The quest for legitimate rebellion: Towards a structuralist theory of rituals of reversal

THE QUEST FOR LEGITIMATE REBELLION : Towards a structuralist theory of rituals of reversal* Peter Weidkuhn Why is it that most men do not consider it sufficient to contemplate their social values and ideas but must also go through certain ritual acts as well? Beidelman 1966 : 401 Rituals of reversal are rituals of the type of the ancient Roman Saturnalia or ancient Greek Kronia . Broadly speaking, they are periods or sequences of behaviour in which people are expected to behave in a manner which is diametrically opposite to that in which they are otherwise expected to behave . A very simple example of this is Sunday in certain Protestant societies . On Sunday you are not expected to work ; as against that, you are not expected to be idle on weekdays . The scientific emphasis, however, is not on the change of actual behaviour, but on the change of people's expectations . It is these which have to be explained . There are three points of view from which this paper starts . The first may be conceived in terms of religious studies as a contribution to the study of non-theistic religion, namely the study of values . The second is to be understood as a contribution to the sociology of deviant behaviour . The third starting point is derived from a specific field of ethnology, as it is called on the continent, or of social anthropology, as it is called in Britain, that is, from the study of 'periods of licence', as Frazer called them (1) . These studies were intensified and expanded by the late Professor Max Gluckman who coined the term 'ritual of rebellion' (2) and disclosed the political dimension of what E . Norbeck called 'rituals of conflict' (3) . Without Professor Gluckman's investigations my own research would not have been feasible . This is not to dissemble the fact that Gluckman has been criticized for ignoring the spiritual dimension of rituals of rebellion by critics like 0 . F . Raum, P . Rigby, E . Norbeck, T . 0 . Beidelman and others (4) . 167

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On the other hand, an entirely different possibility has been opened up by Edmund Leach's suggestion that time is a man-made construction which may slow down and stop occasionally, or can even be forced to go into reverse like a pendulum (5) . The two views need not exclude each other . The art of 'playing history in reverse' (6) has its political as well as its religious connotations . If attention is focused on the quest for legitimacy or justification the merits of both Gluckman's and Leach's theories become evident .

Popular opinion has it that people who deviate from the commonly accepted social norms need readjustment to societal life . Rebellion against social norms, and other forms of normative deviance are usually held to be phenomena of a pathological kind, at least in Western society, something of which one has to feel ashamed . Sociological research taking empirical data at their face value regards rebellion and deviance as a menace to social organization (7) . Anthropologists, however, learning from their experience of the overwhelming variability and plasticity of human institutions may set out in quest of the underlying invariable foundations of human behaviour . It is the problem of justification and legitimacy which is at stake (8) . Consequently we shall not scrutinize how people deal with deviants and so-called maladjusted individuals, but we shall look into the matter by asking : how do people legitimize their social norms, how do they justify the social order? This is not to maintain that deviant behaviour is unknown among primitives, but to call in question a current sociological supposition which, by tacit agreement, assumes that the processes by which the legitimacy of any social system is created, maintained, and renewed, always take an orderly, regular, logical, and consistent course . Or, to put it the other way round : is every deviation from a legitimate order unjustifiable? Are there any legitimate deviations from the legitimate order (9)? This amounts to asking whether there are any legitimate rebellions or revolts, that is legitimate reversals of a given social order . I shall term legitimate every reversal which is structurally based, that is which has its foundation in an ambivalent value-structure of the society . A society, for example, which believes at the same time in a God of Love as well as in the ultimate wrath of the same God is based on a set of conflicting values which exclude one another . This ambivalent value-structure will put a high premium on peaceful behaviour and yet legitimize the deviation from it, which is war and aggression .

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We may even go a step further and ask whether moral ambivalence is not an intrinsic characteristic of every fundamental value . The social implications of values are threefold : they urge one on to action, they authorize or empower action, and they enable or qualify one for action . Therefore they may be regarded as the ultimate sources of legitimacy . As such they urge on, authorize, and enable action even when the actor strives for autonomy and independence of the very same values . Or, to describe it more graphically : when the Lord created Man, he endowed him with power that enabled the creature not only to recognize and to love the creator, but also to recognize his own godlikeness and to rebel against the creator . In both cases the same power is used . This is not an instance of European philosophy, let alone of Christian theology ; I hold it rather to be an elementary and unvariable constituent of the human mind, as it may be ascertained all over the world . Following Claude Levi-Strauss I shall term this elementary and unvariable nucleus of the human mind the savage mind . Its reversing ability which manifests itself as revolt of the creature against the creator is called savage deviance . What I have in mind when speaking of savage deviance emerges clearly from an instance reported by T .G .H . Strehlow from among the Aranda tribe in Central Australia . His account refers to the relationship between fathers and sons, as it comes out during the initiation ceremonies of the tribe . In everyday life this relationship is characterized by the reverence shown by the youngsters for their elders . There is a myth, however, which tells about a reversal of behaviour, and which was recorded by Strehlow in the following manner (10) : 'At Worratarra in the MacDonnell Ranges a great tjilpa Ca kind of lizard] ancestor was living ; and many sons had originated from him . Each morning he used to send them away hunting, and in the evening they would return, and dance around their father in a sacred ceremony . After many days they decided to move on . But before leaving they had to undergo the same initiation rites to which the native young men still have to submit in our days . Until the completion of these ceremonies the father wielded absolute power . What happened on the last day is described by the myth in the following paragraph . . . . : It is the last day, and the young men are ready for their departure from the ingkura [initiation] ground . The sons dance for the last time around their old father Namatjirea, who is sitting at the foot of the huge tnatantja [a sacred pole covered with feathers and representing the male organ] which is towering high up

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into the air beside the sacred earth-mound . The tnatantja is uprooted violently, stripped of its ornament, and cast away into a deep gutter . And then, in single formation, they cleave with their feet the sacred earth-mound, the greatest of all sacred tjurunga emblems , and desert the place for ever . Namatjirea is left behind deprived of sight, a pitiful half-wit, whose strength has been broken for ever : his eldest son, after breaking through the earth-mound, had chanted magic spells and destroyed the sight of his father, because the latter had not taken him to his side as his equal [Strehlow's emphasis], so that father and son could both have sat at the foot of the tnatantja . Now, this is myth, not actual behaviour . Strehlow, however, witnessed the ceremonies, too, and from his account (11) it stands to reason that both - myth and ritual - have a common denominator, savage deviance . Among the preconditions of its actualization there are several to be mentioned : people crowding densely, emotions running high, noisy mirth and uproar, infliction of pain, oppression and humiliation of human victims, producers of an economic good being bereft of the products of their own work, and so on . No wonder that a rebellion is at hand! To apply Marxist concepts in order to explain what happens during Aranda initiation, however, means making use of a historically limited concept in order to cope with a universal situation, a social configuration which for its existence does not depend on history but on structure, that is on the invariable constituents of the human mind . Let me put it this way : Aranda youths do not rebel because Marx is right ; but Marx is right because the savage mind is rebellious! Aranda youths do rebel indeed ; it is not against their human fathers, however, that they are revolting ; their revolt is directed against The Father, against the prototype or archetype of fathers . How otherwise could they shrink from castrating their own fathers and depriving them of their sight, in exactly the same manner as the myth quoted before tells them to do? They are far from doing harm to their fathers, though, since the fathers are only the agents of oppression ; they are not the oppressor himself . The latter is conceived as an authority whose abode is beyond society . Initiation time is reversal time . Another Australian anthropologist, Howitt, reports (12) customs that recall April Fool jokes to the reader : during a certain period the initiates are summoned to do this or to do that ; they are expected, however, always to do the opposite of what they are told to do . Breaches of this rule are severely punished . Readers familiar with the pertinent reports know that the period

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of initiation brings about a verbal and behavioural relaxation of everyday sexual norms in so far as obscene modes of speech and promiscuous behaviour, that are otherwise banished, are temporarily tolerated and even encouraged (13) . One of the most conspicuous instances of reversal is the so called arbor inverse, the reversed tree which is planted into the initiation ground upside down during the ceremonies, and which is met with again in the philosophy of Plato, in Hebrew esoteric tradition, in Islamic tradition, in Dante's 'Paradise in Icelandic and Finnic folklore and elsewhere (14) . An essential peculiarity of savage reversal is the fact, well illustrated by Strehlow's account, that it is not only society itself which is reversed, but the beyond of society as well . Everywhere we come across the fact that the horizontal dimension of social reality, which is the historical dimension, is complemented by the vertical dimension, which is the dimension of structure . As to our topic, deviance and reversal, I again emphasize that studying the history of reversal alone does not settle the problem - this is my major objection to Marxist and other purely historical theories of reversal - ; the study of history has to be complemented by the study of structure, by exploring the raw materials of history . Or, to put it differently : reversal, rebellion, revolt, revolution, or whatever you may call these fundamental elements of history and social change, are not the exclusive concern of political anthropology ; the anthropology of religion is involved as well . What I called the beyond of society has two complementary aspects . The first is a temporal one and presents itself as a special kind of time which interrupts the course of everyday life periodically . We may say that it is an irruption of eternity into historical time (15) . Where people have unlearned the process of thinking in terms of eternity, they perceive eternity as a kind of historical past or future (16) . The phrase 'the mythical past' is perhaps the most outstanding example of this misconception of eternity . Mythology is thus misconceived as a sort of dim historical record which has been blurred by a lack of subtlety . To such people myth is a deficiency of civilization, a survival of times in which man was still incapable of dealing with time in the only accurate way, namely the civilized way which is the historian's way of dealing with time . But to emphasize civilization with regard to the perception of time means to suppress savagery and its perception of eternity . Myth as information about, and expression of, eternity, however, is a kind of human document that is just as legitimate as a so-called pure historical

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document is, which informs about, and expresses an entirely different type of, time, namely history . The second aspect of the beyond of society is a spatial one . In every society space is of at least two kinds : secular space which is accessible to everybody, and sacred space which is not . Strehlow's account tells us that after the initiation ceremony 'for many months to come no man' to say nothing of women - 'may dare to approach' the initiation ground (17) . The latter has to be separated from everyday camp life, because it is the scene of a sudden irruption of the beyond of society into social space . We may call it an irruption of structure into space . The appropriate form of action within the precincts of structure is ritual . Ritual therefore corresponds with myth . Both, myth and ritual, are social means of coping with what is more than merely social . Among the many rituals of reversal in Africa I would like to mention those practised by the Gogo, a Bantuspeaking people of central Tanzania (18) . These rituals are concerned with the restoration or maintenance of a desirable ritual state in an area of space and involve the active participation of women, primarily married women . In these contexts, the normative role assigned to men is a passive one, and they are 'beaten' by the women if they get in the way . For a set period of time, the women, acting in concert, dress like men and ceremonially carry out male tasks performed in 'normal' circumstances exclusively by men, or even 'prohibited' to women . Apart from donning beaded belts, smearing on red ochre, carrying spears, sticks, and knives, all normally confined to men, the women sing 'lewd' songs and behave in a generally aggressive manner . The 'lewdness' of the songs is explicitly stated by the Gogo themselves . Usually they are reluctant to recite or sing these songs in other circumstances . Most of the songs refer, either obliquely or directly, to sexual matters, and frequently to the male sexual organs . During the course of the ritual, the 'male women' are 'sacred' . This amounts to saying that - in terms of religious studies - the women, by performing a ritual of reversal, provoke an irruption of eternity and structure into society . If things have gone in the wrong direction they have to be reversed in the opposite direction . In order to reverse time and space in society the Gogo have resort to the beyond of their society ; in order to change history, it is the raw materials, the foundations of history that are to be activated . Or, to apply a rough and ready formula : cultivating savagery saves civilization . As far as psychology is concerned this rule - to the best of my

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knowledge - is empirically founded : people who are prevented from dreaming go mad . Or, to give the whole thing the appropriate sociological and political twist : people prevented from realizing their dreams play the fool . As a matter of fact, Gogo women play the fool in the same way as do the Aranda youngsters . Why do they play? Why don't they grasp the opportunity of actually depriving the men of their power, the same men who obviously did not know how to stop the entropy of time, that is to prevent things from going wrong, the same men who were incapable of preventing the years from turning about? They do not do so, obviously out of a lack of legitimacy . Values that urge, authorize, and enable revolution (19) are absent in Gogo society . Hence, revolution would be illegitimate . The sole legitimate rebellious activities are those which set a deviation of the system right and balance it with a counterdeviation, a ritual of reversal . The ritual must be performed ritually, it must be played, since the beyond of society is involved . It is not in terms of secular unritualized political action that people can deal with eternity and structure . Any reversal founded on eternity and structure needs ritualization ; otherwise claims to its legitimacy would be forfeited . Or, to reword it in terms of colloquial speech : by no means are you entitled to kill your own father ; but don't hesitate to kill him in your dreams! In order to apply a more sociological formula we may say that rituals of reversal are legitimate rebellions, customs of legitimate deviant behaviour, that is, social processes or events in the course of which intraspecific social norms are turned upside down in an intra-specific social manner . Unfortunately, neither American nor German sociologists, among whom studies of deviant behaviour have considerably increased during the past decades (20), have an eye for the phenomenon of legitimate rebellion or of what I would also like to call the paradox of conformable nonconformity . This term does not merely denote a kind of behaviour that deviates from norms which are accepted and considered to be valid by the whole society , to designate that the terms anomie or non-conformity would be sufficient . What strikes the observer of primitive society or - to reword it in a more adequate way - what strikes the observer of savage processes in civilized society, however (and there is no uncivilized society), is the fact that it is the very deviation from the generally accepted social norms that itself is not only considered to be valid by the society, but is even practised by the totality of its members . To be brief : what is legal today is illegal another day, perhaps tomorrow .

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What anthropology is concerned with is this fact of authorized non-conformity, of legitimate deviation, something unthinkable to most sociologists, lawyers, and politicians . Legitimate deviation, however, is inconceivable only to people who do not discriminate between legality and legitimacy, people who have unlearned thinking in terms of eternity and structure, people who do not recognize any authorities beyond time and space (21) . This is the very point at issue . It is our Western conception of time which stands in the way of our understanding legitimate deviation (22) . In contrast to this stands what Edmund Leach calls a 'discontinuity of repeated contrasts' (23), something which is created by man by creating intervals in social life . According to Leach this notion of time is probably the most elementary and primitive of all ways of regarding time . As to the legitimacy of legitimate deviation two aspects are to be differentiated, surface or consensus legitimacy and deep legitimacy (24) . Social systems that are founded on surface or consensus legitimacy - and every social system is so - depend on the consent of the society's members to what they are told is right or wrong, legal or illegal . The maximum of surface legitimacy in a society is reached with a rate of consent of its members of 100 per cent . To be able to understand and to manipulate surface legitimacy one needs some training in the arts of diplomacy and politics, in the subtleties of civilization . However, all societies are subject to the impact of time, that is to social change ; consent is exposed to entropy . Consent is something more improbable than dissent . Dissent is not a thing to be tended ; it occurs by itself . Consent is likely to fail in the course of time because of the increasing divergence of individual interests . Diminishing consent implies disintegration of the normative power of the social system . The society's legitimacy begins to suffer from decay . Yet at the same time society is unable to generate new legitimacy on its own . It is a fact that conformity may be enforced, but not consent . Hence every society depends on the importation of legitimacy (25) . It has to be imported from a place where entropy (26) is something unknown because it is the place of eternity and structure : the, beyond of society . The beyond of society is the battlefield not of time-bound interests, but of time- and spaceless values . What has to be imported is something very different from the power of interests ; it is the power of values, the power of deep legitimacy . Deep legitimacy originates in, and from, the sphere beyond history and space, that is in, and

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from, the realm of eternity and structure, the realm of absolute freedom . Actors relying on deep legitimacy understand themselves to be the mouthpiece and, the arm of an authority beyond the social border . To develop a sense of deep legitimacy" ho civilization is needed ; all that is needed is to be an ordinary - savage - human being . A very conspicuous instance of conformable non-conformity or legitimate deviation is met with among the !Kung Bushmen in the Kalahari desert of Southern Africa (27), relating to rules of sexual behaviour for women . They never expose their buttocks, which are definitely associated with sex, as the position for sexual intercourse is for the man to be at the back of the woman (28) . Women's wear consists of a genital apron and loin cloth as well as the so-called kaross, a coat made of eland antelope skin, worn round the buttocks (29) . In contrast to what constitutes the everyday code of decency and good manners and what is considered a breach of this code, the ethnographer Lorna Marshall tells us (30) that in the Eland Dance of the menarchal ceremony the women take off their karosses and hang beads from their waists down their bare behinds . The Eland Dance is part of the ceremony of first menstruation . Men are strictly excluded from participation . Another ethnographer calls the Eland Dance the central feature of the girl's puberty ceremony and says it is held in the girl's honour . All the men and boys leave the camp, except for one or two old men, who tie eland's horns to their heads . The motif of this dance clearly is the courtship of the eland bull, and it is said that it can easily become indecent (31) . As we know, initiation time is reversal time . In order to analyze the content of the inversion we are first going on from the girl's being honoured by the performance of the Eland Dance . If the girl is honoured by the women's exposing their bare behinds, it follows that in everyday life the women's honour is insulted by the rule that they are not supposed to show their buttocks in the presence of men . By performing the dance the women's honour is restored again ; or, in other words, behaviour that is inappropriate towards human males is quite decent in the presence of an eland bull . So far so good . But why an eland? The old man representing the bull is the opposite of a young man ; he is not a begetter but someone else . Who else? From other reports we know that the eland, the real species (Taurotragus oryx), is a comparatively rare

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visitor to the parts occupied by the Bushmen . There are some groups of Bushmen who do not kill the eland at all, since they believe that harm will befall any person who eats its meat . In other words, these groups consider the eland to be absolute taboo . The native expression, soxa, designates the power of sacred beings and things . Among other groups the man who shoots an eland must, on returning to the camp, sleep under the large tree in the centre as intercourse with his wife will prevent the poison of the arrow from killing the animal (32) In order to understand these rules of behaviour one has to remember that among primitive societies throughout the world sex and food customs are set in an order of mutual complementary opposition (33) . Thus, a man is supposed to kill game or to beget a child, and a woman is supposed to 'kill' orally what the man has delivered, that is to eat the animal's meat, or to bring forth into life, at the other orifice of her body, what the man has delivered to her . A series of pairs of antagonisms is thus arranged in a system of binary complementary oppositions : man/woman, sex/aggression, game/child, death/life, mouth/vagina and so on . All these pairs of antagonisms exclude one another in savage theory, but attract each other in savage practice . The main problem is to unite the antagonistic entities while, at the same time, preventing them from destroying each other . The uniting process is successful only if it is set in motion through respectful orientation towards a third entity that, structurally speaking, is on a higher level, or, in other words, is structurally ascending . The further you ascend in a structure, the more inclusive are its nodes . The further you descend in a structure, the more the nodes differentiate themselves into single elements (see Diagram 1) . In order to unite man and woman successfully one has to have recourse to a structural node of the level above the human level, to a third entity that is man and woman at the same time . Now my assertion is that among the :Kung Bushmen this entity is symbolized by the eland . This means that if a human being is reversed by overstepping the social border and entering the beyond of society he or she turns out to be an eland, and vice versa (see Diagram 2) . As to the women's behaviour during initiation my assumption seems to be justified . But how about boys and men in the boys' initiation? As a matter of fact, the male initiates undergo a sort of eland transplantation in that some parallel incisions are made on the initiate's skin and small pieces of eland meat implanted while hunting . The incisions are preferentially applied to the buttocks, but are also found on the chest, the

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belly, or the back(34) . Obviously, this eland implantation has to be looked at in connexion with the women's Eland Dance . Both rituals make sense, if they are understood as attempts to acquire the status of an eland in the structural sense . For if you are an eland, your existence has attained a structural level beyond that of man or woman, of honour or shame, of death or life, of conformity or deviance . You have become an entity that always comprises both of them . In structuralist theory this entity which contains both elements of a binary complementary opposition is termed mediator (see Diagram 2) . The nodes of a structure are mediators . They are responsible for the structural dynamics . It is the mediators that unite incompatible elements, for instance individual antagonistic interests, and it is they that reverse social norms into their opposites, which, for example, transform shame into honour and honour into shame . In order to set the process of reversal in motion one has to merge with the mediator as intimately as possible . The most pertinent archaic methods of intimate merging are the most savage and the most efficient : to eat or to drink it, to inhale it, to copulate with it, to implant it . Just remeber the Last Supper and Holy Communion and the Song of Songs, which has been interpreted as describing the mystical marital union between Jesus Christ and the Church in terms of a language that even a pagan Bushman would understand . In Revelation 21,9 the church is introduced as the Lord's bride, as the wife not of the Eland but of the Lamb . . . . As to the origin of elands we are fortunate enough to have a report of a traveller (or government official) who in 1874 published an account (35) about 'Kaggen,' the very well-known supreme being of the Bushmen, otherwise known as the mantis . From this narrative we learn that Cagn is the father of elands as well as of Man . We must here do without an account of this rather lengthy myth, but drawing on comparative religion it is quite evident that Cagn is the creator of all things as well as what is called in German 'Herr der Tiere', or, literally translated, Lord of game (36) . Among hunters and gatherers people believe that a supreme authority, the Lord of game, tells his progeny, the animals, to leave his home which is thought to be far away in the depths of the forest or in a hidden cave in inaccessible mountains . He sends them off so that people may kill them and have food . However, hunters are not supposed to wipe out the species ; otherwise the animals would tell the Lord and he would hold them back . Furthermore, the hunters are expected to collect the bones carefully without breaking or damaging them and to expose the skeleton in the forest so as to enable the animal to be revived by the Lord . Thus, the Bushmen's

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The basic assumption is that parallel elements (nodes of the same level) are unequal and therefore incompatible . FA ., the nodes 11 and 12 are incompatible because 2 and 12 . Their interrelation has to be 'mediated' through their common 'ancestor' which is (1+2) . Likewise, on a lower level, the nodes 121 and 122, f .i ., are unequal (1 prevails in 121, 2 in 122) and therefore incompatible . In 1221 1 and 2 balance each other, but its 'opponent' 1222 is dominated by 2 . - The direct horizontal communication between two nodes is tabooed . It has to be effected vertically through the common 'ancestor' of both nodes . 11111, f .i ., communicates with 1112 through 111, with 1121 through 11, and with 1211 through (1+2) . With regard to the boundary (- - -) separating the beyond of society from the living part of society readers familiar with the structure of unilinear descent groups may bear in mind the religious connotations of what Gluckman (1968 :226) points out with regard to its political significance : 'Up to this point [viz . the boundary], the genealogies serve to coordinate relationships of everyday cooperation, inheritance, and so on, between living people, related through the recently dead . The upper half of the genealogies relates larger groups together [f .i ., segments 11 and 12] - that is, these genealogical links define political or group relations, rather than interpersonal relations .'

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belief that the elands are the siblings of human beings is quite consistent with other hunting people's cosmological ideas . Besides, it is obvious that the Lord of game, Cagn, is the Lord of the beyond of Bushman society as well . What strikes us in connection with our subject is the fact that Cagn's realm and the prevailing form of social interaction therein abounds in deviance . One may even say that the sequence of events is based on the continuously deviating activities of the participants . They make wrong use of their abilities and capacities . Coti, the wife of Cagn, uses her husband's knife for sharpening her digging stick . In fact, knives are exclusively used by men, women are never supposed to touch a man's tool or weapon . By taking Cagn's knife into her own hands Coti interferes with the sphere of male production and spoils it . In consequence, Cagn curses his wife's paramount tool of female production, her womb, so that she is delivered of a spoiled product : an eland's calf instead of a human baby . Cagn wants to make the animal fit for the use of men, but the two sons he already has by their presumption and disobedience spoil the domesticating efforts of their father who thus in vain strives to civilize the new kind of semi-human progeny . The world of Cagn is a spoiled world where people behave in a topsy-turvy way . It is from this inverted world that elands originate . It is said that they are Cagn's children, that they know his abode, that he is in their bones, that they listen to his call and obey it . From a structural point of view and seen from the beyond of society, however, it is the life-world, our own world, the world of social reality which is turned upside down and spoiled . What the sons of Cagn, the human forefathers, do is nothing but bad manners . It is the elands, on the other hand, that actually know how to behave properly ; it is they, animals, game, that are the real, genuine children . Cagn's normal sons, though human, are nothing but spoiled bastards brought forth by the source of evil, Woman . Or, as regards the behavioural norms of everyday life, these norms are fundamentally spoiled ; whoever wants to recognize the original norms must observe the eland's behaviour, and whoever wishes to behave properly, that is whoever wishes to participate in the very origin of norms, is required to behave in the same way as the elands do . This is why the women imitate elands in heat in their initiation ceremonies . Obviously their point is to merge with the origin of norms, the supreme normative authority, the very source of legitimacy . What looks like a deplorable deviation or a custom of licentious behaviour apt to vent otherwise suppressed drives is in fact an effort to regain their spoiled legitimacy, their spoiled justification in order to

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Diagram 2

The Eland as supreme mediator

[node (1+2)]

------------------- reversing boundary

11111 • man food death kill an animal eat meat mouth segment 11

• 12222

woman sex life beget a child (man) bear a child (woman) vagina (woman) segment 12

-- ;f---- Unmediated relation implies destruction of structure . ensure their initial moral integrity and the legality of their everyday behaviour . The reversal of norms by acting out opposite norms is the paramount means of merging, of communication with the very source of norms . This reversal is more than an ingenious device symbolizing the transition from legitimacy to legality ; it is the sole means of effecting this transition, of creating legality . To a Western mind it seems absurd to say that legality owes its existence to processes of deviation . In fact, we have lost sight of the existential necessity of norm reversal which is a basic need of every living human structure . However, it is only from negation that positive norms arise . Or, to put it more graphically : women cover their buttocks, because they know that they are entitled to expose them . In sum, negation is the first step from savagery to civilization . An essential characteristic of savage deviance that becomes more and more effective and relevant in the rituals of reversal of higher civilization is rebellion or revolt . Rituals of reversal have more than a purely therapeutic aspect in the religious and psychological sense : they have essential political consequences (37) . If the pivotal role of the powerless, the underprivileged and the wretched in the

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establishment of the society's welfare and the justification of the power of its ruling class is taken into consideration (38), one may assess the amount of political dynamite hidden in the more developed rituals of reversal, as for instance in African installation rituals, which are characterized by a syndrome comprising anarchy, chaos, licence, obscenity, aggression, reversal of social roles etc . (39) . Savagery, however, is not a thing confined to primitive society . A European would associate the above mentioned list with Carnival (40) . From studying this type of festival it becomes evident that all over the world Carnival masters the art of playing history in reverse . But that is another story (41) .

NOTES * This paper was first read at the XIIIth International Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions at the University of Lancaster from 15 to 22 August 1975 . 1 Frazer 1932ff ., 12, p . 346 'licence' . 2 In Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa, The Frazer Lecture 1952, Manchester University Press, 1954 . Cf . Gluckman 1963, p . 112 . Gluckman's concern was with a "systematic theory about rebellions" (1963, p . 9) . As early as 1947 he had formulated it as follows : 'The theory . . . is that the societies which have a stagnant techno-economy have conflicts which can be resolved by changing the individuals occupying office or in relationship with one another, without changing the pattern of the offices or relationships' (1963, pp . 86f .) In 1955, in a lecture on the Third Programme of the BBC ('The Licence in Ritual') he said : 'And the basis of my argument is that the licensed ritual of protest and of rebellion is effective so long as there is no querying of the order within which the ritual of protest is set, and the group itself will endure' (1956, p . 130), and he added : 'once there is questioning of the social order, the ritual of protest is inappropriate, since the purpose of the ritual is to unite people who do not or cannot query their social roles' (1956, p . 134) . 3 Norbeck 1963 . 4 Raum 1967, Rigby 1968, Norbeck 1963, Beidelman 1966 . Gluckman 1963 argues with other critics : Schapera (20f .), Wilson (24ff .), Gibson (27), and Reay (28) . 5 Leach 1961, pp . 124ff . 6 Weidkuhn 1976 . 7 Cohen 1968, p . 27, e .g ., tells us that deviant behaviour

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is a menace to social organization if it is not restrained, but he does not consider the fact that the same is true as regards conformity, which devalues the distinction between conformity and deviance . Gluckman's ethnographic material is mainly from stratified societies . If 'rituals of conflict' demonstrably occur in so-called egalitarian societies such as most hunters and gatherers - and they do occur - , then either egalitarian societies are not egalitarian (since there is conflict arising out of inequality) or the performance of the ritual does not originally provide for the relief of - political - tensions (since among equals there can be no tension) . This holds true even as to revolutions . Sternberger 1968, p . 244 : 'Revolutions, unlike usurpations or coups d'etat, are not necessarily illegitimate .' Unfortunately, we are nowhere told the circumstances under which a revolution is by necessity legitimate . Strehlow 1947,p . 13f . 107ff . Howitt 1904, pp . 531f .,532f .,534,544,548f .,554,556,557, 604 . Further instance in Spencer and Gillen 1927, p . 295 . Reversal of evaluation of ritual area : Howitt 1904, p . 543 ; of ritual fire, p . 551f . ; of a 'sculpture' moulded out of earth of the 'god' Daramulun p . 553 . As fas as Australia is concerned see Howitt 1904, pp . 656f ., 664,675 ; Mathews 1900, pp . 632,634,635,636 ; 1904, pp . 79, 80,81 ; Spencer and Gillen 1927, pp . 218,257f .,258,299 . Cf . Weidkuhn 1965, pp . 25,76 . Mathews 1895/6, pp . 414,325 ; 1896/7, pp . 301,306 ; Eliade 1954, pp . 312f . ; Heiler 1961, p . 70 . It seems appropriate to mention a caveat . The term 'irruption of eternity' or 'irruption of the beyond' must not be reified . Values as factors of legitimation per definition occupy the strategically essential 'nodes' (see below) of a social structure, which as a hierarchy of values is always a religious structure . An individual approaching such nodes, in a sociometrical sense, comes under tremendous social and religious pressure without knowing why, a process which is experienced as an 'irruption of the beyond' or as the 'reversal of the life-world' . This is not to say that eternity cannot be conceived as the more or less imminent future . To stress the future (or the past), however, means to neglect the present which is thereby excluded from the study of religion . Strehlow 1947, p . 11 . Rigby 1968 . One of the most outstanding peculiarities of revolution

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26 27 28 29 30

is that it is an irreversible process that transforms the basic hierarchy of values (= structure), e .g . by diminishing or augmenting the number of hierarchial structural positions (nodes) . It thus marks the points of no return of historic processes . Revolution is not a happening like rebellion, not every rebellion generates a revolution, but the spiritual seeds of every revolution assume material form in the womb of a rebellion . The present writer would even like to take a further step and say as an anthropologist that for natural reasons the savage mind - which is not the same as the mind of the savages - seems to be incapable of carrying out a revolution . Why this is so is suggested by Weidkuhn 1976 . Cf . Gluckman 1967, pp . 137,165 ; 1969, p . 224 ; Weidkuhn 1969, pp . 289-92 ; 1970 . p . 45 . For a survey see Cohen 1968a and Sack-1969 . An appropriate starting point to overcome any sterile adjustment/ maladjustment position is pointed out by Shoham (1974) . Again, this is not to maintain that the existence of authorities beyond time and space can be scientifically proved, but only to question the origin of legitimacy of so-called secularized action and behaviour . Cf . Gluckman 1968, p . 220 : 'The problem of time is critical for all studies of social and cultural systems . . . . It is about the significance of time and changes in time much of the obscurity has accumulated ; for "time" exists in social life, as many studies have shown, in different modes .' Leach 1961, p . 134 . Although the number of structuralisms - to say nothing of structuralists - is Legion, not all of them are unclean spirits . Apart from the writings of Claude Levi-Strauss the author is much indebted to British social anthropology (E .E . Evans-Pritchard, E . Leach, and R . Needham in particular) . He profited very much from reading Michael Lane's 'Introduction' to his anthology (Lane 1970) . The first German author who really comes to grip with structuralism in anthropology - without combating or denying it - is Oppitz (1975) . For an instance of the importation of legitimacy (and another ritual of reversal in an 'egalitarian' African society) see Weidkuhn 1973 (pp . 452f .) . Leach 1961, p . 132 ; Balandier 1967, pp . 43,129,133 . John Marshall 1958 ; Lorna Marshall 1957, 1957a,1959,1960, 1961,1962,1969 ; Thomas 1959 . Marshall 1959, pp . 339f . Marshall 1959, pp . 355 ;1961, p . 246 ; Thomas 1959, p . 176, table 13 . Marshall 1969, p . 365 .

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34 35 36 37 38

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Schapera 1930,p . 119 . Cf . Passarge 1907, pp . lOlff . and table 23 (p . 102) . Fourie 1928, p . 102 . Some instances : Levi Strauss 1962, pp . 70,102,116,117, 139ff . Cf . the English expression for premarital sexual relations 'sitting down to dinner, before grace is said' . Marshall 1959, p . 351 . Originally published in the Cape Monthly Magazine,for a reprint see Orpen 1919 . See, e .g ., Paulson 1962, pp . 68ff . Weidkuhn 1969 . Cf . Turner's (1969, p . 108) paragraph about 'Mystical danger and the powers of the weak' (the expression 'powers of the weak' is from I .M . Lewis 1963, p .III ; Cf . Turner 1969, p . 99) and Weidkuhn 1976 . Turner 1969, pp . lOOff,170f . ; Balandier 1967, pp . 133ff . ; Perrot 1967 . Van Den Berghe 1963,1965 . Turner (1969, p . 171ff .) mentions dinners on Christmas Day in the British Army, American Halloween, the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian All Saints and All Souls . Weidkuhn 1969,1969a,1971,1976 .

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OPPITZ, Michael Notwendige Beziehungen . Abriss der strukturalen Anthropologie, Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp, 1975 . ORPEN, J .M . 'A Glimpse Into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen', Folklore 30 (1919), pp . 139-52 . PASSARGE, Siegfried Die Buschminner der Kalahari, Berlin : Dietrich Reimer, 1907 . PAULSON, Ivar 'Die Religionen der nordasiatischen (sibirischen) Volker', in : Paulson, Hultkrantz, Jettmar (eds), Die Religionen Nordeurasiens and der amerikanischen Arktis, Stuttgart : Kohlhammer, 1962, pp . 1-144 . PERROT, Claude-Helene 'Be di murua : un rituel d'inversion sociale dans le royaume agni de 1'Indenie', Cahiers D'Etudes Africaines 7 (1967), pp . 434-43 . RAUM, O .F . 'The Interpretation of the Nguni First Fruit Ceremony', Paideuma 13 (1967), pp . 148-63 . RIGBY, Peter 'Some Gogo Rituals of "Purification" : An essay on Social and Moral Categories', in : Leach, E .R . (ed .), Dialectic in Practical Religion, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 153-78 . SACK, Fritz 'Abweichendes Verhalten', in : BERNSDORF, Wilhelm (ed .) 1969 (second edition) : Worterbuch der Soziologie, Stuttgart : Enke, 2-8 . SCHAPERA, Isaac The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa . Bushmen and Hottentots, London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930 . SHOHAM, S . Giora Society and the Absurd . With a foreword by Harold D . Lasswell and Lawrence Z . Freedman, Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1974 . SPENCER, Baldwin and GILLEN, Francis J . The Arunta . A Study of a Stone Age People . London : Macmillan, 1927 . STERNBERGER, Dolf 'Legitimacy', International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 9 (1968), pp . 244-8 . STREHLOW, Theodore George Henry Aranda Traditions, Melbourne : Melbourne University Press, 1947 . THOMAS, Elizabeth Marshall The Harmless People, New York : A .Knopf, 1959 . TURNER, Victor W . The Ritual Process . Structure and AntiStructure, London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969 . VAN DEN BERGHE, Pierre L . 'Institutionalized Licence and Normative Stability', Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 3 (1963), pp . 413-23 . VAN DEN BERGHE, Pierre L . 'Some Comments on Norbeck's African Rituals of Conflict', American Anthropologist 67 (1965), pp . 485-9 . WEIDKUHN, Peter Aggressivitat, Ritus, Sakularisierung . Biologische Grundformen religioser Prozesse, Basel : Pharos (- Basler Boitrage zur Ethnologie Bd . 3), 1965 . WEIDKUHN, Peter 'Fastnacht - Revolte - Revolution', Zeitschrift fur Religions- and Geistesgeschichte 21 (1969), pp . 289-306 .

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WEIDKUHN, Peter 'Ideologiekritisches zum Streit zwischen Fasnacht and Protestantismus in Basel : I . Der Sieg der Fasnacht von 1920 and seine Vorgeschichte', Schweizerisches Archie fur Volkskunde 65 (1969), pp . 36-74 . WEIDKUHN, Peter 'Zur politischen Rolle der Religion in archaischen Kulturen', Antaios 12 (1970), pp . 30-47 . WEIDKUHN, Peter 'Frau Fasnacht - Tochter des Antichrist?', in Unsere Fasnacht, Basel : P . Heman, 1971, pp . 77-87 . WEIDKUHN, Peter 'Die Rechtfertigung des Mannes aus der Frau bei Ituri-Pygmaen', Anthropos 68 (1973), pp . 442-55 (with English summary) . WEIDKUHN, Peter 'Carnival in Basle : Playing History in Reverse', in : 'festivals and carnivals : the major traditions', Cultures, Vol . III, no . 1, 29-53 (Unesco Press and La Baconniere, Paris . Also published in French by the same editor : 'Le carnaval de Bale ou 1'Histoire inversee' .) .