Abstract
American coinage, both circulated as well as commemorative, involves a host of cultural markers that represent the legal iconography of American national identity. The umbrella of American identity is one that covers places and peoples living in the continental United States, arctic and subarctic Alaska, and islands in the Pacific and Caribbean Oceans. As legal iconography, state and territorial American quarters serve as emblems of folk legality in which culture and law constitutively craft one another in ordinary tangible ways. While these quarters depict, and perhaps even celebrate a multicultural polity, the iconographic process of remembering may be more a statement of post-colonial design rather than genuine commemoration of the past and indigenous present of American Indian, Samoan, Native Hawaiian, Native Alaskan, Chamorran, Puerto Rican, and other indigenous peoples under American jurisdiction. These quarters present a theoretical paradox involving the portrayal of images that appear on them. This paradox represents an indigenous moment numismatically framed through non-English phrases and depictions of culture outside the continental forty-eight states. This chapter will examine this paradox as an indigenous moment in the numismatic construction of public memory illustrated by the minting of linguistic variety and cultural imagery on American state and territorial quarters.
This work was first presented at Interpellations: Law, Literature, and the Humanities Association of Australasia at Australian National University in Canberra, Australia in December 2013 and later published as Marusek, Sarah. 2015. The Crafting of Law and the Coining of Culture: Legal Semiotic of the American Quarter. Law, Culture and the Humanities. (https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872115575139). This present paper/current chapter is an expansion of that original paper with a focus on Indigeneity. Some reprinted portions from the original paper appear in accordance with Springer and Sage publication guidelines.
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Notes
- 1.
Wagner, Anne, and Malik Bozzo-Rey. 2014. French Commemorative Postage Stamps as a Means of Legal Culture and Memory. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, eds. Anne Wagner, and Richard K. Sherwin, 307–328. New York: Springer.
- 2.
Matsuda, Mari J. 1991. Voices of America: Accent, Antidiscrimination Law, and a Jurisprudence for the Last Reconstruction. Yale Law Journal 100(5): 1329–1407.
- 3.
For further discussion of folk legality, please see Sarah Marusek, 2015.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Seuffert, Nan. 2006. Jurisprudence of National Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate.
- 6.
Wagner, Anne. 2010. French Urban Space Management: A Visual Semiotic Approach Behind Power and Control, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. 24(2): 227.
- 7.
- 8.
Jappy, Tony. 2013. Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics. New York: Bloomsbury.
- 9.
Barthes, Roland. 1999. Rhetoric of the image. In Visual Culture: The Reader, eds. Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall. 37. London: Sage.
- 10.
Brigham, John. 2009. Material Law: A Jurisprudence of What’s Real. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
- 11.
Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008, Division D, Section 622, [H.R. 2764].
- 12.
United States Mint 50 State Quarters Report 1999–2008 : 10 Years of Honoring Our Nation’s History and Heritage, 14. http://www.usmint.gove/downloads/min_programs/50sqreport.pdf; Accessed 26 November 2013.
- 13.
Ibidem, 15.
- 14.
Ibidem, 15.
- 15.
Yanow, Dvora. 2006. How built spaces mean: A semiotics of space. In Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive, eds. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, 349–66. Turn, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Kevelson, Roberta. 1992. Semiotics and the art of ‘discovery’ in law. In Law and Aesthetics, ed. Roberta Kevelson, 245–79. New York: Peter Lang.
- 16.
Ford, Richard T. 2001. Law’s territory (a history of jurisdiction). Legal Geographies Reader: Law, Power, and Space, eds. Nicholas Blomley, David Delaney, and Richard T. Ford 200–217. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- 17.
Benjamin, Walter. 1999. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In Visual Culture: The Reader, eds. Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, 78. London: Sage.
- 18.
Heritier, Paolo. 2014. Law and image: Towards a theory of nomograms. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, eds. Anne Wagner and Richard K. Sherwin, 25. New York: Springer.
- 19.
Petroski, Karen. 2014. Visual legal commentary. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, eds. Anne Wagner and Richard K. Sherwin, 672–696. New York: Springer.
- 20.
Benavides Vanegas, Farid Samir. 2014. Film and the reconstruction of memory. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, eds. Anne Wagner and Richard K. Sherwin, 1000. New York: Springer.
- 21.
Spiro, Peter J. 2008. Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press.
- 22.
Weiner, Mark S. 2006. Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship. New York: New York University Press.
- 23.
Cramer, Renee Ann. 2005. Cash, Color, and Colonialism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
- 24.
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2015. Settler Colonialism: Then and Now. Critical Inquiry 41(3): 596.
- 25.
I had the pleasure of talking with Professor Black in Canberra at the Interpellations conference in 2013.
- 26.
Kevelson. 1992. 3.
- 27.
As written on quarters in the Americanized writing without the Hawaiian okina (‘).
- 28.
Richland, Justin B. 2007. Pragmatic paradoxes and ironies of indigeneity at the ‘edge’ of Hopi sovereignty. American Ethnologist 34(3): 557.
- 29.
Meyer, Manulani Aluli. 2004. Ho‘oulu Our Time of Becoming: Hawaiian Epistemology and Early Writings. Honolulu: ‘Ai Pōhaku Press (Native Books), 4.
- 30.
Simon, Liza. 2012. Hula U. Hana Hou: The Magazine of Hawaiian Airlines 15(5).
- 31.
Ibidem.
- 32.
Douzinas, Costas. 2011. A legal phenomenology of images. In Law and Art: Justice, Ethics, and Aesthetics, ed. Oren Ben-Dor, 254. New York: Routledge.
- 33.
Hein, Hilde. 1997. Legal practice and aesthetic theory: The case of copyright. In States, Citizens and Questions of Significance, eds. John Brigham and Roberta Kevelson. New York: Peter Lang.
- 34.
Matsuda, 1991, 1406.
- 35.
Maccanell, Dean and Juliet Flower Maccannell. 1982. The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 70.
- 36.
Althusser, Louis. 1999. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation). In Visual Culture: The Reader, eds. Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, 318. London: Sage.
- 37.
Goodrich, Peter. 1992. Specula laws: Image, aesthetic and common law. In Law and Aesthetics, ed. Roberta Kevelson, 207. New York: Peter Lang.
- 38.
Dovey, 1999, 193.
- 39.
Goodrich, Peter. 1992. Devising law: On the philosophy of legal emblems. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, eds. Anne Wagner and Richard K. Sherwin, 13. New York: Springer.
- 40.
Feigenson, Neal. 2014. Visual Common Sense. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, eds. Anne Wagner and Richard K. Sherwin, 105–124. New York: Springer.
- 41.
Feigenson, 2014. 104, 114.
- 42.
Delaney, David. 2010. The Spatial, the Legal and the Pragmatics of World-Making: Nomospheric Investigations. New York: Routledge.
- 43.
Dokoupilova, Despina. 2013. Creating Legal Subjectivity through Language and the Uses of the Legal Emblem: Children of Law and the Parenthood of the State. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 26(2): 315–339.
- 44.
Sherwin, Richard K. 2011. Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque: Arabesques and Entanglements. New York: Routledge, 18.
- 45.
Walker, Neil. 2012. On the Necessarily Public Character of Law. In The Public in Law: Representations of the Political in Legal Discourse. Editors: Claudio Michelon, Gregor Clunie, Christopher McCorkindale, and Haris Psarras. Burlington: Ashgate, 9.
References
Althusser, Louis. 1999. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation). In Visual Culture: The Reader, ed. Jessica Evans, and Stuart Hall. London: Sage.
Benavides, Vanegas, and Farid Samir. 2014. Film and the reconstruction of memory. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, ed. Anne Wagner, and Richard K. Sherwin, 993–1010. New York: Springer.
Benjamin, Walter. 1999. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In Visual Culture: The Reader, eds. Jessica Evans, and Stuart Hall, 78. London: Sage.
Brigham, John. 2009. Material Law: A Jurisprudence of What’s Real. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008, Division D, Section 622, [H.R. 2764]
Cramer, Renee Ann. 2005. Cash, Color, and Colonialism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Delaney, David. 2010. The Spatial, the Legal and the Pragmatics of World-Making: Nomospheric Investigations. New York: Routledge.
Dokoupilova, Despina. 2013. Creating legal subjectivity through language and the uses of the legal emblem: Children of law and the parenthood of the state. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 26 (2): 315–339.
Douzinas, Costas. 2011. A legal phenomenology of images. In Law and Art: Justice, Ethics, and Aesthetics, ed. Oren Ben-Dor, 254. New York: Routledge.
Dovey, Kim. 1999. Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form. New York: Routledge.
Feigenson, Neal. 2014. Visual common sense. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, ed. Anne Wagner, and Richard K. Sherwin, 105–124. New York: Springer.
Ford, Richard T. 2001. Law’s territory (a history of jurisdiction). In Legal Geographies Reader: Law, Power, and Space, eds. Nicholas Blomley, David Delaney, and Richard T. Ford, 200–217. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Goodrich, Peter. 1992. Specula laws: Image, aesthetic and common law. In Law and Aesthetics, ed. Roberta Kevelson. New York: Peter Lang
Hein, Hilde. 1997. Legal practice and aesthetic theory: the case of copyright. In States, Citizens and Questions of Significance, ed. John Brigham, and Roberta Kevelson. New York: Peter Lang.
Heritier, Paolo. 2014. Law and image: Towards a theory of nomograms. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, eds. Anne Wagner, and Richard K. Sherwin, 25. New York: Springer.
Jappy, Tony. 2013. Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics. New York: Bloomsbury.
Kevelson, Roberta. 1992. Semiotics and the art of ‘discovery’ in law. In Law and Aesthetics, ed. Roberta Kevelson, 245–279. New York: Peter Lang.
Maccanell, Dean, and Juliet Flower Maccannell. 1982. The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2015. Settler colonialism: then and now. Critical Inquiry 41 (3): 596–614.
Marusek, Sarah. 2015. The crafting of law and the coining of culture: legal semiotic of the American quarter. In Law, Culture and the Humanities.
Matsuda, Mari J. 1991. Voices of America: accent, antidiscrimination law, and a jurisprudence for the last reconstruction. Yale Law Journal 100 (5): 1329–1407.
Meyer, Manulani Aluli. 2004. Ho‘oulu Our Time of Becoming: Hawaiian Epistemology and Early Writings. Honolulu: ‘Ai Pōhaku Press (Native Books)
Page, Max. 2005. Memory field. Architecture 94 (6): 37–45.
Petroski, Karen. 2014. Visual legal commentary. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, ed. Anne Wagner, and Richard K. Sherwin, 672–696. New York: Springer.
Richland, Justin B. 2007. Pragmatic paradoxes and ironies of indigeneity at the ‘edge’ of Hopi sovereignty. American Ethnologist 34 (3): 540–557.
Roland, Barthes. 1999. Rhetoric of the image. In Visual Culture: The Reader, eds. Jessica Evans, and Stuart Hall, 37. London: Sage.
Seuffert, Nan. 2006. Jurisprudence of National Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Sherwin, Richard K. 2011. Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque: Arabesques and Entanglements. New York: Routledge.
Simon, Liza. 2012. Hula U. Hana Hou: The Magazine of Hawaiian Airlines 15(5).
Spiro, Peter J. 2008. Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press.
United States Mint 50 State Quarters Report 1999–2008: 10 Years of Honoring Our Nation’s History and Heritage, 14. http://www.usmint.gove/downloads/min_programs/50sqreport.pdf. Accessed 26 Nov 2013
Wagner, Anne, and Malik Bozzo-Rey. 2014. French commemorative postage stamps as a means of legal culture and memory. In Law, Culture and Visual Studies, ed. Anne Wagner, and Richard K. Sherwin, 307–328. New York: Springer.
Wagner, Anne. 2010. French urban space management: a visual semiotic approach behind power and control. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 24 (2): 227–241.
Walker, Neil. 2012. On the necessarily public character of law. In The Public in Law: Representations of the Political in Legal Discourse, eds. Claudio Michelon, Gregor Clunie, Christopher McCorkindale, and Haris Psarras. Burlington: Ashgate.
Weiner, Mark S. 2006. Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship. New York: New York University Press.
Yanow, Dvora. 2006. How built spaces mean: a semiotics of space. In Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive, ed. Dvora Yanow, and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, 349–366. Turn, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
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Marusek, S. (2018). Appreciation or Appropriation? An Indigenous Moment in the American Numismatic Narrative (1999–2009). In: Huygebaert, S., Condello, A., Marusek, S., Antaki, M. (eds) Sensing the Nation's Law. Studies in the History of Law and Justice, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75497-0_9
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