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Symbols hattand forhemselvesROYW GN R

THE UNIVERSITY OF HI GO PHESSIII GO ND LONDON


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ref ce

This isa book about meaning as the constitut ive and organi~ingpower in cultural \ife. Its argument is that the human phe-nomenon is a single, coherent idea, oq~ani .ed mentally, phys-i cal ly, and cul tural ly around the form of percep ti on that wecall meaninp;. This idea allows a simple and llnified llnfoldingpcrspcct ivc i n place of the expl anato ry mosai c generated bythe acc identa l col li sion of a known general phenomenon withparticular academic subject areas. Trope, or metaphor-jl lstpreciscly that aspect of expression that is least tangible orglossable-amounts to the germ of a pervasive processualtendency. A kind of involut ion of scl f-re fe rence , the tendencyis formal and systemat ic over and above parti cular symbo\ iccontents.

Meani ng i s not , o f course, a f ree-fl oati ng int angib le, bu t aphenomenon that stands in a certain relat ion to the conventionsof culture. Just how it does so, in what ways, and throughwhat forms of mediation, has long been a subject of speculationand controversy. Most att empt s at r esol ut ion have been anx-i ous t o ancho r t he phenomenon amid the manipul ab le and theaccess ible- the syntaxes , grammars, and ca tegories of saying,the necessi ty and product ivity of doing.

Clearly i f meaning as expression and percept ion is contin-gcnt upon cll lt llml forms, there i s a rc1at ion hcrc that rcqll iresour a ttention. For the rclat ion const itutes the capabil it ies andlimitat ions of human culture itself. The special ists who addressmcaninp; via i ls own scicncc haVl insi sl t,c1, more or Icsscdcctically, thatmcaning isan cffcct 1 signs-ahstract codingsor funct ions t hat can be used t o rat ional ize l he whole matt eras somc sort 1 cpiphcnomcnal orc1cr.

This ass llmcd, or working, del init ion has thc cffcc t of mak-

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ing meaning subordinate to ~igns, and it .m~kes st~dies ofmeaning into exercises in semlology or SemlOtlCS,a sClence ofsi gns and thei r o rderings. l argue t hat such an approach is ap tto constrain the meani ng of naming t hi ngs wi th in the namingof meanings , thm is, to ref lect inadvertently the convention-a li sm and rat ional ity of scholar ly pracedure within the subjecto f st udy . largue, t herefore, in The Invention ojCu/ture tha t theinterpretive elici tation of meanings, which 1 call invemion,can be seen to have a life of its own, and can mold the use ofcult ural convent ions t o it s purposes. l t i s, in fact, locked i nt oa di al ecti cal relati on wi th cu lt ural convent ion , and we mustlook to this dialectic if we are fully to comprehend hllmanexpression .md cllllural motivation.

For m.my readers of The lm enfiarl r{ ClIltllre, th is may haveseemed an unwarranted assumption-too close, perhaps, toassuming t hat meaning i s a black box and a f ree-ft oati ngin tangi ble. That the dialecti c of i nvent ion and conven ti on i s apl ausibl e graund for cull ural me.ming and ll lo ti vati on, t hat itgrounds, and i s grounded in , the t reatment of the i ndi vidualand the coll ecti ve, may be dear enough t o percep ti ve readersof t hat vo lume. That t hese operat ions can be ext rapol at ed t ol arger issues of cu lt ure i s also a part o f that message ..Unl essdemonst rat ed , however , such an ext ension may seem some-thing of an unwarranted assumption.

This is, perhaps, a familiar dilemma to many who haveuccepted the c1icitutive nature of trape; us metaphor, metonym,01 whatnot, i t el ici ts meaning. But as l ong as the e icit at ion i sa funct ion of loca l, 01 epigrammatic expressions alone, ratherthan an overa ll , organiz ing efTect ,cul lure becol ll es u fubric of. d h b . Itropes stltche to~et er y conventlona structure, catego-r ies , .md other conventional iz ing devices. If we are to come toterms with the implications of meaning for cullure as a phe-nomenon, then, it is necessary to show how trope itself canoperate as an organiz ing princ ipie .

But the nut ll l' c of t l'Opemukes thi s a rormidablc pl'Oblem atbest. For t rope-as metaphor, metonym, 01 whatever-is inessence unglossabl e and paradoxi cal. To show how t rope or-ganizes cu lt ure is to show how paradox does, and paradox has

funct ioned in modem l ife, in l it erary image, camp, Zen, coun-t ercul tu re; merely as a means of stopping conventional proce-dures, jol ting them into se f-consciousness. Orgunization mustsurely be made of stemer stuff. One can, after ali, groove onthe delicious ironies of metaphor lImil one's herb tea boi sover, 01 be dri ven punchdrunk by the ambi ti ous pummel ingof Zen mast ers wi thout t he koan ever bei ng j ol led i nt o a satont hat changes one's li fe. lrony, however preci oll s it might be,i s not explanarion, and i t i s not expl ica tion.

The st rat egy of th is book is to show, wit h examples t akenfrom my research in New Guinea, and from the art iculati onof core symbol s i n Western hi sto ry, how the essen ti al lyparadoxical effect of trape expands fram ;1 pluy on conventionalpoint s of rererence imo un orgunizer of cul tural frames. In-deed, i t expands beyond that leve into what 1sha ll cal l higherpowers of trope, eventually dosing upon itself to constitutei ts own ground conditions-the individuali ty of perceptionandthe plurali ty of collective embodiment. ..

The holography that retains the propert ies of trope through-out t hi s expansi on i s best exempli fied t hrough t he recursi veprocessual form tha t I have ca lled ohviation. Obviation is m,an-ifested as a series of substitut ive metaphors that constitute.theplot of a myth (01' t he form of a ri tual) , i n a dialect ical m?ve-ment that doses when i t re turns to i ts beginning point . A myth,then, is an expansion of trope, und obviation, as process, isparadox icul because t he me;mings eli ci ted i n i ts successi vet ropes are rea lized onlyin the process of the ir exhaustion, andexhausted in tha t of thei r rea liza tion.

The order and referential ity of I .mguage und the iconici tyof personal percept ion can never , in themselves , be absolutedeterminunts of meaning, for we know each of them onlythrough the mediat ion of the other . Overprec is ion in definingthem as functions, 01 methodologiz ing them, lends an ai r ofprofessional ism, but only tha t, to our understanding of mean-ing. Meaning isconsl ituted in the li t II belween word und ful l,perceptual image, and I have used u metaformat of diagr'lmsthat are intermediate between abstraction and representationalimage to i llus trate the obvia tive processo But thei r t ri angu-

x I'IIEFACE PIlEFACE xi


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xii PREF E

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t

lat ion is no more strueture than it ir obviatiOll it is a nav-igat ional ai d, i f you wi ll , t o eatch t he parall ax of meani ng asit moves beyond our ken .

The approach I have taken in this book is diaIectical(rather than algorithmie ) in the mathematical sense, meaningthat i t deals with constitut ive 01 existential conditions of itssubjeet , rather than with causal chains 01 the arbitration amongalterna tive descriptive glosses. The bracketing, 01 e1icitation,of an issue cnnlal; f t he i ssue in many possib le 01 alternativeways, but is a very di fferen t concern from the t rut h value,01 proposi tional s tatus , of the i ssue . Thus evidence i s largeIya concern with iIIustrating, 01 exemplifying (rather than prov-i ng ) t he model suggest ed. The evi den ti aI mat er iaIs I haveused come from a broad and disparate cross-section of theJ it erature: material tha t I col lected among the Daribi people ofPapua New Guinea, Nancy Munn s iconographic s tudies of theW~lbiri of Austral ia, discussions ofWestern time concepts andtechnology, an overview of some his torica l topics relevant tothe core symbolizations of medieval rel igious, and modernsecular phi losophy, and final ly, some evolut ionary i ssues in-vol ,ving the human brain and body.

An earlier form ,ofchapter 4 was read at Brown Univers ityin September, 1983, and the discussion following that occasionwas in many respects germinal to the..finaIversion. I am gratefulespec ia lly to Lina Fruzzet ti , Akos Ostor , and Harriet White-head for their insightfulness. Many orher friends have helped,in one way 01 anothel , to cIiei t 01 foeus these ideas, amongthem especially Viclor Turner, Stanley Walens, Fitz-John Por-teI Poole, Marilyn Strathern, James F. Weiner , and John Na-pora, deserve my thanks. Finally, I am more gratefuI than Ican say to those whose efforts have been conslitulve of t hisbook: to Daviel M. Schneielel , a mentor whose encolII agemenl,concern, and support approach the point of devot ion; to MaryAlice Carter, the sun godeless ofthis work; anelto my AntonteI3rentano, Nancy-Sue Ammerman.

ntrodu tion

What are symboIs, that we should be concerned with them)They are ce l tainly not somethlng tha t the nat ives have toldthe anthropologist about, though nat ives are often outspokenabout , :hat we ca ll rhe ir content . Hather, i r seems, rhey aresomerhll1g thar we ofren say rhe natives themselves are aliabour. Are symbol s, then, a ki nd of a el isease of ci vil izat iont hat ,w,e in our min i~r ril ti ons, l ike so many Typhoi el Mal Ys:~1~lWI.ttll1~lyommulllcate to rhe natives? 01 converscIy, is eiv-Ihza llon Itsel f a disease of symbols , as Max Mul le r suggesredt har myth i s a disease of l anguage? The more visi bl e productof the fi el dworker s i nteract ion has to do wit h l anguage, andthe possibi li ty that the social sciences with the ir involuted jar-gons are t hemselves a d isease of l anguage is an issue rhar h,ISs?m~r~mes been rai se~ by thi rd-world skeptics . ( Myst it ica-lIon IS t he t rendy eplt het.) But language, rhey say , i s some-thing we know al i about; i t i s ult imately symbol ic . So, we havelearned, is money. And so we retu rn t o t he orig inal questi onoAre symbols t he academi c currency, a co inage mint ed by thepostcolonial knowleelge inell lstl ies so that, e1l awing lIpon animmense capital of accumulated Iiteratures, philosophies, andestabli shed fac ts , we can buy up the semant ic product ion of~II-too-apt ly named research subject s ? Money, so long as i tISour money, is the only trade item the would-be entrepreneurneed gif t t he nat ives wit h; the rest takes care of i tsd f, for t hehOllse ncver loses.

Granting that this might be so, is it really a timc for newcoinages, I ecvalllaleel anel I cisslIed denominalions lhat willbring our rhe rrue value of money by making i rs orders, andperhaps even its diseases, more explici t? Do we need a clII rencyof in ll at ion? Perhaps i n economics, fo r th is i s an old rl i ck of


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I Hichard Sennell, TireFali of Pub/ie Man (New York: Alf red A. Knopf ,1977),79

Symbolic penetration and hermeneutic, the decoding of con-vemional Ii fe, i s for Sennet t a soci ological concomit am of an; ge l hal Il ri cianBerengar of Tours insisred, to t he amazement and di smay ofhi s peers, that t he Holy Sacramem was bur a symbol, and thatsomething rather J ike s tructural ism-the method of Pie rreeleLa Hame2-elominareel rhe il1lelleClual life of prc-Enlighr-enmem Europe. Like money, ane l l ike Goel, symbols were al -ways lhcre.

Ir is really what we make of lhcm lhal counts. If God, forRame, perhaps , no less rhan for Berengar, was somehow mys-teriously hehind t hings, et hereal and worki ng i n wondrousways, t hen for modem West erners money, and symbols t oo,are somehow mysreriously infrom of things, too e lementa l foreasy or ordinary comprehension. Marxism, economics, andalsosemiot ics, belong to a mystici sm of the exote ric.

Our everyday world rakes poinrs of reference for gramed,anel rhe expccr; lt ions anel values lhar rhosc poinls of rcfcrcnccser up-precision, accounrabil iry, prediclabil ilY, consislency,and the l ike-frame rheories for rhe meanings rhar l ie behindrhem. Unelersraneling point as an c1clllcnralunil, a phonemc,lexeme, spoken or wr it ten symbol, and reference i n rhedoub le-edgeel sense of bei ng borh a fixcd t okcn of commonorienlation anel somelll ing t11


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adoxieal hceau~e lhey referenee lhe implieation~ of an imagery lhat i~di~al -lowcd by the dcf ining eondi tion~ of ~ign or par ticlc. Quanrum phy~ic~ mi~~e~lhe Jca ~ uf hUlllanl xpl ri, nce. ancllllnsl colllpensare for il;Iinguislie apprnleh-es to meaning I ll is~lhe seale of lhe world in which I lleaning operate~.

INTRODUCTION

Metaphor, the symbol whose gloss i s definit ively rclat ive,is t he per fect and appropriat e poi nt of reference for an age ofcryptic symbols and inscrutable meaningsj i ts discovery byevery critical, scientific, and aesthetic enterprise concerned withmeaning is inevitable. It is our own mirror image, and we,perhaps , a re i ts . The very ambit ious at tempt to grammat icizei t, the hurnanis ti c adumbra te i ts charac te r, and psychologis tsrun rats through it. As with God and money, and symbols ingeneral for t hat matt er, it is what we make of i t that COll ntS. Ifi t ret lec ts the l inguis t s ambit ion to resolve everything into ruleand order , the wonder and admirat ion of aesthe tes ane l l it erat i,lhe psychologis l s scienti st ic interrogat ive, how can i t be madeto model t he complexit y of mean ing known to the anth ropo l-ogiSI?

Cul tural relat ivity, l ike Einstein s , i sof ten no more than therelat ivity of coordinate (01 reference) systems, of langllage,ethos, acquired feel , and habitoTo know it, experience it, onegets used to Iiving somewhere eJse, with other people. Thisi s an int roduct ion to the i ssue . But t rope 01 metaphor, the self-referential coordinate, is relat ivity compoundedj i t introducesrclativity within coordinate systems, and within culture. Thuscxpress ions within a culture are rclat ive to, innovat ive upon,and ambiguous wi th regard to , one ano ther. A model foundedupon these relat ions i s, i f i t i s sys temat ic a t al i, a mobile, f luid,and an undetermined system.

Like t he bJack hoj e (whi ch aJso has, in t he j argon of astro -physicists, no hair -by which it Illight be grasped), the ef-fect s of metaphor have been l is ted, ana lyzed, tal li ed, even syn-thesized through metaphors, to an exhaustive degree. A grea tmany of the posi tions taken on metaphor are qui te accurateand ins ight fuj,4 though one sll spect s that a comple te char-acter izat ion wOl llel be as l lnat tainablc , anel as l Iselcss, as thccomplc tc gloss ing of a s ingle I ll etaphor, Possibly al so lhe

4 Thc idea that mctaphor has emergent or t ran~eendental quali li cs i sby no mcans uneommon. Paul Hicoeur speaks of the power of rnclaphoricuncranec 10 redc~erihe a reality inacee~siblc to direet dc~eription CFim~andM/ffal; ~ tr.lIls. K McL,ughlin lIld D Pcllh,luer IChicago: UniversilY ofChi-cago Pres~. 1984J. xl).

CHAPTER ONEmeaning i s a rsigl ed a val ue, and ep istemology becomes the(sc icnt if ic) problem of how that value opera tes. ( ln thi s regardmodern civil ization, with its overconfident value assignments,brings i ts own social sciences upon i tscl f. )

What becomes provoca t ive for an intel lectua l enterpriseconst it ut ed along t hese l ines is the degree t o whi ch mean ingis not an economy of symbols, 01 of systems, as of courseevolution may not be DNA Sweepstakes, 01 physics a game ofunc le rwri ting the insurance of very small parti cles . Uni ts , e le -ment s, combinat ory syst ems, and peri odi c t ab les g ive a ni cefeeling for dealing with the phenomenal universe in the precise,accollntable, preclicti lble ways in which we like to think we rllnour own shop. And if God, to paraphrase Einstein, does notplay e lice wirh lhe l Inivcrsc , lhe scicnli sl who wanls to gct lhebetter 01 the c111siveancl the provocat ive i s obl iged to enter afl oa,ti ng crap game wit h c1efin it ions. How to define uni ts-mo: .ney,symbols, subatomic parti cles-so tha t they wil l retaincnidibil ity as point s of reference (and thei r accountabil ity andpredictabil ity as wel l) in a theoret ical ente rpri se? Fai ling that ,how to define, 01 frame, any viable alternative?

Struc turaJ ism gets the bet te r of thi s impasse by making def-initons (verbal , systematic opposit ions) thcmsclvcs thc llnitsjas t u te humani sti c crit iques and semiot ics do so wi th charac-teri 7.at ions (and wit h t he metaphors t hat , according to PaulRicoeur , a re al i tha t can do jus tice to other metaphors). Point sof reference are not determina tive , but only necessary, as mon-ey becomes so-cc>nlingently-necessary that i t i s printec l onpaper, then i n books, and t hen becomes a vending-machi nefunct ion of integers. A game of redefinit ion tha t maneuvers soadeptly about point s of reference must come home, as did Ein-stein s f ieJd theory, to roost on the relat ivity of coordinate sys-teIlls, We comc clown, cvelllllally, 10 lhe sclf-referential symbol,lhe trope 01 Illet ilpl ior, as a beginning poinl for a cliscllssion ofme;lJling.


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correct characterization of metaphor is as much a chimera asthe correct V;lossinv;of one. I t would seem, however , tha t whatone ean do,


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have to say that ,; the square root of - I, is a metaphor, sinceit r egi sters an impasse in t he cal cu li bil it y o f t he t erms used,.md, bccause i t i s thcrc forc imaginary, i t comes to s tand foran imaginary realm 01 flcld.

The convclllions-rules, syntax, lexicon-of languagestand in a reci procal rel at ion t o that whi ch can be, and i s, sai dinthe language. As we speak by working t ransformations uponthose conventions, fig rinr: our meani ngs t hrough t hem, so t hese t of conventions can be seen as the metaphor of a li that couldbe said in this way. A language, and, insofar as it can be saidto have convent ions (which is how we, perforce, describe it ),a cult ure, is t he ul timate subjunct ive, an a s i f made i nt o ani s by the seri ousness o f t hose who use it .

Once we admit thi s, tha t the ostensibly posit ive 01 ab-solute values are not in thcmselves absolute, but relat ive f ig-ures tha t are manipulated by framing the lesse r, more obviousons within the larger, more convell lional ones, then itbecomesapparent that expression is not only re1ativehetween languages,but also lVith,i, them. Formallanguage then becomes the incre -mt J llof a ~amc in which lesser f i~lIres a re formed within andagaJnst the larger, framing ones, and even tuall y become en-capsulated by them, only to facil itate the formation of yet other,le5ser expressions.

The formal s ide of expression is, of course , not only a fac to rin verbal and conceptual art icll lation, but a polarity in the realmof percepl iol l as wel l, Wi lh il ll plkal ions lhal I shall considerpresently. (Helative abstraction 01 concreteness i s s imply an-ot her d imension in which t he reciprocal rclat ionsh ip amongframes occursj it makes concrete and abstract metaphorsof one another.) The absolute nature of such frames belongsto a conventionalist, 01 l it eral is t perspec tive , one tha t wouldhave to, at thi s juncture, f igurat ively cut the human corpus cal-los m. Unmediated concrete and abstract thought, a trulysplit brain, the hierarchical logical types of Hussell andWhitehead, 01 the codes, axes, and matrices of the structuralist ,give us our cul tura l and contextual frames ready-made . Con-ven ient , i n that they do no t requ ire exp lanat ion, t hey are al so

S. Hll1sVaihingcr, T/rePI1I1 Mophy,fAslj.:A Sy.ystem tha t D. Sperber cal lsencyclopedic knowledge,'l6 and use this capital to makeshrewd inves tments in the world of ethnological product ion?

9NTRODUCTIONC HA PT ER O NE


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Struclure has the cree libi li ty of product , symbol the potency ofmoney, whereas metaphor has a li the credibi li ty and potencyof ... elayelream.

The answer lies not, of course, in ;my poetry 01 precisionthar met aphor might bri ng to ethnol agy-tu rni ng k insh ip andritual into Iiler;l lure, and us into literary cri tics. Ir inheres, rarh-er, in t he possibi li ty t hat t rope as symbol and symbol as rropemighr be mutual ly rei nfo rci ng; thar t he si gni fi cance anel t heworkings of l rope mip ;hl be rendered more coherell l by mod-cl ing cultural const ruct ion upon i t, spreael ing i t our across theculmral specrrum.

The process of model ing i n science, and in soci al science,makes use of known, fami li ar rel at ions or o rderings as a basi sfor t he analog ic comprehension of some hercto fore unorga-ni zed mat eri al . A metaphor i s made, and expanded in to a per-cepti on wit hin the propert ies o f the material ro be grasped, 50l har the idea of a doubl e hcl ix or of fl oati ng l ectonic pl at es, forinstance, is seen to inform the structure of DNA, or themotility of the earth's crust. The seeing itself is n ewknowledge , and because a metaphor i s sel f-signif icat ive, theknowledge acqui res a galvaniz ing force from i ts apparem (andde facto) uniting of knower and known-hence the certaimyrhat carries sciemific paradigms. And the consequences of sucha confidem see ing inc lude a rest ructur ing of the modcl , theheretofore famil iar , by the research mater ia l: DNA becomes amodel for the doubl e-hel ical , geography for the f loati ng andflowing of solids.

To use rhe mode1ing procedure i tsel f as a modcl for culturei s to adduce paradigm Cerla inly l () r cultural mOl ival ion ingeneral, for the invention of culture. 13ut i t is also to take aseconel -order derivar ive-rhe model ing of mode1ing is mod-e1ing. And 50 our choice of the model to be used becomesimportam. If we choose sciemif ic methodology and model ingas rhe f ic ld of known and fami liar re1arions and orderings ,t hen cu1t ure emerges, as for the et hnomelhodo log ist s, as l hefolk science of doing l ife. I f we choose the rcceived knowledgeconcerning s igns and semiotics , semamics and pragmatics , asa mode1, then culture becomes an e1ectrical display of scholarly

lNTHODUCTION10 CHAPTER ONE 11elefinitions, a partide physics of icolls encapslll ;l ling referents,frame markers mark ing frames-funct ions (o r namings) t hats tand for themselves . And i fwe choose the piqllant metaphorsby which insip;htflllliterary (or liler;lry social semiolic) crilicshave characler ized and dramal ized melaphor, lhen cul ture i s,p,erhaps, a dancin~ tex,t , dazzling, conce;t ling, reve,ll ing, pos-slbly psychoanalyzlllg IlS readers or participants.

An alterna tive i s to wager the open, nescient, black-holequal it ies Cor nonqual it ies) of metaphor, as rnndel , aga insr i lSown expansion into mYlh 01 rilual, moelcling ethnography onmet aphor , and meraphor upon ethnography, in rhe hope thatl he known unf ,uni li ar ,mel l he unknown famil iar may hel p 10s~ructu re one anot her . If we assume rhat ki nshi p, or myrh , o rritual, ro take lhree ofthe anthropologist's favorile generalil iesis, in i ts working our, the sequential construclion of a metaphor:a cultural trope in large, expanded frames, then we will, ine ffecr, view lhe mechanism of rhe metaphor ane l i ts gloss ing.If.we pay attention to the lagic, or sequencing of things, we~lIgh t also gat her some evi dence as to the st agi ng of a gl ss,I ts e thnography, so to speak, what meaning makes peoph~'do.A metaphor i s at once proposi tion ane l resolulion ' i t st andsfo r it sel f. Expanded ou tward t o encompass (and d~fi ne) l helarger cul tural frames , the sel f-def inil ion and the pul l towardresolur ion lenel the ir force to cul tural mOl ivat ion ane l acrJon.Meaning acquires in this way a form as well as a contentacqui res a form through i ts content o As t he fo rm and const i~tut ion of a Jexi con always bears t he sub tl e impri nt o f t he met-aphors that can be, and have been, formed against i t (13minorwas never the same after Bach's Mass, C-sharp minor afterl 3eet hoven 's Quar tel), so the formal par t o f ;1 culture accom-modates , and ischarged by, the large-frame myths , r ituaIs , andkin constructions that take form OUI of i l, and form i t. Anelwhatwe see as the general pat te rn of a culture, i ts galac tic s trucrure(as David Schne ider would have i t') of core symboJogy, mustbear the imprint of the generi form anel sel f-c1osure of large-

7 ~avid M. Schlll:ider, NOles IOward a Theory of ClIilure, in K Ilass()and H Selby, eds., Mt aning in Af/lhroruloK) (Albuquerqlle: Universiry of NewMexlco Press, 1976).


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frame metaphors or t ropes. In thi s rep;ard the deep struc ture(Ir a cuhure is only parlially mode and colltellt, B minor andC-sharp minor; it i s al so what I have calI ed obvi ati on, wi th i tsnecessary paradoxes and negations.

Myths , r itua l, and kin rclat ions , seen as expanded t ropes, ascul tural frames wit h a logic or overlay of thei r own, carry us,1 ' S I' 1like Ruth l3ene( ICtSs patterns or peng enan cyc es, con-s iderably beyond the anthropology of social a ffai rs. They ca lIup t he specter o f cult ural det ermini sm, or, if t hat sense of cu l-ture i s too strong, meaning determinism, and thcy draw at ten-ti on away from poli ti cal ends, po li ti cal mot ivcs, and t he ro leof the actor wi th in the drama. At best , metaphor and t he flowof analogy that i t c l ici ts , wri t l arge or smalI , can only influencethe relat ive cont ingency of human ac tions. I t def lect s the sub-s tant ive, the concrete thingnesses of things, as wel I as thesxmbols that name them as such, as il dissolves the sense of~ctor into a kind of general sensorium of meanings.: For thi s reason, then, metaphor, as I have int roduced i there ,

porlends only a very Ierl-handed (or Ierl-sided ) detennin-i sm a relat ional dimension of I)c rspect ive and percept ion thatdeals wi th bounding condit ions and exi st en ti al issues. Thequesti on of i ts sciemihc statl ls coul d, i ndded, be raised , as i tpredicts nothing and is impervious to our cultural games oft esti ng , cont rol li ng, and vali dati on, but t hcn various ethi calCJuestion of i lS scienti li c status could, indeed, be rai sed, as i tusab le, hi ghl y det erminist soci al sci ence. (Mathemati cs,Queen of the Sciences, is entirely a work of the imagination,and thus one of the humanities.) Meaning is a perception insymbol ic val ue spacej t rope i s t he el ici tor and vehi cle of per-cepti on . l 3ut percepti on i tself i s arguab ly the most pot en t o fthe human qualities: not only are our great symphonies andworks of visua l a rt essent ia lly percept ions , but al so our tech-nology is nothing i f no a corpus of detai led, consis tent, prag-mat ic perceptions, and perception l ies at the core of our e lead-l iest weapons anel our most compell ing speculative triumphs.

The use of trope, and obviation, as a modcl allows one tospeak with sOllle confidellce ahou generalities lha more prag-

matic, predictive, anel strategy-orienteel approaches can onlyt ry to explain away. Whel l we speak of I ll eani llg, we are talkingabout seeing within the world of human symbols, not aboutthe grammars, syntaxes , or s ign funct ions through which ordercan be precip it at ed ou t o f expression . To use the algori thmswhose instrumentali ty is modeled on linguistic capabil ity isonet hi ngj t o develop a faci li ty for readi ng l he flow of image-developed analogy, the dialectic of meanings, is quite another.

What, then, is the relat ion of perception to cultural referencepoint? 11is a mat te r of abslrac tion, s ign, and referem, as Saus-sure seems to have thought? Let me tum, now, to the malterof concept and pcrccpt.

12 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 13


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TOO DEFINITE FOR WORDS

2 Too Definite for Words

There are two ways in which names, as symbols, can he con-s idered. We can consider them as codings, or point s of ref-e rence , mereJy represent ing the things named, or we can con-sider t hem in t erms of the rel al ion between the symbol and t hething symbol ized. In the f irst ins tance naming becomes mat terof cont rast s and groupi ng among the names themsel ves: a mi-c rocosm of symbols i s deployed to code or represent the worldof reference. The world of phenomena isself-evident and apart .In t he second i nstance naming becomes a mat ter o f anal ogy:symbol and symbolized belong to a s ingle relat ion, a const ruc-t ion within a larger world, or macrocosm.The di sti ncti on here i s no t a t ri vial one, because ali words,and ali symbols, inso far as t hey are poin ts o f reference, can beconsidered namings. Ir i s c1ear that hoth modes of viewingsymbol s, as cod ing and as analogy, have a cer tain potent ial,: ll1d that the eonstruction of:\I1 explanatory microcosm. eallcds tructure rea lizes only part of the potential . The other partinvolves a mode of const ruct ion that inc ludes symbol and sym-bol ized within the same express ion, and implies, among otherthi ngs, t hat the symbol ized i sno l ess a part of cul tu re t han thesymbol.

To give an example , among the Daribi people ofPapua NewGuinea , the verb form poai (a parti ciple of the verb poie, to benamed, to be congruent with ) i sused to indicate the relat ionof a person or thing to the element for which it has beennanied. The two, denominator and denomina ted, a re said tohe sahi (i.e., tail ), or namesakes, of one another, elements,tha t i s, tha t have a (social ly) recognized as i f relat ionship

I Hoy \V;lgllt r,ll hll: Th,I tIl ,i lll I{Mc (l/lli N i Da,ihi IMij;i III. (Chic;lgo:UniVt l silY 01 Chicago PI CSS, 1972), pp. HS 94

14

15with each other. The aClUal,verbal name is Ire,l ted as a func-ti on of thi s rclati onsh ipi thus, i f a person is n,l ll lt d for some-thing with a plurali lY of convt lIlional design:lt ions (a sulphur-eres ted eoekatoo, for ins tanee) , a li {)f lhese dcs ignal ions arteonsi dered equal ly t o he names of lhe person (e.g. , nara, tera-11 111).

Sueh a rel at ionship i s i ndi vidual, and ind iv iduat ing , i n re-lat ion to convention, because i l cance ls or suspends the orderof conventional reference in which men, for instance, and cock-atoos are assumed to be dis tinc t and nonoverlapping enti ti es .The as if of t he name, so to speak, sets i tself i n opposi ti ont o the as if of refercn ti al desi gnali onj l he name defi nes fo ri tself a possibi li ty , excluded by conventi on, in which a manmight be considered, for whatever reason, to be s imilar to, andthus he, a cockaloo. That possibili ty coincides rather unique-Iy with the name, and so we may conclude that the names tands for the possibi li ty that i t el ic it s (and hence s igni fiesi ts 0wn relat ionship, or i tself),z and also that ir self-referencesitself through that possibiliry. To call a man Sulphur-crestedCockatoo is to give the man an individuality insofar as ametaphor of his being a cockatoo is allowed. But the as ifo f thi s possib il it y must n t cessari ly impingc upon l he as ifof the col lect ive referential , or coding sys lems, prim~ri lybecause t hey bOlh use t he same sei o f eonvenl ions. Thus l hesymbols are used aga in and again, ente ring into varying com-binations, and it is the self-referencing possibili :ies of the con-s truct s that change and differentiate themselves , cre: lt ing thecol lect ive as an innovat ion upon the individual , and vice versa.

Ifwe l real n:unes as merely narnes , point s of reference , thensymbolism becomes a matter of reference: a microcosm ofnames is coun terposed t o a macrocosm of referent s. Bu t i fwet t I I I fea na me as re atlons IIp, t le mlcrocosm o names is nolonger a microeosmj i t hecomes imrilersed in a rnacroeosm ofanalogic construction. Not only do we have an analogy thatencompasses name and named, but tha t analogy suggests , and

~. This posil ion recal ls lhe possible wor lds argumenl lhal Kripke usesagaln~llhe Fre~e-Russell nOlion 01 lhe descriptive nalUre 01 naming. SeI. SaulA. Knpke, Namml: and N,w.rity. (C;lmhricl~t, Mass.: Harv;ml UniversilY Press,1980), 4H-60,


12/32

t ends to enter us imo, analogic relat ions among macrocosmiceonslrUCls.The participle poai indicales a ~ resembl ance t hal can be

fOllnd between some person 01 thing (01 state, act, 01 whatever)aliei allolhl'r, Jlt'llpll' who sharl' Olll' poilll 01'J'l 'sl 'llIhlalll'l' (alieia lIall le i lselr is a poill t 01'I 'cscllIblall l:c, howcvcl ' i l l lIay havcbeen acqui red) share al i of thei r resemblances, forpoai namesthem the same. On this basis, ali people have an infinite rangeof names, al i a re in some sense named a li things, and al io f these names and people are one. (The one name, inci deri-lal ly, is lIm: Ilalllc< , which ali olhcl'wisc 1I0IlplllSSC


13/32

) . BdJulesl., FlJllfI I.uimu rCycl l ~a Pl ff< fl/lim Chk~o: Univcl'si ty 01'Chicago Prcss, 197'), ).4 I bi d., S ).S. Ihid. , 14

the cyclopean mind is a giant since the great ma-jority of ali the neural input of our nervous sys-tem enters into it . I r is a lso a simpleton, incapableof the symbol ic manipulat ions so essent ia l in lan-guages, logic , and mathematics j and i t lacks theability of abstraction.s

, I

TOO DEFINITE FOR WORDSas accomplished faer-as the single eonslilurive acr in theemergence of meanin(. '; . Forever afIeI ' speeula lion has beenaroused as to the origin of langllage, lhe invention of abstrac-tion that formed the Word in the Beginning. But the realizationthat Ille:ln is perceplion, occurring wilhin lhe nalural grollndfrom which abslraclion slIpposedly freecl lhe word, indicatesthat abstraction is, rather, part of a generative and ongoingprocesso The invention of a microcosm by abstraction from apereeptual macrocosm is hal f of a highly charged dia ecriea linteraction, establishing a sensory eontinuum witll ln which rheordering and refiguring of meaning is accomplished. The otherhalf of this eharged interaetion is an equally significant expan-s ion, or concretizat ion, of microcosm into macrocosm that oc-curs in the format ion of analogy. The invention of microcosm,of symbol and language, and of macrocosm, meaning andmeaningful world, are intrinsically and dialectically related as-pects of the same processo

The coding of microcosms, sensorily and qual itat ively re-s tr icted media for the representa tion of symbolic reference,seems to be universal in human eultures. Spoken languag~ isthe most obvious, and perhaps the most important , instar ice ,though nonverbal body langllages and inscribed, visual cod-ings also furnish examples. Such codes are invariably generatedthrollgh ,I l imitation and restriclion of sensory r,lIlge, : ldinin-ished background against which minute variations, sueh asmi-nor sound inflections 01 the shapes of le lters 01 numbers, canbe used to represent significant points of variation. Resrrictionof this sort determines , a kind of redundancy, ofren remarkedupon by rheorisrs of language, in which what are recognizablythe same sounds or image:: keep reeurring in the course ofexpression. The reeurrence actua lly makes use of the codingmedium, the sensual component of symbolizat ion, to convey asense (in large part iIIusory) of referentia l invariancej a givensound 01 orthographic symbol marks the point for a pointof reference. As the point holds its place, so does the reference.In consider ing the realization of the microcosm, I shouldlike to draw upon the particularly felicitous example providedby Professor Nancy D. MlInn, in her s tudies of iconographic

CHAPTER 1WO8gesr, however, rhar perceprion is more rhan a frol1lie r of sym-bolism with the natural wor ld- thm it is, in fact, centrally in-volved.

Bela J ules~, of Bell Telephone Laboratories , speaks of cy-c10pean perception - that which results in the forlllation ofa percept at sOlllecentl 'allocation in the visual systell l by lIsin(. ';stimuli that could not possibly produce thar percepr at an earlierlocarion.ll l The mosr familiar example of such global infor-marion, as julesz would have i r, i s rhar of srereoscopic vis ion,which is based on periphera l informarion from rhe two op-rical rerinas, bur which would require a special , internal reti-na for rhe formarion of the image. He cites experimental ev-idence to indicare thar meaning in visual art , music, poerry, andlinguistic expression generally is cyclopean in this sense,4and notes that

Meaning, i tseems, isi tself a perception, and its experiencing: lnd expression are obl ique to the orderinp; of gr: lmlll :l rs , ll1dpoints of reference , which are , a t best, it s e lici tors . More thanthis, meaning is a perceprion within what we could call lhevalue space ser up by symbolic points of reference, a ste-reoscopic view, i f you wil l, of different symbolic points ofreference brought to focus a t a s ingle cyclopean retina. Ir isthus the perception of analogy, and its expansion in to largerforms, 01 frames, of culture takes rhe form of a f1ow ofanalogy.The identif ica tion of the sign as a media tor between perceptand symbolic concepr establishes ahstraction-the birth of order


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6. Nancy D. Munn. l f/al f, ir i Icon0F:rarhy: Grarhic RCrrc.,cnlalion anJ CulturalSym/,,,/m in (1'1I1 ,1 AII. lr'lli n S l Iity. (1IIIal:;l: Corndl Univl 'r si lY Press .1973)

7 I bid ., ~9

representation among the Walbiri people of central Australia.6Like the graphic representations of OlheI'central desert peoples,notably, for inslance, the Arllnla, Walbiri iconographs stanel ina profollncl rl'lalion 10 lhe coslIlological anel rilual realizalionsof lhe Iraelil ional l if 'c .

Whi le they most certai nly describe a microcosm, the am-bigllities inherent in their representalive lIloeleelisqualify themfram consideration as written language in the conventionalsense of discllrsive phonography 01 ideography.I t eoule l wel l be argl lee l, on lhe OlheI 'hand, tha t for al i the irdivergence from the mimesis of speech character is ti c of a pho-nographic script such as our own, such iconographs do ap-proximate lhe ideography of traclit ional Chinese ancljapanesewri ting. There are, of course, far fewer charac te rs than wefind in the Oriental orthographies, but here again the possibili tyar ises that the ambigui ti es of the Austral ian codes are not nec-e~sari ly more formidable , but merely diffe rent ly s itua ted. Forthey are stylized and abstracted pictures, not of sounds 01 ideas,but oflhe impress ions that are (01' woulcl be) made in the earthby bei ngs that move across i t, 01 of static forms situatecl uponthe eart h. Many of l he most commonly lIseel forms : Ire in factc1~se imitations of lhe tr: leks of hUlIlan beings 01 animaIs.

A juxtaposit ion of the gr: lphs i s a lways reac lable as a sort ofabslracl diagrarn 01 map, pravidee l tha l lhe context i s c1earlyunderstoocl (a more literally inclinecl tradition woulcl doubtlesselevise sense si~ns, like those fllrnisheel in :lnciclll E~yptianhieroglyphics, for this purpose). The ieonographs are inseribeelin areas of loose sanei in accomp:lniment to ore linary conver-sati on as well as t o il lustrate a women's narrati ve t hat Munncal ls the sanc l s tory.l l7 ln these cases the ir cont inui ty seems tobe a more 01 l ess icleographic one, fol lowing the episoc les ofthe narration 01 conversation. The cosmologically significantclepic tions macle ancl usec l by men, however , general ly baset hei r cominll it y on that o f the track, 01 rout e, of a person 01

8. Ibid., 131.

21OO DEFINITE FOR WORDSbeing moving across the country. A t rack can beJlloll'c(1 (/JIIraH)in i ts c reat ion 01 interpretat ion, and movement alon~ thespa tial progression tha t i s graphica lly e lepictceIor implici t inti I fi . IC Inc O son~s sung a )oul SUCCCSSIVCOIllISllI' l'PISo(l'Sin lhe journey has lhe effeel of moelcling lhe eonlinllity ofspoken discourse upon a spat ia l t raverse.

The eountry of these people is, of course, known anel ex-perienced through the known t rail s and landmarks that suchcont inll it ies represento ndeed, s ince the t rae li tional Walbi rilIl usl perforce, as hll nl ers and gatherers, no l on ly gai n Ihei rli ving by foll owing tracks (i n hUflt ing), but al so spend t hei rlives constantly makillIJ t racks themselvcs , that l ife in :111 of it sact s became a process of ilLfcniJtioll. Ancl this inscription, inlargepart an endl ess repet it ion of domest ic and product ive acts, afollowing of custom ancl technique, W:lSalso a retracing oft ra il s and t racks that had been known from t ime immemorial .The Iifeof a person is the sum ofhis t racks, the total inscr iptionof hi s movements, somethi ng t hat can be t raced ou t along thegrouncl.

Ancl t he Iif e course of a peopl e, the tot al it y of thei r ways,conventions, : lncl conventionally encountered sit llat ions, is thcf k I 1 I I . Ium o Its trae s, t le trai soveI' tiS country a ong w IlCIexperience is measured out.

I t i s in thi s scnsc th: lt the analagic cap:lbi li ti es of the t rackiconograph rencler i t the perfect shif ter , 01 hinge element,between the microcosm of rest ri etec l, v:l ll le -eoel ing sensoryrange, anel the rcez i,atioll of tha t l Il ic rocosm in the larger worldof eontr :l st ingly ful le r sensory range. l~.)r a t r: lck representsi tsel f as microcosm, as being ancl movement compressed ontoa two-dimensional plane , and i t thereby implies the ful le r em-bodiment of t his being and movement, as t hat whi ch made thet rack. To fol low the t rack is to infuse : Imicrocosm with theexi stence and mot ion of i ts maker, and, by a cert ai n an:l logy,any sensory enrichment of i ts iconography constit ll tes a similarreversa l of the process of abst ract ion. To perform these oper-a tions upon the collec tive , summ:lt ive sense of t r: lck, as the

CHAPTER 1WO


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9 Ibid., '19.10. l la ldwin Spencer and F.J. GilJen, Tire Native Tn hesofCentra/ Austra/ia(New York: Dover Publicalions, '9(8), U).I Gl'o/l' Ban on, A/.onj;i fla/Art {tire Wmcm Dcsert (Add.lidl': Higby Limoi led, '979) , 146.

Men gave the s tandard explanat ion that in ances-tral t imes ancestor s dreamed thei r songs and de-s igns whi le s leeping in campo As one informantput it: lhe dreamt his track.' On getting up, theaneestor 'put' yira-lIl l Ii s des igns ( that i s, hepainted them or otherwise gave t ll em materia lfo rm) and sang h is songs. As he traveled along,

total li feway and experience of a people, i s to rea lize and vivifyt he making of t hat track as a creat ive act .The Walbi ri , according to Munn,? ca ll t racks in the sense of

marks l ef t by ancest ral bei ngs i n t he country gllnlwan: a termtha t may also be used in the abstrac t sense of ancest ra l powersembodied i n the count ry. Li ke t he clzun nga of t he Arunt a, ar-t if acts of t he creat ive times that cont ai n the sp iri ts of t he cre-ative beings, 10 gUnlwan can be used to rit uall y repli ca t e or re-const itute those t imes . Ir i s s igni ficant for our interes t tha t theritual reconstruction invariably involves a following of thet rack in some forn: Jr other , and usual ly a sensory enrichmentof the gUnlwan as desi gn-i n the vi sit at ion of secret si tes t hatcont ai n sueh desi gns, or the preparati on of a ground pai nt ingca lled a dreaming, or through the broadening of the soundspectrum as song. Thus a constructive or creative act per-formed upon the gllnlll an: the sensory enrichment provided bythe Walbiri themselves, takes on the sacramental sense of acommunion wit h, or a reali zati on of djugurha, the crea tive orstory times ( dreamtime ).

Rather than regarding such ritual syntheses or constructionsas a reversa l of the act ions of creat ive beings, moving backfrom the art if act to the acti ons that made it , Walbi ri t houghtregards the sensory rea liza tion of djugurha as fol lowing upont he precedent of t he ori gi nal creat ive act s, themsel ves a formof premeditated construction:

f 2 . Munn, /Pa/biri /cr ,oJ: I /,y. 46.' ). lbid. , '49.

TOO DEFINITE FOH WOHDS 2Jhe sang his journey ... he sang efhis journey, theevents along the way.IZ

Thus the syn thesis o f djugurha is not simply the mystificationof human const it ut ive act s (as, fo r inst ance, i n a sci ent if icreconstruct ion) , but the assumpt ion of a creat ivity int rins ic tothe act ion of the creat ive t imes .

If we reflect upon lhe fact t1wt the only knowledge or ex-perience that Walb iri have, or can have, of t he creat ive phaseof the wor ld, djugurha, comes about in one way or anotherth rough the human real izati on of mi crocosmi c symbols ex-panded into myths, songs, designs, and country, i t becomesapparent that Walb iri rcli gi ous 'ife is consti tut ed in th is way.Munn comments:

Songs are in a sense symbols or oral l anguage,anel ancestral e1esign 1resymbols of visual orgraphic ' language. ' The ances tors are in effect'talki ng abou t' t he t hi ngs that happen t o t hem inboth visual -graphic and verba l ways, and such' ta lking' object ivates the world around them, giv-ing it social, communicable realityY .

Although it is cJearly elucidated by their marvelously dirt:ct ,recursive usages and epistemology, the dia lect ic between tni -c rocosmic cod~ngs and sensori /y r ich aesthe tic product ions i sby no means j,:mited to the Walbiri, or to central desert ab-origines. Ir is, rather, the condition of human symbolismj apolarity or contrast opposing an art ificially restricted symboliccoding to an (equally) art ificially expanded iconic imagery. Forthe ac t of sensual anel qual it at ive res tr ic tion necessary to theconstit ll tion of referentiaJ value hoth implies '1I1e1enders pos-s ible a ref lexive sensual ane l qua li tat ive expansionj nei ther i smore primary or more nat ural than the ot her , for bot h areeffect s of the same scission, anel each reali zes it character i nContrast to the olher.

Neither sensual restriction nor the sense of referentiaJ value

CIIAI'rEH lWO


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tha t i t faci li ta les i s equivalent, of course, 10 meaning, lhought he percept ion that we undersland as meani ng would beinconccivable and inexpressible without symbolic reference.Meaning requi res a forged absolule, as a kind of epislemolog-ical I ie, in order t o frame such t rut hs as i t is ab le to convey .By lhe sanll loken pern plion ishy no Jneans equivalent to theaeslhelic produclions lhrough which lhe expansion 01 sensoryrange is reali7.ed, yet is is bound to them, and schooled byt hem, as i ts focus. To speak of percepti on wi thout t his focus i sl ike speaki ng of meani ng wi thout t he ori en ti ng axes of sym-bolic reference. It follows from lhis that there isa developmentof perceptual 01 analogic focus coincidenl Wilh every symbolicregime.

Instead of Saussure s absolute unit of sensual abstraction,the s ign, as a media tor between natural percept and the ab-s trac t coding of reference , I have suggested that a modulat ionof (rclat ive) sensory ampl itude-rest ri ct ion as agains t expan-s1 on-embodies and enact s lhe mediat ion between referentialcoding andperceptual image. Heferential symbolism occupiesone pole-that of coding through sensory restriction-of themediation, and perceptual image or analogy-self-significativesymboli sm-occupies the orher . Nei ther i s more natural orcultural, more or less artificial, than the other, and althoughthe dia lect ic as a whole can be seen as a media tive process, thec1emenls lhal i l media les are nol lhose of nalure and cul tl lre.

The mediative signilicance of the dialectic isbest understoodby considering each of i ts poles asa point of media tion betweenthe ot her and an c1ement ext erna I to t he di alect ic ( li g. 2). Themedia tion i s in fact dual and recursive , negot iat ing the exter-nal polarity mediated by the dialectic within the dialectic i tself.(The di al ect ic, i n ot her words, is i tself a represent at ional mi -c rocosm in relat ion to an exte rnal macrocosm.) Symboliccod ings or poil ll s of reference l hl ls mediate between the (ex-ternal) social collectivity and perceptual imagc, simultancouslyproviding a sensory medium for the coding of referentiaI in-variancc and convl nlional rcference points for thc oricntationand recogni tion of imagcs . Perccptual images, or ana logies ,mediate between the individuative, factual world and symbolicrcference, incidentalizing the referential as sclf-signil ication,

TOO DEFINITE FOH WORDS

socialcollectlvity

mlcrocosmreferentialcoding

CULTURAL DIALECTIC\._----~y

macrocosmicimage

individuativefact

and referencing the incidental as perception through a symbolicvalue space.The di,dect ic , then, media tes between two idea l and effec-

livcly unrealii .able POiIllS,lhe social colleclivilY ,lIld concrele,individua tive fact or evento No symbol ever at ta ins completeor absoll ll e convl ntional ily, any Illore Ihan a l rope or imal~l~isever absolulcly unique. The cultural dialee tie 01 figure 2 de-marcates a range within which symbolic express ions , images ,and reference points innovate upon one another as rclativc ycollectivizing or differentiating. The dialectic isenablcd by anencompassing princ ipie of f igurc-ground reversa l, sueh that

FIGURE 2 : Macrocosm ano microcosm as mcdialivc foei.Ieach pole of the dialec tic i s the I imit ing condi tion of the other .An image, such as the cruci fied Chris t in Grunewald s IscnhcimAltarpiccc can be ident if ied as a symbol, and a ttain a certainmeasure of conven ti onali ty, whereas a symbol ic poi nt of ref-erence can bc sccn as back metaphor -the as if of con-ventional usage viewed aga inst the i s of a metaphor formedagainst that usage. A symbol that stands for itseIf, in otherwords , can al so sland for somcthing c1scj a rcfcrcntial symbolcan be seen t o st and for i tself.

Thus the cultural dialec tic, the range within which the gen-eral and thc parti cula r bccome acccss iblc to, and cxprcssiblc

CHAPTER 1WO


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CHAPTER 1WOby, human beings, can, I ike naming, be analyzed in two differ-em ways. It can be seen in microcosmic terms, as a semioticof names contras ting with names, poims of reference that s tandfor symbols , others tha t s tand for thei r referems (or even theirrefir( f1ce), anelsli ll olhers Ihal guaranlee, l ike Saussure's sign,lhe fael of .Ibstracrion ilself. The resulr is a scicnce of signs.Approached from the slandpoint of image rather rhan poin t,the olheI' alternarive, however, rhe dialeclic beeomcs a macro-cosmic realm of embodied meanings, symbols that stand forthemselves. Sueh an analysis beeomes, subject to the Iimita-tions inherent in image, a study of meaning. It is a scienceto the degree that one is willing to put by predictability andthe point-precision of reference for the self-evidence of mean-ings that are , to paraphrase an observat ion of Fel ix Mendels-sohn's , too definite for words.If macrocosmic forms may be distinguished from the mi-crocosm through their self-signification and broadened sensoryrange, they may be comrasted with (unmedia ted) physica lperception by the fac t r im they have signif icance . The signif-icance is of course highly particularized and bound up with thepercepts themselves, rather than determined by a coding ofabstract values, But is is no less sign ificant for ali of that, andi t i s certainly not the kind of simple, natural , or primi tivesignificance from which ausrra opirhecines 01' canny highpriests once derived language by a novel act of abstraction.And precisely because macrocosmic image is neither primitivenor derivat ive, we can conclude tha t forms such as graphic arl,poetry, music, and ritual are not either-they must be as old,as hasl ', anelas imporlam as langllar;e, for t hey are pari of t hesallle condition.

The confiation of aesthetic and everyday images impliedin rhis nOlion of significam perceplion may well seem peculiar01' even erroneous in view of our tendency to consider percep-t ion a natural , and art an artif ic ia l, acr . The discrimination andrecognirion involved in our orelinary apprehension-seeing,hearing, touching, and the general faculty that integrates these senses -of the world around us are cultural and symbolicaClivit ies. They ;Ire, at a vcry generallcvcl, cvery bit as cultural,and as natural , as Mozart' s composit ion of The Mam age oJF i-

TOO DEFINITE FOR WORDSgaro, 01' as my li stening to i t. The rea liza tion that this i sso doesnot render art mundane and ord inary any more than it trans-forms laundry Iists into poetry, though it may be helpful inunderstanding how art can be powerfu l and laundry lists lessso. Aesrhelic images l\; lvCthe salllc symbolic v;l1cnceas Ihoseof ordinary, signif icant perceprion: Ihey belong to lhe el imen-sion of self-signification. In the words of Victor Zuckerkandl:

What tones mean musica lly i s comple te ly onewith them, can only be represented through them.EXCeylin the case of crearive language ...and of poetic language, where other , more'musical' rclations come into play, languagealways has a finished world of th ings before it,to which i t assigns wordsj whereas Dnes mustthemselves create what they mean.14

The difference between ordinary perception and artistic cre-ativity is not that between a naturalistic sensing of the worldand an artificial, meaningful interpretation of that sensii1g,but rather it is a difference between one kind of meaningfuFactand another one , of greater concent ra tion, organizat ion, 'andforce, with in the same semiotic focus. The power of a greatmusic , of a compel ling tradition in poet ry 01' painting, is:thepowcr of conccnlraring and prec lI lpling, organiz ing, orchcs-tr ating , and distilling, the sign ificance that serves us in ourord inary apprehension of reality . Art is the burn ing glass ofthe sun of meaning. If this \Vere not so, i f rhe Iranscendenta lrealizations of art were not at the same time transcendentalreal izal ions of rea li ty, i l wOl lld scan:dy he necl' ssary to dis-qualify aesthetic conslruction as mere artifice 01' illusion.

The point is better made by reference to the his torical phe-nomenon of iconoc1asrn as itappcarcd in Byzantiurn, in Islarnicculture, and among the followers ofSavonarola and the EnglishPuritans. Each of these movements was fundamentalist inlhe sensc Ihat it was cornmitee l to lhe slatus of Holy Scriptureas the actual/ogos, 01' Word, of God 01' AlIah. It followed from

'4. ViclOr Zllck~rbndl, SOIl Sy ,l,o/- 1v11l.1 I ll / h 1~\ ,(rn,,1 If/orltl.t rans . W. R. Trask, Bol lingen S~r ies XLIV (Pr ince ton: Princeton Univers ityPress, 1969),67.

l

, I

IIIlIl

II 'I

I


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CHAPTER TWOthis commitmcnt, made emphatic often to the point of protest ,that the expallsioll of symbolic si~llificallcc imo macrocosmicrealizatioll became automatically, as it were, a precmpt ing ofdivine crcation. Macrocosmic symbolization, in a graphicallyrcprcscllIalillllal form, anelofll'n inlllhcr forms, slIch as elrama,as well, was illterdicled because the cullural dialcclic itsclf hadbeen sacrali i'. ed. Where word is holy reali ty , i ts expansion isdivine crcation.

Another historical example, that of the French impression-ists, shows that the lIlacrocosmic llalUrCof arl can be a seculardiscovery as wcll . There is a raising of consciousness re-garding the rclal ionship of paint ing to visual rcali ty that isdiscernible i ll lhe dcvclopmcll l of Weslern paill ting. lI COIJI-menced wi th the invcnt ion of a world space, continuedlhrough the awakening sclf-consciousness of art is ts who dis -covered brushstroke and the art of conceal ing art , to the crisis

~;of how to paint among the artists of France and the LowCountries in lhe lal ter IJalfof the nineteemh century. The issuewas no longer, as it had been for previous centuries, the evo-': 'cat ion of a sacred or secular world space, because the macro-. cosmic function of painting had been determined. The arti st, 'was in command of perception, because perception itself wassomething like paint ingj it was no longer necessary to rep-resent lhe truer real ity of the senses, but only to determinehow to paint, how to use the senses to create reality. Fromhere to the c1airnof the cubists, that their delineation of figuresin cubical form portrayed the true reali ty , WaSbut a s tep.Whether it deals in cubical realities, modulated tones, orthe verbally el icit ed conceit s of Shakespeare, art shares thequali tative (what neurophysiologists cal l the spatial ) sym-bology of perceptual exper ience. As a symbology the macro-cosm is impervious to systemization, for the simpIe reason thatit is already the kind of figuration that systematizing portends;to organize a percept into a system would involve a t ransfor-mation or metamorphoses, anel since transforrnation or meta-morphosis is si lJlply the means by which quali tative forms un-dergo change, one would merely exchange one percept foranolher. The problelJl is essl'lllially lhe salJll' as Ihal of glossing

TOO DEFINITE FOR WORDSa metaphor: the terms of the metaphor are themselves the gloss.Qne can, of course, eliscuss sensibly lhe impical io lls that mel-aphor has for the verbal, and this is largeJy what our l iteratureon metaphor involves. Qne can, similarly, discuss sens ibly theimplicaliolls of millTOl'osmic l'OllSlnlClioll ill gl'lll'rill fi,,' l'1I1-tural rcl ations, and this is what the present study is ali about.Dealing with pri'mitive elements that are themselves config-urat ions, our problem is ve ry much the opposit e of the semi -oti cist or structurali st, who seeks to dete rmine the mani foldsys tematics by which c1emell tal l I/ts are combilled so i1Stoconstruct complexity. Appropriate transformat ion ( how topaint ), rmher than accurate reconstruction (or deconstruction)i s IJIYgOit l, Like Goe lhe, who sought in his lheories of colorand plant metilmorphosis to est ilbJish a natural sciencc basedon the objectivi ty of sclf~evident forms and meanings, wc needto find the generic-in thi s case, tha t of cul tura l trilnsforma-tion-amid a welter of forms. Such a generic need not be adelerminant, or a picture, or a structure, of clllture, bllt ralherwhat we could cal l an image of our own interpretat ion, andhence of meilning.A single metaphor, regardless of i ts scope, invar iably pre-sents the enigma of what Freud cal led condensation I~-aricl'ness of potentially elicited analogies, ali at once, that makesthe rcading of the expression, or the flxing of i ts intent, amatter of the interpreter's own selection. I f we allow julesz' sarlogy of cyc opeiln perception, then the stereoscopic im-age projected in a metaphor wants iIconventional focal point.Thi s is i1n int rinsic property of embodied meaning, which i salways i ts own focal point , a point that only in some cases-the J imit ing cases where macrocosmic image approximates tothe microcosm-become conventional. And if wc shouldchoose to argue, as I have here, that the indica tive of conven-t ional reference, as ult imate subjunctive, is i tself a cer tainstrain of metaphor or trope, then the problem of condensedmeanings involves the conventional also.

11. Sip;munel rrcuel, The nll'rlwIQlinn Drla ,,' (l.onclon: TIIl Ill l ::t1 l1lPn~ss, 11) 13).


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160 Hoy W'II-:/Il'r, l.etl ,I,\i ,w/ IAm /I(yth eU .~y ,I,,,licOI.llll( (1Ih'K'I:Cornc:1 Univc:rsilY ('rt'ss, IlJ7H),ch;lplc:r I.

named, analogically opposite aspecls of the same sequencejbut for purposes of naming mld idenlif ic ;l lion the play of anal -ogy must stop somewhere, and so one is chosen.) Symbol asimal:f ;IS the c1icilalion of mllltiple, cOl1del1sedaJl;lIogy, hridgesbetween names as points of reference, bringing lhem into arclat ional f idd. The t ransit ion involved in expanding a meta-phor imo larger frames of cultural reference is a t ransforma-tional expansion through a relational f ield, but it is also con-tro lled by the exigencies of what I have called the gener ic,the holography of trope expansion that is the formal concom-itant of condensation.

If images and points of reference, macrocosm and micro-cosm, are indeed mediators, then they must achieve the ir s ig-n ification-and their very constitulion- in the act of media-tion. A point of reference issignifil


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in i s ) , the i s of the conventional references becomes i tsel fa metaphorica l as i f. This reversibi li ty amounts to superor-di nate pri ncipIe, the second-order trope of fi gure-ground re-versal , by which a percept ion can be i nverted wit h i ts percep-tual ground. Hence the dialectic is enabled by its reversibility,by the faet t hat -albeit di fferen ti al ly and in d iff erent ways-referential mieroeosm and embodied maeroeosm ean serve al -ternately as fi gure and ground to one ano ther.

Just as trope in our ordinary understanding amollnts to apereept ion within a f ield of eonventional referenee , 50 figure-ground reversa l i s the trope of perception. It applies the principieof tropc to tropc ilSdf, changing its oril nlalion, and IhllS hOlhenabl ing and bounding the seopeof obvia tion.

SOCIALCOLLECTIVITY

CONVENTIONAL

1..~+~.....~/,..,, ....0-, ..........::~.CONVENTlONAL

IMAGE...~ ~. .oz~~ ~ /.e; .. . . . ..~. l.

O ::::::::~)

IMAGE SOCIAL COLLECTlVITY

A. FORMATlON OFA CONVENTlONAL TROPE

FACTUAL

FACTUAL

8. FORMATION OF AN INDIVIDUATIVE (FACTUALI TROPE

FIGURE 3: Obviation as rncdialivc resolution.eonclllde this diseussion of the dialeetie by introdueing the firstand most immediately relevant of these, seeond-order t rope.

The revcrsibi li ty inherent in obvia tion-tha t the expansionfrom point to frame ean move from mierocosm to maeroeosmor from maeroeosm to mieroeosm-amount s to it s enabli ngeondi tion, the eharae te r of dialeet ic i tsel f. This ean be under-s tood in terms of the not ion of back metaphor, noted above:that when t he as if impli ed by a met aphor is est abl ished (as

articulation: it cannot, for they are not symbolic-we knowthem only through lhe mediat ion of cultural reference and cul -tural image. The fol lowing chapter presents an ethnographicexample of such a mediated dialeet ie , an obvia tion sequenee .The recursiveness of the dialec tic i tsel f, and the exte rna I polesof social col leCl ivi ty and embodicd faet l hat it medi at es, areeonsti tuted by exponential orders, or powers, of t rope. I shal l


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3 Metaphor Spread OutThe olography of Meaning

The tradi ti onal approach to ki nshi p st ud ies, establ ished byLouis Henry Morgan, lhas been to assume that cultures fitt hemselves i nto a reg ime of nat ural k insh ip, gi ven by thefact s of genea logy, by organi7.ing a ser of soc ia l roles thatdevel op i t i nto a system of i nst it uti ons, r igh ts, and marri agepracti ces. Whether t he gi veness o f nat ural k insh ip is as-sumed as an art icle offai th or as a useful heurist ic, i t furnishesan unexamined and prepackaged ground of diffe rentiat ion foran an thropol ogy thar would Ii ke t o limit i ts scope to t he srucl yof collectivities and their organization.

An analogic approach, by contrast, begins with the central ityof rel at ionshi p-t he fact t hat ali modes of reb ing are ba-s ic ;dly analogous-ancl asks how the c1i fferentiat ion of kincl sof relat ionships , imposed by culture, cont rols the f low of ana l-ogy among them. Ir may be culturally appropriate, for instance,for an unc le to ac t fatherly, or for a cousin to be a brotherjbut treating son or brother as lover or husband, or a motheror si st er as pammour belongs oft en to the inappropr iate l Iowof ; Il l; llogy that we cal l inces to Analogic kinship i s a mat te r ofrnaimaining a rnorally appropriate l low by balancing sirnilari tyagainst e1ifferentiat ion, keeping generarion from tlIrning imodegenerarion, as i t were.

The flow of analogy, the in terrelati on among known, con-ventional relat ionships, art iculates their sequentiali ty and sig-nif icance in terms of cul tural concept ions of ~enerat ion, nur-turance , or whatever other terms the myth ofl ife might assume.The lIow it self Ill ay be deal wit h, i n part , th rol lgh the modes

I Thc mos cXlcndcd and cllmpl'chcnsivc discussilln ()f lhis issllc is D vidM. Schncidcl s ti Crili l e ,{,h. S ,,1y Kill.lhil . (Ann Al'hor: Thc Univcrsity (lfMichi~ n IICSS, 1984).

34

METAPHOR SPREAD OUT

and protocols in which people relate to one another-taboos,avoidances, jokin~, reciprocity-but i ts m:ljor symbols :Ireusu-ally those of body subst:lnce, spiri t, or l ine:ll ity. Understood asa nat ive model o f an :l logic flow, these symbol s have l ess thecharacter of beliefs or supports of a structure than that ofmoti fs in a myth.

The Daribi myth or trope of life :lnd ~eneration, which Ishal l exarn inein t his chapt er, r eali zes it s tot ali ty as part of al arger set of i nterl inked tropes, not as a model o f marri age orsociety. Whatever orher significances they may be seen to have,for social , economic, or ecologica l, purposes , Daribi kin rela-t ionships derive their indigenous meanin~ fram the expansionof this trope.

We are dea ling, then, with relat ionship in depth rather thanwit h relati vesj more than t hi s, however, we are deal ing wi ththe relati ons among rel at ionshi ps, the regul arit ies t hroughwhi ch t hey are const it uted, t ransformed, and resolved . Theobjecti ve reali ty of such a regime of ki n const ructi on Ii es no tin it s referent s-concret e behavi ors, sets of people, or a'ctualgene f lows-but in the meani n~s, t he percept ions, that i r ' em-bodie l- ' in the course of i ts expansion into : I l ar~e-frame meta-phor. Let us now examine thi s expansion as i t occur s amongthe Daribi people of Papua New Guinea. ,:

Dar ibi k insh ip beg ins wit h t he act of bet rot hal, wi th ~re-strictive interdict ion of ali social recognition (ali direct relat-ing ) between a man (anel , usuall y, hi s male si bl ings) on ones ide, and his bet rothed anel her mother , on the other . They maynot speak to each orher, see each orher, lI tt er one anot her'sname or the name of the thing it refers to, or hear such a namespoken. The pr incipal parti es, the man and h is bet rathed'smother, are ( true ) au to each otherj al i interac tion betweenthem must be media ted and commuted to exchanges of wealth.An infringment of the interdict must be rect if ied by a smal l gif tof weai, l to the female aUi the betrothal i tself is formalizeel byt he present at ion of a si zabl e amol lm of rnal e goods to thewoman's l ine, and the retur tl of a smaller payment.

The interdict is a f l6sti tlltion of aflinal protocols, in thes trongest sense , those of complete avoielance, for whatever

36 CHAPTER THREE METAPHOR SPREAD OUT 37


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other relat ional analogies (such as their being friends, 01 distamsecond cOllsins) that l llay have prcviously involved the personsconcerned. This substitut ion, anelthe exchange through whichi t i s c ffectcd, establi shcs a convcnt ional rcst ri ct ion of soc ia lillleraclion, rccognition, and prcscnlation, a lllarked behavioralmicrocosl ll, al ll ong l he pr incipai s to l he belro lhal and theirdose kin . 1 shall speak of i t as sll bsti tu ti on A. In aelel it ion tothe au relat ionship, affinilY involves lhat among 1V~1I; a man(anel his brothers) anel lhe father (anel father 's s iblings) of hisbel rolhcd, a guarded relal ionship in which lhe rccc ivers of lhebetrothal show especial restraim aneleleference, anel the similarbUI less strongly emphasizeel batc relal ionship, bctween a man(anel his brolhers) anellhe siblings of his belrolhcel. Thc majorsanction on this microcoslll of relat ing through avoielance anelrespect is lhe social compromi se known as harc ( embarrass-ment, 01 perhaps shame : el el ineel a s that whi ch we feel i n::thepresence of w\li ), so l lluch so tha t the interel ic t might al sobe e lescribed as s imply lhe imposil ion ofharc.

Daribi marriages are traelil ionally initialeel by betrothal 01 subsequent ly t ransferred het rothal (49.6% in a sample of 702m;u'l'iages1), 01 by leviral ic transfer of wives (46.l l%), anelgirls. \vere often bet rothee l in infancy. Bet rothal s are saiel to be be-stoweel in relurn for wealth anel meat, anelthe expectation isthat a relalively constam supply of meat will lIow from therecei ver o f the betrothal to the gi rl's relati ves. An imagery ofmeat anel wealt h pervael es the whole affai r: t hase who givegenerously can expect ae le li tional wives fram the l ine of thei rlI li (16.7% of ali comracl ed mar riages after lhe fi na) , and atsome poi nt in the affai r t he bet rot heel shouldvisi t t he house-holel ofher future husbanel (chaperoned dosely by his mother)to see whether he is accumulating the bridewealth. Betrathal,then, amount s to the set ti ng up of an anal ogy of rel at ionshipthrough a flow of detacheel , partible wealth items, traelit ionallymeat anel pearlshells. This relat ionship of horizontally

1. The Slali sl ics presenled here were originally publi shed in Hoy Wagner ,Mal hemalical P redic lion of Pol ygyny l al es among l he Dar ib i o f Ka rimuiP ,l lrol Pnsl, Terri tory of P ilpua , lI1d New Guinea, a.,'ania 41, no. 3 (Mar ch1971). SOllle supplclllclllilry Slillislics werl' publishl'd );Iler in Hoy Wagner,Analngic Kinship; A O rihi EXillnple, AlIIt'f;can Erlrn gt nu. 4 (1977).

(

fl owing wealt h i s substi tu ted for t he expect at ion of ordinaryhuman interact ion tha t has been rest ri ctee l by the interdict , anelfor any f1ow of common substance that caulel be seen torelate the parties beforehanel. We can distinguish this analogicalconsequence of lhe interel ict from lhe verti cal l low of bodysubstance that is fel t to relate people. 1shall speak 01 lhi s assubstitution B; it contrasts with the conventional substitutionA in that it does not elirectly set up a social elislinction, butrather moelels relationship analogically.

Dari bi commonly speak of .the betrot hal of a waman as t hetaking of heI ' soul (noma 'sabo) bythe praspective husband'sl ine. A soul (noma' also means shaelow 01 refl ecti on ) i s apart ib le i denti ty , as the givi ng of meat anel wealt h i s part ib leanal ogy , anel the usage here is comparab le t o Mauss's no ti onof the M; jor i hau, as t he spi rit of a gi ft that compel s recip ro-cation.1 The lI'cgi oma' ( girl-soul ), then, is the social identityof the bet rat heel taken as a k ind of pl edge for heI' ul timatebestowal as a ret urn on t he prestati ons of meat and weal th, t heacknowlcelgmell t and affirmatioll of re\ ;l tionship as horizontalAow.

1 1 f I. 1 (I . I . fe ael o marnage, lI'C :oo t le tYlllg or lastelllllg othe woman, thus redeems the t:xpectat ion 01 elebt set up by theHow of presl ;l li ons. In so elo il lg it also gran ts the hori; ont alf10wa distinct gender polarity, it sexualizes it by establishinga two-way Aow of women (as female relat ives ofthe brielenowbecome Ilo rmat ively marri ageable i n t he same eli recti on) asaga il ls t meat and weal th. This substi tution, the convent iollalr il e of marriagc cxchal lge tha t I sha ll ident ify as subst itut iollc: condenses a ri ch spect rum of impli cati ons and perceptualpossibi li ti es into a single dramatic act .

The rit e consis ts of the presentat ion of the bride price beforethe bri des fat her's house, and i ts accep tance by the bri de. Thegroom and four ar five other men of his line assume an attirecalled the ogwanoma' (Ii terally boy-soul, but spoken as oneword): a covering of charcoal over the entire visible body, a

3. M rccl Mal lss, Tire C/fi l rans . lan Cllnnison (GIl'ncoe, 11I .:The FreeI 'ress, 19~4) . Sec Iso lhe e~lended disCIIssiol l of lhe Maori 11


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black, cassowary-plullle headdress, and contr asling whitc shelldecorations-the traditional male batde dress. The men as-sume a tense, rigid stance, in single file facing the house door,maintain complete silence, and each holds some 01' the pearlshells-traditionally the major component 01' the br ide pr ice-in the left hand, ,md a bow and sheaf 01' a rrows in the right.The bride emerges from the house splendidly attired, and walksdown the file, collecting the pearlshells from each man, andthen takes them to heI' father. As each man is refieved 01' h isshells, he takes one 01' the arrows into his left hand and snapsrigidly back to attention.

The boy-soul i s the l it eral countcrpart 01 ' the gi rl 's sou lthat is taken in betrothalj it is displayed on the very occasionwhen the girl's s oul, so to speak, is replaced by the girlherself, and the promise 01' a woman in return for a fiow 01'wealth is fulfiJled. But the oglVanoma itself is not transmittedbut mere ly displayedj it is the pearlshells that are transmitted,and when this Occurs they ar e ve ry ostentatiously replaced withan arrow. Unlike the girl-soul, the boy-soul is retained, andretained in a martial posturej moreover the formation assumedby the groom's party is that which serves the Daribi as a met-aphor for succession in birth order and fineafity (e tun hadli, and at his back is ... ). The groom 's party and lhe ogwal/omadramatize the continence 01' male vertical flow as against thehorizontal outfiow 01'male wealth. The bear ing and demeanor01' t he men, furthermore, suggest the contingency of this fiowjit is something to be def ended and sa feguarded.

The composi tion 01 ' lhe b ride pr icc and i lS COl ln lcr p reslal ionbOlh cmphasizcs this gcnder idcntilicalion and exposcs ls rel-,ltivity. The bridc pricc consists 01' ma/c wcalth-pigs, pcarl-shells, and adjuncts 01' m,de productive activity, sllch as axesand bushknivesj it is divided into two parts: were oromalVai( given without return for the woman )-the part that goesas compensation for the woman-and wepona siare ( womanpurchase-finished ) -the parr compt'nsatt'c1 for hy lhe relllrn. . I I 1 1 I 11 IpaYll1e lll glven Wll I I le WOll1an. IIS (owry, ca e( .I ogll ll-rema maho, cons is ts large ly 01'whol ly o rremate wealth, art ifac tsand/or adjll:


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provided by the woman in the conception 01 a ch ild. lt 1 01 1115the inner layer ofthe embryo: bones, viscera and other internalorp;ans, anel lhe circlllalOry syslem. Menstrllation rcleases pa-f., ckamiflc for procreative purposes.The crllcial elifference between these 1I11ielsnel the charac-terisitcs they objectify is the rclative contingency uf malenessand 01 a man s supply 01 kawa, and the re1ative sufficiency 01femaleness and 01 a womn s supply 01paf., ckamiflc. Quantities01 both fluids are necessary to the formation 01 an embryu, anelalthough the amount 01 blood in a woman s body is alwaysfel t to be suffic ient for this, the amount 01 seminal lIuid that aman receives from his father is never suflicient for conception,anel must be allp;mented. I t i s replenished and sllpplementedby the juices and fat 01 meat that i seaten, which enter the alJlI (/system (in a woman they are t ransformed into maternal milk).Meat is, therefore, the external complement 01 male reproduc-tive potential , i ts partible and portable accessory, and it is also,therefore, the link between horizontal and vertical analog icflow. The exigencies 01 acquiring, controlling, and assemblingmeat in the r igh t quantities at the right times, since these aC-tivit ies are social and reciprocal ones, make male physical con-tingency into a social contingency. The Daribi put itsuccinctly:we marry lhose (tines) wilh whom we do nol eat ml al.The conceplon anelbirth 01 offsprinp;, however, model whathas heretofore been negotiated in terms 01 external analop;y,the How 01 gifts 01 meat and wealth as against the gifts 01women and female goods, in terms 01 internal Aow-that 01bodily substance. Thc marriap;e that was enacll d solc1ythrough the reciprocation 01 horizontal Hows is now replicatedanalogical ly in the form 01 vcrtical flow, the substantial connec-tion 01 parent to offspring, and 01 lineap;e to lineap;e. Thus thesubstitution 01 internal, vertical flow for external, horizontalf10w (anel 01 a marriage 01 f1l1idsin tlll former for marrial~ein the \utter) elirectJy controverlS anel cancc1s lhe sense 01interdict at A, which was to abrop;ate any relationship betweenthe lines involved. We can, lhercfore, diap;ram lhis slIbstillllioll,D, directly above A, because although it represents the oppositedia lect ical mode, i t addresses the same isslle as A (fig. 5)

4

4

4tttt4tt41t~

FI(;UIIE 4: First c10surein lhe Daribi kinship scqucnce.

ayn\heala

/~~:~::~ ;I~ l.i

AInlerdlc\

CHAI TEH THHEE

metaphor 01 metaphoric crreet); it renders its eonstructions pro-gressivcly more obl ious as their cumulative medialions 01 theelialectic beco me inereasillgly rc1ative. /\s perceptual symboli-7.ations medialillp; within lheir OWII constilutive lIow, the stap;es01 obviation become perceptions within that 1I0w.The firsl c los1ll e i ll the seqlle llee 01 Daribi kin rela tionsestablishes analogic flow as the medium 01 kin construetion.But the point 01 c1osure, at C, also serves as a point 01 refereneemedia ting between two macroeosmic expressions, and there~fore leads to a new opening, via a Hegelian antithesis, atsubstitlltion D. This subst itut ion involves the procrea tive ac-

t ivity culminating in thc bir th 01 ofrspring, and is best l Indcr-stood via the Daribi no tion 01 conception. Daribi considermaleness to be an efrect 01 seminal f luid, kawa, contained andelevc\opeel wilhin a system 01 tlIbes (af., wa bafiO) and nodesagwa gc) that we know as lhe lymphalic syslem, anel lrans-mitted by a man in cOitllS. lt 1I0ws arollnd the blood in theuterus, anelfonns lhe oUler laycr 01 lhe embryo: lhe skin, eyes,tee th, and hai r, as wel1 as the Iymphat ic system and genital ia01 a man, and lhe lymphal ie sysll m and mammary glands 01 awoman. Femaleness is tonsidered to bc an effeet 01 maternalblood,paf., ckamiflc.contained within the circulatory system, and

II


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CIIAPTEIl TIIIlEE

Intlr 1 for t r 11flowl

43ETAPIIOH SI' Il EAD OUTof view one adopts, however, the anal~y scrves to relate thetwo linealities involved and to crode and render ambi ;uousany expression of thei r dist inctncss.

Thus an addilional convenlional reslriclion, or social pointof referencc, is neccssary to interdict lhe untempered f10w ofrelational analogy. This takes the form of a modeling of exter-nal, or horizontal, Aow upon internal (vertical) f10w as thegeneral social structural convention that I have called nor-mat ive pat ri liny ,'14 l t correlates the shanng of meat and wealthwith mal e substantial flow, and the exchanging of meat andwealth with female (pagekamlne) Aow. As the definitive socials tatement of geneler in relat ion to social cons li tl lt ion, i t opposesmale contingency-the necessity of men to pool and sharemeat and weal th for both social ane l physicaI procreat ion-tofemale sufficiency. The latter is manifested in the notion thatthe pagebidi have, by vi rtue of the bonel of base -b lood, a kindof primordial right to the child rim can be exercised by takingpossession of the child in case of default by lhe falher or, failingthat, by cursing the child with illness or death. .

Substitution E, internally motivated for externally motivatedexchange, carries a wiele range of social and perceptual impli-cations. As a conventional expression it forms a synthetic c10-sure to the thes is -ant ithes is sequence that begins wi th mar ri rigeat C; it organizes the two Aows, brought togcther at C, andinternalized at D, in terms of moral cont ingencies and priori ties .As the definition point for male contingency and female suffi-ciency, it provieles a retroactive motivation for the ogwanomadramati~ation at the marriage rite. (C). As a modeling of hor-iwntal Aow or exchange directly upon internal, subsliIntialf1ow, i t cont rover ts and cance ls su1>sli tu tion B, lhe setting upof a horizontal Aow In lieu efinternaJ or vertical Aow (fig. 6).Most sign ifican tly, i t o rgani~es lhe pagehabo payments that de-f ine l ineal ity as agains t relat ional ana logy, and the lev ira tic Aowof wi\jes lI ithin the Iineality. Finally, as il foslers a f ow of wiveswilhin lhe sharin~ unil, and a kind lI'sharin~ willl lhe IlIalemal

4, Hoy W;l~Ill'r, T/,( lllru or SOIlIl : I ri i / or /),,,i/,i Ct.1II /)4,,,ill;1II ,,,IAl/il1 ( (Chiea~o: Ullivl'rsilY (J Chic;l~ll lress, )67). '47-10,

FIGUIIE~: Cancellation af lhe illlerdicl.

e C mlrraagl: r clproclUon

l/ .............

ie _AInterdlct

is perceived as male by the wife-givers (who regard their sis-ters' chile lren attituelinally anel terminologically as lheir oll n)and fem;I e by the wife- t: lker s.

F rom its own point of view, each siele regarels the chilel tharforms the analo ;y as i ts own internal f1ow, thou~h convent ionalIIsal~e tl' l'als l\te I 'l 'sultill~ analo~y 1'1'0111 lhe viewl'oinl 01' lhewifc-tilkers, as a f10w of page~ al1/1ile, or maternal blood. Thechild's maternalline, represented p;enerally by iImaternaluncle ,, I } 1 I 'Y/I'I 'are IlS 1 l:e 11m, owners or >ase-peop e. W uc ICver POlllt

Substitution D corresponds to the median point of the se-quence, the s t: lte; lt which relat ionship, interd icted at the ol lt set ,comes into its own ;lJld be~ins to carry the externa I anal~y ofexch;lI1 ;e alon ; with ir. This substitution also compounds theperceived relalivi~;ltion noted in Subslitution C, for lhe relar iv-ity of male as against female Aow in that instance here becomesincarnate in the constitution of the cultural persona. The anal-ogy that links person to person, and unit to unit (and it mustbe kept in mind that every person represents such an analogy),

45METAI '1I 0H S I'HEAD OUTCIIAI'TEH TIIHEE


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II

case as a young man approaches adulthood, and begins toaSSlInl l' r l' sponsihi li ly for I ll aking his own paynl l' Jl ts , anel i scl llphas izeel in a popular cUslol ll . MosI Daribi cxchanges in-volve the rec iprocat ion of a smal le r prestat ion, cal lcd .ro{:lI'are-fila hy Ihc rccdvcrs 01' I hc Illain prcslalion. In lhc case 01' amale chi ld, however , the sogwarema wealth wil l often be with-held by the pa{:ehidi until the boy grows up and begins to as-sel l1ble his Iniele price , anel then be l ll rnecl over to him for thi spurpose. Even i f the sogwarema has not been withhcld, however,a request to the pagehidi for a bride price contr ibut ion shouldbe honored. However i t i smade, thi s cont ribution has the effectI . I . . I . Io turnmg exc Jangmg mto s lanng among lI1eage mates,particularly since bride-price contributlons are a significant in-dicator 01'such sharing.

Pagehaho models the exchange 01'wealth between units uponinternal t low (to the point 01'modeling the relat ivization 01'thisf low according to I ineal viewpoint) j the junior levirate modelsthe exchange aI' wi ves upon i nternal ana/ ogi c f10w lI /ihll theuni t. Moreover , t he norma t ive model upon which t he l ev iratei s organized emphasizes f lolV:wi fe (ar bet rothal ) inherit ancesholllcl proceecl Iineally (rom cicieI' to YOllnger. TIIl' clclest 01'aset 01 'male sib li ngs is referred t o as t he gominaihidi; the head h I Ian or source man, on t e ana ogy o a lI'( -gomo, or waterhead, the hei ght ar the source 01' a stream. (A f1ow f rol llfather to offspring is also encouraged, provided the WOlllandidnot nll rture the a tt er .) The flow does nOl a lways corresponclto this norll l (though statist ics indicate that i t cloes in a Illajority01' cases\) and there is a very small (3.8%) incidence 01' i n-her it ance between maternal unc le and nephew.

Sharing in Daribi exchange generally connotes the shar-ing (giving, tha t i s, without expec ta tion 01' immediate return)01'male wealth itemsj exchanging generally involves the giv-ing 01'such wealth against a perceived female t low. By the t imethe child conceived in substit ll tion D has reacheel aelulthooel,one has , even excluding such anoll lal ies as levirat ic exchange

5 floy Wil~ner, An;llnv;ie K)nship, 6}7. In iIs;lI11plenf 3?7Ievir;llie rrilns-fers, 116, ur 54.}%, involved innerililnce frum iInOl lllil tivl ' ypreferred sOlll 'ceof wives, 40, 01' 104'Yo, from a permissible blll nOI preferred sOllree, lhe orhersbein~ 100 disliIlll to lrilce 01';1I11hi~1I0IlSWilh re~;lrlllo normilliVl' SI;lIl1s.

Inlernll lor, , .r 11 flowDIIIIIIIIIIIII

1 rO~CIlV.E . .. ... .. . .. . .. . . . _. C r lc lp ro cll lo n D f moi Iv 1110 . .rn.lllo.1 I .I I ....1. I.... :I ~:I I .. ~..// ,-------_ ..A 8 horllont.1

Inl.,dICl f10w ( or ,.lllIon.Ihlpl

nl.rnlll) forlern.lI)moll ldIXchlngl

FI


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METAI'HOR SI'READ OUTCHAI'TER TIIREEbetween maternal uncle and nephew, a situation of sharingacross l ineal boundaries, and a fl ow of wives wit hi n mal e l in-ealilY. Relativization has reached the point where the normativea lip;nment of sharin~ and exchanp; ing with f low has been com-promised, because lhe IWOkinds 01' f10whave come to modclone another completely. Thus the perception 01'a rbit rar inessin the elisl inction between lhe kinds 01'flow, firsl encounteredin substitlllion C, hslilutionA. i t slallds in a Ill 'gativcor antilhelical relal ion to it; bUl il is,l iso, bccause 01'ilSposit ion

9METAI 1I01\ SI I\EAD OUTCIIAI TEI\ TIII\EE


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c.

\ ...,...,.1 ------_ ...~.unlv.,..1 1. :: 11 tlow horl~onl ltlow

t

rcproelucc hUlllan bcings by Illoving cxtcmally and invcrsclyto the ir own analogic f low.Substitution G forms thc synthetic c1asllre 01 the thircl c1ia-

Il~clicalIlleelialion in lhe Sl'


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METAPHOR SPREAD OUTexterna I t low, in F and exte rna I t low in l ieu 01' relat ionship, inB (fi~. 8).

Substitution G is c1~arly nO th~ r~sult 01'summation 01't h~ s~qu~nc~ as a whol~, but rat her a ki nd 01' u lt imate Iimit ,wh~r~ relat ivi1.ation has resonated through to an exh'lustion 01'i ts possibili ties. Ambiguous in that i t bO h referential ly negatesand negatively references A G i sa lso ambivalent in that i t bothm


30/32

9

II1I

FIGUIIE 9: Canccllation and axial cncompassmcllt.

D IIIIIcl01III=:~IIUl>f -: : >.:.A original Bmedlatlon

9A

replaceel the sel esA-E-C 01 in OlheI worels lhat the consli-tution 01 rclationship through conception and internal (vcrti-cal) analogy has encompassed the constitution 01 rclationshipthrollp;h external (hori; ontal) analo~y (fip;.C)B). lhe Illovelllent01 obviat ion here takes the form 01 a countercIockwisc twist 01

paradoxical poin t G is reached, at which poin t a double can-n lIalion (01 a cancdlatioll 0 canccllalion-lhe \. lIivaknt 01obviation) occurs.lI we follow the consecutive cancellations, D-A. E-E. and

1 -C, i t bccollles apparent that the Illeeliative serics /)-/: -1 has

in~ ( Illeanin~ consielereel as a perceplion in referential valucspace) solcly lhrollgh lheir i ll legralion wilhin lhe larger lrope.Any other consideration 01 them, for instance, as aspects 01 asocia l s truct l\ re , i s subsidiary to this point. Holop;raphy alsoimplies lhal linear corrdales 01 conelensalion c


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the axis of cancellation, until it reaches the paradox of self-encompassment G-D .

Each image of movemeOl presen ted t hus far has been di a-lec ti cal j forward movemenl has proceeded from pole 10 poleof lhe dialeclic until a poiOl of dialeclical coOlradiclion isreached: lhe original poiOl becomes

RoyWagner_Symbols0001

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