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Kennewick Man and the Evolutionary Origins of the Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2014

VENLA OIKKONEN
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Abstract

This article addresses the recent attempts to integrate evolutionary history in the US national narrative. Focussing on the cultural, legal, and scientific controversy over Kennewick Man, the ancient human remains discovered in Washington state in 1996, the article explores the narrative politics of American national belonging. Through a popular historical novel on Kennewick Man's life, the article further theorizes nostalgia as a narrative tool in imagining the evolutionary origins of the nation. The article argues that nostalgia produces a temporal dynamic that bridges the gap between national history and global prehistory, and that this dynamic is reinforced through cultural ideas of genetic knowledge. At the same time, prehistoric nostalgia renders problematic ideas of ethnic difference largely invisible.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 275 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

This research was funded by the Kone Foundation and the Academy of Finland. An early version of the paper was presented at the Memory, Mediation, Remediation conference at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, in April 2011. The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the journal for insightful and helpful comments.

References

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