Indigenous, A Plantation Boolean

How one ideology word traps us in time

Have you ever wondered about the “temporal” element of words you might not normally associate with “time?” Probably not. Let’s do that.

The word "indigenous" gives us a wonderful opportunity to examine at some of the possible dimensions of "temporalization." What is "temporalization," you ask? What do you even mean by dimension? Well, “temporalization” is what we are interested in today, and it’s “how you measure time.” Today we are going to look a little closer at this monstrous thing called "The Plantation," and how it uses things we don’t even notice, like the word "indigenous" to trap us in a frozen temporal crypt.

Are you indigenous? Am I? If not, are we doing something to the indigenous-es? We can fight about this all day. And that is a feature, not a bug. 

Say, for a moment, you wanted to get from New Orleans to San Fransisco (of course you do), you might conceive the trip any number of ways. In the most straightforward sense, you want to figure out how much time it will take. Right? Of course. Let’s look at that trip. 

Google maps, an antiquated and penumbrous tool, estimates that a trip from my front door to the corner of Haight and Ashbury (leave it alone) would take 33 hours if we drove at the speed limit and didn't stop.

Okay, we just temporalized the journey.

Any number of available flight paths can get us to San Fransisco International Airport (expensively) in about eight hours, with stops in Denver or Las Vegas to gawk at the locals. We can get to Oakland (cheaper) in five and a half, but then we would be in Oakland. From Oakland it is about an hour and a half from touchdown, through the BART, to somewhere near where we want to go. Still quicker, still cheaper, assuming we survive the Oakland commute.  

You might be tempted to think that our temporal dimensionalization hasn't changed, but it has. We still have hours and minutes, and that sort of thing, yes, but we've done some funny business and also used value as our temporalizer We can do it cheaply or expensively! How long did it take you to get there? From a self-interested consumer perspective, it took 300 to 500 dollars of time. Saying it out loud this way sounds silly, but the embedded temporalization in “cost” is, for most people, the operative one.

So that’s a very basic schema for two, separate temporalizing relationships, that can be used together or separately to represent the same trip. Inadvertently, we have also answered the question “what is a dimension,” by adding a second one. Dimensions are just variables that we can use to build relationships. Since we have two dimensions of temporality now, we can plot them as “x” and “y”, and see a thing. We temporalized the trip by hours, and cost. Total distance, if added, would make a third.

Okay so what does this have to do with indigenous peoples? Sandbatch is already spiralling off into miscellany. Nothing so far on indigenous! We need some theory first. 

To get started, let's look at what German historian Reinhart Koselleck's discussion of "Historical semantics," says about temporalization itself. Yeah, straight into the heavy stuff.

Leaving aside our simple San Fransisco example, "temporality" in Koselleck’s work refers to the historical and philosophical understanding of time. He posits that time is not a uniform or universal experience for all subjects, but is perceived and experienced differently by non-identical subjects. Some of us start in New Orleans, some of us start in Detroit.

So it actually isn’t just how we measure time. “Measurable time” is actually a special type of time called “historical time,” and today we are looking at different kinds of historical time, so we can measure it. In some addendum material we will look at another kind of time, and at another time we will have to flesh out more fully the implications of “History.” For now, temporality is how we conceive time, which has some inescapable relations with how we measure it.

This concept (temporality) underscores the idea that historical analysis must consider the specific temporal perspectives and experiences of the people and societies under study. Temporality, in Koselleck's view, is a central element in shaping historical consciousness and interpretation.

Koselleck also introduces the inevitable concept of "multi-temporalities," which suggests that multiple, distinct temporalities can coexist and interact within the same historical period. He argues that different groups, institutions, or social structures might operate according to their unique temporal frameworks simultaneously. In the most basic possible terms, the temporalization of a journey to San Fransisco starting from New Orleans and another one starting from Eureka will possess a unique profile of variables and relationships that constitute “temporalization,” yet can operate simultaneously. This concept, like all good concepts, is scalable as needed.

This multiplicity of temporalities challenges the idea of a singular, linear historical time and opens up the possibility of diverse and concurrent historical narratives and experiences. This concept is pivotal in understanding the complexity of historical processes.

Let’s take this in terms of dimensions. Without ever really telling us this, what we take from Koselleck is the idea that time, especially this curious category “historical time,” is actually best represented as a multidimensional graph. If we were to look at a single event— say, the French Revolution, we could find an almost infinite number of ways to “temporalize” it. What kind of times are passing? Well, it is the end,or terminus of “Royal Time” in France. It marks the beginning of “Republican Time,” and it has serious knock-on effects in temporal frameworks that never explicitly touch it (American Time, German Time, Catholic Time).

Ok, now we can look at the word “indigenous” itself, and try to figure out what Indigenous Time looks like. 

The closest thing the English language has to a final arbiter of meaning is the Oxford English Dictionary. Look what it does to us with this "indigenous" thing. Our first, (most current, most common) definition of "indigenous" is: "Born or originating in a particular place."

Okay cool. But then it gives us a special usage: "(now often with capital initial) designating a people or group inhabiting a place before the arrival of (European) settlers or colonizers." And then it petulantly adds, "also with "to" introducing the place in question." 

If the paradox in this definition this isn't obvious and problematic, its earliest instance of this usage will help tease it out. The context dates to Michael Stanhope's 1632 tract hawking investments in a North Yorkshire tourism venture. Stuart era startups had a lot of low hanging fruit to grab.  

There’s just one little thing wrong with these springs! Stanhope warns his London readers that developing the medicinal hot springs in the area around the Forest of Knaresborough, which totally still exists, comes with some potential issues. "Those who neighbour nearest to these waters," says Stanhope, "are an indigenous poore people...and therefore it cannot be expected they [referring to potential visitors of the springs] should accommodate them in their many usefull concernments where in they are most grossely defective." In short, there are poor people around, and they'll scare away the hipsters! 

The central paradox of "indigenous,” as the OED gives it, is that we have a definition of it that seems to include a special aspect that disqualifies its own first usage. The people of Knaresborough are indigenous but they are also in England which is European enough to raise serious concerns about the OED's motives. What do we do with that? The Oxford English Dictionary can't be wrong, so we have to meet it where it's at and square the "special" usage with the "general" usage. 

To do this we have to give up for a moment on the "people" and the "place," and instead notice the remaining, unfalsifiable distinction being made by application of "indigenous," is temporal. It is tempting to seize onto the word "poore," and the dripping contempt Stanhope holds for the locals, and make this purely into a class boundary, or a geographic one, but the distinction is primarily relative and temporal. What is an "indigenous" person? It is a person who was “there” before "we." The special usage gives us an inverse case, where “we” are the indigenous and “they” are the ones who arrived, but if you notice, this doesn’t change much about the actual relationship.

This relationship is relative because it only marks the relationship between two parties, without saying much of anything about the absolute time structure. Indigenous is a “tag” that gets thrown on you when another party arrives, not when some immutable and fixable event occurs (though, the event is immutable and unretractable).  

Let's go back to the Stanhope text, Cures Without Care to see if we can find any clues about what this “indigenous” designation does to a man. He gives us a deeply coded list of things Knaresborough needs to make it a proper destination site for travellers seeking the "chemickal" properties of the various springs in the area, starting with a decent inn: "what unseemely shifts have I seen many strangers of note put to for want of a convenient place of retirement?" 

The inabilities of the "indigenous" inhabitants to provide the things necessary. He continues: "From this & the like abuse it is that diverse justly complaine, and wish that some one might be deputed by authority to mannage these waters, and to provide all things necessary for their more fit use, conditionally that allowance might be made annually by all such as have recourse to them according to their qualities." 

It isn't immediately clear who Michael Stanhope was, but we do know that on two separate occasions he published a pamphlet in London. The first, in 1627, announced a "iovrney, in the true discovery of a soueraigne minerall, medicinall water," which, he quickly pointed out were "not inferiour to the spa in Germany." A little digging indicates that he was probably a younger son of Sir Thomas Stanhope, himself a member of the Council of the North and a younger son of an elder Sir Michael Stanhope-- executed on Tower Hill for conspiring to kill the Duke of Northumberland.

This is a group of people that I have talked about a lot in the past and will continue to talk about, because of the incredible historical rupture they engendered. They’re alternately called “gentry” or “bourgeoisie,” and they invented or popularized almost all of the structural framework associated with “modernity,” and we have caught them red-handed coining the kind of ideological term that:

1. Makes life easier for them. It is easier to refer to “indigenous” than it is to differentiate between a cascading number of demonyms— Knaresbouroughers, Geordies, New Yorkers, etc. The “indigenous” present one, single, abstractable obstacle.

2. Erects an essentially un-passable language barrier between themselves (early agents of “The Plantation”) and persons outside that linguistic/cognitive wall.

In terms of temporalization, the word creates a special kind of nearly immutable temporalization, that we are going to call a “boolean.” This is the same boolean you learned in college library science— a category of data that is either a 1 or a 0. True or false. Are you indigenous, or are you not? This is an “us or them” proposition. The relationship implied by “indigenous”, is shared by a number of other potential booleans in historical semantics. "Master and servant," "friend and foe," "war and peace," and "forces of production and relations of production" come to mind.

We are almost done with Koselleck for the day. He gives us two German words that we also have to tease out: Erfahrungsraum and Erwartungshorizont. Respectively, they translate to “space of experience” and “horizon of expectation.”

Space of Experience, can be conceptualized as a metaphysical terrain, a vast expanse where the present past—events that have been lived, endured, and internalized—reside. It's an assemblage of temporal layers, a mosaic of moments and memories, like the chaotic, swirling patterns seen through the glass of a washing machine, where different pieces of history appear and disappear, but all are contained within the same “drum​”​. In this space, experience is not merely a chronological calibration but a spatial totality. When we remember that William Faulkner told us “the past isnt’ dead, it’s not even past,” he is outlining the “Space of Experience” for us, which can be mostly plainly called “the set of dimensions of temporalization bearing upon the instantaneous present.”

Horizon of Expectation,conversely, is an ethereal, forward-looking vista where the future unfolds itself as a spectrum of possibilities. This horizon is not a mere extension of the past, but rather a tapestry woven from the threads of anticipation, potentialities, and the uncharted. It stands as a metaphorical manifestation of the future made present, where personal and collective expectations converge and diverge in the realm of the "not-yet" and the "nonexperienced"​​.

In this horizon, elements such as hope, fear, wishes, desires, and rational projections are interlaced, creating a dynamic, evolving landscape that constantly shapes and reshapes our perception of what lies ahead. Unlike the Erfahrungsraum, which is rooted in the past, the Erwartungshorizont is scattered among an infinity of temporal extensions, each pointing towards different potential futures​​.

This concept of the Horizon of Expectation highlights the inherent asymmetry and distinction between past experience and future anticipation. It underscores the idea that while our understanding of history is informed by past experiences, our anticipation of the future is not merely an extrapolation of these experiences.

“Past and future never coincide,” Koselleck reminds us in the essay where he introduces these concepts, and “experience once made is as complete as its occasions are past.” But “that which is to be done in the future, which is anticipated in terms of an expectation, is scattered among an infinity of temporal extensions.” What does that mean? Indigenous! Stay on target!

When Michael Stanhope places this word “indigenous” on the people of Knaresborough, he applies an acid bath to their Erfahrungsraum, their Space of Experience. He’s tossed the people of Knaresborough into an emergent category for the data structure of the “Plantation,” then stretching its first silvery tentacles from the counting houses of London. The entire Erfahrungsraum of a people, is reduced to a boolean value “indigenous,” which is characterized as “people who stand between ourselves and exploitation of the resources those people occupy.”

This property, “indigenous” having reduced a Space of Experience, or their living present, into a single value, dramatically affects the temporal possibilites of their “Horizon of Expectation.”

Indigenous— my friends, is a trap. It definitionally locks the “indigenous” subject into paralysis, political impotence, and passivity. The indigenous subject is reduced to begging for subsidies, and savagely competing with other layers of indigenousness. This is what is happening in Israel, at present. Two groups of people, each believing themselves “indigenous” to the Near east. Their dispute over this appellation— which amounts simply to jostling for subsidies flowing from the regime in Washington. The conflict has spilled over into the American public sphere, and is producing totally schizophrenic policy results. The only winners are the Michael Stanhopes of the world— the chattering class of amoral power players feeding at the trough of U.S. Government contracts.

Don’t trap yourself in “indigenous”. You’re on the plantation, and so are the rest of us. That is not the way out.

"You are quite right, my friend, in what you say about experience. For individuals it is always too late, while it is never available to governments and peoples."

-Graf Reinhard to Goethe