultural make-up of the whole Atlantic region. In different ways, encounter situations have thus turned out to be multilateral, and the prehistory of such situations has been recognised as a significant factor in their development.

2. I have only highlighted those three aspects of Bitterli’s work that support my claim: a widespread descriptive tool and conventional narrative attitude effectively precluded, for the time being, the telling of different and conflicting stories. Recent research, by contrast, has discerned a much larger degree of mutual influence by all participants in early modern cultural encounters, it has revealed the implications of our own intellectual traditions in the power struggles accompanying such encounters, and it has shown how previous and contemporaneous connections and entanglements impacted these. This is not to deny that research also expanded on other aspects, nor that typologies continued to be an attractive mode of description for cultural encounters and intercultural relationships. In the

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wake of Bitterli’s books, the latter steadily gained attention in German-language historiography. Historians added new categories to Bitterli’s model and introduced new typologies, seeking to refine the observational matrix, to portray the dynamic and multi-faceted character of cultural encounters, and to focus increasingly on interaction and mutual perception. For example, in a much quoted article, Jürgen Osterhammel investigates three kinds of borders, “imperial-barbarian border”, “national territorial border”, and “frontier” (“Kulturelle Grenzen” 2103). His typology of “demarcation practices” at such cultural boundaries ranges from “inclusion” via “accommodation”, “assimilation”, “exclusion”, and “segregation” to “extermination” (Ibid. 223).3 Like Bitterli’s work, Osterhammel’s study of eighteenth-century encounters between Asians and Europeans (Entzauberung) as well as Reinhard’s textbooks on the history of the European expansion (Expansion) and colonialism (Kolonialismus) were included in the staple diet of German students of early modern history. Together with other ‘globally inclined’ historians, they contributed substantially to placing cultural encounters of a world historical scale on the historiographical agenda (Osterhammel, Weltgeschichte; Iriye and Osterhammel; Wendt, Kolonialismus; Budde, Conrad, and Janz; Conrad, Eckert, and Freitag). Meanwhile, this agenda has been complicated by a plethora of methodological and theoretical innovations. Though German-speaking historians have, until recently (Conrad, Randeria, and Römhild), hesitated to embrace the ‘postcolonial turn’, the field has itself been enriched by theoretical thinking from different cultural contexts; it has gone through a rapid process of intellectual globalisation. This ‘multiplication’ has all but drowned out further updates of the typological model. The most prominent and ambitious are theories of macrodevelopments like “world systems” (Wallerstein), “multiple modernities” (Eisenstadt), or the “great divergence” (Pomeranz) and radical changes of perspective aiming to “provincialise Europe” (Chakrabarty). Those concepts that seem to have caught on most in early modern historical research in Germany, however, are suited to describing concrete encounter situations and their protagonists, like those specialists in cultural mediation, the “go-betweens” (Richter) and “cultural brokers” (Schaffer et al.). German scholars identified such figures both within and outside of Europe (Häberlein, “Kulturelle Vermittler”; Höfele and Koppenfels; Jobs and Mackenthun; Amsler; Burschel, “Ein Vogel”). Others adopted concepts like “transculturation” (Ortiz; Pratt) and transferred them to

3

Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes between an axiological, a praxeological, and an expistemological level of alterity in his classic study La conquête de l’Amérique, which shows that typologies also found adherents outside the German context.

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new contexts, for example, to the German perception of statehood in India (Brauner and Flüchter). “Cultural transfer” (Kaelble and Schriewer; Schmale; Middell) and “cultural exchange” (North; Hyden-Hanscho, Pieper, and Stangl), in particular, found broad acceptance and have been widely used. Methodological approaches discussed amongst German-speaking historians include “entangled” or “shared” history (Conrad, Randeria, and Römhild) and histoire croisée (Werner and Zimmermann). While these approaches overlap and converge, they have helped to open up widely different topics, ranging from the Haitian revolution to Japanese historiography, and in doing so have paved the way for a further increase in complexity and multiplication of perspectives. A lot of theoretical inspiration has also come from neighbouring disciplines.4 In this respect, the interplay between analysing and representing cultural encounters has proved especially pertinent. The representational techniques that were developed in the course of the “Writing Culture” debate had a major impact on early modern historiography in general. Davis’ close reading of the selfnarratives of the three women and the juxtaposition of their biographies is a good example. As I tried to show at the beginning of this essay, her work stands for an interest in the distances and differences between our own culture(s) and those we investigate. It raises questions about the historian’s own situatedness – be it in terms of gender, faith, or ethnicity – and about the methodological and representational consequences this entails. Such questions have reverberated throughout German historical research, but have perhaps been addressed most intensively by scholars affiliated with historical anthropology (Habermas and Minkmar). Another example of interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation is the socio-historical perspective on language (Burke and Porter) that has spawned or stimulated an interest in foreign language acquisition and multilingualism (Häberlein, Glück, and Schröder; Krampl and von Tippelskirch; Dürr). In contact situations, transformations of meaning that need not be of a linguistic nature have recently gained attention under the label of “cultural translation”. Originally introduced in translation studies and literary criticism, this was specifically applied to the early modern period (Burke and Hsia; Newman and Tylus) and is broadly exemplified in current German scholarship (Häberlein and Keese; Bachmann-Medick;

4

Interdisciplinary exchange is first and foremost encouraged in collaborative research, as in the graduate school that initiated the series “Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scholarship” and that inspired my own study of this topic: http://www.gkkulturkontakt.uni-rostock.de/. Cf., for example, the first volume in this series (Juterczenka and Mackenthun).

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Stockhorst). Such work has helped to raise awareness that there are different stories waiting to be told in a very literal sense. To sum up, starting out from the influential work of pioneers of “overseas history” like Bitterli, German-speaking historians have adopted new approaches and a multitude of perspectives not least through international and interdisciplinary exchanges. As a result, the field has become particularly ‘messy’ (some would perhaps say: confusingly chaotic) during the last thirty years or so, and it continues to evolve and diversify. But the ‘multiplication’ has only begun, and a fair amount of work remains to be done. Above all, the field presents some tricky methodological problems. In the final part of this essay, I will outline a few of these, describing recent trends that seem to indicate potential for solutions, and discussing where future research might lead.

3. First and foremost, source material from encounter situations is often particularly biased and fragmented, and requires a breadth of linguistic expertise that makes it hard to do justice to all parties involved. It is a particularly welcome development that an increasing number of multi-lingual scholars able to read nonEuropean languages are making themselves heard throughout Western academe, including the German-speaking context.5 But the field has also profited from a ‘multiplication’ of approaches in cultural history more generally. Historians interested in ‘history from below’ and micro-history have worked with deeply biased sources for several decades, for example, with court and inquisition records. Since the seventies, they have developed alternative methods of interpretation like the reading of sources “against the grain” (Ginzburg) or reading more or less “fictional” accounts with the tools of literary analysis (Davis, Fiction). In Germany, alternative ways of bringing out multiple stories from biased sources have also begun to appear in the wake of methodological innovation in various cultural historical fields. For example, research on symbolic communication has heightened attention to non-verbal forms of expression like ceremonies, rituals, and practices (Stollberg-Rilinger). This has recently been put to use in the history of early modern diplomatic exchanges, for example, with the Ottoman Empire (Burschel and Vogel; Garnier and Vogel; Kühnel) or with West African rulers

5

For example, in the context of the specially sponsored “clusters of excellence” in Constance and Heidelberg or in the German Historical Institute in London, all of which place a specific emphasis on global entanglements.

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(Brauner). If diplomatic relations lend themselves to such a productive application, rituals also played an important role in the religious sphere. Cultural encounters always featured prominently in the study of early modern Christian missions, both Catholic and Protestant (Reinhard, “Gelenkter Kulturwandel”; Wellenreuther, “Bekehrung und Bekehrte”), and have recently taken centre stage in a growing number of publications (Kirchberger; Hüsgen; Dürr; Fechner; Fuchs, Linkenbach, and Reinhard). In this line of research, the dearth of written material from non-European sources is contrasted by an overabundance almost exclusively of European origin. If those targeted by Christian missions rarely emerge from these accounts to tell their stories in their own words, missionaries frequently describe indigenous practices and performances. (Post) These could disclose “worlds” very different from and sometimes conflicting with the missionaries’ perspectives if they were more systematically analysed. An almost equally prolific type of biased source on which Bitterli relied in the seventies is the travelogue. It has lately come under intensified scrutiny in an international upsurge in the critical study of extra-European travel, scientific exploration, and circumnavigation. (Elsner and Rubiés; Hulme and Youngs)6 German-speaking countries produced comparatively few state-sponsored scientific expeditions, but some of the most prominent travel writers of the Enlightenment. Additionally, German scholars were avid readers and reviewers of travel literature. The revived interest in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century voyages has inspired a fruitful dialogue with literary criticism, the history of science, and maritime history. (Despoix; Angster; Fischer-Kattner; Mariss; Güttler) This tendency promises to invigorate the study of a much used but rarely analysed type of source. It even suggests that a transdisciplinary ‘new history of travel’ may be emerging. Not least, this could yield valuable insights into the consequences of our own use of analytical tools and descriptive nomenclatures first developed in the very situations of cultural encounter that we are investigating today. Following yet another route, the renewed appeal of the “global lives of things” (Gerritsen and Riello) has opened methodological roads into the field of early modern material culture. Empirical studies on the cross-cultural circulation of goods have shown, for example, how patterns of consumption and economical developments in Europe itself were profoundly affected by such commercial exchanges. (Mintz; Beckert) These repercussions have met with lively interest

6

This is also reflected, for instance, in the foundation of the Centre for Travel Writing Studies at Nottingham Trent University: “Overview.” 13 February 2017. https:// www4.ntu.ac.uk/apps/research/groups/22/home.aspx/centre/142196/overview/centre_ for_travel_writing_studies.

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amongst German-speaking scholars and have been followed up with numerous studies. (Siebenhüner; Algazi, Groebner, and Jussen; Häberlein, Materielle Grundlagen; Hochmuth; Menninger, Genuss; Hyden-Hanscho, Pieper, and Stangl) ‘Exotic’ objects attracted enormous attention in early modern Europe. (Greenblatt; Thomas; Findlen) Collections brought back to Europe from overseas voyages have lately come to the fore as venues for cultural encounter and appropriation. (Collet; Neumann) Conversely, the full potential of individual objects that are passed from one owner and one culture to another and that accumulate multiple layers of meaning in the process has not yet been realised, although such “travelling objects” have lately attracted considerable attention in more popular publications. (MacGregor) These might indeed have many stories to tell about cultural encounters. Similarly, it could be worthwhile to enter into interdisciplinary dialogue with more specialised research traditions that make use of objects as sources. One of these is summed up under the label of ‘Ethnohistory’. Conceived in a specifically North American setting, the ethnohistorical agenda is still dominated by American indigenous history, and ethnohistorians have only recently begun to “go global.” (Harkin) Like archaeologists, they have systematically sought to transcend the narrow limitation of textual sources. They have demonstrated how a broad spectrum of alternative, often inconspicuous and neglected types, including, for example, objects of utility or landscape features, can yield meaningful results. (Galloway; Boone) Given that German historians have already joined forces with anthropologists in bringing out the rich potential of material sources (Samida, Eggert, and Hahn), it would seem that future historical research in Germany could have a lot to gain from taking the ethnohistorical tradition into account. Originally associated with the Indian Claims Commission, ethnohistorians have of necessity engaged with colonialism’s conflict-ridden legacies, highlighting how, in times of rampant global inequalities, early modern cultural encounters continue to gain new topicality. The discontent resulting from expansion, colonisation, exploitation, and genocide has made the field a fertile breeding ground for globally conducted controversies as well. It goes without saying that both the diachronic and synchronic levels of representation, that which has been and that which has become, need further investigation if the field’s relevance to current political discussions and to the urgent questions arising from global conflicts is to be taken seriously. This becomes particularly acute, for example, in connection with controversial responses to public commemorations of iconic events like Columbus’ landing in America or James Cook’s voyages to the Pacific. Historians have experienced increasing pressure on their critical expertise in countries where indigenous rights and interethnic relations are major political

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issues. The memory conflicts connected with early modern colonial history in the USA, Canada, and Australia have shown that now as much as then, there are more voices demanding to be heard. (Macintyre and Clark; Frie) These conflicts also accentuate the often strained relationship between academic and nonacademic modes of historical representation. There is a consensus today that the German colonial projects of the nineteenth century (albeit on a different scale than, for example, in Britain and France) merit more attention (Conrad; Speitkamp), but this is a relatively recent development. In Germany, the colonial past has not lent itself to public commemoration in the same ways as elsewhere. It has been controversially discussed by a wider public mainly on a local level or in connection with particular occasions, like claims for restitution of museum artifacts, human remains from anthropological collections, etc. There is, however, a long-standing interest in how other formative historical experiences, most notably the Holocaust, become part of collective identities. One concept specifically suited to tackling this question is that denoting a “cultural memory” (kulturelles Gedächtnis) of past events that continue to influence the present (Assmann). Another concept conceived in France and later transferred to Germany is that of “lieux de mémoire” (Erinnerungsorte – ‘sites of memory’). This has been used to investigate how Europe-wide collective memories were fashioned and re-fashioned over time. (Duchardt, Kreis, and Schmale) Europeans’ perceptions of non-European cultures were, in fact, momentous in identity formation within Europe. (Höfert; Carl and Eibach) With notable exceptions (Assmann and Conrad), these concepts have not been equally influential in the anglophone historiographical context. If they were to be more widely applied, they could make useful tools, for example, in exploring different kinds of commemorative storytelling about cultural encounters both within and outside of Europe, and these might be compared in order to bring out different (and potentially conflicting) views. Encounter situations have enormous potential for comparative studies in general – and indeed comparison is part of the raison d’être for the typological approach that Bitterli chose forty years ago. Even though (or perhaps because?) our empirical knowledge of contact situations has increased so dramatically, comparative studies are rare but instructive. If the European expansion has gained in significance as a defining characteristic of the early modern period, its extent has also been shown to have been limited in time and space. Its alleged singularity can be put in perspective through comparison with other expansive processes like that, for example, in the Ottoman Empire. (Casale) Moreover, comparisons can demonstrate how the European expansion progressed at a varying pace and with variable results in different parts of the world, for instance, in the Americas and in China. (Gruzinski) More comparisons can provide further

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correctives to unsatisfactory master narratives like that of the ‘Europeanisation of the world’. Drawing their own conclusions from the fragmentary and biased nature of source material and from the prevailing skepticism of grand narratives, some historians have begun to seek alternatives. One of these seems to be a focus on geographically mobile and globally connected, socially, culturally, or religiously defined groups like diasporas. (Israel; Trivellato) In Germany, this option is already reflected in a lively interest in the global migration of various faith communities, like Huguenots or Lutheran Pietists. (Lachenicht; Pyrges; Mettele) Another alternative would be to follow the “global lives” (Ogborn) of persons who were particularly mobile, travelling between different cultures (Davis, Trickster Travels; Colley; Ghobrial). Much like the “cultural brokers” and the travelling objects mentioned above, such wanderers between worlds can embody different cultural affiliations and multiple identities, melding even oppositional interpretations of cultural encounters. Reconstructing their biographies therefore seems a promising route towards a further multiplication of perspectives (and to further rebut the unconstructive claim that some cultures are simply incompatible). With similar results, Davis and others have sought to “decenter history” by combining seemingly unrelated biographies in narratives of a global scope, demonstrating how local stories are connected in a global web of human interaction. (Davis, “Decentering history”; Andrade) If Burke’s metaphor of “polyphonic” history lends itself to describing such innovative storytelling, visual images like the series of “snapshots” (Ghobrial) or vignettes, the mosaic, the fresco, and the kaleidoscope are equally appropriate. In German-language historiography, such approaches are only beginning to gain ground. (Hausberger, Globale Lebensläufe) On the other hand, a well-established and methodologically sophisticated study of early modern self-narratives that has adopted a transcultural perspective offers an excellent starting position for further advances in this direction. (Wellenreuther and Wessel; Ulbrich, Medick, and Schaser; Bähr, Burschel, and Jancke)7 To conclude, since Bitterli first offered his synthesis, a considerable diversity of approaches and perspectives has been achieved in German-language historiography of early modern cultural encounters. If this seems to indicate that a “polyphonic” history of early modern cultural encounters is indeed on the rise, it is also true that, in this essay, I have only been able to cover one section of the

7

Cf., in particular, the research group “Self-narratives in transcultural perspective” which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG): “DFG Research Group 530. Self-Narratives in Transcultural Perspective.” 13 February 2017. http://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/fg530/index.html.

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research potentially concerned with cultural encounters, largely excluding, for example, highly relevant topics in global economics. (Schnurmann) One of the main issues would probably be to bring the cultural historical perspective into dialogue with these. Admittedly, this is easier said than done; the much debated mediation between the micro and the macro levels of analysis, which has important theoretical implications, is a case in point. For a relatively new and innovative field of research which, in addition, has to accomodate the top-down and bottom-up, the local, regional, and global, and the academic and non-academic perspectives, a further ‘multiplication’ will likely bring new challenges (but hopefully, also new chances). Not to mention the widely different and potentially conflict-ridden perspectives that Davis invokes in her prologue – a fictive encounter scenario that, in spite of all that I have said, does not seriously question the historian’s interpretative prerogative.

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The Contingency of Cultural Negotiations in Cross-Border Networks The BRICS Case Y VETTE S ÁNCHEZ

R ÉSUMÉ Les situations de contact transculturel impliquent un processus de négociation continue qui entraîne des résultats contingents (dans le sens de Giorgio Agamben) et imprévisibles. La zone de contact elle-même est un concept qui favorise le chaos subversif et qui échappe aux frontières précises et distinctives. De nombreux paysages (Arjun Appadurai) transaréaux (Ottmar Ette) montrent le caractère marqué du réseau (»network«). Nous illustrerons cet imbroglio en abordant des cas de figures hautement diversifiés comme le rassemblement de BRICS. Créé comme un acronyme facile à retenir par Goldmann Sachs dans le but de créer un réseau d’investissements multilatéraux, il est devenu une politique pour les Etats BRICS eux-mêmes. Les états-membres hésitent continuellement de négocier le contrôle cohésif dans leur union, non seulement au niveau économique et politique, mais aussi sur le plan culturel, alors qu’à l’époque, leurs relations étaient plutôt chaotiques voire inexistantes.

S ETTING THE T RANSCULTURAL S TAGE The topic of negotiation can help to define cultural processes that mostly imply transcultural networks and nodes. Culture is always cross-cultural somehow. Nowadays more than ever, engulfed as we are in our acute globalization process, there is no way we can support the phenomenon of a pure or guiding dominant culture (Leitkultur) any more. Cultural demarcations are turning out to be con-

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tingent. Thus, we should conceive culture not as a stable, monolithic or essentialized system, but as a fluid, complex, dynamic, fluctuating, versatile one. We will start setting the stage for transculturalism by referring to a series of seminal texts. Two scientists working in a highly culture-sensitive profession, i.e. in the multicultural environment of a hospital, have contributed to defining transculturality by describing cultural processes as a “flexible condensate of [...] factors which have to be constantly renegotiated.” (Uzarewicz and Uzarewicz 170, translation by the author) We float, sometimes uncontrollably, in constant culture contact situations, in which – bi- or polylateral, intercultural or transcultural – negotiation takes center stage. Considering the globality of the digital communications system, the concepts of network and mobility have an advantage over bipolarity in life beyond concepts of national cultures. Knowledge transfer brings with it intersectional concepts of cultures. Flows and scapes (Arjun Appadurai) imply a crisis of utter coherence in the melting pot and shift the paradigm towards a cohesion of multilayered group memberships. In 1992, that is, on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the discovery and conquest of the New World, Mary Louise Pratt used the term contact zone retrospectively for this particular colonial and globalizing impetus. It was also to Pratt’s merit that she revitalized Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz’ pioneering text on transculturation, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940), which explained deterritorialized, third space, and transit cultures of the Caribbean with the symbolic meanings of local agricultural, monocropping products. In today’s era of massive globalization, we can expand the term to include situations more diverse in time and space. The disconnection between culture and territory, and spread of different cultures across a worldwide network of information, circulation and interactions, of movements and ‘multiple connectedness’, led Ottmar Ette to coin the term of the TransArea. This concept reflects the crossing of geographic or climatic as well as disciplinary borders (area studies). “Space can best be defined not by looking at borders and territories but, rather, by focussing on movements of crossing and re-crossing” of cultures. (Ette 7) Nevertheless, the current transcultural paradigm with its mobile spaces, constant movement and circulation should not make us idealize, depoliticize, and detract from power asymmetries still inherent in such processes. The urge to be always on the move in global circulation could, according to Peter Sloterdijk (Eurotaoismus), lead to forced movements, to a kinetic fundamentalism, an excessive “Bewegungszwang”, as he called it 25 years ago (1989). The intense im-

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pulse toward dynamics and movement cannot whitewash conflicts. Negotiation is always needed in diversity. In contrast, Pratt wishes with her contact zones to imply and underline power asymmetries as a post-colonial setting.

N EGOTIATION AND C ONTINGENCY OF C ULTURAL D EMARCATIONS Two or more parties in different contexts of contact situations, be they political, economic, legal, diplomatic, social or personal, will try to soothe friction or conflict by means of a compromise or an agreement. The result of this struggle for control and planning in cultural encounters is unpredictable, or contingent in Giorgio Agamben’s sense. It neither accepts nor rejects options. Giorgio Agamben explains contingency by way of a literary figure, Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener (Bartleby 36). This fictional skeptic has inspired intellectuals in several areas before (Deleuze 171) and since Agamben (Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co., 2000; or Marthaler, Eine Ausdünnung, 2003). Bartleby’s famous attitude and formula “I would prefer not to” illustrate contingency based on the renunciation of any disposition or reason to choose either option, an experiment in potentiality, in what may either be or not be. It represents option, non-necessity, randomness or contingency. Without any “heroic pathos of negation” (Agamben, Bartleby 36), Bartleby’s struggle and his motto prefer to hover between a yes and a no. Contingency thus means a liminal, indeterminate zone suspended between affirmation and negation. A possible future event or circumstance may or may not occur, but cannot be predicted with certainty: it happens by chance, likelihood, fortuitousness. Bartleby’s formula also contains “the strongest objection against the principle of sovereignty”, resisting “every possibility of deciding between potentiality and the potentiality not to.” (Agamben, Homo sacer 33) Restraint and indifference can follow unknown, unpredictable results of predicaments or dilemmas. But on the positive side of the formula, Bartleby might redeem unrealized potentials and forgotten struggles. And contingency, although it parts from a binary way of thinking (yes/no), finally denies it because of its ‘neither/nor’ mediation on the threshold (liminality). Homi Bhabha’s third space in the staircase or Pratt’s contact zone illustrate corresponding images, relocating and interlacing back and forth, between transit and transfer movements, which ultimately help build up networks. Mobile space and travelling cultures form interdependent global constellations beyond national, territorial determinisms. Appadurai’s me-

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diascapes, for instance, serve as the counter-proposition or alternative plan in global communication systems of knowledge transfer. In cultural negotiations, two (bilateral) or more (poly-lateral) counterparties – in business, political, legal, social and private sectors – attempt to settle a conflict through an agreement. In order to reach some advantage, the usually voluntary mechanism follows a balance of interests and mutual promises. The two researchers Roger Fisher and William Ury published in 1981 their handbook on the constructive, consensual Harvard method for acheiving a peaceful settlement of conflicts. A mutually beneficial (win-win) agreement can be reached through an integrative (not a confrontational) and a cooperative (not a competitive) negotiation. The authors’ four principles presume a starting point with a broadened variety of options; furthermore, they suggest separating the people from the problem, thus, focusing on interests and avoiding (personally involved) positions (“positional bargaining” does not lead to fruitful agreements). The agreement should be based on objective criteria and need. (Fisher and Ury 11)

C ONTACT

AND

Z ONE

In what follows, we would like to determine the central term of this book, the contact zone, by separating the two components. When migration and diaspora situations in (post-)colonial contexts are under scrutiny, with disparate, powerasymmetrical cultures meeting and trying to come to terms with each other, we enter a contingent zone. The zone stresses both the divide and the connection, similar to Peter Sloterdijk’s metaphoric bubbles (Sphären); and it dynamises the border. While the latter draws a black, one-dimensional, dividing line (or thread) on a white surface, the zone switches to an areal, atmospheric net with elastic, frazzling, fringed, fuzzy margins. Thus, no clearly defined limits lead us to a no man’s land or borderland. Some zones (military or tariff zones in public transport) do have a clear demarcation, others (erogenous zones) do not. The zone is a rich, suggestive construct applied to a whole series of interacting spheres: political, military (combat or occupation zones), economic (free-trade), meteorological (climate zones), geographic (meridians, time zones) and anatomic (zones of the body). As a contingent phenomenon, the zone creates liminality on the threshold, thus combining separating and uniting forces. The border transforms into a transcultural contact zone. Transit zones at border crossings (customs, airports, airplanes, boats, etc.) stimulate transgressions. Pratt defined cultures in contact by adapting the concept of “languages in contact” to the hetero-

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geneous genre of travel literature. Cultural contact zones are zones of cultural translation in (post)colonial space. (Riese 100) In turn, contact involves assembly and intersection in juncture, juxtaposition, or neighborhood. As a phenomenon of physical and semantic contiguity and thus possibly of irritation, contact, to employ medical images, entails fear of infection, epidemics, and contamination by strangers (cf. the ostentatiously protective clothing of immigration officers). Hence, it can connote complication and lead to turbulence: the more contact, the more trouble. This mechanism definitely comes up, for instance, in friction and conflicts among neighbors. Sigmund Freud alluded to the phenomenon in 1917 (Freud 131; 305), applying the term ‘narcissism of minor differences’. By this he was referring to communities on adjoining territories who had very similar cultural traits and consequently reacted all the more sensitively to details of differentiation. The transcultural processes described above could be very well illustrated by the case of the US Latinos, whose sheer number of more than 60 million makes them an impressive portion of the population of the country. While the label Latinos was established by the Latin American diaspora itself to signal cohesion and strength, the grouping to be presented here started out as an externally coined, artificial construct.

T HE BRICS N ETWORK IN THE S TRUGGLE FOR C OHESIVE C ONTROL In 2001, Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs created the acronym BRIC(S) to designate the four to five (South Africa was added in 2010) major and fast-growing emerging markets with over three billion people or 42% of the world population. These five countries have steadily grown into that artificial concept and into their new roles within a huge conglomerate. Nevertheless, the relationships across borders and long distances remain somewhat chaotic and hardly controllable. Before the unexpected BRICS compound, India, China and Russia were already in contact as neighboring countries, whereas the other two geographically distant members, Brazil and South Africa, had cultivated very limited contact and exchange through time: over 14,000 kilometers separate each, for example, from India. Is it appropriate then, to talk of the BRICS contact zone? Or can we apply the term of the adhocracy, well defined by Henry Mintzberg, to the five countries more or less randomly brought together? Interestingly enough, they all have succeeded in presenting themselves to a global public by organizing sports mega events. Such major enterprises also demand adhocratic skills, as within a very

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short period of time, different staffs of thousands of people (e.g. for the soccer world cup the FIFA, local committee, volunteers, etc.) have to somehow grapple together. This requires flexibility, fast, temporary adaptability, openness, and the ability to organize even without formal structures, which in the marked bureaucracies of the BRICS reckons with opposing forces and is therefore all the more challenging. Behavior and organizational forms in an adhocracy need to be creative, adaptive, spontaneous, dynamic, and integrative. The BRICS would be able to practice adhocracy, which through digitalization will become more common in the future, and take a step away from their bureaucratic systems. Since 2009, the annual BRICS summit meetings (eight by now) have contributed to a certain extent to strengthening ties and articulating new narratives of a multipolar but cohesive control. The rhetoric of multipolarity has been repeatedly applied by the countries’ leaders themselves. Nevertheless – not surprisingly above all ‘Western’ – observers commonly apply the term bric-à-brac to describe the BRICS’ endeavors. Seeking economic power, the BRICS contact zone harbors above all ambitions regarding free trade zones. Member states are discussing terms of a free trade agreement as a significant step to further boost commerce between the emerging markets. However, the bloc is not quite ready yet, also due to economic deceleration, and even recession in Brazil and Russia. Currently, only China has established strong economic ties with each of the rest, but the others have not among themselves. Creating a uniform economic zone for three billion consumers of these emerging markets means, first and foremost, eliminating many of the hurdles that obstruct business across the five countries today. Regulations, visa rules, and trade barriers in over-protected national industries must be eased. At the summit in Brasília 2014, the launch of the New Development Bank (with a $100 billion BRICS contingency reserve fund), due to its economic and symbolic capital, was conceived as an alternative to the World Bank. These two of Pierre Bourdieu’s classical four types of capital successfully describe the Bank’s geopolitical outcome in the BRICS context and might even be expanded. Bernhard Badura’s network capital (Badura et al.) or Michael Woolcock and Deepa Narayan’s bridging, bonding, and linking capitals (Woolcock and Narayan) could also be applied. The establishment of the New Development Bank clearly indicates an important motivation to cooperate with others even beyond the BRICS nation states’ new conception of a strategic international order. A redesigned, deterritorialized balance in world politics is intended to provide the BRICS a more prominent and powerful role in aspirations to global hegemony.

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This became clear, at the latest, with the inclusion of South Africa and its special status in the bloc, pointing to a “South-South” cooperation. The fifth member contributes to the emancipation from the origins of the mere economic narrative and interests highlighted by O’Neill. It also clearly implies a search for common grounds, although the BRICS do not have much in common, do not grow in unison, and all face slowing economies. It is interesting to read the following quote of the Indian author Renu Modi’s (and Chinese book editor Li Xing’s) concerning her hetero-image. She suggests that Westerners have a clearly more pessimistic view of the BRICS alliance as a moribund and too heterogeneous initiative. Since the formation of the nascent grouping, a spectrum of sentiments of the predicament of the BRICS oscillates between reassuring optimism and writing its epitaph. Views from the West [...] generally point to the disparate nature of the member states, their inability to work in unison on their professed agenda, the anomalies about the basis of the grouping itself and between the member states. China’s dominance and her dual role is apprehended by scholars could be problematic. (Modi 89)

I NITIATIVES

OF THE

M ERGING ALLIANCE

Besides the economic and political ambitions of BRICS actors on the world stage, a considerable number and variety of initiatives have been launched in order to increase diplomatic, social, educational, and cultural relationships. They reach from new exchange programs in higher education to the global, maritime security initiative, and from the 2015 memorandum of understanding on a common webpage in five official languages (Hindi, Mandarin, Afrikaans, Portuguese und Russian) plus English to increasing bilateral visits at the ministerial level. The member states’ growing commitment to the alliance and gradual institutionalization of BRICS initiatives might also offer opportunities for civil society (BRICS from below) as presented in the following figure. (Poskitt et al. 4)

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Figure 1: Potential entry points for civil society to engage in BRIC spaces

Source: Adele Poskitt et al. “Where is the real power within the BRICS and G20? A mapping of actors and spaces.” 13 February 2017. http://csnbricsam.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/06/1-Executive-Summary.pdf. The bloc has set out to use its increasing power to secure better positions for its members in global forums, particularly in multilateral spaces, frustrated after little response to repeated calls for global governance. (Poskitt et al. 4)

Mutual communication has been clearly identified as an important issue, therefore, quite a large number of language schools have been founded in the BRICS member countries to reinforce the crucial language training. These skills are definitely an asset to be taken into account, also in economic contexts. This becomes clear, for instance, in the example of the two competitors China and Brazil using South Africa as a local springboard. The two competitors share the aspiration of expanding on the African continent in search of natural resources and cheap labor. In particular, the African countries with Portuguese as their official language (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe) will have to decide between close cultural (colonial past) along with language ties on the one side (Brazil) and financial power on the other (China). The latter offers a far more different culture, promising corresponding frictions as well as a lack of trust due to power asymmetries.

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Traditionally, the bilateral pre-BRICS relationships among the countries themselves were either problematic between neighbors or nearly inexistent between Brazil and the RICS. Migration between Russia and Brazil, for instance, has always functioned unilaterally. Russia counts hardly any Brazilian immigrants, and even the Russian diaspora in Brazil is limited, while historically migration from the Ukraine prevailed (Brazil’s most important woman novelist, Clarice Lispector, is of Ukrainian origin). The same goes for the perception of the other, which displays an imbalance of sympathies. According to the “Global Attitude Project” (Pew Research Center, 2014), 77% of Russians see Brazilians in a favorable light, while the other way round, only 41% of Brazilians have positive attitudes toward Russians (in 2010: still 57%). Mutual stereotypes in former diplomatic circles coined the oxymorons “tropical Russia” and “polar Brazil” (Brühwiler and Sánchez 309). Cultural exchange is equally limited, mainly to classical ballet in Brazil and telenovelas exported to Russia, partly adapted to local tastes; only some plots (those of intrigue, jealousy, and blackmail) cover common ground. Brazil and India practice similar exoticising and nationally stereotyping tendencies. Indians focus on samba, football and the Copacabana, while Brazilians highlight yoga, spiritual music and meditation. There is some exchange in the film industry between Bollywood and telenovelas. Unlike Russian-Brazilian relations, India and Brazil share some early colonial history. Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, on his way to India, landed in Brazil, a coincidence which lead to the exchange of several crops (manioc and cashews made their way from Brazil to India, while coconut, mango and sugarcane travelled from India to Brazil) and cattle: Brazil's main cattle species today dates back to early colonial times and is of Indian origin. (Brühwiler and Sánchez 317) This brief inventory of Brazil’s cultural bilateral relations to RICS partners equally applies to an almost non-existent cultural exchange with China and South Africa. Clearly this extremely narrow substrate of cultural transfer between Brazil and the others has a substantial influence on current bonds. Eurasian RICs share a great deal more mutual knowledge. For further insight into all bilateral cultural connections, see the corresponding chapter “BRIC on BRIC” in our handbook Transculturalism and Business in the BRICS States. (Brühwiler and Sánchez 299-361)

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B OOM OR B URSTING BRICS B UBBLE ? E MERGENCE AND G LOBAL S HIFT VS . C RISIS N ARRATIVES At least until 2012/13, the end of ‘Global South’ zones due to rising powers like China was frequently invoked, especially as the 2008 global financial crisis hit the BRICS states less hard than the West. Before the current BRICS deceleration phase, optimism was still en vogue, which led Robert B. Zoellick, then President of the World Bank Group, to formulate his much-cited statement in 2010: If 1989 saw the end of the ‘Second World’ with Communism’s demise, then 2009 saw the end of what is known as the ‘Third World’: we are now in a new, fast-evolving multipolar world economy. (Zoellick n.p.)

The much-evoked end of the North-South divide in a “deterritorialized” and “transnationalized capitalist order” has also been described by Andrew Hurrell in 2013 as “made up of flows, fluxes, networked connections and transnational production networks, but marked by inequality, instability, and new patterns of stratification.” (Hurrell n.p.) Two years later, Hurrell’s article published in the Brazilian Revista de Economia Política received opposition from the North American policy research Brookings Institution, whose interim vice president for foreign policy at that moment was Bruce D. Jones. He rejected the assessment of emerging powers, instead calling out BRICS crisis narratives and burst bubbles. His discourse cannot be declared empathic, as Jones uses a somewhat flowery, sensationalist vocabulary for the economic downturn. He addresses the once hard-hitting (“clout”) whirling of BRICS geopolitics, now to be described with no restraint in a wholly somber and lengthy account. (Jones n.p.) China faces a litany of bad economic news. And Beijing is not alone in this: Moscow and Brasilia are reeling from economic and political woes as well. After two decades of explosive economic growth and nearly a decade of rising geopolitical clout, the BRICs bubble is beginning to burst facing a number of grim economic indicators. (Jones n.p.)

Even the ‘positive’ exception, India, faces more challenges than promise. The paragraph ends on a negative note, pointing out again the issues of infrastructure and corruption. [...] about 300 million in acute poverty and with limited or no access to electricity; corruption and poor infrastructure continue. But India also has great potential. Its free-market

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economy is diverse, leading to a more sustainable growth than can be had by China, with its state-driven companies. [...] Furthermore the economy has been growing well despite weak governance and poor infrastructure. (Jones n.p.)

In fact, the five countries each face internal problems and, being thus preoccupied with their own affairs, do not have BRICS community building at the top of their agendas. Further negotiations among the heads of states joining forces at the 8th summit in Goa, India, could have served to tackle challenges before all five members. But the host country monopolized the event to a certain extent and put mere geopolitical issues on the agenda regarding A) its own regional conflict, accusing Pakistan of letting militants operate out of its territory and trying to isolate the neighboring country, a key economic ally of China; and B) trying to establish (still unsuccessfully) its own system of agencies to assess the creditworthiness of countries and companies as a counterweight to the three dominating US agencies (Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch). India’s dominant role during the summit also involved settling its own sixteen bilateral deals with Russia on armament (missiles), space exploration, and urban development. Modi’s hard line against archrival Pakistan marks a departure from India's tradition of strategic restraint, showing key differences of opinion with China regarding their neighbor. Xi employs the rhetoric of “enhancing cooperation within multilateral frameworks.” (Xinua n.p.) The interests of the member states were too dissimilar and thus not bound to help them find some common ground. China did not succeed in including its main agenda item, the common free trade zone, on the final summit declaration. The lost chance has become palpable for Brazil, which as a historic and geographic ‘outsider’ of BRICS has been going through internal political turmoil and a recession, including several huge corruption cases coming to the surface. Although caught up in its own problems, the country nevertheless shares several of these with the RICS: social inequality, a precarious infrastructure, a cumbersome bureaucracy (high taxes, governmental overregulation), a lack of qualified workforce, and a lack of confidence and thus of foreign investment, e.g. for startups. In the middle of the economic crisis, banks and the new minister of finance, Henrique Meirelles, might however be a shimmer of hope. The apparent failure to provide cohesive impulses to the BRICS contact zone in spite of its growing influence and power makes clear that the symbolic capital of the summit culture is by far not enough to strengthen community building, to formulate a common vision, share knowledge, and join forces. Rather, these di-

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verse, ever shifting, contingent policies and plans instead point to polycentric governance and to what Mary Douglas calls “institutional bricolage.” (Douglas)

BRICS I CONOGRAPHIC S TAGING The unstable balance between cohesive control, building up a structure of commonality, and a less regulated configuration can be illustrated by the official BRICS iconography, that is, the authorized summit photographs. Year after year, the pictorial message is sent out to the world. When analyzing the photoshootings throughout the years 2009-16, one notices significant changes in the staging. While in the first years the group presented itself in a spontaneous, rather disorganized, colorful get-together among colleagues (figs. 5-7), two characteristics stand out in the photographs of the last two years: standardization and professionalization. In 2015, they opt for stiff and identical postures, the same dark suits for all five, including the lady in the group portrait (fig. 2); Dilma Rousseff, in former years, used to contribute with some touch of color, but here we note the five uniforms of the summit in Ufa (Russia, 2015), the identical positions of arms and hands, the regular, equidistant physical positions in one row, pre-fixed by visible white marks on the floor, thus clearly orchestrated. One year later, in India, the presidents, now all men (after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff), move closer together again, this time holding hands. Large national flags are installed behind them (as in 2009 and 2010). A new side-byside order has been devised, which reflects the geographic and power constellation in the BRICS alliance. The three Eurasian countries stand next to each other in the middle bloc, with the most powerful, by coincidence the tallest member, in the center. Brazil and South Africa stand at the periphery, symbolically at the margins (fig. 3).

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Figures 2-7: Summits RU 2015, IND 2016, IND 2016, BRA 2010, CHI 2011, SAFR 20131

1

From left to right: Figure 2: “BRICS Summit 2015.” 07 February 2017. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/BRICS_summit_2015_18.jpg; Figure 3: “2016 BRICS Summit Faces Immense Challenges, Trade Unions Boycott BRICS labour ministerial.” 7 February 2017. http://orissadiary.com/Current News.asp?id=69895#sthash.Yz3XZI3J.dpuf; Figure 4: “BRICS Summit 2016: ‘Those who shelter, support, sponsor terror, as much a threat as terrorists’.” 7 February 2017. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/live-brics-summit-2016-goajoint-declaration-pm-modi-lanka-president-sirisena-bhutan-bimstec-bangladesh-latestupdates/; Figure 5: “BRICs reach out to S. Africa.” 7 February 2017. http:// www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/brics-reach-out-to-s-africa/article1520566 .ece; Figure 6 and Figure 7: “The cover Leaders of the BRICS countries at the third BRICs Summit (2011) held in Sanya, China”; “Leaders of the BRICS countries at the fifth BRICs Summit (2013) held in Durban, South Africa.” 7 February 2017 http://mea.gov.in/in-focus-article.htm?23577/BRICS+by+brick+Recrafting+a+new +global+order

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The strong symbolic statements continue in a second, more informal photograph of the summit in Goa, before dinner. Again all five BRICS leaders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his guests, presidents Michel Temer, Jacob Zuma, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping, are holding their neighbors’ hands in a pose of victory. All wear local Indian attire, a silk crisp kurtas with a cotton jacket, as a kind of uniform, in varying colors (fig. 4). Two pictures of this event were published, the second one, instead of flags, uses as a background important national landmarks in the form of sand sculptures (for Brazil, Rio’s Cristo Redentor, the Taj Mahal for India, the Kremlin for Russia, etc.). In spite of all attempts at ensuring team spirit, with the five members sticking together, e.g. through symbolic statements in clothing, iconographic staging, or verbal narratives, it is impossible to ignore the volatile character of the (powerasymmetric) relationships as well as substantial struggles between the BRICS members. Last summit’s host Modi, in one of his tweets (“The BRICS family”, 15 October 2016) about the event, applied the kinship concept to the alliance. This description evokes the realm of a certain collectivistic privacy. Not a closed space though, because also the family (like the nation states) has become “a more fluid entity”, with its members’ roles and relations becoming “more negotiable” and subject to change. (Valentina et al. 280f.)

C ONTINGENCY BETWEEN D ISCONNECTION AND H ARMONIZATION How is contact through trade and politics negotiated and discussed in transcultural BRICS encounters in ever-shifting zones or spaces? The theoretical framework set at the beginning of this article and the BRICS as the chosen case of a transcultural contact zone hint at the deterritorialized variant of symbolic modes of communication, that is, “from the physical place of encounter to the discursive space of dialogue.” (Schorch 69) It is precisely the growing together of these five random, contingent emerging states that raises this question, as Mayblin et al. put it in their subchapter “Encounters across difference: the significance of the contact zone”: “accidental proximity does not necessarily produce ‘meaningful contact’.” (Mayblin 213) The question of whether the BRICS can fill the expectations raised by the acronym and increase sustained engagement in the so-called South-South partnership between the disparate states remains unanswered to a certain extent. The sense of togetherness (“family”) still stands on a fragile basis, but after all, members have

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agreed bilaterally, e.g. China and Brazil, on the core values and principles of “non-interference, equality, and mutual benefit.” (Lopes Júnior 1) Such a heterogeneous conglomerate covering a vast territory demonstrates the continuous oscillation between transcultural entanglements and ongoing national paradigms. We have to endure this paradox, paralleled as it is by the dilemma between fragmentation and unity and the questioning of national frameworks from a transareal standpoint. (Brühwiler and Sánchez 363) The paradox is even sharpened through Western lenses trained on the BRICS, since the acronym was invented in the US from a basically economic stance. Any culture-sensitive view of the alliance has been deeply influenced by the bipolar Western framework of the so-called ‘cultural dimensions’. Corresponding indicators were established by Geert Hofstede and his followers and adopted almost worldwide for all BRICS, even by local BRICS scholars of cross-cultural management studies themselves. These indicators bring along onesize-fits-all BRICS traits, e.g. uncontrollable bureaucracy, informal practices and corruption. As to the appreciation of ethic (e.g. freedom of expression/media) and democratic (vs. autocratic/oligarchic) codes or colonial vs. imperial pasts, BRIC forms two pairs: China and Russia vs. India and Brazil. Hofstedean invariant indicators popularized the preconceptions of collectivism and favoritism granted to family and friends (nepotism and lack of meritocracy) for all BRICS. A further generalization concerns a tendency toward “power concentration on paternalistic decision-making leaders and strong loyalties in personal business relationships.” (Brühwiler and Sánchez 363) Still, the standardization or unifying aspirations of a coherent whole do not reach all political, military (Brazil is not a nuclear power), or ecological (more awareness in Brazil) purposes of the BRICS assemblage. Scale and growth rates of the five members on a macro-level differ substantially, let alone the regional, inner differentiation on a meso-level (Brühwiler and Sánchez 364-5). Population size clusters India (1.25 billion) and China (1.35 billion) on the one side, Brazil (200 million) and Russia (144 million), on the other; South Africa (54 million) lingers far behind (Statista.com 2014). Great differences in GDP (2015, with dominator China, before India, Brazil and South Africa) can be compared to less monetary market-driven ratios such as the Social Progress Index (SPI 2015; here Brazil is the leader, followed by Russia, China, and India) or the Human Development Index (HDI 2015; Russia ranks best, before Brazil, China, and India). Standardization is placed in opposition to the basic heterogeneity of the BRICS regions. A transcultural set of diverse entities in a multipolar scenario stands against approval of the BRICS’ unifying brand (Brühwiler and Sánchez 365), and the diverging national interests against the institutionalization of the

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association. As mentioned above, one endeavor of the network is definitely the reshaping of the economic and geopolitical world order “to challenge Atlantic dominance” as well as its “joint opposition to any sort of Western intervention in their internal affairs.” (Huang n.p.) As to this aim of holding geopolitical power against the West, the BRICS Cable might be an interesting episode and a stimulating metaphor to end on. For knowledge transfer, implicit and explicit communication among the member states, they have been planning since 2012 to optimize their telecommunications setup. The BRICS wanted to implement a submarine optical fiber communications cable system in the Southern hemisphere. Part of the motivation for the project was the interception of the National Security Agency (discovered by Edward Snowden). NSA surveillance could be avoided by installing 34.000 kilometers of a two-fiber cable, thus an ambitious underwater telecom project was conceived to connect Vladivostok to Fortaleza, along a line from Russia through China, Singapore, India, Mauritius, South Africa, and Brazil. The BRICS bloc wished to shield itself from US intelligence agencies with cables running across their own territories instead of data traffic moving through European and US hubs. The same goes for Telebras Cable in search of a direct transatlantic connection between Brazil and Portugal without any interfering U.S. technology. (Rolland n.p.) Nevertheless, protection would only be assured for information sent via the BRICS cable and “won’t help the people who use US-based web services like Google, Facebook or Yahoo”. Moreover, the cable “will still be vulnerable to eavesdropping by specialized American military units which learned how to intercept communications on underwater cables during the Cold War.” (Mândrăşescu n.p.) Last year, in 2015, the project was abandoned (with the domain www. bricscable.com no longer active) due to funding problems (cost $1.5 billion) and, not surprisingly, due to political divergence in the BRICS consortium regarding information policy and control (Russia and China vs. the democratic IBSA: India, Brazil, and South Africa). The differing cybersecurity policies seems to have been more significant in the end than the common goal of obstructing the USdominated Internet governance and cybercontrol. (Lee n.p.) The BRICS nations agree that an Internet code of conduct must be developed, but they cannot agree upon what this code should include. In fact, these meetings have recently yielded more intra-bloc disconnect than political harmonization. (Lee n.p.) The dilemma shows the complex interplay of attitudes. A certain amount of privacy would have been achieved through the planned BRICS Internet as an underwater infrastructure for a network inaccessible to the NSA. The suggestive

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metaphor of the immersed, subaquatic communication recalls the iceberg analogy model (Hall). Without a doubt, the numerous invisible aspects of communication patterns hidden beneath the surface can be applied to the complex contact and exchange biases of the BRICS. Although, in some sort of a serendipity process, the ownership of the initial acronym has gradually shifted towards the nations themselves, the BRICS remain a huge, dizzying, and troubled contact zone in persistent negotiation, a BRICScape.

R EFERENCES Agamben, Giorgio. Bartleby oder die Kontingenz gefolgt von: Die absolute Immanenz. Berlin: Merve, 1998. ---. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Badura, Bernhard et al. Sozialkapital – Grundlagen von Gesundheit und Unternehmenserfolg. 2nd ed. Berlin: Springer, 2013. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge, 1994. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Ed. John G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1986. 241-58. Brühwiler, Claudia, and Sánchez, Yvette. Transculturalism and Business in the BRIC States: A Handbook. London/New York: Routledge/Taylor&Francis Group, 2015. Deleuze, Gilles. Bartleby oder die Formel. Berlin: Merve, 1994. Douglas, Mary. How Institutions Think. Syracuse/New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Ette, Ottmar. Caribbean(s) on the Move – Archipiélagos literarios del Caribe. A TransArea Symposium. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2008. Fisher, Roger, and William Ury. Getting to Yes. Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization, Society and Religion. London: Penguin Freud Library 12, 1991. Hall, Edward T. Beyond Culture. New York: Anchor Books Editions, 1989. Huang, Cary. “Are the BRICS cracking? Cultural diversity and competing interests for China, India and Russia underscore inherent contradictions and chal-

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lenges.” South China Morning Post 22 October 2016. 22 October 2016. http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2039065/are-bricscracking. Hurrell, Andrew. “Narratives of emergence: rising powers and the end of the Third World?” Revista de Economia Política 33.2 (2013): 203-21. 1 October 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0101-31572013000200001. Jones, Bruce D. “Rise and Fall. The Bursting of the BRIC’s Bubble.” The American Interest 9 Apr. 2015. 16 October 2016. http://www.the-americaninterest.com/2015/04/09/the-bursting-of-the-brics-bubble/. Lee, Stacia. “International Reactions to U.S. Cybersecurity Policy: The BRICS undersea cable.” Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington 8 Jan. 2016. 20 October 2016. https://jsis.washington.edu/news/reactions-us-cybersecurity-policy-bric-undersea-cable/. Lopes Júnior, Gutemberg Pacheco. “The Sino-Brazilian Principles in a Latin American and BRICS Context: The Case for Comparative Public Budgeting Legal Research.” Wisconsin International Law Journal 33.1 (2015): 1-45. 16 October 2016 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2608770. Mândrăşescu, Valentin. “BRICS countries are building a ‘new Internet’ hidden from NSA.” Sputnik International 28 Oct. 2013. 20 October 2016. https://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2013_10_28/BRICS-countries-arebuilding-a-new-Internet-hidden-from-NSA-7157/. Mayblin, Lucy, Gill Valentine, and Johan Andersson. “In the contact zone: engineering meaningful encounters across difference through an interfaith project.” The Geographical Journal 182.2 (2016): 213-22. Modi, Renu. “BRICS and Bilateral Synergies and Contestations.” The BRICS and Beyond. The International Political Economy of the Emergence of a New World Order. Ed. Li Xing. London: Routledge, 2014. 75-92. Ortiz, Fernando. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y del azúcar. Madrid: Cátedra, 2002. Pew Research Center. Global Attitudes & Trends. 20 October 2016. http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/27/. Poskitt, Adele et al. Where is the real power within the BRICS and G20? A mapping of actors and spaces. 16 October 2016. http://csnbricsam.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/1-Executive-Summary.pdf. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London/New York: Routledge, 1992.

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Reuters. India’s Modi, at BRICS summit, calls Pakistan 'mother-ship of terrorism. 16 October 2016. http://bdnews24.com/neighbours/2016/10/16/india-smodi-at-brics-summit-calls-pakistan-mother-ship-of-terrorism. Riese, Utz. “Kulturelle Übersetzung und intermediale Übertragung.” Heterotopien der Identität: Literatur in interamerikanischen Kontaktzonen. Eds. Herlinghaus, Hermann, and Utz Riese. Heidelberg: Winter, 1999. 7-20. Rolland, Nadège. “A Fiber-Optic Silk Road.” The Diplomat 2 Apr. 2015. 18 October 2016. http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/a-fiber-optic-silk-road/. Schorch, Philipp. “Contact Zones, Third Spaces, and the Act of Interpretation.” museum and society 11.1 (2013): 68-81. Sloterdijk, Peter. Eurotaoismus. Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1989. ---. Sphären. Drei Bände: Blasen. Globen. Schäume. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2004. Uzarewicz, Charlotte, and Michael Uzarewicz. “Transkulturalität und Leiblichkeit in der Pflege.” Intensiv. Fachzeitschrift für Intensivpflege und Anästhesie 4 (2001): 168-75. Valentine, Gill, Aneta Piekut, and Catherine Harris. “Intimate encounters: the negotiation of difference within the family and its implications for social relations in public space.” The Geographical Journal 181.3 (2015): 280-94. Woolcock, Michael, and Deepa Narayan. “Social capital: Implications for development theory, research, and policy.” The World Bank Research Observer 15.2 (2000): 225-49. Xinhua. “Xi calls for joint efforts to enrich China-India partnership.” The Global Times 16 Oct. 2016. 21 October 2016. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1011595.shtml. Zoellick, Robert B. “The End of the Third World? Modernizing Multilateralism for a Multipolar World”. Speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. The World Bank. 14 April 2010. 16 October 2016. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:22 541126~pagePK:34370~piPK:42770~theSitePK:4607,00.html.

Unexpected Outcomes of the Portuguese Encounter in Sri Lanka Innovation and Hybridity S HIHAN DE S ILVA J AYASURIYA

R ÉSUMÉ Les interventions européennes dans le commerce dans l’océan indien débutant au 15ème siècle ont eu des effets imprévisibles sur la culture régionale. Les prises de contacts avec les Portugais qui étaient les premiers habitants de l’Ouest à s’engager dans le commerce avec l’Asie du Sud sont documentées dans des sources historiques écrites et archivées. La contribution reconsidéra les rencontres culturelles entre les Portugais et les Sri Lankais en se concentrant sur la culture matérielle et populaire. Deux exemples seront étudiés : de précieux objets d’ivoire et la musique »Baila«. Il sera démontré que – malgré les désordre et l’instabilité qui résultaient de ces rencontres – l’échange interculturelle a mené à l’innovation de formes artistiques et de la culture populaire. La productivité artistique des rencontres culturelles se manifestent dans des résultats »hybrides« qui représentent plus que la simple innovation ou le métissage de leurs origines.

I NTRODUCTION Three waves of European colonial powers swept the shores of Sri Lanka. The first wave, the Portuguese, arrived in the sixteenth century and was followed by the Dutch and then the British. This paper depicts the dynamics of Sri Lankan culture following the Portuguese encounter, paying special attention to how they are perceived and understood. It focuses on two innovations, the dynamics in material culture and popular culture, through the paradigms of luxury ivory ob-

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jects and baila music, both of which emerged from the encounter. I will discuss different notions of hybridity as processes in the search for control. Historical systems are nonlinear systems in that they are determined by the interactions between the deterministic elements in a system’s history and ‘chance’ factors that may alter its evolution. (Kiel and Elliott 5) The concept of chaos may provide a means for understanding the uncertain nature of social systems as both historical and evolving systems. (Ibid. 19) Creative, unpredictable outcomes resulting from the disorderly state following the encounter and its manifestation in hybridity are explored. The notion of hybridity as applied to cross-cultural outcomes in luxury objects and music will be investigated in order to ascertain the appropriateness of the term hybridity in describing the responses and innovations following the Portuguese encounter. Referring to political systems, Homi Bhabha draws attention to the notion of hybridity. (Rutherford 216) He states that the notion of hybridity stems from the genealogy of difference and the idea of translation. (Ibid. 211) The act of translation (both as representation and as reproduction) denies the essentialism of an original or originary culture. Bhabha asserts that all forms of culture are in a process of hybridisation. The important feature of hybridity is the impossibility of tracing the two original moments from which the third emerges; hybridity is the ‘third space’ which allows other positions to emerge. The third space sets up new structures of authority, displacing the histories that constitute it, creating new political initiatives which are not adequately understood through received wisdom. Bhabha (Cultural Diversity 208) points out that the third space, though unrepresentable in itself, constitutes the discursive conditions of expression which ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appreciated, translated, rehistoricised, and read anew. The third space is the precondition for the articulation of cultural difference. (Ibid. 209)

H ISTORICAL B ACKDROP In the early modern period, a small European country whose objectives were trade and proselytising became involved in overseas territorial control. Breaking into intra-Indian Ocean trading networks, the Portuguese were able to manipulate sea power and strife in the region to gain political and territorial control. After initial exploratory voyages at the end of the fifteenth century, a fleet commanded by Dom Francisco de Almeida was dispatched in 1505 to establish the Estado da India. Although the term Estado da India defined the official remit of

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Portuguese power, the influence of unofficial Portuguese traders extended far beyond the geographical confines of the Estado. This, however, does not imply that the Portuguese ruled the entire coastline within the boundaries of the Estado. The majority of the coastal lands and cities in this vast region remained outside Portuguese control. The jurisdiction of the Viceroy of India included all official and unofficial Portuguese settlements and interests between the southern tip of Africa and the lower Yangtze River. The Portuguese operations in the Estado were organised as a network of nodes, each with a formal administration conforming to a roughly common pattern with trading posts and fortresses. The Viceroy, or Governor, resident first in Cochin and later on in Goa, complemented by officials and a fortress, stood at the pinnacle of this imperial mercantile machinery. The Viceroy’s role extended to negotiating commercial contracts with local rulers on behalf of the Portuguese Crown. The system was unwieldy: its jurisdiction, even within narrow geographical boundaries, was too wide and often ineffective. But, on the other hand, Portuguese policy in Sri Lanka illustrates the strengths of the Estado da India. The Portuguese optimised on sea power and fire-arms in their attempt to control Sri Lanka by reducing the king of Kōtte to a client king paying tribute to Portugal. (Newitt 115) In 1505, a chance storm swept a Portuguese ship on its way to the nearby Maldive Islands, captained by Lourenço de Almeida (son of Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese Viceroy of India), to Galle on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. But it was not until twelve years later that the Portuguese began to establish trading posts and fortresses. In medieval Sri Lanka, trade was dominated by Moors (people of Arab descent), Afghans and South Indians. A caste of traders like the Indian Hindu Vaishyas did not exist in Sri Lanka. (Geiger 109) Sri Lankan cinnamon was renowned as the best in the world, and even today Sri Lanka produces 90% of the world’s supply. The Portuguese succeeded in gaining the monopoly for this precious commodity, which had been in the hands of the Moors, in exchange for military protection for the king of Kōtte. The Portuguese called this king the ‘Emperor of Ceylon’; he had suzerainty over the other two kingdoms Kandy and Jaffnapatam. The divided kingdoms of Sri Lanka meant that kings were continuously threatened by the neighbouring kingdoms.

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M ATERIAL C ULTURE : R EADING O BJECTS Archaeologists use material culture to describe artefacts and objects remaining from former societies. Material culture is used to examine the object, its context and the process of its manufacture and use. Unconsciously or consciously, indirectly or directly, objects reflect the beliefs of those who made them and by extension the society to which they belonged. Therefore, the term ‘material culture’ includes understanding culture as well as the study of the ‘material’. Art historians thus investigate the environmental and cultural context of an object. According to Jules David Prown (Prown 1), an American art historian, material culture is the study, through artefacts, of the beliefs (values, ideas, attitudes, assumptions) of a particular community or society at a given time. The subject matter of material culture is thus diverse; it consists of several subfields – cultural geography, art history, architecture, decorative arts, science and technology.

Figure 1: Robinson Casket (ivory, ca. 1557)

Source: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Re-reading sixteenth century ivory objects and carvings provides an opportunity to re-visit the Portuguese encounter with Sri Lanka. The cultural significance of exquisite luxury objects which have survived for five centuries has to be addressed anew. Objects that were special gifts from Sri Lanka, kept in royal

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households, religious institutions, and later on in museums and private households, have survived. The task of labelling objects in museums raises questions about their classification, origins, design and style. Ivory caskets carved in Sri Lanka in the mid-sixteenth century can be found in museums in Berlin, Boston, London, Lisbon, Munich and Vienna. Nuno Vassallo e Silva, Deputy Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon), states that twelve ivory caskets representing “the earliest Sinhalese works of art exported to Portugal” have been identified (Vasallo e Silva 281). They were crafted in the 1540s and the following decades and were based on a European model popular in Portugal, there made of leather and decorated with metal. (Ibid. 279) These caskets were produced during a relatively short period of time – just forty years. (Ibid. 294) Demand for these exquisite objects was driven by Portuguese markets and carried out under Portuguese patronage. The chief demand came from Queen Catherine of Braganza, who collected luxury ivory goods and then gifted them to other European households .(Ibid. 290) The production of exotic ivory objects in Sri Lanka for the Portuguese market reflects a shift in the source of ivory production, which had previously been on Africa’s Atlantic coast. Nuno Vassallo e Silva attributes the decline in the production of ivory and rock crystal objects for the Portuguese to the end of the official Portuguese presence in Sri Lanka. (Ibid. 295) However, the production centre shifted from Sri Lanka to Goa as Portuguese political relations in South Asia changed. The production of ivory objects in Sri Lanka neither began due to Portuguese demand nor ended with the departure of the Portuguese. Still, the tradition of ivory carving reached a high point during the Kōtte Period (1371597), which includes part of the Portuguese period (1505-658). In the mid-sixteenth century, ivory caskets were given as diplomatic gifts to the king of Portugal, Dom João III (1521-97), by Bhuvenekabāhu VII (1521-51), the king of Kōtte. Two important historical moments were celebrated with these caskets – the birth of an heir to the king of Portugal and the coronation of the effigy of a Sri Lankan prince, Dharmapāla, by the Portuguese king, João III, in Lisbon. King Bhuvenekabāhu sent a diplomatic mission to Portugal with the effigy of the prince Dharmapāla, and the casket illustrates the swearing of an oath of allegiance. Whilst conversion of Asians to Christianity was limited during the early years of contact from the end of the 1530s, it became an important criterion for the provision of Portuguese military assistance (de Silva, Portuguese Encounters xvii). Bhuvenakabāhu VII made it clear to the Franciscans who arrived in 1543 that he had no intention of converting to Catholicism (Don Peter 188). However, his young grandson Dharmapāla and two of his sons by a junior queen were edu-

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cated by Father Friar João de Vila Conde. After Bhuvenekabāhu’s death in 1551, Dharmapāla was acclaimed his successor as he was the legitimate heir, being the son of Bhuvenekabāhu’s daughter, Samudra Dēvi and Vidiya Bandāra (Bhuvenekabāhu had no sons from his chief queen). (de Silva, History of Sri Lanka 151) In 1557, Dharmapāla converted to Roman Catholicism, breaking traditions that had been maintained for two thousand years. Based on the “Deed of Gift” dated 12th August 1580, the king of Portugal claimed the succession of the kingdom of Kōtte after Dharmapāla’s death in 1597. Although the Portuguese period is taken to be from 1505 to 1658, the period of domination was only about 60 years (from 1597 to 1658). The initial phase of contact, from 1505 to 1551, was a period when the Portuguese were allies of the kings of Kōtte. During Dharmapāla’s reign, from 1551 to 1597, the Portuguese transformed the kingdom of Kōtte into a protectorate. After the death of Dharmapāla in 1597, the Portuguese ruled Kōtte directly, extending their rule to the kingdoms of Sitāwaka and Jaffnapatam until they were ousted by the Dutch in 1658. Except for Batticaloa and Trincomalee, which came under Portuguese rule during the latter decades of Portuguese presence, the Kandyan kingdom remained under Sri Lankan rule throughout the Portuguese period. The pattern in Sri Lanka is atypical: Portuguese enclaves in the Estado da India were generally confined to coastal areas. Here, the Portuguese attempted to gain political control over the whole island, through indirect or direct rule. Sri Lanka’s strategic position at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean made it an attractive base in the East.

H YBRID I DENTITIES : I NDO -P ORTUGUESE Hybridity captures the fluid and ever changing nature of the encounter as the effects are felt in the twentieth century. In viewing objects of cultural significance, principally three-dimensional luxury products, we are implicitly asked to regard them as Indo-Portuguese. How do we describe this new culture and, in doing so, how far can we move away from its sources – Sri Lankan and Portuguese? If we accept the new culture as distinct and worthy of its position and status, what problems do we face? Firstly, we must consider who crafted the objects. Three possibilities emerge. The objects could have been made (a) by Sri Lankan craftsmen under Portuguese instruction and patronage, (b) by Portuguese craftsmen absorbing Indian influences, or (c) by Portuguese artisans under Indian influence in Portugal. Secondly, we must consider for whom the objects were crafted and for what purposes. The demand for luxury objects was driven by the elite governing the

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island and by the export trade. Ivory was a precious commodity and the boxes are miniatures, typical dimensions being for example 14.9 cm x 25 cm x 16 cm. Being small and compact, they were particularly suited for transporting overseas. Whilst some caskets are entirely Sinhalese in decorative motifs, others depict Christian iconography. This change in decor represents the beginning of cultural transformation and the religious and political tensions following the encounter. I argue that the changing iconography is a form of cultural assertion and transformation whereby craftsmen portray their own people and culture to ‘others’. Indo-Portuguese caskets therefore emerge as an aesthetic activity in this context. Thirdly, the appropriateness of the term hybridity in describing the culture emerging from the contact between the Portuguese and Sri Lankans should be considered. Hybridity is the hybrid condition; ‘hybrid’ from the Latin word hybrida meaning derived from heterogeneous sources, composed of two or more diverse elements and having a mixed character. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a hybrid as the offspring of two animals or plants of different species or (less strictly) varieties; a half-breed, cross-breed, or mongrel. Hybridity is a term usually applied to animal/plant life, to language, and more recently to vehicular propulsion (cars running on both petrol and electricity). Hybridity is also used by social scientists and historians to indicate mixed ancestry or for a merging of different traditions and cultures. Even though hybridity is not limited to the combination or mixing of two distinct cultures, it inevitably introduces a sense of two or more distinct sources. Hybridity has been a key word for describing new cultures that evolved from cross-cultural contact. Robin Cohen (Cohen 131) points out that, unfortunately, the term hybridisation conveys the opposite meaning to what those who coined the term intended, due to its contrasting association with concepts of sterility and uniformity. Hybridity is thus a contested term and its use in postcolonial theorising is challenged due to its origins in and connections to European expansion. (Young 6-9) These challenges are based on the history of the term, rooted as it is in Eurocentrism and the legitimisation of western social and cultural privileges. (Ibid. 97-8, 102) José Nafafé (Nafafé 54) points out that this argument is anthropocentric and challenges the discourse separating centre and periphery, positing the superiority of the West vis-à-vis all things non-Western. Hybridity makes the label ‘Indo-Portuguese’ a term that covers linguistic, political and cultural outcomes. In linguistics, the nineteenth century term IndoPortuguese is an umbrella term that covers dialects of creolised Portuguese that were spoken during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in coastal enclaves in India and in both inland and coastal areas of Sri Lanka. These creoles are becoming moribund but are still spoken in Daman, Diu, Korlai, Cannanore, Batticaloa,

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Trincomalee, Malacca and Macau. (Cardoso, Baxter, and Pinharanda Nunes 4) Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka Portuguese) has been particularly robust, and though predicted to have died off over a century ago is still the mother-tongue of Portuguese Burghers in the eastern province which was controlled by the Portuguese during the last few decades of their rule. Until recently, Creoles were not understood and were considered inferior to their base languages. Indo-Portuguese, which has its own grammar and literature, is not inferior to European Portuguese. Linguists took an interest in Creoles during the late nineteenth century. Hugo Schuchardt, a German linguist considered the ‘Father of Creole Languages’, wrote a late nineteenth century essay “Zum IndoPortugieschen von Ceylon” (On the Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon), including two Sri Lanka Portuguese songs which John Eaton, a Sri Lankan Burgher lawyer, who himself had a good grasp of the language, had requested ‘a man who knows much about these old songs’ to write down for him. (de Silva Jayasuriya, “IndoPortuguese of Ceylon” 61) Letters to Schuchardt from elite Sri Lankans, who spoke what they called ‘Ceylon Portuguese’ in the late nineteenth century, reinstate its status as a prestige language which was beginning to give way to English. (de Silva Jayasuriya, “Correspondence”) For about 350 years, IndoPortuguese was what English is today in Sri Lanka: the language of external communication and trade. Still, negative connotations were associated with contact languages (creoles and pidgins) until their value was recognised as efficient languages and communicators. Creole was spoken by Dutchmen at home with their mestiça wives and children although Dutch was the official language of administration. The English also spoke Creole during the initial phase in Sri Lanka, as the language allowed them to conduct missionary work and daily communications. The term Indo-Portuguese also describes the hybrid identity of a person – Portuguese and Indian – also known as mestiço (offspring from a Portuguese father and Asian mother), castiço (offspring of a Portuguese father and a mestiça mother) or topaz (a term which stems from the bilinguality of South Asians with Portuguese ancestry). ‘Burgher’ is the current term for Sri Lankans of European descent reaching back to the Dutch period. Portuguese descendants were given the privileges of citizenship under the designation of Burghers during the Dutch period. Mestiças were an asset to the Portuguese colonisers: they were loyal and could be trusted, unlike the indigenous people. The Christianity of the mestiços overrode the differences in their skin colour and race was not a barrier to social acceptance. Embracing Catholicism and speaking Portuguese thus facilitated social mobility. As the empire was operated on thin manpower, mestiços were valued for their fidelity. This was also observed with respect to the mulattoes in

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mid-fifteenth to mid-sixteenth century Portugal. (Saunders 175) The Dutch also valued the mestiças, whom they married in preference to the locals. Mestiças and mestiços bridged the cultural gap between the Europeans and the Sri Lankans. Neluka Silva (Silva i) remarks that nineteenth-century British administrators, on the other hand, viewed racial hybridity in virulently negative terms. Nira Wickramasinghe (Wickramasinghe 85) points out that the concept of hybridity was introduced only when Eastern and Western cultures mixed. When ‘oriental’ cultures mixed, they fused and merged into an acceptable whole; they did not become hybrid. Identities were thus predicated by the notion of difference between the colonial and what was called the ‘native’. Silva adds that “racial purity and hierarchy were part of a political strategy designed to maintain the boundary between coloniser and colonised.” (Silva i) Within the world of decorative art, hybridity is used without elaboration, simply to indicate mixed origins of a work. John Irwin, an art historian, provides various definitions of Indo-Portuguese, first used in the 1880s, to label “objects made in India by indigenous craftsmen or in Portugal under Indian influence.” (Irwin 386) The term was later re-defined to include works of ‘genuine oriental’ industry made in the East under Portuguese patronage. (Ibid. 386) By the 1950s, the term Indo-Portuguese included three categories: (a) objects produced by Indian craftsmen with Portuguese influence on the subject matter, (b) objects made in Portuguese territories by ‘native’ craftsmen estranged from their social inheritance, and (c) objects made by Portuguese craftsmen based on Indian prototypes. (Ibid. 386f.) John Irwin includes art specimens from Sri Lanka (Ceylon) as Indo-Portuguese. But Marsha Gail Olson (Olson 55) remarks that the term Indo-Portuguese distinguished ivory sculptures created under the Portuguese from those created in the Philippines under the Spanish that were called HispanoPhilippine. She further distinguishes works created in Goa as Indo-Portuguese from those in Sri Lanka as Singhalo-Portuguese. In this use of the word, there is little sense of movement or social change. Should we therefore consider whether the term can be stretched to incorporate more of the dynamics of cultural and aesthetic change? As in the ivory caskets, the “interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy.” (Bhabha, Location 4) Models and decorative motifs encapsulate the historical dynamics of the period. I read the iconography, prior to the crowning of Dharmapāla’s effigy in 1541, as simply decorative and secular with floral or zoological designs. As religion became a central theme in Portuguese-Sri Lankan relations, indeed, a point of tension and conflict, the iconography on the caskets changed. The combina-

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tion of Christian decorative motifs and Sri Lankan craftsmanship is of particular interest. An Indian epic (the Ramayana), Hindu gods, Sri Lankan musicians playing instruments, Sri Lankan queens and kings, these all establish the eastern identity of these objects. The Portuguese were not conquistadores in 1541 when the coronation casket was carved for Portugal. Ivory was a precious commodity and local craftsmen carved boxes for export. Gold locks were decorated with filigree work. The adornment with precious jewels – rubies, emeralds, pearls – remains Sri Lankan. In these caskets, a mixture of Sinhalese and European images symbolises the relationship between the two royal households. (Jackson and Jaffer 255) Jackson and Jaffer note that these caskets reinforce European imagery and demonstrate the use of western sources by Asian craftsmen. One can find for example carvings of bagpiping shepherds drawn from an Albrecht Dürer (1471-538) woodcut of 1514, the Tree of Jesse, the birth of Christ, the Betrothal of the Virgin and the Flight to Egypt. Gauvin Bailey (Bailey 108), writing on religious encounters and Christianity in Asia, describes an ivory casket in a private collection in Oporto (Portugal), which was carved between 1622 and 1650. The box in Oporto has a flat lid, but the carvings are a combination of religious iconography and Sri Lankan zoological scenes. Unlike the mid-sixteenth century caskets crafted for royalty, this casket appears to have been carved for the Jesuit superior in Goa or Portugal or for the Jesuit father-general in Rome. Carvings on the front, back and sides depict a Madonna and child, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier (‘Apostle of the East’) and pairs of animals (elephants, peacocks and mythical creatures – makara). Even though the shape of the objects changed due to varied demands, the cross-cultural themes in the motifs conveyed hybridity as illustrated in the collection of the Fundação Oriente (Lisbon), where a “Ceylonese-Portuguese tablecabinet” carved with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is housed. (de Silva Jayasuriya, “Portugal and Sri Lanka” 12) The contador (table-cabinet) from the seventeenth century is made of cedar, paper, ivory, silver and brass. Elephants, turtles, dogs, birds and fish incorporate Sri Lankan imagery into this important Judeo-Christian scene.

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Fruitful ‘interchanges’ between Portugal and Sri Lanka have occurred in many kinds of art including music, furniture, jewellery, religious objects and architectural styles. (de Silva Jayasuriya, “Portugal and Sri Lanka” 18; “Persisting Portuguese Linguistic Imprints in India and Sri Lanka”) But emphasis has been on

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religious conversions, reflecting the perceived pre-modern identity of the Sri Lankans. (Strathern 21; Perera 161-89) Consequently, other cultural aspects which might reveal the true nature of the encounter have received less attention. One of the strongest influences of the Portuguese encounter has been on popular music – chorus baila – generally known as baila. This is not to be confused with other genres called baila in South America. Chorus Baila has been considered an Afro-Iberian hybrid. (Sheeran 146) An Afro-Portuguese form of music called kaffrinha undoubtedly influenced chorus baila. The line between kaffrinha and baila can be fuzzy. Given the lack of historical documents and the dynamics of music in Portugal over the past five centuries, tracing kaffrinha’s roots is not feasible. Whether it evolved in Portugal or Sri Lanka is uncertain. Fifteenth and sixteenth century Portugal had a high concentration of black slaves (Saunders 1) and the Portuguese were familiar with African forms of music such as Guineo. Africans who boarded ships that set sail to India from Lisbon in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have carried African musical genres. To complement thinned-out crews after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, which generally cost the lives of one third of the Portuguese crews, more Africans, slaves or freemen, were taken on board caravels. Afro-Portuguese forms of music are a direct result of the multi-ethnic nature of the Portuguese overseas enterprise.

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Figure 2: Ran pota/Golden Thread (a baila)

Piano score arranged by the author.

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Syncopations and off beats of kaffrinha and baila pulsate to the characteristic rhythms of African music. Listeners enjoy the rhythm-driven melodies and harmonies though they are oblivious to its components. (de Silva Jayasuriya, “Postcolonial Innovations” 25) Harmony, created by playing several notes together (chords), was not an element of Sri Lankan music until after the encounter. The Portuguese unconsciously added this extra dimension to Sri Lankan music. Baila also reminds us of the innovative potential of post-colonial Sri Lanka. The composer of baila, Gajanayake Mudiyanselāge Mervin Ollington Bastianz (1914-85), who became known as Wally Bastianz, was of mixed ancestry. (de Silva Jayasuriya, Portuguese in the East 46) Bastianz’s father was a Burgher, a Sri Lankan of Portuguese and Dutch ancestry, and his mother was Sinhalese. For official purposes, in Sri Lanka, a child assumes her/his father’s ethnicity. The position of the Dutch Burghers was ambiguous around the time Sri Lanka became independent. On the one hand, they were privileged due to their western education and well placed to occupy positions particularly in the legal and administrative spheres. On the other hand, the Dutch Burghers were perceived as remnants of colonialism, even though many were the results of intermarriages with the locals and indigenous people. The position of the Portuguese Burgher was different. The British referred to them by the derogatory term ‘mechanics’ (a mistranslation of the word ambachtslieden, a word which was used for the Portuguese descendants in recognition of their artisan traditions). They continued to speak Creole Portuguese and did not need to make linguistic adjustments due to the trades that they engaged in during the Dutch and British periods. But they were recognised as having a flair for music and the stereotypical Portuguese Burgher was portrayed with his guitar. Bastianz’s hybrid identity was thus an advantage and allowed him to transcend ethnic and class barriers. His exposure to both Afro-Portuguese and Sri Lankan musical traditions enabled him to cross cultural borders and move between cultural traditions. Bastianz was well placed to create an innovative form of music that swept the newly independent nation off its feet amidst the euphoria over the ending of five hundred years of colonisation by three successive European powers, from 1505 to 1948. Oppressed by colonialism for four hundred years, by the end of the nineteenth century, Sri Lankans were searching for their cultural identity. The relaxed attitude taken by the British in not imposing the Anglican Church or other cultural traditions upon them allowed the blossoming of Sri Lankan art forms – Nādagamas (folk drama), mask dances and regional dance forms (Kandyan dance and Sabaragamuwa dance). While these were important in re-discovering a national identity based on tradition, the colonial experience had inevitably left an indelible mark. Returning to the precolonial state was not a feasible option.

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Modernity had affected the dynamics of social change. Against the background of this prevailing weltanschauung, Bastianz responded with chorus baila, intertwining existent forms of music in a rhythm that resonated with the pulse of the newly independent nation. He germinated a new genre of popular music palatable to all ages and ethnic groups that also cut across gender and class barriers. The British style of divide and rule and the need for population censuses had force-fitted Sri Lankans into ethnic boxes that created tensions upon independence. As a policeman who served multi-ethnic communities, Wally Bastianz simply broke down the ethnic barriers and included everyone with his multilingual songs containing lyrics in Sinhala, Tamil, English, Sri Lanka Portuguese and Sri Lanka Malay. In addition to being a singer and a versatile musician who played several instruments, Bastianz was also a brilliant lyricist. Bastianz reminded Sri Lankans of their traditions, emphasising respect for parents, the destruction of families caused by gambling, and hardships encountered by breadwinners. Whilst baila did not dislodge the numerous types of folk and classical music in Sri Lanka, it filled a gap in the entertainment sphere, setting the scene for social dancing in open couple dances. The earlier political and social climate was not suitable for such a new form of ‘homegrown’ music to evolve. The Portuguese period created disorder and turmoil, destabilising traditions that had been engrained for 2.000 years. During the Dutch Period, Portuguese music continued as the tradition of the Portuguese Burghers. Even today, the marriage ceremony of Portuguese Burghers is not complete until the Kaffrinha is danced by the bride and groom, who are then joined by the best man and bridesmaid as well as two other couples. The Dutch Period saw the evolution of a class structure amongst the Burghers. The Dutchspeaking Burghers were more affluent and spoke the prestige colonial language of the day – Dutch – used in administrative and legal affairs. As marriages with Dutch ladies failed, Dutchmen also married Portuguese Burghers, and IndoPortuguese of Ceylon became the home language of Dutch households. Portuguese Burghers continued to speak Indo-Portuguese and stuck to their traditional artisan trades of carpentry, shoemaking, welding and tailoring. The arrival of the British and the introduction of English created additional linguistic hazards. Portuguese Burghers were marginalised further as they continued to speak IndoPortuguese, save for a few exceptions who became multilingual, speaking not only English but also the local languages Sinhala and Tamil. The popularity of baila is amplified by its catchy rhythms inviting listeners to the dance floor. All inhibitions are lost as the most prudish of ladies take to the dance floor with little coaxing. Being an open dance, baila is culturally feasible. Couples gyrate to the rhythm in a new cultural identity where ethnic bor-

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ders have dissolved, representing a new unity bound by harmonious ties. Baila could therefore be viewed as a way of gaining control over the disequilibrium faced by the newly independent nations. Or baila might be viewed as a means of coming to terms with the colonial past – a reconciliation – combining local and adopted traditions. The significance of hybridity as the repetition and reproduction of the effects of colonialism has been extensively mapped out by Bhabha. (Silva 108)

E FFECTS

OF THE

E NCOUNTER

At the time of the encounter, political rivalry among the local rulers led to shifting boundaries of the kingdoms. Defence was a major concern and a crucial ingredient in the Portuguese alliance with the kingdom of Kōtte. The political toehold gained by Dharmapāla when Kōtte became a protectorate of Portugal (1597) was a prelude to Portuguese political involvement and desire to control the entire island. In order to fulfil this objective, it was crucial to gain control of the central Kandyan kingdom. But attempts, both military and political, failed. Although the first Portuguese visit to Sri Lanka was accidental, the island’s trade potential and its strategic location in the Indian Ocean made it an attractive proposition. The Portuguese fulfilled their twin goals of proselytising and trading and did not envisage leaving Sri Lanka, but were driven out by the Dutch after a twenty-year struggle during which fortresses were lost and gained, to be lost again forever in 1658. Their sudden and unforeseen departure meant that no trained clergy was in place to sustain the Catholic church. The Dutch banned Catholicism and, if not for the devotion of the Catholic community and the resurrection of the Church by the Goan Joseph Vaz, it is doubtful if Catholicism would have survived. Some Catholics fled to the central kingdom of Kandy, where the Sri Lankan king allowed them to practise their faith. Spaces not previously occupied by the Portuguese thus became Portuguese cultural zones, such as Wahakōtte, where today pilgrims gather on 13th June to celebrate the feast of Saint Anthony. The disorder created by the end of official Portuguese rule also left unpredictable legacies outside the religious arena. Portuguese linguistic influences are evident in the Portuguese words adopted by Sinhala, Tamil and Sri Lanka Malay. (de Silva Jayasuriya, “Cross-cultural Influences” 237) These words fall into semantic fields which reflect areas of culture contact. For example:

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Portuguese

Sinhala

Meaning

Regua

Rēguva

Customs hous

Procurador Soldado Tombo Biscoito Mesa Figura Trombeta Taberna Semana

Perakadōruva Soldāduva Tōmbuva Viskōtuva Mēsaya Pigura Trampettuva Tabarema Sumānaya Week

Proctor Soldier Record/Archive Biscuit Table Figure of Survey Trumpet Tavern

Nau

Nave

Ship

Semantic category Civil administration Juridical admin. Military admin. Land admin. Cuisine/Food Furniture Architecture Music Leisure Temporal elements Transport

The mestiços and mestiças played a key role in linguistic transmission, particularly after the ending of the Portuguese presence. But baila, though transformed, is the most vibrant legacy of the encounter and enchants the listener who recognises its affinity to other forms of hybrid Iberian music. Baila’s main feature is its poetry, the balladry with which it paints a picture of Sri Lankan life and culture. The etymon of baila could be ballare (Latin) meaning ‘to dance’. Baila may have originally denoted ‘dance’, but today it is also a form of music and song in which the lyrics are of paramount importance. A ballad is a narrative song or poem which was originally intended as an accompaniment to dance. The close association of music, song and dance have emphasised the dance element in baila, so that the relationship of bailar to ballare (Latin) is immediately adopted. But the lyrics of baila surpass all else and indigenise the genre. Despite the word baila being recognised as Portuguese, Sri Lankans lose themselves in the Afro-Iberian-Sri Lankan collage. It is an example of hybridity which includes more than two traditions. As Arjun Guneratne points out, there are no pure cultures; a culture, as a way of being in the world, as a conceptual framework through which the world is apprehended, has developed not only through the evolution of its own logic but also through its interactions with other ways of being in the world. (Guneratne 20f.)

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Still, the ideologies of the Portuguese and Sri Lankans were different; the cultural gap was wide. These are also reflected in the workmanship and decoration of the ivory caskets which combine the diverse artistic traditions. The ivory caskets are an example of cultural hybridity that emanated at the outset of Portuguese contact. Ivory was a precious commodity in Sri Lanka and in viewing the miniature ivory boxes, we are reminded that even before colonisation the Portuguese presence changed the motifs. Responding to external demand, three-dimensional ivory objects became a medium for artistic expression, political authority, selfassertion and a medium for intercultural exchange. The caskets represent the workmanship of Sri Lankan ivory carvers who decorated western objects with narrative scenes, using foliage and animals from both the east and the west. Relationships during the Portuguese encounter before domination commenced are captured and reflected in the ivory caskets which are symbolic of cordial relationships between the royal households of Sri Lanka and Portugal. The caskets are a canvas for asserting Sri Lankan customs and authority, objects based on European models that were diplomatic gifts from a royal household in the East to a royal household in the West. These caskets are of political significance because they represent the first tangible evidence of a Sri Lankan-Portuguese alliance. But they were not unique in terms of luxury objects or ivory carvings. Artistic expressions on objects should be evaluated for their own aesthetic appeal without reference to the components that influenced their emergence. Values change and evolve continuously. Classification of these objects as IndoPortuguese or Singalo-Portuguese introduces the notion of hybridity. Hybridity involves the decentralisation of the dominant culture and its revitalisation by incoming cultures. I have argued that hybridity blurs cultural borders and provides a space for re-thinking encounters. The hybrid object, the object in the third space, displays the spirit of Hegelian dialectics. In Hegel’s way of thinking, thought transcends the unity, the difference and the identity of opposites. The hybrid object possesses a unity in its formation from its parental constituents whilst possessing an identity of its own and showing its difference from the parental constituents. Thus the hybrid object transcends either/or categorisations. Baila, on the other hand, is a response to colonisation, a musical melange intertwining tradition and modernity, breaking down the boundaries between the coloniser and the colonised. It can be viewed as a celebration of contact between different cultural and ethnic groups. The lyrics of baila songs are not limited to English or Portuguese, the languages of the colonisers. Baila engages with the periphery through Sinhala, Tamil and Malay lyrics. Therefore baila is not limited to the new elite who, unconsciously or consciously, emulate the colonisers.

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Baila narrows the gap between the centre and periphery; an unpredictable outcome of the encounter. Baila juxtaposes local and global melodies, harmonies and rhythms. Its emergence within a fervour of nationalism around Sri Lanka’s independence illustrates the innovative capacity of colonised peoples. Baila shows the dynamism of postcolonial spaces, new spaces where identities are recast. The strong Portuguese legacy rooted in Sri Lankan music reminds us that, however unexpectedly, harmonious products also emerged from the encounter. In the reorientation towards a globalised world, internationally marketable products give a competitive edge. Encounters are not entirely negative. This argument is at odds with the historical narratives which focus only on political power play and territorial control. The narrative that is familiar to both scholars and the wider public revolves around kings, captain-generals, wars, religious conversions and the destruction of temples. The day-to-day interactions of the common Portuguese sailor-soldier with the local people have been omitted from the historical records. Baila reveals a forgotten part of this colonial history. Such lost histories can be recovered by studying cultural history.

C ONCLUDING R EMARKS The Portuguese encounter with Sri Lanka itself was unpredictable, even the initial contact being serendipitous. It led to surprising outcomes which deviated from the Portuguese agenda of trading and proselytising. Involvement in the island’s political affairs was unforeseen. The end of the Portuguese presence was also unexpected. Although official Portuguese presence ended over three hundred and fifty years ago, the cultural impressions made by the Portuguese have been remarkably long-lived and even survived the Dutch and British who followed them. Baila, though a postcolonial innovation, illustrates the longevity of the Portuguese legacy and the intertwining of diverse cultures resulting in hybridity. More importantly, it is a harmonious outcome and as such quite unexpected of colonial encounters. As Sri Lanka embraced modernity, new artistic forms emerged, intertwining the global with the local. The dynamics in culture following the encounter were not limited to the Portuguese period. Effects on fine art were immediate and ivory caskets became a canvas for both asserting one’s culture and recognising the culture of the other. Innovation and hybridity in interstitial spaces were inevitable.

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R EFERENCES Bailey, Gauvin A. “Religious Encounters: Christianity in Asia.” Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800. Eds. Jackson, Anna, and Amin Jaffer. London: V&A Publications, 2004. 102-23. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. ---. “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences.” The Post-colonial Studies Reader. London/New York: Routledge, 1995. 155-7. ---. “Culture’s in Between”. Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity. Eds. David Bennett. London: Routledge, 1998. 29-36. Cardoso, Hugo C., Alan N. Baxter, and Mário R.L. Pinharanda Nunes. “Introduction.” Ibero-Asian Creoles: Comparative Perspectives. Eds. Cardoso, Hugo C., Alan N. Baxter, and Mário R.L. Pinharanda Nunes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012. 1-14. De Silva, Chandra Richard. The Portuguese in Ceylon 1617-1638. Colombo: H.W. Cave&Company, 1972. ---. Sri Lanka: A History. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1987. ---. “Portugal and Sri Lanka: Recent Trends in Historiography.” Re-exploring Links: History and Constructed Histories between Portugal and Sri Lanka. Ed. Jorge Flores. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. 3-28. ---. Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives: Translated Texts from the Age of the Discoveries. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. De Silva, Kingsley Muthumuni. A History of Sri Lanka. London: Penguin Books, 2005. De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “‘On the Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon’: A Translation of a Hugo Schuchardt Manuscript.” Portuguese Studies 15 (1999): 5269. ---. “Portugal and Sri Lanka: Sociocultural Interactions and Language Contact.” Oriente 17 (2007): 3-18. ---. The Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008. ---. “Cross-cultural Influences on the Language of the Sri Lankan Malays.” African&Asian Studies 8.3 (2009): 204-21. ---. “Persisting Portuguese Linguistic Imprints in India and Sri Lanka.” The Portuguese in the Orient. Kandy: International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2010. 77-118. ---. “Postcolonial Innovations in Sri Lankan Popular Music: Dynamics of Kaffrinha and Baila.” International Journal of Ethnic and Social Studies Sri Lanka 2.1 (2013): 1-30.

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---. “Correspondence between Hugo Schuchardt, John Henry Eaton, Donald Ferguson, Edmund Woodhouse and William Goonatilleke on Ceylon Portuguese with Linguistic Insights.” Grazer Linguistische Studien 84 (2015): 103-25. Don Peter, Welgama Lekam Appuhamilage. Education in Sri Lanka under the Portuguese. Colombo: Catholic Press, 1978. Geiger, Wilhelm. Culture of Ceylon in Mediaeval Times. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1960. Guneratne, Arjun. “What’s in a Name? Aryan and Dravidians in the Making of Sri Lankan Identities.” Hybrid Island. Ed. Neluka Silva. London: Zed Books, 2002. 20-40. Irwin, John (1955). “Reflections on Indo-Portuguese Art.” The Burlington Magazine 97.633 (1955): 386-90. Jackson, Anna, and Amin Jaffer. “Introduction: The Meeting of Europe and Asia 1500-1800.” Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800. Eds. Jackson, Anna, and Amin Jaffer. London: V&A Publications, 2004. 1-11. Jaffer, Amin. “Asia in Europe: Furniture for the West.” Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800. Eds. Jackson, Anna, and Amin Jaffer. London: V&A Publications, 2004. 250-61. Kiel, Douglas and Elliott, Euel. “Exploring Nonlinear Dynamics with a Spreadsheet: A Graphical View of Chaos for Beginners.” Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences: Foundations and Applications. Eds. Kiel, Douglas, and Euel Elliott. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. 19-30. Nafafé, Jose. “Europe in Africa and Africa in Europe: Rethinking postcolonial space, cultural encounters and hybridity.” European Journal of Social Theory 16.1 (2012): 51-68. Newitt, Malyn. A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400-1668. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005. Olson, Martha G. Jesus, Mary, and All of the Saints: Indo-Portuguese Ivory Statuettes and Their Role as Mission Art in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Goa. Diss., University of Minnesota, 2008. Oxford English Dictionary. 2 June 2015. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/89809 ?redirectedFrom=Hybrid#eid. Perera, Gaston. “The Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon: Convert or Baptise.” The Portuguese in the Orient. Kandy: International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2010. 161-88. Prown, Jules D. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” Winterthur Portfolio 17.1 (1982): 1-19.

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Rutherford, Jonathan. “The Third Space. Interview with Homi Bhabha.” Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: Laurence and Wishart, 1990. 207-21. Saunders, A.C. de C.M. A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal 1441-1555. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Sheeran, Anne. “Baila Music: European Modernity, and Afro-Iberian Popular Music in Sri Lanka.” Hybrid Island. Ed. Neluka Silva. London: Zed Books, 2002. 146-70. Silva, Neluka. “Situating the Hybrid ‘Other’ in an Era of Conflict: Representations of the Burgher in Contemporary Writings in English.” Hybrid Island. Ed. Neluka Silva. London: Zed Books, 2002. 104-26. Strathern, Alan. “The Role of Sinhala Group Identity in the ‘Sinhala Rebellion’ against Bhuvanekabahu VI (1469-77).” The Portuguese in the Orient. Kandy: International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2010. 13-28. Vassallo e Silva, Nuno. “An Art for Export: Sinhalese Ivory and Crystal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Re-exploring the Links: History and Constructed Histories between Portugal and Sri Lanka. Ed. Jorge Flores. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. 279-95. Wickramasinghe, Nira. “From Hybridity to Authenticity: the Biography of a few Kandyan Things.” Hybrid Island. Ed. Neluka Silva. London: Zed Books, 2002. 71-92. Young, Robert. Colonial Discourse: Hybridity, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995.

Enriching Repertoires Code-Blending and Linguistic Transfer in the Contact Zone A NJA V OESTE

R ÉSUMÉ L’article évoque les questions de l’issue chaotique après des situations de contact linguistique. Nous discuterons de différents exemples venant de différents pays afin d’éclairer l’issue imprévisible du contact linguistique : les erreurs grammaticales de Silvia, Reine de la Suède, l’emprunt des clics phonétiques dans les langues Bantu en Afrique du Sud, le mélange de codes (code-blending) réalisé par les enfants avec une audition normale ayant des parents sourds aux USA, et finalement le transfert grammatical »déguisé« dans »Hood German« à Berlin. En effet, les exemples en questions ont des points communs dans leur ressemblance avec la théorie mathématique du chaos, c’est-à-dire que le transfert linguistique dans la zone de contact est difficile à prévoir et que son issue affecte les plus petites différences dans la condition initiale. Des déclencheurs érogènes comme la pression sociale, les valeurs symboliques attachées à la langue, les conditions préalables de chaque individu ou bien l’aspiration à exprimer des particularités linguistiques dans la langue de contact mènent vers un résultat aberrant. Néanmoins, ceci indique encore une fois que les langues sont bien plus que des moyens de communication, puisque la langue est une marque d’émotions, d’affiliation sociale et d’identité.

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1. I NTRODUCTION : C HAOS T HEORY L INGUISTIC C ONTACT Z ONES

AND

The essence of chaos theory in mathematics, as I understand it as a lay person, is that while we usually deal with systems that are deterministic, and therefore also predictable in principle, chaotic systems are extremely sensitive to differences in their initial conditions1: the smallest initial deviations may lead to significantly divergent future behaviour. The outcome is a nonlinear development. (cf. Devaney; Banks et al.) This concept is often referred to as the butterfly effect, which points out that tiny differences in the initial conditions, such as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, may cascade to larger-scale effects weeks later and can influence the formation or the exact timeline and path taken by a tornado. (Lorenz) Chaotic systems, such as the weather, or suddenly occurring so-called phantom traffic jams (caused by small disturbances), are a challenge to scholars because their development is difficult or even impossible to predict. (Kanitscheider) Further, the initial condition responsible for the divergence is nearly undetectable in retrospect. In the paper that follows, I will try to answer the question of to what extent the basic concept of chaos theory can be applied to language transfer in linguistic contact zones. In contact linguistics, there are some certainties one can usually rely on; for example, the basic fact that even multilingual speakers still have to choose which language to speak. Therefore, we can predict that during a conversation a bilingual or multilingual speaker may switch between languages, but he or she cannot articulate two or more languages simultaneously. Or, when transfers from one language to the other occur, we already know that this happens in a specific order, as has been depicted by Thomason and Kaufman in an often cited scale of borrowability. (Thomason and Kaufman 74ff.) The first step is the borrowing of vocabulary, while more basic patterns of phonology, prosody and morphology are only transferred by piggybacking on the shoulders of borrowed loanwords. Phonological and grammatical features do not (or are not supposed to) travel on their own, which can be demonstrated by an example from German: French loanwords that were borrowed and incorporated into Middle High German (1050-350) sometimes still show French phonemes today, such as /õ/ in Pavillon and /ʒ/ in Passage, or they are still pronounced with the stress on the second syllable (Fasán, Galópp), while German two-syllable nouns are usually trochees

1

“Let X be a metric space. A continuous map f: X → X is said to be chaotic on X if 1. f is transitive, 2. the periodic points of f are dense in X, 3. f has sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” (Banks et al. 332)

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with the stress on the first syllable. The phonological or prosodic patterns still adhere exclusively to the French loanwords, and they were not distributed to German words. Only if the language contact between French and German and the borrowing of vocabulary had been more intense may phonemes and prosody have found a passageway to German words, too. Against this backdrop of certainties that usually lead to a linear, predictable development, I will specify the presumed initial parameter settings in language transfer that may be crucial in triggering a different, nonlinear outcome. When looking at an ‘irregular’ example of individual language transfer, the key difference between the conditions in language contact and in natural science becomes apparent: contact linguists mostly deal with probabilities, not certainties, when an individual is involved (chapter 2). Furthermore, I will discuss some examples of unpredictable and therefore chaotic outcomes that cause linguists particular trouble because they contradict even the certainties mentioned above (chapter 3). In the final section of my paper (chapter 4), I will point out the challenge of detecting and interpreting ‘disguised’ grammatical transfer phenomena. ‘Disguised’ grammatical transfer may happen if bilingual speakers try to express grammatical features that exist in their mother tongue (L1), but not in their second language (L2). We cannot predict which grammatical features the speakers are determined to hold on to and for which of them they will invent a compensatory construction in their L2. In addition, as these grammatical features usually occur in the form of lexical items that look completely different from the triggering morphological patterns, we cannot predict their form and their appearance may even remain unnoticed. Despite basic differences between the (laboratory) conditions in natural science and (individual) second language acquisition processes in contact linguistics with regard to a ‘regular’, i.e. deterministic and predictable development, the examples discussed in all three chapters reveal essential similarities to chaotic behavior as it is depicted in mathematics: language transfer in the linguistic contact zone is hard to predict and sensitive to small differences in the initial conditions. Moreover, the responsible triggers for an ‘aberrant’ outcome are nearly undetectable in retrospect.

2. C HAOS , P ROBABILITY ,

AND THE

H UMAN F ACTOR

Theoretically speaking, intensive contact between speakers of different languages may lead to the bilingualism of single speakers or of the whole community in question, but usually, one of the languages gains the upper hand and under-

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goes linguistic transfer to the other language.2 From the speakers’ perspective this means that they decide – more or less consciously – in favour of one language and against the other. It may start with the borrowing of separate lexical items, continue with the adoption of prosodic and grammatical features, and may, in the long run, even lead to language loss. In order to take a look at language transfer and contact-induced language change in contact zones from the perspective of chaos theory, one has to seek out the crucial initial conditions that may trigger divergent developments. Generally speaking, there are four different parameters that influence the transfer of linguistic features (Voeste 99ff.): (1) the time perspective, (2) the speaker’s or speakers’ particularities, (3) the domain range, and (4) the comparability of the languages in question (see table 1 for an overview). First, the speakers have to assess the stability of the contact zone: will the contact be permanent or temporary? Will it be worthwhile to learn the other language from a chronological point of view? Second, the configuration, the ability and the motivation of the linguistic group in question play a large role: does the contact affect individuals, kinship groups, institutions or entire communities? How good are their linguistic skills? Are they motivated and willing to learn the other language? A third important parameter is the distribution of the contact languages over the domain repertoire: are there differences in the communicative range of the languages? Are both used in informal and formal contexts to the same extent? Or are there functional differences, for example when only one of the languages is used in administration or in liturgy? And fourth, what about the linguistic profiles of the languages in contact themselves? Are they typologically alike and/or genealogically related? This point is of interest because transfers may happen more easily if the languages stem from the same linguistic family. Apart from the internal conformity or differences, there are also external characteristics to be taken into account: is one of the languages more prestigious than the other? Does it convey an ethnic or religious symbolic value?

2

Mixed language structures (so-called fused lects) are rare and limited to tight communities. They may emerge from language mixing when bilingual patterns that occur regularly become grammaticalized. (for example, McConvell and Meaking; O’Shannessy).

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Table 1: Parameters in Linguistic Contact Zones 1. Time Perspective

2. Speaker(s)

temporary

Configuration

permanent

individual

collective

Ability talent, education Willingness 3. Domain Range

4. Languages

single

Internal Criteria

all domains

typological differences External Criteria prestige, symbolic value

Each of these four parameters is important in order to predict the possible linguistic development in the contact zone. However, linguists can only infer probabilities from these parameters. They cannot positively conclude the linguistic outcome from the initial conditions. This is a key difference from laboratory conditions in natural science: transfer in a linguistic contact zone is heavily influenced by subjective factors which can be neither calculated beforehand nor measured exactly and compared afterwards. Let us consider a typical example of a chaotic, unpredictable outcome of language contact in this sense. We can make probability statements that may or may not be true, but even in retrospect, we cannot explain an aberrant outcome. Imagine a girl, born in Heidelberg, is the daughter of a German father and a Brazilian mother. She is raised in both Heidelberg and São Paulo until the age of fourteen, when the family permanently moves back to Germany. She graduates and is trained as an interpreter in a foreign language school in Munich, majoring in Spanish. Speaking Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, and German, she works as an educational host with the Organizing Committee during the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, where she meets her future husband at the age of 28. Four years later, she becomes Silvia, Queen of Sweden.

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What kind of initial conditions are given in this specific linguistic contact zone, and what could be a proper prognosis of the outcome? (1) After marrying Carl Gustaf, Queen Silvia intended to live permanently in a foreign language environment. (2) She is a single speaker surrounded by a different language majority; she is educated, and she has proven her talent for learning other languages. (3) Swedish is the language in all domains (apart from English in official international appearances), and (4) Swedish is related to German and English. As Queen Silvia had to attend a great number of official appearances in her new home country, the external pressure to learn Swedish must have been strong. All of these initial conditions speak in favour of a fast and successful acquisition of Swedish. However, in 2004, nearly thirty years after the royal marriage, the Swedish author Björn Ranelid complained about Queen Silvia’s poor grammar, referring in particular to her defective adjective declension and her false plurals (for example *två broms/*two brake instead of två bromsar/two brakes) (Cristiansson), given that Queen Silvia had even received individual language teaching. Ranelid’s comments were a follow-up to a discussion on the discrimination faced by immigrants in Sweden who speak with a foreign accent. The American newspaper Vestkusten gave an English summary of the event: Queen’s grammar not good enough Swedish author complains about Queen Silvia’s use of the Swedish language “She has never even formulated a metaphor.” These were the words by the Swedish author Björn Ranelid at a seminar on justice about Queen Silvia’s linguistic ability. Ranelid pointed out that thousands of immigrants in Sweden struggle alone with the language, and find it very hard to be accepted in Sweden if they don’t speak it perfectly. Even when they crack the grammar, he said, many still don’t get jobs. In contrast, the Queen, who moved to Sweden in 1976, “has had special lessons at [The Royal Theatre] Dramaten and personal speech therapists, according to Expressen. “But her speech is full of grammatical errors”, said Ranelid, citing the occasional failure to give an adjective its correct form, something the local population is certainly in no position to criticize. “She is a bad example for everyone who is cleaning and toiling away”, he said of the woman who grew up in Brazil and Germany and apparently already spoke six languages before she came to Sweden at the age of 32. While Ranelid may have been trying [to] do his bit for integration, he perhaps ought to have considered the fact that the Queen’s occasional slips probably do more for furthering

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the acceptance of immigrants in Sweden than perfect grammar ever would. [...]. (“Queen’s grammar” 4)3

What we can learn from this example is a considerable respect for the subjective or the human factor: even though Queen Silvia seemed to have had more than the required prerequisites for a fast and successful acquisition of Swedish, she did not succeed to the contentment of (some of) her people. Queen Silvia’s case demonstrates the difficulty of determining linguistic behavior in the contact zone, even though it seems quite clear which parameters are to be considered crucial initial factors in general. Contact linguistics mostly has to rely on probabilities and is therefore not comparable with the exact and repeatable measurements under laboratory conditions in natural science.

3. C HAOTIC O UTCOMES : A L INGUIST ’ S H EADACHE In the following section, I will discuss two examples of unpredictable and therefore chaotic outcomes that trouble linguists due to the fact that they contradict the above-mentioned certainties. Example one (3.1) deals with phonological features that were incorporated into native words of the receiving language even though a corresponding intensive borrowing of loanwords to which the foreign phonemes usually adhere did not occur. Example two (3.2) is concerned with speakers who choose to speak two languages simultaneously even though the interlocutor is proficient in both languages. What are the speakers’ motivations and what are the initial conditions that led or lead to this unpredictable behavior? 3.1 Click Sounds in Bantu languages The borrowing of phonological features I am referring to took place in southern Africa. Some of the southern Bantu languages have incorporated a universally rare4 set of phonemes into their sound systems, namely click sounds, which are absent in all other Bantu languages. The clicks cannot be reconstructed to a

3

Cf. also the discussion on “Queen Silvias Language Abilities Skills.” 1 February 2016.

http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/f185/queen-silvias-language-abilities-

skills-26484.html. 4

While clicks as phonemes are rare, the paralinguistic use of clicks in affective speech acts are more common, cf., for example, the dental click in English (tut, tut) to express disagreement. (Gil)

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shared proto-language and have obviously not been retained from an ancestor language. The indigenous languages of the south, Khoisan, however, are well known for their large click repertoires. (Childs 190)5 Therefore, it appears likely that cultural contact between the language groups may have promoted the incorporation of these rare and highly marked consonants into the Bantu languages in question.6 Clicks as phonemes are universally so uncommon that it is unlikely that they emerged independently.7 However, even though centuries of trade, intermarriage and cohabitation had taken place between Khoisan and Bantu speakers (at least until the cattle raids during the 19th century; Herbert 298), the overall impact of borrowing was supposedly not strong enough to explain the incorporation of clicks into inherited Bantu words. This conclusion is backed up by a comparison of population admixture, measured by a genetic haplotype called genetic marker gm1,13,17. (Herbert 301-3, using data from Nurse, Weiner, and Jenkins 131) It is interesting to note that a high percentage of population admixture did not automatically result in the incorporation of clicks. Kgalagadi speakers in Botswana as well as Xhosa speakers in South Africa and Zimbabwe have an estimated population admixture of 60 percent with Khoisan people. (Herbert 302) While Kgalagadi speakers did not borrow any click sounds at all, Xhosa is well known for its substantial set of clicks.8 Therefore, we can conclude that it was not the intense contact in itself that triggered the transfer of click sounds from Khoisan to Bantu. Robert Herbert and others have argued that it was rather an honorific coding of social rank that led to the incorporation of clicks. The speakers of Nguni, a group of mutually intelligible languages spoken in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland including Zulu, Xhosa, and Swazi, practice a form of deferential, venerative behavior called hlonipha (which means ‘respect’ in Zulu). Newlywed women in particular have to show respect to their in-laws. As a symbol of the asymmetrical power relationship, the daughter-in-law is nei-

5

The term Khoisan actually includes genetically, culturally and linguistically different

6

These are: the Kavango language group, Yei, Southern Sotho, and the Nguni language

7

However, there is one reported case of the invention of a specific language register

groups of people (hunter-gatherers and pastoralists), for linguistic details cf. Traill. group. (Güldeman table 1) with five different click phonemes that was exclusively used by male speakers of Lardil. Its symbolic use was limited to men who had undergone the initiation ceremony of penile subincision. Damin, the language register in question, is also the only documented click language outside Africa, located in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. For details cf. McKnight 245; Hale and Nash. 8

For a detailed discussion on clicks and genetic divergence in Africa cf. Knight et al.

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ther allowed to touch her senior male in-laws nor to talk without being asked to or to walk in front of them. (Fandrych 70; Finlayson, Women’s language) The daughter-in-law has to avoid eye-contact and must not eat before her male inlaws have finished eating. The practice of hlonipha also entails linguistic characteristics. The newlywed woman must not use the names of her male in-law family members, sometimes up to two generations away, even if these senior males are already deceased. The names in question and the strategies of avoidance are taught by the mother and/or sister(s) of the bride’s groom to the future daughterin-law or sister-in-law. Apart from the name taboo, where one has to avoid the name itself, there are also a word root taboo and even a syllable or syllable onset taboo. These more extreme kinds prohibit the use of any word stemming from the same root or starting with the same syllable or syllable onset of the male inlaw names. (see table 2 with examples from isiZulu) For example, if a male inlaw’s name was Thando, it would be prohibited to use the name itself or any words that stem from the same root, such as “thanda” (‘to love’), “ukuthanda” (‘love, desire, willingness’) or “uthando” (‘love, affection’). A syllable taboo may either prohibit the use of the complete syllables of the in-law’s name like tha in “-thathu” (‘the number three’) or “ndo” in “indoda” (‘man, husband’) or only the syllable onset like “th-” in “ithambo” (‘bone, collar’) or “nd-” in “induku” (‘stick, rod’).9

9

It should be noted that Zulu has the syllable structure CV (group I according to Kaye and Lowenstamm 292).

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Table 2: Linguistic Avoidance in isiHlonipho (examples from isiZulu) Type of Taboo

Example(s) of prohibited units

name taboo

Thando (male in-law name)

word root taboo

thanda (‘to love’) ukuthanda

(‘love,

desire,

willingness’) uthando (‘love, affection’) syllable taboo

-thathu (‘three’) indoda (‘man, husband’)

syllable onset taboo

ithambo (‘bone, collar’) induku (‘stick, rod’)

There are different strategies to master this linguistic challenge. The women use synonyms with more or less the same meaning, they derive or create new words, or they borrow words from other languages, sometimes from Afrikaans or English. (Finlayson, “Hlonipha”) When the syllable onsets are affected, it is a common strategy to delete or to substitute the consonants, such as by saying “Øambo” or “Banto” instead of “Thando.” One very successful method has been to use consonants that do not occur in native words. This is how click sounds, being highly marked consonants, may have entered the Bantu languages whose speakers practice hlonipha. (Childs 192) This would also explain why clicks that were supposedly borrowed from Khoisan also occur in word-medial positions – while in Khoisan languages clicks are prototypically used word-initially. (Güldemann 9) The borrowing of click sounds in the context of hlonipha is a rare example of an initially foremost individual adoption of linguistic features then being handed down from one woman to another. Only at a second stage, gradually and over the course of time did clicks become an essential part of the Bantu sound systems. The crucial initial conditions that triggered this unpredictable and chaotic outcome were clearly exogenous; they lay in the inferior status of females. Faced with the social pressures of a community that practiced hlonipha, women used the linguistic experience they had gathered in the language contact zone and created innovative solutions in order to master linguistic taboos.

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3.2 Coda-Talk This chapter is concerned with speakers whose situation contradicts the assumption that communication is (merely) the intelligible exchanging of information. The bilingual speakers introduced here are proficient in English but they nevertheless choose to amalgamate their spoken English with American Sign Language (ASL) and to even imitate the voice characteristics of deaf people. This novel mixture of linguistic codes is not predictable and can be attributed to the symbolic and emotional value of the languages involved. When bilingual speakers communicate, they often switch between languages. As it is not possible to articulate both languages simultaneously, speakers have to decide which words or parts of their sentences they want to produce in language one or in language two. During the last forty years, a large number of studies has been devoted to code-switching, especially regarding its constraints. (Winford 126-67 for an overview). It is posited that code-switching speakers, even when they are fluent in both languages, nevertheless use a so-called matrix language into which segments of the second language are embedded. The matrix language can easily be identified because it usually provides the main verbs and so-called closed class items, i.e., articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs.10 However, what if it was possible to speak two languages at the same time? Would the bilingual speakers continue to switch between the languages, would they use them simultaneously or instead stick to only one of them? The example discussed in this section is the communication between socalled Codas, hearing children of deaf adults, who acquired a sign language as their mother tongue. Growing up in a deaf environment entails being accustomed to a culture different from that of the hearing majority. There are some essential differences in communicative behavior, such as the general face-to-face position towards the interlocutor, the intensity of eye contact, the interpersonal distance between speaker and listener, and the importance of the facial expression for verbalizing moods and feelings. (Bishop and Hicks 190) A striking example of the difference in communication between hearing and Deaf11 people is given in Paul Preston’s study on adult Codas. Preston cites a Coda husband who has problems communicating with his hearing wife without seeing her face to face

10 For a discussion and critical evaluation cf. Prince and Pintzuk. 11 Uppercase letters are often used for membership in the Deaf or Hearing community, while lowercase deaf/hearing refers to the audiological status.

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because he is used to visual information also being an important channel of transmission: Barbara was always talking to me from the other room. And every time, I would go into the room and say, “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.” And she said, “Well, I’ll just talk louder.” And I said, “No, you don’t understand, I need to see you in order to understand what you’re saying.” (Preston 136)

When Codas talk to each other, they frequently use signs to accompany their speech. This bimodal speech-sign communication is called code-blending. It differs from the so-called SimCom, or simultaneous communication, that is used in deaf education. SimCom means producing grammatically correct spoken sentences and a more or less word-by-word manual version at the same time. In their study on code-blending of ASL and spoken English, Emmorey, Borinstein, and Thompson asked eleven Coda participants to retell a cartoon to a Coda conversational partner. One participant chose to retell the cartoon in ASL, and the other ten used a code-blending of English and ASL, where 23 percent of the English words were accompanied by ASL signs. (Emmorey, Borinstein, and Thompson 669) However, when the participants had spent some time together and were comfortable with each other, they started to use something called Coda-talk or Coda-speech, a word-for-sign translation of ASL signs (Ibid. 671). Coda-talk examples are: I would be smile if went with you, You will not alone, He not even wince, When he does come Chicago?, I prefer win lottery, Ready go, or I finally find (All examples stem from email communication and were taken from Bishop and Hicks 205-7.). Coda-talk also includes the spoken or written reproduction of ASL signs, such as Eyes going downhill (‘eyesight is getting worse’), Hands in dishwater (‘stumped, at a loss’), or Fork in throat (‘stuck’). (Ibid. 208) The choice of code-blending and especially Coda-talk may come as a surprise as long as we expect a proficient speaker of English to use the spoken form as the ‘default option’, but the results of studies conform to linguists’ expectations: the Coda participants share the experience of being raised in a deaf community and have native-like proficiency in both English and ASL.12 Codeblending as well as Coda-talk can be explained by the intensive contact between a spoken and a signed language. English may even be defined as the matrix lan-

12 According to Emmorey, Petrich, and Gollan, adult Codas use ASL significantly less often than spoken English. So ASL is not their primary language even though it may have been their L1.

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guage which is accompanied by and also influenced by ASL. (Emmorey, Petrich, and Gollan) However, there is more. Sometimes, Coda-talk includes the use of ‘deaf voice’, i.e. Codas imitate the voice characteristics of deaf people, who may have difficulties controlling nasality, pitch, volume and vowel production.13 This is all the more astonishing as children of deaf adults are usually embarrassed when their parents use their deaf voice in the company of hearing people. Nevertheless, adult Codas speak of their sense of home when listening to or using deaf voice. Coda-talk and deaf voice represent a strong bond to Deaf culture and are a symbol of Coda identity, being culturally ‘Deaf’ but functionally hearing. The feeling of being culturally ‘Deaf’ is well explained by the story of a student whose father had a heart attack and was hospitalized in a remote city. When retelling this crisis, speaking and signing simultaneously, she used an ASL-based Coda-talk to explain her inner conflict as belonging to two worlds: What must tell you, me find bad news. Father very sick, hospital, heart. Deaf part of me thinks deaf way. But me live in Hearing world, have hearing roommates, have hearing friends. All act like hearing people. At my house, hearing house. Me sit by phone. Alone. What happens when me tell hearing roommates, they walk out of room. Me find out hearing people think, something happen, your private business. Not ask questions. Me call hearing friends, please come over, need see you. One hearing friend say, busy, can’t but give phone support. Other hearing friend say, I have this block of time. Hearing time. This little block of time. Deaf way very different. Deaf come. In your face, ask, ask, ask. Want to know everything, A to Z. Important touch. We sit down. Discuss, group. Face to face [...] I say what is this Hearing way? Stupid hearing people. I never hate hearing people so much in my whole life. That one week with Hearing. All hearing friends mine. They nice people, but something going on. Conflict. Hearing way, deaf way different. I was so mad. At who? God? Deaf? Hearing? It awful situation. I say I’m leaving tomorrow, go visit deaf friends. I’m out of this Hearing hell. I feel like I am in crazy world. Hearing way very different. I thought of my goal to be hearing woman. Now, what? I have Hearing life. Me sick of this shit. Hearing friends not know sign language, not know parents, not know nothing! (Preston 222-3)

So, when we reconsider the repercussions of intense language contact for one and the same speaker/signer, we see that growing up at the intersection of different language cultures may lead to hybrid identities of the persons concerned. Linguistically, the feeling of being caught in the middle may trigger hybrid forms of communication that are not predictable beforehand and that stay varia-

13 For further details cf. Evans.

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ble and remote to standardization. However, these hybrid forms of communication represent an important symbol of group affiliation as they are unintelligible to outsiders.14 Hybrid forms signify the liminal state of their speakers/signers, who have insight into and participate in two different cultures, but who also feel separated from or not fully belonging to either of them. Creating a linguistic expression for this feeling of being stuck in between has the effect of secluding oneself deliberately from the other communities involved. However, it is also a means to create an insider circle that excludes others by denying communication: outsiders become insiders, insiders become outsiders.

4. G OING U NNOTICED : ‘D ISGUISED ’ T RANSFER P HENOMENA FROM L1 TO L2 Living in a linguistic contact zone and commanding more than one language on a daily basis may lead to a kind of grammatical transfer that is hard to detect because the features in question are not transferred or translated in a one-to-one manner. Bilingual speakers who try to express grammatical characteristics in their mother tongue (L1) sometimes invent a compensatory syntactic (discourse) construction in their second language (L2) to express the same content. We cannot predict which grammatical patterns will be absorbed and integrated into the L2 and which ones will be disregarded. Moreover, even though we know that the patterns will be adapted in the form of lexical items that look completely different from the triggering morphological features, we cannot predict their form and their appearance may even remain unnoticed. An instructive illustration of such ‘disguised’ grammatical transfer comes from hood German (“Kiezdeutsch”, referring to neighborhoods in the city centre of Berlin), a variety of German youth language that is first and foremost associated with speakers of Turkish origin (second and third-generation immigrants) but that is actually spoken by different ethnic groups including German adolescents. (Wiese 29-47) Hood German is often criticized for its grammatical reduc-

14 Another example of such Coda-talk is Oshi (vambo) German, formerly spoken by the GDR children of Namibia, mostly children from SWAPO refugee camps that were educated in the GDR between 1979 and Namibia’s independence in 1990. Oshi German was a mixture of Oshivambo, German and English, used as a kind of secret language to exclude outsiders: The speakers were the only dark-skinned children in a white GDR environment, and they were also the first to visit the German private schools in Windhoek and Swakopmund. (cf. Rammerstorfer; “Omulaule”)

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tions and the excessive use of discourse particles, such as lassma (a contracted form of “lass uns mal”, ‘let us’) and “ischwör(e)” (contracted “ich schwöre”, ‘I swear’). “Ischwör(e)” is a discourse particle that is noticeable because it emphasizes the verisimilitude and authenticity of an assertion. Wiese gives several examples from her corpus: Ihre Schwester is voll ekelhaft, Alter. Ischwöre. (‘Her sister is an awfully disgusting, man. I swear it.’) Ischwör, Alter, war so. (‘I swear it, man, it was like that.’) Mit Auto hat bei uns ein Tag gedauert. Ischwöre. (‘By car, it took us a day. I swear it.’) (Wiese 70)

In German, it is rather unusual to explicitly and repeatedly indicate the truth of an assertion. On the contrary, in standard German, it is much more common to indicate the speaker’s inference or uncertainty of a reported event by using epistemic constructions (“Peter soll krank sein.” ‘Peter is allegedly ill.’ “Peter muss krank sein.” ‘Peter must be ill.’ “Peter will krank sein.” ‘Peter claims to be ill.’ “Peter sagt, er sei krank.” ‘Peter says he is ill.’). (Diewald and Smirnova 115-6) In my view, the wish to express evidential values in hood German stems from the strong influence of Turkish. Turkish distinguishes between direct evidence (where the speaker saw or perceived the reported event) and reflected/mediated evidence (where s/he did not observe it, but presumes it or was told about it). (Gül 177-8)15 According to Uzun, Turkish has a twofold system in which the absence or presence of the suffix “-(I)mIş” refers to direct or indirect evidence (Ibid. 165); for example, “Ahmed gel-di”, ‘Ahmed has (definitely) arrived’ implies that the speaker perceived the arrival, while “Ahmed gel-mış”, ‘Ahmed has (supposedly) arrived’ insinuates that the speaker did not witness the event. If I am right, speakers of hood German with a Turkish background tried to differentiate between witnessed and presumed/reported events, but instead of categorizing indirect evidence according to the Turkish (or the standard German) model, they started to do the contrary. They introduced a discourse particle in order to label direct evidence. The use of the discourse particle “ischwör” as a marker of direct evidentiality may also have been accompanied or even been inspired by the Arabic practice of swearing or making a promise by God, often shortened to wallah, ‘by Allah’ (compare: “ischwör bei Gott”, ‘I swear by God’ or “Wallah ischwör”), so that the (Turkish) labeling of evidentiality and the (Arabic) use of

15 Cf. also Johanson 281 for a different interpretation in regards to indirectivity.

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wallah appeared side by side. (Paul, Freywald, and Wittenberg 97, who classify “ischwör” as lexical borrowing) However, the explicit and repeated indication of truth values via “ischwör” is, in my opinion, not plausibly explained by an Arabic influence, but instead by the ‘disguised’ transfer of Turkish evidential markers.16 Though, as language varieties are not stable and youth languages are especially prone to rapid changes, linguists can only assume the underlying stimuli that lead to the emergence of new constructions. Once again, the initial conditions that triggered the enrichment of language repertoires in the contact zone remain difficult to detect.

5. C ONCLUSIONS My initial considerations were concerned with the parameters in language contact settings that are crucial in language transfer and language choice (time perspective, ability/willingness of the speaker/s, domain range, and internal/external homo- or heterogeneousness of the languages involved). Although we are aware of the decisive parameters in principle, the linguistic outcome is often not as straightforward as it may seem. Linguists cannot rely on dependable and predictable behaviour in the linguistic contact zone but instead are forced to work with probabilities. It is the subjective or human factor that confuses the matter and causes chaotic outcomes. Queen Silvia’s defective adjective declension is an instructive example of such an unforeseen outcome. We cannot explain in retrospect which condition led to her deficient language acquisition: was it due to the strong influence of English, to her advanced age, or to other, more private reasons? Likewise, the other examples discussed here have shown that even wellknown and often described ‘predictable’ developments in the linguistic contact zone may be contradicted by chaotic exceptions that raise questions. The examples selected demonstrate the significance of initial, mostly exogenous conditions. For that matter, I have addressed the question of whether a bilingual speaker would still switch between languages if s/he were able to use them simultaneously. The example of adult Codas has shown that this question cannot be answered without considering the symbolic and emotional value of the languages involved, which is something that cannot be measured by describing

16 In the meantime, as it is used by different ethnic groups including Germans, ischwör may have become a stylized expression, adopting other functions or it may even have changed from a discourse particle to an interjection (cf. Bahlo).

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code-switching techniques. Languages bear very specific connotations for the speaker; they may feel like comfortable, worn-in slippers, in which one feels at ease. Languages may provide or inhibit a sense of home and strengthen a feeling of belonging or of social exclusion. Moreover, creating a novel mixture of linguistic codes may be a manifestation of hybrid identities. Coda-talk and especially the use of deaf voice prove that communication cannot be reduced to the intelligible exchanging of information. Intelligibility may at times be only as important as the emotional and symbolic value of the chosen code. Further, sometimes it may even be the unintelligibility to outsiders that triggers language choice, code-blending, or linguistic transfer. As the example of isiHlonipho shows, language transfer may also be an individual strategy to respond to the challenge of linguistic taboos. Lexical or phonological borrowings are a sound solution in a socially stressful situation and reveal the importance of individual creativity. Bantu women use their linguistic creativity in order to face social pressure, speakers of hood German in Berlin use it to implant relevant grammatical features into a contact language, and adult Codas use it to amalgamate ASL and spoken English in code-blending in order to find an expression for their intermediate position of being both hearing and Deaf. These individual strategies can be called organized because individuals make a (more or less) conscious decision to borrow clicks from Khoisan languages or to convert a grammatical marker of evidentiality into lexical units. However, over the course of time, these single decisions are cast into more solid forms in a process of self-organization. They are adopted and passed on by other speakers until they become an inherent part of the language system, and sometimes their shape or their function will change little by little. This is how Khoisan clicks gradually became an integral part of Bantu sound systems, regardless of hlonipha, and how the expression of evidentiality in hood German was reanalyzed in a multilingual context, and it may in the meantime even have changed from a discourse particle to an interjection. Comparing the basic assumptions of chaos theory in mathematics with contact linguistics, similarities become obvious. Language transfer in the contact zone is hard to predict and sensitive to the smallest differences in the initial conditions. Social pressure and hybrid identities are factors that may lead to unpredictable individual creativity. When these factors are involved, the basic assumptions are no longer valid. All of a sudden, multilinguals have problems learning a language, grammatical features travel on their own, speakers borrow foreign voices to express themselves, or languages are used to exclude others from communication. Looking at the effects helps us to understand the importance of

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language as a cultural marker of group affiliation and identity, but it remains a challenge to recognize the butterfly responsible for these effects.

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Finlayson, Rosalie. “Hlonipha – the Women’s Language of Avoidance among the Xhosa.” South African Journal of African Languages 2.1 (1982): 35-60. ---. “Women’s language of respect: ‘isi hlonipho sabafazi’.” Language and Social History. Ed. Rajend Mesthrie. Cape Town/Johannesburg: David Philip, 1995. 140-54. Gil, David. “Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks.” The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Ed. Matthew S. Dryer, and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 2013. 5 February 2016 http://wals.info/chapter/142. Gül, Demet. “Semantics of Turkish evidential -(I)mIş.” Essays on Turkish Linguistics. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics. Eds. Sıla Ay et al. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009. 177-86. Güldemann, Tom. “Clicks, genetics, and ‘proto-world’ from a linguistic perspective.” University of Leipzig Papers on Africa, Languages and Literatures 29 (2007). 5 February 2016 http://email.eva.mpg.de/~gueldema/pdf/ProtoClick.pdf. Hale, Kenneth L., and David Nash. “Damin and Lardil phonotactics.” Boundary Rider: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey O’Grady. Eds. Darrell Tryon, and Michael Walsh. Canberra: Australian National University, 1997. 247-59. Herbert, Robert K. “The Sociohistory of Clicks in Southern Bantu.” Anthropological Linguistics 32.3/4 (1990): 295-315. Johanson, Lars. “Evidentiality in Turkic.” Studies in Evidentiality. Eds. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, and Robert M.W. Dixon. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003. 273-90. Kanitscheider, Bernulf. “Philosophische Reflexionen über Chaos und Ordnung.” Chaos. Bausteine der Ordnung. Eds. Heinz-Otto Peitgen, Hartmut Jürgens, and Dietmar Saupe. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1998. 1-33. Kaye, Jonathan, and Jean Lowenstamm. “Syllable Structure and Markedness Theory.” Theory of Markedness in Generative Grammar. Proceedings of the 1979 GLOW Conference. Eds. Adriana Belletti, Luciana Brandi, and Luigi Rizzi. Pisa: Scuola normale superiore, 1981. 287-315. Knight, Alec et al. “African Y Chromosome and mtDNA Divergence Provides Insight into the History of Click Languages.” Current Biology 13 (2003): 464-73. Lorenz, Edward N. “Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The 139th Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 29 December 1972. Text file. Web. 26 July 2016 http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/Butterfly_1972.pdf.

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McConvell, Patrick, and Felicity Meakins. “Gurindji Kriol: A mixed language emerges from code-switching.” Australian Journal of Linguistics 25.1 (2005): 9-30. McKnight, David. People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of Classification among the Lardil of Mornington Island. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Nurse, George T., Joseph S. Weiner, and Trefor Jenkins. The Peoples of Southern Africa and Their Affinities. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. “Omulaule heißt schwarz.” Documentary by Beatrice Möller, Nicola Hens, and Susanne Radelhof. Bauhaus-University Weimar, 2003/2004. O’Shannessy, Carmel. “The role of codeswitched input to children in the origin of a new mixed language.” Linguistics 50.2 (2012): 305-40. Paul, Kerstin, Ulrike Freywald, and Eva Wittenberg. “Kiezdeutsch goes school. A multiethnic variety of German from an educational perspective.” Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education 2 (2009): 91-113. Preston, Paul. Mother Father Deaf: Living between Sound and Silence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Prince, Ellen F., and Susan Pintzuk. “Bilingual Code-Switching and the Open/Closed Class Distinction.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 6 (2000): 237-58. “Queen’s grammar not good enough. Swedish author complains about Queen Silvia’s use of the Swedish language.” Vestkusten (San Francisco) 1 October 2004: 4. Rammerstorfer, Ute. “Die ‘Ossis’ von Namibia.” Südwindmagazin. Internationale Politik, Kultur und Entwicklung 7 (2009). 15 February 2016 http://www.suedwind-magazin.at/die-ossis-von-namibia. Thomason, Sarah G., and Terrence Kaufman. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Traill, Anthony. “The Khoesan Languages.” Language in South Africa. Ed. Rajend Mesthrie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 27-49. Uzun, N. Engin. Dilbilgisinin temel kavramları: Dünya dillerinden örnekleriyle. [The basic concepts of grammar: with examples from languages around the world.]. İstanbul: Mehmet Ölmez Yayınları, 2004. Voeste, Anja. “Sprachkontakt in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Überlegungen aus sprachhistorischer Sicht.” Brücken. Germanistisches Jahrbuch Tschechien – Slowakei N.F. 21.1/2 (2013): 99-110. Wiese, Heike. Kiezdeutsch. Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht. München: Beck, 2012. Winford, Donald. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

From Early Country Blues to Rap U WE Z AGRATZKI

R ÉSUMÉ L’histoire de la musique noire aux États Unis est l’histoire des relations intenses entre les cultures afro-, euro- et latino-américaines. Commençant par les Minstrel-Shows au 19e siècle, les multiples rencontres s’étendent sur différents styles musicaux (Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rap) jusqu’à nos jours, et se référant aux notions de race, class et gender. L’expressivité de la musique noire fait dans l’histoire émerger de différentes fonctionnalités d’identification. Sa flexibilité, sa capacité d’adaptation et sa performativité sont les caractéristiques principales, alors qu’au niveau structurel se manifestent aussi les traces du rituel. L’article démontre que le bricolage culturel, la resémantification et l’improvisation contribuent au contrôle du rituel. Selon nous, ces transformations se perpétuent à travers les différents moments historiques et contribuent à la préservation du narratif de l’ordre non-conventionnel.

I NTRODUCTION Infiltrated by the metaphorical lyrics and musical patterns of the slaves’ folklore, such as work songs and field hollers, the burgeoning post-Civil War country blues is characterised by positive distinctiveness strategies which made possible the identity of a black sharecroppers’ community in the face of white economic dominance. Whereas the – often improvised – lyrics spoke about the daily lives of African-American farm labourers in search of jobs, women and a decent life in the south of the United States after 1865 and were sung by black solo artists to black audiences sharing the singers’ lot, the musical performance on the basis of a “call-and-response” pattern recalled the slave experience of old and simultane-

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ously sought to ‘cure’ the troubles by collectively ‘naming’ them. As early as the turn of the 19th century William E.B. Du Bois, the prominent African-American intellectual, captured the essence and the beauty of the blues in unforgettable poetical words: [A] great song arose, the loveliest thing born this side of the seas. It was a new song. It did not come from Africa, though the dark throb and beat of that Ancient of days was in it and through it. It did not come from white America – never from so pale and thin a thing, however deep these vulgar and surrounding tones had driven [...]. It was a new song and its deep and plaintive beauty, its great caden-ces and wild appeal wailed, throbbed, and thundered on the world’s ears with a message seldom voiced by man [...]. America’s one gift to beauty; as slavery’s one redemption, distilled from the dross of its dung. (“Redemption Song” in Guralnik, Martin Scorsese 135)

Race was the dominating category as much as class was, though not explicitly articulated but shining through the simple lyrics of black depression and black joy. In this essay ‘race’ is understood to be an indicator of a radical political consciousness among African-Americans and therefore in line with the aims of the critical race theory which is “to recover and revitalize” this tradition. (Crenshaw XIV) Gender also came to be a powerful category, the more so that in the 1920s classic blues era female singers took the ground and vigorously revised the established gender roles in their songs and beyond. With time African-American blues emancipated itself from its southern rural roots, adapted to first southern and then northern city life and attracted the commercial interest of non-black record companies before and after the Depression. With the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s young proud African-Americans turned their backs on what they considered ‘slave music’. Soul rhythms now represented a new black self-confidence and, concurrently, introduced ‘generation’ as a category to black music. In the end, soul came to replace the preceding narratives that had threatened to displace the life stories of the contemporary generation and thus functioned as post memory. In subsequent years, blues emerged from its temporary ‘exile’ in two phases. In the first phase it was claimed and re-defined by British blues rock bands (chiefly through their re-discovery of black blues musicians of the previous generation), white American high school students, West German anarchists and East German rebels. Secondly, it could be found in the rhythms of counter-hegemonic voices of black and white male city kids ‘rapping’ out their immediate social, ethnic and gender conflicts.

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Even a sketchy historical outline of black music in the United States draws attention to the categories under consideration here. Chaos, unexpectedness, improvisation, but also control describe the patterns of cultural contacts within African-American cultures and with Euro-American cultures from the past to the present. As undefined as they appear to be, these categories develop their meanings in broader social and historical frames of reference. Since its origin in the southern US, black music – blues, jazz, gospel, soul and rap/hip-hop – has remained an arena of cultural struggle for control and (re-)negotiating meanings across the contact zones of gender, race and class. Leaning towards a “thick description” (Stephen Greenblatt) and working both synchronically and diachronically, the present article aims to unfold the multiple cultural performances (chaos, improvisation, control) inside and outside African-American cultures in relation to gender, race and class and as part of the ongoing power discourse. The present essay will focus on secular music, in particular blues, soul and rap, as “products of a subculture.” (Jones 141) Jazz, because of its technical complexity, will be omitted.

E ARLY C OUNTRY B LUES Historically, early country blues developed after the abolition of slavery from different African song patterns and music styles, such as call-and-response, slave songs, and field hollers, whereas the roots of the blues reach back to “the African psyche thousands of years” ago. (Finn 5) Sociologically, early country blues is male and working-class: formally liberated male slaves turned into migrant workers in search of farm jobs in the southern stretches of the US and it was them, not their female counterparts, who sang about their daily lives at the bottom of the social ladder. (Lawson 1, 22) Technically, early blues moulded African song material into a means of articulating the post-slavery world of the ‘emancipated’ African-American sharecropper. As in African oral traditions, the human voice is used as a musical instrument in (early) blues: “Blues-playing is the closest imitation of the human voice of any music,” (Jones 28) while the lyrics are steeped in the material circumstances of singer and audience, who perceived them(-selves) as Americans. Less oral cultures – unfamiliar with the characteristic blue notes, the flattened third and seventh notes inherited from the African and incorporated into the European scale (Ziegenrücker and Wicke 56f.; Walter 31f.) – were inclined to hear melancholic black hopelessness in what was taken to be the minor key of the European scale. Thus was shaped a narrative of black emotions which finds

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continuation (and expansion) in the current excessive use of the term “blues” for emotional states of depression or moodiness detached from the original music and its culture. On the other side of the race line, black listeners in the past heard an emphatic articulation of excitement and emotional depth, as B.B. King has it, until blues was no longer considered the most adequate means of controlling black emotions. Culturally, early country blues is dialogic, communal, spontaneous, as it ‘names’ the artist’s and the audience’s shared conflicts in contrast to white plantation mainstream. Thus it ‘cures’ the immediate repercussions they have on the community. Such cathartic effects are heightened by dancing to the rhythm of the music. Additionally, non-verbal communication links performer and audience, as well as improvised lyrics from the audience or by a direct involvement of the audience in the call-and-response pattern of the tune. Either way, physical response determines the course of the performance. Oral cultures provide their members with “a wider range of emotions on a more immediate level of sensations [...] sound is fleeting and one must react immediately or lose the perceptual experience entirely.” (Sidran 2f.) Or, as Albert Murray has it: The story teller works with language, but even so, he is a song and dance man [...] whose fundamental objectives are extensions of those of the bard, the minstrel, and the ballad maker which, incidentally, are also those of the contemporary American blues singer. (Murray 21)

In short, early blues is a functional music of “energizing intersubjectivity” (Baker Jr. 5), in the sense that it communicates about a singer’s life to listeners sitting in the same boat. (Jones 98) With regard to the patterns under consideration we can conclude that the performative qualities of the early country blues imaginatively re-ordered a multiple chaos, that is here tantamount to the effects of a massive socio-economic change at a particular moment in history (the American Civil War). This is most strongly manifested in the phenomenon of the socially uprooted travelling blues performers connecting with an African heritage that promised the retention of a collective memory in black communities. Ritualistic repetitions of set standards, like rhythm, tunes and lyrics (though often spontaneously rephrased by the audience) heightened the effects of a symbolic or imaginative reclamation of control over social lives. The artists’ names are cases in point. Rejecting their previous masters’ misnomers and thus a white identity imposed on them, these early bluesmen – and all to follow – re-named themselves. Their black names were the antithesis, the refutation of [their] ‘white’ one[s], that ig-

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noble hangover from slavery. The bluesman’s black name is the one he chose when he realized that his mission was to be the interpreter and praiser of his people. (Finn 196) Like in African traditions (Braithwaite in Finn 196), “the bluesman’s black name is the verbal symbol of his character and speaks volumes to his fellow musicians. Hence, the choice of his name is of the highest importance, for it will play a large part in the shaping of his destiny.” (Finn 196f.) In defiance of white constructions of blacks, early country blues began to articulate black pride. John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson’s “I hear my black name a-ringing, all up and down the line” in the 1930s is an echo of what came into being at a time of social upheaval and has since then been repeated at similar historical moments. Having a closer look at contemporary reproductions of country blues under the conditions of new “chaos” – drastic sociological changes in populations, fierce competition in a global market and capitalist marketability – we see the imaginative mechanisms of control fall behind any regeneration. In short, regarding early country blues as an alternative sub-culture – Raymond Williams’ term for independent cultural formations providing “alternative facilities for the production [...] of certain kinds of work, where it is believed that existing institutions exclude or tend to exclude these” (Williams 70) – waging “semiotic guerilla warfare” (Umberto Eco in Hebdige 105) from which the white mainstream plantation culture was immediately excluded, it can be considered oppositional to the class conditions within which it had to exist (Williams 70; Lawson 22). Following Houston A. Baker’s reflections, Afro-American culture […] finds its proper figuration in blues conceived as a matrix [that is] a point of ceaseless input and output, a web of intersecting, crisscrossing impulses always in productive transit. [Blues] are the multiplex, enabling script in which AfroAmerican cultural discourse is inscribed. (Baker 3f., 14; italics in the original)

Hence this music style constitutes African-American experience in time and space as demonstrated by the trope of the railway junction, where the travelling singer signifies the multifarious endless black “intersections of experience.” (Ibid. 8)1

1

Cf. Baker’s reflections on the railway engine as a symbol of promise in black cultures and the blues as a reproduction of these energies.

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C LASSIC B LUES T.S. Elliott’s seminal poem “Wasteland” and Gertrude Stein’s epithet “Lost Generation” have come to be seen as articulate expressions of the widespread post-World War I depression in Europe and the United States. Two major social groups in the U.S. responded actively to the demise of pre-war Victorian civilisation: the independent “New Woman” and the black “Harlem Renaissance”. Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, major protagonists of this arts movement, utilised African-American modes of writing (e.g. black jargon), art forms, among them blues poetry, and music in order to promote black selfrealisation and counter-act white stereotypes. (Wald 24; Houston Ch. 2f.) The awakening black female self-expression may have been a side effect of the fresh cultural sensitivity, at the centre of which we find the “Blue Princess.” (Finn 230) She took the stage – that is, the control – from the male bluesman and put the gender issue on the cultural agenda. Her addressee was patriarchy of any colour. By the 1920s the social status of black women had not changed fundamentally since the end of slavery: they were still subjected to double oppression due to gender and race. Similar to the bluesman, now the blueswoman articulated the stresses and strains of the audience, in particular the female part of it. Interestingly, while she was in control of the artistic performance, her success was linked to the birth and rise of the recording industry which was chiefly in the hands of white northerners. (George 23)2 The blues idioms which had been expressed in diversified regional styles until the years immediately preceding World War I now underwent multiple processes of professionalisation in terms of entertaining, recordings and sales in the north and the south. The artisan, the professional blues singer, appeared; blues singing no longer had to be merely a passionately felt avocation, it could now become a way of making a living. An external and sophisticated idea of performance had come to the blues, moving it past the casualness of the ‘folk’ to the conditioned emotional gesture of the ‘public’. (Jones 82)

Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith and other black female blues singers had made something of a career in the black vaudeville circuit, black minstrel shows, medicine shows and carnivals (Jones 82-6; Wald 16; Starr and Waterman 20-6) and now took a stronghold in the expanding recorded blues market. Their expertise, achieved in the vaudeville theatres and organised by the Theatre Own-

2

The biggest companies were Okeh Records, Paramount, Columbia, Decca, Bluebird, Vocalion, Victor.

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ers Booking Agency (T.O.B.A.) where they had sung the blues in a “smoother theatrical style” (Jones 89), that is, jazz-pop accompanied by small jazz combos (piano, cornet, horn instruments) in front of all-black or mixed audiences, made them eligible for the recording studio. Hence, the history of professional blues recording commences with black female singers, such as Mamie Smith’s (white) vaudeville style “Crazy Blues” in 1920, and is followed by southern down-home country blues queens like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey throughout the 1920s. They climbed the centre stage of the music business, and their performances as well as their records became effective agencies of (black) womanhood, which showed in the lyrics. Bessie Smith’s “Put it right here or keep it out there” is a case in point. The song is informed by the solid resolution of the female figure to end her ‘slavery’, as she has been fettered to a black good-for-nothing: I’ve had a man for fifteen years, give him his room and board; Once he was like a Cadillac, now he’s like an old, worn-out Ford; He never brought me a lousy dime and put it in my hand; So there’ll be some changes from now on, according to my plan: He’s got to get it, bring it, and put it right here, Or else he’s goin’ to keep it out there; If he must steal it, beg it, or borrow it somewhere, Long as he gets it, I don’t care.

To justify her claim, the natural order is made to bear witness: The bee gets the honey and brings it to the comb, else he’s kicked out of his home sweet home [...] the rooster gets the worm and brings it to the hen; [...] the groundhog even brings it and puts it in his hole.

Far from personal shyness, the persona prefers sexual outspokenness (“And he has to find another place for to park his old hips”). Black jargon (“bring-um, break-um”, “they brings it”) identifies the object of her repulsion as a useless black patriarch, but the addressee of her anger – apart from an implicit black female audience – are black chauvinists in general: “That oughta be a tip to all you no-good men.” Smith’s gender-role reversal was also to become a hallmark of female blues performing in the post-war era, as, for instance, demonstrated by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton during performances, when she entered into a call-and-response exchange with her guitarist Pete Lewis: “Aw, play it, boy, play it. Aw, you make me feel good. Now wag your tail. Now get it, get it.” Seen

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from a male perspective, her representation of femininity at times borders on the dangerous. (Mahon 8) Improvised reactions from within the black blues communities were never far away. Male performers had their own reservations about female demands. Roosevelt Sykes’ song is one of numerous examples: My baby she found a brand new place to go My baby she found a brand new place to go She hangs across town at the Monte Carlo. She likes my money, tells me she goin’ to the picture show She likes my money, tells me she goin’ to the picture show But that girl’s been throwing my money away at the Monte Carlo.

Other responses worked in reverse: Muddy Waters’ “I’m a Man/Mannish Boy” (1955) finds a female response in Koko Taylor’s song “I’m a Woman”. Apart from a strong new pride in being black and thus resisting the Jim Crow racism in the southern states, where black men were never recognised as anything other than a ‘boy’, Waters’ raunchy version demonstrates male sexual bravado: I’m a full grown man I’m a man I’m a natural born lover’s man I’m a rollin’ stone I’m a man I’m a hoochie coochie man3 [...] You know I’m made to move you honey [...] The line I shoot will never miss When I make love to a woman, She can’t resist [...] I can make love to you woman, In five minutes time [...].

3

“Hoochie Coochie” was a sexually provocative dance performed by women in late 19th century Chicago.

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In line with Bessie Smith, Koko Taylor’s “I’m a Woman” opposes male sexual dominance line by line and puts the running of affairs into the hands of the female narrator: I’m a woman, oh, yeah, I’m a woman, I´m a ball of fire I’m a woman, I can make love to a crocodile I’m a woman, I can sing the blues I’m a woman, I change old to new […] That means I’m grown I’m a woman, I’m a rushing wind I’m a woman, I can cut stone with a pin I’m a woman, I’m a love maker […] I’m a hold back the lightning, with the palm of my hand. Shake hands with the devil, make him crawl in the sand [...].

Blues lyrics are as much part of an all-black narrative of (re-)gaining control over their black lives – male and female – as short stories are. Zora Neal Hurston’s “Sweat” (1926), replete with references to blues imagery (e.g. the snake), tells a similar plot to Smith’s with a different ending, since the useless bungler is smartly killed by the exhausted partner. Motifs of the black blues narrative can unexpectedly and across the times emerge in different contexts and aim at re-claiming black culture vis à vis white domination. In her story “1955” (1982), Alice Walker fictionalises Big Mama Thornton’s degrading experience with the white music industry in the person of Elvis Presley. Unlike in real life (Mahon 9), the fictitious Gracie Mae wins her honour back over a case of cultural fraud through her generosity and deeper knowledge of her culture. In an interview in 1972 Thornton comments on the sweeping success of Presley’s version of the song “Hound Dog” which originally was Thornton’s. “It’s just one of those things [...]. I’ve been singing way before Elvis Presley was born, and he jumps up and becomes a millionaire before me [...] off of something that I made popular.” (Mahon 9) Thornton relates to the feel and attitude of urban city blues black artists created in the late 1940s, which get lost in white crossovers and also makes mention of the limited opportunities for black – male and female singers – to appear on national TV. In fact, Elvis’ version lacks the woman’s powerful straightforward warning given to another good-at-nothing in

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the original: “Quit snoopin’ round my door, I ain’t gonna feed you no more.” And she proceeds – in agreement with Bessie Smith’s heroine: You made me feel so blue You made me weep and moan ‘Cause you ain’t lookin’ for a woman All you lookin’ for is a home.

Presley’s version subdues this voice by making the metaphoric dog into a real enemy, replacing the key statement of self-confident femininity and turning it on its head: “You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.” Walker’s story has its authentic bits with regard to Presley’s imitation of Thornton’s performing manners, the white bargaining power in the music business and the fierce competition among the “Blue Princesses” (historical Bessie Smith vs. Gracie Mae). Employing the liberty of the literary narrative, Walker deviates from the hard facts of history when Traynor (the fictitious embodiment of Presley) laments the downside of the crossover: I’ve sung it and sung it, and I’m making forty thousand dollars a day offa it, and you know what, I don’t have the faintest notion what the song means [...]. Where out of your life did it come from?

On his quest for meaning, Traynor invites his idol to the (real) Johnny Carson show for a live performance – the historical Presley had refused to appear alongside Thornton at concerts – only to learn that he would never equal Thornton’s accomplishment and would remain a cheap copy, a simulacrum. In short, inspired by a black blues narrative, Walker’s text addresses a black readership to keep a collective memory alive. Furthermore, she crosses over – in response to the white musical cross-over – into white territory to take a delayed symbolic control of cultural claims denied to the bluesmen and blueswomen of the past and argues in favour of a re-appropriation of an African-American legacy from a 1980s feminist point of view. Though it is hard to determine the respective influence of the black female blues ‘queens’, what cannot be ignored is that their vital presence introduced alternative aspects of gender to a ‘male’ form of articulation. Though by the 1920s a substantial part of commercialised, formalised and – in terms of music – standardised American mainstream culture (Jones 86), the blues at the same time retained its rebellious, harsh underside as it claimed the right to a heightened black (female) identity, self-awareness and self-perception. In the long run, the classic

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black female singers set models for numerous professional black female entertainers to follow, including Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Tina Turner. In conclusion, gender coupled with race in classic blues in more than one way. Black (female) performers sang to black and mixed audiences about scenes from daily life as experienced by black women and shared by the attending females (and males). The performers’ expensive and glamorous garb indicated the respected ‘black on the rise’ the black audience could take a pride in. Their extravagant outfits underlined their mainstream aspirations and for the whites in the audience told the success story of white middle-class America. Dominant and oppositional ‘readings’ of their performances depended on different decodings of the signifiers supported by different cultural formations in the audience: “[...] defining blues as commodity and blues as social expression are by no means mutually exclusive.” (Lawson 27)

P RE -

AND

P OST -W AR C HICAGO B LUES

The Depression at the end of the 1920s brought the end of hundreds of small record labels, minstrel shows, vaudeville theatres and regional club scenes, and with it the end of the infrastructure instrumental to the viability of the classic blues. Recording policies had changed by 1925 when Paramount cut sides with Blind Lemon Jefferson, in whose wake a great number of southern down-home guitarists filled the catalogues of the “Race Artists Series” run by Paramount. In 1923 Bessie Smith’s rough style of singing had already turned the record companies’ attention to southern blues singers which, in consequence, caused them to send mobile recording units south in order to record regional artists, among whom they found white ‘hillbilly’ musicians playing the blues. On the heels of Jefferson’s success came a shift in the companies’ focus to black rural musicians and to tying in with these regional markets, because the southern musicians met the taste of rural residential southerners and urban ex-southerners in the north alike. (Wald 29-32) Recordings of regional country-style guitarists peaked between 1926 and 1930, before slick, light, urbane piano-guitar duos with ‘crooning’ singers replaced them.4 In general, the bands that accompanied the classic blues singers had to be reduced in size owing to the drastic repercussions of the Depression.

4

The most popular at the time were Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell and Tampa Red and Georgia Tom.

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Another innovation was that the blues had to adapt to the chaos of the city, since hundreds of thousands of black southerners had reached the northern cities by the 1930s and started inhabiting urban ghettos. (Jones 97) Blues responded to this by going ‘electric’, so that with the help of amplification less powerful voices and guitars could be heard over the surrounding noise in black clubs and streets of crowded black neighbourhoods. Band arrangements centred on piano and guitar, supported by a driving rhythm section manifested in string bass, harmonica and kazoo/washboard. When by 1937 President Roosevelt’s New Deal policy managed to put the American economy – and with it the blues – back on its feet, Chicago had not only made itself a name as a vigorous centre of the blues – the other two Kansas City and Memphis (Keil 61-6) – housing major recording studios and clubs, but had also established a new urban blues style which was synthesised from the down-home country blues styles of Big Joe Williams, Big Bill Broonzy, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson I, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup and Memphis Minnie. It featured the return of the guitar after the long dominance of horn instruments in the classic blues era. As to gender relations, the male focus – often covering up economic failure with sexual bravado – was back on stage appearance and grim lyrics about “big city livin’” (Roosevelt Sykes in Jones 104f.), while female singers continued to sing about frustrating love affairs with a strong undertone of female self-confidence (Oliver 196). On the one hand, with regard to class, urban Chicago blues had its sub-cultural roots in the black ghettos, mainly Chicago’s South Side. House rent parties mushroomed as venues outside the traditional places like clubs, theatres or recording studios. Here black concerns were articulated through the blues as, for instance, numerous pieces written about the Ford car company and Ford products demonstrate; “The tenements, organized slums, gin mills, and back-breaking labors in mills, factories, or on the docks had to get into the music somehow.” (Jones 105) On the other hand, major record companies – Lester Melrose from Columbia, Victor, or Bluebird to name a few – representing the blues mainstream had an influential say in promoting single artists and “house bands” (Erlewine 356) and, through this, in directing the course of popularising the blues. In the broader perspective of race, black northern and southern cultures clashed in the ghettos over serious issues like northern blacks’ adaptation to the American mainstream prior to 1914, southern notions of authenticity, cultural heritage and black identity after 1914 and the acculturation of the southerners in general. For the newly arrived southerner it was common to put his feelings in a blues lyric like “I’d rather drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log/Than go up to New York City and be treated like a dirty dog.” (Jones 105f.) But the less rigid paternalistic society of the city allowed for greater individual freedom,

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which hastened the acclimatization of the newcomer who could improvise his techniques of acculturation. This light city mood of ‘getting in’ or ‘making it’ by simply trying your luck is put forward in Peatie Wheatstraw’s “Chicago Mill Blues”: If you want to have plenty women why not work at the Chicago Mill? If you want to have plenty women why not work at the Chicago Mill? You don’t have to give them nothin’, oooh well, jest tell them that you will. (Jones 107)

These discourses inside the African-American culture, in conjunction with a newly-won awareness among thousands of young black servicemen of the racist fabric of American society during World War I, culminated both in race riots shortly after the war and in the works of the “organic intellectuals” (Gramsci) of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. Articulating the social and cultural conflicts of heterogeneous African-American communities, the evolving urban blues fused older musical traditions and alternative Southern notions of what it meant to be ‘black’ with the new social experience in the northern cities, while traditional rural blues forms persisted throughout the Depression. For the northerner, here the black northerner who had been raised in the north under a more liberal white ideology of achievers and who was ready to pursue his or her individual aspirations accordingly, any reference to the black southern culture, including the music, represented the negation of an accepted order. Comparably less drastic changes came in the aftermath of World War II when the Chicago Blues promoted by the Chess Label grew rawer, louder and more electric. Its backbone was the rural (down-home) Mississippi Delta Blues newly arrived Southerners craved, for as this style coupled emotional homesickness with urban realism. Muddy Waters found the recipe for the new hybrid city sound: amplified instruments and a string band consisting of two guitars, drums, piano and – the most outstanding ingredient – an amplified harmonica (harp).5 With this new sound performed in clubs and on Maxwell Street, the focus of the music was re-directed back to the live audience. The record companies – of whom many were small independent southern labels in the possession of African-Americans now controlling the record business (Oliver 248) – followed suit in their response to the current taste (Erlewine 369).

5

Little Walter, the ground-breaking Chicago harpist, must be mentioned here first. A sculpture outside the Darmstadt Jazz Archive pays tribute to his enormous impact on the development of the City Blues.

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Southerners in the north reclaimed the music they considered best for capturing and articulating their feelings and concerns about “home” and city exile. This meant a specific form of cultural re-appropriation, the more so since they had been socialised by radio programmes back in the south exclusively tuned to the musical tastes of African-Americans, some of them on the air since the late 1930s.6 In speaking about urban city blues of the 1930s to 1950s we speak about an aggressive means of communication inside black city communities. Amplified guitar- and bass-oriented sound and unceasing energy delivered ‘messages’ which would have otherwise been lost or silenced and which were best clad in heavy rhythms, loud vocals and vernacular lyrics. As Muddy Waters has it: I got an ax and a pistol on a graveyard framed That shoots tombstone bullets, that’s wearin’ balls and chains I’m drinking TNT. I’m smokin’dynamite. I hope some screwball start a fight, Cause I’m ready, ready as anybody can be.

Or when Sonny Boy Williamson I sings about the destitution of blacks in city ghettos using his “Collector Man Blues” as a means of reclaiming aesthetic control over conditions long out of the black workers’ hands: “Now go open the door: here comes the collector man [...]. Tell him that I ain’t got no money [...] can’t hardly find a place to stand.” Taken out of this specific context, current urban blues appears to have lost its particular thrust as it does away with the socially controlling function required in the black urban ghettos of the north. For neither black nor white blues bands is the ‘ghetto’ still a point of reference, which results in two effects on the recipient: either (black) cultural memory is activated or kept alive or pure entertainment with a streak of nostalgic rebellion is performed. The rise of a new affluent adolescent consumer group in the early 1950s hastened white crossovers into black music and caused sales figures of records to rocket among chiefly white teenagers. Hence, race remained on the cultural agenda, though grossly modified, as race relations lost significance in the lyrics and were translated into business when young consumers, black and white, spent enormous sums on records by Carl Perkins, Bill Haley and Elvis Presley or were seen in mixed crowds at the white musicians’ concerts (cf. Zagratzki, “Elvis Presley”). Consequently, segregation started to erode in the south, a development

6

Cf. “Sonny Boy’s Corn Meal and King Biscuit Show” on KFFA, Helena/AR. (Oliver 261)

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unwelcomed by the political establishment under the witch hunt-conditions of the Cold War. As to music, blues had a baby (Muddy Waters) named rock ‘n’ roll. Whereas for some scholars this simply means a change of labels in line with commercial strategies in the past, when ‘race records’ had been replaced by “Rhythm and Blues” in order to reach out to new (black) market segments7, for others it embraced a new step in the development of the urban blues with a powerful focus on saxophones, making blues ‘jazzier’ and ‘poppier’. (Wald 206) The new big player on the American music market in these years was the white consumer record companies appealed to, as Sam Phillips of Sun Record put it curtly: “So I got to thinking how many records you could sell if you could find white performers who could play and sing in this same exciting, alive way [of the blues, U.Z.].” (Guralnick, Last Train 96) Music-wise, rock ‘n’ roll synthesises (white) country & western (which had been labelled ‘hillbilly’ for a white mainstream until 1950) with blues, thus familiarising a white audience with AfricanAmerican music for the first time on as large a scale as black rhythm & blues radio stations had done.8 Despite many small black labels in command of black music and despite an increasing concern with black (hipster) creativity and arts among white intellectuals, succinctly articulated by Norman Mailer’s “white negro”, of whom Elvis Presley with some reservations was regarded a living model, the continued control of black music through ‘whitening’ was met by strong opposition. For one, Presley himself pointed out that “Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.” (Bertrand 198f.) Additionally, Dave Myers, one of the protagonists of early Chi-

7

“The term ‘Rhythm and Blues’ became standard in 1949, after being adopted by Billboard as the new chart euphemism for music aimed principally at African-American consumers.” (Wald 203)

8

Presley’s sweeping success came with a rocking cover version of “That’s All Right, Mama” by the Mississippi country blues singer Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup and “You ain’t nothing but a Hound Dog” by “Big Mama” Thornton. (Mahon 15) Ziegenrücker argues that rock ‘n’ roll is simply a purchase label rather than a new music style, since white musicians imitate the most successful black R&B titles (crossover) for a white consumer group. (Ibid. 328) Another label attached to rock ‘n’ roll is class, as Jones has it: “And it is, ask any ‘average’ American mother, a music for ‘low brows’” (Ibid. 222) and “youthful offenders.” (Ibid. 223) “Rock ‘n’ Roll is the blues form of the classes of Americans who lack the ‘sophistication’ to be middle brows [...].” (Ibid. 223)

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cago Blues, refused to be recorded owing to his bad treatment by white Chicago club owners in the 1950s and his still lingering fear of losing control of his words and music when placed into white hands (in an interview with the present writer). In sum, struggling hard, down-home Delta blues and its even more successful cousin R&B survived the 1950s in the face of the fierce competitor rock ‘n’ roll and fiercer commercialisation. Shouters, honkers and amplified guitars were the audible indicators of the blues’ resistance to the complete incorporation into the commercial mainstream. Renegotiating the vocality of the blues, that is enhancing the human voice with the help of electric devices, black artists retained emotional access to black communities and secured meaningful (subversive) articulations of identities from the lower strata of the African-American population. The black blues voices grew louder to be heard by white teenagers and if they were still in need of a meaningful intercultural understanding, the young ‘white negro’ from Memphis battled hard to translate the musical hybrid rock ‘n’ roll into a youth jargon (voice, body) understood by male and female, black and white, sharing the social bottom stratum of southern US society. Thus black artists’ attempts to have a powerful say in the evolution of black music strengthened at a time when this was felt to be slipping away. The resulting amalgamation of music styles leaned heavily towards the living practices of AfricanAmerican cultures. With a time lapse of 20 years the cultural awareness of African-American war veterans, which had been shaped by their crucial contribution to the liberation of Europe and which stood in stark contrast to their social maltreatment back home, reached the young generation of African Americans. Thus at the beginning of the 1960s the blues was no longer considered an adequate genre for young African-American teenagers, since for them it not only represented the time of slavery, but also its correlative mentalities which had to be overcome on behalf of salvaging their own current life stories in the age of post memory.9 In consequence, rhythm & blues shed its skin and laid bare soul, which became the sound track of emancipation and expressed in music what the Civil Rights Movement strove for in politics. Like the other music styles under consideration, soul carries a double meaning. In the cultural arena it represents a cultural sensitivity, deconstructing white ‘othering’ processes of black identities with the purpose of re-evaluating black roots on the basis of African-American resources. Or in Leroi Jones’ words:

9

Billboard, the leading American music magazine, caught the spirit of the times “and in 1969 [...] re-titled its ‘Rhythm and Blues’ chart ‘Hot Soul Singles’.” (Wald 219)

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It is an attempt to place upon a ‘meaningless’ social order, an order which would give value to terms of existence that were once considered not only valueless but shameful [...] soul means a ‘new’ establishment [...] the ‘soul brother’ means to recast the social order in his own image. (Jones 219)

At its heart, soul consciously re-considers what it means to be black, hence it is a liberating act of re-definition. Translating this approach into music, soul concerts shared the cathartic ‘naming and curing’ acts of country fish fries at the turn of the century and urban theatres and clubs in the 1920s. However, unlike the country blues and similar to the classic blues, soul does not lament the fate of blacks, but positively and straightforwardly speaks of the natural rights and power of their non-white identity most drastically coined in the 1960s slogan “Black is beautiful”. James Brown put it to music in his renowned song “Say it loud – I’m black and proud.” (1968)10 After the assassination of Martin Luther King frustration mounted in the black liberation movement. As a result, ‘political’ soul was on the decline (apart from its commercial Philly Sound version) and African-American as well as white teenagers sought new modes of musical expression.

R AP At the end of the 1970s new voices were heard emanating from a black counterhegemonic ghetto culture in New York. LeRoy Jones’ statement about the blues, “As a verse form, it was the lyrics which were most important, and they issued from life” (Jones 82), is in congruence with the rapping style where words are not sung but spoken “in time to music with a steady beat” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 1171). ‘Toasting’ originated in the trickster tales of West Africa and can be defined as storytelling performed against sound collages and generated by DJs through ‘scratching’ records, later by composing their own rhymes. The trickster had been a major figure in the storytelling traditions of black slaves, where he – a shape shifter – symbolised cultural survival and black

10 Soul is technically characterised by Gospel preaching, repetitive rhythms, call-andresponse patterns and vigorous horn riffs. Prominent soul artists are Ray Charles, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin and Dinah Washington. Soul is divided into three distinctive sub-categories: 1. New York Atlantic Records Style: R&B plus Gospel 2. Memphis Sound by Stax Records: Country Blues plus Country and Western plus Gospel 3. Motown Sound Detroit: Gospel plus white pop.

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resistance. In post-slavery times he was replaced by other male figures in the stories (toasts), often improvised as the early country (Delta) blues had been. Longforgotten ‘toasting’ was rediscovered by African-Americans in US prisons in the 1970s, who thereafter reclaimed the traditional narrative form for their specific articulation. Soon leaving the confines of this particular male sub-culture behind, rap – making use of soul and funk – spread into the broader black communities of New York and became the centre of an adolescent hip-hop culture, embracing visual arts, dance, fashion and speech (Starr 382-85). In the revitalisation of African links not only does the human voice, the eminent ‘instrument’ of black music, return with a vengeance, but so do the lyrics, whose communicative function between singer and audience and ‘messages’ had been to some extent drowned out in the urban blues spectacles of Chicago and Kansas City. Rap is consistently African as it utilises African music heritage11 and American as it constitutes a cultural response to oppression and racism, a system for communication among black communities throughout the United States [...] and a source of insight into the values, perceptions, and conditions of people living in America’s beleaguered urban communities. (Starr 382)

What is more, rap started in local neighbourhoods but successfully transmuted into a global cultural and commercial phenomenon. Some scholars have come to analyse rap’s hybrid character in terms of responding to the demolition of established social structures inside African-American communities and of simultaneously re-negotiating positive local identities (Starr 383; Dimitriadis 2). In analogy to early blues, modern rap lives by interaction in that everyday experiences at particular times and places are performed through texts or practices available at this specific historical moment. Constructions of race, class and gender identities unfold in the act of performing. Performance [...] assumes that the uses of texts and practices are multiple and radically contingent [...] [It is] a key site where social, cultural, and material constructions are put into motion, are articulated and re-articulated in new and (often) powerful ways. (Dimitriadis 13)

The dynamics of rap show in the face of commercial appropriation and codification in the mid-1980s, when the next generation of rap artists responded to the 11 Chuck D. writes “that the application of the rap vocal on top of records” and “the timing and rhythm of rap” go back to the Mississippi Delta. (Guralnik, Martin Scorsese 280)

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corollary of the bad boy image readily accepted by a biased American mainstream. Instead of drawing on aggression against white economic and political power, their rap drew attention to the poetic and pedagogical function of the rapper. Within these class commentaries, rap proved to be a viable, dynamic, established practice capable of coming to terms with the complexities of the function of art form in its own “arena of struggle.” (Stuart Hall; Dimitriadis 47-61) The same applies when the aggressive and outspokenly sexist idiom of male (black and white) rap provoked responses by female rappers, who started to deconstruct the raw gang-related masculinity in gangsta rap (Starr 458, 460) as Queen Latifah does in “U.N.I.T.Y.”: Instinct leads me to another flow Every time I hear a brother call a girl bitch or a ho Trying to make a sister feel low You know all of that gots to go Now everybody knows there’s exceptions to this rule Now don’t be getting Mad; when we playing it’s cool But don’t be calling out my name I bring wrath to those who disrespect me like a dame.

The performativity at the heart of rap or hip-hop accounts for its rise to a global medium of textual and symbolic (pseudo-political) resistance. Hip-hop comprises rap, breakdance, graffiti, dj-ing, beatboxing, street fashion and producing. Originating in Manhattan and South Bronx in the 1970s, and articulating the destitute living conditions of African-American adolescents through improvised rituals, hip-hop spread internationally and in the process became commercialised. In response to market control, more recent underground rap struggles to reappropriate the music and style in an attempt to retain its counter-cultural essence. Whatever the linguistic base, the jargon is adolescent and lower class, and not necessarily male.

W HITE S UB -C ULTURAL R ESPONSES By the end of the 1950s the cultural function of blues inside African-American communities had come to be negated by the younger generation. Instead, young Europeans, chiefly British, had grown aware of it. Blues and blues-related music reached the British Isles in the early/mid-1950s, when the British jazz band leader Chris Barber, along with the blues advocates Alexis Korner and Cyril Davis,

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brought Big Bill Broonzy, Little Brother Montgomery and other black musicians to England and incorporated them into their concerts. At the same time Elvis Presley and Bill Haley turned into idols of British/European teenagers. Back in England, Lonnie Donegan, Barber’s banjo player, popularised New Orleans jazz and the tradition of the Memphis jug bands by introducing skiffle music.12 This new reception of blues hit the British music scene at the beginning of the 1960s after Muddy Water’s concert tour in 1958 triggered many more African-American blues greats (Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson) to follow. Soon young British bands such as The Rolling Stones – whose name derives from a Muddy Water’s song, an act which can be identified either as respect for or appropriation of black music – The Beatles, Eric Clapton, John Mayall and many more had their own records cut in tribute to their black idols. It did not take long before they recorded in session with them. In particular the London Sessions featuring Howlin’ Wolf, Eric Clapton and members of the Rolling Stones display the unequivocal impact of the black artist counselling and instructing his young white disciples. As a result this led to a debate among intellectuals about the end of the ethnically black blues and its white future. (Siegfried 108)13 Yet, it also revealed how the raw musical material was improvised to make other ends meet. Blues had always migrated – from the rural south to southern cities, then to the north of the US. In Europe it was transferred and in the course of time adapted to the needs of a subculture existing within an all-white dominant middle-class culture. The result came to be known as blues rock, grounded in the blues and infused with louder and speedier rock guitars to reach the young white rock audience (Erlewine 378), though the lyrics were in the majority of cases mere imitations of black blues traditionals. Taken out of the historical context of black suffering, the songs of these young British bands (and their adherents) voiced their concern in an unfamiliar idiom, phonetically as much as sociologically. Erlewine is historically correct in saying that “The term British blues is an anomaly. By rights, it shouldn’t even exist. After all, Great Britain coming into the 20th century had no blues tradition, or any basis for it. Blues in Britain was an American import, much the same as rock ‘n’ roll [...].” (Erlewine 376) However,

12 Using home made instruments for skiffle music was resumed and translated into the equivalent practice/idiom of ‘scratching’ records in rap. (Erlewine 355) 13 In Germany audiences were familiarised with the blues by the “American Folk Blues Festivals” organised by Fritz Rau and Horst Lippmann from 1962–1969. Their concept was biased, since they tended to put on stage the ‘archaic’ bluesman, who was to be old, poor, droll and rural. This only changed in 1967. (Siegfried 106f.)

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seen from a cultural studies perspective, Charles Keil’s assessment is highly agreeable: If ‘blues music as such’ began as a displacement or projection of white moods, hurts, needs onto black oral traditions, then it may be a healthy trend for whites to experience the blues as their own rather than as mediated by black others. (Keil 233)

In the harsh political climate of Cold War Europe, epitomised in the nuclear threat rather than deterrence and the repressive regimes of bourgeois establishments, British blues rock bands offered alternative discourses of rebellious, that is carnevalesque, fun for which the rowdy Chicago blues, according to the white imitators and their followers, bore witness. Initially, the cultural transfer – according to Urs Bitterli’s taxonomy we can here speak of a “Kulturberührung” (non-violent, temporal and punctual contacts; Wendland 52) – between two alternative/oppositional cultural formations chiefly worked at the expense of the black Other. At the heart of white perceptions we find the notion of the suppressed but stereotypically enhanced ‘noble black savage’ (archaic man) who would sing back against white, male and middle-class supremacy the British youngsters felt they also were subject to in post-war Britain. To this end the alleged hedonistic individualism and the ‘rebellious matrix’ of the musical and cultural African-American idiom – in the sense that the blacks would not simply put up with their ‘fate’ but talk back to their exploiters and oppressors – was rediscovered, if not invented and thus unforeseeably romanticised by a white, counter-hegemonic culture to make it work this side of the colour line. Thus, race and generation conflicts merged into one (blues) idiom by a process of identification with the oppressed and downtrodden world-wide. (Siegfried 60; Oliver 314; Wald 236) No other but the moaning, expressive and plaintive Delta blues represented by Robert Johnson and his like and revived by Eric Clapton and others served white kids’ unfulfilled cravings for authenticity. Black nonconformism was the model of the ‘white negroes’ revolt; its basic assumptions resulted from a ‘positive racism’ which was built on pre-conceived images of an invented tradition (Hobsbawm) in order to serve the teenagers’ projections of their own needs: a new identity resulting from identification and solidarity. The transferred practices were made over for the European sub-cultural context and used in different ways for allegedly identical ends. The receiving side’s readiness for adaption is “the controlling moment” in this transfer process. (Wendland 47; 51) At the other end of the process, the African-American roots of the blues in particular and the contextual cultural practices in general were popularised

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through blues rock and shown respect by previously remote cultures. In an act of symbolic politics, the British reception and revival of black blues helped to reimport it to the US, causing the emergence of white US blues rock bands.14 The fact that white boys not only proved they could play the blues, but cared to infiltrate the white market, is a strong indicator of the comprehensiveness of this transcultural process. The themes of blues in West Germany in the 1960s, in contrast to Britain, included radical left politics. Whereas Mailer’s ‘white negro’ rested with a cultural glorification of the African-American embodied in the hipster, in general nonwhite ethnic groups (including the Black Panthers) operating against repressive white systems inside and outside the US received the stamp of a revolutionary spirit by West German left militants. Being black – or non-white – meant being marginalised and once the link between blacks and West German teenagers was constituted via the figure of the ‘outsider’, the blues was taken to be the shared medium of revolutionary change and utopian freedom: In the beginning, blues was sung by American black slaves [...]. In the course of time, it could solely be practised by blacks: they had sucked in the feeling which is at the heart of the blues, with their mothers’ milk: to exist in the biggest shit. To live in chains, facing guns, behind prison bars. And to raid a supermarket every now and then or to take revenge for a murdered brother. (Siegfried 115. My translation, U.Z.)

Blues became politically charged as it articulated a militant and radical need for immediate satisfaction, an anarchistic lifestyle: it became its hymn. Consequently, to the logic of the militant left, the music industry, which for commercial reasons had promoted a separate white blues market, would lose interest, because the subculture by means of radical resistance would spoil the principles of capitalist trade. (Peter-Paul Zahl in Siegfried 116) The logical climax of this German – Berlin – phenomenon resulted in a left-militant group with the eponymous name “Blues”. Some of their members would join the extreme left underground group “Bewegung 2. Juni” in the early 1970s. (Siegfried 103-19)15

14 For Oliver this was the crucial moment for young blacks to withdraw from the blues. (Oliver 296) 15 Sub-cultural readings of the blues had a manifest impact on rebellious youth subcultures in the GDR. (cf. Rauhut, Kochan)

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C ONCLUSION If we take “chaos” to be ‘disorder’ or ‘non-standardised order’, we will not find many traces of it in black music (blues) as shown above. One may argue that the blues is elusive, as represented by the blue notes – a term coined by musicologists in order to organise and classify the material for an improved understanding – or that it invites a multitude of unforeseeable race-, class- and gender-specific commentaries with its lyrics. It can be spoken in many voices and different jargons, but it has a common grammar (Walter in Siebers), “because”, as Keil puts it with that idealistic emphasis of the 1960s, “it is the place where the personal and social hurts of both racism and sexism [...] flow together and crystalize in an infinite series of configurations like a kaleidoscope.” (Keil 233) In consequence, it is flexible, adaptable to different cultural arenas and, moreover, it is performative, since it adheres to the rules of the ritual. Lyrics, instrumentation, and venue are the set patterns during live concerts; even more standardisation prescribed by the music industry is found on recorded samples. Performativity guarantees a certain conservative structure which is continuously renewed through versatile improvisations. While passed on from one culture formation to the next and back, exchanged between classes, genders, generations and races, ‘whitened’ and ‘blackened’ again and in the process re-shaped and re-invented, the blues signifiers flow around a blues signified which centres on everyday life, the troubles and the pleasures (Wald 216) of the common people, but is told by different narrators to different audiences: e.g. Clapton’s persona complaining about being “down and out” and deserted by his friends in one of the blues song standards appears to be a far cry from the original downtrodden black migrant worker lamenting his lot in the face of white oppression, but simultaneously is the same heart-torn figure.16 These representations work through on-going negotiations of meanings suitable to the historically specific needs of particular agents at historically specific times. Aesthetically, they practise the essential tools of performativity like the body, the voice (also the voice translated into the guitar riff), and the gesture. Regardless of the cultural context, blues, soul, and rap abide by the orderly signified of their genres, but – in particular in the case of rap – improvisation is their unifying and key feature. Kindled through the cultural dynamics of multiple living practises in the urban metropolis, improvisation sets in motion an openended process of re-negotiation. This improvised control, or controlled improvi-

16 I wonder, if Wald’s comment that the “white, cult, museum mentality has triumphed” (Wad 219) stands its ground.

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sation, is the order of black music most profoundly practised in jazz, but can be found explicitly in the styles discussed here. Binding the narratives of chaos to a diachronic and synchronic analysis avoids an ahistorical essentialising of cultural practices and sharpens the mind for the constant changes in the cultural interplay in the contact zone.

R EFERENCES Adelt, Ulrich. “Black, White, and Blue: Racial Politics in B.B. King’s Music from the 1960s.” Journal of Popular Culture 44.2 (2011): 195-216. Baker Jr., Houston A. Blues, Ideology and African-American Literature. A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998. Bertrand, Michael. Race, Rock, and Elvis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Chuck D. “Blues: The Footprint of Popular Music.” Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues. Eds. Peter Guralnik et al. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. 280-1. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. Critical Race Theory. New York: New Press, 1995. Dimitriadis, Greg. Performing Identity/Performing Culture. Hip Hop as Text, Pedagogy, and Lived Practice. New York: Lang, 2009. Erlewine, Michael et al. (eds.). The Blues. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1996. Finn, Julio. The Bluesman. The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas. New York: Interlink Books, 1992. George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm&Blues. German edition. Wien: HannibalVerlag, 1990. Guralnik, Peter. Last Train to Memphis. The Rise of Elvis Presley. London: Abacus, 1995. Hebdige, Dick. New Accents. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen & Co., 1979. Jones, LeRoy. Blues People. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1963. Keil, Charles. Urban Blues. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1966; 1991. Lawson, R.A. Jim Crow’s Counterculture. The Blues and Black Southerners 1890-1945. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. Mahon, Maureen. “Listening for Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s Voice: The Sound of Race and Gender Transgressions in Rock and Roll.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 15 (2011): 1-17. Murray, Albert. The Hero and the Blues. New York: Vintage Books, 1973; 1995.

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Oliver, Paul. Die Story des Blues. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1979. Rauhut, Michael and Thomas Kochan (eds.). Bye, Bye, Lübben City. Bluesfreaks, Tramps und Hippies in der DDR. Berlin: Schwarzkopf&Schwarzkopf, 2004. Sidran, Ben. Black Talk. New York: Da Capo Paperback, 1971. Siegfried, Detlef. Sound der Revolte. Studien zur Kulturrevolution um 1968. Weinheim, München: Juventa Verlag, 2008. Starr, Larry and Christopher Waterman. American Popular Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta. Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. Walter, Khalif. “Wir sprechen dieselbe Sprache.” Das Blaue Wunder. Blues aus deutschen Landen. Eds. Winfried Siebers and Uwe Zagratzki. Eutin: Lumpeter&Lasel, 2010. 15-33. Wendland, Anna Veronika. “Cultural Transfer.” Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture. Ed. Birgit Neumann. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012. 45-66. Williams, Raymond. Culture. London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1981. Zagratzki, Uwe. “‘Blues fell this morning’ – James Kelman’s Scottish Literature and Afro-American Music.” Scottish Literary Journal 27.1 (2000): 105-17. ---. “Elvis Presley and McCarthyism – Rock ‘n’ Roll and Paranoia.” Between Fear and Freedom: Cultural Representations of the Cold War. Ed. Kathleen Starck. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 11123. Ziegenrücker, Wieland, and Peter Wicke. Sach-Lexikon Popularmusik. Erweiterte Neuausgabe. Mainz: Schott; München: Piper, 1989.

Authors

Behrens, Christoph is since 2015 research and teaching assistant in Francophone and Italian Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Rostock where he is preparing a doctoral thesis on the balcony scene, “Balconies of Love: Poetics and Sociocultural Orders of Love in French and Italian Literature”. His research fields include the interrelation of sociocultural and aesthetic praxis (“Wahr-Nehmend Lesen: Literarische Performativität und soziokulturelle Praxis.” Anthropologie der Wahrnehmung. (2017) Ed. Magnus Schlette. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 439-54.), performativity and performance studies as well as the expansion of gender and queer studies infused perspectives in romance philology (“Queere Körper-Geschichte*n – réécriture und mémoire corporelles in Mathieu Riboulets Les Œuvres de miséricorde”. Romanische Studien. 7 (2017), 31-45.). He is also founder of the “Gender and Queer Studies Research Group” at Rostock University and co-editor of the publication series “Rostock Interdisciplinary Gender and Queer Studies”. Brauner, Christina, is a postdoctoral researcher at the History Department at Bielefeld University. Her PhD (University of Münster, 2014) dealt with intercultural diplomacy in West Africa (17th-19th c.), studying the diplomatic role of early modern trading companies and tracing the emergence of transcultural diplomatic practices. Currently, she is developing a project on practices of advertising in early modern Germany (1450-800). Besides, she is co-directing a subproject on intercultural jurisprudence in early modern contact zones (SFB 1288 “Practices of Comparison” at Bielefeld University). She is the author of Kompanien, Könige und caboceers. Interkulturelle Diplomatie and Gold- und Sklavenküste, 17.-18. Jahrhundert (2015) and co-editor of Dimensions of Transcultural Statehood (2015), and of Alles nur symbolisch? Bilanz und Perspektiven der Erforschung symbolischer Kommunikation (2013). She has also contributed to scientific journals, e.g. “Connecting Things. Trading Companies and Diplomatic

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Gift-Giving on the Gold and Slave Coasts in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” (in Journal of Early Modern History 20, 2016) and “Ein Schlüssel für zwei Truhen. Diplomatie als interkulturelle Praxis am Beispiel einer westafrikanischen Gesandtschaft nach Frankreich (1670/71)” (in Historische Anthropologie 21, 2013). Burschel, Peter, is Professor of Early Modern Cultural History at Göttingen University and Director of the Herzog August Bibliothek at Wolfenbüttel since March 2016. His research interests include the history of purity, of skin colours and of cultural brokers. His recent books are about the invention of purity, ritualized cultural contacts and the anthropology of architecture. Peter Burschel is among others co-editor of the “Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte”. Estermann, Josef, is researcher and analyst at COMUNDO, the largest Swiss Organization of Personal International Cooperation. He is also lecturer at the University of Lucerne. His research and lecturing – documented in many monographies and articles – include Intercultural Philosophy, Liberation Theology, Andean philosophy and theology, Global learning and Development theories. He holds a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Utrecht (NL) and a licentiate in theology from the University of Lucerne (CH). From 1998 to 2004, he has been director of the Institute of Missiology in Aachen (D). He has spent almost 20 years in Peru and Bolivia. His Filosofía Andina (1998) has become a standard work and an important reference in Latin America. Among his latest publications: Andine Philosophie: Interkulturelle Studie zur autochthonen andinen Weisheit (1999); Andean Philosophy as a Questioning Alterity: An Intercultural Criticism of Western Andro- and Ethnocentrism (2009); Apu Taytayku: Religion und Theologie im andinen Kontext Südamerikas (2012); Cruz y Coca: Hacia la descolonización de la Religión y la Teología (2014); Más-allá de Occidente: Apuntes filosóficos sobre interculturalidad, descolonización y el Vivir Bien andino (2015). Juterczenka, Sünne, teaches Early Modern History at Humboldt University in Berlin. She earned her PhD at Göttingen University with a study on early modern Quaker missions, Über Gott und die Welt (2008). She was a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for History and has held postdoctoral fellowships in the graduate school “Cultural Contact and the Discourses of Scholarship” at Rostock University and at the International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture at Gießen University, as well as short term fellowships from the German Historical Institutes in Paris and London. Her research focuses on missions, maritime

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history, and cultural encounters. Together with Gesa Mackenthun, she edited The Fuzzy Logic of Encounter (2009), and – most recently – together with Peter Burschel, Die Europäische Expansion (2016), a collection of essays on European expansion in the early modern period. She is currently finishing her second monograph on the media reception of eighteenth-century Pacific discovery. Reis, Olaf, is since 2003 a Senior Researcher and Head of the Research Department at the Clinic for and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Rostock. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of Rostock and was a postdoctoral fellow for cultural developmental psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a developmental psychologist and the principal investigator of the Rostock Longitudinal Study, which started in 1970 and follows up upon 200 children born at this time in Rostock. His research interests include developmental family psychology, social psychology of change and developmental psychopathology. In his current book Niches in Change – East German Families in Transition (Gießen: Psychosozial, forthcoming 2017, in German) he investigates the interplay of social change and intergenerational relations. Sánchez, Yvette, holds the Chair of Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of St. Gallen and is director of the Centro Latinoamericano-Suizo de la Universidad de San Gallen (CLS HSG). She is engaged in several research projects on cross-cultural studies, running a post-graduate program (The Siwss School of Latin American Studies) and co-editing handbooks on Transculturalism and Business in the BRIC States (2015) or on US Latino culture. Prof. Sánchez was born in Maracaibo/Venezuela, studied hispanic language and literature and anthroplogy and got her PhD from the University of Basel. Her literary strands focus on the poetics of failure, of collectionism, of visual culture, on business fictions, and on the Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas. She is the president of the University of St.Gallen Art Committee. de Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan, is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study (University of London) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (Great Britain & Ireland). She is a former member of the UNESCO International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route Project (Paris), rapporteur of its Bureau and currently a member of the UNESCO UK National Commission of Experts. In addition to numerous articles in academic journals and chapters in books, Shihan is the author of six books – The Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire (2008), African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration (2008)

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and African Diaspora in Asian trade routes and cultural memories (2010), An Anthology of Indo-Portuguese Verse (2001), Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon (Athena, London) and Tagus to Taprobane: Portuguese Impact on the Socioculture of Sri Lanka from 1505AD (2001). She has also edited two multi-author books: The African diaspora in the Indian Ocean (2003) and Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia (2008). Shihan is also the Director/Producer of two ethnographic films – Voices of Afro-Sri Lankans and Indian Ocean Memories: African Migrations. She collaborates with the University of Graz (Austria) on the Hugo Schuchardt Archives and the University of Kobe (Japan) on Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade. Voeste, Anja, is Professor of Historical Linguistics/German Language History at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. She graduated with a PhD on variation in grammar (Varianz und Vertikalisierung. Zur Normierung der Adjektivdeklination in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, 2000) and explored historical spelling habits in her higher doctorate degree (Orthographie und Innovation. Die Segmentierung des Wortes im 16. Jahrhundert, 2008). Her research focuses on the synthesis of empirical data and theoretical approaches like historical sociolinguistics and functionalism, sound change and evolutionary theory, or spelling history and systems theory. She is co-editor of Orthographies in Early Modern Europe (2012, with Susan Baddeley) and of Language Development: The Lifespan Perspective (2015, with Annette Gerstenberg). She also contributed to several international journals and handbooks on historical sociolinguistics and on literacy. Wachtel, Nathan, is professor emeritus at the Collège de France, where he held the Chair of Historical Anthropology of Meso and South American societies from 1992 to 2005. His latest research focusses on remnants of Jewish converts in present-day South America. Based on fieldwork on this continent and on investigations in the inquisitorial archives, it aims to reconstruct the ties of Jewish culture between past and present. Furthermore, Nathan Wachtel tries to combine the methods and problematics of historical and anthropological research that arise from the consideration of the converts’ culture and history. The traces of marran culture in the life of descendants from ancient Jewish families are treated in Mémoires marranes, published in 2011. Other selected publications are: La vision des vaincus. Les Indiens du Pérou devant la Conquête espagnole (15301570) (1971), Le Retour des Ancêtres (1990), La Foi du souvenir (2001), La logique des bûchers (2009), Entre Moïse et Jésus (2013), Des archives aux terrains. Essais d’anthropologie historique (2014).

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Wodianka, Stephanie, is since 2010 Professor of Romance Literature at Rostock University, Germany. Her research interests include representations, practices and theories of the collective memory (literature, films, chanson française), the European meditative literature of the 17th century (e.g. Betrachtungen des Todes. Formen und Funktionen der meditation mortis in der europäischen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts, 2004), the relations between aesthetics and the construction of (trans)cultural identities, and concepts and poetics of modern myth (e.g. Zwischen Mythos und Geschichte, 2009; Metzler Lexikon Moderner Mythen, 2014, Inflation der Mythen?, 2016). Since 2013 she has been chairing the interdisciplinary doctoral program on Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scolarship, since 2014 she is member of the graduate school “Deutungsmacht und Deutungsmachtkonflikte in Religion und Belief systems” (both Rostock University), and she is currently working on a project on cultural semiotics of the cardinal directions (e.g. Localisations de l'Europe: sémiotiques culturelles des points cardinaux. Eds. Stephanie Wodianka and Sebastian Neumeister, 2016). Zagratzki, Uwe, is Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures and the Chair of Literature at the Institute of English Studies at Szczecin University, Poland. He has held various posts at the Universities of Osnabrück, Greifswald, Halle-Wittenberg, Rostock and Oldenburg and has worked as a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Brno, Czech Republic and West Georgia, USA. A growing interest in Canadian Studies has been funded by several scholarships from the International Council of Canadian Studies. He has widely published in his main fields of interest: Scottish, English and Canadian Literature and Culture, Cultural Studies and War and Literature. He is also a co-editor of Deutsche Schottlandbilder (1998), of Das Blaue Wunder. Blues aus deutschen Landen (2010), a study of the blues in Germany, of Us and Them – Them and Us: Constructions of the Other in Cultural Stereotypes (2010) and of its follow-up Ideological Battelgrounds - Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11. Vol.1: Perspectives in Literatures and Cultures (2014) as well of Despite Harper: International Perceptions of Canadian Literature and Culture (2014) and of Exile and Migration: New Reflections on an Old Practise (2016). He is a co-founder of the Szczecin Canadian Studies Group.

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