Brigittine French
2015
French, Brigittine
Anthropologies in and of Ireland: Postcolonial Subjectivities and Institutional Locations Journal Article
In: American Anthropologist, vol. 117, no. 1, pp. 143-144, 2015.
@article{French2015,
title = {Anthropologies in and of Ireland: Postcolonial Subjectivities and Institutional Locations},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1111/aman.12176},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-02-03},
journal = {American Anthropologist},
volume = {117},
number = {1},
pages = {143-144},
abstract = {In this valuable book, ethnographer and anthropologist Brigittine French mobilizes new critical-theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology, applying them to the politically charged context of contemporary Guatemala. Beginning with an examination of the "nationalist project" that has been ongoing since the end of the colonial period, French interrogates the "Guatemalan/indigenous binary." In Guatemala, "Ladino" refers to the Spanish-speaking minority of the population, who are of mixed European, usually Spanish, and indigenous ancestry; "Indian" is understood to mean the majority of Guatemala's population, who speak one of the twenty-one languages in the Maya linguistic groups of the country, although levels of bilingualism are very high among most Maya communities. As French shows, the Guatemalan state has actively promoted a racialized, essentialized notion of "Indians" as an undifferentiated, inherently inferior group that has stood stubbornly in the way of national progress, unity, and development - which are, implicitly, the goals of "true Guatemalans" (that is, Ladinos)." "French shows, with useful examples, how constructions of language and collective identity are in fact strategies undertaken to serve the goals of institutions (including the government, the military, the educational system, and the church) and social actors (including linguists, scholars, and activists). But by incorporating in-depth fieldwork with groups that speak Kaqchikel and K'iche' along with analyses of Spanish-language discourses, Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity also shows how some individuals in urban, bilingual Indian communities have disrupted the essentializing projects of multiculturalism. And by focusing on ideologies of language, the author is able to explicitly link linguistic forms and functions with larger issues of consciousness, gender politics, social position, and the forging of hegemonic power relations.},
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In this valuable book, ethnographer and anthropologist Brigittine French mobilizes new critical-theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology, applying them to the politically charged context of contemporary Guatemala. Beginning with an examination of the "nationalist project" that has been ongoing since the end of the colonial period, French interrogates the "Guatemalan/indigenous binary." In Guatemala, "Ladino" refers to the Spanish-speaking minority of the population, who are of mixed European, usually Spanish, and indigenous ancestry; "Indian" is understood to mean the majority of Guatemala's population, who speak one of the twenty-one languages in the Maya linguistic groups of the country, although levels of bilingualism are very high among most Maya communities. As French shows, the Guatemalan state has actively promoted a racialized, essentialized notion of "Indians" as an undifferentiated, inherently inferior group that has stood stubbornly in the way of national progress, unity, and development - which are, implicitly, the goals of "true Guatemalans" (that is, Ladinos)." "French shows, with useful examples, how constructions of language and collective identity are in fact strategies undertaken to serve the goals of institutions (including the government, the military, the educational system, and the church) and social actors (including linguists, scholars, and activists). But by incorporating in-depth fieldwork with groups that speak Kaqchikel and K'iche' along with analyses of Spanish-language discourses, Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity also shows how some individuals in urban, bilingual Indian communities have disrupted the essentializing projects of multiculturalism. And by focusing on ideologies of language, the author is able to explicitly link linguistic forms and functions with larger issues of consciousness, gender politics, social position, and the forging of hegemonic power relations.
2013
French, Brigittine
Ethnography and “Postconflict” Violence in the Irish Free State Journal Article
In: American Anthropologist, vol. 115, no. 2, pp. 160-173, 2013.
@article{French2013,
title = {Ethnography and “Postconflict” Violence in the Irish Free State},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1111/aman.12001},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-06-01},
journal = {American Anthropologist},
volume = {115},
number = {2},
pages = {160-173},
abstract = {Here I offer a reengagement with Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball's (Arensberg 1968[1937]; Arensberg and Kimball 1940) canonical ethnographies of rural western Ireland along with a new consideration of data the ethnographers never analyzed in their publications. I argue that epistemological debates and commitments in U.S. anthropology fueled Arensberg and Kimball's structural-functionalist orientation because of the ways this theory became emblematic of a scientific, value-free perspective to which these scholars were committed in ways that precluded analysis of state governmentality and violence. The new analysis of Arensberg and Kimball's unpublished ethnographic materials shows how local social life was shaped by the persistence of political violence in the "postconflict" democratic Irish Free State well after the war was officially over. I focus particularly on the nascent district court system to show how the judiciary and its participants were key agents in establishing and contesting the legitimacy of the postwar political system.},
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Here I offer a reengagement with Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball's (Arensberg 1968[1937]; Arensberg and Kimball 1940) canonical ethnographies of rural western Ireland along with a new consideration of data the ethnographers never analyzed in their publications. I argue that epistemological debates and commitments in U.S. anthropology fueled Arensberg and Kimball's structural-functionalist orientation because of the ways this theory became emblematic of a scientific, value-free perspective to which these scholars were committed in ways that precluded analysis of state governmentality and violence. The new analysis of Arensberg and Kimball's unpublished ethnographic materials shows how local social life was shaped by the persistence of political violence in the "postconflict" democratic Irish Free State well after the war was officially over. I focus particularly on the nascent district court system to show how the judiciary and its participants were key agents in establishing and contesting the legitimacy of the postwar political system.
French, Brigittine
In: Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 105-107, 2013.
@article{French2013b,
title = {“And he knew our language”: Missionary Linguistics on the Pacific Northwest Coast edited by Marcus Tomalin . Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. ix + 203 pp.},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1111/j.1548-1395.2013.01161.x},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-05-01},
journal = {Journal of Linguistic Anthropology},
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French, Brigittine
In: Journal of Sociolinguistics, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 133-136, 2013.
@article{French2013bb,
title = {Monica Heller. Paths to Post-Nationalism: A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. 2011. 223 pp. Pb (9780199746859) $39.95.},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1111/josl.12021},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-02-25},
journal = {Journal of Sociolinguistics},
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number = {1},
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2012
French, Brigittine
The Semiotics of Collective Memories Journal Article
In: Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 337-353, 2012.
@article{French2012,
title = {The Semiotics of Collective Memories},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145936},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-09-24},
journal = {Annual Review of Anthropology},
volume = {41},
number = {1},
pages = {337-353},
abstract = {This review outlines the conceptual foundations of collective memory research from social scientific and semiotic perspectives. It locates collective memories in publicly circulating signs, merging a semiotic orientation with Nora's (1989) notion of memory sites. It elucidates how collective memories are made, remade, and contested through circulation enabled by semiotic processes of entextualization and erasure that produce cartographies of communicability. It shows how recent analytic work in linguistic anthropology focused on temporality can be mobilized to understand the concrete semiotic and discursive mechanisms by which the past is selectively brought into the present for strategic ends. It concludes by highlighting two promising directions for further inquiry in collective memory research: the role of expert knowledge and the importance of embodied performance. Overall, the review suggests that a semiotic perspective offers an analytically precise way of mapping the processes by which represent.},
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This review outlines the conceptual foundations of collective memory research from social scientific and semiotic perspectives. It locates collective memories in publicly circulating signs, merging a semiotic orientation with Nora's (1989) notion of memory sites. It elucidates how collective memories are made, remade, and contested through circulation enabled by semiotic processes of entextualization and erasure that produce cartographies of communicability. It shows how recent analytic work in linguistic anthropology focused on temporality can be mobilized to understand the concrete semiotic and discursive mechanisms by which the past is selectively brought into the present for strategic ends. It concludes by highlighting two promising directions for further inquiry in collective memory research: the role of expert knowledge and the importance of embodied performance. Overall, the review suggests that a semiotic perspective offers an analytically precise way of mapping the processes by which represent.
French, Brigittine
Linguistic Ideologies of Belonging and Subversion: Mayan Language Politics and State Sponsored Violence in Twentieth-Century Guatemala Conference
126th Annual Meeting American Historical Association, 2012.
@conference{French2012b,
title = {Linguistic Ideologies of Belonging and Subversion: Mayan Language Politics and State Sponsored Violence in Twentieth-Century Guatemala},
author = {Brigittine French},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-01-08},
booktitle = {126th Annual Meeting American Historical Association},
abstract = {This paper examines the ideological associations and material consequences surrounding Mayan language use and activism in 20th-century Guatemala. It does so by tracing the historical development of the ways that Mayan languages became linked to indigenous identity in immutable ways by both the Guatemalan state and Maya citizens involved in El Movimiento Maya, the Maya cultural rights movement. It focuses on three distinct moments: the introduction and cultivation of missionary linguistic work by the Summer Institute of Linguistics and incipient Maya involvement in linguistics (1920s-1950s), language policies and practices during the armed conflict era, known as La Violencia (1960s-1995), and language advocacy that unfolded during the post-peace accords era (1996-2003). It argues that the on-going and politicized construction of an essential connection between Maya identity and Mayan languages has been a productive mechanism for structuring and enacting radically different national political projects. It maps how, on the one hand, the state has sought to eradicate indigenous cultural difference through a variety of practices including: missionary linguistic research, coercive literacy classes, forced military service, and genocidal warfare in service of a modernist, homogenous model of national identity formation. It shows how, at the same time, Maya scholar/activists, involved in cultural nationalism and indigenous rights efforts, valorize a strategically essential link between Mayan languages and indigenous identity in order to assert collective belonging to the nation-state in the face of a history of violent repression. The analysis is borne out through a contextually-situated account of state policies and concomitant discourse about Mayan languages as well as a discursive analysis of indigenous narratives about language that highlights the everyday, the fatal, and the libratory.},
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This paper examines the ideological associations and material consequences surrounding Mayan language use and activism in 20th-century Guatemala. It does so by tracing the historical development of the ways that Mayan languages became linked to indigenous identity in immutable ways by both the Guatemalan state and Maya citizens involved in El Movimiento Maya, the Maya cultural rights movement. It focuses on three distinct moments: the introduction and cultivation of missionary linguistic work by the Summer Institute of Linguistics and incipient Maya involvement in linguistics (1920s-1950s), language policies and practices during the armed conflict era, known as La Violencia (1960s-1995), and language advocacy that unfolded during the post-peace accords era (1996-2003). It argues that the on-going and politicized construction of an essential connection between Maya identity and Mayan languages has been a productive mechanism for structuring and enacting radically different national political projects. It maps how, on the one hand, the state has sought to eradicate indigenous cultural difference through a variety of practices including: missionary linguistic research, coercive literacy classes, forced military service, and genocidal warfare in service of a modernist, homogenous model of national identity formation. It shows how, at the same time, Maya scholar/activists, involved in cultural nationalism and indigenous rights efforts, valorize a strategically essential link between Mayan languages and indigenous identity in order to assert collective belonging to the nation-state in the face of a history of violent repression. The analysis is borne out through a contextually-situated account of state policies and concomitant discourse about Mayan languages as well as a discursive analysis of indigenous narratives about language that highlights the everyday, the fatal, and the libratory.
2010
French, Brigittine
Comment on Trinch’s risky subjects Journal Article
In: Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 205-207, 2010.
@article{French2010,
title = {Comment on Trinch’s risky subjects},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1007/s10624-009-9106-9},
year = {2010},
date = {2010-06-01},
journal = {Dialectical Anthropology},
volume = {34},
number = {2},
pages = {205-207},
abstract = {Trinch’s article provides a thought-provoking consideration of the risks involved for abuse victims in telling their story. In bringing together two seemingly different types of narrative, Trinch compels us to consider what they share. First, there are similarities in the interactional production of the written versions of Rigoberta Menchu ´’s published testimonio and the stories which survivors of domestic abuse tell to paralegals. In both situations, the stories were/are told to an interested interlocutor who works to produce a written account in the first-person narrative of the storyteller. Second, Trinch’s analysis of the controversy surrounding Menchu ´’s testimonio and of the process by which the domestic abuse survivors’ written affidavits are produced highlights the risks involved for people reporting abuse. At the immediate level is the risk of antagonising their abusers, and on another level are the risks in the ways in which their story is transformed in the recontextualisation process, and the subsequent risks for the narrators involved in being seen as not ‘telling the truth’, or as embellishing the ‘facts’. It is this second level of risks which Trinch addresses, exposing powerful language ideologies about narrative truth relevant to the reception of these two different types of narrative. Building on her important (2003) book, Trinch’s work here on the interactional and entextualised nature of narrative production advances both the sociolinguistic analysis of narrative and linguistic anthropological work on language ideologies. Here, I take up Trinch’s point about the role of what she has referred to as the ‘ideology of narrator authorship’ (Trinch 2003, pp. 49–50) in the risks faced by victims of abuse in telling their story. As she explains in the article under review, ‘most listeners believe that the teller is the sole author of the narrative drafted’. This belief ignores the contributions to narratives made by interaction with interlocutors, for example by interviewers’ questions or listeners’ reactions, whether verbal or nonverbal. This ideology of narrator authorship is central to the ways in which the},
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Trinch’s article provides a thought-provoking consideration of the risks involved for abuse victims in telling their story. In bringing together two seemingly different types of narrative, Trinch compels us to consider what they share. First, there are similarities in the interactional production of the written versions of Rigoberta Menchu ´’s published testimonio and the stories which survivors of domestic abuse tell to paralegals. In both situations, the stories were/are told to an interested interlocutor who works to produce a written account in the first-person narrative of the storyteller. Second, Trinch’s analysis of the controversy surrounding Menchu ´’s testimonio and of the process by which the domestic abuse survivors’ written affidavits are produced highlights the risks involved for people reporting abuse. At the immediate level is the risk of antagonising their abusers, and on another level are the risks in the ways in which their story is transformed in the recontextualisation process, and the subsequent risks for the narrators involved in being seen as not ‘telling the truth’, or as embellishing the ‘facts’. It is this second level of risks which Trinch addresses, exposing powerful language ideologies about narrative truth relevant to the reception of these two different types of narrative. Building on her important (2003) book, Trinch’s work here on the interactional and entextualised nature of narrative production advances both the sociolinguistic analysis of narrative and linguistic anthropological work on language ideologies. Here, I take up Trinch’s point about the role of what she has referred to as the ‘ideology of narrator authorship’ (Trinch 2003, pp. 49–50) in the risks faced by victims of abuse in telling their story. As she explains in the article under review, ‘most listeners believe that the teller is the sole author of the narrative drafted’. This belief ignores the contributions to narratives made by interaction with interlocutors, for example by interviewers’ questions or listeners’ reactions, whether verbal or nonverbal. This ideology of narrator authorship is central to the ways in which the
2009
French, Brigittine
Linguistic Science and Nationalist Revolution: Expert Knowledge and the Making of Sameness in Pre-Independence Ireland Journal Article
In: Language in Society, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 607 - 625, 2009.
@article{French2009,
title = {Linguistic Science and Nationalist Revolution: Expert Knowledge and the Making of Sameness in Pre-Independence Ireland},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1017/S0047404509990455},
year = {2009},
date = {2009-11-01},
journal = {Language in Society},
volume = {38},
number = {5},
pages = {607 - 625},
abstract = {This article examines the linguistic ideological work entailed in the analyses of Irish by the “revolutionary scholar” and cofounder of the Gaelic League, Eoin MacNeill. It does so to discern one central way in which the essentialized link between the Irish language and a unified Irish people became an efficacious political construction during the armed struggle for independence in the early 20th century. It shows how MacNeill used authoritative linguistic science to engender nationalist sentiment around Irish through semiotic processes even as he challenged a dominant conception of language prevalent in European nationalist movements and social thought. The essay argues that MacNeill wrote against the unilateral valorization of codified linguistic homogeneity and embraced the heterogeneous variation of spoken discourse even as he sought to consolidate Irish national identity through sameness claims. This critical examination suggests that scholars of nationalism reconsider the taken-for-granted homogenizing efforts of nationalist endeavors that are ubiquitously presumed to negatively sanction linguistic variation. (Nationalism, linguistic ideology, Ireland, semiotics, heterogeneity, Eoin MacNeill, Gaelic League, Europe, scientific knowledge).},
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This article examines the linguistic ideological work entailed in the analyses of Irish by the “revolutionary scholar” and cofounder of the Gaelic League, Eoin MacNeill. It does so to discern one central way in which the essentialized link between the Irish language and a unified Irish people became an efficacious political construction during the armed struggle for independence in the early 20th century. It shows how MacNeill used authoritative linguistic science to engender nationalist sentiment around Irish through semiotic processes even as he challenged a dominant conception of language prevalent in European nationalist movements and social thought. The essay argues that MacNeill wrote against the unilateral valorization of codified linguistic homogeneity and embraced the heterogeneous variation of spoken discourse even as he sought to consolidate Irish national identity through sameness claims. This critical examination suggests that scholars of nationalism reconsider the taken-for-granted homogenizing efforts of nationalist endeavors that are ubiquitously presumed to negatively sanction linguistic variation. (Nationalism, linguistic ideology, Ireland, semiotics, heterogeneity, Eoin MacNeill, Gaelic League, Europe, scientific knowledge).
French, Brigittine
Technologies of Telling: Discourse, Transparency, and Erasure in Guatemalan Truth Commission Testimony Journal Article
In: Journal of Human Rights, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 92-109 , 2009.
@article{French2009b,
title = {Technologies of Telling: Discourse, Transparency, and Erasure in Guatemalan Truth Commission Testimony},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1080/14754830902717734},
year = {2009},
date = {2009-03-31},
journal = {Journal of Human Rights},
volume = {8},
number = {1},
pages = {92-109 },
abstract = {This paper offers a “critical epistemological reflection” on representations of survivor testimony in the Guatemalan truth commissions. As is commonly the case with TRC work, a good deal of effort was dedicated to the recuperation of victims' voices whose experiences of violence and suffering were brutally silenced in official Guatemalan state and public discourse. In this kind of “postconflict” context, the collection of survivor testimony is presumed to give new power to the victims and to create conditions for progressive social change in the aftermath of state-sponsored violence. However, my analysis problematizes these assumptions by elucidating multiple discursive forms, functions, and transformations in survivor testimony that are unrecognized in most truth commission reports. Examining these erasures in the representation of survivor testimony enables me to argue that the truth-telling process and analyses in truth commission efforts may well replicate dominant power relations that continue to tacitly disempower victims in unintended ways.},
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This paper offers a “critical epistemological reflection” on representations of survivor testimony in the Guatemalan truth commissions. As is commonly the case with TRC work, a good deal of effort was dedicated to the recuperation of victims' voices whose experiences of violence and suffering were brutally silenced in official Guatemalan state and public discourse. In this kind of “postconflict” context, the collection of survivor testimony is presumed to give new power to the victims and to create conditions for progressive social change in the aftermath of state-sponsored violence. However, my analysis problematizes these assumptions by elucidating multiple discursive forms, functions, and transformations in survivor testimony that are unrecognized in most truth commission reports. Examining these erasures in the representation of survivor testimony enables me to argue that the truth-telling process and analyses in truth commission efforts may well replicate dominant power relations that continue to tacitly disempower victims in unintended ways.
2008
French, Brigittine
A Companion to Latin American Anthropology Book Chapter
In: Chapter 6, pp. 109 - 127, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008, ISBN: 9781444301328.
@inbook{French2008,
title = {A Companion to Latin American Anthropology},
author = {Brigittine French},
doi = {10.1002/9781444301328.ch6},
isbn = {9781444301328},
year = {2008},
date = {2008-04-17},
pages = {109 - 127},
publisher = {Blackwell Publishing Ltd},
chapter = {6},
abstract = {Essentialism, Violence, and the StateStrategic Essentialism and the Maya MovementEssentialisms and Anthropological ScholarshipAgents of Strategic EssentialismRegimes of KnowledgeErasuresGlobal Forces and Local ArticulationsConclusion NotesReferencesSuggestions for Further Reading.},
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Essentialism, Violence, and the StateStrategic Essentialism and the Maya MovementEssentialisms and Anthropological ScholarshipAgents of Strategic EssentialismRegimes of KnowledgeErasuresGlobal Forces and Local ArticulationsConclusion NotesReferencesSuggestions for Further Reading.