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From the Sutured Wound of Being
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
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Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 64 / / Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences / George Mentore 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 [First Page] [64], (1) Lines: 0 to 27 ——— 0.717pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [64], (1) From the Sutured Wound of Being Adorning the Body, Knowing the World Even without the supposed ritual requirement of “torture” or imposition of “pain,” “the body mediates the acquisition of a knowledge” (Clastres 1989:180). It is an acquired knowledge about society constituting and sustaining itself in, on, and through the corporeal being of the individual (Douglas 1971; Foucault 1979; Gell 1996). At the same time, however, it is also knowledge about human subjectivity attaining its consciousness by means of this very same corporeality (Scarry 1985; Scheper-Hughes 1991; Merleau-Ponty 1992). In other words knowledge of the lived world is experienced through the body, while knowing the lived body is dialectically experienced through the self (Gadow 1980). The lived body, as an acting and vulnerable subjectivity in the world, mediates between society and the self. In this relation it is the greater distinction between the world and the body, rather than that between the self and the body, that society seeks to reduce by inscribing itself upon and in the body as an adornment and as a memory. It seems the “primary unity” (Gadow 1980:174) of the lived body that is, between the self and the body helps to produce the very vulnerability of the body in the world, where the unifying immediacy of self and body radically contrasts with the lack of immediacy between society and the body. Indeed, in order to constitute and sustain its own existence, society has repeatedly to evoke its presence by way of somatic realties; a bodily understanding (Bourdieu 1990) or knowledge becomes an Kim — University of Nebraska Press / Page 65 / / Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences / George Mentore From the Sutured Wound of Being 65 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 [65], (2) Lines: 27 to 31 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [65], (2) imperative requirement for social existence. Written on the body, felt in pain, made desirable by and fulfilled in the self, the obtained juridical knowledge of the body is about social belonging. To become a social person, the individual must submit to society (Fortes 1973; Harris 1989; La Fontaine 1989); the body has at least to respond with an appearance of adhering to social determinants (Marx 1976b [1859]).1 The individual unified with society to the degree in which the self is assumed to be in unity with the body appears to be a major societal concern. Of course society can never be quite certain of subjectivities’ commitment, but in the habitus of bodily techniques, it appears to achieve some level of reassurance (Mauss 1973; Bourdieu 1990). In the body and hence in the lived world, with the collective compliance of individuals as social persons, society confirms its presence. Tracking this social presence from the impressions made by the body in Waiwai society has been one of my principal concerns. How do the Waiwai achieve the ideal secondary unity between the individual and society? What are the characteristic features of this unity? Where does it present itself in order to become known? When if at all is it challenged? And why does it take the forms and meanings it manifests in their world? The trails to some of these answers meander through a representational and interpretative landscape where “savage,” “inferior,” “mythic,” “divine,” “filiated ,” “affinal,” “mutable,” and “adorned” bodies present themselves as cultural landmarks. Indeed, the Waiwai body offers itself as both the terrain upon which the imprints of cultural meanings can be traced and as the very monument of such inscriptions. On the Waiwai body that is, principally through the cultural artifacts of its adornment we can see the knowledge about social belonging produced, displayed, and achieved. It is a knowledge that allows the individual to be positioned in relationships determined fundamentally by categories of gender and kinship. To know the meanings of these categories requires their objectification in historically ordered forms the culturally speci...