Read on Twitter
Holy hell, where to start with this bingo victory in the category of “things senior anthropologists say”? https://twitter.com/donnalanclos/status/1279027639274156032
Well first, if you haven’t already, go read what an actual Indigenous anthropologist from California has to say about the final suggestion as a means of “honouring” this diverse group of people https://twitter.com/savvyology/status/1278966045219229696?s=21 https://twitter.com/savvyology/status/1278966045219229696
Scheper-Hughes starts with an unchecked assumption and a broadly painted brush about social media, an undefined and unexamined notion of “cancel culture”, and labeling renaming as “censorship”. Just...wow.
Then she issues the standard centrist caveat that OF COURSE she agrees with some of these name changes, but clearly Kroeber doesn’t count. This is never really explained beyond a) he studied Indigenous ppl and b) he stopped an unnecesssary autopsy.
Note that in these opening statements about this administrative decision, NSH never does anything to explore how the idea came to the university admin (a group not known for their easy willingness to cave to the demands of anti-racist protestors).
So we are just left with NSH making assumptions about what the people pushing for this change think and why they say it matters to them. This failure to engage with the substance of any complaint is shitty anthropology, and refuses to meet the concerns on their own terms
What follows from there is mostly typical anthropological self congratulation. Anthropologists are credited with enlightening the world about Indigenous people, and their work/influence on developing the field is treated as an inherent good.
Kroeber’s wife is even credited with being the first to use the term “holocaust” for the genocide of Native Americans, and perhaps this is the first published instance of that exact word, but perhaps also there have been actual Native people whose words have not been published
And then we get my favourite part, because it is just SUCH A LEAP. Not only is renaming a building treated as an “erasure” of Kroeber, but ALSO an erasure of the work of his wife and daughter. Multigenerational erasure wiped out in one building name, the horror!
And like. Kroeber’s daughter is Ursula K. LeGuin - a woman who, first, is in no damn danger of being erased (thankfully), but second, does not need her goddamn father to be the gateway entry point for people to find her brilliance.
This is the point where I just throw my hands up at senior anthropologists’ myopic view of the field that has already erased Indigenous knowledge repackaged under white anthro authors’ names, but now sees LeGuin as requiring her dad to preserve her legacy.
