Limits Of Multiculturalism : Interrogating the Origins of American Anthropology

Abstract

Scott Michaelsen shows cultural criticism to be at an impasse, trapped by tradition even in its attempts to get beyond tradition. With this dilemma in mind, he takes us back to anthropology's nineteenth-century roots to show us a network of nearly unknown AmerIndian anthropological writers—David Cusick, Jane Johnston, William Apess, Ely S. Parker, Peter Jones, George Copway, and John Rollin Ridge—working contemporaneously with the major white anthropologists who wrote on Indian topics. Michaelsen tests present-day theses about difference in light of these AmerIndian voices and concludes that multiculturalism never will locate critical differences from Western or white writing, since these traditions are inextricably bound together.