Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
gold! I know where's hidden treasure
souls who've never heard of Him
I will leave earth's shallow pleasure
And search for gold in paths of sin
gold from every tribe and tongue we'll gather
From fields that are white we'll glean rich treasure
By His spirit we will win souls from doubt and fear of sin
Each effort's worth it all a thousand measure
(songs of challenge, no. 38)
24
But why gold? Regardless of missionary intent, the metaphor of gold
was uncannily apt. Gold is deeply woven into Christian symbolism as a
potent and sacred substance. Yet gold is also widely recognized as a dan-
gerous material capable of driving rational men mad. It is the material
form of a polluting temptation. As Taussig describes it, along with the stuff
of sacrifice or offering, gold is “the epitome of evil, a veritable code word
for all we want but in our innermost hearts know we must not have.”
25
For Marx, gold by its nature was money, and vice versa.
26
In his analy-
sis, gold was a universal measure of value for several reasons: it was scarce,
it never corroded, it could be infinitely divided and reassembled, and it
was the condensation of labor.
27
The magic of gold lay in its imaginary or
ideal nature, which in turn atomized human sociality and imbued things
with ghostly spirit.
28
The universal value attributed to gold, in turn, made
it intimately linked to transgressive desires.
Marx most cuttingly described this excessive power of gold through
the figure of those who hoard it.
29
Because gold promised to contain
everything within it and, thus, erase all forms of relational distinction,
the hoarder's limitless desires were unleashed. Marx quotes Columbus
himself on this point, “Gold is a wonderful thing! Its owner is master of
all he desires. Gold can even enable souls to enter Paradise.”
30
The pursuit of brown gold presupposed the alienation of Ayoreo-
speaking people not from their labor power but from their vitalism and
the nuggets of soul content it presumably covered. Such missionary at-
titudes were strikingly similar to those of tradition-seeking anthropolo-
gists. Both presumed a disembodied substance of universal value resided
inside degraded Native bodies, which a properly industrious labor could
extract and collect.
Yet weren't missionaries also dazzled by brown gold? Indeed, the en-
tire mission order was explicitly predicated on a fundamental disorder:
the irrational and excessive desire to hoard Indian souls. Missionaries
wrote that the primary criterion for selecting new recruits was that they
