Imperialist Nostalgia Author(s): Renato Rosaldo Source: Representations, No.

26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring, 1989), pp. 107-122 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928525 . Accessed: 01/05/2011 12:20
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RENATO

ROSALDO

Imperialist Nostalgia
that portrayimperialismwith nosFILMS MY ANGER AT RECENT receptionof Heat and Dust,A informsthisessay.Consider the enthusiastic talgia The whitecolonial sociand TheGodsMustbeCrazy. PassagetoIndia, Out ofAfrica, as eties portrayedin these filmsappear decorous and orderly, if constructedin accord with the norms of classic ethnography.Hints of these societies'coming collapse only appear at the marginswhere theycreate, not moral indignation, progressiveNorth American but an elegiac mode of perception.Even politically audiences have enjoyed the elegance of manners governingrelationsof domia nance and subordination between the "races." Evidently, mood of nostalgia makes racial dominationappear innocentand pure. Much as one can argue that the language of social analysisis not a neutral medium, I shall attemptto show thatthe observeris neitherinnocentnor omniscient.In myview,it is a mistaketo urge social analyststo strivefora positionof innocencedesignatedbysuch adjectivesas detached,neutral,or impartial.Under imperialism,metropolitanobserversare no more likelyto avoid a certaincomwithdominationthan theyare to avoid havingstrongfeelingstowardthe plicity need not lead eitherto confessionalbreastpeople theystudy.Such a recognition realize thattheycannotbe perfectly beatingor to gallopingbias. If social analysts ''clean,' they no more should become as "dirty"as possible than airline pilots, should blind theireyes. The usual of invokingthe limitations human fallibility, notions of evidence, accuracy,and argumentationcontinue to apply for their are studies.Because researchersof necessity both somewhatimpartialand sometheirreaders should what partisan,somewhatinnocentand somewhatcomplicit, in a positionto knowand be as informedas possibleabout whatthe observerwas not know. Has, for example, the writerof an ethnographyon death suffereda serious personal loss? Mourning forWhat One Has Destroyed constabularyoffiCuriouslyenough, agents of colonialism-officials, cers, missionaries,and other figuresfrom whom anthropologistsrituallydissociate themselves-often display nostalgia for the colonized culture as it was of encountered it). The peculiarity their (that is, when theyfirst "traditionally" yearning,of course, is that agents of colonialismlong for the veryformsof life
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alteredor destroyed.My concernthusresideswitha particular theyintentionally kind of nostalgia, often found under imperialism,where people mourn the passing of what they themselveshave transformed.Imperialistnostalgia thus revolvesaround a paradox: a person killssomebodyand then mournshis or her altersa formof life and victim.In more attenuatedform,someone deliberately then regretsthatthingshave not remained as theywere priorto his or her interand then worvention.At one more remove,people destroytheirenvironment nostalgiauses a pose of "innocent ship nature. In any of its versions,imperialist and to conceal itscomplicity with yearning"both to capture people's imaginations oftenbrutaldomination. Imperialistnostalgia occurs alongside a peculiar sense of mission,the white to man'sburden, wherecivilizednationsstandduty-bound upliftso-calledsavage constructed worldof ongoingprogressive change,putaones. In thisideologically (the felicstaticsavage societiesbecome a stablereferencepointfordefining tively "We" valorizeinnovationand then yearn for itous progressof ) civilizedidentity. more stable worlds,whetherthese reside in our own past,in othercultures,or in the conflationof the two. Such formsof longing thus appear closelyrelated to secular notions of progress. When the so-called civilizingprocess destabilizes of formsof life,the agents of change experience transformations other cultures as if theywere personal losses. appropriate emotion to invoke in attemptingto Nostalgia is a particularly establishone's innocence and at the same timetalkabout whatone has destroyed. Doesn't everyone feel nostalgic about their childhood memories? Aren't these nostalgia'sforcerememories genuinelyinnocent?Indeed, much of imperialist sides in its association with (indeed, its disguise as) more genuinelyinnocent, tender recollectionsof what is at once an earlier epoch and a previous phase of radio life. For mygeneration,one can, forexample, evoke nostalgiabyimitating *voices saying"Call for Philip Morris,""The Shadow Knows,"or "Who Was That impebenigncharacterof mostnostalgiafacilitates Masked Man?" The relatively rialist nostalgia's capacity to transformthe responsible colonial agent into an harmless,the impewere not fairly If innocentbystander. mostsuch recollections as would not be nearlyas effective it is. rialistvariety To "us," feelingsof nostalgiaseem almostas "natural"as motorreflexes.How can one help but feel nostalgicabout childhood memories?Don't all people in all times and in all places feel nostalgia? Yet even the historyof the concept in of WesternEurope reveals the historicaland cultural specificity our notion of "to (fromthe Greek nostos, nostalgia. Far frombeing eternal,the termnostalgia returnhome," and algia, "a painful condition")dates fromthe late seventeenth centurywhen it was coined to describea medical condition.The termdescribed, for example, a pathological homesicknessamong Swiss mercenarieswho were far fighting fromtheirhomeland. (Even in itsorigins,the termappears to have

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David Lowbeen associated withprocessesof domination.)Accordingto historian nostalgiawas a physicalratherthan a mentalcomenthal,"Seventeenth-century plaint, an illness with explicitsymptomsand oftenlethal consequences.... To nostalgia in the late sevenleave home for long was to risk death."' Evidently, matter thanthemore innocentmood "we" at times was a weightier teenthcentury experience in recallingour youths.In any case, the changing meanings of nostalgiain WesternEurope (not to mentionthe factthatmanycultureshave no such concept at all) indicate that"our" feelingsof tenderyearningare neitheras natnot necessarily innocent,as one might as ural nor as pan-human,and therefore imagine. Although theydo not use the term,a numberof scholarswho have recently analyzed imperialistnostalgia regard the process of yearningfor what one has In on destroyedas a formof mystification. a manuscript the inventionof AppaAllen Batteau, for example, studies anthropologist lachia as a culturalcategory, He perspective.2 argues thatduringthe lastdecade the phenomenon in historical was closing,racism was codified and as of the nineteenthcentury, the frontier This attitude people began to deifynature and its Native Americaninhabitants. of reverence toward the natural developed at the same time that North Americans intensifiedthe destructionof their human and natural environment.In showinghow cultural notions about Appalachia were part of a larger dynamic, of where people draw Batteau likensthisprocess of idealizationto forms sacrifice and the sacred (nature), and then a line between the profane (theircivilization) process is destroying. worshipthe verythingtheircivilizing In a related analysis, North American historianRichard Slotkin suggests in thatfrontier mythology part revolvesaround a hunterhero who lives out his withthe creaturesof the wildernesswho teach him dreams in spiritualsympathy Slotkinsays,"is alwaysto use the acquired theirsecret lore. "But his intention," skillagainstthe teachers,to killor asserthis dominance over them.The consumhim in his new mation of his huntingquest in the killingof the quarryconfirms and higher characterand gives him fullpossession of the powers of the wilderness."3 In this analysis,the disciple turnson his spiritualmastersand achieves whichSlotkincalls regeneration myth, redemptionby killingthem.This frontier through violence, shaped American experience from the westwardexpansion rhetoricof venturein the Philippinesto the earlyofficial throughthe imperialist the Vietnam War. nostalgiathrougha more imperialist Yet other scholarsattemptto demystify and mostprobassertthatthe past was no better, frontalassault: theyvigorously ablyworse,than the present.Ratherthanclaim thatnostalgiaconceals guilt,they of tryto eliminatealtogetherthe validity elegiac posturestowardsmall townsand for example, book on modernity, rural communities. In a recent stimulating social critic Marshall Berman attacks reverentialpostures toward traditional

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society by claiming that they are "idealized fantasies"designed to gloss over The devastatingportraitof such a societyin Goethe's violence and brutality. Gretchen tragedy,he says, "should etch in our minds foreverthe crueltyand brutality so many of the formsof life that modernizationhas wiped out. So of long as we remember Gretchen'sfate,we will be immune to nostalgicyearning AlthoughBerman and I both aspire to "immunize" forthe worldswe have lost."4 readers from such nostalgia, he apparently misses the paradox (about which societyis brutal) in his claim that modernizationhas "wiped out" the "cruelty (does he mean barbarism?)of past formsof life. In myview,Berand brutality" man combats overlyromanticvisionsof bygone harmonious societiesby simply the comstandingthem on theirhead. Instead of inflating value of face-to-face close to reproducingan ideologyof progress munities,he comes uncomfortably at thatcelebratesmodernity the expense of other formsof life. The preceding analystsshare a classic perspectivewhichassertsthatideolo(in gies are fictions the sense of falsehoods) designed to conceal feelingsof guilt. In more general terms,thismode of analysisargues thatthe workof ideology is to either deliberatelyto disguise real class interestsor unintentionally express underlyingsocial strains.The formerpositsa conspiracyto deceive subordinate connectionratherlike thatbetween groups and the latterassumes an unthinking a disease and its symptom.Thus an analysiswillreveal thatthe rulingclass, for in example, ideologicallybeats the drums about tax simplification order to conceal the factthatit has turned Robin Hood upside down bytakingfromthe poor and the middle class in order to give to the veryrich.Althoughsuch demystifying theiranalyses approaches have proven theirvalue, theyall too oftenshort-circuit involvedand failingto show how ideology byrushingto reveal the "real" interest convincesthose caught in itsthrall.If the culturalformsinvolvedneverconvince they and never prove compelling, why not more directlystudy the "interests" conceal or the "social strains"theyexpress? In the extremecases, whybother to speak of ideology at all? What follows attemptsto dismantle rather than demystify ideology. Presented more in the manner of a montage than a linear narrative,my heterogeneous examples attempt to show how ideology can at once be compelling, and pernicious.5The dismantlingoccurs by giving voice to the contradictory, ideologies, even at theirmostpersuasive,and allowingthem,as the analysisprowithinand between ceeds, to fall under theirown weightas the inconsistencies voices become apparent.Justas no ideologyis as coherentas ittriesto appear, no and contradictions. My dismansingle voice remains withoutits inconsistencies attemptsto infectthe reader, so to speak, witha minor tlinganalyticalstrategy against more case of the ideology'spersuasivenessin order to provide immunity pathologicalepisodes.

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The Civilizing Mission Let me now turn to North America's imperial venturein the Philippines by workingwith materialsrelated to my field research among the Ilonby gots. I shall discuss in turn a series of voices, ranging fromcertainwritings lieutenant in the Philippine Constabulary,to more an early-twentieth-century anthropolorecent evangelical Christianmissionaries,to a turn-of-the-century Michelle Rosaldo and myself.The writers gist,to present-dayanthropologists to discussed move froma man who enforcedlaw and order under imperialism, group, to threeindividuals people who imposed theirreligionon a non-Christian that who tried not to change the culture theystudied. Despite the differences divide them, I shall argue that all are complicitin reproducing the ideology of nostalgia. imperialist My discussion begins with the writingsof WilfridTurnbull, a lieutenant Turnbull decade of thiscentury. in the Philippine Constabularyduring the first spent timeamong the Ilongots,especiallyin 1909 and 1910 when he was in pursuitof the men who murdered an Americanethnographernamed WilliamJones (who in turnis discussed laterin thisessay). by The Philippine Magazineof 1929 carried a story Turnbullentitled"Among for the Ilongots TwentyYears Ago." His story, the most part, turnsout to be a dry,unsentimentalpiece writtenin the ethnographic present and laced with native terms.Turnbull'sethnographicobservationson subsistence,materialculture,and customarypracticeson the whole are reasonablyaccurate, despite his modest disclaimer: "The writerof the presentarticlewishes it to be considered of as an assemblyof reminiscences the people and conditionsas found byhim,a twenty years ago."6 layman with no pretense to a knowledge of anthropology, him fromusing theclassic Turnbull'sdisarmingdenial of expertisedid notinhibit however. norms of ethnographicdescription, In the articleas a whole, lapses fromconventionalformare more occasional an of Excesses usuallysurfaceduringattributions character, than representative. of site especiallyfertile forthe cultivation ideology.Afterdescribingthe so-called if active" construct, thereeverwas one-as "wonderfully Ilongot man-a fictional in vicesof sloth, and "effeminate appearance," he goes on to describe"his"warrior and surliness: male dominance, vanity, as man else,thatit is childhood regardhimself a fighting and nothing to Taughtfrom laborwhich hazardous, is that to manual belowhisdignity perform buttheprescribed any himas a slaveand admirer, tendto all mouldto thefemale whois given he is ofsuperior yearshe is apt to become and vain,and withadvancing makehimsomewhat arrogant one someoftheold menreminding ofold bad-tempered and crabbed, overbearing finally
canines.7

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The canine similein thisAmerican colonial condemnationof the "Ilongot man" striking because, as the article draws to a close, Turnbull appears particularly reintroduceshis simileand adopts a more sympathetic stance tosimultaneously it to ward the Ilongots: "Formerly was customary killthe Ilongots on sight;they were hunted like mad dogs."8 his instance,Turnbull abruptlyinterrupts detached, disIn a more striking tanced descriptionwitha personal narrativethatbegins as follows: the and cabezas [heads]nothaving produced pleasure The presentation theseventeen of a the gavethewriter livechildren, boyand a girlof two enthusiasm anticipated, Ilongots rancherias unrelated. and The youngsters were different aboutten yearsof age, from were directions necessary for givensoap with quiteagreeableto thetransfer, accepted, at as as withmaterials hand,were itsuse, weredelousedand sterilized nearly possible and much withnew wardrobes, becamethe sourceof greatusefulness and furnished
entertainment.9

This storybegins verymuch in the middle. The seventeenhuman heads appear withoutantecedentor explanation; the narrativemakes it appear thattheywere wishes.On the otherhand, the twochildrenappear givenagainstthe lieutenant's via to be a more welcome gift(at least aftertheirinductionto civilization ritual cleansing). to givesan air of innocence Turnbull'swillingness assume adoptive paternity to the whole exchange. The author goes on to tella versionof thewildchild story. When, for example, the two Ilongot children enter their firstChristiansettleaccordingto Turnbull,"'Look, sir,thereare carament,theyyellin excitement, bao, shoot them'-not being able to understandwhyitwas not done. To themthe keeping of a live animal was just a waste of food."'0 As a guardian, Turnbull enjoyed a somewhatindulgentpaternalrelationtowardhis twowards. When the Ilongot boy sharpens his long knifeand tellsa ChristianFilipinothathe wantsto behead him, Turnbull stands back and notes that the boy's fun "caused several undesirable situations."" If the wild child mixes naive innocence with violent impulses, Turnbull combines fond indulgence withpatronizingunderstanding. The narrativeembodies an attitudeof humanitarianimperialism. Turnbull makes his adoption of thechildrenappear humane and intelligible. Yet the reader stillwonders about the mysterious appearance of the seventeen human heads. For furtherilluminationone must consultan earlier text,which Turnbull wroteas an official constabulary reportat the timethe episode actually occurred in 1909. There the lieutenantexplainshow his actions(perhaps initially led unknowingly) to the decapitationsand how he personallyreceived the heads to as he pursued the murderersof the ethnographerWilliamJones. Written a senior officer, Turnbull's 1909 reportdescribeshow Ilongotswere in his camp to hunt down Jones'smurderers:
As the people of Alicad and Tamsi were in camp in compliance with an order of the governor to hunt these people, an expedition was organized next day and rationed (2 chupas

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to of corn per man per day) by me with instructions surround and capture all these people.... On the 8th the cabecilla of Tamsi and the people fromPanipigan returned withtwo heads, claimingthat theywere unable to findany but these,who showed fight and could not be captured.... The head-takingceremonywas celebratedand lasted two days,men, women, and childrenparticipating.'2

order the Ilongots to deliverhuman heads, this While Turnbull did not literally episode repeats itselfoften enough in the report to suggestthat the lieutenant musthave knownthathis orders were more likelyto resultin decapitationsthan and lack of pleasure he showsat the gift in the takingof prisoners.The mystery Magazine,appears quite at odds of human heads, as depicted in the Philippine withhis 1909 report. Indeed, one suspects that in 1909 the giftof heads must have been less surprisingto Turnbull than the presentationof the two children he received as wards and hostages. Magazine and In a later piece, published in a 1937 issue of the Philippine appropriatelyentitled "Return to Old Haunts," Turnbull describes his return, he knew in 1909 and 1910. His essay as a prospector,to Ilongot territory first as contrasts, seen in the following: revolvesaround a series of before-and-after divergences from formerlocal Ilongot custom at "I noted several significant old Panippagan. The presentday house has its flooronly about four instead of ten or more feet from the ground and the ordinarynative hagdan or ladder Stinkingclothing was also in evidence."''3 has replaced the notched pole.... metonymic: and tacitly to Turnbull'sefforts comprehend change are diminutive houses close to the ground indicate the end of headhunting (earlier houses on againstraiders); the disappearance of the notched served as protection high stilts pole signals deculturation (the loss of a "typical"item of material culture); clothesstand fordebasement(Christiangarb as opposed to Ilongot bark stinking presentsthe culture as a tableau frozen in two slices in cloth). This metonymy not unlike the minitime,before and after.It remakes the culturein miniature, the two Ilongot children. Relations that once were drama of foster-parenting have soured and become beggarly. paternalistic remarkson the civilizing Turnbull explicitly process in these terms:
The presentconditionof the people and houses at Pongo was a shock! If such condition it of is a necessarystage to the less than semi-civilization the nearbyChristiansettlements, were betterto segregate the Ilongots and allow them to followtheirown mode of life. If there is a real desire to improvethese people-and theyare well worthit, especiallythe women-suitable teachers should be sent into the interiorwho by precept and example For the rightkind of teacher,the prowill show them the advantages of real civilization. tectionof soldiersis neithernecessarynor desirable.'4

These humanitariansentiments-moral uplift,the value of education, and the white man's burden-appear curiouslyat odds with Turnbull's own role as a Rather than the stark dichotomyof savage and civilized, constabularyofficer. in defined primarily ecothispassage plays more complexlyon semicivilization,
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nomic terms,versus real civilization, known throughmoral values imparted by education. Yet in his essay the formerlieutenant, if speakingin anothervoice, recalls as his punitiveexpeditionaftertheJones murder: "The people of Dickni visitedus frequently, attractedto a certain extent by our winningways, I should like to say,but fear it was only by the rice the cargadors [carriers]fed them and the crackersI dealt out to the children.I did not grudge themanything theygot,for in 1910 I destroyed the settlementto the very last camote plant and in selfdefence had to kill one man, all of which I now know was more my faultthan theirs,due to myignoranceof local customs."'5 Once he was harsh and ignorant, now he is older and wiser.Not unlike his seeminglyself-effacing denial of ethnographic competence,his apparentlyhumble posture authorizeshim to go on, bynow forgivenhis youthful excesses,and describehis warriorfeats.His textual fieldof inconsistent discoursesranges frominnocence(his soldieringhad nothing to do with the Ilongots' degradation) to valor (but he completelydestroyeda and killeda man). settlement Moreover,the changes thatTurnbullencounteredon his returnas a prospectorto his old hauntswere,in part,produced by(or at anyratehappened in accord with) his design, as his 1909 report indicates. There, he suggeststhat Ilongots be given help "to adopt bettermethods of cultivation, seeds, one or more carabao, ploughs cultivation, harrows,etc. be provided; and thattrailsbe builtwithin 6 withthe outside, and graduallyall willbecome friendly."'Agricultural developof headhunting,and contactwiththe outside appear to have been ment,the end the primarychanges that Turnbull witnessedin his 1937 article. His vision of 1909 had come true,but apparentlyhe didn'tlike what he saw. He feltnostalgia for things as they had been when he firstencountered the Ilongots, and this attitudeabsolved him of guiltand responsibility. To bring the "civilizing mission"up to date, one must at least speak briefly about the major role evangelicalmissionarieshave played in transforming Ilongot culture fromthe mid 1950s onward. The most active group in the area has been the largelyBaptist organizationcalled the New Tribes Mission that operates throughoutthe worldamong remotetribalgroups. These missionaries quite oftenspoke with joy at how Ilongots had, as theyput it,accepted Christas their personal savior.Perhaps this jubilant discoursecan bestbe seen in an articlecalled "Old Things Are Passed Away," whichappeared in the New Tribes Mission magThe articlebySarabelle Graves,the wifeof one of the first azine Island Challenge. New Tribes missionaries,describes the initialphase of convertingthe Ilongots:
How I wish you could hear the children of Taang when theyget together!Marvin [her betweenthemand thosein savage villageswhere husband] told me of the greatdifference he and Florentino[his Tagalog-speakingcompanion] have been. Childrenjust big enough this section during the coming year.... Later trails can be made to connect

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song and doing to walk can be seen smoking,chewingbetel nut,singingthe head-hunting the dance; but the childrenof Taang love to gatheraround manytimesa day to sing "Isn't it Grand to be a Christian," "Thank You Lord forSaving My Soul," and many,manyother songs theyhave learned in Tagalog. Yes, the POWER of God, the Gospel, has transformed these precious lives.'7

It's clear that,for Sarabelle Graves, there are two typesof Ilongots, the savage and the Christian.This passage displaysa reverential mood, not of nostalgia for the old formof life,but of a similartendernesstowardthe transformed precious livesof new converts.Can one speak of nostalgiaforthe new? nostalgiain fact My first personal encounterwiththe discourseof imperialist came while doing fieldresearch among the Ilongots in 1969. Althoughthe incident was not inscribed in my field notes, I vividlyrecall a conversationwith a She began to reminisce, Tagalog-speaking evangelical New Tribes missionary. perhaps because she thought it would interestan anthropologist,about how thingswere when she first arrivedabout a decade earlier.She spoke withnostalgia lives frommen she called headhunters,about how people about threatson their shirts. alwayssang theirindigenous songs,and about the absence of store-bought to Ilongot bapThese remarkspuzzled me; theyseemed ill fitting a missionary. called them,purposelyabandoned tized believers,as the New Tribesmissionaries theirsongs, sayingtheytugged at theirheartsand awakened theirold ways.The end of headhunting,for the missionary, marked the success of her evangelical efforts. Many of the shirtswere donations thatshe herselfhad distributed.She desired, the changes that had played a major role in producing,and evidently took place. At the time I puzzled thatshe could yearn for the Ilongots to be as nostheirlives.The notionof imperialist theyhad been before she transformed talgia had not yetoccurred to me.

Mourning the Passing of Traditional Society By now most anthropologists probablyfindsuch notionsas the "vanor society"more convenishingprimitive" "mourningthe passing of traditional Like most cliches, theywere once good metaphors,and tional than insightful. in for theyhave enjoyed a venerablehistory thediscipline.BronislawMalinowski, Claude Levi-Strauss's TroTristes example, anticipateda themeplayed throughout piqueswhen he said, "Ethnologyis in thesadlyludicrous,not to saytragicposition, thatat the verymomentwhen it begins to put itsworkshopin order,to forgeits proper tools,to startready forworkon itsappointed task,thematerialof itsstudy meltsaway withhopeless rapidity."'8 Malinowskihimself, course, was articuof latingthe doctrineof salvage ethnography-record the precious culturebefore it disappears forever-that helped authorize the fundingand institutional supImperialist Nostalgia 115

port of fieldresearch. One should probablyadd thatthe visionof the vanishing has proven sometimesfalse and sometimestrue. Confrontedwiththe primitive assaults of imperialismand capitalism,culturescan show remarkableresilience (as among the Native American Pueblos), and theycan also disappear (as have many Negrito groups in the Philippines). The notion of the "vanishingsavage" formsan ideological patternrecently who pointsout thatthepatternextends explored, forexample, byJamesClifford, George Eliot uses a broadly He beyond ethnography.'9 notes thatin Middlemarch years into the less ethnographicmode to describe a societyplaced about thirty in industrializedpast. Cliffordlocates this ideological patternprimarily the act of writing,the inscriptionof oral culture into textual modes. He argues that creates the simultaneously ratherlike sacrifice, bringinga culture into writing, view cultureas book and destroysit as oral life.Where I diverge fromClifford's is when he asserts that ethnographic writingis primarilyan allegory about much in the modernistsense thatthe subjectof much poetryis poetry writing, referto and are conditioned by social itself.My own view is that such writings includingformsof dominance and subordination.Surelysuch allegories reality, mustbe understood in relationto imperialism.20 The social criticRaymond Williamsgeneralizesabout the ideological pattern of pastoral pasts by documentingthe historicalpersistenceof nostalgicfeelings towardthe epoch about a generationback in time.He argues, however,thatnot historicalcircumstances, theymean all nostalgias are the same; under different things."What seemed a single escalator,"he says, "a perpetual quite different to turnsout, on reflection, be a more complicated moverecession into history, the rural virtues-all these, in fact,mean difment: Old England, settlement, values are being broughtinto ferentthingsat different times,and quite different question."2' nostalgia witha view to reaching What followsfurther explores imperialist officers, and ethconstabulary recognitionthatmissionaries, the uncomfortable overlappingideological spaces, as can be seen in the nographersinhabitpartially Lest there be any conof writings WilliamJones, Michelle Rosaldo, and myself. have oftenused the notion of the "vanfusion,I recognize thatanthropologists intrusions imperialism of and itscolonial the ishingsavage" to criticize destructive of the "primitive" have served as somewhatidealized versions regimes.Similarly, foils against which to judge modern industrialsociety.In her filmTo Keep the of portrait Laura Nader uses a sympathetic Balance, forexample, anthropologist Mexican Zapotec Indian legal practicesto satirize"our" own more dehumanized systemof law. Nonetheless,mydiscussionin what followsunderscoresthe ideoand the agentsof change fromwhich betweenanthropologists logical similarities "we" so oftenattemptto separate ourselves. WilliamJones While doing fieldresearchamong the Ilongots,anthropologist

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wrote a letterhome dated 25 February 1909. Lettershome, of course, are the exemplarygenre for nostalgicdiscourse,and thisone, as can be seen fromthe whereJones was raised as an followingrecollectionsof the Oklahoma territory was no exception: Indian and worked as a cowboy,
I wish the plains could have remained as theywere when I was a "kid.". . . I cannot put me intowords the feelingof remorsethatrose within at the thingsI saw.The whole region was disfiguredwitha most repellingugliness-windmills,oil wells,wire fences. Go to so and so on. The cowboyand the frontiersman and so fordrugs,go to anotherforgroceries, were gone. The Indians were in overalls and looked like "bums." The picturesque cosof horsemen,were things the past. The virginprairieswere no more. tumes,the wigwams,

I that usedtosee. Nevertheless sawthestars you the say Andnowthey that placeis a state! of else? anywhere Did youhearthelonecry nights moonlight Did youeverbeholdclearer and I youcouldhaveseenthelonghorn theold thewolf and theyelpof thecoyote? wish are build.22 punchers ofa different The present would-be time punchers.

lost Jones'slonging foran irretrievably time,at once his childhood and a period of history, appear almostnatural,as if it were onlyhuman nature to be noscan authenticand talgic for lost youth and bygone eras. His lettersurelymanifests do deeply felt sentiments,yet even such moments of "pure subjectivity" not remain untouched bysocial forceand dominantideologies. Writtenfrom the interiorof America's newly acquired Philippine colony, but Jones'sletterhome uses, not a panhuman spontaneoussentiment, a discourse to already appropriated byTeddy Roosevelt.In attempting mask the harsh realRooseveltinvoked and industrialization immigration, itiesof turn-of-the-century rugged individualism,especially as personifiedin the cowboy and the fronventurein the Philippines,not His was an imperialist tiersman.23 actual frontier were at once genuine Jones'sfeelings the Wild West.Viewed in thislargercontext, ideologyof the time.Even in a heartand shaped by North Americannationalist feltletterhome, it becomes apparent thatmostculturalphenomena containtacit shaped. In otherwords,the terms ideologies, and most ideologies are culturally than to separate refermore to distinct analyticalperspectives and ideology culture realities. over the same period as the lettershome, Jones In his fieldjournal, written note. He describes,forexample, huntingwild carabao or strikes quite a different feralwaterbuffalowitha group of Ilongots:
Mangurn ran crouchinglow; D. made itbystandingerect.I could have clubbed him. The carabao thenbegan to move away.I urged the twomen to hurry;when we got to the ridge cannot come upon game like an Indian.24

It the woodof themountain. just entering thick theherdhad gone arounditand were shot.These people for the wasbitter disappointment, from ridgeI couldhavehad a fine Jones findsthat the Ilongots, in contrastwithAmerican Indians, are miserable around whichJames FenimoreCooper could hunters.Hunting,the veryactivity

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so readily constructa romance in the forestprimeval,appears as a shabbyfield by for disappointment.Possible nostalgiahas been interrupted nationalism,the to sense thatPhilippinesavages are inferior the Americanvariety. journal showsa side of his Jones'sfield passage from Anotherrepresentative his activities, materialrelationswiththe Ilongots,thata published ethnography would most probably have concealed. He often tells of the strain and distress he created, on all sides, by the "gifts" gave, both spontaneouslyand in compenservices.Once, when he was going throughhis mail,an Ilongot sation forspecific woman and her boy came to ask him forbrass wire,a scarce good much valued by Ilongots formakingbeltsand jewelry: Whilegoingthrough mailin cameAnanand herboy.She tookherseaton thebox my for whenshe beganbegging thewire.I asked nearme. She was hardly through panting I broke and that wouldsee aboutitlater. almost we She hertowait, toldherthat wasbusy that coming themountain, up she her intotears, eyeswatered; toldme itwashardwork tookme asideand told she evening and herhusband to itwas painful herlegs.And this it at and wouldgo homewith tomorrow they me togivethem wiresecretly night, that the on that it to that remarks sucha course, my without anyone seeingit!I wassurprised find no to wasnota right thing do, metwith heed.25 Jones's "gifts"of brass wire, cloth, combs, and beads to the Ilongots doubtless produced onlysmallchanges in theirlives,buttheywere partof a largereconomy that was penetratingthe region. Although the ethnographerwas not a central the agent in transforming Ilongot formof life,he did participatein and bear witnessto the changes takingplace under the colonial regime.Yet ethnographic discourse of the time saw its mission as the textual preservationof traditional as to and would not have seen fit, it ifwere a breach of etiquette, describe society, the exchanges of goods and servicesbetween the ethnographerand the people under study. Let me continuewitha briefconsiderationof the researchthatMichelle Rosaldo and I conducted among the Ilongots. Not unlike those of WilliamJones, home were no doubt themostnostalgictextsI wroteabout the Ilongots. myletters In late December 1968, a group of Ilongots and I walked to the nearestlowland municipal center where we witnessedthe mayor'sinauguration on January 1. During thatwalk,myIlongot companions appeared in myimaginationas ifthey I were Hollywood Apaches (at other times, incidentally, imagined them as out pirates),and the townswe visitedappeared (to me) to be straight of the Wild West. All of this entered lettershome in some detail, yet my fieldjournal, with would sugperhaps a greater sense of decorum than Malinowski'sindiscretion referring doubt no town," gest,containsonlythelaconic phrase,"Allveryfrontier thisnostalgia to myvivid fantasiesof cowboysand Indians. In my ethnography enters, but by then in an ironic mode: "Like WilliamJones, I felt that I was bearing witnessto the end of an era. Yetno one would have been more surprised

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thanJonesto learn thatnearly60 yearsafterhis death I would be meetingIlongot and red hornbillearrings(a sign young men who stillwalked about in G-strings to of having taken a human head)."26This, as I now see it,was an effort underan ideology,the quest to experience "real" mine yet acknowledge the force of place. Because thereseemed to thatled me to the Ilongots in the first fieldwork, be no other available trope, I recast nostalgia for the "vanishingsavage" in the ironic mode ratherthan as sincere romance. Had classic norms stillbeen in full force,I could have simplyignored whatJones saw and did before me as well as schools,and hydromissionaries, social forces-loggers, settlers, the present-day appear alien to Ilongot tradielectricprojects-that, under such a description, tional culture. At the time I could only acknowledge (but not as fullyas I now would) thatthe veryprocesses thataided mypresence among the Ilongots were bringingdevastatingchanges on them. In September 1981, Michelle Rosaldo and I returnedfora briefvisitamong the Ilongots. We were struckat the changes Ilongots were undergoing and we felta sense of lost innocence. There was no moment,a generationbefore either we or WilliamJones arrivedon the scene, when the Ilongots were theirpristine so, selves. Perhaps we once had enjoyed thinking for the romanticquest of the seeking out the Ilongots, but untouched societyhad been a factorin our first as ethnography pastoral romance no longer seemed conceivable.No more could on a we place settlers, schoolhouse,gold mining,and missionaries the marginsof our discourse. They belonged as much on centerstage as our previousstudiesof headhuntingand Ilongot notionsof selfand social life. journal: "Much of During our returnvisitof 1981 Michellewrotein her field to writean article,a sort of nostalgia for a time when my nostalgia me wanted on seemed to make more sense, reflections the reason that if one were to start NOW one couldn'tdo as much blockingout of 'the outside'as we had previously." She goes on to speak of the changes she notices: people feel vulnerable to their theyare more caught up in a future; theysee hope in evangelical Christianity; instead of chewingbetel nut; cash economy; young men are smokingcigarettes items of dress and material culture fromless than a decade before have been Saradiscarded. Her observationsredeploythe discourseused bythe missionary betelchewersversus belle Graves,who spoke withsuch passion about thesmoking WilfridTurnbull, who the transformedconverts,and the constabularyofficer took such sad note of the changes he witnessedon returningto his old haunts. journal described It seems thattimeshad changed. Yet when Michelle'sfield our initialtrip to a projected fieldsite,she found herselfon an anxious search in forculturaltraits thatwould invokeher nostalgia,"I was pained to findmyself quest of somethingeveryone said was dying: where are there priests?do any When young men learn this?whichhamletshave mostbetelchewers,G-strings?" asked, people told her item by item-priests, betel chewers,G-strings-that the

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"traditional culture"was dying.Althoughshe once embraced the romanticquest for the "vanishingsavage," she now found it painful. No doubt it is easier, if perhaps more painful,to discernan ideologicalpatternas itbeginsto lose itsgrip. this Althoughnot the one MichelleRosaldo would have written, essay is part to of a larger anthropologicaleffort speed the demise of a conventionaltropesociety-and to remind"us" of how complicit mourningthe passingof traditional we are with imperialism.The anthropologicaltrope and the colonial official's discourse I curious longing for what he or she has destroyed-the sentimental be separated fromone another. nostalgia-cannot neatly have called imperialist harmlessmood as a mask of innocence to cover Both attemptto use a seemingly withprocessesof domination. theirinvolvement Rather than invokea coherentselfwho worshipswhathe or she has killedor grievesthe demise of pristinesocieties,I have triedto show the place of imperilike Wilfrid alist nostalgia withina heterogeneousdiscursivefieldwhere writers Turnbull can at once yearn forthe old waysand acknowledgetheirwarriorrole in destroying them. Nostalgia at play withdomination,as in Turnbull'srelation with his Ilongot fosterchildren,uses compelling tendernessto draw attention away from the relation's fundamental inequality.In my view, ideological disthan outright suppression,hence courses workmore throughselectiveattention of textsagainst theirexplicitintentions. the feasibility reading such inconsistent Ethnographyhas participatedin much the same ideological discourseas that of Sarabelle Graves and WilfridTurnbull. In Jones'scase, official discourse supin presses painfulobservations:disappointment Ilongot huntingprowess,excruand the brutal changes he witnessed.Processes of ciatingmaterialtransactions, drasticchange oftenare the enabling conditionof ethnographicfieldresearch, of and herein residesthe complicity missionary, constabulary officer, ethnogand officers during rapher.Justas Jones receivedvisitsfromAmericanconstabulary airplane for his fieldresearch,Michelle Rosaldo and I oftenused the missionary in transportation the Ilongot region.Jones did not police and we did not evanand we participated, relatively as minorplayers,in gelize,but we all bore witness, the transformations takingplace beforeour eyes. Michelle Rosaldo and I were not innocent.The conditionsthat enabled us to reside among the Ilongots already made us complicitin imperialism.Our iniand sincere: the tial efforts disguise our complicity, to however,were heartfelt "pristineculture"of the Ilongots did tug at our hearts,and our capacityto experience changes in theirlives as personal losses was enormous. Even today,when I remember how Ilongots gave up theirmusic and oratorybecause, theysaid, I and grieved (for theyhad become Christians, cannot help but feel hurt,angry, whom?). Thus I have argued thatsurrenderto such memoriesand the recognition of our complicity enable us, not to detour around, but to move through, will and hopefully beyond, imperialistnostalgia. This analyticalmovement more nearlyresemblesthe long convalescencethan the miraculouscure. 120
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The memories that evoke moods of imperialistnostalgia both reproduce and disruptideologies. The notionof such memoriesas pure innocence,like that should probablygo the way as of the social scientist impartialdetached observer, guided by an ethic of masculine heroics,to do the impossible. of other efforts, to Similarly, efforts produce seamless identities-the celebrationof Turnbull as as valiant hero or his vilification imperialistmonster-usually produce carbon copies or invertedimages of the ideologies theyare meantto combat. It is in their inconsistent plenitude that memories eventuallyunravel the ideologies theyso vividlyanimate. Such analyticalrecollectionsare more a process of immersion veni-vidi-vici agonizingintrospection, of and gradual dissolvingthan a latter-day breast-beating confession,and absolute redemption.This mode of analysis atby temptsnot so much to overpoweran ideology, grabbinghold and demystifying presentuntilitgradually make itmore and more fully it,as to evoke itand thereby crumblesunder the weightof itsown inconsistencies.

Notes

(Boston, 1989), by permissionof Beacon Press. 1. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (New York, 1985), 10. See also Jean Starobinski,"The Idea of Nostalgia,"Diogenes54 (1966): 81-103; and Fred Davis, A Yearning Yesterday: SociologyofNostalgia (New York, 1979). I am grateful to Richard for Terdiman forcallingmyattention the above works. to 2. Allen Batteau, "RomanticAppalachia: The Semanticsof Social Creationand Control" (unpublished typescript). 1600-1860 (Middletown,Conn., 1973), 551.
4. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid MeltsInto Air: The ExperienceofModernity (New York,

This essay is reprinted from my recent Cultureand Truth:The Remaking ofSocial Analysis

3. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology theAmerican Frontier, of

1982), 60. 5. My mode of analysisparallels thatof Michael Taussig in his work on the culture of ideologyplus a and Healing (Chicago, 1987). For a reviewof classicmodes of studying to related to mine-that such studiesdo not attendsufficiently what critiquepartially in ideologies actuallysay-see CliffordGeertz,"Ideology as a Cultural System," The
Interpretation Cultures (New York, 1973), 193-233. of terror in Colombia entitled Shamanism,Colonialism,and theWild Man: A Studyin Terror

6. WilfridTurnbull, "Among the Ilongots TwentyYears Ago," Philippine Magazine 26 (1929): 262-63, 307-10, 337-38, 374-79, 416-17, 460-70, esp. 262. 7. Ibid., 263. 8. Ibid., 469. 9. Ibid., 376. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 378. 12. WilfridTurnbull,"1909 Report of an InspectionTrip Through the Ilongot RanchePhilippines riasand Countryon and near theCagayan River"(unpublishedtypescript, Studies Libary,Chicago), 8. 13. WilfridTurnbull, "Return to Old Haunts," Philippine Magazine 34 (1937): 449, 460, 462-64, 546-47, 557-58, esp. 449. ImperialistNostalgia 121

14. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

15. Ibid., 464. Ibid., 462. Turnbull,"1909 Report of an InspectionTrip," 13. (May 1956). IslandChallenge Sarabelle Graves,"Old Things Are Passed Away," (New York, 1961), xv. Pac/ifc of Argonauts theWestern BronislawMalinowski, and The in Culture: Poetics Politics "On EthnographicAllegory," Writing James Clifford, ed. ofEthnography, James Cliffordand George Marcus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986), 98-121. For a recent critique of the relations between anthropologyand imperialism,see Critical Edward Said, "Representingthe Colonized: Anthropology'sInterlocutors," relationto impecompare anthropology's Inquiry (1989): 205-25. One can usefully 15 to rialism with history'sto nationalism and literarycriticism's cultural elitism. In sectorsof all three disciplines response to these problematicconnections,significant See also Rosaldo, Culture and Truth. to are now attempting remake themselves. and City (New York, 1973), 12. Raymond Williams,TheCountry the and American Scholar, AnthropoloIndian,Cowboy, Jones: Henry Milner Rideout, William Field(New York, 1912), 200-201. gistin the For a discussion of North American "innocence" and the ideological character of (New York, in visionsof individualism the Wild West,see GarryWills,Reagan'sAmerica 1988), 93-102, 448-60. William Jones, diary, 1907-9, 27 June 1908, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Ibid., 26 July1908. in and 1883-1974: A Study Society History (StanRenato Rosaldo, Ilongot Headhunting, ford,Calif., 1980), 46.

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