I was interested in the fact that the sacred items of the Baruya were so gendered. The discussion of how men stole the flutes from women, the ways in which different colors are associated with masculinity, and the desire to "re-engender" young boys all really seemed to indicate how much "things" cannot be separated from the identity of the group. On page 133, "Yet, though men managed to lay hold of women's powers, they were incapable for appropriating them fully. These powers remain fundamentally attached to women; it is in them that they have their primal, inalienable source. In reality, what men seized was merely the use of these powers, not their ultimate ownership. And because this right to usage was no given but was acquired by violent means, it must be kept through reiterated acts of violence." This section of the text showed how a physical thing can come to dominate the way a group of people behave, the myths they create about their past, and they way they see the world around them as functioning.
Perhaps one of the most grabbing aspects of Godlier’s work was his “objective” look at societies… to the extent that I feel that this paper may come off as rather offensive to someone who considers themself to be religious. He seems to be indicating that the divine is a purely human-made construct. One of my favorite parts of Chapter 2 was his connection between gift-giving and violence: “Thus the act of giving contains a violence...it carries the violence within itself and at the same time maintains it within certain boundaries, allowing it to be manifested in the public, political arena” (150-1). Western culture usually associates a very warm, friendly environment with gift-giving. But here, Godlier is explaining that giving a gift can be a challenge, or a debt to repaid. It may be non-antagonistic, but it can certainly carry a threat. I was also really intrigued by his examination of the sacred. If you ignore the fact that he seems to be claiming that the divine is a human-made construct (which is a very hard fact to ignore), it is interesting to think of this sort of split—the “normal” human into higher and lower parts: a divinity, and a subservient being. Furthermore, it is an intriguing idea that humans have an unfair gift-giving arrangement with the divine, where they are in a position which does not allow them to ever fully repay their debt. ~Samantha
My favorite part about Godelier's take on the human-object relationship is his suggestion that, though it is a 'human' quality that grants [sacred] objects their social power, that human aspect is necessarily invisible. With this invisibility, Godelier allows for a world where the sacred thing is actually an extension of (and structural building block for) humans' coexistance with other humans. But in order to maintain the social structure, the mechanism must appear to be there by its own machinations, untouched by individual, human interest. In other words, in projecting ourselves onto the material world (thus gods, animism, fetishism) we expose a somewhat egalitarian mindset. We do not believe one or the other human to be inherently better than another but for the objects that empower them - though those are really empowered by us! Society is fetishized by us, granted legitimacy by our belief in it, and then in turn comes to rule by virtue of itself. Godelier calls it a paradox and rightly so, we escape anarchy and tyranny by granting an outside force aspects of ourselves, to be tyrannical over us.
However I'm not sure what to make of the suggestion that [sacred] objects are powerful solely by virtue of their 'duplicate human' aspect. A tool, or a personal, non-sacred possession, these things I can understand in terms of the duplicate sense. The former is the citizen-gun, the monkey who can move a robotic arm with its brain. The latter is Becky's diary, or John's trophy - things which are undeniably, absolutely the other person's and no one else's, in a sense also an extension of their social entity. (Godelier talks about this too I think, with his remarks on religion as presenting man as a real-imaginary synthesis.) But the sacred object can't be the extension of an individual, we know this because of the necessary invisibility. Is it the extension of the group, of societal structure? Perhaps, in that a material object is only a material object until human belief makes it otherwise. But where does the crossover begin? Chicken or egg, does the object inspire belief or does the belief shape the object?
EDIT: wrote this before seeing Samantha's post but have to say she hits part of what I couldn't quite seem to get at (Godelier's acutely objective perspective) right on the nose.
Contrary to the modernist perspective that “a thing is a thing” and serves only to symbolize, Godelier contends (as I understood it) that such objects are more than (unconnected) mental constructions. In a similar characterization as Latour and Ingold, he portrays objects as inherently entangled with material reality in the present. For example, embodied in the sacred object is the men’s power, which is powerful only because it contains the women’s power (pg. 127). Inside the object (and outside), women’s power is entangled and interwoven with men’s. Only, the men have alienated the women from their powerful nature by concealing their knowledge of it. As related by Godelier through his retelling of Baruya myth, the men are aware of their connection and dependence on women, yet must hide it to preserve the hierarchal structure of society. The political ramifications are that the women are maintained as a subject of men and a subject of violence. By creating this artificial division/opposition, the men simultaneously protect themselves from the women’s power and maintain dominance over them. In this way, sacred objects are also Baruya men’s projections/extensions of themselves (137).
The sacred object is shown to be linked with a complicated network of relations (this idea brings back Latour’s genealogy of things). One example of this relationship might be illustrated by gift-giving of semen. A younger man does not return a gift to the older man who originally gave it to him. He can only re-give the gift at the initiation of a younger male generation. In this way, their gifts go on to shape subsequent young boy’s material conditions of existence. An entire relationship is inherited and spread and we can see how thought produces material things (the gift), and material things produce thought.
If we are to look at the gift as embodying these relations, we might see the process of change which led to such divisions of the object as external to man and vice-versa. This is where I find Godelier critique’s Mauss and Levi-Strauss very compelling.
What happens when his ideas are extended to capitalist systems? I know he hints at this kind of application in our reading, but it is still difficult for me to envision. What does an understand of the world in his terms look like if applied to ourselves?
There were a number of key points in Godelier that really stood out, in particular the over-arching idea that the role of objects is not a passive one but rather a very active one, one in which objects exist as both vehicles and symbols of power. They can stand in for other objects as well as for humans, but also transmit power from the imaginary world. As Godelier explains on page 161, if things are moving around (which they always are), there have to be fixed points to anchor on. He explains that this transmission is a complex ability that depends on the relationship between man and himself being materialized through objects. This permits that relationship to exist simultaneously in space and time.
In addition, his discussion of the political sphere came as a useful tool to understand the social reality in which all objects are a part. That social reality is governed by the imaginary that Godelier describes on page 134 as both a necessary condition for the construction of social reality and the infrastructure of that reality. This idea of social reality is an important one as it needs to incorporate both the seen and the unseen, the given and the not-so-obvioius.
While Godelier does a good job explaining the intertwined relationships of human and objects in time and space, The Enigma of the Gift lacks an exploration or analysis of the other side of his argument. That is, he explains the strength of objects, the type of objects that are sacred and/or valuable, but does not give enough credit or meaning to the everyday object, the object that is not given a specific ritualistic place within society but still holds more meaning than the average person might think.
With the vast networked array of nonhuman components present in any cultural system, the concept of property rights—that is, the agreed-upon appropriation of these networked artifacts to specific individuals or subgroups of individuals within the community—seems a practical necessity for any society hoping to avoid the confusion that attempting to manage these networks in their entirety would engender. Still, it is curious to consider the origin of these institutions of property, whose merit is derived solely from the fact that ‘this is how it is and has always been done.’
Godelier examines this phenomenon with his analysis of the Baruya 'kwaimatnie' appropriation rites as tied to a mythological-historical ‘always’ that, while it bears no direct relation to the current physical world, nevertheless directly legitimizes the ritual and lifestyle that have bound the community together in the gradual accretion of their unique cultural perspective.
These ritualized appropriation rites, associated with ‘law’, ‘tradition’, ‘social honor’ etc., for physical artifacts carry with them the simultaneous appropriation of the unique nonphysical properties each artifact possesses in terms of the specific influence it has on the human-nonhuman network it participates in. For example, consider the fortune- or healing-bestowing powers of early Christian relics as directly linked to the authority of the Church that owned them, or the power of a passport as an artifact mediator between governments on one’s behalf as belonging uniquely to one’s self.
As such, it is easy to see an artifact as the physical aggregate of a particular set of network-influences, which so grouped can be ‘owned’, or at least particularized to a group of individuals. But what of ‘property’ that has no physical icon or aggregate? For a particularly intriguing example, consider the Australian Aboriginal cultures, with their collective spiritual world-story— or ‘universe-history’, or whatever the right term would be— of the Dreamtime (also anglicized as ‘Everywhen’ or ‘Ever Unmade’). This history pervades, defines and interacts with the physical world, lending it all significance and allowing the interpretation of meaning from the connections that exist between the cultural mythos and the real world. These connections take the cultural form of ‘Dreamings’, which are particular stories or sets of specific, organized ideas that represent a direct connection between the physical and the mythological. Each Dreaming is highly specific, relating a particular place, action or component of cultural identity to a particular, defining spiritual context. Because of the strong aspects of personal identity connected with intimate knowledge of a Dreaming, they are treated very literally as intellectual property; owned by an individual, a family, or an entire people. One may never repeat someone else’s Dreaming without their expressed permission, as that Dreaming represents a very real part of its owner; being that part that allows the individual or group to network directly with the eternal spiritual context that legitimizes its very existence.
The rules of property that govern these Dreamings functions much as do those governing ‘intellectual property’ in many modern legal codes, though the consequences of ‘just ownership’ are very different in each case. Ownership of a Dreaming is an integral aspect of one’s identity, and preservation of ownership represents a defense of one’s cohesive self. On the other hand, corporate intellectual property (for example a pharmaceutical company’s ownership of an otherwise arbitrary chemical compound) bears no relation to any issue of identity, and is instead preserved out of a hope of depriving competition from whatever practical use can be derived from ownership. Certainly, then, the Aboriginal Dreamings are quite different from the modern idea of IP. Instead of acting as an ‘owner’ in the conventional sense (i.e. one who exerts his rights over an object to utilize its network influences), the owner of a Dreaming serves as its anchor and connection to the specific physical realities onto which it projects its significance. In a sense, then, the cultural owners of a Dreaming function as a networking agent between its context in the Dreamtime and its signifier elements in reality. In this case, since the Dreaming has no literal form or icon, the individuals who participate in it may themselves be viewed as a physical networking aggregate, since it is they who act to form the connections a Dreaming potentiates.
If this is true, and the person who ‘owns’ a Dreaming is in fact its physical artifact effector, then it is reasonable to posit that it is in fact the Dreaming that owns this person, and not the other way around.
Like Emily, I was really fascinated with the discussion of the gender of the objects- and how reflective and causal this gender is of 'real time'- of ongoing relations and subordinations in society. The women are essentially alienated from their own powerful role in society through their alienation from these objects, which were originally theirs. The sacred objects explain the origins of human power structure and serve to legitimize the continuing structures, as upheld by physical and mental violence. One thing that I kept thinking about is the notion that humans themselves can be objects as well as objects being human. The dried fingers of Bakitchatche are a prime example. Over time, this part of his being, his very flesh, has turned into a sacred object. Across societies and religions we see the body parts separated from the human and fetishized. Bones can be sacred. In Christianity wine, which IS the blood of Christ to believers if even only through symbolic power performs this same function. This act of the human becoming a sacred object illuminates another way in which lines between human and nonhuman are blurred... This obviously isn't the focus of our discussion now but its something that stayed with me as I read... I agree with Perri,also, that something very important has been ignored so far.. the everyday object as vitally essential. I'm sure we will come to discuss this, but that also stood out to me. If the sacred object is this important to the GROUP, what of the everyday carries the same level of importance to the individual...?
Godelier stated that the strength of objects (he deals particularly with those that are sacred) lies in their ability to "represent the unrepresentable" (109); to be the meeting place of the real and the imaginary in social relations. Working through this claim he discusses, with regard to the Baruya and in general, aspects and roles of sacred objects. One of these is that they are inalienable, withheld from exchange, meaning that objects and their powers cannot be separated from each other or their owner and it is only the effects of these powers that are meant to be shared amongst society. Sacred objects can also be the scene for transfers of power in social and political relations. For example, the flute that represented and contained the women's creation and life powers was taken by the men and appropriated into their system thereby changing the social hierarchies surrounding gender. Godelier spends a lot of time discussing gender relations around the objects. Because the men see themselves as being both genders through their control of sacred objects and knowledge, it becomes legitimate for them to represent both sides and use violence to ensure the power never returns to its actual form in women. Here these objects become the ground for the realization of imaginary truths that occur from religion and history through myths. The objects stand for something that cannot be seen explicitly and therefore are held in high esteem; through human interaction and personification with them they become a way of validating the imaginary through the integration with the real.
I suppose Godelier is trying to make a point here about the presence and weight of objects in our lives. He makes this clear, although maybe a big stretched and generalized. I guess through our interactions with objects we legitimate the beliefs and structures that we see as being true and making up us and society. We put us into the objects and then have a solid ground for believing what we believe. Is this perpetuating the status quo? If so, how do we become aware of the life of objects enough to be fully conscious of their affects?
Godelier states; "when a supernatural origin is imagined for the social sphere, the social becomes sacred, and society is legitimized as it stands." This rings true in today's society, and I would love to understand more of the reasons for this. Why does it seem easier for people to believe in Gods and divine intervention then theories that are based on physical evidence? The men of the Baruya held authority over the creation myths of their people, not unlike the most popular creation myths people believe today. This was obviously their way of subduing the women. This reminds me of a women's studies class I took where the first reading was of Genesis and how the story was told that way because men were afraid of women's power to reproduce and so they needed to reverse the order and have eve (women) come out of mans body (rib). This story, as we all know, has been a penetrating force impacting male female relations to this day. This is no different than how the Baruya's myth dictates their politics and relations with eachother. What's interesting as relevant to this course is that the Baruya and the modern day western society both have objects that stand as reminders of these creation stories. For example, who can look at an apple and not think of Adam and Eve?
I thought readings by Godelier provided some very provocative insights and arguments about humans and the objects that co-exist in society, particularly within the Baruya community. Moreover, his critique of Mauss' "The Gift" also left me wondering about the "imaginary" meanings that are endowed to an object that serves as a "gift" to another person. Godelier writes, "In short, every social order needs to invent a social and material device which will produce and maintain the (partially illusory) representations that every society generates of itself and of other societies" (152). My understanding of the point that Godelier's trying to make, is that within the context of the social there are objects, "material devices," that aid to constitutes the social order and social relations. For example, the flutes of the Baruya society which use to belong to the women but now lay in the hands of the men. According the myths that surround the origin of the flute, women are the true owners of the power that are endowed in this object, the men only have been a right to use these powers. And because of this right, the men hold a dominating power over the women. It is as if the mythical, or illusory, stories that make up the flutes existence constitutes the object as maintaining order in the Baruya society, in particularly with women. I am not sure if my reading of Godelier's writings is correct. Yet, I do see that this notion of “illusory" meanings of objects are purely social constructions of any given society. This makes me think of consumerism in the sense of different brands and labels, particular in clothing apparel. That is, for example, the label of Chanel, or Coach takes on a meaning that is purely socially constructed in Western (and perhaps non-western) societies, and that meaning is one of status and worth. Whereas, in society similar to the Baruya, this label adds no meaning or definition to a person. I know that may be a bit of a stretch in trying to compare Godelier's analysis of the Baruya society with our own....
For the first few pages of Godelier, I couldn't see what connected his ideas with the concept of posthumanism, but pages 134 through 138 brought it all together for me. The idea of things (non-humans) substituting for humans suggests the question of the definition of "human." Where is the line between human and sacred object? Godelier looks at the way different societies, and societies universally, imagine a sacredness in things, partially by projecting aspects of humans onto things. Godelier posits that "Men ultimately find themselves alienated to a material object which is none other than themselves, but an object into which they have disappeared, in which they are necessarily and paradoxically present through and by their absence" (137).
Godelier writes that "man's double existence, the inversion of relations beween subject and object, between the individuals who produce and their products, can be seen in two principal areas: the economic sphere...and the political sphere" (137). I started thinking about how this idea of "the projection onto things" could apply to other sorts of object relations in contemporary society (136). I was surprised by how many examples sprang to mind. Money is the obvious example of a Thing endowed with such personal significance and power that it can enslave, ruin, rescue or authorize nearly anyone. In some senses the human body is a Thing, and to a great extent, bodies (their colors, shapes, sizes) speak for people and can even drown out the very person that the body is supposed to represent or house. Medications - insulin, antidepressants, painkillers, antiretroviral drugs - are also things that represent aspects of humans and, in doing so, in representing human health and well-being and life, can come to "imprison" humans, in that they create a literally vital dependency (136). (My first response to the question, during our first class meeting, of a thing without which my life would be radically different, was Prozac. I was embarrassed to say so in class... love those SSRIs though.) Then there is the whole slew of other Things with which we define ourselves and others - clothing, houses, cars, engagement rings, yarmulkes, body jewelry - and which can come to control and encompass people, such that people believe that they have to modify these Things before they themselves can change.
Like Emily and some of the other commenters, I found the gendered nature of the Baruya sacred objects very interesting. The way that Godelier wrote about Baruya men seeking not only to dominate women but to encompass them, sounds similar to the way that things not only come to represent aspects of people but also "alienate" and "disappear" those people. If I'm understanding Godelier, one inference from these two parallel processes of "encompassing" could be, roughly, men::women as things::humans. This led me to wonder whether the violence that (Baruya) men use against women to enable this encompassing, is also at work in the encompassing between things and humans.
That's the question I want to ask all of you: Is there violence in the encompassing of humans by things, as there is violence in the encompassing of women by (Baruya) men? And if there is violence between things and humans, which party is committing the violence, the things against the humans or the humans against the things?
I've been reading Geertz, Mauss, and Lévi-Strauss in some of my other anthropology classes (Interpretations of Culture, Ethnographic Imagination); funny how in those courses, students often take concepts at face value; but after taking this class my perception has changed completely. The feeling is both amusing and perturbing.
Unlike Ingold's overturning of Geertz last week, Godelier does not so much defeat Mauss' argument (whom he focuses on more than on Lévi-Strauss') as builds upon it by discussing what Mauss lacked ("a more accurate reconstruction of the sociological basis for the way a certain type of objects circulated" and "[a working] back to the sources of these meanings, to their role in the production and legitimation of a social order" - 151).
At the beginning of Chapter 2, I took interest in the descriptions of the Baruya objects (kwaimatnie, the bull roarers) without fully understanding their importance. However, I understood greatly after reading "Hypothesis on the emergence and the development of potlatch societies", because it is in this section that Godelier draws nearer to the chapter's title, Substitute Objects for Humans and Gods. Here, he discusses the exchange of valuables and pigs for women ("on the one hand, we have persons, on the other all sorts of 'things' which function as substitutes for these persons" - 147). Mauss may have observed that exchange is taking place in a potlatch society, but Godelier goes deeper by claiming that there are a few conditions under which a potlatch society can occur: 1) in kinship, marriage is not implemented through the direct exchange of women, and bridewealth replaces sister exchange 2) political-religious power exists in various rankings, is not hereditary, and is open for people to establish superiority by outdoing their rivals in gift-exchange (147).
In the chapter, Godelier also argues that these systems (substituting objects for humans and gods) arise out of subconscious thought. My main concern, however, is that if (according to Evans-Pritchard) subconscious mannerisms are deemed useless when brought into consciousness, then how effective is Godelier's argument and how does it affect societies which work under the potlatch system and whose members actually believe that they are controlled by higher powers (that are merely extensions of them selves)?
I was particularly intrigued by Godelier's statement, "The imaginary past of the origin of things is still present because it has become the foundation of the cosmic and social order, an invisible reality, but one which is co-present in the present." (124)in that it conjures an image of an "invisible reality" in which governs the order of things present which are not fixed, and in that sense perhaps not as "real". The idea that the objects and people serve as a medium through which this mythic force conducts its cultural choreographies becomes especially complex when thinking about "sacred" objects that "may not be given" and objects that have been present for longer than the people have been present. Lastly, I tried to project this image upon our technologically saturated environments and power-on/off daily rituals and how the idea of "virtual reality" or wireless networks can map itself upon the notion of "invisible reality" and the realms of the spirit. Could our ringing/vibrating cellphones be imagined as modernity's bull-roarers or magic flutes? Clearly this is far from a parallel situation however I am trying to grapple with Godeleir's description of what is considered sacred, versus being precious, in in our price-tagged object-full lives. Whether or not we as humans value our own objects differently than the cultural/capitalism standardized value and what kind of inalienable items do we find in our culture that cannot be given. Godelier emphasizes the gift giving process, along with any other sort of order establishing/allocating ritual, as being a highly intricate dance of power that is never symmetrical. He illuminates how that the roles of men and woman and their specific powers are simultaneously woven together, and harnessed (by the men), to establish a stable social order. As if establishing some thing's position by a process of osmosis rather than delineation or complementation, Godelier states that "for one of the terms opposes the other by subordinating it, and therefore, in a certain fashion, by encompassing it." (130) I believe this thesis elucidates the structure of the dynamics embodying the gift giving, the origin myths, and the establishment of hierarchical powers in society. This understanding also reveals how objects and people can become de-objectified and re-objectified depending upon the orientation and observed instance during the exchange. Godelier points out "Stealing is the opposite of giving. But behind the gift and the theft lies the same logic."(133)and it is precisely this logic that allows for relationships on any scale, whether person or object, to remain necessarily in fluctuating state of being, not just amongst each other but also with each other.
Godlier blew me out of the water. I was really impacted by the discussion of sacred objects, namely the claim that objects make humans strangers to themselves and their origins. I've been mulling over this idea all day and still have very scattered thoughts and reactions, so I'll try to sum up my response without being too sporadic.
Godlier basically says that sacred objects stand in as imaginary people, fostering the idea that real humans are lost within a material society-- both to the collective and to the individual. In fact, he contends that we become unrecognizable to our real selves and unable to comprehend (or remember?) our true and pure origins. He presents a myth of the erasure of origins, in which we trade the consciousness of our origins for societal living, and are transformed via objects into imaginary, constructed humans.
I was also really intrigued by the way Godlier tapped into the dichotomic aspect of human life and the human mind: space vs. time, real vs. imaginary, conscious vs. unconscious. Like I said, I'm still thinking alot of this over, but I'm really intrigued by the idea of the imaginary human, the acted-upon, unconscious human, and interested in thinking about how much of ourselves we've forgotten.
One thing I found particularly interesting in the Godelier reading was the secret names that the Baruya have for certain objects, such as the sun (Kanaamakwe.) Godelier talks about how this plays into the first form of gift-giving in Baruya society, the form “in which the recipients (gods, spirits) dominate the donors (humans) because they will always be superior for having given the kwaimatnie, the secret knowledge, and so forth.” I’m a little confused as to how secret knowledge supports this relationship between recipient and donor. Perhaps it has something to do with maintaining the imagined supernatural origin of the Baruya, which Godelier says is necessary for societies to accept and reinforce social realities?
I was also struck by Godelier’s description in the section about what the Baruya keep that describes how the “dried fingers of the right hand” of Bakitchatche, a Baruya hero, are considered sacred objects. This image reminded me of a comic I had recently read: http://www.tmopmo.com/?id=17, In the comic (in the second square) a guy imagines the possibility of staging an “elaborate romantic gesture” to win his girlfriend back. The elaborate gesture includes the construction of a teddy bear out of his own skin. In the imagined scene, the guy says “Look! I made you a teddy bear out of my own skin! It’s stuffed with my feelings! Love me again!” While this obviously is a joke about the contrived romantic gestures in films, I thought it included some underlying assumptions about sacred objects. Sort of like the Baruya, who believe that objects such as a dried fingers contain the spirit of the person to whom they belonged, our society does acknowledge a relationship between spirit and bodily objects. Again, while it is simply a joke that the teddy bear made out of skin is stuffed with feelings, the skin-teddy bear imbued with feelings struck me as similar to dried fingers imbued with a spirit or power.
16 comments:
I was interested in the fact that the sacred items of the Baruya were so gendered. The discussion of how men stole the flutes from women, the ways in which different colors are associated with masculinity, and the desire to "re-engender" young boys all really seemed to indicate how much "things" cannot be separated from the identity of the group. On page 133, "Yet, though men managed to lay hold of women's powers, they were incapable for appropriating them fully. These powers remain fundamentally attached to women; it is in them that they have their primal, inalienable source. In reality, what men seized was merely the use of these powers, not their ultimate ownership. And because this right to usage was no given but was acquired by violent means, it must be kept through reiterated acts of violence." This section of the text showed how a physical thing can come to dominate the way a group of people behave, the myths they create about their past, and they way they see the world around them as functioning.
Perhaps one of the most grabbing aspects of Godlier’s work was his “objective” look at societies… to the extent that I feel that this paper may come off as rather offensive to someone who considers themself to be religious. He seems to be indicating that the divine is a purely human-made construct.
One of my favorite parts of Chapter 2 was his connection between gift-giving and violence: “Thus the act of giving contains a violence...it carries the violence within itself and at the same time maintains it within certain boundaries, allowing it to be manifested in the public, political arena” (150-1). Western culture usually associates a very warm, friendly environment with gift-giving. But here, Godlier is explaining that giving a gift can be a challenge, or a debt to repaid. It may be non-antagonistic, but it can certainly carry a threat.
I was also really intrigued by his examination of the sacred. If you ignore the fact that he seems to be claiming that the divine is a human-made construct (which is a very hard fact to ignore), it is interesting to think of this sort of split—the “normal” human into higher and lower parts: a divinity, and a subservient being. Furthermore, it is an intriguing idea that humans have an unfair gift-giving arrangement with the divine, where they are in a position which does not allow them to ever fully repay their debt.
~Samantha
My favorite part about Godelier's take on the human-object relationship is his suggestion that, though it is a 'human' quality that grants [sacred] objects their social power, that human aspect is necessarily invisible. With this invisibility, Godelier allows for a world where the sacred thing is actually an extension of (and structural building block for) humans' coexistance with other humans. But in order to maintain the social structure, the mechanism must appear to be there by its own machinations, untouched by individual, human interest. In other words, in projecting ourselves onto the material world (thus gods, animism, fetishism) we expose a somewhat egalitarian mindset. We do not believe one or the other human to be inherently better than another but for the objects that empower them - though those are really empowered by us! Society is fetishized by us, granted legitimacy by our belief in it, and then in turn comes to rule by virtue of itself. Godelier calls it a paradox and rightly so, we escape anarchy and tyranny by granting an outside force aspects of ourselves, to be tyrannical over us.
However I'm not sure what to make of the suggestion that [sacred] objects are powerful solely by virtue of their 'duplicate human' aspect. A tool, or a personal, non-sacred possession, these things I can understand in terms of the duplicate sense. The former is the citizen-gun, the monkey who can move a robotic arm with its brain. The latter is Becky's diary, or John's trophy - things which are undeniably, absolutely the other person's and no one else's, in a sense also an extension of their social entity. (Godelier talks about this too I think, with his remarks on religion as presenting man as a real-imaginary synthesis.) But the sacred object can't be the extension of an individual, we know this because of the necessary invisibility. Is it the extension of the group, of societal structure? Perhaps, in that a material object is only a material object until human belief makes it otherwise. But where does the crossover begin? Chicken or egg, does the object inspire belief or does the belief shape the object?
EDIT: wrote this before seeing Samantha's post but have to say she hits part of what I couldn't quite seem to get at (Godelier's acutely objective perspective) right on the nose.
Contrary to the modernist perspective that “a thing is a thing” and serves only to symbolize, Godelier contends (as I understood it) that such objects are more than (unconnected) mental constructions. In a similar characterization as Latour and Ingold, he portrays objects as inherently entangled with material reality in the present. For example, embodied in the sacred object is the men’s power, which is powerful only because it contains the women’s power (pg. 127). Inside the object (and outside), women’s power is entangled and interwoven with men’s. Only, the men have alienated the women from their powerful nature by concealing their knowledge of it. As related by Godelier through his retelling of Baruya myth, the men are aware of their connection and dependence on women, yet must hide it to preserve the hierarchal structure of society. The political ramifications are that the women are maintained as a subject of men and a subject of violence. By creating this artificial division/opposition, the men simultaneously protect themselves from the women’s power and maintain dominance over them. In this way, sacred objects are also Baruya men’s projections/extensions of themselves (137).
The sacred object is shown to be linked with a complicated network of relations (this idea brings back Latour’s genealogy of things). One example of this relationship might be illustrated by gift-giving of semen. A younger man does not return a gift to the older man who originally gave it to him. He can only re-give the gift at the initiation of a younger male generation. In this way, their gifts go on to shape subsequent young boy’s material conditions of existence. An entire relationship is inherited and spread and we can see how thought produces material things (the gift), and material things produce thought.
If we are to look at the gift as embodying these relations, we might see the process of change which led to such divisions of the object as external to man and vice-versa. This is where I find Godelier critique’s Mauss and Levi-Strauss very compelling.
What happens when his ideas are extended to capitalist systems? I know he hints at this kind of application in our reading, but it is still difficult for me to envision. What does an understand of the world in his terms look like if applied to ourselves?
There were a number of key points in Godelier that really stood out, in particular the over-arching idea that the role of objects is not a passive one but rather a very active one, one in which objects exist as both vehicles and symbols of power. They can stand in for other objects as well as for humans, but also transmit power from the imaginary world. As Godelier explains on page 161, if things are moving around (which they always are), there have to be fixed points to anchor on. He explains that this transmission is a complex ability that depends on the relationship between man and himself being materialized through objects. This permits that relationship to exist simultaneously in space and time.
In addition, his discussion of the political sphere came as a useful tool to understand the social reality in which all objects are a part. That social reality is governed by the imaginary that Godelier describes on page 134 as both a necessary condition for the construction of social reality and the infrastructure of that reality. This idea of social reality is an important one as it needs to incorporate both the seen and the unseen, the given and the not-so-obvioius.
While Godelier does a good job explaining the intertwined relationships of human and objects in time and space, The Enigma of the Gift lacks an exploration or analysis of the other side of his argument. That is, he explains the strength of objects, the type of objects that are sacred and/or valuable, but does not give enough credit or meaning to the everyday object, the object that is not given a specific ritualistic place within society but still holds more meaning than the average person might think.
(on the long side. sorry, bear with me)
With the vast networked array of nonhuman components present in any cultural system, the concept of property rights—that is, the agreed-upon appropriation of these networked artifacts to specific individuals or subgroups of individuals within the community—seems a practical necessity for any society hoping to avoid the confusion that attempting to manage these networks in their entirety would engender. Still, it is curious to consider the origin of these institutions of property, whose merit is derived solely from the fact that ‘this is how it is and has always been done.’
Godelier examines this phenomenon with his analysis of the Baruya 'kwaimatnie' appropriation rites as tied to a mythological-historical ‘always’ that, while it bears no direct relation to the current physical world, nevertheless directly legitimizes the ritual and lifestyle that have bound the community together in the gradual accretion of their unique cultural perspective.
These ritualized appropriation rites, associated with ‘law’, ‘tradition’, ‘social honor’ etc., for physical artifacts carry with them the simultaneous appropriation of the unique nonphysical properties each artifact possesses in terms of the specific influence it has on the human-nonhuman network it participates in. For example, consider the fortune- or healing-bestowing powers of early Christian relics as directly linked to the authority of the Church that owned them, or the power of a passport as an artifact mediator between governments on one’s behalf as belonging uniquely to one’s self.
As such, it is easy to see an artifact as the physical aggregate of a particular set of network-influences, which so grouped can be ‘owned’, or at least particularized to a group of individuals. But what of ‘property’ that has no physical icon or aggregate? For a particularly intriguing example, consider the Australian Aboriginal cultures, with their collective spiritual world-story— or ‘universe-history’, or whatever the right term would be— of the Dreamtime (also anglicized as ‘Everywhen’ or ‘Ever Unmade’). This history pervades, defines and interacts with the physical world, lending it all significance and allowing the interpretation of meaning from the connections that exist between the cultural mythos and the real world. These connections take the cultural form of ‘Dreamings’, which are particular stories or sets of specific, organized ideas that represent a direct connection between the physical and the mythological. Each Dreaming is highly specific, relating a particular place, action or component of cultural identity to a particular, defining spiritual context. Because of the strong aspects of personal identity connected with intimate knowledge of a Dreaming, they are treated very literally as intellectual property; owned by an individual, a family, or an entire people. One may never repeat someone else’s Dreaming without their expressed permission, as that Dreaming represents a very real part of its owner; being that part that allows the individual or group to network directly with the eternal spiritual context that legitimizes its very existence.
The rules of property that govern these Dreamings functions much as do those governing ‘intellectual property’ in many modern legal codes, though the consequences of ‘just ownership’ are very different in each case. Ownership of a Dreaming is an integral aspect of one’s identity, and preservation of ownership represents a defense of one’s cohesive self. On the other hand, corporate intellectual property (for example a pharmaceutical company’s ownership of an otherwise arbitrary chemical compound) bears no relation to any issue of identity, and is instead preserved out of a hope of depriving competition from whatever practical use can be derived from ownership. Certainly, then, the Aboriginal Dreamings are quite different from the modern idea of IP. Instead of acting as an ‘owner’ in the conventional sense (i.e. one who exerts his rights over an object to utilize its network influences), the owner of a Dreaming serves as its anchor and connection to the specific physical realities onto which it projects its significance. In a sense, then, the cultural owners of a Dreaming function as a networking agent between its context in the Dreamtime and its signifier elements in reality. In this case, since the Dreaming has no literal form or icon, the individuals who participate in it may themselves be viewed as a physical networking aggregate, since it is they who act to form the connections a Dreaming potentiates.
If this is true, and the person who ‘owns’ a Dreaming is in fact its physical artifact effector, then it is reasonable to posit that it is in fact the Dreaming that owns this person, and not the other way around.
--ryder onopa
Like Emily, I was really fascinated with the discussion of the gender of the objects- and how reflective and causal this gender is of 'real time'- of ongoing relations and subordinations in society. The women are essentially alienated from their own powerful role in society through their alienation from these objects, which were originally theirs. The sacred objects explain the origins of human power structure and serve to legitimize the continuing structures, as upheld by physical and mental violence.
One thing that I kept thinking about is the notion that humans themselves can be objects as well as objects being human. The dried fingers of Bakitchatche are a prime example. Over time, this part of his being, his very flesh, has turned into a sacred object. Across societies and religions we see the body parts separated from the human and fetishized. Bones can be sacred. In Christianity wine, which IS the blood of Christ to believers if even only through symbolic power performs this same function. This act of the human becoming a sacred object illuminates another way in which lines between human and nonhuman are blurred... This obviously isn't the focus of our discussion now but its something that stayed with me as I read...
I agree with Perri,also, that something very important has been ignored so far.. the everyday object as vitally essential. I'm sure we will come to discuss this, but that also stood out to me. If the sacred object is this important to the GROUP, what of the everyday carries the same level of importance to the individual...?
Godelier stated that the strength of objects (he deals particularly with those that are sacred) lies in their ability to "represent the unrepresentable" (109); to be the meeting place of the real and the imaginary in social relations. Working through this claim he discusses, with regard to the Baruya and in general, aspects and roles of sacred objects. One of these is that they are inalienable, withheld from exchange, meaning that objects and their powers cannot be separated from each other or their owner and it is only the effects of these powers that are meant to be shared amongst society. Sacred objects can also be the scene for transfers of power in social and political relations. For example, the flute that represented and contained the women's creation and life powers was taken by the men and appropriated into their system thereby changing the social hierarchies surrounding gender. Godelier spends a lot of time discussing gender relations around the objects. Because the men see themselves as being both genders through their control of sacred objects and knowledge, it becomes legitimate for them to represent both sides and use violence to ensure the power never returns to its actual form in women. Here these objects become the ground for the realization of imaginary truths that occur from religion and history through myths. The objects stand for something that cannot be seen explicitly and therefore are held in high esteem; through human interaction and personification with them they become a way of validating the imaginary through the integration with the real.
I suppose Godelier is trying to make a point here about the presence and weight of objects in our lives. He makes this clear, although maybe a big stretched and generalized. I guess through our interactions with objects we legitimate the beliefs and structures that we see as being true and making up us and society. We put us into the objects and then have a solid ground for believing what we believe. Is this perpetuating the status quo? If so, how do we become aware of the life of objects enough to be fully conscious of their affects?
Godelier states; "when a supernatural origin is imagined for the social sphere, the social becomes sacred, and society is legitimized as it stands." This rings true in today's society, and I would love to understand more of the reasons for this. Why does it seem easier for people to believe in Gods and divine intervention then theories that are based on physical evidence? The men of the Baruya held authority over the creation myths of their people, not unlike the most popular creation myths people believe today. This was obviously their way of subduing the women. This reminds me of a women's studies class I took where the first reading was of Genesis and how the story was told that way because men were afraid of women's power to reproduce and so they needed to reverse the order and have eve (women) come out of mans body (rib). This story, as we all know, has been a penetrating force impacting male female relations to this day. This is no different than how the Baruya's myth dictates their politics and relations with eachother. What's interesting as relevant to this course is that the Baruya and the modern day western society both have objects that stand as reminders of these creation stories. For example, who can look at an apple and not think of Adam and Eve?
I thought readings by Godelier provided some very provocative insights and arguments about humans and the objects that co-exist in society, particularly within the Baruya community. Moreover, his critique of Mauss' "The Gift" also left me wondering about the "imaginary" meanings that are endowed to an object that serves as a "gift" to another person. Godelier writes, "In short, every social order needs to invent a social and material device which will produce and maintain the (partially illusory) representations that every society generates of itself and of other societies" (152). My understanding of the point that Godelier's trying to make, is that within the context of the social there are objects, "material devices," that aid to constitutes the social order and social relations. For example, the flutes of the Baruya society which use to belong to the women but now lay in the hands of the men. According the myths that surround the origin of the flute, women are the true owners of the power that are endowed in this object, the men only have been a right to use these powers. And because of this right, the men hold a dominating power over the women. It is as if the mythical, or illusory, stories that make up the flutes existence constitutes the object as maintaining order in the Baruya society, in particularly with women. I am not sure if my reading of Godelier's writings is correct. Yet, I do see that this notion of “illusory" meanings of objects are purely social constructions of any given society. This makes me think of consumerism in the sense of different brands and labels, particular in clothing apparel. That is, for example, the label of Chanel, or Coach takes on a meaning that is purely socially constructed in Western (and perhaps non-western) societies, and that meaning is one of status and worth. Whereas, in society similar to the Baruya, this label adds no meaning or definition to a person. I know that may be a bit of a stretch in trying to compare Godelier's analysis of the Baruya society with our own....
For the first few pages of Godelier, I couldn't see what connected his ideas with the concept of posthumanism, but pages 134 through 138 brought it all together for me. The idea of things (non-humans) substituting for humans suggests the question of the definition of "human." Where is the line between human and sacred object? Godelier looks at the way different societies, and societies universally, imagine a sacredness in things, partially by projecting aspects of humans onto things. Godelier posits that "Men ultimately find themselves alienated to a material object which is none other than themselves, but an object into which they have disappeared, in which they are necessarily and paradoxically present through and by their absence" (137).
Godelier writes that "man's double existence, the inversion of relations beween subject and object, between the individuals who produce and their products, can be seen in two principal areas: the economic sphere...and the political sphere" (137). I started thinking about how this idea of "the projection onto things" could apply to other sorts of object relations in contemporary society (136). I was surprised by how many examples sprang to mind. Money is the obvious example of a Thing endowed with such personal significance and power that it can enslave, ruin, rescue or authorize nearly anyone. In some senses the human body is a Thing, and to a great extent, bodies (their colors, shapes, sizes) speak for people and can even drown out the very person that the body is supposed to represent or house. Medications - insulin, antidepressants, painkillers, antiretroviral drugs - are also things that represent aspects of humans and, in doing so, in representing human health and well-being and life, can come to "imprison" humans, in that they create a literally vital dependency (136). (My first response to the question, during our first class meeting, of a thing without which my life would be radically different, was Prozac. I was embarrassed to say so in class... love those SSRIs though.) Then there is the whole slew of other Things with which we define ourselves and others - clothing, houses, cars, engagement rings, yarmulkes, body jewelry - and which can come to control and encompass people, such that people believe that they have to modify these Things before they themselves can change.
Like Emily and some of the other commenters, I found the gendered nature of the Baruya sacred objects very interesting. The way that Godelier wrote about Baruya men seeking not only to dominate women but to encompass them, sounds similar to the way that things not only come to represent aspects of people but also "alienate" and "disappear" those people. If I'm understanding Godelier, one inference from these two parallel processes of "encompassing" could be, roughly, men::women as things::humans. This led me to wonder whether the violence that (Baruya) men use against women to enable this encompassing, is also at work in the encompassing between things and humans.
That's the question I want to ask all of you: Is there violence in the encompassing of humans by things, as there is violence in the encompassing of women by (Baruya) men? And if there is violence between things and humans, which party is committing the violence, the things against the humans or the humans against the things?
- Hannah
I've been reading Geertz, Mauss, and Lévi-Strauss in some of my other anthropology classes (Interpretations of Culture, Ethnographic Imagination); funny how in those courses, students often take concepts at face value; but after taking this class my perception has changed completely. The feeling is both amusing and perturbing.
Unlike Ingold's overturning of Geertz last week, Godelier does not so much defeat Mauss' argument (whom he focuses on more than on Lévi-Strauss') as builds upon it by discussing what Mauss lacked ("a more accurate reconstruction of the sociological basis for the way a certain type of objects circulated" and "[a working] back to the sources of these meanings, to their role in the production and legitimation of a social order" - 151).
At the beginning of Chapter 2, I took interest in the descriptions of the Baruya objects (kwaimatnie, the bull roarers) without fully understanding their importance. However, I understood greatly after reading "Hypothesis on the emergence and the development of potlatch societies", because it is in this section that Godelier draws nearer to the chapter's title, Substitute Objects for Humans and Gods. Here, he discusses the exchange of valuables and pigs for women ("on the one hand, we have persons, on the other all sorts of 'things' which function as substitutes for these persons" - 147). Mauss may have observed that exchange is taking place in a potlatch society, but Godelier goes deeper by claiming that there are a few conditions under which a potlatch society can occur: 1) in kinship, marriage is not implemented through the direct exchange of women, and bridewealth replaces sister exchange 2) political-religious power exists in various rankings, is not hereditary, and is open for people to establish superiority by outdoing their rivals in gift-exchange (147).
In the chapter, Godelier also argues that these systems (substituting objects for humans and gods) arise out of subconscious thought. My main concern, however, is that if (according to Evans-Pritchard) subconscious mannerisms are deemed useless when brought into consciousness, then how effective is Godelier's argument and how does it affect societies which work under the potlatch system and whose members actually believe that they are controlled by higher powers (that are merely extensions of them selves)?
I was particularly intrigued by Godelier's statement, "The imaginary past of the origin of things is still present because it has become the foundation of the cosmic and social order, an invisible reality, but one which is co-present in the present." (124)in that it conjures an image of an "invisible reality" in which governs the order of things present which are not fixed, and in that sense perhaps not as "real". The idea that the objects and people serve as a medium through which this mythic force conducts its cultural choreographies becomes especially complex when thinking about "sacred" objects that "may not be given" and objects that have been present for longer than the people have been present. Lastly, I tried to project this image upon our technologically saturated environments and power-on/off daily rituals and how the idea of "virtual reality" or wireless networks can map itself upon the notion of "invisible reality" and the realms of the spirit. Could our ringing/vibrating cellphones be imagined as modernity's bull-roarers or magic flutes? Clearly this is far from a parallel situation however I am trying to grapple with Godeleir's description of what is considered sacred, versus being precious, in in our price-tagged object-full lives. Whether or not we as humans value our own objects differently than the cultural/capitalism standardized value and what kind of inalienable items do we find in our culture that cannot be given.
Godelier emphasizes the gift giving process, along with any other sort of order establishing/allocating ritual, as being a highly intricate dance of power that is never symmetrical. He illuminates how that the roles of men and woman and their specific powers are simultaneously woven together, and harnessed (by the men), to establish a stable social order. As if establishing some thing's position by a process of osmosis rather than delineation or complementation, Godelier states that "for one of the terms opposes the other by subordinating it, and therefore, in a certain fashion, by encompassing it." (130) I believe this thesis elucidates the structure of the dynamics embodying the gift giving, the origin myths, and the establishment of hierarchical powers in society. This understanding also reveals how objects and people can become de-objectified and re-objectified depending upon the orientation and observed instance during the exchange. Godelier points out "Stealing is the opposite of giving. But behind the gift and the theft lies the same logic."(133)and it is precisely this logic that allows for relationships on any scale, whether person or object, to remain necessarily in fluctuating state of being, not just amongst each other but also with each other.
Godlier blew me out of the water. I was really impacted by the discussion of sacred objects, namely the claim that objects make humans strangers to themselves and their origins. I've been mulling over this idea all day and still have very scattered thoughts and reactions, so I'll try to sum up my response without being too sporadic.
Godlier basically says that sacred objects stand in as imaginary people, fostering the idea that real humans are lost within a material society-- both to the collective and to the individual. In fact, he contends that we become unrecognizable to our real selves and unable to comprehend (or remember?) our true and pure origins. He presents a myth of the erasure of origins, in which we trade the consciousness of our origins for societal living, and are transformed via objects into imaginary, constructed humans.
I was also really intrigued by the way Godlier tapped into the dichotomic aspect of human life and the human mind: space vs. time, real vs. imaginary, conscious vs. unconscious. Like I said, I'm still thinking alot of this over, but I'm really intrigued by the idea of the imaginary human, the acted-upon, unconscious human, and interested in thinking about how much of ourselves we've forgotten.
One thing I found particularly interesting in the Godelier reading was the secret names that the Baruya have for certain objects, such as the sun (Kanaamakwe.) Godelier talks about how this plays into the first form of gift-giving in Baruya society, the form “in which the recipients (gods, spirits) dominate the donors (humans) because they will always be superior for having given the kwaimatnie, the secret knowledge, and so forth.” I’m a little confused as to how secret knowledge supports this relationship between recipient and donor. Perhaps it has something to do with maintaining the imagined supernatural origin of the Baruya, which Godelier says is necessary for societies to accept and reinforce social realities?
I was also struck by Godelier’s description in the section about what the Baruya keep that describes how the “dried fingers of the right hand” of Bakitchatche, a Baruya hero, are considered sacred objects. This image reminded me of a comic I had recently read: http://www.tmopmo.com/?id=17, In the comic (in the second square) a guy imagines the possibility of staging an “elaborate romantic gesture” to win his girlfriend back. The elaborate gesture includes the construction of a teddy bear out of his own skin. In the imagined scene, the guy says “Look! I made you a teddy bear out of my own skin! It’s stuffed with my feelings! Love me again!” While this obviously is a joke about the contrived romantic gestures in films, I thought it included some underlying assumptions about sacred objects. Sort of like the Baruya, who believe that objects such as a dried fingers contain the spirit of the person to whom they belonged, our society does acknowledge a relationship between spirit and bodily objects. Again, while it is simply a joke that the teddy bear made out of skin is stuffed with feelings, the skin-teddy bear imbued with feelings struck me as similar to dried fingers imbued with a spirit or power.
- Ariel
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