Queequeg's Coffin

At its heart, Queequeg’s Coffin calls for recognition of alternative, indigenous literacies in the Americas both prior to European penetration and during the period of contact between indigenous Americans and Europeans (and Americans of European descent). Specifically, this interesting new study examines literacy as a contested arena defined by the dialogue, or lack thereof, between indigenous and European forms of literacy and the consequences of such encounters in North and South America. The need for such analysis, the author notes in the opening stages of the work, stems from the condition that “textual and literary exchanges constitute an important and neglected aspect of American literary history in large part because scholars have inadequately explored the extent to which Europeans who arrived in the Americas encountered literate cultures” (p. 2).Queequeg’s Coffin, though rather brief in length, remains sufficiently dense to offer complex analysis of the interplay between European and indigenous modes of writing and of how, with the initiation of European contact with indigenous Americans, writing became an important “marker of reason and civilization” for European occupiers, conquerors, and their descendants (p. 19). A chapter on “Writing and Colonial Conflict” raises worthwhile, though — for Latin Americanists — not necessarily revisionist, points regarding the European valuation of indigenous (nonalphabetic) writing and how “Europe and its descendants in the Americas developed a ‘possessive investment’ in writing as a marker of reason and civilization” (p. 19). Initially, intentional European invalidation of (and ignorance about) indigenous writing served not only to supplement European seizures of native lands, attempts at political and cultural hegemony, and forced religious conversion, but also to enable generations of scholarly bias concerning the validity of precontact indigenous writing. The author counters this traditionally limited understanding of indigenous writing systems by analyzing various examples of native literacy from across the Americas, demonstrating both their contrasts with European forms of writing and their internal structures that mark them as valid means of writing. For example, although indigenous writing appeared on tree bark in the northeastern woodlands of North America rather than in leather-bound volumes arriving by ship across the Atlantic, this does not discount the existence of native forms of writing prior to the arrival of Europeans. Furthermore, because such forms of writing were displayed for public consumption, indigenous literacy in North America could well have been much broader than in Mesoamerica or some parts of Europe. Not only did these forms of writing endure despite native loss of political and economic autonomy, but, in some cases, indigenous writing even contributed to a dialogue — or more specifically, in Rasmussen’s words, an “inter-animation” — with European writing, in which writing from both cultures informed and shaped the other.Additional sections of the study consider other cases, notably the seventeenth-century peace councils between the Haudenosaunee and French who had settled along the St. Lawrence River. Rasmussen shows how such councils reflected more than mere delineation of territory and behavior, as they also represented efforts by the sides to “enroll and inscribe each other in their respective textual systems” (p. 51). Fascinating in this section is the comparative textual analysis of Haudenosaunee wampum and French alphabetic script. Rasmussen concludes that because these disparate forms of writing served similar ends, they could achieve a meaningful level of “inter-animation” that infused the completed peace treaty with the voices of its indigenous and European authors. Importantly, each of these voices reveals elements of the other. Such findings provide yet another example of how the character of colonial encounters, even if these encounters explicitly favored European protocol, were implicitly altered and shaped by indigenous participants.For the Latin Americanist, Rasmussen’s consideration of don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s appeal to Spain’s King Philip III stands as both the most direct connection to his or her field and the least revisionist section of the work. This is not to suggest that there is nothing new here. For example, the author’s contention that “analysis of Guaman Poma’s work reveals that the textual logic of quipus structures his manuscript in significant ways” (p. 80) proves interesting in light of the widely held notion that Guaman Poma appealed to the Spanish king through European communicative channels. Yet a greater degree and complexity of historical context would render some of the conclusions regarding tone and mood less speculative. This criticism, though, stems from conflicting notions of analysis between author and reviewer rather than any qualitative short comings of Rasmussen’s work.This book stands as a significant (and, hopefully, not solitary) foray into what could and should be a growing corpus of scholarship on indigenous and alternative literacies in the Americas. It posits new questions and innovative approaches for the study of native literacy and serves to illustrate with a broad brush the heretofore underappreciated complexity of native writing and literacy in both North and Latin America

Civilization · Coffin · Colonialism · Genealogy · Ignorance · Indigenous · Literacy · Political science · History · Latin American history and culture · Law

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