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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mapping Genetic Origins
Description
An account of the resource
Genome mapping reveals the tensions between ‘origins’ and ‘homelands’. Our genetic ‘origins’ are probabilistic, not deterministic, because they show our ancestors’ mobility across space, not that they were born into a ‘homeland’ within a particular set of state borders. When one sends in his/her saliva sample, the genome map will reveal not ‘where you are from’ but rather where people with similar genes were grouped 500 years ago before intercontinental travel (as seen in Map 1). As the sample pool increases, one’s ‘origins’ shift. For example, Scott’s original genome map showed that he was mostly Eastern European; today, he is mostly Northern European! When I sent in a request to access my ‘previous identities’, a 23andMe representative responded that they did not provide such information because ‘your results are a living analysis’. Whereas one’s homeland is a socially-constructed relationship to a space, genetic mapping constantly shifts one’s origins across the geopolitical map. Genome mapping ‘unmaps’ our very association with a homeland.
Yet, the concept of ‘homeland’ is a more powerful way to relate to a given space because it is bundled with culturally sanction claims (and emotions) to a given territory. Genetic origins, on the other hand, can feel empty, anachronistic, disconnected. I am not going to take over Italy because I am 2.4% Neanderthal, but I wouldn’t be so happy if the Italian government expropriated my farm on which my family had lived for generations. Homeland gives us a distorted but satisfying sense that we are connected to a static, primordial lineage, that ‘people who share my values and language have always been there’. Genomic mapping, on the other hand, tells us that we are all related in different ways. Homelands emphasize the need for borders against the encroachment of the ‘Other’; genetic origins show that you and the ‘Other’ are 4th cousins. We already know that the idea of homelands can be distorted for political purposes, but whether origins research will be distorted to remap new state or national borders is still an unknown.
Current geopolitical maps obfuscate the complexity of genetic origins. Genome results show that in an x sample pool, one shares a similar genetic composition with a group of people who happened to be clustered in this geographic area 500 years ago. How they map this geographic area, however, is peculiar. Why are Native Americans spanning several continents depicted as a single population? Why are Ashkenazi and Eastern Europeans two different categories when Jewish populations in other parts of Europe at the time are not recognized on the map? The geopolitical map that is intended to show how we are atomized we are may be a limiting tool for mapping our common origins. Some populations appear much larger, while others are invisible.
Ironically, while genomic mapping reveals the tensions between homelands and origins, it also demonstrates their common traits. Both homelands and origins speak to our desires—at least those who submit their saliva samples—to be part of some human collective identity. In both cases, the distorted geopolitical map helps us visualise this mystical dimension of our lives. For example, Map 2 displays my genetic relatives all of whom I have never met, all across the globe. These relatives are not defined by kinship and my encounters with them, but determined by 23andMe’s relational databases that tell us that we shared a common ancestor. This recalibration of my mental map of my relatives feels quite odd. If we ever met, would we eventually act like family? 23andMe can also tell you whether or not you and another person could be relatives—if not now, then in the future. Figure 1 shows that Scott and I are not related, but there are grey overlaps in our chromosomes where there is still ‘not enough information’. It feels weird to find out that you are incorporated into relational networks of which you may not be yet aware, but it is also quite amazing. But it is also this very sense of wonder and magic of being part of something greater than ourselves, I think, that leads us to politicize and racialize such results, and could potentially lead us toward a dangerous path. And this is where homelands and origins are more similar than different.
Creator
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Edyta Materka
Source
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23andMe
Date
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October 15, 2014
Format
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Maps + Chart
Language
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English
thm_origins
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mapping Traditional African Masks
Subject
The topic of the resource
commodification of traditional African arts
Description
An account of the resource
Adding a complexity to Chris Marker's film 'Statues also Die,' the use of African masks play a more interesting role in the use of relational space between the physical and the metaphysical, 'According to the anthropologist Frank Herreman:
One of the most dramatic manners whereby the contact between humans and the supernatural acquires a visible form is at the moment that spirits under the form of masks appear. According to our understanding, the mask is a means of partially or wholly covering the face or the body to render it unrecognisable, and through which the masker acquires another identity. In large parts of the world the original function – associated with the supernatural – has declined, and masking has evolved into a form of profane recreation coming to the fore only once or at most a few times per year, for example during carnival. In West and Central Africa, the function of a number of masks has remained much closer to its original significance. Consequently, such masks still manifest at crucial moments during the cycle of the seasons, and within the course of an individual’s life cycle as well. The mask wearer in this context is, therefore, a more important person than someone who masks for purely recreational motives. In the African context the mask wearer is always an initiated person whose identity is not made known. He undergoes not only a physical, but also a psychic transformation. He comes under the spell of the spirit that he incarnates, and one believes that he so disposes of the supernatural characteristics of the latter. Since the supernatural stands outside the law of the living, one supposes that the mask acts according to its own whimsy. In these acts, however, sits a structure that is dictated by the priest, the magician, the society, the elders, or other forms of the power structure. They must watch over the observance of religious rules, the common law, and the maintenance of various rituals which must be carried out within the scope of events in life’s cycle. Thus, the masks are important instruments that aid in the consolidation of the position of power of the various authority structures.'
Creator
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Scott Valentine
Source
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http://www.vub.ac.be/BIBLIO/nieuwenhuysen/african-art/african-art-collection-masks.htm
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thm_origins