I found the principle of attachment the most interesting part of Pagden. It made complete sense to me that when faced with a culture and place that is completely unknown to you, you would try to attach elements of it to something familiar. Pagden brought the concept up initially with Columbus. He explained that Columbus when attached the Native's concept of abstaining from sex and food in order to find gold, to his familiar idea of Christian rituals that call for an individual to abstain from those things. This form of attachment can be applied to the natural world as well. Humboldt used attachment to compare the plants, and animals in nature to what he already was familiar with.
Overall, I believe the most interesting idea that came out of the first description of attachment was the idea that with attachment inevitably came possession. Once Columbus and Humboldt, were able to form attachments to the peoples and things that existed in the new world, they were able to possess them. Without classification or a basic ability to grasp what they were seeing in the New World it would have been hard for explorers to settle and take over the New World. The ability to attach the unfamiliar aspects of the Americas to familiar concepts, took away many of the fears and apprehensions individuals had about interacting with these foreign concepts.
On the other hand, Las Casas and Pagden believed that with attachment, recognization also occurred. This meant that once they attached Native traditions to some traditions they were familiar with, they were force to recognize “an aspect of behavior as compatible with their own.” In doing this, it began to corrupt their notion of Native's being inhuman. This in essence was Las Casas' aim in writing his accounts. He believed that the more attachments he was able to form between the Natives and the Europeans, the more Europeans would recognize that the Natives were human's as well.
Pagden also brings up the idea of detachment in conjunction with both the 'savage' and the settler or explorer. Pagden believed that when they were trying to possess the new world and assimilate the 'savage' the idea of mobility became extremely important. Moving the 'savage' outside of its world was important, because once he was disconnected from its culture, it would begin to make attachments to European culture and it would make assimilation easier. Pagden also presented the ideas of Lery, who wrote an account about a Frenchman and how he began to assimilate more towards the Amerindian culture the longer he was there. The idea being that as he is attaching elements of his culture to the native culture, he is also detaching elements of his own culture.
As far as, travel accounts go I thought Pagden brought up a good point in that this was a completely new genre and that people were unsure of how to develop it. The writers struggled to convey completely what they had seen in the New World through the previous modems available to them. Till the 17th century this results in “all attempts to represent america at some level are an attempt to resolve tension between appeal of authorial experience and demands of the canon.” In examining my primary sources this week I kept this in mind.
Your post does a good job of bringing up the multiple ideas around 'attachment' that Pagden presents. One of Pagden's overall points is that while there are certain themes running through the ways European travelers dealt with the New World, they often contrasted with each other, which makes it harder to come up with a stereotype of the New World travel account.
ReplyDeleteLike Alice said, great articulation of the attachment concept! I guess I'd add that in addition to humanizing the Amerindians, attachment could also lead to misconceptions and impede rather than facilitate understanding. Take the example of the Thracians and the Tainos; people believed that because both the ancient Mediterranean society and the modern New World society practiced polygamy, both would necessarily practice cannibalism and institutionalized murder of outsiders.
ReplyDeleteHey Mackenzie, I very much agree with your thoughts on attachment. I think it's really the basis of Pagden's writings, namely how we view new worlds and people given our existing background and worldview. I think in the case of Las Casas it was greatly beneficial to the native populations that he was able to make these connections. However, other times when such comparisons were made, they ended up going horribly awry. What determines whether existing frameworks will promote empathy or antipathy?
ReplyDeleteHi Mackenzie, Great discussion of attachment! I like how you brought up Pagden's smaller discussion of European attempts to detach individual natives from their culture in order to get them to assimilate. That seems to present a dichotomy in the European approach to "civilizing" the native: on the one hand, Europeans become somewhat attached to native cultures - seeing themselves in the natives, and on the other, they maintain that those cultures are very different and that, in order to Christianize the natives, they must first detach them from their opposing culture.
ReplyDeleteI also found the ideas of attachment and detachment in Pagden extremely interesting, and you pointed out the idea of decontextualization, which was very important to Pagden. I also thought, though, that he seemed to portray detachment in a positive light when discussing Lery. We do think of a "detached observer" as a more objective one. I think Pagden was heading in that direction in his cautious praise of Lery's writings.
ReplyDeleteI have to second everyone else in saying you did a great job of discussing attachment as discussed by Pagden. It made me wonder whether one could have this principle of attachment without, in a way, giving up a piece of one's own home culture. Lery certainly believed this, Spaniards accused Las Casas of treason . . . what about explorers?
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