From: Louis Proyect
Jacques Lizot’s critique There is a cinematic quality between the clash of Napoleon Chagnon and Jacques Lizot. Chagnon, the blustering American who like to fire pistols to intimidate the Yanomami, could have been played by the young John Wayne. Lizot, the gay French disciple of structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss who seduced young Yanomami with gifts of cigarettes and pasta, could have been played by Alain Renais. It is too bad that Patrick Tierney chose to emphasize Lizot’s sexual predations in his “Darkness in El Dorado”. While there certainly could be a case made that any adult taking sexual advantage of a young woman or man for that matter deserves opprobrium, one cannot escape feeling that Tierney was exhibiting old-fashioned homophobia in the name of defending Indian rights. ^^^^^^^ CB: This also sounds like blunting a criticism of old-fashioned racism in the name of defending gay rights. Oh the poor, liberal White Man always bears the Burden of criticism for all he does for the natives. Mistah Kurtz. He dead, God rest his soul. ^^^^^ Although Chagnon and Lizot started out as collaborators, they eventually parted ways—no doubt a function of deep differences over how to regard the Indians. For Chagnon, they were like Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees waging primate war on their enemies. For Lizot, they were more like the Bonobo chimps that used sexual play—including homosexual—to relieve the tensions that lead to violence. ^^^^^ CB: a real pair of motherfuckers: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. ^^^^ To be fair to Lizot, he did not literally think that the Yanomami were like chimps. In fact his main objection to Chagnon was over his sociobiology, a bogus science that reduces everything to genes. read full article: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/yanomami-science-wars-part-six/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
