In Defense of Ignorance

Abstract

In this concluding perspectives essay, Benton counsels against the search for historical actors’ “understanding,” what they thought or knew about law. She warns that inadequate sources make difficult the recovery of what Natives and settlers believed about law, a problem compounded by their tactical use of “feigned mastery” and “studied ignorance.” Rather than seek the largely unrecoverable “understanding” of historical actors, scholars should instead reconstruct strategic behavior. Understanding, she concludes, was not a precondition to “intelligibility-through-practice,” which arose through negotiations and conflicts over such matters as jurisdiction and protection.