anthropos-misanthropos

[anthropos-misanthropos]

The imperial fictions of traditional landscape depend upon the principle of a center, a single vanishing point that organizes space in relation to a viewer outside the scene. But Stevens’ landscapes are eccentric. Stevens would like to submit his imagination to the fiction of the comprehensive frame. Like Emerson, he often implies a desire to “yield himself to the perfect whole” while becoming a visionary “master of the maze.” But Stevens lives in his “fated eccentricities.”

– Bonnie Costello, Shifting ground: reinventing landscape in modern American poetry

[anthropos-misanthropos]

Modern poetry has demonstrated that landscape, as mimesis or metaphor, is a productive, flexible focus for presenting the mind’s engagement with the world. All of these poets, however, and especially po¬ ets of the postmodern era, express an anxiety that landscape might become mere image, disengaged simulacra to which we become passive spectators of our own creations, rather than channeling experience

– Bonnie Costello, Shifting ground: reinventing landscape in modern American poetry

[anthropos-misanthropos]

It is that very foregrounding of its acts of mediation that makes poetry a particularly rich medium for considering how we construct our ideas of nature and our relation to it. And here the ecocritical preference for referentiality over textuality, for real world over rhetorical and aesthetic concerns, seems misguided. Whether they are interested in “subject matter” (as Stevens said of Frost) or “bric-a-brac” (as Frost said of Stevens), poets draw us into the drama of their configurations and make us aware of the workings and limits of metaphor and symbol. Poetry manifests the difference words and images can make in how we apprehend the world. Certainly a rhetorically oriented criticism is aware of the text (and indeed all mediating forms) less as a statement about reality than as a series of motivated strategies and structures, which communicates something to an audience or makes something happen imaginatively. But such a criticism can involve real-world concerns in that it reveals the entanglement of nature and culture, the interplay between our desires, our concepts, and our perceptions, and possibilities for renewal and vitality within that entanglement. Poetry, for these poets, is not designed to establish epistemological or ethical truths, but neither is it indifferent to epistemological inquiry or immune from ethical motivation or scrutiny. The vitality of poetry is of the imagination and necessarily abstract. But abstraction does not necessarily imply hostility, evasion, or alienation; more often, it involves an engagement with substance, both aesthetic and intellectual. Abstraction can be nourished and influenced, made flexible and dynamic, by that which it abstracts, and can draw us toward the natural world rather than away from it. Abstraction cannot renew itself; it needs a stimulus, a fluent resource. 

-- Bonnie Costello, Shifting ground: reinventing landscape in modern American poetry

[anthropos-misanthropos]

This leads to a question of fundamental importance which has not even been asked, let alone answered, here. We have seen how people fit into patrilineal groups at different structural levels, and the relationships between these structures and other domains of life have been explored in some detail. The analysis culminated in the outline of a comprehensive set of concepts about space and time: these concepts set the Pira-parana individual with his or her internal bodily processes on the one hand, and the socially imposed descent-group identity on the other, at the centre of a system which expands outwards to embrace the whole universe, past and present. This discovery accords perfectly with the character of Pira-parana social organisation with its isolated and highly autonomous longhouse units bound into a comprehensive system of exogamous descent groups. However, it does not explain why such a type of organisation should exist in the first place. There are many other types of organisation to be found among small-scale tropical forest societies, but it appears that in none of them is there so strong an emphasis on membership of widely dispersed and non-corporate groups. The funda- ‘mental question to ask is why the rule of exogamy exists in such a form in this particular historical and geographical context? This is a question that must be answered in a different way.

-- Christine Hugh-Jones, From the Milk River: spatial and temporal processes in northwest Amazonia

[anthropos-misanthropos]

There never were, at least in precontact days, such events as “potlatches.” Rather, there were specific ritual occasions commemorating marriage, death, the construction of a house, investiture of an heir, ele¬ vation of young people to new positions, the “sale” of coppers, the giving of Winter Ceremonial dances, the giving of oil feasts in connection with the Winter Ceremonial, and the display of supernatural properties short¬ ly after they had been received. These were not mere occasions for “potlatches,” they were ritual occasions in their own right, at which proper¬ ties were distributed/Dccasion and distribution were, however, essential elements of a common ritual unit.

– Irving Goldman, The mouth of heaven : an introduction to Kwakiutl religious thought

[anthropos-misanthropos]

Within the total and ongoing sequences of vital exchanges, the first or primary transaction brings the mythic world of first ancestors and of supernatural beings into connection with the contemporary natural world. Emblematic properties (mythical) are associated with complemen¬ tary properties (contemporary). In this primary transaction the human being as noble (shaman) is the mediating power, the bridge, the vital connection between myth time and the present. A religious sociology of exchange ensues through the introduction of human concerns. The noble mediator is not an empty drum upon which cosmic forces beat their independent rhythms. He is himself a drum beater, a master of rhythms. He sounds his own vital interests and seeks to turn the dialectic between the mythic world and the present to his own ompels the cosmic circulation of emblematic and comple¬ mentary properties to yield him long life and strength)

-- Irving Goldman, The mouth of heaven : an introduction to Kwakiutl religious thought

[anthropos-misanthropos]

Along the same lines, I would argue that the image of the social/ cosmic order constructed in the Tlingit mortuary rites was only an ideal. Even within the ritual context itself and certainly outside of it, individual actors continued to see themselves and the world in some- what different terms that those prescribed by the ancestral/mortuary complex. Despite the ritual’s insistence on a single (hegemonic) vision of reality, some room remained for deviation from and disagreement with it. Thus, some of the mourners continued to grieve during and even after the memorial potlatch. For several generations, the deceased might remain in their memory as an unique individual and not just as a depersonalized ancestor or actor playing a role. He might even come back to confront them in their dreams, challenging the notion that all of the attributes of his social persona had already been recycled. Thus even this society, with its cyclical world view and the emphasis on the immutability of the ancestral order, could not completely overcome human individuality and linear time. Perhaps, in the Tlingit case, we could speak of two models of time: a dominant one which was long- term and cyclical, and a subordinate one which was short-term and linear’.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

This ability of dance to move its performers and audience is, in large part, based on the involvement of the body. As Kapferer (1979a:159) suggests, "dance links the body as the center for, and the expressive medium of, individually felt emotion into the symbol sys- tem of gesture, converting individual expression as sign into symbol recognized and realized by others." The Tlingit seem to have been well aware of the importance of the bodily experiences in profoundly affect- ing the participants’ emotions. Wearing ancestral regalia directly on one’s skin, having valuables rubbed on the forehead, and engaging in other ritual acts involving the body helped transform unarticulated inner feelings into culturally sanctioned public emotions, and trans- form abstract cultural values into personally held beliefs and feelings. Hence such statements as "we are the crests of our ancestors, we are the life of our ancestors" are not only expressions of the ancestral ideology but of deeply felt emotion.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

Thus in their mortuary rites the Tlingit transformed death from a threat to the social order into the major opportunity for strengthening and enhancing it. In a system like this, I suggest, one can expect to find an elaborate ritual of secondary treatment of the dead. To make the deceased into a valuable cultural resource, the ritual must separate his perishable and polluting attributes from the immortal and pure ones. The funeral begins this process, but usually some time is needed for all the elements constituting his total social persona to be separated from each other, for the perishable and impure ones to be discarded, and for the immortal ones to be channelled back into the social order of the living. As Bloch (1982:223-224) suggests, whenever the sociopolitical order and its authority structure are grounded in a larger ideal and unchanging ancestral order, the funeral rituals have to overcome in one way or another the individuality of a particular corpse.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

In this ranked society, the dead—or more precisely the sacred heritage (shagdon) that their matrilineal descendants received from them in the form of tangible and intangible property—were the most valuable political resource that had to be periodically regenerated and claims to which had to be legitimized in a public setting. So much of the social identity, power, and prestige of the living depended on this ancestral heritage, that social reproduction had to take place in the context of the mortuary rites where the symbolic manifestations of shagdon were transferred from the dead to their matrilineal descen- dants. Thus in Tlingit society, with its powerful and all-encompassing ancestral ideology, the social order was not simply reconstituted in the mortuary rites, as Hertz himself and his functionalist followers sug- gested, but was, to a large extent, created there.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

Having examined a number of area ethnographies as well as Drucker’s (1950) "culture element distribution" list and Birket-Smith’s (1967) brief comparative study of the "potlatch" in the Pacific, I have concluded that the dead did play a significant role in the cultural systems of the Northwest Coast, but that the role of the dead has been underestimated (compare Kan 1986:194).* Examples of practices reminiscent of the Tlingit ones include sending food and property to the dead through the fire, participation of the ancestral spirits in pot- latches and other ceremonies, keeping some of the ancestors’ remains as relics which could bring good fortune, and some form of double obsequies—most commonly, erection of memorial posts and other grave structures. While different Northwest Coast groups potlatched on different occasions, all of them had the mortuary potlatch, which Birket-Smith (1967:35-36) referred to as a "fundamental trait" (compare Drucker 1950:231).

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

What Rosman and Rubel overlook is a religious system that placed the dead at its center and gave them a crucial role in the sociocultural order. As I have shown, among the Tlingit, the concepts of the matriclan’s immortality, on the one hand, and of the unity and solidarity of its members, on the other, were interrelated and dis- couraged the aristocracy from completely separating itself from its lower-ranking kin. We could say that the ancestral complex impeded the development of classes, even though individual actors did use their love and respect for the dead to legitimize their claims to specific prerogatives and, thus, enhance their status and prestige. 1am suggest- ing that the development of the Tlingit culture on the coast did not involve a radical break with its Proto-Athapaskan base. Since attitudes towards the ancestors were among the main forces that kept the Tlingit clan mates unified, despite their differences in status and rank, the original egalitarianism was never completely replaced by a hierarchical social order.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

In return for the right to use the various manifestations of the ancestral heritage passed down through the matriline, the living supplied the dead with food, clothing, and other necessities. Most importantly, by periodically placing their remains in new containers, invoking their names, and inviting them to the potlatch, the living honored the dead and kept their memory alive. As long as the dead were remembered by the living, they remained immortal. Thus, matrilineal continuity—the basis of social reproduction—depended on the human ability to remember.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

In addition, because the ancestral past and the clan’s destiny were imbued with sacredness, shagdon was also used to refer to an imper- sonal and abstract supreme being, which seems to have been an in- digenous concept, as well as the personified creator in the guise of the Raven (Holmberg 1856:343). Thus, when facing a terrible danger, a Tlingit would pray to the ax shagéon or the haa shagdon, pleading for help. It appears that this was an address to the supreme being, al- though it is possible that the ancestors themselves were appealed to. If that was the case, these were not individual ancestors but a deper- sonalized collectivity of benign ancestral spirits (see Chapter V).’ The idea of shagdon’s connection with individual and collective good for- tune is further supported by its antonym, jinahda, translated as both "bad luck” and "unknown future” (Davis 1976:92; Kan 1979-1987).

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

So far my discussion of the Tlingit view of the person has been focused on those attributes and characteristics that distinguished a human being from a nonhuman one, a Tlingit from a non-Tlingit, a free person from a slave. However, without the immortal ancestral heritage passed down primarily, though not exclusively, through the maternal line, the Tlingit individual lacked the most important dimension of his or her social identity.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

Thus, among the nineteenth century Tlingit, the ancestors were the source of hereditary prerogatives which defined the destiny and social identity of every free person and his or her matrilineal group. Beliefs about the dead, including the need to show them respect by sponsoring memorial rites in which they were given offerings were fundamental to the Tlingit culture. At the same time, because the aris- tocracy controlled and supervised the access to the tangible and intan- gible prerogatives of their clans and played the leading role in the mortuary rites, the ancestral/mortuary complex served as the basis of its dominant role in society. In addition, the ancestors and the cultural- ly sanctified attitudes and feelings towards them were used by all of the ritual participants as a form of rhetoric to portray their more ag- gressive and prestige-oriented actions and words as manifestations of grief and "love and respect" for the dead.

- S. Kan,  Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century

[anthropos-misanthropos]

Here, I shall be concentrating on the separation of elements of the self at death but, before I begin, I must draw a distinction between the aspect I have been describing, which is bad, fearful and represents dissolution and decay, and the other aspect of death, connected with the ‘dead’ ancestors, which represents the origins of life. Contact with the ancestors, which takes place either through shamanism or directly at male ritual gatherings, is supremely dangerous but also an essential condition of continued life.

- C. Hugh-Jones,  From the Milk River : spatial and temporal processes in northwest Amazonia