Open AccessCaptive Minds: New Worlds and Old Metaphors
Author(s) -
Laura Castor
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
nordlit
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1503-2086
pISSN - 0809-1668
DOI - 10.7557/13.2153
Subject(s) - contextualization , mainstream , frontier , clarity , identity (music) , politics , sociology , history , aesthetics , anthropology , gender studies , political science , art , law , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , biochemistry , chemistry , interpretation (philosophy)
The following essay discusses the politics of naming Native Americans at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time of the Wounded Knee massacre and the official "close" of the American geographical frontier, American mainstream identity had lost its earlier clarity. The attention to historical contextualization in particular suggests some of the ways in which the process of naming relates to the larger contested practice of shaping American national and cultural identities