Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (Writing Past Colonialism Series)

257 Pages·1999·18.3 MB·English

by  Patrick Wolfe

Settler Colonialism and the
Transformation of Anthropology
Writing Past Colonialism Series
Series editors: Phillip Darby, Margaret Thornton and Patrick Wolfe, Institute
of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne
The leitmotiv of the series is the idea of difference - differences between
cultures and politics, as well as differences in ways of seeing and the sources
that can be drawn upon. In this sense, it is postcolonial. Yet the space we hope
to open up is one resistant to new orthodoxies, one that allows for alternative
and contesting formulations. Though grounded in studies relating to the
formerly colonized world, the series seeks to extend contemporary global
analyses.
Also published in the series
Phillip Darby, The Fiction of Imperialism: Reading Between International Relations
and Postcolonialism
SETTLER COLONIALISM
AND THE
TRANSFORMATION
OF ANTHROPOLOGY
The Politics and Poetics of an
Ethnographic Event
Patrick Wolfe
CASSELL
London and New York
Cassell
Wellington House, 125 Strand, London WC2R OBB
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6550
First published 1999
© Patrick Wolfe 1999
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-304-70339-7 Hardback
0-304-70340-0 Paperback
Typeset by Ben Cracknell Studios
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn
Contents
Illustrations VI
Acknowledgements vii
Credits viii
Note on Terminology ix
INTRODUCTION Text and Context 1
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SETTLER COLONIALISM
CHAPTER i White Man's Flour 9
VIRGIN BIRTH IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND IN
AUSTRALIAN SETTLER DISCOURSE
CHAPTER 2 Science, Colonialism and Anthropology 43
THE LOGIC OF A GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION
CHAPTER 3 Mother-Right 69
SEX AND PROPERTY IN VICTORIAN ANTHROPOLOGY
CHAPTER 4 Totemism Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 106
VICTORIAN ANTHROPOLOGY'S ETERNAL DICHOTOMY
CHAPTER 5 Survival in a Paradigm Shift 129
E.B. TYLOR AND THE PROBLEM OF THE TEXT
CHAPTER 6 Repressive Authenticity 163
References 215
Index 242
Illustrations
Figure 1 From Spencer and Gillen's The Native Tribes of Central Australia
(1899)
Figure 2 From Carl Strehlow's Die Aranda- und Loritja- Stamme in
Zentral-Australien (1907) and from Spencer and Gillen's Across
Australia (1912)
Figure 3 From Radcliffe-Browne's 'The Social Organization of
Australian Tribes'
Figure 4 Artist Unknown, The Dangers of the Palmer - A Native Attack.
From The Illustrated Sydney News, 22 July 1876
Figure 5 W. H. Fernyhough, Natives of New South Wales Drinking 'Bull'',
and Charles Rodius, Scene in the Streets of Sydney
Figure 6 Eugene von Guerard, Natives Chasing Game (1854)
Figure 7 Two-Dollar Coin
Figure 8 From A. O. Neville's Australia's Coloured Minority (1947)
Acknowledgements
Linda Williams combined intellectual scepticism with emotional encourage-
ment in a way that somehow cohered. Thank you, Linda.
Substantial portions of this book originated as a PhD thesis which, even
allowing for distractions such as employment and parenting, I took far too
long to write. At different times and in different places, I had three super-
visors, Maurice Bloch, Greg Dening and Dipesh Chakrabarty. I would have
been lucky to have had any one. Thank you all. Dipesh, the last in line, read
and commented on the whole draft. Thanks again, bandhuji.
Significant other readers at that stage were my two examiners, Talal Asad
and George W. Stocking, Jr. Both were as gracious as they were acute. Had
they been less gracious, I would probably be driving taxis. Had they been
less acute, I might have published the PhD rather than written a book - which
is to say, I might have taken a less direct route to taxi-driving. Despite illness
and overwork, George Stocking has stayed in touch, encouraging, advising
and inspiring. I lack the words to do any sort of justice to such a debt, but I
shall never forget and I shall always try to follow the example.
Once I had finally rewritten it as a book, I gained further from the insightful
and learned response of Cassell's anonymous reviewer. At an even later stage,
my friends and colleagues Phillip Darby and Michele Grossman read the
whole and said hard things in a soft way.
Different parts have benefited from the comments of Jeremy Beckett, Tony
Birch, Gary Foley, Richard Handler, John Hutnyk, Roger Just, Roni Linser,
Stuart Macintyre, Peter McPhee, John Morton, Michael Muetzelfeldt, Peter
Pels, Tim Rowse, Deborah Bird Rose, Lynette Russell, Oscar Salemink, Julie
Stephens and Mary Wolfe. Thanks to each of you.
I would also like to thank Mike Wolfe, who vacated his study to let me
write Chapter 6.
An Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship, which I held in
the History Department at the University of Melbourne, provided the time,
resources and collegial good times that I needed to write this book.
Throughout the process of publication, Janet Joyce at Cassell Academic
has been the kind of editor you hope for.
Credits
An earlier version of Chapter 1 was previously published as '"White Man's
Flour": Doctrines of Virgin Birth in Evolutionist Ethnogenetics and Australian
State-Formation', History and Anthropology, vol. 8, nos. 1-4,1994:165-205.
An earlier version of Chapter 6 was previously published as 'Nation and
MiscegeNation: Discursive Continuity in the Post-Mabo Era', Social Analysis,
no. 36,1994: 93-152.
The opening paragraphs of the Introduction are similar to the opening to
'Should the Subaltern Dream? "Australian Aborigines" and the Problem of
Ethnographic Ventriloquism', in S. C. Humphreys (ed.), Cultures of Scholarship
(Michigan University Press /Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1997:
57-96), pp. 57-60.
Permission to republish is gratefully acknowledged.
I would like to thank the Royal Australian Mint for permission to print an
image of the two-dollar coin (Figure 7) and for generously supplying me with
the transparency.
I am also grateful to the National Library of Australia, Rex Nan Kivell
Collection, for permission to reproduce Figure 5 (Rodius) and Figure 6 and
to the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, for permission to
reproduce Figure 4 and Figure 5 (Fernyhough).
Note on Terminology
This book's object of analysis is anthropological discourse. Accordingly,
'Aborigines', 'aborigines', 'Arunta', 'Aranda', 'savage', 'native', 'Black',
'black', 'blackfellow', 'Australian', etc., are figures of discourse, here
reproduced as they appear in the primary textual data. I generally spell and
capitalize these terms in accordance with the usage of the text or the author(s)
under discussion. To avoid offence, however - and bearing in mind that
others can legitimately quote from what follows without reference to this
note -1 use a capital 'A' for Aborigine/Aboriginal except in the case of direct
quotations. Where I intend reference to indigenous people in Australia
themselves rather than to others' representations about them, I use the term
Indigenous.
Since the terms 'Arunta' and 'Aranda' recur throughout the book, it should
be noted that the descendants of Spencer and Gillen's original informants
are the Arrernte people of central Australia.