Beyond Textuality: Asceticism and Violence in Anthropological Interpretation [Reprint 2012 ed.] 9783110138894, 3110138891

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Beyond Textuality

W DE G

Approaches to Semiotics 120

Editorial Committee Thomas A. Sebeok Roland Posner Alain Rey

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Beyond Textuality Asceticism and Violence in Anthropological Interpretation Edited by Gilles Bibeau Ellen Corin

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1995

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Beyond textuality : asceticism and violence in anthropological interpretation / edited by Gilles Bibeau, Ellen Corin. p. cm. - (Approaches to semiotics ; 120) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-013889-1 (acid-free paper) 1. Culture — Semiotic models. 2. Anthropology in literature. 3. Anthropology - Philosophy. 4. Participant observation Philosophy. I. Bibeau, Gilles, 1 9 4 0 . II. Corin, Ellen E. III. Series. GN357,B46 1994 301 - d c 2 0

Die Deutsche Bibliothek

94-36450 CIP

-

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Beyond textuality : asceticism and violence in anthropological interpretation / ed. by Gilles Bibeau ; Ellen Corin. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1994 (Approaches to semiotics ; 120) ISBN 3-11-013889-1 NE: Bibeau, Gilles [Hrsg.]; GT

© Copyright 1994 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printing: Gerike GmbH, Berlin. - Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Preface

In presenting this volume of anthropological essays under the title of Beyond textuality. Asceticism and violence in anthropological interpretation, the editors want to translate the basic ambiguity experienced today by anthropologists about the identity of their discipline, as well as the uncertainty surrounding the boundaries of the territory covered by ethnography. Anthropology has recently entered into an era of self-questioning regarding the specificity of its own methods and its autonomy as a discipline within the humanities and the social sciences. A deep current of interrogation lies at the confluence of three concerns that initially developed separately as answers to specific questions but which since seem to have merged together and created the context of uncertainty in which many anthropologists presently practice their discipline. A few words about these three sources of concern will permit us to put into perspective the project that lies behind this volume and will help to clarify its architecture: (1) Contact with numerous North American and European graduate students who have recently entered the discipline of anthropology has shown that many have been led to explore literature and drama by prestigious authors, such as Geertz, who define culture as an assemblage of texts and who transform ethnography into an exercise of reading. In this context interpretive anthropology and its derivatives have focused on textual modes of understanding and have ultimately led to the equation of textualization and ethnography. In the footsteps of literary criticism and practitioners of comparative literature it has become fashionable to look for multiple meanings, for fuzzy logic and liminal categories, for internal disorders and more stable arrangements in the process of reading semiotic cultural systems and making them intelligible. (2) Concurrently, many young ethnographers feel that the practice of their craft should involve more commitment, more authenticity, less selfdeception and less remoteness from lived experience; the inescapable involvement of the ethnographer within the human world in which he/she is a participant observer transforms the ethnographer into an actor who is engaged in the local drama, a reality that makes any pretense to pure

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objectivity spurious. In this context, observation from a distance is transformed into the participatory experience of partnership. The position of the participant observer shifts from the periphery to the center of the stage upon which the ethnographer becomes a dominant character and ultimately, the interpretation of others is subsumed within a discourse which deals with the "/" of the ethnographer. The cultural facts which are submitted to the interpretation - interpretandum - in classical ethnography, are displaced by the eminence of the interpretive subject - interpretans. In addition, so-called post-modern anthropology has gone so far in this direction that the act of writing, the resulting ethnographic texts and the anthropologist qua author become, in certain cases, the very center of the whole anthropological enterprise. (3) This new style of ethnography has led many anthropologists to find refuge in schools of thought that criticize objectivism, subject/object dichotomies and distantiation. Traditional questions addressing cultural translations and interpretations made by anthropologists have been rephrased in a radical way: what is the nature of the presumed gap existing between the interpretations made by informants and the interpretive constructions made by anthropologists? Can anthropological interpretations be valid if they imply meanings of which the actors are unaware? How do anthropologists move from the local knowledge of complex cultural meanings to their expression in ethnographic texts? And more generally, what is the validity of ethnographic interpretation and on what kinds of considerations can anthropologists rely when they want to construct reliable and valid frameworks for interpretation? These three movements of thought (culture defined as texts; the anthropologist as author; and the translational process from ethnographic data to meaning) have converged at the heart of anthropological work to raise explicit fundamental problems of the reliability of our ethnographic interpretations. Are we in our ethnographies writing about the people we claim to be actually writing about, or are we rather projecting ourselves in the forefront as original writers or as partners in debates whose terms are imposed by the fashions of intellectual circles? The editors of this volume are convinced that it is high time for anthropologists to clarify the methods they use in the translational process that goes from collected data to meaning and interpretations. This volume represents a collective effort made by a group of North American and European anthropologists to critically assess the prevalent conceptual frameworks and analytical instruments employed by contemporary anthropologists in their interpretation and translation of cultural facts.

Preface

VII

As guidelines for systematically evaluating the conceptual and operational value of dominant interpretive trends in today's anthropology and more generally in contemporary humanities and social sciences, all contributors to this volume have agreed to engage in a debate encompassing the two following requisites. First, each contributor explicitly states the key heuristic concepts that he or she uses in passing from facts and local interpretations to his or her ethnographic translation. Although we do not pretend to present a systematic and critical review of all prevalent trends in interpretative and hermeneutic movements, this book is intended to offer a solid discussion of the main analytical frameworks presently used by anthropologists, these being philological analysis combined with literary criticism, post-Saussurean trends in Continental semiology such as practiced by Barthes, Kristeva and Derrida, historicized versions of classical structuralism, interpretive anthropology in the Geertzian mode, the hermeneutics associated with Ricoeur and Gadamer, hierarchical readings ά la Dumont, some revised Peircean semiotics, polysemic symbolic analysis and references to psychoanalytical principles of interpretation. A number of analytical concepts that anthropologists rely upon in their interpretive work have been uprooted from their native soil in linguistics, literature, history, philology, exegesis, psychoanalysis and philosophy. In order to deal with problems arising from such eclectic selection of analytical concepts taken out of their intellectual and philosophical traditions, each contributor has been asked to present the larger movement of thought which nourishes his or her own selection of heuristic and analytical concepts. Many terms used in interpretative anthropology receive their full meaning only when read against the background of the exegesis, philosophy, history, linguistics and literature in which they have developed. In addition, each contributor has been asked to apply the chosen analytical instruments and key heuristic concepts to the interpretation of concrete literary texts or social and cultural data. We decided to apply this procedure in order to assess the operational value of the various interpretive methods and to test their productivity as tools when they are handled by anthropologists. A classical Taoist text, a ritual song from India, a few verses of the Book of Revelation, the ship journals of Captain Cook, the court accounts of a trial for murder in the Solomon Islands, and the verbatim record of dialogues and interviews performed during fieldwork constitute the six main texts of this book. Each text focuses on the analysis of content and form with the aim of elucidating their multi-level systems of meaning. In an effort to move from the order of the text to the order of culture and with the explicit

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objective of demonstrating that there exists some discontinuity between the hermeneutics of texts and the ethnographic interpretation of cultural data, an equal number of papers (6) are dedicated to the analysis of various lifecycle and spirit possession rituals as well as to divination procedures, areas which form the most creative and most polysemic parts of any culture. We are mainly concerned in this book with the questioning of the naively and widely assumed continuity between the order of the text and the order of culture. Ethnographic interpretation is presented by the twelve contributors of this volume as a systematic practice which challenges the dominant discourse about the inevitability of subjectivism in interpretation, although no one goes so far as to suggest the revival of ethnographic realism and positivistic methods in the practice of anthropology. In contrast with the strict textualist and subjectivist fashion which often reflects interpretive virtuosity in the writing of ethnographies, the contributors remind their colleagues that the construction of any ethnographic text should abide by some ascetic rigor; and, contrary to positivist-minded scholars who pretend to save the scientific character of anthropology from the dangers of interpretive and hermeneutic chaos, the contributors insist that cultural institutions and texts both contain sub-meanings which can be attained only when interpreters "do violence" to the texts or to the cultural data that they analyse. The editors have expressed their views in the introductory chapter about what reliability and validity mean in the field of anthropology. Our positions, translated under the title of "From submission to the text to interpretive violence" pervade the whole volume, give coherence to its division in four parts, and weave together the various contributions. The idea of editing a volume in which European hermeneutics and North American semiotic movements are pragmatically assessed in terms of their operational value for the practice of anthropology, grew out of the circumstances in which the two editors practice their anthropological work. Ellen E. Corin is a European-born Francophone doing socio-cultural psychiatric research in an Anglophone and natural-science oriented environment at McGill University, while Gilles Bibeau is a Canadian Francophone who has been trained in several European countries and who currently works in medical anthropology within a bilingual interuniversity group based in Montreal. The two editors live in Montreal, a bilingual city, which has historically constituted a crucible for North American and European intellectual traditions. Their daily practice of bilingualism has made them sensitive to the recent process of integrating European, above all French, theoretical trends into North American anthropological circles. Located as they are on the bound-

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IX

aries, they consider themselves to be in a good position to assess major current trends typical of the interpretive movement in anthropology. The intellectual atmosphere in which the anthropologists belonging to the generation born in the forties were trained, including the promoters of all variants of interpretive anthropology and the two editors of this volume, has been marked by fundamental debates between Marxism and existentialism, and between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The powerful influence of linguistics over large parts of the social sciences also affected the intellectual atmosphere of this period as did a profound renewal of historical studies (the Annates school, for example) and the development of new approaches to literary criticism. While a large proportion of the social scientists in North America were, during this same period, trying to bring their disciplines into line with positivist requirements, their European colleagues were devoting much time to theoretical discussions similar to those that Sartre and Ricoeur conducted with Levi-Strauss in the early sixties or Gadamer and Habermas in the late sixties. The success of structuralism, phenomenology and semiology nourished a great skepticism about positivistic methods among European anthropologists of the sixties and seventies. This conjuncture may explain why in France ethnology occupies a singular place which touches both literature and philosophy, and also why the interpretive anthropology of France with its anti-positivist tone, has preceded that of North America. In this context, it is not surprising to discover that leading protagonists of textualism such as James Clifford, Paul Rabinow and Vincent Crapanzano were strongly influenced by their French colleagues. One can imagine that Roland Barthes may have had the French ethnologists in mind when he wrote in his autobiographical portrait: "de tous les discours savants, c'est l'ethnologique qui m'apparait le plus proche d'une fiction" (1975: 87) [of all learned discourses, the ethnological one seems to me the closest to fiction]. Whether intentional or not, most new orientations in North American interpretive anthropology have links with intellectual movements which began in France or in Germany. In order to better understand the ways that ideas and concepts circulate about intellectual traditions and how they may travel from one continent to the other, the two editors have drawn some of their colleagues into dialogue; many of whom are themselves located on the boundaries of these two intellectual worlds. Five English-writing anthropologists (James W. Fernandez; John G. Galaty; Roger M. Keesing; John Leavitt; Gananath Obeyesekere) who are all quite familiar with European intellectual circles were invited to share their views on interpretation with Francophone colleagues. Among the seven Francophone contributors, three (Patrick Kaplanian; Mary Picone; and Andräs Zempleni) work in France

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while the four others (Jacques Chevalier; Ellen E. Corin; Charles Le Blanc; and Jerome Rousseau) either work on a daily basis within an Anglophone environment or at least maintain close contact with Anglo-Saxon intellectual traditions. This volume has been intended as a platform for the confrontation of scholars coming from different linguistic and intellectual horizons but who are at the same time well-informed of others' traditions. The volume is comprised of papers which were presented in their preliminary version at one or another of three conferences which were successively held in 1987, 1988 and 1989. The first symposium was held in Quebec City in May 1987, during the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Ethnology Society, and dealt with the evaluation of the interpretive movement in North American medico-psychiatric anthropology. For the second event, over thirty anthropologists gathered in Zagreb in July 1988, for a two-day symposium entitled "Between semantics and rationality". And finally, in November 1989, during the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, a symposium was held on: "Experience, Subjectivity and the Self. An exchange between philosophy and anthropology". The Quebec conference was organized with the cooperation of David Howes, while Deborah Gordon should be credited with the idea of holding a symposium to reconsider the place of experience and subjectivity within contemporary anthropology. Professor Pierre Maranda of Laval University served as discussant and critic at both the symposium in Quebec and in Zagreb. For this reason the editors have invited him to conclude this volume with a postmodernist view of interpretative anthropology. This "resonant anthropology" as Maranda so calls it, is echoed throughout the following pages as it is frequently used by several of the contributors to this book. This volume should, therefore, be seen as a collective effort organized by G. Bibeau and Ε. E. Corin. Over a period of four years, many informal meetings have been held with the contributors and many versions of the papers have been reviewed. They have now become chapters of an integrated book which should serve as a landmark in the evaluation of contemporary anthropology. Gilles Bibeau

Ellen E. Corin

Sixteenth-century frontispiece to St. Augustine's City of God. Holding the tools of the copyist, the Saint seems to be following the dictation of the angel hovering over him. Five demons surround him each holding a book in his hands.

Contents

Introduction

1

Gilles Bibeau and Ellen E. Corin From submission to the text to interpretive violence

3

Parti Ascetic readings of the text: Proximity and

fidelity

55

Charles Le Blanc From cosmology to ontology through resonance: A Chinese interpretation of reality

57

John Leavitt The Demon of Ashes in Sanskrit text and Himalayan

ritual

79

Jacques M.Sign Chevalier The Great in the Book of Revelation - Le chant du signe Gananath Obeyesekere British cannibals: Contemplation of an event in the death and resurrection of James Cook, explorer

145

Part II Text and sub-text: The grounding of interpretive violence

171

111

Ellen E. Corin Meaning games at the margins: The cultural centrality of subordinated structures

173

John G. Galatyand transition: Confession as a sub-text in Maasai Transgression ritual

193

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Contents

Roger Μ. Keesing Murder on Mount Austen: Kwaio framing of an act of violence

209

Part III Divination as interpretation from within

231

Andras Zempleni How to say things with assertive acts? About some pragmatic properties of Senoufo divination

233

Mary Picone The ghost in the machine: Etiology and divination in Japan

249

Patrick Kaplanian The truths of interpretations: Envy, possession and recovery inLadakh

271

Part IV The cooperative work in interpretation

287

Jerome Rousseau The subject of knowledge

289

James W. Fernandez Egocentric particulars: Pronominal perspective in ethnographic inquiry

303

Conclusion

327

Pierre Maranda Beyond postmodernism: Resonant anthropology

329

Index

345

Introduction

From submission to the text to interpretive violence Gilles Bibeau and Ellen E. Corin

I say that the Library is unending. The idealists argue that the hexagonal rooms are a necessary form of absolute space or, at least, of our intuition of space. They reason that a triangular or pentagonal room is inconceivable (The mystics claim that their ecstasy reveals to them a circular chamber containing a great circular book, whose spine is continuous and which follows the complete circle of the walls; but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. This cyclical book is God). Let it suffice now for me to repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose exact centre is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible (Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, 1956).

1. O p e n i n g How can the foreign reader find the right way within the intricacies of this great maze constituted by the library of Babel? To progress towards the central room or to move out of the labyrinth, the visitor has to face roundabouts, deadends, bifurcating corridors, spiral staircases, mirrors that double and disfigure space, "no exit signs" and blocked doors, symmetrical series of corridors and paradoxical distributions of rooms. Among all of the disoriented scholars who have entered this library since the beginnings of time, there exists a sort of theological belief about the existence of a book concealed somewhere on a hidden shelf which contains the secret plan of the library. No one, however, has found it so far. All visitors have nevertheless learnt from their predecessors that the architecture of the library combines various assortments of geometrical figures, from the hexagon to the circle, and that the number of librarians (who were formerly numerous, according to Borges) has decreased to the point that no one stands there for purposes of indicating at least what the main pathways are in this universe of books. Left with no guide in a world that is structured according to an unknown balance of order and disorder, the interpreters of human cultural reality

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have developed over generations, landmarks and signposts that permit them to assign some meaning to these manmade labyrinths and to gain some understanding of their architecture. These landmarks and referential systems have been progressively organized around a series of key terms such as sign, symbol, code, meaning, signification, denotation, and connotation. It should be recalled that most of these concepts were initially framed in the context of the exegesis of sacred and classical Books (which were supposed to contain revelations about the deep meaning of things) and in the analysis of rhetorical discourses and linguistic structures. Contemporary semiology represents the most recent development of a long historical movement which started some millenia ago and to which have been added the contributions of scholars from Aristotle to medieval theologians, from Augustine to Locke, from Leibniz to Husserl and to Gadamer, and from the first philosophers of language to Wittgenstein and more recently, to Eco, Barthes and others. All these authors have been deeply interested by the interpretation of language as the dominant system of signs as well as by all derived systems of meaning hidden in books, in physical nature, in human behavior and in cultural affairs. They were all practitioners of semiotic interpretation and therefore cannot be ignored when the questioning of interpretation reemerges as a central concern in the human sciences, as is the case nowadays. The metaphor of the labyrinthine library of Babel has served over time for referring both to the complexity of the architecture of cultural constructions and to the perplexity of the interpreter who must decipher multiple meanings of a reality which is obscure, hermetic and diffuse. It is once again the return of the labyrinthine figure which explains the recent shift in the interpretation of culture made by North American anthropologists when they consider the following phenomena as particularly worthy of study: the storage of cultural information in multisemiotic frames of reference, the organization of cultural reality in polythetic classifications, the challenge of traditional hierarchical ordering of cultural formations by inconsistencies, the presence of heterogeneous elements and anomalies, and more generally, the coexistence of disorder with more stable cultural arrangements. The wheel of time brings back to the forefront old questions which are considered new only by those who have turned their backs on the past or who are trapped within the present and attracted by the fashion of the day. We will demonstrate in this book that a sense of historical depth helps to create some detachment in the face of certain dominant fads and fashions. Along with the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, we are convinced that the interpretive and hermeneutic movement forms the koine of culture in this

Introduction

5

decade. In his introduction to a recent issue of the Italian philosophical journal AUT AUT devoted to the Margini del I'ermeneutica, Vattimo writes: "Hermeneutics is the koine of the philosophy or, more generally, of the culture of the eighties... in the past decades there has been a hegemony of Marxism in the fifties and sixties, and of structuralism in the seventies, similarly today, a common idiom is that of hermeneutics" (1987: 3). In identifying the conceptual frameworks that have successively dominated intellectual debates since the early fifties, namely existentialism, Marxism, structuralism and hermeneutics, Vattimo explicitly sets out the terms that are still at the forefront of contemporary intellectual discussions, those of meaning, context, experience and subjectivity. Although he acknowledges the very long hermeneutical tradition that has accompanied the development of human sciences since Aristotle, Vattimo indicates the special importance of two moments in the theorization of interpretation. The first moment followed the rupture of Christianity in Europe and paved the way for a novel usage of hermeneutics during the Romantic period, due largely to scholars such as J. C. Dannhauer and F. Schleiermacher. With post-modernism we have entered a second historical moment that again gives prevalence to hermeneutics. In his book La fine della modernitä. Nichilismo ed Ermeneutica nella cultura post-moderna (1985), Vattimo ventures an explanation for the recent resurgence of the interpretive turn in philosophy and in the human sciences: he proposes that hermeneutics developed in the vacuum left by the absence of projects for the future and as a reaction to the loss of certitudes and references; unable to project themselves into the future, human beings look back at their past productions and try to understand them. The social critique of the present is then perverted and transformed into the cultural critique of the past or of remote societies. If Vattimo is right, we should see the return of hermeneutics in social sciences and in anthropology as a sign of depolitization and also as a sign of nostalgia. Where do the various observers of the library of Babel stand and how reliable are their assessments of reality? Why does the classicist pretend that the architecture of the library is spherical while the idealist sees it as hexagonal and the mystic as circular? These contradictory evaluations of reality raise two series of questions that we will examine in this introductory chapter: the first concerns the conditions that should be present for producing reliable and valid interpretations, and the second, the specificity of the anthropological methods as distinct from those of the humanities and other social sciences. We will argue that the identity of our discipline lies in the dialectics of proximity and distance, submission and violence, and

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that any exclusive modelling on literature betrays the vocation of anthropology. In the section "The order of the text", we note that the conceptual and instrumental equipment provided by centuries of textual critique cannot be ignored by the anthropologist when dealing with the analysis of cultural data; we also indicate that literary analysis implies an inferential process which inserts the text within a series of other texts and ultimately within the culture which supports these texts. Anthropologists should for this reason consider that the order of culture subsumes the order of the text rather than the reverse. In the section devoted to "Alterity and sameness, distance and proximity", we set the conditions that make possible the production of reliable anthropological interpretation, through a discussion of categories such as native indigenous exegesis, dialogical ethnography, co-belonging and optimal distance. The following section deals with "Forgotten lessons of the history of interpretation" and aims at making anthropologists aware of the long hermeneutical and exegetical movement that nourishes contemporary semiology. Anthropologists are invited to learn from the past. In the last section, we take a deep plunge into "the order of culture". Three methods used by anthropologists in their interpretation of cultural data are examined in some detail, and the question of the ethnographic relevance of anthropological interpretations is discussed at length. Access to "the order of culture" passes through the design of specific methods which cannot be equated with those used in the analysis of texts.

2. The order of the text Texts carry multiple messages: this is not exceptional but rather the normal rule. All reductionistic types of textual and literary analysis should for this reason be considered as preliminary steps aiming to reduce the object of study to its basic constituents, to identify main configurations and associations and to elicit central elements, words, figures or sentences which convey messages. Any limitation to this kind of textual analysis would lead inevitably to a loss of essential information because meaning has to be understood in all human affairs - including profane, classic and sacred texts - as resulting from three interactive processes: (1) meaning is not summative in the sense that the interpreter cannot grasp the "total meaning" by the simple addition of information provided by syntax, semantics and rhetoric of a text;

Introduction

7

(2) moreover, meaning is inscribed within a whole which is not the mere sum of its constitutive parts but which weaves itself and forms a "texture" that holds together the grammatical structures and the stylistic forms contained in the text; (3) and finally, as meaning escapes the usual grammatical analysis and textual critique, it forces interpreters to connect the text with other texts and with the same context and invites them to read signs by using inferential systems oriented toward the cultures in which the texts originate. In order to better understand what happens in the interpretation of texts, let us consider the example of a printed page. Letters of the alphabet are organized in words and sentences which make sense so long as they are controlled by lexicon and grammar. Grammatical expression in its turn is controlled by syntax, syntax by literary strategies and the writing style of the author, style by the subtleties of argumentation, by logic and by figures of rhetoric. Ultimately the themes and subjects treated in the text are influenced by the personal experience of the author and by the cultural and moral values. Such a page can be part of a philosophical essay, of a poem, of a personal diary, of a scientific text or, if the author is an anthropologist, it may be a sort of persuasive fiction, as Strathern (1987) has called the literary genre of ethnography.

2.1. Five complementary levels of text analysis It has been the tradition to distinguish at least five complementary levels of interpretation of texts, and above all, of classical texts. There is first the philological analysis which deals with problems of terminology: the obsolescence of certain words, the specificity of the vocabulary, and so on. Second, there is the linguistic and grammatical analysis which implies a solid knowledge of the syntax and semantics of the language in which the text is written. Third, there is the tropological analysis, which serves to identify the rhetorical devices such as metaphors, ellipses and other figures used by the author. These three levels are generally used in a complementary way in what is globally known as "the internal critique" of texts, and several theories, concepts and other analytical tools have been developed for these different levels of analysis. The other two levels of analysis are much more complex because they deal with the epistemological and cultural dimensions of the text: what are the modes of thinking and the argumentative forms present within the text, and in what kinds of world views and cultural assumptions is the text

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Gilles Bibeau and Ellen E. Corin

grounded? The epistemological and cultural levels of interpretation force interpreters to take into consideration properties and principles which are vital to the understanding of a culture, mainly belief systems and mental structures. When the interpreter moves upward in the hierarchy of the five levels, he or she discovers that the support that carries information and meaning becomes increasingly subtle, and that obscurity and complexity progressively increase. It is more difficult to grasp the meaning of complex rhetorical figures than to discover obsolete signification of old terms, and interpreters are less equipped to read the cultural level of a text than they are to study its stylistic composition. The information content of an intelligibly printed page is in no case automatically conveyed to the reader for while both the writer and the reader must master grammar and rhetorical forms as a preliminary stage to elicit meaning, any text says more than what is contained in the material sequence of sentences. The potential information content and the potential to create more complex meaningful forms, increase from one level to the next to produce a hierarchical order of progressive improbability. Centuries of exegesis of classical texts have demonstrated that meaning emerges when potential information carried at the levels of words, syntactic forms, rhetorics and thematics may be reduced via an inferential process which inserts the text within a series of other texts. Meaning, in contradistinction to written sentences, is intangible: it cannot be seen or touched, is not something "solid", but is everywhere present in the text in the intangible form of a kind of blueprint or programme that impregnates the text and imposes some general direction on the whole structure. Meaning should, therefore, be seen as the result of multiple convergent processes which serve to delimit the potential of information, to discipline the richness of symbolic structures and to reduce the inevitable ambiguity carried by the text. In this exercise of assigning meaning to a text, interpreters face a strange paradox. The more a level of interpretation is determined by rules and codes, the more the strategies it uses to carry messages and meaning are limited. The complexity of analysis increases when one passes from the philological level to the syntactico-semantic level and then to the topological analysis, but these three preliminary levels of analysis are much less complex than the epistemological and cultural levels of analysis for which rules, patterns and codes are immersed within basic cultural assumptions. It is evident that linguistic rules are much more rigid than the codes which organize culture.

Introduction

2.2. Intertextuality and cultural

9

presuppositions

A text should always be studied first at its surface, in its objective organization of sentences and compositional style, but all texts, and especially classical texts, possess properties that are not amenable to solely lexical and grammatical perspectives. To produce full meaning, any text should be read in connection with other texts and with contexts that permit us to fill in empty spaces. Umberto Eco writes: "If the text is a lazy machine which requests an obstinate cooperative work from the reader in order to fill the silent or blank spaces, then the text is nothing else than a presuppositional machine" (1985: 29; our own translation). What are these presuppositions that authors incorporate into their texts, hidden within blank spaces, and escaping all readings as long as they remain limited to the surface? Any text built upon some sort of previous knowledge of other related texts or cultural sequences and contexts may create ambiguity for readers who are not familiar with the general culture from which the text has been uprooted and with the modes of thought that prevail in that culture. In order to overcome this basic ambiguity, the reader must master cultural presuppositions which assign some coherence to all texts produced in that culture. Contemporary specialists in literary criticism generally talk about the necessity of an intertextual reading which inserts the text to be interpreted within a series of other texts, for this is where the real meaning of the piece under study lies. Umberto Eco has recently suggested that an encyclopedic perspective should replace the dictionary perspective which he sees as inadequate for helping readers and interpreters in their work of intertextuality. Dictionaries usually list the lexical items which exist within a given language in alphabetical order, providing for each entry relevant information (semantic, syntactic, phonological) about the way it fits into the language system. Generally, the most important part of a lexical entry is its semantic part or the definition of the word: this explains why synonyms, antonyms and other related words are usually included in this definition. The dictionary is not only the reference book on our shelf that we look to in our effort to express correct semantic properties of the English words we use in writing this introduction. More fundamentally, there exists an "inbuilt mental dictionary" that all speakers of a language carry as part of their cognitive equipment. Bilingual speakers or writers who carry two mental dictionaries in their head may have problems either with the pronunciation or with the syntactic structure of a second language, but soon problems can be solved by consulting a good grammar book or by listening repeatedly to a teacher with a perfect accent.

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However, when bilingual writers have difficulties arising from semantic differences between two languages, they cannot rely solely on a dictionary, but should then consult an "encyclopedia". This is, at least, what is suggested by Umberto Eco who defines the encyclopedia as a systematic assemblage of the key configurations which connect elements in a given culture. His view of the encyclopedia, then, constitutes a kind of extension of the semantic properties of the dictionary. The encyclopedia can be seen as providing the major codes and key categories that prevail in a culture, including the preferential schemas that determine the architecture of that culture and the semantic web that links cultural elements together. The encyclopedia is supposed to give expression to the hidden principles which create coherence within a cultural system. These associations of cultural elements and series of connections take the forms of schematas, frames, scenarios or maps and as soon as one important element of a given scenario is known, it becomes possible to reconstruct the whole sequence and to fill in missing information. From this larger scenario, one can make more adequate cultural inferences. In other words, the encyclopedia is constituted by the sum of synthetic propositions, of ideological assumptions and of pragmatic instructions which articulate prevailing systems of meaning in a culture and which help to structure preestablished scenarios and interactions. The encyclopaedic knowledge gives access to presuppositions which may be hidden within the interstices of the text and which may permit one to read the text against the blueprint of coded intertextual scenarios. Semioticians like Kristeva, Barthes, Eco and others, who have placed intertextuality at the very center of the interpretive process, have come to consider all texts as the expansion of the virtuality of a culture. For this reason, they argue that a basic ethnographic knowledge of the culture which has produced the text is essential for doing interpretive work. What Kristeva called intertextuality is found under the name of "cultural code" in the semiological framework of Barthes and, for Eco, it is the "encyclopedia". Eco echoes Borges when he explains what he means by an interpretation based on the encyclopedic perspective: "An encyclopedia is constituted by the registered totality of all interpretations, objectively conceivable like the library of libraries" (1988: 110, our own translation). Eco feels that it is impossible to grasp the message of a book when the book is detached from other books there on the shelves of a library. Instructions and guidelines for interpretation are not revealed in any one book, but rather emerge as basic assumptions upon which many books are grounded. With Deleuze and Guattari (1976), Eco indicates that the interconnections between elements do not follow a regular pattern based on hierarchy and

Introduction

11

opposition as is the case in most geometric figures. They suggest we refer to the image of the rhizome to express the process of intertextual insertion. Any point of the rhizome can be connected to any other point, because one can find nothing in the rhizome but connecting lines. A text, in the same way, is connected through a rhizomic pattern with the various parts of the culture which nourishes it. Ethnographic knowledge ultimately guarantees the possibility of translating, commenting and interpreting a text, for it helps one to make the appropriate cultural inferences as well as adequate contextual insertions. 2.3. Three sources of obscurity There is no doubt that an ethnography is needed for filling the empty blank spaces of a text and for assigning a content to its silent parts. However, there are several elements which complicate the cultural analysis of a text and which contribute to maintain ambiguity and obscurity even among interpreters who do master the encyclopedic knowledge to which Eco referred. These elements arise from three sources: first the rhetorical expressions used by the author, second the symbolic system, and finally the ways of reasoning that prevail in the culture of the author. The usage of tropes such as irony, oxymoron or other rhetorical figures, and the literary genre, that may be fiction, poetry or the transcription of a myth, contribute to create ambiguity about the messages carried by the text. An author can always play with the various levels of meaning in transporting, as is done with the use of metaphor, a word from its usual context into a new context in order to produce a "surplus" of meaning for which the encyclopedia cannot account. Analytical tools have been developed for studying the rhetorical figures used by authors, but in all cases it has been noted that stylistic figures create displacements, condensations and movements which confound interpreters. Ricoeur (1975) is probably the philosopher who has expressed in the most adequate terms the intimate relationship that exists between hermeneutics, the symbolic system of a culture, and the problem of truth. He acknowledges the fact that symbolic organization is always the prisoner of a given sociocultural world and that system of symbols can only be understood by doing ethnographical research. He also reminds interpreters that a symbol is, by nature, opaque because it is always expressed by way of analogy, and in cases of texts which are large forests of symbols, it is not always easy for the interpreter to make adequate cultural inferences, for connections are often masked by the recurrence of analogies.

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The rhetorical and symbolic dimensions of a text are themselves part of a larger system of logic, reasoning, and discursive style which have to be studied by themselves for they cannot be integrated within the encyclopedia. This is why we believe that an epistemological analysis of texts should complement tropological and cultural levels of analysis. This discussion of the problems raised by the interpretation of texts leads us to two main conclusions. First, in contrast with the deconstructionist conviction that there is no such thing as a true meaning of a text, we claim, along with the entire semiotic tradition, that multiple meaning is the rule and that these meanings emerge when the interpreters combine five types of study. In the domain of linguistics, these types of study include the terminological, grammatical and tropological analysis of the text, and in the domain of ethnography they include the study of epistemology and culture. In addition, we believe that any text constitutes a repository and a memorial which reveals its hidden potentialities only when placed within its original cultural context. In affirming that culture can be seen as an assemblage of texts, Geertz uses a kind of synecdoque which is misleading in that it subsumes culture within the order of the text. Culture is in no way a literary genre, and ethnographers will gain very little from a definition of culture which transforms it into texts. Anthropologists are fully entitled to learn from literary critics and other specialists of text analysis, but this does not mean that we must transform culture into texts (Toffin 1989; 1990).

2.4. Authorship and community Cultural ways of thinking and expressing oneself have been crystallized in all cultures by indigenous classical authors and have also been concentrated in canonical texts which serve for the socialization of new generations. Classical authors like Homer, Aristotle and Sophocles in ancient Greek culture, for example, produced more than just the writing of their texts: "they have produced something else", writes Foucault, "the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts" (1979: 153). For this reason, classical authors can be seen as "founders of discursivity" who not only contributed to the emergence of a given intellectual configuration but also laid the foundations of an intellectual cultural identity for generations to come. It is always against the background of these canonical texts of classical authors that the texts of other writers emerge and should therefore be read. It is important to distinguish between the primary texts of authors and the secondary texts of writers for such a distinction helps to clarify the problem of the connection between authorship and community, and between the con-

Introduction

13

tents and the cultural components of texts. One finds behind classical authors a collective "we" who share some common history, language and heritage. Thanks to several innovative thinkers who were their "founders of discursivity", a collective intellectual identity has developed in various human cultures, privileging in each case a specific form of thought, a given style of argumentation and rhetoric, and progressively framing the intellectual configuration of the group. In traditional oral cultures, the recitation of myths and tales of all sorts can be seen as analogous to these primary texts.

3. Alterity and sameness, distance and proximity Everyone expects the experience of an encounter with otherness from the books of ethnographers, an encounter based on the refusal of reducing difference to sameness. The ethnographer, for his or her part, speaks for "otherness" and produces interpretations of other cultural worlds, either nearby or faraway, and these interpretations are generally seen, at least by colleagues within the discipline, as authoritative accounts. The anthropologist's authority to assign meaning is founded on the claims that the ethnographer had direct participation within the daily life of people in an alien setting, which would authorize the "ethnographer as witness" to say: "I was present there". Some ethnographers also affirm that they mastered key codes of communication used within the setting, above all the language, and that they were very well informed about what was going on there. More and more often today, a certain number of ethnographers write that they had access, after a long exposure to this alien culture, to other forms of thinking, feeling and seeing the world. One or another of these three claims may be intentionally forged or unconsciously fallacious, but the readers of ethnographic accounts have very little possibility of controlling what anthropologists write about distant cultures for the ethnographer always hides behind the ethnologist and the nonaccountable work of the fieldworker may permanently haunt the books of anthropologists. The question of the reliability of facts and data collected in the field ultimately remains open. The reader is asked to trust the personal testimony of the anthropologist who claims to speak or write about what he or she has actually seen and heard. For this reason, ethnographic data cannot be equated with written texts, which are readily available to all in a printed form. Even in the case of classical works, which are often ravaged and disfigured by time, additions and commentaries and the process of internal and

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external criticism generally permits the establishment of the authenticity of a given version. 3.1. Native

interpretations

The interpretation of the culture encountered abroad is translated by the anthropologist into concepts, categories and ideas which are supposed to make sense for the people of that culture. Such translations can be either orally transmitted in teaching and in presentations or they can be written down in printed form. Although the interpretations made by anthropologists are still rarely brought back and submitted for critical examination by the population concerned, it is in the nature of anthropology to construct interpretation through a cooperative effort which should normally involve not only the anthropologist but above all, in good ethnography, the cultural actors themselves. Whatever the complexity of the social organization or the subtlety of the system of thought in which people live, the cultural actors are generally well aware of the meaning of things and they are therefore able to provide interpretations of what happens in their daily lives. Most anthropologists do collect native exegesis of cultural reality with great attention and incorporate these indigenous interpretations into the building of what they call "second level interpretations" that may escape the people themselves. Such a collaborative process of interpretation implies corrections, controls and confrontations between what the cultural actors think about their world and what the foreign anthropologist proposes as the most adequate interpretation. Although most anthropologists rely heavily on what their key informants have told them about what is important in their culture, and although they often just echo in their writings the interpretations handed to them by their field assistants or privileged informants, in their academic discourse, anthropologists remain quite skeptical about the possibility of the cultural actors providing relevant and adequate interpretations. Anthropologists generally base their skepticism on two grounds. They say first that people are too closely enmeshed within the intricacies of social and cultural life to maintain the adequate distance needed by the very nature of interpretation, and they add that native actors may miss what is really central to their world because their culture, like any other, functions necessarily as a kind of system of dissimulation and occultation, tending to hide key-mechanisms at work behind sociocultural facts. Whatever the position of anthropologists regarding the validity of native interpretations, they generally collect indigenous interpretations during their fieldwork because they know that such interpretations

Introduction

15

based on proximity are generally drawn from the dominant indigenous cultural categories. In reality, anthropology is limited neither to the spoken or written accounts of personal experiences of "having been out there", and for which very little quality control is possible, nor to the restitution to alien people of interpretations that are expressed exclusively in their own terms and through their own categories. If this were the case, most anthropological books should necessarily have been written in the language used in the field. Anthropology consists as much in the process of making otherness intelligible to one's own people by making their cultural specificity viable against the background of the universal character of humanity. Such a disclosure is necessarily done through the mediation of theories and concepts developed within the various schools of the social sciences and Western intellectual traditions, a process which inevitably leads to the contamination of alien cultural categories by the Western system of thought. In the translation of otherness, anthropologists cannot abandon their ways of thinking and own language, nor can they suspend the claim to superiority or universality of their cultural presuppositions. In other words, the anthropologist cannot render otherness only in its own actual indigenous terms because he or she is no more a native who converses only in local terms with other natives than a reporter who comes back home with mere objective facts. Anthropologists are, rather, located on the boundaries, bearing on their shoulders the impossible task of speaking to people of their own culture in words that they understand without distorting the world of others with whom they have become more or less familiar. It seems quite clear that it is around these questions of connection between different worlds, of degrees of familiarity with the universes of others that the whole translational and interpretive enterprise in anthropology should be examined.

3.2. Anthropological translations of other versions of the world In his book on Ways of worldmaking (1978), the philosopher Nelson Goodman expresses in very clear terms the fact that multiple versions of the world are neither mutually translatable nor reducible to one basic transcultural frame. To give an idea of the irreductibility of different versions of the world, Goodman writes: "Though we make worlds by making versions, we no more make a world by putting symbols together at random than a carpenter makes a chair by putting pieces of wood together at random" (1978: 94). While the world may be fundamentally the same, people construct different versions of it in different places. Whatever value these constructions may have in terms

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of truth, the task of the anthropologist is that of identifying the basic building-blocks or central schemas which determine the architecture of a given world. To anthropologists who want to become familiar with other versions of the world and to translate them into terms that are interculturally accountable (for the culture of others and for that of the anthropologist), Goodman indicates that the way to follow passes through the analysis, by inductive and deductive inference, of the processes which are, according to him, used everywhere in the construction of cultural worlds: Ordering, supplementation, deletion, division, composition, deformation and emphasis. Although these processes are universally used for worldmaking, each culture ends up with a different architecture which always seems unfamiliar to the outsider. The constructivist approach of Goodman invites anthropologists to embark upon a stylistic and epistemological analysis done with the objective of delineating the original reworking of these basic intellectual procedures produced by single cultures. Another American philosopher whose work has equally been nourished by anthropology, Richard Rorty, argues in Philosophy and the mirror of nature (1979) that the natural vocation of hermeneutics is fulfilled in the practice of cultural anthropology and that hermeneutics should renew Western sciences which have become too centered on epistemology. Rorty establishes a sharp contrast between epistemology and hermeneutics: "Hermeneutics is, roughly, a description of our study of the unfamiliar and epistemology is, roughly, a description of our study of the familiar" (1979: 353). In equating epistemology with the idea that all discourses (those of others) are reducible to a common basic language (ours, of course), and hermeneutics with the possibility of translating the unfamiliar in its own terms, Rorty places radical alterity as the basic condition for the emergence of any interpretive discourse about others. The hermeneutician gains his/her status in losing his/her own identity through total assimilation into the world of others, and in through accepting the erosion of his or her own foundations and acknowledging that there exists a minimum of common ground with others. Rorty's idealization of anthropology as the science that crosses epistemological, linguistic and cultural boundaries, has generated ambivalent reactions among anthropologists themselves. Is it acceptable to define anthropology principally as the science of alterity? And furthermore, why should the natural vocation of hermeneutics be that of accounting for the incommensurability of cultural phenomena? The accent put on the "encounter of alterities" within hermeneutic work has reestablished a traditional dimension of anthropology, but there is apparently another dimension of

Introduction

17

classic cultural anthropology that such a position misses - that which looks for common identity across cultures and for the translation of alien modes of thought and key foreign categories into a language which makes sense interculturally and in terms understandable by colleagues within the discipline. Stephen Toulmin addressed himself to this same basic problem during the Enrico Castelli philosophical meeting held in Rome in 1986. During his talk about the existence of different "conceptual communities", he referred in a colloquial way to discussions he had with a number of people about Wittgenstein: Was Wittgenstein a cultural relativist? In a conversation I had with a Collingwood scholar at McMaster University, Albert Shalom, he declared: "Of course Wittgenstein was a relativist. If shared meanings imply shared forms of life, every culture and language community must, for him, have its distinct repertory of concepts and meanings". Given the fragmentary state of Wittgenstein's remarks, it was hard to justify my discomfort with this reading. Yet when I reported this conversation to David Hamlym of London University, three months later, his response was firm, but quite the opposite: "Nonsense: Wittgenstein was clearly a nativistl All our basic concepts and meanings are shared by people in all language communities: so the relevant forms of life cannot be idiosyncratic possessions of any single culture, but must be speciesspecific characteristics innate to all human beings". This second reading of Wittgenstein left me just as unhappy; though, once again, it was not easy to document my disbelief. (1986: 182) Unable to accept either of these two opposite interpretations of Wittgenstein's actual position, Toulmin adopted a more skeptical and a middle-ofthe-road reading. All Wittgenstein wanted to do, according to Toulmin, was to connect together the "forms of life" and "the language games", the communalities and the specificities, the natural and the conventional. Stanley Cavell also tends to place Wittgenstein's thinking in an intermediary position: We are thinking of convention not as the arrangements a particular culture has found convenient, in terms of its history and geography, for effecting the necessities of human existence, but as those forms of life which are normal to any group of creatures we call human... Wittgenstein's discovery, or rediscovery, is of the depth of convention in human life; a discovery which insists not only on the conventionality of human society but, we could say, on the conventionality of human nature itself... perhaps on what an existentialist means by saying that man has no nature. (1979: 111) Each cultural community, while radically distinct from all others, shares elements and patterns that belong to a common basic structure. In Unterwegs

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zur Sprache (1959), Heidegger proposes his own conception of transcultural communication on the basis of the difficulties that arose from his dialogue with a Japanese. Heidegger believes that any understanding of other cultures is totally threatened by the "complete Europeanisation of the world and of mankind" which destroys or dries up original cultural springs that feed each culture. It is not only the diffusion of Western models around the world that bothers Heidegger, but also the fact that other cultures are transformed by anthropologists into objects of knowledge through a process which is entirely dominated by "Western conceptual categories". To attain the status of a scientific discipline, anthropology has opted for the conceptual reduction of foreign cultures and languages. The Heideggerian approach challenges the possibility for anthropology to produce genuine discourse on other cultures, other than that produced in Western terms. There exists, in Heidegger's thinking, a common foundation, das Selbe, that makes dialogue possible, but this universal foundation comes less from a universal human nature than from the Westernization of all mankind. Heidegger imagines the practice of anthropological hermeneutics within a given historical situation in which it is not the great distance between interlocutors that makes mutual understanding difficult, but rather the fact that they share too many features, some indigenous and others imposed by Western culture. In his encounter with other cultures, the anthropologist acknowledges the presence of elements with which he is already familiar because they are part of his or her own world. The anthropologist thus recognizes him or herself in the identity of the other and in this process, differences between cultures emerge in the form of residual elements rather than as a substantive matter.

3.3. Limits of co-partnership and dialogical

anthropology

It is this same stress on "co-belonging and parternship" that Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960) puts at the center of his conception of hermeneutic work. His idea of "positive prejudice" that he sees as the key to good interpretation implies that the interpreter shares a certain complicity with the objects or subjects he wants to understand. Gadamer's conception of dialogue also implies that the interpreter is at the same time inside and outside, different and the same. Such a sense of belonging and the sharing of common partnership is understandable as long as the interpreter works, as Gadamer has done, on esthetic and historical productions within his or her own culture. The fact that the person has matured within the traditions of his or her group evidently equips this person with some sense of anticipation that are part and parcel of positive prejudices. Gadamer duplicates Heidegger's position in his

Introduction

19

own terms. Along with Heidegger he would probably recognize that the possibility of dialogue across cultures depends largely upon whether or not other cultural worlds have become familiar insofar as they have been contaminated by Western culture. Like Heidegger, a typical philosopher of the West who spoke of access to other worlds only en passant, Gadamer has never explicitly discussed the problems raised by the application of his "hermeneutic method" to a culture in which the interpreter is a foreigner. If we assume that there exist real and important cultural differences which are in no way eliminated by the adoption of certain Western behaviors and conceptions around the world, and that anthropologists inevitably share a limited "co-belonging" and complicity with these other worlds, we are forced to reopen the discussion about what is implied by the ambiguous position occupied by anthropologists - a position that necessarily combines alterity with partnership. We are not sure that Gadamer's stress on the notion of dialogue, a notion which has led recently to the development of dialogical anthropology, indicates a way out of the contradictions within which anthropologists are trapped. There is no doubt, as we said earlier, that the anthropologist is located at an interface point that links the inside with the outside, familiar elements with a non-familiar world and sameness with difference, but it is time to qualify the type of tension which may oppose these polarities. Following Gadamer, most "dialogical anthropologists" (and we include here the disciples of Bakhtin) have totally neglected the tragic dimension of the anthropological encounter. The two cultures to which the anthropologist and the other belong are not only different, they are also in many cases hostile, and the Western ethnographer represents, in most cases, a society which directly or indirectly saps and destroys precisely those other societies that anthropology wants to understand. No individual empathy, even the most sensitive, can annul this hegemonic position and produce a balanced egalitarian dialogue. The decolonization process of the sixties has dramatically brought to the forefront of European intellectual debate the problem of the violent and hegemonic position of Europe in her relations with colonial countries, and no one has yet described the "colonial mentality" more accurately than the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Debates of a similar nature about the hegemonic position of American science, including anthropology, have been long delayed in the United States where the legitimacy of the dominant rapports with other countries was discussed in the late sixties and early seventies mainly in relation to the Vietnam War. Two American anthropologists have recently echoed this old debate, reactualizing it in relation to the problem of the validity of contemporary

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ethnographic discourse. "I began", writes James Clifford, "to see such questions as symptoms of a pervasive postcolonial crisis of ethnographic authority. While the crisis has been felt most strongly by formerly hegemonic Western discourses, the questions it raises are of global significance. W h o has the authority to speak for a group's identity or authenticity?" (1988: 8). Clifford sees knowledge about other cultures as something appropriatable, actually owned by the Western scientists, but eventually transferable to the others. " M y general aim is to displace any transcendental regime of authenticity, to argue that all authoritative collections, whether made in the name of art or science, are historically contingent and subject to local reappropriation" (1988: 9). Clifford reminds Western anthropologists that they are still citizens of hegemonic states and that it is not out-dated to question their authority to speak in the name of others. He also raises the question of the appropriation by Westerners of the culture of others and the most intriguing aspect of his position is that he unexpectedly suggests that he relies on the Dilthey-Gadamer hermeneutic model in order to abolish power relationships inherent to the anthropological enterprise: "Interpretation, based on a philological model of reading, has emerged as a sophisticated alternative to the now apparently naive claims for experiential authority" (1988: 38). Along with Gadamer, Clifford also forgets the tragic dimension of the encounter. Geertz has recently restated in Works and lives this problem of the hegemonic political context in which anthropological interpretation is performed. Here, he reframes the problem of contemporary ethnographic authority, contrasting the two sides of anthropological work and life: the "being there" of the field and the "being here" of the writing of ethnography. Geertz writes: The end of colonialism altered radically the nature of the social relationship between those who ask and look and those who are asked and looked at... At the same time as the moral foundations have been shaken by the decolonization on the Being. There side, its epistemological foundations have been shaken on the Being Here side... (1988: 135) Specifically the entrance of "decolonialized" intellectuals into international academic life and more generally into current world geopolitics has created a radically new context for the discussion of authoritative writing and interpretation in anthropology.

3.4.

Voices from the inside

Local experts and voices f r o m the inside are speaking more and more boldly in the name of the cultures to which they belong. The critique of the

Introduction

21

Palestinian-born Edward Said (1978) of Western discourse about the "Orient" has violently disturbed a lot of comfortably settled social scientists. Valentin Y.Mudimbe, a Zairian working in the United States, has just produced a similar deep critique of "Africanist discourse" pointing out that "Western interpreters as well as African analysts have been using categories and conceptual systems which depend on a Western epistemological order" (1988: x). Paradoxically, Mudimbe, as well as Said, cannot escape the trap: both criticize Orientalism and Africanism as inadequate discourses produced over time by Westerners about the "Orient" and Africa, but in so doing both use categories developed by Western intellectuals themselves, Mudimbe relying strongly on Foucault and French thinkers and Said on a combination of interpretive and critical Anglo-Saxon writers. These two brilliant scholars stand between two intellectual worlds that they master with equal competence, but in order for their critique of Western discourses to be understood, they have no choice other than to challenge Africanists and Orientalists on their own grounds by speaking their language and by using their concepts. To what extent might they have criticized Western knowledge by using the endogenous systems of thought and the historical traditions of their own Arabic and African cultures? Both seem to have built their critical discourse on dominant Western intellectual configurations, not because they are highly Westernized, or because they refuse to Africanize and Orientalize their critique in the terms of their own native culture, and also not because the nonWestern Weltanschauungen are not translatable in concepts and theories understandable by Westerners. Mudimbe says clearly why he has used a Western epistemological framework for criticizing Africanism: "My own claim is that thus far the ways in which African Weltanschauungen have been evaluated and the means used to explain them related to theories and methods whose contraints, rules, and systems of operation suppose a non-African epistemological locus" (1988: x). The intellectual locus of control lies outside Africa, Mudimbe writes explicitly, and it is there that the battle must be fought.

3. J. The search for an optimal distance The ethnographic authority to produce appropriate discourse and texts about otherness appears challenged and attacked on all fronts. From the inside, Western anthropologists remind their colleagues that their common belonging to hegemonic nations inevitably creates barriers and obstacles which block the establishment during field work of normal relations which may

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provide access to the world of others. From outside, an increasing number of non-Western scholars are fiercely criticizing the content of Western intellectual interpretations of other worlds, and as an ultimate paradoxical testimony to the hegemonic power of the Western paradigms, they seem to have no other choice, if they want to be understood, than to phrase their opposition by using these very same paradigms. Despite these criticisms, many anthropologists do feel that good will and a great sense of empathy can help overcome their position of power and form the basis of reliable interpersonal relationships with others. In reality, most anthropologists refuse to question radically the inequality of their status in their relations with others and find refuge in a subjective-oriented stand. In the case of Geertz, for example, the art of understanding others and writing good ethnographies is presented as "inseparable" from both the quality of presence that such scholars as Malinowski, Benedict, Levi-Strauss or EvansPritchard had with natives in the field and from their ability to translate their own experience in an original literary style which betrays the personality of the author ("le style c'est Fhomme"). With his usual subtle mixture of irony and iconoclasm, in one of the last papers he published before his death, Leach commented on Geertz's book. He then expressed his own opinion about the status of interpretation in anthropology: An ethnographic monograph has much more in common with a historical novel than any kind of scientific treatise. As anthropologists, we need to come to terms with the now well-recognized fact that in a novel, the personalities of the characters are derived from aspects of the personality of the author. How could it be otherwise? The only ego that I know at first hand is my own. When Malinowski writes about Trobriand Islanders he is writing about himself; when Evans-Pritchard writes about the Nuer he is writing about himself. Any other sort of description turns the characters of ethnographic monographs into clockwork dummies. (1989: 139)

We will never know whether Leach was actually serious in so explicitly stressing the "Ego" of the anthropologist or whether he was being ironic about the invasion of literary metaphors in post-modern anthropology, which transformed the discourse on "them" into a testimony of the "I", recognizing the personality of the anthropologist in the interpretation of the other, and subsuming distanciation and participatory observation under the emotional experience of proximity. Far from being an encounter of sometimes incommensurable alterities, such as expressed by Goodman, Rorty and probably by Wittgenstein as well, anthropology is here transformed into a kind of solipsistic self-dialogue, and the fieldwork experience serves as a mirror

Introduction

23

upon which is projected the image of the anthropologist rather than that of the people encountered. Echoing Geertz, Leach goes as far as to assimilate anthropology into the writing of fiction. The establishment of such an equation between anthropological monographs and novels indubitably constitutes the ultimate avatar of a movement of thought which started by transforming ethnography into "an exercise of reading", equated anthropological interpretation with "critical analysis of texts", and ended up by inviting anthropologists to see themselves as "literary authors" (Clifford and Marcus 1986). Clifford expresses the credo of the supposedly post-modernist avantgarde in anthropology when he writes: "Ethnography is, from beginning to end, enmeshed in writing. This writing includes, minimally a translation of experience into textual form" (1988: 25). All ethnographers who have really done fieldwork know that writing was only one of their activities on the field as well as after they have been back home. Clifford, who has worked on the ethnographic monographs of others may, for this reason, have been totally misled. In entering into the narcissistic age of intimacy, which nourishes the staging of the anthropological "Ego", anthropology has not only been transformed into a literary genre. The intimate and private sphere has also erased the contradictions that arise from the political context of power in which encounters with others develop and in which books are written and read. The new ethos has depoliticized anthropological discourse in subsuming difference under sameness and the "they" under the "I". It is time to redefine culture in more adequate terms than equating it with an "assemblage of texts". It is time as well to reaffirm that reliable interpretive anthropology should combine distance with proximity and that difference can never be translated into sameness. An optimal distance should be maintained at all steps of the interpretive process, and adequate tools, not only those provided by modern literary criticism, should be used by anthropologists if they want to produce reliable and valid ethnographies.

4. Forgotten lessons from the history of interpretation "Human beings are self-interpreting animals", Charles Taylor has recently written (1985b: 45), echoing a central theme of contemporary philosophy. For more than two decades Taylor has steadily argued against all sorts of reductionistic theories that try to model the study of human beings and human cultures on the natural sciences. Drawing creatively on Continental

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philosophers, Taylor has reminded anthropologists that the problem of signification is connatural to self-definition and that the practice of the human sciences therefore necessitates the use of hermeneutics. Human beings are ontologically beings who cannot avoid interpreting themselves, others and the world. 4.1. The interpretive

turn in social

science

Although such an hermeneutic definition of human beings had already been explicitly phrased by Heidegger in his Sein und Zeit (1927) and clearly delineated by his successor Gadamer (1960), it is, strangely enough, through Taylor's 1971 paper "Interpretation and the sciences of man" that anthropologists rediscovered in the late seventies what Rabinow and Sullivan have called "the interpretive turn in social sciences" (Rabinow and Sullivan 1979; 1987). Anthropologists recognized themselves in the words of Taylor when he wrote: Common meanings are the basis of community. Intersubjective meaning gives a people a common language to talk about social reality and a common understanding of certain norms, but only with common meanings does this common reference world contain significant common actions, celebrations and feelings. These are objects in the world that everybody shares. This is what makes community. (1985: 39)

Intersubjective meanings are not only inside the heads of people, but are also expressed in their collective practices and in their socially constituted actions. Only a direct experience of the world of others provides a sense of anticipation and a "precomprehension" about the meanings attached to these practices. Taylor was heard by anthropologists because he gave open expression in 1971 to an old anthropological creed, namely the necessity, in doing anthropology, of sharing daily life and daily activities with other people, to speak their language and to become familiar with their systems of meaning. It is in engaging oneself in intersubjective relations with others that it is possible to experience another world and to gain some comprehension of it. During the same autumn of 1971, Paul Ricoeur published a paper entitled "The model of the text: Meaningful action considered as a text", which eventually became a companion paper for Taylor's in the programmatic reader put together in 1979 by Rabinow and Sullivan. Although both Taylor and Ricoeur argue that human sciences cannot be anything but hermeneutical, their position appears at first sight sharply contrasted in three areas:

Introduction

25

Taylor's collective practices and meaningful action seem to be transformed by Ricoeur into a kind of text, and the cultural interpretation that arises only, according to Taylor, from sharing life with people is replaced by Ricoeur with a model of textual criticism in which non-living documents are submitted to hermeneutic analysis. Finally, the absence of verification procedures in Taylor's never-ending process of interpretation is replaced by Ricoeur with the dialectic of guessing and validation. In stating that the object of the human sciences "displays some of the features constitutive of a text as text" and that their methodology "develops the same kind of procedure as those of text-interpretation" (1979: 73), Ricoeur has invited social scientists to find a model for their analyses of social and cultural data in a revised version of textual criticism. Many anthropologists, North American and European, have answered this invitation enthusiastically. Only scholars who are unaware of how central the interpretation of meaningful human action and practice has always been in Ricoeur's thought have been led to blame Ricoeur for the degradation of the hermeneutics of action into an hermeneutics of text and for the establishment of a dubious analogy between culture and text. It is, for example, intriguing that the second 1987 edition of the Rabinow-Sullivan reader has not reprinted Ricoeur's paper (which had appeared as chapter 2 right after that of Taylor in the first edition). In reality, Ricoeur goes further than Taylor when he takes the risk of proposing to social scientists an interpretive method based on textual analysis. The method he has in mind is one that for centuries has been forging a series of theoretical frameworks and operational tools in order to assign meaning to texts. It is precisely these centuries of philological, exegetical and hermeneutic work that Ricoeur proposes as a model to anthropologists and to other social scientists. No one is more aware than Ricoeur that discourse cannot be divorced from action (discourse is itself an action), that the meaning of a text emerges when read in intertextuality and that the theory of texts always runs parallel with a theory of action. In one of his most recent books, Du texte ά I'action (1986), Ricoeur has left the arena of advocacy, of pleading the right of social sciences to be hermeneutical, a right which was not acknowledged in the seventies. In this book, he demonstrates the productivity of this method and examines some problems raised by the actual hermeneutic practice. In Du texte ά I'action, Ricoeur interweaves his own thought with that of Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer, and traces the concepts and methods he has used in his own interpretive work back to traditional Judaeo-Christian exegesis of the books of the Bible. In proposing to read all sociocultural phenomena as a kind of text and to use hermeneutics as a method, Ricoeur was in fact inviting social

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scientists to acquire some familiarity with the exegetical procedures developed through the long history of Biblical and philosophical hermeneutics, and to become as explicit and systematic in their interpretive process as the practitioners of hermeneutics have been in the past. 4.2. The Jewish and Christian exegesis of biblical texts The ethos of traditional Jewish culture and of the Bible-oriented Protestant milieu in which Ricoeur grew up made him sensitive to the multiple levels of meaning enmeshed within the sacred books, the rigorous procedures involved in their interpretation and the necessity of relying on earlier commentaries. Above all, Ricoeur knew that the Torah, or the Book of the Law, had long served as a foundation in the daily life of Jewish communities, that the Book had replaced the lost Temple, and that its interpretation constituted and still constitutes the means of survival for many exiles. It is in the Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions that Ricoeur found the most elaborate conceptual frameworks and hermeneutic instruments. He often refers to the Greek interpretive tradition as well, which started with the Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle and which has developed under different guises in the Western intellectual world, taking multiple forms in contemporary literary criticism. Ricoeur remains, however, much more inspired by the JudaeoChristian exegesis of sacred books than by the methods developed for the interpretation of profane literary texts. For the Hebrews, a name which already connotes the idea of "migrant people" or "wandering tribes", the Torah, the Word of Yahweh, represented stability, and provided a founding base. "Shema Yisra 'ef', "Hear, ο Israel", constituted a permanent reminder for all rabbis, scribes and interpreters of the Torah that they had to tell the meaning of the Word of God to the community in its current situation. The first form of exegesis that the Jews develped in dispersed communities was the Midrash which refers precisely to the deep analysis of the Book in order to discover the meaning pertinent to the precise context and life of the community. From the very beginning the great scribes, such as Hillel, Eliezer and Aqiba, looked at the text from three complementary angles, each having its own type of interpretation: The halakha, which sought pragmatic rules in the Torah for behaving adequately within the community; the haggada, which was centered around the discovery of doctrinal contents; and the pesher, which was mainly applied to the prophetic scriptures and which led to the scrutinizing of the texts in order to discover the way that the scriptures were going to be accomplished. Written commentaries were progressively added, and it became essential to master the whole

Introduction

27

body of previous interpretations as well as the oral Mishna before proposing any interpretation. One finds very little allegoric and figurative interpretation within Jewish exegesis, and it is generally recognized that the Stoics were the first to formulate the principles of allegoric interpretation in an effort to find an acceptable meaning for myths; in a complementary way, the first Fathers of the Church reinterpreted certain verses of the Old Testament as containing allegorical anticipations concerning the future coming and mission of Christ. Origen and Augustine {De Doctrina Christiana) eleborated what became known in the Middle Ages as the "doctrine of the four meanings in the Scriptures": 1. the literal, based on the grammatical and philological study of the text; 2. the allegorical, which refers to the analysis of figures and metaphoric connections across the various books; 3. the moral, which served to identify the rules of conduct contained in the texts; and 4. the anagogical, which was somewhat similar to the Jewish pesher. This doctrine was dominant up until the end of the Middle Ages, with increasing accent put on the allegorical dimension of the text, and the concomitant widening of the gap between literal and allegorical interpretations. The authoritative role of the Magisterium of the Church and the reference to the Tradition became the main means for the authoritative interpretation of the Sacred Texts.

4.3. The Reformation goes back to the scriptures and to Aristotle s rhetoric During the sixteenth century, two events radically changed the methods for interpreting the Bible. On the one hand, humanist thinkers rediscovered classical Greek and Latin texts to which they applied philological analysis and on the other, Protestant reformers, especially Luther, proclaimed that the sola scriptum should be given full authority, scriptura sui ipsius interpres, and that the obscurity of certain passages should be eliminated on the basis of the Scriptures themselves rather than by reference to what the Catholics called the "Tradition" and the "Magisterium". It is in this context that a Protestant theologian, Flavius Illyricus, wrote the first treatise on hermeneutics of modern times, Clavis scripturae sacrae (1567), in which he stressed the importance of linguistic and critical analysis for understanding obscure verses. Deeply influenced by the Rhetoric of Aristotle and emerging methods in the analysis of classical texts rather than the methods advocated in Jewish and Catholic exegeses, Illyricus stated explicitly that any part of the Bible should be interpreted in the context of the whole Bible, anticipating what later became known as the "hermeneutical circle".

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During the seventeenth century, it became normal for professors of rhetoric and philology to set guidelines for their colleagues in the faculties of theology, law and medicine when facing problems in the interpretation of Biblical, juridical and medical texts. Hermeneutics was still, at that time, considered an "ancillary discipline" whose techniques were supposed to help in deciphering obscure parts of the texts, whatever their contents. It is also in this context that the first systematic treatises of general hermeneutics were written and their principles formulated in such a way as to be applicable to various sorts of texts and "systems of signs". After J. C. Dannhauer, who was the first to use the Latin "hermeneutica" in the title of a book Hermeneutica sacra sive methodus exponendarum sacrarum litterarum (1654), it took more than a century before the philologist F. Ast (1778-1841) published a comprehensive treatise which gave full sense to the "hermeneutical circle". According to Ast, a given text should be replaced within the whole "opus" of the writer. This "opus" should be connected to the subjectivity of the author, this subjectivity to the spirit of the period in which the author lived, and ultimately the interpreter should see the universal Geist at work within the three preceding interconnected levels. Such a circularity serves to keep the text at the center of the interpretive work, but places it in a progressively expanding context which includes the author, his era and the human mind.

4.4. Romanticism and pietism promote subjectivity in interpretation Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), a contemporary of Ast, totally inverted hermeneutic work by transforming interpretation into an encounter between two subjectivities, that of the author and that of the reader-interpreter. Schleiermacher was particularly interested by the elucidation of the subjective conditions that made interpretation possible, but he also contributed to the clarification of basic principles guiding the science of understanding texts, discourses and cultural artifacts (Kunstlehre des Verstehens), a science which he centered around the "the reconstruction of the genetic process" leading to literary and artistic productions. Since Schleiermacher, the object of hermeneutics has no longer been limited to the philological analysis of the written text. Due to the romantic aspects of this thinking, hermeneutics has been profoundly invaded by psychologizing and subjective attitudes, and the notion of sympathy has entered as a key dimension in the hermeneutic experience. It is particularly this psychological and Romantic subjectivism that specialists in interpretation have retained from Schleiermacher as a counterweight to the literalism and the dogmatism of methods that were dominant since the Renaissance (Eco 1984; Todorov 1977; Kristeva 1969).

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Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has the merit of having systematically examined how historical data can be assigned meaning by raising the question of the difference between the Erklären of the natural sciences and the Verstehen of the human sciences. Building on the notion of "moment of life" (Lebensmoment), which was central in the psychological interpretation put forward by Schleiermacher (hermeneutics defined as "the grasping of each given complex of thoughts as a specific moment in the life of a concrete man"), Dilthey radicalized the need for contextualization in affirming that an interpreter who wants to Verstehen should enter within the culture and the historical period that produced the text, artistic work or event to be understood. It is only through some familiarity with the culture of the historical period during which the work was produced that the interpreter gains access to the meanings of things and behaviors of people. Unable to move out of a psychological framework, Dilthey insisted on the fact that human beings are characterized by a primordial capacity of being able to enter within the psychic life of others and, in that context, he privileged two concepts: that of Nacherleben which means empathy and proximity, and that of Erlebnis, borrowed from Kant, which refers to the "lived sentiment". Interpretation consists, according to Dilthey, of the effort to reconstruct, on the basis of their external expressions {Ausdruck), the Erlebnis of others in my own Erlebnis, and it is this inter subjective psychic structure that Dilthey established as the universal foundation of the human sciences. Dilthey's anchoring of hermeneutics within a psychologically-oriented philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie) has nourished the interest of historians and social scientists in the subjective and experiential side of the interpretive enterprise. In inviting social scientists to see a parallel between their interpretation of sociocultural facts and the hermeneutics of texts, Ricoeur's purpose was to make them sensitive to the long history of interpretation that we have briefly delineated. A history which started with various trends in Biblical exegesis, which was systematized at different periods by thinkers such as Augustine and Schleiermacher, and which paradoxically ends up privileging the reader rather than the text. Discussion of the conceptual frameworks and the instruments to be used in the interpretation of texts and cultural data has led Gadamer to reject the use of a methodology built only on the concept of objectivity, as well as the illusions of subjectivism attached to the Romantic models transmitted by Schleiermacher and Dilthey. In combining the concepts of truth and method in the title of his master work, Wahrheit und Methode (1960), Gadamer made clear that he wanted to propose a systematic method that would permit access to the truth of a given cultural production. Three key concepts organize the

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Gadamerian method: Gespräch as expressing a dialogical model in interpretation; Offenheit as translating the ontological openness to others as long as the interpreter works within his/her community of dialogue; and Erfahrung, which refers to the experience of co-belonging and to the existence of positive prejudices in interpretation. We already indicated that the dialogical hermeneutics of Gadamer are valuable as long as one works within his/her own culture, but that this author gives no indication about the method to be used in intercultural work. 4.5. Insights into post-Saussurean

semiology

It is the experience of the conflict of interpretations which has over the years progressively structured the thought of Ricoeur. In his view, two radically contrasted interpretive strategies organize the field of contemporary hermeneutics. On the one hand, the recollection of meaning, the effort to grasp the message itself and the ascetic reading of the text. On the other, the demystification of contradictions hidden within the text, the elucidation of the context which frames the message, and a distantiation in order to see behind the text. Without abandoning the traditional aspect of hermeneutics which deals with decoding, deciphering and assigning meaning, Ricoeur introduced a critical dimension to hermeneutics, a dimension inherited from the masters of suspicion Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and which served for them to denounce alienating illusions. More than anyone else, Ricoeur has systematized and balanced these two sides of the hermeneutic enterprise. Ricoeur, who is also deeply interested in the establishment of clear criteria and rigorous rules for conducting the interpretive process, has maintained a steady critical dialogue with post-Saussurean semioticians of all vintages for the last two decades, especially with Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Kristeva and Derrida. Like Ricoeur, these contemporary practitioners of literary criticism conceive of culture either as a tissue, a drama, a game or a text. They have developed a rigorous series of steps that make semiotic analysis sounder and less impressionistic and all share a deep knowledge of the history of hermeneutic methods in the West. Although we do not think it necessary to examine the individual positions of these contemporary semioticians in detail, we will briefly discuss a few aspects of their methods because they are commonly used by social scientists, and by anthropologists in particular. Our discussion will be limited to Barthes and Kristeva. Barthes and Kristeva like to use the analogy of a "tissue" for cultural texts, which are like pieces of cloth made out of multiple threads and knots

Introduction

31

through the process of weaving. They also consider that it is the work of the interpreter to identify the patterns and the key knots of this interweaving. All cultural texts are polyphonic and for this reason interpreters must hear the multiple voices that blend in the text. Barthes suggested explicitly in S/Z (1970) a kind of literary analysis that would distinguish five interactive codes or voices in the interpretation of texts: 1. the hermeneutic code, which is attentive to the terms that express the plot (enigma) around which the story is constructed; 2. the rhetorical code, which identifies the dominant tropes in the narration as well as their dispersion across the text; 3. as a complement to these first two codes that relate directly to the narrative forms, there is the symbolic code that makes manifest the multivalence of signs, their reversibility and their plurality throughout the text; 4. the behavioral code which assesses the successive sequences in the action and fragments the text into episodes of action; and 5. the cultural code, which relates specific facts or knowledge expressed in the text to the cultural background. The search for the multiple meaning in the text follows paths that have already been trodden by the whole Christian tradition of exegesis, since Origen and Augustine. The position advocated by Kristeva in Semeiotike (1969) is congruent with that of Barthes. The tissue metaphor is also used by Kristeva to express the idea of plurality of meaning, polysemy and multiple interactive dimensions in the text. However, where Barthes speaks of connotation as a key in any plural reading, she prefers to speak of "intertextuality". By intertextuality, she means that each text has to be intertextually linked to other texts and read ultimately against the background of the socio-cultural context. Kristeva and Barthes both advocate and practice a post-Saussurean variant of text interpretation that considers a text as a galaxy of signifiers, a polyphony of voices and a plurality of codes; such a reading makes them sensitive to inconsistencies, anomalies, puzzles, heterogeneity and vacant spaces as much as to coherence, regularity, pattern and structures in the text. To interpret a text properly, post-Saussurean semioticians associated with the ideas of Barthes and Kristeva propose a rigorous and explicit method which should be altogether economic and productive. Like classic structuralists, they attempt to uncover the basic units of multiple sign-systems, they analyze the ways that these units combine by means of various processes such as oppositions, and they follow transformations in the meaning systems. In this analytical process, their interpretation rests mainly on two tropes, metaphor and metonymy.

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4.6. From texts to culture The hermeneutic approach used by contemporary post-Saussurean semioticians can easily be incorporated in the long history of interpretation that we have briefly described. Reference to the practitioners of literary analysis of the past centuries and decades also helps to put contemporary models into perspective and to evaluate their originality. The new dominant paradigm of hermeneutics presents three characteristics which together form an original, but debatable, framework for conducting the interpretive enterprise: 1. texts should be seen as incorporating a plurality of codes and a multiplicity of voices; 2. interpretation is not a description made by a "neutral" observer, but rather a dialogical event between persons who share a common horizon; and 3. this dialogue takes place within a third reality, the context, that contains not only the interpreter and the one being interpreted, but encompasses the text as well. Contemporary practitioners of literary criticism tend to combine the hermeneutics of meaning with the hermeneutics of suspicion, such as advocated by Ricoeur, and have found, for performing this task, a large number of operational tools borrowed from their predecessors. ' In proposing that, by way of interpreting literary texts, one reflect on the culture, behavior and actions of past traditions and present practices, Ricoeur was in no way assuming that cultural facts are de facto organized like texts. He made a detour by using a text analogy for the sole reason that most systematic work in interpretation has been done in connection with sacred and profane texts, and it is this accumulated knowledge that anthropologists should consult and use in their effort to produce anthropological hermeneutics.

5. The order of culture North American anthropologists have, to a greater degree than their European counterparts, demonstrated an enduring affection for the notion of culture, a notion that constitutes a cornerstone in their discipline and whose definition has been continually debated. Irrespective of the school of thought to which the anthropologist belongs - be it the interpretive school, which sees culture as a system of meaning; the ecological school, which sees culture as the outcome of a continuing adaptive process; or the structural-functionalist school, which stresses the holistic and configurational assemblage of elements in the formation of culture - one finds in the dominant American conception of culture a persistent bias toward "logico-meaningful pattern-

Introduction

33

ing", with an equal deemphasis of "causal-functional" interrelationships among social elements and cultural codes. Geared to exploring the internal logico-meaningful character of culture, North American anthropologists have predominantly investigated the inherent coherence of webs of significance, the organizational patterns in emic classifications, the matching of particular thematic features with basic cultural values, and so on. The search for logico-meaningful coherence permeates most methods actually employed by anthropologists in interpreting the ethnographic data they collect. In their efforts to discover the "logico-meaningful patterning" of cultural data, anthropologists follow various paths. Some suppose that homologous correspondences interlink cultural and social codes while others find one or a few particular codes to be dominant and use these as "metaencoders" for other subordinate codes. Anthropologists who have been influenced by semantics tend to read configurations of meaning against the background of the whole culture while cognitively - and literarily - oriented anthropologists seek privileged schemas of explanation and expression elaborated by the culture under study. There is no need to present here an overview of the methods used by anthropologists in their interpretation of ethnographic data, but we do feel it essential to discuss in some detail at least three methodological orientations which illustrate some of the trends currently followed by anthropologists. A close examination of their conceptual frameworks and analytical procedures should permit us to establish what differentiates "the order of culture" from "the order of the text". In order to substantiate the specificity of our discipline, we will systematically compare and assess these three methods by specifying their relation to textual analysis, by making their conceptual referents explicit, and by showing how their analytical tools are actually applied to data. The structural method that we will consider first is generally based on the analysis of texts that are the transcription of oral myths. It is not reciting or listening to Amerindian myths that matter for structuralists but rather the discovery of mythical thought at work within the myths, this mythical thought being interpreted as a combinatory system of signs which is analogous to grammatical models. Ultimately it is the working of the savage mind that interests structuralist anthropologists who often end up as armchair interpreters who work on texts at a distance from the field. The method that we examine next, which we call "culturalist", deals, in our illustration, with a corpus of ethnographic data from India and from Hindu textual sources. What matters here is constructing the various designs of Indian culture in consonance with the contents of the texts. Indian culture is then transformed into a cognitive map of notions and processes which

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functions as a dynamic logic rather than as a fixed syntax. A relativist perspective is preferred to the search for universals and the project is to interpret Indian culture in its own terms. The semantic method, the third, that we discuss, draws more heavily on the hermeneutics of speech and of actual practice. Here, collected narratives which incorporate semantic and pragmatic networks serve as written material from which analysis permits the identification of systems of meaning and action to which people actually refer. These systems of representation and practices are also grounded in the specific forms of social organization and cultural values in which they have developed. Anthropological interpretation builds explicitly on the interpretations provided by the people themselves and are therefore constituted as second-level interpretations. In this section, we examine how anthropologists are currently applying each one of these three methods. The structural method, which emerged in the European anthropological world, more precisely in France, is necessarily examined in reference to the now classical work of Levi-Strauss on Amerindian myths. For the culturalist method, we thought it appropriate to examine the work of colleagues who are or have been related to the Chicago school, and we have chosen among them the very original enterprise of McKim Marriott. And finally, to illustrate the semantically-inspired method, we will refer to our own anthropological studies.

5.1. The structural combinatory matrix in Amerindian myths Saussurean and post-Saussurean semiotic anthropologists consider culture either as a grammar with syntactic rules or as a narrative or drama whose deep meaning can be made manifest through an adequate exegesis of the interwovenness and configurations which connect social life, cosmology and other domains of the culture. One of the inherent features of this method is to attach more importance to form than to content. In perceiving meaning as emerging from the way in which various formal codes (social, natural, cosmological) are interwoven, anthropologists who use such a method tend to rely on certain analytical procedures based mainly on the search for analogy, opposition, inversion and correlations. Levi-Strauss formalized most explicitly the two main analytical procedures used complementarity in the Saussure-and-Jakobson-inspired structural interpretation that he has himself extensively practised. The first procedure consists of the setting up of complementary oppositions between elements belonging to the same semantic domain, such as village - forest; day - night; life - death. While these bipolar terms illustrate the contrast be-

Introduction

35

tween extreme opposite positions, they are completed by the identification of at least two other kinds of positions, the transitional and the superpositional, which serve to mediate these polarities. The basic classification of elements by pairs is established in different domains on the basis of an analogical principle. Cosmological, zoological and human series of binary oppositions can be connected together through an expanding process of association, which becomes progressively more obscure and less centrally significant. In the process of setting up equivalences and parallels among domains which are far apart (for example the links between the sun at zenith, the color red and the state of ripeness), there remains, apparently, considerable room left open for the subjective appreciation of the anthropologist. The second analytical step complements the matching of a series of pairs of opposed elements through a procedure based on the use of metaphoric transference and metonymic substitution. One element of each pair, either the signifier or the signified, is replaced by another element which passes by substitution from its original domain to another, and therefore acquires the original meaning attached to the element which it replaced. The linking between the substituted and substituting elements is generally based on such relationships as similarity (sun and the color red), polarity (left and right), contiguity, part to whole relationships, content to container, and so forth. The search for the interweaving of elements in a culture is not only done on the basis of metonymic substitution. The anthropologist should also establish metaphoric transference of significant elements from their usual semantic domain to a new context and construct additional meaning through this process of "transportation". By their own movement metonymic substitution and metaphoric transference weave a series of interconnections between elements belonging to different fields, build a classificatory order within a vast combinatory model in which elements can be assigned one or multiple positions, and therefore give access, according to the structuralists, to a deep reading of cultural reality. After more than thirty years of interpretive work on his corpus of Amerindian myths and building on what he calls the ever-present "logic of sensory qualities", Levi-Strauss has concluded in a recent book La potiere jalouse (1985) that "All this is sufficient to convince us that myths exhaust all the states of a combinatory table involving bodily orifices" (1985: 220, our own translation). In this combinatory system of positions within a patterned symbolic order, correlations are not only established with animals but also with elements of the cosmology at large and with parts of the body, specifically the orifices. Levi-Strauss writes: "These orifices are anterior or posterior, either at the top or at the bottom: mouth, nose, ears, vagina, anus...

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Taken separately, each one may fulfill three functions: to be closed or open, and in the latter case, either for absorption or for expulsion" (1985: 217, our own translation). These three functions are used by Levi-Strauss as basic building-blocks of a combinatory system which involves various possible positions in relation to the avidity, incontinence (openness), and retention (closure) of the orifices. Such a linkage is established through the analysis of the contents of Amerindian myths that associate animals with specific use of orifices: for example, the nightjar connotes oral avidity and anal incontinence, the howler monkey is associated with anal incontinence, and the ai (three-toed sloth) connotes anal retention. Levi-Strauss considers these three animals (nightjar, howler monkey and the ai) as apical signs in the triangular semantic field of the myths. This illustration, borrowed from Levi-Strauss' interpretation of Amerindian myths, demonstrates how productive the structuralist method can be for giving access to the hidden side of culture. Such a method has been vigorously attacked from three different points of view. On the one hand, Sartre and other historically-minded scholars claim that the structuro-semiotic method establishes from the outset a discontinuity between thought and action, thinking and living, and ends up totally ignoring the context in which classificatory systems function. On the other hand, phenomenologicallyoriented anthropologists claim that the structural framework of analysis tends to exclude data concerning sensibility, affects and emotions, and that the correlations discovered are just dead formal structures which have nothing to do with the daily experience of people. Finally, this method has been attacked most radically by Ricoeur, who has challenged the cognitive aspect of structuralism, an aspect which is central inasmuch as it is the "pensee sauvage" which matters for Levi-Strauss and which he sees at work in mythical thought. Ricoeur argues that structural analysis can be usefully applied only in cultures in which syntax is more important than semantics, in which one finds an extraordinary proliferation of classificatory arrangements but a great poverty of contents and in which systematic correspondences across domains predominate. Ricoeur goes so far as to state that structural analysis can be applied only to cultures which have little to say and which say it in a very well organized and redundant way. By contrast, in cultures that continually reorganize the meaning attached to a given event or symbol, one finds rich semantics made up of symbols with multiple levels of meaning which are constantly being reelaborated by the interpretive tradition. Such a culture cannot be organized along systematic classificatory lines and therefore cannot be grasped through a syntactical analysis. After having set up the contrast between cultures with strong syntax and those

Introduction

37

with strong semantics, Ricoeur concludes, unexpectedly, that the interpreter should not oppose structural and hermeneutic analysis (the type of analysis suited to cultures with semantics) because "it is always within a system that symbolism is deployed" (Ricoeur 1964: 95). In other words, the interpretation of semantics and symbolism cannot be divorced from the understanding of the general syntax and context in which they function. Despite such criticisms, the operational analytic value of structuralism is generally acknowledged to be a useful way of making explicit the logicocognitive dimension of the meaning system elaborated by cultures. LeviStrauss and his structuralist followers have never considered culture as a text but have rather read it as a quasi-linguistic system with its own syntactic rules that the anthropologist has to discover. For structuralists, a language is not the vehicle of a culture but rather the prototype of all kinds of arrangements and organizations. Meaning lies in a combinatory structure and can be expressed in the form of a table of correspondences, its paradigm being found in totemic arrangements. 5.2. The dynamic permutations of Indian culture interpreted through Hindu categories On the North American scene, cultural anthropology has tended to be relativistic ever since the early sixties. Anthropologists have emphasized the cultural construction of reality, looked for categorial systems, enduring arrangements, semantic maps and underlying premises which impose some coherence and order on the flux of changing reality, and have also stressed the conventionality and incommensurability of multiple cultural constructions. In their effort to discover rules and conventions which organize meaning and create convergence through various domains (beings, thoughts, actions, etc.) of a given culture, North American cultural anthropologists have generally adhered to two principles. The most radical have first tried to view each culture in its own terms rather than translating it into Western categories, and then have engaged in total analysis rather than in fragmentary interpretation of disconnected parts of the culture. Among the most important analytical methods of the sixties and seventies were those inspired by the "cultural account" of Schneider, the "symbology" of Turner and Douglas, and the "interpretive anthropology" of Geertz. All of these methods tended to stress the internal coherence of the semiological configurations that articulate individual behavior, cosmology, moral premises and the entire social order.

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The production of a reliable and valid interpretation of a culture "requires somewhat more than providing a meaningful cultural account: it requires building from the culture's natural categories a general system of concepts that can be formally defined in relation to each other; it requires developing words and measures that can be used rigorously for description, analysis and explanation within that culture" (Marriott 1989: 4). McKim Marriott, a Chicagobased anthropologist, has repeatedly insisted on the fact that Hindu India should be understood in Hindu categories and that an authentic Indian ethnosociology should develop on the basis of indigenous presuppositions and concepts rather than borrowing interpretive concepts from Western thought, a thought that he sees as grossly inappropriate for such a translational work. This anthropologist, who can broadly be connected to the Chicago culturalist school which developed around scholars such as Schneider, Turner, Geertz and Friedrich, has contributed greatly to the systematization of an analytical method for the interpretation of a culture in its own categories. The analytical procedures he proposes are particularly relevant for us because they have been applied in a complementary way to the study of classical textual Indology as well as to the on-the-ground ethnography. In his effort to construct an Indian ethnosociology, Marriott has combined three complementary analytical procedures, and validated his progressive interpretation of Hindu cultural categories through unceasing exchanges with Indianist and anthropologist colleagues. As a way to enter Indian culture, Marriott initially identified central cognitive categories on which people rely in their lives and which are referred to in classical Hindu texts. It became rapidly clear that the Hindu notions come in lists or in categorial sets such as the five elements, three humors, three "strands", three human aims, six flavours, eight sentiments, five senses, four classes or varnas... In searching for congruences, communalities and compatibilities across the different categorial sets or lists of concepts, he discovered four main properties of the Indian categorization of reality. All domains are divided into more than two elements; the divisions are made along a gradation (in terms of more or less) rather than in polar opposition; the notions are listed in a hierarchical order that goes from the more subtle to the more gross (from ether to earth for example); and finally notions in one series are translatable into the parallel notions in other series. These four properties were explained by the principle of appropriateness, or rtu-sätmya which is understood as the common geoclimatic underlying dimension through which the various categorial sets of concepts are put into contact. Zimmermann (1980) has convincingly demonstrated that sätmya acts as a structure of resonance, and it is in this sense that Marriott interprets the principle of appropriateness.

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39

As a second step, Marriott made a graphic representation of Hindu categories, making the claim that all elements of Hindu thought must be rated along at least three different dimensions. He then transferred and projected the various sets of notions within the spaces defined by a series of cubes, a three-dimensional geometric figure which appeared appropriate to him for the specificity of Hindu thought, although he has repeatedly said that such a geometric figure is inadequate for expressing all aspects of Hindu thought. The transposition of lists of notions in spatial positions within cubes facilitated the alignment of what goes together in different cubes: the element "ether" was connected with the humor "wind" and the strand "goodness", the element "fire" with the humor "bile", and so on. These various combinations were established on the basis of ethnographic evidence. In Marriott's mind, there is no inherent taxonomy attached to the transposition of the Hindu categories on a series of cubes, and rather than being seen as a static mechanical figure, the three-dimensional space is used for facilitating the understanding of the way transactions and relationships continually shift from one domain to another through a metonymic process of substitution (when someone says "fire" in reference to the elements, the listener can understand "bile" and refer it to humors, and so on). The projection of concepts upon cubic geometric forms should therefore be seen only as a device for facilitating analytical procedures. The third step consisted of the identification of the conceptual processes which explain the partial identities between the aligned notions and their mutual homologies. Marriott came to the conclusion that the Hindu substantial and fluid world is supported by the coexistence of three fundamental processes: mixing-unmixing; unmarking-marking; and unmatching-matching. The "mixing" process implies that the Hindu world is built on a logic of combinations, that all things interlink all the time with other things. The "unmarking" process translates the directional tendencies in Hindu thinking: from subtle to gross, from pure to impure, from wet to dry... The "unmatching" process refers to the fluctuating movement and disorder that "inappropriateness" creates in the universe and that appropriate action and rituals can correct by rematching things. Mixing goes with intersection, unmarking with inclusion and unmatching with disjunction-conjunction. Everything in Hindu culture requires characterization along at least these three processual dimensions, which are projected by Marriott onto three spatial dimensions of the cube. After having provided his three-dimensional construct for expressing the cultural world in which Hindus think and live, Marriott writes, "The model outlined is undoubtedly biased in the direction of its sources, which are most-

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ly Hindu, more north Indian than southern, more learned than popular, more of samkhya-yoga than of any other darsana, more ayurvedic than astrological, more orthodox than devotional, more high caste than low, and more male than female" (1989: 32). More than his bias about the sources of the fluid world and processual thought, upon which Marriott has constructed his Indian ethnosociology, it is his geometric mappings and diagrammatic projections of Indian cultural presuppositions which have been coldly received by some of his Indianist and anthropologist colleagues. The choice of a cubic graphing betrays, according to certain critical colleagues, a deep alienation from the way Indians themselves visualize their own cultural reality. Marriott may certainly be criticized for his stubborn and systematic use of his own geometrical constructs, but this is not, we feel, quite what is at stake. No matter how they are represented, in literary forms or in a system of charts and graphs, all interpretive constructs must be seen only as provisory translations, for the purpose of analytical work, into some form of categories and processes. For this reason, geometric constructs may look strange both to people of the culture and to fellow anthropologists who prefer, for example, to present literary accounts. The important question to be addressed here is rather that of the clarity of the steps followed in the construction of the representational structure, whatever this structure, and with the explanatory power of the proposed construct. It is precisely here that Marriott's interpretive work is particularly helpful, since this author has, more systematically than most others, made explicit how he has moved from textual and ethnographic data to their interpretation. What matters for Marriott is to identify the central "topical schemas" or the key encompassing processes which impose a given architecture on the whole cultural system. His work is exemplary in its analysis of the preferential schemas used in Hindu thought for organizing the various elements of reality, and for explaining and assigning meaning to the world. All this, however, inevitably leads to an epistemological and cognitive bias, and it is strange in his work that the stylistic and rhetorical part of the Hindu culture has been so poorly developed. Fortunately, the work of Francis Zimmermann, who has devoted much consideration to Hindu rhetorics, complements what is missing in Marriott's work. 5.3. A contextual semantic interpretation of mental health problems in the culture of rural Quebec Collective representations and practices in all human groups always emerge from a particular social configuration. For this reason, the cultural values and

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the systems of thought which characterize a region or a society cannot escape from their imprisonment within the social order in which they have historically been constituted. The social organization of a group therefore forms the primary referential series which serves as a basis for structuring the cognitive order of representations and the pragmatic order of actions. (Corin Bibeau-Martin-Laplante 1990: 21) The two authors of this introductory chapter have themselves applied the conceptual framework just cited in their study of the representations and practices connected with mental health problems in a rural region of Quebec, characterized by the presence of three subcultures organized around mining, lumbering and agricultural activities. Their contextual and semantic approach assumes that the popular models used in the three milieus for identifying, explaining and reacting to mental health problems cannot be understood independently of the social context of each of the three subcultures and the specific value system that prevails in it. In developing our model for interpreting the complex system of meaning and practices attached to mental health problems, we have combined, and partly reoriented, the "semantic network analysis" of the Goods (1977; 1982) and the "explanatory models" that Kleinman (1988) made popular. Specific analytical instruments have been developed by these anthropologists for collecting the cognitive, affective, symbolic and experiential elements which enter the cultural construction of mental health problems. Although the context is somewhat considered in the work of Kleinman and Goods, we connect the semantic universe of signs, meaning and actions more explicitly than they do with the social dynamics of communities, with their central cultural codes, with the "conceptions of the person", and so on. The specific architecture of the systems of signs, meaning and actions that the mining, lumbering and agricultural subcultures have constructed for themselves is explicitly read in our work against the relevant sociocultural background. In order to elicit the systems of signs, meaning and action that prevail in mining, lumbering and agricultural cultures of rural Quebec, we conducted three complementary and interactive activities. On one hand, we collected a large corpus of narratives about known cases of people who have actually suffered from mental health problems. Key informants in each subculture were offered a series of fourteen behavioral descriptions of mental disturbances, and it is in reference to these descriptions that they offered narratives in which they described the signs through which the problem was identified, as well as the explanatory meaning assigned by people to the problem and the actions actually performed in order to solve it. The content analysis of these narratives was first done in reference to each subculture (mining, lumbering

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and agricultural), to each behavioral description, and afterwards crosssubculturally, in order to identify the dominant signs, explanations and practices that characterize each cultural milieu. This analytical procedure made manifest the existence of a limited number of themes that crosscut the various narratives in a given subculture. The features that came out were expressed in the form of a semantic net which interwove various threads around a few central knots and which contribute to form distinctive patterns in each subculture. A parallel study of general ethnography was conducted in a sample of villages and cities whose main working activities were based on mines, forests and agriculture. The three subcultures were compared in reference to their dominant forms of social organization, their management of autonomy and control of their own history, and their degree of openness and closedness to the outside world. The analysis of the collected ethnographic data led to the identification of patterns and focal points around which the whole social and cultural life of each subculture seemed to be organized. These organizing focal points have themselves been interpreted as being largely linked to the socioeconomic forces and natural environment that have shaped each cultural milieu. In order to express the interactive pattern that connects the external constraints with the internal organization of values and social forms in the various subcultures, we have coined two notions: that of "structuring conditions" to refer to the influence of external objective realities on the culture, and that of "organizing experiences" to refer to the enduring communal experiences that provide some distinctiveness to each culture. As a final analytical step, we have connected the semantic net in which the systems of signs, meanings and actions have been transposed with the focal points and patterns provided by the analysis of ethnographic data. Linkages have been expressed through a network of connections that took the form of diagrams and maps. The topography of these relations indicates the key categories and the knots in reference to which the social and cultural network is organized in each subculture. Such a procedure allows us to make manifest the relative coherence of the arrangements and nets that interlink the systems of signs, meaning and actions with the dominant cultural values and the specific social organization in each milieu. Our method combines semantic with contextual approaches, and contributes to the articulation of the structural constraints, organizing conceptual categories, key values, social dynamics and the specific construction of the system of signs, meaning and actions. The analysis shows clearly that there is no perfect congruence between the different sets of links and that many networks and patterns create discontinuities and sometimes contradictions,

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within the system of thought and action. We define culture as an interactive series of configurational patterns of representations, conceptions and behaviors which form what we have called the systems of signs, meaning and actions; but we also see these semantic and pragmatic systems as deeply grounded within a sociocultural context and have, for that reason, stressed the importance of combining the analysis of the "logico-meaningful patterning" with that of "causal-functional linkages". Semantics is contextualized through the analysis of the social and cultural genesis of representations and practices. 5.4. Ethnographic

relevance

What is the ethnographic relevance of the interpretations made by anthropologists, whatever the method they actually use? (Keesing 1987). Many radical critics argue that structural, culturalist and semantic methods generally lead to a selection of ethnographic data, keeping that which fits the combinatory or premutational tables and discarding all the rest. Particularly, severe criticism has been addressed to classical structuralists, who are presented as practicing a "purely gnostic approach" which does not seek to support the reconstructed combinatory system on the basis of a careful collection of ethnographic data. Levi-Strauss has himself challenged his detractors in stating explicitly in The savage mind that "the principle of a classification is never postulated; only the ethnographic survey, or more precisely experience, can enucleate it a posteriori" (1962: 79; our own translation). Levi-Strauss assures colleagues that the basic series of binary oppositions are explicitly grounded in ethnography. In reference to metaphoric transpositions and metonymic substitutions, which imply a formal interpretation based on analogy and symmetry, Levi-Strauss himself has acknowledged that there may exist a certain distortion "in relation" to ethnographic reality, adding that interpretation inevitably carries the risk of "constructing reality". In any case, there exists among structuralists and most semioticallyminded anthropologists the conviction that people are not aware of, or able to conceptualize, their own cultural reality because culture is by definition located at the pre-reflexive level. It is therefore up to the anthropologist to give open expression to what escapes the people themselves. Levi-Strauss worked in and on cultures in which written literatures were absent. This was not the case for Marriott, who always had the possibility of seeking enlightenment in textual sources when he was facing some obscurity in the interpretation of actual ethnographic data. Marriott has always vigorously argued that his reconstructed model of Indian culture does justice

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to ethnographic reality as well as to the Hindu texts, although he has admitted that he may be biased in the direction of the classical literary tradition. Ultimately it will be up to specialists in Hindu classical literature to assess the reliability of the interpretations provided by Marriott, the anthropologist. In our reconstruction of the systems of signs, meaning and action in rural Quebec culture, we have built on the discourses of people, on their narratives and on the interpretations they were themselves assigning to the mental health problems lived in the community and experienced by neighbors or by their own family. We assumed that the area of mental health, although an unbounded domain with dark zones and ill-defined boundaries, constituted a royal path of access to the whole semantic and cultural system. Indigenous interpretations of signs, meaning and actions provided by local key informants have actually served as the basis of second level ethnographic interpretation which sometimes simply draws out indigenous interpretations and in other cases builds independently on the basis of knowledge of the larger context that may escape the informants. To assess the accuracy of our anthropological interpretations, we came back to the people themselves with our own positions. We also plan to test the ethnographic relevance of our interpretation more radically through what can be called a "reality control". We would like to nourish the clinical practice of regional practitioners in mental health and assess the relevance of our anthropological interpretations through this practical procedure. This is the reality test to come.

6. Conclusion: Four rules for grounding anthropological interpretation on a reliable basis This conclusion brings us back to the library of Babel, a labyrinthine image that has remained a constant point of reference during the entire history of Western reflection upon the interpretive process. Babel is the Hebrew name for the Mesopotamian metropolis of Babylon, the city of astrologers and diviners which has always been opposed to Jerusalem. Its library refers to the circular ascending and many-floored tower (ziggurat) which was attached to the great temple of Babylon and from the top of which were read the signs of the stars and the positions of planets. The Biblical tradition has always associated this idolatrous effort to decipher the messages of the cosmic order with the confusion of languages and the division of humankind into nations. The nominal root "blV which gave the Semitic word Babel has been read as evoking the idea of confusion (see Bible of Jerusalem). Such a reading is con-

Introduction

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vergent with the Hebrew belief that human beings cannot have access to the right understanding of the world by themselves and that only their God Yahweh could announce his own message in clear terms to the only People he has elected. For this reason, one Book alone can exist rather than a full library of texts, and only one referential Torah, already given, rather than a never-ending accumulation of inadequate readings of reality. The effort made by the astrologers of the Mesopotamian ziggurats to create a universal system of reference based on stars and constellations collapsed in the multiplicity of referential systems, each nation with its own divinatory procedures, its own language, its own books and its own culture. And the first nation that created its own temple with its own God and its own Book was paradoxically the Hebrews themselves. Babel still remains the symbol of the complexity and of the irreductibility of differences to sameness. The library of Babel connotes above all the originality of the semiological systems invented by the different cultures of the world as well as the obscurity of these systems for anyone who pretends to decipher them from an outsider's position. In their interpretive work, anthropologists occupy a very uncomfortable and ambiguous position. On the one hand, they have no other choice but to rely heavily upon the exegetical traditions developed by the Peoples of the Book and by the Greek culture of the logos. On the other, they agree with the Babylonians who built the Tower of Babel that each nation possesses in its own right its own semiological systems and that these systems should be understood in their own terms. In order to walk the perilous path that should, it is hoped, lead anthropologists into other worlds, we suggest following four basic rules which may serve as guidelines. These rules are actually applied in this volume to the interpretation of concrete textual and ethnographic data borrowed from various cultural traditions and are presented here in the form of aphorisms that should be read in the context of the preceding pages. They are also phrased in an imperative rhetoric in order to carry the idea of urgency, as well as the moral obligation for anthropologists to ground their interpretive work upon a solid basis. (I) Acquire familiarity with the surface of reality Disciplined effort is necessary for gaining familiarity with the world of others. This implies the physical hardship of fieldwork, the ascetic learning of foreign languages, and the slow inner transformation of the anthropologist who tries to enter into close contact with the people of another culture. Proximity with others passes first through the sharing of daily activities and

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the progressive grasping of the intersubjective network of meaning they have spun around themselves. The surface of things should not be seen as an artifice or a mask — much less as a lie — but rather as the real scene where things happen and where the anthropologist should become a cultural actor. In order to illustrate how ascetic this process of acquiring familiarity with the language and culture of others can be, we can refer to the techniques used in oral societies for the bodily incorporation of tales and myths. Repetitive recitations accompanied by vocal and musical exercises have been the rule everywhere, and the physical and intellectual discipline of reciting seems to have been intended to produce a sort of assimilation of the person by the oral text. In cultures with written traditions, calligraphic exercises based on the classic texts have been the rule wherein words became elaborate esthetic ornaments serving to visually support the reciting and writing of the text. In Part One of this volume, "Ascetic readings of the text: Proximity and fidelity", four authors present their anthropologically-inspired readings of a classical Chinese Taoist text, of two Indian mythological narratives, of chapter nine of the Biblical Book of Revelation, and finally of Captain Cook's shipboard journals. In his analysis of the Chinese Huainan Zi, Charles LeBlanc demonstrates that a plunge into this Taoist treatise means an immersion into the ancient Chinese thought, culture and society. On the basis of his philological, grammatical and rhetorical analysis, he has found that a single overriding concept pervades the whole Huainan Zi and imposes a logical consistency on the entire text. This concept, which is central in the theory of resonance (ganying), postulates that all things in the universe are interrelated according to preestablished patterns. Only an ascetic reading based on a solid knowledge of Chinese classical language and philosophy, and more globally, of the whole culture, has made possible the discovery of the notion of resonance as the central principle of intelligibility of the text. John Leavitt convincingly demonstrates that a given presupposed world forms the inherent context in the two Indian stories he ventures to interpret, one drawn from ancient Sanskrit literature and the other sung by a modern Kumaoni bard. The two poets narrate basically the same story but with a world of different presuppositions which are not explicitly transparent and which must be discovered through a rigorous exegetical process. In other words, each narrative carries its own context or, in Leavitt's words, its own metatext which is constituted by the culturally-defined purposes for which the text is produced. The linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the two poetic narratives leads Leavitt to discover the linkages of each text with other texts

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and with the basic preexisting story that both have incorporated and rephrased in accordance with local situations, a story in which Siva grants a boon to a demon. In order to delineate the presuppositions present in the texts, Leavitt distinguishes with subtlety between the macrocontext and the metatext. Jacques Chevalier finds, in chapter nine of the Book of Revelation, a hidden and repressed dialectic between astrological religion and logocentric Yahwism, between the killing Scorpio and the redeeming Lamb of God, between the cult of the stars and the cult of the historical Logos. In reality, the equations Scorpio - lamb and Sabaism - Yahwism are everywhere bracketed and repressed within the text, and only an interpretation of an anagogical type can reveal the underside (dark side) of the text. As a post-structuralist semiotician, Chevalier uses what he calls "scheme-analysis". He first identifies the dominant signs that lie at the surface of the text (the zoological code is preferred to the astrological one); then he reconstitutes the central elements of the underground plot which invades the text (the repression of the Zodiacal gods), and finally he finds in the deep layers of the text traces of the presence of an illicit astrological religion. The interpretation of Chevalier is anagogical in the sense that he reads the Book of Revelation against the logocentric and historically-oriented message which distinguishes the Judaeo-Christian religion from other religious beliefs. A radical rereading of the shipboard journals of Captain Cook, a literary genre in its own right at the time of the maritime explorations of the world, leads Gananath Obeyesekere to take an alternative view of the too-rapidly assumed deification of Captain Cook by the Hawaiians. Obeyesekere shows that the events narrated in the journals are integrated within pregiven structures, which are those pertaining to the British and European world, and that the Hawaiian voices are suppressed in the text. Although essential, a literal exegesis of the text is insufficient for unveiling the hidden native voices. In his reconstruction of these voices, Obeyesekere has followed a method which has two main characteristics. He has first demonstrated that the verbal exchanges that the British sailors had with the Hawaiians about cannibalism were radically biased. While each side believed that the other was a cannibal, such a fantasy being an expression of the dark side of all human beings, it was "civilized" British who projected upon the "savages" the image of the cannibal. In addition, discourses about cannibalism, notes Obeyesekere, were themselves trapped within a context of power and terror imposed upon the Hawaiians. The apotheosis of Captain Cook is seen by Obeyesekere as an interpretative construction made by the British of a war event that they locked into their fantasy about cannibalism and about the return of the god Lono.

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(2) Look behind the scenes and read between the lines The meaning that matters for people does not lie at the surface of things, although we have to pass through this surface in order to gain a deeper understanding of what that meaning may be. It is not, however, in stripping off series of layers that we will gain this understanding and that "secret meanings" that people may hide, intentionally or unintentionally, will be revealed. We have repeated many times in this text that all cultures are built in such a way that they occult the central mechanisms which hold things together. People collectively lie to themselves in order to trick each other and to build "false" worlds that enable them to oversee the shortcomings of their mental processes, to believe in their own inadequate Weltanschauung and to conceal their existential incompetence. Cultures are always deceptive and mendacious "texts". Although we have refused to see cultures as analogous to texts, it is still in reference to texts that the reality of hidden meanings can be the most appropriately expressed. Copyists of old times used to write commentaries and explanations in the margins when a given passage was too obscure or when there was some hesitation about the exact phrasing of the manuscript. These marginal notes in the transcriptions, which were often written in red (ruber in latin), became known as "rubrics" and constituted the most proximate commentaries made about the meanings of texts. There is no doubt that the margins were initially used as the location of commentary. And when texts were translated, a whole system of annotations, cross-references and glosses was developed to assure that the original sense was not distorted. Key notions and central categories were not given literal translation but rather were expressed in a variety of words added to one another in an effort to translate the various dimensions of the concepts. Once again, we see that it is between the lines of the translated texts that interpretation was inserted and it was only later on that an independent corpus of interpretation was elaborated. In Part Two of this book, "Text and sub-text: The grounding of interpretive violence", we will follow three anthropologists in their effort to elicit the hidden subtext of a culture. The first will find it in the margins, the second in the interstices and silent parts of the culture, and the third in the multiple disguises taken by what initially appeared to be pure criminal revenge but which was in reality grounded within the central values of the group. In these three studies, each of the authors has chosen a vantage point which permits him or her to reveal some of the hidden meanings. For Ellen E. Corin, what happens at the periphery of a culture is used for highlighting its central codes and for questioning the absoluteness of their affirmed centrality. For John G.

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Galaty, the confessions made during the rituals are seen as public acts of uncovering hidden transgressions. And for Roger M. Keesing, the hidden side of a murder becomes clear only when the interpreter sees it as a perverted initiatic act of warriors and as a death compensation requested by the angry spirits of the ancestors. (3) Walk in the footsteps of diviners We see interpretation as having a link with divination because divination constitutes an attempt to generate intelligibility out of contingency, to suppress the aleatory and to create meaning of some kind (Vernant 1972). Divinatory procedures vary cross-culturally but in all cultures they are built on the same basic principles. A limited number of signs are selected, each one assigned a symbolic value, and the different signs are associated in such ways that all possible positions may be given expression. The practical needs of escaping from contingency in daily life explain why divinatory systems have probably developed the most elementary common system of signs used by human beings, wherever they may have been. Techniques employed in divination have varied considerably, from mechanical procedures to the belief that a spirit or a god was inspiring the diviner. Whatever the procedures, authority has been attached to divination, its veracity has been attested and its way of producing truth accepted by people. Divination has not only provided techniques for deciphering meaning in reference to a conventional system of signs. The first traces of writing seem also to have been associated with divination in China and in many other cultures. The first classic book in China, the Yijing, was a book of divination, and in early times, the Torah was interpreted as an oracle. Oracles of all sorts accompanied the growth of rationality in the Greek world and when we examine carefully the specific systems of signs elaborated for divinatory purposes in different cultures, we discover that they express and translate into action the epistemological premises that structure each culture. Divination should then be seen as a procedure which permits access to specific modes of thinking that are prevalent in a culture. Assuming that divination is an interpretation from the inside, in Part Three, "Divination as interpretation from within", three authors examine how the way divination is organized in the culture they study provides guidelines for interpreting reality in local terms. Andräs Zempleni demonstrates that the verbal utterances and ritual acts of divination produce truth and suppress the aleatory in the domains of politics, religion and medicine. Mary Picone sees the Japanese divinatory system as a polythetic class through which are handled the problems related to the obscure causes of what

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happens in daily life. And finally Patrick Kaplanian discusses the relationships between the indigenous system of interpretation and the interpretation provided by the anthropologist, on the basis of two actual cases of spirit possession. In this discussion, the continuities and discontinuities between the two sorts of interpretation are assessed. (4) Commit yourself to a cooperative creative effort In this chapter, we have shown that the interpretation of texts implies a cooperation between the writer and the reader, the latter being asked to fill the blank spaces. We have also presented the community as a co-author who fully participates in the interpretive work by providing not only raw data but also interpretation from the inside. And the whole history of interpretation that we have briefly discussed may appear to many as a huge, never-ending compilation of commentaries on commentaries, upon which new interpretations have to build. The cooperative effort required by the process of interpretation should, however, not be equated with empathy during fieldwork, or with the sympathy of the ethnographic encounter put forth by dialogical anthropology. These factors are of course necessary, but the commitment to a cooperative creative effort that we suggest arises from something much more fundamental. It first emerges from the fact that meaning is never an already-given collective product but is rather unceasingly cooperatively created by cultural actors, negotiated among themselves on different stages, and publicly revealed. The calling for a cooperative effort is still more fundamentally a question of ontology. Jerome Rousseau demonstrates convincingly in Part Four, "The cooperative work in interpretation", that "thought is always a social activity", that the subject who creates meaning is "a transindividual subject" and that the thinking subject can hold simultaneously or sequentially contradictory views. As a complement to Rousseau's "transindividual subject", James W. Fernandez completes this volume by grounding his reflexion around "egocentric particulars" in the system of personal pronouns used in different languages and as an ultimate homage to philosophy; he refers to the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset who "recognizes as fundamental the discovery of the Ί ' in the 'other' as the paradoxical source of the sense of self". Collaboration with others is inscribed within this basic communality of being.

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"The interpretive turn: A second look", in Paul Rabinow - W. M. Sullivan (eds.), Interpretive social sciences: A second look. Berkeley: University of California Press: 1 - 3 0 . "Le symbolisme et l'explication structurale", Cahiers Internationaux du Symbolisme 4: 81 - 9 6 . "The model of the text: Meaningful actions considered as a text", Social Research 38(3): 5 2 9 - 5 6 2 [Reprinted in: Paul Rabinow - W. M. Sullivan (eds.), Interpretive social science: A reader. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.] La metaphore vive, Paris: Seuil. [The rule of metaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.] Du texte ά Faction. Essais d'hermeneutique 11. Paris: Seuil.

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Vattimo, Gianni 1987 "Ermeneutica come koine", AUT AUT (Special Issue on Margini dell'ermeneutica) 217-218: 3-11. 1985 La fine della modernita. Nichilismo ed ermeneutica. Firenze: Garzanti. [1988] [ The end of modernity: Nihilism and hermeneutics in post-modern culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.] Vernant, Jean-Pierre (ed.) 1972 Divination et rationalite. Paris: Seuil. Zimmerman, F. 1980 "Rtu-Sätmya: The seasonal cycle and the principle of appropriateness", Social Science and Medicine 14B: 9 9 - 1 0 6 .

Parti Ascetic readings of the text: Proximity and fidelity

From cosmology to ontology through resonance: A Chinese interpretation of reality Charles Le Blanc

1. The intellectual development of China in perspective In a famous text, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) remarked: It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequences of discoveries. These are to be seen no where more conspicously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world, the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries. (1960: 122)1

Far from being "obscure and inglorious", the origin of each of these three discoveries is Chinese, spanning the period between the first and twelfth century. The research of Joseph Needham has shown that the flow of scientific ideas and techniques until the seventeenth century was from East Asia to Western Europe, mainly through the mediation of the Arabs (1956: I: passim). The reversal of the flow from the West to East Asia is a historically recent phenomenon, not more than a few centuries old. The evidence which Needham brought to light in his monumental although unfinished Science and Civilisation in China (14 vols, 1956-1986) gave rise in the mind of its readers to a question which, in its very formulation, articulates a fundamental problem of transcultural understanding: "Why did China, despite her manifest advance over Europe in the observation of nature and in technological innovations until the seventeenth century, fail to produce scientific systems and to undergo a scientific revolution, as happened in the West?" 2 In response, many historians, scientists, and sinologists, came forth with intriguing solutions, acknowledging all the while the limits of their own methodological approach. 3 This is because the question deals not only with cultures, but with two distinct civilization complexes, the Indo-

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European and Semitic centred in Western Europe on the one hand and the Sinitic centred in China on the other. In many ways, these civilizations stand in homologous opposition and alterity. It seems that, inasmuch as anthropology provides a broad and pluridisciplinary hermeneutical approach to understand cultures and civilizations other than one's own, the question would benefit from an anthropological consideration. Of course, the question itself, as phrased above in line with the main thrust of the studies that have so far been published on the subject, is laden with subjective, unexpressed, and even unexamined, preconceptions (Sivin 1982: 136). It is first assumed that there is a need and a necessity for non-Western societies to go through the same kind of scientific revolution as Europe underwent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Secondly, it is assumed that as modern science and technology are an intrinsic function of society and culture, non-Western societies should be transformed in the same ways as the West was by the scientific revolution. Thirdly, the chronological priority of the scientific revolution in the West is supposed to reveal that it understood the nature of the world in a way that no other culture or civilization could match. Finally, there is the perception that modern science and technology, despite their Western origins, have become objective, value-free, universal, having as their only criterion the true essence of reality. The fallacy of these four preconceptions need not be belabored. They show the need to constantly re-establish the critical distance between oneself and the subject of one's own discourse. We must assume that even when we readily exert this will to self-criticism, the black cat we chased out in plain daylight through the front door sneaks right back in the dark through the back door. Among the reasons given to account for China's failure to produce scientific systems, we may single out a few types: the Chinese propensity for the concrete rather than the abstract; the logographic writing system; the absence of applied mathematics and logic; the authoritarian socio-political system; the aesthetic conception of nature; and so forth. 4 These reasons would seem to be relevant but are inadequate. In each case, one seeks to approach an extremely complex phenomenon, the understanding of a distinct civilization, from a very narrow angle, as if one were to explain history par le nez de Cläopätre. In order to do justice to the breadth of this question, the methodological approach has to be redefined. What would be needed is a group of scholars representing the main disciplines of the human and social sciences, and in which anthropology, on the strength of its inherent pluridisciplinary approach, would play the role of catalyst. This group would have two central tasks: (1) to study the manifold

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data gathered by Needham and other scholars and to place this data in its proper historical, social and cultural context and; (2) to elaborate a common methodology and hermeneutics that would respect as fully as possible the specificity and even the alterity of the Chinese phenomena under consideration, and allow the various disciplines involved to efficiently communicate their respective insights to each other. But my purpose here is more modest. It is to study, as a contribution to the problem posed above, the ancient Chinese idea of ganying, here translated as "resonance". It has received too little attention from modern scholars, due in part to its inclusion in writings that did not belong to the Chinese classical tradition. The study of this notion, which has both scientific and philosophical overtones, will provide an inside view of one strand of the intellectual tradition of China and throw some light on why the Chinese did not develop scientific systems.

2. The strange world of resonance Ganying is a compound or binomial expression. Each of its composites may function grammatically and semantically as an independent word, for ancient Chinese was, basically, monosyllabic. Gan has as its semantic field the notion of affect, feeling, stimulus and may syntactically function as a verb (to be affected, to be stimulated), a substantive (affect, stimulus), an adverb (affectively, feelingly), or an adjective (affective, stimulating), depending solely on the relative position of the word within the sentence. Syntactic polyvalence was a feature of ancient Chinese. The meaning of ying focuses upon the idea of response, reaction, reflex, effect. Ying may also function as a verb, a noun, an adverb, and an adjective on the strength of word-context. The expression ganying may be literally translated, in the substantive mode, as "action and reaction", "stimulus and response", "affect and effect", and so on. However, as we shall see in more detail later, the expression was first applied, starting with the fourth century B.C., to the study of musical and acoustic phenomena, like, for example, the sympathetic vibration of two chords that are perfectly attuned.5 Therefore, in the light of its initial usage, ganying is better translated by the expression "resonance", which contains synthetically the idea of stimulus and response. 6 This expression was first used in the philosophical commentaries on the Book of Changes (Yijing) and was further expanded by the School of Naturalists (Yin-yang and Five Elements) of the Jixia Academy during the fourth century B.C. One of the main philosophers of this school was Zou Yan

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(305-240), whose work, except for some fragments, has unfortunately been lost. However, we know that Zou Yan exerted much influence on the thinkers of the third and second centuries B. C. We thus find important developments of the idea of ganying in three philosophical handbooks of the third and second centuries B.C., namely the syncretist Lii shi chunqiu (Spring and Autumn of Mr. Lu) of Lu Buwei (d. 235), the Confucian Chunqiu fanlu (The Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn) of Dong Zhongshu (1797-104?), and the Taoist Huainan zi (The Book of Master Huainan) of Liu An (1797-122). Insofar as it deals with the workings of nature and the universe, the Huainan zi is especially relevant to the subject of this study, and will thus constitute the main focus of our attention.7 My endeavor to unravel a strand of Chinese thought surrounding the notion of resonance in the Huainan zi forced me to confront my distance from the subject, a distance which makes itself felt on two levels: linguistic and ontological. In the first instance, the relevant texts themselves go back more than two thousand years and belong to a linguistic tradition alien to the Indo-European family of languages, particularly, French, English, Latin, and Greek, through which my unreflective conception of the world was formed. I believe that my basic understanding of reality was acquired more by the structures inherent in these languages than by any explicit content they conveyed. Against this background, some striking linguistic peculiarities of the ancient idiom in which the Huainan zi was written may be singled out: (1) monosyllabism: each Chinese word is one single sound; each sound has a definite semantic field; (2) tonality: each sound is marked by a tone, which determines its discriminate semantic field; (3) total absence of inflection: each monosyllable is as unalterable as diamond; there are no conjugations, no declensions, no morphological changes whatsoever; (4) syntactic polyvalence of each monosyllable: syntactically, each monosyllable is neutral or amorphous; it has no a priori syntactic function; it is the relative position of the monosyllable in the sentence that determines the function; usage and frequency favored certain functions for given sounds; (5) homonymy: a large number of monosyllables have an identical pronunciation but different meanings; the tones, which affect each syllable, provide a very limited measure of differentiation, since dozens of homonyms may have the same tone, but still differ semantically;

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(6) logographic writing system: each distinct toned syllable is represented by a different invariable character with a definite semantic field. The Chinese character does not primarily represent the sound, as do words in alphabetical writing systems, but the idea or the object. Therefore, the structural relation between the spoken and written language in ancient Chinese is quite different from that of the alphabetical languages. (7) absence of capitalization, punctuation, and paragraph division: the ancient Chinese text is a dense, homogeneous tissue, whose invisible pattern can only be grasped by a structural or morphological analysis of the way the words relate to each other in a given sentence, by unweaving the warp and the woof. The language is not self-analytical, like Sanskrit, Greek or Latin, but synthetic, like the flow of perception. Inasmuch as language is organically and continuously linked to society and culture both as its source and its outcome, the plunge into the Chinese text of the Huainan zi was but the focal point of an immersion into ancient Chinese society and culture. Perhaps an analogy may be drawn between understanding the written narratives and theories of ancient Chinese thinkers such as Liu An and listening to the tales, myths, and wisdom of some of the contemporary "uncontaminated" sages. At the same time, we must be mindful of the limitations of a textual approach; the understanding of a living community or of an individual within a community is of incommensurable complexity as compared to the understanding of a text, however strange the latter may appear. The difference is one of kind, not merely of degree. Textual and oral narratives are but one element in understanding society and culture, but society and culture form the indispensable environment for understanding text and narrative. The distance is considerable at the ontological level as well - in view of the Weltbild put forward by the Huainan zi. Using an an array of literary and euristic devices, it seeks to present us with an overall scheme of the universe, encompassing, as it says "that which is so large that there is nothing outside and so small that there is nothing inside" (Huainan zi 7: 15a). Meaning does not issue from abstraction, neither from linear logic, nor from causation, but echoes forth from the constantly changing position of things relative to one another in concrete time and space. Ontological relativity is the counterpart of syntactic polyvalence. Being comes from Non-Being. Being is essentially change and creativity. The movement of Being is to return to its own ineffable origin. This return is an ontological and not a mental reflection. It is Being's self-transformation. In its perfection, which is the standpoint of the True Man (zhenren), the world may be compared to myriad sounds that produce them-

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selves at the right place and the right time so as to harmonize with the other sounds and form a symphony. There is no composer or director of this harmony. There are no musicians behind the instruments, blowing the horn or strumming the strings. There are no instruments that produce the sounds, but just the sounds themselves. Are we still in a sane or rational world, or must we fall back on Valery's words: "Toute explication du monde qui n'est pas etrange est fausse". Our spontaneous response to strangeness and otherness is to reduce it to self-sameness. Or we may deliberately attempt to divest ourselves of our native viewpoint by identifying totally with a Chinese text like the Huainan zi, transforming it into a kind of scriptural incantation or catechism that becomes true by mere repetition, rememoration, and celebration. Between these two extremes, hermeneutics opens a way to understand the other in the full respect of its specificity, while at the same time keeping a critical distance that implies an awareness of one's own viewpoint. This may come close to Aristotle's (384-322 B.C.) definition of knowledge as "becoming the other" qua other (fieri aliud in quantum aliud). For Kant (1724-1804), true knowledge is "synthetic", judgment being the intellectual unity of a diversity, of things that are different from each other. In this light, one may ask whether Gianni Vattimo's, La Fin de la modernite, is not unduly influenced by Heidegger, when he concludes rather unexpectedly his chapter on "Hermeneutique et anthropologic" by these words: Anthropology (like hermeneutics) is not a meeting with radical alterity, nor a "systematization" of the human phenomenon in structural terms; it most likely falls back on its form of dialogue - the third of those forms which, in our culture, have historically shaped anthropology: a dialogue with the archaic - but under the unique guise in which the arche can be given in the era of achieved metaphysics: the form of survival, marginality and contamination. (1987: 167; translation from French original)

This position gives rise to three questions: (1) Does it not create a new gap between hermeneutics and anthropology, a gap Vattimo's book intended to bridge? By limiting cultural anthropology to a "dialogue with archaism", Vattimo risks isolating it from the other theoretical fields of the human and social sciences and restricting it to islets of survival, marginality, and contamination. (2) Is not archaism, in the final analysis, constitutive of cultural anthropology only insofar as it is a modality of cultural alterity? In this sense, cultural alterity need not be defined by reference to archaic societies, but may very well be a contemporary phenomenon among modern societies

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or even within a given society. Are not hermeneutics and anthropology equally relevant to the synchronic as to the diachronic dimension of sociocultural development and interaction? (3) One may finally wonder whether the metaphor of "dialogue " is not too fuzzy to encompass the proper object of hermeneutics and of anthropology. These two, as scientific endeavors, can contribute to a theory of intercultural and even of transcultural communication, but this does not seem to be their primary objective. In this paper I treat hermeneutics as a discourse on alterity, on otherness, on difference, on what appears at first blush as abnormal or even absurd, but a discourse which, through a process of familiarization, is an appropriation of alterity in the sense of Aristotle's definition of knowledge given above. I believe it is in man's power to become the other without self-destruction. It is true that we find in extreme forms of love and mysticism a desire to lose oneself in the other, to sacrifice and obliterate oneself for the sake of the other. But this is not the calling of hermeneutics. However, the appropriation of the other is not a reduction to sameness with oneself, although the Medieval thinkers insisted that "omne cognitum ad modum cognoscentis cognoscitur". Kant even reinforced this tradition by enhancing the role of the knower in the process of understanding. I can understand what it means for my friend to have lost a parent, because I am able to represent this event, through imagination, memory, and empathy, within my own experience. I am able "to put myself in my friend's shoes", and to become my friend precisely as one who has lost a parent.

3. A hermeneutical approach to the idea of resonance in the Huainan zi The familiarization with and the appropriation of the ideas contained in the ancient Chinese text entitled Huainan zi, in particular, the idea of resonance, is a process that must follow principle. Each of the steps described below may be construed as interpretive tools that enable the reader to understand the text while respecting its intrinsic objectivity and intellectual coherence. 3.1.

Hypothesis

The theoretical orientation of this section may be spelled out as a threefold hypothesis:

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First, as a working definition, the idea of resonance means that all things in the universe are interrelated and influence each other according to emerging patterns, so that interaction appears as spontaneous and not caused by an external agent. The idea of resonance thus plays the role of a cosmological principle, that is, a rational device whereby to understand the universe as a totality, man being part of that totality. Second, although it was conceived as a cosmological principle, resonance is only fully realized in man. The cosmos does not exist as a distinct entity for its own sake, but is created for the full actualization of the True Man. Thus cosmology was bent to serve the highest purposes of man. The Huainan zi ontology was anthropocentric. Third, from a Western viewpoint, one may ask whether resonance did not play in the Huainan zi a comparable role to causality in traditional Western thought. Causality was an important operational concept in the early phases of the scientific revolution in the West, although its role became practically insignificant in view of the recent development of science. Did the blending of cosmology into a man-oriented ontology play the role of an inhibiting factor in China's development of scientific systems? 8 3.2. The establishment of a critical text We know from reliable historical sources that the text of the Huainan zi was completed around the year 139 B.C. The work was written by several scholars under the inspiration and editorship of Liu An, Prince of Huainan. Huainan was a small kingdom in Southeast China, which was much under the sway of the shamanism and idealism of Chu culture, as distinguished from the more realistic and practical philosophies of North China. The Huainan zi was profoundly influenced by the poetical and philosophical works emanating from Chu, most of all by those of Qu Yuan (3437-277 B. C.) and Zhuang zi (3697-286? B.C.), the first, one of China's greatest poets, and the second, one of her foremost philosophers and prose-writers. It is possible to reconstruct to a certain extent the history of its transmission, first in the guise of fragments and quotations in ancient works, mainly from the Tang period (A.D. 618-960) until the first extant printed edition, dating from the Renzong period (1023 -1063) of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1126). I will not enter here into the complexities of the high textual criticism of Chinese texts, which, given the nature of the Chinese logographic writing system, present problems of transmission unheard of in the Western manuscript tradition. Because of the cumulative textual corruption, it is necessary to establish a critical text if we are to deal with the

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authentic and integral work that was written more than 2000 years ago. To give but one example relating to our subject, the Chinese expression ganying, which we translate as "resonance", was widely used in Chinese Buddhist texts to translate the Sanskrit word karma. This had a direct influence on the Taoist exegetical and hermeneutical tradition within which the Huainan zi was transmitted. 3.3. The inventory of resonance-related

texts

The Huainan zi is a relatively large work, comprising more than 130 000 characters. A full translation would amount to about 1000 pages in English. It presents itself as a summa of Taoist thought, organized around cosmology, society, and the individual (Heaven, Earth, and Man, according to the Chinese categories used at that time). There is no chapter devoted explicitly to the idea of resonance. Nevertheless, the idea runs through the whole work as one of its main organizing principles, although this may not be obvious at first reading and has been contested by some scholars. This problem, which properly belongs to the realm of interpretation, will be discussed below. What is beyond question is the recurrence of the "resonance" texts, with varying degrees of density and explicitness, all through the twenty-one chapters, including the last chapter, which is an explicative summary of the work as a whole. The reasons why we choose to study one theme in a book are to a large extent subjective and arbitrary. In this case, after I had become familiar with the Huainan zi, resonance appeared as an interesting but marginal topic, since it did not correspond to the title of any chapter, nor to the overt subjects studied in the work. Again, from the Taoist standpoint adopted by the Huainan zi, resonance appeared as an anomaly. Why a Taoist writer used it so often was a source of perplexity. My first task was to compile all the statements that related to resonance, fully taking into account the context in which they were found. Many statements explicitly contain the expression ganying. Other texts are implicit in the sense that either they do not contain the expression ganying, but some other equivalent expression, such as gandong (to be moved), xiangying (mutual response), yin (to induce), zhao (to summon), you (to originate from), and the list could go on; or, while containing no technical term relating to resonance, they nevertheless intend to express the idea. We may distinguish three kinds of logical statements about resonance. (1) First, some statements attempt to describe perceived or observed occurrences and recurrences of resonance:

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— When the lodestone moves iron, it is that something draws it. (Huainan zi 6: 6a) — When the eastern wind arises, fermenting wine bubbles and overflows. (Huainan zi 6: 3a) — When the silkworm exudes its silk, the chord of the shang musical note snaps. (Huainan zi 6: 3b) — The fusui mirror draws fire from the sun, the fangzhu mirror induces water from the moon. (Huainan zi 6: 4a) — When ruler and ministers have opposite minds, concave and convex halos appear in the sky (on each side of the sun). (Huainan zi 6: 4a) In these statements and in dozens of others that could be culled from the Huainan zi, we have basically the same logical structure: "Given A, there is B". Not only are the two phenomena simultaneous, but there is a necessary link or contact between the two states of affairs. The author is formulating laws and regularities on the basis of empirical observation: each and every time the lodestone is put in presence of iron, it draws it, etc. (2) A second class of statements formulates general prescriptive propositions under which these concrete cases may be subsumed. They usually play the role of premises (deduction) or conclusions (induction) with regard to the concrete descriptions of resonance: — Things that belong to the same category respond to each other. (Huainan zi 6: 3a) — Each thing is affected inasmuch as it resembles the shape and category of other things. (Huainan zi 4: 4a) — That the most subtle essences (qi) respond to each other is obvious indeed. (Huainan zi 6: 4a) We pass imperceptibly from description to prescription, in other words, the statements are explicitly descriptive and implicitly prescriptive; the passage from the covert to the overt is rendered all the more inescapable on account of the syntactic indeterminacy of the classical Chinese language. (3) Finally, we find a third type of statement about resonance, namely, explanatory statements. These provide a general picture and theory of the universe and validate the ontological and epistemological aspects of resonance we have just evoked. This topic will be discussed in the last part of this paper. Suffice it to say here that this view holds that the world as we perceive it is the outcome of cumulative fragmentation in time, space, species and indivi-

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duals, of a primal unity when all things were simultaneously present to each other in a formless state. Things, at their deepest level, preserve a kind of "ontological memory " of this original state of oneness, and seek through an intricate network of correspondences to reenact their lost togetherness. Whence the all-pervasive phenomenon of resonance. 3.4. The classification of themes As more and more resonance-related texts are uncovered and collected, their rapprochement and comparison bring about a self-generating scheme of classification. For instance, chains of texts disseminated in the various chapters relate to the interaction between phenomena in the realm of nature: the lodestone attracts iron, but not tile; water tends to flow downward while vapour tends to rise upward. Some types of resonance occur between or among heavenly phenomena: the movement of celestial bodies in the firmament is construed to be a form of resonance between the sun, moon, planets, and stars; other types, between or among earthly phenomena: the mild spring wind is believed to make wine ferment and different kinds of terrain are thought to produce corresponding formations of clouds. A large number of resonance texts relate to the human world: for instance, it is asserted that genuineness of feeling in human relations lead, both at the family and at the state level, to spontaneous harmony and creativity. Resonance also operates in the field of the arts, of intellectual and moral pursuits. By far the larger number of resonance-related texts, however, bear on the interaction between the natural world and human society (tian ren ganying). It is obvious, that for the author of the Huainan zi, this interaction is not merely metaphorical. For instance, when the prince and his ministers hypocritically bear a grudge against each other, "horned halos" appear on each side of the sun; when the Fire star enters the constellation of the Heart, the earth trembles in the middle kingdoms; when, in the midst of battle, the holy King Wu brandished his sword toward the sun, the latter backtracked three stations in the sky to enable the king to achieve victory. We can see from these examples that resonance sometimes operates as a law or a regular principle, while in other instances it has the mark of a contingent, non-recurring event. Resonance usually operates between two entities or two realms. This we may call "relative resonance ". However, for the Huainan zi, true resonance is total. Only the True Man, the Taoist ideal man, can achieve "total resonance " with the universe, as we can see from the following text, which deserves a brief comment:

68 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15)

Charles Le Blanc When the lute-tuner struck the gong note on one instrument, the gong note on the other instrument responded; when he plucked the jue note on one instrument, the jue note on the other instrument vibrated. This resulted from having corresponding musical notes in mutual harmony. Now, let us suppose that someone changed the tuning of one string, in such a way that it did not match any of the five notes, and that, by striking it, it set all twenty-five strings resonating: in this case, there was as yet no differentiation as regards sound; it just happened that that sound that governs all musical notes was evoked. Thus, he who is merged with Supreme Harmony is beclouded as if deaddrunk, and drifts about in its midst in sweet contentment, unaware how he came there; engulfed in pure delight as he sinks to the depths, benumbed as he reaches the end, he is as if he had not yet begun to emerge from his origin. This is called the Great Merging. (Huainan zi 6: 6 b - 7 a )

The first thing to notice is that the text constitutes a literary unit, in the form of a metaphor or an allegory. The title could be: "The Allegory of the Lute Tuner and the True Man". Although the True Man is not named in the text, lines 11 and 14 provide a description which elsewhere in the Huainan zi is attributed to the True Man. The unity of the text is implied first by the comparative "thus" (gu) in line 11 and more importantly by the fact that lines 9 and 14 are parallel in syntactic structure. Parallelism is an important feature of ancient Chinese and serves as a device to indicate the intellectual and literary unity of a text. This literary unit is composed of two parts. The first part relates to the observation of an acoustic phenomenon which has scientific validity. Two perfectly tuned strings will in effect cause each other to vibrate in unison. This is the level of "relative resonance". This strand of thought is not Taoist, but belongs to the school of Naturalists, who developed a cosmology based on Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. Entities belonging to the same category, such as two strings perfectly tuned to the gong note (which in the Chinese musical theory belongs to the yang category) energize each other, influence each other, resonate together.

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Starting with line 6, the author proposes an imaginary hypothesis whereby, by plucking one particularly tuned string, the lute-tuner would perchance set all twenty-five strings of the Chinese luth or zither resonating. This is a symbolic, metaphorical way of signifying "total resonance". We know from parallel texts in other chapters, that the "untuned" string is silence. Silence is the source of all sounds and musical notes, just like formlessness is the source of all forms, and non-being is the source of being. Here the author uses rhetorical devices to express the analogical passage from "relative resonance" to "total resonance". Silence does not belong to any category of sound or musical notes: it can therefore evoke all sounds and all musical notes. The manner in which analogy is used here to pass from the relative to the totality is typically Taoist. So we find a weaving together of two strands of philosophy in this first part of the text: a naturalist strand stressing resonance between similar things, and a Taoist strand, stressing a kind of resonance that encompasses all things indiscriminately, transcending and containing both the yin category and the yang category. The second part of the text is purely Taoist. It is a description of the True Man, although, as we noted, the expression zhenren is not used. Like the untuned string that sets all twenty-five resounding, the True Man is in a state of total resonance with the universe. Non-emergence from the origin in line 14 parallels non-differentiation from sound in line.9 The True Man is in a state of total resonance because he has not begun to differentiate himself from the origin, i.e., from non-being. The "Allegory of the Lute-tuner and the True Man" contains in a nutshell the important ingredients of the notion of resonance. 3.5. The organization of meanings Austin once said that when faced with a text, one can ask three questions: 1) What does the text say? 2) What does the text intend to say? 3) What should the text say? Until now, we have touched upon the first question, which takes the text in its immediate literality. The question of meaning implies a mediation, in the sense that one takes into account the context and the intention of the author, both Sitz-im-Leben and Tendenzkritik. The context may be compared to a series of concentric circles circumscribing the text under consideration. For instance, it may be argued that the notion of resonance in the Huainan zi is to start with the observation of sets of corresponding phenomena or events in nature, in society and in the individual. Only when a reason is discovered for the simultaneity does the correspondence or event become intelligible and meaningful and can the pheno-

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menon be repeated. At a higher level, the Taoist True Man is he who, by selftransformation and mystical knowledge, is in a state of total resonance with the universe. Finally, resonance is the manifestation and operation of Tao, the ultimate principle of creativity and harmony, in our fragmented and fallen world. Moreover, resonance is equated with the Taoist notion of non-action (wuwei), which had distinctive political overtones. Through this equation, the author of the Huainan zi intended to demonstrate the superiority of a Taoist form of government and social organization over against the Legalist form. We accede to a new contextual circle, which takes us outside the text to the socio-political factions that were struggling for power at the time the Huainan zi was written. Before being able to fully grasp the nature of a work such as the Huainan zi, it is necessary to understand the complex political movements that marked the beginning of the Han dynasty (206 B. C. - A. D. 220) and the manner in which the teachings of the traditional philosophical schools of ancient China were appropriated for ideological purposes. Here the literary critic and philosopher must turn to the historian, to the sociologist, to the political scientist. The type of thinking of which resonance was a key notion was inseparable from other spheres of social activity, and cannot be understood as a closed system. On the face of it, resonance was viewed as a cosmological principle which was ultimately used to justify a particular form of government. However, for the author of the Huainan zi, such a distinction between the Ding an sich and the Ding für sich was purely artificial. For him resonance was a cosmological notion inasmuch as man was an integral part of the cosmos and the same basic principle ran through the organically continuous cosmic field: heaven, earth, and man. We are perhaps reminded of Socrates, who states in the opening pages of the Republic, that while the principle of justice dwells properly in the minds and hearts of men, it is there written too finely to be read easily, so that one should start by studying it in society and in the state, where it is written in letters large enough for everyone to see; in the same manner the principle of resonance, while it operates preeminently in the True Man, is easier to read in the revolutions of the firmament than in the movements of the human mind. But, in the final analysis, for Socrates as for Liu An, it was in the perfection of man that one found the ultimate entelechy of nature and that one also found a metaphor of the natural universe. 3.6. Interpretive

transposition

Until now, we have tried to understand resonance from the inside: from inside the text, from inside the context, which was both literary and sociological.

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But if the process of understanding is to be complete, this movement of immersion in the text must be followed by an emergence and withdrawal and a return to a "native" viewpoint chosen deliberately. What does the notion of resonance mean within the limits of my Western intellectual tradition? Is it possible to transpose it in a meaningful and faithful way in the idiom of that tradition? This calls for more than the translation of the Chinese words in a Western language, which is a first level of interpretation. Rather, it is an attempt to translate intellectual structures from one culture to another. It is a matter of intellectual transposition, not of value judgment. Here, I would like to explore the possibility that the principle of resonance played a role in early Chinese philosophy analogous to causality in traditional Western philosophy. In the West, the principle of causality was initially linked to the Greek notion of substance and substantial form and to linear logic.10 It played a vital role in the development of rational cosmology and science. Although Plato acknowledged both material (or efficient) cause and final cause, he chose the latter as the unique principle of sufficient reason (Phaedo 97c-e, in Plato 1961: 79). Aristotle defined the four types of cause, distinguishing between the material and efficient causes, but giving more importance to formal and final causes (Metaphysics 1, A, in Aristotle 1979: 22-23). For more than a thousand years, the principle of causality reigned supreme in the theological philosophy of Christiandom. God was conceived as the supreme efficient and final cause of the universe. As Edwin Burtt has shown in The metaphysical foundations of modern science, the scientific revolution in Europe cannot be understood outside the paradigm of causality that the Renaissance inherited from the Middle Ages (1964: 63). However, the scienza nueva overthrew final causality as irrelevant and transformed efficient causality into a type of mechanical causality, which could be expressed mathematically. Laplace gave a classic expression to this conception of causality: We should consider the present state of the universe as the effect of its previous state as well as the cause of the state that will follow. An "intelligence" that for a given moment would know all of the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings that compose it if nevertheless it was vast enough to undertake an analysis of this data, such an intelligence will embrace in one same formula the movements of the largest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atoms; nothing would be uncertain for it and the future, like the past would be present before its eyes. All efforts of the human mind in the quest for truth tend to approach, with no limit, the "intelligence" that we have just imagined. (1951: 2 9 3 - 2 9 4 ; translation from French original)

At the same time as Laplace was theorizing about causal scientism, Kant, awakened from his philosophical slumber by Hume's acute criticism of

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causality, was operating his "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy by stating that causality is not a character of things in themselves, but an a priori form of the intellect. This was true both for efficient causality, analyzed in the Critique of pure reason, and for final causality, studied in the Critique of judgment. Kant maintained that causal knowledge is true knowledge, synthetic knowledge: "The concept of cause refers to a particular kind of synthesis, namely that to something A, something entirely different Β is added, following a rule" (Critique of pure reason, in Kant 1952: 232). Kant considered causality, along with substance, to be the most important tool with which to understand the manifold phenomena that constitute our experience: it expressed the realis ratio of things. In a way all statements about reality, all judgments, could be subsumed under the principle of causality, just as all phenomena are perceived in the a priori framework of time and space. Even a bland statement such as "the tree is green" could be rephrased as "something causes that-tree-over-there-that-I-now-see to be green". For the combination of different things always supposes an external agent, a cause. Of themselves, things that are different, by definition, would not come together. Kant's insistance on the a priori character of causality as a form of all possible experience, led to the transformation of causality as a relation between things into causal statements about experience. Today, in philosophy and even more in science, causality is not conceived as a propriety of things but as a way of explaining stated facts that constitute experience. As long as the facts of experience are accurately described, causal relations are established by the transformation of prescriptive or normative statements into explanatory or analytical statements (St-Servin 1978: 190-191). In brief, we may say, at the risk of grossly simplifying, that the main function of causality in the Western tradition was to justify experience in the eyes of the intellect. For perceived phenomena do not manifest by themselves the reason of their existence and of their essence and modalities. But the intellect will not rest until it understands the reason for the existence and essence of given phenomena. The intellect has the means, through language, to infer or deduce the reason. Cause was the name given to this mediated reason. Here, the link between causality on the one hand and logic and language analysis on the other is made obvious. Cause is sometimes believed to pertain to the things "out there", sometimes to the intellect and language, and sometimes to a combination of both. The causal paradigm set up by Aristotle, while it was later denied any ontological status, was never entirely forgotten as a classificatory scheme. But causality could only explain things in a general way, ut in pluribus. There

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were many anomalies to which it was impossible to assign a cause and which were, therefore, unintelligible. Indeterminacy came either from matter, which is imperfect and therefore irregular, or from the human intellect, which is limited in power, in time, and in space.

4. Conclusion Resonance in Chinese thought, such as is exemplified in the Huainan zi, played a similar role to causality in the West: it sought to provide the ultimate intelligibility of given phenomena in the eyes of reason. It expressed the full cycle of cosmological, sociological, and psychological integration: (1) the primal, undifferentiated unity, characterized by 'emptiness' (xu) and rooted in 'non-being' (wu)\ (2) the process of gradual differentiation: the original 'matter-energy' (yuan qi); the dual forces of yin-yang\ the 'space-time complex' (yuzhou); 'heaven and earth' (tiandi); the 'five elements' (wu xing)\ the 'ten thousand things' (wan wu). The abeyant tendency of the myriad things to coalesce and to restore original unity manifests itself through the mutual resonance (ganying) of things with one another (relative resonance); (3) the 'return' (fan) to primal unity. Among the myriad things, only the True Man (zhenren), who achieves 'total resonance' through 'true knowledge' (zhenzhi), can fully accomplish the return (Le Blanc 1985: 197-206). This view of reality stresses the immanence of the Tao as the ultimate ground of being and reason: for the Tao, as non-being, is the ineffable source of all beings and, as reason, is the concealed harmony of the perceived universe. At the phenomenal level of the ten thousand things, the Tao takes the form of resonance. Resonance is therefore a principle of intelligibility of the universe. It explains not only how the universe is structured, but how it functions; not only why it appears as it does, but how it should be ideally. Events, changes, transformations are all instances of resonance, although the "resonant" link between or among phenomena is not always perceptible. Knowledge is the uncovering of the endless chains of correspondences between different parts of the universe, within the framework of yin-yang, the five elements, and other classicatory schemes. One chain of resonant correspondences would go as follows: East (direction) —> Spring (season) —» Wood (element) —» Green (color) —> Sour (taste) —» Jue (musical note) —> Green Dragon (totem) —> Jupiter (planet) —> Scorpio (constellation) > Fuxi (god)

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and so on and so forth (see HNZ 3, passim). Depending on the ever-changing environment, chains of correspondences interact (or resonate) with other chains, weaving an intricate fabric of resonant fibres that constitutes the very texture of the ten thousand things and of the universe as a whole. In the Huainan zi, knowledge is conceived as a kind of mental resonance between the human mind and things, which connotes logical, ethical, and aesthetic values. More importantly, knowledge, as resonance, is viewed as leading man back to his pristine origin. Resonance is not mere objective contemplation or mirror-reflection, but it has a practical transformative function, whereby both the knower and the known are brought closer to the ineffable purity of original nature. Only in the True Man, attuned ontologically to the whole universe, is this process of transformation completed. Knowledge as self-transformation was the hallmark of the philosophy of resonance advocated by the Huainan zi. Furthermore, self-transformation was seen as the touchstone of the transformation of the universe. This organic and man-centered approach to reality, even in its study and logical formulation of objective data, always emphasized the aesthetic and ethical significance of knowledge. There was no propensity to develop a purely abstract description or analysis of observed phenomena. Immanent harmony, not external agency (as in the West) was the source and finality of essence and existence. A thorough examination of this line of thought would, I am convinced, throw some new light on the reason why China did not develop scientific systems. It shows, at any rate, that cosmology in traditional China did not form an independent sphere that operated according to its own laws, but that it was part of a larger ontological field, which comprised man, and it was man who gave the whole field its ultimate meaning.

Notes 1. Bacon, as the context shows, was unaware of the Chinese origin of these three discoveries, a fact which was known to his contemporary, Montaigne (1533-1592). See Montaigne 1962: 886. 2. This is one of Needham's main theses. It has sometimes been contested by Western scholars, especially by historians of science; see N. Sivin (1982). 3. Among the numerous scholars who have taken position on this difficult question, the following may be singled out: D. Bodde (1936,1957, 1979); F. S. C. Northrop (1946); J. Needham (1956); C. Moore (1967); H. Nakamura (1970); B. Schwartz (1973); M. Porkert (1974); J. Gernet (1981); N. Sivin (1982); J. Henderson (1984); and F. Jullien (1989).

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4. By "aesthetic conception," I refer here especially to F. S. C. Northrop's (1946) contention that Chinese thought, as part of "Eastern culture", was based on "concepts by intuition", and not on "concepts by postulation". The latter were, according to Northrop, typical of Western thought. For a systematic criticism of Northrop's viewpoint, see Hu Shih, "The scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy", in C. Moore (1967), p. 104-107. 5. The sympathetic reverberation of perfectly attuned musical strings seems to have struck ancient Chinese thinkers, from the fourth century B. C. onwards, as a most fitting image and metaphor for their conception of the universe. We find it used in this capacity, besides the Huainan zi, in many representative Chinese works between the fourth and second century B. C. These texts confirm the view that ganying was musical in origin. 6. It was Needham, who first proposed to render ganying by "resonance"; he was well aware of the musical background of the idea (1956 IV: I: 1 2 6 - 131). 7. It would seem safe to say that the work mentioned here borrowed from a common stock of "resonance-sayings", perhaps the lost works of Zou Yan or some other scholar(s) of the Jixia Academy. The numerous resonance texts quoted and commented by the three works have an unmistakable air de famille and denote the same meaning, although their connotation, given their respective philosophical outlook and their overall context, is often at odds. 8. On this problem, the reader is referred to J. Henderson (1984). 9. For a more elaborate presentation of the authorship, transmission, contents, and sources of the Huainan zi, see C. Le Blanc (1985). 10. For a discussion of modern interpretations of causality, see B. St-Servin (1978) and R. Roedl in P. Watzlawick (1988), p. 7 9 - 1 0 7 . References Aristotle [1979]

[Aristotle' metaphysics. (Hippocrates G. Apostle, transl.), Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press]. Bachelard, Gaston 1951 L'Activite rationaliste de la physique contemporaine. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Bacon, Francis [1960] [The new organon and related writings. (F.H. Anderson, ed.) Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill], Bodde, Derk 1936 "The attitude toward science and scientific method in Ancient China", T'ien Hsia Monthly 2: 139-160. 1957 "Evidence for 'laws of nature' in Chinese thought", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20: 706-727.

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Burtt, Edwin 1964

"Chinese laws of nature: A reconsideration", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39: 139-155.

The metaphysical foundations of modern science. New York: Doubleday. Gernet, Jacques 1981 Chine et christianisme, action et reaction. Paris: Gallimard. Henderson, John 1984 The development and decline of Chinese cosmology. New York: Columbia University Press. Hu, Shih 1967 "The scientific spirit and method in Chinese philosophy" in Charles A. Moore The Chinese mind. Essentials of Chinese philosophy and culture (ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Huainan zi [1923] Huainan honglie jijie [The Huainan zi with the collected commentaries], Liu Wendian (ed.) Shanghai: Commercial Press. Jullien, Francois 1989 Proces ou creation. Une introduction ά la pensee des lettres chinois. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Kant, Emmanuel [1952] [The critique of pure reason; The critique of practical reason and other ethical treatises. (Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 42) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press]. Le Blanc, Charles 1985 Huai-nan Tzu. Philosophical synthesis in early Han Thought. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de [1962] [Les Essais de Montaigne. (Bibliotheque de la Pleiade) Paris: Gallimard]. Nakamura, Hajime 1970 Ways of thinking of Eastern peoples. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press. Needham, Joseph 1956Science and civilisation in China. 14 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge 1986 University Press. Northrop, F. S. C. 1946 The meeting of East and West. New York: Macmillan. Plato [1961] [Plato, The collected dialogues. Edith Hamilton - Huntington Cairns, (eds.). Princeton: Princeton University Press].

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Porkert, Manfred 1974 The theoretical foundations of Chinese medicine: Systems of correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press. Saint-Servin, Bernard 1978 "Causalite". Encyclopaedia Universalis lit 188-193. Sivin, Nathan 1982 "Why the scientific revolution did not take place in China - or didn't it?" Explorations in Chinese science. Shanghai: Scientific Press. Vattimo, Gianni [1987] [La fin de la modernite. Nihilisme et hermeneutique dans la culture post-moderne. (tr. de l'italien), Paris: Seuil.] Watzlawick, Paul (ed.) [1988] [L'invention de la realite. (tr. de l'allemand), Paris: Editions du Seuil.]

The Demon of Ashes in Sanskrit text and Himalayan ritual John Leavitt

1. Beginnings 1.1. Beginnings 1 The voices of two singers, both silent and frozen here. One voice is printed on paper after generations of copying by hand on palm leaves, and before that, and continuing along with it, generations of singers singing words attributed to this singer. The other voice is typed out now after being sealed on electromagnetic tape, not long ago, within easy memory; before then and since then it was and continues to be a living voice. The first singer is known only as Süta, which is simply the word suta, 'the bard' or 'the herald', and while for a long time his personal identity has not been even a memory of a memory, his identity as a bard, as the bard, has survived as legend. The second singer is called Kamal Räm, and he still sings today, but does so seeking to carry forward the words of generations of teachers, passed down to him through memory and legend. Among the stories both bards sing some are the same, one narrative pattern, but told differently, to different purpose, and presupposing different discursive expectations. Here I will be using one such story to illustrate what its two tellings tell us about the world of presuppositions that surrounds, permeates, and, ultimately, produces each as a distinct performance. My concern here, then, is not with the stories as stories or with an analysis of their symbolism; it is, rather, with their interaction with the contexts of their tellings, the way each text carries its universe of discourse within it, creates its own universe as it is created by it. For this reason I will be concentrating only on pieces of each story, in particular their beginnings and their endings, drawing what lessons these sections immediately offer us, and then elaborating on contexts of several types: the immanent patterns of language and style; the macro-contexts of the discursive universes into which these versions fit; the micro-contexts of their specific framing in the larger literary or ritual events of which they are part; and a few words on the meta-texts constituted by their cultural purposes, their uses or functions. 1

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Without further ado, then, let us move into these tellings and learn what their first few stanzas tell us about their presupposed worlds - the context present in the text - and only then pause to elaborate on their natures and their settings. 1.2. Beginnings 2: The ancient bard This, we read, is what the ancient bard recites: srl märkandeya uväca: tasyaivanantara tata jalamadhye avasthitam / lunkesvaram iti khyätam suräsuranamaskrtam l\l idam tirtham mahäpunyam nänäscaryam mahttale / asya tirthasya mähätmyam utpattim srnu bhärata 121 äslt purä mahävJryo dänavo baladarpitah / kälaprstha iti khyätah suto brahmasutasya ca ß/ It goes something like this in English: Sri" Märkandeya said: Immediately beyond that, my dear, situated in the midst of the water, Called Luiikesvara, honored by gods and demons. /1 / [Is] this sacred ford of great merit, of multifarious wonders, across the surface of the earth. Hear, child of Bharata, the greatness and the origin of this ford. /2/ Once long ago there was a most heroic demon, driven mad by [his] strength, Called Kälaprstha [Death-Back], and the son of the son of a Brahman, β / Still knowing nothing about the story or the tellers, these lines already give us a background to them. Most immediately, we see that the telling is in Sanskrit: it is, therefore, from the South Asian subcontinent, and probably old. In Hindu South Asia, Sanskrit holds a place close to that held until recently by Latin in Catholic Europe: it is a "dead" language still very much alive as the medium for liturgy and sacred text. We note next that the text is in verse form, divided into measured lines. This is, in fact, the typical style of classical Sanskrit narrative verse, the sloka form that is the dominant meter in the two Sanskrit epics and the eighteen great compilations of myth and lore called the Puränas, literally 'the old', i.e., old stories. This story is drawn from one of these compilations, the Skanda Puräna. Going through the text reveals a number of more specific points. (1) Some specific person is speaking, someone other than an omniscient, unnamed narrator. The story has a specific teller whose identity already

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refers back to something, presumably, already known to the reader. In this case the narrator is Märkandeya, a famous Brahman sage; sri is an honorific. On the other hand, there remains an unnamed narrator who is saying "Sri" Märkandeya said". It is standard in classical Sanskrit narrative literature for the stories being told to be told by particular sages and Brahmans. (2) The lines are numbered. We are, then, dealing with an extract from an organized, written book; an overseeing, exegetical mind has been at work. Here I have preserved the style of numbering in both text and translation at the end of each line, as is done in Sanskrit texts. (3) The narration begins "immediately beyond that". "Beyond what?" we ask. The beginning of this story, then, is no beginning: it is the signal of a continuation, a variation in a continuing line of stories. This kind of nonbeginning is, again, typical of classical Hindu myth. The myth has no beginning or end; it begins in the middle, as there is always some unknown episode from the past which shapes the events of the present, and there is always an unsatisfied curse, an unfulfilled prediction to carry us forward into the next episode. (Doniger O'Flaherty 1973: 318)

(4) The sage addresses someone as "my dear" (tata); he is, then, speaking to someone specific "inside" the narration, not to an unspecified reader outside the text, not directly to "us" - as the unnamed narrator who says "Sri" Märkandeya said" may be doing. The relationship between Märkandeya and his addressee is defined by tata, a term usually used to children, as both close and hierarchical. The sage is lovingly condescending to someone. (5) The sage introduces the name Luhkesvara, the name of a holy ford (tirtha)·, and while he says it is famous, it is not so famous that he does not need to introduce it. In contrast with this, he will not be explicitly introducing the major divine characters of the drama, which he may assume his addressee, and which the bard may assume his hearers, already know by name. This story, then, centers on this holy place, and it is in fact one unit of a catalogue of fords on the River Narmadä in western India that makes up this whole section of the Skanda Puräna, the Reväkhanda or "Revä Section", Revä being another name for the Narmadä. The word tirtha has come to mean any holy place, particularly a place of pilgrimage. It is derived from the verbal root tr, meaning to cross over. The Sanskrit word for... a place [of pilgrimage] is tirtha, a crossing, especially over water, a ford. While dry places, especially on mountains, can also be sacred, the Indian hierophany is typically seen in and by the rivers, so that the word tirtha became the normal word for sacred place, even if the "ford" was found high and dry. The association of sacredness with water is, through not exclusively, at least characteristically Indian, (van Buitenen 1975: 186)

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The Narmadä is an important river both geographically and theologically, and lists of its sacred places are not rare in the literature. This "ford" in fact seems to consist not of a crossing-place but of a linga, a phallic emblem of the god Siva, which is established, as the bard tells us, in the middle of the river. We now know why the narrative begins "Immediately beyond that": it is one in a series of descriptions of such holy places, ordered along the river's course. The name Lunkesvara is not immediately intelligible. The second part of the word is Isvara, 'Lord', one of the epithets of Siva and the most common ending for names of sacred places associated with him. The first element may be derived from the rarely used root luk, meaning to drop out or disappear. (6) The bard will sing the 'greatness' (mähätmya) of the ford, a term ordinarily used for praises of a divinity, a place, a season, in fact of any praiseworthy and praise-requiring piece of the universe. (7) He will also sing the origin of the ford, literally its springing forth (;utpatti). While the praises of a holy place may be sung in any order, its origin involves a specific narrative pattern, a story. This is the first indication that we are dealing with a narrative. (8) The sage tells his listener, "Hear!", a direct order as from superior to inferior, which confirms the relationship of condescension that we have already noted. The word specifies the nature of the interaction, which is one of oral communication, even as it is inscribed within this written text. It also indicates the essential activity here: the hearing of an auspicious and beneficent set of words, which will, as Hindus have long assumed, be of direct benefit to the listener. Many kinds of interaction tend to be understood by Hindus, both ancient and modern, as substantial in nature. Thus words uttered by one person are a part of his or her substance; they leave one body and enter another, in this case through the ear, and there have good or bad effects depending on their nature and that of their source. (9) The sage calls his interlocutor bhärata, which is a patronymic, "child of Bharata", the difference between the two here being marked only by the length of the initial a. And this, while not telling us the specific identity of the sage's addressee, does tell us his station and his lineage: he is a royal personage, a descendant of King Bharata, in fact one of the tribe of bhäratas whose name is given to the epic Mahäbhärata, the 'Great (Tale of the) Bhäratas'. We recognize the condescending friendly attitude of the Brahman to a good king, a relationship that forms the dual core of the ancient Indian polity: the king is the exemplar of the warrior caste and lord (pati) of humans

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{nrpati) and the Earth (bhüpati), but is always under the advisement of Brahmans. Such colloquies of Brahman bards and sages with other Brahmans or with kings form the usual frame for the narratives of Sanskrit epic and Puräna. (10) The narrative begins "There was once long ago", using the imperfect tense. While Sanskrit has several distinct past tenses, in the classical language, the one represented here, they all indicate an undifferentiated past. Stories about gods, demons, and ancient kings, and also timeless fables, often begin with aslt, 'there was'. (11) Like this ford, in fact a pretty obscure one, the demon cannot simply be introduced, but must be named explicitly. By contrast, the god Siva will enter the story a few lines farther on simply as deva, 'the god'; it is supposed that we already know who 'the god' is. So the scene called before us is one from Sanskrit literature, and is indeed a common, even a stereotypical one. A sage is telling a story to a king, the story of the origin of a place sacred to Lord Siva, and this origin will have to do with an unruly demon. The reader of the Puräna or listener to its recitation waits to hear what the story itself tells; we, who have been dropped in at the beginnning of this episode but in the middle of the section of the Puräna, are also waiting to hear who the king is, and why he is being told this tale. 1.3. Beginnings 3: The living bard This is how the living bard begins his song: (1) ο suna pai sum, bhagavän, gollü, ganganätha, ο suna pai suna, bhagivanö, yo meri ho binati. (2) α tumü kai sunaunü, gollü, ganganätha, ο tumü kai sunaunü, gollü, ganganätha (3) hay re gahi, kanthai lai lagaye, ο mero rahgilai, ο tu gahi sunülo, gahi re, sivai re avatära. (4) hay re gahi, gollü re ganganätha, kanthai lagai Ihiyä ο yo meri binati rai, gollü re ganganätha (5) hay re bhagavän, siv ho avatära tumü käi sunülo, ο siv ho avatär suni ho, siv ho lukijäla. (6) hay re gahi, siva luka haula rai, siva re bhagiväna, ο sivai luki haula, gahi, ο sivai ho bhagiväna. (7) hay re gahi, sivai ho bhagiväna, siva ho luki mäja, ο siva luki haula ho, ο sivai bhagiväna.

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John Leavitt (1) Listen, oh listen, Lord, Gollü, Ganganäth, Listen, oh listen, Lord, this is my supplication. (2) I will cause you to hear, Gollü, Ganganäth, I will cause you to hear, Gollü, Ganganäth. (3) Oh Gangi, take it to thy heart, oh my bright one, Oh to thee, Gangi, I will tell thee, Gangi, Siva's avatär. (4) Oh Gangi, Gollü, Ganganäth, take it to your hearts, Oh this is my supplication, Gollü, Ganganäth. (5) Oh Lord, the avatär of Siva I will tell to you, Oh hear the avatär of Siva, how Siva goes a-hiding. (6) Oh Gangi, Siva goes a-hiding, Lord Siva, Siva goes a-hiding, Gangi, oh Lord Siva. (7) Oh Gangi, Lord Siva goes a-hiding, Oh Siva goes a-hiding, Lord Siva.

Again, a number of characteristics of the story spring forth immediately. It is being sung, first of all; what you see is a transcription and translation from a recording of a living, singing voice. It is in the Kumaoni language, the language of a region of the Central Himalayas lying in the northern part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, next to the Nepal border. The language is a member of the Indo-Aryan family, which means that it is related to Sanskrit and to other North Indian and Himalayan languages such as Hindi, Panjabi, Bengali, and Nepali, most closely to the last. One aspect of the sung nature of this utterance comes through even in transcription: it contains many final vowels that have either been added for singing (kanthai instead of kanth) or have been preserved from an earlier state of the language and are no longer used in conversational Kumaoni (sunülo instead of conversational sunül). Again, no editor has worked on this text before I did. The divisions in the transcribed and translated texts are my own: I have distinguished as lines and as verses those passages of singing divided by short or long periods of rest on the bard's part as his assistants stretch out the final note. Here I have numbered the verses, but enclosed the numbers in parentheses to indicate their recent and external imposition. (1) Unlike the Sanskrit text, here the bard himself is doing the talking. He begins by telling someone to listen, addressing himself to a specific audience. (2) The use of bhagavän, 'Lord' or 'God', as a term of address indicates that the bard is singing not to human beings but to a divine listener or listeners. The next words reveal the identity of this audience: it is made up of two divinities, Gollü (or Goriyä) and Ganganäth (Gangi for short), who have been invited as the privileged guests for the bard's performance. This narration is

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part of ajägar or vigil, a nocturnal ritual in which local "godlings" of the hills who are suspected of causing problems for a family are invited and propitiated in hopes of re-establishing good relations with them. The jägar involves the singing of stories by the bard (who is paid by the family in question) particularly the stories of the invited gods themselves; during the bard's narration, these gods possess a medium and, in his or her body, dance out their own histories; they then bless the family and the other assembled villagers and speak through the medium's mouth, revealing the source of the problem and, it is hoped, its remedy (on the jägar, see Gaborieau 1975; Leavitt 1985). In many cases, the problem involves not the actions of the gods immediately, but that of ghosts or demons that the gods are called upon to bring to heel. (3) These particular regional gods are unknown in the rest of South Asia, although everywhere in South Asia regional gods of this type are worshiped (cf. Srinivas 1952). They must be distinguished from the great Hindu gods such as Siva, Krsna, and the Goddess, who in rural Kumaon are felt, on the whole, to be too concerned with the universe as a whole to bother persecuting particular families or possessing mediums. It is, however, a very good thing to tell stories about them, whether to human beings or to regional gods; and the story we are concerned with here is such a story, a tale of Lord Siva told to the possessing godlings Goriyä and Ganganäth as an offering to them after the opening invocation of the ritual but before their own stories are told. This quality of story as offering is captured in the bard's identification of his own activity: "this is my prayer", binati, a borrowing of the Sanskrit vinati, which literally means a bowing-down. The use of the first person singular possessive indicates the bard's own taking of responsibility for what he is about to say: his story is a prayer to Goriyä and Ganganäth to be present and to be amenable to his control of the ritual. (4) The bard says he will tell the story, using the causative form of the verb 'to hear' (sunan, causative sunaun): the essential thing here is not his telling in itself, but his making the gods hear what he is telling. This, again, corresponds to the idea that words are bits of bodily substance that leave the teller and, to have their right effect, must enter the body of the listener. The effect in this case, it is hoped, will be that of any auspicious and beneficent offering: a calming and strengthening of its receiver. (5) If the gods hear the story and it is effective, they will also accept it, they will "take it to their hearts" (literally "throats"), as the bard urges them to do. (6) Now the bard tells us something about just which story we will be hearing: it will be an avatär of Lord Siva, tin loki mälika, the 'Lord of the

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Three Worlds', avatära in Sanskrit is literally a 'crossing down', derived from the same verbal root (tr) that gives tlrtha. In classical Sanskrit literature it means the manifestation of a god in earthly form to save the world from evil; and it is used primarily of the ten avatäras of the god Visnu, the best known of which are the divine heroes Rama and Krsna. In Kumaoni bardic usage, however, any story of the deeds of one of the great Hindu gods, such as this story of Lord Siva, is called an avatar. (7) The bard now tells us more specifically what this story will be about. It is the story of Lord Siva's hiding himself away. This apparently embarrassing subject fits the complex character of this god, whose mythology involves a great deal of humor (see Doniger O'Flaherty 1973). It is striking that the word for hiding is a form of the verb lukan, which, with its cognates in other North Indian languages (Turner 1931: 558), may be historically related to the Sanskrit root luk of Lunkesvara, the name of the holy ford in the Sanskrit version of this story. Again, the initial bit of story tells us a great deal. We have a bard singing in the midst of a ritual, singing the story of one god as an auspicious offering to two other gods, and only incidentally to the human audience assembled. These two beginnings raise questions that we will go into more deeply, being centrally concerned with the relations between the text itself, its most specific and intimate articulations, and the universe of presuppositions that produced and continues to produce it around an ancient kernel of story. 2

2. Story and stories Here is that kernel: The god Siva is living with his wife the Goddess (who has many names, including Devi, Pärvati, Gauri, and Durgä). A demon does great austerities, and Siva offers him a boon. The boon the demon demands is that he be given the power to reduce anyone to ashes by laying on his hand. Siva, unwilling but bound by his offer, grants this boon, and the demon immediately tries to reduce him to ashes. Siva flees and eventually asks help of the god Visnu. Using his shape-changing powers, Visnu takes the form of a beautiful woman and appears before the demon, who falls in love with her. She tells the demon to dance for her and wave his hands about; in his dance, the demon touches himself and is reduced to ashes. Siva, the Goddess, and the other gods rejoice at their deliverance.

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The story is neat enough, centering on a folktale-like reversal: the demon is hoist by his own petard, the trickster tricked and destroyed by his own device. But this clever narrative core is amplified, in both classical and folk versions, by its association with the personages present in this summary: the god Siva, his divine consort, a tricky demon, an even trickier shape-changing god. As stated at the beginning, my intention here is not to perform a symbolic analysis, even given the wonderfully reverberating symbols of which this story is full: the ashes, a particular mark of Siva, linked to destruction, to purification, and to renewing power; the complex relations between Siva and the Goddess, refracting conceptions of maleness and femaleness startlingly different from Western stereotypes; the tensions among the cults of the three great divinities of devotional Hinduism, all present here. My purpose is, rather, to stay on the surface of the stories and show how the very texture of that surface is woven out of contextual materials. Different versions of the story elaborate different elements. The Sanskrit version that we began above is drawn from the Reväkhanda section of the Skanda Puräna (5.3.67, summarized in Doniger O'Flaherty 1973: 297). In this version, the demon does great austerities and impresses the Goddess, who prevails upon Siva to grant him a boon, with the bad results that we have seen. Siva's bull Nandin fights the demon and slows him down, while Siva and the other gods flee around the universe to various divine worlds, the demon at their heels. The sage Narada, who is always moving among the worlds, suggests that they turn to Visnu, who tells them to go and take refuge at Lunkesvara on the River Narmadä while he changes himself into a beautiful maiden and tricks the demon to his perdition. The rendition ends with praises of the holy tirtha. As a whole, the Skanda Puräna is dedicated to Lord Siva, and here a tale associated with him is being used to celebrate one of his holy places. Another Puranic version of the story, however, turns it to very different purpose. It is found in the Bhägavata Puräna (10.88), a work dedicated to Visnu. Here, Siva himself grants the boon to the demon, called Vrkäsura, 'wolf-demon', who tries to destroy Siva in order to win the Goddess. Siva flees across the world and finally to Visnu, who changes himself into a small boy and tricks the demon with words: he convinces the demon (an incredibly stupid one, but that's in character for demons) to make sure Siva's boon is a true one by trying it out just once on himself... which the poor devil proceeds to do. The moral of this story is that one should primarily worship Visnu rather than Siva, since the latter grants boons and utters curses on such small provocation (10.88.12-13).

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Versions of this story are also found in folk traditions from many parts of South Asia. In these the demon is usually called Bhasmäsura, the Demon of Ashes. 3 The Kumaoni version from which the above stanzas are drawn sung by the bard Kamal Räm of the village of Jhyüli in central Kumaon in a performance ofjägar in the spring of 1982 - greatly elaborates the opening events. In his version, while Siva and the Goddess are living on Mount Kailäs, the Goddess, who, like any ordinary mortal, regularly dies and is reborn, notices Siva's freedom from death and rebirth and desires this steady immortality for herself. She convinces Siva to grant her immortality by performing an auspicious recitation for her in the middle of the deep forest. The ritual requires that she stay attentive and keep responding, but after six months of unbroken recitation she falls asleep and some scraps of forest refuse - an old parakeet's eggshell and some dry buffalo bones - hear and respond to the story and, as a result of its power, come to life themselves as the Parakeet's Child and the Buffalo-Devil Demon. Siva goes running after the parakeet, and the newly-born Buffalo-Devil Demon comes upon the sleeping Goddess. She wakes up and, enraged at Siva for abandoning her, agrees to tell the Demon how Siva can be destroyed: by getting the Armlet of Ashes that he wears on his left arm and that reduces to ashes whoever that arm touches. The parakeet escapes, and when Siva comes back the Demon tells him that he has been guarding the Goddess in his absence. Siva is so pleased that he offers him a boon; the Demon, naturally, asks for the Armlet, receives it, and tries to use it on Siva, who runs away and hides inside a mountain, with the Demon prowling around outside. After three days of this, Siva goes in a dream to beg Krsna for help. The rest of the story is pretty much as in the generic version until the end, when the Three Hundred and Thirty Million Gods of Kumaoni tradition carry the Goddess's palanquin back to Mount Kailäs. Some of these elaborations are typical of Kumaoni folk tradition, as are the style and context of presentation evident in the stanzas presented above. While the stories are very similar, the different versions are told to different purpose, embody different assumptions about the world and about storytelling in particular, and, most evidently, are cast in different languages, themselves bearing the marks of particular histories.

3. Language and style The very substance of the texts is revelatory; their contextual differences pervade even the languages in which they are manifested.

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3.1. Sanskrit and Sanskrit narrative poetry Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, related to Greek, Latin, Persian, and most of the modern languages of Europe. Like other ancient Indo-European languages, Sanskrit is highly inflected, with nouns and adjectives marked for gender, number, and case, and verbs for person, number, and tense. This means that surface forms rarely correspond to simple semantic entities, and that groups of surface forms share semantic features - or, to reverse the point of view, that through the processes of inflection, kernels of meaning flower into many distinct but related forms. As Friedrich Schlegel put it at the beginning of the last century, soon after the discovery of the historical link between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin: In the Indian or Greek languages each root is in truth just what the name indicates, and is like a living seed, for since it indicates relations through internal transformations, it has greater room in which to evolve; its outgrowths can spread without limit, and are often, in fact, marvelously rich. (Schlegel 1808: 5 0 - 5 1 )

In hearing Sanskrit, as in hearing Latin or Greek, each form suggests necessarily - whole groups to which it belongs, and each must be grasped associatively and led back to a unifying element of meaning. Even in its most simple and direct style, to understand Sanskrit is to grasp relations: to understand the meaning of the form bharati means understanding it to be the third person singular present indicative member of a family of surface forms, each of which expresses distinct relations or situations of the core semantic element roughly translated as English 'carry', a semantic element which may also be expressed in other moods and tenses and in dual or plural number. This core element is usually given as bhr, but this form as such never actually appears with the simple meaning 'carry', unmarked by case or number. In the classical Indo-European languages, Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit, relations of this kind are perceptible and indeed unavoidable: it is impossible to say anything without immediately entering into a perfectly explicit and grammatically required web of relations and associations. This sense of constant association, of explicit reverberation in form and meaning, is heightened in Sanskrit by other developments. As the appellation "classical" indicates, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were each the vehicle of a highly elaborated classical civilization. This role required the forging of vocabularies of great subtlety and sophistication out of a stock of preexisting elements. In ancient India, this stretching of the language was accompanied by an unparallelled exploration of the language itself through the development of what is generally recognized as the world's first and, until recent times, most rigorous, scientific grammar (Emeneau 1955). Part of this re-

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flection on language was the posing of never-realized base forms, such as verbal roots (cf. bhr above), that, themselves unperceived, were postulated as lying behind the variety of surface forms. What Schlegel noted about Greek and Sanskrit was not new to ancient Indians, who themselves thoroughly explored and explicitly articulated the webs of relationships among surface forms. All that has just been said applies to any use of Sanskrit, in any style. In poetic language, however, other processes add more layers of meaning and association: among these are a rich treasury of figures of speech (Gerow 1971), the extremely common use of sometimes roundabout epithets, and the constant production of compounds by simply sticking nouns together. In grasping the meaning of lines of Sanskrit, the total effect is of depth and transparency, of simultaneously perceiving multiple layers of structure and meaning. It is like looking down into a deep, clear pond, distinguishing all at once surface reflections, the mottled surface itself, several levels of pondweed, and the occasional glittering fish. Each element of meaning, in turn, is associated to others, so that great chunks of the named universe of classical Hinduism are regularly evoked through single words. A single example: in verse 2, the ford is called suräsuranamaskrtam, literally 'bowed-down-to by gods and demons'. First of all, this is in the neuter nominative singular, since it qualifies the neuter nominative singular, tlrtham, 'holy ford'; it is also a compound, of suräsura with namaskrtam. The first of these elements is itself a compound, of sura, 'god', and asura, 'ungod', i.e., 'demon'. The second is the past participle of the complex verb namas-kr. kr is the postulated root for the verb meaning to do or to make, and gives forms such as karman, 'action', and samskrta, the 'fully made', the 'perfect', used to denote the perfected tongue, Sanskrit, namas is a noun meaning 'bowing' or 'obeisance', formed from the verbal root nam, 'to bend, to bow', namas-kr also gives the form namaskära, the most common greeting among Hindus. The words for god and demon, of course, are rich with associations, and each of the verbal roots gives rise to a great variety of forms, all clearly related to each other. The story presented here is composed in slokas, i.e., verses, of anustubh meter, the bread-and-butter metre of Sanskrit verse, comparable in function and importance with the Latin hexameter or the English iambic pentameter. As well as being frequently used in Classical poetry, it is the staple metre of Sanskrit epic and of the many didactic works composed in verse. (Coulson

1976: 250) The sloka consists of thirty-two syllables divided into four quarters, each of which is made up of two sets of four syllables each. The first of each of

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these sets is prosodically free; the second is fixed, with the last set of syllables in the first and third quarters patterning υ — u and those in the second and fourth quarters patterning u - u - . This is a relatively easy meter to compose in, combining great freedom with a definite beat: "the syncopation at the end of the first and third [quarters] gives a feeling of suspense which is resolved at the end of each half-verse" (Coulson 1976: 250). Its use seems to facilitate a semi-chanted memorization without interfering with clarity of understanding. Sanskrit narrative poetry is also highly formulaic, i.e., made up of relatively fixed verbal units that can be plugged into the verse to fit the meter. Its formulaic character may indicate its oral origin and continuing largely oral transmission (Lord 1960; on Sanskrit verse, see Grintser 1974). This formulaic character is illustrated strikingly in our text with the introductory formula for a place name or personal name the listener cannot be expected to know already. The two examples we have seen are luhkesvaram iti khyätam, 'known as Lunkesvara', and kälaprstha iti khyätah, 'known as Kälaprstha'. Each of these phrases forms the third quarter of a verse and so must end with, a rhythm supplied by iti khyätam or -tah. But toward the end of the text the sage tells why the ford is also called lingesvara, and to do this he uses the same formula but plugs it into the end of the verse. Here khyätais not usable for prosodic reasons, and sure enough what we get is lihgesvaram iti srutam, which has virtually the same meaning ('heard of as Lingesvara') but ends with the appropriate final pattern u - u - . While I have not done the research that would allow me to say definitely, it seems likely that this, like other such formulas, will recur elsewhere in this Puräna and in other branches of Sanskrit narrative literature: whoever is producing this text is drawing on a storehouse coextensive with the tradition as a whole. One more feature of Sanskrit narrative poetry is worth noting: this is its regular use of allusion both to well-known features of orthodox Hindu life and to other classical texts. Here, for instance, faced with the Goddess's desire that he grant a boon to the demon, Siva cites an unspecified authority: mürkhastrlbälasatrünäm yas chandenänuvartate vyasane patate ghore satyam etad udiritam /8/ Whoever gives in to the wishes of a fool, a woman, a child, an enemy Falls into terrible misfortune. Thus it has been said. But the Goddess's reply goes him one better; she cites the sästras, authoritative didactic works:

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devy uväca / bhäryäyäbhyarthito bhartä karanam bahu bhäsate laghutvam yati sa närievam sästresu pathyate 191 The Goddess said: When a woman asks her husband for something and he just talks a lot, That woman is considered of no account. Thus it is read in the sästras. And the Goddess prevails. These citations refer to the theme of the complexity and difficulty of the interactions of males and females given their differing natures, a theme found in all the versions. But any such reference out to other texts will also serve to lead the listener back to the discursive background of the classical textual universe as a whole. In the language in which it is cast, in shared prosody, in shared formulas, and in its allusions to other texts, our story is bound in a web of references to the whole of this common classical tradition. 3.2. Kumaoni bardic poetry The relationship of Kumaoni to Sanskrit is similar to that of a modern Romance language to Latin, the former in each case being a descendent of the common spoken form of the latter, with new developments, borrowings from other languages, and more recent direct borrowings from the classical language itself. In both cases, the complex inflectional system of the old language has been greatly eroded in the new one, as has the range of the web of semantic references; many old translucencies have become opaque. For a speaker of Kumaoni who has not studied Sanskrit, for instance, the word binati, 'prayer', usually pronounced as binti, is close to a semantic primitive; this person will not be aware that he or she is using a direct borrowing of the Sanskrit vinati, also meaing 'prayer', nor, more importantly, that the Sanskrit word immediately reveals other layers of meaning: it is a nominal formation from the same verbal root nam, 'to bow', that we have already discussed, with the prefix vi-, the two together meaning 'to bow down'. The word is, then, related to the other words derived from the same root and to a whole culturally-marked semantic complex concerning bowing, obeisance, and respect. For the Kumaoni speaker without a Sanskrit education, this complex is not available, binti simply means a prayer; bintvär, 'performer of bintV, does not mean someone who bows down, but someone who prays, and is one of the appellations of the Kumaoni bard. In the case of Sanskrit verse we are dealing with a transcription and translation of written words, with, presumably, oral antecedents; in that of

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Kumaoni bardic verse, with transcription and translation from a direct recording of singing and drumming. The Kumaoni text is produced in accompaniment to specific drummed rhythms, following particular tunes, with prosody appropriate to these circumstances. The tunes and rhythms change several times in the course of the performance; all are used by this bard for other narratives as well, and some, at least, recur in the songs of other bards. Kamal Räm's song is also, evidently, oral. It shows a markedly formulaic character: nearly every segment of the bard's song appears to be formulaic, and many such segments are shared with other performances of this and other bards. As in the case of Sanskrit narrative literature, stores of formulas are held by many bards; while certain aspects of Kamal Räm's performance seem personal to him - such as the continual use of isvar mero bäbä, 'Lord my father' - the bulk of the formulas that he uses are part of a collective tradition. Where the Sanskrit text alludes to other classical texts, the Kumaoni bard makes regular appeal to what it takes to be general knowledge, a kind of oral encyclopedia of definitions, wise sayings, proverbs ambient in Kumaoni village culture. To explain the Goddess's refusal to desist in her quest for immortality, the bard cites a popular notion on the natures of the sexes: "Oh Lord, / oh the race of women. / Not one will accept things" (verse 30), and in discussion of this passage I was taught the saying tiriyä ko hath, 'the stubbornness of women'. Here again, the story's central theme of male/ female natures is being pointed up, but in so doing each text ties itself into a different conceptual universe: there a classical one, preserved in relatively fixed oral and written texts available to a whole civilization, here a popular one preserved primarily in relatively fluid oral texts closely linked to a single region.

4. Macrocontexts: Two universes of discourse For thousands of years, a relatively coherent classical universe of discourse, manifested largely in Sanskrit, has coexisted in Hindu South Asia with a multiplicity of regional and local traditions. While everywhere these traditions interact in complex ways, it is still possible to distinguish them and broadly characterize each.

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4.1. The classical textual universe Sanskrit literature is made up of an enormous body of texts presenting a coherent, if sometimes contradictory, vision of the universe. The texts exhibit a passion for arrangement through numbers and lists, "a taste for the almost mathematical systematization of any activity... an obsession for detail" (Doniger O'Flaherty 1973: 315). Sanskrit literature as a whole constitutes a complete wisdom covering all aspects of life - at least all aspects that, by its own definitions, matter. The passion for classification is applied to the textual corpus itself, which is divided into two great categories. The first is sruti, 'what has been heard' (from the root sru, seen above in the sage's command srnu, 'Hear!'), commonly translated Revelation, sruti texts are part of the very fabric of the universe; they are primeval and unchangeable, and were delivered to ancient seers for the benefit of humankind, since which time they have been passed on through syllable-by-syllable memorization, sruti is pure sacred sound; its correct recitation and repetition is essential. The guarding of sruti is the special responsibility of members of the Brahman caste, and as a result of their millenial efforts it has been preserved in what most scholars accept is a very early form, certainly in a language antedating classical Sanskrit, sruti texts are of various kinds, and together they are more commonly known as the Veda, literally the Knowing (from the verbal root vid, 'to know'). The rest of classical Sanskrit literature falls within the category of smrti, 'what is remembered', usually translated as Tradition, smrti is divided into eight categories of texts, and includes ritual, morals, astronomy, grammar, poetics, erotics, political manuals, the books of law, the six schools of philosophy, the two epics, the eighteen great Puränas and eighteen secondary Puränas (the specific members of each class changing from list to list), medical texts, and an assortment of ceremonial and mystical manuals (Organ 1974: 180; Renou and Filliozat 1947). smrti literature, scholars maintain, began to take shape at the close of the Vedic period and dates almost completely from before 1000 A. D. Where sruti, however, is closed by definition, smrti is open, and new Puränas and didactic manuals have continued to be composed in Sanskrit. It is worth noting that neither sruti nor smrti corresponds to the usual Western assumptions about textuality, which presuppose clear bounded categories of fixed written texts on the one hand and fluid oral ones on the other. In Hindu South Asia, on the contrary, orality is dominant to a remarkable degree: the Veda was fixed by memorization, not writing, and writing of both sruti and smrti serves as a mere support for oral recitation (Parry 1985).

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Reading in South Asia is still primarily reading aloud, to others (Singer 1972: 76 - 77), and in traditional South Asia it was typically the task of Brahmans to read written texts or chant memorized texts to others. Given the climatic conditions, there was no permanence to be looked for in written materials, which would rot in a generation or so and had to be renewed continually, with, in the case of smrti texts, whatever changes these renewals involved. At the same time, whether through short-lived writing, long-lived memorization, or the continual recasting of a store of formulas, relatively coherent and stable pieces of discourse have been preserved through longer or shorter periods of South Asian history. It seems legitimate, then, to continue to use the word "text" for such relatively stable verbal productions: it is a word that owes nothing etymologically to the notion of writing, since it is derived from a Latin (and ultimately Indo-European) root meaning "to weave". The term "text", then, whatever its current definition, begins as a metaphor: not, originally, written words, but woven words, and words may be bound together with a tighter or a looser weave. In the Sanskrit tradition a similar figure is represented by the use of the word sutra, 'thread', for 'book'. This first appears to be a synecdoche or metonymy, since books were bound by thread, but it may also point out an analogy, books being the inscriptions of words that have already been strung together in a fairly fixed way. Our Sanskrit story comes from the Puränas, compilations of mythic, didactic, and cosmographic materials and the main source of classical Hindu myth (Dimmitt and van Buitenen 1978). Each Puräna is dedicated particularly to one of the great Hindu gods Brahma, Visnu, Siva, or the Goddess, but includes a great deal of material not directly concerning its chosen divinity. Puränas are more or less unified as texts; the Skanda Puräna, from which our story is drawn, is one of the least unified, consisting of a series of autonomous sections devoted to the sacred sites of different parts of South Asia. The scholarly literature unanimously considers it not as a single coherent text, but 'only a name to which extensive works... claim allegiance' (Rocher 1986: 2 2 8 - 2 2 9 , citing Mehendale 1970: 294). Our story is drawn from one such 'extensive work', the Reväkhanda, itself a series of stories of the virtues and origins of sacred sites along the River Narmadä. Here I have restricted myself to indicating some of the general characteristics of the classical universe of discourse, without entering into the specific kind of world it posits or the symbols that condense key issues in that world. Some of these appear in the stories, as we noted above. 4

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4.2. Local Universes In every part of Hindu South Asia, regional traditions, often of remarkable scope, coherence, and richness, exist along with the constant presence of this classical universe of discourse. Until recently, Western scholars have shown a stunning lack of interest in these orally-transmitted universes of discourse, preferring to jump between ancient words and contemporary observation. Vernacular universes of discourse in South Asia are only secondarily manifested in books; their primary form is in folk narrative and lore. Our particular interest here is in songs sung by bards such as Kamal Ram and his colleagues all over South Asia. The bard, like bards in other parts of the world (Lord 1960), does not reproduce a fixed text, but recasts a remembered story through a memorized treasury of formulas. Kumaon has a particularly rich living lore, one that exists in close interaction with the daily life of town and village rather than constituting a fixed, memorized or written, body of wisdom. Kumaoni myth takes place in a complex world centered on the region itself, its own places and seasons, with its own panoply of godlings, ghosts, and demons and its own renditions of the exploits of the great Hindu gods, these being ultimately derived, we must assume, from Sanskrit sources. In Kumaon, bardic narratives of the high Hindu gods are all called mahäbhärat, whether or not they are related to the Sanscrit Mahäbhärat. These stories are all, it is said, of the avatärs of gods, and they are believed to be auspicious and beneficent for their tellers and listeners. The story of Siva we are presenting here is one such mahäbhärat, retold for the benefit of local gods as part of theirjägar. This particular story is "extremely widespread" in Kumaon (Pändey 1962: 177), and in Kumaon, as elsewhere in South Asia, the demon is usually called by the Sanskrit borrowing Bhasmäsur, the Demon of Ashes. In Kamal Räm's version, the name has been heard as the Kumaoni bhaisäsur, the Buffalo Demon, and his birth is attributed to the revivification of a pile of buffalo bones.

4.3. Levels of tradition It is always hard to untangle the complex interweavings of levels of tradition. Given the similarity in details, however, it seems reasonable to see the Skanda Puräna version as the source of Kamal Räm's. The Skanda Puräna appears to have been well-known in Kumaon; and some manuscripts of it even contain a section praising the region's holy places, the Mänasakhanda (Atkinson 1884: 298 - 323). It is also quite possible, however, especially given the widespread nature of the story, that the Puranic versions simply represent re-

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latively early snapshots of a continuing, changing tradition which today has taken on, among others, the form given it by Kamal Räm.

5. Microcontexts: The framing of the texts In both cases the stories are framed, but they are framed very differently in each. The Puranic version, as we have seen, is presented as told by one character to another, the usual frame for epic and Puranic narrative. If we look to the beginning of the Reväkhanda, we find that the king being addressed here, the sage Märkandeya's interlocutor, is none other than Yudhisthira, the eldest of the five Pändava brothers, heroes of the great epic the Mahäbhärata; Märkandeya is telling him the story during the king's exile in the Kämyaka Forest. But who is telling us that Märkandeya is telling the king the story? Who says, "Märkandeya said"? It is another sage, Vaisampäyana, who is telling a tale involving Yudhisthira's conversation with Märkandeya to another king, Yudhisthira's great-grandnephew Janamejaya, during the latter's snake sacrifice. Is this the end of it, the "outermost" frame? Hardly. On the one hand, Vaisampayana is not speaking on his own account, but is simply re-taling (to use James Joyce's invention) what was taught him by his guru Vyäsa, 'the Arranger', considered the composer of the Vedas, the Mahäbhärata, and the eighteen great Puränas. Vyäsa is present at the snake sacrifice, and it is to him that the king has addressed his request for a telling; the sage, however, prefers to leave the talking to his disciple. But this, too, is a story; and the story of Janamejaya, Vyäsa, and Vaisampäyana is itself being told to yet another sage, the Brahman Saunaka, by the süta, the bard, with whom we began. The bard's name is given as Ugrasravas, which simply means 'Loud Voice' (the second element of this compound, sravas, is derived from the same root sru, 'to hear', that we have already discussed); and virtually nothing is told of him other than his reciting of stories. 5 The Ugrasravas-Saunaka frame is the "outermost" one mentioned in the text; and yet... someone has to be telling us that once the bard Ugrasravas came to the twelve-year festival of the Brahman Saunaka in the Naimisa Forest and told him the following story... The text names no teller here; is it, we may ask, the unnamed narrator of modern fiction? Not exactly. This is yet another frame, only this one is coterminous with life in the world. A traditional Sanskrit book, as we have noted, is not something to be consumed silently and alone, but to be read aloud to others. The

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"outer" narrative voice confounds itself with the voice of the reader-aloud, and even this first narrator is in some ways a distinctive person. While he is not named, he is not just anybody: we know that such a reader should ideally be an adult male Brahman with certain qualities of learning, in a state of relative ritual purity. This identified reader-performer, unlike the silent Western reader, must take responsibility for what he reads, since his actualization of the text takes place in his own mouth and is carried out to others in his own voice. In the Kumaoni jägar the telling is framed by many fewer layers. The speaker/narrator is the bard himself, in his quality as a bard: he is a male member of a craftsman, or occasionally of warrior, caste, who is socially recognized as competent in playing the drum (hurak) and in running jägars, whence his appelations of hurki and jägari. The bard is addressing gods who are held to be actually present, and their interaction takes place within the frame of a ritual, itself an active part of the greater frame of the vicissitudes of life. The bard's tellings and the gods' responses are of immediate and urgent importance, since they will influence the plans and hopes of the family holding the ritual. In both cases the heavy frame around the story seems to be a correlate of the oral character of South Asian textuality. The immediate speaker must take responsibility for any words that are not attributed to another; in both traditions these words are reduced to a minimum, passed off onto quoted speakers or past gurus. Here there is no general supposition, as is implicit in modern Western literacy, of authorial responsibility and the suspension of readerly responsibility. When we read a story, even aloud, we are not quite telling it; traditional Hindus are. This responsibility on the part of the reader/reciter is particularly acute at the beginning of a text, and we find that the beginnings of Hindu texts are usually made up of the most auspicious and beneficent prayers possible. This is the case both for the Puranas and for the jägar.

6. Metatexts: Cultural purposes Why are these texts being told? We may distinguish two kinds of answers to this question, one involving the explicit purposes put forward by the producers and consumers of the texts, the other involving implicit purposes that may be glimpsed behind these.

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6.1. Explicit metatexts The Skanda Puräna tells a neat story to illustrate and praise the virtues and powers of a geographical spot, virtues that derive from something that happened there. To tell what happened is itself an act of praise and of worship of the god to whom the place is sacred. The Bhägavata Puräna version, while not treating of a specific place, tells of a god's exploits, illustrates his superiority, and so even more directly constitutes praise and worship. As we have seen, the jägar story is performed not primarily to praise the god the story is about - it is only secondarily an act of worship of Siva - but to entertain and edify other gods, those who are specifically being addressed in the ritual. The story is a particularly important offering, but one among many.

6.2. Implicit

metatexts

When we look for implicit purposes or functions of the telling, we are on the edge of a much more extensive analysis than is appropriate here. I will simply note three possible interpretations, three knots of significance where cultural concerns are refracted in narrative. All three of these are additions onto or extensions of the core gimmick of the trickster tricked. In all versions of the story that I have seen, the Goddess plays the central role of somehow, by her stubbornness or willfulness, touching off the action. The story, then, has always been or has come to be involved with the character of the Goddess: in much of Hindu mythology, the Goddess is portrayed as both ferocious and merciful, in other words highly involved in the world, in contrast with the comparatively withdrawn and meditative Siva. The Goddess's actions make the story part of a millennial Hindu discussion of the differing characters of men and women as the foundation of love and kinship (see, for instance, Inden and Nicholas 1977; Kakar 1978). In Kamal Räm's rendition, the links are more specific. As already noted, in most of Kumaon, as in most of South Asia, the demon is called Bhasmäsur, the Demon of Ashes, a compound of the two Sanskrit nouns bhasman, 'ashes', and asura, 'demon'. Kamal Räm, however, or one of his predecessors, apparently heard the first element of the compound as the Kumaoni word bhais, 'buffalo', and so produced Bhaisasur, the Buffalo Demon. Now the Buffalo Demon is extremely well-known in Sanskritic mythology: under the name Mahisäsura (Sanskrit mahisa, 'buffalo') he is the most famous enemy and victim of the Goddess. He appears under her destroying spear in countless sculptures, paintings, and prints and is a central figure in the most

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important Sanskrit text devoted to the Goddess, the Devi Mähätmya (Märkandeya Puräna 81-93), a text that is extremely popular in the Himalayas. The identification of the Demon of Ashes with the Buffalo Demon, who arises from a pile of buffalo bones, also connects Kamal Räm's elaborated beginning of the story with the independent tale, sung in Kumaon (Pändey 1962: 178) of how the Goddess, eager to visit the world of mortals, comes across a pile of bones, is horrified, and is told by Siva that such horrors are precisely the sort of "entertainment" to be found in the mortal sphere. Here I think there is a pun on the words hath, 'stubbornness' and hadd, 'bones', both borrowings into Kumaoni from Sanskrit. Two puns or misunderstandings, then, between ashes and buffaloes, between stubbornness and bones, will have facilitated the elaboration of the beginning of the story in Kamal Räm's version and its linking into great chunks of the mythology of the Goddess. A second observation. For the basic story twist to work at all, Siva must grant the demon a boon which renders him more powerful than Siva himself. Siva's granting of boons that lead to trouble is a common motif in Hindu myth; but here the theme appears in a particularly acute form, with Siva himself the initial target of the demon's powers. Siva flees through the worlds, or, as Kamal Räm puts it, " Siva goes a-hiding". At first glance, this kind of a portrayal hardly seems appropriate praise for a cosmic divinity, and, as we have noted, it is used in the Bhägavata Puräna version to praise Visnu above Siva. But the story seems most popular with groups, such as Kumaonis, who are dedicated to Siva and particularly to the Goddess. Followers of these divinities generally worship them as total and complex personalities: Siva is both ascetic and erotic, both awesome and amusing; the Goddess is both ferocious and loving. Besides being of interest in themselves, these complex and complementary personalities are "good to think" for Hindus concerned with their own natures and interactive relations. The goal of most Saiva myth seems to be as much the explication of the god's nature as his glorification. But it is important that Siva does win in the end and that the universal order is reestablished after each demonic outrage. The cultural import of a satisfactory outcome may be gleaned from the interaction between the text itself and the frames in which it is set. Let us recall the multiple framing of the Skanda Puräna version of the story: (an unnamed reciter tells an unnamed audience (how the bard Ugrasravas told the Brahman Saunaka (how Vyäsa told his disciple Vaisampäyana (who told King Janamejaya (how the sage Märkandeya told King Yudhisthira (the story of Siva, the Goddess, Visnu, and the Demon)))))). It happens that the three outermost of these frames are identical to the frame of the

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Mahäbhärata, which is recited as Ugrasravas told Saunaka that Vyäsa told Vaisampäyana to tell it to Janamejaya (Mahäbhärata 1 . 1 , 4 - 5 , 5 3 - 5 4 ) . The Mahäbhärata is the story of the loss and regaining of a kingdom, and at one of the low points in the story, King Yudhisthira and his brothers have lost their kingdom and are wandering in exile in the Kämyaka Forest. There they meet the sage Märkandeya, who tells them a series of stories (Mahäbhärata 3.50-78). The Reväkhanda of the Skanda Puräna would seem to be reproducing this epic frame as a setting for its own stories praising holy places on the Narmadä. But there is more going on here than simply a borrowing of the epic's prestige. In the Mahäbhärata, the stories the sage tells the exiled king, at the nadir of his fortunes, are all stories of exiled kings who lose everything - and then gain it back. The most famous of these is the story of Nala, in which A. K. Ramanujan sees a general pattern he has labeled the metaphorical metonym (1980): one story metonymically embedded in another also metaphorically reproduces essential aspects of it. Yudhisthira, following the full curve of Nala's adventures, sees that he is only halfway through his own.. .The poignancy [of the Nala story] is partly in its frame, its meaning for the hearer within the fiction and for the listener of the whole epic (Ramanujan 1989: 49).

Hearing Nala's story, in essential traits the image of his own, will help Yudhisthira to live his own out in full, to survive his current hardships and reclaim his throne. And this interpretation works as well for the Skanda Puräna as for the Mahäbhärata, at least in a story, like this one, of demonic disruption, the apparent triumph of disorder, and the final restoration of the gods. This interpretation is reinforced by some verses toward the end of our text: kärkitü caiva yo dadyäd brähmane vedapärage tena dänaphalam sarvam kurukseträdikam cayat /104/ präptam tu nanyathä räjan cchamkaro vadate tv idam sparsalingam idam räjan cchamkarena tu nirmitam 1X051 sparsamätre manusyänäm rudraväso 'bhijäyate tena dänaphalam sarvam kurukseträdikam cayat /106/ And whoever [here] gives a penny to a Brahman learned in the Vedas, By this all Kuruksetra and the other [lands] as the fruit of his gift /104/ He will definitely gain, King, so says Sankara [Siva], This is Sparsalinga, King, established by Sankara; /105/ Merely by touching it (sparsa), the abode of Rudra [Siva] becomes [accessible] to human beings; By this all Kuruksetra and the other [lands] are the fruit of his gift. /106/

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Kuruksetra, the Field of the Kurus, is one of the most sacred places in the Hindu world, the site of the great battle of the Mahäbhärata; and it is the kingdom of which Yudhisthira is the rightful and exiled king, which, upon his return, he will regain in the battle. We may argue a similar role for the metaphorical metonymy in the telling of Siva's story in the jägar. The bard tells the story to the gods Goriyä and Ganganäth, who here have the role of powerful addressees addressed by a preceptor; indeed, the gods regularly address the bard as their guru. We have, then, a very similar relationship between a tale-telling teaching figure and a listening powerful figure in both versions. And in both, the telling is meant to bless and strengthen the listener for the task ahead: king and warrior godlings both have important duties to perform, battle-duties, regaining a kingdom or reestablishing harmonic relations and keeping evil away from the family. The tale's quality as a metaphorical metonymy is strengthened by Kamal Räm's labelling of the whole thing as the story of how Siva "goes a-hiding" (see above). Much of the Kumaoni mythology used in jägars focuses on themes of enclosure and release. That this serves as a metaphorical metonymy for escaping troubles in earthly life is suggested by a Kumaoni ritual of cutting little webs which is performed after the recitation of a story of the Pändava brothers' entrapment by demons. Here it is explicitly stated that we, the participants in the ritual, are cutting the demons' webs and gaining release (Leavitt 1990). In Kamal Räm's rendition, Siva hides inside Simäli Mountain, which is not located in the story and does not come in for particular praise. The Skanda Puräna version, on the contrary, is entirely centered on Lunkesvara, which we may tentatively translate '[the place of] the Lord of Vanishing', where Siva and the other gods hide while Visnu takes care of the demon. In both versions the metaphorical metonym turns on themes of entrapment/ hiding and release, both in the framed story and in the frame, whether this be a fictional royal drama or a real family drama.

7. Endings 7.1. Endings 1: The ancient bard Having just touched on the stories themselves, let us end with their endings. The Sanskrit text continues from the verses quoted above:

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etasmät karanäd räjaml lokapälas ca raksakäh durgä ca raksane srstä caturhastadharä subhä /107/ dhanado lokapäleso räksakäs cesvarasya ca raksati ca sadä kälam grahavyäpärarüpataih /108/ putrabhrätrsamarüpaih svämisambandharüpibhih luhkesvaram ca räjendra devair na dyäpi mucyate /109/ iti srlskände mahäpuräna ekäs Ttisähasryäm samhitäyäm pancam avantyäkhande reväkhande luhkesvaratirthamähätmyavarnanam näma saptasastitamo dhyäyah 1161 II For this reason, King, the Lokapälas are [its] protectors, And Durgä, created for protection, the lovely bearer of four arms, /107/ And the wealth-giving Lord of the Lokapälas; and the protector of Isvara Protects [it] always, through all time, through all transactions of the planets. /108/ In forms like sons and brothers, in the form of husbands and in-laws, The gods, Indra among kings, have even now not departed from Lunkesvara. /109/ Thus in the Skanda Puräna, in the eighty-first collection of a thousand [verses], in the fifth section, of Avanti, in the Revä section, the sixtyseventh chapter, by name the Description of the Greatness of the Holy Place Lunkesvara. //67// The narrative concludes, as many narratives of this type do, with a description of the phala, the 'fruit' or happy results of reciting it or, in this case, of being associated bodily, by drinking or touching, with the sacred place it celebrates. The final verses, which we have just given, tell us that major divinities concerned with space and time are watching over Lunkesvara: the Lokapälas, literally 'world-protectors', the guardians of the cardinal directions; the great Goddess, here called Durgä and so calling up a fiercer and more protective form than the ones used in the narrative: she was "created for protection" since, according to the Devi Mähätmya, she came into being to destroy demons that were threatening the world. The Lord of the Lokapälas is, presumably, Siva; and I suppose that " Siva's protector" refers in the context of this story to Visnu, the preserver of the universe and the maintainer of the patterns of time, regulated immediately by the Nine Planets. The gods, we find at the end, are in the form of essential family members, evoking the key relationships of Hindu kinship: it will be as if they were one's family members, if one only repairs to Lunkesvara, where they continue to dwell. The final formula, not in verse, seals off and defines the preceding chapter as part of a larger whole, a book with numbered divisions. As we have seen,

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this book itself is part of a larger universe of discourse, a classical one that now exists in memorized and written words and in representations and actions based upon them.

7.2. Endings 2: The living bard (101a) ire jo chl siv jijo chl bandi khuläsa kari devtäö! / "ki vä bati ävä," kum, / "o bhasi jangalo me jo cht / ο jo chl gaurä devl rai ge," kunl / ire taintls krör devtäö! /ο bhasi jangal hunt bat lagä dhaV. /ki vä gaurä devl ko dol kasik siv kailäs huni kasikpujaüchä? pujäö dhai! (101b) ο devö bhasi rai jangalo gayä, ο devö, gaurä devT ka. ire devö, yo bhasi jangala gayä, ο devl, taintis köta devä. ire devö, kyä chänan lagä, ο devö, ο yo bhasi jangala? ä deväyo bhasi jangal gayä, ο devö, yo gaurä devl. ire devö, gaurä devl ka ο gayä ο mera re devä. ire devö, gaurä devl ka ο dval yo dvol rai kasala. ire devö, gaurä devl ka ο pujä siva kailäsa. (102a) ire devö, isvara, sivjiljo cht gaurä devikjo cht dval kas cht. /gaurä devl km jo cht siv kailäs me pujä chl, re goriyäl / ire goriyä, dekh dhaV. / ki sat ki bäni cal jo. / ki dharam ko pain calani, isvar mero bäbä. / ire goriyä, tukaljo chl/aur jo chl, isvar mero bäbä, /kijabat kär blc me /ki sät mausänijo chl/cal karä chl, isvar mero bäbä... (101a) Hail! Then the gods opened Siva's prison! / "Oh come out of there", they said, / "oh in that deep dark forest / oh Goddess Gaurä is still there", they said. / Hail three hundred and thirty million gods! / Hit the road for the deep dark jungle! / Oh carrying Goddess Gaurä's palanquin, how will you get to Siva's Kailäs? Get there! (101b) Oh the gods went to the deep dark jungle, oh gods, Goddess Gaurä's [jungle]. Hail gods, they went to the deep dark jungle, oh Goddess, the three hundred and thirty million gods. Hail gods, how they searched, oh gods, that deep dark jungle. Oh the gods went to the deep dark jungle, oh gods, that Goddess Gaurä, Hail gods, Goddess Gaurä's, oh my own god, went, Hail gods, oh carry Goddess Gaurä's palanquin. Hail gods, oh carry Goddess Gaurä to Siva's Kailäs. (102b) Hail gods, Lord, Siv Ji carried Goddess Gaurä's palanquin. / He carried Goddess Gaurä back to Siva's Kailäs, oh Goriyä! / Hail Goriyä, look here! / May the arrow of truth fly! / May righteousness go forward,

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Lord my father! / Oh Goriyä, thou, Lord my father, / in the midst of those times, oh Goriyä, / in the midst of those times / the seven stepmothers made a plot... And, with no explicit transition, we're off on the next story, that of Goriyä and his seven wicked stepmothers. This ending is thus even less of an ending than the beginning is a beginning. But it is presumed that Goriyä and Ganganäth have accepted this story-offering and are ready to hear their own stories sung by the bard and re-play them in dance. This final section follows a different prosodic pattern from the one we started with. The narrative is carried forward in a staccato rhythmic declamation (the sections marked "a") followed by periods of repetitive singing of single lines or bits of lines (marked "b") that express the essence of what has just been declaimed. This style, which has in fact dominated much of the performance, is that of most of the jägar narrations of Kamal Räm and other bards that I was able to observe: while the narrative is carried forward in the rhythmic staccato passages, the repetitive sung sections, focusing on a single incident or scene, allow the possessed god to dance out key moments of his or her own story in the medium's body. The last part of the story of Siva's hiding, then, flows into the next act of a ritual full of poetic and inspired words and actions, themselves drawing on a wider and relatively fixed universe of discourse, one carried not in books but through the chain of living voices of bards. This second universe of discourse is not classical, that is, does not exist primarily in a relatively coherent and self-referential form running parallel to daily life, but refers directly out to that life and is continually being transformed by it. 7.3. Endings 3 In the Sanskrit story, the beginning ties us back into the immediately preceding narratives, while a clear ending seals the story off from the others, giving it a distinct identity, making it an isolable bit of praise, one in a string of mähätmyas - indeed, many such collections of songs or stories of praise to the gods or sacred places are called garlands (mälä). In the Kumaoni chant, the beginning is relatively well marked, by rhythm, melody, and prosody as well as by content. But once the tale is told, once the gods have been "fed" this auspicious offering, it is time to move on to the central part of the ritual, the stories and direct manifestations of the gods themselves. The Sanskrit story has become like a jewel carrying its value in itself, a lasting adornment for a sacred crossing; the Kumaoni one is an offering to be consumed by an immediately-present divinity.

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But from the moment that I take either tale or both and seal them on paper, as they have been sealed here, and frame them in another text, as I am doing right now, their meanings and purposes shift again, and we are in a new world made up of the genres and style-markers typical of modernity. This new frame of words that surrounds and transforms the stories is not the responsibility of a bard, dead or living, or of the living person who reactualizes a written or memorized text by reciting it aloud, but, as the acknowledgement states, represents only the opinions of the author, a figure unnamed within the text itself but whose name - my name - is clearly blasoned just before its first beginning. You yourself, dear reader, will most probably be reading this silently to yourself, without even chanting it under your breath, and certainly will not be declaiming it to listeners eager for blessing. You are free of responsibility for my errors; but, equally, you are left out of the creation of what you are now perusing. This story, auspicious or inauspicious, remains entirely mine, even after my death, as long as my name is stuck on it. The author has no successor. The author does, however, have predecessors, a lineage of teachers - dead and living, passing down questions by voice and by paper - who have largely determined the meaning and purpose of this - so far - outermost frame. The bards' words, or rather a fairly fixed shadow of their words, have been taken out of the universes of discourse that produced them and put into a new one, where they no longer serve to guide kings or pilgrims or to pacify and please angry divinities. Here their purpose, carried down from the author's lineages of gurus, is different: to help to show you, silent and, at this moment of writing, entirely suppositional readers, that this peculiar universe of discourse wherein you and I operate, this modernity, is not the only such universe; that others, often at least, have a coherence and a sense of their own; and that such universes, such contexts, the ideational dwelling-places of tellers of tales, pervade and condition the texts that they sing, recite, or write.

Acknowledgements Research in India was supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies and the U. S. Office of Education and carried out in affiliation with the Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi; research on the practice of classical traditions was carried out with the aid of grants from the Social

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Sciences and Humanities Research Council o f Canada, the Universite de Montreal (Fonds CAFIR), and the Government of Quebec (Fonds FCAR). I am grateful to Wendy Doniger and James N y e for their suggestions and their help in obtaining materials for this paper, to Arvind Sharma for his advice on the translation o f Sanskrit, and to Gilles Bibeau, Lynn M. Hart, and Margaret Paxson for their comments. The opinions expressed here are, however, the sole responsibility o f the author.

Notes 1. It was Milton Singer who posed the terms of this discussion for studies of South Asia in his 1961 paper "Text and Context in the Study of Contemporary Hinduism" (in Singer 1972). 2. For full text and translation of the Kumaoni story, see Leavitt 1985: 427-473. 3. Folk versions of the Bhasmäsura story will be found in Mani 1975 sub Bhasmäsura (Marathi); Elwin 1949: 348 (Madhya Pradesh), paraphrased in Doniger O'Flaherty 1973: 297-298; Oppert 1893: 508 (Tamil), paraphrased in Doniger O'Flaherty 1973: 228; Obeyesekere 1984: 113 - 1 1 4 (Sinhala). 4. For an overview of classical Hindu symbolism, see Biardeau 1981. For analyses which, while powerful, do not in my view adequately distinguish between classical and vernacular universes, see Dumont 1970 [1966] and Marriott 1989; cf. Leavitt 1992. 5. The süta is the bard of all the epics and Puränas. The term is also a caste designation, supposedly derived from a mix of Brahman and warrior castes (see Rocher 1986: 53-59).

References Sanskrit

texts

Bhägavata Puräna 1950 1978

Edition: Srlmad Bhägavatamahäpuränam. Gorakhpur: Gita Press. Translation: The Bhägavata Puräna. Ganesh Vasudeo Tagare (ed. and trans.), 4 volumes. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass [Ancient Indian Tradition and Mythology Series, 7 - 1 0 . ] Devi Mähätmya 1946 Edition with Hindi translation: Sridurgäsaptasatl. R. D. Sastri (ed.). Gorakhpur: Gita Press.

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Mahäbhärata 19331969

Translation: Encountering the Goddess: A translation of the Devi Mähätmya and a study of its interpretation. Thomas B. Coburn (trans.)· Albany: State University of New York Press. Edition: The Mahäbhärata. V S . Sukthankar - S.K. Belvalkar et al. (eds.), 19 volumes. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Translation of Books 1 - 5 : The Mahäbhärata J.A.B, van Buitenen (ed. and trans.), 3 volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

19731978 Skanda Puräna 1910 Edition: Atha sriskandam Mahäpuränam... bay: Venkatesvara Steam Press.

Second edition. Bom-

Other references Atkinson, E. L. 1884 The Himälayan districts of the North-Western provinces of India. Volume 2. Allahabad: Government Press. [Gazetteer of the Northwestern Provinces and Oudh, 11.] Biardeau, Madeleine 1981 L'hindouisme: Anthropologie d'une civilisation. Paris: Flammarion. Coulson, Michael 1976 Sanskrit: An introduction to the classical language. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton. Dimmitt, Cornelia - J. A. B. van Buitenen 1978 Classical Hindu mythology: A reader in the Sanskrit Puränas. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Doniger O'Flaherty, Wendy 1973 Asceticism and eroticism in the mythology of Siva. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dumont, Louis 1966 Homo hierarchicus: essai sur le systeme des castes. Paris: Gallimard. [1970] [Homo Hierarchicus: The caste system and its implications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.] Elwin, Verrier 1949 Myths of Middle India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Emeneau, Μ. B. 1955 "India and linguistics", Journal of the American Oriental Society 75: 145-153. Gaborieau, Marc 1975 "La transe rituelle dans l'Himalaya central: Folie, avatär, meditation", Purusartha 2: 147-172.

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Gerow, Edwin 1971 A glossary of Indian figures of speech. The Hague: Mouton. Grintser, P. A. 1974 Drevneindijskij epos: Genezis i tipologija. Moscow: Glaznaja Redaicija Vostocnoj Literatury. Inden, Ronald B. - Ralph W. Nicholas 1977 Kinship in Bengali culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kakar, Sudhir 1978 The inner world: A psycho-analytic study of childhood and society in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Leavitt, John 1985 The language of the Gods: Discourse and experience in a Central Himalayan ritual. Doctoral dissertation, the University of Chicago. 1990 "Himalayan variations on an epic theme", in Arvind Sharma (ed.), Essays on the Mahäbhärata: 4 4 4 - 4 7 4 . Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1992 "Cultural holism in the anthropology of South Asia: The challenge of regional traditions", Contributions to Indian Sociology 26: 3 - 4 9 . Lord, Albert Bates 1960 The singer of tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Mani, Vettam 1975 Puranic Encyclopaedia. A comprehensive dictionary of the epic and Puranic literature. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Marriott, McKim 1989 "Constructing an Indian ethnosociology", Contributions to Indian Sociology 23: 1 - 4 0 . Mehendale, M. A. 1970 The Puränas. In The history and culture of the Indian people, III: 291 - 2 9 9 . Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Organ, Troy Wilson 1974 Hinduism: Its historical development. Woodbury, NY: Barron's Educational Series. Obeyesekere, Gananath 1984 The cult of the Goddess Pattini. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oppert, Gustav 1893 On the inhabitants of Bhäratavarsa or India. Westminster: Archibald Constable. Pändey, Trilocan 1962 Kumäü kä loh sähitya. Agra and Almora: Sri Almora Book Depot. Parry, Jonathan 1985 "The brahmanical tradition and the technology of the intellect", in Joanne Overing (ed.), Reason and morality: 2 0 0 - 2 2 5 . London: Tavistock.

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Ramanujan, Α. Κ. 1980 The relevance offolklore for South Asian studies. Paper presented to the Conference on Models and Metaphors in Indian Folklore, Berkeley. 1989 "Is there an Indian way of thinking? An informal essay", Contributions to Indian Sociology 23: 41 - 58. Renou, Louis - Jean Filliozat 1947 L'Inde classique. Manuel des etudes indiennes. 2 volumes. Paris: Payot. Rocher, Ludo 1986 The Puränas. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. [A History of Indian Literature, II, 3.] Schlegel, Friedrich 1808 Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indien Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer. Singer, Milton 1972 When a great tradition modernizes: An anthropological approach to Indian civilization. New York: Praeger. Srivinas, M.N. 1952 Religion and society among the Coorgs of South India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turner, Ralph Lilley 1931 A comparative and etymological dictionary of the Nepali language. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner. van Buitenen, J. A. B. (ed. and trans.) 1975 The Mahäbhärata: 2. The Book of the Assembly Hall. 3. The Book of the Forest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

The Great Sign in the Book of Revelation Le chant du signe Jacques M. Chevalier The development of pessimism into nihilism. - Denaturalization of values. Scholasticism of values. Detached and idealistic, values, instead of dominating and guiding action, turn against action and condemn it. Opposites replace natural degrees and ranks. Hatred against the order of rank. Opposites suit a plebeian age because easier to comprehend (Nietzsche, The Will to Power).

1. The bar between the esses1 The science of signs revolves around a basic issue: the relationship between one material sign or meaningful practice and another. This issue implies an effort to move beyond the representational doxa, beyond the received notion that a material signifier stands for a concrete object or an abstract concept, representing either a thing or a thought in the realm of language. In opposition to all "reflective" views of language, the science of signs posits the notion that language forms a system of interrelated elements, bundles of relations that are not reducible to extra-linguistic references originating in the tangible world or the intangible mind. Theories and studies of culture and language have been radically transformed by advances in the science of signs. Yet semiotic theory is still faced with a fundamental riddle: reconciling the logic of sign structures with the temporal motions and the emotional powers of symbolling. As argued below, the influence of structuralism in semiotics is largely responsible for a widespread tendency to neglect the operations of time and of desire - morality, repression and transgression - in the production of meaning. This essay provides an alternative view of the signifying process, a view that challenges the received notion of an intellect deprived of both the motive and the emotive powers of la parole. The S/S (sign/sign) relationship should be revisited in light of a comprehensive theory of the sign process. My contention is that language involves more than a code constantly adjusting itself to the changing circumstances and vagaries of social history, consciousness and human sentiments.

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The argument presented below treats semiotic operations as products of the order-of-desire-in-motion. Briefly, this alternative view of language views the oblique bar that ties one "esse" (for sign) to another as a fivefold measure within the vernacular "bar": (1) a relational and fractional measure (homological, divisive, oppositional) binding one meaningful act (a word, a gesture, a visual image) to another; (2) a place of judgement governed by a profession of faith and morality; (3) a place of confinement, hence a repressive mechanism more powerful than any of the forces of mediation; (4) a place of debauchery where the Law appears as an infraction of itself; and (5) a musical line of attentions shifting through the narrative score. This essay delves into the fivefold connection between signs - into the schemings of time, morality, repression, and transgression in the code of language defined as a system of similarities and differences. These issues will be addressed in the following order: i) the internal logic and the ethical character of language; ii) the mechanisms of repression and transgression inherent in the act of coding; and iii) the temporal dialectic of the narrative process. In order to clarify the linkages between theory and the interpretive practice, I shall begin with the scorpion-tailed demons in Chapter 9 of Revelation and the power that they have "to hurt men five months". My analysis of this particular scene in John's vision of the end of time is by no means exhaustive; one can hardly do justice to this eschatological imagery without a thorough reading of Chapter 9 if not the whole Book of Revelation. Nevertheless, the exercise illustrates the fivefold bar while also shedding light on older notions of "signs" construed as physical manifestations of an immaterial, atemporal Logos. The approach to narrative language discussed below makes sense of John's allegorical imagery, while also undermining his logocentric assumptions about the nature of signs and metaphors.

2. Yahwism and Sabaism When the fifth angel blows his trumpet, scorpion-tailed demons shall form a satanic host endowed with the power to injure people for five months (Rev. 9.10). In John's words: And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit;

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and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Appollyon. One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter. (Rev.

9.1-12.) Most commentators explain the five-month, pain-inflicting attribute of the scorpion-tailed locusts as a reference to the real span of the locust's life which apparently lasts from early spring to the end of the summer. The season during which swarms of locusts cause devastation is about the same length of time. Against this interpretation, readers should note that swarms of locusts never last more than a few days and that the spring season marks the triumph of life over death. Moreover, the five-month attribute is assigned to the locusts only indirectly, by way of the scorpion tail motif which has yet to be explained. Finally, the surface text of Revelation 9 precludes the summertime devastation of the earth's greenery: the locusts were ordered not to "hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree". What we have here is a period dominated not so much by the blazing heat of the estival solstice as by a plague modelled after the Flood, after a winter-like spell characterized by "waters prevailing upon the earth an hundred and fifty days" (Gen. 7.24). But why should John conjure up the vision of a flood of wintry darkness in lieu of an estival drought associated with the locust and the scorpion?

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Scorpions are known for the poisonous sting at the end of their tail and their habit of hiding under rocks - lifeless stones that should not be confused with stone-shaped, life-giving eggs (Lk. 12.11). The arachnid is associated with barren land and the hardships that the chosen people have known under Jacob's command while going through the Sinai desert toward the promised land (Dt. 8.15). Locust plagues invaded Palestine usually from a southerly or south-easterly direction, from the arid wasteland that separates Palestine from the Babylonian land of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Vast numbers of these insects rose with the wind in the morning like a cloud obscuring the rays of the rising sun. Scorpions were evocative of death in the arid desert and the desolate south. On another level, however, John's scorpion motif was but a zoological namesake of an astrological figure known as the Great Sign or the Great Beast, to use the imagery of Aratos (circa 270 B. C.). Like the locust, Scorpio flies low. His celestial representation was fixed in the lowest sky, the southern quarter, opposite the seven Pleiades located on the rump of Aries. The constellation Scorpio was identified by Aben Ezra (1092-1167) as Kesil, or the Foolish, the Impious, the Inconstant. Indications are that the Hebrews viewed the constellation as a crowned Snake or Basilisk. Allen (1963: 362) adds that dwellers of the Euphrates saw the Scorpion as "the symbol of darkness, showing the decline of the sun's power after the autumnal equinox, then located in it". Antares, the brightest star in this zodiacal constellation, heralded the sun rising through the Egyptian temples of the goddess Selit (later Isis) at the autumnal equinox about 3700-3500 B.C. Antares can also be seen rising with the gathering darkness early in June, around the time of the summer solstice. Whether in the summer evening or in the autumn morning, the star brings a temporary darkness, nocturnal or wintry, on the land. The south corresponds to the sun's highest midday point on its journey from east to west. The autumnal sun is homeward bound, returning to its tropical point of origin and full meridional strength. All the same, the sun retreating in the company of Scorpio is a prelude to days of hardship suffered in winter and in exile. Trouble is announced by the arrival of longer and colder nights of autumn, a solar chariot (horse-drawn) moving south via the late October sign of the "frigid Scorpion", to use Longfellow's poetic expression. The sun that enters the southernmost constellation is heading south, toward the real habitat of the arachnid and the lowest quarter of the sky. The five-month period evoked in Revelation coincides with the exact duration of the dark season announced by the sun entering the Scorpion. Biblically speaking, the Great Sign ushers in the eighth month of the sacred

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year and the end of three important festivities celebrated after vintage in the first lunar month of the civil year: the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and the Festival of Tents. The ensuing days of darkness and economic hardship last from about October 24 to the spring equinox, which brings about the grain harvest and the beginning of the ecclesiastical year (about March 21, in the month of Tisri, seventh of the civil year). The fivemonth spell ends with the triumph of the northbound sun rising to paschal glory, or the slain lamb rejoicing in Easterly light of Aries (Rev. 5.12f., 7.9, 13.11, 19.7., 22.1). In short, John assimilates the rise of the locust cloud to the morning appearance of southeastern Scorpio at the beginning of the cloudy and rainy half of the year, more than halfway toward the end of sacred time. John's vision of Judgement Day reported in Revelation 9 also betrays a particular view of human morality and sexuality. The solar figure appearing under the sign of the Scorpion, alias the Great Beast, governs the season of ploughing and sowing, seedtime in biblical lands. The Scorpion stands for an exceptional begetter, a life-giving sun mapped in ancient times onto the region of the groin in the human body, the seat of man's generative power, just below the solar plexus. Other positive attributes of the heavenly Scorpion are inscribed on its "forehead", the star Dschubba found in the Whitall planisphere and known as the Crown of the Scorpion, the Euphratean "Light of the hero", or the "Tree of the Garden of Light placed in the midst of the abyss or the Garden of Eden" (Allen 1963: 369). Correlatively, Scorpio is closely associated with the good life enjoyed after the late summer vintage. Also, the arachnid holds the secret of immortality: like the snake that sheds its skin without dying, the scorpion survives in a land of desolation and is reputed to possess an antidote for its own poison. In short, the reproduction of life is secured by scorpioid locusts gifted with the ability to "multiply like sand" and to withstand the trials of life in the desert. Still, creatures endowed with the power to kill are bound to bring death upon themselves. Scorpions and snakes chasing after their victims stand for war and discord among men, afflictions located of old in the sting and the tail of Scorpio (Allen 1963: 364). If too strong, organs of might will kill and will spare no one, not even the powerful. Life turns her enemies' own weapons on them. The moral of death that rebounds on the murderer applies to venomous creatures known to inflict wounds that sting and burn. Just as the scorpion is fabled to sting itself when surrounded by fire, so too the Scorpion plunges to its death when entered by the solar sphere descending at Fall. Excessive strength draws blood in lieu of the seed and the fluid of manly fertility.

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The scorpion motif inspires horror in John's vision of all hell let loose. Signs of a dark age, however, are merely designed to set the scene for the triumph of the slain lamb rejoicing in the light of vernal Aries. To use the language of Revelation 12, the model woman's faith in the Shepherd must be tested and tried in the desert before she can be clothed with the sun and married to the Easter Lamb. The sun in Scorpio must let go of his phallic strength and convert himself into a young lamb - a meek, sexless, tenderfleshed animal, less than one year old, without permanent teeth. He must bear the sin of men if he is to accede to the light and glory of his Father in heaven, to the power of the many-horned Ram (Aries) communing with his bridal nation at the end of time. In retrospect, the scorpion figure does not connote death simply because of its association with the wasteland or its power to kill; after all, the sting of a venomous beast is nothing when compared to the wrath of the lamb slain. More importantly, the passage examined above converges on the JudeoChristian moral of self-denial. Scorpion-tailed locusts are doomed to fall in the company of their own victims and their leader, known as the angel of the abyss (the Antichrist), because of what they stand for: namely, the sinful ways of post-vintage festivities, war, and phallic might (exercised at seedtime). The darkness they bring upon the land results from their attempt to rise above, and therefore against, the Father of Light. By contrast, the slain lamb embodies the moral of self-sacrifice and is therefore granted the hymenean blessings of God's final Love Feast (the Lord's supper, or Agape repast) heralded by the Second Advent. The scorpion motif is all the more sinful in that it belongs to the idiom of heliolatry, naturalism or the Sabaean cult of stars. As might be expected, Chapter 9 of Revelation reduces the scorpion figure to a zoological sign, an animal metaphor not to be confused with the evil spirits rising at the battle of Armageddon. Beastly creatures in the train of the Antichrist are portrayed "in the likeness of the appearances" of the scorpion-tailed locusts. The reduction of an astrological religion to a zoological allegory prefigures the downfall of all forms of heathenry, as confirmed in the final chapters of John's vision of the end of time. The fifth-angel's passage reduces astrology to silence. Yet it cannot do so without "betraying" (revealing, and breaking faith with) the unspeakable. That is, the scorpion scene lets slip the signs of ancient astrology, a signlanguage that spoke of the order of space and time and the logic of desire and divination governed by spiritual bodies moving in heaven. Paradoxically, John's prophetic vision of Judgement Day makes use of this heathenish language while also converting the Sabaean imagery into tangible manifesta-

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tions of an incorporeal, atemporal Logos: the Verb. Acts of divination centred on movements and desires of the bodily sphere are displaced by acts of prophecy dictated by the immovable Spirit. This interpretation allows us to make sense of John's convoluted imagery. This is not to say that we have cracked the code by revealing the "true meaning" of the symbols at hand. Rather, our findings point to a crack in the code: hidden linkages that could have been made explicit had they not been of a sacrilegious nature. The Great Sign speaks of time, desire, the natural order, the bodily sphere and its will to power, hence of dark forces contained by the scorpion imagery - forces held back from the visible text and yet conveyed through acts of narrative displacement. As argued below, these happen to be the forces that the science of signs tends to expel from its own domain. Herein lies the origin of logocentrism and the rhetoric of the sign: the bodily sphere (and related deities of the natural world) ruled and overruled by the life of the spirit.

3. The verb and the code Our analysis of John's scorpion motif raises fundamental questions regarding the semiotic process, questions pertaining to narrative time, the internal logic of the sign system, and also the role of morality, repression and transgression in language. Let us begin with the twofold nature of the code as a set of moral principles and a set of conventional signs forming a logical system. By definition, a code refers to lawful propositions based on either logic or ethics; one definition usually excludes the other. In reality, however, the code always operates on both levels simultaneously. The same can be said of the bar that ties one sign to another (Scorpio to the scorpion): it too is inherently twosided in that it implies both a measure of morality and a lawful arrangement of signs. On the one hand, the bar fills the empty space that resides between the two "esses" such that neither of them can exist as a Latin esse standing for a meaningful essence. The scorpion makes sense only in relation to the lamb. Each symbol is part of a universe of words (images, sounds, meaningful practices) that speak to other words. The bar points to the interconnectedness of verbs, to analogies, oppositions and mediations that constitute the orderly business of la langue. The line offers a measure against the conceptual or empirical removal of the "esse" from the sign system where it belongs.

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On the other hand, the bar is also a place of judgement guided by a profession of law, sound thinking and public morality: for example, the code of Yahwe in Revelation. It is only the "ideal code" that earns narrative attention. Amoral codes that perform logical conjunctions and disjunctions without a single "injunction" are likely to be overruled. The pronouncements of language require that unlawful utterances be refused a hearing, that they be ruled out of court, sentenced and confined behind bars. John's Verb overrules the voice of Sabaism. No written "esse" can be linked to another "esse" without a literary trial. As in Revelation, all signs contain an act of judgement; language is a double-edged order that draws the line, using words like swords to cut through language. John's scorpion tail motif is a case in point. The latter is but a symbol within a web of symbols assembled into a semiotic structure, a signifier within a web of concrete signification. Yet the scorpion image also points to the moral strictures of Yahwism and the rule of Logos, a rule that bars material signs from constructing a meaningful world of their own through interaction, a universe independent of the life of the spirit. Paradoxically, I have used the science of signs to make sense of a logocentric language that subordinates the visible signifier - the word, written or spoken - to an invisible Sign Maker: the Verb. We now turn to this contradiction between two antithetical notions of the Code, the logocentric and the "semiocentric", the ethic and the scientific, with a view to showing how the two perspectives differ, what they have in common, and finally the limitations of each approach to language.

3.1. Logocentrism "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (Jn 1.1). The oneness of God and the Verb is the obverse of a separation of Creator from creation. A Word divided from the World is at the root of a host of bodies and images severed from the spirit, signs reduced to tangible manifestations of an immaterial Being. Logocentrism means that bodies of the earth and the sky can no longer be confused with the God who lies beyond the visible sphere. The world that exists thus becomes an outward display of a spiritual presence absent for all eternity. Astrology gives in to Yahwism, naturalism to logocentrism. "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years" (Gen. 1.14). With the Fall comes the demise of the astrological cult of physical asterisms condemned to body forth in images of the

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Sign-Maker, the primordial signiflant. Signs of the physical world are converted into pale reflections of Logos, expressions of the Almighty Creator. Divination gives way to divine Revelation, the living body to the life of the spirit. With the Fall comes a division within language, a separation between the godly Verbum and the human vox - the universal truth and the worldly powers of speech. Man's loss of grace ushers in the confusion of Babel, the curse of human languages that pale into insignificance beside the everlasting Verb. Bodies that fall under the rule of Logos are subjected to the whims of idios. They are governed by concrete "idioms" that vary so much they make a mess of the universal truth. Confusion befalls the heathens who take pride in their native dialect, in their own sapience (Lat. sapere, to taste, to know) and good taste (cf. Gen. 11). Through revelation, men are expected to clear themselves of the concreteness of colloquial language, of vernacular words (Lat. verna, a homeborn slave) that must be transcended through observance of the Holy Writ. Much has changed since the scriptural beginnings of the World. For one thing, signs are no longer synonymous with miracles of the Lord as recorded in the Old and New Testaments. The thinking subject now signs himself as father of the verb (Lat. verbum, a word), author of his own mental reflections. The biblical Logos has been overthrown by the knowing subject who speaks of his own "creations" with self-inflated authority (Lat. auctor, enlarger, originator, author): Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". All the same, the res cogitans adopts a language that is not entirely different from the ancient Verb. Both speeches, spiritual and rational, fall under the rule of Logos, the controlling principle of the universe as manifest in speech. I refer to an intangible rule that signs away visible words as token appearances of the spirit of the writ, to be gazed at with a look of deep significance. Language is reduced to an instrument of the mind, a physical shell that contains a kernel of truth, an idea or a concept represented in words. The meaning of life is once more signed, sealed and delivered, enfolded in a world dressed up and written off as the surface body or text. Abstract knowledge is delivered through and from the material corpus, from the textual body made of outward forms and figures of speech. Logocentrism has in common with semiotics an aversion to modesty and language vested with colloquial decorum. The appearances and "habits" of human speech are tolerated or valued only if treated as a prelude to the unveiling of truth. Western knowledge was born from the dis-covery of the body and the uncovering of an abstract spirit resentfully dwelling in the corpus. Ever since, the wisdom of the ages has subordinated language to

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logic, the shell to the kernel of truth. Our theologically-minded culture has been assigned an important mission: to free logic from the sensuous (erotic and material) limitations of la parole. The concrete word is treated as a body foreign to its true self. This brings me to the notion of speech as a representation of truth, hence to the predominant, instru-mental conception of mimesis. When viewed in a representational perspective, words stand for what they are not, either for a concept removed from the senses or a percept appearing in the mind. Enunciations of certitude are here viewed as the end product of an S/R formula that combines Signs with Reason and Reference to produce true knowledge, empirical or logical. Modern and post-modern critics of the representational doxa have questioned the episteme of certainty. The other side of the familiar S/R equation, however, is rarely challenged. I allude to the use of words as moral "representations" directed against all expressions of material bondage. Our concept of language as an instrument of the mind points to the rhetoric of freedom, which Nietzsche scornfully defines as a slave-morality. As heir to the throne of Logos, Homo sapiens is called upon to "deliver" words of knowledge and wisdom that "stand for" what they are not (concepts or objects) and also for the world that should be. Through the language of Reason, the mind is summoned to do battle with man's animal instinct, the darkness of ignorance, the domination of one will by another, man's subjection to the social and the material universe. The knowing subject thus denies himself the right to speak for error, poverty and inequality. Under his rule, the S/R formula is designed to convert acts of language into Stimuli triggering Responses that decondition the subject from all natural habits. Meaning is wishfully thought to influence action, thought is designed to affect behaviour, the intellect acts on the troubled affect, and the subject seeks to master the material object. To sum up, the knowing subject is heir to an older Verb. In spite of the distance that separates Homo sapiens from Logos, both sign makers constitute the immaterial origin of their manifestations in language. The JudeoChristian myth of the Fall heralds the end of astrology, of corporeal spheres once treated as heavenly for all eternity. The split between spirit and body lies at the heart of an abstract truth delivered through or from the material word. The raison d 'etre of the knowing subject lies in his etre de raison, in his enunciations of certitude, and also in his denunciations of servitude. Signs of the modern age fall under a principled logic that "represents" true reality as well as the interests of another world freed from the erring ways of poverty and inequity. Herein lies the foundation of the S/R formula that conjugates sign

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with reason, symbol with reference, stimulus with response, servitude with redemption: the matter/mind metaphysics of truth and freedom. No wonder the chant du signe is sung by a dying swan. The white lie of pure truth swanning freely around in the world of the spirit above bespeaks the death of the material life on earth. Still, in the swan's final dive into the "signs" of our times lies the greatest act of bodily restoration ventured by the knowing subject. Next comes a discussion of these and other fabled illusions that pertain to the Word made flesh - to the semiotic notion of the signifier conceived as an element of "thought in the concrete". 3.2.

Structuralism

Sign theorists have expelled the subject and the object, the concept and the percept from the order of la langue. In the words of Saussure (1966: 102), "the signs that make up language are not abstractions but real objects; signs and their relations are what linguistics studies; they are the concrete entities of our science". Systems of material signification have been substituted for the subject using language to express his abstract thoughts. "There are no preexisting ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language" (Saussure 1966: 112). No longer are we to think in the abstract, that is, in silence, without words in the flesh, far away from the concrete. Nor should we relinquish our rights of speech to lofty "observers" of the objective world. Sound-images are not in the service of the signifying subject that soundly thinks, or the signified object that creates the word in its own image. Human symbolling consists rather of "thoughts in the concrete" situated "halfway between percepts and concepts" (Levi-Strauss 1966: 18). Semiotics puts an end to empirical realism and abstract rationalism. The science of signs brings into question a mind that sheds light on the world through ideas and concepts "reflected" in speech. The representational view of language no longer holds. The lamp is shattered together with the mirror and the light thrown into it. In any case, the lamp does not work effectively without a shade, and the mirror is but the other side of a silver screen that must be hidden before it can mirror anything. Neither tool of human sight is used without the screening off of some light. The light-bearing intellect is blind to the shadows and the dimness of its own specular imagery. The intellect reflecting on the mirror has yielded to the savage mind, hence the heart's-ease of the delicate pensäe sauvage (wild pansy). Levi-Strauss points out that the characteristic feature of the savage mind is its timelessness; its object is to grasp the world as both a synchronic and a diachronic totality and the knowledge which it draws therefrom is like that afforded of a

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room by mirrors fixed on opposite walls, which reflect each other (as well as objects in the intervening space) although without being strictly parallel. A multitude of images forms simultaneously, none exactly like any other, so that no single one furnishes more than a partial knowledge of the decoration and the furniture but the group is characterized by invariant properties expressing a truth. The savage mind deepens its knowledge with the help of imagines mundi (Levi-Strauss 1966: 263.) As Yeats once said, "mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show". Signs signify other signs. The realm of the signifier is a land of no exile where the word never speaks of the world but rather to another word, the mirror to another mirror. Oppositions between images of reality constitute a world of their own. Language is a system of differences. By implication, the symbolic eludes the rule of the mob (chaos) and the despotism of the true message as well (Logos). Language cannot exist on the basis of an absolute laisser-faire association. Nor can meaning be reduced to surface manifestations of a leading theme, an overarching concept, a creative subject, a simple-minded stereotype, or a domineering archetype. Beyond the sameness of the powers of speech gone democratic or totalitarian, there is the land of la differance: an enchanted dominion of playful images slipping and sliding their way through splits and crevices in the code. From the ashes of the Cartesian res cogitans (pitted against the res extenso) has risen the growing subject-matter of man's speaking habit ruled by the unconscious operations of la langue. Products of consciousness are "no more than the expression, on the level of individual thought and behavior, of certain time and space modalities of the universal laws which make up the unconscious activity of the mind" (Levi-Strauss 1963b: 65). The unreflecting self has grown to a point where it can absorb or simply ignore the "little intelligence" there is in every good conscience with its shallow acts of thoughtful representation. Sign theory has entered what Nietzsche called "the phase of modesty of consciousness. Ultimately, we understand the conscious ego itself only as a tool in the service of a higher, comprehensive intellect" (Nietzsche 1967: 676). To conclude, four critical measures have been adopted with a view to taking the signifier back home, toward the savage mind and away from the transcendental subject. First, thought is now said to exist in the concrete. Sound-images constitute a world of their own, never to be subjected to the foreign rule of an abstract conception or a meaningless perception. The "spirit" can no longer hold the natural inclinations of la pensie sauvage in contempt. Second, the system of la langue puts an end to dichotomous themes of thought going either completely wild or resolutely tame by way of

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some masterly logic, inductive or deductive. The logic of symbolling precludes the chaotic rule of free association, the mystical reign of confusion and participation, or the logical tyranny of the unifying concept. Third, meaning is composed from instinct. Like Freud's unconscious id-entity, the Saussurian subject-matter of la langue is naturally unreflective, and is also "the complete, total locus of the network of signifiers" (Lacan 1979: 44). The "body and its great intelligence" form an impulsive habit-at that governs or simply ignores the subject's aspirations to self-conscious clarity. Lastly, reflections on the passing of history give way to the timeless present of synchrony and the code (of which more later). In short, la langue has made advances against the subject, his abstract intellect, his clear conscience, and his remembrance of history. 3.3. The salvaged mind Thus, the twofold subject of history and certainty has been discredited. With the savage mind the production of meaning is closer than ever to language's bodily habitat, and further from the ethereal atmosphere of the thinking spirit. "What seems easier than to let a being be just the being that it is?" (Heidegger 1975: 31). And yet the voice of la parole is still far from home. The swan that sings the death of the logocentric signe du Verbe is merely chanting a prelude to the redemption of another spirit, a secularized Logos consisting of thoughts encoded in the concrete and dwelling in the eternal present. Like Homo sapiens, the code of language is marked with the calmness of a salvaged mind incapable of showing attentions, emotions and mutations through narrative time. As argued below, all grammatical conceptions of symbolling partake in the immateriality, the calmness and the timelessness of an older Verb. "Customs are given as external norms before giving rise to internal sentiments, and these non-sentient norms determine the sentiments of individuals as well as the circumstances in which they may, or must, be displayed... Actually, impulses and emotions explain nothing, they are always results" (Levi-Strauss 1963a: 69). As the darkest side of man, affectivity is refractory to explanation and ipso facto unsuitable for use in explanation. This brings me to the disturbing calmness of the violaceous heart's-ease and the code (Lat. caudex, the base of a perennial plant) posing as la pensee sauvage. Albeit grown in a wild state, the plant that occupies our thought was and is still believed to cure the discomforts of love by securing order and peace of mind. The mind heals the wounds of the heart; la pensie panse les blessures du coeur. Strangely, this composure of emotion hardly suits creatures of the

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wild that are driven to survive rather than rest in peace. The heart-free remedy suggested by Levi-Strauss comes from a plant devoid of any temperamental humour, squeezed of all the juices of bodily life, as it were. A cure of this sort is a curse uttered without its humoral esse (Lat. for being): it is a cur(s)e of metaphysical souls. Saussurian linguistics are concerned with "the logical and psychological relations that bind together co-existing terms and form a system in the collective mind of speakers" (Saussure 1966: 99). As with other formal approaches, the analysis centres on a machinery competently stuffed with structural regulations and humourless codes that never reach the surface body because they are too lazy. The system functions economically, without its logic ever being spelled out. In the Saussurian perspective, the organs of logic are not hidden out of a sense of fear, decency, or in deference to the performative machinations of desire. Rather, they remain covert because no one but the scientist need bring the laws of the intellect out into the open. This formalist account of language errs on the side of intellectualism. A mind that rules out the emotive and moral powers of speech betrays a desire to desire no more, a self-destructive ressentiment against sentiment itself. A logic that comes without a sense of pride or honour is a code without ethics. Structural and formal analysis of la langue has in common with the science of causality that it never makes common "cause" with moral values, subjective consciousness or feelings of the body. The mathematical soul of the heart's-ease has in its sights the end of all surface illusions that give men a sense of "perspective", a cultural horizon that lays down the law, a sense of value and good taste. Semioticians who are "prejudiced against appearance, change, pain, death, the corporeal, fate and bondage, the aimless" should be reminded that the mind cannot function without keeping up appearances (Nietzsche 1967: 407). For "every center of force adopts a perspective toward the entire remainder, i.e., its own particular valuation, mode of action, and mode of resistance. The 'apparent world', therefore, is reduced to a specific mode of action on the world, emanating from a center" (Nietzsche 1967: 567). The central illusion of the Levi-Straussian perspective lies in the disappearing act of the knowing subject. And yet the reflexive nature of a subjectless science "communing with its pre-reflective self" (Levi-Strauss 1975: 10) begs the question: how can we reflect on the unreflective without indulging in the consciousness of science? According to Levi-Strauss (1966: 232), the conscious material and debris of sign structures are assembled into floating constructions that surface above the lawful creations of the bricoleur. Because of history, mental clas-

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sifications are "dismantled like a palace swept away upon the flood, whose parts... come to be combined in a manner other than that intended by the architect". Students of the combinative intellect are invited to deconstruct the palace in the hope of reaching the bottom-most Rock, the cornerstone that can withstand the vagaries of human history. I refer to the universal mind and the meta-language of the code. Science calls upon the analyst to decompose the corpus with the same kind of composure that the savage mind displays when recomposing its thoughts on the passing of history. Little do structuralists know that careful observations and mindful considerations are part of the dress material tailored for a healthy corpus driven by its own illusions. Formal sign analysis has in common with logocentrism that it purports to redeem the signs of language from their worldly habit (Lat. habitus, dress, appearance). "This perspective world... is very false... the more superficially and coarsely it is conceived, the more valuable, definite, beautiful, and significant the world appears". Nietszche (1967: 602) adds that "the deeper one looks, the more our valuations disappear - meaninglessness approaches!" Depthpsychology errs whenever it attaches more importance to the unconscious code than to the code of honour and its cultural commitment to a timehonoured tradition. Beauty and truth presuppose an illusion, a sense of perspective, a will to an obtuse vision shaped by the powers-that-be of speech. Man's speaking "habit" is naturally vested with the cloak of prejudice, a tissue of habit-forming preconceptions and formalities that constitute a people's docta ignorantia. Blind norms of the authorial subject expressing his thought through signs of his own creation are a case in point: they are part of the logocentric illusion, a panoptic vision never to be unveiled or denounced for the sake of a naked truth. The speaking subject has an instinctive tendency to discriminate (Lat. dis-, apart + crimen, verdict) in the sense of showing partiality when passing judgement. Whether right or wrong, language is naturally driven to exercise judgement; reflexion is but a reflex. Every mode of speech must place its trust in a pious doxy (Gr. doxa, praise, opinion), a cultural disposition to act and think according to habit, hence in "the voice of the natural", Barthes' arch-enemy. Bourdieu (1977: 19, 82) defines the habitus as a "system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks, thanks to analogical transfers of schemes permitting the solution of similarly shaped problems". A "doxy" (slang for a beggar's mistress) that loses faith in her own value points to beggars who

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cannot be choosers - impoverished cultures tormented by guilt and selfcontempt. Truth uncovered by means of logical assumptions is like an objective cause unravelled without a good cause: it "assumes" everything save the responsibility of its own will to power. The logocentric assumption of an apolitical sign system is a denial of "sexuality, the lust to rule, pleasure in appearance and deception, great and joyful gratitude for life and its typical states - these are the essence of the pagan cults and have a good conscience on their side" (Nietzsche 1967: 1047). In retrospect, the structural concept of a subjectless culture is plagued with metaphysical signs of the salvaged mind. For one thing, the heart's-ease (wild pansyIpensee) is reduced to curing the discomforts of human sentiments through mental composure. A code without honour knows neither fear nor valour; like a formal grammar, it hides merely for the sake of communicational expediency, not to mention other vulgar reasons that govern a signsystem gone completely apolitical and amoral. The intellect's aversion to the affect - the cognitive to the affective, the intellectual to the moral - points to a longing to long no more. By "disregarding the thinking subject completely", formal semioticians proceed "as if the thinking process were taking place in the myths, in their reflection upon themselves and their interrelation" (Levi-Strauss 1975: 12). The structural "myth of mythology" speaks of a code inherent in a mind that becomes conscious of itself through science. Judging from this scientific pursuit of intellectual self-awareness, the death of the reflective subject has been grossly exaggerated.

4. Repression and the law of transgression The story of the signified concept and the knowing subject dates back to the fall of the corporeal sphere under the rule of Yahwe, the immaterial origin of the manifest word/world. Acts of divine revelation have been substituted for the Sabaean divination of the heavenly body. The man who "makes his son or daughter pass through fire, who practices divination, who is soothsayer, augur or sorcerer, who uses charms, consults ghosts or spirits, or calls up the dead" is detestable to Yahweh (Dt. 18.10-12). As a result, Judeo-Christian history has left us the legacy of a material signifier dominated by the signified, subjected to the intangible Sign Maker, the spirit of an immutable reference. Metaphysics of the conscious subject reduce language to an outer

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vox sheltering the inner verbum: the Verb. In this perspective, the "habit" of speech is treated as a shell resentfully inhabited by the concept. The motions and emotions of language are thus viewed as a perishable "habit", to be outgrown by means of spiritual reading - searching for the logic hiding within (and beyond) the writ. Modern sign theory challenges the assumption of a conceptual plan that governs the order of language. Structural and post-structural studies of language show how signifying images have a life of their own, a "mode of expression" that forms not a manifestation of abstract thought but a world unto itself. But the logocentric attributes of the Word that was "in the beginning" (Jn. 1.1) have shown greater resilience than expected. Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, metaphysics of the authorial mind have been salvaged from the ruins of Sabaism, Yahwism and Cartesianism. Formal studies of language continue to betray the calmness and the timelessness of a mind contemptuous of the body, the corpus and the world of appearances - of everything that is becoming, that is, seemly and changing; with la langue man's drive to free himself from the corporeal sphere is still second nature. There is more to language than logic. The bar placed between one sign and another combines a logic of differences with a code that spells out the differences between right and wrong - that makes explicit formulations of lightness and wrongness. The bar contains other semiotic measures as well. For one thing, we should be careful not to subsume the emotive, willful or political character of language under its normative function, its sense of moral sapience and good taste. The authoritative effects of the semiotic order presuppose an exercise of power by way of repression. Moreover, language is in the habit of transgressing its own laws, logical and ethical. Inasmuch as it is imbued with emotive strength and a will to power, the oblique line that ties one "esse" to another operates as a repressive mechanism as well as a transgressive device more powerful than all other measures deployed by language. This twofold operation, suppressive and offensive, is at the heart of language. We shall examine the process of repression first. 4.1. Bracketing the code Although constantly sliding and shifting through metaphorical linkages, words can be expected to know where the line must be drawn - right between the two "esses" - lest the closeness of their association verge on I'indifferance. The bar implies, therefore, a measure of distance, a concealment effect that can never be fully annulled without speech turning into utterances that matter so little as to make no difference at all. To use John's metaphorical

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rhetoric, the lamb-like, sun-like God must never be confused with the "real" lamb let alone with the sun in Aries. Words nourish one another only by means of an umbilical interval between them. Meanings merged into an undivided concept or a unifying metaphor have little to do with a conception of language that thrives on the vital disconnections of language. Meaning is produced and fractioned by the bar that lies between signs. In the words of Lacan, "a substitutive signifier has been put in the place of another signifier to constitute the effect of metaphor. It refers the signifier that it has usurped elsewhere. If, in fact, one wished to preserve the possibility of a handling of a fractional type, one would place the signifier that has disappeared, the repressed signifier, below the principal bar, in the denominator, unterdrückt". This means that "it is false to say... that interpretation is open to all meanings under the pretext that it is a question only of the connection of a signifier to another signifier, and consequently of an uncontrollable connection. Interpretation is not open to any meaning" (Lacan 1979: 248). The severance of one sign from another through the sliding of la differance, however, represents only one side of the divisive powers of speech; the other side is the rank-ordering effect inherent in the semiotic process. To use Nietzschean terminology, the dominion of words is founded on a hierarchy of subscripts and superscripts, under-wills and over-wills, hence "esses" that come first and others that must follow in the sense of ranking or being bracketed second. Chains of significations are not reducible to flexible series of joined links; they are tied to language like millstones round the verb's neck. This brings me to issues of fashion and signification, covert rules and overt appearances. For Levi-Strauss, the mind produces complex arrangements of correlations of oppositions, as in A is to Β what C is to D (LeviStrauss 1963a: 88). The scorpion of Revelation 9 is to the lamb of Revelation 12 what autumnal Scorpio is to vernal Aries (what darkness is to light, what the south is to the north, the phallus to the head, the fearsome to the meek, and so on). The problem with this structural equation, and formal semiotics in general, is that it cannot account for the fact that signs are rank-ordered: one part of the correlation is dressed to the nines while the other is dressed down and trashed. Although correlated, the zoological and astrological imageries are radically different in that one is made explicit while the other, because illicit, is kept in the dark. The godly figures of Scorpio and Aries are never made visible, for that would spell a breach of faith in Yahwe who lies behind the visible sphere. The equation is encoded, bracketed and repressed all at once.

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An unprincipled code that fails to bracket all improper correlations is a code without honour. In reality, codes cannot function without braces and brackets defined as grammatical substitutes for the French braguette, a flap of cloth designed to conceal the improper parts. When courting the readership, a corpus is naturally concerned with breaches of decorum. Without parenthetic devices of the overt and the covert, the order of speech leaves its compositional body entirely exposed. Indecent ways are commonly mended by the use of seemly habits, clothing the secret parts of the code. "It is the least honourable parts of the body that we clothe with the greatest care" (ICor. 12.23). Bracketing the private parts of the code is our most deeply engrained habit of mind. Discretion is the better part of human valour. Though used to construct theory, the concept of "structure" has no structure (Levi-Strauss 1963b: 278). The concept points to the interrelation and the sum of all parts of language save the most important ones: the covert and the overt, la langue and la parole. There is nothing structurally wrong with the concept of the Code, and it is precisely in its lack of erogenous divisions, orifices, breaches or gaps that the problem lies. A meaningful structure adds up to a collection of linguistic forms that never dare turn into metaphorical figures lest logic be recognized for what it is: mere rhetoric, just a figure of speech. Language cannot be "figured out" if it is dis-figured by logical dissection. A science that dismantles the code inveigles the reader into removing the veil of the signifier. The shell is forced to recede before the kernel of truth, the medium before the message, the "esse" of the material sign before the essence of human thought. Frames of logical reference require that the mind be "framed up", held together by a rigid structure that tricks the body into striking a mental pose, as if held within the confines of analytic reason. Logic is not a "habit of mind". It is a habit of speech that betrays an indisposition to let products of language develop without "signs of a logical plan". As in psychoanalysis, obscure symptoms of a deeper structure are unravelled, decoded and explained with a view to removing the symptoms from immediate sight (Freud 1976: 174). And yet the subject's thinking faculty is a pale reflexion of powers of careful attention (Lat. at, to + tendere, stretch), of man's sensuous disposition to "stretch toward" an imaginary world. Guests of language are constantly invited to attend words by watching after each parole as if it were a precious objet d 'art. The compulsion to lure the reader into putting his faith in one particular set of illusions governs "all that is virtue, science, piety, artistry" (Nietzsche 1967: 853). Actually, the observer is but a watchful soul; the

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readership but the faithful attendant of language; and the listener but a mind that loves gardening - cultivating la pensee sauvage. Effects of symbolic attraction also imply an act of conquest performed by the powers of speech, powers that summon all contending utterances to observe silence lest the narrative lose faith in its own lies. The sign of Aries must fall into disgrace if the slain lamb is to be trusted. Attention thrives on tension. A great deal of servility is needed to endure all the strain and struggle of carefully "observing" (examining, obeying) the original text. Cultural works that command respect are governed by one dominant script that bids all "unrepresented" verbs to silence. More precisely, the explicit is an order that reigns over the implicit - call it the attendant circumstances of a text. These two levels of signification make up the licit corpus, the corpus juris that casts the illicit out of tangible existence. To use the legal imagery, the process of signification entails a proces-verbal, a suit that summons meaning to appear in court. The well-informed subject who witnesses these deliberations must enter into recognizances for the signifiers that are granted freedom of speech. The court administers the right to speak by ruling out words, sentences and readings disallowed by law. Unauthorized "hearings" must be banned if the decorum of judgement is to be observed. In short, language is an interplay of literal assertions and lateral insertions. Gains made beyond the literal meaning, however, are not limited to subindices of polysemic evocation. Indices of intelligibility also require that all disturbing associations be put on the index. The semiotic order therefore comprises three levels of signification: first, words that are clearly written down, through visible dispositions of the narrative plot; second, sub verbo entries of the corpus, that is, words predisposed to insertions between the lines; and third, cognate images written off from the surface narrative, hence signs of an in-disposition to hear them out. 4.2. Transgression is the law As already argued, Sabaism is the underside of Yahwism: signs of the astral religion are repressed by the language of Yahwe. Metaphors of the scorpion and the lamb serve to anathemize the sacrilegious memory of Scorpio and Aries. The apocalyptic usage of zoological symbols is couched in a metaphorical rhetoric (spirits in "the likeness of the appearances" of the scorpion and the lamb) that allows both John and his readership to avoid the signs and sins of heliolatry and zoolatry. Repression, however, does not mean the concentration of undivided attention on the dominant forces alone. As might be expected, the pleasure obtained from the triumph of the Verb over the astral

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pantheon is heightened by a certain measure ofjouissance attained through breaches of faith, "beyond the pleasure principle" (Lacan 1979: 281). Stellar gods continue to lurk behind the theriomorphic appearances of the demons and the deities of Revelation. Contending signifiers are deviously recuperated by way of the hidden signified; heathenry looms large in deeper layers of the text. A corpus highly regarded by its readership consists of a divided self that feeds on a tension, a semiotic "gap between culture and its destruction", as Barthes aptly put it (Barthes 1973: 15). Accordingly, the meticulous (Lat. metus, fear) character of the principle of attention introduced above is part of a narrative movement driven by the fear and the pleasure of transgression. No one heeds a script that simply follows the norm. In the final analysis, the meaning of the signifier that "moves" (by stirring emotions through narrative time) does not lie in I'en-soi (in-itself) of the signified concept or object. Nor does it depend on le pour-soi of the subject or the code communing with its pre-reflexive self. Language is rather ruled by I 'hors-de-soi\ signifiers are always "beside themselves" in that they are constantly rebelling against laws of their own making. The law exists only as a partial in-fraction of itself. The bar that lies between one sign and another is a place of bacchanalian debauchery. Here, in this tendency to turn from its own morality even when edifying it, lies the obliquity of the sign process. The unspeakable cannot be repressed without being expressed through roundabout utterances of the law. Moreover, language is in the habit of subsuming illicit meanings under the ruling code, which is but a way of reinforcing the dominant powers of speech: transgression is a powerful instrument of the law; transgression is the law. Signs of the Greek sema are trivial expressions of the double-edged "schema" (Gr. skhema, Sans, sähas), a term that denotes not only a stylistic device and a manner of speaking but also "a plan to conquer". Consider again the allegorical rhetoric that pervades John's vision of scorpion-tailed demons and the slain lamb appearing at the end of time. The astrological key to this animal code cannot consciously register with the readers of Revelation inasmuch as the stellar figures are part of a counterplot kept secret by virtue of its sacrilegious inspiration. The metaphorical rhetoric of "the likeness of the appearances" of the scorpion and the lamb are part of a Judeo-Christian scheme to "conquer" (to silence or appropriate) the Sabaean imagery by means of zoological distortion. The meta-language of the code ignores the interplay of the licit and the illicit, the conscious and the unconscious. The formal science of signs is a denial of the powerful schemings of language. La langue construed as a

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codificatory machine amounts to a good story only if treated as yet another machination of the transcendental Verb, a logocentric plot to dishonour the surface body of la parole. Actually all productions of language can be brought back home if they are "dressed to kill", which is what the schemings and the machinations of symbolling are designed to do. All combinations of signs are motivated by some crooked combine (French for trick) and also covered up with a dressy combinaison (undergarment) - a "slip" of the French tongue. Schemes of language can be plotted out on a map consisting of three intersecting axes: the analogical, the oppositional, and the anagogical. To be sure, the order of speech is governed by "the union of opposites" and the ensuing organization of analogical and transformational relations. Symbolic correlations, inversions and mediations are part and parcel of the orderly business of la langue (Levi-Strauss 1963a: 77). There is no point in denying the "analytic" efficiency of the classificatory code (Levi-Strauss 1966: 245-269). And yet the structural chant du signe should be given no more than the last rites, the funeral salutation granted to a body of laws no longer infused with moral life. An amoral, apolitical code that predicates without preaching carries a faultless logic that attributes everything to reason save one important thing: the responsibility for raising one code above all others — logocentrism above naturalism, Yahwism above Sabaism. In reality, the code never operates without the anagogical schemings of language, or the moral and allegorical tendencies of the unconscious. When applied to biblical material, the anagogical interpretation shows how moral teachings lead to heavenly rewards for expressions of faith and obedience; thus, the rest of the Sabbath "signifies" the repose of the saints in heaven. Freud rejected this method of "over-interpretation" of dream material as used by those who sought to "disguise the fundamental circumstances in which dreams are formed and to divert interest from their instinctual roots" (Freud 1976: 174). The Kantian notion that the moral character and ethical imperatives of man extend to his dream-life, to his unreflective mind or "kaleidoscopic imagination", can hardly be reconciled with Freud's distinction between moral consciousness and the instinctual determinations and transgressive ways of the unconscious (Freud 1976: 133 - 1 3 9 ) . Freud notwithstanding, there is more to the anagogical scheme than a symbolic illustration of conscious morality. This peculiar mode of signification points to a fundamental tendency of language: hiding the law, removing it from immediate sight and covering it with convoluted imagery. If anything, the biblical schemings of the scorpion and the lamb (Scorpio and Aries) convey a basic lesson: thou shalt not speak of zodiacal gods. Cor-

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poreal spheres of the sky cannot be on par with God the immaterial Spirit. Men of true faith should pay no attention whatsoever to the sorcerous and the sacrilegious ways of "the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators" lest they burn in hell (Isa. 47: 12). This basic law of JudeoChristian theology, however, can never be spelled out in full. Prophets can anathematize astrology by using words to that effect, yet they cannot speak of the unspeakable without contravening their own law. This "double bind situation" (Bateson 1973) involves two injunctions: one forbidding men to talk about astral gods, and another forbidding them to articulate the first rule. The end result is a conscious discourse that employs devious ways of talking and writing about Sabaean gods without actually calling the reader's attention to them. Through anagogical displacement (disguising the law), moral consciousness succeeds in banishing the imagery of false gods while also harnessing their powers to the dominant code - Yahwism. Normative speech violates its own law as it must. Transgression becomes the law. To conclude, the "logic of signification" has in common with Christian theology that it "ignores the sanctity of transgression" (Bataille 1957: 100). The formal science of signs disregards the subversive, double-bind production of moral non-sense within the order of speech. Classificatory compositions lose their class distinction whenever they sever their connections with the anagogic lessons and hu-moral schemings of the textual body. Disjunctive relations and mediatorial conjunctions add up to deadly boring typologies. They contain - convey and withhold - no sensitive information that must be classified by way of an order sealed in every categorical junction, that is, by an imperative injunction. A text consisting of dictions that come without a single dictum or ruling interdiction should be greeted with indifference; the script does not deserve to be prescribed or even proscribed. Likewise, acts of speech that can be declassified with impunity can be suspected of being declasse from the start.

5. The attentions and motions of narrative time My reading of Revelation serves to illustrate a basic thesis: the code and the logic of desire are one and the same thing. The material quoted from John has been disassembled through a threefold method that goes beyond the strict logic of similarities and differences as theorized by Levi-Strauss. First, readers are invited to probe the surface narrative for the dominant signs chosen in preference to all other meanings potentially invested in the

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same imagery. The scorpion-tailed demons evoked in Chapter Nine of Revelation are assigned zoological "appearances" that preclude a literal reading of an astrological code into John's usage of the scorpion motif. The animal code is visibly preferred over the astral. Second, signs forced out of the literal text form the underside of the narrative, an underground "plot" comprising all the unspeakable fears and latent anxieties subsumed in the visible text. John's commitment to Yahwism requires that the Sabaean code (treating Scorpio as a member of the zodiacal pantheon) be reduced to silence. The cult of bodies in heaven cannot be tolerated as it is incompatible with the logocentric distinction between immaterial spirits and the bodies made visible on earth (animals, humans) or in heaven (stars). Third, a ban cannot be placed on illicit indirections of the text without the narrative signifying "the unspeakable" if only in a roundabout way, hence by means of distortion. Like all displacements, John's zoological "misrepresentation" of the astrological idiom borders on transgression: a close reading of Revelation 9 shows how astral religion looms large in deeper layers of the text. Slips of the Sabaean code are unavoidable. This is to say that signs of the ruling order contain transgressive measures of their own. Licit expressions of language are in the habit of subsuming illicit meanings under the dominant code, which is but a way of reinforcing the powers-that-be in the realm of speech. Efforts to reduce Sabaism to absolute silence are not enough; the law of Yahwism stands more to gain by actually turning stellar imagery to its own advantage, as John does in his vision of the end of time. Transgression is a powerful instrument of the Law. The theory of tropology outlined above posits a mode of interpretation that delves into the logical plotting of sign relations while also unravelling the devious schemings of language. These rudiments of "scheme analysis" (Chevalier 1990) are directed against semiotic theories that grant primacy to the intellect over the affect, the logical over the emotional, the undertext over the surface narrative, the formal grammar over the performative drama, la langue over la parole. More generally, the mode of reading outlined above centres on the schemings of time and desire (morality, repression and transgression) in the act of coding. This is to say that the sign process comprises: 1) the politics of "attention" unevenly distributed within the code; and 2) speculations on narrative time. The stratification of attention and the rankordering of signs have already been discussed. We turn now to the problem of temporality in language, starting with the semiotic notion of synchrony. According to Levi-Strauss, one characteristic feature of man's imagines mundi is its timeless perspective (Levi-Strauss 1966: 263). Instead of con-

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stantly committing the past to memory, the savage mind lives "unhistorically" like the "beast that forgets". In the words of Nietszche: Consider the herds that are feeding yonder: they know not the meaning of yesterday or today... He [man] wonders also about himself - that he cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him. It is matter for wonder: the moment that is here and gone, that was nothing after, returns like a specter to trouble the quiet of a later moment... Then he says, Ί remember'... and envies the beast that forgets at once and sees every moment really die, sink into night and mist, extinguished forever. The beast lives unhistorically; for it 'goes into' the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder. (Nietzsche 1949: 5)

The awareness of time passing presupposes detachment from the eternal present, expressed in a language that reacts in remembrance or anticipation not of what is but of what was, shall, or should be. Not so with the savage mind of the forgetful bricoleur, a playful intellect that combines notes and signs to produce rhythm, melody and harmony. Sequels of bygone phrases and sequences produced in variable keys enter the composition only if they are based on the same melodic pattern. The logic of synchrony and harmony applies to facts of history as well: facts are retrieved from a general recollection bank and intervene in the narrative present on condition that they be chronologically ordered and properly synchronized with other events of the story. "History does not therefore escape the common obligation of all knowledge, to employ a code to analyze its object, even (and especially) if a continuous reality is to be attributed to that object" (Levi-Strauss 1966: 258). Synchrony governs the intellect. To use a well-known image, the semiotic machine is like a plaything, a kaleidoscope containing "bits and pieces by means of which structural patterns are realized. The fragments are products of a process of breaking up and destroying, in itself a contingent matter". Levi-Strauss (1966: 36) goes on to say that "these patterns produced by the conjunction of contingent events (the turning of the instrument by the person looking through it) and a law (namely that governing the construction of the kaleidoscope, which corresponds to the invariant element of the constraints just mentioned) project models of intelligibility which are in a way provisional". From this perspective, social reality is constituted by the coexistence of language and speech, structure (paradigmatic) and history (syntagmatic), the necessities of the human psyche and the whims of history. "The powerful inanity of events" is offset by the "metastructure of the language" (Levi-Strauss 1963b: 58; 1973: 475; see Chevalier 1982). Superstructural practices (logic) that ward off the dangers of infrastructural be-

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coming (praxis) should be called into question. Actually, the relationship should be inverted. On the one hand, there is "Apollo's deception: the eternity of beautiful form; the aristocratic legislation, thus shall it be for ever!" Apollo embodies the calmness of the law that reacts slowly, with no feeling of struggle. His rule stands for "a will to measure, to simplicity, to submission to rule and concept". On the other hand, there is Dionysos, who personifies "a passionate-painful overflowing into darker, fuller, more floating states... the will to procreation, to fruitfulness, to recurrence; the feeling of the necessary unity of creation and destruction". He stands for "a desire for destruction, for change, for becoming... an overall power pregnant with the future" (Nietzsche 1967: 799, 846, 853, 1049). The opposition is by no means symmetrical. Nietzsche reminds us that beauty, logic and custom never come naturally to lawless Dionysos. If left alone, becoming is an event that has no meaning. Greek Apollonianism and the corresponding sense of law, however, can still grow out of a Dionysian subsoil: after all, logic must be "conquered, willed, won by struggle - it is his [Dionysos'] victory". The god of pleasure needs to conquer "lies [metaphysics, morality, religion, science] in order to conquer this reality, this 'truth', that is, in order to live". This is to say that "the will to appearance, to illusion, to deception, to becoming and change (to objectified deception) here counts as more profound, primeval, metaphysical than the will to truth, to reality, to mere appearance: - the last is itself merely a form of the will to illusion" (Nietzsche 1967: 33). The immortal Apollo is a figment of Dionysian intoxication. The god of wine is so whimsical that he can actually will time and tide to wait for man. Logic is merely a revel that knows no limit, a drunken party that becomes a rite so solemn as to indulge in the lustful labours of time: that is, conception, pregnancy, birth, growth, and then the tragedy of death as a prelude to another lecherous afterlife - to the eternal recurrence of the will to be. Making sense of the passing of time is like music: narrative language is just "another way of making children" (Nietzsche 1967: 800). If left to himself, Apollo will at best codify time, thereby making history serve memory as the chronic ailment of a life that lives no more. Unlike Chronos, Dionysos enjoys the time of his life, even when "cut to pieces" (Nietzsche 1967: 1052). He makes history as a good story that has a beginning and an end. His corpus plays with the passing of time. Just as he loathes the chronic dissection of time, so he abhors an eternal present grown plainly boring, a timeless moment experienced without tragedy or ecstasy. A good story never takes time simply by the forelock. Instead, it fools the calendrical devices of history by endowing speech with a playful sense of

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timing. Dionysos commands narrative time to be frivolous or heavy, plentiful or exhausted, though not always within the agreed time. Time as told is meant to be taken or given, kept or lost, saved or wasted, bought or spent, shortened or lengthened, deferred or hastened. Narrative language grants time the last word, the one that truly tells, and also the time-honoured right to speak first, as in "once upon a time". This is a far cry from the formal notion of synchrony. The science of signs has succumbed to the cerebral fear of a plot that shifts and moves. The heart's-ease is said to grow in a wild state yet is denied the experience of a wild youth. Sign theorists emulate the dull speaker who ignores diachrony and the succession of facts of language in narrative time (Saussure 1966: 81). But why should the intellect mind its own business whenever daring issues of genesis, growth, evolution and finality are raised? Has the mind never seen a plot thicken before? For Barthes, the actional system involves the ordering of scenes, sequences and stages of actions and events situated in narrative time. Similarly, Levi-Strauss (1966: 258) reduces the "pressure of history" in language to chronological frequencies (daily, annual, secular, millennial) based on "a differential coding of before and after" and variations between hot and cold successions of events through time. Barthes (1970: 26, 91, 215) adds to this action system what he calls the hermeneutic code, the one that regulates the narrative enigma. Problems raised and solved by the story revolve around the formulation of a question, the promise of a response, admissions of defeat, replies that may be ambiguous or partial, delayed or misleading, all of which point to the emplotment and unfolding of a mystery. Like the actional catalogue, the hermeneutic inventory is one code among many. Barthes and Levi-Strauss confuse the coding of time with the timing of the code. Hermeneutic motions of the narrative plot are properties of all codes: they pervade all acts of speech that play with the passing of time. The wheelings and dealings of time govern the politics of language. That is, the schemings of time are inherent to the process of narrative "attention" viewed as I 'attente (waiting or expecting). Far from being an immediate presence of the mind, the order of attention is a command to the senses to be ready for what is deferred; it disposes the senses to respond to words not yet uttered. Attention is caught or held only if there is something potentially worth waiting for, hence the anxiety to wait and see. Words that attract attention create expectations and the anticipations of I'attente. Time in language defers to the machinations of desire. Narrative speech consists of moving sights that preclude the serial slide-effects of a static picture, or what Heidegger calls the vulgar conception of time. In

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reality, the semiotic process is a kaleidoscopic box moved by its own plot, its own logic of desire and "care for the world that exists within-time-ness" (Ricoeur 1984: 62), not by the subject and the vagaries of history acting up from outside the intellect, as Levi-Strauss (1966: 33) would have it. Signs that keep sliding and foundering (because of their polysemic malleability or their sensitivity to history) cannot escape "the profusion of chaos" (Nietzsche 1967: 26, 79). Although forever unfixed, they partake in the boredom of images that never deviate from the norm (Barthes 1973: 43). For Nietzsche (1967: 492, 55 In.), "movement is symbolism for the eye; it indicates that something has been felt, willed, thought". The will to power is at the origin of motion which is not conditioned "from the outside - not caused - I require beginnings and centers of motion from which the will spreads". Signs must be unevenly declined and well orchestrated through time if the words themselves are to touch the readers at the right moment, move them to tears, anger, laughter or pity, to mention just a few possible motions of a story that plays with the passing of time. Not so with logical systems governed by a timeless code, by minds devoid of any will to emotive power: they stand still and aloof with the narrative, with no presentiment of times other than the present literally unfolding before their eyes. The verbal machine seduces the reader from boredom by making advances at the proper time - the spectator should get to the bottom of the story neither too soon nor too late; "a reversal [of the plot] takes time" (Ricoeur 1984: 39). This is to say that narrative time is essentially twofold. It holds scenes and signs of future narration in abeyance while also hinting at images barred from immediate sight. In this way the semiotic process contains memories of the past and expectations of the future, or signs of distant times. This process of narrative deferens (Lat. deference, deferment) prepares the ground for "those strokes of chance that seem to arrive by design" (Ricoeur 1984: 43). Pre-figuration, however, does not belong to the pre-narrative domain of practical experience and action, as Ricoeur (1984: 53, 74) would have it. Rather, it is a corollary of the deferment of meaning inherent in the practice of semiosis. Secret pronouncements of astrology in John's portrayal of Judgement Day are a case point. Demons in the train of equinoctial Scorpio entice readers of Revelation to place their hopes in the almighty Ram well before the actual appearance of the lamb slain at Easter, the season that marks the beginning of a new era and the end of cyclical time. Scenes of a moving script are often impatient. Words destined for the surface of a future scene are prefigured, albeit with discretion. Scorpion-tailed spirits of the Fifth Trumpet form the pre-text of the marriage supper of the paschal lamb celebrated at the end of

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Revelation. Their appearance gives the reader yet another pretext to invest hope in memories of the triumph of Aries at springtime. The creatures are both reminiscences of a heathenish past and shadows of the hereafter, ancient signs of divination lurking behind John's vision of the end of narrative time. The Sabaean plot discussed above illustrates what Ricoeur (1984: 20) calls the distentio process, or the Augustinian dialectic of the threefold present, "the dialectic of expectation, memory, and attention, each considered no longer in isolation but in interaction with one another... As for attention, its engagement consists completely in the active 'transit' of what was future in the direction of what becomes past. It is this combined action of expectation, memory, and attention that 'continues'. The distentio is nothing other than the shift in, the noncoincidence of the three modalities of action". Augustine does not conceive of time as chronology; the measurement of regular motions of celestial bodies simply mark out time. Rather, the temporal experience is a movement of the mind itself, a narrative-like extension of intentionality stretched in three different directions all at once (Ricoeur 1984: 3, 14, 18, 30). The more the mind attends (or makes itself intentio) to signs of its own production, the more it "distends" itself through time. Discordance, however, constantly emerges "from the very concordance of the intentions of expectation, attention, and memory. It is to this enigma of the speculation on time that the poetic act of emplotment replies" (Ricoeur 1984: 20). The implication of disharmony in language is that the distentio effect is but one side of the dialectical equation established above. The other side is governed by what might be called the process of contentio: the contentious operations of forgetfulness, inattention and fear that combine in all acts of signification to produce the machinations of narrative time. Compositions and plots progressing at their own pace thrive on a good measure of narrative discomposure. Signs partly remembered from the past or anticipated before their time are apprehended with anxiety and agitation, with feelings of joy or pain caused by the nearness of pleasure or danger. Letting one's attention be caught by a story and its own mode of "speculation on time" involves a transference of recollections and expectations that may cause some alarm: for instance, the fear that memories and prospects of autumnal Scorpio and vernal Aries be revived to the point of actually undermining the anti-Sabaean rule of Yahwism. Augustine's confessions contain the same elements of contentio that are found in the Book of Revelation. His discussion of time and being is "distended" in the same direction as John's vision - toward the end of time. He too invites his reader to reduce the divinatory motions of the stars to

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orderly measurements of rectilinear time. The Church father warns us not to confuse the measurements of bodies in motion with the temporal tensions and wanderings of the human mind, let alone with the eternal life of the spirit that surpasses all bodily experiences, human or astral (Ricoeur 1984: 14, 26, 30). Like John, Augustine resists the temptation of letting himself be distracted by the unspeakable desiderata, memories and expectations of Sabaean naturalism. All scripts play games with the passing of time, even the most conventional ones. A display of convention betrays a cautious attitude toward the unspeakable - the readers must be cautioned and protected against distant images that haunt the narrative present. The comment applies to the obsessive like-reserve that pervades John's vision of "the likeness of the appearances" of spirits battling on Judgement Day. The prophet's metaphorical rhetoric belies (disguises, leaves unfulfilled) all hopes for the revival of naturalism, be it in the form of heliolatry or zoolatry. John's analogical mannerism is directed against the immediate reunification of animal and astral bodies (the "real" lamb or the "real" Aries) with their kindred spirits (the invisible lamb slain) evolving in heaven, beyond the visible sky. The verb is a machine that moves the reader only when it is deranged. La langue contains its own historical noise, disquieting utterances that cause all compositions to remain forever unsettled and unsettling, even when arranged for melodic instruments. Temporal disturbances are built into all acts of speech that have a beginning and an end. Prologues are moving sights — oracular visions designed to set a story going. Trouble brews in all versions of Genesis: trouble was meant to brew in paradise from the start. The First Book of Moses is concerned with the Edenic myth only because it is anxious to announce, denounce and reminisce about the immorality of the first couple's aspirations to self-idolatry and bodily immortality. From this primordial script emerges a long-lasting anxiety to counter both the naiveties of the short-lived Edenic imagery and the trials of moral life that followed. The Book of Revelation puts an end to the biblical epic by foreshowing the outcome of human history and of God's moral creation. And yet concluding scenes of the Apocalypse are as reserved about the New Earth as Genesis was about the garden of Eden: witness the constant metaphorical reservations of a text haunted by memories of heaven on earth - by a New Jerusalem harking back to unsettling images of an earthly paradise. The conclusive character of John's prophetic narrative does not account for the appeal of Revelation. Only temptations of a reversion to Adam's self-idolatrous type can account for the attraction (and fears) of John's vision of the end of time. A prophet's insight into the future is but an incitement to begin Genesis anew.

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This brings me to a fundamental attribute of narrative time: the endless character of the semiotic algorithm. While it is in the nature of attention to persist-perdurat attentio (Augustine) - it is also natural for attentions of the signifier constantly to shift. Vestiges and hopes of distant times induce symbols and images to move rhythmically from the covert to the overt (or vice versa), from one level of signification to another, from one scene to the next (Ricoeur 1984: 24, 29). The future insists on becoming the past that continues to haunt the hopeful present. Each story has its own mode of development, its own history of signs struggling to make an appearance at choice moments of the narrative plot. Signs in movement have little to do with the serial bricolage of scenes perpetually "dismantled like a palace swept away upon the flood" (Levi-Strauss 1966: 36, 232). Rather the schemings of language lend themselves to different forms of "speculation on time". Passages can be played crescendo or serially, with pessimism or optimism. They can be subjected to pendulum effects of wavering agitations, or to spiralling effects of ups and downs that lead up to a good or a bad ending, depending on the plot. Figures of speech can captivate, scare, lose or bore an audience through the appropriate pacing of the plot and related shifts in narrative space. Semiotic production is governed by the political economy and the history of desire, a fluctuating market of over- and under- investments subject to orderly speculations on shifts of the covert and the overt. The chief attraction of a speech that moves lies precisely in its ability to play with the passing of time - with motions and "distensions" of closure and disclosure, with the enfolding and unfolding of the sign. Narrative language is constantly shifting in and out of memories of the past and expectations of the future. Pre- and post-figurative images, however, are never uncovered by the text in the shape of a final revelation expected by all. A long-awaited figure that succeeds a leading composition is just another shifting sight. Epilogues are no exception. The only difference is that they are self-contained, which implies a reserve, an unresolved enigma that compels the reader to shift back to the prologue or to another variation on the same story. The New Jerusalem portrayed in Revelation is an invitation to read Genesis again. To sum up, the savage mind is governed by the principle of "attention", the unfree play of a dominant code that casts the illicit out of perceptible existence. The order of attentio also contains a tension that comes from the opposite command, which is to be in readiness for signs recalled or deferred because they are worth remembering or waiting for. The process of semiosis is "distended" by the attentes and the vestiges of narrative desire. Symbols

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are always set against shadows of distant times - signs of the past and the future that haunt the narrative present. Moreover, the interplay of remembrance, expectation and attention presupposes some measure of disharmony, hence the dialectic of oblivion, apprehension and inattention. Finally, narrative time is regulated by the motions of desire, a fluctuating economy of overand under-investments open to speculations on shifts of the covert and the overt, the esoteric and the exoteric, inscriptions of the lexical index and subentries on the index. The employment of language is rife with narrative e-motion. The same cannot be said of codes that never shift from foreground to background while moving from a preface to a postface; their story is without perspective. In the final analysis, the bar that separates one "esse" from another should be drawn not just horizontally as between the staff and the rank and file, one above the other. The line should also be drawn vertically, across staff, between sounds of the here and now and notes of the hitherto and the hereafter; in other words, one sign after the other. The bar is a line within a musical score. The emplotment of language implies the temporal dialectic of narrative attentio viewed as I 'attente. All compositions synchronize notes of static differences with tones of moving deferens, sounds of deferment performed out of deference for the hopes and fears, the memories and expectations of the narrative plot.

List of abbreviations Genesis Isaiah Deuteronomy Luke John 1 Corinthians Revelation

Gen. Isa. Dt. Lk. Jn. ICor. Rev.

Notes 1. For a more detailed discussion and illustration of the theoretical perspective outlined in this essay, see Chevalier 1990 (Semiotics, Romanticism and the Scriptures, Approaches to Semiotics 88, Mouton de Gruyter).

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References Allen, Richard Hinckley 1963 Star names. New York: Dover Publications. Barthes, Roland 1970 S/Z. Paris: Seuil. 1973 Le plaisir du texte. Paris: Seuil. Bataille, Georges 1957 L'Erotisme. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Bateson, Gregory 1973 Steps to an ecology of mind. Frogmore: Paladin. Bourdieu, Pierre [ 1977] [English translation by R. Nice. Outline of a theory ofpractice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.] Chevalier, Jacques Μ 1982 Civilization and the stolen gift: Capital, kin, and cult in Eastern Peru. Toronto: Toronto University Press. 1990 Semiotics, romanticism and the scriptures. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Freud, Sigmund [1976] [English translation by J. Strachey. The interpretation of dreams. New York: Penguin Books.] Heidegger, Martin [1975] [English translation by A. Hofstadter. Poetry, language, thought. New York: Harper Colophon Books.] Lacan, Jacques [1979] [English translation by A. Sheridan. The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis. London: Penguin Books.] Levi-Strauss, Claude [1963a] [English translation by R.Needham. Totemism. Boston: Beacon Press.] [1963b] [English translation by C. Jakobson - Β. G. Schoeps. Structural anthropology. New York: Basic Books.] [1966] [The savage mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.] [1973] [English translation by J. & D. Weightman. From honey to ashes. New York: Harper & Row.] [1975] [English translation by J. & D. Weightman. The raw and the cooked. New York: Harper Colophon Books.] Nietzsche, Friedrich [1949] [English translation by a. Collins. The use and abuse of history. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.]

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Ricoeur, Paul [1984]

[English translation by W. Kaufmann - R J. Hollingdale. The will to power. New York: Vintage Books.]

[English translation by K. McLaughlin - D. Pellauer. Time and narrative. Vol. 1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.] Saussure, Ferdinand de [ 1966] [English translation by W. Baskin. Course in general linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.]

British cannibals: Contemplation of an event in the death and resurrection of James Cook, explorer Gananath Obeyesekere

1. The dark side of being human This paper is a take off from my book entitled The Apotheosis of Captain Cook. European Mythmaking in the Pacific (1992). In it I present an alternative view of the events leading to the apotheosis of James Cook, in effect making the case that the supposed deification of the white civilizer is a Western myth-model foisted on the Hawaiians. I use basically the same data as that of Marshall Sahlins: the ships' journals (Sahlins; 1981, 1985). But since I view the Hawaiian episode as the culmination of two previous voyages, I scour the earlier journals, in a way that Sahlins did not, for information that might reveal details of Cook's character, and also the way he was received by chiefs in other Polynesian nations, all of which, I show, throw much light on the subsequent Hawaiian events. I follow the tradition of the masters of suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche and Freud) in my own orientation. This "gaze of suspicion" entails a critical examination of the journals as a literary genre and the audience to which they were addressed. I juxtapose several accounts of the same incident to show how the British fitted the events into a variety of pregiven structures. One technique is especially important, that being the way that the English texts suppress the Hawaiian voices. I try to imaginatively reconstruct the voices of the "native" that lie hidden in the text. This reconstruction of a "hidden discourse" is central to my analytical strategy. I shall illustrate this strategy with a concrete example, namely, the discourse on cannibalism initiated by Cook and other journal writers. Let me begin at the end. It is 1779, but it could be 1989 or 1993 in another place: one group with their piles of stones, and the other with their loaded guns. The ship's officers want genuinely to defuse the tension, but they are not willing to leave till they get the bones of "our dear Captain", for a decent burial at sea. Lieutenant King, who loved Cook dearly, was in charge. When the Hawaiians were told that if "the body was not brought the next morning the

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town should be destroyed", Koah, a chief, a "treacherous fellow" whom King intensely disliked, came aboard to talk about returning Cook's remains. That night, two frightened priests, one of whom was the taboo man that accompanied Cook wherever he went, came up and after loud lamentation about the loss of Lono-Cook, said that they had brought with them whatever remained of him. He then presented us with a small bundle wrapped up in cloth, which he brought under his arm; and it is impossible to describe the horror which seized us, on finding in it, a piece of human flesh, about nine or ten pounds weight. This, he said, was all that remained of the body...

The rest of Cook, they said, was cooked in the Hawaiian fashion and distributed among the king and the chiefs, a mode by which Cook was appropriated into the Hawaiian aristocracy. It is in the course of this conversation between King and the priests that the latter came out with the phrase "when will Lono come again?" This is of course - at least according to Sahlins - a reference to the possible return of the God, after his ritual killing and sacrifice at the hands of the Hawaiians acting out a final phase in a cosmic drama (King 1784: 6 4 - 7 9 ) . Now let me examine the full account of the event by Lieutenant King. Naturally the ship's officers were appalled at the sight of the grisly object, but they soon overcame this for, as the first ethnographers, they were imbued by a scientific curiosity. They could easily change into their white coats for let it not be forgotten they were representatives of the Royal Society. King reports: This (meeting) afforded an opportunity of informing ourselves, whether they were cannibals; and we did not neglect it. We first tried, by many indirect questions, put to each of them apart, to learn in what manner the rest of the bodies had been disposed of; and finding them very constant in one story, that, after the flesh had been cut off, it was all burnt; we at last put the direct question: Whether they had not eat some of it? They immediately shewed as much horror at the idea, as any European would have done; and asked, very naturally, if that was custom amongst us? They afterward asked us, with great earnestness and apparent apprehension, "When the Orono would come again? and what he would do to them on his return?" The same inquiry was frequently made afterward by others; and his idea agrees with the general tenour of their conduct toward him, which shewed, that they considered him as a being of superior nature. (King 1784: 69)

Thus at least in one instance the famous question on the return of Lono (Orono) was uttered by the two Hawaiians in the context of a discourse on cannibalism. The "apparent apprehension" of the Hawaiians is converted into "expressions of sorrow" by Sahlins (1981: 24). King interpreted that anxious

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question as evidence of the Hawaiian belief that they considered Cook to be a "being of superior nature". Elsewhere in the journal King describes Hawaiian attitudes in terms of Christian devotionalism as "adoration". Other British journal writers however, interpreted the event in terms consonant with both Hawaiian and European mythic structures: Hawaiians were afraid of the return of Cook's ghost! What was going on in this dialogue between the anxious Hawaiians and the ethnographers? Let me flash back to the first brief visit of Cook to Kauai in Hawaii the previous year. During that visit James Cook himself asked an identical question. A Hawaiian was carrying "a very small parcel", and since he was anxious to conceal it, Cook insisted it be opened. He saw concealed therein "a bit of flesh, about two inches long", and naturally he surmised "it might be human flesh, and that these people might, perhaps, eat their enemies", a legitimate ethnographic inquiry I might add since Cook says "that this was the practice of some of the natives of the South Sea Islands". The questions put to the Hawaiian confirmed the hypothesis and Cook concluded that "it was their custom to eat those killed in battle" (Cook 1784: 208-9). When Cook tried to confirm his hypothesis of Hawaiian cannibalism the next week (January 29, 1778) from a visitor to the ship's gun room he got a different reply. For Cook, however, this reply was proof of cannibalism. These visitors furnished us with an opportunity of agitating again, this day, the curious inquiry, whether they were cannibals... One of the islanders, who wanted to get in at the gun-room port, was refused; and, at the same time, asked, whether, if he should come in, we would kill and eat him? Accompanying this question with signs so expressive, that there could be no doubt about his meaning. This gave a proper opening to retort the question as to this practice; and a person behind the other, in the canoe, who paid great attention to what was passing, immediately answered, that if we were killed on shore, they would certainly eat us. He spoke with so little emotion, that it appeared plainly to be his meaning, that they would not destroy us for the purpose; but that their eating us would be the consequence of our being at enmity with them. I have availed myself of Mr. Anderson's collections for the decision of this matter; and am sorry to say, that I cannot see the least reason to hesitate in pronouncing it to be certain, that the horrid banquet of human flesh, is as much relished here, amidst plenty, as it is in New Zealand. (Cook 1784: 214)

Something curious was going on here - from the very first visit the British thought that the Hawaiians were cannibals and the Hawaiians thought that it was the British who were out to eat them! Now it is clear that the British inquiry was a legitimate ethnographic hypothesis based on the practice of

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cannibalism in New Zealand among Maoris and elsewhere. But what about the Hawaiians? How did their hypothesis emerge - if one dare call this fear of British cannibalism a hypothesis? The answer comes from King's journal of the next year (1779). Here a curious event occurred which Sahlins thinks was due to the anxiety of the Hawaiians to get rid of the god Lono (Cook) who had overstayed his ritual schedule and who should have been, according to the Makahiki calendar, off to the mythical island of Kahiki from whence he, and his crew, came. King noted: It was ridiculous enough to see them (the Hawaiians) striking the sides, and patting the bellies, of the sailors (who were certainly much improved in the sleekness of their looks...) and telling them, partly by signs, and partly by words, that it was time for them to go.. .(King 1784: 26)

King adds: "...if our enormous consumption of hogs and vegetables be considered, it need not be wondered, that they should wish us take our leave" (1784: 26). Leave to which place? Brittanee. 1 Thus the home of Lono-Cook known to anthropologists as Kahiki was apparently designated as "Brittanee" by the Hawaiians. What kind of place was this Brittanee though? Let King respond again: .. .they imagined we came from some country where provisions had failed; and that our visit to them was merely for the purpose of filling our bellies. Indeed the meagre appearance of some of our crew, the hearty appetites with which we sat down to their fresh provisions, and our great anxiety to purchase and carry off, as much as we were able, led them, naturally enough, to such a conclusion. (King 1784: 26)

The Hawaiians' hypothesis was based on the "pragmatics of common sense". Here were a ragged, filthy, half-starved bunch of people arriving on their island, gorging themselves on food and asking questions about cannibalism. Since Hawaiians did not know that the British inquiry was a scientific hypothesis, they made the pragmatic inference that these half-starved people were asking questions about cannibalism because they were cannibals themselves and might actually eat the Hawaiians. If the British could ask what seemed to the Hawaiians an absurd question - whether they ate their enemies slain in battle - it is not unreasonable for the Hawaiians to have made a further inference: that since the British has slaughtered so many Hawaiians, it is they who ate their slain enemies. This inference is never explicitly made and does not appear in the journals, but, I think, we must consider at least the fear of the Hawaiians that the British were cannibals before we can interpret the

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Statement: when will Lono come again? And the significant words added afterwards, "and what will he do to them on his return?". I think the interpretation that the Hawaiians were afraid of Cook's "ghost" is the correct one. The terrible events prior to, and after, Cook's death, were well suited to that mythic reality. Remember that these events resulted in the death of at least six Hawaiian chiefs and dozens of ordinary citizens, not to mention the burning of residences. Previous to that there were constant floggings for theft and the killing of at least one Hawaiian. According to Beckwith: "Hawaiians believe in the power of spirits to return to the scenes they knew on earth in the form in which they appeared when they were alive" (Beckwith 1970: 164). One visitation from Cook was enough for the Hawaiians. It should be remembered that the Hawaiian fear of Cook's ghost wasn't without warrant, for soon after this interrogation, British marines burnt villages and some irate sailors chopped off the heads of two natives and displayed them on deck, playing out, as it were, a Kurtz persona. These grisly objects inspired terror among the Hawaiians who visited the ship. It is not only in Hawaii that the queries on cannibalism produced a variety of responses from native peoples. It was the same everywhere. In another South Sea island, Mangaia, in March 1777, Anderson, the ship's doctor, "put the question if they ever eat human flesh (and) they answered in the negative, with a mixture of indignation and abhorrence" (Anderson quoted in Beaglehole 1967: 828). Why then the British preoccupation with cannibalism? One reason it seems to me is clear: cannibalism is what the English reading public wanted to hear. It was their definition of the savage. Thus in the many places Cook visited, the inevitable question he asked was about cannibalism, and the replies, for the most part, convinced him that this was a common practice in these places. One month after their visit to Mangaia, Cook came across a number of people in a small Polynesian atoll, Aitu, cooking human flesh in an earth oven. Cook's interpreter, the Tahitian Mai, "could assign no other reason for this, than they meant to roast and eat us". The outraged citizens once again protested and responded with the usual retort: "whether it (cannibalism) was the custom with us" (Cook quoted in Beaglehole 1967: 85). In fact the human flesh turned out to be a hog which the sailors gladly consumed. This event brings back a Proustian memory. During my childhood, caretakers told me, as they had been told, that human flesh tastes a bit like pork. My last comment provides a hint that these dialogues had perhaps produced a sort of anxiety on the part of both the British and the indigenous inhabitants - an anxiety that the Other would "roast and eat us". I call this dark fantasy a psychic structure of long duration shared by both British and

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Hawaiians. Not all Polynesians were cannibals; the Hawaiians did not eat the flesh of the human beings they sacrificed. But, I think, those who sacrifice humans carry with them an unconscious wish to partake of that substance. In this situation, questions regarding cannibalism can only serve to provoke terrible anxiety, that taps the latent wish and in turn resurrects a childhood dread that the stranger asking these not-so-innocent questions is in fact the cannibal. But what about the British? Surely these upright people cannot be accused of so vile a fantasy? My answer is that, like the hapless anthropologist, the British were also socialized in their nurseries in the belief that witches and ghosts ate human flesh. Several decades after Cook's death another malevolent being stalked the European landscape. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte, and this short white man did not have to die to be transformed into a black giant in British nurseries. Baby, baby, naughty baby, Hush you squalling thing I say Hush your squalling or it maybe Bonaparte come this way. Baby, baby, he's a giant Tall and black as Roeun steeple And he sups and feeds rely on it Every day on naughty people. 2

Let me now come back to Hawaii. Underlying the detached ethnographic hypothesis of cannibalism by British officers was the British public demand for such information and underlying both the hypothesis and the demand was the childhood fantasy. Furthermore, the Hawaiian view of British cannibalism was a rational inference based on British cannibalistic queries and on the Britishers' physical appearance of food deprivation. Underlying both inferences was also a Hawaiian cannibalistic fantasy and these fantasies were reinforced in both parties by British terror and by Hawaiian human sacrifice. The event gets locked into the fantasy as the fantasy gets locked into the event. All of these spiral into a variety of crises characterized by what one might legitimately call a temporary "paranoid ethos".

2. "Mirror upon mirror mirrored is all the show" (W. B. Yeats) The preceding discussion concerned South Sea societies which did not practice cannibalism. What then occurred in respect of those that did, such as the

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people of Fiji, the New Hebrides, Marqueses and New Zealand? Let me deal with the discourse on cannibalism during the British interaction with the Maori. I shall deal with the second voyage of Cook between 1772 and 1775, the voyage of the Resolution and the Adventure. During this voyage Cook visited New Zealand twice, the first at Dusky Sound briefly in March 1773, and a second more extensive visit in October. The two ships lost contact with each other (for the second time), and Cook decided to cast anchor in Ship Cove on November 3, to repair his sails and rest his crew. I am interested in an important event that occurred a few weeks later. In his journal entry for November 23, Cook notes that "some of the officers went on shore to amuse themselves among the natives" (Cook quoted in Beaglehole 1969: 292) when they saw an impressive sight: a heart of a youth recently killed was impaled on a forked stick and fixed on the front of the largest canoe. The officers also saw the head and bowels of this unfortunate youth and Pickersgill bought the head in exchange for two nails. The tradition of buying Maori heads had already been started in 1770 by Joseph Banks during the very first voyage (Beaglehole 1974: 213). No wonder then that the natives of this area had gone up to Admiralty Bay and fought a battle there, and this boy's head was from that battle, for according to Forster, the scientist of the second voyage, this tribal war was itself provoked by the British demand for "curiosities" (Forster 1982: 427). When one group exhausted their supplies, they raided another for heads and other artifacts. Cook was away during these initial happenings but when he came back he noted: I was informed of the above circumstances and found the quarter deck crowded with the natives. I saw the mangled head or rather the remains of it from the under jaw, life etc., were wanting, the scul [skull] was broke on his left side just above the temple, the face had all the appearance of a youth about fourteen or fifteen, a piece of the flesh had been broiled and eat by one of the Natives in the presence of most of the officers. (Cook quoted in Beaglehole 1969: 293)

What really had happened was as follows: when Pickersgill brought the head on board, the ship's officers wanted to produce empirical proof of cannibalism among the Maoris. This the despicable Lieutenant Clerke put into effect: .. .1 ask'd him if he'd eat a piece there directly to which he very cheerfully gave his assent. I then cut a piece of carry'd (it) to the fire by his desire and gave it a little broil upon the Grid Iron then deliver'd it to him - he not only eat it but devour'd it most revenously, and suck'd his fingers 1/2 a dozen times over in rapture: the Captain was at this time absent... (Clerke quoted in Beaglehole 1969: 293, footnote)

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When Cook returned he replicated this experimental proof of cannibalism before the ship's crew and the crowded quarter deck of natives (Cook in Beaglehole 1969: 293). Meanwhile further proof of Maori cannibalism awaited the crew of the Adventure. On November 9, 1773, Furneaux took refuge in Tolaga Bay and seven days later he was back at sea. At ship Cove Furneaux found a bottle with Cook's instructions for him to effect a rendez-vous. Furneaux now wanted to reestablish contact with Cook at Queen Charlotte Sound (though Cook had already gone there and despaired of regaining contact with the Adventure). On December 17, Furneaux sent out the cutter under Master's mate John Rowe for a final load of greens from Grass Cove. But the boat did not return and he therefore sent Lt. Burney in search of them the next day. Burney suspected that some unfortunate accident had occurred rather than hostile action from the Maoris since "I had not the least suspicion of their having received any injury from the Natives, our boats having been frequently higher up and worse provided". Burney and his crew landed in Grass Cove and eventually came upon what seemed indubitable evidence that Rowe and his company were killed and eaten by the Maoris. One of Burney's crew found a piece of flesh which Mr. Fannin, the master, thought was dog meat. Later they discovered twenty baskets of human flesh and several belongings and body parts, including the head of Captain Furneaux's black servant (Burney quoted in Beaglehole 1969: 749-52). What was especially interesting was that Burney's presence provoked the natives to assemble on the hill nearby "making all signs of joy imaginable" (Furneaux quoted in Beaglehole 1969: 744). Now let me analyze these preceding events in some detail. It is indeed the case that cannibalism is for the British something that defines the savage as such, an atavistic tendency that even middling civilization cannot overcome. But on the other hand, the British scientific curiosity also has a bizarre quality: twice a piece of flesh from a Maori head was cut up and roasted by British officers and then given to a Maori to eat. The latter then consumes it with great relish (or so it seems) as many assembled Maoris and British crew witness the event. Thus on another level we, who think we are outside of it all, sense that both the British and the Maoris are fascinated by the same event: the Maoris by the British inquiry about their practice of cannibalism and the British by their fantasy. It is this theme of a common humanity that binds British and Maoris that I want to tentatively explore now, for it must be remembered that what gives us all a common humanity is not only our higher nature but also a shared dark side of our being.

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In probing deeper into the dark bond of cannibalism that united the ship's crew and the Savage as part of their common human nature, one notices an even deeper affinity. It seems that the traditions and practices of cannibalism were not the exclusive preserve of the Savage and the intuitions of the Polynesians were correct when they asked the British if they were cannibals. The civilized British sailors also had their tradition of cannibalism. These traditions and practices are nicely documented in Simpson's book Cannibalism and the Common Law (1985). Though Simpson's study mostly deals with cases that occurred in the middle and late nineteenth century, he does record several remarkable prior instances. He conclusively shows that the traditions of cannibalism were well established by the seventeenth century and seem to have been associated with the expansion of trade and conquest following the European voyages of discovery. The context of cannibalism is also clear: it is almost always associated with survival after a shipwreck. Simpson argues that cannibalism during shipwreck was so much taken for granted in England that often ordinary innocuous survivors had to deny that it had taken place. Public attitudes in seaport towns were, for the most part, in sympathy with the cannibals. Though the law required such cases to be reported, there was not a single case of conviction for cannibalism till the famous case of the Mignonette in 1884 (discussed at length by Simpson). On the Mignonette the three survivors ate the youth, Richard Parker, since he was closest to dying and also had the least family responsibilities, not being a married man. What might seem surprising to us today is that the brother of the boy, and indeed the mother herself, did not express any outrage; the former explicitly sided with Captain Dudley and the other survivors. The survivors could calmly talk about the killing and subsequent cannibalism in a matter-of-fact manner, and the executioner kept the penknife that was used to kill the youth as a memento. When the survivors were formally sentenced to prison (only to be pardoned soon after), they expressed resentment and shock at what they felt was legal harassment. In view of the convention bound nature of British cannibalism I find it difficult to accept Simpson's argument that cannibalism was entirely based on hunger during shipwreck and related conditions. The preoccupation with cannibalism existed in British fantasy; hunger was a factor in the origin of the tradition of British cannibalism and a precondition for its continuity and existence. Yet it must be remembered that conditions of starvation (at sea or elsewhere) did not invariably produce cannibalism. This is true of England and anywhere else: there are cultural and psychological conditions that inhibit cannibalism, especially when it entails an act of deliberate killing. One might be willing to die rather than kill a fellow human to eat him. These in-

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hibitions might well extend to other tabooed foods, like the Brahmin's repugnance for beef (symbolically analogous to cannibalism). It is the legitimacy of cannibalism, and its convention bound nature, that fostered and perpetuated it. Thus people who were shipwrecked could in reasonably good conscience eat their shipmates since it was a perfectly acceptable, legitimate, normal, and even normative procedure. The conventions of British cannibablism, insofar as it entailed killing, seem to be both explicit and implicit. The explicit conventions are very clear: first there was to be a drawing of lots, especially to determine the victim. Second, the blood of the victim had to be drunk to assuage one's thirst. Indeed in several instances the blood of the victim was taken before he actually died, since only a live victim had enough of the precious fluid left. Two implicit conventions are equally significant. There was a tacit complicity that the alien, the Other, had to be the victim, and lots were manipulated accordingly: hence the Spaniard, the Portuguese, the Slave, the Black - then to the more problematic case of the boy or unmarried youth or female. The strict employment of the lottery applied only to one's own comrades. Another important implicit convention was the rejection of human extremities which were buried at sea. This especially applied to the head which was exceptionally repugnant (Simpson 1985: 126, 139,263). The initial choice of the alien or the Other for consumption was based on racial prejudice as well as notions of comradeship that were equivalent to siblingship in respect of one's own fellows. But it is likely that unconscious motivations, triggered in the context of food deprivation, were also operative. In popular thought, the black man, the Spaniard and the Portuguese were highly sexed, libidinous creatures. They represented sexuality and life power and it was believed that by consuming their flesh one could introject these powers and thus ensure strength and survival value.

3. Hidden discourses and practices in Maori-British cannibalism Our discussion of British cannibalism helps us understand the manner in which the British represented Maori cannibalism in their discursive actions. First let me consider Cook's anthropology of anthropophagy. It seems that the experiment where the flesh from the decapitated head of the Maori was cut into steaks and broiled comes from the discourses of British cannibalism. It is interesting that the "experiment" had to be repeated when, of course, this was not necessary. Furthermore the language game imputed to the savage in

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fact comes from British anthropophagy. Cannibalism is referred to as "the horrid banquet of human flesh" or as "midnight repasts". New Zealanders are supposed to kill their enemies and "feast and gorge themselves on the spot". Their consumption of smaller pieces of human flesh is referred to as a "dainty bit", "steak", etc. This language is confirmed in later research by New Zealand scholars and anthropologists who attribute "cannibal feasts" to the Maoris. The reality of Maori cannibalism is expressed in the practice and fantasy of British cannibalism. What is called "cannibalism" at this period is a British discourse about the practice of cannibalism, rather than a description about its practice. This discourse is initiated by British ethnological inquiry and stimulated in turn by the demands of their reading public. This discourse on canibalism tells us more about the British preoccupation with cannibalism, than about Maori cannibalism. The British discourse has to be understood in terms of a larger pervasive fantasy of cannibalism resulting from European socialization of that period, and more narrowly, from a subculture of sailors with a tradition of the practice of cannibalism that in turn got locked into the primordial fantasy and then, cumulatively, produced shipboard narratives and ballad literature on the subject. These, in turn, gave direction, even form, to the British discourse with Hawaiians and Maoris; it affected their practice of ethnological science such that the experimental proofs of Maori canniablism were as much science as they were fantasy. Together the discourses, practices and fantasies that I have outlined constitute a "British" "cannibalistic complex" that must be differentiated from what I think (following Sahlins) is the traditional sacrificial anthropophagy of Polynesian peoples (Sahlins 1983). The British cannibalistic complex is symbolically, contextually and perhaps even causally related to other practices, for example, the religious practice of holy communion. For my purposes however, let me focus on two shipboard practices that show an ontological affinity with cannibalism.

3.1 Dietary

practice

The dietary practice that I want to describe pertains to dog meat. Let me start with a facetious aside made by Banks, the gentleman philosopher, naturalist and botanist in Cook's first voyage of the Endeavour in 1769, during their first confrontation with the Maoris. Says Banks: "I suppose they live entirely upon fish, dogs and enemies" (Beeaglehole 1974: 213). Fish, dogs and enemies, one might say, unified and divided the Maoris and the British. Fish was the flesh that binds both: both ate this as a meat staple. Eating dog meat and one's enemies was of course the practice of the Other. Maoris like other

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Polynesian, Melanesian and South Sea folk eat dog meat; Maoris also wore dog skins. While the British concern with Maori consumption of canine flesh was in no way comparable to their interest in Maori cannibalism, the practice was carefully noted in the journals largely to edify and shock their reading public. It is not unlikely that for many Europeans eating dog was much more heinous than cannibalism, since dogs were pets and enemies were not. The contact with the Maori and other Polynesian people however, resulted in the broadening of the British consciousness for eventually the despised dog meat was consumed by the ship's crew, not by the ordinary riffraff, but by the officers. Dog flesh broke one of the barriers that separated the Savage from the Civilized. The ships had dogs as pets, as hunters and as consumers of leftovers. Forster emphasized the obvious fact that for the most part, dogs were pets for the British and hence full of symbolic and psychic import (Forster 1982: 303-5). As pets, dogs (and not just lap dogs) were "man's best friends" and in the case of lap dogs, objects of love or even surrogate kinsmen or substitutes for children. Thus it would seem that, in the European cultural context, the consumption of dog meat is a horrendous act, exhibiting a symbolic affinity with cannibalism. I think it likely that the consumption of dog meat by the crew, especially by the ship's officers, was provoked, on the unconscious level, by the Savages' consumption of human flesh. What is human flesh for the Savage is dog meat for the English. The ship's officers were tantalized by anthropophagy; it triggered a latent wish but, since it was impossible to consume human flesh, they chose dog meat. The cutting up of the flesh from the severed head of a Maori youth by the ship's officers and their defining it as "steak", is not simply a part of an innocuous scientific experiment, but one that seems to tap a latent desire (wish).

3.2.

Collections

The second shipboard practice that I refer to is that of collections. The young Maori's hand was purchased by Pickersgill and this object was later deposited in the collection of Dr. John Hunter (1728-93), a famous anatomist. Banks and other scientists collected heads and bones of the "victims" of cannibalism. They are as much part of scientific collections as they are "trophies" for the officers and curiosities for everyone. Like «trophies» they were eventually mounted in museums and anthropology departments. For example, the head of the "Irish felon" Alexander Pearce, who escaped from the penal colony at Macquarie harbor on the west coast of Tasmania and then ate his fellow escapee Thomas Cox, found its way into the collection of

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Dr. Samuel George Morton, an American phrenologist and later into the University of Pennsylvania Museum (Simpson 1985: 152-53). Ellis reports for the Nootka: "There was one article of trade which some of these people exposed to sale today, that we never saw before in any country: this was, several human skulls and dried hands" (Ellis 1782: 192). And then the usual pantomime on both sides, with the British seamen expressing their fantasies and the Nootka comically mocking them: Some of our seamen made signs of eating the flesh, which signs they readily made too, probably because they saw us do it; and from this circumstance they were pronounced to be cannibals, though it is not unlikely but that we were too hasty in forming our conjectures. (Ellis 1782: 192)

Ellis was right: these people were not cannibals, they were only supplying extremities to satisfy European demand. Ellis goes on to say later: "Several skulls and hands were purchased today as curiosities, but skins of every kind were become scarce" (Ellis 1782: 202).

4. Impact of historical context on cannibalistic practice and discourse The preceding discussion suggests very strongly that the discourse on cannibalism conducted by British officers represented Maori cannibalism in terms of British values, fantasies, and myth models. This means that our anthropological knowledge of the practices of Maori cannibalism eludes us from the very start. There is no doubt that the Maoris practiced cannibalism. Not, however, because they admitted to it for we know from Hawaii that people can admit to do what they do not do, but because there was evidence of cannibalism in the empirical accounts of the British. However slanted the British representation of Maori cannibalism might be, there is no denying that Mr. Rowe and his comrades were slain at Grass Cove, their flesh cooked and placed in baskets, and some parts of their anatomies scattered around. But this event in Grass Cove can only partially illuminate Maori cannibalism, for prior to the coming of the Dutch, French and British, Maoris cold not possibly have consumed Europeans. If so, the change in Maori anthropophagous habits and proclivities must be incorporated into our knowledge of Maori cannibalism. It is unlikely that the Maoris simply fitted the British into their preexistent cultural forms and treated them as if they were traditional tribal enemies, since the British were not their traditional enemies. New Zealand

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scholars generally believe that Cook was treated by Maoris as a kind of god (or goblin); if so, it is possible that the crew was also divinized in some form or other. But the problem with this hypothesis is that it also Europeanizes Maori cannibalism, for it is virtually certain that the Maoris, unlike the Europeans, did not consume the blood and body of their deity. The coming of the European was a new and traumatic event in their history; British ethnographic inquiries produced a new discourse on cannibalism, totally unexpected by the Maori. This discourse, in so far as it occured in a new historical context of power, domination, and terror, must be located therein. In order to do this, we must consider the events in Grass Cove and on the deck of the Resolution as historical products that can best be understood in terms of preceding relations between Maoris and Europeans. It must be remembered that the Maori discourse emerged from the British inquiries into cannibalism and since Maoris did not write about these events as they occurred, their discourse is hidden in the British texts, and have to be unraveled by us. Prior to the events of Cook's second voyage that I have discussed, the Maori's experienced four previous confrontations: in 1642 a brief visit by Abel Tasman; then the first voyage of James Cook in the Endeavour from October 1769 to March 1770 where he circumnavigated New Zealand and mapped its outline; almost simultaneously a short visit by de Surville, followed by a fairly extended stay by another Frenchman, Marion du Fresne, in two ships, the Mascarin and the Castries, between March 25 and July 12 1772, just over a year before Cook's second voyage. I shall not discuss these voyages in any detail, except as they throw light on two features of Maori cannibalism: (1) the discourse and practice whereby they represented their cannibalism to the Europeans, (2) the empirical evidence of the emergence of the kind of cannibalism imputed to them by the European. The latter is, of course, the Maori consumption of Europeans. None of these can be understood outside of the context of domination and terror. Abel Tasman's visit was the only one in which the Maoris dominated the action. When a group of his men tried to land to seek a safe anchor they were set upon by a group of thirteen Maoris (the bad number) and three sailors were killed. Tasman observed from afar what happened to two of them: one was taken into a canoe and the other thrown into the sea. It seems that the eating of Europeans was not practiced in this particular case, since one of the whites was thrown overboard. One hundred and twenty-seven years after Tasman's visit Cook came to New Zealand in his ship the Endeavour. It is not likely that the Maoris had forgotten the earlier event, but it might have been mythologized. It was on Sunday, October 8 that Cook sighted land, and established contact with the

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natives the following day. The initial contact at Poverty Bay was dramatic, sudden, and deadly. Cook went ashore with Banks and Solander and tried to establish contact with the natives, but they went away, only to come back: The Coxswain of the pinnace who had the charge of the Boats, seeing this fire'd two musquets over their heads, the first made them stop and look round them, but the second they took no notice of upon which a third was fired and killed one of them upon the spot just as he was going to dart his spear at the boat; at this the other three stood motionless for a minute or two, seemingly quite surprised wondering no doubt what it was that had thus killed their commorade. (Cook quoted in Beaglehole 1968:169)

The marines were soon brought in. They landed "to intimidate them and support us if necessary". (Banks 1962: 401) Banks shot at least two people and noted: "we may hope however that neither of them were killed as one of the musquets only was loaded with ball, which I think I saw strike the water without taking effect,..." (Banks 1962: 402). Others, including Cook's Polynesian interpreter Tupia, had better luck in killing and maiming (Banks 1962: 402). Now Cook decided that these people were hopeless and went upstream in search of fresh water, and also to try "to surprise some natives and to take them on board and by good treatment" but this also did not work (Cook quoted in Beaglehole 1968: 170). The following afternoon Cook's journal entry reads: I rowed round the head of the Bay but could find no place to land, on account of the great surf which beat every where upon the shore; seeing two boats of Canoes coming in from Sea, I rowed to one of them in order to seize upon the people and came so near before they took notice of us that Tupia called to them to come alongside and we would not hurt them, but instead of doing this they endeavoured to get away, upon which I order'd a Musquet to be fire'd over their heads thinking that this would either make them surrender or jump over board, but here I was mistaken for they immediatly took to their arms of whatever they had in the boat and began to attack us, this obliged us to fire upon them and unfortunatly either two or three were kill'd, and one wounded, and three jumped over board, these last we took up and brought on board, where they were clothed and treated with all immaginable kindness and to the surprise of every body became at once as cheerful and as merry as if they had been with their own freinds; they were all three young, the eldest not above 20 years of age and youngest about 10 or 12.

Both Banks and Cook felt enormously guilty at this wanton murder (Beaglehole 1974: 200). It is however not unsurprising that Cook could not understand that sudden terror followed by unimagined kindness could indeed result

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in the youths becoming "cheerful and merry", or to put it differently, placating the dreaded aggressor. The Maori discourse, like the Hawaiian, occured in the context of uncertainty, fear, the threat of firepower, and that of European domination. Unlike the Hawaiians the Maoris did practice cannibalism. The Hawaiians, I noted, imputed cannibalism to the British; some also, perhaps more in fun than seriousness, threatened the British with their (feigned) cannibalism. Maoris it seemed employed a similar threat: they admitted their cannibalism, for that they were, but emphasized and exaggerated it, and like Hawaiians and the northwest coast Indians, seemed to enjoy the European reaction of disgust and fascination. Cannibalistic discourse then is a weapon, one might say, employed by all the parties. Maori discourse on cannibalism was compounded by the ludic and the serious; the ludic since they seem, on occasion at least, to enjoy the discomfiture of the Europeans, and serious because it was a weapon to terrify them in the context of unequal power, where their real weapons were nothing in comparison to European guns. The combination of the ludic and the serious comes out neatly in the Frenchman Marion's expedition where Lieutenant Roux, interviewing a Maori on the practice of cannibalism, noted: Several of our officers are of my opinion that this is the case, but what completely confirmed what I say on this subject is the fact that one of the chiefs, who well understood what I asked him, told me that after they had killed their enemies, they put them in a fire, and having cooked the corpses, ate them. Seeing that I was greatly disgusted with what he told me, my informant burst into laughter, and proceeded to reaffirm what he had just told me (Roux quoted in McNab 1914: 401-2).

The Maori and other Polynesian discourses on cannibalism then, seem to be a defense against the European; they also serve as a counterattack, an employment of one form of terror against another. It was Reinhold Forster, of the second voyage, who astutely noted the double uses of the discourse on cannibalism by the people of Tanna, in the New Hebrides: "The natives were very jealous to let their habitations, wives and children be seen, and always desired us not [to] go on, and in order to frighten us, they told if we went on, we should be killed and eaten" (Forster 1982: 599). Polynesian people also employed a similar strategy, it seems to me. Consider Cook's first voyage and his initial confirmation of cannibalism by the natives of Queen Charlotte Sound on January 13, 1770. ...some of us went in the Pinnace into another Cove not far from where the ship lays; in going there we met with a woman floating upon the water who to all

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appearance had not been dead many days. Soon after we landed we met with two or three of the natives who not long before must have been regailing themselves upon human flesh, for I got from one of them the bone of the fore arm of a man or a woman which was quite fresh and the flesh had been but lately picked off which they told us they had eat, they gave us to understand that but a few days ago they had taken kill'd and eat a boats crew of their enemies or strangers, for I believe that they look upon all strangers as enemies; from what we could learn the woman we had seen floating upon the water was in this boat and had been drownded in the fray. There was not one of us that had the least doubt but what this people were cannibals but the finding this bone with part of the sinews fresh upon it was a stronger proof than any we had yet met with, and in order to be fully satisfied of the truth of what they had told us, we told one of them that it was not the bone of a man but that of a dog, but he with great fervency took hold of his fore-arm and told us again that it was that bone and to convence us that they had eat the flesh he took hold of his own arm with his teeth and made shew of eating. AM Carren'd scrubed and pay'd the starboard side of the ship: While this was doing some of the natives came along side seemingly only to look at us, there was a woman amoung them who had her arms, thighs and legs cut in several places, this was done by way of mourning for her husband who had very lately been kill'd and eaten by some of their enemies as they told us and pointed towards the place where it was done which lay some where to the eastward. Mr. Banks got from one of them a bone of the fore arm much in the same state as the one before mention'd and to shew us that they had eat the flesh they bit a[nd] naw'd the bone and draw'd it thro' their mouth and this in such a manner as plainly shew'd that the flesh to them was a dainty bit. (Cook quoted in Beaglehole 1968: 236)

It seems that there is a battle going on here with cannibalism as a weapon. The British view of Polynesian cannibalism is an imagined cannibalism, based on a reality that no one seemed to understand. It is also a performance that emerges out of the British discourse; the Maori's are at great pains to prove that not only are they cannibals, but truly horrible ones. The Maori man miming this practice by eating "the flesh of his own arm with his teeth" can be equally well interpreted as a reaction to the British inquiry which elicited information through similar performative actions and so can the bone chewing act. It is the kind of pantomime that some people might use to scare children, and, like many such stories and pantomimes, adults seem to find them funny. It seems obvious that the Maoris had to cope with the British queries on cannibalism in a variety of ways, soon conventionalized. Cook of course always had the help of Tahitian interpreters: Tupia, Hitihiti, and Mai (Omai) who managed to converse (imperfectly) with the Maoris, and then even more imperfectly translate this into basic Tahitian that Cook (and several other

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gentlemen) imperfectly knew. But others simply used the language of gestures which, as Dutton shows, was also highly convention bound and elaborate (Dutton 1987). An early use of gestural language is described beautifully in Captain Wallis's account of first British contact with the Tahitians in 1767. They seemed all very peaceable for some time, and we made signs to them, to bring of hogs, fowls, and fruit and showed them coarse cloath knives, sheers beeds ribons etc., and made them understand that we were willing to barter with them, the method we took to make them understand what we wanted was this, some of the men grunted and cryd like a hogg then pointed to the shore - oythers crowd like cocks to make them understand that we wanted fowls, this the natives of the country understood and grunted and crowd the same as our people, and pointed to the shore and made signs that they would bring off some. We then made signs for them to go into their canoes and to bring us off what things we wanted; they observed what we meant and some went in their canoes... (Dutton 1987: 158)

This kind of gestural language was the sole means of communication during first contact of with people whose language the British did not understand. Thus Reinhold Forster describes a gestural discourse on cannibalism in Tanna, New Hebrides. "It seems that the islanders eat the people, who they kill in battle, for they pointed to the arms, legs and thighs etc. and showed how they roasted and devoured the meat of them. They showed all this by signs" (Forster 1982: 595). Again: "They were very eager to undeceive us, and showed, by signs how they killed a man, cut his limbs asunder, and separated the flesh from the bones. Lastly they bit their own arm, to express more clearly how they eat human flesh" (Forster 1777: 300). But this response of the people of Tanna was not surely initiated by them: it is a response to the British inquiry on cannibalism. The British must express exactly as the natives did, that is, "bit their own arms... etc.", since they did not know the native language at all. This is of course what the Maoris in Queen Charlotte Sound also did, but it is clear that the native reaction is a pantomimic response to the British language of gestures. How would Polynesian people respond to this gestural language regarding cannibalism? One reaction is obvious: strange, enigmatic, white people inquiring about cannibalism by biting their own bodies and performing other imitative actions could be truly terrifying, activating fears of cannibalistic monsters in childhood socialization. Another reaction, particularly once they became more familiar with the European, is the opposite - the ludicrous. Sometimes the ship's account does not help clear up the issue. For example, take the case of the experiment with cannibal steaks during Cook's second

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voyage. By this time the Maoris had developed a variety of responses to British queries on cannibalism but this was an extremely complex one. Remember that Maoris do not eat broiled human steaks, and the whole setting of the ship's quarter deck would have flouted all Maori conventions of cannibalism. They simply performed another pantomime and joined in the spirit of the game initiated by the British with laughter. What we do not know is the intention behind the Maori's action in eating the steak with such obvious relish. Perhaps they wanted to prove to the British cannibals that they [the Maori] were even more dreaded ones. But even here the licking of fingers, etc., are, I think, a Maori imitation of the British expression of relish as they inquired by signs and sounds about the native's relish for human flesh. Once the Polynesians were aware of the British obsession with cannibalism, they were surely going to feed it, either to scare the British or laugh at them, or both. Consider the following native scare story noted by Forster. There circulates on board a story made up I believe on purpose, that the natives told, that a ship arrived on the northern isle in a great storm, and was there broke to pieces. The men in her were safed on shore, and had an engagement with the natives, but not being able to keep up a fire, the natives came up and killed and devoured them all. (Forster 1982: 676)

This scare story feeds the British fantasy, so that Forster noted that the sailors in the Resolution believed that this story portrayed the fate of the crew of the Adventure with whom they had lost contact. Forster adds: "the natives are by no means constant in their story, so that there is little to be depended upon this tale". The native populations that did not practice cannibalism had similar standardized reactions to the British imputation of cannibalism. First, there is an outraged denial; second, a feigned playful or eager admission. For Cook and his crew the admission of cannibalism naturally proved its existence. Yet one must ask why did Hawaiians on occasion emphatically admit to a practice they did not practice? It seems clear that here also, the false admission of cannibalism must be related to the emergent discourse. Cook's cannibalistic queries provoked the Polynesian counter discourse, namely, that the British would be scared if they believed that they - the Hawaiians - were in fact dreaded cannibals. Then the final response: the alien visitor asking dreadful questions by biting their own bodies and other strange gestures and sounds were indeed cannibals themselves. All these reactions are a fallback to fantasy life and its ontogenesis in early childhood of scare stories of man-eating monsters. This is true also of the British sailors: they too had traditions of cannibalism - of a divine figure sacrificed

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for the well being of the world whose blood and body was consumed in a highly charged ritual setting and a lot of stories of cannibalism circulating in both nurseries and ships. It should be remembered however that in terms of conventional anthropological method, such as the evidence garnered in the Human Relations Area Files, various Polynesian groups are listed as having traditionally practiced cannibalism. By the same methodological token the British too should be included. Polynesian cannibalism then is constructed out of an extremely complex dialogue between Europeans and Polynesians, a dialogue that makes sense in relation to the history of contact and unequal power relations and the cultural values, fantasies, and the common dark humanity they both share. The discourse on cannibalism, once initiated, affects a variety of cultural practices in which it is embedded; it affects, for example, the early British practice of ethnological science and the late Maori practice of cannibalism. The scientists on board ship were aptly called by the rest of the crew "the experimental gentlemen". The experiment on the Maori head is a product of the discourse on cannibalism and on science. A discourse is not just speech: it is embedded in a historical and cultural context, and expressed often in the frame of a scenario or cultural performance. It is about practice: the practice of science, the practice of cannibalism. In so far as discourse evolves it begins to affect the practice. Since I've already discussed the effect of this discourse on the practice of science by the ship's "experimental gentlemen", let me now ask a much more controversial question: how did the evolving discourse on cannibalism affect the Maori practice of cannibalism? The change in Maori practice is probably the most controversial part of my argument. I present my thesis hesitantly, not having yet mastered the literature on Polynesia. Conventional Polynesian ethnography simply constructs an ideal type (or types) of Maori cannibalism from a variety of statements — interviews with older men, myths, missionaries' and magistrates' accounts, and even that of eye witnesses, but mostly from the middle of the nineteenth century. These sources of information are treated as reality, i.e. the practice of cannibalism rather than a discourse on it. We know that those people who wrote about cannibalism in the nineteenth century were even less sophisticated and self critical than the experimental gentlemen on Cook's ships. Thus any attempt to construct Maori cannibalism in this fashion is to me extremely dubious, since the practice might itself be affected by the evolving discourse. For example, the mere fact that the Maoris eventually stopped their practice is proof of the capacity of practice to change. Let me modestly present my own viewpoint.

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Let me start with the proposition that not one person in any of Cook's voyages understood anything about Maori cannibalism, outside the knowledge that they were "cannibals". The word itself, derived from western language games, oriented the lines of inquiry into indiscriminate anthropophagy. The only reasonable evidence on Maori anthropophagy during the earliest contacts was from Maori consumption of white sailors, itself a new practice. The first example of this practice is not from the incident at Grass Cove but from the Marion's voyage a year before. Here Marion and his officers, and soon after a number of the crew, were killed in ambush and in all likelihood eaten, though we do not know in what manner. There was considerable provocation for this by French thieving of important cultural artifacts and by their humiliating imprisonment of an important chief. But Marion himself was a considerate and naively trusting person. His being eaten must be seen in the context of Maori-European power relations. The Maoris were already acquainted with both Cook (of the first voyage) and de Surville. Their wish to obtain European power had both a pragmaticrational, and a more affect-laden, symbolic component. On the rational level Maoris tried to enlist the aid of Cook, de Surville, and Marion himself in their tribal wars. This was not successuful; they then tried their best to learn the use of firearms. Let Lieutenant Roux from Marion's expedition speak on this matter: During the afternoon the chief of the native village on Marion Island came to see me, accompanied by several other natives. They brought me some fish as a present, as is their custom when paying visits. They were very much astonished to see outside my tent the blunderbusses, which I had had put in good order the previous evening, and which were now all mounted on their carriages. As they had not seen this kind of arm before, the chief asked what they were, and how they were used. I explained the use of the weapons to them as well as I could, and made him better understand by taking eight or ten balls and loading a gun with them. He then understood quite well what I told him and showed some alarm, making a sign to me that he considered them very dangerous... In the afternoon I went shooting with a volunteer... The chief asked me various questions as to the cleaning of our guns. He has seen me kill some birds, but he did not think a man could be killed in the same way. As there are a number of dogs in this country, he made signs to me to shoot one of them that happened to be passing by. I shot at it, and killed it, which completely bewildered the chief. He went and examined the dead animal with the greatest care so that he could see where the dog had been hit, and then came back to examine the gun with the same minute attention. He then wanted to do what I had done, turning at another dog, and blew upon the lock of the firearm, thinking that this was the right way to discharge the gun. I did not think it necessary to show him the right way to proceed. On the contrary, I

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was very glad he did not know in what way we made use of our weapons (Roux quoted in McNab 1914: 409 - 11).

What Roux did not know was that the natives of this bay had already felt the power of Cook's guns on November 30, 1769 (Beaglehole 1974: 208; Cook quoted in Beaglehole 1968: 2 1 4 - 1 5 ) and they were now rationally trying to figure out their uses. Roux himself had previously taken charge on this hospital camp where this interaction took place. Troubled by the lack of security in this place, owing to Marion's false confidence, he soon installed new guns and shining blunderbusses outside the tent. This was of course further provocation for the Maoris to find out their uses. There were attempts (mostly unsuccessful) to steal muskets. Hence it seems reasonable for the Maoris (or some groups of them) to wrest these guns, and of course, triumph over their enemies. These rational political and pragmatic reasons for killing Marion and the crew were balanced by symbolic-affective reasons. This is to triumph over the powerful Europeans, humiliate them, and at the same time to identify with them and introject their power, as this seemingly trivial example from Marion's voyage neatly illustrates: These natives are greatly given to embracing each other but they display in these caresses a most noticeable ferocity. They are peculiarly fond of kissing each other, and this they do with great intensity. They were never weary of admiring our skins, especially their whiteness, but when we permitted them to place their lips, either upon our hands or our faces, they sucked the flesh with a surprising greediness. (Roux quoted in McNab 1916: 403)

5. Conclusions: From human sacrifice to conspicuous anthropophagy The previous quotation suggests that a shift in Maori consciousness seems to have occurred, itself provoked by the presence of European power and wealth and the European questions on cannibalism. Maoris were changing their techniques of embracing to introject the color of the European skin, and I think, deeper down the European himself, symbolically sucking his body to obtain his power. Juxtapose this with the aftermath of the killing of Marion and members of his crew. Both Roux and du Clesmeur repeatedly report that large numbers assembled in jubilant exultation, wearing the clothes and weapons of dead Frenchmen and above all taking turns at wearing Marion's

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silver pistols, all engaged in conspicuous display. In my view, this was the culmination of what occurred as a wish in the acts of kissing and sucking the bodies of the white man: the fantasy is now given a further symbolic extension in the identification with the aggressor, by wearing his clothes and brandishing his pistols and other weapons. Between the two events is the crucial act of eating the Frenchmen; psychoanalytically viewed, it is the introjection of the other, in this case the power of the aggressor. If my assumption is correct, the consumption of the European resulted in a revitalization of Maori cannibalism and a parallel change in its orientation into a more pronounced anthropophagy. Conditions of mass revitalization, even if temporary, would have meant a greater public participation, actual or vicarious, in dividing and eating the flesh of the powerful aggressor. Consider the event at Grass Cove, a year later, when Englishmen were killed, their flesh cooked and placed, along with fern roots (their "bread" as the ships crew called them) in twenty or so baskets. If indeed the flesh of the Englishmen were eaten by larger numbers seeking revitalization in the face of a threat to the very existence of their society, one can in fact speak of a change in Maori cannibalism, particularly since the conventions of traditional Maori cannibalism (whatever they were) need not apply to the new aliens in their midst. In other words, I am suggesting that large scale anthropophagy was a reaction to the European presence; it is this that set the stage for descriptions of Maori "cannibal feasts" of the later historical and anthropological literature. The change in orientation of Maori cannibalism, in some senses parallels the shift in the orientation of British cannibalism from a generalized fantasy, and a ritualistic act of holy communion symbolically far removed from fantasy, to a tradition of seafaring anthropophagy. With the opening up of the world consequent of the voyages of discovery, shipwrecks and starvation became a regular phenomenon. Thus, in the culture of seafarers, the fantasy of cannibalism became a reality, such that sailors began to accept the literal idea of consuming the blood and body of a victim chosen by lots. So among the Maori: the opening up of their world following the European voyages of discovery, shifted their (sacrificial?) cannibalism into one characterized by pronounced anthropophagy. There is no account in any of the early texts of pre-contact cannibalism among the Maori or among any other Polynesian group. My thesis is close to Sahlins's in this regard (Sahlins 1983). Maori cannibalism must be seen in the larger context of human sacrifice common to Polynesian society. It is human sacrifice that is the key institution: in some places like Tahiti and Hawaii human sacrifice is associated with a chief symbolically accepting the eye of the sacrificial victim. I suggest that Polynesians did not practice cannibalism;

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but instead practiced an anthropophagy (displaced or real) associated with human sacrifice. Pronounced anthropophagy or cannibalism in Polynesia developed with their killing and eating the British; in very complicated ways the British discourse on cannibalism produced the Maori practice of cannibalism. In the nineteenth century both the British and the Maoris seem to take for granted Maori cannibalism and there is plenty of evidence for this, including eye witness accounts. But almost all of these accounts indicate that cannibalism existed, for the most part, independent of human sacrifice. Furthermore after about 1819 it is the natives, not the British, who are being eaten. This change must also be seen in its historical context. The British presence not only escalated tribal wars, but the availability of guns escalated the killing to a degree unprecedented in Maori history. Elsdon Best notes that by 1840, in a twenty year period in the northern part of the North Island alone, 80000 Maoris died in tribal wars. The numbers I think are wildly exaggerated; yet modern warfare did increase availability of the corpses of chiefly enemies and consequently contributed further towards a more general, non-ritualized anthropophagy. Thus my conclusion: as a consequence of historic events both Maori and British cannibalism moved from a highly charged symbolic arena of personal fantasy and religious sacrifice to the shedding of certain of these symbolic properties and the eventual translation of fantasy into anthropophagy. This paper was originally written during my tenure at the National Humanities Center, North Carolina, in 1989-90 on a Senior Fellowship awarded by the Mellon Foundation. I am grateful to both these institutions for providing me the time, facilities and intellectual stimulus to work on a study of James Cook.

Notes 1. The crew were instructed by the admiralty to inform native chiefs who they were and why they were in a particular place. Thus everywhere Polynesians knew they came from "Brittanee". In Hawaii, the priest Koah changed his name to "Brittanee" in honor of the new arrivals. 2. I am quoting these verses from memory. I have not yet been able to locate the exact reference. 3. I have written up a detailed account of nineteenth-century warfare in New Zealand entitled "Cannibalism and Anthropology in the Ethnography of the Maori" (typescript pp. 133), which I hope to incorporate in a separate work.

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References Banks, Sir Joseph 1962 The Endeavour journal of Joseph Banks 1768-1771. J. C. Beaglehole (ed.), 2 vols., Sydney 1962. Beaglehole, J. C. 1968 The journals of James Cook: The voyage of the Endeavour, 17681771. Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society. 1969 The journals of James Cook: The voyage of the Resolution and Adventure 1772-1775. Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society. 1974 The life of James Cook. London: The Hakluyt Society. Beckwith, Martha 1970 Hawaiian mythology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Cook, James 1784 A voyage to the Pacific Ocean in the year 1776,1777, 1778,1779 and 1780, 2 vols., London. Dutton, Tom 1987 "Successful intercourse was had with the natives: Aspects of European contact methods in the Pacific", in Donald C. Laycock - Werner Winter (eds.), A world of language: Papers presented to Professor S.A. Wurm on his 65th birthday, (Pacific Perspective C-100) 153-71. Ellis, W. 1782 An authentic narrative of a voyage performed by Captain Cook and Captain Clarke in his Majesty's ships Resolution and Discovery during the years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779 and 1780, Vol. I, London. Forster, George 1777 A voyage round the world in his Brittanic Majesty s ship, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5, London. Forster, Reinhold 1982 The Resolution journal of Johann Reinhold Forster 1772-1775, Vol. II, Michael Ε. Hoare (ed.). London: The Hakluyt Society. King, James 1784 A voyage to the Pacific Ocean, Vol. 3, London. McNab, Robert 1914 Historical records of New Zealand, Vol. 2. Wellington: Government Printer. Obeyesekere, Gananath 1992 The apotheosis of Captain Cook. European mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Sahlins, Marshall 1981

Historical metaphors and mythical realities: Structure in the early history of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1983 "Raw women, cooked men, other "Great Things" of the Fiji Islands" in The ethnography of cannibalism, Paula Brown - Donald Tuzin (eds.). Special issue of Ethos. Washington, D.C.: Society for Psychological Anthropology, 72-93. 1985 Islands of history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Simpson, A. W. Brian 1985 Cannibalism and the Common Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Part II Text and sub-text: The grounding of interpretive violence

Meaning games at the margins: The cultural centrality of subordinated structures Ellen E. Covin

Anthropological analysis of cultures has always been dominated by what could be called a quest for coherence. Leading schools in anthropology have emphasized interconnectedness and cohesion in description of cultures and societies. This tendency can be viewed as a correlate of the holistic perspective which characterizes an anthropological approach to social and cultural phenomena. Actually, this coherence tends to be biased toward homogeneity and it leads one to disregard the structural importance of what does not fit with the coherence built into the system by the analyst. In the field of medical anthropology, this approach has generally been translated into the perspective that traditional healing rituals, such as possession therapies, are in fact reinforcing the preeminence of dominant cultural values and of prescriptive structures. One could say, however, that this general perspective prevents us from grasping the specific structural processes that underlie various ways of constructing the relationship between the "core society" and that which seems to escape from its central rules and is located at the "margins" of the society. I contend that a perspective which concentrates all of its efforts on the "core" and ignores marginal elements masks important dimensions of the cultural dynamics as such. This question forced itself upon me when I was trying to understand the social and cultural conditions that underlie the construction of marginality or deviance in various societies. Conclusions of a study on schizophrenics in a North American society (Corin 1990) have led me to come back to and to reanalyze data I had collected in Central Africa on the cultural framing of identity and on the therapeutic process in possession rituals. Reference to this African material will allow me to identify "meaning games" that are associated with the margins of societies and to propose a dialectic view of cultural structures. A brief allusion to North American data will allow me to further underscore the pragmatic implications of various ways of elaborating relationships between "central" and "peripheral" cultural spaces in a given society.

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1. A general quest for coherence The degree of distortion introduced by academics in their quest for a cultural coherence should appear through the very process of sorting out relevant and irrelevant data in the construction of ethnography. Unfortunately, we do not generally have access to this first level construction of descriptions. At times, it comes to the forefront through the divergence between pictures provided by ethnologists having done fieldwork in the same area. It is interesting to note that in such circumstances, the tendency is to incriminate individual biases of the ethnographers and to put the debate on a personal level. Rather than examining what has allowed for and sustained the discrepancies between authors, the general tendency is to side with one author as opposed to another. This form of academic conflict necessarily blocks the process of integrating diverse perspectives into a more global understanding of cultural phenomena. At the level of theory, functionalism has maximized the idea that cultures and societies are coherent systems; one could say that the functionalist perspective works with an a priori of coherence. Gluckman's theory of ritual rebellion (1963) illustrates how such a perspective acts towards integrating what seems at a first glance to contradict the general coherence of the system: through reduction to a safety-valve function, rebellion looses its challenging power and is seen as contributing ultimately to the strengthening of what it seemed to contest; the questioning implications of the "deviation" for the central structure are therefore minimized. From a different perspective, structuralism could be seen as allowing for differences, splitting, dividing, but in this perspective, all oppositions are integrated into a coherent system: the "margins" disappear as margins and only remain commutable elements in a system. Derrida (1967) notices that Levi-Strauss' analysis of myths has definitely renounced any reference to a center and has therefore allowed us to think of the "structurality of the structure". Then, any totalization is proclaimed to be either useless or impossible; this leads to a game, defined as "des substitutions infinies dans la cloture d'un ensemble fini" (423). According to Derrida, this is possible because the system lacks a center which could stop and root the infinite series of substitutions. Interpretive approaches seem to have been inspired by an analogous quest for coherence. Interpretation aims at discovering the way of conceiving life, the "frame of minds" (Geertz 1968) of the cultural actors. With Geertz, for example, one has to discover how specific systems such as art, history, philosophy, science, relate to basic common sense notions which can be

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considered as their background. In a similar way, representations and actions are perceived as being reflections of one another: "Hopping back and forth between the whole conceived through the parts that actualize it and the parts conceived through the whole that motivates them, we seek to turn them, by a sort of intellectual perpetual motion, into explications of one another" (1983: 69). As a matter of fact, interpretive schools acknowledge the diversity of the systems of representation. Most prominent researchers in this area have enlightened the multiple levels of meaning that converge within a single signifier. A common tendency remains nevertheless to locate the roots of the diversity "outside" of or at the periphery of the system of meanings. Differences are explained by the specific position that actors occupy in the social and cultural field; some authors contrast for example the world view held by specialists and by lay people, by chiefs, by their subjects and by slaves, by men and women. Differences are also explained by cultural contacts or cultural pluralism, as when a core event is interpreted by actors from various cultures against the background of their respective cultural world, or when the historical evolution of a society leads to a superpbsition of various cultural codes in certain rituals or institutions (see the example of Candomble in Brazil). Thus, one could say that interpretive analysis of cultures accounts for the diversity, but it does not give it a real status from inside the cultural frame itself. In this general context of coherence, reactions toward deviant or marginal behavior should be either to reintegrate it into a normative frame, or to exclude or reject it. Turner's analysis of the rituals of affliction is a sophisticated way to show how deviance can be taken as a pretext to reinforce central cultural norms and to reaffirm the rules governing social relationships. In a parallel way, this perspective has lead Auge to present traditional medicine as authoritative and conservative, and the therapeutic process as having an alienating power over individuals. Conversely, most anthropologists recognize that coherence is only one part of the picture; some degree of diversity is reintroduced through two main paths. The first one is linked with a renewed interest for pragmatics and history. Praxis does not always follow expected directions and some authors have contrasted the order of the events and that of the structure, while others have shown that the power of the structure "absorbs" the diversity of events and integrates them within a structural continuity. The re-analysis of the death of Captain Cook offered by Obeyesekere in this volume presents a renewed way to infuse movement and actuality within the structural order and to inflect it.

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The second path followed for reintroducing diversity within cultural description has been a new valorization of the individual, through an emphasis on his or her strategies of actions or through a focus on his embodied subjectivity. Authors focus on variability which is considered as a "natural phenomenon" which just mirrors the extent of inter-individual variations. In this perspective, the very issue of coherence and diversity of the cultural order is relegated at the back. In general, anthropologists have shown little interest in the possibility that the roots of an individual position could be located within a specific functioning of the cultural structures. One step in this direction is nevertheless taken by some who attempt to demonstrate the various ways individuals play with cultural codes. The book edited by Crapanzano and Garrison (1977) remains a classical, but still isolated, illustration of this perspective. My purpose is somewhat different. I want to draw attention to the fact that heterogeneity can be built into culture itself and that a structural heterogeneity has essential functions at the level of cultures and individuals. By structural heterogeneity, I mean that cultural elements are organized by various codes which follow different rules and correspond to contrasting values. A dominant code is pervaded not only by diversity but by one or several underlying codes whose rules are opposite to those of the seemingly dominant code. This structural diversity is hierarchically organized, and hierarchical inversions which occur during certain rituals or in certain areas of life offer ways to understand the implications of this structural diversity for the culture as well as for individuals. My intention here is to illustrate this process and its cultural and individual significance through two examples taken from Central Africa. The first example deals with the cultural codes through which the Yans Society conceives and organizes kinship relationships and frames the cultural inscription of individuals within the kin field. The second example presents the cultural codes which operate in therapeutic possession groups in Zaire. In both cases, I will show that a structural differentiation within the cultural codes introduces first a level of play into the dominant codes themselves, and appears further as a condition for the effective and viable functioning of the dominant codes, from a societal and/or from an individual perspective.

2. Dualism and dialectic in a kinship system Yans society is formally a matrilineal society (Corin 1971; 1985). Social identity is for the most part obtained from the matrilineage, through which

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most status and belongings are transmitted. Worship of the deceased and ancestors follows matrilateral relationships and the terms of address used between cross-cousins reveal a clear identification between maternal uncles and nephews. Authority structure follows the principle of seniority; the elders of the lineage act for their nephews in juridical affairs and social conflicts; to some extent, maternal uncles have rights of life and death over the younger members of the lineage. Funeral rituals are one key event where the structural tensions which underlie this apparently homogeneous system are clearly manifested. Death of a member of the society could threaten the social equilibrium, and ritual reactions to this event offer a privileged opportunity to gain insight into potential tensions within this society. The most dramatic example of ritual tensions at funerals occurs when an important chief dies. During the hours following death, his classificatory patrilateral grandsons cross the villages of the chiefdom, take all objects, animals, and belongings within their reach, insulting and hitting any member of the chief's lineage whom they meet. This could be interpreted, in a classical functionalist way, as allowing representatives of the people to rebel against the power which the chiefs have over them in ordinary life. However, this kind of explanation is not sufficient to justify why they are the patrilateral grandsons who are taken to represent the commoners. It is more enlightening to reframe their behavior against the background of the rituals of funerals in general, where analogous, if not as spectacular, structural tensions can also be observed. One such line of tension divides people who are in an alternate-generations relationship with the deceased (especially on the patrilateral side for men) on the one hand, and members of the lineage, on the other hand. Signs of hostility and various forms of ragging are still present, but the structural opposition between the two principles seem to be much more profound. Their contrasting characters appear at three main levels during the funerals: - Appearance. Members of the lineage remove most of their clothes and rub their heads, their chest and all their body with ashes; alternate generations arrive, leaping and dancing up and down with their heads decorated with leaves, holding palm fronds and boughs in their hands. - Behavior. Members of the lineage cry near the corpse and dance slowly with syncopated movements; alternate generations laugh, jump, come from time to time near the deceased and joke: "He is not dead!", "Stand up!". Members of the lineage dramatize the death while alternate generations deny its occurrence. This is especially striking at the cemetery where

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the alternate generations eat, just in front of the grave, foods prohibited during mourning. - Responsibilities. One could say that the lineage takes care of the social aspects of death, while alternate generations are more in charge of the ritual aspects of the funeral. When the deceased was a married person, members of his or her lineage challenge the surviving husband or wife and reproach him or her with having monopolized the attention of the dead at the expense of the lineage. Elders of the lineage also conduct long palavers to discover the real cause of death. For their part, alternate generations are in charge of putting the corpse into the coffin, of carrying it to the cemetery, of digging the grave and of burying the dead. Each of these steps provides an opportunity for threatening to stop, for asking for money and for exhibiting all signs of unwillingness to carry out the tasks at hand. The encompassing and multilevel character of the contrast between the two groups - lineage and alternate generation - indicates that this contrast could go beyond a temporary rivalry between two principles of reference and have a deeper structural meaning. An analysis of formal features attached more generally to these two principles of reference reveals that they correspond to contrasting codes. Relationships within the lineage can be characterized by asymmetry and authority. Relationships with alternate generation are marked by symmetry (i.e. reciprocity of address terms) and joking. Lineage time is progressive and irreversible; it is oriented by the general principle of the preeminence associated with age and seniority, and therefore by the progression from the young towards the status of elder, deceased, and ancestor. Alternate generation time is associated with reversibility and cyclicity; some form of reincarnation is thought to occur between grandparents and grandchildren. We are therefore definitively faced with two principles of reference, each one having its own internal coherence but being built around contrasting structural rules. To grasp the cultural meaning and the specific value attached to this contrast, we can follow two complementary paths: first, to search for situations where the contrast between the two principles is clearly enacted, and to analyze the contexts associated with this contrast; second, to search for parallel ways of contrasting other principles of reference, and to examine if they offer any similarity with our first opposition, and if they can help us to grasp its meaning. Let us first consider three examples where our two principles appear to contrast:

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- At a religious level, worship is directed toward the deceased of the lineage; worship is especially important in cases of misfortune or for protection by the ancestors in special events; people of the same section of the lineage tend to be buried in close proximity to each other. However, worship is not carried out by the elder of the lineage himself but by a classificatory grandson or grandfather of a male, who speaks in the name of lineage members. Similarly, at funerals, it is a member of the alternate generation who addresses the dead; for example, he is entitled to "break" a promise or an oath made to the deceased; in this case, it is a classificatory grandson who speaks and acts on behalf of the deceased. - At the political level, power is associated with the chief's lineage and the emblems of power are transmitted through this lineage. It is therefore striking to see that it is a member of an alternate generation (the classificatory grandson) who is in charge of transferring the material emblems of power to the successor of the chief (a member of the chief's lineage). - At the life cycle level, social identity is clearly rooted in the lineage, as I have previously mentioned; it is the maternal uncle who officially presents the child to the community and to the ancestors in a public ceremony which takes place at the end of the second year of life. Nevertheless, another parallel and more private ceremony is also performed during the same period, with the paternal grandfather for a boy and with a grandmother for a girl. This ritual aims at transmitting the individual features from the grandparent to his or her grandchild, who is placed in front of the grandparent, on the ground. In these various domains, the social preeminence of matrilateral references appears as being cross-cut by the intervention of alternate generations; without them, matrilineal references remain in someway powerless or unable to enact their cultural functions. An analysis of rituals associated with the life cycle reveals that this opposition between alternate generations and lineage parallels another structural opposition between the maternal uncle and the father. Connotations associated with the paternal figure are more complex than those associated with alternate generations, but they share common key orientations. Let me briefly present a few striking contrasts between the father and the maternal uncle figures: (1) At the life cycle level, when the uncle introduces the child to the community, he also states explicitly to the father that he is himself the one responsible for the child; he grants the father the function of guardian but reminds him that the father will have to be accountable for the health

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of the child. The symbolic content of the portion of the bride price given to the father (a soap, a lamp...) will acknowledge how much the father "has suffered" for his child in his day-to-day life, in his caring functions. Marriage ceremonies assign a specific role to the maternal uncle and to the father. The maternal uncle is especially responsible for the social aspect of the union. He addresses his blessing to the partner of his nephew or niece and places the marriage under the guard of the lineage fetish, Mbeem\ the maternal uncle is in charge of the legal aspect of the ceremony. The father gives his blessing to his own child; his paternal fetish, Nswo, inherited from his own father, will assure the fertility of his child. Thus, in this matrilineal society where the transmission of life is along lineage lines, the intervention of a paternal principle is necessary to give male or female individuals a real access to the reproductive power. As privileges associated with formal status are transmitted through the lineage, activities leading to the acquisition of personal prestige are associated with the father; it is usually from him that an individual acquires skills that allow him to "distinguish" himself as an individual. It is especially true for the most prestigious activity among the Yansi: hunting. Hunting is linked with the paternal fetish Nswo; a gun is transmitted from father to son and when a famous hunter dies, his son has to go through very specific graving rituals to be able to cut his link with his prestigious father. In the area of witchcraft, which is particularly important in the Yans system of explanation of misfortunes, the affective connotations associated with both figures appear clearly. Among the Yansi, witchcraft is intimately linked with the functioning of legal authority: that of the chief at a societal level, that of the elders and maternal uncles in the lineage. Witchcraft is conceived as a legitimate tool to enforce obedience. The problem is that there is always a risk that this legitimate use of witchcraft may deviate and be used in the personal interest of persons in position of authority. In principle, the individual is supposed to be under the double protection of his or her paternal and maternal lineages, each one taking care that the other does not abuse its power; actually, threatening connotations are almost exclusively associated with the maternal side while the protective ones are linked with the paternal side. Therefore, the father acts as an important protector against frequent abuse of authority by maternal uncles. At a formal level, the relationship with the father shares some elements with that of the lineage (respect and obedience) and some elements with that of the alternate generations (affectivity).

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Thus, one can say that in many respects, the lineage stands towards alternate generations in a position analogous to that of the maternal uncle towards the father. The content of the situations where this contrast is enacted indicates that relationships with alternate generations and with the father involve issues of life, fertility, actualization and individuation. At the cultural level, the patrilateral reference allows the matrilateral prescriptive structure to be infused with actuality and performance; it is a condition for the functioning of the prescriptive structure. At the individual level, the patrilateral reference appears to allow people to occupy individual positions within the system of relationships inherent in the lineage structure, thereby allowing for an individual role within the general framework of the social structure. It introduces parallel principles of legitimacy in social and cultural life. The reversibility and symmetry of alternate generations also gives room for individuality and legitimates the existence and the role of individuals as individuals. One has to notice that functions associated with the father are only partially transferable to the patrilineage and that they remain rooted in an individual bond. It is very difficult to account for the power of this structural diversity in the context of classical anthropological schemes. To call upon any "bilinearity" does not account for the specific features associated with each of the principles, nor for their interrelationships and for their efficacy. Similarly, the sole notion of "inversion" does not account for the creative power of these second order codes and values: it could only account for a temporary release of the strength of dominant codes and not for the potential of actualization, of individuation, and of individualization associated with patrilateral references. The concept of hierarchical inversion as defined by Louis Dumont (1983) is useful for understanding the process involved. For Dumont, the concept of hierarchy implies that every society is characterized by a dominant ideology which orders data around a principle of coherence. In the Yans society, the formal discourse on society and most of the social institutions emphasize the preeminence of matrilateral references, in line with the assignment of positions by the maternal uncle in the ritual introducing the child within his social environment. This notion of hierarchy allows us to identify the potential meaning attached to asymmetrical oppositions where terms are not simply opposite but have a differential value in relation to the whole. While the inversion of a purely distinctive opposition produces nothing, the inversion of an asymmetrical one generates something different. Thus, Dumont suggests that one should pay close attention when an element associated with a secondary

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value emerges as pre-eminent in certain circumstances. However, he remains convinced of the superiority of prescriptive ideology over pragmatics. Therefore, for him, when empirical situations seem to contradict the values expressed in the dominant ideology, they indicate only the presence of "operative", "second order" values. In our data, various indices point to the preeminence of a matrilineal ideology which gives a coherence to various levels of data, discourses and behaviors. However, in certain specific circumstances, we have observed that other principles take preeminence and that they are associated with contrasting formal characters and with specific connotations. This hierarchical inversion produces something new or different, which seems to have a cultural bearing much more important than what Dumont allows for. In the Yans society, the situational preeminence of a patrilateral reference not only reveals the presence of "second order values"; pragmatics reveal that these are in fact conceived as the foundation or as a condition of possibility of the dominant values. In this context, the seemingly secondary axis, the patrilineal principle, encompasses and includes its opposite, the matrilateral principle. This internal structural diversity introduces an important flexibility into the system. Patrilateral reference not only indicates the limit of the matrilateral principle; it introduces a distance regarding the rules associated with the dominant ideology; it opens avenues to escape or to balance its imperative power through a concurrent principle of legitimacy. At the personal level, it guarantees the structural possibility of individuation in front of the collective ascendancy of the lineage. At a cultural level, one could say that what seemed at a first glance to be "a rest" or a "margin" inserts fecundity and actuality within the central cultural codes. It is this dialectic which is called upon in time of distress and misfortune. In case of an illness or a death, the main part of the quest for meaning is in the hands of the community members. The role of specialists such as diviners remains generally secondary and the work on the causes is mainly in the hands of the elders: dreams, indices, past tensions and events are rememFormal discourse

Hierarchical inversion

Yans society matrilineage

Patrilateral principle

patrilaterality paternal figure

matrilinearity

alternate generations

Figure 1. The kinship system and its inversion

lineage

paternal figure alternate generations

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bered, analyzed, interpreted, and most of the ritual reparations take place in the context of public palavers. In this context, elders of the matrilineage are the formal respondents for the affected person but the balance between matrilateral and patrilateral references is the key element, even if often implicit, of this collective process.

3. Segmentation and multi-referentiality in spirit possession idioms The second example deals with the internal structure of the possession idiom in therapeutic possession groups. In my research on various therapeutic spirit possession groups in Zaire, I have been impressed by their ability to play with central cultural signifiers and with their way of using analogies, inversions, oppositions to develop a ritual idiom which is simultaneously "inside" and "outside" of current religious beliefs (Corin 1986). This process can take place at the level of the relationships between the ritual idiom and the general system of beliefs characteristic of a given society. I have, for example, shown that the Zebola idiom uses central cultural signifiers, but transforms them through various oppositions and inversions, which leads one to question their absolute value (Corin 1985). The specific hierarchy of cultural signifiers represents, parallels, and facilitates a process whereby suffering people are reintegrated into the society while at the same time remaining outside and retaining a degree of alterity. I will focus here on another example where an analogous process is manifested at the level of the relationship between local and external influences. The specificity of the Mizuka ritual in the general context of possession in Zaire is its grounding in Islam. Mizuka was introduced to Zaire from East Africa by Arab merchants. It is thus external to the traditional cultures of the adherents. The internal diversification of spirits associated with the Mizuka ritual enables members of the group to express various potential positions regarding the core Islamic values, and also allows for a dialectic between Arab and local traditions. This diversification is enacted through the distinction between various categories of spirits, through the divergences between healers and between adherents in understanding the very nature of Mizuka spirits, and through the values associated with the various categories of spirits at the level of the ritual. As an indexical sign of the essential commitment of the Mizuka toward Islam, the first step to enter into the initiation process is to pronounce the

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Shaada, the confession of faith which manifests the conversion to Islam. Mizuka healers claim that they occupy a central position in the Islamic world and present themselves as real missionaries working for the expansion of Islam. Orthodox religious leaders reject this claim and argue that the very idea of a possession by a djinn is in itself contradictory and pagan. In a parallel way, one of the central issues at stake in the Mizuka ritual is the necessity of establishing a balance between orthodoxy and pluralism, between conversion and appropriation. Therefore, while appearing at a first glance to reinforce the power of Islam references, the ritual distorts these references and uses them to express traditional African values. The ritual idiom manifests a complex interplay between these diverging orientations and makes it possible to symbolize and to overcome the tensions between coherence and diversity, between centrality and marginality. Like most of the spirit possession rituals in Central Africa, the Mizuka ritual establishes a split between the spirits of the ritual, in this case the Muslim spirits, and other spirits which have to be expelled by exorcism, such as the Sheytani. The religious world of the spirits of the ritual is itself highly differentiated. I only retain here the most relevant distinctions: (1) At a first level, healers establish a sharp distinction between the Mizuka, who are Muslim djinns, and the Rohani, who are sometimes identified with Islamic sages buried at La Mecque. Both can heal, but the Mizuka spirits use herbs and remedies while the Rohani pray and use kombe, the material representations of verses of the Koran. Ceremonies for Mizuka involve collective dances; all the initiates, dressed in white clothes, move slowly around in a circle with a few stereotyped movements. Rituals for Rohani involve reciting and singing the Koran. The ambiguous position of the Rohani spirits regarding orthodox Islam is shown by the fact that even if Rohani healers are rejected by orthox Muslims, low status Islamic imams accept to perform religious ceremonies in their honor. (2) Mizuka themselves appear to act as flexible signifiers. In principle, they are djinns organized in a well defined pantheon of families with complex genealogies and linkages of marriage. At the same time, the dynamics of their relationships with men are interpreted in various ways by healers who seem to use djinn signifiers in line with their own traditional African belief system, which can vary according to their respective ethnic group. Through this functional utilization of the Mizuka idiom, people are able to relate to a universal frame of reference, Islam, while retaining key elements of their own tradition.

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(3) Both categories of spirits have "servant spirits": Kilima for the Mizuka, Kibalaka for the Rohani. The striking features to notice here are the following: - both are supposed to be spirits related to tribes encountered during the travel from Arabic countries to Zaire; - both are characterized by special behavior during the dances for the Mizuka spirits: they are childish, greedy, capricious. Normally, at the end of a ceremony, one or two persons are possessed by them and their behavior is a source of many jokes in an otherwhile pious atmosphere; - the initiation into Mizuka ritual always encompasses a possession by these spirits whose arrival in the person follows that of more noble spirits. While the possession by Mizuka spirits is quiet, with persons dancing slowly on the floor or standing, the possession by Kilima is savage and in sharp contrast with the other. At the beginning of the seventh day, the person possessed by Kilima will enter into a hole full of live charcoal and withdraw seven rocks she has to find in the fire. At these various levels, the internal differentiation of the Mizuka spirits mirrors the ambiguous situation of societies under the double influence of Islam and African traditions. More deeply, it manifests the capacity of subversion of the Islamic values by local cultures, through an infusion of African meanings into the functioning of Islamic codes. A further analysis of the ritual drama shows an alternance between spirit figures, rhythms and bodily manifestations which respond to contrasting codes and have differential referents. At the explicit level, the reference to Islam is dominant; this is expressed by the "alien" character of the clothes of the possessed: first grade initiates are entirely swathed in a white cloth closely wrapped around the

ISLAM Islamic spirits (grounded in the Koran) Rohani

Mizuka

Kibalaka

Kilima

Sheytani Djinn

(nature spirits)

as causal agents

AFRICAN TRADITION Figure 2. An African re-reading of an Islamic Idiom. (African influences are in bold characters and framed.)

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head; second grade initiates are dressed in ample white trousers, tunics and turbans; colored veils and jewellery decorate them. A closer appraisal of the structural diversity of the spirit world indicates that African tradition impregnates all levels of this world and is in fact allencompassing. A move from explicit ideology toward the level of praxis and rituals, shows that the African tradition is in fact the dominant idiom. Pragmatics introduces a reversal between the relative power of Islamic and traditional ideologies. Such an inversion does not open to second order values but introduces an inversion into the hierarchy itself. This first level of cultural subversion of the Islamic ideology is doubled by a second level subversion of the male oriented Islamic religious world by female leaders. Their commitment to Islam is attested by their religious devoutness and their care to follow all Islamic prescriptions. The context associated with djinn intervention indicates an apparent reinforcement of the women's commitment to Islamic norms, values and ways of life. In parallel, the ritual is the basis of the constitution of large, well-integrated communities which are dominantly female and led by female leaders who can gain a very great influence in the community at large, as diviners and as healers. I suggest that the structural diversity and the hierarchic inversion built into the religious idiom allows the production of an analogous inversion of references in actual life. To describe the Mizuka religious idioms as a juxtaposition of spiritual entities, some of them Islamic and others African, misses the key point: how an internal play with symbols allows a dialectization of relationships between the center and its margins, and facilitates a diversification process within the dominant ideology. Individual suffering is the anchoring point of this whole process, but the ritual itself has larger cultural implications. The case of possession groups illustrates the fact that second level codes can be used by dominated groups or individuals, not only to express their personality or their personal demands in the context of well-bounded frames and times, but also to subvert the dominant code from the inside. That is, key elements are used but are reframed, in certain cases, in an opposite direction. As individuals use codes akin to dominant cultural values, these cannot easily be rejected, devalued or marginalized; alterity retains its power to challenge dominant codes and to interpellate dominant society.

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4. The cultural construction of marginality and its pragmatic implications One of the common elements shared by the two examples which I have briefly presented is that they give room for an individuation process by giving to the people a possibility of distanciation vis-ä-vis the prescriptive structure: - this is structurally framed within the interplay of cultural codes; - this allows alterity to remain inside of the system; - this also facilitates an internal transformation of rituals and cultures in the context of cultural change, where the challenging and creative power of the interplay between open and hidden hierarchy is equally a part of traditional cultures. My hypothesis is that the hierarchy established between various cultural codes and the possibility of reordering these through hierarchical inversions leads us directly to both specific and more general attitudes regarding deviance and marginality. This can be enlightened through a comparison with some observations done in North American societies. Differences existing between the concepts of tolerance and indifference illustrate two specific ways of constructing the cultural meaning of marginality. Let me examine the status of insane and deviant people in North American society, on the basis of a research I conducted with psychotic patients in the city of Montreal, Quebec. When, as an European immigrant, 1 began to live in Montreal, I was impressed by the seemingly great tolerance manifested toward marginal or deviant people; nobody seemed to pay attention to individuals with very strange or eccentric behaviors. At the same time, I also learned not to stare at people, not even to look people in the eye that I met in the subway or in residential buildings, not to enter into somebody's private territory if s/he did not explicitly invite me to do so. Progressively, more careful observations and several interactions with psychiatric patients have led me to change my mind and to reframe the apparent tolerance as being in fact indifference. Tolerance implies an acceptance of different ways of thinking, behaving, feeling; it acknowledges differences and accepts or transcends these. Conversely, indifference is an attitude towards something evaluated as being of little importance, of little interest. In the later context, alterity has nothing to teach, it questions nothing and can only evoke either a negation of differences, as in the North American popular trend of normalization in the rehabilitation of psychiatric patients, or a suppression of the awareness of the very existence of "different" people. The key difference between tolerance and indifference

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is not a question of degree on a continuum, but a difference at a structural level. The first notion opens to a possible articulation between the "center" and "margins", while the second, in escaping a real confrontation with differences, fosters the maintenance of a status quo. We could say that North American societies let the margins exist qua margins, without allowing the establishment of a link which could sustain either explicit exclusion mechanisms or reintegrative processes. Reactions of rejection can nevertheless appear when marginality is perceived as a threat regarding the private space (as when one tries to implement residential services for alcoholics or for psychiatric patients in middle class environments). I suggest that this general attitude of indifference could be a correlate of two main trends in contemporary industrialized societies. The first one is the dominance of an individualistic ideology as described by Dumont (1983), an ideology that negates the relevance of any hierarchical order and conceives the objective world as being constituted from separate entities and isolated subjects with relationships external to them. This atomization of the world would parallel a "flat" and amorphous view of the universe: "Le tout est devenu un tas" (Dumont 1983: 256). The second trend is the impossibility to inscribe the individual's problematic experience within a relational structure which would allow it to have meaning for both the subject and for others. These two features are intimately related. A reference to Turner's discussion (1986) on Dilthey's distinction between a "mere experience" and "an experience" can help to clarify this association and to contrast the situation in African and North American societies. While a "mere experience" evokes a passive endurance and acceptance of events, "an experience" is a structure of experience; the conversion of "mere experience" into "an experience" is done through relating present experience to previous structures or units of experience. In African traditional societies, the search for meaning is powerfully reinforced by collective beliefs which have received support from tradition and from a consensually legitimated past. I would add that the belief systems and the existence of social mechanisms of relatedness such as those that I have described converge to allow an insertion of the individual problematic experience into what Turner calls a relational structure. I suggest further that the crucial condition which allows this process to expand and to enact its whole therapeutic potential is not the availability of representation systems, or the existence of extended family or any other aspects of the social life per se; it is the presence of the structural diversity I have described below and the availability of meaning games supported by a specific hierarchy built into systems of representation.

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In North America, the extremely individualistic ideology seems to be reflected in the radically marginal status of the margins in our society. One could suspect that this has two levels of implication. At the cultural level, it handicaps an internal process of change that would evolve through a continuous dialectization of the relationship between core and peripheral aspects of our cultural system. Changes could occur within limited segments of society, but it could become more difficult, even impossible, to challenge the core structure of social and cultural values. At the individual level, this could lead to an impossibility or to a refusal to relate differences, as well as marginal people, within a social space as well as within a shared representational frame. Dumont has well described how difficult (he says "impossible") it is to value individuation and equality, while acknowledging differences; according to him, difference as difference would require the existence of a hierarchical system where inversions retain all their power: "Je soutiens ceci: si les avocats de la difference reclament a la fois pour eile l'egalite et la reconnaissance, ils reclament pour eile l'impossible" (1983: 260). In this context, one gets the impression that traditional societies, more than modern societies, have retained the ability to really play and interact with their margins; the center can be questioned or even modified by what is occurring at the periphery of the system. With the trend to occult or to mask the differences between centers and margins, and to integrate people into a homogeneous and atomized social field, one could suspect that we lose a possibility of questioning dominant values. Margins lose their power of relativizing central ideology.

5. Conclusions: Coherence and hierarchy If we come back to the anthropological "quest for coherence" which I denounced above one could say that the real issue is probably less this tendency itself than an unduly simplistic perception of what coherence means. The African examples presented illustrate how the pragmatics of the utilization of cultural codes can reveal the existence of secondary or tertiary codes, each of which respond to specific structural rules but which are interconnected and organized in a complex way. In the examples I have given, secondary codes seem to be in fact essential elements of the global system; they allow the introduction of actualization and individuation into the cultural reality. I have suggested that the existence of a structural hierarchy in the cultural codes permits a dialectization of the

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relationship between core and marginal elements of a society. Conversely, the anti-hierarchic orientation of modern societies would seriously handicap this process; the marginal status of deviance remains mainly disconnected from the core society. These examples illustrate the heuristic power attached to the notion of hierarchical inversion. This allows one to pursue further and to thus expand the symbolic anthropologists' analysis of the challenging potential attached to the concept of negativity which they consider as essential to the very existence of a symbolic order. In her introduction to a book on symbolic inversions, Babcock (1978) noticed that inversion is an essential component of a structuralist vision of society; by analogy with phonetic rules, one could say that every cultural category only exists through its opposition to another category. In this context, the assignment of "chaos" or "disorderliness" to certain acts, events, things, can be a way of indicating indirectly the existence of a cultural order. In symbolic inversion, deviance could also have another function: that of questioning the centrality and the absoluteness of the central ordering. Similarly, for Turner (1978), inversions occurring during major transition rituals act as a reminder of the universal opposition between order and chaos and of the importance of the order; they have also a potentially subversive power in suggesting that cultural elements, disconnected during the phase of chaos, could be composed in a different way than what is "normally" the case. Hierarchical inversion allows us to go one step further in introducing the idea that various levels of codes interplay and that the apparently dominant order is in fact subordinated to another underlying order; while simple inversions would remain located within one single register and temporarily put in doubt in order to further reinforce the dominant code, hierarchical inversions indicate a change of register from which a new order can emerge. As it was demonstrated in the two examples, in cases of symbolic inversions the opposition is not limited to terms but to structural constitutive rules. In putting the dominant structure in tension with another level structure, this process limits its bearing and allows it to function in a flexible way. Hierarchy reintroduces "thickness" into the description. To get access to these second order codes and to the phenomena of hierarchical inversions described below, one has to go beyond the formal description of social structures, even by specialists from within the culture, and to rely on the idea of performance understood in two different ways: performance as a ritual dramatization of underlying and contrasting themes and values, and performance as a possibility introduced within the prescriptive structure by the underlying codes and values. The cultural overlap, hierarchy and inversion of codes form a framework which

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allows individuals to play with the cultural rules and to take a distance from them while remaining "inside" of them. This perspective opens new ways of considering the relationship between structure and praxis: in our examples, praxis is neither a manifestation of the structure, nor a pure manifestation of an individual opposed to the generality of the structure; praxis indicates a tension between several structural orders and reveals the limits, the relativity and the fundamental dependency of the seemingly dominant codes. The main characteristic of what I have called a structural heterogeneity is that diverging codes are simultaneously distinct and related in a common frame. This is this double character that allows a dialectization of the cultural order, either in general, as in the Yans society, or more specifically in response to misfortune, as in the therapeutic rituals. They design the frame against which deviance or marginality can be dealt with or negotiated. In Central Africa, therapeutic rituals build on this structural heterogeneity and use it to allow individuals to take a distance from, and to actually question, central cultural rules. In contrast, in North American societies where the internal ordering of cultural codes is reworked under an individualistic frame in the sense of Louis Dumont, it becomes much more difficult or even impossible for marginality, deviance and alterity to question the central values; they remain disconnected from the core society.

References Babcock, B.A. 1978 The reversible world. Symbolic inversion in art and society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Corin, E. 1971 "Le pere comme modele de differentiation dans une societe clanique matrilineaire (Yansi, Congo-Kinshasa)". Psychopathologie africaine, VII, 2: 185-224. 1985 "La question du sujet dans les therapies de possession". Psychoanalyse, 3: 5 3 - 6 6 . 1986 "Centralite des marges et dynamique des centres". Anthropologie et Societes, 10,2: 1 - 2 1 . 1990 "Facts and meaning in psychiatry. An anthropological approach to the lifeworld of schizophrenics". Culture, Medecine and Psychiatry, 14,2: 153-188. Crapanzano, V. - Garrison, V. (Eds.) 1977 Case studies in spirit possession. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

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Derrida, J. 1967 Dumont, L. 1983 Geertz, C. 1968 1983

"La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines", in: L'icriture et la difference. Paris: Le Seuil. "La valeur chez les modernes et chez les autres", in: Essais surl'individualisme. Paris: Le Seuil: 222-262. Islam observed. Chicago: Chicago University Press. "From the native's point of view", in: Local knowledge. Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books.

Gluckman, M. 1963 Order and rebellion in tribal Africa. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Turner, V. W. 1978 "Comments and conclusions", in: B. A. Babcock (Ed.), The reversible world. Symbolic inversion in art and society. Ithaca: Cornel University Press: 276-296. 1986 "Dewey, Dilthey and Drama: An essay in the anthropology of experience", in: V W. Turner - Ε. M. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience. Chicago: University of Illinois Press: 33-44.

Transgression and transition: Confession as a sub-text in Maasai ritual John G.Galaty

1. Introduction The question of transgression, implied by any notion of a moral order, is intrinsic to social life. But in some societies, issues of personal morality are subjects of public discourse; in other societies, matters of private exchange or religious intercession. But everywhere, rules are applied to acts and instances are defined as transgressions through a process of cultural interpretation which may lead to accusation or confession. The ethnohermeneutic of transgression, which occurs both in daily life and upon marked occasions, concerns both whether a case of so-and-so represents an occasion of suchand-such, and whether the case in fact occurred. Moral behaviour is replete with hidden knowledge, not simply subject to being discovered, like fingerprints, or creatively construed, like clues, but to being "built", like a case, or even to being dramatized and diffused, like justice. Transgression represents a continuous sub-text of society which upon occasion takes the stage. Among the Maasai of East Africa, age-set rituals represent rites of transition, which "foreground" the passage between stages of the life-cycle through ceremonial acts (circumcision, sacrifice, consuming milk or meat, blessing, naming, etc.), accompanied by expressions of pride and anticipation or dread and anxiety. But transition is dangerous and initiates and their intimates vulnerable; beneath the celebration of passage lies anxiety over past transgressions, which if hidden will fester and endanger ritual participants through the sort of "intrinsic" causation which has been used to account for the link between morality and misfortune the world around. As collective enterprises, Maasai ceremonies offer occasions not only for displaying the moral state of individual participants but for interpreting that of society as a whole.1 Beneath transgression lies alterity, schisms between individuals, conflicts between groups, gaps of knowledge, shortcomings of expectation. It is perhaps a functionalist truism that in ceremony the "otherness" of the transgressor is made less strange and community confirmed in a sort of ritual

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refiguration of self and society; in ritual, fear, resentment and humiliation are also evoked, as shortcomings of personal conduct are made public. Ritual hermeneutics represent, more than a simple uncovering of forbidden acts, the pragmatic opening of individuals to community in a clash of hidden meaning and knowledge with public symbols of morality that serves to diminish and sanction alterity in society.

2. Knowledge and alterity "Alterity" and "community" represent two quite different visions of the underpinnings of anthropological practice, both rooted in the philosophical precursors of mid-twentieth century existentialist thought. The first vision sees anthropology as preoccupied with "otherness", in an essentially Western search for and creative construction of its own negation. With roots in the work of Herodotus and Vico, this perspective grew during nineteenth century romanticism and found fertile expression in early colonial ethnography. The second vision emphasizes the universalist task of anthropology, for which "nothing is foreign", of pursuing and rendering comprehensible all the varieties of being human, this the "anthropology" of Augustine, Kant, and Tylor's ethnology. In the works of both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, we find images of the human predicament commensurate with the anthropological vision of cultural alterity, of loneliness and detachment combined with acute selfconsciousness, alienation strangely combined with authenticity. In contrast, the possibilities of mutual understanding arise in the work of Dilthey and Weber on the one hand, and Heidegger on the other, an affirmation succinctly expressed by Karl Jaspers, that "truth must be communicable... we are what we are only through the community of mutually conscious understanding" (1955: 77). This issue hinges not only on what we - through an anthropology - can know, but whether the subjects of our knowledge are radically "other" or, as other human beings, extensions of the self. Faced with a choice between alterity and community, the hermeneutical project seems to founder, since, in Bibeau and Corin's words (in the Introduction to this volume), "distanciation and alterity without co-belonging seems to make hermeneutics impossible", while the experience of "community" would seem to make the hermeneutical process irrelevant, since interpretation becomes decreasingly problematic and less interesting with familiarity. To express this paradox succinctly, we can but do not need to

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interpret what we know well, and need to but cannot interpret what we do not know. In the last instance, the assumption of cultural alterity rests on a philosophy of the unknowability of "other minds", that of cultural community on a philosophy of knowledge through "empathy", the first dissolving into cultural solipsism, the second into vagueness and disillusionment, neither satisfactory as an account of anthropological knowledge or culture. The two positions seem to arise out of the cultural analogue to unilingualism, by which one is a partner within one's own cultural community, yet isolated from all others. But if highly self-conscious monoculturalism is fertile ground for the growth of cultural nationalism in philosophy, it is inappropriate ground on which to develop the intrinsically intercultural dialogue which anthropological theory must represent. Increasing evidence from post-colonial anthropology and archaeology suggests that autonomous, unilingual cultural communities represent the exception rather than the norm, with inter-ethnic processes, multilingualism, and wide ranges of dialectical and cultural variation characterizing most human communities, past and present (Drummond 1980; Kopytoff 1987). Quite common are cultural ideologies of "ethnoanthropological" theories regarding human, cultural and linguistic differences and similarities, in which local images of alterity and community occur in dialectical or contextualized relation to each other (Galaty 1982). Alterity and co-belonging are, then, not mutually exclusive conditions or existential states but invariably co-present in the synthesis of separation and unity widely found both in individual human experience and cultural representation. If in the nineteenth century, "participation" evoked both non-differentiated, holistic "thought sauvage" (of course turned inside out by Levi-Strauss' highly analytical notion of la pensee sauvage) and empathic historical understanding, in twentieth century anthropology since Malinowski, the notion has signified social conviviality across cultural lines as a method of sociological understanding and the presumption of partnership in the genesis of Western knowledge about the non-Western world. The theory of alterity implies that community is as impossible as communication and that knowledge across cultural lines represents a projection since human intersubjective understanding, often naively assumed within the same culture, is in fact rarely achieved. In a sense, the pretensions to empathy rightfully fall prey to the cynicism of alterity, while both fail to grasp the persistent, tentative yet rewarding dialogical engagement implied by being human, and intrinsic to anthropology (Geertz 1973). The project of anthropology demonstrates that through dialogue alterity can be encompassed, not eliminated through transparent under-

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standing but kept at bay through the sort of tentative partnership which enables a degree of mutual intelligibility to be achieved. Wittgenstein's attack on the notion of a "private language" is pertinent here, since the very idea of a "language" and an individual's involvement in "language games" denies radical alterity, implying as it does conventionality and the social (Wittgenstein 1958). But even if cultural knowledge and capability is social, surely various cultures have different language/culture "games" which one must learn in order to play; yet Wittgenstein's critique of ostensive definitions demonstrates that in order to learn one must already know, or, to put it somewhat differently, that learning is never naive and alterity is never unconditional. If so, humans peering at one another across the divide of language and culture see at the outset neither absolute "otherness" nor mere reflections of themselves but, to use a Biblical image appropriate to the history of hermeneutics, "through a glass darkly", or through a lens of intersubjectivity that becomes progressively less dark. At risk of echoing Dr. Jonson's abrupt dismissal of Bishop Berkeley's scepticism about the existence of the world by kicking a stone, "thus I refute him", a severe challenge can be issued to theories of radical alterity in extreme cultural relativity by the fact that second languages are indeed learned, while the inevitable persistence of "otherness" as a pervasive sensibility can in part by confirmed by the fact that second languages are invariably learned imperfectly! Gadamer points out what he calls the "universal linguisticality of man's relation to the world", from which stems the "universality of the hermeneutic problem" and the centrality of translation as a model for "making what is alien our own" (1976: 19). A hermeneutic process is implied whenever meaning is hidden, but the question of "hidden meaning" reflects both on knowledge and knower. The literal meaning of a text can be initially "hidden" but even when grasped can leave the cultural connotations of key symbols and notions in the text equally elusive. Within Geisteswissenschaften, cultural understanding ('verstehende') implies eliciting the ideas, motives, and intentions which lend social action its particular meaning, and thus even nonlinguistic action is infused with linguisticality. But once the presuppositions of a culture are known, the altruistic meaning of suicide in Japan, the virtue of the rational pursuit of profit in early capitalism, or the ironic sense of a wink in America, aspects essential to interpretive understanding may remain culturally implicit although rendered meaningfully unproblematic. If certain areas of culture are, almost by definition, unproblematic, other types of knowledge and action are explicitly problematic and subject to debate and inquiry, from the stock market to the doctrine of transubstantiality,

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or from the nature and explanation of misfortune to secret societies. Yet domains which appear unproblematic after explication or analysis may, within a culture, embody paradox, contradiction, and contextualized variation, demanding further interpretation. An altruistic suicide committed by a depressive, class-based differences in the valuation of the profit-motive, or different degrees of collusion attributed to a wink by sender and receiver, all imply but add "intertextual" aspects to more standard interpretations, rendering the accepted problematic. The "textuality" of culture, however, goes far beyond attributing to social action a certain "narrative" quality, with "intentionality" giving meaning both to particular actions and to a "work" as a whole (Ricoeur 1979). Detached observers can often recognize structural patterns between quite divergent ideas and practices which participants tend to isolate, such as between religious and economic action, or are able to interpret cultural phenomena in historical context, as reflecting pervasive trends in a society, a wider ethos, more widely distributed motifs, or precedents unknown to subjects. While some interpretations are clearly either "ethnohermeneutical" or "analytical", representing theories or accounts either of indigenous cultural origin (which some call "folk models" (Galaty 1981)) or of external cultural, ideological or scientific origin, most anthropological interpretations are "intertextual", representing creative encounters between meaningful elements attributed to or implied by social action within a culture, and motives, notions and experience added by the interpreter. Such interpretations are not easily attributed to either "them" (the culture of subjects) or "us" (a community of writers), any more than a translation strictly represents, in a simple sense, either an original text as such or a wholly novel work. Like translations or even more wide-ranging historical or literary interpretations, anthropology "adds meaning" to rather than simply (re)presenting cultural phenomena, but as a creative enterprise of building on one text another is not utterly unconstrained in this secondary task. To recognize that anthropological accounts represent active forms of "writing culture", rendering as narrative structure rather than as passive description the stuff of experience, does not imply that these accounts have the status of fiction or that the presentation of anthropological accounts as interpretations of cultural phenomena is illusory (Clifford - Marcus 1986). Some recent anthropological theory has combined a precious sensitivity to the creative dimensions of anthropological (reconstruction of culture with postmodern perspectives on the fallibility of the faculties of perception and the knowability of the world, but this synthesis of theories of textuality and alterity in fact leads to a form of anthropological solipsism, in which the hermeneutical circle of knowledge by subject and of

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object, and of self and other, is broken. It is important to realize that interpretations may finally elude the test of truth or falseness, but they still can be seen to manifest degrees of the "creative fidelity" identified by Gabriel Marcel (1964) in rendering intelligible and familiar hidden knowledge and otherness.

3. Transgression and hidden knowledge Errors of meaning are unintelligible at the extreme, but errors of morality are by necessity both meaningful and intelligible, representing disjunctures between the moral order and individual acts as defined through interpretation. Knowledge of what sort of act constitutes a transgression must be both public and widely shared, while knowledge of which acts that have actually occurred are indeed transgressions is intrinsically obscure and is shared by few and hidden from many. The process by which the occurrence of a transgression is defined, and hidden knowledge brought to light, involves both cultural hermeneutics and rhetoric, interpretation, deliberation and declaration. The Maasai age-set system is a structure of both social organization and ethos, aggregating males into seven-year cohorts (later paired into fourteenyear age-sets) which serve local and sectional politics, regulating the lifecycle for groups and individuals, and generating a body of ideas, commitments and normative restrictions, embraced by each cohort in turn, which infuse the society as a whole with a sense of unified value. At initiation, young men are claimed for the age-set of recruitment by sponsoring elders and enter a period of Moranhood, 2 which paradoxically represents a graduated period of maximal social constraint and individual freedom. Subsequent age-set ceremonies progressively loosen the moral and behavioral strictures on Moran comportment, but in so doing gradually draw them away from the para-social space of expansive male companionship towards the domestic world of family and community responsibilities (Galaty 1985). The restrictions on Moran are specific and universally known and understood. They should abstain from sex with initiated women and a fortiori, refrain from procreation; in particular, they must never sleep with the wives of their age-set sponsors, who represent symbolic "mothers", just as elders are prohibited from sleeping with the daughters of their own age-mates and women with the young men of the age-set sponsored by their husbands. At the same time, uninitiated girls (for whom pregnancy is a grave transgres-

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sion) become the legitimate sweethearts of Moran. Further, Moran must not eat meat that has been seen by initiated women, which constrains them to construct meat camps (Olpul) away from domestic villages, or drink milk alone, outside of the companionship of age peers, which enjoins them to live and travel in partnership with age mates. They should always demonstrate age-set hospitality and propriety, never refusing food and shelter to agemates and giving formal respect to age-set sponsors (Galaty 1985). Beyond shaping Moran behaviour, these restrictions give form to the moral sensibilities of all Maasai, representing as they do standards of personal restraint and collective solidarity by which a symbolic "order" is defined in a complex and often confused universe. There is, however, a hierarchy of significance given to these regulations and increasingly wide variation in tolerable behaviour within each domain. Any transgression in food consumption is enturuj, a state of pollution-guilt, which, reflecting as it does a violation of proper relations between age peers and genders, is considered lowly, repugnant, animal-like behaviour. 3 Normally, restrictions on milkdrinking are lifted at a ceremony of Drinking of Milk, which occurs shortly after the great Eunoto ceremony, certainly before the next seven-year cohort is opened; but under certain special circumstances an individual might celebrate this ritual at an earlier date, thus legitimately withdrawing from active age-set participation and solidarity without prejudice against him. The lifting of restrictions on meat-eating is more variable, the Eating of Meat ceremony occurring only a few years after Drinking of Milk among such groups as Purko, and as late as the collective Olng 'esher ceremony among the Kisongo. The lifting of the restriction on sex with initiated women is lifted at Eunoto, around the fourth year after first initiation, for after this ceremony and the Drinking of Milk, senior Moran begin to marry. While it is difficult to assess how seriously this stricture was previously taken, it is clearly given little recognition today, as Moran establish liaisons with young initiated women - often their age peers - who are as yet unmarried or newly married to older men. The restrictions on sexuality between persons in certain age-set relations are absolute, resting on an ideology of incest prohibition. While the norms of age-set solidarity and respect also remain, it is explicitly recognized that, with the graduated progression of age-sets through the life stages, fewer demands will be made on age-mates and less reciprocal sharing will occur as domestic needs and familial demands grow. These restrictions are enforced by cosmic as well as social sanctions, and their transgression is thought to endanger individuals in question or others related to them. In particular, danger is entertained at the time of ritual

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transition, when a person's moral state becomes relevant in general to the process of social transformation or specifically to the process whereby a particular stricture is lifted. As well as occasions of life-cycle passage, rituals are public acts of uncovering the hiddenness of transgression, for individuals must make publicly known their prohibited commissions and in order to dissipate their own pollution and to relieve others of the danger incurred in transition rites must pay penance or compensation. Several cases illustrate the process of uncovering hidden knowledge of transgression, at the times of initiation, Eunoto, and Olng 'esher ceremonies.

4. Transition and danger Initiation is by ritual circumcision, when a boy has reached maturity. The actual operation is performed by a specialist, often a Torrobo "hunter" whose status allows him to accept the physical pollution of the act as long as token payment is made to obviate the moral contagion implied. However, if the initiate has had sex with an initiated woman he is deemed Olkerekenye, a shameful state in which he may endanger himself, his family or the agent of initiation. The night before the rite, he must declare this, and any other sin, and if guilty must pay an additional animal to the circumciser to mitigate the danger incurred. Such a boy will also receive verbal abuse and somewhat rougher treatment in this intrinsically sensitive though public operation. If he refuses to speak or lies, he inflicts danger on others. In one circumcision I witnessed,4 the boy returned to his mother's house after the operation, at which time a blocked arrow was shot into the neck of a cow in order to drain a portion of blood, which when consumed by the boy in mixture with milk would "replace" the blood lost. Several times, the archer - crouched in front of the animal - failed to pierce the vein, at which time the boy's father angrily returned to the house, accusing him of having failed to confess a transgression before circumcision: sex with an initiated woman or the theft of one of his father's animals while herding, to eat. The boy, weak with having withstood the operation, protested and denied either crime, and when the arrow finally found its mark, the father accepted the boy's innocence, demonstrated in "trial by arrow"! At Eunoto, a ceremony for the entire age-set, a special Osingira house is built, representing the "erecting" or "raising" of the age-set itself, whose membership is defined, recruitment officially closed (except in special cases). Only those mothers may participate in the building of Osingira who

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have not slept with one of their sons' age-mates, and if their abstention from this privilege represents a tacit confession, the attempt of a suspect to contribute stimulates accusations by other mothers and subtle negotiations (Galaty 1983). Further, on the major day of sacrifice, only those Moran who have not slept with initiated women may accept the honour of entering Osingira. The celebration becomes a mock battle between elders, who usher in the virtuous and repel the transgressors, who with dance and song make leaping forays at the round structure, only to retreat. Again, the confession is tacit, made at the moment the long line of weaving dancers divides into two streams, one approaching the door, the other obliquely diverging to the left. Later, at the Drinking of Milk ceremony, a young man must declare if he has previously drunk milk alone, outside of the presence of an age-mate, and still later at the Eating of Meat if he has consumed meat seen or prepared by initiated women. These commitments are given such great cultural emphasis and are so deeply internalized by Moran that their repulsion at the mere thought of these transgressions leads them to become so wrought with anxiety when the strictures are to be ritually removed that they experience physical and emotional shock, with trembling, shaking and sweating. At Olng'esher, the ceremony of the "Meat-Rack", at which time two successive seven-year divisions are joined into a single fourteen-year age-set (a ritual primarily associated with the Kisongo section), a participant's first wife is expected to shave his head, in preparation for the ritual sacrifice and Eating of Meat. However, only those wives who have not committed adultery with members of the next age-set, now Moran, may exercise this privilege. One age-set leader's old mother performed the public head shaving in lieu of his wife, in public display and rebuke of his wife's indiscretions. Each participant gave token payment to his wife for shaving his head, removing whatever danger might exist in the ritual act. While the acts of transgression demonstrated through these examples are specific and discrete, an individual is thought inevitably to commit wrongs through moranhood, indeed is required to commit moral wrongs, through killing birds and other animals, shedding blood in fights or warfare, or abusing others. Usually sometime after Olng 'esher, a man celebrates the Olkiteng' Lorba, the "Sacrifice of Wounds", which removes any residual guilt or pollution he may have accumulated, intentionally or unintentionally, throughout Moranhood. This rite must be performed before he sponsors his eldest child in initiation, so the contamination of "wounds" will not at that time pass between the generations. At that time, he must have paid his bridewealth in full, thus gaining definitive fatherhood of his children.

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5. Ritual hermeneutics Levi-Strauss once suggested that games in non-Western societies functioned as rituals, since rather than generating a final difference between equal competitors they served to produce a final state of equity between unequal competitors (Levi-Strauss 1966). Maasai rituals do certainly act to meld participants of quite different statuses and origins into culturally unified agesets, an end to which many of the strictures in Moranhood are directed. However, insofar as individuals approach ceremonial transition in all innocence, the trials of morality they face serve less to unify than to fragment them by discriminating between the virtuous and the transgressor. Essentially, the hermeneutic of ritual rests on a sort of cultural honour code, since each individual is expected to abstain from privileges prohibited by their actions or to confess their transgressions, lest they bring harm to themselves and others. However, the Maasai live in houses without doors, villages without walls, and hillsides with few trees, and are constantly in the company of family, friends, and neighbours. Thus, even hidden knowledge is rarely secret or hidden from everyone, so the inner sanctions on declaring oneself are usually reinforced from outside, as threats, accusations, and ridicule against purported transgressors at the time of ritual transition demonstrate. If the ideology of collective ceremonies calls for peace, harmony and concord between participants, in actuality they serve as great occasions of debate, conflict and schism. The arrangement of villages, the allocation of offices, and the highlighting of transgression bring social differences into focus, emphasizing alterity amidst conviviality. There are several predictable stages of the process described, in which transgressions are identified, danger anticipated, public witness or confession called for, compensation or penance yielded up, and transition without danger accomplished. Beneath this process lies a cultural premise, that there is an internal relation between human moral transgressions and subsequent misfortune, the two linked by some notion of a dynamic and enduring moral state and temporal/spatial/relational contagion (which serves as an efficient mechanism to explain both collective guilt and the innocent scapegoat). The contagious state, and the danger incurred by others, is rendered neutral not simply through declaration, confession or regret, but by payment. The payment made is culturally necessary, and seems to serve functions both of penance and compensation. As penance, the payment can be a very token amount, necessary not as a return for service (as in the wife who shaves her husband's head) but as a means of halting a flow of pollution, of protecting the agent (rather than the subject) of transition. As compensation, the pay-

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ment is a significant but usually designated amount, intended to represent an adequate return for services (as in the payment to a circumciser), an amount increased as danger is involved. Once the transition has been accomplished, the subject appears cleansed and the transgression nullified. As a sacred act, the process thus culminates in what Van Gennep (1908) called "reaggregation", a successful assimilation of the transgressor back into the fold, which validates the "game", in the last instance, as ritual rather than competition. In a society with few intrinsic formal mechanisms for enforcing sanctions, especially those involving crimes without victims (those with victims being appealed to local councils, where fines and other punishments are levied and extracted), the peculiar power of the lattice of age-set restrictions, so important to Maasai identity, derives from that convincing link between social and supernatural sanctions. Like the explanation of unfortunate events by witchcraft, one irrefutable and recurrent way moral misdeeds are discouraged is through their intrinsic link to the gamut of regrettable plights visited upon human beings, who suffer illness and death, livestock loss, family disruption, drought, hunger, civil conflict. Mediating this link are social sanctions, which respond to the hint of moral lapses with opprobrium, accusations and fear, all intended to elicit fear, dismay, regret... and confession. Acts carried out with abandon, disregard or spite, hidden from the public eye or with gullibility not thought of in moral terms, are necessarily raised to public eye on the occasion of ritual, and brought to the social arena. Foucault, in the first volume of his History of Sexuality, suggests that confession is connected with the emergence of the modern individual in Western society, a "confessing animal" for whom the obligation to confess is "so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power which constrains us", for truth "demands" to surface (Foucault 1978: 60). A historian of Western sensibility, Foucault often seems to see the non-Western experience as an undifferentiated backdrop. Certainly, his observations regarding the "power which constrains us" without our awareness seems ά_propos of culture in general, while the notion that truth 'demands' confession seems applicable to the predicament faced in Maasai transition. But Maasai ceremonial confession is marked by few words, in line with a more pervasive tendency towards discretion, especially between the generations. The indiscretions of moral behaviour are seen as most serious when they transgress lines separating the age-sets of adjacent generations, and thus confession - or making public - signifies less a form of verbosity about the intimate than an echo of the respect and discretion expected between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, the initiated and uninitiated, as broadly defined by age relations.

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Maasai rituals, from this perspective, appear as dramatizations of morality, highlighting, confirming and throwing a sacred veil over the social order and its specific regulations. But age-set rituals, while obviously confirmatory in some sense, celebrate transformation not stasis, and are seen not as conservative recitations of timeless scripts but as exciting and open-ended occasions of trauma and exultation, where new forms of identity are entered into, with anticipation and trepidation. It has been debated whether the actual experience of ceremonial participation tends to confirm statuses already achieved or to transform individuals, socially and psychologically, entering new stages of life. The ordeal of scrutiny and declaration of transgressions reveal the trauma implicit even for individuals who have anticipated transition by acting out roles not yet confirmed, such as Moran who have slept with initiated women before their official time. In this way, the ritual serves not only as a structural process whereby the age-set wheel turns between agegrades, but as an event of consequence in the actual refiguration of the self. Individuals reorient to a transformed pattern of relations, and also respond in unique and unpredictable ways to the new opening on life offered by transition. The dramatization of transgressions revealed and penance paid offers each individual a unique experience of alterity within a celebration of and with the Maasai community.

6. Danger, confession and reciprocity The hermeneutic process of uncovering acts, eliciting disclosure and affirming a pattern of rules culminates in a ritual act of payment, as a form of penance, compensation, cleansing and resolution. The transgressor must make payment both to the individual wronged (a father, a wife, a husband) and to the individual who will perform ceremonial acts on his or her behalf (the Circumciser, the Shaver). The payment is thus reciprocal, in representing a retrospective or prospective compensation. Might there be a wider association between reciprocal payments for "absolution" and other forms of reciprocal exchange carried out by Maasai? Or, to put the matter differently, are there notions of danger and intrinsic causation associated with other transactions which exchange alleviates? The most well-known prestation may be that of bridewealth, in Africa usually livestock given by a groom to his bride's family in exchange. Though they are wealthy in livestock, Maasai bridewealth is inelastically defined as a ritual number of cattle and sheep, between four and six, which in actuality are

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rarely transferred at the time of marriage, payment often being deferred until just before the initiation of the first child. The meaning of the payment is as much related to the definition of paternity and moral rectification before a child's initiation as to the act of transferring a bride. However, other gifts are given at the time of marriage to the bride's parents, which may be interpreted as freeing them to allow the child to leave the home without danger; the bridewealth payment at a later date allows a mother's parents to grant leave for their daughter's children's circumcision to be sponsored by her husband, without danger. On several occasions of transition, the subject of ritual must be paid to complete the act. At marriage, the young bride - often in tears after enduring playful abuse - stops before the door of her new house (or her husband's mother's house) and refuses to enter until she is offered gifts of animals by her new in-laws. These animals will form part of her allocated herd, and will provide the exchange-name which the two will reciprocally share. Only when a sufficient number of animals has been offered will she proceed into the house, completing her journey from her natal home. When a young man is circumcised, he "lies dead" during and after the operation, without moving a muscle. He is then called to "come alive", but resists until offered a sufficient number of praise gifts of livestock from his parents, brothers, mother's brother and other friends and relatives. There is certainly an element of free gift and an element of compensation in these ceremonial exchanges. There may also be an element of rectification of the moral state of the participant, who experiences an abrupt and dangerous transformation, relieved through the exchange.

7. Concluding remarks The hermeneutic process is a means of addressing the "otherness" of texts, rendering them familiar through bringing to light both the implicit and potential meanings within them. To do so, some prior familiarity with the assumptions and language of the text is necessary, but if the text is too familiar or lacks multiplicity and depth of meaning, the act of interpretation is trivial and the process unilluminating. That which is truly alien cannot be interpreted, but texts retain and can yield intelligibility, indeed many forms of intelligibility, to those proficient in the code; they can do so as well for a novice interpreter who lays the proper ground for interpretation.

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Maasai face otherness as they approach, as lone individuals, the occasions of traumatic transition defined by their participation in the community. Each child is told that circumcision will be the most terrible thing he or she has every experienced, but since every Maasai has had the experience and endured, so will they. Loneliness, solidarity. Similarly, they commit transgressions and are estranged as individuals, but in ritual their alterity is dramatized and overcome. Anthropology is an interpretive discipline, defined in part by the inscrutability of the cultures it addresses and in part by identification with the people and the cultural texts they produce (and are). It is not through empathy or the assertion of participation that cultural understanding is gained, but through progressive acquisition of the concepts, terms, assumptions and meanings appropriately attributed by subjects to their lives and cultural products. Alterity and community should not be confronted with one another as radically different perspectives, or as scepticism to naivety, but as two copresent conditions of knowing and living.

Notes 1. Research among the Maasai of Kenya was carried out by the author in 1974-75 and 1983-88 under the auspices of the Bureau of Educational Research of Kenyatta University, and with the support of the National Science Foundation, The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the FCAR of Quebec, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research of McGill University. 2. I use the anglicized form Moranhood to represent the Maasai murrano, the period following initiation and experience of warriorhood, and the anglicized Moran to represent the Maasai ol-murrani (pi. il-murran), literally the 'initiated one', figuratively 'the warrior'. 3. For a discussion of the enturuj complex among the Parakuyo of Tanzania, see Rigby (1979). 4. The circumcision referred to occurred among an Ilkunono blacksmith family in Lesuhuta, Purko section, Narok District. The Eunoto referred to occurred in Ilodokilani section, the Olng'esher ceremony in the Kisongo-Loitokitok section, Kajiado District.

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References Clifford, J. - G. Marcus (eds.) 1986 Writing Culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley and L. Α.: Univ. of California Press. Drummond, Lee 1980 "The cultural continuum: A theory of intersystems". Man 15: 353-374. Foucault, Michel 1978 The history of sexuality; Vol. I. An Introduction. New York: Pantheon. Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1976 Philosophical hermeneutics. Berkeley and Los.Angeles: University of California Press. Galaty, John G. 1981 "Models and metaphors: On the semiotic explanation of segmentary systems", in: The structure of folk models, L. Holy - M. Stuchlik (eds.), New York and London: Academic Press. 1982 "Being 'Maasai' Being 'People-of-Cattle': Ethnic shifters in East Africa". American Ethnologist 9: 1 - 2 0 . 1983 "Ceremony and society: The poetics of Maasai ritual". Man 18: 361-381. 1985 "Ainesse, cyclicite et rites dans l'organisation des äges masäi", In Age, pouvoir et societe en Afrique noire, M. Abeles — C. Collard (eds.), Montreal and Paris: Presses de l'Universite de Montreal and Editions Karthala. Geertz, Clifford 1973 The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Jaspers, Karl 1955 Reason and existence. New York: Noonday Press. Kopytoff, Igor 1987 The African frontier: The reproduction of traditional African societies. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude 1966 The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marcel, Gabriel 1964 Creative fidelity. New York: Noonday Press. Ricoeur, Paul 1979 "Society as a text", in: Interpretive social science: A reader, P. Rabinow - W. Sullivan (eds.), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Rigby, Peter 1979

"Olpul and entoroj: The economy of sharing among the pastoral Baraguyu of Tanzania", in: Pastoral production and society, Equipe ecologie et anthropologie des societes pastorales (ed.), Cambridge University Press. Van Gennep, Arnold 1908 The rites of passage. Chicago and London: University of Chicago [1960] Press. Wittgenstein, L. 1958 Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Murder on Mount Austen: Kwaio framing of an act of violence Roger M. Keesing

In February, 1988, two young Solomon Islanders brutally attacked and killed three sleeping victims, virtual strangers, in a peri-urban village; a reluctant accomplice gravely wounded a fourth. The constructions of this event, in terms of a Western-based legal system and of an ancestral way of life followed still in the mountains 75 miles away, are worlds apart. The collision of meanings, moral universes, and legal systems challenges anthropological interpretation, as well as the coherence of a fledgeling nation.

1. Murder on Mount Austen The "facts" can first be briefly set out, as the Western legal machinery constructed them at the ensuing trial. On the night of 6 February, 1988, three young Kwaio (Malaita) men, whom I will call A, B, and C, and a fourth young man D, from neighboring Kwara'ae, set upon the sleeping occupants of adjoining houses at Barana village, on Mount Austen, Guadalcanal. Three sleeping villagers were killed with axes and knives, and a young boy was gravely wounded. D testified that on his way to visit his girlfriend (who was one of the three murder victims), he encountered the three Kwaio men at the margins of the Guadalcanal village. They threatened to kill him instantly if he did not join with them in their attack on the sleeping households. He testified that, terrified, he agreed to join them. The prosecution had apparently agreed to drop charges against D if he turned state's evidence, and identified and testified against the others. The stumbling block in this was that the young boy, who was the brother of the slain girlfriend and knew D well as a regular visitor to the house, testified that it was D who had attacked him and gravely wounded him with a machete. D testified that at the same time A and Β had been inflicting mortal wounds on

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three sleeping villagers, including his girlfriend, the third Kwaio assailant, C, had attacked the boy. D claimed that, contrary to the wounded boy's testimony, he had been only a bystander, holding a flashlight to see what was happening. After the killings, A and Β had taken a mission plane back to Malaita, their home island. C and D had remained in Honiara, the Solomons capital, where eventually they were taken in for questioning. A and Β had been arrested and brought to Honiara. A was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, Β was acquitted on grounds of insufficient evidence (there being some inconclusiveness in his identification), C was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, and charges against D were dropped when he agreed to testify for the Crown. The Crown needed to establish a motive for the killings. It was claimed that in 1987 a Kwaio woman with whom A and Β had stayed in the days immediately before the killings had complained that Barana people, including one of the victims, had stolen from her manioc garden. It was further claimed that Β had been involved in a 1986 quarrel with the Barana man whose wife, daughter, and son had been attacked: the Barana man was the fare-collector on a bus, and Β had supposedly tried to steal $5 from the change-bag, and had been caught and ejected from the bus. Virtually the only reference made in the trial to the fact that A, B, and C were pagans propitiating their ancestors and following traditional customs was an observation by a Christian witness that "They still sacrifice to the custom devils... by burning yams, etc." Some other references were made to payment of customary compensation, but only to establish that A and Β had been in Honiara two years before the killing. When A and C began serving their life sentences, A committed suicide in his prison cell. Β returned to the Malaita mountains, legally innocent. Subsequent appeals by the defense against C's conviction and by the Crown against B's acquittal, resolved in February 1989, changed the picture: I will return to these developments. To understand the hidden side of these events, we need to leave the urban and rapidly Westernizing world of buses, courts and prisons and travel to a world still governed by unseen beings and powers.

2. Fragments of Kwaio culture and history In the mountains of central Malaita, Kwaio pagans defiantly and proudly preserve much of their precolonial way of life. A hundred years ago, when young

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Malaita men went off to the distant plantations of Queensland and Fiji, steel knives and axes had replaced stone tools; and sixty years ago, Kwaio warriors had been forced to give up blood feuding. But the Kwaio traditionalists of 1988 still exchange strung shell valuables in mortuary feasting, still grow taro and yams in mountain swiddens, still sacrifice pigs to their ancestors. Magic is an indispensable accompaniment to everyday technology, and lies at the core of elaborate rituals of desacralization and the renewal of ancestral support (Keesing 1982). Small squares of folded blue cloth have replaced barkcloth as pubic aprons worn by married women, but unmarried women and girls are still nude in customary fashion; men often carry clubs or bows and arrows. Where other Solomon Islanders listen to transistor radios or cassettes or watch videos, in the Kwaio mountains, traditionalists still play bamboo panpipes and chant the epic deeds of warrior ancestors. The events of 1927 still lie close to the surface. In the 1920s, the Government of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, through the agency of a strongman District Officer, imposed a head tax and forced warriors around the island into capitulation by hanging killers for customary homicide and confiscating firearms. An alliance of Kwaio descent groups from the interior plotted his assassination, as a final desperate assertion of sovereignty. Killing District Officer Bell and his Cadet and massacring thirteen Islanders, police and servants, the Kwaio warriors set into motion a punitive expedition that devastated the Kwaio interior both physically and religiously: more than a hundred men, women and children were killed, some sixty of them prisoners shot in cold blood. Shrines and sacred objects were desecrated (Keesing Corris 1980). In the decades since, resentment against alien law and domination and Christian invasion has smouldered, surfacing periodically in millenarian cults, anti-colonial political organization, or violence (including the 1965 killing of a missionary). Despite the culturally conservative cast of life in the tiny, scattered mountain settlements, the Kwaio traditionalists remain bound to the world economy, as they have been for more than a century. Young men go off to distant Solomons plantations, and nowadays to town, in search of adventure and the cash needed to obtain steel tools and other trade goods. Some come back after several years, prepared to settle down, marry, and fit into the old regimes of gardening, feasting and ritual. But many young men stay abroad for years, often nowadays as urban drifters, gamblers and petty (and sometimes major) criminals rather than as plantation laborers. An indigenous class stratification now prevails in Honiara and provincial centers; and Kwaio pagans, with only their musclepower to sell, constitute the very bottom of the

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urban class system. As an urban underclass, which now provides more than half of the total Solomons prison population, the Kwaio increasingly use old culturally-sharpened and valued skills of theft and violence to overturn their marginalization and pauperization.

3. The resurgence of violence Solomon Islands became independent in 1978. In the decade since, Kwaio traditionalists and some disaffected Christians from the coastal margin have been locked in political struggle against the provincial and central governments, over issues of taxation, law, and vast compensation claimed for the depredations of the 1927 punitive expedition (Keesing 1989b, n.d.l). In a climate of confrontation and threat, direct administrative control over the Kwaio interior has ostensibly disappeared. Kwaio extremists are claiming that "independence" means independence from alien colonial law. Some have interpreted this to mean that violence can again be dealt with by customary means through payment of compensation, and even that blood feuding can be resumed. A substantial number of unsolved murders in the Solomons in the last decade, occurring far from Malaita, apparently have been committed by Kwaio men enacting the frightening joint roles of urban hoodlum and ancestrally-empowered warrior. Most frightening is that in the instances on which I have some information, instigation for these killings has come not from the young warrior-thugs themselves, but from their senior kin: the generation who, because of the forced pacification that followed the 1927 massacre, could not themselves fulfil their destiny as warriors and killers. Some Kwaio descent groups, in collusion with warlike ancestral spirits, specialized in killing, theft and destruction (Keesing 1985a); their ancestors, and the generation forced to live in peace, are inciting a return to violent deeds. The attitude of destructive predation, and the climate of anger and alienation that fuels it, are being expressed in other ways as well. When I was in the western Solomons in 1986, Kwaio gangs based in Roviana and Rendova had recently stolen safes from three large firms, netting some $ 50,000 in each robbery. I have elsewhere (n.d.2) examined the self-account by the most notorious Kwaio urban thief of his generation, a specialist in shoplifting everything from outboard motors to sewing machines, and a housebreaker and safecracker of formidable (ancestrally supported) talent and enterprise.

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But it is blood, and blood money - not cash - that concern us here. With this background, we can begin to probe the background to the killings on Mount Austen: the side entirely hidden in the trial.

4. Blood for fame, fortune and vengeance In 1986, X, a Kwaio man in his sixties from one of the three descent groups, feared for their violence, that had plotted the 1927 massacre, decided that it was time for his son to achieve the prestige of being a warrior and killer. Sacrificing to the war spirits, and studying the omens, X sent his son to Guadalcanal to kill someone - anyone. Arriving on Guadalcanal, the son went to a plantation to stay with wantoks. When some of the latter got badly beaten up in a brawl that broke out at a local wedding feast and dance a few days later, the young man who had sworn to kill seized his machete and charged off to do battle with the Guadalcanal men who had prevailed in the brawl. Apparently he was killed himself, and his body hidden. No sign of him was ever found. The Guadalcanal villagers eventually paid $2000 in compensation to the Kwaio kin of the young man, against the unproven accusation that they had killed him. X, grieving but determined to see honor done, put up a sikwa, blood money of shell valuables and pigs, to secure vengeance. (In five years of Kwaio fieldwork, I have found no clear case where such a blood bounty had been put up since the 1920s; so this entailed the re-activation of longabandoned procedures and rituals. However, there is some evidence that X sent his son off to collect an earlier, though more secretive, blood bounty put up to avenge an earlier Kwaio death.) The fathers of A and B, two brothers I shall call AA and BB, are agnates in the same descent group as the grieving father who put up the blood bounty, although in a different segment. Their mother was the sister of one of the three feared warrior leaders who plotted the 1927 assassination, and they are closely tied to both groups and their formidable ancestors. As young boys, they had seen their father, a noted warrior prominent in the Bell massacre, killed by police during the punitive expedition; they had narrowly escaped, thanks to the bravery and quick thinking of an older sister. AA's and BB's older brother had been one of the two Kwaio victims in the initial attack on Bell's police. B's father BB, seeking prestige for and through his son and eager to collect the blood bounty, incited Β and his first cousin A to kill a Guadalcanal per-

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son and claim the bounty. He instructed the young men, already experienced drifters, petty thieves, and gamblers in the urban jungle, on the ritual procedures needed to embark on a secret killing. Pigs were sacrificed, magic performed, omens read. Frighteningly combining the styles of Mafia executioners and Melanesian warriors, A and Β calmly took a plane to Honiara. Staying first on a plantation, then spending several nights sleeping in the garage of a Kwaio woman and her north Malaita husband, the two men chose their victims - perhaps on the basis of the petty grievances raised by the Crown in the trial. Only because they unexpectedly encountered D on the margins of the Mount Austen village of Barana were they led to threaten him - as a known fellow urban petty criminal, speaking Kwaio as well as Kwara'ae - and incorporate him into their assault on the sleeping villagers. Had they not met him, by chance, there is every probability that - like other recent Kwaio murderers who have simply vanished unsuspected - they would have escaped detection. What about C, now serving a life sentence for murder? By his own testimony (after changing his story several times, in characteristic Kwaio fashion), while A and Β were making their way to Mount Austen, he was lying in wait outside the Honiara Hotel planning to rob the cashbox when it was brought out by an employee. (This defense seemed so bizarre in the context of the Western legal system that, following as it did several other abandoned alibies, it was given little credence.) My reading of the trial transcript is that D had never seen C until they chanced to be brought in for questioning together, some days after the murder. D had needed to invent a third Kwaio assailant in order to deny having attacked the boy himself; C served his purpose admirably. At this point, we need to return to the outcome of the reciprocal appeals by the defense and the Crown. In February, 1989, the appeal against C's conviction was upheld on grounds that D's account was internally contradictory and suspect: "The verdict of guilty based on [D's] evidence is unsafe and unsatisfactory and it would be a miscarriage of justice to allow it to stand". The prosecution's appeal against A's acquittal was denied, again on grounds of internal contradictions in D's identifications and internal evidence that he had lied in his testimony. C's freedom from prison was to be short-lived: a year later, he was arrested for house-breaking, confessed to a string of previous robberies, and was sent to prison for seven years. But those are my constructions and those of the legal system. Let me instead turn to the Kwaio interpretations of these events.

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5. Kwaio interpretations The central problematic, for the Kwaio traditionalists, is why, after all the sacrifices had enlisted ancestral support and the omens had been positive, what was supposed to be a clandestine killing had not been successful, and had led to A's death. I shall first take as texts two commentaries recorded about seven months after the killings. I give them in Kwaio, with an interlinear translation. The first commentary seeks to account for the withdrawal of ancestral support from the killers, in terms of the rules that bound men when they had, as it were, entered into a pact with the war-spirits. Alata i na 'o, wane la tabo no 'o fana nga kwa 'inga, ma In the old days, men who sacrificed for a killing, or fana mae, 'ato 'ani ru 'u i 'iß, 'ato 'ani for a battle couldn't go into a dwelling house, and couldn't fata fe 'enia noni geni. 'Ato 'ani fata fe 'enia ta ai. speak with a woman. Speaking with any woman was impossible. Ruana lefu ka abu ai, mae la tabo fana nga adalo 'ilamo, A second tabu thing, when they sacrificed to a war-spirit for a battle, 'ato 'anifu 'u wane 'ani kee kwa 'ia noni geni. It's impossible for a bunch of men to kill a woman. Te 'e wa 'u wane tala kwa 'ia. It's only men they are to kill. This kind of retrospective interpretation is central in Kwaio relations with the invisible but ever-present ancestral spirits. When illnesses or misfortunes occur, Kwaio turn to divination to find out what has led to ancestral displeasure, which ancestor is the agent of retribution, and what needs to be done to restore support (usually a purificatory sacrifice of a piglet). The second, longer, passage further exemplifies this process of retrospective interpretation of misfortune. More importantly, it shows strikingly how Kwaio interpet their engagement with Western-derived legal machinery. Lefu eteeta, laAe leka mai, The first problem was that A came over here, 'ola gila tabo mai 'afuia 'ania adalo 'ilamo, something they had sacrificed for by invoking the war spirits, ma me 'e kwa 'ia no 'o noni geni. and then killed a woman.

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Ruana lefu, ngai na 'a nga sikwa laXe tafoa. The second thing had to do with the blood bounty X put up. Ma wela ana, boo no 'ona gila arua sikwa i 'aa 'aena. And his sons; that pig they put up as the base of the blood bounty. Boo 'aa 'ae, alata 'ua mai, boo gwa 'a e ba 'ita, In the old days, a foundation-pig - even though it was big, boo gwa 'a e abu, boo gwa 'a ngai te 'ana adalo e ba 'ita, even though it was sacred, even though it was consecrated to an important ancestor, wane sia 'ania la 'u, couldn't be eaten for any other purpose. Na 'a boo 'aa 'ae no 'o ngai no 'ona, That foundation pig ma no 'ona naa sikwa, nga boo tala 'aniniwane no 'o ai. of the blood bounty has to be treated as a men's pig. La sia agea la 'u 'ania - boo te 'ana adalo ngai no 'ona, They can't do anything else with it. That pig consecrated to that ancestor, gila sia su 'a la 'a latana nga boo no 'ona, e 'amone no 'o. its name can't be called out, it can't be done. Tala 'aniniwane no 'o ai. Ta 'a wane tala 'ania, wela sika 'u. They're to eat it as a men's-pig. Males are to eat it - young boys as well. 'Afutana wane matari ma tala 'ania no 'ο. Ε mola no 'o. Men from outside are to eat it. It's unrestricted. Boo 'aa 'ae, X ngai e arua sikwa ai That foundation-pig X used to establish the blood bounty — gwa 'a la fa 'alataa 'ania sikwa no 'ona — even though they used it to proclaim the setting up of that blood bounty wela ana ngaia la Xmaa 'ala ma ka ogani mola X's [other] son, seeing it there, coveted naa boo ana. Ε ogani no 'o naa boo ana kee sui that pig. He was tempted by that pig, and so ma gila fo 'ite 'enia boo, gila du 'aa 'ania. they took it out and replaced it with another. Fida 'ana la fo 'ia boo, la fo 'ia boo i lofona. That was like turning that pig upside down. Kee sui, ma gila ngaria mola boo matari, And then they took that other pig, gila agea mai, gila me 'e taboa. they used it, they went and sacrificed it. La daua no'o na sikwa. Boo ngai no'ona 'amoe.

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They immolated it for the blood bounty. But not the right pig. Boo no 'ona gila ο 'omaete 'enia fana sikwa no 'ona, boo 'aa 'ae. (Not that) pig they used to call out the establishment of the blood bounty, the foundation-pig. Adalo ka agasia ma baona ka ria no 'o. The ancestral spirit saw that and was angry. Du 'ana boo no 'o ngai no 'ona, boo la riinge 'enia no 'o, Because that pig, the one that had (initially) been consecrated, gila la bulosia mola boo lofona, gila du 'aa 'ania boo, had been "overturned", they'd replaced it with another pig, kee sui, ma la 'ania mola mai ifanua. and that was the one they'd eaten at that place. Adalo e ogaria du 'ana lefu lo 'o ngai lo 'oo. The ancestor was angry because of that. Na 'a la, 'ola eteeta, nga kouta lo 'o ngai lo 'ori, Well then, at first, that trial to 'oto 'oni ta 'a gila iria kouta no 'ona te 'e wini. all the people said he [A] would win the case. Ngai e sia lusi mone. Na 'a gwa 'a gula naa wane naa polis He couldn't lose. Even some of the police ma ngai iria. Aia. No 'ona e sui, ngai me 'e kookouta said that. OK. After that, he was tried ma ka ria no 'ο. Ε teetele fana nga kouta no 'ona and it turned out badly. He prayed for that court verdict ma adalo ka 'ame fufu 'ia no 'o. but the ancestral spirit didn't rise up in him. Adalo e 'ame ani no 'o ana. Adalo e ogaria no 'o lo 'oo. The spirit didn't cry out through him. The spirit was angry. Naa 'oo no 'ona, gwa 'a la koukouta ma leeleka, leeleka leeleka Because of that, even though the trial went on and on, ma ngaia ka lusi no 'o. Ngai e lusi no 'o naa kouta. he lost. He lost the case. Na 'a burina sui, ma adalo bi 'i aniania no 'o la A. And then after that, the ancestor cried through A. Kee sui ma A ka fata mani mola naa boo la 'akau. A denounced (what had happened with) that pig. "Ou, boo nga ana la agea fana sikwa, ngai e mola. "Oh, that pig they used for the blood bounty is still there. Gila arua mola. Boo mani la 'akau. Adalo e ogaria no 'ona They're keeping it, that damned pig. The ancestor is angry

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ma kouta ka ria no 'ο 'ilo 'oo ". and the trial turned out badly". Kee sui, A ngaia ka kwatea kau nga fatanga, And then A sent word, e kwatea kau fatanga fana fanua. Ngai e 'ilaba 'a: he sent word to his home place. He said, "Ou, 'ola e ria e lau no 'o agu ". Adalo ne 'e ani agu, "Oh, something bad has happened to me". The ancestor possessed me (lit. "cried to me"), sui ma taafi mola boo la 'akau. and cursed that pig. La arua fana nga sikwa, 'ani 'ae 'ania sikwa, They put it up for the blood bounty, to be the foundation of the bounty, gila fo 'ite 'enia mola boo, gila bulasia mola, and then they overturned that pig, turned it, boo matari gila du 'aa mola 'ania. Adalo taafia no 'o. replacing it with another pig. The ancestor cursed it. Na 'a boo no 'ona ngai mola, 'oo kee iria 'ania boo no 'ona That pig is still there, you tell them that that pig, 'ania ngaria te 'ala AA. La AA 'ani meda 'ua. is to be taken to AA. AA is to straighten it out. Bala ta lefu e le 'a te 'e lau te 'agu ta 'ua. Maybe something good will still come to me. 'Amone, mee ria no 'o. If not, then it will go badly. / na 'ona naa alata ngai 'ani diasi no 'o lo 'oo. That was before the decision was to be handed down. La gwaloa no 'o alata fana diasiman. They set the time for the decision to be handed down. 'Ani ngai 'ani kouta. La kee kwairi ai loko 'u, For him to be judged. People reported what he had said, kee kwairi ai loko 'u 'ilaba 'a: "Ou, boo laka 'u e ole mola "; they said, "Oh, that pig is still there"; la A adalo e ania no 'o ma ka iria mola, "Boo mani. the ancestor possessed A and said "It's [because of a] bad pig. 'Ola e fee 'ua la kotofi 'amani naa sikwa? Why did they lie to us about the blood bounty? Gila 'ame kwatea ma gila du 'aa mola 'ania boo matari.'" They didn't give it (the pig) and they replaced it with a different pig.'"

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The text goes on to explain how because of bickering and indecision, the original pig was not sacrificed in time to avert A's "losing", and then going on to commit suicide (for which further explanations of the same genre were proffered). Note that no question is posed here (nor was it posed in other conversations in which I participated) as to why Β was acquitted - since it is public knowledge that he committed the killing along with A. Had I raised the question, it would probably have been answered in terms of the support that was initially expressed by the ancestors at the time of preparatory sacrifices and invocations of war magic. "Guilt" or "innocence", in our sense, are not at issue.

6. Customary law and the restoration of social relations Such interpretations in terms of the unseen ancestors, and the actions necessary to restore ancestral support, represent one kind of Kwaio discourse flowing from a failed venture leading to death or injury. A complementary discourse is cast in terms of customary law, the restoration of social balances and restitution of rights through payment of compensation (in the form of strung shell valuables). Another short Kwaio text will illustrate this complementary avenue of interpretation and action. Να 'a la T, wela ala K, ka iria: " Ola 'ino 'ona, tamoru firi. Then T, K's son, said, "You have to pay death compensation for that. Όο la X, 'oo lo 'o arua sikwa. 'Ale 7 'oo etaa sikwa lo 'oo. You, X, you put up the blood bounty. You established it. 'Amone, lauta i 'oo 'ame arua sikwa, No, if you hadn't put up the blood bounty, la fu 'u wane gila sia kwa 'i mone. Mae sia lau mone. those men wouldn't have killed. The killing wouldn't have happened. Ma, 'oo lo 'oo arua sikwa, maena wela amu, But you put up the blood bounty, for the death of your son, naa nga mae e bi 'i lau. Mae ne 'e lau no 'o kee sui, from that killing that happened. That killing happened, ma wane mele futa la A ngaia ka kee kwa 'ifana sikwa amu. and our relative A went and killed to get your blood bounty. Kee sui ma gila tafoa sikwa fana. Then they paid him the blood bounty.

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Ngaia ka to 'oru fana alata e lalau, He was to stay (in prison) for a long time, fana akwale 'e farisi, akwale 'e farisi ma nima ai for ten years, fifteen years laeftaemu aga. Bala e to 'oru e 'ato mola, for their whole lives. Maybe his existence was hard, ma ngaia ka ri 'o no 'o. Tamoru kwatea 'ola fagu, nga flritaa. and he hanged himself. You are to give me something, as death compensation. Nau ku siria 'ania moru firi noo 'ania akwale 'e goi 'ola. I want you to pay compensation with ten major valuables. Aia. Gwae i 'oo la BB, to 'o firi. Gwae wela amu. Yes. Even you, BB, you're to pay compensation. Even if it is your son'. Du 'ana i 'oo, fui 'ola 'oi agea, 'oo loo 'ai 'agaa 'a fai. Because you, what you did was to incite the two of them to do it. 'Oo 'aiga fana nga kwa 'inga. La A fana kwa 'inga, You incited them to the killing. (Incited) A to the killing, ma wela amu la Β fana kwa 'inga. and your 'son' Β to the killing. Leeleka ma 'oo ko leka no 'o suria la A fana i Westen, Because you went after A in the Western Solomons, fanua ngai ne 'e tautaunga 'i ai no 'o i Westen. the place he was working at was in the Western Solomons. Ngai ne 'e ori mai ma gila gila kwa 'i. He came back and they did the killing. Ma wane mele futa ngaia ka maeria mae lo 'oo. To 'o firi". And our relative died because of that killing. You are to pay death compensation". It is worth noting that distinguishing "religion", a realm of interpretation and manipulation in terms of ancestral agency, from "law", a realm of dispute resolution through litigation and compensation, does some interpretive violence to Kwaio experience. The two realms are intimately interconnected, and their separation is partly an artifact of our own cultural and anthropological conventions. What anthropologic convention leads us to depict as "sacrifice" is separated from the sphere of exchange and compensation only because we assume ancestral spirits do not really exist. An expiatory "sacrifice" represents compensation to an ancestor whose rules or rights have been violated. Indeed, in addition to payment o f f i r i t a a as death compensation to a victim's living kin, the ancestors of the victim must also be compensated

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with firitaa before kin of those responsible for the death can engage in social relations with kin of the decedent.

7. The problematic of anthropological meta-interpretation How are we, as anthropologists, to interpret these interpretive discourses of the Kwaio? Do we read them as "traditional" cultural texts? Or do we read them as commentaries on the progressive breakdown of Kwaio culture and the loss of political control? Do we read them in counterpoint to the legal discourse of the postcolonial state, or as autonomous discourses? Do the Kwaio speak to us in a single voice, or are we to seek muted and marginalized voices? In what frame of time and space are we to situate these texts, suspended as they are between the world of the Kwaio mountains and the world of urban Honiara? The killers themselves embody this perspectival ambiguity: warriors and urban toughs, coolly buying airplane tickets and making their getaway, then ritually claiming the blood bounty of shell valuables and pigs, naked but for their fighting belts and the braided bags that proclaimed their homicide. Do we situate them in an alienated urban underclass or in a culturally constructed universe where ancestors still move and empower the living? I will argue that there can be no single reading of these texts, no unambiguous perspective on Kwaio lives. Although Murder on Mount Austen poses these interpretive paradoxes dramatically, I will argue that they are inherent in our project, and in the lives of those we seek to understand. In a few pages, I can scarcely resolve these issues: at most, I can hope to raise and frame them clearly. First, I will examine some problems in reading these texts (and thousands like them) as representations of "Kwaio culture", for the moment taking as unproblematic the continued enactment of an ancestral way of life in the mountains of central Malaita.

8. Interpreting "Kwaio religion": The said and the unsaid I have argued (Keesing 1982, 1987a) that the "religion" of a people such as the Kwaio, pragmatically seeking to operate in the world, not explain it, poses difficult challenges to an anthropology committed to discovering underlying

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structures and cosmological principles. We, acting as other peoples' theologians, create order and structure out of pragmatic bits and pieces of everyday practice and talk. With what doubt are we to bracket our interpretations? These problems can at least be illustrated, if not resolved, in reference to the commentaries on the Guadalcanal killings. First, in such commentaries and in virtually all naturally occurring Kwaio talk and action - there are no explications of the premises about causality, ancestors, and the connectedness of events that underlie them. The problem is that takens-for-granted are precisely that: they are the unsaid complement to what is said. Let us take the issue of causality. It seems a reasonable inference from texts such as those glimpsed here, statements that retrospectively attribute ancestral agency to account for misfortune (or good fortune), that chains of events are strung together in vast causal skeins. If a snake bites someone, it is established by divination that an ancestor has boonge'enia ('connected') the snake to its victim. If a tree being felled swings and kills the axeman, or if a man lopping branches or collecting canarium almonds falls to his death, it is established that an ancestor has led hand to slip or axe to be misdirected, or has 'implanted' the idea of the almonds in the climber's mind. But can we reasonably infer from such retrospective interpretations a vast cosmic scheme in which ancestral agents connect events to one another, and in which every event is determined by an unseen agent? Can we infer that this is a world where nothing happens "by accident", since for every noteworthy outcome an explanation is sought? The evidence of talk and action seems to me deeply ambiguous here. I see no grounds for assuming that all Kwaio have the same "philosophy" of cause. Some seem to have made (at least many of) the same connections and systemic inferences as an anthropological theologian is led to make. But many, I think, have not: there is only an explanation of noteworthy events. That is, Kwaio "religion" is pervasively pragmatic, addressed to action, not explanation, to events of human concern and appropriate responses to and manipulations of them. It would seem that Kwaio assume the ancestors are not concerned with operating the entire universe controlling the movements of snakes or the growth of wild plants or the weather - but rather, that they intervene in unfolding events when human action induces them to do so (whether by connecting a dangerous snake's movements to that of a delinquent descendant, inducing a particular taro garden to grow well, or causing rain to spoil someone's feast). If we seek a totalizing and systematic account of the Kwaio universe, we are asking questions Kwaio do not ponder, and will reach answers that have no place in their experience.

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An added set of problems arises because for more than a century Kwaio have had to engage a world in which some events were (seemingly) controlled by powerful aliens - the white men in the sailing ships and on the plantations, and later, representatives of colonial power. As these texts show, Kwaio interpret and seek as best they can to control events whites ostensibly control. But we can guess that their "philosophical" interpretations have had to become more "open" to alternative explanations, and alternative loci of power, than they were a century ago. Kwaio are prepared to accept a car crash involving Europeans, or a death of someone without Kwaio ancestors, as having 'just happened'. We are on the thin ice of speculation if we infer that for the precolonial Kwaio nothing 'just happened'. The situatedness of "traditional" Kwaio discourse both in a narrow world the ancestors control and a wider one will shortly be examined. Another problem must first be addressed. Kwaio responses to misfortunes in terms of ancestral agency and the restoration of ancestral support have a kind of domination over other kinds of talk. They constitute a kind of "official" response - just as the "offical", and dominant, Western discourse in relation to a crime of violence such as the Mount Austen killings is that of the legal system of the state. But just as for us there are other genres in which interpretations are sought and framed, not least of all gossip (see Haviland 1977), so the Kwaio explore interpretations through genres other than divination and the inference of ancestral agency. Let me illustrate. How was it that C - who was generally and widely known by Kwaio people not to have been at Mount Austen with A and Β - became implicated in the murder? Interpreting this apparently required more than an ancestor 'connecting' C to a crime he did not commit. It was widely believed by Kwaio I spoke to (mainly, before I had read the trial transcript and fashioned my own interpretation) that C had deliberately implicated himself falsely; how and why was a matter of considerable speculation. Apparently, when the murders were first reported, rumors and gossip spread quickly through Honiara, including the expatriate community. Such rumors and gossip are in some ways the antithesis of legal discourse, as free and incautious in drawing speculative connection, imputing motive, and elaborating suspicion as legal discourse is constrained. So, too, the submerged informal Kwaio talk attributing motive and meaning to action in other than ancestral terms are complementary to, even commentary on and antithesis of, the dominant discourse. A unitary, systematized depiction of "the Kwaio world view" based on that dominant discourse would misrepresent the multi-sidedness of interpretation, as well as the differences among individuals in the depth and global systematization of "world view" (Keesing 1987a).

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9. Ancestors, change and subaltern perspectives If interpretation of A's arrest, conviction and death is framed in terms of ancestors, it is also framed in terms of change. Our texts can be read as commentaries on the encapsulation, subordination, and disintegration of Kwaio culture. The would-be warriors were trying to reactivate ways of killing, and raise the powers of long-quiescent war spirits, long abandoned in the face of colonial domination. By violating ancestral rules - violations they would have avoided had they been faithful to the cultural tradition they sought to enact, but violations (particularly sleeping in the garage of their wantok) hard to avoid in the urban setting - they brought disaster on themselves. Similarly, if the blood bounty had been properly organized, the court case would have been won, through ancestral intervention. Are we to read these texts, then, as a discourse of subalternity? For 85 years, and very directly in the 60 years since the Pax Britannica was imposed, relations between Kwaio and their ancestors have simultaneously been commentaries and reflections on the power of the invasive Christian God and the power of the colonial state. In the 1930s, for instance, the Kwaio ancestress La'aka spoke through a cult priest foretelling the pending doom of the British island stronghold of Tulagi. A witness to La'aka's prophecy recalls that she, speaking through the priest, revealed that: I stayed with all my children at Tulagi when they were hanged. I was there, on the fence, at Tulagi when they called on me when they went to be hanged. I cried and cried. But it happened. (Keesing 1989a: 86)

Kwaio religious discourse is, and must be, a commentary on the powers that surround the enclave within which diminishing ancestral powers hold sway. A dominant problematic for contemporary Kwaio is to reconcile ancestral power within their partly-closed world with their, and the ancestors', relative powerlessness in the world beyond (see Keesing 1989a). But is this the only reading we need? If the ritual errors and violations of ancestral rules that brought imprisonment and death to A are attributed to cultural breakdown and the generation gap produced by forced pacification, they are also the very stuff of Kwaio religious interpretation. My fieldnotes are sprinkled with similar explanations for deaths and misfortunes of every kind, occurring on home turf and in no visible way attributable to the breakdown of Kwaio culture. Rhetorically, Kwaio speak of a golden age when elders lived to a great age, free of pollution violations and ancestral punishment, an era when virtue prevailed and rules were punctiliously followed. But they also sing epic chants of failed battles as well as successful ones, of deaths and disasters. Explanations for failure and misfortune have apparent-

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ly always been cast in the same idioms - of pollution, of ritual error - as the interpretations of A's demise.

10. Submerged voices? Should we seek subaltern discourses of another kind in Kwaio interpretations of the killing? Because pagan women have not been allowed to leave their mountains, their voices could not be heard directly in Honiara. The interpretations I have presented have all been from men; and the pursuit of prestige and plunder through killing is a side of Kwaio culture in which women have no direct part. If we could hear the voices of A's mother or sisters, or C's, would they cast them in a counter-hegemonic idiom questioning male violence? The ambivalence of Kwaio women regarding killing emerges strikingly in a passage from the self-account of a senior woman named Fei'a, who as a child saw her own innocent mother shot in cold blood by bounty-hunting warriors:

Women were often killed for things men did. ... The men ... would lie about a woman. They'd find some excuse to kill her; but what they were really after was the blood bounty - the money and the pigs. ... The women ... said to the men: 'You have to accept compensation for that sexual offense, not kill her.' 'No, we have to kill her.' So they'd kill her and then put up a blood bounty to avenge her death. ... The women morned the death of their sister or their daughter or their mother. ... Then they'd say, I'm putting up my pig for the bounty to get revenge for her. ... I'll put it up for the death of the man who caused the death of my sister.' Another woman might get killed then. That's the way killings went on and on (Keesing 1987b: 54). In the case of A's demise, I do in fact have a text from one of his close female relatives. My 'son' [her Father's Brother's Son's Son] A has died for no good reason. He was tried and convicted, and they put him in a cell; and he just died to no purpose.

I want to claim compensation for it. I am asking you [RMK] to notify the Government that I am claiming death compensation for that. I am asking you to make this representation on my behalf because I am a woman. ... I am so upset thinking about my son' that I have been unable to eat and unable to sleep, in the house down below [my dead son's] men's house.

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Her self-representation is cast in terms of being a woman, but if she is countering male hegemony, it is hardly by questioning the bloodthirsty and violent ways of her male kin and their ancestors. Women express the emotional side of bereavement much more than men, and her response is in this respect representative of ta 'a geni. But more directly, she is speaking in terms of kinship, not womanhood. Her claim is that of an aggrieved kinsperson (aggrieved in a sense hard to comprehend in terms of the Western legal imagination: the Solicitor representing Β and C responded with some outrage - "What about compensation for the people A killed?"), not of a woman challenging male hegemony. It is too often forgotten in the literature of feminist anthropology that women in non-Western societies, as in our own, spend much of their lives enacting social identities predicated on aspects of their personhood only contingently related to gender.

11. Toward an interpretive synthesis Murder on Mount Austen can be unpacked in many ways. First, we have the chilling vision of ancestrally-empowered killers walking the streets of Honiara, using skills of urban petty-theft and sophistication in town ways to execute scarcely-known victims. Second, we have an extraordinary collision between two modes of life and two systems of meaning; and two moral and legal systems that barely communicate with one another. The interpretations unfolded in the court and the interpretations by Kwaio pagans, even as unfolded in Honiara suburbia, are light years apart and irreconcilable. The same events are recognizable across these universes of discourse, but only in barest outline. What is meaningful in one universe is meaningless background in the other; what is motive and explanation in one does not even figure in the other. Even the casts of characters minimally overlap. The disjuncture between the world of the ancestors in the Malaita mountains and the world of British magistrates in Honiara is in some ways rhetorical. The young Kwaio pagans who come to town participate only marginally in the world of the affluent expatriates and neocolonial elite - the Mendana Hotel, the "supermarkets", the Guadalcanal Club and the Yacht Club; they enter the houses on the ridges only silently and at night. There are, for them, two cultures. But the second is that of a marginal urban underclass: they saunter in the markets and Chinatown shops, work intermittently on the coastal plantations, hunt in the shadows. Adolescent boys learn strategies for taming watchdogs, distracting shopkeepers' attention, gambling, avoiding

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ancestral wrath in a town filled with menstruating women: elements of a subculture for finding one's way through the urban jungle. It is within this underclass subculture that Kwaio knowledge of the British legal system, and strategies for outwitting it, are set. Third, we can read the Kwaio interpretations of the killing and its aftermath in terms of "traditional" religion, of a culturally constructed universe where ancestors and their powers prevail. Yet we also need to read these interpretations as situated in a Solomon Islands where the Kwaio speak but one of some sixty languages, where they constitute a beleaguered and dwindling minority, and where they occupy a marginal economic and political position. Kwaio ancestors are a part of this world, still able - in Kwaio constructions - to intervene to bring success or disaster in urban gambling games, thefts, or killings, or turn the outcome of Honiara court cases. Yet the powers of the ancestors are beleaguered and dwindling too, under Christian attack; and a decline of punctilious concern with their rules and precepts is used - along with the 1927 desecration and Christian invasion - to interpret the withering of ancestral power and the withholding of ancestral support (see Keesing 1989a). None of these readings is unproblematic. I have suggested that the dominant discourse of "religious" explanation of events expresses a logic where events salient to humans are retrospectively construed in terms of ancestral interventions and manipulations. Yet this logic could easily be overinterpreted, as implying a global and systematic philosophy for which there is no evidence (Keesing 1987a); my data suggest that Kwaio precept and practice allow and sustain multiple "world views" (just as ours do). I have further suggested that there are not only diverse perspectives on the dominant discourses of a culture, but also alternative and partly submerged discourses - of gossip, resistance, protest. Some, emanating from children, from women, from the marginal, are counter-hegemonic and likely to be hidden from surface ethnographic inquiry (see Keesing 1985c). Murder on Mount Austen raises these issues of multiple interpretation starkly. But had a philosopher-anthropologist been washed up on Malaita shores in the nineteenth or eighteenth century and somehow avoided being eaten, I believe she would have found the same perspectival and interpretive ambiguities. What we have called "cultures" are always, I believe, multiple and multiply ambiguous, internally complex and perspectivally constructed; and simultaneously, eternalizations, celestializations and universalizations of a world within, and commentaries on a world without.

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References Bourdieu, Pierre [ 1977] [English translation by Richard Nice of Esquisse d 'une theorie de la pratique, Librairie Droz, 1972. Outline of a theory ofpractice. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.] Guha, Ranajit 1983 Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1984 "The prose of counter-insurgency", in: Subaltern studies II: Writings on South Asian history and society, Ranajit Guha (ed.), 1 - 4 2 . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Haviland, John B. 1977 Gossip, reputation and knowledge in Zinacantan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Keesing, Roger M. 1982 Kwaio religion: The living and the dead in a Solomon Island society. New York: Columbia University Press. 1985a "Killers, big men and priests on Malaita: Reflections on a Melanesian troika system", Ethnology 24: 2 3 7 - 5 2 . 1985b "Conventional metaphors and anthropological metaphysics: The problematic of cultural translation", Journal of Anthropological Research 41: 201-18. 1985c "Kwaio women speak: The micropolitics of autobiography in a Solomon Island society", American Anthropologist 87: 2 7 - 3 9 . 1986 "Plantation networks, plantation cultures: The hidden side of colonial Melanesia", Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes 8 2 - 8 3 : 163-170. 1987a "Anthropology as interpretive quest", Current Anthropology 28: 161-76. 1987b "Ta'a Geni: Women's perspectives on Kwaio society", in Dealing with inequality, Marilyn Strathern (ed.), 3 3 - 6 2 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989a "Sins of a mission: Christian life as Kwaio traditionalist ideology", in: Family and gender in the Pacific: Domestic contradictions and colonial impact. Margaret Jolly - Martha Macintyre (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989b "Colonial history as contested ground", History and Anthropology 4: 279-301. n. d. 1 Custom and confrontation: The Kwaio struggle for cultural autonomy. MS, forthcoming.

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"Foraging in the urban jungle: Notes from the Kwaio underground", paper presented at the annual meeting of Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, Victoria, BC, March, 1991. Keesing, Roger M. - Peter Corris 1980 Lightning meets the west wind: The Malaita massacre. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Part III Divination as interpretation from within

How to say things with assertive acts? About some pragmatic properties of Senoufo divination Andras Zempteni

How and where to localize divination "between semantics and rationality", here is a problem which arises regularly in philological and anthropological studies on Sumerian, Arab, Chinese or African forms of this seemingly universal institution. Is divination a "science of signs"? What kind of prescientific rationality does it presuppose? How to show that its written codification - for example in the form of the "if p... then q..." formulae of the mesopotamian "protases" and "apodoses" (Bottero 1974) - would be the very matrix of scientific thinking? In this paper, I will not tackle these wide problems. I will just try to define some elementary properties of divination as they arise from ethnographic accounts and from some African institutions that I have been able to observe among the Moundang of Tchad (AdlerZempleni 1972) and the Senoufo of Ivory Coast. Anthropologists have likened divination to many things: to ritual, to judgement, to a single procedure of legitimation, to a lottery "wiser than human mind" (Park 1963), to a psychological technique of persuasion or to a sociological one of "dramatization", to a "science of signs" or to an art of ritual framing and staging. Whether arguable or not, all these approaches are legitimate provided that they do not conceal the specificity of divination, especially that of divinatory act and speech which cannot be reduced to any other type of act and speech. So, I will discuss, among other things, four tightly linked problems that I have posed but not solved in my previous papers (Zempleni 1981, 1982, 1985).

1. If divination is a process of "communication", then... Mostly, anthropologists describe or rather interpret both inspired or "mechanical" divination as a form of communication between two or three partners: the diviner, his customer and some unobservable entity like gods, ancestors

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or spirits whose "messages" are supposed to be "decoded" and made explicit. First, how to define the output or the product of this ritual of so-called communication, given that speech-acts of the diviner are generally connected to some non-verbal act or action which cannot be likened or reduced to everyday acts or to other ritual actions? In the mind of his clients, what is it that divination produces: true assertions, legal sentences, appropriate utterances or efficient ritual acts? Truth, justice (in the Greek sense of divine themis), appropriateness (in the Vedic sense of accuracy 1 ), ritual efficacy... how to qualify the social and psychic reality produced by the interactions between the diviner and his client? Second, if we agreed that, in the clients' mind, divination is a "truthmaking" procedure, that is to say it produces directly statements judged true, what makes the divinatory procedures a plausible source of truth? What are the hidden grounds and guarantees of the veracity of divinatory utterances? Third, how to define in Benveniste's term the divinatory enunciation, this very specific case of deixis and communicative structure? In what respect and why cannot it be reduced to any other type of enunciation or communication? On what grounds does lie this specifically "divinatory" relationship or situation that anybody distinguishes easily from other types of communication of ritual or everyday life? Fourth and lastly, how to define the non-verbal divinatory act or action which seemingly constitutes a sine qua non condition of the veracity, of the justice, of the appropriateness or of the efficacy of the verbal utterances of the diviner? These acts or actions, needless to say, can take many forms: to put a medium in a state of trance or possession, to throw down on the ground and to sort out stones as among the Moundang or icons as among the Ndembu or the Senoufo, to sacrifice an animal and examine its liver ... and so on. Let's add to these acts those which require a direct contact between the diviner and his client as in the Senoufo technique in the yes-no part of the session, the diviner catches the right hand of his client and slaps with it his right thigh when the "answer" is positive. Whatever type of technique he uses - even trance - , the diviner cannot speak without acting in a specific manner. In other words, divinatory utterances or speech-acts imply necessarily non-verbal mantic acts and vice versa. Then, how to define the function of this specific connexion between divinatory speech and acts? To paraphrase Austin (1962), what does the diviner do when he speaks and what does he say when he does things? In my opinion, this is a crucial question: anthropological theories of divination and let me add, of ritual - cannot progress if they don't free themselves from

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the carcan of purely linguistic, semiotic or pragmatic hypotheses, from speech and even speech-acts or "performative utterances". Some general features of divination need to be stated before trying to answer my four questions.

2. Domain, subject-matters and means of divination: Contingency and chance First, how to define the proper field or domain of divination? In African societies where it is closely integrated both in private and public life, divination directs countless daily or exceptional behaviors, so that it crosscuts all the domains of knowledge and practice: even its own domain for, as we will see, divinatory testing of the reliability of divinatory outcomes - that is to say meta-divination - is a paradoxical but widespread feature of most mantic institutions. Thus, religion, magic, law, medicine and politics are all dependent, at given moments, upon the diagnoses, the forecasts and the prescriptions of the diviner, while the diviner does not need at all the attendance of the priest, the magician, the chief, the magistrate, or of the healer - to fulfil his specific function. To sum up, the whole society is dependent upon divination at these crucial moments when it recognizes that experience knowledge, tradition, wisdom, craft - is unable to account for the contingency of the interventions of unobservable forces or factors in human affairs. So, the contingency of the unobservable world is the proper domain of divination. As for mechanical or inductive techniques of divination - from a western point of view - , we can extend this statement so as to point out an analogy between subject-matters and means of the divinatory procedure. If one takes divinatory advice about some events or facts, that's just because these events or facts are contingent or random: unexplainable, unforeseeable, uncertain. To be sure, as Vernant (1974: 17) writes, la divination opere "selon une logique qui conduit ä exclure le hasard de la trame des evenements, soit ä supprimer l'aleatoire". But how does it work? "Cast the lots" (iara) - to throw down some objects like Senoufo icons - that is the well known etymology of the biblical word Torah, oracle or divine Law (Weber 1920: 189). Maybe the God of the Bible does not cast the dice, but men do certainly cast them when they are looking for the meaning of the numerous hazards of their life, especially of their ills and illnesses. To be sure, mechanical divination can never be reduced to blind application of "objective" sentences of chance,

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a complex notion missing in most societies which practice it currently (Evans-Pritchard 1972: 96-115). Nevertheless, mechanical divination works always by means of some randomizing device whose contingent or aleatory "answers" come between the diviner and his client and between him and his so-called "science of signs". This randomizing technique always outlives the attempts of total semiotic codification of events, a typical trend of great - for example, Chinese - divinatory systems. 2 Thus, it seems to be a necessary means of the mantic operation. I will not discuss here the more or less refutable hypotheses that anthropologists have put forward about the ecological, judicial, psychological or sociological functions of theses randomizing techniques: preserving natural resources such as game by randomizing predatory activities (Moore 1957), 3 ritually framing and ordering the disturbing and ambiguous situation which worries the clients, persuading and helping the client to reach a decision, taking him through a "labyrinth" (Park 1963) which offers him a specific resistance and thus create a state of consensus, formally legitimizing difficult and important social decisions by means of an "objective" device whose "impartial" sentences cannot be contested. And so on. What I want to emphasize is only that all these functionalist interpretations overlook or minimize the very nature of the divinatory procedure itself which works by establishing an obvious analogical link between its subject-matters, namely contingent or aleatory events or facts, and its means, namely randomizing devices. What we call chance or randomness is in the same time the object and the means of mechanical divination. 4

3. The veracity of divinatory statements Moreover, as Pascal Boyer (1988: 1 2 5 - 1 3 1 ) points out 5 functionalist interpretations overlook another crucial feature of divinatory procedure, that of the veracity of divinatory statements: namely that the diviner's clients consider, first, that his statements are true and, second, that they are true because they have been produced by the divinatory technique. Sometimes, anthropologists claim that divinatory statements are not true but simply "relevant" or "meaningful". Sometimes they postulate that divinatory truth is a function of the authoritative position of the diviner. Furthermore, they advance isolately or in ad hoc combinations three kinds of classical claims in order to avoid the question of the veracity of divinatory statements. First, these statements would be manipulated by means of the diviner's background knowledge about the client's situation, wishes and probable future. Second, the divinatory statements would be expressed in such an ambiguous way that any sub-

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sequent event could fit them. They could never be proved wrong, in a word, they would be irrefutable. Third, as Horton (1967) has rephrased in a popperian way the well known analysis of Evans-Pritchard (1937), refutation would be blocked by "secondary elaboration": that is, the possible empirical refutation of divinatory diagnosis only casts doubt on that particular ritual and not on divination in general. People find special reasons to explain away a particular failure, so that they carry on relying on divination and oracles. Again, I do not want to criticize thoroughly these arguments but just point out that each of them is insufficient in the sense that many ethnographic counterexamples can be found. So the Senoufo diviner I consulted about my affairs some years ago has stated, by his yes-no technique, that my mother and father were already dead and predicted that my child on the way would be a girl. It happened that these statements were true but this is not the matter: they could not be at all "manipulated" and they were undoubtedly refutable! Many divinatory utterances are specific and predictive enough to be refuted. Now, as to the notion of "secondary elaboration", African people do resort to such reasonings - as the incompetency of such and such a diviner or some "mystic" explanations of the failure of such and such a divinatory ritual - in order to protect the basic tenets of their faith in divination. But, as Boyer rightly notes (1988: 130), we are left again with the crucial question: "Why should it be protected in the first place? There must be some reasons why divination procedures appear convincing, and therefore worth protecting, which the notion of 'secondary explanation' does not explain."

4. The mantic action as the foundation of the veracity of divinatory assertions Now let's turn to my main questions. The subject-matters of divinatory practice are particular cases or problems which require a solution and therefore a set of decisions able to direct action. We can once more qualify these cases or problems as contingent or random facts because of the plurality of the causal sequences, of the patterns of interpretation and prediction liable, in the clients' mind, to explain them, to give them a definite meaning and sometimes to solve them. Now, how to define the elementary divinatory operation? To take the case of illness, this operation has two results. First, it consists in choosing an agency, an origin and a solution amongst the possible agencies, origins and solutions of that illness. Second, the same operation results in changing this

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more or less precise choice into a sentence and an assertion, that is, a statement both just and true. In his clients' mind, the diviner is not a wise man supposed to put forward synthetical judgements about what is sound, judicious, mature, right, reasonable, foreseeable or likely: he is entitled to ascertain the truth by means of his technique. Contrary to a widespread opinion, the veracity of his speech is not grounded either on his religious nor on his secular authority. Whatever the craftiness or the manipulations of the diviner and the seemingly universal scepticism of his clients, the divinatory statements purport to be true and verifiable by the way of experience. This is, evidently, a simplistic picture of mantic operation. It would be as simplistic to suppose, as we will see, that "truth" and "law" - in the Greek or Latin sense of divine themis or fas and not of human dike or jus6 - are the only outcomes of divination. But let's proceed in order to answer my second question: if in the clients' mind, divination is a "truth-making" procedure, what produces the veracity of divinatory utterances? Why and how these utterances are taken as the expression of truth, while ordinary and other kinds of specialized discourses - such as therapeutical ones - are not judged in that way? What are the specific features that make divination a plausible source of truth? To answer this question, I emphasized in a former paper (1985: 4 0 - 4 1 ) a set of hypotheses then worked out and completed by P. Boyer (1988). Anthropologists sometimes forget that divination is a form of ritual. Ritual owes its efficacy to the very act of its performance. Divinatory statements owe their veracity to the very operation which allows the diviner to formulate them, namely his divinatory procedure. Whether this operation consists in the quite mechanical Moundang way of stone-throwing and casting of lots, in the bipartite Senoufo technique of icon-casting and thigh-slapping, in the Zande way of poisoning a series of fowls, in the Nyoro way of entering in trance or in sacrificing a sheep in order to examine its viscera, in all these cases, the action of the diviner is the performative foundation of the veracity of his assertions. I mean that divination is not only a process of enunciation but also a ritual of demonstration of the hidden truths.

5. A specific device of divination: The assertive acts of the diviner In this truth-demonstration ritual, the diviner's speech and non-verbal action are indissolubly linked. The diviner cannot speak without acting in a quite

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specific way. And the quite specific way by which his acts and speech are linked obviously marks off divination from other types of ritual and everyday behaviors. How to name this type of action and this specific connexion between divinatory acts and speech? It stands to reason that when the Senoufo diviner throws down first his divinatory icons and then shows and comments their configuration or when he asks first "is it an illness?" or "is it a sorcerer?" and then slaps his thigh with his client's right hand, instead of confirmation, he does not perform just what Searle (1969) calls a single "speechact". First, he acts and then he speaks or vice versa. And, once again, he cannot speak without acting and vice versa. To use Austin's (1962) vocabulary, his locutionary acts and the illocutionary force of his speech-acts are, in the same time, clearly separated from and closely related to his non-verbal doing which seems to be a kind of explicit perlocutionary act or action. Anyway, it is a non-linguistic act or action whose performance is nevertheless a sine qua non condition of the very existence of the diviner's statements. I have proposed (1985: 40) to name assertive acts these specific divinatory acts or actions. For they do assert or establish something that the purely verbal utterances of the diviner cannot assert or establish. Austin asked himself "how to do things with words"? Theoreticians of divination must ask themselves how to say and assert things with acts. 7 So, assertive act which can be defined as the "enactive" 8 reverse of an performative utterance - insofar as it clearly signifies something by means of a non-verbal doing - seems to be a specific device and feature of divination. Now, how to understand its pragmatic function? 9 As Boyer (1988: 1 3 2 - 1 3 5 ) shows it, anthropologists are mainly divided between two types of interpretation of divination: the "intentional" and the "semiotic" paradigm. Both of them rely on the idea that divination rituals are techniques of communication. In the intentional interpretation, it is assumed that clients and diviners consider these rituals as a technique which allows them to receive messages from transcendent entities, such as ancestors, deities or spirits. This view seems natural enough in cases of "inspired" or "emotive" divination close to possession. In the "semiotic" interpretation, diviners and clients are supposed to conceive their activity as a hermeneutic business: some signs of unobservable situations - from omens and portents to artificial signs produced by randomizing devices - are there, for competent people to observe, decipher and "translate" into ordinary language. These signs are supposed to express messages from the spirits, the ancestors and so on. In certain types of instrumental divination, as the Senoufo one, the idea that divination is a communication with the transcendent world receives

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strong support from the form of the diviner's utterances and assertive acts themselves. Seating in front of a male and a female statuette which stand for his specific interlocutors, the debele or earth-spirits, the Senoufo diviner addresses them as often as not by means of questions, injunctions and even insults. When he has thrown down the icons and comments on them or when he asks some question and slaps his thigh (or not) in order to answer it, he often begins or ends his statements or questions with an interjection or some other rhetorical device which cause everybody to believe that he "communicates" with his debele. So in the course of my own last year's session, having cast the icons, thus he addresses himself to the spirits: 'I've got it! ... here's a dead man who says: 'death!'... listen to him\ (you, the debele). I don't know these dead people, άέϊε (eh)?! Are they the dead of the Earth (allof them) or those of the family? Did you understand it? (you, the spirits) ... ίιίίιύ! (oh yes!) I've seen the wealth ... If it's the Death who must speak, let it speak!... etc.

Then, having caught my assistant's right hand (for I was filming the session), he speaks thus before slapping (or not) his thigh : Is it Kbleö (my assistant) who has given the (divinatory) fees? (is it him who takes my advice?) - (balancing of the joined hands: no!). Is it Kiddnlit (me)? (slap: yes) ... Go tell (you, the spirits) the dead that I tell them to give him (to me) life and fortune. Do as you are told! (slap: O.K.). They are the dead?! (slap) Are they the dead of his home (slap)? The dead of his father? (slap) Tyl! (surprise) wee too kü le? Now then! is his father dead? (slap). His father is dead (slap); a wee nf>ύ kit Ιέ? - and is his mother dead? (slap). Will he ask those to do something? (in his ritual action) (slap) etc.

Indeed, this is a very poor sample of the numerous rhetorical and enactive devices of a Senoufo diviner and I spent much time with my friends to find the French approximations of inteijections as ü?ü ύ!, Very well! ίι?ύ, yes!, üiüit well?, you don't say?, e?e, why! , e?e, no or no-no-no! tyi'!, now! and so on. No doubt, these rhetorical and enactive devices as well as the interrogative or imperative form of the divinatory statements are the main pragmatic means to impress in the clients' mind that divinatory sessions are those of a specific kind of communication between the earth-spirits, the diviner and themselves. And this applies, I think, to many other cases of instrumental divination, in such a way that it weakens the sharp and old distinction between "inspired" and "mechanical" techniques.

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6. The main pragmatic property of divination: The ritual demonstration of the human speaker's evacuation as the subject of the (divinatory) enunciation Now how to define this kind of divinatory communication and the function of the assertive acts of the diviner in the communicative process? How to characterize the divinatory enunciation? Let us remind the classical distinction between the subject of a statement and the subject of the enunciation of this statement. When I say: "John lies", the first one is John and the second one is me: it's me who asserts that John lies. As I have noted in my former paper (1985: 4 0 - 4 1 ) , in the divinatory communication, the pragmatic aspects of this kind of common assertions are deeply modified. When I say "John lies", I am committed to the truth of my kind statement. Now, the common property of the analytical statements of both the diviner and the "inspired" utterances of a medium is the evacuation of the actual speaker as the subject of the enunciation: the individual who speaks removes himself and is removed par difinition as being committed to the truth of his statements. He or she does make the statements but he or she is not supposed to be responsible for these statements: diviners are eager to demonstrate the fact that their utterances could not be taken as dependent upon their own intentions. Let us emphasize that, in this respect, neither oracular "dialogue" nor divinatory "communication" is assimiliable to the ordinary processes of interlocution. This very general and specific property of divination is quite manifest in all "inspirational" techniques - included the Delphic oracle - and in many "inductive" techniques as for example the Senoufo. Now, if we go on maintaining the idea that divination is a "communication", we have to identify clearly who speaks with whom, that is who is the very subject of the divinatory enunciation. Both intentional and semiotic interpretations of divination seem to agree with the Senoufo diviners in this respect. He who "speaks" by the means of words and divinatory signs, that is the subject of enunciation, is a transcendent being as the Earth, the Earth-spirits, the Spider or the Fox, such and such god or genie, ancestor and so on. In a word he is a more or less hidden speaker whose "messages" are either directly "conveyed" by the medium or indirectly deciphered by the diviner. Nevertheless, the belief in such a hidden speaker is not a necessary condition for divination. Besides several Chinese, Roman or Mesopotamian cases of quite pragmatic and "mute" mantics (Vernant 1974), which do not seem to require any reference to any invisible "speaker", a strong ethnographic evidence is given, for instance, by J. Favret-Saada - J. Contreras (1984) when they analyze the practice of French fortune-tellers. There is no

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idea of "another world", no mention of any mediating and invisible entity, no "mystical" aspect at all: the diagnosis is "just there", directly expressed by the succession of cards drawn (Boyer 1988: 1 3 7 - 1 3 8 ) . We cannot therefore consider divination as an anthropomorphic communication between the diviner and some hidden interlocutor. In fact, the reference to such an invisible interlocutor matters infinitely less than the ritual demonstration of the human speaker's withdrawal, that is the "removing" of the diviner as the subject of the divinatory enunciation. This is the main pragmatic property of divination. Now, if the diviner does not "communicate" necessarily with a hidden speaker, he does communicate, in a specific manner, with his client. These two aspects of the so-called divinatory communication have been mostly merged. How to define the second? How the diviner communicates with his client? To take Bateson's way - which allowed him to define the notion of "double-bind" - we can emphasize that all divination - whether "inspired" or "mechanical" - is a diviner-client communication which involves, as any process of human communication, two types of well distinguishable acts. First, the transmission of some contents - statements, decisions, sentences, prescriptions - that is to say an act of communication. Second, the shaping of the relationship in which these contents are transmitted and receive their very sense or meaning, that is to say an act of metacommunication. The metacommunicative action of the diviner, this absent and yet present speaker, consists in proving that he is not the originator of his statements. He has to demonstrate the impersonal or extra-human origin and character of his utterances. In this second respect, the medium's trance and the diviner's assertive acts fulfil the same metacommunicative function. While focusing the audience's attention on the enactive indices of the speaker's removal as subject of the enunciation, these metacommunicative acts induce the impression of impersonal veracity of the mantic statements. They induce also the specifically "divinatory" relationship or situation that anybody distinguishes unhesitatingly from other types of ritual or everyday relationships or situations. So, most assertive acts of the diviner fulfil, in the same time, a communicative and a metacommunicative function.

7. What does divination do? Causal links, thinking and ritual action To finish, I should try to answer my first question: how to define the output or the product of divination? What do divinatory sessions bring about: truth,

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justice, appropriateness or some ritual efficacy? There is a quite specific and yet widespread category of assertive divinatory acts which could lead us to some insight in this matter, namely: the meta divination. As we have seen, the Moundang diviner proceeds by a series of castings, so as to give a definite yes/no answer to his quite minute and analytical questions concerning his client's state and problem (Adler - Zempleni 1972: 5 0 - 7 3 ) . The first four "deals" of this "check-list" are most crucial. For they concern the "state of the hale", that is the very reliablility of the whole divinatory session itself. If the results are negative, the diviner can start again, or - as I witnessed it sacrifice something to the ancestors and start again or decide to cancel the session. In other words, the first four castings assert the veracity or the justice, the appropriateness or the ritual efficacy of what is to follow. Unlike the Moundang, the Sisala studied by Mendonsa (1978) test a posteriori the reliability of their divinatory sessions by means of an institutional procedure called dachevung which is a shortened version of the standard ritual. After the session, the client goes to another diviner and draws several marks in the dust, some of which stand for the first diviner's assertions. If the new diviner chooses with his stick the "right" marks, then the results of the first session are confirmed. How to interpret these seemingly paradoxical a priori or a posteriori checkings of divination by itself? To sum up roughly Boyer's noteworthy argument (1988: 148-153), they would be the best indicators of a general characteristics of divination, "namely that it is a technique which makes it possible to obtain statements which are directly caused by the situation at hand" (p. 150). Thus, the Moundang and Sisala diviners's diagnosis would be "not only a description of the ancestors but also a consequence of their action". Clients establish a link "between an undefined and unobservable state of affairs, on the one hand, and a given assertion which describes it, on the other ... they trust the divinatory description because they assume that it is caused by that undefined state of affairs" (p. 151). In brief, the divinatory utterances and the situation they describe are linked by a causal and not a "descriptive" or "symbolic" link. This leads Boyer to claim that divinatory "signs" are not symbols but rather indices in the Peirceian sense of the term: their relationship to what they stand for is one of effect to cause. As symptoms are indices of an illness which cause them, divinatory utterances themselves are considered as indices - that is effects - of the situation they purports to describe. Once more, I will not discuss thoroughly this undoubtedly new and slightly intellectualist argument. I just want to emphasize that, in Senoufo or other clients' minds, divination is aimed not only to give and produce a true

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description of a "state of affairs" but also and above all to initiate.ritual action which modifies ab ovo and during the divinatory process itself this "state of affairs". Sometimes, the assertive act of the diviner consists to administer some toxic substance to human beings in order to ascertain the truth an ordeal whose result is nothing less than the death of the "guilty" person is the most vivid illustration of the manner in which divination does initiate ritual action. True, it is not the diviner who sacrifices the chicken. That is precisely why he is the one who tells and shows how and when to sacrifice it, what the effects will b e . . . , that is he is the one whojiterally stages the ritual in his client's head and mind. This verbal and enactive staging of the ritual is an essential means of its cognitive and affective efficacy. For, in this respect, the assertive and speech acts of the diviner fulfil a specific function : that of shifters which couple thinking to action. Instead of concluding let me just illustrate this point by a yes-no slapping passage of my last year's session. Having seen my dead parents, the diviner begins to prescribe a sacrifice: ... finishing an affair'? (+10) - (a sacrifice) to the dead? (+) - finish it in his village? (+) - in the village of white people? (+) - just with single words fel (-) - to catch cola-nuts (-) - fresh water to his father? (-) - a thing to cut the throat of? (+) ύ?ϊιύ\ (Yes!) he will cut the throat of (+) - chicken (+) - chicken of village (+) white cock (+) - e?e\ (why!) white cock (+) - they eat meat (+) - and to cut its throat (+) - to pour out the blood tyiriri! on the ground - God! let catch the cock! (+) - person's father is his god (+) - God! you who created us, both (+) - man and woman (+) - 1 say I want Life (+) - 1 say give me something (+) - give wealth (+) - give old age (+) - (father!) come with wealth ( +) - the chicken falls well ke-keke\ (+)...

Notes 1. See for a minute definition of this notion Sylvain Levi (1966) and Francis Zimmermann (1980). 2. See, for example, the evolution of Chinese divinatory systems (Vandermeersch 1974). 3. Lawless (1975) reverses the direction of Moore's question and shows how ecological changes can be correlated with deep modifications of the divinatory system in a society of New Guinea. 4. At another level, A. Young (1977) has pointed out the analogy between divinatory technique and medical events or matters and, as we will see it, the link between divinatory procedure and the state of affairs it makes explicit is maybe something more than an simply analogical connexion.

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5. Chapter 4, "Customized speech (I): Truth without intentions". Pages given are those of the manuscript he kindly communicated me. This manuscript has been published in 1990 by Cambridge University Press under the title: "Tradition as truth and communication". 6. See about these notions Emile Benveniste (1969 Tome II: 99-142). 7. Or rather actions, as linguists - like Bühler (1934) and Jakobson (1963) - have distinguished these two notions. To quote O. Ducrot-T. Todorov (1972: 430) ".. ,1'etude des actes illocutoires s'apparente aux recherches de Bühler et de Jakobson: la distinction de l'illocutoire et du perlocutoire correspond ä celle de l'acte et de Taction, de ce qui est intrinseque et de ce qui est surajoute dans l'activite linguistique". 8. I borrow this term to the psychologist J. S. Bruner (1956: 1-68) who distinguishes three levels and ways of learning: the enactive, the iconic and the symbolic (linguistic) ones. When I learn, for example, to hammer in the enactive way, I try simply to imitate the blacksmith's gests with my hammer. 9. More exactly the function of the necessary connexion between these assertive acts and the diviner's statements in the process we call divinatory "communication". 10. + = slap/yes; - = balancing the hands/no.

References Adler, Alfred - Zempleni, Andras 1972 Le bäton de I 'aveugle. Divination, maladie etpouvoir chez les Moundang du Tchad. Paris: Hermann. Austin, J. L. 1962 How to do things with words, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benveniste, Emile 1966 Problemes de linguistique generale. Paris: Gallimard. 1969 Le vocabulaire des institutions indo- europeennes. Paris: Minuit. Bottero, Jean 1974 "Symptömes, signes, ecritures en Mesopotamie ancienne", in Divination et rationaliti, Jean-Pierre Vernant (ed.), 190-193. Paris: Seuil. Boyer, Pascal 1988 Customized speech . Truth without intentions. Chapter 4, manuscript of Tradition as truth and communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Bruner, Jerome S. 1956 "On cognitive growth", in Studies in cognitive growth, Jerome S. Bruner (ed.). New York: John Wiley. Ducrot, Oswald - Todorov Tzvetan 1972 Dictionnaire encyclopedique des sciences du langage. Paris: Seuil.

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Evans-Pritchard, Ε. E. 1937 Witchcraft, magic and oracles among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press (French translation 1972). Favret-Saada, Jeanne - Contreras, Jose 1985 "L'embrayeur de violence", in Le moi et I'autre, Mannoni Maud (ed.), 9 5 - 1 4 9 . Paris: Denoel. Horton, Robin 1967 "African traditional thought and Western science". Africa, 37, (1): 5 0 - 7 1 et (2): 155-187. Lawless, R. 1975 "Effects of population growth and environment changes on divination practices in Northern Luzon". Journal of Anthropological Research, 31, (1): 1 8 - 3 3 . Levi, Sylvain 1966 La doctrine classique du sacrifice dans les Brähmanas. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Mendonsa, E. L. 1978 "Characteristics of Sisala diviners", in The realm of the extra-human, agents and audiences, 179-195. Moore, Omar K. 1957 "Divination. A new perspective". American Anthropologist, 59, (I): 69-75. Ortigues, Edmond 1981 "Le destin et les oracles", in Religions du livre, religions de la coutume, 3 9 - 5 9 . Paris: Sycomore. Park, G 1963 "Divination and its social contexts". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 93, (2): 195-206. Searle, John R. 1969 Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Vandermeersch, Leon 1972 "De la tortue ä l'achillee. Chine", in Divination et rationalite, Vernant, Jean-Pierre (ed.), 2 9 - 5 1 . Paris: Seuil. Vernant, Jean-Pierre 1974 "Paroles et signes muets", in Divination et rationalite, Jean-Pierre Vernant (ed.), 9 - 2 5 . Paris: Seuil. Weber, Max 1970 Le judaisme antique (p. 246). Paris: Plön. Young, Allan 1977 "Order, analogy and efficacy in ethiopian medical divination", Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, I, (2): 183-201.

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Zempleni, Andras 1981 "Modeies et pragmatique, activation et repetition: reflexions sur la causalite de la maladie chez les Senoufo de Cöte d'lvoire". Social Science and Medicine, 15B, (3): 2 7 9 - 2 9 5 . 1982 "Anciens et nouveaux usages sociaux de la maladie en Afrique". Archives des sciences sociales des religions, LIV, 1: 5 - 1 9 . 1985 "La 'maladie' et ses 'causes'". Introduction ά causes, agents etorigines de la maladie chez les peuples sans ecriture. Numero special de L'ethnographie, 81, ( 9 6 - 9 7 ): 1 3 - 4 4 . Zimmermann, Francis 1980 Rtu-Satmya: The seasonal cycle and the principle of appropriateness. Social Science and Medicine, 14B: 9 9 - 1 0 6 .

The ghost in the machine: Etiology and divination in Japan Mary Picone

1. Divinatory procedures in Japan Like totemism, before Levi-Strauss effectively subverted it as an absolute category, divination - in anthropological usage - seems to include a very large range of practices and concepts which are often not thought by informants to be related. If we still wish to preserve "divination" as a discrete term, I suggest that it should be considered a polythetic class in R. Needham's (1975) sense. Divinatory procedures are, among other things, a partly technical, partly cognitive means of classifying events and (Evans-Pritchard 1937) should not be studied in isolation from the concepts of causality prevalent in a given society. Where, as in Japan, the bewildering variety and technical complexity of divination is such that its social and intellectual aspects are neglected in scholarly accounts, specialists turn instead to the impossible task of comprehensive definitions. Thus divination (Miyake 1980: 165, 184) has been subdivided into "inspirational" (e.g. spirit possession) and "non-inspirational" (e.g. palmistry), "subjective" (e.g. the interpretation of dreams) and "objective" (e. g. geomancy), or as requiring "devices" (e.g. the yarrow sticks of I Ching diviners). Certain forms belong to more than one of these categories but, as Miyake himself suggest, distinctions can be blurred in practice. The ambiguity implicit in the use of devices supposed to randomize access to certain knowledge is evident both in the development of certain techniques (e. g. the I Ching) and in some ancient and modern interpretations of the diviner's role. The I Ching is thought by several scholars to derive from still earlier (Chou Dynasty) forms of divination which allowed communication with the gods or ancestors. Similar claims have been made for other ancient "objective" methods like scapulimancy, based on the observation of natural elements like the cracks produced in bones by fire (Ahern 1980: 57). Modern I Ching diviners in Japan are said to operate in state of muga ("non-self") (Miyake 1980: 17) perhaps in order to obtain the "spiritual response" referred to below.

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The creative contribution of the consultant was recognized by some thinkers at an early date. Shen Kua (eleventh century), a scholar with wide scientific interests ranging from the study of nature or engineering to divination and accounts of predestination, explained in psychological terms why the same method provides different responses when used by different people: In his discussion of divination to determine locations of houses and tombs and to foretell length of life, Lü Ts'ai (d.665) believed that techniques cannot yield reproducible results. It is quite true that technique is not reliable in this sense. Still he did not realize that every kind (of divination) is a matter of substitutes. "The ability to respond spiritually and make the truth manifest depends on the person", thus if two people use a single technique the result of their divination will be different. The human mind is by nature spiritually responsive, but since it is unavoidably burdened, one must, in order to gain access to it, use as a substitute something that does not have a mind. In fact anything that can be seen, heard, thought about or speculated upon can be used as a substitute for this purpose. If this seems irrational, is not all good and bad fortune, are not all the mutations of life and death irrational ? Only with someone able to understand the pattern common to all this can one discuss the spiritual response that makes foreknowledge possible. (Sivin 1982)

Terms like "objective" and "subjective" are misleading because they depend on culturally and historically limited concepts of the person. Japanese Buddhism, particulary its popular form which stresses transference of karma, and Chinese concepts of the interelatedness of all entities, are examples of the inadequacy of these distinctions. Moreover the purpose of a consultation determines, to a degree, the "objectivity" of the answers. While the observation of supposedly inauspicious irregularities of celestial phenomena (e.g. an eclipse) is thought literally to foreshadow national calamities, the private divinatory consultations held to discover the cause of a person's illness are doubly subjective since, whatever the agent invoked, only individual self-perception has determined the questions to be asked. Anthropological studies of African divination (Evans-Pritchard 1937, Zempleni this volume) have stressed the importance of these techniques for a whole society and the attempts to preserve the "truth-making" value of divinatory revelation. Perhaps national institutions such as the Japanese onmyöryö (yin/yang bureau) once had a somewhat similar status and, in late eighteenth century, rulers and military commanders still used ancient astrological treatises to decide when to give battle. But criticisms expressed by the officials themselves or imperial reforms as early as the tenth century enjoining a return to ancient correctness

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of procedure or to approved texts (Frank 1958) show that the possibility of comparison with earlier methods undermines the absolute value of these procedures in literate societies. Objective observation (J. Needham 1954, Vol. 2; Lessa 1968) is said originally to have been a feature of the divinatory methods I shall briefly describe here, most of which are based on the observation by a specialist of certain categories of natural entities, which are "read" and interpreted as (and by means of) a system of graphic signs, revealing knowledge about the present or the future. However, the graphic signs themselves can be the object of observation (e.g. Chinese character dissection (chaiji), (cf. de Groot's 1890)). See also Ginzburg (1979) for the reading of signs and analogies between detection, divination and medicine. Before writing this article, I thought it would be useful to discuss the modern form of one system, geomancy, in detail but this proved impracticable since geomantic manuals include other systems, none of which were generally thought to be entirely autonomous by diviners or consultants. I have therefore attempted to give an idea of the range of concepts available to the Chinese or Japanese diviner and to see how these can be related by events to different forms of causality. The non-specialist reader will need a brief explanation of the concepts underlying this science.1 The Japanese have adopted many of the forms of divination used in China. As shown by Aoki's manual, these cultural borrowings have not ceased and, as my other examples indicate, Western influence is now apparent in even this domain. The earliest forms, such as scapulimancy, were current at least from the third century and (Nihon shakai minzoku jiten, entry uranai) coexisted with shamanic divination ( Wei Ch 'i Chronicle, Rotermund 1988: 32-38); both are still practiced today. Other methods include agricultural divination (roasting twelve beans to determine the weather, month by month, of the coming year, or contests: Sumo wrestling, tug-of-war, etc., between village moieties to discover which one will have the best harvest), observing the flight of birds, and local oracles such as that of Kibitsu shrine where the rumble of a giant cauldron indicates the deity's assent and silence its disapproval. Agricultural divination, however, is often only a part of a long and elaborate series of rites which include shamanic oracles. Simple forms seem deliberately to introduce a random element, e.g. tsuji-ura (crossroads divination) which involved going to a crossroads in the evening and taking words overhead from passersby to be answers to one's question. Other forms of this type included koto ura, zeni ura, tsue ura respectively "harp", coin, and staff divination (Gorai 1979: 271, Rotermund 1987: 106-115).

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2. Divination and the classification of knowledge 2.1. Chronology, Yin/Yang, Five Phases theory, the I Ching and Ch 'i I have attempted to keep definition of Sino-Japanese concepts to a minimum and can only hope the reader will be forebearing. Since major sinologists are not always in agreement, someone from a peripheral field can hardly hope to summarize these ideas, which have developed over several millennia - and have been further reinterpreted by the Japanese - without provoking controversy. Space and time were inextricably linked in the Chinese lunar-solar calendar. Astronomy linked with astrology was also an essential component of the system since the movements of heavenly bodies were thought to portend important changes in human society. But astrologers in China used abstract calendrical indications based on a fixed sexagenary cycle in compiling horoscopes not the ever-renewed calculations derived from observation required by the Hellenistic tradition (Nakayama 1969: 56-57). Astrology also determined, at least in part, the destiny of individuals and is still used by geomancers as the basis of the auspicious orientation of a family house or grave. In Chinese chronology, adopted by the Japanese in 604 A. D., annual time is measured by a combination of signs i.e. six (out of a series of twelve) "branches" and ten "stems" into a sexagenary cycle. The stems indicated three periods of ten days each during the month. The branches, which also denoted the twelve hours of the day and were associated with twelve animals, were sometimes used separately in divination. Each was labelled e.g. "failure", "control", "disorder", etc., and applied to consecutive days beginning with the first (tzu) "rat" of the eleventh month. The sexagenary cycle was thus constituted by sixty pairs of stem and branch signs indicating day and year. Before this system reached Japan various elements had been added to the combination of twelve lunar months and twenty-four solar "knots", calculated in relation to solstices and equinoxes. A date would thus include information on directions, numerological values, colours, yin/yang alternation, etc. For the Chinese, the universe was formed by the alternation of two complementary classes of attributes ("emblems" for Granet 1950: 97—114; Schipper 1982: 3 7 - 3 9 ) : Yin and Yang, associated with cold and heat, moon and sun, death and life, woman and man, etc. Yin and Yang are not diametrically opposed static substances, they alternate over time or according to season, climate, age, sex, etc., so yin at its apogee becomes yang and vice-versa. Classifications of yin and yang are relational, so that, for example, the upper half of the human body is considered more yang than the

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lower but the intestine is a yang organ in respect to the lungs which are said to be yin. The Five Phases theory, a later development, was grafted on to yin/yang classifications by identifying water and fire, i. e. the entities which represent yin and yang at their apogee with types of "energy" ; and by postulating the existence of two intermediary phases: "wood" and "metal". A fifth, or neutral, phase connects the others and is called "earth" (Schipper 1982). The phases are said to succeed one another according to several different orders two of which, production and destruction, seem based on empirical observation (water produces wood by causing trees to grow, wood produces fire, etc.) ( J. Needham 1954, Vol. 2). Western translations of these terms are not always consistent and the phases are sometimes called "elements". The Chinese, by means of what Needham calls "correlative thinking", established a series of correspondances based on numerical symmetry among other things. Table I (Needham 1954, Vol. 2) lists twenty-nine entities elsewhere divided into subgroups (political, astrological, medical, etc.) out of a total that had reached more than three hundred, by the eighteenth century. Different schools or individual practitioners of various sciences (physicians, geomancers, astrologers, etc.) would generally use only a limited number of correspondences. Potentially however, the ideal state of all entities was the harmony of constituent elements medically within the human body, architecturally between houses or graves and the natural features of sites, astrologically between rites and movements of heavenly bodies, socially between styles of government and individual action. All these types of harmony however, were thought to be necessarily interrelated. Divinatory systems are often subsumed under other systems. Geomancers, for example, incorporated eight trigrams from the Book of changes (/ Ching), itself the divinatory "classic" par excellence. Historians (Miyazaki 1966: 161-162; J. Needham 1954, Vol. 2) suggest that the trigrams derived from the drawing of lots with long and short yarrow sticks provided affirmative or negative answers gave rise to the graphic notation of unbroken (odd numbers, yang) and broken lines (even numbers, yin). These could be combined into eight figures (kua); each of which had a name and provided an answer to the consultant. When two trigrams are superimposed the result is a hexagram. The I Ching includes sixty-four hexagrams (8 x 8) as well as the commentaries added over time, each to clarify earlier interpretations. For Lessa (1968), the hexagrams which describe symbolically the steps in the pattern of change show what occurs, and enable one to adapt one's actions accordingly.

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If simple yes/no or positive/negative/neutral alternatives are abandoned in favour of descriptive commentaries as responses, interpretation obviously becomes metaphorical and/or allusive. According to Vernant (1974: 23) even when oracular responses were given directly by a deity the irony implicit in forecasting events seemed to be recognized as inevitable.2 The eleventh century Japanese anthology Konjaku monogatari, for example, includes a story of a self-fulfilling prophecy which is of Chinese origin (Gernet 1974). The last of the unfamiliar concepts used by geomancers is ch ϊ (ki in Japanese) which has variously been translated as "energy", "fluid", "cosmic breath", "finest component of matter" or "influence" (Unschuld 1985: 72). Contemporary Japanese healers or diviners sometimes refer to ki as "enerugF, using an English loan word and suggest that it is similar or identical to electrical or thermal energy (Lock 1980: 204). However, no consensus seems to have been reached among scholars or practitioners. 2.2.

Geomancy

Variously known as ti li "geography", feng shui, "wind and water", or kaso (in Japanese) "house divination", geomancy for a number of scholars (Schipper 1982) is not divination but rather a form of geography. Its main function is the topographical orientation of houses and/or graves in accordance with the natural features of a locality in order to benefit from the flow of ch Ί said to be borne by wind and by water.3 Over time the Chinese have developed a variety of schools which can be grouped into two main trends, "forms and configurations", based on the intuitive understanding of the natural landscape, and "directions and positions", based on calculations and measurements. The latter trend which was common to the schools adopted in Japan uses intruments like a geomantic ruler and compass (luopan) containing a south-pointing magnetic needle and in as many as twenty-six concentric circles, corresponding entities such as planets, trigrams, stems and branches, stars indicating the degree to be obtained in the mandarinate, colours, etc. (Morgan 1981: 161-172). Once a correlation between misfortune (negative influence or cessation of positive influence) and "siting" had been established it was inevitable that the geomancer, who had the power of determining the cause of the misfortune and of establishing positive or negative influences for the future, would also be a diviner. Geomancy was moreover used agonistically. A diviner may have decided that another family had diverted (deliberately or unwittingly) the beneficent ch 7 of his client's site and may have retaliated for instance by "deflecting" bad luck towards the former through mirrors. At earlier periods

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the tombs of one's enemies ancestors were frequently destroyed for this reason. "Tomb divination (bosO) is currently recommended by Japanese religious healers or diviners (Sugiura 1980: 2 5 3 - 2 8 1 ; 1981: 2 0 0 - 2 1 0 ) but, in contrast to methods for house divination, astrology or traditional geomancy they are neglected. As in popular Chinese practice (Morgan 1981: 170) the physical comfort of the ancestors (exposure of a grave to the sun, hierarchical placing of urns in tomb) are considered more important by family members than abstract and technical factors such as orientation.

3. Relative and absolute prohibitions in Japanese house divination According to the short autobiography on the cover, the author of the geomantic manual The Good and Bad Luck of House Divination (Kasö no kikkyö), (1981), Seizan Matsuno, is an architectural consultant 4 for department stores and housing estates. He also appears frequently in television programmes such as "House Divination Corner" and is the president of the "Japan House Divination Architects Association". He is obviously a modern geomancer and his methods, as explained in the manual, have been streamlined to fit the busy life of an equally modern reader. Moreover the latter is not expected to have any previous knowledge of geomancy or astrology, and these techniques are described from scratch. The year, month, day and hour of the reader's birth determine his or her astrological signs. The entire house therefore or certain rooms, should face certain auspicious directions, or at least face away from inauspicious directions, determined in accordance with astrological criteria. In brief, Matsuno advises on the following : How to build the entire house in relation to the small plots of land bought by Japanese house-holders, or how to orient oneself when one lives in a multistoried apartment building ; where to build certain elements, even the most untraditional (garage, balcony, etc.). Where certain rooms or built-in features of the Japanese house should be placed and how to lay out one's garden. Where the centre of a house or a room is to be found. The particular dangers caused by inauspicious directions (e.g. the north-east or "demon gate"). (The above are mixed with lists of absolute prohibitions, irrespective of astrological sign or of inauspicious direction).

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The "five taboos" (English loan-word)5 of house divination (shape of house, the lavatory, bathtub (sic), kitchen hearth, and entrance). Matsuno instructs his readers to check whether the locality had once been a graveyard, execution ground, the site of a Buddhist temple, a Shinto shrine, or of sacred images (dösöjin, Jizö, etc.), and includes sensational revelations about the macabre past of several choice realestate sites in Tokyo.

Another list of forbidden directions is based on the household head's professional activity. Under "company employee", for example, unsurprisingly placed at the top of the table, those in managerial positions are told to avoid the south-east or the east and farther down, among the self-employed, tea masters are enjoined to prefer northern orientations. Other relative rules or warnings: an eastern orientation of the house, for example, will probably harm the eldest son or will prevent the birth of male children, the north-western orientation of the hearth is dangerous for housewives, etc. There are also directions which become unlucky at certain ages, calculated in accordance with birth date in the sexagenary cycle (cf. Frank 1958: 112 for Heian examples). Matsuno's manual shares several features of the almanacs still issued by Ise shrine and traditionally used by farmers to find auspicious days for various activities,6 from sowing or transplanting rice to funerals or marriages. The prescriptions in some almanacs are detailed enough to account for most days of the year and are of ancient origin. As described in great detail by Bernard Frank (1958), starting from the eigth century in Japan the prohibition of directions was regulated by the yin yang Bureau and crossing (in both senses) the inauspicious stars of each day or hour was avoided by taking a circuitous route on journeys or outings or simply by staying at home. Moreover, since the Heian period these prohibitions were superimposed on another group of non-astrological taboos such as "violating the earth by digging a building, marrying, cleaning the stove, etc.". The last table in Matsuno's manual is directly derived, if in simplified form, from these prohibitions. On each day or month of the year certain directions are auspicious or dangerous for all irrespective of birth date. If we look at these prohibitions as a whole the impossibility of respecting them all is made obvious. A room that is placed in an auspicious direction for one family membrer will almost inevitably harm another because their astrological signs prescribe different orientations. In China, this problem is sometimes solved by considering the birth date of the household head to be preeminent in feng shui orientation (Morgan 1981). Matsuno does not underline incompatibilities but he does attempt to give each family member his or her due according to the traditional division of labour, thus the study will be ori-

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ented in an auspicious direction for the husband, the hearth for the wife, etc. An interesting example of the extremes house divination can lead to appear in the autobiography of Niwano Nikkyo (1969: 55 - 57) - the founder of one of Japan's new religions. In the 1920s his employer in Tokyo was convinced that each household object had a "right" place and could only be moved at certain times and in certain directions without incurring divine retribution. Every piece of furniture and its location, with exact measurements, was thus described and the deity's permission was asked in a written petition. Niwano himself used this method, if only for a time, and claims that it worked. Needless to say the multiplication of conflicting, literally built-in prohibitions, both absolute and relative, perpetuates the need for divination. Historically, as is shown by the gradual decline of the practice among the aristocrats, however, such complexity may be self-defeating. The second geomantic manual I have translated is much closer to the Heian period treatises described by Frank (1958) notwithstanding its misleading title: "This is the technique for improving luck" (kore wa kaiun jutsu da). The author, Aoki Taiken is a (possibly self-ordained) Buddhist priest of an esoteric sect who has built a temple for himself and his disciples. There is no mention of Buddhist causality in the book. Aoki writes that he is revealing to the public a personal interpretation of the "science of fate" (unmeigaku) derived from direct experience (in this case asectic practices) and condensed from many books. Only with the help of Bernard Frank's lucid study of astrology in almanacs, and of Carol Morgan's more recent monograph, was I able to decypher page after page of abstruse diagrams. A nomber of Aoki's terms derive from the method that has been preserved in China in the esoteric language of Taoist diviners by liu nan da li astrological school. As in manuals of the Heian period days and directions are rendered lucky or unlucky according to the movements of the so-called Nine Stars (literally One White Water Star, Two Black Earth Star, etc.), names which are confusing since these entities, as Frank explains, are not celestial bodies but astrological deities or emanations of the equally imaginary Nine Palaces (gong). A representation of the world divided into eight parts around a central "Palace" (the Palaces of the eight trigrams: Frank 1958: 175). The latter are an ordering of the sky representing the eight directions in which the deity of the Pole Star and other entities regularly move in accordance with the passage of time. As described by Matsuno in elementary terms the positions assumed by these "stars" can be auspicious or inauspicious in various degrees. Manuals, however, always devote more space to the inauspicious. Aoki recommends

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astrological calculations at all times, to be carried out according to one's "Original Star of Destiny" and "Monthly Star of Destiny", both of which are determined by one's birth date with in the sexagenary cycle. Before major undertakings ("marriage or building a house") one should trace conjunctions of the Nine Stars in respect to the year and the month, whereas for less important activities ("a short trip") only monthly conjunctions are necessary and for everyday occupations ("leaving the house, dating a girl") only daily and hourly conjunctions are prescribed. The movements of the Nine Stars, which follow a zig-zag pattern derived from the "magic squares" composed by nine numbers recorded in the Book of Lo (Lo shu) correspond to the nine Palaces already mentioned (Frank 1958: 176-178) and are represented by eight-sided diagrams, a simplified version of the geomantic compass. As shown in Table II, the directions are reversed in respect to our compass card. The centre of the octagon to the right corresponds to the Central Palace, which contains the Five Yellow Earth Star in the conjunction represented, then, in the first band the twelve branches, and in the second band the Nine Stars and the eight trigrams. To complicate this synthetic representation of heaven and earth still further, the numbers included in each Star's name are those of the "magic square", and their sum, vertically, horizontally and diagonally is the same (Granet 1950: 177-208). Aoki's manual ends with a section on the astrological compatibility of future marriage partners. Each of the auspicious combinations he lists is followed by a brief character sketch, the probability of marriage and its type (love match or arranged marriage). An example: "the woman who will become your wife will be among the best in her school, she likes flashy things, fun and gamgling. She carries herself gracefully and bears a tiny shadow in her heart, a slightly worrying but charming (English loan-word) woman" (1981: 186-267). Another way of predicting marriage compatibility is "name judgement" (seimei handan), i.e. divination based on the number of strokes or other characteristics if the ideographs forming the fiances'names. This task is generally allotted to a professional diviner. Seimei handan is often resorted to, (for example, by sixty-eight per cent of the inhabitants of an industrial area studied by Lewis 1986).

4. A consultation with a shamaness: Multiple etiologies According to written sources Japanese geomancy was a formalized, mathematically (or numerologically) oriented discipline from the earliest times.

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Consultations with religious specialists, however show that at least fragmentary notions of "intuitive" geomancy continue to exist at the popular level and are combined with direct trance revelations. A Tokyo healer, Ozumi Itsuko claims to cure her clients by transferring "living ch Ί" (seiki) to their bodies from the "lines of energy which one perceives flowing in a given area or even in the plan of a house or country" (Ozumi 1987: 60). Consultations with religious healers are interesting examples of the Japanese tendency (Horton seems to be the norm in many other societies) to provide a client or successive clients with different etiologies regardless of the practitioner's special technique. Mrs. Mori, a shamaness in her sixties, was consulted by a young couple. The husband complained of mysterious pains in his legs. "Where do you live ?" the healer asked. "Near Takadanobaba (a section of Tokyo). Very near it ? To the east ? Once there was a well over there. You are bothered by the Well-God. You live on the second floor, don't you ? You are sick, you quarrel a lot. Ah, it's the man who starts it. It is really stupid to have rows with such a pretty little wife". The telephone rang. After a short conversation, the shamaness immediately resumed her trance where she left off. "I can see six of your husband's past lives. He suffers, kaminarisama (thunder god) ! Wake up early in the morning..., make offerings to the Well-God... Who bought the house, the man or the woman ?... My last piece of advice is: leave that house, it is badly oriented, too narrow" !

It is highly probable that the shamaness is trying to find whether the husband's physical problem, which was explicity stated, was the main reason for the consultation. Mrs. Mori is aware that most of her clients have already been unsuccessfully tested by biomedicine so their problems are all the more susceptible to alternative explanations. Mrs. Mori suspected marital problems, in part because both husband and wife were present. The reactions she observed in the wife confirmed this diagnosis. Different levels of interpretation surfaced in her trance revelations. First external geomantic factors were evoked: inauspicious direction, the possible dangers of being on the second floor (also mentioned by Matsuno) and the incorrect, i. e. long and narrow shape of the house. These baleful aspects were associated with disturbing the Well-God, an ancient absolute prohibition. Then, with a sudden shift to Buddhist causality, the husband's past lives were reviewed to see whether his illness was due to karma. Finally, reverting from the spiritual to the economic aspects of the house, which in Japanese also means lineage, she tried to find other causes of the husband's illness in marital discord, hinting at lack of living space and at money problems. It is obvious however that there is no deliberate passage from the irrelevant, according to the

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Western point of view, observation of topographical features to more "real" psychological or economic causes. The couple will discuss all these interpretations and eventually make their own choice.

5. Body divination Known as hsiang pien in China and as ninsö and teso in Japan (respectively "human" and "hand divination"), the detailed observation of a person's body to predict his or her future is an ancient form of divination. Lessa (1968) has written the only Western language study of this science. 7 In comparison with astrology, for example, physiognomy has been neglected because historians of science have not considered it proto-scientific, i.e. as contributing to real science as astrology did to astronomy. Although body divination (the character hsiang also means examination) seems to have been used to some extent for diagnosis, it has been largely discarded by practitioners of Chinese medicine, particularly those combining biomedical training with East Asian techniques. In a statistical breakdown of the responses collected in several encyclopaedic treatises, Lessa has shown that body divination was used primarily to foretell a person's future position in the mandarinate, wealth or poverty in later years and lifespan. Strangely enough, illness, one of the most frequent problems submitted to religious specialists, was mentioned only once. Lessa suggests that its presence may be implied by a prediction of early death or health by the foretelling of relative longevity. The standardization of divinatory responses is not necessarily a consequence of the technique employed, be it yes/no alternatives, coded commentaries (/ Ching), or open divination. Studies of requests freely made to deities in Japanese shrines or temples reveal similar restrictions in variety. The worshipper presents a e-ma (a "picture of a horse") printed on wood and completed by the supplicant's inscription. General formulae such as Kanai ansei ("peace in the house") may cover a variety of problems or such requests may be limited by a deity's "specialization". Requests also reflect contemporary social problems such as the difficulty of university entrance examinations which assure the successful candicate a place in Japan's modern mandarinate: high level company employment. Known in Europe as the doctrine of signatures, body divination is perhaps the most striking example of a form of classification which maintained that the nature of an entity is revealed to the specialist by an examination of its

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external form (Lessa 1968: 135-36). This principle was widely applied by the Chinese (The four volume pharmacopaeia, Pen t sao Kang mu, Picone 1981) but differed from the Western equivalent because Christian doctrines denied the possibility of metamorphosis which would conflict with God's initial act of creation. Taoism and Buddhism, on the contrary, emphasized the constant changes undergone by all entities. In this form of divination the entire body or only the face or the palm, or the relative proportions of bodily parts are considered (for example a small face and a large rounded body are auspicious, "a big downward belly is a sign of worldwide fame" (Lessa 1968: 63). Harmony in anatomical proportions is associated with the ideal of harmony in social conduct. Some schools compared the body, or face, or single features to animals (e. g. tiger eyebrows) or to objects (e.g. wrecked boat) (Lessa 1968: 62, 72). In this case, empirical observation is subordinated to the metaphysical symmetry of Chinese zoological classifications (Picone 1981), since dragons, phoenixes and other imaginary animals are very common in descriptions of auspicious morphology. There are also frequent references to other forms of classification (e. g. divination by means of the five colours, Hou 1979a). The face, in particular, may be described with reference to the five sacred mountains, the five sense organs, etc. Five phases theory is also used and certain people are said to be pure types of one phase, e.g. metal: "a man with a square straight and whitish appearance, whose bones are not small and who is not fleshy is said to be like metal. As metal is strong and sturdy, and can stand refinement, it represents righteousness", most however are combinations of several types (Lessa 1968: 38). The relative position of the elements observed is very important. Thus the face is divided into a number of sections referring to other classifications (e.g. heaven/forehead, man/area around the nose, earth/chin) or into as many as one hundred parts, each of which gave information concerning a few years of one's lifespan (Lessa 1968: 43, 52). Marks and lines were also carefully observed, e. g. the positions of moles on the face or body. Configurations of lines are sometimes said to correspond to an ideogram but a character may reveal something quite different from its usual profane meaning to the diviner (de Groot 1890). The characters were also used in morphological classification e.g. a mouth shaped like the character four. The responses of physiognomists are often a "reading" of a person's character or abilities which, in a Confucian-based morality, was thought to determine his future status. A number of responses however combined

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several types of causality: morphological determination, temperament, or social factors. For example, "a short, flat or crooked middle section of the face is a sign of bankruptcy in middle age, or of stupidity, or of lack of help from one's wife or brothers" (Lessa 1968: 43). The prior determination of one's fate is clearly postulated by some treatises since princes were thought to have thirty-eight teeth, ministers thirty-six, courtiers thirty-four, etc. In practice, however, the Chinese had recourse to a wide range of concepts of determinism, from Buddhist karmic causation to the idea that one's lifespan, luck, health, sperm, etc., were limited, even though certain Taoist techniques were said to replenish vitality. The intermittently skeptical scholar Wang Chung (first century A. D.) wrote a chapter on physiognomy in the Lun heng in which, among other things, he attempted to harmonize potentially conflicting forms of causality: When a man's face reveals a short lifespan, he always marries a woman whose fate is to become a widow in her youth. And when a woman of this sort marries, she also meets a husband who will die prematurely. It is said that, when a man or a woman die prematurely, the husband harmed his wife, or the wife her husband. It is not that they harm each other, but their fates are so constituted in themselves. (Leslie 1974: 186)

There are many references to physionomy in Japanese literature which reveal the variety of uses of this type of knowledge. In the historical chronicle Okagami, for example, divination is used straightforwardly to emphasize, by correct prognostication, the truth of an event. In the Tale of Genji the reading of a physiognomist contributes to the Emperor's decision regarding his son's future (Tubielewicz 1980: 150) and therefore the plot of the novel. In the thirteenth century, Buddhist anthology Shasekishu. the ambiguities of somatic determinism are humorously revealed in the story of a monk (7: 23) who sells his auspiciously thick earlobes to another, thereupon they consult a physiognomist who first foretells bad luck to the earbuyer then, having been told of the transaction, reads the earseller's lobes as if they belonged to their new proprietor. The monk, the tale ends, had sold his chance of prosperity and remained poor all his life. Finally in the nineteenth century Kabuki play, the Yotsuya Kaidan, an acupuncturist "reads" bad luck in the palm of the heroine, just before attempting to ruin her according to his plan. The author obviously intends the irony of this forecast to be apparent and to highlight the heroine's naivete. Physiognomists still gather at the present day in the compounds on temples and shrines, dressed in Chinese-style robes, and displaying outlines or charts of the face and the palm. The one I consulted would not explain his

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methods or allow me to listen to consultations. 8 He told me only that I could achieve what I wished but that "the person you thought will help you in this endeavour is secretly against you, whereas someone you feel to be your enemy will be of service". This response is a good example of the professional ambiguity of diviners and seems designed to shift the consultant's interest from ends to means, reaffirming a possible Japanese preference for causality based on interpersonal relations. As in astrological divination, Western and modern forms compete with ancient Chinese techniques and "computerized" Western palmistry is now practiced in Tokyo shopping areas. The procedure is automatic and, in a sense, objective. One presses one's palm on a sort of photocopying screen and the machine, which is supposed to match a person's configuration of lines with those in its "memory" delivers a written response complete with palm-print. As in certain religious activities, where procedure is more important than intention, practitioners often say that technology increases the efficacy or expands the range of action of a pre-modern rite or technique (e. g. recorded sutra recitations switched on in front of ancestral graves). The Japanese have also invented a new form of "body divination" by which character, marriage and sexual compatibility, work specialization, etc. are "diagnosed" according to one's blood group, selected from a limited number of the blood groups discovered by modern biologists (Nomi 1983).

6. Conclusion Divination and religious causality in general are still often implicitly connected with the irrational. Yet many of the factors involved in deciding to see a diviner or a healer are rational at least in an instrumental sense: he or she may live nearby or be linked to a family by a network of obligations (giri)\ consultations are generally cheaper and results promised in a shorter time than the sometimes useless prescriptions of doctors or psychiatrists. Moreover, the Japanese are very aware of the negative effects of medical therapy (iatrogenic diseases such as SMON, etc.). Finally, divination along with Chinese medicine is part of the "autochtonous" knowledge sporadically referred to by certain religious sects or by individual scientists in the attempt to define a higher or "oriental science", more spiritual than its Western counterpart. There is no fixed itinerary in the resolution of misfortune. A person may decide to "open" his or her luck by buying one of the popular religious

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manuals which generally "sell" a single cause of misfortune (Picone 1986); examples of calamity being followed by appropriate ritual remedies, and by the author's address for the readers who want expert help. This is a choice a priori. Many people however consult diviners directly and may be offered a choice of etiologies, often in sequence, deriving from information given to the diviner at various moments of the process. If we think of actual divination sequences as texts, perhaps the closest analogy is the most modern form of story: post-industrial fairy-tales based on computer games in which a "reader" is given a narrative outline and in increasingly diversifying sequences choses for example a) whether to escape from the dungeon or fight the dragon which leads to a 1 ) fight with guards of a 2 ) grab the treasure, etc. A private consultation with a diviner is in fact very rarely an open request for information and almost always originates in the desire to solve specific, but not necessarily uncommon problems. The statistics collected by Lewis (1986) show that people from twenty to thirty-four consult astrologers or body diviners much more frequently than their elders. This is most probably a consequence of the major decisions (marriage, employment, etc.) they must make during these years. Moreover, since the divorce rate is very low and, for the moment changing jobs is frowned on, these decisions are specially binding. Divination, however, may also cause problems, for example by revealing unwitting transgressions or unsuspected incompatibilities. Further consultations may reduce or solve these problems; if astrological signs are inalterable seimei handan allows people to change the characters of their names. Carol Morgan (1981: 247) claims that the divinatory systems illustrated in Chinese almanacs had no significant effect on people's lives, not even by regulating agricultural activities, and cites Eberhard who reaches the same conclusions in regard to the actual effect of diagnosed astrological compatibility on marriage. These judgements seem to me to be peremptory. We may estimate the number of copies sold by popular religious manuals but it is impossible to discover exactly when and why people but them or whether they buy give lasting satisfaction to their readers.9 One of the most important differences between "traditional" and modern societies is the extent of the range of phenomena each attibutes to chance. We sometimes imagine that societies which accept (or once accepted) wider forms of causality are simpler, or that their members are particularly in need of psychological reassurance, as Lessa still suggests and that they are unaware of the paradoxes implied by knowledge of the future. As we have seen this is not the case. Paradox is particularly apparent when divination is "objectified" by random devices, since to act on information received is to subvert chance, the very factor which legitimates the knowl-

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edge obtained. Much has been written about the difference between "Western" causality, said with considerable simplification to have been until recently strictly Aristotelian, and the Chinese concept of "resonance" between entities of similar nature or of correspondences between social behaviour and natural phenomena which (see Le Blanc, this volume) is not a serial connection of cause and effect. Other theories, however, were current among the literati (Leslie 1974; Unschuld 1985) and to a greater degree, among the people. Buddhism, for example, which stresses a sequential moral causality is relatively neglected in studies of Chinese science. In Japan, Buddhist influence was deeper and longer-lasting and particularly affected popular ideas of causality. Other ideas are derived from autochtonous (Shinto) ideas such as the transgression of prohibitions. Astrological divination introduced still other concepts, including relative or contextual prohibitions. Manuals, particularly almanacs are, of course, the most striking example of relativization of prohibitions and of divinatory truth, since dozens of methods (and necessarily, of outcomes) are presented in the same volume. As I suggested at the beginning of this article, divination is not particularly useful as a general category. Geomancy, for example, may be considered a scientific, a religious or even aesthetic (J. Needham 1954, Vol. 2) activity, a means of linking the living and the dead, or a technique for discovering the causes of misfortune, distributing resources or harming enemies. It is said to influence the future but not to foretell it. Body divination, in comparison, is relatively limited in its applications, it foretells the future and/or reads the character traits which determine it, or can become a diagnostic aid in discovering hidden bodily states. Both however give access to a series of virtually inexaustible correspondences among domains, including other divinatory methods. Evans-Pritchard candidly confessed that he used divination in the field "as a matter of practical courtesy, and found it as useful a device as any for managing mundane affairs" (1937: 269 - 70). Recently American "reflexive" anthropology (cf. Clifford - Marcus 1986) has stressed the importance of the anthropologist's attitude in the field. I feel justified therefore in ending with the following anecdote: towards the end of my first period of fieldwork in Japan I happened to spend an hour waiting for a professor in his large library. Surrounded by seemingly endless vertical lines of intelligible but still aligned characters, my eyes focused with relief on the only European books, a ten-volume Latin edition of the works of Leibniz. On impulse I decided to use a classical Western method of divination: the sortes vergilianae. Blindly opening a volume at random I rippled the pages; my finger stopped on the phrase "Do not rely on divination".

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Notes 1. By "Science", I mean a branch of knowledge based on observation. But, as Sivin (1982: 48) explains, the Chinese had no single concept of sciences, only words referring to "everything that people could learn through study, whether of nature or of human affairs (hsieh), or even more broadly to any pattern that could be apprehended through any form of cognition (li and too)", terms which also had religious or ethical aspects. Divination was an applied or technical form of sciences like geography, anatomy or astronomy used in combinations which appear unfamiliar to us and for ends foretelling the future which we still seek (but through other means, economic forecasts, meteorology, seismography or "futurology"). I have described divination in the present tense, at the cost of subsuming historical developments into an atemporal state of the art, mainly for reasons of space. In any case the chronological sequence of development in China, which is not always fully clarified by specialists, has been altered in Japan where methods obsolete or archaic on the continent were still in use. 2. Gernet (in Vernant 1974) remarks that the Chinese did not have a tragic view of the human condition such as that of the Greeks. 3. The etiological aspects of divinatory methods are pervasive and detailed, as shown, for example, by Granet's (1950: 370-88, or Schipper 1982) examples of correspondences between the human body (microcosm) and heaven and earth (macrocosm). Geomantic points, moreover, are compared in many texts to those used by acupuncturists, since both are areas where ch 'i may be tapped, or correct orientation is compared (already in the Burial Book) to medicine which heals the body. 4. Professional architects, such as Shinohara Kazuo in the seventies have in fact used geomancy in orienting building plans and in harmonizing volumes. 5. Those "taboos" refer to cults devoted to various deities such as the "God of the Toilet", a dangerous deity still said by a few people in the Ryukyu islands today to reach out a hand from the septic ditch and draw taboo breakers down. 6. One of the most common of the divinatory manuals sold in Japan at the present day is the Takashima jingükan. The eponymous nineteenth century founder of this lineage of diviners discovered the I Ching by chance when he was in jail (Chamberlain 1971) and, when free made a fortune (in the fullest sense of the word) with his books by adding his personal reflexions to earlier interpretations of this classic text. 7. Lessa's main sources are the Shen Hsiang Ch 'uan pien, (Sung dynasty) compiled by Ch'en T'uan, the Ku Ch 'in T'u Shu Ch 'eng, compiled by Meng-lei (Ch'ing dynasty), and the Shen Hsiang Hui Pien, compiled by Kao Wei-ching, published in 1843. 8. Religious healers in Japan were generally willing to describe their techniques in detail and sometimes allowed me to assist at consultations. But diviners, particularly those whose methods are purportedly objective and not based on charisma, are naturally afraid that their esoteric knowledge can be stolen. Transmission should take place only between master and disciple and only after years of training.

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9. The dozens of religious manuals I have consulted sell an average of 30000 copies but some best-sellers reach 100000. Of course some readers may buy several books, and experiment with different methods, or a single book may be used by an entire family and lent to friends. The distinction between the single causality advocated by the manuals and the multiple etiologies proposed during consultations is in part artificial since a number of the authors have written several books, each devoted to a particular technique (Picone 1986). Aoki, for example, has also published A Map of the Afterlife (Shigo no chizu) and The Secret Technique of Magical Murder (Mazatsu no hijutsu). Even if we grant that statistical estimates are reliable, different methods of gathering data and also geographical differences provide widely variant percentages of people said to rely on religious causality. For example, in northern Japan (Aomori) the psychiatrist Nishimura Koh found that eighty per cent of her patients had consulted shamanic healers.

References Ahern, E. Martin 1980 Chinese ritual and politic. Cambridge: University Press. Aoki, Taizen 1981 Kore we kaiunjutsu da. [This is the technique for improving luck], Tokyo: Kokusai seihosha. Chamberlain, Basil Hall [1971] [,Japanese things. Tokyo: Ch. Tuttle.] Clifford, James - Marcus, George 1986 Writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, de Groot, J. J. M. 1890 "On Chinese divination by dissecting written characters", T'oung Pao. Evans-Pritchard, E. 1937 Witchcraft, oracles and magic among Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frank, Bernard 1958 Kata imi et kata tagae, Etude des interdits de direction ά l'0poque de Heian. Tokyo: Bulletin de la Maison Franco-Japonaise. Gernet, Jacques 1974 Petits ecarts et grands ecarts, in Vernant 1974 Ginzburg, Carlo 1979 "Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziario", in Crisi Delia Ragione, A. Gargani (ed). Turin: Einaudi.

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Gorai, Shigeru et al 1979 Nihon no minzoku shukyö kozö, Vol. 4 (The structure of Japanese popular religion). Tokyo: Kobundo. Granet, Marcel 1950 Lapensee chinoise. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Hou, Ching-Yang 1979a "The Chinese belief in baleful stars", Facets of taoism, Α. Seidel Η. Welch (eds.). New Haven: Yale University Press. 1979b "Physiognomonie d'apres le teint sous la dynastie des T'ang", Contribution aux etudes sur Touen Houang. Paris: Droz. Leslie, Daniel 1974 "Les theories de Wang Tch'ong sur la causalite", Melanges de Sinologie offerts ä P. Demieville, Bibliotheque de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Vol. 20, para. II. Lessa, William 1968 Chinese body divination. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lewis, David 1986 Japanese fortune telling. Unpublished paper presented at BAJS conference. Lock, Margaret 1980 East Asian Medicine in Contemporary Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Matsuno, Seizan 1981 Kasö no kikkyö (The good and bad luck of house divination). Tokyo: Manbow Books. Miyake, Hitoshi 1980 Seikatsu no naka no shükyö. Tokyo: NHK Books. Miyazaki, Ichisada 1966 "Le developpement de Γ idee de divination en Chine", in Melanges de Sinologie, op-cit. pt. I. Morgan, Caril 1981 Le tableau du boeuf duprintemps. Memoires de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Vol. XIV. Nakayama, Shigeru 1969 A history of Japanese astronomy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Needham, Joseph 1954 Science and civilisation in China, Vol. 1 & 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Needham, Rodney 1975 "Polythetic classification", Man, 10: 349 - 369.

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Nihonshakai minzokugaku 1952 Tokyo: Nihonshakai minzoku jiten kyokai, (ed.) (Folklore dictionary of Japanese society), entry Uranai. Nomi, Toshitaka 1983 Ketsuekigata omoshiro dokuhon (Manual of interesting bloodtypes). Tokyo: Bunka Suzahu shippen. Ozumi, Itsuko 1987 The shamanic healer. London: Bailen. Picone, Mary 1981 "Metamorphosis and necessary monsters", La Ricerca Folklorica 4. 1986 "Buddhist popular manuals and the contemporary. Commercialisation of religion in Japan", in J. Hendry - J. Webber (eds.) Interpreting Japanese society, (Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Occasional Papers, 5. Rotermund, Hartmut (ed.) 1987 Religions, croyances et traditions populaires du Japon, Vol. I. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Schipper, Kristopher 1982 Le corps taoiste. Paris: Fayard. Sivin, Nathan 1982 "Why the scientific revolution did not take place in China 1 or didn't it ?", Chinese Science, 5. Sugiura, Kosho 1980 Mizukorei Kuyö (Memorial services for Mizuko spirits). Tokyo: Miki shobo. Tubielewicz, Jolanta 1980 Superstitions, magic and mantic practices in the Heian period. Warsaw: University of Warsaw Wyoad nictwa. Unschuld, Paul 1985 Medicine in China, a history of ideas. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vernant, Jean-Pierre et al. 1974 Divination et rationalite. Paris: Seuil.

The truths of interpretations: Envy, possession and recovery in Ladakh Patrick

Kaplanian

What sort of relationship exists between indigenous interpretations and the interpretations of Western ethnologists? This is a vast question that requires one major clarification before embarking upon its response. That is, we must distinguish between the facts which exist outside of a native's interpretation and the facts which are constituted by the interpretation itself. The following examples should serve to clarify this issue.

1. Two love stories 1.1. Case 1 The Ladakhis 1 tell that their King Jamyang Namgyal (spelled jam-dbangs mam rgyal) was defeated by the makspon (dmag-dpon) of Khapalu at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The King was taken prisoner and had as his jailer the makspon's own daughter. They fell in love with each other and the girl soon found herself pregnant. One day, the makspon had a dream where he saw his daughter giving birth to a lion. Full of suspicion, he had her examined, and, realizing the extent of the damage to his daughter, his heart was moved. Then he set the King free, gave him his daughter and allowed them go away together. This story has every aspect of a myth in that it is not plausible (implausibility being a common, but not essential feature of myth). The fact of its implausibility is, however, less important to our analysis than the way in which it is treated as such by the ethnologist. The historian can always set forth his own "counter-truth" which pretends to refer back to reality. The above events are historical. They indeed occurred in Ladakh in the beginning of the seventeenth century, regardless of how the Ladakhis relate them. The historian, basing his understanding on documents

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other than those handed down by word of mouth, can demonstrate what personal interest the makspon had in being magnanimous (for instance political alliance with the defeated but unsubdued country, transfer of land, concessions to Islam, peace treaty permitting to look towards new horizons, etc.) and may prefer to base his research on epigraphical or archeological evidence. The work of the historian is based on objective reality, that is to say, on facts which escape individuals. But a mythical story is not, for all that, uninteresting. It provides a subject of study for the ethnologist and refers to mental structures, to the Ladakhi's conception of their past and present. The historian tending to be interested in popular accounts from a heuristic point of view (they can give an indication of reality, without proving anything, not even King Jamyang Namgyal's existence) will refer to more tangible elements: genuine texts, decrees, edicts, letters, inscriptions, testimonies. 1.2. Case 2 The Ladakhis believe that the "spirits" (semfsj)2 of some envious people (which they call gongpo, fem. gongmo, spelled gong-po, gong-mo) can possess the bodies of those people they envy. For instance, Tsewang tells that his wife Dolma was once possessed by his own brother. When a person is possessed, he or she is taken hold of by various means and acts as the mouthpiece of the possessor. Tsewang's brother, while inhabiting Dolma's body, voiced his desire for her. Since then, she has never again been possessed. Like the historian, the psychoanalyst can put forth his own interpretation: that Dolma herself is speaking and that it is Dolma who feels the desire for her brother-in-law. This illustrates another point of view and the Western psychoanalyst may believe no more in gongpo than the historian does in Jamayang Namgyal's beautiful love story. There is a great difference between case 1 and case 2. In case 1, objective historical events did take place independently of the way they are related. As for Dolma's story, it can only take place in a country where one believes in gongpo (although there are cases of hysteria in the West where the patient assumes the voice and gestures of another). In other words, in the case of Dolma, the facts are inseparable from the interpretation given to them by the natives. Struck with the same desire, Dolma would have probably reacted differently in the West via conversion hysteria, phobia, obsessional neurosis or even paranoia.

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But does she feel the same desire? Is the psychoanalyst's counter-interpretation grounded? If Dolma's case is no more than conversion hysteria of a paroxysmal type, the "fit" will have proved ineffectual and Dolma will relapse one way or another. There is no tracing back the associative sequence, nor any abreaction, but on the contrary, an even stronger feeling of being persecuted may occur due to the intervention of the social surroundings, possibly with the approval of some authorities such as the scholar, the lama, the astrologer, or even a deity uttering revelations through a professional oracle, the luyer, spelled lus-gyar (see note 4). Thus, if we are to maintain this assumption of inversion (it is Dolma herself who is in love with her brother-in-law), then recovery as the result of a trance would remain incomprensible from a psychoanalytic point of view. At the very most we can speak of a hallucinatory satisfaction of the desire, for the trance is equivalent to a dream. Yet a hallucinatory fulfillment has never brought about recovery. However, this story occurred only once (although it may occur again but not indefinitely). It is true that the trance induces a manipulation on the part of the social circle which takes hold of the possessor through Dolma's body and makes it speak: "who are you?", "I am so and so", "what do you want?", "I am in love with Dolma". This procedure "objectifies" the presence of the possessor and reinforces it's existence... On the one hand, the brother-in law is actually in Dolma's body. On the other hand, everything occurs as though Dolma, projecting her desire on another person, were indeed meeting this other person who expresses his desire for her and thereby confirms what she has said. The fact remains that from a psychoanalytical viewpoint this objectification is insufficient. Dolma would not recover without going back to the repressed representation, that is to say to the acknowledgement of her desire for her brother-in-law. In the first case, the historian can propose a transcultural interpretive framework based on the assumption that interpretations lie in facts or inexplanatory principles which are assumed to be universal. The ethnologist may likewise make local interpretations - taking, for example, King Jamyang Namgyal's legend as a subject of study. In the second case, the psychoanalyst cannot follow the same process as the historian, whereas the ethnologist can analyse the gongmo manifestations by studying the local interpretations as such - that is to say exactly the way he analyses myths. In both cases, the historian and the psychoanalyst are in radically different positions. As for the ethnologist, he is in a similar position although not identical, due to the fact that in the Jamyang Namgyal legend, he has to deal with one object only: that being the story itself. In the case of

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gongmo, he must deal with two elements. First, he must examine the belief in gongmo, which constitutes an important element of the background and framework of interpretation in Ladakhi culture; and second, he must explore concrete instances such as Dolma's, which must be analyzed while taking into account that Dolma believes in gongmo. In principle, the ethnologist tries to throw light on the meaning of a myth through the knowledge of the culture itself, but his interpretation is not necessarily the same as the popular interpretation. It can thus lead to another interpretation, different from that of the historian; that is, a fraction of the socalled objective reality. As for the psychoanalyst, he has a pre-theory for which he seeks confirmation, just like the Ladakhis when they speak about gongmo. Without making allowance for this belief in gongmo, one runs the risk of falling again into a "slapdash psychoanalysis", an artificial adjustment of it's fundamental concepts. However, as we have just seen although there is no satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon of gongmo, it does have a certain therapeutic effectiveness. How can an interpretation external to a culture account for the therapeutic effectiveness of certain beliefs or rituals founded on an interpretation internal to this same culture? This is the question being put to the ethnologist. The provisional conclusion is that psychoanalysis has not the same status with regard to a possessed Ladakhi woman than history does with regard to a Ladakhi myth. Thus psychoanalysis refers back to a particular context, that being the "modern Judeo-Christian" West, and therefore lacks authority in providing explanation for the phenomenon of gongmo. Ellen Corin has said: The analyst and the person analysed are two entities which have their roots in a very particular culture. This culture consists of the knowledge, points of reference, symbols and values through which the members of a society interpret their experience and construct a world view which is appropriate to them. From the time that these elements are integrated into a world view, this vision takes on the status of "reality". It implies certain particular conceptions of man, his foundations and his relationship to others. From this position of culture and the postulates which follow, we formulate the systems of knowledge in each society; it seems implausible that the project of analysis could be detached from this culturally derived discourse on the meaning of man and the world. Thus, how can we ignore the fact that the particular way in which we view history, or the special importance accorded to autonomy in the development of a person are characteristics of a culture-context which is both Judeo-Christian and modern? (1985: 54)

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In other words, cases should be studied while considering both the therapeutic systems and the systems of belief of a given culture. An ethnologist attracted by the West should be equally interested in neurotics as in psychoanalysis. The point we are left with is that psychoanalysis, connected as it is with a given culture in a given period, cannot provide us with an appropriate explanatory framework for the understanding of the gongmo phenomenon. We must then turn to another explanation. Mine is as follows: We must introduce the "social dimension" of recovery, for it is obvious that it is not pure coincidence that the given case involves a brother-in-law. This might not suprise a Western reader, as instances where a woman is in love with her brother-in-law are frequent, but we must beware of importing such Western standards to other societies. Some, though not all Ladakhi people, practice adelphic polyandry. In this context, Dolma's case appears in a very different light, for the social infrastructure brings everything back to its place: the brother-in-law is not seen by family and friends as a possible second husband. The problem is that of familial and/or social identity: that of Dolma's status. In order to demonstrate what I have up until now stated peremptorily, I shall first describe the gongmo inmore detail, then I shall analyse three specific examples. 2. The Gongmo To begin with, I will describe a few ethnographical elements about the gongmo (masc. gongpo. As it concerns almost exclusively women, I will use the feminine gongmo). They are not necessarily persons whose "soul" (in the Western acceptance of the term) leaves the body in order to inhabit the body of someone else. During the possession, the possessor might well be unconscious, but very often he goes about with his business. He just thinks of the victim of whom he is jealous, and it is this very thought ( s e m f s j , spelled sems, word which also translates as "spirit" or "soul") which inhabits simultaneously the victim's body. Envy is the main motive, which should not be suprising in traditional societies where it is considered bad form to attract attention by conspicuous prosperity. Many possessed individuals complain of being victims of envious rivals, just because they have been successful. One such woman complained of having been possessed, because she had - as a former maid - finally succeeded in dominating the household (Kaplanian 1983); another claimed it was because she was very hard-working (Kaplanian 1981) which enabled her to be married above her class. In order for possession by a gongmo to occur, the possessor has to be wicked and foster evil thoughts. A woman's spitefulness is to be attributed to

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the presence of a demon (de, spelled 'dre) in her. More precisely, the demon which dwells in her left shoulder is more powerful than the "god" (lha) in her right shoulder. As a matter of fact, Ladakhi people believe that each individual carries a de in his left shoulder, and in the right shoulder a lha. Whenever someone appears before the god of death, singe chogyal (gsin-rje chos-rgyal) his lha puts down white stones on the scale of a balance and his de puts black stones on the other scale, this of course occurring after death. But before death, so long as the de is the strongest, the individual is wicked. This is the case with the gongmo, evil to such a degree that the individuals can, in a sense, be assimilated into a de, when the de is very powerful. This power of the gongmo's de expresses itself in a different way as well. Along with the existence of the pair lha/de in the shoulders, there is also another concept according to which the lha occupies the body and the de, the shadow. Gongmo are also currently called gyabi timak (spelled rgyab-gyi krimag, shadow of the back). When one is said to be: "kho gyabde nganpa", "the de of her back is evil", it means that "she is a gongmo". We will see an application of this conception a little further on. So, gongmo are wicked (nganpa) woman with a powerful de who harbour evil thoughts (semngan, spelled sems-ngan) towards others. Most often such thoughts are caused by envy. A gongmo has only to think with envy of someone else in order for that person (who may not even know the gongmo) to possess: this is because her thoughts ( s e m f s j ) can at once take possession of her victim. Bodies cannot move about quickly, whereas thoughts ( s e m f s j ) can move instantaneously from place to place. The spirit of the possessed is driven out of the heart and replaced by that of the possessor (zhuksk[h]an, spelled zhugs-mkhan). The possessed then speaks with the possessor's voice. There are many ways to get rid of the possessor: (1) by ignoring him, by waiting for him to get tired. (2) by holding both the victim's middle fingers and asking the possessor to state his identity and what he wants (this can be done by anyone present). Some must be dealt with gently, otherwise the possessor's sem(s) may flee without having been identified. In other instances, the victim has to be beaten up (in reality, it would be the possessor who is beaten). (3) if this fails, one can also beat the shadow of the back (gyabi timak, spelled rgyab-gyi kri-mag) which is the demon's favorite abode. (4) It is also possible to blow the smoke of a piece of cloth burned in a fire over the victim or better yet, the smoke of some object on which a rinpoche (rin-po-che, reincarnated great lama) has previously blown after reciting mantras (formulas). Most often, colza seeds (nyungskar, spelled

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yungs-dkar, white mustard) are used and this phenomenon is called dugzes (dug-rdzas). (5) Colza seeds are plant blends that give off an appalling smell when thrown into the fire and this smell is likely to reduce the possessor's resistance. (6) Finally, there is an extremely effective means which consists of asking the possessed to lick a shoe. It is well known that the sole is a redoubtable soil (tip, spelled sgrib). The aim is to poison the possessor, not the possessed, and to weaken him. It is worth noting that the second operation is the most common and the most commonly mentioned. In most cases, it is enough to force the possessor to state his identity. The victim's middle fingers are held together, one on top of the other: the middle finger is said to be the delak ('dre-lag, the demon's finger). The ring finger, frequently mentioned in Tibet, is much less mentioned in Ladakh. The middle finger is not only the finger through which the gongmo are overpowered, it is also the finger through which they get in and out. One informant stated that this middle finger leads to the heart in the middle of the body and that in order to keep the gongmo from getting in, one wears a ring around it. This presentation is naturally highly theoretical and we seldom encounter concrete cases which correspond to it exactly. The reader may realize that Dolma's case, which is rapidly described above, already proves to be uncharacteristic. Not so much because it is about possession by a man (which is rare but not nonexistant) but above all because the motives of wickedness and envy seem to be absent. Too many elements are lacking to analyse it in more detail. It is nonetheless perfectly authentic and I have chosen it because it easily lent itself to "Western-style" analysis. In order to support this demonstration, I will draw from three cases, that of Tashi, M.T. and Chorol.

3. Three cases of possession 3.1. Tashi's case It is Α., the oldest of four brothers and two sisters who tells us this story. He spontaneously specifies that the family property was divided up between four brothers and two sisters. He also specifies, just as spontaneously, that this form of property division was a change from the traditional practices "This being new at the time" (it was about ten-fifteen years ago). One of the sisters,

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having married outside of her circle, finally gave up her share of the land, which was consequently divided up among the five others. The other sister took her part with her in the context of a virilocal marriage. This system was in fact new ten-fifteen years ago and is still new today. The traditional system requires that the property remains undivided. The woman marries one, two, or even three brothers and the others may become monks or may marry uxorilocally in a family where there are only daughters (Kaplanian 1981). A. married Tashi, and according to the new rules, Tashi took her part of the family land with her. A.'s cousin (the son of his mother's brother, to be precise) married Diskit who came from another family and brought her portion of land with her into the family of A's maternal uncle. As it turned out, however, A's cousin died and Diskit found herself a widow. After that, a marriage was seriously envisaged between Diskit and one of A's younger brothers.

Α o=A

ά-Δ

0=A

Tashi

A

J

Α

Α

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ό

Figure 1

Finally, A. said, "we gave it up. We wanted to remain on good relations with the uncle's family" (that is, allies). However, with this new system, it would have been necessary for Diskit to take her part of the land with her, an act which would have been seen as self-seeking by the uncle. It is at this moment that Tashi was possessed by Diskit. This happened only twice. Then Diskit, resigned, never came back into the body of Tashi. During the trance, Diskit reproached Tashi for being responsible for the break up of her marriage with one of her brother-in-laws: "It's you who was opposed to it, it's your fault if I was not able to marry your brother-in-law". As in the case of Dolma, the interrogation (by Tashi) has to do with her social status. We are, let us not forget, in a new system of both parental relations and land inheritance. The refusal by Tashi's family to accept Diskit creates a problem for Tashi. Why is it that in two analogous situations, the response of Tashi's circle is different? Tashi's identity is at stake for she is being suddenly put in danger. In this patrilocal system, she is being menaced. Any person in a similar case to her's would be rejected by the family, where they had formerly been accepted. In Tashi's case, she suddenly questioned the family group in which she had been received as to her status. What's

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more, she summoned the claimant into her own family in order to have her expelled. In a given society where the status of a person (or of the subject, as it were) is above all defined by the rules and laws of society, the place of this person, i.e. his or her social and parental status within his or her family, stands for their identity. But the change of rules concerning family bonds and inheritance create new problems. In Tashi's case, she finds herself confronted with patterns which are not necessarily those instilled into her through her own education. Hence the necessity for a recentering. Does this mean that the dimension of the individual itself is nonexistant? Surely not. The exclusion of Diskit confers upon Tashi a certain superiority while she reintegrates the social-parental fabric. She has been elected but not her rival. At the same time as she is being reinstated into the new norm, Tashi sees herself as having been granted a certain superiority. Thus, Tashi's case clearly illustrates what I had said in a more general fashion about the gongmo: while envy is the main motive the envied person is out of phase in relationship to the norm. The person is either above the norm (i. e. exceptionally prosperous which would justify this jealousy) or she is outside of the norm (non-polyandric marriage for example). Finally, they may be within a new norm that needs to be confirmed, assured and affirmed (Tashi's case). The "inversion" that I earlier credited to the psychoanalyst is, therefore, only partly valid. It is not so much Diskit who is jealous (although she has objectively every reason to be so), but Tashi who needs to be confirmed of her over-valorization, in her privileges. The rejection vis-d-vis Diskit puts her in danger and although there is indeed a certain inversion, there is no projection because Tashi is really privileged and Diskit is effectively at a disadvantage. The question asked by Tashi which is attributed to Diskit is relevant because one does not actually see why she was accepted with her part of land, when Diskit was not. The explanation given by A. to the ethnologist (and, in all likelihood to Diskit and Tashi as well) does not satisfy Tashi, for if A. and his brothers did not want to be suspected of being selfseeking by their maternal uncle, they did not mind being so by Tashi's father. We might object that Tashi could understand very well that her brother-inlaw wanted to keep on good terms with the uncle and that her case was different. Maybe she could have understood it if the partition system of property had not been new and therefore not yet consolidated. It must also be

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taken into account that the decision to renounce this marriage with Diskit was probably made by the men. A second example will demonstrate that the gongmo phenomenon becomes clearly evident when dealing with the strengthening of a social position which is outside of the norm. 3.2. M. T.'s case Μ. T. has been through higher education. He has a stable and interesting job. He reads, writes and speaks Tibetan, Urdu and English. He is seemingly diametrically opposed to Tashi. He married the girl he was in love with and against the will of her parents. They had to elope together to Chandigarh to have their marriage registered before the Indian Civil administration. On their return, his wife reconciled with part of her family and it was decided that they would have a traditional Ladakhi wedding in order to "legalize" the situation. The day before the wedding, Μ. T. showed signs of discomfort. He had, it seemed, a slight fever and his legs and back were aching (back ache often bodes possession). I asked him, teasingly, if it was not a case of (s)notpa.3 He dismissed my remark with a wave of the hand and asked me for some medicine. I had none and so he went to bed. On the next day, the wedding took place as planned without any unexpected incidents. I was amazed, however, to find M.T. at a Ihamo's (oracle) seance about ten days later.4 After the session, he told me that he was suffering from mirdeces (faintness which often bodes possession). Another girl was in love with him. This girl's mother was a gongmo and the likelihood was that her daughter had become one as well, especially with the resentment she might have felt after M.T.'s marriage. He thought he was the victim of possession attempts by this neglected girl. Of course, the case here is completely different from the former. Μ. T. disregards the rules of this society (love marriages are very rare) but he needs to be reintegrated. His bride's family still does not accept the fait accompli, so he organizes a traditional wedding. There, the procession does not begin at the girl's parents' house (as is the tradition) but goes from the house of the eldest of the bride's aunts, who agrees to play the part of her mother in the wedding. This half-successful reintegration leads to the outbreak of possession by a gongmo. The gongmo in question, that is, the girl who was assigned to him by his family circle, is not summoned and therefore cannot be solemnly expelled by M. T.'s family. M.T. is then compelled to resort to the lhamo, the oracle, or more precisely, to a deity who speaks through the oracle (see Note 4) and who sup-

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ports him in his choice. The lhamo had actually declared: "You went westwards" (direction of the young girl's village) "you did well to get married". Therefore, Μ. T. is not above the norm, or in a fragile new norm. He is, rather, partly outside it, and this through his own personal choice. I say this partly because love marriages are tolerated (on this subject see Phylactou 1989). His status as an "intellectual" fluent in foreign languages and as a wage earner (he is a book-keeper) in a traditional peasant family, was already a dephasing factor. 3.3. Chorol's

case

The story is told by S. Day: At times, Chorol looked tired and pale; she used to retire to her room for two or three days at a time to sleep. She gave up cooking, shopping and agricultural work during these periods though she only missed a few days of work as a caretaker in Leh. At these times, she complained of pains in her back and sometimes also in her arms. (...) No one was very clear what was wrong. The first signs of illness, in August, were a sore throat and a cold which got worse and worse. Chorol lost her voice for several days. She also developed boils which, she said, did not get better until the end of September. When I asked what was wrong, the family usually said they didn't know; sometimes, they said "she's lazy and stupid" and, when she had complained of back ache, they sometimes claimed "its gongmo, it must be gongmo, Chorol has been possessed before". They thought that amulets from the village monk might help and they told anyone who asked, "she's got a bad throat and she's resting". (1989: 341) Although mirdeces are symptoms boding possession, as well as back aches, nobody really suspects such a diagnosis from the beginning. When it becomes clear that it is a case of possesion, the wrong diagnosis and the symptoms that do not coincide with those of possession will be forgotten (sore throat, boils). Only later will the diagnosis of possession be delivered by the lhaba (orth. lha-pa, oracle, masc. of lhamo) after a first fit. In August, Chorol's brother came home late one night. He was just about to go to bed when Chorol's younger sister rushed in, terrified. Chorol had suffered zhugshes [possession] for five minutes; she had laughed hysterically and her eyes were rolled back so that you could see only the whites. On Saturday, Chorol and Tsering (the younger sister) sent the child to look after the cows. Then, they locked the door so there must have been signs of approaching zhugshes. Still, the gongmo managed to get in. Chorol had slight convulsions and she breathed in sharply. Then she became possessed. She laughed hysterically again just like the Indian film stars in Hindi movies and said that she remembered nothing about the episodes.

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Chorol said that something must have happened a month later. She remembered nothing except that her husband was very frightened and cried. Over the next three days, there were further episodes. One brother described what happened when he was alone with Chorol: "She cried and screamed a lot. I could have stopped it if I'd had my ritual dagger (phur-pa). Instead, I read texts. Chorol snatched the book from me and began to read in Bodi" (that is, in Tibetan) which Chorol does not normally claim to understand. (Day 1989: 344)

Let's point out in the above lines the importance of the other's presence. That is why, as mentioned above, possessed and possessor begin by ignoring each other, which was Chorol's younger brother's attitude: "I ignored her. You must not talk (to an affected person) then, because the attention might encourage possession. If you ignore her, the gongmo might go away". After this method had proved ineffectual, he tried the finger test: I grabbed her two middle fingers hard, SHE [the gongmo] hid her face and tried to cover her shadow which I wanted to beat. Then, she came round and almost cried. She must have realized what had happened because I was still holding her fingers.

This also failed, and finally they had to resort to a lhaba. One of the brothers recounted: (capital letters stand for the deity who speaks or acts through the oracle). I finally persuaded Kirzi oracle to come. He stayed out all night. He came into trance and, first, he sucked something out of grandfather's leg, saying that meme (grandfather) was ill because he drank too much. Then, he sucked something from Chorol's stomach. He put mustard seeds in the fire and blew the smoke over Chorol. He blessed her and immediately grasped her two middle fingers. But the bamo came and went very quickly. He called her Yangchen and said that she was the girl from L. Main house. Just as he was about the beat the bamo with a stick, Chorol said, "No, don't, I'm not possessed". Yangchen's grandmother was also possessing Chorol, he said, but she didn't appear at all. Because the gongmo went so quickly, the god couldn't ask the normal questions. He stayed all night in case they should return, but they didn't. The god said that an amulet would cure Chorol so we got one for her next day and we also took her to Tak Tok rinpoche who gave her a khapko blessing. Khakpo is the name of a ritual, bamo is here synonym of gongmo. (Day 1989: 346).

We will note the fact that the mere disclosure of the possessor's name was enough to stop the possession. This took place in September 1982, whereas the first fit above described had happened in August. Chorol then left her village laying 15 kilometres East of Leh for Leh, the "capital" of Ladakh and came back in December. The signs of possession reappeared. The oracle of Kirzi was called upon again:

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Then HE sent everyone out o f

the room except for Choral and he told the witches to come back with the people. They came back ten or fifteen minutes later. ( . . . ) The oracle came back into trance from about 3:00 to 4:00 that afternoon. The god said the witches had only gone as far as Chorol's throat. HE told them to go to her heart so that they might speak. Then, they would be easier fo finish. HE said that the witches had come to Chorol three days ago. HE also said that they only came when she was in [her village] not in Leh. HE did not reveal their names, but HE pointed out the directions which suggested their origins. All were from the village. HE gave Chorol and amulet which was a welcome scarf with three knots containing barley. HE told her to keep the amulet with her. HE said that HE would take responsibility and she would suffer no possession for a year. Then, HE turned to the other people, to treat them. (Day 1989: 347)

If I dwell on this story, it is not only because S. Day gave a very detailed description of it, but also because this household constitutes an exceptional area of observation. S. Day lived in this family from 1981 to 1984 and previously another ethnologist made long stays there between 1976 and 1983 and even later as he last visited them in 1988.1 have had myself the opportunity to pay frequent visits to the members of Chorol's family since 1977. At the time of the events, the household consisted of an old widowed father and six children. The youngest Tsering was a secretary stationed 200 kilometres from the household. She did not live with her brothers and sisters. Two of the brothers who were divorced had kept their young boys with them (it was a Polyandrie marriage). Δ τ 0

De Figure

Tsering 2

Although they are all well within marriageable age (the youngest was twenty years old in 1982 and the eldest thirty-two), none of them was in fact married, which denotes an already highly unusual situation (the reasons for which are however unclear). In 1981, Chorol told the first ethnologist that she was afraid she might remain an old maid. Moreover, should a sister-in-law enter the family, she ran the risk of being thrown out of the house (the system here is a patrilocal one).5 At the time of the events, Chorol ran away from home with the youngest son of a well known amchi (traditional doctor). But the son had a very bad

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reputation (he was addicted to drinking and he was also lazy). Both families were against this marriage where, unlike M.T.'s case above, not even the minimum rules prescribed in such cases had been respected (Phylactou 1989). What's more, Dechen, Choral's eldest sister was terribly annoyed at having lost a precious source of help in the household. The couple settled neolocally in Leh. In short, Choral stands out of the norms to the point of caricature. In 1984,1 met Choral who had settled back in her family with her husband and their baby. I was told that they had agreed to an uxorilocal marriage which surprised me: uxorilocal marriages in Ladakh only take place in families where there are only daughters (or at most only one boy, much younger than his sisters). Actually having partly reconciled with her family, Choral used to sail to and from Leh to her father's house with her husband and son. As S. Day says: "At that time, it was unclear where Choral and her husband were living" (p. 169). The main possessor of Choral is Yangchen, her best girl-friend (most often, possessor and possessed are closely related) but above all, she is an "old maid" who is jealous of Choral's marriage. Of course, as in the other cases, Choral, who acts on her own authority and totally outside the rules of her society, needs to be confirmed in her choice: hence the necessity of Yanchen's envy. We even learn that Yangchen "had been in the mountain pastures when Choral eloped". On her return, she asks: "Where is Choral, I want to see her?" (p. 349). Thus, Yangchen could have been even an obstacle to this marriage. But Yanchen's jealousy is not enough. Here, Choral, unlike Μ. T., is not confirmed in her choice. M.T. acted only against a part of his wife's family and his choice was accepted by his wife's aunt and eventually by his own family. Moreover, he abided by certain rules even though he hadn't really gone through a traditional marriage and he had "legalized" this love match through his wife's aunt's help. Choral's case is not that of Tashi's. The latter may have doubts about her status, but her family reassures her. Here we see none of this: Choral is really rejected and if all of the previous analyses are accurate, in the former situation she was simply incurable. It is extremely interesting to note that when Choral is possessed (possesion occurring in the village alone), it is by five unidentified neighbors. Thus, in a very important sense it is the village as a whole that rejects her because she doesn't fit in any longer. Things sorted themselves out only later, when Choral began to fit in again in both a literal and figurative sense. Her father-in-law put up the couple in a house next to his in his own village. Father and daughter reconciled. Choral reintegrated the patrilocal norm.

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4. Conclusion Thus, it appears that gongmo cases are connected with the regulation of a society's order. The social circle manipulates the victim through the possession fit. The therapeutic effectiveness ensues. The individual can be reintegrated and wholly reassured (the case of Tashi), confirmed within the circumstances of a certain non-conformity (the case of M.T.) or finally excluded until she makes the necessary amends (the case of Chorol). This article tries to shed some light on the question: Can the interpretation of the ethnologist be accepted by the native? With regard to the above examples, the answer is obviously no. Neither Tashi, nor M.T., nor Chorol can admit that they have not been possessed, or that they are the ones who have problems of social and familial identity, although they are aware of being in an unstable position in relation to the norm (in any case, this applies to Chorol and M.T.). Possession as a manifestation of unstable social identity, helps to "cure" an individual without making it necessary to question his belief in gongmo, or his certitude of having been possessed. This is because the possessors, Diskit, M. T.'s ex-fiancee and Yangchen have indeed good reason for being jealous of their so-called victim, and it is not related in any way with a projection of paranoia, for example. If the ethnologist finds it necessary to reverse the situation by explaining that the "possessed" are the "sick ones", he is not for all that, in the same position as the psychoanalysts, for whom the patient himself is the one who must put into words his repressed desire in order to be cured. This is because there is no repressed desire with the victims of the gongmo, on the contrary they are people who take the initiative of action (in the three cases, the action is marriage) and it is this very accomplishment of a desire which creates problems. As for the victims of the gongmo, some elements remain non-conscious the three victims express their uneasiness, and all three are led to cure it with the help of the family and social circles which induce them to create a more viable/livable position around them (that is to say acceptable to the social surroundings).

Notes 1. The Ladakh is a region lying North-West of the Himalayas. Politically, it is a part of the Indian Union but being situated exactly beyond the great Himalayan range, it is geographically and culturally a continuation of the Tibetan High plateau. Ladakhis speak a Tibetan dialect. They are roughly half Muslims (mainly Shiites duodecimin

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with a few Sunnites) and another half Buddhist-Lamaist. The latter have been the subject of my study since 1974. Transcriptions are given phonetically after the Ladakhi pronunciation. They are followed (between bracket or preceded with spelled) with a transliteration of the equivalent word spelled as it is in Tibetan. 2. The heart as the seat of the "spirit" (sem(s·). The sem(s) of the gongmo comes in dislodging that of the possessed. 3. The Buddhists of Ladakh call (s)nopa (gnod-pa) and sometimes rdon (gdon), skyon (skyon) or gek (bgegs) any kind of damage due to supernatural entities. The (s)notpa may well break out in the form of a drought, poverty, animals dying, etc., as physical or mental illness. The word (s)notpa applies also to damages caused by gongmo. For further details see Kaplanian. 4. It is worth nothing that whenever the treatment described above fails, one resorts to a luyer (lus-gyar). It is a person whose profession is to be possessed by a deity who speaks through her and answers the questions. See Brauen 1980 and Day 1989. In so far as he is possessed, the luyer is called lhaba (Iha-pa) fem. lhamo (Iha-mo) 5. According to the first ethnologist who stayed with this family, the wife of the two brothers had divorced (before her arrival in 1977) because she could not get along with Dechen, the eldest sister. Rivalry between sisters-in-law is frequent. As for Chorol's apprehensions, it is the contrary that could have happened. Translated from French by Gloria Raad.

References Brauen, Martin 1980 Feste in Ladakh. Graz Corin, Ellen 1985 "La question du sujet dans les therapies de possession". Psychoanalyse 3: 5 3 - 6 6 . Bruxelles. Day, Sophie 1989 Embodying spirits, village oracle and possession ritual in Ladakh. North India. Ph. D. Manuscript: London School of Economics. Kaplanian, Patrick 1981 Les Ladakhi du Cachemire. Paris: Hachette. 1983 Quelques aspects du mythe et des structures mentales au Ladakh. Recent research on Ladakh (actes du premier colloque sur le Ladakh). Cologne: Weltforum Verlag. 1990 La maladie en tant que (s)notpa. Actes du 3e colloque sur le Ladakh, Dresde. Phylactou, Maria 1989 Household organisation and marriage in Ladakh, Indian Himalaya. Ph.D. Manuscript, London School of Economics.

Part IV The cooperative work in interpretation

The subject of knowledge Järöme Rousseau

Cognitive anthropology, like other disciplines, tries to answer the question: "What do people think?" This question focuses on the carriers, one might almost say the owners, of ideas and beliefs. In this article I am suggesting that we should rather ask "How are ideas thought?" thereby focusing on the activity of thinking itself, without any a priori about the identity of the actors. This starting point may make it easier to describe human activity and to identify the units which carry out these activities, because, while individuals are usually seen as the source of action, at the other extreme, ethnic groups, classes, and even nations are often considered to be thinking subjects. At the outset, it may be useful to define some concepts which are basic to my argument. Thought is a kind of activity (In other words, we must reject the opposition between thought and action). Perception is also an activity. The distinctions between thought, perception, and motor activity simply focus on different facets of action, and most activities are inconceivable without all three. Communication is another kind of activity, which is itself fragmented into separate discourses. Each discourse has a series of features which establish its boundaries, the nature of its participants, and its articulation with other discourses (Foucault 1971). For example, theology of liberation deals with social issues from a particular viewpoint, and people who engage in this discourse are expected to share social, cultural and political characteristics. People recognize the boundaries of this discourse, because they may accept or reject specific statements because they recognize them to be part of theology of liberation. It is articulated in specific ways to theology and Christian beliefs on the one hand, and political economy on the other. Discourses can be divided into lower-order discourses; for instance, Marxism includes a number of related discourses, many of which are clearly distinguishable from each other.1 Discourses have a life of their own, distinct from the individuals who participate in them. For instance, the history of science shows that scientific discoveries - which are part of specific discourses - cannot be seen as the result of individual endeavours. If Bohr, Fermi and Einstein had not existed, others would have come along to make the same discoveries. Genetics pro-

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vides an actual example: Mendel's work, published in 1865, was ignored, but in 1900, three biologists rediscovered the laws of genetics independently of each other, and without a knowledge of Mendel.

1. Subject The central argument of this paper derives from works of Lucien Goldmann, and I use the term "subject" in his sense. The subject is the entity which engages in an activity. Here, I wish to identify the subject of knowledge, or to put it another way, I attempt to answer the question "What is the entity which does the thinking?" People become subjects by participating in activities, as well as by being acted upon, thus subjects are more than simple actors.2 Someone becomes a poet by doing what poets do (which is more than composing poetry, although this is of course a central feature). Students become lawyers, doctors and accountants both by studying and because the education system molds them into particular kinds of subject. Goodenough's (1965) framework makes it possible to unravel human activity into its components. Social identities form poles in social identity relationships, to which are attached rights, duties, privileges, powers, liabilities and immunities. Various social identity relationships can be combined with each other in specific ways.3 Individuals gain a social identity by taking part in the appropriate scenarios. 4 Althusser shows that subjects are social products when he states that ideology interpellates individuals as subjects: "The practico-social function specific to ideology is to constitute concrete individuals as subjects, to transform individuals into subjects. Indeed, it is by its concrete functioning in the material rituals of everyday life that every individual recognizes himself as a subject" (McLennan - Molina - Peters 1977: 96). Thus, within and across societies, there are different kinds of acting subjects, not discrete individuals who don various roles.5

2. The integration of the subject Goodenough and Althusser provide invaluable tools for rethinking the nature of the thinking subject: Goodenough shows that individuals are assemblages of many social identities; Althusser makes it clear that subjects are socially contingent. But neither overtly contradicts the common-sensical notion that the person is a totality.6

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Overtly and tacitly, we assume that every human being is a small organized universe of knowledge and action. We are ready to accept that this organization may be fortuitous - i.e. that each person integrates a number of unrelated roles - but we feel that there is a totality. This is a fiction. Each individual, as a biological organism, is organized (through a genetic code which is specific to it) and persists through time, with small, gradual, changes which give the impression of a fairly stable entity travelling through time. However, we overgeneralize from that biological and historical basis. Individuals have a feeling of identity and a degree of autonomy, at least if they are functioning members of a society. However, this feeling of self-identity is not biologically given, but a socio-cultural construct. It is important to study conceptualizations of the self, but from that it does not follow that individuals are the subjects of action and know-ledge. 7 What we do and know does not affect us as a totality. A person is composed of several autonomous sectors which can exist independently of each other. This goes beyond the banal statement that, for instance, thinking may be unaffected by some other simultaneous action. A person's knowledge is not integrated, but rather a series of statements which remain independent of each other unless steps are taken to articulate them. In other words, it should not be paradoxical that a person simultaneously holds mutually exclusive views, because they remain insulated from each other (indeed, this is a major characteristic of common sense). This separation of knowledge in distinct compartments exists for several reasons: on the one hand, there are distinct - and incompatible - procedures for establishing the truth of statements, and these form distinct domains of knowledge (Rousseau 1988). At a more experiential level, we constantly shift from one to another province of meaning, each of which has its own structure (Schutz 1967).8 Each domain of meaning has an internal consistency, but distinct domains may or may not be incompatible. 9 Furthermore, the fact of simultaneously holding contradictory views is not ontologically more of a problem than holding contradictory views sequentially. While the common-sensical conceptualization of the person recognizes that it evolves through time, it still posits that we are dealing with the same person. This hypothesis is useful insofar as we look at people as biological organisms, but it produces unwarranted assumptions when we are dealing with thinking subjects. This was part of Goldmann's argument in Le Dieu cache (1955): for Goldmann, the Pascal who wrote Les Provinciales is not the same person as the Pascal who wrote Les Pensees eleven months later, although he was of course the same individual; Pascal became a different person, because the author of Les Provinciales and the author of Les Pensees hold incompatible views. 10

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3. The link between subject and thinking Individuals are not integrated subjects, but concatenations of ideas, beliefs and actions which coexist but do not form a system. We can go further. Not only are individuals not integrated they are not the subjects of thinking and knowledge in the first place. In other words, thinking is not an individual activity. This is counter-intuitive. I have the feeling of having my own thoughts, how can they not be the obvious proof of the reality of the thinking individual?11 Let us leave aside thought for a moment for more mundane activities. To take again an example from Goldmann (1970a: 102), when two people are moving a table, both of them are moving the whole table. We do not say that each of them is moving half a table. There is one subject to the action, the two individuals in that activity. The action of lifting the table calls forth a subject who is constituted by two individuals. Some activities are impossible without team work, e.g. when operating a tall ship, the crew is the subject of that action. Goldmann calls such acting units "trans-individual subjects" (Goldmann 1971).12 Thinking is an activity, and thinkers can also be, and most often are, transindividual subjects. Here, I will limit myself to verbal thinking, ideas which are formulated with words and can be expressed through language.13 Such thinking cannot be individual, except in the trivial sense that we can identify the activity of different brains. Vygotsky's studies of the development of thought and the acquisition of language in children have shown that thought, which common sense would see as the paradigmatic activity of the independent individual, is a social activity based on a social institution, language, and deriving from verbal communication: silent thought is internalized speech.14 But who are the trans-individual subjects of thought? The activity of committees is an example of cooperative thinking, and we are well aware that committees can develop different thoughts than would be produced by the same individuals thinking about the same issue independently of each other. In committee work, an idea is passed along, developed and the end product is truly the product of a team effort. The work of committees is much-maligned often for good reasons. This does not mean that committees are not trans-individual thinking subjects, but rather that the way in which we are constituted as subjects makes it difficult for at least some members of Western society to function well in committees; indeed the common-sensical view that each individual must be an independent emitter of ideas is in itself a stumbling block in the smooth

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functioning of committees. However, such problems can be remedied by appropriate training. There are many other situations where the subject is trans-individual; we can think of some literary creations which are the result of collaboration; there are many other circumstances when a group of people produce ideas in common, and may experience a feeling of communitas in the process; we sometimes talk to others for the express purpose of clarifying our thoughts. These are examples of trans-individual thinking. If we pay attention to the process of thinking, we will recognize that it usually involves the cooperation of several individuals, and there is no good reason for refusing to see thinking as a cooperative activity in the same way as other productive tasks. However, we resist doing so because the concept of trans-individual subject runs counter to the common-sensical notion of subject, which we conceive of as a (human) biological organism which exists in a continuous fashion from birth to death. Trans-individual subjects lack that feature. To take the example of the committee, it is summoned into being according to schedules, and maintains an existence through changes in its personnel. But we can refuse to see a committee as a trans-individual subject only by making the a priori assumption that only discrete biological units think. We have already seen that the individual is not a continuing thinking unit; while he or she may go on living, there may be no continuity in his or her thoughts; we have seen the example of Pascal, and I suspect that most of us only need to look at our own personal history to see some radical breaks in world view.15 If we recognize the fragmentation of the person, it may become easier to recognize how people, in given contexts, may coalesce into trans-individual subjects. Goldmann (1970b: 1 2 6 - 1 2 7 ) gives an example of a situation where people move from one trans-individual subject to another because of socioeconomic transformations: while small-scale peasants can hardly be expected to favour the nationalization of the means of production, the same individuals, after moving to the city and becoming industrial workers, may come to support it. We can also apply the notion of trans-individual subject to what might be called sequential cooperation. One thinker has an idea, which another one develops and carries further, and so on. The progress of modern science is the paradigmatic example of this. With Goldmann (1971) and Foucault (1971), we are well aware that the author cannot be seen as the source of literary creation, but rather as a link in a chain of people who carry and transform ideas. In other words, people become successful authors by inserting themselves into a discourse and following its rules, or, occasionally, by modifying the rules in ways which are compatible with the discourse, or, more rarely, by

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breaking the rules to produce a new discourse for which there is an audience. What authors do is only a particular sub-set of thinking in general. We think by inserting ourselves in a discourse; we fit ourselves to it, and we are thinkers as long as we are part of it. Contrary to common sense, thinking is not a private or an individual activity. By moving from one discourse to another, we join distinct trans-individual subjects. If we recognize the jump between one discourse and another, we may choose to bring them together, i. e. we may modify the boundaries of two discourses to integrate them, or we may maintain their separateness. Ideas are human activities, and various procedures are available for different kinds of thinking; to understand thinking, we have to understand the functioning of these distinct thinking activities. Each form of thinking is an objectification, i.e. a reduction to a particular view-point. 16 For instance, common-sensical thinking follows procedures which establish what we can think and talk about. The central characteristic of common sense is to take everyday reality for granted: "The reality of everyday life appears already objectified, that is, constituted by an order of objects that have been designated as objects before my appearance on the scene... The reality of everyday life is taken for granted as reality. It does not require additional verification over and beyond its simple presence" (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 35, 37). If we switch rules, we may move to sacred or scientific discourse, for instance (Rousseau 1988). Thought is a element of specific activities (e.g. talking, or engaging in a manual activity, require thought). By observing other people's actions, we have access to their thoughts. We do not always know what others are thinking, because people learn to dissimulate thoughts (Ryle 1949: 1 7 3 - 1 7 7 ) , or, more generally, to think in a way that is not readily interpretable by others. But the very fact that we recognize dissimulation is based on the fact that in other circumstances we do know what others are thinking. Furthermore, even if we do not know what a particular individual is thinking at a particular moment, we know other people's thoughts to the extent that they and we participate in the same trans-individual subject. We also have access to thoughts of other trans-individual subjects because language which is socially shared, which exists before the individual, and contributes to form persons - is a privileged medium to gain access to other people's thoughts. Language, knowledge, and the procedures which frame the various forms of thinking, are common property. People may lack some of these tools, but they can be acquired. This is what education - and fieldwork - are all about. 17

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4. Individual and subject Our perception of joining, simultaneously or sequentially, various collective thinking activities is what we more traditionally call self-perception. Selfknowledge is the knowledge of our participation in trans-individual subjects. The fact of my being constituted as a self is only the other side of the coin of the collectivity. Even when I am alone, and thinking with the use of language, I cannot take as a given my existence as a separate, integrated, person. Indeed, in private thought, the thinking subject often divides himself in two interlocutors who talk to each other, in the same way as the chess enthusiast who plays both Black and White. One problem remains. We saw that for each kind of discourse, there is a set of rules or practices, and as we shift from one discourse to the other, we follow another set of rules. This might imply the existence of a transcendental subject who does the shifting. This is not the case. Let us take the situation where two people, A and B, are engaged in an acrimonious exchange. At some point, one of them changes gear, and introduces a conciliatory, rational, or humorous alternative. This is not the work of a disembodied transcendental subject, of an Ego which sits at the helm to guide its ship through life; it is the result of a specific activity, in this case the fact of A partially withdrawing from the acrimonious exchange while it is going on, to evaluate the situation and decide that an alternative course of action would be preferable. Consciously or otherwise, A has been dividing himself into two thinking subjects which interact and negotiate, and they may coexist for a while, or follow each other in the driver's seat according to circumstances. From our feeling of self-identity, it does not follow that each of us is a separate, organized small universe; rather, this feeling is our perception of being part of several trans-individual subjects. Paradoxically, we develop the notion of our uniqueness and our integration because we are not integrated. In the course of the day, and throughout our life, we join a number of transindividual subjects, and this very mobility makes us look for continuity, and makes us work at establishing an integrated self. If we think that persons should be integrated, this is a good starting point to recognize that this integration is not a given, neither is it ever complete. Individuation is a process to which we are subjected (others make us into persons), and by being subjected to those pressures, we make ourselves into acting subjects, who subject themselves to pressures which attempt to develop this integration.

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5. The relationship between subject and belief A focus on trans-individual subjects allows us to rethink the issue of belief We are often faced with the question "Do a given set of people believe in X or not?" In many cases, ambiguities or contradictions become evident, when statements and/or activities contradict each other, and we are placed in the situation of saying that the subjects sometimes act as if they believed "X", and sometimes not. We are all aware of the fact that people are inconsistent in their beliefs and actions, but we must explain it. Inconsistency is a feature of common-sensical discourse. Internal contradictions in scientific discourse are numerous, but its rules aim specifically at resolving them when they are recognized. Sacredness, i.e. the fact of accepting as indubitably true statements which are recognized to be unprovable (and may be, strictly speaking, non-sensical), is a procedure to contain such contradictions. Common sense, by contrast, revels in contradictions and nonsequiturs. For instance, in the same conversation, a locutor might come up with a statement like "Live and let live", while a few minutes later, he will engage in vitriolic racist rhetoric. When placed together, these views are incompatible, but the speaker does not see them as such insofar as he shifts membership from one trans-individual subject to another. While we may on moral grounds deplore such fragmentation, and the absence of a will to be cogent, the task still remains to explain what goes on. In the above example, while we are dealing with a single locutor, we are faced with different subjects who hold different views because they have different interests. Nor, should I add, is the ethnographer a passive observer in this process: we call into being these various subjects by the questions we ask and by our statements, i.e. by presenting ourselves as participants in a subject, which our interlocutor either joins, or to whom he responds by joining its counterpart. Some situations allow individuals to participate in contradictory transindividual subjects which remain insulated from each other, while others do not. We have just seen an example of the former. An instance of the latter is the situation where someone is, say, a shareholder in a food retailing chain, as well as a consumer. The shareholder favours high prices, and will be pleased if the food chain gains a monopoly; but, as a consumer, he must wish for low prices. While such contradictions may not necessarily be resolved, there is pressure for their resolution.

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6. The trans-individual subject as a conceptual tool A focus on trans-individual subjects is part and parcel of a focus on action, which is almost always social action. If we are interested in discourse, we are studying socially-established activities, and we cannot go very far by focusing on the activity of individuals outside of their social context. Neither is the other extreme any more satisfactory: we cannot assume that a "society", a "tribe", or a "culture" have a common view of the world or a common activity, nor can we limit ourselves to the somewhat subtler hypothesis that each society is divided in sectors (e.g. classes), each with an internal consistency. For instance, the study of social inequality has been hampered by two opposite hypotheses. One approach assumes that the organization of status levels (or the contradiction between classes) establishes one kind of inequality, while gender and age are distinct from, and cut across, class inequality. The other approach takes the opposite view that all forms of inequality are integrated in a coherent whole. A focus on trans-individual subjects allows to observe to what extent these factors are related, rather than starting with an a priori assumption. The study of gender relationships can also be carried further by a focus on trans-individual subjects: anthropologists have understandably tried to map the relationships between men and women in various societies, but for some activities the description is deficient when it does not account for the fact that men and women are not distinct actors with distinct interests, but rather part of the same subject, e.g. the domestic unit. There is nothing wrong in mapping gender differentiation and inequality on an "objective" scale, but if we are interested in understanding processes, we must focus on the real actors in each situation, and these are not necessarily individuals. The notion of trans-individual subject is useful not only for research, but for more immediately practical concerns. The fact that individuals are not organized totalities can be used for the resolution of some psychological problems. Take the example of writing blocks, a complaint which is relatively common among graduate students writing theses (Rousseau 1987). While the condition may have psychological causes, which might even derive from conditions in the person's childhood, the writing block itself can be removed very rapidly by focusing on the writing process itself. By focusing on the activity rather than the actor, it becomes easier to resolve the problem. The process of writing requires the insertion in the appropriate trans-individual subject of a given discourse.18 In order for the notion of trans-individual subject to become a practical tool, it will be necessary to study (1) how people join and leave various trans-

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individual subjects; (2) how people can simultaneously be part o f more than one trans-individual subject; (3) the interaction between subjects and discourse (for instance, in order to operate, which subjects does a discourse require?); and, (4) finally, the articulation of the trans-individual subject with more established concepts, such as "individual", "self", "society", "class" and "gender".

7. Conclusion Individuals are not organized totalities, but the locus o f various structures, which are trans-individual. Thinking is not an individual activity. The starting point is not the acting or the thinking subject, but the activity (including thinking). B y joining activities, individual organisms activate themselves, and come into existence.

Notes Previous versions of this paper were presented in 1987 at the meeting of the Canadian Ethnology Society, Quebec, and in 1988 in the Department of Anthropology, McGill University. I am grateful for the comments and questions which allowed me to develop my argument further. I also wish to thank Madeleine Palmer for her comments and suggestions. 1. A preliminary framework for the study of discourse is presented in Foucault (1971). 2. This is why I use "subject", rather than "actor", despite its ambiguity. "Subject" at the same time refers to the conscious, acting self, (as in "subjectivity"), while the etymology of the term emphasizes dependence, the fact of being acted upon ("the King's subjects"). In this paper, I am not using "subject" as a synonym for "topic" or "theme". 3. For instance, individual A may be a physician, a wife, and an amateur of science fiction novels. As a physician, she is part of the social identity relationships physician-patient, physician-nurse, physician-physician, etc. As a science fiction reader, she has social identity relationships with booksellers, authors of science-fiction (and her family, who are expected not to interrupt her while she is reading). Procedures may establish when A must give precedence to her identity as a physician or a wife. 4. The full significance of Goodenough's framework may not always have been understood because of its terminology: he discusses roles, which we see as something

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external, something that a person puts on for a time, like clothes. We may indeed assume some social identities in such an external way, but these are the exception. We should not say that individuals have social identities, rather that one becomes a person through social identities. For instance, traditional gender stereotypes which encouraged male self-assertion and female subordination to the needs of the family contributed to the production of different subjects. Also, societies such as our own, by enshrining individualism, thus produce a particular kind of subject. Ultimately, the Western conceptualization of the individual derives from the division of labour and a highly instrumental relationship to nature. Common sense is a way of organizing knowledge which assumes that language is only a reflection of reality. This expresses itself in linguistic realism: a word must correspond to an object. Levi-Strauss effectively showed the inadequacy of our notion of the individual as an independent thinking subject, but he replaced it by the collective unconscious, a metaphysical concept which raises other problems. "Some instances are: the shock of falling asleep as the leap into the world of dreams; the inner transformation we endure if the curtain in the theater rises as the transition into the world of the stageplay; the radical change in our attitude if, before a painting, we permit our visual field to be limited by what is within the frame as the passage into the pictorial world; our quandary, relaxing into laughter, if, in listening to a joke, we are for a short time ready to accept the fictitious world of the jest as a reality in relation to which the world of our daily life takes on the character of foolishness; the child's turning toward his toy as the transition into the playworld; and so on" (Schutz 1967: 229). From a very different angle, psychoanalysis has also shown that individuals can be seen to be composed of distinct sectors which have a partial autonomy, and that one does not have direct access to the unconscious part of one's self. Other approaches, such as transactional analysis and Laing's (1969) interesting if unsystematic framework, also document the fragmentation of the individual. When I was taught French literature, Goldmann's analysis had not yet trickled down to secondary schools, and my French literature teacher manual engaged in elaborate contortions to argue that, somehow, the two texts had to be coherent, because they were both from Pascal. This is an example of the common-sensical perception of the person as a stable entity. Such unnecessary assumption of consistency can also apply to collectivities, as is demonstrated by the following anthropological example. Cooper (1975) argues that, while the Nuer appear to hold contradictory propositions, there may be no contradiction if they use three-valued logic, which makes it possible to integrate these contradictory views. But, as Salmon (1978) argues, we do not know for a fact that the Nuer attempt to integrate these contradictions, and it is more economical to posit that they are held in distinct contexts. In other words, the Nuer, or anyone else for that matter, cannot be expected to have an integrated world-view.

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Thus, if there is no independent evidence for the presence of three-valued logic, contradictory beliefs certainly do not demonstrate its existence. This is of course the basis of Descartes's Cogito, the flaws of which have been demonstrated from different philosophical traditions (Merleau-Ponty 1945: 423-468; Ayer 1956: 44-52). Elsewhere, he adds that the knowing subject "is neither the isolated individual nor simply the group, but an extremely variable structure in which both the individual and the group, or several groups, partake" ("La nature du sujet connaissant... n'est ni l'individu isole ni le groupe sans plus, mais une structure extremement variable dans laquelle entrent ä la fois l'individu et le groupe ou un certain nombre de groupes") (Goldmann 1970b: 122). The distinction between verbal and non-verbal thinking, while intrinsically worth studying, is not central to my argument here. Ultimately, however, this distinction should be considered further, because the subjects of non-verbal thinking may have particular characteristics distinct from the subjects of verbal thinking. Cf. Vygotsky 1962; Wertsch 1979, 1983; Lee - Wertsch - Stone 1983; Lee-Hickmann 1983. The common-sensical view of the self is supported by its adherence to linguistic realism, i.e. the idea that to words must correspond entities. From this view, it is assumed that the words "I", "me", "myself", must all correspond to an entity, which is The Self. But of course, there is no such correspondence between language and reality. These words do not refer to an entity, they are simply linguistic markers, of the same nature as "here" and "there". There is nothing which is intrinsically "here"; "here" is a shorthand for "the area near the speaker of the word 'here'". In the same way, "I" refers to the speaker of the sentence which includes "I" (Ryle 1949: 186-189). An example of objectification is the use of the metric system to describe things: we reduce objects to weights, lengths, volumes, and so on. Thus, "objective reality" is not the world "as it is", but the world seen through a particular set of procedures. "Knowing someone's thoughts" does not necessarily entail that we know the formulation of their thoughts at a particular moment, but simply that we are informed of their opinions and feelings about particular topics. Other people's thoughts appear inaccessible only if we define the activity of knowing their thoughts in an inappropriate way; somehow, many people feel that we would have to be able to "hear" the thoughts in order to say that we know them. This is comparable to saying that we cannot ever know whether black holes exist, because we cannot see them. The point is that different entities and processes have to be perceived in different ways. Of course, if the writing block is indeed a consequence of some deep psychological problems, therapy may be appropriate for that person's happiness, but this is another story.

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References Ayer, Alfred J. 1956 The problem of knowledge. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Berger, Peter L. - Thomas Luckmann 1966 The social construction of reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Cooper, David E. 1975 "Alternative logic in primitive thought". Man N. S. 10: 238 - 2 5 6 . Foucault, Michel 1971 L'ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard. Goldmann, Lucien 1955 Le dieu cache. Paris: Gallimard. 1970a "Le sujet de la creation culturelle", in Marxisme et sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard, 9 4 - 1 2 0 . 1970b "Conscience reelle et conscience possible, conscience adequate et fausse conscience", in Marxisme et sciences humaines, 121-129. Paris: Gallimard. 1971 "Pensee dialectique et sujet transindividuel", in La creation culturelle dans la societe moderne. Paris: Denoel-Gonthier, 121-154. (Originally published in the Bulletin de la Societe frangaise de philosophic, vol. 64, no. 3, 1970). Goodenough, Ward H. 1965 "Rethinking 'status' and 'role': toward a general model of the cultural organization of social relationships", in The relevance of models for social anthropology, M. Banton (ed.), 1 - 2 4 . London: Tavistock. Laing, R. D. 1969 Self and others. Second ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Lee, Benjamin - Maya Hickmann 1983 "Language, thought, and self in Vygotsky's developmental theory", in Developmental approaches to the self, B. Lee - Gil G. Noam (eds.), 3 4 3 - 3 7 8 . New York: Plenum. Lee, Benjamin - James V. Wertsch - Addison Stone 1983 "Towards a Vygotskian theory of the self", in Developmental approaches to the self, B. Lee - Gil G. Noam (eds.), 3 0 9 - 3 4 1 . New York: Plenum. McLennan, Gregor - Victor Molina - Roy Peters 1977 "Althusser's theory of ideology", in On ideology, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.), 7 7 - 105. London: Hutchinson. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1945 Phenomenologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard.

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Rousseau, Jerome 1987 "Writing blocks and how to solve them". Anthropology Newsletter 28(8): 24, 22. 1988 Knowledge and sacredness. Culture 7(2): 2 3 - 2 9 . Ryle, Gilbert 1949 The concept of mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Salmon, Merrilee H. 1978 "Do Azande and Nuer use a non-standard logic?" Man (N. S.) 13: 444-454. Schutz, Alfred 1967 Collected papers. I. The problem of social reality. The Hague: Nijhoff. [Excerpt reprinted in Rules & meanings, Mary Douglas (ed.) Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, under the title "Multiple realities" (p. 227-231).] Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich 1962 Thought and language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Wertsch, James V. 1979 "From social interaction to higher psychological processes. A clarification and application of Vygotsky's theory". Human Development 22: 1 - 2 2 .

1983

"The role of semiosis in L.S. Vygotsky's theory of human cognition", in The sociogenesis of language and human conduct, Bruce Bain (ed.), 17-31. New York: Plenum.

Egocentric particulars: Pronominal perspectives in ethnographic inquiry James W. Fernandez

1. "Where are you? Here I am!". On being present and absent I will begin by meditating - perhaps ruminating would be the better term given our bovine subject matter — upon one important difference between cattle keepers and miners who live in the mountains of Northern Spain and among whom I am conducting an ethnographic study. And that difference has to do with how one declares the presence of one's person or absence. How does one say "here I am!" Keep in mind that herding is an extended family enterprise and as any family member is fundamentally irreplaceable one is likely to note the presence or absence of one's family members very quickly while deep vein soft coal mining is a corporate activity of a very different order conducted by fraternal aggregates - male aggrandizing groups might be the better term given the conflictivity and militancy of the miners in these valleys for almost a hundred years - under contractual constraints and well aware that the group has greater reality than the individual who is easily replaceable as far as management is concerned. These Cantabrian Slope mountains are, due to the tail-end effects of the gulf stream, very misty and cloudy. With frequency the visibility closes down to several meters at best. Men and women can be much delayed or even lost in these steep deeply fissured limestone escarpments. There are many tales about being lost in the mist and making use of the sixth sense of animals grabbing a cow's tail and driving her home for example. And there are tales of people who have entirely disappeared - fallen off a cliff or into a bottomless sink-hole, been taken by wolves. One way to identify one's presence in these foggy mountains is through song - the melismatic Asturian mountain air - the "Asturianada". ft is heard with frequency in these mountains, on the far side of a canyon or deep valley or somewhere in a deep mist, where the person can only be identified through the personality of his song. It is a very personal form of identification. And in a mist or at nightfall if one is lost or late one long-calls his or her name "Alvarooo: a ooonde stas". And the

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hailed response may be heard following after the echoes, out of the mist, out of the obscurity. "Hoooo" or "Yoooo". "I". "Aqui!" Here I am.1 Mining as it has long been practiced is, as we say, a corporate activity, not to say a militant one in which the individual "Yo" is submerged into the group. And it is a dangerous activity and men can - and often are - easily lost, crushed or trapped into those fragile deep seems and pockets of soft coal. A buddy system has developed, therefore, to keep in touch with one's companions and frequently enough shouted exchanges of the kind we have heard above occur in these deep underground galleries. Or even the melismatic Asturian air will be heard echoing from chamber to chamber (Fernandez 1979). But before going into the mines or after coming out there will often be time for a "shape up", as we call it, to establish the order of the day or of the morrow, or to roll call in the event of an emergency evacuation. When names are read off each miner, many of then former pastoralists, respond not "yo" in the first person but "esta" in the third person: "Here is here". 2 One excludes one's personality and the claims one's personality makes upon the other in the response (Fernandez 1985).3 This small shift from a first person egocentric personal pronoun, or its equivalent, to a third person sociocentric pronoun is worth meditating upon and, indeed, such meditations on pronouns is the focus of this article. Just as in the family life of herding cattle it would be stilted to respond, "esta" to those searching out one's location and even an affront to a diffuse affective bond, so in militant and quasi militant organizations the assertion of the very personal "I'm here Captain" would be inappropriate - an egocentric challenge to organizational purpose and corporate identify. In family life one asserts one's personal being — one's being present or absent - readily. For one's presence or loss is personally felt. In corporate groups there are various forms of resistance to the asserting of one's own being over against the being of the group. One of these is to become a third person who is not really a person at all or is, at least, a kind of non-person (Fernandez 1985). One's absence cannot be too personally felt at all for the very nature of corporate groups is to persist beyond significant changes in personnel and to carry on despite the disappearance of persons. So the person must be, by various mechanisms, grammatical among them, depersonalized. It is an irony characteristic of a corporate and bureaucratic world to say: "The graveyards are full of irreplaceable people". From a family point of view it is exactly what graveyards are full of! It is no irony at all.

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2. What philosophers know We can see then that this article is about pronouns and it takes a perspective on them, as regards their relevance in understanding human behavior which captious colleagues have called "pronominalism". Let me put the promise of pronominalism which is to say the proposition of this talk to you straightaway. As the pronouns are universale of language (though there are significant differences in pronoun systems) they are primordial "points de repere" that is, reference points in human relationship. Thus if we will analyze pronominal interaction, this is interaction anchored in pronouns, then we will obtain fundamental understanding of human interaction. This is the promise contained in this proposition we call "pronominalism". All "isms: contain a promise, implicit or explicit, as do all propositions". But, of course "isms" promise a good deal more that propositions ... perhaps too much.

I would like to argue this proposition first by reference to arguments about pronouns present in the work of two social philosophers of the first half of the century, G. H. Mead and Ortega y Gasset. And I would like to take these two philosophical perspectives and relate them to a developing anthropological perspective in the interests of defining one overall perspective we might be willing to call pronominalism. As one cannot presume to do justice to all the intricacy of argument of two complex philosophies we will have to make use of some key terms and key phrases that lead directly into the respective arguments without being able to consider the intricacy of these arguments in any detail. For Ortega y Gasset these words are "solitude", "alternation" or "reciprocation" and "salutation", for Mead, as we know, the key term is "the generalized other" and, as we may not know because this part of Mead's argument has rarely been featured, "manipulation".

2.1. Ortega: Man the reciprocator I would like to begin with Ortega because, unlike Mead and the other pragmatists, while he is peripheral to the main European-American intellectual traditions, at the same time he seeks to center his inquiry unrelentingly in pronominal transactions. He confronts us directly on the issue as in this quotation from Man and People (1957) a book of particular interest because of its intention to state the philosophic foundations of sociology.4 He says:

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Our concern is to find facts that we can indubitably call social, because we hope to reach absolute certainty as to what society is. All the sociologists have left us unsatisfied even in respect to the fundamental notions of their sociologies... for the simple reason that they never took the trouble to come really to grips with the most elementary phenomenon out of which the social reality arises (1957: 139).

Needless to say these "most elementary phenomenon", an understanding of which will ground our certainty as to what society is, are the personal pronouns and their dynamic. Ortega begins his discussion with the solitary "I" which is, from the first, needful and mistrustful, hopeful and afraid of the relations with "the other man" as he calls him. At once we can note a contrast of Ortega's solitary "I" with the long debated status of the "I" in Mead's social behaviorism (Davis Lewis 1979). There is some ambiguity of argument in Mead as to how the "I" is to be regarded, as to whether it is essentially a responding or purely reactive entity or, in some sense, an active entity, but it surely does not so clearly function from a solitary "a priori point of departure" which can choose to engage or not to engage, to participate or to withdraw from the social world as in the case with Ortega's "I". For Mead social participation with pragmatic consequence is central and the "I" is not primary but rather secondary and dependent to these social behaviors of which it is a part and which give it an identity. In Ortega's thought for society to exist there must be a pre-existing solitude (1957: 2 2 8 - 9 ) . For Ortega the solitary, meditative (a key and frequently employed operative term in his social philosophy) state (the radical solitude of human life) is central as it is in the Spanish religious and philosophic tradition generally. He seeks to launch his discussion from and repeatedly preserve the space for the solitary "I" from which it can contemplate whether to and how to engage in "alteraction" which is to say in "reciprocation" with the other and back into which the "I" can beat a strategic retreat in the face of unrequited or perverse reciprocation. For Ortega the human situation is essentially "inchoate", 5 that is uncertain and in a perpetual state of perplexity as to choosing one's own being (Fernandez 1986). And a basic form of that uncertainty has to do with whether and how to reach out to the other or to retreat back into the solitary "I". Why should the "I" reach out from its radical solitary state? Essentially it is because it realizes that it can not satisfactorily manipulate the world by itself. In making, like Mead, the word "manipulate" central Ortega takes an essentially pragmatic position arguing, characteristically, that we "think to live and not live to think". He argues that "man is fundamentally active", and that the things of the world only exist as "pragma" that is as objects not for themselves but only for our once and future goal-oriented manipulation.

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As essentially a manipulative, manipulating creature man soon recognizes in his solitary state that he cannot adequately manipulate things alone but needs the "com-presence" of the other in these manipulations. Ortega gives as an example the manipulation of an apple. In meditative reflection the solitary "I" soon realizes that it can never see and know both sides of the apple at once however it may frantically turn it around in its hands. Only with the com-presence of the other can the entire apple be known and manipulated with full knowingness. Thus we are compelled by our manipulativeness to move from "I am" to "it is" by means of the initial com-presence of "you are" and eventually the final com-presence and fully pragmatic satisfaction of "we are". This compelling quest for the manipulative promise of com-presence is the source of man's basic altruism. Thus it is that "the other" offers the indispensable probability of compresent collaboration that is reciprocation. This probability and the fact that it is only in the act of reciprocation that the objective world comes into existence fills the "I", "You", relationship with electricity... the electricity, the very human electricity, of realizing what great things, impossible for the "I" alone, can be done with the other man... on other man and woman. It is not surprising that this discussion of electricity in the "I" - "You" relationship leads Ortega to consider the "otherman" as a woman and to offer some romantic platitudes on love as the exchange of two solitudes in the production of a third solitude which is the "I" of the next generation. But there is more to this argument. Unlike Mead, one of whose basic models of the generalized other and of pragmatic action is as we shall see, usually a highly coordinated corporate group of some kind, Ortega considers quite seriously that the basic model of reciprocation and of the electricity of pronominal interaction is a sexual one. In his chapter in Man and people, "A Brief Excursion Towards 'Her"', there is the suggestions that the sexual possibility of two bodies becoming one is the basic model of collaborative com-presence, and of bringing the world into being. That "electricity" is present in implicit or sublimated ways in any "I - You" relationship both as an incitement to such a relation and, for obvious reasons, as a turbulent or troubling factor in its realization. 2.2. The paradox and the dangers of the "I - You " relation Like Dilthey before him 6 - a human science philosopher of marked influence on Ortega - and like so many others, surely Mead, who have commented on the pronominal dynamics of the "I" and the "You", Ortega recognizes as fundamental the discovery of the "I" in the "other" as the paradoxical source

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of the sense of self, that is, as a me who is the object of the other's reciprocal interest. As the "I" extends himself to the other for reasons mentioned the other "you" is recognized as an "I" who, in turn, extends himself or herself to my "I", that is a me, who is an other to the other "I". Such paradoxical shifts, such pronominal gymnastics as occur when we speak about the "I" which is a "You" and the "You" which is an "I", has been the source of extended commentary marking it as the basic dynamic of the human situation (Lejeune 1980). Ortega spends considerable time and much meditative power developing the implications of this identity obtaining paradoxical reciprocation. In any event not only is the com-presence of the other necessary to bring an objective world into being but, also, that com-presence is the source of identity of the self. The electricity of the other lies not only in its unique capacity to bring a world into being but also a self into being. But there is a third source of the electricity of the other "you" and that lies in his or her danger. For there is always uncertainty about the nature of the reciprocation and much possible reason for retreat into the solitary "I". Part of the inchoateness of the human situation lies in the constant requirement of calculating the other's "vital equation" - the proportion of genuineness - or genuine interest in reciprocation - to conventional or shallow self-interested calculation. The reciprocation may be satisfactorily conducted and lead to the inclusive "we all" or exclusive "we-others" state of reciprocal solidarity Ortega speaks to the presence in the first person plural Spanish pronoun "nosotros" (we others) of that exclusive solidary state - but it may also be defeated, exploited or unrequited. The "I" who is the other may turn out to be an "anti-I" and drive "me" back into the "I" of radical solitude. On the other hand we may be led to "we-ity" that's fully satisfying collective action. While it is Mead's tendency to assume fully satisfactory collective action it is Ortega's tendency to assume its frustration and its dangers either in the form of the abuses of collective mysticism or in the plain perverseness of the other.

2.3. G.H. Mead: Manipulation the "other"

in the relation between the "I" and

Since we want to discuss Mead's ideas of "manipulation" we may conclude our review of Ortega's argument by considering his discussion of the nature of the hand salutations (chapter 10 of Man and people) that occur between the "I" and the other. It is an example of Ortega's inventiveness of argument. Given the danger of the other or at least the volatility of the "I" - other relation human society has devised usages (vigencias), that is forms of courtesy

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and ceremonious observance by which to control the danger. The shaking of hands or other forms of hand greetings is one of these widespread usages which is also an elementary form of reciprocation between the "I" and the "other". Ortega reviews the various arguments for the meaning of the salutation: those of Herbert Spencer, for example, that it is a survival of the recognition of social hierarchy, and of dominance and subordination or, at least, of homage and bondage, that is social dependency. Other arguments see in it an effusive statement of reciprocal equality. Indeed no theory can predominate as there are salutations of solidarity and other salutations of distinction and divisiveness, that is of dominance and subordination. Ortega examines the etymological aspect of the hand shake and the presence of the hand (Latin manus) in so many words such as command and manipulation. And he concludes that it is the hand that is the very bridge and central agent of human reciprocation. The meaning of the handshake, beyond its hierarchizing or equalizing meaning in particular times and places, lies in its testimony to the intertwined centrality of reciprocal manipulation in the relation between the "I" and the "other". The handshake is a "we" statement of readiness to manipulate the world to mutual advantage. On the one hand as that reciprocal manipulation proceeds satisfactorily the "law of diminishing ceremonious" applies and the handshake and other usages become less necessary. On the other hand, as that reciprocal manipulaton of the world becomes frustrated and abused the handshake is rigidified or abandoned and a retreat is often enough made back into the solitary "I". Now for Mead, as we know, the ongoing, ever-present and pre-existing social world of coordinated productive inter-action is the reality and effective functioning or "adjustment", to use his term, in that world gives rise to reason as its "raison d'etre". 7 Pure reason in the Kantian sense is non-existent and all we have is situated, and in the end, practical reason, whose only measure is the adequate responses it evokes and the expectations it satisfies or frustrates in the productive coordination of action. The Cartesian, the Kantian, the Existential and indeed the Ortegan effort to privilege the reasoning of the isolated individual is denied and reason is seen as the response to social circumstance. It is basic to Mead that thinking, for better or worse is part of ongoing social activity. If we appear to act for the self it is always action undertaken in a much wider context of social action. Thus the pragmatic thesis that all thinking, knowing and, indeed, consciousness is socially enmeshed and is produced for the sake of a satisfying continuation of a process that began impulsively in the social world that is there.

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In such a socially situated world of human mental activity the selfs, itself (and what a Meadian word the reflexive pronoun, itself is) is part of a social process and not a substance existential outside it. The self can only be defined within a system of action which it has symbolically internalized, that is to say summarily condensed, as the "significant other". Without this "other" there could be no self as the self must take the role of the other before it can recognize the self. No person could be conscious of what he is doing or what he should do without that internalized, generalized other. Here arises the pronominal dynamic of the "I", the "me" and the "you" or other with whom one manipulates the world, and the "he", "she" or "they" that in some way, while not manipulators, are judgmental, directly or indirectly, of that manipulation. Awareness of self is awareness that the social meaning of one acts, one's manipulations, are part of a dynamic social process in which one is both agent, manipulator and patient, manipulated. Within the self the "I" and the "me" are the subdivisions equivalent to agent and patient. For the "me" is the habituated self manipulated by social circumstance in the sense of being ever ready to act according to the dictates of the attitudes it has internalized from the generalized other. The "I" appears as a response when the "me's" habituated action to its social world somehow runs awry and the question arises: "What is happening to me?" And this is followed by the question. "What must I do?" In this view the "I" while yet a response, and not freestanding, is the creative innovative component of the self which seeks to recalculate the generalized other and the self's necessary adjustive response. The emergent pronominal proposition is: "I" adjust the relation between "you" and "me" so that "we" may continue to manipulate the world satisfactorily. As we remember, for Ortega the pronominal proposition is: "I" extend "myself" by salutation to the "other", a "he", "she", "it" or "they", and make of "him" a "you" thus creating a reciprocating pair, a "we". Third persons, incidentally, are more present in Ortega as ever possible alienating forces in the reciprocal relation between the "I" and the "you" and among the "we". They are the source of an underlying pessimism in his argument. We see here as we summarize relevant portions of Mead's argument how important to his pragmatism is the com-present manipulation of the object world. In social life human's share perspectives because (1) they together internalize in symbolic forms the generalized other but also because (2) they also together manipulate the world or teach each other to manipulate it. Like Veblen, Mead and the other pragmatists were very much a product of the nineteenth century and very much admirers of American artisanry,

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craftsmanship and workmanship. Thus, though it is not often featured in interpretations of Mead's work, it was the manipulatory and productive phase of human social activity much more than the consummatory phase the latter a twentieth century preoccupation in any event - that interested him. Mead's biosocial perspective arises in his concentration - like a good many paleo-anthropologists — on the importance of the hand in human evolution.8 This manipulatory capacity gives humans powerful control over the object world especially as they are enabled to manipulate things together with other people. Indeed it is this com-present manipulation - we recall here, and employ Ortega's argument on the necessity of com-presence - that has in large measure enabled us to build the world we know and, moreover, is one of the principle sources of our sense of self in relation to the other with whom we manipulate. Successful com-present manipulation demands that we take the role of the other, and see the object of manipulation from his point of view. It is practice par excellence. The human capacity for manipulation of the world makes for an extended intermediate phase of social behavior between the rise of needs and consummation - in which pronominal transactions are particularly at play. It is in this intermediate phase, indeed, that much of culture arises. It is characterized by such pronominal propositions as; "What are you doing?"; "Show me how I can do it"; "Let's see if I can do it"; "We can do it together". This concern with "manipulation" makes of Mead very much a "tactual" philosopher rather than a visual philosopher in whom the ocular orientation is primary. Now I want to argue here that a "tactual" or "manipulatory" oriented philosophy is of substantial interest to an anthropologist engaging in ethnographic inquiry among non-literate or semi-literate or neglectfully literate populations who are primarily and practically engaged in cooperative productive activity such as cattle keeping and mining. It might not be of much interest to an ethnographer making inquiry in an intellectual population composed mainly of visualizers or verbalizers or in a milieu in which the spiritual and speculative aspects of mind are at a premium. Indeed I have chosen these two pragmatic social philosophers not because they are the only philosophers to ponder the import of pronouns or to have considered reflective self-awareness - we might have begun with Adam Smith or Cooley not to mention C. S. Peirce - but because they are of direct relevance to ethnographic research which for any number of practical reasons has to do with the centrality of manipulatory learning in the lifeways being studied. Even the giving of a Lecture 9 is a pragmatic problem solving act within an ongoing field of social behavior and an opportunity to grapple with (another

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word for manipulate) one's problems of research in pastoral and proletarian milieus.

3. What social science knows about pronouns! 3.1.

Universality

We know first of all the impact of culture on knowledge, or as Mead and Ortega would have it, the impact of the actualities of ongoing social behavior on vital reason. Thus we see that the pragmatic pre-occupations with pronouns of our two philosophers are formulated in quite different ways: the one (Ortega) privileges the existential "I", the other (Mead) ongoing social activity; for the one the "gesture" or salutation is the crucial if tentative bridge across the void between the "I" and the "other", for the other the gesture is a crucial phase - the phase of adjustment - in the social act and an eminent example, since one must imagine how one's own gesture will be seen by the other, of taking the role of the other. And each philosopher has a characteristic frame of reference. Ortega writes within a polity painfully aware of its decline, pessimistic in the face of recurrent disorder in government but in which the contemplative and disinterested spiritual values of an ancient metaphysics are still prevalent. The other, Mead, writes in an industrious, expansive energetic polity full of pride and confidence and optimism in its "know how", its engineering genius, its manipulatory power over any task at hand. And each uses characteristic explanatory metaphors. For Mead the baseball team as a generalized other and the awareness in each player of the expectations of all the others as he plays (manipulates) the ball made, repeatedly, for convincing argument (Mead 1934: 154). For Ortega the model of the archetypal relation between the "I" and the "other" was the relation between man and woman, hardly an apt metaphor for a muscular industrial pragmatist like Mead. One thing anthropologists know about pronouns is that they are everywhere present. Forchheimer (1953) who has made to date the most widespread examination of personal pronoun systems - over five hundred languages examined - could not find one language which did not have the category of person. From his data the statement can be made that every language designates at least four persons, "I", "thou", "he" and "we". We employ in modern English a five person system because we have abandoned the "thou" - a shift in the possibilities of nuancing personal relations which

Pronominal perspectives in ethnographic inquiry Six Person System

Seven Person System

I Thou He

I

We You They

Thou He

We inclusive We exclusive You They

Nine Person System

Eleven Person System

I

I

Thou He

We We You (2) You They (2) They

Thou He

Fifteen Person system I

Thou

He

We (2) inclusive We (3) inclusive We inclusive We (2) exclusive We (3) exclusive We exclusive You (2) You (s) You They (2) They (3) They

Figure 1. Person systems

We (2) inclusive We inclusive We (2) exclusive We excluvie You (2) You They (2) They

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is an interesting story in itself. The six person system which English used in Shakespeare's time - and he made very good use of the thou/you difference as do the Quaker's still - is the most common. Eleven, seven and nine person systems are the next most common while there are a very few examples of fifteen person systems. Of course, we learn only so much from such formalizations of personal pronoun systems. We learn primarily about the human penchant for inclusion and exclusion but not very much about such crucial things as generic sex, about the third person of the formal or infantile address, about the pronouns of respect and social distance which is to say the pronouns of power and solidarity as Brown - G i l m a n (1960) have named the you/thou distinction in European languages. The main point is that the distinction of speaker-spoken to and neither speaker nor spoken to is universally found though not necessarily in freestanding pronouns. There is also an important distinction between the first and second person who most often are subject to the same grammatical processes and the third person which is subject to quite different processes. We make in English gender distinctions in the third person and not the first two, for example. The difference in treatment in the first two persons compared with the third stands to reason in view of the fact that the first two are present in some sense while the third person need not be. Indeed Joseph Greenberg (personal communication) has wondered why the first two persons ever got coded at all in the evolution of language given the fact that these two persons are so obviously present in the situation of interaction. 3.2. Precision and ambiguity What first interested me in pronouns was the relative precision of pronoun use in the Bantu languages I worked among in the late fifties and early sixties, a precision which contrasted with the floating pronouns in the Press Conferences of the Eisenhower era.10 These Bantu languages have a noun class system - from six (Fang) to twelve (Zulu) - to which all substantives are assigned and to which all modifications of the substantives, adjectives primarily, are also assigned as classifiers of the noun. Each noun class, therefore, has its corresponding pronoun system - we are speaking not of the personal pronouns now but of the demonstrative, indefinite, interrogative and possessive pronouns. In, therefore, the necessary correspondence between the noun and its adjectival or pronoun classifier greater precision is obtained than is possible in English. Note in the following example from the Fang language, how in English we are uncertain as to which of the objects

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gathered, or to all of them, the they refers. In Fang it is clear that the they (mi) refers to the wild plums (mimvut). (a) Mvogabot emos da me ke efan ete a wole mimvut, sas, bekara oswiete. Mi ne dang a dang mbung! (b) 'The family that day went into the forest gathering wild plums, fingerfruit and crabs from the river. They were particularly good!' All languages, of course, have rules for pronoun use to help them avoid ambiguity and confusion. In general the rule in English is that the pronouns should follow after that to which they refer... that is pronouns should be moved forward, to the right, of their antecedence. That stands to plain reason. Must not we have the subject or noun in mind before we can employ a term to (pro) "stand for" the noun?. But there are plenty of exceptions to this forward moving rule and we can see that, in English at least, the relationships between pronouns and their referents is a more complex matter and it has challenged linguists, at least generative linguists to work out parsimoniously the rules that will account for the relation of pronouns to their referents... a theory as it is called of "anaphoric binding". In the following examples the first sentence given conforms to the forward moving rule and thus satisfies the norm and is acceptable. The second sentence, with the asterisk, violates that rule and hence is unacceptable. But all the following sentences violate the rule yet are all acceptable. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

The professor snores in the library carrel to which he has been assigned. *He snores in the library carrel to which the professor has been assigned. In the library carrel to which he has been assigned the professor snores. In the library carrel, to which the professor has been assigned, he snores. Snoring, he is snoring, the professor, in the library carrel to which he has been assigned.

Grammatical rules guarantee a certain degree of precision in pronoun reference, then, but there is still much slippage in natural languages and hence for certain purposes professional languages either severely restrict pronoun usage or eschew them entirely. In the law for example whose language is notoriously unnatural, the perfidy of pronouns is mostly avoided in good precise legal language by employing substitute phrases: "the party of the first part", "the party of the second part" - or by repeating with solemnity and redundancy such noun phrases as "the plaintiff" - "the defendant" etc.

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4. False promises: The shifting contexts of the human situation We humans struggle to obtain some permanency in our affairs. The pronouns themselves are one of our problems in this regard. Much of philosophy too, at least of the non pragmatic kind, has evidenced that search for permanency. Thus the philosophers' metalanguage of formal logic must avoid like the plague the use of pronouns in its formalizations. It does this not only because of the possible ambiguity of pronouns but also because of the way that pronouns are bound to the particular situation in which they are uttered. Formal logic is interested - or at least was interested before the development of the focus on the "indexicals" and natural languages - not in the vagaries, the false promises, of changing context, but in statements which are context free and whose truth value can be permanently assigned. With such interests it must abolish pronouns. Take Phaedo's statement at the end of the account of the death of Socrates! (a) "Of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest, the justest and the best". But if this sentence is uttered in another context - say by Brutus at Caesar's grave or Andrew Johnson at Lincoln's grave, or Eliot Ness at Al Capone's grave for that matter, a very different statement is made and truth value is affirmed. Pronouns unless nailed down to specific situations are full of false promises like the famous unchanging sign in the Oxford pub: Free Beer Tomorrow! or Descartes affirmation "I think therefore I am" which hardly has the same necessary truth value when uttered by Larry Bird or Pete Rose. As Descartes himself recognized the simpler and less ambitious statement "I exist" is at least necessarily true each time he, or anyone else, utters it. Except perhaps in the case of a philosopher friend of mine who shouted out "I exist" halfway down the Bright Angel trail in the Grand Canyon ... which shout immediately dislodged a rock above which crushed him. 11 So that when the echo returned, "I exist" it was full if not of false, at least unfulfilled pronominal promise. It is understandable why philosophers who make a claim on permanence avoid such egocentric particulars as Bertrand Russell called them - statements full of pronouns which are only true for particular ego-anchored circumstances and not true in any loftier sense. They would much prefer statements of the kind, to rephrase Phaedo: (b) "Of all the men of Socrates time whom Phaedo knew, Socrates was the wisest, the justest and the best".

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So we live in shifting circumstances and are ourselves shifters, always having to tie promises down. This reminds us that the pronouns themselves have been called shifters. They embody that kind of shiftiness of the "I" into the other, an understanding of which has been a strong interest of social philosophers. They are thinkers who have tried to come to terms with the dynamics of the human situation and how by salutations and manipulations we pass from promise to engagement and they have tried to deal with such shiftiness productively. From another perspective than the search for permanence we see how the perfidious pronoun actually is crucial in locating us within shifting spacetime relations which are the essence of context. Deixis is the term employed to indicate that ability to frame subjects, objects and events in time and place. And pronouns are quintessentially deictic - Zeigworter, pointer words, as the Germans call them, acting to situate us in dynamic social contexts. And we process these rapid, when you really consider then, shifts of person quite readily. We can follow quite easily the following shifts complex as they are. I told you to send it to me when we heard from her so that they could be alerted to our plans before his flight! What you told me to send it to you when we heard from her. I never heard you say a word about either him or them.

Of course a document like the Watergate tapes is so full of pronoun shifts of this order as to be quite confusing. On a President's prolixity of pronoun use in his press conferences, we have seen, can have the same confounding consequence. But still we can follow the pronoun shifts to a considerable degree of complexity. So generally it is quite remarkable how by pronoun shifts we situate ourselves in time and space. Inability to so situate ourselves and others, indeed is a sure sign of disturbance. Here we might bear in mind what is communicated to us by those colleagues who work in that no-mans land of childhood distrubance and retardation and especially those who work in that most baffling and poignant of disturbances, childhood autism. These paradoxical children - often with some characteristics of the idiot-savant, quite frequently evidence the defect of pronoun reversal. They will say "you" where we would expect them to say "I" or "me". If you ask such a child: Kevin, do you want to go outside? He will respond, "You want to go outside". He seems to mean, "I want to go outside".

Bettelheim (1967), from the perspective of ego-psychology, argues that the failure in the subject position to use the first person "I" indicates the autistic's

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inability to develop the self-concept - his inability to take responsibility for himself. 12 But it may not be necessary to introduce an ego-psychology. The problem shown by autistic children in mastering pronoun systems is only the most obvious aspect of a more general problem - the secure development of deictic categories in their speech. All utterances in human situations take place at a certain time and between a speaker and a hearer. And these parameters, and the egocentric orientations on which they are based, frequently shift in the stream of speech. And these shifting orientations are handled at the morphological level mainly by the personal pronouns, and otherwise by the adverbials of place and time and the verb inflections. It is not only autistic children who have difficulty in managing the deictic system. It has long been recognized - by earlier generations of linguists - to be present in children generally. Otto Jesperson reports on children who once having learned to identify themselves with their proper names do not easily accede to such "alienable terms as the personal pronouns" (Jesperson 1949: 123-4). They may be intimidated to speak about themselves in the first person while being called "you" by their interlocutors. They may try to monopolize the first person. "Don't dare to call yourself "I". Only "I" am "I" and you are only you". Or they use indiscriminately either "I" or "you" both for the addresser and addressee so that these pronouns may mean any participant of the given dialogue. Whatever the implications children generally give up such early stolid pronominal egocentrism and show a capacity for turn-taking, for colloguy, as early as three years of age. At the heart of this pronominal mismanagement in whatever form - or a crucial part of it - is the inability to make that frequent shift - that turn-taking between the "I" and the "you", between the "hearers and speakers role" which has been pondered in so extended a fashion by our two pragmatic philosophers. Halliday argues that the ability to alternate between hearer's and speaker's role is basic to what he calls "learning to mean" and thus is basic not only to interpersonal interactional skills but indeed to our whole humanity (Halliday 1977). And one can go further and argue that such regular shiftiness between the "I" and the "you" engenders not only our human acceptance of paradox in our affairs but, frequently enough, our delight in such surprising transformations and sudden contradictions in our experience. Indeed there is something paradoxical in pronouns and not only in this shiftiness. As Bloomfield pointed out many years ago in Language (1933), pronouns are, at once, so very much a part of immediate contexts while at the same time they have a transcendent character such that anyone can be an "I" a "you" a "he" and "it" etc. That is they are very much, as we have argued, tied to specific contexts of interaction - they are indexical and referential -

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while at the same time they are alienable. There is in them both the particular and yet something universal and, in part, their shiftiness lies in this circling back and forth between their particular and their universal status. We might call them, indeed, elementary hermeneutic forms.

5. Conclusion: Some practical consequences of pronominalism Why should we take this quasi-philosophic moment in the company of philosophers to grapple with, to paraphrase Ortega: "These most fundamental phenomenon, most paradoxical particles, most electric elements, out of which the social reality arises". There are any number of vital reasons. For example, recently in anthropology there has been a flurry of acrimonious, often enough "ad hominem" debate about the introduction of personal experience, egocentric particulars as it were, into our ethnographies. One might argue, indeed, that one pillar of post-modern anthropology - although it was surely a Malinowskian tactic as well - rests upon the relevance of subjective experience to the task of cultural description. Many have expressed misgiving's about the introduction of what are called "self-indulgent" subjectivisms into our ethnographic descriptions. But this debate can be understood in pronominalistic terms. We recognize first of all that the introduction of the first person - or even the second person - is felt to be a violation of professional canons of scientific description which, like Caesar's Gallic Wars, is conceived as an investigative struggle that should be written as i/carried out impersonally and in indirect discourse - "after repeated tests it was discovered that" - or at the least in the third person - "when the investigator examined the residual compounds he found that". The system of science, like the miner's cadres we have described in the revelatory moments with which we began, demands such self-abnegation. And such pronominal style is felt to be more objective. Of course, such style ignores the often agonistic atmosphere in which much science is carried out and the agent/patient relations among scientists. Such accounts are left to scientific memoirs although, often enough in recent decades, these are offered up not at the end of a distinguished career but rather, as in the case of Donald Johanson's Lucy or James Watson's The Double Helix, by unabashedly egocentric young scientists who, way before their time, give us all the deictic circumstances of their discoveries. I do not wish to argue - who but a solipsist would - for unabashed egocentrism, in science - or in literature either. But one would still have to say

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that in the social sciences, at least, and particularly in anthropological ethnography, the personal circumstances of the investigator and those subject to his or her investigation are so crucial to the quantity and quality of the material collected that one would be dissembling and unscientific to pretend that the negotiations between the agentive "I" and the patient "me", not to mention the various "yous" or the various "others" in the pronominal field is unimportant to the work. Indeed Dilthey's famous phrase, which surely lies at the heart of the meditations of both Ortega and Mead, "understanding is the rediscovery of the "I" in the "thou"", can surely stand as a pronominal proposition for the nature of fieldwork. It can stand for that point of view, that ever higher level of understanding, that gradually emerges between "me" and "my informants" as we together move to a "generalized other" on the basis of which I, or we, can write an ethnography. The fact is that fieldwork is first a "false promise" full of egocentric particulars struggling to discover or proclaim how they exist. And it is only in grasping that interacting, emergent existence that its promise is fulfilled, a fulfillment whose claim on wider, even universal, truths must always, however, be conditioned by the remembrance of the negotiation of egocentric particulars out of which it arose in the first place. For me, incidentally that remembrance is guaranteed by the building of ethnography on revelatory incidents steeped in deictic circumstance. In these we see, in the flesh as it were, pronominal negotiations of ego-centric particulars... negotiations which lay claim on being or, at least to becoming. This ethnographic practice is an instance of the pronominalistic view that particulars always cast more light on generalities than vice versa. One of the practical consequences of pronominalism then is "truth in labeling" about just how with what ingredients, our ethnographies have been put togehter. But there are even more practical consequences in this dangerous world. Though this paper has largely referenced more hoary linguistic wisdom on the nature of pronouns in the human situation I think useful to mention the recent work of Greg Urban (1986): he has been looking into the pronominal arguments going on during the cold war. To state a more complex analysis in simplest terms, he has been studying the attempts on the part of a War Chief, Reagan's Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, to justify defense expenditure by the rhetoric of the exclusive "we" confronting the "inimical" "they". Urban contrasts this "military pronoun deployment" with the efforts of the anti-war activist, Jonathan Schell to promulgate an inclusive, transcendent "space-ship earth" "we". In this parlous world such insights as provided by this instance of pronominal investigation cannot help but be of practical consequence. For, in part, our enmities are fueled and

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justified in that world by universal affirmations of difference whose existence, in fact, can be seen as the consequence of such rhetorical manipulation of the "egocentric particulars" of our lives. I do not want here in this conclusion to over-generalize about the nature of pronominal negotiations across cultures. Let us recall, just in the IndoEuropean tradition, the important distinction between languages who have preserved the "thee" and the "you", the pronouns of power and solidarity, and those like our own who have given up on them. And, unlike English, there are many languages, like Japanese, where in many situations one works hard to avoid pronouns although the language may be richly endowed with them... as, indeed, is the case with Japanese. In part this is due to a desire to avoid such markers of social differentiation, of power and/or solidarity, as the more complex pronoun systems encode. But there may be other reasons. Recent work in linguistics has gone into arguing that languages do differ as between subject (Sp) and topic prominence (Tp) (Li 1976). This is a distinction between languages that have a primary interest in the subjects of the discussion - the agent and patient insofar as he or she is acted upon or acting - and those that feature the topic at the expense of the subjects: Mandarin Chinese and Japanese are so classed. We can make the distinction in the following way: (a) Sp: John abhors Bertrand Russell's ideas. (b) Tp: As for a theory of truth and meaning, the ideas of Bertrand Russell are abhorrent to John. There are many interesting distinctions that arise because of this difference in emphasis - distinctions having to do with the close relation of verb and subject in Sp languages, the existence of double subjects in Tp languages, the great importance of passivization in Sp languages, in order to escape excessive subjectivity, and its unimportance in Tp languages because of the uncertainty (or disinterest) about whom should be the subject. Because of the emphasis upon having a subject, dummy or empty subjects are often employed in Sp languages. "It is hot", "it is raining", "it is foul tasting". These are unnecessary in topic prominent languages who do not feel such need for a subject. Why not simply "Hot!", "Raining!", "Foul tasting!". Unless one has crossed from one kind of language to another it is hard to convey their particular genius in respect to these distinctions. But in respect to personal pronouns which are so often the subjects at play in subject languages, there is a greatly reduced use of them. English speakers learning Japanese and carrying over with them their subject orientation sound soon perceive themselves as overexposed in pronoun use by reason of their

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dependence on these "egocentric particulars". Japanese and Chinese speakers moving in the English direction find themselves uncomfortably obliged to employ these particulars. The linguist Alton Becker (personal communication) describes his experience with a group of Thai students, strangers to each other, speaking a Tp language, sitting talking to each other for a whole evening without uttering a personal pronoun. Perhaps we could give up on personal pronouns entirely and live in a personless, perspectiveless world. Imagine the Lord's prayer without pronouns. Father art in heaven! Hallowed be name. Kingdom come! Will be done! On Earth as in Heaven! Give each day Daily bread, And forgive debts As debts are forgiven Kingdom, Power and Glory Forever. Amen! If we so give up on pronouns what we give up on is what human life is so vitally about: social relationships. Gregory Bateson (1972) points out that animal communication is largely about matters of relationship - about distance, about proximity, about dominance and subordinance, about inclusion and exclusion, about immediate situations concerning these matters. And that's what pronouns are about - about the deictic contours of immediate situations, about relationships. These are primordial matters in animal life and that is why pronouns - since they are indexical of these matters are primordial. Bateson goes on to point out that the great new thing in cultural evolution was not the abstraction and generalization powers of language but the discovery of how to be specific about something other than relationships... of how to discuss topics without undue involvement with egocentric particulars, as it were. Alas, Bateson says further, this discovery has scarcely effected human behavior. Our social animality, our mammalian ancestral preoccupation with relationship ... with orienting ourselves deictically in social space and time is still everpresent to us. One steps back from such overarching generalizations about human nature as Bateson is inclined to make. Historical change is as everpresent. For languages change as do human interests in relationships. Pronominal dyna-

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mies are also variable. For example it can be argued that the Indo-European languages evolved into their now quite marked subject prominence from a former topic dominance (Lehman 1976). Hence it is conceivable that our present subject prominence might evolve back into topic dominance under the pressure of scientific canons, or by the continued reticence of truth value logic, or through the coming onto the world stage of the Japanese and Chinese, or by convincing demonstration of the impact on human divisiveness and enmity of subject prominent pronominal discourse, or by any other of the discontents of our civilization of excessive individualism. Still one doubts that we will ever so give up on pronouns as to recite the Lord's Prayer or other equivalent ultimate salutations without them. Let me finally return to manipulation and to some "egocentric particulars" of my own. I have featured the centrality of that notion in our two pragmatic philosophers because of its usefulness to me working, as I do, among very tactual and taciturn pastoralists and proletarians in Northern Spain. In Africa in work among religious revitalizers I worked among very speculative, very visual and very verbal folk. They could tell me and picture for me a lot. But these cattle keepers and miners are much more closed mouth... much more ostensive. They prefer to show me how to do things. How to fish, how to scythe a meadow, milk a cow, build a hay pile, feel the difference in the soil between a fertile and barren field, timber up a mine gallery, keep a coal damp lamp properly aflame, play cards, sing a melismatic country air. They have a lot of knowledge but it is preferably implicit, tacit. So I have had to learn the ethnographic virtues of manipulation, of cornpresence with the worked-upon object. It's not so easy for a university man, believe me. For we almost always seek to study and enrich our lives with things intensely verbal or visual. Still there is another form of intelligence in these mountains. It is the intelligence found in the hands. It is the society found in com-present manipulation. And come to think of it - and this is what Ortega and Mead are telling us, are they not - this practical manipulation is perhaps the primordial form of intelligence... the way that egocentric particulars can most clearly become sociocentric realities and can lay claim to perduring existence. And perhaps even more than that — thinking now of the persistent problem of "knowing other minds" that is posed for all we students of the mental systematics of distinctly "other" people - in com-present manipulation, in the passing back and forth of skill, in manipulative turn taking, may lie one of the profoundest forms of knowing. Perhaps as both Mead and Ortega seem to argue, this is the only clear and certain way of knowing other minds. We only know others really, they would have it, through what

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these others can teach us or what we can teach them to do with the objects of this world. Of course, the things we manipulate, grappling with pronouns, are repositories of meanings that are found in the history of their manipulations and not just in the immediate circumstance. These meanings must be teased out of them by other methods and particularly when we are working with taciturn or reticent folk.

Notes 1. In my experience in the Peaks of Europe "Yo" is as likely to be returned as "Ho" and, interpretable as meaning "I" personalizes more than "Ho" the response. Often, however, it may have no more pronominal import than the respectful response in the American navy, "Aye", "Aye". In more traditional middle class milieus where a stricter respect is required among generations the response is likely to be "Mande Ud". (At your command). This response is never employed among cattle keepers. 2. I am indebted to Joseba Zulaika who has pointed up the use of this form of roll-call response in the Spanish military and this may be the source for it as it is practiced in mining. The more standard response in the roll call of military groups is the impersonal "Presente", "He, She or It is present". 3. One excludes one's personality by responding in the third person because the third person, as we say below, does not make a claim in the way that the first two persons make a claim upon the reaction of the other. That is to say that the first two persons are "shifters", and they imply a subsequent shift of perspectives in the way that the third person does not. 4. This book is based on a series of lectures first given in Argentina in 1940 and subsequently published in English in 1957. 5. This is my own term seeking to address Ortega's sense of the "oceanic uncertainty" that underlies human social life. 6. As in Dilthey's oft quoted phrase "Das Verstehen ist ein wiederfinden das Ich en Du". 7. Beside Mead's main writings David Η. Miller's (1973) valuable critical synthesis has been a main source of this discussion of Mead. See particularly Chapter 3, Subsections 7 and 8: "The Hand, The Central Nervous System and Reflective Thinking" and "The Hand and The Physical Thing". 8. Paleoanthropologists emphasize not only the fact that humans or protohumans from very early on give evidence of the capacity for culture in "tool making", they also point to the large areas of the cerebral cortex adaptively devoted to the nervous system of the hand and its manipulations. That is they emphasize the interaction in human evolution between brain and tool manipulation. A pioneering statement of this argument is found in S. L. Washburn (1960). But culture historians who focus

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on the evolution of humankind's productive capacities and products such as Oswald Spengler (1932) or Lewis Mumford (1934) often enough place the hand at the center of culture. Reference is made to the fact that this Chapter was first given as a Dean's Inaugural Lecture at the University of Chicago, May 1987. Eisenhower himself evidenced in his press conferences a particularly loose and slippery usage of pronouns. And this usage was often featured by the cartoonist Jules Feiffer in depicting the President's laborious and cloudy public syntax. For example the cartoon on p. 24 of Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan. (New York: Knopf. 1982) in which Eisenhower gives a laborious explanation of his recent overseas diplomacy in which we's, he's, they's, you's and I's are conflated in the most mystifying fashion. I am endebted to the philosopher Murray Kiteley for this account. Fortunately the Meadian mode was in operation and the echo returning from "the generalized other" restored him to his self. There have been other explanations for this tendency in autistics to avoid the first person and, in the example given, it may be an example of truncated or echoing speech in which the autistic echoes or imitates the speech of his or her interlocutor.

Reference s Bateson, G. 1972

"Problems in cetacean and other mammalian communication" in Steps towards an ecology of mind. San Francisco: Chandler, 364-376. Bettelheim, Bruno 1967 The empty fortress: Infantile autism and the birth of the self. New York: Free Press. Bloomfield, L. [1949] Language. New York: Holt. 1933. Brown, Roger - A. Gilman 1960 "The pronouns of power and solidarity", in T.A. Sebeok (ed.), 253-276. Dorson, R. (ed.) 1979 Folklore in the modern world. The Hague: Mouton. Feiffer, Jules 1982 Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan. New York: Knopf. Fernandez, J. W. 1979 "Syllogisms of association: Some modern extensions of Asturian deepsong", in R. Dorson (ed.), 182-206.

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"Exploded worlds: Text as a metaphor for ethnography (and vice versa)", Dialectical Anthropology 10: 15 - 26. 1986 Persuasions and performances: The play of tropes in culture. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Forchheimer, Paul 1953 The category of person in language. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Gasset, Ortega y 1957 Man and people. London: George Allen and Unwin. Halliday, Μ. A. K. 1977 Learning how to mean: Explorations in the development of language. New York: Elsevier. Jesperson, O. [ 1949] Language: Its nature, development and origin. New York: Holt 1923. Lehman, Wilfred 1976 From topic to subject in Indo-European, Charles Li (ed.), 4 4 5 - 4 5 6 . Lejeune, Philippe 1980 Je est un autre: L'autobiographie de la litterature aux medias. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Lewis, J. Davis 1979 "A social behaviorist interpretation of the meadian "I". AJS 85, 2: 261-287. Li, Charles N. (ed.) 1976 Symposium on subject and topic. New York: Academic Press. Mead, G.H. 1934 Mind, self and society from the point of view of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, David L. 1980 George Herbert Mead: Self, language and the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mumford, L. 1934 Technics and civilization. New York: Harcourt Brace 1962. Sebeok, T. A. (ed.) 1960 Style in language. Cambridge: MIT Press. Spengler, Ο. 1932 Man and technics, New York. Urban, G. 1986 The rhetoric of a war chief. Working papers and proceedings of the Center for Psycho-Social Studies. Chicago, Illinois. No 5, Series. Washburn, S. L. 1960 "Tools and human evolution". Scientific American, 203: 63 - 75.

Conclusion

Beyond postmodernism: Resonant anthropology Pierre Maranda

1. Deconstructionist and constructivist anthropologies The contributors to this volume tackle a substantial anthropological issue. A perennial one. Especially over the last decades, quite a few seminars, workshops and conferences, international as well as national, made it their focus. The critical look of anthropologists on their own work - on the knowledge they report/construct - , gained momentum to the extent that several departments in our field list epistemology as a specific mandatory course. The recurrent question: To what extent can anthropology produce culture-free and therefore valid discourses? In other words, should "ascetic" epistemology be deconstructionist in view of empirical validation, while constructivist anthropology would be a more "violent" approach whose validation would come only from discursive consistency? Bibeau and Corin, the makers of this book, have controlled and channeled ethnographically grounded epistemological reflections to focus it on the very nature of our endeavors, purpose, and raison d'etre. Some years ago, Dan Sperber (1982) contended that anthropologists write to meet philosophers' expectations. Our discourse would be begging for elitist approval. As intellectuals, we would seek acceptance in the community of authorized thinkers and we would, more often unconsciously than not, conform to and abide by the philosophical paradigms and fashions of our time. Thus, following a semiotic trend consolidated by Lotman (1973), "text" became a password to fancy salons. Striving for admission in those exclusive circles so as to gain higher social recognition and acceptance by the chics, anthropologists who were already subservient to other philosophical musings such as hermeneutics and phenomenology, started to upgrade their language and to treat cultures as "texts". Eager to remain in the field of deconstruction, i.e. in texts to deconstruct, they also diligently took as targets some more or less biased samples of their colleagues' writings - texts indeed - and showed, in orthodox postmodernist fashion, the vacuity of anthropological foundations, viz. of ethnography. In the presence of the powerful, and in truly postmodernist self-immolating paradoxicalness, many buy a right of being by

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deconstructing themselves to offer as their own ultimate texts an avowal of personal ethnographic vacuity. Conclusion: the failure of anthropology? No, say Bibeau and Conn (Chapter 1) who want to mark their disagreement with the reduction of cultures to mere texts: the search for "meaning...forces interpreters to connect the text with other texts and with the context and invites them to read signs by using inferential systems oriented toward the cultures in which the texts originate" (p. 7). Contrary to Sperber's view - but that was some thirty years earlier - Clyde Kluckhohn saw anthropology as the new philosophy. Our field would reveal such theretofore unknown dimensions that Western thought would have to take them into account and revamp its most prestigious elucubrations. Interestingly though unwittlingly, the conclusion of Jean Baudrillard's recent book (1990) loops back to Kluckhohn's assertion. For Baudrillard, once everything has been deconstructed, there is nothing left but the ethnography of alien cultures. Actually, Baudrillard and postmodernism in general belabor a point made much earlier by the French poet Stephane Mallarme in the first and last lines of his poem Brise marine La chair est triste, helas, et j 'ai lu tous les livres but Mallarme ends his poem with a call to exoticism Mais, ό mon coeur, entends le chant des matelots.

2. A postmodernist paradox: Ascetic-and-violent anthropologies "Ascetism" and "violence", two keywords in the title of this volume, refer to control. Ascetism implies centripetal, rigorous self-control of appetites, of impulses, of "subjectivity"; the authors of the Introduction consider it coextensive with "submission" to the data. In contrast, violence denotes centrifugal and aggressive control of others and it demands submission of the data to a privileged approach. "Rapture" vs. "rape"? Ascetism tends toward some kind of mysticism: a rapture for absorption in the culture of adoption - the anthropologist becomes a docile, a pious immigrant. Would then violence lean toward rape? Actually, the contributors to this book deal with two forms of "violence", one inner-oriented, the other outer-oriented, two forms of "violence" that analysts practice either on themselves or on their objects of study.

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Ascetes exert a strict control on their own impulses, working toward transparency. Ascetic anthropologists behave like members of oral societies that Bibeau and Corin portray succinctly. Refering to "the techniques used in oral societies for the bodily incorporation of tales and myths" they point out that "repetitive recitations accompanied by vocal and musical exercises have been the rule everywhere". Would that offer us a convincing model, a paradigm of "physical and intellectual discipline" that "seems to have been intended to produce a sort of assimilation of the person by the oral text" - by the cultural text if one wants to use the text metaphor for culture? To reach a so-called deeper level of interpretation, one would practice outer-oriented violence; one would torment one's data until they bow in obedience to, or comply with, some theoretical paradigm, one implying that one's informants are often, if not always, wrong. Such "aggressive" anthropologists share a basic assumption: culture, ideology, are essentially deceptive; they function as "opium of the people". Bibeau and Corin write "We have repeated many times in this text that all cultures are built in such a way that they occult the central mechanisms that hold things together" (p. 48). Consequently, analysts must correct their data and rectify the natives' readings. This book - a truly postmodernist paradox - promotes the ascetic stand, but with a relatively high tolerance threshold for violence. In the editors' words, "the contributors remind their colleagues that the construction of any ethnographic text should abide by some ascetic rigor" but they also "insist that cultural institutions and texts both contain sub-meanings which can be attained only when interpreters 'do violence' to the texts or to the cultural data that they analyse" (Preface, p. ix).

3. Resonant anthropology Postulate: Any text contains its own intertextual1 key. Hence the question: what unlocks the contents of this book? In fact, a leading concept, borrowed from an exotic "philosophical" tradition and on the side of ascetism, can be seen as underlying this collective work. Would it be doing violence to the different contributors to read it in their "texts"? Or would they, as our sources, as our informants, agree with such a reading? If we are bound to be the subjects of a philosophy, could we not switch obediences and try to move at least provisionally under the conceptual canopy of traditional Chinese wisdom? Let us attempt the shift

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with the concept oiganying, "resonance", 2 following LeBlanc's contribution (Chapter 2). Picone (Chapter 10) glosses it as "correlative thinking", after Joseph Needham. Scholar of traditional China, LeBlanc analyzes it as follows. Gan has as its semantic field the notion of affect, feeling, stimulus;... The meaning of ying focuses upon the idea of response, reaction, reflex, effect. [Both gan and ying enjoy grammatical polyvalence: they may function as verbs, nouns, adverbs, and adjectives on the strength of word-context. And since] the expression was first applied... to the study of musical and acoustic phenomena... ganying is better translated by the expression "resonance" (p. 59).3

Taoist resonance anticipated the move from postmodernism to fractals (Chaos Theory) and applications of holography to the social sciences for, indeed, the basic existential paradox becomes transcended when one takes into account the minutest details (i.e. "fractals", very long chains of decimals), which means that "reaching deeper levels" consists in nothing more than extremely careful scrutiny of the data, with the implication that wholes can be reconstructed from any of their parts (the holographic approach). 4 For the Tao, as non-being, is the ineffable source of all beings [basic paradox] and, as reason, is the concealed [fractal] harmony of the perceived universe. At the phenomenal level of the ten thousand things, the Tao takes the figure of resonance. Resonance is therefore a principle of intelligibility of the universe. It explains not only how the universe is structured, but how it functions... Events, changes, transformations are all instances of resonance, although the "resonant" link between or among phenomena is not always perceptible [short of very long chains of decimals], Knowledge is the uncovering of the endless chains of correspondences between different parts of the universe, within the framework of yin-yang, the five elements, and other classificatory schemes (LeBlanc, p. 73).

Accordingly, "resonance" consists of several overlaps and can be developed operationally as it becomes evident upon reading this book. An interesting "resonance" can be pointed out between the Chinese concept and a Melanesian one that could also be glossed as "resonance": kwaililifaila, a term I came across when investigating the native theory of tropes in the field (Lau Lagoon, Malaita, Solomon Islands). It deconstructs as follows: Kwai: reciprocity prefix; lili: to oscillate, to move, switch back and forth, shift from side to side; fai: conjonctive preposition; la: nominal suffix. In other words, "a reciprocal move, together, back and forth in a kind of echo system". Actually, the term also translates our words "echo" and "mimic". Learned Lau gave me that term to render the Western trope "metaphor". 5

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"Resonance" also echoes another concept, a Russian one: that structuring a Markovian space. The mathematics of "reflecting barriers" and "absorbing barriers" has been created by A. A. Markov, the inventor of the famous chains and processes that bear his name and that are at the foundation of the mathematical theory of communications (Shannon - Weaver 1949), cybernetics, computer science and even Chaos Theory and fractals that extend their explanatory range (Mandelbrot 1977; Gleick 1988; Sormany 1990).6 Markov chains provide a rigorous tool for modeling such "structuralities of structures" (Derrida) and the back-and-forth interplays from metonyms to synecdoches (Geertz), and thus a way to move beyond them to define resonance operationally , i.e. as "relays" and "sinks" in cultural data. Semiotic (and not only semantic) nets thus become operational tools with minimal violence to the data as they do not require prior assumptions. Bibeau and Corin (Chapter 1) propose the use of such nets, that they have tested in the field (p. 40). Let us return to the concept of resonance as underlying the different chapters that follow LeBlanc's. I shall strive for "resonance" so as to be consonant with the contributors. Not surprisingly, Sanskrit offers some semantic connivence with ganying. In Leavitt's words (Chapter 3), Even in the most simple and direct style, to understand Sanskrit is to grasp relations. .. In all of the classical Indo-European languages, Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit, these relations as well as others are perceptible and indeed unavoidable: it is impossible to say anything without immediately entering into a perfectly explicit and grammatically required web of relations and associations. This sense of constant association, of explicit reverberation in form and meaning, is heightened in Sanskrit by other developments, (p. 89) In grasping the meaning of lines of Sanskrit, the total effect is of depth and transparency, of simultaneously perceiving multiple layers of structure and meaning... Each element of meaning, in turn, is associated to others, so that great chunks of the named universe of classical Hinduism are regularly evoked through single words (p. 90).

And Leavitt shows by implication that asceticism must be carried out to resonance as fully as possible, otherwise one will take words as "semantic primitives" and thus, foreclosing further understanding, remain with a very distortingly small scope of harmonics. Chevalier (Chapter 4), in true Peircian semiotics - signs signifying other signs ad infinitum - implicitly uses resonance to explore the meaning of Revelation. In so doing, he develops an important dimension of the concept, that of dissonance (transgression). "The realm of the signifier is a land of no exile where the word never speaks of the world but rather to another word, the

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mirror to another mirror" (p. 122). Yet, resonance occurs within culturespecific parameters: "Language cannot exist on the basis of an absolute laisser-faire association" (p. 122). This implies that a full theory of resonance must take transgression, moral non-sense and subversion into account, as well as parasiting (p. 131; see also Galaty's paper, Chapter 7). Only when it does can it approach adequacy, that must also include psychophysiological dimensions. And the author takes up a style akin to Lacan's and San Antonio's, using puns with semantic echoes and leaping in resonnance irraisonnee parce que non arraisonnee lexically and syntactically, in order to short-circuit the linearity of a melody that would otherwise remain deprived of harmonics. In terms of Markov chains, Chevalier explores absorbing barriers (semiotic "sinks") when he writes about inhibition and repression, in connection with "condensation" and "displacement". Thus Revelation, like the whole Bible, is an echo chamber - a Markovian space consisting of reflecting barriers - in which "narrative language is constantly shifting in and out of memories of the past and expectations of the future... Epilogues are not an exception. The only difference is that they are self-contained, which implies a reserve, an unresolved enigma that compels the reader to shift back to the prologue or to another variation on the same story. The New Jerusalem portrayed in Revelation is an invitation to read Genesis again" (p. 141). In Chapter 5, Obeyesekere offers an interesting case of self-amplifying mystifying resonances on the basis of wrong premisses. The "British cannibalism complex" (fed by tales and nursery rimes of which a convincing one is quoted) set the tune for an escalation in communication dissonance and, consequently, for off-key anthropology through Sahlins' "false ear". Thus, the author tries to straighten out the score - viz. his corpus of texts — and to retune the instruments of the players. His strategy consists essentially of reconstructing the "hidden discourse" of the Hawaiians at the time of Cook's visits. As is so often the case in all sorts of accounts, "The event gets locked into the fantasy as the fantasy gets locked in the event", with the result that dissonances self-amplify: "All of these spiral into a variety of crises characterized by what one might legitimally call a temporary 'paranoid ethos' " (p. 150). Consequently, a more "ascetic" reading than Sahlins', i.e. one of anthropophagy in resonance with sacrifice enables Obeyesekere to propose a fuller interpretation of ethnohistorical data. Corin argues (Chapter 6) that resonance includes a built-in factor of leeway for dissonances that fulfill essential functions; e.g., it allows alterity to remain inside the system (p. 187). She consolidates implicitly both Chevalier's point on transgression and Obeyesekere's on "paranoid ethos". Actually, she wishes:

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To draw the attention to the fact that heterogeneity can be built into culture itself and that a structural heterogeneity has essential functions at the level of cultures and individuals. By structural heterogeneity, I mean that cultural elements are organized by various codes which follow different rules and correspond to contrasting values. A dominant code is pervaded not only by diversity but by one or several underlying codes whose rules are opposite to those of the seemingly dominant code (p. 176; see also Bibeau and Corin, Chapter 1, p. 43).

Keesing's paper (see below) gives further resonance to this view. Corin also positions the common notion of "inversion rituals" (Levi-Strauss, Leach, Gluckman, Douglas, Auge, etc.) in fuller theoretical contexts. One can thus avoid structuralist naivete or over-simplifications. To carry on with the musical analogy, we could say that Corin advocates a "dodecaphonic" type of resonance vs. one on the classical scale. This position facilitates, according to her, an internal transformation of rituals and cultures in the context of cultural change, where the challenging and creative power of the interplay between open and hidden hierarchy is equally part of traditional cultures. For Galaty (Chapter 7), the hermeneutic process implies a semiotic surgery (a form of violence?) to probe into the mind-soul along the lines of Geisteswissenschaften, sciences that would reach beyond mere world-views, Weltanschauungen. In this Gadamerian framework, Galaty echoes Leavitt's from another wall. A hermeneutic process is implied whenever meaning is hidden, but the question of "hidden meaning" reflects both on knowledge and knower. The literal meaning of a text can be initially "hidden" but even when grasped can leave the cultural connotations of key symbols and notions in the text equally elusive. Within Geisteswissenschaften, cultural understanding (" Verstehende") implies eliciting the ideas, motives, and intentions which lend social action its particular meaning, and thus even non-linguistic action is infused with linguisticality (p. 196)

e.g., the "linguisticality" of the analyst. On such lines, one must draw the conclusion that the work of an ethnographer is to "textualize" a target culture? In sum, resonance encompasses the hermeneutic process which "is a means of addressing the 'otherness' of texts, rendering them familiar through bringing to light both the implicit and potential meanings within them' (p. 205, emphasis supplied). Consequently, resonance encompasses not only actual harmonics but also "possible" and "thinkable" ones, as stated by Marc Auge (1977) in the framework of ideo-logics. In consonance with the preceding chapters but from a very different theoretical angle, Keesing (Chapter 8) remarks pertinently that interpretative

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violence can stem from resonance artifactually constrained and distorted by the practice of standard anthropological discourse. In his words: It is worth noting that distinguishing religion, a realm of interpretation and manipulation in terms of ancestral agency, from "law", a realm of dispute resolution through litigation and compensation, does some interpretive violence to Kwaio experience. The two realms are intimately interconnected, and their separation is partly an artifact of our own cultural and anthropological conventions, (p. 220)

Keesing adds a significant dimension to the concept of resonance: how do we follow its constituting vectors? What kind of ear must we develop for adequate attuning? How shall we hear what the author calls "submerged voices" and "subaltern" or even "counter-hegemonic discourses"? Can we but agree with the view of culture he proposes in his concluding paragraph, to the effect that a society-specific resonance is often discordant? On this, Keesing's paper converges mainly with Chevalier's and Corin's; all three stress the necessity of ascetic fine tuning to record not only the narrow band of dominant voices but also the whole spectrum of disharmonies unavoidably heard in a concert of voices whose discordances even the most hegemonic society can never completely resorb. To carry on the musical analogy, let us say that ethnographers cannot work only with a simple, single-track mental recorder; they must use a 24-, 48-, or still better a 64-track instrument. Keesing emphasizes the pertinence of parallel information recording; should we also further the development of parallel information reporting, i.e. of non-linear ethnographies, somewhat a la Chevalier? Zempleni (Chapter 9) judiciously underscores the randomized nature of divination apparatus (see also Picone, Chapter 10). In this case, resonance is tuned to the uncertain, the threatening, the unaccountable on grounds of firstorder empirical evidence. As a system to decipher arcane events (arcane because they have occured despite their very low probabilities and thus dissonant with patterned "history"), resonance moves on the level of randomness. 7 And, on the level of prediction, it aims at planning which chords to strike. Mechanical divination works always by means of some randomizing device whose contingent or aleatory "answers" come between the diviner and his client and between him and his so-called "science of signs". This randomizing technique always outlives the attempts of total semiotic codification of events, a typical trend of great - for example, Chinese - divinatory systems. Thus, it seems to be a necessary means of mantic operation. Thus what we call chance or randomness is in the same time the object and the means of mechanical divination, (p. 236).

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Diviners establish "analogical links", i.e. mappings, between "contingent aleatory events or facts, and its means, namely randomizing devices" (p. 236). In Zempleni's words, as regards both intentional and semiotic interpretations of divination, such rituals "are techniques of communication" with ancestors, deities, spirits, etc. But Zempleni suggests that divination be looked at as a form of ascetic interpretation of the unknown. What matters is "the ritual demonstration of the human speaker's withdrawal, that is the 'removing' of the diviner as the subject of the divinatory enunciation" (p. 242) - tantamount to "pure resonance". In the author's view, divination must be resorbed into "metacommunication" (removal of the utterer from the utterance) that leads to what he calls "metadivination", viz. the staging of the ritual in his client's head and mind, to fulfill the function of "shifters which couple thinking to action" (p. 244). Accordingly, resonance become fuller since speculation reverberates in action - like in the cases discussed by Corin, Keesing and Picone. As mentioned above concerning the Chinese concept ganying analyzed by LeBlanc, Picone (Chapter 10) refers explicitly to resonance (p. 265). It is appropriate since she writes about Japan on its Chinese cultural background. And, like Zempleni, she deals with divination - in terms of "correlative thinking". For Picone, "correlative thinking" implies: Potentially however the ideal state of all entities [that] was the harmony of constituent elements medically within the human body, architecturally between houses or graves and the natural features of sites, astrologically between rites and movements of heavenly bodies, socially between styles of government and individual action. All these types of harmony, however, were thought to be necessarily interrelated. (p. 253)

Interestingly, the people who most consult diviners in Japan are those whose "resonance" still needs consolidating: young adults, aged between 20 - 34. On the other hand, Japanese almanacs exemplify what we could call "relativization of resonance". Such books offer confirmation that resonance is not always thoroughly harmonious and that some leeway must be officially recognized for dissonances. Picone agrees implicitly with Chevalier, Corin, and Keesing on the necessity for social charters to make provision for dissonances: "manuals, particularly almanacs, are of course the most striking example of relativization of prohibitions and of divinatory truth, since dozens of methods (and necessarily of outcomes) are presented in the same volume" (p. 265). And in this case, as pointed out by Zempleni, the diviner is superseded by the utterance - a mere book - and as a result thought is geared to action in a culturally defined semio-pragmatic universe.

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Cognitive dissonance may obtain between native interpretations on the one hand and, on the other, that of the ethnographer, the "historian's counterinterpretation", and the psychoanalyst's quest for theory confirmation (Kaplanian, Chapter 11, p. 274). This author raises a question akin to Keesing's: "can the interpretation of the ethnologist be accepted by the native?" and he answers it "With regard to the above examples, obviously no" (p. 285). But he takes care to dissociate ethnology from psychoanalysis: If the ethnologist finds it necessary to reverse the situation by explaining that the "possessed" are the "sick ones", he is not for all that, in the same position as the psychoanalyst, for whom the patient himself is the one who must put into words his repressed desire in order to be cured. This is because there is no repressed desire with the victims of the gongmo, on the contrary they are people who take the initiative of action...and it is this very accomplishment of a desire which creates problems, (p. 285)

Given the type of behavior he focuses on, for this author - like for Keesing, Corin, Zempleni and Picone - resonance is essentially pragmatic; necessarily grounded in Geisteswissenschaften it can only be action-oriented like all other healing attempts. Curing practices act as a cybernetic mechanism to bring back to relative consonance a person gone too far from tolerated dissonances - a person abnormal because of some sort of dysfunction, physical, emotional, or other. To remain consistent with the musical analogy, let us say that curing, therefore, is retuning. Zempleni directly, Picone indirectly, took us to the resorption of the speaker by its discourse. With Rousseau (Chapter 12), we come to a further but congruent aspect of resonance: the dialogical one, i.e. an intertextuality that transcends individual utterers and tunes them up. Following Lucien Goldman and Louis Althusser (see also Taylor quoted in Bibeau and Corin, Chapter 1, p. 24), Rousseau puts the emphasis on transsubjectivity, i.e. in its minimal form, on the duet and then on the orchestra - e.g., couples, committee meetings, team workers, all sources of trans-individual discourse and even of trans-individual thought (Fernandez, Chapter 13). One cannot be a "subject of knowledge", a "thinker", without learning the chords required to join the choir and sing appropriate hymns, anthems and other songs on socially recognizable scales and thus become an accepted "self": "Language, knowledge, and the procedures which frame the various forms of thinking, are common property. People may lack some of these tools, but they can be acquired. This is what education - and fieldwork - are all about" (p. 294). And again, the pragmatic resonance of social integration: "Individuation is a process to which we are subjected (others make us into persons), 8 and

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by being subjected to those pressures, we make ourselves into acting subjects, who subject themselves to pressures which attempt to develop this integration" (p. 295). "Metacommunication" again, as Zempleni would have it. As there is no parole without a langue that makes it possible while constraining it; as there is no music without a sound system (pentatonic, dodecaphonic, tonal or atonal, etc.), so all human communications need a resonance chamber into which it can take shape and in which persists the echo of voices that have lost their own individualities in the collective chants they have generated and that transcend them. And Rousseau concludes (pp. 2 9 7 - 2 9 8 ) by giving four conditions to develop adequate recording instruments of the songs of trans-individual subjects. Fernandez (Chapter 13) brings this collection to its cadence by reflecting on the resorption of the first-person pronoun into the third-person one. With anaphors, all human languages recognize and institutionalize resonance. Pronouns express transsubjectivity as they are filled in through shifts among the inter-subjects they stand for sequentially or parallelly. Consonant with Rousseau and Zempleni, Fernandez would agree that to the Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum, one must prefer Cogitas, ergo sum, and Cogitas, ergo sumus, i. e. "I exist only in the image that I see in the mirror that your eyes/mind hold in front of me, and the same is true for you; this generates intersubjective individuality through the transsubjectivity resulting from our mutual reflection on our mutual reflexion". Natives and ethnographers as well are seized by mutual, anaphoric resonance: you, I and me, we. Indeed Dilthey's famous phrase..."understanding is the rediscovery of the Ί' in the 'thou'", can surely stand as a pronominal proposition for the nature of fieldwork. It can stand for that point of view, that ever higher level of understanding that gradually emerges between 'me' and 'my informants' as we together move to a 'generalized other' on the basis of which I, or we, can write an ethnography", (p. 320)

And Fernandez concludes that the real test, the best validation procedure of mutual understanding, would be effective mimesis, viz. pragmatic resonance, that requires really austere ascetism: And... - thinking now of the persistent problem of "knowing other minds" that is posed for all we students of the mental systematics of distinctly "other" people in com-present manipulation, in the passing back and forth of skill, in manipulative turn taking, may lie one of the profoundest forms of knowing. Perhaps...this is the only clear and certain way of knowing other minds. We only know others really.. .through what these others can teach us or what we can teach them to do with the objects of this world, (pp. 3 2 3 - 3 2 4 )

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In this respect, we could cite one remarkable case of such com-present manipulation: Inuit throat singing, in which one lends one's vocal cords to another person's breath so that a truly intersubjective song results. Analogically, the native song sung on the anthropologist's vocal cords. A kind of resonance Fernandez, and all of us, wish we could achieve? Resonant anthropology calls for sensory, even sensual, ethnography. 9 It demands what we could call "somatization" of field work. In this respect, it belongs with postmodernist ideology: immersion, and what used to be called in the late sixties the "anthropology of experience". It demands, in terms of Fernandez's dichotomy, that we opt for "subject dominant discourses" asceticism - rather than for "topic dominant" - violent - utterances. But resonant anthropology moves beyond mere postmodernism. It reaches an epistemological level akin to that of Chaos Theory and holography but subtler than them. The idea of resonance means that all things in the universe are interrelated and influence each other according to emerging patterns, so that interaction appears as spontaneous and not caused by an external agent. The idea of resonance thus plays the role of a cosmological principle, that is, a rational device whereby to understand the universe as a totality, man being part of that totality (LeBlanc, Chapter 2, p. 64).

Indeed, whereas postmodernism dissolves itself in an endless deconstructionism to return more or less gleefully to chaos, fractal attention - austere care paid to infinetesimal resonances - would reveal a deeply vibrating pattern that, provided adequate and refined conditions are met, would be sensitive even to the slow fall of an orchid petal in the Amazonian forest (the "butterfly effect"). Would then ethnographers, through docility and sensory attuning, attain the serenity of the knowledge that hums - like the transcendent monosyllabic trigram AUM - in a Markovian space of reflecting barriers? In Chapter 1, Bibeau and Corin found a resonance between the metaphor of the library of Babel and the anthropological quest for meaning and interpretive process. In this concluding chapter, I borrowed from LeBlanc's contribution the Chinese term ganying, "resonance", as a leitmotiv that I heard as a continuum through the thirteen movements of this collective performance. This book - a transsubjective production - stemmed from the orchestration by Bibeau and Corin of the many rehearsals, most of them solos in front of diverse audiences, in which the authors assiduously and ascetically refined their interpretive competences. The conductors deserve our gratitude for a work that, with the four rules they give in Chapter 1 (pp. 44), transforms the labirynthine library into a concert hall in which to hear anthropological oratorios.

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Notes 1. Some tend to forget that the widespread deconstructionist notion of "intertextuality" - texts echoing other texts, diachronically and synchronically - came first from Freud to be redefined in anthropology by Levi-Strauss (1955) and to be reiterated by Kristeva (1969) and by so many other semioticians. 2. Cf. Tyler's (1986) notion of "evocative ethnography" and Strathern (1991: 13): "Thus particular ethnographic regions have stamped their resonating style on the anthropological description of certain phenomena such as caste or gift exchange" (emphasis supplied). 3. Congruently with Chinese scholarship, one could intertextualize "resonance" with the concept of "parallelism" that consists of repetition, contrast, and contiguity (Hua 1989). Cf. also the complementarity of räga and täla in Indian music, "one provokes continuity and linear development, the other promotes continuality and cyclical development" (Erdman 1989: 131). 4. "Resonance" can be related to holography but it allows greater operational fuzziness and freer constraints. In anthropology, Levi-Strauss evoked the holographic principle as such several decades ago in Anthropologie structurale (1958: Chapters II, XI) and in reference to "scale" (Chapter XV). For more recent applications, see Wagner (1991), Strathern (1991). 5. See also the twelfth-century Norse scholar Snorri's concept of "kenning", a series of embedded metaphors. 6. Although Gardin would express reserves concerning the establishment of a connection between his "logistic analysis" and fractals, the two forms of thought show some resonance. Writing about "the conflict of interpretations", Gardin characterizes logicist analysis as follows: "L'analyse logiciste est une dissection d'allure microscopique et mecaniste, orientee vers le calcul, l'experimentation". However, it differs from Chaos Theory in that it is more modest and oriented toward "practical epistemology", because logicist analysis "n'ajoute rien ä notre savoir, sinon par une mise en forme qui vise ä en clarifier les fondements" (1991: 94). From an entirely different perspective, cf. also Derrida 1976 and Geertz 1983 quoted by Corin (Chapter 6, p. 230). 7. Cf. Pierre Boulez' pioneering randomization of creativity in his Structures pour deux pianos. Premier livre (1952) and Deuxieme livre (1961), where numerical structures control the creative process. On "randomized, probabilistic" musical creations, see also Nattiez (1975). 8. Fernandez (Chapter 13) also insists on the reversal of Descartes' Cogito ergo sum. 9. Nihil in intellectu quin prius in sensu.

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References Auge, Marc 1977 Pouvoirs de vie, pouvoirs de mort. Paris: Flammarion. Baudrillard, Jean 1990 La transparence du mal. Paris: Galilee. Clifford, J. - Marcus, G. (eds.) 1986 Writing cultures: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Dolezelova-Velingerova, Milena (ed.) 1989 Poetics East and West. Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle. Erdman, Joan L. 1989 Play with laya: Tempo, pace and cadence in Indian music and culture, in Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova (ed.), 111-136. Gardin, Jean-Claude 1991 "Le role du sujet dans les sciences de l'homme: essais devaluation objective". Revue europeenne des sciences sociales 29 (89): 91102. Gleick, James 1988 Chaos: The making of a new science. New York: Viking. Godelier, Η. - M. Strathern (eds.) 1991 Big men and great men. The development of a comparison in Melanesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hua, L. Wu 1989 The concept of parallelism: Jin Shengtan's critical discourses on the water margin, in Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova (ed.), 169-179. Kristeva, Julia 1969 Semeiotike. Paris: Seuil. Levi-Strauss, Claude 1955 The structural analysis of myth, in T. A. Sebeok, ed., 428-444 [reprinted as chapter 11 of Anthropologie Structurale, 1958]. 1958 Anthropologie structurale. Paris: Plön. Lotman, Iouri 1973 La structure du texte artistique. Paris: Gallimard. Mandelbrot, Benott 1977 The fractal geometry of nature. New York: Freeman. Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 1975 Fondements d'une semiologie de la musique. Paris: Union generale d'edition. Sebeok, T. A. (ed.) 1955 "Myth: A symposium". Journal of American Folklore, 78, 270.

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Shammon, Claude E. - Weaver, Warren 1949 The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press. Sormany, Pierre 1991 "Un chaos ordonne". Quebec Science mars: 5 0 - 5 5 . Sperber, Dan 1982

Le savoir des anthropologues. Paris: Hermann.

Strathern, Marilyn 1991 Partial connections. Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. Tyler, Stephen 1986 Post-modern ethnography: From document of the occult to occult document, in J. Clifford - G. Marcus, (eds.), 122-140. Wagner, Roy 1991 The fractal person, in M. Godelier - M. Strathern, (eds.).

Index

Abreaction 273 Action 2 4 - 2 5 , 3 1 - 3 2 , 3 4 - 3 7 , 3 9 , 41-44,49, 59, 70, 85, 90, 98, 104-105, 111, 120, 124-125, 137-139, 152, 154, 158, 161-163, 175-176, 196-197, 202,219, 222-223, 234, 237-240, 242-244, 245 (n.7), 253, 263, 285, 289-292, 294-297, 307-310, 335, 337-338 Adjustment 274,309,312 Adler, Α. 233,243

Analysis of texts (see also ·. Textual analysis) 6, 12, 23, 33 Analytical statements 72, 241 Analytical strategy 145 Analytical tools 7, 11, 33 Anaphoric binding 315 Ancestors) 49,177-179,210-213, 215-224, 226-227, 233, 239, 241, 243, 249, 255, 337 Ancestral 209,211-212,215-217, 219-224, 226-227, 263-322, 336

Affect 36, 41, 59, 66, 120, 123, 126, 134, 165-166, 180 African societies (see also: Traditional societies) 235 African traditions 185 -186, 188 Africanism 21 Age-set(s) 193,198-199,201, 203-204 Allegoric 27 Allegorical 27, 112, 131-132 Alterity(ies) (see also: Other, Otherness) 6, 13, 16, 19, 22, 58-59, 62-63, 183, 186-187, 191, 193-197, 202, 204, 206, 334 Alternate generation(s) 177-182 Althusser, L. 290,338 Ambiguity 8 - 9 , 11, 221, 227, 249, 262-263,296,314-316 Anagogic 133 Anagogical 27,47, 132-133 Anagogical displacement 133 Analogies 11, 117, 183, 253 Analogy 11, 25, 30, 32, 34, 43, 69, 95, 190, 235, 244 (n. 4), 335-336, 338 Analysis of myths 34-36, 174, 273

- spirits 212,215,217,220 Anomalies 4, 31, 65, 73 Anthropological 5 - 6 , 15, 18-20,23-24, 32, 34, 44, 58, 157, 167, 173, 181, 189, 194-195, 197, 209, 220-222, 233-234, 249-250, 305, 319, 329, 336, 340, 341 (n. 2) - enterprise 20 - essay, books, monographs (see also: Ethnography(ies)) 15, 23, 319 - interpretation(s) (see also: Interpretation) 6, 20, 23, 34, 44, 197, 209, 221 - method(s) 5, 33, 164 - work 20 Anthropologies 329-330 Anthropologist(s) 4 , 6 - 7 , 12-16, 18-25, 30, 32-35, 37-38, 4 0 - 4 1 , 4 3 - 4 6 , 48, 50, 148, 150, 155, 175-176, 190, 221, 227, 233, 236, 238-239, 265, 297, 311-312, 329-331,340 Anthropology 5 - 6 , 14-16, 18-20, 22-24, 37, 50, 58, 62-63, 107, 154, 156, 173, 194-195, 197, 206, 221, 226, 254, 265, 289, 319, 329-331, 334, 340, 341 (n.n. 1,4)

346

Index

Anthropophagy 1 5 4 - 1 5 7 , 1 6 5 - 1 6 8 , 334 Anxiety 1 3 4 , 1 3 7 , 1 3 9 - 1 4 0 , 1 4 8 - 1 5 0 , 193,201 Aphorism(s) 45 Apotheosis 47, 145 Appropriateness 3 8 - 3 9 , 234, 243 Appropriation 20,63, 184 Arab traditions 21, 183 Architecture 3 - 4 , 10, 1 6 , 4 0 - 4 1 Argumentation 7, 13 Aristotelian 265 Aristotle 4 - 5 , 12, 2 6 - 2 7 , 6 2 - 6 3 , 71-72 Arrangement(s) 4, 17, 3 6 - 3 7 , 94, 117, 128, 202 Ascetic 3 0 , 4 5 - 4 6 , 1 0 0 , 3 2 9 - 3 3 1 , 333-334, 336-337, 340 Ascetic reading(s) 30, 46 Asceticism 333, 340 Assertive acts 233, 238-239, 241-243, 245 (n. 9) Association(s) 6, 10, 35, 89-90, 116, 123, 127, 130, 204, 333 Ast, F. 28 Astral religion 130,134 Astrologer(s) 4 4 - 4 5 , 133,252-253,264, 273 Astrological religion 47, 116 Astrology 116, 118, 120, 133, 138,252, 255, 257, 260 Assymetrical 181 Assymetry 178 Attention 14,59, 112, 118, 123, 129-131, 133-134, 137-139, 141-142, 176, 178, 181, 187,242, 275, 282, 340 Audience 84-86, 101, 141, 145,242, 294, 340 Auge, M. 175,335 Augustine, St. 4, 27, 29, 31, 139-141, 194 Augustinian 139 Austin, J. L. 69,234,239

Authenticity 14, 20, 194 Author 7 , 9 , 1 1 - 1 3 , 2 2 - 2 3 , 2 8 , 5 2 , 106, 119, 174, 264, 293-294, 334 Authorial 98, 125, 127 Authorial subj ect 125 Authoritative writing 13,20 Authority 1 3 , 2 0 - 2 1 , 2 7 , 4 9 , 9 1 , 119, 177-178, 180, 238, 274, 284 Authority to speak 20 Authorized 329 Authorship 1 2 - 1 3 Avatar 23, 84, 86, 96 Babcock, B.A. 190 Babel 3 - 5 , 4 4 - 4 5 , 119,340 Bacon, F. 57, 74 (n. 1) Bakhtin, M. 19 Bar 118 Bard(s) 46, 7 9 - 8 6 , 88, 9 2 - 9 3 , 9 6 - 9 8 , 101-106, 107 (n. 5) Bardic 8 6 , 9 2 - 9 3 , 9 6 Barthes, R. 4, 10, 30-31, 125, 131, 137-138 Bataille, G. 133 Bateson, G. 133,242,322 Baudrillard, J. 330 Belief(s) 3, 8, 45, 47, 49, 146, 150, 183-184, 188, 241, 274-275, 285, 289, 292, 296, 300 Belief system(s) 8, 184, 188 Belonging 1 8 , 2 1 , 3 4 - 3 5 , 6 8 Benedict, R. 22 Benveniste, E. 234, 245 (n. 6) Berger, P. 294 Bibeau, G. 3 , 4 1 , 1 0 7 , 1 9 4 , 3 2 9 - 3 3 1 , 333,335,338, 340 Bible 25-27, 44, 235, 334 Bilingual texts 26 Bilingual 9 - 1 0 Blessing 106, 116, 180, 193 Blood 115, 154, 158, 164, 167, 200-201,211,213,216-218, 221,224-226, 244, 263

Index Body 35,82,85, 105, 115, 118-120, 123-124, 126-127, 129, 132, 146, 158, 164, 166-167, 177,213, 252-253, 260-261, 263-266, 272-273, 275-278, 337 Body divination 2 6 0 - 2 6 1 , 2 6 3 - 2 6 5 Book of Changes (Yijing) 49,59,249, 252-253, 260, 266 Book of Revelation 4 6 - 4 7 , 111-116, 118, 128, 131, 133-134, 138-141, 333-334 Borges, J.-L. 3, 10 Bottero, J. 233 Boundaries 15 - 1 6 , 44, 289, 294 Bourdieu, P. 125 Boyer, P. 236-239, 2 4 2 - 2 4 3 Bracket 47, 127-129,222 Bracketing 127-129 Bricoleur 124, 135 Bridewealth 2 0 1 , 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 British 47, 145, 147-151, 153-156, 158, 160-164, 1 6 7 - 1 6 8 , 2 1 1 , 2 2 6 - 2 2 7 , 334 Bruner, J. S. 245 (n. 8) Bühler 245 (η. 7) Burtt, Ε. 71 Calligraphic exercises 46 Cannibalism 47, 145-169,334 Canonical texts 12 Captain Cook 4 6 - 4 7 , 145-152, 154-155, 158-166, 175, 334 Categorial sets 38 Categorial systems 37 Causality 64, 71-73, 75 (n. 10), 124, 222, 249, 251, 257, 259, 262-265, 267 (n. 9) Cavell, S. 17 Center 10, 18, 28, 52, 124, 138, 174, 186, 1 8 8 - 1 8 9 , 2 1 1 , 3 0 5 , 3 2 5 (n. 8) Central Africa 173, 176, 184, 191 Central codes 48 Central cultural signifiers 183 Central schemas 16

347

Central values 48, 191 Centrality 48, 173, 184, 190, 196, 309, 311,323 Ceremonies 179-180, 184-185, 193, 198-206 Chance 1 3 8 , 2 1 4 , 2 3 5 - 2 3 6 , 2 6 2 , 2 6 4 , 336 Chevalier, J. 47, 111, 134, 136, 142, 333-334, 336-337 China 49, 5 7 - 5 9 , 64, 70, 74, 251-252, 256-257, 260, 266, 332 Chinese 46, 57-66, 6 8 - 6 9 , 71, 73, 74 (η. 1), 75 (n. 4), 233, 236, 241, 244 (n. 2), 250-255, 260-265, 266 (n.n. 1, 2), 321, 323, 331-332, 336-337, 340, 341 (n. 3) Christianity 5 Circumcision 193, 200, 2 0 5 - 2 0 6 (n. 4) Classic texts 46, 266 Classical authors 12-13 Classical books 4 Classical literary tradition 44 Classical Sanskrit narrative verse 80 Classical texts 7 - 9 , 2 7 , 9 1 , 9 3 Classical universe 93, 96 Classical works 13 Classification(s) 4, 33, 35,43, 67, 94, 252-253 Classificatory 35-36, 72, 132, 179, 332 Cleansing 204 Clifford, J. 20, 23, 197, 265 Co-belonging 6, 18-19,30, 194-195 Co-partnership 18 Code(s) 4 , 8 , 10, 1 3 , 3 1 - 3 4 , 4 1 , 4 7 - 4 8 , 111-112, 117-118, 122-138, 141-142, 175-176, 178, 181-182, 185-187, 189-191,202, 205,291, 335 Coded 10,260,314 Cognitive categories 38 Cognitive map 33 Coherence 9 - 1 0 , 31, 33, 37, 42, 63, 96, 106, 173-176, 178, 181-182, 184, 189, 209

348

Index

Coherent 93-95, 105, 174, 297, 299 (η. 10) Collectivity 295, 300 Colonial 1 9 - 2 0 , 1 9 4 , 2 1 2 , 2 2 3 - 2 2 4 Corn-presence 307-308, 311, 323 Com-present manipulation 310-311,

Contemporary ethnography 19-20 Contemporary humanities (hermeneutics, literary criticism, philosophy, semiotics) 4, 6, 23, 26, 30, 32 Content analysis 41 Contentio 139

323, 3 3 9 - 3 4 0 Combination(s) 21, 39, 72, 132, 160, 236, 252, 258, 261,266 Combinatory system 33, 3 5 - 3 6 , 43 Commentaries 1 4 , 2 6 , 4 8 , 5 0 , 5 9 , 2 1 5 , 221-224, 227, 253-254, 260, 308 Common sense 148, 291-292, 294, 296, 299 Common-sensical 290-294, 296, 299 (n. 10), 300 (n. 15) Communication 13, 18, 63, 82, 126, 195, 233-234, 239-242, 245 (n.n. 5, 9), 249, 289, 292, 322, 333-334, 337, 339 Community 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 7 - 1 8 , 2 4 , 2 6 , 3 0 , 41, 44, 50, 61, 179, 182, 186, 193-195, 197-198, 204, 206, 223, 293, 329 Compatibility(ies) 38, 258, 2 6 3 - 2 6 4 Compensation 49, 200, 202, 204-205, 210, 212-213, 219-220, 225-226, 336

Context(s) 4 - 5 , 7 , 9 , 1 1 - 1 2 , 2 0 , 2 3 , 2 6 - 3 2 , 3 5 - 3 7 , 4 0 - 4 7 , 59, 65, 6 9 - 7 0 , 75 (n. 7), 7 9 - 8 0 , 88, 104, 106, 146, 153-160, 164-168, 175, 178, 181-183, 186-190, 197,214, 274-275, 278, 293, 297, 300 (n. 10), 309,316-318, 330,335 Contextualization 29 Contradictions 19, 23, 30, 43, 118, 197,

Complexity 4, 8, 14, 45, 61, 64, 92, 249, 257,317 Conceptual communities 17 Condensation(s) 11, 334 Confession(s) 4 8 - 4 9 , 139, 184, 193, 201-204 Configuration(s) 6, 10, 12-13, 21, 3 2 - 3 4 , 3 7 , 40, 43 Conflict of interpretations 3, 341 (n. 6) Congruences 38, 42 Connotation 4, 31, 75 (n. 7), 179-180, 182, 196, 335 Connote(s) 26, 36, 45, 74 Conscious 122, 124, 126, 131, 133, 194, 298 (n. 2), 3 0 9 - 3 1 0 Consciousness 111, 122, 124, 132-133, 156, 166, 309 Consonance 33, 335, 338

214, 296-297, 300 (n. 10), 318 Contrasting codes 178,185 Contreras, J. 241 Convergence 37 Cooperative effort 14, 50 Core society 173,190-191 Corin, E. 3, 41, 48, 173, 176, 183, 194, 274, 329-331, 333-338, 340, 341 (n. 6) Corporate identity 304 Correlation(s) 3 4 - 3 6 , 128-129, 132, 254 Correlative thinking 253, 332, 337 Correspondences 33, 36-37, 66, 69, 73, 253, 265, 266 (n. 3), 300 (n. 15), 314, 332 Crapanzano, V. 176 Critical analysis 23, 27, 64 Critical text 64 Cultural 4 - 1 9 , 2 5 , 2 8 - 3 5 , 3 7 - 4 6 , 5 0 , 59, 62, 79, 98-99, 101, 124-125, 130, 153, 156-157, 164-165, 173-176, 178-179, 181-183, 186-191, 193-198, 201-202, 206, 220-221, 224, 251, 289, 291, 319, 322, 331, 333, 335-337 - account 3 7 - 3 8 - alterity 62, 194-195 - analysis 11

Index - code(s) 10,31,33,41,175-176,182, 187, 189, 191 - data 6,25,29,33,331,333 - dynamics 173 - facts 14, 29, 32 - inferences 11 - meanings 178, 187 - performance 164 - presuppositions 9, 15,40 - relativity 196 - systems 10,40,44, 189 - texts 30-31, 206, 221, 331 Culturalist 33-34, 38, 43 Culture 4 - 5 , 7 - 2 1 , 2 3 - 2 6 , 2 9 - 3 0 , 32-34, 36-49, 57-58, 61-62, 64,71,75 (n. 4), 93, 111, 120, 126, 131, 167, 173-176, 183, 185, 187, 190, 195-197,203,206,210, 221, 224-227, 274-275, 297, 311-312, 321, 324-325 (n. 8), 329-331, 334-336 Curses 81, 88, 119, 124,217 Danger 139, 165, 193, 199-205,222, 255-256, 259, 266 (n. 5), 278-279, 307-308, 320 Dannhauer 5, 28 Dark humanity 47, 123, 145, 152, 164 Dark side 47, 145, 152 Deconstruction 329-340,341 (n. 1) Deconstructionist 12, 329 Deferens 138, 142 Deification 47, 145 Deixis 234,317 Deleuze, G. 10 Demon(s) 47, 79-80, 83, 85-88, 90-91,96, 100-103, 112, 131, 134, 138,255, 276-277 Demystification 30 Denotation 4 Derrida, J. 30, 174, 192, 341 (n. 6) Description 16,22,32,38,41-42,66, 68-69, 74, 82, 103, 155, 167,

349

173-174, 176, 190, 197, 243, 261, 283, 297,319, 341 (n. 2) Desire 63,88,91,111-113,116-117, 124, 133-134, 136, 138, 141-142, 151, 156, 160, 264, 272-273, 285, 321, 338 Deviance 173, 175, 187, 190-191 Deviant 175, 187 Diachrony 137 Dialectical 139, 195 Dialectization 186, 189, 191 Dialogical 6, 18-19, 30, 32, 50, 195, 338 - anthropology 18-19,50 - ethnography 6 Dialogue 18-19, 23, 30, 32, 62-63, 147, 149, 164, 195,241,318 Dichotomies 122,340 Dictionary perspective 9 - 1 0 Differance 122, 128 Difference 13,18-19,23,45,63,127, 133, 174-175, 187-189, 202, 320 Differential value 181 Dilthey, W. 20, 25, 29, 188, 194, 307, 320, 324 (n. 6), 339 Dionysos 136-137 Discordances 139,336 Discourse 4, 14, 16, 18-23, 25, 28, 44, 47, 58, 63, 79, 93, 95-96, 104-106, 133, 145-146, 151, 154-155, 157-164, 168, 181-182, 193,219, 221,223-227, 238, 274, 289, 293-298, 298 (n. 1), 319, 323, 329, 334, 336, 338, 340 Discursive style 12 Discursivity 12-13 Disharmonies 139,142,336 Disorder 4, 39, 101,252,312 Displacement(s) 11, 117, 133-134, 334 Dissimulation 14, 294 Dissonance(s) 333-334,337-338 Distance 5 - 6 , 13-14, 18,21,23,33,58, 60-62, 120, 127, 182, 191, 314, 322 Distanciation 22, 187, 194 Distentio 139

350

Index

Diversification process 186 Diversity 62, 175-176, 181-182, 184, 186, 188, 335 Divination 49, 116-117, 119, 126, 139, 215, 222-223, 233-244, 249-265, 266 (n. 1), 336-337 Divinatory 39,45,49,233-244,244 (n.n. 2, 4), 245 (n. 9), 249-253, 260, 264-265, 266 (n.n. 3, 6), 336-337 Diviner(s) 44,49, 182, 186,233-244, 249-251, 254-455, 257-258, 261, 263-264, 266 (n.n. 6, 8), 336-337 Dominant codes 133-134, 141, 176, 181, 190-191, 335 Domination 120, 158, 160,211,223-224 Douglas, M. 37,335 Doxa 111, 120, 125 Drama 30, 34, 81, 102, 134, 146, 185, 204 Drummond, L. 195 Dumont, L. 107 (n. 4), 181 -182, 188-189, 191 East Africa 183, 193 Eco, U. 4 , 9 - 1 1 , 2 8 Egocentric 50,303-304,316,318-323 Elders 177-183,198,201,224,264 Embodied subjectivity 176 Emeneau, Μ. B. 90 Emotional 22, 111, 134,201,226,338 Emotions 36, 123, 127, 131 Empathy 19, 22, 29, 50, 63, 195, 206 Empirical validation 329 Emplotment 137, 139, 142 Emptiness (xu) 73 Encyclopedia 10-12,93 Encyclopedic perspective 9 - 1 0 Endogenous systems of thought 21 Enunciation 120, 234, 238, 241-242, 337 Envious 272, 275 Epistemological 7 - 8 , 12, 16,20-21,40, 49, 66, 329, 340 - analysis 12, 16 Epistemology 12, 16, 329, 343 (n. 6) Erklären 29

Erlebnis 29 Ethnographer(s) 12-13,19,23, 146-147, 174, 296,311,335-336, 339-340 Ethnographic 6, 10-11, 13,20-23,33, 39-40,42-43,45, 50, 147-150, 158, 227, 233,237,241,303,311, 319-321, 323, 329-331, 341 (n. 2) - authority 20-21 - interpretation(s) 44 - relevance 6 , 4 3 - 4 4 - study 303 - text(s) 331 Ethnographies 22-23,319-320,336 Ethnography 6 - 7 , 11-12, 14, 20, 23, 38, 42-43, 164, 168 (n. 3), 174, 194, 319-320, 329-330, 339-340, 341 (n. 2) Ethnohermeneutical 97 Ethnological 155, 164 Ethnologist(s) 13, 174,271-275,279, 283, 285, 286 (n. 5), 338 Ethnology 194,338 Etiology(ies) 249, 258-259, 264, 267 (n. 1) Eunoto 199-200, 206 (n. 6) Europe 5, 19, 57-58, 71, 80, 89, 260, 324 (n. 1) European 19, 25, 32, 34, 47, 58, 145-147, 150, 153, 155-158, 160, 162, 164-167, 187, 223, 265, 305, 314 European anthropology 34 Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 22,235-236, 249-250, 265 Evidence 39, 147, 152, 157-158, 165, 168, 195, 209-210, 213-214, 227, 241,272, 300 (n. 10), 336 Exchange 38,47, 151, 193,204-205, 211, 220, 295, 304, 307, 341 (n. 2) Exchange-name 205 Exegesis(es) 4, 6, 8, 14, 25-27, 29, 31, 34, 47 Exegetical procedures 26

Index Existential 48, 1 9 4 - 1 9 5 , 3 0 9 - 3 1 0 , 3 1 2 , 332 Experience 5, 7, 13, 15, 2 2 - 2 4 , 28, 30, 36, 4 2 - 4 4 , 63,72, 125, 137-140, 188, 194-195, 197, 201,203-206, 206 (η. 2), 220, 222, 235, 238, 257, 274, 293,318-319, 322, 336, 340 Experienced 44, 136, 158,206,214 Explanation(s) 5, 33, 38, 42, 48, 123,177, 180, 197, 203, 219, 222-224, 227, 237, 259, 274-275, 279, 325 (n.n. 10, 12) Explanatory 4 0 - 4 1 , 275, 312, 333 - models 41 Explicatory statements 66, 72 Explicit 26, 31, 33, 37, 40, 60, 89, 99, 105, 117, 127-128, 130, 154, 185-186, 188, 233, 239, 244 (n. 4), 305, 333 External agency 64, 72, 74, 340 Fanon, F. 19 Fantasy(ies) 47, 149-150, 152-153, 155, 157, 163, 167-168,334 Favret-Saada, J. 241 Fernandez, J. 50, 303-304, 306, 338-340, 341 (n. 8) Fetish 190 Fiction 7, 11, 23, 97, 101, 197, 291, 298 (n. 3) Five elements (wu xing) 38, 59, 68, 73, 332 Figurative 27, 141,284 Figure(s) of speech 90, 119, 129, 141 Folk model 197 Folk narrative 96 Formal 3 4 , 3 6 , 4 3 , 7 1 , 124-128, 131, 133-134, 137, 178, 180-183, 190, 199, 203,314,316 - codes 34 - logic 316 Formalist 124 Formlessness 69 Foucault, M. 12, 21, 203, 289, 293, 298 (η. 1)

351

Frames 4, 10, 30, 101, 129, 176, 186 Frameworks - conceptual 5 , 2 6 , 2 9 , 3 2 - 3 3 , 4 1 - epistemological 21 - psychological 29 - semiological 10 - structural 36 - theoretical 25 Frank, B. 2 5 1 , 2 5 6 - 2 5 8 Freud, S. 30, 123, 129, 132, 143, 341 (η. 1) Friedrich, P. 38 Functionalism 174,236 Funerals 1 3 2 , 1 7 7 - 1 7 9 , 2 5 6 Gadamer, H.G. 4 , 1 8 - 2 0 , 2 4 - 2 5 , 2 9 - 3 0 , 196, 335 Galaty, J. 48, 193, 195, 197-199, 201, 334-335 Game 17, 30, 140, 154, 163, 165, 173-174, 188, 196, 202-203,227, 236, 264 Gan 59,332 Ganying 59-60, 6 4 - 6 5 , 67, 73, 75 (n.n. 5, 6), 332-333, 337, 340 Gardin, J.-C. 341 (n. 6) Garrison, V. 176 Geertz, C. 12, 20, 2 2 - 2 3 , 37-38, 174, 195,333,341 (n. 6) Gender 89, 199, 226, 297-298, 299 (n. 5), 314 Geomancy 249, 251-255, 258-259, 265, 266 (n. 4) Geometrical figures 3, 1 1 , 3 9 - 4 0 Gerow, E. 90 Gestural language (see also'. Languagegestures) 162 Gluckman, M. 174,335 God(s) 3, 26, 45,47, 49, 73, 80, 82, 8 5 - 8 8 , 90, 93,96, 98-106, 113, 116, 118-119, 128, 131, 133, 136, 140, 146, 148, 158, 224, 233, 235, 241, 244, 249, 259, 261, 266 (n. 5), 276, 282-283

352

Index

Goddess 8 5 - 8 8 , 9 1 - 9 3 , 9 5 , 9 9 - 1 0 1 , 103-105, 114 Goldmann, L. 290-293, 299 (η. 10), 300 (η. 12), 338 Gongmo 2 7 2 - 2 7 7 , 2 7 9 - 2 8 5 , 286 (η. η. 2, 3), 338 Goodenough, W. 290, 299 (η. 4) Goodman, Ν. 1 5 - 1 6 , 2 2 Good, Β & M.-J. D. 41 Grammatical analysis 7 Grammatical structures 7 Great sign 111, 114, 117 Greek 1 2 , 2 6 - 2 7 , 4 5 , 4 9 , 6 0 - 6 1 , 7 1 , 8 9 - 9 0 , 113, 131, 136, 234, 238, 266 (n. 2), 333 Guattari, F. 10 Habits 114, 120, 122-123, 125, 127, 129, 131, 134, 152 Habitus 125 Haggada 26 Halakha 26 Hallucinatory satisfaction 273 Han dynasty 70 Harmony 62, 6 7 - 6 8 , 70, 7 3 - 7 4 , 135, 139, 142, 202, 253, 261-262, 332-337 Hart, L. 107 Hawaiian(s) 47, 145-150, 155, 160, 163, 334 Heaven and earth (tiandi) 73, 258, 266 Hebrew(s) 2 6 , 4 4 - 4 5 , 113-114 Hegemonic 19-22, 225, 227, 336 - position 19 Heidegger, M. 18-19, 2 4 - 2 5 , 62, 123, 138, 194 Heliolatry 116,130,140 Hermeneutic code 31,37 Hermeneutical 5, 6, 2 4 - 2 5 , 2 7 - 2 8 , 58, 63, 65, 194, 197 Hermeneutical circle 2 7 - 2 8 , 197 Hermeneutics 5, 11, 16, 18, 2 4 - 3 0 , 32, 34, 59, 6 2 - 6 3 , 194, 196, 198, 202, 329 Hermeneutics of suspicion 32 Heuristic 61, 190,272

Hidden discourse 145,154,334 Hiding the law 132 Hierarchical inversion 176, 181 - 1 8 2 , 187, 190 Hierarchy(ies) 8, 10,128,181, 183, 186-190, 199, 309, 335 Himalayan ritual 79 Himalayas 84, 100, 285 (η. 1) Hindu(s) 33, 3 7 - 4 0 , 44, 80-82, 85, 86, 9 0 - 9 3 , 9 5 - 9 6 , 98-100, 102, 104, 107 (n. 4) Hinduism 87, 90, 107 (η. 1), 333 Historian(s) 29, 57, 70, 74 (n. 2), 203, 253, 260, 271-274, 325 (n. 8), 338 History 6, 13, 17, 23, 26, 2 9 - 3 0 , 32, 42,44, 50,58,64, 95, 111, 123-126, 135-138, 141, 158, 164, 168, 174-175, 196,210, 274, 289, 2 9 3 - 2 9 4 , 336 Homer 12 Homonymy 60 Honour 1 2 4 - 1 2 6 , 1 2 9 , 1 3 2 , 2 0 1 - 2 0 2 Horton, R. 236,259 Huainanzi 46, 6 0 - 7 0 , 7 3 - 7 4 , 75 (n.n. 5, 9) Human nature 17-18, 152, 322 Human sacrifice 150,166-168 Humanist thinkers 27 Hume, D. 71 Husserl, E. 4 , 2 5 Hysteria 272-273 Identity 5, 12-13, 16-18, 20, 7 9 - 8 0 , 82, 85, 105, 173, 176, 179, 203-204, 275-279, 285, 289-291, 295, 298 (n. 3), 306, 308 Identification 3 4 - 3 5 , 39, 42, 85, 100, 167, 177, 206,210,214, 303 Illicit 47, 128, 130-131, 134, 141 Illness 182, 203, 215, 235, 237, 243, 250, 2 5 9 - 2 6 0 , 281,286 (n. 3) Illyricus, F. 27 Imagined 71, 148, 161 Imitative actions 162

Index Incommensurability 16, 37 Incompatibilities 256, 264 Inconsistencies 4, 31 Indexical sign 183 India 3 3 , 3 8 , 8 1 , 8 9 , 106 Indian(s) 3 3 - 3 4 , 3 7 - 3 8 , 4 0 , 4 3 , 4 6 , 81-82, 84, 89-90, 107, 280-281, 285 (n. 1), 341 (n. 3) Indian ethnosociology 38, 40 Indices 1 3 0 , 1 8 2 , 2 4 2 - 2 4 3 Indifference 133,187-188 Indifferance 127 Indigenous exegesis 6 Indigenous interpretations 14-15,44, 271 Indigenous system 50 Individual(s) 1 9 , 3 7 , 6 1 , 6 5 - 6 6 , 6 9 , 122-123, 174-176, 179-181, 186-191, 193-196, 198-206,223, 241, 250, 252-253, 263, 272, 276, 279, 285, 289-298, 298 (n. 3), 299 (n.n. 4, 5, 7, 9), 300 (n. 12), 304, 309, 335, 337-339 Individualistic ideology 188-189 Individuation process 187 Indo-European 36, 60, 89, 95, 321, 323, 333 Inference(s) 1 0 - 1 1 , 1 6 , 1 4 8 , 1 5 0 , 222-223 Inferential process 6, 8 Inferential systems 7, 330 Inflection 6 0 , 8 9 , 9 2 , 3 1 8 Infrastructural 136 Initiation 183, 185, 1 9 8 - 2 0 1 , 2 0 5 , 2 0 6 (n. 2) Inspired divination 49, 233, 239-240, 242, 249 Instruments-analytical 41 - conceptual 29 - hermeneutic 26 Interculturally 1 6 - 1 7 Interlocution 241 Interpret 31, 34, 38, 46, 148, 195, 197, 221, 223, 227, 233, 243, 274

353

Interpretation(s) 4 - 6 , 8, 10, 13-15, 18, 20, 22-40, 4 3 - 4 5 , 4 8 - 5 0 , 65, 71, 75 (n. 10), 99, 101, 113, 117, 128, 132, 134, 149, 174, 194, 197-198, 205, 219-223, 226-227, 236-237, 239, 241, 249, 253-254, 257, 259-260, 266 (n. 6), 271, 273-274, 311, 327, 334, 336-338, 341 (n. 6) - anagogical 47, 132 - anthropological (see also: Anthropological interpretation) 6, 20, 23, 3 3 - 3 4 , 40, 43-16, 50, 197, 209, 221-223, 236,271, 274, 285, 338 - of culture 4, 6, 13-14, 22, 25, 29, 38, 193, 197 - of language 4 - native (indigenous) 1 4 - 1 5 , 4 4 , 5 0 , 214-215, 219-220, 222-227, 259-260, 2 7 1 - 2 7 4 , 3 3 8 - psychological 2 9 , 2 4 9 , 2 7 2 - 2 7 3 - of texts 7, 1 2 , 2 5 - 2 9 , 3 1 - 4 0 , 4 5 , 50 Interpreter(s) 4, 8 - 9 , 11-12, 21, 26, 31, 33, 161,330-331 Interpretative anthropology 23, 37 Interpretative approaches 174 Interpretative movement 5 Interpretative process 10, 23,26, 30, 44, 340 Interpretative violence 3, 48, 220, 329-331,333,336 Intepretative work 10, 25, 28, 35, 40, 45, 50 Intersubjective 24, 29, 46, 195, 339-340 Intersubjective meanings 24 Intersubjectivity 96 Intextual insertion 11 Intertextual reading 9 Intertextuality 9 - 1 0 , 2 5 , 3 1 , 3 3 8 , 3 4 1 (n. 1) Inversion(s) 34, 132, 176, 181-183, 186-187, 189-190, 273, 279, 335 Irony 11, 22, 196, 254, 262, 304 Islam 183-186,272

354

Index

Jakobson, R. 34, 245 (η. 7) Japanese 1 8 , 4 9 , 2 5 0 , 2 5 5 , 2 5 8 - 2 6 0 , 262-263,321-323,337 Jaspers, Κ. 194 Jewish culture 26 Jixia Academy 59, 75 (n. 7) Jouissance 131 Judgement 112, 115-116, 118, 125, 130, 138, 140, 233, 238, 258, 264 Kant, I. 29, 6 2 - 6 3 , 7 1 - 7 2 , 194 Kantian 132,309 Kaplanian, P. 5 0 , 2 7 1 , 2 7 5 , 2 7 8 , 2 8 6 (n. 3), 338 Karma 6 5 , 9 0 , 2 5 0 , 2 5 9 Keesing, R. 43, 49, 209, 211-212, 221, 223-225, 227, 335-338 Key configurations 10 Kleinman, A. 41 Kluckhohn, K. 330 Knowing subject 119-121, 124, 126,300 (n. 12) Knowledge 1 8 , 2 0 , 3 1 , 6 2 - 6 3 , 7 0 , 7 2 - 7 4 , 93, 119-121, 135, 165, 193-195, 198, 200, 202,219, 227, 235-236, 249, 251-252, 255, 262-265, 266 (n.n. 1, 8), 274, 289-292, 294-295, 299 (n. 6), 301, 323, 329, 332, 335, 338, 340 - of context 44 - encyclopedic 9, 11 - ethnographic 10-11, 157, 195 - of texts 9 - Western 21, 119, 195 Koine 5 Kopytoff, I. 195 Kristeva, J. 10, 28, 3 0 - 3 1 , 341 (η. 1) Kumaoni 84, 86, 88, 9 2 - 9 3 , 96, 98, 100, 102, 105-106, 107 (n. 2) Kumaoni bard 46, 9 2 - 9 3 Kwaio 2 0 9 - 2 1 5 , 2 1 9 - 2 2 7 , 3 3 6 Labyrinth(s) 3 - 4 , 4 4 , 2 3 6 Labyrinthine 4, 44

Lacan, J. 123,128,131,334 Ladakh 271, 277, 282, 284, 285 (η. 1), 286 (n. 3) Ladakhis 271-276, 280, 285 (η. 1) Lamb slain 116, 138, 140 Landmarks 4 Language(s) 4, 7, 10, 13, 15-18, 24, 37, 4 4 - 4 6 , 50,61,72, 79, 88, 90, 111-112, 116-132, 134-139, 141-142, 196, 205,239, 292, 294-295, 299 (n. 6), 300 (n. 15), 305, 312, 314-316, 318, 321-322, 327, 334, 3 3 8 - 3 3 9 - Chinese (see also: Chinese) 61,66 - "dead" 80 - of diviners (see also: Diviners) 257 - of gestures 162-163,312 - Indo-European (see also: IndoEuropean) 54, 71, 84, 89, 314, 323, 333 - Kumaoni (see also: Kumaoni) 84 - Kwaio 227 - narrative 112, 136-137, 141,334 - Sanskrit (see also: Sanskrit) 83, 90, 92, 94 Language game(s) 17, 154, 165, 196 Language system 9 Laplace 71 Latin 2 7 - 2 8 , 6 0 - 6 1 , 80, 8 9 - 9 0 , 92, 95, 117, 238, 265,309, 333 Law 26, 28, 6 6 - 6 7 , 74, 94, 112, 118, 122, 124, 126-127, 130-133, 135-136, 153,205,211-212, 219-230, 235, 238, 279, 290, 315, 336 Leach, E. 2 2 - 2 3 , 3 3 5 Leavitt, J. 4 6 - 4 7 , 79, 85, 102, 107 (n.n. 2, 4), 333, 335 LeBlanc, C. 46, 57, 332-333, 337, 340 Legal 130, 153, 1 8 0 , 2 0 9 - 2 1 0 , 2 1 4 - 2 1 5 , 2 2 1 , 2 2 3 , 2 2 6 - 2 2 7 , 234,315 Legal authority 180 Legalist 70 Leibniz, W. 4,265

Index Levi-Strauss, C. 22, 30, 3 4 - 3 7 , 43, 121-124, 126, 128-129, 132-138, 174, 195, 202, 249, 299 (n. 7), 335, 341 (n.n. 1,4) Lexical entry 9 Library 3 - 4 , 10, 4 4 - 4 5 , 265, 315, 340 Licit 130-131, 134 Life cycle 179 Lineage 82, 106, 176-183,259,266 (η- 6) Linguistic 4, 7 - 8 , 12, 16, 27, 37, 46, 60, 111, 121, 124, 129, 195-196, 234, 239, 245 (η. 8), 299 (η. 6), 300 (η. 15), 320-321,335 Linguistic rules 8 Linguistics 12,121,124,321 Literal 27 Literary 22, 28, 40, 44, 61, 68, 70, 79, 118, 197, 293 - analysis 6 , 3 1 - 3 2 - authors 23 - criticism 9, 23, 26, 30, 32 - genre 7, 1 1 - 1 2 , 2 3 , 4 7 , 145 - metaphors 22 - strategies 7 - style 22 - texts 26, 32 Literature 6, 4 3 - 4 4 , 46, 57, 81-83, 86, 91, 9 3 - 9 5 , 155, 164, 167, 226, 262, 299 (n. 19), 319 Local traditions 93,183 Locke, J. 4 Logic 7, 12, 34, 37, 39, 58, 61, 7 1 - 7 2 , 111-112, 117, 119-120, 123-124, 127, 129, 132-133, 135-136, 138, 227, 300 (n. 10), 316, 323 - of desire 116, 133, 138 - of sensory qualities 35 Logical 46, 66, 74, 117-118, 120, 123-124, 126-127, 129, 134, 138 - statements 65 Logico-cognitive dimension 37 Logico-meaningful patterning 3 2 - 3 3 , 43 Logos 45,47, 112, 118-120, 123

355

Logocentric 47, 112, 118, 123, 125-127, 132, 134 Logocentrism 117-119,125,132 Logographic writing system 5 8 , 6 1 , 6 4 Lono 47, 146, 148-149 Lord (god) 8 2 - 8 7 , 9 3 , 102-105, 116, 119, 322-323 Lord, A.B. 91,96 Lotman, I. 329 Luckmann, T. 294 Luther, M. 27 Maasai 1 9 3 , 1 9 8 - 1 9 9 , 2 0 2 - 2 0 4 , 2 0 6 , 206 (n.n. 1,2) Macrocontext(s) 47, 79, 93 Magic 211, 214, 219, 235, 258, 267 (n. 9) Mahabharata 8 2 , 9 6 - 9 7 , 101-102 Malaita 2 0 9 - 2 1 0 , 2 1 2 , 2 1 4 , 2 2 1 , 226-227, 332 Malinowski, B. 22,195,319 Mallarme, S. 330 Manipulate 154,236-237,285, 306-307, 309-312, 324 Manipulation 220, 222, 227, 238, 273, 305-311, 317, 320, 323-324, 324 (n. 8), 336, 3 3 9 - 3 4 0 Manipulative 307, 323, 339 Manipulatory 311-312 Maoris 1 4 8 , 1 5 1 - 1 5 2 , 1 5 4 - 1 5 8 , 160-168, 168 (n. 3) Maps 10,37,42 Marcel, G. 198 Marcus, G. 23, 197, 265 Marginal 48, 65, 173, 175, 186, 189-190,212, 2 2 1 , 2 2 6 - 2 2 7 Marginality 62, 173-174, 184, 187-188, 191 Margins 48, 173-174, 186, 188-189, 209,214 Markov, A. 3 3 3 - 3 3 4 , 3 4 0 Marriott, M. 3 4 , 3 8 - 4 0 , 4 3 - 4 4 , 1 0 7 (n. 4) Marx, K. 30, 145 Marxism 5,289

356

Index

Maternal uncle 177,179-181,278-279 Matrilateral 176,181-183 Matrilateral references 179,183 Matrilineage 182-183 Matter-energy (yuanqi) 73 Matter/mind 121 Maze 3 Mead, G.H. 305-312,320,323,324 (n. 7), 325 (n. 11) Meaning(s) 4 - 1 4 , 1 7 , 2 4 - 2 7 , 2 9 - 3 8 , 40-43, 46, 48-50, 52, 59-61, 69, 71, 74, 75 (n. 7), 89-90, 92, 101, 106, 111, 117, 119-120, 122-123, 128, 130-136, 138, 147, 173, 175, 178, 181-182, 185, 187-188, 194, 196-198, 205-206, 209, 223, 226, 235, 237, 242, 261, 274, 291, 309-310, 321, 324, 324 (n. 1), 330-333, 335, 340 Meaningful 8,24-25,38,69,71, 111-112, 117-118, 129, 197-198, 226, 236 Medical anthropology 173 Memorial 12 Memorization 91,94-95 Memorized 95-96, 104, 106 Meta-encoders 33 Meta-interpretation 221 Meta-texts (see also: Metatext(s)) 79 Metacommunication 242, 337, 339 Metadivination 337 Metaphor 4, 7, 11, 22, 31, 63, 68, 70, 75 (n. 5), 95, 112, 116, 128, 130,312, 331-332, 340, 341 (n. 5) Metaphoric 27, 35, 43, 67, 69, 101-102, 127-131, 140, 254 - transference 35 Metaphorical 67, 69, 101, 127, 129, 140, 254 Metaphoprical metonomy 101 -102 Metaphorical rhetoric 127-128, 130-131, 140 Metatext(s) (see also: Meta-text(s)) 46-47, 9 8 - 9 9

Metonymie 35, 39, 43, 101 Metonyms 333 Metonymy 31, 95, 101 Metonymie substitution 35, 39, 43 Micro-contexts 79, 97 Midrash 26 Mimesis 120,339 Mizuka 183-186 Modern societies 62, 189, 264 Modernity 106 Monosyllabism 60 Moore, C. 74 (n. 3), 75 (n. 4) Moore, O. 236, 244 (n. 3) Moral 7,27,37,45,67,88,94, 115-118, 120, 124, 126-127, 132-133, 140, 193, 198-203, 205, 209, 226, 265, 296, 334 Moral consciousness 132 -133 Morality 111-112,115,117-118,120, 131-133, 136, 193-194, 198, 202, 204, 261 Moran 198 -199, 201, 204, 206 (n. 2) Moranhood 198, 201 -202, 206 (n. 2) Morgan, C. 254-257,264 Moundang (Tchad) 233-234, 238, 243 Mudimbe, V. Y. 21 Multi-referentiality 183 Multiplicity of voices 32 Multisemiotic frames 4 Muslim spirits 184 Myth(s) 11,13,27,33-36,46,61, 80-81,95-96, 100, 120, 126, 140, 145, 157, 164, 174, 271, 273-274, 331 Mythical story 95, 272 Naming 193 Narration 31, 81, 85, 105, 138 Narrative(s) 31, 34, 41-42, 44, 46, 61, 79-83, 87, 89, 91, 93, 96-99, 103, 105, 112, 117-118, 123, 130-142, 155, 197, 264,334 Narrative time 117, 123, 131, 133, 134, 137-142 Narrator 80-81,98

Index Native exegesis 14 Native interpretations 14, 338 Naturalism 116, 118, 132, 140 Ndembu 234 Needham, J. 57, 59, 74 (n.n. 2, 3), 75 (n. 6), 251,253,265, 332 Needham, R. 249 Nietzsche, R. 30, 111, 120, 122, 124, 126, 129, 135-136, 138, 145, 194 Nietzschean 128 Non-action (wu wei) 70 Non-being (wu) 61,69,73,332 Normative 72, 127, 133, 154, 175, 198 North America 189 North American 173,187-188,191 North American anthropologists 4, 25, 32-33, 37 Nyoro 238 Obeyesekere, G. 47, 107 (n. 3), 145, 175, 334 Objectification 273, 294, 300 (n. 16) Objective 9-10, 15-16,42,58, 121, 126, 188, 235-236, 249-251, 263, 266 (n. 8), 272, 274, 297, 300 (n. 16), 307-308,319 Objectivity 29,63,250 Obscurity 8, 11, 27, 43, 45, 304 Obsessional neurosis 272 Occultation 14 Olkiteng' Lorba 201 Olng'esher 201, 206 (n. 4) Ontological relativity 61 Ontology 50, 57, 64 Operation 21, 25, 32, 37, 64, 70, 111, 122, 127, 139, 200, 205, 236-238, 277, 336 Opposition(s) 11, 22, 31, 34-35, 38, 43, 58, 111-113, 117, 122, 128, 132, 136, 174, 177-179, 181, 183, 190, 289 Optimal distance 6, 21, 23 Oracle 49,235,237,241,251,273, 280-283 Oral text 46, 93, 331

357

Orality 61,95 Ordeal 204,244 Order 4, 8,21,35,37-38,41,44, 82, 101, 111-112, 116-118, 121, 123, 127, 129-130, 132-134, 137, 141, 175-176, 181-182, 186, 188, 190-191, 193, 196, 198-199, 204, 222, 253, 285, 289, 294, 303-304, 317, 336 Order of culture 6 , 3 2 - 3 4 Order of the text 6, 12,33 Ordering 4, 16, 137, 190-191,236,257 Orientalism 21 Origen 27, 31 Ortega y Gasset, J. 50,305-312, 319-320, 323,324 (n. 5) Other 13, 15-16, 1 8 - 2 0 , 2 2 - 2 4 , 2 9 - 3 0 , 45-49, 62, 66, 95, 98, 147,154-155, 167, 180, 188, 199-200, 202, 226, 274, 276, 282, 293-296, 304, 306-312, 317, 320, 323,324 (n. 3), 325 (n. 11), 338-340 Otherness 13, 15, 21, 62-63, 193-194, 196, 198,205-206, 335 Paradox 8, 194, 197, 221, 264, 307, 318, 330-332 Paradoxical 3,22,50,235,243,291, 307-308,317-319, 329 Paradoxically 21, 29, 45, 116, 118, 198, 295 Parallelism 68, 341 (n. 3) Paranoia 150,271,285,334 Park, G. 233,236 Participatory observation 22 Partnership 18-19,195-196,199 Pascal, B. 291, 293, 299 (n. 10) Patrilaternal reference 181-183 Paxson, M. 107 Peircean 243, 333 Penance 200, 202, 204 Performance 79, 85, 88, 93, 105, 161, 164, 181, 190,238-239, 340 Performative utterances 234, 239 "Peripheral" cultural spaces 173

358

Index

Periphery 48, 175, 189 Person 18, 32, 41,46, 80, 82, 89, 92, 98, 106, 135,178, 180, 183, 185, 199, 244, 250, 260-261, 263, 272-276, 278-279, 282, 286 (η. 4), 290-291, 293-295, 297, 299 (n.n. 4, 10), 300 (η. 18), 303-304, 308, 310, 312-314, 317-319, 322 (η. 3), 325 (η. 12), 331, 338-340 Person systems 312-314 Personal pronouns 50, 304, 306, 312-322 Personal testimony 13 Pesher 26-27 Phenomenology 329 Philological analysis 7, 27-28 Philology 28 Philosopher 4 - 5 , 11, 15-16, 19,24, 50, 59, 64, 70, 227, 305, 307, 311-312, 316-319, 323, 325 (n. 11), 329 Philosophy 5, 16, 23, 29, 46, 50, 69, 71-72, 74, 75 (n. 4), 94, 174, 195, 222, 227, 306,311,316,330-331 Phobia 272 Picone, M. 49, 249, 261, 264, 267 (n. 9), 332, 336-338 Plato 71 Plot 31,47, 105, 130-132, 134, 137-139, 141-142,211,213,262 Plural reading 31 Plurality of codes 31 - 32 Plurality of meaning 31 Poetic language 90 Poetry 11,89-92,290 Pollution 199-201,224 Polynesian 145, 149-150, 153, 155-156, 159-164, 167, 168 (η. 1) Polyphonic 31 Polyphony of voices 31 Polysemy 31, 130, 138 Polythetic class 49,249 Polythetic classifications 4 Possession 50, 183-185, 234, 239, 249, 271,275-277, 280-283,285

- groups 176, 183, 186 - idiom 183 - rituals 173, 184 - therapies 173 Post-colonial 195 Post-figurative 141 Post-modern 120 - anthropology 22,319 Post-modernism 5, 23 Post-Saussurean semiology 30-31 Post Saussurean semioticians 30-34 Post-structural 47, 127 Postmodernist 197,329-332,340 Power 20, 22-23,40, 47, 57, 63, 70, 73, 86-88, 99-100, 111-117, 119, 122, 124-131, 133-134, 136, 138, 144, 154, 158, 160, 164-167, 174-175, 177, 179-182, 184, 186-187, 189-190, 203,210,212, 221, 223-224, 226-227, 254, 276-277, 290, 308, 311-312, 314, 321-322, 329, 335 Pragmatics 10, 26, 34, 41, 43, 148, 165-166, 173, 175, 182, 186-187, 189, 194, 221-222, 233-234, 239-242, 306-307, 309, 311-312, 316, 323, 337-339 Praxis 136, 175, 186, 191 Prayer 85, 92-93, 98, 322-323 Pre-figuration 138 Precomprehension 24 Prescription(s) 66, 186, 235, 242, 256, 263 Prescriptive 66,72, 173, 181-182, 187, 190 Presuppositions 9, 15, 38, 40, 46-47, 79, 86, 196 Priests 145-146,168,224,235,257 Primary texts 13 Probability 8, 258, 307 Prohibition(s) 199, 255-257, 259, 265, 337 Pronominal 303, 305, 307-308, 310-311, 316, 318-321, 323, 324 (η. 1), 339

Index Pronominal style 319 Pronominalism 3 0 5 , 3 1 9 - 3 2 0 Pronoun reversal 317 Pronoun shifts 317 Pronoun systems (see also: Person systems) 305,312,314,318,321 Prosodic 91, 105 Prosody 9 2 - 9 3 , 105 Protestant reformers 27 Proverbs 93 Proximity 5 - 6 , 13, 1 5 , 2 2 - 2 3 , 2 9 , 4 5 - 4 6 , 322 Psychoanalysis 129, 274-275, 299 (n. 9), 338 Psychoanalyst(s) 272-274, 279, 285, 338 Psychoanalytic 273 Psychoanalytical 273 Psychoanalytically 167 Purana 8 0 - 8 1 , 8 3 , 9 1 , 9 4 - 9 5 , 9 7 - 1 0 3 , 107 (n. 5) Quebec 107, 187, 206 (n. 1), 298 Qu yuan 64 Rabinow, P. 2 4 - 2 5 Ramanujan, A.K. 101 Rank-ordering 128, 134 Rationalism 121 Read 3 , 7 - 1 0 , 1 2 - 1 3 , 2 3 - 2 5 , 2 8 - 2 9 , 31, 33, 37, 41, 4 4 - 4 5 , 4 7 - 4 8 , 50, 57, 63, 70, 80-81, 83, 92, 95, 98, 106, 112, 127, 129-131, 133, 138-141, 159,214, 221, 223-225, 227, 251-252, 255-257, 262, 264-265, 267 (n. 9), 275, 277, 280, 298, 304, 3 3 0 - 3 3 1 , 3 3 4 Reader 3, 8 - 9 , 13, 24, 2 8 - 2 9 , 50, 57, 63, 8 0 - 8 1 , 8 3 , 106, 129-131, 133, 138-141, 251, 255, 264, 267 (n. 9), 298, 334 Reading 9, 17, 20, 23, 3 0 - 3 1 , 35, 4 5 - 4 7 , 65,95, 106, 112, 127, 130, 133-134, 149, 155-156, 214, 221, 224, 227, 251, 261-262, 331-332, 334 Realism 121, 299 (n. 6), 300 (n. 15)

359

Reason 3 , 6 9 , 7 1 - 7 2 , 113, 120, 129, 132, 309,312,319, 332 Reciprocation 305-309 Reciprocity 178,204,332 Recitation 13,46, 83, 88, 94-95, 102, 204, 263,331 Reciter 98, 101 Reference(s) 4 - 5 , 9, 24, 27, 32, 4 1 - 4 6 , 4 8 - 4 9 , 92, 111, 113, 120, 126, 129, 146, 173-174, 178-186, 210, 2 4 1 242, 261-262, 274, 305, 312, 315 Referential systems 4, 45 Reformation 27 Relative resonance 6 7 - 6 9 , 73 Reliability 13,44,235,243 Reliable 5 - 6 , 2 2 - 2 3 , 38, 44, 64, 250, 267 (n. 9) Religion 47,49, 116, 130, 134, 136, 220-222, 227, 235, 257, 336 Religious 47, 155, 168, 179, 183-186, 193, 197, 211, 224, 227, 238, 255, 259-260, 263-265, 266 (n.n. 1, 8), 267 (n. 9), 306, 323 Repetition 62, 94, 341 (n. 3) Representation 34, 3 9 - 4 1 , 4 3 , 104, 114, 120, 122, 157, 175, 184, 188, 195, 221, 225-226, 257-258, 273 Representational 40, 120-121, 189 Representational doxa 111,120 Repressed 47, 128, 130-131,273,285, 338 Repression 47, 111-112, 117, 126-127, 130, 134, 334 Resonance 3 8 , 4 6 , 5 7 , 5 9 - 6 0 , 6 3 - 7 1 , 73-74, 75 (n.n. 6, 7), 265, 332-340, 341 (n.n. 3,4, 6) Resonant 7 3 - 7 4 , 3 2 9 , 3 3 1 - 3 3 2 , 3 4 0 Responsibility 8 5 , 9 4 , 9 8 , 1 0 6 , 1 2 6 , 132, 153, 178, 198, 283,318 Return (fan) 61,73 Revelation 4 6 - 4 7 , 111-116, 118-119, 128, 131, 133-134, 138-141, 333-334 Revelation 250, 256, 259, 273

360

Index

Rhetoric(s) 6 - 7 , 1 3 , 2 6 - 2 8 , 4 0 , 4 5 , 117, 120, 128-131, 140, 198, 296, 320 Rhetorical 7 - 8 , 12, 31, 40, 46, 69, 224, 226, 240, 320 - discourses 4 - expressions 11 - figures 8, 11 Rhizome 11 Rhythm(s) 91, 93, 105, 135, 141, 185 Ricoeur, P. 11, 2 4 - 2 6 , 2 9 - 3 0 , 32, 36-37, 138-141, 197 Rigby, P. 206 (n. 3) Rites 132, 136, 193,200-201,251,253, 263, 337 Ritual(s) 39, 4 8 - 4 9 , 79, 8 5 - 8 6 , 88, 94, 9 8 - 9 9 , 102, 105-106, 146, 148, 164, 167, 173-181, 183-187, 190-191, 193-194, 1 9 9 - 2 0 6 , 2 1 1 , 2 1 3 - 2 1 4 , 221, 224, 233-244, 264, 274, 282, 290, 335, 337 - dramatization 190 - efficacy 2 3 4 , 2 4 2 - 2 4 3 Romantic period 5 Romanticism 28, 142 (n. 1), 194 Rorty, R. 16,22 Rousseau, J. 50,289,291,294,297, 338-339 Russell, B. 316,321 Ryle, G. 294, 300 (n. 15) Sabaism 47, 112, 118, 127, 130, 132, 134 Sacred 4, 6, 2 6 - 2 7 , 32, 8 0 - 8 3 , 9 4 - 9 5 , 99, 102-103, 105-106, 114-115, 203-204, 211,216, 256, 261, 294, 296 Sacrifice 63, 97, 116, 146, 150, 163, 166-168, 193, 201,210-211, 214-216, 219-220, 234, 243-244, 334 Sage(s) 61, 81-83, 87, 91, 94, 97, 101, 184 Sahlins, M. 145-146, 148, 155, 167,334 Said, E. 21 Salvaged mind 123 Sameness 6, 13, 19, 23, 45, 6 2 - 6 3 , 122

San Antonio 334 Sanskrit 46, 61, 65, 7 9 - 8 1 , 8 3 - 9 6 , 98, 100, 103, 105-106, 333 Sartre, J.-P. 36 Saussure, F. de 34, 121, 123, 137 Saussurian 34, 123-124 Savage mind (pensee sauvage) 3, 33, 36, 43, 121-123, 130, 135, 141, 195 Scenarios 10, 164,290 Schemas 10, 16,33,40, 131 Schematas 10 Scheme(s) 6 1 , 6 7 , 7 2 - 7 3 , 125, 131-132, 181,222,332 - analysis 47, 134 Schlegel, F. 8 9 - 9 0 Schleiermacher, F. 5, 2 8 - 2 9 Schneider, G. 3 7 - 3 8 School of Naturalists 59, 68 Science 4 - 5 , 15-16, 1 9 - 2 0 , 2 3 - 2 5 , 2 8 - 2 9 , 54,58, 6 2 , 6 4 , 7 1 , 107, 117-118, 121, 124-126, 129, 131, 133, 136-137, 155, 164, 174, 233, 235, 251, 253, 257, 260, 263, 265, 266 (n. 1), 289, 293, 298 (n. 3), 307, 312, 319, 3 2 3 - 3 3 3 , 3 3 5 - 3 3 6 Scorpion 1 1 2 - 1 1 8 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 0 - 1 3 4 , 138-139 Searle, J. 239 Second level codes 186 Second level interpretations 14, 44 Secondary texts 13 Segmentation 183 Self 23, 50, 62, 105, 116, 120, 122, 124, 126, 131, 140-141, 194-195, 198, 204, 226, 249-250, 291, 295, 298, 298 (n. 2), 299 (n. 9), 300 (n. 15), 306, 3 0 8 - 3 1 1 , 3 1 6 - 3 1 9 , 325 (n. 11), 334-335 Self-identity 24,291,295 Self-transformation 6 1 , 7 0 , 7 4 Semantic maps 37 Semantic method 34, 4 0 - 4 3 Semantic net 10, 42, 333 Semantic network analysis 34,41

Index Semantics 6 - 7 , 9 - 1 0 , 3 3 - 3 7 , 4 0 - 4 4 , 59-61,92, 233,332-334 Semiology 4, 6, 30 Semiotic(s) 4, 12, 30, 34, 36, 43, 111, 117-121, 127-132, 134-135, 138, 141, 234-235, 239, 241, 329, 3 3 3 - 3 3 6 Semitic 44, 58 Senoufo (Ivory Coast) 233-235,237, 239-241,243 Sexuality 115, 126, 154, 199,203 Shifiter(s) 244, 317, 324 (n. 3), 337 Ships'journals 4 6 - 4 7 , 145, 147-148 Sign(s) 4 - 5 , 7, 28, 31, 33, 36, 4 1 - 4 4 , 47, 49, 111-112, 114-142, 148, 152, 157, 162-163, 165, 177-178, 184, 233-234, 239, 241, 243, 251-252, 255-256, 261-262, 264, 280-282, 330, 333-334, 336 Sign system(s) 31, 126 Significance 20, 33, 74, 99, 119, 176, 199, 299 (n. 4) Significant 24,35, 125, 149, 154,203, 264, 304-305 Significant other 310 Signification 4, 8,24, 118, 121, 128, 130, 132-133, 139, 141 Signified 35, 121, 126, 131, 195 Signifier 31,35, 111, 118, 121-123, 126, 128-131, 141, 175, 183-184, 333 Silence 69, 116, 121, 130-131, 134, 251 Singer, M. 95, 107 (n. 1) Singers 79 Sisala 243 Sivin, N. 58, 74 (n.n. 2, 3), 250, 266 (n. 1) Snakes 97, 114-115,222 Social identity 176, 179, 226, 275, 285, 290, 298 (n. 3), 299 (n. 4) Social status 278 Society(ies) 5, 17, 19, 41, 46, 58, 6 1 - 6 3 , 65, 67, 69-70, 150, 167, 173-177, 180-190, 193-194, 197-198, 202-203, 226, 235, 244 (n. 3),

361

249-252, 259, 264, 274-275, 279-280, 284-285, 290-292, 297-298, 299 (n. 5), 306, 308, 323, 331,336 Socio-cultural 31,291 Sociocentric pronoun 304 Socrates 70,316 Sola scriptum 27 Solipsism 22, 195, 197,319 Solitary "I" 3 0 6 - 3 0 9 Solomons (Islands) 209-212,220, 227, 332 Somatization 340 Song 83, 93, 96, 105, 201, 303, 326, 339-340 Song Dynasty 64 Sophocles 12 Soul 124, 129, 275, 335 Space-time complex (yuzhou) 73 Spain 303, 323 Speech act 244 Spencer, H. 309 Spirit(s) 28,49, 116-123, 126, 130, 133-134, 138, 140, 149, 163, 183-186, 212-213, 215-217, 220, 233, 239-241, 249, 272, 275-276, 286 (n. 2), 337 Spirit possession 50, 183-184,249 Spirits of the ancestors 49, 220 Staging of the ritual 183,233,244, 337 Statement(s) 65-66, 72, 149, 164, 222, 234-244, 245 (n. 9), 289, 291, 296, 309,312,316, 324 (n. 8) Stimulus and response 59 Stories 4 6 , 7 9 - 8 1 , 8 3 , 8 5 - 8 8 , 9 5 - 9 7 , 101, 103, 105-106, 161, 163,271 Story 31, 4 6 - 4 7 , 7 9 - 8 8 , 90, 9 2 - 9 3 , 95-106, 107 (n.n. 2, 3), 126, 132, 135-142, 146, 163, 214, 254, 262, 264, 271-273,277, 281,283 Strangeness 62 Strathern, M. 7, 341 (n.n. 2, 4) Structural differentiation 176

362

Index

Structural diversity 176, 181-182, 186, 188 Structural heterogeneity 176,191,335 Structural rules 178,189 Structuralism 5 , 3 6 - 3 7 , 111, 121, 174 Structuralists 31, 33, 35, 37, 43, 125 Structure(s) 4, 7-10, 18, 29, 31, 3 6 - 3 8 , 40, 47,49, 60, 66, 68, 71, 90, 111, 118, 124, 129, 135-136, 145, 147, 149, 173-177, 181, 183, 187-190, 197-199, 201, 222, 234, 272, 291, 298, 300 (n. 12), 333,341 (n. 7) Style(s) 7, 9, 12-13, 22, 7 9 - 8 1 , 8 8 - 9 0 , 105-106,214, 253,277,319, 333-334, 337, 341 (n. 2) Stylistic figures 11 Stylistic forms 7 Sub-meanings 331 Sub-text 48, 193 Subaltern 224-225, 336 Subject(s) 18, 50, 58, 86, 119-126, 129-131, 138, 141, 175, 188, 193-194, 197, 2 0 2 - 2 0 3 , 2 0 5 - 2 0 6 , 235-236, 241-242, 279, 289-298, 298 (n. 2), 299 (n.n. 5, 7), 300 (n.n. 12, 13), 315, 317, 321, 323, 331, 3 3 7 - 3 4 0 Subjective 22, 2 8 - 2 9 , 35, 58, 65, 250, 319 Subjectivism 2 8 - 2 9 , 3 1 9 Submerged 223, 225, 227, 304, 336 Submission 3,5, 136,330 Substitution(s) 3 5 , 3 9 , 4 3 , 1 7 4 Subtext 48 Subversion 185-186,334 Sullivan, W.M. 2 4 - 2 5 "Surplus" of meaning 11 Suspicion 30,32, 145,223,271 Symbol(s) 4, 11, 15, 36, 45, 87, 96, 111, 114, 117-118, 120-121, 123, 130, 132, 141, 184, 186, 194, 196, 243, 274, 335 Symbolic 8 , 1 1 - 1 2 , 3 1 , 3 5 , 4 1 , 4 9 , 6 9 , 87, 122, 130, 132, 156, 165-168, 179, 190, 198-199, 243, 245 (n. 8), 310

Symbolically 154-155, 166-167,253, 310 Symbolism 37, 79, 107 (n. 4), 138 Symbology 37 Symmetry 3,43, 136, 178, 181,253, 261 Sympathy 28, 50, 153 Synchrony 63, 121, 123, 134-135, 137, 142, 341 (n. 1) Synecdoche(s) 95,333 Syntactic 8 - 9 , 34, 3 6 - 3 7 , 5 9 - 6 0 , 68, 334 Syntactic indeterminancy 66 Syntactic polyvalence 5 9 - 6 1 Syntax 6 - 7 , 34, 3 6 - 3 7 , 325 (n. 10) System of signs 4, 33, 42, 49 Systematization 38, 62, 94, 223 Tactual 311,323 Tale(s) 13, 46, 61, 82-83, 85, 87, 97, 100, 102, 105-106, 163,262, 264, 286, 331, 334 Tao 70, 73, 266 (n. 1), 332 Taoist 46, 60, 65, 6 8 - 7 0 , 257-262, 332 Taylor, C. 2 3 - 2 5 , 3 3 8 Ten thousand things (wan wu) 7 3 - 7 4 , 332 Terror 47, 149-150, 158-160 Testimony 3, 13, 22, 209, 214, 272, 309 Text(s) 3 , 6 - 1 3 , 2 1 , 2 4 - 3 3 , 3 7 - 3 8 , 4 4 - 4 8 , 50, 6 0 - 6 5 , 6 7 - 7 1 , 74, 75 (n.n. 5, 7), 7 9 - 8 3 , 86, 88, 91-101, 103, 106. 107 (n. 2), 113, 117, 119, 130-131, 133-134, 140-141, 145, 158, 167, 196-197, 205-206,215, 219, 221 - 2 2 5 , 251, 264, 266 (n. n. 3, 6), 272, 282, 299 (n. 10), 329-331, 334-335, 341 (n. 1) Text analysis 7, 12 Textual analysis 6, 25 - Textual criticism 25, 64 Textual critique 6 - 7 Textuality 94, 98, 197 Texture 74, 87

Index Thinking 7, 12, 15, 17, 36, 3 9 , 4 9 - 5 0 , 70, 118, 126, 129, 187, 233, 242, 244, 253, 289-295, 298, 309, 323, 332, 337-339 Thinking subject 119,123,126, 289-292, 295, 298, 299 (η. 7), 300 (η. 13) Thought 9 , 1 3 - 1 5 , 1 7 , 2 1 , 2 3 , 2 9 , 3 3 , 3 6 - 4 1 , 43, 46, 50, 60, 64-65, 6 7 - 6 8 , 7 3 - 7 4 , 75 (η. 4), 111, 120-123, 125, 127, 129, 138, 154, 194-195, 199, 275-276, 289, 292-295, 300 (η. 17), 330, 337-338, 341 (η. 6) Tian ren ganying 67 Time 3 - 4 , 21, 23, 39, 61, 66, 7 2 - 7 3 , 103-104, 111-112, 115-117, 122-123, 131, 133-142, 178, 186, 199-202, 221, 257, 291, 317, 322 Timeless 83, 121, 123, 134, 136, 138, 204 Tissue 3 0 - 3 1 , 6 1 , 125 Todorov, T. 28, 245 (n. 7) Tolerance 187,331 Tonality 60 Topic 3 - 4 , 3 2 1 , 3 4 0 Torah 2 6 , 4 5 , 4 9 , 2 3 5 Toulmin, S. 17 Traditional doctors/healing 173, 175, 283 Traditional societies 13,183-184, 187-189, 275, 335 Tragic dimension 1 9 - 2 0 Trance 234, 238, 242, 259, 273, 278, 282-283 Trans-individual subject(s) 50, 292-298, 332 Transcultural 15, 18, 57, 63, 273 Transgressing 127 Transgression 49, 111-112, 117, 126, 131, 133-134, 193, 198-206, 264-265, 334 Transgressive 127, 134 Transition 35, 105, 190, 193, 200, 202-206, 299 (n. 8)

363

Translate 16, 22, 39, 4 8 - 4 9 , 65, 71, 102, 161,275, 332 Translated 14, 23, 48, 59, 84, 89, 94, 173, 254, 257 Translation(s) 14-15, 17, 23, 38, 40, 48, 65, 71, 81, 84, 93, 168, 196-197, 253 Transsubjectivity 338-339 Tropes 11,31,332 Tropological analysis 7 - 8 , 12 True knowledge (zhenzhi) 62, 7 2 - 7 3 , 120 True Man 6 1 , 6 4 , 6 7 - 7 0 , 7 3 - 7 4 Truth 1 1 , 1 6 , 2 9 - 3 0 , 4 9 , 7 1 , 8 9 , 119-122, 125-126, 129, 136, 161, 194, 198, 203, 234, 236, 238, 241-244, 245 (n. 5), 250, 262, 265, 271, 291, 316, 3 2 0 - 3 2 1 , 3 2 3 Turner, V 37-38, 175, 188, 190 Tyler, S. 341 (n. 2) Uncertainty 160,306,308,321,324 (n. 5) Unconscious 13, 122-123, 125, 131-132, 150, 154, 156, 275,299 (n.n. 7, 9) Understand 5, 7, 15, 18-19, 39, 58, 6 2 - 6 4 , 70, 72, 89, 122, 161-162, 176, 221,279, 282 Understanding 4, 8, 18, 22, 24, 2 7 - 2 8 , 37, 39, 45,48, 5 7 - 5 8 , 61, 63, 71, 89, 91, 174, 183, 194-196, 206, 254, 271, 275, 297, 317, 320, 335, 339-340 Undifferentiated unity 73 United States 19,21 Van Gennep, A. 203 Vandermeersch, L. 244 (n. 2) Vattimo, G. 5, 62 Veracity 49, 234, 236-238, 2 4 2 - 2 4 3 Verbal productions 95 Vernant, J.-P. 4 9 , 2 3 5 , 2 4 1 , 2 5 4 , 2 6 6 (n. 2) Verse 27, 80, 84, 90-91, 93, 101, 103-104, 184

364

Index

Verstehen 28-29, 324 (η. 6) Verstehende 196,335 Violations 224 Violence (see also: Interpretative violence) 209,211-213,225 Violent 19,21,212,226 Voices 20, 31-33, 47, 79, 105, 145, 221, 225, 336, 339

Wittgenstein, L. 4, 17, 22, 196 World view 7, 175, 223, 227, 274, 293 Writer(s) 8-10,12-13,21,28,50, 64-65, 145, 197 Writing 7, 9, 12, 20, 22-23, 46, 49, 58, 61, 64, 95, 106, 133, 197, 297, 329 Wuwei 70

Weaving 31, 55, 61, 69, 74, 96, 201 Weber, M. 194,235 Webs of significance 33 Western 15-16,18-23,26,37-38,44, 58, 64, 71, 74 (n. 2), 75 (n. 4), 87, 95-96, 98, 119, 145, 165, 194-195, 203, 209-210, 214-215, 223, 226, 235, 251, 253, 260-261, 263, 265, 271-272, 275, 277, 292, 299 (n. 5), 330, 332 Western Europe 57-58 Western intellectual tradition 15, 21-22,

Yahwism 47, 112, 118, 127, 130, 132-134, 139 Yans 176, 180-181, 191 Yansi 180 Ying 46, 59, 332 Young, A. 211 (n. 4)

26,64,71-72, 305 Will to power 111, 117, 126-127, 138 Witchcraft 150,180,203,283

Zande 238 Zebola 183 Zempleni, A. 49, 233, 243, 250, 336-339 Zhenren (True Man) 61, 69, 73 Zhuang zi 64 Zimmerman, F. 38, 40, 244 (η. 1) Zou Yan 59-60, 75 (n. 7)