Anicka Fast | Boston University (original) (raw)

Papers by Anicka Fast

CamLing 2007: Proceedings of the 5th Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research, 2007

Recent linguistic literature abounds with overtly moral language justifying linguists’ interventi... more Recent linguistic literature abounds with overtly moral language justifying linguists’ intervention in endangered language situations. To use Matras’ disparaging characterization, language revitalization is no longer ‘just a topic of research, but a mission’ (2005: 226). Documentary linguists thus find themselves in the unusual situation of having developed an interventionist stance that superficially resembles the rhetoric of missionary linguist counterparts, despite many academics’ continuing uneasiness about missionary methods and motives. Through a broad survey of the recent endangered language literature, I argue that the contrast between documentary linguists’ use of moral language and their rejection of the moral contributions of missionary linguists starkly highlights the moral incoherence that philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre identifies with post-Enlightenment attempts to find a shared rational basis for morality. This incoherence contrasts with the missionary linguist’s worldview, which I suggest typifies the tradition-based rational enquiry advocated by MacIntyre. The moral framework of missionary linguists includes allegiance to the Christian community rather than to the academy; the cultivation of virtue as part of identity, and the belief that moral judgments can have a rational basis. In short, the clash between academic and missionary linguists rests on a fundamental disagreement about the terms of moral debate. I conclude that fruitful engagement can only occur if academic linguists stop accepting particular claims to truth only as illuminations of supposedly universal values, and, like their missionary colleagues, situate their moral language within a particular tradition.

Missiology: An International Review, 2018

While most Protestant missions in Belgian Congo gladly accepted the colonial state's offer of edu... more While most Protestant missions in Belgian Congo gladly accepted the colonial state's offer of educational subsidies in 1946, a strong emphasis on church-state separation led the American Mennonite Brethren Mission (AMBM) to initially reject these funds. In a surprising twist, however, the AMBM reversed its position in 1952. Through archival research, I demonstrate that a major factor that led the AMBM to accept subsidies was the creation and institutionalization of a racially separate ecclesial identity from that of Congolese Christians. Moreover, the development of this separate identity was closely intertwined with missionaries' vision for a "white children's school," geographically separated from their work with Congolese. The enactment of white identity helped pave the way for the acceptance of subsidies, both by bringing the missionaries more strongly into the orbit of the colonial logic of domination, and by clarifying the heavy cost of failing to comply with the state's expectations. Through this case study, I engage with the complexity of missionaries' political role in a colonial African context by focusing on the everyday political choices by which missionaries set aside their children as sacred, by exploring how ideas about separateness were embedded into institutions, and by demonstrating how attention to the subtleties of identity performance can shed new light on major missionary decisions.

Anabaptist Witness, 2018

Bien que la plupart des missions protestantes au Congo belge aient été plus qu’heureuses d’accept... more Bien que la plupart des missions protestantes au Congo belge aient été plus qu’heureuses d’accepter, en 1946, l’offre de subsides scolaires de la part de l’état colonial, la Mission américaine des Frères mennonites (AMBM – American Mennonite Brethren Mission), très attachée au principe de la séparation de l’Église et de l’État, a refusé cette offre au départ. Cependant, dans un revirement surprenant, l’AMBM change de position et accepte les subsides en 1952. À travers une étude historique, je démontre que le facteur majeur qui amène l’AMBM à accepter les subsides est la construction et l’institutionnalisation d’une identité ecclésiale séparée des Chrétiens congolais. De plus, la construction de cette identité séparée est étroitement liée à la vision qu’avaient les missionnaires d’établir une « école pour enfants blancs », séparée géographiquement de leur travail avec les Congolais. La promulgation de cette identité de Blanc contribue à ouvrir la voie à l’acceptation de subsides, à la fois en intégrant les missionnaires dans l’orbite de la logique coloniale de la domination, et en les amenant à prendre conscience du coût élevé de la non-conformité aux attentes de l’État. Cette étude tente d’expliquer la complexité du rôle politique des missionnaires dans un contexte colonial africain en abordant une question plus vaste : comment, en veillant aux choix politiques quotidiens – la création de groupements sociaux, le choix de termes pour désigner les autres, les modes du culte, et les discours du sacré – peut-on faire ressortir les formes de collaboration subtile qui peuvent se développer entre un état colonial et d’autres acteurs blancs à travers le jeu complexe de l’identité raciale séparée? Dans le cas de l’AMBM, le fait de porter attention aux processus subtils de la construction de l’identité permet de jeter un nouvel éclairage sur les décisions majeures des missionnaires dans le passé.

Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 2018

Existing histories of the brief Franciscan Recollect mission to New France (1615-1629) tend eithe... more Existing histories of the brief Franciscan Recollect mission to New France (1615-1629) tend either to overstate the assimilatory character of the Recollect missionary vision or to overlook their comprehensively political vision. Through a close re-reading of early Recollect sources, I excavate a missionary vision for cohabitation between indigenous people and French settlers that, while assimilationist in some ways, also reflected deeply a conviction of human equality , a nascent understanding of the church as a political alternative to empire, and a willingness to learn from and adapt to indigenous cultures. The Recollects' vision was shaped at every stage by their specifically Franciscan practice of poverty. This poverty predisposed them to critique mercantile interests in the colony, shaped their appreciation of indigenous traveling companions, and made them more prone to recognize Christian equality across cultures.

Revue des étudiants en linguistique du Québec , 2006

L’harmonie vocalique en français canadien est un phénomène variable selon lequel le relâchement d... more L’harmonie vocalique en français canadien est un phénomène variable selon lequel le relâchement des voyelles hautes dans les syllabes finales fermées se propage vers la gauche dans les syllabes ouvertes. On peut remarquer un cas d’opacité dérivationnelle dans des mots tels que [-] ‘musical’ où l’harmonie se manifeste malgré le fait que le déclencheur présumé d’harmonie, c’est-à-dire la dernière voyelle du radical, [i], est tendue et ne se trouve pas dans un syllabe finale ou ouverte. Poliquin (2006) prétend que ce cas ne peut être analysé sans une théorie qui comprend un élément cyclique. Cela pose un défi pour les théories parallélistes telle que la théorie de l’optimalité (TO).
À cause de l’exclusion de la variation comme outil analytique, Poliquin ne peut que proposer des explications basées sur l’anormalité de la variation. En permettant à la variation de jouer un rôle plus central que celui de ré-hiérarchisation de contraintes, je peux améliorer l’adéquation descriptive d’une explication en TO de l’harmonie vocalique en français canadien.

Data on the perceptions of language utility held by church leaders, missionaries and church membe... more Data on the perceptions of language utility held by church leaders, missionaries and church members in south-western Burkina Faso illuminate a complex use of language ideology in an ongoing intra-church conflict. I suggest that the discourses used by missionaries and church leaders reflect competition over the theological resources needed to address linguistic diversity within the church. Many Western missionaries hold to an essentializing ideology that connects the vernacular with identity and spiritual authenticity, thus functioning to contain diversity within the church through the idealization of linguistically homogenous congregations, and to obscure unequal access to resources for ideological legitimization by re-casting missionaries as agents of cultural revitalization and dismissing alternative conceptions of church as insufficiently indigenous.

Language Documentation and Description, 2009

Mennonite Quarterly Review, Jul 2016

At a time when North American Mennonites are questioning the legacy of mission, this essay review... more At a time when North American Mennonites are questioning the legacy of mission, this essay reviews three strands of thinking that are converging to reaffirm a believers church perspective on mission even as the Anabaptist church develops a more global identity. An older generation of North American Mennonite mission scholars and historians, younger voices speaking largely from within a Mennonite World Conference context, and a variety of thinkers from the Global South are all richly expressing the key Anabaptist conviction that ecclesiology and missiology are essentially connected. This suggests that the worldwide family of Anabaptists might be at a turning point in defining its identity and mission. The essay argues that it is time to move past a polarized debate, in which one is either “for” or “against” mission, and to understand Mennonites’ historical involvement in mission as part of a larger story of working toward deepening relationships in the world church.

CamLing 2007: Proceedings of the 5th Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research, 2007

Recent linguistic literature abounds with overtly moral language justifying linguists’ interventi... more Recent linguistic literature abounds with overtly moral language justifying linguists’ intervention in endangered language situations. To use Matras’ disparaging characterization, language revitalization is no longer ‘just a topic of research, but a mission’ (2005: 226). Documentary linguists thus find themselves in the unusual situation of having developed an interventionist stance that superficially resembles the rhetoric of missionary linguist counterparts, despite many academics’ continuing uneasiness about missionary methods and motives. Through a broad survey of the recent endangered language literature, I argue that the contrast between documentary linguists’ use of moral language and their rejection of the moral contributions of missionary linguists starkly highlights the moral incoherence that philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre identifies with post-Enlightenment attempts to find a shared rational basis for morality. This incoherence contrasts with the missionary linguist’s worldview, which I suggest typifies the tradition-based rational enquiry advocated by MacIntyre. The moral framework of missionary linguists includes allegiance to the Christian community rather than to the academy; the cultivation of virtue as part of identity, and the belief that moral judgments can have a rational basis. In short, the clash between academic and missionary linguists rests on a fundamental disagreement about the terms of moral debate. I conclude that fruitful engagement can only occur if academic linguists stop accepting particular claims to truth only as illuminations of supposedly universal values, and, like their missionary colleagues, situate their moral language within a particular tradition.

Missiology: An International Review, 2018

While most Protestant missions in Belgian Congo gladly accepted the colonial state's offer of edu... more While most Protestant missions in Belgian Congo gladly accepted the colonial state's offer of educational subsidies in 1946, a strong emphasis on church-state separation led the American Mennonite Brethren Mission (AMBM) to initially reject these funds. In a surprising twist, however, the AMBM reversed its position in 1952. Through archival research, I demonstrate that a major factor that led the AMBM to accept subsidies was the creation and institutionalization of a racially separate ecclesial identity from that of Congolese Christians. Moreover, the development of this separate identity was closely intertwined with missionaries' vision for a "white children's school," geographically separated from their work with Congolese. The enactment of white identity helped pave the way for the acceptance of subsidies, both by bringing the missionaries more strongly into the orbit of the colonial logic of domination, and by clarifying the heavy cost of failing to comply with the state's expectations. Through this case study, I engage with the complexity of missionaries' political role in a colonial African context by focusing on the everyday political choices by which missionaries set aside their children as sacred, by exploring how ideas about separateness were embedded into institutions, and by demonstrating how attention to the subtleties of identity performance can shed new light on major missionary decisions.

Anabaptist Witness, 2018

Bien que la plupart des missions protestantes au Congo belge aient été plus qu’heureuses d’accept... more Bien que la plupart des missions protestantes au Congo belge aient été plus qu’heureuses d’accepter, en 1946, l’offre de subsides scolaires de la part de l’état colonial, la Mission américaine des Frères mennonites (AMBM – American Mennonite Brethren Mission), très attachée au principe de la séparation de l’Église et de l’État, a refusé cette offre au départ. Cependant, dans un revirement surprenant, l’AMBM change de position et accepte les subsides en 1952. À travers une étude historique, je démontre que le facteur majeur qui amène l’AMBM à accepter les subsides est la construction et l’institutionnalisation d’une identité ecclésiale séparée des Chrétiens congolais. De plus, la construction de cette identité séparée est étroitement liée à la vision qu’avaient les missionnaires d’établir une « école pour enfants blancs », séparée géographiquement de leur travail avec les Congolais. La promulgation de cette identité de Blanc contribue à ouvrir la voie à l’acceptation de subsides, à la fois en intégrant les missionnaires dans l’orbite de la logique coloniale de la domination, et en les amenant à prendre conscience du coût élevé de la non-conformité aux attentes de l’État. Cette étude tente d’expliquer la complexité du rôle politique des missionnaires dans un contexte colonial africain en abordant une question plus vaste : comment, en veillant aux choix politiques quotidiens – la création de groupements sociaux, le choix de termes pour désigner les autres, les modes du culte, et les discours du sacré – peut-on faire ressortir les formes de collaboration subtile qui peuvent se développer entre un état colonial et d’autres acteurs blancs à travers le jeu complexe de l’identité raciale séparée? Dans le cas de l’AMBM, le fait de porter attention aux processus subtils de la construction de l’identité permet de jeter un nouvel éclairage sur les décisions majeures des missionnaires dans le passé.

Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 2018

Existing histories of the brief Franciscan Recollect mission to New France (1615-1629) tend eithe... more Existing histories of the brief Franciscan Recollect mission to New France (1615-1629) tend either to overstate the assimilatory character of the Recollect missionary vision or to overlook their comprehensively political vision. Through a close re-reading of early Recollect sources, I excavate a missionary vision for cohabitation between indigenous people and French settlers that, while assimilationist in some ways, also reflected deeply a conviction of human equality , a nascent understanding of the church as a political alternative to empire, and a willingness to learn from and adapt to indigenous cultures. The Recollects' vision was shaped at every stage by their specifically Franciscan practice of poverty. This poverty predisposed them to critique mercantile interests in the colony, shaped their appreciation of indigenous traveling companions, and made them more prone to recognize Christian equality across cultures.

Revue des étudiants en linguistique du Québec , 2006

L’harmonie vocalique en français canadien est un phénomène variable selon lequel le relâchement d... more L’harmonie vocalique en français canadien est un phénomène variable selon lequel le relâchement des voyelles hautes dans les syllabes finales fermées se propage vers la gauche dans les syllabes ouvertes. On peut remarquer un cas d’opacité dérivationnelle dans des mots tels que [-] ‘musical’ où l’harmonie se manifeste malgré le fait que le déclencheur présumé d’harmonie, c’est-à-dire la dernière voyelle du radical, [i], est tendue et ne se trouve pas dans un syllabe finale ou ouverte. Poliquin (2006) prétend que ce cas ne peut être analysé sans une théorie qui comprend un élément cyclique. Cela pose un défi pour les théories parallélistes telle que la théorie de l’optimalité (TO).
À cause de l’exclusion de la variation comme outil analytique, Poliquin ne peut que proposer des explications basées sur l’anormalité de la variation. En permettant à la variation de jouer un rôle plus central que celui de ré-hiérarchisation de contraintes, je peux améliorer l’adéquation descriptive d’une explication en TO de l’harmonie vocalique en français canadien.

Data on the perceptions of language utility held by church leaders, missionaries and church membe... more Data on the perceptions of language utility held by church leaders, missionaries and church members in south-western Burkina Faso illuminate a complex use of language ideology in an ongoing intra-church conflict. I suggest that the discourses used by missionaries and church leaders reflect competition over the theological resources needed to address linguistic diversity within the church. Many Western missionaries hold to an essentializing ideology that connects the vernacular with identity and spiritual authenticity, thus functioning to contain diversity within the church through the idealization of linguistically homogenous congregations, and to obscure unequal access to resources for ideological legitimization by re-casting missionaries as agents of cultural revitalization and dismissing alternative conceptions of church as insufficiently indigenous.

Language Documentation and Description, 2009

Mennonite Quarterly Review, Jul 2016

At a time when North American Mennonites are questioning the legacy of mission, this essay review... more At a time when North American Mennonites are questioning the legacy of mission, this essay reviews three strands of thinking that are converging to reaffirm a believers church perspective on mission even as the Anabaptist church develops a more global identity. An older generation of North American Mennonite mission scholars and historians, younger voices speaking largely from within a Mennonite World Conference context, and a variety of thinkers from the Global South are all richly expressing the key Anabaptist conviction that ecclesiology and missiology are essentially connected. This suggests that the worldwide family of Anabaptists might be at a turning point in defining its identity and mission. The essay argues that it is time to move past a polarized debate, in which one is either “for” or “against” mission, and to understand Mennonites’ historical involvement in mission as part of a larger story of working toward deepening relationships in the world church.