BOB SCRIBNER Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe

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30 Bob ScribnerCook almost from the very beginning, revealing a long historiographywhich told and retold the story of the god Cook-Lono, sometimes forvery self-interested reasons, as in the case of the early missionaries wholabelled Cook as an idolator for accepting his designation as a god.Finally, he explores the patterns of violence and irrational behaviour inCook that, he argues, led to his death in an act virtually of resistance bythe increasingly terrorized Hawaiians. If Cook was deified after his death,this was the same dignity accorded by the Hawaiians to many greatchiefs 37 .The major issue highlighted in all this is the difficulty of recoveringthe 'native's point of view', even when the anthropologist sets out armedwith the best of intentions. It is still possible to end with a wholly falsifiedaccount, no more than 'the constructed understanding of the constructednative's constructed point of view' 38 . Obeyesekere's main interestis the personality of Cook, and he brings to his analysis an acute awarenessof Cook's role as a bearer of terror and violence to the natives heencountered, sharpened by a sense of the questions of politics and powerinvolved, undoubtedly a consequence being himself, as a Sri Lankan, amember of a colonised people. In an article published around the sametime, he sharpened the critique by addressing the issue of cannibalism, apractice which had fascinated the ethnological curiosity of Cook andother Europeans penetrating the Pacific in the eighteenth century 39 .Through a carefully nuanced reading of the explorers' accounts of nativecannibalism, Obeyesekere showed that the Europeans, by closely questioningand demanding practical proof from the natives about their allegedcannibalistic practices, drew upon themselves the natives' fear thatit was the Europeans who were really cannibals. Moreover, the Europeanobsession with the issue created a discourse to which the natives reactedboth by exploiting the notion of cannibalism for their own purposes (to37 Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking inthe Pacific (Princeton, N.J., 1992).38 The description used by Crapanzo (as note 22), Hermes Dilemma, p. 67, in his critique of Geertz's classic analysis of the Balinese cockfight, but equally applicable toreadings of the Cook story.39 Gananath Obeyesekere, 'Britische Kannibalen'. Nachdenkliches zur Geschichte desTodes und der Auferstehung des Entdeckers James Cook, Historische Anthropologie1 (1993), 273-93; the essay originally appeared in Critical Inquiry 18 (1992),630 - 54.
Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe 31arouse fear among the Europeans as well as to mock them) and by adaptingtheir own discourse and practice of ritual anthrophagy to the Europeanparadigm. Not only was the later practice of cannibalism a responseof European intervention 40 , but it was virtually impossible to recoverexactly what the original pre-European practice had been. The issue wasfurther confused by the willingness of the explorers to attribute cannibalismindiscriminantly even to those to whom the practice was as abhorrentas it was to Europeans. Thus, the return of only a fragment ofCook's remains (the rest seems to have been ritually cooked but not eaten)convinced his crew that the Hawaiians were cannibals, despite theirprotestations to the contrary. Although Obeyesekere admits that there is acertain tentativeness about the interpretation, he has put his finger on amajor problem for both the historical anthropologist and the contemporaryanthropologist. The mere presence Of an observer changes the situationhe or she intends to observe, indeed, the ethnologist may well findthat what he or she observes is merely the natives observing him or her,so that access to any 'native point of view' is virtually impossible. Theproblem is the more acute for the historian, who- must depend on theobservations of others, who even if they are classic mediators betweenone form of culture and another may only reveal a mediating process atwork. The problem is the more accentuated when the mediator is an inquisitor- even viewing the 'inquisitor as anthropologist' may be of littlehelp. Certainly, as Lyndal Roper's contribution in this volume reveals,great benefit can be derived from study of this process of encounter,whether between inquisitor/torturer and victim or between pastor andparishioners. It can reveal much about mentalities, forms of behaviourand how they might be modified, although it might be better to give upthe pretence that we can recover the status quo ante and concentrate onthe dialogue as the central hermeneutic context.The many problems inherent in attempts to employ anthropological approachesto history seem to suggest that the dangers might outweigh theadvantages of the enterprise. One might well be tempted to ask whetherthere is any point in pursuing this elusive quarry further. The obvious40 Obeyesekere calls it a 'revitalisation' of the practice, hinting that it was perhaps inthe process of dying out, although it is unclear how he is able to come to that conclusion,since he claims that it is impossible to uncover the history of cannibalismprior to contacts with Europeans.
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BOB SCRIBNER Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe

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