Indians in Unexpected Places, Introduction

Indians in Unexpected Places, Philip J. Deloria; Introduction, “Expectation and Anomaly”

This introduction is about a photo named Red Cloud Woman in Beauty Shop, Denver 1941. This image can be found online here.

• shared ideology and expectation of “The American Grain”
• “ghostly presence” of stereotypes in subtle manners
• “broad cultural expectations are both the products and the tools of domination and that they are an inheritance that haunts each and everyone of us. To chuckle at Red Cloud Woman without malice is perhaps possible. To separate oneself from the history that produced the chuckle is not, and that history contains a full share of malice and misunder­standing.”
• question and explore expectations and historical assumptions; question what coins something as an anomaly and why it is defined as such; question the connotation and definition of the anomaly as the other
• anomaly is to other as certain categories are to “nature” : white, woman, modern, beauty, technology, labor
• “when it comes to naming anomalies, even subtle and contradictory accretions of meaning will work to empower the broad, largely consensual categories that have consis­tently placed whites over Indians, men over women, capital over labor, and the normative over the exceptional.”
• Indigenous viewers of an Indigenous subject may not view her the same as American expectations; representative vs. anomalous image
• “As consumers of global mass-mediated culture, we are all subject to expectations. They sneak into our minds and down to our hearts when we aren't looking. That does not mean, however, that they need to rule our thoughts.”
• considering: instead of viewing an event by rarity and by categorization, view generally by frequency
• “missed out on modernity” in general narrative
• frequency and unexpectedness
• view actions through a non-Eurocentric lens, but the Native ideological frames of an event
• expectation in introduction inspired by the concept of stereotype
  • stereotype originally meaning undistinguishable concepts, exactly alike
  • imposition of meanings onto stereotype: sameness in ddifferent connotations
  • intuited belief that an aggregate is a cause for a material event; linkage between image, text, performance, event, and account
    • multiple forms and multiple acts of power
  • “stereotype might function better as a descriptive shorthand than as an analytic tool”: a simplifiedd and generalized expectation seen in an image, text, or utterance; a sound bite; a crude, minor description
  • complexity of expectation found in the concepts of discourse and ideology
• ideology is fluid; 16 separate forms identified in theory
  • assertions; observances of the world in both truth and falsehood
  • association with illusion and dissonance
  • ideology: mistaken belief that leads against one’s interest, and are paired with observances of the world; rationalization of contradictions found in the world used by different people worldwide
  • ideology: a way in which thoughts are constructed, a philosophy; a belief and idea that is made fact through experience and performance/action/representation
    • not an overt show of racism, but a subconscious belief encouraged by one’s culture andd experiences
  • directional: favors some and disadvantages others, making it appear natural through unevenness
  • ideology stems from marxist traditions towards power, domination, and acquiescence
• discourse: explicit cultural shape, art and practice
  • vs. implication of ideology
  • discourse: linguistic tradition that works with the limits of one’s frame of mind towards experience and understanding
  • the chuckle itself in regards to the response of the photo vs the context behind it
  • “Even as we see ideology (content) functioning within discourse (practice), we might at the same time see discourse (ac­tion) functioning within ideology (consciousness)! Both concepts, in other words, connect-to one another, to social acts, to individual con­sciousness, and to changes in practice and circumstance occurring over time. If ideology and discourse suggest that there are structures—and, indeed, limits—to our own knowledge, it is also true that such things can be readily transformed over time.”
• stereotypes are too simplistic; expectation is shorthand for dense webs of meaning, representation, and action
  • expectation in the webs of power, dominance, and national relationships
  • the idea of reconfiguring one’s mindset through word choice: anomaly reinforces expectation; unexpected resists categorization and questions expectation
• monolithics vs. breadth and depth; cultural, narrow analysis
  • “By turning to the essay form rather than to the monograph (each of these essays has threatened, at one time or another, to blow up into a monograph), this book aims to address critical problems in the writing of American Indian history. That writing has long confronted a singular paradox: the most effective frame for making general sense of the diverse experiences of hundreds of tribal peoples has been that of federal government policy. In effect, this practice centers Indian history, not on Indian people, but on the U.S. government. The understandable response of many historians and many Indian people has been to turn to the unique particulars of tribal and community histories. Taken together, such community-based histories reveal the stunning breadth and texture of American Indian experiences. They also help fulfill the important obli­gation of scholars to make their work meaningful to Indian communi­ties. And, by revealing a wide range of Native responses, they effectively render inert the generalizing framework built around federal policy.”
• the unifying theme should be recontextualized: change and persistence in non-Native ideology and expectation vs. changes in North American policy, and how Native Americans engage with those expectations
• touchstone of personal experience versus community history; cohorts acrosss communities, not momentary focus
• essay: first attempt, early glimpse, preliminary assessment: “He essayed his chances”
  • it’s not assay?????????
  • openness to complications within society and humanity; change and confrontation
• Indian pacification; modern primitivism; complicated construction of images of violence and perpetuation of violent, savage imagery; primitivism and asssimilation to modernity, masculinity aand white attraction in relations; technology and modern social hierarchy for progression, automobility; musical expectation and expression and integration, opportunities to avoid anomality
• rethinking categorization by “anomalous” cumulative experiencing; reimagining the contours of modernity and the image of the unexpected; “secret” histories