The Nomad
Thinking About Nomads and How Nomads Think
by Niillas Oskal

"Nomad" comes from the Greek word "nomos" which means to pasture and refers to people who move with their animals, which in turn move as they graze at different times throughout the year.

In the history of ideas, the subject of nomadism is interesting in itself, but gains political relevance now that the assault on Sami reindeer herding has intensified. The nomad has a long history as an object of contempt.

I will focus somewhat on nomads' own thoughts about themselves, but mostly on non-nomad perception of nomads, and on the nomad way of thinking. I will present some images of the nomad and nomad thought that has evolved, paying special attention to images created by western philosophers.

The image of the nomad is in itself ambiguous but the focus here is the prevailing image as it has established itself in the philosophy of western culture. However the same image is commonly held throughout the western world.

Even though one can achieve consensus on this collective image of the nomad, the relationship to that image can be quite ambivalent. There is a sharp distinction between what the nomad represents and what the non-nomad represents. The nomad represents the uncivilized, while the non-nomad represents civilization. As a departure point in distinguishing between civilized and uncivilized, several terms have evolved contrasting the nomad and the non-nomad:

NOMAD......................................NON-NOMAD
(barbarian................................civilized)
(lacking culture and history................culture)
(irrational................................rational)
(myth.....................................education)
(destructive...........................constructive)
(haphazard..................................planned)

The nomad image has been a scapegoat for civilization which contrasts its own excellence with the nomad's raw and wild life. The nomad image has become an icon of anticivilization and the nomad has been given the role of civilization's curse.

My point of departure is the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770 - 1831). Hegel has written extensively about nomad culture, not because he found it meaningful in itself, but because it represented a stepping stone in his scheme of development toward historical unity. Hegel maintained that culture doesn't just change, it evolves. Cultural development is a step forward with the steps forming a stairway. Hegel portrays nomad society as a sort of natural state. The history of civilization begins when the first nomad settles down to farm. With agriculture there is an end to the nomad's unstable and unplanned life, and agriculture requires preparation and concern about the future that the nomad lacks. In the book "The Foundation of Philosophy," Hegel writes: "The original beginning and the first creation of the state has been correctly attributed to agriculture, together with the establishment of marriage, in that agriculture principals include cultivating the earth and therefore absolute private ownership, which at the same time pushes back the wild nomadic life, those wild ones who seek their living from place to place and disturb private property's peace and security of meeting its own needs, where sexual love is limited to marriage...which ties those needs to the family and property to the families' welfare."

In the above quote we hear that tilling the soil, that is dominance of outer nature, and dominance of the inner nature - that is to say sexuality's subordinance to agriculture and self sufficiency - go hand-in-hand towards progress and freedom. Civilization's history begins, according to Hegel, when people relate to outer nature by transforming it, dominating it and influencing it. Nomad culture, on the other hand, relates to nature passively; it savors nature, adapts and submits to nature. Nomadism is, according to Hegel, a prehistoric phenomenon. The nomad is not a person in the sense of being an independent individual.

The outer nature creates the nomad. In other words, the nomad does not dominate and form the outer nature. On the contrary, it is outer nature which is the protagonist in relation to the nomad. The nomad does not resemble nature; the nomad is nature.

This is expressed in the statement "the purely natural existence...comprised the absolute threat to civilization," written by two other German philosophers, Max Horkheimer and Theodore W. Adorno. Natural existence both poses a threat to civilization and represents a reminder of an ancient fear. The civilized was:....."burdened with the fear that the self could be turned back to pure nature, from which it had separated itself with indescribable effort, and which for this reason filled it with indescribable fear. The living memory of past times, even though these nomadic (...) stages for thousands of years had been burned out of human consciousness with the most terrifying punishments. The enlightened spirit replaced torture -- the rack and burning at the stake -- with a condemnation of all forms of irrationality as destructive."

Frederich Nietzche further radicalized the image of the nomad. To him the nomad is the inhabitant of the desert, but I think Nietzche could have just as easily used the tundra as a metaphor. In the desert as nomad landscape, all points are equidistant to the midpoint, because the midpoint, the nomad, is always moving.

The nomad landscape can be crossed without moving forward. A nomad does not travel, it is actually the landscape which changes form in synch with the nomad's movement. In such a landscape there are no tracks, nor any history or development. The distinction between nature and culture dissolves. The distance between the dead and the living diminishes. Life in the desert is always on its way back to inanimate nature, In such a landscape it is difficult to distinguish between reality, wishful thinking, and illusions. In the desert you must roam around in endless circles. Life becomes an eternal round dance where nuances in the landscape reappear indefinitely.

In such a landscape Nietzche describes when he places one of his characters, Zarathustra, "among the daughters of the desert," and sitting "in the very smallest oasis ... with the desert so dizzyingly near ... without future, without past." But "without European dignity" and "without European voraciousness." Nietzche's title for the section is "The desert spreads. Woe to whomever shelters a desert." It sounds like he had stolen the title from an issue of a Finnmark mainstream newspaper interviewing a botanist. Nietzche's book on Zarathustra came out over 100 years ago. Since then the image has been filled out by Nietzche-inspired French philosophers who emphasize that the nomad has a frightening capacity to destroy, comprising a terrible threat to civilization.

To Nietzche "nomad" and "state" are incompatible, and can only be united through violence. He writes: "I used the word state - it is clear what is meant - one or another band of blond predators - a conquering and dominating race - welded together in war and powerful enough to organize everything around it - which unfazed clamps its fearsome paws onto a nomad people which has no form, even though it may be greater in numbers. This is how 'state' begins on earth. We can drop the romantic notion that the state began as a contract."

According to Nietzche, the state amounted to a ruthless war machine. But the French followers of Nietzche tied the war machine and destructive tendencies to the nomad. The nomad became an aggressive and warlike destroyer. According to the French Nietzche-inspired philosophers, the nomad has an enormous capacity to destroy, but they are not alone in that belief. Nearly ten years ago the head of the group "Stop the Death Cloud" stated that reindeer herding poses a greater threat to the environment than does radioactive pollution from the Kola peninsula. The same conclusion has been drawn by Norwegian Geographical Studies after its own scientific research. So much for the nomad image.

So far I have just interpreted descriptions of the nomad image by various philosophers, descriptions that are held to be empirical evidence. Is the nomad a hero or a villain according to these descriptions? Strangely enough, it seems that both those who answer 'yes' and those who answer 'no' agree with these descriptions. To the so-called philosophers of the Enlightenment, the nomad stands for lack of judgement, mysticism, and barbarism, while according to the so-called post modern French philosophers, the nomad image contributes to our viewing skeptically the notion that we can attain absolute knowledge (education and enlightenment). Before closing, by asking about the possibility of correcting the view of the nomad, I will touch on the subject of nomadic philosophy, or thinking about nomadic thinking.

Nomadic philosophy does not just consist of describing a nomadic reality, but is a form of philosophy which acts like a nomad, that is to say it acts in a nomadic manner in its method of philosophizing. This manner of philosophizing is a manner of maneuvering into a position where one can attempt to capture an otherwise unsurveyable reality with a lasso.

Also here a French philosopher can serve as an example, namely Michael Foucault. Foucault has a special method of argumentation which can be compared to the nomadic method of argumentation.

The nomadic method of argumentation breaks the rules of serious debate. Such rules guarantee that the participant's position can be tracked from the opening statement through the rebuttal. The rules are supposed to guarantee that the arguments are not self-contradictory, and that the participants are sincere and that all participants have equal opportunity to participate.

The nomadic method of argumentation breaks noticeably with such rules. It breaks with the obligation to distinguish between true and false, between genuine arguments and "as if" arguments. In a non-nomadic argument whoever criticizes is required to tell the truth about what is being attacked. The nomadic argument doesn't argue against anything at all and attacks no one. When the nomad joins in, it is never done directly, and never from a point of view the debaters have anticipated. The nomad argues from a distance and uses a distinct, artful, evasiveness combined with irony and cheerfulness.

The nomad is always present, and at the same time somewhere else than expected. It is easy to agree with a nomad for a moment, but only for a blink of an eye before the nomad has moved on. The nomad does not insist or stand firm, but is always on the move. The description of a form of argumentation can be used to describe Foucault's method. Foucault once said that he desired to write in a way that hid his face, and that his thinking was full of holes as a Swiss cheese.

Given that the image of the nomad has taken hold and given that the nomad represents itself in its own unique manner, is it possible to correct the image of the nomad?

A pessimistic answer can be given by paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre; It is not experience that shapes the nomad concept; on the contrary, it is the nomad concept that colors experience: if nomads didn't exist, civilization would have invented them. Some deride nomads because they are nomads, while other deride nomads because they perceive themselves as nomads. I hope that the problem is more political than existential.

On a more constructive note, I conclude with some thoughts from Johan Turi: "And I have understood that the Swedish government wants to help us, which it can, but it doesn't understand how it really is, our life and our lifestyle, because the reindeer Sami cannot exactly explain the way it is. I have thought that it would be best if there were a book, where everything about reindeer Sami's life and conditions was written, so that it wouldn't be necessary to ask how reindeer Sami live, and so that it wouldn't be possible to lie to the Sami and twist everything, those who want to blame the Sami when there are conflicts between farmers and reindeer Sami in Norway and Sweden. In this book all circumstances and explanations are written down so that it is clear enough that any reasonable person can understand it."

Johan Turi is an optimist and has faith in educating people. The Swedish government doesn't have bad intentions, but is only uninformed about reindeer Sami and their lives. It is simply a matter of how well one can explain things to the government. But in Turi's book there are two reservations and a possible limitation to this approach.

The first deals with the relationship between an obligation to tell the truth and an ethical and esthetic obligation not to speak of what is ugly and despicable. "There are many such events (conflicts between farmers and reindeer Sami and murder of reindeer Sami, N. O.), which we have heard about, and there are many others which we have not heard about. But I cannot write an more of such events, because it is ugly to tell about despicable events -- but if one is to write about everything, then one must write about everything, both the ugly and the beautiful."

The above quotation reveals that Turi values most an unswerving obligation to tell the truth, even if he has some reservations.

The other reservation he has about educating his target audience comes from his understanding of the relationship between knowledge, power and oppression. Turi tells of Sami healing practices:

"But it is not appropriate to write about all healing methods in this book, because this book will be read all over the world, and many learned men will not be receptive. They will not believe in them, and just mock supposed Sami ignorance..."

In spite of these two reservations, Johan Turi writes the book, hoping to educate the Swedish government about reindeer Sami life and conditions. But what does the Swedish government need to know in order to understand the reindeer Sami? From Turi we read that beyond practical reindeer herding, the Swedish government should know a great deal about caring for children, Sami healing practices, yoik, stallos and the little people among other things. Johan Turi has faith that understanding can correct the picture of the nomad, and he uses nomadic argumentation in a masterful way.

I have been familiar with the image of the nomad as long as I have had contact with non-reindeer Sami, but the nomad method of argumentation as viable was unfamiliar to me until relatively recently. The person who brought the nomadic argumentation form alive for me was John Henrik Eira while we were students in Tromsø.