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“My message to the anthropologists of the center, in the United States, Great Britain, and France, is a plea to realize, first, that their overwhelming power has created relations of domination and subordination in anthropological practice”

Kuwayama’s message (from what I have gather in the couple of quotes Jessy has given us) is nothing new to the anthropological discourse; the discussion of power-relations in anthropology has been around for decades especially given the influence of the postmodern feminist movement in contemporary anthropology. The discussion of this power-imbalance is essentially what I’ll be researching for my final project if you want to check out my proposal, /exchange/node/1300.

“But 'native anthropologists' deepen the divide: by rejecting the central discourse, they make it even more difficult for dialog to occur. But to participate, Kuwayama suggests that they must familiarize themselves with the master's tools.”

This is way off topic but I think Kuwayama’s discussion lends to our past discussions about the feminist movement and participation in preexisting patriarchal institutions. Authors such as Woolf tell us that women need to create their own institutions, distinct from those governed by men. However if we apply Kuwayama’s ideas to the feminist movement he suggests that women must comply with the standards and norms that men have determined in order for us to gain acceptance and for our ideas to be considered valid. How does this fit in with readings such as Sosnoski’s, who suggests that we go against the grain and must change our methods from competition to concurrence? What about the idea that women should be writing for women? Does Kuwayama think we must cast aside such idealism and face the reality of the situation; that we must play by “the master’s” rules in order to participate in the dialog?

Anyway, back to the Book of Salt… I think Jessy brings up some interesting ideas about language in the book. While reading I found myself wondering why language was so difficult for Binh after living in France for so many years and working for the Steins. The idea that Binh wasn’t given access to learn language makes a lot of sense given the underlying discussion of race and class inequalities Book of Salt has to offer. That said, the novel would be completely different if there wasn’t the language barrier, especially considering past class discussions (and readings I’ve done for Anthropology about the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis) about the importance of language in determining the way you think about the world and behave in it.