1. Cultural Politics

2. “We can speak of a “network” of cultural ideas without being essentialist
Anti-essentialist caveat: diverse societies cannot be reduced to a single common core.
Wrong Right

3. Essentialism
Essentialism requires a single “core” of characteristics, often a means to dominate or exploit a group: eg “women are less intelligent, more emotional than men and therefore cannot attend universities”
2) Essentialism can also be used against domination:
Eg Maria Montissori believed that women are inherently superior to men in brains, and that technology eliminates significance of male physical strength.
Just because essentialists might give compliments doesn’t mean we have to buy their premise. The price is too high!

4. Biological vs Cultural Essentialism
Biological essentialism = genetically fixed mental characteristics = racism
How do you prove no “race” is superior to another?

5. Biological vs Cultural Essentialism
Biological essentialism = genetically fixed mental characteristics = racism
How do you prove no “race” is superior to another?
The genetic similarity of humans indicates our species is very young. We are practically clones.
Cognitive complexity is evident in all cultural activities: African fractals for example!
According to Marx, racism is an “ideology” that helps the wealthy justify their exploitation of the poor.

6. Biological vs Cultural Essentialism
Cultural essentialism = culturally fixed mental characteristics = ethnocentrism.
Example: “we will never see democracy in X, because their culture is inherently [pick your prejudice: violent, sneaky, subservient, cowardly, greedy, etc.]

7. Essentialism and “backhanded compliments”
The “authentic native” sounds like it might help indigenous groups who do not want outsiders claiming land rights, fake beads, etc.
But this helped colonists jail rebels among Black South Africans and Native Americans (eg film from apartheid era
South Africa, “The Gods Must be Crazy”)
It helps colonial rulers: guilt-ridden lament
“we are to blame for having accidently polluted
the natural purity of these “children of the forest”
with our own troubling artifice.”
Uses the myth of the “vanishing native”

8. Conclusion:
Stereotypes tempt us by reducing complexity to simple “cognitive boxes” – they are basins of attraction!
Primitivism (bio or cultural) is a major stereotype
You can’t oppose primitivism with romantic myths—that just feeds it: purity, vanishing natives, etc.
You CAN oppose primitivism with good models for their hard-won accomplishments:
a. ethnomathematics and other indigenous knowledge
b. hybridity, cyborg politics and other anti-purity
constructions.