On happiness, values, and time This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Joel Robbins. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau5.3.012 SPECIAL ISSUE AFTERWORD On happiness, values, and time The long and the short of it Joel ROBBINS, University of Cambridge All of the contributors to this collection on happiness provide us with accounts in which the usual ethnographic focus on what we might call the “thick temporal middle” gives way to discussions of people’s concerns with intense momentary experiences of happiness, on the one hand, or very long-term judgments about the happiness of whole lives, on the other. More than this, many of the contributors examine how people try to connect these two time-spans, often taken to be representative of hedonic and eudaimonic versions of happiness, respectively. Starting from these observations, I work to develop an account that relates happiness to values and then both to temporality. Drawing on Durkheim’s rarely noted account of the way in which effervescence creates or reveals values, I suggest a model of how the connection between happiness and temporality is constructed in social life, and I consider differences in this process of construction in societies dominated by tendencies toward value pluralism and those dominated by value monism. Along with aiming to bring out some of the key collective findings of this collection on happiness, then, this essay aims to make a contribution to the recent resurgence of value theory in anthropology. Keywords: happiness, values, temporality, value pluralism, monism, Durkheim This collection on the values of happiness in part responds to the fact that happiness has made a major push recently to move itself up in the Euro-American hierarchy of values. Bhutan got there first, of course, but at the currently very busy crossroads of psychology, economics, and policy discourse, some Euro-American elites are lobbying hard to get happiness to the top of their own countries’ evaluative charts. In a social critical mood, it is hard not to find all of this interest in happiness a little disappointing. One remembers almost wistfully the early years of the recent recession, when many people voiced the hope that the devastation the financial crisis was wreaking would finally provide an opening to reconsider the stark neoliberal version of the value of individualism that had until that moment seemingly become so entrenched as to be beyond challenge. Then the energy and rapid initial [216]spread of the Occupy Movement appeared poised to go some way toward making this hope for a real effort at value change seem realistic. If the only innovation we end up with out of this ferment, at least on the elite academic and policy levels, is a concern with “nudging” us toward happiness regardless of the state of the world around us, one has to wonder how much will really have changed (Davies 2015). It is also hard to imagine that the current vogue for happiness will not pass rather quickly. One expects that either the global economy will make stronger moves toward recovery and neoliberal individualism will confidently stride back to the very center of our value concerns (it is surely already taking giant steps in this direction, and it never had a long way to go to get there in any case), or things will get worse and happiness will come to look like too flimsy a goal to pursue by way of fixing them. Thus it is a relief that this collection, in both conception and realization, does not stake everything on happiness, and does not address only what Ross Abbinnett (2013: 32) calls the “neo-utilitarianism” at the heart of recently emergent versions of the science of happiness, but also responds to the resurgence of anthropological interest in the study of values (e.g., Graeber 2001; Pedersen 2008; Otto and Willerslev 2013). The ultimate goal of this afterword is to work along with the articles collected here to trace out some of the threads that tie discussions of happiness and of values to one another. In pursuit of that goal, I will push further some theoretical suggestions made in the articles, and put forward a few arguments of my own that build on them. But before I get to work on this, I also want to respond to the unusually ethnographically creative and compelling quality of most of the articles by making some observations about some aspects of what it means to take on happiness as an ethnographic object (or set of different objects). As Sara Ahmed (2010: 15) puts it in her book The promise of happiness, a work many of the contributors here cite, it is worth asking not only what happiness is, but also “what it does.” In that spirit, I want to start by asking what happiness does to ethnography and ethnographic writing. As we will see, answering this question will lead us onward toward more theoretical concerns. Happiness: The long and the short of it One thing that is striking about many of the articles collected here is that they show that a focus on happiness somewhat reworks the standard ethnographic construction of time. Borrowing an element of Jason Throop’s elegant phenomenological description of the nature of happiness, an element Ahmed (2010) also elaborates, happiness as a modality of engagement with the world brings its own horizon(s) to bear on the way we understand what we encounter, and it is clear that this horizon or these horizons have informed to productive effect the way many of the ethnographic accounts collected here approach time. Put straightforwardly, many of contributors to this collection are concerned either with intense moments of experienced happiness or with people’s reckoning of their own or others’ happiness over long spans of time. Some of them also take up the relationship between these two temporalities of happiness. So Dena Freeman shows us how Gamo Highlanders of Southern Ethiopia once aimed for the longterm pleasures of living with smooth social relations but have recently switched to [217]seeking the strong momentary highs of Pentecostal ritual. In studying Bangladeshi migration to London, Katy Gardner similarly counterposes the “emotional high” that migration promises the would-be migrant will feel on arrival at a new home to the way in which family projects that involve migration for some members aim at “wellbeing” or “the good life”” as a much “longer-term” reward. Iza Kavedžija shows us that the elderly Japanese people she studies explicitly seek to balance pleasures of the present moment with the construction of narrative coherence across the life-course, while Harry Walker finds the Amazonian Urarina representing all that goes into defining a life well lived over time in their joyful response to the sight of a successful hunter returning to the village with a lot of game in hand. Finally, following what should by now begin to look like a pattern, Charles Stafford, working in China and Taiwan, compares families motivated by goals of long-term economic betterment with those who have opted for the rather narrower time horizon of the pleasures of decadence. Even the ethnographic phenomena and accounts presented here that are not built on some or other opposition between long-term and short-term pleasures situate themselves at one extreme or the other. Thus we can contrast Throop’s discussion of the Yapese concern that happiness narrows a person’s temporal (and social horizons) too drastically with Michael Lambek’s analytic decision in his study of one version of Swiss happiness to take as “the unit of happiness not a statement, bodily expression, or feeling, but a life.” And in a related twist, Henrik Vigh builds his discussion of the motives that lead young Bissauan men to join a rather millitarily weak militia around the notion that these men volunteer out of a sense that it is worth trading short-term experiences of violence for the possibility of living out long lives of secure, happy social involvement Even in an afterword, it is probably not good practice for a writer to overload two consecutive paragraphs with as much diverse ethnographic material as I just have. But I am hoping that the kaleidoscopic near-repetition of concerns with either or both the present instant and the very long term in sentence after sentence above can help me make in quite concrete terms my point that once anthropologists start to write about happiness, something interesting happens to the way they engage time. One might say that most ethnographic writing, whether phrased in the ethnographic present or not, at least implicitly constructs a kind of thick temporal middle ground between the moment and the long-term horizon. This is the temporal middle of routine actions and their expected consequences, of getting things done, of everyday social reproduction, and of, we might say, succeeding more or less at being a “normal” person of a certain social type living a “normal” life in local terms. In ethnographic accounts set in this temporal middle, time recedes into the analytic background, and it rarely appears as an important aspect of the motives that ethnographers demonstrate or imply drive the actions of those they are studying. But when it comes to studying happiness, this temporal middle does not appear to provide an adequate framework for ethnographic discussion. Gardner’s and Stafford’s articles, for example, stand out against the general run of ethnographic writing for the way their considerations of happiness allow them to integrate long, two or more generation time-spans and diverse temporal perspectives into their descriptions of what Stafford elegantly calls the “intergenerational coordination of goals and intentions.” Most of the other pieces offer us detailed accounts of the [218]way actors draw on culturally available materials to help them work out the relationship between living for or nonreflexively engaging in the moment and, by contrast, working toward longer-term projects thought to lead to the achievement of something like a good life. I would suggest that such complicated considerations of time are part of what makes these articles so fresh, and that this concern with the temporal lends these pieces a deep coherence beyond that which follows from the fact that they all focus on happiness. To this point, I have wanted to make a descriptive claim: the articles collected here, all of which take happiness under one definition or another as their object, crowd around the ends of the temporal continuum upon which human lives are lived, and very few of them dwell much in the temporal middle that so commonly provides the setting of ethnographic work. Furthermore, many of the contributors also tell us that one of the projects that is important to the people they study is finding some way to relate the momentary and the long-term versions of happiness, or to decide how much energy they should devote to seeking each type. Staying on the descriptive level here, I would also note that the activity of work appears in a number of the articles as a practice that ideally relates these two modalities of happiness. Throop, for example, notes that the Yapese, often suspicious of happiness as too individualizing in its effects, still find it morally appropriate to take pleasure in work. The Urarina, Walker tells us, likewise find nonalienated labor productive of the momentary pleasure they call “joy” as well as the long-term tranquility that marks the good life. In Freeman’s account, it is changing labor relations that in part account for the reorientation of Gamo approaches to happiness that she charts. We might say that work is usually by its nature an activity viscerally experienced in the present but also oriented to future goals. When people enjoy it in the moment, then, they never wholly lose sight of the longer term. Perhaps this is what gives work the ability to bind together the kinds of times to which happiness is relevant. Unlike work, sex only makes a few appearances in these articles (perhaps surprisingly in a collection on happiness). But in Vigh’s discussion of it, the ability to engage in sexual relations assures young Bissauan men of the true social belonging they value, and so sex turns out, like work, to provide momentary pleasures without completely occluding long-term goods. I consider the points I have just discussed to be some of the findings of these articles taken as a set: happiness in a wide range of diverse cultural settings appears to come in momentary and long-term forms, and people frequently feel themselves challenged to construct some relationship between them. Work and, maybe, sex stand out as activities that have been attractive to people living in some cultural settings for their ability to link these two temporalities of happiness. Simply figuring this much out in empirical terms is worth the price of admission here, especially since I, at least, have not seen these kinds of points made anywhere else. But findings are not theories, and so a crucial next step is to think about ways to get some theoretical purchase on the varied temporalities of happiness that these articles lay out. I want to suggest in what follows that turning to the question of values can help us in this endeavor. I recognize that it might at first glance appear that, taken together, the articles already lay out a theoretical approach to the issue at hand, rendering a turn to the discussion of values superfluous. This appearance rests on the way that some of [219]the contributors turn to the classic philosophical distinction between hedonism and eudaimonia to shape up the opposition between momentary and long-term happiness. This works well in many of the articles, but it is important to recognize that in itself this distinction does not constitute a theory of happiness per se but rather a classificatory device for distinguishing between different kinds of the purported phenonemena. Even when we draw on this philosophical distinction, we still have theoretical work to do. And the wager of the approach I will be taking here is that doing this work in anthropological and sociological terms, rather than in philosophical ones, may help us reach some new destinations in our thinking about happiness. I should also note that difficulties for any theory of happiness arise for the fact that when confronted with its momentary and long-term temporalities, particularly when they are construed by means of the hedonism/eudaimonia distinction, it is fair to wonder whether happiness is not more than one kind of thing. Perhaps hedonism has to do with something like a feeling of joy, while eudaimonia is about a feeling of contentment. Or maybe eudaimonia is not about a feeling at all, but more about a culturally informed judgment on the nature of a particular life. In light of similar concerns, the philosopher Dan Haybron (2011: 3) suggests that philosophers have long pointed to, and often conflated, two distinct things in their discussions of happiness: “a state of mind” and “a life that goes well for the person living it.” I bring this up because in reading the articles in this collection is it hard not to wonder whether if in fact the contributors do routinely conflate two different things under the term “happiness,” then there is something confused at the very heart of the attempt to have an anthropology of happiness, and particularly one that relates happiness to values, that encompasses them both. Haybron, for his part, finds that it is only the “life going well” kind of happiness that is clearly about values, since “to ascribe happiness” in this sense “is to make a value judgment: namely, that the person has whatever it is that benefits a person” (ibid.: 4, emphasis removed). In response to this problem, I want to take a different tack and suggest that through the articles collected here, perhaps we can find a core element shared by these two kinds of happiness, and that this core has crucially to do with the way both kinds of happiness involve values. This is where my argument is headed. Effervescence, value, and emotion What is the relationship between happiness and values? There are a number of ways one could approach answering this question. In this section, I want to take one that leads through the work of Émile Durkheim and which thus deploys materials with which anthropologists have long been familiar. To accept values as a central theoretical concern means to follow James Laidlaw (2013: 60) in defining human beings as profoundly “evaluative” creatures and to agree with the philosopher Józef Tischner (2008: 50) that “our world is a hierarchically ordered world and our thinking, a preferential thinking.” But even when we have gone only this far in thinking about values, we confront a problem that has beset the scholarly debate about values ever since it began to take something like its current shape in the nineteenth century (for a brief history, see Schnädelbach 1984): [220]Are values essentially subjective, such that we as Laidlaw-like evaluative creatures add them to the world, or are they objective, in the sense that they are qualities of Tischner’s hierarchically ordered world taken on its own terms? Is this not in some ways analogous to our problem of two kinds of happiness (each with its own distinct temporality)? Does not the hedonic, in-the-moment kind of happiness appear to be wholly subjective, and does not the eudaimoniac, life-span version of happiness, even if we can imagine it might find subjective expression in a feeling like contentment, seem ineradicably to involve some kind of “objective” or at least socially shared and stable judgment on what it means to live a good life?1 The fact that this problematic of plausibly being considered both subjective and objective is shared by values and happiness alike is, I think, a clue that values and happiness are related and that examining them together can enrich our understanding of both. Let us start with values. In the history of philosophy and the human sciences more generally, there are many answers to the question of whether value is a subjective or an objective phenomenon, and there are strong arguments on either side. There is no space to review much of this debate here. But as it happens, Durkheim took it up in a lecture entitled “Value judgments and judgments of reality” given in 1911, just before publishing his great book on religion (in English the lecture appears in Durkheim [1924] 1974 and the religion book as Durkheim [1912] 1995). As he puts the problem: One the one hand, all value presupposes appreciation by an individual in relation with a particular sensibility. What has value is in some way good; what is good is desired, and all desire is a psychological state. Nevertheless the values under discussion have the objectivity of things. How can these two characteristics, which at first blush appear contradictory, be reconciled? How, in fact, can a state of feeling be independent of the subject that feels it? (Durkheim [1924] 1974: 81–82)[221] As we might expect, especially if we are familiar with the Introduction to the Elementary forms, by drawing on his notions of social facts, shared representations, and effervescence, Durkheim finds an answer to this question that lets him have it both ways. Durkheim begins by arguing that the value of something emerges when it is placed into relation with an “ideal” (ibid.: 90). Or, as he puts it somewhat more clearly, “value derives from the relation of things to different aspects of the ideal” (ibid.: 94). “Since ideals and their corresponding value systems vary with various human groups,” Durkheim continues in a vein that should be a comfortable one for anthropologists, “does this not suggest a collective origin for both?” Turning then to an argument that will become very well known through the versions of it that appear in the Elementary forms, he suggests that sentiments that are shared among members of a social group have more “energy” than purely individual ones and thus appear to subjects as ideal ones by contrast to their more personal, less obviously shared “real” ones. Durkheim goes on to add that such powerful, shared sentiments and the ideals they produce arise in moments of “collective ferment” (ibid.: 91). Once created in such moments, these ideals are invested in concrete objects and shared concepts that allow them to be continually apprehended, even outside of moments of collective enthusiasm (ibid.: 94). In this way, things in the world come to be related to ideals, and thus to have value, and values come at once to be in us, as experiences and recollections of collective ferment, and to transcend us, as things in the world that we feel have a value of their own. In the Elementary forms, the argument we have been tracing appears in a modified version as an account of how moments of collective “effervescence” produced by ritual elevate individuals, making them feel they are more than themselves and in touch with an external power greater than their own, and thereby give rise to the notions of religion and the sacred, which are in fact simply representations of the force of collectivity (society) itself (Durkheim [1912] 1995: 220). I have gone back to Durkheim’s slightly earlier and less often discussed text because there this argument appears not as one primarily about the origin and nature of the sacred, but rather as one about the roots of ideals and values. Values and the sacred are surely not unrelated in Durkheim’s thought, but I want to focus on the values argument here. In particular, I want to suggest that we take Durkheim’s feeling of effervescence as at least the paradigm case of what the contributors to this collection treat as happiness in the present moment, and as at most wholly equivalent to it. Durkheim would then be telling us that it is this kind of experience of happiness that produces values (or, to be precise, it produces ideals which then produce values). Sometimes he seems to want to suggest that this emotional state produces new ideals and values de novo (as in the Reformation or the French Revolution: Durkheim [1912] 1995: 215–16; [1924] 1974: 92). At other times, I think it is more compelling to read him as suggesting that experiences of intense happiness convince subjects beyond a doubt that they live in the objectively “hierarchically ordered” worlds Tischner describes in which some things are clearly better than others, rather than producing such worlds anew every time they occur. More importantly, we should also note the recursive element of Durkheim’s argument. We experience effervescent happiness when we feel we are joined together with others in sharing the same [222]representations and evaluations of a situation and are therefore acting in concert in relation to it. It is this sense of shared approach to the world that produces the feeling in question in the first place. Yet if we take objective values to be productive of shared judgments of the world and shared desires to act upon it in particular ways (remember that for Durkheim values elicit desires), we can also say that values produce collective effervescence as much as collective effervescence produces values. A corollary of this recursive quality of the relationship between values and effervescence/happiness is that subjects sometimes find themselves experiencing moments of happiness when they act in terms of a shared value, and they sometimes discover they are in the presence of a shared value when they feel such happiness. A number of prominent philosophers in the phenomenological tradition have connected emotions to the discovery of values in a way that bears some relation to Durkheim’s argument (though with no particular focus on the social production of such emotions). They have argued, as Fiorenza Toccafondi (2009: 150) puts it, that a “certain type of expressiveness [here taken as a quality of an object] and the emotional tonality connected to it discloses to us the value of what we are faced with, thus giving rise to certain axiological beliefs.” Max Scheler ([1913–16] 1973) is the most prominent phenomenologist to hold a position of this kind, arguing that feelings of love and hate in particular are the “organs” of the perception of values, but arguments along these lines are common in this philosophical tradition more generally (see Gubser 2014). What makes Durkheim’s position stand out, along with the role it gives to social experience and to effervescence or happiness rather than love or hate as a key emotion of value perception, is the fact that he goes beyond asserting that feelings disclose values to subjects to also offer an account of what it feels like to realize a shared value in the performance of a concrete activity. In Durkheim’s recursive model, that is to say, effervescence attends not only the revelation of a value, but also the performative realization of it. This point becomes clear if we turn to ethnography. I carried out fieldwork among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea, a community of roughly four hundred persons. I have elsewhere argued that what I have called “relationalism” is one of the two most important contemporary Urapmin values (Robbins 2004). This is a value that defines the creation and maintenance of relationships as two of the best things a person can accomplish. One of the key ways Urapmin realize the value of relationalism is through carrying out exchanges of foodstuffs and other material items with one another, for they see such exchanges as the most powerful way of fostering relationships. In examining the relationship of values to happiness, it is worth noting that one kind of exchange the Urapmin find very pleasurable is that of feasts that consist of large platters of mashed taro covered in oil that has been squeezed from the seeds of pandanus palms. All Urapmin families own stands of pandanus trees, and because these are situated at a wide range of altitudes and the fruiting of the trees is very sensitive to microclimate, different stands produce seeds at different times throughout the year. At any given time, only a few families will have trees with fruits that are in seed and ready to use for preparing a feast. When a family has pandanus trees in seed, it will invite friends and relatives to come to a feast. There follows several long hours of labor-intensive preparation on the part of the host family, both cooking and mashing the taro, and squeezing the thick red oil from the Pandanus seeds. Once the [223]dish is ready, the guests will crowd around the platter (made from a large slab of dried tree bark) and devour the food with great speed, fending off as they do so the inevitable crowd of dogs eager for their share. The consumption of the pandanus feast thus unfolds as a brief period of intense fervor. The eating part of the event is always frantic and over quickly. It is also emotionally very highly pitched. Urapmin find pandanus oil delicious and highly satisfying; it is an extremely fat-rich component of a diet notably lacking in fat. People are always excited to be invited to a pandanus feast, and in my experience the events themselves are routinely happy and effervescent ones that stand as a clear realization of the value of relationalism in Urapmin life. If a group of people have been invited to a pandanus feast, it is also expected that they will invite their host to a return feast when their own pandanus fruits are ready for harvest. Often, at the initial feast, the guests will use some bark string to measure the size of the dish prepared. They will give the hosts this string to keep until they come for the return feast, when the second dish will be measured to check if it is a true reciprocal match for the first one. (As I have noted elsewhere, the Urapmin find the exchange of precisely matched items to be an especially satisfying way of realizing the value of relationalism: Robbins 2009a.) At one return feast where I was present, the string was brought out and it was discovered that the return dish was slightly larger than the original one it was given to reciprocate. Everyone in attendance immediately became very animated, producing a chorus of whooping exclamations that often indicates moments of effervescence among the Urapmin. The source of this great happiness was the fact that because the return dish was larger than the first, the original hosts would have to start the cycle again, since the exchange could not be left in a non-matched state. What made this feast even more effervescent than usual was that the discovery of the excess meant that this realization of the value of relationalism, exciting enough in its own terms, pointed to another one in the future. Urapmin pandanus feasts, with their relation-enhancing quality and emotional intensity, are a good example of the way people experience moments of intense happiness when they realize values they find important. Young Urapmin who attend these feasts learn about the value of relationships from them in precisely the kind of effervescent setting in which Durkheim expects that people will first come to recognize the values that hold in their communities. Older people know this value already, but through the intense happiness they feel at its realization, they reconfirm their sense that relationships, and particularly those of equivalent exchange, are some of the most valued things in their world. The contributions to this collection are full of moments in which the realization of an important value is connected with strong feelings of happiness in precisely the way it is in Urapmin Pandanus feasts. Freeman, for example, tells us about the delight the Ethiopian Gamo take in “playing,” the jocular kind of interaction they take to most directly realize the value of “smooth social relations.” One similarly senses that the British humanists Matthew Engelke studies find themselves feeling quite happy when they realize their core value of reason as they publicly criticize those they take to be overly invested in religion or hold what they call “ethical juries.” For the elderly Japanese people with whom Kavedžija works, achieving balance between the multiple values that call out to them appears to be their primary [224]value, and they find happiness in accomplishing this by, for example, “properly” carrying out everyday tasks such as “preparing meals and growing vegetables,” thereby demonstrating they can still balance the value of autonomy against the also valued dependence that increasingly marks their lives. The connection between happiness and the realization of important values can also have an anticipatory or retrospective character. We have already seen the anticipatory side of this in the Urapmin excitement over the way too large a return of pandanus sets up a new round of feasting. In a major contribution to the anthropological study of values, Frederick Damon (2002) provides another example. He describes how the Muyuw people of Milne Bay Province in Papua New Guinea take the achievement of fame in kula exchange as their primary value (see also Munn 1986). As locally understood, the achievement of fame in kula is a temporally extended process. When one first gives (or “throws”) a kula valuable to a partner, one’s “name” (or fame) “falls” as that of one’s partner “climbs” (Damon 2002: 129). It is only when one’s partner gives one’s valuable onward that one’s own name will climb. Damon describes the emotions that attend kula exchanges in these terms: While the initial throwing of a valuable is experienced as a loss, and often an angry one, fairly soon my informants assumed an attitude that was more like dancing. “Mwon won” is the term employed for this condition, and it is reasonably well translated as “ecstacy” [sic]. It is a sense of coming back to life as one envisages a valuable moving on down a line of actors. This experience of being, perhaps like being blessed, is the realization of fame one imagines. (Ibid.: 130) Though the time-scale is shorter, Walker illustrates a similar kind of happiness in the anticipation of the realization of a value when he discusses, in his contribution to this collection, the way the Urarina take the experience of seeing a hunter return to the village with a large game animal he has bagged as one that “epitomizes” intense short-term happiness. What the Urarina anticipate in this moment—a moment in which they know there will be enough meat for everyone to eat—is the performative realization of their core value of “tranquility.” To explore an emotionally charged form of retrospection, rather than anticipation, we can turn to Lambek’s discussion of the restaurant and ballroom (Rossfall) that is so important to Willi Preisig, the Swiss man whose life-history he narrates. This ballroom, the recurring site of youthful courtship in the region, and also, as a restaurant, the scene of visits by older adults, appears to represent, or to have represented during the course of Willi’s life, the highly valued possibility of reproducing the local farming way of life. Finally, in Gardner’s and Stafford’s contributions, we catch glimpses of the ways in which anticipations and recollections of the production of happiness through the realization of values are managed in intergenerational and transnational social groupings. The two authors describe social situations rendered very complex either by migration or by rapid socioeconomic change or by both. But it is fair to assume that all societies must in part be bound together by intergenerational constructions of shared values and moments of anticipated, recollected, and presently experienced happiness of the kinds they discuss (on the creation of intergenerational sharing more generally, see Wentzer 2014).[225] Having brought time into my argument about effervescent happiness and value by looking at anticipation and recollection, I have begun to move toward returning to the problem of determining the relationship between momentary, hedonic bursts of feeling and more long-term, eudaimonic-type feelings of contentment and judgments of happiness. In the remainder of this section, I want to consider one way of thinking about this link from the Durkheimian perspective I have been developing here. As it happens, Durkheim’s notion of effervescence has recently received a good deal of attention from sociologists (Fish 2005 provides a good overview). One of the most important contributions to this renewed discussion has been Randall Collins’ (2004) elaboration of a theory of what he calls “interaction ritual chains” (see also Robbins 2009b). Collins accepts Durkheim’s assertion that collective actions produce effervescence and his further claim that rituals are a kind of action that is especially suited to generating this emotional state. Noting that rituals can be characterized by their combination of a shared focus of attention and a high degree of mutual coordination between participants, Collins goes on to follow Erving Goffman (1967) in suggesting that all successful social interactions have a ritualized quality. Because this is so, Collins concludes, all well-formed social interactions must also produce at least some effervescence, or what he calls “emotional energy,” among those who take part in them. If one is tempted to check Collins’ argument against the evidence of one’s own experience, one might think here of the elevated feeling one has after a good conversation with a friend, or a successful meeting with colleagues, or even after an unproblematic interaction with a stranger who stops to ask directions on the street. On Collins’ account, smooth social relations, even when they are not valued in themselves as among the Gamo, are productive of some quantum of the kind of happiness that we have tied to the disclosure and realization of values. In making this statement, I am suggesting that it is possible to bring Collins’ argument about interaction ritual chains together with the one about the relation between values and happiness I am making here. To fully carry off a synthesis along these lines, I would have to show that many social interactions aim at the shortor long-run realization of some locally important value, for this would make a large number of social interactions capable of generating appropriate effervescence when successful. I do not have space to pursue such an argument here (though I have tried to do so in Robbins 2012), but I do not think it is at all far-fetched, and I hope it can be taken as a plausible hypothesis for the purposes of the present discussion. If we accept that all successful social interactions not only produce at least some effervescence, but that in doing so they also reveal their links to values, then a final argumentative step that Collins takes can give us some help in finding a link between punctual experiences of happiness and the happiness of a life well lived. The step in question comes when Collins (2004: 44) argues that it is the effervescence or “emotional energy” produced by ritual interaction that propels us through life. Human beings actively seek such energy, Collins argues, and they use the energy produced by previous interactions to move themselves forward into new ones. The emotional links between interactions that result create the “chains” that Collins refers to in his titular phrase “interaction ritual chains.” I want to suggest at this [226]point that with Collins’ claims in mind, we might take a life well lived to be one that produces a steady flow of effervescence by virtue of moving regularly through a wide range of successful interactions across the life-course. These interactions may realize any number of locally important values, and we know the values at stake will differ across cultures, but perhaps the form of a life well lived (rather than its content) could be said to be fairly stable in the way it links values and the production of happiness in the routine movement of a person through a large number of successful social interactions. In defining a life well lived in this way, I do not mean to suggest that every social interaction a person engages in has to go smoothly in order for his or her life to go well (for a related point made in philosophical terms, see Roberts 2015: 42). This would be too high a bar to set for a life to be defined as good. The point is rather that a good life will be one in which social relations often tend to go well, to be oriented to and disclosive of important values, and therefore to produce a reasonable amount of effervescent happiness that can carry a person forward into the future. But even when the bar is lowered in this way, this account still leaves out one important feature of the way people live lives oriented toward values: the fact that people often find themselves confronted with values that conflict, or with the need to make choices between values which will lead them to set aside the pursuit of some important ones. How do people’s negotiation of these kinds of complicated value situations factor into the question of how well their lives have gone? To address this question, we will have to set Durkheim’s preoccupations aside and turn instead to those of Max Weber. Value plurality and the nature of a life well lived Weber, more than Durkheim, is known as a sociological theorist of value. One of his most influential arguments, after all, is that there exist a number of different values in society (or at least in “modern” society), and that these are destined forever to conflict with one another like “warring gods” (Weber 1946: 147, 153). Economic and ethical values, for example, often pull in different directions, as do scientific and political ones, and so forth. If Weber’s argument is correct, it raises problems for any theory that would want to relate in a simple way the kind of happiness that results from the realization of a single value to the kind of happiness that is supposed to characterize a life well lived. (Such problems are also taken up in slightly different terms in the introduction to this collection.) For if multiple values exist and sometimes conflict with one another, the happiness of a good life is going to have to follow in some respects not only from realizing particular values, but also from choosing to realize the right ones at the right time, even if that means failing to realize others. In this section, I want to take Weber’s position to be partially though not wholly right, and I want to consider what the issues it raises mean for the anthropological analysis of shortand long-term happiness. Even in the very simple form in which I have just presented Weber’s argument about value conflict, it consists of two parts. The first asserts that there exist many values in society. Let us call this a claim of value plurality. In the rest of this section, [227]I am going to assume that all social formations contain a plurality of values.2 The second part of Weber’s argument concerns not just the existence of multiple values, but also the nature of the relationships that hold between them. The relationships between values, he asserts, are destined to be ones of conflict, and this will mean that people living in these societies will often be faced with “tragic” choices that require them to forgo realizing one value in order to realize a conflicting one. Thus, for example, a person might choose to act on an ethical value at the expense of realizing an economic value he or she also holds to be important. The position that all societies will contain values that conflict in this way is know as “value pluralism” (see Lassman 2011 for an excellent discussion of value pluralism that also surveys the positions of Isaiah Berlin and others). It is worth going to the trouble to distinguish value plurality from value pluralism because there is another theory of the relations between values that, like that of value pluralism, assumes the existence of value plurality, but that, unlike value pluralism, does not assume values are inevitably in conflict. This position is known as value monism, and its primary claim is that the various values present in any given society ultimately work harmoniously together. One way this can come about is if all of the diverse values ultimately serve one “supervalue.” In hedonistic versions of utilitarianism, for example, happiness or pleasure stands as a supervalue in this way (Chang 2001). It can also come about because, properly understood, all of the values in a society work together, such that realizing one helps a person realize others (Dworkin 2011). And, finally, drawing on Dumont’s crucial anthropological contributions to value theory, and simplifying them a great deal, value monism can come about because society allocates the realization of different values to different social domains (or contexts), such that people do not in fact face tragic choices between values that in the abstract would conflict (Dumont 1986). For example, one can imagine societies in which ethical values are thought to apply most importantly to the domain of family life, while those of economic gain apply most fully to the market. If people properly identify the domains in which they are acting, they should be able without tragic difficulty to determine which values they should be realizing by their actions. Dumont further adds that different social domains are themselves ranked by values, such that while each domain sometimes provides the appropriate context for action, some are more important and widely relevant than others. Such relations between domains allow people to sort out how to act in situations in which more than one domain appears to apply: in a rough-and-ready way, one can assume that the more highly valued domain should govern action in such circumstances. A society that is exhaustively ordered by the kinds of value relations Dumont lays out would be a monist one in the sense that, as in the other monist formulations, tragic value conflicts would not arise. I have argued elsewhere that social formations tend to display both monist and pluralist tendencies, but that at any given time some lean more in one direction or the other (Robbins 2013). The hypothesis I want to explore in the rest of this [228]section is that the way punctual moments of happiness contribute to a life well lived will look somewhat different in societies with a more monist inclination than they will in those that are more tilted toward the pluralist side. In their introduction to this collection, Walker and Kavedžija argue that in practice conflicts between values do not tend to trouble people very much. As they put it, in “the everyday world of practical ethics, people routinely make judgments involving incommensurable values in a straightforward, formal, or schematic manner.” I think this accurately describes the situation in largely monist social settings.3 These are ones in which finding the right value to realize in any given situation is relatively straightforward. Where this is true, movement from one moment of happiness to another throughout life in the way Collins predicts ought to eventuate at the end of the day in having a lived a life socially understood to be “good.” We catch glimpses of the kind of good life more monistic social settings allow in some of the contributions to this collection. One senses, for example, that Willi Preisig, the Swiss farmer at the center of Lambek’s article, has lived this kind of life. It is not that his life has been wholly free of difficult choices, but few of them appear to have been tragic, and the many momentary happinesses he has experienced appear to sum neatly and with little or no remainder into a quiet but secure sense of satisfaction with how his life has gone. Lambek does not make this argument, but it is possible to imagine that for many people of Willi’s generation, Le bonheur suisse has taken this form. It is possible to catch a glimpse of a similar sense of long-term achievement among the elderly Japanese discussed in Kavedžija’s article, where a high or even preeminent valuation of balance provides people with a very effective way of approaching conflicts that arise between their lower-level values; whenever faced with such conflict, finding a way to balance the realization of both values will count as having realized one that is higher than either of them. In this way, a wide range of value-linked experiences of momentary happiness that follow from the achievement of balance can feed into a life well lived. Even the militia volunteers of Vigh’s study appear to have a pretty strong sense that social involvement is unchallenged as their primary value, and they thus aim for it with a monistic steadiness that, as Vigh shows to powerful effect, cuts against the apparent chaos of the world around them. Yapese altruistic suffering, in Throop’s account here, similarly helps organize other values into what appears to be an at least partially monistic formation in which the route that connects momentary happiness to long-term eudaimonic success is not a hard one for people to identify (though it may be hard for some or even many of them to traverse).[229] Some of the other contributions to this collection, by contrast, paint portraits of social formations that seem better characterized as value pluralist. In these cases, the line that links momentary pleasures to notions of the good life does not run at all straight, and one senses that finding the good life in these places is less a matter of achieving the quiet satisfaction that comes from pursuing values that fit well together than it is one of making “heroic” efforts of practical judgment in the face of the significant challenges that follow from confronting values in conflict. In pluralistic formations, it is always possible to go astray not by failing to seek the good as one pursues the pleasures of the moment, but by indulging too much in some value-linked pleasures and too little in others. These kinds of concerns appear in the ethnographic portraits offered by Gardner and Stafford, where across spans of time and space people wrestle with choosing the values on which to focus. Should one aim for familial closeness or economic uplift, educational and artistic cultivation or the ascetic work routines that can bring greater wealth? And the people they discuss in their contributions further ask themselves if one person can make value choices for another, a particularly fraught question in situations in which tragic loss in some value dimension always accompanies gain in another. Similarly, though the tragic drama of choice has a different ethnographic feel in this case, Engelke shows us how humanists wrestle with the need to allow themselves to recognize the value of some emotional insights and experiences to ethical deliberation, even as they promote reason as their primary value (and as the one most conducive to the production of happiness). And finally, Freeman’s article, focused on a situation of significant change, paints a picture of a settled Gamo monism built around the core value of smooth social relating displaced by Gamo entry into the market and exposure to pluralistic struggles that changing legal regimes and Pentecostal ritual help to address, but perhaps not to resolve into a new monist formation. By means of this rapid marshaling of ethnography, I have meant to suggest that the nature of good lives is different in different places, and not just because of differences in the content of the values that exist in various societies, but also because of the differences in the ways those values relate to each other. I have suggested two ideal types of good life in this regard: one in which more monist formations allow moments of happiness to add up to good lives in a fairly straightforward manner; and one in which value pluralism and conflict mean that good lives are going to be at least different from, and maybe even felt by those who achieve them to be “more” than, the sum of the happy moments they have had in the course of arriving at them. No one lives in ideal-type worlds, so there is no question of reifying these accounts into a hard dichotomy. The point is to be aware as anthropologists of the different ways people can hope or seek to connect feelings of happiness to the accomplishment of happy lives in the social formations in which they live. In this way, we can acknowledge the ethnographic differences in kinds of notions of the good life that show up in this collection, and confirm the strong hunch, one that has guided me here, that these reflect real if subtle differences in the materials the contributors present, and not just differences in the way they have written them up. It is through being attentive to these differences that we can build on the progress made in this collection toward the goal of creating accounts that are adequate to both the long and the short of happiness.[230] Conclusion Twenty years ago, at the height of the most recent wave of disciplinary particularism, anthropologists might have suspected that happiness is too much a culturebound Western notion to be of much use in cross-cultural research (Keane 2003). I have sought to argue here that the consistency with which these articles raise issues of shortand longer-term temporal horizons, rather than simply relying on the unspoken temporal middle ground that provides the setting for most ethnographic discussions, gives the lie to this position. There is something about happiness and its relation to values that everywhere presents challenges to people seeking to integrate the various temporalities through which their lives unfold. If we focus on how people face those challenges, it is not difficult to shape up happiness and values as topics of comparative investigation, even as happiness may be understood differently in different places, and even as values and the relationships that hold between them clearly differ across diverse social settings. In the past, anthropologists who have not focused on issues of happiness have arguably raised issues of the relation of longand short-term temporalities similar to those found in these articles. Most notably, Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry’s (1989) influential discussion of the various ways social formations use currencies to articulate the two transactional orders constructed by individual, short-term interests, on the one hand, and long-term, collective interests in the reproduction of social orders, on the other, strikes me as pointing to a similar area of investigation. And it is perhaps not accidental that although Bloch and Parry are not interested in happiness in their piece, they are interested in matters of certain kinds of value. Values on their own, this might suggest, render human temporality complex. Happiness without value, then, would not raise the same kinds of questions about time. But it is a great accomplishment of this collection that it shows us that happiness without value appears to be a rare occurrence. Even if there are very few societies in which happiness itself is the primary, overriding value people seek to realize—it is rarely the supervalue that rallies all others to its cause—we now know that happiness is routinely tied up with the disclosure and realization of values, and hence with the complexities of the personal and social management of time. This unusually rich collection of articles puts this important point before us, and in doing so redeems its promise of showing why happiness is an important subject of anthropological investigation. References Abbinnett, Ross. 2013. Politics of happiness: Connecting the philosophical ideas of Hegel, Nietzsche and Derrida to the political ideologies of happiness. New York: Bloomsbury. Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The promise of happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry. 1989. “Introduction: Money and the morality of exchange.” In Money and the morality of exchange, edited by Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, 1–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[231] Chang, Ruth. 2001. “Value pluralism.” In International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences, edited by N. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes, 16139–45. New York: Elsevier. Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction ritual chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Damon, Frederick H. 2002. “Kula valuables: The problem of value and the production of names.” L’Homme 162: 107–36. Davies, William. 2015. The happiness industry: How the government and big business sold us well being. London: Verso. Dumont, Louis. 1986. Essays on individualism: Modern ideology in anthropological perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Durkheim, Émile. (1912) 1995. The elementary forms of the religious life. Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Free Press. ———. (1924) 1974. Sociology and philosophy. Translated by D. F. Pocock. New York: Free Press. Dworkin, Ronald. 2011. Justice for hedgehogs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fish, Jonathan S.. 2005. Defending the Durkheimian tradition: Religion, emotion and morality. Aldershot: Ashgate. Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an anthropological theory of value: The false coin of our own dreams. New York: Palgrave. Gubser, Michael. 2014. The far reaches: Phenomenology, ethics, and social renewal in Central Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Haybron, Dan. 2011. “Happiness.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/happiness/. Keane, Webb. 2003. “Self-interpretation, agency, and the objects of anthropology: Reflections on a genealogy.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45: 222–48. Laidlaw, James. 2013. The subject of virtue: An anthropology of ethics and freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lassman, Peter. 2011. Pluralism. Cambridge: Polity. May, Todd. 2015. A significant life: Human meaning in a silent universe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Munn, Nancy D.. 1986. The fame of Gawa: A symbolic study of value transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) society. New York: Cambridge University Press. Otto, Ton, and Rane Willerslev, eds. 2013. “Value as theory—Parts I and II.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3 (1– 2). (Special issues.) Pedersen, David E., ed. 2008. “Values of value.” Anthropological Theory 8 (1). (Special Issue.) Robbins, Joel. 2004. Becoming sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. Berkeley: University of California Press.[232] ———. 2009a. “Conversion, hierarchy, and cultural change: Value and syncretism in the globalization of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.” In Hierarchy: Persistence and transformation in social formations, edited by Knut M. Rio and Olaf H. Smedal, 65–88. New York: Berghahn. ———. 2009b. “Pentecostal networks and the spirit of globalization: On the social productivity of ritual forms.” Social Analysis 53 (1): 55–66. ———. 2012. “Cultural values.” In A companion to moral anthropology, edited by Didier Fasin, 117–32. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2013. “Monism, pluralism and the structure of value relations: A Dumontian contribution to the contemporary study of value.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3 (1): 99–115. ———. 2014. “Ritual pluralism and value pluralism: Ritual and the management of intercultural diversity.” Debates do NER 15 (26): 15–41. Roberts, Robert C. 2015. “How virtue contributes to flourishing.” In Current controversies in virtue theory, edited by Mark Alfano, 36–49. New York: Routledge. Scheler, Max. (1913–16) 1973. Formalism in ethics and a non-formal ethics of values: A new attempt toward the foundation of an ethical personalism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Schnädelbach, Herbert. 1984. Philosophy in Germany 1831–1933. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tischner, Józefa. 2008. “Thinking in values.” Thinking in Values: The Tischner Institute Journal of Philosophy 2: 47–59. Toccafondi, Fiorenza. 2009. “Facts, values, emotions, and perception.” In Values and ontology: Problems and perspectives, edited by Beatrice Centi and Wolfgang Huemer, 137–54. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. Wentzer, Thomas Schwarz. 2014. “’’I have seen Königsberg burning’: Philosophical anthropology and the responsiveness of historical experience.” Anthropological Theory 14 (1): 27–48. Sur le bonheur, les valeurs et le temps: toute l’affaire Résumé : Tous les auteurs de cette collection d’articles sur le bonheur nous fournissent des contributions où l’attention ethnographique ordinaire sur la ’densité d’une temporalité intermédiaire’ cède le pas à la considération de soucis collectifs ou individuels quant à l’intensité d’une expérience momentanée du bonheur d’une part, et d’autre part, de jugements au long-terme au sujet du bonheur tout au long d’une vie. De plus, plusieurs auteurs examinent comment ces deux temporalités qui peuvent être rapprochées des versions hédoniste et eudaimonique du bonheur se conjuguent. En s’appuyant sur une hypothèse de Durkheim rarement évoquée quant à la manière dont l’effervescence génère ou révèle des valeurs partagées, je [233]propose un modèle de la construction du lien entre temporalité et bonheur dans la vie sociale, et j’étudie les différences dans ce processus de construction dans des sociétés dominées par des tendances allant d’une part vers un pluralisme des valeurs et vers un monisme des valeurs cardinales d’autre part. Outre son exposition des découvertes clés de cette collection d’article sur le bonheur, cet article se propose donc de contribuer à la résurgence récente des théories sur la valeur en anthropologie.   Joel ROBBINS is Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Much of his recent work has focused on the anthropological study of values.   Joel RobbinsDivision of Social AnthropologyFree School LaneCambridge CB2 3RFUKjr626@cam.ac.uk ___________________ 1. A reviewer of this article took issue with this point, suggesting that if we take happiness only to be a feeling, then one can have “long-term happiness” as long as one feels such happiness, regardless of whether one realizes socially shared values or not—even mass murderers, on this argument, can have happy lives. I would not want to suggest that it is impossible to argue for this position, but I would point out that the position I am taking here is not idiosyncratic. It is often taken by philosophers interested both in happiness and in values. To refer to just two very recent examples, Roberts (2015) considers this very issue and argues for a position like the one I have argued for here, while May (2015) makes a strong argument for the need for values to be objective or socially shared if the realization of them is to contribute to a meaningful life (see also the quotation from and discussion of Durkheim immediately below in the main text, for his own grappling with some related issues). This reviewer is more generally worried that in connecting happiness to values, I fail to define happiness as only a feeling. I am not sure I would want to restrict the meaning of “happiness” in this way in any case—I have already noted that I take “happiness” to be a complex term—but I would point out that I do intend the following discussion of Durkheim’s work to offer a novel way of connecting short-term and long-term happiness by tying them both to the experience (emotion?) of what Durkheim calls effervescence. 2. I make an argument for this position, drawing on the work of Louis Dumont, in Robbins (2013). More generally, Robbins (2013) and (2014) offer much more developed accounts of the arguments of the next several paragraphs. 3. I am less confident than Walker and Kavedžija that it also describes the situation in most pluralist settings, in which they suggest values frequently differ from one another but do not conflict. Perhaps they are thinking of situations of value plurality but not pluralism, as I have defined these terms. There are some important theoretical issues at stake here, such as whether the fact that values always involve ranking constrain the kinds of relations that can exist between them, so that situations of value plurality that are not ones of value pluralism must be monistic in some way, but these are not issues that need to be settled in the context of the argument I am making here.  

Fuambai’s strength This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Carlos David Londoño Sulkin. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau6.3.011 SPECIAL SECTION Fuambai’s strength Carlos David LONDOÑO SULKIN, University of Regina Despite Fuambai Ahmadu’s upbringing in the United States, she accepted at the age of twenty-two her mother’s invitation to return to her Kono people in Sierra Leone to undergo their secretive initiation ritual to transform her into an unambiguously female, marriageable adult and a member of the women’s secret Bondo society. The most dramatic part of the ritual involved having the external part of her clitoris and her labia minora1 excised by a sowei, a woman in charge of such ceremonies. This ritual, known as Bondo,2 was the feminine counterpart of the Poro initiation for boys, in which these were circumcised and given instructions on how to be men. Proud of her initiated status, she has struggled over the past two decades to correct and contest Western anti–Female Genital Mutilation (henceforth, anti-FGM) critics’ overwhelming, indignant imaginary of African initiation rituals as torture and mutilation, and of initiated African women as sexual cripples and weak victims of cruel patriarchal traditions. This essay draws a moral portrait of her; in the process, it engages with the anthropological study of moralities and advocates for a liberal pluralism with relativistic entailments. Keywords: morality, ethics, liberalism, female genital surgeries, FGM, Africa, ethnography, biography I met Fuambai very briefly in 2006, at an American Anthropological Association meeting. I was charmed, finding her charismatic, stylish to the point that I suspected my criteria for judging this were insufficiently sophisticated to do her justice, and beautiful. Her professional credentials also impressed me: a PhD from the London School of Economics, consultancies with UNICEF and the British Medical Research Council, and an ongoing postdoctoral fellowship at the University of [108]Chicago. Our meeting was brief, and as she left, another friend who was there said, “That Fuambai . . . she’s a strong woman.” Intrigued, I followed up on her name and read her compelling ethnographic account of traditional African female genital surgeries (henceforth FGS3), including the intense and very personal story of her own initiation process (F. Ahmadu 2000). At the first opportunity, in 2009, I invited Fuambai to the University of Regina to give a lecture, and then again in 2015 for a weeklong one-on-one open interview on her life story. Between her visits, we kept an email conversation going, and I followed up on her reading recommendations, namely ethnographic and medical research that sought to paint a more nuanced picture of the contexts, meanings, and entailments of FGS practices, independently of authors’ interest in the continuation or disappearance of the practices in question (e.g., Shell-Duncan and Hernlund 2000; Hernlund and Shell-Duncan 2007; Shweder (2000, 2009, 2012, 2016; and Obermeyer 1999). Since the mid-1990s, Fuambai made it a defining life project to contest the (mis) representation of FGS in Africa by media and by organizations such as the WHO and the UN, which tended to be informed mostly by anti-FGM activists. She explicitly claimed that there lay her greatest aspirations, and that her academic interests were subordinate to and served these. In publications, conferences, and interviews, she and a small but growing group of scholars (a number of whom came to constitute The Public Policy Advisory Network on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa (2012)4 have called for more rigor and evenhandedness in cultural representations of non-Western others and in public policy debates about their practices. Many of their arguments were nicely summarized in their 2012 public policy advisory, where they contested mainstream portrayals and explained that men and women in societies that practiced genital surgeries overwhelmingly found these to be aesthetic enhancements, and definitely not “mutilations”; they also published data to show that the great majority of women who had undergone such surgeries had rich sexual lives that included desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction. Medical and reproductive complications as a result of FGS were infrequent exceptions but were nevertheless much sensationalized by critics (The Public Policy Advisory Network on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa 2012: 22). Finally, they showed that these practices did not have a single, shared, patriarchal purpose wherever they took place but rather had diverse and multiple meanings, just as they had diverse forms (The Public Policy Advisory Network on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa 2012: 23). Fuambai’s and her colleague’s efforts were an uphill climb, with a heavy onus of proof on them, against widespread, deeply felt social understandings in the West. Broaching the topic of FGS—more the traditional versions than the medical ones—seems to require from speakers an explicit normative ethical declaration, at least in Euro-American milieus. It’s a topic to which many people react viscerally [109]with indignation or heartrending pity, and too often with claims to know what “FGM” is all about that would sound intolerably presumptuous and dogmatic if they pertained to a less loaded topic. Even Charles Taylor, a champion of tolerant, critical multiculturalism, subscribes to the claim that includes “FGM” among “clearly reprehensible practices” (Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 68, my emphasis). These attitudes extend to the social contexts of academic disciplinary endeavors, where critical research on the topic is difficult and sometimes impossible (see, for example, Boddy 2007: 55; Johnsdotter 2012: 92, 108), and of the courts, where legislation is often based on mono-dimensional, poorly researched representations of the practices (Rogers 2016: 235–37). As Carla Obermeyer put it, “the harmful effects of female genital surgeries are so often assumed to be indisputably true that they are rarely posed as questions to be investigated” (1999: 24). Fuambai’s arguments and bibliographic suggestions made me realize early on that I had bought casually into—and reproduced—simplistic, harrowing anti-FGM portrayals of FGS, without bothering to study the matter more carefully by way of doing or reading ethnography. After engaging with Fuambai, my response was to embrace more pointedly than before what Richard Shweder calls “liberal pluralism”: a “taste” for ways of life that allow and indeed encourage persons to live in accordance with their own evaluative understanding of how they ought to live and what kinds of persons they should be, tied to the recognition that others’ preferences and convictions may be underwritten by diverse, worthwhile values that may nonetheless conflict with the liberal value of unimpeded choice (2009: 250). With most anthropologists today, I dismiss a dated cultural relativism premised on isolable cultures that mold people’s subjectivities, and the kind of ethical relativism that stems from that. Perhaps James Faubion is right to further question the sheer extent of human ethical diversity that some relativists might posit exists. As he notes, there are “striking similarities among persons of similar class and status everywhere, and the basic schematics [of the ethical imagination] are considerably fewer than the relativist allows” (2011: 9, 10). Many anthropologists champion their disciplinary practice of providing thick descriptions that suggest what sense practices that we may find foreign or immoral might make to the people who indulge in them, thereby helping temper the more immediate, condemnatory gut reactions of outsiders to these practices.5 Their sense is that this is compelling not because it relativistically underscores cultural differences but rather because it reveals the commonalities among human beings that underlie diverse, apparently alien forms. While I agree, I would highlight that the moral differences between groups and between persons are not radically reducible to an ultimate sameness, and that the concept of relativism, taken with self-conscious irony, can still do useful work to gainsay claims undergirded by any theological or metaphysical order purporting to function as an absolute measure for truth or for the good (pace Laidlaw 2014: 224). Our evaluative understandings of responsibility, the estimable, and the despicable involve meaning-generating semiotic associations, which like all semiotic processes have an intrinsic, unavoidable proclivity to differ between persons, groups, and generations, and furthermore to change. They are causally, even if not univocally, [110]interrelated with our biographies in the context of our relational networks, practices, and institutions. Evaluative criteria and practices are thus historically contingent, and our moral judgments, to the extent that they depend on such contingent products, are thus relative. I think of anthropologists’ thick descriptions as historical gestures that create commensurability between moralities (Overing 1987). I must say that what I find most intriguing about such an endeavor is the reminder of the possibility of innovation, new kinds of footings of relationships, new kinds of subjects, and new moralities resulting from new or transformed vocabularies and symbolic practices.6 Unlike Fuambai herself, I have no driving interest in seeing FGS (or for the matter, male circumcision, tattooing, or piercing) thrive. But then again, neither am I keen to see it change or disappear. I am keen to nudge fellow freedom-and-equality-loving consociates, and beyond them, others, to adopt liberal pluralist attitudes. I also hope to erode the appeal of a sclerotic liberalism that disavows the contingent character of its own historical development, and makes universalizing assumptions to the effect that liberal ways of life are in some objective sense more valuable than illiberal ways of life. I hasten to add that such a stance does not preclude defending one’s own views fiercely, even if one is ironically aware of their contingent character. A case study for an anthropology of morality My work with Fuambai was motivated by my longstanding interest in studying morality anthropologically. Reading Fuambai’s (F. Ahmadu 2000) story immediately made me zoom in, surprised, on the kinds of social world within which FGS featured as necessary, respectable, or estimable procedures, and how these surgeries featured in the distinctions of worth that Fuambai and other actors in such social worlds made regarding themselves and others. Furthermore, I felt deep curiosity regarding such a colorful, charismatic, controversial character. What were her aspirations? What stood out in her horizons of concern, such that it would demand her evaluative attention when it swam into view? How had she become the woman that she was? What had happened during her childhood and later that could account for what she esteemed, cared about, or despised? Who had influenced her ways of thinking and feeling, and how? Had her evaluations changed over the years? And if so, how and why? This is one of three moral bioethnographic case studies that deploy a framework I propose for the anthropological study of morality. I am paraphrasing Faubion’s (2011: 210) term “ethical bioethnographies” here; like him, I pursue life histories and contextualize them socioculturally, with particular attention to semiotic fields he calls “ethical” and I call “moral.” Though bioethnographic accounts are not the only application of this framework, at the core of each of my case studies is an extended interview, interpreted in the light of ethnographic accounts of the person’s contexts. In Fuambai’s case, I sustained email conversations with her over several [111]years, interviewed her for eight days in October of 2015 about her childhood, family, loves, education, and struggles and dilemmas, and was in regular contact with her through social media until the very moment I signed off on this article for publication. In contrast with the other cases (that of an indigenous Amazonian man, and that of a Colombian science writer7), for which I had many years’ worth of ethnographic familiarity, I had no experience with Fuambai’s African and diasporic social networks that would allow me to contextualize with thick description many of her expressions as citations of shared symbolic forms from those milieus. For that, I depended on her own ethnographic account of Sierra Leone and The Gambia, and to some extent on other literature on peoples among whom there are traditional female genital surgeries (e.g., Boddy 2007; Boone 1986; Gruenbaum 1982; Hardin 1993). Then again, I converged much more in intellectual background with Fuambai than I did with my other interlocutors; it could be said that a significant part of my research with her was an animated conversation between British-trained anthropologists. She certainly had a much more thorough grasp of my overall research project than did the others, and my analysis was more shaped by explicit feedback from her. In my framework, much inspired by philosopher Charles Taylor (1985, 1989), moralities are persons’ understandings and sensibilities that involve their making strong distinctions of worth concerning the qualities of actions, thoughts, emotions, relationships, ways of life, embodiments, persons, human groupings, and sundry other aspects of personhood and sociality. They feature centrally a motivating sense or picture of the kinds of being persons themselves and others around them are, can be, and should be, of the footings of the relationships they have, can have, and should have with others, and of the world within which this all takes place. Moralities are semiotic and historical: persons develop and maintain them in the very processes of picking up and citing—redeploying in their thoughts, emotions, and interactions—the symbolic forms and their dynamic systems or webs of associations, most centrally language, made available to them by their interactions with members of their social networks, from earliest childhood and over their lifetimes. Symbols are material forms—perceptible things such as images, sounds, sensations, feelings, places, and objects—that “mean something” because people associate them in various ways with other forms. Persons acquire and redeploy linguistic and other symbolic forms in the processes of living their lives in society. These redeployments are very much like Judith Butler’s (1993) cited interpellations that, throughout people’s lives, performatively constitute them as subjects and make symbolic forms available anew for others to pick up and redeploy.8 Biographies in overlapping social contexts where similar forms are reiteratively deployed account for why people tend to speak, make moral evaluations, recognize and enact certain characterological types (Agha, via Keane 2016: 144), and establish interpersonal [112]relations that are more similar to those of our consociates than to those of foreigners. Nevertheless, biographies are always historically unique, and so the associations between symbolic forms will, unavoidably, differ somewhat between persons, between social groups, and between generations. This entails that moralities, like their partly constitutive webs of symbols, are somewhat shared within social groups or networks, and yet experienced intimately in unique ways by individuals. In other terms, and pace Taylor (1985: 10) and Keane (2003: 412), I embrace Jacques Derrida’s concept of slippage or indeterminacy of meaning, finding it a limit to the human capacity for mutual understanding and to the mind-structuring and consequent group-homogenizing efficacy of symbolic deployments. It is also a source of the noise, movement, and opaqueness to reflexivity that renders semiotic systems mutable. Scholars on the topic have paid a great deal of attention to the contrast or range between tacit, inarticulate, or habitus-like aspects of morality and more self-aware and explicit aspects of it (e.g., Zigon 2008). Some consider some form of freedom, tied to reflexivity, a diacritical aspect of it (e.g., Faubion 2011; Laidlaw 2014). Webb Keane (2016) has made amply clear that innate propensities that are not fully in our ken play a fundamental part in “ethical life,” and that everyday interactions, which he makes the case are intrinsically part of ethical life, flow smoothly precisely because the actions involved are habitual and beneath actors’ awareness. I would add that nobody has a thorough, clairvoyant grasp of the webs of associations that feature in their constitutive self-interpretations, or of the biographical processes by which these come to be. Despite this opacity of aspects of the self to reflexive awareness, however, my own bias is that when it comes to human beings, even tacit, inarticulate experiences are the experiences of subjects whose self-interpretations are constitutive and involve language; more or less articulated distinctions of worth will play a role in shaping even habitual human interaction (see Taylor 1985: 74, 272). I am called to address reflexivity and freedom in Fuambai’s case precisely because her explicit accounts of herself were the object of so much second-guessing and doubt by members of the public and media, and by people with whom I discussed her. Could she have been brainwashed? Did she really have clear insights into her own values and life? Was she lying? Did my own account not accept at face value too much of what she said? Could she not have been particularly successful at strategic impression management?9 I have no doubt that Fuambai evaluated herself, others, and her interactions with intelligence, and planned her gestures with some strategic, reflexive intent. In fact, she valued this as an ability and a resource of people generally, and of the African women she admired particularly. But by my account, she was not a free, utilitarian agent with a clairvoyant, controlling grasp of her own innermost workings and constitution, because nobody can be. What it was that truly, deeply mattered to her, that which stood out in her horizon of concerns, was not her choice, and could not be a choice; the symbolic forms that articulated her fundamental distinctions of worth and constituted her self-interpretations were not the choices [113]of a preexistent, willful subject. They were constitutive. And her constitution was such that she simply saw that these things mattered.10 There is room for self-interpretations to be questioned reflexively and critically, but again, the new and critical distinctions of worth for doing so are themselves not a matter of radical choice. I could still be suspected of being a subject of “ethnographic seduction,” that is, of having been influenced by Fuambai in ways I could not recognize, and such that they impacted on my understandings and research results (Robben 2007: 160). For instance, my friendship and emotional alignment with her could have made me unwilling to ask incisive, uncomfortable questions or otherwise probe critically into her discourse, which I trust sincerely expressed her thoughts much of the time, but equally certainly, at times invited my collusion in the construction of her own self-image, as interlocutors do (see Keane 2016: 275). I cannot remember such discomfort or unwillingness, except perhaps when we broached the topics of income and wealth, but then she seemed quite pragmatic and straightforward when speaking about these matters. Late in the writing process, I concluded that I perhaps too readily dampened my curiosity and avoided inquiring into other secrets of Bondo, in the name of respect for what the women in question wanted to keep secret and private. Fuambai may have helped me do that, keeping my interest riveted to other matters. But against an image of seduction, I believe that my own more secular and pragmatic understandings of the cosmos and of knowledge, and my aesthetic preferences regarding gender relations, differed sufficiently from Fuambai’s that I could remain capable of engaging critically, if sympathetically, with her. Fuambai’s case offered the interesting complexity of migrants and other people in diaspora, who cite in their speech, actions, and very emotions a dazzling diversity of symbolic forms from their geographically dispersed and culturally diverse social networks’ members’ interactions. I recognized from her self-portraits and evaluations of others that she valued qualities of persons and of ways of life that most readers would likely find familiar: class, prestige, wealth, intelligence and education, political power, family loyalty and love, unselfish maternality, femininity, and beauty and sexiness. In these regards she was self-assured, a person with a clear sense that she was of high standing in the public eye. Less familiar, but expressed in much of her talk and demeanor, was her deep investment in a picture of “strong” or “powerful” womanhood that seemed to be eclectically tied to her African background, to her American upbringing, and to a complex religious understanding of the cosmos. Her struggle against anti-FGM misrepresentations in particular put on the line for her whether she was indeed the kind of strong African woman she aspired to be. Growing up African in America Fuambai’s Africanness, her Kono ancestry, the prestige of her parents’ clans and of her immediate family, and the virtues of cosmopolitanism, education, intelligence, and beauty were foci of concern for her, and came up in her telling of her childhood [114]and early adulthood. She spoke very highly of her parents, and in accounting for herself she often portrayed them, their lives, their treatment of her, and her sense of how they thought of her. She painted a broad-brush picture of their privileged standings in the Kono district of Sierra Leone, manifest among other ways in their elite high school education in Krio11 schools in Freetown. Fuambai’s parents, Komba and Finda (Janet, in English), moved to the United States in 1963 or 1964; Komba had a USAID scholarship and support from Tamba Songu-Mbriwa, the paramount chief of the chiefdom of Sandoh, to pursue his education further. This was a time when many African nations were gaining their independence and when many of the children of the elite were being sent to Europe and the United States to prepare themselves for leadership, and the expectation, Komba told Fuambai, was that he would return one day to be a leader. Fuambai was born in the United States in 1967. When she was almost one year old, Janet moved back to Sierra Leone for a few years with Fuambai and her older brother. The family returned permanently to Washington, DC, in 1973, when Komba received his master’s degree. Over the next decades, according to Fuambai, the Ahmadus rallied a community of expatriate Sierra Leoneans around themselves, beginning with Janet’s family but expanding much beyond. Komba and a friend also founded the Kono Union in DC, Maryland, and Virginia (henceforth, DMV), of which Fuambai would become president in 2014. This involved some struggle, and in her public statements at the time, and later to me, she made frequent references to her parents’ historical importance in establishing a Sierra Leonean presence in the DMV. Fuambai variously described Komba as handsome, wise, humble, and unpretentious. She adored the man, and expressed no doubts that the feeling was reciprocated: “I was his favorite! . . . I think he projected his love for his mother on me. He always expressed ambitions for me. He wanted me to go to Stanford, and to become a broadcaster. There could be no barrier to me, professionally. He didn’t want me working in the kitchen, and would fight with my mom when she made me work. He never saw me as eventually to be somebody’s wife.” Fuambai portrayed her mother as the more determining parent regarding the state and direction of their household. Janet, according to Fuambai, was not as concerned with Komba’s ambitions as she was with her children’s interests and those of her own family of birth, and she imposed those interests on Komba. She had insisted on bringing some of her siblings with her when they moved back to the United States in 1973, and brought more over the years; in fact, Janet’s mother, Gbessay, lived with them as well. This sounded to me like a household that was closer to matrilocal ideals (where couples move in with the woman’s family) than to the ideals of the Kono, who conceive themselves as made up of clans in which membership is passed on by male line, and where couples supposedly live with the man’s family. She made sure her husband helped her family, for which, as Fuambai put it, “he really had to hustle,” working at different times as a cab driver, as a professional statistician, and by running his own investment company. Janet also [115]went to great lengths to ensure her children went to private schools; with time, her siblings contributed to her children’s education as well.12 Just as Fuambai admired her mother’s strength and impositions, she valued her own feisty assertiveness. She explained that she was a rebellious and disobedient teenager, willing to incur punishment as long as she got to do what she wanted. She would go to the movies against her mother’s prohibitions, question the latter’s arbitrariness, and stand up to her mother’s lashings when her father was not there to intercede indulgingly on her behalf. When there was collective punishment for her and her siblings—and it was always her mother who dealt it—Fuambai would demand to go first; she also figured out that she could threaten her mother with American laws against child abuse, which reduced the physical punishments. In a related vein, Fuambai also seemed to identify with her father’s mother, though they never met. They were namesakes: Fuambai’s name was an Americanized version of the old woman’s name, which was pronounced “Fwambeh.” Fuambai explained their name came from “fande,” a Kono term for a type of resistant cotton thread for country cloth (see also Schön 1884). As a name, it honored the capacity to keep the family together and close knit. According to her granddaughter, Fwambeh had been light-skinned and beautiful (“everybody thought she had to be a Fula, because of that”), stubborn, hyperactive, and argumentative. At some point or another in our conversation, Fuambai described herself, or spoke about having been described, with each of these expressions. “[Fuambai] is a good name for me because I am rebellious, stubborn, don’t conform, and do keep family together.” Fuambai recalled as a child wanting to eat like the kids on American TV rather than on the floor, and being mortified when her parents revealed too much of their African background in public, with their heavy accents in English and with her mother’s head ties. Still, she underscored that she grew up thinking of herself much more as an expatriate African and a Kono than as a black American. “My dad was an intellectual, sensitive to ideals of African identity . . . he hoped to return to Sierra Leone. He did not allow us to identify as Americans.” Komba told Fuambai that Chief Songu-Mbriwa used to speak of the Kono district as an Israel or a Zion, a place with an important destiny, and that he imagined Komba to be important for that; Fuambai was sure this had greatly influenced her father, for he never abandoned his strong sense of being Kono rather than American. She too professed great attachment to Kono, and considered her ties to it to define who she was. Her school, populated by a cosmopolitan mix of children of diplomatic, aristocratic, and otherwise wealthy families from all over the world, likewise served to make her identify more as an African than as a black American. By the time Fuambai was a young adult, studying International Affairs at George Washington University, she did have a sense of herself as black. However, she pointed out that she did not feel at home in the Black Student Union, feeling that some of her peers there thought she was fake because she wasn’t “hood” enough and did not feature their own accent. (She and her siblings could switch at will to [116]African American Vernacular English; it sounded to me like this was something they used with some humor to mark intimacy.) She felt more at home with the African and Caribbean students, and ambitious as she clearly was, she soon became president of the African Students Association. Another important aspect of Fuambai’s moral constitution that I can tie to her childhood was her deep religiosity. She had a strong, reflective sense of the intimately manifest presence of God in her life, and reported a history of eclectic comfort in Methodist, Muslim, and Pentecostal liturgies and of engagement in theological discussions with practitioners of these religions. Doubtless her attitudes were related to the fact that at home, she witnessed or participated in a diversity of religious rituals. Her mother had converted to Christianity in her childhood, and had joined a Methodist church upon arrival in DC. Some of Komba’s folks were practicing Muslims, and Fuambai and her siblings became comfortably familiar with their practices. The power of women Fuambai expressed a deep admiration for certain aspects of women among the Kono and other West African groups she grew up with or studied as an anthropologist. She reiterated to me, as she had in publications and talks (e.g., F. Ahmadu 2000: 301, S. Ahmadu n.d.), that she had sought to undergo the Bondo ritual because she wanted to be powerful, like her mother, aunts, and other initiated women. But it was Fuambai’s account of how her mother garnered scholarships for Fuambai’s siblings that carried home for me the gist of the power or strength that Fuambai saw in the African women she admired so much. Fuambai had been, her mother told her, a precocious child who had walked at nine months and from very early on had been clean, quiet, and thoughtful. A teacher at the prestigious and expensive Washington International School in DC caught on to Fuambai’s intelligence, and had her tested. She passed with flying colors and was awarded a full scholarship. Janet made the case to the school authority that Fuambai had three siblings who couldn’t go to a different school than Fuambai, and that she was a poor immigrant who could not afford a proper education for her children. The school considered this, and gave all the children scholarships. Fuambai saw in this a manifestation of African women’s power to get what they needed and wanted from the world—often something for the good of their children or families—by dint of eliciting others’ friendliness, desire, pity, respect, fear, or whichever attitude was necessary. To achieve this, they had to be adaptable and resourceful, deploying, as needed, drama, argumentative acumen, charisma, sex appeal and amatory competence, trickery, and when necessary, violence. I see in this notion a transformation of traditional Kono understanding of power (gbaseia) as the ability to “harness knowledge, medicines, witchcraft, and other supernatural means in socially appropriate ways” (Hardin 1993: 192), to the extent that it is not only the supernatural that is harnessed instrumentally. As with her stubborn, argumentative, and beautiful grandmother, Fuambai likely identified a great deal with her purpose-driven, resourceful mother. Like Janet, Fuambai had gone to great lengths to ensure that her son received an elite education.[117] Another story that I found revelatory of Fuambai’s admiration for what I would call the “savvy resourcefulness” of African women concerned her Auntie S.13 In 1998, in yet another turn in the 11-year civil war that rocked Sierra Leone from the early 1990s, the Nigerian army had wrested Freetown from the rebels, and Sierra Leonean citizens in exile were being repatriated. Auntie S. traveled from Washington to visit Fuambai, who was doing anthropological research in The Gambia. Auntie S. wanted to hitch a free ride on the repatriation buses, to check on two houses she owned in Freetown. Fuambai marveled at her aunt’s ability to slip back into African modes of interrelating with people, and her sheer ability to blend in and get what she wanted. “You would never imagine that she had ever left. She was in her element. I wanted to see the village through her lenses. She would go to people’s houses and they would put out food on the floor for her . . . she blended with people wherever she was . . . she was charismatic [and . . .] could connect. . . . I let her talk and put us on the bus.” Her aunt’s presence and attitude garnered for Fuambai the possibility of listening to the talk of women in exile, in different camps. Auntie S. would solicit their stories, ask about missing relatives, and generally spark conversations. From such conversations, she learned the secret that these women had performed initiation rituals even when on the run. It was clear that Fuambai had had to think and speak often in her life about gender inequality; in TV interviews she reacted against popular images in the West of African women as pitiable victims of patriarchal family and religious systems. In our conversations, she acknowledged that sometimes African women would strategically deploy such images themselves, and stressed that she sympathized with their needs when they did so—but in the context of anti-FGM activism, she resented them. To counteract them she underscored her own memories of growing up in a large expatriate family, surrounded by women who seemed to her to be running the household and making all the important decisions. I loved an image she used, of women “tying up their lappas” in the face of a challenge. Lappas are wrap-around skirt cloths, and Kono women foreseeing a physical scuffle would tie them up firmly lest they be easily ripped off. The image was used in demands for loyalty, as in “I tied my lappa up for you!” (I fought for you!). Her mother and her aunts— like initiated women in Kono—were fully willing literally to tie up their lappas to tackle any man who would threaten them with violence but also metaphorically to address conflicts of different kinds. Fuambai stressed that women who had undergone Bondo—and even more so if they had undergone it together—were expected to rally to each other’s aid against men, outsiders, and others who might infringe on their interests. (Feigning) subordination to men Fuambai described herself as an African feminist, but also as in some ways conservative and traditionalist, to the point that she often sympathized with the values of religious Republicans in the United States, though she voted Democrat and loved [118]the Obamas. She knew that some aspects of her picture of sex and male-female relationships were such that feminists and many Westerners would reject them. For instance, she expressed in a televised interview her articulate support for polygyny (Badawi 2015). Earlier, she told me she would have been willing to be part of a polygynous marriage herself, with the understanding that it would have to be with a man with the wherewithal to make such an arrangement a dignified, politically and economically advantageous arrangement. She was unapologetic and frank about what she called her philosophy: “I will respect you, worship you, take your shoes, cook for you, do your laundry. . . . Your house is clean. . . . [An African woman] is in a man’s house. . . . She goes into her man’s house. . . . I do think a man should be paying the rent, sustaining me. . . . My choosing a man means I am giving up on other men who are economic possibilities. Tradition says ‘This is your wife—you have to provide housing for her, provide for her.’” Kono and surrounding groups Fuambai was familiar with treated marriage as a pragmatic arrangement, a matter of people finding a complementary gender counterpart that would allow them to achieve sustenance and reproduce patrilines and clans. This did not preclude emotional closeness, but there was actually some condemnation of women who “loved their husbands too much” and therefore ceased to demand that men provide for them and for their own families (Hardin 1993: 64). Delicious sex and infatuated love were in some cases reserved for lovers rather than spouses, though there was supposed to be an expectation of appropriate reciprocity from lovers as well. Fuambai loved the idea of powerful women manipulating men, pretending to be dutiful wives, but wresting sexual pleasure, affection, and fecundity from lovers. She used this image to contest the picture of African women as spineless, ignorant, or brainwashed victims of patriarchy that anti-FGM seemed to her to promulgate. Nevertheless, she did not enact this feminine ideal all the way herself, expressing personal ambivalence about the instrumental attitude to marriage, noting that she had been raised in the United States and that this had also shaped how she loved and engaged in relationships. She noted that among Krio in Freetown, and certainly among Kono and other Sierra Leonean expatriates in the United States and London, there was an increasing preference for the model of monogamous “true love,” associated with status, education, and Westernization. Monogamous “true love” had considerable appeal for her as well. She brought up a female cousin’s good-natured contempt for her in this regard, and her laughing injunction to Fuambai to stick to American men, because she didn’t have what it took to deal with African men. We delved into this in conversation, and concluded that for her, a man could be her main source of companionship and emotional support, something less likely in Kono itself, with the stronger separation of the sexes. But my sense is that the footings of male-female relationships in government and academic institutions in North America, where men and women were supposed to downplay or disarticulate many previously established differences between them, simply didn’t fulfill Fuambai. She certainly participated in such milieus competently, and indeed benefited from them, but at another level, more intimate yet self-aware because much more problematized, she bought into the beauty and the desirability of a social life in which there was a more marked differentiation of genders, to some extent along traditional Kono lines. She spoke enthusiastically about [119]how Kono understood the sexes to be different, exclusive, and complementary; each was its own milieu, with its responsibilities and privileges, and with its own hierarchy (see also F. Ahmadu 200: 298, 299). She underscored that the Kono female initiation ritual taught subordination of young women to female elders, and the art of feigning subservience to men in their verbal communication, body language and gestures, and the performance of domestic duties.14 Kono women would consistently seek to maintain a myth of male dominance that ultimately enabled them to protect their female prerogatives (especially against increasingly masculinized religion and culture in Africa) (F. Ahmadu 2000: 306). But even as she respected and defended traditional gender roles, Fuambai made space for changes. She spoke with admiration about expatriate women in the DMV who worked hard and bought their own houses. More to the point, in March of 2014, she was elected president of the Kono Union of the DMV. She was the first woman and the first American-born Sierra Leonean to occupy that office. Media-savvy and competent with accounting, she worked hard to inject vigor and optimism into the ailing association. As she portrayed it, running the Union entailed much dealing with coups, betrayals, retaliations, bad press, working alliances, triumphs, and blunders. She ferociously demanded that some much-loved kin show their loyalty to her and to her father and mother as community creators and philanthropists, and whenever it was not forthcoming, she was willing to burn bridges in defense of her family and what she felt was best for Kono and Kono women. At one point, an elderly, politically active auntie of hers remarked that Fuambai’s contenders were Fuambai’s seniors, and were furthermore men, and that therefore Fuambai should capitulate to them. The auntie stated that there was or should be no difference between Kono Union and Kono life, and that a woman must be under a man. Fuambai did not yield: “I would argue that the Kono Union is not a traditional Kono organization, and in this setting, if a woman is in charge, let her be in charge.” On Bondo and becoming a woman In 1991, while she was still an undergraduate at university, Fuambai’s mother, aunts, and grandmother invited her, her sister, and other girls in her family to “join Bondo.” She was twenty-one years old at the time. I think she was ambivalent about avowing the extent to which she had consented to the ritual. Perhaps this stemmed from valuing both the principle of consent and the courage to consent, and yet deeming the value of consent not to trump other values that the ritual enacted. “I did give consent to join Bondo. . . . Some would argue I didn’t give consent because I didn’t quite know what would happen.” Still, Fuambai did know that it involved some cutting “down there,” because a young aunt had described to her the secret goings-on and the cutting that she’d witnessed when she’d spied on a Bondo ritual. The young aunt had backed down from travelling to Sierra Leone to be initiated, but Fuambai’s own response, in her own words, was one of “Show me this thing I’m supposed to be afraid of.” She was unsure of her memories, regarding whether [120]prior to undergoing Bondo she had “read something” or not by the Nigerian physician Olayinka Koso-Thomas, who had worked in Sierra Leone and condemned FGM fiercely; she had no knowledge, however, of the careful ethnographic analyses of the cultural significance of these practices published by Ellen Gruenbaum (1982), Janice Boddy (1982), and others, or of the more explosive, activist-minded denunciation by Fran Hosken ([1980] 1982). For local Kono girls back then, there certainly was no “full and informed consent” to the ritual; in fact, there was an attitude on the part of some of the older women to the effect that the ritual involved intentionally tricking girls. Kono girls nowadays, Fuambai noted, did tend to know that the ritual involved cutting and pain.15 Fuambai’s account of her decision to undergo Bondo pointed to her childhood. She had memories from her early years in Sierra Leone of frequent wonder and delicious tingling fear and fascination with the dancing, the masquerades, and the secrecy surrounding the Poro and Bondo initiation rituals for adolescent boys and girls respectively. She remembered growing up in the United States surrounded by a set of strong women—her mother, aunts, older cousins, and her friends—who seemed vigorous and knowledgeable, and who clearly spoke about secret matters of import among themselves, but would change the subject when Fuambai arrived. She had very much wanted to be a part of it all, informed, strong, and decisive. She took for granted from early on that to achieve that, she would one day have to join Bondo. Her aunts and grandmother sang Bondo songs around her and spoke about it as a wonderful celebration. “For me the awesomeness of Bondo was the lure. Not being part of it was a problem. I’d heard women arguing in terms of the right to open your mouth that Bondo gave you. . . . You came into a conversation on sex, and they stopped talking. . . . And I wanted IN.”16 She yearned for access to the secrets of these women, and for the right to speak and be hearkened to as a full-fledged woman. As if preempting imagined critics, she added that for her it was never a matter of [ethnic] identity, of being “truly African” or gaining a sense of belonging. Neither was she buying into the Kono sense that there was something childishly unappealing or androgynous about her genitals, nor that she needed initiation to truly become a woman. “No, what attracted me was the power.” Again, I must note that I was struck by the sheer frequency with which Fuambai’s claims in this regard were subject of disbelief or second-guessing by people reading her work or hearing her stories. Her explanation of why she sought initiation, and of its importance to her, was a focus of such doubt. In a TV interview (Sackur 2016), for instance, anti-FGM activist Nimco Ali suggested that Fuambai had been traumatized by the initiation, and had come up with a legitimating story [121]when the time came to pick a cultural identity. Several people to whom I told Fuambai’s story were similarly persuaded that she displayed false consciousness or something like a Stockholm syndrome. Skeptics’ premise was that unquestionably, something horrible and irredeemable had happened to Fuambai and to every initiated woman; Fuambai has often protested that most of those women would argue that it had not (F. Ahmadu 2000: 284; Sackur 2016). It’s as if, for skeptics, genuine choice for Fuambai could only have led to her rejection of practices that skeptics disapproved of. Her choosing otherwise—even if Fuambai felt that she was making a thoughtful choice for her own edification—could not be considered autonomous or free. As Fuambai told the story, the initiates and several of the older women flew to Freetown in December of 1991; one young aunt who was afraid to undergo the initiation opted out. Fuambai’s oldest aunt determined that the main house for the initiation of Fuambai, her sister Sunju, and a cousin should be in Koidu, the capital of the chiefdom; Fuambai’s other cousin would undergo it in her father’s village. The women had Fuambai’s uncles clear a bush behind the house in preparation for the event. The sowei, who was charged with protecting the initiates from witchcraft and other dangers during this physically and spiritually vulnerable time, would have chosen an auspicious site and “fortified” the space spiritually. Before being secluded, Fuambai and the three younger girls were taken to Fuambai’s maternal grandfather’s village, her father’s village, and others, to seek blessings. The ritual started, and Fuambai knew it was too late to turn back when she found herself naked with other girls, by a river, their clothing out of sight. She heard the women talking about their bodies. They were fascinated with Fuambai, because she was fully physically an adult by then, and because she had come back from the United States to undergo the ritual. “She looks like Finda!” one woman said. The women bathed and shaved them, and the fact that it would definitely involve her genitals became absolutely clear. Fuambai figured out later that the medicinal leaves they had been given for analgesic effect were making her high, because everything seemed great. That night they were all sitting in a hut, lit with a couple of candles. Everybody was being quiet, though there were lots of women. Fuambai was miffed that all the women were checking out her vulva; a few times that the sowei came and opened her legs, all would peer, curious about an adult, uncircumcised clitoris. “They looked like ‘Oof! This needs to be cut’. . . but also surprised that it wasn’t as ghastly . . . they probably expected a little dick.” At that point, a woman whom Fuambai knew as Auntie J. came. She worked as a nurse in the United States, and Fuambai’s mom, very worried about her daughters’ pain, had arranged for Auntie J. to give them some anesthetic. Auntie J. told Fuambai that because she was an adult, she should know that what would happen was that some of the flesh of her vulva17 would be cut off, but that Auntie J. would anesthetize her first. Fuambai recalled wondering whether she would enjoy sex as she had in the past, and thinking “Well, if I don’t enjoy sex and orgasms again, I’ll just study more.” She added, “The idea that a woman won’t enjoy sex is Western . . . very improbable.”.[122] I opened my legs. Sunju opened her eyes wide. They were holding me, but I had to appear calm. Auntie J. injected me. Sunju cried. They held her down and injected her. Then at the break of dawn they hoisted me up and bolted through the door and rushed to the clearing. There was drumming. I knew pain was coming, but thought the anesthesia might help. These women had me lifted with my legs spread. I felt this kgggg [Fuambai made a noise to represent the sensation] on one side, and I screamed bloody murder. Then there was another cut on the other side. Then they went for the labia, both sides. I felt blood gushing, and threw up. The women were horrified at this. “This is not bad! [Not disgusting],” they protested. I fainted. Just before fainting, I saw them bringing my sister out. . . . I was saying, “No!” and thinking, “These savages!” When Fuambai came to, she was lying on the floor with her head cradled on her mom’s lap. Her mom was wiping away her tears. She was in great pain. She looked around for Sunju, and saw her and her little cousin walking around and laughing. The cousin was only seven years old, tiny and beautiful. Some of the women had found her too small, but Fuambai’s aunt, the girl’s grandmother and primary caretaker, had not wanted to miss the opportunity to have her go through Bondo. The child had been inordinately proud of this, and Fuambai later heard that she hadn’t flinched when she was cut. Then a sowei instructed Fuambai to get up and go pee. The pain throbbed when she stood up. Sunju accompanied her. Urination stung brutally, and Fuambai cried. She remembered that Sunju (“She was so cute!”) thought she was crying because the toilet was a mere hole in the ground, and tried to console her: “Don’t cry! It’s because they’re poor that they don’t have toilets!” Fuambai described how the local girls felt sorry for her, and how some who had already been initiated left school early to come and look at her. Many of them referred to her as “the white girl,” because she came from the United States. The attitudes of the women present varied, something Fuambai later saw in other initiations she witnessed. Some were very empathetic with the girls’ pain; Fuambai imagined that they were reliving their own. Others’ attitudes seemed to her to be more along the tough-love lines of “Come on! Get over it!” Some of the women took on the attitude that they’d successfully tricked the girls, “kind of like telling them you were taking them for ice cream but actually got them vaccinated instead.” Adding to her thick description, she noted that the message to the girls was that as a result of the ritual, they were now real women. As she admitted that the pain had been excruciating, Fuambai added that Kono people think of it as instructional. “You are introduced to the beauty but also to the harshness of womanhood. You learn to cooperate with other women, and to bear the pain of pregnancy and birth. The sowei will also be your midwife and your supporters [in initiation] will be your supporters [when giving birth]. . . . You are dead when cut, and then you are born again. It’s a liminal space of supernatural transformation. One anthropologist wrote that the cut puts senses in disarray, and that you become very vulnerable, and in that state you can learn ancestral values.” The Bondo ritual enacted, as it purported to instill, key virtues of women—virtues that reflected the strength that Fuambai so admired. Soweis themselves were exemplars in this regard: wise, unyielding, and unsentimental, and responsible for inculcating novices with “stoicism, which must be displayed during excision; tenacity [123]and endurance, which are achieved through the many other ordeals a novice must undergo; and, most important, “dry-eye,” that is, daring, bravery, fearlessness, and audacity, qualities that will enable young women to stand their ground as adults in their households and within the greater community” (F. Ahmadu 2000: 299). The most dramatic part of the initiation was the cutting, of course, but there was more to it. For one thing, as Fuambai said she would realize later when doing research on similar rituals in The Gambia, there was much chance for the adult women to indulge in sexual liaisons and to break certain everyday rules of propriety during the public part of the ceremony. Initiates, once cut, were taught songs with layers of meaning, and somehow it all involved lessons on how to be good lovers, and to control men’s penises and sexual actions for their own pleasure and eventual fertility. It was a time to learn about that, and about much else.18 After pointing this out, she expressed clearly her ambitions for the practice: “We need to bring back the sexual education aspect, the separation of men and women.” In an earlier publication, she had stated that she would describe herself as “neutral” with respect to the continuation of the practice (F. Ahmadu 2000: 305); by 2015, her position was less neutral. She explained in an email that her position had changed because of the sudden popularity of labiaplasty and other forms of FGS in Western countries.19 She wanted to see the whole package return with its tradition and meaning, and for it not to become like current, secular male circumcision, which she found too clinical, or like much female genital cutting in The Gambia, which took place in people’s homes, with little or no ritual. To her—and here I underscore that these are the views of a woman who both underwent initiation as a native and who carried out participant observations as a trained anthropologist—the old rituals, with long periods of seclusion and an intense learning process, seemed most worthwhile. Fuambai did not benefit fully from that aspect of her own ritual. Her mother had arranged for them to recover in a friend’s big, beautiful house, where they were luxuriously taken care of. Fuambai remembers beginning to smile again when the pain subsided somewhat, and receiving more visits from schoolgirls. The sowei and her entourage would come every so often, ensure the wound was closing properly, change their bandages, and comment on how it all looked good. Another auntie, a Mende woman, commented on what a great job the sowei had done on Fuambai. Fuambai’s mom said she’d gotten the best one, likely to produce the best-looking surgery with the least bleeding and the shortest healing period. A cousin later told Fuambai that that sowei’s reputation increased hundredfold after Fuambai’s operation, for having cut a “white” woman and doing a good job. Several years later, Fuambai met a woman in the bush in The Gambia who told her she had heard of [124]the Gandhorun children who had been brought from the United States, and of the sowei who had cut them. “If you’ve got money, you get her.” Fuambai’s mother did not wish to wait for the “coming-out” aspect of the ritual, so they unceremoniously left for Freetown. There, they stayed at another aunt’s place, and got more painkillers and antibiotics. Fuambai told me she had felt worried and sad at the prospect of never enjoying sex again. In Freetown, she met a young, beautiful, flirtatious Mandingo man who persuaded her to sneak out and go to the movies with him; her desires came back and she knew it was going to be ok. She returned to the United States three weeks after her surgery. “I got up courage not long after, I looked with a mirror, and I could say ‘wow, this is pretty!’ I liked how it looked. I wanted to show it off. I had thought I’d never have sex again. . . . But then it was gorgeous.” She reported that her American boyfriend found her beautiful all the way, and thought that the rope with amulets and leaves tied around her waist was very sexy. When they had sex, she felt some numbness in the site of the cut, but she could still achieve orgasm. The numbness soon went away. Talking about initiations and sex Initiates were strongly enjoined to protect the secrecy of the Bondo ritual. In an email elaborating on this, she wrote, “I knew initiates were made to take an oath of secrecy—but I don’t recall that I was made to take any oath. I was also told that the herbal medicines they gave me would make my mouth ‘heavy’ whenever I wanted to talk about what happened in Bondo.” The injunction to secrecy eventually created a dilemma for Fuambai: she could continue to respect the secrets of Bondo as she had for years, at the cost of letting only negative accounts of it make it to public light, or she could seek to correct the overwhelmingly negative popular account of female genital cutting, at the cost of breaking the vows of secrecy. It seemed to me that she did not depend for economic and emotional purposes on the set of companions who underwent Bondo with her quite in the same way they depended on each other, and that for this reason she could afford to break with tradition in order to defend it. And she did. She claimed that for this she was at times questioned in public by men who knew she wasn’t supposed to speak about Bondo. Her response was that she had spoken to several soweis and to many women who had undergone the rituals, and that they had blessed her for defending them while protecting their own secrecy as a cultural right.20 In several of her public lectures, and much more intimately when I interviewed her, Fuambai spoke about her sexual experiences and about her own body with considerable candor, revealing more about these than most people usually do outside close relations. But she did not appear at all confessional or affected, or moved by some drive to make public an image of herself as somebody totally comfortable with her own sexuality. To me it seemed something she did instrumentally, to participate effectively in a struggle that mattered deeply to her, over African women’s personal and cultural rights; she framed her own sexuality, presenting [125]certain aspects of it in a certain light, in order to reframe the initiation rituals for a hostile public. One explicit message was that she had sufficient practical and theoretical knowledge of sex and orgasms prior to undergoing Bondo to have a point of comparison with her experiences afterward. She could thus begin to shed suspicion on strong anti-FGM claims that cutting damaged women’s genitals’ functionality and rendered orgasms difficult or impossible (e.g., Gele, Johansen, and Sundby 2012; Reyes and Thuy Seelinger 2013; and Thabet and Thabet 2003). She explained to me that she had grown up in the 1980s and, in her own words, had “had no hang-ups about sex.” As a teenager she had had ample opportunities to read about sexuality, had talked about it a great deal with cousins—some of them initiated, and for the most part cheerfully vulgar and detailed in their accounts of their vigorous sexual exploits— and so had good theoretical knowledge of intercourse, oral sex, and orgasms (see F. Ahmadu 2007: 281). By her sophomore year at university, she also had a boyfriend— a very tall, handsome (and white) former varsity athlete. “I got the hot guy . . .” Summarizing the relationship, she wrote to me that with time and mutual trust, the relationship became sexual, and he introduced her to foreplay, oral sex, and so on. Of course, she was also explicit about her continued ability to achieve orgasms through oral or manual stimulation, or heterosexual sex, after undergoing Bondo. She was interested in underscoring that orgasms for her were most intense and pleasurable when achieved with heterosexual intercourse, and that this was as Kono thought it should be. She argued that this was because of the famed G-spot. She took it to be something that’s situated differently in different women, and stated that hers was deep-set, almost cervical, and hence the superiority, for her, of orgasms achieved through skillful vaginal penetration.21 This was yet another matter concerning which Fuambai’s accounts and those of initiated women who approved of FGS were disbelieved (e.g., 2007: 280–84). In her sister Sunju’s documentary (S. Ahmadu n.d.), a skeptical, uncircumcised Sierra Leonean woman expressed doubt about whether a circumcised woman who claimed to have experienced orgasms really had: how could she know that what they experienced really was an orgasm? The circumcised woman’s eye rolling in response said it all. Of course she had. Along these lines, Fuambai wrote that “unlike these ‘mutilated’ African women, no one seems to question the credibility of Western women with surgical ‘designer vaginas’ who report increased psychological and physical satisfaction after drastic genital operations” (2007: 284). Fighting the good fight As a young woman, Fuambai had aspired and fully expected one day to become, as she put it, “a hotshot international lawyer or banker” at the International Monetary [126]Fund (IMF) or World Bank. She was still on that path from 1992 to 1994, during which time she got a master’s in African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS/University of London). Early on during her stay in London, however, Fuambai attended several meetings of the still young anti-FGM movement, read Alice Walker’s (1992) book, and watched Walker’s and Parmar’s film, Warrior Marks (1993). Book and film both represented female genital cutting as culturally endorsed, mutilating torture, a brutal betrayal of women by their mothers, and a practice likely to cause deadly hemorrhages and difficult births. “I felt outed, humiliated, disappointed, angry with that book. It made us look like our mothers were crazy . . . psychologically damaged.” She changed direction, and in 1995 started her MSc/PhD program in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, under the supervision of famed Africanist and feminist professor Henrietta Moore. She went on to do six years of doctoral fieldwork on male and female initiation rites among Mandinka peoples in The Gambia, time during which she also consulted for UNICEF and the British Medical Research Council. She received her doctorate in 2005. In 1995, Fuambai published an article in Pride magazine that described Kono female initiation rites and contested Walker’s picture of brutalized African women, their traitorous mothers, and the deadliness of FGM. Expanding on this later, she explained that contrary to most Europeans and Americans, who understand being a male or a female to be an innate given and a matter of nature, Kono thought about this differently (F. Ahmadu 2000). They saw young children as somewhat androgynous beings in need of transformation or completion through social practices that made them fully, properly male or female. The prepuce in boys was held to be a feminine remnant, vagina-like and unseemly, and similarly the external part of the clitoris and the labia in girls were deemed ugly and masculine. Only with the appropriate rituals that included the physical removal of these tissues that made children androgynous, would they be able to become fully sexed, to reproduce properly, and to become part of the world of “culture” (F. Ahmadu 2000: 295, 296). In our interview, Fuambai told me that as an activist, speaker, and occasional consultant for Sierra Leonean government offices, she was privileging arguments about equality and universal human rights, rather than the more relativizing arguments I was prone to want to discuss, to defend her people’s practices and to question anti-FGM rhetoric. She protested, for instance, that it was intolerably discriminatory that a white woman in London or Los Angeles could request a surgical transformation of her vulva for cultural, aesthetic reasons, but an African woman was not free to do the same. She could not legally find someone from her own society who was a recognized expert at such surgeries, to transform her vulva according to the aesthetic values of her society (see F. Ahmadu 2007: 284). In fact, she could not get one with a Western doctor if she argued that she was doing it for her own traditional cultural reasons. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to assume that her interest in defending FGS and initiation rituals against zero-tolerance legislation was only in the interest of equal rights to individual freedom. As I interpret her, she respected and appreciated the collectives of initiated women, found these to contribute to the beauty, quality, and fairness of social life for both women and [127]men among Kono, and very much wanted to maintain the conditions that allowed those collectives to be reproduced.22 In 2006, Fuambai spearheaded the creation of the Miss Sierra Leone USA pageant; then in 2009, she founded the magazine SiA. Both engaged with culture, fashion, and the lifestyle of Afropolitan women, and Fuambai intended them to carry a positive message about admirable African womanhood. She explained that in the years that followed she was hurt by attacks from younger Sierra Leonean expatriate women who were willing to be insultingly critical of their circumcised mothers (F. Ahmadu 2014: 18). Concerned over these women’s reproduction of anti-FGM rhetoric, she rehashed the magazine completely in February of 2014, to be more pointedly the voice of empowered, circumcised women, and to educate internal critics. She furthermore ran successfully in 2014 for the presidency of the Kono Union in DMV, on a platform that called for respect for Kono women. Despite the harshness, the stereotypes, and the misrepresentations of anti-FGM rhetoric and of direct critics, Fuambai’s public demeanor and speech seemed always to remain calm and well informed. This was in stark contrast to the often-insulting indignation of critics and opponents.23 When I commented on this, Fuambai responded that she knew that she represented a large number of women who would never get a chance to appear on TV and to be hearkened to, and that even in her case, opportunities seemed to be one-shot deals. “So I have to be very careful. In North America there’s this stereotype of the ‘angry black woman’ that is used to exclude some voices. . . . You’re not going to get anywhere being angry.” My perception is that Fuambai has been relatively successful at undermining, at least among the public who have heard her speak, the more simplistic misrepresentations of FGS, and at urging caution when judging the unfamiliar. Yet she confided that her struggle had been at a cost to her career, her finances, and her emotional tranquility. She had turned down an offer of a well-paid, secure, tenure-track job at a university, in part because it came with friendly but pointed advice from the prospective employer that she put her activist work aside and focus on academic publications instead. I remembered that she had also had to be exhaustingly careful in her public lectures while employed by the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The question came up as we discussed this: why keep struggling? “I don’t feel I have a choice. I have to engage, to defend [FGS]. . . . If I could stop and do something else, I would.” Her motivation was religious, at least in part. She spoke about her faith in similar terms, as involving no choice: at one crucial moment in her adult life, she had suddenly felt the presence of God with absolute immediacy, awe, and relief. As she portrayed it, His obviousness to her rendered questions of choice about belief irrelevant. In another episode that Fuambai deemed critical, she discovered an ancient Egyptian creation story according to which the first androgynous being was created through the blood of circumcision. She was struck by this being’s names, Sia and Saa, because these were also the names given respectively to the first girl and boy born to a Kono woman. “Sia” was in fact part of Fuambai’s own name, as her [128]mother’s firstborn daughter. She took this spirit, who in Mande peoples’ accounts was also generated in an original act of circumcision (e.g., see Boone 1986: 8, 9), to be somewhat akin to the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity. For her, these connections were no coincidence but rather a strong suggestion of the historical precedence, and perhaps founding originality, of Kono and neighboring people’s circumcision rituals, which she considered could have been the foundation for circumcision in Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Islam. She also took her discoveries to be an intimate affirmation of her purpose to be a voice for Sia and for her female ancestors. Hence her protests when she felt that certain dramatic anti-FGM gestures disrespected that spirit egregiously (F. Ahmadu 2014: 30–32). Fuambai’s picture of a universe characterized by the immediate presence of a (mostly) benevolent God, and in which gendered personhood, identities, divisions, and virtues stemmed from, were modeled on, and were prescribed by that God, was what philosopher Charles Taylor would call a “moral source”: something the love, respect, or contemplation of which empowers [persons] to do and be good (1989: 83, 94). Fuambai identified as a child of such a God, and this provided some of the frames within which she determined what was good, valuable, ought to be done, or ought to be endorsed or opposed (Taylor 1989: 27). Engaging in her struggle was, in the context of such a frame, inseparable from being the strong, resourceful, African woman she aspired to be. On ethnography, commonalities, and difference Engaging with Fuambai opened windows for me into her unique, cosmopolitan, richly evaluative understandings of the kinds of persons and relationships there are in the world, of sexed bodies and proclivities, and of the footings of relationships among women and between spouses. Through her ethnographic and personal accounts, I grasped the diversity of ways in which FGS could fit, reasonably and with positive moral valence, into Kono and surrounding people’s lives. Getting there depended on our exchanges leading me to recognize certain commonalities between us, such as for instance, aspirations to physical courage, admiration for the competencies that lead to the achievement of valued results, including, at times, the willingness and ability to break rules, deploy drama, or otherwise skillfully manipulate relations; a loving interest in shaping children well and a desire that they share at least some of our values; clear and motivating (if different) preferences regarding the looks of genitals and bodies generally, and feelings and memories of sexual enjoyment; and a comparable sense that at least some conventional hierarchies, some of the time, are justified. We both could recognize critical moments in our history in which we felt that our eyes had been opened, that we had achieved insights that not everybody had access to, and we both had sufficient experiences with diverse groups’ footings of gendered relationships to have a comparative sense of which we preferred.24 Nevertheless, working with Fuambai also underscored for me that people’s understandings of the kinds of beings and persons they can possibly be (e.g., a child [129]of God, an androgynous woman in need of ritual perfection, or a diasporic citizen), the kinds of relations they can be part of (e.g., fellow initiates in rituals, matriarchs and underlings, opponents in public debates), what stands out in their horizons of concern (e.g., elegance in demeanor, fear of God, or equal treatment) differ and have differed in important, motivating ways between social groups and between persons. So have the considerations and criteria regarding what a good life would be. Fuambai’s own grasp of and dynamic redeployments of Kono, North American, and academic anthropological values or distinctions of worth are an example of how people reproduce, mix, and transform moralities. So it still makes sense to me to claim, pace James Faubion (2011: 9), Webb Keane (2016: 4), and James Laidlaw (2014: 224), that persons live in different moral worlds, and that their criteria for judging persons and actions are relative to those worlds. Living with other people sometimes requires us to establish commensurabilities between different worlds, but this is always a creative act of translation.25 So are ethnographic thick descriptions. Much (but not all) anti-FGM legislation and action now seems to me a somewhat violent, morally absolutist imposition in the face of incommensurable moral worlds. My pluralist preference has been to engage instead in ethnography or similar efforts to come up with new, creative formulations that render such worlds mutually commensurable and intelligible. Fuambai and fellow scholars have engaged in such efforts effectively. The parties can then take stock, decide whether the differences are still unlivable, and reconsider their options—be they further attempts at creative mutual understanding, compromise, or violence. In a recent email, Fuambai reported from the front lines to her friends on a recent compromise along those lines: that the Government of Sierra Leone and leading soweis had signed MOUs “to prohibit under-18 female initiation and circumcision,” but allowing the “Bondo society and other [soweis] to self-regulate, create awareness and implement this policy nationwide.” Acknowledgments My research was funded by a Dean’s Research Award (Arts) and a Humanities Research Institute fellowship at the University of Regina. Christie Hubbs assisted in reviewing the anti-FGM literature, and I thank Marcia Calkowski, Philip Charrier, Michael Lambek, Rick Shweder, Eldon Soifer, and participants in the University of Regina’s Department of English OMAD lecture for comments and suggestions. I thank Fuambai herself for her generosity in engaging with me in this project. References Ahmadu, Fuambai. 2000. “Rites and wrongs: Excision and power among Kono women of Sierra Leone.” In Female “circumcision” in Africa: Culture, change and controversy, edited by Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund, 283–312. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.[130] ———. 2007. “‘Ain’t I a woman too?’: Challenging myths of sexual dysfunction in circumcised women.” In Transcultural bodies: Female genital cutting in global context, edited by Hernlund, Ylva and Bettina Shell-Duncan, 279–310. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ———, ed. 2014. SiA. https://www.joomag.com/magazine/sia-and-the-shabaka-stone-vol-1/0113864001395071062. 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Hastings Center Report 42: 19–27. Reyes, Hernan, and Kim Thuy Seelinger. 2013. “Ending ‘female circumcision’ in practice and name.” The World Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-thuy-seelinger-jd/ female-circumcision_b_3829467.html. Accessed July 12, 2014. Robben, Antonius C. G. M. 2007. “Ethnographic seduction, transference, and resistance in dialogues about terror and violence in Argentina.” In Ethnographic fieldwork: An anthropological reader, edited by Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka, 159–76. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Robbins, Joel. 2012. “On becoming ethical subjects: Freedom, constraint, and the anthropology of morality.” Anthropology of this Century 5. http://aotcpress.com/articles/ethical-subjects-freedom-constraint-anthropology-morality/. October 2012. Rogers, Juliet B. 2016. “The first case addressing female genital mutilation in Australia. Where is the Harm?” Alternative Law Journal 41 (4): 235–38. Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sackur, Stephen. 2016. “Fuambai Ahmadu, co-founder of African Women Are Free to Choose, and Nimco Ali, co-founder of Daughters of Eve.” HARDtalk. January 11, 2016. BBC News (website). July 11, 2016. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV6UfEaZHBE. Schön, J. F. 1884. Vocabulary of the Mende language. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Shell-Duncan, Bettina, and Ylva Hernlund. 2000. “Female ‘circumcision’ in Africa: Dimensions of the practice and debates.” In Female “circumcision” in Africa: Culture, change [132]and controversy, edited by Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund, 1–40. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Shweder, Richard A. 2000. “What about ‘female genital mutilation’? And why understanding culture matters in the first place.” Daedalus 129 (94): 209–32. ———. 2009. “Shouting at the Hebrews: Imperial liberalism v liberal pluralism and the practice of male circumcision.” Law, Culture and the Humanities 5:247–65. ———. 2012. “Relativism and universalism.” In A companion to moral anthropology, edited by Didier Fassin, 85–102. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. ———. 2013.”The goose and the gander: the genital wars.” Global Discourse 3 (2):348–66. ———. 2016. “Equality now in genital reshaping: Brian Earp’s search for moral consistency.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 26 (2): 145–54. Taylor, Charles. 1985. Human agency and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1989. Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1994. “The politics of recognition.” In Multiculturalism, edited by Amy Guttman, 25–73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thabet, Saeed Mohamad Ahmad, and Ahmed S. M. A. Thabet. 2003. “Defective sexuality and female circumcision: The cause and the possible management.” J. Obstet. Gynaecol. Res. 29 (1): 12–19. Walker, Alice. 1992. Possessing the secret of joy. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace. Walker, Alice, and Pratibha Parmar. 1993. Warrior marks: Female genital mutilation and the sexual blinding of women. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace. World Health Organization. 2016. “Female genital mutilation.” Fact sheet. February 2016. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/. Zigon, Jarret. 2008. Morality: An anthropological perspective. Oxford: Berg.[133] La force de Fuambai Résumé : Bien qu’elle a grandi aux Etats-Unis, Fuambai Ahmadu accepta à l’âge de vingt-deux ans l’invitation de sa mère à rendre visite à ses proches du peuple Kono en Sierra Leone, pour recevoir les rites d’initiation secrets qui marquent la transition vers un statut de femme en âge de se marier et d’être un membre de la société secrète Bondo. La partie la plus notable du rite implique l’excision de la partie externe du clitoris et de la labia minora par une sowei, une femme en charge de ces cérémonies. Ce rituel, que l’on appelle Bondo, est le pendant féminin de l’initiation Poro pour les garçons, dans lequel ils sont circoncis et instruit comment être un homme. Fière de son statut d’initiée, elle s’est battue durant les vingt dernières années pour corriger et contester l’imaginaire des critiques occidentaux de la Mutilation Génitale Féminine représentant le rituel d’initiation comme un acte de torture et de mutilation, et les femmes Africaines comme des femmes mutilées et victimes de traditions patriarcales cruelles. Cet essai dresse le portrait moral de Fuambai et ce faisant, il aborde l’étude anthropologique des morales et défend un pluralisme libéral, ainsi que ses implications relativistes. Carlos David LONDOÑO SULKIN is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Regina and the incoming President of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (2017–2020). Since 1993, he has carried out ethnographic fieldwork among People of the Center (Colombian Amazon), mainly with Muinane-speaking clans. He is the author of People of substance: An ethnography of morality in the Colombian Amazon (University of Toronto Press, 2012). Carlos David Londoño SulkinDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of ReginaClassroom Building, CL 306.33737 Wascana ParkwayRegina, SK S4S 0A2Canadacarlos.londono@uregina.ca ___________________ 1. This would be classified as Type 2 FGM in the World Health Organization’s typology (WHO 2016). 2. Bondo, Bundu, or Sande are equivalent terms in Mende and other Sierra Leonean languages that connote secrecy and privacy; they also refer to women’s secret initiation society. Other terms are Suna, Susu, and Serere (Hardin 1993: 35; Boone 1986: xxiin6). 3. “Female Genital Surgeries” is the preferred term of the Public Policy Advisory Network on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa (2012). The term “mutilation” presupposes that the practices in question are harmful, contrary to the judgment of the majority of the women who undergo these. 4. Though a relative newcomer to the topic, I was invited to be a signatory to the 2012 document. 5. See Keane (2016: 121, 122); Laidlaw (2014: 32); Lambek (2010: 13); Robbins (2012); and Shweder (2012) for discussions. 6. For discussions of such changes, see Keane (2016); Rorty (1989: 9); Kulick (1992); and Robbins (2012), among many others. 7. For my purposely “lite” report on him, see Londoño Sulkin (2015); on my deeper Amazonian work, see Londoño Sulkin (2012). 8. With this, I begin to address Faubion’s requirement that analytical frameworks accounting for enduring systems of ethics must reveal how these systems engender their own reproduction in time (2011). 9. See Boddy (2016: 41, 42), on uninformed and patronizing attributions of false consciousness to cut Hofriyati women in Sudan. 10. For a thorough argument along these lines, see Taylor’s critical case against Sartre’s concept of radical choice (1985: 28–30). 11. The Krio (or Creole) are people descended from slaves in the British colonies who were freed and resettled in Sierra Leone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 12. Hardin notes that matrifilial ties are less apparent than patrilineal ones but are equally important facets of Kono identity (1993: 57). Kono women marry into their husband’s households but nonetheless maintain allegiances to their own patrilineages (1993: 59). 13. Fuambai called most African women of her aunt’s generation “aunties”; her mother’s sisters, however, she addressed as “mom.” 14. Fuambai was not persuaded that women’s having to feign subordination was evidence of a real power differential between men and women. 15. In recent years, Fuambai came to see ethical sense in the call to change cutting practices so that they take place later in life, and with full and informed consent. What compelled her was a discussion of cases of children whose reproductive or sexual anatomy did not fit typical definitions of female or male, were surgically “disambiguated,” and later resented caregivers’ choice of sex for them. 16. See Boone’s (1986: xi–xv) clarifying account of the institutional significance of secrecy among Mende peoples, and the series of distinctions of worth between the initiated, who possess an informed intellect, a widened vision, and deepened discernment, and the incomprehension and dumbness of the uninitiated. 17. Fuambai did not remember the exact terms Auntie J. used. 18. Shweder (2016: 146) reports on a Kenyan man’s similar account of his month-long recovery from a painful circumcision as a time during which he learned the history of his people, what it meant to be a man, and how to treat women, have sex, care for cattle, face up to painful ordeals in life, and be fearless. 19. See Boddy (2016) on this specific topic. On inconsistencies in Australian legal treatment of cosmetic genital surgeries, religious male circumcision, and FGM, see Rogers (2016: 236). 20. In 2016, a set of (Shia Muslim) Bohra people from Gujarat, India, thanked her for these very reasons. 21. The part of the clitoris that is cut in so-called Type 2 and some Type 3 FGM is the external, visible part; a much larger proportion of the organ, made of erectile, potentially orgasm-triggering tissue, is hidden under the labia majora, and is untouched by FGS. For a discussion on the extent of knowledge and ignorance about female genital anatomy in debates about FGS, see Shweder (2013: 216, 217). 22. See Taylor (1994: 52–61), on a “politics of recognition” that can protect the interests of a collective in creating the conditions for its own reproduction. 23. See, for instance, Brockie (2013). 24. For convergent discussions on shared feeling being fundamental to mutual understanding, see Laidlaw (2014: 224) and Taylor (1985: 61, 62). 25. Rorty’s treatment of “passing theories” (1989: 14) converges with this account of commensurability.  

An ongoing conversation This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Cesar Gordon. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.2.012 MEDITATION An ongoing conversation Terry Turner and the Kayapo-Mebêngôkre Cesar GORDON, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Comment on Turner, Terence. 2017. “Beauty and the beast: The fearful symmetry of the jaguar and other natural beings in Kayapo ritual and myth.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (2): 51–70. Commenting on Terry Turner’s paper, “Beauty and the beast,” almost two years after his passing, is both an intellectual and an existential task. It brings back memories. I will always remember the pleasant days in the late 1990s when he came to Rio de Janeiro and we would walk through the Botanical Garden having lively talks about the Kayapo-Mebêngôre. His vast ethnographic knowledge and experience, as well as his passionate interest and commitment to the Kayapo and the indigenous peoples of Amazonia were a real inspiration to every young anthropologist, as I was at the time. In those years, I had just started my own research among the Xikrin people, who, like the Kayapo, are another subgroup of the large Mebêngôkre-speaking community. Reading Turner’s paper today and reflecting on his ethnographic analysis and reasoning is almost like sustaining that conversation. I would thus like to offer my commentary as a humble homage to Turner. In spite of this more or less personal justification, I hope that my discussion here has a broad and general interest to readers. The article is a crystallization of Terry Turner’s long and prolific work on the Kayapo, which spans more than fifty years of research, much of which was spent in Kayapo villages in Brazil. The text reflects the work of a mature anthropologist, recuperating many of the main themes of his ethnography, always securely fastened to their corresponding analytical tools. The starting point is an understanding of Kayapo society as a system for the production and reproduction of an [84]asymmetrical pattern that originates in the exploitation of the young by the elders, which results in a differential appropriation of social value, expressed in the native concept of mêtch, or “beauty,” as Turner translates it. Turner’s great merit was constructing a model that sought to integrate all aspects of Kayapo social life, analyzing them through a series of distinct structural levels that are dialectically articulated by successive encompassments: the lower (domestic) level of material production and the social production of persons; the intermediate level of communal institutions (age sets and men’s house); and the upper level of the ceremonial system, which transcends the tensions of the preceding levels and constitutes a mechanism for the patterning and reproduction of a total asymmetrical structure. The model is dynamic and takes into account the dimensions of both time and space, as can be discerned from the descriptions of the life cycle, which is where the author locates the tensions that traverse the structural levels. A prime example is the tension between the uxorilocal residence rule and the emphasis on paternity as a criterion for access to collective adult life. The result of the Kayapo sociological machinery is the “beautiful” person, an embodiment of a complex chain of social relations. Although it is the ultimate goal of Kayapo productive efforts, beauty is unequally distributed, and society hence remains divided into two categories of persons: beautiful (me mêtch) and common (me kakrit). Turner tended to minimize the importance of this difference in terms of its political and economic effects. However, as I showed in previous work (Gordon 2010), the distinction does indeed have ramifications for political and economic life, being closely associated with agency or social power. This is because the same social relations that compete in the constitution of beauty (such as an extended and extensive kindred) also compete in the maintenance of prominent political positions and economic wealth. Furthermore, there is an even more important aspect that has completely escaped Turner’s analysis. I am referring to the more complete understanding of the notion of mêtch and its fundamental articulation with the problem of differentiation, which, for the Mebêngôkre, poses as an immense philosophical and existential problem. As I have shown elsewhere (Gordon 2016), at the core of the definition of mêtch is the idea that social order should rest on a coefficient of difference, which reveals the totemic bias of Mebêngôkre society. Hierarchical or asymmetrical differences can only be adequately understood when they are articulated to totemic-type differences. Returning to the model, Turner recognizes yet another level—which we might call “cosmic,” “natural,” or “extrasocial”—which has always had a somewhat problematic articulation with the other levels, generating a sort of torsion or chiasma in the model, and perhaps indicating a limitation to his theoretical toolkit. Animals, for instance, appear as the infrasocial limit of humanity but, at the same time, as its suprasocial limit, setting the parameters within which the human condition transits. The problem is that both these poles converge at the same point, in a “fearful symmetry of beauty and bestiality.” The figure of the jaguar synthesizes this ambivalence and can emerge in a violent form precisely at the point that Turner expects to find the vertex of the process of human socialization. How are we to explain this? It is necessary to return to the ethnographic ground and to attempt a description that remains closer to the native idiom, mobilizing the Mebêngôkre notions of [85]aybanh (alienation, madness), karon (anima, image, or double), kamrô (blood), ∼in and ‘i (flesh and bones, or corporality). In “Beauty and the beast,” the focus of the analysis shifts to Kayapo conceptions of the relations between “humans and nonhumans,” which is traditionally the weakest point in Turner’s model. This focus enables him to refine his interpretation of these relations as seen by the Kayapo and, at the same time, to resume his criticism of the analytical models of animism and perspectivism, as formulated by Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, respectively. Turner had begun to develop this criticism in an earlier article (Turner 2009), developing his lifelong intellectual discomfort with Claude Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism. Unlike Marshall Sahlins, another great American anthropologist of his generation who was trained in the Marxist tradition of Leslie White but ultimately found his theoretical home in structuralism, Turner never abandoned his Marxist roots. The concept of “production” therefore remained a mainstay of his analyses of the Kayapo, taking precedence over the concepts of “exchange” or of “ontological predation,” associated with their structuralist roots. In this vein, Turner offers a number of interesting considerations, ultimately recognizing that a Kayapo “animism” exists but arguing that it involves complex notions of “anima” and “corporality,” which are less evocative of perspectivism, particularly in its schematic variant (Viveiros de Castro 2004), and more reminiscent of Aristotelian notions of “form” (eidos) and “matter” (hylé). The articulation of the formal–agentive dimension of the karon and its material substrate (flesh, blood, and bones) does indeed indicate that the perspectivist model needs to be calibrated to the specificities of Mebêngôkre-speaking people and those of other members of the Gê family. However, some of these issues had already been addressed in a clearer, more general fashion by authors such as Carlos Fausto (2007). On the other hand, the relations between “beauty” and “violence” that Turner points to could have been analyzed further had the author investigated certain cosmological considerations of the Kayapo. I am thinking specifically of the origin myths of feather ornaments and ceremonial beauty, in which the figure of the “great bird” (Àkti), the celestial equivalent of the jaguar and an epitome of “ferocity” (Àkrê), is destroyed by the pair of “civilizing” brothers, thereby instating a new cosmic order. This myth is important for illustrating a nonperspectivist inflection to Mebêngôkre thought, which would strengthen Turner’s argument insofar as it does not refer to a presubjective and preobjective state, as Viveiros de Castro (2004) would predict but, on the contrary, to a complete inversion of the subject–object relation that is processed by humans through the controlled possession of violence and aggressive capacities (Àkrê). This narrative complements the archetypal myth of the theft of the fire of the jaguar (Turner 2017) and establishes the need to deal with the sacrificial logic of the Kayapo universe, which remains eclipsed by the model of production. This helps us to understand a further lacuna in Turner’s analysis: the Kayapo recognize that beauty originates in violence and hence may eventually return to it. However, these are only some considerations raised by this dense article. I would like to conclude by saying that “Beauty and the beast” is proof that Terry Turner’s work remains alive and vibrant, drawing on current debates in the field of native Amazonian anthropology and providing a wealth of anthropological insights. (Translated by Luiz Antonio Lino da Costa)[86] References Cited Gordon, Cesar. 2010. “The objects of the whites: Commodities and consumerism among the Xikrin-Kayapo (Mebengokre) of Amazonia.” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 8 (2). doi: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol8/iss2/2 ———. 2016. “Ownership and wellbeing among the Mebêngôkre-Xikrin: Differentiation and ritual crisis.” In Ownership and nurture: Studies in native Amazonian property relations, edited by Marc Brightman, Carlos Fausto, and Vanessa Grotti, 209–231. New York: Berghahn Books. Fausto, Carlos. 2007. “Feasting on people: Cannibalism and commensality in Amazonia.” Current Anthropology 48 (4): 497–530. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/518298 Turner, Terence S. 2009. “The crisis of late structuralism. Perspectivism and animism: Rethinking culture, nature, spirit, and bodiliness.” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 7 (1). doi: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol7/iss1/1 ———. 1980. “Le dénicheur d’oiseaux en contexte.” Anthropologie et Sociétés 4 (3): 85–115. doi: https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/as/1980-v4-n3-as493/000979ar.pdf ———. 2017. The fire of the jaguar. Chicago: HAU Books. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2004. “Exchanging perspectives: The transformation of objects into subjects in Amerindian ontologies.” Common Knowledge 10 (3): 463–484. doi: 10.1215/0961754X-10-3-463   Cesar GORDON is Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Department of Cultural Anthropology. He has been working with the Xikrin-Mebêngôkre since 1998 and he has been publishing articles and chapters covering socioeconomic changes, ritual practices, monetization, history, mimetic aspects of interethnic relations. He is the author of the book Economia Selvagem: Ritual e Mercadoria entre os Xikrin-Mebengokre (2006), and co-editor of Xikrin: uma coleção etnográfica (2011). He was a visiting professor in France, at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Social, Collège de France, Paris.   Cesar GordonDepartment of Cultural AnthropologyInstituto de Filosofia e Ciências SociaisUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (IFCS-UFRJ)Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazilcesargordon@ufrj.br  

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Transforming translations (part I) This work is licensed under the Creative Commons |   Amiria J. M. Salmond. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau3.3.001 Transforming translations (part I) “The owner of these bones” Amiria J. M. SALMOND, University of Auckland Recent writing associated with anthropology’s “ontological turn” has worked to transform the familiar trope of ethnography as a mode of translation. In place of popular conceptions of social anthropology as the more-or-less faithful transmission of other peoples’ cultural meanings, these approaches frame the ethnographer’s task as that of generating novel concepts and terminology—ones that are “peculiarly ours” rather than “theirs”—through a creative synthesis of philosophy and field experience. Within this scheme, the roles that “native thinking” (and indeed “native thinkers”) are invited to play in this burgeoning discourse remain unclear. Here I address this issue ethnographically, through an ongoing initiative on the part of Te Aitanga a Hauiti Māori people in New Zealand to build a digital repository of tribal taonga (ancestral artifacts, images, knowledge). In an account written with the purposes of their project in mind, I consider what Hauiti’s efforts to translate their whakapapa (genealogies and oral histories) into digital forms might imply for an anthropology that would seek to reframe questions of difference by mobilizing such native “anthropologies” in the service of disciplinary self-renewal. These ethnographic insights then set the scene for a second discussion—to appear in the following issue of HAU—of how ontological approaches are seeking to transform anthropology, considered in relation to earlier debates on the difficulties of translating cultural and ontological alterity. Keywords: ethnographic translation, ontological turn, Māori, digital anthropology, cultural invention, incommensurability Today it is undoubtedly commonplace to say that cultural translation is our discipline’s distinctive task. But the problem is knowing what precisely is, can, or should be a translation, and how to carry such an operation out. . . . To translate is always to betray, as the Italian saying goes. However, a good translation is one that allows alien concepts to deform and subvert the translator’s conceptual toolbox so that the intentio of the original language can be expressed within the new one. —Eduardo Viveiros de Castro All we have to go by are our misunderstandings of others’ views—our initial descriptions of their statements and practices. What we then produce, if we are to avoid projection, is a series of concepts that imitate those statements and practices . . . but are nevertheless peculiarly ours. . . . [A]nthropology is not about “how we think they think.” It is about how we could learn to think, given what they say and do. —Martin Holbraad Recent writing associated with anthropology’s “ontological turn”1 has transformed the familiar trope of ethnography as a mode of translation, while seeking to move the discipline on from its association with cultures conceived as bounded, language-like entities. Building both more and less directly on poststructuralist and postcolonial insights into the nature and politics of alterity, an appealing self-image is being crafted for social anthropologists as creative philosophers, lending their genius to the impossible (though far from futile) task of making sense of others, as a means of improving ourselves. In place of popular conceptions of ethnography as the more-or-less faithful transmission of other peoples’ cultural meanings, these approaches frame the ethnographer’s task as that of generating novel concepts and terminology—ones that are “peculiarly ours” rather than “theirs”—through a creative synthesis of philosophy and field experience. Instead of asserting the ability to accurately reproduce native habits and ideas for nonnative audiences, these writers often foreground incommensurabilities—the very practices, ideas, and things encountered in the course of fieldwork that most confound their own descriptive capabilities. In this frame, ethnographic translation appears as something of an art form, a philosophical mode that seeks to infect familiar ways of thinking with otherness, as a means of stimulating analytic creativity. Within this potentially attractive scenario, however, a certain lack of clarity remains with regard to the roles “native thinking” (and indeed “native thinkers”) are invited to play in this burgeoning discourse. In the Italian saying traduttore, traditore—invoked by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro above—there is an enticing liberty implied by the inevitability of the translator’s betrayal. Whether it is taken to mean simply that the standard of fidelity to an original is generally set too high, or that translation inherently attempts the impossible (like carving out shared space across different scales), it seems that a degree of creative license is being sanctioned. That is alluring indeed for ethnographers, if all we have to go on are “our misunderstandings of others’ views.” Acknowledging our own limitations lets us off the hook in a number of ways. One convenient effect of this particular absolution, as mobilized in the approaches mentioned here, is that it opens up a seemingly infinite range of resources—the artifacts of recursive ethnographic analysis—to be deployed in the “game” of creative concept generation. But who else might lay claim to such resources? Whom or what do we betray in our transforming translations, and to whom or what are we no longer trying (so hard) to be faithful? These questions might be asked by a native intellectual, someone concerned perhaps with cultural property rights and the exploitation by metropolitan scholars of self-consciously “indigenous” knowledge, but I put them for different reasons. First, because my own ethnographic relationships demand that I reflect on such matters, and second because these questions are begged, I think, by the ways in which arguments in favor of ethnography as “controlled equivocation” (Viveiros de Castro 2004) or as “inventive definition” (Holbraad 2008, 2009, 2012) foreground the importance of their ethnographic commitments. As articulated in one manifesto, the basic idea advanced by such approaches is to let things encountered in the course of fieldwork recursively “dictate the terms of their own analysis” (Henare [Salmond], Holbraad, and Wastell 2007: 4).2 Instead of involving the mere accumulation of data against which to test existing theories, fieldwork ought to encourage anthropologists to generate insights that are “novel” and “peculiarly our own” but that clearly owe something to the field experience. To rephrase the question then, what might be owed, and to whom, in a recursive anthropology? Clearly, in the first instance at least, the answer must be sought recursively. What I propose here, then, in line with the sort of methodology prescribed above, is to address my query about recursive analysis ethnographically, in the terms of my own field experience. The aim is to see what happens when such approaches are inflected—and perhaps even “deformed and subverted”—by a different constellation of ethnographic relationships. Later, in a second article to appear in the following issue of this journal, I explore the implications of this ethnographic experiment for the ways in which ontological approaches are currently being articulated. In recalling a number of earlier discussions about the challenges of translating cultural and ontological alterity, I show how the language deployed by present-day anthropological ontologists invites critiques of a kind that have already been leveled at earlier scholars who grappled with notions such as “different worlds” and “ontological alterity.” Applying the insights generated through the ethnography presented in the present article, I suggest that the ontologists’ commitment to ethnographic engagement might inoculate their approaches against many of these charges but nonetheless begs questions about the precise nature of their ethnographic investments. In the present article, then, I explore by way of example what might be at stake in the kinds of artifacts anthropologists produce in New Zealand, where ethnographic relationships can entail special kinds of expectations and commitments. Part of the story inevitably turns on cultural politics, but more to the point is the specificity of the ties in which one becomes enmeshed as an ethnographer, and the obligations, as well as inspiration, that may extend from them. In applying this recursive methodology, I draw on relationships with members of Te Aitanga a Hauiti, a Māori iwi (tribal kin group) based in Uawa (Tolaga Bay) on the East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Working through an ongoing initiative to build a digital repository of tribal taonga (ancestral artifacts, images, knowledge), I consider what Hauiti’s efforts to translate their whakapapa (genealogies and oral histories) into digital forms might imply for an anthropology that would seek to reframe questions of difference by mobilizing such native “anthropologies” (Viveiros de Castro 2004) in the service of disciplinary self-renewal. “The owner of t hese bones” Besides the firm outline of tribal constitution and crystallised cultural items which form the skeleton, besides the data of daily life and ordinary behaviour, which are, so to speak, its flesh and blood, there is still to be recorded the spirit—the natives’ views and opinions and utterances. —Bronislaw Malinowski Iwi (n.) 1. Bone. . . . 4. Nation, people. —Herbert William Williams, A dictionary of the Maori language Anthropological3 attempts to translate the beliefs, practices, and languages of Pacific peoples may be traced to Europe’s Age of Discovery, when voyages of exploration ventured into unfamiliar waters with a view to knowing and exploiting that vast ocean’s seemingly infinite resources (Smith 1992). When James Cook reached New Zealand in 1769, bringing with him the Tahitian priest-navigator Tupaia, part of the country’s coastline had been marked on European maps for over two centuries, yet virtually nothing was known of its inhabitants. A skilled linguist, Tupaia was able to communicate in his native language with the people they met, and played an indispensable role as the Endeavour’s chief translator, broker, and cultural advisor, mediating what appeared to many of Cook’s men as encounters with radical alterity (Salmond 2003). In Queen Charlotte Sound, for instance, after some months spent in New Zealand waters, Cook and some sailors explored the coastline together with the Tahitian and the gentleman naturalist Joseph Banks. Rowing across the Sound, they saw the body of a woman floating in the water, and upon reaching shore, Tupaia asked some local people about her. According to Banks, they “told Tupia that the woman was a relation of theirs” (Beaglehole 1962: 455). As the Tahitian spoke with them, his companions wandered about the cove. A dog was baking in an earth oven, with provision baskets heaped beside it. Poking in one of these baskets, a member of Cook’s group saw two clean-picked bones that seemed to be human, a discovery that created immediate consternation among the Endeavour party, including Tupaia. He questioned the local people, asking What bones are these? they answerd, The bones of a man. —And have you eat the flesh? —Yes. —Have you none of it left? —No. Why did not you eat the woman who we saw today in the water? —She was our relation. —Who is that you do eat? —Those who are killd in war. —And who is the man whose bones these are? —5 days ago a boat of our enemies came into this bay and of them we killd 7, of whom the owner of these bones was one. (Beaglehole 1962: 455) Banks’ account of the exchange suggests that while these bones, as apparent traces of Māori cannibalism, sparked an immediate and visceral reaction in Tupaia and the Endeavour’s sailors, for others including Banks and Cook, they supplied empirical confirmation of preformed hypotheses about the scale of humanity’s differences: The horrour that apeard in the countenances of the seamen on hearing [Tupaia’s] discourse which was immediately translated for the good of the company is better conceivd that describd. For ourselves and myself in particular we were before too well convincd of the existence of such a custom to be surprizd, tho we were pleasd at having so strong a proof of a custom which human nature holds in too great abhorrence to give easy credit to (Beaglehole 1962: 455). Through his conduct and writing, Banks—like many later ethnographers—translated otherness into affinity by encompassing his Polynesian interlocutors within the brotherhood of Man, resolving alterity through appeal to a common humanity. In this sense, his posture of untroubled equanimity in the face of what seemed to most of the crew inhuman behavior may be read as a self-consciously Enlightened response that prefigured that of much contemporary anthropology to the problem of cultural difference. While his moral philosophy may have been generous toward “savages” when compared to that of many of his contemporaries, however, it was no less geared to an imperial agenda. The purpose of cultivating “friendship and alliance” with local people and “inviting them to Traffick,” as Cook had been instructed, was to secure the “Consent of the Natives to take Possession for His Majesty” of their lands “by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors” (Beaglehole 1955: 514). Here, translation was an instrumental means by which a transfer of ownership could be effected; Banks’ accounts of the local people and their “Genius, Temper [and] Disposition” (Beaglehole 1955: 514) had unequivocally appropriative intentions. Positioned in direct opposition to such imperialist aims, the modern image of anthropologists as translators of culture has been cultivated in part as a corrective to the discipline’s enduring reputation as the “handmaiden of colonialism.” Whereas ethnology in the British tradition emphasized socio-cultural differences with a view to governing diverse colonial subjects, it is claimed, anthropology as an international discipline is now dedicated to promoting equal participation in the global order for all the world’s peoples. With this in mind, the proper attitude toward difference, having defined it, would seem to be to seek its resolution, and this indeed is where many anthropologists have positioned themselves politically, working (philosophically or practically) in support of minority rights, humanitarianism, conflict resolution, and the general promotion of intercultural communication. In this instrumental register too, cultural translation is a tool with which difference may be uncovered, engaged, transcended, and resolved through appeals to common goals and shared meanings. Much ethnography has thus proceeded on the basis of a hopeful humanism that seeks to cultivate the seeds of mutual understanding in the common ground of human nature. Yet recent (and not-so-recent) scholarship across the social sciences and humanities has pointed to the moral ambiguities—and continuities with Enlightenment thinking—entailed by such a project; issues that have acquired pertinence and moral complexity in relation to ongoing Euro-American attempts to enforce particular brands of liberal democratic humanism upon those regarded as other, at home and internationally. In philosophy and translation studies, for example, the work of cultural translators, including anthropologists, has been closely interrogated over a period of decades, and its political effects have become the focus of intense analytic scrutiny in fields like indigenous studies and postcolonial literary criticism, as well as within anthropology (Asad 1993; Buden et al. 2009). At the center of these discussions is the question of difference, and whether the aim of translation ought to be to resolve differences of the kind we are accustomed to thinking of as cultural—if this is even possible—or to take difference seriously in different ways. In its activist voice, such work has drawn explicit attention to the practical and philosophical violence executed against people(s) regarded as other in the name of projects of commensuration, as well as differentiation (Povinelli 2002). In place of a “common sense” vision of translation as the transmission of meaning across linguistic and cultural boundaries to create shared communities of understanding, it offers an alternative role for the translator as a creative agent who finds inspiration in the very impossibility of their task; in misunderstanding, impasse, and “the crisis of failing to know otherness” (Budick 1996: 10). Many anthropologists too have become concerned by the ease with which their own discipline—among institutions that deal in culture—claims to know its other. A body of scholarship has emerged that seeks to foreground differences of the kind that may be swept aside or resolved in advance by the concept of the anthropos. Here the remedy proposed is ethnographic; by paying close attention to how others handle difference differently, it is suggested, we may be able to imagine new ways of dealing with difference ourselves. One way in which this analytic move has been articulated is as a shift from primarily epistemological concerns (comparing people’s differences as different knowledges about the world) toward ontology (comparing the ways in which people compare differences as artifacts of difference itself).4 Here some effects of these moves on the aims and practice of ethnographic translation are considered, in an attempt to draw out from the following example of translation-in-action some implications for ethnographic theory and methodology. Although in many ways the so-called ontological turn constitutes a radical and productive reworking of the task of ethnography, I suggest, the privileged role it reserves for ethnographers as interpreters of other people’s lives may put it at odds with some of the native anthropologies it identifies as resources for disciplinary self-renewal. Te Rauata: A digital taonga repository Titirangi mountain was shrouded in mist as we rounded the final bend in the road, driving into Uawa one winter’s morning in July 2010. In Tolaga Bay township—a scattering of shops along a wide main street—we stopped for coffee before heading in convoy to the marae to film the final stage of our haerenga, or journey. In front of the ancestor/meeting house Ruakapanga, a crew of Te Aitanga a Hauiti rangatahi (young people) were rehearsing one of the many action-songs composed in their rohe (tribal area) last century. We women wrapped scarves around our waists for the pōwhiri or welcome, as our group was summoned with karanga (ritual calls) onto the marae proper, the grassy lawn in front of the house’s carved facade. Speeches followed in Māori, greeting the ancestors present and laying down the kaupapa or purpose of the day’s activities. Formalities over, we got to work on filming the documentary, which recalled an earlier expedition to the area by members of the Dominion Museum ethnographic team in 1923. Commissioned by the local tribal leader, national politician, and anthropologist Sir Apirana Ngata, a group of Māori and pākeha (non-Māori) ethnologists, inclu-ding my great-great grandfather James McDonald—a filmmaker and photographer for the museum—had traveled to the area to record songs, chants, and technologies that Ngata feared were in danger of being forgotten (Henare [Salmond] 2007). Now our film crew, led by two Māori directors, was retracing their steps, talking to descendants of the people the Dominion Museum team had met and filmed, photographed and recorded, using the latest technologies of their day. Inside the meeting house, Dr Wayne Ngata—Apirana’s great-nephew—intoned one of the mōteatea (chants) etched into wax cylinders during that earlier expedition. Afterward he was interviewed on camera by my mother Anne Salmond, an anthropologist with lifelong ties to the East Coast through her work with my godparents, the elders Amiria and Eruera Stirling, and through our extended family in the nearby city of Gisborne. I had been to Uawa several times before. The first time I remember was in 2003, on a visit with my family to attend the unveiling of the gravestone of Irihapeti Walters. “Auntie Bessie,” as she was widely known, had introduced many people, including me, to Māori taonga (treasures) in her role as Kaiarahi or guide at the national museum. I met her there through a research project I was doing at university, and she was a formative influence on my decision to study anthropology. Her knowledge of the collections was unparalleled, and she told me of the unpredictable antics of certain artifacts that had been reluctant to enter the museum, but had settled down because they are “used to us now.” A staunch adherent of the Mormon faith, her black granite tombstone was etched with an image of the church’s temple in Salt Lake City. It was through Auntie Bessie that I came to work closely with her whanaunga (relatives) Wayne Ngata and his niece Hera Ngata-Gibson, both members of Toi Hauiti, a working group of the Te Aitanga a Hauiti tribal Trust. A visit to an exhibition they had organized called Te Pou o te Kani, with a group of Māori curators from the national museum, led to further exchanges with the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology where I was working as a curator. A series of reciprocal visits followed, including a delegation of Hauiti de-scendants coming to the UK, which eventually led to a formal partnership with the Museum on the Artefacts of Encounter project, launched in April 2010. When I returned to Uawa in 2012 for a digital technology wānanga (workshop) hosted by Toi Hauiti, it was thus to maintain and strengthen these relationships. Led by the group’s Chairperson, Wayne Ngata, the Hauiti people are currently developing a repository in which to store their digital taonga—images, video footage, sound files, and documents both historical and contemporary relating to their whakapapa (genealogies and oral histories); their traditional arts of karakia (ritual incantations), haka (performing arts), and mōteatea (chants and songs); as well as tā moko (tattoo), whakairo (carving), whatu (weaving), and raranga (basketry). To be included in the digital system—named Te Rauata (“the gathering together of images”)—are visual and textual records of early encounters that took place in Uawa between their ancestors and crew on Captain James Cook’s first two Pacific voyages of discovery in 1769 and 1773 (during the first of which the Tahitian translator Tupaia played a prominent role). Oral historical accounts of these visits, too, later recorded by missionaries and others, are to be combined in the repository with film footage, sound recordings, photographs, and maps made of Hauiti landscapes, artifacts, and people, through a project named Te Ataakura for an ancestress descended from Hauiti, the iwi’s eponymous progenitor (Ngata, Ngata-Gibson, and Salmond 2012). The purpose of the January wānanga was to discuss with Te Rauata’s technical developers (software writers) and scholarly collaborators (anthropologists and art historians) the principles that would shape the system’s formal architecture, and the kinds of data that would populate it. At the time it was not yet clear what sorts of digital entities would exist within the repository’s databases, the tabulated “objects” to which the different file-types (JPEGs, MP3s, PDFs, etc.) could be linked and made searchable through the tracing and tranching of different kinds of digital relationships. In order to establish the database schema, the developers needed Toi Hauiti to tell them what they wanted to put into the system, how these data would be related, and how they want users to access it. It emerged that Toi Hauiti not only want to include their whakapapa in the form of genealogies and oral histories within Te Rauata, they also want whakapapa to generate the structure of the database and the ontology of the system itself.5 Whakapapa (lit.: “to generate layers”) is a Māori-language term usually translated as “genealogy,” though it has migrated into everyday New Zealand English to signify distinctively Māori ways of reckoning relations of descent. In common parlance, one’s whakapapa is one’s family tree, and to have Scottish, Welsh, and Māori whakapapa is to descend from all those peoples, while using the term “wha kapapa” as opposed to, say, “lineage” or “family history” indicates familiarity with Māori notions of relatedness. In practice, and especially when used by speakers of Māori, it invokes a continuously unfolding generative complex of ideas, processes, and artifacts that may be considered both to exceed, and to be incommensurable with, genealogy. As a number of anthropologists have observed, indeed, whakapapa is a relational field—or fabric—of cosmogonic proportions (Prytz-Johansen 1954: 9; Sahlins 1985a: 195; Salmond 1991: 39–44; Tapsell 1997) encompassing everything there is: animals, plants, landscapes, and inanimate objects, as well as people. According to Marshall Sahlins, indeed, it constitutes a “veritable ontology” (1985b: 14). Whakapapa is thus much more than genealogy, narrowly conceived; from the beginning ethnographers and Māori have noted its centrality to every aspect of Māori existence, its role in shaping—if not determining—not only social relations but their very conditions of possibility. As it arose in the workshop, though, the whakapapa that would generate Toi Hauiti’s digital repository appeared less as an aspect of Māoritanga (Māori ways) in general than as a defining characteristic of “Hauititanga,” as Toi Hauiti call it, in particular—an especially “Hauitian” approach to the task at hand. Rather than emphasizing their distinctiveness in terms of being Māori, as opposed to the pākeha (non-Māori, European) anthropologists and software developers present, Hauiti were keen to convey their whakapapa on their own terms, to their own people—especially younger generations—as well as to those who were, in different ways, accustomed to thinking about relatedness rather differently. The problem that became the focus of the workshop was how to translate Hauiti’s whakapapa into a relational database schema, which would ultimately be rendered in the binary logic of code. The developers were being asked to perform a complex feat of ontological articulation—to write software that would reproduce and extend the ontology of Hauiti’s whakapapa, allowing it to encompass and continue to generate novel (in this case, digital) forms. This was not a new type of problem for Hauiti, who have been appropriating novel technologies and artifacts through whakapapa since long before the arrival of Cook’s first voyage at Uawa in the late eighteenth century. But it was new in the sense that this particular technology is explicitly concerned with the formalization, as well as generation, of relationships. The relational character of both whakapapa and relational databases created grounds for potential misunderstanding, since it was not yet clear whether they could be relational in the same way. Together with Toi Hauiti, the anthropologists’ role was to help translate Hauiti whakapapa for the developers and to observe and participate in the project of building the Te Rauata system as a whole. Helpfully for us, questions of whether different ontologies may be compared and translated—and how to tackle this ethnographically—is currently a hot topic of debate in anthropology and related disciplines (Alberti and Bray 2009; Alberti et al. 2011; Jensen 2010; Henare [Salmond], Holbraad, and Wastell 2007; Holbraad 2012; Latour 2009; Lloyd 2010; Pedersen 2011; Scott 2007, 2013; Venkatesan 2010; Paleāek and Risjord 2012). Although some critics have associated these developments with a move away from the grounded realities of fieldwork toward theory of increasing degrees of abstraction (e.g., Geismar 2011: 214; Laidlaw 2012), a more engaged reading acknowledges the pivotal role accorded ethnography as the primary source of anthropologically distinctive insights into matters of ontological difference (e.g., Crook and Shaffner 2011). In the Uawa workshop, certainly, the issue arose as a practical problem posed by Toi Hauiti, which all participants (including anthropologists) were recruited to address; how to render one dynamic complex of practices, processes, and artifacts (whakapapa) in terms of another (relational databases). The conceptual and practical challenges of this task, including the potential incommensurabilities—or untranslatability—of these different relational modes were immediately clear to all concerned. Another form of received wisdom about anthropology’s newfound interest in ontological matters is that it concerns forms of difference that bear a striking resemblance to those customarily grouped under the rubric of culture. True, those exploring the ethnographic potential of ontological approaches are interested in differences of the kind we are accustomed to thinking of as cultural, but their aim is precisely to redefine these in order to get past the culture concept’s well-rehearsed limitations—to come up with newly ethnographic ways of addressing “the difficult problem of how this difference is to be located, situated, delimited” (Candea 2010), as opposed to resolving such differences in advance—dissolving them—by invoking familiar concepts. “Ontologies” as a heuristic may not ultimately prove the best way forward, but these debates at least tackle the problems of culture head-on, instead of placing them to one side as if those earlier discussions had never happened. At present, furthermore, there is a productive lack of consensus as to what an “ontology” might be, anthropologically speaking, beyond the view (shared at least by those who use the term) that it is not “just another word for culture” (Venkatesan 2010). In our January workshop, certainly, the ontological differences that presented themselves did not map in any straightforward way onto cultures—Toi Hauiti were at pains to assert the particularity of their whakapapa as “Hauitian” (not simply Māori), and the software developers were mobilizing highly specialized terms and practices, many of which remained quite incomprehensible to the anthropologists (who, as fellow pākeha, might have been taken as cultural allies). The challenges of translation and comparison did not appear in cultural (or even culture-like) terms. It quickly emerged that the task of translating Hauiti whakapapa into digital form was to proceed simultaneously on a number of fronts and would involve a certain division of labor. While the schema of the database was being generated through the writing of software, work could begin on translating nondigital records—such as documents and photographic prints—into electronic files, by scanning and rephotographing them digitally. A mass of material already collated and conserved “under people’s beds” would be brought out and converted into digital formats ready for incorporation into the system. At the same time, records produced by and for Toi Hauiti and already in digital form, such as video-and sound-recordings of significant events and performances, would be prepared for uploading, while new records of present-day events were continually being created. The software developers needed to work closely with Toi Hauiti to ensure that the system being generated in code would indeed translate their whakapapa in the manner desired, allowing it to reproduce and extend itself in the form of digital and digitized artifacts and relationships. The developers requested a list of translations of key Māori terms being used during the workshop and in Te Rauata’s development. And Toi Hauiti themselves (including a Hauitian web designer not present at the workshop) would take the lead in translating/transforming the repository’s contents into web-based applications designed to engage a broader community of users. The anthropologists’ role in all this was thus a minor one, concerned primarily with supporting Toi Hauiti’s ongoing efforts to translate their whakapapa verbally and practically into terms that would facilitate the work of the developers. The discussion presented here is both about, and part of, that continuing process. The risks of translating their whakapapa into digital form were a major concern to Toi Hauiti, balanced with the technology’s positive potential, imagined especially in terms of its capacity to capture the interest of their young people, many of whom are enthusiastic digital citizens. Translation’s transformative effects, its capacity to “deform and subvert” the nature and significance of its object, is a factor of which the group is acutely aware. They are keen to exploit the distributed and generative character of web-based technologies to create multiple copies of digital objects in disparate locations, but are equally aware of its potential misuses. Throughout the development of Te Rauata, indeed, Toi Hauiti have been explicit about the importance of maintaining ownership, mana, and control over every aspect of the process, from the servers on which the database resides (located at a school within their tribal area), to determining who gets access to what levels of the system, to articles written about the project as a result of their collaboration with technical developers, Pacific art historians, and ethnographers. The involvement of anthropologists in the project was at Toi Hauiti’s direct initiative. Over the past two decades, the group has conceived and delivered a series of events and projects designed to revitalize their local economy and to stimulate cultural and artistic development among their people (Ngata, Ngata-Gibson, and Salmond 2012). Far off the main transit routes, Uawa is a small and relatively isolated coastal settlement with a population of around 700, dominated by descendants of Hauiti, a fighting chief who lived there in the sixteenth century. Once a prosperous agricultural center with a renowned whare wānanga (house of learning)—Te Rāwheoro, established centuries ago by Hauiti’s father Hingangaroa—the community had fallen on hard times in the late twentieth century when coastal shipping was abandoned in favor of inland roads as the preferred means of transporting goods and people between the North Island’s main centers. In an effort to improve the lives and prospects of the local community, especially their young people, Toi Hauiti was formed in 2000 as a working group of the Te Aitanga a Hauiti Charitable Trust, and charged with promoting and capitalizing on the iwi’s history of artistic and cultural excellence. Focusing on the legacy of Te Rāwheoro in the form of traditions of carving, weaving, oratory, performing arts, and tattoo that had survived the wānanga’s official closure in the mid-nineteenth century, the group swiftly launched a series of initiatives to attract outside interest and support, to reconnect with their dispersed taonga (ancestral treasures including carved and woven artifacts now in museums around the world) and to mobilize whakapapa connections with around 5,000 of Hauiti’s descendants living away from their tribal territories, throughout New Zealand and abroad. Among the first of these projects was Te Pou o Te Kani, the temporary exhibition I had visited of tribal artifacts and contemporary artworks drawn from local private collections and loans from museums, mounted in a local house on the main street of Tolaga Bay township for three months in 2003. While the primary aim of Te Pou o Te Kani was to build capacity within the iwi, showcasing the skills of local weavers, painters, and carvers, it also attracted national and international interest as possibly the first Māori tribal cultural center to open to the public. Among the visitors to the exhibition were anthropologists and curators from metropolitan museums and universities as far afield as the UK. Following the exhibition’s closure, Toi Hauiti resolved to expand the relationships thus established by launching a further series of initiatives in collaboration with a number of overseas institutions. These include a venture currently underway with botanists at Kew Gardens and the Natural History Museum in London to replant their riverbank with seeds that are the uri (descendants) of those collected in Uawa by Joseph Banks and by George and Reinhold Forster (naturalists on Cook’s second Pacific voyage). The Te Ataakura digital repository, being developed with the involvement of anthropologists and other staff at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), is another of these collaborative projects. Translating Māoritanga Anthropology’s image as a discipline specialized in cultural translation was not insignificant in Toi Hauiti’s decision to work with ethnographers. A substantial part of the group’s practical work involves attracting outside funding for their various community-based activities, and among obvious potential sources are monies earmarked for anthropological research and related “cultural” projects. Recognizing this, they approached Cambridge, activating existing ties with a view to collaborating on an initiative that would further their own continuing efforts to reconnect with the dispersed artifacts of Te Rāwheoro’s legacy in overseas museums, including taonga collected at Uawa during the Cook voyages. A formal partnership was established, and Toi Hauiti worked closely with the Museum during and after their first visit to Cambridge to draft a major grant application that expressed their aims in a form designed to appeal to UK funding bodies. This was a “successful” translation, economically speaking, as it provided funding to support travel for more Hauiti people to visit their taonga in overseas collections and attend international workshops, as well as technical equipment and expertise necessary to build the repository. It was clear, however, that for an initiative like Te Rauata to succeed, further resources would be needed to underwrite Toi Hauiti’s commitment to the project. A second grant application was submitted, this time conveying the group’s aspirations in the rather different terms required by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, a national body for Māori research funding in New Zealand. This award funded Te Ataakura, the research project led by Toi Hauiti, through which the group would produce their relational database in collaboration with technical developers as well as anthropologists and art historians from the universities of Auckland and Cambridge. In terms of the “ownership” of, and mana (authority, control) over the processes and artifacts of ethnographic translation, it is important to note that— unlike in other places, perhaps—Toi Hauiti’s decision to work with anthropologists was far from obvious. In New Zealand, and especially among Māori, the discipline of anthropology has long been regarded with considerable suspicion. From the 1970s, non-Māori scholars writing about Māori society have been vigorously challenged in seminar rooms and in print to justify their right and competence to translate cultural others, and departments of Māori Studies, employing many Māori academics, were established in New Zealand’s universities via wide-ranging programs of intellectual and political self-determination. In 1975, in response to growing indigenous pressure, the Waitangi Tribunal was founded by the government to hear Māori claims about specific failures to honor the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi, a document signed by tribal leaders and representatives of the British Crown in 1840, through which New Zealand was formally accessioned as a British colony. Since 1985, when the Tribunal gained retrospective jurisdiction to consider claims about breaches as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, anthropologists have been routinely recruited alongside sociologists and historians as expert witnesses by either claimants or the Crown,6 to give evidence in the Tribunal’s adversarial setting. Research priorities shifted into activist mode, as scholars took sides, spurred on by lawyers and their own loyalties to undermine each other’s testimony, leading to a certain segregation of “academic” from “Tribunal” scholarship, and to the emergence of historiographic and anthropological critiques questioning the objectivity and evidential status of “Treaty-centered histories” (Sharp and McHugh 2001: 4; van Meijl 2009). Today, few university-based anthropologists in New Zealand list contemporary Māori topics among their academic research interests (they work mainly on historical subjects or in Pacific islands and further afield). Further, although a significant number of distinguished Māori scholars trained as anthropologists during the twentieth century, few Māori students are following in their footsteps (Henare [Salmond] 2007), finding more direct routes to tribal advocacy and leadership—or simply better career prospects—in professional degrees such as law and commerce or the burgeoning range of iwi management qualifications offered by tertiary institutions. Although most Māori Studies departments began life as anthropological enclaves populated by (Māori and non-Māori) linguists and ethnographers, furthermore, many have since become oriented toward indigenous activism, maintaining a strong focus on the “decolonization” of scholarship. The few anthropologists who continue to publish on contemporary Māori topics tend to be based outside New Zealand, and their work is sometimes critical of these and related developments, rendering them through various brands of political-economic theory as by-products of an “ideology of traditionalism” (Webster 1998, 2002), as examples of strategic (or naïve) cultural construction (Kolig 2002), or as emblematic of “increasing hostility of Māori to foreign interest and research in Māori culture” (van Meijl 2009: 343).7 Looking at the scope of scholarly discourse about contemporary Māori culture, indeed, it is as if at least two quite separate conversations are going on that are mutually unintelligible—even untranslatable—in the sense that neither seems able to take the other’s claims seriously. One, playing out in Māori Studies departments, as well as in schools, government bodies, and other institutions charged with implementing cultural policy, takes Māoritanga (“Māoriness”) to be a range of received tenets, practices, and “spiritual” principles handed down from ancestors that remain fundamentally relevant today and that are held to define Te Ao Māori (often translated as “the Māori world view”). This version of Māori culture forms the basis of government policy with regard to Māori arts, education, healthcare, and in areas such as social welfare and the penal system. It is also implemented, by Māori and others, in a wide range of research programs and organizations (including Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, which funded Hauiti’s digital repository project) under the influential banner of Kaupapa Māori (Māori values) research, exponents of which have been strongly critical of anthropology, advocating instead a “by Māori, for Māori” approach in which indigenous subjects maintain authority and control over the research process and its outputs (Tuhiwai-Smith 1999). The second conversation, proceeding mainly in the pages of anthropology journals, takes Māori culture to be the contemporary predicament of New Zealand’s indigenous people as culturally marked members of a modern liberal-democratic polity, many of whom are engaged in strategic projects of identity construction for political and economic ends. This discussion sometimes takes the first as its object but with little attempt at engagement (these anthropologists write about Māoritanga but rarely address their arguments to its exponents).8 More than this, such scholarship often presents “Māori culture” in a form that participants in the first conversation could not recognize even if they wanted to, since its practical effect is to expose the foundations of Māoritanga and “the Māori world view” as fabricated and (at least implicitly) inauthentic inventions (examples in Henare [Salmond] 2007; Friedman 1992). In this intellectual and cultural-political milieu, Toi Hauiti’s decision to work with anthropologists in translating themselves to potential supporters and technical developers was thus unconventional, an indication of their mana and self-confidence in their ability to maintain authority over their own representation. Although determined not to get caught up in cultural politics—scholarly or other-wise—they are conscious of working within socio-political fields partly dominated by these peculiarly disjointed conversations. For these debates are also manifest outside the academy, in national politics and in inter- and intra-iwi tensions. Items in broadsheet newspapers and on television in New Zealand regularly feature incidents framed as clashes between economic rationalist objectives and “the Māori world view” that invariably beg the question, more or less explicitly, of whether “traditional Māori beliefs” are being invented in order to press a Māori politico-economic advantage. Much mileage is made out of such debates by politicians, with conservative party leaders successfully campaigning on the slogan “iwi Kiwi,” for example, in the 2007 election (we are all New Zealanders; down with cultural and tribal factionalism; up with minimizing—if not abolishing—special treatment for Māori!). Many iwi, furthermore, are themselves riven with disagreements about the degree to which their current leadership are tūturu (authentic, representative), or strategic individualists out for personal gain. Such conflicts have no doubt been going on for centuries but are now noticeably inflected by the conceptual opposition of timeless cultural integrity on one hand and strategic cultural identity construction on the other; incommensurable worlds which Māori, like all culturally marked peoples, are now routinely required to inhabit. Among my aims here is to test how a recursive approach to ethnography might help to address this impasse, arguably characteristic not only of New Zealand’s postcolonial predicament but also that of much contemporary ethnography. Translating Hauiti whakapapa into a relational database “ontology.” Among the issues of translation that became a focus of discussion around the table at the January wānanga in Uawa was how to clarify the differences between whakapapa and genealogy, so that the software developers could get a handle on the kinds of digital objects (including relationships) the Te Rauata digital repository would be asked to accommodate. In identifying whakapapa as that which would define and dictate the inclusion of everything to be entered in the database, Toi Hauiti began by introducing the concept of mea as an alternative to the term “thing” (which the developers had been using deliberately because of its semantic openness) to describe the material to be entered. Mea, they explained, is an encompassing term that can be used to embrace all the digital objects that would go into Te Rauata, from people to carved ancestral objects to landscapes to the very ties that bind them together within Hauiti whakapapa.9 In attempting to devise how these observations should be translated into the database schema, the developers asked Toi Hauiti to elaborate on the different kinds of mea within their whakapapa, which at this stage were being thought of (by at least some of the workshop participants) as belonging to discrete categories. A table was drawn up as follows (the rough translations given in square brackets were not included at the time): tangata / tipuna whenua / moana taonga / kōrero kaupapa whare atua [people / ancestors] [land / sea] [ancestral treasures / knowledge] [projects] [houses] [ancestor deities] Table 1 : First attempt to define tables for mea within Toi Hauiti whakapapa Toi Hauiti then explained that mea of each of these kinds could be related not only to mea of other kinds but also to mea of the same kind, so that all are (potentially) connected by the same quality of (digital) relationship. Inspired by this, the developers proposed the idea of putting all the mea of every kind into the same table in the database, explaining this by the analogy of a filing cabinet: rather than having six different drawers, the system could have just one: tangata / tipuna 1 tangata / tipuna 2 tangata / tipuna 3 whenua / moana 1 whenua / moana 2 whenua / moana 3 Taonga / kōrero 1 etc . . . Table 2 : Alternative database table structure for mea within Toi Hauiti whakapapa One of the developers then showed a series of different kinship diagrams as rendered by a popular genealogy software program on his laptop, in order to stimulate conversation about how relationships between different categories of data might be represented to Te Rauata users. Although his intention was to illustrate the fact that the same body of underlying data can be represented graphically in different ways, the images on screen immediately launched a discussion about whakapapa that kept circling back to the question of how it was similar or different to genealogical relatedness. Toi Hauiti introduced their whakapapa by giving the names of the ancestors that define Te Aitanga a Hauiti as an iwi (tribal grouping), beginning with Hingangaroa, the father of Hauiti, who established the famous school of learning Te Rawheoro. They talked about important taonga (ancestral treasures) that had belonged to some of these ancestors, some of which remain in their tribal territories. Among their taonga is the patu pounamu (greenstone hand weapon) Kapuārangi, which was returned to them by the Tairāwhiti Museum in 1999; it had been taken from a grave site some years earlier, and its repatriation was a major catalyst in their efforts to revitalize Hingangaroa’s legacy (Ngata, Ngata-Gibson, and Salmond 2012). A carved poupou (wall panel) associated with the ancestress Hinematioro, possibly gifted to the Tahitian Tupaia during Cook’s visit to Uawa in 1769 and now held in a museum in Tübingen, Germany, was another of the taonga mentioned. This ancestral figure has been visited by several delegations of Hauiti people in the past few years, events that were recorded in the German media and in a documentary for Māori Television, footage from which will be incorporated into the digital repository. Each of these mea appeared in their accounts as a nexus or knot-like tie encompassing myriad constellations of events, names, relationships, and initiatives dedicated to the perpetuation and continuing renewal of Hauititanga—that is, of being Te Aitanga a Hauiti. The anthropological participants in the workshop contributed to the discussion by drawing on their own knowledge of whakapapa, in relation to fieldwork experiences mainly among other iwi—albeit with close whakapapa ties to Te Aitanga a Hauiti—and to ethnographic and Māori scholarly literature on the subject. Recognizing, as the developers and Toi Hauiti also did, that conventional glosses of whakapapa as “kinship” or “genealogy” were of limited use in translating the kinds of connections Hauiti were invoking into the form of a relational database, they attempted together with Toi Hauiti to unpack what appeared as key points of contrast between whakapapa and genealogical relatedness. The following expands on some of the themes raised in the course of that exercise in comparative translation. Transforming translations: Whakapapa , the “Woven Universe”10 To translate whakapapa into conventional ethnographic idioms such as “kinship” or “genealogy” is inevitably to objectify it, in the sense of imposing a certain form on a mode (or rather modes) of relational dynamism that admit of no such fixed borders in their own terms and within their own perspectives—ontologies (in the sense both of theories and ways of being) that constantly extend themselves beyond their own self-defined (and self-defining) limits as an inevitable effect of an impetus toward generative encompassment. Such resistance to ethnographic translation is not peculiar to whakapapa, of course, and it has not deterred scholarly commentators or Māori from attempting to translate it into terms other than its own. As noted earlier, the notion of whakapapa as a relational fabric coextensive with the cosmos has been explored by a number of authorities, Māori and otherwise. Mythological accounts and whakapapa assembled by theologians, tribal experts, ethnographers, and other scholars together present a comprehensive and internally varied relational cosmology, versions of which have been laid out in detail by Māori scholars including the Reverend Māori Marsden (2003), Sir Āpirana Ngata and Pei Te Hurinui Jones ([1959] 2004), Mohi Ruatapu (in Reedy 1993), Teone Taare Tikao (in Beattie [1939] 1990), and H. T. Whatahoro (e.g., 1913), as well as being synthesized by ethnologists and anthropologists, notably Elsdon Best (e.g., 1924, 1982), J. Prytz-Johansen (1954), Te Rangi Hiroa (e.g., 1949), Anne Salmond (1991), and Gregory Schrempp (1992). This “monogenetic” cosmology, as Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962) called it, is ordered in papa or layers, linked and knotted through with descent lines extending (in its generalized form) from the origins of being in primal conception; through the stages of Te Pō (the night of cosmic potential); Te Kore (the void); the union and subsequent separation of Ranginui the sky and Papatuanuku the earth; down through their “godly” descendants to people in the present via lineages that may include whales, sweet potatoes, species of tree, and other flora and fauna. In daily life, such lineages are routinely encountered on marae (communal gathering complexes centered on an ancestral whare or meeting house, traditionally located on tribal lands but now often sited as well within schools, army barracks, and universities). They are embodied in the whare itself, which usually carries an ancestral name, and in the carvings and photographs that may line its internal walls. During ceremonial gatherings, whakapapa are recited by speakers at the beginning of their formal orations as a means of establishing their right to speak on that land, especially vis-à-vis other Māori present, as the “living face” of their ancestors. Although such formalities are often dispensed with in meetings between people who see each other regularly, they remain a requisite feature of official occasions, including receptions for important visitors, significant hui (tribal gatherings), and tangihanga (funerals). Even for those who don’t give formal speeches, some knowledge of “who’s who” at such events is important in establishing, for example, the tikanga (protocol) to be followed in welcoming guests onto the marae, since this can vary in significant ways among different iwi (tribal kin groups). For those who participate in marae life, then, knowledge of whakapapa (one’s own and others’) is indispensible to acting effectively and is one of several attributes that qualify one to take an active role in such proceedings.11 While this knowledge was traditionally preserved and disseminated orally, notably within whare wānanga (schools of learning) such as Te Rāwheoro at Uawa, many whakapapa were recorded after Māori took up the technology of writing in the early nineteenth century. Today it is common for Māori people to use genealogical websites to research their whakapapa, and social networking sites—on which “pages” are created for particular ancestors and marae as well as tribal groupings—have become popular loci for debating the intricacies and authenticity of specific lineages and connections (Brown and Nicholas 2012). As Toi Hauiti’s presentation of their whakapapa suggests, however, such lineages are mere threads within a thick and intricately knotted fabric comprising land- and seascapes, taonga (treasured possessions), kōrero (knowledge), kaupapa (projects), whare (houses), and atua (ancestral deities), as well as people. The whakapapa presented at the Uawa workshop, beginning with Hingangaroa, the father of Hauiti, for example, was later situated within a much longer lineage extending back through some forty papa or generations, including ancestors who had traversed the Pacific Ocean to arrive in Aotearoa (New Zealand) from homelands in Eastern Polynesia, through Tangaroa (“god” of the sea) to Papatuanuku (the earth), thus binding Hauiti’s people to every aspect of Te Ao Mārama (“the world of light” or “the natural world”). At their insistence, each of these layers came to be rendered within the database as separate rows in the table, each row containing the name of a specific ancestor. Part of the logic of putting all the mea in the same “drawer” of the digital “filing cabinet,” indeed, was that none of these names are pure categories. “Hinematioro,” for instance, is an ancestor within Hauiti’s chiefly line as well as a carved poupou in Tübingen, and while she could thus be created and then linked as two separate digital objects within the system she is also, as a knot in the fabric of whakapapa, one and the same. In this sense, it is tempting to think of mea not as digital “entities” but as Deleuzian multiplicities, “not truly one being but an assemblage of becomings,” and “not truly one being either . . . ‘belonging to the many as such, [and having] no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system’” (Viveiros de Castro 2009: 223–24, citing Deleuze 1968: 236). For the language of whakapapa is often unmistakably rhizomatic; chants recalling the origins of life invoke the growth of tubers or the germination of seeds and the unfurling of leaves and tendrils of creeping plants across the land, putting down new radicals as they expand from the original rootstock.12 It can also be arborescent: Māori Marsden, an authority recognized by Toi Hauiti, describes how “each thing . . . had its own root foundations in the ‘cosmic tree’ which was sometimes depicted as having its roots in heaven and its crown on earth” (1998: 9–11). Certainly, a Deleuzian reading of whakapapa would be a fascinating exercise, translating aspects of Māori relatedness in ways that would transform it, like all such evocations, in illuminating ways.13 Yet the task with which we were charged by Toi Hauiti was not to apply existing theory to their whakapapa, primarily for the benefit of other anthropologists, but to enable their whakapapa to reproduce and extend itself, allowing it to encompass and continue to generate novel (and especially digital) forms by way of novel (digital, anthropological) translations. The primary analytic purpose here is thus not to appropriate whakapapa into existing ethnographic conversations (though this is certainly an effect of these interventions), but to support Toi Hauiti’s project to allow their whakapapa to continue to speak for—and to—itself, as Wayne Ngata emphasizes: The discussions, and products of the discussions like Te Rauata [the digital repository] and other publications, need to speak to us when speaking about us because we are the guardians of that body of knowledge. (Ngata, personal communication, June 26, 2012) Here a fundamental aspect of whakapapa is being flagged that has not thus far arisen, namely, the responsibilities that its knowledge and belonging entails. Whakapapa lineages may be taonga in their own right; they are entrusted to certain people who act as their kaitiaki or guardians and who may place limits on their dissemination in whatever form. While many such lineages have been published either by or against the wishes of their caretakers, others remain closely guarded within families, often in the form of handwritten notebooks inherited from recent ancestors (Haami 2004: 23). Being translated into writing has impacted on the workings of whakapapa, as a number of scholars have observed, not least by making literary artifacts out of oral process. As anthropologist Joan Metge has speculated, for instance, one reason why written whakapapa are often regarded as tapu (sacred, restricted) may be because of the instrumental importance they acquired as historical documents used by colonial authorities as forms of legal evidence, especially in establishing title to land and other resources (1976: 167). Among the reasons why the kaitiaki of whakapapa wrote them down in the first place was the need to assert such rights vis-à-vis other Māori, especially rival groups but also sometimes close relatives, and in such circumstances a certain degree of discretion, even secrecy, was required. As the East Coast leader, politician, and ethnologist Āpirana Ngata observed, furthermore, translating oral whakapapa into texts affected the ways in which Māori conceived of such relationships. “If you visualize the foundation ancestors as the first generation, the next and succeeding generations are placed on them in ordered layers,” he pointed out, but in “setting out genealogies in writing or print,” he went on, the layers “are turned upside down . . . the foundation ancestors are placed at the top and descending lines traced downwards (cited in Salmond 1991: 345). Take or “root” ancestors, however, were understood to be planted in and grow from particular places, thus binding people and land together, as manifest in the burial of iwi (ancestral bones) or whenua (placentas) in the ground to generate tangata whenua (land people), so such an inversion had profound conceptual implications. Writing was not able to fix or reconfigure whakapapa relations altogether, however. Records show that large hui or gatherings were held in different tribal areas during the nineteenth century expressly to compare and debate different iterations of the same whakapapa lines, which were routinely contested during the same period in a profusion of Māori language newspapers. In these discussions, the mana (efficacy, authority) of particular speakers and their arguments decided which claims were authentic, and many people edited their whakapapa books in light of such exchanges. These discussions continue in tribal wānanga today, as well as on the Internet, and whakapapa thus continues to dynamically assert itself, as different groups and individuals continue to affirm the authority of their lineages over others. As a form of knowledge then, whakapapa is relational but not relativistic; its truths, no less than those of science, are of critical importance. What such truths are measured against is not (always) objective, however—“what really happened,” which simply cannot be known as one approaches its most fundamental layers—but rather other accounts judged as more or less authoritative on the basis of a complex variety of factors, some of which are distinctively Māori (e.g., principles such as mana), and some of which are not (the authenticity of archival documents). This is indeed what lends whakapapa its distinctive relational dynamism, enabling its most learned exponents to summon up connections to anything and anyone within its prodigiously inclusive embrace. When a tie to someone far outside one’s most immediate constellation of relationships is deemed expedient, for example, there are time-honored mechanisms for initiating such encompassing (and always political) relationships. Among different kin groups, for example, taumau (arranged) marriages, in which high-born women were gifted as taonga, were used well into the twentieth century to align the interests of distant relatives, even bitter enemies. Children were also sometimes gifted in this manner, although here the aim was not always to bring two lineages closer together—such prestations could be designed to ensure the continuance of a separate line that would otherwise die out or to assuage a wrong according to the principle of utu or just return (Henare 2003). Treasured taonga, too, named for ancestors who owned and used them, were presented by one lineage to another with similar purposes in mind. It is possible, for instance, that Hinematioro’s poupou, now in Tübingen, was presented to the Tahitian priest-navigator Tupaia following his learned exchanges with local tohunga, when he recited whakapapa from his native island of Ra‘iatea, to which Hauitian lineages were connected. Name exchanges or sexual hospitality too may have been used at Uawa, as they were by other Māori during the Cook voyages, since descent lines in the district still carry Tupaia’s name (Anne Salmond 2012). Such gifts (taonga, women, names) were commonly used by Māori kin groups to bind Europeans and other outsiders into their whakapapa. Well into colonial times, political leaders and heads of state were entrusted with ancient cloaks, adzes, pendants, and ear-ornaments, gifted in elaborate prestations in which the whakapapa of the taonga, preserved in the teachings of the whare wānanga, was sometimes recited by guardians who had kept this knowledge intact over many centuries. England’s royal family have been the recipients of many such “gifts” over the past two centuries from Māori leaders who have persistently sought to establish whakapapa ties to Britain’s senior chiefly line (Cory-Pearce 2006). Whereas rhizomic analogies of tubers and gourd plants are used to evoke the filial aspects of whakapapa, then—descendants spreading across a landscape, putting down roots in new places—relations of alliance generated through prestation are often summoned through the more widely used vocabulary of plaiting, stitching, and weaving. Although the term whakapapa itself appears to have proto-Polynesian roots that may relate to techniques of barkcloth production (the principal traditional means of making cloth in island Polynesia, in which layers of softened bark are beaten together), in Māori its workings are typically elaborated in the terminology of plaited mats and hand-knotted textiles. In whatu, for instance— the twining technique used to make cloaks from the muka fiber of harakeke (Phormium tenax)—each line of wefts is an aho, recalling the aho tipuna, the lineages linking papa or generational layers. To kanoi is to weave the main thread of a garment, and it is also to recite one’s own whakapapa (Salmond 1997: 207). Tukutuku panels inside meeting houses are woven by two people passing strands of split kiekie root between each other, and a tuku is a transaction (such as the gift of a taonga) establishing an ongoing reciprocal relationship. In raranga (plaiting), each section of a mat is a papa. These and other linguistic parities suggest rich homologies between such processes, their artifacts, and whakapapa, such that familiarity with these techniques offers purchase in attempting to translate the nature of these ties ethnographically (Henare [Salmond] 2005b). Te Arawa anthropologist Paul Tapsell, indeed, invokes these very analogies in describing the importance of gift-giving in establishing and maintaining whakapapa relations: Each taonga’s ancestral pathway has woven a pattern of human interconnections upon the land for generations, forming a korowai, or cloak, of knowledge. (Tapsell 1997: 335) When important taonga were gifted among Māori kin groups, Tapsell notes, their trajectories bound parties to the exchange into reciprocal relations sutured with threads poetically conjured in tauparapara or sayings that evoke the plunging and climbing flight of the tui bird, stitching sky and earth together. When taonga were presented in attempts to encompass outsiders, such as Europeans, however, the gift’s import was often lost in translation into other relational idioms and conceptions of ownership, with the result that many potent and precious ancestral taonga became detached from the whakapapa lineages to which they were integral. Hinematioro’s poupou, for instance, may have been appropriated by Banks following Tupaia’s death at Batavia (Jakarta) in 1770, making its way via the naturalist’s prodigious collection of natural and artificial “curiosities” to Germany.14 A similar fate met many of the precious cloaks, greenstone body adornments, and weapons presented to Cook and his men during their New Zealand sojourn by Hauiti’s people and others, most of which now reside in European museums and private collections. Taking such prestations as a transfer of property, Europeans often failed to grasp, let alone honor, the responsibilities extending from being bound into the whakapapa lines with which they had been invested (Henare [Salmond] 2005a). Anthropologists too, in their studies of “the gift,” Tapsell argues, have struggled both to understand and convincingly translate the relationships entailed by such prestations. Often relying on secondary sources instead of first-hand ethnographic experience, he notes, they have employed familiar concepts such as “inalienability,” “possession,” and “ownership” to generalize about an “incredible diversity which continues to surround taonga prestations,” describing Māori ties to their taonga in ways that Tapsell struggles “to reconcile with [his] Te Arawa experience” (1997: 362). Tapsell’s insistence on the specificity of his own tribal perspective, in contrast to the internally coherent “Māori culture” invoked by many other ethnographers is but one example of how being positioned within whakapapa’s fabric can inflect ethnographic translation. As in their treatments of the Māori gift, by contrast, anthropological analyses of Māori kinship have typically addressed whakapapa objectively, concerned to establish generalized definitions—notably of how various levels of relational groupings were in fact constituted within “traditional” Māori society. The mid-twentieth-century debate over whether hapū (typically glossed as subtribes) are or are not properly considered descent groups, for instance (involving Raymond Firth, Meyer Fortes, and Edmund Leach, among others), sought to refine a universally applicable terminology used to compare different kinship “systems” cross-culturally, and paid little heed to what those positioned within whakapapa themselves had to say on the matter (Schwimmer 1990). This discussion is ongoing (Sissons 2010, 2011; Webster 2011; van Meijl 2011), and its more recent iterations purport to demonstrate how far Māori ideologies and understandings of themselves and their culture depart from an empirically observable reality. These anthropologists appropriate the authority to act as cultural translators, deploying their distinctively demystifying insights to distill an objective truth out from competing (cultural, anthropological) representations. The dynamism of whakapapa affiliations, in which hapū periodically reconfigure their relational networks, creating new hapū or iwi alliances, has thus offered intriguing puzzles to anthropologists keen to lock down universal principles behind diverse “ambilineal,” “bilateral,” and “optative” kinship practices. Whereas for a time it seemed possible to set aside the political context in which such transformations were taking place, however, and to write as if one’s generalized analyses had no direct political salience, this all changed in New Zealand when the Waitangi Tribunal gained jurisdiction over claims dating back to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Suddenly it became critical for Māori people to be able to prove membership of historically recognized and documented kin groups, to which present-day rights to land and other resources attached. Kinship studies were catapulted from seminar rooms into court-like settings, as anthropologists’ views (alongside those of historians) on what counted as an authentic hapū or iwi were endowed with the status of impartial evidence. Māori stakeholders weighed in on debates formerly conducted in an ambience of scholarly detachment, asserting their whakapapa with a force commensurable with the degree to which their identity and well-being were at stake. It is in this irrevocably politicized context that scholars now write about whakapapa, even though some continue to attempt to assume positions of objective detachment. While such contested settings may be seen to handicap ethnographic translation, forcing anthropologists to write with an eye to the political consequences of their work, they may also be regarded as a stimulus, impelling one to address aspects of ethnographic experience that are perhaps possible to marginalize or ignore altogether in other places. In the case of whakapapa, Māori interventions in what were once abstruse theoretical debates have raised important questions as to whether scholarly commentaries on matters such as kinship can ever be regarded as politically innocent. They ask, both explicitly and implicitly, whether it is desirable—let alone possible—to separate such questions out from politics and other aspects of existence, analytically, in the first place. Most importantly, from an ethnographic perspective, such interventions remind us that Māori themselves have made numerous attempts to translate whakapapa’s workings into a diverse range of idioms, translations that might equally be regarded as exercises in ontological articulation—creative attempts to address the incommensurabilities of whakapapa and genealogy, often from within whakapapa’s own, ever mobile, perspectives. Aside from the work of Māori anthropologists (examples in Henare [Salmond] 2007), indeed, there are many other instances of Māori people deploying whakapapa’s generative cosmology to encompass and translate alterity. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example, a series of Māori “prophet movements” sprang up around New Zealand, spearheaded by charismatic leaders who, inspired by missionary teachings, espoused messages weaving Māori cosmology and Christian theology together. While some of these movements lasted a few years before fading away or were actively repressed, others endure in the present. Whereas mainstream Christian denominations too still enjoy a strong following among Māori, furthermore, Mormonism continues to attract a disproportionate share of the Māori population. Its creed about the ancient settlement of New World territories by the Lost Tribes of Israel has been extended to Polynesia, and resonances asserted between the church’s teachings and Māori cultural practices and language (Barber 1995). Among the most significant perceived commonalities that have attracted Māori to the sect is the church’s emphasis on recording and reassembling genealogical lineages, and their family history resources are commonly used for whakapapa research. Attempts to articulate whakapapa in the terms of other relational idioms are not confined to religious or ethnographic spheres, however; considerable institutional support and public investment is now dedicated to establishing how whakapapa, among other principles regarded as distinctively Māori, may be brought to bear on areas of activity as diverse as criminal punishment, environmental conservation, and the science of genetic modification (Henare 2003). As such bodies of research develop, a great range of “Māori” ideas about issues such as relatedness and how they should be translated into public policy and practice is brought increasingly into view. Whereas some would take this variety as evidence of the demise of an authentically coherent “Māori” cultural perspective in the face of acculturation and hybridity, it could equally be seen as proof of whakapapa’s resurgent vitality. For there are strong continuities here in the ways in which the dynamic knotwork of relations never settles. What such differences throw into relief, in this light, is how many Māori people are accustomed to moving between ontological positions in which different things are possible—for instance those of “science” and “the Māori world view”—perhaps much as they routinely shift between their (say) “Te Aitanga a Hauiti” and “Ngāti Porou” identities. Such transitions, between one’s several taha or “sides,” and the ability to smoothly negotiate them, are indeed a defining characteristic of whakapapa-in-action (Anne Salmond 2012a). What is generally made less explicit, at least in scholarly analyses, however, is how this inherent motility allows the “worlds” whakapapa encompasses and generates to proliferate and be scaled. Switching from one position to another may involve flipping between different (and more-or-less parallel) dimensions (Hauititanga > Arawatanga; Te Ao Māori > science) or shifting up and down within a scale, from lesser to greater levels of encompassment (whanau > hapu > iwi), or the reverse. The nature of such movements are also relationally defined, so that whereas in one instance a switch from, say, a “Ngāti Porou” to a “Te Aitanga a Hauiti” identity might be framed as a movement from one iwi to another, on other occasions, and from within different positions in that whakapapa, it might appear as one from a larger, encompassing federation to a smaller, more hapu-like collective. Yet—contrary to anthropological attempts to create stable typologies out of such relations, thus locking down what is, and is not, an “authentic” iwi or hapu—these were never “objective,” fixed positions or “worlds” in the first place. Rather, such whakapapa constellations are inherently relational, in that what they are may differ in the terms of the particular lineage or nexus from which they are apprehended. Again, this does not make them relativistic: the seniority and mana of one position or line—and its ability to encompass and define others—may be defended to the death. The rub is, of course, that in practice those making such claims do not infrequently find themselves in conflict and among the main challenges faced by those operating within whakapapa’s terms, historically and in the present, has been the difficult (often impossible) task of maintaining such differences in a state of fertile and generative tension. Conclusion Lévi-Strauss once claimed, “it is in the last resort immaterial whether . . . the thought processes of the South American Indians take place through the medium of my thought, or whether mine take shape through the medium of theirs” ([1969] 1983: 13). Despite the power of his vision of an anthropology transformed by indigenous philosophies, then, his assumption of the role of chief translator—even author—of such thinking seems to imply a degree of hubris. Although in whakapapa’s terms, as we have seen, shared substance—or a certain pedigree—are insufficient alone to qualify an orator to speak on behalf of others, the way one locates oneself—and is located—within its matrices of relationships, certainly matters. This positioning, which is indeed the only possible source of such authority from whakapapa’s perspective, is not without limits, of course, most obviously those conferred by recognized parentage. At the same time, even these factors may be contested, their significance reconfigured, and the degree to which one lives up to the demands of mana (personal authority, efficacy) as well as principles such as utu (just return, reciprocity), and whanaungatanga (responsibility, especially to one’s closest kin), also work to determine whether one’s authority to translate others’ identity and thinking is recognized. For anthropologists, whakapapa thus entails a commitment to building and actively maintaining ongoing relationships with one’s interlocutors, who—like Toi Hauiti—may assert their own mana over the ethnographic process and its artifacts. Such ties obviously entail restrictions, on what can be translated, for example, as well as how and by whom, but such limitations need not be negatively construed. On the contrary, they may productively refocus one’s attentions in ways that can generate insights that might not have been arrived at in other settings. For a recursive anthropology, which would mobilize such ties in the service of disciplinary renewal, whakapapa thus begs some important questions, for example about the relationship of such writing to “indigenous” scholarship. So far, it seems, the main role allocated to anthropology’s interlocutors within ontological approaches is that of muse—a fertile and malleable resource for the scholarly work of conceptual innovation. Yet, as the ontologists acknowledge, many of anthropology’s subjects have long pursued their own projects of “controlled equivocation” and “inventive definition,” creatively articulating their differences in practice and in print. What might purported (as)symmetries between these different “anthropologies” entail? Why are these voices silent, and silenced by omission, in current anthropological discussions of ontological alterity? What is it, exactly, about selfconsciously “indigenous” voices in particular, that seem incommensurable with ontographic concerns? The issues I am raising here are not (just) about the kinds of privileged insights “natives” may or may not have into their own culture and being (cf. Ramos 2012). Rather—to put it negatively—why should those who locate themselves selfconsciously outside a given constellation of relations be in a better position to analyze them ethnographically than those who explicitly address their own positioning within those matrices as well as—or instead of—externally? Is it only anthropologists who engage in projects of what Viveiros de Castro (2004: 4) terms “external comparisons” (as opposed to those carried out “within” a given culture)? And are not all such comparisons, anyway, internal to particular, relationally defined, perspectives? Surely ethnography, by definition, requires one precisely to negotiate one’s own transitions between such positions, drawing on different “sides.” Those who skillfully navigate whakapapa’s dynamic matrices are experienced handlers of such apparent incommensurabilities—expert translators of alterity into affinity, and of alliance into otherness. Accustomed to shifting between worlds and to scaling their networks strategically, they are schooled in traditions geared to facilitating smooth transitions between alternative universalisms and to the creative encompassment of those who (at least initially) appear as other. Within whakapapa’s terms, indeed, “incommensurability” and “untranslatability”—and what might be termed “ontological alterity” in general—are relational states, open to generative transformation like all the nexi and threads (people, landscapes, taonga, etc.) that make up its inherently mobile fabric. How this will translate into the relational database Te Rauata remains to be seen, but it is clear that Hauiti’s whakapapa will productively transform itself, and be transformed, in the process. That whakapapa is constantly being (re)negotiated, though, does not make it relativistic, since how one is recognized in whakapapa’s terms is of vital importance. For anthropology this means that being defined by, and living up to the demands of, certain kinds of relationships—and addressing the unavoidably political implications of that predicament—are aspects of the ethnographic project that cannot, and need not, be set aside. Rather, approaching such conditions as productive stimuli, it might be allowed that they inflect the ways in which “culture” continues to be “translated” to a greater degree than is sometimes admitted. In the final part of this article, to appear in the next issue of HAU, I apply these insights to a broader discussion looking at the recursive methodology advocated by exponents of the “ontological turn” in relation to recent criticisms leveled at their projects. Revisiting a series of earlier debates—about linguistic relativism, incommensurable paradigms, and radical translation—I consider how terminology appropriated from those (ongoing) discussions may invite people to think of current ontological approaches within social anthropology in similar terms. Yet such associations not only obscure the debt most anthropological “ontologists” acknowledge to European (post)structuralist philosophy, as opposed to the mainly North American thinkers whose arguments I rehearse. They also elide the fact that these recent approaches gain a considerable part of their momentum from a set of issues that may be thought of as distinctively postcolonial. Seen in this light, I argue, charges such as orientalism, synchronism, and excessive relativism, when leveled at the “ontological turn,” may distract from more profound (and no less political) issues that its exponents must now address. Acknowledgments I am especially indebted to Giovanni da Col for his dedicated editorial guidance and encouragement—inspiring and unrelenting in equal measure—without which this paper would surely never have been completed. Also to Wayne Ngata and Hera Ngata-Gibson of Toi Hauiti, whose invitation to work on their project and ongoing advice and support helped generate much of its content. The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (NZ). Liana Chua, Sean Dowdy, Ilana Gershon, Keith Hart, Carl Hogsden, Martin Holbraad, Charlotte Joy, Marcos Lanna, Billie Lythberg, Wayne Ngata, Maja Petrovic-Steger, Anne Salmond, Phil Swift, and Nicholas Thomas, as well as four anonymous reviewers, were kind enough to read drafts and offered many important comments and suggestions, not all of which I have been able to fully address. 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Transformer les traductions (partie I). « Le propriétaire de ces os » Résumé : La contribution récente du « tournant ontologique » en anthropologie a contribué à transformer le rôle familier de l’ethnographie en un mode de traduction. En lieu et place des conceptions populaires de l’anthropologie sociale comme la transmission plus ou moins fidèle de significations culturelles des peuples autres, ces approches assignent à l’ethnographe la tâche de générer de nouveaux concepts et terminologies — ceux qui sont « nôtre singulièrement » plutôt que les « leur » — à travers une synthèse créative de la philosophie et de l’expérience de terrain. Ceci étant, le rôle que la « pensée indigène » (et même les « penseurs indigènes ») est invitée à jouer dans ce projet et ce discours en plein essor reste flou. J’aborde ici cette question par l’ethnographie d’une initiative conduite à Te Aitanga a Hauiti Māori en Nouvelle-Zélande pour construire un référentiel numérique de taonga tribaux (artefacts ancestraux, images, connaissances). Dans ce récit, rédigé dans l’esprit des objectifs de leur projet, je considère ce que les efforts des Hauiti pour traduire leur whakapapa (généalogies et histoires orales) dans des formes numériques pourraient impliquer pour une anthropologie qui chercherait à recadrer les questions de différence en mobilisant ces « anthropologies » indigènes au service d’un renouvellement disciplinaire. Ces connaissances ethnographiques plantent alors le décor pour une deuxième discussion — à paraître dans le prochain numéro de HAU — à propos de la manière dont les approches ontologiques cherchent à transformer l’anthropologie, ce en rapport aux débats antérieurs sur les difficultés de traduire l’altérité culturelle et ontologique. Amiria J. M. SALMOND is a Research Consultant on the ERC-funded Pacific Presences project at the University of Cambridge and a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland. A former Senior Curator and lecturer at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), she has also curated and designed exhibitions at the Tairāwhiti Museum in New Zealand. Research interests include Māori weaving (whatu and raranga), artifact-oriented ethnography, cultural and intellectual property, digital taonga, and ontological approaches to social anthropology. Her book Museums, anthropology and imperial exchange (2005) was published by Cambridge University Press and she coedited Thinking through things: Theorising artefacts ethnographically (2007). Amiria J. M. SalmondDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of AucklandPrivate Bag 92019Auckland, New ZealandPhone: +49 175 826 7120amiriasalmond@gmail.com ___________________ 1. Later in this article, and in the second part (to be published in the next issue of HAU) I consider what is meant by this term, including critiques of the very idea of thinking about current preoccupations with ontological questions as a “turn” within the discipline. 2. As Holbraad is at pains to point out, this phrasing sits uncomfortably with his more recent iterations of ontologies as emphatically “not phenomena out there to be found,” but rather “analytic artifices” (2012: 255) along the lines of Roy Wagner’s “cultural invention,” which we ethnographers posit to account for what appear to us as “conceptual divergences” between our informants and ourselves. He nonetheless remains strongly committed to the principle of analytic recursivity, which he describes in terms of allowing the “substance” or “content” of ethnography to impact on the terms of its own analysis. 3. In the sense of grounded in a concept of the anthropos. 4. For example Argyrou (1999, 2002); Henare [Salmond], Holbraad, and Wastell (2007); Holbraad (2012); Viveiros de Castro (1998). 5. In information science, “ontologies” are taxonomic hierarchies designed to enable data to be shared across diverse systems and platforms. This usage differs substantially from deployments of the term in anthropology (Amiria Salmond 2012). 6. Now represented by the New Zealand government. 7. This does not of course exhaustively describe current ethnographic scholarship on Māori subjects. Scholars based outside New Zealand whose work does not conform to this characterization include Haidy Geismar, Ilana Gershon, Daniel Rosenblatt, and Gregory Schrempp. 8. There are also some Māori critics of the “traditionalist” vision of Maoridom promulgated by Kaupapa Māori scholarship and its allies, who do address their arguments directly to their opponents. See for example Tau (2001), who attributes the “death” of matauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) among his own Ngai Tahu iwi (tribe) to the collapse of whakapapa as “the fabric that held the traditional world view together.” 9. Wayne Ngata notes that the term may be considered by some to be derogatory, but was deployed “because of its characteristic as a common denominator.” 10. The woven universe (2003) is the title of the Reverend Māori Marsden’s book on Māori cosmology. 11. Others may include fluency in the Māori language and (with regard to oratory) gender, depending on the marae (women do not generally speak formally on marae except in some tribal areas, for example that of Whanau-a-Apanui, farther up the East Coast from Uawa). 12. See also Prytz-Johansen (1954) on the concept of tupu. 13. See for example DeLoughrey (2007) who offers just such an analysis. 14. As Anne Salmond has noted, Banks made no secret of his proprietorial interest in Tupaia, for whom he had assumed financial responsibility when the Tahitian opted to join the Endeavour in the Society Islands, writing, “I do not know why I may not keep him as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbours do lions and tygers at a larger expense than he will ever probably put me to.” When Tupaia died Banks assumed ownership of his personal possessions.  

The value of language and the language of value This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau3.2.004 The value of language and the language of value A view from Amazonia Alexandra Y. AIKHENVALD, James Cook University The concept of value is manifold. Something judged good, proper, and desirable in human life is judged as valuable. Being valuable may have economic connotations of worth—to do with the degree to which desirable objects may bring material benefits. In this article, I concentrate on the Tariana, a representative of the Vaupés River Basin linguistic area in the far corner of northwest Brazilian Amazonia. I focus on how the value of language as the mark of identity is expressed in Tariana. I then turn to the expression of meanings to do with evaluation (“good, proper, as it should be” versus “bad, adverse, other,” or “correct” versus “incorrect”), with a special focus on the danger of otherness, as an exponent of a pan-Amazonian perspective on the condition of alterity. The rampant degree of language loss contributes to additional tensions between the traditional value of language knowledge and the modern situation. The concept of monetary worth came into the society, and the language, through the introduction of market economy within the last two or three decades. At the end, the findings are put within the perspective of Amazonian languages and cultures in general. Keywords: Amazonian languages, alterity, value, Tariana, Arawak family Value in language The concept of value is manifold. Something judged good, proper, and desirable in human life may be looked upon as valuable. Having value may go together with economic connotations of worth—that is, the degree to which desirable objects may bring material benefits. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “value” in English (and also French, Portuguese, and some other familiar IndoEuropean languages) extends beyond worth and evaluation and into “the ability of a thing to serve a purpose or cause an effect, as in news value” (s.v. “value”). These overtones belong to the domain of English semantics and usage, and are a matter for a different study. The ideas of value are articulated through language use. As shown throughout this volume, values as cultural representations can be expressed in numerous ways, for example through ritual objects and acts. Language is the ubiquitous means of expression of “idea-and-values.” How do peoples from nonmainstream minority cultures articulate value judgments in general? How, if at all, do they value the languages they speak? And what means do they use to express concepts of worth and comparative evaluation of objects, people, activities, and so on? These are some of the questions to be addressed here. In this paper, I focus on the Tariana group, a representative of the Vaupés River Basin linguistic area located in the far corner of northwest Brazilian Amazonia, and speakers of the only Arawak language in that area. The area is characterized by multilingual exogamy: one must marry someone who speaks a different language. Language is inherited through one’s father, and is the badge of a person’s identity. Language proficiency and the ability to speak the language “correctly” are of primary importance. The Tariana language is highly endangered. For a variety of historical reasons it is being rapidly replaced by Tucano, the major indigenous language of the Vaupés, and by Portuguese, the national language of Brazil. This creates a discrepancy between traditional values placed upon being able to master one’s father’s language and modern reality: many Tariana speak a “borrowed” language, and are thus not “up to standard.” As fewer and fewer people speak the language, some purists relent: code-switching with Tucano and with Portuguese is always noticed but not always considered to be a mark of incompetence (as it was a decade ago). Language as a synchronic system of expressing the notions of value and morality (in the spirit of Robbins, part one of this special issue) and the social conventions of language use are intricately linked to practices of valuation (also see Henry, Otto, and Wood, part two of this special issue, on the emergent processes of valuation in a broader context). In the Tariana area, widespread language loss and the introduction of commodity exchange have far-reaching consequences for the traditional articulation of language and valuation. Rampant language loss does not result in downgrading the value and the importance of the language. Its consequence is a discourse of nostalgia for the olden days when the Tariana people could live up to the expectations of their ancestors, and be “proper people.” And the value of knowledge of one’s genealogy gradually starts to override the importance of the language as it is being lost. The linguistic expression of value in Tariana is manifold. Value judgments often refer to someone’s linguistic proficiency or lack thereof. I focus on a discussion of the terms for “good, proper, as it should be” versus “bad, adverse, (an)other, different.” Terms for “(an)other,” “otherwise,” and “elsewhere” have pronounced negative overtones. That is, value does not necessarily go together with desirable alterity among the Tariana, despite the ongoing quest for material wealth in terms of Western goods. The concept of “monetary worth” is making its way into the society. It is also talked about more and more, thanks to the development of a market economy within the last two or three decades. The versions of the Tariana origin myth told over a few years reflect these changes. The inclusion of the non-Indians and their monetary wealth in the origin myth reflects the societal change and concomitant newly introduced values. However, white traders are outside the classificatory kinship system. We start with a brief overview of the people, the language, and the traditional setting. Language, people, and identity: The Tariana of the Vaupés River Basin The traditional setting The multilingual Vaupés River basin in northwest Amazonia spans adjacent areas of Brazil and Colombia. It is a well-established linguistic area whose major social feature is an obligatory societal multilingualism that follows the principle of linguistic exogamy: As Tariana elder Leonardo Brito put it, “those who speak the same language as us are our brothers, and we do not marry our sisters.” Language affiliation is inherited from one’s father, and is a badge of identity for each person. The major features of the area are summarized in Box 1 (Aikhenvald 2012a: 82). Box 1: “We don’t marry our sisters”: Marriage network and areal diffusion in the Vaupés River Basin linguistic area Languages spoken: East Tucanoan and Tariana (Arawak) Principles of social organization: members of the exogamous network marry someone who speaks a different language: a Tariana cannot marry a Tariana, but can marry a Tucano, a Wanano, a Piratapuya, etc. Shared kinship system is of Iroquoian type. Subsistence and settlement: banks of the Vaupés River; slash-and-burn agriculture; fishing, some hunting, and limited gathering. Multilingualism: one’s father’s language is a badge of one’s identity and determines whom one marries. One also speaks (and speaks well!) the language of one’s mother and of one’s mates in the longhouse whose mothers speak other languages in the area. Language etiquette: (a) Keep your languages strictly apart: inserting forms from another language into one’s own is seen as a mark of incompetence. (b) Speak your father’s language to your father and your siblings. If you want to be polite to other people, speak their father’s language to them. Outcomes: hardly any borrowed forms, numerous similar categories and functions. What makes Tariana crucial: comparing Tariana with its Arawak-speaking relatives outside Vaupés shows what categories are due to East Tucanoan impact. Languages traditionally spoken in the area belong to three unrelated genetic groups: East Tucanoan, Arawak, and Makú. Speakers of East Tucanoan languages (Tuc-ano, Wanano, Desano, Tuyuca, Barasano, Piratapuya, and a few others), and of an Arawak language, Tariana, participate in the exogamous marriage network that ensures obligatory multilingualism. The Makú are outside the marriage network. The marriage rules are not fully straightforward: for instance, traditionally the Tucano do not marry the Barasano and the Desano do not marry either Tariana or Wanano. The Desano are considered younger brothers of the Tariana (this resonates with some hypotheses about their erstwhile Arawak origins: see Aikhenvald 2002). Every group has preferential marriage partners (for instance, the Tariana of Santa Rosa prefer to marry the Piratapuya, and the Tariana of Periquitos tend to marry the Wanano).1 The exogamy itself is rooted in the distinction between consanguinity (identified with speaking the same language) and affinity (relating to speaking a different language). These two dimensions, and their interrelationships, define the Vaupés society (in the spirit of the principles formulated by Viveiros de Castro 2001). A striking feature of the Vaupés linguistic area is a strong cultural inhibition against language mixing, viewed in terms of borrowing morphemes. Recognizable loans are traditionally considered tokens of linguistic incompetence. Those who violate the principle of keeping languages strictly apart and commit the “crime” of mixing their languages by introducing lexical and grammatical loans (Tariana nañamura na-sape [3pl-mix 3pl-speak] “they speak by mixing”) are ridiculed as incompetent and sloppy. Those people are often referred to, behind their backs, as me)da-peni (be.good.for.nothing-ANIMATE.PLURAL) or as “those who are good for nothing” (translated into Portuguese as à toa). This is the first value term to be mentioned here—we return to its other overtones below. A note on the Tariana language is in order. The overwhelming majority of forms are of Arawak origin. But the structures—that is, the meanings of the forms, and the grammatical categories—are overwhelmingly Tucanoan. Much of what will be said below is shared with Tariana’s East Tucanoan-speaking neighbors and relatives. The Tariana in the context of the Brazilian Vaupés THE LANGUAGE SITUATION Multilingualism, social organization, and language attitudes of the peoples of the Vaupés River Basin area on the Colombian side have been discussed in a variety of sources, among them Christine Hugh-Jones (1979), Stephen Hugh-Jones (1979, 1988, 1992), A. P. Sorensen, Jr. (1967), Jean Jackson (1974, 1983), and Alcionílio Alves da Silva Brüzzi (1977). The Brazilian side is markedly different: linguistically so, because of the presence of a non-Tucanoan language (Tariana); and socially so, because of a greater degree of cultural disintegration and loss thanks to a strong impact of the Salesian missionaries, and—prior to that—continuous contacts with the non-Indians, especially during the rubber boom. According to the language etiquette of the area, one is supposed to speak the language one identifies with—that is, one’s father’s language—to one’s siblings, father, and all his relatives, and one’s mother’s language to one’s mother and all her relatives. However, during past decades the traditional pattern of language transmission in the Brazilian Vaupés has been affected by a number of factors. When Salesian missionaries established themselves in the area in the early 1920s, they imposed Western-style schooling on the Indians, and forced children into boarding schools where they were made to speak just one language, Tucano. Salesians aimed at civilizing Indians. This implied not only making them into “good Christians.” Salesians also considered the traditional multilingualism of the area a “pagan” habit, and strived to make Indians monolingual “like other civilized people in the world.” The Salesians in the Brazilian Vaupés chose the Tucano language because it was, numerically, the majority language. Salesian missionaries practiced forceful relocation of Indian settlements closer to mission centers—where the Indians could be more easily controlled—and amalgamation of different settlements, eliminating the traditional longhouse system and introducing European-style nuclear family houses. Another reason for the disintegration of traditional multilingualism was a breakdown of traditional father-child interaction: with the need for cash-flow, all able-bodied men would go off to work for Brazilians—undertaking such tasks as collecting rubber and gold-mining. As a result, children would have a considerably reduced degree of exposure to their father’s language. This resulted in the spread of Tucano, and, to a lesser extent, of other East Tucanoan languages, to the detriment of Tariana. At present, Tucano is rapidly gaining ground as the major language of the area, at the expense of other languages in the Brazilian Vaupés (which does not appear to be the case in Colombia). The main consequence of the recent spread of the Tucano language in the Brazilian Vaupés is the gradual undermining of the one-toone identification between language and ethnic group. Another linguistic success story was the implementation of Língua Geral Amazônica2 by Catholic missionaries across the whole northwest Amazonia. This language is also known as Nhêengatú, with a literal meaning of “good speech.” The spread of Nhêengatú started in the seventeenth century in the areas of Maranhão and Pará, as a simplified—or semicreolized—variety of Tupinambá (a Tupí-Guaraní language). It was implemented as a major language of interethnic communication in the interior Amazon from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, to the detriment of a great many indigenous languages (including many Baniwa varieties). It is still in use in the Upper Rio Negro area but is now partly endangered (Rodrigues 1986). Many descendants of the now extinct Baré identify with this language as their ancestral heritage. Some older speakers of Tariana used to know a certain amount of Língua Geral and called it Baré (with no reference to “good language”). Nowadays schools operate almost exclusively in Portuguese. This language (known as Yalana yarupe “non-Indian language,” or “white man’s language”) is rapidly gaining ground, and may, in the future, pose a threat even to Tucano. The maintenance of the Tariana language, and the self-esteem of its speakers, were boosted by the establishment of the Association of the Tariana of the Middle Vaupés in 2000, whose founding president Jovino Brito is a fluent speaker of the language, an expert in the traditional lore, and nowadays a healer.3 Following a general trend toward establishing specialized ethnic schools in the Upper Rio Negro area, a Tariana special school (Portuguese escola diferenciada), Enu irine idakini (“The grandchildren of the blood of Thunder”) was established in 2005. The name of the school reflects the origin myth of the Tariana as a whole. Its founding director Rafael Brito is the youngest speaker of the Santa Rosa variety, and fluent in the language. The special school offers the same subjects as other schools, in addition to at least two hours a week of the Tariana language. After a rocky start, the school is now well established; as of second semester 2012, the language is being taught by two fluent speakers: Emílio Brito (of Santa Rosa) at secondary level and Edivaldo Muniz (of Periquitos) at primary level. That representatives of different dialect varieties teach the language at school reflects a present day tendency to allow for variation and relent on the strict adherence to just one variety (documented in Aikhenvald 2002, 2003b). TO KNOW A LANGUAGE: A VAUPÉS PERSPECTIVE Language is the badge of identity, and the major defining feature of the societal exogamy throughout the Vaupés area.4 People who marry someone who speaks the same language as themselves are said to be “like dogs” (Tariana tsinu kayupeni). Those who do not speak their own language are treated with condescension and pity (and refer to themselves this way as well: Tariana na-sawaya na-sape [3plborrow 3pl-speak] “they speak by borrowing”). One can claim to speak a language only if one has a right to do so: that is, if it is one’s father’s language. I have been a witness to a few situations whereby an Indian would deny speaking a language they had just been speaking fluently because this is not “their” language. To know a language in the Vaupés context means to know it through and through. Only those who have a native-speaker-like proficiency in a language would acknowledge they actually know it (also see Sorensen 1967 and Grimes 1985). The Tariana refer to those who know just the names of flora and fauna but cannot produce a story in the language as nepitaneta-mia-ka pa-sape-li sede (3pl+name+CAUSATIVE-ONLY-RECENT.PAST.VISUAL IMPERSONAL-SPEAK-NOMINALIZATION not.have “they only call names, there is no talking”). The term me)dapeni (“those who are good for nothing”) is often used to describe those who cannot tell a story and can only “call names” in a language.5 Speakers who fail to use the right markers of information source are also me)da-peni. We return to this below. The growing language loss threatens peoples’ identity. Full knowledge of a language is gradually ceasing to be accessible to many people, since the majority of languages other than Tucano have become endangered. Some telling figures are in Table 1. Table 1: The Brazilian Vaupés: Languages and their speakers  TucanoPiratapuyaWananoDesanoCubeoTariana People4,5001,2321,0001,8003,0001,500 Language speakers4,50020020015030095 The discrepancy between the number of those who belong to a tribe and those who actually speak the language is particularly marked in the case of Tariana. There are hardly any children learning Tariana: the youngest speaker of the Santa Rosa variety is now in her early twenties. The spread of Tucano is also leading to the gradual disappearance of one of the most fascinating multilingual areas of the world, and the areal phenomena associated with it. The Tariana close up THE TRADITIONAL CLANS Tariana, the only representative of the Arawak family within the Vaupés area, used to be a continuum of numerous dialects, one for each of several hierarchically organized clans. The hierarchically higher clans of the Tariana were a powerful group in the Vaupés area (starting from their first mention in 1755: see 1992). The highest-ranking Tariana were also the first to lose their language; this process was already advanced in the early twentieth century, according to Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1911: 51; also see Giacone 1962: 7). The only dialect still actively spoken is that of the Wamiarikune, traditionally one of the lowest ranking clans.6 The myths and oral histories of different Tariana subgroups indicate that they may have taken different migration routes and perhaps assimilated different language groups, before they had arrived in the Vaupés basin.7 Having archically organized clans is a feature of all the East Tucanoan groups in the Vaupés area. Establishing the exact position of each clan on the hierarchy is a controversial matter: every group will give you a different hierarchy. According to the Wamiarikune lore, the Tariana groups fall into two large classes: the upper ranks who came floating out of the water at Ipanoré rapids and lower ranks (also called surara-ne “slaves, soldiers”) who appeared out of the smoke of the creator’s cigar. In at least some accounts, the Wamiarikune belong to the latter group. In most accounts, they “floated” (this is reflected in the name of this group wamiariku-ne we.float-LOCATIVE-ASSOCIATIVE.PL “people of the place of our floating”). But note that origin myths are not cast in stone: they change depending on the audience and on the times (see Brüzzi 1977; Aikhenvald 2002; and in “The value of language, and discourse of nostalgia” and “The language of ‘worth’: White people in the origin myth” below). The egalitarian nature of Vaupés societies may appear to be at odds with existing clan hierarchies. According to early sources (see an outline in 2005), in the eighteenth century representatives of higher-ranked clans used to sell members of lower-ranking ones into slavery to Portuguese traders. Nowadays, there does not appear to be any obvious tension between clan hierarchies and the egalitarian organization of each clan. The access to goods and skills within each clan is—at least in theory—equal for all. Clan hierarchies are important for ethnic histories and interclan attitudes, but little else. Whether or not egalitarianism in itself can be treated as a traditional value is a moot point. Its value overtones are reflected in negative attitudes toward those who want to surpass others in having more, or wanting more. Traditional hierarchies of subclans and division of labor within each subclan (see “Straight men, wayward women, and further expressions of value” below) used to be part of traditional values. Nowadays it is the knowledge of these that is appreciated and valued just as is any traditional knowledge (of which there is little left). Language loss and the loss of traditional knowledge have resulted in an increased value placed upon linguistic and cultural documentation of Tariana: the dictionary, the existing cultural description, the recorded and transcribed texts, and also web resources. Gradually, the focus is shifting from the spoken to the written word. But this is a topic for another study (see Aikhenvald 2013a). THE TARIANA, THEIR RELATIVES, AND THEIR NEIGHBORS For the Tariana, and for the other Vaupés people, humans are divided into two groups. Nawiki (lit. people) covers Indigenous people, or Indians. Yalana (one of the very few loans, coming from Língua Geral yara “man”) covers all nonIndigenous people and roughly correlates with the notion of “white man.” Note however that Asians and Afro-Brazilians are also Yalana. The term for the Vaupés Indians is Yeposana, which is also the term for the Cubeo Indians (see Aikhenvald 2002: 22; and Brüzzi 1977; I have no explanation for this at present). That is, a Yanomami from way up to the northeast, or a Baniwa from the Içana River area, would be a Nawiki but not a Yeposana. A Desano would be a Nawiki, and a Yeposana. The Yeposana divide into wa-ya-sawa (1pl-POSS-CL:GROUP “our group”) and pa:-sawa (one/another-CL:GROUP “another group”). Normally, any Tariana—no matter what clan they belong to—will be referred to by the Wamiarikune as “our group.” “Another group” covers the non-Tariana-speaking Yeposana.8 This nomenclature is remarkably similar across the Vaupés (see Brüzzi 1977). It is notably different from other Amazonian groups, for instance, the Panoans south of the Amazon who tend to have a special term for an “enemy group” (see Erickson 1986). All the Yeposana are classificatory relatives (consanguineal, if they share the father’s language, or affinal if they do not). Nawiki are, in theory and sometimes in practice, marriageable. The Yalana stand apart from the Nawiki. Anyone who uses recognizably foreign forms from an East Tucanoan language would be condemned as useless. In addition, a complex set of stereotypes is associated with the major group of the Yeposana, the Tucano. They, and their language, are perceived as a threat to Tariana (and rightly so) (see Aikhenvald 2002: 187–208, 2003b). However, with the language loss, some Tariana speakers are now becoming more tolerant of occasional switches into Tucano. Unlike about ten years ago, one switch will not earn you a label of “useless.” Regular switches will. Those who code-switch with Baniwa (which is closely related to Tariana) and insert Baniwa forms into their Tariana are regarded as somewhat weird and may be made fun of. But if they use a Baniwa form that has a different meaning in Tariana and can be interpreted as wrong Tariana, they are called useless. The political stance of the Baniwa has become stronger since 2002 (when Baniwa was proclaimed to be one of the three official indigenous languages of the Upper Rio Negro, together with Língua Geral and Tucano). The Baniwa are reported to possess strong “poison” (Tariana ya:ne). Associating oneself with the Baniwa is fraught with danger of being suspect of having access to the poison. The relationship between the Tariana, the “white man” (Yalana), and the “White man’s language” is uneasy. The white people—a dominant group—are identified with access to economic prosperity and education. (The term yalanata “to boss,” is derived from the yala-na [Non.Indian.person-SUFFIX:PEOPLE].) The white man’s language is a symbol of status (see Woolard 1989: 89 on this multifaceted notion) associated with desirable attributes that imply improvement in the quality of one’s life and access to goods, possible jobs, and so on. But centuries of negative experience in interactions with the white people (stereotyped as the “patron-peon” relationship going back to the tragic events of the rubber boom era: see Meira 1993 and Hemming 1987) have created a feeling of inferiority, dependency, and caution in regard to white people among Indians. In day-to-day discourse one finds that white people (especially men) are stereotyped as endowed with the undesirable qualities of greed and arrogance. These features are also assigned to those who overuse a white man’s language while speaking Tariana, and thus are perceived as go-getters trying to gain access to economic advantages of the “white man’s world.” They are condemned as “wanting to be better than us”—a dangerous attribute (see below). We now turn to our next topic: the language of value, or evaluation, which the Tariana use. The language of “ value ” The Tariana language is comparatively rich in the ways of talking about value and evaluation. We briefly go through the existing terms, and then draw some conclusions. Good, proper, and straight The adjective and stative verb mača-translated as “good” extends into “proper, correct, appropriate, real, fully accomplished.” A good-looking woman is mača-ma (good-CLASSIFIER:FEMININE). A nice, happy person is referred to as mača ka-kale (proper/good RELATIONAL-heart). An evil spirit will not harm (or do adverse things to) someone who is mača, “good person behaving properly,” as in (1): (1) mača-ka-nuku puaya ma-ni-kade-pidana   be.good/proper-SUBORD-TOP.NON.A/S adverse NEG-do-NEG-REM.P.REP   “He (the evil spirit) does not do anything adverse if one behaves properly.” A very common expression is mača pi-ni (be good/proper 2sg-do “be careful, behave appropriate, take care”). Verbs can form compounds with mača (“be proper, be good”); the resulting form means “be really VERB,” as in mača-hui (be.proper-be.tasty “be really tasty ones”), mača-puwhi (be.proper-be.happy “be really happy”), mača-nhesiri (be.proper-like “really like”), mača-kera (be propershine “be really shiny”), mača-makara (“be really dry” lit. good-dry, cf. English good and dry ground after the flood). The adverb mayakani “straight, in a straight line, direct” also means “good, correct, right.” A person who is honest, follows the rules (that is, taboos) and behaves properly can be referred to with this term. Traditionally, women were not supposed to share male traditional knowledge (see below). Numerous place names had two versions: the one only used in the presence of women is referred to as “covert” (Tariana napianipe). The other was considered the correct one and could be used only by men in the presence of men; this form is referred to as mayakani (“straight, correct”). So, for instance, the covert name of the Ipanore Rapids to be used in the presence of women is Pa-hwa-le-dapana (lit. “the house where one lies”). The correct and straight name is Miaka-dapana (lit. “the house of yore”). (In my experience, those women who still speak Tariana are aware of both names, and now use the “correct” one.) In Piapoco, an Arawak language closely related to Tariana but spoken in distant locations in Colombia and Venezuela, machakani (“right, straight”) also has the meaning of “correct.” This suggests that the association between correctness and following a straight line goes beyond the Vaupés area. The term for “correct,” pawa-li (IMPERSONAL-sound, play-NOMINALIZATION, literally “the one that sounds”) has strong positive overtones of doing something in a correct way (including language use) and following the societal rules. The language of alterity: Bad, evil, and “different” The major term for “bad, evil, adverse” is the adjective and stative verb mači“bad, improper” (unlike its positive counterpart mača-, it cannot form compounds with verbs). An evil, nasty person would be referred to with this adjective. If one feels “bad,” it means not just physical discomfort: mači di-rena (bad he feels) very often refers to mental anxiety, and also to those who have been adversely affected by the evil spirit of the jungle. In (2), the children of a man who did not come back from the jungle went to look for him and found his gun and his feces. For them, this was good enough evidence that somebody had done something bad to him, mostly likely an evil spirit: (2) wha-niri-nuku [ma: či-pu-nihka na-ni-nhi]   1pl+parent-MASC-TOP.NON.A/S bad-AUG-REC.P.INFR 3pl-do-ANT   “They have indeed done something bad to our father” (we see the obvious evidence). A plethora of terms with the meaning of “different, another, other way” are an alternative to ma:či-: they all have strongly negative overtones of something dangerous. These are the indefinite modifiers pači (“another of a different kind”) and pa-(“one, another,” also used in counting), stative verb puaya (“different, unfamiliar, adverse”) and adverb puale (“other side, elsewhere, somewhere else”). Numerous terms for “same” have no negative overtones. The notion of “different” as adverse can be linked to a broader vision of the condition of alterity, prominent in Amazonian cultures in general and encompassing various facets of potentially dangerous other, be it in the form of other Indian groups, supernatural entities of various sorts, the dead, white people, or women (see Henley 1996, for an overview and Descola 1986 on relationships between alterity, nature, and society among the Achuar of Ecuador and Peru). Someone who is going through difficulties and is in a bad way will be described as being puaya (“in a different, and a bad way”). In the story about the origin of tobacco, the Creator said the following about his son-in-law, the Trickster Creator, who had to smoke simple leaves and lack tobacco that his father-in-law had in abundance: (3) puaya-peri-na ihya   adverse-COLL-REM.P.VIS you.plural   “You are in an adverse way” (I saw it long time ago). Along similar lines, if someone is possessed (eaten) by an evil spirit, he looks different (puaya hiku): this is a sign of something adverse. If someone is well behaved (and is mača), the evil spirit will not do anything puaya to them, as in (1) above. Menstruating women are considered dangerous (the late Graciliano Brito explained to me that the dangerous evil spirit Ñamu likes menstrual blood and so menstruating women are an easy target). A menstruating woman can be referred to as inaru puaya alia-ka (woman different/adverse EXIST-SUB “when a woman is in a different, adverse state”). The adverb puale (“the other way; on a different side” cognate to puaya) also has overtones of something adverse. The indefinite pa:či (“other, of a different kind”) often refers to something dangerous, as in (4). Here pa:či yaphini (“something different”) refers to some unknown adversity. (4) pa:či yaphini wa-na di-nu-mha   other.of.different.kind thing 1pl-OBJ 3sgnf-come-PRES.NONVISUAL   “Something else (dangerous) is coming to us” (we cannot see it but we feel it: turned out to be the evil spirit). Along similar lines, pa:- (“one, another”) often has overtones of something strange, unknown, and potentially dangerous. For instance, pa-ma inaru (one-CL:FEM woman) may mean “one woman,” “another woman,” but also “strange, foreign, potentially dangerous woman.” Further examples are in Chapters 11 and 26 of Aikhenvald (2003a). In the Portuguese spoken by the Tariana and by Tucanoan-speakers, the terms outro (“(an)other”) and diferente (“different”) also have overtones of something dangerous, ominous, or straightforwardly bad. Saying “Outra coisa tá vindo para nós” (translation of [4]) has strong overtones of impending danger. This linguistic expression of what can be called “adverse alterity” is also reflected in attitudes and in behavior. There is no doubt that the Tariana value foreign (i.e., white man’s) clothing and also food—including chips, coke, and chicken, which are status symbols, something only rich people can afford. Yet local food is what one cannot live without (hence the positive overtones of the verb kehwa (“be used to, be brought up to use”). People who pride themselves in having access to white people’s goods are ridiculed as “wanting to be better than us” (see below). These clearly negative overtones of being different go together with the culturally entrenched fear of “someone who is almost like us but not quite” widespread in the Vaupés cultural area (and described in C. Hugh-Jones 1979, among others). In the patrilineal and male-focused culture of the Vaupés, this goes together with some gender stereotypes. Straight men, wayward women, and further expressions of value We saw in the previous section that menstruating women are dangerous and therefore referred to as puaya (“different, adverse”). This goes with the fact that in most Tariana traditional stories women appear to be strange and dangerous beings who spoil everything (and are referred to as manihta-kadite [NEG+think/reasonNEG+NCL:ANIM] “the one who does not think”). For instance, one traditional story relates that because of women’s misbehaving, people have to suffer and work to get food. If a man dreams of a woman before going hunting or some other important event, this is a bad sign. There are numerous taboos to do with women being prohibited (under threat of death) from catching a glimpse of the Sacred Yurupary Flutes, which used to be their property and were taken off them by men. Women are not supposed to hear any words that contain the root piri (“Yurupary flute”): other synonyms are employed in women’s presence, as a secret language (ina: napia-nipe [woman:PL 3pl-hide-NOM]) “what they hide from women”). According to Jorge Muniz (personal communication April 2012), the only able-bodied elder and healer from the community of Periquitos, women suffer birth-pains as a punishment for them trying to hold on to the Sacred Flutes. However, women are not considered to be beneath men in any way: they are different and perhaps dangerous but not at all inferior (also see Aikhenvald 2013b). The generic noun čiari (“man”) has distinctly positive overtones: of courage, determination, and reason. People say it about themselves: Ricardo Brito, an elder from Santa Rosa, tells a moving story about how he managed to escape from a jaguar, and says that he’d said to himself, at a critical moment: (5) nuha-misini čiari-naka   I-TOO man-PRES.VIS   “I am also a man.” Saying (5) is like a self-encouragement, confirming that one is courageous and manly enough to overcome an adverse situation. In animal tales, a positive character (such as the turtle) says the same thing to himself, before he undertakes a strenuous task of killing a tapir. The term for “woman” may acquire negative overtones if contrasted to čiari (“man”) as in (6) from a story about the otter teaching his son how to be like himself—strong and courageous. (6) čiari-naka inaru-kade-naka nhua   man-PRES.VIS woman-NEG-PRES.VIS I   “I am a man, I am not a woman.” That is, women are a different, strange, and potentially dangerous other. They are puaya by nature. In many traditional stories, women are conceptualized as a “dangerous other,” and “those who do not think.” Women are to blame for the fact that manioc has a hard skin that is difficult to peel. Human sweat has a bad smell because women misbehaved with a smelly mucura rat. Until the establishment of a Tariana indigenous school in 2004, women—wives and mothers—used to be blamed for not transmitting language to the Tariana children. An anthropologist might want to link this to the fact that women have to come from pa:-sawa, another group of Indians (who speak a different language), and are thus representatives of the dangerous side of alterity as a pan-Amazonian concept. Note that women are important as mothers, sisters, and daughters, and represent affinal relations as a basic dimension of “the cosmic relational matrix” in the society, using Viveiros de Castro’s words (2001: 19). They are dangerous as source of transformation and change. This is not uncommon: Gillian Gillison’s (1993) work on ceremonial role and status of women among the Gimi in the Highlands of New Guinea points in a similar direction. Incidentally, women are blamed for language loss in other cultures. Alexandra Jaffe (1999: 103–8) focuses on the “discourse of culpability” among the Corsicans who identify women as “betrayers” of the indigenous language. The rhetoric of accusation in the Vaupés area is now gradually changing. That children can hardly speak or write Tariana is considered the fault of the school and of the teachers who are not implementing it properly. This is an instance of cultural change in explicitly formulated values. This shift in values due to a societal change can be compared to value reversal in the Yukaghir society as described by Rane Willerslev (2010), whereby women acquire a new role and a new status due to recent transformations. A really important and respectable woman can be spoken about as if she were a man (this is also the case among the Jarawara, an Arawá-speaking group in southern Amazonia. See Dixon 2004: 287). The masculine pronoun is used to refer to such a woman. Members of the Brito family often switch to masculine when they talk about their mother Maria (a Piratapuya, an unofficial authority on cultural and even linguistic matters). In the origin myth told by the late Cândido Brito, a masculine pronoun is used to refer to the woman-creator Nanayo (see below).9 The Vaupés society, despite its inherently hierarchical clan structure, is egalitarian. Traditionally, there was hereditary division of tasks: warriors, shamans, dance masters, and slaves or servants all had their place in life (see further details in Aikhenvald 2002). At the same time, those who wanted to surpass others appear to have always been condemned as not behaving properly. A middle-aged Tariana was showing off his knowledge of Portuguese and bragging that he was eating “chicken every day” (we recall that chicken from a supermarket is a “status food”). He was ridiculed, as wanting to “surpass people” (di-na-tha-ka di-yena [3sgnf-wantFRUSTRATIVE-REC.P.VIS 3sgnf-surpass]). I was warned not to trust him. The same applies to any Indian who behaves too much like a Yalana, that is, a non-Indian stereotyped as a dangerous go-getter. This usage points toward a covert value judgment attached to being equal to others: if you step out of line, and have more than others, you are vulnerable to envy, sorcery, and “evil breath.”10 This reflects a tension between a desire to possess consumer goods and the danger behind overdoing things. The verb -na (“want”) often has negative overtones: it implies wanting without thinking (that is, wanting with no reasoning; anihta “to reason” is a highly positive action). Someone who does something wrong or suffers through their own fault is said to have done it by “wanting” (di-na-li). A positive or a negative quality can be emphasized by an augmentative suffix -pu (or –pi, by younger speakers), or –pasi. So, inaru-pasi (womanAUGMENTATIVE) may refer to a “big woman,” or to a really appreciable beautiful and desirable woman, or to a desirable and beautiful woman who is dangerous (e.g., an evil spirit in the shape of a woman).11 A special pejorative enclitic, yana (“bad, naughty”), can be used for negative evaluation of animate referents—from naughty children to the Tariana forefathers who were supposedly mucking around with other peoples’ wives and got themselves a nickname of Iñemi. This name appears in the literature on Tariana (Koch-Grünberg 1911). It is used by the Kumandene Tariana of Santa Terezinha as a term of abuse to refer to the Wamiarikune group (when a Wamiarikune is out of hearing), and translated into Portuguese as diabo (“devil”). The issue of value judgments of one Tariana group with respect to another lies beyond the scope of this study. A further frequent means of negative evaluation is through the adverb meēda (“good for nothing, useless”). This takes us to the next section. The value of language, and the value of speaker Certain grammatical categories are more communicatively important than others. All the languages in the Vaupés basin have what is known as “evidentiality.” This means that in every sentence one needs to have a special suffix that indicates how one knows what one is talking about: whether one saw something, heard it, or felt it (as one “feels” an evil spirit in [4]), or inferred it, or assumed it, or simply was told about it (see Aikhenvald 2004 for a general overview and the details). This goes together with a cultural requirement to be precise, characteristic of the Vaupés societies, perhaps so as to avoid potential accusations of hiding something with bad intentions or worse—with being a sorcerer. As in many other Amazonian societies, clear and precise expression is what defines a person’s worth. Among the Mamaindê, a Northern Nambiquara group from southern Amazonia, a typical way to refer to a “good, trustworthy person” is to call them “one who speaks well.” Someone who is “untrustworthy or of a questionable moral reputation is labeled as one who does not speak well” (Eberhard 2009: 468). In this case, and in many others, the correct use of evidentials is what signals a good speaker—and henceforth, a good, reliable, and trustworthy person. The same principle has been described for Huallaga Quechua and the Tariana and the East Tucanoan peoples in the Vaupés River Basin area (see Chapter 9 of Aikhenvald 2012a). A major token of “correct” Tariana is the ability to use evidentials in the right way.12 Those who use the wrong evidentials are mēda-peni (“those good for nothing, useless”). The late José Manuel Brito was sneered upon and said (behind his back) to be useless because he was not using the correct remote past reported evidential (due to his Baniwa background). So are those who do not know traditional lore (such as the story of the Origin of Tobacco, quoted above in [3]). The late Américo Brito was the only person to have actually seen the Offering Ritual, once highly important. As he got old and sick, he started using Tucano words thus committing a crime of mixing languages. I was then told that he was then mēdite (“a good for nothing, useless one”). The adjective mēdite (animate singular), mēda-peni (animate plural), and further forms with different classifiers can refer to any person who does not “deliver” and are thus “good for nothing, useless.” Someone who cannot build a house properly or could not fish or hunt could in principle be referred to as mēdite. But the most frequent and usual meaning of this term with reference to people is “someone (normally a man) who is not up to scratch in their father’s language proficiency” and who does not know the traditional stories. In traditional stories, one hears about meda-peni-ma-pe ina: (useless-PL:ANIM-FEM-PL women) referring to women who “do not think” and thus do wrong things to the detriment of others (and often themselves). (The opposite of medite is mačaite “proper”.) The same term can refer to inanimate objects if they are judged not good enough. An enormous parcel containing clothing that I’d sent to the Tariana from Australian was referred to as mēda-da (with classifier for round objects) because it did not contain any money. A river which does not lead to any village is referred to as mēda-pua (classifier for waterways). An island where no one lives and there is no game is mēda-kere (classifier for island), “an island good for nothing.” The term for uninteresting or nontraditional stories—or for gossip—is mēda-peri kalisi (“useless story”). A snake whose bite is not dangerous is described as mēda-pidana dyuku (uselessly-REM.P.REP 3sgnf+bite “it bites [reported long time ago] for nothing [with no result]”).13 The value of language, and discourse of nostalgia The major terms referring to “value” in the sense of “evaluation” in Tariana follow a rather clear pattern. Approbatory overtones go together with the notions of correct, right, and straight. “Bad” and “dangerous” are associated with being different, and with various terms for “other” or “something else.” This partly goes against Sahlins’ thesis (2011) concerning the supreme value of the other: in actual fact, there is an ongoing tension between the desire for outside goods, and the fear of unknown, and thus dangerous, outsiders. The most significant, and ever-present other are women. Womanhood is often associated with potential danger. In the exogamous Vaupés society, women always come from a different group than their husbands, something that goes together with being different (but in no way inferior). Traditionally, someone’s standing in the community and value as its member has been strongly linked to their language proficiency, and also the knowledge of traditional lore. Rampant language loss among the Tariana (and other peoples of the Vaupés in Brazil) does not result in downgrading the value of the language. On the contrary: people strongly lament the loss of the “good old days” and “good old ways” of speech, producing something similar to what Jane Hill (1998) described as “discourse of nostalgia,” in her discussion of the bilingual communities around the Malinche volcano in central Mexico. Talking about themselves, many people produce lamentations about “us poor things,” waha-yana-pe (we-PEJORATIVE-PL) (note the pejorative suffix here)—going on about how the proper migrations histories are not known any more and people are forgetting their father’s language. This discourse of nostalgia and quest for the olden days when the Tariana people could live up to the expectations of their ancestors is hardly a new phenomenon. The culture of laments was strong among the Tariana and other peoples of the Vaupés before contact and soon after it. During Offering feasts and when seeing each other after a period of absence, the Tariana would produce long lamentations with nostalgic overtones about good old days and good old people now all but gone. This is documented in early anthropological studies (Brüzzi 1977; Koch-Grünberg 1911) and supported by the speech behavior of the few remaining traditional speakers I have observed in my own work. One reason for this practice is the reluctance to overtly talk about one’s being well (for fear that evil spirits or malevolent shamans who might overhear you). Along similar lines, one never says, “I am fine” in Tariana: if one is to speak properly, one needs to say “I am fine, more or less/almost” and then start complaining about things that are wrong with you (see §26.3 of Aikhenvald 2003a). The members of the high-ranking clans of Tariana who lost their language several generations ago (Koch-Grünberg 1911) concede that they speak a “borrowed” language (Tucano and now also Portuguese) and thus are not up to scratch. However, many (especially men) find it hard to accept that they are lagging behind the lower-ranking clans—the ones who still speak the language. I have overheard statements that the Tariana spoken by the Wamiarikune is not the original Tariana (Dominique Buchillet made similar reports, personal communication June 1999). The Kumandene Tariana (inhabitants of the village of Kapinawali, or Santa Terezinha, on the Iauari river, May 2012) plainly said that the Wamiarikune speak nothing but Tucano, and that their Tariana is far from pure— therefore they are not up to scratch. The high-ranking Tariana know their genealogies better than the lower-ranking clans. Among them, the value of knowledge of one’s genealogy is overriding the importance of the lost language, not in the least so because of interest, and support, of Brazilian and foreign anthropologists. We now briefly turn to the other side of value—that of monetary worth. The language of worth: “White people” in the origin myth Contact with white people in the Brazilian Vaupés goes back to the late eighteenth century. It is thus not surprising that the white people have been integrated in origin myths of various indigenous groups, albeit in different ways. As Stephen Hugh-Jones (1988: 141) put it, “for the Vaupés Indians, and presumably for many other tribal societies too, myth and history are not mutually incompatible but coexist as two separate and complementary models of representing the past.” These origin myths reflect the role and the status of the white people and especially the ways in which they manage to accumulate their money and possessions (viewed as their powerful attributes). Numerous origin myths told by the Vaupés peoples and by the Baniwa speaking groups in the neighboring Içana basin present white people as having equality with the indigenous groups. In many versions, as people were created, the Creator kept calling different groups one by one, to come out of a hole at the Ipanoré rapids (the order in which different groups were called relates to their tribal hierarchies). The white people emerged together with the rest. According to the Ipeka-tapuya (Baniwa of Içana) version (narrated in Urubucuara/Ipanoré: Brüzzi 1994: 67–68), the white people came out first, bathed in the water, and acquired their light colored skin (making the waters of the Vaupés river black), and all their advantages with it. According to another Baniwa version, the white people, as soon as they came out, bathed in a pond full of gold powder; this accounts for their light colored hair and their riches. According to a version told by Siuci and Hohôdene (Brüzzi 1994: 68; Cornelio and Wright 1999: 92; Marcília Fontes Rodrigues, personal communication 1991), the Creator (Baniwa Ñapirikuri, lit. “the one of the bone”) offered the first Indians and the first white people a shotgun. The Indians were afraid (Brüzzi 1994: 68), or they couldn’t use it (Cornelio and Wright 1999: 92; Marcília Fontes Rodrigues, personal communication 1991); while the white men could shoot well. As a result of this knowledge, as José Cornelio and Robin Wright (1999: 92) put it, “the White man has a shotgun, and with this has everything, he knows all and everything. This is why the White people have all the things. If our ancestors could shoot, everything would have been theirs,” and “this is why Indians were left behind” (Marcília Fontes Rodrigues, personal communication 1991). The savvy with which the original white people could handle one of their most powerful attributes—the gun—accounts for their economic supremacy. Similar versions are told by various groups in the Colombian part of Vaupés (see Hugh-Jones 1988:143–45, for a composite version, involving the acquisition of a gun by white people as opposed to the bow acquired by Indians).14 The traditional origin myths of the Tariana did not have white people in them (Brüzzi 1994: 69); the various Tariana groups emerged—following a hierarchical order—out of the blood of Thunder. The story I recorded in 1994 did have white people in it. This version is rather different from the Siuci and the Hohôdene myths. The Female Creator (whose image is widespread in the Vaupés area) makes all the people emerge from water; the white people arrive later, and it is a white man who shows everyone else a valued item, whose nature is not explicitly stated. The white man knew what the object was, while the Indians did not recognize it. The Creator approved of this. As a result, Indians stayed as they were, with their Indian languages. The white people acquired white people’s language (yalana-ku). No further economic advantages or riches are mentioned (also see Aikhenvald 2003c): (7) They (our ancestors) appeared in this waterfall, the ones (who were) to become the Tariana, after the White people were there, they appeared and stayed. “Who knows this?” they asked, the White man asked, our grandparent (i.e. ancestor) did not know what he meant. The ancestor of the White man knew, “This is what it is,” he said, he recognized (what the object was). “All right,” she (the Woman Creator) said, “then you will stay as you are, she gave the White man’s language to them; as for us Indians, all the groups, all our languages became different.”15 A somewhat different story was recorded from the same speaker in 1999, five years later. He was the only one knowledgeable enough to tell the origin myth. This version, given above in (4), is much more similar to the Baniwa one, and yet still rather different. White people are opposed to Indians on the whole as two distinct groups (this is very unusual in the Vaupés context). The Creator shows the Indians a coin (note the use of the Portuguese word for money, Portuguese dinheiro: this word, with a classifier for round things, refers to a coin), and asks him how much the coin is worth. He did not know, and this is why “we, Indians, will never have any money.” In contrast, when the Creator makes the Original White Man count how much the coin is worth, he does it well, saying: “The coin is worth this much.” As a result, the white people have become as they are, with lots of money, unlike the miserable Indians, who “couldn’t think” (which is the Tariana way of saying stupid) and thus will have to keep suffering: (8) There were people, at the beginning there were two groups, there were us Indians (and) white people, white people emerged downstream, we Indians emerged upstream. . . . Then she (the Woman Creator) asked the Indian, she put down one coin (dinheiro) there, she put down one coin. She started asking the Indian, “How much is this worth,” she said, he didn’t know, this is how we were to be, we Indians (to be) moneyless, this is how it was. The ancestor of the white man was there too, all (the people) were there, she ordered them to count, he got it right, he said: “This coin is worth this much.” “You are to become white people,” she said, “this way you are to become White people, you are to have a lot of money,” then we turned into Indians, we did not think, we Indians had no thinking altogether. We are to suffer this way.” The white presence and the degree of development of the market economy in Iauaretê (the mission center of the Vaupés area) grew remarkably toward the end of the 1990s. Indians—like the late Cândido Brito—who live in Iauaretê depend more and more on their purchasing capacity; consequently, money becomes the central coveted asset. The culturally significant origin myth reflects this. Once again, the white people emerge as savvy and smart—these inherent properties account for their economic supremacy in the market situation. In neither of Cândido’s narratives is there any sign of a negative attitude toward the go-getter white people—rather, there is an overtone of admiration for their inherent knowledgeability and success. In contrast, Indians are viewed as inherently miserable “have-nots.” As Stephen Hugh-Jones (1988: 146) puts it, “such myths concern the recognition, interpretation and acceptance of White domination and by placing it at the beginning of time they present it as something inevitable and beyond human influence.” The Western concepts of monetary riches and worth are making their in-roads into the life and into the language. However, we can recall that in day-to-day discourse those who want to have more and to be better off than their Indian relatives and neighbors are looked upon as arrogant go-getters, not-to-be trusted or taken seriously. This also applies to people who use too much Portuguese in their Tariana (or Tucano), as if to show off their familiarity with the world of the White Man—coveted and rich, but treacherous and unfriendly. The adverse alterity of desirable foreign goods and riches is counterbalanced by negative attitudes against those who want to surpass the rest (see above). Language, value, and worth: A Vaupés perspective Throughout the Vaupés area, language is the major badge of identity inherited through one’s father. The principle of language-based exogamy hinges on language identification and language knowledge. Language proficiency (which implies knowing a language through and through) is in many ways a defining property of a trustworthy and “proper” person. Traditional society used to be egalitarian: there was no division of classes of people based on how much they possessed. Hereditary division of tasks was reflected in certain skills (such as dances, warrior skills, and shamanic knowledge) being restricted to relevant groups. At the same time, subclans used to be—and are still remembered to have been—hierarchically organized based on the order of their emergence from the Wapuí rapids (see above). In numerous cultures, myth is not static: it shifts to reflect history and cultural changes. As Hugh-Jones (1988:141) puts it, “although it is the essence of timeless tradition, myth is nonetheless subject to a constant process of change which allows it to keep pace with reality.” It is nowadays the case that the most important asset—the language—survives only within a low-ranking group, the Wamiarikune. In 2000, the late Cândido Brito told us a revised version of the Tariana origin myth, which stated that the Wamiarikune were among the last ones to emerge, but that they were given the guardianship of the Tariana language over and above other groups because the last ones were the ones who excelled in knowledge. Cândido repeated the same story to his son Jovino Brito just before Cândido’s death in early 2011 as a legacy to keep in mind. The value of language maintenance appears to be instrumental in creating a revised clan hierarchy, thus resolving a potential tension between being a lower-ranking clan and excelling in knowledge. In Tariana, and in many other Vaupés languages, the notions of value span other semantic fields. What is “good” is also “proper, correct, and straight.” What is not so good is “other” and “different.” The two versions of the Tariana origin myth show how the non-Indians (white men) and their riches and knowledge are now part of the lore. The white man’s riches and attributes are coveted, but those who try and get too much of those are not to be trusted. The other is dangerous, no matter how attractive their possessions. In addition, the quest for consumer goods, and political positions and influence, changes the balance of power between young and old, creating hitherto unknown material inequalities. A tension between a quest for consumer goods and their potential danger remains unresolved. In a certain sense, it can be seen as a constraining factor against greed and getting too much power and competence in material matters (the explanation of the death of Ismael Brito illustrates this). The Tariana origin myths gave been adjusted to incorporate the presence of the white people, thus changing the perspective on values and valuation: the dangerous “other” is gradually becoming part of “us.” Whether language loss and partial obsolescence of traditional marriage patterns will result in a diminished sense of cultural distinctiveness (as is the case with many indigenous minority groups in Siberia including the Yukaghir, as discussed by Willerslev 2007) is a matter for further study. Many of the revived traditional dances and patterns of face painting can be categorized as belonging to “Standard Average Vaupés” cultural complex. The distinctive Tariana practices are no longer remembered. This is also the object of discourse of nostalgia for some. The overtones of value and worth in the Tariana language are typical for the Vaupés area. At least some of its features are typical for the whole of Amazonia. For many groups, language proficiency is a defining characteristic of a trustworthy and “proper” person. The notion of “good” is often associated with a “straight line.” The goods owned by the white man are highly desirable—but the white people remain a dangerous other.16 However, impending social changes, and especially language loss typical of most Amazonian groups are bound to affect the practical issues of evaluation and value. Abbreviations 1 – first person 2 – second person 3 – third person ANT – anterior AUG – augmentative CL – classifier f – feminine MASC – masculine NEG – negative OBJ – object PL – plural POSS – possessive PRES – present REC.P.INFR – recent past inferred PRES.VIS – present visual REC.P.VIS – recent past visual REM.P.REP – remote past reported sgnf – singular nonfeminine SUBORD – subordinator TOP.NON.A/S – topical nonsubject Acknowledgments I am grateful to Rane Willerslev and Ton Otto for comments and questions during the “Anthropology of Value” workshop in Cairns where this paper was presented. R. M. W. Dixon provided incisive comments and suggestions, and Brigitta Flick has been instrumental in proofreading this contribution. I am grateful to Jovino Brito and all my other teachers of Tariana, the Britos of Santa Rosa, and the Muniz of Periquitos for teaching me their remarkable language, and to all my teachers of Baniwa and other languages of the Brazilian Upper Rio Negro for their patience and dedication. References Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 1999. Tariana texts and cultural context. Munich: Lincom Europa. ———. 2002. Language contact in Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003a. A grammar of Tariana, from north-west Amazonia. 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La valeur du langage et le langage de la valeur. Une vue d’Amazonie Résumé : Le concept de valeur est multiple. A de la valeur ce qui est considéré bon, approprié et souhaitable dans la vie humaine, et avoir de la valeur peut avoir des connotations économiques qui sont fonction du degré selon lequel des objets désirables peuvent apporter des avantages matériels. Dans cet article, je me concentre sur le tariana, une langue de l’aire linguistique du basin du Vaupés au nord-ouest de l'Amazonie brésilienne. Je mets l’accent sur la façon dont la valeur de la langue comme marque d’identité est exprimée en tariana. Je me tourne ensuite vers l’expression de significations ayant trait à l’évaluation (« bon, juste, comme il se doit » et « mauvais, négatif, autre » ou « correct » et « incorrect »), avec un accent particulier sur le danger de l’autre, représentatif d’une perspective pan-amazonienne sur la condition de l’altérité. L’ampleur de la perte de la langue contribue à susciter des tensions supplémentaires entre la valeur traditionnelle de la connaissance de la langue et la situation moderne. Le concept de valeur monétaire a pénétré la société comme la langue suite à l'introduction de l’économie de marché au cours des deux ou trois dernières décennies. Ces résultats sont replacés en conclusion dans la perspective des langues et cultures amazoniennes en général. Alexandra Y. AIKHENVALD is Distinguished Professor, Australian Laureate Fellow, and Director of the Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) and Warekena (1998), and A grammar of Tariana, from northwest Amazonia (Cambridge University Press, 2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages. Her other major publications, with OUP, include Classifiers: A typology of noun categorization devices (2000), Language contact in Amazonia (2002), Evidentiality (2004), The Manambu language from East Sepik, Papua New Guinea (2008), Imperatives and commands (2010), Languages of the Amazon (2012) and The Art of grammar (forthcoming). James Cook University AustraliaLanguage and culture research centreThe Cairns Institute Building D3-036,PO Box 6811, CairnsQueensland 4870Australiaalexandra.aikhenvald@jcu.edu.au ___________________ 1. Recently, some of these restrictions have been violated. In addition to one person with a Tucano mother and a Barasano father, I know of three instances of Desano-Tariana marriages (two of them involving speakers of Tariana or their families). While the parents are somewhat upset the young people exhibit no shame. In one instance, a Tariana has married another Tariana from a different subclan; this is a matter of shame to the father, and has affected his reputation in the community. For obvious reasons, I will not mention the names of the people involved. 2. Lingua Yeral in Spanish-speaking countries. 3. Aikhenvald (2003a: 21) briefly outlines the features of Jovino Brito's spoken Tariana. 4. Aikhenvald (2002: 17–28) discusses the putative age of the area. 5. Recently, José Luis Brito (who has a teacher's diploma and has been working as a librarian for over twenty years) suggested that one should know verbs to be able to claim that one knows a language. It has been suggested, during the Workshop, that this purism among the Tariana may result from the fact that the language is endangered. This is most likely not the case, since the neighboring East Tucanoan speaking groups display the same kind of purist attitude to their languages (see, for example, Sorensen 1967). 6. This article, as all my previous work, is based upon information obtained via original fieldwork over more than twenty years with speakers of all existing dialects of Tariana (mostly the Wamiarikune of Santa Rosa and Periquitos, with less than 100 speakers in all). An overview of previous work on Tariana and the Tariana dialects is in Aikhenvald (2003a). Another quite divergent variety of Tariana is spoken by the Kumandene of Santa Terezinha (Kapinawali) on the Iauari river (Aikhenvald forthcoming); there may be another dialect upstream from San Carlos (in Venezuela) (Jovino Brito, personal communication, April 2012). 7. The Wamiarikune are, in all likelihood, direct descendants of a group of nomadic hunters and gatherers described by Carl Fredrich Phillip von Martius (1867: 567) and of the Yurupary-tapuya mentioned by Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1911) and Henri A. Coudreau (1886-7). Also see Aikhenvald (2006, forthcoming) for further data on their origins. Historical and traditional evidence suggests that neither Tucano nor Tariana are the autochthonous population of the Vaupés. There is an assumption that the original inhabitants of the area were the Makú groups (see Aikhenvald 2002). 8. The terms for other groups of nawiki that are not Yeposana include Mayanaku-ne for Baniwa in general, ũhũnawiki for the Hohôdene Baniwa, and Werekhena for the Warekena of the Xié river and surrounds. And there are of course terms for different groups of the Yeposana, e.g., Desene “Desano,” hulipísi-ne or wiri-ne (aphrodisiac-PL) “Barasano,” kupheme-ne (fish-PL) “Piratapuya,” suruphe-ne (clay-PL) “Tuyuca,” panuma-pe (one+mouth-PL) “Guanano,” yase-ne (toucan-PL) “Tucano,” ye:-ne (armadillo-PL) “Tatuyo.” The Makú people (ma:ki-ni “Makú,” including Hupda, Yuhup, Bara, Kakua, Nukak, and also Dâw) are sometimes talked about as Nawiki, but mainly discarded as being “like animals” in the jungle. 9. Older speakers continue to follow this convention; however, younger speakers (like Jovino Brito) question it, and seem not to be familiar with it. 10. The late Ismael Brito was an able handyman, and was running a sawmill in Iauaretê until his tragic death by drowning after a night of drinking in late 2008. The explanation for this given by his younger brother José Luis was as follows: Ismael became too important, as if he'd owned the sawmill; and it was other peoples’ sorcery that killed him. 11. This is different from other languages, including Portuguese and Spanish, where the augmentative has strong negative connotations. 12. See details in Aikhenvald (2002: 213–20). “White people’s” language does not have to mark information source and many Indians comment that white people are not to be trusted because they never tell you how they know things. 13. These forms are derived from the adverb mēda. This has two meanings: “in vain, for nothing” (and has a few synonyms, including ka:, kayka, ka:pu and the frustrative modality) and “against all expectations, anyway.” 14. This resembles the origin myth of the East Tucanoan speaking Desano (Fernandes and Fernandes 1996: 175–76): the Grandfather made all the Indians emerge from the Waterhole. He then offered them five cups and put on display a hat (symbol of technical know-how), a gun and two more cups of eternal life. The ancestor of Indians drank from the five cups. The Ancestor of White men drank from the cup of eternal life, wiped his mouth, and got white skin. He then chose the hat and the gun—which is why white people have everything. 15. This version shares some similarities to the Origin myth of the Yucuna, also from the Arawak family (like Tariana), but only distantly related. In the Yucuna version, the Father-Jaguar (the Creator) created all peoples together. They were created without a mouth. The Creator gave each of them a mouth and made them speak different languages, so that they could distinguish each other. He then called all the people, and told them to choose what they wanted. The White people took the guns (which the others rejected). They started speaking first and this helped them become numerous. After that, the Creator made different Indian groups (Jacopin 1977). 16. Also see Albert 1988, 2000, and papers in Albert and Ramos (2000).  

Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Nadia Fadil and Mayanthi Fernando. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.005 Rediscovering the “everyday” Muslim Notes on an anthropological divide Nadia FADIL, KU Leuven Mayanthi FERNANDO, University of California, Santa Cruz This article critically examines recent calls by anthropologists to focus on what they call “everyday Islam.” We locate this new literature within two tensions central to anthropology: first, its dual commitment to humanity’s heterogeneity and commonality, and second, its dual imperative to account for dominant social structures and individual resistance. We argue that the concept of everyday Islam emphasizes one side of these paradigmatic debates, highlighting the universality of humans and emphasizing opposition to norms. We then take up the distinction this literature makes between everyday Muslims and Salafi Muslims. We suggest that a reinvestment in everyday Islam ends up discounting the validity, reality, and ontology of those framed as Salafi Muslims and invalidates ethnographic inquiry into ultra-orthodox Muslim life. Even as scholarship on everyday Islam attempts to expand the anthropology of Islam, then, it restricts the field instead by demarcating anthropology’s proper object of study in a very narrow way. Keywords: Everyday Islam, anthropology of religion, ethics, alterity, Salafism Two central tensions lie at the heart of the anthropological endeavor. The first is between the desire, on the one hand, to delineate the multiple and heterogeneous ways in which human beings live and make sense of their lives, and, on the other hand, to underscore the commonalities and shared conditions of seemingly different life-worlds in order to define the human. The second tension is between, on the one hand, the imperative to identify powerful social structures and norms that mediate individuals and, on the other, the attempt to account for individual creativity, agency, and resistance. While these two underlying tensions have played out in [60]various ways throughout the modern history of the discipline,1 they seem to have found a new site of articulation in the contemporary anthropology of Islam. Over the past two decades, Islamic revivalism, defined as the unprecedented worldwide engagement with exegetical texts and theological reasoning by Muslims untrained in traditional Islamic institutions, has become a major field within the anthropology of Islam. Dispensing with earlier modernist accounts that predicted the secularization of non-Western societies and pathologized the supposed Islamic exception,2 much of this literature has sought to make sense of the discourses and practices of revivalist Muslims from within the network of concepts on which these Muslims draw. In so doing, it has equally sought to dismantle a common set of binary oppositions—modernity and tradition, politics and religion, rational deliberation and religious discipline, autonomy and authority—that have long informed studies of the Muslim world. Recently, however, a growing number of scholars have begun to criticize this apparent overinvestment in Islamic revivalism and especially the focus on ethical self-cultivation through the inhabitation of Islamic norms, which, they argue, presents two major problems. First, these scholars hold, the focus on piety and Islamic norms constitutes a reductionist account that privileges religion at the expense of political, economic, and other structures mediating Muslim life. The second, related critique is that the focus on piety lacks complexity; what critics mean is that ethical self-cultivation is never a totalizing project, nor are its outcomes easily predictable. Rather, “struggle, ambivalence, incoherence, and failure must also receive attention in the study of everyday religiosity” (Osella and Soares 2010: 11). This call for complexity entails emphasizing the internal contradictions, ambiguities, and incoherences that inform the discourses and practices of ordinary Muslims, an approach framed as attending to “everyday religiosity” or “everyday Islam.” Our essay is an attempt to think through this new investment in the “everyday” and grows out of our own experience as anthropologists of the Muslim world. We have noticed over the past few years a remarkable uptick in panels, conferences, articles, and edited collections in Europe and the United States that bear the title of “everyday Islam,” such as a 2014 online curated collection with that very title by Cultural Anthropology,3 a forthcoming issue of Ethnologie Française on “everyday aspects” of Muslim life, the edited volume Ordinary lives and grand schemes: An anthropology of everyday religion (Schielke and Debevec 2012b), and the already cited Islam, politics, anthropology by Filippo Osella and Benjamin Soares (2010), [61]which emerged from a 2009 special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Rather than simply dismiss this framing, we wish to take it as the starting point for a deeper conversation about a number of important questions raised by this literature on the everyday, questions we believe are central not only to the anthropology of Islam but to anthropology itself. Indeed, the global Islamic revival and the growing public visibility of Islam in the West has generated a great deal of debate in academia and beyond, with significant analytical, epistemological, and methodological implications for the discipline of anthropology, and especially for the study of religion and ethics. “Ordinary” or “everyday” ethics4 has become a site of anthropological attention (including within this journal) and much of that work engages with the seminal contributions from anthropologists of Islam like Saba Mahmood and Talal Asad, even if to refute them.5 Michael Lambek (2012), for instance, has insisted on the need to locate ethics outside the religious domain; James Laidlaw (2014) has called for highlighting the complexities and contradictions intrinsic to ethical deliberation; and Michael Lempert (2013, 2014) has cautioned against any easy locatability or immanence of ethics, including in the everyday. This turn to ordinary ethics has found its translation in the anthropology of Islam through the idea of everyday Islam. Our essay is therefore an implicit engagement with the aforementioned literature on everyday ethics, although we are less interested here in the second term of this pairing (“ethics”) than in the first (“everyday”). Our aim is not to theorize what ordinary or everyday ethics mean to us, but rather to interrogate the underlying assumptions and resulting effects of framing certain phenomena as “everyday.” We will argue throughout this article that the concept of the everyday, and the way in which it has been recuperated within the anthropology of Islam, seems to emphasize one side of the paradigmatic agency/power and unity/diversity debates within anthropology, reiterating human creativity against the weight of norms and highlighting the universally shared conditions of the human subject. We suggest, moreover, that beyond merely rearticulating a commitment to agency and human unity, the turn to everyday Islam has (sometimes unintended) conceptually, methodologically, and politically problematic effects. Calls for a reinvestment in the “everyday” or “actual” lives of Muslims explicitly or implicitly mark revivalist or pious Muslims as exceptional and, more insidiously, not “real.” As a consequence, this new scholarship discounts certain forms of Muslim life, invalidates anthropological inquiry into those ways of being Muslim, and redefines anthropology’s proper object of study in a very particular way. In other words, even as this scholarship attempts to expand the anthropology of Islam, it significantly narrows the field instead. In pursuing this line of analysis, we seek not only to understand how a tacit attachment to a set of secular-liberal sensibilities and norms underpins a profound political and affective discomfort [62]with (certain tendencies within) Islamic revivalism but also how social-scientific narratives—in this case a commitment to the everyday—can play a crucial role in adjudicating the ontological truthfulness, authenticity, and, ultimately, humanness, of various life-worlds. Islamic piety and everyday ethics Starting in the 1980s, the anthropology of Islam began to focus on revivalist tendencies in various parts of the Muslim world. Much of this research initially emerged to account for why Muslim societies were not fulfilling modernist expectations of increasing secularization and decreasing religiosity. For some analysts, Islamic revivalism indicated Islam’s theological incommensurability with secular modernity (Gellner 1992). Others insisted on the failed promise of modernity and the limited capacities of newly established nation states in the Arab world for economic and political integration after independence (Kepel 2012). These studies were soon replaced by works that problematized such a one-dimensional understanding of the routes modernization might take, and especially the notion that modernization would necessarily entail secularization. Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori’s influential Muslim politics (1996), for example, argued that revivalist tendencies do not signal a rupture with modernization so much as represent an instantiation of it, and that what often passes as a return to tradition is, in fact, a complex articulation of modernization. Rejecting the well-established polarity between modernity and religion, this scholarship found that postcolonial, modernist transformations, including mass media and mass education, facilitated rather than prevented various forms of Islamic revivalism.6 Taking a somewhat different approach to the relationship between tradition and modernity, but with a similar commitment to make sense of Muslim subjectivities from an emic perspective, and drawing on Talal Asad’s (1986b) framework of Islam as an always evolving discursive tradition, other studies began to demonstrate how processes of modernization enabled the renewed cultivation of older, “traditional” ethical sensibilities and authoritative practices (Agrama 2012; Hirschkind 2006; Mahmood 2005; Salvatore 2007).7 It is against this approach that much of the new literature on everyday Islam positions itself, so it seems worthwhile to sketch some of the former’s core interventions using two exemplary texts: Saba Mahmood’s Politics of piety (2005) and Charles Hirschkind’s The ethical soundscape (2006). Both [63]are ethnographic studies of the ethical engagements and daily struggles of ordinary pious Muslims in Cairo. While Mahmood’s work concerns pious women who participate in mosque study groups, Hirschkind’s looks at male city dwellers who rely on audio cassette sermons in their projects of ethical self-reform. Mahmood and Hirschkind argue that through various practices of ethical self-cultivation—which they understand as bodily practices of self-discipline aimed at restructuring a set of moral, sensorial, and affective dispositions in accordance with authoritative Islamic norms—their interlocutors remake themselves into virtuous Muslim subjects. Although Mahmood and Hirschkind do not use the everyday as an analytical frame, they detail the daily ruminations, conversations, and difficulties these women and men encounter in their ethical journeys and demonstrate how these are informed by a constant engagement with the Islamic tradition. Indeed, everyday life presents a series of challenges that require ethical decision-making: should one meet a colleague in a café that serves alcohol? Should a woman alone ride in a taxi with a male driver? Should one got to a mosque study group one’s husband is firmly against it? These are all questions that pertain to piety as much as they do to the domain of the everyday. They are also all questions that are usually answered through some reference to Islamic authority, to the exegetical tradition and, ultimately, to the Quran and the Sunna.8 This does not mean that these kinds of ethical questions are easily answerable via a “literalist” reading of the sources and without debate, or that ethical action is simply a question of following the rules. Rather, it means that the opposition between piety and the everyday—and the concomitant opposition between textual norm and individual practice—is untenable. Consequently, Mahmood’s and Hirschkind’s monographs engage with the broader anthropological study of ethics and religion. Recent work has defined ethics as an essential condition of everyday life and of the human (Das 2010, 2012; Lambek 2010b). This scholarship has tried to reconfigure older debates on ethics by showing how ethical considerations are an intrinsic part of everyday life and do not necessarily rely on moral (or religious) frameworks. While Mahmood and Hirschkind similarly problematize any differentiation or temporal suspension between ethics and everyday life by showing how ethical commitment is at once deeply political, societal, and individual, they also refute the notion of an immanent ethical realm, and therefore any stark distinction between the domain of “religion” and that of the “everyday.”9 This remains a crucial point of differentiation within the scholarship on ordinary ethics. In contrast to those scholars—including scholars [64]of the Muslim world—who posit a strong distinction between ethics and religion and seem invested in emphasizing that people behave ethically outside the domain of religion and without reference to explicit moral norms (e.g., Al-Mohammad 2012; Al-Mohammad and Peluso 2012; George 2009), Mahmood and Hirschkind argue that conduct becomes ethical to the extent that it is situated—by the implicit or explicit intentions of the actors themselves—within a broader moral horizon such that ethical practice is constantly self-transformative.10 This latter approach has been influential in shaping new directions in the anthropology of religion in general, and of Islam in particular. A number of recent studies have attended to the way individuals constantly make and remake themselves into what they consider good Muslims through ordinary actions (Deeb and Harb 2013; Fernando 2014; Jacobsen 2011; Jouili 2015). While these actions (like not getting angry at a sibling or being kind to one’s neighbors) are not immediately recognizable as “religious” (unlike, say, wearing a headscarf or praying five times a day) they are nonetheless fundamental to the kind of ethical subjectivity many Muslims attempt to cultivate in themselves. Finally, Mahmood’s and Hirschkind’s work on ethics, in conjunction with their de-naturalization of the conventions of secular thought and praxis, paved the way for new scholarship that has sought to unravel how liberalism and secularism—and not just Islam—operate as moral fields enacted through everyday practices. For instance, our own scholarship has turned to the secular as a site of specific norms with attendant forms of ethical self-cultivation. We have argued that, like various forms of religiosity, secularity too includes a range of ethical, social, physical, and sexual dispositions, hence the need to apprehend the secular via its sensorial, aesthetic, and embodied dispositions and not only its political ones.11 In other words, by radically provincializing secular concepts, categories, [65]and attachments, Mahmood’s and Hirschkind’s work—and that of Asad (1993, 2003) before them—enabled scholars to make secularism and secularity not just the background condition of their intellectual work but instead an object of observation and analysis. Such epistemological volte-faces have a long history in anthropology. Yet this ethnographic attention to pious self-cultivation, the critical analysis of the relationship between morality and ethics, and the provincialization of secular norms and values have provoked an antagonistic reaction—sometimes quite vociferous— among a number of scholars within and outside the discipline of anthropology.12 The turn to everyday Islam is part of this reaction. The following sections therefore attend to key texts and key claims in this turn. Our aim is not necessarily to invalidate this work or even its critiques of the (over) focus on Islamic piety.13 Rather, we seek to understand the scholarly as well as the moral-political purchase of this explicit turn to the everyday. In sum, we are interested in why “everyday Islam” has become such a popular analytical framework for so many anthropologists of Islam.14 We are particularly puzzled by the opposition between piety and the everyday posited by much of this literature since, as we made clear above, everyday practice and ordinary Muslims are a central part of the earlier scholarship on Islamic piety and ethics. We want to suggest that the everyday acts here less as an empirical site of observation than a normative frame that enables the restoration of a conceptualization of agency primarily understood as creative resistance to (religious) norms. It is to that argument we now turn. Practices of everyday resistance The notion of the everyday has long been central to anthropology as one of the most privileged sites of analysis to examine the “imponderabilia of actual life,” to [66]cite Bronislaw Malinowski’s well-known phrasing (1922: 18).15 This concept, together with its twin “the ordinary” (Lambek 2010a; Stewart 2007), have anchored attempts to understand the vicissitudes of large-scale structures by examining their enactments in daily speech and practice.16 Ranging from Irving Goffman’s seminal Presentation of the self in everyday life (1959), which examines the different frames individuals use to locate and construct themselves as social subjects, to Henri Lefebvre’s Critique de la vie quotidienne (1958), which calls for a de-familiarization of the everyday, the everyday has been understood as a space of contradictions that help us unravel the ways in which social structures or systems are materialized or contested (or both). A structural tension therefore animates the analytical focus on micropractices: while the concept of the everyday seeks to understand the operation of power, it does so by accounting for its mutability through daily iterations. Michel de Certeau’s The practice of everyday life (2011) remains one of the most popular and influential illustrations of such an approach. There, de Certeau attends to the creative poetics of the “common man” in his patterns of consumption, offering a microanalysis of the operation of power in its daily enactments and renegotiations. At the same time, for de Certeau, strategies of everyday resistance to power rely on existing (though nondominant) repertoires of action, such as folktales, myths, epic legends, and games. De Certeau’s account of the everyday thereby foregrounds creativity and resistance while simultaneously inscribing them within, rather than dislocating them from, existing norms and values. Rather than opposing agency to power, de Certeau reconceptualizes agency as a tactical deployment of power. Lila Abu-Lughod’s Veiled sentiments (2000), a powerful ethnography of everyday Bedouin life in Egypt, is another example of this approach. Abu-Lughod traces how Bedouins use poems to articulate sentiments of vulnerability otherwise impermissible within the honor-driven moral framework of ordinary social life. Rather than posit moral discourse as the site of powerful social rules and Bedouin poetic expression as the site of agentive, creative resistance to them, Abu-Lughod underscores how poetry is also a social convention, a “cultural repertoire” of sentiments and actions (180). She thereby reads the situation as one in which moral discourse and poetry constitute two competing social conventions within which Bedouins are produced as subjects, rather than as one convention (morality) constraining the human spirit (expressed in poetry). And, importantly, Abu-Lughod does not portray Bedouins as contradictory or incoherent subjects. Instead, through [67]careful attention to the networks of concepts that underpin the honor code and poetry, she tries “to explain the logic of the system [as a whole]” (xxi). In a more recent ethnography that follows Abu-Lughod’s lead, Lara Deeb and Mona Harb examine how Shi’ite Muslims in southern Beirut draw on multiple moral rubrics to create new modes of pious leisure. They describe a “complex moral landscape” (2013: 10) within which young people “who don’t view their lives as necessarily bifurcated [between religious norms and everyday leisure] . . . are striving to bring fun and faith together in ways they feel are more compatible—striving for a greater level of consistency in their lives across these dimensions” (32). Although Deeb and Harb do not explicitly foreground the everyday as an analytic, other recent anthropological works have been more explicit in invoking the everyday. Samuli Schielke stands out as an influential proponent of this turn to everyday Islam, and his essay “Being good in Ramadan” (2009), on the experiences and daily practices of “ordinary Muslims” in a northern Egyptian fishing village during the month of Ramadan, is often cited by other scholars as an analytical touchstone.17 While Schielke has since published a more expansive monograph (Schielke 2015), we mostly focus on the essay here because it concisely represents both the major claims and attendant pitfalls of the turn to everyday Islam. In his essay, Schielke describes Ramadan as a time not only for fasting and praying but also for festive forms of sociality and fun, like football. Although “there is a general sense of increased social, moral, and pious commitment during Ramadan,” he writes, such a “focus on reward and piety” is temporally exceptional (2009: S26–27). Daily fasting is followed by nightly entertainment and conspicuous consumption. Moreover, the month itself stands apart from the rest of the year: Ramadan is a “time of exceptional morality that, by its nature, will last only as long as Ramadan lasts . . . and this exceptional nature indirectly legitimizes less consistent approaches to religion and morality for the rest of the year” (2015: 50). As Schielke explains, “This is a highly utilitarian understanding of religion that implicitly allows Ramadan to be established as a moral and pious exception from not so perfect everyday life. If Ramadan is a time of exceptional reward when God forgives one’s previous sins, one may commit some sins and slip a little from one’s obligations during the rest of the year” (2009: S28).18 Thus, Schielke concludes, “The ways in which most people [68]practice Ramadan do not require an ethical subjectivity that aims at the perfection of a purified, God-fearing self capable of keeping right and wrong clearly apart” (2009: S28). Indeed, Schielke takes explicit issue with the recent focus on Muslim piety and what he considers the “problematic tendency to privilege the aim of ethical perfection” (2009: S35). Rather than aiming for ethical perfection, he contends, his Muslim interlocutors usually contradicted or evaded strict moral norms: when the holy month ends with the feast of ’id al-fitr, the same young men who pray and fast during Ramadan go back to smoking hashish, watching porn, and sexually harassing women in public parks and promenades (2009: S29). He therefore argues that ethnographic focus should be redirected toward the “ambivalent nature of most moral subjectivities,” and to “conflicts, ambiguities, double standards, fractures and shifts” (2009: S38). Doing so enables the analyst to understand better how religious norms operate on a day-to-day basis, an approach Schielke frames as attending to the distinction between “grand schemes” and “the actual paths people take” (2015: 127). Schielke’s emphasis on ambivalence, ambiguity, and contradiction echoes other scholarship that similarly seeks to underline the complexities of Muslims’ everyday religiosity. Liza Debevec, for example, writes on “moderate” Muslims in Burkina Faso who, although they recognize the importance of salat (daily prayer) for their religious practice, nonetheless postpone these salat until a later stage of their lives. Like Schielke, Debevec wants to complicate prevailing accounts of piety by taking into account not only moments in which explicit moral aims are realized but also those in which they fail to take hold: “The demand that Muslims must pray regularly, and the discussion about how to do it properly, is part of everyday religious life just as much as the claim to postponing piety until a more appropriate moment is” (2012: 35). Other scholars write in similar terms of the “critical engagement” Muslims have with the norms by which they seek to abide (de Jorio 2010: 92), of the moments of doubt that are as integral as moments of faith to Muslims’ lives (Aishima and Salvatore 2010), of “internecine tensions and ambivalences” that underpin pious discourse (Huq 2010: 165), or the “experience of uncertainty, tension, and anxiety” that accompany the ritual performance of prayer (Simon 2009: 270). In so doing, they underscore how Muslims’ ethical and moral lives are marked by fracture and failure, inconsistency and incoherence. And attention to these “everyday experiences” remains essential, these scholars argue, for a comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship Muslims hold to religious norms and the contradictory desires that persistently animate Muslim subjects. Part of showing that Muslims are not saturated by normative religious requirements entails highlighting the agency of ordinary Muslims. Consider, for instance, Magnus Marsden’s (2005, 2010) ethnography of Chitrali Muslims in northern Pakistan. In an article on the touring practices of young Chitrali men who traverse the local countryside, Marsden regards these tours as an escape from or resistance to doxic social norms: “Chitrali tours are an everyday social practice that are often purposefully deployed by people—albeit temporarily—to distance themselves from the concerns of sectarian difference and status distinction that permeate everyday village life” (2010: 66). Moreover, in contradistinction to village life, these tours offer Chitralis a space for creativity and critical reflection: Chitrali touring . . . cultivates a modality of understanding and perceiving the wider world founded not on the active cultivation of embodied ethical dispositions but in the appreciation of a mindful, if often sceptical, curiosity about heterogeneity. . . . In spite of the pressures placed upon Chitrali Muslims to conform to Islamic doctrinal standards, during the course of their tours Chitralis expect one another to question, to reflect upon, and interrogate the conditions of their everyday lives. (68) Touring is a temporary tactic against social convention. Marsden’s article draws on his monograph Living Islam (2005), which is driven by an explicit desire to show that Chitrali Muslims lead “intellectually vibrant and emotionally significant lives” (1), and there he expands on the critical engagements his interlocutors have with revivalist tendencies in the region. They do so not only through intellectual arguments but also through poetry, dance, and musical performances, as well as through esoteric customs like amulet-wearing, all of which reformist trends consider illegitimate. Practices like touring, poetry, music, and dance, Marsden argues, are based on an appreciation of skepticism, self-reflection, heterogeneity, wit, irony, and humor, all values that he posits against social convention and the homogeneity cultivated by revivalist Islam. The different contributions sketched above present the everyday as a site of creativity, individuality, and transgression, a space in which Muslims negotiate and, importantly, contest the normative requirements to which they are subjected by enacting a set of alternative desires. Everyday practices thereby appear as moments of disruption, of not conforming to religious norms. But this invocation of the everyday as only a site of contingency or resistance can lead to an oppositional distinction between domains that are saturated by power and social conventions (Islamic doctrine and morality) and those that are not (everyday practices). Consider, again, Marsden’s ethnography of Chitrali touring. “Chitral’s landscape,” he writes, “is injected with abstract religious concepts that posit the possibility of experiences of moral, selfless, and devotional-like feelings of love to one’s beloved—human or divine” (2010: 61). He continues: “Abstract and Sufi-derived conceptions of other-worldly love sit jaggedly alongside feelings of lust, desire, and love that are widely considered as being illicit” (62). For Marsden, religion (as a moral discourse) occupies the space of conceptual abstraction, while the everyday is constituted by sensibility and affect, by experience and feeling unmediated by discourse. Such an understanding posits the individual as separate from power and processes of socialization, bifurcating discourses and norms from the raw experiences of the subject. This approach neglects the ways in which individual experiences and actions, even those that transgress dominant norms, are always produced within and mediated by discursive norms and power relations. After all, rather than only an escape from custom or village tradition, touring could equally be viewed as a social convention, a tradition of sorts, especially given that “Chitralis talk about tours as providing complex opportunities to hone their capacity to enact and cultivate diverse modes of sociality and moral, aesthetic, and intellectual sensibilities” (55). Indeed, touring, like musical performance and poetry, seem to be standard practices of subjectivation, central to learning how to be a proper Chitrali male. Instead of a temporary escape from norms, [70]then, as Marsden argues, touring, music, and poetry seem to be as integral to normative Chitrali social structure as Islamist morality and village social conventions. The opposition between social/moral norm and individual agent upheld here parallels an opposition between religion and other societal domains assimilated to the everyday (like love or family). Islamic traditions and normative discourses are posited as an abstract, otherworldly moral system, in contradistinction to everyday practices that often contradict or do not live up to the values of that system. Recall Marsden’s description of Chitral’s landscape as “injected with abstract religious concepts” that “sit jaggedly alongside feelings of lust, desire, and love” (2010: 61). Marsden never explains why these concepts are abstract rather than real, especially since Chitralis clearly seek to live and experience them. Regardless, religion here occupies the space of the abstract and otherworldly, while lust, desire, and love exist in the real, the everyday. Debevec understands her interlocutors’ continual deferral of salat in similar terms: “The conflict which people try to postpone could also be understood as a conflict between the real and the ideal world of the people of Bobo Dioulasso” (2012: 45). The distinction between the ideal and the real, the abstract and the everyday is an attempt to “account for the complex duality of religion as an everyday practice and a normative doctrine” (Schielke and Debevec 2012a: 1) and to correct the emphasis on “normative doctrines as the primary field of religion” by attending to how people “actually live religious lives” (2). Marsden, Debevec, and other like-minded scholars therefore foreground what they see as a tension between what people say (their ostensible commitment to moral rules or “grand schemes”) and what they “actually” do. As a result, they are critical of anthropologists of ethics who “focus on the declared aim of pious discipline rather than its actual outcome” (Schielke 2009: S24). Schielke’s reference to “actual outcome” is telling in that it reveals a broader approach: any gap between moral rules and “actual” practices is seen as evidence of the inefficacy, failure, or rejection of Islamic norms, rather than as an indication of the complex ways in which those norms are lived and enacted, a view that only confirms the distinction between a moral system and individual agents who exist outside that system. While it is certainly important to attend to the everyday practice of religious life, the scholars examined here end up simply inverting what Schielke and Debevec call the “hierarchy of a primary and secondary field of religion” (Schielke and Debevec 2012a: 2). By privileging “everyday practice” over “normative doctrine,” a strict distinction between those two domains is reiterated, reproducing Robert Redfield’s (1956) distinction between great and little traditions and Ernest Gellner’s (1981) differentiation between high and folk Islam. In fact, these scholars do more than reiterate these classical distinctions: they also conceptualize normative doctrine and everyday practice as unconnected and, indeed, as opposed. Yet the fact that a commitment to a particular norm is often imperfectly achieved does not refute the importance attached to that norm. The need to work with, through, or against other inclinations remains central to any ethical commitment. The efficacy of norms is not only determined by their realization but also by conscious and unconscious discursive and affective attachments to them, irrespective of one’s “actual” practices. The fact that Schielke’s interlocutors watch porn does not imply that they do not define such conduct as morally wrong. It is by considering the complex discursive and affective attachments one holds to religious prescriptions and practices, and not only the extent to which they [71]are being realized, that one can have a full grasp of their weight and impact on an individual.19 In the aforementioned articulations of everyday Islam, however, religion emerges as a set of abstract rules that are lived very differently “on the ground,” that is, within the realm of the real, the human, the everyday. This split produces contradictory conceptual and methodological effects for the study of religion: on the one hand, religion stands outside individual conduct as a set of abstract doctrinal rules demarcated in texts and by religious authorities; on the other, “real” religion is found precisely in individual, everyday conduct recorded by the ethnographer. The analyst’s role consequently becomes one of accounting for the ambiguities and contradictions of Muslims’ ethical journeys, and of giving voice and legitimacy to these seemingly repressed realities resulting from the impossible demands made by religion. One finds such an approach in the work of Debevec (2012), who offers an otherwise compelling account of the practice of postponing prayer until later in life. Her essay traces the different reasons her interlocutors give to account for this “failure” to practice correctly, which range from demonic temptations to the absence of a stable and settled life. However, while her own interlocutors understand the practice of postponing prayer as an effect of their spiritual or social weaknesses, Debevec appears reluctant to accept her interlocutors’ own explanation—one might even call it resolution—of this “contradiction.” She prefers, rather, to regard it as a tactical move—an act of conscious or unconscious agency—that helps her interlocutors negotiate “the very strict and detailed prescriptions of a proper life as a Muslim” (2012: 44).20 Postponing prayer, she writes, is “a successful solution to the potential conflict of pious ideals and a complex life” (2012: 45). Debevec seems analytically committed to restoring the agency of her Muslim interlocutors, whose religiosity might be seen as questionable in the eyes of preachers and purists (see also Debevec 2013: 231). In the case of Schielke’s article on Ramadan, we witness little effort to account for the ways his interlocutors conceive of their ambivalent relationship to, and nonfulfillment of, moral norms. The reader gets little sense of how, for example, the young men who fast during Ramadan and watch porn during the rest of the year explain this seemingly discrepancy. How do these men negotiate their competing desires? How do they make sense of or resolve for themselves what Schielke sees as contradictory behavior? Even when his interlocutors do try to explain their comportment, Schielke seems to reject their explanations. He gives us the example of Mustafa, a former Salafi who “now regularly shaves, has returned to smoking, prays irregularly, and maintains contact with female friends in a way in which Salafis would consider unacceptable” (2009: S33). Mustafa himself sees his behavior as a temporary suspension of piety and hopes to return to a more pious lifestyle eventually. He is not ambivalent about or uncommitted to the ideal of piety; rather, he has a sense of past, present, and future, and he understands his comportment in the present in orientation to a more perfect but deferred future of more rigorous practice. Schielke, however, reads Mustafa’s trajectory as a transition from “commitment to ambivalence,” an example of “everyday lives loaded with ambiguities and contradictions” (S33).21 The absence of an emic accounting makes the framework of contradiction and ambivalence seem external, unrecognized as such by “everyday Muslims” themselves. This positions the analyst as someone who not only records tensions and conflicts that might arise from conflicting demands but also resolves some of these tensions by turning any discrepancy between norm and practice into either a tactic demarcating human agency (in the case of Debevec) or a sign of the consistent opposition between moral norm and individual behavior (in the case of Schielke). Either way, religious norms and everyday practices emerge as distinct realms, one a space of abstract rules that are impossible to realize fully and the other a space of complexity and “actual” human conduct, where agency and choice are enacted in opposition to (religious) norms. Within this binary, the analyst emerges as the voice of authority who can in some cases even objectively determine the truth of her interlocutors better than they can. Schielke’s claim that Ramadan is objectively a time of exceptional morality, for example, relies on ignoring “religious authorities and ordinary citizens” who “argue that Ramadan should be a time of spirituality and moral cultivation that helps create a committed Muslim personality and [73]society free of vices and unnecessary spending, oriented toward individual and collective self-improvement” (2015: 50). In other words, he mentions only in passing a very different Muslim understanding of Ramadan, then dismisses this perspective in the very next sentence. At the same time, part of the reason there seems no need to explore ethnographically how one’s interlocutors might make sense of the discrepancy between moral ideal and actual practice—what many of these anthropologists understand as contradiction, ambivalence, and ambiguity—is that this discrepancy seems natural (a point we will elaborate in the next section). If fasting, praying, and sexual abstinence are forms of exceptional behavior that occupy the realm of religion, then playing football, watching porn, smoking, and praying irregularly are forms of “everyday” practice that do not need to be explained or theorized beyond marking, first, their empirical facticity and, second, their status as conduct that implicitly and explicitly resists doctrinal norms and thereby signals the creativity, critical spirit, and agency of the human being. Our disagreement with this approach, one that posits a distinction between norms and individual agents and between religion and the everyday, replays an older debate in anthropology between proponents of practice theory and poststructuralist critics. In an essay representative of the former group, Sherry Ortner calls on anthropologists to “see people not simply as passive reactors to and enactors of some ’system,’ but as active agents and subjects in their own history” (1984: 143), and to focus not on “the hidden hand of structure” but rather on “real people doing real things” (144). In response, Jane F. Collier and Sylvia J. Yanagisako point out that “an emphasis on agency, strategy, and the interest of individuals in practice approaches can easily lead to an implicit opposition between the ’practical’ and the ’symbolic.’ Such a scheme overlooks the fact that people’s ’practical’ concerns and strategies are as culturally constructed as so-called ’symbolic’ ones” (1989: 30). Moreover, they argue, the distinction between the “symbolic” (or structural/normative) and “practical” makes nonsymbolic practices ostensibly transparent: “They are simply what they are” (31). This has a number of effects: “when we define certain actions as symbolic, we risk setting ourselves the task of ferreting out the ’true’ meaning of these actions,” with the concomitant presumption that “actions not labeled as symbolic have obvious—i.e., pragmatic and equally familiar—aims” (31). As Michelle Rosaldo once observed, by “’separating out the symbolic from the everyday, anthropologists quickly come upon such ’universal’ facts as correspond to their assumptions’” (quoted in Collier and Yanagisako 1989: 31). Rosaldo’s and Collier and Yanagisako’s critiques apply, we find, to much of the anthropology of everyday Islam and its understanding of what constitutes the real and the universal. Although this anthropology explicitly aims to counterbalance scholarship it finds overdetermined by a focus on norms, it draws on a set of universalizing claims about what constitutes the everyday by relying on a tacit distinction between, on the one hand, exceptional or extra-ordinary subjects who have a strong commitment to religious norms (usually labeled “Salafis”) and, on the other, “ordinary” or “everyday” Muslims who do not. The everyday Muslim thus emerges as a familiar figure, one whose behavior does not need to be explained and who, in her ambivalent, critical, and even contestatory relationship to Islamic norms, seems very much like the mostly secularhumanist analysts who study the Muslim world. Even those anthropologists not [74]invested in liberal-humanist conceptions of religion as a set of abstract norms, or of agency as the active resistance to norms,22 or even of the everyday as the site of the “real,” seem to invoke this figure when they deploy the everyday as an analytical frame. Naveeda Khan (2006, 2012), for example, posits the everyday as a paradigmatic site of skepticism, ambiguity, and uncertainty; Veena Das (2010) sees it as a site of encounter and unexpected possibility; Amira Mittermaier, for her part, writes of the “experience of contingency and vulnerability that marks much of everyday life” (2012: 260). The everyday thereby emerges as a space in which norms fail to take hold rather than are (also) reiterated. In these different accounts, then, the everyday becomes not only an analytical frame but also a normative one: as a space characterized by friction, contestation, uncertainty, and subversion, the everyday stands as a recuperative site of humanist possibility. Concomitantly, the everyday Muslim emerges as a familiar humanist subject who looks very much like her anthropologist interlocutor. In the particular geopolitical context in which we write, it may make sense to insist on such similitude, one that incorporates Muslims “others” into the realm of the human. Yet this insistence on sameness via the paradigm of the everyday comes at a cost, namely, the banishment of the exceptional or extra-ordinary Muslim—the pious Salafi—not just from the realm of the everyday but also, concomitantly, from the realm of the human. It is to this process that we now turn. The impossibility of the “Salafi” Muslim In the previous section, we attended to the opposition between social/moral norm and individual agent at the heart of this turn to everyday Islam. We did so not simply because we have a number of theoretical disagreements with this approach but more importantly because we see in this differentiation a tendency to naturalize certain comportments as both valuable and fundamentally human, and, as a result, to determine the ontological status of different forms of Muslim life.23 Put another way, the paradigm of the everyday operates here as a normative modality of ontological differentiation, distinguishing between real and unreal (or impossible) ways of being. As part of their critique of the ostensible overfocus on pious self-cultivation, Osella and Soares offer the concept of islam mondain, which they translate as “Islam in the present world.” As they note, “Islam mondain does not privilege Islam over anything else, emphasizing instead the actual world in which Muslims find themselves” (2010: 12). It is not clear how Islam could be anything but lived in the [75]actual world. Nevertheless, Islamic traditions—the focus of scholarship on piety against which they propose islam mondain—do not, it would seem, constitute the actual world in which Muslims live. For Osella and Soares, there is little sense that actively cultivated piety might be a response to, and therefore part of, the “actual world in which Muslims find themselves.” This framework is dangerously close to the common secular critique that ultraorthodox or “Salafi”24 Muslims are, as is often put, “living in the Middle Ages,” that is, mistaking one epoch for another. It is also related to the conception of religion at work in the anthropology of everyday Islam discussed earlier, whereby religion (in this case Islam) exists outside real space and time as otherworldly and abstract, to use Marsden’s terminology. What, then, constitutes the real, actual world, the space and time of the everyday? Osella and Soares lay out a series of revealing oppositions in articulating the difference between what they call the “’piety’ turn” (2010: 10) and the kind of anthropological analysis (captured by the term islam mondain) found in their coedited volume. Referring to Schielke’s essay on Ramadan, they write that in contrast to “some studies [that] over-privilege the coherence and disciplinary power of Islam . . . we learn here about the ambiguities in young Egyptian men’s lives and everyday practice, with all its contradictions and imperfections” (12). If the earlier studies emphasize certainty, they continue, their volume’s contributors focus on doubt. Where the piety turn focuses on “the active cultivation of embodied ethical dispositions,” the anthropology of everyday Islam attends to practices that foster “the appreciation of a mindful, if often sceptical, curiosity about heterogeneity,” and to Muslims who are “reflexive and outspoken on religious matters” (13). Thus certain sensibilities and attitudes—curiosity, self-reflection, ambiguity, contradiction, imperfection, doubt, skepticism—constitute the domain of the everyday, of the real or actual world. Osella and Soares (2010) and Marsden (2010) explicitly state that they are not grafting “liberal secular standards onto unsuspecting nonliberal subjects” (Marsden 2010: 68), and that these values emerge from and are just as germane to non-Western cultural traditions. We do not disagree. We are nonetheless struck by how the sensibilities and attitudes that comprise the everyday— the domain of the real—are precisely those sensibilities and attitudes most valued by the secular-humanist tradition. If one of the goals of these anthropologists is to dismantle the ontological exceptionalism often ascribed to Muslims by the secular West (an exceptionalism they believe is reiterated by scholars of Islamic piety), the reincorporation of Muslims into the realm of the ordinary hinges on showing how Muslims—or at least “everyday Muslims”—cultivate and celebrate values that are deeply familiar to secular sensibilities. Those values, sensibilities, and attitudes are not just universalized but also naturalized as the normal state of human nature—a naturalization that contradicts these anthropologists’ explicit calls to account for the diversity of Muslim life and results in an ontological differentiation between what counts as real and what is [76]unreal or exceptional. Consider, once again, Schielke’s article on Ramadan, which, he argues, is an exceptional period of reinforced ethical commitment that enables a more flexible relationship to religious norms during the rest of the year. Ramadan, he writes is a time of exceptional morality [that] demonstrates and enforces the supremacy of God’s commands by constituting a time in which morality is not situational but strict and in which religious obligations must be fulfilled. But in the end it is precisely the temporary rigor of the holy month that establishes and legitimizes the flexible nature of norms and ethics for the rest of the year. (Schielke 2009: S28) Schielke here opposes the exceptional time of Ramadan, when moral rules are obeyed, to the time of everyday religiosity or everyday practice—the rest of the year—when morality is not strict but situational, religious obligations are not fulfilled, and individuals’ relationships to norms and ethics are flexible in nature. But the conceptual/methodological contradiction elaborated earlier—i.e., that religion is defined as, on the one hand, abstract moral rules and, on the other, individual practice unrelated to and even resistant to those rules—remains. After all, the rest of the year, which is not exceptional but rather normal, is precisely not the time and space of religion, but of the everyday. For the other element of Schielke’s argument (one echoed in his longer monograph and by many of his colleagues) is that playing football, having fun during Ramadan, getting bored, traveling abroad, falling in love, striving for material success, being good to one’s parents, or watching porn are all illustrations of everyday conduct, and that Muslims are not solely guided by religion. Consequently, these practices represent a nonreligious realm (“the everyday”), whereas other types of practices (such as sexual restraint, praying, or fasting) are framed as religious. Within the anthropology of everyday Islam, an ontological distinction becomes established between the domain of religion (of Islam) that, paradoxically, becomes restricted to those types of conduct that are recognized and framed as disciplinary and understood as exceptional to social life. In contrast, the everyday becomes the site of flexibility, spontaneity, ambiguity, and ultimately secularity. We see this ontological differentiation and naturalization equally occurring in the differentiation between types of Muslims. Recall that the focus on everyday Islam has emerged as a corrective to what this scholarship regards as an overemphasis on piety and ethical self-cultivation, seeking ways “to account for views that are neither clearly nor consistently in line with any grand ideology, and lives that are full of ambivalence” (Schielke 2009: S24). It ostensibly seeks to broaden the picture, to account for Muslims whose lives are not dedicated to ethical self-cultivation and self-perfection. And, beyond the simple fact that there are diverse ways of being Muslim, another justification for broadening anthropologists’ analytical frameworks concerns representativity: part of the problem with the piety turn, according to its critics, is that even though “actual activists in Islamist or piety movements are relatively few” (Schielke 2012: 318), scholars of the piety turn take these “committed religious activists as paradigmatic representatives of religiosity” (Schielke 2009: S35; see also Bangstad 2011). In other words, anthropologists of everyday Islam seek to reorient the focus from the demographically minoritarian pious subject and [77]to bring into view ordinary Muslims, understood as the overwhelming majority in Egypt and elsewhere. As Schielke writes, “we must be careful, not to take the way from ambivalence and imperfection to clarity and commitment as the regular and typical one. . . . People always live complex lives: a person’s identity is in practice dialogical, made up of different voices and experiences. . . . In consequence, people commonly shift between different roles and identities” (2009: S33). Schielke’s is a particularly interesting passage because it shows how a stated desire to expand effectively results in the exclusion of certain life forms. Schielke begins by noting that an orientation toward clarity and pious commitment is not a regular or typical one—a claim about representativity (the pious subject is a minority one)—but then quickly moves into a different kind of argument, namely, a universalist claim about the human subject or, as he puts it, “people”—not some people or many people, but rather people. He continues: “Salafis, just like everybody else, live everyday lives loaded with ambiguities and contradictions” (S33, emphasis added). Later he writes: “Piety does not proceed along a unilinear path. It is an ambivalent practice that is often related to specific periods in life, especially those marked by crises. . . . This is, of course, common knowledge in Egypt, as it is probably everywhere. . . . I posit that it is precisely the fragmented nature of people’s biographies which, together with the ambivalent nature of most moral subjectivities, should be taken as the starting point when setting out to study moral discourse and ethical practice” (S36). Schielke has gone from a call to attend to the varied dimensions of Muslim life (which would call for varied analytical frameworks) to a series of normative claims: anthropologists should study Islam and Muslims in a very specific way because all forms of piety proceed in the same way and Muslims (like all people) are the same everywhere. The methodology proposed by Schielke and others—studying religious life as an ambivalent and contradictory endeavor— relies on stronger normative claim about human nature (“people”). That normative claim about human nature produces, in turn, a normative claim about natural (that is, proper) attitudes toward religion and, concomitantly, about the exceptionality of the Salafi Muslim. As we argued earlier, scholars like Marsden, Schielke, and Debevec seem to understand religion as a set of moral rules and as temporally exceptional—that is to say, under normal circumstances, a strong commitment to fulfilling these moral rules is restricted to exceptional ritual circumstances (for example, Ramadan). The natural attitude toward religious rules is one of ambivalence and contestation, hence the discrepancy between moral rules and actual behavior. This conceptualization of religion results in the normalization of forms of conduct that are characterized by a loose and flexible relationship to Islamic traditions and an exceptionalization of conduct that strictly adheres to, or attempts to adhere to, Islamic norms. And the term “Salafi”—a term whose analytical usage has been contested25—plays a central role in this delineation of Muslim [78]life. The term “Salafi” functions as a mark of exceptionality, not merely with regard to demography—i.e., as a religious minority—but also to ontology—i.e., as a human aberration. It is used to refer to forms of religiosity seen to stand outside the domain of the everyday, that is, forms of religiosity that are extra-ordinary. More than simply an analytical or explanatory term, therefore, “Salafi” operates as a normative category to qualify which kind of actions, habits, and conduct are to be considered spontaneous and thereby natural, and which are, in contrast, the product of a strict regime of selfor other-imposed discipline and therefore the product of ideology, not “real” religion but rather politics.26 Indeed, Schielke’s article on Ramadan and portions of his subsequent book on youth in post-2011 Egypt are as much a critique of Salafism as they are an analysis of everyday Muslim life. Schielke takes the figure of the Salafi as the paradigmatic revivalist, despite the hermeneutical and political diversity of the Islamic revival. According to Schielke, Salafism entails a commitment to absolute perfection: “To be ’committed’ (multazim), in the dictionary of revivalist Islam, is not just to obey God’s commands. It is to develop a character completely devoted to God’s commands in every respect and in every moment. It is to overcome all ambivalence and to form a comprehensive and consistent God-fearing personality” (2015: 63).27 Yet if “complexity is the normal way morality works” (53), the ostensible coherence demanded by Salafism is an impossible demand. As Schielke puts in the earlier article, the demand for moral perfection “does not mean that people would actually live this way, and therein lies both the power and the fundamental trouble of the Salafi ideal of religiosity” (2009: S32). Thus Salafism “is inherently unstable because it includes the attempt to impose on oneself a way of being that stands in contradiction with the way human personality and subjectivity actually work” (2015: 147). What is striking here is how Schielke’s normative critique of Salafism relies on the universalist-naturalist understandings of both religiosity and human nature discussed earlier. Salafis, according to Schielke, make the mistake of thinking that one’s life should and can be lived such that “moral rules” and “actual practice” might be aligned as much as possible. But, Schielke argues, “people” do not and cannot live this way. The “fundamental trouble” with Salafism is that it is an unnatural way to live; Salafis not only misunderstand the place of religion—as an abstract and other-worldly phenomenon, it should remain outside the real and [79]actual world of everyday life—but they also fundamentally contravene human nature itself. Their advocacy of coherence, certainty, and the active commitment to a pious and virtuous life impinges on everyday Muslims’ inclinations—that is, natural, human inclinations—toward contradiction, doubt, curiosity, self-reflection, ambiguity, imperfection, and skepticism. Moreover, the unnaturalness—the inhumanity—of Salafism makes it dangerous not only to non-Salafis but also to Salafis themselves. Schielke writes, the Salafi discourse of piety with its tremendous emphasis on purity makes it very difficult to find a balance with different desires. . . . There is neither a return to the relative comfort of the negotiated ambiguity of living for God in Ramadan and for oneself for the rest of the year, nor comfort in the rigid understanding of religion. Since religion stands totally beyond critique, people can only search for faults in themselves. . . .As a consequence the wave of Salafi religiosity with its insistence on purity and perfection actually intensifies the fragmentation and contradictions in young people’s lives. (Schielke 2009: S34) Thus a central danger of Salafism—other than posing a problem to everyday Muslims—is that it is auto-destructive, both psychically damaging and, ultimately, ontologically unsustainable. Despite Schielke’s earlier claims that ambiguity is an essential part of life itself, it is now Salafis who become responsible for fragmenting the everyday subject. Salafism, Schielke contends, puts considerable pressure on an individual’s psyche by proffering an unattainable model of ethical perfection: “On the one hand, people can hold to it without having to fully realize it, and its being unrealized allows it to remain pure and simple while life is messy and complex. On the other hand, however, it can become a serious obstacle in people’s lives, a debatekilling argument that can lead people into serious crisis and dead end” (2009: S32). The ostensible escape Salafism offers from the messy reality of life ends up causing the practitioner serious psychic harm. And in so doing, Salafism reveals itself to be an unsustainable ideological project: “Salafis, just like everybody else, live everyday lives loaded with ambiguities and contradictions. . . . The rigour of Salafi piety that makes it so attractive in the mess of the everyday also makes it difficult to maintain in the face of ambivalent feelings” (Schielke 2009: S33). Salafism, it turns out, is not only unnatural; it is also difficult to sustain precisely because it is unnatural. Over the long term, Salafism and the pious Muslim subject aiming at ethical perfection are ontological impossibilities. Let us reiterate that we have no interest in a defense of Salafism. Nor is our critique of the scholarship we have discussed prompted by a desire to dismiss the ethnographic quality of many of these studies or to do away with the concept of the everyday. As noted earlier, the concept has long had an important and critically vital place within anthropology. Our disagreement lies in how this concept has come to be used to differentiate empirically between practices seen as representative of everyday life and those that are not in some of this literature. We are disturbed by the way in which such use of the everyday reproduces a series of cascading normative distinctions between everyday and exceptional, real and not real, natural and unhealthy, human and ontologically impossible. Rather than shedding light on the various ways in which religious—as well as other—constraints and [80]commitments inform and structure human conduct, and how these are continuously negotiated, the concept of the everyday here assumes that some practices are more natural—more human—than others. In so doing, it delegitimizes—renders unnatural—particular modes of conduct and forms of life, which are regarded as psychically damaging, ontologically impossible, and an effect of political ideology rather than proper ethics or religion. Conclusion Scholars have long argued that the subjective commitments of anthropologists play a central role not simply in analyzing their objects of study but also in determining and defining them in the first place. Several authors have focused, for instance, on the way authoritative discourses construct the distinct social phenomena—religion, rationality, the economy, village life—under ethnographic study (Asad 1973, 1993; Clifford and Marcus 1986; Hymes 1972; Scott 1991; Trouillot 2003). Others have addressed the problem of cultural translation—i.e., the difficulty of rendering particular concepts, life-worlds, and imaginaries intelligible in the language of the social sciences (Asad 1986a; Chakrabarty 2000; Evans-Pritchard 1976; Leenhardt 1979; Strathern 1990). These critiques have enabled much-needed reflection about anthropology’s particular epistemological and semiotic commitments (or lack thereof). They have led to the understanding that various social phenomena do not merely exist in the world as first-order empirical realities but are, rather, always already mediated—for the “native” and the anthropologist. Finally, these critiques have prompted an ongoing conversation about the discursive and structural conditions under which social phenomena are turned into discrete objects of observation and analysis. Discussion of anthropology’s epistemological, semiotic, and political conditions of possibility is far from exhausted, of course, and new scholarship continues to contribute to our critical awareness about the ethnographer’s role in determining her object of study, about the epistemological and semiotic relevance of “native” concepts and categories, and about the vocabularies and scripts through which we understand and frame particular phenomena. This essay is part of that broader conversation, and it has sought to examine the conceptual and epistemological contours of recent calls to study “everyday Islam.” As we observed, this scholarship emerged as a critique of what it sees as a scholarly overemphasis on piety and ethical norms. It seeks to show that the pious Muslim is neither paradigmatic nor representative, hence its investment in demonstrating the moments of discontinuity, fracture, ambivalence, and incoherence in Muslims’ lives. Yet these scholars’ insistence on ambiguity and their concomitant critique of norms rely, we suggested, on a particular understanding of agency that posits the self as external to and independent of structure of powers (i.e., religion). Moreover, we argued, subjects, practices, and ethical orientations not characterized by celebratory incoherence and ambiguity are relegated outside the everyday and become, as a consequence, unworthy of ethnographic attention. As we demonstrated in the latter part of the paper, the language of the everyday results in the ontological disqualification of a strong commitment to religious norms. Terms such as Salafi or activist have a normative rather than analytical function: they serve to dislocate [81]such commitment from the realm of everyday life, framing it as the outcome of political or ideological manipulations. The language of the everyday, we concluded, does not merely operate as a descriptive account that unravels the imponderabilities of life; it is also a normative vocabulary that serves to disqualify the ontological validity of particular life-worlds by delineating them as not-everyday, and, ultimately, as unreal. It is worth noting how much that normative vocabulary retrenches a series of secular-modern ethical-political commitments. As Hirschkind (2014) writes in a short commentary for the curated collection on “Everyday Islam” by Cultural Anthropology, the space of the everyday “bears a strong affinity to what has conventionally been called the secular; namely, a domain of ambiguity, contingency, skepticism, and pragmatic concern, one relatively immune to the powers of religious discipline and normativity.” Hirschkind also perceptively points to the ongoing significance of Edward Said’s (1979) critique of Orientalism in the study of Islam and Muslim societies. Writing against a tradition of Orientalist scholarship that conjured Muslims as intractably attached to an ossified, text-based set of religious norms, many contemporary anthropologists insist on attending to practice instead of text, doubt instead of certainty, resistance instead of submission to norms. But there is a certain irony to Said’s long intellectual shadow over this work, for the anti-Orientalizing gesture of much of the scholarship under discussion produces not only the familiar everyday Muslim but also the Salafi or activist Muslim—secular modernity’s radical Other. Indeed, as Susan Harding (1991) argues in her important essay “Representing fundamentalism,” the secular-modern subject is secured through the “fundamentalist” and an accompanying series of polarities: belief versus doubt, literal versus critical, backward versus modern. Although Harding was writing about Christian fundamentalists in the United States, her analysis applies equally well to the figure of the Salafi. Harding writes that certain “repugnant” groups do not come in for the same anti-Orientalizing gesture of progressive social scientists, whose “tools of cultural criticism are better suited for some ’others’ and not other ’others’—specifically, for cultural ’others’ constituted by discourses of race/sex/class/ethnicity/colonialism but not religion.” In other words, “many modernist presuppositions still operate uncritically within contemporary studies of politics and culture . . . generating a radically parochial imaginary of the margins in which only sanctioned cultural ’others’ survive.” Moreover, given the secularity of the social sciences’ epistemological commitments, disrupting “academic representations of fundamentalists . . . may provoke charges of consorting with ’them,’ the opponents of [secular] modernity, progress, enlightenment, truth, and reason” (Harding 1991: 375–76). Unsurprisingly, anthropologists of ultra-conservative Muslims have been accused of, at best, downplaying the deleterious effects of Salafism or, at worst, being apologists for Salafism (see, e.g., Abbas 2013; Bangstad 2011; Gourgouris 2013; Robbins 2013). Yet the piety turn, as it has been called, and the more general turn to ethics within the discipline of anthropology, have opened up avenues of inquiry that we as scholars continue to find productive, not only for better understanding the nature of certain forms of religiosity but also for critically interrogating the secularliberal presuppositions that underpin much of our lives and, as a result, for better understanding the nature of certain forms of secularity. We therefore find some [82]anthropologists’ dismissal of Salafis as incoherent and even inhuman subjects particularly troubling for its refusal to engage with and be engaged by “the systematicity and reason of the unfamiliar, the strange, or the intransigent” (Mahmood 2005: 199). That dismissal recalls anthropology’s fraught relationship with so-called local knowledge and what Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2003) called “the epistemological status of the native voice.” Trouillot contended that “anthropologists never give the people they study the right to be as knowledgeable or, more precisely, to have the same kind of knowledge about their own societies as ethnographers” (2003: 129). At the same time, according to the discipline’s own laudatory self-narrative, much of what distinguishes anthropology from its sister social sciences is precisely its commitment to taking native voices seriously. That commitment, we want to argue, must remain even when faced with interlocutors we might initially find abhorrent. Moreover, taking our interlocutors seriously means accepting them as sources of knowledge and as theorists in their own right, whose visions can critically interrogate, unsettle, and remake—and not only confirm—our own understandings and theorizations of the world. As Tim Ingold argues, the distinction between subjective participation and objective observation is untenable: participant observation is an ontological commitment to learning from and with others, and “to practice anthropology is to undergo an education, as much within as beyond the academy” (2014: 392). Participant observation is therefore an “unnerving” enterprise and one that “entail[s] considerable existential risk” (389). We recognize that at a time in which the “Muslim question” (Norton 2013) has emerged as a civilizational fault-line, accounts that underscore Muslim alterity in order to de-familiarize dominant secular-liberal assumptions can sometimes be recuperated as evidence of a clash of civilizations. In fact, many of the anthropologists of everyday Islam we have discussed see themselves as working against the unrelenting de-humanization of Muslims by highlighting similarity rather than radical difference and offering an account of the ordinariness of Muslims the world over. Yet, as we have argued, attempts to emphasize (most) Muslims’ sameness in order to undermine a clash of civilizations framework can end up producing certain Muslims as aberrational, unnatural, and even inhuman. Ben Highmore reminds us in the introductory notes to The everyday life reader that reiterating sameness comes at a double cost: the first is that of normalizing and universalizing one’s own values and worldviews; the second is that of creating what he calls “implicit ’others,’” or those “who supposedly live outside the ordinary, the everyday” (2002: 1). The anthropology of Islam, it would seem, faces an impasse in which Muslims only serve as evidence in a conversation between Western interlocutors about the unity or diversity of humankind. One way forward, we want to suggest, might entail finding analytical language that does not reproduce the sameness/difference paradigm seemingly endemic to anthropology. Another might be an analytical and methodological volte-face, one that inquires into why certain phenomena become problems or questions (the Muslim question, the Jewish question) in the first place. In conclusion, then, we want to reiterate that our critical engagement with anthropologists of everyday Islam is meant to be just that: critical engagement. Although we may disagree on certain analytical and methodological approaches, we nonetheless share a sense of dismay about the neo-imperialist nature of EuroAmerican engagement with the Muslim world. Indeed, the everyday might be the [83]proper starting place for any ethnography committed to critical de-familiarization precisely by making legible and viable the imaginaries, hopes, and aspirations that guide the everyday conduct of people considered odd, exceptional, or extraordinary, without simply rendering them as similar to “us.” That commitment has long been the lynchpin of the discipline of anthropology; it remains vital to any serious consideration of the Muslim world. 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Berkeley: University of California Press. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2003. Global transformations: Anthropology and the modern world. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Turner, Bryan S. 1978. Weber and Islam: A critical study. London: Routledge. Redécouvrir le musulman « ordinaire » : notes sur une scission anthropologique Résumé : Cet article examine de manière critique les incitations récentes, formulées par des anthropologues, à étudier ce qu’ils appellent « l’islam ordinaire ». Nous situons cette littérature récente au carrefour de deux tensions centrales de l’anthropologie : d’une part, ses engagements avec à la fois les similarités et les différences au sein de l’humanité dans son ensemble, et d’autre part, sa volonté de témoigner simultanément des structures sociales dominantes et des formes de résistance individuelle. Nous suggérons que le concept d’islam ordinaire souligne un aspect de ces débats paradigmatiques, en mettant en avant l’universel et en insistant sur l’opposition aux normes. Nous étudions alors la différence faite dans cette littérature entre les musulmans ordinaires et les musulmans salafistes. Nous mettons en avant le fait que l’investissement actuel dans la notion d’islam ordinaire discrédite la validité, la réalité et l’ontologie de ceux qui sont présentés comme des musulmans salafistes, et met à mal les ethnographies de la vie musulmane ultra-orthodoxe. Alors même que les études de l’islam ordinaire tentent de développer l’anthropologie de l’islam, elles limitent son expansion en définissant très étroitement son objet légitime. Nadia FADIL is Assistant Professor in the Interculturalism, Migration, and Minorities Research Centre (IMMRC) at the Anthropology Department of the KU Leuven. Her research interests revolve around questions of secularism, religion, and Islam. Nadia FadilAnthropology DepartmentInterculturalism, Migration, and Minorities Research CentreKU LeuvenParkstraat 45—Box 36153000 Leuven, BelgiumNadia.Fadil@soc.kuleuven.be Mayanthi L. FERNANDO is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her first book, The republic unsettled: Muslim French and the contradictions of secularism (Duke University Press, 2014), addresses the intersection of religion and politics in contemporary France. She has recently begun to work on law, embodiment, and the sex/gender norms of secularity. Mayanthi L. FernandoAnthropology Department361 Social Science 1University of California, Santa Cruz1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USAmfernan3@ucsc.edu ___________________ 1. Perhaps the most familiar instantiations of the diversity/unity question are the debates between Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1976) and then between Marshall Sahlins (1987, 1996) and Gananath Obeyesekere (1992), about “native” rationality. Debates between poststructuralist anthropologists inspired by Foucault and Bourdieu and anthropologists of “practice theory” remain a prime example of the power/agency problem (cf. infra). 2. Early examples include Max Weber’s examination of Islam’s theological difference from Christianity; for a fuller account, see Turner (1978) and Huff and Schluchter (1999). 3. The collection includes essays published previously in the journal by Al-Mohammad (2012), Osanloo (2006), Rouse and Hoskins (2004), Khan (2006), and George (2009), as well as interviews with the authors. 4. As Michael Lempert observes, the terms “ordinary” and “everyday” are largely interchangeable in this literature (2013: 387n1). 5. James Laidlaw’s The subject of virtue (2014) nicely illustrates how the current “ethical turn” in anthropology has been directly influenced by ongoing debates within the anthropology of Islam, and a large part of his book is devoted to recent developments in that field. For example, his chapter “The ’question of freedom’ in anthropology” (138–78) is largely a critical engagement with the work of Saba Mahmood. 6. See Deeb (2006); Salvatore (2007); Starrett (1998). Gregory Starrett, for instance, argues that mass education in postcolonial Egypt led to the “objectification” of the Islamic tradition, i.e., its construction as a separate and clearly demarcated entity to be harnessed for economic, political, and social development. The resulting ability of ordinary Muslims to participate in debates about Islam and its role in social and political life led, in turn, to the Islamic revival in Egypt. 7. Armando Salvatore (2007), for instance, analyzes how notions of islah or maslaha are recuperated in postcolonial Egypt and connected to notions of public interest. Hussein Ali Agrama (2012) likewise examines how the concept of hisba is assimilated into modern conceptions of state sovereignty. 8. John Bowen (2009) examines similar kinds of questions that emerge for Muslims in France. These debates, Bowen shows, occur on two levels. On the first, more mundane level, French Muslims have to determine how to live, work, marry, and sacrifice according to Islamic norms in a non-Muslim environment. The second level—what Bowen calls metareasoning—concerns how best to think about the questions posed at the first level, that is, how best to determine which tools and traditions Muslims should draw upon to figure out how to live, work, marry, and sacrifice in a non-Muslim context. Lara Deeb and Mona Harb (2013) consider a similar process among Shi’ite Muslims with regard to pious forms of leisure in Beirut. 9. Lempert makes a similar critique of much of the work on ordinary ethics, arguing that it can often harden “dichotomies of small and large, micro and macro, implicit and explicit” and that we should take care “not to sever the entanglements that make [ordinary ethics] seem quotidian in the first place” (2013: 386). 10. In her account of ethics, Mahmood relies on the distinct Aristotelian tradition drawn on by her interlocutors, for whom everyday behavior is connected to a process of ethical self-transformation. Although she distinguishes between morality and ethics, she sees them as interlinked, deploying Foucault’s differentiation between ethical substance and modes of subjectivation or techniques of the self. Mahmood does not see morality as a set of abstract rules to which the subject acquiesces; “Rather, Foucault’s framework assumes that there are many different ways of forming a relationship with a moral code, each of which establishes a particular relationship between capacities of the self (will, reason, desire, action, etc.) and a given norm” (2012: 234). Thus “the piety movement has a strong individualizing impetus that requires each person to adopt a set of ascetic practices for shaping moral conduct” (235). 11. By examining secular criticism of and punitive action against veiling, Mayanthi Fernando (2014; see also Selby and Fernando 2014) analyzes secularity’s underlying sex/gender norms and secular power’s investment in and interpellation of female bodies. Similarly, Nadia Fadil (2011) considers not veiling as an aesthetic of the self intimately tied to a moral subjectivity grounded in liberal ethical norms. By understanding not veiling as an everyday practice of ethical self-cultivation, Fadil challenges a hegemonic secular-liberal viewpoint of the non-veil as a natural way of being. 12. See Abbas (2013); Bangstad (2011); Gourgouris (2013); Mufti (2013); Robbins (2013). 13. In fact, we are sympathetic to this critique: as Fadil argues, the idea of “veiling as an idiosyncrasy that needs to be explained or accounted for” is inadvertently confirmed by even sympathetic research on the veil. As she notes, “Restricting the analysts’ lens to orthodox Muslim conduct like veiling, and leaving other forms of (pious) conduct unexplored, results indeed in a situation wherein only practices that fail to correspond with ’secular ways of life’ are turned into the object of research” (2011: 85). 14. Although we focus on the work of Samuli Schielke and Magnus Marsden as the oftcited proponents of this turn to everyday Islam, our interest also extends to scholarship as diverse as Al-Mohammad (2012); Al-Mohammad and Peluso (2012); Das (2012); Debevec (2012); Khan (2006, 2012); Mittermaier (2012); and Simon (2009). We do not suggest any homogeneity to this literature and recognize the very different orientations and analytic attachments that animate these studies. We are nonetheless interested in how all these works frame the everyday as a site of complexity, ambiguity, or encounter (in contrast to religious institutions and norms), what effects this framing has for the anthropology of religion, and what normative sensibilities might underlie—even inadvertently—this framing. 15. In the introductory passages to Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski uses this expression to insist that analysts should attend to the “routine of a man’s working day, the details of his care of the body, of the manner of taking food and preparing it; the tone of conversational and social life around the village fires, the existence of strong friendships or hostilities, and of passing sympathies and dislikes between people” (1922: 19). These details, he explains, are crucial to understand the way structures work and are maintained. 16. Michael Sheringham (2009) argues that the focus on the everyday as a distinct scholarly perspective emerged as part of the postwar French intellectual movement that relied on Surrealism and sought to decenter and reimagine political life. For a further overview of the theoretical deployment of the everyday in cultural theory, see Highmore (2002) and Kaplan and Ross (1987). 17. Samuli Schielke is cited as such by, among others, Debevec (2013: 211); Deeb and Harb (2013: 16-17; Laidlaw (2014: 173); and Mittermaier (2012: 250). We concentrate on his two essays “Being good in Ramadan” (2009) and “Being a nonbeliever in a time of Islamic revival” (2012), which distill the central claims made in his longer monographs and edited collections. While Schielke’s monograph is certainly ethnographically richer than his articles, it retains the main problems we identify here, namely, the notion of religion as a set of abstract rules in opposition to everyday life, and the understanding of Salafism as an impossible and unnatural way of being. 18. Schielke’s discussion of Ramadan in Egypt in the future tense (2015) is more nuanced than the earlier article version, emphasizing the complexity of non-Ramadan morality. As he writes, “the power of the moral shift of the feast lies not simply in the falling back to bad habits. More important, it marks the shift from a period of observance during which the sins of the previous year are erased to a more complex order of morality” (51). Nonetheless, a dual structure that opposes a time of exceptional morality (Ramadan) to “everyday temporality” (outside of Ramadan) continues to inform his analysis. It is to this dual structure that our critique attends. 19. Our argument here draws on Talal Asad’s seminal critiques of Ernest Gellner, developed in The idea of an anthropology of Islam (Asad 1986b) and “The concept of cultural translation in British social anthropology” (Asad 1986a). In both works, Asad takes issue with the authority of the analyst to decipher and decode subjects’ behavior while disregarding the meaning and signification attributed to it by the subjects themselves. The first essay problematizes a Gellnerian perspective that represents actors as involved in a dramatic struggle without any consideration of the meaning and discourses that orient their conduct (1986b: 8). The second essay critically explores Gellner’s work in relation to the privileged position the anthropologist accords himself to decipher and decode the “real meaning of what Berbers say (regardless of what they think they say)” (Asad 1986a: 155). 20. Maria Louw provides a different account of similar declarations by ordinary Muslims in Uzbekistan that they hold little knowledge about Islam. Louw takes these declarations as a starting point to understand “what it means to be Muslim in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, and to understand and conceptualize which experiential realities people are actually referring to when they talk about ignorance and oblivion” (2009: 19). Deeb and Harb (2013) also take a different approach by trying to understand how seeming contradictions are resolved by those who experience them, usually by inquiring into the emic reasoning of their interlocutors and in so doing foregoing the framework of contradiction. 21. Schielke significantly expands on Mustafa’s reasoning in his later monograph, though he still does not accept Mustafa’s declaration of his Salafi path as a choice, arguing, “this choice was extremely limited from the start. None of the many other currents of Islamic piety and practice was on his list of options. More important, all the options were explicitly Islamic” (2015: 142). Schielke’s understanding of choice as action unconstrained by norms appears again in a discussion of Mustafa’s refusal to go against the wishes of his mother, who does not want him to marry a divorced woman. Schielke does not understand Mustafa’s refusal as an ethical commitment to family but rather as a lack of “real choice” (101). As he writes, “Mustafa repeatedly sought a space of freedom in his marriage plans, but he faced powers too great to overcome” (101). There is no sense that that “power”—i.e., his mother’s will—is part of a broader ethical paradigm that marks a particular commitment to family, and that Mustafa’s decision to obey his mother is also a choice, albeit one made in relation to ethical or moral obligations. 22. Naveeda Khan (2012), for instance, understands the skepticism and striving present in everyday life as inherently social phenomena, produced through social relations and philosophical-cultural traditions rather than emanating naturally from the individual self; importantly, she also does not see skepticism as opposed to religious belief but as internal to Islamic practices and traditions. Mittermaier’s (2012) meditation on divinely inspired dreams presents a Muslim subject-agent integral to Sufi strands of the Islamic tradition who does not act but is rather acted upon by dreams and the divine. 23. By ontology and ontological we mean a mode of being or existing (see Fanon 1952). 24. Though “Salafi” now circulates in academic, political, and media discourse as a catchall term for ultra-orthodox and/or Wahhabi-inspired Muslims, we use the term with caution, and usually to refer to other scholars’ terminology. For aesthetic reasons we do not continually use scare quotes around the term, but they are always implied. See note 25 for more on the term and our reasons for caution. 25. The recent edited collection Global Salafism (Meijer 2009) represents the clearest and most explicit attempt to grasp the phenomenon of Salafism and determine its precise characteristics as a distinct tendency within Islamic revivalism. In a recent paper, however, Henri Lauzière radically historicizes the term, arguing that salafiyya emerged as an analytical category in the first half of the twentieth century within French Orientalist academic literature. While the term did have medieval antecedents, it was not used to determine and qualify distinct religious tendencies but rather to point to certain theological disagreements. It is through the work of Louis Massignon that the term emerged as a distinct category that would come to be adopted within and outside the Arab world (2010: 384). 26. Sindre Bangstad (2011) criticizes Mahmood for not calling her interlocutors by their proper name—Salafis—and thereby occluding their true (and dangerous) political orientations. 27. It should be noted that despite the ethnographic richness of Egypt in the future tense, Schielke’s ethnography of Salafism is quite thin. Schielke’s account of Salafism seems to rely almost entirely on three former Salafi activists, and even though he notes that “not all experiments with Salafi (or other) commitment are transient” and that “[many people join the movement and stay for the rest of their life” (2015: 146), we get no sense of these people.  

Acting translation This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Carlos Fausto and Emmanuel de Vienne. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau4.2.008 Acting translation Ritual and prophetism in twenty-first-century indigenous Amazonia Carlos FAUSTO, Museu Nacional-PPGAS Emmanuel DE VIENNE, Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense-CNRS; Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative This paper focuses on a prophetic movement led by an Amerindian from Mato Grosso, Brazil, in 2006. This man created a radically new liturgy and cosmology by combining elements borrowed from local shamanism and mythology, Christianity and TV shows, among other sources. He managed to convince entire villages to take part in spectacular healing ceremonies and gathered a huge number of followers. One of these ceremonies was extensively filmed by indigenous filmmakers, making it possible to examine the micromechanisms of this cultural innovation, and thus address with fresh data and a new approach the old issue of Amerindian prophetism. We propose here the concept of translating acts to describe this indigenous practice of transcreation, giving special attention to the multiple semiotic mediums through which it is enacted. Keywords: Amazonia, shamanism, prophetism, messianism, translation, ritual, pragmatics “He said he was an Old Christian, born in the city of Silvis, in the reign of Algarve . . . and, confessing, he said that about six years ago, a gentile people from the hinterland emerged with a new sect named Santidade [Sanctity], one of them being called pope and a gentile woman Mary of God” (Furtado de Mendonça [1591–92] 1922: 35). And so confessed Fernão Cabral de Taíde before the Inquisitor Furtado de Mendonça during the First Visitation of the Holy Office in 1591. The slaveholder Cabral de Taíde had hosted the movement led by a certain Antonio, an Indian raised by Jesuits in the Tinharé mission in Bahia, who, according to other adepts of the movement, proclaimed himself pope—or God: The principal said he was God and Lord of the world, and there is another gentile among them whom they called Jesus and a gentile woman whom they called Holy Mary. (Confession of Cristovão de Bulhões, Furtado de Mendonça [1591–92] 1922: 137) Known as Santidade do Jaguaripe, the movement brought together Indians, people of mixed blood, and some Whites, combining many different elements into its rites. The movement had a strong political connotation, as many confessions make clear: And they worshiped it [the idol] saying that their God would soon come to free them from the captivity they found themselves in, and would make them the masters of White people and the Whites would become their captives, and those who do not believe in that abomination they called Sanctity would become birds and other beasts of the forest. (Confession of Gonçalo Fernandes, Furtado de Mendonça [1591–92] 1922: 111) Since the beginning of the colonization of the Americas, we find similar references to the emergence of indigenous charismatic leaders announcing a profound sociocosmic transformation, conceived both as the overcoming of the human condition and as the inversion of asymmetric relations between Amerindians and White people. In Lowland South America, references to such movements appear in the second half of the sixteenth century along the Brazilian Atlantic coast (Monteiro 1999: 1009–15)—as in the case of the Santidade do Jaguaripe (Vainfas 1995)—and accompany the history of indigenous peoples in the region until the present.1 These movements have been interpreted in a variety of ways—as messianic and millenarian, as resistance to colonialism, as political utopias, as syncretic cults resulting from the encounter of two cosmologies, or as structural permutations of a mythic world facing new historical situations. Less attention has been given to the actual process of appropriating, translating, and creating a new cultural form, particularly in regard to the pragmatic dimensions and the interactive frames of this process. A more recent approach has come to see these events as providing a privileged entry for the investigation of ritual communication and cultural transmission in a broad sense. These studies focus particularly on the propagation of such movements through the analysis of their communicative dynamics, both within and outside the ritual setting. Stemming from Boyer’s analysis of the Fang epic genre (1988), which links the asymmetries of knowledge in public declamation with its repetition (and thus with its definition as a tradition), this line of inquiry has also drawn on certain developments in ritual theory (Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994; Houseman and Severi 1998). Severi, in particular, has contributed to the conceptualization of the kind of chimeric complexity that characterizes ritual enunciation in prophetic movements. Analyzing late-nineteenth-century Western Apache messianism, he shows how a pragmatic counterintuitivity was generated through the condensation of different and contradictory identities in the person of the “prophet” (Severi [2007] forthcoming). His earlier notion of a paradoxical enunciator (Severi 2004), in continuity with his analysis of Kuna shamanism, is also meant to explain how prophetic innovations “capture imagination” and rapidly spread beyond their original setting. From a more epidemological point of view, Pierre Deleage (2012, 2013) has investigated the ritual construal of a prophetic authority and the specific mediums employed for the spreading of the prophet’s message. Most anthropologists who have investigated such movements in South America have had to rely on historical data and secondhand accounts, making it difficult to produce a fine-grained analysis. Moreover, only successful movements at a certain stage of their development (when their choreographic, musical, and linguistic elements had more or less stabilized) appear in the written sources. The actual and initial process of invention is mostly absent in these studies. This article aims to fill this gap by peering into the microdynamics of an Amerindian prophetic movement. Here we examine a recent case that erupted in the Upper Xingu region, in Brazil, in 2006, when a man in his forties started curing people through radically new ritual techniques, claiming to have received his powers from a direct encounter with God-Sun. Self-designated “Master,” this man also prophesied the end of witchcraft (i.e., the end of disease and death) and the end of the world. We were not present during the movement’s apogee, but we have at our disposal six hours of video recording of one of its climatic moments, and a number of later interviews.2 This material makes possible a minute description of the ritual actions in all their dimensions: speech, gestures, bodily orientation, the gaze, the manipulation of objects, and so forth. It bears witness to the hesitations, uncertainties, misfires, and repetitions that characterize the birth of a new cosmology embedded in a new ritual form. Our case also has the advantage of being closer to failure than to success. The literature on prophetism and related phenomena has had no alternative other than to privilege the great movements that passed the test of history, and to dismiss the more discreet outbursts that remained unnoticed. The latter nevertheless deserve to be considered as minor variants of the former. While presenting a number of specific elements, our case pertains to the same family of phenomena commonly labeled “prophetism” in indigenous America, and it is directly relevant to its understanding. Although there is much discussion in the literature on how to characterize these movements (Brown 1991; Veber 2003; Fausto, Xavier, and Welper 2014), they all combine features of the colonizers’ world (especially Christianity) and indigenous traditions in a particular way, generating a new propagating form. Here we propose to address the production of this new form as a special case of translation, one that is made of what we call translating acts. Translating acts We must first make clear the sense in which we take translation here. Let us proceed by means of a contrast: compare the sort of semantic-oriented translation intended by missionaries in the colonial space of the Reducciones (Hanks 2010) with the following iconic and ironic translation effected by a Guarani shaman at his village in the distant year of 1628. Named Ñeçu (possibly a corruption of Jesus), this shaman and chief had initially welcomed a few Jesuit missionaries into his people’s lands, but then decided they should be killed. Montoya recounts what he did afterward: To show he was a priest, albeit a false one, he donned the liturgical paraphernalia of the priest and, thus attired, presented himself to the people. He summoned the children before him and proceeded to eradicate, through barbaric ceremonies, the indelible character which baptism had impressed upon their souls. (Montoya [1639] 1985: 201–2) He scraped the tongues of the children who “had tasted the salt of the sapient spirit,” as well as their backs and necks to “smudge the holy ointments,” and reversed the ritual, washing the children from their feet up to their heads. This inverted baptism is an act of translation (and betrayal), which makes the Christian and indigenous imageries collide (and combine). A certain level of shared knowledge is required for people to engage in these actions. More than a conceptual operation, though, what is at stake here is the construction of a successful interactive and communicative context. Ñeçu undoubtedly mimics the priests, but he also transcreates their liturgy on the spot, counting on the engagement of his audience to make it work, and thus reinforce his own position. What kind of translation was he making? As in our case, Ñeçu’s translation does not involve questions of semantic or stylistic accuracy, nor the dilemma of privileging the target or the source language while trying to preserve meaning. It is, rather, a question of transference, of carrying across (as the etymology of the word makes clear), in order to produce a dynamic equivalence through which the translator establishes his/her authority. In this sense, it is closer to the notions of transcreation and transliteration characteristic of some strands of poetic translation theory (Campos 1981; Lages 2002), and also to notions of cultural translation as pragmatic situations involving what Pina-Cabral (1999) calls “equivocal compatibilities.”3 Specific to our case is the fact that there is someone—the Master—continuously producing these equivocal compatibilities in the act, and not two sides situated within different cultural traditions colliding. As we will see, our “prophet” transcreates his own experience of both worlds into a new form, striving to produce a commensurability between the indigenous and nonindigenous traditions.4 The expression “translating acts” also has a number of echoes and connotations. Firstly, in much the same way that speech act theory sees verbal utterances to be doing things and not only carrying meanings, we seek to explore how translating acts induce transformations in practical situations rather than only focusing on semantic and conceptual elements. These acts of translation are situated like any other social action, and subject to evaluation in terms of success or failure by the actors themselves in the course of their interaction. Secondly, “translating acts” is also to be understood as “translation made of actions,” and not solely or mainly of utterances or texts. This widening of the scope of translation in order to include multiple semiotic mediums implies giving as much attention to nonverbal as to verbal aspects of communication. Translation made of actions requires us to pay attention to choreographies, gestures, body transformations, the manipulation of artifacts, and so on. Speech is often not the main medium for translation, and semantic content is hardly ever the primary concern of participants in the course of translating acts. Finally, our concept also implies the idea of “translation in action.” We wish to focus here on processes of transcreation unfolding in space-time, within certain interactive frames, and prior to the stabilization of any given translation. In sum, the expression “translating acts” contains three related ideas: “acts of translation,” “translation made of actions,” and “translation in action.” We are particularly interested in actions that produce a kind of working misunderstanding between two or more fields (call them “ontologies,” “cosmologies,” “cultures,” or “religions” as you wish) by condensing them into certain ritual forms. Translating acts differ, for example, from a translation of the Bible negotiated between Amerindians and missionaries, in which equivalences between meanings are sought. Translating acts imply images coming together and colliding on the spot. They also have to create their own metacommunicational conditions in order to engage people in them. Their context is thus one of an interaction in which the felicity of each act of translation is calibrated within a complex set of relations, thus making them subject to correction and change over their course. Finally, translating acts imply uncertainty and experimentation, and work by triggering abductive reasoning.5 In order to ground our concept empirically, we shall describe and analyze a number of ritualized situations as they unfolded during the visit of the Kuikuro people to the Kalapalo village of Tanguro, where the self-designated Master was prophesying and curing during the 2006 rainy season. A case of Jesus The news about the miraculous cures performed by Manuá had begun to spread across the Upper Xingu.6 The Kuikuro were the first to collectively engage in the movement, which until then had been limited to the Kalapalo people themselves. One day, the shaman Lümbu entered the Kuikuro village, running, swaying his head, and sighing as though in a trance. He said that Manuá had “made” (tüilü) him, and that he had become like him. He had adopted the Master’s new curing technique: instead of smoking and extracting the spirit darts from the patient’s body, he would strike the painful area. Some people immediately submitted themselves to the therapy, and paid for Lümbu’s services in the appropriate way. At dusk, the men gathered in the middle of the village and summoned the shaman to tell his story. Manuá had announced that the world would come to an end, and that those who did not go to his village would be taken away by Ogomügü, the anthropophagic double-headed vulture that holds up the sky. Having heard this prophecy, the men asked Lümbu: “When will the world end?” Not knowing our number system very well, he replied: “In thirty years.” Since they were both in their sixties, Chief Afukaká and his brother-in-law Jakalu were relieved: “Let it go. By then we’ll be well dead.” Lümbu noticed his mistake and retracted himself: “No, it will happen in five years.” Everyone was disappointed. That night, Lümbu treated many people for free. Not all were convinced of his new powers. A man in his late twenties with a headache submitted to the therapy, and after many ineffective blows to his head, decided to tell Lümbu he felt better just to avoid any more slaps. The next morning this man stayed home, but some thirty people—men, women, and children—decided to board the boat and depart for the village of Tanguro, under the guidance of Chief Afukaká. With them went three Kuikuro videomakers, who started shooting halfway to Tanguro, when Manuá, having learned that the Kuikuro were arriving, went to their encounter. Over the next two days, the videomakers recorded all the ritual actions that took place at the village: the welcoming ceremony, the staging of the Master’s illumination, the baptism rites, the healing sessions, and so on. The present article focuses on the first two moments only, starting, for analytic reasons, with the staging of the events that turned Manuá into a prophet. In an interview recorded six months later, Manuá explained that everything began when, very ill, he went to defecate in the bush on the outskirts of the village and fainted.7 On waking up, he saw Tãugi, the Sun, donning a resplendent crown of yellow feathers.8 The divinity said to him: I’m Tãugi. To you, I reveal myself. I’m worried about you, you’re almost dying. I’ve revived you and shall help you. You’ll become a shaman, the most powerful shaman and all other shamans will be below you. (Manuá 2006—interview) Taugi gave Manuá a new name: Master-King (Mestre Rei), which, as Taugi explained to him, was his own former name (“the one people used to call me”). Here Manuá conflates Taugi and God (Deus) with Jesus, who is commonly called “Master” or “Christ-King” (Cristo Rei) in Brazilian Christian churches. This conflation is made clear soon after in the interview when Manuá recounts that Taugi presented his mother to him: “Her name is Anhipe, but I always call her Mary (Maria) to White people.”9 Mary was beautifully adorned and painted: “Like a young girl leaving seclusion during a funerary ritual. Beautiful.” And Manuá continues: “But she’s old, from ancient times, she is his mother.” Here he conveys a paradoxical image, insofar as Mary is presented both as a young woman at the height of her beauty and reproductive potential, and as Taugi’s mother, the very one who nurses the dead. As we shall see, these paradoxical identifications are all acted out in the staged scene of Manuá’s illumination. He relates it here directly to the pivotal Xinguano myth, at the same time as he inserts himself and the Christian deities within it. Notably, six months after the events, the Master provided a stable oral version of his illumination, which contrasts with the improvisation and innovation that characterized the rituals we recorded. However, this story was stabilized much earlier, during the prophetic movement itself, and not afterward, as if Manuá needed a narrative framework to structure his own innovations. Here he draws directly on a striking feature of Xinguano rituals, in which myths function as a charter for ritual actions. This feature may have resulted from the historical process through which the Upper Xingu became a single multiethnic system. Rituals of different origins were appropriated and adopted by all the peoples forming this cultural constellation (Fausto, Franchetto, and Heckenberger 2008; Fausto 2011a). A mythical charter would have been a convenient tool for transmitting and making sense of complex ritual routines in the absence of prior shared knowledge.10 And this was precisely the case for the recently arrived Kuikuro. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Master decided to put his own origin story on stage. Manuá’s followers had cleared a “plaza” (hugógo) for him—a circular space, carefully weeded, located at some distance from the village. It clearly pointed, though, to another plaza: the village center, where the main chief, called the “master of the plaza” (hugogó oto), makes his formal speeches. The fact that this plaza was decentered in relation to the village meant not only that Manuá defied the chiefs from the periphery, but also that he wanted to distance himself from a specific setting in order to build a new physical context for his innovative communicative practices. He operated in space the kind of deictic “de-anchoring” that one finds in myths. The new setting afforded him a considerable expansion in scope: Manuá’s ambition being cosmopolitical, his plaza was a cosmic one, where indigenous and nonindigenous deities came together. His plaza synthesized all Xinguano plazas, and projected them onto a virtual space filled with the Sun’s shining presence and Sangitsegü’s eternal youth. From his plaza Manuá could hear everything, as he claimed in his interview: “Taugi improved my hearing. Tak! I could hear everyone, the whole world, as the Whites say.” Staging the illumination11 The plaza is connected to the village by a large path. Manuá arrives totally naked, even though just shortly before, while still in the village, he had been fully adorned to formally welcome the Kuikuro. Now he is ill. He arrives talking. He says: “Look, here is my beginning,” employing a term (etihunte-) that applies to origin narratives.12 “My belly was hurting a lot, I went to defecate.” He carries a little flute in his hands, the flute with which Whirlwind masks “talk” to ask for food.13 He makes strange gestures, stretching his arms into the air and spinning around slowly. He enters the plaza, and addresses the people there: “My belly was really hurting. Do you like it when your bellies hurt?” They shout: “No!” Then he addresses Chief Afukaká, instructing him: “Go there, father, you will be Taugi.” Manuá employs the correct kin term to address his classificatory father Afukaká, whereas previously, while still in the village during the welcoming ceremony, he would only call him anetu (“chief” or “noble”). Afukaká now dons a full feather diadem, similar to the one Manuá was wearing earlier. Manuá turns to Afukaká’s daughter, Auná, who is a high-ranking chief in her late thirties: “Maria, you stay there.” The three characters—Taugi-Afukaká, Maria-Auná, and Manua-Master-to-be—stand up in the middle of the circle formed by the men. “In no way am I lying. All of you, look! That’s how it started.” Manuá tells the audience how painful it was and how worried he was. He goes to the center of the circle, rests one knee on the ground, stretches up one of his arms, and addresses the Sun: “Taugi, look at me, my belly is hurting, what is doing that to me?” Then reporting Taugi’s speech, he yells: “Manuá!” and falls down on the ground. After a brief moment, he raises his head slightly and talks to the audience, while pointing to Taugi-Afukaká: “Look behind me, is he haunting me?”14 The audience respond in unison: “Yes!” Manuá calls Maria-Auná to come and see what is happening to him. Entirely naked save for a shell necklace, Auná does not respond to the command. Manuá goes on talking: “Say: ‘What am I going to do for my son, what are you going to do for him?’” Without moving from her place, Auná starts repeating her line. Afukaká murmurs: “Approach him.” Manuá sits and talks to the audience: “Listen to me. I get it. It’s still difficult for her, she hasn’t absorbed it yet?” The audience applaud. Manuá tries once again, asking Afukaká to tell her what to do. But the chief is also puzzled. Manuá cuts it short, and asks Afukaká to come closer to him and play his part: “You are going to shout ‘Manuá!’ for them.” Standing up now in front of Manuá, who lies down on his back, Afukaká raises his arms and shouts very loudly. Manuá raises his head as though waking; the audience applaud. He gets onto his knees and, staring at Afukaká, asks: “Who are you?” The chief now replies without delay: “I’m Taugi.” Manuá falls down again, this time facing the ground. He stays still for twenty seconds, and Afukaká becomes uneasy, not knowing what to do. He looks up at one of the Master’s auxiliaries and makes a discreet inquiring gesture. He returns to his part again, raises his arms, and shouts once more: “Manuaaaaá!” Still lying on the ground, Manuá suddenly turns over onto his back melodramatically. Fresh applause. He gets up again on his knees: “How are you going to cure me?” he asks Taugi-Afukaká, who answers: “I’m going to teach you.” “What for?” replies Manuá. “To stop your belly pain.” The scene draws on the shaman-patient interview that precedes any cure in the Upper Xingu, but now recast in the manner of a Catholic revelation with the patient kneeling down and the divinity standing up. “What’s inside my belly?” asks Manuá. Afukaká responds in a detached tone: “Who knows?” and Manuá murmurs: “Blood.” Getting once more into the play, the chief repeats “blood” twice. Manuá whispers to him what to do next, and Afukaká takes some water from a huge aluminum pot and washes Manuá’s head and back, while saying: “Get well, get well, get well.” He then helps the sick man to stand on his feet. Manuá looks around, as if he had just gained consciousness. He then laughs in a bizarre way. Nobody talks, nobody applauds. He turns to Taugi-Afukaká and asks in a low voice: “Who is she?” “She’s Maria,” Taugi-Afukaká answers. “Oh, you came from inside her, didn’t you?” “Yes.” “Should I go to see her?” In this way, Manuá draws Auná back into the scene, but now with her own father identifying her as Maria. Manuá thus skillfully overcomes his initial failure to make her participate in the staging of his illumination. He walks toward her, limping and tottering, and in a beseeching voice asks her to cure him. He repeatedly calls her name: “Maria, Maria.” Auná hesitates, but finally capitulates and talks to him. She walks toward him, she stretches out her arm and almost touches him, but he falls down to the ground again. He stays there, waiting for her, but it is only after a while that she approaches him and yells: “Manuaaaaá!” With a brusque movement, he gets up on his knees and slowly stands up. Now he does everything gently, taking his time. He gets very close to Maria-Auná, facing her, but says nothing. He is a tall and sturdy man. Auná is visibly uncomfortable. After a brief pause she murmurs: “I’m going to teach you how to stop your belly pain.” Manuá does not give any clue to the right answer now. She touches his belly lightly with the tip of her fingers, and he moves away, still limping, while one of his auxiliaries gestures for those present to applaud. They do so. Manuá now addresses the audience directly, showing them the content of the aluminum pot: a reddish-brown liquid like permanganate water. He uses symmetric consanguine kinship terms (“my sisters,” “my brothers”) to address the Kalapalo, and refers to all the Kuikuro as “those who have arrived.” He questions all of them: “Is this my blood?” and people respond in a somewhat shy and apathetic way: “Yes.” This seems to have been an innovation even for the Kalapalo, who had already been taking part in Manuá’s cures for some time. He keeps talking in a reflexive way, saying that they do not yet know how to answer his words, until he regains control of the situation, and reinstalls the frame of rhetorical questions and responses in unison. God as a hyperspirit In order to gauge the innovations introduced by the Master, we need to provide a quick overview of shamanism and chieftaincy in the Upper Xingu. Shamans and chiefs are two prominent and distinct positions among the Kuikuro and the Kalapalo. They also both have different levels of power and legitimacy. In shamanism, the main difference resides in the modality of initiation. Some specialists are said to have been directly “made” (tüilü) by the spirits during a dramatic and recurrent illness, while others are said to have been made by other shamans only. The former are considered more powerful than the latter. However, even shamans made by spirits must undergo a lengthy and expensive training process guided by another shaman, until he is ready to be initiated in a collective and secret ceremony. The first thing he must learn is how to smoke tobacco, which is the earmark of shamanism.15 The crucial moment, though, is the transmission of a viscous substance (called nguto in Upper Xingu Carib languages) from initiator to initiate. This substance, which originally belonged to a spirit, allows the new therapist to remove the disease with his hands or mouth, or both, depending on where the substance is located in his body. This transmission establishes a substantial community between the spirit, initiator, and initiate. Manuá short-circuits this institution by claiming to have been directly elected by Taugi-God, and refusing to submit himself to shamanic training. While his illumination can be interpreted as a form of shamanic election, his attitude implies a rupture: he tells all shamans to yield to his power, and even makes new shamans (or remakes old ones like Lümbu).16 He also deprecates tobacco, and claims that the substance he shares with Taugi is blood, which he exudes from his body. He does not cure by extracting pathogenic agents from the patients, but by hitting them and inflicting pain on them. Violence is indeed a recurrent therapeutic action, if not the main one. It expresses an obvious paradox: the injury is the remedy that relieves pain. God as a king Manuá’s relation toward chieftainship is likewise complex, but overall more respectful than his relation toward shamanism. After all, he is a member of the Kalapalo elite, and had been a prestigious champion wrestler in his youth. Sportive wrestling competitions between hosts and guests are a central aspect of intertribal rituals in the Upper Xingu, and victory not only increases the prestige of a community, but also turns individuals into celebrities. Almost all the current executive chiefs in the region are former champions. Manuá was well placed, then, to acquire an eminent political position through traditional means, although perhaps not that of a “master of the plaza,” which he certainly coveted (Franco Neto 2010: 252–53). According to Cardoso, Guerreiro, and Novo (2012: 26), from the very beginning of his prophetic movement, Manuá was haranguing people each morning in the village, something that only high-ranking chiefs would feel sufficiently legitimized to do. Manuá’s movement is full of resonances for Xinguano politics, including his cosmological conflation of Taugi-God and himself as Master-King. In the region’s mythology, the Sun is the great transformer. Together with his twin brother Moon, he instituted the world in its contemporary form, including human mortality. It was also the twins’ decision not to revive their mother Sangitsegü, but to commemorate her in a funerary rite by means of an artifact: a wooden effigy. Since then all dead chiefs have been celebrated in a ritual that depicts the substantial continuity existing between chiefs and demiurges: like Sangitsegü and her sons, chiefs are made of the noble wood that the Kuikuro and the Kalapalo call uegühi.17 As a chief, Afukaká is really the offspring of Taugi and his mother. His eldest daughter Auná, who bears the name of his late mother, is also herself a chief. Not surprisingly, Manuá asks Auná to play the role of Mary, mother of Jesus, who is both young and old at the same time, while asking Afukaká to play Taugi’s role, making him the son of his own daughter. In the Upper Xingu, names produce an infinite recursion between alternate generations, which leads back to the time of origins and forward to the future. And the future here is Manuá’s. Through his initiation by a hyperspirit (the cultural hero himself and his mother, alias the father and mother of White people), Manuá identifies himself with the very source of the power of both shamans and chiefs, approximating, as Cardoso, Guerreiro, and Novo (2012: 27) argue, a kind of authoritarian power that exceeds what local standards define as legitimate. The illumination scene has a clear political message, therefore: by attributing Taugi’s identity to an influential Xinguano chief, literally crowning him with shamanic, political, and Christian emblems in a context that emphasizes his own importance, Manuá actually dethrones both chiefs and shamans. A paradoxical I In the illumination scene, Manuá inserts Christian imagery into the Xinguano mytho-ritual world, drawing on his fragmentary exposure to both Catholic and Evangelical church services in the city (Franco Neto 2010: 255). He makes simple identifications: Taugi is God (and Jesus), Sangitsegü is Maria. There is a theological simplification at work here too: the Christian Trinity is eclipsed, indigenous twin-hood disappears. The Moon is never present, and the Sun, called by his personal name Taugi, is ever-present. Manuá’s conflation of Christian and Xinguano deities thus presumes a prior de-complexification: each of them must appear as one in order to make the translation possible (Jesus, for instance, becomes one of God’s names). Such simplifications, however, allow new condensations to occur and the creation of new complex figures. The reconfiguration of a plurality into a unity within each tradition seems to be a precondition for the production of a new plural and paradoxical person: the Master. Severi’s notion of a “paradoxical I,” which he coined to describe Apache prophets in the nineteenth century, aptly captures this ritual configuration, and the ambivalent appropriation of the Conquering Other (Severi [2007] forthcoming: ch. 4). According to the author, the paradoxical character of Amerindian prophetism results not from the mapping of ontological concepts from one tradition onto the other, but from the production of a relational scheme where being “like the other” implies being simultaneously “different from (and above) the other.” During the night trip, Manuá boarded the Kuikuro boat and started to preach and cure. At a certain point, he stopped to recount that Taugi had told him that he would be higher than the pope, who cannot cure people: “I’m fed up with hearing my own speech from the Bible,” God said to him. “That’s why I’m teaching you, so that you can become the one who will spread my word.” The Book does not cure; writing has no power or presence. It will befall the Master to talk and heal without mediation. Given the importance of writing in other prophetic movements in South America, such as the Aleluia in the Guianas, it is rather surprising that God-Taugi so clearly affirms the inefficacy of the written word.18 In contrast to Severi’s study, the opposition to the Whites in our case is much less pronounced. The latter are not the main targets of the ritual communication. Yet the contradictory proposition “I am like you, thus I am different to you” is constantly mobilized in Manuá’s interaction with Afukaká. In the illumination scene, Manuá plays himself as he was before becoming a Master: that is, as a sick person. At the same time, he duplicates himself, acting as both his former and present self. Here the “paradoxical I” is matched by a “paradoxical you,” since Afukaká plays the role of Taugi-God, but he is also the sick patient asking to be cured. He is split between two simultaneous conditions, although a stable identity underlies the scene as a whole: he is undoubtedly the chief. We have here a kind of pragmatic translation in which the focus is less on the equivalence between different entities (God = Taugi; Mary = Sangitsegü) and more on a translation of the ritual conditions under which these entities are normally mobilized. The Master activates different regimes of communication: the indigenous private shamanic communication with the spirits, the ecstatic collective communication with Jesus characteristic of some Evangelical cults, and the mediated communication of Catholicism where the mother of God plays a crucial role. While shamans converse with a variety of spirits, they never address the cultural heroes of indigenous mythology. Manuá, though, talks directly to the latter and reveals them to be the same as the White people’s divinities. He puts himself in the position of an ultimate intermediary. At the same time, he establishes a communicational frame in which the indigenous collectivity directly addresses the deities by constantly calling them with their arms raised toward the sky: Taugi! Deus! Jesus! Maria! Sangitsegü! Manuá even makes his followers blow with hands clasped over their mouth and nose in order to unblock their ears and force them to listen to God’s words. Another essential aspect of Manuá’s innovation is his use of “therapeutic violence.” Shamanism in Amazonia does not ignore the link between suffering and healing. But suffering is a prerequisite to become a healer, not a solution in itself.19 We can also find in shamanism an identification between the patient’s present condition and the shaman’s past (as a sick person) and future (as a healer). However, the whole system is based on the idea that personal communication with the spirits excludes normal communication with humans. The shaman is a double person, both a benevolent spirit (who extracts the pathogens instead of injecting them) and a visually perceptible human. People are left to watch over his shoulder while he interacts with his auxiliary spirits during the treatment (de Vienne 2011). True, the sound of the maracá, the smoke of the tobacco, and the dancing shaman do render the spirits present and material, but the patient must stand completely still, and never look at him. By importing the idea of a direct verbal encounter with the divinity, Manuá explodes this communicative context. If curing implies both speaking and listening to the gods on an open public stage, then the difference between healing and initiation disappears, and the suffering intrinsic to initiation now appears as the healing process itself. Improvisation and the management of uncertainty The translation between two macro structures of communication with the supernatural is not the only remarkable feature of Manuá’s ritual actions. We still have to account for how he manages to reenact his complex personhood constantly and captivate his audience, how he can perform strange collective actions for hours on end, multiplying his translating acts ad nauseam, and how these are evaluated by the participants. Any ritual innovation must face the problem of the paucity of shared knowledge about how to act in this or that situation. Translating acts are performed in a context of a profound asymmetry in knowledge. In the literature on ritual, such asymmetry is often considered the means, rather than the obstacle, to the efficacy of ritual interaction (Boyer 1988, 1990). In our case, however, a maximum discrepancy combines with other parameters: ritual knowledge is ultimately in the hands of a single individual who stands alone—except for his chosen assistants—before a crowd. Most of his actions are not only new, they also reveal themselves to be opposite to commonly accepted practices. In other words, the Master’s stakes are quite high: the prophet can either convince people (i.e., convert patients into adepts) or end up being considered a fraud, a crook, or a sorcerer. Presenting himself as the focus of attention and the main organizer of the collective action, he must continually switch from one interactive frame to another, invoking (or improvising) various aspects of context, sometimes in complex and potentially dissonant layers. According to the feedback received, he strives to control any misunderstandings that might jeopardize the fragile common ground achieved thus far. He thus acts not only as the main actor-translator in the scene, but also, at a meta level, as its director, incurring the risk of seeing the whole situation collapse. Becoming a “prophet” requires a communicative feat that we also need to explain. While the work of translation mainly belongs to the prophet, the participants are not just mimicking actions or adhering to them out of a naïve belief. They are neither imitators nor believers, but interpreters, albeit not in a hermeneutical sense. The adhesion is practical and always subject to testing within what we could call “an abductive frame.” This expression seeks to ground the cognitive notion of abductive inference, which Boyer takes from Peirce in order to explain magic-religious ideas. By replacing “inference” with “frame,” we wish to convey the idea that abduction is a two-way relation: to captivate the participants, the prophet has to provide clues, which trigger abductive inferences, making it plausible that he is “a case of X.” But more than just inferring, which supposes a kind of pure propositional operation, what seems to be at stake is the “capture of imagination” (Severi 2002). We could even say that the ritual frame is an “art-like” situation, in Gell’s (1998) sense: at issue is the conflation of the prophet and his prototype (God-Sun), the power of this image, its “trapping quality,” dependent on the success of a series of translating acts. Let us now see how this was acted out during the welcoming ceremony held just before the illumination scene. Stabilizing a certain common ground20 Early morning, the hosts get ready to formally receive the visitors, as demanded by Upper Xingu etiquette. This time, though, the greeting ceremony is different from the one preceding or opening intertribal rituals. Kalapalo men and women gather inside Manuá’s house, where the shamans are already sat on their stools, smoking. Manuá does not smoke, but sighs continuously as though in a pre- or posttrance state. In front of the house, young men stretch out a sort of clothesline on which they suspend Xinguano luxury items (shell necklaces and cotton belts) as well as a ritual object (specifically the “face” of the Whirlwind mask). This line is similar to those strung up by a sick person’s kin when shamans perform the soul retrieval ritual.21 Luxury items are offered to the abducting spirits as a gift to persuade them to release the captured soul. The current setting is that of a superlative healing session that includes the whole village.22 Manuá organizes his people inside the house in a precise order. He gives a fine feather headdress to the young man leading the line, and asks the audience: “Is he now a shaman like me?” They all reply in unison: “Yes!” He claps his hands and everybody follows him. Well adorned, the Kalapalo exit the house and split into two parallel rows outside, men facing women, a formation that echoes both collective vaccination protocols and Evangelical baptism. Manuá shouts “Taugi! Deus! Jesus! Maria!” and says: “Extract the disease out of my shaman” (i.e., out of himself).23 All the people raise their arms and shout in reply. Amid the shouting and applause, Manuá leaves the house held by his parents and parents-in-law, who are weeping. As he walks between the rows, he asks: “Did I cure you all?” and the audience respond: “Yes!” He then proceeds to ask: “Does your [some part of the body] hurt?” and the audience shout “No!” He arrives at the end of the rows and, pointing to his family, who are still crying, tells the people to listen to them weep. His family are unadorned and completely naked, as when people are ill or in mourning. The whole scene conveys a paradoxical idea: although the Master has cured everyone, his kinfolk cry as if he were dead. Time-space collapses here: as we have seen, he did indeed die, only to be revived by God-Sun, becoming like him and starting to cure. At this stage of the ritual, however, his followers ask God-Sun to cure him, as though he were still dead, and his kin wail as though he were a corpse. He announces that he is about to leave them all, that he is going up to meet Taugi. “Am I going to take off?” he asks, and the people respond all at once: “No!” He ascertains the degree of adherence, admonishing the women: “If you do not cry enough, I shall take off.” They cry louder. He then approaches his wife and takes their little son from her arms, telling the participants that only the baby will become like himself: “You are not going to believe in him,” he says, “that’s why he is not looking at you. Call him Pope and he will look at you.” The followers shout “Pope!” Manuá turns his baby to face the shouting audience and smiles as he says: “I told you.” They keep repeating “Pope!” and the baby suddenly pees. Unperturbed, Manuá states that he has just urinated their illness. He then reproaches the women again for not shouting loudly enough. “Don’t you want him to become the one who extracts illness from you?” and the women respond “Yes!” He tells them to applaud and thereby terminates this particular act. Interval. People stop shouting, kin stop crying. Manuá reorganizes the setting, issuing mundane instructions. Next, his sister by his side and his parents and parents-in-law behind his back, he kneels down and stretches out one of his arms, showing a pigeon made of wood. He does not kneel as Christians do in a church, but as chiefs do when receiving visitors from other villages, with only one knee on the ground. He poses a new question: “Is he going to cure you with this pigeon?” Nobody answers. The Kalapalo do not understand the innovation. It is unclear what the pigeon is doing there. Xinguano people do confect wooden miniatures of birds, typically for the Pequi fruit festival, but not pigeons. Unaware of the Christian symbolism of the dove, the participants wait in silence until Manuá poses a more direct question: “Do you want it to become like me?” and the followers shout “Yes!” For a lapse of time he seems unsure what to propose next. He then asks: “Am I trembling?” People seem to already know the answer: “No!” “Who is trembling then?” and they immediately shout: “Maria!” Obviously his sister’s association with Maria had been previously established, and Manuá regains control of the situation. He then hands the wooden pigeon to her and asks the people to applaud, quickly ending a frame in which people had failed to grasp part of his translations. Wild translations and fast switching After staging this first ritual before his own people, thereby ensuring a certain level of shared knowledge, even if some innovations were lost in translation, Manuá tells his auxiliaries to fetch the guests. The Kuikuro enter the village in two lines divided according to sex. On the left, Chief Afukaká heads the male line; on the right, Auná leads the female one. In front of the two lines comes Lümbu, the Kuikuro shaman who had already learned how to cure in Manuá’s style, and had gone to the Kuikuro village to persuade them to come to Tanguro. The Kuikuro are completely naked, which, from the Xinguano point of view, evokes sickness, while the adorned bodies of the Kalapalo indicate that they are feasting, and therefore happy and healthy. This embodied distinction establishes a new frame: on the one side, we have the Master’s followers, who have already been cured; on the other, the Kuikuro, who are collectively ill. It is from these distinctive conditions that Manuá will now try to establish a common ground with the visitors, who are unacquainted with any of his translations, except for the fact that he summons Taugi, Deus, Jesus, and Maria all the time.24 The visitors slowly enter the village circle, and stop at a distance to face the two rows formed by the Kalapalo. Chief Afukaká calls Manuá using a formal chiefly speech, addressing him as a consanguine of a younger generation, but then he adds: “Look, here are my followers. I brought them for you to cure them.” Manuá walks with his sister (who still carries the wooden pigeon) to the end of the lines, raises one of his arms, and greets Afukaká in a nontraditional way: “If you were angry with me, I wouldn’t cure you. It’s really true, and you believe in me.”25 His voice is slightly raised in pitch, the prosody flat and descending at the end of each sentence, like a whimper of pain, evocative of shamans as they moan while curing. While explicitly formulating a greeting, he is actually invoking another setting (Gumperz 1982): a shamanic séance. Pointing to the sky behind the Kuikuro, he then provides evidence of his power: “Look over there. Look what has come to cure you. Do you think that it is the rain you are seeing?” Bewildered, the Kuikuro turn and seek out the referent to his words. The Kalapalo applaud. Manuá continues: “Do you want your disease white or black?” No answer. He exhorts Afukaká to provide him with an answer: “Chief?” Afukaká responds: “White.” The Kalapalo applaud, making it clear that this was the right answer. Without pausing, the Master now shows his people (and the still distant Kuikuro) a small measuring receptacle, a plastic cup used to administer drugs to patients. From this cup he drops a tiny white moth onto the palm of his hand, displaying it to those present, while saying: “Here it is, here it is, look at it! Is it?” The Kalapalo reply: “Yes!” And Manuá adds triumphantly: “He said it was white.” One of his auxiliaries tells the people to applaud. Clapping hands. Manuá now turns to face the Kuikuro, raises his hand, showing them the white moth, and tells them: “Look, you’re no longer ill, here it is with me.” The act of showing the pathogenic object extracted from the patient’s body is an exaggerated and public version of what shamans normally do. Not only is its ostentatious and collective quality new, but also the fact that it is made at a distance, without any physical contact between specialist and patient—a technique that would later be adopted by some traditional shamans as a new form of curing among the Kuikuro.26 The other innovation is to display the pathogenic agent inside a measuring cup, such as those that come with cough syrup or children’s antibiotics. Instead of being an intaking device, the cup becomes, so to speak, an outtaking one. Here Manuá appropriates—and simultaneously inverts—the indigenous experience with Western medicines, which forms a central part of their relations with White people. After the initial greeting, Manuá tells the visitor to approach. Chief Afukaká is the first to step forward. The Master takes out a soaked toucan-feather diadem from an aluminum pot full of water, places it on the chief’s head upside-down, and makes a small gesture with his fingers, as though blessing him. Here he conflates an image of Christian baptism with an inverted Xinguano ritual attire. However, unlike the seventeenth-century Guarani shaman Ñeçu, he does not invert baptism, but the way Xinguanos don a feather diadem. Nude and perplexed, Chief Afukaká is overpowered by the Master, who presents himself as the Master of masters. Still holding the white moth in his open hand, Manuá kneels down in the same posture used by a host chief to welcome a chiefly visitor. Instead of being seated on a stool, however, Afukaká is standing up. Manuá starts with the classic opening of formal dialogues (“Chief, chief, chieeeeeeeef”), elongating the last vowel. Then he says something unexpected, retaining the correct prosody, but speaking in a louder voice: “I have been working while you were arriving.” Chief Afukaká murmurs: “Do I have to respond to this?” “Yes,” Manuá murmurs back, and Afukaká responds in the traditional chiefly way. Then, sighing again as shamans do, Manuá continues. Having grasped the dialogic structure of the scene, Afukaká now replies promptly. The dialogue revolves around the fact that the Kuikuro had all come to Tanguro in order to have their diseases extracted from their bodies. Manuá is again clearly resorting to different, normally incompatible settings: ceremonial dialogue and precuring talk between the shaman and patient. He speaks in a louder voice, clearly addressing all participants, as well as Afukaká, who for his part answers in a lower voice, respecting normal usage, and thus considering the surrounding Kalapalo as mere “overhearers” (Goffman 1981). Manuá is already navigating between different frames of participation, splitting himself, so to speak, into two layers: Manuá the interlocutor of Afukaká, and Manuá who shows everyone that he is talking to Afukaká. This position as the publicist of the actions of others and himself is a defining trait of Manuá’s translating role. Next, while the Kalapalo audience clap, Manuá stands up, places the white moth in Afukaká’s hand, and asks in a playful tone: “Did the dead thing open its eyes?” Staring at the perplexed Afukaká, Manuá smiles broadly and waits for a confirmation, which comes in the form of Afukaká’s own shy smile in response. Manuá gives the signal for applause. Now walking around the chief, he invokes a new setting, that of a humorous stage performance, as though on a TV show. This time the cue for the new “footing” is the amusing tone, as well the movement of his body.27 He asks everybody: “Do we want it to fly? Say ‘Yes’!” With the moth again held in his hand, he shouts at it: “Rise, rise!” He then throws it up into the air, but the little insect falls to the ground. This violation of what everyone was expecting fails to dent the Master’s self-confidence. He analogically connects the moth’s downward flight to the disappearance of the disease for which it stands: “Your ex-disease is now on the ground!” he exclaims. Sighing again, he scoops out some water from the aluminum pot with the little measuring cup and serves it to Afukaká, saying: “Drink the blood of Taugi.” The chief drinks and is told to enter the house and sit on a stool. Next comes Afukaká’s daughter, Auná. She also drinks, and is dispatched to join her father inside the house. But when she is about to walk between the Master and his sister, the former holds her and Lümbu tells her what to do: she has to pass to the left of the Master’s sister rather than split them. Here Manuá plays in two different keys. On the one hand, he produces an imagelike association between dispensing medicines, Catholic communion, and the Sun, conflating in his own person the roles of priest and doctor, while he also convokes the main Xinguano mythological figure, with whom he identifies himself. The Eucharistic substance dispensed is not the bread-flesh but the wine-blood (here converted into Taugi’s water-blood). However, in the local mythology, drinking blood is what distinguishes warlike Indians from pacific Xinguanos.28 It is impossible to know how this cannibal translation reverberated in Afukaká’s imagination. By any reckoning, though, Manuá was making a risky association here, one among many others that would eventually lead to him being accused of witchcraft. On the other hand, the practical rectification of Auná’s slight ritual mistake makes visible that there is a correct way of proceeding, one with which the Kuikuro are not yet acquainted, but which is central to the ritual’s organization and success. Errors and corrections establish a differential in knowledge and give the impression that improvisation plays a minor part in the scene. This is played out at diverse levels of inclusion: the Master knows more than his auxiliaries, his auxiliaries know more than the Kalapalo, and the Kalapalo know more than the Kuikuro. This explains why Manuá stages a set of actions with his own people before letting the Kuikuro enter the village plaza. He has to establish different levels of shared knowledge. Manuá continues to dispense Taugi’s blood to the Kuikuro, who approach him in a hierarchical order. This is a basic structuring principle in Upper Xingu rituals, but here it is reinforced both by Manuá’s political ambitions and by the presence of one of the most important Xinguano chiefs. At a certain point, though, Kumãtsi, a Mehinaku man married to a Kuikuro woman and descendant of an ancient Kalapalo chief, presents himself, painted with red annatto dye and wearing a necklace and a belt, in stark contrast to the other visitors. Manuá interrogates him: “Who are you?” Kumãtsi responds in an Arawakan language: “I’m Mehinaku.” “Who am I?” retorts Manuá. Without grasping the questioner’s intent, Kumãtsi replies: “You are half Kalapalo, half Nahukwá.”29 Manuá accepts the answer, but then flips it over: “What did I become? I’m not Kalapalo anymore, I’m not Nahukwá anymore. What did I become?” he asks, raising his arms and pointing to the sky. Kumãtsi now says: “You have become God.” One would expect Manuá to call for applause at this point, but instead he continues to question the man: “How do you say God’s name?” Kumãtsi once again fails to get his point, so Manuá gives him a clue: “The name I have now.” Someone whispers to the baffled Kumãtsi: “The name you give to Taugi [in Arawak].” Kumãtsi still does not get it, and it is only after his wife whispers the correct term that he replies in a hesitant tone: “Kamu?” Clapping. Kumãtsi finally relaxes, while Manuá addresses the audience, saying that he had held his interlocutor’s speech within his chest: “I hold ‘Kamu’ here.” This event shows how Manuá is able to reframe an interaction in order to regain control of the situation. Kumãtsi presents himself as a healthy visitor going to a traditional festival, not as someone ill expecting to be cured. Manuá presses him to give proper answers, without ever losing his magisterial grace, but always putting the visitor in an uneasy position. Manuá makes Kumãtsi mumble that he is God, but is not satisfied with the answer. He wants to make him say God in the Mehinaku language: he wants him to provide a new translation identifying Deus, Taugi, and Kamu, and, of course, himself, the Master. Is this a ritual? We cannot present the entire set of actions that ensued at the Kalapalo village of Tanguro on that damp day in 2006. We hope our description has shown how skillfully Manuá was able to switch from one footing to another. In his famous essay on footing, Goffman (1981) mentions that certain people in certain situations excel in acting like pivots, pursuing different courses of communication, with different persons, in different tonalities. While this ability may be constitutive of human communication in general, it also seems clear that Manuá takes it to a level of complexity rarely achieved in everyday communication. And he does so on many grounds. The most obvious aspect is the extremely wide scope of the settings he invokes. These are often dissonant, sometimes contradictory: communion, baptism, dispensing medicines, shamanic treatment, chiefly reception, traditional formal speech, funerary wailing, witchcraft, TV shows, and Evangelical church services. He does so to a point where it seems futile to seek for a coherent preexisting metaphysical agenda. From the prophet’s perspective, what is at stake is the invention of new settings in which different contexts and forms of communication become commensurate. To achieve this aim, he rapidly alters his tone, gestures, or addressees. For instance, he may be talking to a patient as a therapist and then suddenly address the audience, mobilizing a TV show setting, before immediately coming back to a kind of shamanic interview. He also combines different modalities simultaneously. When greeting Chief Afukaká, for example, his body posture invokes a ceremonial welcome, while his speech and prosody invoke shamanic healing. Finally, he also switches quickly from one context to the other, and employs a wide range of mechanisms to do so. By using different modalities in divergent ways, the Master not only juxtaposes settings, he also merges them. Participation frames play an important role here in reducing this dazzling complexity. This is less explicit in the collective welcoming ceremony, but very clear during the curing therapies, where the communication between Manuá and the patient basically consists of straightforward instructions (stand up, lie down, drink), therapeutic gestures, and rhetorical questions. The communication between the Master and the audience corresponds largely to the dialogue established with the patient, which is closer to a monologue than a dialogue. The interactional pattern is similar to Evangelical testimony, where the pastor publicizes what the believer is saying by repeating, commenting on, and drawing circular conclusions from his or her words. The Master is always controlling the flow of communication, and aligning different degrees of knowledge about each of his performative acts. He is indeed the universal translator he claims to be, someone able to hear and speak to everyone in an ever-changing context that he himself constantly recreates. At the same time, this communicative behavior risks trapping him in a vicious circle: the very moves he performs in order to construct a common ground or assure the participants’ commitment invariably cast doubt on the ritual frame itself. Consider one of these frantic switches or combinations of footings. Most of the time they are meant to clarify the situation. Manuá explains to everyone what is going on, or to someone what he or she is supposed to do. Then he suddenly interprets a slight detail in the environment as a confirmation of his Taugi-quality, or as proof that Mary is indeed present (in the form of a blowing wind or a flying bird), and asks everyone to yell out their belief and faith in him. But these constant contextualizations loosen his grip on the audience, who forget what the main course of action is supposed to be. In addition, some states, like shamanic distress and pain, cannot be dismissed suddenly without arousing some suspicion about their sincerity. Here two important reflexive actions are crucial: the applause and the Master’s whimsical laughter.30 Most of the time, his auxiliaries begin clapping as a way of forcing everyone to demonstrate their agreement on the situation publicly, as well as their active participation in it. But they clearly invoke staged situations, making it hard to decide what exactly is going on. Laughter, on the other hand, is almost entirely exclusive to Manuá and Manuá only. His laughs are often inserted at a juncture between two different actions, as a means to fill the gaps and, perhaps, to mask some slight embarrassment. They show that the Master knows what he is doing, even if no one else does. At the same time, no one is sure what exactly is supposed to be amusing, nor what sort of action he is reacting to or commenting upon. If his laughter applies to the highest order of context (i.e., to the whole ceremonial encounter), would that not imply that everything is just a (serious) play? We have already seen that there is a complex relation between acting and ritual in the illumination scene. One may wonder if this feature is not far more systematic, giving to the whole scene its predominant tone. According to Bateson, any playful behavior implies metacommunication: “The actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote” (1972: 180). A playful nip, for instance, does not denote aggression. Bateson also recognized a more complex form of play: “the game which is constructed not upon the premise ‘This is play,’ but rather around the question ‘Is this play?’” (ibid.: 182). Following this insight, Houseman proposed to define hazing rituals in elite French preparatory schools as built upon this very question. While openly fictitious, the humiliations the new students suffer are decidedly too painful not to provoke real distress and anxiety. At the same time, the new students are “forced to pretend to pretend that this is so” (Houseman 2001: 4), that is, to maintain the fiction of the fictitious quality of hazing. Our case can be seen as an inversion of such a frame: while being submitted to what they believe to be a serious ceremony, the Master’s patients constantly face the question “Is this really a ritual?” The whole event, therefore, oscillates between (fake) ritual and (serious) play, an oscillation that could partly account both for the Master’s capacity to captivate, and for his later disqualification as a witch. The fall The Master effectively generated a new communicative context and established new ritual condensations. However, like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, he had to run to remain in the same place, constantly innovate to continue to amaze. His task became ever more complex as he became famous and was asked to cure people in other indigenous villages and even White people in the city. He started asking for large sums of money, saying that his spirit Taugi no longer accepted traditional luxury goods. He had already hugely inflated the price of shamanic treatment in terms of luxury goods; now he was throwing the entire system of shamanic payments into disarray (Fausto 2014). The Master’s innovations were soon regarded with suspicion by a number of powerful shamans, who first suggested that he had to submit himself to formal training with another shaman, and later began spreading a counterinterpretation that attributed his powers to witchcraft. When other Kalapalo people, with a history of political dispute with Manuá’s family, started to fall ill, many fingers pointed to the Master (Cardoso, Guerreiro, and Novo 2012: 28–29). As the accusations became ever stronger, the Master’s fate was sealed, forcing him into exile under the threat of execution. His fall was as rapid as his rise. The rise and fall of a prophet’s empire is not exactly a question of belief and disbelief, at least not in a theological sense. The Master’s translating acts were received within what we earlier called an “abductive frame.” People took part in these actions as long as they could practically engage with the possibility of him really being a hypershaman, capable of putting an end to pain, sickness, and witchcraft (the only cause of death in the Upper Xingu).31 For some he was actually managing to attain this condition and, to tell the readers the truth, a number of our acquaintances really were cured. But guess what? Most of them were not. Still, there is no consensual judgment about the Master today: Was he a fake? Had he been powerful but subsequently lost his power? Was sorcery the real source of his power? After his downfall, traditional shamans adopted some of his innovations—like curing at a distance or via the radio—but most of them returned to business as usual. People just moved on, and so did the shamans. Even if the Kuikuro visitors were not entirely convinced, the event itself proved a success, communicated over an ample area through the grapevine and the radio. After the visit and some months before his fall, the Master went to the Kisedje (Suya) people in order to cure their great chief Kuyusi, a therapy that cost a couple of thousand reais, paid by the municipality of the nearby town of Querencia. This was probably the climax of Manuá’s prophetic movement, which lasted approximately a year, spreading like wildfire, but containing within it the very sparks of its own failure. Concluding claims Let us conclude with some straightforward general claims concerning the notion of “translating acts.” We hope these claims will render more explicit the ideas that have guided our analysis of the ethnographic data. First of all, we claim that: (1) translating acts are a modality of translation through actions, in which referential meaning plays a less important role than form, context, and expressive force. From this privileging of pragmatics over semantics, we derive two main consequences: on the one hand, translating acts operate by using different modalities of communication and distinct semiotic modes; and, on the other, the failure or success of a translating act is not a matter of adjusting to the conceptual content of one or other of the languages/worlds in contact. Our second major claim is that: (2) ritual situations are a privileged experimental context for translating acts, especially those mediating between radical alterity, meaning that in different “cultural encounters” translation is less a matter of producing a lingua franca and more a question of generating a new ritual form. Here we propose a shift in the way one understands such encounters: we address them as a way of creating new forms of communication (both with “spirits” and with people) rather than of producing a new syncretic cosmology. In this sense, the emerging rituals are a kind of experimental frame in which a certain number of communicative means are put to the test. Rituals are not the only place for the production of new intercultural pragmatics (see Stasch, this issue), but they are remarkably rich in this respect. At the same time, they involve risk, since translating acts produce an abductive landscape of a special kind: one that involves both creating a new prototype (here Taugi-Sun) and convincing the audience that the main actor on the ritual stage is this very prototype (Master-King) and not a case of another, better-known person (a shaman, a crook, or even a sorcerer). Responding to this abductive landscape is a matter of practical engagement rather than belief. As we have seen, the richness and riskiness of translating acts seem to presuppose a prior simplification of meaning and relations within each of the different worlds in contact. Simplification would be a precondition, then, for producing a new complex ritual configuration, meaning that in the process of translation, some elements must necessarily be eclipsed and others foregrounded. Finally, there is a chronological and topological dimension to such prophetic movements, which involve the invention, selection, and transmission of new forms in space-time. They tend to speed up all the procedures involved. They rise as fast as they fall, they spread as far as they shrink back. But when some of the translating acts survive, and this is our last claim, then: (3) the stabilization implies the begetting of a new tradition, a new original, which often implies the forgetting of the very process of translation that gave birth to the new form. Memory effaces the acts of appropriation and translation, though traces of them remain registered in ritual form (Severi 1993; Fausto 2007; Santos-Granero 2007). Reading these acts back then only remains possible through a sort of indicial investigation (Ginzburg [1986] 1989). Here we have tried to present an ethnographic case in which these translating acts can be observed still unfolding before attaining any stabilization. Acknowledgments The first version of this text was presented at Carlo Severi’s seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2012, and a second one was prepared for the Fyssen Seminar ‘Translating Worlds’ held in Paris in 2014. We thank William Hanks and Carlo Severi for their kind invitation. We heartily thank Takuma, Mahajugi, and Ahukaka Kuikuro for making the tapes used to write this article available to us. Our gratitude also goes to the anonymous reviewers who helped us to improve the manuscript. 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Terra calada: Os Tupinamba na mata atlàntica do sul da Bahia. Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras/Almedina. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2004. “Perspectival anthropology and the method of controlled equivocation.” Tipiti: Journal of the Association for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 2 (1): 3–22. Whitehead, Neil L. 1999. “The crisis and transformation of invaded societies: The Caribbean (1492–1580).” In Cambridge history of the native peoples of the Americas, edited by Frank Salomon and Stuart Schwartz, Vol. III-1, 864–903. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Une traduction en acte: rite et prophétisme dans l’Amazonie Indigène du 21e siècle Résumé : Cet article étudie un mouvement prophétique initié par un Amérindien du Mato Grosso, au Brésil, en 2006. Cet homme a imaginé une liturgie et une cosmologie radicalement nouvelles, qui combinent des éléments empruntés, entre autres sources, à la mythologie et au chamanisme locaux, au christianisme et aux émissions de télévision. Il a fait participer des villages entiers à de spectaculaires cérémonies de guérison et a été suivi par un grand nombre de disciples. Une de ces cérémonies a été presque intégralement filmée par des réalisateurs locaux, ce qui nous permet d’analyser les micro-mécanismes de cette innovation culturelle, et ainsi de poser à nouveaux frais, et avec de nouvelles données, la question classique du prophétisme amérindien. Nous proposons ici l’usage du concept d’actes de traduction (translating acts) pour décrire cette pratique indigène de transcréation, en accordant une importance particulière aux divers modalités sémiotiques par lesquelles ces actes sont realisés. Carlos FAUSTO is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of Os Índios antes do Brasil (2000), Inimigos fiéis (2001) and Warfare and shamanism in Amazonia (2012). He is the coeditor (with Michael J. Heckenberger) of Time and memory in indigenous Amazonia (2007) and (with Carlo Severi) L’image rituelle (2014). Carlos FaustoMuseu Nacional - PPGASQuinta da Boa Vista s/nRio de Janeiro, RJ20940-040 Brasilcfausto63@gmail.com Emmanuel de VIENNE is Associate Professor at the University of Nanterre, France. He conducted fieldword among the Trumai in the Upper Xingu Region (Mato Grosso, Brasil). His topics of interest include shamanism, ritual, and joking relationships. Emmanuel de VienneUniversité Paris-OuestLaboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative (Lesc), UMR 7186Maison Archéologie & Ethnologie René-Ginouvès21, Allée de l’Université, 92023 Nanterre cedexFranceemmmanueldevienne@gmail.com ___________________ 1. Famous cases discussed in the literature include, among others, the Guaraní of Paraguay and Brazil from the late sixteenth to early twentieth centuries (Melia 1987; Nimuendajú 1987); the Arawakan peoples of Selva Central in Peru in the seventeenth century (Métraux 1942; Santos-Granero 1992; Varese 2006); the Upper Negro River Tukanoan and Arawakan peoples in the nineteenth century (Hugh-Jones 1994; Hill and Wright 1988); the Tikuna of the Solimöes river in the twentieth century (Nimuendajú 1952; Oliveira Filho 1988; Goulard 2009); and the Ge-speaking Canela of Maranhäo in the twentieth century (Melatti 1967; Carneiro da Cunha 1973). For the Guianas, Whitehead refers to an apocalyptic upheaval in Trinidad and the Orinoco region at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but also states that “no millennial tradition emerged until the nineteenth century, unlike in Peru or coastal Brazil” (1999: 897). From the mid-nineteenth century on, we witness the proliferation of the Aleluia prophetic movement among the region’s Carib-speaking peoples (Butt Colson 1960, 1971, 1994/1996; Thomas 1976; Andrello 1993). 2. The filming was made by Takuma, Mahajugi, and Ahukaka, members of the Kuikuro Cinema Collective, who were trained by Fausto in filmmaking and have been close collaborators for the last ten years. The ethnographic data result from approximately two years of fieldwork among the Kuikuro (Fausto), and a year and a half among the Trumai (Vienne), both in the Upper Xingu. The Kalapalo and Kuikuro speak dialects of the same Southern Karib language (Meira and Franchetto 2005). Takuma Kuikuro and Yamalui Mehinaku Kuikuro worked with us on the transcription and translation of the video recordings in Rio de Janeiro. Ahukaka Kuikuro collaborated on the transcription of the interviews made later with Manuá and his parents in the city of Canarana. Fausto has also interviewed two Kuikuro shamans who were protagonists of these episodes: Lümbu and Samuagu. However, in this text, we avoid using a posteriori discursive explanations of the episode in order to focus on actions. More apposite to our aim are the discussions we had with Takuma and Yamalui on each of the main scenes recorded in the tapes, which gave us a firmer grasp of the actions and the backstage. (Takuma is not only the main filmmaker, but also Samuagu’s first-born son and is half-Kalapalo.) Clearly, there was no stabilized exegesis at the time, and Takuma was also uncertain about some of Manuá’s innovations. Further data were also collected through informal conversations with many Kuikuro and Trumai people in the following years. We also benefited from Cardoso, Guerreiro, and Novo’s (2012) and Franco Neto’s (2010) writings on Manuá, whose data were gathered among the Kalapalo. Marcela Coelho de Souza shared information about Manuá’s visit to the Kinsedje village, where he treated Chief Kuiussi. 3. In his work on human trafficking in Macau, Pina-Cabral (1999, 2001) coined the expression “equivocal compatibility” to refer to the misunderstandings that emerge in intercultural situations, when each party defines the linguistic or material object that enables the relation using distinct criteria and conceptions. As Viegas points out, the interactions here are “pragmatically viable, that is, compatible, not only despite, but precisely because of the fact they are founded on equivocations” (2007: 237–38). In other words, the pragmatic translation here is based not on semantic accuracy, but on equivocal compatibilities. Viveiros de Castro (2004) applied this notion of equivocation to reconceptualize comparison in anthropology. He aims at the practice of anthropology as a form of translation, which must be controlled so that the source language (the “local,” “native”) subverts the target language (“anthropology”). Here we are looking at a process where a native person translates-subverts both the source and the target language by exploring equivocal compatibilities between Christianity and Xinguano mytho-ritual practices. 4. It would be interesting to compare the kind of “twisted commensuration” attained here with the one Hanks examines in the context of the colonial reduction of the Maya language, where the aim was to convert Christian doctrine into Maya utterances with minimal semantic distortion of the source language: “Cross-language commensuration is bidirectional, at least in principle . . . but in point of fact this reversibility is more a logical possibility than a historical actuality. The two languages were asymmetric . . . it was the Maya that was to be reformed according to the meaning patterns of Spanish, not the other way around” (2010: 159). 5. As Boyer points out, abductive explanations are conjectural, and the process of inferring is triggered by the explanatory demands of particular situations (1994: 217–18). Taking his lead from Boyer, Fausto (2002) employed this notion to simultaneously account for the flexibility and resilience of magico-religious ideas among an Amazonian people, circumventing the problem of belief, and the distinction between practical action and religious ideas. Gell had recourse to abduction in order to formulate a radically nonlinguistic theory of art: “The usefulness of the concept of abduction is that it designates a class of semiotic inferences which are, by definition, wholly distinct from the semiotic inferences we bring to bear on the understanding of language, whose ‘literal’ understanding is a matter of observing semiotic conventions” (1998: 14–15). As is well known, it was Peirce ([1901] 1940) who introduced the concept of abduction in epistemology as a third term in-between induction and deduction. 6. The Upper Xingu is a transitional zone between the savannah and the Amazonian rainforest, located to the north of the central Brazilian plateau and the southernmost limits of the Amazonian basin. It was first colonized by Arawak-speaking people as early as the ninth century AD, and received further migratory influxes after the Conquest. Carib-speaking people probably arrived in the region by the sixteenth or seventeenth century, Tupi-speaking in the eighteenth century, and the Trumai in the nineteenth century. Through a complex process of amalgamation and recreation, these peoples came to forge a single sociocultural constellation, known as the Upper Xingu society, which is plurilingual and multiethnic (Franchetto and Heckenberger 2001; Hecken- berger 2005). In this text, we use the term “Xinguano” in reference to the people of this sociocultural constellation. 7. Takumã Kuikuro recorded this interview in July or August 2006, in the town of Canarana. Marina Cardoso obtained another version in Portuguese, which is very similar to our own, but contains additional data, particularly concerning Manuá’s experience in the town, just prior to his “illumination” (see Cardoso, Guerreiro, and Novo,. 2012). Takuma also interviewed Manuá’s parents, but we will not analyze these data here. 8. The typical Xinguano feather headdress is composed of four different layers: the frame woven from plant fibers, the diadem of toucan feathers (red, black, and yellow), the Cacicus sp tail-feather diadem (yellow), and the feathers of hawks and the red macaw. The Sun has a particularly bright version of this headdress, one he wears to obfuscate his enemies. Here there seems to be a conflation of this attire with Jesus’ dazzling crown. 9. Anhipe is the designation given to the women made from wood by Kuantungu and sent to marry Jaguar. Two of them, made from a harder wood, arrived at Jaguar’s village, and one of them, called Sangitsegu, gave birth to Taugi and Aulukuma, the twins Sun and Moon, the main figures in Xinguano mythology. Nowadays Sangitsegu puts the recently dead into seclusion and breastfeeds them, enabling them to rejuvenate. 10. It is difficult to say, however, which comes first: the learning of the ritual actions or the acquisition of the narrative charter. Moreover, these kinds of initiatory stories seem to be frequent in other Amerindian prophetic movements. 11. From this point on, we shift to the present tense to describe the ritual events in question in order to convey the situation better. We call Manuá’s revelation “illumination” in order to foreground the meanings associated with the Sun and his resplendent crown. 12. Origin myths are called X-etihuntepügü or X-opogipügü. These verbs (suffixed by a perfective aspect) connote the idea of “origin,” and contain an explanation of how a certain feature of the world came into being. 13. Manuá told Cardoso that during his illness, a shaman had identified the Whirlwind as one of the agents causing his disease (Cardoso, Guerreiro, and Novo 2012: 14). Manuá did not mention this in his interview, but his father said that he had been ill for some time, “because his Atuguá was killing him,” meaning that he had become an owner of this expensive mask, and thus a sort of double person: a human-whirlwind (on this mask, see Barcelos Neto 2008 and Fausto 2011b). 14. He employs the verb -ihintsi-, which indicates an uncanny encounter, often portending a bad event. 15. Unlike the Arawakan and Tupian peoples in the Xingu, only shamans smoke among the Carib populations. 16. In a scene recorded inside his house, Manuá stands up on a stool and displays all his wealth (the shell belts and necklaces with which he was paid), while the kneeled shamans chant with their rattles. 17. This is also known as the “Sun’s tree” (kwaryp) among the Tupi-speaking Kamayura. This term (also kwarup or quarup) became the ritual’s common designation in the anthropological literature. 18. Among Carib-speaking peoples of the Guianas, by contrast, “books, including educational ones, gained a ritual use as soon as indigenous people put their hands on them. . . . Indeed, papers and books were often kept as true treasures” (Amaral 2014: 138). See also Abreu (2004) and Deleage’s work (2013) on the role of writing in different prophetic and nonprophetic traditions. 19. In this respect, see Davi Kopenawa’s extraordinary account of his initiation and the pain the spirits inflicted on him (Kopenawa and Albert 2010: 140–42). 20. Clark’s concept of “common ground” refers to the mutual knowledge of participants in an interaction, which guides inferences about the contextual meaning of their utterances (Clark 1992, 1996). For Clark, common-groundness makes possible joint commitments, which are essential to all true joint activities. It is a basic condition of any cooperation, and therefore of human sociality in general (Clark 2006). Hanks (2006) applies this notion to the analyses of a Yucatec Maya shaman’s divination session. In a situation where disparities in knowledge are very important at the beginning, the shaman progressively manages to build a common ground, in which the divination and therapeutic session becomes both true and effective, regardless of the semantic meaning of his utterances. 21. With one difference, though: no feather headdresses are hung on this occasion. The absence is due to the importance of its current use: as stated earlier, the crown of yellow feathers is the Sun’s distinctive attire, and here it is worn by the main character in the staged events. 22. Most ritual events in the Upper Xingu originate in a healing process, in which the expatient is converted into the sponsor of a festival related to the spirits deemed to have caused the disease (Barcelos Neto 2008). These festivals are not, however, ritual healings on an amplified scale. The most public situation that maintains a similarity with Manuá’s collective healing sessions is called, among the Kuikuro, “the docking of the spirits.” At the behest of the shamans, the community performs it during the therapeutic process, materializing a special relationship between a class of spirit and a patient that can later evolve into a future ritual cycle. 23. He says “upagisu ikuike,” the first word being formed by a possessive pronoun, plus the root pagi and a genitive suffix. The term specifically designates the shaman hired by the parents of a baby to provide care over its first two years. The parents make a single payment at the start of the contract, and can call the shaman whenever the baby needs (see Fausto 2014). 24. True, the previous night, while still on the boat, Manuá had performed a number of different “translating acts,” but they were so wild that most of the time the Kuikuro were left completely baffled, and only the constant intervention of the shaman Lümbu ensured that they responded in the expected way. 25. Here Manuá employs the verb -ikeni-, meaning “to believe,” the same term he had just used when chiding the women who seemed not to believe in his son, the peeing pope. In daily contexts, the verb -ikeni- is employed pretty much in the same way as we do. But here Manuá is also retranslating it from its use in religious contexts in the city. This retranslation impacts less on the semantics of the verb “to believe” than on the metalinguistic presuppositions about the possibility of saying the truth. The Sun is the greatest trickster. Our Kuikuro collaborators even interpret his name (Taugi) as an abbreviated form of the noun tauginhu (’liar’—the suffix -nhu is a nominalizer). Jehovah and Taugi stands thus in opposition in regard to truth and deceit. (On this topic, see Basso 1987.) 26. Gregor writes that in the 1970s the great Kamayura shaman Takuma would extract pathogenic substances from his patients without any direct contact with them (1977: 348). After Manuá’s debacle, however, some Kuikuro shamans started curing without even going to the patient’s village. They would just send their spirits—particularly the “master of tobacco”—to do the job for them. 27. Goffman defines footing as “the alignment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the way we manage the production and reception of an utterance” (1981:128). 28. In one famous narrative, the mythical character Ahinhuka offers a bowl of manioc porridge to the ancestor of the Xinguanos. The latter looks at the contents and sees only blood, refusing to drink it. The ancestor of “wild Indians” (ngikogo) drank the whole cup, however, confirming his predatory disposition. 29. There are four Carib-speaking peoples in the Upper Xingu: the Kalapalo, the Kuikuro, the Matipu, and the Nahukwá. They all speak mutually comprehensible languages (Meira and Franchetto 2005). 30. Applause is a nonindigenous form of expression which the Xinguanos incorporated in new activities in the villages (e.g., when someone scores a goal in a football match or after someone talks in a nontraditional political meeting). Applause is also quite common in TV shows and in Evangelical cults in Brazil. 31. As attested in the historical record, what became known as “prophets” in the literature on the indigenous peoples of South America were mostly hypershamans: that is, individuals who acquired a power similar to that of the cultural heroes. They were deemed capable of refounding the conditions in which humanity has lived since the end of mythic time by producing a state of continuous ritual effervescence. These movements were themselves sorts of hyperrituals intended to put the world in flux and remold it through unending ritual activity. The Tupi-Guarani who inhabited the Atlantic Coast in the sixteenth century had a category for incorporating this possibility: the term karaiwa or karai designated regional shamans, distinct from the more ordinary and local payé. In the early colonial period, this category was applied to both Europeans and leaders of “prophetic” movements (Clastres 1975). It is important to note, however, that hypershamans are more powerful than biblical prophets: they do not only announce the coming of a new time, but intend to ritually fabricate this new world themselves.  

“Lines that speak” This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Arkotong Longkumer. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau6.2.011 “Lines that speak” The Gaidinliu notebooks as language, prophecy, and textuality Arkotong LONGKUMER, University of Edinburgh This article navigates my experience of returning copies of the “Gaidinliu notebooks” from the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) to the Zeme Nagas of Assam, India. The notebooks were confiscated in 1932 by the British administrators and donated to the museum. They are from a religious movement, the Heraka, and their prophetess, Gaidinliu (1915–1993). Returning the notebooks highlighted a number of theoretical issues in approaching texts, particularly since these were written in a language that is “untranslatable.” I argue that their textuality requires one to examine the notebooks in relation to the unfolding of the kingdom (Zeme: heguangram), using the notion of textuality (Uzendoski 2012) grounded in dreams, prophecy, songs, and visions. Second, to appreciate the value and purpose of the notebooks, one must pay attention to the sonority of sound that manifests the words of the notebooks in song. Finally, these issues point to significant ways in which we understand the relationships between history, language, and experience. Keywords: Gaidinliu Notebooks, Heraka, textuality, prophecy, language, writing and orality, (un)translatability, India To unlock a society, look at its untranslatable words.—Salman Rushdie, Shame I first heard of the “Gaidinliu notebooks” when I was doing research in North Cachar Hills of Assam, India, in 2005.1 These “notebooks” are associated with the prophetess, [124]Gaidinliu (1915–1993), affectionately also known as Rani (Queen), who was the leader of an indigenous religious movement known as the Heraka. No one possessed the notebooks in their entirety. Therefore descriptions were elusive and mysterious—some people talked about them as “god given,” and others as a “script” that contained in it many “signs” about future events. There was speculation that once the notebooks were made available, translated, and understood, it would usher in the heguangram, generally translated as “kingdom.” What is this kingdom? And how is one to recognize it? To examine these questions, I realized that the Gaidinliu notebooks required many layers of interpretation that included different modes of communication, and how experience plays a central role in understanding these dynamics. About this time, on my different field visits, other requests came in: people wanted to know of these “notebooks” and whether I had seen them.2 I assuaged their curiosity by informing them that I had seen a copy of the “script” in the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) at the University of Oxford. I assured them that I would request a copy from the curator. Upon returning to Britain, I contacted PRM regarding the Gaidinliu notebooks and about taking a copy to the Zeme people of North Cachar Hills.3 They scanned the notebooks and provided copies to take back to the community. This article, first, is an attempt to reflect on the “afterlives” of these notebooks once they find their way back to the community through issues surrounding textuality, prophecy, and untranslatability. I was also curious about the pervasiveness of the Gaidinliu notebooks in the Zeme imagination. After all, they had not seen them for many years and the Zeme had always told me they were “untranslatable.” These two dimensions together became significant as I attempted to answer this question: what is the relationship between a text that is untranslatable on the one hand and its value to a community on the other? This paper explores the role of the ethnographer, who “returns” an artifact of value, but also someone who helps mediate the relationship between the past, the present, and the future, in a way neither the ethnographer nor the community envisaged. It is written in a reflexive tone that shows my own process of thinking through the issues upon my “discovery” of the notebooks. The more I started to think about these issues, the more it became apparent that one cannot approach the Gaidinliu notebooks as a text that simply involves reading and writing.4 In order to navigate through these complex concerns, this article [125]will focus on the idea that texts of this kind cannot be read “cold.” Rather I want to suggest that examining the notebooks as a form of textuality that is grounded in experience, involving dreams, prophecy, songs, and visions, brings about a rich analysis. It allows us to understand the notebooks through the dynamic interaction of the different senses and active participation with the community whose own ambiguous relations with them point to important ways in which we understand the connections between history, language, and experience. Narratives shared by Gaidinliu herself about what the notebooks mean and my own experience of “returning” them to the community affirm this view. Second, rather than look at the notebooks as mere materialization of ink on paper, their textuality requires one to examine the notebooks in relation to the unfolding of the kingdom (Zeme: heguangram). Moreover, to appreciate the value and purpose of the notebooks, one must pay attention to the sound that manifests the words of the notebooks in song. Some of the Heraka claim that the songs they have been singing—while the notebooks were inaccessible—derive from the script. These songs—also largely untranslatable due to the use of different languages—are the way in which the words of the notebooks are transmitted to Gaidinliu’s followers. It is not simply the literal meaning of these songs but their overall affect that must be understood. Before discussing these issues, it is important to appreciate some of the context surrounding the Gaidinliu notebooks and how they came to be lodged in a museum in England. But first let us turn to some of the theoretical aspects that ground this paper. Textuality and prophecy Recent studies have questioned the notion that orality is inferior to alphabetic literacy, or that orality gives way to the written form (Uzendoski 2012; Finnegan 2007; Ingold 2007; Gow 1990; Goody 1996). Many cases from around the world have demonstrated that the manner in which people communicate does not necessarily oppose the oral and the textual. Indigenous peoples, argues Michael Uzendoski, have developed intricate ways of understanding textuality in which “cosmology is inscribed within the body, the social, and the surrounding ecological world” (2012: 55). How are we to understand “text” as a cultural production however? Text, from the Latin Texo, means “to make” and more specifically “to weave” (Mignolo 1994: 236). In general, text can be viewed as a technique of weaving a narrative that is inscribed and patterned in images, designs, paintings, and musical notations. Text is therefore a kind of “interweaving or interlacing” (Arnold and Yapita 2006: 6) of voice and writing, a point made by Jacques Derrida (1976). Drawing on Derrida’s understanding of the relationship between text and voice, Denise Arnold and Juan de Dios Yapita (2006) argue that Derrida’s “dynamic play of text” must be broadened to include glyphs, marks on ceramic, footprints in landscapes, and designs—in other words, the “whole conglomeration of signs in any given territory, both above and below” (Arnold and Yapita 2006: 6–7). These deliberations, [126]although useful, require more localized instantiations created in social and cultural spaces than those discussed by Arnold and Yapita. While textuality is central to understanding the relationship between cosmology, the body, and the natural world, one must also pay attention to the notebooks and their relationship with prophecy, given that the community have not seen the notebooks in over eighty years, and that there is a prophecy associated with their return, heralding the heguangram. Prophecy plays an important role for the community. It is referenced in speech through the interpretation of dreams, visions, and predictions, used to explain the mundane and fantastic; woven into stories of old; and often devoted to discussions of change. If we combine the idea of prophecy as “revelation” (Anderson and Johnson 1995; Leavitt 2000), and Ramon Sarró’s notion of prophecy as requiring “constant actualization in the interpretation of the present and equation of the future” (cited in Blanes 2011: 99) we come to understand how the prophecy of the notebooks and its association with heguangram unfolds. First, the bringing of the notebooks is fulfilling a prophecy—my bringing them and what heguangram means for the community. Second, the difficulty in understanding their value is compounded by the fact that the notebooks are inexplicable and everyone agrees that this is so. So how are we to “place” them? Just as we are to understand that the notebooks are part of a prophecy, it is also prophecy that enables us to understand the meaning of the notebooks. This brings us to the centrality of a notion of textuality that includes prophecy to illuminate the relationship between text and community, issues surrounding translatability, and how the “eye hearing the script,” sometimes through song, all play an important role in mediating the relationship between the notebooks and their place for the Heraka. According to the Zeme, the word “heguangram” means heguang (a state of freedom or “one who is the agent of this freedom”), while ram literally refers to a village or community having territorial connotations (Longkumer 2010: 160). Based on tradition, it basically means that a state of freedom will be exercised by an agent in a particular territory. Sometimes, people interpret heguang with economic development and access to better health and education. At other times, it is associated with a person, which in the folk tradition was often associated with heroic characters. Rani Gaidinliu, for example, saw herself as the heguang in the sense that she brought about a degree of freedom to her people through the reforms she initiated, particularly in the form of the Heraka. Others like Namteduing, whom I will introduce below, see themselves as the heguang. At one event Namteduing told me that “if we get heguangram, it will be one king rule. The king will be that person who knows the story of the Zeliangrong people from the beginning. Educated persons cannot be king, as they don’t know the history of the Zeliangrong people” (Longkumer 2010: 194). I encountered diverse reactions to the notebooks’ return, marking moments of celebration and anxiety. For some, the memory of the notebooks was like the embers of a dying fire, now rekindled. For others, the return of the notebooks was a form of “heritage,” largely forgotten and representing an era far removed from contemporary society. While Namteduing represents the former and embraces the Gaidinliu notebooks, Ramkhui the president of the Heraka Association represents the latter and rejects the Gaidinliu notebooks. This also demonstrates the tension between urban and rural populations, with urban being associated with forward-looking, progressive attitudes.[127] Therefore, the tension over the prophecy of the notebooks, I argue, is largely due to the fact that it authorizes a particular discourse (Lincoln 1994) over claims of leadership materialized, in this case, through its return but also through the tradition of heguangram. It is once we reflect on these ideas of textuality and prophecy in the form of heguangram and the place of song, that we can have some understanding of the place of the notebooks for the Zeme. Gaidinliu and the “magic books” The notebooks first came into prominence in 1932 when the British were trying to quell an uprising among the Zeliangrong people of Northeast India in the present states of Manipur, Assam, and Nagaland. The Zeliangrong leader Jadonang and his distant cousin Gaidinliu were at the forefront of this “uprising.” Its purpose was to oust the British from the region, stop the spread of Christianity, and to “reform” their own indigenous religion so that it would meet the challenges of the modern world. In the late 1970s, this movement came to be known as Heraka. Before that, it was simply called the Jadonang—and then Gaidinliu—movement. Today the Heraka is one of the largest indigenous religious movements in the Northeast of India, followed primarily by the Zeliangrong Nagas of Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur drawing on certain influences from Hinduism and Christianity. Heraka, then, literally refers to a process whereby one fends off other gods, who are now seen as “dangerous,” and instead gives primacy to only one deity, Tingwang (the sky god). For example, Chuprai, the god of grain, central to pre-Heraka cosmology, is now replaced with Tingwang. The exact process of how this came about cannot be explained here, but it was related to economic and social reforms, particularly associated with sacrifice. In other words, the economic realities associated with sacrifice had a direct bearing on the cosmological revision of deities (see Longkumer 2007). Rani Gaidinliu is therefore credited with making this transition possible—no sacrifices and obeisance to one god, Tingwang. One of the ways this move was made possible was through the medium of songs. Songs, thus, were powerful ways to protect the people from these “abandoned gods” as the Heraka negotiated this religious change. However, in the 1930s the British were concerned that the uprisings in Northeast India would destabilize the harmony of the British Empire, as they threatened to ignite ethnic conflicts between different groups of people. For instance, the British were worried that the Zeliangrong would start targeting the Kuki people due to past grievances caused during the Kuki rebellion of 1917–19 (see Longkumer, forthcoming). As a preventive measure, Jadonang had to be stopped. He was seen as inciting the people of the region by proclaiming a “Naga raj” that would reportedly oust the British and “massacre the Kukis.” Jadonang was caught and hanged by the British in 1931, while Gaidinliu escaped to the North Cachar hills, although she was eventually captured and imprisoned the following year. The first known photograph of Gaidinliu shows a teenage girl, wrapped in a shawl looking rather stricken (see figure 1). When she was captured she was just 16 years old. Her captor, J. P. Mills, who was a colonial administrator, anthropologist, collector, and author, also discovered some curious notebooks. He offered this unflattering description of Gaidinliu:[128] Magic books of the sorceress Gaidiliu [sic] captured with her other property in March 1932. The writing is apparently nothing but meaningless scribbling. She is a Kabui girl of no education at all and taught herself to scribble. Her “literary” power gave her immense prestige and she used to send written messages to her adherents—with verbal messages to say what they meant. (JPM 5/18/32)5 Figure 1: Photograph by John Comyn Higgins. Sent to J.H. Hutton, 18 January 1932. Hutton Collection, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. P.57507.HUT. This note appears in an accession book entry associated with the objects when they were donated to the PRM collection. Alongside the confiscated notebooks, the original basket in which the notebooks were kept was also retained. The twelve [129]notebooks resemble schoolbooks, with the stationary supplier’s name—such as “Swan Brand Exercise Books” or “Swaraj Exercise Book”—inscribed on them (see figures 2 and 3). Most of these notebooks have English names, while some also have Bengali writing in them. Two of them have a photo of Mahatma Gandhi on their cover, and this type of notebook was circulating widely across British Administered India. This suggests that Gaidinliu either procured the exercise books from local bookshops or borrowed them from friends, or that she herself attended one of the government and Christian mission schools in the region. With regard to the specific “magic books” themselves, nothing much is written. Mills’ is probably the last written account of what we know of these books. The fact that Mills kept the notebooks points to his obvious interest as a collector and anthropologist for the colonial archive. Intriguingly, it could also suggest that he took the power of Gaidinliu and the notebooks seriously: to prevent the spread of her influence, the action by Mills forever imprisoned the notebooks, rendering them dormant in the colonial museum.6 However, there was another curious incident around this region of India, recorded by the British administrator J. H. Hutton in 1922, and relating to a village in Manipur, Megwema. He calls it the “curious case of the ‘child authoress.’” He writes, There is a girl who produces sheets of scribblings representing the names of natural objects at the dictation of 10 familiar spirits, six male and four female. There is no doubt but this child, aged about 7, is very much in earnest. She got her mother to obtain writing materials from Kohima at the dictation of the spirits that reside in her and when they arrived fasted seven days of her own accord as a preliminary genna [non-working days—associated with taboos] before beginning to write.7 In order to seek some advice with regard to this episode, Hutton then contacts Carveth Read, a British philosopher and logician. In his reply, Read notes, Your letter about the inspired child who spoils so much writing paper has lain too long unanswered. . . . Amongst ourselves it is a common occurrence for a child to announce its intention of “writing,” and to do so upon every scrap of paper obtainable for some time. But that is plainly imitativeness, and there is no claim to inspiration. This Naga girl cannot have got the idea of writing out of her own consciousness: She must have seen it done or heard it described. She may deny this (I suppose) without intentional deceit. As to the 4 female and 6 male spirits that direct her, does the local belief in “possession” account for such a delusion? . . . What the local belief in possession is I don’t know. If it will explain her delusion, that is enough. That the girl should have undertaken to write without any knowledge of what it is to “write,” is impossible; and she herself, therefore, is logically non-existant [sic].8[130][131] Figures 2 and 3: Gaidinliu notebooks. Source: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1928.69.1570. 3–4. This philosophical arrogance is telling, particularly since Read equates “writing” with a particular kind of learned technique. Anything outside this realm, it appears, is simply dismissed. While it is tempting to suggest that this girl could have been Gaidinliu, who in 1922 was around seven years old, there is no evidence to support this. Nevertheless, the correspondence between Hutton and Read shows that “writing” of this kind was known to exist in the region. It also raises the question of whether or not “writing” is a learned behavior, one that requires imitation. In regard to the Gaidinliu notebooks, it is entirely possible that Gaidinliu herself was aware of writing due to the work of Christian mission and government schools, and the growing presence of the British colonial state. On the other hand, it could also be that writing does not always require a prior exposure to alphabetic literacy but could be related to a kind of retrieval of a previous form of writing, a point I return to below. It is no surprise that people have dismissed the Gaidinliu notebooks—this includes my own early impressions of the “writings.” When I briefly examined the books in 2005, some pages had writing that resembled the Meitei (language used in Manipur) and Bengali alphabets while other pages had seemingly random lines, circles, and drawings. Overall, the writing was very cryptic. My initial conclusions were that, whatever the reasons for Gaidinliu keeping the notebooks or their efficacy in the minds of her followers, the importance of these writings is that they represent a form of “literary power” that was probably based on imitation influenced by the colonial state (Longkumer 2010: 98). However, this analysis now seems insufficient. An adequate analysis must surely take into account instances where writing is provoked by the spirits (as in Hutton’s report above), and this recognition invites us to consider seriously the manner in which dreams, visions, and prophecy contribute to fashioning the Gaidinliu notebooks. In this respect, the Gaidinliu notebooks can be understood as broadly comparable with other, perhaps more familiar, practices and perspectives, such as those embodied in two competing claims. The first interprets the notebooks as a form of talismanic power drawn from Chinese traditions. The second focuses on how indigenous peoples in the highland areas of South/Southeast Asia—called Zomia (van Schendel 2002)—invoke writing as a kind of retrieval of “lost cultural property” (Scott 2009: 223). The examination of these claims provides a way to understand the larger role of writing and orality in the Zeme context and the tensions associated with what the notebooks represent. However, I find neither of these claims entirely convincing and appeal instead to notions of textuality in order to understand the significance and value of the untranslatable notebooks for the Zeme community. The spirit of writing Consider first the idea of the Gaidinliu notebooks as a form of talisman. In Chinese tradition, a talisman represents the “legible” and “illegible” between the “spirit” and “human” world. It serves as a medium that enables communication with, or control of, the sphere of demons and deities. In effect, “talismanic script could express or illustrate ineffable meanings and powers that defy transmission by traditional modalities of communication: oral or written” (Robson 2008: 138). In fact, there is a prevailing theory that suggests that the “earliest forms of writing in China were not used to transcribe human speech but, rather, preceded it and were signs that reflected [132]the hidden powers of the universe and were used to ‘communicate with the spirits’” (Robson 2008: 136; see also Fleming and Mann 2014). Clearly, the Gaidinliu notebooks could be seen in this tradition of “communicating with spirits,” particularly as Hutton’s report suggests that writing of this kind was present in the region. Furthermore, the only first-hand information we have of the notebooks affirms this view. According to her biographer, Ramkhui Newme, Gaidinliu said that these “scriptures” (Zeme: samde) came from the Bhuban cave, the place where the Jadonang and Gaidinliu movement began. Her biographer says, In the wall, beside the big stone, there is some scripture. When Jadonang and Gaidinliu enter inside, both of them wrote the scripts in their books. That script is God script. God, Jadonang, and Gaidinliu are the only ones who can read that script. Others cannot read it. With that script, we will know what will happen in the world . . .9 This “talismanic model” is useful in so far as it recognizes the “script” as a “communication” with gods or spirits. However talismans were often worn or digested to dispel “demons” or to protect people from any untoward incidents. With regard to the notebooks, the material script itself is not thought to have this power to act like a talisman, nor can it be interpreted or translated. Rather, as I will show below, it is the sound of the “words”—involving an act of seeing sound through song—which offers this protection. The second viable claim worth considering focuses on “lost cultural property” and views the Gaidinliu notebooks as a kind of “literary power.” Narratives of loss and return are present more widely in Southeast Asian contexts where, for example, they are associated with the return of a lost book among the Karen of Burma. European missionaries bringing the Bible were viewed as bringing the lost “Book of Gold” (Kammerer 1990: 282). A similar theme of loss and return can be seen in the case of the Hmong living in the borderlands of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, who are said once to have had all of the characteristics of a state-making people, such as literacy, irrigated rice cultivation, and kings. When the missionaries arrived with their bibles and scripts, these texts were seen as the “restoration of lost cultural property” (Scott 2009: 223). It is therefore not surprising that the theme of loss and retrieval is also found in the case of the Zeliangrong Nagas. One of the few Naga writers to comment on the Gaidinliu notebooks (Pamei 1996) even suggests that they are written in the ancient Naga script rediscovered by Jadonang, who apparently used it widely to compose hymns. Furthermore, some claim that this ancient script has been deciphered (Pamei 1996: 104), but supporting evidence is not easily found. Thus there is a possibility that the Gaidinliu notebooks are related to the myth of the lost script, recovered by Gaidinliu. In different Zeme versions, the script was either eaten by a dog, lost in a flood, or burned during a massive fire; variations on a theme that resonate with other regional cases (see Scott 2009: 221–22). James C. Scott presents us with a viable thesis about the loss of writing among indigenous communities, which could be applied to the Zeliangrong Nagas as well.10[133] Scott makes the claim that the lack of script in the highland areas of South and Southeast Asia (Zomia) was due to their choice to evade the state-making projects of the valleys. Therefore, to be seen as not having a written history (a mechanism of the state) can work in their favor. Marginalized ethnic groups, Scott argues, can maximize cultural flexibility by abandoning written traditions. The shorter their history and genealogies, the more they can “invent on the spot” and evade state assimilation (2009: 235). Lack of written history, however, does not mean that only writing determines the collective and common past but rather how much history one wishes to illuminate is an active editorial choice (237). Scott’s model holds that indigenous people choose to reject the written in favor of orality as a form of resistance against state incorporation, so could it not also be that narratives of “retrieving” a script reflect a choice to (re)position a people within a written tradition?11 While Scott’s arguments are interesting, they fall short of explaining the actions of the young girl described by Hutton and too easily dismissed by Carveth Read. The idea that her “writing” could be a form of “lost cultural property” is certainly one point. However, in the case of the notebooks, since they are untranslatable and were possibly never intended to be translatable in the straightforward sense, the idea of “lost cultural property” holds less sway. I would like to consider an alternative possibility by suggesting that the notebooks evoke the importance of dreams, visions, and prophecy to illustrate them as a form of textuality. Lines that speak How then do the Gaidinliu notebooks help us think about the nexus between orality, writing, and indeed other forms of communication? Tim Ingold, in his innovative book Lines (2007), traces the history of lines and their different manifestations in diverse cultures. Ingold’s intervention allows the possibility to explore the notion that ever since people starting speaking and gesturing, they have also made lines to communicate these sentiments. It is only in the modern period that people started separating language from music, speech from song, and writing from drawing (Ingold 2007: 3). Here, I suggest, it is useful to think about our dominant notions of writing as one of many possible forms of communication, and one that does not necessarily compete with orality. In fact, to see the notebooks as grounded in the poetics of story that “elicit perspective truths” (Uzendoski 2012: 73) in their own right is essential if we are to make any interpretative progress. Among the Nagas of India, multiple modes of communication are of immense importance in both historical and contemporary practices. For instance, Ao Naga shawls not only demonstrate the identity of the weaver and the wearer but the patterns on the cloth act as a language of power that narrates the place of the individual [134]within society (Wettstein 2008). Similarly, material objects like stones recall stories of ancestors and their deeds, enable remembrance of certain events, or point to the origin of peoples through memorials and megaliths (Blackburn 2008). Another vivid contemporary example of textuality is drawn from Zasha Colah’s work where she examines the Luingamla Kashan—a kind of sarong worn by women in the Naga areas of Manipur—as a comparison with the Gaidinliu notebooks. The Kashan tells the story of Luingamla, a girl of fifteen, who was killed by Indian army personnel for resisting rape as she was weaving a Kashan. The memory and spirit of Luingamla is kept alive by her friend Zamthingla Ruivah who weaves a Kashan using the “luminosity of the red wool, and gaunt elán of the woven designs.” Zamthingla explains that “red meant joy, it hoped to express beauty,” and to evoke the “irrepressible joy and spiritedness of Luingamla” (Colah 2008: 16). In sustaining these memories, the multiple modes of textuality bring in to focus not only its cultural richness but also its quotidian value in evoking something that cannot be captured through the mere writing of words on paper. In another instance, Peter Gow (1990) recalls how Sangama from the Piro of Peru, an illiterate man according to Western standards, claimed he could read the newspaper like the colonial whites. Sangama rejects the dominant notion of writing by utilizing his own shamanic tradition of seeing, which transformed the paper into something more profound. For Sangama, Gow notes, “reading is a transformation of paper, from a surface covered with ‘design,’ into a corporeal woman who speaks to him, and reveals information about distant realms” (1990: 98). Similarly, shamanic practices of the Shipibo and Conibo Indians in the Peruvian Amazon utilized particular designs, which were interpreted by their early interlocutors as hieroglyphic script. These patterns and designs were woven into cloth, ceramic pots, and thatched roofs. Such patterns, as Ingold argues, could be a kind of “musical code” since songs were sung as cloth was woven to “harmonize the design.” In the words of the ethnologist Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, the Shipibo-Conibo Indian songs “can be heard in a visual way . . . and the geometric designs are themselves lines of sound” (1985: 170; quoted in Ingold 2007: 36). In this sense, if one approaches the Gaidinliu notebooks as a design that requires a literary analysis, or an artistic interpretation, we are missing the point. But seen through the lens of textuality, involving a multiplicity of modalities, the “notebooks” open up new and fresh possibilities of interpretation. Dreamlines and the future event One possibility lies in the relation of the notebooks to a particular kind of coded message, an alternative language system that Gaidinliu developed to help navigate her life-world. A long-term follower of Gaidinliu since her teenage years, Peihei, believes that the Gaidinliu notebooks are diary-like, consisting in “words” communicated by God Tingwang in visions and dreams. When I interviewed Peihei in Laisong village in North Cachar Hills, she told me how these writings could predict future events while also operating as didactic instructions from Tingwang, which Jadonang and Gaidinliu could use to teach their followers. The notebooks were thus used to legitimate Gaidinliu as the successor to Jadonang upon his death in 1931. Gaidinliu reportedly told Peihei that Jadonang found out about his [135]impending death by opening his own notebook.12 In red ink it said, “this year you will not eat from the harvest”—which meant that his time was drawing to an end. In Gaidinliu’s notebook, on the same day, it was written, “everything is in your hands: north/south; east/west.” Peihei even remembers the words by heart though they are largely untranslatable: “Nda ningtau nehiu zongpa melin mehui kula melin nehui . . .” Because the British were looking for Gaidinliu at that time in 1932, she had to hide the notebooks as they contained the main ideas needed to lead the Zeliangrong people. She finally found a hiding place and called it Heraguleuli (God-book/belongs to God).13 When I asked Peihei if this notebook is the same as the notebooks in Pitt Rivers Museum, she replied, “Yes, but not all of it.”14 When I enquired again, why these “notebooks” are important for the Heraka, she said: The script is important for the Heraka and for me. But we cannot read and understand. But one day, we will understand the notebook. When the time comes for the Zeliangrong people, God will send one person to lead. With that hope we live (figure 4).[136] Figure 4: Peihei, a disciple of Gaidinliu, looking at the notebooks in Laisong village, Assam, in 2014. Author’s copy. This millenarian idea is quite pervasive among the Heraka and was first related to Jadonang. The idea of the kingdom came in a dream. Jadonang dreamed of a “Makam Gwangdi,” or “Naga Kingdom” (apparently interpreted by colonial officials as Naga Raj). This vision of the kingdom, as the historian Gangmumei Kamei explains, “[was] for religious purification, cultural resurgence and social integration, his political dream of a kingdom was a natural response to the British colonialism which was always resisted and never compromised by him, nor by his people in the past” (2002: 30). The way that the textuality of the notebooks weaves a narrative about prophecy is important. The continuities between the past, Jadonang’s kingdom, and the present notion of the “heguangram,” are striking. My encounter with Namteduing substantiated these connections. I had met Namteduing many times. He is known as a “mad” man who has proclaimed that he is Jadonang reincarnated (hanged by the British in 1931 for sedition). He is controversial not only because he has caused division within the Heraka movement but also because his views are seen as very adversarial. For example, he has openly challenged the leaders of the established hierarchy of the Heraka movement by questioning their interpretation of the “true hingde” (true law) of Tingwang, the Zeme high god. So when I met him again after many years, I expected a highly polemical conversation. After a few hours of talking, I brought out a copy of the Gaidinliu notebooks, which I gave to him as a present. We talked for another hour or so and as I was about to leave, he said this: Once we get the script [Gaidinliu notebooks], heguangram will come. But we don’t know who will be the one [who brings the script and translates the untranslatable]. Maybe our friend [Arko] who has brought the script from Oxford will bring about heguangram. I left the place in silence. The silence was only punctuated by a humorous comment from my friends: “I can’t believe our brother [Arko] will bring about the heguangram, especially since it is coming from Namteduing.” “You could be the return of Jadonang.” And they laughed. I was slightly unnerved by these comments because in the past when the anthropologist Ursula Graham Bower conducted research in Northeast India in the 1940s, she was often seen as the return of their prophetess, Gaidinliu, and was treated reverentially (Bower 1952: 144–46). It does demonstrate, however, that prophecies of this nature are not only uncommon but people’s reaction to these episodes could mean my own apotheosis. This incident illustrates two significant points. First is the very nature of the “script” and how its return would usher in the heguangram. Although, it was difficult to ascertain if it was the actual notebooks that were required, I got the sense that the copies were equally acceptable because Namteduing wanted his photograph taken with them (see figure 5). It is the secret coded messages reportedly inscribed in the notebooks, rather than the notebooks per se, that are valuable for the founding of the heguangram. Here the “afterlives” of an artifact are significant as they animate its relationship with the community, heightened in this case by urgency. For Namteduing, and for some of the Heraka, it is not merely the “return” of the notebooks that is important. The coming of the kingdom also requires an agent to make this transition possible—to render the untranslatability translatable—and to bring clarity to the impending kingdom. The [137]community now possesses the notebooks, making the unveiling of the kingdom a real possibility. Figure 5: Namteduing holding a copy of the Gaidinliu notebooks along with his followers in Hajaichak, Assam, in 2014. Author’s copy. The second significant point relates to the positionality of the ethnographer. Perhaps without the ethnographer the notebooks would have remained, out of sight and forgotten, in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The ethnographer, who searches for and locates the artifacts, has resources available and thus the means to bring copies of the notebooks from Oxford to Assam. This results in the ethnographer, in a small way, making history and contributing to the story of the Heraka. The episode of returning these artifacts highlights the textuality of the notebooks in all their cultural intricacies. Yet, while the return of the notebooks illuminates our understanding of the Heraka’s kingdom, there are abiding concerns within this narrative, especially when we take into account competing stories of “texts” and the authority they represent for the Heraka community. Telling stories, navigating history It is important to bear in mind that there is not a single authoritative version of how the notebooks came about. There are multiple versions, or “storeys,” that “to read (to listen to) a narrative is not merely to move from one word to the next, it is also to move from one level to the next” (Barthes 1977: 87). The Zeme are great storytellers, and the term they use to evoke this is rasam. Unlike Western notions where myth, history, legend, and folktale are carefully defined, the Zeme notion of rasam is a comprehensive mode of social practice.[138] There are several stories illuminating the origins of Gaidinliu’s writings. According to one Heraka story, the notebook “writings” were received in Bhuban cave by Gaidinliu. As mentioned by Gaidinliu’s biographer and interview accounts, the walls of the cave were filled with writing. They transmitted an aura of the written form that Gaidinliu took down in detail: the notebooks are probably the only traces of what was then visible in the cave. People who visit Bhuban cave now narrate visions of words appearing suddenly and then disappearing again (Longkumer 2010: 99). Could it be that Gaidinliu captured in written form these images of words as they appeared? Another version of the origin narrative has it that when Gaidinliu sacrificed mithuns (a semidomesticated bison), she would cut off the penis and, inside, find the alphabet for the scripture. This version may also signify the emasculation of the male organ over which she now had power. However, the more popular version of this “script” comes from two other stories. The first story goes like this: Gaidinliu would often visit Zeilad lake, an important landmark for the Zeliangrong people, due to its association with the lake deity, Hechawang (python god). On this occasion, the fearless Gaidinliu approached Hechawang and caught his large head and emptied some eggs into his mouth as a gift of food. In return, Hechawang requested that Gaidinliu bring him a perfect plantain leaf. Using his long tongue, Hechawang wrote the script on the plantain leaf and said, “all the good things to be taught through this script, I have given to you.” Hechawang requested that Gaidinliu write the words down in a book, as the plantain leaf would deteriorate. There are variations in the story of what was written on the plantain leaf. One tradition suggests that a song was written, while another implies that it contained words associated with the Zeliangrong Heraka kingdom. The second story takes its cue from the Hingde Book (law book) of the Heraka, a book that is now in circulation as an official “religious text.” According to tradition, a king whose name was Manshai ruled the world. He could read a mysterious script, called the Hingde Book, and could heal using it. One day he was ill and asked his wife to bring the Hingde Book from the laundry basket where he had kept it. Upon searching, she was unable to find it. Manshai immediately thought that Tingwang (their high god) had taken it away. Because he could not use the secret codes hidden in the Book to cure his illness, he turned to the herakapeu (literally, god-communicator) to prophesize. Thus was ushered in the age of prophecy. Mediation was now absolutely necessary to communicate with gods through sacrifice. Immediate access to god through individual effort was challenged by the herakapeu. For many generations, it is said, people suffered due to the heavy burden of sacrifice. Now, it is said, the Hingde Book, lost during Manshai’s generation, was recovered by Jadonang and Gaidinliu in the Bhuban cave. According to the Heraka, they no longer need the herakapeu, as they can access god immediately through the words of the Book (Longkumer 2010: 97–98). These stories trace a relationship between the official Hingde Book, the Gaidinliu notebooks, and Manshai’s script that tradition says existed long before. But what is this relationship? One way to approach an answer is to suggest that all these texts exist in people’s imaginations. The Hingde Book is “sacred scripture,” mirroring the original Manshai script that was reportedly removed by Tingwang and now returned. This echoes what the French sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger (2000) [139]has called a “lineage of belief” that “is affirmed and manifested in the essentially religious act of recalling a past which gives meaning to the present and contains the future” (2000: 125). But with regard to the Gaidinliu notebooks, the relationship is more complicated. Some have said that what Gaidinliu wrote has no link with the Hingde Book or with Manshai’s script, and that they have a different purpose: they are meant to bring about the “kingdom,” as intimated above. The more people I asked about the notebooks, the more it became apparent that their history is not entirely related to the Hingde Book, nor to Manshai’s script, nor even to the Book currently in use. Rather, their purpose is more exact but shrouded in mystery because their translatability will be rendered visible only when the time is right. There is also a certain uneasiness among the Heraka elite with regard to the Gaidinliu notebooks. When I showed them to the leader of the Heraka movement, Ramkhui Newme, he was not particularly elated or deferential toward the notebooks. He concluded that no one really understands them now, but that they remain an important artifact of “Zeme heritage.” For him, the Hingde Book is more important. This kind of positioning is also common among others of the Heraka because writing is associated with prestige, with some advantages over orality. Written texts make certain kinds of orthodoxies possible—whether it is stories, legends, myths, rules, or laws. Once a text becomes the indisputable point of reference, certain readings may be discouraged or disallowed. Clear distinctions can be made between what is “original” and what are deviations, particularly when a text is deemed authoritative (Scott 2009: 227). Here is how Helui in the town of Haflong put it: All of this [laws, rules about practice] is written completely in the Hingde Book. We have not written before, so we have forgotten a lot. So nowadays with the use of Hingde Book, we can be perfect Heraka (complete Heraka). If we have our Hingde Book, our next generation, with the help of this Book, can preserve Heraka Hingde. If we have written records about Manshai, Herakandengpeu [famous Zeme traditional healer], then we can read through the books and no need to ask the old men. The distinct advantage of the written word over the oral is visible in the above conversation—to be perfect Heraka requires that the stories be standardized for posterity. In a way it also shifts the balance of power from the community of storytellers to the individual who now has the power to read on her or his own accord. In this regard, the Gaidinliu notebooks cannot act in the same way as the Hingde Book due to the former’s perceived mystifying content. This tension also points to the larger problem of alphabetic writing that has been introduced to indigenous peoples like the Zeme through British colonialism, Christian missions, and the Indian state. As the above discussion suggests, alphabetic literacy and writing imposes a kind of knowledge. It is a sign of “literary power” related to the capillary powers of the bureaucratic state, schooling techniques, and the job market. Indeed, in this context orality is slowly giving way to alphabetic literacy as the dominant mode of discourse. Therefore, those who believe in the Gaidinliu notebooks are, I was told, “village folk” who decry the present as oppressive and want a better future. The textuality of the notebooks thus opens them to an undesirable diversity of [140]opinions that are clearly against the grain of orthodoxy. People like Namteduing and Peihei represent the ideal of heguangram, the kingdom to come. Claude Lévi-Strauss makes an astute observation with regard to this debate. He says, “Writing is a strange thing. . . . The one phenomenon which has invariably accompanied it is the formation of cities and empires: the integration into a political system, that is to say, of a considerable number of individuals into a hierarchy of castes and slaves. . . . It seems rather to favor the exploitation than the enlightenment of mankind” (quoted in Scott 2009: 228). The narrative of the Gaidinliu notebooks appears to embrace a paradox—the untranslatable notebooks are a form of resistance to incorporation in the state that requires a certain legitimacy where legible writing is privileged over orality but, at the same time, they demand an orthodoxy of interpretation and thus translation. However, there is also a more quotidian understanding of the notebooks among the Zeme. Asked simply, “what are the Gaidinliu notebooks?” an elderly man answered: “This script has been taught to the people through song. The song is the sound of the script and the song is difficult to translate.” The embodiment of the notebooks in the hearts, minds, and bodies of the Heraka people is in their songs, confirmed by many of the older people who remember Gaidinliu teaching what the elderly man narrated. The relationship now seemed almost natural but further complicated by the very fact that the songs are untranslatable too.15 It is said that many of the songs are written in five or six different languages. Even the people who perform these songs could never understand their exact meaning. This raises important questions as to the meaning of the songs and their intended audience. This issue is not unique to the Zeme. For instance, Ingold notes how for medieval monks in Europe, scripture was understood “not as something made, but as something that speaks” (Ingold 2007: 13; italics in original). Listeners were expected to hear the voices of the biblical scripture and learn from them. In a certain sense: “Instead of using their ears to look, they were using their eyes to hear, modelling their perception of the written word upon their experience of the spoken one” (Ingold 2007: 13). Therefore, writing, reading, listening, and understanding were aspects of the same thing. As Dominique Leclercq explains, one was expected to read the text “with one’s whole being: with the body, since the mouth pronounced it, with the memory that fixes it, with the intelligence that understands its meaning and with the will which desires to put it into practice” (quoted in Ingold 2007: 17). Similarly, Matthew Engelke’s work among the Friday Apostolics in Zimbabwe, notes how sound in song is a vital part of their “live and direct” experience with God (2007: 200–23). Engelke suggests that the sensorium of sound for the Friday Apostolics is evident in song: “There is something about the human voice in song to God that serves as a vehicle for God’s presence—that indeed is God’s presence. [141]Singing, as a certain kind of sound, conveys that presence in itself” (2007: 207; italics in original). While the significance of sound cannot be ignored in the Heraka case, the relationship between the untranslatability of the song and the notebooks requires a closer examination of the distinction between writing, speaking/singing, seeing, and hearing. The relationship between the notebooks and their visualization through song is a helpful way of approaching the Gaidinliu notebooks. The notebooks themselves appear to have no interpreters or readers who can make sense of them in the immediate present. But their chief translator, Gaidinliu, has passed on the tradition to her followers so that now, as the elder earlier commented, “this script has been taught to the people through song. The song is the sound of the script.” The way sounds play a role in language is not unique to this context. The Qur’an is but one example of the divine presence in language. This is why the Qur’an is often seen as “nontranslatable.” The prophet received oral transmission by the angel Gabriel as sounds, which comprised an inalienable part of the transmitted sacred text. To attempt to translate this would mean exposing the Qur’an to the diversity of linguistic differences and give rise to potential conflict and disagreement. Only in the Arabic text does the Qur’an remain stable (Keane 2013: 7). In contrast, the Bible risks inaccuracy by making it translatable into the vernacular. Nevertheless, the belief is that through these translations, people gain access to God. This inherent conception of language as divine presence can equally be applied to the Gaidinliu notebooks. However, unlike both the Qur’an and the Bible, the Gaidinliu notebooks’ access to God cannot depend on either their non-translatability or their translatability. If we are to suggest that the songs sung by the Heraka are the notebooks in sound this lets us see them in a different way. I suggest that once you understand the notebooks through sound—the eye hears—then their significance and value are better understood. Gaidinliu taught her followers the script through song and whether they understand the language in the song or not, the song becomes the very presence of the script. It is through the presence of the script that we can understand both how the notebooks fit into the prophecy and how the very idea of prophecy becomes so fundamental in any analysis of the notebooks. But let us reflect further on the place of these songs. The eye hears: The spirit of the song Heraka songs speak. It is not simply the voice that gives them their power but that these songs, like those of the medieval monks, must be sung with one’s whole being and from the heart. It is no surprise then that these songs are infused into the very fabric of the community. During the course of my fieldwork, there were numerous occasions when these songs presented a visual and sonic experience. The ebullient atmosphere when these songs were sung publicly becomes charged with intense emotion—the voice, the feeling, and indeed the embodiment of song through the swaying of bodies dressed in their finest clothes, transports both the singer and the listener to a different plane. The fact that humans cannot understand the songs does not seem to matter to the Heraka; their untranslatability, their ineffability, is to bring the sound of the divine to the human ear.[142] The popularity of Heraka songs builds on the existing traditions and practices of song, poetry and stories. During the early phases of their movement (1930–60), people were anxious about the various spirits and gods that inhabited the landscape. The textuality of the songs was precisely to appeal to significant sections of the people—those who could not read or write, those without the kind of alphabetic literacy introduced by the colonial state. As discussed, the emphasis of the Heraka was to make the transition from many deities and spirits to a single god, Tingwang. To free the landscape from these competing deities and spirits required a kind of religious “charm” that would embrace them like a shawl. Songs were these protective shawls for the people. When sung, this insured that the actual translatability of the words did not matter as long as they were being sung with proper learned utterances and serious intention. Take, for example, the case of Sanskrit recitations in India where “listening to the sound of religious text is already held to be auspicious and purifying” (Moebus and Wilke 2011: v). Similarly, the seriousness of the song must be underscored. When Gaidinliu encountered the goddess of Bhuban cave in September 1928, according to her biography, the following words were uttered to remind her about the importance of singing these songs. This ritual is practiced to this day in remembrance of this event: For what purpose have you come here?To make you live or die is my willBut sing this song for everlasting life. It is helpful again to recall the way in which the world of talisman or amulets written in legible and illegible esoteric script were worn or digested to repel “demons” in the ancient world, a practice found from the Middle East to East Asia and used in a variety of religious contexts (Robson 2008: 130–31). Similarly, the construction of these songs has a specific purpose for the Heraka, as Namteduing, the “mad” man, said: In Heraka songs, all the gods are praised—all the gods of the eight corners of the sky and earth. So that is why we are free from the evil spirits as we praise them through our songs. Songs invoke all the spirits so that none are excluded from praise. Indeed, songs are not meant to dispel these gods/spirits but to attract and put them under the spell of the songs, to render them ineffective. The songs therefore could be seen broadly as having talismanic power that is woven with words and is traced along the lines of the body. Songs involve all the senses—the reading of the notebooks through singing made visible through the body, woven into the fabric of everyday life for the Zeme Heraka. They take on a “sacred” dimension for the very reason that they were inscribed in writing in the Gaidinliu notebooks, but were also taught by Tingwang to Gaidinliu through dreams and visions, forming a prophecy. The immediacy of the sound from Tingwang’s mouth is as real to the people as when Gaidinliu memorized them. In effect, the voice of Tingwang is not simply represented for the hearers. Rather, as already intimated, it is brought to their presence so that they can engage with it directly (Ingold 2007: 37). As a way to round off this discussion, I offer a literal translation of the song Heguang Samdin Wang (narrating heguang’s return). It leaves open the “spirit of the [143]song” to heal and transform the landscape, weaving lines that thread the memories of the past, present, and the unfolding of the notebooks in the future. Heguang! waiting for your coming with hopeTo bring all the things in our villageWith the songs and the words, we are enjoyingWaiting for your comingWith hope16 Conclusion Language plays a crucial role in how cultural worlds are navigated. It is in this context that the Gaidinliu notebooks present a particular challenge. How do we comprehend something that seems incomprehensible? Everyone is agreed that nobody knows what the writing in the notebooks says and nobody knows how to read it. Indeed, people like Mills (Gaidinliu’s captor), and to some extent myself, were skeptical about her rather cryptic and undecipherable notebooks. However, the episode of their return to the Heraka demonstrated that to dismiss the notebooks as mere scribbles means losing something of value. Nor is regarding them as having talismanic power or as a retrieval of lost cultural property entirely satisfactory, although each sheds some light on the interpretation of their significance. If we take the notebooks as an example of an indigenous language system in its own right, however, the picture is transformed. I have suggested that to understand the Gaidinliu notebooks, one must consider the nature of textuality, with its multiple modalities—from the body, to writing, songs, dreams, and prophecy—grounded in human experience and understanding of the world. Thus recognizing the notebooks as experienced and not simply read or understood opens them up to fresh interpretative possibilities. The texture of the stories associated with the Gaidinliu notebooks allows another reading that must be taken seriously: that of the future-event whose coming will unravel the notebooks and bring about the Heraka kingdom. In one sense, the return of the notebooks can be viewed as an enactment in the “tense of a metaphysical present,” where the past-present-future shape meaningful narrative sequences out of experience (Connerton 2004: 43). In another sense, the prophecy of the notebooks can be historicized as a “temporal projection” (Blanes 2011) situated within a linear timeframe, starting with its colonial capture, its present revelation, and its unknown future. Therefore, my role in returning the notebooks is now central to the narrative of this kingdom but also highlights the power of the notebooks themselves, albeit copies. While much of the conversation I had with the Heraka happened around the copies and not the originals, it was never quite clear if the coming of the kingdom required the return of the “original” or the “copy.” In many ways, it is more important to appreciate the textuality of the notebooks rather than the materialization of the text in the original notebooks.[144] The untranslatability of the notebooks becomes less significant when the text is mediated through song and divine language enters the human world. For the Heraka to navigate through their social life the songs became a powerful medium to protect the people from “evil spirits” that roamed the land, as they moved from one cosmology to another. But what is equally interesting for me is the nature of the object that I was returning. So what was it that I was returning—the notebooks, the words, the lines, the pages, or some hidden codes? One argument could be that the “script” is already present in the songs and therefore the documents themselves are not needed. But as I discovered, the bringing of the notebooks elicited a positive response from those who wanted to discuss the idea that the material presence of the “script” itself would initiate the coming of the “kingdom.” In a way the script acts as a metonym for this coming kingdom. The discussions surrounding the Gaidinliu notebooks point to the larger issue of material objects and their consequences as they interact with the world. Here I return to a discussion highlighted by Nicholas Thomas (2013), that material objects must be grounded in social relations that animate the way we navigate our worlds beyond the walls of the museum. On the one hand, as I have shown, the notebooks in themselves have continued to exercise agency—mediating the agency of Gaidinliu, Jadonang, or Tingwang—even after their removal by the British administrators. This article has suggested that returning the notebooks has caused anxiety and celebration, eliciting different responses from different audiences. In this way, it must be underscored that artifacts and the meanings they produce can move beyond the confines of museums to spaces where they can be animated through social relations. So what began as a project to return the notebooks to the Heraka transformed into an insight about the “afterlives” of material artifacts. For the Heraka, the return of the notebooks is a step toward the coming of “the kingdom” and thus, rather than simply returning an artifact, my own role may be regarded as bringing the realization of “the kingdom” closer to fulfillment. While the ethnographic task is to reflect critically on the nature of such cultural productions, the encounter itself holds the power to shape the future. Acknowledgements I am indebted to Lindsay Graham’s brilliance; as usual, she provided her immense energy and patience in discussing and reading many of the ideas contained in this article. Different aspects of the article were presented in Edinburgh (Scotland), Tromsø (Norway), and Oxford (England). My thanks to Naomi Appleton, Bjørn Ola Tafjord, Siv Ellen Kraft, and Elizabeth Hallam for making these events memorable and to the audience in engaging with these ideas. Staff at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford provided the digital copies that I took to Assam. For expediency and professionalism, I thank Clare Harris for her expertise as Curator for Asian Collections (and also reading a draft of this article), Julia Nicholson, Marina de Alarcon, Nicholas Crowe, and Beth Asbury for shepherding access to these notebooks. I am grateful to comrades-in-arms of my Edinburgh writing group—Jacob Copeman and Aya Ikegame—who read and discussed this article with enthusiasm, and to Mark Elliot, Greg Johnson, and Elspeth Graham who were generous to offer [145]their comments amidst their own busy schedules. The four anonymous reviewers provided much to think about and their comments have greatly improved this article, along with the patience of the editors who provided timely guidance. I am also thankful to my friends in NC Hills, and particularly to Adeule and Tahulung, who after all these years continue to work with me and provide lasting inspiration through their own work and ideas. References Anderson, David M. and Douglas H. Johnson. 1995. Revealing prophets: Prophecy in Eastern African history. London: James Currey Ltd. Arnold, Denise, and Juan de Dios Yapita. 2006. The metamorphosis of heads: Textual struggles, education, and land in the Andes. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 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Longkumer, Arkotong. 2007. “Religious and economic reform: The Gaidinliu movement and the Heraka in North Cachar Hills.” Journal of South Asian Studies 30 (3): 499–515. ———. 2010. Reform, identity and narratives of belonging: The Heraka movement of Northeast India. London: Continuum. ———. Forthcoming. “Freedom and frustrated hopes: Assessing the Jadonang movement, 1917–1932.” In Northeast India: A Place of Relations, edited by Amit Baishya and Yasmin Saikia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mignolo, Walter D. 1994. “Signs and their transmission: The question of the book in the new world.” In Writing without words: Alternative literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter D. Mignolo, 220–70. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Miller, Daniel. 2005. Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Moebus, Oliver, and Annette Wilke. 2011. Sound and communication: An aesthetic cultural history of Sanskrit Hinduism. Berlin: De Gruyter. Pamei, Ramkhun. 1996. The Zeliangrong Nagas: A study of tribal Christianity. New Delhi: Uppal Publishing House. Robson, James. 2008. “Signs of power: Talismanic writing in Chinese Buddhism.” History of Religions 48 (2): 130–69. Scott, James C. 2009. The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Thomas, Nicholas. 2013. “Epilogue.” In Distributed objects: Meaning and mattering after Alfred Gell, edited by Liana Chua and Mark Elliott, 201–6. New York: Berghahn Books. Uzendoski, Michael. 2012. “Beyond orality: Textuality, territory, and ontology among Amazonian peoples.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (1): 55–80.[147] van Schendel, Willem. 2002. “Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: Jumping scale in Southeast Asia.” Development and Planning D: Society and Space 20:647–68. Wettstein, Marion. 2008. “Defeated warriors, successful weavers.” In Changing local cultures in the North-east of India, edited by Michael Oppitz, Thomas Kaiser, Alban von Stockhausen, and Marion Wettstein, 129–48. Gent: Snoeck Publishers. “Des lignes qui parlent.” Les carnets de Gaidinliu: langue, prophétie et textualité Résumé : Cet article évoque ma restitution de copies des “carnets de Gaidinliu” du Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) au Nagas Zeme d’Assam (Inde). Les carnets furent confisqués en 1932 par les administrateurs britanniques et confiés au musée. Ils avaient été composés par un mouvement religieux, les Heraka, et leur prophétesse, Gaidinliu (1915 - 1993). La restitution des carnets révéla plusieurs problématiques théoriques liés à l’approche des textes, en particulier parce que ces carnets étaient écrits dans une langue “intraduisible”. Je suggère que leur textualité doit être examinée en rapport avec l’histoire du royaume (Zeme: heguangram), en utilisant la notion de textualité (Uzendoski 2012) qui repose sur les rêves, la prophétie, les chants et les visions. De plus, afin d’apprécier la valeur et les intentions de ces carnets, nous devons être attentifs aux sonorités manifestées par les mots des carnets qui se reflètent dans les chants. Enfin, tout cela suggère des façons de comprendre les relations entre l’histoire, la langue et l’expérience. Arkotong LONGKUMER is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He is the author of Reform, identity and narratives of belonging: The Heraka movement of Northeast India (Continuum, 2010) and has published in journals such as Himalaya, Contributions to Indian Sociology, and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. He is currently writing a book on Hindu nationalism in Northeast India and Hindu nationalists’ engagement with indigenous peoples. Arkotong LongkumerReligious Studies, New College University of EdinburghMound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LXUnited Kingdoma.longkumer@ed.ac.uk ___________________ 1. North Cachar Hills is an autonomous district council in the Indian state of Assam inhabited by different ethnic groups, some of them Zeme Nagas. These Naga areas are contiguous with other Indian states of Nagaland and Manipur. Collectively, they are known as Zeliangrong Nagas (who comprise of three kindred tribes: Zeme-Liangmei-Rongmei). North Cachar Hills has recently been renamed as Dima Hasao District but most of my Naga informants are unhappy with this change, which was prompted largely by the political leverage the Dimasa ethnic group holds in the district. I retain the use of North Cachar Hills to provide some continuity with colonial records, while also recognizing that this name is largely retained by many of the Zeme Nagas I work with. 2. There are different adjectives used for the Gaidinliu notebooks—diary/script/book/text. For the sake of clarity I use both “Gaidinliu notebooks” (its official nomenclature) and “script” due to the Heraka’s reference to it as “Gaidinliu sam” (script). But I will primarily be using the term “notebooks,” as the word “script” tends to refer solely to the written word. 3. I use Zeme and sometimes Zeliangrong interchangeably, although I do use Zeliangrong when referring to the group of tribes rather than simply the Zeme. 4. In this article I focus primarily on what the lines of the pages represent when I returned the copies to the Heraka, rather than on the materiality of these notebooks themselves, which would need another essay to do justice to its considerable intersections with current anthropological literature (Engelke 2007; Keane 2013; Kirsch 2011; Miller 2005). 5. Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) 1928.69.1570.1/2. The entire collection of the Gaidinliu notebooks are classified under the accession number: 1928.69.1570: 1–14. PRM also has other things belonging to Gaidinliu like her ornaments and shawl. 6. My thanks to Clare Harris for pointing this out to me (Clare Harris, pers. comm., June 16, 2015). 7. PRM, Hutton Ms. Box 2. 8. PRM, Hutton Ms. Box 3: 74–75. 9. This biography by Ramkhui Newme is not published and is in Zeme. I translated it with the help of Adeule, who worked as a research assistant during my fieldwork in 2005. 10. On a more general note, the Nagas do not have an indigenous written language but have adopted the Romanized alphabet for writing. Hindi is sometimes used but to a lesser degree. 11. This is not a one-way process as indigenous people like the Zeme also give importance to writing. In other contexts among indigenous peoples, claims over land and heritage are increasingly becoming important due to the politics of identity. For example, Greg Johnson’s (2011) study shows how Hawai’ians use the written word in the form of genealogies archived in state records to contest claims to ownership over sacred objects. He calls this “courting culture” where the legal domain is used to great effect. 12. It could be entirely possible that the Gaidinliu notebooks kept at the PRM contained Jadonang’s writings as well. It is difficult to corroborate this. 13. Among the Tibetan Buddhists, texts are often hidden for future “discovery,” and are called Treasures, which are “texts of mystical revelation” (Gyatso 1986: 7). These Treasures have to be found by an adept disciple who then searches for the content of the revelation, later to be disseminated and published as texts. 14. This is rather ambiguous. It could be that Peihei meant that not all of Gaidinliu’s notebooks are in the PRM, or that the notebook that was hidden was only part of the collection of notebooks now in the PRM. She probably meant the former. 15. This is strictly not the case, as a few of them can be translated with the help of a gifted linguist or groups of them who speak the three kindred languages—Zeme, Liangmei, and Rongmei, alongside Hindi, Nepali, Assamese, and Nagamese. But the point of the untranslatability of the songs suggests that, at least for the Heraka, the writing of the notebooks is elevated to the divine plane where everyday human linguistic diversity cannot comprehend it. 16. Italics mine. This is a popular Heraka song. Heguang here refers to the one who will bring about this kingdom. Translation by the author.  

Supermanagers, inequality, and finance This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Karen Ho. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.022 BOOK SYMPOSIUM Supermanagers, inequality, and finance Karen HO, University of Minnesota Comment on Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the twenty-first century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. What makes Thomas Piketty’s (2014) work compelling is not only that he uses the tools of mainstream economics, especially the management of “big data” on centuries of tax records, to depict increasing socio-economic inequality, but also that he recognizes the vital moral and social questions underlying the production of inequality. What kinds of societies are being constructed and reproduced, and who is understood as “deserving” and “meritocratic”? In this regard, the United States stands as one very instructive case. As Piketty argues, in the United States inequality has recently grown to be “quantitatively as extreme as in old Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century” (2014: 293). Yet, he emphasizes the differences between contemporary hyperinequality in the United States and nineteenthand early twentieth-century European (and American) inequality, as he argues that we have ushered in an entirely new way of achieving our shocking levels of inequality. Today, Piketty insists that “what primarily characterizes the United States … is a record level of inequality of income from labor (probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world, including societies in which skill disparities were extremely large)” (2014: 265). More precisely, the prototype of inequality is no longer the “passive” recipient of interest from inherited fortunes (i.e., income made possible from already accumulated capital and wealth) but rather the top manager who actively (and perhaps meritocratically) accumulates [482]through income from labor (though Piketty acknowledges that these two modes of accumulation are not mutually exclusive). Now, while there are certainly compelling reasons for drawing this distinction, it is also necessary to question it, because it is through understanding the contemporary collapse of this distinction between capital and labor, wrought in large part by finance, that Piketty’s argument can be further honed and strengthened. (It is also important to question the notion of aristocratic passivity—certainly the colonialism and enslavement that generated global and national wealth inequalities helped to produce the contours of modern inequality). Further context is necessary to understand Piketty’s argument about today’s rising wealth and inequality. Piketty identifies a particular subclass of executives/employees at the upper echelons of large firms whose “extremely high remunerations at the summit of the wage hierarchy” are a central factor in rising wage inequality, as they comprise the majority of the top centile, which has captured “60 percent of the total increase of US national income” from 1977–2007 (2014: 297–98). Specifically, by examining tax returns and corporate compensation records, Piketty found that 60 to 70 percent of the top .1 percent of incomes in 2000–2010 belonged to these top managers, whom he dubs “supermanagers.” By comparison, athletes, actors, and artists of all kinds make up less than 5 percent of this group. In this sense, responsibility for the new US inequality lies not with easily identifiable “superstars” but with these somewhat less-publicized supermanagers (302). He first attempts to explain why supermanagers are so highly compensated in the course of shedding doubt on mainstream economist arguments and rationales. Extreme divergences of income, he argues, are not well-explained by dominant scholarly accounts that credit the increased skill, efficiency, and “marginal productivity” of managers as rationales for their skyrocketing incomes. Piketty goes so far as to say that even justifications of managerial compensation based on firms’ increased earnings are misplaced and overdramatized. First, these managers often get paid the most when “external” factors allow for increased earnings and thus usually get “paid for luck” (335). Second, it is an understatement to say that there are few objective means of determining a single executive’s contribution to the success of a firm. Finally, he undercuts the hackneyed rationale that education, skill, and technology account for the income differences in the United States by showing that countries with similar technological and educational training do not produce such pronounced inequality. Those within the top decile, he notes, have similar educational pedigrees to members of the top centile, and since US inequality equals or surpasses that of poor and emerging countries with even starker educational and skill hierarchies, it makes little sense to state that inequality of compensation in the United States simply mirrors inequality in skill: “Is it really the case that inequality of individual skills and productivities is greater in the United States today than in … apartheid (or postapartheid) South Africa” (2014: 330)? Unconvinced by these generalizing and normative economics-driven explanations, Piketty then offers his own. He concludes that the central and “most convincing” reason for the “explosion of the very top US incomes” is, simply put, that executives are in charge of their own compensation and they are empowered by the larger society and a set of corporate governance norms that sanction their pay practices and believe in their protestations of meritocracy. Piketty writes that “at [483]the very highest levels salaries are set by the executives themselves,” and it is therefore “inevitable that this process yields decisions that are largely arbitrary and dependent on hierarchical relationships and on the relative bargaining power of the individuals involved” (2014: 330–32). On the one hand, Piketty’s assertions are an important intervention against the applicability of economistic theories such as marginal productivity, where the problematic assumption is that “the invisible hand” of the market properly assigns compensation according to contribution. He forthrightly states what many economists rarely admit: “In practice, the invisible hand does not exist, any more than ‘pure and perfect’ competition does, and the market is always embodied in specific institutions such as corporate hierarchies and compensation committees” (2014: 331–32). On the other hand, his solution reproduces, in part, individualistic, behavioral discourses, in that he sees individual supermanagers as “incentivized”— through naturalized greed combined with conflict-of-interest, “executives-withtheir-hands-in-the-till” instrumentalism—to pay themselves more and more (332). He then turns to focus on the cultural justification for the massive shift in socioeconomic values and practices, arguing, very effectively, that supermanager selfproclamations that they are the pinnacle manifestations of a “hypermeritocratic society”—the very embodiments of productivity, morality, and merit—not only have “very little factual basis” but also intertwine violent inequality with claims to moral righteousness and social justice. Piketty importantly recognizes that US “meritocratic extremism” is “much harder on the losers, because it seeks to justify domination on the grounds of justice, virtue, and merit, to say nothing of the insufficient productivity of those at the bottom,” and in so doing, combines the worst of two worlds—rampant inequality of wage and wealth with the justificatory pretense of virtue and virtuosity (2014: 416–17). But the corresponding and perhaps more fundamental question is what enables these blatant self-justifications to fall on sympathetic ears? Piketty identifies the manifestation of this shift and describes how the shift is rationalized, but avoids the shift itself and its conditions of possibility. He does not approach the central problematic head on and ask what does the rise of the supermanagers signal about the very changes in capital accumulation and practice that made this rise possible? What Piketty is missing, I contend, is that the compensation of supermanagers is the direct result of seismic changes in the very nature and purpose of the corporation toward financial values, models, and practices. The exorbitant incomes now prevalent at the top levels of management actually serve as an index of the massive financialization of the US economy. Their paychecks, in a sense, are the spoils of financial excess, made possible through framing and governing corporations as if they were financial assets to be mined for the good of the supermanagers themselves. In my view, the reason Piketty does not delve further into the problem of the supermanagers and what fundamentally accounts for their rise is that he reproduces the binary between capital and labor and discounts the importance of finance and financialization. His treatment of finance is an important piece of the puzzle. To his credit, Piketty certainly notices the growing influence of finance in the US economy, particularly the fact that some of the highest incomes of the supermanagers derive from the financial industry. (And, he seems to recognize, in general, that supermanager income is transferred from the poorest 90 percent, an aspect of appropriation [484]that is culturally characteristic of US financial dominance). Yet, almost in the same breath, he proceeds to downplay the relevance of this finding, reasoning that “nevertheless, 80 percent of the top income groups are not in finance, and the increase in the proportion of high-earning Americans is explained primarily by the skyrocketing pay packages of top managers of large firms in the nonfinancial as well as financial sectors” (2014: 303). He takes at face value the fact that since the majority of top incomes belong to supermanagers in nonfinancial corporations, this means that “traditional” managerial labor within productive and manufacturing enterprises still accounts for the lion’s share of supercompensation. Simultaneously, Piketty assumes that finance is important to the narrative of inequality and supermanagers only in the largest fortunes, (the top centile of the top 1 percent) as it is in those cases that financial assets, “almost all of it in the form of dividends,” begin to occupy a greater share of income (281). His interest in finance is piqued mainly at the .01 percent level. Piketty’s distinction between labor and capital, I argue, prevents him from seeing how supermanager incomes actually blur the boundaries between capital and labor, as well as how it is precisely finance that bridges, and has helped to collapse, this distinction. In what follows, I show that finance not only crosses the boundaries between the nonfinancial and financial sectors but has also instigated the conversion of capital into labor. Specifically, I make the case that it is precisely the conversion work of finance (financial actors, models, values, and practices) that has helped to source the exorbitant salaries of supermanagers, unlocking institutional assets (capital) and turning them into income from labor. Here, it is crucial to grasp the overwhelming influence of finance in both financial and nonfinancial sectors. In fact, in order to demonstrate the increasing financialization of the US economy, sociologist Greta Krippner documents a rampant increase in how nonfinancial firms “derive revenues from financial investments as opposed to more traditional productive activities” (2011: 34). Specifically, she demonstrates that the “ratio of portfolio income to corporate cash flow among nonfinancial firms” increased five fold by the late 1980s and then again in the late 1990s and after the millennium. Moreover, the ratio of financial to nonfinancial profits in the US economy writ large is now “approximately three to five times the levels typical of the 1950s and 1960s” (35, 40). The growing influence of finance has, in a sense, made nonfinancial firms into financial firms. General Electric, for example, continues to be framed as a nonfinancial firm, and yet for a number of years, the majority of its profits have derived from GE Capital. The US economy has undergone a large-scale transformation in that the nonfinancial sectors have become aligned with finance, and financial activity has burst its historically constructed boundaries—all this generated by the concerted and coordinated conversion of productive assets into financial wealth. Because Piketty holds onto this categorical distinction between financial and nonfinancial firms, he downplays the power of finance by neatly segregating it within its own narrow “sector.” Drawing on evidence amassed by Krippner and others that for all firms “profit making in recent years has occurred increasingly through financial channels,” I contend the opposite, which is that the distinction between financial and nonfinancial firms is immaterial for assessing and analyzing financial values and practices in corporations, and correspondingly, accumulation across all industries (Krippner 2011: 51). Given that “the trajectory of the US economy” writ large is “aptly characterized in terms of a process of financialization” (51), I make [485]the additional argument that it is precisely finance that has made possible such exorbitant profits for supermanagers in both financial and nonfinancial sectors. Their seemingly boundless compensation, as documented by Piketty, does not materialize abstractly, as the phrase making money out of money seems to suggest. In fact, the source of this exorbitant income is the conversion of already accumulated capital in corporations into liquid income through financial transactions and advice. Take the curious case of “stock buybacks,” the esoteric yet normative practice among the great majority of Fortune 500 public corporations to use more than half of their earnings—$2.4 trillion to be exact—to purchase their own stock in the open market, which results in an immediate, yet often short-lived, boost of the companies’ stock prices (Lazonick 2014: 48). Now, given that the bulk of supermanagers’ compensation schemes derives from stock options and stock awards, engaging in stock buybacks “on a colossal and systemic scale” enacts a direct transfer of wealth from corporate earnings (which historically were reinvested in the enterprise or shared with employees in the form of less radically unequal pay scales) into the pockets of supermanagers (53). This is clearly an extraction of wealth: as economist William Lazonick argues, “the very people we rely on to make investments in the productive capabilities that will increase our shared prosperity are instead devoting most of their companies’ profits to uses that will increase their own prosperity” (48). The result is that the pay of corporate executives climbs ever higher, even as “overall U.S. economic performance has faltered,” and “trillions of dollars that could have been spent on innovation and job creation … over the past three decades have instead been used to buy back shares for what is effectively stock-price manipulation” (48, 50). What Piketty, as well as many social critics, have not fully accounted for is that over the past thirty years, finance has aligned most, if not all, public corporations to its values, models, and practices and has used corporations as sites of financial extraction. Two massive changes helped to make this possible. First, the practice of compensating executives from the spoils of finance has actively steered supermanagers away from the pre-1980s understanding of corporations as long-term social institutions and toward the idea that corporations are financial entities whose productive capabilities and fruits of labor can continually be redistributed toward and siphoned off through supermanager-led financial transactions. Second, galvanized by an ideological origin myth to “return” control to the “true capitalists” (shareholders and investors), the corporation itself has been restructured into a site primarily for the maximization and extraction of wealth in the name of the shareholder, whose very ownership of and claims to the corporation also had to be constructed and perpetuated.1 [486]Supermanagers in traditionally nonfinancial settings and their counterparts in the financial industry often work either in concert with one another, or in a disciplinary relationship where the latter pressure the former to act as agents for shareholders and investors, i.e., finance. In other words, it is not so much that a class of supermanagers has emerged and used its hierarchical positionality to command exorbitant pay for itself but rather that corporate institutions themselves have been transformed into sites for potential and continual financial extraction that supermanagers can now direct. The “labor” of corporate and financial supermanagers packages the corporation’s “capital” (its accumulated worker productivities, its organizational capacities, its cash flow) and converts it into a source of income for the supermanagers in both nonfinancial and financial firms. “Wages,” moreover, a term that evokes traditional salaries as well as the capital/labor dichotomy, is not an apt term to describe the compensation for supermanager labor, because the labor of supermanagers directly converts capital to financial income. They are paid in capital, not in prearranged wages in exchange for labor. Perhaps the clearest distillation of this new landscape is in the private equity (PE) sector of the financial services industry, where the central products are corporations themselves and the key labor (the sector’s “value added”) involves amassing enough wealthy investor funding in order to buy, repackage, and sell a collection of corporations every five years or so.2 There is perhaps no better sign of the end of the public corporation as we knew it than its transformation into a short-term investment. In this context, corporations that are pursued and bought by private equity funds are actually referred to as “portfolio companies,” signaling their transformation into investor assets. Once a company falls under PE control, its CEOs and supermanagers serve at the pleasure of the PE partners and are highly compensated only if they achieve cost-cutting and earnings targets. They don’t always; two-thirds of CEOs get replaced sometime during the short-term period the PE firm holds onto the company (Appelbaum and Batt 2014: 57). This private equity “financial model” necessitates a fundamental rethinking of the very nature of corporations and capital accumulation, as this new structure is built on the understanding that the new “portfolio company” exists only as a repository of private equity value. The case study of Harry & David, the once-thriving mail-order fruit and gift retailer founded in Medford, Oregon, is instructive here. It was acquired by two private equity funds in 2004 for “$253 million, with $82.6 million in equity and $170 million in debt” (Appelbaum and Batt 2014: 69–70). A year into the ownership, the PE owners piled on even more debt by issuing themselves dividends totaling $101.6 million. Such financial engineering ensured that no matter the result, the PE firm had already guaranteed itself a 23 percent return on this part of its portfolio. The new owners thus forced the company to service even more debt and prevented it from using its own cash flow for any other constituency or improvements by [487]extracting a dividend payment. Not surprisingly, in March 2011, Harry & David declared bankruptcy, as it was unable to pay its new debt load of $200 million. And, yet, the story does not end there: the very declaration of bankruptcy was used to trigger a taxpayer subsidy. The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation “assumed responsibility for the retirement benefits” of Harry & David’s 2,513 employees and retirees. Ultimately, the PE owners, who had held onto a diluted stake of Harry & David, were able to realize their “investment” by selling it to 1-800-Flowers (Appelbaum and Batt 2014: 69–70; Njus 2014). As private equity demonstrates, taking money out of portfolio companies (bleeding out the company) and “distributing” it to investors is part and parcel of the structure of capitalist accumulation that finance has produced and upon which it depends. And, of course, the fact that financial supermanagers can normatively extract such returns explains why they in particular are overrepresented in the exorbitant compensation category. They are not only on the highest rung of the hierarchy of payouts and claimants for liquidated companies but they also help to structure the deals and transactions that help to culturally enact this kind of incentive structure. Finance, therefore, has not only made possible the construction of a class of supermanagers dispersed throughout financial and nonfinancial institutions, but has helped to transform corporations into financial assets ready for such mining. The supermanagers may understand their compensation to be grounded in their talent and smartness and good returns, but in reality their incomes are dependent on the capture of capital; in this vital sense, today’s rising inequality is perhaps not as distinct from the rentier incomes of the Ancien Régime as Piketty assumes. References Appelbaum, Eileen, and Rosemary Batt. 2014. Private equity at work: When Wall Street manages Main Street. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Ho, Karen. 2009. Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Krippner, Greta. 2011. Capitalizing on crisis: The political origins of the rise of finance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lazonick, William. 2014. “Profits without prosperity.” Harvard Business Review 92 (9): 46–55. Njus, Elliot. 2014. “Medford-based Harry&David sold to 1-800-Flowers.com for $142.5 million.” The Oregonian/Oregon Live. http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2014/09/medford-based_harry_david_sold.html. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the twenty-first century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. [488]Stout, Lynn. 2012. The shareholder value myth: How putting shareholders first harms investors, corporations, and the public. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.   Karen HoDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of Minnesota395 Hubert H. Humphrey Center301 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55409USAkarenho@umn.edu ___________________ 1. Legal scholar Lynn Stout (2012) has demonstrated that the very notion that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value, while widely proclaimed and assumed, is nowhere stated in corporate charter, and is problematized by the robust claims of multiple other constituents of the institution. I have demonstrated that the shareholder value revolution was also based on enacting an ahistorical “origin myth,” which reimagined that all companies were created by shareholder capital and controlled by shareholders. This is historically inaccurate, as shareholders typically do not invest in the productive capabilities of the corporation; by buying already outstanding shares in the financial markets, they opted for liquidity, not control (Ho 2009). 2. Although private equity (PE) firms and funds are not homogenous and are not all in the business of extraction and liquidation, the point I underscore here is that PE, in general, privileges a short-term temporality and continually packages corporate institutions for sale.  

This is (not) like that This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Matei Candea. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.036 BOOK SYMPOSIUM This is (not) like that Matei CANDEA, University of Cambridge Comment on van der Veer, Peter. 2016. The value of comparison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ceteris paribus clauses are nice. They allow us the regularities and modularities we know are there while reminding us of the exceptions—fluctuations or deviations from a macroscopic order that point the way to a deeper understanding. This cognitive form (general pattern + exceptions) and its relatives (broad similarities + attendant differences, models + qualifications, etc.) are deeply anchored in the structure of our case-based organisation of knowledge: “This is like that (which you already know) but with the following differences.” It wears the micro-structure of cumulative learning on its face.           —William Wimsatt, Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings One of the most engaging features of Peter van der Veer’s spirited argument for comparison is that it relies so centrally on showing, rather than telling. Despite its general-sounding title, this is not an abstract disquisition on the art of comparing but a hands-on, sleeves-rolled-up comparative experiment. This is apposite, since the theoretical argument represents a forceful assault on “abstract generalization” in the social sciences. A second extremely engaging feature of this work is the way it relativizes the current anthropological obsession with comparisons of which one term is defined as an “us.”1 For decades now, anthropological reflections on comparison have focused primarily on such us/them contrasts, in which “our own categories” are challenged by an encounter with alterity. With a few notable exceptions, anthropologists have tended to treat as an after-thought the seemingly more modest craft of [518]building comparisons that travel sideways from one case to the next—“this is like that, but with the following differences.” True, van der Veer does invoke the widespread dictum that anthropological comparison ought to be first and foremost a way of reflecting on “our” concepts (van der Veer 2016: 28), which other anthropologists have expressed by saying that comparison is in the service of translation and not the other way round (Asad 1986; Viveiros de Castro 2004). But in practice, van der Veer’s book backgrounds this us/them dynamic by foregrounding multiple “lateral comparisons” between various aspects of life in China and India (Candea 2016). “Euroamerica,” as the occasional third term in these lateral comparisons, is more surely and more subtly decentered and provincialized (Chakrabarty 2007) than in many approaches that start from a head-on confrontation between “us” and “them.” This point rejoins the previous one: in this respect too, the strength of this book lies in its stepwise dynamic, its “transparticular” moves (Howe and Boyer 2016) from case to case, to case, to case. Never just particular, yet steering clear of a totalizing universality. In one respect, however, the book is intensely “frontal,” and that is in dealing with other social scientists’ ways of comparing. The list of approaches to comparison in which van der Veer (2016) sees the specter of “generalism” is long: evolutionism and cognitive anthropology (2, 43), the concern with ontological alterity (5), the Geertzian penchant for generalization (27), the culture and personality school (31), the materialist reductionism of political economy (17), the Durkheimian method of generalization and classification (148), the tendency of Weberian arguments to essentialize cultural units (65–66), Dumont’s insufficient removal of generalism from his holism (34). In one way or another, in fact, most of the main approaches to comparison in the history of anthropology are critiqued here. From some of these, van der Veer seeks to retain the best parts, shorn of their egregious generalism. Others incur a wholesale dismissal. Van der Veer is both entertaining and convincing when launched full tilt against, for instance, Whitehouse and Cohen on ritual (3–4), the Pew Foundation’s “Faith on the Move” report (31), or Wimmer’s attempt to code the relation between industrialism and nationalism (39). What van der Veer opposes to these unsatisfactory alternatives is not a competing theoretical generalism but rather a masterful empirical demonstration. Indeed, The value of comparison embodies its commitment to opposing abstract generalization in the way it is crafted: detailed examples are woven through its entire length, including the initial framing chapters. This makes it difficult to reduce van der Veer’s observations on comparison to a doctrine. Some readers, judging the book by the title, might seek to skim it, discarding the merely empirical “examples” in order to extract or distill from this book the gist of what comparison in the abstract ought to look like. Such readers are barking up the wrong tree. There is no blueprint here, no elevator pitch. It is supposed to take time: the examples are the point. Such a hurried reader, on a hunt for abstract summation, might for instance find that the positive figure of anthropological “holism,” which van der Veer opposes to its evil twin generalism2 is something of a moving target. Holism appears in this book in a number of guises: as the drawing of inferences from a study of [519]fragments (2016: 9); as the interpretation of “another conceptual universe” (27); as an appeal to the broader context or question that is determined for the anthropologist by his choice of a particular fragment to focus on; or indeed the ethnographic question of how people themselves think that parts make up a whole (31). On the face of it these various invocations point to rather different moves within the broad family of holisms (Otto and Bubandt 2010). One could imagine ways of tying these various definitions together into an overarching, and necessarily quite hefty theoretical edifice—one could, as it were, extrapolate a “whole” from these theoretical fragments—but this isn’t really the point. It is sufficient for the purposes of this demonstration, that none of these holisms represents the kind of naïve totalizing generalization that Van der Veer rejects so forcefully: the image of bounded, absolutely homogeneous societies; or the picture of blank universal actors motivated entirely by economic rationality or selfish genes. Having thus drawn a clear line in the sand, the author can then pragmatically deploy a panoply of holistic strategies to get the job of comparison done. Some of these appeals to holism suggest the kind of radical comparison associated with, for instance, Louis Dumont: they think this in relation to us who think that (Dumont 1983: 14). That particular radical holism is a relational engagement in which what is compared are the observer’s own concepts and those of the subjects, whose respective totalities are thus an epistemological effect of the relation. This is a general dynamic that Dumont’s work shares, as André Iteanu and Ismael Moya have noted, with that of Marilyn Strathern or elements of the ontological turn (Iteanu 2013). Van der Veer’s treatment of the notion of civilization (van der Veer 2016: ch. 3) owes something to that radical approach. At other times, the holism deployed in the book challenges “our concepts” in a less acrobatic way, as a merely negative commitment to not taking for granted the existing ways in which anthropologists divide their subject into domains. Thus we find, say, iconoclasm and urban planning are to be read through one another (chapter 4). Different again—and perhaps most common throughout the book—is a third kind of holistic strategy of finding a broader context for a fragmentary observation. This takes the form of what one might call a caveated generalization: “this is broadly the case, with important exceptions.”3 The paradigm of this move might be found in the claim that “one continues to have a need to engage with the traditions that are central to societies and the ways they have been interpreted to form the civilizational core of national history, but one needs, at the same time, to acknowledge the contradictory and fragmentary nature of these traditions” (van der Veer 2016: 65–66).[520] The statement is illustrative of the book as a whole: it points to ongoing tensions and difficulties of the comparativist’s art without presuming to resolve them once and for all through some grand abstraction. How is one to achieve this balance of engaging with, while not quite subscribing to, people’s sense of the coherence of their own traditions? How contradictory and fragmentary need a tradition be before it is no longer a tradition but two or three (contradictory and fragmentary) subtraditions? Readers seeking once-and-for-all answers to these questions will not find them in this book. What they will find, however, is a convincing and engaging answer to these questions posed in one set of concrete cases, an answer that to repurpose one of van der Veer’s statements on his own method, is “specific without any pretense to general truth, but definitely of broader significance” (van der Veer 2016: 26). In sum, I am suggesting that the “gist” in the end is precisely the book as a whole: an intricate, multistranded, multiscalar and profoundly erudite historical and sociological comparison of key themes in the study of India, China, Europe, and America. This book certainly “wears the micro-structure of cumulative learning on its face” (Wimsatt 2007: 33). The very possibility of such a book is the argument, an argument for the “comparative advantage” of anthropology, which has the benefit of standing as its own instance and proof. I challenge any reader not to come away from it feeling both wiser and better informed about its empirical subject matter, and invigorated about the pragmatic power of anthropological comparison. References Asad, Talal. 1986. “The concept of cultural translation in British social anthropology.” In Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography, edited by James Clifford, 141–64. Berkeley: University of California Press. Candea, Matei. 2016. “De deux modalités de la comparaison en anthropologie sociale.” L’Homme 218:183–218. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2007. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dumont, Louis. 1983. Essais sur l’individualisme: Une perspective anthropologique sur l’idéologie moderne. Paris: éditions de Seuil. Howe, Cymene, and Dominic Boyer. 2016. “Portable analytics and lateral theory.” In Theory can be more than it used to be, edited by J. D. Faubion, G. M. Marcus, and D. Boyer. http://www.academia.edu/download/32192328/Portable_Analytics_and_Lateral_Theory.pdf. Iteanu, André. 2013. “The two conceptions of value.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3 (1): 155–71. Otto, Ton, and Nils Bubandt. 2010. Experiments in holism: Theory and practice in contemporary anthropology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. van der Veer, Peter. 2014. “The value of comparison.” Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Initiative, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory: 1–14.[521] ———. 2016. The value of comparison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-value-of-comparison. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2004. “Perspectival anthropology and the method of controlled equivocation.” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 2 (1): 3–22. Wimsatt, William C. 2007. Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: Piecewise approximations to reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.   Matei CandeaDivision of Social AnthropologyUniversity of CambridgeFree School LaneCambridge CB2 3RFMc288@cam.ac.uk ___________________ 1. What I have elsewhere called “frontal comparisons” (Candea 2016). 2. Which in a previous iteration of this argument he called “wholism” (van der Veer 2014). 3. For instance: “In my view there is no escaping the fact that a continuing hierarchical mentality prevails in India that prevents care arrangements from being extended to the urban poor. We do not thereby return to a holistic view of an Indian caste system, as in Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus, because that would certainly be a wrong perspective on modern India. However, it does imply that turning our back on the significance of hierarchical values in Indian society by focusing on youth culture and media and other manifestations of an Indian cosmopolitanism does not make hierarchy go away” (van der Veer 2016: 139). Other examples might include caveated generalizations about how the application of concepts of civilization create exclusion (79), or the potentially universal nature of human indifference (131).  

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Tcherkézoff: More on Polynesian gift-giving This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Serge Tcherkezoff. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online) More on Polynesian gift-giving: The Samoan sau and the fine mats (toonga), the Maori hau and the treasures (taonga) Serge Tcherkézoff, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales This commentary explores the Samoan concept of sau in relation to the Maori concept of hau and elaborates on a comparison—once made by Marcel Mauss—between the sacred gifts of taonga (Maori) and toonga (Samoa). After illustrating how Lévi-Strauss’ interpretation of Mauss’ concepts of “the sacred” and “mana” had abusively narrowed the latter’s thoughts that led him to write the Essay on the gift, this paper presents new ethnographic material on the Samoan notion of sau in order to rethink the sociocosmic quality of the Maori hau. This material reveals that the sacred gifts of Samoans and Maoris are to be understood not through their material specificity (fine mats, nephrite carving, etc.), but through their capacity—given to them through ritual—to capture reference to the origins of the clan. Keywords: the sacred, spirit, gifts, fine mats, mana, hau For Aiono Fanaafi Le Tagaloa This brief commentary aims to offer an insight into the Samoan concept of sau in relation to the Maori concept of hau, and to further elaborate a comparison—first examined nearly a century ago by Marcel Mauss—between the sacred gifts of taonga (Maori) and toonga (Samoa). Indeed, Hau seems the most appropriate venue for such an inquiry. Besides taking the name from the Maori concept, the journal’s intellectual agenda draws on the fecundity of “conceptual disjunctures,” illustrated by its editors as follows: Hau is a call to revive the theoretical potential of all ethnographic insight, wherever it is brought to bear, to bring it back to its leading role in generating new knowledge. Above all, we see ethnography as a pragmatic inquiry into conceptual disjunctures…. by adopting the term hau as a mark of our enterprise, we are placing ourselves within a particular stream of anthropological scholarship that over the last three decades has addressed such disjunctures, and the moments or events of “speculative wonder” or “positive equivocation” to which they give rise. Concepts like hau…are events, unclassifiable remainders that rearrange preconceived notions and categories by juxtaposing different cultural images and positions. (da Col and Graeber 2012: vii) In line with this methodology, I will suggest how the Samoan concept of sau leads us into viewing the whole of gift-giving as a life-giving process. Through comparison, I will further show that the Maori hau is not about an esoteric theory of magic, as many have presumed, and that the Maori taonga, as well as the Samoan toonga, need to be understood at a much wider sociocosmic level. Lévi-Strauss, Mauss, the hau, and “the sacred” While it was Marcel Mauss’ translation of the Maori hau that initially popularized the concept in anthropological and philosophical circles, it was Claude Lévi-Strauss’ interpretation of the Maussian translation that inaugurated the long-standing debate over the concept’s significance (Lévi-Strauss [1950] 1973; Mauss [1925] 1973). Lévi-Strauss’ interpretation had been very useful when, right after Word War II, the ethical urgency was to apprehend social configurations and mythological schemes from “nonmodern” societies in a way that would enable a universalistic comparison, far from any fundamental opposition between a so-called rational-modern type of thought and those that would have remained at a “prior” step, still embedded in a “prelogical” turn of mind. Lévi-Strauss wished, at all costs, to discard the Maussian notion of the “spirit” in the gift (i.e., the Maori hau as a specification of the more general belief of mana in Pacific societies, or manitou, orenda, etc. in Amerindian societies), as he feared it would be remembered only as a translation of a local concept, a magical “spiritual” entity within a specific theory elaborated by Maori priests or magicians. More generally, he aspired to discard any ethnography that could add water to the mill that divided the putatively prelogical thoughts at work in “traditional” societies and the rationality of “modern” societies. Thus, discarding hau—and even the specifically Maussian interest in the Pacific mana—Lévi-Strauss led his reader to the new ground of a grand universal theory of reciprocity (ibid.). But Lévi-Strauss, and many more after him, seriously narrowed what Mauss really meant with his translation of the word “spirit” and his larger interest in the ethnography of the Pacific mana. Mauss had been using this terminology with interest to Pacific ethnography long before he became aware of the Maori notion of hau. One only need look to his earlier elaborations on the theory of “the sacred”—a very broad theory that he wanted to be valid for all human groups. There is no space here to present the whole Maussian theory of the sacred and to gather the numerous and necessary quotations.1 We can only give a brief and consequently oversimplistic summary. Mauss’ theory of the sacred can be summarized as follows. In any social group, collective representations—the unconscious materialization of the feeling of belonging to a group that each individual has—create the notion of an external force which is permanent. This offers a guarantee of the fact (indeed, the belief) that the group will go on forever. This level is thus far above any individual consciousness. As soon as Durkheim and Mauss conceptualized those schemes around 1908, moving away from their prior notion of the sacred as a static system of wide divisions between what is “forbidden” and what can be “touched” (their first conceptualization of the sacred/profane dichotomy), it appeared to them that these collective representations of the perennial nature of the group (in one word: the sacred, in its new definition) are always embodied and materialized in “circulatory” form. The force, they theorized, “comes and goes.” it invades one object or person, at least for a short time—and the whole work of ritual is to try to make it stay longer in that the force contains the “powers of life,” the guarantee of social reproduction. Early on, Durkheim and Mauss had been struck by the ethnography of concepts like manitou, orenda, etc. among North American Indians, and also with the concept of mana, prevalent in a large part of the Pacific. They chose the latter as the archetypical case, and created the following sociological model: mana is “the sacred” as a total force (i.e., it binds everyone into the group) and it is always circulating. Indeed, several times in the Essay on the gift (from here on, the Essay), Mauss mentions a notion of the “circulus.” Expanding mana (and related concepts) into the area of the economical and juridical notions of truck and exchange, Mauss analyzes gifts (at least those which are “total prestations,” which represent a whole group or subgroup and circulate in this wide “circulus”) as “vehicles of mana,” a conceptualization which was already present in his study of magic as “choses à mana”2 (Mauss and Hubert [1904] 1973). From his study of magic to the Essay, the model of mana remains intact; only the notion of “circulus” was new in the Essay and now central to the mana model. Thus, Lévi-Strauss’ attempt at interpretation in 1950 should be taken with extreme caution. Lévi-Strauss wished to persuade the readers of the Essay that they need not pay attention to the concept of mana, which would just be a misleading reminiscence of Mauss’ former study of magic. For Lévi-Strauss, the real new concept at work in the Essay, even if not explicated by Mauss, was reciprocity—the universal mark of all social life. This attempt was ethically useful in those years, as we said above; but it also erased what in fact was at the very heart of Maussian sociology. A more detailed study of Mauss’ texts, and his later references to the Essay, easily reveal that his interest in the Maori hau was that it was a clear instance and explication of the mana model at work in all societies. it was useful because it was a concept explicated by the Maori themselves, within their exchanges of gifts. Thus Mauss thought it would be a pedagogic example that could persuade economists and jurists (the primary audience whom the Essay was aimed at) of the following: behind any exchange between two individuals, there could be a whole collective circulus if the gifts exchanged belonged to the total-prestation type. Mauss did not mention mana prominently as he did not want the Essay to appear only as an application of his and Durkheim’s theory on religion, but his usage of the formula “vehicles of mana” in the Essay is, for us, a very clear sign of mana being used as pedagogic exemplification. Mauss’ interest in the Maori hau was not because he thought he could build his case on a local theory of magic, because for him the hau was not that at all; it was a local explication of the universal circulation of mana, which is to be expected in any social life configuration. Similarly, a wide misinterpretation has been done to Mauss’ usage of the word “spirit.” It is again a core concept in Maussian sociology from early on, long before the Essay. It is enough to read his several critiques of Frazer in those years. He constantly opposes Frazer’s larque approach of all religious social facts to a “spiritual” one which would be much more “sociological.” Frazer thought he could explain religion as a rational system of deductions mistakingly applied to the environment (i.e., primitive societies misunderstanding the causes of natural phenomena), while Mauss, along with Durkheim, tried to show the spiritual mechanism at work in the socius. This wasn’t a “spiritual turn of mind” of putatively primitive societies, but a universal mechanic involving conceptions of the soul or the spirit. In short, every member of a social group has a representation of its own spiritual individuality, its own identity (whether called a “soul” or anything else), as being a part of a collective spirit—which is again to be understood through the mana model. Social life creates in everyone the belief of a collective spiritual force, and from there everyone represents his or her own soul as being in essence a part of the collective one. There lies Mauss’ interest in all manifestations of a spiritual type, as they all illuminate a part of the sociological mechanism of belonging to a group. Thus sociology must focus on spiritual social facts. When Mauss translated the hau of the Maori gift as a form of “spirit,” he had in mind the idea that any gift, at least when being a total prestation, is put into circulation as a form of expressing and reaffirming the link that ties an individual to the group. For Mauss, the hau of the Maori has to be understood within the wider mana model. Now, back to ethnography. The sau and the hau Within an area such as Polynesia, clearly defined at least in linguistic terms, ethnography always gains from regional comparison. Thus, if indeed a Maori concept called hau has or had some centrality in Maori cosmology and social practices, it is worth asking if we can find a linguistic equivalent in other Polynesian societies. Linguists and language archivists have of course raised that question in specialized attempts at reconstructing many Proto-Polynesian words. These are usually limited to readings of previous ethnographies, and thus to the words that had been noted down by ethnographers. When looking at one particular and well-known dictionary,3 the results are disappointing. Besides in the Maori world, occurrences of hau or sau (the phonetic variability is regular) with meanings linked to “return for services or to a gift,” appear only in languages of Fiji, Ifira-Mele, Pukapuka, Tonga, and West Uvea. The Samoan example is missing, as no published ethnography of Samoa had mentioned the concept of sau in the context of gift-giving. It could be that, for similar reasons, references to other regional languages are also missing. It could also be that this hau/sau of the gift would have been, from the start of Polynesian languages or even before, a specialized application of the widespread homonym which designates (or has designated) in many Pacific societies a high chief, and specifically the life-powers of those chiefs. (Chiefs are, and have to be, gift givers par excellence, redistributing the flux of ceremonial gifts converging to them.) Yet, beyond linguistic questioning, and beyond the Maori case, no comparative ethnographic enquiry has been conducted that searches for local meanings and word-usages of hau/sau in gift-giving contexts. As I happened to be doing fieldwork in Samoa in the 1980s and 1990s (on other issues mainly: chieftainship, political evolution, gender, and kinship), I could not resist asking my Samoan friends and mentors about hau/sau. I must say that I, myself, did not hear that word in the formulas that were uttered during ceremonial gifting or exchanges. But, having the Maori case in mind, I was tempted to make a try through direct questions. Most people of low rank did not know how to answer my questions. However, all of them did mention the “dew.” It is probably another homonym of hau/sau, again widespread in Polynesia; interestingly enough, one friend directly linked the sau of the gift to the morning dew (see below, respondent no. 3). Only people who were at the same time of a certain or high rank, and had been involved in ceremonial oratory, could answer and comment. Conversations were in English with parts in Samoan. (My translations or comments are between brackets and parenthetical descriptions of the respondents are also included; Samoan words are written following official modern rules in Samoa which avoid all diacritic signs.) “Yes, we say for instance: Lelei o le sau o le faifeau.” [My translation: “It is a nice gift that has been given to the Pastor.”] (Respondent: an elderly lady much involved in the ceremonial life of her village.) “Yes we have notion of sau. It is linked to the personhood. We say: O le sau o le ola [literally: the sau of the life]. If we say that, we mean that your arrival, your susumai [a formula of welcome addressed to a superior] is the sau of my life; it liftens up [me], it strengthens my life.” (Respondent: a senior chief who is also a teacher.) “You want to know about the sau. It is a gift that you are particularly happy to give. For instance, a gift to your Pastor, o le sau o le Faafeaiga [another respectful designation of a Pastor, besides Faifeau]. You also have the gifts you give to a high Chief…well in fact any kind of gift. For instance, you made a new plantation, you are very happy with your plantation, really very happy with what it has produced; then you feel so happy, and immediately you want to make a gift to the Chief. This feeling of happiness, it is the same as when you wake up early and you, or a baby, goes out to enjoy the morning dew, which is something very powerful to cure all kind of sicknesses.” (Respondent: a middle-age high chief and orator.) I particularly cherish this latter comment: the happiness to make a gift (whereas a Westerner might have expected to hear about the happiness to receive a gift), the force of happiness that takes up the person and drives her to make a gift, a gift that one has to make because one wants to make it, etc. Mauss would have loved this comment, so expressive of the “obligation” of the gift that he was trying to understand. It also rejoins with answer no. 2: the sau is at the level of the whole of life, it invades the person as a feeling imposed from outside, it “strengthens one’s life.” Professor Aiono Fanaafi Le Tagaloa, a leading figure in research within Samoan studies since the early 1960s,4 has made a useful academic comment for our purposes here. In a talk she gave in 1994 at my university (EHESS), where she had been elected as Visiting Professor, she presented her views about Samoan personhood—more exactly the components of “the mauli of the person” (mauli, mauri in other Polynesian languages, translates anywhere from “soul” to “the total spiritual part” of the body). “The mauli of a Samoan person includes,” Aiono said: Iloilo: reasoning, capacity to make a choice Masalo: capacity to foresee Mana: power to implement [this is the famous Oceanic and Maussian mana] Sau: capacity to create Mafaufau: capacity to think Manao: desire, affect Finagalo: one’s will Upon hearing Aiono mention the sau, I asked her during the public discussion if she could comment further. She added: It is the creative part of the human. Today it means also wealth, presentation of food, and gifts, but it is the part where human equates God; you can create, create people (beget children), create things. God is said [to be] the mataisau, the chief-creator. Thus, with the Samoan sau, we are very far from any specific, esoteric theory of magic and very far from any “spirit” located within the objects given (in the material sense that Westerners have kept in mind from their reading of Lévi-Strauss’ comments on the Maussian translation of hau). We are, rather, at the most general level of a life-giving cosmology. I will not dare to dwell longer in Maori ethnography of the hau. But this level of generality demonstrated by the Samoan example suggests that we follow an interpretation given by Dame Anne Salmond: In Maori ontology, hau is the source of life. When the world began, a burst of energy generated thought, memory, and desire. Desire made knowledge fruitful, and from knowledge came the Pō, the realm of ancestors, and the Kore, the “seedbed of the cosmos.” It was not until hau, the wind of life, blew that the phenomena of the everyday life could emerge, impelled by exchange in spiraling networks of relations.5 Samoan toonga and Maori taonga If we are indeed at such a general level of a life-giving cosmology, far from any local, specialized, esoteric, or magical theory of a “spirit” residing in objects given, then we are led to raise a query on what has been written about those Maori and Samoan objects of gift-giving. Shall we encounter the same encompassing level of “life-giving” powers in the Samoan toonga and the Maori taonga? Mauss himself, in the Essay, initiated a comparison between the Samoan and the Maori case. Of course, he did not compare the Maori hau with the Samoan sau directly, as he was not aware of the Samoan concept, but he certainly did compare Samoan gifts with the Maori category used to designate gifts animated by the hau. He noted that the Maori taonga, those items that (so it seemed to him) are given with and circulate because of the hau, could be linguistically cognate to the famous Samoan fine mats ie toonga, or just toonga (pronounced /tōnga/ with a long “o”).6 Mauss even found the Samoan example to be a perfect introductory case for his Polynesian chapter, the first chapter of the whole Essay. in Samoa, two kinds of gifts circulate, oloa and toonga (we won’t comment here on their debated dualism). Only the toonga seemed to Mauss (from his reading of the ethnography from the LMS Missionaries) to constitute “total prestations,” as only the toonga clearly referred to the clan, the genealogy, the land, and not to an individual; the oloa (food, tools, and also, since contact, European imported items), on the other hand, seemed to Mauss to be a more individual (rather than clan-based) type of property. Thus, Mauss opened the first chapter of his Essay with the Samoan case in order to draw the reader’s attention to the type of gifts that are “total” (which meant, very simply, gifts that represent a social group). He wrote (and I paraphrase and summarize): in Samoa there are two types of gifts, but let us keep in mind the toonga which are the only ones to enter into total prestations. The Samoan word toonga then made a perfect transition for Mauss’ more substantial section on the Maori hau and the Maori taonga. Hence his construction of the first chapter, from the Samoan toonga to the Maori taonga, which then, in turn, reveals the Maori concept of hau and the anthropological idea of the “spirit in/of the gift.” This led me to raise a question. Would the Samoan word toonga refer to the materiality of that gift made of fine mats, to a quality linked to that material (e.g., the “fineness” of the mats), or rather to some much more general idea, as general as the concepts of hau and sau appeared to be? A long inquiry, both sociological and linguistic, led me to a clear-cut conclusion. The word does not refer to “mats” or to any physical material (a meaning carried by the word ie that comes before toonga); nor does it refer to any quality of fineness. “Fine mats” are, indeed, ie toonga, often shortened to just the word toonga. But when it is not used as a shortened version of ie toonga, the word toonga still sometimes refers (and always referred in the nineteenth century) to a group of various gifts (fine mats, tapa cloth, body ointments), themselves linked to the persona of the unmarried “lady” or tamaitai (and those gifts play a prominent role in marriage gifting as they refer to the engendering powers of life that the bride potentially represents). In marriage, but also in all ceremonial exchanges, a dominant reference is the “covering” or “wrapping-in” of the body (with mats, tapa, and ointments), itself a very direct symbol of the maternal gift of life. In ceremonial exchanges of food, etc. (oloa) and mats, etc. (toonga, the toonga are given in return for a first gift of oloa and are announced as “the covering” of the initial gift and givers. At a cosmological level, the Samoan fine mat is, fundamentally, a “cover for life.” This last remark opens up another vast ethnographic inquiry; suffice it here to mention that, in the legends of origins, the first fine mat revealed its powers when a Samoan woman saved the lives of other Samoans, who had been captured by Tongans, by covering them with such a mat. In historical Samoa and up to the 1960s, anyone who was about to be killed in an act of revenge could have his life saved if he presented himself in front of the enemy entirely covered by a fine mat (Tcherkézoff 2002, 2008). Actually, there is a good chance that the linguistic history of the word toonga (and of the Maori taonga is linked to the Proto-Polynesian *taqo (-ga being a nominalization suffix) base which meant “to cover.” We are thus tempted to return to the Maori taonga. Perhaps taonga have also been seen, in a restricted way, as specific ritual objects used in various “magical” rites. Mauss was the first to give to the Maori taonga a larger sociological dimension, but of course he did not have access to detailed ethnography. Later on, Annette Weiner, while she was advancing her new—but quite questionable—ideas of the “inalienable” or “keeping-while-giving” character of some gifts in Oceania (like the Maori taonga or the Samoan toonga), insisted quite rightly on the variety of objects that are considered as taonga (Weiner 1985, 1992). But it was Paul Tapsell who, in 1997, finally opened the door on the wide generality of the taonga; he showed—even if he did not mention the Maussian expression—that the taonga are indeed “vehicles of mana” in the largest possible sense.7 He had and has the vantage point of being a trained anthropologist and a direct participant in Maori ceremonies. Allow me to quote at length his ground-breaking paper (Tapsell 1997). First he quotes Kawharu: “‘taonga’ refers to all dimensions of a tribal group’s estate, material and nonmaterial—heirlooms and wahi tapu, ancestral lore and whakapapa, etc.” (Tapsell 1997: 326). Here we can add some further commentary. The word whakapapa refers to the whole realm of genealogical ties (between the living and the dead, between the living themselves, and between the living and the gods). The mention that taonga are tapu is also quite revealing. This word duplicated, taputapu, can be used as a ceremonially polite way for designating taonga objects (Williams 1971: 385). It seems then that a taonga is more defined by its taboo state than by its materiality, since the word taputapu alone can formally replace the word taonga. Samoa has a parallel example: the fine mats can be referred to as “the mea sina of the country,”8 the treasures of the country, or literally the “shining-white-luminous beings-things.” Elaborating on whakapapa, Tapsell stresses that taonga can only be understood in the context of a ritual recitation of genealogies (and all these genealogies belong ideally to the great cosmological scheme beginning with primordial forces and ending with the creation of humanity). Every living creature and every site of the landscape belongs to that story. in this whakapapa logic: The traditionally accepted role of taonga is to represent the myriad ancestor-land connections, reinforcing the kin group’s complex identity and authority over their estates…. To reiterate, all items deemed taonga within the traditional Maori universe are directly associated with both ancestors and customary tribal lands. According to tradition, a taonga can be any item which recognisably represents a kin group’s genealogical identity, or whakapapa, in relation to their estates and tribal resources. Taonga can be tangible, like a greenstone pendant, a geothermal hot pool, or a fishing ground, or they can be intangible like the knowledge to weave, or to recite genealogy,9 and even the briefest of proverbs. (Tapsell 1997: 327, 331) Still, within this vast category, objects which can be laid upon the ceremonial ground (marae) and can be given out—because they are man-made and not parts of landscape—are indispensable. In the different ceremonies recounted by the author, it is woven cloaks and ancient weapons that are the taonga around which the ritual concentrates. Without saying that they are more important but only “particular,” Tapsell (ibid.: 333) writes: Among taonga, one particular type is termed whakairo. According to Williams (1971: 88), whakairo means ‘To ornament with a pattern.’ Taonga whakairo are any ancestral physical items crafted through the artistry of weaving or carving…. They are not only physical manifestations of tribal knowledge but also spiritual representations of certain ancestors with whose wairua10 they have become associated over time. Each of these taonga was originally layered, by its artist, with a complex of interconnecting patterns reflecting fixed points within the kin group’s dynamic genealogical past upon their lands. The most prominent taonga whakairo existing today are fine cloaks (kaitaka, korowai, kakahu), mats (whariki) and wall panels (tukutuku) woven from flax; canoes, houses, gateways, posts and long handled weapons (taiaha,11 tewhatewha) sculpted from wood; flutes, fish hooks and club-like weapons (wahaika, patu paraoa) carved from human or whale bone; and stone effigies for protecting resources, sinkers, club-like weapons (mere,12 patu-onewa and personal adornments (such as hei tiki) made from various kinds of stone. When the author mentions the great taonga imbued with the mana of the Te Arawa people, he writes: Traditionally, Te Arawa’s mana over their district was physically manifested in the arts of weaving and carving, which continue with great strength even today. Fine feathered cloaks and whariki [finely woven kiekie (river side) plant 13 mat used on the marae],14 symbolic representations of Te Arawa’s whakapapa and mana (over lands and people), feature prominently among the many taonga that the tribe has presented to others over the generations at life-crisis type occasions. They are always presented by being laid out on the marae—symbolising Te Arawa’s past and present, connecting land and sky upon the sacred courtyard, representing ancestors and descendants as one identity standing before their hosts or distinguished visitors. (Tapsell 1997: 356) For our discussion, the most significant remark made by Tapsell is that one cannot know in advance what will be a taonga among the material objects produced by men or women. Greenstone weapons (mere pounamu, or just mere), whale bone weapons (wahaika), hardwood weapons (taiaha), canoes, ancestral houses (whare-tupuna), food repositories (pataka), personal adornments, as well as the tattoo (moko)—all these being fabricated by males—and all the cloaks, floor-mats, baskets, rain capes, etc. done by females, can be transferred after completion to the authority of the elders. The latter “decide the kaupapa (charter) of each item and under whose mana it will be controlled. Through the more public recitation of karakia (ritual formulae), the tohunga-ahurewa (spiritual specialists, priests) then empower the items with the wairua [soul] of certain ancestors, which transforms them into taonga” (ibid.: 363; emphasis added). This precision is fundamental. What really defines the state of being taonga is neither the materiality of the object nor the gender category of its producer, but the fact of having become, through ritual, the incorporation of the presence and powers of ancestors. A taonga is nothing less than “the sacred” in the Maussian sense—a symbol of the link of belonging to the “total” reference of the group. Once we understand that a taonga is a receptacle for the link to group origins, indeed a “vehicle of mana,” we can appreciate that the hau, “in Maori ontology, is the source of life” (Salmond, op. cit supra). In Samoa, the sau is itself “the sau of life” (o le sau o le ola), as one of my friends said. To paraphrase him: when a high Chief, thus a sacred person (in the Maussian sense), comes to see me, his arrival “liftens me up” because his presence with me allows a sharing of that sau o le ola (Respondent no. 2, op. cit supra). And, as I mentioned before, the famous Samoan fine mat is itself, fundamentally, a “cover for life.” References da Col, Giovanni, and David Graeber. 2011. “Foreword: The return of ethnographic theory.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1 (1): vi–xxxv. Hereniko, Vilsoni. 1995. Woven gods: female clowns and power in Rotuma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1950) 1973. “Introduction à l’œuvre de Marcel Mauss.” In Sociologie et anthropologie, by Marcel Mauss, IX–LII. Paris: PUF. Mauss, Marcel. (1925) 1973. “Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques.” In Sociologie et anthropologie, 143–279. Paris: PUF. Mauss, Marcel, and Henri Hubert. (1904) 1973.“Esquisse d’une théorie générale de la magie.” In Sociologie et anthropologie, by Marcel Mauss, 3–141. Paris: PUF. Tapsell, Paul. 1997. “The flight of Pareraututu: An investigation of Taonga from a tribal perspective.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 106 (4): 323–74. Tcherkézoff, Serge. 2002. “Subjects and objects in Samoa: Ceremonial mats have a ‘soul’.” In People and things: Social mediations in Oceania, edited by Bernard Juillerat and Monique Jeudy-Ballini, 27–51. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. ———. (2004) 2008. ‘First contacts’ in Polynesia: The Samoan case (1722–1848), Western misunderstandings about sexuality and divinity. Canberra: ANU Press. http://epress.anu.edu.au/first_contacts_citation.html Weiner, Annette. 1985. “Inalienable wealth.” American Ethnologist 12 (2): 210–27 ———. 1992. Inalienable possessions: The paradox of keeping-while-giving. Berkeley: University of California Press. Williams, H. W. 1971. A dictionary of the Maori language. Wellington: Government Printer. Réflexions sur le don Polynésien : le sau et les nattes fines (toonga) Samoa, le hau Maori et les trésors (taonga) Résumé : Cet article explore le concept samoan de sau par rapport au concept Maori de hau. Il se penche sur une comparaison, elle-même proposée sous une première forme par Marcel Mauss, entre les dons sacrés des taonga (Maori) et des toonga (Samoa). J’évoque d’abord comment l’interprétation lévi-straussienne des concepts maussiens de « sacré » et de « mana » a réduit et déformé le projet qui avait conduit Mauss à écrire l’Essai sur le don. Ensuite, je présente des données nouvelles sur la notion samoane de sau. Ce matériel nous révèle que les dons sacrés des Samoans et des Maoris doivent être compris non pas à travers leurs spécificités matérielles (nattes fines, sculpture de néphrite, etc.), mais a travers leur capacité—obtenue par le rituel—a contenir une référence aux origines du clan. Serge Tcherkézoff is Professor of Anthropology and Pacific Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and Visiting Professor at the Australian National University where he coordinates an program supported by the French Embassy, and at the University of Canterbury (part-time). His works bring together fieldwork in Samoa during the 1980s and 1990s with an ethnohistorical critique of European narratives about Polynesia. Recent books include: First contacts in Polynesia: The Samoan case (2008) and the coedited Oceanic encounters: Exchange, desire, violence (2009) (both at ANU E-Press); Polynésie/Mélanésie: L’invention française des races et des régions de l’Océanie (2008) and Tahiti 1768: La face cachée des premiers contacts (2009) (both at Au Vent des Iles, Papeete). ___________________ 1. This, together with the Samoan ethnography of gift-giving, will be available (in French) in a book due to be published: Marcel Mauss à Samoa: Le holisme sociologique et le don Polynésien. Marseille: Pacific-Credo Publications. 2. An English translation is rather difficult: things (choses) made of mana, things belonging to mana, things organized by mana. 3. See Pollex (“Polynesian Lexicon,” an on-line database initially directed by the late Professor Bruce Biggs, now by Ross Clark, at the University of Auckland): http://pollex.org.nz/entry/sau.5/ 4. Although now of an advanced age, she is still very active in organizing, with other people (including some of her daughters), a primary, secondary, and tertiary level of education in Samoan language and culture, a proper “house of knowledge” as the Maori had in ancient times. 5. Salmond’s quote is from her endorsement of Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory: http://www.haujournal.org/endorsements 6. Mauss spelled it tonga, from his reading of missionary accounts; modern Samoa spells it toga, as it conventionally writes the /ng/ phoneme just as “g,” and it does not use any diacritical signs such as the macron. i shall write toonga to remind the reader of the length of the vowel, which explains how the word can be cognate to the Maori taonga. 7. In the same paper, Tapsell shows that Weiner’s theory of “inalienable possessions” cannot be applied to the Maori taonga (ibid.: 362); I would add that it also cannot be applied to the Samoan toonga. 8. The word refers to a supernatural dazzling whiteness, such as only the sun or the moon can give. in Samoa, the fine mats are definitely associated with the side of the cosmological light or ao, as against the primordial darkness or po. 9. At several points in this study, Tapsell stresses the link between genealogical ties and the network constituted by weaving and plaiting. Vilsoni Hereniko (1995) had already made similar remarks in his study of Rotuman. 10. To translate wairua briefly and not very accurately, we could say “soul.” 11. A long hard wood weapon which carries an ancestral name and represents land retention through the physical force of warriors. 12. A mere, “a hand-held chiefly weapon,” can be a mere-pounamu, which is made with nephrite (the green stone called pounamu). Tapsell (1997: 355) has a story of one which was so tapu that people could hardly come near to it. 13. Kiekie is a widely spread Polynesian word for a Pandanus species used for fine weaving; cf. the Samoan word for the fine mats ie toonga (/’ie/, pronounced with a glottal stop, is the regular cognate of kie). 14. This insertion is the definition for whariki given by the author in his Glossary, appended at the end of his paper (ibid.: 372).

Malinowski’s magical puzzles This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Mark S. Mosko. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau4.1.001 Malinowski’s magical puzzles Toward a new theory of magic and procreation in Trobriand society Mark S. MOSKO, Australian National University Malinowski’s classic accounts of Trobriand sociality have left anthropology with many lasting conundrums. This two-part article examines two such puzzles revolving around contradictory reports over the agencies involved in magical chants (megwa). On the one hand, consistent with his pragmatic and functionalist theories of language and culture, Malinowski claimed that, although ancestral baloma and other spirits are typically invoked in most spells, those incantations’ efficaciousness derived instead from the power of the enunciated words. On the other, as part of his evidence in support of Islanders’ “ignorance of physiological paternity,” he conceded that spells intended to produce pregnancy in village women were instead expressly aimed at eliciting appropriate ritual actions from baloma spirits as agents of conception and birth. On the basis of ethnographic data recently gathered at Omarakana village interpreted through specific adaptations of the “New Melanesian Ethnography” and Tambiah’s earlier “participation” theory of ritual practice, I argue that for Trobrianders the magical power of words is the power of spirits, and vice versa. This insight has important implications for classic and contemporary debates over the nature of “magic,” controversies over paternity and so-called “virgin birth,” theories of personhood and agency, and the character of dala “matrilineage” relations. Keywords: magic, procreation, personhood and agency, kinship, Trobriand Islands PART 1: THE MAGICAL POWER OF BALOMA This power [of magic] is an inherent property of certain words, uttered with the performance of certain actions by the man entitled to do it through his social traditions and through certain observances which he has to keep. The words and acts have this power in their own right, and their action is direct and not mediated by any other agency. Their power is not derived from the authority of spirits or demons or supernatural beings. It is not conceived as having been wrested from nature. The belief in the power of words and rites as a fundamental and irreducible force is the ultimate, basic dogma of their magical creed. — Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, p. 427 Trobriand Islanders and their culture as interpreted by Malinowski and subsequent fieldworkers and commentators have presented the discipline with numerous lasting conundrums. This two-part article draws attention to two such interconnected ethnographic puzzles: one has largely escaped anthropological attention, namely the mechanisms underpinning the supposed efficacy of indigenous “magic”; the other revisits one of anthropology’s most colorful debates, the so-called “virgin birth” controversy of the 1960s and 1970s, as regards Islanders’ beliefs in the spirit insemination of humans and their supposed “ignorance of physiological paternity.”1 Together these puzzles bear upon numerous other dimensions of Trobriand ethnography and regional Oceanic cultural variation as well as classic and contemporary anthropological theory as concerns the general nature and rationale of “magic” and “kinship” and the possibly intrinsic relation between the two. As regards the first of these puzzles, on which I concentrate in Part 1, Trobrianders are renowned for highly elaborated forms of magical practice employing vocalized megwa “spells,” “chants,” or “incantations” in accompaniment with nearly all social activities—in gardening, fishing, kula exchange, courting, procreation, canoe construction, sorcery and curing, milamala harvest celebrations, warfare, and so on.2 Over time, Malinowski’s descriptions of these activities and his theorizing about them have proven both influential and controversial.3 However, in all those discussions, few fellow post-Malinowskian ethnographers have addressed the role, if any, of ancestral baloma and other spirits in Trobriand magical performances. Baloma, in brief, are the invisible, immaterial “souls” or “spirits” of living humans which, upon corporeal death, depart the corpse and enter the spirit world of Tuma, the “land of the dead.” There they enjoy a spirit existence, but eventually, as Malinowski described ([1916] 1948), baloma spirits age and are transformed into “spirit children” (waiwaia) to be reincarnated as new humans by means of inseminating women of their same matrilineal (dala) identity. Now during the time of their existence in Tuma, baloma especially, along with other categories of nonhuman spirits, are invoked by practicing magicians in megwa “spells,” particularly the most important ones—that is, those closely identified with the baloma spirits’ own dala membership and identity. I stress this because, on the one hand, Malinowski (e.g. [1916] 1948: 201; 1922: 398, 404, 451; 1935b: 213–50) staunchly maintained, as in the epigraph above, that it was the words (biga) spoken in megwa spells and not the spirits expressly invoked therein which Islanders considered to be the agents responsible for producing the desired magical effects.4 On the other hand, over the twenty months of ethnographic research I have recently conducted in the Trobriands, virtually every knowledgeable adept of traditional megwa ritual with whom I have consulted contends unhesitatingly, contra Malinowski, that it is named spirits who are the critical magical agents, now as in Malinowski’s day and presumably earlier.5 In these experts’ view, the correct chanting of the other words and expressions to which Malinowski attributed efficacy, basically enumerating the spell’s specific themes, intentions, and ingredients, is necessary to its effectiveness, but without the active participation of spirits those words in and of themselves are insufficient to produce the desired results. Like Malinowski, I shall focus here on that class of megwa known as tukwa considered to be most critical in how they underpin the traditional system of kinship (i.e. dala “subclan” or “matrilineage” identity and rank) and, thereby, the indigenous system of hereditary chieftainship and leadership.6 Largely by monopolizing such dala-based hereditary ritual assets, chiefs (guyau, gum gweguya) and local leaders (tolivalu) are able to organize their communities. And it is through a detailed consideration of these quandaries over Trobriand magical efficacy that, in Part 2 of this essay, I am eventually guided to shed new light on the other major puzzle regarding indigenous views of the participation of baloma spirits in human procreation and the character of kin relationship. Spirits and words in magical and religious practice—Recent debates One might reasonably expect that the numerous field studies conducted in the Trobriands subsequent to Malinowski, the foundational contributions to the anthropology of magic, and the many other debates spawned by his other writings would have attracted considerable interest to this issue before now. After all, Malinowski’s treatment of magic and his pragmatic theory of language in alignment with Frazer’s view of magical instrumentality were important in the later works of Austin, Langer, Wittgenstein, Burke, Winch, and others (see Tambiah 1990: 53–83) and contributed to the development of modern sociolinguistics and other approaches that were deployed in critique of structuralism. However, “magic” generally has proven to be among anthropology’s most intractable topics, to the point that, as Graeber (2001: 241) has noted, the term has long been largely abandoned or replaced by other rubrics. In the past several years, however, interest in and debates over “magic” have reemerged as a result of new field studies that go well beyond the philosophical “rationality debate” of the 1960s but resonate with aspects of the puzzle over baloma spirit agency. These recent arguments have arisen largely in consequence of the development of experimental ethnographies informed by phenomenological and reflexivist approaches. A central issue concerns the epistemological and ontological status of research subjects’ and researchers’ experiences, attitudes, and claims regarding the beings and forces involved in “magical” practices (here defined inclusively with “religion,” “ritual,” “witchcraft,” “sorcery,” etc.); namely whether the spirits, gods, demons, pagan deities, supernatural forces, and so on, experienced by participants might truly exist or not, and the extent to which such expressions should be taken as manifestations of human power relations or as either valid or skeptical declarations of sincere belief (e.g. Favret-Saada 1980; Luhrmann 1989, 2012; Turner 1993; Greenwood 2000, 2005, 2009, Graeber 2001: 239–47; Lohmann 2003; Fountain 2013; Morgain 2013; Stoller and Olkes 2013; Blanes and Espírito Santo 2014; see also the Book Symposium published in this journal, HAU 2013). Related to many of these arguments is the claim that the culture-bounded ethnocentrism of the Western “rationalistic,” “empiricist,” “objectivist” orientation under which most prior anthropological research on magic had been conducted, in presupposing the nonreality of a spiritual world beyond the realm of sensory experience, has severely limited the anthropological understanding of what could be taken as a universal magical consciousness. For some, this seems to involve a problematic mixing of theology and anthropology. As formulated most forcefully by Greenwood (2009), however, the limitations of strictly rationalistic approaches to magic can only be overcome through intense, direct participatory engagements in its practice, which require the investigator’s suspension of disbelief. Revisiting Malinowski’s magical puzzles from the perspective adopted here, I suggest, may indirectly help illuminate some aspects of the current discussions. By “indirectly,” I merely say that I do not pretend to offer anything approximating an answer as to the ontological reality of baloma or other spirits invoked in Trobriand spells. That choice seems to me a false one: that is, the necessity of either rejecting or accepting their ultimate reality. Instead, I focus on the kinds of new insights can be attained by viewing villagers’ expressed beliefs and attitudes regarding the efficacy of spirits as if they are real—a viewpoint compatible, on the one hand, with Luhrmann’s (2012: 16–17) methodological and ontological agnosticism. I cannot say that the spirits of Tuma are “really real,” since for my purposes it ultimately doesn’t matter either way. It is true, as I have described elsewhere (Mosko 2004), that some of my past fieldwork experiences have caught me suspended between my usual selfconscious scientific rationalism and my occasional convictions that the powers of indigenous (North Mekeo) magic might be real after all. On the other hand, that concern is not the critical ethnographic point, which is instead, following Graeber (2001: 240, 245–46), among others, the intimate tie of magic to the nature of social capacities. If, as Malinowski correctly observed, Trobriand magic is an indispensable aspect of most if not all indigenous pursuits, but if he was wrong in attributing magical efficacy to the words of spells alone rather than to spirits, then our ethnographic understanding of the gamut of Trobriand institutions and their creative potentialities—kinship, chieftainship, yam exchange, harvest celebration, kula, mortuary exchange, procreation theory, etc.—is in considerable need of revision. Not surprisingly, these recent controversies over magic have their counterparts in the wake of the contemporary “turn to ontology” in the anthropological study of religion. As Michael Scott (2014) has lately characterized the situation, there appear to be two main ontologies currently at play: the conventional “Cartesian dualism” of Western science dominant in most earlier twentieth-century anthropology, and what he terms a “relational nondualism” cohering from diverse, recently influential writings (e.g. Horton 1993; Ingold 2000; Viveiros de Castro 2007; Willerslev 2007; Holbraad 2009; Latour 2009; Rose 2011), including, of particular relevance to Melanesia and this essay, those of Marilyn Strathern (1988) and Roy Wagner (1975, 1991), among others, within the framework of the “New Melanesian Ethnography” (Josephides 1991; hereafter NME). The issues germane to the first of Malinowski’s magical puzzles concerning the efficacy of words versus spirits, I suggest, historically anticipate the tensions between Scott’s two ontologies. Malinowski’s generally pragmatic orientation fits well with the established “wonder-occluding” scientism, while the material I offer here underscoring villagers’ notions of spiritual agency resonates with the “wonder-sustaining” terms of “relational nondualism,” particularly those of its lineaments connected to the NME. But more importantly, I think, the basic empirical questions concerning Trobrianders’ attitudes toward spirit efficacy played a fairly critical but tacit role earlier on in Stanley Tambiah’s initial “performative” theory of magic (1968, 1973), which he later reformulated in terms of “participation” (1990). Reviewing that transformation in Tambiah’s seminal thought, I suggest, has possibly important implications for ways in which the solutions to Malinowski’s magical puzzles might point to fruitful conceptual refinements in both the NME and Scott’s ontology of “relational nondualism” more generally. Before turning away from contemporary discussions over magic, however, it must be noted that Malinowski’s two magical puzzles converge rather perfectly with Viveiero de Castro’s recent reminder of the “co-implication of the two founding problematics of anthropology, kinship and magic” (2009: 246). There, Viveiros de Castro insightfully treats magic (alternatively presented as “animism”) and kinship as cognate expressions of Maussian gift exchange, which, as I describe below, also informs my NME theoretical approach to the puzzles over magical efficacy and the nexus of relations involved in procreation. More specifically, he argues that both kinship and magic qualify as processes of “personification.” Following Gregory (1982) and Strathern (1988, 1992), he argues that just as kinship is conventionally seen as an exchange of persons as gifts, things and people in gift economies assume the social form of persons, hence qualifying both as ontologies of animism or magic. Understandably, Viveiros de Castro’s main illustrations of these ideas are drawn from what he terms “multinaturalist” Amazonia. Hopefully, the treatment I offer of Malinowski’s puzzles over Trobriand magic and kinship reckoning will be seen as an endorsement of Viveiros de Castro’s insight from an additional cultural realm, one far removed from Amazonia but familiar, thanks to Malinowski and other Massim ethnographers, to a large number of Euro-American anthropologists globally. Tambiah’s “participation” theory of magic and the New Melanesian Ethnography According to Graeber, nearly all modern anthropological treatments of magic “[have] been, in one sense or another, an elaboration on Tambiah” (2001: 241). Graeber makes special note of the two early signature works of Tambiah’s “performative” theory of magic (1968, 1973) which reanalyzed the foundational works of Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard, respectively. In his demonstration of “how the language of ritual [including magic] works” (1968: 188), Tambiah reexamined the vatuvi spell of Omarakana’s gardening magic, rejecting Malinowski’s (1935b: 3–74) crude pragmatism and focusing instead on the analogical (i.e. metaphorical and metonymical) relations between the words of megwa to account for their meaningfulness and persuasiveness to participants. At the very juncture of launching into this analysis, however, Tambiah remarked that he considered deliberations over the agency of words versus spirits to be symptoms of a “Frazerian hangover” (1968: 176) and a “somewhat barren debate” (183). He thus simply proceeded to examine the symbolic functions of the vatuvi spell’s words only, accepting without further consideration Malinowski’s assertions of the nonagentive participation of ancestral baloma spirits. So although his performance theory went considerably beyond Malinowski’s pragmaticism, the agency of spells still resided for him in words and the relations between them.7 In Tambiah’s other influential early essay (1973), reinterpreting Evans-Pritchard (1937) on Azande magic, he similarly focused upon the analogical connections, here involving enchanted “medicines” rather than spoken spells, to the neglect again of spirit participation. In terms I shall examine below, in other words, by dismissing spirit agency from consideration, Tambiah’s early performative treatments of both classic reports of magical efficacy had presupposed the Western distinction of “objects” as distinct from “subjects.” This is important inasmuch as some two decades later in Tambiah’s more mature theorizing over “magic” and its relations to “religion” and “science,” he clarified a distinction between two basic orientations to reality: “causality” and “participation.” The laws of causality were characteristic of science and mathematico-logical reasoning. Tambiah’s main interest, though, was in the alternative aesthetic and religious orientation, inclusive of magic, whereby “laws of participation,” following Lévy-Bruhl mainly, but also Leenhardt, Wittgenstein, Febvre, and Bloch (Tambiah 1990: 84–94), effectively muted the subject–object distinction so as to include spirits and similar suprasensible beings as agents in ritual processes and procedures: for example, “the idea of mana, emanating from the individual as suffusing his shadow, hair and nails, his clothes and his environment … taboos and avoidances, rites of intensification, rites of severance … participation between the dead, especially the ancestors, and spirits and deities with the living’ (1990: 96). He quotes Lévy-Bruhl, who could well have been speaking specifically of the Trobriands: The notion of society, too, is entirely different for the primitive [sic] mind. Society consists not only of the living but also of the dead, who continue to “live” somewhere in the neighbourhood and take an active part in social life before they die a second time.… [T]he dead reincarnate in the living and, in accordance with the principle of mystical participation, society is as much merged in the individual as the individual is merged in society. (Lévy-Bruhl, quoted in Tambiah1990: 86)8 Now Tambiah’s later participation theory very closely approximates the other approach already mentioned on which I am seeking theoretically and methodologically to base my treatment of Trobriand magical agency: namely the NME introduced above. But there are conceptual problems here also, some similar to and others distinct from those in Tambiah’s work. Marilyn Strathern’s The gender of the gift (1988) has come to be widely accepted as the NME’s foundational text. There Strathern (1988: 12–15) is similarly critical of the analytical distinction of “individual” and “society” in Melanesian contexts, which is implicit in Tambiah’s quote from Lévy-Bruhl when “person” and “relations,” respectively, are substituted. Also, where Tambiah, in line with Lévy-Bruhl’s notion of participation, breaks down the “subject–object” distinction, this also aligns with Strathern (1988: 19). But for Tambiah, the resulting “participation” consists of persons both distinguished from and identified with one another in terms of what amounts to criteria oriented to the distinction of the sacred and the profane. On this last score, Tambiah’s and Strathern’s modeling partly diverge in critical ways. Insofar as the persons who mystically participate with one another are thereby merged in Tambiah’s framework, we have a theoretical precursor approximating the “dividual” or “partible person,” a central concept in the NME. According to Strathern’s (1988) formulation following Mauss’s (1967) theory of gift exchange, persons are composite beings constituted of the elicitive detachment, attachment, and exchange of their respective parts, seen as previously transacted relational elements of still other persons, whether they take the form of material objects, body parts, linguistic expressions, nonverbal performative actions, items of knowledge, and so on. In Tambiah’s participation view, just as “things” or “objects” qualify as parts of persons, so also do the imagined spiritual beings toward whom living humans oftentimes orient their actions in ritual and other contexts. In Strathern’s view of Melanesian partibility, however, the components of persons are more or less strictly construed in the gendering identities and capacities of masculinity/femininity and same-/cross-sex relations. Unquestionably, Trobrianders conceptualize themselves, their relations, and the world around them in gendered terms which sometimes articulate with discernments of relative sanctity and secularity (see, e.g., Mosko 2013, in press-b). But in Strathern’s analyses, the gendered dimension of personhood tends to singularly eclipse all other dimensions of personhood such as, in particular, sacred and profane identities and/or their analogs. It is noteworthy that Strathern’s inspirations for both the specific notion of personal partibility and the general framework for her perspective on Melanesian sociality—McKim Marriott’s (1976) exposition of the “dividual” of caste India and Roy Wagner’s (1975: 120–25) depiction of the dynamics of “innovation” and “convention,” respectively—were formulated with significant regard to complexities flowing from the sacred–profane opposition. Strathern’s formulation of Melanesian sociality and personhood thus runs parallel with Tambiah’s initial performative theory of magic but deviates from his later participation model in effectively occluding the participation of beings such as baloma and other spirits marked as to their relative sacredness. This is so even in her foregrounded contexts of ceremonial exchange and initiation rituals where persons may well engage in elicitive transactions of the parts/relations of their persons in terms separate from or compounded with their gendered components. Therefore, in adapting the NME and its core notion of personal partibility to the analysis of Trobriand magic and kinship, I am seeking to effect a shift analogous to that between Tambiah’s earlier and later approaches. We cannot understand Trobriand practices in past, present, or changing circumstances without taking into account villagers’ perceptions of the participation of baloma and other sacred beings in their persons and lives.9 The identities and capacities following from the Trobriand version of personal partibility, I argue, characterize the relations between living persons and spirits and thereby animate indigenous notions of magicoritual agency. In terms of Trobriand cosmology outlined below, moreover, not only are persons and spirits identified together, but the magical words of megwa spells and the features of the “natural world” to which they refer are all potent components of one another. “Magic,” “religion,” and the character of personhood It is worth noting how Malinowski’s account of Trobriand magic resonated (1) with the views of Tylor (1871) and Frazer (1922), current at his time, over the nature of and distinction between “magic” and “religion,” and (2) with individualist assumptions about personhood and agency which have persisted in much anthropological theorizing up to the present, the emergence of the NME notwithstanding. These two discussions, I argue, are intimately connected. For Tylor and Frazer, agency in the sphere of “magic” was presumed to reside in beliefs in the impersonal, technical powers inhering in entities other than conscious beings, or persons—that is, in forces of the natural world actuated, for example, by verbalized spells and incantations. Ritual powers attributed instead by participants to conscious, supernatural beings of a personal sort, such as spirits with capacities analogous to humans and requiring propitiation, were classified as belonging to the sphere of “religion.” The presupposition of the universal existence of these two separate spheres thereby justified Malinowski’s portrayal of beliefs concerning ancestral baloma and other spirits as manifestations of the people’s “religion” while largely excluding them categorically from participation in “magic.” In elaborating upon insights from the NME as outlined above, therefore, I seek to demonstrate that the magical powers attributed by Malinowski and others to impersonal words and their combinations are the magical powers of persons, spiritual as well as human. But there is more to my proposed modifications of the NME as conventionally conceived. The agnostic “as-if” position noted above fits, I think, comfortably with Strathern’s (1988: 7–9) and Wagner’s (1975 passim) presentations of their own “as-if” models as analytical “fictions” or “inventions.” And their approaches are much to the same sort of purpose as I adopt here in revisiting Malinowski’s magical puzzles: that is, of revealing the distortions that might arise from unconscious biases in anthropology’s and my own predominantly Western cultural orientation. So in response to the charge of NME essentialism, I suggest that, by following such a tactic, it is possible to legitimately forestall the seeming necessity of assuming either that “otherworld” spirits exist or that they do not. This is thus one way in which adjustments of the NME along the lines proposed here can contribute to debates of an epistemological as well as ontological sort which have once again captured the discipline’s imagination. Austronesian comparisons Malinowski’s magical puzzles pertain not only the Trobriands but also to Melanesia and the Pacific generally, where, differently from the West, sacred powers are conceived as being immanent in all manifestations of reality. Some ethnographies of Austronesian- and non-Austronesian-speaking societies assert that local ritual practitioners are believed to recruit spiritual persons of various kinds—ancestors, spirits of nature, creator deities, etc.—as agents of their magico-ritual practices. Others maintain, like Malinowski, that magicians are generally understood to rely instead upon impersonal forces of nature named in spells and incantations to perform their miraculous feats.10 Despite their differing implications otherwise, the supposed efficaciousness of words and spirits share one key feature that is definitive of Oceanic cultures: the notion that all beings and entities of people’s conceived worlds participate in or are animated by mystical forces, mana being the most obvious example (e.g. Codrington 1891: 119–20; Lawrence and Meggitt 1965: 6–9; Chowning 1977: 64–66; Trompf 1991: 66, 73–74, 84–87; Sillitoe 1998: 215–16). Answers to questions deriving from Malinowski’s magical puzzles as to the relations between persons, spirits, magical spells, and the beings and entities of the world named in them do not only bear on contemporary debates over magical efficacy and the nature of kinship but also respond to long-held views about the Pacific generally. Magic and “virgin birth” As already suggested, Malinowski’s puzzle over magical efficacy has an additional twist entangled with controversies surrounding Trobriand notions of “virgin birth.” It will be recalled that Malinowski ([1916] 1948, 1932) had reported that Trobrianders were “ignorant” of the facts of physiological paternity. His disavowal of the agency of spirits in magical performance thus parallels his denial that villagers possessed knowledge of the procreative contributions of fathers to children. However, there is a flip side to Malinowski’s assertions regarding Trobriand views of procreation which has attracted considerably less notice, namely that in some of his and others’ reports, rather than fathers, the principal agents supposedly responsible for causing (or preventing) human pregnancy and birth are baloma spirits of the dead: not only the reincarnated waiwaia “spirit children” which supposedly effect the actual insemination of women, but other baloma spirits which are sometimes claimed to transport the waiwaia from Tuma, the spirit world, and insert them into the bodies of their mothers-to-be. In some circumstances, as my own field inquiries confirm, those spirits are believed to do so in response to megwa spells performed by married couples or living relatives on their behalf (Malinowski [1916] 1948: 219–20, 222–23; 1929; 1932: 146–52, 154, 156, 160–61, 168; see also Austen 1934–35: 108–11; Weiner 1976: 44, 122, 251n.; 1988: 54–55; 1989: 40; 1992: 39, 74, 76, 121–22). In his rejection of Islanders’ knowledge of physiological paternity, therefore, Malinowski accepted assertions that baloma spirits were regarded as the source of magical efficacy, but with respect to his denial concerning practically most other indigenous magical practices he regularly insisted that the words of the spells themselves and expressly not baloma spirits served as effective agents. As I shall attempt to show in Part 2, this seeming contradiction is a critical one. The ambiguities surrounding Malinowski’s magical puzzles and the “virgin birth” controversy are of one piece. Omarakana, cultural change, and the current “Paramount Chief” By now, some readers will be perplexed by the extent to which this analysis may appear to disregard the facts of historical change which Trobrianders have undoubtedly experienced since Malinowski’s time. I fully appreciate the extent to which Islanders’ lives have been deeply affected by colonialism, capitalism, commodification, electoral politics, Christian conversion, formal education, and so on. I justify the basically synchronic approach of the current exercise largely on the unusual circumstances which prevail at Omarakana, my research base, as well as factors concerning the state of change across the region. Omarakana is the initial site of Malinowski’s pioneering field studies and, not coincidentally, the home of the Tabalu “Paramount Chief.”11 Omarakanan viewpoints including those of the Tabalu, senior members of Tabalu dala, and other village elders are widely taken today, and likely in Malinowski’s time, to represent the most authoritative contemporary source of Kilivila gulagula or “Northern Kiriwinian sacred tradition.” It must be appreciated also that the Tabalu of Omarakana is known to have in his possession the two most powerful ritual items upon which the powers of other subclans and villages still depend for their livelihood: the female tokwai spirit, Kabwenaia, embodied in an igneous stone, and her male counterpart, Kaisusuwa, inhabiting a wrapped wooden stick. In their conjugal-spiritual intercourse, these two are viewed traditionally as the “source” (u’ula; see below) of agricultural plenty and scarcity and epidemic illness for the entire archipelago. But Omarakana continues to retain its regional preeminence inasmuch as the sacred knowledge possessed by the current Tabalu, Pulayasi Daniel (Figure 1), is nowadays unrivaled. It is widely known that Pulayasi was formally adopted as “son” (latu tau) and personally groomed from infancy by his “uncle” (kada), Mitakata—a contemporary of Malinowski who reigned as Tabalu successor to To’uluwa from 1929 to 1961 and who is generally regarded as the greatest “Paramount Chief” of the modern era. As such, Pulayasi is considered to be the nearly complete embodiment of Mitakata’s (and thus his predecessors’) person and office and the singular reservoir of Tabalu tukwa, or traditional knowledge and ritual powers. Although some Islanders might question particular details of Pulayasi’s viewpoints, anyone familiar with the contemporary Trobriand scene will appreciate how even those contestations are largely configured with reference to the dominant Omarakana-Tabalu viewpoint as personified in Pulayasi. Figure 1: Tabalu Pulayasi Daniel resting among graves of deceased Tabalu relatives, Omarakana village. (Photo by Mark Mosko 2012.) More generally, I argue that it is impossible to develop a full and accurate account of Trobriand historical change when the ethnographic baseline for those transformations is seriously flawed or incomplete, as I think is the case with current ethnographic knowledge of indigenous megwa. If, as Malinowski and others have maintained, magic is an essential component of virtually all indigenous activities, any attempt to chart the course of change in those areas must needs begin with a robust understanding of the indigenous logic and content of those magical practices. Take, for instance, Islanders’ conversion to Christianity. The large majority of Northern Kiriwina villagers profess to be “Christian,” but that Christianity is strongly inflected and syncretized with the traditional understandings set out here as regards the people’s indigenous relations with ancestral and other spirits. None of the local Christians or even their leaders whom I have interviewed, including Pentecostal pastors, deny the existence of baloma and other spirits as powerful, albeit evil and malevolent beings. Virtually all Kiriwinan deaths that take place nowadays are interpreted as the result of “sorcery” (bwagau) produced by magicians’ manipulation of evil bilu baloma spirits (see below), now often identified with “Satan” and “devils” of the Christian pantheon. In nearly all cases of serious illness caused by suspected sorcery at Omarakana and other villages, patients and their families first consult native curers (tayuvisa), whose efficacy is attributed to baloma spirits. Only later do villagers seem to consult church deacons and pastors for spiritual healing purposes, much along the lines of indigenous curing rites. Only as a last resort do patients present at the Island’s health centres. Sunday services of the dominant United and Catholic churches are attended overwhelmingly by women and children, while the men who monopolize megwa tend to stay away. Not coincidentally, male gardeners and fishers who profess to be nominally Christian tell me they still practice their private gardening spells oriented to indigenous spirits, sometimes appealing also to Yaubada, the Christian God. Men from across the Island still regularly visit the current Tabalu, Pulayasi Daniel, with requests for traditional magical assistance. When in 2010 the critical burning of the gardens was delayed for well over two months owing to unrelenting rain, on September 13 the men of Kabwaku village led by their Toliwaga chief, Toguguwa Tobodeli, came en masse to Omarakana with a substantial payment (susula) to induce Pulayasi to use his traditional sunshine spells to dry out their gardens. Sergio Jarillo de la Torre (2013) reports that modern-day carvers, even when they petition Christian spirits, employ traditional magical techniques to seduce potential buyers, including European tourists, into buying their wares. As I have recently described (Mosko in press-a), cultural innovations such as men’s gambling with cards have adapted indigenous magical practices of courting, kula exchange, and warfare in appeals to ancestral and other spirits for support in winning. None of these cultural changes, I maintain, can be accurately gauged without a sound grasp of their indigenous precursors. The spirits, the spells, the words, and the puzzle The word baloma refers to the internalized “soul” of living persons and that soul’s existence as a “spirit” being once it is released from the body upon death. Baloma in the latter sense, then, are human ancestral spirits (Malinowski [1916] 1948). A broader category, bilu baloma, refers to those and additional spiritual beings, including tubu daiasa “creator deities,” tosunapula “first to emerge” spirits of particular dala matrilineages, tokwai “nature sprites,” and potentially malevolent mulukwausi “flying witches,” kosi “ghosts,” and itona/tauva’u “warrior spirits.” To my knowledge, Malinowski never attempted a systematic classification of these. Malinowski’s claims regarding the supposed noncontribution of spirits to the effects of magical spells are inconsistent with his accounts of the tenor of relations between living humans and spirit inhabitants of Tuma in five main additional contexts: procreation and reincarnation (as noted above), dreams and trances, funerary rites, annual milamala harvest celebrations, and, most significantly in the present context, supposedly perfunctory ritual “food offerings” or “sacrificial oblations” (ula’ula) in accompaniment with megwa and other activities. When presented by magicians to spirits as preliminaries to megwa performances, the latter offerings were supposedly separate from the causes and effects of the magic itself (Malinowski [1916] 1948: 214, 243; 1935a: 279, 468–69; but see 1916 [1948]: 215; 1922: 422–23; 1935a: 95, 279).12 Otherwise, for Malinowski, baloma spirits conducted their spirit lives in the spirit world, Tuma, largely absorbed in their own affairs some remove away from Boyowa, the visible world of their living human descendants.13 As Malinowski observed ([1916] 1948: 196, 199–215; 1922: 428–63; 1932: 182; 1935b: 92), megwa spells are typically structured as three sequential segments (u’ula “base,” tapwala “body,” and doginala “tip”) in accord with a particular botanical imagery employed in virtually all indigenous contexts of activity—indeed, which he appreciated as “characteristic of native canons of classification” (1932: 143, my emphasis), despite his indifference otherwise to structural concerns. In the opening u’ula section (meaning “base,” “origin,” “foundation,” “cause,” “reason”), the main purpose of the spell is enunciated and ancestral baloma predecessors and other spirits are invoked by personal name or kin term (e.g. “grandfathers”). In the tapwala middle section (“body,” “trunk,” “stem”), the specific magical actions intended to take place with respect to the patient, target, or victim are declared. In the spell’s concluding doginala (“end,” “final point,” “tip”), the magician states the anticipated results. The most well-documented spell exhibiting this three-part structure is the Omarakana vatuvi “striking of the soil” spell as presented by Malinowski (1935a: 96–98) and reanalyzed by Tambiah (1968: 191–92). Not mentioned by Malinowski, with megwa and other contexts of u’ula-tapwala-doginala sequencing there is typically a fourth element, the spell’s keyuwela (“fruit,” “offspring”), whereby its results materialize (Mosko 2009; 2013: 498–502). Malinowski reported that the opening u’ula invocation of spirits constituted “the most prominent, persistent and universal, feature of Trobriand magic” (1932: 328), and that the spirits’ names were typically recited also in the doginala “tip.” But those two segments are distinguished also by the inclusion of the spell’s general theme and intended results, respectively. On those grounds alone, one might reasonably assume that such direct incantations are expressly addressed to the spirits and predecessors as instructions for performing the tasks enumerated in the middle tapwala segment. It will prove useful to examine carefully Malinowski’s claims on this matter. In “Baloma,” published between his first and second fieldtrips, he commented: That the names of the ancestors are more than a mere enumeration is clear from the fact that the ula’ula [“oblation”; see above] is offered in all the most important systems.… But even these presents and the partaking of the sagali [i.e. distributions of food and other wealth], though undoubtedly they imply the presence of the baloma, do not express the idea of the spirits’ actual participation in fostering the aim of the magic; of their being the agents through whom the magician works, to whom he appeals or whom he masters in the spell, and who perform subsequently the task imposed on them.… The baloma participate in some vague manner in such ceremonies as are performed for their benefit, and it is better to keep on the right side of them, but this view by no means implies the idea that they are the main agents, or even the subsidiary agents, of any activity. The magical virtue lies in the spell itself. ([1916] 1948: 214; see also 196, 213–15) In his postfieldwork publications, Malinowski expressed the same reservations even more forcefully. In Coral gardens, his most mature and through treatment of Trobriand magic, for example, he noted: But in every community, among the Trobrianders quite as definitely as among ourselves, there exists a belief that a word uttered in certain circumstances has a creative, binding force; that with an inevitable cogency, an utterance produces its specific effect, whether it conveys a permanent blessing, or inflicts irreparable damage, or saddles with a lifelong obligation.… It is this creative function of words in magical or in sacramental speech, their binding force in legal utterance, which, in my opinion, constitutes their real meaning. (1935b: 54)14 The words are supposed to exercise a mystical effect sui generis on an aspect of reality. This belief is due to certain properties and associations of these words. (1935b: 219) So, what empirical documentation might have led Malinowski to dismiss the participative or agentive role of spirits in Trobriand megwa? Midway between his two fieldwork experiences, he noted: The data here given concerning the role of ancestors in magic must speak for themselves. It has not been possible to obtain much additional information from natives upon this subject. The references to the baloma form an intrinsic and essentially important part of the spells in which they occur. It would be no good asking the natives “What would happen if you omitted to invoke the baloma?” (a type of question which sometimes reveals the ideas of the native as to the sanction or reason for a certain practice), because a magical formula is an inviolable, integral item of tradition. It must be known thoroughly and repeated exactly as it was learnt. A spell or magical practice, if tampered with in any detail, would entirely lose its efficacy. Thus the enumeration of ancestral names cannot conceivably be omitted. Again, the direct question, “Why do you mention those names?” is answered in the time-honored manner, “Tokunabogu bubunemasi [our old custom].” And in this matter I did not profit much from discussing matters with even the most intelligent natives. (1916 [1948]: 213–14, emphases added) Given this absence of native exegesis, the repetitive “rubbing” or “impregnation” of the words of voiced spells into objects which accompanied many recitations impressed him as the “most effective and most important verbal action” (1935b: 216) of megwa performance. For example, He prepares a sort of large receptacle for his voice—a voice-trap we might almost call it. He lays the mixture on a mat and covers this with another mat so that his voice may be caught and imprisoned between them. During the recitation he holds his head close to the aperture and carefully sees to it that no portion of the herbs shall remain unaffected by the breath of his voice. He moves his mouth from one end of the aperture to the other, turns his head, repeating the words over and over again, rubbing them, so to speak, into the substance. When you watch the magician at work and note the meticulous care with which he applies this most effective and most important verbal action to the substance; when afterwards you see how carefully he encloses the charmed herbs in the ritual wrappings prepared, and in a ritual manner—then you realise how serious is the belief that the magic is in the breath and that the breath is the magic. (1935b: 216; see also 215–18; 1922: 406–8; 1935a: 93ff.) My contemporary informants describe these actions as yopu’oi wodila, literally “put into something with mouth.” They argue that the kekwabu “images” and peula “powers” of the words of the spell as a complete form (ikuli, i.e. as a gwadi “child” of the magician; see below) do indeed impregnate the object, but insist that it is only with the agency of bilu baloma that this transference can be effected, similarly to how ancestral baloma are understood to impregnate women with fetuses from Tuma (see Part 2). Nonetheless, at several critical moments in his postfieldwork writings, Malinowski revealed lingering doubts as to whether his unequivocal denials of baloma magical efficacy accurately reflected the native point of view. For example, in an appendix to Volume 1 of Coral gardens titled “Confessions of ignorance and failure,” he wrote: [T]here remained a great many lacunae in my data, simply because I did not spend enough time in the field collating and synthesising them. Take, for instance, the problem of the part played by the spirits in general, and ancestral spirits in particular, in native tribal life. … What exactly is the relation between the mischance brought about by the offended spirits and mischance brought about by malicious magic? I cannot say, for again I have not investigated this problem as fully in the field as I should have done. I occasionally enquired whether it was really the wrath of the baloma or the evil intent of the magic. But the answer would usually be “I do not know”… [H]ere again I have not gone deeply enough into the subject to ascertain what they [spirits] do and whether they are really believed to be there. (1935a: 467–68, emphases added) Malinowski in his own mind, therefore, had sufficient reason to leave open the possibility that in the view of his interlocutors baloma and other spirits might have played a critical agentive role in magical practice after all. And in this regard, it is notable that in the spells provided by Malinowski, the person(s) stated in middle tapwala segments to be performing the stipulated actions were sometimes identified by the first-person pronomials (i.e. singular “I” and plural “we”), but shifted at other times, even within the same spell, to singular and plural second-person “you.” Malinowski took this to suggest that “[t]he spirits stand in the same relation, as the performer does, to the magical force, which alone is active” (1922: 423). But as Tambiah (1968: 190) recognized, this points specifically to a conceptual identification, and hence potential “participation,” of the invoked spirits with the magician— a view to which I shall return below. Magical agency in post-Malinowski ethnography Reports from the many ethnographers who followed in Malinowski’s wake variously address questions of megwa agency. Linguist Gunter Senft (1997, 1998, 2010), who has most closely studied megwa, largely defends Malinowski against the criticisms of Tambiah in affirming that Trobrianders (Kaileuna Island) consciously attribute a special Frazerian efficacy to the power of magical words independent of their metaphorical and metonymical meanings and performative functions. But also, at certain junctures, Senft, like Malinowski, seems to equivocate over whether baloma might after all be included among the possible agents of megwa. At one point, for example, he widens the scope of magical interactions (“participations”) so as to include not only the kind of analogical meanings identified by Tambiah but also the animate, inanimate, and spiritual beings named in spells, including them among the addressees and/or agents (Senft 1997: 371–86). In other instances, Senft points to invoked ancestral baloma as the relevant mediating agents through identifications with the magician; in yet others, the addressed ancestral baloma are grouped with the named animate, inanimate, and nonhuman entities as the agents of the spells but distinguished as beings separate from the magician (1997: 374–79, 381, 382–86, 387); and in still other contexts, these addressees function as patients subject to the power of the magicians’ magical words (1997: 388–89). Annette Weiner’s account of the location of magical agency in “hard words” is similarly ambiguous as to spirit participation. She (1976: 218) initially followed Malinowski in attributing the power of magic to “spoken words,” which she amplified in her later treatments (1983: 691–92, passim; 1988: 71), conceding ritual efficacy to words through Tambiah’s repetitive metaphorical and metonymical significances while couching her analysis in a theory of language closely approximating Malinowski’s pragmaticism: “[H]ow Trobriand magic is thought to work can be understood only from a theory of Trobriand language in use, not from a theory of magic as such” (1983: 691–92). In the latter work she related how “objects” addressed in spells (e.g. animal and plant species, implements, other items of the physical environment which absorb a spell’s words) serve as mediating agents carrying the magician’s verbal message to the target or patient (702–4), more or less consistent with Malinowski’s notions of how the words of spells are “rubbed,” “impregnated,” or “breathed” into “objects” (704; see above). However, at one point she includes “deceased former owners of the spells (ancestors)” (702) among those “objects.” In her analysis of the art and aesthetics of expert (tokabitam) canoe carving (Vakuta Island), Shirley Campbell reports that carvers, the items they carve, and the materials employed in their work become “imbued” with magic (2002: 43), and that carving magic is “thought to have a life of its own” as a “separate power that is not only used by the owner but also, to some extent, uses the owner” (54; see also 61ff.). However, she does not offer an account of the mechanics of magical performance or specify indigenous views of purported agency. Nevertheless, at one point, Campbell implies that baloma cannot be agents of the megwa employed in kula voyaging. Just prior to departing on a kula expedition, the canoe owner (toliwaga) entreats the male baloma spirits of his dala to stay back as their presence “is thought to adversely affect the canoe’s ability to manoeuvre rough open seas.” Campbell reasons, “Baloma reside underground while waiting to be reborn. Their subterranean abode connects them to the heaviness of land where they are immobile, in stasis between death and rebirth” (160). My Omarakana informants insist that magical rites performed at sea are directed chiefly at the onboard spirits, flatly rejecting any suggestion that ancestral baloma are constrained by the heaviness of land or subterranean abodes. And although Malinowski did not consider spirits to be the agents of sailing magic, he was given to understand that ancestral baloma did accompany living kin on kula voyages (1922: 435–36). Gioncarlo Scoditti’s treatments of canoe art and oral poetry (1990, 1996, 2012) on Kitava Island include numerous references to megwa spells in the inheritance, initiation, composition, memorization, and performance of ritual carvers and poets. But following Tambiah, among others, he (1990: 88, 97 n. 6; 1996: 11, 68, 270; 2012) stresses the metaphorical and aesthetic values of spells rather than their inherent magical potency, such that the participation or possible agency of spirits is barely considered. His interpretation of the “unusuality” and secrecy of megwa words (1990: 68n, 97n), however, recalls the efficacy of utterances themselves as variously argued by Malinowski, Senft, and Weiner. Elsewhere, Scoditti (1996; 2012) groups megwa with the “songs” and “poems” (wosi) composed by contemporary poets, concentrating again on the subtle aesthetics of the words and images as thought and experienced by performers and audiences, eliding again indigenous views of magical agency. Nonetheless, he hints that Kitavans might regard baloma and other spirits as magical agents after all when, with one spell, the magician-carver invokes his deceased father, from whom he presumably acquired the spell, “as a protective deity” (1996: 213). Even more suggestively, he notes that human chanters of megwa are equated with the spells’ ancestral baloma authors (119n, emphasis added). From Kaileuna Island to the west of Kiriwina, Susan Montague (1983) reports that men’s capacity for performing miegava (cognate with megwa) or “noise force” depends on their inherent gender identities and their proper observance of dietary “taboos” (see below). The latter, when violated, produce blockages in magician’s bodies, preventing the internally stored mental/magical energy from being externalized. Miegava itself, she records, “consists of non-substantial force possessed by baloma residing in the non-substantial part of the universe. It is manifest and available in living people in terms of sound, as are all other non-substantial forces” (41, emphasis added). Miegava force is said to consist in the “ability to ‘order the natural elements’” (42; see below). Somewhat confusingly, she states that “[t]he crop in the ground [i.e. garden fertility] ‘magic’ probably is not magic at all, but encouragements sent to baloma to infuse the plants with animation and growth” (45n). In any case, Montague’s information seems to leave open the possibility that in traditional Kaileunan reckoning, baloma spirits and the baloma souls of magicians are intimately related with the words of miegava and that spirits are at least indirectly involved in the effectiveness of spells. Harry Powell, who conducted fieldwork near Omarakana in the early 1950s, did not investigate the topic of magic deeply, but still noted that unseasonable weather could result from spirits’ dissatisfaction with people’s misbehaviors toward them by making mistakes in the performance of spells or failing to provide them with enough food, presumably through ula’ula oblations (see fn. 12 above). Also, he reports that baloma spirits invoked in Omarakana’s rain magic were understood to have “their [i.e. the spirits’ own] magic”: [I]t was no use trying to make rain magic against the baloma. The rain was obviously the result of their magic, and as they include in their numbers all of the dead and gone magicians of the past, and as the baloma are spirits anyway, obviously no mere human rain magician’s efforts could hope to prevail against them once they really got cracking. (Powell 1950: 12) Frederick Damon, reporting on the kaluwan (cognate of baloma) spirits of Muyuw Island, provides no data regarding the possible role of spirits in magic. However, he (1990: 258n) concedes that, for several reasons, his informants were “extremely reluctant” to give him knowledge of magical spells, resulting in a significant gap in this dimension of his ethnography. Among the previous generation of Northern Massim ethnographers, only Nancy Munn (1986: 82–84, 288n) explicitly names ancestral balouma as effective agents, but immediately after making that assertion with reference to a single instance, she cautions against generalizing to other Gawan spells. Recently returned from doctoral fieldwork, Sergio Jarillo de la Torre (2013) reports that informants in several communities to the south of Omarakana affirm that indigenous spirits are the principal agents of traditional carving spells, which have in certain respects been joined by spirits of the Christian pantheon. Despite Malinowski’s strident protestations of the magical effectiveness of words, his own writings and those of subsequent investigators and commentators offer at least fragmentary evidence that ancestral baloma might well be perceived by Trobrianders as playing critical agentive roles, similar to reports from some other parts of Melanesia. What exactly that role is and how it relates to the efficacies which have been attributed also to other entities and beings—words, metaphorical/metonymical relationships between words, nonhuman spirits, other animate and inanimate beings of the “natural” world, and so on—have yet to be rendered intelligible. Framing the issue in these terms inevitably calls for a detailed reconsideration of the relevant aspects of Trobriand cosmology, which, on the basis of recently gathered ethnographic information, is more complicated and differently configured than has been reported thus far. What follows is a condensation of innumerable hours of discussion, questioning, rethinking, and reanalyzing the existing ethnographic corpus guided by my village interlocutors’ knowledge. Readers should be advised that, to the best of my ability, the following account strongly reflects the authoritative viewpoints of the inhabitants of Omarakana, and particularly the current Tabalu and his cadre of both Tabalu dala and non-Tabalu followers, and other Islanders I have interviewed as well.15 Cosmology All beings and entities of the traditional Trobriand “universe” (kwetala valu, literally “one village” or “place”), whether perceived as animate or inanimate, material or immaterial, or human or nonhuman, are enlivened by a property termed momova, variously translated as “life,” “vital spirit,” or “vital breath” (Scoditti 1996: 68; 2012: 67ff.; Lawton 2002; Baldwin n.d.), or, as I prefer, “vital essence.” My informants’ elaborations on these meanings indicate that even those entities which appear in their outward, material form to be inanimate or lifeless nonetheless harbor invisible momova. Thus all beings and entities of the visible, material world of Boyowa including humans, plants, animals, rocks, features of the land, sea, and sky, and so on, possess, embody, and/or participate in inner momova. Critically, however, the momova of any particular being or entity of Boyowa is also considered to coexist as, or to be a component of, its invisible counterpart in Tuma, the realm labeled by Malinowski ([1916] 1948) “land of the dead.” This latter designation is misleading, though, insofar as it implies that the various occupants of Tuma are somehow lacking in momova or the capacities of life, when according to informants they are actually the source or essence (u’ula) of life, including the life of their material manifestations in the visible world, Boyowa. This does not mean, however, that Trobrianders lack a notion of “death” (mate); far from it. But “life” and “death” are for them differently conceived than in the West. The spirit world, Tuma, and the beings and entities inhabiting it are saturated with momova, the essence of life, on which the inhabitants of Boyowa depend for their very material existence.16 Tuma and Boyowa To explain this fully, one must first comprehend the specific spatio-temporal location of the two realms and their general relations to each other. Ethnographic reports of Tuma’s purported location have been quite varied, ranging from the island of Tuma, lying north of Kiriwina or Boyowa; the underworld beneath the land surface of Boyowa or other islands of the archipelago; the initial underground habitation of all beings and entities of Boyowa before their cosmic emergence from the cave, Obukula, near the present-day village of Labai to Omarakana’s north; the subterranean “holes” or “houses” from which initial dala matrilineage ancestors (tosunapula) are believed to have emerged in the aftermath of cosmic creation; and the invisible abode of all bilu baloma spirits, including human ancestral baloma and other categories of spirit beings yet to be described (i.e. nonhuman tokwai “nature sprites,” itona or tauva’u “warrior spirits,” tubu daiasa “creator deities”). Tuma, as presented to me at Omarakana, however, is the hidden, invisible “inner” (olumwela) dimension of the universe, interpenetrating the visible, material “external” (osisuna, yosewa) world of Boyowa so that the two realms coincide. This is how humans, animals, plants, physical features of the world, and so on, in their material manifestations can exist outwardly in Boyowa, yet harbor inwardly the momova of Tuma. Perhaps prototypically, the invisible insides (lopola) of bodies are part of or participate in Tuma. It is through this intimate, mystical connection of the two realms that living humans of Boyowa are able to communicate and interact with ancestral and other spirits of Tuma. Villagers have impressed upon me often that Boyowa and Tuma are like “mirror images” (saribu) such that every being or entity of outward material or bodily existence (yo’udila) has its inner immaterial (kekwabu, literally “image” or “image-like”) counterpart. This relationship of material body to immaterial image characteristic of the two realms is reversible, however. As it was explained to me in terms of the culture’s prevalent “canoe” symbolism, for example, to living humans Boyowa is the “hull” (waga) that carries them about, with Tuma as the “outrigger” (lamila) that guides or supports the craft, but for bilu baloma spirits Tuma is their “hull” and Boyowa is their “outrigger.” This relationship of mutual, reciprocal interdependence between Tuma and Boyowa constitutes the broader context through which islanders’ megwa and other ritual practices are understood to acquire their efficacy. When my informants elaborated on the mirror-like relation between Boyowa and Tuma, the question occurred to me: What is the mirror image of a living human if his/her soul only enters Tuma upon death? Or phrased conversely, if everything in Tuma has a material complement in Boyowa, what is the Boyowan counterpart of a person’s baloma “soul” once the person identified with it has died and disappeared from Boyowa? The answer to both questions is the same, as suggested already: living humans are in critical ways the material Boyowan embodiments (yo’udila) of Tuman spirits, and bilu baloma in Tuma are the reflections or images (kekwabu) of Boyowan beings and entities.17 Kekwabu images and peula powers While the beings and entities of Boyowa and Tuma are both “alive” in being animated by momova, within each realm their specific kinds or types of momova differ from one from another as qualitatively varied “forms” or “configurations” (ikuli) of distinctive kekwabu “images” which accordingly possess distinctive peula “powers” or “capactities” as exhibited in their Boyowan manifestations. These two aspects of movova—kekwabu “images” and peula “powers” or “capacities”—draw us considerably deeper into the base of Trobriand magic and, as I shall explain in Part 2, kin relations. The notion of kekwabu, first, has been mentioned in several previous ethnographies, variously translated as “shadow,” “reflection,” “characteristic,” “valuable characteristic,” “photo,” “drawing,” “spirit substance,” “image,” “resemblance,” “spirit part,” “spiritual essence,” “spiritual aspect,” “ensemble of pieces/parts,” “element of knowledge”; and occasionally it has been equated with the baloma “spirit” or “soul” of something, even of nonhumans (e.g. Seligman 1910: 734–35; Malinowski [1916] 1948: 150–51, 156, 167, 180–82; 1922: 512–13, 184; [1926] 1948; Weiner 1976: 82, 199; 1988: 42; Scoditti 1990: 58; Campbell 2002: 98, 106; Lawton 2002; Mosko 2009: 694; Baldwin n.d.; Hutchins and Hutchins n.d.).18 It is peculiar, therefore, that almost nothing has been made ethnographically till now of its cosmological significance, at least as it is comprehended at Omarakana. Each of the glosses listed above carries a degree of indigenous meaningfulness, but the English gloss for kekwabu which I take to be most useful for present purposes is that of “image,” namely the momova-laden, nonsubstantial image components or characteristics of anything which, by virtue of different associated peula (“powers,” “capacities”), differentiate and assimilate beings, entities, species, and so on, of Tuma and Boyowa from and to each other. Peula “power” or “strength” (also “active,” “force,” “strong,” “robust,” “hard”), as a second inherent aspect of momova, has occasionally been mentioned ethnographically also (e.g. Weiner 1983: 693; Powell 1995: 74; Lawton 2002; Senft 2010: 76; Baldwin n.d.; Hutchins and Hutchins n.d.) but rarely analyzed. By a sort of indigenous post facto logic operating similarly to Oceanic mana, the visible attributes and capacities of any being or thing in Boyowa are considered by Islanders to be expressions of specific inner peula powers inextricably tied to the perceived contours of the form of that being’s or thing’s invisible kaikobu images. The exact expression of those inner powers and images is understood to be an instance of “emergence” (sunapula) directly analogous to the mythical, creative mythical coming forth of the visible Boyowan cosmos from the cave, Obukula (see Part 2). Accordingly, any configuration of kekwabu images with its paired peula power(s) has a dual existence, if you will—as the potent nonmaterial form of some invisible being or entity of Tuma and, through the effect(s) of the peula powers or capacities intrinsically associated with those internal images, as its embodied material counterpart as a visible manifestation of Boyowa. From what I have learned, kekwabu images and peula powers are understood to operate between the two realms in something like the following way: When you peer upon anyone or anything of Boyowa and then quickly close your eyes, that immaterial but definite image which remains in your mind (nona) is a kekwabu (actually, an ikuli “formation” of many distinct, separate kaikobu) initially internal to that person or object which, through expression of its peula capacities—hence coming forth or emerging (sunapula) from Tuma—has been projected so as to be detached from that person or thing so that it appears internally as an element of your “mind” (nona, nano) and “thought” (nanamsa), hence a component of your own person. Those readers versed in the NME will readily recognize in this presentation, at least to this point, the generalized dynamics of personal partibility inherent in indigenous understanding of virtually any interaction between persons (and “things”) of Boyowa as mediated through and manifested by the kekwabu images and peula powers arising ultimately from Tuma. Others more familiar with corresponding Oceanic animistic notions will, again, hopefully appreciate the extent to which Trobriand thinking in terms of internal and manifested kekwabu and peula approximate the classic renderings of mana. The relevance of Lévy-Bruhl’s, Tambiah’s, and others’ notions of “participation” and the pan-Pacific immanence of sacredness mentioned above should also be evident in these details of momova “vital essence” in its various transactable forms. But these and additional aspects of kaikobu, peula, and human-spirit relations, to which I next turn, challenge what in the West are recognized to differentiate categorically “persons” from “non-persons”, “things” or “objects”. Human spirits, nona “mind,” and nanamsa “thought” Among the scattered ethnographic references to kekwabu listed above, there are instances where the inner kekwabu of specific nonhuman objects or beings have been described as being equivalent to those entities’ baloma “souls,” as if animals, plants, natural phenomena, and so on, that embody momova are constituted of the same order of baloma “souls” as humans and ancestral spirits. I have occasionally heard such attributions myself in the field. However, when I asked my interlocutors for clarification on this point—do these entities possess baloma “souls” or “spirits” in the same sense as human beings?—they uniformly told me “no,” explaining that allusions to the immaterial kekwabu of nonsentient beings and entities as baloma are common enough but technically inaccurate. While those other beings are constituted of momova-laden kekwabu and associated peula that generate their material manifestations in Boyowa, those images and powers do not include nona “mind” and nanamsa “thought,” which critically distinguish persons. Pigs, garden plots, trees, reefs, winds, and so on, of Boyowa do not possess mind or thoughts and thus cannot communicate through words with humans—unless they happen to harbor beings which are otherwise constituted of mind and thought (see below). The baloma “souls” of living humans are partly composed of momova in the specific kaikobu and peula forms of “mind” and “thought,” thereby distinguishing them as “persons” (tomota; see below) separate from nonsentient beings and things of creation: that is, those which lack the images of nona “mind” and powers of nanamsa “thought.” Upon being released from their bodies following death, human baloma “souls” continue to exist in their immaterial baloma “spiritual” forms with the retained capacities of mind and thought of persons. But the baloma of humans, living and deceased, are not the only beings in the cosmos which possess images and powers of nona and nanamsa. Rather, all those beings which have appeared in the literature and are construed by Islanders as bilu baloma or “spirits” in the generic—ancestral baloma, tubu daiasa, kosi, tosunapula, tokwai, itona/tauva’u, mulukwausi, etc.—are classified as such on the basis of possessing or being constituted of nona and nanamsa. And it is on the criterion of sharing those qualities that all sentient beings can potentially communicate with one another as “persons” (tomota), as Trobrianders define that notion. Nonhuman bilu baloma spirits such as itona/tauva’u “warrior spirits” and tokwai “nature sprites” along with human baloma, kosi “ghosts,” and mulukwausi “flying witches,” in other words, qualify as “persons” precisely in this sense of being composed of the kekwabu images of mind with the associated peula capacities of thought. Furthermore, on this basis, not only can humans and spirits communicate with one another, but in the context of megwa they do so through the medium of structured images and powers of nanamsa thoughts as realized in ordered sequences or formations (ikuli) of words. In this specific sense, the magical power of words, as conceived by Malinowski and others, is the magical agency of persons, including bilu baloma spirits of Tuma and humans of Boyowa. The words of megwa spells are thus potent images among the definitive components of the beings in whom they are incorporated as persons. The u’ula and doginala invocations of megwa as illustrated in the vatuvi and other spells thus do not merely pay mythological homage to magicians’ ancestors and predecessors, as proclaimed by Malinowski; in the view of Omarakanans and other Islanders, those words as structured kekwabu have the peula capacities of identifying the magician with the named bilu baloma spirits, thereby reconstituting them as the persons empowered to act in the present as they had done in the past since the time of the spell’s origination. This can be explained partially by recalling how Malinowski (1922: 315, 409–10, 412; [1925] 1948: 76) and others (Tambiah 1968: 184; Weiner 1976: 218, 252; Scoditti 1996; 2012; Senft 1998) have variously reported that megwa are seen as being stored in a magician’s “belly” (lopola) after entering his person through the larynx or vocal organs of his throat, the seat of “intelligence” or “mind” (nona or nano) also located in some accounts with the dabala “head.” As explained to me by my Omarakana friends, all of these assertions are correct but only partly so and in subtly different senses. When a magician transmits a spell to his successor and as the recipient learns it, they both voice it repeatedly, externalizing in the one case and internalizing in the other. Thereafter, the words of the spell as potent (but not activated) images are stored as separated images in the initiated magician’s bodily lopola. Here, the term lopola refers not only to a person’s “belly” or “abdomen” but also to his/her generalized “insides,” including the head, larynx, mouth, torso, limbs, organs, and so on, insofar as all inner body regions enclosed by skin are infused with watery blood (buyai). Thus the words of the spell with their attached powers, once learned, course disjointedly through the fluid blood of the magician’s body, where, in that decomposed condition, they are magically inert or “cold” (tula). The critical faculty of nona mind, concentrated in the magician’s “head” or “brain” (dabala, inclusive of the larynx, as has been reported by some), is to draw up the disconnected images and powers of the spell from the magician’s “belly” and to organize or structure them into a particular coherent sequence or form (ikuli, simuli) of words—that is, as a nanamsa “thought”—exactly as the spell was initially internalized by the magician and his bilu baloma predecessors. It is the nona “mind” located in the head or larynx, my informants insist, where the megwa is thus first recongealed, or, as Malinowski characterized it, “crystallized” (1932: 409; see also Montague 1983: 45n). When the images of the spell in that form are voiced by the larynx and other vocal organs at the oral tip of the magician’s body, they become energized or “hot” (yuviyavi). In that condition, projected as invisible sound into the air or wind (yagila) and thus into invisible Tuma, they emerge from the magician’s mouth as the spell’s potent “fruit,” “offspring,” or “child” (keyuwela, gwadi; see Part 2). This means that the vocalization of the structured sequence of kekwabu images recreates and reinvigorates the identity and relations of the persons of both Boyowan and Tuman realms associated with the spell—the magician and the invoked bilu baloma—as one person. Those spells which are regarded as hereditary to members of a given dala (tukwa) can only be learned and effectively used by persons constituted of the appropriate dala images and powers. Here the claim is that the kekwabu and peula ingredients of a given dala’s spells are contained or stored in the blood of dala members. However, only those principally male members who are able secondarily to learn the ordered, structured sequencing of the verbal images or words as a fully formed megwa spell from a suitably knowledgeable predecessor—that is, through the human capacities of mind and thought—will be able to effect the desired results. This, incidentally, explains why men are unable to perform effectively the hereditary megwa of dala with which they possess no identification even if they mentally learn the spells, further refuting Malinowski’s claims as to the exclusive magical agency of words. One needs to have embodied the appropriate inner kekwabu and peula stored in one’s blood, prototypically through kin relations, in the first place. There is considerably more significance attached to these processes of storing, forming, and producing megwa. As my Omarakana confidants sometimes portrayed it, the summoned bilu baloma instantly come to occupy space at the magician’s shoulders or back, and then proceed invisibly and instantly as spirits through Tuma to enter the lopola (including the head and mind) of the patient or target, where the peula powers of the spell’s kekwabu images are activated, meaning that they alter the form (ikuli) of the patient’s previous configuration of images and powers.19 To be sure, the words of the magicians’ spells are kekwabu images possessing specific peula powers, but not separately from the bilu baloma of which those images and words are themselves detachable parts. In other words, the resolution of Malinowski’s magical efficacy puzzle lies in the ways that the words of spells are construed cosmologically as personal components of the invoked spirits as well as the invoking magician. But still, this is not the complete story as it is understood at Omarakana. Those beings and entities of the cosmos which do not qualify as sentient tomota “persons” in the sense considered here, while they may also embody momova-laden kaikobu images and powers which partake of both Boyowa and Tuma, do not harbor baloma “souls” or “spirits” properly speaking since they lack the inner, invisible kaikobu constitutive of the peula powers specifically of mind and thought. Nonetheless, those non-person kinds of beings and entities do play certain active roles in megwa spells and contribute to their effectiveness. To explain how they do so in concert with the minds and thoughts of human and spirit persons, it is necessary to probe even deeper into the indigenous cosmogony, into the initial creation of the universe as Trobrianders traditionally understand it and the developments which mythically ensued. But also, it is by virtue of the mythical interactions between the initial inhabitants of Tuma and Boyowa consequent to cosmic creation that the relationships underpinning contemporary Islanders’ relations to each other in terms of kinship, clanship, and rank through various mechanisms of gift exchange were established. PART 2: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF TROBRIAND CREATION AND PROCREATION The wording of magic is correlated with a very complicated dogmatic system, and with theories about the primeval mystical power of words, about mythological influences, about the faint co-operation of ancestral spirits, and much more important, about the sympathetic influences of animals, plants, natural forces and objects. —Malinowski, Coral gardens and their magic, Vol. 2, p. 222 (emphasis added) In seeking to solve the puzzle of the source of agency in Trobriand magic thus far, I have focused on information indicating the terms by which Islanders conceive of a personal identity between magicians and the spirits invoked in their spells, namely through the compatibilities of inherited and learned kekwabu images and peula powers involving mind and thought. In his writings, Malinowski conceived of this very linkage as “mythological” in nature. For example, There is another side to the lists of ancestral names in magic, which must be remembered here. In all Kiriwinian magic a great role is played by myths, underlying a certain system of magic, and by tradition in general. How far this tradition is local and how far it thus becomes focussed on the family tradition of a certain subclan has been discussed above. The ancestral names mentioned in the several [magical] formulae form therefore one of the traditional elements so conspicuous in general. The mere sanctity of those names, being often a chain linking the performer with a mythical ancestor and originator, is in the eyes of the natives a quite sufficient prima facie reason for their recital. Indeed, I am certain that any native would regard them thus in the first place, and that he would never see in them any appeal to the spirits, any invitation to the baloma to come and act, the spells uttered whilst giving the ula’ula [oblation, see below] being, perhaps, an exception. But even this exception does not loom first and foremost in his mind and does not color his general attitude towards magic. (Malinowski [1916] 1948: 215, emphases added) This identification of magician with ancestors as being “mythological” evidently provided Tambiah with a reason to exclude ancestral spirits from his initial performative treatment of Trobriand magic (see Part 1): The three parts [of a spell; i.e. u’ula, tapwala, and doginala] appear to present the following progression. The u’ula, which is brief, states the basis on which the spell is constructed, firstly the major theme or metaphorical idea which is elaborated in the spell and secondly the mythical heroes and ancestors who wielded the magical powers in question and with whom the magician himself becomes identified. This second feature is the portion of the spell that relates the magic to myth, which I do not discuss. (Tambiah 1968: 190, emphases added) However, there is much more in Trobriand mythology and cosmology generally that is relevant to questions of magical efficacy, particularly the role not only of sentient persons but also of the other nonsentient beings and entities named in spells through the medium of words. How, then, did the entire Trobriand dual universe of Boyowa and Tuma in their spiritual, human, and nonhuman dimensions get mythically established? The answer to this question will eventually touch on the second major puzzle left by Malinowski concerning the indigenous cosmogony and those aspects of kin relationship consequent to human procreation. Cosmogony Over the course of numerous in-depth discussions, Tabalu Pulayasi, members of my principal research team at Omarakana, and others have provided me with the following details regarding the sacred story (lili’u) of bubuli, the mythical events of “creation.” In summary, at the beginning there was only the primal god, Topileta, and his female counterpart, Tugilupalupa, locked in the embrace of sexual union (cf. Seligman 1910: 679, 732–34; Malinowski [1916] 1948: 156–59, 242; Baldwin 1971: 318, 369–73; Glass 1986, 1988; Ketobwau 1994; Malnic 1998: 185, 196). Topileta is the paternal (tama) spirit or god (baloma, tubu diasa) of the universe, described by Malinowski and others as the chief or master of immaterial Tuma. But Tuma, my informants add, was initially Tugilupalupa’s womb; hence she is regarded as the mother (ina) of creation, and her vagina through which all of beings and entities emerged is considered to be the legendary cave, Obukula, at the northerly end of Kiriwina Island near Labai, the ancestral Tabalu village.20 From the separation of this primal pair, the universe and all beings and entities it contains were born or created (bubuli) as their “children” (gwadi). The visible world of Boyowa and all of its inhabitants thus emerged (sonapula) from invisible Tuma, the womb of Tugilupalupa, with progenerative characteristics of paternal Topileta also.21 As offspring (i.e. keyuwela “fruit”) of the two gods, every momova-laden being and entity of creation thus embodies and is animated by certain of the specific sacred characteristics and capacities (i.e. kaikobu and peula) of the divine parents. Accordingly, every subsequent emergence of beings and entities from Tuma to Boyowa—including in particular, as we shall presently see, the vocalization of megwa spells and the reincarnation of humans—thus recapitulates the cosmic procreation of the universe or some focused aspects of it. The first children to emerge were the spirits referred to, like their divine parents, as tubu daiasa, which can conveniently be glossed as “creator deities.” The term tubu is a variant of the word tabu, which in kinship terms nominally refers to “grandparent,” but in this context applies more generally to “first ancestor” or “progenitor.” The term daiasa here means “our.” Some of the more mythically famous tubu diasa appear as central characters in various recorded myths, the most popular and frequently cited being the tale of the cannibal monster Dokanikani, heroic Tudava, and his mother Malita (or Mitigis, Bulutukwa) (Malinowski [1926] 1948: 122–24; 1927: 111–14, 244, 340; 1935a: 68–75; Baldwin 1971; J. Leach 1971; Lawton 1993: 181–82; Malnic 1998: 164–73). According to Tabalu Pulayasi, however, the most notable of Topileta and Tugilupalupa’s tubu daiasa offspring is a different Tudava, Ika’ili Tudava, who has often been confused and/or conflated with the Tudava of the Dokanikani story correctly named Ikuli Tudava. These two Tudava characters are father and son. The more famous Tudava, Ikuli Tudava, who was mythically born of Malita and who mythically killed the Dokanikani monster, was the son of the other Tudava, Ika’ili Tudava, also known in some Massim myths as Dovana or Gere’u. Ika’ili Tudava, the father, was the first son of Topileta and Tugilupalupa to emerge from Obukula, and he was of Tabalu dala. The son, Ikuli Tudava, like his mother, Malita, was of Tudava dala. The term ika’ili means “speaking/saying things, they come into existence.” Thus in Pulayasi’s cosmogony, Ika’ili Tudava had the power or ability inherited from his parents, Topileta and Tugilupalupa, to “say” things into being either by speaking their names from his mouth or by blowing them out through a conch shell. In this fashion, the originally divine kekwabu images and peula powers distinctive to various species acquired their embodied, material character in Boyowa from the interior images and powers of Ika’ili Tudava’s person. As he moved about, Ika’ili Tudava created many of the inhabitants and features of the land, sea, and sky orally, as distinct from the way that his female tubu daiasa paramour, Malita, mythically gave vaginal birth to her plant, animal, and other children, including the son, Ikuli Tudava.22 Ika’ili Tudava’s capacity of generating children from his mouth thus stands as a masculine sort of procreative capacity comparable with the ability of females to reproduce children through their vaginas. And in coming forth or emerging in this way, Ika’ili Tudava’s children embody kekwabu and peula of their father and mother according to their specific characteristics and, through them, those of the primal cosmic pair, Topileta and Tugilupalupa. Now in many accounts of Ikuli Tudava’s birth, he was conceived after water dripping from the top of a cave opened his mother’s vagina (see Malinowski [1916] 1948: 228; Campbell 2002: 179). However, sopi, the term for “water,” is commonly used to refer to the magic transferred from one man to his successor orally (Kasaipwalova 1975; Scoditti 1996: 96, 199; Campbell 2002: 56). By implication, Ika’ili Tudava’s son, Ikuli Tudava, was mythically conceived for emergence into the universe through the voice of his father’s words. In some accounts of the Tudava story, it is he, Ikuli Tudava, who, after slaying the ogre Dokanikani, traveled about the Massim archipelago performing many acts of verbal creation. But according to Pulayasi, these feats were those of the father, Ika’ili Tudava. Pulayasi adds that Ika’ili Tudava was not the only tubu daiasa spirit offspring of the primal pair with the ika’ili capacity of creating children through the agency of voice. That capacity was shared with Topileta and Tugilupalupa’s other offspring known as tosunapula, “beings who emerged [from Obukula]” or “first emergent ancestors”. These are the brother–sister couples standing as the primal antecedents of dala matrilineages.23 Through their spirit pedigrees they together possessed the masculine-paternal capacity of ika’ili, calling things into existence through voicing their names and other characteristics with words. But the tosunapula pioneers of distinct dala inherited different kekwabu images and peula powers from their respective progenitors, and it is those distinctive configurations which continue to differentiate dala matrilineages, and much else, from each other. According to Omarakana elders, Ika’ili Tudava not only created many of the features of the world, he also instructed ancestral tosunapula of separate dala upon their emergence from Okukula to migrate from Labai and lay claim to specific parcels of land and sea. As they did so, those tosunapula called into existence various animals, plants, and other phenomena of the world which, like them, embodied some of the images and powers distinctive to their respective dala identities. It was in this way during the phases of creation and migration that the universe was eventually populated by most of its now-known occupants and features. Accordingly, the world is currently inhabited by beings and entities, each of which (or each species of which) is a “child” or partial embodiment of the tosunapula persons of a specific dala identity. But also, the beings and entities thus created along specifically dala lines of differentiation, or at least those kekwabu and peula powers associated with their respective dala, are among the sacred possessions (tukwa) shared among all humans of those respective dala identities. Other components of a dala’s tukwa include its living and deceased human members, similarly associated nonhuman tokwai spirits, lands, decorations, insignia, titles and rank, totems, myths, and so on (see below). It will be helpful to elaborate on a few critical details. All beings and entities of the cosmos are descended as children from the primal gods, Topileta and Tugilupalupa, and are thus animated by momova “vital essence,” including the specific images and powers ultimately inherited from them. That vital essence was in the first instance procreative in an explicitly sexual sense, deriving from the conjugal union and separation of the primal couple and the procreative acts of the tubu daisa creator gods. In the following episodes of creation focused upon human tosunapula, however, that vital force was manifested not in the form of giving birth sexually or vaginally, insofar as tosunapula brother–sister couples observed the taboo against dala incest. Instead, as they migrated, they reproduced orally and thus quasi-incestuously through the recitation of kekwabu images as words that have associated with them specific peula powers. Thus the primal powers exhibited mythically by Ika’ili Tudava and tosunapula of different dala are duplicated in the capacities nowadays exhibited by magicians in the performance of megwa through the detachment or enunciation of sacralized words. Consequently, as I shall explain below, present-day megwa spells are the creative vocalizations of tosunapula employed at the time of creation and subsequently transmitted intact to living human descendants. However, the miraculous feats of the tubu daiasa of creation result not from the mere utterance of megwa “words,” as Malinowski maintained, insofar as those words are personal components of the sentient beings who contributed to the creation of the cosmos, or parts of it, along dala-specific lines. Therefore, when magicians call forth the personal images of their predecessors (and other bilu baloma spirits; see below), they are effectively replicating or reenacting events and events of creation. As Malinowski ([1925] 1948: 74–75) reported, all of the megwa in existence today are unchanged from the time of creation. Now because the tosunapula siblings ancestral to a specific dala are understood mythically to have also verbally created distinctive kinds of nonhuman beings and entities, those latter species are likewise viewed as “children” (gwadi) of those tosunapula, thereby sharing with their human co-descendants some of the same dala-specific identifying kekwabu images and associated peula powers. I stress some here because, as in the case of strictly human procreation as traditionally understood by Trobrianders, children inherit some, perhaps all, of the characteristics of each of their parents.24 This means that every dala constituted as a human collectivity is connected by means of shared images and powers to a unique population of nonhuman beings and entities of both Boyowa and Tuma. Thus, for example, the chiefly Tabalu dala has various animal, plant, and celestial beings with which it identifies. Members of Yogwabu, a commoner (tokai) dala based also at Omarakana, recognize yet other beings and entities mythically created by its tosunapula with which they identify, and so on. The general principle here is that, if the word naming a certain species or any of the other features associated with it is mentioned in a megwa, that species and its characteristics are part of the tukwa of that particular dala, inherited unchanged from the time of creation. That species, in other words, is seen as sharing kindred kekwabu and peula with persons who also identify with that dala. Taking the example of the tapwala segment of the vatuvi gardening spell discussed by Malinowski (1935a: 96–98; 1935b passim) and Tambiah (1968: 191–92), the “grubs,” “blights,” “insects,” “beetles,” and so on, that “bore” and “destroy” crops and that are to be “swept” and “blown away” are constituents of the tukwa of the magician’s and his predecessors’ dala. This indicates why the meaning of dala goes far beyond “subclan” or “matrilineage group”—the usual definition in anthropology since Malinowski—as it includes also the beings and entities of the cosmos which together embody, in whole or in part, the same images and powers. I believe that until now Montague (1974: 43–49, 71, 103–4) alone has perceived that dala consists not in a corporate group or matrilineage of people but in essentially shared magical capacities—what I have presented here in terms of shared kekwabu images and peula powers. The bird, fish, mammal, and plant species, koni emblems, designs and decorations, traditional lands, and politico-ritual rank as well as the people and the megwa they embody as common descendants of the same mythical tosunapula are thus all parts of or participants in the same dala identity, its tukwa. A dala’s store of tukwa images and powers is the ultimate source (u’ula) of the life (momova) of its human and other members, and to those dala members with the capacity of mind and thought those tukwa images and powers are “sacred” (bomaboma). They should avoid ingestion of them in the exactly the same sense as people should avoid dala incest (suvasova). There are two critical qualifications regarding the scope of dala, however. First, not all tosunapula who emerged as children of Topileta and Tugulupalupa at the time of creation are genealogically ancestral to humans. These others are Tuman “spirits” (bilu baloma) of specific kinds who also migrated and “settled” (sibogwa) across the land- and seascape but never adopted the practices initiated by humans which followed the eventual occupation of specific locations by tosunapula ancestors. As one result, these other spirits do not undergo the death and reincarnation that is consequent to the initiation of exogamous, inter-dala heterosexual reproduction. These nonhuman tosunapula emergence spirit beings are thus immortal, with the characteristics and capacities of mind, thought, and perpetual life (momova) of inner Tuma, living underground, in large trees, grottoes, large stones, and so on. These nonhuman tosunapula are the spirits which have been described ethnographically as tokwai “nature sprites.”25 The world’s tokwai in this sense emerged from Obukula alongside or being carried by their human counterparts, thereby sharing with them the same kekwabu and peula so as to identify and classify them according to dala distinctions. And just as the human tosunapula progenitors were distributed among specific locations of the land and sea, their nonhuman tosunapula relations were scattered accordingly. It is for this reason, for example, that the human tolivalu “owners” of specific partitions of land and seabed share dala identity with the tokwai that invisibly inhabit those locations, since those tokwai are also regarded as tolivalu “owners” or “leaders” of the same tracts and included among the magician’s tukwa. The tokwai which emerged and migrated alongside particular human tosunapula were endowed by their divine parents with the same kekwabu images and peula powers of mind and thought. This originating class of emergent tokwai spirits, in short, qualify as tomota “persons” even though they are not human. It is for this reason that magicians can communicate with them through megwa, invoking them by name along with ancestral baloma in u’ula and doginala passages of spells. Moreover, a given magician personally identifies with those summoned nonhuman bilu baloma as parts of his own person through the sharing of tukwa images and powers, even though he is not descended from them in the same sense that he is from his human progenitors, that is, by parturition. Thus nonhuman tokwai spirits can participate in the magician’s magic as component relations of his person. Secondly, not all of the beings and entities of Boyowa and Tuma that are proclaimed to harbor tokwai spirits are sentient, possessing the images and powers of mind and thought. Here, as with the term baloma (see above), the term tokwai carries a certain ambiguity. While the, let us say, “ordinary,” visible animals, plants, and other material features of Boyowa are understood to be animated by invisible momova “vital essence” of Tuma and to share many of the images and powers of the original nonhuman tosunapula-tokwai of creation, on their own they lack the characteristics of mind and thought. As some informants put it, these visible material beings and entities might well incorporate tokwai in the sense of kekwabu and peula, but they are distinct from the mindful tokwai of creation with which they are thereby connected. Thus, presently, magicians can refer to and draw upon the images and powers of animals, plants, and other features of Boyowa in their spells insofar as those species are animated by the same dala-specific characteristics as the original nonhuman tosunapula with whom magicians are also identified. A magician as participant in his dala therefore enjoys a “totemic” relationship with the sentient and nonsentient tokwai that emerged from Obukula with his tonsunapula ancestors and thus with the specific animal, plant, and natural species associated or identified with them. The shared images and powers connecting them are the kekwabu and peula that are mainly voiced in the tapwala segments of spells.26 In general, people of a given dala must observe dietary and other restrictions associated with exactly the beings and entities that are called upon in the tukwa spells of the dala with which they identify. These are the “taboos” mentioned by Malinowski and others that accompany specific megwa.27 Parents instruct their children on which foods or other behaviors they must avoid, even if they do not know the exact wording of their dala’s spells. This way, when grown, the children will be eligible to receive and use those megwa. Violation of one’s dala’s taboos renders one unrecognizable to the bilu baloma who observed those proscriptions while they were alive. Rather than performing actions as the spell instructs, the spirits turn their back on anyone they do not recognize as themselves in terms of shared images and powers. Violation of the taboos of one’s dala is thus analogous to the commission of dala incest (see below), which similarly compromises one’s dala identity. Now, the many distinct species of animals, plants, and “natural” phenomena populating Boyowa are related to one another through the perceptions of them that that people hold through their capacities of mind and thought. As Pulayasi and others explain, this is how seemingly distinct beings and entities of the visible world can nonetheless embody the same or analogous kekwabu and peula. Even though black clouds and maua, a species of black fish, are clearly different entities, sharing the quality of “blackness” enables them to be meaningfully voiced together in Omarakana’s weather magic for producing heavy rains. On yet other kekwabu and peula criteria, the sea-passage of Kadilabona, the village of Labai, de’u leaves, and the leaf ribs of coconut palms jointly cited in the vatuvi spell are assimilated to each other. These are exactly the kinds of metaphorical and metonymical connections which Tambiah (1968) through his initial performative approach insightfully recognized as explaining what he interpreted as the power of magical words. However, in the view of the indigenous cosmology elaborated here through my adaptations of the NME and consistent with his later participation theory (see Part 1), the power of those words has everything do with Islanders’ understanding that their significations and effectiveness are equivalent to the personal constitution and agency of the magician as identified with invoked bilu baloma spirits. Megwa as reproduction This leads me finally to consider the agency of spirits in connection with procreation as a key dimension of Trobriand kin reckoning along with magic. From the very beginning, my field interlocutors have been adamant regarding the magical agency of bilu baloma rather than words alone with megwa. My initial impression was that, through invoking those spirits, the magician was recruiting them to transport mystically the invisible images and powers of the named nonsentient species from their specific locations in the Boyowan external world, bringing them together and manipulating them outside the magician’s body before being transferred by the named spirits to the target or patient to produce the desired results. In subsequent discussions, though, my informants portrayed a significantly different scenario. The kekwabu and peula of “natural” species and phenomena that the magician calls forth in the vatuvi spell, for instance—the grubs and beetles swept and blown away, etc.—are seen as coming instead from the magician’s own bodily interior (lopola), where they have been stored for vocalization and projection, then to be carried forth invisibly by or as the spirits through Tuma to the intended destination. Moreover, the complete externalized, vocalized megwa is regarded as the magician’s “child” (gwadi)—indeed, equivalent to a “person”—modeled on the characteristics of the mythical tosunapula children, human and nonhuman, generated by their procreative separation from the deities of creation described above as well as on the ordinary reproduction of offspring to human mothers and fathers. The utterance of megwa through men’s oral cavities is thus analogous in different but complementary ways to the masculine ika’ili creative acts of spirit ancestors, on the one hand, and to the giving of birth through women’s vaginas, on the other. Recall my description above of the procedures by which megwa are supposedly produced within and without the magician’s body, namely how megwa vocalized by the magician repeatedly emerge from his vocal channel into the initiate’s oral cavity; how the megwa are repeatedly voiced by the recipient so that they can be internally formed or memorized, indicating that no one can learn a spell through a single repetition; how the memorized words are dismantled from one another, enabling them to flow through and be stored in the blood of the magician’s body; how in being recalled as megwa they are summoned to the magician’s mind; how there they are reconstituted or re-formed by the mind into a coherent, ordered thought; how that insubstantial but ordered thought can then be repeatedly enunciated by the organs of the throat and mouth for emergence, at once to Boyowa, to outside the magician’s material body, but invisibly also to be constituted in the internal, invisible realm of Tuma. These steps follow closely the processes involved in indigenous views of human procreation and birth as I elsewhere summarized them (Mosko 1995, 2005) on the basis of the reports of previous investigators but subsequently affirmed in general outline by my Omarakana informants.28 I present the key connections here as a series of analogies between procreation (in bold) and magical generativity (in italics): Children are conceived partly as a formation (ikuli) of the gendered elements or contributions of two gendered parents, a feminine, largely substantial but fluid or bloody mother and a masculine, largely insubstantial but nonfluid, inelastic father. Megwa consist of a formation (ikuli) of elements drawn from two gendered parts of the human body (i.e. disconnected words stored in/flowing amorphously through the body’s bloody lopola interior and masculine, largely insubstantial/reasoned/structured nona mind).   Human children are the products of the formation of a fetus wherein the disconnected images and powers flowing in the blood of the mother’s lopola are drawn down and coagulated in the womb by the forming influences of the father. The disconnected words of a spell stored in the blood of the magician’s body are drawn up into the throat by the reasoning or thinking capacities of the magician’s mind.   From the vaginal-end of the woman’s body, she gives birth to material children identified as tukwa of her dala. From the head-end of the magician’s body, he gives birth to immaterial children identified as tukwa with his dala (see below).   The father sexually penetrates the vagina of the child-to-be’s mother. The magician mentor provides the spell which enters the magician’s body through the mouth.   The father’s contribution to the child consists in the feeding (vakam) of immaterial, invisible images that have the capacity of conveying form (ikuli) to the child. The mentor’s contribution consists of immaterial, invisible images that have the capacity of giving form to the disconnected images and powers of the spell otherwise dispersed in the initiate’s body blood.   The father feeds the fetus through the mother’s vagina with repetitions of sexual intercourse, resulting in the fetus “child” being ikuli “coagulated,” “congealed.” The mentoring magician orally recites the spell numerous times for it to be received, internalized, and ikuli “coalesced” as his “child” formed in the initiate’s memory.   The mother contributes two components to the child which identify her and it with her dala: the distinctive character of her substantive blood and the insubstantial waiwaia spirit child sent from Tuma. The magician correspondingly embodies substantially the tukwa images and powers of his dala along with the insubstantial bilu baloma immanent in his own person.   The waiwaia spirit child is brought to the mother by baloma spirits of Tuma who identify with the mother’s (and also the father’s) or fetus’s dala. The spell as recited by the magician and transferred to the patient is accompanied by baloma spirits of Tuma who identify with the dala of the magician (or his father; see below) and mentor.   The repeated acts of sex between the parents shape or coagulate the images and powers of the mother contained in her blood so as to form a fetus in the mother’s lopola, after which repeated acts of sex are suspended. The magician’s and mentor’s repeated reciting of the spell continues until the spell has been completely formed or memorized, whereupon it is stored in the magician’s lopola.   The fetus gestates in the mother’s lopola until such time as she gives birth through her vagina. The spell resides inertly in the magician’s belly until such time as he is ready to externalize it through his mouth.   The mother’s reproductive organs consist of a moist inner lopola container (bam “womb”), delivery tube (bulabola, wila “vagina”), clitoris (kasesa), and labias (bilibala, bila). The magician’s vocal apparatus consist of a moist inner lopola container (wadola “mouth”), delivery tube/throat (kayola), uvula (kasesa), and lips (balola, bila).   In the process of giving birth, women excrete red fluids likened to blood along with the newborn child. When magician’s speak their megwa, they typically excrete or spit red fluids likened to blood from their mouths (i.e. betel spittle, as the chewing of betel is a normal preliminary or accompaniment of reciting megwa).   The human child who emerges is constituted of the images and powers of its baloma ancestral spirits in Tuma. The enunciated magical spell is constituted of images and powers shared with the magician’s ancestral baloma spirits in Tuma.   In order to conceive and give initial birth, women must be penetrated by some external physical means, since being of a given dala identity (tukwa) is of itself insufficient to conceive and give birth to children. In order to learn a spell sufficiently to use it, a magician must internalize the spoken contents of the spell, since being of a given dala is not sufficient to mentally know and perform the tukwa spells of that dala.   When parents fail to inculcate their images and powers into their children properly or exactly as according to their respective dala, the children will be ineffective in their own lives. When magicians fail to learn and operationalize their megwa perfectly (as, for example, in leaving words out, violating related taboos), the magic will not work properly.   The child born to a woman contains the images and powers of the bilu baloma spirits of their dala. The megwa spell voiced by a magician contains the images and powers of its bilu baloma predecessors.   Children born of women embody the distinctive images and powers of human and baloma “persons” (tomata), with mind and thought, who are thus capable of exhibiting agency. The megwa children (i.e. spells) created by magicians contain the images and powers (i.e. words) distinctive to tomota human and bilu baloma “persons” with mind and thought, who are thus capable of exhibiting agency. From these parallels, it can be inferred that the magical words of megwa do have pragmatic and performative effects, but not only in the narrow manners claimed by Malinowski and Tambiah initially. The magical powers of the words of megwa are inseparable from the personal characteristics and capacities of the persons of both living human magicians and the spiritual beings who embody them through dala or other relationships and identities. Discussion and conclusion For the sake of conclusion, I shall concentrate on the clarifying light which this last point and the above analogies shed on indigenous views of human creativity, procreative as well as magical, along lines consistent with Viveiros de Castro’s formulation of the intrinsic relation between magic and kinship. The momova “vital essence” given expression in megwa is as magically creative as human procreation is magical. Returning to Pulayasi’s rendition of cosmic generation, the tosunapula ancestors of the various dala were born of the sexual separation of the primal deities, and they inherited from them their definitive images and powers. But during their creative journeys before settling, the human tosunapula did not utilize their genital organs in sexual relations to reproduce offspring of their same dala kinds. They were brother–sister pairs who together, while conforming to dala prohibitions against sexual incest, nonetheless possessed the capacity of creating “quasi-incestuously” from their oral cavities “children,” or beings and entities of the eventually settled world with whom they shared dala-identifying images and powers. Once settled and entering into relations with persons of other dala, however, those children proceeded to reproduce human offspring heterosexually and exogamously from the opposite ends of women’s bodies, their vaginal “tips.” Seen in this light, the creative images and powers of megwa issuing from magicians’ mouths in the present are what remain among living humans of the original creative images and powers of mind and thought emergent in tosunapula ancestors. And insofar as those megwa “children” emerge from men’s mouths similarly to how women as “mothers” conceive and give human birth from their wombs, the procreative agency of magicians is masculine and paternal even though their spells are among the tukwa of their own supposedly matrilineal dala identities. But after all, the ika’ili magical powers of the tosunapula brother–sister pairs were endogenous as to dala. Human tosunapula of different dala affected their diverse miraculous creations without interacting with one another until the time of eventual “settlement” (sibogwa) on the land. Thereafter, life, including the giving of birth, death, and reincarnation for the descendants of the human tosunapula (i.e. their baloma offspring), changed. From this it follows that dala entities incorporate images and capacities necessary to magically reproduce children, and thereby themselves, both with and without contributions from beings or entities of other dala. A single dala by definition thus contains certain capacities of both endogenous and exogenous reproduction—capacities nowadays still embodied in the blood of people’s bodies but formed and externalized as human sons and daughters by women vaginally and as megwa by men orally. Now this conclusion resonates undeniably with the classic reports of Trobriand “virgin birth” insofar as pregnancy is seen as resulting from the inseminating influence of a waiwaia “spirit child,” except for three critical ethnographic caveats.29 First, waiwaia “spirit children” are seen as originating in Tuma, an invisible womb-like, maternal kind of place as illustrated by Obukula cave. But a waiwaia “spirit child’s” constituent images and powers, being invisible and nonsubstantial yet eventually manifested in its physical appearance in Boyowa, are to that extent masculine or paternal (see Mosko 1995: 667–70). As noted above, the internal baloma “soul” of a living person, grown from the implanted waiwaia, is intimately connected with the insubstantial images and capacities constitutive of that person’s eventual nona “mind” and nanamsa “thought” or “reason,” qualities categorically identified with men and masculinity. To that extent, the inseminating waiwaia, although it is of the same dala identity as the mother, qualifies as a masculine sort of contribution to the child’s person. In short, inseminating waiwaia “spirit children” are masculine entities, although they can secondarily take the form of either males or females in the children into which they can develop. This is essentially the same recipe as when senior dala males transmit their spells to their dala juniors and when male magicians give voiced form to the images and powers of spells cursing through their blood. In short, acquiring the images and powers of one’s dala through birth by women is not enough to effect those capacities magically; one needs also to combine those disjointed images and powers through the structuring, forming, ikuli-making agency forthcoming from same-dala men, that is, endogenously.30 Secondly, in the bodies of living humans, the lopola “interior” is viewed as primarily feminine, substantial, and wet, whereas the nona “mind,” as seat of nanamsa “thought” or “intelligence” to which the baloma of a human is initimately associated, is viewed as insubstantial, dry, and thus mainly masculine (cf. Montague 1983; Scoditti 1996: 69; 2012: 69–71; n.d.). And thirdly, even if in some sense the waiwaia “spirit child” embodies masculine qualities to be fused or formed (ikuli) with the same-dala images and powers flowing in the mother’s blood, it is still understood to be transported to Boyowa by other baloma of Tuma, which, according to some reports, are inseminating male ancestors (Malinowski [1916] 1948: 219; 1932: 148–49, 150; Weiner 1989: 40), or even by baloma ancestors of the fetus’ human father’s dala (Malinowski 1932: 147, 150). This, it will be recalled, constituted one of the ethnographic contexts that contradicted Malinowski’s theory of the magical power of words (see Part 1). In sum, even if the waiwaia child’s dala identity is that of its female mother, it is “male” as regards its insubstantial masculine character, and the spirits seen as responsible for transporting it to the mother are, in the course of doing so, accordingly masculine and hence “paternal,” even if “incestuously” as per shared dala identity.31 This should not cause total surprise. Within the framework of “matrilineal inheritance” of dala identity as it has been presupposed in most prior ethnographic accounts, there are numerous indications from the indigenous cosmology of complementary masculine-paternal spiritual agencies—agencies which in one way or another involve contributions of images and powers outside of or separate from the lineaments of strict dala maternity. This is my main, final concern. Virtually the same logic applies with the intergenerational cycling of megwa spells. Since the tosunapula settled and initiated the exogamous heterosexual reproduction of their human descendants, their megwa spells have not been typically or by rule inherited directly or automatically by nephews from uncles or other dala elders. To Malinowski’s considerable consternation ([1916] 1948: 226–27; 1932: 345, 349; 1935a: 177), the most important and powerful megwa, such as those of chiefs, village leaders, garden magicians, and others (i.e. tukwa spells), were regarded as among the collective wealth of their matrilineal dala groups, but the dala men supposedly entitled to inherit those formulae had to pay heavily (pokala) for them when, even more perplexing, magicians’ sons were typically given them “freely” by their fathers even though they possessed different matrilineal dala identities. For Malinowski, this illogic was a manifestation of what he saw as a conflict between principles of “matriarchy” and “patriarchy,” or “motherright” and “father-love.” My research has revealed that the children (latu) of male members of a given dala are classed as a particular subcategory of dala members and hence as part of their father’s dala’s tukwa. These children of men are termed litulela (and reciprocally a person’s father’s maternal dala kin are called tubulela), as distinct from the children of dala women (veyolela). Litulela dala affiliates receive through procreative and other contributions the distinctive kekwabu and peula of their father’s dala, not only those of their mother. Fathers and children are thus anything but “strangers” (tomakava) to one another, as reported by Malinowski (1932: 3, 5, 16; cf. Weiner 1976 passim). Not only is this directly relevant to indigenous theories of procreation, but it also explains why it is that magicians customarily transmit their secret megwa to their sons rather than to their legitimate dala heirs (see also Mosko 2013, in press-a). Edwin Hutchins (1980: 19–43; pers. comm.; see also Powell 1956: 391, 393–97; Weiner 1976: 125, 157–59, 163; Campbell 2002: 52) has clarified the inheritance between men of dala land which applies in most particulars to the transmission of megwa, since both are tukwa. Fathers are understood not to give their land or spells as “free” gifts to favored sons (even less so to nephews) but rather as reciprocities for the kaivatam indulgences (food, labor, betel, tobacco, money) that considerate loving sons customarily present to fathers over the full course of their lives. This is the basis of the intimate litulela–tubulela relationship which encompasses the people of father’s dala and the children of men of one’s own maternally defined dala. Such gifts and other observances are accepted as sufficient justification for a father to give important items of wealth imbued with the images and powers of his own maternal dala to one or more of his favorite sons, who, as litulela, are “one dala” (kwetala dala) with him. Mainly because of the usual residence pattern of patrivirilocality, a man’s male dala relatives (uncles, brothers, nephews) are practically excluded from those same opportunities; hence, it is much later in their adulthood that male veyolela maternally related kin might become able to present substantial pokala solicitations to their elders, more or less substituting as the kaivatam gifts of sons, with the intention of acquiring land, megwa, or other dala wealth. Although Hutchins does not make this point explicitly, my Omarakana informants stress that those pokala prestations are intended to cultivate in the uncle or dala elder dispositions analogous to those routinely generated through paternal relationship. Through pokala, in other words, dala juniors attempt to establish “adoptive” (vakalova) father–son relations with their own dala seniors. It is according to the identical logic that chiefs and local leaders will often formally adopt a young chosen nephew as “son” to succeed them, as in the case of Pulayasi.32 The result is that before the megwa spells of a specific dala are transmitted endogenously across generations, they commonly pass from “fathers” to “sons”—including to “nephews” or others “adopted” as “sons,” and nominally, therefore, to men in that specific respect “outside” of the maternal dala— before they can exogenously reenter the dala of their matrilineal origination. If a dala elder’s son has already received megwa from his deceased father, then the father’s male dala relatives must make a special payment (katuyumali), more or less equivalent to pokala, to the son who has “replaced the father” (keymapula; Weiner 1976: 196–97; Mosko 1995: 771), so as to elicit the megwa of their own dala from him. In short, megwa “children” are regenerated within a dala according to processes analogous to how human “children” are procreated with their endogenous masculine and feminine dala identities and through extra-dala “paternal” contributions. Although the capacities of megwa recapitulate the asexual-endogenous masculine creative powers of tosonapula before settlement, the processes by which they are reproduced nowadays within and between dala reflect as well the exogamic exchanges inaugurated by dala ancestors subsequent to their mythical settlement on the land. To close, the notions of “personal partibility” and magical “participation” thus provide a new lens through which two prominent puzzles of Trobriand culture can now be reconfigured and hopefully solved. The crucial conceptual innovations here are that in the Trobriands persons are not viewed as unitary subjects in the sense of the canonical Western “individual” separate from the inanimate “objects” or “things” that they “possess” or “own.” Instead, they are composed of the detachable, elicitive components of other persons, including the elements and relations of baloma “souls” and “spirits” and the kekwabu “images” and peula “powers” of which all beings of the cosmos are constituted and in terms of which they participate with each other. As concerns Malinowski’s puzzle over magical efficacy, the words of spells are effective not following from their categorical differentiation from baloma and other spirits, but because they are spirits, or at least detachable, personal components of them. As for the enigmas over “virgin birth,” the inseminating influences of spirits, waiwaia, blood, warmth, dripping water, and so on, are in the terms of the culture and cosmogony not separate from the agency of procreative fathers; they embody the personal images and powers of paternity. However, the utility of personal partibility and participation as demonstrated in this essay does not stop there. Without it, the images and powers of megwa might initially have been taken to be mere “objects” while the kekwabu and peula of parents, children, and baloma might similarly have been seen as “subjects,” and thus not immediately comparable. After all, it is the analytical faculty of personal partibility and participation to dissolve the distinction of persons and things which has enabled me to compare indigenous views of magical and procreative agency as analogs of one another. Acknowledgments Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association at Washington, DC, anthropology seminars at the Australian National University (2009) and the University of California at San Diego (2014), and the Melanesian Research Seminar in London (2013). The ethnographic information contained herein was gathered at Omarakana and neighboring villages on eight annual fieldtrips totalling twenty months between 2006 and 2013. Initially I was the personal guest of the Tabalu, Pulayasi Daniel, but before the end of the first visit I was adopted to become a member of Tabalu dala, a younger brother of Pulayasi, and a kinsman and affine to others. I mention this detail because it greatly impacted the caliber of my relationships with residents of Omarakana and the surrounding community. I am immeasurably indebted to Tabalu Pulayasi and other members of my research team (Pakalaki Tokulapai, Molubabeba Daniel, Kevin Kobuli, Mairawesi Pulayasi, Vincent Yogaru, Toliwaga Toguguwa Tobodeli, George Mwasuluwa, Tobi Mokagai, and Modiala Daniel) and many other Northern Kiriwinans for their faith and confidence in me and my work. Generous funding from the Australian Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University made the research possible. I have been greatly aided by the resources made available to me at the DEPTH archives at California State University (Sacramento). Allan Darrah, Fred Damon, Michael Young, Jordan Haug, Kathy Lepani, Ed Hutchins, Andy Connelly, Harry Beran, Ralph Lawton, Sergio Jarillo de la Torre, Susan Montague, and five anonymous referees provided invaluable comments and criticisms of earlier drafts. This article’s appearance is largely due to Giovanni da Col’s unrelenting encouragement and support. Remaining errors and omissions are my own. References Austen, Leo. 1934–35. “Procreation among the Trobriand Islanders.” Oceania 5: 102–13. Baldwin, Bernard. 1971. “Dokanikani: Cannibal tales of the wild Western Pacific.” Unpublished manuscript, 391 pp. April. Pacific Manuscript Bureau, reel 10031. ———. N.d. “The vocabulary of biga Boyowa.” Unpublished manuscript. Pacific Manuscript Bureau, reel 63. Blanes, Ruy, and Diane Espírito Santo, eds. 2014. The social life of spirits. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Campbell, Shirley. 2002. The art of kula. Oxford: Berg. Chowning, Ann. 1977. 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Fighting with food: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1983. Magicians of manumanua: Living myth in Kalauna. Berkeley: University of California Press. Les énigmes magiques de Malinowski: vers une nouvelle théorie de la magie et de la procréation dans la société trobriandaise Résumé : Les écrits classiques de Malinowski sur la socialité trobriandaise ont laissé à l’anthropologie de nombreuses énigmes durables. Cet article en deux parties examine deux de ces énigmes relatives aux descriptions contradictoires des agents impliqués dans les chants magiques (megwa). D’un côté, en accord avec ses théories pragmatique et fonctionnaliste de la langue et de la culture, Malinowski a affirmé que, si les baloma ancestraux et autres esprits sont généralement invoqués dans la plupart des sorts, l’efficacité de ces incantations dérive plutôt de la puissance des mots énoncés. De l’autre côté, en guise d’évidence de « l’ignorance de la paternité physiologique » des insulaires, il prétendait que les sorts destinés à produire la grossesse chez les femmes du village avaient expressément pour but de susciter des actions rituelles appropriées des esprits baloma en tant qu’agents de la conception et de la naissance. À partir de données ethnographiques récemment recueillies au village d’Omarakana, interprétées sous l’angle de la « nouvelle ethnographie mélanésienne » et de la théorie de la « participation » dans la pratique rituelle formulée antérieurement par Tambiah, toutes deux ici revisitées, je soutiens que pour les trobriandais le pouvoir magique des mots est la puissance des esprits, et inversement. Cette nouvelle compréhension a des implications importantes pour les débats classiques et contemporains sur la nature de la « magie », les controverses sur la paternité et la soi-disant « immaculée conception », les théories de la personnalité et de l’agencéité, ainsi que les caractéristiques des dala « matrilinéaires ». Mark S. MOSKO is Professor of Anthropology in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. He is author of Quadripartite structures (1985) and Gifts that change (forthcoming) and coeditor (with Margaret Jolly) of Transformations of hierarchy (1995) and (with Fred Damon) On the order of chaos (2005) as well as many journal articles and book chapters. In recent years he has reoriented his earlier research interests concerning North Mekeo (Central Province PNG) symbolism, social organization, and change to ethnographic comparisons with the Trobriands and reinterpretations of earlier analyses of their culture. Recent publications include “The fractal yam” (JRAI 2009), the 2008 RAI Curl Prize essay “Partible penitents” (JRAI 2010), and “Omarakana revisited” (JRAI 2013). Mark S. MoskoDepartment of AnthropologySchool of Culture, History and LanguageCollege of Asia and the PacificAustralian National UniversityCanberra ACT 0200 Australiamark.mosko@anu.edu.au ___________________ 1. The “virgin birth” debate, as it came to be known, was initiated with an essay by Edmund Leach (1966) based on Malinowski’s report (1932) and other ethnography conducted by that time (e.g. Austen 1934–35; Powell 1956). Additional major contributions to the debate focusing on Trobriand procreation include Edmund Leach (1968), Powell (1968), Spiro (1968), and Montague (1971). Others have subsequently entered the fray (e.g. Weiner 1976, 1988; Delaney 1986; Van Dokkum 1997; Mosko 1998, 2005). 2. The term megwa is nowadays used to refer both to “magic” generally and to specific spells or chants. There is an archaic term, yopa, which is occasionally used to refer to verbalized spells (Malinowski 1922: 299). 3. An incomplete list of critics on topics other than those addressed in this essay would include, for example, Firth (1957); Tambiah (1968, 1973, 1990); Rosengren (1976); Weiner (1976); Stocking (1983); Iteanu (1995: 145–46); Senft (1997); Gell (1998). 4. The word baloma refers to the internal “soul” of living persons and that soul’s invisible, immaterial existence once it is released from the body upon death to become human ancestral spirits (Malinowski [1916] 1948). The term bilu baloma includes among its referents various nonhuman as well as human spiritual beings, as described below. 5. Based on others’ previously published ethnographies, two prior investigators (Philsooph 1971; Darrah 1972; see also Baldwin 1971: 282) came to question seriously Malinowski’s claims as to the efficacy of magical words. There are also statements available from knowledgeable Trobrianders endorsing the view that spirits are the source of megwa powers (Ketobwau is Ketobwau 1994: 22–25; Malnic 1998: 143–44). 6. These spells are among the collective tukwa “property” of dala units (see below). Although Malinowski concentrated on these dala-based incantations, he was apparently not familiar with the named category, tukwa. It should be noted that there exists another category of non-hereditary “private” megwa spells (sosewa) which, unlike tukwa, does not necessarily require the invoking of ancestral spirits but still relies on spirit agency (see Figure 1). 7. Interestingly, in his analysis of Sinhalese and Pali Buddhist rites conducted in the same essay as his analysis of Trobriand magic, Tambiah (1968: 176–80) included the participation of gods, ancestral ghosts, spirits, and so on, as among the effective agents. 8. It is curious that despite this considerable shift between his “performance” and “participation” approaches, in the latter context Tambiah (1990: 65–83) devotes two chapters to Malinowski and Trobriand magic but again elides the question of spirit participation or any implications which might ensue from it. 9. One of the strongest criticisms of the NME is its typically synchronic orientation toward sociality and hence its supposed inability to address change. Elsewhere (Mosko in press-a, forthcoming), I have sought to respond to this criticism, in the first instance dealing with the contemporary practice of Trobriand magic in the context of introduced gambling; and see below. 10. A sample of both views would include Codrington (1891: 119–20); Hocart (1914: 99); Hogbin (1936: 244); Chowning (1977); Lawrence (1988); Lawrence and Meggitt (1965: 6–9); Young (1971; 1983); Valeri (1985); Trompf (1991); Gell (1995); Sillitoe (1998). 11. The designation “Paramount Chief” is an artifact of the establishment of colonial control by British and Australian forces. Here I prefer to use the indigenous title for that position, the “Tabalu.” 12. Evidence I have gathered regarding the logic of ula’ula oblations lends further support to my present argument that bilu baloma spirits are the agents of magic. Their separate treatment, however, raises issues well beyond the question of the magical efficacy of spells in the strict sense and, owing also to length limitations, must await a later opportunity for analysis. For now, it is sufficient to note that ula’ula offerings are essentially sacrifices intended to obligate the named spirits, inducing them to reciprocate by performing the acts as instructed in the next-recited megwa. As I have argued at length elsewhere (Mosko in press-b), the logic of sacrifice fits comfortably with that of personal partibility. 13. To the people of Northern Kiriwina, the term “Boyowa” is the indigneous name of the main island of the Trobriands, nowadays known as “Kiriwina.” However, villagers also routinely refer to the generalized visible, material universe as “Boyowa,” in contrast to the invisible, immaterial world of Tuma. 14. For additional rejections by Malinowski of the magical agency of baloma spirits specifically, see also [1916] 1948: 196, 213–15; 1922: 407, 412, 433, 435–36; 1935a: 452–82; 1935b: 215–18. 15. As I have been advised by the Tabalu, Pulayasi Daniel, the information contained within the following account of the indigenous cosmology is very likely not readily accessible from all or even most Trobrianders. This is partly because it holds a central place as tukwa or sacred hereditary knowledge of members of Tabalu dala, particularly those based at Omarakana (see below). In this as in other instances, knowledge of tukwa, including the content of megwa spells “owned” by a particular dala, is restricted to selected dala members and children of male members. Therefore, while other villagers of different dala may know various bits of Trobriand cosmology as outlined here, it is presumably only Tabalu affiliates, and only some of them at that, who are in possession of the full and most authoritative accounts. Pulayasi adds this as one explanation for why fuller accounts of Trobriand cosmology have not been given to ethnographers working elsewhere in the region. 16. In this sense, Trobriand cosmology would qualify as an instance of Descola’s (2010) ontology of “animism.” But as I shall outline below, on the basis of additional ontological criteria, Trobriand cosmology also qualifies as “totemism” and “analogism.” 17. From the perspective of this mirror-like imagery, the cosmological tie between Boyowa and Tuma is analogical (Descola 2010). 18. Kekwabu is the Northern Kiriwinan dialectical version of kaikobu and kaikwabu as reported from other regions. 19. This process would seem to parallel Malinowski’s (1932:148–49, 152–54, 160) reports of women being inseminated by waiwaia “spirit children” through their heads; see Part 2. 20. The oral traditions of most, although not all, dala include mention of the local emergence of dala ancestors on dala-owned land. According to my Omarakana and other sources, these events occurred mythically in the course of tosunapula migrations before “settlement” (sibogwa) on the lands that their living descendants have come to occupy. 21. This version of Trobriand cosmology, of itself, is consistent with the preponderance of ethnographic evidence which refutes Malinowski’s notorious claims of Islanders’ supposed “ignorance of physiological paternity”; see below. 22. The famous water (sopi) dripping from the stalactite which pierced Malita’s vagina in conceiving Ikuli Tudava is identified by Pulayasi as the watery saliva (bubwalua) of Ika’ili Tudava (cf. Malinowski [1916] 1948: 228; 1935a: 68–75). As I shall discuss below, mouths along with caves are viewed as analogous to vaginas, capable of giving birth. 23. Tosunapula are the same spirit ancestors described by Weiner (1976: 39) and Malinowski (1935b: 262–63) as tabu. 24. The particulars of Trobriand beliefs about human procreation are, of course, immensely complicated and controversial. Thankfully, the Tabalu, Pulayasi Daniel, and my other Omarakana informants have affirmed in broad outline my earlier analyses and the further details presented below. 25. The malevolent, war-like tauva’u or itona thought to cause epidemic disease are a subcategory of tokwai. 26. In this regard, Trobriand cosmology conforms to Descola’s model of totemic as well as animistic and analogistic ontologies. This explains, in part, Seligman’s (1910: 661–735) strong focus on “totems” in his formulation of Northern Massim social organization. 27. The term for these taboos is kikila. 28. Tambiah (1968: 195) observed how Malinowski failed to appreciate the symbolic parallels between garden and pregnancy magic, although his informants were clear on the relationship. My argument here is more general: that in the terms of the culture, the logic of all masculine magical megwa production and creativity is analogous to feminine bodily reproduction and procreation, and vice versa. 29. It is not my intention here to reopen the debate over “virgin birth,” for I do not delve into the many additional data which point to the deep significance of Trobriand paternity. Rather, I focus here on the agentive parallels of baloma ancestral spirits in procreation and megwa performance. This treatment of implicit incest in beliefs regarding spirit impregnation of females also differs substantially from the account of Weiner (1992). 30. In this passage, I allude to the way in which the gender distinction of “male” versus “female,” along with other key dichotomies in the culture, is systematically crosscut such that anything conceptualized initially as “male” is typically composed of both “male” and “female” parts, and the same for any being or entity initially classified as “female” (see Mosko 2013). This formulation comes very close, I think, to exemplifying Strathern’s (1988) notion of androgynous Melanesian persons conceived in terms of cross- and same-sex relations; see also Scoditti (2012: 67). 31. Trobriand attitudes toward “incest” (suvasova) have generated an enormous literature in their own right, the systematic analysis of which goes well beyond the bounds of the present essay, but which I hope to examine more fully in future along the lines provisionally set out here. 32. The contemporary chief of Kwenama dala based at Yolumgwa village, John Kasaipwalova, was similarly adopted as son by his mother’s brother, the previous chief, Nalabutau.  

States of dependency or patron-client relations? This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Cris Shore. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau6.1.008 MEDITATION States of dependency or patron-client relations? Theorizing precarity in academia Cris SHORE, The University of Auckland Comment on “Academic precarity as hierarchical dependence in the Max Planck Society” by Vita Peacock, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Volume 6, Issue 1, Summer 2016. Vita Peacock is to be congratulated for her thought-provoking study of academic precarity in Germany’s most important nongovernmental and nonprofit research association. The Max Planck Society (MPS) boasts an impressive record of scholarly achievement with “no fewer than 18 Nobel Laureates” to have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, and over 15,000 scientific publications per year (MPS 2016). According to the MPS website (2016), the basis of that success lies in its distinctive person-centered model, one that entails recruiting the “world’s leading researchers,” endowing them with the “best working conditions,” and giving them “free reign in selecting their staff.” As Vita Peacock demonstrates, however, that freedom for the permanently tenured few comes at the cost of extreme dependence for the underclass of subaltern researchers on typically short-term, nonrenewable contracts. That is not something the MPS mentions on its website. Academic precarity and the casualization of the workforce have become key features of the contemporary higher education landscape not only in Germany. For example, in the United Kingdom the number of academics on casual contracts has grown to some 54 percent, while in the United States an estimated 76 percent of the academic workforce is now in nonpermanent, “adjunct” or “contingent posts” (O’Hara 2015). In Germany by contrast, precarity seems to have deeper roots and takes a different form. Drawing on a brief history of the Max Planck Society and short ethnographic and biographical vignettes of three male scientists, Peacock [128]demonstrates the strong continuities between the present system and the older hierarchical model of its Prussian predecessor, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. From a structural perspective, this seems to be a case of plus ça change. The theoretical novelty of the article is its application of James Ferguson’s (2013) provocative argument about voluntary dependency in Kwa-Zulu-Natal province of South Africa as a way of framing and analyzing the situation of scientists in the Max Planck Society. In his article, Ferguson challenges some commonly held Western liberal assumptions about individual autonomy and human dignity by showing how the “condition of dependency”—and the act of voluntary submission to the authority of a more powerful magnate—represents a form agency (or “mode of action”) and socio-political strategy. It is also an expression of personhood commensurate with a more socio-centric and relational idea of the self traditionally found in Africa. Peacock applies this framework to reflect on the extreme precarity of researchers in the Max Planck Society whose dependency, she argues, is the necessary counterpart to the independence and excellence of its directors. Following Ferguson, she proposes that we de-pathologize academic dependency and see it instead in terms of a “functional complementarity” of social relations. While some useful insights can be gained from such comparisons and by challenging uncritical Western assumptions about the “autonomous individual,” the notion of “desirable” dependency and the translation of the situation in Kwa-Zulu-Natal to German academia are, to say the least, problematic. To recast dependency in the workplace as a form of empowerment or desirable dependency runs the risk of obscuring what is at stake and the wider processes of structural violence that produce and sustain such inequalities. What I would like to do in this short commentary, therefore, is to contribute a few further thoughts to anthropological debates about precarity and autonomy in academia. The first of these can perhaps best be framed as a question. Instead of using aspirations to dependency in South Africa as a lens for exploring hierarchical relations in the Max Planck Institute, would it not be more analytically productive to look at examples closer to home? I am thinking in particular of studies of patronage and clientelism in Europe. There is a rich ethnographic literature going back to the 1960s that explores precisely the kinds of paternalistic and hierarchical dependency relations that seem to characterize the Max Planck Society (see, for example, Davis 1977). These studies showed how the patron-client relationship, despite its unequal and exploitative nature, was often deeply moral and intimate and typically depicted in the idioms of kinship and friendship. In this respect, patron-clientelism provided a mechanism for the weak and the powerless to draw more powerful members of the local elite (typically embodied in the figures of the landlord, mayor, doctors, politicians, and priest) into the orbit of their moral worlds. As with Ferguson’s account of South Africa, voluntary submission to a powerful patron was a strategy used by poor and subaltern individuals to mitigate their structural position of precariousness and vulnerability. It was also often a calculated exchange relationship and investment strategy: on the one hand, clients would offer loyalty, deference, and obedience, and for their part patrons would provide security, protection, and favors for the client and his family. The morality of the relationship was partly a result of the intimacy and continuity of these interpersonal ties. However, these ethnographies of patronage in Europe also highlighted the structural and systemic [129] dimensions of the patron-client relationship and the fact that these close “dyadic bonds” formed chains that extended outward in a network of relations that reach beyond the local community. In this way, local patrons, like feudal barons, were brokers and community-nation mediators whose position served to connect—or, as often as not, maintain the gap between—local elites to the wider resources of the state. Patrons were also typically clients of other, higher-placed patrons. But more importantly, from a political economy perspective, these patronage relations were a disguised form of class relationship—although the folk model often failed to acknowledge that unflattering conception. How might these insights be used to rethink relations of precarity at the Max Planck Society? To see precarity as dependence is a useful analytical move but we should also consider the class aspect of that dependency and question the idea of “functional complementarity” (we might ask “functional for who”?) That, I suggest, would enable us to make an even more persuasive E. P. Thompson-esque knights-move as it provides a methodology for connecting microlevel observations with macrolevel structural processes. The baronial “God-Professor” model has long been a feature of German academic life and seems to be particularly evident in the hard sciences, but perhaps the more interesting question to ask is to what extent has this model become more entrenched as a result of the neoliberalization of universities and the rise of academic capitalism? From an Antipodean (and personal) perspective, what I find striking is the extent to which this model seems to have spread to the humanities and the social sciences. This is particularly noticeable with the rise of what we might call “project barons”—i.e., those academics who have successfully captured large external research grants that have enabled them to create their own semiautonomous research institutes or centers, with their own budgets, staffing, and career opportunities. If the emergence of project baron reflects a science model of research, it is also a highly gendered phenomenon, yet the article makes little mention of gender. This is curious given that all of the protagonists in the story are male. It would be interesting to ask how much the pattern of precarity and sociality in this Nanoscience laboratory are shaped by gender norms. For example, how many of the Max Planck Society’s eighteen Nobel Laureates were men and what percentage of its directors are women? How different would the relationship between researchers and directors be if the later were female, and what might that reveal about the gender assumptions behind the Harnack Principle? While “excellence” and “autonomy” are often empty signifiers in academia—as Bill Readings (1996) pointed out two decades ago—to what extent does their rise to prominence as key values of the MPS reflect significant changes in gender relations as a result of the neoliberalization of the academy? Finally, there is the question of “autonomy” and the utility of applying Ferguson’s insights from South Africa to make sense of relations in German academia. Besides the obvious contextual differences in history and culture, a key point of contrast concerns the distinction between personal and professional autonomy. Ferguson’s argument about dependency in Kwa-Zulu-Natal reflects a much broader understanding of personhood that extends far beyond the workplace. Scientists in the Max Planck Institute may be dependent on their directors for continued employment but their condition of dependency is unlikely to extend beyond the workplace. In this respect, while Ferguson is right to challenge the myth of the autonomous [130]individual and the idea of dependency as some sort of disease, it is dangerous to apply this logic to the principle of professional autonomy in academia. Academics may not be “autonomous individuals” (and increasingly less so in the current environment of austerity-driven managerialism), but without at least some degree of academic autonomy very little remains of the principles of academic freedom and independence of thought upon which the idea of the university was founded. References Davis, Jon. 1977. The people of the Mediterranean: An essay in comparative social anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ferguson, James. 2013. “Declarations of dependence: Labour, personhood, and welfare in Southern Africa.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (2): 223–42. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12023. Max Planck Society. 2016. “A portrait of the Max Planck Society.” Accessed June 19, 2016. https://www.mpg.de/short-portrait. O’Hara, Mary. 2015. “University lecturers on the Breadline: Is the UK following in America’s footsteps”? The Guardian, November 17. http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/17/university-lecturers-uk-us-casual-posts-food-stamps. Readings, Bill. 1996. The university in ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.   Cris SHORE is professor of Anthropology at the University of Auckland. His main research interests lie in the interface between anthropology and politics, particularly the anthropology of policy, Europe, and the ethnography of organizations. He has published extensively on various themes including the anthropology of corruption, elites, the EU, “audit culture,” and university reform. His current research includes a study of universities in the global knowledge economy and a project entitled “The Crown and constitutional reform in New Zealand and other commonwealth countries.” His most recent book (edited with Sue Wright) is Death of the public university? (Berghahn Press, forthcoming). Cris ShoreDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of Auckland10 Symonds StAuckland 1010New Zealandc.shore@auckland.ac.nz  

Durkheim’s herbarium This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Bjørn Thomassen. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.044 INTRODUCTION Durkheim’s herbarium Situating Arnold van Gennep’s review of Émile Durkheim’s The elementary forms of the religious life Bjørn THOMASSEN, Roskilde University This introductory article situates Arnold van Gennep’s review of Émile Durkheim’s The elementary forms of the religious life. It does so by relating the review to van Gennep’s much-neglected endeavor to establish methodological foundations for the emerging social sciences in the early twentieth century, in open contrast to Durkheim and the Durkhemian school of anthropology and sociology. It also contextualizes the review by revisiting earlier publications where van Gennep decisively went up against Durkheim’s approach to religion and society. The article finally suggests that Arnold van Gennep must be considered a founding figure of ethnographic theory, of relevance still today. Keywords: Arnold van Gennep, Émile Durkheim, religion (theory of), ritual, ethnographic theory, history of social science Having no feel for life, no feel for biology or ethnography,he transforms living phenomena and beings (vivants) intoscientifically desiccated plants arranged as in a herbarium. What could possibly justify a translation and reprint of a review written by Arnold van Gennep more than a century ago? A review, moreover, of one of the most debated books in the history of the social sciences—Durkheim’s The elementary forms of the religious life (EFRL from now on)? Has not everything been said that needs to be said? Alas, no. When Durkheim published EFRL in 1912, it received both acclaim and criticism. In terms of reception, the book went through its own unsurprising but highly problematic “division of labour”: sociologists would generally gloss over the long [568]and descriptive ethnographic parts on Aboriginal Australian myth and ritual (the main part of the book) and jump straight to the overall conclusions. At this level, it was widely agreed that Durkheim had contributed a decisive statement about the origin and nature of religion, and about society as such. EFRL is without rivalry the most quoted and used work in the sociology of religion ever—and it figures as a core reading in any university course still today. Anthropologists and area specialists were more critical. Even Radcliffe-Brown, the proto-Durkhemian among English anthropologists, found that the ethnographic parts were based on a series of misinterpretations, and wrote so in a letter to Mauss (Kuper 1988: 177). Yet he still celebrated the theoretical edifice and domesticated Durkheim’s functionalism for future generations. With time, the book established itself as the foundational text for both the anthropology and sociology of religion. Subsequent critiques of Durkheim’s position (and there are many) have never questioned EFRL’s status as a “classic,” the mature masterpiece of the founding father of our social sciences. Arnold van Gennep’s review occupies a singular position in these early debates about religion and society. He had himself published on totemism and on the Australian material, and had a detailed knowledge of Durkheim’s sources. At this level his critique is categorical. However, the ethnographic weakness cannot be detached from the general view of religion and society that Durkheim presented in EFRL. Indeed, the most crucial aspect of the review concerns the “sociological” part, the general theory. Van Gennep says quite simply that there is no theory whatsoever. What Durkheim presents is nothing but a “metaphysical” abstraction, a “scholastic” thought-experiment, an invention of a desk-scholar. If van Gennep is right, we have for more than a century been discussing a theory which never existed. It is worth contemplating. Van Gennep’s review not only forces us to question EFRL’s status as a classic. It also raises questions that, far from belonging to the footnotes of intellectual history, relate to foundational questions of the What, How, and Why of ethnographic theory. To appreciate this deeper relevance, it is necessary to briefly contextualize the review, and say something about the man who wrote it. Situating Arnold van Gennep Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957) is one of the least recognized and understood anthropologists still today. He became known outside smaller circles of European folklorists only after 1960, when Rites of passage (originally published in 1909) was translated into English. Van Gennep had died three years before, in the midst of general oblivion. Rites of passage is a powerful book, and became an instant success—with half a century of delay. Upon its reading, key figures such as Leach, Needham, and Evans-Pritchard expressed sincere wonder as to why van Gennep had not been held in higher regard within French anthropology. Leach (1968: 522) concluded that van Gennep’s approach to ritual had proven much more fertile than that of Durkheim. How could someone write such a book without ever holding a position at a French university? Needham (1967: xi) even called the general disregard of van Gennep “an academic disgrace.” Needham had gained some insight into van Gennep’s universe, as he translated The semi-scholars into English in 1967. [569]Besides the 1975 translation of van Gennep’s review of EFRL (see Pickering 1975: 205–8),1 no further work has since been translated into English, so Matthew Carey’s updated translation in this issue is the first translation of a van Gennep text in nearly half a century. The semi-scholars is a prose-style ironic account of academic specialization and the farcical but tragic loss of both commonsense and ultimate purpose in the pursuit of gay science. Needham understood that the book somehow reflected van Gennep’s own experience with institutionalized academia. He also intuited that van Gennep must somehow have been “kept away” from the academic world of Paris, but never ventured further into the issue. Arnold van Gennep is today well known among European folklorists (Belmont [1974] 1979; Senn 1974), but he has remained a puzzle for anthropologists. And sociologists quite simply don’t know him. History commits strange injustices. Van Gennep is one of the most prolific writers and well-read social scientists in modern European intellectual history. His encyclopedic knowledge was second to none. His review activities were amazingly prolific and wide ranging. Between 1905 and 1949 he published 250 review articles just for Mercure de France, the journal where his review of EFRL appeared in January 1913. Since he would typically review three to five books together in each “chronique” for Mercure, we are dealing with more than a thousand books reviewed—in this one journal alone, and he published for many others. In 1908 van Gennep had himself founded La Revue des Études Ethnographiques et Sociologiques, in which he would publish regularly while functioning as Directeur and administrator. This journal, albeit short-lived, could well be seen as a potential competitor to L’Année Sociologique, founded by Durkheim in 1898. Van Gennep reviewed extensively because he had to: it added a bit to his income, which he put together via an array of freelance jobs, never receiving a salaried job in French academia. But he evidently enjoyed it as well, devouring with intense curiosity anything that was brought to his attention. His reviews dealt with literature across the social sciences in at least ten different languages, including French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and a handful of Slavic languages. He consulted all major journals in Europe and America, and contributed to many of them. In an article from 1927, discussing the use of the subconscious in the study of living languages, he stated mastering eighteen languages plus a number of their dialects (Belmont [1974] 1979: 7). It was van Gennep who translated some of the most important works into French (including Frazer and Westermarck, not to forget the eighteen volumes of Havelock Ellis’ series on sexual psychology). Already in this role of translator and transmitter of European anthropology, folklore, poetry, art, history, and psychology, van Gennep played a nonnegligible role for the French social sciences during the first half of the twentieth century.[570] Van Gennep was a meticulous but honest reviewer, always approaching the work under review with careful respect. His critical sense was sharp as a knife, but he would maintain an extremely sober and respectful tone when dealing with other people’s work. As the reader will probably appreciate, this was hardly the case with van Gennep’s review of EFRL. The review is bitingly sarcastic. While sprinkled with gentle doses of humor, van Gennep annihilates Durkheim’s entire enterprise. He thereby also debunks the epistemological and methodological foundations of the Durkhemian school. Why this uncompromising tone? To understand the stakes, we need to take a step back and consider van Gennep’s relationship to the Durkhemian school. Arnold van Gennep and the French social sciences In most encyclopedic entries, van Gennep is described as an “outsider” to the inner circles of French academia. This is somewhat true. Van Gennep never got a job offer in French academia. He was born outside France (although he came to France at the age of six with his mother), and as a young man he lived for a longer period in Russian Poland, before moving to Paris to study in 1901. It is also clear that van Gennep possessed a rebellious nature. At the same time, the “outsider story” simply does not add up. Van Gennep was, in his early career, extremely close to the inner circles of French academic life. His critique of Durkheim came from a vision he gained from within. And the critique took shape during the formative years of social science discipline formation. At the beginning of the century, van Gennep studied sciences religieuses with Léon Marillier at the École Pratique, in close contact with that cohort of young people later to become Durkheim’s collaborators, including Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert, Paul Fauconnet, and many others. Upon Marillier’s death in 1901, Mauss became van Gennep’s teacher and mentor. In 1903, Mauss proofread and commented upon van Gennep’s thesis on taboo and totemism in Madagascar. Van Gennep’s interests during the first decade of the century developed alongside those of the Durkheimians, including the classical topics of totemism, taboo, the origins and nature of religion, magic, classification systems, and the relationship between myth and ritual. The relation to Mauss seems to have been especially important, even profound. They were contemporaries, and their positions converged in important ways (for more detail, see Thomassen 2016, on which this and the following section draws). In the preface to his first book, Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar: Étude descriptive et théorique from 1904, van Gennep reserves the final thanks to “mon ami Marcel Mauss” (van Gennep 1904: 2). In 1906 van Gennep published his second book, Mythes et légendes d’Australie, in which he chose to openly expose the problems with Durkheim’s work. This is important to know: his 1913 review of EFRL was not a sudden impulse, but the culmination of a critical engagement that had started a decade before. Van Gennep’s discussion of Durkheim in his 1906 book goes straight to the heart of the latter’s position. Before 1906, Durkheim and Mauss had written several essays on religion referring to the Australian material. Van Gennep was not convinced. His critique started off from an issue which was then the object of endless debate: whether it was possible to establish which descent system was the “original one.” Referring to [571]the Australian material, Durkheim had argued that matrilineal descent could be considered the original mode of social organization, only that over time it had been replaced by patrilineal descent. Van Gennep argued back that in many Australian societies parallel systems coexist, and that a social scientist should refrain from speculating about “origins” in the absence of empirical evidence. He thereby uncovered the evolutionist stance that lurks behind Durkheim’s explanatory apparatus. Durkheim had wanted to cut off historical explanations from sociological science, but the moment he set out to theorize himself, he plunged into evolutionist speculation. Van Gennep therefore questions the adopted analytical procedure by which Durkheim posits the Arunta at a certain level or stage of “development,” allowing him an analytical short-cut to the question of “origins.” Whenever Durkheim recognizes a change, over time, or between groups (in kinship affiliations, for example), he systematically prevents any real account of such a transformation, relegating it simply to the “general needs of society” (van Gennep 1906: xxv). Durkheim presents no grounding epistemology to tell us what such a “society” is to be able to “have” such needs. Durkheim, says van Gennep, operates a peculiar kind of “métaphysique sociologique” (ibid.: xxiv). Positing a “metaphysical abstraction” at the core of his argument, he then artificially “animates” it (ibid.: xxv) by manipulating ethnographic data, and by granting “society” explanatory powers without ever accounting for the very nature of that “society” (the parallels to Gabriel Tarde’s earlier critiques of Durkheim are evident; see Thomassen 2012). As van Gennep says, rather provocatively, this means to resolve a problem without having even managed to pose it as a problem (1906: xxv). On those same fatal pages, van Gennep took one step further in his critique, pointing towards the dangerous political implications of Durkheim’s categorical collectivism: We have seen how Mr. Durkheim explains social modifications by the “needs of society” without indicating either the why or the where of those needs, and without justifying how exactly a “society,” however small, may have “needs” in the first place. It is by an identical process of animation that they speak to us of “the call of the fatherland,” or “the voice of the race.” Mr. Durkheim anthropomorphizes, even if this is what he pretends to defend himself from. (1906: xxxv, emphasis and inverted commas in the original, my translation) What a foolishly honest/honestly foolish thing to write in 1906! According to van Gennep, Durkheim’s sociology was not just flawed at the theoretical level; the entire epistemology onto which it built bore resemblances to other and much more serious political essentialisms that were showing their ugly face. Durkheim answered van Gennep’s critique with absolute silence; but he was evidently aware of it—and there can be no doubt that he discussed it with Mauss. Rites of passage In 1909 van Gennep published Rites de passage. This was a crucial moment in his life, as the writing of the book coincided with his decision in 1908 to quit his job [572]at the Ministry of Agriculture (where he had been head of translations) and dedicate himself wholeheartedly to writing and translating. Rites de passage was van Gennep’s most important book, resulting, in his own words, from nothing less than an “inner illumination.” It provided him with a conceptual frame that guided him for the rest of his life. It was Mauss (1910) who reviewed Rites de passage in L’Année, although Durkheim might have had some say as well. Mauss’ review was very negative, perhaps unsurprisingly after van Gennep’s attack on Durkheim in 1906. It was also a very unfair review, as it distorted the aims and intentions behind the book, showing no appreciation of the conceptual advance it actually presented. Van Gennep, however, was determined to carry forward his project. In 1910 he published La formation des légendes, his seventh book. It was followed up by two books in 1911 (one of which was later translated as The semi-scholars). Van Gennep had by then become deeply engaged with general epistemological and methodological issues. Prior to World War I he published a series of programmatic articles in which he started to formulate a methodological platform for the social sciences—an approach which he baptized as a “biological sociology,” and which differed from the Durkheimian school on all significant accounts. In his review of EFRL, van Gennep makes reference to Durkheim’s lack of a sense of “biology.” This is crucial, but we can only appreciate this comment if we understand that van Gennep’s insistence on biology was not an allusion to the authority and objectivity of natural science, but instead a stress on the importance of direct observation, and systematic gathering of data, leading, step by step, to theory building. Van Gennep wanted social scientists to deal with what he called living facts (“faits naissants,” e.g., facts in their “emergence”) rather than dead and abstract social facts, “external” to the individual, as Durkheim would have it. This is the pivotal contrast that animates the 1913 review. Van Gennep is not exposing just this or that aspect of Durkheim’s approach. He is saying that Durkheim’s social science has lost sight of human beings. EFRL represented a diametrical opposite to his own attempt to establish anthropology as a life science. Despite his productivity, van Gennep never passed the threshold into French academia. This certainly had a lot to do with his critique of Durkheim. Following failed candidatures at the Collège de France in 1907, 1909, and 1911, he decided to go abroad. In 1912 he was offered the first (and only) academic position he ever held, as chair in “Swiss ethnography” at the University of Neuchâtel. It was Henri Junod who made it possible. Junod had read Rites de passage and was deeply impressed by it. When EFRL was published, van Gennep was almost an outcast in French academia, already on the move to Switzerland, where he was about to set up his own school of anthropology. In Rites of passage van Gennep had argued for the centrality of ritual and ritual passages toward an energetic understanding of religious ritual and social processes. He had proposed a universal classification of rites. He had published a book on Australian myth and one on totemism. These should have been central discussions for anyone writing a book about such matters in 1912. Durkheim, however, disregarded van Gennep’s contributions altogether—on purpose, as van Gennep cannot help but remark in his review. He had little reason to be diplomatic.[573] Out of Durkheim’s herbarium, into the life sciences So why does it all matter? It matters because van Gennep’s review of EFRL is not only one of the most radical but perhaps also the very first of such critiques of Durkheim’s approach to society and religion—yet even critics of Durkheim have so far neglected it. Nobody then, and nobody since, would have been so uniquely positioned to assess the work in question. The critique has to be taken seriously. It matters because the review in question does not only throw critical light on the Durkhemian project; it equally throws light back on the life and much-neglected work of Arnold van Gennep. The review is not only about what van Gennep was against; it opens a window onto what he was struggling for. “Publish or perish,” the slogan goes, but it does not apply to van Gennep, who did indeed publish, and more than almost any social scientist in the twentieth century. And yet he almost nearly perished. Van Gennep was not just a prolific reader and writer. He had a project, and a larger vision of the social sciences that he tried to build up in the early decades of the twentieth century. Course syllabi on religion today often insert an excerpt from Rites of passage. In today’s standard approach, van Gennep is discussed as a supplement to Durkheim’s theory of ritual and religion: van Gennep offered a useful terminology for the study of ritual passages, whereas it was Durkheim and others who provided a theoretical framework. Van Gennep would have been seriously uneasy seeing his classification of rites represented as a supplement—or, worse, a parenthesis—to Durkheim’s sociology of religion. His entire work was an effort to overcome what he saw as the most serious defects of Durkhemian sociology. I am aware that Durkheim’s EFRL will stay on our reading lists for some time to come. But now that van Gennep’s review is finally available in English, we could at least start adding it to those reading lists—making it clear to ourselves and our students that his contribution to the study of religion and society was not an addition to Durkheim’s, but a genuine alternative. It matters, finally, because van Gennep’s vision for the social sciences was intimately related to the aim of this Maussian journal to inspire ethnographic theorization. While HAU takes its name from Mauss’ spirit of the gift, this “spirit” can in fact be traced back to van Gennep. In Rites of passage Van Gennep had largely anticipated Mauss’ most salient observations concerning gift giving. Chapter 3 in Rites of passage is almost entirely dedicated to ritualistic exchange of words, gestures, services, goods, slaves, and wives: exactly the aspects of exchange that Mauss systematically took up in his essay on the gift, and which Lévi-Strauss used as platform for his exchange theory. Certain “gifts” are obligatorily given, said van Gennep: the circulation of goods and objects serves to create continuous social bonds ([1909] 1960: 31). Gift giving is the “confirmation of a bond,” and “to accept a gift is to be bound to the giver” (ibid.: 29). Van Gennep then discusses, among others, the potlatch as one peculiar example, as he discusses gift-giving practices among warrior groups as a peace-instituting act; he further notes how incorporation rites are often tied to military, sexual, and political rights (ibid.: 35). This crucial conceptual discussion is entitled “Individuals and groups,” which precedes the six following chapters, which each deal with a cross-cultural examination of ritual passages as they pertain to the life cycle, from pregnancy to death. Van Gennep anticipated [574]Mauss’ insight that gift giving must be seen as a foundational principle at play in ritual phenomena, weaving together individuals and groups—neither of which can or should be reduced to each other. Common wisdom has for a century catalogued van Gennep as a talented ethnographer and folklorist, but ultimately an undisciplined figure lingering at the margins of the social sciences, and unfortunately without a theory. In Routledge’s Key thinkers, Karady (1987: 255) characteristically claimed that van Gennep’s approach was “essentially empirical with limited theoretical underpinning.” It is high time we turn conventional wisdom on its head. Arnold van Gennep was a daring thinker across disciplines exactly because he was an eminent ethnographer, a theorist with a passion for living facts in all their spirited materiality. He clearly must be ranked among the founding figures of ethnographic theory. References Belmont, Nicole. (1974) 1979. Arnold van Gennep: The creator of French ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Karady, Victor. 1987. “Arnold van Gennep.” In Key thinkers, past and present, edited by Jessica Kuper, 255–56. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Kuper, Adam. 1988. The invention of primitive society. London: Routledge. Leach, Edmund 1968. “Ritual.” In International encyclopedia of the social sciences, Vol. 13, edited by David Sills, 520–26. New York: Macmillan. Mauss, Marcel. 1910. “[Review of Van Gennep’s Rites de passage].” L’Année Sociologique 11: 200–202. (Reprinted in Œuvres, I, : 553–55. Paris: Minuit, 1968.) Needham, Rodney. 1967. “Introduction.” In The semi-scholars, Arnold van Gennep, ix–xx. Translated by Rodney Needham. London: Routledge. Pickering, W.S.F (ed.). 1975. Durkheim on religion: A selection of readings with bibliographies and introductory remarks. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, pp. 205–8.[575] Senn, Harry A. 1974. “Arnold van Gennep: Structuralist and apologist for the study of folklore in France.” Folklore 85: 229–43. Thomassen Bjørn. 2012. “Durkheim between Gabriel Tarde and Arnold van Gennep: Founding moments of sociology and anthropology.” Social Anthropology 20: 231–49. ———. 2016. “The hidden battle that shaped the history of sociology: Arnold van Gennep contra Émile Durkheim.” Journal of Classical Sociology 16: 173–95. van Gennep, Arnold. 1904. Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar: Éétude descriptive et théorique. Paris: Leroux. ———. 1906. Mythes et légendes d’Australie: Études d’ethnographie et de sociologie. Paris: E. Guilmoto. ———. (1909) 1960. The rites of passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Contextualisation du compte-rendu critique de van Gennep au sujet des Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse d’Émile Durkheim Résumé : Cet article d’introduction contextualise le compte-rendu critique rédigé par van Gennep au sujet de l’ouvrage d’Émile Durkheim Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. L’article met en rapport ce compte-rendu et le projet bien souvent négligé qu’avait van Gennep d’établir les fondements méthodologiques des sciences sociales balbutiantes au début du 20e siècle ; un projet qui contrastait fortement avec l’école Durkheimienne de sociologie et d’anthropologie. Le compte-rendu est également placé en relation avec des publications plus anciennes de van Gennep où ils s’oppose explicitement à l’approche qu’adopte Durkheim dans l’étude de la religion et de la société. Enfin, cet article suggère qu’Arnold van Gennep devrait être considéré comme un fondateur toujours d’actualité de la théorie ethnographique. Bjørn THOMASSEN is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University. His work engages anthropological and social theory applied to a variety of social fields, including the study of political revolutions and social mobilization. He publishes in journals across the social sciences. Recent books include Italian modernities (coauthored with Rosario Forlenza; Palgrave, 2016); Breaking boundaries: Varieties of liminality (edited with Agnes Horvath and Harald Wydra; Berghahn, 2015); Liminality and the modern: Living through the in-between (Ashgate, 2014); and Global Rome: Changing faces of the Eternal City (edited with Isabella Clough Marinaro; Indiana University Press, 2014). Bjørn ThomassenDepartment of Social Sciences and BusinessUniversitetsvej 1Building 23.14000 RoskildeDenmarkbthomas@ruc.dk ___________________ 1. In the volume “Durkheim and Religion”, edited by Pickering (1975), a translation of van Gennep’s review was added under “Other authors” as an appendix. However, this volume failed to properly situate Arnold van Gennep’s wider contribution to the social sciences, and largely left the reader unequipped to engage the review and its background. In fact, the 1975 English translation of the review has received almost no attention in the literature.   This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Arnold van Gennep. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.044 TRANSLATION Review of É. Durkheim, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse Arnold VAN GENNEP Translated from the French by Matthew Carey   Rigorous to a fault, Mr. Durkheim spares the reader not a single step in the formidable chain of reasoning that underpins his efforts to identify The elementary forms of the religious life; nor a single opportunity to discuss the minutiae of the ordering of his evidence. The volume is composed of two overlapping sections: the one theoretical and general; the other monographic. This latter, though most thorough, seems to me to be the weaker of the two. As I have myself, over the years, inspected the same documents as Mr. Durkheim, I consider myself entitled to declare their theoretical worth to be rather less than he seems to suppose. Indeed, he treats them in much the same manner as religious commentators treat their sacred texts, marshaling vast erudition to illuminate them, but never wondering whether three-quarters of the raw material is even trustworthy. I should like to hope this volume might attract a few new adepts to ethnography, but I fear that, like Mr. LÉvy-Bruhl’s book, it will only drive them away.1 Believe me when I say [577]that this is a dusty, bookish sort of ethnography, handled the way Greek and Latin texts are often handled in the misnamed German style. The surfeit of references to documents written by sundry informants, police officers, random colonists, obstreperous missionaries, and so forth, is simply futile, as there are entire pages of Mr. Durkheim’s book where the conscientious ethnographer is obliged to append a question mark to each line: “Really? How reliable is this informant? How reliable is the document and what does it actually say?” Andrew Lang and Father Schmidt lost their way in the Australian hornets’ nest and, lo, Mr. Durkheim hurtles after them. In ten years, his entire systematization of the Australian material will have been utterly rejected, along with the multiple generalizations constructed on the flimsiest foundation of ethnographic facts I have ever observed. The idea he has extracted from this ensemble of primitive man (relatively speaking; cf. the footnote to p. 11) and “simple” societies is simply misguided. The better one is acquainted with Australian societies, and the less one focuses on the development of their material culture and social organization, the more one remarks that they are very complex, very far from the simple or primitive, and indeed very evolved along their own lines. At this very moment, B. Spencer (whose complete material I have never had the opportunity to examine, having only seen summaries and analyses) is exploring northern Australia: is it likely that what his expedition uncovers will be simpler or more primitive. It will be clear to even the nonspecialist reader (unversed not merely in the Australian ethnography, but in ethnography more generally) that Mr. Durkheim plugs the gaps in the data with innumerable hypotheses, always ingenious, and always put forward with disconcerting sincerity. As soon as one rejects the least of these hypotheses, the rest of the edifice begins to crumble. This entire section, I fear, rather resembles the intellectual method of Lombroso, whose strength resides precisely in the vast number of articulating hypotheses, the practical inanity and logical deficiency of each of which deserves a book of its own. But let us not tarry with these inauspicious Australians, who have bamboozled many a thinker. The other section of Mr. Durkheim’s book is full of good, solid truths. Two grand theories dominate this section: a general theory of totemism and a general theory of religion. In both cases, the data marshaled reaches beyond Australia to attain the necessary comparative scope. In chapter V, we encounter a critique of various theories of totemism. It is simple, efficient, and correct. Chapter VI (origins of these beliefs), however, offers no real theory to speak of. For the mere assertion that “totemism is the religion, not of such and such animals or men or images, but of an anonymous and impersonal force, found in each of these beings but not to be confounded with any of them” (i.e., mana), cannot be described as a theory. What is more, this definition can only be applied to totemism’s substratum. In other words, it amounts to a reduction of totemism to fetishism and thus sidesteps all the very real difficulties of interpreting the detail and simultaneously sidesteps such questions as: Why so many different forms of totemism? Which is the real one? Etc. It opens, in short, a door to all sorts of new debates, but provides us with no definition that might illuminate the areas of darkness. A totem is a sort of force that has been individualized; it is quite unlike “fetishistic” or “impersonal” forces.[578] Mr. Durkheim’s statements regarding this impersonal force and dynamic primitive conceptions thereof may startle the reader; I think I have been sufficiently forthright in pointing out the weaknesses of Mr. Durkheim’s book to be believed when I say that here he is entirely correct. Primitive conceptions are fundamentally concerned with energy. As indeed are all religions: this difference lies in the names one gives to the forms and sources of energy, and the manner in which they are represented. The way in which Mr. Durkheim presents religion and its constitutive elements (ideas of the soul, spirits, or gods; religious prohibitions and taboos in negative forms of worship; sacrifice and mimetic, commemorative, and piacular rites in positive forms) is the direct product of his Australian analyses; he ceaselessly refers back to these tribes to demonstrate the “genesis” of such and such a tendency or religious institution. It is the shakiness of its foundations that makes the whole intellectual construction so fragile. What is more, Mr. Durkheim’s well-established personal proclivity for identifying and foregrounding the collective (or social) element leads him to neglect the generative role of particular individuals in creating certain institutions and beliefs, which I had myself underlined in Australian myths and legends, and which he willfully dismisses as nugatory. He painstakingly shows how the social aspect predominates in the different religious phenomena he investigates. I cannot, however, follow him when he states that “society is not an alogical being (être),” or indeed that it is a being at all. Whilst it is clear that in more primitive societies, social action is more insistent than individual action, the latter can always reassert itself. Mr. Durkheim’s dream is to endow society with a natural, or ideally even cosmic, reality subject to laws every bit as stringent as those governing physico-chemical reality; though he periodically draws upon biology, he is surely only referring to the lower orders of animalia. Is man one of these? An uncertainty begins to prey upon me. Mr. Durkheim has discovered unicellular organisms; can an Australian society, for it is Australians we are dealing with, really be a unicellular organism? I fear that Mr. Durkheim, for all his apparent concern for ethnographic facts, actually only has a feel for metaphysics and even more so for scholastics. For him, concepts and words have ultimate reality. Having no feel for life, no feel for biology or ethnography, he transforms living phenomena and beings (vivants) into scientifically desiccated plants arranged as in a herbarium. From there to outright denial of the reality of the individual and the dynamic part played by individuals in the evolution of civilizations is a short leap that Mr. Durkheim eagerly makes. Of course, in semicivilized societies, religion understood as a totality of beliefs and acts of a certain kind is the most “social” phenomenon there can be, for at that moment it encompasses law, science, everything. But it is for this very reason, and because the individual has progressively come to self-awareness and so become individualized, that human progress consists in the progressive secularization of all mental and practical activities, gradually disaggregating and destroying religion. I simply cannot see the point, nor even the possibility, of replacing religion by another, sociological imperative.   Arnold VAN GENNEP (1873–1957) was a French social scientist best known for his 1909 book, Rites of passage. ___________________ Editorial Note: This article is a translation of Arnold van Gennep’s “Review of É. Durkheim, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse,” Mercure de France 101 (374) (January 16, 1913): 389–91; reprinted in Chroniques de folklore d’Arnold van Gennep, 1905–1949 (texts collected and introduced by J. M. Privat), 92–95, Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 2001. 1. Lévy-Bruhl (Lucien), Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures, Paris: F. Alcan, “Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine”/ “Travaux de l’Année sociologique” publiés sous la direction de M. E. Durkheim, 1910, 461 pp.  

Analysis of the dreams of a Guayaki Indian woman This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © John Leavitt. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.2.043 TRANSLATION Analysis of the dreams of a Guayaki Indian woman Translated by JOHN LEAVITT, Université de Montréal The following is a translation of Lucien Sebag’s “Analyse des rêves d’une Indienne Guayaki,” originally printed in Les Temps modernes, CCXVII, June 1964. The pages that follow are distinct from a classic piece of ethnology; they present the analysis of a series of dreams of a young Guayaki Indian woman, dreams that were collected in their original language during an ethnographic mission among these Indians, who live in Paraguay in the region of San Juan Nepomuceno.1 My stay there lasted from February to September 1963, and the material presented here was collected in a little over two months: every morning the young woman Baipurangi would come to tell me her dreams; at first I asked for them, but as time went on it became a matter of habit. Our discussions lasted from half an hour to an hour and a half, the difference depending primarily on: –   linguistic difficulties, which were noticeably reduced after a time by my growing familiarity with the language; –   the length and importance of the material brought to me: it sometimes happened that Baipurangi remembered three or four dreams a night; –   the opacity of the story to which I was listening. This opacity resulted both from the way a dream was related and from my ignorance of the context, which made things still more obscure.[522] As to the first point, the systematic recounting of her dreams was a completely new activity for Baipurangi: she often skipped essential information to focus on a theme that seemed more important to her,2 in which case it was extremely difficult to reconstruct the chain of events. There is, to be sure, nothing exceptional in this—every patient who shares oneiric productions or fantasies acts in the same way. But in this case the task was more delicate because of my inadequate knowledge of the social and religious underpinnings. In this connection it is important to underline that while these dreams take on meaning only on the basis of continually increasing ethnographic material, inversely, they themselves provided a privileged means of access to this material—many mythological themes, many beliefs became accessible after their appearance in one or another of the dreams. In collecting these texts I was governed by two concerns: –   one, ethnographic: to attempt to grasp certain properties of Guayaki culture by analyzing the way in which its constituent elements are taken up, lived, transformed by a particular individual; –   the other, psychoanalytic: to mark how the subject, using a certain number of privileged signifiers to which her culture gives access, develops her own problematic, the partial analysis of which could serve to confirm or deny certain theses of Freudian psychoanalysis. On the first point, we have no doubt as to the results: dream analysis, pursued steadily in certain privileged circumstances, reveals whole sections of the cultural edifice which remain hidden to normal observation and interrogation. The second concern presents more problems: while we can draw certain conclusions from what is found in the dreams, none can be drawn from what is not found in them; after two months of “analysis,” the material from a single subject is still not nearly sufficient for any kind of generalization. It is thus with the greatest caution that I will venture into this domain. The corpus collected includes about one hundred dreams; twenty-nine of them are presented here, the others having been eliminated either for their “neutrality” (simple images of classic scenes of Guayaki life) or for their “unintelligibility” (two or three of the dreams remained completely meaningless to me), or because they added no supplementary information to the dreams already in hand. This redundancy, however, while undeniable—very often Baipurangi simply dreamed of a separation from her husband and return to her father and mother—is not without meaning: the repetition of themes or characters reveals the articulations of the family constellation within which Baipurangi is struggling. The fact that certain elements appear in all the dreams obtained for several days, and thereafter only episodically, reveals certain psychological turning points, the existence of a process in the most general sense of the term.[523] The dreams that follow have been translated3 and then analyzed; this analysis is governed by a set of criteria which should be kept in mind: The dreams comment on each other: elements which are extremely obscure at first become clear as they are developed in later dreams. Thus the research did not bear on any particular dream production but on the group as a whole; and in this I followed the criteria of any structural study. The ethnographic context naturally provided the indispensable background to which I referred what I was hearing. Baipurangi’s dreams were generally constructed out of classic situations and attitudes of Guayaki culture: because of this any discrepancy between normal behavior and that which appeared in the dream was always of value as an indicator—it allowed a direct grasp of what the dream was seeking to signify. Although Baipurangi did not really free associate—the formulation of the analytic rule was difficult—every dream did provide her the occasion for numerous commentaries. In this way, memories of her childhood sometimes emerged, and these allowed a better understanding of episodes that at first were incomprehensible. Parallel with this work with Baipurangi, I was able to devote time to direct observation; immersed in the life of the tribe, I had the possibility of watching the development of the real conflicts to which the dreams referred and to question the various protagonists as to how Baipurangi had acted in each case. Finally, based on what Baipurangi had told me, I was able to ask her parents about her childhood and her husband about their sexual life together. In this way the distance between the real processes and their symbolization took on meaning. The conditions of this work call for two additional remarks: At no time did I share either my interpretations or my thoughts about her dreams with Baipurangi; nothing was said that might have influenced her or turned her reflections in a direction determined by the observer. My interventions, always as short as possible, were meant only to allow me to reconstruct the dream in its entirety or to obtain ethnographic elements that were indispensable for understanding what was happening. The fact that Baipurangi sometimes dreamed these interpretations, which I had never shared with her, indicates the singularity of the conditions of this sort of dialogue. On the other hand it is undeniable that work of this kind could not have led to anything without the “affective transference” that Baipurangi directed onto myself, a transference which acquired real force when she began telling me her dreams. In this connection it does not seem false to say that during the whole of this period Baipurangi “dreamed for me.” The number of her dreams, three or four a night from the time she knew that she would be telling them to me every day, as well as the interest she took in our sessions, show that the dreams were a real gift that she came to give me every morning. I find a confirmation of this [524]in the fact that, when our relationship became less close because of the affective neutrality from which I never deviated, she practically stopped dreaming or remembering her dreams. This overdetermination in no way lessens the value of the material collected, but indicates that the dream functioned on two levels:4 in its form a realization of the very desire to dream, it set into play in its content desires still more secret, which we are now going to try to decipher. But this is possible only once the ethnographic context is in place. * * * At Arroyo Morroti5 lived two groups of Guayaki Indians who had been put under the protection of Don Manuel Peyreira, a Paraguayan rancher. They had partly abandoned their former way of life, which until then had been totally nomadic. The first group, the “Aché Gatu” (their own name for themselves: “Aché” is the term used by all Guayaki groups to designate themselves; “Gatu” means “good”) had been in this situation for four years.6 This is the group to which Baipurangi belonged. In many respects life continued as it had before this relative sedentarization; agriculture had not been introduced, and the Guayaki still lived by hunting and gathering; they left the area regularly on long journeys, but always came back to the place where they were settled, especially since the Paraguayan in charge of them provided them fairly regularly with beef or horsemeat. In its general outlines the culture had not yet changed very much; the various taboos were still being observed with the same rigor; and while the machete had replaced the stone axe, this transformation dated back to an even earlier period, when the Guayaki had gotten into the habit of stealing tools from the woodsmen who worked in the forest—a habit that provoked bloody reprisals. Without going into detail,7 the Guayaki can be characterized as follows: they are certainly among the most primitive societies of South America; pure hunter-gatherers (no trace of agriculture has been found and nothing permits us to attribute this to a regression), they lived in autonomous bands not exceeding around a hundred members;8 the various bands moved over a vast territory and in general did not interrelate.9 Each group dispersed into subgroups consisting of a few families who hunted together; these groups were often temporary, although motivated by intense affective bonds. The group thus moved around [525]between several camps; sometimes groups visited each other and all would reunite; but this never lasted very long, since the scarcity of game made frequent dispersions necessary. The habitat was of the most rudimentary kind: it consisted of simple shelters, made of branches of the pindo palm, which could be built in a very short time and abandoned without complications. Sometimes this shelter served a single family; sometimes it was larger and could shelter fifteen or more people. Even with this sociological framework in place, Baipurangi’s dreams become intelligible only if one keeps in mind certain characteristic traits of Guayaki culture. Two great ceremonies mark the life of the adolescent: the piercing of a boy’s lip and the purification that follows a girl’s first menstruation. Lip piercing takes place around the age of thirteen or fourteen. It marks the transformation of a boy into a man who can hunt and take a wife. The lip is pierced by two adults using a monkey bone. A little hole is made in which the Guayaki will wear the beta, an ornament usually made from a small bone of an animal (a peccary); it is a sign of virility and a promise of successful hunting. The menstruation ceremony involves the construction of a special hut within the encampment itself, the isolation there and partial fast of the girl (who may not eat meat for several days), the purification of the recluse and of all who have had sexual relations with her since her first period; this purification consists of a massage with liana shavings soaked in water. A man who is not purified in this way risks death and may be killed by a jaguar or a poisonous snake. This purification also takes place at the birth of a child, but in this case the danger threatens the child’s father or fathers,10 who can escape death only if they are washed with liana shavings. Men who father a male or female child thus find themselves in the same position as those who receive and have sexual relations with a woman who has become an adult.11 The birth of a child involves several other individuals as well: the child who has just emerged from its mother’s womb is taken up in the arms of a woman who holds it while other members of the group massage its body and mold its head (the word “mold” translates the indigenous term; it involves only a massage, which causes no deformation). The child will use special terms to designate the people who thus took part in his or her birth: jware will refer to the man who molded my head,12 upiare to the woman who took me in her arms, and I will be their chave. After giving birth a woman should submit to certain taboos (prohibition of all sexual relations and eating the principal meats) until her child is able to take his [526]first steps. During this period the mother is kuja ichyve,13 a special status that involves profound changes in her life. While children are often desired, abortions are very common; they are generally motivated by the hardships of forest life. When they reach adulthood men and women have themselves tattooed; the tattoo consists of several long parallel incisions, dorsal for the men and ventral for the women. When a woman submits to this operation it is for the purpose of bearing strong, resistant children. Boys and girls are not, however, equally valued. Boys are received with joy, and the Guayaki have many methods of assuring the birth of a male; girls, on the other hand, were sometimes killed at birth and very often killed at the death of their father or mother; girls were the main victims of the vengeance called for by every death—even though the victims were sometimes over ten years old. The dreams that follow allow us to grasp the often unconscious effect of this status on a particular feminine subjectivity. The Guayaki bear the names of animals, the animals one’s mother ate while she was pregnant. Because of this a Guayaki often has twenty or so names but only uses a few of them depending on personal choice. The man who brought the meat my mother ate is my chikwagi, to whom I am particularly attached; in principal I have many chikwagi, but in fact only two or three are selected out of all those who have played this role and are actually considered as such. Polygyny and polyandry both exist among the Guayaki; at any moment of the group’s history the sex ratio determines its preference for one or the other, while the two forms can coexist. The presence of relatively stable, established families, made up of a man and two women or inversely one woman and two men, does not stand in the way of extreme freedom in sexual relations; thus every child often has two fathers, and sometimes three; in certain cases he lives with two fathers, in others with only one of them, if the second has left the child’s mother. Parallel to the true husband or wife is distinguished the japetyva,14 a term that designates the individual with whom I have a legalized liaison involving regular sexual relations. One man might live with two women more than thirty years apart in age, such as a grandmother and a granddaughter; in fact, girls cease to be virgins at an extremely early age, around eleven or twelve, which sometimes results in an ambivalent relationship to sexuality. The Guayaki are cannibals;15 they eat all of their dead (endocannibalism) and sometimes organized war-parties for the purpose of killing and eating their enemies (exocannibalism). The alimentary meaning of cannibalism was the only one suggested to me; a religious meaning seems out of the question.[527] Cannibalism does, however, involve practices aimed at regularizing relations with the world of the dead: when a person has been eaten, the bones are broken and then thrown into the fire—the first act is for the purpose of keeping away the bad soul ianvé,16 which dwells in the forest and constitutes a permanent danger for the living; the second permits the ascension of the good soul, ové, to its celestial home. This duality of the soul plays a major role in Guayaki belief: Ianve is related to all the evil beings that live in the forest and sometimes kill people; people are fleeing from Ianve when they change camp after a death, for Ianve comes to take the husband or wife who is still alive. Ove, on the other hand, is positively valued; the celestial world is opposed to the danger and mystery of the forests: above, the souls of the dead are connected by bonds of friendship which contrast with Ianve’s isolation, and they watch over the world they have left. We will not, then, be surprised to see the dreams repeatedly bringing up the theme of death—death which allows passage to another universe, similar in many respects to human society, but without the problems that make life in the present so difficult. Indeed, the link between the two worlds is constantly evoked, since what happens on earth has repercussions in the heavens. These take different forms, but amount essentially to the revenge that is called forth by most human acts. No theme, in fact, is more pregnant with meaning for the Guayaki than that of revenge. The death of an adult, man or woman, brings in its wake the murder of his or her children (usually the daughters), whose souls rise up to the sky to rejoin their father’s or mother’s soul. The most diverse meteorological phenomena, cold, rain, wind—designated by the global term pichua—are the consequences of this death and are provoked by the Ové of a close relative, which takes it upon itself to avenge the dead. A death involves both a real compensation (the killing of a child) and the use of an interpretative schema that allows the linkage of certain natural phenomena to the event afflicting human society. But death is not the only object of such a privilege: the perforation of the lip, the first menstrual period, the killing of an animal each creates a disequilibrium which will not be absorbed until the injured party has been avenged. Relations between man and woman are based on the same categories: the widow who remarries risks being the next to die; Ianve will come back to collect his former mate. No day passes without such ideas coming up in the Guayaki’s conversations; the smallest incident, a tree falling, a storm, a bad dream, is attributed to the recent or distant death of a member of the group. One cannot help being struck by the amazing homogeneity with which the notion of vengeance is used to account for everything that can happen to a Guayaki. Such are the elements, here presented very schematically, which we will meet again in Baipurangi’s dream-life; through them we will be able to grasp the way the dream puts this material through a series of transformations which in turn reveal what the dream is seeking to signify. BAIPURANGI is a young woman, around eighteen years old, married to a thirty-year-old man, JAKUGI, the man who took her virginity before she had had her first period. For a time after this she had two husbands simultaneously, Jakugi and [528]KRAJAGI, who has been dead for two years. Baipurangi’s parents, on the other hand, are alive—her mother BAIPUGI and her two fathers KANDEGI, still married to her mother, and PIKUGI, who now lives with another woman. The dreams also involve the following persons: PAMPIGI, the mother of Baipugi and so grandmother of Baipurangi, who was first married to Pikugi and then, at a very advanced age, to Jakugi. She died around the same time as Krajagi. JAPEGI, Baipurangi’s jware, who purified her when she had her first period; he died very recently. DORO PAREGI: He died very young, a little while after participating in Baipurangi’s birth; thus he too is her jware. JAPEKUJAGI: A young woman, older than Baipurangi, who was kidnapped by the Paraguayans; she had watched protectively over Baipurangi for some years and had intervened several times when Baipurangi found herself in difficulties. KYBWYRAGI and JYVUKUGI: Two very important members of the group, for whom Baipurangi feels the greatest affection; she thinks of them, especially the former, as potential lovers. The Jakugi-Baipurangi couple had existed for several years, and it had known a good many difficulties in that time. The coexistence of the two husbands had not been easy, the jealous Jakugi finding it hard to accept Krajagi’s claiming his conjugal rights. After the death of the latter, Baipurangi had had sexual relations with a young Guayaki—but this affair ended badly: Jakugi found out, thrashed his rival, and beat his wife. Since this incident the latter, fearing reprisals, no longer deceived her husband.17 But the situation weighed on her, whence the ambivalence of her behavior—she was, in fact, always giving and refusing herself, always attracting men she liked and then not carrying the adventure out to its normal consequences—an attitude, she explained, caused by the fear that she felt. Another fact worthy of note: her absolute sterility during this entire period. Baipurangi had no children and had never been pregnant, a situation that was beginning to disturb her profoundly.[529] I was able to obtain this information before beginning to collect dreams; these will present new information and will allow us to penetrate more deeply into this fabric of relations; but above all they will take us past the level of simple biography to gain access to the problematic that constitutes Baipurangi’s life. Dream No. 1. I18 am in the forest with Jakugi. He turns towards me and says, “A brara19 will bite you.” This dream, the first one collected, is very short—her husband’s simple statement announcing her impending death: she will be bitten by a poisonous snake. On this occasion Baipurangi tells me about her relationship with Jakugi and indicates that she is not happy; this sentiment is directly related to her feeling of sexual saturation. Jakugi wants to make love all the time, he never gives her a moment of rest, he is not gentle. Jakugi is a violent man and she resents his sexual insistence, experiencing it as an aggression. At first glance the dream simply embodies this aggressivity, carrying it out to its normal outcome—death. For the Guayaki this kind of announcement, or prediction, is neither prophecy nor curse; it simply expresses the consequences that will follow from an act previously committed; it is not based on a fault involving any feeling of guilt, but rather on an “objective” failing. In this sense, Jakugi’s aggressivity is not pure violence; although the dream has not yet revealed any of this, it is based on something else—something that makes it necessary for Baipurangi to die.20 Dream No. 2. I am in the forest with Jakugi and we meet a female peccary (chachu in Guayaki); she is kuja ichyve and is accompanied by her daughter. Jakugi hits the daughter with the shaft of his bow and kills her. I am horrified and I cry. The peccary wants to avenge her child and she bites Jakugi. He kills her with an arrow; I climb a tree to escape. Baipugi, Baipurangi’s mother, is presently kuja ichyve; she has a child several months old and is bound by all the taboos that this state involves (sexual and food prohibitions). “Chachu” is both Baipurangi’s name and her mother’s; thus, while evidently other things as well, they are both peccaries. It is highly unusual to cry over the death of an animal; I would do so only if one of my deceased kin bore that animal’s name. The fact that Baipurangi starts to cry when Jakugi kills the little peccary indicates that more than a mere animal is involved here. The theme of the mother avenging her daughter is, on the other hand, common in the oneiric productions of the Guayaki as well as in the belief system through which they encode events; and it is sons-in-law who are the most common victims; [530]several deaths were attributed to the vengeance of a mother-in-law who came back to earth after death precisely for this purpose. Notwithstanding the absence of any explicit recognition on Baipurangi’s part, these various elements suggest the identification of the two peccaries with Baipugi and Baipurangi; this would make the latter the victim of an aggression, thus explaining the tears, which can refer only to the death of human being. The identity of the two situations (kuja ichyvé), the similarity of the names (chachu), and the evocation, in connection with what seems to be a normal hunt, of the death of near kin, all seem to fit this interpretation. The comparison with later dreams that develop these themes abundantly will confirm it further; but as far as this dream is concerned, all that Baipurangi will tell me is that she is still unhappy with Jakugi and is afraid of him beating her, a fear that perhaps takes concrete form in the murder of the baby peccary. Dream No. 3. Jakugi is not there. Around me many children—they are all boys—are playing, laughing very loud and climbing trees; I am angry and start to cut down the tree with an axe; the children fall down while my mother Baipugi and my father Kandegi watch. Kandegi is very hungry, and he cuts down a pindo palm to extract the pith; we all eat it and I feed the children with the pith. Jakugi is absent; throughout the series of dreams he will be either present and aggressive, disturbing Baipurangi’s life, or absent, leaving a blank space that others will come to occupy. This dream is the first of a long series in which the father takes the place of the husband. The occasion for the dream was an event that I had been able to observe the day before: Baipurangi cleared an area of ground using an axe; all the children helped her and the work turned into a game in which Baipurangi and her little companions enjoyed themselves tremendously. The dream re-presents this situation but transforms its meaning: the children behave exactly as they did during the day, but Baipurangi, on the contrary, becomes morose; the laughter of the others makes her angry, and it is to make them stop that she starts to cut down the trees. The boys fall down, but in Guayaki waa means both to fall and to be born. Here one cannot help thinking of the “acting-out” analyzed by Freud and based entirely on the fact that the same German word (niederkommen) can indicate both falling and giving birth (Freud 1920). From this perspective, what the dream seems to be saying is this: “In the absence of any man (on this occasion Baipurangi explicitly tells me that she does not want to have a child by Jakugi), and while my mother and father watch, I give birth to several boys; and it is my father who then finds food for them.” The refusal to laugh, which is doubly marked (Baipurangi does not laugh, and she does not want the children to laugh), would then be explained, since pregnant women are forbidden to laugh for fear of giving birth to girls rather than boys—something that nobody wants to happen. Here again the passage from manifest to latent content operates only indirectly, without the subject’s explicit acceptance of the probable meaning which our analysis—based on the cultural elements put into play—seems to reveal. The interest of the experiment comes from the fact that the dreams to follow will bring forward and deal explicitly with themes that remain latent here.[531] Dream No. 4. I am sleeping near my mother Baipugi; suddenly Krei appears; he is a young man with a pierced lip; he tells me, “Jakugi is very angry; he will scratch you because you had sex with Kybwyragi.” Then we go hunting, Krei, my former husband Krajagi, who is now dead, and I. Krajagi kills an armadillo; I bring it back and roast it; then I give a piece to my father Kandegi. The term krei has a double meaning: in its more general sense it can be translated “shadow”, “image”; in this case it would apply both to my shadow on the road and my image in a mirror; but in a more restricted and certainly a derivative sense, it designates a being that lives in the forest, appears especially at night, and attacks the Guayaki on various occasions, particularly when they disobey taboos; in this last case his forms are many, while the aggressions he commits are often sexual in nature; here he appears as a young man who has already had his lip pierced, i.e., as a possible sexual partner, and despite certain transformations the function he fills will be the same through the whole series of dreams: that of a messenger who announces the news, who objectively describes what is going on; in many respects he personifies the law: in certain cases he forbids things, in others he shows the unavoidable results of the situation. This absolute position is, certainly, often a decoy; the rule that he enunciates is precisely the one to which Baipurangi is willing to submit, and his appearances are situated within a field determined by Baipurangi’s desire, responding to those aspects of her desire which she cannot admit in the first person. This is no simple artifice: the store of meanings made manifest in the dreams defines a space in which the range of operations granting the subject access to the set of possible formulations of her problematic transforms its very content. In addition, I learn from this dream that Baipurangi and Kybwyragi have been attracted to one another for several days; nevertheless they have not had sex, since Baipurangi is afraid of Jakugi’s reaction; on another occasion, not so long ago, he had fought with his rival and struck Baipurangi. The dream, for its part, considers the thing done; it is the explicit realization of Baipurangi’s desire.21 Because of this, the unhappy consequences of the act come to the fore; but the dream will be able to neutralize them; for the conjugal couple that the dream constitutes is not the one that currently exists: Baipurangi finds herself with her late husband Krajagi. Krajagi is the antithesis of Jakugi. As I begin to learn on this occasion, Krajagi was an elderly man incapable of violence, having only rare sexual relations with Baipurangi and remarkable for his lack of jealousy. The dream both achieves what Baipurangi is seeking and neutralizes the dangerous effects of this event by substituting Krajagi for Jakugi; it finishes with a hunt, the various moments of which—the man killing, the woman cooking and distributing the food—are always presented to signify equilibrium regained, the return to daily activities. Dream No. 5. I am in the forest with my two fathers Kandegi and Pikugi, my mother Baipugi and Pikugi’s wife; I am carrying the arrows and give them to them whenever they catch sight of an animal. Pikugi kills a coati and divides it among us.[532] This is the first dream in which the desire to return to the situation of childhood is clearly marked; there are no more husbands, no lovers, and Baipurangi is once again with her two fathers and two mothers, one real and the other artificial,22 hunting with them and sharing their family life. In later dreams this theme will show considerable development. Dream No. 6. While I am asleep Krei comes to visit me and says, “Your little brother is dead, you are going to drink armadillo blood and die.” Then Jakugi goes hunting and brings back the armadillo; he is very angry because I want to make love with Kybwyragi; he adds, “Your brother is dead, I will hit you.” Then Jakugi gives me the armadillo blood and I drink it. I know that I am dead and it is my jware Japegi, who has been dead for several years, who comes to avenge me; he will take away my upiare Jakwachugi and, he tells me, he will unleash a tempest. Then Japegi turns into my late husband Krajagi; I am in mourning because my little brother has died, and he has come to carry me off to the sky. I am very happy, for his soul (ove) is good; and so we go off together. Baipurangi’s little brother is sick, and for several days she has been afraid that he will die; every death demands vengeance, both a real revenge which is to be carried out by the members of the group (who kill their children at the death of a man or woman) and an ideal revenge, the work of the souls of dead kin whose intervention generally unleashes rain, wind, thunder. This dream is characterized by the overlaying of two acts of revenge, one, that of the brother’s death, being ritual in character, while the other is psychological in content. Jakugi is responsible for both; and Baipurangi, on her part, tends to confuse her fear over her brother’s possible death and the anxiety provoked by her developing relationship with Kybwyragi into a single feeling of apprehension. Krei condemns her to drink the blood of an armadillo; it is in fact thought that drinking the raw blood of an animal will cause death. Jakugi goes hunting armadillo and offers the blood to Baipurangi. But we are dealing here with a classical Guayaki attitude: in certain cases women declare that they want to drink armadillo blood and die; a mother whose son, a sister whose brother has just died will put a cup of armadillo or coati blood to her lips; this is, however, only a ritual gesture; the husband is present at the scene and at the moment the cup is about to touch his wife’s lips he seizes her arms and tries to calm her down. After a while she lets herself be convinced and agrees not to commit suicide. This ritual sequence undergoes a transformation in the dream: not only does Jakugi not try to keep Baipurangi from drinking the armadillo blood, he seems to urge her on; beyond the social situation which involves only a mock suicide, he is impelled by a deep personal resentment powerful enough to make him wish for Baipurangi’s death. The dream makes use of elements furnished by the culture, modifying them in function of the message it bears, this message taking its full value from the disparity between the code of the society in question and the transformations it undergoes on the level of the individual (cf. Sebag 1964). This dislocation is of revelatory value: it allows a decoding, unveiling the elements of the signifying chain that support the signified of the dream.[533] Jakugi’s aggressivity is an extension of that which he has shown in the other dreams: he acts the way Baipurangi expects him to. We should, nevertheless, look at this more closely. This dream has a point in common with dream no. 4: it considers already accomplished what is still only a possibility. In 4, Baipurangi dreamed that she had had sexual relations with Kybwyragi, which was not the case; in 6, Krei announces the death of her brother while he is still alive. And in both cases these happenings provoke Jakugi to extreme acts, the result of which will be the separation of the two spouses and the constitution of another couple: –   in 4, Baipurangi is back with an earthly Krajagi; –   in 6, she dies and her soul goes to join Krajagi’s. This is in fact where the meaning of the dream is to be found. It could be formulated as follows: “If my brother dies and, doing what we usually do, I act as if I’m going to drink armadillo blood, then Jakugi will let me go ahead and drink it to get revenge for my relationship with Kybwyragi. When I am dead I will return to my former husband Krajagi, the only one I desire to be with.” Thus what is an object of anxiety in the daytime—the possible death of her brother—becomes an object of desire in the dream, because it grants access to realms that are not of this world; hence the passage from the optative to the present. Japegi is Baipurangi’s jware and it is he who will avenge her by coming to take away his former wife Jakwachugi.23 In this connection Baipurangi tells me that when she was young Japegi always came to her defense; and what she is telling me about her past will be of considerable interest later on: when she was about ten years old she suffered from the indifference of her father Kandegi, who fed her badly and “kept all the meat for himself”;24 one day when she was hungry she started to cry, and he threatened her with his bowshaft. At this point Japegi intervened to protect her, an action justified by the fictive bond of kinship between them. The same bond is invoked in the dream, Japegi avenging Baipurangi’s death in conformity with the attitude he showed during his lifetime. The final conjunction with Krajagi is made possible in a double way: on the one hand Baipurangi kills herself and, once dead, rejoins Krajagi; on the other, Krajagi comes back to reclaim his wife; in this case it is the bad soul, ianve, who comes seeking his former spouse. This seizure of the living by the dead is a subject that causes Guayaki widows a great deal of fear; they take a thousand precautions to avoid dying in this way. But the dream erases all distinctions between ove and ianve in favor of the single affirmation of the joyful reconciliation with Krajagi. Up to this point I have based myself either on the organization of the syntagmatic chain or on the comparison between the normal value of certain cultural traits and the distortion that the dream makes them undergo. The analysis thus seems to possess a high degree of probability. But there are also lateral [534]associations that remain hypothetical, yet are no less interesting for that. The passage from a possible death to a real death (I dream that my brother is dead while he is still alive) was a means of getting out of this world to become part of Krajagi’s.25 But a more deeply hidden intention can be grasped in this: as the material that follows will show, Baipurangi suffered a great deal because she was not a boy, and during her childhood her father made her feel this keenly; the sick little brother is a son of Kandegi, born in his father’s old age and fulfilling his long-held desire. So one may wonder whether, by anticipating his death, Baipurangi is not punishing her father, taking from him the little boy he holds so dear. While nothing allows us to answer this in the affirmative, it remains a problem to be kept in mind. Dream No. 7. Pampigi (the late wife of Jakugi and my father Pikugi, now dead for several years) comes to visit us; she goes into the forest to hunt with her former husbands while I stay in camp. Jakugi and Pikugi separate and each follows the tracks of an anteater. Pampigi comes back by herself carrying a coati, part of which I give to my father. During the night Krei comes to visit me and announces that Jakugi has been killed by the anteater he was hunting and that the same thing has happened to Pikugi. Jakugi will not come back. Pampigi cries, but as for me, I feel happy. On the other hand, my father is dead, and that makes me grieve. It is my jware Japegi who avenges my father; the wind roars, the trees fall down. Then Pampigi commands the wind to stop and it obeys. After this the ianve of Jakugi appears; it is in a rage and coils around me to take me away with it; but Pampigi intervenes and orders it to go away. Ianve runs away. Everything ends: we sleep in camp, Pampigi and I. Pampigi was married first to Pikugi and then to Jakugi [Translator’s Note: This order of marriages is clear in the text, but seems to have been inadvertently reversed in the French publication. I have corrected it here.]; she returns and takes them both back, leading then off together on a hunt. But the trip she is inviting them on is really a journey toward death; the hunt will be a tragic one. This is the logical consequence of the return of a dead person’s soul to the living: those whom she loved are directly endangered. Two days before this a tree fell on Jakugi and wounded him slightly; everyone in the group blamed this accident on the ianve of Pampigi, who would be expected to persecute her most recent husband. Baipurangi herself gave me this interpretation the day before; without the least doubt, this incident provided the pretext for the dream. And what does the dream say? That Pampigi’s return is the ideal way to get rid of Jakugi, but that a certain price must be paid for liberty obtained in this way; the death of her father Pikugi, who was Pampigi’s other husband. Whence her contradictory behavior; Baipurangi laughs over Jakugi’s death, weeps over her father’s; but the second was the condition for the first.[535] From this point of view this dream is similar to the preceding one: for in both cases it is the death of a loved one, father or brother, that permits me to break off my relationship with Jakugi. The break, however, takes place completely differently in the two cases: in 6, Baipurangi passes into the other world, while in 7 it is Jakugi who leaves ours; and the two of them do not end up in the same world—Baipurangi’s is the sky, which all of Guayaki culture connotes positively; Jakugi, on the other hand, disappears into the forest, a dangerous and hostile world. This opposition is found again in the dream itself; Pikugi is located celestially, his death is avenged in direct reference to meteorological phenomena associated with Ove, whose abode is in the sky. Jakugi’s revenge, on the contrary, is a personal one, he wants his wife back, and in this case Baipurangi is threatened with death by strangling. One can therefore characterize the contrasted positions of Baipurangi and Jakugi in Dreams 6 and 7, of Pikugi and Jakugi in Dream 7 with an identical formula. Dream thought uses the code furnished by the culture to characterize the psychological and affective relations among human beings—and in so doing gives them their full force. It is Pampigi, back from the beyond, who can serve as intermediary between the living and the dead who obey her; thanks to her, peace re-descends in an asexualized world in which Baipurangi sleeps with Pampigi. The shadow of the father still looms, however, since Baipurangi offers Kandegi a piece of the meat which she has been brought. Dream No. 8. I meet you26 and you say to me, “You, you want to have boys”; I agree and we have sex; then we go into the forest together and meet my mother there; I say to her, “I made love with Wachugi.” This is the first dream to show a real element of transference; I had interpreted her second dream as a manifestation of the desire to have male children, but of course I had not talked to her about it. Now this interpretation, which has remained a secret, is attributed to me by the dream, in the very form I had given it. To this several remarks must be added: I am situated precisely in the position that Krei has filled up to now, that of categorically enunciating the truth of the situation. This substitution arises from the very nature of our relationship: for almost three weeks Baipurangi has been telling me her dreams and the memories connected with them; the amount that I now know about her, like my neutrality, which continues to astonish her when she compares it with the enterprising behavior of the few Paraguayans she has known, makes me appear as the depository of the [536]ensemble of her history, as the one most likely to formulate her desire. But paradoxically the dream evokes our sexual relations, giving me the burden of naming this desire and of accomplishing it. Nothing that has happened up to now, however, allows us to clarify the import and the value of such a yearning, which has been formulated by someone other than herself; it is an immediate given which will be made explicit in later dreams. Dream No. 9. I am in the forest with Kandegi, Baipugi, Pikugi, and his late wife Pampigi; Jakugi is not there; I am pregnant and give birth to a boy; it is my mother who picks his up in her arms; it is Kandegi who massages his skull, and Pikugi who purifies me with liana. After that I have a lot of children; they are all boys. The father does not come; I do not see him, I do not know who he is. While Baipurangi was telling me this dream, I interrupted her, mistakenly as it turns out, to ask her who was the father of the boy; after hesitating for a long time, and certainly following external associations, she answered that it was Krajagi; in the rest of the story she specifies that all the other children have no father. The place of the father is thus left blank, it is unknown; if she has named Krajagi, it is in reply to one of my questions and echoing her conscious preoccupations. On the other hand, her father and mother are there with her, performing the functions involved in a birth, although such a specialization does not exist in reality, any member of the group normally being allowed to take care of the baby. In fact, the dream seems to combine two possibilities which are mutually exclusive in normal situations: to have a child one needs a man to be its father, for whom one has left one’s own father and mother; but in her dream Baipurangi has a number of boys—without any progenitor appearing on the horizon—and while continuing to live like a little girl in the family she was born into. At the same time, the refusal to give birth to a daughter is clearly marked by the proliferation of boys. Dream No. 10. I am married to Krajagi and I sleep with him, my head resting on his chest; we do not make love and the night is very peaceful; in the morning we go to the camp of the Paraguayans, who give cloth to Krajagi; I do not get any because I already have a skirt. The Paraguayan looks at me and says to Krajagi, “Your wife is very pretty, I desire her.” I start to cry, “The Paraguayan wants to make love with me; if that happens I will die.” We run into the forest and there we meet my father and mother; everything is fine and the next day we go hunting together. A new substitution of Krajagi for Jakugi; it is a normal one (not involving the return of the dead) but explicitly purged of any erotic signification: Baipurangi sleeps calmly on Krajagi’s shoulder. On this occasion, she specifies that she had sexual relations only rarely with her first husband, the latter having been content to be tender and loving. It seems that this abstinence was due to an absence of desire on account of his advanced age, as well as to the jealousy of Jakugi, who was already firmly refusing to share Baipurangi at the time the two husbands lived together. Nevertheless the dream has a more heavily marked sociological element here; I am referring to the relationship with the Paraguayans, the dream formulating the situation as follows: they give us cloth, which we do not have in the forest, but in exchange they sleep with us. Baipurangi feels that is an intolerable situation, and once again it is death—or rather the threat of death—which allows [537]her to escape from this danger. This death which, in the course of the various dreams, will be announced, evoked, called forth, experienced, always appears as the means of passage from one universe to another, the abolition of what exists being followed by a restructuration in another form. This passage takes place either, as in the preceding dreams, from the society of living Guayaki to the world of the dead where all relations between individuals are reformulated differently, or, as in this dream, from a Guayaki society which has been changed by contact with whites to the old community, which lived freely in the forest. The dream thus ends with a reconciliation that is at once sociological and affective: the return to the forest and resumption of daily activities, and the conjunction of family of orientation with the conjugal family, the former husband Krajagi behaving exactly like a father. This dream calls for several other remarks: it is Baipurangi who makes the passage between worlds possible by crying to Krajagi that she is in danger of death. Because of this Krajagi flees with her, but, in so doing, his behavior is the total opposite of that of Jakugi, who did not act as he should normally have and let Baipurangi die. Thus, the substitution of one for the other is explained by reasons having to do with the organization of the syntagmatic chain. On the other hand, the theme of clothing is not a negligible one: the day before, in fact, I had offered Baipurangi a skirt to thank her for the work she had done for me; a number of similar gifts had already been made to other Indians who served as informants; thus there was nothing personal in it. In the dream Baipurangi specifies that she, for her part, is dressed, wearing the skirt that I gave her as a present; thus, only Krajagi is looking for clothing; but in exchange for what he gets, the Paraguayans ask him to give them his wife. So it is possible that the dream—which, by definition, is always destined for me—is reminding me that since I, too, have given her a skirt, I would have just as much, if not more, right to have sexual relations with her. One thing that suggests this interpretation is that along with this dream Baipurangi had a series of short dreams during the same week, all concerning her refusal to be Peyreira’s mistress. She escapes from him and finds me in the forest, with the result that we become a couple. Thus the dream functions on two levels: –   It marks the refusal of the present situation and the return to an archaic world which is both the world of childhood and the world the Guayaki knew before they had undergone any acculturation, a return which is one of the kernels of Baipurangi’s dream thematic. –   But at the same time the way of posing the problem is aimed, more directly, at me—since it offers me reasons to ask what Baipurangi is trying to give me. Dream No. 11. Jakugi is sleeping with Achikujagi, a girl who is younger than I am; I don’t know whether they make love; as for me, I am sleeping with my father Kandegi; I am very happy. This dream draws its interest from the fact that it so clearly marks the substitution of the father for the husband. Achikujagi is the japetyva of Jakugi, who, in this sense, has two wives. Baipurangi dreams of a separation: Achikujagi would stay with Jakugi while she would go sleep with her father. In both cases all reference to sexuality is absent.[538] Dream No. 12. Jakugi appears unexpectedly and my mother cries to me, “There’s Jakugi, run!” We escape into the forest, but Jakugi follows our tracks and catches us; I shout at him that I don’t desire him anymore. He moves as if to strike me with the branch of a tree, but my mother gets between us: “Don’t hit my daughter; you are very angry; I will not give you your wife.” Then my father Kandegi talks to me: “Don’t have any man, you will sleep with me; to men I will not give you,” then, speaking to Jakugi, “I do not give you my daughter, I do not share her.” Hearing these words, Jakugi calms down. He doesn’t hit me and he goes away. Up to this point the passage from the conjugal family to the family of orientation was made possible by certain events (Jakugi goes off with another woman, etc.), but was not directly affirmed as such. In this dream, however, the implicit becomes explicit: the marriage with Jakugi is annulled; and it is not simply that the two spouses separate, as can happen with any couple; nor that Baipurangi dies and rejoins her former husband in the sky; such accidents are an integral part of a normal life, and they leave unchanged what happened before them. But here it is the past itself that has been abolished; Baipurangi’s father and mother undo the gift they made of their daughter at a certain point in her life and decide to keep her definitively. The very form of this annulment clearly marks the central aspect of the return to the original situation: Kandegi forbids Baipurangi—as if she were still a little girl—to have relations with men; in the dream he pronounces the words his daughter would have wished to hear in reality. In fact, the dream effaces the distinction between past and present; it takes us back to a time when the essential choices had not yet been made. This scene of the father taking his daughter back is, in addition, without any evident sexual content; in her commentaries Baipurangi never turned in this direction; but the father’s intervention has an aggressive character which makes it resemble an attack of jealousy and relates it to a veritable conquest. Kandegi’s “I do not share my daughter” situates father and husband in a relationship of confrontation which tends to make them interchangeable. Dream No. 13. My jware Japegi comes to visit me and reminds me of our bonds of kinship. “You are my chave; I molded your head.” “You are my jware.” “When you are dead, you will come to my camp.” “I am not dead yet.” “You will die, for the ianve of Krajagi will come to take you away; after that, I will avenge you.” Hearing this, I am very happy because I will see Krajagi and live with him in the sky. This dream simply re-presents certain themes that have already been illustrated in the preceding dreams: the same intervention by Japegi, who occupies a position at once neutral and protective (he will avenge Baipurangi’s death); the same celestial reconciliation with Krajagi, which presupposes Baipurangi’s death, brought about this time by Krajagi himself, who will come to take back his former wife; the same confusion between the bad soul (ianve) and the good soul (ove), a confusion that is without anxiety, since the reconciliation will take place in the sky.[539] Dream No. 14. Jakugi is not there; I am sleeping with my parents: my chave, the son of Pichugi, is dead. Krei comes to visit me and says, “Your brother will die and be buried”; my jware Doro Paregi does not come; he is dead and he does not visit me; finally, my father and mother go away into the forest; I remain alone. The night before, a woman of the group had had a baby, a boy, and Baipurangi took him in her arms and massaged him. This is the child whom Baipurangi sees dead, identifying him with a little girl who has been dead for a certain time, and who was Baipurangi’s chave. Her brother’s illness is related to this; it is an illness for which Krei predicts a disastrous outcome, uniting the three children in a common destiny. This is evidently a dream of abandonment; Baipurangi’s real or potential spouses are first presented, explicitly or implicitly, as absent; and what we witness is the progressive crumbling of the links connecting her to those with whom the sexual dimension is neutralized: in the superior generation her father, her mother, and her jware, and in the inferior generation her brother and her chave. Now the day before, Kandegi and Baipugi had left the camp, leaving Baipurangi with her husband, which caused her a great deal of anxiety (as she told me several times on the day of their departure); this little separation, without importance since father and mother would be coming back shortly, nevertheless revives a number of extremely painful memories; she tells me that when she was little it often happened that her parents would go off on long expeditions in the forest, “abandoning” her to another family. Thus, a real departure without any significance takes on a weight which the dream adds to by extrapolating Baipurangi’s separation from all who are dear to her. But her anxiety is also real; on the afternoon of the day she tells me this dream she is supposed to be washed with the liana because she took part in Pichugi’s delivery; she tells me this morning that she doesn’t want to be purified and would rather die; she reaffirms this when I tell her she is joking, but ends up letting herself be purified. Dream No. 15. Peyreira arrives at our camp on a horse; he wants to make love with me, but I tell him that his wife will be very angry; then he goes away and I let him go; I am happy. But you are not there and I am sad. Briku Kivirugi consoles me: “It doesn’t matter, you are going to dream that you are making love with him.” The interest here is twofold; the interpretation proposed in 10 is confirmed in that Baipurangi refuses Peyreira and at the same time turns toward me; but its importance lies in the fact that this is a dream which explicitly concerns the act of dreaming itself: it is a meta-dream which takes itself as object and, through Briku Kiviregi’s mouth, expresses its own meaning, i.e., that it is a satisfactory substitute for what cannot really be effected, in this case the sexual act with me. Certainly it had appeared early on that the very act of telling me her dreams carried an erotic value because of the attention and intimacy which it implied; but here it is the dream itself that is thematized: the substitutive function of dream life, which takes the place of something else and allows the restructuration of a real situation that is lived as unchangeable, is clearly perceived here. Dream No. 16. Kybwyragi has gone into the forest; we follow his tracks; but only his bones are found, for he has been eaten by the jaguar; we are afraid and we return to camp to tell what happened. Then I leave with Pikugi; we do not meet the jaguar.[540] The Guayaki are very frightened of the jaguar; when one of them stays in the forest for a long time without sending news, they say that he has been eaten. Kybwyragi has been gone for several days; everyone agrees therefore that the jaguar who once ate his mother has done the same thing to him. The forest is dangerous, which explains the reaction of flight. But paradoxically Baipurangi and Pikugi are able to wander there without any problems immediately after this; as it happens, Pikugi is the only one who is legally in danger of such a death: for he is the father of a child who has just been born, and he has not yet been purified; in the forest he runs the risk of being attacked by a wild animal or bitten by a snake. Thus the dream carries out a veritable exchange, the jaguar killing Kybwyragi instead of Pikugi, which allows Baipurangi to find herself alone in the forest with the latter. The same theme will reappear in dream no. 21. The two dreams which follow simply re-present in slightly different form motifs which have already come up in the last few days; but even on this score they confirm what was suggested above. Dream No. 17. My jware Doro Paregi comes to see me and says, “You do a lot of cooking, you are very tired, you are going to die.” “My soul will go away with you; when I am dead I will not do any more cooking.” “Your jware Japegi will avenge you; he will capture Jakwachugi.” Suddenly Japekujagi appears and states, “I will not give my chave to men; you will not have any husband.” This dream combines two distinct themes; on the one hand, the present situation is recalled: Baipurangi often does the cooking for many people and this specialization, which is due to local conditions and much more extreme than is normal among the Guayaki, does not fail to weigh on her; she gets bored and sees this as another indication of her inability to accept her own status; thus death appears again as the normal way out of this unsatisfactory world. On the other hand the dream brings in the character of Japekujagi, a young woman some years older than Baipurangi, who was kidnapped by the Paraguayans.27 On this occasion Baipurangi explains to me that Japekujagi used to protect her from her father’s aggressiveness on various occasions when he had wanted to hit her, and that Japekujagi had opposed the first advances of the men of the group when they started to desire Baipurangi. For this reason Baipurangi was not married until after Japekujagi had disappeared; where her friend had succeeded —in watching over Baipurangi and in not giving her away—her parents had proved incapable. The dreams erase this difference in behavior: in 12, Kandegi and Baipugi pronounce the same words as Japekujagi in 17: “you will have no husband; we will keep you with us,” but while in the second case the dream merely re-evokes a past situation, in the first it attributes to its characters precisely the actions that they had failed to perform. Because of this, once Baipurangi’s desire—that her father take her back and keep her within her natal family forever—is realized in the dream, it [541]masks the essential distinction, which she raises when she talks about her childhood, between her father who neither desired nor accepted her and other kin who loved and protected her. The aggressivity towards her father, which will underlie the rest of the series of dreams, is here in some sense masked by the will to compensate him that animates some of them. Dream No. 18. I am in Jakwachugi’s camp; suddenly the jaguar appears. I am terrified but he reassures me: “Don’t cry, I will not scratch you.” So I stop crying, and he goes on, “You must not have any husband; leave Jakugi.” After that he goes away; Jakugi does not come and I am happy. The jaguar is not just any animal; curiously enough, it is one of Baipurangi’s chikwagi; for during her mother’s pregnancy the men of the group came upon a jaguar, drove it off, and brought back the deer the jaguar had just killed and had not had time to eat. Baipugi ate some of this deer, transmitting the animal’s name to her daughter. In the dream, too, the jaguar is a protective being, absolutely without ferocity, who states the same interdiction that Baipurangi has already put into the mouths of her father and Japekujagi. This is all the more striking since some days earlier Baipurangi dreamed that the jaguar had killed Kybwyragi, thus allowing her to go into the forest with her father Pikugi; it is as if the animal were being used both to forbid her from having sexual relations (in which case it is the chikwagi speaking) and to suppress possible marriage partners (which is the business of a jaguar). Dream No. 19. I die of a sickness; they bury me and my parents and Jakugi cry. Barendy appears and takes me through the sky; he carries me on his chest and tells me, “I will avenge you, I will fall upon the Aché camp and make the trees burst into flame.” He does this, to the great fear of the Aché; then my jware Japegi appears and takes me with him. Barendy is a mythological being who lives in the sky and is associated with fire; he is identified with shooting stars that fall upon the earth; it is said that he burns the forest trees when he gets angry, and that he is attracted by campfires, which cause him to attack the moment he notices them. Commenting on this dream, Baipurangi explains that everyone believes that Barendy is her father: while her mother was pregnant, she dreamed of having sex with Barendy; the result of this kind of dream is the birth of a daughter. Barendy, a distant being to whom very distinctive characteristics are attached, is thus the only father who has accepted Baipurangi as a daughter; for is he not the one directly responsible for her sex? The dream itself makes this mythical father into an avenging father who punishes the Aché for Baipurangi’s death, a behavior that has been shown by no real father in the whole series of dreams; on the contrary, it was shown malevolently by Jakugi, benevolently by Baipurangi’s mother Baipugi, by her jware Japegi and Doro Paregi, by Japekujagi who played something of the role of a mother for her, and finally by her first husband, Krajagi; thus by all the people who matter to her—except for her two fathers. This inability of the real father to avenge her can only be explained if what Baipurangi needs to have avenged is above all the way she was treated in her childhood; this vengeance will become the theme of the dreams to follow. Dream No. 20. I am living with you in the forest; we have a daughter; when she grows up, the Paraguayans desire her; but our daughter tells us, “I don’t want to [542]have any husbands.” Then she has her first period; I cover my daughter with cloth, but the ceremony is incomplete: the other Aché are not there and there is no purification with the liana. Here is the first dream—it will also be the only one—in which Baipurangi gives birth to a daughter; the two previous dreams in which she really or metaphorically gave birth to children left no ambiguity about the fact that these were boys, the boys that her father wanted so badly that he had not accepted his daughter. But this time the sex of the newborn is female, and the fact that I am the father deserves notice.28 This daughter is nothing but a double of Baipurangi; like her mother, she insists that she does not want any husbands; unlike her mother, certainly, the daughter has remained a virgin; this is indicated not by what she says but by the way in which the menstruation ceremony takes place; in fact, one sequence is missing, namely the purification of the men who have had sexual relations with the person who has had her first period. The loss of virginity generally takes place well before the first menstruation, and when the latter arrives there are always several men in danger of being eaten by the jaguar and who should therefore be washed with liana; it is this deflowering, often undergone at too early an age, that haunts Baipurangi; it is what her dream daughter has never known. Here again, the discrepancy between the norm and the way it is presented in the dream marks what is significant for Baipurangi. Dream No. 21. Jyvukugi has gone into the forest and been killed by the jaguar; my father Pikugi follows his tracks and gets there as the jaguar is about to eat the corpse; he chases the animal away and brings the body back; I cry and my mother says, “Your father is not dead yet; don’t cry.” Then I set about cooking the body; the meat is divided among all the members of the camp; as for me, I eat the penis. The meaning of this dream evidently depends on the meaning of cannibalism in Guayaki culture. In spite of very intense questioning of all members of the group, only the alimentary sense of the act was put forward: “human meat is good” was the most frequent response, and even today, when cannibalism has almost entirely disappeared,29 it is very common to hear adults expressing regrets for its passing. So, until some contradictory information comes in, the consumption of Jyvukugi must appear as a purely alimentary act; but this act has multiple consequences. First of all, this dream reworks a sequence from dream no. 16 by changing its characters around. It is no longer Kybwyragi, but Jyvukugi who is eaten by the jaguar; but in both cases Baipurangi can then go into the forest with her father Pikugi without running the least risk. We have noted that Pikugi has not yet been purified and so really risks suffering the fate that is Jyvukugi’s in the dream; and here again the substitute image imposes itself; Baipurangi has the greatest affection for Kybwyragi and Jyvukugi, whom she has often considered as potential lovers. In slightly different forms, dreams 16 and 21 can thus appear as sacrificing a possible mate in the place of the father, the young woman preferring the death of the former to that of the latter.[543] We must go farther than this: for the dream reproduces what happened while Baipugi was pregnant with Baipurangi. A jaguar had just killed a deer when men appeared, drove it away, and brought the deer back to camp, where it was divided among the members of the group. Baipugi was close to giving birth to her daughter when she took part in the meal, which explains why the child, who was born a few weeks later, is named after the deer and has the jaguar as her chikwagi. The dream simply repeats this real event; with one difference: it is no longer a deer, but Jyvukugi, who will be eaten. How can this transformation be explained? Another detail offers the solution: for when a man was eaten, it was normal practice to offer his penis to the pregnant women so that they might give birth to boys, the oral introjection of the penis excluding the possibility of a female birth. This is exactly what is happening with Baipurangi; while it is not explicitly stated that she is expecting a child, the chasing away of the jaguar, repeating as it does the events surrounding her mother’s pregnancy, clearly indicates that this is the case, as does the meal she eats. Indirectly, and without prejudging the ultimate value of cannibalism, Baipurangi dreams that she saves her father by letting her lover die, and that she takes all precautions to ensure that her child will be a boy. Dream No. 22. Krei comes to strike down my father Kandegi because he has gone off into the forest without me; Krei explains that he is doing it to avenge me. Krei is also angry because I have mistreated his pets, his coatis; and he is avenging himself by striking my father; I cry and rub Krei’s face to calm him down. Then he declares: “You took part in the delivery of a child; I will make you die.” Krei turns into my jware Japegi and we both go into the forest. Several levels of meaning meet at this point: those who have taken part in the birth of a child are in danger, for a certain time, of being attacked by Krei. Baipurangi is in the situation of having recently massaged the head of Pichugi’s son. Once again on this occasion she fantasizes her own death, the final departure with her jware Japegi abolishing the distinction between the world of the living and the world of the dead. But the heart of the dream is located elsewhere: in the punishment that Krei inflicts on Kandegi; he attacks him twice, and each time for different reasons. In the first case, it is Baipurangi who is avenged and what is at issue is still Kandegi’s departure into the forest, which made his daughter suffer because it made her remember the many abandonments of her childhood; Baipurangi’s aggressivity against her father is thus apparent, even though—in function of the norms of Guayaki culture—revenge cannot be the doing of the injured party, but of a responsible neutral agency. The second case, on the other hand, seems more obscure: it is Krei who is avenging himself; but, paradoxically, the guilty party, namely Kandegi, is not the one who is punished, but Baipurangi herself, whose dream says that she killed Krei’s pet coatis. This displacement of persons, and the very nature of the crime, formed so many enigmas, which were only solved thanks to Baipurangi’s commentaries on this dream. This fact is deserving of note, for it was certainly with this dream that we came closest to the classical analytical situation, Baipurangi giving herself up to real “free associations.” Out of what she tells me, one event emerges which illuminates the present dream: when she was about eight years old, Baipurangi had [544]a pet coati30 that had been given to her and to which she became very attached. One day when the family had no meat, her father Kandegi killed the coati for the meal. Baipurangi watched and wept; she held this against her father and even today vehemently maintains that it was a terrible thing for him to have done. This is apparently the event that was taken up by the dream, but it has been treated in such a way as to mask its aggressivity, while at the same time giving this aggressivity free rein: it is no longer Baipurangi who must be avenged, but Krei; and, a final point of unconscious rhetoric, the crime for which Kandegi will be punished is not his own but that of his daughter. In this way the same message is articulated twice, but it is made explicit the first time and veiled the second. This difference appears to be explained by the very archaism of the memory involved. The aggressivity against the father which has taken a certain time to take shape in the dreams seems to be touching on more and more ancient elements: at first Baipurangi was concerned with her marriage, which her father had wrongly condoned; following this the theme of abandonment came to the fore; finally it has become a question of direct aggression perpetrated against her by her father: the discrepancy between manifest and latent content which is most clearly marked here could thus be attributed to the primitive character of the problems evoked. Dream No. 23. Krei comes to visit me; he tells me, “Your father Kandegi is going to die and you will be an orphan; to avenge your father, Jakugi will beat you; you will die and be buried with your father.” The desire for the death of the father is here confirmed for the first time; up until now it has been Pikugi rather than Kandegi who has occupied the place of the dead; now Kandegi’s death is an accomplished fact, one that will bring about Baipurangi’s death (caused by the intervention of Jakugi, true to his usual character), and therefore, in another world, the reconciliation and final reunion of father and daughter. Dream No. 24. Jakugi kills a male deer; the female comes running to avenge her husband’s death, and Jakugi kills her too; he brings the dead animals back to camp and this makes us cry, my mother and me. This dream refers back to Dream No. 2, for here again Jakugi kills two animals and Baipurangi is very deeply hurt by this act; but this time the animals are deer rather than peccaries and the pair is no longer made up of a mother and a daughter, but a male and a female. The fact that both times the animals’ death is cause for weeping and lamentation is a clear indication that they are there in place of human beings. But which human beings? In 2 it seemed that the people in question were Baipugi and her daughter; in a formal way, the present dream confirms this interpretation: the death of the animal mother brings about the appearance of the human mother at the same time as the constitution of the deer couple weakens the relationship between Jakugi and his wife, who are presented quite separately from each other.[545] Still, the identification of the deer couple presents other difficulties; in the absence of all commentary outside the dream itself, it can only be hit-or-miss; nevertheless, two hypotheses can be put forward: Wachu (deer) is my native name; besides this, I know—for Baipurangi has told me several times—that Jakugi is growing concerned about our long morning conversations; thus it is possible that I am the one whom Jakugi kills, the deer’s wife being none other than Baipurangi herself; the dream would then be describing our common death, and, crying over the animals’ bodies, it is for her death and my own that Baipurangi was weeping. But here there is no way to reach any kind of certainty. On the other hand, Wachu is also the name of Baipurangi’s little brother, who had died of his sickness several days earlier; it is possible that the dream is blaming Jakugi for this death, although it is hard to understand why the husband-wife relationship should have replaced that of brother and sister (this last relationship does not mean very much when one is talking about animals; this might explain the change.) Dream No. 25. Krei comes to kill my father Pikugi; in this way he is going to avenge me, for I am very sick; I put myself between them and cry “Don’t kill him,” but Krei pays no attention to me, and Pikugi dies; I cry very hard, I will also die, and they will bury us both. This dream simply re-presents themes that have already been raised several times, and finishes quite normally with a post mortem reconciliation of father and daughter. Dream No. 26. A Guayaki from another group comes to visit us; I have never seen him before, and I start to laugh. This makes my father upset, and he says, “Don’t laugh, this is a fine young man; if you laugh you will not give birth to a boy.” In this dream motifs that have until now been randomly scattered through the dreams appear and are connected. Three essential themes that had been developed independently of each other: –   My father was very unhappy about my birth; he did not want a daughter; –   My father let me get married; in this way he definitively abandoned me; –   I want to give birth to boys and only boys; are now connected. But in what form?[546] The arrival of a Guayaki from another group, who is a possible mate, provokes laughter on Baipurangi’s part, laughter both of derision (she is making fun of this suitor) and of provocation (she is attracting his attention); while this ambivalence is characteristic of Baipurangi in everyday life, still the dream makes it quite clear, despite the ambiguity, that it is expressing a refusal. Now—and here we can see real progress in the clarification of Baipurangi’s problematic—her father, who in previous dreams had agreed to take her back and keep her with him once and for all, here forbids her to laugh, putting forward the young man’s good qualities, and so wishing that she should marry him. But this will for marriage remains secondary; it is rooted in a deeper desire: that of seeing his daughter give birth to a son, the son that Baipurangi was not herself. The way in which Baipurangi seems to deny sexuality while asking for it in her behavior is revealed to be based on a deeper anxiety, that provoked by her sterility, by her inability to repay the debt she contracted to her father in being born a girl; an anxiety which the next dream will push to its extreme consequences. Dream No. 27. Krei comes to visit me and says: “If you have your period, you will die; an animal will capture you and you will be carried off by the armadillo disease; if you are not pregnant, then death is lying in wait for you, but if you are expecting a child, then you will not be sick.” Baipurangi finishes by specifying that Krei wants her to have a child. Thus it is indeed sterility that is now taken as object, a sterility identified with death;31 in the preceding dreams, death appeared only as a way of getting rid of Jakugi and rejoining her former husband Krajagi with whom she only had “chaste” relations: but this was nothing but the conscious and tranquilizing use of an obvious fact too brutal to be accepted as such: for what the dream strikingly reveals is that this desire for death is simply the other side of her inability to live, to give life to a child of the male sex; only this, a new term in the game of signifying relations, would allow her to stop fantasizing her return to her original family, to master her feeling of abandonment through having responsibility for a small creature who must in turn not be abandoned, and finally to give meaning to her sexual relations by transforming them into something other than the sign of the lost paradise of childhood. The same content is formulated in the following dream, but this time disguised in a way that is highly illustrative of the dream-work. Dream No. 28. Krei tells me, “Don’t take a husband; if you get married, you will be very sick. Jakugi makes love a lot, and because of this you will get sick.” Then he turns to Jakugi to say, “Leave Baipurangi alone and sleep with other women; she has not been tattooed and so you can’t have her, for when a young woman has not been tattooed I do not give her away; you will have other wives.” Then I meet my father, Kandegi, who tells me that Krei has ordered him that we should sleep side by side; so we spend the night next to each other. At first glance, this dream is completely different from the preceding one and more like others which Baipurangi had had considerably earlier: Krei takes the young woman away from Jakugi to give her back to her father, and the world of [547]childhood is reconstituted once more; and the interdiction he lays down makes no allusion to a possible birth. But this is nothing but appearance; in fact, what does Krei say? “I do not allow a woman who has not been tattooed to get married.” In Guayaki culture tattooing is in no way a prerequisite for sexual relations or marriage; it generally takes place much later. On the other hand, it is directly associated with the reproductive functions: a tattooed woman will have strong and handsome children who will not get sick; and it is for this that a woman submits to this long and painful operation. For this reason alone the dream’s evocation of tattooing implies a direct reference to the desire to have children; but this desire is repressed: the semantic value of tattooing is different in the culture and in the dream, and the distortion which the syntagmatic chain operates upon the paradigmatic organization is given as the place both of repression and of the return of the repressed. What Krei is actually saying is thus quite different from what he seems to say, and his interdiction could be expressed as follows: “I do not allow a woman to marry if she cannot bear a man children; therefore, such a woman can do nothing but return to her father”; in reality, this return is itself impossible, since Baipurangi is not the son her father wished so much to have. Dream No. 29. Jakugi is married to Chachu Kujagi, and they are tickling each other. Chachugi asks me if I am angry; I answer no, for I know that Jakugi will die. This is the last dream that we collected; it allows Baipurangi to rid herself of Jakugi in the simplest possible way—by marrying him to a dead wife: for Chachu Kujagi died several days earlier, of pneumonia; in tickling her—an act which the Guayaki always interpret as a prelude to sexual relations—Jakugi is signing his own death warrant. And his death is definitely what Baipurangi wants; several Guayaki have died during the last few weeks following an epidemic; what is appearing is the possibility that Jakugi be the next victim. It is here that the series of dreams ends; we have analyzed them in order and have tried to interpret them basing ourselves both on the series as a whole—the dreams commenting upon each other—and on the way in which the cultural data are transformed on the oneiric level, with the associations provoked in Baipurangi by the telling of her dreams furnishing an important added base. It is now time to return to the problem in a synthesizing way. * * * The twenty-nine dreams given here make up only a little over a quarter of the material collected; as far as their content is concerned, the dreams that have been left out contain no new information; they are generally very short and condense into a phrase or an image what other dream dreams develop more abundantly. Nevertheless, from a certain point of view, it is crucial to consider the material as an integral whole, for only in this way can we grasp the displacement that has taken place in the thematic in the course of these two months: any dream that we have kept as an important one was in most cases announced and confirmed by a number of secondary dreams which in one way or another carried the same message. We have thus based ourselves on the corpus as a whole; but the rifts revealed in the study of this corpus are also present in the more limited series that has been commented upon here: to see this it will suffice to summarize the essential points of each dream [548]into one or two phrases; simply juxtaposing these allows us to grasp in a condensed form the slips and transformations of meaning that have taken place. No. 1. Jakugi announces my32 death. No. 2. Jakugi kills me and kills my mother who is trying to avenge me.33 No. 3. I give birth to children while my father watches; then he feeds them. No. 4. Jakugi’s aggressivity towards me; in the end he is replaced by Krei. No. 5. I live with my parents as I did when I was a child. No. 6. Jakugi has let me drink armadillo blood, so I die and rejoin my former husband Krajagi in the sky. No. 7. The return of Pampigi causes the death of my father Pikugi and my husband Jakugi. No. 8. Wachugi tells me, “You want to have children.” No. 9. I give birth to many boys, whose father is unknown. No. 10. I live with my family far from the Paraguayans. No. 11. Jakugi leaves me for Achikujagi; this makes me happy. No. 12. My father and mother take me back from Jakugi. No. 13. I know that I am going to die and go live in the sky. No. 14. Everyone leaves me, including my father and mother. No. 15. I dream that I will dream that I am making love with Wachugi. No. 16. Kybwyragi is eaten by the jaguar; then I go into the forest with my father Pikugi without running any risk. No. 17. Japekujagi forbids me to take a husband. No. 18. The jaguar forbids me to take a husband. No. 19. When I die, my father Barendy takes me away and burns up the forest to avenge me. No. 20. I have a daughter by Wachugi; she is a virgin and does not want a husband. No. 21. I eat the body of Jyvukugi, who has been killed by the jaguar; I will have boys. No. 22. Krei avenges me and himself by striking down my father. No. 23. Krei announces the death of my father, which will bring about my own death. No. 24. Jakugi kills a deer couple. No. 25. Krei kills my father to avenge me. No. 26. My father prevents me from laughing so that I will give birth to a boy. No. 27. Krei tells me that if I have my period again I will die. No. 28. A woman who cannot have children should not get married. No. 29. The death of Jakugi. Simply looking through this résumé reveals the existence of a process which, as it develops, grants us access to the more secret problematics that structure Baipurangi’s [549]life.34 Certainly, several of the dreams can be detached from the group either because they concern only minor points or because they refer to unchanging aspects of the situation: this is the case with dream 10, in which Baipurangi reaffirms her refusal of close contact with the Paraguayans, with dream 15, which thematizes the function of dreaming, and with dream 18, in which Barendy, in his classic role, takes away the young woman who has just died; but these are exceptions; the other dreams fall into groups, and these can be classed as follows. The first six dreams, with the exception of 3 (which presents the desire to have children in a disguised way) and 5 (in which Baipurangi nostalgically evokes her life as a child) center around Jakugi, who in one way or another causes Baipurangi’s death. This unity is all the more striking since this theme of the murder committed by the husband—for sometimes it is explicitly a murder—will not reappear in the dreams that follow. Dream 6 marks a turning point: Baipurangi’s death, which has been experienced until now as a trauma, begins to appear to her as a way to be rid of Jakugi and to rejoin her late husband Krajagi; thus, in most of the dreams that follow Baipurangi will be fantasizing her own death, calling for it, glorifying it—the death that will open her road to another, positively valorized, universe.35 Baipurangi certainly feels the danger of this; she is afraid of Jakugi, and her desire for death comes out in other ways than just in the dreams; she speaks of it often, even outside our meetings, a sign of real anxiety. But the way this raw material is picked up and elaborated by the dream will change its meaning: it is as if the traumatizing elements that are evoked over and over again through the whole series of dreams takes on a different value through their integration into a syntagmatic chain, as if relating them to other signifiers drawn from the code provided by the culture allows their explosive charge to be reduced. In another way, the dream-work consists of selecting certain elements that have been lived in their full opacity and hostility in order to integrate them into the very dialectic of desire and its object; thus, their inertia dissolves; they lose their aura of destiny to become the indispensable mediations that a living intentionality can use to arrive at its goals. That this integration takes place on an imaginary level does not diminish its real effectiveness. Thus Dream 6 marks a turning-point the effects of which will be felt as far as Dream 20. Jakugi is no longer a threat; he is simply the person it has become impossible to live with; hence the many variations on the theme “how to get rid of him?” To this question the dream brings two answers, one of which is situated typically within the imaginary order, while the other will facilitate access to the symbolic problematic that rules Baipurangi’s life by seeking to return to the time when this problematic was formed. For Baipurangi the first way consists of fantasizing her own death and rejoining someone she loved very much—her late husband Krajagi or her jware Japegi and [550]Doro Paregi—in the world beyond; this is the case with dreams 6, 13, 19, which all end in a heavenly reunion. The second way36 consists of dreaming of a primordial interdiction which would forever prevent Baipurangi from taking a husband: in 12 this interdiction is imposed by her father Kandegi, in 17 by Japekujagi, in 18 by the jaguar. This shift in characters is not secondary; it seems to us to be correlated with the greater depth of the dreams that will follow; for the characters invoked do not occupy the same semantic position. Kandegi is alive, but when faced with a real choice he did not behave as he does in the dream; on the contrary, he gave his daughter away, and, as far as Baipurangi can tell, he did so gladly. On the other side, Japekujagi protected Baipurangi from an even earlier loss of virginity than the one she actually experienced; but today, taken by the Paraguayans, she might as well be dead and can no longer help. The jaguar, finally, neutralizes the double opposition: he is a mythical being situated beyond life and death, who played no role in Baipurangi’s childhood and marriage. We have had the impression that after each dream, the impossibility—for reasons which are themselves contrary—of making the character in question play the role given to him in the previous dream brings about his replacement by another term. Dream 18, by choosing the most theoretical and abstract solution, will break suddenly with the previous dreams and bring back to the fore an aggressivity directed explicitly against the father who, precisely, did not act in real life as he did in the dream. But parallel to this series of dreams which all abolish the marriage to Jakugi has appeared another series, centered around the birth of children. Baipurangi’s desire to have boys was already revealed in Dream 3; Dream 8, responding to an interpretation that had not been revealed, puts the confirmation of the existence of this desire into my mouth, and 9 makes us witness to the birth of many children, all of which, without exception, are boys. The place of the husband, on the other hand, remains empty, while the father of Baipurangi is present at all the deliveries, feeds the children in 3, massages them in 9. We can give two explanations, which are not mutually contradictory, for this presence: either Baipurangi’s father is also the father of her children, or else these children are explicitly destined for him because they respond to his desire. What makes the first hypothesis likely is that several times the dreams have ended with the substitution of Kandegi for Jakugi; the chastity of his relationship with Baipurangi does not negate the fact the father is here put in the husband’s place and that Baipurangi keeps insisting that she spent the night with him. What is thus symbolized, certainly, is a return to the world of childhood, to a stage in her life when Baipurangi had not yet been taken from her parents; but it is the father and not the mother to whom she returns; and the evocation of nights spent with her father makes one think irresistibly of a veritable love [551]of the daughter for the father, which springs out of her very origins. The second hypothesis—that the birth of boys is a gift made to the father—will be confirmed by the third group of dreams, which will clarify the problems that have been left hanging so far. It must not be forgotten that as she explains and comments on these dreams, Baipurangi is recalling numerous episodes from her childhood. What serves as a backdrop to her dream life is the feeling of abandonment that possessed her at a very early age, when her father sometimes left her in the care of friends or relatives for periods that could last up to several months; because of this, her marriage simply appears to her as the supreme and ultimate abandonment; whence her tendency to relive the mythical scene of separation37 while inverting its meaning, the adult refusing this time to give the girl away. This abandonment by her family, for which she holds her father principally responsible, can probably be explained by the objective conditions of life in the forest; Baipurangi, however, does not connect her father’s attitude to this situation, but to the disappointment he felt when Baipugi gave birth to a girl and not to a boy. On this subject, memories abound. She remembers that very often she went without meat simply because she was a girl,38 and she evokes one dramatic scene that particularly struck her: when she was about ten years old her mother gave birth to another girl, and Kandegi became so angry because of this that he picked up his bow as if to hit the baby, even sketching the potentially murderous movement; at this point the women of the group intervened39 and things calmed down;40 it remains nonetheless true that Baipurangi sees herself as the victim of such an aggression.41 Once she has recognized her father’s desire to kill, she feels that whenever he leaves her, for however short a time, it is the veritable equivalent of his murdering her. So, when she fantasizes her own death, she is not content just to separate herself in this way from Jakugi and go to the sky to rejoin her loved ones; she is also unconsciously responding to her father’s desire to see her dead because she is not a boy. c. This is what highlights the turn taken from Dream 21 on: up to this point the dreams have revealed no aggressivity against the father. Baipurangi has been content to dream that Kandegi behaved differently than he did in reality, thus [552]answering his daughter’s wishes, while she herself, giving birth to a heap of boys, fulfilled the secret desire (secret because it has not yet been formulated in the dreams) of her father. It is this aggressivity that now emerges: Dreams 22, 23, and 24 feature Kandegi’s death, and they make it the result of cruelties inflicted upon Baipurangi. Parallel to this there occurs a modification in the way in which the question of children is posed. Up until now Baipurangi has been content to give birth to boys (Dreams 2 and 9) and to understand these scenes as the simple result of her desire to have children (Dream 8). Now the structure changes: she no longer gives birth, but clearly sees that it is her father who wants her to have male children and that for her this is a question of life or death. Let us look, then, at these two transformations. For the first, Dream 22 is decisive, since Krei kills Kandegi for reasons related for the first time to the “bad treatment” that Baipurangi suffered in her childhood. The episode of the pet coatis, by its very archaism, reveals the depth to which the desire for the death of the father descends in Baipurangi’s subjectivity. This desire for death is only the other side of the desire for the father who has refused to accept his daughter; from this point of view, Dream 26 provides the key to the whole edifice: up until now, the dream father has behaved in the way his daughter wishes he really had—he has kept his daughter and has not given her in marriage; but now real behavior and dream behavior unite: the father lectures his daughter who is making fun of a suitor and who, by her untimely laughter, could drive him away and cause the birth of a girl rather than of a boy; Dreams 2, 8, and 9 appear in retrospect to give the father what he has always been waiting for. It is Dreams 27 and 28 that will show exactly why it is crucial for Baipurangi to answer this desire: if she does not, then sexuality is forever forbidden to her. As Krei says indirectly, only women who can have children have the right to a husband; those who cannot will remain alone, with death as their only end; and the dreams taken as a whole point to a direct formulation of Baipurangi’s problematic: the only condition that would allow me to continue living with Jakugi is to have a child; and this is so because it is only by giving birth to a boy that I will have the right to be a girl. Baipurangi’s dream production can be interpreted in full only by taking into consideration the plurality of levels on which it develops: 1. She lost her virginity while very young—this is common for young Guayaki women—and she suffered because of this; her sexual relations with Jakugi weigh heavily on her; she continually opposes his aggressivity to the gentleness of Krajagi and repeatedly describes herself as literally gorged on the erotic plane, her valorization of Krajagi being proportional to her disgust. But both the dreams and the commentaries that follow them reveal that this husband was in fact a substitute for the father, surrounding the then very young girl with tenderness and protection, recalling her to a time before she had sexual relations. These remarks should not, however, lead us to think of Baipurangi as sexually frigid; the refusal of sexuality that is explicitly affirmed and lived in reality in her relationship with Jakugi was accompanied by a sexualization of most of her behavior; she could be attractive, provocative, and what seemed to us to characterize her from this angle was a permanent ambivalence not unlike that of hysterics.[553] 2. What is in play from one end of these dreams to the other is the question How can one be a woman? which J. Lacan has pointed out as that of the hysteric, and which takes on a particular weight here, developing as it is in a culture whose daughters are rejected at birth and often put to death on various pretexts during childhood. In being born a girl, Baipurangi has contracted a debt to her father; she has deprived him of what he desires, and her present abandonment, like those that preceded it, appears to her as the result of this debt: sexuality is the sign of this abandonment, the permanent reminder of her debt; but it is also the way for her to liberate herself: for she can abolish the debt only by giving her father what she took from him, namely a boy. Only the birth of a male child can justify her as a woman; and this is equally so of her justification as a living being since, as Krei says, if she has her period again she will die. 3. Thus the avatars of the relationship with Jakugi are located only on the surface; they refer back to an archaic complex which began to manifest itself in a series of dreams produced as a result of the relationship that has been established between Baipurangi and myself, a relationship based on entirely different criteria than the ones she is accustomed to. Thus aggressivity against the father is coupled with a profound dependence upon him, a dependence which is evidently symbolic rather than real. It is because this drama has been knit from the very beginning that all the successive abandonments, even the most harmless ones, have been lived as traumas; nothing in the present-day behavior of her parents, which was completely friendly, could cause anxiety; it remained nonetheless true that a simple trip into the forest carried disproportionate importance. This allows us to understand the metaphorical equivalence between father and husband; it doesn’t matter who will be the procreator of my children as long as I can give these children to Kandegi; at the limit, the procreator could be my father himself; Dreams 2 and 9, in which Baipurangi gives birth while her father watches, could then be explained as follows: by dreaming that Kandegi feeds the children that she has just delivered or massages them at birth, Baipurangi is granting him satisfactions he would have wished for and has not had; but in exchange for this gift she receives the right to be a woman. As Freud writes, “Actually, we can never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another” (Freud 1907: 145). * * * At the same time I was conducting this experiment with Baipurangi, I collected dreams from several other individuals. Each time I was able to capture the workings of mechanisms identical to the ones here analyzed. Certain remarks should be made in this regard: by their very generality, they delimit the framework within which these questions can be discussed. These dreams refer to the difficulties that individuals encounter in the society in which they live: the scenes they evoke, the feelings and reactions they attribute to the various characters, are characteristic of a certain culture. Interpretation becomes possible only on the basis of an extensive knowledge of that culture, the dream productions meanwhile providing a means of access to the psychological problems engendered by a particular social organization. But the discussion of a [554]particular case allows us to grasp how little such a sociological determinism can exhaust the material in question. An initial observation can give us an idea of this: for these dreams speak to us without mediation; what they put into play, beyond cannibalism, the murder of girls, and ritual vengeance, still concerns us directly. The story of this Guayaki girl, a member of the most primitive tribe of South America, whose entire life has been spent in conditions more precarious than we can imagine, still for the most part follows a logic that is familiar to us. The interrogation that runs through her discourse concerns her right to exist, a right that is not really but symbolically challenged. Her search for a place from which her past and future can take on meaning and reconnect normally with each other lays before us the fact that no such place is naturally given to man, that he does not occupy such a place as the result of some simple process of organic maturation, but only through a dialectic allowing him access to mastery of the symbolic space within which he has come into being. If the culturalist shapings of psychoanalysis are so disappointing, it is because they locate themselves on another level: for culturalism seeks to show how different societies create specific individual problematics, the subject being particularized according to the institutions through which he both realizes and completes himself. But, beyond certain of his formulas, what Freud is posing are the very conditions of this particularization: in what way does an organism bearing multiple possibilities become a subject centered around certain essential signifiers? The subject does not simply grow out of the organism; what happens, rather, is the subject’s encounter with an order that makes him accede to another dimension, constitutive of all culture. This universality exists on several levels: it is that of the symbolic function, of the passage from a phenomenal universe to the organization of signifying chains through which alone the real can be refracted, of the structuring of human relations that flows from the effectiveness of this logic, finally of the nature/culture conjunction that operates in every individual when, at the moment of birth, he is torn out of pure biological immediacy. It is above all on this last level that Freudian psychoanalysis is located. That Freud passed from the analysis of this encounter between determined individuals and a constitutive symbolic order to an actual history of the engendering of this order itself (the project of Totem and taboo) marks a confusion between two origins, that of structure and that of event. It does not, however, follow that this primordial order should be identified with that of any given society. When Freud defines the child as polymorphously perverse, he cannot be referring to a simply bodily incompleteness which develops over the long run toward some rigorously defined state of normality. Any familiarity with history or ethnology puts the idea of any such normality permanently into question. On the other hand, he is not so far from the linguist who observes that the human voice is capable of articulating an infinity of sounds.42 In both cases it is within a determinate [555]environment that this plurality of possibilities will lose its original indifferentiation, some of them becoming the privileged form of adult behavior. These forms vary from society to society; but in order to institute them all societies depend on what nature has provided them with, and this nature can never be definitively replaced: for what is rejected does not simply disappear; the individual, marked as what he is by a particular code, continues to bear within himself what this code misrecognizes or refuses. In inscribing individual energies into a network that preexists them, societies give this energy the power to become history; but each individual, while coming into being as an individual only through his encounter with such networks, remain something more than this. Which is simply to say that childhood is never over, and that it is at the point where child and adult, nature and a particular social universe, meet that we find certain activities, from playing to dreaming, that carry us ceaselessly back and forth between the real and the possible. A dream is the discourse of a subject who is at once both addresser and addressee. This means that code and message are also identical: the dreaming individual does not follow a predetermined code that has been fixed once and for all, but chooses or invents, in function of what he is seeking to signify, a certain type of syntax out of all those that are available. Thus, two successive dreams might easily follow two different codes. Freud demonstrated this polyvalence of dream logic in The interpretation of dreams: it means that the dreaming subject is situated at the meeting point of multiple symbolic systems and draws from their elements and syntaxes to signify his own condition. In doing this he may follow the preexisting codes of his culture, subject these codes to deformations such that the true meaning can be found only by pursuing associations, or—and this is the most frequent case—freely invent lexicon and syntax. For the most part, Baipurangi’s dreams occupy an intermediate position, using ritual sequences whose identity is retained while introducing certain displacements which can be made intelligible only through comparison with the cultural model. In line with this, they invite us to take a brief look at the problem that is raised throughout the work of Jung—that of the existence of archetypes and their appearance in both dreams and myths. One precision should be made immediately: in Jung’s eyes the appearance of archetypes is characteristic of only one class of dreams; in the other class, each dream has its own meaning, obeying rules specific to a particular subject. The latter group—and this includes most dreams—can be decoded only through free association. Thus, in his own words, Jung opposes any isomorphism of signifier and signified, which he sees as one of Freud’s errors: “It is far wiser in practice not to regard the dream-symbols semiotically, i.e., as signs or symptoms of a fixed character. . . I say that this procedure is advisable in practice because in theory relatively fixed symbols do exist whose meaning must on no account be referred to anything known and formulatable as a concept. . . It may seem strange that I should attribute an as it were indefinite content to these relatively [556]fixed symbols. Yet if their content were not indefinite, they would not be symbols at all, but signs or symptoms” (Jung 1931: 156). In this case, the key to the dream can be provided only by the subject himself. It is he who has “decided” the nature of the relationship between symbols on the one hand, things and concepts on the other, and it is to him that we should address ourselves. There are, however, other cases in which the materials at work in the dream obey a code which for Jung is universal and equally valid for individual and for collective productions. The analyst shares this code with the analysand, and so does not need to proceed via the patient’s commentaries—his own associations are just as valuable. “Each individual has his own life, his images and ideas. . . But what is of central importance on the level of the personal unconscious is not necessarily so for material arising from the collective unconscious. Faced with an archetype, the analyst can and should begin to think, for it arises from a structure common to the human condition, about which my associations will be as valuable as the dreamer’s” (Jung [1934] 1962: 313).43 Whether or not such dreams exist, Jung’s interpretation of them misrecognizes certain properties of symbolic thought. He himself wavers between a synchronic and a diachronic idea of archetypes: in the first case, they would consist of “constants of the imagination” valid for any individual whatever (and thus without relation to time) and organized in the unconscious, which is therefore a real entity which expresses itself equally in myths or dreams. In the diachronic view of the archetypes, on the other hand, we are referred to a history in which the archetypes came into being, a history whose essential property is that nothing in it is ever lost. “The unconscious, as the totality of all archetypes, is the deposit of human experience right back to its remotest beginnings” (Jung 1929: 157, cited in Jacobi 1957: 36). But this linear schema of history is unacceptable both for humanity and for animals. For the universals of the imagination cannot be reached on the level of images: the recurrence of certain signifiers which seem to bear the same signified all through human history can most often be explained as the simple projection of our own semantic classes onto material that is actually far more complex; and when this recurrence takes place over shorter periods it is the result of a shared development valid for certain, but not all, societies. Anthropology and the history of religions, on the contrary, reveal how little symbols possess “a fixed meaning or character” in this domain. Even the most natural conjunctions—such as a paternal sun, a maternal earth—cease to be natural in a different context. It seems that what governs the formation of symbolic universes is a series of mutually exclusive choices rather than any progressive and undifferentiating integration of different levels of meaning. The dreams to which Jung is referring utilize a recognized and objectivized code. It is thus true that the analyst is able to advance a coherent interpretation without passing via the subject’s associations; but it is vain to speak as Jung does of the analyst’s associations. For in this case it is not a question of associating, but of knowing as thoroughly as possible the collective meanings carried by the various elements [557]of the dream. In listening even to Baipurangi’s dreams, with their extremely limited individual lexicon,44 recourse to a collective unconscious that is the same for everyone is inconceivable. Analysis only became possible once we had plunged ourselves into a particular cultural universe, completely unknown beforehand. For a Guayaki dream-interpreter, on the other hand, the best procedure would not have been to follow his own associations, but to master the values of his own culture—and to verify whether or not they were the same for Baipurangi. In both cases the use of the term “association” is inadequate. When the dreams of a patient make use of mythical and religious material, the key to this material is to be found outside the dreams themselves; but this does not mean that it is universal. Cultures, like individuals, organize and interpret what is available to them in function of principles that differ from one case to the next; in no case can the relationship of subjectivity to the symbol be considered a natural one, with symbols consubstantial with the “soul” itself. And this implies: that when such material is legitimately used in an individual’s dreams, it is always in cases where it was previously known to him, one way or another. that—if this material is not distorted—only an objective study of its content, incorporating all the necessary safeguards, can give us access to it. that while the analyst can, to the extent that he immerses himself in such a system, sometimes interpret it without difficulty, this does not mean that his own associations share in the privilege: for they themselves can form so many distortions, which will only occasionally intersect with the distortions the patient has performed on the same material. And what is at stake here is understanding the patient’s own distortions. From this point of view, Jung’s conception is both too broad and too narrow. The dreams that he says belong to the collective unconscious are those that contain mythological themes; but there is no reason to confine ourselves to these: political, social, economic elements would be equally amenable to the same techniques. A dream centered around historical figures, Lenin or Hitler, shows the same use of certain signifiers from my own culture for individual ends. Thus, the fact that some dreams are constructed like myths is not satisfactorily explained by an isomorphism of the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious; it arises, rather, out of the encounter of an individual with a symbolic order that is distinct for each society. Collective unconscious and individual unconscious do not overlap:45 the former is entirely externalized; it is coextensive with the myths, rituals, institutions, representations of a particular culture, and is nothing outside of these; all interiority is excluded from it, since there is no subject to be the bearer of this totality. Unconsciousness bears—although this is not always the case—on the rules of construction of these systems and their respective modes of articulation. Thus, it is not lexicon but syntax that can be unconscious. Still, the human individual is [558]sometimes characterized by unconsciousness of both:46 through his encounter with the world he is inscribed with primordial images which are immediately masked, transformed, but without losing their—originally semi-biological—effectiveness; his everyday mental life reveals the existence of operations which structure immediately given material in an original way. The reader may refer to the forgetting of the name Signorelli at the beginning of the Psychopathology of everyday life; the final interpretation does not really reveal any new content; several times, already, Freud had thought over the relationship to death, impotence, and mastery that is formulated by the slip, and the quality of being unconscious characterizes the themes, not the operations; the operations produce a conjunction of the materials being worked with in such a way that all evident meaning is excluded. This opacity is, however, the sign of a new reorganization of the psychological field, bringing out equivalences among previously unconnected domains. By its very formalism, the unconscious reveals the multiplicity of implications of the contents of subjectivity; it seeks to establish unity and continuity where fragmentation and discontinuity seem to reign. This is what vitiates Sartre’s critique in Being and nothingness, which he bases on Stekel’s statement (Sartre [1934] 1966: 95) that “Every time that I have been able to carry my investigations far enough, I have established that the crux of the psychosis was conscious.” Even if this is true, it does not change the fact that the pathogenic kernel, even though available to me explicitly in such a case, structures my psychic universe in a way that in most cases is not directly accessible to me. A slip of the tongue or a dream remains unintelligible even in cases in which its decipherment would tell me nothing I did not already know. The distinction between unconsciousness of the lexicon and unconsciousness of the logic that rules it seems a decisive one: it rules out any confusion between the individual and the collective and connects psychoanalysis to two other domains: to biology on the one hand, and on the other to the universal semiology announced by Ferdinand de Saussure. The cultural lexicon used by the subject is an explicit one, which explains both the subject’s ability to use it and the analyst’s ease in understanding it. It is important to note that this lexicon has been learned, and is not attached by any natural link to particular conscious subjects. This observation, while decisive, is still not enough to explain the fact that dreams and myths from different societies echo each other. Robert Gessain (1957) has noted the homology between certain North American myths of the vagina dentata and dreams obtained on the analyst’s couch. How can such similarities be explained? The answer can only be found in the structural non-congruence of the individual and his culture. The latter represents only one of many possible symbolic systems—while every individual bears within himself the virtual totality of these systems. What a culture admits, recognizes, validates in its members is only a part of what these members are; and this misrecognized, repressed, forecluded being remains, in many ways, present. The notion of marginality, put forward by anthropologists, apparently refers to individuals whose entire personalities are organized around different elements than those central to their culture; but there is a part of each one of [559]us that remains marginal, and it is this part that other societies have developed and legitimized. The dream, by its very nature, leads into this relatively undifferentiated place where being infinitely exceeds what is said about it. The confusion of addresser and addressee allows a greater freedom of syntax, which is directly related to the openness of childhood. For while the adult has become an adult through being marked by a particular culture, the child still carries the possibility of being equally open to all conceivable norms. The dream—partly because of its normal abolition of the conditions of communication (there are also other reasons)—initiates a return to the freedom of childhood; it introduces other thoughts than those from which the culture of the dreamer draws inspiration; it uses whatever is immediately available to construct figures other than those that dominate waking life. Thus, the dreams of a hysteric or an obsessional neurotic might well rediscover—recreate—an organization of the world once developed by some vanished culture. From a certain point of view, Baipurangi’s dreams give us an example of this power: centered around a debt, they see marriage as a veritable gift; they tend to crystallize around a primal scene in which the father actually gives his daughter away. But nothing in Guayaki culture could really correspond to such a fantasy: Guayaki girls have total freedom in the choice of a mate, with the one stipulation that they are not free not to choose. The norms of the group, the life led by its members, were such that in practice marriage was imposed whenever possible. But in this process, which was only weakly institutionalized, the father’s role was minimal: it was not he who brought about the formation of the conjugal family. Baipurangi’s mythical reorganization of her own history is not based on the real conditions of her marriage with Jakugi, but on the way her relationship with her father has been structured since she was born. It is in function of a specific problematic—itself referring to the totality of Guayaki culture—that Baipurangi has reconstructed the system of social relations, giving the father a role that is not normally his. When Lévi-Strauss points to the incest prohibition as the foundation of all society, he makes it clear that every gift given is the consequence of a gift received: the father gives his daughter to a man of another group because he himself once before received a woman from that group. To different degrees every kinship system is an actualization of this primordial exchange, although this will be explicitly thematized only in some societies. While marriage always implies a giver, in the latter case his position changes from a peripheral to a central one. Instead of being the implicit correlate of the circulation of women, his intervention becomes real, with all the psychological or social effects that this implies. It is this passage that is effected in Baipurangi’s dreams. This is not to say that Baipurangi’s drama coincides in any simple way with this last possibility. In Baipurangi’s eyes, her father did indeed give her away, but not because he had previously received something. For in this case the woman has been replaced by the child as object of desire: her father did not get what he had a right to, namely a son; instead of a son, Baipurangi was born; and, because she had never been accepted, she could then be given away. Here giving comes before receiving: Kandegi abandons his daughter to Jakugi because he is hoping for a son from their union; at the birth of this boy the bargain will be definitively sealed. A gift that has received its countergift can no longer be put into question: thus we might expect that if Baipurangi gives birth to a boy it would forever establish her [560]as Jakugi’s property. But this is not the situation at all: for it is not a question of real possession but of the places of terms within a symbolic space that does not coincide with the actual relations among people. What is in question ultimately is not knowing whether or not Baipurangi will remain Jakugi’s wife—a factual problem that will be resolved once Baipurangi has mastered her own symbolic constellation—but ascertaining the extent to which she can realize a symbolic conjunction with her father which could abolish the disjunction that has existed since she was born. Thus her mythical history takes form at the meeting point of two propositions: –   My father gave me away because I took something away from him. –   Once I have given him what he is hoping for, I will be accepted retroactively. Such a logic, evidently, is completely ordered by an individual dialectic; but even so, it brings to light certain universal processes around which other cultures are organized. This is so of the exchange of women: in considering her own marriage as the exchange of a daughter for a son, Baipurangi is formulating the position of woman as object of exchange with a rigor that is without equivalent in her own society. The problems raised by the interpretation of these dreams are located at the intersection of many disciplines. This is not by chance: sooner or later the elaboration of any ethnology leads into biology on the one hand, psychology on the other. And we are not dealing with a reduction of any sort here, but rather a reciprocal fertilization possible only if the specificity of each discipline is fully respected. Psychoanalysis has never been so true to its goals as when it has maintained—against certain sociologistic tendencies—the irreducibility of its experience;47 to this extent it has been able to integrate results obtained on other levels, most notably that of linguistics. Inversely, ethnology has been able to define its object through a radical critique of psychoanalytic extrapolations about “primitive societies”; still, the problem of the relationship of the two fields remains open. It is hoped that the present essay might contribute to its solution. Translator’s note. I would like to thank Mark Mancall for instigating this translation and Isabel Heck for her help in preparing the manuscript. My goal here has been to be as literal as possible while not letting the English get completely bizarre. I have maintained most of the author’s idiosyncratic punctuation, especially his rather breathless use of semicolons and en-dashes. Where Sebag cites the French versions of works that also exist in English (e.g., Freud and Jung), I have given the equivalent passages in the published English translations. Two points where translation tactics should be made explicit: First, French possessives do not distinguish the gender of the possessor, but that of the possessed: son, sa, or ses can all mean “his,” “her” or “its”. Standard usage now (at least mine) is, when this is not otherwise specified, to use something like “his or her.” But in the early 1960s, virtually all scholarly writing referred to “the individual” or “man” as him and his. Not to impose more anachronism than necessary on the text, I have followed this usage here. Second, Sebag follows the scholarly French mode of referring to himself as “we” when it is the author’s voice, rather than the acting individual’s, that is speaking: “We undertook a study of dreams on our own. . .,” means that Sebag did it by himself. This use of [561]“we” corresponds to nothing in English. It distances the author’s voice and is apparently supposed to be modest. Sebag switches to “I” when he talks about himself as an actor in the events narrated, as, for instance, in Notes 28 and 30 below. There is no non-obtrusive way to signal the switching back and forth in the text between “we” and “I.” Given that, in spite of its expressive and poetic qualities, this is a text in which the referential function is predominant, I have decided to change the authorial “we” to “I” throughout, keeping the plural only when Sebag seems to be including the reader in the exploration: “I was (literally ‘We were’) able to obtain this information. . . [It] will allow us to penetrate more deeply. . . [It] will permit us to transcend the level of simple biography. . .” The French text is there if the reader would like to explore this stylistic dimension further. There is a discussion of the use of authorial “we” in Claude Lévi-Strauss, L’homme nu (Paris, 1971), p. 559. References Freud, Sigmund. 1905. “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,” Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, VIII. London: Hogarth Press. ———. 1907. “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, IX. London: Hogarth Press. ———. 1920. “On the Psychogenesis of a Case of Female Homosexuality,” in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, XVIII. London: Hogarth Press. Gessain, Robert. 1957. “Vagina dentata” dans la clinique et la mythologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Jacobi, Jolande. (1957) 1959. Complex /Archetype/ Symbol. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jung, Carl. 1927. “The Structure of the Psyche,” in Collected Works, VIII. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1931. “The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis,” in Collected Works, XVI. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. (1934) 1962. “Du rêve au mythe” in L’Homme à la découverte de son âme, 6th edition, Paris: Albin Michel. Lacan, Jacques. (1953) 1979. “The Neurotic’s Individual Myth,” trans. Martha Noel Evans in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly 48: 405-425. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1949) 1963. “The Effectiveness of Symbols,” in Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Sarte, Jean Paul. (1934) 1966. Being and nothingness. New York: Pocket Books. Sebag, Lucien. 1964. Marxisme et structuralisme. Paris: Payot. ___________________ 1. Pierre Clastres and I studied Guayaki culture jointly; but I conducted this rather marginal work on dreams on my own. 2. I did not neglect these formal characteristics (the way a dream is related is as valuable as the dream itself); but in most cases they did not seem relevant, since they were identical throughout the corpus. 3. In the present essay it did not seem helpful to give the original texts with interlinear translations. 4. Which is, of course, always the case in an analysis. 5. Arroyo Morroti was just a clearing in the middle of the forest, where the Guayaki had settled because their protector’s “rancho” was located there. 6. The second group, the “Aché Kwera,” had been there for only a year, and some of its members did not appear at Arroyo Morroti until just before our arrival. 7. The ethnographic information given here has been limited to that strictly necessary for understanding the dreams that follow; we have avoided all developments not relevant to the dreams. 8. Neither of the two groups at Arroyo Morroti included more than forty members or so; but this was due to persecutions by the Paraguayans. 9. The Aché Gatu and the Aché Kwera did not know each other before meeting at Arroyo Morroti. 10. Cases of polyandry are very frequent in Guayaki society. 11. This point would require long explanations which we are unable to give here; we can, however, say that this marks an essential difference between men and women, indicating that it is the former who exchange the latter, and that in every case the counterpart of the gift received is the possibility of death itself. We should also note that sexual relations that took place earlier are only authenticated when the girl has her first period. 12. The term jware is also applied to the person who purified the girl with liana shreds at the time of her first period; this clearly indicates the reciprocal structural articulation of the two ceremonies. 13. Following the way Guarani is written, the phoneme y—common to Guayaki and Guarani—designates a guttural French “u”. The symbol u here designates the French sound “ou” [Translator’s note: As in English boot]. 14. I cite only those Guayaki terms that have specific functions not directly translatable into French; the dreams to be analyzed will involve figures designated by these terms. 15. This is true of at least one of the groups, the Aché Gatu, to which Baipurangi belonged; the second group, the Aché Kwera, buried their dead. 16. The term “soul” is of course used here with reservations. Ianvé and Ové can be defined only by their characteristics. 17. We should mention that the Paraguayan in charge of the Guayaki, Manuel Peyreira, had gotten into the habit of sleeping with Baipurangi from time to time. This situation was intolerable both for her and for Jakugi; but neither of them could do anything about it. 18. Baipurangi is speaking; we have kept as closely as possible to the text of the dream, in order to preserve the personal nature of the narration. 19. An extremely poisonous snake, greatly feared by the Guayaki. 20. I have analyzed the dreams in order, indicating at every point the degree of certainty the interpretation can claim. Each problem will be reconsidered in a more general way later in the essay, as we assess the route we have travelled. 21. “The dream-work. . . subjects the thought-material, which is brought forward in the optative mood, to a most strange revision. First, it takes the step from the optative to the present indicative; it replaces ‘oh! if only. . .’ by ‘It is’” (Freud 1905: 162). 22. In Guayaki a woman in this position is designated by a term meaning “false mother.” 23. As in this case, acts of revenge always draw on preexisting affective and social relations. The soul of a dead person, intervening on behalf of a wronged third party, will seize someone he was close to in life, most often his wife. 24. Meat has extraordinary affective and social value for the Guayaki. A Guayaki who spends a week without eating meat becomes morose and seems to have lost all interest in life. 25. This is a very common way of formulating problems for the Guayaki, in conversation as well as in dreams. We collected dreams from adults of both sexes, and this theme appeared in every case. 26. This is a reference to me, myself, to whom Baipurangi is telling the dream; this is the first in which I appear. Pierre Clastres and I had received Indian names after about three months with the Guayaki. He was Brikukiviregi (red-headed vulture), and I was called Wachugi (deer); these names had nothing to do with our physical or psychological qualities. [Translator’s note: Sebag uses the word chevreuil for the animal that gives him his name. In dictionaries, this is given as ‘roebuck’, and Auster, for instance, consistently uses this term in his translation of Clastres. Since these creatures are not all male, of course, the term should be roe deer. A roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) is a smallish European deer, a favorite with hunters. There are none in South America. I don’t know what kind of cervid the Aché hunt, but I would guess it’s the Brocket Deer (genus Mazama), a smallish deer about the size of a roe. I just translate it ‘deer’.] 27. Up until a few years ago the Paraguayans organized expeditions to kidnap Guayaki children, who were afterwards resold. It is only fairly recently that a law was passed forbidding such traffic and that the Department of Indian Affairs has extended its—faraway—protection over the various native groups of Paraguay. 28. Haven’t I, for my part, accepted Baipurangi completely? Haven’t I recognized her as a woman and still not had sexual relations with her? 29. In June, 1963, the Guayaki did, however, eat a little boy who had died of an illness, and performed the appropriate ceremonies (stripping and cremation of the bones). 30. Coatis are the only pets the Guayaki have; people catch them young and keep them until lack of food forces them to be killed. 31. The Guayaki explain most deaths as caused by diseases brought on by three essential foods: honey, armadillo meat, and coati meat. 32. Baipurangi is of course speaking of herself. 33. These summaries are situated not on the level of what the dreams say explicitly, the manifest content, but on that of the interpretation, the latent content. 34. An additional confirmation of this was provided by the appearance of childhood memories from the end of the first month. 35. The Guayaki, both men and women, speak very frequently of their own death; and they do so with a lyricism that is not without grandeur. 36. Dreams 7 and 11 occupy a somewhat special place; they deal with the same subject, the departure of Jakugi; the first is important because in it Baipurangi accepts the sacrifice of Pikugi—the father she is less attached to—in order to be rid of Jakugi; the second, which takes real conditions into account, evidently represents the most satisfactory solution. 37. Guayaki marriage involves no ceremony; and, strictly speaking, there is no need for the father’s consent; the father- and mother-in-law do, however, receive pieces of game from their son-in-law. 38. Indeed, what is in question in this case is more a mythical reconstruction of her history, revealing its symbolic value (on this subject, cf. Lacan [(1953) 1979]), than any kind of photographically exact narration. Direct questioning of the various protagonists revealed that while Kandegi was not happy about the birth of a daughter, he still treated her well on the whole. 39. The opposite could easily have taken place, and Kandegi could have killed his daughter at birth; this is what happened in several other cases. 40. This girl was later, at a very young age, kidnapped by Paraguayans. 41. Baipurangi must remember how her father would threaten her with his bow in the same way when she cried for lack of meat. 42. This represents, of course, only a very general analysis seeking to point out that nature remains the basis for cultural specifications, which are themselves mutually exclusive. Diachrony is essential to the Freudian theory of stages, in which each stage depends on the preceding one. This dependence is not real but symbolic: for it is the way in which the encounter between a particular drive and the law has been lived that determines the later form of that drive. In addition, the reappearance of earlier phases in adult sexuality is not simply a resurgence of certain moments of infantile sexuality that have remained identical throughout their development; a pervert is not a child, but a man who can signify his adult sexuality only by means of the debris of his childhood sexuality; thus the latter is restructured in function of norms posterior to it. 43. A somewhat different version will be found in Jung’s Collected Works, XVIII (1977: 90-91). 44. It is nevertheless true in Dream 2, built around the birth (fall) of children, that the Guayaki word for “fall” (waa) also means childbirth. 45. On this point, cf. Lévi-Strauss ([1949] 1963). 46. The unconscious may be threefold, involving lexicon, syntax, and function. 47. In my opinion, this is part of the significance of the work of Jacques Lacan.  

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Green: Reciting the future This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Sarah Green. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online) Reciting the future: Border relocations and everyday speculations in two Greek border regions Sarah Green, University of Manchester Using ethnographic research from two different historical periods and border regions of Greece—the Greek-Albanian border in Epirus in the northwestern mainland during the 1990s, and the Greek-Turkish border in the north Aegean in the 2000s—this article explores how talk about what might happen next contributes toward the continual process of relocating borders. A comparison between them demonstrates that the specific historical moment and the different iconic significance of the two border regions mattered considerably in people’s speculations about what might happen next. As such, the stories form part of the historically contingent process of giving borders certain qualities. This article focuses on the way these accounts combine stereotypical with personal stories about the past, bringing widely known, and often ideologically inflected, commentaries that are recited almost by rote together with more personal stories about people’s experiences. The article suggests that such recitations both perform and reiterate stereotypical and ideological positions, which locate people politically, socially, and in relation to the border—and which also define the qualities of border. The more personal stories act as a contrast, or complement, to these recitations, locating people in their own relations, and highlighting the way borders are multiply qualified places. Keywords: borders, location, Epirus, Albania, Aegean, Greece, recitation Epirus in the 1990s Epirus, a region located in northwestern mainland Greece, experienced a major change in its political landscape in the last two decades of the twentieth century: its border with Albania was reopened, after almost fifty years of closure. Albania under communist rule had the most tightly controlled borders in any part of Europe during that period (De Waal 2005: 5-7), not only preventing most movement of people or goods across the border, but also preventing almost any information about the country from getting out: Albania’s neighbours knew little if anything about what had been going on there. Equally, the Greek government persisted in refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the border after the cessation of hostilities in 1949, so that in formal terms, Greece remained at war with Albania until the 1970s (Clogg 1986: 194). As the communist regime in Albania began to change in the mid-1980s after Enver Hoxha, the country’s leader since the Second World War, became ill and then died, followed by less hostile relations between the Greek and Albanian governments from 1987 onwards, restrictions around the border began to loosen. The crossing points were more formally opened in May 1990; restrictions were further relaxed during 1991, and the final ending of communist rule in Albania in 1992 ushered in a period of mass movement of people from Albania across its borders into Greece. Unsurprisingly, that was a period of somewhat disorganized shifts in official policies and regulations, both on the Greek and the Albanian sides. Little of the necessary infrastructure to support the newly opened border had been put into place as yet: the roads were too narrow; there was not a sufficiently large border control point at Kakavia (the main official crossing point in Epirus); and there was insufficient funding to police the border properly. During these years, both the Albanian and Greek governments responded to problems as they arose, neither side being quite sure what would happen next. One could say the border was undergoing a process of official relocation during this period. It was in these circumstances that I spent a considerable amount of time in Epirus with the people of Pogoni, a region that shares its western border with Albania (Green 2005). In these early years, accounts in Greece about what this relatively sudden reappearance of Albania and Albanians might mean were inevitably based on very sparse knowledge. Many drew upon popular accounts of what communist states were like in general and patched that together with the few facts they knew about Enver Hoxha (e.g., that he was an admirer of Stalin); this was combined with historical stereotypes about what Albanians were like (e.g., that they worked hard, but were also highly patriarchal and had a tendency toward blood feud). Media accounts reflecting relatively conservative views combined these stereotypes with a widespread belief that because Albania had been communist, what had probably happened during the fifty years while the border was closed was precisely nothing—or rather, many believed that nothing had happened that could be called “progress.” Instead, many suggested that the country had been kept in a state of general “backwardness,” usually meaning insufficient modernization in every sense of the term, both material and moral. Those with more socialist views avoided speculating about what had happened, with the result that the more conservative and populist perspectives dominated accounts that appeared in public in Epirus at the time. An equally important topic of conversation concerned the Greek-speaking peoples who had remained on the Albanian side when the border had been closed. This was unsurprising, as it was on the basis of the existence of these people—called Northern Epirots in Greece—that successive Greek governments had remained at war with Albania for decades, arguing that Northern Epirus was Greek. In line with the logic of this claim, there was a constantly repeated commentary at the beginning of the 1990s on the Greek side, that Northern Epirots had been particularly badly affected by the closure of the border because of their separation from Greece. The Orthodox cleric who represented the border area, Metropolitan Sevastianos, played an important part in promoting this view locally, including the publication of a book in 1989 entitled Northern Epirus crucified (Sevastianos 1989). The claim of Greek rights to Northern Epirus (Southern Albania) continued to be made in various forms after the border was reopened in the late 1980s, though in somewhat muted form (Dalakoglou 2010: 137-8). In the media, that account was occasionally accompanied by the expressed hope that the reopening of the border would reunite this lost population with their brethren on the Greek side, and that this would mark some kind of return to normality, as if the half century of communism in Albania had been a historical accident that was now being corrected.1 This account was often accompanied by a hope for the return of the close-knit communities that apparently had been lost in recent decades. Nobody I met in Pogoni thought this kind of talk was anything other than idealistic rhetoric. They were entirely familiar with the style of this talk, which they saw as being among the most common forms of slightly saccharine nostalgia expressed in the region and in Greece more widely. They were recognized as a version of the stories about how people used to live in some rural idyll in the past: working together to bring in the harvest and take care of the animals; having regular gatherings in the village square to celebrate saints’ days, or just to sing in the unique polyphonic musical tradition of the Pogoni area; taking care of each other and keeping to the traditional values of close-knit community life.2 Each performance of this kind of talk was a recognizable repetition of a previous performance, each part was known almost word for word, or rather by heart, by everyone: the sentiments expressed were the most important aspect, the element that everyone recognized instantly. The main point of the performance was a longing for something lost, particularly something that had to do with mutual social regard, relations, and connection. The significance of this kind of nostalgia in Greece has often been noted. Herzfeld explored it in particular in terms of how Greeks relate to Greece as a nation (Herzfeld 1986, 1997). In Cultural intimacy, he focuses on “structural nostalgia,” and suggests that a key feature of this kind of nostalgia is the expression of rhetorical longing for “damaged reciprocity . . . a mutuality that has been . . . ruptured by the self-interest of modern times” (Herzfeld 1997: 111). He also argues that this form of rhetoric is marked by a sense of timelessness (ibid.: 11213). Gourgouris, in his discussion of the popularity of nostalgia in Greece, notes that it is a distinctly modern discourse (Gourgouris 1996: 222) and that a great deal of it involves longing for a vanished world that never existed: “the spatial coordinates of Greece are constantly revolving, predicated as they are on a permanent condition of return to a place that does not exist” (ibid.: 223); and he goes on to note that this nostalgia expresses as much a utopian hope for the future as it is a reminiscence on a lost past (ibid.). The connection between repetitive, rhythmic storytelling and the kind of nostalgic sense of loss noted by Herzfeld and Gourgouris is also powerfully evoked in Kathleen Stewart’s study of the peoples of the Appalachian coal-mining region of West Virginia (Stewart 1996). Her ethnography focuses particularly on the way stories were told there, stories that densely, and in a jumble of fragments, describe and perform a multiple sense of longing, loss, and hope. In Stewart’s words: These hills—at once occupied, encompassed, exploited, betrayed, and deserted—become a place where the effects of capitalism and modernization pile up on the landscape as the detritus of history, and where the story of “America” grows dense and unforgettable in remembered ruins and pieced-together fragments. (Ibid.: 4) Stewart notes that the stories she gathered had a certain poetics about them, that they needed to be listened to differently, in a way that would absorb their sense beyond the words and the gaps that they left: “Missing pieces and unknown meanings taught me to listen not just more intently, but differently—a listening in order to retell. Over time, as I came to recognize patterns in modes of telling, it was easier to follow along with stories and to remember them verbatim” (ibid.: 8; emphasis added). In order to grasp the sense of these stories, Stewart learned to recognize patterns in the way the stories were told (their rhythm, their style, their sentiments), and she learned them by heart. They evoked a sense of loss, a sense of longing for a return to something—something that perhaps never actually existed, but was missed just the same: “Ways and ideals and fundamental attachments emerge from out of the ruins as a space of desire resonant with nostalgias, heroics, and dreams of reversal” (ibid.: 48). The more stereotypical nostalgic talk in Epirus seemed to have similar qualities, echoing a sense of wholesale, national loss; these were popular and public stories that could be heard in virtually any part of Greece, and they evoked the entirety of the Greek people. Indeed, as Herzfeld has studied at length, these stories played an important part in defining and performing a particular version of contemporary Greekness, the more official nationalist version (Herzfeld 1986: 53-4). On the face of it, the reopening of the Greek-Albanian border and the reconnection with Northern Epirots seem like ideal material for this kind of nostalgic account. And indeed, such accounts did appear in newspapers and they were occasionally expressed by elected officials; however, they were almost never told by people who actually lived near the border. While it was possible for some people in Pogoni to be nostalgic about the way life had been in the past in general, the events surrounding the closure and subsequent reopening of the Greek-Albanian border did not seem suitable for this kind of talk. The closure had not simply been about the separation of Greeks from each other by an external power; it had also been about the deep divisions between communist and capitalist political ideals, and which had separated Greeks from each other internally. These political differences had caused a civil war in Greece after the Second World War, a fight that had been particularly painfully experienced in Epirus (Close 1993; Shrader 1999).3 By 1950, Albania had gone down the communist route, and Greece, following the defeat of the communist side of the civil war, had gone in the other direction. And while some Greek-speaking peoples had remained on the Albanian side when the border was closed, a significant proportion of the defeated Greek communists had remained on the Greek side. Many of those people were imprisoned, and, if not, they were prevented from gaining decent employment, or they were deprived of passports, or they were generally harassed in other ways by the authorities; their lives were made difficult more or less until the mid-1970s, about the same time that the formal state of war between Greece and Albania ceased. In short, the Greek-Albanian border did not mark a timeless difference between one side and the other, nor a straightforward iconic injustice done to the Greeks who were left on the Albanian side; rather, it was the location of unfinished business and ambivalent attitudes about the political economies of capitalism and communism (and to some degree, also about the role of the Church in defining and defending certain nationalist sentiments). This ambivalence persisted over the decades, not only because it was part of the unfinished business of the border, but also because it was strongly associated with the conflicting ideologies driving the Cold War, so it could hardly be ignored. Seen in that context, the stories that described the border location, and its closure, as having been only about an injustice against the Greek nation—while recited by some people in Greek Epirus, particularly members of the Orthodox clergy and some of the more nationalist politicians in the region—were not repeated by those who lived around the border; a few even vocally challenged such assertions, particularly those who had borne the brunt of discrimination against them after the end of the civil war. Most simply ignored these accounts, silently; even if they agreed with the idea that Northern Epirus ought to be part of Greece rather than Albania, the awareness of the ambivalence over what this border represented in civil war terms made it difficult to tell those accounts without evoking a memory of that unfinished business. If nostalgic longing was not a popular way to discuss the reopening of the border in Epirus, much more common were hard-hitting, factual-event forms of storytelling. These stories were much darker and more fearful about the future, and they had a completely different temporal rhythm and style: not a hoped-for return to a timeless past of peace and harmony, but of the potential dangers of reopening the border. In the early 1990s, there was a clear set of themes, mostly related to various kinds of crime and moral transgression; all of them expressed a fear about the crossing or transgressing of boundaries, fears about the consequences of mixing together the two sides of the border after its reopening. These accounts represented the border as having become suddenly leaky, allowing potentially toxic and dangerous elements to cross into Greece.4 These stories told of the countless houses that were broken into after the border was opened; the Orthodox chapels that had their icons stolen or, worse, defaced; they told of rapes committed by illegal migrants, or of the Albanian women who were sold into sex slavery by their male relatives; they told of the ingratitude of the people whom the Epirots on the Greek side had tried to help, in an initial act of humanity and friendship. That latter story was particularly popular in Pogoni, and it was repeated again and again. The story went like this: when the people from Albania first crossed into Epirus, residents in Pogoni did their best to help them and give them food, clothing, and shoes (almost everyone mentioned the shoes; they have particular importance in Greece as a marker of social status, and a sign of intimacy when given as a gift). The story goes on: these people from Albania, sometimes described as Northern Epirots and sometimes not, turned out to be ungrateful and behaved very badly, often stealing from those who helped them. So the people from Pogoni became disillusioned about them.5 This was a story of initial trust that was betrayed, and that justified an attitude of suspicion and hostility towards Albanians.6 Stories that challenged these accounts of betrayal and disillusionment developed quite soon afterwards. These alternative stories represented the border as a mere political device, an accident of history, which did not mark any major difference between peoples. Rather than marking a barrier that kept separate entities that should not be mixed together, the border was represented as a line in the sand that political and military authorities had put there; it could have been put somewhere else, or it might not have existed at all; either way, it was a political border, not a social or ethnic one. A popular account of this type was that the Northern Epirots, having dreamed of a return to Greece one day (a form of that main nostalgic story of the “lost” Greeks in Albania), had crossed the border and found themselves being treated as backward people simply because they came from Albania. The disillusionment of many Northern Epirots recalls Gourgouris’ point that the location of Greece, the Greece in people’s imaginations, always seems to be somewhere else (Gourgouris 1996: 223). Other accounts suggested that Albanians had been treated as the source of extremely cheap and highly exploitable labor with no legal rights, justified through an assertion of Albanian “backwardness.”7 This approach suggested that it was the Albanians, not the Greeks, who had been exploited and betrayed. This was a deeply politically inflected debate that drew upon both contemporary and historical political affiliations; and, again, the trace of the Greek civil war, and the affiliations expressed during that time, were clearly present in these debates. That trace, often an indirect hint of something everyone was expected to know about, was also a form of recitation in a sense, but often made present through deliberate indirect references, an act of mutual knowing: it was an indirect reference to something that also perhaps never occurred exactly as it was imagined or represented now, but which was being relied upon in order to make sense of the present and possible future.8 The Cold War might not have ended, not really, not in terms of the sentiments and ideals involved; what might happen next could be a continuation of those old debates, those old enmities, a recasting of the ideological battle lines to suit contemporary conditions. All these debates, whatever political perspective they represented, became familiar performances: people knew them, came to expect them, came to judge each other and know each other by them. I wrote many of them down, and rereading these notes years later felt like reading endless streams of repetitions. I was not the only one to notice the repetitive character of these accounts, and nor was I alone in noting the oblique references to traces of the past, and the use of stereotypical assertions about people and betrayal. Seremetakis, for example, noted it: Traveling down to the nearby Greek towns myself, I heard about Albanians killing Greeks, Albanians being killed or being fed and sheltered by Greeks, and Albanians being betrayed by Greeks or other Albanians. Endless narrations, an ongoing oral daily newspaper. Albanians and their tales were everywhere, yet every time I tried to locate one of those narrated Albanians, he or she was always absent. Albanians, myth and reality. (1996: 489) Here, Seremetakis echoes the same sense of recitation as I experienced at the time, and the same sense that people were speaking in a way that evoked a set of wider, abstract conditions. The constant repetition, the constant recitation, was beginning to fill an enormous gap of what was still unknown at the time; the gap was being filled with traces, with stereotypes, with repetitions built upon particular, recognizable, and competing political perspectives and sensibilities. While these stories were being recited, there were also other kinds of talk in Pogoni that were much less monumental, much more mundane. This talk was about people’s particular lives: what had happened to Dimitri’s son near the border the other day when he was out hunting and got into trouble with the border guards; the old man in the village who had gone to Albania to look for a young bride and had come back empty-handed, feeling dejected; how the building works to upgrade the road to the border were disrupting people’s lives and livelihoods, yet the government clearly did not care; how someone met his cousin after almost half a century of separation, and the two could not find much to say to each other anymore, and began to wonder whether they ever did have much to say to each other; how there was talk of a road being built that would provide a high-speed link between Ioannina and Thessaloniki, and how that would change everything;9 how the Albanians who had moved into some villages were keeping the schools from closing because their children increased the numbers enough to justify the schoolteacher’s salary; how there might be an opportunity to make a killing on the property market in Albania if people bought now, before the foreigners realized what nice beaches there are on the coast there. Endless talk about everyday things,talk that made it entirely unclear, actually, what the border meant or what might happen next in relation to it. Little of this talk was rhythmically repetitious, and while some of it might have been sentimental, it did not take on a coherent sentimentality; it was people narrating their lives, telling of things that had happened to them and their immediate kin, friends, and acquaintances. Some of this talk was hopeful; some fearful; some just descriptive. Occasionally, people would drop into a recitational style in these personal narratives, drawing on it to give an event a particular meaning, and to make it more of a performance; but, mostly, people were telling stories about particular events, unconnected to the familiar patterns, stereotypes, or ideals of the recitations. These were stories about people they knew, rather than traces; and, collectively, these accounts did not usually add up to something coherent, but instead generated a sense of the border as being multiple, messy, and unpredictable. Sometimes, accounts of similar experiences were told often enough by a wide enough range of people that others began to recognize a pattern in them; people would begin to expect that the next story about that topic would be the same—not because it was following some particular rhetorical style or political perspective; but because a lot of people had told about having the same experience. For example, in the early years, many people reported being fined in Albania for a variety of apparently very minor, or even nonexistent, traffic violations. After numerous reports of this experience, people began to warn each other about it—not in the more recitational style, as evidence to support a particular image of Albania and/or Albanians, but rather in the form of practical advice: if you drive in your own car in Albania, be prepared to pay fines. This kind of repetition results in an expectation about what might happen next that is different from the kind built up from the reciting of stereotypical rhetoric.10In the case of recitation, speculation about what might happen next is built upon a preexisting model, a set of beliefs or assertions, about how things are, and, more importantly, a main point of telling the story is to demonstrate the truth of the general principle: the assertion that Northern Epirus belongs to Greece; or that Albanians are bad people; or that the past was idyllic compared to today. The more mundane everyday kind of speculation about what might happen next was based on people telling stories about themselves and develops with the telling of the stories, and without there being, at least initially, a predetermined script, a predetermined pattern into which the repetition must be fitted. There is no effort to squeeze what happened into an existing explanation for it. The focus in this talk is on what happened, on the event, and not so much what it represents. Both forms of storytelling coexisted in Epirus, and of course they often blended into one another; I do not intend to make a hard distinction, but instead simply to note that there is a distinction. Furthermore, the stories told were not random: the recitation style was expressed in the terms of what had made the Greek-Albanian border distinctive for people—the history of the Cold War and the particular relationship that the people of Epirus had with that history, rather than the familiar nostalgic longing for a return to a lost golden era; and the everyday stories people told of what happened in their lives were both conscious and unconscious contrasts to the logic of recitation, to the stories that could account for everything through traces, as if they are representations of an underlying truth, rather than accounts of the mess of everyday life. The result was a sense that what would happen next would be both predictable—a repetition of what had come before, the playing out of a theory that we already know—and yet lively and contingent, open to the possibility of being surprised. The Aegean in the 2000s The argument I have made so far suggests that particular, specifically located histories, and particular, personal stories in relation to borders (in this case, relating to the cold War and its aftermath in the border area), combined with stereotypical rhetoric that is rather less spatially and temporally particular (in this case, Greek nationalist rhetoric), are equally important to the process of redefining and relocating borders. To explore the implications of this a little further, I will take a somewhat briefer look at the kinds of stories circulating more than a decade later about changes going on around another border region: the Greek-Turkish border in the Aegean, during the late 2000s. The symbolic and political importance of the Greek-Turkish border, and particularly the Aegean part of it, for dominant accounts of contemporary Greek history is so well known it hardly requires comment. The failed attempt by the Greek military to secure parts of Asia Minor for Greece in the early twentieth century became a key moment in both the history of modern Greece and of the relationship between Greece and Turkey. The conflicts resulted in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which not only agreed the territories of the two countries, but also arranged for a compulsory exchange of populations between them, overseen by the League of Nations: with few exceptions, Greek orthodox peoples living in Turkey were to be sent to Greece, and Muslims living in Greece were to be sent to Turkey (Hirschon 2003; Ladas 1932). This was a starkly different situation from that at the Greek-Albanian border, where the separation between the two countries was nowhere near as symbolically important to the development of the Greek nation, and there was nothing like the kind of separation of populations between Greece and Albania as had been officially imposed by the Treaty of Lausanne in separating Greece and Turkey.11 of course, as implied in the discussion earlier about the importance of the orthodox church in asserting certain kinds of nationalist sentiment about Northern Epirus, the issues that separated Greece from Turkey did have their echoes in the separation between Greece and Albania (indeed, Muslims in general, whether Albanian or Turkish, were often referred to as “Turks” in Epirus). Nevertheless, my main concern here is the difference in the sense, or quality, of border that people mostly expressed during fieldwork,12 and in Epirus the overwhelming sense was that the Greek-Albanian border marked an ideological division between communism (and its aftermath) and capitalism, and the histories associated with it that made both the relations and separations of that border somewhat ambiguous. The Greek-Turkish border, on the other hand, and particularly in the Aegean, marked the division between Greeks as Orthodox Christians and Greece on one side and Turks as Muslims and Turkey on the other, and both of the contemporary Greek and Turkish states were formed in large part out of the conflict and subsequent formal disambiguation between them. There was no additional complexity of the Cold War intervening in that narrative in the Aegean, nor anything within living memory that strongly challenged it, either. The Greek-Albanian border felt to most like a border that was about socialism and postsocialism (for peoples on both sides of the border), and although there were elements of religious-based nationalism present, that was not the main focus of attention during my period of fieldwork. In the Aegean, the political geography itself seems structured as a binary opposition: the western and northern coasts are part of contemporary Greece, while the eastern coast is part of the contemporary Turkish mainland.13 There are a scatter of islands within the Aegean, the vast majority of which are part of Greece, an arrangement also established by the Treaty of Lausanne. The two countries’ territories thus face each other across this water. That generates an overall duality—on the western side, Greece, on the eastern side, Turkey. However, the Aegean being a sea, and this sea being filled with (mostly Greek) islands, means that the borders between Greece and Turkey are repeated, again and again: islands such as Rhodes, Lemnos, Ikaria, Chios, or Samos, and their surrounding water and air space, are Greek; but at some point toward the east, as the mainland of western Turkey is approached, the water, and the air, become Turkish. Exactly where the sea and air borders in the Aegean are located is still a matter of dispute (Acer 2003; Bacas 2005). So while the differences that these borders mark are unambiguous, their physical location, at least in the sea and the air, is still debated. That makes these borders different from the Greek-Albanian border in Epirus, which is, for the most part, a land border, and there is little contemporary dispute about its location; the uncertainty there is more about what it is that the border locates and differentiates. My ethnographic research in the Aegean is focused on the shifting relations between two towns: Mytilene, the capital of the Greek island of Lesvos, located in the north Aegean, and Ayvalik, a small town on the coast of western mainland Turkey, also often referred to as western Anatolia. They are separated by 17 miles of sea, and, nowadays, a ferry regularly takes goods and passengers between them. Both towns still bear the marks of the enforced exchange of populations in the 1920s. In Mytilene, there are many abandoned and broken-down houses, as well as an abandoned port, in the previously Muslim area in the south of the town; and in Ayvalik, there are also many old abandoned houses in the previously Orthodox areas of town. I am focusing here on Mytilene, but it is worth noting that both towns are marked by these abandoned places, some of which are slowly being restored, on both sides. For now, people still walk by them and cannot help but be affected, whether consciously or not, somewhat in the manner described by Navaro-Yashin about walking past rusting old trucks and walls with bullet holes in them in Cyprus (Navaro-Yashin 2009: 14). Abandoned places are particularly effective as traces, material manifestations of relations and places that continue to be lively through their ruins, again also noted by Stewart in her study of the Appalachian Mountains (Stewart 1996: 90-6). In Stewart’s words, “Objects that have decayed into fragments and traces draw together a transient past with the very desire to remember” (ibid.: 92-3; emphasis original). The abandoned places in Mytilene recalled many years of social and trading relations between the Aegean islands and the western Anatolian coast—times when, some said, life was relatively good, though of course others said the opposite. Then the troubles began that resulted in the exchange of populations, and Mytilene found itself without its nearby mainland and market, and Ayvalik found itself without the expertise of olive oil production that had disappeared along with the Greeks (Hirschon 2003; Koufopoulou 2003). That story is so coherent that it is barely recognized as recitation or a performance; it is much more often regarded as a simple description of what happened. The roof of the old main mosque in Mytilene fell in a few years ago, turning it into a ruin. Recently, a project has been implemented to protect the mosque from further decay and to help to partially restore it, with funding from the European Union. Every so often, art installations are placed in the grounds in front of the old mosque. Those kinds of changes, both deliberate efforts to preserve the trace and to make something else, also affect people as they walk by. Still, they can only walk by, they cannot walk in: the gates are locked because, the authorities say, the building is in a perilous state, and so it is too dangerous for people to enter. On the same street as the old main mosque in Mytilene, many of the once abandoned houses increasingly are being restored and new businesses are beginning. For many years, at least twenty-five, there have been some small businesses in that district around the old main mosque—artists and ceramics specialists mostly, plus an all-night place to eat, and a wine wholesaler. Nowadays, there is a more concerted effort to change things, to make that section of the street, which forms the southern part of the main market street of the whole town, into somewhere again. Residents of Mytilene would often tell me whether their family was brought to Mytilene as one of the refugees in the 1920s, or had already been living there when the exchange happened. A few said they could tell the difference just by looking at a person, or hearing them speak for a short time; others said this was nonsense. In any case, and again, there was remarkably little talk of loss, separation, or longing; there was a marked absence of any dream of return. One 94-year-old man now living in Mytilene, and one of the few I met who was personally transported across from Ayvalik to Mytilene in the 1920s as a child, occasionally goes to see the Turkish lady who now inhabits the house in which he was born in Ayvalik. When asked by a friend whether he would claim the house back from her, he responded: “Why should I? She’s a nice woman, and what use do I have for that house now?” He did have children, so he could have wanted to leave it to them, as an inheritance of his past. But the exchange of populations had cut something for him, had severed a relationship—not between himself and Ayvalik, as that was clearly still very important to him; but it had severed his children’s relationship with the place. They saw no familiarity in it in a literal, social sense: no kinship. Similarly, a doctor from Athens whose family had been moved from Smyrna (Izmir) said that she travels over to Turkey occasionally just to keep in touch with the place that her parents spoke about so fondly, but that she herself did not remember. She added that it is never possible to return: the place had changed and her family had changed, so she was going to see the remainders, like ruins; a place that reminded her of where her family had been, which no longer existed. Some people on the ferry traveling between Mytilene and Ayvalik who said they were going to Turkey in order to visit old Greek places discussed this as an act of tourism rather than a personal journey: a visit to a place that had a lot of history, a place where many things happened that were important to Greece and the Greeks. Most people did not even say that; instead, they said they were going over to visit the weekly bazaar in Ayvalik. The most regular passengers were traders of various types—a man who specializes in buying horse saddles from Turkey and selling them on in Greece; another who collects antique furniture and has shops both in Mytilene and in Athens. Some big businesses have grown as well: one company specializes in selling Turkish-made automated olive presses to Greek customers. And in addition to the passengers traveling from the Greek side to Turkey, the ferries also carried a range of cargo in the other direction, from Turkey to the Greek side. There was a wide range of goods, notably fresh fish in ice-packed Styrofoam boxes; a range of different kinds of tile and stone for house building; and, interestingly, aniseed, the key ingredient that gives ouzo its flavor—Lesvos is famous for its ouzo. Initially, I noted this steady flow of trade only in passing, being more interested in the social relations between the two sides and how these might be changing now that it is much easier than it had been to travel from Greece to Turkey.14 However, once I began to listen to people’s talk, I understood that the trade was in fact key to most people’s personal accounts of this border, as opposed to the more widely recited, highly familiar, nationalist rhetoric about the Greek and Turkish nations. The nationalist rhetoric on the Greek side emphasized the tragedy of the 1920s, the huge loss, both to the Greek people and their nation, and the way that this loss can never be made good (note the contrast here with the nationalist rhetoric in Epirus ten years earlier after the Greek-Albanian border reopened). The implication is that the separation between the Greek and Turkish sides of the Aegean is irreversible, and any attempt to bring them together again is an act of betrayal. People’s discussions about trade were quite different in emphasis, focusing on connection and relation rather than separation. It was the trade that had linked all the Aegean islands with the western Anatolian coast in the past; it was the trade that had suffered most when the relations were cut in the 1920s, and both Mytilene and Ayvalik were launched into deep economic difficulties as a result; trade was also the first form of interaction between the two sides to be revived whenever relations became less hostile between Greece and Turkey; and trade is, today, the major focus of both the fears and hopes of what might happen next for the people of Mytilene. If Cold War politics was the key focus informing personal talk on the Greek-Albanian border in the early 1990s, then trade turned out to be the key focus informing talk on the Greek-Turkish border of the Aegean in the late 2000s. Even the rhetorical nationalist talk was often expressed through the issue of trade: when it became possible for goods to cross from Turkey to the Greek side again, the local papers were instantly filled with stories about attempts to undermine local businesses by flooding the market with cheap imports from Turkey. If there were accusations of betrayal now, it was most often against those who shopped Turkish. Obviously then, just as people in Epirus drew on wider stereotypes about Albanians, people in Mytilene also regularly drew upon grand narratives that both constituted and justified deep oppositional differences between Greeks and Turks. There was a continual stream of reciting-style talk, both in coffee shops and in the newspapers, about the ongoing threats posed by Turkey. Moreover, talk about Turks and Turkey easily slipped into the well-worn and highly familiar recitations about almost 400 years of Ottoman control over Greeks on which Herzfeld has written in considerable detail (Herzfeld 1986, 1987). But as also noted in several of the contributions to When Greeks think about Turks (Theodossopoulos 2007), there was considerable variation in how this discussion was phrased, revealing a diversity in the way Turkish people were discussed. In Mytilene, many suggested that following the assistance the Greek government offered Turkey after a major earthquake devastated parts of the Turkish mainland in 1999, which was reciprocated when Greece experienced its own major earthquake a month later, relations between the two countries had fundamentally changed. One example: It was definitely after the earthquake in 1999; after that, things changed. It wasn’t a change in the rules or regulations, I don’t think; it was people’s attitudes. That’s what changed.15 The comment that people did not particularly remember the regulations changing after the 1999 earthquake is important. In fact, the major regulatory changes occurred four years earlier, in 1995; and these were brokered by the European Union and concerned all the Mediterranean countries, only two of which were Greece and Turkey. The changes were initiated by a program called the Barcelona Process, aimed at encouraging both economic liberalization in the whole region and a variety of other political initiatives.16 The revised version of this agreement, made in Paris in July 2008, reiterates a commitment to completing a “deep Free Trade Area in the EUROMED region by 2010.”17 The significance of this is that most people’s personal accounts of their experiences with this border are related to issues of trade, and the vast majority of the rhetoric was also related to that during fieldwork (2007-8). The border might have iconic significance in terms of the making of the Greek nation, but for people living in the region, this area was also, and fundamentally, a trading route that had been badly disrupted by the events of the 1920s. Most accounts people gave me of their families’ experiences of relations with the Turkish side had to do with this: the western Anatolian coast formed a key part of the markets and trading routes for the Aegean islands, and that coast provided easy access to two key cities—Smyrna/Izmir, and Constantinople/Istanbul. And when crossing between the two sides became much easier, it was not contact between the peoples of the two sides that was the focus of discussion, but the threat to local markets in Mytilene posed by the much larger and much better organized markets in towns like Ayvalik and Dikeli, another town just across the way from Lesvos on the Turkish coast. The Barcelona Process is effectively redefining a range of borders established by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. The Treaty cut the links between islands and the eastern mainland in the Aegean, so that people in Lesvos developed a sense that their island was located in the middle of nowhere, far away from any cosmopolitan center. After 1923, the nearest accessible cosmopolitan center was Athens. The Barcelona Process, which was unconnected with the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey, set in train a redefinition of those borders. In the process, the Aegean was becoming a part of something much bigger: no longer a border predominantly marking the difference between Greece and Turkey, but instead governed, for the most part, by a much larger entity—the European Union (EU). And the EU, in spite of having no territory itself as such (Abeles 2000), is becoming key in redefining the Aegean as being part of a pan-Mediterranean network of economic, environmental, and political cooperation. The perspective of one quite substantial Mytilene trader who had been key in developing new trade between Lesvos and the Turkish mainland in recent years is worth discussing here. His way of speaking about the experience combines recognizable political recitations with a personal account of his experience as someone who did regular trade in Turkey. In one fell swoop, he stereotyped and classified Turkish people, constituted the Aegean as a single entity, and suggested that, actually, everyone is much the same, and how things turn out is historical accident. I had introduced myself as being interested in his views and experiences on the shifting relations between Greece and Turkey: “The first thing I have to say is Turks are Turks. They don’t change mind-set; their mentality is from the 1950s. The Greeks now experience their own past through their relations with the Turks. The Turks will have to change that before they can join the EU. . . . The Greeks used to have that same mentality, you know, but they were forced to catch up a bit . . . though Greeks too still have a long way to go—we still wasted all the subsidies the EU paid to us, rather than building proper infrastructure. . . . The Turks could catch up; they just haven’t. One of the things that makes them different is their unreliability; if you make a deal, you should keep it, and they don’t. . . . In any case, the people of the Aegean have kept in touch with each other over the years, despite all the changes, and they understand each other—not like in the mainland [of Greece], where people know nothing of Turks; here, they’re close by, and we know. So we’re not opening new roads in Turkey, we’re reopening old roads, and we’re modernizing. We’re not doing something different.”18 This commentary was made in front of a Turkish friend, Ay§e, one of the few Turks who today lives permanently on the Greek side. I asked her later whether she agreed with this man’s views. Ay§e responded that he had been prominent in the local center-right party on the island for some years, and added, “That’s why he talks like that.” In other words, his rhetoric about Turks simply identified his political leanings; to Ay§e, it did not say anything about his relations with Turks in practice. This border was one that appeared to many to be in the process of transforming, both in returning to some old paths once well worn, and of multiplying its relations. More specifically, it was no longer only a border that was located here, and that formed some kind of interface among the places and peoples of the Aegean; it was also a border that was a part of somewhere else, part of a place that Marc Abeles calls “virtual Europe” (Abeles 2000), a place with no sovereign territory, but plenty of regions and states. In a sense though, the border had always been multiply related, simultaneously historically, politically, economically, personally, and in diverse imagined/virtual ways. That multiplicity did not prevent a sense of singularity about the place, just as combining past and future with the present does not prevent a sense of singularity of the moment; rather, it added density to the experience, like the ruins of past lives and the diversity of talk. The addition of the EU’s rhetoric and border regulations could be considered to be one more element of that, a partial repetition even, and it is a matter I have discussed elsewhere (Green 2010); here, I have been trying to draw out the way people combined a range of familiar, ideologically inflected assertions about the meaning of the place with their stories about their own, or their families’, personal experiences, which were recounted in much less recitational style, and with much less certainty about what those stories added up to. In combination, these stereotypical repetitions and personal accounts made speculations about what might happen next seem, while to some degree apparently predictable and repetitive, nevertheless contingent, perhaps even negotiable, in a small way. The unpredictability of the small things—the mundane, quotidian, personal matters that people have to attend to as they go about their lives—that seemed to be where the contingency lay. The big moments—the way the Cold War played out in Epirus, and the way the leftovers of the wars between Greece and Turkey and the Lausanne Treaty that followed it played out in the Aegean—marked all the stories, in one way or another, and that made “border” mean different things in the two places and times I have been discussing. When combined with people’s accounts of their own lives and relations, it was at that point that speculation about what might happen next took on a less overdetermined or epic feel, and became more a kind of contemplation about whether there is anything that can or should be done. Afterword Finally, the fieldwork for the Aegean part of this article was carried out in 2007 and 2008, before the current fiscal crisis in Greece. At the time of writing in May 2012, things appear worse in economic terms than anyone ever predicted during my fieldwork; and yet in another sense, it was not entirely unpredicted: time and again people said that there was no money, that everything was being kept afloat with the constant recirculation of debts and credits, and through a range of informal methods that always resulted in the government receiving less tax revenue than they should. That was excused by people suggesting that they could not make ends meet in any other way, and, anyhow, the government would just waste the money (another regular recitation, repeated endlessly). Many people in 2008 did not believe the situation could continue as it was, but they carried on, using their creativity to get by, as there seemed few other options. There are even fewer options now; but while it makes many people furious—furious with their successive governments, with the EU, with banks and large corporations (“Why should we pay for this when it was they who created the problem?”)—it is not altogether a surprise. This too had its trace, and people had recited it. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Stef Jansen (personal communication) for encouraging me to begin thinking about everyday speculations about the future. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of a draft of this article. 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When Greeks think about Turks: The view from anthropology. London: Routledge. Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The political lives of dead bodies: Reburial and postsocialist change. New York: Columbia University Press. Réciter le futur : Relocalisations frontalières et spéculations quotidiennes dans deux régions frontalières grecques Résumé : À partir de recherches ethnographiques portant sur deux périodes historiques et régions frontalières différentes de la Grèce (la frontière gréco-albanaise d’Epire, dans la partie continentale nord-ouest, au cours des années 1990, et la frontière gréco-turque de l’Egée-Septentrionale dans les années 2000) cet article explore la façon dont les discours sur ce qui pourrait survenir contribuent à un processus continu de relocalisation des frontières. Leur comparaison montre que le moment historique particulier et la signification emblématique des deux régions frontalières importent considérablement dans les spéculations des gens sur ce qui pourrait arriver. En tant que telles, les histoires font partie du processus historiquement contingent d’attribution de certaines qualités aux frontières. Cet article se concentre sur la façon dont ces récits associent certains stéréotypes à des histoires personnelles sur le passé, mêlant ainsi aux commentaires éculés et souvent idéologiquement infléchis qui sont comme récités, des histoires personnelles d’expériences vécues. L’article suggère que ces récitations réalisent et réitèrent à la fois les positions stéréotypées et idéologiques qui localisent les personnes politiquement et socialement par rapport à la frontière, et qui définissent également les qualités de la frontière. Les histoires plus personnelles contrastent, ou complètent, ces récitations, et localisent les personnes dans leurs propres relations, en soulignant la façon dont les frontières sont des lieux multi-qualifiés. Sarah Green is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and works on issues relating to borders, relative location, and place, especially in the Greek-Turkish and Greek-Albanian regions. Topics within this spatial focus have included gender and sexuality, new information and communications technologies, money, finance, and environmental degradation. ___________________ 1. This echoes a very similar sentiment that Katherine Verdery heard expressed in other parts of postsocialist Europe (Verdery 1999). 2. A verbatim example of such accounts can be found in Green 2005: 216-18. 3. A particularly poignant example of this battle can be seen through the work of Nicholas Gage on the one hand, whose book Eleni rapidly became a famous account of what Gage believed were the atrocities perpetrated by the communist side of the war; and, on the other hand, the response by Anastases Takas, who strongly attacked Gage’s account of the war in almost every respect (Gage 1983; Takas 1986). Many people in Epirus during the 1990s, whichever side they or their parents had supported during the civil war, were so upset by the whole debate over Eleni that they did not wish to even discuss it. 4. This is of course a very common sentiment about the reopening of borders; another example can be seen in Gingrich’s description of the rise of racism in the southern Bergenlands of Austria (Gingrich 2004). Haraway suggests such visceral fears of transgression are related to deeply entrenched Euro-American concerns about the possibly monstrous effects of mixing categories together (Haraway 1997). 5. Again, an account of this type can be found in Notes from the Balkans (Green 2005: 58). 6. Betrayal is an important concept in contemporary Greek historiography, as Herzfeld has noted (1985, 1992). It is important to note that by the late 2000s, both the stories and the attitudes they justified had almost completely disappeared in Epirus; but in the early 1990s, the story of Albanians showing ingratitude and betraying the trust initially shown to them was repeated almost daily. 7. For more details of the kinds of experiences Albanian migrants had in Greece in the early years, see Lawrence’s ethnography, Blood and oranges (2007). 8. I have explored this notion of trace in more detail in a working paper entitled “Lines, Traces and Tidemarks: reflections on forms of borderliness” that can be found at http://wvww.eastbordnet.org/working_papers/open/. The key point is that not only events, but also concepts and ideas, leave traces, even if what they leave as traces is not predictable by the events or concepts themselves. 9. This is a reference to the Egnatia Odos motorway project. It has now been built and has reduced travel times between Ioannina and Thessaloniki to a fraction of what they were in the 1990s. 10. Deleuze refers to the recognition of a pattern from this kind of repetition as “passive synthesis”: if a person sees the letter B follow the letter A often enough (AB AB AB AB AB A . . .), when they next see the letter A, they will come to expect the letter B to come next—not because of the characteristics of the letters A or B, but because of their constant appearance together (Deleuze 1994: 70-1). 11. The exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey did of course affect Epirus; my point is that the Greek-Albanian border was not symbolic of the separation between Greece and Turkey in the way that the Aegean region was. There is also the issue of what happened to the Cams or Tsamides in terms of the battles between Greece and Albania (Hart 1999; Mikalopoulou 1993), but again, that did not involve the iconic difference between Turk and Greek that was being evoked by the separation imposed in the Aegean. 12. I explore the idea of qualities of border, or “borderness” at more length elsewhere (Green 2010, 2012). 13. Of course, it would be easy to suggest that while the Greek-Albanian border marked the difference between East and West in terms of political economy, communist versus capitalist, the Greek-Turkish border marked the difference between East and West in terms of Occident and Orient. However, as my comments about the ambivalence toward that distinction in Epirus have indicated, and as a great deal of research on concepts of the constitution of Greek identity has demonstrated, there is also deep ambivalence about the way Greece relates to such Occident/Orient distinctions: see Faubion 1993; Fleming 1999; Frazee 1969; Gourgouris 1996; Green 2005; Herzfeld 1986, 1987; Hirschon 1989; Karakasidou 1997. 14. The other way around, traveling from Turkey to Greece, is still quite bureaucratic and expensive; but that is a topic for another article. 15. People also often spoke about the huge popularity of a Turkish soap opera, called Yabanci Damat (Foreign groom) in Turkish, and Tα Σύνορα της Aγάπης (The borders of love) in Greek, as an indication of changing relations between the two countries. The soap opera is about a Turkish woman and a Greek man who fall in love, and the resistance against this by their two respective families. Lenio Myrivili has also carried out an intriguing study of this issue (Myrivili 2007). 16. http://www.eeas.europa.eu/euromed/index_en.htm. The key objectives in 1995 were: Political Dialogue, Economic Cooperation and Free Trade, and Human, Social, and Cultural Dialogue. Recently, in 2008, the whole process was renamed “EUROMED” and its aims and objectives have been changed, particularly to include issues relating to terrorism and the quest for peace. 17. Joint Declaration of the Paris Summit for the Mediterranean, p. 12. Available at http://www.ue2008.fr/webdav/site/PFUE/shared/import/07/0713_declaration_de_paris/ Joint_declaration_of_the_Paris_summit_for_the_Mediterranean-EN.pdf 18. The reference to the opening of old roads was something also mentioned in Epirus, but it was meant more literally: once border controls relaxed in the late 1980s, some well-worn paths used in the past by both travelers and pastoralists in the Epirus region were reopened by locals and regularly used to cross between Albania and Greece without going through the formal border crossing point. That practice carried on until the late 1990s, after which time border security on both sides became much tighter again. The idea of doing again what has been done before was regularly mentioned in both field sites.

Transference and counter-transference in Life in debt This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Michael Jackson. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau3.1.018 Book Symposium Transference and counter-transference in Life in debt Comment on HAN, Clara. 2012. Life in debt: Times of care and violence in neoliberal Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press. Michael JACKSON, Harvard University   What I found immediately compelling about this book was Clara Han’s personal courage and ethnographic skill at entering so deeply and empathetically into the lives of the people of La Pincoya. Reading her dramatic descriptions of peoples’ everyday crises, struggles, and aspirations, and seeing the oppressive and pervasive ramifications of indebtedness in their lives, I found myself asking two questions. First, what is it that moves an anthropologist to commit herself so completely to the subjects of her research, especially when this means placing her own life in jeo-pardy, unless she feels that she has accrued a moral debt to her subjects that she can only begin to repay by giving them her undivided attention and trust—so that ethnographic praxis becomes an act of care and of solidarity? Second, is there a way in which anthropologists can approach indebtedness as a phenomenon that is anterior to the specific historical and politico-economic conditions under which the vexed questions of moral obligation, debt, and social justice make their appear-ance? Clearly, the first question could only be answered by the ethnographer herself, though it would seem to be not unconnected to our human impulse to bear witness to suffering, even when we cannot alleviate it, and to identify with those who suffer as a magical strategy for annulling our sense of impotence in the face of their afflictions. The second question touches on the symbolic logic of reciprocity in social relations and, as Han’s research demonstrates, a complicated interplay exists between interpersonal relations, relations between citizens and the state, and relations between people and their gods. In all these sectors, questions of fairness and justice are at stake—what the state owes its citizens, what the affluent owe the poor, what a family or community owes its members, and what the gods owe humanity. But how can we avoid reducing the notion of debt to its purely material manifestations, and do justice to its spiritual, moral, and symbolic nuances? In Debt: The first 5,000 years (2011), David Graeber points out that despite radically different cultural, political, or economic circumstances, human beings appear to be “haunted” by a “mythic communism” that finds expression in the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” “If we really want to understand the moral grounds of economic life, and by extension, human life,” Graeber argues, “we must start… with the very small things: the everyday details of social existence, the way we treat our friends, enemies, and children—often with gestures so tiny (passing the salt, bumming a cigarette) that we ordinarily never stop to think about them at all” (2011: 89). This, Han succeeds in doing admirably. But theoretically, her emphasis is on explaining moral indebtedness against the historical background of Chile’s years of state-imposed neoliberal policies, leaving aside the more general questions concerning the ontological dimensions of exchange, sacrifice, and natural justice that Graeber, in the tradition of Marx and Mauss, broaches. Was the resurgence of democracy after the fall of Pinochet, and the new rhetoric of the state owing its citizens a moral debt, not only a reminder of the oscillation between hierarchy and egalitarianism that characterizes the history of so many modern states, but a sign of the dialectic between differentiation and identification, enmity and amity, that informs all social relations regardless of whether the individuals or groups involved are powerful or powerless, poor or affluent, articulate or voiceless? What is at issue here is how completely we can explain human situations and experiences by referring to state policies and programs, traumatic historical events, global political economies, and discursive regimes. This is a largely unresolved issue in Life in debt, for though Han writes within the paradigm of political economy, the superbly detailed and in-depth quality of her ethnography undercuts this theoretical perspective. It is not simply a matter of seeing how “State institutions and economic precariousness are folded into people’s intimate relations, commitments and aspirations” (Han 2012: 17); it is a question of showing in what ways these prior factors are at once objective and subjective, actual and imagined, mediating worldviews without ever being entirely reducible to them. This indeterminate relationship between constitutive forces and constituting agents is particularly evident in the case of care, which is at once a product of healthcare institutions, personal dispositions, and individual emotions (including those of the ethnographer herself, “drawn into a range of relationships” with her subjects). Clearly, the origins of dispositions and emotions are not necessarily traceable to market forces, medical technologies, and material resources. Thus, in the aftermath of Sra. Flora’s son-in-law’s violent assault on her daughter, Sra. Flora asked the couple to leave her house. She had been pushed beyond the limit of what she could endure. “Sra. Flora’s narrative was not one of abandonment or social death,” Han writes, “Rather, by telling Florcita to leave the home, Sra. Flora reaffirmed her life within it” (48). She repaired the house, built a small garden, “walked with more energy in her step… projected her voice instead of guarding it closely in hushed whispers” and “marked out the home as nonviolent” despite the violences that surrounded her (47–48). Han’s nuanced, sensitive, intimate writing captures the everyday negotiations and transformations that define life at the limit, but it is not simply the limit, but life to which her ethnography attests—the “different ways,” as she puts it, “of being oriented to and living in time” (233). “In staying with, or being immersed in, a ‘drop of time,’ anthropological inquiry can attend to those kind acts—those presents of this world—a responsiveness to the lives of others that can neither be named nor instrumentalized as social policy in the service of actual justice” (90). This approach also reminds us that suffering is endured and imagined differently by different people despite its origins being identical for all, and that the traumas visited upon people by the violence of their history or the inequalities in their societies generate self-perpetuating patterns of behavior that remain in place long after the precipitating cause has passed. Because dysfunctional coping strategies within families may constitute a kind of practico-inert—possessing a life and logic of their own—what kinds of agency or praxis can transform the situation, and where do state interventions and personal respons-ibilities merge in this transformative process? I am not sure how either of the questions I raised at the beginning of this review may be resolved. Our closeness and identification with our interlocutors makes it almost impossible to analyze the sources and repercussions of this involvement— which, in psychoanalytic terms, includes both transference and counter-transference. And the current anthropological vogue for explaining individual experience and interpersonal interactions by referring to state or global forces all too often occludes or marginalizes the mutable and various ways in which agency, mood, emotion, memory, and personality figure in the evolutionary struggles of everyday life. Reading Life in debt between the lines, I find an unresolved tension between these different perspectives—the experience-near and the experience-distant, the argot of the street and the jargon of the academy, the humanistic and the scientific traditions. But then, aren't such irreconcilable points of view reminiscent of the contrasted perspectives with which the people of La Pincoya understand their lifeworld, shaped by history and circumstance yet also seizing the day and finding tortuous passages through the vexations and violences that beset them? References Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The first 5,000 years. New York: Melville House. Han, Clara. 2012. Life in debt: Times of care and violence in neoliberal Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press.     Michael JacksonHarvard Divinity SchoolHarvard University45 Francis AvenueCambridge, MA 02138mjackson@hds.harvard.edu  

Reality effects This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Kristina Wirtz. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.028 BOOK SYMPOSIUM Reality effects Kristina WIRTZ, Western Michigan University Comment on Palmié, Stephan. 2013. The cooking of history: How not to study Afro-Cuban religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stephan Palmié’s The cooking of history heralds a new level of disciplinary reflexivity in what we should hereafter feel very unsettled about blithely calling “Afro-Cuban religion.” What distinguishes his approach to questions concerning the ontological status of our ethnographic objects and categories is his attention not only to history but to historicity, in tracing the world-making projects through which those objects and categories have come into existence. The stories he tells toward historicizing “Afro-Cuban religion” suggest a dialogical field of action in which “anthropology” and perhaps even “history” itself are just as much at stake as their objects of study. Having contemplated the increasingly crowded shelves of BL2532.S3, Palmié observes a multilingual cacophony of ethnographies, histories, religious manuals, glossaries, and books of photos, songs, drum rhythms, legends of the orishas, and even recipes. Tracts shelved under different call numbers, too, are abundantly cited on this shelf: notably, Yoruba dictionaries and Cuban colonial histories, studies of Brazilian and North American religion, and even legal proceedings in several disparate jurisdictions. These multifarious texts invoke an array of what Paul Johnson (2007) calls diasporic horizons, looking variously to Africa and Cuba, and to their diasporas, and therefore to the wider Atlantic World, and the subsequent “dialogues” (pace Matory 2005, Yelvington 2006) among religious practitioners across the Americas and Atlantic Ocean. It is far from clear how (or even to what extent) scholarly and theological tracts jammed in together on the shelf should be differentiated, especially given the number of scholar-practitioners counted among authors. Contemplating the state of affairs for which library shelves are metaphor and metonym, Palmié seeks to historicize the unfolding ethnographic interfaces that have coalesced various practices into a unified, knowable object of discourse. This [530]objectification is variously labeled “Santería,” “Regla de Ocha,” “Yoruba tradition,” “Orisha worship,” “Lucumí religion” (or, for a brief moment, “Lucumí Christian morality,” Palmié 2013: 55–56), or even “witchcraft” (see Wirtz 2004), depending on who you ask, but everyone seemingly agrees that these differently sourced labels all apply to more or less the same “religion.” This, as the many cases explored in his book illustrate, is about the only point of agreement. Palmié’s central concern is to show how deeply scholars are implicated in these often contentious processes of cultural objectification—the discourses through which particular ethnographic objects and historical relations become knowable. Along the way, he shows the ethnographic interface itself to be an illusion, a convenient fiction of two ontologically distinct and separate domains of practice, one scientific and the other spiritual. This fiction is maintained largely by humanist scholars, unwitting heirs though we may be to our missionary and colonizing predecessors in the Western pursuit of disciplinary truth. The frisson at the interfaces of our various pursuits creates “reality effects” including disciplinary and categorical boundaries (Palmié 2013: 10). But Palmié directs our attention to the ways in which ethnographic objects “lead double lives”: they not only change over time “in fact,” but “because we come to them from historically no less changing epistemic vantage points.” Therefore, he argues: the figures we inscribe from fleeting observations … are no less subject to history than the empirical grounds from which our discursive efforts call them forth. Acknowledging the essential rather than accidental historicity of both subjects and objects of study is a step in the right direction. (Palmié 2013: 8) There are broad implications, then, for his argument concerning how we, whether scholars or religiosos or both, understand the ethnographic and historical fictions we perpetrate about “discoveries” of our objects of study. But Palmié’s goal is more specifically to explore how “the two—Afro-Cuban religion and its anthropology— emerged together over the course of a long twentieth century” (2013: 256). Both are “a deeply heteroglossic configuration co-assembled, and cooked over time, by members of different, and themselves changing communities of practice and interpretation” (256). With wit and a depth of understanding earned through decades of research, Palmié examines the metacultural activities of “scientists” and “wizards” alike—to borrow his previous formulation (Palmié 2002)—showing the duration and degree of their mutual dependency in creating what now looks to be a (Great) “Tradition” whose relative purity, inventedness, and value as signifier of African “survivals” and creolizations alike are hotly contested among practitioners, scholars, and other stakeholders, including government entities of Cuba, Nigeria, and the United States. Consider the case Palmié explores in chapter two, where he traces the transatlantic ethnonym “Yoruba” that now delineates a West African ethnic identity and language—a Herderian primordial “nation” sharing what is only recently regarded to be a unitary language that extends across West Africa’s postcolonial national borders. This idealized entity is taken as the ground or primeval source for transatlantic claims regarding particular religious phenomena such as the orishas and the sacred language Cuban practitioners attribute to them, whether glossed as “Yoruba” [531]or its putative ethnogenetic predecessor, “Lucumí.” The work of historicizing the current relations between these entities serves to anachronistically project them back in time. More contemporary African “sources” from dictionaries to ethnographically observable religious practices, and even authoritative figures such as the Nigerian babalawo and scholar Wande Abimbola, are taken up—or volunteer themselves—to stand in for a primordial “chronotope of Africa” as precursor to today’s “Afro-Cuban religion” (Palmié 2013: 28–29). Such construals can become hotly contested in the transnational politics of African diasporic religion and scholarship, as when Cuban or US-based practitioners (of “religion” or its ethnography) accept the chronotope but locate the purest of African survivals not in contemporary postcolonial Africa, but among those most conservative of preservationists, the descendants (via genealogy or relational praxis; Palmié 2013: 26) of African slaves, whether in Matanzas, Miami, or Oyotunji Village. Despite the seeming commonsensicality of the notion that Africa (wherever and whenever it is located) logically preceded its Diaspora, Palmié effectively challenges this logic by choosing a broader spatiotemporal scale of analysis—the Atlantic World—to show how the chronotope of Africa with its unidirectional historical progression has masked more complicated chronotopic relationships. What Palmié’s careful exegesis of the historical record shows is the extent to which the ethnogenetic processes producing the “Yoruba” people and language were coeval with, rather than prior to, the efforts in places like Cuba and Brazil to coalesce and codify what were thereafter recognized as the “religions” of Santería and Candomblé. Only later—much later—could anything called the “Yoruba” origins of these New World practices be recognized. Beyond their coevalness, “Yoruba tradition” and its diaspora can now be fairly said to coconstruct each other. He points out the convergence of diversely situated individual and corporate agencies, engaged in what was already and always self-consciously reflexive, agentful action, a scaffolding jointly (but seldom cooperatively) constructed by earlier generations of scholars, missionaries, colonial and state officials, and priests across the Atlantic World (another ethnographic object-in-the-making) whose often self-conscious efforts were directed toward various projects of nationand religion-building. Palmié organizes much of his argument in terms of a different chronotope, the “cooking of history,” which he adapts from Fernando Ortiz’s famous metaphor for Cuban “transculturation” as a stew blending distinct (African, European, indigenous) origins into something new. Rather than dwelling on the stew’s primordial origins—its ingredients—as do most invocations of Ortiz, Palmié suggests a novel reading of the ajiaco as a stew of history-in-the-making that continues to bubble, continually transforming relations between past and present so as to prevent us from ever recovering an objective past (the “raw” ingredients) free from its “cooking.” Moreover, disdaining the somewhat mechanistic metaphors that endure in claims about cultural “survivals,” “creolizations,” and “syncretisms” (this latter the subject of historical deconstruction starting in chapter three), he points out the agency manifested every step of the way by all of the involved parties, sometimes with deliberate reflexiveness about what was being accomplished and often, too, with additional unintended or unanticipated consequences. As he puts it: [532]I have sought to acknowledge the open-ended historicity of all knowledge as part and parcel of a recursive pattern spinning out ever-new predications of past and present as it spirals onwards into the future. To phrase it in Don Fernando’s terms, whatever knowledge we produce about the everevolving ajiaco that we claim as our “world” instantaneously enters into the process of cooking, too. (Palmié 2013: 253) As the argument unfolds, it becomes clear that Palmié sees in his historical project not so much a jumbled “stew” as what in passing he calls a “confection” (2013: 8, 12), which brings to mind the exquisitely delicate structures of spun sugar so important to Sidney Mintz’s (1987) exegesis of Atlantic World history. Rather than dissecting which “roots” are in the stew (look, a bit of cooked yuca alongside the quibombó), or how the stew is “digested” (as he says, ingesting àmàlà has yet to make anyone Yoruba—see 2013: 239), Palmié describes many chefs in the kitchen constructing “recipes” for “Afro-” “Cuban” “religion” (e.g., 250–51, 254). How fitting these poetics that his final case concerns an actual cookbook, and in particular uses the contrasting cases of Jamaican “creole” ackee and saltfish with Cuban “Yoruba” ritual cornmeal with okra (amalá con quibombó) as metaphors for creolization versus Afrogenesis positions on the origins of African Diasporic culture. This debate, invoking the ghosts of E. Franklin Frazier and Melville Herskovits as it inevitably does, is where most discussions start (for two recent, excellent such interventions, see Brown 2003; Yelvington 2001), but it is where Palmié ends. His devastating conclusion, for those wishing to resolve questions of origins once and for all, is that both positions partake of the same semiotic ideologies and thus endlessly refract one another in light of the irresolvability of what categories such as “African” and “creole” actually represent, and why. In short, given the open-ended recursivity of what Clifford Geertz (1973) described as “turtles all the way down,” our very attempts at historical interpretation feed back into shaping what we can even recognize as history. We might consider two critiques of this analysis. For starters, some might wish to claim that anthropology has already exorcised its essentializing demons. It is true that Palmié constructs his argument out of ethnographic and historical materials and theoretical insights that are for the most part already familiar to scholars, sometimes from his own previous publications. But what he has accomplished in this book is novel and exciting for those of us working in the same “kitchen” precisely because he took up all those bits and pieces lying about and plain for all to see to demonstrate the extent to which our very efforts to sort out origins and attributions have “cooked” one particular confluence of histories and practices into its current confections. Lest anyone claim that Palmié’s critique is now a commonplace of anthropology, I think we could productively explore our ongoing disciplinary complicity in interpellating quite a few “dragons” beyond those Palmié identifies (2013: 14). The next question might be whether a negative (“how not to …”) can produce a positive. As a fellow traveler of Palmié’s into the conundrums of “Afro,” “Cuban,” and “religion” I find myself bereft of an unproblematic label for what it is that I study. In one online forum I frequent, posters raised practical questions about the implications for teaching courses on topics such as “African Diasporic religion.” As [533]Palmié himself concludes, more deliberate disciplinary reflexivity about scholarly historicity as an ongoing confection is in itself a good thing. And if we can convey to students the indeterminacies and ever-emergent qualities of our most cherished categories of study, all the better for the future of our collective scholarly endeavors. In addition, to borrow fellow commentator Michael Silverstein’s shorthand, Palmié’s “cookbook” does provide some useful recipes. In teasing out the range of agentful actors and semiotic ideologies in play for several historical and contemporary cases of ethnographic interfaces explored throughout the book, he models what Martin Holbraad (2012), drawing on Cuban Ifá divinatory logics, might call a “motile” anthropology, in which we accept that ethnographic investigation, like Ernst Gellner’s history, has the properties of a self-writing game (Palmié 2013: 253). But, crucially, this is a multiparty self-writing game, since anthropologists’ efforts interact with the self-representational efforts of those studied, who of course study us back (for one of many such examples, see Metcalf 2002). I read Palmié’s intervention as offering a robust and semiotically informed alternative to the usual approaches of anthropology’s current “ontological turn.” While acknowledging the profound importance of ontological frames in epistemological “finds,” Palmié’s argument works against the trend of treating ontologies as ready-made worldviews, ripe for “discovery,” whose moments of interface produce scholarly insight into the different worlds “we” and “they” inhabit. As much as he works the metaphor of “interface” as a two-way interaction (religion and its anthropology), the implications of his analysis go beyond comparing how santeros are busily confecting anthropology for their purposes even as anthropologists confect Santería for theirs. The “reality effects” he shows involve ontological boundarywork dialogically producing meaningful “worlds,” rather than contact between fully-formed, preexisting ontologies producing clashes (per Sahlins’ [1985] “structure of the conjuncture”) amid occasional coincidences. Indeed, “we” and “they” share more than separates us, particularly in our tendencies to displace our politically interested machinations onto our “fetishes,” whether those be divinatory oracles or the ethnographic objects we have construed them to be. At least for the everexpanding domains in which “Afro-Cuban religion” matters, the Atlantic World has been made recognizable through firstand second-order practices that are irremediably hybrid and that therefore resist sorting into what the natives do versus what their ethnographers do. Ontologies, then, are neither raw nor cold, but in a continual process of cooking. Understood as “historically contingent articulations,” (Palmié 2013: 10) ontological frames are themselves “motile.” What Palmié describes as the “discovery” guided by what is already at least potentially “knowable” is akin to what Holbraad (2012) describes as the motility of knowledge produced through divination in Ifá, where it is not to be understood as describing an already set future—a predetermined destiny—that is then discovered. Rather, a pathway toward something newly recognized as knowable is created, bringing what are merely potentialities into social relevance by acknowledging them. Doing so, Holbraad argues, creates the very pathway of the future that divination is “about.” In like fashion, historical and ethnographic “divination” is itself a historically active, intensively dialogical process and an act of historicity that produces meaningful “worlds.” What delectable new confections can we imagine?[534] References Brown, David H. 2003. 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The cooking of history: How not to study Afro-Cuban religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wirtz, Kristina. 2004. “Santería in Cuban national consciousness: A religious case of the doble moral.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 9 (2): 409–38. Yelvington, Kevin A. 2001. “The anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean: Diasporic dimensions.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 227–60. ———, ed. 2006. Afro-Atlantic dialogues: Anthropology in the diaspora. Santa Fe: SAR Press.   Kristina WirtzAnthropology Department, M.S. 5306Western Michigan University1903 W. Michigan Ave.Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5306USAkristina.wirtz@wmich.edu