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THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. SPRING 1994

would be a pity if the cogent and con­structive aspects of this wide-rangingcritique became unnecessarily mired inlegitimate current debates over an inde­pendent Kanaky or Belau's constitu­tion.

The Apotheosis ofCaptain Cook:European Mythmaking in the Pacific,by Gananath Obeyesekere. Princeton:Princeton University Press and Hono­lulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1992. ISBN0-691-°5680-3 (PUP); 0-93°97-68-4(BMP), xvii + 251 pp, figures, appen­dixes, notes, bibliography, index.US$24·95·

Thanks to the timely publication ofGananath Obeyesekere's The Apotheo­sis ofCaptain Cook, Pacific anthropol­ogists can at last turn away from thedeluge of revisionist theories about theconspiracy or assassination of John F.Kennedy to engage the debate over ourown mythic-historical moment, the"apotheosis" and ritual murder of Cap­tain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay,Hawai'i, on 14 February 1779. Obey­esekere, a distinguished South Asianistand authority on psychological anthro­pology, bursts onto the Polynesianscene as a "stranger king," confidentlyand masterfully striding over the turfof areal specialists. This incursiondeserves our enthusiastic welcome andcareful examination, for it raises issuesof critical importance for the historicalanthropology of the interface of Euro­peans and Pacific Islanders: not only isit imperative to uncover local catego­ries of meaningfulness, but it is equally

TERENCE E. HAYS

Rhode Island College

~.~.~.

sponse to the critiques lodged by theseauthors. Nor would they likely be sat­isfied by the increasingly voicedacknowledgment within the professionthat the traditional use of the "ethno­graphic present" tense in ahistoricaldescriptions and analyses has obscuredour understanding of societies as muchas it has abetted the perpetuation ofstereotypes and no longer valid imagesof Pacific peoples. With a fewexcep­tions, the contributors seem less inter­ested in improving the practice ofanthropology than they are in directingits efforts toward political objectives.

"It is the duty of social scientistseverywhere to expose the problemsfaced by Pacific peoples as they resistdestruction and extinction," say theeditors (xxviii, emphasis added). Oth­ers would stress not only our "duty" tobe advocates for political causes andmovements, but also that we have nochoice in the matter. Thus, SimeoneDurutalo asks, "Is a disengaged, de­tached, disinterested (in the criticalsense of the word), neutral anthropol­ogy possible?" (209). Although such agoal may always have been illusory (or,as most of the contributors would haveit, a disingenuous pose), for him thereis no doubt about the future: "Withinthe contemporary reality of a heavilynuclearized and militarized Pacific, theanswer is clearly in the negative" (2°9).

Weare reminded, as we arethroughout the book, of the sloganpopular in the 1960s and 1970s, "If youaren't a part of the solution, you're a .part of the problem." For the editors, atleast, the only "solution" appears to bethat we all join them and their contrib­utors, of whom "most are active sup­porters of the concept of a nuclear-freeand independent Pacific" (xxi). It

BOOK REVIEWS

vital to identify western ideologicalassumptions, patterns of discourse,and psychological dynamics.

Apotheosis moves toward its ambi­tious goal of reinterpreting the domi­nant popular and scholarly under­standing of Cook's fateful visit toHawai'i along six related paths. First,Obeyesekere tries to undermine theaccepted paradigm by a new "criticalreading" of the western sources (eg,ships' logs and journals, missionaryhistories, and ethnographic descrip­tions) that have been mined as evidencefor the claim that Cook was identifiedby the Hawaiians with their fertilitygod Lono. Far from being objectivereports of what Hawaiians did, said,and thought, these sources are, forObeyesekere, a massive projection onHawaiian consciousness of western"myth models," especially the general­ized early modern idea that Europeans(Columbus, Cortes, Cook) were supe­rior or divine beings in the eyes of"primitive" peoples. Obeyesekere'scritical reading involves, further, show­ing the specific personal, political, andrhetorical forces that shaped the writ­ing and editing of western texts aboutHawai'i.

Second, Obeyesekere performs aparallel critical reading of purported"Hawaiian" discourse about Cook asLono, noting that at least by the 1820SHawaiians had become so influencedby the previous western assumption ofCook's apotheosis that even nativelanguage sources are not immune fromthis bias and therefore cannot be usedas a transparent window into the tradi­tional past. Although Obeyesekeredoes not mention this, when the mis­sionary William Ellis visited Kealake­kua Bay in 1823 he found that the chiefs

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there reflected sorrowfully on Cook'smemory while looking at the plates inthe folio volume of Cook's voyages(Ellis, Polynesian Researches: Hawaii,133). Obeyesekere finds that Hawaiiandiscourse-at least what is available tohim in translation-is characterized bymultiple voices, genres, and perspec­tives.

Third, Obeyesekere mounts a com­plex argument (against Sahlins) thatthe historical coincidence of Cook'sarrival at Kealakekua Bay and theMakahiki festival then in progress isnot in itself grounds for supporting theCook-as-Lono identification. Hawai­ians were not foolish enough to sus­pend their "practical rationality" todeal with this unique and momentousevent in favor of a mechanical mythi­cal-ritual logic based on stereotypicalreproduction, and there is evidencethat Cook's advent actually did delayor alter the ritual schedule (as Sahlinsalso claims). Sahlins's use of rigidcalendrical calculations to compute thestages of the Makahiki is rejected onthe grounds that this ritual was onlysystematized during the period of Ka­mehameha I.

Fourth, Obeyesekere proposes anew explanation of what did happen in1778-1779 that not only fits the facts asrevealed by his critical reading ofsources but makes sense of Hawaiianand European cultural categories andpolitical motives: in order to draw theBritish into his ongoing struggleagainst the forces at Maui, Kala­ni'opu'u, the paramount chief of theisland of Hawai'i, invested Cook as ahigh chief and, after Cook's death,used his remains to perform a post­mortem deification, again with an eyetoward military gain. So what for

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THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. SPRING 1994

Sahlins is an innovative mythic identifi­cation and ritual killing becomes forObeyesekere a political installation andstrategic deification.

Fifth, Apotheosis tries to discreditSahlins's account of Cook in Hawai'iby challenging, at times in a line-by­line fashion, specific interpretationsfound in his many well-known publica­tions. Obeyesekere is particularly both­ered by the notion that Hawaiiansexperienced their world only by seeinghistorical events as enacted myths-butthis is not at all what Sahlins actuallyargues, as is especially clear from hisdiscussion of Hawaiian performativeculture, historical narrative, and prac­tical engagement, three critical dimen­sions of his comparative theory that arenot dealt with by Obeyesekere. Muchattention is given to refuting the ideathat the death of Cook was a reversekali'i ritual, the sham battle in whichthe king, linked to the warlike god Ku,proves his usurping powers and thenmoves inland to encompass the femaleagricultural forces associated withLono. But in saying that the scene of I4February is "strangely reminiscent" ofa sham battle rite, Sahlins (Islands ofHistory, 129) is not claiming that theHawaiians actually performed a ritualbackwards but only that Cook's ships,in returning to the bay while the forcesof Ku were in ascendance, were catego­rically out of place given their associa­tion with the Lono pole.

Obeyesekere's own mana is mani­fested in his accusation that Sahlinsinvented the description of a "hundred"Hawiians joining in Cook's murder(r82); that number and description arein fact found in the contemporary jour­nal of Captain James King (Beaglehole,

ed., The Journals ofCaptain JamesCook, 3:r, 557). Sahlins is also casti­gated for using a passage from an "offi­cial" (ie, published) journal by thissame King (r79), and then two pageslater Obeyesekere uses the same "offi­cial account" to protest another Sahlinsargument. Furthermore, for one whocontends that western scholars fail toappreciate the "tropic" character of thediscourse of the other, Obeyesekereshould never have failed so many timesto grasp the parodic, witty, and allu­sive quality of Sahlins's writing style.

Sixth, Obeyesekere directs his subtleskills in psychological interpretation toa rereading of Cook's psyche and findsthe standard opinion of him as a heroichumanitarian grossly inaccurate, for inaddition to the wise and generous "Pro­spero" dimension there is the darker"Kurtz" layer, where unreasonablecruelty and passionate rage towardboth crew and Islanders nearly led tomutiny and probably contributed to hisdeath. (No doubt Cook "lost it" whilevisiting Hawai'i, but he did not sail"round and round" the island ofHawai'i, as Obeyesekere mistakenlystates on pages 44, 53, 78, and 80).Here, Obeyesekere only tantalizes uswith his deconstruction of Cook, sincethis will be the subject of anothereagerly awaited major publication.

For the record, readers should knowthat I served as Sahlins's archivalresearch assistant in Hawai'i and laterwrote a dissertation under his direc­tion.

RICHARD J. PARMENTIER

Brandeis University