American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The editor of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal has kindly given me the opportunity to reply to Dennis Tedlock's response to my essay-review of his book, The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. I have been asked only that my "counter-comment should not be longer than his paper, [that I] . . . should avoid any personal comments, and should try to remain as close as possible to the points of contention that are discussed in his paper." I can surely be briefer than Tedlock, because there are very few real points of contention between his positions and my own; it is only his representation of what I wrote in my "Mythography and Dialogue . . . '' that produces the appearance of contention. Personal comment is another matter. My review article treats Tedlock's work with consistent praise, in a tone that is respectful throughout; there is nothing of the "innuendo and irony" of which I am accused. Tedlock responds to my work, however, by impugning not merely my scholarship but my motives, assuming that I am consistently engaged in "moves" familiar or recognizable, in a variety of "games" all of which are to be taken as aspects of "academic politics" (p. 70, 72, and passim). It is virtually impossible to defend oneself against a charge as vague and insidious as playing "academic politics," especially since Tedlock never does say what he actually means by the phrase. He and I are not members of the same department, nor even in the same discipline (he is an anthropologist, I am a professor of literature); we are not affiliated with the same institutions. I have no doubt he has something specific in mind, but what? I continue to believe that what I wrote can be judged entirely on its own terms, and that no speculation about motives is necessary to explain it. If one nonetheless feels compelled to look for outside explanations, it seems to me that the notion of a desire to play "academic politics" is among the more fantastic. It is much more reasonable to conclude that Tedlock has, here, quite simply projected his own concerns as mine.