Contextualizing Human Origin Stories in Mixed-Culture Classrooms
This article analyzes the concept of truth on which the practice of Ifá divination in Cuba turns. Motivated ethnographically by Ifá practitioners’ claims that the truths their oracles issue are indubitable, I argue that from the viewpoint of commonplace conceptions of truth such an assumption can only be interpreted as absurd. To avoid such an imputation, the article is devoted to reconceptualizing what might count as truth in such an ethnographic instance. In particular, it is argued that in order to credit the assumption of divinatory indubitability, representational notions of truth must be discarded in favour of what I call a “motile” conceptualization, which posits truth as an event in which trajectories of divinatory meanings (called “paths” by diviners) collide. In advancing such an analysis, the article exemplifies what I call an “ontographic” approach, dedicated to mapping the ontological premises of native discourse through the production of concepts which, while not the native concepts themselves, comprise their close equivalents. Elaborated in greater detail elsewhere (Holbraad 2012b), this is put forward as my take on what the editors of Hau call “ethnographic theory.” (Holbraad 2012a)
It is problematic for those who are instructing students who are not destined for academia to nonetheless insist that the human origin story that is meaningful and useful in their own lives as scientists or academicians (evolution) must be meaningful and useful in their students lives. An approach that might be helpful in these situations, should any student be troubled by this origin story called evolution, would be to offer that science and academia form a particular culture where evolution is the human origin story used to describe not only our past but to explain our present and to try to predict our future. It is necessary for those visiting this culture to learn this human origin story and to understand what science and academia are saying about humanity’s past, present and future. But that does not mean it must overwrite or negate important human origin stories those students and their cultural cohort may have. Nonetheless, the students should be made to understand, for studies in science and in academia, it is necessary and important to learn this particular human origin story.
I can understand that most if not all scientists and academicians would balk at calling it a human origin story, since story suggests fiction and what they propose is that their human origin explanation is actually true. They could, perhaps, call it a human origin explanation or a human origin perspective. But they should understand that those who don't adopt it will perceive it as a human origin story that is not to be privileged as truth. And that if they find that infuriating, they should understand that they also will be evoking that emotion in perhaps some of their students. Does science and academia want their human origin story privileged? Absolutely. All cultural cohorts do. All feel they have understood the truth and that others are benighted. What is important to remember is that for some students passing through classes in science and academia, evolution as a human origin story will not meaningfully express their cultural cohort’s past, will not imbue its present and will not be welcome as a part of their understanding of their future. The desire for science’s truth to prevail is not mysterious, but neither is the desire of other cultures to preserve their own sense of the truth. When we ask people to set aside their human origin story, we are asking them to abandon their cultural sense of who they are, why they are here, how they should behave and how to think about the future. If their future is not in science or the academy, abandoning all of that may not be remotely worth it. Instead of asking them to abandon it, we could ask them merely to spend a little time understanding a foreign culture’s human origin story, one they need not adopt if they are not going to embed themselves in that culture, and give them permission to explore ideas without having to overthrow their own culture and the morality built upon it. If we can acknowledge that there are boundaries to the privilege given to evolution as a human origin story, that it can be explored without being adopted, understood without being accepted, some tension might be able to be released around this issue. And science and academia really need to understand the importance of differing human origin stories to their adherents and the deep cultural meaning that they hold. When scientists and academicians consider that what they are engaging is actually the truth and everything else is nonsense, they wander into dangerous territory whenever they leave their culture behind and head into other cultures. If they can understand that theirs is as cultural a viewpoint as anyone else’s, they may be able to avoid troublesome episodes that cause hurt and mistrust to multiply and hinders their own research and exploration. An instructive case involved the Havasupai tribe of the Grand Canyon, where the tribe insists they offered their blood for genetic research to help them understand the diabetes devastating their tribe and discovered it had been used for purposes that they considered to undermine their culture. From Amy Harmon’s article in the New York Times on this issue:
Another article [academic article published using Havasupai DNA], suggesting that the tribe’s ancestors had crossed the frozen Bering Sea to arrive in North America, flew in the face of the tribe’s traditional stories that it had originated in the canyon and was assigned to be its guardian. Listening to the investigators, Ms. Tilousi felt a surge of anger, she recalled. But in Supai, the initial reaction was more of hurt. Though some Havasupai knew already that their ancestors most likely came from Asia, “when people tell us, ‘No, this is not where you are from,’ and your own blood says so — it is confusing to us,” Rex Tilousi said. “It hurts the elders who have been telling these stories to our grandchildren.” Others questioned whether they could have unwittingly contributed to research that could threaten the tribe’s rights to its land. “Our coming from the canyon, that is the basis of our sovereign rights,” said Edmond Tilousi, the tribe’s vice chairman. (Harmon, 2012)
Unfortunately, biologists are not usually trained as anthropologists, and they can fail to understand the minefield they are walking in cases like these. I think it would be good if they did. Every believer in a human origin story wants that human origin story to be universally adopted. We all want to be morally coordinated. (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2012). We all want to be right and for what we believe to be true. But right and true are often culturally-bound and insisting on the superiority of one’s being right and true make dialogue across cultures impossible. Privilege evolution in the classroom, in the sciences and academia, just acknowledge that other human origin stories are privileged elsewhere and often serve meaningful cultural purposes that evolution would not equal in those cultures. Acknowledge that science and academia constitute a culture, a fruitful one, a beautiful one, but one that still has to communicate with other cultures in respectful and not just superior ways. References
DeScioli, P and Kurzban, R. 2012. A Solution to the Mysteries of Morality. Psychological Bulletin of the American Psychological Association.
Harmon, Amy. 2012. Indian Tribe Wins Fight to Limit Research of its DNA. 4/21/2010. New York Times. Retrieved 2/15/2012.
Holbraad, Martin. 2012a. Truth beyond doubt: Ifa oracles in Havana. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (1): 81–109.
Holbraad, Martin. 2012b. Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthroplogy of Cuban Divination, University of Chicago Press.