he Mourning Wars

Figure 5.6 Algonquian couple, 18th century (artistunknown).AboriginalpeoplesfromtheMi’kmaqthroughtheGaspéIroquoistotheLaurentianIroquoiswereeagertotradewithCartierwhenhearrived.

Smallpox in Canada

AftertheTreatyofUtrecht,

he Seigneurial System

Champlain,nowinhislate50s,wasnamedgovernorofNewFrance.

asCanadiens.UntiltheConquestthereare,technicallyspeaking,noCanadians(withan“a”insteadofan“e”).Thereaftertherearebothkinds.Forthepurposesofconsistencyandrespectforhistoricaldistinctions,“Canadiens”isusedinthistexttodescribethepeopleoftheSt.LawrenceValleywhoseancestryisFrench;“Canadians”willbeusedlaterinthetexttoidentifypeoplelivinginUpperCanada(a.k.aCanadaWest,Ontario) and those anglophones in Montreal after the Conquest.Establishing CanadaAfterspendingsometimeinAcadia,ChamplainbegantheprocessofestablishingaforwardpostatQuebecin1609.Withacomplementofbarely50men,ChamplainwasabletoachievemuchtosustaintheFrenchpresence.Afortifiedsettlement—ahabitation—wasconstructedandanallianceestablishedamongtheAlgonquin,theWendat(Huron),andtheFrench

Settlementsimplywasn’tnecessary

Acadia and French Newfoundland

InthemeantimeAcadiahadtodealwithitsvulnerabilityissues.

A Difficult Start

hatdistinguishesAcadiaasanadministrativeunitisthatsomuchofitwaswater:theGulfofSt.Lawrence,theBayofFundy,theGulfofMaine,CabotStrait,andalongstretchoftheAtlanticOcean.TheGulfofSt.Lawrenceisroughlycircularandmanyofthekeysettlementswerealongitsedge.

butaviablepresencewasonlyestablishedinJuly1605,whenPort-RoyalwasfoundedontheBayofFundyinwhatisnowNovaScotia.Port-RoyalwastobecomethehubofaFrenchcolonialterritoryinwhat16thcenturyEuropeanmapsdescribedas“Arcadia.”

andthearrivalofFrenchdelegationsdeterminedtobuildasustainedpresence.Notsurprisinglytheywoulddosofirstinthelandsclosestto Europe and near the riches of the Grand Banks fisheries. This territory would become known asAcadia

Asweshallseeinsubsequentchapters,theEnglishreliedonemigrationto(re)populatetheterritoriestheyclaimed.FrancewasreluctanttodothesameanditlackedtheresourcesandthewilltobuildmuchmorethanareplacementsocietyalongtheSt.LawrenceandafewoutpostsinAcadiaandLouisiana.

Relativelypoor,oftenpummelledbywars,andrivenbyreligiousdifferences,westernEuropewasbothhighlymotivatedbytheprospectofpotentialrichesintheAmericasand,atthesametime,accustomedto competing bitterly with rivals from other polities.

Cartier’srelationshipwiththeSt.LawrenceIroquois,andespeciallywithDonnacona,wasnotespeciallycivil

French Expeditions

nglandandFrancedescendedintotheHundredYears’War(1337-1453)overthequestionofwhowouldsucceedtothethroneofFrance.Thelengthyconflicthadasignificantpoliticalimpactforbothsides

ApartfromthetracesleftbehindatL’AnseauxMeadowsandthepossibilitythatsomegeneticmaterialmighthavefounditswayintotheAboriginalcommunitiesofthe region, the Viking legacy evaporated with their departure. Vinland was a dead end

he First Voyageurs: the Vikings and Others

Morethan500identifiablegroupsemergedinNorthAmericaduringthepre-contactera(thatis,from1000to1492CE).Althoughtremendouslydiverse,thegroupswithineachregionofthecontinentsharedmanycommonfeatures,includingsubsistencestrategies,kinshiprelations,politicalstructure,andelementsofmaterialculture.AndalthoughtherewerecommoneconomicandculturalfeaturesacrossNorthAmericaandsomethatweresharedinMeso-AmericaandSouthAmericaaswell,thisdoesnotinanywayindicateasinglemonolithicAboriginalculture.InthenorthernhalfofNorthAmericaalonethenumberoftonguesspoken,artistictechniquesperfected,songsanddancestyles,architectural and engineering experiments, and systems of government can barely be calculate

Archive of Place

2.3 The Aboriginal Americas

ls this "an

t is to say, when a student can write intel ligibly and intelligently about a book the student has not

p, prototypical bullshit has to do with a purposeful misrepre sentation of self, has the quality of gamesmanship, and-contrary to what Frankfurt says-is at least potent

, there are prototypical and nonprototypical instances of bullshit. So in defining bullshit, one task at hand is not to say what is bullshit and what is not but to distinguish what is prototypical bullshit from

: "He's a total fraud-a complete bullshitter." Barry is just as dead-on in his parody of sociologists, who "spend most of their time translat ing simple, obvious observations into scientific-sound

2-3). This article proposes to take up where Frank furt left off and to address the question of bullshit in a way that is especially pertinent to academics, even more pertinent to people in the humanities and social sciences, and most pertinent of all to those who specialize in rhetoric and writing.

n brazen

g espe

ey

instance, "chicken shit" connotes unmanliness, weakness, and pettiness. InJohnson's eyes, if Nixon had been a bullshitter, he would have been a far better ma

Son, you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad" (Morgan 109).

he l

th

In that sense, bullshit is disconnected from the truth in a way that lying never is.

bullshit is "one of the most salient features of our c

question

Acade

orks

o, we remain true to our discipline and to ourselves

s incumbent on us, the writing teachers, to be ever aware of the grades within the category and to move within and around those benign forms that are inescapable and even helpful, while resisting the gravitational pull of the prototypical. In doing

But the cat

selves-a productive

er selves. We must acknowl edge that benign bullshit is inevitable when people are attempting to write well. But the

T

ankfu

At

self. Just as bullshit is a greater threat to the truth than a lie, this docile form of bullshit is a greater threat to student writing than the cynical work of the bu

5). Combine disregard for the truth with the inevitable classroom pre tense that the writer truly cares about his or her academic development, and an insidious variety of bullshit is f

ger problem. This bullshit subverts academic writing through competent but insincere coopera tion

Anoth

t. No one, not even the "bullster," would contend that bullshit can really substitute for well-informed and though

Ye

fines bull as "relevancies, how ever relevant, without d

y in his essay "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts." In the delicate language of 1963, Perry re

Ye

n "genre kno

Composition

bullshit, Marxist-feminist bullshit, deconstructionist bullshit, statistical bullshit, and the list goes on-and on. These epithets signify a final judgment of unintelligibility or bad faith leveled at the practitioners of one theory or discipline by practitioners of another, who not only disagree with the other theory or discipline but who, in some ulti mate way, deny that it yields knowledge and assert that the whole discipline or theory qualifies as a prototypical case

thers. While the academy constitutes a kind of specialized group, it is a group with subgroups and subspecialties organized according to a myriad of criteria: disciplines, historical periods, theoretical frameworks, e

Moreove

g may

eir experiments, participants in the United States consistently saw Mexico as more similar to the United States than the United States to Mexico. O

Yet e

of bullshit-bullshit on the edge of the cat egory.

of knowledge. Someone who can create this tone may indeed be playing the game of academic publica tion

Consid

criptor. That turns successful academic writing into a complex game indeed-an art or craft in which arguments are forwarded, but more than just argumentative imperatives must

lication as "entering

least to some degree, the reward system encourages the academic writer to misrepresent him- or herself by emphasizing if not exag gerating the influence of what he or she has written. Yet

ademic knows that such rewards are distributed on the basis of reputation. Su

it is nonprototypical bullshit-in at least these ways: Aca

In o

ather, they worry that even good academic writing, especially in the humanities and social sciences, is something like bullshit

e academic prototype is not characterized by outrageousness but rather by earnestness (indeed, by earnest tedium). Simi

However,

ities. Such writing is seen as gamesmanship in a game that is r

Thes

gleefully in

ch as "The Odor of Male Solitude," "Margaret Cavendish as Giant Cucumber," "Obviating the State by Statin

nities. Among those papers none suffers so much opprobrium as the ones delivered at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Associ

Fo

ely obscure, what they re ally mean is that the writing does not appropriately a

B

ords: The absence of agents in sentences and a corresponding abundance of abstract nominalizations characteristic of stylis tic opaqueness figure prominently in Williams and Lanham's

ites, "Generations of students have struggled with dense writing, many thinking they were not smart enough to grasp the writer's deep idea

Josep

non-academics call academic writing bullshit, they mean that it uses jargon, words whose meanings are so abstract and vague as to seem unre lated to anyone's exper

When

han others. Because of that, we have to investigate not whether academic writing is considered to be bullshit but whether or not prototypical academic writing is considered to be proto typical bullshit-and in whose esti

Fo

everywhere. But this essay is particularly concerned with the way bullshit is perceived and the way it operates in aca

ot

ites, "[P]articular politeness conventions embody, and their use implicitly acknowledges, particular social and po

Of

auda

ur call is important to us" has the usual qualities of self-misrepresentation (if

As

al bullshit is what a bullshitter tr

at we are more tolerant of bull

Prototypi

s the statement "I feel like a dog that has been

One

t out, the prototypical case of lie includes not just actual falsehoods but also statements made when there is an insufficient basis for knowing the truth.

To sum

So "

dic quality of bullshit is gender specific-i

line superiority. This etho

The

sbelief. Part of the game is to speak so convincingly that the auditors believe the bullshit and thus not only enhance the speaker's reputation as a fisherman or ladies' man, but also enhance his reputation as a skilled bulls

The former usually concerns the one that got away; the latter the one that didn't. This bullshit aims to enhance the speaker's reputation as a sports man or a lover and in the process entertain the

The

mple: the client knows that the sales representa tive has his own agenda, that the salesman may be exaggerating the product's advantages and minimizing its sho

comings, but the client should expect nothing el

Bullshi

se. The complexities described above indicate one of the serious limitations of Frankfurt's definition; namely, bullshit may be a defining aspect of rhetorical situation

tatives. Their goal is to sell the product, yet they are required to present themselves as benefactors of their potential cus tomers, as persons with only the good of the cli

Firs

hol

Onc

n terms: Is it deceptive to represent oneself as one actually aspires to be; to create an ethos one doesn't have yet but wants to have? Is such representation really misrepr

short, acting virtuous would lead them to

ssess. Furthermore, the misrepresentation aims to dece

ter attempts to mis represe

lthoug

Likewis

ry i

hat says (1) that category members do not necessarily share a single set of distinguishing features and may exhibit features to greater or lesser degrees and (2) that some category members are more typical-that is, cognitively salien

an others. In prototypical instances of lie, someone makes a false statement that he or she believes to be false for the purpose of deceiving anoth

A

eatures but rather because they share in varying degrees some of the features typical

ponds, "You don't know what a dog that's been run over feels like." From that, Frankfurt draws the lesson that Wittgenstein

Frankfu

nds accused. What might help, though, would be to grapple with the meaning of bullshit differ ently than Frankfur

A

ow

. Academic bullshit may bear no relationship to what is true or false, correct or incorrect. But no one is offended by academic irrelev

The

is a greater enemy of truth than lies are (6

n

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Produ

a Fourth of July speaker may commit an act of bullshitting by exag geratedly extolling the virtues of America

Frankfu

this

Som

cademic texts. Third, one major consequence of studying disciplinary writing has been the aban donment of the abstract ideal once called "g

, the writing style of composition research risks being called bullshit because it often has the timbre of abstruse literary criti cism or of social science. Second, composition has taken up disciplinary writ ing as an important area of study and thus implicitly

e" (1). Rather, we have to confront the fact that our culture often singles out academe as the mother lode of bullshit.

Academics

c

If

, we are if anything more conflicted than the public

In

at all of us are familiar with

Frankfu

2-3). This article proposes to take up where Frank furt left off and to address the question of bullshit in a way that is especially pertinent to academics, even more pertinent to people in the humanities and social sciences, and most pertinent of all to those who specialize in rhetoric and writing

I n 2

elves

well.

r th

than a lie:

eds of

ts them

some

ut all o

proto

egory.

-specific

is entir

it.

gly

e bullshi

g the jud

Lanham's

or fish

hose est

difference does

somethi

n pl

quality

st of

he t

perspective

man.

n shit."

shit.

rankf

al situa

tion of misrepr

acteris

eral cate

ical

can

fur

irrelev

e (6

s. (5