183
culture shamans and their hunting minions felt deep respect for and sensitivity
toward the animals they killed. So indoctrinated in the way of life of these postDorset (Paleo-Eskimo) Inuit peoples was this conceptualization, that it is said “it is
thus generally assumed that seals will allow themselves to be killed by good hunters
who observe their taboos, in fact, that they even call it ‘going home’ when they go
to a breathing hole to let themselves be stabbed”
22
.
Because we are all in this together, our use of “the camera and the tweezer”
23
is
a realm of actions at odds with nature. So clearly so as to render the joys of imagined solitude, or even friendship, in one of the world’s most magnificent places no
more than a moment of stuffing (bouche), or the consumption of layer cake. A fiction that can support no conclusions about our species because such testimonies are
like whiplash from one person, one community, one culture to another. And yet we
perpetuate its infinite loops and twists, its lies and provocations in hopes of someday
believing that it all makes sense.
But with no possible objectivity in science, in the arts, and certainly not in the
underlying rationale for hope, our imaginations run no more riot than our daily
selves and their mechanical expressions. A cruise ship in Greenland. A man on the
moon. Tourists to the summit of Everest. Looters on Santa Monica’s 3rd Street
Promenade or of the famed Macy’s of the Macy Parade. The cover-ups of Seveso,
Chernobyl, of Bhopal. The lists of human hubris and self-deception can only escalate with our desperate demographics and boredom, entitlements and social chasms.
Sociology quickly turns to anthropology which, in turn, and soon enough, settles
into that chilling silence masking the whole of archaeology.
22 ibid., p. 164, Citation from Knud Rasmussen, Iglulik and Caribou Eskimo Tests. Report of the
Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-ered1924, vol. 7, 3.
23 See the extraordinary book, Objectivity, by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Zone Books,
New York, 2007, p. 397
19.3 The Severe Silences of Archaeology
culture shamans and their hunting minions felt deep respect for and sensitivity
toward the animals they killed. So indoctrinated in the way of life of these postDorset (Paleo-Eskimo) Inuit peoples was this conceptualization, that it is said “it is
thus generally assumed that seals will allow themselves to be killed by good hunters
who observe their taboos, in fact, that they even call it ‘going home’ when they go
to a breathing hole to let themselves be stabbed”
22
.
Because we are all in this together, our use of “the camera and the tweezer”
23
is
a realm of actions at odds with nature. So clearly so as to render the joys of imagined solitude, or even friendship, in one of the world’s most magnificent places no
more than a moment of stuffing (bouche), or the consumption of layer cake. A fiction that can support no conclusions about our species because such testimonies are
like whiplash from one person, one community, one culture to another. And yet we
perpetuate its infinite loops and twists, its lies and provocations in hopes of someday
believing that it all makes sense.
But with no possible objectivity in science, in the arts, and certainly not in the
underlying rationale for hope, our imaginations run no more riot than our daily
selves and their mechanical expressions. A cruise ship in Greenland. A man on the
moon. Tourists to the summit of Everest. Looters on Santa Monica’s 3rd Street
Promenade or of the famed Macy’s of the Macy Parade. The cover-ups of Seveso,
Chernobyl, of Bhopal. The lists of human hubris and self-deception can only escalate with our desperate demographics and boredom, entitlements and social chasms.
Sociology quickly turns to anthropology which, in turn, and soon enough, settles
into that chilling silence masking the whole of archaeology.
22 ibid., p. 164, Citation from Knud Rasmussen, Iglulik and Caribou Eskimo Tests. Report of the
Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-ered1924, vol. 7, 3.
23 See the extraordinary book, Objectivity, by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Zone Books,
New York, 2007, p. 397
19.3 The Severe Silences of Archaeology