Dissecting the Nacirema

554 Words3 Pages
Satire is the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. Horace Miner was an anthropologist who, in 1956, wrote Body Ritual among the Nacirema. The article satirizes American culture through an anthropological perspective but also plays as a critique of Western arrogance in anthropology and society itself when it comes to viewing non-Western societies. With this, the article’s language overstates the exoticness of the Nacirema by highlighting the tendency to too quickly attribute or explain unfamiliar practices as religious or supernatural rites and parodies the expectation of “otherness” in anthropological thought by writing the study as if through a subjective perspective which anticipates difference in other cultures without truly understanding why. When it comes to writing a study of another culture, the language used can sometimes highlight whether or not you truly understand the culture being studied. The language of Horace Miner’s Body Ritual among the Nacirema is used, for instance, to satirize the mistakes many anthropologists make when they assume other societies have religious/supernatural aspects in their cultures, regardless of if they do or not. The article that Horace Miner writes himself utilizes the chance to show how much some anthropologists get caught up in assumptions and rely on terms such as “ritual,” “ceremony,” and “magical” to explain practices that they are perhaps unfamiliar with. For example, Miner describes the bathroom as a “ritual” site or medicine as “magic” material. At the end of article, it is even stated that the Nacirema are “magic-ridden” people (Miner, 149), although most Americans are void of many practices involving supernatural and even religious aspects. Although minor details, the article is full of far-fetched comparisons that demonstrate how much truly

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