Preserving an ethnographic object requires isolating it from all contact

Evidence

Ethnology brushed up against its paradoxical death in 1971, the day when the Philippine government decided to return the few dozen Tasaday who had just been discovered in the depths of the jungle, where they had lived for eight centuries without any contact with the rest of the species, to their primitive state, out of the reach of colonizers, tourists, and ethnologists. This at the suggestion of the anthropologists themselves, who were seeing the indigenous people disintegrate immediately upon contact, like mummies in the open air. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 26

Categorization

• QUESTION: The Tasaday were later widely alleged to be a hoax staged by Marcos-era officials — is Baudrillard’s exemplary case itself a fabrication?
• SHARE: Worth flagging to anyone working on the anthropology of ‘pristine’ peoples — the Tasaday story is this argument’s most concrete anchor.
• XREF: connects to: Museumification exterminates what direct worms and decay could not — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 41; Preservation requires removing something from its immediate existence — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1059; Restoring artifacts to original sites is more artificial than keeping them transplanted — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 42 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Preservation requires removing something from its immediate existence #corroborates (1.00) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1059