Anne Salmond, who recently
called for thinkers to engage with open rather than closed minds—arguing that "other cultures may have insights that elude us" —was recently called out by Dane Giraud for the very same reason: specifically, for ignoring the insights of Enlightenment culture. The only position that actively suppresses inquiry,
pointed out Giraud, is her own. "What is more antithetical to free thought'" he asked rhetorically, "than declaring whole categories of knowledge off-limits to criticism because they belong to the wrong culture."
Salmond, of course, has form. Her own favourite cultural whipping person is Western. Her writing, said Michael King of her 2003 book Two Worlds, gives "a strong impression that, rather than attempting to represent both cultures dispassionately, Salmond [is] straining to case every feature of Māori behaviour in a favourable light and many features of European in an unfavourable one.”
But in doing so, she fails to learn there either. Reviewing Salmond's work, historian and former Waitangi Tribunal director Buddy Mikaere
reckons Salmond's work "turns our tipuna into cardboard caricatures." Rather than learning deeply from other cultures, he says, she offers only a "one-dimensional characterisation." For her and several other Pākeha historians, he says, "Māori [are] invariably depicted as deeply spiritual beings who only ever acted on the basis of high-minded principles. Pākehā, on the other hand, [are] mostly unprincipled rogues or fools whose behaviour was always motivated by racial arrogance, greed and self-interest."
Such is the accusation, it will be remembered, Salmond
throws at the Pākehas of the Free Speech Union. It apparently never gets old.
It begins to look as if Salmond is unable to learn much from either of the Two Worlds of which she writes.
What also never gets old is re-reading the demolition of Salmond's work by the grand old man of New Zealand history
Peter Munz, who destroyed her whole platform of post-modern posturing and epistemic duplicity in his 1994
review of her first major book. In her work she is guilty, he says, of not just "disinformation, but of actual misrepresentation."
Salmond claims to have been "guided by 'Heidegger, Foucault, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Habermas, [Mary] Hesse, Derrida, Eco and others.' ... [a] list [that] reads like a Who's Who in Postmodernity ... all of whom would have helped to confirm her in her prejudices and methods."
What she does not discuss ... [is] whether [these thinkers] are sound guides. It appears that she is under the impression that these postmodern thinkers have solved the problem as to how different systems of knowledge or belief are related or, rather, not related to one another. Could it be that she is simply ignorant of the fact that there is much modern thought which rejects these facile, politically motivated doctrines of Foucault and Derrida, of Eco and Ricoeur? If she takes her stand with these people, she ought, to say the least, have produced some evidence that she has also examined the counter-arguments and, perhaps, found them wanting. But as things stand, she appears simply as an uncritical camp-follower — which is a poor show for a professional anthropologist.
Furthermore,
the explanations of the differences in systems of knowledge that these thinkers provide should not, I trust, be considered final. In the pre-postmodern world of good sense, belief or knowledge systems are distinguished according to whether they are true or false. ... What is really at issue and what she is trying hard to disguise by her way of constructing the past, is the brute reality of cultural evolution. ...
[I]nstead of jumping on the postmodern bandwagon which is nothing more than a belated overreaction to the Victorian age, it is time scholars like Salmond caught up with modern thought and revised their view of evolution.
The limitations of the early mind are the result of isolation and of absence of the kind of contact which would expose beliefs and taboos to criticism. Societies and cultures, which for demographic and political reasons are exposed to contact with others, are more likely to question their own traditions, change their taboos and develop eventually a more universal system of knowledge — that is, beliefs which are more than validations or legitimizations of their own parochial cultures. In a nutshell, this is the heart of cultural evolution.
An evolution — a progress — only made possible by being open to new ideas. Says Munz:
Darwin or no Darwin, we are all descended from black Eve, and every single culture which has ever existed is a departure from the culture of black Eve, whoever she was. [I am using the notion 'black Eve' metaphorically to indicate that all existing cultures are descended or transmuted from a common stock.] ...
I would suggest ... that one can rank the distance of societies from black Eve according to their exclusiveness. The earliest societies were totally exclusive and would not admit people other than those who belonged to their descent group. Next came societies which would admit people through marriage; and at the other end of the scale, farthest removed from black Eve, there are societies which potentially include anybody who wants to be included. Ranking in these terms is completely neutral and value-free. All it says is that while one cannot 'become' a Maori, one can 'become' a New Zealander, and that, for that reason, there is a structural difference between these two kinds of societies, and that that difference defines the distance of these societies from black Eve and that the actually exclusive structures are earlier than the potentially inclusive structures. Since this criterion is neutral, there can be no question of 'progress', only of progression. ...
[W]hatever criteria one likes to choose, the distances from black Eve can be ascertained because evolution, including cultural evolution, is a reality of life.
If one wants to understand the coming together of two different cultures, as Salmond does, one must take into account, as Salmond does not, the different distances they have moved away from the earlier forms. Salmond has explicitly rejected evolution. 'Contemporary literature on traditional thought is still bedevilled", she writes, 'with implicit sometimes explicit evolutionism.' If she had her way, it would soon cease to be so bedevilled! I suppose she rejects cultural evolution in the face of overwhelming evidence because by making all cultures more or less equal she thinks she can heal wounds and pour oil on troubled waters and be 'politically correct'. But in the long run, there is no point in burying one's head in the sand: a distortion of reality brings about its own nemesis even if one does not quite yet know what shape that nemesis will take.
Can one say 'Ouch!'?
Log in
