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1Muscogulus
I thought the group might be interested in a review of Savage Anxieties, by Robert Williams — an American Indian legal scholar's take on "the inventions of Western civilization." I received a copy from the Early Reviewers group and finally got my thoughts together:
I already knew of Robert A. Williams for his work on American Indian legal issues and as a contributor to the conceptual framework of settler colonialism. So I was intrigued to find that he was taking on the whole sweep of "Western civ" from an indigenous perspective. And why shouldn't he? Western observers have been making sweeping judgments about indigenous peoples, based on little or no evidence, since 1492.
No, wait, not 1492. More like 900 BCE.
Williams' thesis is that the idea of the savage permeates and helps to shape Western civilization. As in many other areas of human thought, the thing called "civilization" is understood largely through contrast with its opposite, "savagery." The most stimulating aspect of this book is Williams' demonstration of how the elements of "savagery" have a remarkable continuity throughout history, regardless of specific times, places, and peoples.
Among the characteristics of the "savage," he finds are:
Williams has an agenda here, and he writes like the advocate he is. I find, though, that sometimes an obvious bias can be an aid to the reader, and Savage Anxieties is a case in point. I prefer a little moralizing to the fake impartiality of historians who assume a god's-eye view of history. And to be clear, Williams is not one of those deterministic revisionists out to install a slighted ethnic group as the fount of all that is good and true in the world. (I'm looking at you, Martin Bernal, Thomas Cahill, Arthur Herman, Ivan Van Sertima, Jack Weatherford, etc., etc.)
Williams is revealingly judgmental about Western society. He finds that already by Roman times there is "an emptiness at the heart of modernity that is likely irremediable" (119). The vows of medieval monastics are "silly" (138). Williams doesn't pause to reflect that such snap judgments are not unlike the routine dismissal of indigenous cultures as "primitive," or the all too common technique of defining them by what they lack in comparison to their conquerors.
Sometimes Williams doesn’t dig deep enough. For example, he assumes that the "Wild Man" myth is a Christian invention, when in fact it goes back much farther, to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In that tale, the great hero-king meets his match in a shaggy nature boy called Enkidu; Gilgamesh and the wild Enkidu each find their fulfillment in the other. This suggests that the Wild Man is a more complex figure than Williams has realized, and folkloric Wild Men must have influenced the preconceptions of many Europeans as they encountered American Indians for the first time. (This video from Switzerland shows a modern example of a domesticated Wild Man ritual dating from European antiquity.) These preconceptions, although they did help interfere with an accurate understanding the native peoples, were not always in perfect sync with the doctrines of popes and archbishops, as Williams assumes.
Williams lacks the formal qualifications to write a synthetic history of the classical and medieval West. His survey of Roman architecture and sculpture rests mainly on photographs and impressions from his personal tour of Rome. I didn't mind that, but I did notice his weak grasp of languages: He repeatedly uses the Greek verb infinitive skythizein ("to drink like a Scythian") as if it were an adjective ("skythizein drunk"), and he assumes that English savage is identical with French sauvage — so a perfume called Eau Sauvage must be about "the noble savage theme," right? — Well, no.
His use of that scholarly cliché, "noble savage," is anachronistic, and it doesn't really excuse him to point out that legions of other scholars have made the same error. His effort to make the 19th-century "noble savage" concept identical with the thought of ancient Greeks is not convincing to me: Even as shorthand for an ideological complex, it's way too short.
Despite its brevity, this book could have been improved by some omissions. At one point Williams fixes his attention on the obscure, possibly nonexistent "Goliards" without demonstrating any persuasive connection between them and the theme of savagery. Later, in describing the Renaissance revival of the myth of the Golden Age, he feels compelled to toss in an episode from Don Quixote, but gives the unfortunate impression that he is more familiar with the Broadway musical than the 16th-century novel. Williams also clings to a few rhetorical flourishes that weaken his case through overuse. One of these is the repetition of Voltaire's "African madman" insult for Tertullian, the early Christian church leader. Although Williams insists Tertullian "was not crazy," somehow he can't mention his name without also using the "African Madman" label. He even indexes him as "Tertullian ('African Madman')." I really couldn't see the point of this conceit. There are a few other instances like this in the book, and they tended to undermine my confidence in the author.
Still, despite all these criticisms, I found the book engaging and convincing. Savage Anxieties is an amateur effort that punches above its weight. Sometimes it takes an amateur to bring a fresh perspective to a discipline, and I think Williams has opened some ground that others may explore more thoroughly. In bringing indigenous perspectives to bear on Western intellectual history, he does us a service that no classical scholar, to date, has been able to provide. I don't mean to imply that no other scholar has critically examined classical texts regarding indigenous peoples; in fact, Williams cites some of them in his eclectic bibliography. What is new here is that Williams is able to address the subject from the other side, and he writes with authority on the legal fictions that have been devised since 1492 to legitimize the taking of indigenous land and the mistreatment of indigenous people. How many classical scholars could do that?
So in sum, I find the book stimulating and convincing, and it kept suggesting new connections to other ideas, which is a thing that good books often do. I'm grateful to Robert Williams for his efforts and I hope he keeps it up.
P.S. For another video of the Swiss "wild man" ritual, see here. These three creatures — der Wilde Maa, der Vogel Gryff (eagle-headed griffin), & der Leu (lion) — are shown dancing in front of the mayor of Basel. It's part of the Carnival celebration each February before Lent begins.
I already knew of Robert A. Williams for his work on American Indian legal issues and as a contributor to the conceptual framework of settler colonialism. So I was intrigued to find that he was taking on the whole sweep of "Western civ" from an indigenous perspective. And why shouldn't he? Western observers have been making sweeping judgments about indigenous peoples, based on little or no evidence, since 1492.
No, wait, not 1492. More like 900 BCE.
Williams' thesis is that the idea of the savage permeates and helps to shape Western civilization. As in many other areas of human thought, the thing called "civilization" is understood largely through contrast with its opposite, "savagery." The most stimulating aspect of this book is Williams' demonstration of how the elements of "savagery" have a remarkable continuity throughout history, regardless of specific times, places, and peoples.
Among the characteristics of the "savage," he finds are:
- They have no fixed abode, but lead wandering lives.
- Their life is crude and uncomfortable.
- They are devoted to passions — lust, rage, vengeance — which they cannot control.
- They get drunk easily. (Scythians can't hold their liquor like Greeks can.)
- Female savages are "unsexed" in some way.
- Most if not all savages are cannibals.
Williams has an agenda here, and he writes like the advocate he is. I find, though, that sometimes an obvious bias can be an aid to the reader, and Savage Anxieties is a case in point. I prefer a little moralizing to the fake impartiality of historians who assume a god's-eye view of history. And to be clear, Williams is not one of those deterministic revisionists out to install a slighted ethnic group as the fount of all that is good and true in the world. (I'm looking at you, Martin Bernal, Thomas Cahill, Arthur Herman, Ivan Van Sertima, Jack Weatherford, etc., etc.)
Williams is revealingly judgmental about Western society. He finds that already by Roman times there is "an emptiness at the heart of modernity that is likely irremediable" (119). The vows of medieval monastics are "silly" (138). Williams doesn't pause to reflect that such snap judgments are not unlike the routine dismissal of indigenous cultures as "primitive," or the all too common technique of defining them by what they lack in comparison to their conquerors.
Sometimes Williams doesn’t dig deep enough. For example, he assumes that the "Wild Man" myth is a Christian invention, when in fact it goes back much farther, to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In that tale, the great hero-king meets his match in a shaggy nature boy called Enkidu; Gilgamesh and the wild Enkidu each find their fulfillment in the other. This suggests that the Wild Man is a more complex figure than Williams has realized, and folkloric Wild Men must have influenced the preconceptions of many Europeans as they encountered American Indians for the first time. (This video from Switzerland shows a modern example of a domesticated Wild Man ritual dating from European antiquity.) These preconceptions, although they did help interfere with an accurate understanding the native peoples, were not always in perfect sync with the doctrines of popes and archbishops, as Williams assumes.
Williams lacks the formal qualifications to write a synthetic history of the classical and medieval West. His survey of Roman architecture and sculpture rests mainly on photographs and impressions from his personal tour of Rome. I didn't mind that, but I did notice his weak grasp of languages: He repeatedly uses the Greek verb infinitive skythizein ("to drink like a Scythian") as if it were an adjective ("skythizein drunk"), and he assumes that English savage is identical with French sauvage — so a perfume called Eau Sauvage must be about "the noble savage theme," right? — Well, no.
His use of that scholarly cliché, "noble savage," is anachronistic, and it doesn't really excuse him to point out that legions of other scholars have made the same error. His effort to make the 19th-century "noble savage" concept identical with the thought of ancient Greeks is not convincing to me: Even as shorthand for an ideological complex, it's way too short.
Despite its brevity, this book could have been improved by some omissions. At one point Williams fixes his attention on the obscure, possibly nonexistent "Goliards" without demonstrating any persuasive connection between them and the theme of savagery. Later, in describing the Renaissance revival of the myth of the Golden Age, he feels compelled to toss in an episode from Don Quixote, but gives the unfortunate impression that he is more familiar with the Broadway musical than the 16th-century novel. Williams also clings to a few rhetorical flourishes that weaken his case through overuse. One of these is the repetition of Voltaire's "African madman" insult for Tertullian, the early Christian church leader. Although Williams insists Tertullian "was not crazy," somehow he can't mention his name without also using the "African Madman" label. He even indexes him as "Tertullian ('African Madman')." I really couldn't see the point of this conceit. There are a few other instances like this in the book, and they tended to undermine my confidence in the author.
Still, despite all these criticisms, I found the book engaging and convincing. Savage Anxieties is an amateur effort that punches above its weight. Sometimes it takes an amateur to bring a fresh perspective to a discipline, and I think Williams has opened some ground that others may explore more thoroughly. In bringing indigenous perspectives to bear on Western intellectual history, he does us a service that no classical scholar, to date, has been able to provide. I don't mean to imply that no other scholar has critically examined classical texts regarding indigenous peoples; in fact, Williams cites some of them in his eclectic bibliography. What is new here is that Williams is able to address the subject from the other side, and he writes with authority on the legal fictions that have been devised since 1492 to legitimize the taking of indigenous land and the mistreatment of indigenous people. How many classical scholars could do that?
So in sum, I find the book stimulating and convincing, and it kept suggesting new connections to other ideas, which is a thing that good books often do. I'm grateful to Robert Williams for his efforts and I hope he keeps it up.
P.S. For another video of the Swiss "wild man" ritual, see here. These three creatures — der Wilde Maa, der Vogel Gryff (eagle-headed griffin), & der Leu (lion) — are shown dancing in front of the mayor of Basel. It's part of the Carnival celebration each February before Lent begins.
