Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.20.1609080104440.4302@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Worlds and Names
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2016 01:06:33 -0400 (EDT)
Worlds and Names http://www.alansondheim.org/mtbaker.jpg 'They thought there must be a country in the sky, and that there must be a lake. Some one said they would go on the warpath. One of them was able to shoot far. Then another one shot and hit the notch of the (first) arrow. Then all of them shot, but they did not reach down. When Raven put his nose there, then it reached the ground. When they were going to start, Wolverene said: "Wait for me. It will take me two days to put away my things. It will take me two days." He was still putting away his things when they started. Then Wolverene became angry because he was left. When they had gone up, he took hold of (the arrows) and tore them down entirely. They all dropped down. Then the women became angry at him because they were left alone in the town. The pursued Wolverene and he was about to be killed. They pursued Wolverene, and he was out of breath. He took up his sinews and cut himself to pieces. He changed himself into a squirrel. He put it under the belt which was around his waist. Then he went back somewhere, because he could do no more, being tired. He went around, and some one said: "Here is Wolverene." He said: "I am not he; I am called He-who-wants-to- act-differently-from-others-and-who-does-not-care-for-whatever- may-be-done. I am shooting squirrels."' - from Kutenai Tales, Franz Boas, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 59, Washington, D.C. Now the Kutenai is given on the page opposite the translation, line by line. And the translation may or may not be accurate by Kutenai standards. Consider the narrative as it is, as transformations and absorptions. Consider more traditional narrative formations - short stories, novels, etc. There may always be transformations. The transformations in this fragment of a much longer narrative grouping, however, speak to something else, I think (something thinks), the part of the whole of the part, the vector across organisms and epistemologies (some thinking of objects and part-objects), the naming across affect and epistemologies, something shaking the core of ontology (it thinks) to the (entangled, bifurcated) roots. And it seems to me (to one (to many)), that this category of tropes and transformations among tropes reflects as well, a condition (door, outlook, many think) of existence itself, at least as far as it applies to organisms, and the negation of organisms (perhaps sentience, many think (one thinks)) or negations of organisms (many think) as actors or receptacles, as employers or employments, as Hamiltonians or Lagrangians (one thinks (many think)), something to be noticed, something _noticeable_ within the alterities of narratives and the narratives of alterities (among the books, slips, notes, diaries, pages, fragments, varieties and varieties of oral and written textualities (some say (many say))) - the texts 'dictated' and 'collected' as told (he says) - Told by Mission Joe and Felix Andrew and he (Franz Boas) continues, 'Three other tales were told in the same way by Mission Joe, a man about 60 years old, whose dictation was repeated by Felix Andrew, a young man who speaks English very well, but whose ability to interpret the Indian texts word by word was even less than that of Pierre Andrew.' And further - 'All these tales were recorded without translation; and the translation was made later on, in part with the assistance of Pierre Andrew, in part with that of Felix Andrew. All my informants were Upper Kutenai.' So that there is _that,_ of that period and process, an attempt at accuracy (for example there is a Kutenai-English, English- Kutenai vocabulary at the end of the volume). So to some extent, this situates (loosely, some say (many say) ethnology, scholar- ship, linguistics, and to a lesser extent perhaps, situates these tales. Wolverene says: '"I am not he; I am called He-who-wants-to-act- differently-from-others-and-who-does-not-care-for-whatever-may- be-done."' This is a proper name; in the Kutenai, there are no dashes. What is the expression indicative of totality? And a totality defined, as an outlier organism (many say) defined by negation? Defined perhaps as outlaw, borderlander-after-all (before all), residing within and without the community, among them (one says (many say))? And is this not the problematic of culture in the first and last place (among the continuum of places, an _open set_ (one says (many say))? And what of the expenditure of energy, of maintenance, of legacy (always disappearing, evanescent, always languaging, always transforming)? I (one says, (some say (many say))), among others, bring this to your attention (your perusal, your thinking among this), this self-hunting, self-dismemberment, this renaming, this whole-for- the-part, part-for-the-whole, this parting of the whole, hallowing of the part, this _condition or conditioning_ - of this narrative - of the wayward or wandering - of the untoward - of this epistemological breakdown (which was never a whole or hole, or rather the fragment of a hole, or part or parting of the hole (one says (many say))) - I (many say (some say)), there is this among us, the rest (borderlands, containers, outliers) are fictions at best, fragments, narrative of proclamations - every language ab nihilo declarative - for instance - for an instance or instant - for an instantiation) - circulations (I say (many say)), not circularities (one says (many say)) ... ... 'Then the ribs on one side of the [water] monster were cut off. They were thrown away down the river. The one side of the ribs is now a cliff below. Then the other side was thrown away, there where it was being cut up. Therefore the cliff is named Standing Rib. Then its body was cut up and scattered about where there are people. Its flesh was to be their food. Then its body was gone entirely, and the people here had been forgotten, where it was being carved. There was no water there. Someone said: "Is that in the water there its backbone?" When it was all done, they talked among themselves. "What shall belong to these people, because we killed it on their own land?" Then they picked up the blood and scattered it. They said: "This will belong to these people. These people will be few. They will not be many, they will not increase, but they will always remain; even if many make war against them, they can not be exterminated." Now it is finished. The end.' */ - ibid. p. 83 (one says(many say)) /* http://www.ktunaxa.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutenai_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ktunaxa http://lowerkootenay.com/ http://www.ethnologue.com/language/KUT https://archive.org/details/kutenaitales00boas http://wals.info/languoid/family/kutenai#9/49.5000/244.0000