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    Lokensgard - The Matter of Responsibility - JCRT 4.1

    The Matter of Responsibility: Derrida and Gifting Across Cultures

    Ken Lokensgard
    College of Charleston

    In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in theories of the ‘gift’ and ‘gifting’ among those interested in cultural and religious studies. These scholars are reexamining the claim made by French sociologist, Marcel Mauss, that, among indigenous peoples and those whose cultures have developed independently from the now highly capitalistic cultures born from Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian pasts, an economy exists in which ongoing, reciprocal exchange is consciously emphasized. In The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (first appearing in French in 1925 as ‘Essai sur le don’), Mauss reveals that in most clan-based, indigenous societies, there is a strong awareness of interdependence and less concern with self-interest or the accrual of personal wealth than in many other societies.

    Notes

    Bibliography

    Benveniste, Emile. ‘Gift and Exchange in the Indo-European Vocabulary.’ In The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity, ed. Alan D. Schrift, 33-42. New York: Routledge, 1997.‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’’

    Bernasconi, Robert. “What Goes Around Comes Around: Derrida and Levinas on the Economy of the Gift and the Gift of Genealogy.” In The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity, ed. Alan D. Schrift, 256-273. New York: Routledge, 1997.

    Bullchild, Percy. The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfeet Elders Told It. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985.

    Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death. Translated by David Wells. Religion and Postmodernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

    ________. Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

    Ewers, John C. The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwest Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958.

    Godelier, Maurice. The Enigma of the Gift. Translated by Nora Scott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

    Grinnell, George Bird. Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People. N.p.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892; reprint, Williamstown: Corner House Publishers, 1972.

    Hallowell, A. Irving. ‘Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View.’ In Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy, ed. Barbara Tedlock and Dennis Tedlock, 141-178. New York: Liveright, 1975.

    Long, Charles. Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion. With a Foreword by Charles Winquist. Aurora: The Davies Group, 1999.

    Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I. Translated by Ben Fowkes. With an Introduction by Ernest Mandel. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.

    Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W.D. Halls. With a Foreword by Mary Douglas. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990.

    McClintock, Walter. The Old North Trail or Life Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians. London: Macmillan and Co., 1910; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1992.

    Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., S.vv. ‘economy,’ ‘appreciate.’

    Schrift, Alan D. “Introduction: Why Gift?” In The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity, ed. Alan D. Shrift, 1-22. New York: Routledge, 1997.

    Ken Lokensgard is a visiting assistant professor of religion at the College of Charleston. He specializes in the religious consequences of cultural contact for indigenous peoples. He is also interested in the ethnography of religion and in the politics of cultural representation.

    ’ 2002 Ken Lokensgard. All rights reserved.
    Updated 07/28/21.
    http://jcrt.org/archives/04.1/lokensgard/

    1. I use the word “thing” to refer broadly to any entity, which may have the ontological status of either an object or a subject. Services, too, are sometimes exchanged as things. ↩︎

    2. ‘Ontology’ is here understood as a culture’s shared categorization of beings and general perception of being. Ontological issues include such existential concerns as personhood, life, death, and so on. This anthropological understanding of ontology derives from the work of psychological anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell. His linguistic work among the Algonkian-speaking Ojibwa revealed to Euro-American scholars that the Ojibwa live in a highly animate cosmos in which many ‘other-than-human’ beings share the characteristics of personhood with humans (Hallowell 1975). ↩︎

    3. Along with the work of Jacques Derrida explored in this essay, anthropologist Maurice Godelier’s The Enigma of the Gift best exemplifies the recent examinations of religion and gifting. Godelier argues that, in the contemporary West, things that are not exchanged often have greater religious value than do exchanged items. ↩︎

    4. The work of Charles Long is particularly helpful in gaining an understanding of the relationship between orientation and religion (Long 1990, 7, 107 - 108). ↩︎

    5. ‘Blackfoot’ is preferred as both a singular and plural designation by most Blackfoot people and is the accepted scholarly spelling. ‘Blackfeet’ is the legal designation for the Piegans of Montana. The four confederated Blackfoot tribal divisions reside on separate reserves in Alberta, Canada and on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Each division belongs to the Algonkian language family. The three Canadian divisions are the Kainaa ’ Kainai or Bloods, Siksik ’ Blackfoot proper, and Aap__tohsipi(I)kani ’ Northern Peigan or Pikunis. The Montana division is the Aamsk__pipi(I)kani ’ Southern Piegan (note the different spelling for the U.S. division) or Pikunis. They refer to themselves collectively as Niits__tapiiksi, meaning ‘real people.’ ↩︎

    6. My use of the term ‘traditional’ is used in reference to those people who perceive the world according to the guidelines set by their ancestors and who maintain continuity with the past through established ceremonial practices. It is important to acknowledge that traditional peoples have adapted their practices to the contemporary world, while still maintaining this continuity. ↩︎

    7. General description of bundles derives from personal observation at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary as well as such representative sources as Ewers, Grinnell, and McClintock ↩︎

    8. Interview conducted by the author with John and Carol Murray in September 2000 at their residence on the Blackfoot reservation in September 2000. Carol Muray is a Southern Piegan tribal member and past president of Blackfoot Community College. John Murray is also a Southern Piegan tribal member and former director of Blackfeet Studies at Blackfoot Community College. Also interviewed was Joyce T. Spoonhunter, Southern Piegan tribal member and Cultural Coordinator for the Blackfoot Nation. Joyce was interviewed by the author in July 2000 at the Red Crow Caf’ in Browning, on the Blackfoot Reservation. ↩︎

    9. Interview conducted by the author with Allan Pard, Northern Peigan tribal member in November 2000. Also interviewed was Frank Weasel Head, Kainai tribal member, in August 2001, at the Weasel Head Residence on the Blood Reserve. ↩︎

    10. It’s important to note, of course, that indigenous peoples have also lost a great deal of material culture that was never truly offered to cultural outsiders; it was simply taken. ↩︎