ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the existence of vast areas of neglected discourse points directly to the rhetorical power of particular, culturally-valued heroic narrative - epic stories that themselves discount and, ultimately, eliminate cultural difference along with other forms of experience. By the time an indigenous group is willing to market an inalienable relationship or what for them is god-given, one can more or less assume that ‘tradition’ - at least as it is popularly understood - has been challenged, if not transformed, undermined, vanished. The voice of tradition, in other words, may or may not be the voice our New-Age, Protestant-Buddhist, politically-correct ears actually want to hear. Calvinists, despite their love of money, have a very low threshold for contagious magic and, to be blunt, make poor animists, because a commodity is a fixed, dead thing.
