"Returns" explores homecomings--the ways people
recover and renew their roots. Engaging with indigenous
histories of survival and transformation, James Clifford
opens fundamental questions about where we are going,
separately and together, in a globalizing, but not
homogenizing, world. It was once widely assumed that
native, or tribal, societies were destined to disappear.
Sooner or later, irresistible economic and political
forces would complete the work of destruction set in
motion by culture contact and colonialism. But many
aboriginal groups persist, a reality that complicates
familiar narratives of modernization and progress.
History, Clifford invites us to observe, is a
multidirectional process, and the word "indigenous,"
long associated with primitivism and localism, is taking
on new, unexpected meanings. In these probing and
evocative essays, native people in California, Alaska,
and Oceania are understood to be participants in a
still-unfolding process of transformation. This involves
ambivalent struggle, acting within and against dominant
forms of cultural identity and economic power. Returns
to ancestral land, performances of heritage, and
maintenance of diasporic ties are strategies for moving
forward, ways to articulate what can paradoxically be
called "traditional futures." With inventiveness and
pragmatism, often against the odds, indigenous people
today are forging original pathways in a tangled,
open-ended modernity. The third in a series that
includes "The Predicament of Culture "(1988) and
"Routes" (1997), this volume continues Clifford's
signature exploration of late-twentieth-century
intercultural representations, travels, and now
returns.
|
|