Moving in time, out of step: mimesis as moral breakdown in European re‐enactments of the North American Indian Woodland

Abstract

What constitutes a dance step executed just right? Does its success reside in its faithfulness to an ‘original’ model or script or in a feeling experienced by the dancer interpreting the model in a new context? This is the kind of epistemological, and moral, dilemma that was often voiced during my fieldwork amongst Indianists, amateurs involved in re‐enactment of Native American lifeworlds on European soil. In Indianism, museum‐quality replicas made by and worn on European bodies function as heuristic tools in exploring ‘what life was really like’ in other times and places. Focusing on Woodland Indianist performances and replicas in a variety of European settings, I suggest that Indianism, as an amateur engagement with re‐imaginings and reifications of the North American Indian, faces constant moral breakdown because of its unease with the transformative nature of mimesis.

The ‘Hunnic eye’: skilled mediation in popular re-enactment

“…Another widespread form of popular re-enactment is called Indian hobbyism (e.g.see Sieg 2002;Penny 2013; on Indianism in East Germany, seeBorries and Fischer 2008; in Germany and the Netherlands, seeKalshoven 2004Kalshoven , 2005Kalshoven , 2012Kalshoven , 2015Kalshoven , 2016 on the re-enactment of Scottish history outside Great Britain, seeHesse 2014).5 For the historical trajectories of popular re-enactment and living history, see, for example,Carlson (2000),Schlehe et al (2010),Roselt and Otto (2012) andWillner et al (2016).3 6 A N JA D R E S C H K E © 2019 European Association of Social Anthropologists.…”

“… Another widespread form of popular re‐enactment is called Indian hobbyism (e.g. see Sieg ; Penny ; on Indianism in East Germany, see Borries and Fischer ; in Germany and the Netherlands, see Kalshoven , , , , ; on the re‐enactment of Scottish history outside Great Britain, see Hesse ). …”

Development as pedagogy: On becoming good models in Japan and Myanmar

“…As a situated and multifaceted activity, teaching and learning change both the teacher (the “model”) and the student (the “copy”). The performative arts also show that bodily imitations in learning processes do not ensure exact replications of the teacher, since each body moves and is shaped differently and the teacher can also at times encourage innovation in the student (Averbuch ; Kalshoven ). Imitations are not limited to a one‐to‐one relationship between model as authority and copy as follower, since imitations can refract the location of power, and thus the relation of model and copy, into multiple directions (Lempert ; cf.…”