Pagden Response – Helen Higuera – Week 3

I have to admit that I had to look up the term commensurable, which apparently means “having a common measure,” or having a common unit of measure.

In the context of Pagden, “Cultural commensurability” would a common mental framework, or a set of terms and categories, that apply to unrelated cultures. The idea of searching for cultural commensurability perhaps implies an unfamiliar observer of a culture trying to find a “common denominator” between his own worldview or set of cultural standards and the observed culture. Pagden describes how Europeans protected themselves from “the Shock of the New” by carrying around with them at all times “a cluster of notions, categories, superstitions” (5). This is reminiscent of Hodgen’s discussion of European travel writers in some ways, but Pagden seems more sympathetic towards the impulse to find, or perhaps impose, commonality between the known and the unknown.

He calls the process of relating the known to the unknown “attachment,” and he admits that this process could easily lead to “assimilating” the unknown into the known (24). In other words, not just finding an analogous relationship but deciding that the unknown belongs to a known category (such as Amazons, etc) and not thinking any further. However, I agree with Mackenzie that Pagden describes this as primarily a means of seeking understanding and common ground using familiar ideas. I also agree that the idea that attachment leads to possession was Pagden’s most interesting point. In particular, the idea that the impulse to divide, demarcate and categorize is ultimately an impulse to possess, though I think that he somewhat conflated literal ownership with a sort of mental ownership. Namely, that categorizing, and specifically naming, places and peoples in the New World allowed Europeans to situate the unknown within their own intellectual framework for thinking about the world – not just to feel that they owned the land and the people in the literal sense, though perhaps that too. Pagden compares names to paper money in that they represent “the unique capacity of the human to carry with him what he is able to possess” (27). Paper money represents literal possession whereas names come packaged with a set of ideas and associations and allowed Europeans not only to conceptualize the unknown but also to discuss and write about it.

In the process of naming and possessing, the European gaze was essential. As Pagden states of Las Casas, his gaze, the gaze of the European, was “the only one which could confer existence on the world.” Those who had the privilege of naming the lands and peoples of the Americas were those saw them, and the act of naming in turn gave them authority and possession. Thus, authenticity became extremely important for Las Casas,Oviedo, and others who wrote about the New World. Pagden explains this also in the context of the European practice of exigesis, or always situating new works within a canon of established ancient and sacred writers. However, Las Casas and Oviedo were writing about completely new experiences for Europeans. Thus, they had to cultivate their own authoritative voice, essentially, to become a St. Jerome or St. Augustine, as Pagden puts it. These authors approached this by trying to establish eyewitness authority for themselves or their sources, and, conversely, trying to cast doubt on the first hand nature of others’ accounts.