In a society in which personal relations are characterized by frag- mentation while the trend of history is toward reorganization into a new, oppressive totality in which ideological controls may be decisive, quotation's immanent self- consciousness about the avenues of ideological legitimation-those of the State and its dominating class and culture-or, more weakly, about routes of commercial utterance, can accomplish the simple but incessantly necessary act of making the normal strange, the invisible an object of scrutiny, the trivial a measure of social life.

he credibility of the image as the explicit trace of the comprehensible in the living world has been whittled away for both "left" and "right" reasons.

the well-entrenched paradigm in which a documen- tary image has two moments: ( 1) the "immediate;' instrumental one, in which an image is caught or created out of the stream of the present and held up as testimony, as evidence in the most legalistic of senses, arguing for or against a social practice and its ideological- theoretical supports, and (2) the conventional "aesthetic-historical" moment, less defina- ble in its boundaries, in which the viewer's argumentativeness cedes to the organismic pleasure afforded by the aesthetic "rightness" or well-formedness (not necessarily fonnal) of the image.

s. Documentary testifies, finally, to the bravery or (dare we name it?) the manipulativeness and savvy of the photographer, who entered a situation of physical danger, social restrictedness, human decay, or combinations of these and saved us the trouble.

In the liberal documentary, poverty and oppression: are almost invariably equated with misfortunes caused by natural disasters: casuality is vague, blame is not assigned, fate cannot be overcome. Liberal documentary blames neither the victims nor their willful oppressors-unless they happen to be under the influence of our own global enemy, World Communism.

Luckily, Cesar Chavez was not watching television but rather, throughout that era, was patiently organizing farm workers to fight for themselves.

Documentary photography 1 has come to represent the social conscience of liberal sensibility presented in visual imagery

When this visual genre served as a frame of reference, the dwellings depicted in portraits of Native families, which were ideally transitory structures such as teepees and wigwams, indicated a lower stage of development along the evolutionary line of progress.

lthough Smith specifically mentions his goal to photograph individuals, this family portrait is within the mandate for the anthropo- metric photography of the day.

Perhaps because “arm-chair anthropologists” often depended upon the vicari- ous experience of viewing photographs, they encouraged amateur field photo- graphers to capture as much scientifically serviceable data on film as possible.

As was the case with the relationship between anthropometric studio photography and painted portraits, nineteenth-century viewers “saw” ethnographic field photographs within the context of established Western painting traditions.

Then too, as the sites of American world’s fairs moved westward with the advance of the colonial fron- tier [Baldwin, in Rydell 1984: 105], anthropologists and entrepreneurs alike favored tribes from the Plains, the Southwest and the Northwest Pacific Coast, whose members they imagined were “‘pure’’ savages.

World’s fairs presented anthropologists with unparalleled opportunities to col- lect large amounts and varieties of anthropometric data within the safety of an environment that they created and controlled. A

The anthropology display also included an anthropometry laboratory that Boas used to gather anthropometric data on a large number of individuals [Figure 5]. According to Boas’ published results of the men whom he and his assistants measured, there were 3018 full-bloods, 594 mixed-bloods and 217 whites [Jenks 1916: 2].

This shift of interest from ethnology to physical anthropology also entailed a shift in aesthetic preferences. In contrast to the earlier reliance on the visual genre of painted portraiture, the majority of anthropometric images were taken in partial conformity with the visual genre used for specimens of the hard sciences.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, this view of the historical role of photography underlay the production of government-sponsored Indian portraits and influenced this visual genre in the direction of group sittings.

To Western viewers, who believed that the facial expression revealed the inner qualities of the subject, the calm and often pensive expressions of the chiefs revealed their “noble” and intelligent characteristics [Linkman 1993: 35].

Through a case study of anthropometric photographs of the Chippewa, I dem- onstrate, on the one hand, that ethnographic photographers chose and manipu- lated visual genres to bolster the scientific authority of their images and thereby the validity of their scientific claims, and on the other hand, that visual allegories influenced both anthropologists’ and other viewers’ perceptions of photographic images to such a degree that they did not appear “real” and “true” unless they conformed to the dominant master narrative.

Unfortunately I have not discovered a way of deranging the archive so that it might recallthe content of a girl’s life or reveal a truer picture, nor have I succeeded in prying open thedead book, which sealed her status as commodity.

By playing with and rearranging the basic elements of the story, by re-presenting thesequence of events in divergent stories and from contested points of view, I have attemptedto jeopardize the status of the event, to displace the received or authorized account, and toimagine what might have happened or might have been said or might have been done.

In a free state, it would have been possible for the girls to attend to the death of a friendand shed tears for the loss, but a slave ship made no allowance for grief and when detectedthe instruments of torture were employed to eradicate it.

I decided not to write about Venus for reasons different from those I attributed to him.Instead I feared what I might invent, and it would have been a romance.

What hasbeen said and what can be said about Venus take for granted the traffic between fact, fantasy,desire, and violence.

There is not one extant autobiographical narrative of a femalecaptive who survived the Middle Passage.

I want to tell a story about two girls capable of retrieving what remainsdormant—the purchase or claim of their lives on the present—without committing furtherviolence in my own act of narration

We only know whatcan be extrapolated from an analysis of the ledger or borrowed from the world of her captorsand masters and applied to her

Andwe can account for this by con! nect! ing the dots: both African slaves and Cir! cass! ian slaves were sub! jectto sex! ual exploita! tion, even if the lat! ter were sup! pos! edly res! cued from that fate, and this is the point ofcon!tact that played so pow! er! fully on white Amer! i!cans’ imag!i!na!tion:

The idea of a woman being at the sex! ual mercy of her owner was not for! eign to the imag! i!na!tion of thewhite pub! lic at the time in the United States, but Pow! ers’ statue of a naked white woman alluded onlyindi! rectly (and per! haps for that rea! son in the only way then pub! licly pos! si! ble) to the fate of manyenslaved Black women

And so Bar! num invented the “Cir! cass! ian Lady,” or some!times the “Cir! cass! ian Beauty,” as a sideshowper! former of a par! tic! u! lar kind. The type included a num! ber of key fea! tures: the woman must be pretty,or even beau! ti! ful, by Vic! to! rian stan!dards; she would wear exotic cloth! ing, gen! er! ally more reveal! ingthan that worn by Euro! pean and Amer!i!can woman of that era; she might dis! play strik! ing jew! elry andother orna!ments, such as strings of pearls or richly embroi! dered clothes. And the most telling fea! tureof all: the big hair.

The leg! end of the white “Cir! cass! ian Beauty” being sold into sex! ual slav!ery had taken on such a life ofits own that in the early 1860s P. T. Bar! num, the great Amer! i!can show! man and pro! moter of hokum,con!ceived the idea of buy! ing a Cir! cass! ian woman out of cap! tiv!ity in Turkey to exhibit in his wildly suc! -cess! ful Amer!i!can Museum in New York City.

Already in his 1775 text, Blu! men!bach specif! i!cally iden! ti! fied the Cir! cass! ian women amongthe peo! ples of the Cau! ca! sus as the sin! gle most beau! ti! ful rep! re! sen! ta! tives of this pure and pri! mor!dial“Cau!casian” type: “Take, of all who bear the name of man, a man and a woman most widely dif! fer! entfrom each other; let the one be a most beau! ti! ful Cir! cass! ian woman and the other an African born inGuinea, as black and ugly as pos! si! ble”

In 1775, the Ger! man nat!u! ral!ist Johann Friedrich Blu! men!bach (1752–1840)pub! lished On the Nat!ural Vari! ety of Mankind, a work that became one of the most influ! en! tial texts inthe emerg! ing Euro! pean sci! ence of race.

Cir! cas!sians, a peo! ple from the Cau! ca!sus region in whatis now mod! ern Russia

What I know now is that the woman depicted here fits the model of a kind ofper! formed per! son! al! ity dubbed the “Cir! cass! ian Lady” or the “Cir! cass! ian Beauty” in mid-19th cen! turyAmer!ica. What I learned about what is essen! tially a cir! cus iden! tity I find fas! ci! nat! ing because of what ittells us about how 19th cen! tury Amer! i!cans treated race, even the white race, as a spec! ta! cle, as a per!-formed iden! tity that might not be what it seemed.

Why,forinstance,is the "wildernessexperience"so oftenconceivedas a formofrecreationbest enjoyedby those whoseclassprivilegesgive them the time and re-sourcesto leavetheirjobsbehindand"getawayfromit all"?Whydoesthe protectionof wildernessso oftenseemto pit urbanrecreationistsagainstruralpeoplewhoactu-allyearntheirlivingfromthe land(exceptingthosewhosell goodsandservicesto-thetouriststhemselves

To theextentthatwildernesshasservedas an importantvehicleforarticulatingdeepmoralvaluesregardingourobligationsandresponsibilitiesto the nonhumanworld,I wouldnot wantto jettisonthe contributionsit has madeto our culture'swaysof thinkingaboutnatur

This, then, is the central paradox:wildernessembodies a dualistic vision in whichthe human is entirely outside the natural.If we allow ourselvesto believe that nature,to be true, must also be wild, then our verypresence in nature representsits fall.

. Thus, in the myth of the vanishing frontier lay the seeds of wildernesspreservationin the United States, for if wild land had been so crucial in the makingof the nation, then surely one must save its last remnantsas monuments to the Ameri-can past-and as an insurance policy to protect its future.

The sublime wildernesshad ceased to bea place of satanic temptation and become instead a sacredtemple, much as it contin-ues to be for those who love it today.

Yet all three men areparticipatingin the same cultural traditionand contributing to the same myth: themountain as cathedral

The sources of this ratherastonishingtransformationwere many, but for the pur-poses of this essay they can be gathered under two broad headings:the sublime andthe frontier

ay.To be a wildernessthen wasto be "de-serted,""savage,""desolate,""barren"-in short, a "waste,"the word's nearest syn-onym. Its connotations were anything but positive, and the emotion one was mostlikely to feel in its presence was "bewilderment"or terror.

In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but,interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.

Americans! your republican politics, notless than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, yoursuperior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (asembodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate theenslavement of three millions of your countrymen.

By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its mosthorrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York hasbecome as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remainsno longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power isco-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Where these go, may also gothe merciless slave-hunter.

Tell me citizens,WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glanceat the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentleshower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nationmust be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must bestartled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must beproclaimed and denounced.

I will, in the nameof humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitutionand the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, withall the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shameof America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command;and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, orwho is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and jus

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I,or those I represent, to do with your national independence?

The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yetI cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration.

I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of yournation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it.

This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home,did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints,burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, fromwhich I escaped, is considerable—and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to theformer, are by no means slight

Intheheated contextofthisdebate,advocatesonbothsidesarequestioningfactualstatements,theaccuracyofwhichmatteredtofewhalfacenturyago.“Facts,”bothtrivialorprominentinrelativeisolation,arequestionedorheraldedbyeachcamp.

Thatsuchrulesarenotthesameinalltimesandallplaceshasledmanyscholarstosuggestthatsomesocieties(non-Western,ofcourse)donot differentiatebetweenfictionandhistory.

Withinthatviewpoint,historybecomesoneamongmanytypesofnarrativeswithnoparticularorceeexceptforitspretenseoftruth.?

WhatIhopetodoistoshowhowmuchroomthereistolookattheproductionofhistoryoutsideofthedichotomiesthatthesepositions suggest andreproduce.

WiththebattlecryofSan Jacinto,Houston’smenreversedformorethanacenturythevictory SantaAnnathoughthehadgainedinSanAntonio.

Now,three yearsafterSantaAnnafirstgainedpowerinindependentMexico,afewEnglish-speakingsquatters occu-piedtheplace,refusingtosurrendertohissuperiorforce.LuckilyforSantaAnna,theSquatters wereoutnumbered—atmost189potentialfighters—andthestructureitselfwasweak.Thecon-questwouldbe easy,orsothoughtSantaAnna.

These sights carry a double message. They show a suffering that is outra- geous, unjust, and should be repaired. They confirm that this is the sort of thing which happens in that place. The ubiquity of those photographs, and those horrors, cannot help but nourish belief in the inevitability of tragedy in the benighted or backward—that is, poor—parts of the world.

And television news, with its much larger audience and there- fore greater responsiveness to pressures from advertisers, operates under even stricter, for the most part self-policed constraints on what is “proper” to air.

In the era of tele-controlled warfare against innumer- able enemies of American power, policies about what is to be seen and not seen by the public are still being worked out.

The terms for allowing the use of cameras at the front for nonmilitary purposes have become much stricter as war has become an activity prosecuted with increasingly exact optical devices for tracking the enemy.

Taken by an unknown Boer photographer ten days after the British defeat, which had cost the lives of thirteen hundred of their soldiers, it gives an intrusive view down a long shallow trench packed with unburied bodies. What is particularly aggressive about the image is the absence of a landscape.

And the viewer is in the same position as the lackey behind the camera; the experience is sickening.

Its theological and legal un-derpinnings were already present, though not yet fully codified.Identifying the DoCD's origins is challenging—some scholarstrace it back to Constantine's Christian empire, as Cornel Westsuggests, while others locate its roots in the broader expansionof Christendom, as outlined in Basic Call to Consciousness(West 2008; Barreiro et al. 2005).

These demarcationlines reflect the Treaty of Tordesillas (2018), which carved up theworld between Portugal and the Crown of Castile and Aragon(Spain), thus marking the domains for the eurochristian imag-ined right of possession and domination

European Monarchs, havingdepleted their coffers during the Crusades, shifted their colonialfocus to the Canary Islands (ca. 1436), where they testedconquest strategies: slaughtering or forcibly converting Indige-nous peoples, breaking promises of protection, and usingChristianization as a pretext for enslavement (Miller 2019;Miller et al. 2010).

Columbus' arrivalis often framed as the dawn of exploration, but in reality, itmarked the beginning of genocide, justified in the name of God.

he Doctrine of Discovery, or more accurately, the Doctrineof Christian Discovery (DoCD), has long served as a ligamentconnecting Christianity and colonization, not just in theAmericas but across Africa, Oceania, and beyond. Rooted in a15th‐century theological and legal framework, it justifiedenslavement, exploitation, and extraction (Newcomb 2008;Wolfchild 2015).

Our gift was time and attention and care and red-stained fingers.Heart berries, indeed.

The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store,red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for thesheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting ma-chine. I hope so. But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as acommodity, as private property. There is no bond beyond the politelyexchanged “thank yous” with the clerk. I have paid for them and ourreciprocity ended the minute I handed her the money. The exchangeends once parity has been established, an equal exchange.

From the viewpoint of a private property economy, the “gift” isdeemed to be “free” because we obtain it free of charge, at no cost. Butin the gift economy, gifts are not free. The essence of the gift is that itcreates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at itsroot, reciprocity. In Western thinking, private land is understood to bea “bundle of rights,” whereas in a gift economy property has a “bundleof responsibilities” attached.

Her final gifts, our most revered plants, grew from her body.The strawberry arose from her heart. In Potawatomi, the strawberry isode min, the heart berry. We recognize them as the leaders of the ber-ries, the first to bear fruit.

you don’t feel the warm feathers cool in your hand and know that a lifehas been given for yours, when there is no gratitude in return—thatfood may not satisfy. It may leave the spirit hungry while the belly isfull. Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam traywrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance atlife was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.

1 his is parnllel to fhc rccog·nition that no theory ofc:0111 ..l •· d. . ' • pos1t10n by itselfc,1 s to the producuon of music:, or of ,irt.