Mimesis and Pacific Transcultural Encounters: Making Likenesses in Time, Trade, and Ritual Reconfigurations 9781785336256

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MIMESIS AND PACIFIC TRANSCULTURAL ENCOUNTERS

ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology General Editor: Rupert Stasch, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge The Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO) is an international organization dedicated to studies of Pacific cultures, societies, and histories. This series publishes monographs and thematic collections on topics of global and comparative significance, grounded in anthropological fieldwork in Pacific locations. Volume 1

The Anthropology of Empathy: Experiencing the Lives of Others in Pacific Societies Edited by Douglas W. Hollan and C. Jason Throop Volume 2

Christian Politics in Oceania Edited by Matt Tomlinson and Debra McDougall Volume 3

The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots: Custom and Conflict in East New Berlin Keir Martin Volume 4

Creating a Nation with Cloth: Women, Wealth, and Tradition in the Tongan Diaspora Ping-Ann Addo Volume 5

The Polynesian Iconoclasm: Religious Revolution and the Seasonality of Power Jeffrey Sissons Volume 6

Engaging with Strangers: Love and Violence in the Rural Solomon Islands Debra McDougall Volume 7

Mortuary Dialogues: Death Ritual and the Reproduction of Moral Communities in Pacific Modernities Edited by David Lipset and Eric K. Silverman Volume 8

Mimesis and Pacific Transcultural Encounters: Making Likenesses in Time, Trade, and Ritual Reconfigurations Edited by Jeannette Mageo and Elfriede Hermann

Mimesis and Pacific Transcultural Encounters Making Likenesses in Time, Trade, and Ritual Reconfigurations

Edited by Jeannette Mageo and Elfriede Hermann

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2017 Jeannette Mageo and Elfriede Hermann

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mageo, Jeannette Marie, editor. | Hermann, Elfriede, editor. Title: Mimesis and Pacific transcultural encounters : making likenesses in time, trade, and ritual reconfigurations / edited by Jeannette Mageo and Elfriede Hermann. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, [2017] | Series: ASAO studies in Pacific anthropology ; volume 8 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017015942 (print) | LCCN 2017040615 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785336256 (e-book) | ISBN 9781785336249 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology--Oceania. | Pacific Islanders--Cultural assimilation. Classification: LCC GN662 (ebook) | LCC GN662 .M48 2017 (print) | DDC 306.0995--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015942 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78533-624-9 hardback ISBN: 978-1-78533-625-6 ebook

Contents



List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments

xi

PART I. Introduction

Introduction: Mimesis in Theory and in Cultural History Jeannette Mageo

3

PART II. Mimesis through Time

Chapter 1. Imitation as Relationality in Early Australian Encounters Francesca Merlan

29

Chapter 2. Transitional Images and Imaginaries: Dressing in Schemas in Colonial Samoa Jeannette Mageo

49

Chapter 3. Reel to Real: Mimesis, Playing Indian, and Touring with The Vanishing Race in New Zealand 1927 Sarina Pearson

79

PART III. Selling Mimesis: From Tourist Art to Trade Stores

Chapter 4. Traditional Tahitian Weddings for Tourists: An Entwinement of Mimetic Practices Joyce D. Hammond

111

Chapter 5. Of Dragons and Mermaids: The Art of Mimesis in the Trobriand Islands Sergio Jarillo de la Torre

138

vi Contents

Chapter 6. Capitalism Meets Its Match: Failed Mimesis of Market Economics among the Asabano of Papua New Guinea Roger Ivar Lohmann

164

PART IV. Ritual Mimesis and Its Reconfigurations

Chapter 7. Mimesis, Ethnopsychology, and Transculturation: Identifications in Birthday Celebrations among Banabans in Fiji Elfriede Hermann

189

Chapter 8. Mimesis and Reimagining Identity among Marshall Islanders Laurence Marshall Carucci

209

Chapter 9. Anthropology, Christianity, and the Colonial Impasse: Rawa Mimesis, Millennialism, and Modernity in the Finisterre Mountains of Papua New Guinea Doug Dalton

230

PART V. Afterword

“1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 Bundles.” Mimetic Technologies: Their Intimacies and Intersecting Histories Joshua A. Bell

257

Index

274

List of Figures



Map 0.1. Chapter Study Sites

xii

Map 1.1. Map of Baudin’s voyages

36

Figure 2.1. Girl wearing the tutagita style. The tuft is bleached. Probably by John Davis, Otto Finsch Collection. Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (17.P.5:40).

53

Figure 2.2. Studio shot of tāupōu in ceremonial dress wearing a tuiga. Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (No. Ikono162a-PolynesienSamoa).

55

Figure 2.3. Studio shot of girl in tāupōu dress wearing a tuiga with sailors, several other Samoan girls in the background: a tourist shot. From the collection of Augustin Krämer. Linden-Museum Stuttgart (38:2).

59

Figure 2.4. Village shot before a fale, three people in the foreground, two in ceremonial dress, armed Samoan men in the background. Savai‘i, 1861–1879 by Johann Stanislaw Kubary, Museum Godeffroy Collection. Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (2014.21:167).

60

Figure 2.5. German in Samoan dress. From the collection of Augustin Krämer. Linden-Museum Stuttgart. Album 36 (#69).

66

Figure 2.6. Picnic under the Mango Tree. From the collection of Augustin Krämer. Linden-Museum Stuttgart (38:7-1).

69

Figure 3.1. Cook Islands cowboy, circa 1910, Cook Islands, by George Crummer. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (C.003109).

80

Figure 3.2. Sir Dudley de Chair wearing feather warbonnet. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

88

Figure 3.3. Paramount’s Red Indians with Lord Mayor Norwood, Wellington, 2 February 1927. (Visit of American Red Indians, Wellington, by Roland Searle. Purchased 1999 with New Zealand Lottery Grants Board funds. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa [A.018536]).

89

viii Figures

Figure 3.4. Frank Seumptewa and Mita Taupopoki, hongi at Whakarewarewa, 20 January 1927. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

91

Figure 3.5. Franklyn Barrett, Leonard Manheimer, and Frank Seumptewa at Otaki. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

97

Figure 3.6. Amelia Dee, Frank Lawton, Nasjah Manheimer, Franklyn Barrett, Reg Kelly, and unknown gentleman at Otaki. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

99

Figure 4.1. A priest (in left foreground) awaits a couple dressed for their wedding in Tiki Village, Mo’orea. Photo courtesy of Tahiti Tourisme.

118

Figure 4.2. A tīfaifai is wrapped around a couple marrying on the island of Bora Bora. Photograph courtesy of Giulia Manzoni di Chiosca.

119

Figure 4.3. A couple is transported and entertained en route to their honeymoon bungalow. Photo courtesy of Tahiti Tourisme.

121

Figure 5.1. The wooden torch carved in the 1970s by David Mweiluvasi in imitation of a real torch. Originally fitted with batteries and a light bulb, Mweiluvasi’s torch was fully functional. 139 Figure 5.2. A tokwalu in the shape of a fish, a very popular type known as kapwagega (wide open mouth), found throughout the Trobriands.

148

Figure 5.3. Daniel Tobweyova from Kwebwaga Village shows his interpretation of the kapwagega carving to which he has added an innovative element in the form of a mimetic emblemization (see Figure 5.4).

149

Figure 5.4. Detail of Tobweyova’s carving, where the tail of the kapwagega fish is unusually carved in the shape of a lagim canoe board with two tabuya boards on the side.

149

Figure 5.5. Traditional lagim and tabuya boards carved by Paul Giyumkwumumkwu.

150

Figure 5.6. Another lagim canoe board carved by Paul Giyumkwumumkwu. The bwalai are the two anthropomorphic figures with round eyes found in the middle. An alternative rendition of the bwalai can also be seen in Figure 5.5.

155

Figures

ix

Figure 5.7. Detail of a kaitukwa walking stick photographed in Obweria Village in 2010.

158

Figure 7.1. The birthday child is standing in front of her mother wearing a Fijian costume. Photo: Elfriede Hermann, 28 May 1998.

197

Figure 7.2. The girl in her sixth garment: the costume of the Banaban Dancing Group. Photo: Elfriede Hermann, 28 May 1998.

199

Figure 7.3. The birthday child in her ninth costume: a two-piece suit in the Western style. The birthday cake shaped as a basketball court and the European-looking doll seated in the middle of it are references to her identity, too. Photo: Elfriede Hermann, 28 May 1998.

200

Figure 8.1. Young men from Meden jepta (Enewetak Atoll) prepare their wōjke in the church (1982).

214

Figure 8.2. Rupe, ruup! (Explode it, explode!): Jitaken’s wōjke is revealed in the explosion—Ujelang (1976).

215

Figure 10.1. E338248-0, “1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 bundles” in the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center. Photograph by Emily R. Cain and courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, E377675-0. 258 Figure 10.2. Expedition aviator and film recorder Richard Peck in a staged image with Tombe villagers reading a magazine. Photograph courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Arb400.

260

Acknowledgments



Our deepest gratitude goes to the Pacific Islanders who taught us about their transcultural practices and drew us into mutual mimesis. We would also like to thank all the colleagues and friends who discussed our research findings with us, especially at the annual meetings of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO). Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington gave us important comments at an early stage in the project, Michael Taussig sent us his thoughts at a later stage, and Joshua Bell provided provocative discussions of our contributions at just the right time, all of which we gratefully acknowledge. Joyce Hammond facilitated the production of the research map with the assistance of Western Washington University. Rixanne Wehren, a professional mapmaker, expertly drew the map. To all of them go our many thanks. In addition, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their close reading and valuable suggestions. Our warm thanks also go to Steffen Herrmann for his commitment to the project and his generous professional assistance with preparing the manuscript and illustrations for publication. Also, we are greatly indebted to Rupert Stasch, the general editor of the ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology, for his valuable advice and support throughout the submission, review, and publication process.

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PART I Introduction

Introduction Mimesis in Theory and in Cultural History JEANNETTE MAGEO

How do people meet and fathom one another in transcultural encounters? What do they reap from such encounters? How do they bridge boundaries, reaching out to a transcultural Other? Alternatively, how do they establish boundaries or fail to do so, falling instead under the spell of a transcultural Other? Our answer in this volume is this: through mimesis. In the West, the concept of mimesis has been around at least since Plato, who sees art as mimesis and the artist as a copyist. For Plato in The Republic (1968) life is a dim copy of ideal forms and art a yet dimmer copy. Aristotle in the Poetics (1927) also sees art as mimesis, but for him art creates a special contemplative state of mind, a balance point or special zone poised between identification with a flawed hero and the distance inspired by his tragic fate. In this introduction I take mimesis to be making likenesses and, like Aristotle, a way to negotiate identification and dis-identification. Making likenesses can be manifest in performances (mime or parody, for example) or productions (ritual or art), or can simply proceed within a person’s mind. Indeed, Pacific Islanders in the arts of caricature, theater, costume, carving, and more, have long used mimesis to contemplate transcultural encounters as many of the essays to follow show. I begin here by offering a model of mimesis as a mode of thinking, feeling, and contemplation, one that suggests how this mode of processing experience lends itself to intercultural identifications and dis-identifications and can help bring to light Pacific Islanders’ and their visitors’ mental and emotional reactions to encounters between them. If mimesis is to make a likeness, in the simplest sense likenesses are images and hence are likely to be rooted in that mental faculty that Lacan calls the Imaginary. Lacan (1977, 1968) contends that the Imaginary is the first form of cognition to emerge in human development. Children (mis)recognize themselves as their likeness in the mirror and imagine their experience is happening to it. According to Lacan, however, this image-based form of conceptualization soon shifts to the background of consciousness, yielding to verbal thinking about the practical and urgent realities of daily life. Imaginative

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processing, however, does not go away: it migrates into dreams, but also into the subtle body language of quotidian communication, which runs in tandem with verbal discourse. With their faces and bodies, people suggest images—images of which they may be unaware or inarticulate, but nonetheless images that register with their interlocutors and to which their interlocutors respond. Indeed, recent neuroscience research identifies “mirror neurons” in our brains that copy and reflect all that we perceive, providing a basis for learning and relating (Rizzolatti and Craighero 2004; Dinstein et al. 2008; Gallese and Goldman 1998; Keysers 2009). Mimesis is also fundamental to our species’ being: human evolution relied upon imitating others’ adaptive cultural variants (Boyd and Richerson 1987). The particular character of this form of mentation is that likenesses, call them copies, are inevitably mutinous and inexact, saying something a little more than what we meant and escaping our intentions. Copies manifest the sliding of meanings that Derrida (1978) calls différance, which he says, “deconstructs all kingdoms”: never static, mimesis erodes and betrays all things that are. What we find in mimesis, Taussig (1993: 115) tells us, “is not only matching and duplication but also slippage which, once slipped into, skids wildly.” Copying, then, is forever making new “originals”; it is both a moment in a series and an entry point for innovation. The study of mimesis offers a way of considering cultures that resolves the twentieth-century debate about whether culture is reinvented or authentic. From a mimetic viewpoint, the questions are never: Is it new or old, perduring or mutable, derivative or genuine? Rather the questions are: What is this likeness repeating, altering, saying? As Benjamin (1955: 73) says of translations, which of course are copies, they succeed to the extent that they are transformations and renewals “of something living.” The transformative nature of mimetic processing is perhaps most transparent in dreams. In Freud’s terms ([1900] 1964), dreams are “day residues”: fragments of daily experience reproduced but altered by our associations to this experience. Indeed, this is why a dream figure resembles, but does not, someone we know; a dreamscape is like, but is not, some place we have been (Stickgold et al. 2001; Stickgold and Walker 2004; Barrett and McNamara 2007). Yet mimesis is present in waking too: our minds inevitably associate an original subject to like material from elsewhere and so, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously, alter what we intend to reproduce. Those aspects of a copy that iterate an original, that are “true,” I propose, state a subject; the variations or “imperfections” of the copy comment on this subject. This subject/commentary relationship is clear in activities such as caricature and really in all types of acting. Indeed, mimesis is also “acting like” or acting “as if ” through which copies of an earlier “original” make visible and embodied an imaginative conception but also commentaries on such con-

Introduction

5

ceptions. Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet offers us a commentary on Shakespeare’s conceptions of the father-son relationship, on contradictions between morality and duty, and much else. In turn Shakespeare copied/commented on the legend of Amleth chronicled by Saxo Grammaticus and others and possibly, in a way, even Sophocles’s Oedipus; the list could go on. Such commentaries convey thoughts about an “original,” but equally they convey feelings. There is no way better than caricature, for example, to express derision and contempt. Operating on a troublesome border between thinking and feeling, mimesis is a way to know broadly defined. One sign of approaching a universally useful concept, I believe, is that such concepts lie on a horizon where Western dichotomies like “thinking versus feeling” breakdown. Focusing on mimesis, therefore, can also help to bridge the Cartesian dualism critiqued in recent decades by poststructuralist and feminist scholars. This volume concerns copying as it occurs between cultural groups— parsing the subject specified by a copy and the thoughts-feelings about the subject indicated by variations thereon in various Pacific locales (see Map 0.1). These variations represent a kind of conversation, “talking back” (and forth) in images to a colonial Other or to a cultural consociate. In this spirit, all the chapters in this volume ask: What are people copying? What is the “original” (meaning an earlier copy from another point in a conversation in images)? What is the implied subject—implied, that is, by this “original”? How do the copies upon which our chapters focus vary from this earlier “original”? In what sense does this variation imply a commentary? Is the copy investigative, eulogizing, deconstructive, additive, augmenting, expansive, subversive, or deceptive? For copies have all these potentials. Does the original speaker or another then copy this copy in turn? Who claims to represent the original and why? How do respondents (mis)represent an original. What is the back-and-forth in this conversation and in what direction(s) does it lead? To what purposes? What are its messages and metamessages? In what sense does the copy, or the conversation it elicits, convey thoughts and feelings about a transcultural Other or about the copyists’ own culture and history in face of the challenging novelty transcultural contact often introduces into a cultural world? We presume that those instances of mimesis on which we focus are about a small subject specified by an original but also about a larger subject. So we ask in these various Pacific contexts, how is the copy at issue commentary in the most particular and in the most general sense of the term? We also ask: How do the thoughts and feelings conveyed by the copies upon which our individual chapters concentrate shed light on the nature of mimesis and of cultural change? How might analyses of cultures and their encounters as a play of likenesses be different from analyses of them as discourse and disquisition? How, furthermore, can mimesis inform and transform our understandings of written or spoken sources?

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By answering these questions with our Pacific data we offer insights into the nature of mimetic processing as well as into the cultures we study and their encounters. Our aim is to examine the (re)production of cultural likenesses, along with the cultural forms and forces they configure, as well as to explain how these (re)productions repeat and vary identifiable practices and performances and at the same time are turning points in a cultural history or an intersecting set of histories: points of transcultural encounter.

Mimesis and Cultural Identity

Mimesis is often an embodied, near unconscious process, as when two sympathetic interlocutors mirror one another’s posture and gestures. Given that it is so large a part of how people relate, Cantwell (1993) would rather we speak of “ethnomimesis” than culture at all, given that the latter category is often subject to reification and that so much that we share in culture comes from copying. I would not go so far as to substitute the word “mimesis” for culture, any more than I would substitute “discourse” for culture, but acknowledging this subject’s vast scope, I want to break it down to more thinkable dimensions. Probably, in transcultural encounters mimesis is first a way to communicate, as when people share no common language and therefore mime acts and ideas they wish to discuss—charades for real purposes. Indeed, Obeyesekere (2005) believes European colonists’ myths about South Pacific cannibalism arose in this way. Later, however, when social and political relations take more stable form, mimesis can also be a way of incorporating the Other, of emblemizing one’s own culture to distinguish oneself from this Other, or of displacing the self in deference to a dominant cultural Other. I call the first “incorporative mimesis,” the second “emblemizing mimesis,” and the third “abject mimesis.” These distinctions are, of course, heuristic and in practical instances porous, each type bleeding into, inflecting, or transforming other ways of copying. This volume will show that people use mimesis to appropriate otherness as often as they use it to amplify difference and that political and economic subordination often tempts them to mimetic self-repudiation. The question is when and why they do so, as I explain below. Incorporative Mimesis

Under the best circumstances, I venture, when people from different groups meet, each side brings with it a plethora of culturally shared ideas and feelings about many domains of experience (what I as a psychological anthropologist call “schemas”) that are new to the other—ranging from the practical and political to the spiritual and psychological to the aesthetic that in their nov-

Introduction

7

elty challenge and excite. People’s reactions to such novelty, again under the best circumstances, are surprise, interest, covetousness—feeling “No, really?” “Could it be?” “I have to try that!” Incorporative mimesis is a way of seeing how some aspect of the other fits and how it feels. And when we try on other cultures in image forms there may be no going back. We know something new; its registration is ineradicable, no matter if what we learn is flaunted in emulative show or hidden, plagiarized without attribution, or even partially forgotten or fragmentarily remembered in the culture history that comes after. One thinks and feels through a cultural Other’s life ways by copying images that allude to their schemas and combining these with images and corresponding schemas of one’s own that are to a degree concordant. Mimesis, then, not only borrows schemas across cultural lines. As in Sahlins’ structure of conjuncture (1981, 1985), one’s own schemas may provide enduring structures and the other party’s new content. Let me give you a linguistic example. At contact in Papua New Guinea (PNG) there were more than 900 spoken languages. During early colonial times, many Papua New Guineans were transported to work on plantations elsewhere in the Pacific, such as Samoa, Queensland, and Fiji. After 1884, many of them were sent to work on large copra and tobacco plantations in German New Guinea, and when PNG later became a protectorate under the League of Nations, the Australian administration continued this practice (Waiko 1993, 2003). There, workers acquired some English and German words (Mühlhäusler, Dutton, and Romaine 2003: 5–7; Kulick 1992: 4–5). As interactions with those speaking different Papua New Guinean languages increased thereafter, often people did not have a local language in common but they did have this colonial vocabulary. Gradually this vocabulary, along with words from few dominant PNG vernaculars, supplied the basis for a language that came to be called “Tok Pisin” (also “Neo-Melanesian”), now the PNG lingua franca. The interesting thing about this language is that key aspects of its grammar are Austronesian. Austronesian languages are widespread in coastal PNG (Smith 2002) and represent the largest language family in the Pacific (Bellwood, Fox, and Tryon 1995). One might say Papua New Guineans expanded local language schemas to incorporate new content. The PNG example is telling in that it is on the verbal/discursive level that hybridity has usually been considered heretofore. Its fullest exploration has been in Creole studies (see, for example, Baptista 2005; Palmié 2006; Hall 2003). Yet Tok Pisin and other creoles seem radical borrowings of the foreign to adapt indigenous ways. The process I call incorporative mimesis, in contrast, can be one-sided but it can also be mutual, a back and forth conversation in images between parties to a transcultural encounter in which not only indigenes but also colonials try on the others’ images and forge hybrid images and schemas through this experimentation. Indeed, European companies and

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states alike saw “going native” as a major danger for their residential officials, one that threatened to undermine colonial authority. According to Anderson (1991), such hybridity was a stain anyone born in the colonies, no matter how pure their European ancestry, could neither avoid nor remove. When people copy foreign schemas within the structures of their own long enduring ones, the new “content” may have a corroding effect. Thus Sahlins (1981: 37–66) argues that in Hawai‘i, at contact, the indigenous schema, tapu, expanded to incorporate foreign trade: King Kamehameha tabooed foreign ships, in effect creating a chiefly monopoly. This new content eroded Hawaiian social structure. Why? Because implicit in this transcultural trade was a British capitalist exchange schema. In action if not always in the abstract, I suggest, Hawaiians sensed that this schema offered an alternative interpretation of events, opening the tapu schema to question and challenge. Tapu, which had given chiefly edicts force, no longer appeared to be just the way things were. The capitalist exchange “content” made the cultural nature of tapu and the power relations it predicated visible and, therefore, vulnerable to those who had interest against it—most particularly women. Tapu regulated Hawaiian relations between highborn people and commoners but also those between men and women (Sahlins 1985, 1981). Kaahumanu, King Kamehameha’s favorite wife, who served as coregent during the reign of his next two successors, made a spectacle of breaking the taboo on women eating with men by dining with her son King Liholiho. Commoner Hawaiian women had done so before her, dining with British seamen when they broke Kamehameha’s tapu on commoner-foreign trade by swimming to ships to conduct their own forms of exchange. Another example: missionaries set about their work in Samoa in the 1830s, building village churches along with their congregations and running prayer services. The most important of these were Sunday services, for which everyone dressed up in the latest fashion. The fashion was whatever European clothes Samoans could beg, borrow, or make. Indeed, one of the earliest items in the British Museum’s Samoan collection is a tortoiseshell bonnet presented to Queen Victoria before 1841 (Museum catalogue # 0211.12). Victorian bonnets were then all the rage in Samoa (Turner [1861] 1984: 113). Samoans, however, often wore European clothes without regard to their gender ascriptions. The Reverend Drummond (1842) reports that women might wear a frock coat to Sunday services or a man a dress. The scene Drummond (1842) recounts does not reflect ignorance of missionary gender models: it visually represented a Samoan schema in which status trumped everything else. Novel European garments had become a dramatic way to signify status or pretentions to it. So here Samoans copy European dress, but not quite, as in Bhabha’s (1994) famous phrase, in terms of an indigenous status schema. The persistence of this Sunday dressing custom

Introduction

9

up through the 1970s (Schoeffel 1979: 110) indicates that this “not quite” is Drummond’s view, not one shared by these Samoans. Rather than trying to replicate European gender schemas, their affectations of English dress were simply new content incorporated into a Samoan status schema through mimesis. As in the case with tapu in Hawai‘i, however, this European-Christian gender content was not without eventual consequences for the Samoan world, as I have shown elsewhere (Mageo 1998). Couplings of indigenous and foreign schemas can also be the other way around: one can adopt a foreign schema to restructure one’s social world, using one’s own schemas as a supporting content. Kamehameha, for example, restructured Hawaiian island society by mimicking the British idea of monarchical power, making and calling himself “king” but supported this new schema with a Hawaiian model of chiefly mana, the trans-Polynesian idea of sacral power and authority (see Shore 1989). Implicit in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European monarch schema were also those of the nation and of global relations as commerce among nations, which Kamehameha likewise adopted along with European aristocratic dress and the status implicit in it. As in creolization studies, however, in these Hawaiian and Samoan examples it is unclear how mimetic incorporation was conversational, a back and forth exchange of schemas between two cultures, and indeed in colonialism it often was not. Lack of mimetic reciprocity, several of the chapters will suggest, is one index of colonial attitudes that are themselves likely to erode an indigenous culture. Emblemizing Mimesis

Under reasonably benign circumstances, then, people at least at first, admittedly sometimes to their cost or those of their fellows, incorporate foreign schemas. But what do people do under obviously oppressive and dangerous circumstances? They may then feel a need for borders and may want to define themselves against others’ schemas and modes of being. They do so by copying images from their own culture apparently absent in that of colonial interlocutors to represent a unique identity—images that become a banner and a shield, advertising difference, marking a cultural border. It must be further said that indigenes are often not the only authors of such emblems. Emblemizing images too commonly evolve from transcultural conversations and also capture what a foreign Other identifies as salient and significant about an indigenous culture, even though indigenes often seek these emblems in their culture’s past. Harrison (2006) sees people as using mimesis to create and maintain the social boundaries needed to differentiate their identities from other similar social groups. Resemblance among such groups, Harrison believes, instigates

10 Jeannette Mageo

rivalry and inspires attempts to assert difference by denying or disguising similarity. My difference from Harrison (2006) is that I see the oppositional form of mimesis, which I call “emblemizing,” as but one form of mimesis among several and also that in transcultural encounters I do not view similarity as the fundamental cause of oppositional self-definition in images. Its primary cause, I believe, is the threat of sociopolitical dominance and with it of what I call “mimetic abjection,” which I return to shortly. When people use certain practices and customs to emblemize their way of life, Thomas (1992: 214) calls this form of self-definition “cultural objectification,” which he sees as inherently oppositional “reifications of custom, indigenous ways, and tradition.” Like Harrison (2006), Thomas views such reification as aimed at asserting difference and, while he does not explicitly say this difference is asserted in the face of actual similarity, his first illustration, the Samoa-Tonga-Fiji trading triangle, suggests it is. Before Western contact Tonga had representation and influence in the governance of many islands in its Pacific locale and has been described as an “empire” (Kirch 1984: 217–42; Gunson 1990b). Based on Samoan genealogical evidence, Henry dates the period of Tongan dominance from circa ad 950 to circa ad 1250 (1979: 18, 87). Gunson (1990a: 19, 1990b) believes it lasted as late as 1820, close to the arrival of Christian missionaries in Tonga and Samoa. Kaeppler (1978) documents a Tonga-centric exchange system between Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji. Samoans sent high-status girls to become Tongan wives in exchange for the red parrot feathers that hallmarked ceremonial fine mats requisite to rituals of state in both Tonga and Samoa, many of which came back to Tonga as dowry with Samoan wives. In turn, Tongans sent high-status girls to become chiefly Fijian wives and got back feathers for Samoan exchange. Through this wifely traffic among the region’s three most powerful societies, Tongan royals rid themselves of highborn sisters, who in Tongan cosmology, most inconveniently, had more mana than their ruling brothers. In Thomas’s influential argument, this triangle generated cultural objectification, which he believes was manifest in the practice of tattooing. In my view, tattooing in the triangle did not objectify or reify these cultures but enlisted two distinct forms of mimesis: incorporative and emblemizing. Showing how members of the triangle enlisted these forms will help to demonstrate the usefulness of distinguishing the kinds of mimesis I posit for cultural analysis. My evidence lies in tattooing legends and songs in all three places. Both Tongans and Samoans trace tattooing to Fiji, where women were tattooed but not men. In the origin story of Tongan tattooing, a man means to report the custom to his compatriots but returning to them violently stubs his foot; his startle causes him to reverse the gender relations practiced in Fiji and he sings, “Tattoo the men, but not the women” (T. Williams 1858: 160). Samo-

Introduction

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ans have a similar myth and song about tattooing. Two famous girls, Taema and Tilafaiga, swim to Fiji and memorize a tattooing song but, diving deep to dine on a giant clam on their return, come to confuse the tattooing gender relations and also begin to sing, “Tattoo the men and not the women.” This tale, recorded by the missionary Turner ([1884] 1986: 55–56), is still sung about today in the song Pese o le Tatau (The Song of the Tattoo). In these myths and songs Tongans and Samoans mimic a Fijian practice. These origin stories further suggest lineage and kinship, which generated transformational variations around common cultural themes. Indeed, by virtue of triangular wifely traffic, Samoan, Tongan, and Fijian high chiefs were in-laws and traced their genealogies to one another. In Thomas’s (1992: 215) “cultural objectification,” each party to a transcultural encounter refers “disparagingly” to the other. Tongan and Samoan tattooing tales, in contrast, portray Fijians as dominant in the sense that they depict them as originators of this common practice. Tongans, the actual regional hegemons, along with Samoans, who were later to infiltrate and in many senses coopt Tongan power (Mageo 2002), appear in these tales as derivative in practice, confused in concept, and as failing to correctly copy Fiji. Rather than defensively asserting identity and difference as in Thomas’s and Harrison’s models, these Tongan and Samoan songs and tales joke about them by featuring the respective errors of their own messenger mimics, thus disparaging their own cultures rather than that of another member of the triangle. Only in abject mimesis, I shall soon argue, do cultures reify. Then both the dominant and subordinate cultures reify the dominant culture: they regard it as a fixed and unchanging measure of all things. Relations within the triangle were often fractious (Mageo 2002), but so were relations between families and villages within each of these island groups. Hereditary chiefs (ali‘i) held extensive suzerainty in distinct geocultural neighborhoods. Present-day nation terms probably only referred to dynastic houses, suggesting borders where none existed (Gunson 1997). The sense of “foreign” domination was probably limited, at least until these tales were retold to and recorded by foreign scribes during times when Europe and America were seeking to or had acquired Pacific colonies (see for example Krämer [1923] 1949). Yet, under threat or fact of foreign dominance, I agree that cultural identity tends to be oppositional. When this is the case, however, I propose that people emblemize cultural identity and difference through practices and schemas that, unlike tattooing, which was ubiquitous in the triangle, they perceive as absent from the other culture. Thomas’s second example, drawn from early Samoan colonial history, illustrates my point. The London Missionary Society (LMS) minister John Williams took Tahitian teachers to Christianize Samoans. The teachers urged Samoan women

12 Jeannette Mageo

to cover their breasts. The women responded by telling the Tahitians’ wives to “faasamoa”: Gird a shaggy mat round their loins as low down as they can tuck up the corner in order to expose the whole front & side of their left thigh anoint themselves beautifully with scented oil, tinge themselves with turmeric put a string of blue beads round their neck & then faariaria (fāalialia) walk about to shew themselves. You will have, say they, all the Manaia (mānaia) the handsome young men of the town loving you then. (J. Williams [1830–1832] 1984: 117) Thomas’s argument here is that mission attempts at dominance spurred an oppositional articulation of cultural identity—the fa‘aSāmoa (Samoan way). I would add that the behaviors these Samoan women recommended their Tahitian teachers mimic (showing oneself so as to attract mānaia) enacted a cultural schema: mānaia actually refers to chiefs’ sons and to Samoans’ hypergamous social system (see further Mageo 1998: 119–40). In this vignette, Samoans tout a practice and a schema they perceive as absent from a want-to-be dominating Christian-mission culture and thereby assert identity and difference. Here, Samoans emblemize their culture, yet I find no evidence that these women reify it. Rather, they treat one of their most important schemas, indeed a schema they don fa‘aSāmoa, as a practice and a performance rather than as an object. This fa‘aSāmoa schema, however emblematic, emerges in a transcultural conversation and represents an effort to assert Samoan ways in face of an attempt to change them: to make a cultural Other (British missionaries) the model and Samoans the mimics. Even in the early days of Samoan-mission relations, missionaries adamantly objected to showing off the body (fa‘alialia), a practice that was central to this fa‘aSāmoa schema (Mageo 1998). In counterpoint to Harrison (2006), these Samoans may assert difference, but they do not repudiate the possibility of similarity; indeed they counsel Tahitian missionaries to copy and be like them. In emblemizing mimesis, people may represent their culture via a currently practiced schema, as these nineteenth-century Samoans do, or they may represent it by copying and renewing schemas from their past, but in either case people select schemas they perceive or at least characterize as absent in a dominating culture. In New Zealand, for example, Māori redeployed the mana schema to reconsecrate marae (temple grounds) in villages but also to replicate them in universities, where they became spaces for a cultural renaissance, generating other spaces for scholarly reflection and for newfound appreciation of Māori artifacts and arts. These marae, along with other emblems drawn from a desecrated but enduring past, became icons of and platforms from which to re-create their New Zealand home as a bicultural society (Gershon 2012).

Introduction

13

In this renaissance the mana schema was not treated as an unchanging object. Who can forget the transformations of Māori images and schemas in the film The Whale Rider (2002), in which a young Māori girl, forbidden chiefly training on the marae with her male cohorts, becomes the mana-endowed caller of whales. While the mana schema came to serve as an emblem of Māori culture, in contemporary New Zealand people represent it through traditional practices and performances that are often copied in a host of new contexts (football games and tourism for example) by Māori and Pakeha alike. Mixtures

Admittedly, incorporative and emblemizing dimensions of mimesis may coexist or interpenetrate. The question is: What is manifest and what is latent, which kind of mimesis is the subject and which the undertone? Thus, often what people in culture incorporate is an emblem of a desirable difference, as when Samoan chiefs made up their own European-like military uniforms with epilates and stars (Chapter 3) or when Banabans dress a birthday celebrant in outfits signifying the different ways of life, wealth, and capacities of their Pacific neighbors (Chapter 8). Both incorporative and emblemizing mimesis coexist because both enact fundamental cultural processes: incorporation creatively expanding the local repertoire of schemas, emblemization creatively deploying distinguishing schemas to represent cultural identity. Further, as with any dichotomy, there are no pure cases and in the following chapters we find mixtures and intermediate cases more interesting than pure cases could be. One can think of these two styles of mimesis as nicely summed up in Taussig’s landmark study in what he calls a “division of mimetic labor” (1993: 186). Cuna males dressed like Europeans evince what I call incorporative mimesis, trying on and trying out in their persons foreign persona that are also captured in curing figurines, while Cuna women’s dress, molas, emblemize tradition. Yet even here one finds mimesis doubling back on itself, for while those molas women design refer back to and in this sense replicate traditional body painting, on them they often inscribe Western images like the RCA dog gazing into a Victrola (Taussig 1993: 224–29). Abject Mimesis

It is easy to mistake an imbalance of mimicry in the earliest colonial encounters for abjection: to see indigenous peoples as mimicking colonists because they regard them as superior models. As Taussig (1993) points out, however, in these encounters it was often evident that indigenes had a lively mimetic faculty and, while sometimes the crew of a Western ship answered in kind, officers did not condescend to mimic. This imbalance, however, likely reflected

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only a presumption of superiority on Europeans’ part. Obeyesekere’s (1992) work on Captain James Cook makes clear that the English thought indigenous peoples thought that Cook was a god; indeed, plays were performed on the London stage to this effect. Yet as Cook’s death makes equally clear, the greater power was often in local hands. Dureau (2001) argues that in these earliest encounters, Westerners on small vessels far from home with inadequate supplies were in fact highly dependent on the good will of local people: it was they who had fresh water and food as well as numbers. As the colonial project wore on, however, whites did dominate; in some places an imbalance of power and mimicry became more fact than colonial presumption, although to what degree varied from place to place and from time to time. The result of such an imbalance is often what I call “abject mimesis,” in which one party to a transcultural relation is ever the model and the other always the mimic. Here mimesis, a natural play of the mind, is frozen by power relations and becomes self-negating. Bhabha’s brilliant work on “mimic men” and “zones of ambivalence” shows that in the colonial project this imbalance often resulted in an “almost the same but not white” (1994: 89) identity for indigenous peoples that reflected the ambivalence of colonists. Colonists wanted to be the model and wanted indigenes to mimic them but imperfectly, as too close a resemblance would undermine their distinction and with it their right to rule. This one-sided mimicry condemned indigenes to a liminal existence in which they could neither be themselves nor the other. I use the additional term “abject” to characterize this kind of mimicry because I believe Kristeva’s (1982) earlier work on abjection can deepen our psychological understanding of it. Although Bhabha does not use the word “abject” to characterize his “mimic men,” there is a strong overlap between his portrait of these colonial subjects and Kristeva’s concept. Thus Kristeva (1982: 9) says in abjection, “I am only like someone else,” a mere copy in which fidelity is the only measure. We might define abjection, then, as a state of mimetic identification in which the self quests after, but without the possibility of becoming, an idealized Other. Kristeva continues, in abjection, “The ego gives up its image in order to contemplate itself in the other” where it finds “a forfeited existence” and “a composite of condemnation and yearning”—I would say, in abject mimesis condemnation of the self for imperfectly replicating the other and yearning for identity with it. This composite is the experience of being, in Bhabha’s terms, “not quite,” which plunges the abject “into a pursuit of identifications that would repair narcissism” such that the self becomes “puppet like” (Kristeva 1982: 49)—a copy lacking content, empty, the strings pulled by a dominant Other. But, while abjection is anchored in an idealized Other who could be said to represent “the law,” the abject “neither gives up nor assumes the prohibition,

Introduction

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a rule, or a loss; but turns aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to betray them, the better to deny them” (Kristeva 1982: 15). As Kristeva says, abjection is “what disturbs identity, system, order. … The in-between, the ambiguous … which hence draws attention to the fragility of the law” (ibid.: 4). This is why abject mimesis retains the possibility of collapse into deconstructive play and interrogative irony (Bhabha 1994; Mageo 2008). Abject mimesis, in effect, is a denial of Otherness rather than an incorporation or reassertion of it. Often it is a denial by both parties to an intercultural encounter if for different motives: colonists finding it convenient to interact with cultural Others who are like them but not so like as to share their entitlements; indigenes having internalized the cultural practices and ideals of a racist Other. Black skin, white masks, as Fanon (1967) has it, is colonialism’s most internalized form. Once there is a “not quite/not white” identity (Bhabha 1994: 92), however, whiteness becomes a role, an act, an acting out of assumed privilege—hauteur. As Kristeva (1982: 40) says of abjection, it makes everything seem “made up,” and the same could be said of mimic men: they betray the culturally constructed nature of what they copy. By copying their colonial overlords, mimic men suggest that white superiority is an act rather than an original with the primary authority that suggests. When images and schemas with them are internalized—when they become pictures in the mind—a slippage of meanings is often reignited. The chapters in this volume suggest that, unlike in the South Asian and African cases that Bhabha and Fanon discuss, in most Pacific locales colonial oppression seldom became so personally and culturally negating. Slavish copying was a temptation that Pacific people largely avoided. They did so sometimes by internalizing and transforming the images and schemas of a globalized capitalist culture, sometimes merely by abandoning any real attempt to copy them. Yet abject mimesis too is part of the stories we tell. A final note before I turn to the chapters: the kind of mentation we trace here, along with its various forms and expressions, may be particularly important in the Pacific because of its relevance to local models of personhood. In Samoa, for example, a copy or likeness is an ata, which means a reflected image, a shadow, a spirit, or a representative. If the unique authentic individual is key to understanding personhood and interpersonal interaction in many Western cultures, the representative plays a key role in Samoa. In matters of love one does not forward one’s own suit but finds a so‘a, a double, to do it. In government, too, chiefs do not speak for themselves but employ a talking chief to represent them, and talking chiefs were the real makers of Samoan political history (Mageo 1998: 102–18; Meleisea and Schoeffel Meleisea 1987). Like the partible person in Strathern’s (1988) terms or the gift in Mauss’s ([1925] 1990) terms, the representative as a copy, spirit, and image of another

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can travel to stand for its originator. As Kopytoff (1986: 83–87) points out, in the West we make primary distinction between “persons” and “objects.” In some sense this distinction turns on another between the original and the copy. Persons are believed to be individual, irreducible, priceless originals and “one of a kind,” if they are true to their authentic natures. Objects in a Western capitalist system are always reducible to commodity status and are infinitely reproducible, mere copies, their value equivalent to anything with a similar price tag, and they have nothing to do with personhood. Yet objects so often have the status of “gifts” rather than “commodities” in Pacific societies and hence are also images, shadows, and representatives of their givers and thus have everything to do with Pacific understandings of what and who the person is.

Time, Trade, and Ritual

Again conceding mimesis’s vast scope, this volume zooms in on three contexts of transcultural encounter in three sections. First in “Mimesis through Time” we ask how mimesis operated in such encounters in the past. Images tell histories that words cannot, yet the usefulness of a mimetic perspective for writing culture histories is largely unexplored. How does one’s perspective change, we ask, when the focus is first on images and mimesis as the language of images, albeit supplemented by written records rather than the other way around— images as merely adding illustration and decoration to a study of texts. Images, of course, call for interpretation just as words do but may add surprising dimensions to written records or contradict them, suggesting counterhistories. Mimesis is an act and maybe the origins of acting, of theater, as Aristotle suggests in the Poetics (1927), but it is also a cultural process through which people communicate, as in instances of first contact when two peoples share no common language. Francesca Merlan in Chapter 1 (“Imitation as Relationality in Early Australian Encounters”) revisits “first contact” tales of encounters between Europeans and indigenous Australians as a way of confronting and dismissing Darwin’s identification of mimicry as an inferior form of mind characteristic of “natives.” Merlan asks what the conversational one-sidedness often evident in the mimesis of early encounters (indigenes mimicking but less of the reverse) says about power relations, racist attitudes, sociality, and cultural self-presentation and indeed the actual experience of these encounters that archived words cannot. The Darwinian evolutionary interpretation of what Taussig (1993) calls “the mimetic faculty” casts mimesis as inherently abject, even simian. This view, I suggest, has long been evident in Western developmental psychology, for example in Piaget’s (1985) conceptualization of “preoperational thought.” Preoperational thinking is prelogical; in this phase children mistake visual

Introduction

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symbols for things. Piaget implies that image-based thinking is essentially irrational and literal, rather than a mimetic mode development that parallels the development of words and sequential logic. Chapter 2, my chapter (“Transitional Images and Imaginaries: Dressing in Schemas in Colonial Samoa”), investigates costume in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Samoa. There, I argue, costume evinces incorporative mimesis and this mimesis results in what I call “transitional images.” Transitional images are combinations of local and foreign images that encapsulate and prefigure transitions from one cultural-historical moment to the next, bridging the distance between “status quo culture” and an evolving cultural reality. Thus Samoans often dressed up for photos in Victorian garments combined with culturally iconic artifacts. The resulting images reveal colonial constructions of Samoans but also Samoan reactions to the Anglo-European Romantic movement, which LMS ministers, the dominant foreign presence in the nineteenth century, brought to Samoan shores. During the period of German rule in the westerly Samoas (from 1900 to World War I), Samoans also produced traditional artifacts but with foreign dyes and individual signatures that alluded to foreign “art” schemas. More generally in the German period there is evidence for a mutuality of mimesis: not merely Samoans representing foreign schemas in their persons and artifacts but also Germans dressing like Samoans and sporting Samoan artifacts. A mutuality of mimesis in a colonial regime, I suggest, attests to a degree of genuine interest on both sides of a colonial encounter, which led during the German period to a brief flowering of a hybrid culture in the westerly isles. Sarina Pearson’s “Reel to Real” (Chapter 3) begins where Chapter 2 leaves off—in 1914 Apia. Pearson zooms in on Samoan youths staging a real shootout that resembles a scene from the silent westerns that screened twice weekly in the town hall. She then journeys with early twentieth-century Hopi and Navajo who tour Australia and New Zealand with a Hollywood western, The Vanishing Race, and are ceremonially welcomed as honored guests on a Māori marae. One is tempted to call this metamimesis; Pearson’s case shows how the simulacra mimesis produces can become vehicles for intra- and intercultural conversations that stray far from the sites of their production but that become the basis of meaningful exchanges nonetheless. The Māori marae encounter, she argues, is neither emancipatory nor resistant; it is conversational. Her chapter shows that replicas, even from highly suspect sources, can give participants in a transcultural encounter a visual language through which and with which to play and even to commune. In the volume’s second part, “Selling Mimesis: From Tourist Art to Trade Stores,” we ask how cultural travel, tourist art, and even business ventures carry on intra- and intercultural conversations through mimesis. These conversations often remain opaque to the verbal mind but emerge when one considers

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how copying-plus-variation evinces a thinking and feeling through culture, both one’s own and that of others: sometimes in lucrative ways, as in Joyce Hammond’s chapter on Tahitian “destination weddings,” sometimes in marginally profitable ways, as in Sergio Jarillo de la Torre’s chapter on Trobriand “airport art,” or in profitless ways, as in Roger Lohmann’s chapter on a failing PNG trade store. The Tahitian case serves as a stellar example of what Marx called “commodity fetishism,” the ability of commodities (understood in a broad sense to include marketed “experiences”) to provide images that enchant by appearing as something more, something other, than what they are. The Trobriand case shows how the incorporation of foreign images does not necessarily create “mimic men” but can begin fantasy processes that expand the local repertoire of images and carry on enduring mimetic practices in ways that aim at global appeal. Lohmann’s PNG case demonstrates the limits both of capitalism and of copying. In Hammond’s Chapter 4, Tahitians entwine visual elements emblematic of local and colonial imaginings of ancient Tahitian life, islanders’ Christian weddings, and practices featured in the annual independence festival to create “Traditional Tahitian Weddings for Tourists.” “Entwine” is the appropriate word here because in Polynesian cultures binding others and thus incorporating them in one’s group—through leis, for example, or gifts or other enticements—is an enduring practice. The result is a copy of “indigenous” forms crafted so as to create “unforgettable moments” of personal biography and to allow visitors to cast themselves as star players in a Western idyll about romantic Polynesia. Tahitian practitioners’ long and deep history with Western visitors and their historical awareness of the invented character of “traditional weddings” reveal that here it is the globetrotting Westerners who are condemned to be “not quite” either natural or cultural, all the while that they strive to bridge a transcultural distance between life and imagination. In Chapter 5 (“Of Dragons and Mermaids”), Jarillo de la Torre shows that Trobriand Islanders, through their carving, attempt something like what Tahitians achieve through their destination weddings. By incorporating Western fantasy images into Trobriand figurines (tokwalu), they aim to seize the imaginations of moneyed tourists, much as in precolonial times participants in Malinowski’s Kula ring (1922) strove to draw wealthy Trobriand men into gift exchange. The problem is that (the imaginative power evinced in Trobriand cricket matches notwithstanding) tokwalu seem better at copying anew an enduring Trobriand fantasy of prosperity through connection with powerful Others than at captivating contemporary Western tourists. Ever since Malinowski’s early work, Trobriand Islanders have captured the anthropological imagination, but they have not animated Western fancy generally, being more off the beaten path of colonial expeditions and trade. At first glance, then, Trobrianders carving seahorses and mermaids might seem

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an abject displacement of local images in favor of foreign ones, given that there are no such creatures in Trobriand legend. Jarillo de la Torre demonstrates, however, that rather than abandoning their own culture for the images of cultural Others, these carvings result from artisans’ conscious exercises of what Stephen (1989) calls the “autonomous imagination” to expand the visual vocabulary of an ancient practice. Like ata in Samoa, tokwalu represent their originators’ intentions. Like art in Gell’s (1998) argument, potentially such copies would then have agency to act upon others in distant times and places. Yet this incorporation of foreign content in Trobriand schemas via copying does not sell well, leaving Trobriand purveyors forlorn. The PNG trade store Lohmann discusses in Chapter 6 (“Capitalism Meets Its Match”) is equally forlorn. Colonial exposure to a money economy whet Asabano villagers’ appetites for foreign goods. Lohmann tells of two young men returning to this village from jobs in an urban center where foreigners usually ran commercial enterprises. Attempting to copy the capitalism they learned there, they open a village store, only to find themselves reluctantly incorporating local schemas of exchange and gift obligation into capitalist schemas of credit, which makes any replication of Western economic practices into bankrupting caricatures of their original. Like the airplanes that became central to “cargo” ceremonies, this Asabano trade store may be a symbol and a site through which and at which to think about foreign ways but in the end seems to best capture insurmountable differences between the local and the foreign. The abandoned trade store, like an unbanishable ghost, attests to the Asabano’s inability and unwillingness to forsake the durable bonds that define their culture. For them capitalism comes down to a denial of kinship: its putative rationality cuts too deeply into local ways of thinking and feeling. Victor Turner (1977) sees ritual as a way to mediate intracultural relations such as those between classes. In the volume’s third part, “Ritual Mimesis and Its Reconfigurations” we ask how ritual or ritualized elements of mimesis reveal thoughts and feelings about transcultural relations. Contemporary rituals and ceremonies, these chapters will show, sometimes combine imported images and the schemas they convey with images and schemas from the cultural past to create effective transcultural identities. At other times, mimicking foreign schemas destructively displaces indigenous lifeways and forestalls the development of new identities. In Chapter 7, “Mimesis, Ethnopsychology, and Transculturation,” Elfriede Hermann explores how Banabans use mimesis to incorporate all their significant transcultural relations into their cultural identity. Contemporary Banabans celebrate children’s first birthdays. In the event Hermann describes, the family dresses the birthday celebrant in costumes from all those foreign groups that have left tracks in Banaban’s history and impressions on Banabans’

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imaginations. By doing so the family announces, asserts, and consecrates its status while adding emblems of other cultures to the child’s identity. As among Hammond’s Tahitians or Jarillo de la Torre’s Trobriand Islanders, the mimetic practices that today characterize Banaban first birthdays serve to create a transcultural space where people aspire to capture the schemas and accompanying socioeconomic power of the Other. Taussig (1993: 129) writes, “Mimesis registers both sameness and difference, of being like, and of being Other,” and indeed this is precisely Banabans’ explanation of the identity work they perform. For Banabans even very little people’s ability to represent cultural Others is a way of empowerment. Larry Carucci in Chapter 8 on Marshallese identity in Hawai‘i presents us with a stunning Marshallese copy of the Christmas ritual, which is, of course, a Euro-American copy of the much older “pagan” rite celebrating the winter solstice. Marshallese conjoin the Christian emblem of the decorated tree, originally about light in the darkness of northern winters, with a schema that has long been central to Marshallese ritual: dedicating individual resources to those relationships of gifting and exchange that knit together the larger community. But now individual resources are symbolized by the dollars that decorate the tree and people’s effort is at least in part to construct a group identity in a contemporary world where identity is king and culture one of the foremost means to achieve it. Like Tahitians’ destination weddings, Marshallese Christmas celebrations layer diverse historical and cultural strands in the images of a contemporary ritual. This Marshallese Christmas tree, however, is exploding and hence also an emblem and a copy in miniature of their abject modern history: their islands as a testing site for nuclear explosions. If Marshallese and Banaban ritual performances help to organize fragmentary transcultural experience holistically in images, mimesis can also be fragmenting, producing, Dalton argues in Chapter 9 (“Anthropology, Christianity, and the Colonial Impasse”), copies of divisive foreign distinctions. Christian missionaries to the Rawa of PNG were sympathetic to native custom and incorporated images from the men’s spirit house into Christian practice. This mimetic mutuality led to the spread and deep rooting of Christianity. Rawa Christians, however, also unintentionally mimicked the Euro-American religious-secular divide, which has led to increasing village disunity and the decay of traditional communitarian values. These three sections focusing on history, exchange, and rite, respectively, while useful for highlighting contexts for the study of mimesis, point to dimensions of its subject that always tend to be present. Thus making sense of mimesis seems necessarily to involve historical perspective. Tahitian destination weddings are pastiches of history and index long episodes of interaction between locals and visitors. One cannot understand Trobriand airport carving

Introduction

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except as a historical practice, its feet planted deeply in enduring patterns of gift exchange. The Asabano trade store is a failed attempt, not only at capitalism but also at a historical break. The Banabans’ first birthday celebration that Hermann recounts is a veritable history of intercultural relations. The Marshallese Christmas tree condenses a painful colonial history in visual form. Dalton can only make sense of mimetic practices among the Rawa by situating these in a history of Christianity there. Trade may be for necessities, as when European explorers bartered with Pacific Islanders for fresh water and food on interminable voyages, but often trade is about capturing imaginations, and imaginations tend to be captured through images—the basic unit of mimetic processing. All these chapters are also about how indigenes or locals or both “capture” the images of cultural Others, sometimes in the sense of grasping or understanding, sometimes in the sense of appropriating, and sometimes in the sense of enchanting. In German era Samoa, for example, an open imaginative exchange between locals and visitors seems to have led to a brief intercultural renaissance. In Pearson’s chapter, imaginative exchange goes on the road to become part of a larger commercial enterprise and a global system of image exchange, which is capped by Māori and American Indians trading Hollywood images on a New Zealand marae—a feathered Indian headdresses for Māori kilts and cloaks. Hammond sees Tahitians and Jarillo de la Torre Trobrianders as aiming at imaginatively capturing cultural Others as a basis for trade. In capitalist societies commodity fetishism is a way to infect imaginations, a fate the Asabano resist. Rituals can be considered transactions in images; there words are often present more for their incantatory and magical power than for their communicative properties. It is not insignificant that many of the objects I discuss in my chapter on Samoa were objects of ritual exchange and ceremonial gift giving. Giving the gifts that were once given in ritual on occasions of state to German governors and other officials seems an instance of ritual magic and a way to assimilate new rites to older ones. In Pearson’s chapter, where all is cinematic simulacra, we get a Māori ritual of exchange staged anew for the camera. This exchange on a marae in some ways mimics Māori ritual, just as Tahitian destination weddings borrow elements from ancient Tahitian rites to ritualize “romantic moments” for their customers. Trobriand airport art is modeled on the production of ritual objects. Banabans’ first birthday celebrations and Marshallese exploding Christmas trees forge new rituals. From diverse and shared perspectives, each of these chapter shows how Pacific cultures feed on intercultural relations and, at the same time, how these relations unsettle social life in ways that compromise and challenge shared senses of personhood and polity. Examining mimesis in Pacific transcultural

22 Jeannette Mageo

encounters thus allows us to apprehend the possible benefits and perils that accompany a play of copies within and between cultures and increases our understanding of why people experience intercultural exchanges as exhilarating and liberating and/or as antithetical to their well-being. In all this, we hope to expand awareness of how mimesis affects people everywhere, from those living in multicultural urban environments to those in remote times and locales. Jeannette Mageo has been involved in research and publication on Samoan culture, history, and psychology since 1980. In recent years she has turned to examining the collision of Samoan, European, and American cultures and psychologies in the colonial encounter through performance art, historical photos, and colonial artifacts. Her books include Theorizing Self in Samoa: Emotions, Genders and Sexualities; Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Pacific (edited volume); Power and the Self (edited volume); Dreaming and the Self: New Perspectives on Subjectivity, Identity, and Emotion (edited volume); Attachment Reconsidered: Cultural Perspectives on a Western Theory (Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Mageo, eds.); and Dreaming Culture: Meanings, Models, and Power in U.S. American Dreams. References Anderson, Benedict R. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Aristotle. 1927. The Poetics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Baptista, Marlyse. 2005. “New Directions in Pidgin and Creole Studies.” Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 33–42. Barrett, Deirdre, and Patrick McNamara. 2007. The New Science of Dreaming. 3 vols. Westport: Praeger Publishers. Bellwood, Peter, James Fox, and Darrell Tryon, eds. 1995. The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Canberra: Australian National University. Benjamin, Walter. 1955. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. 1987. “The Evolution of Ethnic Markers.” Cultural Anthropology 2(1): 65–79. Cantwell, Robert. 1993. Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” In Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass, 278–93. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dinstein, Ilan, Cibu Thomas, Marlene Behrmann, and David J. Heeger. 2008. “A Mirror up to Nature.” Current Biology 18(1): R13–R18. Drummond, George. 1842. October 26 letter to London Missionary Society Headquarters from Savai‘i. Council of World Missions Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

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Dureau, Christine. 2001. “Recounting and Remembering ‘First Contact’ on Simbo.” In Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, ed. Jeannette Mageo, 130–62. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Mask, trans. Charles L. Markmann. New York: Grove Press. Freud, Sigmund. (1900) 1964. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey. Vols. 4 and 5. London: Hogarth Press. Gallese, Vittorio, and Alvin Goldman. 1998. “Mirror Neurons and the Simulation Theory of Mind-Reading.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2(12): 493–501. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gershon, Ilana. 2012. No Family Is an Island: Cultural Expertise among Samoans in Diaspora. Expertise. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gunson, Niel. 1990a. “Tongan Historiography: Shamanic Views of Time and History.” In Tongan Culture and History: Papers from the 1. Tongan History Conference Held in Canberra 14–17 January 1987, ed. Phyllis Herda, Jennifer Terrell, and Niel Gunson, 12–20. Canberra: Australian National University. ———. 1990b. “The Tonga-Samoa Connection 1777–1845.” The Journal of Pacific History 25(2): 176–87. ———. 1997. “Great Families of Polynesia: Inter-island Links and Marriage Patterns.” The Journal of Pacific History 32(2): 139–52. Hall, Stuart. 2003. “Creolization, Diaspora, and Hybridity in the Context of Globalization.” In Créolité and creolization, ed. Okwui Enwezor, Carlos Basualdo, and Ute Meta Bauer, 185–98. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz. Harrison, Simon. 2006. Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West. New York: Berghahn Books. Henry, Fred. 1979. History of Samoa. Apia: Commercial Printers Ltd. Kaeppler, Adrienne L. 1978. “Exchange Patterns in Goods and Spouses: Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.” Mankind 11(3): 246–52. Keysers, Christian. 2009. “Mirror Neurons.” Current Biology 19(21): R971–R973. Kirch, Patrick V. 1984. The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things. Commoditization as Process.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 64–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krämer, Augustin. (1923) 1949. “Salamasina: Scenes from Ancient Samoan Culture and History.” Unpublished manuscript, translator unknown. Mesepa, American Samoa Community College Pacific Collection. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Kulick, Don. 1992. Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction: Socialization, Self, and Syncretism in a Papua New Guinean Village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1968. “The Mirror-Phase as Formative of the Function of the I.” New Left Review 51: 71–77. ———. 1977. Écrits: A Selection. Allen Sheridan, trans. New York: Norton. Mageo, Jeannette. 1998. Theorizing Self in Samoa: Emotions, Genders, and Sexualities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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———. 2002. “Myth, Cultural Identity, and Ethnopolitics: Samoa and the Tongan ‘Empire.’” Journal of Anthropological Research 58(4): 493–520. ———. 2008. “Zones of Ambiguity and Identity Politics in Samoa.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14(1): 61–78. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mauss, Marcel. (1925) 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls. New York: Norton. Meleisea, Malama, and Penelope Schoeffel Meleisea, eds. 1987. Lagaga: A Short History of Western Samoa. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. Mühlhäusler, Peter, Thomas E. Dutton, and Suzanne Romaine. 2003. Tok Pisin Texts: From the Beginning to the Present. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1992. The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2005. Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press. Palmié, Stephan. 2006. “Creolization and Its Discontents.” Annual Review of Anthropology 35(1): 433–56. Piaget, Jean. 1985. The Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plato. 1968. The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books. Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Laila Craighero. 2004. “The Mirror-Neuron System.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 27: 169–92. Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———, ed. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schoeffel, Penelope. 1979. “Daughters of Sina: A Study of Gender, Status and Power in Western Samoa.” Ph.D. dissertation. Canberra: Australian National University. Shore, Bradd. 1989. “Mana and Tapu.” In Developments in Polynesian Ethnology, ed. Alan Howard and Robert Borofsky, 137–73. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Smith, Geoff P. 2002. Growing Up with Tok Pisin: Contact, Creolization, and Change in Papua New Guinea’s National Language. London: Battlebridge. Stephen, Michele. 1989. “Self, the Sacred Other, and Autonomous Imagination.” In The Religious Imagination in New Guinea, ed. Gilbert H. Herdt and Michele Stephen, 41–66. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Stickgold, Robert, J.A. Hobson, Roar Fosse, and Magdalena Fosse. 2001. “Sleep, Learning, and Dreams: Off-Line Memory Reprocessing.” Science 294(5544): 1052–57. Stickgold, Robert, and Matthew Walker. 2004. “To Sleep, Perchance to Gain Creative Insight?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(5): 191–92. Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Thomas, Nicholas. 1992. “The Inversion of Tradition.” American Ethnologist 19(2): 213–32. Turner, George. (1861) 1984. Nineteen Years in Polynesia. Papakura: McMillan. ———. (1884) 1986. Samoa: A Hundred Years Ago and Long Before. London: Macmillan.

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Turner, Victor W. 1977. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine. Waiko, John D. 1993. A Short History of Papua New Guinea. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003. Papua New Guinea: A History of Our Times. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Williams, John. (1830–1832) 1984. The Samoan Journals of John Williams, ed. Richard M. Moyle. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Williams, Thomas. 1858. Fiji and the Fijians, vol. 1. London: Alexander Heylin. Acknowledgements I thank Josh Bell, Rupert Stasch, Stanley P. Smith, and Elfriede Hermann for reading and commenting on this chapter and all of the contributors to this volume for their comments during the four sessions out of which this volume developed. I also thank Steffen Herrmann for his work preparing this chapter for submission.

PART II Mimesis through Time

1 Imitation as Relationality in Early Australian Encounters FRANCESCA MERLAN

Early observers and commentators in Australia, as in colonial encounters elsewhere, saw imitative (mimetic) behavior deployed by indigenous people as evidence of their primitive character. The deployment of imitative behavior was asymmetrical—more often observed among indigenous people than explorers—but occurred on both sides. This chapter proposes a principled revision of the common characterization of imitation in early encounter as “primitive.” The chapter argues for an interpretation of mimetic behavior as fundamentally relational and, as such, evincing modalities of interrelationship comparable to ones widely found in human interaction. At the same time it also acknowledges as significant to its occurrence in early encounter the highly honed and developed cultural character of imitative behavior in indigenous Australia. First exemplifying the kind of imitative behavior that has so often been understood as primitive from early Australian and other encounter material, the chapter then briefly explores theorizations of mimesis in recent anthropology and argues for fuller consideration of the historical circumstances of imitation in early contact and the framings in terms of which Europeans understood it. Imitative behavior of a more affective rather than reflective kind was deployed in the unstable and uncertain contexts of early encounter, which were often characterized by great intensity and reciprocal attention on the part of outsiders and indigenes to each other’s emotional states.

Introduction

Charles Darwin ([1896] 1906: 206), along with many others, surmised that imitative ability was a particular capacity of primitives. One of the famous passages from his Journal of Researches says of the Tierra del Fuegians: They are excellent mimics: as often as we coughed or yawned or made any odd motions, they immediately imitated us. Some of the officers

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began to squint and make monkey-like faces; but one of the young Fuegians (whose face was painted black with a [?] white band over his eyes) succeeded in making far more hideous grimaces. They could repeat with perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed them, and they remembered such words for some time. Yet we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign language. Which of us, for instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence of more than three words? All savages appear to possess, to an uncommon degree, the power of mimicry. I was told, almost in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among the Caffres: the Australians, likewise, have long been notorious for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any man, so that he may be recognized. … How can this [mimetic] faculty be explained? Is it a consequence of the more practiced habits of perception and keener senses, common to all men in a savage state, as compared with those long civilized? (Darwin [1896] 1906: 206) Clearly, these incidents of imitation made impressions upon the newly arrived Europeans, and we can imagine at least one reason why: in this first encounter, given their usual reliance on language but limited capacity to use it in this situation, they focused on what they could pick out, some of it being exactly what they had said, repeated back to them in words, or imitated in gestures. The Fuegians reproduce words in an unknown language perfectly; and Australians are reputed to imitate others’ gait with verisimilitude. We also can recognize multiple phases in some of the forms of imitation described: the Fuegians see a yawn and imitate a yawn, upon which the officers add a further level of imitation of the imitators, and again a Fuegian ups the ante. The view of particular and especially newly contacted peoples as specially given to imitation has persisted in many forms over decades, and this capacity was and sometimes still is cited as a hallmark of civilizational type—in fact, of primitive character. As such, it extends well beyond first encounter moments and continues in the form of ideas on the part of outsiders of imitation as a particular talent, or capacity, of such “primitive” people as Australian Aborigines. Ability and tendency to imitate are seen as attributes or faculties of a kind of people. This sort of understanding of Aborigines as “type” recurs through time. Take, for example, the statement in the Report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines for 1910, that children in the school at Ngoorumba (near Bundarra, New South Wales) display great interest in gardening, though it “is new to them,” and make fair progress “in such subjects as give scope to their imitative faculties” (Legislative Assembly New South Wales 1911: 5). We might read such a statement today as primitivizing in its suggestion that the students

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excel in matters that involve imitation over others because this is part of their “nature.” Are we justified or not in viewing imitative capacity and tendency as characteristic of certain peoples? Was Darwin right, or in what way may he have been? Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideas about Australian Aborigines were often cast in terms of civilizational difference between “them” as primitives, “us” as civilized people. Along with this one finds views that change in Aboriginal society, as a form of hunter-gatherer society, must mean collapse due to the high degree of integration among societal institutions conceived as sketched above: if one thing gives, so do all the rest (see, e.g., Sharp 1952 for an early academic view of this kind). The idea that change entails collapse has been countered (in a usually fraught and politicized atmosphere) in recent decades by an equally mistaken position that continuity entails no change (or at least, no change that can be admitted to discussion). It is no longer generally acceptable to regard certain peoples as “primitive.” A somewhat different (and more positive) perspective has been promoted over the last four or five decades of Australian Aboriginal society as one in which the person-land relation is primary and continuous, and indigenous social practice is fundamentally to be seen in terms of kinship and relationality. In this frame the Aboriginal person and his or her capacities are no longer directly designated “primitive” (or “savage,” etc., as they often were in the nineteenth century), but (as we also saw in the turn-of-the-century Bundarra reference above) persons and capabilities are nevertheless suggested to persist through major alterations in context. An alternative approach would acknowledge that the person is a social category continually reconstituted—though partially rather than entirely—as social circumstances change. On this view one may think that particular ways of deploying imitative behavior are, at least in part, historically and socially specific. But they are certainly not entirely mutable. Imitativeness is also clearly part of a general human repertoire, as further discussed below. We are, then, as so often in social observation and theorization, best advised to recognize both the relevance of general human capacity and sociohistorical specificity, in the phenomenon at hand, mimesis or imitative behavior. This opens the way to theorize different forms of the phenomenon and at least suggest, if not fully illustrate, a spectrum of imitative behavior. In such a spectrum questions of the structure and dimensions of variation become interesting and significant. Clearly, not all instances of imitation are equally intentional (one may sometimes imitate something about a model without meaning to), nor equally accessible to reflective consciousness of the parties involved, nor equally exact replicas of some model, and so on.

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In any event, a persistent tendency of the colonial imagination, as the quotation from Darwin illustrates, was to seize upon imitation as a character of primitivity, rather than as a generally available capacity deployed in particular ways and circumstances. In this, Darwin was a man of his times. In this chapter I want to cast light upon imitation as an available and honed capacity in early encounters between outsiders and Australian indigenes and adumbrate some of the questions raised above of structure and variation.

Imitation as Human Capacity

Imitation is a focus of research in many disciplines: in experimentally oriented fields including comparative, cognitive, developmental, evolutionary, and social psychology; cognitive neuroscience; ethology; primatology; and robotics. In the more traditional human sciences, from Aristotle to Auerbach, imitation, or mimesis, has been treated as a topic in ontology, philosophy, and aesthetics. Imitation has been recognized as fundamental in interaction as a modality for the linking of phenomenal experience and shared meaning in a way that creates a platform for more conventional, systematic, and symbolic expression-content linkages and kinds of interaction (Zlatev 2005). Whatever the phylogenetic distribution of the innate bases of imitation, higher primate observational and experimental data suggest that these are “open programs” requiring substantial environmental input before there develops a significant imitative capacity. Imitative behavior is not seen exactly as a definitive rubicon between humans and other animals, but as a modality which, strictly defined, is not easily or fully attributed to even higher animals, despite the fact that some of our common imagery of imitative behavior is based on ideas of it as animallike, simian in particular. There is no contradiction, it would seem, with such experimental and primatological evidence in seeing imitative capacity as phylogenetically (though not uniquely) human but also strongly susceptible to long-term contextual (cultural) influence. Relatedly, imitation is seen by many of these experts as a possible key to understanding empathy. While there is still much debate on the extent to which babies and higher primates imitate, or merely emulate, outputs (see Whiten et al. 2009), there is good evidence for the ubiquity of unconscious imitation, or mimicry, in human interaction. This phenomenon, dubbed the “chameleon effect,” refers to the unconscious or subliminal tendency to mimic the postures, mannerisms, and facial expressions of one’s interaction partners. This level of imitation often seems to be “under the radar,” or relatively unavailable to reflection. Measures of electromyographic (EMG) activity show that people rapidly and unconsciously imitate the facial expressions of others, even when the pre-

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sentation of these faces is not consciously perceived (Chartrand and Bargh 1999). Social psychological studies show that the mere perception of another’s behavior seems to increase the likelihood of engaging in that behavior, facilitating interactions and increasing liking between interaction partners (ibid.). High scorers on empathy tests are more likely to exhibit the chameleon effect. Unconscious mimicry could lead to an empathic response by biasing the facial motor system, which has been shown to influence mood. Contributing to the picture of the role of unconscious imitation are well-attested imitation deficits associated with autism, hypothetically related to early inattention to social stimuli (including adults imitating the autistic infant) and deficits in joint attention reducing the frequency of synchronous movement (Williams et al. 2001). Together, these results suggest that there are kinds of integration among perception, socially relevant imitation even if unconscious or only liminally perceived, emotional experience, and empathy. Integration of imitation and affect is relevant to evidence of mutual attention to emotional states from the early encounter material. However, much of what is recorded as imitative behavior, as we shall see, is at a different level than any chameleon effect, more “above the radar”: in most events recorded (usually indigenous) people are described as engaging in imitation in which one person’s action—typically complex in a sensorimotor sense and sometimes experimental, that is, seemingly intended to elicit reaction—is directly imitated, and this imitation is apprehended by the imitated person as such. Imitation is to this extent shared, entailing an exchange of perspectives between those in the imitative action: model action, interlocutor imitation, model apprehension of the imitation, and the intent to imitate. The imitation remains pre- or only loosely conventional, experiential, and often evidently emotion-laden but unschematized, perhaps in some instances not completely voluntary, but in many others clearly so; cross-modal (involving sensorimotor coordination), highly iconic of the “original,” and seemingly not oriented to making any particular statement or representation, but simply analogical. More examples of early journal recordings of such imitative behavior follow below in this chapter.

Anthropologists on Imitation

The work of psychologists on imitation (e.g., Piaget and Inhelder 1969; Donald 1991; Zlatev 2005) has tended to focus on issues of bodily and cognitive capacity, the question of human distinctiveness or otherwise in capacity to imitate, implications for definition of Self and Other, spatiotemporal variations (immediacy, deferral) in imitation, its protoconventional and nonrepresentational character, its relation to consciousness, and capacity to imitate, with the rela-

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tionality it presupposes as necessary to other aspects of human communication and interaction. Anthropologists, on the other hand, have tended to focus on imitation as a modality of relating to, and defining oneself in relation to, others at relatively high levels of social categorization of relationship between Self and Other. Recent explorations of this kind have therefore, not surprisingly, tended to come from consideration of the highly asymmetrical relations of colonialism. In Mimesis and Alterity, Taussig (1993) wanted to move against a colonial politics of representation of the other as completely different and separate, seeing imitation as a useful trope for getting at processes of producing alterity, the mutually involved differentiation of Self and Other. Taussig epitomizes the “ability to mime … [as] the capacity to Other,” leaning upon the authority of Walter Benjamin’s ([1933] 1978) remark that the “mimetic faculty” is the rudiment of a former compulsion of persons to “become and behave like something else.” Taussig retains from Benjamin the insight that mimetic practice appears in every form of life but also his conviction that it is diminished in modernity. Taussig’s commitment is one that has some of its roots in romantic yearning. He aims to “reinstate in and against the myth of Enlightenment, with its universal, context-free reason, not merely the resistance of the concrete particular to abstraction, but what I deem crucial to thought that moves and moves us—namely, its sensuousness, its mimeticity” (Taussig 1993: 2). Related to this is his concern to challenge capitalist reification, to restore tactility to understand how the world may be comprehended through the body. Little islands of imitativeness, sensuousness, and tactility make themselves manifest everywhere, even if adults among us discover this by entering into what they imagine to be the child’s world (ibid.: 77). Taussig maintains faith with the Benjaminian legacy and also contributes a necessary revisionist element to primitivizing views of imitation that see it as animallike, focusing upon it instead as fundamentally social, relational, and power bearing. While Taussig follows a Benjaminian line grounded in the idea of sensuous correspondence between something and that which repeats it mimetically, Derrideans contest the kind of totalization that would allow for there to be an original to copy. They value continuing deferral and argue that anything that seeks that kind of totalization produces a radical and disruptive concealment and some form of excess. Performative repetition and inherent instability are the conditions of always partial identity. Homi Bhabha belongs to this Derridean camp in the way that he has made widely cited use of the notion of, not mimesis broadly speaking but mimicry; his focus is on the artifice of imitation, and the asymmetry that underlies it. A key textual provocation for him is Macaulay’s famous minute on education in India in which he had written of creating: “a class of interpreters between

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us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (1994: 87). In other words, a class is evoked of what V.S. Naipaul (1967) famously called “mimic men” trained in English ways. Bhabha’s point is that they are anglicized but emphatically not English, meant to be almost the same but not quite. This gives rise to what he calls the ambivalence of mimicry, which fixes the colonial subject as a “partial presence” but ensures that there is a strategic limitation that makes mimicry “at once resemblance and menace” (1994: 86). Bhabha considers mimicry “not as a harmonization but a resemblance that is not presence.” This does not seem to directly deny the original as presence in the way that some Derrideans might, but the possibility of imitation. “Sly civility” arises in the gap between colonizers and their mimicked versions, accompanied by desire on both sides: on that of the colonizer, for the colonized to become more like them; and on that of the colonized, for quite a range of things, sometimes amounting to Anglophilia and for what we might call the ideal “real,” for example, British justice, which they want to be realized as promised. Hegemony exists in the structure of colonial dependence that reinforces this gap, that is, power rules through a surrogate synthesis. Taussig takes into account the dialectical nature of imitation and its consisting in an exchange in order to count as such, while placing the strongest accent in his account on the joint and continuing production of Otherness rather than simply its prior existence as brute fact—the position he intends to counter. Bhabha as theorist of colonialism places the greatest emphasis on the impossibility of totalizations, both at the levels of “original” and “copy,” as a function of power relations. Both Taussig’s opening of the space of production of Otherness and Bhabha’s concept of power-laden partial resemblance are useful. Also useful are the impulses, briefly mentioned above, from cognitive psychology that suggest the utility of closer attention to identifying the dimensions of imitation as psychosocial action. Additionally, in my further exemplification and discussion of imitation in early Australian encounters, I find it important to take into account both the specificities of the historical situation in which they occurred and the kinds of framing that both parties to encounter applied that affected how they understood the “empirical situation.”

Prevalence of Imitative Behavior

First and foremost in the early journals of exploration for Australia are situations in which Europeans were in direct, face-to-face contact with indigenous people and remarked on those people copying what they themselves had done. This involved imitation at close quarters, with the source material the

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Map 1.1. Map of Baudin’s voyages

actions of Europeans, understood by them to be copied by their indigenous interlocutors. Nicolas Baudin, the leader of the French expedition to map the coast of Australia 1800–1803, reported that Bruny Island natives came to them in the vicinity of what he called Port Cygnet, in the southern part of present Tasmania, in the hopes of obtaining presents (or so he thought), and they received “what we gave them with great outbursts of joy.” He goes on, “They imitated easily and with gestures, and repeated clearly several French words” (1974: 345). The characteristic of being able to repeat words of foreign languages, and likewise to repeat the texts of songs accurately, was something that amazed Europeans. Like Darwin, cited above, they considered it a feat, and something they themselves could not easily do. Consider how French explorer Péron candidly compared himself with Bruny Islanders in this regard: Generally, they appeared to me to have much intelligence; they grasped my gestures with ease; from the very first instant they seemed to per-

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fectly understand their object; they willingly repeated words which I had not been able to seize at first, and often laughed when, wishing to repeat them, I made mistakes, or pronounced them badly. (cited in Roth 1899: 36) West, like many others, reported upon imitative ability as a general capacity of the natives: “They were fond of imitation and humour; they had their drolls and mountebanks; they were able to seize the peculiarities of individuals and exhibit them with considerable force” ([1852] 1966: 88). The link that is made between imitation and humor is important, relatable to the extent to which good humor, drollery, and expressions of exuberance seem to have been a regular feature of some early encounters that remained of a relatively positive kind. (Many encounters did not remain so.) On the other hand, it seems that imitation was not always a means of achieving greater contact with the other (by “becoming and behaving” like him). It could be a way of achieving some interaction but also bounding it off. Mortimer (cited in Roth 1899: 41) gives the following account of an interview in order to make the point that French discoverers often found it difficult to open communication with the natives: “Our third mate on landing, saw several of them [natives] moving off. He approached them alone and unarmed, making every sign of friendship his fancy could suggest; but though they mimicked his actions exactly, and laughed heartily, he could not prevail upon them to stay.” This episode may be linked to many diarists’ references to the great “shyness” of the natives and to difficulties in approaching them. It remains unclear here whether the natives took the intended imitation by the Europeans of their “chatter” as such. There were many circumstances in which diarists record indigenous people imitating some kind of action they had seen the Europeans perform, observing them as it were from a less directly engaged perspective; and in noting their intention, the Europeans sometimes assisted them to perform the action more effectively. This was not direct imitation by indigenous people of Europeans in interaction with themselves but based on observation by indigenous people of what Europeans did, or sometimes what Europeans explicitly showed them. For instance, La Billardière observed several forms of imitation and collaboration: A native, to whom we had just given a hatchet, displayed great dexterity at striking several times following in the same place, thus attempting to imitate one of our sailors who had cut down a tree. We showed him that he must strike in different places, so as to cut a notch, which he did immediately, and was transported with joy when he saw the tree was felled by his strokes. They were astonished at the quickness

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with which we sawed the trunk in two; and we made them a present of some hand-saws, which they used with great readiness, as soon as we had shown them the way. These savages were much surprised at seeing us kindle the spongy bark of the Eucalyptus resinifera in the focus of a burning-glass. He, who appeared the most intelligent among them, was desirous of trying the effects himself, threw the converging rays of the sun upon his thigh by its means; but the pain he felt took from him all inclination to repeat the experiment. (cited in Roth 1899: 29) In short order, means of using a metal hatchet, a handsaw, and a glass were imitated. This was imitative instruction of a purposeful kind. On another occasion, a person referred to as a “chief ” had observed a woman using a comb that had been given to her. He wanted to use it also but could not get it through his tangled hair. He was assisted, with difficulty: I … was soon obliged to hold the hair back with the one hand, and pull the comb with the other. From this he did not shrink, but encouraged me in my work, saying frequently, “Narra coopa—very good.” And when the work was accomplished he looked at himself in a glass, with no small degree of pleasure. He was a man of an intelligent mind, who made rapid advances in civilization, and was very helpful in the preservation of good order in the Settlement. (cited in Roth 1899: 44) What was reproduced in these kinds of imitation reported in the encounter literature? The imitated content seems generally to have been derived from the bodily actions of Europeans and frequently their words. We learn that indigenous people appreciated capacities of Europeans to imitate: members of the Beagle’s crew in Tierra del Fuego were apparently not averse to engaging in antics and imitative behavior, we are told; although imitative of what and whether it was of the indigenes, we do not learn: “[The Fuegians] were highly pleased by the antics of a man belonging to the boat’s crew, who danced well and was a good mimic” (Keynes 1979: 96). For their part, the more insightful European observers, such as Darwin, instinctively treated reproduced language in these encounters as something that is not first and foremost propositional, but something uttered and taken up, a form of bridge-building engagement. Similar forms of bridge building, the intent to produce shared feeling, can be seen in Darwin’s observation that Fuegians expressed “satisfaction or good will by rubbing or patting their own, and then our bodies” (Keynes 1979: 96). Darwin implies that they are, in effect, suggesting an affective meaning content: satisfaction is shown by their rubbing their stomachs. They then do this to the outsiders, in the absence of the latter imitating the original gesture.

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The intent seems clear: to establish a mutuality of experience and feeling, by rubbing and patting, to be understood (so Darwin suggests) as an icon of good feeling and satisfaction. But the fact that this act of mutuality is carried out one-sidedly seems an important issue of mimesis, possibly related to incipient differences in power or the capacity to influence others: who embodies the content of a potentially imitable act, and is the imitation realized? As one begins to consider the described instances of imitation, indeterminacies become noticeable and also seem to have been noted by the Europeans themselves, for example, when imitation seems to have turned into parody. These involve situations of some complexity. One from Péron’s journals in Tasmania can serve as an example. On one early occasion the French at Bruny Island encountered a group of women, one of whom stepped forward and made signs to the French to sit and lay down their guns, the sight of which frightened them, says Péron ([1824] 2006: 198).1 After they sat, the women were all vivacity, talking, laughing, gesticulating, twisting and turning, when M. Bellefin began to sing, accompanying himself with very lively, very animated movements. The women were immediately quiet, watching M. Bellefin’s gestures as closely as they appeared to listen to his songs. At the end of each verse, some applauded with shouts, others burst out laughing, while the young girls (undoubtedly more timid) remained silent, showing nevertheless, by their motions and facial expressions, their surprise and satisfaction. (Péron [1824] 2006: 199) After M. Bellefin finished, the most confident of the women began to mimic his gestures and tone of voice in an extremely original and very droll manner, which greatly amused her friends. Then she, herself, started to sing in so rapid a fashion, that it would have been hard to relate such music to the ordinary principles of ours. (Péron [1824] 2006: 199–200) Here the woman’s action is clearly recognized as imitative of what the Frenchman did, but Péron seems to imply that she does it as much or more for her companions’ amusement as to amuse, or engender any sort of commonality with, the French. We may interpret this as a targeted mimicking for the benefit of the other women as much as anything. Here a participant (Bellefin) is the apparent focus of comment, rather than (only) of intended communicative engagement. Where the person copied is an interlocutor like Bellefin rather than a nonparticipant in the interaction, and copying is addressed to another intended audience, imitation becomes a form of mockery and ironic comment, rather than a bridge between those seemingly in direct interaction. The effect is to make an ostensible participant

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an outsider and to make those who receive the message the actual nearer (“in the know”) interlocutors. This episode seems to suggest a certain confidence on the woman’s part in drawing the distinction she did between insiders and the French outsiders. In the case of the singing Bruny Island woman, she was mimicking M. Bellefin, singing as he had sung and indeed in front of him but in such a way as to make clear that she was playing upon his singing for the benefit of the other women, rather than simply trying to engage with him (though of course she remained highly aware of his presence and that of the other Frenchmen). Indeed, it may be that Bellefin’s attempt to engage the attention of the indigenous women had misfired or gone slightly astray, for European explorers and encounterers gave considerable thought to how they might engage the “natives,” whether by offering them various kinds of material items or by other forms of interaction. Often enough, imitations by indigenous people were of bodily actions that Europeans themselves deliberately deployed as part of a certain received, and continually evolving, body of understanding that these were the things that would captivate native audiences and serve as a way of evaluating their dispositions, a matter to which the visitors, as we shall see, paid considerable attention. This might be termed one kind of “framing” of imitative action, clearly arising from European preconceptions. By framings are meant here ideas brought to interaction that strongly affect how they are understood, sometimes despite evidence that might be contrary to such understandings. And clearly, in this vein, the French at Bruny Island believed that singing to the natives—and as I also discuss elsewhere, dancing with them (Merlan in press )— were ways of engaging with them as naturally as possible. At this point, though, the woman does build a bridge more directly and materially with the French: taking some pieces of charcoal from a reed bag, she crushed them in her hand and prepared to apply a coat of this dark paint to my face. I lent myself willingly to this well-meant whim. M. Heirisson was equally obliging and was given a similar mask. We then appeared to be a great object of admiration for these women: they seemed to look at us with gentle satisfaction and to congratulate us upon the fresh charms that we had just acquired. Thus, therefore, that European whiteness, of which our race is so proud, is nothing more than an actual deficiency, a kind of deformity that must, in these distant regions, yield to the colour of charcoal and to the dark red of ochre or clay. (Péron [1824] 2006: 200) On this occasion, then, having imitated the song in a way that seemed more directed toward her companions—though certainly provoked by and also directed at the French—the woman explicitly created a ground of common-

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ality between herself and the Frenchman by acting on him, almost certainly with the general aim of making his skin more like hers. This was seemingly her intention, and Péron clearly took this, in any event, as an effort to cancel his unusual whiteness. It is more typical in these journals to read of the natives imitating the Europeans; but here, we read of the natives taking the initiative to make the Europeans more like themselves, without the French having authored the exchange but with their amused acquiescence. Further to the episode involving charcoal, above, it is notable that difference of skin color was an object of wonder for indigenous people all over the Australian continent, and they often sought to investigate it (along with some other properties of the visitors, such as sex; Merlan in press ). Indigenous people often at first apparently entertained the question whether the light skin color of the Europeans was permanent or temporary, deep or superficial, and (as in the woman’s gesture), what might arise interactionally from changing that color.

What Is Mimesis in These Encounters?

Imitation such as is illustrated in some examples above typically involves a visible and/or audible, if small-scale and fleeting, behavioral icon of an act that thereby becomes shared. This production seems particularly significant in situations in which the parties have little in common relative to the commonalities they share with much more familiar others. The episodes reported also yield some sense of the complexity and embeddedness of imitation in larger flows of interaction and of its place in an emotional and affective economy in circumstances characterized by uncertainty, lability, volatility, and apparent continuous attention on the part of both outsiders and indigenes to each other’s emotional states. The latter are of course reported and understood as it were “through a glass darkly” and very much slanted for the outsiders (as their reporting shows) toward framing preconceptions that they held (such as that indigenous people were coming to get “presents,” that they would react in particular ways, want particular things, and so on). Noticeable in the early journals is how unstable in terms of action and emotion is the boundary between engaging and not, between engagements the journalists represented as peaceable and more volatile ones. We form a picture of a moving border zone of mutual awareness between parties in which one form of action was often rapidly transformed into another and in many of which violence was either clearly feared or actually ensued. This volatility does not only appear at earliest contact. One might say that it can continue to appear, or reappear, to the extent that encounter is not stabilized, or becomes destabilized, even after a period of time. It is a zone in which

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action on the part of the natives may relate but is not subordinated to outsiders’ guidelines or framing ideas for the organization of interaction. These guidelines include elements of the outsiders’ evaluative and moral framework and notions based on their experience, both that which they already had and that which they continued to accumulate, of the range of native behavior: what “works,” what is risky, how to entice and reward, and how to guard against unwelcome developments. When I say one must include outsiders’ evaluative notions, it is evident that they were constantly bringing to bear their ideas of temperament, intelligence, and moral qualities such as generosity, treachery, kindness, and others to their assessment of indigenous action. It is important to recognize the continuing possibilities of volatility in the tenor of relationship, rather than allow it to seem that the taking up of engagement is easily managed or necessarily progressive. Though uncertainty can be discerned often enough in early moments of encounter, it can recur after periods in which natives and outsiders have had a certain amount, sometimes even a lot, to do with each other. It minimally involves a lack of regularization of interaction, lack of shared affect and understanding of intentions between parties, and often appears as transitions in which initially compliant-seeming or unremarkable behavior on the part of the natives turns into hostility. In contrast with observations of such apparently negative emotional states, ranging from indifference to whatever the visitors had to offer materially, to timidity, mistrust, alarm, and rage, there are equally many observations by journalists of great “joy” and “pleasure” that the natives are understood to manifest, often specifically at the presence or appearance of the visitors and, supposedly, the things they have to offer. Throughout the early journals there are so many mentions of these conditions that one can only conclude that the visitors were hypersensitive to anything that might warrant such emotional categorization, for example: As soon as the boat came, we invited some of them to go on board. After taking a long while to decide about it, three of them consented to get into the boat; but they got out again in great haste as we prepared to push off from the shore. We then saw them walk quietly along by the sea, looking towards us from time to time, and uttering cries of joy. The next day we returned in a large party. Some of the natives soon came to meet us, expressing by their cries the pleasure they felt at seeing us again. A lively joy was depicted on all their features when they saw us drawing near. (Péron, cited in Roth 1899: 28) What were the, no doubt complex, emotions these people were experiencing and expressing? We shall never know. But it is noteworthy in the same text that a mother in the group had to cover her infant’s eyes in order to calm him. Also,

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some of the natives in this group were concerned to prevent the French from moving in certain directions, so much so that they were “entreated” not to go there, and a woman who perceived them moving that way uttered “horrible cries, to give notice to the other savages.” Can this have been unalloyed joy? Yet it was so interpreted. The selective examination above, I submit, supports the view that imitative behaviors of early encounter were thoroughly relational, and not indicators of primitive character. They were cross-modal externalizations (i.e., involving exchanges in modalities of sight, sound, tactility) generally oriented to the establishment of a communicative bridge of some sort between those encountering each other. They were temporally fairly fleeting, unstable, and also evidently frequently asymmetrical. Asymmetry in imitative relationships is a dimension that figures both in Taussig and Bhabha and warrants further comment here. We must first consider that reports we have of these imitative exchanges are of course rather one-sided. They suggest that indigenous people imitated outsiders more than the reverse (although instances are reported of Europeans engaging in imitative behavior, often a response to what they clearly took as imitative on the part of indigenous people). Such imitation doubtless drew upon capacities strongly developed culturally among Australian indigenous people—in hunting, dancing, and everyday sensibilities—and capabilities developed in cultural forms of observation, body movement, and interaction (cf. Wild 1977),2 but not only that. The extent to which we find imitation reported in explorers’ and other early journals must be placed in the context of the instability, volatility, and uncertainty in the relations between the parties. In that world historic context, there was—as the journals show (Merlan in press)—great attentiveness on the part of outsiders and indigenes to each other’s emotional states. In such circumstances, imitation is one way of recognizing, as well as drawing out and probing, the condition of the other as well as signaling identification with him. That the economy of mimetic behavior was typically unbalanced, in that the Europeans were more imitated than imitating, is not surprising. It may be partly explained in terms of the wider framing in which imitative behavior occurred. Europeans came equipped with prior (framing) ideas about what savages were like and thus were less oriented toward building bridges to them than were indigenous people toward them; and Europeans were certainly inclined to see their interaction with indigenous people in channeled, experimental, purposeful, and often quite overly instrumental terms. These terms had often been thought out and prepared in advance. To engage in some of the kinds of imitation we see described in various colonial journals—copying of the other, as understood by the parties—was not to use signs to convey some kind of question or message formulated out-

44 Francesca Merlan

side the encounter. Many of these acts of imitation were not conventional, nor were they tokens of regular expression-content relationships, rather they focused upon the immediate encounter itself, making it interactive and at least fleetingly collaborative by doing what the other does and having the effect of creating and prolonging a moment, temporarily deferring questions of what was to come next. To my mind, this suggests a view of mimesis in early encounter not so much as one of those interacting displaying schemata to each other (per Mageo’s “mimetic incorporation”) but as variant ways of relating to the unknown Other by becoming an experiential analogue of him, at least temporarily, at the same time persisting in observation of one’s interaction with him as participant in it. I suggest that in many of these encounter situations imitation was a readily available modality of establishing engagement, some commonality of an immediate sort. It created a bridge between oneself and another in the “copying,” embodying the other in a way that was noticed, and made “imitation” to the extent that it was noticed, and thus a means of relating Self and Other, among other things, in the mutual realization of the imitative behavior itself. By miming and reproducing what the other does, one can literally feel oneself to be building a collaborative activity. Thus, to comment on Taussig’s formulation, this is a production of the Self-Other dialectic itself, with potentials for both identification and differentiation with and from others. It also seems crucial that imitative behavior be recognized as such by one’s interlocutor. Indeed, given the extent of attention paid to the phenomenon in European explorers’ journals, it seems that indigenous people’s acts were regularly recognized and particularly noticed as imitative. And in such moments of recognition, some of the questions about the instability and indeterminacy of relationship, which were so salient in early encounters (but not only then), were, at least temporarily, deferred. Europeans came largely prepared to see and emphasize radical cultural, indeed civilizational difference. Sometimes, they succeeded in doing otherwise and recognized the quickness, the observational acuity, the mirth, and other characteristics of the people they were meeting. Mageo (Introduction, this volume) develops a notion of “mimetic emblemization” similar to “cultural objectification” and focuses on the dimension of people copying elements of their own culture to emblemize their identity and render it distinctive. Other ethnographers have focused on copying between indigenous groups, and those and outsiders, and the integration of dimensions of what are supposed to be others’ imagining of oneself into self-representation (Caiuby Novaes 1993). There is no real indication in this early Australian contact material of self-objectification as part of the imitative interaction or of the integrative imitation into mimetic behavior of a “mirrored” dimension of the

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self (how one imagines oneself being seen by the other) as an intended element of self-representation as discussed by Caiuby Novaes.3 But what did occur provides insight into asymmetrical performance of imitation as an aspect of unfolding power relations, in specific contexts in which those in encounter had little experience of each other, came to it from quite different points of view, in moments that were characterized, as the discussion has shown, by lability and instability as well as attentiveness of outsiders and locals to each other’s emotional states, of joy, anger, and so on. At the same time, we have seen in a number of examples indigenous people’s turning imitative action initiated with Europeans as their focus toward their own audience, often for comic effect, as in the case of the woman who sang for/in relation to Bellefin. Attending to others requires complementarity—a relation “between” unfolding in time and space—that can exist as a matter of degree and quality and thus imply questions of power and influence. What sometimes occurred in the first instance was that indigenous people acted the other, creating a recognized ground of commonality. The indigenous people seem to have been more prepared to do this and culturally grounded in imitative terms than the outsiders. Yet while we need to recognize imitative capacity as cultivated culturally in indigenous practices, we resist its being taken as evidence of fundamental difference of human civilizational kinds, a property of a kind of society or kind of person. Imitation as in these examples is much better understood as grounded in honed cultural capabilities, relational, and inevitably transitional between modes of action. To refute the interpretation of early imitative behavior as evidence of primitivity is perhaps not difficult to do, as few admit nowadays to ideas of others as “primitives.” We nevertheless have to remember how bodily imitation such as we have examined in this chapter was interpreted by Darwin and his contemporaries in ways that were common over much of the long period of colonial expansion. And we must remember that this kind of interpretation continues, in altered ways, to this day—more as projections of persisting Otherness, now commonly with at least partly favorable valence. Even the Benjaminian orientation of Taussig toward an understanding of the ways in which outsiders and locals become mutually entangled assumes an original degree of Otherness in terms of which imitation is linked with naturalistic powers of copying, rather than considering imitative behavior, perhaps especially in early encounter, as a basic and (in some cases, also) a culturally available and highly developed framework for sociability. There are many degrees of imitativeness between the immediacy of some of the above encounters and others that may be seen as more complex. The material considered here has focused on early encounter, scenes that have a face-to-face dimension; the imitations are bodily ones that participants can

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immediately grasp. But even such immediate evocations of Otherness in the Self exemplify and further point toward the possibilities for mockery, burlesque, and evaluative comment that have been the subject of some other work (e.g., Sweet 1989; Redmond 2008). Indigenous Australians continued to deploy imitation, after typically unequal relations between themselves and settlers had stabilized in various parts of the continent. But often, imitative behavior was now practiced among and before themselves, as targeted mimicry concerning the white man and his ways—imitation with attitude and typically with power imbalances firmly in place. Redmond (2008) describes dances in the North Kimberley that mimic European styles and persons who have come to be European stereotypes: Captain Cook and General MacArthur. The artfulness is imitative, but the intent is to mock and joke and poke fun at the movements, clothes, and ways of these archetypal Europeans—in the manner of the woman who poked fun concerning M. Bellefin. The specific aim is not to create a bridge between self and the imitated other in direct interaction but to enable others, namely an audience of one’s fellows, to be amused by their recognition of the stereotypy and, in the material Redmond describes, the humorously alien and regimented quality of European behavior. This, then, is not mimesis of the first order, but mimicry in the sense of ironic copying and mocking, a second order that can easily be built on the bodily techniques of imitation and explicitly depends for its effects on shared recognition between copier and audience (at least, if not the copied model) of the imitation as such and of the shared sense of truth of what it ironizes. This second order, mimicry or imitation aimed at shared awareness of being imitative, is probably what British sailors were enacting long before, when, as Darwin reports, the sailors screwed up their faces “monkeylike” in response to the Fuegians who were coughing and yawning after the sailors did so. A more complete view of imitation would further examine its more considered, rationalized, and even programmed forms in terms of which contexts of colonial governance have been interpreted (see, e.g., Roque 2015; Merlan 1998). I re-evoke here the suggestion made above that a more appropriate understanding of imitative behavior as both generally human and specific, culturally developed capacity, the interaction between these levels and its changing character, needs to be couched in a wider view that acknowledges the person as a social category continually reconstituted—though partially rather than entirely—as social circumstances change. The persistence of the conventional interpretation of imitative behavior as primitive is part of the historical imbalance shaped by preconceptions, lived in the encounters themselves, and surviving them in some of the ways that these encounters have been subsequently understood.

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Francesca Merlan is professor of anthropology at the Australian National University. She has long been interested in encounter as an ongoing historical process, especially with respect to indigenous-nonindigenous relationships in Australia. While her chapter in this volume treats historical material, she continues contemporary field research and writing on encounter and transformation in Northern Australia. Notes 1. And so it might have: Baudin reports having aimed at people, and he says he only had to shift his gun to see how much people feared it (Baudin 1974: 323). We may guess they had experience of its use. 2. Wild (1977) describes differences between “mimetic” and “non-mimetic” dancing of the Warlpiri (Walbiri) of Central Australia, illustrating the gendered cultural elaboration of this difference between that which is highly imitative and that which is not. Mimetic dancing (walparini) is imitative of ancestral (usually animal) creator figures and is characteristically performed by men. Nonmimetic dancing (wintimi, mirli-mirli) involves performance of “generalized traveling” on the part of the ancestors, exhibiting little mimetic specificity, and is performed by women. On occasions (e.g., in the Fire Ceremony) men engage in nonmimetic dancing—that is, when they have been singed, put through forms of what might be seen as gender “despecification.” In many ritual moments, men “are” women symbolically. In these dance forms, close imitation is culturally elaborated and marked, the nonmimetic more general and unmarked. 3. Hence Caiuby Novaes’s title, Jogo de Espelhos (Play of Mirrors) as her leading trope in interpretation of intratribal relations and relations between Bororo and Salesian missionaries in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

References Baudin, Nicolas. (1801–1803) 1974. The Journal of Post Captain Nicolas Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the Corvettes Géographe and Naturaliste; Assigned by Order of the Government to a Voyage of Discovery, trans. Christine Cornell. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia. Benjamin, Walter. (1933) 1978. “On the Mimetic Faculty.” In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Bibliographic Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 333–336. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Caiuby Novaes, Sylvia. 1993. Jogo de Espelhos: Imagens da Representação de Si através dos Outros. São Paulo: Edusp. Chartrand, Tanya L., and John A. Bargh. 1999. “The Chameleon Effect: The PerceptionBehavior Link and Social Interaction.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76(6): 893–910. Darwin, Charles. (1896) 1906. The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle Round the World. New York: Appleton.

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Donald, Merlin. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Keynes, Richard D., ed. 1979. The Beagle Record: Selections from the Original Pictorial Records and Written Accounts of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. New York: Cambridge University Press. Legislative Assembly New South Wales. 1911. Aborigines. Report of Board for the Protection of, for 1910. Retrieved 1 July 2016 from the Digitised Collection “To Remove and Protect” of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) at http://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remo ve/23692.pdf. Merlan, Francesca. 1998. Caging the Rainbow: Places, Politics, and Aborigines in a North Australian Town. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. ———. In press. “Dynamics of Difference in Australia: Indigenous Past and Present in a Settler Country.” University of Pennsylvania. Naipaul, Vidiadhar Surajprasad 1967. The Mimic Men. London: Deutsch. Péron, François. (1824) 2006. Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, trans. Christine Cornell. Adelaide: Friends of the State Library of South Australia. Piaget, Jean, and Bärbel Inhelder. 1969. The Psychology of the Child. New York: Basic Books. Redmond, Anthony. 2008. “Captain Cook Meets General Macarthur in the Northern Kimberley: Humour and Ritual in an Indigenous Australian Life-World.” Anthropological Forum 18(3): 255–70. Roque, Ricardo. 2015. “Mimetic Governmentality and the Administration of Colonial Justice in East Timor, ca. 1860–1910.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(1): 67–97. Roth, Henry L. 1899. The Aborigines of Tasmania. Halifax: King and Sons. Sharp, Lauriston. 1952. “Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians.” Human Organization 11(2): 17–22. Sweet, Jill D. 1989. “Burlesquing ‘The Other’ in Pueblo Performance.” Annals of Tourism Research 16(1): 62–75. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. West, John. (1852) 1966. The History of Tasmania. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia. Whiten, Andrew, Nicola McGuigan, Sarah Marshall-Pescini, and Lydia M. Hopper. 2009. “Emulation, Imitation, Over-Imitation and the Scope of Culture for Child and Chimpanzee.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 364(1528): 2417–28. Wild, Stephen A. 1977. “Men as Women: Female Dance Symbolism in Walbiri Men’s Rituals.” Dance Research Journal 10(1): 14–22. Williams, Justin H., Andrew Whiten, Thomas Suddendorf, and David Perrett. 2001. “Imitation, Mirror Neurons and Autism.” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 25(4): 287–95. Zlatev, Jordan. 2005. “What’s in a Schema? Bodily Mimesis and the Grounding of Language.” In From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics, ed. Beate Hampe, 313–42. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

2 Transitional Images and Imaginaries Dressing in Schemas in Colonial Samoa JEANNETTE MAGEO

Costume—broadly construed to include attire and dressing accoutrements— serves in this chapter as an organizing figure for tracing mimesis in artifact and photographic collections from late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Samoa. In photographs of this period, Samoans often dress in culturally iconic artifacts, yet these items incorporate Victorian images and ideas, which London Missionary Society (LMS) ministers brought to Samoan shores. Arriving circa 1830, the LMS was the dominant foreign influence in Samoa through much of the nineteenth century. Toward the end of the century German influence rose, becoming German government in the westerly islands from 1900 and extending until World War I, when New Zealand bloodlessly captured these islands for the British crown. Some historical photographs and artifacts from this period evince a mutuality of mimesis: not merely Samoans representing foreign schemas in their persons but also Germans dressing like Samoans. This mutuality, I argue in the second part of this chapter, attests to a degree of genuine interest on both sides of this colonial encounter, which led to a period of aesthetic and social experimentation and innovation.

Mimesis and Transitional Images

I pursue these arguments by introducing cultural schemas theory to Winnicott’s (1951) ideas of “transitional realms” and “transitional objects.” Winnicott found transitional realms and transitional objects in children’s play. Emerging from the protection of infancy to confront a frequently frustrating world, in transitional realms children re-create disconcerting aspects of that world in their own terms much like Freud’s eighteen-month-old grandson did in the famous fort-da game ([1920] 1964). When his mother went out, this boy would play with a wooden reel, a piece of string tied around it, saying “gone” as he threw it away and “here” when he reeled it back. In fort-da, the

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transitional realm is the game, an imaginal space the boy creates to play out and thus to think and feel through a challenging social reality: the fact of his mother’s absence. The transitional object is the reel: the boy’s artifact, one that distills and symbolizes a moment of transition between his private inner world and his real-world circumstances. The power of Freud’s story is that it catches that moment. This boy copies his mother’s comings and goings but with a difference: he is in control of them. He uses one of those image copies-plus-variations that I argued in the Introduction represent the modus operandi of mimesis. Transitional realms, I venture, are spaces for dealing with reality by replicating it, altered by the resources of memory and by desire. There, children create and inhabit fictive copies of daily life and work through their reactions to it. This boy, I suggest, is also thinking-feeling about the mother-child relationship and his reel instantiates a transition between Self and (m)Other. The arc of the bounding reel is a wished for bridge to mother, and the act of making it, at the same time, is a concession to the reality that she is a separate being who acts independently of him. In making this inner accommodation the boy does indeed transit from an inner world of desire to a social world of persons. But this is of course the mother-child relationship in Euro-American cultures in which mother is the primary caretaker—a childcare schema that is not universal (Quinn and Mageo 2013). In Samoa, for example, little ones are cared for by a multitude of others and their bond to their biological mother is muted (Mageo 1998, 2011b, 2013). The Euro-American way of raising children is to forge a strong intersubjective bond with one person, mother, who is then intermittently absent, thereby acquainting the child with the separateness of his person (Mageo 2013). “Here-gone” is a wonderfully economical rendering of this childcare schema. This rendering uses words but also acts out images. Definitions of cultural schemas vary, but here I take schemas to be shared ideas about a domain of experience and for acting in it. In cognitive anthropology, researchers generally conceive of cultural schemas as stable mental structures found in discourses and practices (D’Andrade and Strauss 1992; Strauss and Quinn 1997: 5; Holland et al. 1998; Mageo 1998, 2002; Quinn 2005). What I am suggesting here and have argued elsewhere (2011a, 2013) is that just as we can infer cultural schemas from discourse and practices, so also we can infer them from images, as in the fort-da example. Further, in my view schemas are probably always in some degree of historical transformation and during colonial periods often in rapid, abrupt, traumatic transformation. Let us take the idea of visually rendered schemas back to Winnicott and to play. Winnicott sees transitional objects as helping children transit from their subjective needs to objective reality. In society, however, play is not the solitary game of an isolated child (like Freud’s grandson) but a collective and transcul-

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tural activity in which two or more parties to an interchange, as I argued in the Introduction, may “try on” one another’s visually rendered cultural schemas. Yet, each party’s cultural schemas also remain. The results, then, are hybrids that I call “transitional images” because like transitional objects they lie betwixt and between what people experience as Self and what they experience as Other. Also like transitional objects, transitional images represent a potential bridge, albeit between cultures and between moments in history. Transitional images can be made in two ways. (1) People copy foreign schemas but with image elements that allude to their own enduring schemas. Samoan combs, we will see, crowned the Victorian hairstyles that nineteenthcentury missionaries thought proper—styles that, I will show, visually represented Victorian feminine sex and gender schemas. In the way Samoans wore them, however, combs also alluded to the traditional ceremonial headdress and with it to Samoan sex and gender schemas. (2) Or people combine images that signify their enduring schemas with image elements that refer to a foreign schema. Tapa, siapo in Samoan, was a precolonial item of wear and of ceremonial presentation; it was an instantiation of what I call a “decorating” schema, to be explained shortly. During the German era, however, siapo began to incorporate image elements such as foreign dyes and individual signatures that suggested a European folk art schema. Mainly what I shall be discussing in this chapter is Samoans’ incorporations of European schemas, but I also suspect European schemas were reworked in Samoa. There is not space here to fully present the latter argument, but photographs I present later in the chapter clearly suggest it. Transitional images occupy what White, in his seminal study of the Indians of the Great Lakes region, calls “the middle ground”: a space where parties to a transcultural relation use the cultural forms of the Other “for their own purposes and according to their own understanding” (1991: 55). Transitional images bridge the distance between what we might call “status quo culture” and an evolving cultural reality. Folded into these images, then, are those very histories that many scholars have referred to as “between the lines.” Many colonial artifacts and photographs from such times/places are, in effect, “stills” of these histories in the sense that they capture a moment that condenses an ongoing intercultural process. As in Gell’s (1998) idea of objects in art, particularly powerful transitional images may also be actors in the sense that they strongly affect the feelings and thoughts of those who circulate them. People subliminally understand how such images combine foreign and local schemas and learn from them just as they might walk away from a work of art with new ideas and feelings. Wilde ([1889] 1972) best captures this image-based way of learning. He argues that, to people who see a Renoir for example, the world comes to appear like an Impressionist painting and inspires accordant feelings.

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Last, this chapter asks: What is the relation between mimesis, transitional images, and times of innovation like the German era in Samoa? Some transcultural encounters provide more scope to “converse” about new schemas through a back and forth play of images than others. Periods of novel intercultural contact, when attendant politics do not bear too oppressively on most people, I argued in the Introduction, are such times. Here I argue that the German era was such a period in Samoa. Thus we will see that in the German era, transitional images were evident in photographs of Samoans and of Germans too. This example further suggests that such periods are heralded by mimetic incorporations on both sides of a transcultural relation. Then transitional images irrupt into what we might call “cultural center stage” and people enter what I call “transitional imaginaries”: collaborative mental spaces created by indigenous and foreign residents of a common time and locale. In transitional imaginaries, as in allegory, people tend to regard cultural Others as embodying and playing out, “impersonating” in a word, their schemas, which is not to say they are conscious of doing so when “conscious” means this regard appears as words in the mind. Thus for Samoans in the colonial encounter, Europeans impersonated the liberty to express and act for oneself rather than representing one’s group. For Europeans, on the other hand, Samoans impersonated freedom from nineteenth-century European proprieties. In turn, Samoans “tried on” these new liberties, while Germans entertained noble savage fantasies in their own persons. In transitional imaginaries, then, there is interactive play with foreign schemas, and with this play comes heightened creativity because people then have a sense that there are various possible cultural worlds. Of course, the German era in the westerly isles was not free of intercultural conflict (Meleisea 1987: 46–101; Hempenstall 1997, 2014; Hempenstall and Mochida 2005: 51–86). But if colonial politics constituted a darker frame, within this frame people found a space for experimentation in the arts and in social relations—not only German colonists and Samoans but also people from other locales who made their homes there, for Samoa was then a captivating global crossroads and some tarried rather than passing through. I begin with Samoans and their incorporations of visually represented Victorian schemas before the German period, moving toward this period and the mutuality of mimesis evident in some German photographs.

Comb Copies

Samoan combs are extremely common in British and German collections. Besides being easy to carry in a suitcase, combs are so common in artifact collections probably because in the colonial encounter, combs decorating girls’

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hair became emblems of indigenous culture. Pre-Christian girls’ combs were ornamental rather than functional (G. Turner [1861] 1984: 113): they wore their hair in the tutagita style (gita for short), which consisted of a tuft or two, the rest of the head being shaved. Visually, I will show, combs incorporated colonial schemas, thereby reconfiguring enduring Samoan schemas. To understand this reconfiguration,

Figure 2.1. Girl wearing the tutagita style. The tuft is bleached. Probably by John Davis, Otto Finsch Collection. Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (17.P.5:40).

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first let us examine the schemas that gita images symbolized. One might see the gita as a partial replication of the headdress (tuiga) that high chiefs (ali‘i), chiefs’ sons (mānaia), and the village virgin (tāupōu) wore on ceremonial occasions (Figure 2.2). Its signature feature was tufts of reddish or even blonde hair, colors believed to be characteristic of highborn people, a visual mark of their right to rule—that is, to title and its entitlements: discretion over land and other resources. Within the family, the village, and among villages, Samoan society was hierarchical. This hierarchy was rooted in a ranking of titles that reflected social consensus about genealogy. Visually the tuiga represented this “genealogy as the right to rule” schema. Thus when a commoner’s baby was born with light hair, gossips would attribute it to chiefly philandering. Light hair, however, was broadly copied: Samoans generally bleached their hair with lime to shades from brown to red to white as in Figure 2.1—a treatment that also remedied, at least temporarily, ubiquitous head lice. In contrast to brown skins, this was a dramatic effect commented on by early visitors (see, for example, Churchward 1887: 399–401). The tuiga also represented a practical schema for genealogical politicking pursued by all chiefly people but best impersonated by the tāupōu. While the tāupōu was chosen for her exalted genealogy, she was also part of a strategy for making genealogy. In pre-Christian Samoa, each village sponsored a tāupōu, caring for her and chaperoning her to maintain her virginity in order to mate her with a high title. “Mate” may seem a strange word here, but in preChristian Samoa there was no word for marriage (Schultz 1911: 22). The tāupōu and the titled male who fathered her child remained together only until she became pregnant (W. Pritchard 1866: 134–35; Schultz 1911: 22– 25; Stuebel 1976: 126–30). Rather than ritualizing the pair bond as Westerners do in marriage, in exalted couplings Samoans ritualized the girl’s defloration and the birth of a first child. The tāupōu was virginal so her child would have an unquestionable genealogy, qualifying a possible son for his genitor’s title after his death. Bringing that title back to the village would increase its status. Such children were called tama‘āiga, literally “the children of many families.” Making tama‘āiga through exalted couplings along with title wars drove Samoan political life. As the gita visually echoed the ceremonial headdress, every girl’s sexual praxis resembled that of the tāupōu: the gita represented a variant but related schema in which sexuality was in the service of family and village alliances and of social ascent (cf. Ortner 1981). Samoan social life oscillated between periods of planting and periods of visiting. A group representing its village traveled to other villages, where they were ritually greeted and feasted. At the welcoming ceremonies that began such occasions a visiting party recognized

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Figure 2.2. Studio shot of tāupōu in ceremonial dress wearing a tuiga. Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (No. Ikono162a-Polynesien-Samoa).

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its hosts’ genealogical claims, and the host recognize those of its visitors such that the ritual itself operated like an alliance. Wild celebrations followed in which common girls made children whose genitors were from different and otherwise potentially fractious villages. Highborn males led such parties and common girls might also have relations with them—another potential source of alliances and a way that common families (ever trying to improve and assert their extended family status) could enter the chiefly game of genealogy crafting. Indeed every child was, ideally, a gafata i luma (a genealogical step forward; Hjarnø 1979/1980: 91–93). This genealogy schema represented an interpretation of sex and gender that was productive rather than prohibitive. Indeed, Samoans seemed to be without sexual prohibitions to missionaries; they were not. Girls’ shaved heads visually represented important prohibitions that structured everyday life. Given how far back Samoans traced genealogy, most boys and girls in a village were likely to be relatives. In Samoan cognatic kinship calculation, they were “brothers” and “sisters,” between whom sex was a disgrace to family honor. Girls affected the gita style at puberty: then their heads were shaved, leaving the characteristic tufts. Girls’ partially shaved heads probably symbolized sexual restraint in village relations and in deference to the civic project of making genealogies around which Samoan society revolved. Thus by the 1880s, elders might cut a long-haired girl’s hair in the gita style if she was sexually indiscreet (Willis 1889) as if to reassert traditional authority. The association of hair with sexuality has a long history in psychoanalysis and anthropology. Leach (1958) famously argues that while in many cultures hair appears to represent sexuality, it actually conveys social messages about affiliation with groups expressed through sexual metaphors: hairstyles visually represent group identity.1 In the case of the gita, I argue, hair additionally signifies a girl’s role in her group and the sexual schemas that were supposed to propel it.

Colonial Hair Schemas

When LMS missionaries Christianized Samoa, they complained about sexual mores to be sure but also about hairdos (Williams [1830–1832] 1984: 231). Thus the founding missionary to Samoa, John Williams, writes in his 1832 journal: “The females further disfigure themselves by cropping their hair very close & also shaving the head leaving only a tuft … of which they are very proud.” Missionaries urged girls to mimic European gendered hairstyles; embedded in these styles, however, were sexual schemas about which missionaries had mixed feelings.

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The Victorian girl with lovely long hair was a romantic figure in the literature and painting of the period and the very personification of deep personal sentiment in matters of love and marriage. As Descartes made individuals’ private thoughts definitive of being human, the Romantics made personal sentiment equally definitive. Evangelicals were part of the nineteenth-century English Romantic movement, and in the practice of religion they too favored inner feeling. Romantics of all stripes thought that girls should be able to choose their marital partners on the basis of personal sentiment rather than family advantage, although they differed as to the nature of what this sentiment should be. Evangelicals preached that marriages should be based on spiritual compatibility, and many opposed reading romantic novels because of the passionate feelings there conveyed (Davidoff and Hall 1987: 27, 158, 160; Davies 1961: 247, 256, 277). Such passionate feelings were pivotal to British Romantic novels from their eighteenth century beginning with Richardson’s Clarissa ([1748] 1985) to nineteenth century novels like those of the Bronte sisters, Jane Austin, George Elliot, and Dickens. Preachers and novelists, then, represented two sides of a Romantic movement debate about the place of personal feeling in sexualmoral conduct. While missionaries to Samoa championed only one side of this debate, inadvertently they provided direct access to the other side. Because they were Protestants whose religion was based on the idea that people should be able to read the Bible so as to forge a personal relationship with God, missionaries opened schools that taught reading in every village where they resided; within decades some Samoans were more literate than the average Londoner (Willis 1889; Murray 1839; Gilson 1970: 102; Garrett 1982: 125). By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were bookstores in Apia that sold romantic novels that Samoan girls read (Safroni 1916: 79). In response to the tastes and preferences of missionaries, voyagers on passing ships, resident consuls, and other foreign residents of the major ports, Apia and Pago Pago, many Samoan girls began growing their hair long, as in the Western image of the South Seas beauty. Indeed, in the earliest Samoan collection, that of the British Museum, the first comb to appear is dated 1841 (museum catalogue # 0211.17)—only a decade after missionaries established their churches in Samoa. Beautiful, bounteous hair became a mark of particular attractiveness in European photographs of Samoan beauties and among Samoans. As late as the 1970s at the first beauty pageant in Samoa, the winner was selected by measuring the length of each girl’s hair with a yardstick. Just as the gita did, the new hairstyle visually represented messages about sexuality. After women began to grow long hair in the nineteenth century, married women wore their hair up often held by a comb; taking the comb out of a married women’s hair, such that it fell down, was one of the four personal offenses that received public punishment (Stair 1897: 95).

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Combs as Transitional Images

How, then, were combs a transitional image that visually combined enduring Samoan schemas with European ones? Long unfurled Polynesian hair (which would require combing), on the one hand, iterated images of Victorian beauties, both those romanticized in the high art of the period and those images of exotic nude or seminude women that circulated more secretly in Victorian society (McClintock 1995: 21, 31, 75)—among which were photographs of Samoans (Nordström 1991a, 1991b). Hair held up by a comb, on the other hand, mimicked the precolonial hairstyle for women: in photographs many girls with bound hair look as if they may have quite short hair. So hair up copied a closely cropped head in a new key, yet it was also an opposite. Inasmuch as hair in Samoa symbolized a sexual schema, like its “original,” hair up suggested restraint, but bound up in this hairdo was also a new schema we might call “sexuality in the service of personal sentiment” and a new possibility—letting one’s hair down, as in the image of the South Seas beauty. This transitional image also indexed a moral revolution enacted on the streets of Apia. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Apia—with its hugely expanded trade, foreigners with unfamiliar interests thronging the port, fancy new foreign goods, sailors and whalers looking for loose women and other forms of entertainment, guns in free circulation, consuls and other officials who purveyed European Enlightenment ideas and knowledge of a wider world—was a dangerous and exciting place (Churchward 1887; Safroni 1916; Gilson 1970: 165, 183). Couplings with foreign males, moreover, were not incestuous and hence beyond the purview of Samoan moral schemas. Such couplings became increasingly common (Willis 1889). Middleton Safroni, a traveler in Apia at the time, says for example, “On the beach stroll … droves of pretty half-caste girls. … They have fine times those girls with German and English sailors, or with ‘perfect gentlemen’, and sometimes with a black sheep missionary who has been dismissed from the L.M.S.” (1916: 57–58). Combs were a transitional image in another sense as well. Even more than the gita, a comb in the hair copied those headdresses worn at ceremonies by those high-status persons mentioned above, which were topped by comb-like sticks seated in tufts of hair (see Figure 2.2). Inasmuch as girls’ colonial hair adornments copied this headdress, they suggested a democratization of style and status that was part of the package of Enlightenment ideas missionaries and others imported—an import that played into indigenous tendencies to assert one’s own family status whatever its actual genealogy was. Thus in private venues still today Samoans often brag to one another by making or implying claims about their family’s genealogy.

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Missionaries also conveyed these democratizing-elevating messages by preaching premarital virginity for all girls. In pre-Christian Samoa there was no word for virgin; the only gloss for it in Pratt’s ([1862/1911] 1977) early dictionary is “taupou.” Christian ideals for girls thus suggested that girls not only should be like tāupōu (virginal) but also could be like tāupōu—a status implication iterated by crowning combs. This democratization is also visible in the changing status of the tuiga itself, which in the photographs of the period seldom appears in its original ceremonial context, but rather became a way of representing chiefly status that focused particularly on the figure of the tāupōu. I say “figure” because in studio shots girls were frequently dressed to look like a tāupōu (Figure 2.3), privileging the tāupōu in representing Samoan culture. In the historical photographs I have collected from museums in Britain and Germany, the “tāupōu” is by far the most frequent subject. She is also a photographic centerpiece for artifacts that had come to emblemize Samoa in the colonial encounter, by mutual agreement as it were, such as fine mats, tapa, and fans—objects extremely common in artifact collections. Indeed, the tāupōu herself was a transitional image that evolved out of a transcultural conversation. She impersonated a number of Samoan and European schemas: a Samoan genealogy schema from the cultural past, a mission sexual schema

Figure 2.3. Studio shot of girl in tāupōu dress wearing a tuiga with sailors, several other Samoan girls in the background: a tourist shot. From the collection of Augustin Krämer. Linden-Museum Stuttgart (38:2).

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for virginal girls, an Enlightenment democratization of status schema that forwarded enduring Samoan tendencies toward family status promotion, a European noble savage schema about the natural aristocracy of some Pacific peoples (tāupōu was frequently translated as “village princess” and in the legend accompanying photographs simply as “Samoan princess”), and a Victorian pinup schema (a beautiful girl commonly wearing much less than European girls did at the time). If colonial cameras made transitional images, it was not just the colonial photographers who authored them. Samoans themselves put on ceremonial headdresses even for village shots, apparently to look Samoan. In the impromptu village shot before a fale (house) in Figure 2.4, for example—its hasty nature evident in poor focus—the central figure is a girl who may represent the tāupōu, a shell band around her head that, just as stick-like combs, was an image element of the ceremonial headdress (see Figure 2.2). Rather than the fine mat that would have been her traditional costume, she wears a fringed sarong (lavalava) around her waist, possibly an imported shawl, which Samoan girls often wear in photographs of the time probably because it copied the fringe that is a signature feature of Samoan fine mats, also part of the tāupōu’s ceremonial costume.

Figure 2.4. Village shot before a fale, three people in the foreground, two in ceremonial dress, armed Samoan men in the background. Savai‘i, 1861–1879 by Johann Stanislaw Kubary, Museum Godeffroy Collection. Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (2014.21:167).

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This girl appears to have dressed up for the shot, with flowers in her hair, unlike the woman to her right, who is in normal bodily attitude and attire. Yet, her look is inquiring rather than passive. Neither of these women’s facial expression invites the colonial gaze. Rather, I suggest, she dresses to represent her culture. The young man to her left lends credence to this suggestion: his headdress implies he is a mānaia, the tāupōu’s counterpart. Clearly no ceremony is taking place, yet he also holds an orator’s fly whisk, combining ceremonial items that would usually be held by two different figures, perhaps the more to assert the cultural identity he represents. The young man’s expression in this photograph is challenging and thus resonant with the guns his companions hold: neither his expression nor their arms convey the colonial subordination that would suggest an itinerant photographer is the only author of this shot. Thomas (1991) argues that people’s sense of cultural identity emerges in colonial encounters and that in Samoa the first such encounter was with Tonga in the Tonga–Samoa–Fiji triangle, a regional trade and political system existing well prior to pre-European contact in which Tonga was the regional hegemon (see also Kaeppler 1978; Mageo 2002; Hempenstall and Mochida 2005: 65). In Figure 2.4, then, we witness a reemergence of what is likely an earlier Samoan cultural identity schema in the context of the European colonial encounter. Scholars often see Pacific photography and artifact collections as a kind of European self-mimicry that only appears to render ethnographic subjects or their cultures while remodeling them to support Western agendas ranging from domination to a critique of the civilizing mission (Bell 2005; Jolly 1997; Maxwell 1999; Nordström 1991a, 1991b; Quanchi 2006, 2007; Stephen 1993; Thomas and Losche 1999; Tiffany 2001; Thomas 1991). Edwards (2001: 109) argues, however, that random elements in colonial photography, like the expressions and guns in this shot, have “the potential to contest or subvert the ideological dimensions of the image’s creation.” Photographs and artifacts too have been considered as sites of and even “agents” for the emergence of alternative histories and unheard voices (Edwards, Gosden, and Phillips 2006; Edwards and Hart 2004; Gell 1998). This photograph, however, may further evince an evolving intercultural “conversation” about schemas—a conversation revolving around transitional images like the tāupōu and the combs girls wore to better resemble her.

Tapa Incorporations and Transformations

Other artifacts in early collections at first seem less transitional than combs, for example, tapa. Tapa, along with fine mats or skirts of leaves, were clothing in precontact times and were wrapped around the waist, the breasts be-

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ing bare. Clothes, however, were for decoration rather than modesty and were conceived of as “wrappings” (Tcherkézoff 2003). Thus the eighteenth-century La Pérouse ([1785–1788] 1994–1995) observes from his ship that Samoan men were nude except for their tattoos, and the nineteenth-century missionary Williams ([1830–1832] 1984: 167, cf. 102, 167, 230) expresses chagrin when a Samoan girl wearing only a fine mat that William wants to buy takes it off on the spot and hands it to him. Yet decoration, as locally understood, had great significance. “Teu le vā,” literally “Decorate the space between,” is probably the most important Samoan exhortation to civil conduct. A vā is “a space between” but also signifies a relationship, particularly between groups, which Samoans visualize as a circle around a center. In meetings, chiefs representing their respective groups sit at the posts of a round house. In village landscape, the great houses of resident extended families circle the malae—an open space that marks its center. Even early Samoan petroglyphs feature this design (Kikuchi 1964). “Teu le vā” is thus also an image of a Samoan schema for social and political life. Society coheres, from the Samoan viewpoint—it is beautiful and peaceful instead of endless war—only by virtue of chiefs and the families they represent decorating the space between. One decorates through decorous conduct: showing respect, as one does to a hierarchical superior within the family, which means serving them. Ideally, however, one should treat all with respect, that is, in polite address, as if they were above one socially, and through hospitality in which one serves the other. In ceremony one treats the titled representatives of other families and villages as if they were one’s own superiors by rendering them as-if service in the forms of gifts, which in precontact Samoa were of two kinds. ‘Oloa represented the service of men and tōga the service of women. Men made utilitarian, although highly crafted items such as boats and houses (Shore 1982: 203–4). Women made decorative items, among which were siapo. The crown of ceremonial gifting and traditional industry, ‘ie tōga, were mats as fine as linen that might take more than a generation to complete, as opposed to coarsely woven sleeping mats or mat blinds used to wall Samoan’s open houses in bad weather. Gifts distilled and visually represented the service it took to make them. Service-gifts-respect, then, were parts of this “decorating” schema; tapa, as a decoration and a ceremonial prestation, was one of its component images. What I am suggesting is that visually represented schemas are “overdetermined.” I take this word from Freud’s ([1900] 1964) analysis of dreams. For Freud, this means that a number of dream images have the same meaning such that this meaning occurs redundantly in the dream. For me, cultural schemas are visually overdetermined: a number of images in a culture (in this case chiefly meetings, the village layout, petroglyphs, but also fine mats and tapa) signify the same schema, the “decorating” schema mentioned above. Tapa and

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fine mats decorated via wrapping people, yet wrappings were meant not simply to decorate but also to bind people to their group. Thus still today when wayfarers journey away from the islands, relatives pile leis (ula in Samoan) around their necks such that their necks disappear in a pile of flowers. Tcherkézoff (2003: 53, 55) points out that the bones of the family dead were wrapped in tapa or mats.

Tapa as Transitional Images

As missionaries’ influence grew, they insisted people more regularly cover their bodies. Cloth, less labor intensive than siapo or fine mats, easier to clean, having a fancy foreign allure, and easily exchanged for copra (an industry missionaries encouraged), was a ready solution to this new “religious” problem. Along with guns, cotton cloth was a primary trade item that made Samoans dependent on imports and hence on the colonial world. Village photographs suggest siapo continued to be worn as decoration and as an available form of fabric for newly important covering up, but imported cotton cloth soon became extremely popular and often played the part siapo formerly had: it was wrapped as a lavalava about the waist (see the accompanying dancers in Figure 2.3). Broken free from some of its practical duties siapo became, not necessarily what one wore but what one wore to look Samoan. This significance was evident in and reinforced by photographic practices of the time. For shots that might be sold to tourists or to the many European curio dealers like the Marquardt brothers in Germany (Thode-Arora 2014b), professional photographers in Apia kept culturally iconic artifacts in their studios to dress up Samoans as chiefs or tāupōu (Blanton 1995), siapo being one such object. As a photographic image, siapo combined Samoans’ “decorating” schema (its highly graphic, decorative nature remains clear in these photographs) with a European “native cultures” schema. The context in which an object appears is also an element of image. By shooting siapo in studios and out, jam-packed with other traditional Samoan artifacts, colonial photographs gave siapo this additional significance. Anderson (1991: 163–86) notes that one of colonists’ primary occupations was taking inventory of the people they surveyed by collecting their arts and crafts in European museums, thus masking political domination as cultural curating. Ethnic shows, popular throughout Europe at the time, also took inventory by displaying the diversity of what Europeans considered the worlds’ wild (in the sense of uncivilized) creatures and cultures, particularly those of the colonies. In Germany these events were called Völkerschauen (ethnic shows; Thode-Arora 2014a). In these shows Samoans, along with their arti-

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facts, impersonated a “native culture” schema on the European stage. Photographic studios in Samoa were another European stage for the impersonation of this “native culture” schema. Before European contact and after, for Samoans siapo represented family identity. As in Mauss’s ([1925] 1990) The Gift, in ceremonial presentations fine mats and tapa played the role of social personae representing the extended family that had made and gifted them (Tcherkézoff 2003: 53–54). In the German era siapo came to represent cultural identity in a global context for colonial visitors and for Samoans. Thus, while they slowly disappeared from ceremonial presentations (Tcherkézoff 2003: 53), siapo came to play prominently in ambassadorial presentations, for example, the opening of the observatory in Apia built by Otto Tetens in 1902, or given to Knipping as vice-ambassador to Samoa, or to Solf in his capacity as governor. Yet if siapo configured cultural identity, it was a porous identity that did not rely on the exclusion of foreign elements. Natural dyes tinted the oldest nineteenth-century siapo, which are found in British collections: mainly black, brown, and white with occasional reds and yellows. Siapo from the 1890s and turn-of-the-century periods in German collections, including gifts to governors, are innovative in pattern and also occasionally rife with foreign colors— pinks, blues from cobalt to turquoise, purples, oranges, and greens (see, for example, Übersee-Museum Bremen catalogue numbers D 4817, the cover image, and also D 4829, D14319/14320). Thus siapo came to combine enduring Samoan image elements, the bold eye-catching designs that had long characterized many tapa copied in colonial dyes. Colonial hues pervaded other artifacts too. A straight line of parrot feathers along the bottom decorated fine mats. During colonial times these parrots became increasingly rare, and colonial trade replaced the regional trade that had also once supplied them (Kaeppler 1978; Mageo 2002). Chicken feathers tinted red with foreign dyes, therefore, came to mimic parrot feathers, although gradually these acquired a foreign rainbow of colors, as did other woven artifacts, for example, dance dresses and fans of varied designs. Dresses and fans, however, lacked ceremonial status and, while fine mats were the primer kind of tōga in those gift exchanges that were the core of Samoan ceremonial life, they offered little opportunity for innovation: they could mainly be finer or less so. As the Samoan world, along with the global one to which it was increasingly wed, sped up over the course of the twentieth century, the fibers used to make many “fine mats” acquired by foreign collections became shockingly thick. Siapo, sometimes stamped out from a carved board (‘upeti), sometimes sketched freehand, displayed great variety and thus offered considerable decorative scope. This scope, along with siapo’s prominent place in many museum collections, made it ripe for incorporation of another European schema: folk

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art. Siapo thus began a transit, anticipated in the innovative tapa of the German period, from an instance of women’s service, to artifact, to “art object” and the makers from anonymous family members to individual “artisans” who sometimes signed their work. In the first half of the twentieth century this siapo-as-art schema probably found most self-conscious expression in the American Samoan studio of Mary Pritchard (1984) and then even more explicit expression in Sean Mallon’s Samoan Art and Artists (2002). Pritchard and Mallon are Samoans although their names indicate that they, like the hybrid schemas they forwarded, are mixed. The idea of the artisan suggests individual authorship and a self-expression schema new to what had been a highly collective culture that defined, not only objects but people too as group representatives (Mageo 1998). What we witness here is a process in which siapo became a copy of its former self, one that included foreign elements from color to personhood category, making it a transitional image and adding transcultural significance to its earlier import in family and village exchange. After World War II, the westerly Samoas became a New Zealand protectorate. For reasons beyond the scope of this chapter, the New Zealand regime was uncongenial. Samoans began a resistance movement called the Mau (Field 1991). Siapo from the New Zealand period are also beyond my scope here, but let me nonetheless add that the foreign dyes of the German period began to bleed out of siapo: they became an emblem of a past and a Samoan cultural identity purified of colonial colorations. Perhaps fine mat feathers would have also returned to their earlier invariant red but, as the parrots that people had formerly used disappeared, newly made mats could not resemble their originals without foreign dyes, which seems to have kept the way open for the many colors.

Mutual Mimesis

The blush of foreign dyes on ceremonial objects, however, is not what is most surprising in German collections, but photographs of Germans in forest and village posing for shots wearing Samoan artifacts. Figure 2.5, for example, is a photograph collected by Samoa’s most famous ethnographer (apart from Margaret Mead), Agustin Krämer. Here a barefoot, shirtless German poses for a forest shot in what we might call noble savage drag, an ula of pandanus fibers around his neck, wearing a pandanus tuff reminiscent of the gita. He is not wearing everyday Samoan clothes. Indeed, his pandanus skirt fringed like that at the bottom of fine mats suggest high ceremony (read nobility), which he combines with the war club that to Europeans would say “savage.” These are items that Samoans would not ordinarily wear together. With this photograph,

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Figure 2.5. German in Samoan dress. From the collection of Augustin Krämer. Linden-Museum Stuttgart. Album 36 (#69).

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of course, no one would question that the object of the photograph was also the agent of the shot even though he did not take it himself. Whatever his presuppositions, Figure 2.5 suggests an openness, even an enthusiasm, toward the cultural Other. Why? Published and archival sources show that while Western governments were encroaching upon Samoan sovereignty throughout the colonial period (Gilson 1970), national attitudes toward Samoans differed. Germans, with a history of independent dukedoms and principalities not far behind them (Anderson 1991: 84–85), tended to credit the importance of Samoan titles and regarded them as natural aristocrats and an honored part of the Reich. Thus, Krämer spent most of one volume of his encyclopedic two-volume work on Samoa recording chiefly genealogies (1902–1903) and wrote another book on the westerly Samoa’s first paramount, Salamasina ([1923] 1949). The Reich had a treaty with Samoan chiefs, the Treaty of Berlin, and a German post office in Apia (U.S. Postmaster-General 1908: 292), forms of respect they extended to no other colonies. In many German colonial locales such as Papua New Guinea, German colonists were likely to regard the local population simply as savages (see Dalton this volume). As Tahitians impersonated “noble savages” for the British and then the French, however, Samoans impersonated them for Germans. Thus, a Samoan chief, Tamasese, traveled in Germany and was treated as an aristocrat bearing gifts—just those artifacts that had become emblems of the culture (Thode-Arora 2014c). This regard lent itself to German mimicry of Samoan models. The first German governor of Samoa, Solf, and his successor, Schultz, spoke Samoan fluently and negotiated directly with chiefs (Hempenstall and Mochida 2005; Davidson 1967: 76–90). Even Solf ’s governing methods suggest mimicry: Hempenstall (2014: 41) describes him as “copying Samoan chiefly style and values.” This is not to say that Samoans, particularly those directly involved in politics, did not resent German rule. Indeed Solf struggled against the powerful tūmua and pule, groups of orators who appointed high chiefs to hold the most important titles, but their resistance never became revolution and Solf ’s policies, while paternalistic, were on the whole liberal (Hempenstall and Mochida 2005: 52–82). His successor, Schultz, studied and wrote about Samoan law (1911) and collected those Samoan proverbs that were the stock and trade of chiefly oratory (1965). If copying (or being a copyist) is the sincerest form of flattery, I do not want to suggest that this is the only sentiment captured in German era historical photographs and artifacts. Thus, while high chiefs commonly wear suits or military uniforms in studio shots, in village photographs they tend to be surrounded by their armed retinue, as in Figure 2.4. These latter images mix an indigenous idea, the chief ’s ‘aumāga (militia and workforce) with the European armed guard, but its don’t-tread-on-me implications are clear. On the

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other hand, in German photographs high chief Matā‘afa Iosefo, the leader of the resistance to German colonialism, often appears glowing in the center of village shots in a white European garment, a cassock or jacket, over a white lavalava; no one else in the photograph is dressed in white. This transitional image is not the “not-quite-white” of Bhabha’s mimic men (1994). Indeed, these shots were one side of an ongoing political argument and assert the power and moral evolution, perhaps even the natural aristocracy, of its principal figure, combining Samoan chiefly schemas and European ones. And they show Matā‘afa’s tactical willingness and patent ability to incorporate Europeans’ visual language without surrendering to that language.

Impersonating Transitional Images

Merlan (Chapter 1) shows that in early colonial encounters in Australia, mimicry was one-sided: indigenes mimicked Europeans but not the reverse. Indeed, one-sided mimicry is evident in many of the encounters surveyed in this volume, Hermann’s Banabans and Jarillo de la Torre’s Trobriand Islanders, for example. But what happens when mimicry is a two-way street? The answer I suspect is a mixing of objects and practices through which schemas are materialized, but also of people. Stoler (1995) finds racial openness and unions in the early stages of European colonialism, which she links to a desire for political and economic alliances in remote locales. In photographs from the German era, I found evidence of racial openness and unions. These unions do not appear to be politically and economically motivated, as in Stoler’s Indonesian case. The early Dutch East Indies Company, for example, needed marital alliances to form the basis of trading relationships. In Samoa, Germans had well-established coconut plantations and were more or less accepted members of the local population (Gilson 1970; Hempenstall 2014). Indeed, the interracial associations captured by a photograph collected by Krämer from the LindenMuseum in Stuttgart (Figure 2.6) suggest the easy openness that comes from interest in Otherness. Here Germans and Samoans, convivial glasses of beer in their hands, several with arms around one another, “Picnic under the Mango Tree”: this is the shot’s title, which suggests a group dressed up for an outing. Probably they hired a photographer to take it in remembrance of love and friendship, or the shot was taken by one of the party excluded from the frame by that role. In the exact middle is a German in a helmet, Dr. Funk, and a man with a hyphenated name dressed in a straw hat, white shirt, vest, jacket, and black tie—his apparel similar to several of his German compatriots.

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Figure 2.6. Picnic under the Mango Tree. From the collection of Augustin Krämer. Linden-Museum Stuttgart (38:7-1).

Another central figure, Hollweg, wearing a military-like white uniform jacket, has ferns wrapped around his cap, just as another German to the right, Lotte, has ferns around her hat. The Samoan woman next to Hollweg, Sefilina, wears a crown of ferns in her hair and a tapa imitation of a Victorian dress, yet her skirt preserves a Samoan sense of dress as wrapping in siapo. She leans in toward Hollweg. The Samoan woman to the far left, “Frau Dr. Funk” (Mrs. Dr. Funk), wears a fine mat around her waist and a Victorian fitted shirt above, topped by a fashionable European hat. Fine mats, the most important ceremonial items, were worn frequently in colonial photographs, but clearly no photographer dressed Frau Funk for this shot. Here mixed dress and mixed couples constitute transitional images. Let us parse the schemas they impersonate. Probably all parties to this scene had the intent of binding one another in friendship through decoration, celebration, and, indeed, the shot itself. Like Samoans’ colonial hairstyles, ferns in German hair probably mixed the Samoan decorating schema (expressed through wrappings) with a German cultural schema of the period. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany,

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the ancient Greco-Roman world was a dominant cultural influence (Butler 2012). Germans’ interest in Greece and Rome dovetailed with their interest in folk cultures, including their own folk culture, for example, in the collecting of the Grimm brothers (who were employed at the University of Göttingen), which resulted in Jacob Grimm’s German Mythology in 1835. All these were part of the German Romantic movement, which eulogized a simpler, more natural, and purer social existence that could be found in the past, among the Volk and some “native” cultures, and that represented an altercultural identity image for Germans at least since the eighteenth century (Reusch 2008). Germans imagined these cultures and themselves to a degree as of a more heroic time in cultural evolution in contrast to the cultures of modernity found in the rest of Europe—that is, as akin to “noble savages.” Throughout Europe, the noble savage both predicated and contradicted a racist evolutionary hierarchy used to justify colonial domination. The idea of the “savage” meant wild but also morally inferior, while the idea of the natural noble suggested superiority, albeit in the quotation marks that European governments extended to romantic ideas. One major way Europeans dealt with this contradiction was to split past nobles from present savages. As Anderson (1991: 180–81) points out, colonists tended to regard the builders of monuments like the Parthenon and “colonial natives in a certain hierarchy … such that contemporary natives were no longer capable of their putative ancestors’ achievements,” and sometimes regarded present inhabitants as a separate (fallen) race. Ancient Greeks were thought noble, present Greeks much less so. A second major way to manage the noble/savage contradiction was to regard colonized Others as children, who in the Victorian model were likewise imagined as purer and simpler but also in need of looking after. Solf, as willing as he was to learn about and from Samoans, referred to them constantly as his “children” (Hempenstall and Mochida 2005). That said, to a degree one can distinguish here between a governmental level where colonial officials used a semblance of superiority to justify colonial rule and an everyday level where Germans and Samoans sometimes had friendly relations that presupposed a degree of equality. Poole (1997; Pinney and Peterson 2003) is right that relations of inequality are much of what one sees in the colonial archive, but it is as much a mistake to assume this is always the singular nature of colonial relations as to assume the opposite. Colonial power to inscribe and enforce was often circumscribed or uneven and at times more myth then reality (Dureau 2001; Obeyesekere 1992). What one can more safely assume is that colonial encounters were meetings of two radically different cultures with profound implications for the other’s world. Let us return to Samoan and European dress within this photograph. At first glance, European blouses covering Samoans appear to be entirely a for-

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eign inscription. As missionaries insisted girls cover their breasts, where nothing had been, Samoan women tended to copy Victorian garments. Indeed, mission schools in Samoa taught everyone letters but also women to sew. In shots from Apia studios and also in village scenes from the German period, Samoan women might dress in siapo, a cloth lavalava, a fine mat, or a dancing mat around their waist and a fancy Victorian blouse or bodice. As Colchester writes, “Clothing was one of the most obvious markers of the change imposed by colonialism and the mission” (2003: 1). Yet blouses still copied a Samoan original: fancy dress as an index of status. Indeed, Western clothes had this significance from their earliest import, as in a Sunday church scene Drummond (1842) describes of “a good old gray-headed man coming … with the woman’s morning gown on and … a female coming in a gentleman’s morning coat.” Western clothes were everyone’s “Sunday best” and this significance trumped any other. In Figure 2.6 blouses also represent a Samoan “decorating” schema repeated in other garments: the fine mat wrapped around Frau Dr. Funk and the tapa that wraps Sefilina. Yet, blouses also visually redefined what bodily regions were sacred. Loins had long represented making “genealogical steps forward” for Samoans and were hence wrapped with tapa, mats, or tattoos. To Europeans breasts represented the mother-child relationship so central to their conceptions both of family and women’s role. The shift in Samoan women’s role predicated by this reconfiguration, however, was slow to follow: early childcare remained an extended family affair (Mageo 2013). Sometimes, what T. Turner (1980) calls “the social skin” remains, at least for a period, only skin deep, while at others it seeps into the cultural world, where it has been copied—as the Victorian “romance” schema that long hair embodied challenged Samoans’ understandings of sex and marriage (Mageo 1994, 1998). Probably the power of a foreign schema to effect social change (as opposed to fashion) depends on its usefulness to those involved. Freedom to marry on the basis of personal sentiment may have been more useful to girls in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Apia than bearing the burden of childcare by oneself was to Samoan mothers then and now.

Transitional Imaginaries in Play

Transitional imaginaries, I suggest, are made of schemas that converge and diverge—as crowning ferns probably had convergent and divergent meanings for Samoans and for Germans. For missionaries, colonial era combs probably connoted decoration, a neat and modest appearance and sexual restraint. For Samoans they probably connoted foreign finery, decoration, sexual restraint, and the democratization of tāupōu status.

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For Europeans, siapo suggested native industry, folk art, and cultural identity. For Samoans, siapo evoked ceremonial prestations, respect, cultural identity, and later art and individual authorship. Costume was decoration and a statement about status for both Samoans and Germans, even if decoration had additional meanings for Samoans, as ferns in the hair did for Germans. Such convergence makes communication possible, while divergence adds to its revolutionary potential. Romantic schemas visually inscribed in combs and the long hair that missionaries associated with them, for example, affected Samoan girls’ presuppositions about sex and gender. As with language, with images one makes translations by finding visual facsimiles for others’ images in one’s own visual culture. In turn, finding facsimiles in effect makes transitional images and advances the development of a transitional imaginary. By looking for schemas in images and allowing that they are porous structures potentially open to tumultuous change, the ideas of transitional images and transitional imaginaries puts cognitive schemas in a new light and gives image schemas a place in historical research. Indeed, a proliferation of transitional images may index cultural transitions and the schema transformations that register and forward these transitions. Such images and imaginaries may help people transit from one “imagined community” to another, to enlist Anderson’s (1991) famous phrase. In other words, people in a culture have a common fantasy of what it means to be a member. Yet the fantasies that support an imagined community are ever evolving and change with the times. This evolution happens, I have argued here, at least in part through transitional images. The forms in which I have found transitional images—artifacts and photographs—litter museum collections and are often from periods when written records are scant or inadequate or only from the colonial viewpoint. Transitional images, therefore, offer both conceptual and methodological advantages. In visual anthropology there is a trend away from seeing artifacts and other objects as representations that beg for interpretation and toward seeing them as actors in the world that affect social relations (see, for example, Wright 2013). Objects without question have this dimension, but artifacts and photographs are also images and as such actors in transitional imaginaries. Parsing the cultural schemas in such images, therefore, has the potential to shed new light on these particular objects and on the cultural histories of which they mutely but often eloquently speak. Transitional imaginaries are spaces in the mind but also in the world where people think and feel through experience in visually represented schemas from their own culture and that of a resident foreign culture(s) in the sense of “in the medium of ” and of “working through.” Such images must be understood through the role they play in a working-through process as it plays out in an imaginary realm shared between two or more cultures in a specific time and place.

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Transitional imaginaries are not entirely “conscious” in the discursive sense, and this is part of their usefulness. The opacity of the image, its reluctance to slip unambiguously into words, provides imaginative space where people can “converse” about foreign schemas insulated from the judgments that might attend more explicit conversation. Interpretability provides deniability, which temporarily insulates the world of words from extreme differences that might wreak havoc with civil interactions. Opacity gives people time to adjust to new feelings and ideas. Differences between Samoan and colonial morality, society, government, and religion required time—time for considerations and integrations that could transpire away from the potentially awkward and confrontational explicitness of words. Such time, while it lasts, may dilute conflict and the cultural and personal erosion it threatens. And such times may shelter personal, social, and aesthetic experimentation that allows people to envision a transit from one historical moment to the next, in the case of German era Samoa from a regional to a global stage. Jeannette Mageo has been involved in research and publication on Samoan culture, history, and psychology since 1980. In recent years she has turned to examine the collision of Samoan, European, and American cultures and psychologies in the colonial encounter through performance art, historical photographs, and colonial artifacts. Her books include Theorizing Self in Samoa: Emotions, Genders and Sexualities; Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Pacific (edited volume); Power and the Self (edited volume); Dreaming and the Self: New Perspectives on Subjectivity, Identity, and Emotion (edited volume); Attachment Reconsidered: Cultural Perspectives on a Western Theory (Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Mageo, eds.); and Dreaming Culture: Meanings, Models, and Power in U.S. American Dreams. Notes 1. Leach sparked a debated I discussed elsewhere (Mageo 1994). References Anderson, Benedict R. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bell, Leonard. 2005. “Eyeing Samoa: People, Places, and Spaces in Photographs of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” In Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire, ed. Felix Driver and Luciana Martins, 156–74. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Blanton, Casey, ed. 1995. Picturing Paradise: Colonial Photography of Samoa, 1875 to 1925. Daytona Beach and Cologne: Southeast Museum of Photography and Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum of Ethnology.

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Butler, E.M. 2012. The Tyranny of Greece over Germany: A Study of the Influence Exercised by Greek Art and Poetry over the Great German Writers of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Churchward, William B. 1887. My Consulate in Samoa. London: Richard Bentley and Son. Colchester, Chloë, ed. 2003. Clothing the Pacific. Oxford: Berg. D’Andrade, Roy G. 1995. The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D’Andrade, Roy G., and Claudia Strauss, eds. 1992. Human Motives and Cultural Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. 1987. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Davidson, James W. 1967. Samoa mo Samoa: The Emergence of the Independent State of Western Samoa. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Davies, Horton. 1961. Worship and Theology in England: From Watts and Wesley to Maurice, 1690–1850. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Drummond, George. 1842. October 26 letter to London Missionary Society Headquarters from Savai‘i. Council of World Missions Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Dureau, Christine. 2001. “Recounting and Remembering ‘First Contact’ on Simbo.” In Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, ed. Jeannette Mageo, 130–62. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2001. Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Oxford: Berg. Edwards, Elizabeth, Chris Gosden, and Ruth B. Phillips, eds. 2006. Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture. Oxford: Berg. Edwards, Elizabeth, and Janice Hart, eds. 2004. Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images. London: Routledge. Field, Michael J. 1991. Mau: Samoa’s Struggle for Freedom. Auckland: Polynesian Press. Freud, Sigmund. (1900) 1964. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey. Vols. 4 and 5. London: Hogarth Press. ———. (1920) 1964. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, Vol. 18:1–64. London: Hogarth Press. Garrett, John. 1982. To Live among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania. Geneva and Suva: World Council of Churches and Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gilson, Richard P. 1970. Samoa 1830 to 1900: The Politics of a Multi-Cultural Community. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Hempenstall, Peter. 1997. “The Colonial Imagination and the Making and Remaking of the Samoan People.” In European Impact and Pacific Influence: British and German Colonial Policy in the Pacific Islands and the Indigenous Response, ed. Hermann Hiery and John M. MacKenzie, 65–81. London: Tauris Academic Studies, German Historical Institute. ———. 2014. “Germany’s Pacific Pearl.” In From Samoa with Love? Samoas Travellers in Germany 1895–1911, ed. Hilke Thode-Arora, 27–46. Munich: Hirmer.

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Hempenstall, Peter J., and Paula T. Mochida. 2005. The Lost Man: Wilhelm Solf in German History. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Henry, Fred. 1979. History of Samoa. Apia: Commercial Printers Ltd. Hjarnø, Jan. 1979/1980. “Social Reproduction: Towards an Understanding of Aborginal Samoa.” Folk 21–22: 72–123. Holland, Dorothy, William Lachicotte, Jr., Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Jolly, Margaret. 1997. “From Point Venus to Bali Ha’i : Eroticism and Exotism in Representations of the Pacific.” In Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific, ed. Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly, 99–122. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kaeppler, Adrienne L. 1978. “Exchange Patterns in Goods and Spouses: Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.” Mankind 11(3): 246–52. Kikuchi, William K. 1964. “Petroglyphs in American Samoa.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 73(2): 163–66. Krämer, Augustin. 1902–1903. Die Samoa-Inseln. Entwurf einer Monographie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Deutsch-Samoas. Stuttgart: Schweizerbart. ———. (1923) 1949. “Salamasina: Scenes from Ancient Samoan Culture and History.” Unpublished manuscript, translator unknown. Mesepa, American Samoa Community College Pacific Collection. La Pérouse, Jean-François de Galaup de. (1785–1788) 1994–1995. The Journal of JeanFrançois de Galaup de la Pérouse 1785–1788. 2 vols. Trans. John Dunmore. London: Hakluyt Society. Leach, Edmund R. 1958. “Magical Hair.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 88: 147–64. Mageo, Jeannette. 1994. “Hairdos and Don’ts: Hair Symbolism and Sexual History in Samoa.” Man 29(2): 407–32. ———. 1998. Theorizing Self in Samoa: Emotions, Genders, and Sexualities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 2002. “Myth, Cultural Identity, and Ethnopolitics: Samoa and the Tongan ‘Empire.’” Journal of Anthropological Research 58(4): 493–520. ———. 2011a. Dreaming Culture: Meanings, Models, and Power in U.S. American Dreams. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2011b. “Empathy and ‘As-If ’ Attachment in Samoa.” In The Anthropology of Empathy: Experiencing the Lives of Others in Pacific Societies, ed. Douglas W. Hollan and C.J. Throop, 69–93. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. ———. 2013. “Toward a Cultural Psychodynamics of Attachment: Samoa and US Comparisons.” In Attachment Reconsidered: Cultural Perspectives on a Western Theory, ed. Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Mageo, 191–215. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mallon, Sean. 2002. Samoan Art and Artists. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Mauss, Marcel. (1925) 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Society. London: Routledge. Maxwell, Anne. 1999. Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the “Native” and the Making of European Identities. London: Leicester University Press. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge.

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Meleisea, Malama. 1987. The Making of Modern Samoa: Traditional Authority and Colonial Administration in the History of Western Samoa. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. Murray, A. 1839. January 15 letter to London Missionary Society Headquarters from Tutuila. Council of World Missions Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Nordström, Alison D. 1991a. “Early Photography in Samoa.” History of Photography 15(4): 272–86. ———. 1991b. “Samoa: Stereoviews and Stereotypes.” Stereo World 18(4): 4–12. Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1992. The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ortner, Sherry B. 1981. “Gender and Sexuality in Hierarchical Societies.” In Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, ed. Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead, 359–409. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Pinney, Christopher, and Nicolas Peterson. 2003. Photography’s Other Histories. Durham: Duke University Press. Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pratt, George. (1862/1911) 1977. Pratt’s Grammar and Dictionary of the Samoan Language. Apia: Malua Printing Press. Pritchard, Mary J. 1984. Siapo: Bark Cloth Art of Samoa. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press; American Samoa Council on Culture, Arts, and Humanities. Pritchard, William T. 1866. Polynesian Reminiscences. London: Chapman and Hall. Quanchi, Max. 2006. “The Imaging of Samoa in Illustrated Magazines and Serial Encyclopaedias in the Early 20th-Century.” The Journal of Pacific History 41(2): 207–17. ———. 2007. “The Euro-American Psyche and the Imaging of Samoa in the Early 20th Century.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 5(1)1–10. Quinn, Naomi, ed. 2005. Finding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Quinn, Naomi, and Jeannette Mageo, eds. 2013. Attachment Reconsidered: Cultural Perspectives on a Western Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reusch, Johann J.K. 2008. “Germans as Noble Savages and Castaways: Alter Egos and Alterity in German Collective Consciousness During the Long Eighteenth Century.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 42(1): 91–129. Richardson, Samuel. (1748) 1985. Clarissa. New York: Penguin. Safroni, Middleton A. 1916. A Vagabond’s Odyssey. London: Grant and Richards Ltd. Schultz, E. (1911) n.d. Samoan Laws Concerning the Family, Real Estate and Succession. Trans. Rev. E Bellward and R.C. Hisaioa. University of Hawai‘i Pacific Collection. ———. 1965. Proverbial Expressions of the Samoans. Wellington: The Polynesian Society. Shore, Bradd. 1982. Sala’ilua: A Samoan Mystery. New York: Columbia University Press. Stair, John B. Rev. 1897. Old Samoa. London: The Religious Tract Society. Stephen, Ann. 1993. Pirating the Pacific: Images of Travel, Trade and Tourism. Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing. Stoler, Ann L. 1995. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Strauss, Claudia, and Naomi Quinn. 1997. A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Stuebel, C. 1976. Myths and Legends of Samoa. Tala o le Vavau, trans. Brother Hermann. Wellington and Apia: Reed and Wesley Productions. Tcherkézoff, Serge. 2003. “On Cloth, Gifts and Nudity: Regarding Some European Misunderstandings during Early Encounters in Polynesia.” In Clothing the Pacific, ed. Chloë Colchester, 51–75. Oxford: Berg. Thode-Arora, Hilke. 2014a. “‘Around the World for Fifty Pence’: The Phenomenon of the Ethnic Shows.” In From Samoa with Love? Samoan Travellers in Germany 1895–1911, ed. Hilke Thode-Arora, 79–91. Munich: Hirmer. ———. 2014b. “The Brothers Fritz and Carl Marquardt: Settlers in Samoa, Ethnic Show Impresarios and Traders in Ethnographica.” In From Samoa with Love? Samoan Travellers in Germany 1895–1911, ed. Hilke Thode-Arora, 46–57. Munich: Hirmer. ———. 2014c. “A Diplomatic Visit?: Tamasese in Germany and the Samoa Show of 1910– 11.” In From Samoa with Love? Samoan Travellers in Germany 1895–1911, ed. Hilke Thode-Arora, 138–79. Munich: Hirmer. Thomas, Nicholas. 1991. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thomas, Nicholas, and Diane Losche. 1999. Double Vision: Art Histories and Colonial Histories in the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tiffany, Sharon W. 2001. “Imagining the South Seas: Thoughts on the Sexual Politics of Paradise in Samoa.” Pacific Studies 24: 19–50. Turner, George. (1861) 1984. Nineteen Years in Polynesia. Papakura: McMillan. Turner, Terence S. 1980. “The Social Skin.” In Not Work Alone: A Cross-Cultural View of Activities Superfluous to Survival, ed. Jeremy Cherfas and Roger Lewin, 112–40. London: Temple Smith. U.S. Postmaster-General. 1908. Report of the US Postmaster-General. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. White, Richard. 1991. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilde, Oscar. (1889) 1972. “The Decay of Lying.” In Essays by Oscar Wilde, ed. Hesketh Pearson, 33–72. Freeport and New York: Books for Libraries Press. Williams, John. (1830–1832) 1984. The Samoan Journals of John Williams, ed. Richard M. Moyle. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Willis, Laulii. 1889. The Story of Laulii, Daughter of Samoa, with the assistance of W.H. Barnes, ed. San Francisco: Jos. Winterburn. Winnicott, D.W. 1951. Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock. Wright, Christopher. 2013. The Echo of Things: The Lives of Photographs in the Solomon Islands. Durham: Duke University Press.

Acknowledgments I thank Elfriede Hermann for initially urging me to investigate German museum collections and for sending information, encouragement, and support, which made my initial forays into museum research possible. I thank Josh Bell, Stanley P. Smith, and Rupert Stasch for their comments and suggestions. I also thank Steffen Herrmann for formatting the chapter, Michelle Poppe for helping me to organize museum data, Ulrich Menter for his generous assistance at the Linden-Museum in Stuttgart, Jeanette Kokott for her kind assistance at the

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Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg, as well as Dorothea Deterts and Renate Noda for their generous help with artifacts at the Übersee-Museum in Bremen. I also thank Washington State for a grant to conduct museum research in Germany and Wenner-Gren for providing funds for museum research in England.

3 Reel to Real Mimesis, Playing Indian, and Touring with The Vanishing Race in New Zealand 1927 SARINA PEARSON

Introduction: Westerns in the Pacific

Throughout much of the twentieth century, Hollywood westerns were a popular and significant influence on Pacific imaginaries and cultural life (Pearson 2013; Salesa 2010; Te Punga Somerville 2010). Cinematically inspired cowboys figured in historical events (Salesa 2010), photographs (Tonga 2014), and literature (Te Punga Somerville 2010). Traces can even be discerned in screen production itself (Pearson 2014). In 1914, four Samoan youths robbed a Chinese gambling establishment, stole government firearms and ammunition, murdered two German planters, and staged a shootout worthy of the penultimate scene in the silent westerns that screened twice weekly in Apia’s Town Hall. Around the same time amateur photographer and local businessman George Crummer took pictures of Cook Island cowboys; groups of young men historian Dick Scott described as “roving bands of cowboys in full costume (no Indians) riding through the palms hitching scrub ponies to the trading store and walking stiff-legged to the counter” (1991: 176; Figure 3.1). The arrival of motion pictures and Hollywood film in the Cook Islands has been described as transformative (Tonga 2014). Locals enthusiastically embraced going to the movies, intensifying their wage labor in part to meet the cost of tickets at any one of the five theaters that operated six days out of seven on Rarotonga in the 1920s (Tonga 2014). “Similar to other parts of the Pacific such as Samoa and Tonga, Cook Island audiences preferred the Hollywood westerns above all other genres” (Tonga 2014). In the 1930s, Richard “Dick” Godwin, a plantation manager at Mulifanua on the west coast of Upolu, built his own theater and imported films directly from a Los Angeles exchange. According to his great-granddaughter, Godwin’s workers were so inspired by B westerns that they persuaded him to train them in horsemanship just like the cowboys they had seen in the movies (Godwin, personal communication, 2014). Lost afternoons watching Hopalong Cassidy

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Figure 3.1. Cook Islands cowboy, circa 1910, Cook Islands, by George Crummer. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (C.003109).

at Apia’s Tivoli Theatre in the forties inspired Samoan novelist and playwright Albert Wendt to populate his future literary work with outlaw cowboys (Wendt 1984; Salesa 2010), and weekly trips to the cinemas in Gisborne perhaps similarly influenced Witi Ihimaera’s story “Nobody Wanted to Be Indians” (1996),

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in which two Māori boys resort to fisticuffs over which one gets to the play the cowboy on the way home from a Saturday matinee. These accounts defy a postcolonial logic that assumes indigenous communities in the Pacific ought to have identified with celluloid Indians on the basis of their shared colonial subjugation. Referring to the enduring popularity of Hollywood cowboys in Samoa, Salesa writes, In an easy, convenient world, Samoans might have recognized a shared colonial predicament between themselves and filmic Indians, turned the tables on cowboys and Germans, and staged inversions of the narratives of westerns. Samoans might have whooped it up as renegade Indians. But it is pretty clear that Samoans were not interested in “playing Indian.” … Samoans wanted to be cowboys. (2010: 332) The complicated and difficult world of the colonial Pacific was a place where identifications between indigenous groups were profoundly shaped by colonial configurations of power (Te Punga Somerville 2010: 684). The popularity of cowboys in Samoa, other Pacific Islands, and far-flung locales farther afield, however, should not be read as simply an exercise of Hollywood imperialism. Critics argue that the cowboy’s transcendent masculinity, sense of cosmic justice, ready violence, and surprising capacity for tenderness and sentimentality (often expressed in song) offered audiences a repertoire of images that helped them make sense of modernity in the rapidly changing contexts in which they lived (Salesa 2010; Ambler 2004; Gondola 2009; Reynolds 2005; Powdermaker 1962). The western therefore became a site onto which various social, economic, and cultural transformations could be mapped and sensuously experienced. The celluloid cowboy became its most potent agent, symbolically equating heroism with whiteness, whereas the cinematic Indian affixed victimization to being brown. The boys in Ihimaera’s story refused to identify with Hollywood Indians, because movie Indians were duplicitous, dangerous, and, perhaps most importantly, doomed. But how might this interpretation change if it transpired that indigenous Pacific communities did not reject cinematic Indians outright but emulated them and what if these emulations were visibly more complex than mere mimicry of the western’s symbolic economy of indigenous dispossession and destruction? This chapter addresses these questions by examining a series of mimetic events between Māori and Hollywood Indians. In 1927 a group of Hopi and Navajo performers arrived in New Zealand as part of the promotional machinery for Paramount’s 1925 epic The Vanishing Race (released in the United States as The Vanishing American). During their six-week engagement in Aotearoa, the group visited Te Arawa at Whakarewarewa and Ngāti Raukawa in Otaki. These encounters were documented on film, in photography, and in reports written by Franklyn Barrett, an Austra-

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lian filmmaker hired by Paramount to promote or, in the parlance of the day, “exploit” the film.1 His photographs in particular show the strikingly mimetic nature of encounters between Māori hosts and their Native American visitors thereby complicating historical accounts about the relative insignificance of Hollywood Indians in the Pacific. While much of Barrett’s archive shows how Paramount perpetuated the exhibitionary economies of extinction and exoticism popularized by world expositions, a small collection of candid photographs accompanied by a brief written account about a Sunday excursion to Otaki invites us to reconsider how Hollywood Indians circulated as mimetic capital (Greenblatt 1991) in the Pacific. Mimetic capital, Greenblatt argues, consists of three interrelated phenomena. First, images and the technologies for the production and distribution of images are circulated through capitalist networks (Greenblatt 1991: 6). Second, images can be considered to constitute a type of capital that can be accrued, stored, and subsequently used to generate new representations (ibid.). Third, mimetic capital refers to qualities mimesis and capital share; “mimesis, as Marx said of capital, is a social relation of production. … this mean[s] that any given representation is not only the reflection or product of social relations but that it is itself a social relation” (ibid.). Whereas mimetic capital has been used to describe the circulation of new signs and performances inspired by a history of encounter between Europeans, Americans, and indigenous Pacific peoples (Balme 2007), it is used here to explore how Native Americans were symbolically and physically distributed by Hollywood capital in the 1920s, how audiences in Australia and New Zealand played Indian-exploiting American narratives of settler colonialism to make sense of their own antipodean context to generate new and unexpected interpretations of settler colonialism, and how Māori encounters with Hopi and Navajo in the 1920s were enmeshed in the symbolic economy of the Hollywood Indian. This chapter’s focus on the influence of Hollywood films and spectatorship in the Pacific complements existing literature that addresses cinematic representation, alterity, subjectivity and modernity during the extraordinarily dynamic 1920s (Bell, Brown, and Gordon 2013; Geiger 2007; Rony 1996). Live performances by “real” Indians in the already ideologically and formally contradictory cinematic context of The Vanishing Race elucidates Hollywood’s imperial power and indigenous agency. On one hand, Paramount orchestrated mimetic performances to focus attention upon parallels between Māori and Native Americans, particularly their shared presumptive fates as vanishing peoples. On the other hand, Hopi and Navajo asserted indigenous agency through acts of impersonation, mimicking popular representations of “themselves” as Show Indians and Māori enacted similar impersonations as denizens

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of “Maoriland” (Blythe 1994: 16–18).2 Describing Paramount’s campaign as an infliction that indigenous performers felt compelled to resist and subvert, fails to adequately describe these encounters. Instead, they were deeply inflected by Hollywood but not entirely indebted to it. Māori used studio-sponsored or -sanctioned events to express indigenous affiliations grounded in the political recognition of common colonial experiences with Navajo and Hopi. They also adopted popular cinematic iconography at these events, suggesting that Māori simultaneously engaged with “real” Indians while to some degree also playing “reel” Indians.

The Vanishing American

Paramount’s Red Indians, as the troupe of Hopi and Navajo performers were officially called, were hired to promote the big budget adaptation of Zane Grey’s novel The Vanishing American. The film was originally conceived of during a trip through the Navajo-Hopi lands of northern Arizona and southern Utah in 1922, when film producer Jesse Lasky and Grey agreed that the stunning, stark, and seemingly vacant landscape of Monument Valley would make an ideal film location (D’arc 2010; Handley 2007; Pauly 2005). Consequently, Grey wrote a cinematically inspired narrative about the mistreatment of Indians. It was initially serialized in the Ladies’ Home Journal and then published by Harper Brothers as a novel to coincide with the film’s 1925 release. The literary and cinematic versions of The Vanishing American tell the story of Nophaie, a young Navajo hero who battles against forces of bureaucratic corruption and government indifference. There are significant differences, however, between its various iterations. The serialization published in 1922 “elicited protests from church-based groups for its negative representations of missionary work on reservations” (Hearne 2012: 134). Harpers insisted upon changes. Grudgingly, Grey tempered but did not eliminate accusations of missionary sexual misconduct and government avarice (Pauly 2005: 242–43). In revising the manuscript for publication as a novel, Grey also revised the ending to suggest a marriage between Nophaie and the white teacher Marion. Without Grey’s permission, his editor at Harper and Brothers publishers changed the plot of the novel back to its serialized ending, in which Nophaie dies of influenza before he and Marion can marry. (Hearne 2012: 134–35) The film version similarly forestalled any possibility of miscegenation. It also omitted the beginning of both published versions in which Nophaie is abducted as a child and subsequently educated at the Carlisle Indian Industrial school, where he distinguished himself as a star athlete and fell in love with

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Marion, only to resoundingly reject the assimilated future he had been prepared for by returning to his reservation. Instead, director George Seitz filmed a lengthy and elaborate “preface” depicting human habitation of the Southwest in epic “evolutionary” terms. It opened with a title card illustrated with mastodons and battling dinosaurs that quoted Herbert Spencer’s First Principles. “We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong … a survival of the fittest.” A parade of evolutionary stages followed: first a troupe of “cavemen,” who amble toward the camera and out of frame, then basketmakers, followed by slab house people, and eventually cliff dwellers who inhabited sophisticated sandstone structures, practiced religion, and a variety of arts. Almost certainly referencing ancient Pueblo peoples,3 the film depicted this group as indolent and thus easy prey for aggressive Navajo who invaded from the north. The invaders, referred to as “early Nopah” (Grey’s pseudonym for Navajo), dominated until sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadors forced the Indians to acknowledge the superiority of their European horses and firepower. The preface then fast-forwards to the Nopah’s “final chapter” with the arrival of Kit Carson, who pacified them through force and with assurances that the U.S. government would allow them to inhabit their ancestral lands, ensure their prosperity by teaching them to farm, and ultimately assimilate them as “good white men.” Carson’s rhetoric proved hollow, as the Nopah found themselves increasingly consigned to unsustainable tracts of desert. Their ignominious fate is offered as ultimate proof of Spencer’s prognostication that the strong will ceaselessly and inevitably devour the weak. Thus primed, audiences read the ensuing story of Nophaie’s doomed heroism against intractable institutional treachery and government corruption as yet another chapter in the master narrative of cultural obsolescence. Seitz’s film version of Grey’s story retreated entirely from the author’s antireligious critique. It distilled the various forces that dispossessed and victimized Indians into a single character: the villainous assistant Indian agent, Booker, played by Noah Beery. Booker was unambiguously evil. He stole Indian horses on the pretext of animal welfare, sexually attacked Marion in her schoolroom, and confiscated all the remaining arable land on the reservation while Nophaie and his kinsmen fought heroically on behalf of the United States in World War I. When the Nopah soldiers returned from the Western Front, they found their families starving. Angry and desperate they mounted an insurrection against Booker’s offices. Nophaie counseled restraint, but to no avail. Booker and his men opened fire on the returned soldiers with machine guns. Distressed at the mounting carnage, Nophaie tried to stop the battle, only to be accidentally shot by friendly fire. As he lay dying in the penultimate scene, he accepted Christ and appeared to fatalistically accept his people’s destiny to eventually vanish.

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The Vanishing Race has been described as a sympathetic western because instead of envisioning Indians as formidable and irrationally savage opponents to the project of settlement and white privilege, as was the case in many Hollywood westerns, it depicted Indians as victims of corruption and modernity (Aquila 1996; Hearne 2012; Lewis 2012; Varner 2009). It was considered atypical of the genre because of its focus on a doomed hero instead of “the west as the home and testing ground for invincible heroes” (Walle 2000: 129). Known also as “reform dramas” (Aleiss 1991: 468; Hearne 2012: 106) sympathetic westerns tapped into public outrage over Native American policy by offering audiences images of indigenous distress through a potent combination of realism and Hollywood melodrama. At first glance realism and melodrama seem awkward, if not incompatible. Whereas realism focuses upon sober observable visible evidence (Nichols 1991), melodrama emphasizes heightened affect and emotion. Hearne (2012: 106), however, argues that the reform drama’s political aims partially arbitrated between the two. The authenticity provided by shooting on location on remote reservation lands in Monument Valley; casting thousands of Hopi, Navajo, and Paiute extras; and devoting significant amounts of screen time to the depiction of “traditional” activities seemed to reinforce The Vanishing American’s authority to critique indigenous victimization. Claims to ethnographic authenticity also appealed to the public’s appetite for the nascent genre of dramatic documentary signaled by Flaherty’s commercial success with Nanook of the North (1922). Lasky, who had commissioned several dramatic documentaries in the mid-1920s, including Moana: Romance of a Golden Age (1925), Grass (1925), and Chang (1927), no doubt endorsed if not encouraged revitalizing the well-established Indian drama by wedding it to this popular new genre. Whether for political reasons or to increase The Vanishing Race’s popular appeal, fusing realism and melodrama produced a formally incongruous and deeply contradictory film. The preface remains stylistically and tonally distinct from the melodramatic narrative that follows. Lasky’s extraordinary effort to use real locations and authentic extras is curiously undermined by a series of casting choices that include Richard Dix in red face as Nophaie, Bernard Siegel as Do Etin, and the Navajo themselves as the non-Navajo cliff dwellers who were exterminated by invading Nopah (Handley 2007). The melodramatic portion of the film attempts to produce pathos and elicit sympathy that are definitively foreclosed by the preface’s unequivocal assertion that the Nopah are doomed to disappear. Many of these contradictions are specific to The Vanishing American but also reflect more widespread indeterminacy and hybridity in Hollywood films of the 1920s. For example, W.S. Van Dyke’s White Shadows in the South Seas for MGM (1928) similarly mixes melodrama with footage of a more dispassionately “documentary nature” to

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authenticate its anticolonial claims (Geiger 2007). The ontological blurring of fact and fiction, realism, and melodrama in these films would have been further compounded by exhibition practices in which the feature film would have been accompanied by an assortment of items including newsreels, short subjects, and live acts. Live acts had become such an important part of downtown movie palace exhibition by the mid-1920s that there were three well-developed types (Gomery 1978). Labeled “presentations” in industry jargon, the first type was the “pure” presentation, a revue-like spectacle with a troupe of dancers and several specialty vaudeville acts built around one particular theme (ibid.: 25). These presentations, pioneered by Chicago exhibition moguls Balaban and Katz, were usually thematically distinct from the film they preceded. Sid Grauman, a rival exhibitor, developed a second format commonly referred to as the “prologue,” in which the “presentation’s central theme was linked to a theme or motif from the feature film” (ibid.). The third variation was a variety type show. The performances staged by Paramount’s Red Indians in Australia and New Zealand were almost certainly thematically related to The Vanishing Race, but relatively little detail about prologues in general let alone specific details about their particular performance have survived. Some accounts suggest that the Indians performed a cultural display, including peace pipe smoking, a war dance, and demonstrations of archery (Sunday Mail Brisbane, 16 December 1926: 8); however, most reviewers tended to focus upon the film itself, describing live entertainment very generally as “haunting” (Evening Post, 5 February 1927: 19) or “atmospheric” (NZ Truth, 3 February 1927: 2). Without more definitive information about the constituent elements of these prefatory performances, it is difficult to ascertain precisely how mimetic they were in relation to the film. However, it seems almost certain that Paramount intended live performance to intensify their feature release’s sense of realism. Live cultural displays preceding Seitz’s lengthy evolutionary prologue would ideally authenticate if not enhance The Vanishing American’s claims to ethnographic realism, although, as will become apparent, elements of the live prologue, such as costuming, were not necessarily ethnographically accurate. Using four members of the film cast in the live prologue similarly reinforced the film’s apparent authenticity. Of the four, only eleven-year-old Nasjah Manheimer, who appears in several key scenes with Richard Dix, is immediately recognizable. For audiences the appearance of this child must have been uncanny, appearing as he did to “step out of the screen.” The introduction of real live Indians into The Vanishing American’s already ontologically unstable and ideologically inconsistent narrative effectively amplified its most obvious contradiction. The Indians’ presence in Sydney’s theaters, streets, schools, department stores, and newspapers not to mention the thousands of extras on screen in the film’s epic battle

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scenes seriously tested if not made outright mockery of any notion that they were disappearing due to a “failure to adapt to modernity.”4 Their simulation of vanishing, although deeply ironic, was not especially new. Paramount’s promotional strategies were consistent with nineteenthcentury Wild West shows that toured Australia and New Zealand. In 1890 Harmston’s Circus introduced a Wild West exhibition to Melbourne (Arrighi 2009: 72). That same year, Wirth Brothers introduced a Wild West component modeled upon Buffalo Bill’s shows to their New Zealand circus. This show included roughriding demonstrations, war dances, and simulated attacks on covered wagons that ended in the definitive defeat of real “genuine denizens of the plains and forests, not semicivilised fellows picked up perhaps, from some other show in the States” (Auckland Star, 22 September 1890: 3). By the time Paramount’s Red Indians arrived down under in the 1920s Indians were an integral part of Australasia’s symbolic and cultural landscape. A psychic investment in Indians has often been described as exceptionally American (Deloria 1998). The degree, however, to which Indians figured in Australasian fantasies was powerfully expressed by a Sydney journalist who wrote, “When we were boys we dreamt of Indians, we fought them in the bush covered paddocks near our homes—but they were always dream Indians. At the Prince Edward they present them to you in the flesh on the stage” (Truth [Sydney, NSW], Sunday, 11 July 1926: 6).5

Paramount’s Red Indians Down Under

Transporting Native Americans to Australasia to promote a film for nearly a year was consistent with Paramount Studios’ intensive, elaborate, and indeed expensive domestic and international publicity campaigns of the 1920s for their prestige releases.6 For The Ten Commandments Paramount organized 11 road shows which toured Australia with a packaged publicity campaign. … Part of the publicity for Ben Hur included a man in Roman costume who drove a chariot from Sydney to Melbourne. A 30-foot brontosaurus roamed the streets of Perth to announce The Lost World. … Cinema lobbies were regularly transformed into pirate ships, or Indian camps, or tropical islands. (Segrave 1997: 25) Paramount’s Red Indians, which consisted of Hopi elders Frank Seumptewa and Sikia Omeyoma; Charlie Telwepe and Earl Numkena, who were in their thirties; Roy and Amelia Dee, with their two small children; along with Navajo brothers eleven-year-old Nasjah Manheimer and seventeen-year-old Leonard were contracted to perform cultural demonstrations in the foyers of movie

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palaces and present live prologues before several screenings daily, meet and greet civic groups of various kinds, and promote American products such as Pontiac automobiles and Indian motorcycles.7 They arrived in Sydney from San Francisco on Matson Line’s Sierra on 26 June 1926 to a crowd of 30,000 spectators (Geraldton Guardian, 9 July 1927: 1). After an extended engagement at the recently built palatial Prince Edward Theatre, Paramount’s Red Indians toured Australian capital cities and towns for more than seven months. Franklyn Barrett’s photographic archive documents a range of promotional activities from relatively casual encounters with white Australians in bush settings to elaborately staged events during which peace pipes were smoked with dignitaries. One such encounter features the governor of New South Wales Sir Dudley de Chair, who is photographed wearing a feather warbonnet (Figure 3.2). The Indians’ promotional activities in New Zealand were similar to their Australian activities although perhaps conducted on a comparatively modest scale. They were taken to tea at the Tudor Tea Rooms in Auckland with Zane Grey, who was in New Zealand on a fishing expedition (Auckland Star, 22 January 1927: 13). In Wellington the Indians paraded on horseback from the railway station to the town hall, where Lord Mayor Norwood held a civic

Figure 3.2. Sir Dudley de Chair (left) wearing feather warbonnet. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

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reception for them (Evening Post, 2 February 1927: 2; The Film Weekly, 27 February 1927: 12; Figure 3.3). There was, however, one signature difference between the studio’s approach to promotion in Australia and in New Zealand. Whereas Paramount painstakingly and quite publicly orchestrated an encounter between the Indian troupe and Māori, they do not appear to have arranged similar events with aboriginal groups in Australia. This disparity is likely due at least in part to differentiated popular discourses of vanishing and the extinction of primitive peoples. Australian aboriginal groups were popularly conceptualized as having already vanished. It was not simply that the first Australians seemed devoid of customs, beliefs, values, reason, and even language, it was also as if, to many of the early commentators, they were already nonexistent. They did not live in villages, they did not farm or garden, and they possessed little or nothing of economic value except the land, which they were deemed not to possess. Further, they did not pose the threat of organized warfare that colonists encountered in North America, South Africa, and New Zealand. … Until the 1970s, white appropriation of Australian territory was legitimized by the doctrine of terra nullius. (Brantlinger 2003: 118)

Figure 3.3. Paramount’s Red Indians with Lord Mayor Norwood, Wellington, 2 February 1927. (Visit of American Red Indians, Wellington, by Roland Searle. Purchased 1999 with New Zealand Lottery Grants Board funds. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa [A.018536]).

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Native Americans and Māori, however, were often popularly described as hovering in a twilight state of inevitable extinction, doomed to eventually succumb to the juggernaut of Western progress (Brantlinger 2003). Paramount’s interest in staging photo opportunities between Hopi, Navajo, and Māori was undoubtedly driven in part by the prospect of expanding the film’s registers of sentiment, effectively transforming the film from the exceptionally American Vanishing American to a universal saga of human “progress.” The studio signaled its objectives by remarketing the film as The Vanishing Race in international markets. The film’s relatively modest box office sales in its domestic market (Aleiss 2005) may have increased pressure on the studio to increase sales in its foreign markets.8 In late 1926, Paramount executive John W. Hicks arranged for the Māori tribe Te Arawa to formally invite the Indians to Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa in the Rotorua region (The Film Weekly, 23 December 1926: 21). Paramount exploiteer Johnson elicited the elaborately illustrated invitation in person. It addressed Frank Seumptewa and his fellow Hopi and Navajo performers as distant “kinsmen,” while the seven chiefs who signed the document referred to themselves as “relations.” Paramount published a copy of this invitation in the trade journal The Film Weekly,9 and barely a month later Barrett and the Indians found themselves on a southbound bus just hours after disembarking in Auckland harbor. Barrett’s official account of the Indians’ powhiri (Māori welcoming ceremony) at Whakarewarewa, describes how Chief Seumptewa and his delegation were guided onto the marae (Māori meeting house) at the Model Pā by the Te Arawa elder Tutanekai. There they faced a wero, which are a series of intimidating challenges from three Māori warriors reserved for visitors and dignitaries. Once their Māori hosts were satisfied that the Indians intended peace, the troupe was led to the front of the elaborately carved meeting house, where women performed dances of welcome and men performed a haka. The Indians then reciprocated by preparing and smoking a peace pipe with Te Arawa elder Mita Taupopoki before bestowing Hopi “chieftainship” on him by naming him “Chief Ripening Corn” and presenting him with what Barrett refers to as a splendid “Hopi War Bonnet.” Feathered headdresses were not part of Hopi or Navajo dress. The actors in The Vanishing Race as well as Hopi and Navajo men more generally in the 1920s were likely to wear cotton trousers and shirts, perhaps a silver belt, silver or turquoise necklaces, and a cloth headband.10 Nevertheless, at virtually every official event in Australasia, Frank Seumptewa and his colleagues wore feathered headdresses along with fake buckskin fringed trousers and shirts. Their outfits, which were a pastiche of stylistic elements drawn primarily from American Plains Indians (Green 1988: 39), were typical of those that nineteenth-century Show Indians wore (Brown, personal communication, 2015).

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Popular literary westerns about settling the frontier and live shows like Buffalo Bill’s Wild West had cemented Plains Indians, primarily Sioux, in the popular imagination as authentic “Red Indians” (Moses 1996: 4). The “generic” Plains-style feathered headdress formed the basis of Paramount’s promotion because of its metonymic potency and mimetic utility. Dignitaries in Australia were invariably offered the opportunity to wear one of the feathered headdresses and to pose for an obligatory photograph (see Figure 3.2). Wearing the war bonnet alluded to the recognizable but contradictory pleasures of “playing Indian” while amplifying the incongruity between this article of clothing and its wearer, and thus reinforcing his or her whiteness. At Whakarewarewa however, the headdress produced an altogether different effect. In a photograph taken at the Model Pā on January 20, Mita Taupopoki and Frank Seumptewa performed a hongi (a traditional Māori greeting) presumably at the conclusion of the powhiri (Figure 3.4). The image is arresting for its symmetry and the striking resemblance between the men in it. At first glance they appear to be mirror images, virtually indistinguishable until one registers Taupopoki’s feather cape and taiaha (carved wooden staff ). The composition, which relies heavily upon the men’s twinned Plains-style feather warbonnets seems almost certainly designed to

Figure 3.4. Frank Seumptewa and Mita Taupopoki, hongi at Whakarewarewa, 20 January 1927. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

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draw strong visual parallels between Native Americans and Māori as romantic relics doomed to extinction. The photograph, which reproduces the optics of anthropological display popularized by innumerable international expositions, offers seemingly incontrovertible visible evidence that Hopi, Navajo, and Māori were essentially the same, thus authenticating Paramount’s claims to tell the story of “vanishing races” (Corbey 1993; Rydell 2006). This photograph appeared in newspapers and trade journals, including the Auckland Star, with the caption, “Brown Man Greets the Red” (Auckland Star, 22 January 1927: 10).11 The series of events that led up to this photograph and the photograph itself exemplify the “reproduction and circulation of mimetic capital” (Greenblatt 1991). Mimetic capital is a particularly useful framework for Paramount’s Red Indians and their encounter with Māori because it elucidates and explains the role Hollywood played in engineering and choreographing this event while simultaneously offering insight into the complex effects it produced for its participants. In this case, Paramount Studios specifically and Hollywood more generally produced and distributed the western’s iconography on a global scale. Celluloid cowboys and filmic Indians entered innumerable imaginaries,12 becoming part of cultural repertoires that could be enacted in novel ways, such as those enumerated at the beginning of this chapter. Reel Indians were more than simply images to emulate. They produced new complex social relations not just between Native Americans and Māori but between these groups and their representations. Paramount’s decision to costume Frank Seumptewa and his colleagues in Show Indian apparel was not merely expedient; it was strategic. The Indians’ physical presence in theaters and on tours was designed to authenticate the film’s realism, not its ethnography. They were dressed as Show Indians because in effect that is what they were. Barrett’s archive contains no trace that Seumptewa or his colleagues exercised autonomy or agency over their performances for Paramount; however, there is no indication they were entirely subjugated either. Views on indigenous agency in Wild West shows and Hollywood films have long been divided. Some critics view Native American performers as powerless pawns in their own exploitation (Friar and Friar 1972), while others argue that participation in shows constituted acts of survival. Kasson suggests that Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show gave Indians opportunities to “[perform] many roles, of which the stage villain was only one. … [They were] offered reasonable pay, a chance to travel, and an opportunity to interact with a large variety of non-Indian people” (2000: 163). The appeal of working in Hollywood included similarly new experiences, better economic opportunities, and “freedom from the paternalism of federal officials. For some Indians, Hollywood could serve as

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an alternative to the sense of confinement and oppression that often came with life on an Indian reservation” (Rosenthal 2005: 333). Although in many respects free to capitalize upon their own cultural resources, Paramount’s Red Indians were nonetheless treated like chattel by the U.S. government, which required Paramount to post a bond guaranteeing their return following the tour. They were chaperoned by Hugh Dickson Shine Smith, a freelance Presbyterian missionary, who by all accounts was a sympathetic and knowledgeable figure, having lived on the Navajo reservation at Tuba City for decades (Kildare 1966). To what extent the cast of Paramount’s Red Indians continued to work as Show Indians after this tour is unclear, largely because of the uncredited nature of their labor. Frank Seumptewa did not pursue a career in Los Angeles; however, from his home in Arizona he continued to be involved with filmmakers, including Howard Hawks (Arizona Independent Republic, 27 November 1940: 51) and Howard Hughes (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 25 May 1942: 44), suggesting that he continued in some capacity as “theatrical labor” (Werry 2011: 128). Te Arawa were similarly experienced cultural performers. Paramount’s decision to stage their historic mimetic encounter at Whakarewarewa was logistically expedient because Te Arawa had a long history of cultural entrepreneurship and performance. From the mid-nineteenth century, Tūhuorangi, one of Te Arawa’s three major kin groups, catered to wealthy European tourists and dignitaries keen to view the spectacular geothermal formation known as the Pink and White Terraces on Lake Rotomahana and glimpse “real” Māori. After the terraces were destroyed by the 1886 Mount Tarawera eruption, “many members of Tūhourangi mov[ed] to Whakarewarewa, at the invitation of their closest relatives, Ngāti Wāhiao … [bringing] with them all their skills as guides and tourist entrepreneurs” (O’Malley and Armstrong 2008: 214). Unfortunately, they were largely thwarted from resuming their tourism businesses. The New Zealand government, eager to develop Rotorua as a tourist destination and flagship for the modern nation-state (Werry 2011), systematically alienated Māori from prime land and geothermal resources in the region. Eventually Māori settlement concentrated at Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa, where “under the auspices of the Department of Tourism and Health Resorts” (Diamond 2012) they were reduced to “ethnological exhibits, living natural heritage sites, and curiosities as novel as the thermal grounds on which they stood” (Werry 2011: 3). Although largely excluded from capitalizing upon the tourism of which they were a central component, Te Arawa continued to guide tourists (Treagus 2012; Werry 2011) and staged performances on a commercial basis for the tourist department (O’Malley and Armstrong 2008: 230). These shows were expressly designed for non-Māori audiences. Treagus notes:

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When Maori began to perform in spaces outside their own cultural areas. … Songs and dances were taken out of their original context, and solidified into set pieces that worked with pakeha audiences. Likewise as tourism grew in Rotorua, a canon of selected songs and dances formed for use in tourist shows. … Bella Papakura organised two or three dance performances a week in Whakarewarewa. (2004: 760) Like Paramount’s Red Indians and their predecessors in Wild West shows, Te Arawa staged performances of “themselves” to cater to the expectations of nonindigenous spectators. In some sense these performances could be viewed as acts of impersonation, which is a tactic Chen (2005) writes about in relation to Asian American politics and performativity. Impersonation involves assuming a public identity, partly of one’s own construction, that entertains a majority culture. In the process this performance ensures not only cultural visibility but economic survival. Te Arawa also toured internationally. A group of fifty performers traveled to New York in 1909 (Werry 2011). In 1911 legendary guide Maggie Papakura (Margaret Pattison Thom) and Mita Taupopoki led a troupe to London, where they performed at the Festival of Empire in a “reconstructed village on the grounds of the Crystal Palace” (Werry 2011: 123). Paramount was able to engineer the photo opportunity at Whakarewarewa because of the production and circulation of mimetic capital in Hollywood westerns, prevailing modes of indigenous cultural performance, and discourses of vanishing. It is tempting to dismiss or diminish the mimetic exchange between Hopi, Navajo, and Te Arawa at Whakarewarewa because the “conversation” they engaged in, to borrow Mageo’s terminology from the introduction to this volume, was engineered by capitalist corporate forces in what Poignant refers to as “show space” (2004: 7). It is a temptation worth resisting, however, not just because mimesis from the “top down” is a valid phenomenon in its own right but because although Paramount’s publicity department orchestrated this mimetic encounter, the encounter does not appear to have been wholly contained or controlled by it. Barrett’s discursive accounts hint that relations between Hopi, Navajo, and Māori were facilitated by Hollywood but not dictated by it. Before and after the official performances on the Model Pā, Barrett and the Indians were hosted at Te Papaiouru Marae in Ohinemutu. They exchanged speeches there upon arrival, ate, slept, and before their departure were given parting gifts, including a cloak (presented by Tutanekai to Frank Seumptewa), a carved paddle, a walking stick, a pipe, and a kete (woven bag). The fact that the Indians were hosted at Ohinemutu is significant because Te Arawa maintained spatial and social distinctions between fee-paying tourists, who were entertained at Whakare-

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warewa, and dignitaries, who were hosted at Ohinemutu on a noncommercial basis (O’Malley and Sullivan 2008: 230). Borough chairman Tai Mitchell (Henry Taiporutu Te Mapu-o-te-rangi Mitchell) tended to organize these latter events. Barrett’s archive contains a letter from Mitchell dated several weeks after the visit. In it Mitchell apologizes for the delay, having been preoccupied with a visit from the Duke and Duchess of York, and details a bill for groceries, which suggests that the Indians were guests and perhaps also clients. Visitors to marae customarily give the hosts koha (gift, donation, contribution) to help defray their host’s costs. Although koha are often given at the time of the event, it is entirely possible that uncertain how many people would be attending the event, Barrett liaised with Mitchell afterward.

Otaki

A second encounter between Paramount’s Red Indians and Māori reinforces the impression that while the studio was instrumental in facilitating the event, the mimetic encounter it engineered exceeded its control. In early February during their Wellington engagement, Paramount’s Red Indians were invited to the Raukawa Marae in Otaki near New Plymouth. The invitation appears to have been extended by Kingi Tahiwi (Kingi Te Ahoaho Tahiwi), who at the time was a translator at the head office of the Native Department in Wellington. Paramount employees attended the event but played no apparent part in initiating it.13 Tahiwi, along with William Harold Wills, who was then headmaster of Otaki Māori Boys College, organized the event while Mr. Wylie of Wylie’s Motor Garage arranged transportation at this own cost (Otaki Mail, 9 February 1927: 2). Many of the protocols observed at Raukawa Marae were the same as those enacted at Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa, including a powhiri and programmes of reciprocal dance; nevertheless, this event differed in tone, content, and representation. For example, the motorcade containing Frank Seumptewa and his colleagues was serenaded into the town of Otaki by a Māori brass band. Barrett notes that there was much humor in the obligatory speeches of welcome, including good-natured joking that took the form of an offer to organize a marriage between the Indians and Ngāti Raukawa. Eighty-year-old Sikia Omeyoma apparently had to be forcibly restrained from taking up the offer, much to the amusement of the gathered crowd.14 There was a public component to the event and a private one restricted to the visitors and their Māori hosts. At lunch, “a picturesque Maori maiden, clad in a … feather robe, sat at a modern piano and struck up a two-step” (Barrett 1927), inducing a formerly sedate Māori matron carrying a large teapot

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to dance the Charleston as she poured for those gathered. Hosts and visitors then attended a Māori language service at the Rangiataea Church, the oldest Māori Anglican church in New Zealand, famous for its neogothic exterior and Māori-inspired interior with kowhaiwhai15 decoration (Brown 2009). After the service, Seumptewa and his colleagues were taken to visit the monument commemorating the legendary Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha. Te Rauparaha was a colorful, and venerated, military leader who late in life commissioned the Rangiataea Church although he himself never converted to Christianity. He has been described as a brilliant military tactician who led many intertribal campaigns to secure territory for his tribe and eventually played a key role in the musket wars, most of which took place between 1818 and 1840 (Keane 2012). In the 1840s Te Rauparaha signed the Treaty of Waitangi—the historically vexed agreement that effectively formalized the relationship between Māori and British settlers. He signed believing that it would secure his ownership over land he had conquered. He resisted European exploitation of the treaty by preventing surveys in the Wairau Plains and later aiding Māori attacks on settlers (Oliver 2012). In response, Governor Grey arrested him and held him without charge while attacking his tribe. Ensuring that Paramount’s Red Indians were taken to Te Rauparaha’s monument to hear about his many exploits seems like a carefully calculated opportunity to tell them of Te Rauparaha’s mana and Ngāti Raukawa’s historical grievances over land confiscation. A subsequent publicly extended invitation to visit Ratana Pa in front of nearly a thousand Māori who had gathered to meet the Indians seems like a similar gesture. Although the Indians were unable to accept the invitation because of professional obligations in Wellington, it seems very likely that this invitation would have been accompanied by a detailed explanation of the Ratana movement’s political significance. The Ratana movement was a pantribal Christian movement that campaigned for social equality and justice on the basis of the Treaty of Waitangi (Newman 2011). Its founder, prophet and faith healer, Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana, went to London to see King George V in 1924 armed with a petition of 45,000 Māori signatures (two-thirds of the Māori population at the time) to discuss the alienation of Māori from their land and breaches in the Treaty of Waitangi (ibid.). Fearing embarrassment, the New Zealand government opposed such a meeting and effectively thwarted Ratana’s plans; however, his efforts placed Māori grievances over the treaty firmly back on the national agenda after decades of government indifference. It seems unlikely that Frank Seumptewa—who had been forcibly sent to the Sherman Institute, a residential school designed to assimilate Indians, in 1906 with this wife and two children (Sakiestewa Gilbert 2010: xxiv)—would have failed to register or empathize with his hosts’ politicized discourse of resistance and challenge.

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Barrett recounts two intensely mimetic moments at Otaki. In the first, he describes how a very old Māori woman carefully copied every gesture of a dance the Indians performed for their hosts. Although there is no photograph of her in Barrett’s archive, this fleeting but powerful anecdote suggests that mimetic exchanges between Māori and the Indians also occurred “from the bottom up” as a sensual corporeal event that expressed respect and affinity through similitude. In Barrett’s second mimetic moment, he describes how spirited young Māori women “commandeered” the Indians’ headdresses while serving afternoon tea in the wharekai (dining hall). This latter instance appears to be hinted at in Figure 3.5, where three Māori women pose for a candid portrait wearing feather warbonnets that they appear to have appropriated from Leonard Manheimer (center) and Frank Seumptewa (to the right). The broad grin of the young woman in the light-colored dress suggests playfulness rather than parody or postcolonial menace (Bhabha 1994). Playing Indian has long been considered serious business. Often considered a distinctively American tradition that extends back to the founding of the republic, it has been linked to ambivalent nationalist desires fulfilled by simultaneously valorizing and dispossessing Native Americans (Deloria 1998).

Figure 3.5. Franklyn Barrett, Leonard Manheimer, and Frank Seumptewa at Otaki. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

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However, a number of postcolonial scholars have noted that the practice also resonated across various settler colonial sites. In the Australian context, McGrath argues that playing Indian often took the form of imaginative child’s play, effectively functioning as a “dramatized allegory of settler colonialism” (McGrath 2001). She suggests that these games consolidated modern identities by offering explanations of the genesis and development of settler states. The fact that these stories originated “somewhere else” simultaneously added to their potency and their palatability because they seemed universal and yet projected recognizable symbolic engagements with indigeneity onto foreign, and therefore safer, spaces (McGrath 2007). Similarly, the western’s popularity in New Zealand has been attributed to its capacity to express settler colonial logics, particularly those of belonging in disputed territory and relations between the indigenous and the nonindigenous (Limbrick 2007: 70; Te Punga Somerville 2010: 673). Settler colonialism’s real historic violence and its reel emblemization in Hollywood westerns provides an important context within which to read the women’s playfulness, but it might fail to fully capture its meaning. One possible clue might lie with Barrett, who wears a korowaistyle cloak made of fine flax and tassels. He stands to the women’s left in Figure 3.5. Visitors to marae dressed in Māori cloaks on two types of occasions: tourist displays such as those in Rotorua, where “visitor[s] [were] dressed in Māori garb and photographed as pantomime chief[s]” (Werry 2011: 112) and, according to Māori diplomatic protocol, when important visitors were presented with “valuable and storied cloaks, in order to symbolically assume the mantle of mana lent by the tribe welcoming them” (Werry 2011: 112). Both occasions effectively translated visitors. The first made them objects of ridicule (mostly good-natured and perhaps sometimes otherwise), while the second acknowledged their status by making it visibly manifest through articles of prestige clothing. The visit to Raukawa Marae seems to have consisted of a mixture of both good-natured ridicule and respect. Barrett, Reg Kelly, and Frank Lawton as well as Amelia Dee, her older child, and Nasjah Manheimer were photographed dressed in cloaks. Manheimer and one of the unidentified exploiteers wear piupiu (which are short kilts made of flax usually used for dance) over their shoulders as cloaks (Figure 3.6). The caption in Barrett’s photo album reads, “Frank Lawton, Franklyn Barrett and Reg Kelly in disguise.”16 Compared to other candid photographs from Raukawa in which these men are shown wearing their street clothes, these photographs suggest that the men are slightly ill at ease in the cloaks, but they nevertheless pose gamely for the camera. By contrast, the Ngāti Raukawa women wear their feather headdresses with much greater confidence. Taken in conjunction, the two photographs strongly suggest that these mimetic gestures

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Figure 3.6. Amelia Dee, Frank Lawton, Nasjah Manheimer, Franklyn Barrett, Reg Kelly, and unknown gentleman at Otaki. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

involving cloaks, piupiu, and feather headdresses were strongly reciprocal in nature. These photographs potentially signify more than hospitality and reciprocity, however. The women might have appropriated the headdresses because they “belonged” to the real Indians standing next to them, with whom they felt affinity and affection. The strikingly easy physical intimacy with which the women link arms or hold hands with Leonard Manheimer and Frank Seumptewa seems to support this interpretation. They might also have appropriated the headdresses as symbols of reel Indians, whom they may or may not have recognized as impersonations. With the construction of Bright’s purpose-built cinema in 1913, film exhibition had become a regular fixture in Otaki. While little information about favorite Hollywood genres in 1920s Otaki survives, fifty kilometers away in Upper Hutt comedies were apparently popular and the cinema was well attended, with most townspeople patronizing the cinema more than sixteen times a year on average (Cleveland 2003).

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For the women of Ngāti Raukawa, encountering cinematic characters who literally stepped off the screen, apparently “made flesh” as that Sydney journalist had written the year before, must have been a powerfully modern experience. The opportunity to then play self-consciously with one of the distinguishing cinematic signifiers of the Hollywood western effectively sutured them into the global image economy. The enduring irony here is that although they wore the headdress in much the same way as Mita Taupopoki at the Model Pā, their act of indigenous affinity in the context of their gender and their modernity produces radically specular alterity. Primed by postcolonial critics to look for any trace of indigenous resistance or empowerment in the colonial context, whether Bhabha’s potential menace of mimetic metonymy (1994), Taussig’s mischievous modes of disruptive imitation (1993), or other appropriative acts of subversive emancipation, there is a powerful temptation here to privilege the Māori-Indian encounter at Otaki as more authentic and therefore more significant than the one at Whakarewarewa. Barrett’s photographic archive shows encounters at Otaki to be more candid and joyful, and his discursive account of the warmth and humor on the Raukawa Marae significantly reinforces this impression. The issue with privileging one as more authentic than the other is that it sets up a problematic and false dichotomy. These events were mutually interdependent logistically, culturally, and symbolically. Paramount’s efforts to emphasize a sense of pathos about modernity using Hopi, Navajo, and Māori as props in taxidermic tableaux (Rony 1996) of disappearing primitives produced opportunities for Ngāti Raukawa to arrange an encounter in which they could meet, talk, sing, dance and express solidarity, share a meal, their home, and perhaps even their politics.

Conclusion

Contemporary scholarship on the western in the Pacific focuses attention on Hollywood cinema’s role as a cultural resource in the region, but much of this work has emphasized the potent iconography of cinematic cowboys (Salesa 2010; Te Punga Somerville 2010). In this chapter the celluloid Indian, although far less prominent in the historical record, clearly constitutes a type of mimetic capital enabling symbolic or reel encounters as well as physical or real encounters. Under the auspices of Paramount Studios, Navajo and Hopi circulated symbolically on the silver screen as noble, sentimental, and romanticized relics on the verge of extinction. Paradoxically, by hiring them to market the film, the studio effectively undermined its own narrative. Frank Seumptewa and his fellow performers were integrated into the modern global economy and consequently were empowered to irrefutably perform

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modern subjectivity as they visibly adapted to rapid social and technological transformation. Not only did Hollywood Indians circulate along routes of commerce and technology, but they also provided a potent supply of images that audiences redeployed mimetically. White Australians and New Zealanders played Indian, usually by donning the metonymic Plains-style feathered headdress. Thus costumed, they could simultaneously manifest their modernity as sophisticated consumers of the latest cultural technology and enact the conditions of dispossession that enabled their very presence in settler colonies. More than a few photographs in Barrett’s archive appear to demonstrate this phenomenon. In several photographs dignitaries or socialites wear feathered Indian headdresses while socializing with Frank Seumptewa and his colleagues. In others, crowds line the streets of Sydney and Melbourne wearing paper-feathered headdresses (courtesy of Paramount) in anticipation of encountering some real live Red Indians. For Māori, the mimetic capital of Hollywood Indians produced social relations of symbolic equivalence as vanishing indigenes and also opportunities to express themselves as modern cosmopolitan subjects. In the summer of 1927, it also engendered opportunities to encounter Native Americans face to face in social encounters where hospitality could be reciprocated, histories of colonial oppression shared, and friendships formed. Barrett’s photographic archive simultaneously makes mimetic exchanges during these encounters visible and remains stubbornly silent on the precise nature of the indigenous relations engendered. What Te Arawa at Whakarewarewa and Ngāti Raukawa at Otaki thought of these encounters, or the film itself, is like much of the history of cinema spectatorship in the twentieth-century Pacific: difficult to research. More detailed historical records do not seem to exist. However, reading between the lines of Barrett’s discursive texts suggests that while these encounters were shaped by Hollywood capital (symbolic and financial), they were far from wholly contained or controlled by American studios. One can only speculate as to what Frank Seumptewa and his fellow performers made of Te Rauparaha’s memorial and the invitation to visit Ratana Pa, but Kingi Tahiwi’s motivations for placing symbolically potent sites of Māoridom on that day’s agenda strongly suggest a desire to share Ngāti Raukawa’s mana and history of colonial oppression with their Native American visitors. Barrett’s photographs, particularly those taken at Otaki, suggest something perhaps as political but manifestly more playful. These images show how Māori deployed the mimetic capital of the Hollywood Indian. The women in Figure 3.5 have appropriated the Red Indians’ feathered headdresses (almost certainly comically since everyone who has been to the cinema knows women cannot be Indian braves).

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The humor with which the headdresses are worn suggests something akin to mimetic excess (Taussig 1993: 254–55), which is produced by symbolic interactions that render the boundaries between Self and Alter unstable. Under these circumstances mimesis becomes self-conscious and self-aware, simultaneously spontaneous and ironic. Whether deliberate or not these women satirically exploited the incongruity of Māori subjects playing Indian. This photograph is all the more startling because it utterly fails to reproduce the symbolic equivalence of romantic extinction so clearly manifest in the studio’s carefully stage-managed image of the hongi between Mita Taupopoki and Frank Seumptewa at Whakarewarewa. Perhaps it is the women’s twentieth-century clothes or the familiar composition of the commemorative group photograph at a social event, but mimesis in the form of exchanging clothes in this instance takes on a peculiarly self-aware and performative quality. Māori, Navajo, and Hopi understood how they were represented by commercial and cultural forces far away and beyond their control. They chose to simultaneously acknowledge the power of these forces and defy them by expressing their indigenous affinity and themselves as modern agents in the global cultural economy. Sarina Pearson is an associate professor in media and communication at the University of Auckland. Her current research interests include Hollywood in the Pacific, short film, and digital storytelling. In addition to her academic work, she produces short films, sketch comedy, and television documentaries. Notes 1. Australian filmmaker Franklyn Barrett was considered a film industry pioneer by many (Delamoir 2011); however, as the local feature film came under increasing pressure from American imports in the early 1920s (Thompson 1985: 73), Barrett moved progressively into exhibition, initially in publicity (or “exploitation,” as it was referred to at the time) and eventually into theater management (Rutledge 1979). 2. “Maoriland is a world outside time, a lost world even, into which the tourist may step briefly and tantalizingly before returning to the luxury and comfort of the nearby hotel, and the hotel is of course in real historical time (the present)” (Blythe 1990: 93). 3. Ancient Pueblo peoples were historically referred to as “Anasazi.” 4. There is little visible evidence that Paramount staged live prologues for The Vanishing American in the United States; however, it is likely. “In 1923, the Famous Players-Lasky Studio shot The Covered Wagon (James Cruz, 1923) on location in Wyoming, with the help of many Indians from the Wind River Reservation. To promote the film, the studio hired thirty-five Arapaho women, men, and children from Wind River to perform a live prologue before each showing at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. … Two years later, in 1925, … many of the same Indian performers were hired to perform another live prologue at Grauman’s Theatre for the western film The Iron Horse (John Ford, 1924)” (Rosenthal 2005: 332–33).

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5. McGrath points out, “Although the historical writing and iconography of Australia’s past had a very different character than that of the Old West, the popularity of mass-culture renditions had effectively universalized the American story” (2007: 206). 6. Studios ceased such elaborate campaigns in the 1930s as faith in the economic efficacy of them faltered and the Depression hit. See Gomery (1992). 7. Hopi and Navajo names are spelled (and undoubtedly misspelled) in various ways across newspaper accounts, trade reports, and in Barrett’s archive. Accuracy here has been attempted by taking names from shipping manifests; however, there is no guarantee these are accurate either. Poignant (2004: 15) points out that newspaper accounts are notoriously treacherous, although in some cases they are the only surviving accounts of events like this tour. 8. An item in the trade journal The Film Weekly reports that The Vanishing Race had record sales in Wellington (24 February 1927: 12). 9. A copy of the Indians’ response is held in the Auckland Memorial Library. 10. A hand-tinted archival magic lantern slide of Frank Seumptewa taken in 1933 by Edward H. Davis who was a field collector for the Museum of the American Indian also shows him in this type of clothing (Object Id 2010.50.1.192-t, Davis Collection, San Diego History Center, retrieved 20 November 2015 from http://www.sandiegohistory .org/davis/collection/2010501192-t). 11. The photograph was also reproduced in The Film Weekly (17 February 1927: 25). 12. The best example of the western’s influence on far-flung postcolonial sites is the literature about cowboys in Africa’s Copperbelt (Gondola 2009; Reynolds 2005; Ambler 2004; Burns 2002; Powdermaker 1962). 13. Paramount staff who went to Otaki include Paramount exploiteers Franklyn Barrett and Reg Kelly, general manager of the Regent Theatre in Wellington, Mr. Lawton, general manager Australasia for Paramount, Mr. Guff, and a government cinematographer, Mr. Bridgeman (Otaki Mail, 9 February 1927: 2). 14. Most accounts refer to Sikia Omeyoma as an elder member of the group, but reports as to his precise age vary wildly. 15. Kowhaiwhai refers to Māori decorative arts that use an intricate scroll pattern. 16. Franklyn Barrett Collection, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. References Aleiss, Angela. 1991. “The Vanishing American: Hollywood’s Compromise to Indian Reform.” Journal of American Studies 25(3): 467–72. ———. 2005. Making the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies. Westport: Praeger. Ambler, Charles. 2004. “Popular Films and Colonial Audiences in Central Africa.” In Hollywood Abroad: Audiences and Cultural Exchange, ed. Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes, 133–57. London: British Film Institute. Aquila, Richard, ed. 1996. Wanted Dead or Alive: The American West in Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Arrighi, Gillian. 2009. “Negotiating National Identity at the Circus: The FitzGerald Brothers’ Circus in Melbourne, 1892.” Australasian Drama Studies 54: 68–86. Balme, Christopher B. 2007. Pacific Performances: Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Barrett, Franklyn. 1927. The Red Indian ‘The Vanishing Race’ Tour. Franklyn Barrett’s Personal Account of the New Zealand/Australian Tour. Manuscript, Catalogue Number 764309. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Bell, Joshua A., Alison Brown, and Robert J. Gordon, eds. 2013. Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology, and Popular Culture. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Blythe, Martin. 1990. “The Romance of Maoriland: Ethnography and Tourism in New Zealand Films.” East-West Film Journal 4(2): 90–110. ———. 1994. Naming the Other: Images of the Maori in New Zealand Film and Television. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press. Brantlinger, Patrick. 2003. Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Brown, Deidre. 2009. Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond. Auckland: Raupo. Burns, James. 2002. “John Wayne on the Zambezi: Cinema, Empire, and the American Western in British Central Africa.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 35(1): 103–17. Chen, Tina. 2005. Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Cleveland, Les. 2003. “What They Liked: Movies and Modernity Downunder.” The Journal of Popular Culture 36(4): 756–79. Corbey, Raymond. 1993. “Ethnographic Showcases, 1870–1930.” Cultural Anthropology 8(3): 338–69. D’Arc, James. 2010. When Hollywood Came to Town: A History of Movie Making in Utah. Newburyport: Gibbs Smith. Delamoir, Jeannette. 2011. “The Explosive Life of an Exploiteer: Franklyn Barrett Tours North Queensland with The Ten Commandments.” National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Retrieved 10 December 2013 from http://nfsa.gov.au/research/ papers/2013/09/16/franklyn-barrett-explosive-life-of-an-exploiteer. Deloria, Philip J. 1998. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press. Diamond, Paul. 2012. “Te Tāpoi Māori—Māori Tourism—20th-Century Māori Tourism.” Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 2 May 2015 from http://www .teara.govt.nz/en/te-tapoi-maori-maori-tourism/page-2. Friar, Ralph E., and Natasha A. Friar. 1972. The Only Good Indian: The Hollywood Gospel. New York: Drama Book Specialists. Geiger, Jeffrey. 2007. Facing the Pacific: Polynesia and the U.S. Imperial Imagination. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Gomery, Douglas. 1978. “The Picture Palace: Economic Sense or Hollywood Nonsense?” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3(1): 23–36. ———. 1992. Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Gondola, Ch. D. 2009. “Tropical Cowboys: Westerns, Violence, and Masculinity among the Young Bills of Kinshasa.” Afrique & Histoire 7(1): 75–98. Green, Rayna. 1988. “The Tribe Called Wannabee: Playing Indian in America and Europe.” Folklore 99(1): 30–55.

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Greenblatt, Stephen. 1991. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Handley, William R. 2007. “The Vanishing American (1925).” In America First: Naming the Nation in US Film, ed. Mandy Merck, 44–64. London: Routledge. Hearne, Joanna. 2012. Native Recognition: Indigenous Cinema and the Western. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ihimaera, Witi. 1996. “Short Features.” In Te Ao Marama 5: Te Torino, ed. Witi Ihimaera, 221–24. Auckland: Reed Books. Kasson, Joy S. 2000. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History. New York: Hill and Wang. Keane, Basil. 2012. “Musket Wars.” Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 1 September 2016 from http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/musket-wars. Kildare, Maurice. 1966. “The Indians Named Him Shine.” Frontier Times 40(6): 20–23, 50–51. Lewis, Randolph. 2012. Navajo Talking Picture: Cinema on Native Ground. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Limbrick, Peter. 2007. “The Australian Western, or a Settler Colonial Cinema Par Excellence.” Cinema Journal 46(4): 68–95. McGrath, Ann. 2001. “Playing Colonial: Cowgirls, Cowboys, and Indians in Australia and North America.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 2(1): 1–19. ———. 2007. “Being Annie Oakley: Modern Girls, New World Woman.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 28(1–2): 203–31. Moses, Lester G. 1996. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Newman, Keith. 2011. “Rātana Church—Te Haahi Rātana—Founding the Rātana Church.” Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 30 January 2015 from http:// www.teara.govt.nz/en/ratana-church-te-haahi-ratana/page-1. Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Oliver, Steven. 2012. “‘Te Rauparaha’, from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.” Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 24 January 2015 from http://www .teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1t74/te-rauparaha. O’Malley, Vincent, and David Armstrong. 2008. The Beating Heart: A Political and SocioEconomic History of Te Arawa. Wellington: Huia. Pauly, Thomas H. 2005. Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Pearson, Sarina. 2013. “Cowboy Contradictions: Westerns in the Postcolonial Pacific.” Studies in Australasian Cinema 7(2–3): 153–64. ———. 2014. “Hollywood Westerns and the Pacific: John Kneubuhl and The Wild Wild West.” Transformations Journal of Media and Culture 24. Retrieved 24 November 2016 from http://www.transformationsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Pearson_ Transformations24.pdf. Poignant, Roslyn. 2004. Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle. New Haven: Yale University Press. Powdermaker, Hortense. 1962. Copper Town. Changing Africa: The Human Situation on the Rhodesian Copperbelt. New York: Harper and Row.

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Reynolds, Glenn. 2005. “Playing Cowboys and Africans: Hollywood and the Cultural Politics of African Identity.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25(3): 399–426. Rony, Fatimah T. 1996. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham: Duke University Press. Rosenthal, Nicolas G. 2005. “Representing Indians: Native American Actors on Hollywood’s Frontier.” The Western Historical Quarterly 36(3): 328–52. Rutledge, Martha. 1979. “Barrett, Walter Franklyn (1873–1964).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 1 March 2015 from http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barrett-walter-franklyn-5145/text 8615. Rydell, Robert W. 2006. “World Fairs and Museums.” In A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald, 135–51. Malden: Blackwell. Sakiestewa Gilbert, Matthew. 2010. Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902–1929. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Salesa, Damon. 2010. “Cowboys in the House of Polynesia.” The Contemporary Pacific 22(2): 330–48. Scott, Dick. 1991. Years of the Pooh-Bah: A Cook Islands History. Rarotonga, Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton. Segrave, Kerry. 1997. American Films Abroad: Hollywood’s Domination of the World’s Movie Screens from the 1890s to the Present. Jefferson: McFarland. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Te Punga Somerville, Alice. 2010. “Maori Cowboys, Maori Indians.” American Quarterly 62(3): 663–85. Thompson, Kristin. 1985. Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market, 1907–1934. London: British Film Institute. Tonga, Nina. 2014. “Cook Islands Cowboys.” Te Papa Blog. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Retrieved 4 December 2014 from http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2014/08/08/ cook-islands-cowboys. Treagus, Mandy. 2004. “Spectacles of Empire: Maori Tours of England in 1863 and 1911.” In Exploring the British World: Identity, Cultural Production, Institutions, ed. Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia Grimshaw, Kiera Lindsey, and Stuart Macintyre, 749–64. Melbourne: RMIT Publishing. ———. 2012. “From Whakarewarewa to Oxford: Makereti Papakura and the Politics of Indigenous Self-Representation.” Australian Humanities Review 52: 35–56. Retrieved 24 November 2016 from http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p196961/pdf/ 04-Traegus.pdf. Varner, Paul. 2009. The A to Z of Westerns in Cinema. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Walle, Alf H. 2000. The Cowboy Hero and Its Audience: Popular Culture as Market Derived Art. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Wendt, Albert. 1984. “The Writer as Fiction.” In Publishing in the Pacific Islands, ed. Jim Richstad and Miles Jackson, 41–50. Honolulu: Graduate School of Library Studies University of Hawai‘i. Werry, Margaret. 2011. The Tourist State: Performing Leisure, Liberalism, and Race in New Zealand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Jane Landman, who shared Franklyn Barrett’s archive with me; Josh Bell, who provided very helpful comments on drafts of this chapter; Kathryn McLeod at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia; Jan Harris, a volunteer historian at the Otaki Museum; and James Taylor and Lawrence Wharerau at Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. The University of Auckland Faculty of Arts Performance Based Research Fund made research trips and travel to present this chapter possible. Thanks also go to Jeannette Mageo, Elfriede Hermann, and the members of the ASAO mimesis and transculturation discussions for their patience and insight.

PART III Selling Mimesis: From Tourist Art to Trade Stores

4 Traditional Tahitian Weddings for Tourists An Entwinement of Mimetic Practices JOYCE D. HAMMOND

Imagine the bride-to-be dressed as Tahitian brides were in former times, the groom escorted by Tahitian men to the place of the ceremony to await her … Imagine receiving Tahitian names, and the names of your future children, while being covered with perfumed flower leis and garlands, and a marriage certificate written on traditional “tapa” cloth as a symbol of your eternal vows. —Tahiti Tourisme

Introduction

The advertisement above, encouraging tourists to imagine themselves at the center of wedding ceremonies marketed as traditionally Tahitian, is designed to resonate with enduring Western fantasies of a mythic Tahiti of sensual experiences, idealized landscapes, and exotic ceremonies. The weddings draw upon many sources: tourists’ imaginaries, selected and modified practices of precontact and early contact indigenous marriage rites, re-created dances and costumes associated with islanders’ cultural revitalization efforts, Western objects appropriated and modified by islanders, and historical and contemporary attributes of Christian ceremonies used in islanders’ own weddings. The entwinement of strands creates a pastiche of practices contributing to the complexity of the tourism performance that constitute the tourists’ weddings. By exploring the intricate entanglement of the various strands of influences that inform tourists’ traditional wedding ceremonies, I hope to highlight the necessity to consider unique elements that activate any mimetic practice. Uncovering various influences, their origins, their manifestations, and their underpinnings is more than an exercise of closely studying a particular practice. As Hermann has written, “Transcultural interactions, such as have taken place ever since the Pacific was first peopled, provided fertile ground for

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old meanings to be articulated within, and to articulate with, new contexts, thus encouraging the transformation of traditions” (2011: 8). Understanding how past practices, ideas, and attitudes undergo transformative change to meet specific circumstances and incorporate entirely new strands is essential. Questioning the interconnections and interactions of elements of evolving phenomena is indispensable to researching traditions, no more so than when examining mimetic practices arising from intercultural exchanges. Mimesis is key to the creation of the tourists’ weddings.1 Examining the role of mimesis in the ceremonies’ entwinement of documented, imagined, and lived strands of indigenous Mā’ohi (indigenous islanders) past and present ways of life reveals ways that the weddings’ strands simultaneously fulfill goals for the tourists, the Mā’ohi performers, and the tourism industry. Together with the concept of imaginaries (Salazar 2012; Salazar and Graburn 2014) and that of tourism performance (Balme 2007; Edensor 2000; MacCannell 1973; Zhu 2012), an analysis of the imitative aspects of the weddings exposes aspects of historical interactions between Mā’ohi and the first Westerners who wrote and drew their impressions of the indigenous people, between foreigners and Mā’ohi from the late eighteenth century to the present day, and between contemporary Mā’ohi and their ancestors. Mimesis is an active ingredient in many social interactions and societal changes. A creative approach to selectively adapt traits of others’ ways of life and a powerful tool of communication, mimesis may become so integrated into lifeways as to no longer be easily recognized as imitations of “original” or imagined attributes of others. As a valuable analytical concept for interrogating why and how people copy, modify, and utilize material culture, behavior, and ideas, mimesis strengthens investigation into the motives and ways that people may selectively draw upon their own cultural past to shape their own and others’ contemporary realities. In all scenarios of mimesis, the selection of images to be imitated may be based on subjects regarded as real or, alternatively, imagined and idealized practices and objects. The latter are no less real or authentic than the former, if it is understood that mimetic behaviors, objects, and relationships are created and selected for particular purposes. Mimetic processes within tourists’ Tahitian weddings are multiple and complexly intertwined. The ceremonies mirror many facets of visitors’ projected idealizations and fantasies that can still be traced to dominant Western imaginaries of Tahiti of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings, sketches, paintings, and plays. Likewise, Hollywood films such as South Pacific, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Couples Retreat have contributed to tourists’ enthrallment with romance in the Pacific (comparable to the historical impact of Hollywood films about the American West on islanders; cf. Pearson, this volume). The nature of the tourist weddings is closely tied to Mā’ohi cultural performances, particularly those associated with cultural revitalization efforts of the past cen-

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tury that continue to the present, most apparent within the annual July festival. The influence of Christianity from 1820 (the year Pōmare I’s followers overwhelming converted to Christianity) to the present is also, if less obviously, represented in traditional Tahitian weddings through mimesis. Imitative behavior in the form of performances often figures prominently as expressions of imaginaries, those filters that Salazar describes as representational assemblages mediating identifications with Self and Other (2010: 5–6; also Hermann this volume). Salazar asserts that imaginaries work as mental, individual, and social processes that derive from both personal and collective ideas of people’s understandings of themselves and others. While imaginaries can be created anew, modified, and abandoned, many accommodate modifications to “master narratives” of remarkable continuity (Salazar 2010: xiii). Likening imaginaries to the circulation of blood, Salazar encapsulates the dynamic of how imaginaries may reinforce some ways of thinking, even as they readily accommodate innovations (ibid.: 44). Imaginaries that islanders and tourists bring to the Tahitian weddings are a complex interweaving of projections and motives from different backgrounds, situated within the glocal (global/local) context. Performances, Balme reports, “provide a particularly fruitful ground for cultures to imitate and thereby approach one another” (2007: 6). The performative nature of Tahitian weddings, resulting in what Debord would term a “spectacle,” gives tourists opportunities to interact with Mā’ohi who conform to tourists’ fantasies.2 As spectacle, the weddings are “not a collection of images” but rather “a social relation between people” (Debord 1995: 12). The ceremonies also allow tourists to engage in experiential tourism (Cohen 1985; W. Smith 2006), which, as Salazar and Graburn assert, is “often based on processes of temporal and spatial Othering” (2014: 2). Experiential tourism offers tourists “the opportunity to move from (more passively) lived imagining, which is self-enclosed and concentrated on the imaginaries themselves, to (more actively) experienced imagining, which is directed and intentional” (Salazar and Graburn 2014: 2). Primarily this chapter uses the concept of performance in the theatrical sense to refer to people following behavioral and spoken scripts, enacting roles in a staged setting, and wearing costumes. The tourists’ traditional Tahitian weddings rely upon an imitation of both tourist and Mā’ohi imaginaries of ancestral Mā’ohi. The simultaneous time periods of the past and present incorporated into the weddings express the presence of the past within contemporary imaginaries, while at the same time they serve to frame the performance as performance. Tourists enact roles of precontact islanders; the Mā’ohi performers enact imagined ancestors; and often, at least one Mā’ohi performer also enacts the role of contemporary translator and interpreter. Some of the ceremonies’ imitated aspects contain past and current Christian wedding strands.

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Since a professional photographer or videographer usually records the ceremony, the imaging places a contemporary performative frame around the ceremony as well. As performances, the weddings draw upon the dual meanings of play— play as a performance and play as a leisure, re-creative activity. The construction of a recreational activity with corporeal involvement in fantasy is a means for tourism marketers and Mā’ohi performers to extend the myth of Tahiti and capitalize on the Tahiti tourism brand. At the same time, because Mā’ohi performers draw upon early Western accounts of their ancestors’ lives, the islanders’ own imaginaries of their forbearers, together with historical Christian and contemporary influences, provide insights into the rich history of Mā’ohi and Westerners’ interrelationships and the role that mimesis has always played in their interactions. The entwinement metaphor in this chapter highlights the fact that while imitated strands of the tourist weddings originated in different time periods and from various sources, they cannot be easily separated. Many aspects of the oldest strands of European descriptions and imaginings of islanders’ lives and practices, for example, have been extant since the late 1700s and have continuously impacted both Mā’ohi and Western ideas of former Mā’ohi ways of life. As will become evident, some imitations are permutations of other imitations.

Background to the Weddings

Weddings marketed as “traditional Tahitian weddings” have been staged in French Polynesia since the 1980s. The ceremonies share much in common with other destination weddings in the world that promise couples an experience of exoticism based on locals’ traditional marriage rites (Jamieson 2004; Johnston 2006; McDonald 2005). However, while traditional Tahitian weddings have been part of a larger global trend of tourist products, Tahiti’s particular history of contact with European explorers, traders, and missionaries; Western literature and art with Tahitian subject matter; French colonial politics; the tourism industry; and islanders’ cultural revitalization efforts have all contributed to the emergence and unique characteristics of tourist weddings staged in French Polynesia. In the past, as today, most Tahitian weddings occur in the Society Islands of Tahiti, Mo’orea, or Bora Bora, the three most popular destinations.3 Tourists from all over the world visit French Polynesia, but the majority comes from North America, Europe, Australia, or Japan. Americans far outnumber other visitors, and it is they who are the main consumers of the weddings marketed as traditional.4 Although most visitors’ weddings take place on resorts’ adjacent beaches or grounds, ceremonies are sometimes staged in other venues. Tiki Village, a tourist attraction on Mo’orea that simulates a Ta-

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hitian village of the past and was the first place to stage tourist weddings, has been hosting marriage ceremonies since the early 1980s.5 Weddings may also be conducted on public beaches and even on cruise ships. While tourist weddings may be combined with the formalities of an official marriage in French Polynesia (available since 2009), most couples are only interested in the staged celebration produced by a dance troupe or entertainment group hired by a resort or hotel (Prince 2010). In many cases, tourists have already been legally married. The nonbinding aspect of tourist weddings may contribute to tourists’ perceptions of the ceremonies as playful, which, in turn, reinforces the lighthearted ambiance associated with Tahiti. Additionally, family members or friends do not accompany many couples. If the wedding is combined with a honeymoon, couples may opt for exclusivity, although costs of transportation and housing guests may also play a role.6 Some couples regard the ceremony as something they wish to do just for themselves. As is typical with destination weddings worldwide, advertising for Tahitian traditional weddings is disseminated through such media as websites, print brochures, and bridal magazines. Tahiti Tourisme’s world regions’ websites include descriptions of the weddings and provide an online pamphlet titled Tahiti Destination Wedding Planner (Tahiti Tourisme n.d.). A couple usually selects a hotel’s or other vendor’s named wedding package, which includes a brief description of the ceremony and the price. The descriptions set the stage for a couple’s expectations. Typical parts of tourists’ traditional Tahitian weddings performances are 1. Separate preparations of the bride and groom. 2. Separate arrivals of the bride and groom, accompanied by attendants, to the ceremony’s location. 3. Welcoming actions of the island performers. 4. The pronouncement of marriage vows and the performance of symbolic actions, led by a man enacting the role of priest of indigenous religion. 5. The presentation of a “marriage certificate” and the invitation to kiss. 6. The symbolic wrapping of a tīfaifai (quilt) around the couple. 7. Dance entertainment for the couple and dance instruction for the couple. 8. Couple retiring to their honeymoon suite, in some cases transported to an overwater bungalow (if a couple’s guests are in attendance, a small reception may follow the wedding). 9. Professional photographer recording highlights throughout the ceremony. 10. All of the Mā’ohi performers wearing costumes of “ancient Tahitians” or apparel associated with historical and contemporary island apparel (such as the wraparound pāreu).

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Mimesis and the Western Myth of Tahiti

Tourism in French Polynesia revolves around the long-held Western imaginary of Tahiti, a fantasy traceable to eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought and Western reports and drawings associated with European voyages to the islands in the late 1700s. Then, as now, ideas about the South Pacific formulated prior to initial contacts impacted Westerners’ ideas of what they would find. A supposition that people of unknown areas in the southern hemisphere would exhibit inversions of Western civilization was easily combined with projections of humans’ former lifeways, expected to have been maintained by natives. French philosopher Rousseau, for example, used ideas of “noble savages” as a way to critique civilization. When the men accompanying Wallis and the sailors with Bougainville arrived at Tahiti’s shores in 1767 and 1768, respectively, many Western expectations seemed upheld. Written and sketched impressions drew upon and elaborated idyllic “Garden of Eden” or “Golden Age” scenarios, particularly since the men found the climate agreeable, food in abundance, and sexual relations easily obtained. These first Westerners and the men with Cook, who visited Tahiti four times between 1769 and 1777, often described the islanders and their ways of life with glowing analogies to the ancient Greeks. Banks, the naturalist of Cook’s first voyage, wrote about the women’s beauty and elegance, likening them to Greek goddesses. He compared Tahiti to Arcadia and the idyllic Greek Golden Age, when nymphs and satyrs ambled in the countryside in romantic trysts (Beaglehole 1962). Bougainville called the island “The New Cytheria,” after the Greek island where Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, originated. Commerson, the naturalist accompanying Bougainville’s voyage, concurred: “They know no other Gods than Love. Every day is dedicated to it, the entire island is its temple, every woman is its altar, every man its priest” (Dunmore 2002: 94). Many of the accounts written by eighteenth-century seafarers included descriptions of public scenes of sexual intercourse, in some cases seemingly staged for the visitors or devised to include them.7 Reports of the sexual invitations and displays, circumstances of partial or complete nudity, and sexually suggestive “wanton” dancing fueled imaginations of Westerners who read voyage accounts or embellishments of them.8 Despite the scientific goals of many expeditions (B. Smith 1985), reports were often flawed with preconceptions, biases, and lack of detail. The “rapturous accounts” of Tahiti, as Salmond has termed them (2010: 45), that emerged from the first two decades of contact continued to fuel the utopian fabrication of Tahiti and served as inspiration for various European artistic, literary, and political projects (Balme 2007; B. Smith 1985). Bougainville’s book, Voyage autour du monde, for example, provided inspiration for philosopher Diderot

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to critique French civilization and create political arguments about natural rights. Similarly, despite early reports of islanders’ use of infanticide, war, and ritual self-laceration (behavior Christian missionaries condemned and worked to eradicate, along with suggestive dancing, tattooing, and sexual liaisons of unmarried partners), it is the utopian fantasy of Tahiti that prevailed in Western thought. Beautiful women and handsome men, uninhibited in their sexual activities, joyful in expressing the pleasures of dance and music, largely free from the toil of work in a place of abundant food and warm climate, were cast as “natural” humans who lived in harmony with their environment. The island and its people, fashioned and fueled from Western imaginaries and desires, drew Europeans to Tahiti in search of its pleasures. The painters Gauguin and LaFarge and the writer Loti helped to perpetuate the idyll of Tahiti in the nineteenth century. It is this Western imaginary of Tahiti as a locus of romance, sensuality, and sexuality that the tourism industry promotes to entice tourists to Tahiti. As Kahn asserts: “The myth of Tahiti, ever present in the Western imagination, is the fuel that propels Tahiti’s tourism industry” (2011: 77). The coupling (pun intended!) of stereotypical visions of Tahiti as a place of lovemaking, attractive people, and fabulous scenery with a mysterious, exotic wedding ceremony forms the foundation of mimesis in the tourists’ traditional Tahitian wedding ceremonies. The tourists are wooed with interpellative marketing to imagine themselves as carefree, amorous, and fun-loving natives.

A Starring Role: “Going Native”

As tourist products, the traditional Tahitian weddings provide tourists with the opportunity to star in a performance of imagination. Pretending to be “soft primitives,” couples can immerse themselves in a ritual that foregrounds many legendary beliefs about Tahiti (see Torgovnick 1990). By imitating the imagined ancestors of islanders, the tourists can embody, if only for a brief period, the qualities of being natural, sensual, pleasure seeking, and romantic (in terms of being both mysterious Others and attractive to a sexual partner). Playing at becoming the Other is both a way to play like a child and to play as an actor. “Playing Tahitian” gives tourists the opportunity to foreground idealizations for their marriage that especially emphasize sensuality, sexuality, and naturalness. Tourists who dress in costumes enter into the make-believe of the Tahitian fantasy, partially through their appearance (cf. Sturma 2000). Just as Western explorers to Tahiti relied heavily on written and drawn descriptions of costume and adornment to characterize foreigners (B. Smith 1984: 298), so too, tourists undergo transformation through the mimicry of dressing up as “na-

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tives.” At a minimum, the couple are dressed in plain white pāreu, wraparound lengths of cotton cloth imitative of the fine white bark cloth used in nuptial rites (Oliver 1974: 448).9 The woman’s pāreu is tied above her breasts, the man’s at waist level. Couples often choose to add showy headdresses and gorgets (breast coverings) made of fiber and feathers (Figure 4.1). These are imitative of historical and contemporary dance costumes that highlight islanders’ material culture heritage (D’Alleva 2005; Traxler 2011): distinguished men originally wore such headdresses and demigorgets as battle dress (Oliver 1974: 380–81). Fragrant flower leis are usually placed around the couple’s necks as well. In the ceremony devised by Tiki Village of Mo’orea, the imitative elements for becoming the exotic Other find further elaboration in the preparatory ritual of the bride and groom in separate locations. The bride is ensconced in a simulated native dwelling, where she receives a massage with mono’i oil (coconut oil scented with the Tiare Tahiti flower), surrounded by female attendants who sing in Reo Mā’ohi, the indigenous language, as her body undergoes the first step in her transformation as Other. Men attend the groom in a separate location and paint tattoo patterns on his body as his preliminary step. Dressing up, as well as receiving massage and simulated tattooing to “try on” the persona of the Other, is what Taussig terms a form of mimetic alterity (1993). The practice resonates with early precedents in Westerners’ first

Figure 4.1. A priest (in left foreground) awaits a couple dressed for their wedding in Tiki Village, Mo’orea. Photo courtesy of Tahiti Tourisme.

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encounters with Mā’ohi. Dressing up as the Other on one’s own initiative or dressing the Other in the fashion of one’s own society were both forms of incorporative mimesis (see Mageo, Introduction of this volume), foregrounding alterity that figured in many of the eighteenth-century encounters between Westerners and Mā’ohi. For example, two officers sailing with Wallis dressed the famous Mā’ohi priest Tupaia who sailed with Cook to New Zealand/ Aotearoa as an Englishman (Robertson 1948: 193). More resonant with the contemporary tourist practices of dressing as Other is the example of the naturalist Banks who sailed with Cook’s first voyage. To accommodate his request to participate in a funeral ceremony, Mā’ohi assigned Banks a role that entailed donning attire of a “spirit-cum-fool figure” (Balme 2007: 44). While Banks’s experience was unique, it was common for Mā’ohi to wrap gifts of bark cloth around English and French visitors (sometimes in the form of fashioned clothing; e.g., Beaglehole 1962: 253).10 More than gifts, according to Tcherkézoff, the bark cloth wrapping was a method of “enveloping and thereby incorporating the stranger … and whatever sacred powers he possesses” (2003: 57; cf. also Babadzan 2003: 25–30). Wrapping a couple in a tīfaifai (a Polynesian cotton “quilt”) is another embodied aspect of the ceremony (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2. A tīfaifai is wrapped around a couple marrying on the island of Bora Bora. Photograph courtesy of Giulia Manzoni di Chiosca.

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This particular act foregrounds the ways that Mā’ohi imitative processes used in tourists’ weddings have not been limited to re-presenting island life during the earliest contact period. Since tīfaifai originated from combined influences of precontact bark cloth and missionaries’ introduced Western quilts (Hammond 2014), they are imitative of both sources on a material level. Enveloping a couple in a tīfaifai simultaneously mimics the wrapping of highstatus visitors in bark cloth and the importance of giving a couple a tīfaifai in contemporary Mā’ohi weddings. If a couple has paid for a tīfaifai envelopment, attendants come forward near the end of the ceremony with a tīfaifai, which is wrapped around them for a moment and explained as symbolizing their physical and spiritual union. Because tīfaifai wrapping is imitative of the frequent bark cloth wrapping reported by Europeans, it may, like the earlier practice, also be understood to signify a social transaction. Metaphorically, the wrapping of a couple in a tīfaifai is a veritable economic binding; couples pay more to have this act included in their wedding package. (In some rare instances, couples may ask to purchase the tīfaifai.) Although corporeal enactments of tourists’ weddings include actions such as the couple placing their hands together while water or coconut water is poured over them to symbolize the purity of their union or having their wrists lightly bound together with fiber (elements unreported in early Western descriptions of ceremonies), the main corporeal strands of mimesis in the tourists’ weddings are those of dressing as the Other, as previously described, and dancing as the Other. Dancing has always played an enormous role in the Western mythologizing of Tahiti due to the associations made by early Western observers who wrote extensively about the erotic nature of the dancing. As Kahn asserts, “One of the most popular forms of tourist entertainment in Tahiti has always been dance, an activity that has helped create the image of Tahiti as an exotic and erotic destination” (2011: 76). Whereas most tourists simply watch Mā’ohi in dance performances, tourists who buy traditional Tahitian wedding packages extend the make-believe by imitating indigenous dance as part of the wedding’s script. Near the end of the wedding ceremony, the couple proceeds to an area to view and later join into dancing. Drumming accompanies the ’ō’tea, a fastpaced dance form, performed by women or mixed couples as entertainment for the couple. Then the bride and groom are led individually to the performance area to dance with and receive instruction from someone of the opposite sex. The Mā’ohi dance partner has to occasionally imitate the other sex’s dance moves in order to better instruct the tourist pupil (an amusing element, due to the gendered forms of dancing). After instruction, the wedding couple are expected to perform the island dance together, as all look on. Since the dance emphasizes rapid hip movements for the woman and scissor move-

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ments of the man’s legs near her thighs, the sexual overtones of the dance coincide with an understanding of the sexual component of marriage. A final aspect of tourists’ embodied characters within the wedding ceremony is in their roles as elite members of a bygone era. The make-believe of being elites or Tahitian royalty extends a fantasy of an optimal experience as a “native,” mirroring a popular theme among tourists to “play royalty” on vacation (Gottlieb 1982). Sometimes borne on biers or bodily carried from canoes to arrive at the wedding destination, couples are seated near the end of the ritual in large rattan chairs. These ostentatious chairs, locally called Pōmare chairs, are so named for their association with the royal Pōmare family who reigned from 1773 to 1880. Seated as “royalty,” the couple are served champagne or another alcoholic beverage to enjoy as they watch the dancers perform. The fantasy of embodying “Tahitian royalty” is extended in the elaborate headdresses and gorgets that are part of many tourists’ costumes, since the costume items creatively copy apparel worn by elite members of pre- and early contact period Mā’ohi on special occasions. Aside from the weddings’ cost, some elements of the ceremonies clearly function to signal luxury, exclusivity, and service, as, for example the private spaces for the weddings, the dance entertainment for the couple, and postceremony drinks. Flower petal–strewn beds of a resort’s luxurious bungalows fashioned to look like native bungalows (cf. Otnes and Pleck 2003) are another form of indulgence, as is a ceremonial ride to an overwater bungalow included in some wedding packages (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3. A couple is transported and entertained en route to their honeymoon bungalow. Photo courtesy of Tahiti Tourisme.

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Tourists who engage in traditional Tahitian weddings seek meaningful experiences that generate personal, unique memories from direct involvement, one of the characteristics cited by W. Smith as characteristic of experiential tourism (2006: 3). Tourists often use the expression “bucket list,” and for some couples, the prestige value of visiting Tahiti to add to their portfolio of experiences in exotic places is underscored and enhanced with a traditional Tahitian wedding. Sharing photographs and their thoughts about the special event on social media is another way some couples extend their wedding experience. Even though the tourist weddings are not legally binding, they are celebrations of marital relationships and, as such, mark one of the most important personal rites of passage in people’s lives. The weddings’ ceremonial-only status may, in fact, enhance their meaning for couples who seek qualities in the wedding with which they may identify. As one bride related to me, the traditional Tahitian wedding was “out of the box,” a description of being atypical that she proudly ascribed to the couple themselves. This couple extended their experience by following up with tattoos of their Tahitian marriage names inscribed by a local tattoo artist. Some Mā’ohi participants in weddings comment on the way that couples are visibly moved by the experience, an assessment that seems supported by some tourists’ remarks about the ceremonies being magical and possessing layers of meaning that they could not completely discern. Key to the tourists’ enjoyment of a traditional Tahitian wedding is the trope of play. By pretending to be ancient Tahitians in a ritual that is itself not real (in a legal sense) but that celebrates a joyful union, a couple can focus on idealizations of themselves and of marriage. In his research on the intersection of play, creativity, and ritual, Huizinga observes, “The ritual act has all the formal and essential characteristics of play, particularly in so far as it transports the participants to another world” (1962: 18). Just as “in the playground, participants create ‘temporary worlds’ within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart” (ibid.: 10), so too, tourists who play at going native enter into a temporary world set apart from their ordinary lives. Removed as it is in time and place from their “real” lives, staged in the setting of “Paradise on Earth,” a place in Judeo-Christian lore associated with sexual knowledge, the traditional Tahitian wedding as a cultural performance can generate the magic of what Turner (1984) referred to as the subjunctive mood, which can express supposition, desire, and possibility. Cohen points out, “Tourists enjoy paradisiac play ‘knowing very well that they cannot be but fictitious paradises’” (1985: 294–96). Tourists play “as if ” in a fanciful acceptance of the pretended scenario. Others lead the couple through the rituals reinforcing the make-believe, childlike innocence associated with being dressed up as Tahitian.

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The innocence of the couples is paralleled by the long-established Western projection of islanders as “children of paradise,” childlike in their abandonment to pleasure and carefree lives. Though seemingly far removed from their everyday lives and identities, the tourist weddings allow couples to foreground their desires and project the possibilities (or reaffirmation) for a romantic marital relationship symbolized by the idealized wedding. That the weddings are make-believe may be one of the paradoxical traits that can make it most meaningful to couples (see Turner’s From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play). The seeming simplicity of a traditional Tahitian wedding is one of its attractions for many couples. While the ease of having others direct everything may allow a couple to simply enjoy a focus on communicating their love and devotion to one another, part of the appeal for some couples is the opportunity to escape many of the obligations and expectations that may accompany a wedding ceremony back home. In a popular guide to destination weddings, the author mentions the “3F’s” of freedom, flexibility, and fun as the greatest incentives for couples (Sardone 2007: 20). By freeing themselves from conventions of weddings at home, pursuing the flexibility of doing something “their own way,” and having fun as a paramount pursuit, a couple can communicate a great deal about themselves to others, as well as reinforce their identities for themselves. There is a certain irony to those couples pursuing a kind of rebelliousness to the status quo of marriage expectations in their home communities in order to enter into what they understand as the traditions of another society. It might be argued that such motives provide an interesting contemporary parallel to or imitation of the historical use of Western imaginaries of the South Pacific to criticize conventions of Western societies. An investment in cultural capital is another important aspect of the clarifying work of identity construction that couples accomplish by participating in the weddings. While a couple’s participation illuminates their identities as spouses who know how to express their feeling for one another in mythic terms, the participation in the fantasy also signals their identities as sophisticated travelers and connoisseurs of exotic experiences who can afford the time “to play” and the expense of indulging in an ultimate leisure experience (see Bruner 1991; Haggard and Williams 1992; Jaworski and Thurlow 2011). The prestige associated with traveling to French Polynesia and the idyllic location for romance so well established in contemporary and historical Western thought is tied to the romantic associations that people back home have of Tahiti. Since Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Mo’orea have long been favored as honeymoon destinations, to add a wedding to the vacation may provide a way to prolong a stay and add more color to the stories and images that couples share

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with family and friends. It is also a way for people to add to their portfolio of experiences in exotic places as well as an increasingly significant way in which people in postmodern societies seek to define themselves. By “going native,” “living the dream,” and “investing in their love” (Kahn 2014) through a ritual that foregrounds most of the tourist idealizations about Tahiti, couples can generate memories and impress others with the thought that they fully experienced the beautiful, natural, carefree, and romantic aspects of the Tahiti of Westerners’ dreams.

Distancing, Nature, and Mimesis

Tahiti is enhanced as a fabled and exotic destination by its remote location and a projection of timelessness that contrasts with tourists’ clockwork routines at home (Kernan and Domzal 2000). As Balme observes, selling the Pacific rests heavily upon exotification, which renders the Pacific “timeless and always in a pre-contact state” (2007: 9; cf. Fabian 2002). According to Root, authenticity and “real” native cultures are equated with uncontaminated contact with modern society (1996: 116). Tourists’ participation in a performance of an imagined ancient ritual fulfills the fantasy of a place distant in both space and time. Another distancing mechanism of the wedding performance is the use of Reo Mā’ohi, the indigenous language of Tahiti. The words Haere mai! (Come here!) are accompanied by the sounds of a conch shell blown to summon the celebrants to the ceremonial area. Once the couple are standing before the priest, he speaks to them (and sometimes reads) in Reo Mā’ohi. His words are translated into a language the couple understands by another member of the performance troupe, and his directives are usually accompanied by interpretive remarks about various symbolic acts. Reo Mā’ohi is also written on a “certificate” of marriage. Most documents include a brief statement about fa’aipoipo (marriage) that includes the date and the wedding names conferred upon the couple. All is written on a stiff surface made from plant material. The bestowal of wedding names, based on a former custom of Mā’ohi couples receiving a name in common (a custom still honored on some islands), centers on combining a word such as moana (ocean), here (love), or manu (bird) with a second word: tāne for man and vahine for woman. Sometimes first names for one or more future children are also written on the document. The use of indigenous language serves to signal authenticity and tradition. It also plays a role in rendering the ceremony exotic, not only because it is unintelligible to the couple but also because, as Root points out, cultural difference is connected to authentic experience in the minds of many people

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(1996: 175). Further, since the couple are dependent upon performers for directions and must rely on a translator/interpreter to understand the meaning of symbolic acts, they are rendered childlike. That, in turn, strengthens a sense of the ceremony as imaginative play and a vision of the couple’s “native selves” as innocent children of nature. The distancing dimensions of the tourists’ exotic wedding ceremony reinforce and highlight the liminal qualities associated with all wedding ceremonies as rites of passage (Turner 1982, 1984). As “time out of time” when actions, clothing, and other ceremonial strands signal a liminal period between unwed and wed status, the tourist weddings heighten liminality due to the unfamiliar elements of the ceremony. Furthermore, since the wedding is typically combined with a honeymoon, the playful qualities of the performance can be joined with a leisurely period in which a couple focus on one another; the basics of sex, food, and sleep; and recreational activities. An emphasis on nature and the intimate connection of islanders with their environment also plays an important role in the Western trope of Tahiti as a utopian setting. Images of lush vegetation, waterfalls, blue skies, beaches, lagoons, and minimal clothing (signaling warm weather) figure prominently in tourism materials. The seduction of escaping to a tropical island is paralleled by the seduction associated with native women. Indeed, many images of Tahiti are of native women surrounded by nature. Tahiti is offered up as feminine, as reflected in Tahiti Tourisme’s marketing line: “Tahiti and her Islands.” Situated outdoors, tourist weddings capitalize on Westerners’ association of Tahiti with nature and mimic the imaginary of a pervasive natural beauty. Most weddings are staged on or within sight of a beach, a place positioned between land and water. Historically, the beach was also the place of Westerners’ arrivals and departures. Thus, the beach mimics the liminality of a rite of passage, even as it reflects Westerners’ association of Tahiti to an idealized natural environment (Balme 2007). Hotels and resorts host most ceremonies. Their private or semiprivate groomed beaches or the manicured grounds guarantee a pristine environment with palm trees, fragrant flowers, and a view of the ocean. The props for the wedding ceremonies are also linked to nature. The conch shell to signal the start of a wedding, the use of coconut water poured over a couple’s joined hands, the shell and fiber costume pieces, and the flower leis all communicate the naturalness of the ceremony and the ritual’s reflection of islanders’ harmonious relationship with nature. Although some ceremonial strands may not replicate original Mā’ohi materials used at the time of contact (for example, white cotton cloth is now used to imitate fine white bark cloth), the props incorporated into the ceremony all convey a close association of islanders with their natural environment.

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Presences and Absences in Imitated Weddings

A few aspects of tourist weddings are clearly based on Mā’ohi incorporative mimesis of Christian rites introduced by Western missionaries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mā’ohi and their forbearers have long assimilated ceremonial elements of introduced Western weddings into their own wedding practices.11 The influence of Christianity is less visible in tourist weddings than the strands of an idyllic myth, partially due to the unseen influence that historical and contemporary Christianity exerts on the tourists’ ceremonies through Mā’ohi rejection of specific practices performed by their ancestors. Drawing from Balme’s observations that the exotic cannot be totally strange since it “would lack some familiar element that makes it attractive” and “neither can it be totally familiar because it would then cease to be attractive” (2007: 8–9), the tourist weddings are attractive and desirable, at least in part, for their familiar Christian wedding elements. Since the weddings mimic some aspects of marriage rites currently followed among local Mā’ohi, the Western strands in the tourists’ weddings can be regarded as mimicking both the “original” missionary-imported Western marriage practices and the historical and contemporary weddings among islanders. Most central to a replication of a Christian ceremony is the assumption that the wedding is based on monogamy and love. Although early documentation for Mā’ohi rituals do not include a union of a man to more than one woman in the same ceremony, there is ample evidence that polygamy was practiced among the elite (Oliver 1974: 828). Among the statements the priest makes during a tourist wedding may be ones loosely based on an ancestral injunction for marriage partners to pledge steadfast allegiance to one another (ibid.: 448). However, other statements, such as admonitions to love one another, follow a more Christian script. Sometimes the priest reads Reo Mā’ohi to the couple, a practice imitative of reading from the Bible. Couples almost always receive a written “marriage certificate” in the indigenous language. Both practices are acts of incorporative mimesis modeled on Western Christian practices and Western legal documents. What is most noteworthy about the tourists’ weddings is the absence of certain strands associated with the Mā’ohi marital ceremonies of precontact and early contact periods as recorded by early observers. That which is not imitated for the tourists is revelatory of contemporary Mā’ohi attitudes about the limits of mimesis in a performance for and with tourists—attitudes strongly influenced by contemporary Mā’ohi identification as Christian as well as a commitment to the reinforcement of the Western imaginary of Tahiti. The decision not to copy certain elements exposes the pervasive, ongoing influences of Christian teachings and Western practices that originally began as Mā’ohi incorporative mimicry.

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One of the most significant aspects of the marital rite of passage described in several early Western accounts was that of the self-inflicted puncturing of the heads and faces by female kin of a couple, causing their blood to flow in “a manifestation of love and union of blood” (Henry 1928: 282). The marital rites of Mā’ohi couples described in early accounts took place in open-air ancestral marae, the sacred places where ancestral skulls were displayed and where priests oversaw ritual practices.12 With rare exceptions, tourists’ weddings don’t take place on marae, but neither are they staged in churches, the location of historical and contemporary Mā’ohi weddings. Another large difference between tourists’ ceremonies and Mā’ohi marriage rites recounted in early Western reports are the significant roles of the kin of the couple: amassing food and feasting at the ceremony; creating and giving gifts of bark cloth, canoes, hogs, and other valuable property; and participating as celebrants and witnesses to the ceremonies. Since tourists who participate in a traditional Tahitian wedding may intend to stay on for a honeymoon, many couples’ family members or friends do not attend the tourist ceremony. Even if some relatives and friends of a couple do accompany them to the islands, there are typically far fewer than would attend at the couple’s home locations. The guests may bestow gifts, take photographs, and join in a party after the ceremony, but the gifts are not redistributed to the couple’s kin and the economic outlay (perhaps with the exception of helping to pay for the expense of the trip and the ceremony) is not commensurate with the kin obligations of Mā’ohi.

Imaginaries and Ma¯’ohi Mimesis of Ancestral Practices

In fashioning a wedding performance to fit Western ideals of Tahiti, Mā’ohi performers draw heavily upon the emblematic mimesis (see Mageo, Introduction of this volume) associated with the Mā’ohi cultural renaissance movement of the 1970s to the present. The imitation of dance costumes of Tiurai and Heiva festivities (discussed below) figure prominently, as do dancing and music. These features are doubly imitative since the cultural revitalization forms are often based on copying and modifying the early written and sketched descriptions of Mā’ohi ancestors made by Westerners. Many strands in the tourist ceremonies, like many components in cultural renaissance performances, are part of what Greenblatt refers to as mimetic capital, the recirculation of images, ideas, and concepts that build up over time to be “‘banked’, as it were, in books, archives, collections, cultural storehouses, until such time as these representations are called upon to generate new representations” (1991: 91). From the eighteenth century to the present, numerous economic, political, and social changes have occurred as Mā’ohi integrated introduced Western

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customs, often through incorporative mimesis, or adapted their own practices to changed circumstances. However, reclamation of indigenous culture, particularly through the re-creation of material culture and cultural practices long suppressed or forgotten under missionary and French colonizing efforts, became increasingly important from the 1960s onward. (It should be noted that Tiurai festivities during the month of July, originally encouraged by the French to mark the French national holiday of July 14, were one of the few sanctioned means through which the colonized islanders were able to freely express some indigenous practices.) The Mā’ohi cultural renaissance was fueled by islanders’ knowledge of other Pacific Islanders’ cultural reclamation projects as well as political dissent for a host of imposed colonial practices, most notably that of French nuclear testing in Pacific waters, which began in 1960 and ended in 1996. Mā’ohi political and cultural resistance to French domination in the 1970s was accompanied by efforts to extend some of the 1950s and 1960s actions designed to revitalize Mā’ohi culture and restore pride in Polynesian heritage.13 The support of indigenous arts and cultural traditions as a politicization process was spurred in the 1970s with the backing of Tevane, the minister of culture, who felt that government encouragement and support of the arts would aid islanders in discovering or rediscovering their culture, thus fostering pride and feelings of self-worth (Stevenson 1992: 120). Tourists’ interest in indigenous culture was another factor in government support. The Mā’ohi cultural renaissance in French Polynesia coincided with a growing tourism economy, which was supported by an international airport on Tahiti that opened in 1960. The confluence of these factors resulted in an even stronger conjunction of Polynesian expressive culture with international visitors’ desire to experience celebrated aspects of Tahiti. Reenactment performances of indigenous religious rites on Marae Arahurahu; the creation of Te Fare Vāna’a, an organization devoted to the preservation and promotion of indigenous language; the reemergence of tātau (tattooing), formerly banned by missionaries; the establishment of annual exhibitions and competitions of wood and stone carving, plaiting of natural fibers and making of tīfaifai; and a larger emphasis on indigenous dance figured importantly in the cultural revitalization efforts of Mā’ohi culture. To a large extent, the Mā’ohi cultural renaissance has revolved around copying former cultural practices, including various performative forms that were prohibited by early Christian missionaries. In 1977, the year when French Polynesia gained greater political autonomy from France, the annual festivities of the Tiurai were renamed Heiva, an indigenous term encompassing celebration and dance. (Abandoning the former name, which was based on the English word for July, the month in which the national French holiday occurs, was also a political statement.) As

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Stevenson notes, the Heiva has figured significantly as a centerpiece for cultivating Mā’ohi self-respect and cultural identity (1990, 1992, 1993). While the Heiva includes various athletic contests, it is a particularly important venue for foregrounding the arts, including dance, music, and the visual arts. Within the Heiva, creativity and innovation are strongly rewarded, even as earlier cultural traditions provide inspiration for the reimaginings and re-creations of all the arts (Stevenson 1992: 125). As among other people who have sought to reclaim cultural heritage that was undermined or destroyed by conquering invaders and colonial institutions, contemporary Mā’ohi draw heavily on understandings of their ancestors to shape contemporary self-definitions. For both islanders and others, written and pictorial observations form the basis for understandings of Mā’ohi society, owing to the fact that Christian missionary influence, Western trade, and European colonization radically altered indigenous ways of life. As Stevenson observes, the people of Tahiti and others interested in the indigenous past have heavily relied on Europeans’ original drawings, journal entries, and collected objects from the early years of Tahitian-European contact “to construct the framework of traditional Tahitian society” (1993: 78; my emphasis). Stevenson’s assessment of the significance of creativity and adaptation in Mā’ohi art forms is tied to her argument that islanders had to modify and innovate within the expressive realm of the arts in the face of many destructive forces of postcontact influences if they were to “adhere to the cultural and artistic traditions they value” (1992: 118). Notably, many of the arts were tied to indigenous religious beliefs and practices. Much ceremonial knowledge including “the preparation of regalia, the construction of objects, the composition of chants, the choreography of the ceremonies, and what is now believed to be about twenty thousand words in the Tahitian language” were lost in the conversion efforts of Christian missionaries (ibid.: 121). Citing Linnekin’s observation that cultural revivalists create a culture even as they rediscover it, Stevenson asserts that the Heiva as a “mainstay of Tahiti’s cultural and artistic heritage is strengthened by the constant reinterpretation and modification of a tradition” (1992: 125). Innovation in costuming is prevalent; islanders combine various elements of garments of their ancestors, depicted in words and drawings by European explorers, to create new designs “that are posited as authentic” (ibid.). When traditional Tahitian weddings were fashioned for tourists, the islanders’ mimetic production of Heiva dance and dance costumes provided the tourists’ wedding ceremonies with two of its most important components. Like dance costumes inspired by early European depictions, tourists’ wedding attire is meant to be evocative of ancient Mā’ohi society. Within tourist weddings, the clothing worn by the Mā’ohi participants, with the exception of those worn by the priest, are, like the attire for the wedding couple, essentially dance cos-

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tumes, some of which have evolved into “almost unrecognizable elaborations of chiefs’ rather than dancers’ clothing” (Kaeppler 1977: 76). A basic colorful, cotton print pāreu is usually worn by the musicians and sometimes by the dancers. Many priests’ costumes closely resemble the priests’ attire worn in Mā’ohi marae reenactments, which seem to have been inspired by the attire of chiefs and priests depicted in early European artists’ work. Just as islanders’ mimicry of material culture and behavior is selectively chosen for heritage reenactment, and creative modifications are introduced for contemporary dance performances, so too, selectivity and “artistic license” in modifications are operative principles in tourist weddings. For example, many strands of the tourist weddings copied from Heiva dance costumes are fashioned from different materials than would have been used at contact (Figure 4.3). From Traxler (2011: 24–25, 104), I conclude that turkey and dyed chicken feathers may be used in headdresses and gorgets in place of feathers of now extinct birds or from feathers once traded from other Pacific islands. So, too, has cotton fabric replaced bark cloth. Human hair is no longer used in headpieces. The mix and match approach of innovative tradition making is also witnessed in those tourist weddings in which indigenous words are written on bark cloth imported from other areas of the Pacific (its manufacture in French Polynesia largely ceased in the early contact period) or fashioned from coconut fiber.

Discussion and Conclusions

In Aphrodite’s Island Salmond recounts a Mā’ohi precontact prophecy that “the glorious children of Tetumu,” whose bodies would differ from that of indigenous inhabitants of the islands but who belonged to the same species, would arrive on a canoe without an outrigger, take the islanders’ land, and destroy the old rules (2010: 464). As Salmond explains, the islanders thought they themselves had summoned up the Europeans (ibid.: 458). With this in mind, as well as seventeenth-century European speculations on a wondrous place where humans lived abundantly and in peace, Salmond asserts, “Tahitians and Europeans alike sent their ancestral fantasies flashing into the future, shaping how it happened” (ibid.: 463). In the future that was shaped, what is now history and the contemporary period, the imaginaries of both islanders and Westerners have gone flashing into the past, shaping both it and the present. Traditional Tahitian weddings for tourists, which have existed for only three decades, are apposite symbols of historical and contemporary circumstances and ideology that have and continue to shape many aspects of mimesis for Mā’ohi as well as for tourists. Although differences between tourists and Mā’ohi are at the heart of the weddings, as is emphasized in a ritual set in the mythical past, the congruen-

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cies between tourists and Mā’ohi performers are striking and necessary for the success of the events. All participants are involved in a performance mode, all draw upon mimesis, and all rely on imaginaries. The imaginaries of both the visitors and the hosts are strongly aligned in relying upon descriptions of Mā’ohi ancestors by Westerners. However, the mimicry of Mā’ohi performers is closely associated with the emblematic mimesis of the Mā’ohi cultural renaissance, even as it accommodates Western imaginaries. By contrast, the imaginaries and mimicry of tourists are tied much more to Western associations of Tahiti as a place of ephemeral fantasy, filtered through the mimetic capital of paintings, films, books, and tourism promotional messages. As projections that combine the Mā’ohi imaginary with the Western imaginary, tourist weddings creatively blend strands that reveal selectivity of documented observations, historical changes, and contemporary marketing strategies. Stevenson’s assertion that “the Tahitians modified and reinterpreted their culture early in the contact period in reaction to the several influences that were introduced by outsiders” (1992: 118) is useful commentary on the dynamics of historical and ongoing processes of cultural change generally and the creation of traditional tourist weddings specifically. More broadly, Kaeppler’s observation that “tradition is a continuous process—constantly adding and subtracting ideas and practices, constantly changing, constantly recycling bits and pieces of ideas and practices into new traditions” (2004: 294) aids in identifying the tourist weddings of the past, present, and future as traditions. Like all traditions, the tourist weddings can be described as “context-bound articulations” (Hermann 2011: 1). They attest to the creativity and resourcefulness of Mā’ohi tradition making. Even as they reveal economically savvy innovations, the tourist weddings continue older Mā’ohi traditions, albeit in innovative forms. Older Mā’ohi traditions of performance and of incorporation of outsiders are fundamental to the weddings, even though they are not traditions foregrounded within the ceremonies. In Pacific Performances, Balme (2007) discusses many indigenous Pacific Islanders’ performative modes recorded in explorers’ Western records, including those associated with Mā’ohi greeting and leave-taking, gift giving, sexual spectacles, and dances. As performances with scripts, actors, and costumes, the tourist weddings are among the most recent of Mā’ohi performative genres. Like the spectacular contemporary shows of the annual Heiva that convey stories through dance, music, and spoken words or the marae reenactments of the 1980s,14 tourist weddings are a theatrical form telling stories of romance and desire. Tourists’ traditional Tahitian weddings also extend continuous practices of islanders to incorporate visitors and aspects of their ways of life through mimesis. As events in which visitors are at the center of a celebration of re-

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claimed, invented, and contemporary Mā’ohi wedding traditions, the ceremonies extend a long-held Mā’ohi custom to welcome outsiders into their midst, often encouraging them to act and dress as islanders. Given their chronological origins, the various strands of traditional Tahitian weddings may seem like an anachronistic jumble of material objects and behaviors. However, using the lens of mimesis, a tourist traditional wedding may clearly be understood as an intricately entwined set of mimetic expressions revelatory of past and present interactions among islanders and outsiders. The exchange between islanders and tourists in traditional destination weddings—an experience in return for monetary gain—is mutually beneficial. Many aspects of traditional Tahitian wedding ceremonies are clearly fashioned with consumers in mind. Ceremonies are tailored to fit different budgets; variations include the number of performers, the amount of entertainment included, and the time devoted to the ceremony. As a tourist product, the weddings generate tourist dollars for the performers and the businesses that promote and host the weddings. Nevertheless, the creation of destination weddings gives islanders opportunities to reinforce, create, and shape visions of their cultural heritage. For example, decisions not to copy certain strands of nuptial ceremonies reflect contemporary attitudes of both islanders and visitors about acceptable practices. While some islanders regard traditional Tahitian weddings as simply “show biz” and “Hollywood,” many of the images used to fashion tourists’ weddings derive from some of the same mimetic practices that have motivated islanders to reclaim, re-create, and extend a cultural heritage that was virtually lost as a result of the outcomes of Western contact with Polynesians. Other aspects of tourists’ traditional Tahitian weddings reflect the fact that Mā’ohi willingly adopted many customs and beliefs from Westerners after contact, even if the replications were often creatively modified. What began as mimetic actions quickly became incorporated into the fabric of ongoing society. As a tourist product, the purchased destination wedding fulfills visitors’ desire for an exotic, once in a lifetime experience that places a couple at the center of a fantasy enactment of being islanders themselves (Kahn 2014). Their participation in the weddings gives them an opportunity to embody, if only briefly, a fantasy of inhabiting their paradisiacal visions of Tahiti. Strikingly, both islanders and visitors look to the past for realizing contemporary aspirations. Islanders comingle projected precontact ancestral and historical rites with modifications reflecting islanders’ embrace of Christianity, selected aspects of ancestral lore, tourists’ imaginaries, and a market economy catering to tourism. Tourists look to an idyllic past, one also based on selective foregrounding of certain ideas and one in which they may participate to engage in a perceived authenticity of humanity (MacCannell 1976). Simulta-

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neously, as self-enhancement opportunities associated with leisure activities, the weddings give tourists a source of identity in postmodern times (Kernan and Domzal 2000) by fortifying visitors’ at home identities as savvy consumers of Otherness. Tourists can accumulate cultural capital by participating in an “exotic rite” that may be shared through photographic, written, and oral memories. The entwinement of strands in the traditional Tahitian wedding ceremonies coconstructed by Mā’ohi performers and tourists may best be understood as a cumulative expression of complicated exchanges that draw heavily upon mimesis—an exchange between Mā’ohi and Europeans during the early contact period; between Mā’ohi and Christian missionaries; between islanders and their ancestors through re-created ancestral heritage; and among contemporary islanders, tourism personnel, and tourists who draw upon centuries of Western accounts and fantasies of Tahiti and the Mā’ohi people. Joyce D. Hammond is a professor of anthropology at Western Washington University. Her research and teaching interests include expressive culture, photographic representational issues, tourism, and gender. Much of her work has been with Polynesians. She is the author of Tīfaifai and Quilts of Polynesia (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1986), and her research on Polynesian textiles, as well as other subjects, has appeared in such journals as Visual Anthropology, Uncoverings, Visual Studies, Pacific Arts, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Journal of American Folklore, and The Hawaiian Journal of History. Notes 1. Some Europeans living in French Polynesia have also chosen traditional Tahitian weddings. 2. Several Mā’ohi told me they would feel shame to marry in a ceremony like those staged for tourists. Many islanders regard the tourists’ traditional weddings as superficial and frivolous. During my seven months’ study in 2013, I did meet one Mā’ohi couple active within the Mā’ohi cultural renaissance movement who chose to create what they termed a “cultural wedding” for themselves to underscore the point that it was not a traditional wedding (in the sense either of the tourists’ weddings or of a strict replication of Mā’ohi unions described in early European accounts). Fellow collaborators in what is termed “the cultural life” lent their support and talents to the wedding. The ceremony for this non-Christian couple involved many people contributing to different aspects of the ceremony such as sweeping the earth, drumming, singing, and dancing. The date was aligned with an auspicious full moon; an ’orero (orator) recited the genealogy of each spouse; and participants honored the forested location of the wedding with song. Rather than exchange rings, the couple decided to be tattooed with an identical symbol during the ceremony by an artist skilled in using indigenous tattooing tools and techniques. Female family members of the groom made a magnificent tīfaifai that was wrapped around the couple. The wedding was unique, and the

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3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

couple described it as a ceremony that allowed them to express themselves and reflect their identities. Although Tahiti is a specific island, the name Tahiti is often used to designate all of French Polynesia. Advertisements proclaim “Tahiti is synonymous with Paradise,” and the name Tahiti is universally recognized. Many islanders prefer the term Mā’ohi (indigenous) when referring to themselves and their culture, but the term Tahitian is typically used in tourism marketing. Some couples wear Western-style wedding apparel in the ceremonies. Most Japanese prefer a Christian chapel setting, the symbol of “exoticism” they prefer (cf. McDonald 2005 for a Hawaiian parallel). According to Tepoe Teuahau, a member of Tiki Village’s staff, Olivier Briac created Tiki Village and instituted weddings for visitors when Matarau, an indigenous priest, gave him the idea. As is true of other global destination weddings, the success of Tahitian weddings is partially linked to honeymooning in a desirable location. Recent scholarship suggests Westerners misunderstood islanders’ motives of literally incorporating visitors’ supposed special powers. See Tcherkézoff 2004, 2003 and Salmond 2010. John Hawkesworth edited Captain Cook’s first Pacific voyage journal, included in a 1773 three-volume publication. Oliver (1974) compared accounts of Western explorers, missionaries, and visitors for information about Mā’ohi life during the late indigenous era and early European era. To construct an accurate description, he frequently points out Eurocentric biases, but he utilizes the facts of Westerners’ observations. I rely on several sections of Oliver’s three-volume Ancient Tahitian Society. As Sturma remarks, “The act of clothing or decorating the other was often a first step toward forming a relationship.” Further, “it was apparently common for Tahitians to make over their Western visitors.” When Wallis visited Tahiti in 1767, he was invited ashore by “Queen” Purea (Oberea) and clothed “after their manner.” Bligh also reported being dressed Tahitian fashion more than once (Sturma 1998: 92–94). Drummond (1980) describes similar practices of incorporation for weddings in Guyana in his discussion of cultural intersystems. According to Oliver, there were two sets of events that could be considered marital rites in ancient Tahiti (at least for upper-class unions). One took place inside the couple’s natal homes; a further rite occurred on a marae (1974: 96, 447–453). Writing of the codification process for Tahitian dance in the 1950s, Stevenson cites the 1960s as the true beginnings of Tahiti’s institutionalization of culture (1992: 122). Stevenson discusses the restoration of Marae Arahurahu in 1954, which was inaugurated with a grand procession of islanders dressed as they believed their ancestors might have appeared (1990: 268).

References Babadzan, Alain. 2003. “The Gods Stripped Bare.” In Clothing the Pacific, ed. Chloë Colchester, 25–50. Oxford: Berg. Balme, Christopher B. 2007. Pacific Performances: Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Beaglehole, John C., ed. 1962. The Endeavor Journal of Joseph Banks, Vol. 1. Sydney: Halstead Press. Bruner, Edward M. 1991. “Transformation of Self in Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 18(2): 238–50. Cohen, Erik. 1985. “Tourism as Play.” Religion 15: 291–304. D’Alleva, Anne. 2005. “Elite Clothing and the Social Fabric of Pre-Colonial Tahiti.” In The Art of Clothing, ed. Susanne Küchler and Graeme Were, 47–60. Portland: Cavendish Publishing. Debord, Guy. 1995. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. Drummond, Lee. 1980. “The Cultural Continuum: A Theory of Intersystems.” Man 15(2): 352–74. Dunmore, John, ed. 2002. The Pacific Journal of Louis-Antoine De Bougainville: 1767–1768. London: Hakluyt Society. Edensor, Tim. 2000. “Staging Tourism: Tourists as Performers.” Annals of Tourism Research 27(2): 322–44. Fabian, Johannes. 2002. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Gottlieb, Alma. 1982. “Americans’ Vacations.” Annals of Tourism Research 9(2): 165–87. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1991. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Haggard, Lois M., and Daniel R. Williams. 1992. “Identity Affirmation through Leisure Activities: Leisure Symbols of the Self.” Journal of Leisure Research 24: 1–18. Hammond, Joyce D. 2014. “Tīfaifai in Tahiti: Embracing Change.” Uncoverings, Research Papers of the American Quilt Study Group 35: 42–68. Henry, Teuira. 1928. Ancient Tahiti. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 48. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum. Hermann, Elfriede. 2011. “Introduction: Engaging with Interactions: Traditions as Context-Bound Articulations.” In Changing Contexts, Shifting Meanings: Transformations of Cultural Traditions in Oceania, ed. Elfriede Hermann, 1–19. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press in Association with the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Huizinga, Johan. 1962. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Jamieson, Tina. 2004. “Making a Scene: Tropical Island Weddings.” Journal of Pacific Studies 26: 151–73. Jaworski, Adam, and Crispin Thurlow. 2011. “Tracing Place, Locating Self: Embodiment and Remediation in/of Tourist Spaces.” Visual Communication 10(3): 349–67. Johnston, Lynda. 2006. “‘I Do Down-Under’: Naturalizing Landscapes and Love through Wedding Tourism in New Zealand.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 5(2): 191–208. Kaeppler, Adrienne L. 1977. “Polynesian Dance as Airport Art.” In Asian and Pacific Dance: Selected Papers from the 1974 CORD-SEM Conference, ed. Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Judy van Zile, and Carl Wolz, 71–84. New York: Committee on Research in Dance. ———. 2004. “Recycling Tradition: A Hawaiian Case Study.” Dance Chronicle 27(3): 293–311. Kahn, Miriam. 2011. Tahiti beyond the Postcard: Power, Place, and Everyday Life. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ———. 2014. “‘Invest in Your Love’: Romantic Desires, YouTube Videos, and the Online Marketing of Tahiti.” Tourist Studies 14(2): 144–67.

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Kernan, Jerome B., and Teresa J. Domzal. 2000. “Getting a Life: Homo Ludens as Postmodern Identity.” Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing 8(4): 79–84. MacCannell, Dean. 1973. “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings.” American Journal of Sociology 79(3): 589–603. ———. 1976. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken Books. McDonald, Mary G. 2005. “Tourist Weddings in Hawai’i: Consuming the Destination.” In Seductions of Place: Geographical Perspectives on Globalization and Touristed Landscapes, ed. Carolyn Cartier and Alan A. Lew, 170–92. New York: Routledge. Oliver, Douglas L. 1974. Ancient Tahitian Society. 3 vols. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Otnes, Cele C., and Elizabeth H. Pleck. 2003. Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prince, Jan. 2010. “Get Married in Tahiti for Real OR Just Pretend.” Tahiti Beach Press, 4–8 August. Robertson, George. 1948. The Discovery of Tahiti: A Journal of the Second Voyage of the H.M.S. ‘Dolphin’ Round the World 1766–1768, ed. Hugh Carrington. London: Hakluyt Society. Root, Deborah. 1996. Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference. Boulder: Westview Press. Salazar, Noel B. 2010. Envisioning Eden: Mobilizing Imaginaries in Tourism and Beyond. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 2012. “Tourism Imaginaries: A Conceptual Approach.” Annals of Tourism Research 39(2): 863–82. Salazar, Noel B., and Nelson H.H. Graburn. 2014. “Introduction.” In Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches, ed. Noel B. Salazar and Nelson H.H. Graburn, 1–28. New York: Berghahn Books. Salmond, Anne. 2010. Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sardone, Susan B. 2007. Destination Weddings for Dummies. New York: Wiley. Smith, Bernard. 1984. “Captain Cook’s Artists and the Portrayal of Pacific Peoples.” Art History 7(3): 295–312. ———. 1985. European Vision and the South Pacific. London: Yale University Press. Smith, William L. 2006. “Experiential Tourism around the World and at Home: Definitions and Standards.” International Journal of Services and Standards 2(1): 1–14. Stevenson, Karen. 1990. “‘Heiva’: Continuity and Change of a Tahitian Celebration.” The Contemporary Pacific 2(2): 255–78. ———. 1992. “Politicization of la culture Ma‘ohi: The Creation of a Tahitian Cultural Identity.” Pacific Studies 15(4): 117–36. ———. 1993. “The Museum as a Research Tool: A Tahitian Example.” In Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific, ed. Philip J.C. Dark and Roger G. Rose, 74–83. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Sturma, Michael. 1998. “Dressing, Undressing, and Early European Contact in Australia and Tahiti. ” Pacific Studies 21(3): 87–104. ———. 2000. “Mimicry, Mockery and Make-overs: Western Visitors in South Pacific Dress.” Fashion Theory 4(2): 141–56. Tahiti Tourisme. n.d., ca. 2012. “Tahiti Destination Wedding Planner.” Booklet, 66 pages. El Segundo: Tahiti Tourisme.

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Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Tcherkézoff, Serge. 2003. “On Cloth, Gifts and Nudity: Regarding Some European Misunderstandings during Early Encounters in Polynesia.” In Clothing the Pacific, ed. Chloë Colchester, 51–75. Oxford: Berg. ———. 2004. Tahiti 1768: Jeunes filles en pleurs; la face cachée des premiers contacts et la naissance du mythe occidental (1595–1928). Pape’ete: Au Vent des îles. Torgovnick, Marianna. 1990. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Traxler, Rika. 2011. “Clothing the Un-clothed: The Evolution of Dance Costumes in Tahiti and Rarotonga.” Master thesis. Northridge: California State University. Retrieved at 23 April 2017 from http://scholarworks.csun.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.2/834/ Rika_Traxler_FINAL_Thesis_smallsize.pdf?sequence=1. Turner, Victor W. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1984. “Liminality and the Performative Genres.” In Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, ed. John J. MacAloon, 19–41. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Zhu, Yujie. 2012. “Performing Heritage: Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 39(3): 1495–1513. Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful to the many people living in the Society Islands who discussed traditional Tahitian weddings with me, to employees of Tahiti Tourisme who aided me in various ways, and to those tourists and islanders who allowed me to witness several weddings and to pose questions about them. Thank you to all the participants of our ASAO group and all those who reviewed my manuscript and offered suggestions. I appreciate the time and monetary support Western Washington University provided for my 2013 research and for financing this volume’s map.

5 Of Dragons and Mermaids The Art of Mimesis in the Trobriand Islands SERGIO JARILLO DE LA TORRE

The beginning of charter tourism in the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1962 was hailed as the coming of a new era in Trobriand woodcarving. Since then and until PNG’s independence in 1975, the regular flow of visiting expats provided villagers with a steady source of cash in an otherwise subsistence livelihood based on traditional gardening and fishing. In that period, large numbers of carvings for tourists were produced throughout the islands, granting an average income of some AUD 70 per carver a year (Wilson and Menzies 1967: 63; Campbell 2002: 46), an estimated threefold increase in per capita earnings for Kiriwina, the Trobriands’ main island (Leach 1978: 18). This golden age of Trobriand tourist art increased competition among artists, prompting them to look for new ways to engage with potential buyers. The late David Mweiluvasi, a carver from Bwetalu Village in the Kuboma district of Kiriwina, represents the inventiveness of that time. Half a century after the tourist boom, David Mweiluvasi is still remembered throughout the islands. His skill, resourcefulness, and ingenuity combined to produce a series of astounding objects unlike those traditional Trobriand carvings that can be seen in many museums around the world. Among Mweiluvasi’s most remembered carvings are a foldable chair, a wooden shotgun, and a “Trobriand torch” (Figure 5.1). Because of his creative designs, David Mweiluvasi achieved the highest status among carvers. His prestige granted him an appearance at the Sydney Royal Easter Show in 1970 as a representative of PNG. People still recount how he was the first carver to ever obtain 100 Kina for a carving in the Trobriand Islands, a “mythical” sum at the time. But for those acquainted with Trobriand classic carvings in Western collections, Mweiluvasi’s near-mythical reputation might come as a surprise. A mere utilitarian object, the torch lacks the aesthetic charm of the refined lime spatulas and the convoluted canoe boards that gave Trobriand carvings their ongoing worldwide prestige. What is the merit of a utilitarian carved wooden torch? Why would a copy of a Western tool surpass its original in the age of mechanical reproduction

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Figure 5.1. The wooden torch carved in the 1970s by David Mweiluvasi in imitation of a real torch. Originally fitted with batteries and a light bulb, Mweiluvasi’s torch was fully functional.

(and cheap plastic conspicuousness) in anybody’s mind? The quick answer lies in the torch’s mimetic functionality. Reproducing a working Western object was a Trobriand triumph, a confirmation of the locals’ capacity to equal and surpass the outsiders’ prototype with whatever tools were available at the time and place. But the torch’s light beam shines past its image of technical success, revealing the creative ways by which Trobrianders try to enchant outsiders through their material designs. It constitutes one of the many tangible revelations of how locals articulate a vision of their world in dialogue with that of outsiders. In line with the scope of this volume, this chapter explores the contribution of carvings as mediators of cross-cultural engagements in the Trobriand Islands. It uses mimesis as its own particular torch to illuminate the relations between tradition and innovation, between the individual and the collective imagination, and, ultimately, between culture and cultures. I propose to consider Trobriand carvings in terms of their imitative qualities and how these qualities serve the purpose of appropriating cultural elements. Unless we are dealing with a conscious project of cultural subjugation, adopting and adapting foreign elements through mimicry is one of the most basic and immediate processes set in motion when different cultures meet. Cultural encounters prompt exchanges of behaviors, images and symbols, and their eventual incorporation into the adapters’ culture under forms that evidence a slight de-

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parture from the originals. This incorporative mimicry (Mageo, Introduction, this volume) facilitates intercultural communication and understanding at the most immediate level—that of visual perception. Furthermore, mimetic incorporation is a way of becoming Other. It reveals the transformative potential of people and objects across cultural divides, allowing them to act on both sides of the divide while reshaping schemas along the way. This reconfiguration of cultural forms and forces is often achieved in conjunction with another type of imitation, mimetic emblemization (Mageo, Introduction). This type of self-mimicry involves copying elements from one’s own past cultural tradition. In carrying the past into the present, mimetic emblemization reinforces cultural identity by assisting locals in understanding elements that belong to their tradition. As we shall see, this understanding becomes key when locals try to portray themselves to outsiders. Also a transformative form, emblemizing mimicry is intertwined with mimetic incorporation to afford the expansion of relations (that is, the establishment of relations among people irrespective of their physical presence in the same location) upon which Trobriand sociality is based beyond the Milne Bay Province, where the Trobriands are situated.

Carving Encounters

Tokwalu1 woodcarvings from the Trobriand Islands are material witnesses of the ongoing transcultural encounters that have been taking place in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea for more than a hundred years. In his first visit to the Trobriands on 21 July 1890, governor general of British New Guinea Sir William MacGregor came ashore “on a small island close to Kitava”—most likely Nuratu Island—and reported the following in his dispatch to the governor of Queensland: “It is clear that they and all other natives of the Trobriands have a great aptitude for carving in wood” (MacGregor 1892: 7). MacGregor’s observation is not incidental. An avid collector of Trobriand artifacts (there are more than four hundred lime spatulas in his collection at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane alone; see Macintyre 1983: 79), he visited the islands on ten occasions, complaining about how prices of carvings had “risen some 300 percent” since his last visit (MacGregor 1894: 19), yet seemingly unaware of how this salvage collecting was in fact motivating the production of tourist art (see Harrison 2006). Given their position on the route between Australia and East Asia, the Trobriands were among the first places in island New Guinea to have regular contact with Europeans. In the early nineteenth century, whalers anchored off Kiriwina and traded iron hoop and axes for fresh supplies as well as “Arrows, Spears, clubs … and many other articles” (Gray 1999: 25, 31). Long before MacGregor first set foot

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in the islands, Trobriand artifacts had been captivating visitors to the area, where the trade of curios was already well established by 1870 (ibid.). Some of the earliest documented collectors of local carvings include Owen Stanley in 1849, Andrew Goldie in 1878, Nicholai Miklouho-Maclay in 1879, and Otto Finsch in 1884, to name but four. The carefully executed and intricate Trobriand woodcarvings, with their stylized patterns and abstract-looking motifs, fascinated these early voyagers and collectors, making these objects the central tools of contact between locals and outsiders in the Trobriand Islands.2 More than a century later and notwithstanding the ups and downs of the tourist industry in the Trobriands, tokwalu have upheld this central position as objects of encounter. In 2010 in Kiriwina, many locals considered carving a necessary endeavor, with more people turning to carving to complement traditional activities like gardening and fishing. As in other parts of New Guinea where carving and tourism encroach (e.g., the Sepik in PNG or the Asmat and Kamoro regions in Western Papua; see Silverman 1999; Stanley 2012; Jacobs 2012), the sale of tokwalu offers the possibility to earn money and access goods and services. In what amounts to a self-perpetuating system, the increasing monetization of the Trobriand economy has resulted in an increment in cash-yielding activities, chiefly among which is the “act of carving”—the production, appropriation, and circulation of tokwalu for sale. When money is needed to get healthcare and education, obtain Western foodstuffs and clothes or travel, people resort to carving, hoping to obtain cash for their tokwalu. In the period 2008–2010, an estimate 53 percent of the male population had made at least one carving for sale in the Yalumgwa Village of Kiriwina (with an even higher proportion of men claiming they knew how to carve and could do it when needed). Craftsmen make tokwalu, and whenever they—or others on their behalf—manage to sell them, cash enters customary circuits of exchange and assists the creation of new ones. Tokwalu also afford the possibility to mobilize the resources associated to traditional enterprises, like sagali funerary distributions, and more modern needs, like those related to Christian rituals and festivities, nowadays an integral part of the islands’ social life (Jarillo de la Torre 2013). Yet unlike the golden days of expat charters, tourists today come in a trickle, and they do not always buy tokwalu. Trobriand carvers, therefore, not only need to make objects for sale, they also need to carve out a market for their crafts.

Magic of Appropriation

Conceived as renditions of “Trobriandness” for a non-Trobriand Other, tokwalu need to cast an image that is simultaneously familiar and original. They need to look Trobriand enough, similar to each other and remain “under-

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standable” for outsiders, but given the competition they also need to “stand out” (see Silverman 1999: 62). The view resulting from this dialectic is pieced together by Trobrianders through a diffuse dialogue with buyers in which their own desires and those of dimdims (as foreigners are known in Kilivila, the language of the Trobriand Islands) meet in the form of tokwalu. Artifacts are made so as to transcend local taxonomies, conforming to globalized, Western categories as these are conceived by Trobrianders. The locals’ fabrication of translocal items embodies an indigenous technique—in its most ample sense—of engagement with and appropriation of an increasingly present Western culture and some of its most pervasive elements and ideas (Foster 1999: 148). If a tokwalu is a composite of images, it does not encompass Trobriand images only. Carvings for tourists also incorporate representations of global mass culture as Trobrianders and their fellow Papua New Guineans visualize them (see also Foster 2002: 134 ff; West 2012; Lohmann this volume). Carvings, thus, are repositories of aspirations and the material agents that facilitate the deployment of social relations beyond Kiriwina to achieve these aspirations. These extended social relations are framed by a postcolonial “dialectic of the modern” (LiPuma 2000: 7) that, for Melanesia (as for other places in the Pacific and beyond), seems to oscillate between acculturation (Robbins and Wardlow 2005) and the maintenance of tradition as resistance to outsiders (Thomas 1992). As Mageo has pointed out in the Introduction to this volume, this oscillation is characterized by an intercultural conversation between Others. This talking back and forth elicits cultural appropriations that tend to be carried out in images and symbols, some of which take the form of intracultural reappropriations when the symbol is drawn from the past within the same cultural tradition. When trying to understand cultural encounters, symbols and images become key. Our perception of the world and in particular how we make sense of it is arguably done through the creation and appropriation of symbols (Wagner 1981). Accordingly, it is possible to look at meaning as a particular type of perception (Wagner 1986: 13). With symbols as the necessary mediators used to perceive the world, the act of understanding is achieved through a dialectic enacted between two spaces: that of microcosmic, individual perception and its expanded conventionalized collectivity. The object we perceive—or “image,” in Wagner’s terms—is a “point metaphor” that needs to be apprehended in its relation to the interpretation we make of it—the “frame metaphor” or the elements that make up the object/image (ibid.: 29–31). This dialectic lays its own tracks, so to speak, when it is resolved in what Wagner calls “obviation” by incorporating newly invented symbols into the all-binding conventionalized frame we refer to as “culture.” Obviation is the “dialectic resolution of mediation” (ibid.: xx).

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Exposed to outside influences for over a century, Trobrianders need to keep on engaging with and making sense of incoming new images from EuroAmerica, Asia, and the rest of the Pacific. And because one “cannot easily apprehend the other without turning it into their own” (Wagner 1981: 34), Trobrianders try to transform the outsiders’ symbols into theirs, eventually modifying the larger framework into which those symbols are integrated. This way of making culture through appropriation cannot be fully understood without paying attention to the tools of appropriation. Mimesis in particular has proved to be a common way of expanding point metaphors into reference frames by copying elements from other cultures and adapting them to local schemas. In his well-known formulation of the subject, Walter Benjamin defined the mimetic faculty as “the capacity to become alike” found both in people and objects ([1933] 1999: 720). This use of mimesis as a perceptual tool evidences the subject-object and microcosm-macrocosm connection and thus facilitates a holistic, meaningful comprehension of alterities in the world. Drawing on Benjamin, Taussig (1993) has further developed the concept of mimesis as appropriation in cross-cultural contexts, including indigenous imitations of Western commodities (e.g., ibid.: 226–30). Benjamin’s and Taussig’s treatment of the mimetic faculty as a sensuous, prediscursive human capacity embedded in images and objects—a type of magic that bridges the “divide between animate and inanimate” (Gebauer and Wulf 1995: 269)—particularly befits the Trobriand case. Trobriand crafts for tourists are indeed a coalescence of tropes encompassing traditional local images and native representations of a “modern Other.”

Carving Relations

Tokwalu epitomize this inventiveness of carvers in their endeavor to reach out to dimdims so as to “capture” them (Gell 1992; 1998) and establish a pattern of relations with the potential to yield cash. Although the aim of carvers is to elicit wealth from outsiders, the stress is not in the one-off transaction. Carvers instead emphasize the relation. Relations are key because they can bring more such transactions.3 Captivation, thus, is one of the strategies enacted by Trobrianders to establish these relations; it requires innovative vision but also inclusiveness and the capacity to “become the Other,” a cultural likeness of sorts that allows these relations to last. This is why tokwalu can be seen as material attempts to expand local cultural frames, evidencing how innovation is tradition for Trobrianders, a constant encompassment of past into present, of here and there. Looking at the ways this is achieved helps us to recognize how these cultural frames are broadened in a way that assists Trobrianders in coping with sociocultural change from an active standpoint.

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As I will show, the matter of the inner substance in a carving is a combination of accounts and aspirations, stories and desires that make the object meaningful. The question, thus, is one of ontological balance and reciprocal understanding. On the one hand, Trobrianders expect that their tokwalu will reach out to dimdims; on the other hand, dimdims expect that Trobriand souvenirs will connect them to a timeless Kiriwina. Trobrianders are required to make intrinsically Trobriand carvings and tourists are expected to buy them. Relatively contrasting expectations of modernities and Arcadian primitivisms are played out in an overlapping arena of representations: Trobrianders and dimdims visualize each other and the terms of their exchanges in anticipation of those exchanges. The categories ascribed to each image of alterity (Trobriand and dimdim) tend to inform their counterparts. Yet, however straightforward this imitation of objects may look, local craftsmen do not just adopt an image of Otherness and reflect it back to its originators. Their inferences are not dislodged from Trobriand referential frames but are incorporated in them instead. The real indigenous appropriation is not that of a form but of the possibilities that can be derived from that form. What are these possibilities? And how do Trobrianders conceive and enact them? From a Trobriand position, carving equals the making of a domain of connections as much as it is the making of an object. In fact, carvings have been relational artifacts in intra- and interisland exchanges long before the arrival of dimdims (Malinowski 1922: 200), establishing trade links among the villages where tokwalu were originally manufactured in Kiriwina (at first mostly Bwetalu in the Kuboma district) and those other places that acquired them throughout Milne Bay Province in the context of the kula and other exchanges. The advent of Western capitalism has effected sociocultural transformations that demand new approaches to the production and circulation of meaning. Whereas Trobrianders and their carvings moved within homogeneous cosmologies across the kula ring in the past, they now have to negotiate a universe where cash and Western goods are becoming new poles of signification. The responses and reactions of buyers and other Trobrianders are instrumental in assembling visions of the modern lifeworld (Ingold 2000). Tokwalu are channels of mediation in which representation meets commensurability and in which the object becomes an index of exchange. As we shall see next, in Kiriwina—like elsewhere in Melanesia—the production of objects entails the symbolization of personal relationships (Wagner 1981: 24–25). Trobriand artifacts are the result of relationships; they are “created not in contradistinction to persons but out of persons” as Strathern has put it (1988: 171). What are the relations, then, that make up a tourist souvenir? Since tourists are not a constant presence in the Trobriands, locals need to piece together the dimdim world for which they are carving from other sources. How, then, do Trobrian-

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ders conceive and perform (through their carvings) the personal Other with whom they will engage in new exchanges?

Magic Symbols

Carvers seeking new patrons through their tokwalu do not start from scratch but follow the template provided by their traditional cosmologies instead. Becoming a carver is a process that involves an ongoing initiation. The first step in that initiation—the drinking of sopi—signals the inception of a creative potential. Sopi is the magic water that enables carvers to visualize and create their designs. After drinking sopi, carvers in the making start dreaming of mauna (literally “animal” but also “emblem” or “symbol” in the carving context). They endeavor to reproduce mauna in the prescribed forms, owing to the capacity of visualizing forms bestowed upon them by their initiators. An emblem is therefore first dreamed and then visualized and tentatively executed over an extended period of time, until the carver “knows” (kateta) the symbol. Mauna are also linked to the ancestors that first appropriated and transmitted them, signifying ways of relating to an environment inclusive of past associations that reach into the present and project into the future. Because mauna are endowed with agency, they draw in not only those who appropriate them but also those who comment on them and interpret them and those upon which the emblem acts its efficacy (or lack of it). The designs have an ongoing life in which many entities participate. Modern-day carvers need new mauna to assist them in capturing new patrons. Even if their essence does not appear to be as complex as the multilayered forms of esoteric cognizance and material symbolism expressed in traditional carvings, the circulation of tokwalu and the corresponding implementation of relational networks spreading from the Trobriand world demand an equally extensive knowledge of the carvings’ substance if we are to follow their agency. Here I use “essence” and “substance” for want of better terms to define the compressed characteristics that compose—materially and conceptually—an object in Melanesia (see Strathern 1990). This Melanesian perspective is in tune with Alfred Gell’s claim that artifacts are a “congealed residue of performance and agency in object form, through which access to other persons can be attained” (1998: 68). With this in mind, I suggest we consider the making of new carvings beyond mere stylistic innovation. With their unconventional woodcarvings, craftsmen create new models of patrons and in the process they also redefine their own roles and positions along the way. In treating tokwalu not as singular units of and for transaction along a linear path from carver to buyer but as a junction of perspectives and possible actions instead, tourist objects become analogous to traditional Tro-

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briand representations. They visualize a potential for interpersonal affirmation that draws upon relations heedless of the physical presence or absence of actors in the same space-time. This analogy is propelled by what Appadurai calls “the new power of the imagination in the fabrication of social lives” (1996: 54). Tourist art surfaces as the creative encompassment of alternative images of (real or dreamed) possibilities originating “elsewhere” (ibid.). Tokwalu are material tropes of desire (the representation of dimdim wants and impulses but also the delineation of the carvers’ auspices). They summon an idealized Other that is made of Trobriand aspirations and their visualizations.

Incorporating Dragons

In 2009 Moyobana was acknowledged as one of the best carvers in the Trobriand Islands. His fame spread from his village, Kabwaku, throughout Kiriwina by means of the tokwalu he sold for cash. When he showed me his last creation, a one-meter-high serpentine carving of polished ebony on a pedestal, I realized I was admiring a dragon. Neither a lizard nor a snake (both animals are common in Trobriand land and lore), the carver insisted his tokwalu was a representation of a dragon, and when I asked him where he had seen one, his response was “I dreamed it.” Moyobana argued because he had already drunk sopi he was able to dream any animal; including this dragon. Sopi is associated with the process by which carvers make “their minds clear” (nanosi migileu) at the beginning of their initiation so as to “make room for mauna.” After drinking bespelled brackish sopi water at the beach, carvers dream of the designs they will later incise in the surface of the wood. The dream is a guided inspiration: it is the magic that steers the mind and opens it to the mauna emblems found in traditional Trobriand carvings and handed down by ancestors from the mythical times. Those who carve with sopi4 reenact an interpretive genealogy traceable to other carvers, ancestors, and mythical beings. Passed on through successive generations, sopi magic maps out some of these relations by linking relatives to landmarks such as a lineage’s place of origin. Carving is the exteriorization of a type of knowledge that assembles symbols, magic, and relations through a constructive dialectic of the material and the intangible. Moyobana’s dragon presented a conceptual puzzle. It was the material visualization of a mythical creature that does not belong to the Trobriand mythical realm. With no electricity, no TV, and no Internet at the time, the Trobriand Islands were relatively isolated from Western visual culture. Yet it would be a naïve presumption to surmise that carvers from Kiriwina are unquestionably distanced from any external influences—or that they should be so. Due to increased mobility, many Trobrianders travel to urban centers today and become familiar with the current historical flow of images (TV, Internet,

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etc.). Regardless, dragons in the Trobriands (and in other places of the province) are “legitimate” objects, inasmuch as they do actually exist there as carvings. Why carve a dragon? And how to dream it? These questions being interchangeable, the point is to ascertain the implications of the generative impetus or else to find out what it is, exactly, that Trobrianders are carving beyond appearances. Trobrianders portray their interactions with tourists in different and sometimes contrasting ways. They often try to display an image of authenticity that aims at meeting the idealized projections of the Trobriand world that some tourists carry with them when they come to Kiriwina. This, though, does not preclude carvers from trying to conform to other tropes of Western modernity as they observe them directly or receive them indirectly through the interpretations of others.

The Call of the Mermaid

In 2010 Sawem, a master carver from Yalumgwa in Kiriwina, showed me yet another strange woodcarving: a mermaid. Yet when I asked him what a mermaid was, his exegesis happened to be more prosaic than Moyobana’s. “This,” Sawem admitted, “is your animal, it’s a dimdim animal. We don’t have it here in the Trobes [the Trobriand Islands].” When I asked him why craftsmen in Kiriwina carved mermaids, Sawem’s response was direct: “This is a tokwalu, a carving for tourists. It is very popular among divers, they really like this one.” The profusion of mermaids found in the Trobriand Islands in their different versions confirmed Sawem’s words. Their popularity signals the taste of buyers and records the Trobrianders’ reception of that taste and their incorporation into the local pantheon. Tokwalu are, after all, artifacts for the Other. Their raison d’être is to conform to the desires of the potential buyers. Carvers effect an interpretation of Trobriand culture through the artifacts they carve. Like any other artists, they do not proceed in a sociocultural vacuum. The Trobriand world is tied to the Western capitalist one and to local perceptions of it. Tokwalu have been mediating vehicles of the encounter of Kiriwina and the West for more than a hundred years, but as the conditions of this encounter change, the objects that mediate it vary too. On this account, tracing a tourist agenda of preferences in absolute terms can only be approximate, given the heterogeneous origins of potential buyers and the rapidly changing circumstances of the exchanges. For instance, some of these buyers will never reach the Trobriands, but Trobrianders expect to reach visitors through their carvings. If Sawem has carved mermaids in the past and sold them to divers, chances are that other divers may be interested in buying mermaids.5 Given their proven record of success in appealing to dimdims, mermaids are associated with a type of buyer, but this association needs to stay open enough to en-

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compass prospective patrons. Unlike traditional mauna, anchored to ancestral symbols, the template “mermaid” does not need to conform to a prescribed set of immutable signs or meaningful actions. Because it is not part of a system, the mermaid functions as a freestanding metaphor to which different values can be attached. It can also “work” in other cultural contexts and with alternative categories of tourists. Visualizing these categories demands a degree of creative flexibility from Trobrianders to adapt to nonnative taste. But it is not a problem of form only, solved by the molding of lines in carvings to please divers. Some carvers, like Moyobana, reveal an impetus of appropriation for which mermaids and dragons need to become native at their origin. This impetus betrays the aspiration to conquer another type of kateta, the knowledge of the dimdim world and the ability to act upon it. When carvers want to lend historical and traditional depth to their innovative carvings they copy external elements and mix them with traditional ones in an exercise of incorporative and emblemizing mimesis (see Figures 5.2, 5.3 and 5.5). Imitating mermaids helps Trobrianders in their appropriation of Western schemas. Integrating foreign chimeras into Trobriand cosmologies through mimesis is a procedure performed to construct Western subjects with whom

Figure 5.2. A tokwalu in the shape of a fish, a very popular type known as kapwagega (wide open mouth), found throughout the Trobriands.

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Figure 5.3. Daniel Tobweyova from Kwebwaga Village shows his interpretation of the kapwagega carving to which he has added an innovative element in the form of a mimetic emblemization (see Figure 5.4).

Figure 5.4. Detail of Tobweyova’s carving, where the tail of the kapwagega fish is unusually carved in the shape of a lagim canoe board with two tabuya boards on the side.

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locals can engage through mutually intelligible material idioms. The object’s configuration is conceived concomitantly in general and particular terms. Its meaning has to be open enough to include standard images ready for apprehension, and at the same time it must also bear the specific weight of a singularity. It needs to create the tourist within the tourists. And in doing so the tokwalu has to stay distinctly Trobriand as well.

Figure 5.5. Traditional lagim and tabuya boards carved by Paul Giyumkwumumkwu.

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Dimdim Dragons

After my discovery of the Trobriand dragon, I encountered it again several times under different shapes that nonetheless spelled out a similar idea, the identification of a Western trope as something ordinarily Trobriand. Almost every carver had his own dragons. Yet I did not realize how common the image was beyond the sphere of carvers until Mwasisi, a young Trobriander in the hamlet of Kutoila (Yalumgwa-Obweria ward), where I was based during my fieldwork, pointed at the thermos in the family’s house and affirmed naturally that the animal depicted on it was a dragon. That was indeed an Asian dragon pictured in the Chinese-made thermos purchased in a trade store in Losuia, Kiriwina, and I had noticed it only after Mwasisi’s casual affirmation (a good few months after I saw my first Trobriand dragon). “Bo la nukwali minana dragon” (I already know this one [animal] dragon), Mwasisi said. Mwasisi recognized the dragon in the thermos as something as familiar as a Trobriand mauna. To what extent do Trobrianders like Mwasisi recognize dragons because of the carvers’ material mediation? His awareness denoted the degree to which dragons are inscribed in Trobriand folklore, but it is legitimate to wonder if they are carved because they are popular or if they have become popular because they are carved. Here we are left wondering about the origin of Moyobana’s dragon: is it inflicted upon him from a radically different Otherness? And if so, can we take the dragon to be an example of abject mimicry, an abasing of the Self vis-à-vis what is perceived as a superior colonial Other (Mageo, Introduction, this volume; Merlan this volume; Bhabha 1994)? It is plausible that Moyobana had seen a similar depiction of a dragon (in a made in China commodity, a T-shirt, or even another carving) and absorbed it into his own symbolic pool of emblems. It is equally plausible that Moyobana had dreamed a dragon after seeing one or after hearing that Asian dimdims nowadays are really into buying carvings of dragons. From a dimdim position, it may be assumed that Moyobana is capitalizing on a Western trope of mass culture—and submitting to it uncritically. But from a Trobriand perspective it is also possible that Moyobana had dreamed the dragon before seeing one. In this respect, the problem is not one of Western domination. Trobrianders do not portray dimdims as a fundamentally conflicting Other but as a potential partner instead, one that can identify dragons and mermaids too.6 As a matter of fact, Trobrianders do not yield to the modern buyers by becoming sellers of modernities. Tokwalu cannot be seen as submissive imitations. Instead, carvers try to keep their objects recognizable while imbuing them with local agency so as to draw buyers closer, engaging them in a long lasting set of relations. Dragons and mermaids are symbols of the cognitive

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potential of carvers and of their capacity to create objects with “open agency” able to influence people beyond the Trobriand Islands’ world. Tokwalu may not always have real, physical models but concretize, nonetheless, a concept, an aspiration, or an absence (the intuition of something that’s missing or is known but cannot be apprehended) into a material trope. Much like traditional mauna, the dragon embodies this aspiration: to harness the desired qualities of present-day tokwalu, the key to prestige and money. And like Mweiluvasi’s torch, it also presents the material evidence of the carver’s modern knowledge and his capacity to make a dimdim object on his own terms.

Carving with a Story

Mimicry facilitates transcultural engagements with a dimdim Other. It accounts for a type of indigenous analysis delving further into the feedback between images and narratives. Trobrianders seek to endow their tokwalu with an aura of multivocal range capable of transmitting their agency and reaching out to a world with which they have partial engagements only. Like the attributes of traditional carvings, dense with symbolism and emblems, tokwalu nowadays carry the equivalent in dimdim terms. To complete the mimetic incorporation, the material imitation of forms has its immaterial counterpart, the “story.” The interactions between carvers and tourists are first based on the visual display of objects as embodiments of expectations. Trobrianders expect their tokwalu to do the talking. Tourists expect that too (they are attracted to the formal characteristics immediately evidenced by the artifact), but they often seek verbal cues from the authors as guides to the crafts they want to buy. Dimdims try to elicit hermeneutical responses from carvers as markers of “authenticity.” In their imagination, every object is the solid representation of a local custom or a myth that needs to be extricated from the artifact. The reception of these expectations is exemplified by “the story” in the carving.7 Trobriand carvers use the English word when asked by buyers about the conceptual origin of their carvings. “This carving has a story” is the most repeated tag line when Trobrianders try to convince buyers of the validity of their material elaborations as interpretations of their lifeworld. Tobweyova’s kapwagega fish is an excellent example. To explain the unusual incorporation of lagim and tabuya canoe boards on the tail of his kapwagega fish—an otherwise common tokwalu—he stated, “This fish has a story. A canoe went to do kula in Budibudi. On the way back the canoe risked sinking but one of the crew knew this type of magic; he summoned a big fish called suisayu and the fish took them back safely to Kiriwina on their canoe.”

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Tobweyova’s carving incorporates some traditional esoteric symbols such as those found in the lagim “because it’s a tokwalu about the kula.” Tokwalu like Tobweyova’s kapwagega fish are completed by a story that traces their origins and functions as teleological signposts, so buyers can understand the significance of the object they are about to acquire. Thus, the material inalterability of the finished carving is completed by the malleable soul of the immaterial narrative. If the carving is a visualization of several entities (the animal or the mythical creature but also the carver’s agency and the buyer’s desire), as I suggested before, the story that accompanies it is the enactment of a mediation to put in contact all these entities. Objects, like people, are made of narratives that can elicit the relations of which things and persons are composed in Melanesia. Carvings are visualizations of these relations and material repositories for the verbalizations that accompany them. Contemporary tokwalu like dragons or mermaids bring together a received model and their potential re-elaborations. The dynamics of the interpretation of the symbol and its subsequent renditions are subject to changes (reinterpretations and re-enactments) in objects that attempt to reach an elusive outsider. Epitomized by the story, the soul of the carving is a performance in progress. Under this light, tokwalu become disputed objects that do not belong unequivocally to any one cosmologically pure tradition. The story helps in selling the carving but it also guides representation. Dragons and mermaids are also a challenge for carvers: they exemplify the appropriation of a foreign, epistemologically unknown form. When engraving these unknown symbols, Trobriand carvers are not only evidencing their intentions of appropriation but also announcing how this is done. A carver’s magic is so powerful and encompassing that it allows him to dream mauna that dimdims thought were only theirs. This capacity to dream Western tropes is also a story: it is the narrative of the carver’s success and how he was able to obtain it. It “thickens” the carving with the detachable qualities of the carver, dreamer of strange animals and creator of images, including the successful image of the self, capable of being projected beyond the Trobriand tradition while complementing it. A carving that “has a story” embodies the dialectic interplay of the material and the intangible as a symbol of the Trobrianders’ interpretation and conventionalization of their changing world. The reciprocal flow of extrapolation, of narratives from carvings and carvings from narratives, is constructed upon the generative potential attributed to objects in the Trobriand Islands. In other words, tokwalu have a story because they can be (or become) a story: they can elicit other narratives and produce other objects. Thus the story in an object in Kiriwina is an open genealogy of past relations and actions with the capacity to yield and incorporate new ones. Conceived as performances, some objects’

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agency derives from (1) their personhood (their capacity to act like people and be acted upon) and (2) their ontological ductility (their capacity to act from different standpoints or under different shapes across specific sociocultural domains). Objects, therefore, can reproduce the relations that lie at their origin but also promote new ones. As elsewhere in Melanesia, this type of transferable agency is also common in Kiriwina. The attribution of personhood to objects in Milne Bay Province is best illustrated by the classic treatment of shell valuables in the kula (Munn 1986). Shells contain a fraction of their temporary owners and act as agents for kula participants, notably carrying their fame (a “positive qualisign” with transformative properties; ibid.) beyond the physical boundaries of their community.8 In the Trobriand Islands, the reification of persons and the personification of objects postulated by some scholars for Melanesia (see Strathern 1988) is not limited to kula shells. When interacting with dimdims, Trobrianders need to find a common ground to communicate the origin and the defining characteristics of the personifying potential that resides in their artifacts. If Trobrianders verbalize the story of a carving when trying to sell it, they do so to establish a common nexus between their cosmologies and those of their European consumers. Some of these cosmological concepts involving the potential personhood of objects can be too abstract to grasp for dimdims, but also for those uninitiated Trobrianders who lack the carvers’ esoteric knowledge. I now turn to another instance of the carvings’ “story,” or how carvers materialize9 traditional elements through mimetic emblemization and how that shapes local understandings of Trobriand cosmological constituents.

Materializing Emblems

“Cultural objectification” understood as striving for self-definition is not necessarily a “reactive process” (Thomas 1992: 214) born out of oppressive circumstances. Likewise, it is not always aimed at an outsider. To the contrary, the choice to emblemize cultural traits—that is, to select distinct cultural attributes from the past and replicate them in the present to assert a group’s cultural identity (see Mageo’s Introduction)—can betray an inclusive strategy. A characteristic example of this is the portrayal of tokwai spirits in Trobriand materializations. Tokwai are nature spirits that dwell in trees, plants, rocks, waterholes, and other places (Malinowski refers to them as “woodsprite[s] … stealing crops from the field and from yam-houses, and inflicting slight ailments” 1922: 77, 128). Some people know how to interact with the tokwai using magic megwa spells, directing them to obtain protection or to cause harm to others (e.g., Malinowski 1935: 278, 375). The tokwai are omnipresent in the Trobriand world.

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Yet even though they are mentioned in everyday discourses and invoked in many magic spells, tokwai representations in contemporary woodcarvings are uncommon. When asked about tokwai features most Trobrianders are hardpressed to describe them. As I noted above, a fundamental part of the carver’s task in Kiriwina is to be able to internalize and externalize images. Carving material representations of Trobriand cosmologies requires a capacity to visualize invisible elements. A good case in point is that of the bwalai, humanlike figures found in traditional kula canoe boards (Figure 5.6). Different from the tokwai, the bwalai (in fact known simply as tokwalu by the uninitiated) are spirits that travel in the canoe; their role is to protect the crew while at sea. Yet if the canoe master (toliwaga) forgets to bespell the bwalai with the right megwa prior to the journey, the spirits will come alive in case of shipwreck and devour the crew (see Jarillo de la Torre 2013). Notwithstanding their knowledge of the bwalai and the position they occupy, both materially and symbolically, carvers do not have a canonical, unanimous representation for them.10 But because they constitute one of the traditional emblems carved in the lagim, Trobrianders are familiar with them and are able to recognize the bwalai in canoe boards.

Figure 5.6. Another lagim canoe board carved by Paul Giyumkwumumkwu. The bwalai are the two anthropomorphic figures with round eyes found in the middle. An alternative rendition of the bwalai can also be seen in Figure 5.5.

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This familiarity, though, is not always readily found in other representations of supernatural Trobriand agents. Unlike canonical emblems, tokwai spirits have no defined materializations. Nevertheless, in an increasingly visual society, the question of representation goes beyond the production of tourist art. Despite a hundred years of Christian missionization, tokwai still permeate Trobriand life. In order to bridge local and global cosmologies, Trobrianders need to adapt elements from the past to current schemas. As the following example shows, this appropriation is often carried out in images, enabling a wide comprehension also from within the culture in which they are produced. In a succinct explanation of how a particular type of magic of attraction named kaimwasila works, Joe Beona, a young Trobriander, attempted to pin down the defining elements that make the magic efficacious. Kaimwasila is prepared using a concoction of vegetable matter (plants, fruits, flowers, etc.) mixed with coconut oil (bulami) over which a magic spell is recited (see also Campbell 2002: 97–98). Anointing yourself with this medicated bulami results in enhancing your capacity of attraction to the point where third parties experience an irresistible desire toward you and are easily coaxed into complying with your wishes. The utterance of the spell summons the spirits of the ancestors, “putting them into the bulami,” as Joe affirmed, “so they too can help you persuade other people do what you want.” When I asked him what else was in the herbs, Joe stated that there were also other magic creatures in the bulami: “When you collect the plants you have to do it at a special time. That is the time when some creatures come to live in the plants,” Joe declared. “What creatures?” I asked him. “Spirits. In Kaibola and Luwebila [two villages to the extreme north of Kiriwina where kaimwasila originated] there are mermaids that come to sleep in those plants. If you capture them, they too will be in the bulami. Together with the spirits of your ancestors, these mermaids will make the bulami work. You also need to put parts of yourself in the bulami, like your pubic hair and dirt from your body. If you give the bulami to someone—in a betel nut for example—then the mermaid will go and live inside their body making them do what you want.” Two things are particularly telling about Joe’s explanation. One is the conviction that magic works because the bulami has in it a “spirit” that acts on behalf of the person (and in conjunction with the spirits of ancestors). Plants are not important in themselves. They simply contain a “collectible being” that is the purposive agent of their power, in association with the spirits of ancestors and fragments of the self. The other remarkable thing is that Joe claims that this spirit living in plants and trees is a mermaid. One could surmise that the

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mermaid is Joe’s concrete and familiar representation of a tokwai spirit, never mentioned by him in our conversations. Sure enough, the mermaid is familiar to the dimdim tourist, but at this point it is also familiar to a Trobriander like Joe who, incidentally, is not a carver. The mermaid has been co-opted in the Trobriand pantheon because it helps any Trobriander (not just carvers endowed with the power to dream images) visualize the invisible, therefore making it more accessible and apprehensible, exteriorizing a previous interiorization. Joe, who is well aware of the mechanisms that regulate the efficacy of a magic he himself uses, is short of exegetical cues when in need of explaining those mechanisms to a dimdim. The mermaid is the concretization of an abstract image of power, and—even more importantly—one dimdims can recognize. It is there to be grasped also by the uninitiated layman. But the fortune of the mermaid also rests upon the fact that it can now be presented as something intrinsically Trobriand. Dimdims will recognize the shape of the mermaid immediately—not a Western mermaid but a local one. And since the same process is equally adapted to validate representations of other Trobriand spirits, the mermaid stands metonymically next to other images of supernatural creatures. For example, carvers of tokwalu in Kiriwina are experimenting with new renditions of “flying witches.” 11 Flying witches (yoyowa or mulukwausi) and sorcerers (bwagau) are said to be able to transform their own features so as to terrorize their victims. Like objects and landscape features, witches and sorcerers too may have “spirits” inside that act as their source of power (see also Bell 2006). When I asked him what a yoyowa looked like, my adoptive Trobriand father Camillus gave me the following description of one of his sisters—a reputed flying witch in the southern village of Sinaketa: “She is a very skinny woman with big glowing eyes, like a cat; she can dislocate her jaw so as to keep her mouth wide open and swallow people; she can also make her teeth, nose and ears grow to appear more fearsome. She has a long tongue that sticks out of her mouth” (see Crivelli, Jarillo, and Fridlund 2016: 5). Camillus’s description of a flying witch is reminiscent of the features carved in this tokwalu, a kaitukwa walking stick representing a yoyowa (see Figure 5.7). His account matches tokwalu just as much as tokwalu match his description. In many Trobrianders’ reasoning, dimdims buying representations of flying witches and mermaids are presented with an “authentic” story (insofar as it is a Trobriand one). But if this promotes a more direct understanding of Trobriand myths by outsiders it also assists Trobrianders like Joe or Mwasisi in picturing abstract concepts and invisible beings like tokwai or mythical creatures like dragons. At this point, it is clear that this type of appropriation through mimetic emblemization is not merely the seizing of an image by a carver through imitation or reproduction to create an object appealing to

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Figure 5.7. Detail of a kaitukwa walking stick photographed in Obweria Village in 2010.

dimdims. The appropriation of an image is a communal operation carried out by carvers and others, the creators of material objects and those who corroborate these creations with their recognition.

Conclusion: Mimesis as the Making of Relations

Through these examples, I have demonstrated the power of the mimetic image as a tool of intercultural and intracultural comprehension. Through the intertwining of material incorporations and emblemizations, carvers bring Trobriand cosmological forces like the tokwai to the surface, both for Trobrianders and outsiders. But if mimesis assists perception across different cultural spaces it also helps bridging understandings throughout time. Emblemizing the past is a way for Trobrianders to live the present and conceive the future as a constant reenactment of ancestral custom. According to old master carvers, this is expressed visually by the chambered nautilus shell’s growth pattern, as it incorporates “the magnitude of the previous loop/performance” (Scoditti 2012: 88) into the body of the shell, con-

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ceiving the future as a replication and expansion of the past (see also Jarillo de la Torre 2013: 26). Or, as Annette Weiner put it, “When Trobrianders try something new, they do not give up the old—for the old is a lifeline for each generation” (1982: 70). And if past and future are not far apart, neither are dragons, tokwai, and mermaids. In a universe that is now in permanent dialogue with the rest of the world, tokwai are commensurable with dragons and mermaids. Tokwalu are innovative symbols that aim at “integrat[ing] disparate contexts” (Wagner 1981: 53), the Trobriand one and the dimdim’s. Once their mimetic incorporation and emblemization is complete, new tokwalu like the mermaid or the dragon will become as conventionally straightforward as the wooden torch is now. It is important to understand, nonetheless, that the adoption of a foreign trope and its submission to local referential frames does not amount to a translation. Nor is it necessarily prompted by an asymmetric encounter made of forced impositions and uncritical assimilations. Incorporating a dragon or a mermaid into the traditional Trobriand pool of myths must not be mistaken with surrendering to Western cosmologies more than it is adopting and dominating elements from those cosmologies from an entirely vernacular perspective. Mimesis is a tool that helps apprehend a given image in relation to the larger cultural frame within which it is to be embedded. This is why mimesis can be “culturally specific and universal,” allowing the simultaneous display of difference and similarity (Hermann, this volume). Yet what makes mimesis a particularly apt concept to analyze Trobriand woodcarvings is its potential to uncover relationality across cultural divides and between objects and subjects, as theorized by Benjamin ([1933] 1999). When looking at intercultural encounters in Melanesia it is important to acknowledge the extent to which these are mediated by objects. Like other people in Melanesia, Trobrianders conceive artifacts as aggregates of relationships (Strathern 1988, 1990). Over the past century, carving in the Trobriand Islands has proved to be a constructive undertaking, an inventive endeavor set to make sense of a changing reality that involved more and more the continuous presence of foreign elements and their uninterrupted interactions with the locals. Carvings like dragons and mermaids have become nexuses of these new relations. To a degree, carvings for foreigners do not only display Trobriandness but are also the material signification of the relations among Trobrianders and dimdims. To see the full breath of these relations, we need to consider them as networks flowing in and out of Melanesia, carrying “delocalized” images that are assembled throughout changing settings. This commensurability enacted through mimetic incorporation is crucial to establish patronage relations with outsiders and guarantee an income. From a theoretical perspective, mimesis can be used as an analytical torch to explore the transformations resulting from transcultural encounters. It

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sheds light on the relations between people and things, revealing the object’s multiple indexical properties. In the Trobriand case, looking at mimesis as a technology of revelation evidences the carving’s capacity to represent the invisible and connect it to a collective imagination. Carvings are thus established as the products of a series of relations and the potential originators of new ones. They do more than simply agglutinate the contrasting mythopoetic fabric of the Trobriand world with the historical interpretation that EuroAmericans still make of it. As I noted earlier, the real mimetic appropriation effected by Trobrianders is not that of a foreign form but that of the possibilities that form affords. The act of appropriation takes priority and that is what is actually empowering, since it allows Trobrianders to effect a degree of control over the potential relations embedded in the object. Sergio Jarillo de la Torre (Ph.D. in anthropology, Cambridge University) is currently Sylvan C. Coleman and Pam Coleman Memorial Fund Fellow in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. He has also been a fellow in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. His main research areas are social change, tourist art, material culture, and climate change. He has carried out fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands and Budibudi in PNG as well as in Mozambique and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Notes 1. The term tokwalu originally indicated freestanding carvings depicting anthropomorphic figures only, the male prefix to- (him) denoting human or human-like traits. The term may be linked to tokwai, a type of spirit that is believed to dwell in trees and other features of the landscape (see below). With time and through the interaction with Europeans who seemed to privilege anthropomorphic carvings over other types, tokwalu has come to indicate any type of carving made for outsiders. 2. A fascination that was likely shared by those interisland trade partners with whom Trobrianders had been engaging in exchange long before the first Europeans showed up in Milne Bay Province (Gell 1992: 44). Given their wide distribution throughout this area of Eastern Papua New Guinea, Trobriand carvings already had the consideration of prestige items prior to the arrival of Europeans. 3. The same strategy is enacted by Makonde woodcarvers from Northern Mozambique and South Tanzania, whose goal is to enter into patronage relations with buyers and maintain these relationships through original, appealing carvings so as to keep a steady flow of commissions (see Kirknaes and Korn 1999; Kingdon 2002). 4. Not all carvers are in possession of sopi and some carve without magic altogether. 5. The fortunes of the geographically unconfined mermaid have encompassed the Pacific long before their adoption by Trobriand carvers. European and American sailors,

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8.

9.

10.

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through their interactions and material exchanges, have helped bridging disparate cultural traditions through mimetic visualizations (see the carved mermaid at the American Museum of Natural History, attributed to a Haida carver from the Northwest coast of Canada; Glass 2011: 161). So-called Feejee mermaids from Japan (fabricated chimeras that look like animal specimens) were once popular (and expensive) curios traded by sailors around the world and featured in side shows from Africa to Europe and America (P.T. Barnum’s American Museum famously displayed one in New York in 1842; see Levi 1977; Viscardi et al. 2014). The mermaid remains a powerful representation in tourist art across the world beyond Asia and North America, from Mexico (Chibnik 2003) to West, East, Central, and South Africa (Siegel 2008; Jules-Rosette 1984) to other parts of the Pacific (e.g. Tonga; see van der Grijp 2012). Pearson (this volume) cogently shows how mimetic exchanges are prone to producing unanticipated and novel sets of social relations. For similar associations between objects and narratives and how they are perceived as instrumental in facilitating the sale process, see Jacobs’s analysis of Kamoro carvings in West Papua (2012: 203–7) or Causey’s study of Toba Batak woodcarvers in Sumatra (2003: 194). And across time too. See for instance another type of “personalized object,” Trobriand songs, more often than not known by the name of the composer rather than the song’s title. Thus, Trobrianders would prompt a singer to “perform Sebwagau,” that is to sing a song from Sebwagau’s repertoire, re-enacting the late composer’s personality, creativity, and fame and not just “singing a song.” I follow Bell and Geismar’s use of materialization as a concept expressing “the interweaving of words, materials and human action” (2009: 3) that encompasses Trobriand woodcarvings. Since the making of tokwalu cannot be understood without words, images, techniques, and relations, “materialization” seems to be better suited than the more ontologically bound and static term “material culture” as an analytic concept. In fact, bwalai are sometimes depicted as a couple (Figure 5.6) or as a single individual (Figure 5.5). Likewise, there are many examples in which the bwalai are clearly gendered, whereas in other cases they are represented as androgynous beings. “Flying witch” was first used to translate the Kilivila terms yoyowa and mulukwausi by Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific and is still employed by the people of Milne Bay Province when trying to differentiate them from bwagau sorcerers.

References Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bell, Joshua A. 2006. “Intersecting Histories: Materiality and Social Transformation in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea.” Ph.D. dissertation. Oxford: University of Oxford. Bell, Joshua A., and Haidy Geismar. 2009. “Materialising Oceania: New Ethnographies of Things in Melanesia and Polynesia.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 20(1): 3–27. Benjamin, Walter. (1933) 1999. “On the Mimetic Faculty.” In Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2, 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, 720–22. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Campbell, Shirley F. 2002. The Art of Kula. Oxford: Berg. Causey, Andrew. 2003. Hard Bargaining in Sumatra: Western Travelers and Toba Bataks in the Marketplace of Souvenirs. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Chibnik, Michael. 2003. Crafting Tradition: The Making and Marketing of Oaxacan Wood Carvings. Austin: University of Texas Press. Crivelli, Carlos, Sergio Jarillo, and Alan J. Fridlund. 2016. “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Research in Small-Scale Societies: Studying Emotions and Facial Expressions in the Field.” Frontiers in Psychology 7(1073): 1–12. Foster, Robert J. 1999. “Melanesianist Anthropology in the Era of Globalization.” The Contemporary Pacific 11(1): 140–59. ———. 2002. Materializing the Nation: Commodities, Consumption, and Media in Papua New Guinea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gebauer, Gunter, and Christoph Wulf. 1995. Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gell, Alfred. 1992. “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology.” In Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics, ed. Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton, 40–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Glass, Aaron, ed. 2011. Objects of Exchange: Social and Material Transformation on the Late Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast. New York: Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture. Gray, Alastair C. 1999. “Trading Contacts in the Bismarck Archipelago during the Whaling Era, 1799–1884.” The Journal of Pacific History 34(1): 23–43. Harrison, Rodney. 2006. “An Artefact of Colonial Desire? Kimberley Points and the Technologies of Enchantment.” Current Anthropology 47(1): 63–88. Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Jacobs, Karen. 2012. Collecting Kamoro: Objects, Encounters and Representation on the Southwest Coast of Papua. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Jarillo de la Torre, Sergio. 2013. “Carving the Spirits of the Wood. An Enquiry into Trobriand Materialisations.” Ph.D. dissertation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1984. The Messages of Tourist Art: An African Semiotic System in Comparative Perspective. New York: Plenum Press. Kingdon, Zachary. 2002. A Host of Devils: The History and Context of the Making of Makonde Spirit Sculpture. London: Routledge. Kirknæs, Jesper, and Jørn Korn. 1999. Makonde. Copenhagen: Rhodos. Leach, Jerry W. 1978. “The Kabisawali Movement in the Trobriand Islands.” Ph.D. dissertation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Levi, Steven C. 1977. “P.T. Barnum and the Feejee Mermaid.” Western Folklore 36(2): 149–54. LiPuma, Edward. 2000. Encompassing Others: The Magic of Modernity in Melanesia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. MacGregor, William. 1892. “Despatch Reporting Expedition Undertaken to Effect Capture of Murderers of Two Traders at Murua (Woodlark Island).” Annual Report on British New Guinea (1890–1891): Appendix B, 4–8. ———. 1894. “Despatch Reporting Visit to the D’Entrecasteaux and Neighbouring Islands.” Annual Report on British New Guinea (1893–1894): Appendix D, 16–21.

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Macintyre, Martha. 1983. The Kula: A Bibliography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ———. 1935. Coral Gardens and Their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands, vol. 1. London: Allen and Unwin. Munn, Nancy D. 1986. The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Durham: Duke University Press. Robbins, Joel, and Holly Wardlow, eds. 2005. The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia: Humiliation, Transformation, and the Nature of Cultural Change. Aldershot: Ashgate. Scoditti, Giancarlo M.G. 2012. Notes on the Cognitive Texture of an Oral Mind: Kitawa, a Melanesian Culture. Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishing. Siegel, Brian. 2008. “Water Spirits and Mermaids: the Copperbelt Chitapo.” In Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and Other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora, ed. Henry J. Drewal, 303–12. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Silverman, Eric K. 1999. “Tourist Art as the Crafting of Identity in the Sepik River (Papua New Guinea).” In Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, ed. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner, 51–66. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stanley, Nick. 2012. The Making of Asmat Art: Indigenous Art in a World Perspective. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing. Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1990. “Artefacts of History: Events and the Interpretation of Images.” In Culture and History in the Pacific, ed. Jukka Siikala, 25–44. Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Thomas, Nicholas. 1992. “The Inversion of Tradition.” American Ethnologist 19(2): 213–32. van der Grijp, Paul. 2012. “A Cultural Search for Authenticity: Questioning Primitivism and Exotic Art.” In Debating Authenticity: Concepts of Modernity in Anthropological Perspective, ed. Thomas Fillitz and A.J. Saris, 128–41. New York: Berghahn Books. Viscardi, Paolo, Anita Hollinshead, Ross Macfarlane, and James Moffatt. 2014. “Mermaids Uncovered.” Journal of Museum Ethnography 27: 98–116. Wagner, Roy. 1981. The Invention of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1986. Symbols that Stand for Themselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weiner, Annette B. 1982. “Ten Years in the Life of an Island. The Anthropology of Development Policies in the Trobriands.” Bikmaus 3(4): 64–75. West, Paige. 2012. From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press. Wilson, Kent, and Karen Menzies. 1967. “Production and Marketing of Artefacts in the Sepik Districts and the Trobriand Islands.” In New Guinea People in Business and Industry: Papers from the First Waigani Seminar, ed. Ron Crocombe, 50–75. Canberra: Australian National University, New Guinea Research Unit.

6 Capitalism Meets Its Match Failed Mimesis of Market Economics among the Asabano of Papua New Guinea ROGER IVAR LOHMANN

Introduction

Capitalism’s march around the globe seems relentless. Like other copyable human creations, capitalism is made of culture and manifests in three forms: schemas, behaviors, and artifacts (Lohmann 2010b). Of these, only the last two are directly visible to would-be emulators. Within and across social boundaries, people see and copy capitalism’s institutions and trappings with astounding frequency. Nevertheless, capitalism does not overwhelm all aspects of economic activity, nor is it accepted everywhere it is introduced. In this chapter, rather than directly addressing the important question of why it is so frequently and transculturally copied, I instead identify barriers that inhibit its being copied. These appear when we analyze the areas in social life where capitalism cannot find purchase (pun intended). By understanding the kinds of relations that inhibit copying capitalism, those that foster it stand out by comparison. Moreover, channeling and restricting capitalism to meet social and ecological goals can be more effectively done in light of the sociocultural conditions under which people do not enact it—even when they are aware of it. Capitalism reached the Asabano, a subsistence horticultural people of central New Guinea, shortly after first contact. When Australian colonial officials arrived in 1963, Asabano men were taken to government stations in Telefomin and Wewak, where they experienced state currency and trade stores before being sent home. At the invitation of labor recruiters in 1966, the first few men went to work two-year stints on distant plantations. They earned pay for work and spent it in trade stores on exotic manufactured goods like woven clothing, metal tools, and white salt, some of which they carried home. The proportion of people participating in capitalist ventures run by others while away from home has never been substantial. There remain virtually no paid work opportunities in their remote villages that would allow individuals to accumulate capital. The reciprocal basis of the local economy remains in

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force. Reciprocity obligations continually equalize the distribution of wealth among all people by whittling away at any person’s private surplus. Although people admire the products of capitalism, their attempts to copy capitalist undertakings by opening and operating businesses have so far proven abortive or partial. Transcultural mimesis (that is, the diffusion of culture across social cultural boundaries, seen from the perspective of people who copy) did not produce a workable copy of capitalism. The isolation and intimacy of Asabano society means that the only people available to serve in capitalism’s required social roles of employer, employee, merchant, and customer cannot enact these roles in the openly selfish and acquisitive manner required for capitalism to function. Therefore, although efforts to mime capitalism in the form of trade stores and markets have been sporadically attempted, these newer copies of capitalism are so functionally different from the model that was copied that it represents a failed mimesis. I consider this case of attempted mimesis to begin to answer the question of why capitalism has not successfully diffused here despite a desire to reproduce it. I analyze attempts by Asabano to copy business models they had witnessed in order to identify factors that are thwarting their mimesis of capitalism. These include the remoteness of their settlement and the fact that sharing is extended to virtually everyone with whom they routinely come in contact. This prevents those who do attempt to start businesses from selling enough goods and services for cash at a sufficient markup. Since this small society is based on close relationships, capitalism fails for the same reasons that it does not govern the distribution of resources within intimate family units in complex, large-scale, capitalist societies. The intimacy that characterizes family groups allows them to remain bastions of sharing and reciprocity within larger redistribution and market economies. Intimacy provides conditions under which capitalism and market economics break down. Where a whole society exists as a set of relatively intimate relations, capitalist culture can gain purchase only at the expense of reducing the intimacy of existing relationships or by expanding to include nonintimate associates to serve as partners in capitalist social roles. The former has not been acceptable to Asabano people, and they experience maximizing their own share of wealth at the expense of village intimates as unseemly or even criminal. The latter has not been possible due to their home territory’s location in a sparsely populated region without easy access to other population centers. Cultural creations change in the recontextualizing process of “mimetic acts of transculturation” (Hermann, this volume). The Asabano case of failed or at best partial mimesis—where some aspects of capitalism are mimed but other components that are vital to capitalism’s efficacy are not—illustrates processes common to diffusion, envisioned from the point of view of culture-receiving agents. Capitalism has both appeal and limitations as an object of transcultural

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mimesis. In any situation of diffusion, from borrowing words across languages to transformative acculturation, some factors promote mimesis while others inhibit it, and the success, failure, and form of cultural copying depends on the form and relative strength of each of these factors.

An Intimate, Egalitarian Society

Asabano villages are a collection of a few houses, made mainly of materials freely gathered from the surrounding bush. Villages are perched on relatively flat spots amid rugged mountain ranges covered in thick rainforest that extends for miles in all directions. Residents number in the tens. They come and go freely, looking after children, working in nearby gardens, and going on foraging expeditions. Every morning, hearth smoke rises through the thatch as neighbors build up fires that had burned all night to cook their breakfast of sweet potatoes in the ashes. Conversations and sounds of activity carry between houses whose outer walls are made of planks tied to frames with gaps, letting breezes in and hearth smoke out. At midafternoon, settlements are all but abandoned, and village dogs start to howl in loneliness for their humans. Toward evening, the people regather, some enticing piglets close to their houses with dainty treats, only to raise squeals of protest when they grab and carry the struggling animals up ladders and toss them through the doors to spend another night in safety. After nightfall, conversations and cooking give way to sleeping around the hearths on the floor. Such was the flow of life during my stints living in Yabob village in the 1990s and 2000s. Like many of the tiny societies in Papua New Guinea, the Asabano live in a very few, close-knit villages. Although there are no vehicle roads connecting them to one another or to other more distant centers, everyone lives within range to visit by foot. Such conditions breed mutual familiarity. Everyone knows everyone in the entire society. Relationships are primarily conceived of in terms of kinship, so that almost everyone in one’s circle is either a relative or an in-law. It’s as though everyone were part of a single, if rather large, household. Indeed, as late as the 1960s, Asabano hamlets actually consisted of a single community house, supplemented by a men’s cult house and a menstrual hut. While smaller extended family houses have since sprung up in their settlements for those who wish them, the public community house remains at the center of daily village life and is the primary residence for some. Asabano society as a whole is intimate (Lohmann 2013). Small-scale societies do not require a complex hierarchy to distribute roles and statuses. Typical of Papuan-speaking peoples of the interior of New Guinea, the Asabano have no chiefs or other powerful leaders who can stand

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above others. The status differences that do exist take the form of greater ascribed status of males over females and of vigorous elders over juniors and children. These distinctions have, since at least late precontact times in the mid-twentieth century, influenced the distribution of scarce resources. For example, senior initiated men had rights to foods forbidden others in the religious initiation system, but within initiation grades the foods that were their prerogative were shared rather than hoarded for individual consumption or, as would have been unthinkable, for sale. The initiation complex was in force until, under the influence of a Baptist mission, it was actively destroyed during the mass conversion “revival” movement of 1977. However, the idea of anyone who has the means of sustenance preventing another person from freely having a share was and remains anathema to basic Asabano morals. This characteristic overshadows the relatively minor differences in status. Asabano society is quite egalitarian. The strong identification, familiarity, and sharing with everyone else in one’s social world that characterizes Asabano village life is something that I had not previously experienced in my own society, where such intimacy is restricted to family and, to a lesser extent, close friendships. It is precisely these relationships that resist the inroads of capitalism, even in societies in which capitalism dominates other economic relationships. One would not sell dinner to one’s child. One would not charge one’s spouse for accommodations. Without social distance, the self-centered acquisitiveness that lies at the heart of capitalism is cut adrift. As Paul Bohannan (1955: 60) observes in his study of Tiv market and gift spheres, “people do not like to sell to kinsmen since it is bad form to demand a high price from a kinsman as one might from a stranger. Market behavior and kinship behavior are incompatible in a single relationship.” Transactions with kin, fictive kin, and other intimates are supposed to involve sharing. As Thomas Widlok (2013: 28) argues, sharing is based on notions of common relatedness, communication, and presence. He notes that it need not be arranged such that all participants get an equal share, and he convincingly makes the case that its diagnostic qualities are as visible in demand sharing as they are in freely given distributions. Sharing is, then, an index of the sort of common cause, all-in-the-same-boat sort of equality that manifests intimacy. It extends the unit of “selfishness” from “me-now” to “us-always.” That is, the “self ” for whom one acts is expanded to include one’s associates of the past, present, and future. By contrast, acquisitive economic modes such as capitalism require exchange partners who are able and willing to interact as competing interests. Capitalism’s roles cannot be copied within intimate social structures without undermining and reformulating them. Thus, “the indigenous service economy” of provisioning in domestic households based on moral obligations (Gell 1999: 87), “generalized reciprocity,” or sharing freely

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without keeping account, and “balanced reciprocity” in which equal gift exchanges express participants’ social equality (Sahlins 1972) are all anathema to capitalistic roles. Intimacy and equality in societies like the Asabano are markers for inclusion in a moral community suited to a sharing way of relating. In hierarchical societies, other markers can be called upon to similar effect. For example, Toren (1989) shows how Fijians, judging capitalism as morally lacking but nevertheless participating in it, “launder” its proceeds into gifts. Here, hierarchical orders as well as kinship are associated with traditional sharing, while “European” capitalism is seen as something done between “equals” in the sense of people with no moral obligations toward one another. Thus, the moral relations of sharing versus dealing, while arising in egalitarian and intimate societies, can be retained and even attached to nonequals and nonintimates through the advent of rank and chiefdom social organization and beyond. Moreover, capitalism can coexist with sharing and reciprocity in the same society if different sets of relationships appropriate to each economic mode can be compartmentalized and if goods and services can be conceptually transformed from commodities into gifts and back again. As Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch (1989: 2) point out, competitive, oppositional, and acquisitive, “short-term exchange which is the legitimate domain of the individual,” and cooperative and common cause, “long-term exchanges concerned with the reproduction of the social and cosmic order” are found interdigitated in a wide range of societies. Accordingly, the Asabano do have tenuous connections to the broader, multinational capitalist economy and transform the commodities they have been able to buy into gifts and shared provisions within their own community. It is in attempting to enact the role of capitalist entrepreneur within their own community that they have faltered in copying, since success would require undermining the intimate basis of their society. As my Asabano hosts and I negotiated a cross-cultural adjustment to one another, the degree and kind of intimacy was central. This prominently included the matter of what role mutual sharing versus purchase would play among us. I was content to act like family, to a degree, by freely sharing what I considered small things, like food, back and forth so long as there were not too many expecting too much at once. I also experienced firsthand that an egalitarian ethos inspires pressure to distribute equally and precipitates resentful jealousy when one person is favored over others. Our different standards of sharing led to memorable ethnographic discoveries. On one occasion, Soki, a man with whom I had a mutual fondness, borrowed my backpack, and then proceeded to take it away on a long journey with, it later became clear, no intention of returning it. My field notes of 6 November 1995 capture the powerful emotions I experienced—often a sign that one has hit on a cultural difference.

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This morning Foren and Willie came over. I was complaining to [Foren] about Soki, trying to get an idea of the local standards considering theft/sharing. He told me that just recently Meki asked him for his shoes to play soccer with because he had a sore on his foot. After the game was done, he walked to Daksil, and didn’t give them back. The next day he asked him for them, and [Meki] said, “they belong to me now.” I asked Foren how that made him feel, and he said he was unhappy about it, but would just let it go. He said when he would think about his shoes he would be regretful that he doesn’t have them anymore, but he won’t be too angry. This in contrast to me: I am furious with Soki and feel trust has been broken. I feel if I loan something, it should come back. Here the sharing philosophy is strong, and is enforced by what we would call petty theft. No possession is held completely securely. What I think now, looking back, is that far from breaking a trust born of friendship, by taking my loan as a gift Soki was in fact treating me as a favored insider: as a member of the intimate, egalitarian moral community I had come to study as a participant-observer. It is, of course, by awkwardly stumbling through just such incongruities and misunderstandings between cultures that we come to understand both others’ ways and our own. Demanding my backpack back, I had, as it were, failed in my participant-observer’s attempt at mimesis of Asabano reciprocity.

Capitalism’s Appearance and Asabano Reactions

With the preceding sketch of Asabano intimacy and egalitarianism in mind, consider their reaction to capitalism’s appearance at the margins of their society. It arrived, with other novel cultural creations displayed with an opportunity to copy as part of early contact events. The elder Sumole presented an account of his people’s contact history on 9 September 1994, which serves admirably here as a summary. When I was a kid Ansep’s age [about twelve or thirteen], we heard airplanes for the first time. People were all frightened and ran away to the forest. People thought it sounded like an insect that sings when it’s about to rain. After this, some Telefolmin came to trade steel knives, axes, and salt, and told us about the white people and how they had outlawed fighting. After this, just Bledalo and I walked via Eliptaman to Telefomin to see for ourselves. … I was afraid because we were in enemy territory. When we got to Telefomin, white missionaries showed us axes, knives, and salt. They also gave us clothes,

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with which I was very happy. They also gave us rice and canned fish to eat. After a little while we went back and told people what we saw. After this the Omai called to us to participate in a raid on the Saiyo. We went along because they thought ol kiap [the Australian colonial patrol officers] wouldn’t know, as they hadn’t been to our territory before. After the raid the first patrol entered our area, and took the men who had participated prisoner. We were held at Telefomin for five months, and then sent to Wewak, where the head kiap asked us questions. He asked if we knew about kiaps and the law, and we said we didn’t, so we only stayed in Wewak for a month. Having gone back to Telefomin, the kiaps gave us work for a month lengthening the airstrip. They didn’t feed us enough. At the end of the month the kiap sat on his verandah, and as he called each man’s name he came forward and got his pay: £550 each. They explained to us what money is good for, and directed us to the store where we bought lots of stuff. The kiap wanted to go back with us to our village, so we all went as part of a patrol. … When we arrived they bought a pig from Bledalo for £100 plus an axe. Before contact, the Asabano had used seashells as media of exchange, but they were unlike the newly introduced Australian money in having inherent value as decorative jewelry rather than being mere representations of value (for a description of types and values, see Lohmann 2000: 77–80). They were high denomination and featured in exchange for valuable foreign goods, like stone adzes and palm wood bows, or featured in ceremonial presentations, such as bridewealth payments. Although marriages required the groom to assemble large numbers of shell money pieces and other valuables, including net bags, pigs, bows, and arrows, this was achieved by asking all one’s relatives to contribute. Upon turning the assembled pile of wealth over to the bride’s father or another close male relative, the wealth was immediately redistributed to all the relatives on her side. In practice, some of the relatives who helped the groom pay his bridewealth were also recipients by virtue of other kin relations to the bride. The earliest state money introduced was Australian pounds. These were replaced from 1966 until 1975 with Australian dollars, and since national independence in 1975, with Papua New Guinea kina. The new money quickly entered bridewealth presentations and could not be fully secured from ongoing demands of all one’s associates for a share. Shell valuables, especially aduwale or fathoms of nassa shells known in Tok Pisin as rop tambu, continue to be valued and to circulate side by side with introduced money in a manner similar to that described for their distant neighbors, the Urapmin (Robbins 1999: 99). While cash, unlike aduwale, originates from capitalist relationships, once it enters the

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local Asabano economy it quickly circulates in the same noncapitalist style as shell money, in domestic provisioning and reciprocity-based exchanges. Some three years after the first cash payments for labor and materials that some Asabano received from kiaps in 1963, recruiters representing tea plantations in the highlands and coconut plantations in the islands visited the Asabano. Beginning in 1966, several men signed up for two-year contracts to work at coconut plantations in Kavieng, Rabaul, and Manus and a tea plantation in Mount Hagen. Having there participated in wage labor and a market economy that included exposure to trade stores, these men returned home laden with exotic goods such as machetes, axes, European clothing, foam mattresses, soap, bags of rice, and canned food. In 1974, a Telefolmin Baptist leader named Diyos established a mission and Bible college for training pastors from around the region at the edge of Asabano territory, with the support of the Australian Baptist Missionary Society. A contingent of Telefolmin followers, including people of mixed Telefolmin and Asabano background from neighboring Eliptaman, settled just upstream on Telefol territory. Telefolmin people associated with the mission set up occasional small trade stores modeled on those of larger centers, bringing very small-scale capitalist ventures to the Asabano homeland. Local opportunities for wage labor remained practically nil, but with the rise of mining at the relatively nearby Ok Tedi gold and copper project and its associated town of Tabubil, and the even nearer gold and copper exploration activities at Frieda River, some limited work opportunities in these areas have attracted a few men on mainly temporary work and visiting opportunities. For a short period in the early 1990s, the Asabano were engaged to grow European vegetables for sale in town or at Telefomin. By 1994, this had been discontinued due to rising airfreight costs. Reputedly a weekly vegetable market had also been set up at the Duranmin airstrip (where Telefolmin and Asabano people converge), but it appeared to be defunct when I sought it out in 1994. At the turn of the twenty-first century, some few pursued panning for gold in the Frieda River area and gathering agarwood in remote areas for sale to agents when away from home. Such endeavors introduced a small flow of cash and exotic goods into Asabano hamlets. By the time of my fieldwork in the mid-1990s, there was a community school for area children at the airstrip. The Asabano village of Yakob where I was based is a quarter to a half hour’s walk from the Duranmin airstrip and the nearest Telefol village. In 1994, I noted that there were two trade stores at the airstrip and one in Yakob. Of those at the airstrip, a Telefolmin named Chris Wang, the headmaster of the community school, owned one and the missionary Diyos and his nephew, also a pastor, named Roti, owned the other. When I made my first visit to these, my Asabano companion suggested we go to Chris’s store since

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the prices were cheaper there. I found nothing at all in Chris’s store. He told me he was planning to send someone to Tabubil in a few days to buy goods, but this never transpired. Chris said that he operated at no profit, since the local people had so little money. In other words, this store was not a capitalist undertaking at all, but a volunteer-run public service venture. Proceeding from the school across the Ilim River to the Telefolmin hamlet of Ilimdang, I found Roti, who opened his storeroom for us. I bought a packet of crackers and a can of corned beef. On another occasion I spoke to Diyos about his experience running a trade store. I told him that word around Yakob was that his prices were high. He explained that they do not understand the costs to him or how to add them up. He said they ask him for things, and he sometimes says no, and they have resented that. He also warned me early on that the Asabano people would likely relentlessly ask me for things and that I should not feel obliged to give them everything they asked for. Buying from the local store in Yakob was often even more difficult. It was a new venture at the beginning of June 1994 by two young men named Obert and Chris. They had recently returned from a stint of migrant wage labor with a stock of wholesale goods, endeavoring to start a business at home. Excited to discover that there was a store in my village, I walked down the hill from my house to a small shack occupying the patch of bare earth in the center of the elliptical collection of houses below. It was padlocked and unoccupied. Others told me that the owners were away on a trip in the bush for hunting or gardening, with no definite return time scheduled. Eventually I found out that Obert’s uncle Yadibole had the key, and at length I managed to find him and he opened the store for me. There were one-kilogram bags of rice, cans of mackerel and corned beef, bags of sugar, bottles of cooking oil, tubs of margarine, packets of crackers, jars of instant coffee, and a few cans of Coca-Cola. These local stores, I found, do not keep much in the way of stock. Everything has to be brought in by airplane, entailing not only freight costs but also passenger tickets for the person sent to buy, with no guarantee that the money will all be spent according to instructions. Just as a pair of shoes or a backpack put in another person’s hands for temporary use may become a de facto gift, so can cash entrusted to someone for a purchase be directed to other purposes. Complaints may be grumbled, but the moral of sharing commands greater legitimacy. Obert and Chris’s capitalistic enterprise in Yakob lasted several months. Two weeks after my first visit, the owners were back and holding a fund raiser for the store. For 10 toea (hundredths of a kina), one could have a turn shooting a toy arrow at a can of fish. If one’s arrow knocked the can down, the archer won it. The game was popular with little boys, whose regular routine involved roving in play groups shooting insects, lizards, and birds with miniature bows

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and arrows. Belok, a thirtyish man of my own age and one of my best informants, told me he disapproved and worried that the storekeepers were taking the little money that parents had. I must have made some remark about the odd opening hours, for by September of 1994 I found myself being entrusted with the key to the shop so that I could return at my convenience to buy. Understandable, since I probably had by far the most disposable cash of anyone in the village, combined with no garden of my own—yet. This made me useful not only as a customer but as a barterer who could transform traditional valuables into store-bought goods. On one morning of that month Yalomo, a man a little older than me, appeared at my house. He had with him three arrows, two of which he wanted to trade for soap, and the other of which he was giving me. He left me to finish drinking my coffee and went back down the hill to his house in Yakob. I then went down and opened the store, took a bar of soap for 80 toea and a box of matches for 20 toea, which I gave him in exchange for the two arrows, which knowledgeable men make from freely gathered materials. I also took ten marbles at 10 toea each and distributed them to some of the children. I left the money in the appropriate place inside the locked store. Yalomo’s inclusion of a gift arrow with the arrows meant for a direct exchange is telling. It was symptomatic of the anxiety people exhibited at reducing their economic relations with me and others in their circle to bare, capitalist buying and selling. My buying something from them for cash, especially small items, created some discomfort unless the exchange could be elevated to a statement of connection that transcended what would otherwise be a cheapening diminution of friendship to selfish cash mongering. Pairing the request for such an exchange with a gift partly made up for it. When I would purchase valuable things like drums, door boards, shields, or net bags for cash, such discomfort was much less, possibly because these appeared like quality exchanges rather than base utilitarian purchases. I certainly treated them as such, and designating an item a memento or a museum piece added a personal touch that warmed the capitalist coldness (Lohmann 2010a). Returning for a shorter visit eleven years later with my wife Heather M.-L. Miller, one evening the local Baptist pastor Somi and his family arrived just after dark with a gift of plantains and a request for pens for his child to use in the community school, which we presented. The passing of these two items in opposite directions between our families was not in the form of barter, but rather two freely given gifts that happened to take place at about the same time. Another morning, in August 2005, Somi presented Heather and me with a choice piece of cooked meat from a cassowary he had trapped and steamed while in the forest. Feeling abashed at what I recognized to be a very fine gift, and rather out of practice in Asabano exchange expectations, I cast about for a possible ap-

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propriate return gift. My eyes fixing on bags of rice, always greatly enjoyed by the Asabano, I asked, “Would you like some rice?” Somi replied almost angrily with a rather passionate lecture that I should either give it freely as a gift or not give it, but it is wrong to ask if someone wants something after having received a gift. Doing so diminishes what was a gift into a mere exchange. “Of course we would like rice,” he said obviously. I considered myself justly reprimanded, realizing that although I knew better, after my years away from the field I had reverted to my capitalist—or at very least balanced reciprocity—habits. But back to the day in 1994 when I exchanged store goods for arrows with Yalomo: the marbles I bought the kids apparently excited some degree of consumerist desire in the younger generation, for a boy named Robert came to my house with a kina and asked me to open the store to sell him a packet of crackers at 80 toea. Two other boys, Keli and Saiwan, tagged along and bought a marble apiece with the change. Even the change was distributed to Robert’s companions. I am sure the biscuits were divided and the marbles shared among them as well. A year after the store had opened, it was defunct. In January of 1995, while in the midst of a conversation with a young man named Mason and an older boy named Daniel about the connection between environmentalism (my interest) and business (their interest), they told me that two elders, Yadibole and Salowa, had complained that Obert had “eaten” the profit money from the store. For their part, Obert and Chris told me that the store went out of business because they received constant requests from relatives to give them items from the store “on credit.” As Robbins and Akin (1999: 14–16) point out in describing this phenomenon in trade stores across Melanesia, such requests amount to changing a would-be capitalist transaction into an act of sharing appropriate to the intimate kin relationship. Purchasing from close kin threatens that relationship by performatively redefining it as an exchange between nonintimates in which both parties seek to maximize their profit at the expense of the other—the relationship that characterizes the global capitalist economy. It is, understandably, a frightening prospect to redefine one’s family in such a manner. Chris and Obert found themselves unable to deny such requests when pressed with reminders of past gifts they had received. No items given on credit were ever paid for in cash, we can surmise, because in an economy based on domestic provisioning and generalized reciprocity, everything is simultaneously already paid for and already owed in debt and cannot accurately be quantified, particularly in terms of a colonial money that no one has in very great supply. This is a case of mimicking the exogenous roles of customer and merchant seen at trade stores that connected nonintimate associates—but in terms of previously existing Asabano schemas of domestic provisioning and reciprocity, leading to a copy that is a transformation of the original (Mageo,

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Introduction, this volume). Since the mimickers meant to accurately reproduce a capitalist business but their version was different enough from the original to lose functionality, I call it a “failed” mimesis. Despite a few outer trappings, it is not capitalism at all. By July 2005 the state of “capitalism” at Duranmin was basically unchanged, with one informal ministore in Yakob and another in the Telefolmin settlement near the airstrip. As usual, I brought gifts to share and received gifts of food, shelter, and conviviality. Among the items I wished to give was a bolt of cloth. I was unsure how to distribute it in a way that everyone would regard as appropriate and fair. Asking Belok for advice, he also found the problem a difficult one. He mused that it would be good to use the cloth to start a business sewing clothes to sell elsewhere and share locally. Imagining such a turn of events, he commented further that this would be problematic if the cloth were not in the right person’s hands, because the wrong one would not work for the community, but only for him- or herself. Thinking aloud he continued, “It would be good if they could figure out a way to make the money stay for the community itself, and have it grow so they could show you by the time you come back that it has grown.” Belok’s ruminations on this situation highlight why the Asabano find capitalism functionally uncopyable even though they admire its products and would like to emulate it. Notice in particular that, on the one hand, it would be desirable to help the whole community and use the cloth as capital for a clothing-making business. But selecting the right person to do this would be tricky. What is to stop the proprietor from “eating” the profits? How can they be securely entrusted to manage and grow investment capital on behalf of the community as a whole? As if this were not a high enough hurdle to starting a capitalist venture, the products of such a business would have to be sold beyond the community and given away within the community. The intimate, egalitarian community is a family in which the rules of domestic provisioning and reciprocity apply. Only outsiders could be treated as customers from whom one could demand base cash payments for goods and services rendered, and outsiders with money were distant and difficult to reach. Of course, the business could never be started and the cloth was simply shared out among all comers. One day later in that field season, my translator Laurie asked me about a rumor he had heard that sanguma witches sell the hearts of the people they kill in California. Similar rumors elsewhere in Papua New Guinea have been productively analyzed to show that the problem people have with capitalist commodification is really about relationships rather than objects (Leach 2005). Witches in the Asabano imagination are supposed to undermine communities by taking and consuming others’ lives rather than sharing and promoting mutual sustenance. Without hazarding to guess where this particular rumor came

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from, it does resonate with Asabano thinking that one would sell the ill-gotten gains to distant and anonymous customers. Since capitalism is based precisely on not sharing freely, it has a subtle but uncomfortable hint of witchcraft about it. The image of witches killing people—possibly their own close kin, as Asabano imagine—in order to acquire hearts to sell in the world capitalist market for cold cash offers a cautionary tale about what happens when capitalism is brought into the home: family members are turned into supermarket meat for the sake of a little cold cash. This anxiety, that capitalism out of place is a sort of deal with the devil, has cognates elsewhere on the peripheries of the world capitalist economy, as evocatively explored by Michael Taussig ([1980] 2010). The Asabano clearly recognize that capitalism can somehow provide for the common good through a form of selfishness, much like generosity does in their own system of reciprocity because being generous to others strengthens others’ generosity to oneself. Nevertheless, they find themselves unable to enact capitalism within their society for the same reason that parents freely share with their children in societies in which capitalism dominates economic relations outside the family sphere. In August, 2005, I hired Mason, now a family man, to repair our verandah and chop some firewood in exchange for a can of corned beef. He considered it a great deal and accepted also our offer of breakfast, which softened the callousness of paid work. As usual, this exchange was only in part a matter of hiring one for pay in a capitalist sense. It could, like all exchanges I made with people—even those that involved money—equally be described as a gift exchange to mutual benefit, in which no profit was generated. This exemplifies how commodity exchange and gift sharing can be conflated to conceal and lubricate awkward-fitting transculturation. However, Mason was at this time keeping a small trade store out of a locked room in his family house—the only store then in Yakob. He was endeavoring, as others had before him, to mimic capitalism within his own society. As we ate breakfast together, he noticed a couple of cartons of cigarettes I had brought to give away as gifts—they had been highly valued during my earlier period of fieldwork, but I had many extra packets since an impressively successful antismoking campaign had swept the area. Mason asked me if I would like to sell him the extra cigarettes to use as stock in his store. I agreed to sell him a carton of ten packs for 15 kina—they had cost me 2 kina per pack in the provincial capital of Vanimo. He told me he would later sell the individual packs for 4 or 5 kina apiece. That same morning another of my most generous informants, a young man named Folen, came by, and I slipped him a pack of cigarettes so he would not have to buy them at Mason’s inflated prices. I had, as usual, been partially enculturated into the Asabano system, trying to give away and receive gifts to make up for the sense of sullying buying and selling that is so central to the capitalist system.

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Upon my most recent visit in 2007, Roti had a trade store in the Telefolmin hamlet of Ilimdang as he had ten years earlier, but it had no stock. Mason’s store was still going, but was low on stock as well. While in the mid-1990s, twice-weekly flights by the Mission Aviation Fellowship connected the Duranmin airstrip with Telefomin, Tabubil, Vanimo, and other centers, by 2005 and continuing in 2007, planes only rarely made a stop. This added one more difficulty to the problem of either selling or buying goods and services from outside the local, intimate community. In June of 2007 I managed to book a flight to Tabubil as part of a vain attempt to get a vital computer part. Whenever I have made a trip out in which I was expected to soon return, I have always been inundated with visitors asking me to buy things for them, sometimes supplying me with money, other times just asking. The shopkeeper Mason was one of my visitors on this occasion. Unlike all the others, he gave me 500 kina in cash and a shopping list of store goods. Some days later, I duly purchased his requests at the Wangbult wholesale store in Tabubil with the help of the Asabano couple Daina and Andrew, who were living in town. Andrew collected the goods and weighed them at the airport, and I paid the freight and we waited. My flight arrived, landing first at Tumolbil, a gorgeous area of rugged mountains, about a half hour’s flight from Tabubil. After another half hour’s flight, I was back at Duranmin. I had spent a little more than Mason had given me on the goods and the freight, and of course my and Andrews’ time, my keep, and my own flight were donated. However, these expenses would have been part of our own, daily living anyway, and indeed much of the gift economy system is based on this realization. Mason had succeeded in keeping at least some capital out of the gift economy, collecting it until an opportunity to restock presented itself. The store was continuing, but this was certainly not providing a living to Mason and his family. That came, as for everyone else, from subsistence gardening and foraging in a social network of domestic provisioning and reciprocity. Nor did it provide substantial wealth accumulation, either for Mason or the community. My impression was that people appreciated having local access to the store’s goods for widely shared items that could not be locally produced, including white salt and luxury foods like bagged rice and canned meat. The pattern of trade stores at Duranmin is of a piece with findings elsewhere in Melanesia. Trade stores may operate in rural settings to concentrate capital but often serve alternative purposes. For example, David Akin (1999: 122) reports that the Kwaio of the Solomon Islands operate such ventures to increase their access to traditional shell valuables, which can be obtained for cash more easily than via other means. Like the other trade stores that have come and gone at Duranmin, Mason’s has an aspect of play about it. Play and acting-as-if are common themes in transcultural mimesis, as can be seen by their frequent appearance in this

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book. Merlan (this volume) describes it in early colonial Australia, and Pearson (this volume) describes Māori playing the role of Native North Americans in antipodean entertainments. And Hammond (this volume) analyzes pseudotraditional Tahitian destination weddings in which the participants take their playacting as an occasion for lightheartedness. By contrast, in the Asabano play at capitalism, there is, I think, a bit of regret that, try though they might, real capitalism cannot work here. Or rather, in order to work, unacceptable and possibly unfeasible cultural and social changes to relational schemas would have to be made. People use a shack or room to play store with a cast of would-be merchants, buyers, and customers, none of whom are really in this for the money. This is also a form of trying on styles—the accouterments of capitalists if not the substance, just as Samoans and their German colonizers mimicked one another’s personal adornments as a mutual compliment and exploration (Mageo, this volume). The exotic mermaids Trobriand Islanders have worked into tourist art (Jarillo de la Torre, this volume) also exemplify incorporating elements that seem out of place into a traditional genre being expanded for capitalist purposes. In terms of Mageo’s useful mimetic paradigm of incorporative-emblemizing-abject mimicry (this volume, Introduction), the Asabano reaction to capitalist models has been mainly attempted incorporative mimicry—wishing to try on capitalism, without either defining themselves in terms of it or doing so under duress. Surrounded by a capitalist culture, they are pleased to participate in it insofar as they can, and where they cannot (namely, at home), their subsistence and reciprocity economy keeps them whole.

Capitalism as an Object of Mimesis

Mimesis, of course, is doing or making what we have seen others do or make or making what others have made. The ideal is to make a copy that bears a likeness to the model. Our aptitude for copying one another’s cultural products is a necessary condition for our species’ characteristic dependence on cultural adaptation. We are able to rely so heavily on traditionally transmitted lineages of culture because we can successfully copy many of the cultural creations we observe. The accuracy with which culture is copied varies depending on a variety of circumstances. In some cases, copies of copies of copies of cultural creations generations and multiple social cultural border crossings later, retain the form and function of ancestral and cousin exemplars. In others, there is so much fraying about the edges, lost swaths, and newly replaced swatches of culture’s “shreds and patches,” to echo Robert Lowie’s ([1920] 1947: 440) famous phrase, that descendant versions are radically different from earlier or alternative contemporary ones. Being made of culture,

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capitalism is subject to some alteration with every copy. This is in part for the reasons Jeannette Mageo (this volume) identifies in the Introduction, since the likenesses to earlier exemplars produced by mimesis are often, if not “inevitably mutinous and inexact.” At times the copies made are purposely changed, as when laws have been debated and enacted against child labor or limiting fulltime work hours. At other times, copies are imperfect due to misperceptions and misunderstandings of models or because of extraneous conditions that constrain the form the latest copy can take in its new context. The basic principles of functional capitalism, as an object for mimesis, are concentration of surplus by private individuals for use as capital to procure the means of selling goods or services at a profit sufficient to maintain or grow the original surplus. Capitalists’ ideal of personal wealth maximizing encourages them to carry it around the world in their search for resources and markets, especially when satisficing standards are crowded out of consciousness. As it becomes enmeshed within different and evolving cultural contexts, capitalism changes without undermining its functionality. Early Calvinist religious beliefs in Europe encouraged workaholism and unlimited acquisitiveness while suppressing personal consumption of profits for pleasure (Weber [1904–1905] 2002). The Christian god and other supernatural beings, themselves also abstract creations highly susceptible to copying (see Dalton, this volume), can be enmeshed with capitalist schemas to personify and empower the extraction and unequal concentration of wealth. When linked to runaway consumerism, throwaway “convenience” without regard for ecological cycles and constraints, and unrealistic economic growth ideologies, rapacious expansionism encourages mimetic replication on a global scale in search of new means of profit. This cancerous form of capitalism has diffused rapidly through appealing to people’s desire to radically increase wealth and consumption (see Anderson 2010). However, it ultimately undermines itself and life at large because it motivates continued expansion in unsustainable ways that disrupt its own ecological resource and survival base. These forms of capitalism include “successful” mimesis of basic components in that they produce functional (for the short term) copies of capitalist practice. Although the Asabano living in their own sociocultural environment have not successfully copied capitalism, there are, obviously, situations in which it thrives even in relatively recent contact situations in Melanesia. Ben Finney (1973) famously described early businessmen in Goroka who were able to succeed in capitalist coffee-growing ventures in part because the indigenous big man status system provided a model for individual ambition and organization that could be adapted to capitalist demands. Turning gift sharing, which expresses social common cause, into commodity exchange, which expresses social difference, requires change in either actual or cognized relations. En-

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trepreneurs can turn existing and newly cultivated, nonintimate relationships into capitalist exchange dyads. They can conflate commodities with gifts, so that although gift-based relationships have actually been eroded into merchant-customer roles, retained trappings allow participants to pretend their relations are unaltered. New capitalists can also establish separate spheres of relations for gifting and commodity exchange, each operating like a different game with its own economic rules. Strategies such as these have sometimes enabled capitalist commodification to be successfully mimed in Papua New Guinea (Gregory 1982). Edward LiPuma (1999: 206–9) quotes a young Maring man named Moses who clearly articulates the necessary ingredients of a successful capitalist venture to the ethnographer. Moses struggled to explain and justify to his relatives the different economic rules under which his trade store operated, such that he could not simply give them items in stock. His name and mission education earned him the appellation of “profit prophet.” The pun underlines the substantial shift in thinking that is required to go from a sharing economy to a capitalist one. This is so even where population concentrations are higher and contacts with nonintimates are easier to come by than they are at the Asabano home territory at Duranmin. Also instructive is Glenn Petersen’s (1986) account of trade stores in Pohnpei, where capitalist trappings rather than capitalism itself were copied to enhance the redistribution-based economy. In this Micronesian locale, cash and commodity inputs to the local economy came largely from America’s external capitalist system, rather than being accumulated by skimming profits from the sweat of exploited fellows. Local entrepreneurs set up trade stores as ways to spend rather than make money. These stores come and go rapidly, as their owners extend credit to enhance social connections and prestige in the redistribution-based traditional political economy. In short, rather than representing an attempt to copy capitalism so that it functions in Pohnpei as it did in America, some elements of retailing were copied to translate capitalism’s commodities into gifts to support the unbroken redistributive economic system. This is not a case of failed mimesis of capitalism but of successful mimesis of trade store imagery to serve a noncapitalist goal. Where functioning capitalism is copied through diffusion or enculturation it still must connect with noncapitalist economic forms, and indeed there is no society whose economic relations are 100 percent capitalist. Capitalism must be and is “flexible,” and, as Jens Kjaerulff (2015: 3) observes, “‘gift-like’ moralities and socialities proliferate in, and even sustain, the kind of intensified commodification that more widely has been touted as tearing social relations apart.” Moreover, as Anna Tsing (2013: 37) points out, as valued things pass through different hands and across differently defined relational boundaries, gifts transform into commodities and back into gifts. This can include

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passages of goods between whole societies who define themselves as following kinship- or business-based moral systems. For example, Janet Carsten (1989) found that Malay fishermen, considering capitalism contrary to their ethnic identity, left capitalist trading to Chinese middlemen. Malay men would work for money, but by handing it over to their women to “cook” it was transformed into something shared. As the present case shows, there are conditions under which people who come in contact with capitalism do not copy it, either by choice or because they are prevented from doing so. Even some of the most extreme forms of capitalism, which have been copied or at least admired in many parts of the world, cannot be successfully copied over all relational categories. Andrea Muehlebach (2013) shows that in Italy neoliberalism—an extreme free market stance—is tempered by a zone for redistribution in which charitable donations and volunteerism for nonkin have been added to the minimal zone of sharing within the nuclear family. Furthermore, love and loyalty to brands are important ways in which the social distancing of capitalist relations is obscured (Foster 2005; Nakassis 2013). The difference between these cases and the Asabano case is that their all-pervading local intimacy prevented Asabano people from copying the minimal functional conditions of capitalism into even a compartmentalized sector of life. In arguing that people feel compelled to regard intimate social groups as off-limits to capitalist relations, I am not claiming that capitalist relationships are free of emotional bonds or motivations. As Eva Illouz (2007) shows, capitalism is replete with emotion and where present, its ideal of bargaining can enter even intimate relationships—to a degree. However, where the private and public spheres are basically one, and where there are no easily accessible outsiders to the domestic household unit who may serve as employers, employees, customers, or merchants, a full-blown market economy is impossible to mimic. Capitalism is not a simple thing that one can observe and comprehend in a moment; rather it appears as numerous and varied acts and their consequences. While one might imitate some of these, a fragmentary imitation of forms is likely to fail. In the same way that cargo cultists imitated the trappings of European activities like putting flowers in vases or sitting at desks without the desired cargo arriving because these were insufficient or incidental to the true and complicated sources of cargo, would-be capitalists, try as they might, are not always able to copy the correct components of cargo’s sources to achieve results (see Dalton 2004). Cargo cults provide an extreme case, in which, contra Dalton, misunderstanding led to the wrong parts being mimicked to get the desired results. In other situations, the principles are understood accurately, but mimicking them in practice is cut short by contextual factors.

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In cultures as in ecosystems, everything is connected to everything else, and these webs of interdependent relations can serve as a barrier to mimesis and diffusion when they remain unbreached. Opening a niche for an exotic organism or cultural creation requires, in some circumstances, displacement of many interdigitated others. If, despite such contextual barriers to mimesis, a gap is torn to accommodate a novel cultural creation, radical and foundational reorganizations result, as acculturative collapses and revitalization movements illustrate (Wallace 1972). The Asabano economy has undergone no such radical reorganization through its articulation with capitalism. Their later copy of capitalism very quickly became so different from the one that served as a model that it lost functionality. That is to say, Asabano attempts at capitalism did not produce a viable copy.

Conclusion

We appoint other primates to stand for the propensity to copy with expressions like “monkey see, monkey do” and “aping” but copying one another is in fact most developed among humans. In urging us “to think of mimesis as the nature of culture to create second nature,” Michael Taussig (1993: 252) highlights that even as we bustle about copying those around us, we define ourselves in opposition, in one way or another, to those we copy. Simon Harrison’s (2006) masterful study of the complex ways in which people use and restrict mimesis to shape identity—including by copying those we despise and not copying those we consider to share our identity—offers an impressive theory of these phenomena. In transcultural contact situations, mimesis deployed in identity building is often thwarted, countered, and deflected by cultural, social, geographical, and other barriers. What people endeavor to copy, and which imagery inspires their efforts, is highly tied to identity, as Carucci (this volume) dramatically illustrates. The Asabano engagement with capitalism is a case of attempted mimesis that is short-circuited by the stability of characteristics of Asabano society that are antithetical to the functioning of capitalism: intimacy, egalitarianism, and isolation. The whole of Asabano society functions similarly to how households or close families operate in complex societies. Sharing, not individual maximizing, defines all steady relationships. If the Asabano are to join in the capitalist fray on their own turf, they will have to either compartmentalize their family-style and capitalist-style relationships with intimates—as when one sells a car to a family member at full value but then also shares food without expecting payment—or become more connected with people they can partner with in more strictly capitalist relations.

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Humankind’s experiment with capitalism has had profound consequences. We have learned that when unbridled, it leads us to devour our own, as Marx’s (1990) foundational critical analysis showed the world. With limits, however, its potential to destroy everything from intimate relationships to whole ecosystems of which humans are an interdependent part can be overcome. In its place, with its divisive and narrow selfishness constrained within broader laws for the common and intergenerational good, it can be a marvelous tool to produce, reduce, distribute, reuse, and recycle sustainably. Peoples’ decisions regarding which aspects of capitalism to mime have massive implications that may be beyond their awareness at the time. We can look at the “failed” mimesis of capitalism’s functional core considered here as a success for preserving the positive intimacy and ecologically sustainable, steady state economy upon which Asabano society has long been based. When people are tempted to turn the last pockets of intimacy and equality in their social circles into exploitation zones for maximizing personal capital, its contradictions raise a warning specter—call it a witch image—of a world no longer enriched, but devoured, by money (for such a case, see Counts and Counts 1977). Capitalism everywhere meets its match in social groupings defined by their intimacy and equality. Roger Ivar Lohmann is an associate professor of anthropology at Trent University. He holds B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is past editor-in-chief of Reviews in Anthropology, former chair of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, and past president of the Green Party of Ontario. References Akin, David. 1999. “Cash and Shell Money in Kwaio, Solomon Islands.” In Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, ed. David Akin and Joel Robbins, 103–30. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Anderson, Eugene N. 2010. The Pursuit of Ecotopia: Lessons from Indigenous and Traditional Societies for the Human Ecology of Our Modern World. Santa Barbara: Praeger. Bohannan, Paul. 1955. “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv.” American Anthropologist 57(1): 60–70. Carsten, Janet. 1989. “Cooking Money: Gender and the Symbolic Transformation of Means of Exchange in a Malay Fishing Community.” In Money and the Morality of Exchange, ed. Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, 117–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Counts, Dorothy, and David Counts. 1977. “Independence and the Rule of Money in Kaliai.” Oceania 48(1): 30–39. Dalton, Doug. 2004. “Cargo and Cult: The Mimetic Critique of Capitalist Culture.” In Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique, ed. Holger Jebens, 187–208. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

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Finney, Ben R. 1973. Big-Men and Business: Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth in the New Guinea Highlands. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Foster, Robert. 2005. “Commodity Futures: Labour, Love and Value.” Anthropology Today 21(4): 8–12. Gell, Alfred. 1999. “Inter-Tribal Commodity Barter and Reproductive Gift Exchange in Old Melanesia.” In The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams, ed. Eric Hirsch, 76–106. London: Athlone Press. Gregory, Christopher A. 1982. Gifts and Commodities. London: Academic Press. Harrison, Simon. 2006. Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West. New York: Berghahn Books. Illouz, Eva. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kjaerulff, Jens. 2015. “Introduction.” In Flexible Capitalism: Exchange and Ambiguity at Work, ed. Jens Kjaerulff, 1–41. New York: Berghahn. Leach, James. 2005. “Livers and Lives: Organ Extraction Narratives on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea.” In Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities (The Social Life of Things Revisited), ed. Wim van Binsbergen and Peter Geschiere, 283–300. Berlin: Lit. LiPuma, Edward. 1999. “The Meaning of Money in the Age of Modernity.” In Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, ed. David Akin and Joel Robbins, 192–213. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Lohmann, Roger I. 2000. “Cultural Reception in the Contact and Conversion History of the Asabano of Papua New Guinea.” Ph.D. dissertation. Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison. ———. 2010a. “In the Company of Things Left behind: Asabano Mementos.” Anthropological Forum 20(3): 291–303. ———. 2010b. “Introduction: The Anthropology of Creations.” Anthropological Forum 20(3): 215–34. ———. 2013. “Sleeping among the Asabano: Surprises in Intimacy and Sociality at the Margins of Consciousness.” In Sleep around the World: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Katie Glaskin and Richard Chenhall, 21–44. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lowie, Robert H. (1920) 1947. Primitive Society. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1. London: Penguin. Muehlebach, Andrea. 2013. “The Catholicization of Neoliberalism: On Love and Welfare in Lombardy, Italy.” American Anthropologist 115(3): 452–65. Nakassis, Constantine V. 2013. “Brands and Their Surfeits.” Cultural Anthropology 28(1): 111–26. Parry, Jonathan, and Maurice Bloch. 1989. “Introduction: Money and the Morality of Exchange.” In Money and the Morality of Exchange, ed. Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, 1–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petersen, Glenn. 1986. “Redistribution in a Micronesian Commercial Economy.” Oceania 57(2): 83–98. Robbins, Joel. 1999. “‘This Is Our Money’: Modernism, Regionalism, and Dual Currencies in Urapmin.” In Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, ed. David Akin and Joel Robbins, 82–102. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Robbins, Joel, and David Akin. 1999. “An Introduction to Melanesian Currencies: Agency, Identity and Social Reproduction.” In Money and Modernity: State and Local Curren-

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cies in Melanesia, ed. David Akin and Joel Robbins, 1–40. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1972. Stone Age Economics. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Taussig, Michael T. (1980) 2010. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Toren, Christina. 1989. “Drinking Cash: the Purification of Money through Ceremonial Exchange in Fiji.” In Money and the Morality of Exchange, ed. Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, 142–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tsing, Anna. 2013. “Sorting Out Commodities: How Capitalist Value Is Made through Gifts.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(1): 21–43. Wallace, Anthony F.C. 1972. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Vintage Books. Weber, Max. (1904–1905) 2002. “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” In A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek, 50–60. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Widlok, Thomas. 2013. “Sharing: Allowing Others to Take What Is Valued.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(2): 11–31. Acknowledgments I thank most of all my Asabano informants for patiently teaching me their proper way to relate to others by encompassing me for a time in their familial economy, which I admired and tried, but often failed to copy in the mimesis of participant-observation. Thanks also go to Jeannette Mageo and Elfriede Hermann for organizing the exchange of ideas represented by this volume and to all the participants in our ASAO sessions for their engagement with my efforts toward this account. Our discussant Joshua Bell, in particular, provided a detailed and constructive critique of an earlier draft that I found to be of great value, and directed me with impressive erudition to connections with others’ work. Two anonymous reviewers offered useful critiques and further direction.

PART IV Ritual Mimesis and Its Reconfigurations

7 Mimesis, Ethnopsychology, and Transculturation Identifications in Birthday Celebrations among Banabans in Fiji ELFRIEDE HERMANN

Introduction

In this chapter I shall consider mimesis as an integral component of transculturation. The term “transculturation,” which Fernando Ortiz ([1947] 1995) was the first to use, describes the processes of adoption, recontextualization, and reconceptualization of practices from another culture. These processes go hand in hand with social interactions and involve all interactive partners as well as the power relationships that are at play (Hermann 2011: 4). As Fernando Coronil (1995: XLI–XLIII) stresses, the concept of transculturation shines a novel light on transcultural exchange under conditions in which power is unequally shared. The concept of mimesis, as I see it, can give us a better analytic handle on processes of transculturation and concomitant identifications. As Michael Taussig (1993: xiv) has demonstrated, the mimetic faculty was especially manifested in encounters between European colonizers and indigenous peoples. The mimetic faculty is, in Taussig’s definition “the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other” (1993: xiii). In expanding on Taussig’s perspective, I shall assume that mimesis is generally manifested whenever there are transcultural encounters: not only when, say, “Europeans” (or Westerners) encounter indigenous groups but when indigenous peoples encounter each other. Mimesis is frequently implied in the transfer of cultural aspects of a community of Others to one’s own group. For when transculturation is undertaken, it often happens as a result of one party wanting to establish likeness with the other party. Treatments of mimesis (e.g., Gebauer and Wulf 1995; Taussig 1993) and mimetic conflict (Harrison 2006) have taught us that imitating is linked to a desire to be identical and to become Other. Taussig argues that mimesis is a universal human capacity. Building on this insight, I point out that mimesis

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is culturally specific and universal. What is culturally specific arises, among other things, from the fact that specific ethnopsychological discourses in cultural communities are linked to this universal capacity. Ethnopsychological discourses reflect the ways in which members of a cultural community conceptualize, observe, and discuss their own and others’ psychic processes, concomitant behavior patterns, and relationships (Lutz 1985: 36). As a cultural system of knowledge alive to the interpretation of self and others (ibid.: 39), the ethnopsychology of any community is never static but constantly transforming in a historical trajectory (Hermann 1995: 56). However, it seems to me that ethnopsychological discourses on the relation of Self and Others largely escaped the attention of studies researching mimesis. As I see it, it is precisely ethnopsychological discourses, in all their cultural specificity, and the embodied practices that follow from these that we should be exploring to learn how, within the ethnopsychology of a particular group, the relation between sameness and difference is conceived. More explicitly, it would be interesting to learn how this relation surfaces in dominant discourses and, based on this dominance, then comes to be frequently transposed into action and embodiment. A cross-cultural comparison would certainly uncover a variety of dominant discourses of this kind. Thus it might be the case that, in some cultural communities, difference and sameness are construed as opposed to each other and mutually exclusive, whereas in other groups difference and sameness are construed as overlapping and—to a degree—mutually inclusive. Culturally specific theories on the relationship between sameness and difference are themselves characterized by images made in mimetic processes. Following Jeannette Mageo (Introduction, this volume), I assume that in mimesis images of a prior model (i.e., a model that is to be copied) are of fundamental importance. But images of Self that result from copying, reconceptualization, and modification are no less so. I argue that it is especially ethnopsychological discourses on being “same but different” that play an important role in the mimesis involved in transculturation. Ethnopsychological discourses, such as those encountered in any cultural community, are intertwined with history, politics, and economics but also with sociality and religiosity. Hence these must be seen, just as with transculturation itself, as operating within a field of shifting power relationships—but equally in light of their potential to unfold agency. Such ethnopsychological discourses are involved in mimesis and its relation to power. As Taussig said, “The wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power” (1993: xiii). When ethnopsychological discourses on sameness and difference flow over into mimesis, what results is a merger with (likewise culture-specifically constituted) emotions and senses. Emotions are to be seen—and here I find

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myself in agreement with Abu-Lughod and Lutz (1990)—as no less discursively constituted than they are politically (and bodily) manifested. As for the senses, I take my lead from Taussig (1993) and Classen (1997: 401) in viewing these as every bit as much culturally and productively as they are physically evident. Just how important ethnopsychological discourses can be for mimetic processes I will demonstrate from a case study. The Pacific society of Banabans well exemplifies how mimesis is enacted via clothing; itself a product of transculturation, clothing here serves as a source of further transculturation. In considering Banaban mimesis, I shall point to a specific ethnopsychological discourse of the Banaban community living in Fiji, a discourse that is co-constitutive of mimesis. For the following case study, I have chosen a birthday feast in which specific identifications were ascribed to the “birthday child” (as I shall call the person whose birthday is being celebrated, whatever the age). These identifications are predicated on likeness being manufactured with cultural others (albeit slightly modified to meet Banaban concerns). Banaban first birthday celebrations lend themselves extremely well to such a perspective, since for the birthday children they constitute no less than rites of passage, where their identifications are presented in a compacted form. From among the many objects through which likeness with others is imagined, I have opted for the case of clothing because by taking stock of the textiles used to cover the body, both here and in other societies, we gain insight into the relationship between Self and Others (see, for an overview, Hansen 2004; for the Pacific, Küchler and Were 2003; and for case studies, Mageo and Pearson this volume). By focusing on the clothing worn by a particular birthday child—clothing designed according to prior models taken from other communities—I am able to examine mimetic acts in the present, albeit following from previous mimetic processes. Clothing that has long since undergone transculturation points, I suggest, to past mimetic processes now stabilized into present configurations. Here, then, we have a sequence of mimetic processes, which Joyce Hammond has aptly designated an “entwinement of mimetic practices” (see her contribution to this volume). In order to understand the context in which the here relevant mimetic processes played out, we need to briefly review Banabans’ political history.

Banaban History, Intercultural Encounters, and Transculturation

Banabans originate from the island of Banaba (formerly known by its colonial name “Ocean Island”), which lies in the Central Pacific. Since precolonial times, contacts have existed between Banabans and the people of the Gilbert

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Islands. Intercultural contacts with persons of European background have been ongoing ever since the inception of the Protestant mission in 1885 (Silverman 1971: 88), the arrival of multinational phosphate mining on Banaba in 1900,1 and the awarding by the British colonial power of Banaba to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony in 1901 (Maude 1946: 4; Shlomowitz and Munro 1992: 104). The Protestant missionaries (soon joined by their Catholic competitors), the mining company officials, and the British colonial officers all had their own, if different, ways of subordinating Banabans. The missions converted Banabans to Christianity. The mining industry and the colonial power positioned them below Europeans according to the racial and class hierarchies of the time, while according them the status of landowners and so ranking them above the common laborers from China, Japan, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. During World War II, Banaba was occupied by the Japanese, and Banabans were evacuated to Nauru, Kosrae, and Tarawa. After the war, they were assembled on Tarawa by the British colonial authority and then, in December 1945, resettled on distant Rabi Island in the Fijian archipelago (Hermann 2004; Kempf 2004; T. Teaiwa 1997; K. Teaiwa 2005, 2012). A few years later, Banabans acquired rights of ownership over Rabi Island (Kempf 2011c: 21). Despite the fact that this now made Banabans collective landowners in Fiji too, they soon ran into Fijian discourses refusing to accord them the same ownership status as autochthonous Fijians (i.e., the original inhabitants of that archipelago). Then, in the years following independence a series of coups took place, in 1987 and 2000,2 aimed at forcing through the ethnonationalist agenda of autochthonous Fijians, events that could not but have deleterious consequences for Banabans. So the community found itself repeatedly confronted with vociferous ethnonationalist claims to Rabi Island (Kempf and Hermann 2005: 382). From their new home on Rabi Island, Banabans struggled to win independent status for Banaba. Their campaign, intensifying from the 1960s on, strongly emphasized their cultural difference from the Gilbertese. At that time, decolonization came for Banabans at a price: colonially prestructured subordination to a new state entity, Kiribati. What particularly incensed Banabans about this prospect was that 85 percent of the profits from phosphate mining on their home island, profits that had previously gone to the British colony, now went to the new state of Kiribati (Hermann 2003: 79–80). Despite Banabans insisting vehemently on their ethnic difference from the Gilbertese, Banaba was awarded in 1979, against the express will of its original owners, to the newly sovereign state of Kiribati. Although Banabans did contribute significantly, both politically and through recourse to violence, to making the mining firm cease operations that

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very same year, they were obliged to accept that Banaba, their old home, the place that gave them their identity, was now subjected to Kiribati rule. This usurpation did not, however, prevent Banabans from strongly insisting, as the years went by, on their ethnic difference—their aim being now to ensure that they did not lose the special rights over Banaba conceded to them in Kiribati’s constitution. Even today, a discourse circulates among Banabans asserting their ethnic otherness from the I-Kiribati, as the inhabitants of that state call themselves, though, to be sure, the discourse is now conducted in more moderate tones than earlier. However, in various contexts this political discourse on difference is conjoined with a social discourse on sameness, reflecting the fact that Banabans and I-Kiribati have a long history of intermarriage. In the course of this convoluted history of interactions, Banabans took over elements of European, Gilbertese/I-Kiribati, and Fijian cultures. On colonial Banaba, Banabans responded to the triple hegemony of mission, mining, and colonialism with a series of mimetic acts (see, e.g., Kempf 2011b on the transculturation of Christianity qua social mimesis). Reacting to the then prevalent power disparities, Banabans adopted a great number of discourses, practices, and items—not least of these Western clothing. In multicultural Fiji, Banabans rubbed shoulders with autochthonous Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Europeans, and Chinese but also with resident groups from other Pacific countries. As a result of these intercultural interactions, they came to take over, inter alia, particular elements from the clothing styles of their neighbors.3 Add to this the fact that Banabans have also adopted, since the colonial era, certain of the cultural practices of the Gilbertese laborers on Banaba as well as the citizens of Kiribati, for example, the art of composing, elements of dance costumes, and certain dance adornments. But when they took to stressing their strong cultural difference during the decolonizing phase, it was only logical to drop a number of these borrowed elements of Gilbertese clothing in favor of a distinctly Banaban dance costume, one of their own devising. And it is in this costume that they have subsequently presented their specifically Banaban identity on international and national stages (see Kempf 2011a).

Ethnopsychological Discourses on Being “Same but Different”

To grasp the mimetic processes that have occurred in Banabans’ long history of intercultural interactions, it will help to look at this group’s avowed ethnopsychological principles. Banabans have separate ethnopsychological discourses on sameness and difference, but they also engage in a clearly discernible discourse combining the two. The corresponding discursive formations have been tested through time and were certainly modified to handle new contexts before assuming their present form and content. Even though ethnopsycho-

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logical discourses among Banabans have, to an extent, developed discontinuously, I assume that the Banaban discourse of “sameness with others” has long been articulated in the egalitarian spirit so prominent in this society. Thus every member of Banaban society is taught, from early life, that he or she is equal (titebo) with (ma) every other Banaban. Moreover, this equality, or sameness, can be and is extended in many social contexts to those from other ethnic groups. Being different ((ka)okoro) from (ma, Banabans say “with”) others constitutes a no less important dimension of Banaban ethnopsychology. To explain what they mean by “different” Banabans have recourse to such adjectives as “unique,” “special,” and “separate.” While being different can, in Banaban eyes, assume various degrees of intensity, it always indicates that someone stands in a relationship with all others. Finally, there is an audible discourse in Banaban society that combines sameness with difference. For Banabans these states are by no means mutually exclusive; they can, and they do, coexist. This finds expression in the colloquialism titebo ma (ka)okoro (same but different). In Banaban logic, this can even be reversed to yield “different but same.” Dependent on the historical, political-economic, social, and religious context, Banabans associate with the exercise of power and agency an assurance of being “same but different” on one occasion while “different but same” on another.

Birthday Celebrations and Identifications

Birthday feasts for Banabans are rites that offer space for the articulation of being the same but different vis-à-vis members of one’s own group, on the one hand, and representatives of other cultural communities, on the other. Here identifications can be articulated with regard to long-standing elements that were adopted, incorporated, and modified in Banaban culture but that have their source in other communities. These rites create spaces in which a cultural Other can be an attractive model for shaping and growing the Self—in sum, spaces in which mimesis serves to produce transculturation. Birthday feasts in Banaban communities are, in fact, themselves products of transculturation. Banabans of the older and middle generations are unanimous in insisting that birthday celebrations do not form part of Banaban tradition. From what I was told by my Banaban interlocutors, it seems that the practice of marking the first year of life goes back to the 1950s; be that as it may, it is certain that the practice of celebrating the twenty-first year of life became increasingly common from the 1980s on. Banabans of the older and middle generations are well aware that these two practices were taken from British culture. In a Fiji marked by British hegemony in the colonial and post-

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colonial eras, it did not escape Banabans’ attention that birthdays were being celebrated, and they decided to emulate this practice. My interlocutors used such expressions as “we copy” (vernacular: ti kakairi), with some hastening to add that Banabans adapted these borrowed practices according to their own cultural thinking. Both celebrations—marking the first and the twenty-first years of life— are today important rites of passage for every Banaban. The feasts marking a child’s first year of life are described by Banabans in terms of the infant having “reached his or her year” (koron ana ririki). Given that the child has now gotten through the first and most difficult year of life, when survival is the paramount concern, and that he or she is now entering the phase of childhood, all rejoice. Now is the time for the child—irrespective of gender—to be presented to its maternal and paternal relatives. What does, however, make a difference in the way the child is treated is the order of birth (or adoption into the family): in the case of firstborns (te karimoa) a large feast is deemed appropriate, while later arrivals merit only smaller celebrations. Moreover, the size of a birthday feast depends on the economic means a family has at its disposal (with some help coming from bilateral relatives). Interestingly, between the first and the twenty-first years of life hardly any birthdays are ever celebrated—at least this was true of Rabi Island up to the turn of the new millennium.4 If Banabans attribute ever more importance to celebrating the twenty-first birthday, it is because they see it as marking the official transition to adulthood. Coming of age is associated for Banabans with the rights they hold as citizens of Fiji but also and especially with their discourse on being free (and possessing autonomy) from then on.5 Birthday celebrations among Banabans are ritualized affairs, embracing a large number of practices and objects transcultured over recent decades and pointing to earlier mimetic processes. The birthday child (either a baby or a young adult, as stated above) is seated in a central position. Also, a birthday song is sung in his or her honor. The song could well be the English “Happy Birthday to You” or it might be a composition especially commissioned from a Banaban composer for the occasion. One object that must on no account be omitted from either celebration is a richly decorated birthday cake covered with sugar icing. On this cake are sometimes things offering themselves as models for identification of the person being celebrated. One such thing—a great favorite—is a doll associated with the birthday child’s anticipated future personal characteristics. That the person celebrated actually identifies with these symbols was brought out by Nei Tanieta’s narrative. Looking at a photo, she pointed to the doll on the cake baked in her honor (she had just turned twenty-one). Nei Tanieta said with a smile, “And I stood there” (11 July 1998). Another object associated chiefly with today’s twenty-first birthday celebrations is a key that

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symbolizes freedom. Another is the clothing worn by the birthday child on such occasions—a matter to which I will now turn in some detail.

Transcultured Clothing and Mimesis at a First Birthday Feast

Having familiarized ourselves with Banaban history, ethnopsychological discourses, and birthday celebrations, let us now consider a concrete case, one in which a baby girl’s first year of life was being celebrated. This case is instructive because it exhibits, in condensed form, cultural products of transculturation and social mimesis that have been actively developed through time by Banabans—products that were pressed into service mimetically once more, identifying the birthday child in a multiplicity of ways. The celebration we will examine is a first birthday feast held for a little girl I shall call Ratila. As she was the firstborn child in the family, hers had to be a very large feast, which duly took place in May 1998 at the largest community center on Rabi Island. Inside the hall Ratila and her mother, Nei Tanieta, and a number of respected persons were seated at the so-called head table, in full view of hundreds of assembled guests (the celebrations would last many hours). A giant birthday cake was positioned in front of the little girl. The exquisitely decorated cake was the work of the sister of the mother of Ratila’s father. This expert baker told me, “I put two posts for the basketball. Basketball refers to a girl. It is something to suit the child” (28 May 1998). A basketball court made of green icing, with a white staircase of three steps leading up to it, was prominently displayed on the cake, which had four sides. In the middle of the two shorter sides, there was a post. Seated in the middle of the basketball court was an European-looking doll with brown hair. The doll was wearing an orange T-shirt and a blue skirt fashioned from jeans material, which Ratila’s mother referred to as sports attire. Unmistakably, the baker had not just created a basketball court and a doll but had turned them into symbolic references to Ratila’s gender identity. Nei Tanieta later confirmed that the baker had deliberately chosen a theme suitable for Ratila for the cake’s decorations, knowing that her mother played basketball and wanted her daughter to be a successful player. Bearing in mind the context—a festive occasion when the whole point was to wish the little girl every happiness in her future life—it can be concluded that the message, figuratively speaking, was for Ratila to take charge of her life by treating it like a game. In that capacity, playing in a team—in sports, but also in life—she would still have to prove herself. Throughout the feast, other individual characteristics of the little girl and her social relations to various groups were presented by means cultural and artistic alike. Important in this connection was a birthday song, especially com-

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posed for the occasion by the Banaban composer Ten M. Kokoria, but equally important were items of clothing. When the feast started, Ratila was wearing a Fijian costume (Figure 7.1). This costume was made from masi, a traditional Fijian bark cloth. As Nei Tanieta said, “This is something special for Fijians” (8 July 1998). She explained that the costume signaled that the child was the “same” as her Fijian grandfathers on both the maternal and the paternal side. As a distinguishing feature of autochthonous Fijian culture, the bark cloth was evidence of the social relationships Banabans have been growing with Fijians since their resettlement to Rabi Island in 1945. But the costume also signaled that this girl differed ethnically from Banabans not linked through kinship to Fijians. Next a group of singers sang a birthday song in honor of the child. In the song’s refrain, in which female and male voices (to a guitar accompaniment) joined in a harmonious and buoyant melody, carried off with great verve, the child’s ethnic origins were recited one by one. Thus the child was praised by invoking places (concrete localities on islands, whole islands, and countries) from which her bilateral forebears stemmed. In terms of the cultural logic of Banabans, what was being stated is that the child possessed genealogical roots in the various communities living in these places. When the name of a specific island, or a specific place, rang out, this was the signal for persons also identifying with that same island or place to stand up, wherever they happened to be seated. With radiant faces and bodies swaying to the music, they moved forward to spray the members of the singing group with perfume and, as if that

Figure 7.1. The birthday child is standing in front of her mother wearing a Fijian costume. Photo: Elfriede Hermann, 28 May 1998.

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was not enough, to sprinkle them with a perfumed powder. Responding in this way, they not only drew attention to a specific identification of their own but confirmed the relations they had with the birthday child. Then, when the guests had turned their attention to the meal, it was time for Ratila to slip into a new costume. This second costume was a white dress in the Western style, which Nei Tanieta, however, characterized as Banaban. The point, evidently, was to give the child a modern Banaban identity—an identity that group members have cultivated ever since the early twentieth century, when Banaba was transformed through phosphate mining and features of Western life style. However, Ratila’s white European-style dress was not worn alone: on her head and chest she wore garlands of rose, pink, and yellow artificial flowers—very much in line with the modern Banaban style. The dress, which featured several layers of finest lace, had been commissioned from a Banaban seamstress. When shortly afterward the choir struck up another song, Ratila’s clothes were changed again. Her third costume was fashioned from ultrathin strips of bright pandanus leaves, with an inlaid motif of black-tinted pandanus material. Nei Tanieta referred to this dress as te kunnikai te ira (the dress made from strips of pandanus leaves). She explained to me that this was a “Gilbertese [I-Kiribati] custom, or we should call it Banaban custom.” In her eyes it merited a double reference since it was the creation of an elderly I-Kiribati seamstress but the style of weaving fine strips of pandanus leaves into a costume was as specific to the woman’s fellow countrywomen as it was also to Banaban women. Noteworthy, too, is that she described the dress as “custom”—a description testifying to the fact that Banabans and I-Kiribati now considered this shape their own even though a European woman’s summer dress must have been the prior model. Next, the choir gave another rendition of Ratila’s birthday song. Once again—and in a loud voice so that everybody could hear what was being sung— it was pointed out that Ratila had roots on several of Kiribati’s islands, in China,6 in several places in Fiji, and—not least—on Banaba itself. Once again delighted Banabans having the same origins came forward with their sprays, and in next to no time the hall was awash with perfume and pleasant odors, sweet to inhale. Now, Ratila reappeared in her fourth costume, a skirt and top made entirely of threaded mainly pink artificial pearls. Earlier Banabans liked to make dresses out of threaded pearls (te moromoro), Nei Tanieta explained. The Banaban sister of the grandfather of Ratila’s father had crafted, with exquisite skill, this te moromoro pearl costume. Nor was it worn alone: on her head was now a crown of white pearls. There, in capital letters threaded from dark greenish-blue pearls, could be read her second name, which linked her to an eponymous Fijian sister of her maternal grandfather.

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Ratila was soon removed from the limelight again and helped into yet another costume, her fifth one. This was a skirt with three tiers of light-colored stripes of plant material (te buka tenua). This being an I-Kiribati costume, Ratila wore it complete with the characteristic I-Kiribati neck and head adornments. Nei Tanieta told me that a Banaban woman designed this costume in the I-Kiribati style. Visually it carried clear references to the intimate relationships Banabans cultivated with I-Kiribati, especially during the time of phosphate mining on Banaba. Finally it was time for Ratila to be presented in her Banaban identity (Figure 7.2). The women had crafted a miniature version of the (traditionalizing) costume worn by the Banaban Dancing Group. Thus Ratila wore upper arm adornments; a necklace and chest adornment (woven out of pandanus material); a dancing costume made from black-colored grass fibers, a belt around her waist studded with gleaming white seashells and iridescent disks of mother of pearl; the trademark, and unmistakable, crown of the Banaban Dancing Group, featuring fragile white feathers between filigree flower imitations made of dried pumpkin leaves; armbands and ankle adornments; and, not least, a bra woven from ultrathin strips of pandanus leaves. The little girl’s sixth costume was the work of two ladies from Kiribati, one of them active in the Banaban Dancing Group. Ratila wore this particular costume in recognition of the fact that both her (Banaban) maternal grandmother and her (Fijian) maternal

Figure 7.2. The girl in her sixth garment: the costume of the Banaban Dancing Group. Photo: Elfriede Hermann, 28 May 1998.

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grandfather had danced for many years with the Banaban Dancing Group, but also because her mother’s brother was himself a member. Thanks to the above links, the little girl could now appear in the costume of these dancers, thus integrating her into this group as a potential member. And so Ratila could let her Banaban identity shine forth in the costume of the Banaban Dancing Group. Slipping out of this latest costume, Ratila next appeared in modern clothes in the Western style. This—her seventh costume—was a white crocheted dress (te koroti) with Ratila’s first name crocheted on the upper rear side in large dark-red letters. The delicate needlework was the work of an I-Kiribati woman. The eighth, and penultimate, costume was an elegant dress done in darkred velveteen, decorated in white lace at the neck and cuffs and along the fringes. What Ratila now had on was a “garment of European provenance” (te bai ni matang). Her maternal grandmother then took the little girl to the end of the high table for a chat with some of the guests sitting there. When Ratila got back, it was time for one last change. Her ninth—and final—costume was an elegant two-piece suit: the upper piece was a white blouse with pink arms and was worn with a long pink skirt (Figure 7.3). Ratila spent the rest of the evening in this elegant suit, moving around in the vicinity of the high table. Testifying to the relations Banabans have entertained with people from Western countries in the colonial past on

Figure 7.3. The birthday child in her ninth costume: a two-piece suit in the Western style. The birthday cake shaped as a basketball court and the European-looking doll seated in the middle of it are references to her identity, too. Photo: Elfriede Hermann, 28 May 1998.

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Banaba as well as in the postcolonial present in Fiji, this dress also anticipated her future opportunities to make a posh appearance. The point of Banabans having the little girl don all these different dresses was to stress that, in each case, she was the same as others who would normally, as a matter of course, be wearing that particular item of clothing. By stressing sameness in no fewer than nine cases, each time a specific identification of the child could be expressed. The fact that Ratila could don so many costumes, each having a different cultural background, presupposes transculturation of these clothing types.

Transculturation of Clothing, Images of Others and Selves, and Mimesis

In early colonial times, Banabans accepted Western clothing not, or not just, because the missionaries insisted that they do so. From the colonial discourses, they had seen themselves hierarchically downgraded as a result of wearing their scanty traditional clothing. The image they gained of Europeans— whether from the mission, the colonial authorities, or the mining engineers, all of whom rammed home the higher status they enjoyed—was, among other things, formed from the very clothes they wore. In order to achieve parity with Europeans, Banabans performed mimetic acts of transculturation with Western clothing. By altering their appearance in a European direction, they attempted to acquire something of the power emanating from, and represented by, Western clothing. In line with their ethnopsychological logic, they sought equality in what was different: they covered their bodies in European clothes and hoped thus to achieve status equality. Even with the passing of the colonial era, the striving for equality has remained. Now it is possible for the power relations between Banabans and Europeans to shift much more easily than before. And yet the global circulation of Western goods, ideas, technologies, and money has helped to ensure that persons with roots in Western-imprinted societies are, in Banaban eyes, seen as representing the economic and political power of Western countries. Political-economic contexts influence the images Banabans have formed not only of Europeans but of I-Kiribati and Fijians too. Retrospective narratives by older Banabans all concur in presenting the Gilbertese as a working class on a colonized Banaba. On the one hand, they saw them very much as class inferiors, since Gilbertese did not own land on Banaba. On the other, Banabans saw the latter as also being in some ways superior experts in cultural practices of a kind that could indeed unfold power in social contexts— for example in the art of ritual composing (Kempf 2003). In the postcolonial

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era, such images of the Gilbertese have not entirely ceased to reverberate with Banabans. But what Banabans now have to bear in mind is that the I-Kiribati represent a state that holds dominion over their home island. It was once the case that Banabans selectively transcultured elements of clothing worn by the Gilbertese/I-Kiribati—and in fact still do occasionally—and what they now attempt is to acquire aspects that attest to an agentive self. After being resettled on Fiji, Banabans had to confront two unpalatable facts: they were now migrants and, what was more, a minority in a country whose indigenous inhabitants self-identified as the rightful landowners (the word in the Fijian language is i-taukei). The image won by Banabans of the autochthonous Fijians was therefore of powerful landowners, of whom those possessing chiefly titles were more powerful than the common people. Even after the Banaban community acquired land rights over the island of Rabi, Banabans had to recognize that not all autochthonous Fijians regarded them as landowners having the same status that Fijians enjoy. And even after, in the course of time, most Banabans had acquired Fijian citizenship, they also had to face yet another disagreeable truth: some Fijian ethnonationalists were not willing to accord them equal citizenship rights; indeed, Banabans understood the ethnonationalists as giving them the same advice as they had already given the large Indian diaspora in Fiji, namely, they wanted them to leave. If, then, Banabans reacted to this situation by transculturing aspects of autochthonous Fijians’ clothing, it was partly because they imagined themselves in the role of Fiji Banabans, who—empowered by being citizens of Fiji—could situationally feel themselves as not unlike the autochthonous Fijians qua Pacific Islanders. In the intercultural interactions between Banabans and I-Kiribati as well as Fijians it has been, and still is, the case that their power relationships and hierarchic positions vary with the circumstances. But it is of note here too that clothing has lost none of its importance in the very image Banabans form of cultural others. By adopting (if only in a situation-specific manner) clothing of different cultural provenance, Banabans conceive of themselves in terms of these others and incorporate aspects of them, as in Mageo’s idea of “incorporative mimesis” (Introduction, this volume). By virtue of the creativity displayed in dealing with transcultured matter, they combine, it can surely be said, sameness and difference. Thus the dazzling array of clothes worn by the little girl at her birthday feast was itself the result of mimetic activities, each one representing her likeness with one reference group or other—Fijians, Europeans, I-Kiribati—while at the same time certifying her, in the sum of all her identities, as someone very special, even unique. The European-looking doll clad in athletic attire and signaling activity and agility also underlined this effect, even as it offered a model of success that could also be Ratila’s if she so chose. Here a conver-

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sation was taking place between the image of the doll and the self-perceptions Banabans have of themselves. Banabans represented the birthday child to make her resemble the European model, all the while attributing to her, through her Banaban neck and head adornments, a mixed identity—European and Banaban—an identity that made her distinct. So we have a scenario in which mimesis, in the context of the birthday feast, was co-constituted by ethnopsychological discourses turning on the relationship between sameness and difference. The mimetic adoption of the clothing worn by Others follows the discursive logic of being “different but same”: a Banaban person initially rated as culturally different from members of other ethnic groups can thus achieve sameness with the latter. But mimetic transformation also corresponds to the discursive message of “same but different”: a person initially the same as other Banabans becomes a person who differs from members of his or her cultural community. In Banaban eyes, there is no contradiction here: one does not have to be either one thing or another. Rather, Banaban-declared ethnopsychological principles recommend and forward an integrated relationship: “different but same.” Here, what we might call an ethos of the person utilizes and encourages, perhaps even necessitates, mimetic practice within a context of transculturation. The mimetic transformation of the birthday child was not only rendered highly visible to the guests in a flurry of dazzling colors and fantastic shapes but was pitched as well at all the other senses. Thus it was also rendered audible in the words of the song, accompanied by a pleasing and passionately intoned melody. Moreover, the same mimetic process could be inhaled in the form of the fragrance given off by the sprayed perfume. Finally, in this child’s birthday celebration mimesis is tactile and collective—experienced not just by the celebrant but also by members of the choral group, as when they had powder sprinkled on their skin. Since specific discourses cause Banabans to reach out to those deemed the same in a loving and charitable spirit, it does not surprise us to find these mimetic acts also stimulating loving and caring emotions in the assembled guests. Based on other discursive patterns rendering obligatory the recognition of difference, all participants at the feast made a point of according the girl every show of respect. The items of clothing expressed in the mimetic transformation of the girl were gender-specific. They would therefore be different for a little boy. Moreover, feasts of this kind are unthinkable without gender-specific accouterments, as when a female doll was placed on top of the birthday cake for Ratila. Gender-specific lifeways were also adumbrated during the feast. And yet the basic script for celebrating a first birthday is the same for boys and girls. Banabans consider themselves to practice gender equality when celebrating their children. The feast for little Ratila differed, however, in size and scale from other birthday feasts, where the organizers could not afford lavish expen-

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ditures on this rite of passage. So the demonstration of a certain distinction is part of what this feast was about. Apart from celebrating their children’s first birthdays, Banabans find space for other occasions—everyday and festive—when mimetic transformations can be performed within a context of transculturation. Festive occasions for rites of passage do not stop at twenty-first birthdays; there are also engagements and marriages. Common to such occasions is that Banabans depict not only their personal selves but also their collective self in performances, the point being to render their mimetic acts palpable in a multitude of different ways and to engage their own and others’ senses. Thus they position themselves via what we might call “sensual” or “tactile” mimesis, not only within their own community but also within other fields of power, namely those surrounding them on the regional, national, and international levels. By using such occasions to achieve mimetic equality with powerful others, they show they are capable of bridging the cultural—but also political and economic—distances separating them and demonstrate the agency they need in intercultural negotiations.

Conclusion: The Role of Ethnopsychological Discourses in Mimesis and Transculturation

Banabans have been copying clothing from former colonial Others and also from contemporary Westerners, on the one hand, and Fijian and I-Kiribati costumes, on the other. In the process they have transformed their identities by partial and modified incorporation of the semblances of others. Here making a likeness—mimesis—is co-constituted by a universal human faculty and an ethnopsychological discourse that lauds being “same but different.” This discourse affords insight into what is needed for the embodied articulation of mimetic processes—and therefore about how we need to conceive the relationship between identity and alterity. Rites indicating transculturation (and hence transcultural encounters) can afford interesting insights into mimesis, as is the case with the rites described by Laurence Marshall Carucci among the Marshall Islanders and the wedding rites treated by Joyce Hammond for tourists in Tahiti (see these authors’ contributions to this volume). Birthday feasts can be reckoned among the rites characterized by transculturation. Important birthdays, such as the first year of life and the twenty-first year of life, are today celebrated not only by Banabans but in many other Pacific societies as well (see, e.g., for the Marshall Islanders Carucci, this volume; for the Tongans in Tonga and Tongan diasporas, see Addo 2012: 13; Small 1997: 71). For Banabans, birthday celebrations make available a space for identification of articulations, that is, not only for identifications of the birthday child

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herself or himself but also for those of the invited guests who celebrate their social relations to the birthday child (and so also their personal and collective selves). In the course of these identifications, Banabans have recourse to models drawn from their own society and to those from other societies. Copying and modifying models is common among Banabans (as in other societies too) in everyday life; however, specific rites like birthday feasts offer social spaces where mimetic processes are especially evident. Banabans’ mimesis is both “incorporative” and “emblemizing” (see Mageo’s Introduction, this volume, for these concepts). The images and objects they copied and creatively remodeled were soon deployed effectively to represent their Banabanness, comprising manifold identifications with and differentiations from various cultural others. Copying—and then modifying what is copied—reveals how Banabans think about their historical and contemporary encounters with Westerners, I-Kiribati, and Fijians. Thus we might in their case too, as Jeannette Mageo has proposed in more general terms for mimesis (see Introduction), detect an echo of “talking back,” whenever Banabans wear copied dress styles—whether these styles closely resemble prior models or distinguish themselves from predecessors. When Banabans respond, they criticize undertones in prior models that signal to them that Europeans, Fijians, and I-Kiribati do not see them as their equals. By performing mimetic acts of transculturation, Banabans attempt to acquire something of the power represented by others in their clothing, becoming, in some respects, the same as the Other. Banabans admire and respect prior models, but they are also convinced of their ability to adjust these models to suit their own style, and so make the copy even better. The message Banabans’ mimesis holds is that they consider themselves equals (and therefore the same), but at the same time, through their cultural specificity, they insist on difference in relation to others. This dual message is, in turn, linked to their ethnopsychological discourse of being “same but different.” In light of the importance of such a discourse in Banaban society, I submit that dimensions of a locally specific ethnopsychology may, in other societies too, propel mimesis in processes of transculturation. Elfriede Hermann is professor at the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Göttingen. She has conducted research with the Ngaing of Papua New Guinea, the Banabans of Rabi Island (Fiji) and Banaba Island (Kiribati), and the inhabitants of Kiribati. The foci of her research and publications are identifications, belonging, emotions, historicity, ethnicity, migration, cultural transformations, transculturation, and cultural perceptions of climate change. Among her publications is the edited volume Changing Contexts, Shifting Meanings: Transformations of Cultural Traditions in Oceania (2011, University of Hawai’i Press), and with Wolfgang Kempf and Toon van

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Meijl she coedited Belonging in Oceania: Movement, Place-Making and Multiple Identifications (2014, New York: Berghahn Books). Notes 1. In 1900 phosphate mining was started by the Pacific Islands Company, which in 1902 was bought out by the Pacific Phosphate Company, which in 1920 was taken over by the British Phosphate Commissioners. The board of the latter consisted of representatives of the governments of Britain, Australia, and New Zealand (Maude 1946: 4–5; cf. Shlomowitz and Munro 1992: 104). 2. The last coup (2006) was of a rather different kind. 3. For example, Banaban men, when attending church, often wear the same gown as Fijian men do on festive occasions. 4. Later (round figure) birthdays are celebrated from time to time. Thus, for example, a highly respected man marked his fiftieth birthday with a big feast in 1996, to which Wolfgang Kempf and I were invited. 5. However, this autonomy only partially plays out on the personal level, for parents continue to expect, even after their children have become adults, that they will be consulted on decisions of life-shaping importance for their offspring. 6. Some of the Chinese workers brought in by the British to work the mines on Banaba had liaisons with Banaban women, resulting in a number of children. References Abu-Lughod, Lila, and Catherine A. Lutz. 1990. “Introduction: Emotion, Discourse, and the Politics of Everyday Life.” In Language and the Politics of Emotion, ed. Catherine A. Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Addo, Ping-Ann. 2012. “Teaching Culture with a Modern Valuable: Lessons about Money for and from Tongan Youth in New Zealand.” In “Pacific Islands Diaspora, Identity, and Incorporation,” ed. Jan Rensel and Alan Howard. Special issue of Pacific Studies 35(1–2): 11–43. Classen, Constance. 1997. “Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses.” International Social Science Journal 49: 401–12. Coronil, Fernando. 1995. “Introduction to the Duke University Press Edition. Transculturation and the Politics of Theory: Countering the Center, Cuban Counterpoint.” In Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, by Fernando Ortiz, IX–LVI. Durham: Duke University Press. Gebauer, Gunter, and Christoph Wulf. 1995. Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hansen, Karen T. 2004. “The World in Dress: Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33(1): 369–92. Harrison, Simon. 2006. Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West. New York: Berghahn Books. Hermann, Elfriede. 1995. Emotionen und Historizität. Der emotionale Diskurs über die YaliBewegung in einer Dorfgemeinschaft der Ngaing, Papua New Guinea. Berlin: Reimer.

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———. 2003. “Manifold Identifications within Differentiations: Shapings of Self among the Relocated Banabans of Fiji.” In “Multiple Identifications and the Self,” ed. Toon van Meijl and Henk Driessen. Special issue of Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology 42: 77–88. ———. 2004. “Emotions, Agency, and the Dis/Placed Self of the Banabans in Fiji.” In Shifting Images of Identity in the Pacific, ed. Toon van Meijl and Jelle Miedema, 191–217. Leiden: KITLV Press. ———. 2011. “Introduction: Engaging with Interactions: Traditions as Context-Bound Articulations.” In Changing Contexts, Shifting Meanings: Transformations of Cultural Traditions in Oceania, ed. Elfriede Hermann, 1–19. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press in Association with the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Kempf, Wolfgang. 2003. “‘Songs Cannot Die’: Ritual Composing and the Politics of Emplacement among the Resettled Banabans on Rabi Island in Fiji.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 112(1): 33–64. ———. 2004. “The Drama of Death as Narrative of Survival. Dance Theatre, Travelling and Thirdspace among the Banabans of Fiji.” In Shifting Images of Identity in the Pacific, ed. Toon van Meijl and Jelle Miedema, 159–89. Leiden: KITLV Press. ———. 2011a. “The First South Pacific Festival of Arts Revisited: Producing Authenticity and the Banaban Case.” In The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples: Spectacle or Politics?, ed. Barbara Glowczewski and Rosita Henry, 177–86. Oxford: Bardwell Press. ———. 2011b. “Social Mimesis, Commemoration, and Ethnic Performance: Fiji Banaban Representations of the Past.” In Changing Contexts, Shifting Meanings: Transformations of Cultural Traditions in Oceania, ed. Elfriede Hermann, 174–91. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press in Association with the Honolulu Academy of Arts. ———. 2011c. “Translocal Entwinements: Toward a History of Rabi as a Plantation Island in Colonial Fiji.” GOEDOC, Dokumenten- und Publikationsserver der Georg-AugustUniversität Göttingen. Retrieved 16 August 2015 from http://resolver.sub.uni-goettin gen.de/purl/?webdoc-2923. Kempf, Wolfgang, and Elfriede Hermann. 2005. “Reconfigurations of Place and Ethnicity: Positionings, Performances, and Politics of Relocated Banabans in Fiji.” In “Relations in Multicultural Fiji: Transformations, Positionings and Articulations,” ed. Elfriede Hermann and Wolfgang Kempf. Special issue of Oceania 75(4): 368–86. Küchler, Susanne, and Graeme Were. 2003. “Clothing and Innovation: A Pacific Perspective.” Anthropology Today 19(2): 3–5. Lutz, Catherine A. 1985. “Ethnopsychology Compared to What? Explaining Behavior and Consciousness among the Ifaluk.” In Person, Self, and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsychologies, ed. Geoffrey M. White and John Kirkpatrick, 35–79. Berkeley: University of California Press. Maude, H.E. 1946. Memorandum on the Future of the Banaban Population of Ocean Island: With Special Relation to their Lands and Funds. Auckland: Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. Ortiz, Fernando. (1947) 1995. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de Onís. Durham: Duke University Press. [Originally published as Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar. Havana: J. Montero, 1940]. Shlomowitz, Ralph, and Doug Munro. 1992. “The Ocean Island (Banaba) and Nauru Labour Trade, 1900–1940.” Journal de la Société des Océanistes 94(1): 103–17.

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Silverman, Martin G. 1971. Disconcerting Issue: Meaning and Struggle in a Resettled Pacific Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Small, Cathy A. 1997. Voyages from Tongan Villages to American Suburbs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Teaiwa, Katerina M. 2005. “Our Sea of Phosphate: The Diaspora of Ocean Island.” In Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations: Unsettling Western Fixations, ed. Graham Harvey and Charles D. Thompson, Jr., 169–91. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2012. “Choreographing Difference: The (Body) Politics of Banaban Dance.” The Contemporary Pacific 24(1): 65–94. Teaiwa, Teresia K. 1997. “Rabi and Kioa: Peripheral Minority Communities in Fiji.” In Fiji in Transition, ed. Brij V. Lal and Tomasi R. Vakatora, 130–52. Suva: University of the South Pacific. Acknowledgments I would like to extend a warm word of thanks to the Banaban community, who received me with their usual hospitality and acquainted me with their discourses on sameness and difference. I wish to place on record my gratitude to the government of Fiji and the Rabi Council of Leaders for kindly granting me permission to conduct fieldwork in Fiji and on Banaba. I am also greatly indebted to the German Research Foundation for a research grant. For helpful comments and suggestions, I thank Jeannette Mageo, Deborah Gewertz, Frederick Errington, Mick Taussig, Joshua Bell, those who participated in the sessions we held at ASAO annual meetings, Rupert Stasch, and the anonymous reviewers. I would also like to warmly thank Steffen Herrmann for helping with preparing the photographs and the chapter for publication. As always, my thanks go to Wolfgang Kempf for inspirational conversations and also to Dr. Bruce Allen for expertly correcting my English.

8 Mimesis and Reimagining Identity among Marshall Islanders LAURENCE MARSHALL CARUCCI

In Becoming Sinners, Joel Robbins argues in favor of a form of social change among the Urapmin of Highland New Guinea that he calls “adoption”: “taking on something new without prejudging what happens to what was there before” (Robbins 2004: 11). While Robbins’s work serves as a grandly researched contribution to Urapmin ethnography, I question whether, in any society, it is possible to adopt new forms of social practice without revaluation in terms of an already existing set of local social practices and symbolic exemplars. These local practices and symbolic forms, however contested, constitute the interpretative frames that anthropologists call “culture,” and in my own experience with people from the Marshall Islands such framing devices must be used to lend meaning to the world. Even in cases in which people say they are copying the representational forms of others, those copies are far from direct replicas. Replicative processes of this sort involve mimesis, creating copies that mimic, in their representational form, people’s interpretations of the practices of others. But that process, I shall argue, always involves indigenous reformulations of the original exemplars, cultural representations that are, in their comparative formulation, necessarily grounded in a taken-for-granted array of cultural symbols and practices that, through their very existence, transform the imagined cultural products that are supposed to mime the activities and/or representations of others, producing hybrid forms and culturally innovative interpretations. Meaning is critical in any assessment of mimesis and, in line with an anthropological tradition that extends back to Malinowski, if not earlier, the aim of ethnographic inquiry is to capture the meanings of others. Malinowski thus notes that a core part of the ethnographic endeavor is to “grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world” (Malinowski [1922] 1961: 25). In that vein, much as Dalton does in his contribution to this volume (Chapter 10), it is important to keep Cantwell’s idea of “ethnomimesis” at the core of any cultural formulation that reimagines the cultural practices of others in order to mimic those practices, incorporate them, and thereby

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“re(cognize) them in us” (Cantwell 1993: 5). The ethnoscape of concern in this chapter is the Enewetak/Ujelang community, who, prior to World War II, occupied an atoll in the northwesternmost quadrant of the Marshall Islands. Already by that time, the Enewetak community had incorporated people from other locations, including spouses from Ujelang Atoll and from locales in the eastern quadrant of the Caroline Islands. After the war, Enewetak people were displaced onto Ujelang, where they struggled to maintain some semblance of a wholesome and healthful existence while the U.S. military used Enewetak as a central site for nuclear testing. After thirty-three years living in exile, the community was allowed to move back onto a few parts of Enewetak, but the atoll was so radically altered in its environmental contours that, since that time, many members of the community have moved to the government center (Majuro, Marshall Islands), to Hawai‘i, and to other locales in the United States in search of a meaningful life.1 With this experience in the Marshall Islands as a baseline, it is clear that miming practices take place with some frequency, yet their mimed representations, several of which I consider in the pages to follow, are far from iconic replicas. Examples provided are from periods of research on Ujelang, Enewetak, Majuro, and the Big Island of Hawai‘i between 1976 and 2015. While local people may describe the copies I present as identical to an original, in fact they are reframings different in form and meaning from the way their “originals” were positioned in an earlier Marshallese society. The first section of this chapter considers mimeses of this sort: purported replicas, which rely heavily on the way in which Enewetak/Ujelang people lend meaning to kamolu (song fest competitions), and “Christmas trees,” which form a core part of their own four-month celebration of Kūrijmōj (Marshall Islands’ Christmas). In the second part of the chapter, however, I delineate a kind of mimesis I call “antithetical,” in which social practices may take a form that is opposed to the imagined practices of others. In this kind of mimesis, the entire possibility of positing a view of “who we are” not uncommonly positions “our practices” alongside those of others “who we are not.” And the imagined image of that “who we are not” relies on mimesis, even if only to use that negative image, that imagined replica of the other, to formulate “who we are.” Power, I will show in the examples to follow, figures prominently in mimetic practices of both sorts, inasmuch as mimicry of the Other does not operate as a means just to “recognize them in us” but to capture the potency of the acts of others and gain access to that power. In this chapter, I explore the varied contours of mimesis and particularly the multiple modes of expression that, day to day, are either actively produced or are already imagined to have mimetic content by Ujelang/Enewetak people who use as exemplars components of the practices and demeanors of white people (di pālle).2 These vary all the way from Ujelang/Enewetak people’s at-

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tempts to identically replicate a particular representation to occasions when the exemplar stands in antithetical relation to a contemporary Ujelang/Enewetak practice, thereby representing the heightened value of who we are in relation to the mimed practices of those imagined others. The motivations that underlie these representational processes are multiple as well. At times, mimesis operates to capture the potency of that being mimed through replication, however far those replicas may be removed from Peircean pure icons—firstness of firsts (Peirce 1931[I]: 157). In other instances, mimetic forms may serve as contrastive exemplars, denotata of that which is distinctly di pālle (belonging to white people) as opposed to the much more highly valued “us.” Often, the latter are deprecatory stories that serve to rationalize rank differentials, however inappropriate, that people see between themselves and these others. They have also, however, become salvage modes of manit (custom), that is, attempts to capture that which is being lost, again through mimesis, since, at certain times, it is that which has been lost that can serve as a source of power in the current day. Those lost practices, once reified, require reappropriation to gain access to the power of the past. At certain junctures, mimesis serves as a mode through which people hope to appropriate power that they do not hold. At other junctures, it serves as proof of an already realized attempt to be that imagined Other, however much it may prove to take on shapes that are quite different from the original practices of those imagined others. Most frequently, this is how people talk about church practices. In other instances, mimesis provides the grounds for resistance to the imagined practices of others, or may provide a measure of simple failure to be able to actually replicate the acts of di pālle. In either case, one’s identity ultimately stands apart from that which exists as a clear-cut image in the mind of Marshallese of how others act but represents what they are not. As Derrida (1978) contends, mimesis is always productive, an innovative mode that inevitably begins as a doubling of preexistent alternative understandings, not with the pure originals that Plato had in mind. In this illusory world, cultural constructions are always fashioned out of similarities and differences, but those distinctions rely on comparisons with appropriations and reinterpretations of that which exists in another already experienced construction of the world.

Mimetic Features of Ku¯rijmo¯j (Marshallese Christmas)

I begin with a look back at a couple of the core signifiers of the celebration of Kūrijmōj, the thoroughly indigenized celebration of Christmas. I have written extensively about this celebration in other locations (Carucci 1980, 1993, 1997), but there are two fragments I would like to consider here. The first of

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these is, in all likelihood, truly one of the first fragments to have been introduced, mimed, and reimagined throughout the years in ways that lend continuity to the entire celebration. This is the practice known as kamolu (to make song), consisting in the current era of song fest competitions between two or more jepta (songfest groups). At least in local people’s constructions of their own past, these songfests, combined with feasting, formed the core of Kūrijmōj. Indeed, by 1880, Finsch notes that the great yearly feast (or “gluttony,” as he terms it) once held at the time of summer solstice rather than winter had been shifted to the site of the mission on Ebon, and people from Jaluij made the trip to Ebon to celebrate (Finsch 1893: 45–46). Therefore, even by this time, a time when Finsch claims there were fewer than four hundred Christian converts in the entire Marshall Islands, mimesis had already taken place: mediated representations stood between indigenous forms of feasting, of dancing, and of singing and the practices recommended by missionaries. We know nothing definitive of the earliest kamolu. It was not a folkloric practice, and early investigators like Finsch were seeking pure unadulterated culture. But it is quite clear that missionaries admonished local people for their dances—both the mimetic war dances of the men and the sexually explicit duum of the women, although there were complementary male forms of sexually explicit dance as well (Finsch 1893: 32–33)—causing the provocative forms to move underground and, only recently, reemerge in more explicit, public arenas. As for songs, missionaries, themselves, translated their own hymns, including some well-known Christmas hymns, into Marshallese. But in contemporary times, a radical mediation has occurred in kamolu: locally penned songs have fully replaced any Christmas hymns in Kūrijmōj. These, too, however, frequently are based on reconfigured popular tunes from elsewhere, including the United States. Thus, while foreign in certain details, the songs sung at kamolu bear chromatic vestiges of songs that are at a considerable remove from the religious genre. And, of course, the competitive format and feasting are fully developed modes within the toolkit of Marshallese ritual forms but mimed and given new contour in kamolu. The imagined universal generosity of the ancient ones is often discussed, and current exchange practices are critiqued: “Oh, now they are giving a little only, but in past times, the old ones exhausted their potential [to give generously] in kamolu.” One highly developed analogue for Marshall Islanders is the keemem (first birthday’s celebration). While Finsch does not mention it, he knew there were naming ceremonies, and local people now contend that those names were once given as part of the keemem. But if the keemem forms the Marshallese prototype for kamolu it, too, has come to be reimagined and to incorporate elements once reserved for Kūrijmōj and for kamolu.

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For a keemem, there are always two sides, food givers and food receivers, the former the extended families of whom the child is a member and who provide the food, the latter, those who receive the food and give honorific speeches dedicated to the child. They also sing minimally “songs of giving” at the time that gifts (now almost exclusively dollars) are placed at the feet of the child. Given the overlapping ties to bwij (bilateral extended families) that exist among Enewetak/Ujelang people, as a result of long-standing bilateral crosscousin marriage exchanges, there are no pure lines that separate givers and receivers, and, certainly, at a keemem everyone receives food (even members of the sponsoring families). Nevertheless, the speeches delineate the oppositional scenario, and those sides are far more formalized with songfest groups at Kūrijmōj. There are never fewer than two such groups. On Ujelang in the 1970s, for example, Jitaken and Jitoen were in direct competition throughout the four months of Kūrijmōj. The two competed as warring groups and as marrying groups, with lots of talk (from formal speeches to cursory jibes) that pointed to the mimetic links that interrelate Kūrijmōj and these long-standing Marshallese domains. As a hybrid social practice, kamolu also implicates other domains. Thus people describe the interactions of kamolu as types of warfare, yet also note that these “battles” are limited to love and giving. People associate these “works of love” with the coming of the mission. Thus, the modus operandi of kamolu requires that one demonstrate iokwe (love/welcome), and giving in abundance becomes the demonstrative mode of these unique gifts of war. Kamolu is thus a highly complex, polysemic representation drawing on long-standing local practices but, at least in its locally imagined form, representing a Christian ritual form associated with modernity. Its hybrid features are absolutely clear-cut, drawing on practices of exchange and sharing of long standing and incorporating themes of marriage and warfare that, when pressed, people admit are of ancient derivation. Nevertheless, local people do not automatically disarticulate kamolu into its historical components. For most people, it is just what we do. It is associated with Christianity and is frequently used to set the actions of the current day aside from those of the people of the past (armij ro mokta). Those with most knowledge of kamolu note that it was invented in the early years on Ujelang and differs from the early kamolu brought by missionaries both in the songs that are sung and in the large food exchanges that accompany the event. At the same time, in everyday discourse, kamolu is imagined as a mimetic event. As a Christian ritual form brought to Enewetak by the first resident missionary, it marks a shared communal modernity. If kamolu is a form of ethnomimesis at the conceptual level, in its historical formulation, it is hybrid to the core.

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The Wo¯jke: An Ujelang Christmas Tree

The second part of Kūrijmōj I would like to consider is the building and presentation of the wōjke (tree), a form that came to be highly elaborated on Ujelang and Enewetak and now is performed on the Big Island. Here different iconic representations stress different lines of mimesis seeking meaningful positions with the varied customs of each locale. On Ujelang, and certainly on Enewetak in the 1980s and early 1990s, the presentation of the wōjke formed the highlight of a jepta’s (songfest group) presentations on the twenty-fifth day, a time when all of the songs and dances prepared by each jepta were presented. At this time, as well, the largest food exchanges occurred among members of different jepta, and the most elaborated speeches were given. As I have detailed elsewhere (Carucci 1980, 1997), the wōjke, other than in name, was nothing like a tree at all. Rather, it was an exploding piñata-type contraption, but often much larger, and filled with “gifts to God,” always appropriated by God’s earthly representative, the local minister (Figure 8.1). Most of the content is money, often suspended on strings (the “branches” of the tree), but soap (laundry and bath), matches, and other goods might also be ensconced within. The tree had to be exploded magically, often accomplished by wires leading to a pile of match head shavings. While these often misfired, those that were successful were men in bwilōn¯ (things of amazement; Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.1. Young men from Meden jepta (Enewetak Atoll) prepare their wōjke in the church (1982).

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Figure 8.2. Rupe, ruup! (Explode it, explode!): Jitaken’s wōjke is revealed in the explosion—Ujelang (1976).

This cargo-like device has mimetic links to many domains, each of particular significance to Ujelang/Enewetak people. At a straightforward semantic level, the wōjke “tree” is an indigenous incarnation of the Euro-American Christmas tree. More critically, in line with the central operational mode of kamolu, the wōjke offers the format through which love is demonstrated to God, through the overabundant gifts that were presented. And certainly, as a festival of renewal that, as I have argued elsewhere, continues to hold ties to the ancient renewal festival of the Marshall Islands, the expectation was that such generous gifts would, of necessity, require that God reciprocate with equally beneficent gifts linked to human reproduction and to the renewal of nature in the coming year (Carucci 1980, 1997). But, the explosive character of the wōjke also mimes the explosive potency of the bombs dropped on the atoll during the Battle of Eniwetok as well as the nuclear weaponry that people witnessed after the war as the United States conducted nuclear tests on Enewetak and Bikini. As frightening and destructive as these devices were, as much as they spread human misery throughout the northern Marshall Islands, the explosions also encapsulate for Enewetak residents the supernatural potency that is described as kabwilōn¯lōn¯ (to make repeatedly amazing). Having witnessed this awesome potency with their own eyes, having felt the earth shake after the explosions, these felt emotions are deeply embedded in people’s consciousness. Wōjke shift control of this force

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from a deified source, or from a source controlled by Americans, into the hands of jepta members at Kūrijmōj. In this appropriative mode, mimesis lends power to those who, otherwise, would remain marginal witnesses to such force. As with kamolu, wōjke are complex polysemic representations. Nevertheless, in local people’s discussions of these objects, they are prime examples of mimesis. In 1977, the crew of young men constructing the wōjke for Jitaken in an open room within Jojeb’s house insisted that their wōjke lukuun komāāt jekjek in baam ko ioon Enewetak (precisely replicated the shape of the bombs on Enewetak). At the time, I thought this was bizarre, inasmuch as their wōjke looked like a large box, about eight-feet square, with the requisite inscriptions of biblical verse on some of the cloth that enclosed the valuables. Many months later, looking at photos of the building that enclosed the first thermonuclear device that was exploded on Enewetak in November 1952, the “Mike” test, I was reminded of the square structure built by the young men from Jitaken. Had they actually seen photos of “Mike”? Certainly, they were far more concerned with the operational potency of their bomb, yet when it was successfully exploded—as young children chanted, “Rupe, ruup! (Blow it to pieces, [make it] explode)”—the Jitaken bomb makers reminded me, “As we informed you, [it] really exhausts the shape of the [original Enewetak] bombs.” In 1982, celebrating the second Kūrijmōj after their return to Enewetak, Jitoen men constructed an innovative wōjke that mimed another historical symbol of foreign design. Theirs was a much smaller wōjke in the shape of a nineteenth-century clipper ship with square-masted sails. While the Jitaken wōjke makers had stressed the bomb-like quality of their wōjke, members of Jitoen noted the most exemplary feature of their own wōjke. Several members noted how their wōjke lukuun komāāt jekjek in Morning Star eo (entirely exhausted the shape of the Morning Star), referring to the first missionary packet that sailed from Hawai‘i to Micronesia. And, of course, given the innovative contours of the wōjke, it was an amazing “tree.” The entire wōjke was about four feet in length and traveled along monofilament trolling line so that the young men, standing outside of the lagoon-side entry to the church, could drag it from the rear of the church up to the front using an elaborate pulley system. The craft was painted black with white sails, and in fairly large print on each side it was labeled Morning Star. Like all wōjke, this one was hollow and was designed to explode (using a pile of phosphorous scraped from the heads of dozens of match heads). The phosphorous was to be ignited from a distance using bare wires and batteries. As is often the case with wōjke, despite pretesting, the Morning Star did not explode for the Kūrijmōj celebration on the twenty-fifth day. Nevertheless, due to its unique design, the wōjke was a favorite and received many accolades. However, it was only the ethnomimetic interpretation of the Jitoen Morning

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Star that allowed it to be seen as an exact replica of the nineteenth-century original. The actual physical form of the Jitoen Morning Star set it aside quite sharply from a Marshallese sailing canoe. But neither did it much resemble the Morning Star, which was a barkentine ship with a central set of square-rigged sails supplemented with fore and aft sails. Instead, the Jitoen Morning Star looked more like a fully rigged ship, with three square-rigged mainsails. Moreover, the stern of the ship had the abrupt contour of the Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria-style vessel rather than the sleek contour of the original Morning Star. In other words, this wōjke relied upon what Mageo terms both “incorporative and emblemizing mimesis” (Introduction, this volume) to draw upon the potencies of imagined representations reformulated from core signifiers of others, in this case missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, for inspiration. Wōjke practices are in this way similar to Banabans’ innovative appropriation and redesign of the clothing styles of others for critical local celebrations (Hermann this volume). Most clearly, the Jitoen Morning Star was designed as a relatively diminutive exploding wōjke, not as a missionary transport craft, but none of this detracted from the local conceptual focus on the imagined iconicity that linked the wōjke with the Micronesian Morning Star. As with kamolu, or with Jitaken’s Mike-like bomb, the Jitoen Morning Star was a complex, hybrid signifier. Nevertheless, as an ethnomimetic signifier, its central contours were more than adequate to cause people to imagine it to be a replica of an original, a symbol that allowed the members of the Jitoen jepta to successfully capture the potency of those first encounters with Christianity and incorporate them into their performances during Kūrijmōj of 1982. During the weeks of advent, immediately preceding December 25, it is common for each jepta to take responsibility for the food and performances on a particular Sunday. This was true in 2002, when the Big Island Marshallese jepta from Ocean View was responsible for the songs, entry dances, and distribution of food. In this instance, they had also decided to incorporate a wōjke in their presentation even though this wōjke would be far less fancy than the “tree” they planned to present on December 25. While my entire adoptive family was performing with Ocean View and I had heard discussion about presenting the tree, other than being asked to donate money and other items to fill the tree, I was not involved with its design. Therefore, when we lined up to present our beet (entering line dance) and to sing our songs, I was surprised to see that the wōjke was simply a six-foot Walmart Christmas tree and that the gifts for God, that would go to the minister, were arranged underneath or were hung from its branches. Indeed, a few of those gifts were even wrapped in the Western style that has been popular since the 1920s. Of course, many dollar gifts were suspended from the

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branches in a fashion that replicated the revealed dollar gifts that often filled exploding Enewetak/Ujelang wōjke (Carucci 1997). And boxes of candy, to serve as panuk, thrown into the crowd to appease the children, were also hidden behind the tree. The entire arrangement was fitted onto a small gardening wagon so that it could be hauled into the central performing area toward the end of the presentation of songs. After the performance, I asked about the wōjke and the fact that its form lacked the innovative character of most wōjke. Lauren, a middle-aged Jitaken man who was a respected member of the church, said, “Well, it is suited to this day. It would never be the same [as complex as] the real wōjke which would be revealed on the 25th.” But Druie, Lauren’s mother-in-law, said: Well, such is the case on this island, an island of di pālle, “white people.” So our friends [other members of the jepta] believe it is suited to use the customs of white people and reveal that thing [the plastic Christmas tree] to the other jepta. In these times, when we live on the island of the white people, it is appropriate [in their eyes] to take [on] the customs of white people. While several others commented on the Ocean View wōjke, these two statements capture some of the ambivalence that applies not only to the wōjke but also to the contradictions of life on the Big Island for Marshall Islanders. As I have noted elsewhere, this is a place where Marshall Islands residents no longer entirely control the parameters of their own lives (Carucci 2012, 2013). They live with American laws and are continuously negotiating their own identities in relation to the (often negative) judgments of others who inhabit overlapping social spaces. In this case, Lauren suggests that this wōjke was suited for the occasion but was far less elaborated and innovative than would be true of the “official” wōjke presented on the 25th. At the same time, this wōjke was judged to be good enough for the advent Sunday presentation and, of course, for the very first time, core components of its form were an exact replica of an American Christmas tree. And Druie rationalized the choice as potentially appropriate inasmuch as members of the community were now living in the lands of white people. However, neither Druie nor Lauren were particularly committed to the identity value of this new wōjke. Rather, it is positioned as a meditational signifier: good enough, given its larger and narrower presentational contexts, but not really, or not yet, a real representation of who we are. Indeed, the Ocean View wōjke could not be a men in bwilōn¯ (thing of amazement), for it had no explosive potential. If the transfer of that power into the hands of Enewetak/Ujelang was a core piece of earlier wōjke on both of those atolls, the absolute inequalities in power between Marshallese on the Big Island and their neighbors were manifest every single day. It was not a social

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setting in which Marshallese exuded the same confidence in their identities as they did when living in the Marshall Islands, and this lack of surety was indexically marked by the uncertain adoption of the Walmart Christmas tree into the celebration of Kūrijmōj.

Emblemizing and Antithetical Mimesis: Mimetic Components of Everyday Practice

If the above examples represent mimetic processes in their exemplary mode, the same fundamental process, I believe, forms an important piece of a wide range of everyday practices. In the examples given above, it is clear that imagined others and the representations that they provide are frequently mimed as imagined past fragments of local cultural practices and beliefs. Of course, as much as the mimesis is said to replicate past practices or practices of some foreign group, in performance and in reflections on that performance, the meanings attributed to imagined past practices within Marshallese society or the practices of others are substantially changed. But, alongside this entire set of mimetic practices, another series of representations is used to distinguish local Enewetak/Ujelang people from their favorite comparative other, di pālle (clothed people/white people/Americans). In representations of this sort, the mimetic moment consists of an imagined form that aims to capture what white people are up to. Rather than attempting to replicate that form, however, the intent in this case is to depict an “us” that differs from white people. The construction of Self, of the “us” as it currently exists, in fact, always bears a relation to imagined forms of cultural Others. I suggest Marshallese use the same formula for symbolic constructs to imagine Americans as they do to imagine others who they might aspire to replicate or to use for purposes of identity contrast. Whether people are creating a past imagined identity of themselves or of another group as a foil to their current identity does not matter: in both cases their replicas aim to capture essential features of that group, while in practice, they reshape either themselves, others, or, frequently, both. Of course, in the case of di pālle discussed in this section, the aim is oppositional: to set Marshallese identity apart. Making a replica continues even when the purpose is only to create an image of foreigners as an “original” point of contrast. Mageo (Introduction, this volume) discusses the identity relationships in precolonial times among Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji as emblemizing mimesis. My focus in this section is to provide ethnographically grounded examples mostly derived from everyday discourses, though certainly material representations such as clothing and other items intimately connected with identities, both cultural and interpersonal, may be core components of these mimetic practices.

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The term “antithetical” is well suited to this set of emblemizing representations since Marshall Islanders are in this case expressly attempting to position their own identities in opposition to clothed people, that is Americans or “white men.” What distinguishes these examples from the Tonga, Samoa, Fiji case discussed by Mageo is the inordinately different set of power relations that separate Americans and Marshall Islanders (compare with Merlan, Chapter 1, this volume). This means that, on an everyday basis, Marshallese construct images of themselves in opposition to Americans, whereas only in the most unique and localized circumstances do Americans ever construct images of themselves in opposition to Marshall Islanders (also see Pearson, Chapter 3, this volume). Antithetical mimesis is undoubtedly a specialized form of what Mageo terms “emblemizing mimesis” in the Introduction to this volume. In contrast to what Mageo (Introduction, this volume) calls “abject mimesis,” however, antithetical mimesis does not, of necessity, contain a sense of inferiority. Rather, in the instances below, Marshall Islanders may use antithetical mimesis to position what it means to be Marshallese in opposition to what di pālle are like without any assessment as to the relative value of one social practice over another, or it may suggest a relative ranking of social practices, with either American or Marshallese forms being preferred. These representations of “us” are daily occurrences among Marshallese. To the extent that they are contrasts with di pālle, perhaps those that I have inscribed in my field notes always reference my own presence in the scene and the conflict that that presence evokes within members of the Ujelang/Enewetak community. In many everyday settings, my presence receives no special attention, but in contexts where others are present who do not know me well, local people tire of explaining in which particular ways I am di pālle (of this they are not really certain) and in which ways I am just “one of us” (mottad): Ujelang/Enewetak Marshallese. In chastising children for misbehavior, those community members who do not interact with me on an everyday basis occasionally appropriate my presence, saying: “Lali bwe di pālle n¯e enaj mani iok ” (Watch out because that white person [next to you] will beat you.). The hope is that this ploy will immediately cause young children to act in the manner that their overseers desire, with quite mixed effects. Far more frequently, people who are addressing others who do not know me simply say: “Leen di Ujelang or leen (ej mottan) di Majel ” (That male person [is] a person of Ujelang [or a person who is part of we Marshallese]), rather than going into a long explanation of why this is the case. In any case, the use of time, the use of money, the care of objects, the way in which one positions one’s self in the landscape, all of these are fashioned as points of contrast between di pālle and “us” (di Ujelang/di Enewetak) or, sometimes a more broadly stated “us” (di Majel, “people of the Marshall Islands”).

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What I am suggesting is that these contrastive statements require precisely the same sort of fashioning of imagined others as do all forms of mimesis. In cases in which imagined di pālle are contrasted to “us,” contemporary practice often involves contrary activities, which then become the focus of discourses (equally essentialized) that position the contrastive features of “how we act” in relation to that imagined, ethnomimetic Other. In actual practice, neither of these imagined originals is, in fact, true. In Weber’s terms, they are ideal types that are, of necessity, also local products. As much as the Ocean View advent wōjke began to look like an iconic replica of a Walmart Christmas tree, earlier generations of wōjke were frequently used to set Enewetak/Ujelang people apart from di pālle (white people/Americans). This was often done as a form of local empowerment. For example, in Tira’s speech that accompanied the Jitaken wōjke in 1982, he said: This is not just a tree for a while [an ordinary tree]. It is true that the young men have adorned it [kainikniki], but much more so than those adornments of di pālle. Our [exclusive] wōjke is far beyond that amount. The content of this tree is a thing of amazement. And, as it explodes—well, as you will see, it is well beyond that which can be imagined. So powerful, you may disappear [i.e., may be wiped out in the blast]. These superlatives are unusual for a Marshallese speech since respected elders often demean the gift they are about to give in their speeches so as to allow the gift itself to overwhelm the recipients. It would certainly be shameful to have a gift that did not live up to the claims of the speechmaker. But, in this case, I believe, Tira was taking a chance. This songfest group followed Jitoen, and the Morning Star wōjke described above had had great audience appeal. But the Jitaken wōjke was much larger than the Morning Star design and, having seen the content of the Morning Star wōjke and heard rumors about the amount that Jitoen was giving to the minister (since several of his children were in that group), he was taking a risk in his speech. He knew that the physical shape of the Jitoen wōjke would not overly impress the crowd since it was a modified version of the standard boxlike form. But knowing that the content of the Jitaken wōjke was considerably greater, and knowing that the tree had successfully exploded in three earlier tests, he hoped that Jitaken could still win the competition based, in part, on their wōjke. At the same time, of course, Tira compared di pālle and American wōjke/ trees as if they shared the same design features and encapsulated the same intent. And while it was the exterior decorations that constituted his initial point of contrast, it was really the gifts it contained and its explosive potential that, as Tira well knew, separated Marshallese wōjke and their American “counterparts.” Indeed, as I had often asked about Enewetak/Ujelang wōjke as part of

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my research on Kūrijmōj, it was common for people to use the indigenously designed trees as something that set them apart from Americans. Indeed, local people often seemed as though it was difficult for them to understand why Americans had not incorporated explosive force into their own Christmas trees. They knew that Americans controlled this force, since it was the awe-inspiring force of American nuclear explosions that provided inspiration for the original Ujelang designs. But, somehow, Americans had not imagined the connection. It took the wisdom of the Marshallese to design wōjke of such superior design. Tira’s speech points to the way in which an imagined idea about American Christmas trees underlies his ability to contrast Marshallese wōjke with those American trees. And, of course, the wōjke are seen to be superior to the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the imagined American trees are taken to be iconic replicas of actual American Christmas trees even though American trees are quite varied in their character. It is in this construction of an imagined other that mimesis occurs, even when, as in Tira’s speech, the intent is to then use that imagined representation of the practices of others as a point of contrast with what we, the members of Jitaken, do. What we do, the speechmaker suggests, is more powerful than the practices of Others. A much more ambivalent situation, in terms of power, is provided by a quite differently positioned example from my research in 2012 with Enewetak/ Ujelang people on the Big Island of Hawai‘i. This example was a point of communal concern, reiterated on multiple Sundays during my summer research visit. Specifically, the point of contention surrounded the time when church services were to begin. The example forces readers to stretch the use of mimesis, since all earlier examples in this chapter refer to representations of objects within the spatial domain. Here, it is people’s positioning of their activities in relation to time that is pertinent. Nevertheless, as in the preceding example, the measure of value rests on how Americans and Marshallese compare in this critical feature of everyday life. Enewetak/Ujelang people (and Marshallese more generally) are fond of referring to awa in Majel, “Marshallese hour, or Marshallese time,” to contrast their own lackadaisical attitude toward time with that of Americans. Nevertheless, the long-standing exception has been church. On Ujelang in the 1970s, three bells at fifteen-minute intervals marked the beginning of church, with the first church song commencing precisely on the third bell. This practice was repeated on Enewetak in the 1980s and 1990s, and I heard the same thing on Majuro, Utedik, Mejatto, and Ebeye as well. In other words, one of the essential points of contrast between an introduced mission event, church, and all other Marshallese events was that Marshallese church, in its timing as a ritual event, had to mimic the American sense of temporality.

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Undoubtedly, early missionaries chastised their parishioners for their indolence and failure to attend to the temporal orientations of the church.3 Indeed, as Thompson points out (1967: 95), there was a close association between puritanism and emerging orientations to clock time. Puritan discipline was but one arm of a complex set of historical changes that led to contemporary commodified notions of temporality that have become ubiquitous in the lives of Europeans and Americans. Nevertheless, Thompson (1967) notes that, despite emerging orientations to clock time in England and the United States, in practice the “time is money” formula was differentially distributed and frequently met with local resistance. In practice, it had highly varied effects on people’s everyday lives. Those effects are directly embodied in daily action. As Munn notes: Considered in the context of daily activity, clock time is quite alive, embodied in purposeful activity and experience. Coordinately, people are ongoingly articulated through this temporalization into a wider politico-cosmic order, a world time of particular values and powers. This articulation may include conflicts over clock time, as well as daily operations carried on in its terms. (1992: 111) In the Marshall Islands, missionary efforts to transform local people’s conceptualization of time paid off, if in a restricted domain, in that local people now utilize awa in pālle (white people’s time) to govern their activities when it comes to church services. Again, this is not unlike what, in Burman’s view, happened among Simbu people: The people view the missionaries’ arrival as the founding act of these “new [temporal/calendrical] ways”. … The present derives its meaning as a departure from earlier ways, but the latter are then dialectically implicated in the very idea of the new. Overall there is a different world time—regulated by a changed source of potency and political agents—in which the governance of daily and seasonal activity is grounded. Such transformations are familiar in the context of European colonization. (Munn 1992: 110) The Enewetak pastor on the Kona side of the Big Island directly challenged this mission-inspired sense of world time, or God’s time, with church time in Ocean View reverting to Marshallese time. If his action was seen less as colonial resistance than as an attempt to publically demonstrate his own power in relation to his parishioners, church was always one to three hours later than the time that he announced at the prior service. Church members were highly upset by this new practice, and it was a universal topic of conversation in the time lag between the set time that the

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service was to begin and when it actually began. Two prototypes were used. The most common was to contrast this type of lateness (romuj) with awa in pālle (“American time,” or, literally, “clothed people’s time”). The second was to contrast the current degenerate practice (which was indeed being admonished by the respected elders who were members of the church themselves) with the time used on Majuro at the main church in Uliga or the time used for the beginning of events during the church conference held in July of each year.4 The importance of church time to local people is manifest in their actions, since, for months if not years, they continued to show up hours in advance of the minister. Their comments, as well, serve to reiterate the sacred nature of church time.5 Boas, a respected elder and an officer in the church (United Church of Christ or Congregational), for example, said, “Why is it that that fellow [the pastor] is once again late. Do you think that if you went to the Episcopal [church] there in Konawaena or to the UCC [United Church of Christ] in Waimea they will be late and like this? Well, never. … It is, well, [a] joke, that fellow.” So, in Boas’s eyes, none of the other churches on the Big Island would allow this lateness and it makes the Marshallese church look bad not to follow the designated time schedule. While he does not, in this quotation, state that these are di pālle churches, this is how he speaks of these churches in other contexts. In essence, then, an unspoken part of his message is that church time is white people’s time, Big Island white people’s churches are always “on time,” and it is not a good thing if we do not adhere to that time. Part of the ritual efficacy of church is captured by adherence to ritual temporality, a temporality that inverts the structure of everyday life for Marshallese (Turner 1969) but represents a pancultural “God’s time.” If that temporality is abused, the value of church may be negated. For many years, Reverend Juut served as the ritual head of the UCC church in the Marshall Islands, and Ijao, reinforcing the message of Boas, used Juut’s own actions to reiterate the improper action of the current Big Island Marshallese minister: Well, you are right, sir, there is no joke with that fellow, sirs [meaning that the Ocean View minister’s actions are a huge joke]. Don’t you see that when Juut came to the conference in Kona the year before last … [others interject that it was two years prior] … even though he was really ill and it was difficult for him to move from place to place, well, these things did not matter. When it was ien [the time for church to begin], he would never be slow. Yes, you’re right, twenty, nearly thirty minutes prior he would be ready in advance, and wait for the time when it was the hour.

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If the general intent of Boas’s statement is reiterated by Ijao, in his eyes, the mission-introduced form has now been internalized as a proper Marshallese form of action and represented by the head of the Marshallese church, a legitimized authority figure. On another Sunday, Tobin, who himself was late inasmuch as he struggled with transportation now that he had lost his leg to diabetes, joked about the Big Island minister in an analogous way: Well, sirs, why is it that that fellow is so humorous? What is it he is thinking? Is he going to be the minister in Uliga [the main church of all Marshall Islands churches and site of numerous church conferences], and [act in this way]: “Oh, sirs, wait. I still have to shit, and get ready, and travel to this place from those other locations, from Rairek and those parts. Won’t you excuse my error and wait for just a while? What is he thinking? Oh wait while I run to the ocean side and shit, and get ready, and travel to this place from Rita and those locales. No joking, that fellow” [meaning that the Ocean View minister’s actions are a huge joke]. Here, Tobin uses a classical Marshallese form of mimicry to take the position of the minister and pretend that he was in charge of the main Uliga church. His tonality points out just how absurd these pleas would be if they were to become the standard practice for the Marshall Islands’ church in Uliga (and, therefore, all Marshallese churches). Foregrounding the bathroom practices of the minister by having the minister announce them in public (since they should be kept as secret as possible) increases the humor of the entire sequence and makes the lunacy of the Big Island minister’s pleas all the more apparent. People also joked about the current minister, saying that he had stated: “Na eo, bell,” meaning, “When I arrive, that is the [third] bell—the time for church to begin.” Playing off of this theme, church elders began shouting out to others who were 1.5 hours late or more (these others knowing that the service would be still later): “Oo, ejanˉin awa, ej ruo wōt bell kio” (Oh, it is not yet the hour [to commence]; it is only now two bells [only two bells have rung]). And, of course, in reality, no bells were rung in Hawai‘i, the entire analogue resting on another imagined world of would-be practice in the Marshall Islands. Therefore, all of these grumblings about contemporary practice rely on imagined other realities that should be replicated in everyday practice, particularly in relation to church, but, in fact, were not. The othering, here, is really of “us” in relation to the ideal-type practices of both di pālle and of di Majel (who, themselves, were miming di pālle practice of a century or more in the past). This is a prime example of what Mageo calls “abject mimesis,” or, more specifically, a case in which local people are engaged in the complex semiotic

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play surrounding colonial relationships discussed by Bhabha (Mageo, Introduction, this volume). Another conversation during this same “waiting for church” period on the Big Island, however, is equally revealing, for in it, Marshall Islanders (most, but not all of them, Enewetak/Ujelang people) were discussing a fellow parishioner who had just arrived, propping him up as the di pālle stand-in with which to contrast themselves. I use a pseudonym to talk of Tikon Kaer but the qualities that Enewetak/Ujelang residents of the Big Island attribute to him and to his family are often highly valued. Indeed, these qualities represent attributes of di pālle that are imagined as being valuable, even though in this case they are rediscovered incarnate in a fellow Marshall Islander. Situating such positively valued attributes in this fashion makes them potentially attainable, if still somewhat distant, for other Marshallese (compare with Lohmann, Chapter 7, this volume). As Tikon Kaer arrived and backed his truck into a parking place not far from the church in Ocean View, a group of six men were already gathered under the portico attached to the rear of the church. The truck was a 1990s model full-sized Ford pickup with a shell, and one of the men said: Ejjelok emōn in leo lali wa eo waan. Etto an bed ak, ilo am lali, kwe ba ekāāl (Isn’t it difficult to appraise how well that fellow has watched over his vehicle. It has been around a long time, but when you look at it, you would say it is new). Others uttered short statements of agreement. Then one of the other men said: Elap an oktak mākītkīt ko an leen jān kejuij. Baj, n¯e e konaan wiatok juon wa, ej etal im wiaki. Cash, bwe etto an lomnoki im kakōnkōn jeen ko an, baj wonan wa eo. Ak kej, loe juon men im konaan buke. Etal im buk juon loan ilo baan inem kōllālok nan mej (Very great is the difference in the movements of that fellow over there from the rest of us. As an example, if [he]6 wants to purchase a vehicle, he [just] goes and purchases it. Cash, because he has thought about it for a long time and has saved his money, the cost of the vehicle [that is]. But us [the others of us], see a thing and want to take it. Go out and take a loan at the bank and then continue paying [out, away from the speaker] until death.) Again, others agreed with this assessment, adding small segments to the story in support of the contrast. In this case, as opposed to the stories of more radical contrast with others above, an internal other is imagined, one who, as soon as he joins the larger

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group is accepted as one of us.7 From the perspective of mimesis, however, there is still a momentary ideal type of Otherness, even an Otherness from within that is established as an image of that which we (at some levels) wish we were—so that we would not have to constantly pay off the interest on borrowed money—and that which, in fact, we are.

Concluding Thoughts

My aim in this chapter has been to demonstrate that there are no pure edges to mimesis; it is used, if at different levels, for appropriation and for contrast. As Derrida (1978) would have it, there are only already represented originals, not true primitives in the Platonic sense—both in the action of miming an original and in setting one’s own practices beside another’s, imagining a symbolic Other take place. In both instances, a mediation between two represented forms results in a new symbolic construction (Kristeva 1980). In everyday practices the weight of those imagined forms varies but ethnomimesis always, of necessity, involves imagined cultural forms. It also necessarily involves (in contrast to Robbins’s notion of “adoption”) the construction of a newly fashioned mimetic form, one whose meanings only make sense in relation to an array of other signifiers that, of necessity, lend new meanings to that which is being mimed. Most notably, since utterances always point to those who have generated them, power relationships are premised on speaking style as well as on the content of speech events. Mimesis inevitably positions selves in relation to imagined others, even though the valence of these relationships may vary tremendously. At one pole, the desire to be like the other and to capture the potency of others is highlighted, whereas, in the case of antithetical mimesis, one’s own identity is juxtaposed to the images of others. Mimetic relations therefore always provide keys to local people’s sense of power, in terms of the act of constructing copies, but also in the desire to attempt to become like or unlike any imagined other. These differential processes of semiotic production and use add substantial value to the understanding of processes of mimesis. While an awareness of the multilayered nature of mimesis does not alter the identity of mimetic forms, it certainly contributes to their value as instruments of analysis in coming to understand the ongoing microdynamics of cultural production and social change within any particular social setting or cultural milieu. Laurence Marshall Carucci, professor of anthropology at Montana State University, holds a degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago and has conducted ongoing research with Marshall Islanders since 1976. The focus of

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his research has been on issues of social and cultural change among Enewetak people and the members of other communities who suffered through World War II and the subsequent era of US nuclear testing in the northern Marshall Islands. The results of his research appear in numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including Nuclear Nativity, The Typhoon of War, and Memories of War (the latter two books coauthored with Lin Poyer and Suzanne Falgout). The chapter in this volume is based on research among Enewetak/Ujelang people in the Marshall Islands and Hawai‘i. Notes 1. My own research among members of the Enewetak/Ujelang community has involved about seven years of living with local people on Ujelang, Enewetak, Majuro, Kona, Hawai‘i, and other locales during the past forty years. 2. di pālle, “those (who are) clothed” or “whitemen” or, most frequently, “Americans,” the prototypical Other that is so frequently mimed or used to imagine that which “we Marshallese” are not. 3. Bartlett, for example, outlining attitudes held by the Hawaiian Mission Society at the time of its founding (in 1850) well in advance of the first mission to Micronesia, gives form to the stereotypes: “These various [Micronesian] groups differ in language and in the details of their customs and superstitions, but agree in the general characteristics of their native occupants. They are the natural homes of indolence and sensuality, of theft and violence” (Bartlett 1871: 23). 4. Considerable irony exists in the Kona reverend’s manipulation of “church time” for his own ends. If the minister flaunted his power among Enewetak/Ujelang people by making the congregation wait for his arrival he risked trivializing his own authority among UCC ministers in the Marshall Islands, where awa in jaar “the time for church,” remained sacrosanct. Of course, the Kona pastor knew his actions were viewed negatively in Majuro, but those actions were aimed at Big Island Marshall Islanders, among whom he suspected he would spend the rest of his preaching career. Wider contexts were largely irrelevant to him. Several community members agreed, saying the minister did not care. In their eyes, his display of power represented an attempt to compensate for his youth when others in his age cohort—now his parishioners—were considered to be more powerful social actors than was he. Now his power among his parishioners was, in some sense, absolute. Church never began until he arrived. Nevertheless, the comments that follow represent attempts to sanction the pastor through publically shared denunciations of his actions. 5. While much has been edited out of the interaction sequences that follow, I hope to convey just how critical church time is to local actors by “animat[ing] cultural forms with agentive action” (Munn 1992: 100) and by “[following the] ‘incommensurable islands of duration’ into the microlevel of daily life where,” in this case, “situated actors … strategically develop the sequences and tempos of [sacred] work” (Munn’s critique of a lacuna in Bourdieu; Munn 1992: 107). Each story questions the moral legitimacy of the Kona pastor, demonstrating just how the pastor’s practices differ from their own ideal imagined forms of ministerial identity.

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6. The subject’s male status is understood here, not marked in the utterance. 7. In this case, there are still small markers of difference, particularly between Ujelang/ Enewetak people, who dominate this community, and Tikon Kaer, who is from a different atoll in the Marshall Islands. References Bartlett, Samuel C. 1871. Historical Sketch of the Hawaiian Mission: And the Missions to Micronesia and the Marquesas Islands. Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Cantwell, Robert. 1993. Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Carucci, Laurence M. 1980. “The Renewal of Life: A Ritual Encounter in the Marshall Islands.” Ph.D. dissertation. Chicago: University of Chicago. ———. 1993. “Christmas on Ujelang: The Politics of Continuity in the Context of Change.” In Contemporary Pacific Societies: Studies in Development and Change, ed. Victoria S. Lockwood, Thomas G. Harding, and Ben J. Wallace, 304–20. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. ———. 1997. Nuclear Nativity: Rituals of Renewal and Empowerment in the Marshall Islands. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. ———. 2012. “You’ll Always Be Family: Formulating Marshallese Identities in Kona, Hawai‘i.” In Pacific Islands Diaspora, Identity, and Incorporation, ed. Jan Rensel and Alan Howard. Special issue of Pacific Studies 35(1–2): 203–31. ———. 2013. “Pedagogical Promise, Disciplinary Practice, and the Fashioning of Identities among Marshallese Youth in Primary School.” Pacific Studies 36(3): 193–225. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Finsch, Otto. 1893. Ethnologische Erfahrungen und Belegstücke aus der Südsee: pp. 119–182 on the Marshall Islands. Wien: Hölder. Translation (#1031) housed in The Pacific Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i, Manoa. Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw. (1922) 1961. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. New York: Dutton. Munn, Nancy D. 1992. “The Cultural Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21(1): 93–123. Peirce, Charles S. 1931. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Robbins, Joel. 2004. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thompson, Edward P. 1967. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present 38(1): 56–97. Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine.

9 Anthropology, Christianity, and the Colonial Impasse Rawa Mimesis, Millennialism, and Modernity in the Finisterre Mountains of Papua New Guinea DOUG DALTON

Mimesis and Culture

This chapter shows how mimesis works with a theory of culture to comprehend the complex historical process involved in the millennialist adoption of Christianity from German missionaries by Rawa people in Papua New Guinea. Following Taussig (1993) and Benjamin (1986), I understand mimesis to be a fundamental, biologically based proclivity to assimilate oneself to Alterity and Otherness to oneself through physical imitation and play (Mageo Introduction of this volume and Merlan this volume). When unencumbered by political power and identity concerns, it involves what Mageo (Introduction) calls mutual “incorporative mimesis.” Mimesis is frequently observed in transcultural interactions and, as Mageo (Introduction) elucidates, it involves preconscious thinking in images, which enables thinking through other cultures’ lifeways. Following Gebauer and Wulf (1995, 1998, 2003), Kempf (2008: 66, 2011) shows how the mimesis involved in making Christian-influenced Pacific Island identities provides “a way of articulating similarity and difference” and conjoining of past and present. Among similar creations, many chapters in this volume show “there are no pure edges to mimesis” (Carucci this volume)— mimetic acts entail the “entwinement” (Hammond this volume) of multiple layers of copies of copies for which there is no single original (Mageo, Pearson, Jarillo de la Torre, Hermann, Lohmann, all this volume). My aim in this chapter is to tease apart some of the historical layering of mimesis as a process of copying earlier “originals” (Mageo Introduction) to understand the creation and working of Rawa Christianity. In order to do so, I understand mimesis to interact historically with certain basic cultural

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processes in specific ways. As R. Wagner (1981) shows, culture is a recursive process that limits conscious awareness; it also limits the mutual comprehension of Otherness via incorporative mimesis. The most characteristic property of human culture is the recursive positive feedback of its collective symbolic representations on itself and its bearers. Humans create complex, elaborate, self-amplifying symbolic systems that express and celebrate their cultural achievements, understandings, and selves. As Bateson (1979) saw it, this entails a positive feedback process that brings about unbridled, self-generating growth. Because it involves the nonlinear feedback of a culture on itself, I describe this process as “self-amplifying,” “self-generating,” and “self-reinforcing” along with more conventional phrases such as “self-fashioning” and “self-making.” It can be seen especially where populations engage in unsustainable expansion and exploitation of their environments, other people, and one another. The growth in size and complexity of cultural systems is limited only by the complexity of the human mind or by the failure and collapse that results from the unsustainable practices in which a culture or other cultures around it engage and the diminishing returns an expanding culture experiences as it encounters Otherness. The recursive feedback of any particular culture either learns to reconcile and find balance with alterity or produces a violent cataclysm that changes the configuration of intercultural relations. Bateson (1979) identified a contrary, self-correcting, equilibrating negative feedback process that provides the counter to runaway positive feedback processes. From this perspective, mimesis provides the mechanism in negative feedback that checks the self-amplifying growth of positive cultural feedback.1 Mimesis enables a symbiotic, complementary mutual exchange of perspectives that encompasses difference, as when Samoan “natural aristocrats” encounter German power-as-responsibility (Mageo this volume). The cultural process of self-fashioning, however, involves an “emblemizing” cultural “ethnomimesis” (Mageo Introduction; Cantwell 1993). Where mimesis accommodates and enables difference, I suggest the positive recursive processes of culture tend to eliminate difference and produce instead a hierarchy of sameness. Like their individual members, cultures can engage in the mimetic comprehension of Otherness only insofar as they are able to shift out of the recursive process of self-making. Conversely, cultures are able to engage in their own self-amplification only insofar as they can delimit mimesis and the mutual comprehension of others.2 Thus the Melanesian mimesis of capitalist profit-generating exercises can easily become an impossible endeavor (Lohmann this volume). Mimesis often produces creative cultural fusions that empower positive, self-amplifying cultural processes; however, I shall show these easily, if not inevitably, lead people to embrace the recursive exclusionary projects for which mimesis otherwise provides the corrective check.

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All cultures have both of these processes to some extent or other. Rawa people, for example, at different times and places, created patches of grassland from the overuse of garden soils and expanded their populations into the territories of others, yet they also sustained balanced relations between hamlets in ritualized warfare and ceremonial pig feasts and had long-term trade ties with coastal and Eastern Highland villages. German colonial culture involved self-generating, expanding, positive feedback processes that obviated Otherness at a scale that Rawa people could hardly imagine. Cultures comprise both mimesis and recursive cultural processes in variegated social fields; interactions between them typically involve a variety of actors and a complex mix of imitation and positive self-fashioning. Cultures are therefore essentially open-ended and globalization involves less the interaction of contrasting local and global systems and more a coeval, rhizomatic interactive cultural network (Fabian 1983; Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Human global culture consists of many such cultures interacting with one another in various states of disequilibrium; its general trajectory is that of unsustainable growth, which is promoted particularly by global capitalism and “religious” fundamentalism. Understanding mimesis in relation to culture this way thus enables the comprehension of indigenous experience in transcultural encounters, the open-endedness and disequilibrium of cultures, and culture change without lapsing into a binary with cultural continuity, which is particularly problematic for the anthropology of Christianity. Understanding mimesis also grasps the nonlinear, unpredictable complexity of colonial history rather than construing it as a straightforward linear encounter between opposed traditions. I begin by considering the variegated roles and mimetic activities of German missionaries and government in relation to Rawa warriors, villagers, and plantation workers. I then discuss how the anthropology of Christianity has floundered on conceptual impasses that mimesis eliminates. The following account describes the integration of Christian ideas and behaviors with indigenous magical practices to create intersubjective empathy and form a positive, self-amplifying community. I conclude by considering fragmentation following the Christian millennial movement and find the effect of global Christianity is an effect of modern secularism. This order of presentation may strike some readers as uneven because the entire theoretical exposition does not appear at the beginning. Instead, following the understanding of mimesis and culture explained above, my theoretical observations on mimesis, religion, and Christianity in relation to the anthropological literature are scattered throughout the chapter wherever they are particularly relevant. In particular, I consider the anthropology literature on Christianity at the point in my argument where it becomes necessary to

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elucidate the historic adoption of Christianity by Rawa people. The advantage of this order of presentation is that the anthropology of Christianity is thereby rhetorically wrapped into Rawa historical experience rather than the other way around. This allows me to use Rawa historical experience to reflect on the anthropology of Christianity and has the effect of historicizing and humanizing this arena of anthropological writing. My hope is that by doing so I will produce a better and more convincing theoretical demonstration.

The Double Game

It was 3,600 years ago that Mount Witori in East New Britain erupted in what Matthew Spriggs described as “one of the most massive eruptions to occur anywhere on earth during the time that modern humans have existed on the planet” (1997: 76, qtd. in Kirch 2000: 88). Into the void which Witori left came an Austronesian seafaring people from the west who gave rise to a new cultural complex that effloresced in and around the New Britain “out of a fusion of intrusive Austronesian and indigenous Papuan cultures” (Kirch 2000: 93). This fusion must have involved some copying between cultures. Beside the seafaring Lapita people who emerged from this synthesis were Rawa people inhabiting the Finisterre Mountains on the north coast of Papua New Guinea, a few hundred miles from Witori. Rawa speak a Papuan language and lived in dispersed hamlets built around a men’s spirit house devoted to the “eye of the sun,” for which they used the widespread Austronesian term mata (Barnes 1977). Their communities were conceived as drawing upon the sun’s life-animating energy to grow gardens, pigs, children, lines of kin, and the collections of shell wealth that, as used in bridewealth, expanded simultaneously with hamlet communities. In late nineteenth-century Prussia and Germany, industrialization, population growth, outward migration, a recession, national unification, and a growing middle class made colonialism an attractive solution to “the social question” of how to manage the “impoverished, unemployed, landless masses who threatened to undermine stability” (Short 2012: 68). Wealthy merchants, the educated middle class, and missionaries advocated German colonialism to advance their interests and nationalist aspirations, which they promoted to the working, agrarian, and lower middle classes (Short 2012). But they failed to get Bismarck’s support until, in 1884, he decided colonialism could appease the French following their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war by joining them in competition with British imperialism. Bismarck thus simultaneously employed “social imperialism” or “a conscious government policy of focusing public opinion on national achievement so as to weaken

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the forces of democratization, liberalism and socialism in Germany, with the objective of entrenching the power of the aristocratic Prussian élite” (Firth 1982: 19; Conrad 2012). The nationalist liberal aspirations of the ascendant middle classes aimed to spread Germanness to their rural hinterlands and to a global colonial empire. Missionaries particularly saw their role as the civilizational “uplift” of backward peoples. “This mythos of imperialism was the discursive embodiment of German liberals’ attempt to define national identity through reference to the German mastery of alterity” (Fitzpatrick 2008: 13). The self-amplifying German colonial project was thus not typically open to comprehending Otherness through mimesis. Papua New Guinea natives copied German behavior more than the Germans imitated indigenous people. Harrison (2006) and Merlan (this volume) explain the “unbalanced economy of mimetic behavior” (Merlan this volume) between colonists and indigenous subjects as a consequence of the different attitudes they adopt toward one another that result from the divergent ways that they create cultural identities: Western possessive individualism and nationalism lead Europeans to see others as inferior, whereas Pacific Islanders’ relational identities lead them to view difference as equal or superior (Harrison 2006). However, the contrast between Melanesian relationality and European individualism has been overdrawn: each is found in both traditions; the cultural difference is instead a matter of emphasis and contextual foregrounding (Lipuma 2000). In addition, intercultural mimesis was not as uneven in Samoa (Mageo this volume) as it was in New Guinea, where German colonialists especially constructed an imagined racial hierarchy (e.g., Wolfers 1975; Keck 2008). German missionaries, moreover, were more prone to imitate native behavior than were government officials. The imbalanced mimesis between German colonial and indigenous Rawa cultures is therefore more an effect of differences in the scale and degree of their positive feedback processes than a refraction of individualistic as opposed to relational identities. The most prominent missionary advocate for colonialism was Friedrich Fabri, director of the Rhenish Mission in Barmen. Fabri promoted missionaries with his program of “educating the natives to work” whereby missions would civilize natives into laborers while government would protect missions and promote commerce. But because missionaries were often critical of harsh colonial labor practices and government control measures, bolstering parties opposed to colonialism in the German Reichstag, the German New Guinea Company delayed the mission to New Guinea by two years; Rhenish missionaries were allowed entry only after agreeing to let the company determine the location of their stations and to support the government (Bade 1987). Nevertheless, Fabri (1903, qtd. in Bade 1987: 65–66) claimed that Rhenish missionaries in New Guinea were “advocates of the natives against many

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an unscrupulous European” and claimed “preservation of the people is to be credited largely to the missions” rather than the company. The Rhenish missionaries were the first to mention the Rawa by name (Sack and Clark 1980: 141). The company only knew the unidentified mountain villagers for their recalcitrance and fierceness, but missionaries wrote that Rawa “appear to be better than their reputation” (ibid.). Their initial contact involved a delegation to the mountains to give gifts in compensation for the murder of the wife of a Rawa plantation worker: “The Raua people who accompanied our delegation back home stayed at the mission station and in Bongu for three days, and came into contact with the greatest and most glorious gift that exists for sinful human beings: the Gospel” (H. Wagner and Reiner 1986: 130–31).3 The missionaries thus employed an indigenous means of preventing violence through payment, copying native behavior to accomplish their goals. Rhenish missionaries also provided Rawa people an image of a religiously based, burgeoning plantation community that eschewed violence and obviated the apartheid secular plantation hierarchy. Young Rawa men sought employment on German plantations, where they adopted European economic behaviors to bring back adzes and other artifacts to their villages. Missions supported themselves with plantation enterprises, resisted registering their workers as laborers, and obtained natives by purchasing orphans and children, attracting youngsters with gifts of soap and iron tools and paying laborers with occasional gifts. They thus created indigenous Christian communities from which they sent natives back to their villages with valuable possessions. “For many villagers the mission was recruiter, employer, civil and spiritual authority, tradestore and school all in one, and they identified closely with it, speaking of ‘our sawmill’, ‘our plantation’ and ‘our printery’” (Firth 1982: 149). This exemplar of religious community resonated with the Rawa sun culture: both integrated successful economic and community growth with the perception of supernatural religious power; it became the model that Rawa people would copy when their own religious system failed. The Rhenish Mission’s close ties and geographic proximity to the government led Rai Coast people to associate them with their loss of land. To natives, “the missionaries often appeared simply as a particularly friendly type of white trader. Moreover, the credibility of a white group preaching nonviolence and charity became questionable as a result of the activities of the two other white groups, one striving for profit by unscrupulous methods and the other willing to use force to take power” (Bade 1987: 57). A native rebellion devised in 1904 included the missions among its planned victims. When another plot was rumored in 1912, two Rhenish missionaries on the official board helped decide there was enough evidence to act against the natives.

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The following expulsion of villagers effectively reduced their field of potential converts. After nineteen years, when the first group conversion of twenty natives took place in 1906, the missionaries had lost an equal number of missionary personnel to disease and violence. At the end of German rule and more conversions and expulsions for continued pagan practices, the mission counted ninety-six converts but considered many unreliable (Bade 1975). Whatever mutual understandings Rhenish missions and Rawa achieved by copying one another’s exchange activities were thus stymied by the association with government, whose self-amplifying nationalistic economic enterprises obviated incorporative mimesis. Where Rhenish missions had ties to the Old Prussian Union and German commercial elite, the Lutheran Neuendettelsau missionaries came from rural Bavaria, and its first missionary to New Guinea, John Flierl, was of peasant stock. Delayed for a year by the New Guinea Company before promising to support them, Flierl distanced himself from the government officials at Finschhafen after arriving, and they soon fled outbreaks of malaria. Flierl established a station inland at a higher elevation to avoid malaria at Sattelberg with the aid and direction of the Kate big man Zake and set about learning local languages and customs. Zake worked closely with Flierl’s associate Christian Keyser, who is reported to have “‘followed Zake and mimicked’ him: ‘Whatever Zake did he did it too’” (Melkiside 1973: 18; qtd. in Richter 2014: 136). Zake had Keyser employ a Kate ritual wherein sorcery is publicly confessed, revealed, and thus obviated and communities feast, dance, and sing together, burying their artifacts of war and magic (Richter 2014: 137–39; Garrett 1992: 8–9; H. Wagner and Reiner 1986: 45–46). Keyser acted as a local big man, publicly accusing many participants of sorcery and announcing the permanent elimination of violence in Christian communities. Zake thereby positioned himself as an exceptionally important local leader, while Keyser innovated a highly successful method of community conversion that would make him renowned in missionary circles. But after returning to Germany and elaborating his theories in publications and conferences, when Hitler came to power Keyser and Neuendettelsau missions were led to embrace National Socialism and thus helped propagate among the greatest human disasters in history (Winter 2012). Portraying native conversion as a fight on the side of the “light” of Jesus’ teachings of love and peace against the “darkness” of violent conflict (Garrett 1992: 8–9; cf. Errington and Gewertz 1994), hardy native evangelists took Zake’s Kate Christian conversion ritual into the mountains and beyond in a highly successful missionary program. Rawa people brought this program into the southern Finisterres and employed it to create an indigenous Christian millennial movement and counter the destructive effects of colonialism. Yet I will show that it also led them to embrace secular government and busi-

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ness and experience much fragmentation and disharmony. The situation in Sattelberg thus yielded a mutual incorporative mimesis between natives and missionaries that benefitted both and created a very effective mission program and indigenous Christian movement. But these successes also led to positive, recursive, self-amplifying cultural processes that attempted to include their opposites and thereby thwarted the initial mimetic comprehension of Otherness that had inspired them. When the German New Guinea Company came to the island in 1885, many employees set about expropriating land from indigenous people in dishonest ways, particularly along the Rai Coast (Firth 1982: 25–26). Deceptive labor recruitment and abuses of plantation workers by company planters and traders added to the grievances of local people. Many reacted by killing those guilty of stealing land and mistreating workers. With no major tribal organization to defeat, German officials tried to counter such acts with punitive expeditions by attacking settlements thought to harbor those whom they presumed guilty in essentially vengeance raids. Often hastily abandoned villages were burned down and whatever natives could be found—“women, children, pigs, dogs, hens and occasionally a warrior”—were shot regardless of culpability, adding to villagers’ grievances (Firth 1982: 43). Even the relatively enlightened Governor Hahl, who took over administration from the company in 1902 and recognized their counterproductive nature, thought them necessary to assert German authority. These tactics were continued by the Australian military when they took control from the Germans in 1914 (Firth 1982; Rowley 1958; Hiery 1995). The Deutsches Kolonialblatt specifies forty German punitive expeditions between 1898 and 1912, but Moses (1969: 54 note) says, “Often a strictly reconnaissance expedition would fulfil the task of a punitive expedition while en route. Hence the precise figure of all punitive expeditions would be much higher than forty.” Rai Coast mountain villagers were most troublesome to German administrators; “the regime tried to stop mountain people preying on coastal villages in a series of fiercely-fought battles in 1910, but the final effect was only to drive the offending tribes deeper into the Finisterre Range” (Hempenstall 1978: 195). The Annual Reports of the Imperial Government mentions “several violent clashes” in the district around Madang at this time but specifies only a single skirmish (Sack and Clark 1979: 322; see Burton 1999). Australian military punitive expeditions are even less well recorded; however, Rowley mentions a 1915 violent expedition against a Rai Coast village that he tentatively locates in the mountains behind the Rhenish mission station near Bongu (Rowley 1958: 199–200, 165). Given the violence of punitive expeditions, much of the Rawa reputation for fierceness was likely a self-fulfilling projection of German and Australian colonial imaginations. Rawa people described a type of ritual warfare wherein

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groups of men stood behind large decorated shields and shot arrows at their adversaries at some distance; their wives stood behind them and handed them arrows. Schmitz (1960) also records the displacement of Karo villages located in the mountains along the Kabenau River immediately above Bongu by the northern movement of Rawa people. Because Rawa and Karo are 97 percent cognate dialects (Toland and Toland 1991), this movement probably represents a long-term aggressive territorial expansion. The headman of the Rawa village where I lived said that, like many other villagers, his grandfather’s generation had come from an area called Dumuna on the Rai Coast. They staged violent territorially expansive warfare against the original southern Finisterres inhabitants in a manner similar to German and Australian punitive expeditions, burning houses and shooting fleeing men and sometimes women. Schmitz locates Dumuna in the north coast mountains along the Kabenau River above Bongu (Schmitz 1960: 36). Although I cannot find a specific account of a punitive expedition against the people of Dumuna, it is very likely that the headman’s ancestors were fleeing colonial violence, for the invasion from the north coast took place at a time when and from a place where there was extraordinary colonial violence on the part of Germans and Australians. Despite the mimesis that transpired between the Rhenish missions and Rawa people, the highly successful and elaborate Rawa sun culture made them no less prone to comprehend German colonial Otherness through mimesis than the Germans were open to indigenous Alterity in their self-amplifying nationalistic project. The 1908–1909 annual government report states that the mountain people of the north Finisterres “had for a long time been provoking the white people by contemptuous messages and threats which they arranged to have delivered to the Government, and by stirring up the villages which were friendly to the Government” (Sack and Clark 1979: 292). Villagers also recounted Rawa men, resplendently bedecked in their shell wealth, interacting with Australian patrol officers in an arrogant and condescending manner. Rawa people described their ancestors as highly successful and civilized: men styled their hair using pig grease, trimmed and shaved their beards with razor-sharp bamboo splinters, and donned their highly valued shell wealth before venturing out in public; women did much the same with self-decoration and adornments. Rawa people were no more disposed to imitate the smug, arrogant, violent culture of German officials than the Germans were about to imitate them. This impasse resulted in violent conflagration that displaced the people of Dumuna and produced a period of extraordinarily violent treachery and warfare in the southern Finisterres. The slaughter and territorial clearing of hamlets that followed created such an intolerable level of animosity and fear that a handful of young boys, including one who would become the head of

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the village where I resided, worked tirelessly to end it. Through their efforts, a group of leading men went and got a Neuendettelsau evangelist from below the mountains in the Rama-Markham valley and moved him into a nearby Rawa hamlet. Zake’s Kate Christian ritual conversion drama was replayed many times in the years that followed as the movement spread into the mountains. The village where the evangelist first resided moved further up in the mountains to the center of the Rawa subdistrict east of the Sulima River. Leaders married the evangelist to a local woman and together created an extraordinary millennial movement and a new village that was too large to be practicable for many members from distant areas; it split into three villages that established their own churches and leadership but maintain close ties with one another. The German colonial enterprise in New Guinea thus provided both the impetus and resolution to the inordinately violent warfare that took place among Rawa people in the southern Finisterres before they adopted Christianity. Colonialism thus entailed a kind of double game between government and missionaries: the government undertook harsh punitive measures, and the missionaries resolved the antagonisms that resulted. The former was the effect of the conflict between the recursive, self-amplifying cultural processes of German government and Rawa hamlets, and the latter was made possible through the mutual incorporative mimesis of villagers and missionaries. To end a period of warfare, Rawa people employed the Neuendettelsau mission to copy the modern Christian communities they first observed and experienced on Rhenish mission station plantations.

An Anthropological Interlude

When I moved into the village that had been at the center of this millennial movement fifty years earlier, I was surprised to see at its center, several hours’ walk from the nearest road, a large, imposing church building made of timber and concrete, painted white, and sporting a gothic-style spire. Robbins (2003, 2006) suggests that anthropologists have avoided studying Christianity because Christianity is too familiar and a Christian-derived anthropological drive to meaning avoids Christianity’s millennialist failures. Not only did the prospect of studying Christianity give me, as Williams (1944: 89) said, a “feeling of boredom,” but I also shared Robbins’s anthropological prejudice that Christianity had likely ruined the culture. Yet my analysis of millennial failures below does not lead me to blame Christianity. Burridge (1978) traces the historical antagonism between anthropologists and missionaries to Malinowski’s functionalism. Stipe (1980) similarly attributes these differences to functionalism and not anthropology’s Christianity

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but its secularism, as does Cannell (2005, 2006). Stipe (1980), Van der Geest (1990), and Boutilier et al. (1978) enjoined a historical rapprochement between anthropologists and missionaries, outlining their differences and finding common ground. Barker (1990a: 9) then called for an ethnographic study of Christianity that appreciates “local expressions of Christianity … as phenomenon in their own right” rather than through a set of false choices that betray anthropologists’ antipathy toward missions. Earlier anthropologists tended to see the adoption of Christianity either as bringing fundamental change or, often, as a superficial set of beliefs and practices obscuring a more basic cultural continuity. They also typically viewed conversions as casual and motivated by practical and material interests, or as real, substantial, and destructive to native culture. Following Barker’s direction, however, instead of falling into these false choices, the many excellent chapters in his volume find a variety of complex hybrid inventions of authentic indigenous Christianities (Barker 1990b). Nevertheless, decades after a new, energetic bourgeoning anthropology of Christianity became well established following the arrival of new forms of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, Barker (2012: 67–68, 2014: S172) was again proclaiming the need to move beyond “dualistic models of Christian conversion” and “debates about whether conversion to Christianity along the modern missionary frontier is best understood as rupture from or continuity with indigenous cultural forms and understandings.” How did we end up in this situation? Douglas (2001: 625) credits Jorgensen (1981: 76–78) with having “pioneered the ethnography of Pentecostalism in Melanesia” as an “indigenized,” “locally-styled variant of Christianity” aimed at a total millennial self-transformation, yet Jorgensen (2005: 444–45) credits Robbins for having helped him appreciate the influence of global Christianity, and Douglas (2001: 620) counts Robbins as “alone at this stage” in having “published a significant body of relevant work” among an “increasing number of very recent works by anthropologists whose field experience … has from the outset been amongst evangelical, pentecostal, or charismatic Christians, with the result that secular prejudices are necessarily problematized as part of the ‘culture shock’ of the ethnographic equation.” Robbins has indeed repeatedly raised questions regarding the prejudices underlying the ethnographic ignorance of Christianity, but his work among the Urapmin is solidly on one side of the false choices that Barker previously pointed out: Robbins (2007) accuses cultural anthropology of being the science of “continuity thinking” in opposition to the globalizing transformational force of Pentecostal Christianity. Attempts by leading scholars to resolve the impasse have gotten nowhere (Scott 2005; Mosko 2010; Robbins 2010; Barker 2012: 68, 79 n7). Anthropologists are apparently still bewitched by an idea of culture that views it as

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a bounded, discrete system that either continues through its own agency or changes from external forces. Christianity is likewise often thought to be a particular kind of thing—a “religion”—with certain essential properties of belief and conviction that give it a historical ontological force. Culture needs to be rethought as an essentially open system, which transcultural mimesis enables, and religion and Christianity should be seen as a part of culture rather than a specific kind of thing, which can be done by considering them as recursive cultural processes. “Religion” is not a particular kind of thing but instead the term that Western Europeans employ to describe and categorize complex, positive, recursive symbolic systems in other cultures that appear superficially similar to the ones that they dub “religion” in their own. As I describe below with Rawa people, the similarities can be remarkable. Yet like most cultures, Rawa do not divide religion from secular “reason” as Western Europeans do. Because religion is not a particular kind of thing, Christianity likewise has no particular ontological status except as a continually changing set of images and practices. Past anthropologists ignored change almost as much as they ignored Christianity. Change was usually viewed as one, more powerful, autonomous cultural system causing changes in another, less powerful, one. When it was more elaborately theorized to comprehend indigenous agency and perspective, the argument was that indigenous people employed their cultural categories to try to do one thing when adopting foreign ideas and practices, but the inherent logic of those practices subverted and changed their cultures. Sahlins (1985) made and Robbins (2004a) adopted and modified this argument of unintended consequences.4 The problem is not that it is wrong but that it is a truism; it therefore explains nothing. History is an unpredictable, nonlinear, complex process: any change that humans undertake will have unanticipated results. The argument of unintended consequences assumes that cultures are autonomous systems acting on one another in lines of causation; it therefore misconstrues history as linear and cultures as autonomous systems. Understanding mimesis allows the comprehension of indigenous experience in transcultural encounters, the open-endedness of cultures in various states of disequilibrium, and unintended consequences without assuming a linear causality between distinct cultures or religions.

Rawa Christianity

The adoption of Lutheranism by Rawa people in a millennial movement around 1930 is a clear example of mimesis: Rawa people copied the image of a modern Christian community that they first observed and experienced on the Rhenish mission station plantations along the Rai Coast, which the Neu-

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endettelsau mission helped them to establish in their own villages. The indigenous Christian movement that the transcultural mimesis inspired between the Rawa and Lutheran missions became a self-reinforcing, positive recursive cultural phenomenon. Although I had no interest in studying Christianity, I never went to church, prayed, or sang hymns so much in my life as I did while living in the village. Yet I focused my attention on apparently non-Christian indigenous ideas and practices involving such things as kinship, marriage, bridewealth, reciprocity, mortuary rites, and magical practices. Villagers did not distinguish what appeared to be different realms to the anthropologist except when they counted certain beliefs and behaviors as antithetical to Christianity. Everything in village life was supposed to be subsumed by the Christian millennial movement. Gambling, drinking, and magic were often criticized, but only when they were considered contrary to creating community. The positive, self-amplifying cultural processes involved in growing Christian fellowship took precedence over a consistent Christian theology. Anthropologists tend to view Christianity as an intellectual belief system with a certain historical causality. But Rawa people took Christian ideas only as far as they could be used to create a positive, self-generating Christian congregation. The emotional force behind the deeply felt need to bring about peace and reconciliation from the remnants of colonial violence was far more important than any particular theological conception. The Lutheranism that the villagers adopted belongs to a mainline Protestant church, but its adoption for a complete millennial self-transformation makes it comparable to more recent charismatic and Pentecostal movements. Yet Rawa villagers did not engage in the restless close reading and interpretation of scriptural passages that many Pentecostals and charismatics do (e.g., Engelke and Tomlinson 2006b). They lacked the striking confessional practices common to these movements (e.g., Robbins 2008; Rumsey 2008; Schram 2010) except at times of particular social drama: when Zake’s Christian conversion ritual was employed, when the first Neuendettelsau mission was brought into the mountains, or when the modern village church building was built in 1972. Rawa Christianity was a movement to end violence and the intensified sorcery practices that followed the invasion from the north coast. Villagers claim to have run the last sorcerer out of the mountains around the same time as they built the village church building. Yet when people die, ill feelings are frequently foregrounded and people’s minds go to sorcery. Church leaders made sure to be present in the funeral wakes that are so much a part of village life (Dalton 2016) in order to quell the sorcery suspicions that are often voiced, calm families, and preclude an outbreak of violence. Village leaders often spoke against those who “stay by themselves” in the bush (i stap wan wan or otoro kuranange kurnange) rather than in the village. It

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was often said that “we are merely men of the earth” (mipela man bilong graun tasol) to express the idea that, in relation to God’s almighty power, people are sinners, prone to all sorts of passions, fractiousness, and magical pretenses. This phrase also implied the idea that God takes the souls of dead people, not sorcerers, so there is no need to take revenge when someone died. It was also used to mean that, in opposition to the egoistic sexual ascetic practices of magicians and sorcerers to obtain power for themselves, people are subject to human passions and thus bound to get married, bring forth and raise children, grow old and die. The village headman spoke against magicians, saying they are enamored of their own putative power. But God is all powerful. The evangelist preached that practicing magic is tantamount to believing in false gods. Yet very many villagers pursued it, for practically every human endeavor has some magic associated with it. People have magic to make their gardens, pigs, and children grow, to make it rain and stop raining, to win card games and court cases, to create empathy, solicit gifts, and make women or men fall in love. Although the last sorcerer was chased away, sorcery is still rumored to be among the powers of other headmen, and one young man from the village has apparently recently taken up the art. Practicing magicians attended church regularly, and church leaders sometimes condoned magic among those they knew. The apparent theological conflict was simply ignored as long as magic was being used constructively to promote community. When I asked one magician about the seeming conflict with Christianity, he simply told me that God put all kinds of things on the earth, and he just uses them. Magic is often used to make people compassionate (kawuyi kingo, “belly cold”) and sorcery can be employed to counter external threats. Magic and sorcery are evidently accepted as long as they participate in building a positive, self-amplifying Christian community. Rawa Christianity entails an apparent paradox between the self-amplifying millennial movement of love, peace, and reconciliation, on the one hand, and a specific theological doctrine that would limit the movement’s efficacy, on the other (cf. Cannell 2006). But when the absolute authority of an all-powerful Christian God came into conflict with the purpose of creating and maintaining a larger and more effective self-reinforcing community, God lost out. This apparent paradox was resolved during the ritual performance used to initiate a regional Lutheran church conference that the villagers hosted in the early 1980s. In the performance, the delegates were “pulled” (wosoro) into the village by a traditional singing-dancing performance using an important magical song. The aim of this song is to produce compassion and promote the mutual exchange of perspectives that takes place in incorporative mimesis that had once been used to bring guests into hamlets for pig feasts and Christian evangelists into villages.

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The procession ended at the church door, where a skit was performed wherein an old man with a net bag full of ancestral artifacts had it taken from his shoulder by the missionaries, representing lifting the burden of old ways from the Rawa people. But the Rawa president of the Lutheran district was overwhelmed and cried; he then reinterpreted the skit and said that it had demonstrated the ancestors’ power to transform themselves and bring peace and reconciliation. Christian theology and magic were thus brought together to promote a self-reinforcing community. The evangelist’s preaching during Sunday services similarly did not aim to inculcate a specific theological doctrine but instead spoke of God’s love, for the need to bring everyone together, and against those who undermined community by not attending services, or related bible stories to address a social conflict or problem in the village. Yet even when the preacher’s point was predictable and boring, church services always involved communal prayer and song. Reciting the Lord’s prayer in pidgin was familiar to everyone, poetic, and powerfully collective, uniting the voices of women and men in a plea for forgiveness. Services also always involved hymns; the unity and collective harmonizing of voices in the church was inspiring and heartrending. Asad (1983: 243) points out that “although theology has an essential function, theological discourse does not necessarily induce religious dispositions, and … conversely, having religious dispositions does not necessarily depend on a clear-cut conception of the cosmic framework on the part of a religious actor.” The ideas that God is all powerful and that “we are merely men of the earth” were powerful notions for Rawa people, except when they were no longer useful to the purpose of carrying through a self-amplifying millennial movement to ameliorate violence and build community. The young Rawa teenagers who began the movement were also imitating the men’s spirit house, which they were just learning about, and worked to replace with the Christian church. Both involved remarkably similar aesthetic forms comprising a mythology, ritual singing, and kinds of prayer. Ritual song and prayer, in particular, are recursive expressive cultural forms that involve what Rappaport (1999: 83–84) called “self-referential” “epideictic” displays of the power and cohesiveness of the group. Rawa ancestral songs evoked magical tutelary bush spirits and were crucially important to men’s self-understandings and positive self-expression in collective spirit house celebrations. Christian hymns reverberate through Rawa selves and community in similar ways. Burridge (1969: 5) reminds us that, “all religions are basically concerned with power” (cf. Tomlinson and McDougall 2013b). The Rawa spirit house was designed to harness the energy of the sun to make gardens, pigs, lines of kin, and collections of shell wealth grow. All expressed the collective power manifest in the self-referential singing and dancing displays that took place in ritual pig feasts around the spirit house. The Christian church was similarly

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supposed to draw upon the omnipotent power of God to overcome strife and create vibrant successful communities in the modern world. And its members did so through the mimesis of recursive symbolic collective Christian song and prayer that embody and express the power of their selves and community. Needless to say, however, things did not work out entirely as planned.

Unintended Consequences

While the church has created a large and growing, cohesive community, the village has also experienced much fragmentation. What was, in the early 1980s, a village of five hundred had, by 2000, more than doubled its population and split into three villages along political lines. There had never been enough village leadership positions for the seven or eight lineages represented, and village politics tend to be dominated by several groups associated with the headman’s kin line. As the population grew and feelings festered, the village reached a tipping point and splintered into three. The village has also experienced economic fragmentation. The main village trade store, which is jointly owned and run by several kin groups closely aligned with village leadership, sits across from the churchyard, yet its purpose is to attract money from other villagers. The owners thus embraced a kind of capitalist enterprise that delimited people’s ability to practice incorporative mimesis with one another and thwarted the recursive community-generating project of the Christian millennial movement (cf. Lohmann this volume). Yet stores fit the image of a modern Christian village, and no one in the community spoke against it. Another store near the church was run and fairly regularly stocked by two men from other kin lines, and, in other parts of the village, there were five other smaller trade stores run less attentively by men from yet other kin groups. Not only was the number of stores excessive, but the stores were also prone to theft. Burglary was so epidemic by the late 1990s that all of the trade stores had iron bars or wire on their windows and were virtually always occupied by a shopkeeper. A group of wayward village youths were reputed to smoke marijuana and steal from trade stores and other villagers’ bags of coffee parchment. The victims often threatened violence but the Christian community prevented it. Girard (1977) finds such conflict to be at the heart of culture in “mimetic desire”: desire is never merely an individual affect regarding an object but always involves imitating others; the double bind that follows leads people to build social unity by sublimating and displacing their antagonism onto a scapegoat. The desire and imitation of mimetic desire are evident in the proliferation of trade stores, but there is no observable process of scapegoating in the village. Instead, people either open their own stores or take the goods

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they want from those who have them. The instilling of desire to attract money originally associated with the main village trade store has thus morphed into the agonistic competition of mimetic desire between trade stores. But violent conflict has been forestalled, not by scapegoating but by the church community. Girard’s scapegoating process is more associated with colonial government and business than it is with missionaries or Rawa: German colonial antipathy toward Rawa can be seen as scapegoating born of the competition and frustrations of an emerging social class system (Steinmetz 2007). Following Weber (1958), anthropologists argue that Christian missions inculcate individual dispositions such as worldly asceticism and self-discipline that further modern global capitalism. Fabri’s Rhenish mission program of “educating natives to work” was indeed precisely that. Cannell (2006: 34, 2005) associates this process with mainline Protestant churches, for other sects of Christianity are antimodern and some are not even ascetic. However Rawa Christianity did not lead to capitalism: they arrived at the same time; modernism was not based on individual ascetic dispositions or discipline but instead on the separation of “belief ” from reason and knowledge and of religion from secular institutions in a broad transformation in institutions of power that took place following the Reformation (Asad 1983; Pouillon 1982; Ruel 1982). Rawa shell wealth and communities once grew simultaneously, but now these are opposed processes. The village also began to fission along religious lines. When the village split into three, one of the new settlements built a Pentecostal church and the people from the original villages were so upset that they burned it down. Some men from the new settlement cleared an area of land and devised plans for a modern church building but are still seeking the funds to build it and are not sure what religious direction to take. The former village Lutheran evangelist also moved into a hamlet on his land with one of his brothers who had returned after a long period of working in a variety of jobs on the coast. His brother was unusually enterprising and also a Pentecostal. He set up a trade store with an electric generator that powered a refrigerator and established a Pentecostal church that has reportedly appealed to a number of followers who practice imbibing the Holy Spirit together. Anthropologists explain the attractiveness of the increasingly popular Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity in Papua New Guinea as due to the more decisive break with the past they provide to further the goal of recovering a lost identity through “development” (Jebens 2005); their imperative to evangelize, egalitarianism, and ecstatic rituals (Robbins 2004a); the fact that charismatic Christianity creates a rupture with the past that recasts spirits as demons, thus becoming a globalizing force of rupture that easily localizes by preserving indigenous ontologies (Robbins 2004b); and the attractiveness of charismatic ritual (Robbins 2009; see also Kapferer, Eriksen, and Telle 2009).

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Yet Rawa people were able to do all of this with Lutheranism and instead view Pentecostalism as an alternative to the political economic fragmentation that Lutheranism brought. For a short period of time around 1980, many church leaders and Christian converts joined a “cargo cult” movement that turned out to be a confidence scheme run by a man from the north coast. They built a village around a cult house, sang, danced, feasted on pork, and watched their money grow in the individual savings account passbooks that the cult leader showed them. But when his sleight-of-hand deceptions demonstrating the growth of money in the cult house proved false, the cult collapsed and he was chased out of the mountains, reportedly to become a businessman in Lae. Everyone returned to the church and nobody wanted to talk about it, yet a few men still secretly practice a version of this cult. Christianity has no particular ontological historical causal force. Rather it provides sets of alternative forms and images, which can be objects of mimesis. It was not the coming of Christianity that inspired Rawa people to change their religion but rather the traumas of modern secularism that came with it.5 Rawa people have embraced different forms of Christianity along with the occasional “cargo cult” and enacted the images they provided of a holistic community that fully integrates the growth of people, wealth, and power in order to counter the violence and fragmentation of secularism and beat the colonial double game. Rawa mimesis seeks a mutual comprehension with the Western world that secular institutions deny them (Ferguson 2002; Fabian 2002). Given this fragmentation and millennial malfunction, it might be supposed that anthropologists must now “define Christian culture as a failure” (Robbins 2006: 221). The argument is that, unlike other Abrahamic religions, Christianity assumes that its deepest meanings are translatable across languages and uniquely “posits meaning as an achievable, superlinguistic entity” that it actually never reaches in practice (Engelke and Tomlinson 2006a: 21). Yet this presupposes that Christianity is a particular kind of thing that operates in a historic vacuum as the purveyor of false promises rather than, say, “cargo cult” con artists or the political and scientific projects of modern secularism. But for Rawa people, Christianity is the counter to the alienation, fragmentation, false promises, and failures of secularism. Tomlinson and McDougall (2013a: 17) point out that “the difference that Christianity makes in Oceania is always and inevitably a political one.” Rawa Christianity is not a failure, for it has grown in tandem with and successful opposition to the fragmentation and potentially disintegrating violence that secular political economic institutions have otherwise also brought to the village. I left the village in 1984 and started out the drive to Madang from the Ranara Lutheran Mission Station where I had slept. Below the mountains along the Ramu highway, the Rawa Lutheran pastor there, with whom I had become

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quite familiar, stopped us along the road to say good-bye and give us his blessing. I told him that the Rawa people had “strengthened my belief ” (strongim bilip bilong mi). But to tell the truth, there was nothing I particularly believed in besides the Rawa people and, after I left, I never set foot in another church until I returned to the village for a short visit toward the end of 1999. Having done so, however, it appears to me that Rawa Christianity will continue to successfully ameliorate the alienation, pain, and violence that the illusions, false concepts, and distinctions that Western secularism brings, and they will persist in their endeavor to beat the colonial double game by enacting an image that Christianity has provided, at least until the next volcano clears a space for an honest fusion of cultures, although, unfortunately, this time it will have to be on a much larger scale. Doug Dalton has done fieldwork in the northeast mountains of Papua New Guinea and published articles on indigenous shell wealth, economic change, “cargo cults,” cultural identity and memory, modernism, myth, mortuary rites, Christianity, millennialism, and indigenous religion and exchange. He teaches core courses in the Anthropology Program at Longwood University. Notes 1. Mimesis is “the golden fleece” that Forge (1972) suggested might be brought back from New Guinea in relation to Bateson’s schizmogenic processes but that led instead to a conceptual impasse between hierarchy and egalitarianism (e.g. McDowell 1980, 1990; Robbins 1994). The positive self-amplification of mimesis obviates this impasse when “inequality” is understood as a fractal process (R. Wagner 1991). 2. This is the basis of Derrida’s deconstruction, which finds the exclusions inhabiting any idealistic discourse (e.g., Derrida 1976). 3. Rawa has the ethnonyms Raua, Erawa, Erewa, and Elaba (Kiel 1974: 16 n2). But Rawa people refer to themselves using the first-person plural personal pronoun nore, “us,” and their language as norengo mande, “our talk.” Erawa and Karo as names for people are therefore likely mistranslated nominals of the third-person dual and plural pronouns eraga and garo, “them (two)” and “them” (Toland and Toland 1991: 22) which Rawa people once upon a time taught Europeans: when missionaries first asked groups of Rawa what to call them, the Rawa taught them their third-person plural pronouns, so as to say “You call us ‘them’.” 4. In the relatively isolated homogeneous Polynesian island cultures Sahlins studied, an approximate linear historical process would likely precipitate. But in Melanesia, which is noted for its complexity and heterogeneity, that would not be the case. 5. Asad (2003) relates secularism to violence. References Asad, Talal. 1983. “Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz.” Man 18(2): 237–59.

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———. 2003. “What Might an Anthropology of Secularism Look Like?” In Formations of the Secular: Christianity Islam, Modernity, 21–66. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bade, Klaus J. 1975. “Colonial Missions and Imperialism: The Background to the Fiasco of the Rhenish Mission in New Guinea.” Australian Journal of Politics & History 21(2): 73–94. ———. 1987. “Culture, Cash, and Christianity: The German Colonial Experience and the Case of the Rhenish Mission in New Guinea.” Pacific Studies 10(3): 53–71. Barker, John. 1990a. “Introduction: Ethnographic Perspectives on Christianity in Oceanic Societies.” In Christianity in Oceania: Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. John Barker, 1–24. New York and London: University Press of America. ———. ed. 1990b. Christianity in Oceania: Ethnographic Perspectives. New York and London: University Press of America. ———. 2012. “Secondary Conversion and the Anthropology of Christianity in Melanesia.” Archives de Sciences Sociale des Religions 157: 67–87. ———. 2014. “The One and the Many: Church-Centered Innovations in a Papua New Guinean Community.” Current Anthropology 55(S10): S172–81. Barnes, Robert H. 1977. “Mata in Austronesia.” Oceania 47: 300–319. Bateson, Gregory. 1979. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E.P. Dutton. Benjamin, Walter. 1986. “On the Mimetic Faculty.” In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 333–36. New York: Schocken Books. Boutilier, James A., Daniel T. Hughes, and Sharon W. Tiffany, eds. 1978. Mission, Church, and Sect in Oceania. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Burridge, Kenelm. 1969. New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities. Oxford: B. Blackwell. ———. 1978. “Introduction: Missionary Occasions.” In Mission, Church, and Sect in Oceania, ed. James A. Boutilier, Daniel T. Hughes, and Sharon W. Tiffany, 1–34. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Burton, John. 1999. The Yaganon People of the Rai Coast: Ethnography and Social Mapping Study. Queensland: Thursday Island. Retrieved 19 July 2014 from https://crawford .anu.edu.au/rmap/archive/gawar-yaganon/Burton_Gawar-Yaganon_people1999.pdf. Cannell, Fenella. 2005. “The Christianity of Anthropology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11: 335–56. ———. 2006. “Introduction: The Anthropology of Christianity.” In The Anthropology of Christianity, ed. Fenella Cannell, 1–50. Durham: Duke University Press. Cantwell, Robert. 1993. Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Conrad, Sebastian. 2012. German Colonialism: A Short History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dalton, Doug. 2016. “Death and Experience in Rawa Mortuary Rites, Papua New Guinea.” In Mortuary Dialogues: Death Rites and the Reproduction of Moral Community in Pacific Modernities, ed. David Lipset and Eric K. Silverman, 60–80. New York: Berghahn Books. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Douglas, Bronwen. 2001. “From Invisible Christians to Gothic Theatre: The Romance of the Millennial in Melanesian Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 42(5): 615–50. Engelke, Matthew, and Matt Tomlinson. 2006a. “Meaning, Anthropology, Christianity.” In The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity, ed. Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson, 1–38. New York: Berghahn. ———. eds. 2006b. The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity. New York: Berghahn Books. Errington, Frederick, and Deborah Gewertz. 1994. “From Darkness to Light in the George Brown Jubilee: The Invention of Nontradition and the Inscription of a National History in East New Britain.” American Ethnologist 21(1): 104–22. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2002. “Comments on ‘Of Mimicry and Membership.’” Cultural Anthropology 17(4): 570–71. Fabri, Friedrich. 1903. Rheinische Missionsarbeit 1828–1903: Gedenkbuch zum 75jährigen Jubiläum der Rheinischen Mission. Barmen: Verlag des Missionshauses. Ferguson, James G. 2002. “Of Mimcry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New World Society.’” Cultural Anthropology 17(4): 551–69. Firth, Stewart. 1982. New Guinea under the Germans. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Fitzpatrick, Matthew P. 2008. Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism 1848–1884. New York: Berghahn Books. Forge, Anthony. 1972. “The Golden Fleece.” Man 7(4): 527–40. Garrett, John. 1992. Footsteps in the Sea: Christianity in Oceania to World War II. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. Gebauer, Gunter, and Christop Wulf. 1995. Mimesis: Culture–Art–Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1998. Spiel–Ritual–Geste. Mimetisches Handeln in der sozialen Welt. Hamburg: Rowohlt. ———. 2003. Mimetische Weltzugänge. Soziales Handeln–Rituale und Spiele–ästhetische Produktionen. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Girard, René. 1977. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harrison, Simon. 2006. Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West. New York: Berghahn Books. Hempenstall, Peter J. 1978. Pacific Islanders under German Rule. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Hiery, Hermann J. 1995. The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Jebens, Holger. 2005. Pathways to Heaven: Contesting Mainline and Fundamentalist Christianity in Papua New Guinea. New York: Berghahn Books. Jorgensen, Dan. 1981. “Life on the Fringe: History and Society in Telefolmin.” In Plight of Peripheral People in Papua New Guinea. Volume 1: The Inland Situation, ed. Robert Gordon, 59–79. Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival Inc. ———. 2005. “Third Wave Evangelism and the Politics of the Global in Papua New Guinea: Spiritual Warfare and the Recreation of Place in Telefolmin.” Oceania 75(4): 444–61. Kapferer, Bruce, Annelin Eriksen, and Kari Telle. 2009. “Introduction: Religiosities toward a Future—in Pursuit of the New Millennium.” Social Analysis 53(1): 1–16.

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Keck, Verna. 2008. “Representing New Guineans in German Colonial Literature.” Paideuma 54: 59–83. Kempf, Wolfgang. 2008. “Mobility, Modernisation and Agency: The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea.” In Telling Pacific Lives: Prisms of Process, ed. B.V. Lal and V. Luker, 51–67. Canberra: ANU Press. ———. 2011. “Social Mimesis, Commemoration, and Ethnic Performance: Fiji Banaban Representations of the Past.” In Changing Contexts, Shifting Meanings: Transformations of Cultural Traditions in Oceania, ed. Elfriede Hermann, 174–91. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press in Association with the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Kiel, Dana E. 1974. “The Intergroup Economy of the Nekematigi, Eastern Highlands District, New Guinea.” Ph.D. dissertation. Evanston: Northwestern University. Kirch, Patrick V. 2000. On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lipuma, Edward. 2000. Encompassing Others: The Magic of Modernity in Melanesia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. McDowell, Nancy. 1980. “It’s Not Who You Are but How You Give That Counts: The Role of Exchange in a Melanesian Society.” American Ethnologist 7(1): 58–70. ———. 1990. “Competitive Equality in Melanesia: An Exploratory Essay.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 99(2): 179–204. Melkiside, Advent P. 1973. “Christ Danced in Sattelberg between 1886–1914.” Master’s thesis. Lae, Papua New Guinea: Martin Luther Seminary. Moses, John A. 1969. “The German Empire in Melanesia 1884–1914: A German SelfAnalysis.” In The History of Melanesia: The Second Waigani Seminar, 45–76. Canberra: Australian National University. Mosko, Mark. 2010. “Partible Penitents: Dividual Personhood and Christian Practice in Melanesia and the West.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: 215–40. Pouillon, Jean. 1982. “Remarks on the Verb ‘To Believe.’” In Between Belief and Transgression: Structural Essays in Religion, History, and Myth, trans. J. Leavitt, ed. Michel Izard and Pierre Smith, 1–8. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rappaport, Roy. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Richter, Gabriele. 2014. “‘Zake: The Papuan Chief ’: An Alliance with a German Missionary in Colonial Kaiser-Wilhelmsland (Oceania).” In German Colonialism Revisited: African, Asian, and Oceanic Experiences, ed. Nina Berman, Klaus Mühlhahn, and Patrice Nganang, 130–46. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Robbins, Joel. 1994. “Equality as a Value: Ideology in Dumont, Melanesia and the West.” Social Analysis 36: 21–70. ———. 2003. “What Is a Christian? Notes Toward an Anthropology of Christianity.” Religion 33(3): 191–99. ———. 2004a. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2004b. “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117–43. ———. 2006. “Afterword: On Limits, Ruptures, Meaning and Meaninglessness.” In Christianity and the Limits of Meaning, ed. Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson, 211–23. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

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———. 2007. “Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture: Belief, Time, and the Anthropology of Christianity.” Current Anthropology 48(1): 5–38. ———. 2008. “On Not Knowing Other Minds: Confession, Intention, and Linguistic Exchange in a Papua New Guinea Community.” Anthropological Quarterly 81(2): 421–29. ———. 2009. “Pentecostal Networks and the Spirit of Globalization: On the Social Productivity of Ritual Forms.” Social Analysis 53(1): 55–66. ———. 2010. “Melanesia, Christianity, and Cultural Change: A Comment on Mosko’s ‘Partible Penitents.’” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: 241–43. Rowley, Charles D. 1958. The Australians in German New Guinea, 1914–1921. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Ruel, Malcolm. 1982. “Christians as Believers.” In Religious Organization and Religious Experience, ed. John Davis, 9–31. London: Academic Press. Rumsey, Alan. 2008. “Confession, Anger and Cross-Cultural Articulation in Papua New Guinea.” Anthropological Quarterly 2(2): 455–72. Sack, Peter G., and Dymphna Clark, eds. and trans. 1979. German New Guinea: The Annual Reports. Canberra: Australian National University Press. ———. eds. and trans. 1980. German New Guinea: The Draft Annual Report for 1913–14. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schmitz, Carl A. 1960. Historische Probleme in Nordost-Neuguinea: Huon Halbinsel. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. Schram, Ryan. 2010. “Witches’ Wealth: Witchcraft, Confession, and Christianity in Auhelawa, Papua New Guinea.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: 726–42. Scott, Michael W. 2005. “‘I Was Like Abraham’: Notes on the Anthropology of Christianity from the Solomon Islands.” Ethnos 70(1): 101–25. Short, John P. 2012. Magic Lantern Empire: Colonialism and Society in Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Spriggs, Matthew. 1997. The Island Melanesians. Oxford: Blackwell. Steinmetz, George. 2007. The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stipe, Claude E. 1980. “Anthropologists versus Missionaries: The Influence of Presuppositions.” Current Anthropology 21(2): 165–79. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity. New York: Routledge. Toland, Donald F., and Norma R. Toland. 1991. Reference Grammar of the Karo/Rawa Language. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Tomlinson, Matt, and Debra McDougall. 2013a. “Introduction: Christian Politics in Oceania.” In Christian Politics in Oceania, ed. Matt Tomlinson and Debra McDougall, 1–21. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. eds. 2013b. Christian Politics in Oceania. New York: Berghahn Books. Van der Geest, Sjaak. 1990. “Anthropologists and Missionaries: Brothers under the Skin.” Man 25(4): 588–601. Wagner, Herwig, and Hermann Reiner. 1986. The Lutheran Church in Papua New Guinea: The First Hundred Years, 1886–1986. Adelaide: Lutheran Pub. House. Wagner, Roy. 1981. The Invention of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1991. “The Fractal Person.” In Big Men and Great Men: the Personifications of Power, ed. Maurice Godelier and Marilyn Strathern, 159–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Scribner. Williams, Francis E. 1944. “Mission Influence amongst the Keveri of South-East Papua.” Oceania 15(2): 89–141. Winter, Christine. 2012. Looking after One’s Own: The Rise of Nationalism and the Politics of the Neuendettelsauer Mission in Germany, New Guinea and Australia (1928–1933). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang Publishing. Wolfers, Edward P. 1975. Race Relations and Colonial Rule in Papua New Guinea. Sydney: Australia & New Zealand Book Co.

PART V Afterword

Afterword “1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 Bundles.” Mimetic Technologies: Their Intimacies and Intersecting Histories JOSHUA A. BELL

In mimesis, tightly interfolded like cotyledons, slumber the two aspects of art: semblance and play. —Walter Benjamin, “The Significance of Beautiful Semblance” Within the climate-controlled cool of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center on a drawer in a hermetically sealed cabinet resting on polyethylene foam in an acid-free blue cardboard box is a set of six bundles of short wooden sticks bound by rattan, plant fiber, and—in one case—a discarded plastic Agfa film wrapper (Figure 10.1). Labeled “1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 bundles,” E338248’s catalog card in the ethnology collections reads, “Short match length sticks presented by the natives to Mr. [Matthew] Stirling [former curator at the National Museum, one of the leaders of the American-Dutch Expedition of 1926] for him to perform magic and make them into matches.” What to make of this mimetic gift? At first glance it seems to be a play on technology—a misunderstanding of the way matches come into being as it were—and a means by which to elicit through a gift the rarest of commodities in the rainforest in 1926: matches. Here we have materials and labor familiar to the Papuan makers used to mimic and thereby elicit things made by unknown labor and materials (Taussig 1993). Adding to the enchantment of this bundle is the plastic Agfa film wrapper enveloping one set of sticks—still and moving images being the mimetic technology par excellence (Bell 2010; Deger 2016).1 While it is tempting to interpret the use of the discarded Agfa film pack as the Tombe villagers’ drawing an association between the “magic” of the camera with their hoped for transformation of the sticks, their intentions remain unclear. Though this set of objects has contemporary resonance given our anthropological interest in mimesis, it nevertheless remains profoundly mute (Benjamin 1980: 138–39). Mindful of critiques of the anthropological fascination with

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Figure 10.1. E338248-0, “1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 bundles” in the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center. Photograph by Emily R. Cain and courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, E377675-0.

hybridity (Jay 1993; Strathern 1999), the use of this film wrapper may have been due to its foreignness as much as its convenience, such that we need to be wary of assuming that “artifacts both flow and remain recognizably European in origin” (Strathern 1999: 124), as they travel. Doing so distorts the long-standing Oceanic histories of adopting and adapting foreign things and works to distort local meanings and associations that these things are assimilated into (Thomas 1991; S. Harrison 2006) and the distinct possibilities that these men sought these novel things for their own gain in regional trade cycles (Sahlins 2005). What then do we know about these objects besides what we can learn from them through their materiality? The only account of this gift we have is that by Matthew Stirling,2 the expedition’s American leader, and his companion Stanley Hedberg’s3 rendering of the event, which transpired at the Explorators Camp near Tombe Village. Hedberg’s journal reads as follows: One of the pygmies who had been absent all day arrived in camp rather late in the afternoon and wanted Matt to make him some matches. He and his companion had spent the entire day cutting match sticks and they had them all tied up in a bundly [sic] and were very ernest [sic] in their request that we make them some matches. What to do[?] They had seen us do many miracles and if we couldn’t do that it would mean we would probably lose our prestiage [sic]. Matt was equal to the occasion however, and with a great deal of ceremony placed a new

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box of matches in an empty film pack tin without their seeing it and then exhibited another to them, empty. I took out one of the sticks and showed them they were too long so we measured one stick off carefully to the match box and after showing them the wood was not as good as our match wood because it wouldn’t burn[,] he placed the bundle of sticks they had made in the tin[,] covered it tight[,] and then placed it under his shirt which he had all folded up on the table. He lighted a match and past [sic] it over it back and forth [and] with a great deal of rubbing of hands and mismerizing [sic] gestures he finally extracted the tin. He opened it and took out the box of good matches. I lighted one and it burned brightly. They whoped [sic] it up and tapped their penis cases enthusiastically and the other chap immediately wanted Matt to make him a box. That was going too far so we had him donate something which he did, an elaborate arm ornament and soon he had a good box of matches for his bundle of sticks. Matt is now oppicial [sic, = official] match maker for the pygmies and he will probably be kept busy for they are in love with matches. (Hedberg, 21 October 1926)4 Echoing other colonial encounters in Oceania (Lips 1937; Jones 2007; Jolly, Tcherkézoff, and Tryon 2009; Ballard 2014), Hedberg’s account is nevertheless notable for its frankness about what he believed was at stake: their prestige as outsiders. It is also notable for the discussion of the performative trickery Stirling undertook to sustain this belief. Their duplicity is positioned as a celebration of their ingenuity and of the ignorance of the Tombe men. This magical fiction undoubtedly made the expedition’s presence and work all the more palatable locally, as it did position them as effective partners with whom to exchange (Strathern 1990; Hasinof and Bell 2015). However, lest they have to endlessly produce matches, Stirling insists an “elaborate arm ornament” be donated before he produces the next box of matches, and thus Stirling turns his trickery into another way to collect. But, as the contributions to this volume make abundantly clear, mimetic play can be unpredictable and cross-cultural valuation equally rife as can be with intersecting desires (Girard 1977; S. Harrison 2006). As Stirling relates in a subsequent journal entry, “This evening I was swamped by men coming in with bundles of sticks they wanted metamorphosed into matches. I fear I made a mistake in demonstrating my powers yesterday” (Stirling, 24 October 1926).5 Here we have an example of mimetic surplus in which the relations and desires generated become unpredictable in their scale and scope, spilling out of the original encounter and impacting future events (Taussig 1993: 207, 254–55).6 Writing about technology, Gell (1988, 1992; see also Weiner 2001) argues for its similarities to magic—the ways in which both are aimed at making

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things happen—changing and affecting the world. Indeed drawing on Jennifer Deger’s nuanced account of media use and understanding among the Yolngu community of Gapuwiyak in Arnhem Land, both are revelatory (Deger 2006, 2016). In this particular case, regardless of the men’s intentions, I cannot help but see this bundle of sticks (E338248)—this gift to Stirling—as a provocation—in a classic anthropological sense—to see what Stirling had in his bag of tricks (Strathern 1992). This was a bag of tricks that had hitherto produced photography, moving pictures, guns, canned goods, magazines, and other novel things as part of the visiting expedition. Indeed, for the two and a half months in the camp near Tombe Village, the male and female visitors to the expedition had been witnesses to, and subjected to various mimetic technologies by Stirling, his fellow Euro-Americans, and the expedition’s Ambonese soldiers, Dyak boatmen, and Malay carriers; these ranged from being recorded by still and moving images to the more intimate measuring of one’s body (Hasinof and Bell 2015). Moreover, expedition members involved themselves in elaborate staged encounters where they positioned themselves ironically with local men looking at magazines (e.g., Aero Digest) (Figure 10.2). These images were meant to extenuate technological difference and make visual puns about people’s relative positions vis-à-vis one another. These were games all too familiar to audiences of the Global North between the world wars, when new technolo-

Figure 10.2. Expedition aviator and film recorder Richard Peck in a staged image with Tombe villagers reading a magazine. Photograph courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Arb400.

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gies expanded the mimetic capacities of modernity while at the same time increasing the scale and scope of their ability to travel. This conjunction created new ways to celebrate the supposed triumphs of modernity while reinforcing notions of distant primitive people outside of time (Fabian 1983; Taussig 1993; Bell et al. 2013). I mention this latter aspect of the expedition’s encounters to emphasize that both parties were involved in deep mimetic play through various technologies and/or means. While it is not clear how Stirling understood the bundle of sticks, beyond the implied understanding that the gift was a playful misunderstanding of the expedition’s technology and thus a marker of the Papuans’ remoteness, he nevertheless incorporated it into his collection for the Smithsonian’s National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History). Doing so, Stirling memorialized this cross-cultural gesture of mimesis for subsequent interpretation and captivation (see Isaac 2011). Within the context of this volume, Stirling’s “lot of magic sticks” foregrounds various issues around mimesis touched upon in this volumes’ chapters, which were often involved in the various encounters that transpired in the unfolding of Oceania’s intersecting histories and which continue to play out today. This object and the encounter from which it emerged raises for me the following themes: (1) the temporal and spatial scales of mimetic encounters, (2) technologies and the materiality of mimesis, and (3) the ontological premises of mimesis. I will turn to these themes in detail below, and in doing so I hope, as it were, to perform magic akin to Stirling, without too much trickery, and illuminate the collected chapters.

Temporal and Spatial Scales of Mimetic Encounter

The collected chapters usefully remind us that mimesis involves various temporal and spatial scales, be they intimate objects—such as the texts, images, and artifacts that circulated in Oceania from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries discussed by Merlan, Mageo, Pearson, and Jarillo de la Torre—or those involving sets of ideas and practices—as discussed by Hammond, Lohmann, Carruci, and Dalton. These scale-making ventures are replete with productive confusion and insight (Tsing 2005). But as Tsing (2005: 58) reminds us, “Scale is the spatial dimensionality necessary for a particular kind of view, whether up close or from a distance, microscopic or planetary.” Moreover, as she asserts, “scale is not just a neutral frame for viewing the world; scale must be brought into being: proposed, practiced, and evaded, as well as taken for granted. Scales are claimed and contested in cultural and political projects” (ibid.). Each of the mimetic encounters and processes discussed in this volume invoke some new horizon or dimension that is desired by participants. Moreover they occur within varying constraints.

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Here I am thinking specifically about the ways in which political and social processes, be they of first encounter or during different periods in colonial and postcolonial contexts, shape the efficacy of mimesis (Gosden and Knowles 2001; Gosden 2004). These early encounters are usefully understood using Richard White’s concept of the middle ground, which resonates with Dening’s concept of the cross-cultural space of the beach (Dening 1980). Articulated in his examination of the Great Lakes region of North America during the seventeenth century, the middle ground is where “diverse peoples adjust their differences through what amounts to a process of creative, and often expedient, misunderstandings” (White 1991: x). It is in this temporally bound space that the generative misunderstandings by all involved help create new practices from which meanings emerge that transforms all parties involved. It is in this fleeting middle ground before the asymmetries of colonialism begin to become less flexible that mimesis is most efficacious (see Merlan and Mageo this volume). As these dynamics shift, the efficacy of mimesis alters, as Natasha Eaton (2013) has demonstrated artfully in her account of the movement of artworks between the Mughal and British Empire from 1765 to 1860. In the process all involved become intimately bound together in the creation of a shared colonial space. Though not explicitly about mimesis, Gosden and Knowles (2001) provide a powerful argument about the performativity of colonialism in New Guinea that, foreshadowing some of Eaton’s argument, shows how foreign and local objects and their displays were instrumental in establishing a new middle ground. The wealth of mimetic objects from Oceania—German-made glass dogs’ teeth and shells for exchange, Orokolo eharo masks decorated with cutters and other European things, New Ireland skeuomorph wooden axes, glass knapped points in Australia, Waghi shields decorated with the Phantom (Bell in press; Bell and Geismar 2009: 15; Gunn and Peltier 2006; R. Harrison 2003; O’Hanlon 1995)—collectively point to the intercultural visual-material economies that emerged over time (Thomas 1991; Were 2010; Bolton et al. 2013; Brunt and Thomas 2012). While these artworks, objects, and rituals called into question asymmetries of power that were emerging (Bhabha 1994), such mimetic gestures were pathologized and dismissed by colonial authorities. The labeling of the various mimetic practices, millenarian beliefs, and iconoclasm that emerged in the central Papuan Gulf in 1919 as the “Vailala Madness” (Williams 1923, 1934) exemplifies this move. Responding to the degradations of colonialism, this and other movements that emerged across Oceania were too often called by the pejorative term “cargo cults” and their followers punished (Hermann 1992; Lindstrom 1993). Multiple scholars have shown that the misunderstanding of these movements not only fails to acknowledge the creativity of Oceanic communities but

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also the political and moral claims of these movements (Lattas 1998; Jebens 2004; Kirsch 2006). As Ferguson (2006: 174–57) notes about an African context, but a context that applies equally to Oceania, reducing mimesis to parody or resistance obscures how such encounters can be “a haunting claim for equal rights of membership in a spectacularly unequal global society.” Put another way our interpretations matter, as they can disenfranchise those we seek to understand confining them to outmoded understandings of sociality (see Smith 1999; Tengan 2008; West 2016). With the sedimentation of colonial rule in Oceania, the middle ground was slowly and at different times transformed into discreet and fleeting contact zones brought into being through particular assemblages of things, humans, and nonhumans (Pratt 1992; Clifford 1997; Tsing 2005; Haraway 2008) and that can be located in artifacts themselves (Peers and Brown 2003: 5). We see these contact zones throughout this volume: in the colonial photographic studios in Samoa (Mageo), the birthday parties enacted by the Banabans (Hermann), the Tahitian weddings (Hammond), and the Marshallese enactment of Christmas (Carucci). Moreover, aspects of these contact zones live on and circulate in the subsequent texts, photographs, film, and objects that emerge from these mimetic encounters both intentionally and not. Here I am thinking particularly of the Trobriand carvings that circulate in touristic and art world settings (Jarillo de la Torre) and the films made during cross-cultural encounters in New Zealand (Pearson). Regardless of their material form, as Jarillo de la Torre reminds us citing Gell, Trobriand carvings, and indeed the wide array of things discussed in this volume, are “congealed residue of performance and agency in object form, through which access to other persons can be attained” (Gell 1998: 68) and that continue to exert their power over us. The chapters in this volume also reveal that these practices and ideas were and are not always successful (Dalton, Lohman, and Carucci). Indeed, the breakdown of mimesis in these localities is as instructive as their success in that it points to a wider disenchantment with the promises of modernity. Here we have the curtain parting to reveal what Sasha Newell (2012) in his ethnography of conspicuous consumption among young urban men in Côte d’Ivoire has called the “modernity bluff.” Newell’s work pushes us to think about how Oceanic communities while working through the abjection of the varied regional realities of postcolonialism and settler colonialism continue to engage with the foreign through popular culture and consumption (Wardlow 1996; Foster 2002; Bell 2006) and how this intersects with understandings of race, gender, class, religion, and place (Rutherford 2003; Bashkow 2006; Besnier 2011; Tomlinson and McDougall 2013; K. Teaiwa 2014). Newell’s provocation for ethnographers of Oceania is to explore how the imitation that these men engage in, a choice of style and means of survival, has

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the double effect of exposing “not the mimicry of the postcolonial subject, but rather the fantastic performance through which the North Atlantic continues to manufacture the illusion that modernity exists” (Newell 2012: 261).7 For the Rawa, Christianity has continually failed to produce what it promised (Dalton, this volume), while for the Asabano capitalism as articulated in the village store has also failed to work (Lohmann, this volume) and for the Enewetak/ Ujelang community in the wake of displacement due to U.S. nuclear testing, celebrations around the wōjke creates a contact zone through which the bomb itself is imitated and infused with Christian themes. We begin to understand further not only that we have never been modern (Latour 1993) but that the self-professed magic of modernity is akin to Stirling’s swapping bundled sticks for matches: a parlor trick meant to assert asymmetries between the Global North and South. Nevertheless the circulation of these potent mimetic things—mimetic capital in Greenblatt’s formulation (see Pearson this volume)—reminds us that mimesis travels, having effects both near and far and into the future. As part of these travels, as each of these chapters show, these mimetic encounters involve varying degrees of intimacies through movement of bodies, direct confrontations, and more distant and delayed engagements. If we are to take the power struggles involved in mimetic encounters seriously then, “We have to push the notion of hegemony into the lived space of realities in social relationships, in the give and take of social life, as in the sweaty, warm space between the arse of him who rides and the back of him who carries” (Taussig 1987: 288; see also Diaz 2012). Attending to the mimetic encounters that these chapters do pushes us to rethink these varying spaces, relations, and materializations.

Technologies and Materiality of Mimesis

As is apparent, one cannot discuss mimetic encounters in Oceania without also thinking about the role and scope of technology and materiality, what I will refer collectively to as media. Put another way, the chapters raise how we need to attend to the actual stuff of mimesis—be they wood carvings, siapo, visual images, people’s bodies and words, or their gestures. For if mimesis is a way of acting upon the world (Eaton 2013), then a critical aspect of this process is the medium through which it is carried out. Theory generated through ethnography inside and outside of Oceania (see Miller 2005; Morphy 2007; Bell and Geismar 2009; Coupaye 2013) has pushed scholars to recognize the affordances and constraints of the material world and how the properties of things shape human action dialogically. Objects and images are now understood to be important actors that work to shape individuals’ and communities’ social lives. While there is a danger here of flat-

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tening local ontologies (Bell 2013), what is key theoretically is thinking about what things do whether conceived of as secondary agents of their makers (Gell 1998), as autonomous actors (Latour 1999; Mitchell 2005), or materials in an “ecology of life” (Ingold 2012). The rethinking of objects and technologies has helped scholars conceptualize how all things are bundles or assemblages of materials, ideas, actions, and qualities (Keane 2003; Ingold 2012); they are, in one reading of Melanesian sociality, partible (Strathern 1988; see Leach 2003). This has brought new attention to the different sensorial aspects of things—color, texture, weight, size, smell, and so on—the cultural foregrounding of which are enmeshed in the specificities of people’s particular materiality, which is temporally constituted (Keane 2003, 2007; see also Weiner 1992; Diaz 2012). The rethinking of objects and technology in this way works to help dismantle the analytic distinctions between the tangible and intangible (Gershon and Manning 2014), which is a false dichotomy in the Pacific (Weiner 1983; Weiner 2001; Stasch 2003). As Keane (2007: 5–6) argues, we would do better to examine semiotic forms, which include “sounds of words, the constraints of speech genres, the perishability of books, the replicable shapes of money, the meatiness of animals, the feel of cloth, the shape of houses, musical notes, the fleshiness of human bodies, and the habits of physical gestures.” All of these semiotic forms play a role in mimetic encounters. This bundling is evident in the explosive displays of wōjke discussed by Carucci, wherein the different materials assembled are reified or challenged through speeches at the celebrations. Similarly for Tahitian weddings, as Hammond discusses, the costumes of cotton fabric, imported bark cloth with indigenous words printed on them, and turkey and dyed chicken feathers worn by officiates and dancers work to invoke the past and create a spectacle for consumption. The Banabans use a similar profusion of things in their elaborate first birthday celebration, as discussed by Hermann, but she also highlights the multisensory nature of these engagements. As she recounts, male and female singers praising the child through the invocation of specific places are sprayed with perfume or perfumed powder as they sing. Here we have a dense poetics of mimesis created through these encounters and subsequently amplified through the materiality of what is used. Attending to the materiality of mimetic encounters helps us to better understand how people articulate their engagement with the world over time and through different forms without foreclosing the nature of this engagement. What emerges in these encounters are the respective parties’ understandings about circulating things—that is, the conflated and conflicting media ideologies surrounding these encounters (Gershon 2010; Gershon and Manning 2014). But as Deger (2006, 2013, 2016) elaborates in her work with the Yolngu community in Gapuwiyak, rather than displacing traditional mimetic practices found in ritual, film, and new media, for the Yolngu these things enable

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new mimetic labor through which communities can continue to affirm their ancestral connections while also exploring new identities. As recent work on mobile phones and photography in the Pacific shows, new media helps extend cultural practices while also transforming them (Andersen 2013; Lipset 2013; J. Taylor 2016; Geismar 2015; Wright 2013)—such that we need to be aware of the complex intersections of media over time (Gershon and Bell 2013). A subset of this theme is one of infrastructures—that is, the ways in which these media themselves traveled and the ways in which their messages were bundled and passed along (Larkin 2013). Attending to media infrastructures helps us understand the imaginaries that they help to generate and “how the political can be constituted through different means” (Larkin 2013: 329). We get glimpses of these infrastructures in Pearson’s, Mageo’s, and Hammond’s discussions of the visual economies through which Maori films and Samoa and Tahitian photographs circulate. Understanding these infrastructures is essential if we are to comprehend what asymmetries communities see their mimetic acts as attempting to address (Jacka 2001; Street 2014). Collectively, these chapters bring to the fore different Oceanic communities’ responses to global connectivity that build on cultural categories and representational practices. They each reveal the ways in which the material world as part of the mimetic encounters described can both facilitate and hinder the remaking of social relations, racial categories, cosmologies, and political economies. The mimetic encounters described ask us to rethink our own assumptions about the nature of mimesis and the various medias by which it works.

Ontological Premises of Mimesis and Our Translations

By way of concluding, I want to discuss a final core theme, and that is ontology: not only how mimetic encounters are understood by others but what worldviews did these ways of being in the world help bring forth? My intention here is not to delve into the current debates about ontology (Kohn 2015; Graeber 2015) but rather to focus on our translations and interpretations of mimesis. Ontology lies at the heart of the mimetic work across Oceania as communities work out in ritual and nonritual activities their relations to each other and nonhumans (see Strathern 1988; Hereniko 1994; Tapsel 1997; Halvaksz 2003; Deger 2006; Scott 2007; Sahlins 2013). As the chapters demonstrate, mimesis is a broad canvas that is intimately bound up with creativity and improvisation (Ingold and Hallam 2007). Moreover, mimesis is inherently relational, however asymmetrical at times, and involves active looking and being another (see Introduction). To invoke Inga Clendinnen’s masterful book on the mimetic encounters in early colonial Australia Dancing with Strangers (2005), it is a dance that unfolds in a specific time

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and space. Through the creation of relationships, mimesis is also about probing the boundaries and nature of relations and identities while creating new shared spaces (Taussig 1993; S. Harrison 2006; Eaton 2013; see Introduction this volume). Throughout this process mimesis abounds in uncertainty—in terms of both where it ends and begins and what its intended outcomes are. As Benjamin (2002: 137) reminds us, it is bound up with semblance and play. A key issue here is how to discern these moments of mimesis and how to interpret them in such a way that the uncertainty that they originally entailed is not lost. In Dening’s words, we need to “return to the past its own present” (1997: 423) and think critically about the futures that individuals and communities were and are striving to make (Hau‘ofa 1994; T. Teaiwa 2006; Osorio 2011; Rollason 2014). This is a productive interpretative tension that exists in understanding these encounters and pushes one to think about the scale and scope of cross-cultural interactions and the agency involved (Thomas 2000; Silva 2004; Ballard 2014). To this end it is helpful to recall that “translation is always a transformation” (Dening 1997: 424; see also Benjamin 2007). Dening qualifies this observation by adding, I have never felt that the response of island peoples to changes put upon them by empire, mission, and trade was something less than creative aboriginality. Their translations were never a denial of self. They were empowered by an imagination that filled the silences of their own language. … When we translate the differences of the past in our histories, we empower our imagination to hear the silences in our own language (Dening 1997: 424; my emphasis). While I wholeheartedly believe that we can work to read these accounts and their objects against the grain to empower our imagination (Douglas 1998), we need to be cognizant of the partial nature of our resulting narratives, however illuminating they may be (Trouillot 1995) and be open to the different ways history appears (Strathern 1993; Ballard 2014). This dilemma is inherent to all the chapters—for while dealing with mimesis, each case is working through the transformations of translations across time and cultures and through different media. This is not an insurmountable gap, but it is one we need to be mindful of and creative in our thinking about these encounters. Indeed, to this end Thomas (2000: 277) has commented that “a constitutive paradox of cross-cultural history [is] that the narratives of colonizers and colonized are linked but not shared, and connected but incommensurable.” While I believe that this assessment still largely holds for Oceania, this edited collection, in bringing mimesis to the foreground, does help clarify the nature, scale, and scope of these unfolding intersecting histories. We are reminded that mimesis is profoundly engaging anthropologically because of issues it raises about the nature of cross-culture engagement (Stoller

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1994: 160; Eaton 2013) and about our interpretations of it. While this volume is by no means the last word on mimesis, collectively the essays make a valuable contribution to helping reveal the ways in which mimesis has been and remains central to the intersecting histories of Oceania. Joshua A. Bell is curator of globalization at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Since 2000 he has conducted field research with communities in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea. In 2012 he began collaborative research on the social and ecological impacts of cell phones in Washington, D.C. His latest book is a coedited volume titled The Anthropology of Expeditions: Travel, Visualities, Afterlives (2015). Notes 1. Agfa film was presumable used by expedition members for their still film cameras. 2. Prior to the expedition, Matthew Stirling (1896–1975) was as an assistant curator in the Ethnology Division of the National Museum and later served as the director of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1928–1957). It was in this capacity that he carried out much of the archaeological work in Central America for which he is best known. 3. Hedberg (dates unknown) met Stirling in Florida while employed as a publicist of Florida real estate. Prior to this he has served as an Associated Press reporter, which put him in a unique position to promote the expedition (P. Taylor 2006: 6). Following the expedition, he went on to be a public relations expert for several automotive (Hudson Motor Car, Company) and aviation (Pratt & Whitney and the Aviation Manufacturing Corporation) companies. 4. The full diary by Stanley Hedberg can be accessed here: http://www.sil.si.edu/expedi tions/1926/JournalHedberg/HedbergJournallAll.cfm. 5. The fully dairy by Matthew Stirling is accessible here: http://www.sil.si.edu/expedi tions/1926/JournalStirling/StirlingJournallAll.cfm. 6. Taussig (1993: 208) explains that mimetic surplus helps reinstate the magic of the mimetic faculty in technology: “Taking the talking machine to the jungle is to do more than impress the natives and therefore oneself with Western technology’s power, the Elto outboard motor compared to the wooden paddle; it is to reinstall the mimetic faculty as mystery in the art of mechanical reproduction, reinvigorating the primitivism implicit in technology’s wildest dreams, therewith creating a surfeit of mimetic power.” 7. His perspective echoes Taussig’s hope that through mimetic excess people will have “access to understanding the unbearable truths of make-believe as foundation of an all-too-seriously serious reality, manipulated but also manipulatable” (Taussig 1993: 255). References Andersen, Barbara. 2013. “Tricks, Lies, and Mobile Phones: ‘Phone Friend’ Stories in Papua New Guinea.” Culture, Theory and Critique 54(3): 318–34.

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Ballard, Chris. 2014. “Oceanic Historicities.” The Contemporary Pacific 26(1): 96–124. Bashkow, Ira. 2006. The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bell, Joshua A. 2006. “Marijuana, Guns, Crocodiles and Submarines: Economies of Desire in the Purari Delta.” Oceania 76(3): 220–34. ———. 2010. “Out of the Mouths of Crocodiles: Eliciting Histories in Photographs and String-Figures.” History and Anthropology 21(4): 351–73. ———. 2013. “The Sorcery of Sweetness: Intersecting Agencies and Materialities of the 1928 USDA Sugarcane Expedition to New Guinea.” In Reassembling the Collection: Ethnographic Museums and Indigenous Agency, ed. Rodney Harrison, Sarah Byrne, and Anne Clarke, 117–41. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press. ———. in press. “‘… You Cannot Divide a Tomahawk as You Can a Stick of Tobacco’: Currencies of Conversion and History in and from the Papuan Gulf of Papua New Guinea.” In Art–Artifact–Commodity: Perspectives on the P.G.T. Black Collection, ed. Robert Foster and Kathryn Leacock. Buffalo: Buffalo Museum of Science. Bell, Joshua A., Alison Brown, and Robert J. Gordon, eds. 2013. Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology, and Popular Culture. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. Bell, Joshua A., and Haidy Geismar. 2009. “Materialising Oceania: New Ethnographies of Things in Melanesia and Polynesia.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 20(1): 3–27. Benjamin, Walter. (1916) 1980. “Die Bedeutung der Sprache in Trauerspiel und Tragödie.” In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, part 1, 137–40. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. ———. 2002. “The Significance of Beautiful Semblance.” In Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935–1938, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland, et al., ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, 137–38. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007. “The Task of the Translator.” In Illuminations, 69–82. New York: Schocken Books. Besnier, Niko. 2011. On the Edge of the Global: Modern Anxieties in a Pacific Island Nation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bhabha, Homi. (1984) 1994. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” In The Location of Culture, 85–92. London: Routledge. Bolton, Lissant, Nicholas Thomas, Elizabeth Bonshek, Julie Adams, and Ben Burt, eds. 2013. Melanesia: Art and Encounter. London: British Museum Press. Brunt, Peter W., and Nicholas Thomas, eds. 2012. Art in Oceania: A New History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Clendinnen, Inga. 2005. Dancing with Strangers: Europeans and Australians at First Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Coupaye, Ludovic. 2013. Growing Artefacts, Displaying Relationships: Yams, Art and Technology amongst the Nyamikum Abelam of Papua New Guinea. New York: Berghahn. Deger, Jennifer. 2006. Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2013. “The Jolt of the New: Making Video Art in Arnhem Land.” Culture, Theory and Critique 54(3): 355–71. ———. 2016. “Thick Photography.” Journal of Material Culture 21(1): 111–32.

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Index

agency, 19, 82, 92, 145, 151–154, 190, 194, 204, 241, 263, 267 ambivalence, 14, 35, 218 anthropology of Christianity, 232–233, 240 Aotearoa. See New Zealand appropriation, 89, 141–144, 148, 153, 156–158, 160, 211, 217, 227 articulation, 12, 131, 182, 194, 204, 223 embodied, 204 Asabano, 19, 21, 164–183, 264 Australia, 17, 29–47, 68, 82, 86–89, 91, 103, 114, 140, 178, 206, 262, 266 Australian Aborigines, 16, 30–32, 43, 46, 89 authentication, 86, 92 authenticity, 85–86, 124, 132, 147, 152 Banaba, 191–193, 198–199, 201, 206 Banabans, 13, 19–21, 68, 189–206, 217, 263, 265 bark cloth, 118–120, 125, 127, 130, 197, 265. See also tapa Barrett, 4, 81–82, 88–103 Baudin, Nicolas, 36, 47 beach, 58, 114–115, 125, 146, 262 Bhabha, Homi, 8, 14–15, 34–35, 43, 68, 97, 100, 151, 226, 262 birthday celebration, 21, 189, 191, 194– 204, 265 bomb, 215–217, 264 bwalai (carved figures), 155, 161 capitalism, 18–19, 21, 144, 164–183, 232, 246, 264 “cargo cult”, 181, 247, 262 carving, 7, 18–19, 21, 128, 138–154, 159– 161, 263–264 celluloid cowboys. See also cowboys, cinematic



celluloid Indians. See Hollywood Indians ceremony, 19, 47, 54, 58, 61–62, 65, 90, 111–134, 212, 258. See also birthday celebration; Christian ritual; Kūrijmōj (Marshallese Christmas); wedding Christian ritual, 141, 213, 239 Christianity, 20–21, 96, 113, 126, 132, 192–193, 213, 217, 230–248, 264 Christmas Tree. See wōjke (Ujelang Christmas tree) church time, 223–224, 228 cinema, 80, 87, 99–101 circulating things. See circulating clothing, 61, 71, 91, 125, 129–130, 134, 171, 191–205, 217, 219. See also costume; dress colonial encounter, 13, 17, 29, 49, 52, 59, 61, 68, 70, 259 colonial oppression, 15, 101 colonial power, 70, 192 colonial violence, 238, 242 colonialism, 9, 15, 34–35, 68, 71, 82, 98, 193, 233–239, 262–263. See also settler colonialism comb, 38, 51–53, 57–61, 71–72 commodity, 16, 18, 21, 143, 151, 168, 176, 179–180, 257 competition, 128, 138, 142, 210, 212–213, 221, 233, 246 Cook Islands, 79–80 Cook, James, 14, 46, 116, 119, 134 copying, 3–9, 15–20, 35, 39, 43–46, 51, 67, 112, 126–128, 143, 164–169, 178–182, 189–190, 204–205, 209, 230, 235–236 costume, 3, 17, 20, 49, 60, 72, 79, 87, 92, 111–121, 125–131, 193, 197–204, 265. See also dress; feathered headdress cowboys, cinematic, 79–81, 92, 100 creativity, 52, 122, 129, 131, 161, 202, 262, 266

Index

cultural change, 5, 131, 143, 232 cultural objectification, 10–11, 44, 154 cultural revitalization, 12, 111–114, 127–133 cultural schema, 12, 49–51, 62, 69, 72

275

Enewetak, 210–229, 264 Enewetak/Ujelang people, 210–229 ethnomimesis, 6, 209, 213, 227, 231 ethnopsychology, 19, 189–205 Europeans. See also Westerners; white people exchange, 8–10, 18–22, 43, 63–65, 94, 97, 132–133, 139, 144–145, 167–176, 189, 212–214, 243, 259, 262 expedition, 19, 36, 88, 116, 166, 237–238, 257–261, 268 punitive, 237–238 explorers, 21, 29, 40, 43–44, 114, 117, 129, 131, 134 externalization, 43, 155

dance costume, 64, 118, 127–130, 193, 199–200 dancing, 43, 46–47, 86–87, 94–98, 115– 121, 127–134, 212, 243–244, 265–266 Darwin, Charles, 16, 29–32, 36–39, 45–46 democratization, 58–60, 71, 234 difference amplification of, 6 and similarity, 159 (see also same but different) dimdim (foreigners), 142–159 di pālle, 210–211, 218–221, 224–228. See also white people disappearing culture, discourse of, 82, 87, 89, 100–101 discourse, 4–6, 50, 89, 155, 190–196, 201–205, 213, 221, 244 dream, 4, 62, 87, 124, 146–147, 153, 157, 268 dress, 8–9, 13, 49, 55, 90, 97–98, 119–120, 201, 205. See also clothing; costume American Indian, 21, 90–92, 97–102 Banaban, 13, 199 European, 8–9, 13, 70, 198 Fijian, 197 I-Kiribati, 198–199 Māori, 21, 98 Samoan, 17, 55, 59–71 Tahitian, 111, 117–122 Western, 198, 200–201

gender, 8–9, 47, 51, 120, 196, 203, 263 German colonialism, 52, 67–68, 178, 232–234, 238–239, 246 German missionaries, 230–234. See also Neuendettelsau Mission; Rhenish Mission German Romantic movement, 70 gift, 16, 18–21, 62–64, 119, 167–180, 213–221, 235, 243, 257–261 gita (hairstyle), 53–58, 65 globalization, 15, 142, 232, 240, 246

economic relations, 167, 173, 176, 180 egalitarianism, 169, 182, 246, 248 emblem, cultural, 9–13, 20, 53, 65, 67, 131, 140, 145–159 embodiment, 152, 190, 234 emotion, 3, 29, 41–45, 85, 168, 181, 190, 203, 215, 242 empowerment, 20, 100, 221 encounters, symbolic or real, 100

hairdressing, 51–58, 69, 238. See also comb; gita hegemony, 35, 193–194, 264 historical photographs. See photographs historical practice, 21 histories, intersecting, 257, 261, 267–268 Hollywood Indians, 81–82, 101 Hollywood western. See western (film genre)

fa‘aSāmoa, 12 fact and fiction, blurring of, 86 family group, 165 feathered headdress, 88, 90–91, 97, 101 Fiji, 7, 10–11, 61, 189, 191–195, 198, 201–202, 219–220 framing, 29, 35, 40–43, 209 French Polynesia. See Tahiti

276 Index

Hopi, 17, 81–94, 100–103 humor, 37, 95, 100, 102, 225. See also joking hybridity, 7–8, 17, 51, 65, 85, 210, 213, 217, 240, 258 identification, 3–4, 14, 43–44, 81, 113, 167, 191, 194–198, 204–205 identity cultural, 6, 11–13, 19, 61, 64–65, 70, 72, 129, 140, 154 transcultural, 19 unique, 9 images of Americans, 219–221 as counterhistories, 16 language of, 16 transitional, 17, 49–77 imaginary Mā’ohi, 113, 131 Western, 112, 116–117, 123, 126, 131 imagined community, 72 imitation, 4, 29–47, 69, 112–127, 139–144, 151–152, 181, 232, 244–245, 263–264 asymmetrical, 29, 43, 45–46 disruptive, 100 for fun, 46 (see also ironic mimesis) impersonation, 64, 82, 94, 99 innovation, 4, 49, 113, 129–131, 143–145 interaction, 15, 32–46, 111–114, 152, 160–161, 193, 202, 232, 267 intimacy, 99, 165–169, 181–183, 257, 264 joking, 95, 225. See also humor Kiribati, 192–193, 198–205 Kūrijmōj (Marshallese Christmas), 20–21, 210–219, 222 landownership, 192, 202 likeness, 3–6, 15, 143, 178–179, 189, 191, 202, 204 London Missionary Society (LMS), 11, 17, 49, 56, 79, 82, 85–86, 92, 112, 131, 263, 266 Lutheranism, 241–242, 247

mana, 9–13, 96–98, 101 Mā’ohi (Tahiti), 112–115, 118–134 Māori (New Zealand), 12–13, 17, 21, 81–83, 89–98, 100–103, 178 marae, 12–13, 17, 21, 90, 94–95, 98, 100, 127–131, 134 markets, 90, 165, 179 marriage practices. See wedding Marshall Islands, 209–229 Marshallese Christmas. See Kūrijmōj (Marshallese Christmas) material culture, 112, 118, 128, 130, 161 materiality, 258, 261, 264–265 mauna (animal/emblem/symbol), 145– 148, 151–153 melodrama, 85–86 middle ground, 51, 262–263 millennialism, 230, 232, 236, 239–247 mimesis. See also ethnomimesis abject, 6, 11, 13–15, 220, 225 antithetical, 219–220, 227 emblemizing, 6, 9, 12–13, 148, 217, 219–220 exchanging clothes as, 102 failed, 164–165, 169, 180, 183 imbalanced, 234 incorporative, 6–7, 13, 17, 119, 126–128, 202, 230–231, 236–239, 243–245 interpretation of, 266–268 ironic, 39, 46, 102 and making relations, 92, 142–144, 158–161, 266–267 mutual, 7, 17, 20, 49, 65–68, 230–231, 237, 239 poetics of, 265 self-concious, 102 and senses, 190–191, 203–204 tactile, 203–204 transcultural, 165, 177, 241–242 travelling of, 264 mimetic capital, 82, 92, 94, 100–101, 127, 131, 264 mimicry, 13–14, 16, 30, 32–35, 46, 61, 67–68, 81, 117, 126, 130–131, 139–140, 151–152, 178, 210, 225, 264

Index

mining, 171, 192–193, 198–199, 201, 206 missionaries, 8, 10, 12, 20, 47, 51, 56–59, 63, 71–72, 114, 117, 120, 126, 128–129, 133–134, 169, 192, 201, 212–213, 217, 223, 230–240, 244–248. See also German missionaries missionary work, 83 misunderstanding, 169, 179, 181, 257, 261–262 modernity, 34, 70, 81–82, 85, 87, 100–101, 144, 147, 151, 213, 230, 261–264 Morning Star (ship), 216–217, 221 museum collection, 64, 72 Mweiluvasi, David, 138–139, 152 Native Americans, 82, 87, 90–92, 97, 101 nature, 124–125, 215 Navajo, 17, 81–87, 90–94, 100–103 networks, 82, 145, 159 Neuendettelsau Mission, 236, 239, 242 New Zealand, 12–13, 17, 21, 49, 65, 79–82, 86–89, 93, 96, 98, 119, 206, 263 “noble savage”, 52, 60, 65, 67, 70, 116 nuclear testing, 128, 210, 264 objects. See also materiality circulating, 141, 170, 201, 261–266 personhood of, 65, 154 transitional, 49–51 obligations, escaping from, 123 ontology, 32, 246, 265–266 Otherness, 45–46, 144, 151, 193, 227, 230–234, 237–238 appropriation of, 6 consumption of, 133 denial of, 15 interest in, 68 production of, 35 Papua New Guinea (PNG), 7, 18–20, 67, 138–160, 164–183, 230–248 Papua New Guineans, 7, 257, 261. See also Asabano; Rawa; Trobrianders Paramount Studios, 87, 92, 100 Paramount’s Red Indians, 83, 86–96, 101 pāreu (wraparound), 115, 118, 130

277

Pentecostal church, 246 performance, 82, 86, 92–94, 111–131, 153, 204, 217–219, 243 photographs, 49–52, 57–69, 72, 79–82, 98–99, 101, 122, 127, 260, 263, 266 play, 49–50, 81, 98, 114–115, 117, 122– 123, 177–178, 198, 257–261 playing Indian, 81, 83, 91, 102 royalty, 121 Tahitian, 117 power, 9, 14, 34–35, 45–46, 70–71, 81–82, 156–158, 189–194, 201–202, 210–211, 216, 222–223, 230, 234–236, 243–247, 262–264 power relations, 8, 14, 16, 35, 45, 189–190, 201–202, 220, 227 prestige, 87, 98, 122–123, 138, 152, 160, 180, 259 primitivity, 32, 45 Rawa, 20–21, 230–248, 264 realism, 85–86, 92 reciprocity, 9, 99, 165, 167–169, 171, 174–178, 242 reformulation, cultural, 167, 209 relationality, 29–47, 159, 234 Reo Mā’ohi (language), 118, 124, 126 representation, 5, 12–17, 20, 33–34, 49–65, 71–72, 82–83, 102, 113, 127, 142–146, 152–157, 201–205, 209–228, 231, 266 resettlement, 192, 197, 202 Rhenish Mission, 234–239, 241, 246 rite of passage, 125, 127, 204 romance, 71, 85, 112, 117, 123, 131 same but different, 193, 203 sameness, 20, 190, 193–194, 201–203, 231 Samoa, 7–8, 10, 15–21, 49–73, 79– 81, 219–220, 234, 263, 266 Samoans, 8–12, 17, 49–72, 79–81, 178, 231 scale, 259–261, 267 self-perception, 203 semblance, 257, 267

278 Index

settler colonialism, 82, 98, 263 sexual schema, 56–59 sharing, 122, 165–182, 213 siapo (tapa), 51, 62–65, 69–72, 264 song, 10–11, 36, 39–40, 161, 195–198, 203, 212–218, 243–245 sopi (drink), 145–146, 160 Spencer, Herbert, 84 spirits, 154–157, 244, 246 Stirling, Matthew, 257–261, 264, 268 studio shots, 59, 67 symbols, transformation of, 143 Tahiti, 111–134, 204 tapa, 51, 59, 61–65, 69, 71, 111, 118–120, 125, 127, 130, 197, 265. See also siapo tapu, 8–9 Tasmania, 36, 39 tattooing, 10–11, 62, 71, 117–118, 122, 128, 133 tāupōu, 54–55, 59–63, 71 Taussig, Michael, 4, 13, 16, 20, 34–35, 43–45, 100, 102, 118, 143, 176, 182, 189–191, 230, 257–261, 264, 267–268 technology, 257–261, 264–265, 268 temporality, 222–224 tīfaifai (quilt), 115, 119–120, 128, 133 tokwalu (carving), 18–19, 141–161 tourism, 13, 93–94, 111–134, 138, 141 tourist art, 17, 109, 138, 140, 146, 156, 161, 178 trade store, 17–19, 21, 109, 151, 164–165, 171–177, 180, 245–246

tradition, 10, 13, 97, 112, 123–124, 128–132, 139–143, 153, 161, 194, 209, 232–234 transformation of, 112 transculturation, 3–21, 50–52, 111–112, 165, 189–207, 232, 241–242 transitional realms, 49–50 Trobriand Islands, 138–161 Trobrianders, 19, 21, 138–161 Ujelang, 210–222, 226–229, 264 Vanishing American, The (film), 81–86, 90, 102 Vanishing Race, The (film), 17, 79–82, 85–86, 90–92, 103 violence, 41, 81, 98, 192, 228, 235–238, 242–248 Wagner, Roy, 142–144, 159, 231, 248 warfare, 89, 213, 232, 237–239 wedding, 18, 20–21, 85, 111–137, 178, 204, 263, 265 western (film genre), 17, 79–81, 85, 91–94, 98–103 Western myth, 6, 111, 114, 116–117 Westerners, 14, 18, 54, 112–119, 124–127, 130–134, 189, 204–205. See also white people white people, 169, 210–211, 218–224, 238. See also di pālle; dimdim; Westerners wōjke (Ujelang Christmas tree), 20–21, 210, 214–222, 264–265