California mission bells: Listening against the “fantasy heritage”

Abstract

The paper takes a critical look at the legacy of the Spanish mission period in California as symbolized by the mission bell. According to “fantasy heritage”, that is the myth of California’s pastoral begin-nings under Franciscan missionaries – a myth perpetuated by Mis-sion Revival writers, real estate boosters, public space projects, etc. – the bell is synonymous with benevolence, charity, nurturing mercy, etc. Responding to the recent expansion of the Mission Bell Marker (MBM) program (a dense network of eleven-foot roadside markers in the shape of Franciscan staffs donned with cast bells, placed along a route of California’s highways, freeways, and local roads collectively known as “Historic El Camino Real”), the paper attempts to investigate the original function and implications of the bell as it was deployed by the missionaries upon contact. This is gleaned from a Franciscan account of the behavior of St Junípero Serra. Following a brief discussion of the function of listening, it is argued that Serra practiced “predatory” listening and used audio-pollution by the bell as a strategy devised to intervene in the very foundations of the epistemic certainties of the Indian world-view. An argument is made that Serra’s bell was the first instrument of colonization, of physical and epistemic invasion, of temporal regimentation, and the silencer of all other sounds. In the last section of the essay it is argued that no driver in California is safe from the ideological interpolation of the MBM and a strategy of resisting the bell’s romanticization is offered.