Perceptions of European Literacy in Early Contact Situations

Wogan, Peter

doi:10.2307/481832

Cited by 17 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The Omushkego integration of written media, notably syllabics, into the new movement might be read as enthusiasm for a powerful and magical novelty, in line with James Axtell's (1988) thesis about the strong impact of the Jesuits' introduction of the printed word among the Native people of the northeast. But Axtell may have overstated the novelty of literacy, according to Peter Wogan (1994). Building partly on Wogan's work, Germaine Warkentin has explored these issues further and finds that Native North Americans have been "too easily classified as 'oral' cultures" (1999,4).…”

Section: Books Writing and Oral Literacymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations

Brown¹

2017

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This collection of essays became a book thanks to the warm support and encouragement afforded to me by Athabasca University Press, and particularly by Pamela MacFarland Holway, senior editor, and Megan Hall, acting director of the press. Their interest in the project was manifest in the assistance they rendered with converting my older texts into digital form through optical character recognition treatment, since several articles predated the computer age or were in outdated formats. Their consistent help, good advice, and enthusiasm have been deeply appreciated throughout the project. I am grateful also to the publishers and editors who responded promptly and cordially with permission to reprint those articles for which they held copyright; publication credits and copyright information appear at the end of this volume. My warm thanks also to Joyce Hildebrand, a most meticulous copy editor; to Weldon Hiebert, who produced the maps of Rupert's Land and of places mentioned in the text; and to Renée Fossett, who provided the comprehensive index for the book.The articles gathered here came into being with the help and support of professors, friends, colleagues, and, in many cases, peer reviewers, across the decades from the 1960s onward. Several are cited and thanked in the introduction or in specific chapters, and I will not try to name them all here. Some of them, however, have contributed in one way or another to more than one chapter and to my work over a period of years. Patricia McCormack had important roles in helping chapters 3, 4, and 5 see the light of day. Chapters 4 and 5 first appeared in 1976 in the Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology, a small journal that Pat edited as a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Alberta. As a graduate student myself at the time, I was happy to bring out two of my first fur trade writings in that venue, while completing my dissertation, which found publication four years later . Then in 1988, as co-organizer of the Fort Chipewyan and Fort Vermilion Bicentennial Conference, she invited me to be a plenary speaker-an opportunity that led

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Section: Books Writing and Oral Literacymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations

Brown¹

2017

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“…It has been claimed that writing is often perceived with awe in early contact situations because of its ability to communicate across spatial and temporal distances—a feat often said to be equated with “magical powers,” analogous to the ability to predict the future or to communicate with spirits (Wogan ). The ability to read and write was awe‐inspiring to the Native Americans, for example, “largely because it duplicated a spiritual feat that only the greatest shamans could perform, namely, that of reading the mind of a person at a distance and thereby, in an oral context, foretelling the future” (Axtell 1988:93, cited in Wogan :412) . However, while the ability of writing to communicate across distance almost certainly accounts for part of its allure and initial mystery, more important is its ability to displace or delegate voice.…”

Section: The Authority Of Displaced Voicementioning

confidence: 99%

Documents as Displaced Voice: Writing among Amazonian Urarina

Walker

2016

J Latin Amer Carib Anth

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R e s u m e n Aunque los niveles de alfabetización sean aún bajos en la Amazonía, los Urarina del Perú emplean documentos con frecuencia y entusiasmo. Este artículo explora el uso y apropiación de documentos escritos en relación a ideologías locales del lenguaje y del poder, focalizándose en sus cualidades performativas, es decir, en lo que los documentos 'hacen' . A pesar de que el uso de documentos escritos cumple un rol importante conectando la población al Estado peruano y su burocratizada cultura política, aquí se argumenta que para los Urarina, los documentos son especialmente valorizados por su capacidad de extender influencia personal y poder persuasivo gracias a tres capacidades/tendencias que se sobreponen. Los documentos desplazan o delegan la voz separándola de la agencia, construyendo, por tanto, una imagen de autoridad distante o trascendente. Asimismo,éstos transforman y transfieren a través de diversas modalidades semióticas, sugiriendo la mediación de relaciones con mundos no-fenomenales. Porúltimo, los documentos fijan el discurso, evocando permanencia en un ambiente social fluido. [Amazonia, burocracia, documentos, alfabetismo, oralidad, escritura] A b s t r a c tDespite apparently low levels of literacy, Urarina people of Peruvian Amazonia engage enthusiastically with written documents. Focusing on their performative qualities, or what documents "do," this article explores their use and appropriation in relation to local ideologies of language and power. While serving an important role in linking people to the Peruvian state and its highly bureaucratic political culture, it is argued that documents are especially valued, and deemed capable of extending personal influence and persuasive power, because of three overlapping capacities or tendencies. They displace or delegate voice and detach it from agency, thus constructing an image of a distant or even transcendental authority; they transduce across semiotic modalities, suggesting the mediation of relations with nonphenomenal worlds; and they fix discourse, hinting 414J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y

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“…Try teaching these claims to undergraduates and you will discover how deeply a literate bias is part of our academic common sense.' Other such cases -of theories about literacy that persist in Hydra-like fashion, despite strong criticisminclude Todorov (1984) on Cortés' literate mentality, Hirsch (1987) on cultural-educational standardization, early accounts of awe at western literacy (see Wogan, 1994), and the self-renewing, McLuhanesque theories about social changes and the mass media, especially, most recently, the Internet. This is not to say that IC is nothing more than a recapitulation of Goody, Ong, or anyone else, but the point is to show how, even in the recent past, academic communities have been overly quick to embrace theories about print and literacy -many with similar distinctions in terms of memory, cognition and so on -that turned out to have serious shortcomings, and to suggest that caution is therefore advised in this case, as well.…”

Section: Western Language Ideologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagined Communities reconsidered

Wogan

2001

Anthropological Theory

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This article critically evaluates Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1991), arguing that the book's popularity partly derives from its resonance with widespread, deep-seated western notions of language, especially oppositions between print and orality in terms of their relationship to cognition, emotion, history, and nationalism. The article gives reason to reconsider reactions to Anderson's book and argues for a more sustained focus on the relationship between nationalism and linguistic ideologies.

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Perceptions of European Literacy in Early Contact Situations

Cited by 17 publications

References 21 publications

An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations

An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations

Documents as Displaced Voice: Writing among Amazonian Urarina

Imagined Communities reconsidered

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