Cattle Poetics: How Aesthetics Shapes Politics in Mursiland, Ethiopia 9781800731691

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CATTLE POETICS

Ethnography, Theory, Experiment Series Editors: Martin Holbraad, Department of Anthropology, University College London Morten Axel Pedersen, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen Soumhya Venkatesan, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Manchester In recent years, ethnography has been increasingly recognized as a core method for generating qualitative data within the social sciences and humanities. This series explores a more radical, methodological potential of ethnography: its role as an arena of theoretical experimentation. It includes volumes that call for a rethinking of the relationship between ethnography and theory in order to question, and experimentally transform, existing understandings of the contemporary world. Volume 9 CATTLE POETICS HOW AESTHETICS SHAPES POLITICS IN MURSILAND, ETHIOPIA By Jean-Baptiste Eczet Volume 8 THE CHILDREN OF GREGORIA DOGME ETHNOGRAPHY OF A MEXICAN FAMILY By Regnar Kristensen and Claudia Adeath Villamil Volume 7 GOING TO PENTECOST AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO STUDIES IN PENTECOSTALISM By Annelin Eriksen, Ruy Llera Blanes and Michelle MacCarthy Volume 6 CUTTING COSMOS MASCULINITY AND SPECTACULAR EVENTS AMONG THE BUGKALOT By Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen Volume 5 VITAL DIPLOMACY THE RITUAL EVERYDAY ON A DAMMED RIVER IN AMAZONIA By Chloe Nahum-Claudel

Volume 4 VIOLENT BECOMINGS STATE FORMATION, SOCIALITY, AND POWER IN MOZAMBIQUE By Bjørn Enge Bertelsen Volume 3 WATERWORLDS ANTHROPOLOGY IN FLUID ENVIRONMENTS Edited by Kirsten Hastrup and Frida Hastrup Volume 2 FIGURATIONS OF THE FUTURE FORMS AND TEMPORALITIES OF LEFT RADICAL POLITICS IN NORTHERN EUROPE By Stine Krøijer Volume 1 AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL TROMPE L’OEIL FOR A COMMON WORLD AN ESSAY ON THE ECONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE By Alberto Corsín Jiménez

CATTLE POETICS How Aesthetics Shapes Politics in Mursiland, Ethiopia Jean-Baptiste Eczet Translated from French by Andrea Davoust and Wendy Ribeyrol

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Jean-Baptiste Eczet Translated from French by Andrea Davoust and Wendy Ribeyrol All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2021032921 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-168-4 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-169-1 ebook

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

viii

Foreword: The Politics of Beautyxi Philippe Descola, translated by Andrea Davoust Introduction. Forgotten Aesthetics 1 Mursi Country (Baa Muni), Past and Present 4 Fieldwork8 Ubiquitous Cattle 10 Cattle Aesthetics and Social Organization 12 From Interactions to Institutions 14 Chapter 1. Poetics of the Self: Anthroponomy Colours of the World Names of Relationships Relationships in Names Perceptions of Relations

18 20 25 29 33

Chapter 2. The Colour Complex: The Network of Names Names of Status The Colours of People Framing Relationships The Colours of Women Distribution of Colours Points of View Concerning Circulation

41 41 43 48 51 55 62

Contents

vi

Chapter 3. The Time of Colours and People: Poems Descriptive Points of View: Wives’ Poems The Place of ‘Mothers-in-Law’ The Prospective Point of View: Ox Poems Awaiting the Sacrifice The Retrospective Point of View: Shield Poems The Poet and Politics

66 67 76 77 79 83 88

Chapter 4. Revealing and Removing Beings: Ephemeral Adornments Showing One’s Relational Network: Jewellery Showing One’s Pastoral Qualities: Dung Painting The Dangers of Vision: Painting with Clay The Paradox of Disguise: Ornaments for Tourists

90 92 97 99 103

Chapter 5. Displaying a Common Heritage: Lasting Adornments The Men on the Women’s Dresses Synthesis of Scarifications The Total Ornament: The Lip-Plates

109 109 113 122

Chapter 6. Pastoral Vitality: Dances 138 The Preparation of the Bodies 140 ‘Striking the Dance’ (Dak Holog’)143 Common Destiny to Both Humans and Cattle 156 Chapter 7. Complex Cattle Love The Depiction of Cattle The Construction of an Emotional Attachment Killing Cattle: Removing Them from the World before the Eyes of Others

161 162 169

Chapter 8. The Poets and Their Ages From Ontogenesis to Grades The Attraction of Grades The Articulation between Aesthetic Styles and Grades The Elders beyond Men

182 183 186 194 196

174

Contents

vii

Chapter 9. The Restoration of Persons: Rituals Pregnant by Another Man Sowing Dissent Murder among Friends The Land Is Bad

203 204 210 214 219

Chapter 10. The Resolution of Problems: Politics The Time and the Place of Politics The Requalification of People Times of Crisis The Passage from the Private to the Public General Policy Speech

227 229 234 237 237 243

Conclusion256 References

262

Index269

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1.1.

The relationship between an individual and a bull is expressed in the bull name (sara dip’) which designates the colour of the bull

30

1.2.

Each relationship with Alter is expressed by a name

30

1.3

The relationship to cattle and to the colour that expresses it is renewed by interaction with Ego and his names

31

1.4

Ego’s relationships are expressed in the form of anthroponyms converging on a colour

31

2.1

The fundamental and subsidiary colours (ree and kalatange) are transmitted in pairs

44

2.2

Taking the father as a starting point, and then amongst siblings, the fundamental colour of one person determines the derived colour of the next person down in order of birth

45

2.3

Six names circulate in a meeting between three people

49

2.4

Origins and changes in women’s colours after marriage

53

2.5

Possible circulation of colours for a man

58

2.6

Possible circulation of colours for a woman

59

Illustrations

ix

2.7

Distribution and transmission of colours in Selabuyo’s family

60

3.1.

Information included in Ngadongi’s poem

69

5.1.

Patterns of riru scarifications

115

6.1.

The temporary ornamentation of the men (left) facing the usual ornamentation of the women (right)

142

6.2.

Plan of the fourth sequence

148

7.1.

A scarified grey ox

165

8.1.

The six successive grades of the Mursi age system

183

Top: the spatial distribution of ritual and ceremonial activities (here, the sacrifice of cattle one after the other in the stone circles, the blessing of the cattle and the dances). Bottom: the spatial distribution in public debates

232

10.1.

Tables 1.1.

Means and effects of coloured names

36

2.1.

The type of person who is the source of the colours and the relationships with the corresponding animals

47

2.2.

The relationship of each person with his colours and the corresponding animals

48

5.1.

Causes of bleedings and chronology with scarifications

119

7.1.

Contrasted characteristics of relationships between people and between the herdsman and his animal

174

8.1.

Correspondences between the names of grades and common nouns

187

Photographs 0.1.

The lip-plates became a primitivist contemporary emblem

3

Illustrations

x

0.2.

The relationship between East African pastoralist and cattle is remarkable due to the emotional, expressive attachment that they have for their cattle

11

4.1.

Giray put some clay on her forehead when she woke up

100

5.1.

Session of kitchoa scarifications

117

6.1.

A mature woman (a ‘wife’) is placing an object on a dancer’s shoulders

149

6.2.

A young woman dancing

153

6.3.

While some young girls continue their dance, some mature women advance in single file or in groups, raising their arms towards the sky recalling bovine horns 155

7.1.

A scarified grey-green-blue (chage) bull

163

9.1.

Three ‘junior elders’ (rori) from Maredunka before going off to ‘steal’ the ox

221

9.2.

‘Junior warriors’ (dong’ay) taking the ox back to the encampment where it will be put to death

223

FOREWORD

The Politics of Beauty Philippe Descola Translated by Andrea Davoust

Anthropology has long had trouble with groups that developed their political institutions outside the state. Indeed, the state remains this field’s default horizon. For evolutionary anthropology of the distant past, the state was an embryonic destiny. Its absence first distinguished – ahead of time – the meagre accomplishments of those who failed to invent it. Later on, it became an unavoidable, burdensome neighbour to be accommodated by compromising, and these concessions in turn left their mark on those who could not afford to ignore it. And even when the ‘Savages’ were able to fend it off, as Pierre Clastres wished, the state remained a monstrous appendix whose coming ‘society’ as a whole strived to prevent, armed with mysterious foresight. Ever and always, the state remained the hallmark of categorizations through which to study those who do without it. Jean-Baptiste Eczet’s great merit in addressing this question is that he takes a step back. This initially appears puzzling, since it amounts to demonstrating that the East African pastoral populations of which he is one of the rare French experts aesthetically express political institutions, thus incorporating them in a metonymic fashion.

xii

Foreword

Eczet’s paradoxical proposals aim neither to charm nor to shock. Indeed, like any innovative anthropologist, he amplifies and develops in conceptual terms the inspiration he drew from the Mursi people of southern Ethiopia’s Omo valley, whose life he shared for more than a year. These ferociously egalitarian cattle herders cultivate a warrior ethos and have long remained on the sidelines of the national state. They are a shining example of the way in which aesthetics plays a pivotal role in social and political life, and offer a medium to express, by discussing beauty and seeking its expression, the basis of collective life and rules for living together. Anthropological research on East African pastoral societies had up to this point focused either on the ecological and symbolic aspects of what has been called the ‘cattle complex’ since Melville Herskovits coined the term, or on the internal workings of segmentary political systems based on a hierarchy of age sets. In the former case, analysis centred on the herders’ emotional inclination towards their cows; this investment in their herds was depicted as bordering on pathological passion, removed from any economic rationality, while the study never really questioned the reasons for the bond and identification between humans and animals. In the latter case, the political organization was described using as a starting point the systematic division into groups defined by their age – there are six such age sets for Mursi males – while ignoring the fact that these visible age sets are operative only at certain times, and alongside, or in alternation with, other circumstantial forms of social mobilization based on geographical closeness, territorial divisions or kinship. By emphasizing the aesthetic forms of personal construction – corporal adornments, onomastics and poetic art – Eczet proposes an alternative, processual vision of Mursi sociality and sheds new light on the institutions through which pastoral societies of the Nilotic area were traditionally described. With his vivid writing and superb, respectful photos, Eczet shows us how adornments, both those of humans and cattle, are links connecting various situations of interactions with archetypes and recurring aspects of social life: ritual practices, homicides, marital relations, ties with the dead, etc. Mursi bodies, enhanced with headdresses, jewels, armbands, bracelets, lip-plates, ear discs, paintings and scarifications thus become the continuously recomposed clues to intentional attitudes that help define and maintain relations with humans and nonhumans. It is also the case with naming practices, which are essentially visual phenomena, as are the images projected by bodies: while the first name given to a Mursi refers to the quality of the colour he or she shares with the bull he or she is associated with at birth, the dozens, if not hundreds, of names

Foreword

that will be subsequently given according to his or her interactions with others are a source of variations – metonymic and metaphoric – on this initial colour-based identity. Via the incorporated forms they show and the names bestowed upon them, individuals develop social identities that place them in increasingly distinctive positions within the network of relations with other human beings, as well as with particular places and a whole range of nonhumans – cattle, spirits, the dead, etc. Eczet’s subtle analysis of the wide range of interactions between men, women and herd leads him to reinterpret the ‘cattle complex’. In his work, the way in which these relations change depending on the context is ultimately based on the plasticity of uses that can be assigned to cattle – at times meat reserve, at time exchange value and at times mirror or foil. He thus establishes that the assignment of individual status according to age sets in fact results from a gradual deployment of personal identity rather than from a pre-established setting, since the system of category-based classification becomes conspicuous only in very peculiar circumstances that require the complexities of Mursi sociality to be reduced and simplified. For Mursi herders have favoured mobility and temporary links over ties with a territory or lineages, the constant re-creation of their togetherness in agonistic assemblies over clearly defined obligations between set social categories; as a result, individual abilities, bodies and bovine partners are magnified. This gives an idea of how crucial it is to study this sort of pastoral democracy, entirely contained in corporal practices defined by constant movement, a frugal material culture, adornment, the mastery of oratorical art and the inclusion of bovine partners in social life, in order to contemplate new, non-Eurocentric forms of democracy that have developed on the peripheries of states. For poetry, temporary or permanent body decorations, dance, persuasion rhetorics, and colour as typological tool are not institutions in the ordinary sense – that is, settings within which human actors take actions. All of the above are instituting frameworks that offer interaction scripts and images of the group through which to stage many possible situations of agreement or disagreement. Evidently, the term ‘politics’ here does not refer to power relations or the art of expressing a collective will. Rather, it is defined as a way of creating unprecedented situations by bringing together things that, at first glance, do not belong to the same pragmatic or ontological categories: humans and cows, obsessive egalitarianism and the free use of violence, poetry and the internalized belonging to an age group. Here lies the power of this book on political anthropology. This field has enjoyed a strong

xiii

xiv

Foreword

renewal, boosted by young researchers such as Jean-Baptiste Eczet, by giving up transposing to the rest of the world the concepts and categories through which the West has objectified its historical path. Philippe Descola is a French anthropologist, professor at the Collège de France. He has published extensively on his field research with the Achuar of Ecuador and on the comparative analysis of the relations between humans and nonhumans.

Introduction Forgotten Aesthetics

Aesthetic is woven into the fabric of Mursi life. It is a formal feature of many Mursi customs, from continually renewed body adornment to the poetics of cattle colours, from poems describing networks of people to cattle-inspired dances, and from oratory art to political debates and ritual innovations. The inspiration for this aesthetics is cattle, and daily interactions revolve around cattle as the basis for identities and social relations. And yet, the destiny of bovine animals, despite the value and attention given to them, is to be put to death. We therefore need to understand what I called ‘amour vache’ (tough love, with an untranslatable play on the word vache, cow) in the original French manuscript and why this strong bond is governed by aesthetics. I wish to show that aesthetics is not one field of experience alongside others, but a transverse aspect of pastoralism and social and political organization. That is why this volume on the Mursi departs from other extant works covering the cultural area, which tend to offer more compartmentalized views of East African pastoral societies, leaving aesthetics on the margins. In the West’s imagination, the aesthetics of East African pastors serves mainly as romantic and orientalist inspiration, rife with evolutionist prejudices (see Riefenstahl 1982, 1986; Silvester 2006; Zvardon 2006; and critique by Tornay 2009; Eczet 2010a; Régi 2013). The Mursi women’s lip-plates have thus become a modern primitivist emblem.

2

Cattle Poetics

The West’s perception of aesthetics from this part of the world was mainly shaped by early explorers’ stories and was widely disseminated in the second half of the twentieth century by reporters of all kinds (Abbink 1999, 2009). The first documented expedition down the Omo valley was that of Vittorio Bottego in 1896, which brought back news of the existence of a group called Tdama, Muu or Murzu. Probably the ancestors of today’s Mursi, they were described as ‘the most savage of African races’ with ‘loathsome tendencies and beastly habits’ (Vannutelli and Citerni 1899). Between the late nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century, it was quite common for explorers to express such negative opinions about southern Ethiopia’s cattle herders. They used the derogatory name ‘Shanqillas’, borrowed from Ethiopians of the Highlands, which could be translated as ‘nigger’ or ‘slave’. One example of the fascination and contempt of the times for ‘savageness’ is found in Frenchman Henry de Monfreid’s writings: Approaching … I come across slaves walking in single file to the water. They are Chancallas women, of Herculean build and with the faces of brutes. This is the truly savage race. They are as black as soot, with low, receding foreheads and the hair of their small heads cut short. Their noses enormous and flat, their lips thick. The whites of their eyes is bronze coloured, shot through with red veins. They wear abudjedid tunics, so filthy they have turned the colour of chocolate. No, freeing such beings would not be an act of humanity, it would be reckless nonsense. (De Monfreid 1999: 93, letter dated 1912)

Multiple illustrated works about East African cattle herders were published in the second half of the twentieth century. While the authors of these works were intent on casting a more positive light on these groups, they were not exempt from evolutionist prejudices, though these were expressed differently (see Chapter 4). A whole range of physical and cultural stereotypes were expounded – for instance, the Karas were described as seven-foot-tall giants and Hamar women were presented as ‘magnificent creatures’ necessarily descended from the Queen of Sheba.1 These writings repeatedly conflated paleontological and cultural times (Tornay 2009): Lucy, the first Australopithecus and symbol of nascent humankind, was wrongly located in the Omo and put forward as proof of the primitive nature of the present. Art and relations with nature were painted as naïve and spontaneous, wars as bloody (and of course for the sake of status), and organization as anarchical. Body paintings were said to bear witness to some original aesthetic intuition. Anthropological works on cattle herders of the Omo valley, in contrast to such exoticism-tainted literature, have mainly focused on social

Introduction

Photo 0.1. The lip-plates became a primitivist contemporary emblem. During the last few years, a large diffusion of coffee-table books proposed an evolutionist judgment on this practice. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

organization. Their approach was partly determined by the geographical origins of their authors: David Turton began his career in Manchester and his initial training was British structural functionalism; Katsuyoshi Fukui’s ethological and cognitive approach, with its focus on ecological conditions, is in line with the kind of anthropology the Japanese carry out in Eastern Africa (Ichikawa 2011); and Serge Tornay’s ethnographic and carefully comparative undertaking is typical of France’s poststructuralist anthropology. All these anthropological traditions, despite their variety, rejected the cognitive approach, which was viewed as reductive. Wielding radically non-interpretative ethnography, Tornay (1982) attacked Dan Sperber’s (1974, 1982) theories about the place of cognition in symbolism, as did Ivo Strecker (1988), the ethnographic specialist of the Hamer, for whom sociality resides in the facts of language and interlocutory situations. The researchers each published an article presenting the usual classification of colours in the region that makes cattle’s coats the taxa of colour classification. This time, the point was to strongly oppose Berlin and Kay’s (1969) evolutionist model by showing the subtlety of local classifications, keeping clear of any evolutive teleology. The reason why aesthetics was ‘forgotten’ in anthropological works is same one that lies behind the aforementioned clashes with cogni-

3

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4

tive theories: such debates signal the ethnographers’ strong desire to fight evolutionist approaches in describing the complexities of the Omo valley cattle herders’ social lives, one of the goals being to help them achieve statutory legitimacy within their respective nations. They avoided describing the East African herders’ aesthetics, however much on display it remained, in order to avoid unwittingly reinforcing the prevalent primitivist preconceived notions concerning these people. For depicting these people in works purported as iconographic archives of doomed ancestral practices is just another way of denying them their modernness, which goes hand in hand with a denial of their historicity.

Mursi Country (Baa Muni ), Past and Present What is known about the past of the Mursi and neighbouring groups provides us with clues as to their constant evolution and geographical rooting. The history of the Omo region is a story of migrations, assimilations and divisions (see Turton 1988; Tornay 2001; Bader 2002; Wersvijver 2008), which drastically reduces the lasting existence of these groups. The birth of the Mursi dates back 150 years, when a group of pioneers crossed the Omo River in Karum, thus splitting from the Suri (or Surma) and self-defined as Muni (plural Mun). Their territory, which lies between the Omo and Mago Rivers, is not governed and no census has ever been carried out; the Mursi population is estimated to be 10,000. Because of permanent migrations, assimilations and divisions, neighbouring groups are related in different ways when observed from different angles (linguistics, culture, identity, etc.). For instance, the term ‘Surma’ is used in the tourist industry and by linguists. It sometimes designates the Chai/Tirma and the Baale. Similarly to the Mursi, they practise pole duelling (called sagine by the former and donga by the latter). The Chai and the Tirma, who speak a language similar to that of the Mursi, are sometimes collectively designated as the Suri (or Suuri), an ethnonym used by Job Abbink, although Katsuiyoshi Fukui establishes a distinction between the Chai and Tirma, and the Suri, using the latter word for the Baale. The Baale typically illustrate dynamics of reciprocal influence between the groups: their lifestyle is identical to that of the neighbouring Suri, but they share less than 50% of their vocabulary with the Tirma. They are linguistically related to the Murle and Olam in Sudan. Historically, the author of a study of Sudan’s Kachepo (who call themselves Suri) mentions that the clans bore the name of Baale (Bader 2002). It is possibly a clan that progressively separated and adopted the

Introduction

Ethiopian Suri’s lifestyle, for all agropastoralists in southern Ethiopia consider that clanic separation is the typical way to form an independent group. Their agropastoral lifestyle was disrupted in the twentieth century when the tsetse fly almost entirely destroyed their herds, forcing them to grow tubers and cereals, and to take to beekeeping and pottery. In the 1970s, an epidemic also destroyed a large part of the Suri’s (Chai and Tirma) herds. However, they replenished their herds and did not abandon their pastoral ethos. A number of Mursi have Chai origins, because of migrations and frequent marriages. The Mursi form a pioneer front, which continuously progressed north, taking territory from the Me’en. Together with the Tishana farmers, the Me’en, who raise cattle, form the Bodi group (named Tumuri by the Mursi). The Mursi and Me’en rarely intermarry, are often at war, and yet personal friendships between them are durable. The Mursi maintain more distant relations with the Tishana and do little more than trade jewels and other manufactured goods with them. The Mursi fully assimilated the Kwegu in the late twentieth century. The Kwegu, who did not own cattle, had specialized in hunting, fishing and gathering, and building pirogues. Their relationship with the Mursi was one of clientelist mentoring: each Kwengu had a Mursi mentor who would offer him protection and heads of cattle when he married, though the animals stayed with the mentors (Turton 1986). In return, the Mursi required services such as pirogue crossings of the Omo. Although they did not intermarry, the Kwegu were gradually incorporated into the Mursi, until they no longer existed independently, as shown by Woodhead (1982). The Kwegu origins of a number of Mursi are well known, though they have now adopted the Mursi lifestyle. Some Kwegu still live in Bodi territory. Some elders say they came from a place that lies to the southeast, now Borana territory, a claim supported by archaeological data. The supposition is that the Omo valley agropastoral people followed a spiral-shaped path over the course of several centuries, travelling to the north of their current territory, crossing the Omo River to settle on its west bank, then crossing it again further south to settle on its east bank, which is their current territory (Verswijer 2008). It is difficult to determine precisely when the migration took place. The paucity of these groups’ material cultures means archaeology has few traces to work from (Tornay 1975, Abbink 2000). Apart from accounts dating from the Ethiopian conquest (1898–99) or the Italian presence (1938–41), or written by rare travellers (Vannutelli and Citerni 1899), we have virtually no information about the more distant past. When Timothy Clack and his team conducted archaeological digs in Mursi territory (Clack and Brittain 2010), they found

5

6

Cattle Poetics

circular stone structures that formed platforms dating back to the nineteenth century and that fitted in with contemporary practices, only larger in size. Similarly, a mere 300 kilometres northeast as the crow flies, funerary steles belonging to the Shay culture and dating from the tenth and sixteenth centuries are engraved with motifs that are not found anywhere else in Ethiopia, except on the Mursi’s bodies (Eczet and Poissonnier 2012). This data suggests a wide array of possible scenarios concerning the past of the Mursi and the neighbouring groups. Hence, the only valid position is to reject any fixist definition of their society, as has long been circulated in popular written and photographic reports. The Omo valley is not an inward-looking place that has lived in isolation since ancient times and must no longer be described as a conservatory of archaism. The Mursi live in an area stretching roughly 30 kilometres from east to west and 70 kilometres from north to south. They practise transhumant pastoralism and grow sorghum, plus some squash, beans and tobacco. The daily production of food keeps women busy for many hours, as it includes cooking various kinds of leaves (kinoe) that must first be picked in the bush, milking cows and curdling the milk, grinding the sorghum seeds on stone to obtain either porridge (tila), when mixed into hot water, or a thick soup (shallu), when mixed into water and milk. The Mursi hunt only occasionally, when food becomes scarce, and resort to fishing only in the event of famine. The Mursi raise zebus, a variety of small domestic cow suited to dry zones. Zebus have a hump of fatty flesh on their backs. Their milk is consumed in large amounts, often fermented, but is never made into butter or cheese. The flesh is eaten whether the animal was killed or died naturally. The best pastures are in the grassy central area of Mursi country, as well as beyond the bushbelt to the East, but there herders expose themselves to potential raids by enemies, and the cattle may come into contact with tsetse flies. A few small herds of goats may be found and, more rarely, fat-tailed sheep. I noticed a few chickens in Mako, which were presumably introduced by missionaries or because of the proximity to highland markets. Herds are frequently moved about, but their movements cannot exceed a few dozen kilometres eastwards or westwards,2 as the Mursi are split into five sections along a north-south axis. Consistently with the frequent movements, Mursi dwellings are meant to last only a few months or sometimes a few years. Field huts (dori, plural doren) are straw domes propped up by sticks and are too low to stand in, whereas pastoral camp huts (dera, plural deran) are somewhat larger; they have a round wall made with big sticks, waterproofed with mud, and the beamed roof is thatched. Depending on the

Introduction

size of the hut, a central pillar may or may not support the framework. Both types of dwellings are accessed through a low opening that keeps the air inside cool during daytime. Sorghum can be grown in two ways. The first is rain-fed farming. It is the least dependable, since yields can vary considerably depending on rainfall, which is unpredictable and very localized. Each person decides where to farm, possibly in different places from one year to the next. Some plots are passed on within clans, especially the better-defined plots along the Omo River where crops are planted in the floodplains. This type of farming also depends on rainfall in the highlands, but is more dependable. However, this relative crop security is now jeopardized by the Gibe III dam. Since it was built upstream, farmers have been forced to resort to irrigation and less water is available around Lake Turkana (Dassanech, Turkana), whose levels keep declining. One of the initial reasons I chose to visit the Mursi for my fieldwork was to be able to observe and describe the increasing involvement of newly arrived nonregional actors: I wished to witness the early stages of missionary work. When visiting Kenyan athletes a few years back, I had travelled to the Kerio valley, where Samburu herders wore their precolonial clothes and adornment while driving their cattle. There, the locals had converted to Christianity en masse, as evidenced by the large number of religious buildings. But after converting, they usually abandon their traditional dress and jewellery in favour of Western-style clothing. There lay a subject for my future research: how does one lead an existence of pastoral transhumance in a globalized world and often dictated by a missionary model of moral precepts and of centralized religious life? Could Christianity’s typical pastoral metaphor resonate particularly strongly in this part of the world? Documenting initial missionary work could be a valuable contribution for anthropology, mainly because traces of early conversions are only found in missionary or colonial archives, modern conversions being more often than not second conversions (after a first conversion in colonial times or before). But reality soon caught up with me: the one and only mission located in Mursi territory, near its northern border, had little impact on their daily lives. It must be said that the Mursi have opposed everything centralized authorities have tried to impose on them for the past thirty years: a national park, a police station, offers of positions in government bodies, a ban on lip-plates, etc. Clearly, the Mursi and related groups treasure their marginality as a way to circumvent domination by a centralized state. They have done so differently from the Southeast Asian peasants who found refuge in remote areas and produce social forms that allow them to escape the reach of centralized authorities (see Scott 2009).

7

Cattle Poetics

8

Incidentally, their life on the margins was easy enough to preserve for many years, because neighbouring colonial countries and Ethiopia itself had long neglected the area, which is difficult to reach and contains neither gold nor oil. Only from the 1970s onwards did the Mursi and the Surma really have to face the Ethiopian state (Abbink 2002), though without having to radically alter their lifestyle, as the Derg dictatorship shut Ethiopia’s doors to anthropological research, tourism and most missionaries from 1974 to 1991. This is why the state and other characteristic traits of modernity will be present only intermittently in this text – that is, when I observed them.3 We will encounter tourists, government police and the early stages of a sugarcane plantation. The reason I do not mention the dam, which was about to be built during my last field trip, is that the threat it posed was still rather abstract at the time. Likewise, I rarely mention the sugar plantations started by multinational companies in the Omo valley and the subsequent land clearing that took place from 2015 onwards, because these changes had not fundamentally altered the lives of the Mursi. For instance, an elder Mursi called Olibuizir, whose political opinions are highly respected, decided to plant his own sorghum seeds on the very same plots of land that had been cleared, because the tedious work of soil preparation had already been done. Although criticized, the intrusive land conquest was nonetheless reframed as a farming opportunity, and the land clearings were seen in a less catastrophic light.

Fieldwork I spent twelve months in the field, mainly between 2008 and 2010, and returned again in 2015. From the very first day, I carried out all my research in the indigenous language, mun. In 2008, only two brothers spoke English. The younger brother, Olibui ajaareholi Milisha, helped me compile a personal dictionary as well as conjugation tables;4 the older brother, Olibui achakte Olisirali, spent time with me on two occasions for transcriptions and translations of poems and political debates. The first few months I spent near Mako, in the northern part of the territory, in a dense farming area near the Mago River. I often stayed with the women and children, who kindly taught me the basics of mun. A handful of missionaries from Serving In Mission lived there too; their mission, which had been there for nearly two decades, comprised a school and a little-used clinic. With this school, plus another small one located on the country’s central plateau (the only two non-Mursi places on the territory), some children were able to receive an education in

Introduction

Amharic. Afterwards, I settled in a cattle camp, from which I was able to frequently travel as far as Magento, the grassy central plateau. There, I spent more time in the company of the men and their cattle. That year, the Banko River ran dry very early and every day the bovines were sent far away to find water. For several months, our only food resources, apart from the occasional basket of thick porridge, were milk and sometimes the meat of dead cattle. I carried out my final bit of fieldwork near Magento, where my network of acquaintances was in large part renewed. Generally speaking, I avoided considering those hosts who became my friends as key informants – a type of relationship I am not comfortable with – and preferred getting involved every day with different individuals of all ages, both men and women. My two female best friends greatly facilitated things by feeding me, protecting me and teaching me farming, whereas my two male best friends introduced me to their pastoral and political life. All helped me learn mun, but no individual was my sole source of information. Two of my acquaintances died while I was in the field. Others played an important role in my daily life, and I could not possibly draw a full list of the kind Mursi who accepted my presence and answered my questions. The Mursi voluntarily live with few material possessions; to fit in, I usually slept wherever I happened to be at dusk, sleeping in my tent only occasionally; my personal belongings all fit in a small rucksack. In that way, I was never really cut off from the course of everyday life. There were moments of relative withdrawal from social life, for example, late at night or during early-morning activities, and though they were not times of important discussions, they nonetheless provided me with opportunities to observe intimate moments, such as when people put on and shifted their body ornaments around or recited certain poems. Being woken in the middle of the night by a kick in the shoulder from someone wanting to chew tobacco was tiring indeed, but it taught me something about my hosts, for instance, this crucial Mursi concept: the concept of ree and its verbal form reg’ey, the ‘visual impulse’,5 which necessarily involves meeting the eye of the other and interacting with the other. Sleep is perceived as a strange moment, one of dreaded withdrawal, such as during an illness. Therefore, sleep is never actively sought or particularly respected, not even by a mother for her child. Generally speaking, being fully involved in communal life gave me a far better understanding of the Mursi than if I had sometimes had the possibility of withdrawing from daily business. If I hadn’t constantly renewed and revived existing relationships, it would have been held against me. Being myself required to continually stabilize temporary ties during my fieldwork, I came to understand the way in which Mursi

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relations functioned: it is necessary to build and permanently activate a network of acquaintances. This requires constant work, but the upside is that it is very easy to extend one’s network. As the terms of relationships are not determined once and for all by status, acquaintance or personal affiliation, I was free to engage with anyone without prior introduction. Similarly, relations are not mutually exclusive: I would stay with junior warriors, then would go somewhere with wives without taking particular precautions or having to worry about getting flak. However, one issue kept cropping up: it was desirable that I own a few heads of cattle, preferably oxen whose hide matched the colour in the name given to me.

Ubiquitous Cattle East African pastoralism is generally defined through the emphasis on the emotional bond between cattle and their owners, which is visible in their numerous bodily and poetic practices. Some authors have considered that the herders’ habit of putting cows at the heart of all expression stemmed from an ‘obsession’. What my research intends to achieve is precisely to account for the ubiquity of cattle without venturing into a discussion of these herders’ all-consuming passion, as this would amount to supporting propositions based solely on a mental disposition (and a negative one too): can diverse practices, recurring among all the Nilotic peoples of East Africa, really be explained away as the result of an emotion or inclination? At the same time, there is no denying that specific bonds are formed; this was visible, for example, in one man’s tears when a friend’s ox bearing the same name as him was sacrificed. Neither can the wealth of cattle-related aesthetic practices be reduced to economic or ecological considerations. What I propose is a different perspective on this relationship with cattle: rather than asking why references to cattle are ubiquitous, maybe we should be asking ourselves which ubiquitous social relations bovines embody. The pervasiveness of cattle in East African pastoral societies was noticed very early on and was named the ‘cattle complex’ (Herskovits 1926). Inspiration for the term came from the generic concept of ‘cultural complex’ developed in diffusionist anthropology (Graebner 1911). It refers to a key chain of activities in a society, revolving around a living being or an artefact – Schlee (1994) thus talks about a ‘camel complex’ among the herders of northern Kenya. The polysemy of the expression ‘cattle complex’ has sometimes made it confusing (see Mair 1985), as

Introduction

Photo 0.2. The relationship between East African pastoralist and cattle is remarkable due to the emotional, expressive attachment that they have for their cattle. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

has the multiplicity of actions related to cattle, whose scope extends beyond livestock farming. The operative definition I retained for cattle complex in this body of work is the following: the presence of cattle, either direct or referential, in all activities and discourse. What most surprises outsiders is precisely the identification between herders and their cattle, and the recurring poetic expressions about cattle. However, little academic attention has been devoted to the subject so far. The few studies that examine the emotional attachment of herders to their animals did so through a prism inspired by psychoanalytical theses (Beidelman 1966). This literature perceived the ways in which herders ritually put their cattle on show, and put them to death, as collective projections of individual issues.6 Incidentally, such ethically questionable psychologizing interpretations are the reason why East African herders have been deemed obsessive even to this day (see, for example, Gabbert 2012). Said obsession was even held up as an example of the well-known ‘tragedy of the commons’ described by Garett Hardin (1968), with so-called ‘pastoral egoism’ put forward as the explanation for a purported lack of rationality in cattle breeding. Some authors took the opposite view and, drawing inspiration from Evans-Pritchard (1940), showed how refined this pastoralism was with

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regard to the ecological and political organization (Almagor 1978; Fukui 1996), while others, such as Galaty (1981), and Galaty and Johnson (1990) proposed studies on the strategies and political and economic challenges of modern pastoralism from a development-oriented perspective. Others have also described the evolutions of East African pastoralism – for instance, Hutchinson (1996) shows how cattle-specific exchange spheres (Bohannan 1955) opened to other items such as firearms and how money gradually replaced cattle as a token of exchange. I wanted to avoid explaining bovine pervasiveness in a pejorative way (using the obsession justification) and nor did I want to concentrate exclusively on a specific theme (such as economics or ecology). Instead, I focused my attention on the multiplicity and complexity of bovine occurrences, without positing a unique definition of cattle. There are as many cows and oxen as there are mediations in various social interactions; therefore, livestock are present in each and every moment of Mursi life. It may be a good to be traded, a source of poetic inspiration, or a companion who quenches thirst. Bovines are all this at once, and in my work I show that they can appear as artistic representations, coloured references, ideomorphs (see Chapter 7), colour prototypes, centres of affection or proof of public renunciation. Hence, the omnipresence of cattle is the sign of something other than an obsession or strong economic interest. In other words, the first step is to explain the ubiquity of cattle; only then may this relational tool be better understood not as an end, but as a practical tool in the ‘relational economy’ mentioned by Evans-Pritchard (1965 [1934]). The idea is avoid seeking a unique factor (ecological, economic, symbolic or other) behind ubiquity, i.e. a cause in proportion to the effects (Latour 1985). In this way, we can understand Mursi customs and respect their uniqueness without erring on the side of excessive exoticism.

Cattle Aesthetics and Social Organization Another original feature of East African herders is that they base the rules of their social and political organization on the different stages of life. The Mursi belong to the numerous groups that we usually call ‘societies with age sets and generation sets’, which are founded on a type of organization referred to as an ‘age-set system’. The system of age sets itself was often studied from a comparative perspective,7 which paid little attention (if any) to aesthetic practices. Yet it is immediately apparent that the Mursi express themselves in different aesthetic styles depending on their age. Furthermore, in daily

Introduction

life, aesthetics is more frequently visible – in the form of adornment, poems, etc. – than the belonging to age sets, which reveals itself in rituals or political action (see Schlee 1998). The approach I propose therefore aims to understand the age-set system through its relation with aesthetic practices. In his seminal work, David Turton aimed to describe the Mursi’s social organization, i.e. their age-set system and the way it worked (1973: 124–50). Yet Turton himself eventually admitted that describing it as an autonomous form of social organization was a hopeless endeavour and abandoned the idea. Instead, he decided to study the interaction of the age-set system with other variables (territory, space, etc.), since the Mursi are always mobilizing different organizations depending on the occasion, be it a regular event (following the agricultural or pastoral calendar) or a contingency (conflict or famine). This malleability is a typical feature of so-called segmentary societies. The anthropological term ‘segment’ has a vernacular equivalent: the term buran (plural buranyoga). A buran is a unit that changes constantly according to the context; it can range from one’s immediate circle to all of the Mursi (buran a munion) and includes the five territorial sections that are mainly involved in the forming of groups of opponents during pole duels. Similar to a taxon in biology, which is not dependent on the level of arborescence (it may be a reign, a gender, a species, etc.), a buran is a community that considers itself as such as long as the association exists. Thus, what becomes clear with this notion of buran is that several types of ephemeral organizations may emerge and then disband. They are not mobilized at the same time or for the same reasons, and no single criterion defines a social relationship8 once and for all. The same goes for age sets: only occasionally are they mobilized to identify persons – exclusively males. In day-to-day life, belonging to a certain rank9 generates only limited social expectations. For instance, no one expects a ‘senior warrior’ to marry, though he is entitled to do so provided he owns enough cattle, just like any other man. If he does so, his life will change: he will leave behind his pastoral companions living in separate cattle camps and will join other married men, likely ‘little elders’, in villages near fields. Indeed, marriage largely determines where one lives, and these living places are mainly going to be determined by farming activities. In that sense, marriage has a much greater impact on daily life than a change in grade, even an important change such as that from warrior to elder (Turton 1973: 137). Generally speaking, age systems are linked to kinship in various ways (see Almagor and Baxter 1978), but there is no direct causality. Pastoral associations are mainly formed on the basis of friendships and good relations, with kinship sometimes playing a part, although not a prom-

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inent one.10 Also, as Tornay (2001) suggested, the age system does not create ancestors. If you ask someone about their ancestry, the answer will not go any further than the names of their direct ascendants. Sometimes a man will not even mention his own father, but will answer with the name of his kogine, an ancestor to whom no precise filiation can be traced back. Several kogine constitute a clan (kawuchuwa) whose definition is twofold: an ancestry on the father’s side, without any names being stated, and a place near the Omo River. These clans are mainly mobilized when matrimonial alliances are formed and in cases of mediation in conflicts within the Mursi. In other words, there is no overarching, stable and continuous order that could neatly fit into a graph of age sets. Besides, theoretical age systems are often not very good transcriptions of empirical situations, with over-old or over-young individuals who do not fit into any set or have not met social expectations. Indeed, what is remarkable about these systems is that they would simply be unliveable if they actually matched their descriptions by the Mursi. This is a classic example of the discrepancy between theory and practice. Age systems are drastic simplifications of daily life, and the purpose of the age criterion is clarification: it appears primarily in political contexts, to organize public debates, when the elders’ authority must morph into decision-making power. The singularity of each individual (their idiosyncrasy) is reduced to a status (determined by the grade), which allows them or not to take part in the debate (the right to speak). Thus, the age system is a way of altering the conditions of daily interactions to create political personas at certain specific moments, in order to give legitimacy to the power of speech and the agreement of listeners, in a society where the non-hierarchical ethos requires a specific system to accept that some members should decide for others. This is why the age system is not a social structure, but a social and political tool that reconfigures daily relations to prepare political governance. But what makes these positions of authority legitimate is the mastery of various aesthetic expressions in daily life, which subside during political events. Aesthetics is therefore the hidden side of the political moment.

From Interactions to Institutions In this work, I have tried not to assume the existence of social structures or overarching ontological conceptions if I did not actually observe them. That is why the chronology of my investigation and my account progresses from what is labile and relative towards what is durable and

Introduction

category-based. The book begins with an aesthetic grammar, in which I describe Mursi customs as tools to create relations between individuals. Only at the end of the work are they replaced in the whole collective life. I first present the poetics of names, since designing persons is a prerequisite for every interaction among the Mursi. The description of the dozens of names used to designate each individual on a daily basis reveals how strong ties are created among individuals and their cattle, by way of the colours the names refer to, and how these features shape transmission networks parallel to kinship networks (see Chapters 1 and 2). The names, cattle and colours belonging to each person are then woven into poems. These poems not only express the unique identity of the persons uttering them, but also suggest various temporal perspectives that imply internalizing category-based perspectives: young or old, male or female (see Chapter 3). Bodies and adornment are part and parcel of daily social relations, but following very different logics. The more ephemeral ornaments (clay or cow-dung paintings, paintings for tourists and jewels) contribute to revealing certain relations or managing certain interactions (see Chapter 4). Longer-lasting ornaments (women’s dresses, scarification and lip-plates) form a common repository of collective references, carried directly on bodies, for these references are otherwise scattered across time and space because of the Mursi’s transhumant, pastoralist way of life (see Chapter 5). Dances offer a picture of the broader pastoral group (humans and cattle) by staging human relations alongside cattle relations, thus highlighting the fact that in order to come into existence, marriages as well as herds need the entire group (see Chapter 6). From the description of all these practices, which involve cattle either directly or as a reference, I propose to consider the relationship between persons and cattle in its two stages, the first being the establishment of a personalized relationship, and the second the killing. I do this without resorting to traditional psychologizing theories that analysed it either as obsession or as the symbolic emphasis of an economic necessity (see Chapter 7). In the next three chapters, I then endeavour to demonstrate how aesthetic practices and the relationship with cattle are part and parcel of the formation of age classes, ritual life and political governance. I first show how daily aesthetic practices enable the age criterion and its legitimacy to emerge in a political context (see Chapter 8). Aesthetic practices are indeed organized into different sensory repertories as individuals get older, and even though they do not imply any hierarchy in their daily uses, they legitimate the fact that a hierarchy of age classes does occasionally materialize in a political context. Age sets, which temporarily structure certain contexts, are therefore more of a ‘performative structure’ (Sahlins 1989) than a social

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organization. In this way, a non-hierarchical ethos can coexist with a hierarchy based on age sets. I then present a chronicle of the events that occurred during my fieldwork, including famine, adultery, a deadly accident between neighbours, homicides by sugn (or Ari, farmers from the highlands) and governmental presence. This is how the Mursi meet, for they otherwise live scattered across pastoral and farming areas. They are able to face these troublesome events through two types of collective mobilizations. The first gives rise to major formal innovations, drawing from daily aesthetic practices. The goal is to closely fit the particular problem encountered by the parties: these are ritual processes, the aim of which is to restore persons to decent relational conditions (see Chapter 9). The second type of collective mobilization is political moments (see Chapter 10). These take the form of public debates devoted to the search for consensus regarding a particular problem and its resolution. Public debates are very restrictive, stereotyped arrangements that involve more than the individuals who triggered the event. The distinction between these two types of activities, and the resulting local definition of political activity, is phrased according to segmentary logic: when a problem affects only those who caused it, i.e. when the equivalent segments can confront each other and negotiate (neighbours, villages or territorial sections), then it is handled in a ritual way; when a problem affects people other than those who caused it, i.e. when a segment can imperil another segment with no possibility of confrontation (for example, if someone taking revenge on a neighbour causes a village to be in danger), then it is handled through political means. Politics come to the rescue of non-equivalent segmentary oppositions.11 In my alternative portrait of a Nilotic group, I brought together the wealth of aesthetic practices, the ubiquity of cattle and the age system while steering clear of, respectively, expressive gratuitousness, unlikely emotional assumptions and a mechanistic social structure. I took seriously cow dung smeared on faces, arms raised skywards mimicking cow horns and Old Country Fire calling his camp neighbour ‘Giraffe Nearby’. Because names are powerful tools of dual relationships and the first thing the Mursi told me about themselves, it is appropriate to begin with them.

Notes 1. See Chennevière 1985, 1986, 1989. 2. To the west, crops can be grown on the Omo River’s floodplains, whereas the east is an area of pastures. Given the geographical location of these complementary

Introduction

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

activities, people tend to travel between east and west rather than between north and south. For an analysis of the women’s point of view on ‘modernity’ as visible in interactions with tourists, missionaries and the government, see Latosky (2013). See the appendices in Eczet (2013). Defining this term is one of my goals in Chapter 1. See also Beidelman 1966. For example, see Stewart 1977. See Turton (1973: 116 and 132) on why it is problematic to consider even territorial sections as stable, noncontext-dependent data. Men go through six ranks as they advance in age: changalay (plural changala), dong’ay (plural dong’a), teri (plural tero), rori (plural rora), bari (plural bara) and karue (plural karo). When translated according to the social expectations associated with each set, changalay are ‘big children’, dong’ay are ‘junior warriors’, teri are ‘senior warriors’, rori are ‘junior elders’, bari are ‘senior elders’, and karue are ‘old men’ or ‘retired elders’. The adjectives ‘junior’ and ‘senior’ (tini and bô) are the Mursi terms for distinguishing between younger and older individuals within a same grade; they also indicate precedence between wives or birth order. I use them because a mentoring system is set up between warriors of adjacent grades. Similarly, the distinction between elders can be phrased in terms of ‘junior man’ (hiri a tini) and ‘senior man’ (hiri a bô). Recruitment to a grade is individual until ‘senior warrior’, then all the members of a given grade move on to the higher grade. The truly systemic part of this age system thus starts at ‘junior elder’, for the movement of one of its member implies that of the others. In other words, recruitment becomes collective starting at the grade of ‘junior elder’ (rori), so only from then on do age sets exist. An age class is a historic section of individuals who have reached a grade together. There is one class of ‘junior elders’ (rori), one of ‘senior elders’ (bari) and, depending on how many are still alive, one or two of ‘old men’ (karue). When members of a class move up one grade, the class retains its name. What Turton (1973: 133) named ‘generational classes’ is the simple grouping of four age classes, alternating between Gamal and Kirin. In practice, when all the individuals belonging to a generational class comprising four adjacent classes pass away, then the following generational class gives the four next age classes the name of the generational class that just died. The group is considered the extension of an age class and is not truly recognized as a generation, where fathers beget sons who in turn become fathers and beget other sons, like in the Nyangatom’s age system (Tornay 2001). Tornay (2001) uses the expression ‘good pastoral companionship’, while Almagor (1978) uses ‘pastoral partners’ Generally speaking, debates in Ethiopia have been categorized as ‘traditional justice’ and not politics – for example, this is what Pankhurst and Assefa (2008) did in their report on customary dispute resolution institutions.

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1 Poetics of the Self Anthroponomy

In his introduction to The Nuer, Evans-Pritchard attempts to show the reader how difficult fieldwork is. In order to do this, he refers to names. The difficulty lies in the very fact of ascertaining the name of the person one is speaking to, as the following dialogue illustrates: Nuer are expert at sabotaging an inquiry and until one has resided with them for some weeks they steadfastly stultify all efforts to elicit the simplest facts and to elucidate the most innocent practices … Questions about customs were blocked by a technique I can commend to natives who are inconvenienced by the curiosity of ethnologists. The following specimen of Nuer methods is the commencement of a conversation …: I: Who are you? Cuol: A man. I: What is your name? Cuol: Do you want to know my name? I: Yes, you have come to visit me in my tent and I would like to know who you are. Cuol: All right. I am Cuol. What is your name? I: My name is Pritchard. Cuol: What is your father’s name? I: My father’s name is also Pritchard. Cuol: No, that cannot be true. You cannot have the same name as your father. I: It is the name of my lineage. What is the name of your lineage? Cuol: Do you want to know the name of my lineage?

Poetics of the Self

I: Yes. Cuol: What will you do with it if I tell you? Will you take it to your country? I: I don’t want to do anything with it. I just want to know it since I am living at your camp Cuol: Oh well, we are Lou. I: I did not ask you the name of your tribe. I know that. I am asking you the name of your lineage. Cuol: Why do you want to know the name of my lineage? I: I don’t want to know it. Cuol: Then why do you ask me for it? Give me some tobacco. I defy the most patient ethnologist to make headway against this kind of opposition. One is just driven crazy by it. (1940: 12–13)

This would indeed drive a person crazy unless he or she saw this difficulty as a sign of a real issue. Perhaps names reveal broader notions involving important practices. Perhaps telling a name is something more than eliciting a simple fact. Indeed, the Mursi spoke of more than themselves when I asked them their names. I asked a woman that I did not know very well while she was working in her field: Me: What are your names? Her: Zebra. Me: Why that name? Her: Because my cow is striped. Me: Who gave you that name? Her: Striped Country Old Man. Me: And why is your necklace red and white? Her: Because my husband’s name is Giraffe Near, he has a red striped ox.

These dialogues that began with a name contained references to cows and colours that I found confusing. Cows and colours were to be found elsewhere. After the killing of a cow, a young woman sang in the midst of the other women: I call upon the spirit of the sparkling water, the grey cow Which, from all directions, brings the mist I draw with my hands on the smoke-coloured coat Of the daughters of Gowiny The blue bird is himself afraid of his blue body The tobacco body is eaten by the lances The body with the tobacco coat, brother of my man Defies the red fire.

I asked her a simple question, expecting a simple answer:

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Me: What’s the blue bird? Her: It’s grey-green-blue,1 it’s like the grey cow. It’s me.

This answer seemed strange to me. From names, we moved on to colours. From the colour of a bird, we went via a cow to reach an identity: ‘it’s me’. My question then is: how do you go from a bird to a colour, then to a cow and finally to a person? Sometimes the colours even pass from person to person. A woman sang the following: ‘It comes from the earth and we know that the season has come. The giant snake with the pink cows of his children.’ So I asked: Me: What comes from the earth? Her: The rainbow which heralds the rain. It’s like me, it’s grey-green-blue. Me: What’s all this about pink cows? Her: They are the children of my co-spouse to whom I have given my pink colour. Me: But you said your colour was grey-green-blue! Her: It’s the same, grey-green-blue and pink.

Even if I did not yet understand the meaning of these statements – dialogues or poems – I could perceive one recurring feature: the use of colour references. One can easily see that names and colours play an important role in people’s identity, and that cows are part of this. It remains to be seen how names and colours are able to link beings as dissimilar as people, cows and blue birds. The object of this chapter will be to describe the relationships to be found within the coloured names.

Colours of the World The Mursi illustrate what Herskovits (1926) calls the ‘cattle complex’, that is, the interlocking of men and cattle in all activities and forms of discourse. Often cattle are used because of their colour. If cattle are to be found everywhere, so is colour. We could therefore just as well refer to a ‘colour complex’ (Eczet 2010a). It was not by chance that anthropologists carrying out research in the 1970s and 1980s in the lower Omo valley all devoted articles to the classification of colours (see Fukui (1996) on the Me’en, Tornay (1973) on the Nyangatom, and Turton (1978b, 1981) on the Mursi), whereas they were studying sociopolitical and ecological issues. This classification is inspired by the model provided by cattle. Thus, learning about the pastoral way of life and acquiring the local language all comes down to mastering this classification, otherwise it is impossible to understand even the simplest discourse.

Poetics of the Self

The coats of the Mursi’s cattle are very varied, both from the point of view of colour and markings. From a very young age, the Mursi know how to describe the coat of a cow by its colour: brownish-yellow or chestnut is goloni; striped markings, often red and black, are tulay, etc. There are about twenty recurrent terms plus combinations, and numerous other terms describing the detail of the coats. These recurrent terms constitute the elementary taxa of colour classification. They are used to describe all other visual perceptions. A setting sun and blood are described using the word for a red coat (goloni), while a zebra and a chequered blanket are described using the term for a striped coat (tulay). This classification is only really effective when one knows all the cattle coats. Indeed, the recurring colours that serve as taxa do not form an ideal palette of colours: the chestnut coat is not of the purest red, but it is redder than all the other coats (Turton 1980). It is thus possible to describe any element in the world even when the visual perception of it is very different from the corresponding coat. For example, a bright pink flower is designated by the rege coat, which I would translate as ‘pink’, but that instead corresponds to ‘cream’, because this is the colour that it most closely resembles. The distribution of colours that come from the coats of cattle show marked discrepancies. It is a kind of ‘colour gestalt’ more than a list of colours, as all the colours form a structured whole and not a juxtaposition of perceptions. Each colour taxon (a term designating a coat) only becomes classificatory with the knowledge of adjacent perceptions (the other cattle coats). In other words, the coats act as distributors rather than as definitions of perceptions. Because of the cattle model, this classification considers as elementary taxa perceptions that we would not necessarily refer to as ‘colour’: there are dappled or striped coats, or any other kind of combination of colour markings. It will therefore be necessary in the rest of this chapter to understand the term ‘colour’ as implied by this unusual classification, that is, ‘colour and markings’. As the Mursi, in their usage, do not distinguish single colours in the markings, nor shall we. Certain taxa encompass several colours that would be distinct in English. For instance, the term chage designates a grey cow. By extension, it will be used to describe the perception of green and blue, as there are no coats that match the blue of the sky or the green of foliage, and the chage coat is the one that comes closest.2 Chage is thus used to describe all the shades of grey-green-blue. Far from being a form of visual agnosia, this linguistic fact simply shows the primacy of cattle coats in the determination of colour categories. The elementary taxa of this colour classification form the basis of the identity of individuals via their names. Indeed, all the terms employed in

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a name (animals, plants, features of the landscape, etc.) were chosen for their reference to a colour. Thus, the name Ngadoghun (feminine prefix Nga- and doghun, zebra) refers to the zebra and to striped markings called tulay. Similarly, the personal name Orian also designates a striped snake called orian. Idiomatic expressions included in names are also references to a colour, like Miroma, from miro (plural miren), which designates bovine scarification markings arranged in a circle, and ma (water). This name conjures up the image of a body encircled by the snake orian seen through water. The association of several terms is thus frequent. In Teosame, for example, teo are little pieces of wood planted in the ground to stretch skins that project a striped shadow on the ground, while same designates the fringes on the flanks of the colobus monkey. However, names have another characteristic linked to the Mursi’s major kind of social relations. The Mursi’s day-to-day way of life rarely brings them into contact with people beyond their immediate vicinity. As is customary in East Africa, villages and camps are small, and settlements are scattered. There is no market. Public debates and rituals are the only times when people come together outside their own neighbourhood. The breeding of cattle, which involves dealing with transhumance and epidemics, and the problems of cultivating sorghum set up close associations between people. As David Turton has shown (1973), associations between herdsmen and the choice of a shared residence are determined within dynamic contexts, according to shared farming activities and to cattle transhumance practices. More permanent criteria, such as kinship, remain subordinate to practical constraints and to continually renegotiated free associations.3 Because of the dynamism of these associations, the interaction of two people – and its practical corollary, face-to-face contact – is the preferred kind of sociality. The Mursi insist on this point by being given a different name for each relationship. Each individual is called by several names and can have as many names as there are interlocutors. The list of names is thus elastic. Each speaker can call a person by an original and specific name. However, one person never uses several names simultaneously. An individual may be called both Orian and Miroma, but each interlocutor does not alternate between the one name or the other. The multiplicity of names comes from the multiplicity of people and situations. Thus, as the network of relationships increases and as the individual grows older, more and more names are used to designate him. Except in certain precise cases, a new name does not eliminate previous names. There is therefore no limit to the number of names by which an individual may be called. As well as being cumulative, the Mursi naming process is potentially infinite. New names are constantly being created,

Poetics of the Self

as we can see with references to new materials and imported objects (jerrycans, cars, tyres, etc.). It is tempting to recognize in these names entities chosen for their intrinsic visual characteristics: the leopard would express mottled black (biseni) and the buffalo would express black (koroy). Indeed, many names seem to call on precise entities in order to recall a colour: Ngachare (feminine prefix + leopard) for mottled black (biseni), Ngabale (feminine prefix + the feathery white points of reeds) for white (holi), Rombe (Stone Ostrich), which recalls the white black-leg (jaareholi) colour of the ostrich, and Kirinja (Giraffe Nearby) recalls the dappled red colour (kori). But if some elements in the world display a colour in an obvious way, names in fact describe contingent perceptions. They are not strictly linked to specific entities. In fact, parts of the real world used in names are often closer to atmospheres or impressions than to discrete entities. For instance, the bird called logi is often used to express grey-greenblue (chage). However, only some of its primary and secondary wing feathers are blue. Therefore, it is not the entity ‘logi bird’ that expresses the colour blue, but only some of its feathers. Moreover, we can only see them when the bird takes flight, because its body is black. Other names make the metonymy even more explicit: the name Hyena Spots (Bologushiro) designates only the spots and not the hyena; similarly, Selay Dos (Selabuyo) indicates the gradations of colour on the selay bird’s back and not the whole of the ‘selay bird’. The layout of a scene may produce a colour to act as an expression in a name. For example, the name Gango’lu designates a distant dirt track standing out from the savannah, which is much lighter in colour. Tourists’ cars, which are usually white, arrive. Their intermittent passage along the black track highlights the perception of black-white-black (lui). Another example, Mueytul, evokes a scene that necessitates a precise chain of inferences in order to find the corresponding colour. In the language of the neighbouring Me’en, muey tul means ‘look behind’ (goyn wuru in mun). This name recalls the attitude of the baboon, which, as it runs away, stops and looks back over its shoulder. The baboon’s fur is sand-grey (gidangi), so this name evokes that colour. Itimogo (Fire Starter) refers to red, as it evokes the moment when the grass catches fire and when one needs to blow on the first smouldering red blades. We could also mention Cows Throw Bones (Biotongig’a), which expresses the colour white black-leg (jaareholi). This name conjures up the idea of a herd of black cows walking, their white front legs bending and extending as they move, giving the impression that bones are being thrown into the distance. Finally, a name like DokDok is an onomatopoeia for the sound of the local woodpecker knocking against a tree trunk search-

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ing for insects. This name recalls the mottled black colour (biseni), like the back of this bird. In this way, Mursi names do not merely add extra metaphorical value; rather, the Mursi use colour according to contingent perceptions and not according to an encyclopaedic knowledge of substantially monochrome entities. The metonymy should therefore be understood literally and not metaphorically, and we should not reduce detailed environments to one of the coloured entities that comprise it. In other words, the apparently metaphorical evocation of a snake passing through water in the name Miroma is not a means of enhancing the image of the snake. One should not see any symbolic content or any evocation of references connected with the snake, but simply a proposition of perception. The correspondence between a colour and an entity is occasional and fortuitous. Moreover, an ‘actualizing particle’4 (Turton 1978b) always precedes colour terms. The systematic use of this particle in front of colour terms should not be understood as the mark of a substantialist conception of a colour. It is simply the indication that it could have been otherwise. Colour is not a property of things, but a state, which is transitory by definition. Indeed, the term ‘same’ designates the feathery white hairs on the flanks of the colobus monkey (kalam). The overall aspect of this monkey is black and white. Its body displays markings that the Mursi themselves refer to as black-white-black (lui). ‘Same’ is often used in names referring to this colour, like Samelu (where lu is a contraction of lui), or in Kalamsame (Colobus Feathers). However, ‘same’ may also be present in a name referring to stripes (tulay), as in Teosame. Here, it is used in reference to the fringes that give a striped aspect to the animal’s fur. Thus, the same element may express two different visual perceptions. In mun, there are no substantive forms like ‘the white of same’. There are no adjectival forms either – ‘the white same’. Only a state is formulated – ‘the same is white’ (or in its subordinate form, ‘the same that is white’). And yet, a state may change. The previous proposition may exist alongside ‘the same is striped’, as it is a question of a contextualized point of view of the same and not a description of the substantial quality of that element. Therefore, a name is not constructed with reference to entities that belong to categories founded on colour. For a long time, I expected to perceive a specific kind of behaviour linking a person and elements of his colour. I sometimes hoped to find traces of different behaviour between a certain person and certain elements of his colour. But I found nothing. A man whose colour is black does not have a special kind of relationship with, for example, coal or obsidian. And yet obsidian is most often described as black. But if one concentrates on its reflections, it will

Poetics of the Self

be seen as white (holi). And if it is on the ground, one could evoke the colour black-white-black (lui). The individual therefore has a special relationship with perception, but not with what produces it, for elements only contribute to each perception momentarily, except for cows. The first name of men has the form ‘Bull (ole) + colour’.5 It fixes the colour of the individual once and for all, and is given in a baptismal context (see Chapter 2). Henceforth, I shall call this the ‘bull name’, and the Mursi qualify it by adding to sara (designation) an emphatic prefix suffix, ‘dip. Thus, an individual whose colour is black (koroy) will necessarily be called Black Bull (Olekoroy). His other names will refer to this colour – for example, Metal Earth6 (Basegi), Many Dark Scars (Murameri), Beetle Head (Habbagule) and Moving Ants (Gonazi). An individual whose bull name is Grey-Green-Blue Bull (Olechage) may also be called Chu-Chu-Chu. This is an onomatopoeia describing the sniffing of a scent floating in the air (this expression may also designate a cloud of dust). In this name, smelling the air is associated with the idea of the smell of sorghum beer (gesso) floating in the air. This beer is cream-coloured and the Mursi refer to it as rege, but we would describe it generically as pink. How can an individual linked to the colour greygreen-blue (chage) also be called by a name referring to pink (rege)? This is because in the Mursi naming process, equivalences exist between colours. I call the groups of equivalent colours ‘families’. There are six of them.7 These equivalences mean that an individual of one colour may be called by a name referring to any of the other colours in the same family. The Mursi thus briefly comment on this: ‘it’s the same’ (a et’to); ‘they all make up one’ (a dhone kare); ‘they are close’ (el jaja); or, on the contrary, ‘it’s different’ (a bibi). There is no general justification for the existence of a family, and the criterion that might explain one of them does not necessarily apply to the others.8

Names of Relationships The Mursi naming process (anthroponomy) is thus cumulative and contributes to individualizing relationships. The equivalences within the families of colours enable even more variations in the choice of name and colour. With all these possibilities, how can one see the logic at work in the choice of names and their usages? When one asks a person’s name, the question is in the plural: ‘What are your names?’ (Saraa gugnu aeneng’?, where gugnu is the genitive plural of the second person singular). However, the Mursi do not admit straight away to using several names. A few weeks after my arrival, when

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I began to distinguish each term in the flow of words and when I gradually began to recognize proper names, I never knew who was being talked about. It always seemed to me that these were people outside my immediate circle. But I also noticed that the elder with whom I often spent my evenings in front of the fire was called different names by his wives, his nephews and his male visitors. In daily life, there are more names than people being designated. When I began my study on names, I expected people to give them to me simply: asking someone his names should enable me to make a list. The assumption was that each person masters his own anthroponymic identity, forgotten names by definition being irrelevant. But the lists that I made never went beyond two or three names, even when I insisted. However, when I asked someone specifically for the name that a particular person had attributed to him, I was given the answer without hesitation. Thus, if I specified the enunciator, I obtained a reply. This peculiarity of naming requiring both sides of a given situation in order to exist makes it necessary to carry out systematic surveys involving both parties in a relationship. Trying to ascertain a person’s entire relationship network is particularly difficult among the Mursi: people are constantly on the move because of cattle migration and the cultivation of sorghum in different sites. The search for a stable and identifiable network is bound to fail. This is why I decided to proceed with systematic surveys of two groups made up of people who were interacting at the time of my investigation. Because of the constantly changing nature of these associations, I had to carry out my survey over a short period of about one month. I selected two sample groups according to spatial criteria that ensured that the individuals met and named each other. On the one hand, I chose a village (oro) where most of the women in one sample group lived and, on the other hand, a pastoral camp made up of enclosures (tui, plural tunia) where most of the men lived.9 In the village, nineteen people were identified.10 In the camp, twenty-two people made up the sample group. They had wives in the village and spent nights there on a regular basis. Similarly, three of their wives are included in the two sample groups for the same reasons. The whole sample group was made up of thirty-five people, six of whom figured in both groups. I asked each person the name that each of the other members of the sample group gave him or her, and the type of relationship that existed between them, implying a kin relationship.11 I obtained 1,561 answers out of a possible 1,608 (97%). A total of 307 names were recorded and translated, and forty-six terms of address and reference were linked to family ties. For each one of them, I completed the survey with a short interview asking for details concerning their paternal ancestry (kogine),

Poetics of the Self

their clan (kawuchua) and their colours. I also suggested other names corresponding to relationships that I proposed. In these samples, I observed that some people never had the same name twice, whereas for others, some names came up often. Thus, the list that I compiled for some individuals did not exceed ten names, while the maximum (by suggesting relationships outside the sample group) was sixty-eight. All of them assured me that they had many more. The attention paid to family ties rested on the hypothesis of the existence of a link between the categories of kinship and possible categories of names. Interviews with the children revealed that knowledge of names is acquired long before knowledge of kinship. Thus, I envisaged the possibility that poetry might be the means of learning about family ties. But this was not the case, and I never could establish recurrent associations between a type of name and a type of familial link. Names are formed according to the specific relationship between two individuals. The quality of this relationship may be familial, but it is especially created by a founding event or by a period that has brought it into being. Between men, this is often based on the possession or circulation of cattle. For example, the link recorded between a paternal uncle (oona) and the use of certain references to a bovine animal is only a statistical correlation; it is very likely that his nephew (ngosoni) will use a name that recalls an animal that his uncle gave him in provision for his marriage. By reason of virilocality, the uncle sees his brothers’ children grow up and participates in cattle transactions when they marry. Thus, the relationship, which is visible in the name, is founded upon these events. The name is a means of situating the other and of situating oneself in relation to the other. Names that intersect constitute a framework for interaction. Social status or kinship is only taken into account as one variable among others; rather, it is events or shared experiences that determine the choice of name. For example, calling someone by his bull name is a reference to childhood and to that important period of life when identity is being forged with cattle. Using this name means that one knew the person at that time in his life. Referring to this may be interpreted differently according to whether one is older or of the same age, as this may be a means of highlighting a shared experience or, on the contrary, a difference in age that implies a certain inferiority. The founding events for the creation of names may be of many different kinds. Sometimes an event marking the original period when the event took place will be crystallized in the name. Metal Earth is a name for a man whose colour is ‘black’ and it was used by young neighbours who had recently settled nearby. Indeed, in preparation for his marriage, this man had accumulated many heads of black cattle. The young neigh-

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bours, impressed by the herd, expressed through this name the impact made upon them when they saw the enclosure as if it were covered in black, as if it were metal. Following a marriage, which is a classic founding event, a whole series of relationships is suddenly newly defined: for the young husband, the wife’s father was previously a man who was designated according to his age, his clan, the proximity of his herd to that of the young man or other significant events. After the marriage, he is the father-in-law who imposes a certain deference (Goffman 1974). The creation of a new name marking this new relationship is made necessary by the event of marriage. The father-in-law will certainly choose a name recalling one of the cattle that the husband gave him, insisting on the stature of the animal (for example, Ngokoro, Black Neck, to emphasize the powerful neck of the beast). Similarly, the husband, with regard to the wife, witnesses a change in his relationship. Before marriage, he would certainly have called this woman ‘Young Girl!’ (dhole), unless a shared childhood involved a certain intimacy and the use of a name corresponding to that relationship. After marriage, he calls his wife by a name recalling the ox given to the man who is henceforth his father-in-law, insisting this time on the shape of the horns of the animal or on one of its attributes (like Ngakodobu, Big Bell; ‘of my black bull’ is implicit). A person’s names thus constitute a social memory, and the list may narrate the identity of an individual (Ricoeur 1990). All the interviews concerning names inevitably turned into biographical accounts. Retrospectively I can do the same thing with my names. When I arrived, I suggested that I be called Jamba, a more easily pronounceable diminutive of the lengthy Jean-Baptiste. In spite of that, some called me Jambi, others Jambui, and others attempted to pronounce my whole name. Mistakes due to the novelty of my name lasted a long time for those who had made them. And trying to correct the mistakes did not seem to make them change their opinion of my name. I understood later that it was already a question of declensions. Later, in the company of these people who used jewellery, painting and scarifications, I felt a little naked. They encouraged me to use them too. I asked a woman to make me a bead necklace as all the Mursi wear them. From then on, not an afternoon went by without a Mursi asking me ‘what are your names?’ or ‘what is your ox like?’. Most of them already called me by a name, and all of them knew that I did not have any cattle. I understood then that I was wearing a necklace that encoded the colour of the person who wore it. With the alternation of red and black, I was the striped colour tulay, and in principle I had a name: Striped Bull (Oletula). From then on, this colour was declined to add to my list of names. Some of the women and

Poetics of the Self

men I had known from the beginning called me Oletula, a name that refers to childhood and was appropriate for my lack of experience of Mursi life. If some thought I was too young to be a ‘junior elder’, most of them saw no problem because I had a child. One day, a man whose colour was the same as mine told me that he was giving me his ‘junior elder’ name: Teosame.12 I could henceforth introduce myself using this name and my new relations understood that I was (like) a ‘junior elder’. Some declined this name using Teogoloni (goloni: red). However, the man who had given me his name called me ‘boy!’ (lussi!) and I had to show respect by not naming him. A young Mursi remained somewhat apart: a foot deformity prevented him from participating fully in some of the men’s activities (particularly long marches and raids), but he was already married. In short, he was not completely respected by the ‘junior elders’ because he was only a ‘senior warrior’, but he was no longer completely a ‘senior warrior’ either as he had already set up a home. I noticed that he never employed a name already used by others to designate his interlocutors. And he called me Tulakoro (Dark Striped), as this was a colour variation that did not involve great commitment on his part: the basic colour was declined, but no real appreciation was made. He positioned himself differently from the others, without presupposing either hierarchy or common experience. Another Mursi called me Bartula, a neologism that means Striped Place. We had just quarrelled over something insignificant, as was always the case, and he gave me this name as a punishment, sometimes adding the suffix hong’, which means ‘only’. He was in fact taking up the birth name, which does not mention any relationship; it simply evokes the place where it was attributed.13 By doing this, he mentioned my colour, but did not allude to any relationship: I was reduced to lifeless stripes. I can thus trace some of my relationships with these people through my names. And this is obviously what all the Mursi can do or, rather, what the multiplicity of names brings about in a diffuse way.

Relationships in Names As I discovered names, all the Mursi began to talk to me about the importance of having an ox. There is indeed much more in a name than two interlocutors. There are references to colour and cattle. When one asks someone his name, one may sometimes only receive the colour of his ox by way of an answer: ‘What are your names?’ ‘My ox is red.’ Similarly, when the Mursi have recourse to a description to designate someone in his absence, they use a colour or a bovine animal. When I asked

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Figure 1.1. The relationship between an individual and a bull is expressed in the bull name (sara dip’), which designates the colour of the bull. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

Figure 1.2. Each relationship with Alter is expressed by a name. The latter takes up an implicit relationship between Ego and his bull/colour and that is eclipsed by the one he has with Alter. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

Poetics of the Self

Figure 1.3. The relationship to cattle and to the colour that expresses it is renewed by interaction with Ego and his names. If we concentrate on the relationship between Ego and his bull, Alter is eclipsed. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

Figure 1.4. Ego’s relationships are expressed in the form of anthroponyms converging on a colour. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

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someone where the man who had my knife was, I received the reply ‘it’s the man with the sand-grey ox who’s sitting over there’ (a iraa bhungay agidangi hi bae hung’ bunu). One could say this as an order: ‘Man who is sand-grey!’ (Ira agidang’!) Finally, the usual designation of an absent third person takes the form of the ‘kinship name (kogine) + colour’, as in ‘the Biochage who is gidangi’ (Biochage agidangi). From the ‘bull name’, several relationships can be seen. They can be represented in the following way.14 This first relationship will be implied in all the other anthroponymic usages. It constitutes a minimal generative structure. The individual is called by different names, which all refer to his colour that comes from his bull’s coat. The first core relationship, person – bull – colour, is eclipsed by a relationship of the following type. From the point of view of the ‘bull name’ (see Figure 1.1 above), one can also see that the relationship between Ego and his bull is reinforced by its constant reiteration in the course of interindividual relationships. The multiplication of names produced by the expansion of Ego’s network of relationships converges on colour. Without being the exact copies, they reaffirm the original link with the bull. Thus, this fundamental relationship contains all of Ego’s anthroponymic relationships. The ‘bull name’ creates a first relationship that conditions the others. It is inherent in them. It also has a specific form, as it is materialized in a transfer of cattle (see Chapter 2). Moreover, we say, as in English, that we ‘give’ a name (adje), as we give a cow. In other relationships, the Mursi say that they ‘call’ by a name (eli). The giver of a name and the receiver will never be able to call each other by their names. The avoidance of names will lead to the other being addressed as ira! (‘man!’) or lussi! (‘boy!’). This relationship will never be modified because the ‘bull name’ is the only one that is fixed once and for all: it goes along with the gift of a bull, as an unequivocal objectification. The giver of the name will remain so, and the adult and the child will never name each other, unlike all the other relationships that can evolve. The first entity (Ego, cattle or colour) is of little importance, as the others can be deduced from it. Thus, figures 1.1 and 1.2 modify points of view, but keep the original three elements unchanged: a name is necessarily a colour that necessarily refers to an ox, as the relationship with an ox is necessarily created in a name the colour reference of which necessarily corresponds to that of the ox, etc. Mursi names give redundant information (Bateson 1980: 202): the additional information that is not formulated can easily be mobilized by those who make use of it. Now we can understand how my interlocutors passed from colour to a cow,

Poetics of the Self

and then to themselves. It is a chain in which all the links are equivalent: ‘it’s grey-green-blue, it’s like the grey cow. It’s me’, as the woman replied to my question about the blue bird. This statement explains very little, but makes visible the redundant information contained within each of the three elements. From the point of view of communication, this statement is entirely acceptable, even if it is disconcerting from an ontological point of view. We must now turn our attention to another aspect of Mursi poetics. This will enable us to have a clearer understanding of the above statement as the woman was talking about her identity, which we cannot reduce to a matter of communication. People in contact with one another are inevitably linked by personal feelings.

Perceptions of Relations Some names are good names.15 This judgement does not depend on a name’s appropriateness to the one-to-one relationship that brings it into existence: names have a poetic content that goes beyond their quality as a link in a relationship. Beyond the deictic properties of these names, we still need to know what effect the poetry of these names produces. The name Metal Earth is linked to the relationship of an adult man with his two young neighbours who are impressed with his growing herd of black cattle; however, several points should still be elucidated: why does this name have such an open frame of reference? Why does it not have a propositional syntax? Why not simply use a name like ‘Impressive Big Black Herd’ if that is what the young people wished to express? Mursi names are not allegories. Analogies are made by means of perceptions, not values. For example, the leopard is a preferred reference to express the mottled black colour, but there is no automatic transfer; other mottled black things are not charged with the same values that the Mursi associate with the leopard. The transference of an ontological analogy (Descola 2005) that was very frequent in medieval colour symbolism (Pastoureau 2004, 2008) is not established. In these names, some syntactical elements of propositional language are absent. In order to translate them, we shall use, as Jullien has proposed for the titles of Chinese paintings, the ‘literal, which is not subject to syntax’ (2010: 115). The name Charengele does not translate as ‘Leopard with Widely-Spaced Horns’ (char co kerre a engele), but ‘Leopard Widely-Spaced’ (where the adjective does not relate to the noun which precedes it, but to its reference – here, the horns). The refusal of a propositional syntax and the search for coloured perception inde-

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pendent of the elements that comprise it recall those memories that the poet seeks and that have not yet been enclosed in words or concepts. Bonnefoy describes this as ‘a total presence in events’ as opposed to ‘the impingement on the eyes of the analytical point of view’ (2010: 29). A cognitive psychologist would speak of synesthesia (Witthoft and Winawar 2006). In all cases, we linguistically reconstruct impressions that bypass categories of language. The poetry in the names is not a specific linguistic usage founded on the creation of metaphors;16 it resides in images that cannot be enclosed in words. The name Zungorojaare, which I would translate by Zig-Zag Path Leg, brings to mind the image of the swaying movement of the baboon as it walks and that expresses sand-grey (gidangi) when associated with paths. It is the whole scene and the visual knowledge of the Mursi that is mobilized to produce the colour sand-grey. This is not simply a coding of the type ‘baboon = sand-grey’. Girlongoro, which could be translated as Print Bear Path, refers to the image of an elephant bearing its tusks and leaving behind muddy footprints in the path. Once again, it is not a question of looking for an entity in order to find the colour it expresses. On the contrary, it is a question of expressing the colour by creating scenes in which the entity is only one detail in the picture: different elements are accumulated, being not necessarily on the same scale, or observed from the same angle. Gidangi is not the colour of the elephant or of mud, but the scene in which the elephant helps to create the image of a muddy path conjures up gidangi in a powerful and intangible way. There is no scale in the way in which the Mursi divide up the real: the starry heavens may demonstrate mottled black (biseni), or the abdomen of the insect niday the sections of whose carapace slot together to form the perception of stripes (tulay). It may be a huge white cloud in a stormy sky that creates the white black-leg colour (jaareholi), or the numerous tips of the reeds along the river whose feathery extremities resemble a multitude of white balls (holi). Above all, different scales may be present in one and the same name. These names do not refer to anything tangible, but to impressions. They do not even designate a person: the function of designation is focused on the relationship rather than on the person. The emphasis on the relationship was already visible in the collecting of names, which made it necessary for me to mention both sides of a relationship. Thus, from a practical point of view, the collecting of names was preceded by the collecting of relationships. We are too hasty in considering personal names as pre-existing markers of identity. We consider that the ‘quality of the personal name’ exists a priori and people use these practical

Poetics of the Self

linguistic tools in their interaction with others.17 The ethnography of the Mursi suggests otherwise. In mun, there are no words to say ‘verb’, ‘common noun’, ‘pronoun’ or ‘adjective’. On the other hand, there is a word, sara,18 which I at first translated by ‘personal name’, as David Turton (1981) and missionaries (Bambu, Bryant and Lemugidir 2002) had done before me. Is only one linguistic category made explicit here? Probably not. With the term sara, the Mursi do not recognize a body of terms, but an interactional situation: designated metonymically by sara, it only partly takes on a nominal form. It is first an action-oriented category before being a linguistic one. It is true that personal names can have a specific performative capacity in certain communication situations (Leguy 2011) and can be powerful classificatory tools (LéviStrauss 1962; Zonabend 1980; Bromberger 1982). But their linguistic quality is not different from that of common nouns (Granger 1982). Generally, the most realistic analyses of what proper nouns are in empirical situations find that the only way to define a personal name is in the social and pragmatic sphere. The attempt by Saul Kripke (1982), who sees the name as a ‘rigid designator’, demonstrates in short that without the social sphere and pragmatic conditions (‘baptism’ and the ‘causal chain’ in his terminology), neither designatory models nor referential models are viable (cf. Engel 1984; Contim and Ludwig 2005). In mun, it will be said that names are the form that some relationships take on. They could possibly be recognized as an ad hoc autonomous linguistic category. We can then reconsider the personal relationship that is created between a name and the bearer of it on the basis of colour. Calling or being called by names means including referents within relationships that then become charged with emotion. During marches in the bush land, the Mursi, who knew about my research, would enthusiastically indicate to me where I could see certain coloured perceptions and in which names they could be found. On the subject of his Me’en neighbour, Fukui pointed out: a girl of about thirteen named Lilinta (Dragonfly), who is associated with the colour red, becomes extremely excited whenever she sees the red colour in the highest saturation of 98 cards which I showed her. (Fukui 1996: 359–62)

Similarly, while women declaim poems – as we shall see in Chapter 3 – it is not uncommon to see a person brandishing an object of the colour that is being sung about and shouting out the name of another referent of that colour, as when Black Ear (Koroyni) circled the weeping singer brandishing a black clay pot and shouting ‘Midnight’ (barkiango!) to make the presence of that colour even more strongly felt. Because

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Table 1.1. Means and effects of coloured names. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet Means

Effects

Face-to-face interactions

Engage the emotions

Open-endedness of what is designated

Designation of unclosed/ unfinished relationships

Evocation of multiple images around one and the same perception

Variation of the relational identity around one root

existence unfolds by means of exchanges between interlocutors – exchanges made up of coloured perceptions – the perceptive world becomes charged with emotions. These interactions are made up of more elements than simply two people: there are the people, their names and the world around them. From a pragmatic point of view, there is the physical presence of the people, the objectification of their relationship and the referents of their objectification. Names are very efficient tools for linking words and emotions. Granger suggests that common nouns are proper nouns that have gradually lost their capacity to interpellate (1982: 35). Thus, proper names are the means by default of designating individuals during childhood. They come before common nouns, not because the prototypes of nominal categories have yet to be learned, but because the presentation of individuals and the world – subjects and objects – is done through exchanges between people. The designation of the starry heavens by the words ‘night sky’ is a secondary linguistic construction, because before gaining the concepts of ‘sky’ and ‘night’, there was the perception in a context. The designation was an interpellation: not the ‘night sky’ of the description, but the deictic ‘sky-night!’, a synonym of ‘you!’ or ‘that!’. Thus, calling one’s daughter Sky Night (Tumudayno) is not only a case of using common nouns as personal names; it is a means of mobilizing a method of discrimination in the world and in forms of address linking the emotions inherent in each relationship to coloured referents. As such, the creation of images beyond the capacities of description prompts the accumulation of cognitive, pragmatic and memorial conditions for poetic intuition, which commits each person to feeling a similarity between himself and perception.

Poetics of the Self

In this sense, there are no names to which the Mursi have added poetic content. But there is an interpersonal poetry, one of the expressions of which produces a form similar to people’s names. The propositional aberration ‘it’s grey-green-blue, it’s like the grey cow. It’s me’ is not an emotional aberration; it is a social effect produced by poetry present in the interaction, but not an ontological definition of beings in presence. Poetical descriptions of the Mursi are not to be found in the things of the world, but in constantly changing perceptual states. The Mursi language, mun, has no term that could be directly translatable by ‘colour’. A cow’s coat – and by extension, the coats of other mammals – is chore. The colour of an individual is sometimes ree (see Chapter 2). However, when I was conducting my first interviews and asked someone what his ree was, he replied using the verb derived from it: reg’e. To my question concerning his ‘essence’, ‘What is your ree?’ (Ree anunu aeneng’?), he replied using a word indicating process: ‘I reg’e the ox which is red’ (Anye kereg’ey bhungay agolony), in which the ox and its colour were most often included. Moreover, translating ree by ‘body’ is also possible. Ree ilaaso is used at times of ill health and could be translated as ‘the body is sick’, and ree baaso as ‘the body is well’, often associated with body posture, respectively, with falling shoulders and dangling arms or, on the contrary, with puffed-out chest. To find out if a person is feeling better, one says ‘Is your body better?’ (Ree anunu watew challi?). But with illness, as with general day-to-day states of health, ree only refers to an overall appreciation. The formulation of a symptom is always related to a more precise part of the body (the head, the stomach, etc.). The ree is thus a general state more than a precise one, a process rather than an attribute. Of a person (ir, plural iri), one could say that he or she is old (nga ira aniagasi), but not that the body (ree) is old; the ree only describes a transitory state. The nominal form of the being, the ree, is more readily enunciated within a dynamic, in the form of a verb. It expresses the process of actualization and expansion of social relations by means of visual perceptions. In this sense, the ree is an intensive and the state of being is fine when seen and activated by the expression of colours in names, or in the form of physical well-being, or of the body that is shown. But when withdrawn from the world, being can no longer express itself, and this arouses the anxiety of the Mursi; if someone retreats into his hut in full daylight, people around will think of illness, and sometimes, death. Names pass through the pragmatic condition of bodies placed face to face. Whether a body or a colour, being shows itself to the world.

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Pierre Smith remarks that in Rwanda, as among the Mursi, the term that is usually translated by ‘body’ (umubiri) does not apply to a corpse. Because the umubiri, like the ree, is ‘the perceptible texture of life’ (Smith 1985: 15), the physical body of which is only one of its objectifications, mortal remains are abandoned in the bush because, without life, they are nothing more than corpses, as I was myself able to ascertain and as Tornay has also determined (2001). An adequate definition of the ree and of its verbal form has been provided by Taylor on the subject of the ‘soul’ among the Amazonians. She proposes that this term, instead of being an intentionality, ‘refers in reality to the reflected image of a thing, in the appearance of a person’ (Taylor 2009: 43–44, see also 1996). It is the same with the Mursi. If the soul of the Mursi is a colour (ree), we should not conceive of it as a coloured spirit endowed with intentionality, but rather as a coloured disposition that orients the eyes of the other. Similarly, the body (also ree) is not an attribute; it is a visual proposition directed towards the other. *** When dealing with the variability of interindividual relationships and recording their particularities in the naming process, it is necessary to adopt a fixed point that can subsequently shift. Colour makes the variation in point of view possible by diversifying it from objectifiable criteria: the taxa taken from cattle coats. Names act first and foremost as determinants of relationships between two people. The accumulation of names is an indicator of the expansion of the relational network. Social memory is thus inscribed in people’s names. But names also function by means of an unusual kind of poetry: impressions conjured up through interpellation make it possible to combine the reference of the names and the dispositions experienced in the exchanges. Colour is thus a person’s social identity, and the ox that embodies the colour becomes the inevitable and recurrent referent for all communication concerning that individual’s identity. In this chapter, names have been described thanks to the networks that create them. We shall see that the network of identity has expressive, communication (see Chapter 3) and affective (see Chapter 7) consequences. For the moment, we must leave the point of view centred on the individual in order to envisage other aspects of anthroponomy: the practical use of names in exchanges, the distribution of coloured properties between people, and the transmission of these properties from person to person. We shall then witness a fundamental process of social intercourse among the Mursi of which anthroponomy is the privileged witness: the colour complex.

Poetics of the Self

Notes 1. As we shall see, one term covers what we would distinguish in English by grey, green and blue. 2. See Tornay (1973) for the perception tests on the Nyangatom; the results are presented in a chromaticity diagram. 3. For example, the virilocality that structures some of the alliances is regularly challenged according to individual initiative. Uri Almagor (1978) uses the expression ‘pastoral partners’. 4. Turton employs the expression ‘actualizing particle’ to emphasize the systematic use of the a- in front of colour terms. This is also the third person singular of the verb ‘to be’ (he is big: nong a ramay). ‘Being in a place’ is expressed differently (he is there: nong hi nga). 5. For the moment, I rely on the description of masculine anthroponomy. However, apart from the ‘bull name’, the use of names that I present in this chapter is common to men and women. The differences will be seen in Chapter 2. 6. Unpolished metal is described as black by the Mursi. 7. Black (koroy) could make up a family on its own, but it is often linked to the family of ‘black and white arrangements’ (lui; kiwo; jaareholi). The Mursi whom I questioned and the results of my own observations are ambiguous on this subject. 8. See Eczet (2013: 61–65) for a full development of the impossibility to determine one criterion for the distinction between families of colours, and the study of the Me’en by Fukui (1996) for an introduction to the genetics and forward planning of colours in the reproduction of cattle. 9. The collection of names took place during a period of work in the fields that accentuated the separation between the men and the women, as the latter remained close to their fields. 10. The children were excluded from the study, although several of them were questioned. 11. My questions were the following: ‘What does this person call you?’ (Na ira elign eneng?) and literally ‘This person with you, it’s what?’ (Nga ira co inye, a hon?). 12. I shall give a more in-depth study of the gift of names in Chapter 2. 13. While waiting for the ceremony during which the bull name will be attributed – a ceremony that takes place during the first months of life – the mother and other individuals in contact with the newborn baby will give him or her a first name. This ‘birth name’ simply refers to the place of birth. For example, here are some names given at birth to boys: Barteri (Dust Place), Barhugn (Thirst Place), Bargeri (Crest Place) Bartumuri (Tumura Place: a plural name which the Mursi give to the Me’en), Barchulue (Dung Place), Bartui (Enclosure Place), Bargoro (Path Place), and Barkido (River Place). For girls, the name could be Sholbi (the name of a tree that the mother held on to during birth), Barmele (Jerrycans Place), Nadori (House Place) and Nayag’ (Abandoned Village). Only the people who have developed a strong personal link with the person will continue to use this name. 14. The schematization principles are inspired by Gell and his ‘Strathernograms’ (1999: 29–75).

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15. A sara han where han is an emphatic suffix that could be translated by ‘very’. 16. As Sperber and Wilson have shown (2008), the figures of style are also present in everyday language and do not suffice to distinguish the poetic from the literal. 17. Whether in works dealing exclusively with personal names (Leguy and Lebarbier 2006; vom Bruck and Bodenhorns 2006) or in different entries in encyclopedias of linguistics (for example, Brown 2006) or through logical reasoning (van de Velde 1998), personal names are perceived as pre-existing things around which systems and varied usages are organized; the essentialist quality of a personal name takes precedence over what brings it into existence. 18. I shall come back to this term and to another (mora) in Chapter 2.

2 The Colour Complex The Network of Names

Mursi names designate relations and link perceptions, cattle and people through the effects of communication and emotional dispositions. The aim of this chapter is to show the social complexity of these names by describing the distribution and the transmission of colours.

Names of Status In order to understand how colours are spread through a network of people, it is necessary first of all to return to the distinction that the Mursi make between two types of names: sara and mora. The difference is not to be found in usage, because either type of name can be used. Yet, whereas the sara are created as the need arises and increase in number as the network of relationships grows, the mora are less numerous and are given during a ceremony. Therefore, they are not only the expression of a relationship between two people, but also that of a sociological place within the group. The term mora is synonymous with calves (singular mor) and with blessing. The discourse of the elders is loa mora (literally ‘the words of the calves’) and has the power to bless. The names called mora have far-reaching sociological implications because they correspond to status: the status for men of ‘junior elder’ (rori) and of ‘senior elder’ (bari).1 These types of status make people actors in the political life of the community: they can then participate in public debates. Sometimes, albeit

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with some hesitation, the ‘bull name’ was presented to me as a mora, certainly because it was attributed during a ceremony. This was the case when Dontori replied to my question about his names: ‘Mottled Black Bull? It’s a sara but a little bit of a mora’ (Olebiseni ? A sara nga a boey tini a mora). The use of a mora does not modify interaction. These names can be employed in the same way as other designations as long as they are appropriate to indicate the relationship for which they were created. This is what came out of a discussion with Bull Sand-Grey Mud (Olegidang’dorr), who was designated in that way by several people. His authority was such that many people knew that name, even if they did not use it or even if they had little contact with the man. A ‘junior elder’ like him usually presents this mora to a stranger: it refers directly to a sociological status and will therefore be used by default if no other criterion can be brought forth to particularize that relationship. It was thus that Bull Sand-Grey Mud introduced himself when we first met. But I also remember that he hesitated between that name and Bull Mud (Oledorr). When I asked him about this later, he presented the two names as mora of a ‘junior elder’. I expressed my surprise at finding two mora for a ‘junior elder’ as he should only have one, but his wife corrected him immediately. She reminded her husband that his mora was Trodden Path White Flanks (Girduni Dab’ay). He recognized his mistake at once. In this case, the sociological scope of certain sara acquired by frequent use contributes to accepting them as mora by the people that they designate. A mora is ‘given’ (adj- mora) whereas a sara is ‘attributed’ (odan- sara). A man transmits to a child a pair of names made up of the ‘bull name’ and the mora of the ‘junior elder’. The child will keep the second name without using it until he himself becomes a ‘junior elder’. This second name recalls the colour of the individual without ever referring to cattle. It is made up of a minimal association of two terms, but never three.2 The pair of names is not always the same between two individuals who share the same colour. Indeed, the bull name is identical between two people of the same colour, but the ‘junior elder’s’ name may not have the same declension while expressing the same colour. However, the two names are transmitted simultaneously and do not change along the same chain of transmission. Thus, several parallel transmission chains of the same colour exist that do not use the same pair of names. To these two names are added between two and five other names, which are attributed when the rank of ‘senior elder’ (bari) is reached. These names are given by the outgoing ‘senior elders’ who become ‘old man’ (karue). They may suggest some particular references to cattle without using colour terms, recalling, for example, the shape of the

The Colour Complex

horns. When a name evokes cattle and their colours, it will use a plural feminine form. The mora of a ‘senior elder’ are chosen from a stock of stereotypes and the same names are often used. For the mora, there are no spontaneous creations, but the reuse of designations taken from a limited stock. This is the reason why Dontori and others were not very sure whether to categorize the bull name amongst the sara or the mora. In fact, the ‘bull name’ can be considered as a mora insofar as it only exists within a limited stock of names (limited by the taxa of colour classification) and is repeated identically with people and transmissions. In this way, the mora of each individual are agreed by everyone. This is not a consensus on usage – as each person uses different designations – but on the recognition of identity: each person knows the ‘junior elder’ name of others, even if he does not use it. The counterpart of this consensus is that these names are extremely generic. They are shared by other Mursi and are therefore not discriminatory. The mora belong more to a process of individuation than to one of individualization. The mora are the nominal and personalized form of the social status given by rank. They are determined by the access to status and not by a new relationship. Therefore, they exist even before an exchange takes place. However, the use of the bull name and the ‘junior elder’ name is inevitable in practice. Only those names dependent on the rank of ‘senior elder’ are attributed without the necessity of there being a relationship, which the simultaneous acquisition of several names underlines. Thus, there are more names than the number of relationships. These existing supernumerary names belong to the process of construction of seniority.3 Some of them will never even be used.

The Colours of People The colour is given by means of a pair of stereotypical names independent of any future uses. But in the establishing of his identity, a young Mursi is not only defined by one colour. Indeed, up to now, I have only associated each person with one colour in order to better highlight the relational principles which this association enables. In fact, each person is linked to three colours according to three different acceptations. The possibilities in terms of the variations and relational subtlety that they express are thus greatly increased. Sometime after their birth, children are associated with a colour and are attributed two names by a person chosen by the father.4 The other names will more often than not recall this first colour. The man also gives the child a calf of that colour, to which the child, for the first

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Figure 2.1. The fundamental and subsidiary colours (ree and kalatange) are transmitted in pairs. All pairs are possible except those in which the two colours are from the same family. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

time, will administer pastoral care. This first colour, called ree,5 will henceforth be translated by ‘fundamental colour’. The man also transmits to the child another colour, called kalatange. This colour is not transmitted in the form of names, but reference to it in future names is possible. The link with the kalatange is much the same as with the ree, as well as the way in which this colour is declined in names. However, current practice reveals that even though the formal usage is much the same, this colour is used less often. This is why I translate kalatange as ‘subsidiary colour’. There is no link between the fundamental colour and the subsidiary colour, unless it is that they were already the colours of the donor and that they are given to the child together. The names will refer to one or the other of these colours without ever mixing them. Moreover, this pair of colours is made up of colours from different families of colour. There is therefore a coexistence of two colours that takes the form of two groups of names referring to two colours from different families. Finally, a third colour is determined automatically according to familial links: the hamwe. The hamwe is not transmitted randomly like the other two names originating from the father’s friend; it is determined by the siblings. The eldest son determines the hamwe of the next brother in the order of birth and so on: the fundamental colour of the eldest is the hamwe of the next brother in line, and the fundamental colour of the latter is the hamwe of the youngest brother. It is the father who determines the hamwe of the eldest brother. I translate this term as ‘derived colour’, as it is derived6 from a close family member, although the nature of it is changed (contrary to the fundamental and subsidiary colours, which are the same in nature for the donor and the recipient). For example, if a person’s fundamental colour is black (koroy), we can deduce that his

The Colour Complex

Figure 2.2. Taking the father as a starting point, and then amongst siblings, the fundamental colour of one person determines the derived colour of the next person down in order of birth. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

elder brother’s fundamental colour (or his father’s fundamental colour if he is the eldest brother) is also black. This person will be able to receive names that decline the colour black, besides the fundamental and subsidiary colours. The fundamental colour (ree), the subsidiary colour (kalatange) and the derived colour (hamwe) do not have the same meaning for a person. These different meanings may be understood thanks to two criteria: the relationship with the person who originally determined and transmitted the colours, and the type of cattle that embody them. From childhood, all the Mursi look after their father’s herd and often those of their pastoral partners. In his herd, the father will have taken care to include at least one animal of the fundamental colour of each of his sons. Often this calf was given by the donor of the bull name. This animal then becomes a focal point:7 the children speak of their calf, they comment on its behaviour and its physical aspect, they mime with their arms the shape of its horns, and they refer to it by exclaiming (Bhungay ti gagno kare! ‘By all my oxen!’), etc. Later the children will sing ox poems (zilüe a bhunagn) when, in the morning, they groom their animal by rubbing it with leaves in its enclosure. Gradually each child will come to possess several male animals of his fundamental colour. The young male animals are encouraged to reproduce, but it is impossible to keep too many in one herd as this would result in fighting. They may be boarded out with a friend or exchanged. After some years, these bulls are then castrated. As a result, the oxen increase in bulk and, as such, are highly valued.8 Each ox is decorated with strips of leather, warthog tusks or bells. Painting one’s bull or ox and then oneself with dung underlines the parallel between the owner and his animal.9 When the animal dies, its skin is removed and the meat is eaten. The owner does not always at-

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tend this festive event and he can under no circumstances eat the meat. Once the skin is dry, it is used as bedding. However, the owner will never be able to sit on this; instead, he will give it to a friend. Sometimes even the sad memory of the animal will be brought to mind when the former owner sees the skin. This sorrow bears witness to the close relationship that exists between the animal and its owner. But certain taboos must be respected, such as avoiding too close an identification between the two. For example, the bull or the ox of the fundamental colour must not enter its owner’s hut;10 it must not smell that its owner has just had sexual relations; it must not plunge its nose into the basket containing its owner’s sorghum, etc. If these taboos are ignored, they must be palliated by means of a sacrifice, usually of a goat. If this is not observed, illness or death in combat await the owner in the not too distant future. The relationship to cattle of the subsidiary colour is almost identical, the difference manifesting itself more in quantity than in quality. Although there is a certain pride in presenting one’s ox of the subsidiary colour, the desire to possess several oxen of that colour is not so strong. Often, only one animal in the herd represents that colour. The practice of covering the animal with dung and ashes and then covering oneself in the same way has never been observed in this case; this is not because such a practice is not permitted, but because there is always an ox of the fundamental colour. The same taboos exist, but here too, I have never been able to witness them directly. Each person tries to include cows in his herd corresponding to his derived colour (hamwe). Only one Mursi offered this comment, but it seems that we may consider that the hamwe is associated with femininity in general.11 Some taboos concern female cattle, but for reasons independent of their possible status as animals of the derived colour of their owners.12 For example, Samelu owned two pink cows (rege). Unfortunately for him, he said, they are ngudur, because their mother is pink too. He could not drink their milk and eat meat consecutively, unless he respected a delay of three days. However, he did not intend to get rid of them, because they corresponded to his derived colour. The relationship of an individual with these cattle is the opposite to that with the people who determined the colour. Indeed, the cattle corresponding to the fundamental colour and to the subsidiary colour are necessarily male and the relationship that is established is closely linked to identity: the animal provides direct and personal support to individualization. The taboos concern the maintaining of a minimal distance between the man and the animal in ways that are quite similar to those in relationships determined by kinship. For example, Charengele, who

The Colour Complex

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Table 2.1. The type of person who is the source of the colours and the relationships with the corresponding animals. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet Origin of the colour

Relationship with the bovine animal

Ree Fundamental colour

‘Sufficiently distant’

Taboos concerning proximity

Kalatange Subsidiary colour

‘Sufficiently distant’

Taboos concerning proximity

Elder brother or father

No taboos

Hamwe Derived colour

is the paternal uncle (oona) of Milisha, cannot enter his nephew’s hut; similarly, the cattle owned by Milisha of his fundamental and subsidiary colour must not attempt to enter either. But the colour identity at the basis of the relationship with the bovine animal was transmitted by a person who is ‘sufficiently distant’, that is, one who does not have any close familial ties and with whom the age gap is quite significant. The situation is reversed for the derived colour. First of all, this colour is embodied by a cow, thus establishing a certain distance precluding an identity link with a man. Moreover, another gap may be observed because this colour is the fundamental colour of an elder brother. As a consequence of these already-existing gaps, no taboos concerning proximity are required. Some taboos may accrue to hamwe, but hamwe does not create them. No taboo can fashion the relationship with the corresponding animal, because the ‘right distance’ from the beast has already been postulated in the brotherly (or paternal) relationship which enabled it to come about (see Table 2.1). Finally, we should note that the Mursi express their derived colour using an idiomatic expression: ‘I milk with my hands and drink my derived colour’ (Anye koboyn seno hamwea nanu), in which the complement ‘my derived colour’ is interchangeable with ‘my brother’ (godenea nanu) or ‘elder brother’ (godene a bô). The derived colour marks out fixed positions within a group of male siblings, i.e. positions that cannot be reversed, like that of the calf suckling from its mother’s teat. So it is by means of an image that is unthinkable for an adult, but that expresses a necessary order, that both the colour and the order of precedence are conveyed: the image of children taking the herd out to graze on the pastures and because there is no water, they must drink from the cows’ teats to quench their thirst.

Cattle Poetics

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Table 2.2. The relationship of each person with his colours and the corresponding animals. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet Person in relation to his colour

Person in relation to the corresponding bovine animal

It’s me

It’s like me

It’s also me

It’s also like me

It’s me because it’s my brother

It’s like me because it’s like my brother

Ree Fundamental colour Kalatange Subsidiary colour Hamwe Derived colour

Framing Relationships Particularizing relationships and employing complex names is not only a possibility of temporary usage; on the contrary, names are clearly stated at the beginning of any exchange, according to usage that makes them particularly prominent in the social space. They recall, as a kind of prologue to proceedings, the framework of a relationship between two people. When they meet, two men may greet each other in the following way: – Teosame!? – Nyomanikaolu! – Teosame!? – Nyomanikaolu! – Teosame!? – Nyomanikaolu! – Sit you.

This exchange of names enables the speakers to situate each other.13 The stating of names is a constant practice and exchanges that are not prefixed in this way are rare. The exchange of names also takes place before discussions in small groups. If, during important discussions, Nyomanikaolu addresses Teosame directly several times but not consecutively, they will exchange their names before each new intervention. It took me a while to master this practice satisfactorily. When Nyomanikaolu called me ‘Teosame’ (my ‘junior elder’ name), I sometimes replied Uhi? to indicate that I was ready to listen to what he had to say and also to hide the fact that I could not always remember the name that I was supposed to use when addressing him. He picked me up on this

The Colour Complex

Figure 2.3. Six names circulate in a meeting between three people. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

several times and by way of reproach asked me if I was a boy (lussi) or a man (iri). By not replying to him using his ‘junior elder’ name, I was creating an inappropriate imbalance at the beginning of the exchange by showing the deference of a young woman or a child towards an elder. The combination of the statement of a name in a face-to-face situation and the coexistence of several names is learned from a very young age. The day after the attribution of a name to a little girl, I saw her paternal grandmother repeat the different names the child had been given the day before (see below). The old woman held her granddaughter firmly in her hands and raised her up so that she was facing her directly. She looked straight at the child, who could do nothing other than look straight back at her grandmother and listen to her. The grandmother then repeated several names for a few long minutes. The grandmother was introducing the child to the proper way to interact with others: to look and to name. And she was not only proposing a single name, but a list of names. The mother of the child, her grandmother and her father all told me that this was common practice.

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The statement of names enables the continual establishment of explicit frames for interaction. Mursi names act as deictic markers, like pronouns that only have value in interpersonal communication. In a group, an individual may be called by as many names as the people present: the relationship with one is not necessarily the same as with another, and they cannot be confused. Naming someone is also a public act and all the people present hear (and so are aware of) the exchange of names, whatever their level of implication in the interaction. Relationships between two people expressed by names are known to others. There are therefore certain relationships that intersect, that are observed and that are made explicit by names. In the following example, three individuals are talking together. The names they call each other by enable us to learn some of the six relationships that are logically possible. ♂ - ♂: These two men call each other by their ‘junior elder’ name (rori). The reciprocal use of the name corresponding to their grade indicates their political equality. The generational difference due to the uncle–nephew (oona-ngosoni) relationship is not taken into account. If the two men had not been of the same elder rank, the uncle would probably have used a name referring to one of his nephew’s head of cattle, thus recalling his youth, while the nephew could have used the form of address ‘little uncle’ (aboe) because they know each other well. Moreover, the inevitable use of ‘junior elder’ names between men of this rank enables the observer to deduce the fundamental colour of each one: black (koroy) for the uncle and white-leg (jaareholi) for the nephew. ♂ - ♀: This man calls his wife Cut Ears (Nganiabelne), which refers to one of the oxen that he gave when he married. It is frequent for a husband to name his wives with this type of reference (here an ox with scarified ears). His wife calls him Black Bracelets (Sigiokoroy). This name is used by other young women of the neighbourhood, and by doing this, his wife shows that she is like a young girl in relation to her husband. She confirmed this to me with a knowing smile. ♀ - ♂: These two share no previous common experience, so the family link will be brought to bear in order to frame this relationship that has come about following a marriage. Through marriage, this woman has become the maternal aunt (kaka) of this man. Unlike her husband, she can show this man that he is younger than she is from a generational point of view. He is in fact her nephew (ngosoni) and so she calls him by a bull name, Dappled Grey-Green-Blue Bull (Olelori). However, she remains somewhat reserved so as not to appear too familiar. Indeed, the fundamental colour of the nephew is white-leg and his bull name is Olejaareholi (White Leg Bull). By using the subsidiary colour of this

The Colour Complex

man in the form of his bull name, she can find a balance in the relationship: she uses the familiarity that one might show to a nephew, while creating a shift away from a name that is very much linked to childhood by using the subsidiary colour. In this way, she maintains a certain deference when naming this man who is of the same grade as her husband. In reply, he uses the teknonym ‘ wife of Dorwa’. He considers this woman as a wife from the paternal filiation (kogine) of his uncle, whose name is Dorwa. It is a mark of respect not to use a personal name: for him, she is situated in relation to her husband and the familial link is recalled in an all-encompassing way by simply alluding to family membership. The familial link kaka is not the most pertinent quality in the relationship. This last relationship shows that reciprocal positioning is not necessarily symmetrical, contrary to the relationship between the two men, which is made symmetrical through the names in spite of the generational difference. Some choices of names are frequent, such as calling one’s wife by an attribute of the ox that was given when the marriage took place, but this is a consequence of existing regular relational positions that entail the use of certain names and not the strict application of rules.

The Colours of Women The names of women are divided up between sara and mora. Women do not have grades like those of men, but the distinction also rests on the opposition between ‘a tool for particularization’ and ‘sociological placement’. A mora is received in early childhood in the same way as the masculine bull name is received. It can take two forms. The first is close, in its construction, to the bull name, but ‘Bull’ is replaced by ‘Cattle’ (Bio, singular bi),14 as in Black Cattle (Biokoroy). The use of the plural is systematic. The second form declines a colour without reference to cattle, this time recalling the ‘junior elder’ names of men – for example, Striped Open Plains (Tulamog’io) and Striped Grasses (Tulaterio), which refer to the striped colour (tulay). The difference with men’s names that have the same form is brought out by customary use. For example, only the arbitrary nature of the attribution to a gender differentiates the masculine name Giraffe Near (Kirinja) from the feminine name Dappled Red Silence (Laekori), which also refers to a giraffe and to the colour ‘dappled red’ (kori). Neither of these two name constructions implies duality with a bovine animal. They indicate a much larger relational group, suggested by the use of the plural and the insistence on perception rather than on an animal.

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However, when women reach maturity, they may attribute to themselves other mora that integrate a reference to cattle that is often allocated to men. As is frequently the case in East Africa, old women gradually lose their gender as an irrefutable and contrastive difference with men. In the name Biramay (Cow Straight [horns]), in which the adjective refers to the shape of the horns, we can note the following change: this woman justified to me the choice of this mora by the fact that one of her finest cows had straight horns, thus highlighting a specific cow in her possession, something that is usually observed in the case of men. Here the personal relationship is doubly marked: she chose her name that refers to her own animal. We should note the parallel between certain women’s mora that are given during childhood and the ‘senior elder’ mora of men. The references to cattle are in the plural and, moreover, in the feminine for men. There is therefore an inversion in the course of existence between men and women: the latter personalize their relationship with cattle only when they grow older, whereas men, who initially had a close identification with cattle thanks to the bull name, become detached from it with their ‘junior elder’ mora, which only evokes the perception without the reference to cattle, and then reintegrate the animal in the plural feminine form when they become a ‘senior elder’. All other women’s names are sara. The colour suggested in the first name will be declined with the increase in the number of names as the relational network expands. Feminine names are most often constructed with a feminine prefix (-nga) followed by a reference to a perception – for example, Ngakumo (Black Bird), Ngadoghun (Zebra), Ngabale (Tips of Reeds) and Ngachare (Leopard). However, this prefix is not absolutely necessary, as in Marle, a short green (chage) grass, or Luke, a black-white-black (lui) ornamental belt. Women are also linked to several colours. However, unlike men, all the colours of women are derived colours (hamwe). In fact, throughout their lives, women receive their colours according to the men with whom they are associated. First of all, they take the fundamental colour of their father and that of his friends. Then, following marriage, these colours are replaced by, respectively, the husband’s fundamental colour and that of a new donor who is a friend of the husband.15 This change in colour during the course of a lifetime bears witness to the fact that, like the referents of their mora, their relationship with colour is less individualized than that of men and depends on a larger relational group. There are thus four colours to which a woman is linked during her lifetime. Marriage is the moment when the first two colours are replaced by two others.

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Figure 2.4. Origins and changes in women’s colours after marriage. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

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In spite of the change in colours following marriage, reference to one or other of the first colours is not infrequent; they are not completely forgotten. Moreover, the fact that the attachment to a colour depends on the attachment to a man enables certain informal arrangements. For several months, a young girl stayed with Samelu and Ngadongi, my hosts. She was the agnatic cousin of Ngadongi. This young girl of about twelve years old had expressed the wish to live with her cousin, and her father, who lived several hours’ walk away, came to visit her regularly. She introduced herself to me by the name of Ngachare (Leopard) and I thus deduced that her colour was mottled black (biseni). After a while, she wore a first necklace of the black-white-black colour (lui), then a second one of grey-green-blue (chage). Necklaces usually refer to people’s colours (see Chapter 4). She told me that she did not really like wearing her mottled-black necklace (biseni). This colour reminded her of her father, with whom she had a difficult relationship. She therefore wanted to take on the colour of Samelu and of his elder brother.16 When her father visited, it did not seem to bother him at all that her necklaces referred to other colours than his own. When I suggested that a boy might do the same thing, he and Samelu replied that this was simply not possible. Moreover, I regularly saw adult women wearing necklaces of one of the colours of their childhood. So women only have derived colours (hamwe). However, they can potentially keep the fundamental colour and the subsidiary colour of the first donor, that is, the father’s friend. Later, if in turn they give their colour, they can transmit the pair ‘fundamental colour-subsidiary colour’ in the same way as men. Indeed, I have found in several cases that women could be chosen for this gift. But it seemed to me that choosing a woman was in fact making reference to a man. In practice, when the man that the father of the child to be named had chosen died, the father addressed himself to a woman who had received the dead man’s colours. She will give her colour as well as the man’s subsidiary colour that she had kept as a potentiality. The colours of women are anchored only in female animals. Most of the women and young girls I met assured me that in their husband’s herd, they had one or several cows of their colour, although I could not check this every time. In all cases, the colour they held in common with their father or with their husband ensured that they had several head of cattle of their colour, even if these were not always female. On the subject of women and cattle, the men simply reply that it is not the same thing as for them. Sometimes, I was told that it was equivalent, but essentially the question was not very important. The women themselves may display great enthusiasm when describing their animals, but

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in contrast to men, many of them confided that they could do without, which in fact is what they did during the period of work in the fields. Therefore, for women, there is greater malleability than for men in the appropriation and use of colours. First of all, they can be vectors of colours that they do not express, as in the case of the subsidiary colour of their name donor, which remains dormant in anticipation of a future gift. And their colour identity is not embodied in an animal of their colour in such a necessary way as for men. Their names only refer to a dual relationship with an animal at a much later date. Thus, they have an identity that is much less determined by a fixed palette of colours. This being the case, they are the exclusive officiants in ceremonies during which names are given. The presence of the male donor is not even required if his wife is in attendance. These differences produce a paradoxical effect that we shall return to particularly in Chapter 3 on the subject of poems: in spite of their changes in colour during their lifetime, women are perceived as the guarantors of colours and ensure their permanence.

Distribution of Colours In order to go further in the description of the transmission and distribution of colours, we must now address some more developed ethnographical case studies. This will enable us to see the strategic aspect of the choice of the name donor. Obviously, regular and expected uses may be forced, compensated for or even circumvented. Koremakaolu and I get on well. I had known him for only a few weeks when he asked me to give my own name to his newborn baby girl. I would thus determine for him my fundamental colour (striped, tulay) and I would give him the potential of my corresponding ‘bull name’ and ‘junior elder’ name, Oletula and Teosame, as well as my subsidiary colour, red (goloni), which the child would be able to transmit when she was older. As she would not bear my bull name, I had to choose a feminine name. I suggested Ngadoghun (Nga-Zebra), expressing ‘striped’ in the least poetic way possible, or so I thought. Her father replied that this was not suitable, as this was a sara and not a mora. The mora is indeed the colour of the ‘outside’ donor, whereas the father only gives the sara with his colour, which she will not be able to transmit. The name must also have a more complex form that recalls the striped colour (using one of the two possible forms mentioned above). He helped me by suggesting Tulamog’yo (Striped Open Plains), recalling the large grassy plains of the country that fill the eyes with the impression of stripes. I of course accepted. The ceremony took place shortly afterwards.

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It is obvious that Koremakaolu chose me, amongst other reasons, because I alone could provide all the food and drink necessary for the ceremony: coffee, tobacco and sorghum beer. We met on the Ari plateaux, in the village of Belamer17 on the heights of the place that the Mursi call Mako. Together we bought coffee, chewing tobacco and arake (a distilled alcohol), because at that time of shortage, it was unthinkable to use the sorghum, which was in short supply, to make beer. On the day of the ceremony, we arrived with my host Samelu and my neighbour Dontori at Maridhadhare, where Koremakaolu and his family lived. This small cattle camp, situated at the foot of a hill, is made up of five enclosures and of a few other sites further south on the slopes of the hill. The meeting was fixed for shortly before midday in order to give everyone time to bring out their cattle. We were received in Koremakaolu’s enclosure and particular attention was given to our reception: Koremakaolu gave us the skins of his cows (ada) to lie down on, and left us the best places in the shade. Four other men were waiting under a big tree in the centre of the enclosure in the central area of the camp (balo). Ngalu, Koremakaolu’s wife, brought us coffee. This drink, prepared with whole beans (dried and roasted) from the coffee tree and chillies, is drunk while crunching rough salt. It is consumed during most ceremonial events and also to purge the body. That is why Dontori and Koremakaolu turned away to vomit a few seconds after having drunk it. Koremakaolu distributed tobacco to all the guests and to the women. He kept some for the other men. Ngalu was wearing a particularly ornate dress (say). She was also wearing a necklace of bells and shells, and her lip-plate. She brought us alcohol, which we drank in turn. Dontori does not like this bad-quality alcohol, which makes him aggressive, but he drank it nonetheless, making apparent the fact that he did not like it. When everyone had drunk, Koremakaolu indicated to me that I should follow him to a hut at the other end of the enclosure. He also asked Dontori to follow him. The latter seemed to expect this. Samelu remained in the shade. I noticed as I entered the hut that the women of the settlement had also drunk coffee and alcohol. Koremakaolu had red clay on his forehead, as did Ngalu and her two children, as well as Ngabale and Ngachibo, and the other women of the settlement.18 The discussion concerned how the ceremony should best be carried out. Ngabale rose to her feet and took a mouthful of coffee, which she kept in her mouth. She spat, blowing the coffee onto the little girl that Ngalu was holding in her arms. She then pronounced a first name: ‘Tulaterio!’ She took another mouthful, spat it out and then pronounced ‘Nadoghun!’ and so on. She continually alternated a name with the spraying of coffee

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onto the child. The other women and Koremakaolu prompted her with the names: Tulaterio, Ngadoghun, Tulamog’yo, Ngachare and Teosame. Ngachibo then got up and repeated the same gestures. At the end, she added a name, Ngakogine, which had been prompted by Ngalu. Then finally it was Ngalu’s turn. We left the women in the hut and went back to the central area. Koremakaolu gave tobacco and alcohol to the men who had remained on the sidelines of the ceremony. Someone had taken care to bring them coffee, which they had already drunk. I then asked Koremakaolu and the other men to elucidate certain points. I had not understood why the name Ngachare had been pronounced, as it refers to the colour mottled black (biseni). This colour is not mine nor that of the child’s father. They replied that she had received it at birth from a man of that colour. This man was of the same paternal line (kogine) as Koremakaolu, the father of the child. This is why the name Ngakogine had also been pronounced. Ngadoghun (Zebra), which I had wrongly suggested, was nonetheless pronounced, as if to begin the declension process of the striped colour. Similarly, my name Teosame had been pronounced even if it would not be used. However, she now has the name and will be able to transmit it one day to a boy. Koremakaolu told me that in the future, I should call his daughter ‘young girl’ (dhole) and she would address me without naming me. He pointed out that his daughter had the striped colour (tulay, mine) and mottled black (biseni, the colour of the other man). He used the verb reg’e to speak about the way in which his daughter would express these colours. But I was certain that only the father and the other donor could transmit their colours. And yet I had the impression that there were two of us who had transmitted them, excluding the father. That evening, I asked Samelu about the donor of the other colour. And it was there that a problem became apparent. He told me after some hesitation that it was Shoadario,19 one of the neighbours who had been present at Maredhardhare during the ceremony. When I mentioned this again the following day to Dontori who had been present in the hut, he told me that he had given the colour. That was why he had expected to be invited into the hut. These two men shared the same fundamental colour. As such, it did not really matter who was the ‘true’ donor. There were no consequences in terms of names and colours for the child. A few days later, I saw Koremakaolu again and asked him the same question without anticipating a specific response by suggesting names. He told me that it was a man of the colour mottled black (A ira ti biseni) and remained evasive. However, he knew that I was acquainted with both Shoadario and Dontori. I also understood that it would not be correct for me to continue this inves-

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Figure 2.5. Possible circulation of colours for a man. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

tigation concerning the identification of the donor of the name, and especially not in the presence of the men concerned, unless I wanted to provoke a confrontation. Nevertheless, a clue enabled me to form an opinion: the name Ngakogine told me that Shoadario, who was of the same kogine as the father of the baptized child, was probably the donor. Dontori did not belong to that family or to the Garakole clan. Several aspects of the naming process should be noted here. Usually, the father attributes a colour to his daughter, besides the other donor. But Koremakaolu is an active man and is always looking for new associations. He does not have many cattle and is not a very influential orator, but he is always present at dances and other collective activities, chiefly rituals at which he is always prepared to play an expressive role.20 Through his choice not to initiate his own colour with his daughter, by foregoing this option, we can deduce his desire to be associated with two men rather than just one. In fact, my questions concerning the identification of the donor of the mottled black colour were not decisive.

The Colour Complex

Figure 2.6. Possible circulation of colours for a woman. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

On the day of the ceremony, Dontori took the place of the real donor, Shoadario. Because they share the same colour, these two men were interchangeable. Dontori was so pleased that he told me he had himself given his colour. In effect, the fact that two men occupied the role of donor was not very important for the donors themselves. The relationship between them and the child will be serene, devoid of conflicts, but hardly more developed than that. These men have no particular duty towards the child (except that they will certainly add an animal of their colour to their gift; see below) other than being grateful to her father, Koremakaolu, who had chosen them. In the end, Koremakaolu had acted strategically: instead of having just one donor besides himself, he had three. It was worth not attributing his colour to his daughter, who, after all, will change her colours after marriage. The charts in Figure 2.5 and 2.6 show all the possibilities of colour circulation from Ego’s perspective. The major difference between men and women resides in determination: men automatically determine several people from different kinds of relationships (child, brother, wife), whereas women do not. This rests on the different nature of determination: it indicates an inevitable rank for men and a temporary association for women. These examples of the workings of transmission and determination enable us to understand the distribution of colours between people in a reliable and deductive way. By describing the distribution of colours

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Figure 2.7. Distribution and transmission of colours in Selabuyo’s family. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

within a family, we can also see the degree of freedom that is allowed, particularly concerning the rather vague notion of ‘sufficiently distant’ for the name donor. Figure 2.7 shows the descendants of Selabuyo, a ‘senior elder’ of Chai (or Suri) origin.21 This chart was produced by linking information given by each of the individuals concerned and who were present in the place where the research was being carried out. However, all of them had sufficient knowledge to be able to complete this chart themselves.22 Selabuyo settled in Mursi territory shortly before the birth of his first son. His second wife is of Mursi origin, but information concerning his first wife who died many years ago is contradictory (was she Chai or Mursi?), probably because this is of little importance today. In spite of his integration, which seems to have been relatively successful, he nonetheless remains a Chai among the Mursi. This can be seen in the transmission of some names within his family.

The Colour Complex

Selabuyo is respected as an elder, but retains his Chai origin, which is well known to everyone. This relative lack of integration can be seen in several of his transmission choices. Admittedly, he found pastoral partners to give names to his first children, but he had difficulty in finding any for his youngest son. So he asked his eldest son (Dareole) to give to his youngest son (Olechage) of a different mother his name and colour. By doing this, Dareole helped his father as if he had been a pastoral partner. But the condition of being ‘sufficiently distant’ is undermined here because of the close family connection. The distance resides only in the great age difference between Dareole and his young half-brother, reinforced by the fact that Dareole was already a ‘junior elder’. However, this alone cannot ensure the sufficient distance required for transmission. As such, Dareole gave a different colour, but from the same family, thus creating a distance limiting the overlapping of identity: he replaced dappled grey-green-blue (lori) with grey-green-blue (chage). The difficulty that Selabuyo encountered in finding donors for his children is only one aspect of the problem; indeed, few people asked him to be a donor. So Dareole chose his own father to give a name and a colour to his eldest son (Oletula). He thus enabled his father to transmit his colour. But here again, we find the situation in which the condition of ‘sufficiently distant’ is not respected because of the familial link. Thus, Selabuyo, whose colour is gradations (sirway), transmitted a colour of the same family, striped (tula), in order to create sufficient distance in a roundabout way. However, in both cases, we can see that the subsidiary colour (kalatange) is not modified for this reason. A final colour shift is created this time for a slightly different reason. Usually a woman acquires the colour of her husband and that of a donor when she marries, with one exception: the first wife (the ‘senior wife’, mwe a bô) of the eldest brother has one of her colours determined by her father-in-law (junu). This was the case for Nonta, one of whose colours was determined by Selabuyo (gradations, sirway). The other came from her husband. But this situation creates too strong an overlapping of identity between her and her husband, because her husband also had his derived colour determined by Selabuyo, his father: the couple would then have dappled grey-green-blue (lori) and gradations (sirway) in common. To prevent this, the wife took grey-green-blue (chage) as her colour, thus creating a shift away from her husband.23 This example shows the necessity of being well integrated among one’s pastoral partners in order to be able to participate fully in the distribution of names and colours. To help his father, Dareole twice created colour transmission links in which the ‘sufficiently distant’ condition was endangered. The solution was therefore to create distance by means of the colours that are transmitted.

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Points of View Concerning Circulation The colour property is transferred from an adult to a child, and this transmission does not have great consequences for the relationship between the donor and the recipient. No specific term designates this relationship. At most, they will avoid conflict. This is why, as the example of Tulamog’yo has shown, it is possible to have two donors for the same colour, and the donor does not need to be clearly identified. Maintaining the possibility that either of the two men may be the donor is not a problem: each one has transmitted and the child has received. The two donors can accept themselves perfectly well as co-donors. This is possible as the effects of this kind of transmission depend on points of view. The people who give their names insist on the satisfaction of seeing their colour spread over the world, not only in the cattle that the child will raise, but also in the poetic injunctions of names and possibly of poems. Each new instance of that colour is theirs. And the influence of the donor is made visible through that colour. As for the child, he sees that his social life depends on a bovine animal. Moreover, the colour is received from a mature man to whom he will address himself with due deference. The man also transmits to him a future name, referring to an ontogenic model to follow. Already, the precedence (the hierarchical order of age systems) and the articulation of a social position with poetics are visible. Here, the gift of a colour and a name is asymmetrical, not only because a gift creates a debt, but also because the point of view on colour distribution implies distinct models of relationships: for a man, it means expansion, but for the child, it means the precedence of an older man and the necessary presence of a bovine animal to begin the social life. The gift of an animal comes shortly after the gift of a name. Later, the man will add a second animal when the child marries. If we consider the distribution of colours, this double gift should not be understood as a loss. The second animal is part of the marriage arrangement, which indeed makes the marriage possible (38 head of cattle have to be collected), and the new wife expresses her husband’s colour, particularly in the form of names and poems. The correlation between the loss of an animal (as a result of the gift) and the increase in the distribution of the colour can also be seen when the man transmits his name to a girl. Here too he gives a first animal when he transmits his colour to the child. But there will not be a second gift when the young woman marries; on the contrary, the man will receive an animal in return. When the young woman becomes the wife of another man, she loses her colour and it is very unlikely that names

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or cattle will be able to recall it. The loss of the colour of the animal received by the man after marriage is of little importance. The spread of colours is halted, but the net loss in terms of animals is avoided, as the man retrieves his initial investment. However, as we have seen, this young girl will be able to transmit the original donor’s colour to another child one day. If it is a boy, she will give him the bull and ‘junior elder’ names of the man. These names will thus have jumped a generation in order to reappear. This is also why the restitution of the animal may be put off or even forgotten. In all cases, this type of obligation or debt is not transmitted because it only has a meaning for the people and the individual colours engaged in these exchanges. Giving one’s name to a boy is therefore more profitable if we envisage it in terms of colour distribution. Giving it to a girl is more profitable if we envisage it in terms of the transfer of cattle. Actually, giving is an intentional positioning more than a real evaluation of gains. We have seen with the distribution of colours around Selabuyo (see Figure 2.7 above) that two name transmissions were justified as a reinforcement of relationships, as they did not exactly respect the ‘sufficiently distant’ condition between the donor and the recipient. The father had transmitted his names and his colours to his own grandson, while his son had transmitted his names and colours to his young half-brother (another of Selabuyo’s children). This could be explained by the difficulty that Selabuyo, as a Chai immigrant, experienced in finding pastoral partners to transmit his colours and to receive colours from them. Personal influence acquired on a daily basis can be seen in the number of individualized relationships, names and declensions of names; the personal pastoral capacities also make it possible to own cattle, particularly of one’s colour. And the transmission of colours, which is understood differently according to the point of view of the donor and the recipient, does not create alliances or relationships of kinship, but bears witness to another kind of tie that, in this generic form, only retains its meaning in terms of influence (Viveiros de Castro 2004). *** We have now understood that among the Mursi, saying one’s name gives a lot of information about oneself: a colour, cattle, a relational network, influence. Using such a complex tool in such a brief and ephemeral form bears witness to the importance of everyday social relations, which are repeated, visible, ongoing or temporary. Evans-Pritchard, although he was sometimes exasperated, as we have seen in the dialogue at the

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beginning of the first chapter, had nonetheless perceived the importance of people’s names in economic relations: little is known at present about Nilotic cattle-names, which are of great interest sociologically, illustrating language as a technique of economic relations, and showing the ways in which symbols referring to colour and their distribution are formed. (Evans-Pritchard 1965 [1934]: 628, emphasis added)

But consciousness of one’s existence, determined by the existence of others, one’s vision and the appellation that objectifies it, makes the self vulnerable to the variation of social relations and to the disappearance of others (Taylor 2009: 45). Mursi names and the expression of colours depend on relationships that have been experienced. Thus, durable forms of identity are to be sought elsewhere. With the recital of poems, identity can find stability independent of ephemeral relationships. Poems can be understood as the expression of an individual identity that can be presented to a group. In poems, each individual exists outside dual relationships.

Notes 1. I first of all present masculine practices. This precedence can be justified by the fact that several feminine practices depend on those of men and not the opposite. They will be better understood if they are developed subsequently. 2. For example, if Dappled Red Bull (Olekori), then Dappled Fire Monkey (Kalamdonigo) or Giraffe Near (Kirinja). 3. I shall return to the construction of seniority in Chapter 8. 4. Sometimes, I was told that the name had been given by the father (shuune). But this reply revealed two metonymies. First of all, the one referring to generic paternity, a synonym of elder (the ‘father-husband of the milk mother’ is often designated by the form of address dada, ‘daddy’). Second, the use of shuune could be understood as an insistence on the choice of the name donor that is the prerogative of the father of the child. 5. See Chapter 1 for a more general definition of ree. 6. The Mursi say ‘take’ the coat of the elder brother to have a name that resembles him. 7. I do not use the expression ‘favourite ox’, which is current in the literature of herdsmen in East Africa, because it seems inappropriate to me. For a development of this question, see Chapter 7 on the emotional relationship with the animal and the killing of the beast. 8. The ideal is to own four animals of one’s colour. Four is a recurrent figure among the male Mursi: four knots are made in the umbilical cord of the newborn baby boy; one has to wait four days before burying a dead man, etc. The figure linked to women is three. 9. See Chapter 4.

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10. I insist on the word ‘owner’ as the animal of the fundamental colour belonging to another individual would not carry the same taboos. 11. The analogy is a little risky, but ‘wife’ is mwe (or mog’e, plural mog’ay, according to the pronunciation), while the derived colour is hamwe and is only applied to female cattle. Moreover, it is the only type of colour that women have (see below). 12. On the one hand, I found Ngudur, bi a martishu, bi a kuleaosho and bi a marnew, and on the other hand, bi a ololae and bi a chomare (bi a… – the cow that is…). The former group includes taboos concerning cows with transmitted criteria, while the latter relates to cows whose taboo is circumstantial (as when twins are born). For a description of these taboos, see Eczet (2013: 108). 13. The repetition of names is not necessary, but is a means of agreeing on the perfect reciprocity of the interlocutors, as is customary between two elders who will confront each other in public debates. 14. A female cow is be (plural bea). 15. The men who give their colour to the same woman are wula (plural wulania). 16. Because the elder brother had determined Samelu’s derived colour, the young girl found herself with two colours identical to those of Samelu. 17. A village that the Mursi call Adici, derived from addis in Amharic, ‘new’, which refers to markets. 18. We shall see in Chapter 4 that clay is used to repel passing ‘beings’. Here, it means repelling the name donors, only keeping their names and their colour. All those who are going to pronounce or receive names have it applied. 19. Shoadario: Raised Birds. Dario refers to the action of throwing a stone to raise birds (shoa). The birds invoked in this image are vulturine guinea fowl that spend their time on the ground and take flight only when they need to escape. They are black with white spots, thus recalling the colour biseni. 20. We shall encounter him again in Chapter 9. 21. The Chai are a group related to the Mursi who live on the west bank of the Omo. 22. To identify the people, I use the names by which I called them. 23. All of the other gifts and determinations presented in Figure 2.7 respect their ideal statement.

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3 The Time of Colours and People Poems

When asked about the nature of wives’ poems, Nganiakoroy, a wife of my neighbour Shoadario, replied: The words [the subject] of poems? The words of poems are very strong! Very strong! I am the girl [wife] of a man, and we got married. I even married a Mursi man. And when I come? He gives a cow. And in the public place I gather red cows, I gather them all. I say ‘Hu! Cherries, cherries red-striped’, I say like that. At Goto a long time ago. A really long time ago! That, yes, it’s like that.

Nganiakoroy told us that she had to sing her red colour determined by marriage in a public place (the balo, the central area of the settlement). However, she situated the object of her recitation in the distant past, thus lending authority to the expression of the permanence of her colour. The coloured perceptions at the basis of people’s identity are given, transmitted and circulate within networks of individuals. But this fragmented identity, which is in constant expansion, may be created on the initiative of each person. Indeed, each Mursi may present himself or herself to a group by means of a fixed poetic object: the poem (zilüe). Names particularize and distribute, whereas poems create consensual definitions in the form of a synthesis. But by fixing the relational space, poems bring out a temporal direction. The zilüe are sung poems. Each adult has at least one, sometimes several, especially women. The content is fixed and if more references

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are added, a new poem must be created; the existing poem cannot be lengthened. Thus, there can be no improvisation during the recitation, except sometimes the repetition of lines. Those who are least comfortable with this exercise can appeal to a specialist (nani, ‘he who knows’, generally), who will compose the poem for them. Depending on whether the person reciting is a man or a woman, a young or older person, the general identity is of course not the same. There exist three sorts of poems declaimed in three different contexts, in which people will express their own singularity. In wives’ poems (zilüea mogy’ay), the narrative element is minimal and consists chiefly in the formulation of a network of coloured references that converge on the reciter. The feminine identity emerges from a distribution of colour largely determined by the men around her. Women therefore say ‘to lay’ or ‘to put down’ (odjo) a poem, as one would display a card. Masculine poems are either ‘ox poems’ (zilüea bhunagn) or ‘shield poems’ (zilüea gashay). The narrative, although stereotyped, is more apparent. It relates, respectively, the advance towards death of a bovine animal or a war-like episode from the past. Thus, men say they ‘recount’ (yocto) their poems. In all cases, the audience is collective. The poem is therefore an easily recognizable form: it presents the accumulation of the partial identity references of the reciter to an accumulation of potential dual relationships (the group that listens to the reciter). The stereotypical form of each of the types of poems does not impede the precise presentation of an individual identity. If these poems do indeed present what it is to be a woman, a young man or an elder, they also adapt to the life and intentions that each person wants to include in the presentation of himself or herself. For each type of poem, I shall therefore begin by presenting the theme and the context in which it is recited, and then I shall describe some examples of poems and their precise reference to the empirical life of the reciter.

Descriptive Points of View: Wives’ Poems All Mursi poems create an accumulation of clues, the specific distribution of which can only describe the reciter. Wives’ poems exploit this formal means of expression best. For example: I call upon the spirit of the sparkling water, the grey cow Which, from all directions, brings the mist I draw with my hands on the smokey coat Of the daughters of Gowiny

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The blue bird is himself afraid of his blue body The tobacco body is eaten by the lances The body with the tobacco coat, brother of my man, defies the red fire I disturb being a daughter from Daya: Kalamsame, Chawuhi And in Loko they speak of me softly In Chermani they speak of me slowly And from the land called Mena, to the grey cows of my father I sing myself and the grey cows Bring from all directions the mist Logi! Logi! In the pot!

This chart (Figure 3.1) may be derived from the poem itself, without any further explanations. In this poem, a woman of the grey-green-blue colour (chage) uses different elements from the world of her colour: the spirit of the sparkling water that lives at the bottom of the river in the blue-and-green reflections, the mist, the cow’s coat made out of smoke, the blue bird rukay, the logi bird whose flight feathers alone are blue, and the tobacco whose leaves on the plant are still green, just like the kinöe leaves that are cooking ‘in the pot’. She mentions Gowiny, a place that designates by metonymy the clan to which she now belongs following her marriage. She also mentions her brother-in-law (‘brother of my man’) who gave her his colour. Because of this, she ‘disturbs’ her husband, whose colour is black-white-black (lui), which is mentioned by two of his names, Kalamsame (Colobe Frange) and Chawuhi, because he too is of the colour grey-green-blue. Indeed, his elder brother (the brother-in-law in the poem) determined his derived colour (hamwe). Thus, her husband has two colours in common with his wife, a very pronounced overlapping of identity. She adds the names of Daya, Loko, Chermani and Mena, which are other places linked to her former clan – that of her father. Back there, the women gossip about her (‘they speak of me’) because her father was also grey-green-blue, as we learn from the line ‘the grey cows of my father’. Thus, in the life of this woman, the colour grey-green-blue is omnipresent, like the ‘grey cows [which] bring from all directions the mist’. No name, derived from a specific relationship bearing witness to a particular point of view, can alone determine an individual. Consequently, situating oneself in oneself is to no avail. As everyone is subjected to the same identity conditions, a person cannot situate himself thanks to just one of his relationships. Teknonyms, for instance, are of no use. The performer of the poem describes part of her relational network (in the poem quoted above, this is made up of the woman’s father, her husband and her brother-in-law) and recalls the colours corresponding

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Figure 3.1. Information included in Ngadongi’s poem. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

to these people. She also mentions perceptions recalling her colour, and the poem is thus composed of a cluster of clues that can only converge on her, i.e. it creates an overall image of the reciter that all can agree on in spite of the particularities of relationships. Four semantic and formal ways contribute to the movement towards convergence on one individual: the accumulation of clues, assembling, redundancy and fusion.

The Accumulation of Clues The poem quoted above is a good example of the expression of a network of people and colours. Its particularity rests precisely on the fact that, in spite of changes in colours due to her marriage, Ngadongi remains associated with the colour grey. In the following statement, a woman evokes her colour and the people to whom she has given it: It comes from the earth and we know that the season has come. The molue with the pink cows of his children.

What ‘comes from the earth’ is the rainbow that announces the rainy season. This rainbow is like the molue, the large grey (chage) mythical snake. The reciter has transmitted her colour, here evoked by the rain-

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bow and the snake, to the two sons of one of her co-wives (lomo, plural lomugen). But because this is the transmission of a colour to masculine individuals who are close to her, for her grey-green-blue (chage) colour, she substitutes another colour of the same family, pink (rege), and it is for this reason that she mentions ‘pink cows’. In this example, the individual identity of the reciter appears through an original distribution of her colours: her grey-green-blue colour twice transmitted to close relations, with a chromatic shift.

Assembling The assembling of the scattered pieces of one’s personality is clearly announced at the beginning of the poem. The women often begin with the verb mer-. This verb describes the action of calling cows in order to assemble the herd (‘I assemble the cows’: Anye kemeri bio). In this way, the women express their intention to bring together in one fixed entity fragmented expressions, whether these concern cattle, colour terms or other people. The redundancy apparent in the tryptich colours/people/ cattle and the identity overlap between the three types of elements mean that inevitably, and literally, assembling one of these elements comes down to assembling the others. More precisely, this verb describes the calling together of cows by means of onomatopoeias. Each animal of one colour responds to one particular onomatopoeia. I have on several occasions noted the effectiveness of these calls: the repetition of the sound ch-ch-ch makes it possible to call in the black cow in the herd. With the specific use of this verb, there is the idea of assembling by means of the voice.

Redundancy The poems display the redundancy of each noun (the relational tryptich colours/people/cattle). Within this association, we pass constantly from one to the other of these three terms, as when the woman told me that the blue bird was grey-green-blue, like the grey cow, that is herself. In these poems, perceptions are called up in the same way as one calls cows: ‘I call Rounds to Circles Spots of Fire’ (Kemeri bolue te kurne bologo, kori colour, dappled red). Sometimes the subject is multiplied: ‘I call Female Cherry Antilopes who has the knot undone in Tulta’ (Kemeri shiginoe urasa loine kog’ona tultae, where shigin is an antelope with a red coat). The subject is repeated, although the different forms are

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placed after the verb like a direct object. These repetitions, as in the expression ‘I assemble myself’ (Kemeri anue, where anue means ‘myself’), which often begins these poems, are a way of emphasizing the subject (anye, ‘I’): ‘I’ applies to ‘female antelope’ and ‘cherries’. A kind of saturation effect is thus produced with the development of redundant information.

Fusion According to specific linguistic usage that we have already discussed with reference to names, syntax does not always correspond to that of propositional language. For example, the colour terms are always used with the prefix a- (third person singular, systematic usage) signifying that what is being spoken of is transitory. In names, this particle has disappeared, and Red Bull is Olegoloni, whereas a red bull is described using ole agoloni, literally ‘the bull is red’ or ‘the bull which is red’. Thus, the designation in the form of the personal name Red Bull literally superimposes two terms (bull + red) without making ‘red’ the adjective qualifying the noun ‘bull’. In practice, names are spoken quickly, in such a way that the fusion of terms is reinforced and the propositional aspect is diminished. Olegolony will often be pronounced ‘Ol’golon’!’, and Oletulakoroy will be pronounced ‘Ol’tulakoro’!’. The merging of the terms in pronounciation reinforces the idea of the nonpropositional superimposing of elements (colour/people/cattle). The same applies to poems in which certain deficiencies in propositional syntax contribute to establishing the interchangeability of terms. In Ngadongi’s poem presented at the beginning of this chapter, the subject (anye, ‘I’), the particles indicating possession (suffix -a, ‘of’ or ‘of the’) and the actualizing particles indicating colours (prefix a-, ‘it is’) are missing. The missing elements have been added and appear in parentheses: E [Anye] kemeri meno bioe [a]-chage arane onya wangahe Ah, [I] sing the spirit of the reflections to the cows [which are] grey-greenblue come from all directions bring the mist E [Anye] kichir meno chore burre ngonia Gowinye Ah, [I] draw the spirit of the reflections the smokey coat daughters of Gowiny Wa rukay idok ree [a]tilo / damu ree bag’a bera The rukay frightens the body [which is] dappled grey/the tobacco body is eaten by the lances

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E damu chore ree[a] galle nymno go agolonya Tobacco the coat the body [of the] brother-in-law defies the fire which is red … Nga ba kele Mena bioe[a] dag’e [a]chage And the land called Mena, to the cows [of the] patriarchs [who are] grey-green-blue

The three types of missing elements produce an effect of fusion between the terms. On the one hand, the absence of the personal pronoun minimizes the reference to the person as reciter, and the lack of the possessive creates equivalence between the terms without defining the possessor or the possessed. On the other hand, the colour terms without their ‘actualizing particle’ tend to fix a perception that is usually presented as temporary. In short, a reduced definition of the subject and the essentializing of the colour help make permanent the colours of which women are the depositaries. The poetry is disconnected from anthroponymic form and everyone can appreciate it. Thus, although the poem provides a host of clues concerning the reciter, each person can find in the perceptions separated from names a little of himself. He can hang onto them, participate and see himself in them. Indeed, everyone has not experienced the same events, but has already perceived, or will perceive in the future, ‘trees which seem felled as they look so small next to a giraffe’, this thing ‘which grows from the earth and which announces the rainy season’, or ‘a smokey coat’. The wives’ poems are sung after each important ritual in relational and spatial configurations specially constructed for the recitation. The women arrange themselves in a circle several metres in diameter. The children mix in with them and the men can observe the recitations from a short distance away. The reciters come forward in turns and stand in the centre of the circle to declaim their poems. The gaze of others, which in daily life is limited to a few people present in the same place simultaneously, is now increased considerably by the presence of spectators. If designations are the interiorization of the other’s gaze and function as dispositional ‘engagers’, poems accumulate dispositions by adding active restitution: the other imposes himself through the names he gives you, but you impose yourself on others with your poems. Moreover, the recitation is never carried out in a cold, distant way, as everyone can judge the quality of it. Often the female singer has the barbarito (trembling legs), a recurrent idiomatic expression used in the evocation of combat. If she does not tremble she may adopt a fixed, deadpan appearance along with a chanting intonation which is sometimes intensified by weeping. The accumulation of identity ele-

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ments corresponds to the accumulation of emotions: in the same movement, the singer calls upon her references and the attention of others. The reciter thus finds herself in the centre of the circle and the centre of attention. She remains almost motionless on the spot. The emotional intensity may be very strong. The consumption of sorghum beer, sometimes of arake (distilled corn alcohol, bought on the high plateaux) is frequent before the recitations. I once saw a woman weeping after the private recitation of her poem at my request, but the group context adds an obvious commitment in terms of performance: the poems are declaimed with great emphasis, sometimes they are shouted, the initial musicality then loses in subtlety and the lines are more chanted. The reciters show attitudes of extreme concentration and, very quickly, of fatigue. The attention of the female spectators becomes more intense as the reciter’s commitment intensifies. Sometimes, women come and support her or help her to sit down. These are gestures that are never observed in the context of daily life, even with older or weaker people. The woman who declaims her poem may hold an object of the colour she is singing about, most often a bead necklace (challae), in one of her raised hands. She may also hold in her right hand (masculine laterality) an old staff (biley). This is usually only held by a ‘senior elder’ (bari) and it is the indispensable element in the hands of all the elders who are orators in public debates. We can therefore perceive the formal continuity between the recitation of women’s poems and, as we shall see in Chapter 10, men’s public debates. In both cases, the staffs indicate the right to speak of the people who hold them and, in this way, their social maturity. Other women may come and place on the reciter’s shoulders or on her arm, or even in her hand, another element belonging to them of the colour she is singing about. This practice, called ulupto, can be found in the dances (holo) that also provide the opportunity for others to place an object on the person of the performer (see Chapter 6). Objects may be thrown on the ground at the feet of the reciter, like yellow bracelets (lalang’). Some women of the same colour may stand up, take an object of that colour and dance, shouting a term referring to it: barkaingo! (‘midnight’ for black), maluge! (the name of a striped insect), dole tui! (‘in the pot’ in reference to the green kinöe leaves cooking on the fire), etc. The poems are addressed to the assembly as a whole and engage whoever finds – or ‘sees’ – herself in the semantic content. The reciter’s identity is defined by the ambivalence between the specification of self and the expression of a colour with which everyone can identify: the definition of a collectively viable self involves the intrusion of others (‘it’s as much the other as me’) in a referential and pragmatic way. As in a kind of double bind, the more the women speak of themselves, the more they summon others and speak in fact of relationships.

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Obviously, some women are more eloquent than others and have more poems. In this way, the alternation of women reciters results in what could be described as jousting tournaments. Even if no winner is declared, the competition is visible in the fact that some women stand up after a fine recitation by one of them in order to try and better her performance, either by the number of lines recited or by the level of volume. The men say in ironic tones that this is a women’s war (a kamana mog’yay), but during the recitations, they remain attentive and in the background. The irony never becomes mockery. The women comment very little on their poems, unless it is to say that the words ‘come from the stomach’ (udjono kiango tui) and that they are ‘hard’ and ‘strong’ (log’a a dhadhale). Another short commentary, but one that is shared by all, is that these poems speak of stories from the distant past (log’a a bekingi han’). The reference to the past expresses above all the idea of the permanence of colours that exist independently of the women, as if those who pass and who sing were of less importance than the colours they sing about. The women, because they change colours during the course of their lives, are vectors for colours, whereas men can only reinforce theirs. This is why these recitations take place after most important rituals. It is necessary to record the ritual consensus – and the actions and relationships that it made possible – in time, by the use of these poems that have the value of permanence. The poems are anchored in the individual identity of the reciter in order to arrive at a shared conclusion: Kalemugonoli’s poem I call to me the stripes of the striped red insect That the enemies followed in the black mountain to the cliffs The red striped spots I call the hearth in the midst of the women The red striped stripes I call the hearth in the midst of the women My father-in-law the old man Teogolony The striped insect curls up on itself And the striped insect curls up on its own body The stripes like the circles of the basket bear the stripes which are in the mountains in Darkamue The cousins of Korui strike the python and bring it back to take it to the public place I want to bring it back and take it round the fire in the public place where the priest stands I want to bring it back and take it with the people in the public place where the priest stands [striped insect], [striped insect], [striped insect], python!

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Kalemugoloni finishes reciting her poem in tears. She told me it came ‘from the deepest part of her stomach’, the seat of the emotions. Moreover, this detail figures in a line of one of her other poems: kemeri iniso kiango tui (literally ‘I call heart stomach in’). In the above poem, she focuses on her father-in-law who is colour gradations (sirway) and who transmitted to her his striped colour (tulay) from the same family. She specifies ‘the cousins of Korui’ to recall the Chai origins of this man. In Chapter 2, I described the distribution of colours in the family of Selabuyo who is the father-in-law in this poem. Two name transmissions were the relational supports that Dareole, the husband of Kalemugoloni the reciter, was offering to his father. This poem is a relational support, in the form of a compliment, from Kalemugoloni to her father-in-law. She describes only him mentioning the kinship link between them, by relating the place where this man came from and insisting on highlighting his colour in the public place by killing an ox of that colour, evoked by the python which the cousins strike dead: Biramay’s poem I call the spots which circle themselves around the spots of fire called thus in the heat (chorus: red of heat without clouds) To he who knows, from my mouth I gave a long time ago To he who knows, from my mouth I gave to him one evening To he who knows, from my mouth I gave a long time ago I want you to say that you bring the cows from whose udder you drink (chorus: to the public place) I want you to say that you bring them, the cows of the people (chorus: to the public place) It rises from the earth and the trees have fallen to the ground, on the other side of the plains, I want to see close up It rises from the earth and the trees have fallen to the ground, uncle’s plains, I want to see close up The spots of fire were sung by the mothers-in-law a long time ago The giraffes were drunk by the mothers-in-law a long time ago They were brought by the herdsmen to these lands They were brought back, the feathers with red marks They were brought by the mothers-in-law to these lands They were brought back, the feathers with red marks Some feathers with red marks are hidden in the house of the sisters of Lemui Some feathers of the dappled red bird are sheltered in the house of the sisters of Lemui.

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Unlike Kalemugoloni, Biramay does not compose her own poems. Three times she mentions the specialist (nani) who composed her poem when she says ‘To he who knows, from my mouth…’. There is even the use of direct speech attributed to the specialist: ‘I want you to say that you bring…’. But even if Biramay was less inspired than others, her poem has explicit recourse to the figure of the specialist to emphasize that the importance of highlighting colours is beyond her capabilities. The task is beyond the powers of Biramay not only as a person, but also as a generic reciter. Colours must be presented in the public place in a way that is beyond her capacity to do so, because colours exist beyond people. Several women told me that they found this poem to be particularly successful. The recourse to a specialist meant that the poetic and visual effects were well mastered. ‘It rises from the earth and the trees have fallen to the ground, on the other side of the plains, I want to see close up’ is a statement containing the description of a giraffe, an animal that is so tall that the trees seem small, as if they had been cut down beside it. What she wants to see close up is the giraffe that she had perceived in the distance, thus expressing her intention of furthering closer ties with her husband whose ‘junior elder’ name (rori) is Giraffe Near (Kirinja). This name evokes a dappled red ox that is so big that it resembles a giraffe seen close up, the giraffe that Biramay wants to see. This poem is also remarkable because there are few clues concerning the reciter: we learn only about her new clan thanks to a place name associated with it: Lemui. We can guess that it is her husband’s clan because she points out that the colour was sung by mothers-in-law (gniaho), i.e. by her husband’s female ancestors. However, the attribution of permanence to a colour by filiation is putative. As we have seen in Chapter 2, colours are transmitted randomly and never follow a filiation of any kind. Even derived colours (hamwe), which are passed from brother to brother in the case of men and follow filiation then alliance for women, are only determined once. In these poems, it is not the passage of colours through time that gives them permanence, but the descriptive point of view of their distribution. For example, the ‘dappled red feathers’ are not mentioned as an artefact that women keep. This is the expression of the dappled red colour, the only instances of which are preserved in the coats of cattle, that is, the coats of dappled red animals that are themselves obliged to reproduce in order to survive.

The Place of ‘Mothers-in-Law’ The presentation of the women’s poems enables us to better understand some usages of naming. For two men, a similarity in their fundamental

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colour (ree) implies being called dangi and calling each other bardangi (bar-: place). This reciprocal appellation, which is systematically applied, can be understood according to the relationship that women have with colour. Indeed, dango (plural dangi) is the reciprocal term of address between two mothers-in-law. However, this reference to mothers-in-law should be understood in a metaphorical sense that goes beyond the description of a familial link. In the wives’ poems, the women speak of mothers-in-law (using the classificatory appellation gniaho) as the guarantors of the expression of their husbands’ colours, as in the two lines of Biramay’s poem: ‘The giraffes were drunk by the mothers-inlaw a long time ago / They were brought by the mothers-in-law to these lands’. By calling each other Bardangi (literally Place Mothers-in-law, with ‘mothers-in-law’ as a plural term of address), the men place themselves in the position of guarantors of the expression of the same colour, as women are for colours in general. Indeed, the same fundamental colour of two men will remain unaltered, independent of the individual relationship they may entertain. These men will keep their colour all their lives. Their equivalence will exist perennially and it is by using a feminine reference for the perpetual expression of colours that they situate themselves in relation to each other. They are like two ‘mothers-in-law’ coming together to sing the permanence of colours. In other words, a perpetual masculine equivalence is expressed by a feminine equivalence.

The Prospective Point of View: Ox Poems Ox poems present a paradox that bears witness to the ambivalent relationship between a man and his ox: a man cherishes his animal, for example by brushing it down, while singing its progress towards being put to death. Indeed, the destiny of these animals that are adored is to be killed. The ox poems are sung especially by young men of the grade of ‘junior warrior’ (dong’a) and ‘senior warrior’ (teri) who often live with their age-mates in the large cattle encampments on the dangerous edges of the territory. These poems evoke the reciter’s conduct as he leads his ox to the place where his animal will be put to death. The actual act of killing and the festivities that follow are not described. What counts is the movement towards the killing. One should therefore understand the prospective aspect of these narratives: why describe an event without mentioning the climax?

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The ox poems are often sung privately, while a man is caring for his ox on a daily basis. The man breaks off a branch of a tree, rubs his ox’s fur with it and sings his poem. When the ox lows in the evening in its enclosure or during the night, the man may also sing his poem, even if he is lying on his bed. This second case is particularly frequent in the weeks before his marriage, when he must be separated from numerous heads of cattle in provision for the event. The man is most often alone with his ox when he recites his poem. The attention of others is not therefore centred on the reciter, and the emotional intensity seems weaker than when wives recite their poems. However, it is a kind of communication that takes up the conditions of the presentation of the self to a group – for example, the mention of a relational network of colours. Indeed, there is more to an ox than simply the animal. The ox displays its owner’s colour and constitutes the most concrete, unambiguous and recurrent objectification of it. It is thus at the basis of most of the owner’s names that are themselves interindividual mediations that particularize relationships. We have seen in Chapter 1 that the animal is the source of the bull name (Figure 1.1). Each new name uses this initial relationship, even though it may be eclipsed (Figure 1.2). Finally, in his interaction with his ox, he will find himself with these names even though the interpersonal relationships in which he participated no longer exist (Figure 1.4). The following chapters will show that certain ornaments also use the reference to this ox in order to contribute to interactions between people. The ox is present when its owner interacts with others, and becomes the link in interpersonal relations. The very name of the poem zilüe a bhungay recalls the constant reference game between a man and his ox. Ox is bhungay (plural bhungen). Grafted onto the nominal root of ‘ox’, the use of the accusative or dative personal pronoun in the second person singular ‘you’ is achieved with the suffix -gn, usually placed after the verb. In this case, the common noun plus this pronoun is impossible to translate, but implies the idea of the man’s repeated work with his ox in a face-to-face context. Finally, the man declares the tryptich name-colour-ox even while he is taking care of his own animal as a consequence of its colour that inspires his names. Discourse is being superimposed on everyday practice. Using cattle as go-betweens to express remarks concerning the ox inevitably results in saturation, which has sometimes wrongly been used as an illustration of a so-called obsession with cattle on the part of the Nilote herdsmen, of whom they would be the apotheosis. However, in this instance, it is a case of discourse whose theme is death: the killing of the ox.

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Awaiting the Sacrifice In these poems, the valuing of his ox is always connected to the project of killing it. Rather than a paradox here, we should see a kind of a balancing process involving construction first of all and then destruction. We shall return to this at greater length in Chapter 7, which deals with the construction of a caring relationship with the ox and the killing of the animal. But first I need to present some of the elements of this relationship in order to make the poems comprehensible. The relationship between the animal and its owner is largely constructed through the use of bovine references (in names, poems, gestures, ornaments, etc.) in interpersonal relationships. In spite of some identity overlaps, there is no equivalence between an ox and its owner to the point of one standing for the other. In the case of a killing, for example, one is not killed instead of the other, as the classic interpretation of Evans-Pritchard (1956) suggests concerning the Nuer. However, renouncing one’s ox makes it possible to ‘produce’ another. As the animals come from the practice of social relations between people, as they participate in them, discord in relationships implies the necessity to destroy this emerging form in order to rebuild it anew, in a way that is more appropriate to the present situation. These poems therefore relate the act that each Mursi must accomplish in order to manage his relationships: he must resign himself to killing his ox when a relationship fails, for example, when a person is ill (and thus removed from the gaze of others), when he has broken a taboo, killed a person or committed any other misdeed that might cause harm to others. Sometimes even, as we shall see in Chapters 9 and 10, it may be a question of personal renunciation from which the group may benefit: in a time of famine, a man may give up one of his cattle to be killed in an altruistic act aiming at the re-establishment of good relational conditions. The poems speak of one of the most difficult and meaningful social acts that young people must master. They have little experience of this act, which for them has the significance of an initiation rite. The poems, sung by young male warriors, are the expression of renunciation and of the acceptance of their animal’s death. The prospective point of view concerning the pastoral project can be seen in the constant evocation of the elders who have already accomplished this task many times and who thus find themselves in the position of initiators. In addition to the elders, one person always accompanies the reciter in his narrative, the lali, who is often mentioned by name. The lali is a witness of the same level of maturity as the reciter. We could say, in this context, that he is another novice in front of the already initiated elders. In this sense, he shares the necessity and the importance of the

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rite of passage for the owner of the animal. Killing one’s ox is a painful intimate act that must be carried out in public. And the figure of the lali, as another novice, insists on the social position of the reciter. This witness shares the same condition; the position of the lali is therefore reciprocal: many ox poems end with a reversal of perspective. While the reciter is first of all accompanied by a witness, he then becomes the witness of the other. The poems of these young people are short and very stereotypical, simply stating that they are bringing their animal into the centre of the stone circle. Over time, the poems are adapted more closely to people, to the point of showing the limits of the prospective point of view, witnessing the change in status from that of warrior to that of elder, as Lugolonkudusay’s and Olechage’s poems show: Lugolonkudusay’s ox poem I collect and I bring to people there where there is a hearth Around the fire they came first to the hearth for the goat First to the hearth for the goat, the elders have she-goats They enter the hearth and have staffs fallen from the sky My imposing ox, the different men1 in the middle, with a lance comes my witness Doloma Red antelope, Daughters of Tobi, he drank yesterday at the udder of the dapped He drinks with his hands at the udder of the mottled black cow The lances of that man cut the tail Mixed with pink, my pink ox has had its ears cut by the lances I sing and I guide my witness Runyomanikiwo

This poem describes the advance of the ox towards the stone circle, ‘the hearth’, where the elders are waiting. It is pointed out that the latter have brought a goat, an animal that, with the sheep, often serves to highlight the sacrifice of the ox. The colour of the animal that he is preparing to kill is pink (rege), his subsidiary colour (kalatange). Two of his witness Doloma’s colours are mentioned: the fundamental colour red (goloni) like the antelope, and the derived colour mottled black (biseni), recognizable in the idiomatic expression ‘drinking at the udder’. He even points out the clan of his witness by naming a place and the women who come from there (‘Daughters of Tobi’). But in conclusion, he proposes a reversal of perspective by integrating another man, of whom he is the witness this time. This man, called Runyomanikiwo, has grey-green-blue (chage) as his fundamental colour, of the same family as pink (rege), the subsidiary colour of the reciter.

The Time of Colours and People

Thus, the latter first places himself in the position of the person who presents an ox to be killed accompanied by a witness, and then, thanks to a shift permitted by the equivalence of colours, finds himself in the position of the witness in relation to a man who is giving his ox. This colour equivalence with the witness is not necessary when the reciter brings his own ox. However, when he in turn becomes the witness, a correspondence is always present between his own colour and that of the man whose witness he is. This dissymmetry is a way of insisting on the fundamental role of the witness who may also be affected by the killing of the ox of another man. This reversal also bears witness to the prospective point of view, but no longer only concerning the ox to be killed. By placing himself as a witness, the reciter takes a step towards the position of elder, which some can already see in him; soon, he will be one of the elders who await the young around the stone circle and watch them put their animals to death: Olechage’s ox poem My witness this dangerous man has some peritoneum already My witness this dangerous man distributes peritoneum to people, like that2 He slowly knots peritoneum around the necks of people My witness Lugolonbana knots grease around the necks of people I say hey!3 I cut down at all the passages of the rivers He makes a stone circle hearth at the foot of Kabusho Me, mummy sister of Dukui heard my own mouth yesterday on the road Yesterday we met on the road to show to all the Mursi Mummy sister of Dani heard me speak and brought some [necklaces of] seeds I say hey! I kill at all the passages of the rivers She heard me do it, the stone circle hearth at Kabusho The ox has destroyed the enclosure of the calves, the mediator has assembled the old men in the enclosure of the father of Nehirom The father of Nehirom has a deaf stomach The stomach bears silence and becomes dark Naïve he does not know and kills the cow without wanting to hurt I sing and I guide, my witness Nyomanikaolu Nyomanikaolu, an elder from Galmay The mouths drink at the udders of the ostriches, run round the blue bird, the one with the high forehead is drawn by the lances I say hey! [to his witness] I kill at all the passages of the rivers He makes a stone circle hearth at the foot of Kabusho [place] Mummy, sisters of Duni hear my own mouth in the public place Mummy, sisters of Dukui, we meet on the road

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I show to all the Mursi, I show to all the members The ox has destroyed the enclosure of the calves The mediator has tired eyes The father of Nehirom He kills the cow without thinking it ill Komana sister of Loko hums softly and I want to move away The blue bird moves away and carries what it wants, a high forehead, drawn by the lances Ah, mummy, sisters of Duni, listen to my voice and bring some [necklaces of] seeds I show my seeds they look, all the Mursi Mummy, sister of Duni listen only to the mouth Listen to the mouth, they only look, all the Mursi I say hey! I have cut hey! I cut down at all the passages of the river Grey-green-blue spots!

Olechage is still a ‘senior warrior’ (teri). But he suffers from a malformation of the instep that prevents him from taking part in some valued activities, like war raids in which the capacity to move easily is essential. Moreover, he already has two wives, and he is recognized for his talents as a poet and an artisan in the making of ornaments. He is thus divided between the status of warrior that was attributed to him by age and rank, and the way of life that he shares with his peers, essentially ‘junior elders’ (rori). As he has a good reputation and a certain influence, there would be every reason for him to be a ‘junior elder’ and little reason for him to remain a ‘senior warrior’. In Olechage’s poem, the strain on his identity is exhibited in several ways. He begins by mentioning his witness who gives pieces of peritoneum to the people present. This is usual after the killing of the ox. This greasy tissue is placed like a necklace around the necks of the people who are particularly important during the sacrifice. So the sacrifice has already taken place, which is unusual in the narrative of ox poems. Moreover, Olechage insists on the fact of being seen. All the Mursi are called to the sacrifice, to be witnesses, even though two witnesses (lali) have already been mentioned (Lugolonbana and Nyomanikaolu). To emphasize his own importance, he points out that one of his witnesses, who is supposed to be a novice like himself, is an elder. Usually, the elders do not participate in the killing, but are placed around the stone circle with perhaps a small animal to sacrifice (a sheep or goat). In this poem, this order is disturbed. Olechage recounts that: The ox has destroyed the enclosure of the calve the mediator has assembled the old men in the enclosure of the father of Nehirom

The Time of Colours and People

The father of Nehirom has a deaf stomach The stomach bears silence and becomes dark Naïve he does not know and kills the cow without wanting to hurt … The mediator has tired eyes

Here, in fact, he describes a problematic event. The ox that has destroyed the enclosure is none other than himself, who stole his father’s animal. The elders assemble to organize a debate and his father is angry; the stomach (the seat of the emotions) is deaf to all words. Even if he justifies himself by saying that he intended no ill, Olechage has carried out an improper sacrifice by failing to respect his father’s authority. And Olechage goes even further. He mentions the women who are ready to bedeck him with necklaces made of seeds, a consideration generally reserved for warriors when they return from war victorious, and usually a subject for the shield poems of the elders (see below). This is a way of placing himself beyond the ox poems by disrupting the classic narrative because it already integrates the retrospective point of view by mentioning a past victory. It is also for that reason that Olechage remained discreet when he sang his poem to me, asking me to come alone to his enclosure.

The Retrospective Point of View: Shield Poems Shield poems take up the theme of warlike activity. Two moments are favourable for the recitation of these poems: when warriors depart on raids; and during the ritual in which these departures are enacted. I twice observed a ritual involving the capture of an ox, except that the ox had been chosen in advance and there had obviously not been an actual theft or any real danger. The enactment of these rituals was conducted according to the chronology and the actions inherent in war: body painting, marches to the encampment, the firing of shots from Kalashnikovs, etc. This ritual was characterized by its resemblance to a warlike raid in which the recitation of poems, chanted and sometimes almost shouted throughout the raid, added a certain gravity and tension that was felt by me as an observer, but was also equally palpable in the attention and concentration of the participants. Mature men sing their poems at a moment when they are questioning what they are. They are in close contact with death when they go off to fight. These recitations are an emphatic expression of self, but they are not competitive like those of women. Men recite their poems simulta-

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neously without there being a time set aside for each one (one after the other) or a space (one person at the centre of attention), thus making it impossible to evaluate any possible level of excellence. What awaits the participants is death, and they must speak of it by acting pragmatically in the most diametrically opposed way, that is, by exaggerating the acoustic and visual display that death could come and sweep aside. Shield poems evoke a warlike episode in the past. The retrospective point of view enables an elder to stand out in two ways: first, from those young men who have a pastoral apprenticeship to carry out; and, second, from the women who express themselves through a permanence beyond themselves. The elders affirm their own lives as an event. In order to reveal the individual identity of a reciter, shield poems also make use of the accumulation of clues. The text is interspersed with many references to the colour of the reciter and to those of his close network. However, the biographical narrative indicates that the subject of the poem is the life of the individual. In contrast to women, who, through the description of a distribution and a change of colours, highlight their permanence, men only speak of themselves, of their own lives in the form of events. Moreover, women are the inevitable place to which men return after the war: they wait for the victorious warriors, ready to put a necklace of seeds around their necks. The mention of the warlike episode retrospectively exhibits the qualities of the individual reciting: the poem treats of a warlike episode that has already taken place, in contrast to the sacrifice of the ox that is yet to come in the ox poems. It is no longer a question of convincing oneself of one’s capacity to accomplish an act of renunciation, but of presenting a value that has already been achieved, because the war can only be in the past. After all, going off to war does not make a warrior; one has to return victorious. Only those who can sing of a past war are approved warriors. The others are no longer there to speak. The shield poems therefore relate warlike episodes that are in the past for the reciters, but that are contemporaneous for the young people who recite ox poems. And the distance between these two categories of men is still strongly marked. The elders were present in the ox poems as initiators to record the act of renunciation. This time, the elders themselves validate their own abilities through the past exploits that they recount. Once more, social rank is recalled. It is not important to know whether the exploits are true, as it is above all social rank and gender that need to be expressed. For women, men present a striking event in contrast to feminine permanence. As for the condition of warrior, it is only asserted after the war has ended in front of present-day warriors who will perhaps not do better.

The Time of Colours and People

The very way in which these poems are designated indicates their temporal direction. Shield poems are zilüe a gashay. ‘Shield’ is gash in the singular and gasha in the plural. In mun, the locative is a suffix (-e) placed after the noun. In the expression that designates these poems, the locative is placed after the term ‘shields’, which this time I transcribe by -y, as the diphthong is very little marked. The expression zilüe a gashay (or gashae) could be translated as ‘poems on the shields’. We shall see in Chapter 5 that scarifications are made on the skin after the murder of an enemy. In the same way, shield poems are the retrospective textual marks of these murders, inscribed ‘on the skin of the shields’: Runebi Rongadi’s shield poem I recount the deaf coal, I leave for the new grass and a cow guides us I recount the departure to the edges of the territory, The rainy season with sharp new grass, the black grass covered in dew On the first days we sleep on the banks of the Oso We move black the dry season With all my fearsome Geleway, we talk in secret And we call each other by our names I call Chagnoramay by his name And I throw red of Rabikav’ania Yesterday I heard the tree with black fruit come out through the pass with Biochage I watched Kalemedere Kneeling in front of the houses of the sisters of Galay The sisters of Galay take the gourds, black inside to have black clay Bless the coal and we transport joy treading the path They assemble together some girls from Dolue Their hands carry the black gourds like sandals They bless with their mouth the black ox with the white head Oh, we brandish the lances and I drink from the udder the bird with the white flanks We have killed in the north of the river Karkuaye And at Karkuway we strike and the bones remain Yesterday I ran with the striped cow Karteogoloni They went together, it was yesterday at Chiri when they were young Young we walked and we ran in the morning leaving the vultures sated I hear the voice of Bikiwo My voice was heard by Bikiwo Uncle Karamsamekaolu Uncle hurries with his eyes to find the goats Mummy! The sisters of Kurumi stand straight and tall Their hands carry the seed necklaces But we are still on the other bank of the Asso

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We are still held up by the fighting We, your children, walk between two fires and the Geleway are naked.

Runebi Rongadi is recognized as a good herdsman. He is very active in dances, but I have never seen him speak in a public debate. The expressive qualities of this man, which several Mursi have insisted upon, orient him towards a network of images to describe him and towards the displaying of images of war, expectation, return and tension. The new grass recalls the beginning of the busy pastoral season, just after the rains, when sometimes it is necessary to go to the dangerous confines of the territory. The ‘black grass’ evokes Runebi Rongadi’s colour because it grows on dark burnt stubble. Black was also present with the ‘deaf coal’, to be understood as brave, even reckless, and this could refer to the reciter as well as to his ox. Similarly, we cannot know precisely who receives the black clay several lines later. To evoke the fact that he is a ‘junior elder’, he quotes the names of two companions of this grade recalling the anthroponymic reciprocity between them (‘we call each other by our names’). He then alludes to a past exploit by referring to Karteogoloni with whom he participated in a warlike episode, contrary to the two others whom he mentioned principally to update a contemporary narrative. His clan is indicated by a place name, through the mention of women (sisters of Galay and sisters of Kurumi). He indicates his derived colour (hamwe) when he states that he drinks the bird with the white flanks (colour kiwo). In conclusion to this poem, mentioning the naked bodies of the warriors is not so much an image of the warrior who goes into battle with a painted body as one of a body from which all ornamental expressivity has been taken away. The withdrawal of ornaments is a sign of mourning on the part of the living, and of the condition of the dead bodies. Nudity in this case marks the risk shared by the warriors who will perhaps soon be dead, and by those who wait for them, who will perhaps soon be in mourning: Teosame’s shield poems Striped insect whose lance is blood red recounts I dodge and I kill in the black mountains where the mist rests The scarified ears of the striped shell, the red lance with cows leopards I reach the river Banko in Ari country I reach the river Banko in Ari country and I raise the hand of men The right hand and I take mud to strike all my body with Mummy sister of Galmay I killed yesterday with Bekolu and it is still fresh

The Time of Colours and People

Still fresh yesterday at Dochui we paint ourselves with dog mud I wage war the shields I wage war with the bird white flank and I guide the people in the savannah And stones are placed around the heart I wage war and the shields, I assemble the bird white flank It guides the members in the savannah, the boys recount The lances drink red mud I recount the black mountains where the mist rests The lances drink red mud I recount the black mountains where the mist rests and the blue bird I run with Bekolu The striped insect with bloody lances, I dodge and I protect with the hands I dodge towards the South with the hands, I recount the mountains where the blue bird rests Mummy sister of Galmay I shall tell it to you They will carry in their hands seeds They will cover me with grey stones in the flanks Embers! Tortoise!

Although he is a ‘junior elder’, Teosame is considered by many to be a ‘senior elder’. This rank has already been attained by his elder brother, Charengele, a well-known sorcerer (ngereye). He told me that he had always been small compared to Charengele, although he had never practised to become a sorcerer like his brother. His wit and talents as a speaker make him an excellent orator in public debates and thus an influential political personality. His personality can be seen in his poem. This poem is less expressive and describes a less dense network than the previous one, although his colours are indicated: striped shells, the striped insect or the tortoise, all of which inform the listener of his fundamental striped colour; the red embers indicate his subsidiary colour, red; the leopard his derived colour, mottled black. The emphasis in the poem is placed more on the warlike actions themselves. The episode is situated in the present: beginning in the past, then using the present and finishing in the future, Teosame situates the action in process. This poem is much more aggressive in its content than the previous one and has recourse to a number of similar images, such as running when at war, speaking of a corpse that is still fresh, citing his companions, receiving seed necklaces when he returns victorious, or the scarified ears that recall a bovine scarification similar to that of people. But he also adds the actual death of a man. The blue bird that rests on the mountains is one of his unfortunate companions of the colour grey-green-blue (chage) who lost his life out there and who is recalled by the mist.

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The Poet and Politics Teosame is a talented orator and I have seen him rise to speak again and again in public debates where politics is exercised. Outside the debates, he constantly harangues whoever passes within range, either embarrassing them or making them burst out laughing. In his poem with its restrained expressivity, he uses the present tense and description of warlike gestures. His performance places him within the theatrical register: in the present tense, he tells of a war and actions carried out in combat (holding a lance and dodging out of the way). The war is over, as he is there to bear witness to it, but the seed necklaces are projected into a victorious future. By doing this, he insists on the chronology of war and not on the risk of death. On the contrary, Runebi Rongadi’s poem concentrates more on networks and less on the fighting and precise actions. With his method of mixing tenses, he establishes a memorial register (even though this may be fictional). He uses not only the past tense, but also the third person plural when he mentions himself and his companion. He places himself in the position of storyteller rather than actor, as was the case with Teosame. Runebi Rongadi also wants to show his victorious return, but he prefers to express the dangers of war, concluding on a return from battle that is delayed and may never take place. He does not speak of one death in particular. He expresses the ambivalent anticipation of those who are not involved in the fighting and who do not know whether they will be dealing with the dead or the living. The women with their seed necklaces wait without knowing. Teosame, the politician, mentions a dead friend, but he himself in the recitation of his narrative has no doubt about his victory. The women will be there when he returns. *** Contrary to names that circulate and that are constantly updated, poems are works in the sense of being artefacts – that is, they are an end in themselves. And like all fixed forms, the poems fix a movement; here, that of being oneself in relation to others at a particular moment in one’s existence. We have here distinguished three movements: the permanence of the women’s descriptions, the prospection of the warriors towards the pastoral value of renunciation, and the retrospection of the elders looking back on their lives. From a formal point of view, we should distinguish between ‘the poem as work of art’, which opens out onto a network of references, and ‘the poem as action’, which makes a pragmatic synthesis. Indeed, if

The Time of Colours and People

the references follow an expansive movement – by multiplying allusions to colours and people in the world – the important thing for the reciter is to bring them all together in a fixed form. On a memorial level, poems must master knowledge about oneself, in an inward movement, whereas with names, one must know the others’ names, i.e. one must master knowledge about the other, in an outward movement. But these poems also talk about necklaces, clay and scarification – not just words, but material. The aesthetics of wording gives way to the aesthetics of bodies.

Notes 1. The ‘different men’ is the literal translation of the ‘elders’. 2. I.e., casually. 3. The reciter says ‘hey’ to his witness.

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4 Revealing and Removing Beings Ephemeral Adornments

The Omo valley has become a favourite photographic resource for reporters looking for pictures showing a wide variety of body ornamentation. Often, their production vaunts naïve and natural art on the part of those witnesses of ‘the dawn of humanity’ (Beckwith, Fisher and Hancock 1990; Silvester 2006, 2008; Zvardon 2006). Southwest Ethiopia is particularly mobilized for such primitivist discourse. Some academic publications have attempted to call into question these clichés (Girke 2014). However, barring a few exceptions, anthropological research has not concentrated on the study of body ornamentation.1 The lack of attention given to ornamental practices, which are however explicit and numerous, may be explained by their mode of presence: the ornaments are omnipresent in daily life, but they never seem to be the principal issue of interactions. Moreover, the users themselves make very little comment on them. Thus, the relational conditions made by their use must be the description of the practical contexts in which this takes place. I will first show that a complete adornment does not exist, only an accumulation of ornaments forming a repertoire. Then I will set out several ephemeral adornments, each of which is associated with a theme. We shall see that these ornaments make it possible to manage interactions with different ‘beings’: one’s peers, one’s oxen, the dead and tourists. We shall distinguish two intentions. Jewellery and bovine dung painting show attachments, revealing relationships (both human and pastoral) that already exist. Conversely, clay painting and painting for tourists display detachment: this painting is oriented towards warding off transient

Revealing and Removing Beings

people (the dead2 and tourists). Thus, painting oneself with clay or for tourists is an action aimed at producing detachment, whereas adorning oneself with jewellery or painting oneself with dung actuates existing relationships. Here, the act of painting oneself and adorning one’s body is not so much aimed at aesthetic expression as at the creation of visual propositions contributing to the performance of varied interactions. Mursi body modifications contrast with the austerity of their material culture that has often been emphasized among the Nilotes in general (see Tornay 1975; Abbink 2000b). Their habitat is a simple dome of straw, the structure of which is made of branches. Their farming tools are spades, machetes and long sticks used for sowing the sorghum seeds. Kitchen utensils consist of wickerwork objects, gourds and earthenware pots of which each home possesses very few. Only the decorations on the sorghum baskets and on some of the pots, the surface of which is sometimes embellished with notches, may recall those to be found on the body. Moreover, there are no tombstones and no statuary art. However, the bodies of the Mursi are always decorated and often abundantly so. This is done in different ways, either by adding elements (jewellery, clothes, feathers, etc.) or by ‘working’ directly on the skin (scarifications). The lip-plate combines both of these by the insertion of a clay disc in the lower lip that has previously been perforated. These ornaments may be ephemeral (like painting) or durable (like metal bracelets), in the same way as modifications to the body may be short-lived (haircuts) or permanent (extracted teeth and scarifications). For almost all of these adornments, the Mursi simply comment ‘It’s fine!’ (a challi!). Almost no other appreciation is obtained, and without the insistent questions of the anthropologist, they would not be mentioned at all. If I insist, I receive only one authoritative response that excludes all other comment: ‘It’s the tradition’ (a dame). The body adornments of the Mursi do not constitute a system. The use of clay (debbi, plural debbinia) to paint oneself does not present a link, by analogy, contrast or accumulation, with, for example, the wearing of a black metal bracelet (sigi, plural sigio). Some of the ornamental practices are used repeatedly throughout a person’s lifetime, whereas others are only implemented at precise moments. Some are reserved for only one sex, while others are limited to people of a particular age. When one sees the adornments as a whole, one can easily deduce the sex and the age of the person. But this is all that body ornamentation perceived as a whole enables one to understand: a general sociological situation. One can ascertain whether one is dealing with a young man or a young girl, a child or an old man. However, this is information that does not need ornamentation in order to be perceived. Except in rare

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cases, we learn nothing personal about the identity of the individual. Moreover, each ornament is relatively independent of the others. Thus, the Mursi body is not the locus of individual expression. This provides scope for the expression of a wide variety of themes. And this is why the Mursi body can be seen as a repertoire: it is the depository of different expressions, the common feature of which is that they are concentrated on people. Because the Mursi do not have recourse to any further comment, the decorations present on the bodies only produce an effect visually. But their apparently passive nature in the course of interactions should not encourage us to consider them simply as background; on the contrary, they give clear information concerning the intentions of those wearing them, thus contributing to the interactions.

Showing One’s Relational Network: Jewellery3 Only necklaces of coloured beads (challae, plural challagna) are worn throughout life by men and women. These necklaces, which were formerly made of seeds, are now acquired at the market. The distribution of the colours of the beads is encoded according to the coats of the bovine animals to which the individuals are linked. Indeed, we have already seen that each Mursi is linked to colours to be found in the coats of bovine animals, and these colours are recalled in the names that people give each other. Lineage and territorial affiliations form the bases of alliances and distribute populations, but the people define themselves above all by the declensions of their colour in the anthroponymic and poetic system, and by the owning of cattle that recall a person’s colour. Thus, any mention of a colour is a reference to a person. The necklaces are no exception, and it is very frequent for a Mursi who is linked to the colour ‘black’ (koroy) to wear a necklace of black beads, whereas another Mursi linked to the colour ‘dappled red’ (kori) will wear a necklace in which red and white beads alternate. However, even if the colour code is precise (we know exactly which colour the necklace designates), it does not give precise information concerning a person’s relationships, as he or she may be wearing the necklace of another person of a different colour. For example, a woman may wear a necklace of her husband’s colour, or two friends may have exchanged theirs. In spite of the precision of the colour code of the beads, usage may undermine the information that the necklace holds. The fact of wearing colours other than one’s own reveals an important use of jewellery: it can be lent and it can circulate. Indeed, the wearing

Revealing and Removing Beings

of jewellery is not synonymous with wealth.4 This correlation is indeed not established by the Mursi, and women insist more on the longevity of certain bracelets, some of which can even be handed down from mother to daughter. Because they can be lent and exchanged, all young girls wear an equivalent number of bracelets, in spite of possible disparities in their other possessions. Jewellery is exchanged among friends. A bracelet may be worn on the arm of one young girl for two weeks, then for a few days on the arm of another, and so on. The circulation takes place essentially between peers as a lot of jewellery is worn preferentially at certain ages. I quickly found myself included in this circulation. As markers, my own ‘ornaments’ served as points of reference to track the exchanges. One day, one of my hosts found my watch in my tent. After I had given it to him, he wore it on his wrist, then two days later he fixed it onto the end of his duelling staff, and on the fourth day he attached it to his headband (shashi); then it disappeared. At first, I thought that he had stored it away somewhere, a rare object to be preserved, or that he had lost it. And then I rediscovered it two days later on the wrist of another young man whom I did not know. It was my host who had given it to him. Sometime later, I asked him what had become of my watch. He replied that someone else had taken it and left. It was probably in Miso, quite a large place in the grassy plains in the centre of Mursi country. I saw it again several weeks later on the wrist of another young man. My host then told me that it would come back sooner or later, and this was in fact what happened. As the wanderings of my watch show, the Mursi regularly change their ornaments. And this is indeed the issue: the appeal of ornaments resides in the fact that they help to reveal the bearer’s skill in forming relationships. Although all objects seem to have a declared owner; they pass from one person to another as interpersonal relationships develop. Thus, wearing a piece of jewellery, even a precious one, is as important as taking it off and replacing it with another, even if the latter is of less value. In other words, even the possession of a rare piece of jewellery (like a kamariseno, a metallic coil worn round the arm) does not imply that the owner will always wear it. Jewellery is not worn according to a system of ownership, but to demonstrate skill in forming relationships. The omnipresence of jewellery on the body bears witness to an ease in making relationships, and each person exhibits visually on their body the number of pairs that he is capable of mobilizing. When the Mursi are questioned, they only justify the wearing of jewellery with a laconic ‘it’s fine’ (challi), but this should be understood as the validation of a process. Wearing jewellery is less a question of exhib-

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iting economic wealth derived from investment in material values than exhibiting moral wealth acquired through investment in relationships. Jewellery is an indicator of one’s relational capacities within a group of individuals of the same age. Moreover, this is why jewellery is the first thing to be taken off when someone dies: suspending relational activity following the death of someone close requires the wearing of jewellery to be suspended. Wearing jewellery implies an intense relational activity that is not appropriate to the expected withdrawal during the period of mourning. The end of mourning sheds particular light on the revelatory character of a relational network of jewellery. I knew Kirduni Kaolu when he had been in mourning for one of his uncles for several weeks. He was not wearing any jewellery and had let his hair grow, one of the first signs of self-neglect. I asked him several times when the period of mourning would end. He always gave me the same answer: he did not know, but it would be soon, because there would have to be dancing. And so I turned to other Mursi from the neighbourhood to find out a little more, and I was given exactly the same answer, although the choice of the moment was theirs. A mourner can be easily recognized by their appearance, although I know of no kind of behaviour that is strictly forbidden for such a person. Kirduni Kaolu’s calm and reserved attitude during his period of mourning did not change much afterwards, as this was his temperament. Only when he took part in the dances was he much more expressive. But dancing is the one activity that the mourner avoids. He is not even present at the dances as a spectator. As we shall see in Chapter 6, dancing is the expression of the vitality of the group, and this is curtailed by death. When one meets a mourner, instead of the usual greetings, one may prolong the handshake and bring the hand up to one’s own mouth and spit upon it, which is the minimal form of blessing. The handshake is very little used among the Mursi, and this simple gesture has a threefold intention. First of all, it confirms the mourner in their social isolation. He has taken off his jewellery; he is not asked where he has come from or how he is by way of greeting. The silence confirms his withdrawal. However, the hand is held and, what is more, without any mediation. This is the only time when I have seen two mature men have any bodily contact. Finally, the spitting is the gestural idiom of blessing that will help them to embark upon a positive future. In short, in this handshake, past, present and future are brought together: the recognition of a death in the past that has led to the present position of withdrawal, an almost intimate gesture that keeps the mourner in direct contact with

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the living, and words of blessing materialized in the spitting that incite him to return to the normal course of things. This return happened one morning, although no one had warned me. I was told that the decision had been collective and had come about because it was time. I learned nothing more on the subject. I found Kirduni Kaolu sitting in his enclosure, near his wives’ hut. I was told that all the people from the encampment were present, although there were only people of the same maturity, i.e. peers (lukuri, plural lukura), ‘junior elders’ (rori) or those considered as such (there was in fact a ‘senior warrior’ (teri) who was already married), that is, the closest neighbours of Kirduni Kaolu. There were also his two wives and his daughters. Each one approached to place an object in front of him, most often a piece of jewellery. I was also invited to do the same with one of my bracelets. Soon a number of objects were spread out before him, including a bracelet of white metal (dumay) and a heavy metal bracelet (ula) set down by his daughters, a bracelet of yellow metal (lalang’) and a bracelet of black metal (ereci) deposited by his wives, his bow and two arrows, his bead necklace (challae), a ‘junior elder’ necklace (kuchue) made of leather and metal used only on accession to this grade, razors (milanshi) and some sheep fat (kutay), as well as a machete and an axe placed there by his friends. All the men gathered around Kirduni Kaolu and coated their hands with sheep fat, which is used in the ritual processes of asepsis. They then dipped their hands in a calabash full of water and threw a few drops onto the objects as a blessing. Kirduni Kaolu took a bracelet and touched all the men around him one by one, discreetly miming the action of hitting them on the arms with it. He repeated this action with all the objects. Each object touched all of his peers, as if to insist on their circulation and to indicate his network of peers. But this network remained underdetermined, i.e. non-nominative, in spite of the presence of the different people. Indeed, all the objects touched all the men. Moreover, while these gestures were being carried out, the men talked among themselves, discussing what should be done and how. From the pragmatic point of view, we were in a situation of interaction in which everything is negotiated and discussed, as in everyday life with one’s peers. Once the objects had been set down again, Runebi Rongadi, a ‘great junior elder’ (rori a bô) took the bead necklace (challae). He put it round Kirduni Kaolu’s neck and then took it off four times (the figure of masculinity). The fourth time, he left it round Kirduni Kaolu’s neck and placed the bracelets on his arms. This marked the end of his mourning:

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in the same way as the victorious warrior who has cheated death and returns home (see Chapter 3) or like the dancer before he begins (Chapter 6), a necklace will content this man as he will have recovered his expressive life. This is why Olekoroy, another of Kirduni Kaolu’s friends, offered to shave his head. But he cut him and was replaced by Runebi Rongadi who finished the job. The hair was then thrown onto the fire. The few children who were present left at this point and I understood a few minutes later that they had gone to fetch some older people. The three mature women arrived and took a little ash from the hearth of an extinguished fire. They came up behind Kirduni Kaolu and applied the ash to his left shoulder. When two ‘senior elders’ (bari) arrived (one of who was the komoru, the ritual specialist), Kirduni Kaolu stood up and placed some ash on their faces. Kirduni Kaolu, now that he had recovered his expressivity, was able to protect the elders through the intermediary of the ash that can replace clay when the latter is scarce (see below). It is true that the elders are at the height of their ontogenesis, but they often complain that death awaits them and that they are old and tired. They are therefore in more danger, and the experience of the proximity of death that Kirduni Kaolu has just undergone enjoins him to protect the elders. More indicative is the gesture of the women who, through this protective ash, place themselves behind the man as in the dances, i.e. in a position of encouragement. In any case, the participants around Kirduni Kaolu retain their generic character: his peers express the network of peers, whereas the elders are there as figures of fathers and mothers. The women then bring out the alcohol of fermented honey (gima) and we all drink. With the circulation of jewellery on the body, each person shows his relational activity, although this does not indicate with whom exactly. More importantly, the body adorned with jewellery concentrates, in the form of an index, relationships that are never simultaneous in daily life: real relationships, which are scattered in time and space like the names that objectify them, are gathered together on the body. But this time, the ritual at the end of a period of mourning displays a potential network, present simultaneously around the mourner in order to reintroduce him into the dynamics of the living who are not in mourning. This does not involve displaying the effective and complete network, i.e. counting his pieces of jewellery and gathering together the people who are really concerned. It involves displaying the principle of a network of peers that is usually only really gathered around one person in the form of jewellery. Here the individuals are all there together and are touched by each one of the pieces of jewellery to actualize the link with them. The few tools presented (machete, axe and bow) are not worn on the body like jew-

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ellery, but are part of the same dynamic: they are objects that circulate and are used in ordinary activities, one of the most important of which is the clearing of the fields.

Showing One’s Pastoral Qualities: Dung Painting Dung painting (chulue) demonstrates a relationship with a bovine animal and bears witness to the strong pastoral inclination of the Mursi. This kind of painting is exclusively masculine. Men cover themselves and their male animals with dung. The dung used as paint on the bodies of the men and the animals has two perfectly accepted aims: reproduction is the desired objective for the animal that will be covered with dung, whereas the man, also painted with dung, hopes to present himself in the best possible way to the women he covets. The thematic and practical parallel does not indicate a crude equivalence between the reproduction of bulls and seduction or marital intentions on the part of men; rather, it indicates a recursive practice for the bulls into which men intervene. Mornings are devoted to looking after the cattle in their enclosure before they are taken away to the grazing grounds. Often under the guidance of an adult, the children remove ticks from the many folds in the animals’ skin and place ornaments on their bodies. Before the children take the animals out of the enclosure and accompany them a few hundred metres away to continue the inspection, a man may approach the bull that he would like to make use of for reproduction purposes. He picks up dung from the ground and with this he covers the hump of fat situated on the neck of the bull (dhog’ey), the sign of good health. With broad sideways movements over the whole body, starting from the skull, the man covers the vertebral ridge and then the flanks of the animal with dung. In the same movement, he smears his own face with dung, sometimes his shoulders and more rarely the whole of his body. A verb specifically describes this action: -irre. Olechage, a young man aged twenty, stopped beside me with his face covered in dung. He sat down and took off his sandals. He threw them on the ground several times, making them spin. After they had fallen, he observed them and in their arrangement looked for indications concerning the future relationship between himself and the woman he desired. As his face covered in dung demonstrated, the perspective of marriage was occupying his thoughts. Although limited and stereotyped, the commentary of the young men is often very explicit: ‘I want to marry’ (kihine gama).

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The themes of reproduction and seduction are central to bovine painting. However, this does not imply an analogy between men and cattle; rather, the painting is a visible sign of the association between men and cattle according to which the one is the condition of the other. For example, a man must give thirty-eight bovine animals to his future father-in-law in order to be able to marry: no cattle, no marriage. Therefore, exhibiting his pastoral qualities is an obvious way for a young man to show himself to best advantage, particularly with young women. But the symmetry between the dung on the animal (which the young girl does not see much because the beast is on the pasture lands) makes it possible to offer a more precise definition of the pastoral qualities that have thus been highlighted. Indeed, the originality of dung painting lies in its recursive use. It is often used in conjunction with ash taken from the fires that the children had lit the night before to keep the animals warm. These fires are mostly fuelled by dung dried in the sun (zir) and a few branches. Two recursive loops are implied in this practice: on the one hand, the dung that has come out of the animal is replaced on it; and, on the other hand, the dung has become fuel to replenish the fires that warm the animals during the night. The dung is transformed into heat and ash, which will be smeared on the animals’ bodies. This is thus a closed circle that the paint on the animal’s body makes apparent. The protective environment of the enclosure is thus integrated with the animal. The lives of the young herdsmen living in the midst of the enclosure begin with the body covered in dung. As Evans-Pritchard points out, the enclosure is one of the most important places for forging the attachment between men and their animals: As soon as children can crawl they are brought into close intimacy with the flocks and herds. The kraal is their playground and they are generally smeared with dung in which they roll and tumble. The calves and sheep and goats are their companions in play and they pull them about and sprawl in the midst of them. Their feelings about the animals are probably dominated by desire for food, for the cows, ewes, and she-goats directly satisfy their hunger, often suckling them. As soon as a baby can drink animal’s milk its mother carries it to the sheep and goats and gives it warm milk to drink straight from the udders. (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 38)

The hearth of the fire (ngawu), whether it is that of the animals or of the people, metonymically designates the ‘place of the women’ as well as the ‘hearth’ in the sense of the family home. It also sometimes appears in the poems to designate the circle of stones in which the ox is put to death. In this sense, the hearth is an element of transversal reference to domestic life. Moreover, a man would never pick up dung to paint himself and

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his bull outside his enclosure. This operation is carried out inside the enclosure and indicates an undeniably domestic pastoral activity. The other qualities of the herdsmen (the defence of the animals, the choice of pasture lands, etc.) are unrelated to this painting. The redundant nature of dung painting (painting a bovine animal with bovine dung) may be understood as the desire to seal the relationship between the animal and its keeper. The dung in the enclosure that came from the animal will help it to reproduce in a continual cycle, for, without the herdsmen, the animals will not go out to graze and will not be protected behind the hedges and thorny branches of the enclosure when night comes. Man intervenes in this loop by painting himself, and the exhibition of the presence of the owner on the body of the animal indicates the latter’s domestic condition. It ensures that the bull will be protected when it goes out to graze on dangerous pasture lands during the day and that it will do best what is expected of it, i.e. reproduction. The reproduction of the herd implies an increase in the number of head of cattle, and, in fine, the possibility for the owner of the animals to marry. The man thus demonstrates part of his domestic pastoral work, which consists in enlarging his herd, which will then become tangible for his future wife when the marriage provision is paid.5 The man presents himself to young women thus covered in the visible evidence of his pastoral practice: the care of the home, the management of the reproduction of his bulls and the enlarging of his herd. His intentions are entirely clear, although he avoids any simplistic parallel between himself and the copulating animal.6

The Dangers of Vision: Painting with Clay Clay painting may be very discreet. It is less a question of covering the whole face than drawing a few vertical lines on it, sometimes on the shoulders too. A little extra clay is often thrown into the bush land around the user. Clay is used in response to interaction with problematic beings, like a snake encountered on a path or a dead person in a dream. In all cases, this kind of painting demonstrates a distancing from danger, sometimes by reaffirming other links. The danger is treated visually through the painting, particularly as it is identified according to its visual characteristics.7 In the previous chapters dealing with names and poems, we have seen that daily life is continually punctuated by images and visual perceptions (besides the decorated bodies facing each other). Seeing rightly and exhibiting what needs to be exhibited are the basic conditions for

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Photo 4.1. Giray put some clay on her forehead when she woke up. © JeanBaptiste Eczet

the proper conduct of interpersonal relationships. Consequently, visual phenomena that are wrongly perceived or overperceived maybe be a cause for fear. In order to describe the use of clay painting, I shall first concentrate on the encounter with an overperceived being: the dead person. When I asked people why they had painted themselves, they most often replied: ‘I dreamed’ (Anye wakunaasi). The interview then revealed the details of the dream: sometimes this was a problem with the herd that was a long way away and sick, and sometimes the idea that enemies were going to attack. But often I was told of the vision of a dead person. Dreams are never interpreted. One simply states what was seen. What seemed to trouble people the most was that they had seen the dead person as well as they could see me. The problem lies in the fact that the dead person imposes their presence as distinctly as if he were still alive, not simply as a figment of the dreamer’s memory, because memories occur not only during dreams. I tried to ascertain if a link could be established between these visions and the menenge (plural menenga),

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ghostly spirits (supposedly those of the dead) living in the bush land and in the earth, but without success. The problem lay only in the fact of having seen a dead person. To alleviate the effects of these difficult visions, a skilled person, the ngereye (plural ngereya), prescribes clay. It was always towards these people that I was directed when I wanted to find out more. They alone have the capacity to see correctly what is wrongly perceived by others or, conversely, to bear the vision of what one should not see. They can thus stimulate the vision of dead people who were not close to them without this being problematic. They can also see future dangers in dreams. Their powers of divination enable them, for example, to foresee an attack or to know in advance the sex of a child before it is born. But this is not esoteric knowledge or that acquired through contact with a spirit. It is always and exclusively knowledge of visual information that cannot be perceived by others: the foetus is hidden in the mother’s womb, and the coming attack would require movement in space to see the fighters approaching. In a word, the visions enable the ngereye to see places where neither he nor others find themselves. Neither the past nor the future is accessible to him. Likewise, the vision of the dead person is always contemporaneous with the dream. The vision does not actualize the presence of a dead person as if the dead would come back from another world or another time. The ngereye does not introduce third persons or hold particular relations with the dead people he sees, but he is capable of holding this face-to-face position.8 The ngereye proposes treatment for the problematic situation. This first of all entails re-creating a relationship with the dead person. If the Mursi bury a body and if they organize a funeral ceremony,9 several actions are carried out, one of which implies the use of clay. The ngereye proceeds to apply clay on the forehead and then on the fingers of the corpse. He then takes hold of the rigid hands and places them on the forehead of the close family members who are present at the ceremony. Thus, the dead person and his close relations will all bear the clay mark composed of lines on the forehead, as a first form of relationship that may afterwards be renewed, for example, following a dream. This is what clay can achieve; it is referred to as barari (powerful, strong) and is feared by all.10 It can re-create a relationship according to a method initiated by the living. This relationship asserts that the dead person is dead and that the living person is still alive. Indeed, the dangers expressed by the Mursi are less linked to the potential evil influence of the dead person than to their visual presence: this presence recalls too strongly the face-to-face relationships between living people, whereas everything, the painful memory most of all, recalls that the person seen

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in the dream is well and truly dead. Moreover, the word translated as body (ree), as we have seen in Chapter 1, does not apply to a corpse, but only to the living body that is active in the social space. And it is in this way that the dead person presents themself in dreams. Among the Mursi, the dead, as with genealogy in general, only participate in the affairs of the living by being forgotten. Either they remain in the form of a generic name (when the deceased has given his name to a group from the paternal line, called kogine) or they impose themselves on personal memories that the social conscience does not allow one to share. One does not speak of one’s dead any more than one speaks easily of one’s dreams. Dreams are never recounted in the form of speeches, except to the ngereye or possibly to the anthropologist. Dreaming of the dead is the common lot of everyone, but this can only be shown thanks to a few clues: the clay that a person applies to his forehead can tell others that he has dreamt of a dead person or of any other danger. The clay carries an emotional charge. It is visible on a part of the body that is the most exposed to the eyes of interlocutors; it modifies the person who bears the mark. This person displays on his face the tone of his dream. Interactions will then be conducted differently. One will avoid asking too many questions of the person covered in clay; he will be forgiven for not taking part in discussions and will be excused from participating in a number of social conventions. The person covered in clay is thus said to be ‘invisible’, as several Mursi told me. In the case of a dream about a dead person, the latter is metonymically present in the clay and faces the living in the appearance of painting. This painting on living people’s face is thus his only public form. The dead person and the memory of him are a personal affair. Moreover, when the Mursi bury their dead, there are no tombs indicating the location of the body; at most, there may be a stone for a few days or weeks. This absence is the first mark of the oblivion stipulated by the deceased. The transient beings revealed by clay painting are not only the dead, even if the use of such painting is often associated with them. The beings may be very varied, but the danger they represent is always treated in this way. Their common point is the problematic vision that reveals them. They may be revealed in a dream (as with the vision of a confrontation or a murder, a death during childbirth or an epidemic, etc.). They are not then personified ‘beings’, but they are revealed in a vision, whereas they could not be perceived during waking experience: they are overperceived. However, some beings may also represent a danger if they are insufficiently seen. A snake glimpsed before it slithers away to hide in the grass, the fatal bite of which is justifiably to be feared, gives rise to clay painting to protect against a potential danger. The beings thus perceived in problematic visions may take on different forms. In

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this sense, the dead are only the ‘beings’ that present a problem of vision the most clearly and the most frequently, but they are not the only ones.

The Paradox of Disguise: Ornaments for Tourists Encountering tourists requires another type of ornamentation. This painting is particularly rich in colours and shapes, and the jewellery is abundant and worn in unusual places. At first sight, the situation that could explain this profusion of ornaments seems simple. A tourist takes photographs of a Mursi and each one returns after a few minutes with the fruit of his ‘work’. The former has got pictures of a ‘tribe’ with strange customs made visible by body ornaments, and the Mursi has received a few coins for each release of the shutter on the tourist’s cameras. Régi (2012) recalls one of the explicit motivations of the Mursi who say they ‘take’ money. The tourists are the people who ‘take’ photos (Turton 2004). The ornaments of the former are traded for the photographs of the latter, so the increase in the number of ornaments will enable the Mursi to earn more money. The difference between the body ornaments that I have been able to observe during my fieldwork and those reserved for the tourists is enormous. There is certainly an increase in the adornment, but also in the originality of this ornamentation. It was around the village of Dildil, on the edge of Mursi territory, and in Kibish in Suri territory, where most of the tourists are concentrated, that I was able to see ways of adorning the body close to those that I had seen in books of photographs of ‘the peoples of the Omo valley’ (Beckwith, Fisher and Hancock 1990; Giansanti 2004; Silvester 2006; Salgado 2013). This unusual context brings with it new relationships and consequently generates unusual ornamentation, exclusively for the tourists’ benefit. However, this is not only an excess of adornment that could bear witness to a process of ‘folklorization’ for the Mursi, who would thus be making an obvious spectacle of their culture when faced with growing interest from outside observers. Régi (2012) has shown the Mursi’s desire to attract tourists, particularly through the staging of their work, but the question of the aesthetics and artistic forms used in the ornaments must still be raised. In the context of interaction with tourists, ornamentation has continually been enriched and modified. One of its characteristics is the diverting of objects and ornaments from their usual function. I have expressed a critical point of view concerning some of the photographs when they do not make clear the context in which they were taken and when they claim to bear witness to ancestral practices that are nothing of

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the sort (Eczet 2010b). Serge Tornay (2009) has described in detail the evolution of the iconography: under the growing pressure of photographers, the populations of the Omo valley have changed the place where they wear their loin cloth when posing for photos. Thirty years ago, the first images showed the loin cloth in the right place, later it was worn around the neck, and finally on the head! Interaction generally constitutes an unpleasant experience both from the point of view of the tourists (Abbink 2000: 10–11) and from that of the Mursi themselves (Turton 2004: 8). In all respects, it resembles a confrontation (Abbink 2000: 8). The actual taking of the photo, and not just the confrontation between two categories of people, poses a problem. When a young Suri took my camera and tried to photograph a woman drawing water, and then one of his friends who was a little shy, neither of them appreciated the attempt and went off complaining as if they had been harassed by an annoying tourist, because it really is a question of annoyance. Very often the photographs of photojournalists or tourists show frozen figures, all of whom display a serious, not to say resigned air. The act of photographing is unique in that it focuses on the subject briefly but intensely. Moreover, this is done through the intermediary of an artefact (the camera) that is explicitly directed at the model and that hides one of the most important components of an interindividual relationship: the face. Even if the subject seems to agree to be the model, the act itself does not correspond to the usual logics of interaction. There is an imbalance in the photographic act. Susan Sontag (1973) describes photography as a predatory act that the tourist context illustrates well, provided that one does not see in the pejorative meaning of predation only a capturing of the spirit, but in a more practical way, a relationship of unequal forces deriving from an imbalance in the interaction. Indeed, the camera introduces technological as well as relational mediation between the photographer and his subject. The cases of ‘reflex’ cameras are of such a size that they cover half of the face, and they are often surmounted with protruding lenses. There are amateurs with high amplitude varifocal lenses (zooms) and professionals with high aperture lenses. In all cases, photographers direct at their subjects a camera that has all the attributes of a firearm: the photographer aims, puts his eye to the viewfinder and shoots. The terminology is perfectly adapted to both a camera and a Kalashnikov. The Mursi very quickly made the parallel between taking a photograph and shooting a gun. Both use the verb ‘to shoot’ (edjo boto; edjo bena: ‘you shoot a photo’; you shoot bullets’, literally ‘stones’).

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With digital cameras, once the photograph has been taken, the tourist’s eyes are fixed on the camera. The camera is lowered to the level of his chest so that he can check on the screen the image that has just been recorded. The photographer’s smile at the subject after the taking of the photo with a film camera is now replaced by his focusing on himself. And it seems to me that for the tourists, this is a practical means to avoid looking again at their Mursi subjects who often make clear the fact that they have been insulted. Recent technological innovation therefore does not re-create favourable interactional conditions. Maybe it accentuates the imbalance even more. Even if compact digital cameras could, because of their small size, eradicate the constraints of larger cameras that cover the face, they on the contrary divert the attention of the photographer away from his subject. Henceforth the tourist looks at an object a few centimetres away from him that is pointed at his subject. At the same time, he has the subject in his sights and the visualization of his instantaneous image: his subject is only seen through the screen of his camera. Like an unmanned drone spying on a territory that presents a great danger (here the face-to-face interaction with a Mursi), these little cameras create a three-way relationship that makes any possible eye contact impossible: all that remains is the photographic weapon directed at the subject, and the photographer who only sees through the intermediary of a screen. Why then does the painting increase in intensity in front of cameras? I suggest that for the Mursi, it is a way to rebalance the interaction by altering their practices and disguising their person. The paint used when in contact with tourists is made up of muddy oxides, the same ones that are used during dances to blur the overall vision of the body (see Chapter 6). Often in the presence of tourists, only the face is covered with paint. Furthermore, it is practically impossible to photograph someone whose face is not painted. This paint takes on the double function of a mask: showing and hiding. The mask shows itself, but hides the individual. Thus, the more colourful and the more disguised the individual is – and hence a little less himself – the more he will give himself over to the photographic game. Each Mursi creates a facial barrier symmetrical to that of the camera, and each side takes part in the game while hiding behind their own artefact. The painting enables the Mursi to maintain the paradox of attracting the tourists while at the same time keeping them at a distance. The Mursi and their neighbours the Suri become more aware of their customs concerning the body in these encounters. The wearing of lipplates is poorly perceived by the Ethiopians from the highlands, and

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fascinates tourists as much as it repels them. The practice has been described as ‘backwardness’ that needs to be stopped, and the Mursi as well as the Suri have finally integrated this criticism (Turton 2004; Latosky 2006). But ornamentation like paintings for the tourists does not enter into the argument, first of all because Westerners appreciate supposed ‘primitiveness’ from both the artistic and the anthropological point of view, and painting is deemed to be proof of this. This shows benevolent evolutionism on the part of this particular public (Régi 2013). The ornaments, because they have been deflected from their primary function, can increase without calling into question their former uses. The modification in the use of everyday ornaments no longer enables them to reveal the usual relationships with their peers, their animals or the dead. In the context of interaction with tourists, it is not frowned upon to wear a loin cloth, a calabash or a bovine decoration on one’s head. Here the use may, and even should, be modified. Indeed, some ornaments and certain gestures figure ‘intermedial forms’ that bear witness to the relationship of interdependence between the Mursi and their bovine animals (see Chapters 6 and 7, in which I present several of these intermedial forms). This is particularly the case with the lip-plate that the women wear in their lower lip and that changes the proportions of the face. Symmetrically, the oxen have their horns modified. And if the women and the oxen have their faces ‘deformed’ in similar proportions, these representations are less the result of reciprocal imitation than of an artistic form showing the interdependence of human and bovine groups (Eczet 2012). The positive aesthetic validation involves an artistic form that has captured both the human and the bovine in order to produce a third form that bears witness to the relationship that the two groups share. However, in the ornamentation destined for the tourists, this third form is shattered. We can often see people wearing a ngila (an exclusively bovine ornament made of strips of leather and surmounted with two warthog tusks). The men are thus in the situation of imitating the oxen, which is unthinkable in everyday life. Sometimes again, women place their dresses on their heads, thus diverting one of their most essential ornaments from its usual function. These alterations thus take two paths: either the imitation of the ox by using, for example, exclusively bovine ornaments (the humans play at being oxen) or the modification of the use of an ornament (the people no longer know how to use it). Another striking aspect of these photographs is the generally fixed posture of the subjects. The latter are always painted and stare intensely at the camera lens; sometimes they turn away from it, but they always maintain the same bodily rigidity. Contrary to the painting used during dances and that is washed away with sweat to reveal a body in the pro-

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cess of modification (see Chapter 6), the painting destined for the tourists must stay on the body of the Mursi. If the latter remain motionless, it is so that the painting will stay on their skin, will keep the tourists at a distance, as with clay, and will fulfil its role as a visual barrier between them and the transient people. *** Jewellery reveals a certain activity, but one that is not particularly intense for pairs of individuals; it does not transmit precise information and is addressed to all. Dung painting, because of the parallel between an ox and its owner, reveals pre-existing relationships with animals as much as it is directed towards future relationships. With these ornamental practices, the aim is to reveal relationships that have already been formed in order to highlight certain friendly and pastoral qualities. However, clay painting reveals very little. It is directed towards the dead person who needs to be kept in his place and towards the living who could be included in this task. The ornamentation that has been diverted from its original purpose is aimed only at tourists in order to make any interaction with them bearable. These last two practices are reactions to relationships that have endured but that must be kept at a distance. They reveal very little, but bear witness by their very existence to the task of putting an end to relationships. Ephemeral ornaments are visual propositions that orient the observer towards a thematic issue: informing spectators and regulating certain relationships. Without speaking a word and without making any particular gesture, these ornaments become included in interactions that they enrich. They are part of procedural knowledge (Bloch 1998) which has not been the subject of comment (or at least very little). And the ephemeral character of these ornaments should not hide their importance because they reveal some of the most elementary interactions in society. But besides these visual propositions on the body that set up a certain dynamic and therefore only have a transitory use, there are more lasting interventions. Because they are stable in time, they contribute very little to defining interactional conditions; rather, they act as a kind of patrimony by showing relationships, states or shared conceptions.

Notes 1. Either it has focused on the lip-plate, which, it is true, is a very well-known Mursi or Suri emblem (see Turton 2004; Latosky 2006; Fayers-Kerr 2011; Eczet 2012), or it has become an exception. The work of Faris on the Nuba (1972) is

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2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

the only study dealing with body ornamentation as a central issue, although the author remains on the level of formal and symbolist analysis. My proposition will mainly focus on dead people, but clay painting is used to deal with all kinds of ‘visual dangers’. I present jewellery as an indistinct class of ornaments resting on the same relational logic. See Eczet (2013) for an exhaustive list of the jewellery recorded during my fieldwork and for a description of some of the variations in usage that are not relevant to the discussion in this chapter. The value of ornaments is derisory. During my fieldwork between 2007 and 2010, bracelets were exchanged for 5–10 Ethiopian birrs (€0.30–0.80). A large bag of cereals was traded on the nearest markets for several hundred birr. The sale of all of a young girl’s bracelets would therefore hardly cover the cost of a bag of grain. Children also begin this practice with calves, and a man without a bull will do it with an ox. In these cases, the reproductive intention is requalified as a desire for growth. The continuum between the desire for reproduction and growth is visible when the bull becomes an ox after being castrated. After several matings, the bull is castrated if its owner acquires another. Because of this, the ox will grow fatter and become the animal to which poems are sung. Dung painting then ceases. It was the painting that in a certain way made possible the growth that calves can also benefit from: because they have been painted and because they have reproduced, they become imposing oxen. Sometimes the men justified this painting with a laconic ‘so that they will grow’ (ke te bui). When I asked somewhat provocatively if appearing thus covered in dung was a way of showing that they were going to copulate like their bull, they replied that this was not the case at all, but nonetheless insisted on the copulation of the animal: – ‘You are going to copulate like your bull?’ (Inye hale chok dhole co olea nunu kare?) – ‘My bull copulates with a cow but I am just going to play [without any sexual connotation] with a girl’ (Olea nanu muk be nga anye kitiragn co dhole song’). For an alternative interpretation in connection with the treatment, see FayersKerr (2013). Actually, ngereye are presented as people gifted with skills that are both unusual and quite simple to define. Only mature people have the systematic right to a funeral ceremony. In the case of the death of a young person, for example, funeral procedures may be simplified; this may even mean leaving the corpse in the bush. The earth is a source of fear and also the favourite vector of witchcraft. Although this is very little theorized, a lasting or chronic illness may be put down to witchcraft. Often the vector of witchcraft will be the earth. Therefore, many practices aiming at combating these illnesses involve actions that include the earth (like spraying) or imposing a temporary ban linked to the earth (for example, forbidding a person to walk on footprints). The work of healers (ngere) consists in putting earth on an unspecified ‘evil/ill’. I refer the reader once again to Fayers-Kerr (2013) for an analysis of the use of clay in therapeutic practices and for the relationship that the Mursi have with the earth.

5 Displaying a Common Heritage Lasting Adornments

During my first period of fieldwork among the Mursi, I took part in a meeting of pastoralist groups from southern Ethiopia and some of their Kenyan and Sudanese neighbours, organized by The Pastoralist Communication Initiative. Only a few places were allocated to each group and I witnessed some disputes among the Mursi about who should attend. In spite of that, they particularly wanted to include several women (young girls and mature wives) amongst their representatives, although the latter would not take part in the debates. Moreover, I noticed that these women were going to the meetings wearing their usual apparel, i.e. their dresses and their adornments. The men, for their part, were wearing Western-style textile clothes (T-shirts and trousers), and thus were indistinguishable in appearance from the organizers and other observers. The presence of the women, which was more visual than political (i.e. oral), said less about the role of women1 than about the role of certain adornments of which they are the chief depositaries. The constant presence of these ornaments among the Mursi, and their strong presence outside their territory, underlines some important identity issues for the group.

The Men on the Women’s Dresses A woman’s dress (say, plural sayo) rests on the right shoulder (feminine laterality) and is added to a skirt (june), which is made up of two parts

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(kele, the front part, and jon, the back part). In this section I use the term ‘dress’ to designate all these parts without distinction, as the adornments that I am going to describe are present on all of the women’s clothes. The dresses are made from antelope skins as cow skin is too stiff. It must be rubbed with grease regularly and softened by twisting the leather over small sections. Often the young girls begin by using an old dress that their mothers have lent them in order to make their own. These dresses have two types of ornamentation: the first is invariably composed of black lines incrusted into the leather; and the second is always present on young girls’ dresses and consists of beads sewn onto the leather. These two types of decoration represent the relationships between a young girl and a group of men: the black lines figure the generic affiliation of the woman to a group of men, whereas the beads indicate the men who, either effectively or specifically, are in a filial, marital or other kind of relationship with the women wearing them. It must be noted that over the past few years, the Mursi have had ever greater access to industrially produced goods on the market at Jinka. Thus, among the women particularly, textile materials tend to replace the leather dresses. However, in spite of this change, which makes it impossible to encrust coloured beads, Mursi women prefer the striped materials that clearly recall the stripes on the leather dresses. The dresses adorned with beads are worn by those young girls who are about to be married and by young mothers. The very young girls and mature women wear dresses without beads. The beads are most often sewn onto the lower hem of the garment forming semi-circles or ‘upturned Us’. The colours of the beads recall the men, and hence the cattle the woman wearing the dress is closely related to.2 For example, Arlugoloni, who is not yet married, sewed beads of three different colours onto her dress, indicating three identities: red-white-red (lugolony) is her own colour given by her elder brother; black (koroy) is her father’s colour; and mottled black (biseni) is her elder sister’s colour.3 The sister, whom I called Ngachare, also wears a wide embroidered belt (naddere) that she adds to her dress when watching the men’s stick duels. She indicates her future matrimonial alliance with the mottled black colour of her future husband, thanks to the alternation of black-and-white beads. Another segment of grey-green-blue beads (chage) indicates one of her future husband’s brothers. Finally, a large portion of the belt consists of the alternation of black bands over a short section and white bands over a longer one, showing the black-white-black colour (lui). She explained that she ‘drank’ this colour, according to the idiomatic expression, because her future husband also ‘drinks’ it. Indeed, the latter’s derived colour (hamwe) is determined by his elder brother, Olelu (Black-White-

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Black Bull). She thus displays both the colour of her future alliance and of two of her future brothers-in-law. Sometimes, the semi-circles of beads sewn along the lower part of the dress were explained to me as representing a herd. The beads indicate the colour of the cows and provide information concerning the colour of their owner, who is often the woman’s father, elder brother or husband. A line of beads sewn onto the dress may also represent the young boy who accompanies the herd and who, once again, is identified thanks to his colour. As in wives’ poems in which the women describe the distribution of colours, the dress and the belt make it possible to include the colour references of the men in their entourage. The dress can be taken off, but not the skirt (june). The latter is almost an extension of a woman’s body; it is only rarely taken off even during sexual intercourse. The skirt is a fundamental attribute for women and is central to the ceremony that makes a young woman (dhole) a wife (mwe). This ceremony, called june chibine (‘the knotted skirt’), consists essentially in the replacement of one skirt by another. The rows of black parallel lines are always present on the three parts of the dress. A woman who was inscribing these parallel lines by scratching the sun-dried skin of her new dress told me that without them, this piece of leather was not a dress. Each line measures about 15 centimetres long, half a centimetre wide and is about one centimetre away from the next one. Between each band composed of parallel lines, the vertical space measures about 5–10 centimetres. The dress is entirely covered in these lines. As for the beads, this ornamentation provides information about a network of men. But unlike the beads that point out individual identities, the lines indicate the constant presence of a multitude of unspecified men around the woman. In order to understand what kind of presence they refer to and how a sequence of lines can indicate a multitude, we must digress into the subject of matrimonial practices and contexts of enumeration. The Mursi practise levirate marriage. On the death of her husband, a widow should automatically marry her brother-in-law, in most cases the eldest of the brothers. Also, in the case of sterility, one of the brothers of the husband is mobilized to produce a child with the wife. The child thus born will be by right considered as the child of the husband and not of his brother. But beyond this example and that of levirate marriage, which is not systematically practised,4 many other relationships are possible through marriage, as each woman potentially has a greater web of relationships than simply her husband’s brothers. The Mursi recognize groups from the paternal line (kawuchua), which one could call a clan. These groups are themselves divided into kin

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groups from paternal ancestors (kogine), which comprise several men (a few dozen for the biggest ones) and their descendants. Another kind of division somewhere between kawuchua and kogine brings together several kin groups that do not have a specific name. Let’s take the example of the Juhay clan (kawuchua).5 This one is divided into several kin groups from the paternal line (kogine). I identified the following: Dorwa, Olechude, Kaolomeri, Tula, Dedep, Mirezuo, Darchalu, Arichage, Binianinge and Ngokolu. In this example, Samelu, from the kogine Dorwa, personifies Ego in order to describe possible associations. He divides his clan into three groups of kogine: (1) Dorwa-Olechude-Kaolomeri; (2) TulaDedep-Mirezuo; and (3) Darchalu-Arichage-Bibianinge-Ngokolu. Concerning the men belonging to one of the two other subgroups ((2) and (3)), Samelu says that they do not drink from the same udder, thus indicating that they are not brothers: ‘he drinks6 from another udder: Tula is different, Darchalu is different, Dorwa is different’ (Bhonia a bibi, tula a bi, darchalu a bi, dorwa a bi). Samelu simply notes that they are from the same clan (a Juhay kare), that they are the same (a etto) and that they are one (a dhone karee). Concerning the men from the kogine of his group (1), Samelu replies in the same way as if it were his own kogine: a godengen, which means half-brother, distinct from godine, which means brother, but without justifying this association by a different ancestry from that which justifies the clan or the kin group. If his wife had a child by a man from his own kogine (like his brother) or one belonging to the same kogine subgroup (a half-brother), the child would rightfully be accepted as his own. If adultery is proven, it would carry only slight blame (unless those concerned were caught in the act). Samelu then established a distinction according to a criterion that I could not fathom: if his wife had a child with a man from group (3), the child would be kept, but with a penalty that could go as far as violent reprisals or murder. Concerning group (2), Samelu told me that they were different, like foreigners. The procedure of conciliation would then take a different turn: the child would not be integrated into the progeny of the father in the same way, and compensation would be demanded, beyond the possible murder of the offender. Nonetheless, if the levirate marriage could not take place from among the brothers or in the kogine to which Ego belongs (group (1)), a woman would go to the two other groups in order to find a new husband. Each woman has, because of her marriage, potential alliances with men, extending from the quasi-equivalence with the husband to the foreigner. The consequences linked to adultery are therefore variable according to the different potentialities.7 There is a gradation of which

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the future of the child – the collateral and durable result of an extraconjugal relationship – is the prime witness. Thus, the wife does not acquire only one conjugal relationship with her husband, but many possibilities that, whether they are intended or opportunistic, are tolerated to different degrees, as is the management of their consequences. In this sense, she finds herself linked to several people not by right or in fact, but potentially. During interviews concerning these kin groups called kogine, Samelu and the other interviewees listed them by performing an idiomatic gesture: one finger was raised for each one and then passed over the chin, going from the base of the finger up to the end, as if the chin were drawing a line along each finger. Generally when someone indicated to me a list of names (those referring to the different grades of an elder, for example), he did so by drawing parallel vertical lines in the sandy soil. Each line corresponded to the uttering of a name. The motif on the ground seemed to be identical to that found on the dresses. The same thing happens when the ‘junior elders’ receive several new names simultaneously when they become ‘senior elders’. The stating of a list of names is accompanied by parallel vertical lines drawn on the ground. Finally we have seen with clay painting that the vertical lines drawn on the forehead indicate a link between a dreamer and a dead person by representing several identities simultaneously (see Chapter 4). The Mursi have a base 20 system of counting.8 Ten is called tomon and is accompanied by a gesture in which the folded hands are struck together, as if to indicate the combination of all the fingers. The number twenty is irkun, but it is from the number forty that the base 20 system can be perceived. Forty is zuo raman, literally ‘two people’. The Mursi justify this appellation by the fact that forty is equal to the sum of all the fingers and all the toes of two people. Then they say zuo size (three people) for sixty, zuo wush (four people) for eighty, etc. Thus, an ensemble is counted by reference to groups of fingers, which are then unfolded one by one to count. The parallel vertical lines, often drawn with the fingers or on the fingers, are thus a visual indication of the listing of identity. Covering a woman’s dress with these lines underlines the multiple identities to which each woman is linked.

Synthesis of Scarifications Existing both as a painful, personal experience and as a visual mark exhibited to everyone, scarifications have a wide range of references. Scarifications are to be found on the upper part of the body: the torso,

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the breast, the belly, the back, the hips, the shoulders and the arms. Contrary to the practices of the many Nilotic groups of neighbouring Sudan, no scarification is to be found on the face. The kichoa have varied motifs, but they are made in the same way. They are done by lifting the skin with a thorn and then making two circular incisions in the raised skin. The result is an oval-shaped scar half-a-centimetre in diameter. This can be repeated as many times as necessary in order to create a pattern. The patterns are thus composed of cuts forming dashes (or dots) in rows of two or three. The men say that it is feminine to have kichoa on the belly, the shoulder blades or the hips, although men can have them there too. Both sexes have scarifications, but some patterns are exclusive to one or the other sex. Some patterns are recurrent. They do not have a specific name, so I shall give them names arbitrarily. Thus, the ‘check pattern’ is composed of a vertical middle line that runs along the abdomen. At regular intervals, three lines, each composed of three rows of dashes, cross the first line at right angles in a symmetrical fashion. The bottom one is on a level with the navel. This form of scarification is exclusively feminine. The ‘double upturned U’ is only to be found on the shoulder and applies to both sexes. It is composed of a base about 15 centimetres long on which are placed two adjacent upturned Us. Lines of dashes are to be found on the back. They may follow the shape of the ribs and form a horizontal line on the level of the hips, or a big C on the shoulder blades.9 The scars imputed to the ‘fathers’10 during beatings or rituals are also called kichoa. They are due to blows administered with a branch. It is frequent to see such scars on a man’s sternum, shoulders or back. They alternate with those caused by the sticks called donga during the duels of the same name and are inflicted by one’s ‘peers’. These are obviously of indeterminate size and shape according to the kind of blow inflicted. There are therefore two types of kichoa depending on the way in which they are produced. The murder of an enemy by a man will lead to a scarification produced by burning, which is called riru.11 These are first of all carried out on the forearm and perhaps later on the upper arm in the event of a repeated offence. In mun, the forearm is mun (plural muni). The Mursi themselves are called the Muni and it is on this part of the body, the homonym of the collective identity,12 that the scarifications linked to murder are to be found. The riru are produced with the point of a lance heated in the fire. They are scars made up of three continuous parallel lines. The only pattern of the riru is made up of two parts that are generally associated. The upper part is the schematic pattern of a wave stretched out regularly and represented horizontally with two crests with a trough between them.

Displaying a Common Heritage

Figure 5.1. Patterns of riru scarifications. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

The second shape is a U turned on its side and reproduced four times – two on the left and two on the right – just below the wave. The murder of a man implies a riru on the right arm, and the murder of a woman a riru on the left arm. For the first murder, the whole pattern is carried out on the forearm. For subsequent murders, the pattern is placed on the upper arm, the wave will then reach and cover the deltoid. However, in practice these rules are often circumvented. I have often seen the wave pattern on its own on the deltoid and more rarely the four Us on their own on the forearm. On the contrary, laterality is always respected. Finally, it is not necessary for a murderer to have a riru, but it is necessary to be a murderer to have them. Comments on scarifications are minimal: ‘it’s fine’ (a challi) is often the only justification that I obtained. As for the riru, murder is mentioned, but without any real explanation as to the precise nature of the murder that caused them to be made. Concerning kichoa, when I insisted, I simply received a laconic reply ‘I just cut’ (anye kedi hong’). If again I insisted, I received the answer that inevitably puts an end to any discussion ‘it’s the tradition’ (a dame) and one might be content to qualify these regular and prominent scars as gratuitous aesthetics that add to the appeal of a young and silky skin (eri a remisew). The scarification sessions do not seem to be particularly complex and they are perfectly integrated into the course of daily life. I have observed

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three sessions that involved women for the making for kichoa. They all followed this chronology: I first heard about a woman who wanted scarification. The woman in question was apprehensive and put it off until the following day several times. A few days later, I was contacted as the session was about to begin. There I found several wives and young women who had temporarily broken off their usual activities (work in the fields or domestic tasks in the vicinity of their houses). All of them were watching a woman making cuts in the skin of another woman. They had no hesitation in making comments and calling to the two women. The session played out in this way without restraint or any particular implications. The men passing by stopped to have a quick look and then went on their way. In fact, it all went off as if nothing exceptional was going on, although a woman was undergoing unbearable pain. And the woman who was on the receiving end of the razor blade or the sharp obsidian either laughed or concentrated, and when the session was over, she went back to her usual activities, like working in the fields or nursing her child. The failure to prepare a special framework for these sessions and the lack of commentary on scarification obviously does not indicate negligence on the part of the Mursi. Those who do not have scarifications assert that they have abandoned the idea because of the extreme pain it entails: ‘it hurts a lot and I don’t like it’ (A wadino hang’! Anye kamarew). Those who do have scarifications dismiss them as if they were of no importance. The mastery of self that is necessary during the scarification process must also be found in the lack of discourse amplifying the act a posteriori. The cuts and the burning do not provoke a strong reaction; this is so much the case that it is not worth mentioning them afterwards. The ideal of self-mastery has been remarked upon by other authors who have studied the Mursi: David Turton (personal communication, September 2012) often heard it stated that men don’t defecate; an ideal man is someone self-contained, in possession of excellent self-mastery and awareness. I was reminded of this when I came across Riesman’s … reflections among the Fulani, where he found it was shameful for a man to be seen eating or defecating or in any state of need; similarly, Hutchinson (1996: 189–91) noted that men should express their self-mastery through their eating practices in contrast with women whose menstruation was a constant reminder that they cannot even master their own bodies. (Fayers-Kerr 2013: 27)

This desire for control can be seen among the Mursi on many occasions. For instance, mealtimes are intense moments. Food must be eaten very quickly, not because of gargantuan hunger, but because one must be able

Displaying a Common Heritage

Photo 5.1. Session of kitchoa scarifications. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

to consume a great deal in a short space of time. The men justify this by reference to the warlike raids during which one has no time to waste. Men should be able to drink several litres of beer in one go, dilating their stomachs in just a few seconds. Difficult times bring out the ideal of self-mastery: one should never complain. I have walked with people for several hours in the sun. Some of them had a haggard look, holding their heads in their hands because of painful migraines caused by dehydration. But in spite of all this, they never referred to their discomfort. The ideal of mastery also brings with it confusing answers for the observer. When I was sleeping on the ground desperately in pain, with bruised pressure points on my hips and scraped ankles, I inquired in exasperation of certain Mursi why they did not make themselves beds out of straw or other materials that would provide a kind of cushion between the body and the ground. My interlocutors systematically answered that they were capable of putting up with such conditions, without any further justification. They may complain of poverty in relation to the acquisition of cows or other goods (soap or medicine), but sleeping on the ground was not an issue. On the contrary, ‘we are red dust’ and ‘we are raised dust’13 are idiomatic expressions for the arrogance and pride at being autonomous and strong, and especially at being able to sleep wherever one finds oneself. When famine set in, we had to be satisfied with only a basket of sorghum porridge every two days. Once when I was particularly hungry, I

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asked a man to sell me a goat, but he asked me for an exorbitant price with a mocking air. I should have given him an external reason, for example, the breaking of a taboo that would require the sacrifice of the animal – in this case, the necessity would have been outside myself. But in order to make him lower his price, I told him naively ‘I’m starving’ (Anye dag’agn hozue). He calmly replied with a touch of irony: ‘It’s a Mursi tradition [being hungry]. Are you turning White?’ (A damea Muni. Inye te arenji?). The ideal of self-mastery makes pain and discomfort mere variables to be denied, sometimes even to be sought after. However, there are events that have to be undergone and the loss of mastery implies the performance of other actions in order to regain it. First, inopportune bleeding – generally speaking, blood that flows inopportunely is always problematic and requires treatment. For example, I was sitting in the central area of the encampment with Olekiwo when a friend of her mother’s came to speak to her about her somewhat aggressive behaviour. She gently made fun of Olekiwo mimicking her gesticulating in all directions during a stick duel. She prolonged her imitation using the gestures of women’s duels in which heavy metallic bracelets replace the wooden sticks of the men. But in her enthusiastic imitation, she inadvertently struck Olekiwo on the head and made it bleed. The game stopped immediately and she called over a young boy who brought her some ashes in lieu of clay. She did not place the ashes directly on the wound, but on Olekiwo’s face and on her own, as well as on the faces of all those present including mine. On another day, a big argument in the encampment resulted in several bloody injuries, and seeing blood stopped the fight.14 The blood that flows, however superficially, is always treated as a danger. For some blood, the answer is scarification. Indeed, blood is always the common factor beyond the apparent dissimilarity between the events that give rise to the scars. In other words, the scar is the standard result of a reaction to different kinds of bleeding. It is thus according to the type of bleeding to which the scars refer that they should be understood. But if blood shed inopportunely gives rise to another kind of bleeding, which this time will be controlled, the common generative principle cannot be perceived so easily, because some scarifications anticipate bleeding, while others concern blood of a different nature. Although they cannot be controlled, some kinds of bleeding are recurrent and can be predicted, such as menstruation. Others are probable – for example, if one takes the risk of participating in a stick duel. Therefore, if different scarifications can be situated according to the type of bleeding, the bleeding itself is largely defined by its recurrent or occasional nature or its predictable or potential occurrence.

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Table 5.1. Causes of bleedings and chronology with scarifications. © JeanBaptiste Eczet Type of bleeding

Causes

Chronology of scarification

Pattern

Recurring and predictable

Menstruation, childbirth

Anticipation

Central grid

Varied and unpredictable

Illness

Reaction

Various (part of the grid)

Beatings. Unpredictable but likely

Warrior ethos (expected participation in duels)

Anticipation

Various (frequent innovation)

Suffered blows. Unpredictable but likely

Duels or punishment by elder

Consequence

Underdetermined scar

Perpetrated in the enemy’s body

Killing

Reaction

Wave and four Us

Type of scarification

Kichoa

Riru

Table 5.1 gives a list of the principal causes of scarifications, the type of bleeding and the scarification that corresponds to it, and the relationship between the bleeding and the controlled scarification. The physiology of women implies different kinds of predictable bleeding. Thus, belly scarifications anticipate the bleeding linked to menstruation and childbirth, and, as we shall see below, the lower lip is pierced shortly before the first sexual relations. The scarifications that correspond to these inevitable kinds of bleeding have a single pattern that is common to all women. Some illnesses cause bleeding, and scarifications are often carried out after the event, although this reaction is subject to a more variable appreciation. The patterns may be more or less inspired by others that already exist, or they may be totally new, but most often the place where the scarification is placed is directly linked to the place where the illness was situated. The scars received in duels and those that seem at first sight to be the most ‘gratuitous’ – i.e. without a direct link with the bleeding one

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is subjected to – are the two faces of the same action. Those produced fortuitously show the mastery of the body and the resistance to pain by the implication of the bearer of them during fights. But this bleeding is incurred by other Mursi in ceremonial contexts, which must never result in death. In short, the blood that one Mursi causes to flow in another implies another kind of blood, which he inflicts upon himself. This is why many kichoa-type scarifications are carried out at an age when both men and women take part in duels:15 these duels only take place when is all is well in the country and when there is no famine or serious problem to be dealt with, as they cannot allow themselves to shed blood while the country is suffering.16 However, when all is well enough in the country to allow blood to be shed, one must produce on one’s body what one is going to produce on the body of another, thus proving the mastery that one has by making oneself bleed as much as one makes others bleed. With the riru, the scarification of the murderer, the shedding of blood does not need to be on the body of a Mursi because of the different nature of the blood. The blood shed in a murder is not endogenous, as it is in a duel. The blood equivalent is not sought vis-à-vis something that does not concern the person who shed the blood. Exterior bleeding is not problematic; only the prestige of the mark is kept (and the scarification is made a long time after the act) and the prestige of the self-mastery that it implies for its realization. The Mursi scarification patterns are not very suggestive in themselves for the Mursi. They are not multilayered, i.e. evoking a number of other elements. On the contrary, I would suggest that they are the synthesis of tangible forms that can be easily observed in the visual environment of the Mursi, and that the perceptual links can be traced by analogy. The perceptions behind the patterns are always linked to human activity. In other words, one can see in these patterns archetypal forms of different kinds of human presence. This is a synthetic movement that results in the patterns, like a conclusion. The U, the most frequent pattern for the riru as for the kichoa, represents a domestic human presence. When an old man dies, he is taken from his hut (dori, plural doren) through the only narrow passage by which one is able to enter. This detail is not without importance as, in the case of the death of a single man – i.e. one who, according to the Mursi, is not mature enough to die – the roof of the hut is pierced and the body is taken out through this improvised passage. The usual passage forms an U. Moreover, the way in which it is made makes the pattern appear completely explicit before its integration into the general structure makes it less obvious.

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The shape of the cattle’s enclosure also forms a large U, the ‘thickness’ of which clearly recalls the riru. The entrance is situated between the two upstrokes of the U and the cattle spread themselves out in the central area, while the extremities are reserved for the houses. The riru can be graphically confused with the charted vision of the plan of the enclosure. It should be noted that the Mursi are familiar with looking at plans, particularly in divination practices.17 Similarly, the whole of the enclosure itself with its co-residents forms a U, like a fractal pattern, in the heart of which is the central area (balo) that is the preferred meeting place of the men. This pattern may also be found on the soles of sandals, which today are made from tyres. They are cut out of the tyre and leave the imprint of the U on the ground, and this enables the person wearing them to be identified as a Mursi. Such recognition is not anecdotal, as once or twice my own soles did not leave U footprints. The design on my soles was not recognized and was interpreted as the footprint of an enemy, and this led to a close inspection of the surrounding area. The wave, present above the U in the riru pattern, represents a kilitchoe (plural kilitcha), the generic name for birds of prey like the falcon or the buzzard.18 The Mursi pay close attention to birds,19 so it is not surprising to find them in these synthetic forms. The complete riru pattern may then figure a scene in which humans would be positioned beneath a flight of birds of prey. The riru would thus present a complete scene. Fayers-Kerr (2013: 37) suggests that these signs are the traces of vulture feet in the sandy earth (dong’ui, plural dung’ua). In any case, the evocation of the scene is linked to the idea of the hunt and murder. In Runebi Rongadi’s shield poem (see Chapter 3), he conjures up a warlike episode by mentioning the vultures who come afterwards (‘leaving the vultures satisfied’), a consequence of murder that will also imply scarification for the warrior. If the U is the elementary representation of human presence, then the bringing together of two Us may evoke the coming together of several humans. A ceremonial staff (samui) is used increasingly often by the Mursi, although it is said that it originated with the Me’en just to the north. This staff is made up of a narrow rod that is just as high as a woman’s face. At the end of this staff, two rods are attached on either side of the staff and this forms exactly the same pattern of double upturned Us as the kichoa. Young female spectators hold it in their right hands (masculine laterality) and can place their lip-plate over the staff, between the two Us. Finally, this staff is painted alternately in white and black, recalling the design of dashes in the kichoa. As the double U pattern is visually present during marriage ceremonies, it could be interpreted as

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representing two dwellings, or rather as two stable forms of human presence, if we retain the underdetermined significance of the pattern. Thus, it is not surprising to see this mark linked to the coming together of two encampments among young people who are about to marry. The pattern is particularly recurrent in the form of kichoa that are made when one participates in duels, which is where the different clans meet and where matrimonial alliances may be envisaged. The other kichoa types of scarifications mostly follow the natural lines of the body, like the ribs, the shoulder blades or the muscles. They have no representational value and have no meaning except in the fact of their existence, and here it is the body itself that indicates human presence. After all, the body may also be seen as an underdetermined index that does not indicate identity. In this sense, it is generic and archetypal, as is the pattern. Generally for scarification patterns, the distinction between indexical and iconic references is unjustified. It is more a question of a specular representation. Because of the analogies drawn from the patterns, the image may refer to the sign recursively: these signs do not necessarily have an original model; they reflect each other, as in a mirror image. With scarifications, the common repertoire is shown by the practical conditions of its existence, i.e. the scars are born of pain that does not make the bearer of them flinch. People have inscribed this experience on their bodies. This is not the general experience of being a Mursi, which would simply involve a tautological and useless definition of identity, but the experience of being a good Mursi, i.e. one who faces up to this self-mastery that is made apparent by a shared visual repertoire.

The Total Ornament: The Lip-Plates The lip-plate or labret20 is an exceptional ornament as it transforms the most important place for interaction between people: the face. It causes pain when it is first inserted and even afterwards, as it impedes some of the wearer’s basic functions. If other bodily adornments often give rise to pain, obstruction or a modification of the appearance, one must recognize that the lip-plate combines them all to a remarkable degree. It is thus an ornament that is all the more complex. Its complexity is the fruit of a cluster of representations and actions that converge upon it and justify its existence. This complexity is often eclipsed because it is such an obvious sign of identity. But if the lip-plate is a strong marker of Mursi identity, it is because it is at the heart of a network of ideas. If we consider what the Mursi say about it, i.e. very little, simply that ‘it’s

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good’ (a challi) and that ‘it hurts’ (a waddino), or that they do it because they are Mursi, one is likely to reproduce the circular identity reasoning describing it as a Mursi emblem that serves as a distinctive sign. The pain would only then be considered as another initiatory ceremony that makes the above suggestion even more apparent. Moreover, the ethnologist should not try to force further commentary for one simple reason, it seems to me. On the one hand, the lipplate exists in everyday life and is not the subject of commentary by the Mursi themselves. It therefore functions without comment. As such, one should determine its action without words. On the other hand, more and more outside observers are asking the Mursi for explanations concerning this practice, often showing disdain and even disgust. In this case, the Mursi are obliged to justify themselves in the course of interviews, and the discourse on the subject of the lip-plate then becomes nothing more than an attempt to legitimize the practice when there is no need to do so. It is obviously possible for us to project our feelings and experience onto Mursi dispositions, even going so far as to relativize the relativism of beauty by considering that the Mursi find it ugly too and do it deliberately: Some anthropologists claim that labial mutilation was aimed at making women unattractive to protect them from the slavers’ raids. Nowadays, the function would only be symbolic as only women from a high caste have the right to wear one. The size of the plate is equivalent to the dowry demanded by the families of the marriageable young women. The dowry is composed of cattle and goats, etc. and a firearm, as modernity and insecurity decree!21

In addition to some errors here,22 the plate is only envisaged in terms of its function; it is perceived with disgust (‘making women unattractive’) or from a culturalist perspective (‘equivalent to the dowry demanded’). In other words, something as ugly as this must have a purpose. However, it seems that the lip-plate for the Mursi is something obvious that does not require further explanation. The Mursi do not need to talk about it to admit the lip-plate into their everyday actions, because this form outlives its meaning without the necessity of recourse to commentary. The lip-plate is a clay or sometimes a wooden disc. It is usually designated by the material it is made of: dhebbi (plural dhebbinia) for those made of clay and kio (plural keno) for those made of wood. The former starts off as a ball of clay earth, which has been moistened and beaten for a long time in order to eliminate the air pockets and to increase its density. Little by little, this ball is flattened and a disc becomes visible. Once this disc reaches the desired diameter, the wet fingers of the woman

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who is making it draw a groove of the width of a lip along the side of the disc as smoothly and as regularly as possible. It is then placed in the embers of a fire and, according to which process of heating and oxidization is used, it will turn black, red, brown or white (LaTosky 2006). The wooden lip-plate (also called burgui) is rarer; it requires more time to make as no specific tool exists to produce it out of a tree trunk. One must regularly coat the piece of wood with grease, which, as it soaks into the wood, will make it soft and easy to cut. We should point out that discs placed in earlobes are the result of the same process, although they are smaller in diameter. Lip-plates break easily and so it is necessary to produce them often. As objects, they do not have any particular value; it is their integration into the body that produces a specific result. If they are designated only by the material they are made of, this is not simply an instance of metonymy, but rather the recognition of the fact that the lip-plate without a body, without a woman or a lip is merely a lump of clay or a piece of wood. The lower lip lends itself easily to being pierced and ornamented. The Me’en women who live to the north of Mursi territory also pierce their lip with a wooden stick, but unlike the Mursi, they do not increase the size of the hole afterwards. Only a clay cone, the point of which is directed towards the gums and the rounded base towards the outside, is kept in place. The Nyangatom, both men and women, who live to the south of the Mursi wear an ornament in their lower lip; this is sometimes a metallic band from which a bead may hang, and sometimes one large bead kept in place by a short wooden stalk. Contrary to Me’en and Nyangatom women, who wear their lip-plates all the time, Mursi women wear them in contexts in which a person can be judged on visually perceptible criteria; one does not actually need to know the person. In other words, the women wear the plate in formal ceremonial contexts: during dances and other moments of seduction, when a wife serves a meal to her husband and his guests, and during most rituals that are for the Mursi the only times when more people than one’s immediate neighbours gather together. It can therefore be seen that the occasions on which the lip-plate is worn are well defined and in all cases, the absence of men indicates the absence of the lip-plate. The lip-plate could be compared to high heels: it is not necessary to evoke the theory of affordance (Gibson 1977) at length in order to understand that the wearing of the lip-plate is not a simple matter, and it prevents one from doing what one wants. What prompts the wearing of it is not obvious, and it is tricky to fit in place. The posture of the person wearing the lip-plate must adapt to it, and gestures and attitudes will be modified: the head is held high, the gait is limber and low, and

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face-to-face contact becomes the preferred mode of interaction, as otherwise the plate would sway dangerously and would knock against the sternum, and even tear the lip, as has sometimes happened. The consequence of this restriction in movement is that the plate cannot be worn except during certain clearly defined activities and on relatively few occasions, as wearing it to carry out domestic activities (milking, preparing flour, looking after the children, etc.) would be well-nigh impossible: try vacuuming in high heels! The comparison goes beyond the anecdote. Shauna LaTosky also remarks upon the alteration in body movements: Bikalomi was teasing me about getting my lip cut and mimicking the way in which a girl should walk while wearing it: her head held high, her chin swaying back and forth in a very subtle sensuous manner. (2006: 373)

The lip-plate can also be seen in one’s way of being. If detecting another’s intentions according to the actions one sees a person carrying out characterizes the theory of mind, then the lip-plate is a guide for orienting the inferences. The body moves strictly according to the gestures imposed by the lip-plate – this little piece of clay or wood makes gravity, inertia and centrifugal force all the more important. It adapts and adopts the most efficient gestures within the constraints of the situation. The spectator infers from the way in which the body moves an impression of solemnity, which has the effect of creating an advantage out of a constraint: the ‘hindered’ body shows spectators the attention that it pays them. LaTosky speaks of self-consciousness to describe the sharp consciousness of the woman who moves in a way that is prized by men. She quotes one of her informants, Olelori: If she didn’t put it in I would hit her and her mother would hit her. Later, when she is given to her husband, if she does not put in her lip plate, her husband will hit her. We teach her how to behave for when she goes to her husband. (2006: 375)

However, the woman does not only express deference. For, beyond the acceptance of the constraint, she must adopt a mode of behaviour and can even do better. The message is twofold: on the one hand, she has to deal with the constraint and, on the other hand, she can use it: accepting and surpassing. Small steps are preferred to big ones, and few words to long and loud speeches, and measured gestures to extravagant movements. And it is also women who take the initiative concerning the lip-plate in order to produce the desired effect.23 In short, the metaproposition that the woman with the lip-plate makes – and that is made by the object itself – is the internalization of the man’s point of view

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about the woman by specific gestures, in the context of seduction or of a positive presentation of self. If the lip-plate was merely an unequivocal form of masculine domination (only in the case of the woman’s acceptance of it, not when she uses it to her advantage), these lumps of clay would remain in the earth, because family and conjugal violence already fulfil this role, as Olelori pointed out above. By internalizing men’s point of view concerning some of their expectations regarding women, the latter show these same men that they can do what is required of them and draw all the advantages they can from this situation. In the same way, by conveying men’s point of view in the form of body movements, they make other women, including the youngest ones, the witnesses of it. They are esteemed by everyone, including other women. The lip-plate is not worn all the time. The lower lip then hangs below the chin. Some muscles give this part of the lip a certain mobility, but most of the time it remains inert. Several gestures adapt to this object that disables part of the mouth. The mun language does not have any labiodental fricatives like [f] or [v], and avoids bilabial occlusives at the beginning of words, chiefly [p]. For example, all over Ethiopia, the populations of the high lands generally call Westerners farenj’ or farenji; however, the Mursi call them arenji. Similarly, the police are called oliso, derived from poliso. Thus, men themselves include this female constraint in their phonetic system. When the lip-plate is removed, besides the modified movements that have partially been integrated even without the lip-plate, a gaping hole remains on the face. This void illustrates the other side of the point of view of that women have about themselves. During a woman’s life, the lip-plate is worn from sexual maturity to the birth of her first children, i.e. for only a few years. Women will leave it off after that and the lip will retract. In everyday life, the wearing of the lip-plate is reserved for certain occasions, as noted above. Women are therefore most often without it, but the scar will inevitably be visible. I have never had the opportunity of observing how the piercing of the lip is carried out, but in all cases deciding to pierce a lip and actually piercing it is the business of each woman. Besides the lip-plate, we have seen that a scarification of the kichoa grid type is indispensable on the belly for women. Women therefore have a twofold scarification that is exclusive to them. A woman’s face that has, by default, a hanging lip is inseparable from her scarified belly. This double scarification punctuates the transformations that a woman’s body undergoes and that blood underlines: menstruation, the onset of sexual activity, and childbirth. This is why

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they are of the utmost importance; contrary to a deliberately inflicted blow or a possible illness, these recurrent stages in life are the common and inevitable lot of female physiology. The belly marks indicate women’s initiative concerning procreation, just as the pierced lip shows women’s control over sexual activity at puberty. The way of making blood flow (piercing, cutting) as well as the place where it flows tell us by analogy about the nature of these exclusively female events – the loss of virginity, menstruation and procreation. The treatment by scarification inscribes these events on women’s bodies and in their voluntary actions.24 It should be noted that these marks are not permanent. In the same way as the events that they express, they disappear when their point of reference is no longer relevant. The lips of the older women who no longer wear the plate eventually retract and their mouths regain their shape. Similarly, the ageing of the skin, amplified by successive pregnancies, causes the belly scarifications to gradually disappear. When pregnancies become a thing of the past and when sexual activity diminishes, scarifications of all kinds fade. David Turton says correctly that ‘the lip-plate worn by Mursi women is an expression of female social adulthood and reproductive potential’ (2004: 4). Yet, one should not understand this as a status – that of being an initiate or a wife – but as a practice that commits each woman to her condition. The belly and lip scars represent the point of view of women about themselves when they take the initiative concerning events that are exclusive to their own bodies: the loss of virginity, menstruation and procreation. The lip-plate is an object with a specific shape. If it only takes on meaning when it is integrated into the body, its materiality informs us about another use of women’s bodies. Among the Mursi, few visual shapes explicitly recall human activities.25 The environmental context of the Mursi is composed of wooded savannah and grassy plains. Human presence is only to be found in the villages. The few paths that sometimes connect the villages are not very different from those made by the animals around the water holes. Outside the villages, the Mursi do not modify the appearance of the world in a controlled manner, which would result in geometrical shapes that could be roads, earthworks, cemeteries, etc. Everything that is outside the living area falls into the often pejorative category of gai (savannah or bush, gasho in its locative form). The fields (gui, plural guyo) do not have specific shapes; the form of the plots is often determined by the terrain, the vegetation and the constraints they impose: each sorghum seed is planted ‘sufficiently far’ from the others, and not in rows.

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This visual randomness does not offer regular or recurrent rhythms that fill the space. If the reader raises their eyes from this page in order to look at their present environment, they will discover the rectangle of their screen or of their book, of their A format sheet of paper, of their table and of the room in which they find themself, the straight lines of corridors, pillars and streets, and the repetition of these shapes, the keys on their keyboard, the compartments in their bookcase, the rows of books and windows, tables and chairs, staircases and interconnecting roads, they will see that our vision is saturated with geometrical shapes and volumes – which are, in this case, all based on the rectangle – and that are no longer noticed because they recur so often. The visual environment of the Mursi does not offer such specific stimulation and this makes certain forms stand out with greater sharpness. The lip-plate has no equivalent either in texture or shape (Gibson 1979) and contrasts with the usual perceptive environment. The disc is thus an original form through its characteristics of regularity and the place where it is set, in a woman’s face, which immediately makes it even more visible. Isolated in the random continuum of perceptions, this geometrical model is to be found in human ceremonial activities: the concentric circles of stone that are formed for the sacrifice of cows (ngawu), the circulation of cattle during blessings, the special arrangement of individuals during dances and the declaiming of poems, etc. All the collective ceremonial occasions26 take the form of a circle constructed by the people taking part, the spectators and the stones. And beyond the people who are actually participating in the ceremony, the domes of the huts are obvious signs of human presence. But all this is ephemeral. When the dancing stops and the sung poems come to an end, when the cattle return to their enclosures, when the Mursi leave their crumbling huts for new grazing lands, and when the grass grows and hides the stones, the circle is no longer visible. If the circle is the form that human collective activity adopts, then it is as ephemeral as these meetings and disappears the moment the interests and the activities of each one have briefly intersected, and then have ceased to converge. In contrast to these forms that are dispersed in time and space, the lip-plate displays permanence by being implanted in the body, which follows the movements of people in time and space. Therefore, the circle does not need the very rare occasions when people come together in order to exist. A woman wears an underdetermined archetypal form that figures collective human activity. This is display, and not just a piece of clay, as it is ‘a surface which has been configured or treated in such a way as to exhibit information which cannot simply be reduced to a surface’ (Gibson 1979), in spite of its indeterminacy and its absence of sign. It is

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a visible model set in the face so as to make it even more visible, and one that concentrates human activities and their variability in one defined object. The lip-plate is not a memory-aid for the shape that these group activities should take; rather, it illustrates what links the individual and collective lives by keeping some of these collective forms in the everyday perceptual field. And when the Mursi leave their territory – that is, when Mursi identity is tested, as in the meeting mentioned at the start of this chapter – the lip-plate does not act as a distinctive emblem like a blazon that recounts a story or a symbolic representation of values. Rather, it is a starting point for what it means to be a Mursi; this is less the knowledge of a symbolic corpus than the participation in certain practices. By their presence, the women thus adorned guarantee the actualization of this method of remembering: keeping in sight what we do together. Recently, another body ornament has also taken this form. The Mursi do not like long hair and in the past they would shave their heads with obsidian. This tool did not give a particularly regular or close cut, and some old photographic documents show hair that has grown in an anarchic fashion without any particular pattern being sought (Vannutelli and Citerni 1899). With the recent acquisition of metallic razors, the Mursi can now develop more elaborate haircuts. These are varied, but all follow the same pattern: the minimal cut is a disc on the top of the head (cherrita) to which two horizontal bands are added, one near the forehead and the other near the nape of the neck (shulshule). Sometimes concentric circles are cut around the central disc. In these societies organized according to age and without an institutionalized head, it should be pointed out that public debates27 – the forum for collective political expression – do not follow the model of the circle. The debates are clearly set apart: here there is an assembled audience sitting in front of orators who take it in turns to speak. The latter give their point of view on a situation that was the reason for the debate. They walk up and down in front of the assembled audience holding a staff or a Kalashnikov in their hand until they have finished speaking. In this case, the circle is not an appropriate model, as the social consensus, even though it respects procedure, is not of the same nature as dances or sacrifices. Here, a problem has caused the meeting to be called and the participants may perhaps not agree on the course of action to be adopted. Worse still, from these debates, divisions may arise and quarrels may worsen. In short, politics is not founded upon consensus, contrary to the other collective activities that have already been mentioned. The circle only embodies what is undisputed. Wearing a lip-plate, Mursi women are disfigured. In the literal sense, this term is not pejorative, but states that the figure – here the face –

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is destroyed or deformed (one must focus on the prefix dis- or de-). With the lip-plate placed in the lower lip, we discover a face with unusual proportions, far from the orthodox canons of beauty by which the mouth separates the face horizontally into two equal parts, and this is probably somewhat disconcerting for a cognitive system of face recognition.28 The lip-plate is often associated with the discs in the ears that add volume and shape to the lobes. The question of aesthetics is inevitably raised with this practice. For beyond the consideration of body movements that have adapted to the lip-plate, and beyond the fact that the plate indicates the bleeding of the body at certain periods in a woman’s life and that it bears a nodal geometrical shape, we should take into account that the face is literally disfigured by the lip-plate. How then should we understand the appreciation ‘it’s fine’ when we do not know if it also applies to the result on the face? We could ask the question in a relativistic way: ‘To what aesthetic criteria does this correspond?’, considering that the positive appreciation is the result of arbitrary learning. We could also look for balance and perceptual precision in the object ‘lip-plate-face’ that would be recognizable by everyone. We might then risk falling into a linguistic trap by substituting the word ‘beautiful’ for ‘aesthetic’, a concept that navigates between its adjectival and nominal forms (‘it’s beautiful’ and ‘the beautiful’), and extends from the apprehension of experience to the definition of the properties of a thing (Jullien 2010). The alternation between affects (emotions) and the cause of the affects (object) may make us lose sight of what we mean by aesthetic, and only seek reasons that lead to the notion that the lip-plate is something aesthetic either in essence or as a result of arbitrary learning. The aesthetic validation that is worn on the Mursi women’s faces could be the validation of the human–bovine relationship that they symbolize. The lives of the Mursi and those of their cattle are closely interlinked, and no human activity can take place without the actual or referential presence of cattle. As names show, the latter are designated according to the colours of their coats, in the same way as humans are designated and named by means of the colours of the animals’ coats. The bases of Mursi identity are largely determined by cattle and, consequently, the positive apprehension of the ‘bovine’ artistic form is an attractor that leads to the quest for artistic forms connected to them. And the identity bases connected with cattle and that are translated into rhetorical forms also find their expression in artefacts. On the one hand, human identity is constructed through formal analogies between things in the world, of which the bovine animal is an indicator and towards

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which comparisons always return; on the other hand, cattle are not the equivalent of humans either in their appearance or their psyche, and it is not a question of the latter imitating the former (see Chapter 7). Art then must find intermediary forms between cattle unmodified by human agency and a woman unmodified by human agency. No one copies or imitates the other to the point of becoming like him, the two groups and the artistic productions feed each other.29 Without being mere imitation, the modifications of the human body and that of cattle reflect each other: the scarifications on the one can be seen on the body of the other, the painting is the same and is often carried out at the same time, and the jewellery is also made in the same way. The lip-plate helps to reduce the distance between the shape of the woman’s and the animal’s faces. A woman does not have the animal’s muzzle, and the animal does not have her round skull. The lip-plate changes the proportions of the female face and thus brings it closer to that of the animal. The latter’s horns are altered by humans who strike them with heavy stones in order to modify their curvature. This recurring practice is called ‘knotting’ (chipto) and simulates the outline of a rounded skull that cattle lack. This correspondence is sometimes put into words as in Olechage’s ox-poem, which was given in Chapter 3. Olechage evokes his animal and its rounded horns as if they were knotted on the top of its head, saying that it has a ‘high/raised forehead’ (tuno mumo): ‘The mouths drink at the udders of the ostriches, run round the blue bird, the one with the high forehead is drawn by the lances … The blue bird moves away and carries what it wants, a high forehead, drawn by the lances.’ During the dances, everyday gestures modified by the wearing of the plate are out of the question and are replaced by little skipping movements like those of calves. The young women with their lip-plate spring rapidly and lightly, suggesting the young age of cattle. The men raise their arms to represent the horns of their bulls or their oxen and then tap the earth with their feet as if to print the dull sound of the beasts’ hooves in the ground. The older women who no longer wear a lip-plate join in the game of seduction by walking across the space where the dancing is taking place. They also raise their arms to the sky to form the shape of the horns – the elementary gesture figuring horns – and by so doing bring into the general choreography the undifferentiated herd (see Chapter 6). Thus it is that with bodily practices (ornamentation and dances), identity references are interwoven. But the one is never taken for the other. With ornaments as with dances, the imitations are suggested but never made explicit. The men and women do not paint themselves according to the colour of their animals, nor do they

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hide themselves beneath masks to imitate them: identity is not multiplied, but reinforced and asserted by drawing on bovine references. The women are not cows, no more than the cows become women. These are valued forms that arise from the proximity between the two groups and the positive aesthetic perception is precisely the result of the rapprochement and of the partial overlapping of the two. Identity here finds another level of expression because the lip-plate represents one of the most striking figures of Mursi aesthetics resulting from the co-referentiality between humans and bovine animals.30 Another type of intermediary form is present among the neighbours of the Mursi. The Nyangatom live to the south of Mursi country. They are also Nilote herdsmen. The Nyangatom can be distinguished from the Mursi by their relationship with water, which in this region takes the form of the great river that is called Omo by cartographers, Waro by the Mursi, and Anam by the Nyangatom. The latter, of whom Serge Tornay (2001) has traced the ethnogenesis over two centuries, emigrated from the north of Uganda, crossed the deserted Kenyan plains of Turkana and finally settled in a horse region between Ethiopia and Sudan. When they arrived, the banks of the river were inhabited by a small group of people, the Murle of the Omo. Tornay shows how this group disappeared from accounts over time. It was decimated by an epidemic and the survivors were assimilated into the Nyangatom (Tornay 1978). The latter maintain a twofold division in their society, one part of which is more sedentary than the nomadic herdsmen and has a close and enduring relationship with the river. And something that is rare enough among the Nilotes to deserve mention is that the Nyangatom fish, and eat fish and crocodiles. For the Mursi, this custom is debasing and marks one of the most important differences between them. In short, if the Mursi and the Nyangatom are illustrations of what Melville Herskovits (1926) describes as the cattle complex, the latter contrast with the former less by their practices concerning cattle than by their specific relationship with water, the river and with the consumption of the animals that live within it.31 Why have I digressed to speak about the Nyangatom and their particular eating habits? Simply to insist on the fact that in these lands of formal analogies between the things of this world, it is not surprising to find certain aesthetic patterns in the diversity of forms (ornaments, bodies, dances, etc.). The Mursi reduce the distance between people and cattle in some aesthetic practices, just as the Nyangatom formally bring their women and aquatic beings closer together. A Nyangatom woman does not have the same silhouette as a Mursi woman because of her clothes and her ornaments. Here the proportions of the human body

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are transmuted to more closely resemble aquatic beings, closer to the catfish than the crocodile: the numerous necklaces worn by the women hide the neck beneath a cone of pearl. Between the bottom of the face and the shoulders, no angle breaks the continuity of line. The neck has disappeared, and the head and the chest are one continuous mass. The women’s dresses mould the buttocks and the upper thighs, and flare out into different-coloured leather fringes. Finally, the Nyangatom lip-plate, which, as we have seen, is a tongue of metal fixed under the lip, could recall the barbs of the catfish in the Omo. Sometimes streaks are chiselled into the metal to recall the scales of the fish. The junction between the head and the body is obliterated to reveal one continuous mass. The dress prolongs the continuity of the body and ends in flared fringes. Scale-like and barb motifs recall the description of an aquatic being.32 The lip-plate in the form of a simple disc of clay or wood reconciles a number of accumulated points of view and relationships: the point of view of men about women, of women about themselves who are the guarantors of the permanence of an archetypal social form, and finally stereotypical figures of the Mursi aesthetic that produces intermediary forms midway between human groups and bovine animals. It is then an object with a strong identity value, but not in the sense of a belonging. It shows us relationships of genre, collective practices and aesthetics by means of different pragmatic contexts that exist outside itself, but with which it is associated: specific ways of moving, scarifications in general, dances and rituals, the pastoral ethos. It is a link common to different devices and manages to bring about a surprising paradox: that of being a powerful synthesis in such a simple object. *** Mursi adornments can be understood within their timeframe. The clay, the dung and the ashes are ephemeral materials that only remain on the skin for several hours, like the emotions and the intentions to which they bear witness. Clay painting, for example, wears off within a few minutes or hours, in the same way as the memory of a dream fades. Similarly, the most transitory jewellery reveals relationships, and changes as everyday relationships evolve. The dresses, the scarifications and the lip-plate are more lasting, like the common practices to which they refer. Only old age and damaged skin will efface scarifications. With age too, women’s lips will retract and the mouth will regain its shape. For women as for men, all kinds of adornments will diminish with age. Age is adequate proof of a person’s value. In this sense, the body itself is sufficient ornament for age.

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Four bracelets of yellow metal (lalan’g) remain on the ends of limbs, on the muni, the same term that the Mursi use to designate themselves. This minimal adornment on the four muni of the body reinforces the affirmation that they are no longer children who are completely naked. Four is the number associated with masculinity, and one can see in this practice an achievement of the process of manhood (irimo). This is a society based on the age system. Time is not cyclic or backward-facing; it moves forward continuously until one day maturity is attained. Moreover, the movement from a host of adornments to an almost complete abandonment of them reflects the relational conditions among the Mursi. The multidimensional adornments that have no links between them and that divide the body up into a repertoire accumulating inferences and references reflect the multitiered work involved in the stabilization of social relations. What is shown in the uniqueness of people’s names is the same for adornments: this is not a homogeneous world in which one can instantly take part, but a multifaceted one that implies negotiation. The body and its ornaments are, like names, an objectification of the person (Strathern 1988: 208) and the product of relationships. And because people and their relationships change, these aesthetic tools also change. But life is not only an egocentric process. Others activities express categories. With the help of specific ornaments and staging that involves the whole community, dances incite participants to represent the categories that make up the extended group of herdsmen and their cattle. They must now add gestures to adornments in order to show how the pastoral vitality of the Mursi takes shape.

Notes 1. It is obvious that one cannot limit a political role to public expression. It should also be noted that some women (particularly Turkana women) expressed themselves during collective debates. Mursi women organized debates among themselves in the evenings and then gave a full account of their reflections to the Mursi men before the collective debates took place the following day. 2. These beads take up the colour coding of the necklaces (challae) seen in Chapter 4. 3. While the practice is not feminine, these sisters recognized the existence of hamwe in the same ways if they were male. 4. I have come across many widows who have deliberately remained unmarried or who even returned to the people and place of their own original clan. They were rather mature women. 5. This type of classification has also been verified by informers from the Ngereyay and Bumay clans about their own clans, where I found the same kind of divisions.

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6. He uses the verb bhonie, ‘drinking at a cow’s udder’. We have seen its use concerning links between siblings: the younger son drinks his elder brother, particularly when using his colour in the form of his derived colour (hamwe). 7. See Chapter 9 for the description of the negotiations and ritual ceremony following adultery with ‘foreigners’ in this sense. 8. A decimal base is beginning to predominate because of the arrival of money, although this is counted with a disparity of 1/10: 10 birrs is ‘1 rose’ (rege a dhone) because the banknotes are pink, 20 birrs is ‘two roses’, etc. Similarly, hundreds are counted according to the number of green banknotes. For example, 300 will be ‘3 grey-green-blue’ (chage a size). 9. For a more complete description of these patterns, see Eczet (2012) and (2013). 10. ‘Fathers’ here is in the plural because it may refer to the genitor as well as to a classificatory term referring to the elders. 11. An internal conflict among the Mursi does not lead to scarification. Moreover, only the murder of an enemy that the Mursi recognize as having the same way of life can result in the carrying out of riru. This type of enemy comes from neighbouring groups who are also herdsmen (Me’en, Nyangatom, Hamar or Dassanetch). Also excluded are the Suri (or Surma) who are considered as relatives, and the farmers of the highlands (Ari, Dime and Dizi). 12. We should remember that it is also these parts of the body that young women who wear jewellery particularly like. They cover them with several dozen bracelets (see Chapter 6 concerning dances). 13. Kano teri goloni or kano teri chu chu chu; see Chapter 8. 14. See Chapter 9 for a more complete description of this episode. 15. We should remember that men use sticks in their duels, whereas women use heavy metal bracelets with which they strike their opponent on the head, making it bleed profusely. 16. We shall encounter this perfectly explicit problematic concerning blood that should not be shed when ‘the country is bad’ (ba a gersi) in Chapter 10 on the subject of public debates. 17. Reading the entrails of cattle is a current practice: each vein of the duodenum represents a river and its tributaries, the blood clots are the encampments, and the intestinal tubes form the relief of the surrounding highlands. See Chapter 8. 18. I have identified Circus Macrourus, Circus Pygargus, Circus Aeruginosus and Micronisus Gabar Aequatories. 19. The ngereye observes birds during the divination process. See also Chapter 8 for an original use of birds in names. 20. Labret has a wider application as it designates any ornament placed in the lip. 21. Retrieved 14 May 2012 from http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Mursi. I hope the reader will forgive me for using a collaborative source in which the author has disappeared behind the idea of a common truth the origin of which cannot be traced, but work on the lip-plate is rare in anthropological studies and frequent in the blogs of travellers and in coffee-table books. 22. There are no castes among the Mursi and the dowry is fixed independently of the size of the lip-plate (Turton 2004). I quote a page from Wikipedia so as not to centre my criticism on one source in particular, but one could cite Beckwith, Fisher and Hancock (1990), Giansanti (2004) and Silvester (2006).

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23. Young girls who do not yet wear a lip-plate sometimes use a thin twig of supple wood about 20–30 centimetres long, the ends of which are placed at each side of the mouth so that the curve of the twig acts a lip-plate. 24. In a footnote, LaTosky mentions a lip-plate with a hole in the middle. This is supposed to have a ‘special meaning for the wearer and the observer’ (2006: 384). With the consequences of the analysis of scarifications here, we can see that the lip-plate with the hole in it doubles the hole of the scar, producing an overlapping effect. Making explicit the physiological changes in women and implying blood that flows, it is subject to the same precautions as the events that it indicates. 25. I refer here to human activities that leave a specific mark, enabling us to see a conscious desire to modify and arrange. Most of the grasslands have been modified by humans using slash-and-burn techniques, but this does not result in the formation of an intentionally specific or repeated visual pattern. 26. We should remember that these collective ceremonial occasions make up the vast majority of collective gatherings in general. The scattered habitat and the pastoral life are not conducive to such gatherings. There is no market and it is only during the clearing of the fields that people come together. And this last activity is not guided by any specific special shapes. 27. These will be described in Chapter 10. 28. Advice concerning the standard proportions of the face is frequent in drawing manuals directed at the general public, but since antiquity, different, very elaborate canons of beauty of the body and the face have appeared at regular intervals (see particularly the translation of Vitruvius’ ten books of De Architectura, 1692 (English translation). For one reference among others on the cognitive system of face recognition, see Bruce and Young (1986). 29. The Mursi do not have a term that covers both humans and cattle, but the Me’en, who share their way of life and whom they sometimes marry, and with whom they speak a language of the same family, use the term me’en to designate humans as well as cattle (Fukui 1996). 30. In the previous chapter, I presented the ornaments and the modifications in modes of dress for the benefit of tourists. For example, women and children wear bovine decorations made of warthog tusks (ngilla) on their heads as if to make horns for themselves. The one becomes the other and thus they leave the valued aesthetic register and tend towards pastiche. The Mursi here make fun of themselves a little by playing at being cattle to please the tourists. In these conditions created by tourism, the intermediary form disappears and with it the human–bovine relationship. 31. The Mursi also conquered territory previously occupied by the Kwegi. Leslie Woodhead (in ‘The Kwegu’, Disappearing World, Granada Television, Manchester, United Kingdom, 1982), assisted by David Turton, describes in a documentary the relations of servitude that grew up between them and the Mursi. In particular, in exchange for protection by the Mursi and for the gift of several head of cattle when marriages took place, the Kwegu acted as carriers because they alone knew how to build canoes and did not mind taking to the water. But in this case,

Displaying a Common Heritage

the assimilation of the Kwegu did not result in a specialization of some people in activities linked to the river. 32. Nyangatom scarifications are straight dotted vertical lines on the torso. The face is sometimes also scarified, and the scars, still dotted, surround the eyes, forming two large round shapes like the eyes of fish. The scale-like patterns and the enlarging of the eyes also heighten the similarity in form. But this similarity never goes beyond the inspiration stage to become imitation.

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6 Pastoral Vitality Dances

Dances stage the vitality that fashions both people and their herds. The whole group is thus collectively involved in this condensed form of activity: the young men and women, but also the mature women and the elders. I use the term ‘vitality’, which has a biological connotation, but it does not only express the relationship between young men and women that would eventually lead to marriage and children; those who do not directly participate in reproductive activity, like mature women and elders, are also necessary. It is a question of showing different roles and temporal directions in order to produce a complete picture of the extended group of herdsmen. Some dances bring together young men and women almost every evening from neighbouring encampments and offer a shortened version of the complete choreography. Other dances, held less often, call upon all the inhabitants of a vaster territory as far away as 20 kilometres. In all cases, the harvest of the still-green sorghum (tishu) heralds the dancing season (holog’). A bad harvest (ba a ololue, ‘the land is empty’), but also a serious bovine epidemic, may lead to the dancing being suspended. Generally speaking, the Mursi say that there is no dancing if things are not going well in the country (ba a gersi) or if the belly – the seat of emotions and feelings – does not want it (kiango nga hine). The land must be full (ba a chassi). The dances require that prosperity should exist before being able to express the vitality of the lives of people and their animals. In this sense, the dance is a collective relational validation of the pastoral and agricul-

Pastoral Vitality

tural work that is carried out daily by individuals. In one designated place, it displays actions, intentions and different positions that in daily life are scattered, in the same way as people are scattered over the territory on a daily basis and in the broader course of their lives. Indeed, the collective groupings that go beyond the immediate vicinity only usually take place when a problem has been detected ‘in reaction to’ a problem, as we shall see in Chapters 9 and 10. In the case of large-scale dances, the problematic event is of little importance. However, it seems to me that a triggering event is always mentioned.1 The description that follows is based on two afternoons of dancing organized as a pairing of the ‘meeting and retaliation’ type. The reason that was advanced for the organization of the dances was that a woman from the Mako region had been mocking the young men from the Maridunka region because of their childish behaviour. Furthermore, she said that they would never succeed in attracting a young girl from Mako. The young men from Mako aimed the same criticisms at their peers in Maridunka, thus forming two competing groups making a dance necessary. One dance was to be held in Maridunka and another would follow shortly afterwards in Mako, i.e. a meeting would be held in the territory of each one of the opposing groups. The dances then oppose two groups established according to their temporary presence within a network of people who know each other: a buran, i.e. a segmentary unite, a relative group. Thus, even if the idea of confrontation is latent, it never becomes the main issue at stake: on the one hand, the groups that have momentarily come together this time may be different on the next occasion, and, on the other hand, the dances do not contain any act of direct confrontation between the members of the two groups. At most, each group comes with the desire to do more than the other, resulting in mutual emulation rather than competition. There is no validation of the superiority of one group over the other. When I asked about this at the end of the dancing, they replied that the dances in general had been successful or not, with no further comment. The mobilization of this kind of division is not accidental. In this case, a buran is a group of men who share a pastoral and agricultural activity because of their close spatial proximity. The dances are the expression of the vitality that emerges after the work in the fields is done and on the condition that the herds are doing well. Thus, the groups of partners engaged in the same kind of work are in the best position to express it. And because vitality also concerns marriages, the dances oppose two groups, and especially put men and women in contact with one another on the basis of meeting and transformation.

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The Preparation of the Bodies Two days before the meeting in Maridunka, I saw the elders crouching down, engaged in clearing a space for the dance to take place beneath the great tree in the encampment that gave shade during the hottest hours of the day. Each one had a machete and was pulling out clumps of grass so that the ground would simply be beaten earth. I watched them as they worked busily for a long time. I heard them talking together visualizing the dances in order to work out the limits of the future dance area. Although they themselves no longer danced, it was their job to undertake the material organization of the dances. On the day of the Maridunka dance, at the beginning of the afternoon, small groups of men who were going to participate in the dancing left for the river in order to get ready. All the members of the buran did not necessarily go together to prepare themselves, but they did not mix with the rival buran. There were some ‘warriors’ (donga and teri), but also several ‘junior elders’ (rori). Only the ‘senior elders’ were missing (bari) and the few ‘junior elders’ who were already considered as ‘senior’, and who had been preparing the dance area. After they had washed, they coated themselves with mud, helping each other to cover their backs. A fairly thick coating of mud is smeared on first of all. After a few minutes, this coat has dried and the surplus mud is rubbed off, leaving a fine homogeneous layer, giving a matte and lightened aspect to the skin. Often the chin, the area around the mouth and the nose are also covered. Patterns are added onto this even background according to two different methods: either the skin is scraped with wet fingers, a small plaited cord or any other serrated tool, in order to inscribe parallel lines, or by adding onto the first layer some more mud of different colours in little touches. In the second case, the choice of colour is opportunistic and depends on the presence of muddy oxide nearby. Finally, the hands and forearms (muni), and the feet and the legs2 (also called muni) are cleaned. A clear horizontal limit is marked between the parts of the body that are painted and those that are not. Although each person is free to choose his paintings and patterns, it seems that a general theme is adopted in order to create a certain homogeneity amongst the men from the same buran. This theme is only adopted on the day of the dance: sometimes circles are chosen, sometimes handprints, sometimes spots. However, residual differences are to be found between men of different grades within the same group: from the same common theme, the ‘junior warriors’ can distinguish themselves slightly from the ‘junior elders’, for example. Once the paintings have been com-

Pastoral Vitality

pleted, the men noisily join the dance area where the women are already present, some of them singing and some others with bells on their feet. The particular appearance of the men for this one occasion already presents several relational conditions, some of which will then be choreographed. The homogeneity of the paintings in a group of dancers reveals a group of peers. Indeed, the emphasis is laid on ephemeral ornamentation that tends to deindividuate the body. If jewellery reveals an active network of potential peers using specific ornamentation that may be unique, the painting for dances does the opposite. Here the network of peers is present and makes up the group of dancers. The painting thus expresses the equivalence of the members of the group present in the bodies gathered for the dance. The paintings deindividuate to the point of hiding the body, or at least modify the general image of it. First of all covered with a uniform coating of mud and then decorated with patterns, the body is thus hidden and then saturated with visual motifs. We have seen in the previous chapters the level of attention the Mursi attach to the visual and to the capacity to detect variations resulting from it, even going as far as to use clay painting to counter a visual ‘problem’. By multiplying visual details, either by little touches of white or ochre-coloured mud placed on the body, or by inscribing parallel wavy lines, the usual form of the body is set aside in favour of temporary forms. The paintings make no attempt at symmetry. Concentric circles may cover the right shoulder blade, whereas there may only be a few simple marks on the left one. Some lines may encircle one arm or leg, while the other may only have spots or nothing at all. A handprint is a regular feature. Although I was looking for a figurative possibility, the dancers simply stated that it was thus easy (a baseni) to create multiple patterns (meri). These paintings produce temporary variations to the detriment of the general image. The other method used to paint oneself reveals this even more obviously. The wavy pattern (with curves, a rongadi) is a visual idiom that the Mursi usually mention to signify the difficulty in finding one’s way. It is, for example, advanced as the first reason when people lose their way in the savannah. I have seen this pattern painted in ash on the legs of certain people when they are working in the fields. The legs are the only part of the body to be painted in this way, and this is supposed to prevent harmful things contained within the earth from reaching the man as he works, as if the twisting paths of the paintings would divert the danger. The blurred nature of the overall image of the body creates a paradoxical proposition. The many visual motifs make it possible to capti-

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Figure 6.1. The temporary ornamentation of the men (left) facing the usual ornamentation of the women (right). © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

vate the attention of the spectators, but their attention is attracted by means of an elusive form. The women wear their usual ornamentation. And the contrast between the exceptional visual proposition of the men and the usual ornamentation of the women once again reveals a relationship that will be played out on the level of the choreography. The men adorn themselves in such a way as to be the ‘ornamental negative’ of the women, in the photographic sense of the term: the ephemeral ornamentation of the men is the opposite of the enduring ornamentation of the women, placed where the other sex does not have any. The men are indeed covered with exceptional paintings that are exclusive to the dances. On the contrary, the women come without any additional ornamentation. The bodies of the men are completely covered, except for the muni (the forearms and legs), which have been cleaned and left naked. However, the women wear on their forearms (muni) many bracelets that are the ornamental idiom of femininity.3 Therefore, the men are naked in the places where the women wear their most durable attributes. And these parts of the body bear the same name as that by which the Mursi designate themselves: Muni. We can thus consider that these parts of the body are particularly significant to designate people metonymically.4 It is not a question of representing two half-bodies that added together would make a complete body, but of showing a contrast that the choreography will progressively fade. We shall see that during the dances, the interactions between the men and the women trigger trans-

Pastoral Vitality

formation in the men. This important moment arrives after the women have laid one of their own ornaments on the men. This change will be marked by a specific intense gesture on the part of the men, one of the consequences of which will be the effacing of the paint due to the sweat that has been generated. This then is a dynamic form of masculine ornamentation that can itself represent the change brought about after the intervention of the women. It is the counterpart of the permanent ornamentation of the women. So it is not a question of representing two parts of a wholeness, but rather a concept of complementarity that will be seen later on in the choreography.

‘Striking the Dance’ (Dak Holog’) The dances are made up of six acts, i.e. a series of six different choreographies. Some acts may begin before the previous one has finished. Act 1: the call of the women. The dances begin with the call of the women. They stand in the space allocated for the dancing and begin their chants, although from a distance one can only discern the clapping of hands. They are arranged in a circular formation that is quite open so that the men can come and position themselves in the centre. These chants are first and foremost an ensemble of voices repeating different phrases and onomatopoeia at length. A soloist directs the voices by chanting a more developed text. She always begins with an unsemantic call that I could transcribe as ‘Oyééé koreya!’, then a rhythm is established with clapping and the rubbing of the bracelets on the women’s forearms. They do not all adopt the same rhythm. Some mark the upbeats, whereas others develop improvised motifs from time to time. After a few minutes, the soloist indicates the end of the chant by means of a different intonation and all the women then terminate their accompaniment with irregular clapping that comes to an end progressively. A few seconds go by, sometimes a minute, and then another chant begins, sometimes directed by another soloist, and so on and so forth. The men gradually arrive in successive waves of small groups. When they are numerous enough to begin dancing, they enter the open circle formed by the women: the first call of the women bringing the men into the dance area henceforth becomes a call included in the choreographic narrative. The choreography that then begins figures this call and the advance of the men towards the dance area. The chants do not change, and the men mime the action of running without looking at the women:

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they circulate in single file,5 forming a circle inside that of the women. They circulate anti-clockwise, passing in front of the women without necessarily looking at them. The men’s gestures are to be found in numerous rituals: they advance with small steps and a swaying motion, and move their arms as if they were running at high speed. Their elbows rise up high behind their torso and their hands high in front of their chest. Their duelling sticks (donga) or their Kalashnikovs (ture or kilashi)6 held in the right hand are placed vertically close to the body. In short, the men mime the action of running and their response to the women’s call, i.e. their entrance into the dance area. They also form a rhythmic vocal ensemble with deep guttural sounds from which high-pitched cries sometimes emerge. The first act, in which no one is given prominence,7 is made up of a double call: the one that invites the men to join the women, and then the one that has the men mime their entrance into the dance area. Repeating this action in two different ways helps to establish the fictional register: the participants will then carry out actions that are intended to be the expression of other actions by dancing the approach which they have just accomplished. The entry into the scenario of the dance thus involves the choreographic duplication of the call of the women and the arrival of the men. Act 2: the arrival of the men. The men then turn towards the inside of the circle that they form and continue to circulate with small side-steps this time. Their movements, miming the action of running, remain the same as before. They now face each other and their circle is inside the incomplete circle of the women, like a concentric circle of a smaller size. As with the call, there is a time gap between the ongoing action and the action expressed in the choreography. The arrival of the men was danced when they were already there. There is now a general agreement to enter the dance that is signified by the positioning of the men side by side, whereas the practical agreement has already taken place in the first choreography. With this repetition, the participants have indeed passed from direct action to expressive action. Men and women will then form a complete circle together, although they still do not mix. Before that, during one dance, I observed the men positioning themselves in a straight line, side by side, facing the women. They then went backwards and forwards, towards the women and then they backed away for a few minutes before arranging themselves in the circle. Act 3: the men present themselves. Once the circle has been formed, the men take over the directing of the chants while the women follow their lead in chorus or stop. As with the women, a soloist often directs the

Pastoral Vitality

chant, although his voice is not necessarily louder than the others. He may pass in front of the assembled men, facing them. The vocal ensemble is this time entirely chanted. Two long sticks, the ends of which touch at ground level, may be struck and thus amplify the clapping of hands. Each man may then leave the circle of chanters in order to carry out a dance. He comes forward holding a duelling stick or a fire arm in his hand; it does not matter if this belongs to him or if he has borrowed it. The men who come forward once more take up their running movements, exaggerating them even more: the torso leans forward slightly and the legs are quite bent. Leaving his place among the men, he moves forward towards one young woman in particular, following a curved trajectory more or less round the circle. He stops abruptly in front of the young woman and waves his weapon slightly above the heads of the women, this time holding it with both hands. This is not an aggressive gesture against the woman; he does not mime shooting or attacking, he is only displaying his weapon in a restrained action, adopting a fixed pose rather than figuring a warlike act. Then, after stopping for less than a second, just enough time to freeze his movement, the man returns to his place among the other men with the same running movement. It is of no importance if he does not return to the same place as before. Sometimes the two body movements, the running movement and the pose, may be accomplished simultaneously in a sort of continuous pose. The man displays his weapon above the heads of the women while walking with determined tread. He moves his arms up and down as if to emphasize the importance of his weapon. We can consider the effect of these two variations from a horizontal point of view, i.e. that of the spectators: when the weapon is held above the heads of the women, the bearer cannot always be seen. This is even more true in the second variation in which the weapon seems to float above the people. If the weapon is a Kalashnikov, the dancer may pause for a moment in the dance area, brandish his Kalashnikov and fire it above the heads of the people. In response, the young women who have remained in the group may do the same. As each man comes forward, he presents himself before an undifferentiated group of women. When he approaches one of them and takes up his pose, he does not look at her beforehand or during the meeting. This interaction is less a complete face-to-face encounter than the representation of a face-to-face encounter. The man does not look directly at the woman in front of whom he stops, nor does she seek to return his gaze. If their eyes meet, it is purely by chance. I have tried to determine whether the choice of the woman before whom the dancer stops marks a relationship or a particular intention,

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but without success. The Mursi all confirm that it is a question of advancing towards the women and not towards one woman in particular, in spite of the brief dual interaction. This action does not presage real encounters.8 The women in front of whom the men stop are not, even potentially, possible partners for another reason: they may be very young women, barely out of childhood, or they may already be married women. One should therefore distinguish between two uses of the term ‘wife’ (mwe, plural mog’ay): the first refers to the marital status and describes a married woman, while the second refers to a status reached by a woman who is considered as mature. Thus, a married woman (mwe) may be called ‘young girl’ (dhole) and may be considered as such for several more years. A ceremony called ‘the knotted dress’ (juni chibine) will ratify the status of wife (mwe) often a long time after the marriage and the birth of several children, notably by the replacement of one skirt (juni) by another. These women are not only future wives, as some of them are wives already, but what they have in common is their status as future mothers, and thus they are all ‘young girls’ (dhole) in the sense of their ontogenetic status. And this is what the participation of the young married women indicates to us: from the point of view of the vitality expressed in the dances, they are, in the same way as the single young women, those who will have children. The fact that the men make no particular choice and that no specific interaction is established indicates that the men find themselves faced with a particular category of women: future mothers. To sum up, the men parade themselves one by one miming running movements – the idiom of the warlike march or exhibiting a weapon. Their individuality emerges from isolation, although the stereotypical gestures confine them to an equally stereotypical expression. They stop in front of a woman, not in order to enter into a relationship with her, but metonymically to underline the face-to-face encounter with the whole group of young women present. This is an individual masculine appreciation of a category of women. Act 4: the men transform themselves. This tableau is the most complex one as a direct interaction takes place between a dancer and a woman (or several women), while carrying out a sequence of actions. This is a moment of great intensity in the dances; it is also a choreography in which quite a few men dare not engage. While some men continue to pursue their perambulation, others advance and position themselves in the centre of the circle. By simply walking, they indicate that there has been a change of register in the action: the men have ‘arrived’ and some of them will now carry out what

Pastoral Vitality

they have come to do. Nothing obliges one man to give way to another, but they generally avoid advancing more than two or three at a time. The man stops in the middle of the dance area so that he can be seen by everyone. Here his attitude bears witness to the fact that interaction has ceased. In a fixed position, the man leans on one leg, with drooping shoulders and with his head slightly bent forward. He looks at the ground, but with a somewhat vague expression. More rarely, the man raises his head in order to cast a vague glance beyond the participants. And he waits. He has stopped moving and displays an attitude of withdrawal into himself that contrasts with the movement of the previous parades. This attitude is completely at odds with his position in the centre of the area of activity and round which the other dancers are still moving. He may wait thus for several minutes. One begins then to notice a trembling in his legs, called barbarito, a frequent gestural idiom to express tension.9 This is also the moment when the spectators can take time to look at each person and when the specific ornamentation plays a central role. The dung painting that catches the eye can here be closely examined, and the spectators’ gaze rests on the body hidden beneath the ornamentation. The context of the dance is also the only one in which men place a touch of colour corresponding to their fundamental colour (ree) on their own bodies. We have seen earlier (see Chapters 1 and 3) that colour is not to be found on the body on a daily basis, although it is very present in names and poems. Here a man may frequently be seen wearing a headband of his colour, or a piece of cloth that encodes the colour in the same way as his necklace (challae) does. These are always things that have been acquired on the market (except for the feathers), like cloth and plastic. Painting never fulfils this function. So the dancer proposes an emphatic image of his coloured personality; although this is hardly individualized, it is perfectly adapted to someone addressing a group that does not need to establish a particular relationship with him. The only aim is to give a powerful and effective presentation. During this closely observed waiting period, tension rises for the dancer. His gaze becomes more intense. His legs tremble more and more. Then, slowly, he raises his arms to represent the horns of his ox of his own colour. He holds his stick in one hand and sometimes protection for his hand in the other; this is made of straw and is used to protect the hand during stick duels (donga). Here again, he may remain motionless for a while, although this period of immobility is shorter than the previous one. An intermedial form is reached here: the man is not his ox; however, like his ox, he displays his colour unequivocally on his body. He does not have any horns, but his gestures suggest them

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Figure 6.2. Plan of the fourth sequence. A man advances, remains motionless and then creates an intermedial bull form (1). A woman then advances and places a woman’s object on his shoulders (2). The man then begins his dance with jerky jumps making circles (3), before returning to the group of his peers. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

without any direct interaction with the spectators, just like an ox that can see its owner, but does not look at him.10 Then without transition, the dancer seizes his stick with both hands and carries out a dance sequence in complete contrast to his previous immobility. His path curves round in circles, and he approaches the women and the men, jumping with his feet together. He alternates three or four little jumps with one higher one, taking care to beat the ground with his feet, thus producing a jerky movement. The aim here is to express a certain violence. With a slight delay verging on an offbeat, the hands holding the stick or the fire arm follow the movements from the bottom up. The stick, held vertically, goes up and down, making its phallic shape even more obvious: the tip of the stick is indeed sculpted like a man’s penis with a protuberant head sometimes covered with a piece of leather. The dancer’s eyes are closed. He only opens them to check where he is going so as not to bump into any of the gathered assembly. This very

Pastoral Vitality

Photo 6.1. A mature woman (a ‘wife’) placing an object on a dancer’s shoulders. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

intense and physically exacting moment does not last longer that about 30 seconds and sometimes a lot less. It comes to an end with a final very high jump and then he returns to the other men. He may, if he wishes, repeat the two sequences: the running towards the women and the pose, followed by the jerky jumps. When the men evoke bulls and more generally the vitality of cattle, they mention their tread and the sound their hooves make when they strike the ground. It is particularly during bull fights that these sounds are the loudest, and these are the sounds that are represented in the dances. Sometimes we may be startled by a bull charge in the enclosure that we cannot see because it is night; only the sounds tell us what is happening. The trajectory of the dancer, which is not circular but rather a spiral movement, is also inspired by the way in which the bulls confront each other. When they are focused on combat, they may smash through the thorn fence just like the dancer who has his eyes closed and in front of whom the spectators must move apart as he approaches. Although this is not necessary, one or two women may in turn approach the motionless dancer. They place on him one of their orna-

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ments, often a belt and sometimes a necklace. A bracelet may also be thrown at the feet of the dancer if one of the women cannot get near enough to him. The man then dances with these objects placed upon him.11 They may fall off, as nothing holds the belt for example on the dancer’s shoulder when he begins his leaps. He does not stop even when he loses a headband or any other object. This object acts as a support and a trigger. Here the object is not of the colour of the person on whom it is placed, as is the case with poems. The only necessary quality of the object is that it should be given by a woman. Understanding this therefore involves the identification of the woman who carries out the act. These women are already mature. They are wives (mwe) in the marital but also the statutory sense of the term; they are no longer young girls (dhole), in contrast to the women in front of whom the men stopped during their parade. The women who place the objects are somewhat set back within the group. Moreover, these women place an object on the dancer, provided that they are of the same clan origin as the dancer’s mother. The Mursi consider that each man belongs to a certain clan through the paternal line, to which his mother also belongs after marriage. The recognition of this origin means mobilizing a criterion of the past that has changed after marriage. The prenuptial paternal affiliation is not completely forgotten by the women, as terms of kinship recognize two men whose mothers were of the same clan origin before marriage. Thus two men who do not have the same father and who are therefore from two different clans, but who have mothers of the same clan origin are yana and can address each other using the term bae.12 When one or several women from the original clan of the dancer’s mother approach him, this is not a category of women assimilated to his mother at the time of the dance: following their marriages, these women are no longer from the same clan. This is the mobilization of a classificatory criterion that refers back to the past by virtue of marriage. The women who place the objects are not identified according to a precise kin relationship, but according to a category: ‘a woman who shares the same clan origin as my mother’. This is not a kin relationship that aims to look back to precise ancestry, but one that justifies a past act: these women are the equivalent of the dancer’s mother before her marriage to his father. They are not his real mothers (who are necessarily from the dancer’s clan) any more than they would be metaphorical mothers from the past for the dancer by virtue of their clan. They are the future mothers before whom his father danced in his time. These are women whom his father could have married in his time. Also, their original relational positioning with reference to the dancer is a double proposition: on the

Pastoral Vitality

one hand, it provides a model for alliance because the model worked well in the past and, on the other hand, it validates the present action by encouraging the man to present himself before the future mothers. The intrusion of a retroactive present into the dance functions like the double call at the beginning of the dance sequences. There was the real call to come together in the dance area, and then the danced call. Henceforth, there is a choreography recalling the past agreement between a future mother and the dancer’s father. This agreement comes after the dancer has presented himself before the future mothers at the time of the dance (amongst whom there may be a future wife). The vitality in the form of alliance finds its expression in a transgenerational repetition that gives it its replicable character. Indeed, through the object placed on the dancer that triggers the climax of the dance, the idea of the repetition of alliance is set in train: the men solicit a union in their parade and the women empower them to do so. Their action encourages the men to express vitality, which here is represented by the movements of the men who beat the ground like bulls. Moreover, this retrospective point of view can be seen in the gestures of the women as they place the objects. We have seen with the men’s shield poems (see Chapter 3) the repetition of a narrative motif: that of the women awaiting the victorious return of the men, standing ready to place seed necklaces around the necks of the returning men. During the dances, the women do not face the men when they place their objects; they do so from behind. The women’s leather belt is like the necklace, but it is placed from behind, as if to encourage the man to depart, and they are leaving the path open for him. This time they are not favouring the man with a face-to-face welcome. The men then come and present themselves to the ‘future mothers’ by means of an intermedial form inspired by bull gestures. And the placing of objects by ‘already mothers’ shows that this action is a repetition in order to set the action in time. The men do not insist on what they are, but give a decisive demonstration of the vitality that emanates from their bodies and their pastoral activities. Even their colour is exhibited – the one that is generally mobilized in individual relationships. Here they show themselves as their animals show their colour, i.e. unequivocally before the eyes of the gathered assembly. The dancers come forward one after the other and repeat the actions; the presentation of the intermedial bull form of the men lasts for a long time, sometimes almost an hour. It increases in intensity. The restraint of the approach miming the running movement, the brief halt and then the withdrawal into the self are replaced by noisy, rapid and exhausting gestures. The men complete their choreography with the emergence of

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another artistic form. In mirror-image to the emphatic gestural proposition, the ornamentation of the dancers decreases more and more. The dancers have been singled out by their colour and their dancing skills, which require gestures that are difficult to carry out. Those dancers who were not sure enough of themselves have remained in the background. The bodies are now shown: during the repetition of these intense movements, sweat has effaced the paint from the bodies. The men who dare not take part in this section of the choreography put all their energy into the vocal and instrumental ensemble, and they too sweat profusely. Therefore, when the men hand over to the women to receive the latter’s response, their bodies are devoid of paint, i.e. their bodies can now be visually apprehended. The effacing of the paint marks the end of their proposition.13 Act 5: the skipping of the women. When the men have finished their proposition, some young women advance a few metres from their place in the circle, one after the other, and more rarely simultaneously. This time, the dance should be more limber. The dancers jump with their feet together and their knees well bent. The torso is held erect, sometimes slightly bent forward. The hands are raised up close to the chest. The arms are relaxed and the crooked elbows swing up and down as the body rises and falls. The elbows seem to follow the movement of the body impelled by the legs. The dresses of the women (the upper part that is held on the shoulder, saagauni, and the skirt, juni) follow the same movement as the elbows. Thus, we have the vision of a body bouncing up and down rapidly, and the ‘extensions’ of the body undulate around it. The heads of the dancers are tipped back and their gaze carries beyond the men opposite them. Sometimes the eyes are closed. So as not to injure the lip and in order to maintain the suppleness of the movements, the lip-plate – if it is worn – is held raised up on the nose and the lower lip is contracted in order to hold it firmly in place. The young women who carry out this dance have advanced with little hopping movements, and then they remain on the spot for the major part of the sequence. This may last for a few seconds or more than a minute, but this passage remains brief, as was the case with the men when they struck the ground with their feet. Moreover, the female dancers do not approach the men at all, and the more timid amongst them hardly leave their original place. When they have finished, they often move backwards to take up their place again. The gestures are difficult to perform. The right frequency in the jumps must be found so that the dress will follow the rhythmical movement in spite of its inertia. And this frequency is difficult to maintain because the movements must continue to be lithe in spite of the effort required

Pastoral Vitality

Photo 6.2. A young woman dancing. The head is slightly tipped back and the legs remain bent in order to be able to jump up gracefully and accompany the movements of the dress. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

to carry out the jumps. No desire for interaction emerges as it did with the men when they advanced towards the women. The interactional register is equivalent to that of the men in the bull dance, but with a different intention. The impression that this choreography gives is that of detachment on the part of the dancer, as if she were dancing in spite of herself. This dance borders on passivity and contrasts strongly with the total involvement of the men in their dancing. The faces of the young girls are expressionless and rather relaxed, their gaze seems vacant and we can guess that the effort paradoxically rests on the impression of facility that they should convey. No aspect of the dance should stand out particularly, either audibly, visually or rhythmically, as it did with the men’s abrupt changes of register: the feet do not strike the ground, there is no special ornamentation, and there is no alternation between small steps and large leaps. In this dance, everything is regular, continuous and supple, and the impression of detachment emphasizes the idea of passivity as if the gestures were almost unintentional. The intermedial form presented by the women figures calf movements. Calves are described by the Mursi as jumping about without paying any attention to the world around them. When a man describes a calf coming out of its enclosure, he tips his head back and moves his

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elbows up and down in the same way as the women in their dance sequence. The impression of passivity that they must communicate to the others amounts to exhibiting the carefree behaviour of calves. Once more these intermedial forms do not aim at transposing bovine qualities onto humans or vice versa. If the carefree behaviour of calves is to be shown in the women’s gestures, this does not mean that the women themselves are carefree. It is a question of showing the women presenting themselves to the men and representing the temporal direction of the vitality distinctive to them and that, in bovine terms, this time involves calves. The women’s dance does not indicate alliance with men, but what arises from it. By completing these gestures, the women evoke the calves to come, like the children who will subsequently be born. In other words, the men draw from the past for their proposition, whereas the women look to the future for their response. Act 6: the herd and the herdsmen. The herd is not only composed of bulls and calves, in the same way as the human group is not only made up of young men and women. One last choreography carried out by another category of dancers situates the alternation between ‘propositionresponse’ and ‘past-future’ in an image of the present – that of the large herd. Certain mature women walk across the dance area. This is the last act, although some of the walking may begin while the men are approaching the end of their proposition. However, these passages intensify as the dance progresses and become more numerous when the last dances of the young girls are taking place. This is not a dance in the strict sense. These women walk in single file. They look rather cheerful and do not seem to pay any more attention to the men than they do to the women. They parade raising their arms according to the common gestural idiom figuring the shape of bovine horns. We have seen in Chapter 2 that mature women could include a reference to one animal in particular in their senior elder names, as, for example, the form of the animal horns of the animal they own. This gesture is common among men and is characteristic of masculinity. Here the women adopt this intermedial form in front of everyone. In this parade, two criteria in the way in which the women move produce the image of the herd. First of all, the passages back and forth over the dance area are carried out in groups, even if the group is only made up of two or three people. In the absence of gestures other than the raised arms representing the animals’ horns, it is impossible to infer one particular category of cattle, as the men do with bulls or the women with

Pastoral Vitality

Photo 6.3. While some young girls continue their dance, some mature women advance in single file or in groups, raising their arms towards the sky recalling bovine horns. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

calves. Here the women are inspired by the herd in general in order to show the results of the pastoral project. It is not surprising that mature women undertake this role. These are the women who sing the wives’ poems (zilüe a mog’ya), i.e. the descriptive points of view concerning the distribution of colours (see Chapter 3). Whether they are mentioned as sisters (ngone) or as mothers-in-law (gniaho), they are the preferred vectors of colours, and not points of attachment like men. Like a bovine herd, they preserve, maintain and show the product of pastoral work. The elders do not dance or produce any intermedial forms inspired by cattle. Nonetheless, their implication tells us a lot about their place within the group. The elders have taken on the choice and the preparation of the dance area. Furthermore, before the organization can begin, their agreement is necessary: it is they who decide whether things are going sufficiently well in the country for the dances or the stick duels to take place. Likewise, their withdrawal from the production of intermedial forms is an indication of their relationship with the animals. During the dances, they do not approach the circle of chanters or dancers, but they remain nearby, only a few metres away. They sit or they lie down, they talk among themselves of everything or nothing, and not necessar-

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ily about the dances which they observe out of the corner of their eye, but that they observe nonetheless. Thus, their withdrawal is not a sign of lack of interest in the dances, but only a sign of detachment. Dealing with the organization of the dances and their withdrawal from the performance of them reflect how the herdsman acts with regard to his herd: he decides where to graze his animals, he clears the grasslands by setting fire to them at the end of the dry season and he watches over his cattle with all-embracing attention. During the dances, the elders are and do with people what the herdsmen are and do with their animals. This original position in relation to the group may enable us to suggest that they too produce an intermedial form in their own way. They have a role that defines their position in relation to the group. Although they are no longer actual herdsmen because they no longer follow the herds, during the dances, they adopt the position of the human herdsman in relation to the animals. Thus, the elders position themselves midway between the herdsmen that they have always been and the elders who are henceforth detached from this activity. In other words, if the intermedial forms inspired by the animals of the other categories of dancers are the expression of the relationship between people and animals, the pastoral role of the elders during the dances (i.e. their own intermedial form) is the expression of their relationship to the human group. As we shall see in Chapter 8, elderhood is the culmination of an ontogenesis that situates certain individuals beyond people who are involved with their cattle.

Common Destiny to Both Humans and Cattle These dances are the condensed expression of the linking of men and women with the aim of prolonging the common good, i.e. the extended pastoral group: humans and their cattle. Each one finds his or her place. The dances are organized into six acts, which may be grouped into pairs: the first two dances are the call of the women and the agreement of the men. We have seen different levels in the call in which the expressive register is delayed in time in relation to the practical register. The following two acts are a proposition emanating from the men. Each man mimes the warrior’s march to present himself before the assembled women. The women are defined generically as future mothers. Then some of the men who have ‘arrived’ attempt to give prominence to themselves with bull gestures, taking from the animal its vigour and from man his warlike strength. The man who carries out this sequence is aided by a woman

Pastoral Vitality

who is nothing more than a reminder of a successful past event: this woman was like his mother when his father danced. She validates the dancer’s act by recording this dance in an action that is repeated in time. The suggestion of the reproducible nature of the act is there to show the universal value of the scenario made up of proposition/response by the men and the women. This is not a story, but the repetition of history. The last two acts are made up of two responses given by two categories of women. The future mothers propose gestures inspired by calves, i.e. looking to the future. As a positive response to the men, the impression of facility in the dance, as if it were carried out ‘in spite of the woman’, invites them to see a future that is inevitable and full of promise. The mothers come into the midst of the dancers representing an undifferentiated herd. Once more, they are there to show, and perhaps to validate, the future of the group that notably involves a large herd of livestock. Finally, the elders organize and observe the dancers, as a herdsman organizes and observes his cattle. During the course of a few hours and in a well-delimited area, the dances represent certain positions, roles and divisions in time for people who in their daily lives are scattered in space. They thus express in a condensed way during a one-time event an overall image of a society, and a future that in everyday life can only be apprehended in a fragmented and intermittent way because of the dispersed lifestyle and of the different stages in the ontogenesis of each one. The dance is a synthetic and delimited form of the expression of the common good, as the poems are for the expression of self. These dances do not enable individuality to emerge as the poems do. The gestures are too stereotyped to demonstrate anything other than a good performance. We learn very little about the personalities of the dancers taking part. However, it is possible to correlate the greater or lesser implication of some of the dancers from the expression of their desires or events in their lives. In Chapter 3, I suggested that we should see Runebi Rongadi as a poet distinct from Teosame, who is more oriented towards the practice of politics. The former takes part in the dances in a totally absorbed manner; he returns to the central area and goes towards the women again and again, repeating the bull gestures. As for Teosame, when he comes, he stays on the sidelines. He passes by and observes, although he cannot yet assume the position of the elders, as he is still a ‘junior elder’ (rori). Olechage, whose ox poem, reputedly of great quality, makes of him a much-appreciated poet, also participates intensely in the dances and does not hesitate to attract everyone’s attention. Samelu, my host, finds himself in an intermediary position, perhaps that which Teosame once occupied when he was younger. He is

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not yet a ‘junior elder’ (rori) among whom he is considered as a ‘junior’ (rori a tino) among ‘seniors’ (rori a bô). Although he is still enthusiastic about the dances, he remains among the assembled men and participates in the rhythmic accompaniment. His discretion does not prevent him from being well regarded and he is invited to most of the informal meetings of ‘senior elders’ (bari). Finally, Rabi Kav’ania is not accustomed to dancing a great deal. We shall see in Chapter 9 that he was troubled by a particular event: his wife was pregnant by another man, and the problem and its resolution were discussed between the afternoons of dancing in Maridunka and Mako. He was not to be seen in Maridunka as he remained at home. He was more than visible in Mako, where he continually went back and forth shooting his firearm. For him, the expression of reproductive vitality in the dances was without doubt inappropriate during the first occasion in Maridunka, and a means to overcome it during the second, at the risk of overdoing his participation. *** The dances are a collective affair that express collective issues. The individuality of the participants is left aside to a large extent in order to highlight generic positions. The intensive use of intermedial forms between humans and cattle makes it possible to evoke their relationship in one and the same action. These intermedial forms, created this time by gestures and not by ornamentation (like some seen in Chapter 5), do not imply equivalence between the two groups. Once again, the intermediaries between human and bovine gestures insist on the relationship between the two groups: we could read the scenario of the dances as that of the humans alone, or we could see only the cattle in them. But it is the formal uncertainty that creates the conditions for the representation of their common destiny. Creating a three-way link between men and women through the intermediary of cattle enriches strictly human relationships. This form of expression inspired by cattle that could be considered as ‘symbolic’, i.e. detached from practical life, is in fact closer to the reality of life among the Mursi in which people’s future depends to a great extent on cattle. Only expressing one of the groups, either the human group or that of the cattle, would mean leaving aside half of the extended community of herdsmen. The bovine reference that is displayed in these intermedial forms is not simply added for symbolic reasons; it is a heightened representation of the Mursi’s life project. Thanks to these intermedial forms, one kind of actor (people) can represent the whole of the pastoral group that includes both humans and cattle.

Pastoral Vitality

In the previous chapters, the bovine animal has often been shown in different forms, although I have never considered it as the most important thing the Mursi deal with. We shall now take the animal into consideration. In Chapter 6, we shall place the animal at the centre of our analysis. This time I shall not describe a particular process of sociality or the aesthetic forms that contribute to it, but I shall see how the role of the animal is constructed, how it finds itself at the crossroads of several practices and processes of sociality. This will enable us, on the one hand, to describe the animal as being both omnipresent and always pertinent: the multiplicity of forms in which it appears makes it possible to defend this paradox without invoking an obsession, a powerful cosmology or an economic necessity. It is a malleable tool rather than an unequivocal point of attachment.

Notes 1. The stick duels (donga) are always triggered by bullying among warriors. The correspondence in form and the articulation with the dances are obvious. 2. Here the leg is distinct from the thigh. 3. We have seen in Chapters 4 and 5 that the other indispensable ornament of all women is their dresses, although they can be perceived as the extension of their bodies, contrary to their bracelets, which can be taken off. 4. We should remember that the scarifications that follow a murder (riru) are also worn first and foremost on the forearms. 5. It should be noted that movement through the bush is always in single file, even in open spaces. 6. Ture designates all firearms and comes from the English ‘turret’, whereas kilashi is a Mursi adaptation of the diminutive for Kalashnikov, ‘kalash’. 7. The soloist is not in a specific position either, because one has difficulty in situating her unless one approaches in order to identify her. 8. Meetings may take place later when most of the people leave. Only the young men and women who are really involved in a relationship remain, sometimes continuing with other types of dances, particularly in couples the choreographic register of which is completely different. 9. The ‘women’s poems’ in which the reciters in the centre of the circle are affected by the same trembling (see Chapter 3). 10. We shall see in Chapter 7 that the Mursi do not expect interaction with their cattle on the human model. 11. The depositing of the object is called ulupto, as when during the wives’ poems, a female spectator of the colour that is being sung about comes and places her necklace on the reciter (see Chapter 3). 12. The term of address of these men from different clans of whom one can marry the daughter is lang’ and the classificatory expression is ira co lang’ (‘man with lang’’).

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13. We can thus have a better understanding of why the paintings done for tourists (see Chapter 4) are inspired by those used in the dances. One never sees a man apply dung or clay to his face for tourists. On the other hand, covering the face and the body with wavy lines to confuse the tourists and hide the body is the norm. And we can understand why painted people stand rigid in front of the photographer, as if frozen: gestures would risk not only revealing the person, as in the dances, but it would also denude him by effacing the paint. This dynamic ornament plays an integral part in the register of dances, although it becomes a risk in the context of tourism, in which people try hard not to show themselves.

7 Complex Cattle Love

There are cattle that are the source of poetic and artistic expression. There are also cattle that are the source of meat; these are animals that one feeds and that afterwards save one from famine. Sometimes cattle constitute a store of meat that can be used in times of scarcity. But cattle are also animals that one laments before putting them to death. How can we reconcile the capacity of cattle to feed men with their use as poetic inspiration and with the affection that men lavish upon them? How can we account for a form of relationship that includes all of these aspects at the same time? The hypothesis of this piece of work is to try and understand the expression cattle complex by focusing on the complexity that is expressed through cattle, and not on cattle as the source of complexity. It is obvious for the herdsmen that human and bovine existences are closely interwoven. However, some suggestions imply that there is something stronger than interdependence here. In recent debates on the relationships between men and animals, the Nuer and their cattle are sometimes mentioned as examples of the inclusion of animals within the human group to the point of being man’s equivalent.1 However, the equivalence is problematic, beyond the fact that it is one-way, i.e. humans think in terms of cattle, but not the other way round (see Lienhardt 1961: 16); therefore, this is not a perspectivist point of view in which the positions are reversible (Viveiros de Castro 1998). This equivalence makes the sacrifice of cattle incomprehensible, and yet this is their primary vocation. It is not immediately obvious, or without conse-

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quence, that ontologically similar beings with which one has a relationship often based on affection can be regularly and massively sacrificed.2 Evans-Pritchard uses strong words to describe the relationship between men and cattle: ‘irrespective of use, they are in themselves a cultural end, and the mere possession of, and proximity to, them gives a man his heart’s desire’ (1940: 40). Thus, to render an account of the sacrifice of cattle, his solution, as for others, was to participate in a kind of symbolist inflation. The cattle were metaphors – ‘symbols’ – and affections were no longer the issue, because what was being killed was something other than cattle. However, it is an animal that is killed. Therefore, through a description of the different practices, one must cast aside the ontological correspondence between people and their cattle in order to bring to bear, without paradox, the attachment for the animal when it is being put to death.

The Depiction of Cattle The cattle share with humans the fact of being adorned, burned, bled and painted, but neither of the groups pretends to be the other. The bovine jewellery is adapted to their morphology and the people only use it on their bodies when they dress up for the tourists. In this case, they transform themselves, giving up their preferred adornments for a pragmatic means of keeping the tourist at a distance (see Chapter 4). The scarifications retain the same graphic aspect as those of the humans, but are adapted to the animal’s body as they are to be found in the cartilage of the ears. The ears referred to as niavi kono recall the dotted design of the kichoa scarifications. The ears referred to as niavi bello come after the murder of an enemy by the owner of the animal, who, for his part, has riru. However, imitation and representation are current practices in childhood. Children imitate fighting bulls in the enclosures, on all fours and head-to-head. Sometimes they shout and strike the ground, showing that they are perfectly well acquainted with the movements of cattle and the behaviour of the animals, which, as a result, they can imitate easily. As they advance in age, their imitations do not improve and finally cease. A few practices related to imitation will lie: the shape of the animals’ horns is modified and their curves constitute, in addition to their colour, one of the most remarkable characteristics of each animal, which their owners imitate, when they refer to it by using their arms to form the shape of the horns. But this gesture is too fragmentary to be an imitation. What is missing is the lowing of the animal, the position on all

Complex Cattle Love

Photo 7.1. A scarified grey-green-blue (chage) bull. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

fours, the movements of the head and the rest of the beast’s behaviour, and this prevents people from seeing a cow in the man who has raised his arms in the shape of horns (see Eczet (2020) for a deeper analysis of imitation). The children also carve little figurines out of clay suggesting the horns and the grease ball that zebus have on their shoulders (dhog’e). They use them as toys, holding them between their fingers to play at fighting. Here too, instead of improving their carving skills with time, the practice is simply abandoned. The discontinuing of these carvings does not signify a lack of modelling skills; it is simply the consequence of them being no longer pertinent when the child reaches adulthood. When these practices cease, it means that another aesthetic register has become more highly valued: the intermedial form, for example, but also the bovine artefact that is the animal itself. One sort of cattle can indeed act as an artefact. This is a grey animal with ornamentation made up essentially of scarifications over the whole body. This depiction offers a double synthesis of elements belonging to Mursi aesthetics and thus becomes a sort of generic emblem for the pastoral way of life of the people. But because it is a question of representing most of the group, the ox decorated in this way does not acquire a special value compared to another unscarified animal. Its artefactual value is distinct from its value as an animal.

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Only oxen of the colour grey-green-blue (chage) can be adorned in this way; the choice is the owner’s. Because of the equivalence of perceptions within a family of colours, there are sometimes cattle of the colour pink (rege), although never of the colour dappled grey-green-blue (lori), which is however part of the same family. Chage designates the colour grey-green-blue, but also means ‘community’. This synonymy, actively used by the elders during public debates, comes down to using the description of the rainbow. The Mursi in fact present the rainbow as composed of two bands of the colours greygreen-blue (chage) and pink (rege). But the way in which the Mursi use colours does not link colours and entities in any substantial way. Thus, the rainbow may be described as striped (tulay) as well as having colour gradations (sirway), and they may even perceive red (goloni), yellow (bhiley) or black (koroy). Thus, the rainbow is set up by the Mursi as a perceptual reservoir of colours. As people are linked to colours, the rainbow, may, by means of a syllogism, serve as a reservoir of people. Thus, the term that is most used to describe the rainbow (grey-green-blue, chage) is the term that designates the reservoir of people: the community. We find this pre-eminence of the grey cow in several places in the literature concerning the Nilotes of East Africa. For example, the accounts of the origins of the Turkana describe a group of men who followed a grey-coloured ox from Uganda to the deserted plains of northwest Kenya. They settled in the place where the animal stopped. Beyond the anecdotal, Lamphear (1988) calls this group of men ‘the people of the grey bull’ when introducing a study of their origins and expansion. The mention of an animal’s colour is never without significance in these regions and the colour grey, which is presented as representative of the group, metonymically expresses the community. The dry bovine scarifications (miren) are, like the riru that men carry out on themselves when they have killed an enemy, made by burning using the heated point of a lance. We may notice three main patterns:3 two are to be found on people’s bodies, while the third appears during ritual activities. The first pattern, located on the animal’s flank, is a part of the riru scarification that some men have on their arms after having committed a murder. Although the kilichoe, i.e. the vulture stylized in the form of a wave, does not figure on the animal’s body, the graphic correspondence with the riru of the murderer implies that it is an indication of a human presence engaged in martial activities. Concentric circles are incised on the shoulders and the hindquarters of the animal. In a ritual context, the concentric circles are also made with stones arranged either around the

Complex Cattle Love

Figure 7.1. A scarified grey ox. These scarifications are called miren and bring together patterns that are present separately on the bodies of people. © JeanBaptiste Eczet

place of sacrifice or around the ritual specialist who blesses the animals. These circles represent the two most important moments in the life of the herdsmen: the birth and the death of the cattle. The circles around the hindquarters emphasize pastoral activity and two of its products: dung as a result of grazing and calves as a result of reproduction. These two products are brought together in one action when, for example, the women draw circles in dung around the hindquarters of cows that have calved in the previous few days. But whether the circles are drawn on an ox or a cow is not very important. The Mursi say that they have simply chosen the fattest animals and that they prefer oxen for this reason. This is why the reference to skills in pastoral production by means of the circles around the hindquarters can hold, although it is only speculative: in the same way as the animal is chosen for its grey colour that is synonymous with the whole community, scarifications and their symbolic references can be seen on an animal and this applies to all, whether male or female. The generic scarifications carried out on an animal chosen for the generic quality of its colour produce a double synthesis of conceptions related to cattle, thus becoming an indicator for the whole of the Mursi herd. The scarified animal is a representation of the association between man and animal, in which the colours of men find their origin in cattle,

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and in which the collective forms of humans are embedded in them. The scarifications thus show the double movement of Mursi expressivity: first, drawing on the colours of the bovine prototype and subsequently creating variations of them (Chapters 1–3); and, second, reducing the visual variations produced by social life to simple forms, like ad hoc prototypes (Chapters 5 and 6).

Bovine Ideomorphs: When One Talks about Absent People The grey scarified ox is more than an ox; it is a representation of a characteristic of the group. But there is also a form of discourse that considers the animal less than an animal. The omnipresence of cattle is not only expressed in an emphatic manner. For example, one day I moved apart from the other men in order to have a rest on a cowhide. I could hear the men talking and I understood that one of them was looking for a cowhide to lie on. He came up to borrow mine, thinking that I had gone away. When he saw me, he turned back and said in a somewhat disappointed tone: ‘the striped ox is on it’ (Bhungay atula hi bae hung’). I could have understood this as discursive proof of an ontological equivalence between my animal and myself: I was not only of the striped colour (tulay), but some called me Striped Bull (Oletula), and they spoke of me as ‘the striped ox’! In this brief example, the intrusion of the animal is due to a communication condition when speaking of people who are absent. Indeed, we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2 that the extreme particularization of dual relationships by means of the name makes the Mursi naming process very expressive, but not very powerful.4 Each name designates one dual relationship, but its application to other relational configurations (collective, in the absence of people, etc.) is problematic.5 Speaking of people who are absent involves having recourse to the original bovine reference. Moreover, speaking of absent people with the aim of identifying them or locating them is the subject of many everyday exchanges between people. The importance of this kind of discourse comes largely from the difficulty of situating people and knowing what they are doing because they are dispersed all over the territory and in constant movement. When, for example, a guest who has arrived in the village wants to give news of his country or recount certain events, he may begin a long monologue. His words may relate events which occurred in the place where he came from or which he himself had heard of. He may speak of sacrifices, waterholes, marriages, transhumance, illness or quarrels – so many activities in which cattle play an active role. But very often, for the

Complex Cattle Love

outside observer, the cattle seem to be the only subject of his discourse, to the point of irritating the observer who would like him to ‘go beyond’: I used sometimes to despair that I never discussed anything with the young men but livestock and girls, and even the subject of girls led inevitably to that of cattle. Start on whatever subject I would, and approach it from whatever angle, we would soon be speaking of cows and oxen, heifers and steers, rams and sheep, he-goats and she-goats, calves and lambs and kids. I have already indicated that this obsession – for such it seems to an outsider – is due not only to the great economic value of cattle but also to the fact that they are links in numerous social relationships. Nuer tend to define all social processes and relationships in terms of cattle. Their social idiom is a bovine idiom. (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 18–19)

But in spite of the fact that Evans-Pritchard has seen the social role of cattle (‘links in numerous social relationships’), he is irritated because it confuses two types of reference: the cattle as a topic (‘led inevitably to that of cattle’) and the register of communication (‘Their social idiom is a bovine idiom’). In much Mursi discourse, as is probably also the case in Nuer discourse, it is not cattle that are more interesting than stories about men, but the stories about men who need cattle in order to find expression. This time, cattle are present as signs that one could describe as ideomorphs6 in which a touch of agency is necessary for the viability of the narrative. Consequently, the Mursi produce a narrative discourse in which the life of cattle saturates syntactic subjects, as it runs parallel to human life, but the referential subject of which remains stories about people. For example, one may hear ‘the black oxen stayed in the enclosure while the red cow was fetched’ as ‘Runebi Rongadi was negotiating his marriage with Nashigin’. This second proposition includes two names that have no meaning when a third person who one does not associate with is mentioned. However, saying ‘the black oxen’ implies people of the colour black who are accumulating cattle with the aim of getting married. And mentioning ‘the red cow’ implies a woman of the colour red. In this sense, mentioning cattle is necessary, even if they are not at the heart of the narrative. And the use of the enclosure may either be understood as obvious in the context of cattle or as a metaphor if one thinks of people. Unfortunately, this clue is not discriminating enough to definitely identify people. These coloured clues will therefore be coupled with numerous narrative clues. So if we couple the semantic clues, without referring to a specific relationship that would have taken the form of a name, with other narrative clues (for example, ‘the black oxen that were attacked on the plain at the beginning of the rainy season’, ‘whose father

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exchanged the spotted cow’, ‘by all my oxen! How red the cow was at the last donga!’, etc.), with a bit of luck and a talent for oratory, the speaker will mobilize enough narratives for the listeners to pick up at least one, or even several that they are familiar with. They can then catch on to the main narrative: recognizing a well-known narrative motif and identifying the people involved will then enable the listener to deduce who the people in the story are only by using colour clues. And having identified an already well-known story, it then becomes possible to deduce the people involved in new stories. But when one gives news from one’s country, cattle and their colours are part of the information because news is a story of sacrifices, journeys to sources of water, marriages, transhumance, illnesses and disputes – i.e. activities in which both cattle and humans, and their colours, have participated. The outside observer may therefore find it difficult to understand if one is still talking about people or about their cows in order to identify the former. This is a difficult exercise and oratory skills are not evenly distributed among people. When I listened to these stories, one term came back often and was never completely integrated into the flow of the sentence. The speaker adopted an evasive or interrogative expression and said: inaagay’. First of all, I thought that this was a kind of logical connector indicating hesitation. Then, as I began to understand the syntax and the content of the discourse better, I noticed that where there should have been a name, I heard this idiomatic expression that filled the syntactic void of the impossible name, it was also to be found when a narrative detour was too complicated for the storyteller.7 By giving the impression of speaking about cows, the Mursi in fact circumvent the logical and cognitive constraint of the anthroponymic system by exploiting knowledge of events that punctuate Mursi life: marriages, transhumance and sacrifices, which all necessitate cattle being moved, lent, exchanged, given or killed. Telling a story with many narrative digressions increases the possibility for the listeners to tie in their own knowledge, or their personal involvement in the management of cattle, and by using the clues, they can find out who is being talked about. There are therefore possible substitutions between humans and cattle, even though they are not ontological equivalents: when a women replies to my question about the blue bird ‘It’s the colour grey-greenblue, it’s the grey cow. It’s me’, she means that these beings express a common perception (see Chapter 1). When someone replaces the name of a person with a coloured ox, he uses a perceptual equivalence in order to give clues about people. One is the mention of identities linking beings together, while the other uses this to be able, in a practical way, to talk about people, and only about people.

Complex Cattle Love

The Construction of an Emotional Attachment The attachment of the Mursi to their animals is difficult to describe from an emotional point of view. The Mursi do not speak much about this subject. But the ways in which they display their attachment are numerous. The ox’s coat that is of its owner’s colour is brushed at length with leaves while an ‘ox poem’ is being sung (zilüe a bunagn). In this poem, the pastoral project is formulated with its ultimate conclusion, which is the killing of the animal. During the day, the owner raises his arms, giving them the shape of the animal’s horns. During the dances, this gesture can be repeated in the choreography in order to demonstrate the link between the person and his animal. Sometimes in the morning when the animals leave their enclosure, the owner carries out a dance. With bells on his feet, he leaps and sometimes sings his ‘ox poem’ while executing broad body movements indicating good health: jumps, vigorous head movements and short runs over several metres. In contrast, during certain sacrifices when the animal moves forward towards his death, one can see its owner and his close friends or relations weeping. When Evans-Pritchard somewhat clumsily suggests that, concerning cattle, ‘the mere possession of, and proximity to, them gives a man his heart’s desire’ (1940: 40), it is, in my opinion, because the Mursi, like the Nuer, seem to be full of admiration while taking care of their cattle: it is the admiration of the art lover in front of his masterpiece. In practice, one should rather speak of an intense look when a Mursi contemplates his herd, of enthusiasm when he talks about it and of solemnity, as when I was given to understand that it would be a good idea for me to own one or several oxen of my colour. As always in research situations in the course of fieldwork in which the observer is supposedly richer (in money and various possessions) than the indigenous population, I was the subject of incessant requests. Above all, the smallest of my gifts or purchases quickly became known by people who had not taken part in these transactions. After a while, several Mursi told me that having animals of one’s colour was a good thing and that I should therefore do something about it. When I had acquired two young ‘striped’ (tulay) calves, those around me congratulated me and encouraged me to look after them well. They sometimes enquired after my calves. Nobody wanted me to give the calves to them and I was almost never asked how much I had paid for them, as this seemed to be of little importance. These calves were really mine, contrary to everything else that I thought I owned and that was the subject of exchange, or that attracted envy, curiosity or even theft. There was always the possibility that my things would become the property of

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someone else, but my calves were apart. When I left, I suggested to two friends who were each looking after one of my calves that they should use them first if they needed to kill cattle. I understood very quickly that my suggestion did not make sense: although I could at any moment give away my calves, it seemed to be irrelevant to imagine a stock of animals for potential killing. Finally, I must admit that I took more and more pleasure in observing my calves, in seeing them do what calves do, and even if they did not give me my heart’s desire, as Evans-Pritchard had stated, they gave me pleasure. They seemed to some extent to help stabilize my presence day by day among the Mursi. Indeed, I had acquired something that may seem paradoxical: the most common, frequent and generic animal was now mine, i.e. unique and in my possession. Thus, I felt a certain attachment to my calves because of the colour that we shared and that other Mursi always used when addressing me. But although it seemed that I was beginning, for a short time at least, to feel something like what the Mursi feel for their cattle, I could not be sure that the emotions and the specific link between the animals and me was of the same kind. This was because, as I mentioned earlier, the modesty of the Mursi concerning their emotional states is almost total,8 and one practically never receives confidences or personal or stereotypical explanations of any kind. Then there is the methodological difficulty of putting into words emotions that generally do without them and that are in this case the result of a process rather than the process itself. Thus, it is rather the contrasts that we can make between the attachment to cattle and relationships with other people that inform us indirectly about the possible feelings or emotional dispositions that link people to their animals. We have seen that cattle are omnipresent in exchanges, either in daily interactions (names, pastoral practices, etc.) or in ritual ones (poems, dances, etc.), including those in which the animal does not play a main role, i.e. in which it does not constitute the principal reason for the interaction. For example, one is not named in order to speak of the animal. This being the case, the animal becomes linked to human affairs by making them more significant and more bearable. To sum up, existing through one’s colour and one’s body is dependent on the presence of others and on the forms that are produced when they meet. The name constructs an ephemeral image figuring a visual perception. On the initiative of others, it is spoken in an act of face-toface interlocution and then it disappears. None of the Mursi knows all their names as they depend on others in order to exist, and these names designate a relationship rather than a person. However, the root of the name is the colour, which remains constant in spite of variations. The

Complex Cattle Love

number of colours is finite, but they can be shared and transmitted. The root, which could be the intimate part of the individual, is thus underdetermined to act as a unique essence. Too many Mursi have the same root, which is thus overdistributed in the world and among people. The identity overlap between people often occurs, i.e. each colour can be oneself but can also be another person. Thus, being oneself depends on others and on interactions, and if the others are no longer there, then the coloured self is nothing more than potential, a starting point, a base, a preconception, but never a sufficient definition of the person. And this is the reason why when I questioned the Mursi to find out their colour (‘What’s your colour [ree]?’), meaning in this context ‘who are you?’, they did not reply with a noun, but with a verb or a relationship: ‘I kereg’ey red’ (where reg’e is the verbal form of ree, and completely untranslatable), or ‘My ox is red’. The Mursi use the term ree to designate the colour to which they are linked. But this term also designates the body that suffers the same attacks of the ephemeral. All settings and postures only have meaning and justification when they can be seen, when they are addressed to someone, when they create interactional contexts and when they produce inferences in the other. No ornament is hidden beneath another or is used for the purposes of witchcraft. But illness is hidden away and the Mursi ask for news of the sick person using this same term, ree. The sick person remains in his hut, away from the gaze of others. At most, others speak to him from outside his hut. Thus, the sick ree, whether it be colour or body, cannot be there (i.e. he cannot stand before the others) if his interactional capacities are diminished: if there is no body, there will be no name. A state of weakness brings about the suspension of the process linked to ree by removing the body from sight and interrupting the use of coloured declensions present in the names. The ree only designates the living body; it is an intensive that illness diminishes and death annihilates. Moreover, this term cannot be used to describe a corpse. And when it designates the colour of a person, the ree is also used in its verbal form (reg’e), as in a poem, for example. Faced with these interactions that are necessary in order to become someone, something must act as a fixed point that will concentrate everything that a person is. And one element can alone contain all the relationships that make up a person and can be sufficiently determined, specific and stable so as not to suffer the uncertainty of the necessary presence of others. It is cattle that become this fixed point, for they provide the colours, which they display unequivocally. They are a stock of meat when there is famine; they are also a stock of potential colours for people in everyday life.

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But if colour is one of the primary conditions enabling the animal to become closely linked to a person, it must nonetheless acquire something more in order to really perfect its role as a fixed point of reference. It must not be reduced to its colour alone as with ideomorphs seen from above in which cattle can only have relevance because of their colour. A specific relationship is created that will be different from all others. But this is still not enough: the particularization of the relationships between people (which is the main kind of everyday sociality) makes it more difficult for this specific relationship to emerge because they are all recognized as such. Thus, two methods are used to contrast this particular relationship with those between humans. On the one hand, the relationships between humans are ephemeral, whereas the ox is the property of its owner. The mode of attachment in this case is belonging; the ox belongs to its owner. What people reject in a non-hierarchical society in which individual enterprise is of prime importance, the bovine animal demands: it is dependent, one can take pleasure in it, one can shut it away, one feeds it, one can kill it, one can keep a close eye on it and it constantly only shows only one image of itself. On the other hand, the Mursi have a demonstrative relationship with their animal. This contrasts with the martial ethos that favours a reserved attitude. Emotional outpouring distinguishes this relationship from strictly human affairs, which are carried out with great restraint. The relationship with the animal is therefore both unique and stereotypical. It involves shouting, tears and caresses that are absent from everyday business between the Mursi. We can thus better understand the dual presence of an attachment that takes the form of the possession of inalienable goods, and the display of emotions that distinguishes this relationship from those between humans. With gestures, names and poems, the oxen were merely references to living animals. We can see now how indispensable it is to have an animal (a body) of one’s colour. Among the Mursi, it is more important to use material goods than to own them,9 and thus the animals are often kept, exchanged, lent and put out to board.10 But the animal of the colour of its owner is his shadow: the owner can give it away if he wishes (as in the case of marriage) and it can be demanded of the owner if, for example, the latter is a murderer who must pay the price of blood. But the animal will always be treated with special respect and will not be transferred unless this is in accordance with the identity of its owner. The emotional bond makes personal an owner–property relationship that otherwise would be as unstable as a perception and as shareable as a name. The public demonstration of affection in the relationship between the owner and his animal distinguishes it from relationships with other

Complex Cattle Love

people. The relationship with the animal is thus exclusive and inalienable, and is not only based on an overlap of identity. By combining property and public demonstration, the animal of its owner’s colour is placed in a preferential and distinguishable relationship. It will finally die, and although its owner will be sad, it will soon be replaced by another animal; what will remain is the relational process between a head of cattle and its owner, which will be activated again when another animal arrives. As an artefact constructed by the practice of breeding and of the sociability between people, the beloved ox can be destroyed and replaced, provided that it is then reconstructed. The herdsman will need time and all his skills to carry out this project successfully. However, oxen are more easily replaced than people – one will better remember a wife or a dead child than an ox. One can replace an ox; one can only weep for a person. The ox therefore occupies a very special emotional space, embodying accumulated personal relationships (because they all make reference to it). All corresponding affects are transferred onto the animal, but the resulting relationship never attains the quality of that between people. This is why among the Nilotes, the bovine animal is so difficult to understand. It can be seen as the most complete subject as it contains all the expressions of people, and references to it are omnipresent in human actions. One might then speak of obsession. But at the same time, it is a very material possession at one’s disposal, the object of all one’s care. One might then speak of economy. Many analyses do not include this paradox and set the animal either in an emotional or symbolic position, or else in an economic system. Another aspect of this bond with the bovine animal must still be underlined in order to describe the attachment without humanizing the relationship on the spiritual level, for example. In order to be viable and stable, the link between the animal and its owner must be oneway. Reciprocity implies intention and the judgement of others, as with people. But the ox is like a dead-end and does not make any movement in return in the direction of the human: one cannot be judged or disappointed by one’s animal. One expects nothing of the beast except that it lives. At any rate, one does not expect any kind of behaviour that could be interpreted as intentional towards the herdsmen. The animals are more dependent on humans for their survival than the contrary, and the reciprocity of affection is not an issue. There is no dialogue that can humanize the relationship. Men think with the help of cattle, but cattle do not intentionnaly care about men, and the latter make no demands upon them. In other words, one can become attached to something other than an equivalent so as not to endure the impermanence of the Other.

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Table 7.1. Contrasted characteristics of relationships between people and between the herdsman and his animal. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

Person

Person

Cattle of owner’s colour

The relationship exists before the colour

The colour exists before the relationship

Ephemeral and contingent perception

Displays unequivocal perception

No control over people (non-hierarchical ethos)

Possession, care (choice of killing)

Restraint in affects (martial ethos)

Demonstrative affection (song, tears, enunciation of qualities)

Appreciation/judgement/ sanction

No reciprocity

The ox among the Mursi is a construction fed by the dispositions of its owner more than an intentional agent inspired by the human model. Table 7.1 recapitulates some of the characteristics of relationships between humans and cattle. Whether one sees them in terms of contrast, complementarity or inversion, these characteristics emphasize the relational differences, eliminating any idea of ontological overlap. Moreover, each type of relationship parallels the other, thus offering it a vacant relational space.

Killing Cattle: Removing Them from the World before the Eyes of Others If we agree about the caring relationship with one’s animal noted above, its sacrifice poses completely different questions from those made familiar by anthropological literature on the subject. The first consequence of killing an animal implies renunciation on the part of its owner. Except

Complex Cattle Love

in the case of compensation following a murder, the killing of the animal is a chosen and voluntary act carried out by its owner. The first problem I was faced with when I observed these sacrifices was the apparent lack of ritual characteristics. In most cases, I did not perceive any of the actions that one could qualify as ritual and that in other contexts produce a rich and profitable terminology with which to understand them.11 The killing of an animal is nothing more than the killing of an animal, without any additions such as words, specific ornaments or other actions besides the single gesture of putting to death. A volunteer, assisted by two or three other people, brings the animal to the place where it will be eaten, and inflicts a blow to the top of the animal’s head with a heavy stone. Some prepare the fire, while others cut up the carcass. Those presiding are rather young; they serve the meat according to the usual order. The best pieces of meat are reserved for the elders (like the liver), other pieces are for the women, and still others for the warriors, etc. No role of any importance other than the functional role emerges. No statement will exteriorize the action beyond the people present, for instance, by referring to recipients. Nothing more happens than the killing of the animal and the eating of the meat. Even the eating of the meat is identical to what I have observed many times when, in the morning, a dead cow is discovered and subsequently eaten. The voluntary killing leads to the same consumption of meat as when the animal dies for any other reason. During certain large-scale rituals involving the killing of an animal (see Chapters 9 and 10), certain actions are added, but they are not intended to enrich the act of killing. At most, some actions invite a person to be a privileged spectator, for example, by approaching the animal about to be killed because they share the same colour. The variations observed at the putting to death of the animal are merely additions around this ritual archetype, which is both constant and sufficient.12 The killing is not then made complicated by means of ritual actions. What counts is the result and much less the gesture. The person who carries out the act only performs a practical, efficient task. This is not a sacrificial practice because ‘the act of putting to death can only be sacrificial if it undoes links which have been created during a ritual process between the animal … and one or more people engaged in the rite’ (Cartry 1987: 8, emphasis added). For the Mursi, only the killing counts and it seems that it is only a teleological means of removing the animal from the world. The killing is always carried out before the eyes of witnesses. Then the animal disappears completely, eaten by these same witnesses. This is a question of eliminating an emerging figure of pastoral life, a figure that played an important role in a number of interactions

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of its owner. This is why the eyes of others and their participation in the removal of the animal from the world are necessary. In Mursiland, an animal is never put to death in secret. To render an account of the simplicity of this procedure, which contrasts sharply with its importance and the witnesses that are required, I suggest that the killing is a simple action that punctuates a complex process. Generally, all ritual moments among the Mursi are quite clear contexts for interactions (see Chapter 9). Aesthetic practices do not occupy a more important place than in everyday life, and relationships are openly revealed without the addition of an extra layer of complexity. The essential reasons for the killing are thus to be found outside this moment. And the killing should be understood literally: it is the simple removal from the world of something that possesses a certain complexity outside this moment. We should therefore understand the way in which the literal killing of an animal impacts on the complexity of everyday life. A cow is killed when a problem has been ascertained. This may be an illness, famine, a murder or, more rarely, the breaching of a taboo. A large number of cows – several dozen – may also be killed during the extensive renewal or modification of relationships (for example, during changes in grades, marriages and funerals). However, the Mursi do not suggest that there is a direct causal relationship with the problem or the situation that triggered the killing. In the case of illness, for example, the sacrifice is never presented as a therapeutic solution. People come, eat and leave. They are the visual witnesses of the killing and they eat the meat, but they in no way participate in any kind of assistance or therapeutic procedure: no one goes and salutes the sick person in his hut, except his close family, but they would have done this anyway. In the case of a marriage or a funeral, there is no rule for the number of animals to be killed. There is only the idea that the more animals are killed, the more successful the ceremony will be. The killing is not in fact oriented towards the problem. It does not aim to solve the problem. The killing and its consequences are aimed at the owner of the animal. It is carried out because of a change or some kind of relational disorder that is probable or potential, past or future, to which this act is supposed to contribute in a positive way. Eliminating one of the most valued products in social relations enables the Mursi to construct another that will be more adapted to the contemporary situation. As I suggested earlier, interactions on a daily basis are unstable and require constant construction. They encounter opposition from the animal in one’s possession and in the demonstrative affection that sets it apart from other relationships in which one is engaged. When this an-

Complex Cattle Love

imal is killed, this relationship no longer exists, and one suffers from a feeling of frustration that no longer has an outlet. The owner of the ox that is to be killed weeps and remains apart during the killing and the consumption of the meat. This is not because it is formally forbidden for him to participate, but because his sadness and suffering become more bearable if someone else deals with it: there is no point in forbidding something that one would not do anyway.13 Moreover, without there being any rules, anyone who is close to the owner may refuse to eat the meat and simply be a witness. The observer may be tempted to suggest that what is being eliminated when one decides to remove the animal from the world is the sum of everything that it had helped to forge: the relationships that made use of the animal to take shape, the names that it modelled, the gestures and dances that it inspired, etc. But that comes down to saying that one kills something else when one puts the animal to death. However, the things that it had helped to produce still remain in spite of its disappearance: the people and the names are still there, the poems too, and the gestures and the sensitive categories that often originated with the animal. What is removed when the animal is killed are not its antecedents, but effectively the final result of what already exists, and the potentiality of creating more is brought to a halt. It should not be forgotten that the herdsman is attached to the animal that is killed. And there is no point in seeking what is being killed elsewhere than in the animal. Otherwise, one might be tempted to consider that cows can be substituted for men because of identity mirror games. The cows would be something other than themselves, a double symbol of people: ‘They [the Nuer] center, however, in the general idea of substitution of lives of oxen for lives of men’ (Evans-Pritchard 1954: 1) and further on ‘So if in symbol the sacrificial spear is the man, so also is the sacrificial victim’ (1954: 1), and again ‘Men and oxen have a symbolic equivalence in the logic of sacrifice, so that whatever is sacrificed is an “ox”’ (1954: 6). By exteriorizing the ox in order no doubt to make its significance richer, this type of interpretation no longer takes the animal into consideration: something else is being killed in its place. But the death of an ox is a serious affair because it is an ox that dies. And the direct relationship with it has disappeared. The question then becomes: why get rid of the special relationship that one has painstakingly built up? I suggest that this is a way of relaunching a human and pastoral enterprise through the destruction of what it has produced. The animal that one cherishes is the culmination of a process derived from a sequence of human affairs: naming, being named, recounting, dancing, adorning, being a herds-

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man and doing all this as well as possible in order to gain the social approval in the eyes of others who are never satisfied with an attribute or a fixed position. The animal is, while it is still there, the support for the continuing task of forming relationships. Renouncing the final product of Mursi life, the commensurable form of unstable sociality, enables the Mursi to relaunch the relational dynamic. But the slate has not been wiped completely clean; a man is still a good herdsman with his knowledge of breeding and he retains what the previous animal enabled him to produce, but the obvious victory that was embodied in the animal must be won again. Among people who favour the visual register in relation to cattle, one should not underestimate the fact of destroying and removing from sight the animal that displays a colour. This is why the killing takes place because of problems or sudden relational changes. Illness may be the indicator of a badly structured and ill-used being, and the best solution is therefore to reconstruct.14 In other words, one must try again to be what one should have been. Relationships may change and construction then becomes obsolete, to the point at which it becomes necessary to destroy a great number of them in order to renew them. What will then be constructed will be more in line with relational patterns to come, following a marriage, a death or after a change in grade. The renunciation of cattle is public because it should make possible the renewal of relationships. The killing must then take place before the eyes of others, before witnesses and in full knowledge of the facts. A sacrifice is of no worth unless those who are potentially concerned witness the owner renounce his animal. Moreover, this is what the omnipresent figure in ox poems, the lali, recalls. He is the one who accompanies, he is the friend and the witness (he is not directly concerned by the animal). In these poems, which paradoxically describe the approach to the sacrifice of the ox that one cherishes, this figure gives shape to the external perspective without which the renunciation will not be accepted by the others. What the killing of an ox signifies is public renunciation with the aim of reconstructing the final product of the pastoral enterprise. A last example is very eloquent: when a great ceremony for the changing of grades (nitha) is organized and the ‘senior warriors’ are ready to become ‘junior elders’, some of them must first ‘wash themselves [-tonia] in order to become white [ke te holi]’, in the sense of becoming pure. They are the men who have had sexual relations with a wife who is already a mother. To ‘become white’, those considered guilty must give several head of cattle to the elders during one or several sacrifices. After having eaten, the elders declare that the guilty person is fit to get on with

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his life and change grades. One can also guess from this example why Evans-Pritchard allowed himself to indulge in Christian rhetoric when describing sacrifices among the Nuer. There has been a fault; there is renunciation and a public display of the renewal of self, which sometimes involves ‘washing oneself’. What Evans-Pritchard lacked was an adequate conception of the animal to see that the ‘inner state’ (EvansPritchard 1956: 322) is less the fruit of a deictic religion than of interactional effort. I have observed that all cattle may be sacrificed, although calves are spared and one tends to avoid killing cows for obvious reasons linked to the management of the herd. As the renunciation should be on a par with the problem, or with the situation that has led to the killing of the animal, each beast represents a different quality in this renunciation. Some contexts necessitate the killing of an ox of the owner’s fundamental colour (see Chapter 9 for a description of this), others may see a less important cow as the object of the renunciation, and still others, in the case of the Nuer, a cucumber. Sometimes it may be an animal that has no colour link with its owner. The witnesses, in spite of their variable commitment according to the more or less close relationship they have with the person whose ox is to be killed, all participate in the removal of the ox from the world by eating it, although those who feel too close to the owner will not consume the meat. During the feast, the reason for the presence of the meat is not mentioned: it is eaten, and that is all, and all of it must be eaten. A short time afterwards, there is no longer any trace of the killing, except perhaps for the hearth containing the embers of the fire on which the animal was cooked.15 *** For the owner whose ox was killed, all that remains is for him to continue his pastoral activity and produce another animal. There is no period of mourning that would recall the dead ox. The continual process of attachment to one’s ox that alternates bovine expression with the disappearance of its emerging shape is also different from that involving humans. Mourning after the death of a person implies withdrawal from social life and the removal of certain ornaments. The ornaments and the dances that bear witness to active relationships are temporarily halted. Only those ornaments implying relationships oriented towards the wearer are kept, like the clay that helps the Mursi to deal with death and danger. The person in mourning must wait for several weeks, and sometimes months, before his entourage will allow him to return to

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active life. The loss of a human relationship brings with it a suspension of active life. But the loss of a relationship with an ox relaunches life. The animal may be seen in two ways (in growth and being put to death) like the systolic and then diastolic movement of human socialities: if the presence of cattle is the source of poetry, the absence of the animal is the source of new relationships. This is why cattle are the object of everyone’s attention before they are killed. The ox was often understood to be an entity without any capacity for transformation. The multiple bovine forms (discursive, artistic, emotional, etc.) were conceived as a stretching, an overflowing or a bovine surplus. They were all relegated to ‘symbolic thought’. The animal is in fact a very practical tool, so practical that it combines roles and transforms itself according to activities. We shall see once again in the following chapter that it plays a decisive role in the definition of relationships. This time, it enables the categorization of people according to their age; these are people who do not compare each other as much as they compare their differing relationships with cattle.

Notes 1. Edouardo Viveiros de Castro (2011) uses the example of the Nuer to evoke the total interchangeability between men and cattle, i.e. that man have the same worth as their cattle. This is what the ethnography of Evans-Pritchard suggests and even more that of Lienhardt on the subject of the Dinka. 2. Rendering an account of the co-presence and the incompatibility of the two practices are at the root of Descola’s (2005) attempt, for example, concerning the absence of sacrifice in the Amazonian animist world. 3. One of the patterns recalls the kichoa scarification that young men and women make on their shoulders during the period in which they take part in stick fights (donga). 4. This formulation was suggested to me by Carlo Severi, who used it himself in Severi (2004). 5. We have seen, for example, in Chapter 3 that the poems may be perceived as the presentation of one’s identity in front of the group that no name could achieve. 6. I use the word ‘ideomorph’ in opposition to ‘anthropomorph’. I should, in order to be semantically correct, use the neologism ‘bovinomorph’ as the subject involves coloured cattle. But I prefer to use ideomorph to insist on the practical aspect of using the animal only for his colour as an objective visual dimension. 7. Inaagay’ is a contraction of ina and gay-. The first term is itself a contraction of iri (man/person) and of the suffix -na (here or there). Ina (‘that man there’) is used in direct response to an interpellation by someone whose name one has forgotten. Gay- is the verb to know. Thus, inaagay’ is an idiomatic expression

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8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

that is only found in this type of discourse, derived from the contraction of ina+gay, imperfectly translated as ‘that man there, you know…’. Moreover, I have never heard the Mursi telling me tell me of any good feeling about a person (only good acts) or a painful memory concerning a dead relative. See Tornay (1975) for a description among the Nyangatom, south of the Mursi. See Boutrais (2008) for an example of such transfers among the Peul. For example, the Batesonian ‘framework’, the contrast structure/communitas (Turner 1990), the terms ‘condensation’ (Houseman and Severi 1998), ‘paradox’ (Houseman 2002), ‘complex identity’ (Severi 2010), etc. It should be noted that the killing of an ox does not lead to any flow of blood. When the animal is opened and cut up, a little blood may flow onto the ground, but I did not notice any particular precautions concerning this. In answer to my questions on the subject, people did not speak of a ban, but of repulsion: ‘I don’t want to’ (nga kihini) or ‘I don’t like it’ (anye kamarew). See Chapter 1 and above for the notion of ree, which indicates both the fundamental colour shared with the animal and the body, and this is only expressed in an intense way in an interaction. Illness is hidden away, and because of this, one cannot express one’s ree, whether one’s colour or one’s body. The few pieces of the animal that have kept for future use, like the skin and the tendons, are retrieved immediately.

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8 The Poets and Their Ages

East African pastoral societies derive the segmentation of their groups from the stages of life (Peatrik 1995), based on the recognition of individuals’ varying levels of maturity, hence the expression ‘age system’. As always with the Mursi, cattle are never very far away. Indeed, for the observer, as for the Mursi, one way to determine the advance in age is to take into account the relationship that each person has with his cattle, and this relationship can be seen through aesthetic forms. Bovins thus have a role to play in the mechanism of calculating age. Evans-Pritchard suggested that a change in status brings about a change in the relationship with cattle: Likewise, in speaking of age-sets and age-grades we find ourselves describing the relations of men to their cattle, for the change from boyhood to manhood is most clearly marked by a corresponding change in those relations at initiation. (1940: 16–17)

The causality he chooses places the cattle at the end of the line; he believes that age determines the relation with cattle. What I wish to demonstrate, on the contrary, is that distinct relationships with cattle contribute to modifying relationships between humans based on an age criterion. Indeed, relationships with cattle are privileged at certain times in life, and neglected at others. For example seniority is constructed in opposition to strong relational attachments with cattle, which are frequent among young men. Cattle and relationships with them provide the unit of comparison with people. Thus following cattle enables us once again to follow people.

The Poets and Their Ages

Figure 8.1. The six successive grades of the Mursi age system. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

What is the exact nature of the Mursi ‘age system’? Is it a permanent social organization or an ephemeral performative structure (Sahlins 1989)? The system primarily categorizes individual existences. Smallscale everyday social relationships should be able to blend in with the life of the group. At this point, relationships that are too exclusive and specific – as described in the first chapters – are no longer profitable; what needs to be produced, to offer a framework for certain collective interactions, is a unified image of society and a categorization of individuals. We therefore must understand how this is carried out, how an individual-centred point of view governing everyday social activity is changed into a group-centred one structuring moments of political activity. So, for individuals, passing from continuous ontogenesis to discrete categories (grades spread over successive degrees) requires the description of a process on different levels: (1) the objectification of people’s advance in age; (2) the division into groups of practices and people as they advance in age; and (3) the occasional emergence of this division.

From Ontogenesis to Grades Let us first of all consider the final result of this division and recall the six stages that are the grades (see Figure 8.1).1 The Mursi age system objectifies six grades spread over six successive levels. These grades are the objective and inevitable stages of ontogenesis. They constitute a necessary development. They are the normative and serial counterpart to continuous real life. Indeed, a person emerges from the progressive chain of his relationships and his actions with all the ambivalence linked to that. In practice, one can be ‘in-between’ for many things, but not when it comes to belonging to a grade.2 Actual tension in everyday life comes from the inevitable dissimilarity between an empirical life and a normative one. Let us take an

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example. Olisirali was the first Mursi to speak English3 thanks to a visit to Australia organized by Australian missionaries. He gradually became a well-known figure for the government, and people from the outside always addressed him first. His mastery of English and his diplomatic skills enabled him to act as a mediator and messenger between worlds that up until then had only had sporadic, and often conflictual, contact with one another. For this reason, among the Mursi he is a respected man whose opinions are listened to. He is more than thirty years old. He has two wives and several children. However, he is still only a ‘senior warrior’ (teri). He does not have the right to speak in public debates (mesi). Therefore, it seems paradoxical that Olisirali should not be able to speak in a public debate, whereas his importance in the fields of diplomacy and the media ultimately come from his ability to speak three languages: Mun, Amharic and English. Hence his problematic position: he would be perfectly able to assume the status of the ‘junior elder’ grade (rori), but the system prevents him from doing so. Olisirali’s father is in a similar situation to that of his son, as he is often presented as a ‘senior elder’ (bari), although he is still only a ‘junior elder’ (rori). Yet, the right to speak is the same between junior and senior elders, so that this situation is perfectly tolerable for his father, contrary to the situation of Olisirali, who has difficulty in becoming involved in public affairs, as much as he would like to. The grades and seniority are not dependent on economic criteria. I have heard discussions several times between a ‘senior warrior’ and some ‘junior elders’ who had come to see him one by one. The former is the owner of many cattle. In addition to considerable wealth that enables him to feed his family and to ensure that he will contract marriages in the future (he already has two wives), he boards out many head of cattle with his pastoral partners who have fewer cows than him. By doing this, he ensures for himself a certain respectability because of his well-known generosity, but this also enables him to mobilize for whatever reason a network of people who are in his debt. The ‘junior elders’ came to see him rather pathetically, and one of them complained that he had still not received anything from him. The young man thus occupied an advantageous social position compared to that of the older men, but he still had to remain silent when the affairs of the country were being debated. The older men, although they were poorer and obliged to seek support, were unquestionably able to give their opinion about the running of the country and publicly criticize the younger men who inevitably do not do what they should. But these few examples4 cannot be reduced to a debate between the norm and the practice, between the model and its application. In fact,

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they only constitute the residual confrontation between two moments which co-exist: on the one hand, everyday life, largely dominated by individual initiative, established social networks and status thus acquired; and on the other hand, the life of the group at a given moment, often dominated by the fact of belonging to a grade, i.e. by a definition of self according to a generic criterion. It is not a problem of knowing the ‘margin of individual freedom’ within the collective framework. Rather, one must try to understand how one can create a passage between two types of sociality that, when they come into contact, may contradict each other. This will enable us to explain how individuals pass from one status to another one that does not rest on the same base, and how an institution founded on an age system can remain legitimate. The hypothesis that I put forward is that this division in society and the roles that devolve from it find their legitimacy in everyday praxis. This is therefore quite similar to a praxeological approach (Warnier 2007) founded to a great extent on the observation of aesthetic usage (discursive and plastic), which makes it possible to render an account of a collective hierarchical organization at a given time in a society that places equality and individual enterprise at the top of its scale of individual values. In short, with everyday praxis, a hierarchy is set in place that, although of little importance as far as the number of interactions is concerned, emerges from time to time as the indisputable established order. In other words, the sociality that is based on grades is very different from that of everyday life. But it is with the latter that the grades and the hierarchy that they imply find their origin and their legitimacy. I insist on the word ‘praxis’, which is here made up largely of aesthetic practices, because the discourse that applies directly to the grades is not very enlightening. However, it is quite easy for the ethnologist to conduct an interview on the attributions and the lifestyle of the men belonging to such and such a grade. The Mursi readily answer giving the tasks assigned to each one: going to war, blessing, living with the cattle or near the fields, dealing with the affairs of the country, etc. Likewise, they express the generic relations between the grades without difficulty: the ‘senior elders’ (bari) strike the ‘senior warriors’ (teri), but are the first to give them advice; the ‘senior warriors’ (teri) mobilize the ‘junior warriors’ (dong’a) as they wish, because they are in charge of their recruitment, etc. The means to justify a grade is often achieved using circular reasoning: a ‘senior warrior’ is the man who does what is expected of a ‘senior warrior’. The grades are not their own justification. When this answer had been exhausted, my informers spoke to me of reciprocal relations between members of different grades, thus producing answers such as:

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X is what X is by virtue of Y being what Y is. In short, the commentaries on grades seemed to be starting points for action, particularly on the political level. However, in the interviews, the legitimacy of the starting points remained obscure. When I tried to understand the adjectival meaning of the grades, my informers had little to say: what a ‘junior elder’ has to do is quite clear, what he is is much less. Or rather, it is obvious. Nevertheless, this type of circular justification does provide information on one particular point. The grades derive from the people themselves, i.e. from something that they do, and not from an attribution outside themselves. A grade is not a status that has been acquired directly after completing clearly determined initiatory stages that offer those concerned new contexts and experiences after a sudden and irrevocable change (Houseman 1986, 2002). Accession to a grade should be understood as the validation of a status that has already been acquired de facto and that must then be acquired de jure. Initiatory procedures continue throughout the period during which one belongs to a grade.5 Grades are related to everyday practices and are not formed according to certain events: marriage, death or warlike episodes are not taken into account by the age system. These often inevitable stages in life are not taken into consideration in the definition of grades. I propose to consider grades as deriving from stable age-linked aesthetic style made up of practices around which people come together. How then can poles of attraction be created around which a group of different people can be formed?

The Attraction of Grades Aesthetic practices underline people’s ontogenesis. We have already seen that names and their bovine references evolve over time; poems bring together points of view that are differently situated in time (descriptive, prospective and retrospective); certain ornaments exhibit different capacities or shared repertoires according to the age of the wearer; dances also bring together points of view differently distributed in time in order to offer an image of society in the present. Generally speaking, the manifestations that bear witness to the ontogenesis of individuals go far beyond the criterion of age formulated according to an age system, grades and age groups. How then are these personal practices requalified in order to sometimes correspond to an age system made up of categories? The vernacular terms for each grade also form part of their aesthetic styles. Each term is a paronym6 for the terms which are used to refer back to each grade. The argument that I am defending here is that this

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Table 8.1. Correspondences between the names of grades and common nouns. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet Grade

Reference/paronym

Definition

changalay

changalay

small creeping plant with little green leaves

dong’ay

1. donga 2. dong’wa/dung’wa 3. dung’a

1. a duelling stick and the name of the duel using this stick 2. vultures 3. deaf (stubborn, rash)

teri

1. terri 2. teri’ 3. teri’

1. new lush grass 2. swift 3. dust

rori

riru

man’s scarifications following a murder

bari

bari/bare

yesterday

karue

karue

old man

proximity is a way of summarizing the references that are used to define a grade. These linguistic correspondences are visible in the way of life and also in the expectations that each person formulates concerning each grade.

‘Big Child’ (Changalay) The main occupation of the changalay is watching over the herd on the pasture lands during the day, either alone or with others. He also helps take care of the animals in the enclosures and does the milking. The changalay is still only a child, but an autonomous one who follows in his elders’ footsteps: he is no longer with his mother and the other women like the younger children who are generally called ermi (plural ero). Changalay also designates a small creeping plant that can often be seen in the midst of the young sorghum shoots. This correspondence was pointed out to me by a ‘senior elder’ (bari), after an interview concerning one of his changalay children. We were talking about the latter,

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and without drawing an explicit parallel, he showed us a plant and told us its name, as if to insist on the idea of becoming a man, a plant not yet fully formed, one that creeps, grows and spreads. The changalay is given a ‘bull name’ (sara dip’). This name is the one that refers most directly to his colour and his bull. The proximity stipulated in the name between the changalay and the animal follows actual practices. Evans-Pritchard suggested that the Nuer went from the mother’s breast to the cow’s udder (1968: 57), because this age is the one during which the child is closest to cattle. Among the Mursi too, the animal is the source of heat during the night, the source of hydration during the long grazing hours, and its bodily products cover the bodies of the youngest children. Thus, the pastoral tasks of the changalay imply close proximity with cattle, which give them their means of subsistence. A changalay in a pastoral encampment is literally dependent for his existence on the existence of cattle and, moreover, it is to the changalay that the milk is given in priority. They are so close to each other that the children do not create intermedial forms from their cattle: they do not dance and they do not wear any ornaments except their necklaces (challae). On the contrary, they have fun in the encampment literally imitating fighting cattle. The variations in their names are short-lived and refer explicitly to a calf that they themselves own, like the name Bald Red (Lemugo), which alludes to a red calf with horns that are still short. The absence of intermedial forms in favour of direct imitation should be understood according to the relational process that it represents: here it is a question of identification, contrary to more advanced ages that will figure another type of relationship by means of intermediary forms. The changalay must still learn what it is to be a person, what cattle are and the different relational processes that link these groups. The other prominent aspect of their bull name is that it is very widespread among other changalay. As this name indicates, individuation comes through proximity with cattle, but individualization has hardly begun; the other aesthetic forms are in their very early stages, or simply non-existent, like the poems.

‘Junior warrior’ (dong’ay) The main activity of young adolescents, the dong’ay, is looking after the cattle in the large encampments (baktay) on the outskirts of the Mursi territory. These encampments act as buffer zones against attacks from the outside. The dong’ay help in the fields and begin to start their own herd. When they live with their fathers or with a near relation, they still

The Poets and Their Ages

sleep in the hut with their calves. Adopting elaborate gestures, they carry and lean on a donga, a long stick as tall as a man. This is the weapon used in duels of the same name. The name of the grade, the duel and the instrument used in the duel share a common semantic core because it is from these that one expects the expression of warlike and boisterous youth: an abundance of jewellery and an obvious display of virility are associated with this grade. Moreover, the end of the long stick, donga, is carved in the shape of an acorn and is sometimes covered with a piece of skin, like a man’s uncircumcised penis. Paronyms may lead off in different directions. For example, the Suri, from whom the Mursi separated some 200 years ago by crossing the Omo, call the stick duels sagine. However, there are two verbs in suri for ‘to fight’: dak and dagine. The former is used when one speaks of ‘fighting with’, or of ‘beating/striking’ several people (agne kadak ero: I beat children), as well as in many expressions (guyo dak ba: the rain falls, literally ‘the rain strikes the ground’). The second is used when a relationship between two people is involved (agne kadaginegn: I’m going to hit you). The verb that is used for the duel (dagine) is a paronym of the duel (sagine). However, the Mursi opted for the term donga in reference to the stick and the grade. The word came into use only recently, but the logic behind its creation is comparable. The name received when an individual becomes a dong’ay is always the name of a bird (jaloenia, wulinia, cheycheyna, etc.). There is no link with his colour. The negation of the personal colour, which is very rare in Mursi anthroponymic practice, produces a contrast with the exuberant gestures and ornaments as if the expression of themselves, which is already very visually pronounced, should not be reinforced in any other way. Moreover, dungw’a (singular dungw’i or dongw’i) means ‘vultures’. As we have already seen in Chapter 5 concerning scarifications, murderers may, when they are ‘junior elders’ (rori), exhibit scarifications (riru) on their arms. The upper motif of the riru represents a bird of prey (kilichoe), while the upside-down Us could figure the footprints of vultures. As the elders say, the dong’ay await the old age of the oldest in order to take their place, in the same way as they say that birds of prey swoop down on the villages to steal meat, or as vultures wait for bodies to tear to pieces. The relationship with ‘senior elders’ (bari) is a distant one. The elders read the future in the birds when they hear them, those same jaloenia and wulinia that give their names to the dong’ay. Literally, the elders ‘see’ the future in the birds as they see the future in the dong’ay who will succeed them. Finally, a person is called deaf (dung’a) if he is rash or has done something stupid and violent. And the dong’ay, as they will tell you them-

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selves, are the ones who make frequent blunders, particularly when they disobey the ‘senior elders’ (bari) by organizing stick duels, for example, without their knowledge.

‘Senior warrior’ (teri) The capacity for war is stronger among the teri. They are the first to go off with their cattle to the dangerous boundaries of the territory in quest of lush grass, and who take revenge or steal cattle from their neighbours. Some get married and gain their autonomy. They then own their own separate herd and dwelling and begin to live with ‘junior elders’. But even in this case, their silence during public debates bears witness to their lack of legitimate authority within the community. The way of life of a teri can be seen in the following paronyms: terri designates new lush grass that is particularly sought-after because of its nutritious value for the cattle. This pasture land can be reached on condition that one is prepared to lay oneself open to possible enemy raids. The appearance of this grass is referred to as udjon (third person singular), which could be translated by the verbs ‘to grow’ or ‘to hatch’. The same verb is used for someone or something that arrives – for example, enemies approaching on the warpath. The teri represent the time to come, and they insist upon their future position as ‘junior elders’ (rori), which will enable them to speak in public debates. The future is also visible in the construction of the names in this grade that take the form ‘Mor + common noun’. Mor (plural mora), which means calf, is associated in these names with a reference recalling the derived colour (hamwe) of the individual, as in Morhuge (Calf Red Clay), or Morkale (Calf Midday, where midday is white like a blinding light). The term teri’ refers to rapidity.7 Teri’ also means dust and this homonymy is to be found condensed in the following expression: ‘ter’ chuchu-chu’. Chu-chu-chu refers to something that hangs in the air, like a smell, or a cloud of dust that rises when men and cattle pass along during the dry season. Teri’ chu-chu-chu may therefore also be translated by ‘raised dust’, but it is important to understand the context in which this expression is used. The expression, which can be replaced by teri’ goloni (goloni: red like the earth), is used in difficult situations when there is hunger, warlike raids or general discomfort. For example, when we had to sleep on the ground in the bush because we were too far away from the nearest village, I would often hear the young men say ‘we are raised dust’ (kano teri’ chu-chu-chu) or ‘we are red dust’ (kano teri’ goloni). By that they meant ‘we are tough guys, we don’t care about sleeping in

The Poets and Their Ages

the dust’, as they do during a raid. This is an often-used expression to convey the skills of the teri when faced with a difficult situation. The colour reference in the name for this grade always corresponds to the individual’s derived colour (hamwe). We should remember that this colour is automatically inherited from the previous elder brother (sabo: before). The colour is derived from him. Thus, in addition to the lexeme ‘calf’ used as a prefix, naming using this colour amounts to making an implicit reference to a person who is relatively older than oneself, and placing oneself in a situation in which precedence is recognized (wurio: behind, that comes afterwards), whether in reference to a bovine animal or to a human. These ‘senior warriors’ still have no political power.

‘Junior elder’ (rori) Up until this point, recruitment is carried out on a case-by-case basis by those belonging to the grades above.8 The passage from teri to rori (from warrior to elder) and to the following grades is carried out by promoting all the Mursi concerned covering an age range of about twenty-five years. So all the teri become rori. This grade is the first one in which a man can wield real political power: he gains the right to express his opinions in public debates, which is where political activity is conducted among the Mursi (Turton 1975). It is expected that the rori show less warlike violence and greater ability in managing crisis situations, cattle and their own marriages, as marriages are the relational condition for the cultivation of sorghum. This grade concerns quite young men (twenty-five years old) as well as much older men (probably over fifty years old). There can therefore be a wide age range from this grade upwards, in comparison to the lower grades, in which age is more uniform. The rori grade is greatly valued. In some ritual contexts, it is associated with the lion. ‘When I become a rori I will be able to roar’ or ‘we roar like lions’ are the most frequent comments. The rori grade is considered to be the one to be attained, an ideal compromise between power, prestige, maturity and youth. The riru type scarification that is most often seen on rori refers to birds of prey. The upper part represents a kilichoe (plural kilicha), i.e. a bird such as a falcon or a buzzard.9 The lower Us are generic motifs that represent human presence, whether direct (the form of bovine encampments) or indirect (vulture footprints bearing witness to a warlike raid). There is therefore a bird of prey present in the symbolism specific to the rori and materialized in the riru. Open to polysemy – either protection or hunting – the evocation of the scene is warlike in all cases. The image of vultures, mobilized by the Us that represent their footprints, is to be

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found for example in Runebi Rongadi’s poem, in which he mentions ‘the vultures sated’ that remain after the murder of an enemy (see Chapter 3). In addition, these scarifications are carried out on the noblest part of the body: the forearm. Likewise, the women cover their forearms with their most valuable bracelets. This part of the body is called muni, which is also the name that the Mursi give themselves. With only very rare exceptions, only the rori have riru scarifications. A young man who has killed an enemy will prefer to wait until he has become a rori before having scarifications.10 Scarification marks the completion of an act of war a posteriori. The act is in the past, but henceforth the body bears the trace of it. The very nature of the scarification, which is not concomitant with the act that caused it to be made, makes it the privilege of the rori: it is an act of memory and this fits in well with the political role of the rori, which is to supervise and debate, but no longer to fight as the rori has already proved his valour. One should note that only the rori manipulate two kinds of representation of past exploits: they sing shield poems that recount a victorious raid in the past and have riru that represent an earlier victory. The names of rori are determined at birth, as the donor transmits this name as well as his bull name (sara dip’). Here the colour is fully expressed; moreover, it is the only one that is expressed, as the bovine reference has disappeared. The evocation is of something in the world only, the colour is shown without ever including a reference to its bovine antecedent. For example, a man of the colour mottled black (biseni) whose bull name is Mottled Black Bull (Olebiseni), can have Raised Birds (Shoadario) as his rori name; this conjures up a scene in which vulturine guinea fowl11 with black plumage flecked with white are raised by stones thrown by the hunter into the bushes, and then the birds fly away. With his wives, his children, possible gifts of names and multiple appellations, a rori exists beyond his relationship with cattle. His name expresses colours spread like a network of people and no longer the animal. In practice, a rori is henceforth taken up with the management of his farm, and he delegates pastoral tasks to acquaintances or relatives from lower grades.

‘Senior elder’ (bari) Becoming a bari follows being a rori. This grade does not give greater power in the public debate, but the greater maturity of the bari is none-

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theless visible, for example, when they take precedence in eating during the sacrifice of a cow or when others wait for their blessing when important public decisions are taken (concerning war, migration, etc.). It is a well-known fact that they are the guarantors of tradition and the history of the Mursi, which recalls wars, migrations and famines in narrative form. They are sometimes mocked in secret by the younger men because of their age, and the bari themselves try to hide their age as well as they can by wearing more and more clothes. In mun, past time is indicated by verbal prefixes: wa- (just now), bare-/bari- (yesterday), burto- (a few days) and be- (a long time).The prefix designating ‘yesterday’ (bare/bari),12 the paronym of the grade, is the only step into the past to be objectified: night forms the separation from the present moment. So the grade and the verbal marker refer to the past, but as with filial and generational precedence, this is a past fixed by a precise objectification (a birth or a night). This grade is not only relative (being ‘younger than’ and ‘older than’), it is an attainment that marks the end of a process, and its paronym corresponds to a precise temporal location (yesterday) as it is objectified by a clearly defined passage of time (night), contrary to the other vaguer temporal prefixes. ‘Old man’ (karue). Finally, there is the karue grade. This term signifies old age and concerns only a small fraction of the population. It often corresponds to a withdrawal from public life. Entering this grade does not bring with it any names. In a way, it is outside the system. The term karue itself can literally be translated as ‘old man’ and designates someone who has undergone physical decline.13 Generally speaking, all the names of grades can be understood adjectivally. Using them to qualify a person is customary among the Mursi. One can say A karue hon’ (‘He’s only an old man!’) in order to insist on the great age of a man who may still be a ‘senior elder’ (bari). Similarly, the Mursi sometimes called me a ‘senior warrior’ and sometimes a ‘junior elder’, according to the context and to my ability at the time to cope with it. No particular kind of behaviour or attribute (clumsy syntax, paternity, endurance, ignorance, etc.) was sufficient to situate me once and for all. So one designates a grade by what one expects of it rather than seeing it as a status in society. One can ask a man if he is a dong’ay if one wants to underline his rash and somewhat stupid reaction to a situation. Likewise, rori can be used as an adjective synonymous with strength and maturity, just as bari can be used as a synonym of wisdom and intelligence. This is because it is more a question of varied and general expectations concerning a grade than a precise definition. Grades can in turn be used to describe people and not merely as classificatory criteria.

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The Articulation between Aesthetic Styles and Grades Apart from speaking in public debates, I know of no practice that is clearly permitted or strictly forbidden according to the grade of the person under consideration. At a particular level of maturity, some practices are valued and others are judged to be inappropriate– for example, the eating of liver by a young person, as this is reserved for ‘senior elders’. The grade records a status retrospectively. In other words, the grade is the culmination of a whole set of practices, but it is not a premise that determines behaviour. Of course, the grade is used recursively to define what a person is. But recursive does not mean circular: the grades are tools for living in the community; they have resulted from modes of behaviour linked to people’s individual ontogenesis. They in turn create statuses that are then reintroduced into everyday practices as one criterion among others. The grades specify exclusive and absolute statuses that would be crushing if they were allowed to dominate in everyday social relations. Although all the aesthetic practices evolve with ontogenesis, some are never strictly linked to the hierarchy of grades, like dancing, which only serves to distinguish youth from maturity, or like the wearing of jewellery, which merely bears witness to an intense relational activity with one’s peers (see Chapter 4). They are the sign of exchanges and relationships between partners who do not have any other means of exchange or obligations of partnership, as cattle would be. Because of this, they are the appanage of young men, but they tend to disappear progressively with the advance in age towards maturity, as pastoral and marital success (causally linked because of provision for marriage) will then become the preferred expression of good relational skills. Other aesthetic practices are closely linked to grades, like names that punctuate the advance towards elderhood. The grade names provide information concerning relationships with cattle and people: the bull name is the mark of an identity and practical fusion between the animal and the child; the ‘junior warrior’ name is the name of a bird that is not linked to the person’s colour and that produces a contrast with the exuberance of his ornaments; the ‘senior warrior’ name, which includes the ‘calf’ prefix and only mentions the person’s derived colour, insists on the superiority of rank of the older person to which the younger ones owe respect; the ‘junior elder’ name marks an identity break with the bovine animal, as this name only expresses the individual’s fundamental colour without ever mentioning the animal; finally, when the person’s ontogenesis reaches its final stage with the ‘senior elder’ grade, the ani-

The Poets and Their Ages

mal becomes a sign as it only exists in the form of attribute or category. For this grade, the animal is more abstract, demonstrating, as we shall see below, that the elders are now in the position of humans faced with ordinary cattle. The changalay (‘big children’) are setting out in life. Their naked bodies do not yet reveal relational skills. They do not take part in the dances as they do not yet have a role to play in the expression of vitality. They can sometimes be seen playing at imitating cattle, as when they fight in the enclosure like bulls. They still have an extremely close relationship with cattle. Their physical closeness is constantly recalled in the naming process. The use of intermedial forms begins here, but neither reflexivity nor synthesis appears at this point. They do not even sing ox poems because they cannot occupy a position within the group that would create such relational disorder as to envisage having recourse to a killing. If an animal needs to be killed because it is sick, a close relation will give one of his cows. The ‘warriors’ form the most exuberant category, but they are also those who have to contend the most with precedence. The dong’ay (‘junior warriors’) have a grade name that denies their fundamental colour (ree). In this sense, they can only exist through their bodies. Therefore, it is relational skills with their peers that they must learn and display, and they decorate their bodies as much as they can in order to do this. They participate in the dances and sing their ox poems continuously: the vitality in which they participate is coming into existence, and they have to rehearse the killing of the animals that they take care of. They display themselves, they show that they are learning the ways of the Mursi, but they do not show themselves as unique individuals. Moreover, the ‘junior warriors’ live together apart from the rest of the community in encampments given over to the cattle. The teri (‘senior warriors’) continue the process, but because they have to wait for the systemic, collective changes of grades that occur every twenty-five years, the age difference among the members of the age group is very apparent.14 Some follow the ways of ‘junior warriors’, while others come close to the way of life of ‘junior elders’, but wear fewer ornaments. Their grade name expresses precedence rather than negation, i.e. the fact that they exist in reference to another by the use of the ‘calf’ prefix followed by their derived colour. This precedence can be seen in the political debates during which they cannot yet speak, although their opinions are increasingly taken into consideration in informal discussions. In addition, they cannot sing shield poems that offer a synthesis of past experience, although they are the ones who constantly carry out acts of war.

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The ‘junior elders’ (rori) only sing their ox poems occasionally and have names that refer only to their colour. They are not so close to cattle. Their name marks this distance from the animal and the expansion of a network that no longer depends upon it (the perceptions of the landscape without cattle being the anthroponymic equivalent of networks of wives, children and pastoral partners, far beyond the ownership of cattle). Their network of acquaintances reaches all categories: they frequent both older people and younger ones. They can be personally implicated in relationships with all elements in society by creating a network of pastoral companions as well as of family members, different wives and their children. From this point of view, and with the time gap between marriages, a person may almost be a ‘senior elder’ and may also be concerned by marriages and the birth of children like a ‘senior warrior’. The range of different types of relationships is at its height and it is probably this that constitutes the appeal of this grade. However, the ‘junior elders’ are already able to validate their past life by their riru scarifications, their retrospective poems and their increased participation in public debates that bear witness to their competence. The ‘senior elders’ do not need to validate their past life like the ‘junior elders’. Their limited use of aesthetic forms is fundamental as it reflexively exhibits some of the mechanisms of those who use them.

The Elders beyond Men The ‘senior elders’ (bari) arrive at an end point. They are not waiting any longer and they are no longer ‘little’ (tino) in relation to ‘big’ (bô), as the Mursi say in connection with the previous grades. The final karue ‘old man’ grade exists more to situate what the system, for demographic and logical reasons, needs to create without making it a superior status: a ‘senior elder’ (bari) must step down one day and find a place somewhere else. More than a grade, karue is a sociological category for the few survivors who are now outside the system. The aesthetic styles objectify ages and justify the grades by something other than the grades themselves. In this sense, the Mursi compare people less than the praxis of each person’s world. They can thus attribute hierarchical positions in a world without centralized authority. However, the place of the elders puts forward other issues, as it is not only a question of punctuating an ontogenesis – as for the other grades – but also of marking an ending. If the lower grades entertain the hope of future promotion, this is not the case for the ‘senior elders’. Concerning the Meru in Kenya, Peatrik (1991) designates the people in the last age of

The Poets and Their Ages

their life using the term ‘accomplished’. This is also the impression that they wish to give among the Mursi. Obviously, as the grade is only one criterion defining political rights, being a ‘senior elder’, taken only in the sense of sociological status, is not enough to be accomplished. We must describe in what way they are accomplished, beyond simply the promotion to a higher grade and the unforeseen trials of life. And here again, it is aesthetic practices that are the markers of their accomplishment. In the Mursi anthroponymic system, each interpersonal relationship can be experienced under a different name. In addition to all the names that have come from the extension of the relational network, a new name is given when one enters each grade and to which it is linked. When a man becomes a ‘senior elder’, he acquires between three and six names. For the first time, extra names appear, over and above those connected to specific relationships. Because of this, most of these will never be used. This exception may contribute to a reflection on the name. Up until this point, names designated relationships in a practical way. Henceforth, the new ones exist for themselves, as constructions without any ulterior aim – they are desocialized, i.e. names without relationships. This use of names is concomitant with a reversion towards cattle. These names reintegrate the bovine reference after it had been set aside during the period of the ‘junior elder’ grade. But the return of the bovine reference is not a retrograde step; it is present in the idiomatic form of an attribute (like the shape of the horns), of a rather feminine plural category (like suckler-cows, lamala) or the generic mention of the species (bi, plural bio, bovine) – for example, Biotongiga (Cattle Throw Bones), Lamalabolo (Suckler-Cow Spots) or the very simple Biochage (Grey Cattle). By avoiding the direct identity correspondence between the owner and the animal, the latter becomes a sign thanks to the names. In the name Nebi Ale (Buffalo Head-Rest), the horns are recalled by means of an object that best indicates the elders. It is no longer the cattle who express men, but the men who express the cattle. Moreover, these names become consensual, which is the best way to become eternal. The Mursi demographic pyramid is such that ‘senior elders’ are few and far between. The change in grade always takes place when the ‘senior elder’ age group is in danger of disappearing completely. This lack of numbers, combined with the importance of these men, means that most people call them directly by one of their names linked to the ‘senior elder’ grade:15 in spite of the great number of names acquired during the course of a long life, the end of life unfolds with only a few names. When a senior elder is absent, he is referred to by his kogine name (group of agnatic descendants from the paternal line), using on very rare occasions a periphrase that adds clues

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all converging on the person – for example, ‘it’s the [kogine] who is [colour] whose name is [contemporary grade name of the person]’. Their ‘senior elder’ name is so consensual and so obvious for everyone that it can in turn serve as the person’s kogine name, especially if in his own life he has many children. Indeed, an impressively large family will subsequently bear his name, i.e. this name will become generic and the expression of a shared paternal ancestry, even beyond that particular person. The consensus around the identity of a person is thus requalified into the identity of a group. The elders no longer sing poems because their collectively viable identity already exists in their name and in their mere presence. The consensus centred on the self that is impossible a priori is henceforth possible in practice, until a permanent expression in the form of a kogine name is found. The wives’ poems describe the distribution of colours and are the durable form of femininity (see Chapter 3). Of these poems, the Mursi say that they speak of ‘things long ago’. Likewise, they say of the father (shuune) of the kogine that his ancestry goes back ‘a very long way’ and it is of little importance if the man only died a few years ago. The mechanism at work in the poems, and also present in the names of the elders that amounts to settling a consensus on the person, is in fact a mechanism of seniority itself. The overloaded body of the adolescent is the complete opposite of the elders’ bodies. The ‘senior elders’ no longer wear bracelets, necklaces or leather straps, nor do they cover their faces with dung or mud. Their scarifications have progressively faded from their skin to the point of becoming invisible. The artistic forms that informed others about the multiplicity of themes of Mursi life are no longer there. Not only are these activities over for the most part, but their absence also shows, by contrast, the work of all the others that is still in progress. At most, they keep four bracelets of yellow metal (lalan’g, the figure of masculinity), one on each extremity of the body. The forearms and the legs are called muni in mun, the word the Mursi use to designate themselves: Muni. This minimal ornamentation enlightens us as to the very human character that they henceforth have. Textiles that have recently become available make the opposite kind of ornamentation possible, but with a similar result. The elders wear clothes, shirts and shorts more and more frequently. They say it is to hide their ageing bodies and their ribs, which are now visible. However, this amounts to unloading the body: the body and the practical effects of gestures are less detectable, and this is because of the textiles that have no particular significance in relation to customary ornamentation.

The Poets and Their Ages

The profusion of names is something of the past because consensus has been reached. Gone also is the fragmentation of the body due to the use of ornaments; it has been replaced by a naked body or a hidden one, i.e. a monolith. The withdrawal of the elders from dances may be deceptive and be interpreted as a lack of interest. But they are always present during the negotiations for the organization of dances. Most often, they stand apart and watch, talk among themselves or with some of the women, chew tobacco or nap for a few minutes. They can also forbid the dances. If you replace the dancers with cattle and replace the elders with herdsmen, you have the most ordinary picture of pastoral life, when men consult each other about the management of cattle and when the animals graze under their watchful eye. The elders are in the position of guardians of the herd. With seniority, a movement is halted. The use of the intensifier reg’ey that signifies the extension of self by one’s personal colours is rare. There is no need, as the human and bovine network that this extension requires has already been established. Because of this, when an elder dies, the whole community is concerned, as he may have been an important figure for everyone. Therefore, on such occasions, largescale sacrifices are organized involving up to several dozen cattle. As we have seen in Chapter 7, the killing of an animal signifies the renunciation of an emerging form of pastoral social relations. Taking the person from the world initiates the construction of new relationships. When an elder dies, all the relationships in the area are affected, not only because people have a feeling of deference towards seniority, but also because in practice, that particular elder had dealings with each and every person. The number of animals killed must therefore be equal to the number of relationships affected. The animal is no longer necessary as a mirror or a revealer. The elders are both those who distance themselves the most from cattle and those who also have the power to bless them,16 as they have the power to bless other people. From their mouths come blessings called ‘the words of calves’ (log’a mora). This expression might appear paradoxical because of their great age. But this reference to youth in the mouths of ‘senior elders’ designates those to whom the words are addressed, and not those who are pronouncing them: the words that have the value of blessings are directed towards younger men, those who are still closely linked to cattle. They protect their future. These words belong to those who hear them. These are indeed words for calves as the elders are the guardians of the younger men. The elders adopt a point of view that overlooks society from above, from a place left vacant for Mursi cosmology. They of course overlook

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society from the top of the hierarchical scale, from which they can bless and curse, and where they can assume a divine position in society, as Tornay suggests (2001: 307) concerning their Nyangatom neighbours; they are, after all, the recipients of sacrifices during grade changes. Their dominant position is also topological, as in the case of divination. The entrails of the sacrificed animal are spread out and commented upon by the elders as if they were examining a map: the veins are the River Omo or the River Mago, the intestines are the mountains and the high plateaux in the region, and the cysts are the villages and the herds. The animal here has become a map, and the contents of its entrails the signs that the elders look down upon and study. When Laekori, an important healing woman, straightens up while digging in her field in the company of other women and cries out several times to the sky ‘Protect!’ (Ulugugnu!), she turns towards tumu. Tumu designates the sky, but this term may also be translated by ‘chance’ or ‘destiny’ more successfully than by ‘God’, which the missionaries attempted to impose. What was she addressing? She was addressing the position occupied by the elders during divination, that high position overlooking the territory represented by the entrails. She was addressing the elders who seek good fortune in the divination process and who are the source of destiny in the blessings. In this sense, they are tumu. With a delay in time and a change of scale, Laekori was addressing the elders: they were overlooking the field represented by the intestines from their view point, and she was digging in her territory, a tiny person, like a pinpoint on the intestines scrutinized by the elders. And so the elders are called zua bibio, ‘the different people’. They are remote, and it is from this that they draw their prestige and their absolute superiority in the hierarchy. Concerning political work, although the ‘junior elders’ are more numerous and have the advantage of being able to physically assume the proposals that they put forward (for example, carrying out reprisals), their status ultimately remains subordinate. The latter are still grappling with their ontogenesis. At the age of a ‘junior elder’, cattle are a stock that needs to be divided among his wives, his children who are going to marry, etc. The ‘junior elders’ have placed the bovine prototype at a distance; cattle are no longer such a fundamental support for identity, but the management of the herd is more than ever the guarantee of success in life. The ontogenetic development that first involves being ‘by the animal’ and then ‘for the animal’, finally involves being ‘beyond the animal’ with seniority. Names, as witnesses of ontogenesis, show us the two simultaneously acquired extremes: the fundamental name, thanks to which the child bears the description of the animal (Black Bull, Striped Bull, etc.), and the ‘junior elder’ name, which only keeps the colour without mentioning the animal. And be-

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tween the two we find all the other anthroponymic creations. All these will be redundant with the advent of old age. Cattle, as signs, once again become the tool of men. *** The ontogenesis of the Mursi is a process in which aesthetic practices are correlated to social positions. This correlation is due to the fact that these practices are included in people’s everyday lives and they help to situate people in relation to each other. These practices, which play a part in different kinds of sociality on a daily basis, make it possible to create categories of people that segment the group: these are the grades. The grades exist continuously, but are only really mobilized at certain moments. The grades are the result of a synthesis of a whole set of everyday states and practices, although they are in themselves a reduction of what people are, as is a designated status. Thus, when grades are established as a primary criterion at a particular moment of political activity, aesthetic productions tend to fade as they no longer have any significance, although some accidental traces may still remain on people’s bodies. This is why one might believe that aesthetic practices are ancillary, expressive and gratuitous activities in the pastoral societies of East Africa. One might also think that it is not necessary to study them because they give no information about what is going on: the issues at stake in the political agenda make no allusion to them. On the contrary, these issues take shape by means of the removal of these intermediary forms from everyday life. In other words, the criterion of age introduced as a sociopolitical system eclipses some of the mechanisms in its own structure. The next two chapters will set out a more narrative ethnographic study. I shall describe the problematic events that have led the Mursi in my circle to come together in a totally different way from that of everyday social relations: for ritual and political purposes. I want to show, with the help of a very simple definition of politics inspired by the pragmatist tradition, that the times when people assemble in reaction to a problematic event may take one of two paths: either the problem is private and will require a ritual that will attempt to restore good relations between the individuals concerned; or the problem is public and will require a political debate oriented towards the resolution of the problem. We shall see that the distinction between the ritual and the political does not depend on the nature of the problem, or on the definition a priori of a ritual domain or a political one in a binary division of spheres of activity, but simply on the combination of people engaged in or concerned by a problem at a given moment.

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Notes 1. In order to suggest the emergence of an age criterion as a category, I adopt an exclusively masculine point of view: first of all, for a logical reason, as this sociopolitical tool is linked to the practice of politics and therefore to men in a more obvious and objective way than to women; and then because I was unable to carry out the same studies for women as for men, although the former are probably much more than mere observers in the management of the affairs of the country. 2. See Stewart (1977), who offers a formal study of age systems. On the front page, this book contains a reminder of the inevitable rules of such systems, and the whole book has recourse to mathematical transcription showing the systemic and quite rigid character of the way in which they function. 3. He then taught his young brother English. Up until 2010, they were the only Mursi to be able to speak the language. 4. See Eczet (2013) for a series of examples of this type. 5. The main initiation practice is called koma koda and entails the beating of the younger ones by their elders, and then the former offer the latter valued commodities (see Chapter 10). 6. Paronyms are approximate homonyms that may or may not have a semantic link. Their phonological resemblance sometimes leads to confusion (as with ‘irruption’ and ‘eruption’, for example). 7. Doing something quickly is expressed differently: ‘Inye ali kokopte’ (literally ‘You speak quickly’) or ‘Anye kogoyo shaw’ (I’m going there quickly’, literally ‘I’m going there early’). 8. The recruitment ceremony brings together several individuals (in a kind of promotion campaign), but their choice is ultimately an individual one. 9. I identified Circus Macrourus, Circus Pygargus, Circus Aeruginosus and Micronisus Gabor Aequqatories. 10. There are procedures for the reintegration of murderers, but this scarification is not one of them, especially as men who have killed do not always have it. 11. Acryllium vulturinum. 12. I offer the two spellings as according to my interlocutor, and perhaps according to the verb that followed his phonetic construction, I clearly heard both pronunciations. 13. One should distinguish this term from the one used to mean ‘old’ with positive connotations: niagasi, plural niagasa. 14. Indeed, it is from this grade onwards that recruitment will be carried out collectively. This will thus concern a whole cohort of people of very different ages who find themselves at very different stages in their lives. 15. Not naming is another mark of deference. 16. All the elders have the power to bless people and cattle, but only ritual specialists (komoru) can bless cattle on the level of the whole country during the bio lama (‘the assembled cows’).

9 The Restoration of Persons Rituals

The events below took place in 2010 over a period of two months. Among them are adultery, a fight, murders and famine. I did not purposely choose these problematic situations. They happen to be the reasons why the Mursi got together and held rituals. At first glance, some rituals do not appear to be associated with circumstantial problems, but upon closer inspection are always tied to problematic situations. For instance, the koma koda ritual (decided/ attributed knees) renews the authority of an age grade over another by way of repeated initiation-type rites, whereby the older participants hit the younger ones. It is the pragmatic renewal of moral authority, in reaction to excesses on the part of the younger men (unauthorized fights, egoism, etc.). Other events are handled in a political way, as we will see in Chapter 10. We will distinguish these with a pragmatic definition of politics. For now, let us simply mention the following contrast: a political moment addresses the problem by way of a set tool (the debate) that can handle dissensus beyond the individuals taking part, whereas a ritual moment is made up of actions involving the individuals directly affected by the problem. Incidentally, the objective is less to solve the problem by seeking an outcome or eliminating the cause than to deal with the negative consequences on the persons concerned. This is why the arrangement is flexible and sometimes innovative, as it is closely adapted to the particular situation and to the individuals taking part.

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Pregnant by Another Man I learned one morning that Rabi Kav’ania and Bartolue, both sons of the current ritual specialist (komoru) at that period, had gone off on a punitive expedition. The reason was that one of Rabi Kav’ania’s wives was pregnant by another man. After having beaten his wife, he had called his brothers to go with him to kill the man who was guilty of the offence. The two brothers had acquired the reputation of always being ready for a fight. Dontori, the third of the three brothers, did not accompany them; I only learned why later. When they arrived, they only found the family of the guilty man. The offender had fled as he had been informed of the reprisals to come by a messenger who had arrived before the two brothers. A mediator (koesania) intervened as an intermediary between the two sides. This man was supposed to help find an amicable settlement. If the negotiations came to a satisfactory conclusion, he was also to organize the ritual that would aim at compensating Rabi Kav’ania for the outrage that he had suffered and at rehabilitating his wife. The two brothers returned home without having shed any blood, but having initiated negotiations. Samejaare, the mediator, had remained with the family of the offender to confer with his close circle and possibly to meet with him, should he return from flight. A few days later, the mediator returned to finally fix the terms of the compensation and proceed with preparations concerning the sacrifice of an ox. Rabi Kav’ania’s entourage had to be particularly persuasive on the subject of this ritual. First of all, he wanted to keep his children and ‘throw his wife into the bush’, and this was not to be taken as an idle threat. When we arrived, a sheep had already been killed. The breeding and the killing of sheep are rare. The sacrifice of a sheep never replaces that of an ox, but is added to it. The Mursi told me that the sheep was barari, a word that is extremely broad in meaning, implying a notion of importance and respect combined (like powerful, mysterious, etc.). The skin of sheep is not used in the same way as that of goats; in fact, I have not been able to identify any specific use for it. The meat is eaten and the gastric substances are used in addition to those of cattle. Sheep differ from goats in that the latter can be used to replace cattle for a sacrifice of lesser importance. I have probably not carried out a sufficient number of observations to be able to clearly situate sheep in these sacrifices, but in each of my observations, an external fear weighed upon the unfortunate cause underlying the sacrifice. This was often an illness, and in this case it could have been the other man. It would seem that the killing of a sheep could be understood within the general context of asepsis.

The Restoration of Persons

The remains of the sheep had been placed at the entrance to the enclosure. It was impossible not to see them. They introduced the scene and what was about to happen there. Once we had passed over these remains, we sat down on the opposite side of the enclosure from the house of Rabi Kav’ania’s offending wife. Four men seemed to have a particular status in this ritual: Samejaare, the mediator; Runebi Rongadi, a close friend of Rabi Kav’ania; Korema Kaolu, a pastoral partner of Rabi Kav’ania who shared the same encampment; and Lugolonkudusay, a visiting guest who had no particular acquaintance with Rabi Kav’ania. We can thus observe that the panel of men, made up of four (the figure of masculinity) ‘junior elders’, brought together different types of participants, each having a different kind of relationship with Rabi Kav’ania. In a certain way, they represented different degrees of personal involvement in the affair, ranging from a warrior companion to a stranger and including a pastoral partner. When I arrived, Olelori, a ‘junior elder’ had already taken some of the contents of the stomach (gara), the fatty parts of the intestines (cholloy) and the blood (niava), mixing them all together to make a substance called waou. The four men assigned to the ritual mediation approached the woman and her two children, and covered their foreheads and legs with the substance, after which the latter returned to their hut. Olelori, assisted by Runebi Rongadi, led the ox into the middle of the enclosure for the killing. The ox, which was impressive both in terms of its size and its dappled red colour (kori), corresponded to the fundamental colour (ree) of its former owner, the guilty man. Olelori and some ‘junior warriors’ from the vicinity then cut the animal up and prepared the fire. The men ate the ox for about an hour, the meat having been distributed according to the usual order, which left a large amount for the women of the neighbourhood. When the meal was over, the offending wife and her children came out of their hut and advanced towards the centre of the enclosure. A man gave a stick to each child, then with their mother they knelt down in single file, with the eldest boy in the front followed by the daughter and the mother behind her (a very young baby had remained in the hut). Finally, the head of the dappled red ox was placed behind the mother, thus extending the line. The same substances as those from the sheep composing the waou had been taken from the ox and were mixed with those of the sheep. The mediator then came and stood in front of the first child and, starting from the top of his head, covered the child with waou down to his eyebrows. He began again from the top of the child’s head and this time went down as far as the neck. He did the same thing with the daughter and then with the wife, stopping between each one in order to

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throw a few drops of waou towards the outside of the enclosure. After him, Runebi Rongadi did the same thing, then Korema Kaolu and finally Lugolonkudusay. The head of the ox was then thrown onto the fire and was later eaten by the young people. Lugolonkudusay also collected the mor, a piece of the peritoneum, which he placed round his neck, and then did the same to the wife with another piece. The wife then stood up with her children and, after having picked up a few belongings, went off to her field with some other wives to do their farm work. A discussion then began among the men on the subject of compensation. Samejaare, the mediator, spoke first, and then the other three men who had officiated during the ritual. They went over the facts again and each one suggested compensation in the form of cattle. Their suggestions were very similar and, after a few exchanges, as well as remarks from Olibuizir and Kirdune Kaolu, two ‘great junior elders’ (rori a bô), a conclusion was reached. Rabi Kav’ania looked as if he was not satisfied, but this attitude was due more to the situation in general rather than to the proposition in particular, as he insisted on the fact that he would not touch his wife again. He finally accepted the suggested scenario: if the child to be born was a girl, she would be his and the guilty man would only have to give a cow. If the child was a boy, he would be given to the offender after he had been weaned. But the offender would still have to give twenty-nine head of cattle to Rabi Kav’ania.

Double Mediation, Double Consensus Rabi Kav’ania had been the victim of a serious outrage: the adultery of his wife, made visible by the presence of the unborn child. The offender had to carry out an important act of renunciation through the gift of an ox of his fundamental colour (ree), i.e. the most obvious bovine form from his pastoral and relational activities. The use of the sheep indicated purification, which is why it was placed in front of the enclosure in order to introduce the scene that was to unfold there. The mixed substances from the sheep, the waou, covered the wife and her children with a first cataplasm, showing the necessity of having recourse to asepsis: the outside element, whether this was illness or a stranger, had to be set apart. After this first act of anointing, the woman and her children went and hid in their hut, like sick people, the only ones who habitually withdraw from the sight of others. The guilty man’s ox was then eaten by the other men, including Rabi Kav’ania. The killing of an ox is generally carried out on the initiative of its owner. However, in this case, the owner was alienated from his prop-

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erty because he himself had alienated what he should not have done – the wife of another man. Eating the ox is the best way to eliminate it, and this contributes to eliminating the offender’s only-too-visible production. Once the men had finished eating, the wife and her children were arranged in the manner of koma koda (‘decided knees’), in which young people on their knees allow themselves to be beaten by the eldest from superior grades. The children were presented with duelling sticks as used in ritual stick fights. The wife was not given one, as a sign of humiliation. Behind her two children, she faded into the background, losing the advantage of precedence that is usually expressed, concerning the order of births, the succession of grades or the order of wives, with a metaphor of a single file: sabo (in front, first), then wurio (following, behind). She found herself behind her children, both topologically and in terms of importance. Only the head of the offender’s ox was behind her. Four men (the figure of masculinity was flouted here) came and covered the children and the wife with substances from the ox mixed with those of the sheep. We have seen in Chapter 4 that dung painting introduces the theme of alliance (marital and sexual) and that, by extension, it applies to all growth when related to calves or children. This idea is mediated by the dung, which enables one to be included in a double bovine cycle: the domestic cycle, which implies looking after the cattle in the enclosure, and the pastoral cycle, which involves accompanying them to the grazing lands. Here the cycle is particularized in the extreme, because this is not just any dung, but substances from an animal that has been killed. The fat, the blood and the contents of the stomach form the humours of that animal that enable people to display on their bodies the life of the dead beast. But this display does not cover the face, as is often the case with this kind of painting. Here it is a case of identifying and assuming. Covering the face would add a layer of complex implication that would serve no purpose. When Runebi Rongadi began to smear the face of the first child, Samejaare intervened to stop him. And then the head of the ox was placed at the end of the line, i.e. at the bottom of the scale of precedence. It was placed on the ground as an indication of the animal that had already been eaten. The ox too had to be identified, especially in the absence of its owner. Nothing was done to the head; it was not covered with waou as it was dead. No one wanted anything from it; it was there for bad reasons. The Mursi do not dialogue with their cattle when the latter are alive, and this relationship does not change after their death. Following the smearing of the wife and her children with waou, the ox’s head was hastily thrown on the fire and subsequently eaten. The skin of the animal, although it was large and

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could have made a perfect bed (ada), would be cut up and used to make jewellery and leather utensils that would no longer show the colour of the coat; moreover, they say that the skin of an ox killed for such reasons cannot be made into a place conducive for sleep. More than ever, the killing of the ox is the basis for removing it from the world, as an animal but also as a representative of the offender’s colour. If the killing is the removal from the world of one of the pastoral products of the offender, then one must also remove his colour. The woman and her children were cleansed, hidden and then placed in a position of submission, and then were ready to continue their lives, which for the moment meant going off to the fields and leaving the men together. In spite of a certain level of formality, the men’s negotiations did not bring to the fore their grades and did not lead to a real debate. The problem was in fact confined to Rabi Kav’ania, his wife and the other man, who was only present in the form of his ox. No other person was affected by the problem. Even if the man had been killed by Rabi Kav’ania, his murder would not have been followed by reprisals; it would have served as compensation and would have been considered as an acceptable form of justice. As for compensation for the child, the opinions expressed were more in the nature of advice. The negotiations were not political and the mediator was there to ensure that consensus emerged. Samejaare was in that position because of his clan affiliation, which was different from those of the two parties involved in the conflict and not because of any particular skills he might possess. In the case of another problem, he might only be a spectator without any role to play if his clan is of no use in the mediation. He himself is therefore the figure of consensus, in a position that existed before him. If the ritual and the actions surrounding the ox and the woman constitute a consensual system for redressing the situation, Samejaare as mediator is the human form of the imposition of the consensus. The negotiation could in fact be imposed, which would be completely impossible in political situations. The figure of the mediator, excluded from public debates, comes forward in such circumstances as these when a life is at stake if ever reprisals, even justifiable ones, are carried out. However, this private affair, which was to a great extent resolved through ritual, received a lot of attention from Rabi Kav’ania’s entourage because the cattle obtained in compensation involved a certain number of people. Matrimonial provisions constitute the largest transaction of cattle among the Mursi. The distribution of animals follows paths marked out by bonds of kinship, but often friends and pastoral partners are increasingly inevitable recipients (see Turton 1973: 169–83). Thus, the importance of the transaction makes the sex of the child crucial for

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Rabi Kav’ania and his closest pastoral partners. Virilocality and the permanence of men’s colours make boys a stable base for a father, but the necessity of establishing a herd for the son when he marries has a high price. Daughters, on the other hand, will leave, change colour and clan, but their marriage will fill the father’s enclosure with cattle. Inevitably, the scenario of the birth of a boy was the object of most discussion, and the solution that was chosen was to restore the child to his biological father after it had been weaned, and to claim twenty-nine head of cattle. I saw in this decision a relatively harsh double sentence for the offender. In discussion with the elders, and with Olibuizir in particular, I learned what might in fact happen in the future. They told me that in such situations, the child often stays with his mother and the wronged husband finally accepts the situation and keeps the child. With the suggestion of giving the child back and obtaining huge compensation, the mediator offered Rabi Kav’ania a generous arrangement, even if with time and in practice, only part of it will remain: either he will keep the child and receive the cattle, or he will give the child back and the debt will gradually be forgotten. The negotiations were carried out according to the criteria of everyday social relations in which some people know more than others. Two kinds of consensus could be seen: the first in the ritual actions oriented towards the wife; and the second in the presence of the mediator oriented towards Rabi Kav’ania. Before leaving, the men tried to offer reassurance to Rabi Kav’ania, encouraging him to move on. But issues of paternity were problematic in this family, as his younger brother, Dontori, was in conflict with his father over an issue related to progeny. Rabi Kav’ania was in fact encountering this problem for the second time. His younger brother Dontori had impregnated his first wife several years before. Rabi Kav’ania still reproaches him with this even though there were never any reprisals or punishment. However, the tension created by this act between brothers surfaces every time such a case presents itself, perhaps because there is no provision for compensation between brothers. This time, the opportunity was too good to miss and Rabi Kav’ania made the most of it. He began by complaining that this was the second time that this had happened to him and it was for this reason that he was so upset. His brother immediately understood the implicit reference and reminded his brother that the episode was in the past and that anyway, the child was a girl. Without explicitly saying so, he was reminding his brother of the normative rules concerning the tolerance of adultery and the recognition of children that we have already seen in the discussion on women’s dresses (see Chapter 5), and the interchangeability of brothers in the case of sterility, for example.

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Dontori was thus insisting on the trivial nature of the dispute. But Rabi Kav’ania had reached his objective, for, having forced Dontori to adopt an unequivocal and strong position on the limited importance of such occurrences among siblings, he recalls, by way of indirect revenge, that his brother nonetheless refuses to sleep with a woman to give her children. This woman is in fact his father’s new wife. The father, who was really too old to marry again and to have more boys as he had hoped, was counting on Dontori. Dontori, who had fallen into his own trap, lost his temper and left the place accompanied by Samelu and me. I was holding his rifle so that he would not use it. A few days earlier, I had witnessed a dispute between Dontori and his father on this same subject, and it had proved necessary to prevent Dontori from having access to a Kalashnikov. Tension was thus at its height until it finally exploded in a general brawl the following week.

Sowing Dissent I knew a young girl who, for me, was a young girl like all the others in the neighbourhood and with whom she spent most of her time. Therefore, I was very surprised to learn during a conversation that she was a new wife of the komoru, his fourth. The husband already had three wives. He was very old and I had difficulty imagining how he would manage this new alliance, especially as he was a ‘senior elder’ and, as such, could not take another wife. His first wife who had given him three sons was dead, and the two others had only given him daughters. This meant that most of his children were going to leave him and this was a cause for concern. He had thus arranged with some men the possibility of a union drawing on the principles of marriage. The situation was complex, as the position of Siday varied according to the different points of view and the level of acceptance of the situation. For the komoru, she was his mog’onen. To the root mwe (wife) or mog’e, if we hear the diphthong, the suffix -en has been added and this is used to indicate an extension of a relationship of kinship. For example, a sister is ngone and a half-sister is ngonegen. Siday is thus a wife in a particular type of category. Ngakodobu, the second wife of the komoru, considered Siday as her daughterin-law (mere), the wife of Dontori. The komoru should therefore have been her father-in-law (junu). She totally rebuffed my suggestion that Siday was her co-wife (lomo, plural lomugen). For Dontori, Siday was of little importance and he did not want to hear anything about her. For most people in the encampment, Siday was the ‘little wife’ (mwe a tino)

The Restoration of Persons

of the komoru. Everyone, except Dontori, agreed that the sexual union of Dontori and Siday would legally produce children for the komoru, and they would be considered as nephews and nieces (ohene) for Dontori. Finally, I was told that if Dontori continued in his refusal to accept the situation, his brothers would take his place. I must confess that I did not understand why they persisted with Dontori. The original cause of the fighting was vague for most of the participants. It was based on different feelings of resentment. But I think that Dontori came upon his first wife getting drunk with the wife of his young brother Bartolue. Dontori does not like drinking, especially badly distilled arake from the high plateaux that makes people aggressive. He reacted by striking the two women hard with his stick. They found refuge in the nearby enclosure that belonged to Dontori’s father, the komoru. Very quickly, several people found themselves involved in the fighting. When I arrived, I saw the komoru’s wives attempting to hit him and other women. Dontori was soon intercepted by his friend Samelu, who led him apart. The fighting was well underway. Sticks rained blows on heads, broke two metatarsals in the hand of one wife, and the komoru received a blow on the head from a heavy metal bracelet (ula). This blow inflicted a deep cut in his scalp and his face was covered in blood in a few seconds. Once everyone had seen the blood, the fighting stopped and the people dispersed. The disruption caused by this event was felt by everyone. Although everyone began by evoking the conflict between Dontori and his father, they quickly agreed that the general atmosphere had deteriorated as a result of various tensions. The alcohol had only served to make the situation worse. Life went on. A few days later, we gathered in the komoru’s enclosure where the fighting had taken place. The komoru was positioned in the middle of the enclosure, where the cows sleep. When we arrived, he had already prepared a mixture made from waou and white clay. I did not see the animal from which the waou had been taken, but I deduced that it came from one of the komoru’s goats, which could be used as a substitute for an ox. The meat had already been eaten. The wives and the daughters of the komoru, as well as his female neighbours, remained near the houses. The men from the encampment placed themselves on one side of the enclosure, in the area assigned to the cattle. The komoru had prepared his mixture under the stunted tree that grows in the centre of the enclosure and we could still see the headrest (ale) at the bottom of it. A few metres from there, a small fire was barely smoking between the usual three stones of the hearth. He had thrown a few special plants, called barari, onto the fire. He had covered his face and shoulders with the mixture of waou and clay. When most of the members of the encampment were present, the komoru stood up

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with his back to the hearth. Some men approached him in turn and stood in front of him. The komoru took some of the mixture from the calabash at his feet and smeared the face, shoulders and chest of each of them. Then it was the turn of the women. After having thus anointed the whole assembly, he washed his hands with the water that one of his daughters brought to him and then sat down with the men. Some latecomers arrived and the komoru requested Olelori, his sonin-law, to carry out the smearing process in his stead. We remained like this without doing or saying anything for quite some time. Nobody said a word, but this was not a time of reflection. We looked at each other without insistence. Most people were just looking into space. The youngest girls soon began to show signs of impatience, exchanging mischievous smiles. Kirduni Kaolu, a mature man, indicated in his usual benevolent way how I should behave. With a knowing look, he conveyed that ‘all is well, we just have to wait’. A kind of debate then began between the men, but only a few of them spoke (the oldest and most respected among them), while the komoru remained silent. Each person had something to say in summing up the incident, and then they called for it to be forgotten as there were more serious problems to be dealt with, such as the famine that was beginning to set in.

Facing Up to the Invisible The

causes of the fight were vague. It is very likely that some feelings of resentment came to the fore when the violence broke out. Some of the blows had their own motives. Because of the general confusion, all the witnesses were implicated. Being a witness and being involved were one and the same thing because the one implied the other, even if they had not hit anyone. The cause of the violence was intangible because its origin was too diffuse. But the execution of it was perfectly understood, notably because of the shedding of blood. Clay was therefore central to the mediation. We saw in Chapter 4 that clay is used to distance different passing beings (the memory of a dead person, dangers of different kinds) who cannot easily be apprehended visually. The clay makes it possible to reappropriate beings by turning an inner fear (inside oneself) into a message directed towards the outside (painting on oneself that others will see). Seeing so much violence caused by something that was so difficult to define constituted a problem to be dealt with by clay. Standing together in the face of an intangible threat involved the implementation of a double action. First of all, the komoru took care

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to throw three plants into the fire (dirshimay, dordoki and lalay) whose main virtues were to make the person carrying them invisible. I have accompanied men into the bush who gathered these plants in order, as they explained to me, not to be seen either by enemies or by dangerous animals like lions and buffalos. During this ritual, burning them near the place where the anointing took place meant that although one could not take action on the cause, one could burn a tool that conferred invisibility, and it was through an invisible cause that anger had insidiously crept into the encampment. On the other hand, the use of clay implicated all the participants, including those officiating. And although this was an unforeseen event, the arrival in the enclosure of some latecomers made it perfectly possible not to mark any distinction between people: the ritual specialist delegated the anointing of the latecomers to another, thus indicating that his presence was not indispensable for the carrying out of the ritual mediation. He was, in this position, one of the protagonists in the fight and the host at the restoration process rather than the ritual specialist with exclusive skills. The reason for the long minutes of silence that followed was to keep everyone in the same place, without which the women would probably have left to go to the fields. The silence prevented any form of individualization, as the faces whitened by the thick clay that had been made particularly sticky because of the additional application of the waou effaced most of the facial characteristics of many of the individuals. For a few moments, we were all there, in the same situation, without any specific function, without faces, covered with our externalized fear, watching one of the plausible ruses for the anger (to be invisible) go up in smoke. Some of the elders then gave their opinion on the situation in a succession of monologues. Everyone remained seated and the words were intended to be reassuring. They were more like a blessing than a judgment. But the komoru, perhaps the most respected ‘senior elder’ in the assembly, recognized for his great qualities as a mediator, nonetheless remained silent: he was one of the protagonists in the situation and found himself at the moment with the ‘young’ people who are usually the recipients of blessings. Thus, the elders who were not implicated – Kirduni Kaolu, Olibuizir, Nyomani Kaolu, Artulahola and Lugolonkudusay – spoke in turn. Lugolonkudusay was invited to speak, but did not do so. He could not really commit himself any further on this issue, not because he was a guest, as his presence during the fight automatically made him a member of the group, but because his reason for being there was a negotiation with the komoru for the marriage of his daughter. He therefore concluded by recentring the discussion on the real problem

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at that moment in time, which was the famine. I never heard any other references to the fight after that. A marital tiff led to a fight. The restoring of good understanding between people involved patching up relations. Nonetheless, if a ritual aims at restoring good relational conditions and focuses on people, it hardly takes into consideration the causes underlying the problem. The level of tension diminished, but at the expense of putting the problem on hold. During this ritual, Dontori was absent. And I have no doubt about the komoru’s intentions: it was much easier for him to bring about appeasement through ritual when his son, who continued to obstruct his wishes concerning marriage, was not there.

Murder among Friends After the situation had calmed down, and famine alone was imposing restrictions, another event occurred to prevent the smooth running of things. The north of the Mursi territory is an area of close relations with the Me’en (plural Me’enit). The two peoples have had friendly relations and have assisted each other for a long period of time, although there are no intermarriages, and periods of war have punctuated their common history. It is not infrequent for a Mursi to take refuge in Me’en country and vice versa. At the end of the afternoon, I learned that a Me’en had come to take refuge in Maredunka. When I saw him, his uneasiness was perceptible. Contrary to the usual attitude of distrust or curiosity that I had come to expect, this man avoided my eyes and said very little. Samelu took me to one side and explained that during a dispute with his neighbour, when they were both drunk, a shot was fired that killed the neighbour. The man who had been killed was father to several children and the husband of two wives. This was more than enough for him to expect reprisals. A Mursi in Maredunka offered him hospitality and indirect protection. Indeed, an attack on a murderer meant an attack on the whole encampment, and this was an improbable risk to take. The exile of the murderer was going to last the time it took for negotiations to take place, perhaps one or two years. Two days later, the murderer witnessed the arrival of his father, accompanied by a classificatory half-brother (godengen). The father had brought with him one of his son’s oxen. In the enclosure of Olechage who took them in, the murderer’s half-brother killed the ox, assisted by two young people from the encampment. He cut up the carcass on his own and collected a lot of the blood in a calabash, which he set down a few metres away. The murderer, who had

The Restoration of Persons

already taken off all his jewellery during his flight, now took off all of his clothes. He tore out a piece of the guts from the animal, dipped it in the blood from the calabash and brushed it over his whole body, finishing with his face and head. The murderer’s father remained apart. The half-brother had put on a woman’s dress (say) and then sat down behind the calabash filled with blood. The murderer’s two children approached him one by one and either stood or knelt before him in order to be covered with the blood from the calabash. A woman from the encampment had come to help him cover the children. Another woman came out of her hut. This was the murderer’s second wife who had been the cause of the dispute between neighbours that had gone so badly wrong. She too, like the others, was covered in blood, although she had kept her dress on. After this, the murderer and his half-brother took some chyme (the contents of the stomach) and wiped their hands and forearms with it. The half-brother first entrusted one of the murderer’s children who had not been covered with blood (he was the child of his first wife) with the task of covering all the cattle in the enclosure by rubbing a little blood on their backs. He also threw some blood towards the outside of the enclosure and into the central area. The half-brother repeated the same actions, but this time adding some chyme into the blood. He went back to the carcass, cut four pieces of liver and placed them with the intestines. These pieces, the most valued ones that were usually reserved for the ‘senior elders’ (bari), were distributed to the murderer’s father and to a Mursi ‘senior elder’ who had joined us, but also to the murderer himself and to young Olechage, who was the host at this ritual. The half-brother then cut some pieces of peritoneum (mor) and arranged them round his own neck and round that of Olechage, as well as round those of the murderer and his children. However, before placing pieces on the murderer and his offspring, he had sprinkled them with milk, which a woman had brought in a small calabash, and spat upon them. Finally, Dok Dok and the ritual specialist (komoru) who had eventually joined us stood in front of the spread intestines and interpreted the blood vessels and the cysts as if they were future movements of people. Other Mursi joined them and, as always after the killing of an ox, ate the meat.

Managing the Invisible by Showing Oneself I was first of all inclined to deduce that this was a process of purification for the murderer. But a paradox remained: how can one wash oneself of

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blood with more blood? The purification of the murderer was the wrong interpretation; it was necessary to listen to the Mursi explaining literally what they were doing. They did not say much more than Samelu, who commented that ‘the men [people] wash the ground (earth)’ (zuo onia ba). The murderer had taken refuge with his Mursi friend to escape the reprisals that could have been fatal for him. He had therefore come as a guilty man. But the problem from the Mursi point of view did not concern the moral aspect of the affair. This man had killed his neighbour, he was certainly blameworthy, because he had been drinking, but that was his problem. The Mursi did not care about him. On the other hand, they feared that he had come with the cause of the problem. Samelu, who had spoken to the murderer, told me that the latter could not explain his gesture, and that alcohol was the only thing to be blamed. Once again, the cause of the conflict was vague, but the result was very clear. A man had killed his neighbour – that is to say, his friend. We have seen that clay painting is used to deal with the arrival of passing beings that one wants to repel: the memory of a dead person as well as all kinds of dangers (such as a snake surreptitiously appearing, a future war, an epidemic, etc.). Similarly, as we have seen with scarifications, the blood shed must always be on the initiative of the individual: either one may anticipate it when it is foreseeable (menstruation, childbirth, etc.) or it may be provoked after its unexpected occurrence. With this murder, the man was confronted with two kinds of problem: first, the source of the problem that was difficult to define; and, second, the very real blood that had been shed. Painting the body with blood constituted a way of resituating oneself in the face of these two problems, a combination drawing both on clay painting and scarifications. But because he had killed a friend and abused his relational network, the murderer had to give up his finest ox. His father had brought it for him so that it could be put to death. As the murderer was not a Mursi and as his problem was a personal one, the other Mursi did not come and support this act with their presence; only his father and his halfbrother had to be witnesses. It was not possible for him to shed his own blood, as this would have been the equivalent of scarification, which is always reserved for something prestigious. His ox therefore enabled him to situate the blood on his own body without benefiting from the positive sign of the scar. And as he had taken away a life and had killed a whole body, he had to cover the whole of his own body with blood. He finally cleaned himself with chyme, i.e. cow dung whose origin was known to him; in this way, he used his ox to coat himself with something positive. In particular, he took this substance to clean his

The Restoration of Persons

forearms, which are uncovered during dances, when one paints oneself to show oneself at one’s best. In short, this blood painting was not an act of self-accusation and it was not a process of purification either: it was the recovery of his life by taking the initiative of blood, by setting aside the ill-determined cause and by renouncing the emerging form of his relational process. He had failed to behave in an appropriate way. He was therefore killing a part of his pastoral project in order to reconstruct it, and he was locating this initiative on his body, in reference to the blood that had been shed. His final gestures, when he cleaned his forearms, showed that he was engaging once again with life, without a period of reclusion or withdrawal. He had perhaps lost his head a few days previously, but he was showing by these actions that it had turned out well for him. The Mursi point of view was that ‘men wash the ground’. As with evil ‘spirits’ that circulate through the earth and sometimes follow travellers to the point at which it becomes necessary to cover one’s guests with clay to protect them from possible afflictions, the murderer may have transported with him, in spite of himself, some of the evil elements that had precipitated his murderous outburst of rage. Therefore, the halfbrother asked a child to sprinkle the enclosure and the land around it. According to the Mursi, the problem was possibly there: by saying that the men washed the earth, they were not talking about the murderer, but about their encampment. The wife and the children of the murderer, witnesses of the murder, were only covered by others with blood taken from the carcass. They were involved in spite of themselves, and so they did not have to carry out compensation themselves. They were passive observers of the murder and had to remain passive in the process of restoration. Their proximity to the event and to the participants required that they be present. The most surprising thing was to see the half-brother wearing a woman’s dress. He told me he could have done it without, but that it was better with. We have already seen two instances of cross-dressing: first of all, young boys dressed as little girls when they crawl on the ground so that the afflictions that the earth may engender do not affect them (women are less sensitive to them than men); then in meetings with tourists, during which the deflection of an ornament from its traditional use is one of the ways of distancing them. The half-brother had to apply blood to the murderer’s children. He found himself manipulating substances involved in a process of rejection of blood wrongly shed and of an evil that was difficult to define. He had to protect himself from it. He therefore had to transform himself as babies are transformed when they crawl on the evil earth. Dressed as a woman, he could ward off the

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danger circulating in the earth. He could thus contribute to washing the ground, protected as he was by the woman’s apparel. The piece of peritoneum is always worn by the principal actors in the killing of an ox. Olechage kept his until the following day: killing an animal is a positive act that can be displayed, even if the original cause of the killing is not. I was particularly surprised to see the murderer himself eating pieces of meat from his ox. I understand this as the acute awareness of his delicate position: he had just killed a friend and was involving the Mursi in his protection. Killing his ox therefore committed him to reconstructing himself in a more appropriate way than in being what he had become (a murderer), and eating the meat himself – i.e. contributing to the complete elimination of the animal – underlined his determination for all to see. This affair was a simple dispute between neighbours, and the Mursi only became involved to eat the meat. However, only a few days after this ritual had taken place, the problem almost became a political one. The elders had seen in the intestines of the ox that the Me’en would come for revenge anyway. Moreover, a passing Me’en messenger confirmed that this was a real danger. In order to guard against a rise in the level of violence that was immediately qualified as war, a debate was organized in Me’en country. I did not participate, but a small Mursi delegation attended. This was composed of a few elders who were used to this kind of thing. The debate had taken a unique turn: everyone was so afraid that there would be a war that would be particularly unfortunate during the famine that the debate quickly insisted on the private nature of the business and fears faded forthwith. The elders had warned the allies of the dead man not to take any action in Mursi country and to find a solution amongst themselves. The murder then was not the subject of debate. It had become political only for a brief moment in order to insist that the affair was private.

Taking Inspiration from One Restoration in Order to Complete One’s Own I think that the komoru found the ritual mediations of the murderer particularly fitting. Two days later, he took inspiration from them in order to return to the episode of the fight. It was necessary to go further, insisting on his own role in the affair and showing that he was rising above it, a little like the murderer.

The Restoration of Persons

The clay had been used in the same way for all the participants. It had completed its task of collective restoration: for some minutes, we were all the same, hidden beneath the clay, sitting in silence, looking at each other. While exposing this tragic episode, we were showing ourselves to each other, adding that we were all ready to begin again on a sound basis. But the komoru had lost control and nothing had been done about that. He had used violence, although his character and his mediation skills had earned him great admiration. Runebi Rongadi, his neighbour, brought him a sheep. He killed it and took the chyme and covered the komoru’s body with it. Runebi Rongadi came back to the komoru several hours later and covered him this time with mud gathered from his enclosure. Before going to bed, about an hour later, he came back again and washed the old man with water. Because of what the group expected of him, the problem was a moral one. Everyone had seen the komoru lose his temper and, what is more, against his own family. A sheep was chosen, and we have already seen the role that sheep play in the process of asepsis. The komoru was then covered with dung to insist on the pastoral project that remains the central value. But his great age meant that he had gone beyond these pastoral values (see Chapter 8), and so he was washed with water to put an end to the ritual. With the clay, the komoru had suggested a general restoration of the encampment, in order to override the different feelings of resentment that had caused the fighting. With the chyme of the sheep and the dung, because of his role and what the others expected of him, he placed himself in the position of having to show his personal implication in the fighting. However, others took care of him. He did not wash himself and thus was not in the same position as the murderer who had to assume his act on his own. The komoru was showing to everyone his awareness of his behaviour during the fighting, but he detached himself sufficiently from it so as not to have to shoulder all the responsibility. Once more, he was using his fine mediation skills to redefine what he was and what others could expect of him.

The Land Is Bad Famine had set in. It was not yet too serious, but the sorghum was rationed. We had one meal a day at the most, sometimes only once every three days, during which time we drank milk. The next rainfall, although we did not know how abundant it would be or where exactly it would fall, was going to be decisive, as it alone could put an end to the

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problem. If the next rainy season proved insufficient, the country and its inhabitants would really suffer. Often, famine is offset by the purchase of grain from the highlands thanks to the sale of cattle. Indeed, the territorial expansion of the Mursi has been such over the last twenty years that contacts with the high plateaux are frequent. But a double murder put an end to any contact between the Ari from the highlands and the Mursi: a man and his granddaughter were watering their calves in the foothills of the high plateaux when they encountered two visibly drunk Ari who had come to steal honey. The man and his granddaughter were killed. The reaction of the Mursi was immediate and several night expeditions were organized to take revenge. This was achieved by the murder of two Ari. Obviously, the government would have preferred a judicial solution to the affair. The army came to demand the surrender of those who had committed the second murders. One important outcome was that access to the highlands was henceforth forbidden to the Mursi until further notice, and probably for several months. In addition, the episode of the fight in the village of the ritual specialist, even though it was a private affair, had had a great impact. The komoru, the rituals specialist, that is to say a specialist to create consensus, had lost control. The famine and the prevailing bad atmosphere were blamed for this. In the end, the war with the Me’en had been avoided, but this new event had revived fears of another conflict. All the men in this part of the country were therefore going to meet in Maredunka, because the situation in the country was turning sour. In what followed, a combination of ritual and politics was set in motion. Indeed, the accumulation of problems with which the Mursi were faced oriented the focus on the people and restoration (the feeling that the country was in a bad state that affected people individually because of the famine) and on the problem as such (the famine that could not be offset because there was no access to the market and because of the intrusion of the army). In this situation, one should not see ritual as a symbolic or expressive version of the political problem that would be quite practical. One should see a common activity dealing with the two aspects of the problem at the same time. There was thus a ritual consensus directed towards people that coexisted with the public debate, this time seeking a consensus on the problem. An ox was chosen for the sacrifice. A ‘junior elder’ (rori) living near Zelay gave one of his animals. This was a huge ox that had been destined for this end by its owner from when it was a calf: it was to be offered to the community for a sacrifice in the case of a problem affecting the

The Restoration of Persons

Photo 9.1. Three ‘junior elders’ (rori) from Maredunka before going off to ‘steal’ the ox. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

whole group. This killing was an altruistic renunciation that had been planned for a long time and was aimed at revitalizing the relational dynamics of the country in general. In the middle of the night, I heard some shouting and some repeated sounds made on a bell-less trumpet (turumba). Early in the morning, the atmosphere was still effervescent. After having taken the cattle out of their enclosure earlier than usual, the ‘junior elders’ (rori) from Maredunka went off in the direction of an encampment occupied by ‘junior warriors’ (dong’ay) a few kilometres away. Shortly after having left the village, we stopped and the men began to paint themselves. They emptied some gourdes of water onto the soil to dilute it in order to make mud. Some pieces of coloured mud had been brought along too. The men seemed to be excited, as before a dance. Moreover, they painted their bodies in the same way: patterns roughly distributed over an initial coat of mud. The spirals were thick and the painting was not very even. The whole face was also covered. The forearms (muni) were not cleaned as for the dances. It is true that their bodies could not be clearly seen, but the less precise painting served as an introduction to the activity of war and its uncertainties. When this preparation had been completed, some men began to sing their shield poems, which related their past warlike exploits.

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We continued our journey towards the encampment where the ox was waiting for us. We walked quickly, each with his weapon in his hand and singing his poem. Shortly before we arrived at the camp, the noise level became intense. Some men were shooting into the air and the poems were almost being shouted. I asked what the next step was, more to avoid being in the middle of a shooting match than in the interests of ethnology. The answer I received was ‘We are stealing the ox!’ (‘age kolana bi’). When the encampment was in sight, most of the men ran inside the enclosure, while others stood at the entrance, keeping watch. The ‘junior warriors’ who were guarding the ox did not pretend to defend it, and did not seem surprised, but the aggressiveness of the attack made them move away. The ox was rapidly surrounded and isolated. The ‘junior elders’ took it out of the enclosure, taking care to tie a rope around its neck. This was a very different procedure from the usual way in which the animal was led with a stick and voice commands. The men were really capturing this ox. One of them then turned towards the ‘junior warriors’ and, after having put some ash on his hands, passed them over their faces. The elders then set off back to the village, all the time singing their shield poems and shooting into the air. They left the ‘junior warriors’ to lead the animal to the encampment in Maredunka. The ox was taken to the enclosure of Golonlemui, who is a relative of the ox’s owner. In this enclosure I noticed the owner’s wife and one of his classificatory mothers, both of whom were weeping. They were watching the ox advancing towards the centre of the enclosure and were holding their heads in their hands. Olekoroy, one of the men who had gone to capture the ox, went over to them and spoke to them gently, to comfort them I suppose. The other men stood around the ox at a good distance, i.e. close to the thorn barrier marking the boundary of the enclosure. Then the owner arrived. His fundamental colour (ree) is black-white-black (lui), like the ox itself. He was accompanied by Korema Koalu, who is also of the colour black-white-black. Both were weeping. The owner, prostrate, stopped and sat a few metres away from his animal. Korema Koalu began to declaim his ox poem. He moved round the animal, fired a few shots into the air, and sang louder and louder and faster and faster. When he stopped, his legs were shaking. Other men then sang their ox poems too. I understood that they all had some kind of link with the owner (either they shared the same colour or they were relatives or friends). The situation was very intense and the excitement of these few men was reinforced by the silence of the others who remained standing, watching. Korema Koalu continued to repeat his ox poem and came and knelt in

The Restoration of Persons

Photo 9.2. ‘Junior warriors’ (dong’ay) taking the ox back to the encampment where it will be put to death. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

front of the animal. He deposited a piece of black-white-black material on the ox’s horns (ulupto, as when the women recite their poems or during dances). He was weeping and his sobs sometimes made it difficult for him to speak his lines. Then all the men who had fired shots and sung their ox poems in the enclosure approached one by one and passed their hands full of ash over the animal’s forehead. Three ‘senior elders’ (bari) then entered the enclosure, approached the owner of the ox and, looking at the animal, asked him if he was willing to allow his ox to be put to death. The owner replied several times that he was. The komoru then gave his usual blessing to the owner, wishing him prosperity for himself, his family and his cattle. Then he covered his face with ash. The ox was led into a clearing not far from there. A ‘junior elder’ of great physical strength offered to do the deed. Great strength was indeed needed to kill the ox with one stone blow. Once killed, the ‘junior elders’ distributed the first cuts from the carcass. The ‘junior warriors’ only took charge of grilling the meat later. The elders then began to read the intestines that had been spread out. Other ‘junior elders’ arrived late. They nonetheless sang their shield poems and approached what was left of the carcass in the middle of the tall grasses. Their behaviour seemed paradoxical: they were pre-

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tending to run while declaiming their poems out loud and firing their weapons into the air. When they arrived near the carcass, they acted as in the enclosure when the animal was still alive. They took a little ash from a hearth nearby and placed some on the animal’s forehead and then on their own. One person whose arrival was particularly noticed was Teosame. We have seen in Chapter 3, which dealt with poems, that Teosame has a way of expressing himself that already indicates his political skills. He arrived alone and I could not help seeing in this his desire not to mix with the group. He did not mime running, but walked with determined tread chanting his shield poem. Each line was a veritable interjection between more or less long intervals of silence. When he arrived near the carcass, Bartolue, the son of the ritual specialist, pretended to defend it, as he had done with the previous group that had only just arrived. Teosame took no notice of him and I thought I saw him make a gesture with his hand, the kind of gesture that a man (iri) makes to tell a boy (lussi) to move out of the way. He calmly put one knee on the ground near the carcass, and a man came and covered his face with ash. He stood up quite slowly, brandished his weapon in the air and fired a few shots, and then went and sat down. Not only was Teosame a politician and one who is very much at ease in these games of authority and in staging himself, but I had also forgotten one thing: the man killed by the Ari was his brother and the little girl was his grand-niece. Moreover, Teosame was the first one to speak. He spoke again several times during the debate. I only saw the oldest rise to speak. The debate lasted more than two hours, which is particularly long, especially as so few people spoke. At the end of the speeches, the komoru rose and stood in the debating area. A few elders followed him, formed a circle and listened to the ritual specialist’s blessing, and then they all sat down again. The debate was over and was restored to the ritual process. As with Russian dolls, the consensus was sought and was found in different ways: the debate was the consensual mechanism for exposing diverging points of view. It safeguarded speech and the expression of disagreement. It was retained within the ritual framework, which bore witness to a consensus of a different kind, oriented towards people and their dynamics. The first pieces of meat were taken to the ‘senior elders’. One of them, faced with the pieces of meat spread out on leaves, stood up with a lance in his hand. He brandished it high in the air and planted it in a piece of the liver after having shouted a few lines of his shield poem. He sat down and the men then ate the entire ox. No pieces were given to the women.

The Restoration of Persons

From Individual Suffering to a Collective Problem Things were not going well in the country because of a number of problems: some had an outside cause, like famine, the Ari murders and the presence of the army, while others were internal, like the fight in the village and the renewed tensions with the Me’en. Although all these problems were not causally related, the fact that they occurred at the same time linked them de facto. It was therefore necessary to carry out a double action: the restoring of good relational conditions and the finding of a consensus in the face of all these problems. The most obvious way of restoring the wellbeing of people was to kill an ox that metonymically stood for everyone’s animals. This sacrifice made it possible to relaunch the pastoral project. However, it meant requalifying the killing of one particular animal given as the result of an altruistic gesture, as a sacrifice applying to all the Mursi. And so the ox had to be stolen first so that this piece of individual property could participate in a collective undertaking. The agreement of the owner was requested, and so this was not entirely a hostile act. The ox was therefore the victim of a staged capture, recalling the warlike raids: paintings, shots fired, the movement towards a cattle encampment and the chanting of shield poems. However, it was the ‘junior elders’ who led the raid, although they no longer go off to war very often, while the ‘warriors’ were the victims of it. These ‘junior elders’ sang the poems boasting of their former exploits, while the ‘junior warriors’ led the ox to the place of sacrifice, each one carrying out the actions described in his own poem (see Chapter 3). This raid was thus fictional because it corresponded to the direct expression of the poems and to the anachronist aspect of them: the elders were making war recounted in the past, whereas the warriors were making the sacrifice that they were rehearsing in prospective mode. It was the shorthand version of the poems, as presented in the Introduction to this volume. This ox was going to be killed for a reason that went far beyond its owner. The sacrifice of the animal applied to everyone and the renunciation was collective. The owner was going to see his ox put to death for something other than for himself. The elders therefore protected him with clay after having received his agreement to the sacrifice. Similarly, the ‘junior elders’ covered the faces of some ‘junior warriors’ who had been guarding the animal in the encampment and who had been the ocular witnesses of the theft of the ox, without having attempted to defend it. The theft made it possible to requalify the ox as the property of everyone. Consequently, the men who had no link with the owner, but

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who were of the same fundamental colour (ree), had a special relationship with the animal. Koema Kaolu was in tears in front of this ox as if it had been his own. Moreover, the friends and family of the man also displayed their sadness by singing their ox poems. All of them, through their actions, showed that they were concerned by this individual ox, which had become, following the theft and the agreement of the owner, a property held in common, the killing of which would be valid for the whole community. During the debate, only the elders spoke, as the great number of problems faced by the community meant that only the most experienced could make proposals. Moreover, the debate did not end with a clear consensus, and this is certainly why the ritual specialist went and stood in the debating area. He gave his blessings surrounded by other elders who formed a circle around him, which is the usual spatial arrangement for consensual ritual activities, whereas earlier speakers had placed themselves in straight lines. By doing this, he restored the conduct of the debate to the context of ritual consensus. He confirmed the use of the mechanism in an emphatic way befitting his role, with the same intention as when each orator says before speaking: ‘it’s alright, there’s no problem at all’ (achalli bhoe gersi ninge). He also added future prosperity, hoping that future relations might be protected. The meat was only eaten by the men, as this ritual process was directly associated with the political conduct of men. And as a final emphatic gesture, showing the importance of this sacrifice, a ‘senior elder’ killed the meat again by planting his lance in it. We can see here the specific position of the ‘senior elders’: as they no longer have anything to do with living cattle, although they do participate in transforming them into signs (see Chapter 8), the elder’s warlike action was directed at the meat, i.e. the abstraction of the ox, which was the same thing for him as the map of the intestines in which he had read the future. *** In this final example, consensus is sought and obtained in different ways: debate was the consensual arrangement whereby diverging opinions were detailed. It preserved speech and the expression of disagreements. But it was itself preserved within a ritual framework that signalled a consensus on another level, focused on persons and their dynamics. What happens when the ritual arrangements are subordinate to a political moment?

10 The Resolution of Problems Politics

The Mursi distinguish between two kinds of problems: yiaye and log’o. The previous chapter described the yiaye, i.e. problems restricted to the private sphere: their consequences only affected the people who were concerned by the problem, however serious it might be. These private problems were resolved by ritual. Thus, among the Mursi, rituals are moments when actions are oriented towards the people directly implicated in the problem. Their aim is to restore good relational conditions. During these rituals, the spoken word is rare, and actions are themselves the hoped-for restoration. Other problems are called log’o (plural log’a), literally translated as story, speech or word. This literal translation is very significant as the Mursi also use this term to designate stories, speeches and words. And the synonymy is no coincidence. These problems are dealt with by means of words using a specific mechanism of interaction: the public debate among men. Facing the assembly, orators one by one give their opinion about a given situation. Only men from the elder grades have the right to speak in these debates. The others remain silent. Aesthetic practices are largely abandoned, although the interactional mechanism of the debate is consistent with the processes of sociality to which they bear witness. The log’o are political problems that are distinguished from private problems to be dealt with by rituals. To establish this distinction, I rely on John Dewey’s (2010) definition of politics, two aspects of which

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should enable us to chart numerous empirical situations. First of all, one should determine, for each problem, where its consequences lead: Sometimes the consequences are confined to those who directly share in the transaction which produces them. In other cases they extend far beyond those immediately involved in producing them. The two kinds of interests and of measures of regulation of acts in view of consequences are generated. In the first, interest and control are limited to those directly engaged; in the second they extend to those who do not directly share in the performance of acts. (Dewey 2010: 116)

In the second case, i.e. when the consequences of the problem affect people who are not involved in what produced it, a fundamental question is raised – that of the political representation that makes it possible to act in response to the problem: Those indirectly and seriously affected for good or evil form a group distinctive enough to require recognition and a name. The name selected is The Public. This Public is organized and made effective by representatives who as guardians of custom, as legislators, executives, judges, etc., care for its especial interests by methods intended to regulate the conjoint actions of individuals and groups. Then and in so far, association adds to itself political organization, and something which may be government comes into being: the Public is a political state. (Dewey 2010: 117)

The Public does not pre-exist and its incarnations are manifold. It is formed according to the problem, its particularities and the way in which it affects the people who are not the source of it. But contrary to the Western democracies that Dewey spoke of, the Mursi have political representatives who are as ephemeral as the problems that were the reason for their emergence. There is no durable specialization of roles, and each elder may be a representative for as long as the debate lasts.1 This is what Dewey means by political state, in which we may understand ‘state’ as a way of being at a particular moment (like an emotional state). Therefore, it is not a question of problems or domains of a political nature, but of relational arrangements leading to a political state. However, being in the position of a political representative is not straightforward in Mursi land, where, as we have seen in the description of aesthetic practices, social relations are founded on experience and singularity based on a non-hierarchical ethos. In ideological terms, individual enterprise is a central value that is challenged when people suffer the consequences of a problem that was not of their making and that for its resolution requires collective decisions where some people decide for others. In this sense, the exercise of power is the art of making

The Resolution of Problems

others act. And this is why describing political practice after the description of aesthetic practices does not simply involve the overturning of a hierarchy. Aesthetic practices make people do things. With both practices, it is as much about issues concerning forms of interactions, conditions and constraints of communication, and what is possible and what is not. Before developing a case study, it is necessary to present in a general way how the two above-mentioned aspects come about: the emergence of a public defining the political moment (and its opposition to private problems to be resolved by ritual) and the creation of political representation (implying the emergence of a hierarchy of competence in a largely non-hierarchical environment).

The Time and the Place of Politics A typology of problems to be dealt with by ritual or politics is impossible. Indeed, this distinction rests on empirical criteria related to the different levels of people’s engagement and of the different ways in which they are affected by the consequences of a problem of which they may, or may not, be the cause. Likewise, the size of the group engaged in a problem is not the reason for the distinction. Some ethnographical examples will make this distinction clearer. Samelu, my host, told me one morning that we had to go to Mardhadhare to meet Rabi Kav’ania, the son of the ritual specialist (komoru). The latter came with us, as did Olibuizir, one of the most respected elders in the area.2 The presence of these two elders and the long journey required of the old komoru made me wonder about the importance of the meeting. Samelu only said that we were going to drink beer as there was some left in the pot. This reply was plausible as famine was rife and beer, which was scarce, was jealously guarded and drunk in secret. When we arrived in Mardhadhare, we went into a hut and drank what was left of the beer away from the gaze of the women and children present. The atmosphere was relaxed and we exchanged some unimportant pieces of news. Suddenly Rabi Kav’ania called Olibuizir by his elder name. The latter immediately replied to him using his elder name. After this first exchange of names, we stopped drinking beer and Samelu gestured to me that that I should listen carefully. He whispered: ‘Wait, look, there are problems/words.’ Then as each one spoke, their names were stated in turn to mark the reciprocal positioning of the speakers (see Chapter 2). The discussion was therefore important. It was taking place between orators recognized throughout the country,3 but without the mechanisms of debate: everyone remained seated and the exchanges were brief.

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The famine due to the drought had placed a strain on the herdsmen, who had to take their herds further and further away every day, and their wives had to deal with the sorghum as best they could. The discussion aimed at considering displacement in order to preserve the unity of the cattle encampment. This unity is fortuitous and made up of people who choose to be part of it. Some people had therefore assembled to discuss the question. Others would bow to their decision, like Olelori, Shoadario and Girdunikaolu, ‘junior elders’ from the neighbourhood. Others had been excluded from the discussions. The discussion had the serious tone of a debate in which opinions are exchanged and disagreements become apparent from time to time. And it seemed to be within the political domain. However, the problem remained a private one: it involved defining the best possible displacements for the people concerned. Their choice would not impose any course of action on others, and their potential departure would not affect those who would not move or who would move elsewhere. The only people involved were those who considered the situation sufficiently disturbing to want to find a solution. What people felt about the idea ‘famine’ and its consequences, considered by some to be important enough to envisage transhumance, was subjective and therefore the whole group was not subjected to the decisions in the same way. Moreover, the resolution of this problem did not generate others in a kind of domino effect. Although the problem was shared by all, it remained a private affair. A discussion between participants sitting in a hut with all the necessary marks of deference and gravity was enough, all the more so as the drinking of beer added the idea of consensus a priori. Therefore, this was not a debate but an attempt by several people to evaluate the problem. It was more a question of management than political debates. On the contrary, a situation that only seems to concern very few people in the group may give rise to political management. Two Ari farmers were killed when they came to gather honey on the Mursi plains. The elders adopted a peaceful stance as was their custom. They may have disapproved of the use of violence that in this case seemed gratuitous, but no one intended to seek out and punish the killer. This was the situation until the government police entered Mursi territory and came as far as Mako in order to speak with the elders – the ‘chiefs’, as they call them. A dozen vehicles followed, some surmounted with heavy machine guns, with the aim of apprehending the offender and putting him in prison. Up until that moment, there had not been a debate. But the police issued a clear threat if the person was not found: an elder (it did not matter which one) would be taken to prison in his stead. A few days after the arrival of the police, some Mursi left the villages and went into the bush.

The Resolution of Problems

Those who had to stay behind began to fear for their lives, terrified that the police would use their weapons against them. These developments radically modified the situation: the murder, considered as the action of a high-spirited young man in keeping with the warrior ethos and hardly criticized by the elders, had become political as its consequences were likely to cause unexpected danger for a large number of people not implicated in the murder. Debates were immediately organized and two points of view emerged: one aimed at protecting the killer in the name of the integrity of the community and by accusing the Ari of theft, the other favouring the preservation of the integrity of the territory and bringing about the departure of the government by proposing to hand over the offender. In other words, a decision was being taken on another’s life, because the consequences of his acts affected people who were not concerned by the murder itself. The problem was henceforth political. Political problems are often linked to questions of territory. During public debates, it is frequently a case of population movements in the wake of war, famine, demographic pressure or the establishment of national parks or sugar plantations. In a word, the management of space, an essential element for transhumant agropastoralists who have made of the dynamic occupation of their territory their way of producing resources, is very often the reason for a political debate.4 But the correlation between territory and politics is statistical and not structural: the problems that most often affect people who are not the cause of them are linked to the management of space. Politics is not necessarily linked to the governing of a territory, and the governing of a territory is not inevitably a political activity. During a political moment, the public debate is a mechanism of interaction that distributes the right to speak in order to bring about favourable conditions for the solving of a problem. The spatial organization of people and the voicing of their opinions take on a particular form. Indeed, contrary to rituals made up of actions aiming at restoration, the public debate only offers a favourable context for the resolution of problems. It is not in itself the resolution of the problem. In other words, the ritual records consensus, whereas the debate strives to achieve it. It is for this reason that the distribution of people in space is totally different for the two types of activities. Generally, all the rituals form circles. I have suggested that this should be seen as the spatial disposition of consensus (see Chapter 5). On the other hand, in the case of political moments during which the main issue is to achieve consensus, the circle is abandoned and replaced by an alternative spatial distribution: people are seated and grouped together listening to an orator who walks up and down in front of them.

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Figure 10.1. Top: the spatial distribution of ritual and ceremonial activities (here, the sacrifice of cattle one after the other in the stone circles, the blessing of the cattle and the dances). Bottom: the spatial distribution in public debates. © Jean-Baptiste Eczet

The debate takes place in an open space that is sufficiently large to accommodate as many as a hundred people easily. These debates are not hidden from women, but they are a masculine activity and only the most mature women are sometimes able listen to the different speakers, albeit from a distance. The assembly of men is spread over an area 10–20 metres wide facing an open space where the successive orators walk up and down. The elders (rori and bari) place themselves quite near to the place where the orators speak. Somewhat withdrawn, or further away to the side, the warriors (teri and dong’a) listen but cannot speak. It is not necessary to face the orator. Often, when the debate begins, subgroups of people who were already seated and talking amongst themselves do not modify their positions. One can therefore see people in profile or turning their backs on the orators without this invalidating their implication in the debate. Depending on the length and the nature of the debate, spectators may be completely distracted and not really follow

The Resolution of Problems

the presentations. Speaking between the presentations is done discreetly and briefly; this is a moment for public speech during which everything must be said out loud and to the group. And because everything must also be heard, those who have dozed off will be woken up. It is by standing up and leaving the group to take one’s place in the public speaking area that one becomes an orator. The orators take turns, one after the other, to address the assembly for about 15–20 minutes. The changes in orators are negotiated each time. There is no pre-existing order of speech (unless it is a problem that has first to be presented by one of the protagonists). Either the orator comes to the end of his speech and sits down of his own accord, or another man who wishes to speak stands up and signifies to the one who is still speaking that it is time for him to step down, or again the men in the assembly may tell the orator that he has spoken enough (usha, ‘Stop!’, ‘Finish!’) and that he should sit down (tea bae, ‘sit down’). The transitions are rather fluid even if sometimes there are outbursts of anger, although these are quickly contained. The orators position themselves facing the seated men, and then walk up and down in a straight line across the public speaking area, over 10–40 metres. Sometimes they walk so far away that it is difficult to hear them. They only stop from time to time to shout a warning or a threat, or to mime a shot, and it is not rare to see a man run straight across the area speaking in a low voice as if he were alone, or even in silence. A crescendo effect is often sought. The orators carry an elder’s stick (biley) in their right hand (masculine laterality), and those who do not have one borrow one. More and more often, a Kalashnikov is carried instead of a stick, especially by the ‘junior elders’. The speed of the walking, either slow or rapid, is proportional to the intensity of the excitement of the orator’s speech. The orator always begins with ‘achalli!’, the usual greeting literally translated by ‘it’s fine!’ (or ‘is it fine?’ according to the intonation, often followed by words that are meant to be reassuring: ‘it’s alright, there’s no problem at all’ (achalli bhoe gersi ninge)). But this introduction must be applied to the debate that remains a space for reassuring words and not to the situation that is the reason for the debate, because this is problematic. This idiomatic phrase recalls the fact that the consensus pertains to the method of exchange of opinions and not to the opinions themselves. The conditions for the allocation of the right to speak must be preserved,5 although nothing guarantees that a common agreement will be reached. On the contrary, the safeguarded context for the distribution of the right to speak and the de-particularization of relationships contribute to the hardening of people’s standpoints. During these debates, men can be seen shouting and making threats. Some of them leave the

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debate uttering insults and curses that in everyday life would certainly lead to a potentially violent reaction on the part of the person or the group that had been addressed in this way. Here, during the debate, outbursts of anger, different points of view and tension may intensify with less restraint than in everyday life. We should remember that in the private context, a serious discussion is introduced by the reciprocal calling of the names of the speakers, and the meeting of their eyes that underlines the relational connection through the body. Here, by taking in the whole assembly with one glance, the speaker avoids looking at one person in particular.6 No one can impose a solution if an agreement is not reached. And so some debates give rise to others. It is not an exaggeration to think that some population splits that have been part of the history of the groups in the region might have been decided during debates, or at least have been the result of disagreements that the debate has made public, as certain elders have told me.

The Requalification of People Public debates are moments when grades, present on an everyday basis as one criterion among others, become central for the organization of the group and tend to saturate the discourse of the orators who make frequent reference to them. The differences between certain grades and the rights associated with them henceforth become absolute and independent of the particularities of everyday life. Here, regardless of whether one has recognition or is unpopular, rich or poor, the mere fact of belonging to a grade enables or prevents public speech. Consequently, it seems to me that the grades can be considered as a theoretical order of precedence agreed upon at times when collective organization around certain problems requires the recognition of a category-based hierarchical position. However, empirical precedence is very much correlated to increase in age: it is very likely that one will have acquired a broad network of friends and relatives (wives, children, friends, etc.) and to be able to mobilize it after many years of working hard at matrimonial and pastoral activities. In other words, a probability is established as a certainty. Only two grades accord the right to speak in public debates: junior and senior elders (rori and bari).7 Through their daily practice of a retrospective aesthetic styles, of auto-validation and of growing consensuality distinct from political issues, the elders (rori and bari) prepare day by day to decide for those younger than themselves. Through their daily

The Resolution of Problems

practices unrelated to an interindividual hierarchy, they find themselves from time to time in a legitimate hierarchical position; in other words, there is nothing shocking about these differential rights. The warriors (dong’ay and teri) have a role to play in everyday life based on self-affirmation. On the level of their practices, they have to create conditions conducive to social and pastoral prosperity: the number of their names constantly increases to sanction their successful integration into the group (see Chapters 1 and 2), their poems introduce into pastoral tasks the idea of renunciation that is yet to be achieved (see Chapters 3 and 7), the jewellery reveals the relative strength of a network of peers (see Chapter 4) and the dances display the dynamism of warlike youth (see Chapter 6). Moreover, these warriors will be expected to fulfil their potential by a form of relationship that involves violence.8 In short, all these practices are oriented towards preoccupations that are rather egocentric, the only ones that can develop characteristics that will later help them to become fully accomplished men. In order to become someone, one must first pay attention to oneself and increase the number of one’s head of cattle, of one’s wives and one’s relational network in general to be able to occupy an advantageous place within the group. Warlike skills at the centre of their education are highly valued, in total contradiction to the type of relations one has to call upon in public debates. The latter are more oriented towards negotiation and the search for consensus than towards physical force and domination. On the contrary, the elders constantly set themselves up as competent people within the group, particularly through their aesthetic practices. Little by little, their names cease to be individualized and create consensus to the point of becoming a name of generic filiation; their poems cast a backward glance at a war in the past; their ornaments are discarded because they themselves, by their very presence, epitomize the success of the body that has survived until now; in general, they behave with the warriors as human herdsmen with their cattle, and this is what the dances bear witness to. In this sense, everyday practices do not imply a hierarchy between warriors and elders, but anchor in repeated and necessary customs legitimate positions vis-à-vis oneself and the group: a warrior does not speak in public (the young men I questioned about this said that they would be incapable of doing so) and an elder does not go to war, less because of physical incapacity than because of the ridicule of practicing an activity that does not correspond to their daily way of being implicated in the collective life. During debates, the elders have the legitimacy to solve a problem that will imply that others will accept their decision. And while the elders

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debate, the warriors remain in an inferior position in the hierarchy. The warriors carry out actions that will lead to the development of their individuality, but will not yet ready them for the management of the affairs of others. That is why a warrior may sometimes question the authority of an elder, but the authority of the elders during moments of political importance is unequivocally established. A hierarchy is set up that can redistribute roles without contradicting the ideal of individual freedom shared by all. However, even if it is perfectly legitimate, i.e. in accordance with an established status, the grade is not a capacity in itself; it is the possibility for action. Many ‘senior elders’ (bari) do not speak in public, in the same way as during the dances some warriors do not advance towards the women. Similarly, some are more gifted than others in composing poems or political speeches. But in spite of the differences in skills, the grade remains the most important attribute of people during political activity, even if this means taking away a part of a person’s identity. During a public debate, belonging to a grade involves less the creation of a specific identity than taking something away from that identity. Indeed, only one dimension is put forward. People distribute the right to speak according to the grade criterion that enables them to speak or prevents them from doing so. Everyday life follows a logic of accumulation and particularization where the grade is simply one criterion among others, but in political management, only the grade counts. Thus, the interaction that takes place during the establishment of grades as the only discriminating criterion cannot use the popularity accumulated by each one. The individual speech that seeks to convince the group must make use of an ‘I’ performative, because an ‘I’ biographical is of little use. At debates, we can therefore see that some everyday positions are confirmed, whereas others are completely denied. Thus, the ‘senior elder’ Nebi Ale may be reprimanded if his speech goes round in circles, in spite of his experience in dealing with famine. And a somewhat unsociable ‘junior elder’ may find himself in a strong position thanks to his powers of persuasion. On a daily basis, the former is much more implicated in different forms of relational networks than the latter, but in the course of a debate, all that counts is the argument and the act of speaking. Here, politics is not based on accumulated values, which, when embodied by one person, would lead to centralized authority, to a big man, or a chief.9 Accumulating relations enables a person to exercise a certain influence in daily life, but in the domain of politics, only the grade counts. Influence is exercised at a particular moment and only then. In a society without any differentiation of tasks and in which each person has the right to preserve the integrity of the country by assuming

The Resolution of Problems

the role of the police or the politician at any given moment, these roles have to be assumed, and afterwards forgotten.

Times of Crisis Most problems involve the holding of a ritual or a debate. Other problems resulting from diffuse tensions entail the organization of multiform events during which a killing takes place alongside a public debate. This was the case in the spring of 2015. The rains were beginning to fall in Mursi country, but it would be at least another month before the sorghum was harvested. Stocks were drying up and food was scarce, a frequent occurrence and one that always causes difficulties. In addition, two important events took place in the space of a few days. First of all, a dozen buffalo were killed in the Mago national park to the southwest of the Mursi territory. And very quickly it was established that some Hamar living further to the south had been the perpetrators of this bloody hunting expedition using automatic weapons. But the government and its representatives accused the Mursi of having turned a blind eye to this intrusion, and even of having been accomplices to the attack. They were therefore to be held to account. Second, two Chinese workers and their Ethiopian driver employed by the company running the sugar cane plantation that was in the process of being set up in the region10 were attacked while they were carrying out a survey for the construction of a road. It would seem that the aggressors had been Me’en, but the latter denied the charge and accused the Mursi. The place where the assault had taken place was situated on the frontier between the two territories, and this raised doubts as to the identity of the attackers.11 Because of these two affairs, the police and the special forces came several times to talk to people in Mursi villages. In short, although there was no clearly defined danger, the situation was tense. It was therefore decided to kill an ox and organize a debate. The last example in Chapter 9 described the ritual part of an event of this type that took place in 2010. I shall now describe the purely political part.

The Passage from the Private to the Public The accumulation of problems did indeed lead to a political state, because people not engaged in the action at the root of the problem were nonetheless affected by it. However, this projection into what was for the moment only a potential risk made the mobilization of the elders

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for the public debate more difficult. For those who really wanted the debate, it was a question of coming to an agreement about the right attitude to adopt in the face of the authorities and how to avoid inappropriate individual conduct. Because of the various interests and feelings involved in this tense situation, the issue at stake was first and foremost the mobilization of the elders of the region so that they would agree to come, sometimes from as far as two days’ walk away. In the case of these problems that are not limited, but are the result of the recognition that ‘things are not going well in the country’ (ba te gersi), the killing of an ox serves as the federating ritual action. This moment is literally called ‘we eat the ox’ (kabag’ bhungay) and consists in killing an ox prior to holding a debate and finally eating the meat of the animal. The ox had been selected and predestined for this particular purpose a long time before by its owner who fixed a large number of bells upon it when it was still a calf. The animal undergoes a staged capture during the course of a raid the model for which we have already seen, in order for it to become part of a collective action, and for the killing to participate in the renewal of the relationships of the whole group (see Chapters 7 and 9). Obviously, the reputation of the owner who gives his ox on such an occasion is greatly enhanced. But this time, the owner of the ox provided for the purpose, an ox with a black neck, died before his animal. It therefore fell to his close friends to organize this ‘gift’ and the killing, and to trigger the holding of the debate. However, as we shall see, these people were not up to the task of summoning enough participants for the organization of a debate. They needed in this instance to mobilize people who had difficulty in considering that the situation was political, i.e. who felt that they were very little concerned by the problems as stated. In the extracts that follow,12 a ‘junior elder’ named Olohune, a friend of the deceased, has come to ask for help in a village where there are people who could help to organize a debate. He speaks first of a specific problem: that of the probable absence of Kumuholi, an influential ‘junior elder’, as he is still in mourning and no one has come to comfort him,13 i.e. to bring his mourning to an end. And it seems to me that the example on which Olohune focuses is the metonymic illustration of his difficulty in motivating people sufficiently so that they will agree to come to the debate. If he can only bring together a small contingent of Mursi, his mission will be considered a failure. Olohune therefore also needs the help of some ‘senior warriors’ to comfort and convince Kumuholi to come, as he needs people in general to attend. This discussion took place in the evening, with the participants sitting in the central area of the village. There were some ‘senior warriors’ (in-

The Resolution of Problems

cluding Olisirali and Olekiwo, who will speak), and three elders – Bale, Machak and Nebi Ale.14 Olohune adopted a solemn tone of voice and began by clearly stating the name of Olisirali, followed by a long silence: Olohune: Now there are words. Now, the problem is approaching quickly. And the problem only belongs to the people of this village. Yesterday we tied knots.15 The ox with the black neck, there were six knots. I sleep here, and tomorrow with Olibui a chakte,16 tomorrow morning early, we go there. We go there and we will meet the people to comfort them, and we sleep out there. But now, the problem, we present it here. I arrived a long time ago, at midday. I told Kumuholi to come here and talk about it. I am going to sleep at home and tomorrow I come back here. ‘Senior warriors’? This thing I spoke to you about, you have not recounted it. ‘Senior warriors’, now he says to himself: what are they doing? Now they are going to leave and talk amongst themselves. I have already talked to you about this here. Before, you gave me some money, you gave me 400.17 Now I’m going to sleep. And tomorrow morning early, with Olechage Olibui, tomorrow morning early, we’ll go first, before you. You all stay here. We’re going to sleep. I’m going to sleep two sleeps there.18 You don’t follow us yet. I’m going to sleep with Olechage. We’re going to lead the ox and bring it back. All of you who are numerous, you are not going there. Now, I’m going to take some arake to bring to the people of the village. And you will all go together. Go and sleep. We will meet tomorrow to discuss this problem.

Already, Olohune is speaking both about the debate, saying that he will go and fetch the animal that is destined to be killed, and about the problem of ending Kumuholi’s period of mourning that requires the warriors’ assistance. Olekiwo agrees: Olekiwo: Alright. Now we are real men. And you are speaking to ‘great senior warriors’.19 I am going and I recount this thing to the ‘senior warriors’. And all will be ready. Of this story we will be completely aware. This story of the ox with the black neck. The owner is dead. In the earth. If the owner had not been dead, maybe the ox would have remained two or three years. I don’t know, we don’t know. He could show it to the people during the blessing of the cattle. And everybody would see it. Tomorrow, you and Olisirali, go there. You will take Kumuholi if he wants. You go and ‘comfort’ and we can meet out there. We can meet. Olohune: I have gone and come back. This midday, I was out there. I spoke to the people out there. And now, I have come back here. Tomorrow morning we will go there, we are the people dealing with this. Olekiwo: Perhaps the people have understood. We have already spoken for a long time about this. Now Olibui20 wants to plant, as the water is gathering.21 Together, with the ritual specialist called Biotongiga, they reached

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an agreement. Now, at this smoke when we were waiting for you, I met his shoes,22 he’s gone. Perhaps he’s gone to Betogi or directly to Hanna to join his wife? Perhaps he’s returned. Dok-Dok23 and his wife who is Habbakoro left together. Now his wife, his sandals are there. They went there and had an understanding with the people out there. They plant, now. We can discuss this problem. It’s the evening, we can return to our huts. Now, we have six days, it’s a lot. We must stay there all this time. We’ll meet in the precise place before. The words are in six days,24 they know it even a long way away, as far as the south, even out there in the west where the Chinese are. Perhaps we can hear the words of Olisirali and afterwards we’ll go gently to our huts and sleep. And tomorrow we’ll go.

Strangely enough, Olekiwo seems confident about the fact that settling the problem of the mourning will enable the debate to take place properly. However, Olisirali, another warrior, points out the problem: Olisirali: You came with this problem the other time, alright, and we first spoke together about what you told us. Everything, everything, everything. At Koru, now, even in this village, they know. And the story before, the ox with the black neck, the cow moos for the people, and the people took the cow to another place. Now we can go there and hide our eyes.25 Now it’s the departure. We are going there. Go on! Strike until you reach home,26 then come, it’s the departure. Now this story, too many things have been put in it. I’m uncomfortable. Later these stories will be on the other side27 if they are put together. Let’s see this tomorrow, in the central area. When you asked the man called Kumuholi, there were ‘senior warriors’. They refused.28

Indeed, the ‘senior warriors’ close to Kumuholi did not yet want to comfort him, and Olisirali argues that the organization of the debate and the end of the period of mourning should not be lumped together. Olohune insists to order to get his help: Olohune: Kumuholi, out there, you answered me and said: ‘When you and the komoru [ritual specialist] came, did you comfort us?’ I said: ‘I already came to comfort you, and this cow is the cow of a dead person!29 It’s a problem of a dead person and it must end!’ Tomorrow, you go, and tell the ‘senior warriors’ and Kumuholi. Olisirali: The problem of the male animal … This problem is like that. It’s a male cow. It was chosen by his friends. They put the bells, they also gave the calf afterwards, and the people will say that they are going to eat this cow. The cow itself is going to call the people.30 It’s an old Mursi tradition. It’s what I have understood about this story.

Saying this, Olisirali makes clear the priority of organizing the debate over the ending of a person’s mourning. The ‘senior elders’ then enter the discussion:

The Resolution of Problems

Machak: It’s not right to go from house to house to speak about that. And you give to only one for this story, instead of going from village to village.31 At the next high smoke, those who come from far away, we can all meet out there. Before, if I understand the Mursi, the stories were like that. Don’t go from house to house. And now, I am here. And these things that Kumuholi speaks about, well, Mursi culture is like that, whatever the situation. If it’s like that, I won’t go either! In my body,32 it’s bad. My son, yesterday was lost.33 But the people call us and we go, no matter my body. I ignore it and I go. I go like that, with my body. Now, it’s the departure. Now, go and sleep and come tomorrow morning early. Come here and let’s go. And at the next dawn, we’ll meet at the place called Lakuncho to do the things. All things must be recounted, and we mourn with Kumuholi if Dorwa34 wants. Let’s go and may the ‘senior warriors’ make their provisions for the stick duels. Let’s go for the mourning.

Another elder then begins to make strong complaints and Olohune remains silent, his head bowed. Bale challenges those who are listening. He sometimes speaks of Olohune with disdain in the third person. He wonders if he is not the person who must give a calf in compensation for the ox that is going to be killed, and that it is for this reason that he is delaying in organizing the event: Bale: There are things that you say that I don’t understand. You speak of the ox. Perhaps he is the one who gave the calf when the decision was taken? The ox you speak of, its owner is dead. The owner of the cow is dead and he left behind him that one and others, many of them. You have already chosen one of your calves, so stop. Why do you insist with this problem now? Is that the way it is usually? That black bull with the bells, was it like that before the owner died? Stories like that? When the people go and comfort, they comfort with a marriage drum. It’s like that when you go where a person has died! When you prepare the stick fights and drink at the udder and when a friend dies. I speak of that custom. If someone dies, me for example, you come to my enclosure, your guns ring out, and you eat. Now you are losing Mursi customs. Here, there are not many Mursi. Everybody is out there in the south or along the Omo. The ox has already been chosen by the ‘junior elders’. It’s you the ‘junior elder’.35 You gave the message to the other ‘junior elders’. And who will give the calf? Many people wanted. Me! me! me! You talk amongst yourselves, at the beginning just one, and then many want to give. The knots were decided by your companions. Your thing is just the calf.36 You speak out there, you speak on the other side, why? Too much ash has been spread!37

Bale reproaches Olohune with mixing things that should remain separate: on the one hand, the private problem that concerns the managing of the death of the ox and the comforting of Kumuholi; and, on the other hand, the general mobilization of the men for the debate, i.e. the

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awareness of a public problem. Bale continues by invoking an example taken from a past event in which an ox was put to death in order to organize a debate. Although this elder seemed to remember the situation perfectly, the warriors were completely ignorant of it: Bale: The red ox, its owner, died in the water, on the other side. His ox was in Maki and he sent it to Kirinsela. When the family of the deceased lived out there to prepare the fields, we met and talked. We struck the fire.38 A group of people was sent to see the owner39 and comfort him. You must send the message to the owner. Take the ox and kill it. Those people had answered that they were planting in the fields and when they finished they will join us. ‘We cut the weeds and we come.’ And when they came to the place, we weren’t there! Only later. They had tied knots,40 but the one who had tied them wasn’t there, so I changed the knots so that it would be four. And it became four sleeps. The people might have to travel to come. And yes, this story of the male cow, you should hear it and then come.41 The country is in a bad state. Everybody must come and discuss. I changed for four days. The red ox wanted to untie the knots!42 In the afternoon, when there was only one sleep left, the people began to be there. The tension could be felt, on this place of the cow. Some walked all night, for a long time, and slept in the bush. And they joined the cow early in the morning. The people fired shots for this ox. And they put it in the enclosure. For the ox with the black neck, is there a problem? Your friend chose this ox for his companions.43 So forget it and go! Take off the bells! If the cow can make the country better, then it will happen. The people come, discuss, all night if necessary. Tomorrow, you go there. Go and do what you planned. Where is this ox? With the family or in the bush? For the red ox, they came early in the morning to show it to the family. They had led the cow all night. They did what they had to and they killed it. Now, it’s five sleeps. You go and sleep, and tomorrow four sleeps. Speak little. Don’t bother us anymore, the words give nothing.

Olohune, certainly vexed at being thus reproved, then tries to reverse the situation by recalling that sometimes the elders do not attend these debates: Olohune: Artulahola!?44 For another black ox, you didn’t come. Now we are here so you must come. I have come here to finish these things.

Machak interrupts him: Machak: This cow with the bells there. When we, we have decided this thing in the past, we didn’t come and speak to the ‘senior elders’. It’s only when we had finished that we went to speak to them about it, and tell them that we will go and kill this ox. And in the morning, this event, everyone, everyone, everyone went there. Why so many things like that for you?

The Resolution of Problems

Nebi Ale: My words were the same. Bale: Everything is mixed. This man is what?45 Artulahola and Machak: I don’t know!46

Following these criticisms, the discussion finally orients itself, little by little, towards other subjects. The debate took place a few days later, without the comforting of Kumuholi having taken place. Moreover, he was not present.

General Policy Speech The aim of this debate was not to solve a specific problem, as would be the case with a decision to hand over a man guilty of murder to the police. It aimed at reaching agreement on the conduct to be adopted in the face of the authorities so that they would stop casting doubt on the participation of the Mursi in the above-mentioned attacks. Although the decision to collaborate with and participate in meetings with the government was quickly taken, this debate was nonetheless the opportunity to recall that the ‘elders’ had an important role to play in controlling the ‘warriors’. This is because, in spite of everything, it was not impossible that some of them might have been implicated in the attacks. This control particularly involves a sort of continuous initiation called koma koda (‘the decided knees’). These tests take place every time the elders consider that their corresponding warrior grade is behaving badly.47 The younger ones kneel down, in a group, unclothed and painted as for war, and holding a stick in their hand. The elders come and beat them with long branches. The blows are dealt and many scars result from these beatings. After having received a blow, the warrior stands up and hugs the elder in his arms, dominating him physically. This obviously retroactively reinforces the impression that the submission to the blows was voluntary, hence the designation ‘the decided knees’. Following this, the warriors give gifts to the elders (coffee, honey, etc.) and listen to their advice. With the gifts they repeat their acceptance of a hierarchy, which had earlier involved accepting violence. This is the only moment when the hierarchy between the grades is displayed in a violent way on the body. The younger ones nonetheless show that they could easily dominate their elders, and this confirms that the hierarchy exists on a different level from that of force.

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The speech that follows was that of a ‘junior elder’, the fifth orator in the debate. It lasted about 10 minutes, each sentence was punctuated by silence. This speech was noticed because the man was particularly vehement when he reproached the other elders who, according to him, did not exercise enough control over the younger men: Nebiseno, when the people gave you the stick at Moizo,48 what did you do with that? With that stick, you interrupted people.49 Ah yes! Why do you annoy us so much? When the people put the sticks into your hands, did the country become better? Did you leave the land to your children? Did it become a land of children? A land of games?50 The problem came to the Mursi and the people gave a new name, wasn’t it after a war with the Tumuri?51 The people made a big meeting52 at the place called Gamamlui. Didn’t the people come? The people came and drank coffee and went to the place called Donay. Tuodoné, when the people came, what did he say? Duli?53 If I cut the mountains of Boru, and if you cut the mountains of Dara, the red ox, wouldn’t the vultures have eaten it? They gave a name.54 You don’t like to hear that. Lugolonkudusa, I speak to you of that place which is now occupied by children. Do they refuse to give money?55 The people? Did the people receive the sticks? Now they can deal with the country. Are you insulting? This becomes bad. This meeting all together, if we let things ride, the young people will kill each other because they made bad choices. Now the people, their hands strike each other everywhere, when they drink milk.56 Why do you do that? Regé: what did you say to me at Kola? What were your hands like? What did you tell? What did you say? The ‘junior elders’ act differently. The ‘senior elders’ act differently. Until now that’s four years, this year it will be five years. What can the komoru do? And when he gives back the healthy cows, when will that be?57 Too long ago now, a man called Balbong did that here. A long time ago, in the shade, didn’t he recount that? And in this blessing of the cattle, the oxen of expression58 were brought by Balbong. But as far as the Nyomanigormay, wasn’t his head shaved by a hyena? Eaten by a hyena? And where is Gounabelé? With that bald man like a whetstone?59 You are stupid, when things happen, you only tell dirty things. If the earth is in a bad state, are there no close friends and relatives to take care of? The widow and her children are there and they will eat meat. And the child will be strong. The unclean woman, she will marry people, like the Bedameri. Like the Chola. The man who is Berabe agolonia. With Gurumedere, now can’t you see the senior elders of these people? If you don’t take good care of the land, when will it be good? Ah, that’s it, these children are going to destroy you. These children are going to destroy you. Rabi Kaolu! Hey! Be a man. A short time ago you spoke little and you spoke well. If you are intelligent, watch people closely. Among the young men, some know. They come and they listen in the shade. I’ve done a lot of koma koda. I drank there three times. At midday, I hit you, me

The Resolution of Problems

the ‘junior elder’, in the evening, we struck the ‘senior warriors’, and at night we were going to give to the senior elders.60 Have you vomited? We planted the sorghum a long time ago and have you vomited?61 That’s it, leave the game on this earth … And the ox will not eat of this earth.

A long silence ensued, before his conclusion: And when it was the moment to be struck, I was struck harshly, and often, and I went barefoot into the bush and you followed me to hit me again. Why? To make a man of me.

In all, thirteen people spoke. The information that each person had concerning the killing of the buffalo and the attack on the Chinese workers was exchanged, and the conclusion was that nobody knew much at all. With the exception of two orators, all agreed that it was necessary to speak to the government at the latter’s request in order to demonstrate their innocence, even though some pointed out that in the end, they were bowing to the rule of might. The most sensitive subject was the question of the reaffirmation of authority because, as we have seen in the above extract, the ‘senior elders’ in certain regions did not do the koma koda to the warriors. The end of the debate came when the komoru spoke.62 As the ritual specialist (one might as well say the consensus specialist), he must sum up the debates that have taken place. He recalled the main elements concerning the two problems that had brought the Mursi together on that day; he then went further to reproach the elders who did not respect order. Indeed, the komoru, as ritual specialist, not only has the duty to bring about consensus, but it is also his role to see that certain ritual practices, like stick fights in particular, run smoothly by deciding on when they should be held and by blessing the participants. He recalled all this by making a personal commitment, his first objective being to preserve his position as an exemplary figure. He began by recalling Mursi values and practices: We have eaten for a long time. And we are still here! In the past I have visited many places. Buffalo there! Here two milking cows were tied up. They sleep there. They multiply. I went among the Masaï. But in Jinka I don’t see any animals. In this place, I can’t see any. I have seen nothing of these things. If a child is struck by illness, we go and kill only one of the animals. We went there and killed only one warthog. If we kill a female cow, we take the skin. Before we killed like that. To make women’s dresses. Ropes and bells. It was like that. With ropes and bells, before, we killed the ox. Oledorr, we must have an explanation. Golon’, if we are here, we must talk. The government cannot take us if we form a group.63 That man there, he’s on the ground.64

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He can’t catch him. Even Torko cannot.65 I cannot change it. I speak for my team.66 Sometimes a man can kill, and another dies. If he’s one of ours, we are not going to catch him. But I don’t like blood in the group. We’ll seek him when he’s alone.67

After a period of silence, he returns to the problem linked to the massacre of the buffalo by the Hamar: A Hamar is a Hamar. There are mediators with them. The komoru with the white ox is there. Torko too. A very few years ago, I killed a yellow ox.68 And him why?69 And him, in the government, he’s not there. How strange!70 The government has protected for a long time the frontier of the river. Balagidangi is our country. They are on the other side. And him, the government has power in his arms, and he produces fear. He makes an entrance.71 Why do they come so near to the entrance? He has made an entrance near the Elma. They do it everywhere. As far as the valley. Why do they come and tell us they have no power? The government has pushed the Mursi. Whatever they want they have. At the next smoke, they will speak. Now I have a child to take who is ill. I shall go out there. I shall stay out there to wait for the message. I am not going to be beneath the earth, I’m not going to the sky. I don’t want to hide as with the problem the other time. ‘He has gone to the other side! He has gone to the other side!’ Where have I gone? That problem the other time was caused by my blood.72 Now if something happens, I reject.73 I must go and ask what will happen. I shall see it.

There is another long period of silence (walking back and forth without speaking), then comes the problem of the attack on the Chinese workers: Always some problems, it’s a country of ‘always some problems’. These very white people,74 for a long time we’ve heard tell of that. At Hana, there’s shooting. Perhaps they will find the killer. It will be worse if we hide, if we hide in the ground. We are numerous, if there is a problem, we go together. The problems are long. Now we are all here for this ox with the black neck. I have already finished what concerns me, and we have finished about this problem. Now we can speak about the news of the country. We have already spoken of serious problems. The country is bad, but it’s finished.

Then begins a speech that could be qualified as a ‘general policy speech’: Now, Karteoramay, I say to you: don’t ignore the meetings of the other groups. You listen and afterwards you really know. And afterwards we can recount our mouths. If it’s on the other side, we’ll go there. You listen to theirs, and you recount their ways. Man has ears. Now the government has told us to leave for the resettlement villages,75 and it will bring grain and houses. We take the sorghum from Alaka. Everything, everything! And we

The Resolution of Problems

remain with the cattle. They won’t go after Moizo. They don’t clear the other side. In the bush their story has stopped. I have understood the story of the black ox. Where is that man going? People go far to take away the weeds from the fields. They are going to fight against the weeds. Now it’s alright. The things we were worried about are finished.76 The red men, if they want to come let’s go. I have left my sick child in the middle of the grass. Now I’m going. And if you look for me tomorrow, I shall be at Romos. They wrote a long time ago that the houses would be on the land.77 Now tell them that I am there, because I’m going there. If they come for the bad things, I am there with my friends and relatives, I have already told you. Haven’t I already told you? Have you got ears, Bargoro? Haven’t I recounted words in the ears of the government? That man there,78 if he looks for things in the bush, I won’t go, but if it’s at my house, I shall go and meet him. If it’s at Addis Ababa, I won’t go. If it’s like last time, I won’t go. The Mursi don’t like it. Problems arrive at night. Problems arrive at midday. I have already said this in the debates! Haven’t I already said this in the debates? He assembles the things from before.79 The papers. They know they we have gone to many places. He assembles the things, Karteoramay. Now the things change. They don’t know. They know me, but they ignore me:80 ‘We will seek his body!’

He takes the opportunity to criticize another ritual specialist: Among the Hamar, owners of Torko,81 they looked for him yesterday. Why do you look for him? He’s with the cattle. I say this: Torko is not going. I’m going and that’s all. Torko is old. And his ‘junior elders’ can also go and speak with the Hamar. When the ‘Komora who is black’, he stayed there.82 And this struck earth, I have travelled it. This great man,83 does he not remain on the ground? That’s the problem. All of you, the country is growing darker. Go off and help with the weeds. Help with the skin-and-bone cattle. Perhaps some must go a long way? A man, a real man! He came to listen to the words!84 Now we have listened to the words. The pretentious people do not stay until the end. They move away, they are not good people. The government comes and talks, and talks, and talks. But this meeting, is it a meeting with the government alone? This land of meat? And this cow, was it castrated by the government? You have done that yourselves! Go and listen to the Ari and tell them everything. And if they call you, don’t refuse. I never refuse a meeting. I say: like that, like that … ‘The man who has killed, who is he?’ If someone has killed,85 tell them. Don’t hide it. And if the ritual specialist himself kills, he goes to prison. Sometimes, they accuse us for any reason at all. But nobody has killed. The government has lots of words: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5! That man there, on the skin, he has done something bad.86 He accuses people not linked to the problem. Like that, it’s bad.

He continues with a long speech about the denial of his role – that is, his role in the authorization of stick fights (donga):

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Now, all the people do what they want, with you the old people. Why do the elders push for the donga? For a while now people have finished with the donga. You all want it, but you are old. Liars! Some will say that it’s not them, liars! All the hands, they strike each other.87 For eight months you have pushed for the donga, liars! The cattle are sick now. The cattle will be sick if there is the donga. If the people bleed, we will no longer strike our hands. All the things happen if you don’t respect that. Don’t strike your hands again. You fight only by striking your hands.88 When the sorghum grows, if the wind blows, it lies down, because it is sick. And another ox with bells will be ill and die. Did I not already say that at another meeting? Only duels, only weapons. The cattle are sick because of you. Now, I’m saying something to you: before the boys from Dedep were there: ‘Come and bring the senior warriors and strike them.’ And the old men will be on the ground watching. This cow with the black neck is a woman’s cow.89 The women serve the Komoru. The boys from Dedep will bring the calabash during the ritual. The people who drink,90 if you fight, you will break your hands and head. The donga has its procedure. It must be blessed. And then the donga will roar. I don’t accept that the old men want the donga now. Liars! Your donga will begin in Ngorteresoy.

He finally concludes on the authority that the elders must renew with regard to the warriors, picking up on the reproaches of the orator that we have seen above: Boys! The senior warriors of the south have cooked some liver without giving it to the senior elders.91 They have eaten the whole country. Now they are not cooking anything at all. They are sitting there. Are you not striking the boys? Before, we would have taken up sticks for that, oh yes! You who have struck the senior warriors, aren’t you Mursi? This story of the black ox, have you understood everything?92 And you, aren’t you taking up sticks? All the regions must do the ‘decided knees’, but some haven’t done it. What will become of this? Do you even want to go? Are the sticks fighting? They did not ask permission for the donga. If I continue to speak, I shall be ashamed. I stop in the middle. Go, eat the wood.93 And if they fight you back, you give up and you make men of them.

The debate comes to an end, the usual interactions begin again and everyone returns home. If some had the opportunity to speak, and particularly to reproach their peers who were not behaving well in their opinion, most people remained silent. Indeed, I have often heard the Mursi speak of debates as places where one listens, where information circulates and where one learns for the next time. The idiomatic expression says that those who know ‘listen in the shade’ (chig’ rigio). The political debate is not a moment when one only speaks. Listening and

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understanding94 are also very important. And the orators are not content with simply speaking; they also walk. *** I can only refer the reader to further studies for an analysis of the construction of charisma, proficiency in public speaking and the skills that they require. It will probably be necessary to follow these people in their numerous public debates over several years. However, before concluding, one point must be understood: why do the orators walk when they address the members of the assembly? It is not obvious why orators move back and forth in front of the audience listening to them, especially when everyday life is experienced with the constant exchange of names in face-to-face encounters (see Chapter 2). It seems that by placing himself in profile instead of facing the audience, the orator is simply adopting the correct body position when, among the Mursi, he has to address the group as a whole. Indeed, he must deindividualize his comments in a practical way in order to make them into a speech. However, sometimes certain names are pronounced as if addressing someone directly. But the lack of reciprocity in the speaking of names, and the back-and-forth movement of the orator in front of the audience, make his remarks, suggestions and reproaches general rather than particular. A particular name of an elder is pronounced to show that the orator’s words are addressed to all the elders, or perhaps to the elders of a particular region to which the named person belongs, rather than to that one person in particular. And if the orator stops speaking and faces one person that he picks out and begins to criticize personally, he will have abused his monopoly of speech and the audience will immediately intervene to tell him to resume the debate. Finally, many everyday discussions concern the exchange of information about the activities of the country and its people: who does what and where? In this context, the traveller, sometimes even a neighbour, brings knowledge that is impossible to acquire otherwise than by listening to him. These are often long monologues that the visitor imparts shortly after his arrival. And from this point of view, the orator who ‘travels’ across the public speaking area also travels across the country, often pointing with his finger in the direction of the source of his information. In fact, by walking, he stages the activity of the traveller, making a contrast with the audience who, like the people who remain in their villages, in the shade, know nothing of what is happening elsewhere. Facing these seated men, the walker is the one who has seen and who

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talks about what he knows. If wisdom is acquired sitting in the shade listening to others, it is dispensed by walking, looking directly to the front, like a traveller who has seen what he talks about. The debator, while walking, will then be able to establish this knowledge by giving orders targeting certain individuals, while not revealing the specific extent of his knowledge to the assembly. The speeches contain many hints, veiled references and ellipses, not to confuse the audience, but, on the contrary, to show inclusion in the group while being discreet about personal business, ensuring only the protagonists know everything about it. Leadership, and the adherence that supports it, thus resides in the ability to gather information. Authority is not something that can be gained by exhibiting a biography or that can be imposed by seizing riches and productive means. Authority here is about continually renewing influence, because the factors behind this influence are events and the knowledge must continually be renewed. It is with the bodies of the deceased that one can understand the importance of listening, which is the other facet of speech. A dead person, of course, does not speak, and experience enables us to see that this is so. However, the deceased may not withdraw completely from the affairs of the living, and troubling dreams in which they appear distinctly bear witness to this. In this case, the use of clay proves to be the means to ward off this being and the vision that one has had of him (see Chapter 4). One can then deal with the appearance of a dead person. But one is careful to see that the dead person does not receive anything from the world he has left. Thus, during the burial of an old Mursi, I saw the elder leading the ceremony take up two handfuls of earth from the place where he had told us to dig. When the circular hole was completed and when we had placed the body, curled up on its side, within it, the elder picked up the first pieces of earth. He placed them over the dead person’s ear, which was turned towards the surface before we filled in the hole with stones and earth. Thus, the elder made sure that the dead person would no longer hear the affairs of the living.

Notes 1. Apart from the komoru (the ritual specialist) who usually intervenes in these debates to conclude by means of a consensual speech (cf. below). 2. The ritual specialist (komoru) and Olibuizir are very close due to the association of their skills. Olibuizir is a reputed sorcerer (ngereye) whom the komoru calls upon for his visionary skills. 3. The most recognized among the orators are called jalabay (plural jalaba) like the komoru and Olibuizir.

The Resolution of Problems

4. It is probably because of the frequent correlation between politics and territory that Peatrik (1999) and Tornay (2001) studied generational classes in relation to territorial sovereignty. Similarly, David Turton (1978) proposed a study of the Mursi age system in relation to space, as he did not want to consider it as such or simply in terms of power. 5. In general, and outside the context of debates, the Mursi insist on allowing people to express themselves as much as they want. Daily life may at any moment be interrupted by the monologues of those who wish to speak. 6. We shall see later on that addressing someone in particular is less a direct reproach aimed at that person than, by metonymy, a reproach directed, for example, at the elders from a particular part of the territory (cf. below). 7. The members of these grades all became members together because of collective recruitment; they are therefore members of an age-set, i.e. a historical section that will not be modified again by individual recruitment. It is also for this reason that from this grade onwards and from the creation of a closed group, the classes will bear a proper name. 8. As Turton (1998) suggests, war between herdsmen may be envisaged as a kind of relationship and not as an absence of relationship because of its violence. 9. It should be noted that the term jalabay (plural jalaba) designates a person reputed for his qualities as an orator in political debates (and consequently for his experience). A person receives this qualification more because of his accumulated success during political moments than because of recognition of success in his private life. More than great men, jalaba are great orators. 10. See the Conclusion for a note on this subject. 11. I must point out that this information has not been verified or made official. In this text, I am only giving one version of a problem during my period of fieldwork. I never found out, for example, how serious the attack on the Chinese workers was. 12. I devote a lot of space here to the speeches themselves. I have constantly been confronted with a lack of comment on aesthetic practices. This time, as for the poems, the practice involves speaking, and these extracts from the debates replace the description of practices. I intersperse speeches with contextual or implicit elements that will help the reader to understand the issues at stake. In footnotes I give alternative or additional translations to those in the text that I particularly want to keep as close as possible to the mun. 13. I use the verb ‘to comfort’ to translate the verb ubul-, the nominal form of which is kubulo. It designates actions oriented towards mourners and, more particularly, towards the ceremony of the end of mourning when ornaments are put on again and the head is shaved (see a description of this in Chapter 4). I use the verb ‘to comfort’ because the Mursi I questioned on the subject insisted on the intentional and affectionate aspect of the actions. 14. Once more, I name people with the specific name that I was using. 15. Knots are tied on a rope and one is undone every day, until D-day. This means that in this case, ‘the date has been chosen’. 16. Olisirali, a ‘senior warrior’, also called Olechage Olibui further on. 17. This sum is to buy alcohol after the comforting ceremony.

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18. Night (baro) is called ‘sleep’ (ungo) when it is a question of counting days. 19. Teri a bô, to distinguish them from ‘little senior warriors’ (teri a tino). Moreover, at this date, the renewal of the age-sets was due to take place in about two years, and these ‘senior warriors’ were shortly be ‘junior elders’ (rori). Lots of them already lived like ‘junior elders’. 20. Olibui (a kogine name) designates Olibuizir (his ‘junior elder’ name), one of the most respected elders of the village and of the northern region of the Mursi country in general. 21. The rainy season is beginning. 22. The smoke indicates the morning and the expression ‘next smoke’ (runo bure) means ‘tomorrow’ by evoking the image of the huts smoking in the morning. The ‘shoes’ are in fact traces. In this case, this means that he only saw the footprints of the man and that he missed him. 23. A quite consensual name for Olibuizir. 24. Because of the homonymy between speech, story and problem, only the context can enable us to distinguish the exact meaning of this term in each sentence. Here it designates the debate. 25. Hiding one’s eyes so as not to see the killing that must henceforth be carried out. 26. To strike (dag-) is used in numerous contexts. Here it means walking, when one’s feet strike the ground. 27. This means that they will not agree. 28. They did not yet want to end the period of mourning. 29. The cow mentioned here is the ox with the black neck. 30. It seems to me that there is no intentionality attributed to the cow. It is a way of saying that this event will attract people to it. 31. Machak reproaches him with not circulating the date of the debate more widely, in the central area of each village when all the men are there. 32. Note that he uses the term ree, which I attempted to define in the conclusion of Chapter 1. It can be translated as ‘body’, but it nonetheless remains an intensive concept referring to the physical state, and to the personality in general and to its expression. We could also say ‘my being’. 33. He has also been in mourning for a few weeks. 34. This is Olikiwo called by his kogine name. He is a ‘senior warrior’ from the village that can comfort Kuluholi. 35. Bale reminds him that this ox was chosen by him and his companions (including the owner) a long time ago, a long time before they became ‘junior elders’, and it is for this reason that he explains the anachronism of his first suggestion. 36. Bale says that at the beginning, everyone wanted to enhance his reputation by saying that they would give a calf (an altruistic act in compensation for another altruistic act), but when it comes down to actually giving it, no one wants to do it. 37. It often happens that when a traveller passes from encampment to encampment, he puts some ash on his face and on those of his hosts in order to guard against evil beings who might have followed him (see Chapter 4). Too much ash spread means that he has gone to see too many people. 38. He means that they sat around the fire to talk.

The Resolution of Problems

39. This is the person to whom the ox passed after the death of its original owner. 40. The people sent to contact the family had chosen a date in agreement with the family. 41. It is necessary to give people time to come. 42. There was impatience. 43. The owner who is now dead and who had chosen to one day give his ox for this type of occasion. 44. The kogine name of Nebi Ale, one of the ‘senior elders’ present. 45. Question addressed to the other elders. 46. An ironic answer. 47. I.e. the ‘junior warriors’ for the ‘junior elders’ and the ‘senior warriors’ for the ‘senior elders’. 48. When you became an elder, used in the sense of ‘wise’. 49. I.e. you were mediators. 50. I.e. have you lost the control of the country? 51. Following a war, a front of pioneers composed of a few families was formed and settled in a new territory. Generally speaking, the recent history of the Mursi is one of territorial expansion towards the north. 52. I.e. a big debate. 53. The orator recalls the name of an old ritual specialist. 54. ‘Cut the mountains’ means ‘destroy the country’, i.e. behave badly. Consequently, the ox that he is talking about would be left to the vultures instead of being eaten after the debate. 55. He is talking about gifts that the ‘senior warriors’ must make to the ‘senior elders’ during the koma koda. He is saying here that the koma koda was not carried out. 56. The warriors agree to get ready for the donga (stick fights) without the permission of the elders. 57. It has been several years since the ritual specialist has been able to do the bio lama (‘gathered cow’), a blessing of all of the cattle of the country. But problems are increasing and in this case, bleedings caused by unauthorized stick fights prevent the blessing from taking place. 58. He uses bhungay kerecta, which I translate by ‘ox of expression’ and that corresponds to ‘favourite ox’ that we find in the literature of the region. As kerecta is the past participle of the verb rege-, the nominal form of which is ree, I prefer to use ‘ox of expression’, which underlines the expressiveness that it entails. 59. ‘Junior elders’ designated by their grade name and who were badly injured because they did not respect the ban on fighting when they were ‘senior warriors’. 60. He states the two types of koma koda and the gifts that follow. 61. After the koma koda, did the warriors give you the girari to carry out the purges? This comes down to asking whether the koma koda was carried out. 62. The debate was long and was suspended after two hours in order to eat meat. Then, two orators stood up to resume the debate, which ended with the komoru’s speech.

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63. He is addressing the two orators opposed to talks with the government. 64. To speak of the group, the Mursi use the singular ‘he’. He speaks of the men in the assembly. 65. The assembly is made up of free men, and even the other ritual specialist (Torko) cannot make them change their opinion. 66. Rhetorical restriction to dedramatize the imposing of an opinion: he says that he is only speaking for his close friends and relatives. 67. He postulates solidarity, saying that this man will not be handed over, but will be punished in private. 68. He made peace with the Hamar more than ten years ago. 69. ‘Him’ stands for the Hamar, implying: ‘Why are they creating problems for us?’ 70. It is usually the government that makes trouble of this kind. 71. It has put another checkpoint in place to keep the Mursi away. 72. One of his children had some problems with the police and the komoru withdrew from public affairs for a while. 73. He rejects the scenario whereby they have to hide. 74. These are the Chinese, distinguished from Europeans. 75. These are camps in which the government wants to settle the Mursi. 76. I.e. we share the same version. 77. They had planned the construction of a workers’ camp a long time ago. 78. The government. 79. The government remembers that before becoming the ritual specialist, the komoru worked occasionally for the government. 80. The government does not take into account the role that the ritual specialist has held for several years. 81. This means that the ritual specialist called Torko is the one assigned to the resolution of the conflict with the Hamar. 82. At the time of the ‘Komoru who is black’, the previous influential komoru in the north of the territory. 83. Great in the sense of maturity: he reproaches Torko for not having dealt very well with this affair. 84. Those who remained to listen are real men. 85. In the case of someone who is not a herdsman, contrary to what he said above when he said that they would not denounce their own. 86. The chief of police, sitting on the skin like a guest. 87. Come to an agreement. 88. Shift from a metaphorical to a literal one meaning of ‘striking with the hands’, i.e. from ‘coming to an agreement’ to ‘fighting’. He implies that they will pass from one to the other. 89. The Mursi conceive of the feminine as implying an idea of permanence and importance (see Chapter 3). 90. The people who prepare the donga and who therefore drink a lot of milk. 91. The liver is generally the part of the animal reserved for the ‘senior elders’. 92. Or: ‘Have you not understood that we are here because of a lack of authority on the part of the elders?’

The Resolution of Problems

93. Strike the ‘warriors’. 94. It might appear trivial to recall the necessity of understanding, but this also distinguishes these moments from a number of other ritual contexts described in anthropological literature in which the sematic comprehension of statements is not often required.

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I often wondered, while working on this monograph, whether I wasn’t getting carried away with aesthetic practices. I wondered if my work focused too much on this aspect of Mursi social life. Yet aesthetic practices were there to be seen, before my very eyes, in Ethiopia – and in the Paris Metro. In June 2012, I received a phone call from a documentary filmmaker who had helped Olisirali (Bull Red Flank White) to make a film about the Mursi (Young and Olibui 2009) for the Pastoralist Communication Initiative (PCI).1 The film had just received a prize that was to be awarded in Monaco. Unfortunately, a visa hitch prevented Olisirali from joining his fellow filmmaker in England, and then he found himself stuck in the Schengen Area. I let him stay at my place in Paris and we spent a few days together, going for walks and working, with Olisirali helping me with some finer points of my study, such as the translations of certain terms. I also listened to Olisirali discuss political problems in the Omo valley, which seemed to interest him more than his cows. He had become a kind of spokesman for the Mursi cause and displayed enough diplomatic finesse not to be perceived by the government as some sort of whistleblower. After all, he had all refused a government position in order to preserve his freedom – freedom of the kind that exists in Mursi country where power is not centralized and decisions are taken collectively. He occasionally earned money when he was in town, in Jinka in the south or in Addis Ababa, the capital. He wore Western-style clothes with an Ethiopian touch. I could tell which of his clothes had come from the market stalls of Addis Ababa and which he

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had acquired during more or less humanitarian events where he played the part of ambassador: a fluorescent green T-shirt from the Red Cross, a coloured shirt with an improbable pattern, halfway between a painting by Jackson Pollock and a child’s representation of the solar system. Here in France, I believed that the only way my friend Olisirali could teach me about the Mursi was by talking about them. From my own pragmatic point of view, he was like a walking encyclopaedia of the Mursi world. And then one day in downtown Paris, we were standing face to face in a Metro train on line 9, between the Nation and Robespierre stations, when I finally understood that for the past few days, he had been exhibiting one of the fundamental practices among the Mursi: his colours. I realized that I had constantly been calling him Red Bull White Flank and that his red polo shirt with a white stripe in the middle was his subsidiary colour (kalatange) red-flank white (sirali). A small grey stripe recalled his fundamental colour (ree) grey-green-blue (chage), like the fluorescent green T-shirt that he had been wearing the day before. Finally, the shirt with black (biseni) dots that he had been wearing before was his father’s colour, i.e. his derived colour (hamwe). So no, Olisirali was not wearing this T-shirt just because the Chinese textile industry that now clothes the world was acculturating the Mursi and contributing to turning them gradually into Ethiopian subjects – or, rather, that was secondary. The changes induced by this textile innovation still remained largely contingent upon Olisirali’s pastoral practices. For several days, he had been wearing his colours, the very same colours that make him who he is and through which he expresses himself. And in the Paris Metro where he knew no one apart from me, and no one knew him, and where names and the particularization of relationships were not mobilized, he adopted the posture of a dancer displaying his colours, as if facing a group of people before whom one must emphasize who one is, in a monolithic expression of self that takes the form of a colour visible for all. In fact, Red Bull White Flank, a poet herdsman from East Africa, was passing through Paris on Metro line 9 and I almost failed to see anything but a T-shirt. *** What we learn from the aesthetic practices described in this book is that the cumulation of daily practices gives individuals the maturity that determines their grade (see Chapter 8). The same goes for gender. Gender distinction gradually arises from a common background of social relations and shared practices. For men, we saw how a growing social existence, distributed across the group, took shape through names

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and colours (see Chapters 1 and 2). Poems summarize part of this existence, which is the object of consensus with regard to the group. In the poem’s discursive form, particularized relationships, of which names are significant markers, follow an inward movement (see Chapter 3). During debates, on the other hand, knowledge follows an outward movement because it mobilizes knowledge about the country’s affairs that is difficult to gain. The biographical authority of a speaker matters little. There is no automatic causality, but the qualities of a great speaker (jalaba) and those of a man who is influential in daily life may overlap, because in both cases the speaker must invest himself a lot and be attentive to a great many people. This knowledge is gained when a man engages in many transactions involving cattle, because it implies travelling across a territory and mobilizing a considerable network of pastoral partners. In case of exceptional social success, the consensus about a man’s self (regarding identity and politics) reaches its apex when he gives his name to an agnatic line (kogine). But becoming a historic figure in Mursi country always comes at a price: the loss of specificity. Ancestral identity is generic, i.e. standardized through the recognition of a name that marks a group, but not through the remembering of a unique life story. Ornaments are above all the sign of successful relational inclusion within a group, either because they bear witness to an activity (as in the case of jewels that show an active network of peers – see Chapter 4) or because they refer to a common repertoire of symbols (as in the case of long-lasting ornaments – see Chapter 5). What is shown through dancing is the sociological position in the process of vitality according to age (see Chapter 6). I was not able to observe pole fighting (donga) enough to describe it in this work, but it seems to belong to the same category of exhibition of the group’s reproductive strength, although it carries the death risk pertaining to war. In war, however – whether individual raid or collective vengeance – a man thus exhibiting his body achieves another type of social consensus and maximum expressiveness. War is visible in inflicted scars, in scarifications on a murderer’s body or in stories narrated in poems; victory is visible in the heads of stolen cattle added to a herd. In other words, war is an expressive process that quickly produces its own ending: either the man dies at the hands of his enemies and his body disappears (there isn’t even a grave) or else he retires from war and lays down his ornaments as he moves towards the position of elder, or ‘pastor of humans’, as was evident during dances and debates (see Chapters 6 and 10). Men therefore follow singular trajectories, the warrior and the great speaker being the most accomplished figures, since they are in charge of running the country’s affairs (see Chapters 3, 9 and 10). I describe the political realm and war through men only,

Conclusion

but this bias must be seen above all as an effort to give the most faithful account of Mursi practices in their institutional forms. Female coloured names have the same action as male ones, linking women to cattle via a shared colour. The relationship is constantly updated with names designating particularized relationships. However, there is one difference: the colour is chosen according to certain men. When it comes to colours, women may be seen as secondary expressions of their fathers, then of their husbands (see Chapter 2). But what poems tell us is that women, although they change colours throughout their lives, are in fact perceived as guardians of the permanence of colours (see Chapter 3). Precisely because women change colours throughout their lifetimes, they offer better proof than men that colours exist and endure beyond individuals and, in particular, men, who pass and die.2 For instance, they may give their own names and pass on their own colours (see Chapters 1 and 2), and also substitute for their husbands who wish to give their colours, but the opposite is not allowed (see Chapter 2). And recurrently, because they sing lasting colours and unchanging cattle while men sing such-and-such war and such-and-such cow, women embody the possibility of duration beyond the time of a given event (see Chapter 3). Indeed, colours may be given and acquired, and their transfer depends on various alliances (marriage or others), whereas patrilineality is not recognized in the distribution of colour.3 Ultimately, passing on colours is the business of women.4 A man may only give a few cows, if he owns any, whereas colours, like women, circulate (see Chapter 7). Thus, the ‘internal’ political management of Mursi country is a male version of colour management, in which women take part. For example, when men say that poetry recitation is women’s way of warring and that they recite their poems while brandishing an elder’s stick (biley) like men during debates, what is being staged is an exhibition of singular abilities for the community’s benefit: singing one’s own colours nicely for others to recognize themselves in them, managing the country well so that all can lead a satisfactory life. Practices of body ornamentation follow a similar logic, although the symbolism may be specifically male or female. The idea of durability lays more with the women, because they wear on their bodies many more ornaments belonging to the common repertoire of social forms than men do (see Chapter 5). They draw inspiration from calves to express the genesis of society in their dances, and put herds on show to express collective wealth, whereas men mainly stage potential alliances. Women also distinguish themselves from men in the roles they play in war: they give birth to the bodies that will go to war to defend Mursi interests. Incidentally, because they are present in men’s shield poems, they are

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260

the first spectators of war. As with colours, women are the guardians of individual potentialities, even though men make the most of the expression of their singularity beyond their own existence (through the name shared with their kin and the bequest of cattle). *** So we see that gender distinction takes shape through multiple, repeated and small differences. That is what makes aesthetic practices efficient. They are not definitions set in stone; rather, they are constantly renewed proposals, more or less successful, and are therefore just as flexible and undetermined as the persons and the empirical situations in which they find themselves. For example, a name alone is too small a component of identity, which is distributed across a network of interrelationships, to suffice as a reliable form of social recognition, as is usually the case in most societies. Poems alone are able to produce a consensual image of self in a collective context. Similarly, a body ornament creates contexts and representations that are too undetermined and too low-intensity for it to be the ultimate goal of the action or a way to truly define oneself. As we have seen, singular individuals emerge through the ubiquity and repetition of these practices, which form proximal ways to differentiate and associate. Hence, the grade that defines a position in the age system validates nothing more than a generic place in a category within the group, which is relevant only in certain situations. How efficient, then, is an age system if its creation totally ignores the singularity of the individuals through which it exists? Some authors propose, either explicitly or implicitly, a formal advantage of the age system5 as opposed to centralized formations. They suggest that this organization is particularly well suited to an environment in which famine, epidemics and necessary migration result in social relations that cannot be founded on rigid criteria of chiefdom or territory, because they must allow for drastic reconfigurations of groups, for example, after the death of part of the population and potential assimilations and scissions. But how does a global division of society (the age-set system) nonetheless stand the test of time and of space? In other words, if groups are reconfigured in spite of severe cuts in the human network, what kind of mediations hold and ensure the sufficient stability of the relational schemes for the organization to survive? That is, how can an institution based on a comprehensive sociological division be transported through space and time if migrations and group reconfigurations are frequent and not imposed by force? What I propose is to take the word ‘transport’ literally: individuals transport the institutions in the form of aesthetic practices that

Conclusion

evolve with age and allow a comprehensive sociological division based on individual stages of maturity to be set up on an as-needed basis. The use of the body and its ornaments, and acts of language and poetry, are examples of ‘mobile, body-centred habitus’ (Wengrow 2003); they are practices that follow persons in space and time; they are accomplished through individual abilities and form the foundation of a sociological system. The fact that aesthetic practices are constantly used, to the point that they saturate the social space, both helps set up powerful institutions (the organization of age-sets) and encourages formal and relational innovations; in turn, these help deal with hardships and contribute to the renewal of groups despite the vicissitudes of history.

Notes 1. A series of projects carried out with pastoralists in the Horn of Africa. 2. See Gabbert and Thubauville (2014) for work about southern Ethiopia showing the advantages of women’s flexible individual strategies compared to those of men, whose status is more rigid. 3. In a recognition of precedence rather than paternity; only the father’s ree becomes the firstborn’s hamwe, the firstborn’s becomes the youngest’s, etc. 4. Let us recall that women say in their poems (see Chapter 3) that cows of a particular were drunk by women of a particular place, as a reminder of an alliance, without men ever being mentioned. One recurring female figure that involves men in a minimal way is the figure of the mother-in-law. 5. For an explicit example of this argument, see Tornay (1995: 55–56).

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Index

age-set, 12–13, 182 bleeding, 118–120 cattle complex, 10–11, 20, 132, 161 clan, 4–7, 14, 68, 76, 111–112, 150 clay, 91, 99–102, 123–125, 163, 212–219 complexity, 12, 41, 122, 161, 176 colour complex, 20, 38 death, 37, 77–88, 94–98, 102, 108n9, 111, 120, 161–180, 223–225, 241–242 debates, 14, 16–17, 22, 73, 87–88, 109, 129, 134, 190–191, 194–196, 227, 230–236, 242, 245–251, 258–259 Dewey, John, 227–228 dream, 99–102, 250 emotion, 35–37, 169–173 ethos, 14–16, 172–174 Evans-Pritchard, Edward E., 11–12, 18, 63, 79, 98, 162, 167–170, 177, 179–182, 188

exchange, 12, 36, 38, 43, 45, 48–50, 63, 92–93, 108, 136, 166, 168–172, 194, 206, 229–233, 245, 249 fieldwork, 7–9, 18, 103, 109, 169 Gell, Alfred, 39n14 gender, 52, 257, 260 identity, 20, 26–28, 33–38, 46–47, 55, 61, 64–79, 84, 109, 122, 129–133, 171, 173, 236 killing, 169–179, 218–226, 237–238 kinship, 27, 32, 150 linguistic, 34–36, 71 lip-plates, 1, 3, 7, 91, 105–107, 121–132, 152 marriage, 13, 28, 52–54, 62–63, 97–99, 111–112, 138–139, 150, 176, 191, 210–214 migration, 4–5, 260 mobilization, 16, 139, 150, 237–241

Index

270

obsession, 10–12, 78, 159, 167–173 pastoralism, 6, 10–1 perception, 21–25, 33–36, 69–72, 128–132, 170–174 photographs, 103–106 poetry, 27, 33–38, 72 politics, 129, 201–203, 227–231, 236 pragmatic, 35–37 ritual, 15–16, 22, 58, 74, 83, 95–96, 124, 144, 164–165, 175–176, 201–255 scarifications, 91, 113–122, 126–127, 131, 133, 162–166, 187–192, 196–198, 216

sacrifice, 10, 79–84, 128–129, 161–162, 165–169, 174–180, 199–200, 204, 220, 225, 232 segmentary, 13, 16 sociality, 22, 159, 172, 178, 185, 201, 227 tourist, 8, 103–107, 136n30, 160n13 transmission, 41–43, 55–63 Turton, David, 3, 13, 20, 22, 127, 251n8 vitality, 138–139, 146, 149, 151, 154, 158, 195