scholarly journals ‘A Likeness made From First Hand Witness’?: The Discursive Position of a Purported Crazy Horse Photograph

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Grace Campbell Russell

<p>This dissertation is concerned with the ways in which photographs are discursively deployed and used in the writing of history. More specifically, it will consider how photos, and the historical, scientific, ethnographic and romantic discourses surrounding them, are used to erase or ‘make safe’ the traces of the radical resistances of dominated groups within colonial frameworks. The case explored here concerns the tintype photograph claimed as being of the Lakota chief and warrior Crazy Horse (c.1840-1877). Exhibited by the Custer Battlefield Museum in Montana, the claim that this photograph is of Crazy Horse is controversial. It is generally thought that no visual likeness of Crazy Horse exists; and his refusal to be photographed can be read as a practice of opposition to his assimilation into colonial narratives and accounts of American frontier history. In claiming the photo to be of Crazy Horse, the history of his resistance is rewritten and repositioned. This changes the way he becomes knowable and understandable within the contexts of (neo)colonial discourses and narratives, in which Native Americans are often relegated to the past, and appear either as casualties of the policies of Manifest Destiny, or as a romantic other which has been symbolically integrated into American mythic culture. This dissertation focuses on how the claim that this photograph is of Crazy Horse is made, and how the various associated cultural fields (photography, historiography, museology) are affected by, and play into, such a claim. This involves identifying the discursive processes and disciplinary mechanisms through which meaning is produced in relation to a particular cultural object. It considers the supposed photograph of Crazy Horse as an example of how history assigns significance to objects “in terms of the possibilities they generate for producing or transforming reality” (de Certeau, 1986:202), rather than as representations or reflections of reality.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Grace Campbell Russell

<p>This dissertation is concerned with the ways in which photographs are discursively deployed and used in the writing of history. More specifically, it will consider how photos, and the historical, scientific, ethnographic and romantic discourses surrounding them, are used to erase or ‘make safe’ the traces of the radical resistances of dominated groups within colonial frameworks. The case explored here concerns the tintype photograph claimed as being of the Lakota chief and warrior Crazy Horse (c.1840-1877). Exhibited by the Custer Battlefield Museum in Montana, the claim that this photograph is of Crazy Horse is controversial. It is generally thought that no visual likeness of Crazy Horse exists; and his refusal to be photographed can be read as a practice of opposition to his assimilation into colonial narratives and accounts of American frontier history. In claiming the photo to be of Crazy Horse, the history of his resistance is rewritten and repositioned. This changes the way he becomes knowable and understandable within the contexts of (neo)colonial discourses and narratives, in which Native Americans are often relegated to the past, and appear either as casualties of the policies of Manifest Destiny, or as a romantic other which has been symbolically integrated into American mythic culture. This dissertation focuses on how the claim that this photograph is of Crazy Horse is made, and how the various associated cultural fields (photography, historiography, museology) are affected by, and play into, such a claim. This involves identifying the discursive processes and disciplinary mechanisms through which meaning is produced in relation to a particular cultural object. It considers the supposed photograph of Crazy Horse as an example of how history assigns significance to objects “in terms of the possibilities they generate for producing or transforming reality” (de Certeau, 1986:202), rather than as representations or reflections of reality.</p>


Author(s):  
Charles R. Cobb

This chapter provides an overview of landscape studies in archaeology, particularly as practiced in the southeastern United States. There is an extended discussion justifying historical anthropology as an important point of departure for this study, in particular because of its usefulness for exploring processes of colonialism. The chapter provides summaries of the major Native American groups and European powers that appear in the remainder of the volume. Generally speaking, the three major European players, or the Spanish, English, and French had different goals and methods of colonization. These methods cumulatively spurred a highly ramified history of landscape transformations for Native Americans. The chapter’s approach resonates well with post-colonial approaches that attempt to decolonize the past by removing Europeans as the primary lens by which we view the actions of Indigenous peoples. Working under rubrics such as “Native-lived colonialism” and “decolonizing the past,” archaeologists increasingly are seeking to integrate European texts, the archaeological record, oral histories, and the perspectives of Native peoples to try and achieve a plural perspective on past lifeways.


Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Mikael Strömberg

The article’s primary aim is to discuss the function of turning points and continuity within historiography. That a historical narrative, produced at a certain time and place, influence the way the historian shapes and develops the argument is problematized by an emphasis on the complex relationship between turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts within an argumentative framework. Aided by a number of examples from three historical narratives on operetta, the article stresses the importance of creating new narratives about the past. Two specific examples from the history of operetta, the birth of the genre and the role of music, are used to illustrate the need to revise not only the use of source material and the narrative strategy used, but also how the argument proposed by the historian gathers strength. The interpretation of turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts illustrate the need to revise earlier historical narratives when trying to counteract the repetitiveness of history.


Author(s):  
David Paroissien

This chapter questions the view that Dickens took little interest in history and remained ignorant of the challenge of writing about the past. Following John Forster’s dismissal of A Child’s History of England as ‘that little book’, which ‘cannot be said to have quite hit the mark’, A Child’s History, Barnaby Rudge, and A Tale of Two Cities have received often unsympathetic treatment, particularly with respect to the way the past is used in his two historical novels. Read within the context of ideas about history advocated by Carlyle and Macaulay in the 1830s, this chapter contends that fresh light can be shed on Dickens’s awareness of historiography and on his familiarity with an invigorated approach to the discipline advocated by the two most prominent historians of the first half of the nineteenth century.


2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei. V. Grinëëv ◽  
Richard L. Bland

Many people have written about the history of the Russian-American Company (RAC), some for scholars, others for a lay audience. Numerous writers have been Americans and Europeans who have had access to the records of the RAC that are held in the U.S. National Archives. But more records-preserved in Russia-were rarely accessible to Western scholars until the end of the Cold War. Dr. Andrei V. Grinëëv is one of the leading authorities on the history of Russian America. In the past two decades he has published two monographs, ten chapters in the three-volume Istoriya Russkoi Ameriki [The History of Russian America], and seventy-five articles in Russian, English, and Japanese. He writes not just about the Europeans who settled in Russia's transoceanic territories but also about Native Americans. Many of his works are unique in that he draws on both the ethnography and history of Native Americans. With regard to Russian America, he deals not only with the policies of governments and companies but with individuals as well. In pursuit of this task, Grinëëv has now written a book about everyone who had connections with Russian America. It contains more than 5,800 biographical sketches and was published in 2009. In the work below, he analyzes the writings of scholars who have tried to unravel historical details about individuals, companies, and governments that related to the Russian-American Company. This article was translated from Russian. Since a great deal of Russian literature is cited, it is important to understand the form of transliteration used with these titles. For a detailed description of the transliteration, please see the Translator's Note in the appendix.


During the past decade, there has been a rapid growth in studies of the physical properties of the asteroids. In consequence, there now exists a much better basis than there was hitherto for comparing the properties of meteorites, determined in the laboratory, with those of asteroids. The way in which recent measurements of asteroids and meteorites can be interrelated to determine the nature and history of a meteorite parent body is illustrated via a case study of the asteroid Vesta and the Ca-rich achondrite Kapoeta.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Nita Handayani Hasan

The existence of folksong is an important thing for the Moluccas. It has functions as an entertainment and the way to deliver the events that existed in the past. This research discuss about jarjinjin and largula folksongs based on hermeneutics approach. The purposes of this research are to transcript and to understand the deepest meaning of the jarjinjin and largula folksongs, and to know the functions of those folksongs for the owner and the young generations. Jarjinjin and largula comes from Longgar village, Kepulauan Aru district, Maluku province. This research use qualitative description method. After transcripted and analyzed  the lyrics, the results show about the history of Longgar, Karey, and Gomu-Gomu village; the folksongs taught the people always remember the message of the ancestors in maintaining brotherhood and culture. For the owner, jarjinjin and largula made brotherhood relation closed beyond the villagers in Longgar, Karey, and Gomu-Gomu village; remaining the history of the ancestors; preservation of local languages; entertaining, because they have sang together and escorting by stampted drums and gongs; and maintaining and preserving the tradition. For young generations, they improved the knowledge about the history of Aru’s ancestors; practicing and demonstrating local language ability; reinforcing love of the history; and maintaining and preserving the tradition. Keberadaan nyanyian rakyat bagi masyarakat Maluku merupakan hal yang penting. Nyanyian rakyat berfungsi sebagai penghibur hati dan cara untuk  menyampaikan peristiwa-peristiwa yang ada di masa lampau. Penelitian ini mengkaji nyanyian adat yang berjudul jarjinjin dan largula dengan menggunakan pendekatan hermeneutika. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mentranskripsi nyanyian adat jarjinjin dan largula, mengetahui makna yang terkandung di dalamnya, dan mengetahui fungsi kedua nyanyian adat bagi pemilik lagu dan generasi muda. Lagu jarjinjin dan largula merupakan nyanyian adat yang berasal dari Desa Longgar, Kabupaten Kepulauan Aru, Maluku. Metode yang digunakan adalah deskriptif kualitatif. Setelah melakukan transkripsi dan analisis terhadap kedua lirik-lirik lagu, diketahui kedua nyanyian adat tersebut menceritakan perjalanan sejarah nenek moyang desa Longgar, Karey, dan Gomu-Gomu. Selain itu, dalam nyanyian adat mengandung ajaran untuk selalu mengingat pesan leluhur dalam menjaga persaudaraan dan adat-istiadat. Fungsi bagi pemilik lagu yaitu mendekatkan hubungan persaudaraan antar masyarakat Desa Longgar, Karey, dan Gomu-Gomu; mengingatkan sejarah perjalanan leluhur; pelestarian bahasa daerah; penghibur hati, karena dinyanyikan secara bersama-sama dan diiringi alat musik tifa dan gong; dan menjaga serta melestarikan tradisi. Sedangkan fungsi lagu jarjinjin dan largula bagi generasi muda yaitu menambah pengetahuan terkait sejarah perjalanan leluhur masyarakat Aru; media melatih dan mempertunjukkan kemampuan berbahasa daerah; memperkuat rasa cinta terhadap sejarah masa lalu; serta menjaga dan melestarikan tradisi.


Author(s):  
A.S. Sagatova ◽  

Today our independent country is following the path of self-development, paying attention to the cognitive foundations and roots of our national history. The beginning of the striving for the realization of great goals - reveals its essence in connection with the study of the history of the country, native land. Having analyzed the past history, the author in his article, referring to the merit and activities of great personalities who have left a bright mark and contributed to great historical achievements, focuses on the role of their worldview. This marked the beginning of the study of the personality of Kazakh batyrs, who were messengers of spirit and honor on the way to the unity of our country, an example of courage and heroism - an example of the steppe.


2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-207
Author(s):  
Marius Nel

The article hypothesises that the historical development of Pentecostal hermeneutics is closely related to and illustrated by Pentecostals’ attitude towards theological training. A short survey is given of the development of theological training within the Pentecostal movement in order to demonstrate how it accompanied a change in the way the Bible was considered during the past century in terms of three phases. For the first three decades Pentecostals had no inclination towards any theological training; they considered that the Bible provided all they needed to know and what was important was not what people in biblical times experienced with or stated about God, but the way these narratives indicate contemporary believers to an encounter with God themselves, resulting in similar experiences. From the 1940s, Pentecostals for several reasons sought acceptance and approval and entered into partnerships with evangelicals, leading to their acceptance of evangelicals’ way of reading the Bible in a fundamentalist-literalist way. From the 1970s they established theological colleges and seminaries where theologians consciously developed Pentecostal hermeneutics in affinity with early Pentecostal hermeneutics, although most Pentecostals still read the Bible in a fundamentalist-literalistic way − as do the evangelicals. Its hermeneutics determined its anti-intellectual stance and the way Pentecostals arranged the training of its pastors. The history of the Pentecostal movement cannot be understood properly without realising the close connection between its hermeneutics and its view of theological training.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document