Jacques Derrida, To Save the Phenomena.

In 1989 the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, wrote an essay on my early artwork entitled “Sauver les phénomènes (Pour Salvatore Puglia)”. The essay was originally published in the French journal Contretemps in 1995.

I am pleased to announce that the Chicago University Press has recently published an English translation of this essay along with several other writings by Derrida in the collection Thinking Out of Sight, Writings on the Arts of the Visible.

For a preview of “To Save the Phenomena” click here.

Below are the nine works referred to in Derrida’s text (only Vie d’H.B. is reprinted in the translated text):


1987 Ashbox
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1986 Intus ubique
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1987 Als Schrift
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1985 Hors d’attente
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1984 Présages
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1986 Croce e delizia
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1983 Vie d’H.B.
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1985 Aurora
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1988 Orto petroso

Keams Canyon, May 1896 (2021)

Un recente impegno, in risposta alla sollecitazione di un mio amico che lavora nel campo dell’educazione e mi chiedeva un lavoro sulla scolarizzazione nel secolo XIX.

Eccoti la mia idea. Penso a una serie di sei-otto lavori (formati 30×40 e 30×30) sui bambini Hopi alla scuola industriale di Keams Canyon nel 1896.
Come avrai visto dal mio testo sul sito (Hostile Hopi, italiano) la scolarizzazione era una tappa importante per l’assimilazione degli indiani d’America. Andando a scuola, non potevano più parlare la loro lingua, dovevano cambiare nome, vestirsi all’occidentale e naturalmente seguire il catechismo. La scuola era lontana dai villaggi quindi tornavano raramente a casa.
Gli Hopi finirono per dividersi in due fazioni, gli Hostile, che volevano rimanere sulla Mesa e continuare le pratiche tradizionali e che rifiutavano di mandare i figli a scuola; e i Friendlies, che accettavano la scuola e anche di andare ad abitare nelle casette nuove in pianura.
Nella primavera del 1894 quasi tutti resistettero all’attribuzione di lotti individuali e chiesero ai “Washington Chiefs” di continuare a coltivare in modo comunitario. La loro petizione non ebbe mai risposta ma la lottizzazione non funzionò.
Nel novembre di quell’anno intervenne l’esercito degli US per mettere i bambini a scuola in modo forzato, e diciannove padri di famiglia renitenti vennero imprigionati e deportati ad Alcatraz per un anno.
Alla fine la scissione ci fu davvero, nel 1906, quando il villaggio di Oraibi si divise fisicamente in due. I Friendlies rimasero a Oraibi e gli Hostile fondarono un nuovo villaggio, Hotevilla.
Nella primavera del 1896 lo storico dell’arte tedesco Aby Warburg visitò il villaggio di Oraibi, oltre alla scuola industriale di Keam’s Canyon. A Oraibi assistette a una danza rituale, la Hemis Kachina, che non era quella che fu poi il soggetto della sua famosa conferenza di Kreuzlingen (“Il rituale del serpente”, pubblicato in italiano in aut aut del Gennaio-aprile 1984).
Durante i suoi soggiorni presso gli Hopi Warburg non pare avere avuto conoscenza degli avvenimenti degli anni precedenti; in ogni modo non li menziona e sulla questione dell’educazione occidentale ha una posizione ambigua, come si può evincere dagli ultimi paragrafi della sua conferenza. Altri hanno già interpretato e preso posizione al riguardo. Ma è evidente che la sua superficiale adesione alla luminosità dell’insegnamento occidentale contraddice il suo pessimismo “leopardiano” rispetto alle conseguenze del progresso importato dalla modernità.
Per questa mia nuova serie, lavoro a strati.
Un primo strato è trasparente ed è la riproduzione di una foto fatta da Aby Warburg al Keams Canyon. Un secondo strato è la riproduzione della petizione comunitaria del marzo 1894, rivolta ai “Washington Chiefs” e firmata da ognuno con il disegno del suo totem, e la relativa spiegazione. Il terzo strato è la mia ripresa, grossolana e profana, di alcune di queste “firme-totem”, a mo’ di tatuaggio rosso fluorescente.
Esistono due altre foto di Warburg, fatte nella stessa occasione. Una rappresenta Thomas Keam davanti casa, l’altra il Canyon dove si trovava la scuola. Keam era un ex militare irlandese stabilitosi in Arizona, dove aveva aperto un emporio e fungeva da mediatore fra gli Hopi e il governo americano. Ma non penso di intervenire su queste ultime immagini, che mi paiono « fuori tema ».
Apporrò al disotto dei miei lavori le didascalie del libro da cui ho tratto le foto di Warburg (B. Cestelli Guidi, N. Mann, Photographs at the Frontier.  Aby Warburg in America, 1895-1896, London 1998).
La questione che pone questa serie di lavori è certo speciale e non comparabile con quelle che voi educatori affrontate oggi. Dovevano i bambini Hopi essere mandati a scuola o dovevano essere lasciati alla loro comunità e alla loro cultura? Oppure era possibile una strada intermedia?
Apparentemente nell’America fra i due secoli questo non era possibile.

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KC 01. Alunne Hopi con il loro insegnante, Mr. Neel, di fronte alla Moki (Hopi) Industrial School al Keam’s Canyon, Arizona, nel maggio 1896. Queste foto vennero scattate da Warburg al termine del suo soggiorno nel territorio Hopi.
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KC 02. Alunne Hopi e alunne occidentali nel Keam’s Canyon, Arizona, maggio 1896.
 Le alunne della Scuola industriale Moki (Hopi) stazionano su una roccia; il gruppo è composto da bambine indiane, ad eccezione di una bambina occidentale (facilmente riconoscibile dall’abito bianco).
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KC 03. Genitori Hopi che riportano i figli da scuola, Keam’s Canyon, Arizona, maggio 1896.
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KC 04. Allievi Hopi della Industrial School di Keam’s Canyon, Arizona, maggio 1896.
I bambini indiani venivano vestiti in abiti occidentali. Warburg aveva chiesto loro di illustrare una storia per vedere se il pensiero simbolico continuava a vivere in popoli che non erano pienamente « civilizzati » dal punto di vista della civiltà occidentale. Questi ritratti erano intesi come documentazione del suo esperimento, il che potrebbe spiegare la posa «antropometrica» di queste fotografie.
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K5 05. Allievo della Moki (Hopi) Industrial School a Keam’s Canyon, Arizona, maggio 1896. Per gli studenti della Industrial School, cappelli e vestiti erano parte dell’uniforme quotidiana: la scuola era in internato e si trovava a miglia di distanza dai loro villaggi.
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KC 06. Allievi della Moki (Hopi) Industrial School. In questo doppio ritratto, il più grande dei due sembra estremamente consapevole. La mano appoggiata ai fianchi e lo sguardo puntato sul fotografo rivelano una fierezza non intaccata dagli abiti che gli sono stati imposti.
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Below is my response to a request from my friend M., who asked to elaborate an art project on the subject of education in the 19th century. 

This is my proposal. Six works (30×40 cm and 30×30 cm) on Hopi children at the Keams Canyon Industrial School in 1896.
As you have noted in my recent text (Hostile Hopi, English), schooling was an important stage in the assimilation of Native Americans. On their way to school, they could no longer speak their language, they had to change their names, dress Western and of course follow the catechism. The school was far from the villages so they rarely returned home.
The Hopi ended up splitting into two factions, the “Hostiles, who wanted to remain on the Mesa and continue traditional practices and refused to send their children to school; and the “Friendlies », who accepted the school and even went to live in new houses on the plains.
In the spring of 1894 almost everyone resisted the attribution of individual plots and asked the “Washington Chiefs” to be allowed to cultivate them communally. Their petition was never answered, but for several reasons the government’s land allotment program did not work out.
In November of that year, the US army intervened to force the children into school, and nineteen defying fathers were imprisoned and deported to Alcatraz for one year.
In 1906, the split was exacerbated , when the village of Oraibi was divided into two. The “Friendlies”, remained in Oraibi while the “Hostiles” founded a new village, Hotevilla.
In the spring of 1896, German art historian Aby Warburg visited the village of Oraibi, as well as the industrial school at Keams Canyon. In Oraibi he attended a ritual dance, the Hemis Kachina, which was not the subject of his famous lecture in Kreuzlingen (“The Snake Dance”, published in Italian in aut aut, January-April 1984).
During his stays with the Hopi, Warburg does not appear to have been aware of the events of previous years; in any case he does not mention them, and on the question of Western education his position is ambiguous, as reflected in the final paragraphs of his conference. Others have examined this matter and taken position. But it is evident that his superficial adherence to the enlightened nature of Western teaching values contradicts his “Leopardian” pessimism regarding the consequences of any sort of progress resulting from modernity.
In my new series, I work in layers. A first layer is transparent and reproduces a photo taken by Aby Warburg at Keams Canyon. A second layer is a reproduction of the community petition of March 1894, addressed to the “Washington Chiefs” and signed by each member of the community with the design of his totem, and its explanation. The third layer is my crude imitation of some of these “totem-signatures”, resembling red fluorescent tattoos.

There are two other photos taken  by Warburg on the same occasion: one of Thomas Keam in front of his house, the other of the canyon where the school was located. Born in England, Keam served in the US army eventually settling in Arizona, where he operated a trading post and acted as a mediator between the Hopi and the US government. But I do not expect  to use these last two images, which I consider to be insufficiently relevant.
However, I will place underneath my artworks the captions published in the book containing Warburg’s photos (B. Cestelli Guidi, N. Mann, Photographs at the Frontier.  Aby Warburg in America, 1895-1896, London 1998).
The question posed by this series of works is quite particular and unlike those that educators, like yourself, face today. Should the Hopi children have be forced  to attend faraway schools or should they have to be left in their community in contact with their culture? Or was an intermediate solution possible?

Apparently in late-nineteenth century America, this was not an option.

 

See also: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/07/hopi-petition-asks-government-to-allow-communal-land-owning-to-continue.html

https://books.google.fr/books?id=EHrML-IMEfIC&pg=PA114&dq=hopi+moqui+allotments&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xkHfUbbkIcazyQHFvoHoDQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=hopi%20moqui%20allotments&f=false

 

 

 

 

Hostile Hopi (English, 2021)

The following text is the premise of an art project I recently completed (May 2021; see Keams Canyon, May 1896) involving various photographs taken by Aby Warburg during the spring of 1896 in the northeastern sector of present-day Arizona (USA).

The Hopi are a Native American tribe established between the 8th and the 13th centuries in the desert territories bordering present-day New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Since 1934, the Hopi constitute a self-governing tribe occupying a reduced area within the larger Navajo reservation.

The Hopi’s first contact with Westerners dates back to 1540, when the conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado learned of their existence and carried out an initial census. Subsequently the Spanish conquerors attempted to convert them to Catholicism. In 1629, thirty Franciscan friars arrived in their territory.
The year 1680 saw the great revolt of the united Pueblo and Hopi, which took the Spanish twenty years to quell. At the end of the 17th century, the only village that the missionaries had succeeded in converting was Awatowi. In the winter of 1700-1701, groups from other Hopi villages attacked Awatowi. All the men were killed, while the women and children moved to other villages, and their houses were burned to the ground. The Spanish eventually gave up their attempts to colonize the Hopi, and their presence on Hopi land became sporadic.

The first contact with the new occupants, the United States of America, occurred in 1850 (two years after the end of the war in which the US incorporated 55% of Mexican territory).
In 1875 Loololma (also known as Lololomai), the head of the village of Oraibi (considered the most traditional of the Hopi settlements) was taken to Washington to meet with the President of the United States. He returned convinced of the need to build schools in order to provide access to American “civilization” and to produce larger quantities of maize, the Hopi’s staple food.

In 1887 the first school was built at Keams Canyon. This initiative represented a genuine attempt to convert the Hopi and, as a result of the passive resistance on the part of many members of the tribe, the few pupils attended the school (1). Eventually in 1890 US federal troops forced children to attend by threatening to arrest non-compliant parents.
In 1893 a new school opened in Oraibi. The following year, a group of parents refused to send their children there. The US army intervened, arresting nineteen fathers and eventually deporting them to Alcatraz prison, where they remained detained for several months (November 1894-September 1895) (2).
Finally, in 1906, as a result of inter-community conflicts related to education as well as land ownership issues, the village split into two factions: those who collaborated (the “Friendlies”) remained in Oraibi; while those who resisted (the “Hostiles”), under the leadership of Lomahongyoma, head of the Spider clan, established a new settlement, Hotevilla.

In the winter of 1895-1896,  after a stay in Washington where he conferred with ethnographers at the Smithsonian Institute, Aby Warburg visited several Native American villages in New Mexico and attended certain ceremonies (but not the Snake Dance). From Albuquerque he travelled to Laguna, then to Acoma; in San Ildefonso he observed a performance of the  Antelopes Dance. In late April 1896, after a stay in California, he returned to the Hopi territories. After a two-day trip in a buggy across the desert, he arrived at Keams Canyon and proceeded to Walpi and Oraibi, where he witnessed the humiskatcina dance.

Therefore, Warburg was in Oraibi some seven months after the release of the nineteen “Hostile” fathers from Alcatraz prison. Although in the account of his journey (as recounted in his well-known Kreuzlingen lecture of 25 April 1923) (3), Warburg does not mention this episode, it is highly unlikely that he was unaware of it. And, while his entire lecture revolves around the question of the conflict between the “Hopi soul” and Western culture and the subject of education is repeatedly referred to, Warburg does not seem to be familiar with the methods of forced education practiced by the US government. He only mentions difficulties that the head of the village of Acoma encountered in convincing reluctant Indianers to enter the church.

Figure 27 of the Kreuzlingen lecture shows a small group of school children “gracefully dressed and in aprons”, who no longer believe in to the “pagan demons”. But this observation, apparently ironic, is followed by a striking affirmation: “Children standing in front of a cave. Leading them to light, is the task not only of the American school, but of humanity in general”.

The first four photos that follow illustrate the different phases of the arrest and internment of the nineteen Hopi parents (among them, at the center, the head of the “Hostile” faction, Lomahongyoma). The next two photos were taken with Warburg’s Kodak camera: they show Neel, the teacher, with two Hopi girls and a group of children in front of a cave .

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(1) “The Keams Canyon School was organized to teach the Hopi youth the ways of European-American civilization. It forced them to use English and give up their traditional ways. The children were made to abandon their tribal identity and completely take on European-American culture. They received haircuts, new clothes, took on Anglo names, and learned English. The boys learned farming and carpentry skills, while the girls were taught ironing, sewing and “civilized” dining. The school also reinforced European-American religions.”
This quote, as well as the information above and most of the following, is taken from the wikipedia article “en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi”.

(2) For additional information on this deportation  and the four related photographs, see the website of the Alcatraz National Park: www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/hopi-prisoners-on-the-rock.htm.
See also: S. Rushfort, S. Upham, A Hopi social History, Austin, Texas, 1992; M. S. Gilbert, Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902-1929, Lincoln, Nebraska, 2010; H. C. James, Pages from Hopi History, Tucson, Arizona, 1974; Peter M. Whiteley, Deliberate Acts, Changing Hopi Culture Through the Oraibi Split, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1988.

(3) A. Warburg, “Il rituale del serpente”, aut aut, 199-200, January-April 1984, pp. 17-39; see also the fundamental B. Cestelli Guidi, N. Mann, Photographs at the Frontier. Aby Warburg in America, 1895-1896, London 1998. And without overlooking Aby M. Warburg, Images from the region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, Translated with an interpretive essay by Michael P. Steinberg, Ithaca and London, 1995, and David Freedberg, “Pathos at Oraibi: What Warburg did not see”, in Lo sguardo di Giano: Aby Warburg fra tempo e memoria, ed. C. Cieri Via e P. Montani, Torino 2004), pp. 569-611.

Note: this is a revised automatic translation from the Italian (see my Hostile Hopi 2017-2021).
(The images disappeared from this page. Please refer to the Italian version of this article.)
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The nineteen “Hostile” in Alcatraz.

Hopi and Western children at Keams Canyon, photo by Aby Warburg (1896). From B. Cestelli Guidi, N. Mann, Photographs at the Frontier. Aby Warburg in America, 1895-1896, London 1998.
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A page from the Hopi petition, March 1894.

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The religious chiefs symbols.

 

2021, Keams Canyon 00, 40×30.

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The final pages of the Kreuzlingen (1923) lecture, in “Il rituale del serpente”,  aut aut, Gennaio-aprile 1984.

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