COMMENTS ON THE FIRST QUESTIONNAIRE

SOME STUDENTS SEEM NOT TO HAVE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AT ALL!  YOU WERE EXPECTED TO ANSWER BOTH QUESTIONS IN THE FIRST QUESTIONNAIRE.  FOR THE FIRST QUESTION YOU COULD CHOOSE ONE OF THE TWO AFRICAN CASES ILLUSTRATED.  IF YOU ANSWERED ONLY ONE QUESTION, TO EARN CREDIT YOU NEED TO SUBMIT THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION YOU MISSED BY OCTOBER 8TH.

Please note: I am not penalizing late submissions of this first questionnaire, but in the future you will lose half a letter-grade per class day that it is belated.

Your answers were graded for English style, clarity, and focus.

PLEASE, IN FUTURE ASSIGNMENTS DO NOT START FROM DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS.  What we need to do is produce our own definitions, express our own views.  Have you ever considered that dictionaries express OPINIONS about the meanings of words?  Encyclopedic dictionaries that provide many citations may be objective, but only because they indicate several meanings of a word.  There is no such thing as THE meaning of any word.

One of the purposes of asking that you read one of these papers was to highlight the different meanings of words such as tribe, race, ethnicity, etc.  On the basis of this reading, we will review and expand in class our initial discussion on the CONSTRUCTION of these divisions.  See the vocabulary.

FIRST QUESTION

Remarks on some of the ideas expressed:

Some students thought that the African cases are fine and dandy.  "These peoples are proud of their heritage."  Other students understood very well the dynamics of the history of Tutsis and Hutus, or of Zulu identity.  By the way, Tutsis and Hutus both believe that the other group has distinctive physical characteristics.  And yet to an outsider they look just the same...  The Zulus were fragmented by the interference of European powers, who fostered the segregation of artificial "tribes" moved by their own political interests.

One student pointed out that there is no real American identity, because everybody came from somewhere, including the Native Americans.  True.  This precisely shows how relative the ideologies of tribal, racial, or national identity are.  They are CONSTRUCTED.  Archaeologists are telling us nowadays that the earliest prehistoric human remains found are those of an African female.  Others say that the first humans dwelled on the steppes of Eurasia.  Unless you resort to a theological answer to the question, Where have we all come from?  you have to accept our ignorance.  In any case, if there is a "race" it is the human species, don't you think?

Here is my take on American cultural identity. Those who claim "pure" American heritage trace their origins to the pilgrims.  The Native Americans may have come from elsewhere in a remote prehistory, but they were here when the Mayflower arrived, so they have at least precedence in time over the newcomers.  Isn't it the case that Americans constructed the foundations of their culture when they declared independence and developed a political organization of their own?  Think about the Founding Fathers as ancestors.  Doesn't some mythic aggrandizement embellish their historical role?

Exclusion starts from the moment a group establishes itself and adopts an identity.  But it is made effective if that group dominates the "Others."  In this country the prime example is, of course, the case of the Africans who were brought as slaves and, when slavery was abolished, retained the label of an inferior "race."  We could find many examples, ancient and recent, of power or wealth as instruments of exclusion.

Have you considered the problems of the current global culture that is developing at a fast pace these days?  Is it really global or does it exclude the greater part of humanity?  I do not mean to suggest that the process is negative (as a matter of fact, even if it were we would not be able to stop it).  But perhaps we should be more aware of what they call the "digital divide."  It exists also within the borders of the USA.

SECOND QUESTION

Some misunderstandings were the following.

Athena is a goddess, not a hero.  Olive trees were in history the foundation of trade and prosperity, but that does NOT make Athena a goddess of fertility.  That is Demeter, the goddess of grain.  Other gods and goddesses were also thought to promote human procreation (Aphrodite and Dionysus) or growth of the livestock (Hermes).

The most extraordinary statement I found in two papers is that women voted in ancient Greece.  They did not, except in myths or texts that represent their rebellion.  The question, however, was why real Athenians chose this myth of origin and this patron goddess.  Most students answered this question reasonably.

Those who made much of the femininity of Athena need to be reminded that it is highly dubious.  Born without a mother, she rejects sexuality and is a goddess of war, a masculine endeavor.  She wears military attire and carries weapons, offensive and defensive.  I will grant that a paradoxical trait is that she fosters skills that are typically feminine, such as weaving.