Holger Pedersen and "Race"

[Alice Faber]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Benji Wald:

> >I have just had a chance to look over Pedersen's book
> >The Discovery of Language, and contrary to the (in
> >my view libelous) claims by B. Wald posted on this
> >list, it is immediately apparent (pp. 101, 321)
>
> BW: amazingly enough, decades ago I underlined the very passages in my copy of
> Pedersen's book that AMR has in mind.  They refer to the utter distinction
> between
> language and "race", and making inferences about race from reconstructed
> language
> family.  Pedersen is among the linguists I referred to parenthetically
> above who
> criticise racism WHEN THEY RECOGNISE IT.  Institutionalised racism is
> deeper than
> that.

I'm having a little trouble following the above, because I'm reading from my
paperback English translation (copyright 1931). I think it's important when
committing exegesis, which is, after all, what we're doing with this close
textual reading, to bear in mind that this is a *translated* work.

> Back to AMR:
>
> >that the late great Indo-Europeanist explicilty
> >and strongly criticizes work (e.g., Mu"ller's)
> >which used racial criteria to classify
> >languages, that he himself refers to purely
> >linguistic criteria as the basis for "Hamitic"
> >and for connecting this to Semitic (p. 122

I don't see Pedersen's criticism of M"uller's racial criteria as strong,
though he does criticize it (p. 117, for those scoring at home). And he does
refer to linguistic criteria for Hamitic and Semitic. Given the state of
knowledge at his time (he lists three subgroups of Hamitic, Egyptian, Berber,
and "South Hamitic" [=Cushitic, roughly], but no Chadic). He correctly raises
the question of whether Hamitic and Semitic are co-ordinate branches.

> I hope I have made my point, and, at the least, it is that much more can be
> brought to bear in interpreting the writings of a scholar or the
> orientation and assumptions of various theories than meets the less
> informed eye, or enters the less informed mind.  There is much more in
> linguistics, historical linguistics, or any other field that fundamentally
> studies people (or even other animals, or even ANYTHING) than what any
> practitioner in any field thinks there is, and that is of some interest to
> me, and I hope to at least some other readers.  I like to know something
> about the larger motivations for my interests are, how I fit into the
> currents of human thought, and how that might affect some of the
> assumptions I make or some of the directions of research I enjoy but
> ordinarioly take for granted.  None of us can know "everything", or let the
> lack of knowledge interfere with what we think is worth pursuing, of course
> etc etc, but I am always interested in something that could come from
> anywhere -- who knows where -- that can help me resolve or dissolve some
> problem that has gripped my attention.  I think most scholars are the same;
> they just differ in what gives them insight -- and what discomforts them.

I agree here...I'm bringing something different to Pedersen than either Alexis
or Benji is. In the section on Semitic and Hamitic, I find many gratuitous
references to Christianity (and some non-gratuitous references, as well). This
is, of course, partly Pedersen and partly me, and others might disagree about
how gratuitous these references are. The questions Benji is encouraging us to
ask are whether these references would have been perceived as gratuitous in
the mid 1920s when Pedersen wrote, and if not what cultural presuppositions
might have motivated Pedersen to make these references. I'm really out of my
depth when it comes to this kind of analysis, so I'll leave it at that.

I think it's worth saying that Pedersen's work is an admirable state of the
art description of historical and comparative linguistic knowledge for its
era. There is little of substance that is inconsistent with the knowledge of
its day, beyond the simplification that is inevitable in an introductory
survey. There are many prescient remarks. However, much in it is outdated. We
have, after all, made progress in the past 60 years. What bothers me in some
instances is the *tone*, a tone that reflects cultural assumptions that I find
objectionable. This is not to say that Pedersen knew that his work would have
such an impact 60 years down the road, or that he would have written
differently, if he had known.

Alice Faber