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The reader might by now be left with the impression that the inhabitants of rural Imerina are simply anti-authoritarian. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, the attitude described in the last section, however pervasive, is only that: an attitude. It is rarely formulated explicitly. No one ever told me “It is wrong to tell others what to do,” or “We Malagasy do not believe in giving orders.” That would have been palpably absurd, since people do in fact give each other orders all the time—particularly women, who in households are always sending children off on errands, assigning each other tasks, assigning tasks to their menfolk. It is mainly in public contexts that orders are considered inappropriate. Second of all, the authority of elders and ancestors is considered— especially in public contexts—absolutely legitimate, indeed, as the very foundation of social order. Elders and ancestors are seen as legitimate, however, largely because they are not seen as operating like kings (or for that matter, bossy women.) Rather than telling others what to do, they are seen as properly intervening in human affairs in order to tell others what not to do.This is not to say that this sort of “negative authority,” as I call it, is not fraught with ambivalences of its own.1 To understand why that is, however, and how these structures of legitimate authority operate more generally, one has to begin by understanding the Merina kinship system. Descent Groups Merina descent groups (which Bloch calls demes2 ) are structured around tombs.3 Tombs—old earthen tombs or newer, concrete ones—are everywhere 53 NEGATIVE AUTHORITY 3 in the Merina countryside; they are the chief way history becomes inscribed on the landscape. Every deme has its ancestral territory, and its one most ancient tomb, that of its “great ancestor” or razambe, and a number of others that are seen as having spun off from it. All are within that deme’s ancestral territory. Members include anyone who is descended from that ancestor who also chooses to be buried in one of the tombs—they need never have actually lived on the deme’s territory, though to qualify for access to a tomb, one should at least hold on to a rice field or two in the territory, a piece of the ancestral land. There are all sorts of rules as to who can and cannot be buried in what tomb, but most people have a very wide range of choices: at the very least, between their mother’s and father’s tomb, and usually, between four or five different tombs.The kinship system is thus cognatic, marital residence is flexible , everyone knows other places they could live, other families they could belong to, other communities where they might be able to stake some kind of claim. Most young people spend at least some time in the city, or moving about between different relatives. As a result, becoming a significant rural elder or ancestor is a matter of pulling people together: in practice, this above all means acquiring enough land and property to prevent one’s children and grandchildren from drifting away. Hence, in rhetoric, tombs are often represented as fixed centers, stones of memory from which children tend to drift away in all directions. At the most abstract, ancestral authority is a matter of constraint, binding, holding people in. Again, space does not allow a detailed discussion, but there is a basic contradiction between the interests of fathers and sons. Even in the pre-colonial nineteenth century the typical fairy-tale success story featured a young man who abandoned his home to seek his fortunes, acquired wealth, translated it into land and tombs, and then prevented his own children from doing as he did, so that they would maintain his memory on death. If a father managed to become a famous razambe, the chief ancestor of an important tomb, it almost necessarily meant obscurity for his children. Yet at the same time, most of the important men in a given community derived much of their authority from the memory of a father or grandfather who was a prominent elder—one who would eventually have to be forgotten if their own names were to endure.4 The contradiction is played out, in part, by the dual representation of ancestors : alternately, as benevolent figures who give “blessings” to the living, or as terrifying ghosts that haunt the neighborhood of tombs and murder children. LOST...

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