Question 3<\/p>\n
In \u201cFirst Contact as a Spiritual Performance\u201d Lutz writes, \u201cOne of the most obvious difficulties is comprehending the performances of the indigenous participants\u201d (32). This statement contains an assumption about the nature of the article\u2019s audience which I would like to examine. Lutz expands upon this comment by claiming, \u201cThe key and usually unremarked problem is that we have insufficient distance from our own and our ancestor\u2019s world view.\u201d\u00a0 In this statement Lutz is demonstrating the extent of his own \u2018unremarked\u2019 assumption about his readership. By using the inclusive \u201cwe\u201d and \u201cour ancestors\u201d (32) Lutz is actually excluding all non-europeans. This implicit exclusionary act betrays a certain ideological assumption about knowledge production and the institutionalization of knowledge. While Lutz\u2019s article makes a concerted effort to promote critical self awareness on the part of the reader by emphasizing a\u00a0 \u201cdefamiliarization of the familiar,\u201d the article nonetheless reproduces certain ideas about academic authority and issues of power. The very fact that Lutz expects to be writing for an audience of european descent reveals the implicit power hierarchy present within the academic institution.\u00a0 As an academic,\u00a0 Lutz speaks from a position of socio-cultural authority, whose claims to knowledge also invest him with a certain claim to cultural capital. While it may be impossible to transcend such a position as an academic, it is nonetheless possible to gesture to this position of cultural authority in one\u2019s work and to acknowledge some of the problematics that such a position entails. Perhaps an acknowledgement on Lutz\u2019s part as to the structural inequities present in the \u2018researcher- subject of study\u2019 relationship would help to address some of the implicit assumptions in the text. This discussion makes me think of Thomas King<\/a>\u2019s commentary on postcolonial theory in Chapter 2 of The Truth about Stories.<\/i>\u00a0 While acknowledging the promise that postcolonial theory contains, King questions the extent to which post colonial theory actually affects the lives of colonized peoples. He writes: \u201cI know that postcolonial studies is not a panacea for much of anything\u201d (58).\u00a0 I feel King\u2019s comment speaks to the structural inequality <\/a>that is still very much present within academia and institutionalized education.<\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n King, Thomas. \u201cYou\u2019re not the Indian I had in mind.\u201d The truth about stories: A native narrative. <\/i>Toronto, Ont: House of Anansi Press Inc, 2003. 31-60. Print.<\/p>\n Lutz, John. \u201cFirst Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Encounters on the North American West Coast\u201d Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact<\/i>. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question 3 In \u201cFirst Contact as a Spiritual Performance\u201d Lutz writes, \u201cOne of the most obvious difficulties is comprehending the performances of the indigenous participants\u201d (32). This statement contains an assumption about the nature of the article\u2019s audience which I … Continue reading