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摘要
摘要
In this important and original study, the myth of the Noble Savage is an altogether different myth from the one defended or debunked by others over the years. That the concept of the Noble Savage was first invented by Rousseau in the mid-eighteenth century in order to glorify the "natural" life is easily refuted. The myth that persists is that there was ever, at any time, widespread belief in the nobility of savages. The fact is, as Ter Ellingson shows, the humanist eighteenth century actually avoided the term because of its association with the feudalist-colonialist mentality that had spawned it 150 years earlier.
The Noble Savage reappeared in the mid-nineteenth century, however, when the "myth" was deliberately used to fuel anthropology's oldest and most successful hoax. Ellingson's narrative follows the career of anthropologist John Crawfurd, whose political ambition and racist agenda were well served by his construction of what was manifestly a myth of savage nobility. Generations of anthropologists have accepted the existence of the myth as fact, and Ellingson makes clear the extent to which the misdirection implicit in this circumstance can enter into struggles over human rights and racial equality. His examination of the myth's influence in the late twentieth century, ranging from the World Wide Web to anthropological debates and political confrontations, rounds out this fascinating study.
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Researching early descriptions of American Indians, particularly French observers in northeastern America, anthropologist Ellingson finds no picture of stereotyped "noble savages"--the French say bon sauvage--"good," not "noble." Some individual Indian leaders were described as noble, Indians' hunting was a "noble" pursuit contrasted to European peasants' farm labor (hunting was the prerogative of aristocracy), but what Rousseau and other Enlightenment philosophers discussed was a theological issue, original sin versus innate innocence, either natural or in a vanished Golden Age. In 1859, retired British colonial administrator John Crawfurd claimed Rousseau had believed, falsely, that savages are noble in character. Crawfurd argued that "savages"--non-Western, colonized peoples--are ignoble, dirty, and properly subject to white men's rule. This attribution to Rousseau of a belief that "primitives" are innately noble in character is the "myth of the noble savage.'' Crawfurd's ridicule of the belief justified European racism; the 1859 date links it to Crawfurd's rejection of Darwinian evolution and human monogenesis, although Darwin's patron John Lubbock used Crawfurd to support his own racism. Ellingson brings use of the myth up-to-date with Internet postings and shows it currently used against Makah Indian whaling. All collections. A. B. Kehoe University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee
目录
Illustrations | p. xi |
Preface | p. xiii |
Introduction | p. 1 |
I The Birth of the Noble Savage | p. 9 |
1 Colonialism, Savages, and Terrorism | p. 11 |
2 Lescarbot's Noble Savage and Anthropological Science | p. 21 |
3 Dryden, Heroism, and Savages | p. 35 |
II Ethnographic Discourse on "savages" from Lescarbot to Rousseau | p. 43 |
4 The Noble Savage Myth and Travel-Ethnographic Literature | p. 45 |
5 Savages and the Philosophical Travelers | p. 64 |
6 Rousseau's Critique of Anthropological Representations | p. 80 |
III The "savage" After Rousseau | p. 97 |
7 The Ethnographic Savage from Rousseau to Morgan | p. 99 |
8 Scientists, the Ultimate Savage, and the Beast Within | p. 126 |
9 Philosophers and Savages | p. 158 |
10 Participant Observation and the Picturesque Savage | p. 169 |
11 Popular Views of the Savage | p. 193 |
12 The Politics of Savagery | p. 219 |
IV The Return of the Noble Savage | p. 233 |
13 Race, Mythmaking, and the Crisis in Ethnology | p. 235 |
14 Hunt's Racist Anthropology | p. 248 |
15 The Hunt-Crawfurd Alliance | p. 263 |
16 The Coup of 1858-1860 | p. 271 |
17 The Myth of the Noble Savage | p. 290 |
18 Crawfurd and the Breakup of the Racist Alliance | p. 303 |
19 Crawfurd, Darwin, and the "missing Link" | p. 316 |
Epilogue: the Miscegenation Hoax | p. 324 |
V The Noble Savage Meets the Twenty-First Century | p. 329 |
20 The Noble Savage and the World Wide Web | p. 331 |
21 The Ecologically Noble Savage | p. 342 |
22 The Makah Whale Hunt of 1999 | p. 359 |
Conclusion | p. 373 |
Notes | p. 389 |
References | p. 397 |
Index | p. 425 |