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Notes on the Failures of Salvage Linguistics Jeffrey NEARLY PERFECT: NOTES ON THE FAILURES OF SALVAGE LINGUISTICS JEFFREY WAJSBERG A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO July 2018 © Jeffrey Wajsberg, 2018 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the “salvage” era of American linguistics (c.1910–1940) and its focus on the extraction of knowledges and cultural artifacts from Indigenous groups whose civilizations were believed in peril. Through close readings of historical archives and published materials, I imbricate the history of these scientific collection practices through the interpretive frames of Science & Technology Studies (STS), deconstructive criticism, and postcolonial theory. I centre the project on the career of linguist-anthropologist Edward Sapir, seizing upon his belief that linguistics was “more nearly perfect” than other human sciences—that linguistic methods were more akin to those of the natural sciences or formal mathematics. I employ Sapir as the chief focalizer of my work to map the changing topography of the language sciences in North America over these pivotal decades of disciplinary formation. Failure, here, offers a heuristic device to interrogate the linear logics of science and success which buttress that desire for perfection. Both conceptually and historically, the dialectics of failure and success throw into relief the vicissitudes of fieldwork, the uncertainty of patronage relationships, and the untenable promise of salvage that characterized these years. Through this approach, I present linguistics instead as a kairotic science—from the Greek kairos, suggesting opportunity—not perfect, but situated vividly in the world, bound by space, identity, and time. I examine how linguists conducted their collection work through the extension of a scientific network (Chapter 1), their construction of a scientific identity to the gradual exclusion of amateurs and the reduction of informant contributions (Chapter 2), and the development of an experimental system within the temporalities of fieldwork (Chapter 3). My dissertation hence invites a critical intervention within the history linguistics to re-encounter the science’s disregarded past and re-think its shared responsibility toward Indigenous communities in the present. iii For my cat I will always be waiting. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My work was generously funded by the Government of Canada through a SSHRC Joseph- Armand Bombardier CGS-Doctoral Award, which included a Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement. I received additional support through a Provost Dissertation Scholarship from York University and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship from the American Philosophical Society. I could not have accomplished this feat without my own network of supporters. I thank foremost my advisors Joan Steigerwald, Mike Pettit, and Sheila Embleton: your commitment, insight, and incision have enriched this project and contributed to my growth as an academic and intellectual. I was also influenced by other faculty members at York: Jamie Elwick, Edward Jones-Imhotep, Aryn Martin, and Natasha Myers. I owe a debt to Henry Cowles, Catherine Fountain, Judith Kaplan, Melissa Littlefield, Sylvia Nickerson, and Thomas Teo for their responses to my work in varying capacities, as well as to Barbara Dancygier and Margery Fee for their initial support in pursuing a Ph.D. I extend my gratitude to Joseph Errington and the Department of Anthropology at Yale University for hosting my first archival excursion; to Sylvie Laflamme, Jonathan Wise, and especially Benoit Thériault at the archives of the Canadian Museum of History; and to all the friendly, engaging, and always helpful archivists and staff at the American Philosophical Society, in particular Paul Sutherland. I owe as much to my personal connections. I thank my friends and colleagues in the Department of Science and Technology Studies who shaped the research culture and social fabric of the program: Aadita, Aftab, Bretton, Callum, Cameron, Cath, Dorian, Drew, Ellie, Emily, Erin, Jason, Kasey, Kelly, Nanna, Travis, Tyler, Yana, and many others in the Greater Toronto Area. Special appreciation belongs to Angela Cope and Shayna Fox Lee, whose intelligence, conversation, and kindness have affected and inspired me beyond the scope of any degree. I am also grateful to the friends who put me up and put up with me at different stages of the research and writing process: Anna, Ingrid, Laurie, Marisa, Megan&Drew, Thelma, Wanheng, and others. Anita Law deserves singular mention for the innumerable calories and witty dialogue we shared over the years. Finally, I am thankful for the local businesses in Montréal that fed my body and morale. Shout-out to Encore Books, whose patient staff abided my loitering, and to John, Andrea, and of course AJ at Maté Latte and Kokkino café for fueling me with the requisite dose of caffeine. Thanks also to fellow café denizens Emilie Malame for emotional support and memes and the strident Dr. Eric Savoy for his unofficial guidance and the occasional mot juste. I would not be here if not for my family: Denise, Leo, and Joseph. Much love and hope for the future. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ................................................................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................................................... v List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................................... vi Introduction: Nearly Perfect .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Curating Intimate Distance .................................................................................................. 20 Introduction: On Intimate Distance ............................................................................................... 20 Section A: Extension (into the Museum), 1910–1911 ........................................................... 34 Section B: Extension (into the Field), 1912–1913 .................................................................. 55 Section C: Retraction (the War), 1914–1918 ............................................................................ 75 Section D: Retraction (the Denouement), 1919–1924 ....................................................... 102 Conclusion: On Departures, 1925 ................................................................................................ 117 Chapter Two: A Dash of Genius ................................................................................................................... 119 Introduction: Whorf—and the Noise ......................................................................................... 119 Section A: The Linguist in Training—the Hobbyist in Transit ........................................ 131 Section B: An Engineer—among Bricoleurs ............................................................................ 143 Section C: Calibrating—the Public Intellectual ...................................................................... 160 Section D: Between Semantics—and Pseudoscience .......................................................... 174 Conclusion: Whorf—the Failure ................................................................................................... 189 Chapter Three: Bracketing Time ................................................................................................................. 192 Introduction: Becoming Linguists ............................................................................................... 192 Section A: Committing to Knowledge ......................................................................................... 206 Section B: Training the Linguist’s Judgement ......................................................................... 213 Section C: Collecting the Linguistic Laboratory ..................................................................... 223 Section D: Analyzing Writing Systems ....................................................................................... 235 Section E: Classifying Genres of Collection .............................................................................. 246 Section F: Archiving Analog Afterlives ....................................................................................... 257 Conclusion: The Transit of Linguistics ....................................................................................... 267 Conclusion: Toward an Intra-Linear Linguistics ................................................................................. 269 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................ 275 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure
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