Premium
No past, no present: A critical‐Nayaka perspective on cultural remembering
Author(s) -
BirdDavid Nurit
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2004.31.3.406
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , trance , ethnography , sociology , epistemology , anthropology , aesthetics , history , philosophy , art , visual arts
By means of an ethnographic analysis of Nayaka life stories and trance invocations, I revisit the common wisdom that cultures classed as “immediate‐return hunter‐gatherers” show little interest in the past. I argue that Nayaka are not interested in the past in the common Eurocentric understanding thereof. They are interested, however, in a past filtered through their own sensibilities. Their specific case supports a broader critique of studying ways of remembering the past in terms of a Eurocentric past–present distinction.