A lot can come from page 17: Weapon’s of the Weak?

A lot can come from page 17: Weapon’s of the Weak?

When I was reading Jon Cruz’s book, I could not help but think that many of his concepts, most notably the fact that he argues for the development of a new point-of-view/framework for which to look at cultures on the margins in the US as a convergence of historically specific sociological processes and modernity discourses, reminded me of James C. Scott’s Weapons of the Weak. While in his introduction Cruz argues that his book “is not a ‘cultural resistance’ story” he does allow that it “helps account for the rise of an interpretive formation that has enabled people to become mapped, to struggle over existing maps, and to become reflexive mappers themselves.” (17) I would posit that Scott, or the concepts that Scott introduces, had to be present before Cruz’s book and its theories could be consumed by scholars.

            Cruz focuses a great deal of his work on the importance of the historical realities surrounding cultural methodology that allows for a change in the way black spirituals are viewed just before and after the Civil War in the US. It is his use of history that allows for his interpretation that “the phenomenon of slave culture – black culture in general and the Negro spiritual in particular – was central at the crossroads of the two larger cultural developments of American hermeneuticism and cultural scientism.” (17) I find it unsatisfying that we would not want to set these processes in any more historical base than the moment in time of the transition. His argument leans, in part, on the shoulder of history as a process and the relation of not only historical economic, social, and cultural realities but also the history of the development of ideas. It is for this reason that I find myself on page 17 (where apparently all my concerns exploded on the marginalia of the book) frustrated not to see Scott and Weapons of the Weak. 

            Cruz argues that within the processes he discusses he sees the “beginnings of the American analysis of culture on the margins and the rationalization of nineteenth-century ethnosympathy.” (17) Now, I completely support this conclusion (which I believe as a grad student, and a historian, is a pretty brave thing to declare). What it immediately brought to mind (and this is where my marginalia really kicks off) is that in order to study the margins, they must first be identified, mapped, or at least be gifted a moments notice by scholars. This is why I find Scott’s omission so unfortunate. Scott would allow Cruz with a framework to discuss these initial processes, and would only support his arguments (I believe).  When talking about “Historically constructed cultural force fields that bequeath ways of seeing” (17) how can you consciously leave out Scott??

 

- Sarah Howard

 (On a side note, I hope everyone had a good, safe, and fun Halloween. And Professor, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!, I am sorry I was not able to make it to what I imagine was quite the hopping shindig!)