Round two in an academic fistfight concerning interpretations of the Hawaiian perception of Captain Cook (172879). In The Apotheosis of Captain Cook (not reviewed), Gananath Obeyesekere claimed that the notion that Hawaiian natives mistook Captain Cook for their god Lono was a cultural myth perpetuated by ``Western'' scholars—Sahlins in particular. In this openly hostile response, Sahlins (Anahula, not reviewed, etc.) contends that it is ludicrous to assume, as Obeyesekere does, that native Hawaiians were endowed with a ``practical rationality'' that would have made it impossible for them to mistake a European man for a Hawaiian god, and points out that the notion of practical rationality is itself a Western concept. He next attacks the premise that Obeyesekere, as a native Sri Lankan, has a ``privileged insight'' into Hawaiian culture. Sahlins asserts that Polynesian culture and the culture of South Asia share little in common except a vaguely similar experience of Western domination. One of Sahlins's main criticisms is that, by dismissing their testimony as tainted by Western influences, Obeyesekere systematically silences the voices of Hawaiian informants. (Since Hawaii had no written language at the time of first contact, information was recorded by Europeans.) He also undermines Obeyesekere's argument by uncovering numerous errors of omission, inaccuracy, and misinterpretation. After addressing these flaws in Obeyesekere's book, Sahlins launches into a point-by-point defense of his own analysis of the Makahiki ritual (which concerns the cyclical return of Lono) and its resonance with the interactions between Cook and the natives as noted in the diaries of several crew members. The larger debate between ``Western imperialist'' anthropologists and their younger deconstructionist cousins is left unsettled, but there can be no doubt the Sahlins defends his own work persuasively. Virtually no appeal to the general reader, but essential reading to anthropologists caught up in the general theoretical upheaval affecting the discipline.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-226-73368-8
Page Count: 301
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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