Indian Giver or Nobel Savage

Duping, Assumptions of Identity, and Other Double Entendres in Rigoberta Menchú Turn's Stoll/En Past

Bibliographic Data

ID2468331
AuthorsD M Nelson (0000-0003-3659-8422, Lewis & Clark College, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume28
Issue2
Pages303-331
Publication date2001-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.2001.28.2.303
OpenAlexW2026874943
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited37

I address the emotional debate over David Stoll's claims that parts of Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Turn's testimonial are untrue. Rather than arguing for or against either "side", I negotiate the double entendre of "Indian giver" and the assumptions that structure the arguments that make up the debate. I track how such assumptions of identity involve a detour through gendered, ethnic, and transnational difference. Transactions such as gifting, joking, and stereotyping are ecstatic and pleasurable, and vacillate with threatening to suggest that the vacillation itself, the exchange, is essential to identification and that the empiricist promise of being "nonduped" is an error. [identity, violence, globalization, consciousness, Mayan organizing, gender, U.S. anthropology

Aesthetics · Art · Consciousness · Epistemology · Identity (music · Negotiation · Social science · Sociology · Testimonial · Anthropology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Gender Studies · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Latin American and Latino Studies · Philosophy

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