The Reenchantment of the World (31 page)

 

 

It is thus clear that, in social terms, the naven ceremony makes perfect
sense. If schisms occur patrilineally, anything that strengthens affinal
ties (those that result from marriage) reduces the chances of schismatic
break. The affinal links are the weak points in the whole Iatmul social
organization, and thus the naven ceremonies, which reinforce and even
exaggerate these links, serve to shore up community integration. In fact,
without the naven ceremonies, Iatmul villages could not be as large as
they are.

 

 

Bateson's explanation of the social meaning of naven is brilliant, but
the real inspiration here lies in the fact that he never took his own
explanation seriously. Given that naven serves the function indicated,
can anyone really believe that the powerful emotive energy evident in the
ceremonies is explicable in sociological terms? Would anyone seriously
wish to assert that transvestism and ritual copulation are performed for
the express purpose of preventing social fission? Bateson was aware that
this type of explanation lacked an understanding of the motives of its
participants, and he realized that the clue to such motives lay in the
"ethos" of the culture, its overall emotional climate. If one wanted
the ethos, which was as much a matter of value as it was of fact, one
would have to formulate a new definition of scientific methodology. The
strictly functional/analytical approach is correct in some rational
or pragmatic sense, but it misses the whole point. As his father had
once written, it was easier for a scientist to solve a difficulty than
to feel it. Gregory had found a situation in which feeling and solving
were two sides of the same coin.

 

 

What to use as a model? As much as Bateson was impressed by the analytical
work of famous contemporaries such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Edward
Evans-Pritchard, his real mentor was the great anthropologist Ruth
Benedict, whose concept of "configuration" pretty much corresponded to
what he was to call the sum of ethos and "eidos." Ethos was the general
emotional tone of a culture, eidos the underlying cognitive ("logical")
system that a culture possessed. The "concepts," wrote Bateson,

 

 

are in all cases based upon an holistic rather than a crudely analytic
study of the culture. The thesis is that when a culture is considered
as a whole certain emphases emerge built up from the juxtaposition
of the diverse traits of which the culture is composed.12

 

 

Hence the abstract property, the "feel" or ethos, arose from the
arrangement
of concrete elements. It could not be located in the same
way that the elements could, for it was of what he would later call
a higher "logical type" than they. A different juxtaposition would
necessarily mean a different culture, even if all the elements were
identical. In this way, said Bateson, we can state that a culture affects
the psychology of its individuals without also stating that a Hegelian
'Zeitgeist,' or Jungian "group mind," is somehow at work. Following the
example of Ruth Benedict, he continued,

 

 

I shall speak of culture as
standardising
the psychology of the
individuals. This indeed is probably one of the fundamental axioms of
the holistic approach in all the sciences: that the object studied
-- be it an animal, a plant or a community -- is composed of units,
whose properties are in some way
standardised
by their position
in the whole organisation. . . . Culture will affect their scale
of values. It will affect the manner in which their instincts are
organised into sentiments to respond differently to the various
stimuli of life.

 

 

As Bateson admitted, the method was deliberately circular: you determined
the system of sentiments normal to the culture (the ethos), then invoked
it as an explanation for institutions and behavior. Such circularity,
he held, should not be a problem, because it could be avoided only by
taking a functional, or sociological, view of the system, and this told
you nothing about the
motives
of individuals. If you wished to know
motives, you had to put yourself
inside
the system, and to do this
was inevitably to plunge into circularity. There was nothing mysterious
about this situation, as even Gödel's theorem showed. Our behavior was
no less real for being self-validating.

 

 

What, then, would constitute an adequate analysis of Iatmul ethos,
and what might this analysis tell us about their reasons for performing
naven? Much of the ethos of both Western and Asian societies arises out
of social differentiation, especially that between classes or castes. How
one behaves in the presence of another, the emotional tone one adopts, is
at least partly conditioned by relative social position, the importance
of which varies from one society to the next. In Iatmul culture, on
the other hand, there are no social classes and differentiation occurs
according to sexuality. Hence, Bateson's chapters on Iatmul ethos are
necessarily discussions of
sexual
ethos.13 He asks: How do the men
act with each other, how do the women act with each other, and how do
the two sexes act in mixed company?

 

 

The dominant characteristic of male behavior in public situations, whether
in mixed or all-male company, is pride. For Iatmul men life is virtually
a theatrical performance, and activities performed in the ceremonial
house incline toward the spectacular and the violent. The house is both
a place of ritual and a place for debating and brawling, but it is this
latter aspect that largely prevails. As Bateson notes, in the Iatmul
mind the ceremonial house is "hot," pervaded by "a mixture of pride and
histrionic self-consciousness." Entry into the house is marked by some
bit of theater: the man coming into public view will swagger or react
with buffoonery. Just as the society has no law or central authority,
it has no hierarchy of power, no chieftains. What it has, instead, is
a "continual emphasis on self-assertion." Standing is attained by way
of the achievements of war, shamanism, esoteric knowledge, and also by
playing up to the public.

 

 

This behavior is especially marked during public debates that seek
to resolve some point of conflict. "The speakers," writes Bateson,
"work themselves up to a high pitch of superficial excitement, all the
time tempering their violence with histrionic gesture and alternating in
their tone between harshness and buffoonery." A speaker might threaten
to rape members of the opposition, for example, and pantomime his threat
with an obscene dance. When some speaker finally manages an insult too
great for the opposition to tolerate (usually by making fun of their
totemic ancestors), a brawl erupts which may lead to heavy injuries,
and eventually to feuds that involve killing by sorcery.

 

 

Although the ceremonial house is for men only, the reaction of the village
women is never far from the men's minds. Activities in the house are a
preparation for public ceremonies, in which the men perform before the
women in full regalia. Initiations, which take place in the house, are
deliberately staged so that parts of the ceremony are visible to the women
who are nearby and outside, and who thus form an audience. The women also
hear the sounds of the secret tribal instruments, and "the men who are
producing these sounds are exceedingly conscious of that unseen audience
of women." The whole culture, says Bateson, "is moulded by the continual
emphasis upon the spectacular, and by the pride of the male ethos."

 

 

As might be expected, the ethos of Iatmul women is quite the reverse,
though there are instances of remarkable female assertiveness which
are regarded as admirable by the Iatmul people. But for the most part,
if the lives of the men are preoccupied with "theater," those of the
women are centered around "reality": obtaining and cooking food, keeping
house, and rearing children. Such activities are done privately, with
no regard to appearances. Female style is unostentatious, sometimes to
the point of being taciturn. The general spirit is one of quiet jollity
and cooperation, and it is the theatrical behavior of the men which
provides most of the drama of a woman's life. When, however, the women are
collectively called upon to dance publicly, they exhibit a proud ethos,
wearing male ornaments and even moving with a slight swagger. This mild
transvestism becomes full-blown during naven.

 

 

As Bateson points out, his sketch of the Iatmul sexual ethos is drawn
from a European point of view. Male Iatmul behavior is histrionic to us
but not to the Iatmul, who find it quite normal. If we put ourselves
within the culture, we learn that the women find the men strong and
assertive, whereas the men find female behavior weak, sentimental, and
even shameful. Taking the female position in sexual intercourse is seen as
degrading, and for this reason the role reversal during naven's simulated
copulation is almost shocking. We see, then, that "each sex has its own
consistent
ethos which contrasts with that of the opposite sex." Naven
is remarkable for its reversal of these two very rigid cultural styles.

 

 

We are finally in a position to understand why naven is performed. The
immediate motivation is tradition: a child has achieved something
noteworthy and its relatives must therefore publicly express their
joy. In this sense naven is no more esoteric than a bar mitzvah. What
we are really asking is why the celebration takes its particular form,
for obviously, the Iatmul might simply celebrate with a feast. The sexual
ethos described above provides the answer. The men are accustomed to a
theatrical display of emotion, not the genuine expression of it. Women,
on the other hand, are allowed to express real joy in the achievements
of others, but are rarely involved in spectacular public behavior. The
child's achievement, however, forces the Iatmul to enact a celebration
that cuts across this rigid sexual categorization, violating the norms
of both sexes. The men can identify with public display, but not with
expressions of joy. The women can express joy, but to make a public
display is to violate their norm. The result is acute embarrassment
for both sexes, and it is this embarrassment that pushes the situation
towards transvestism.

 

 

Bateson's point of comparison here is the fashionable English horsewoman
who wears decidedly masculine clothing when she rides. Horse riding,
compared to the more typically approved "female" activities of British
culture, has a definite masculine flavor, generating as it does a powerful
sense of physical mastery. In Britain no less than in New Guinea, men
and women are socialized along very different lines. When she rides a
horse the British woman is placed in a situation somewhat unusual for
females, but typical for men; hence a masculine costume appropriate to an
"abnormal" situation. Similarly, the Iatmul woman engaging in a public
display is doing a man's "thing," but wearing a man's costume takes
the edge off the resulting embarrassment. Wearing such a costume says,
in effect, "It's really OK, I'm a man right now." As for the man, he
wears filthy garments and acts in an ineffectual way because his ethos
has taught him to regard female behavior as weak or dispicable. This
"exchange" behavior is so emotionally charged that at its peak the
'wau' may simulate giving birth, while the 'mbora' ('wau's' wife) may
jump on the 'wau' and humiliate her husband by taking the active role
in ritual copulation.

 

 

Although he did not stress it at this point, Bateson did note one
other psychological motive for naven besides the mitigation of
embarrassment. Most cultures possess an aggressive male ethos of
performance (the injunction to "Be a man!"); but in Iatmul culture,
Bateson observed, this pressure may be an above-average burden on
the emotions. As Jung noted, all personalities have both feminine and
masculine components, and it is thus possible that the Iatmul sexual
ethos is suffocating even to them. That a man must never express joy for
another's achievements, or be passive in sex, and that a woman must never
be ostentatious, or the sexual aggressor, probably generates enormous
psychological tensions. Clearly, these tensions are a source of energy
in the naven ceremony, which affords some relief by allowing each sex
to "be" the other for a short time and act out the severely repressed
parts of its personality. The very frequency of the naven ceremonial,
which is performed upon the slightest excuse, further corroborates the
argument that it is a counterbalance to a burdensome sexual ethos. As
the Iatmul themselves would say, theirs is a "hot" society, generating
powerful tensions that are frequently and dramatically relieved.

 

 

Bateson's reflections on the nature of these social and psychological
tensions led to the formulation of his greatest anthropological concept,
that of schismogenesis. Once again he searched for a social analogue to
the biological distinction, emphasized by his father, between radial
and meristic differentiation. Relations between Iatmul men built to a
climax along symmetrical lines. In the ceremonial house, ridicule was met
with ridicule, irony with irony, and boasting with boasting until some
remark finally precipitated a brawl. Male-female relations, however,
followed a very different pattern. Although we have spoken of a male
ethos and a female one, they are hardly independent of each other. The
men are theatrical
because
the women admire the show; the women are
passive (for the most part) because the men are histrionic; and it
is likely that the behavior of each invokes increasingly exaggerated
reciprocal responses. Thus this form of schismogenesis, which Bateson
calls "complementary" in contrast to the symmetrical schismogenesis of
male-male relations, also escalates over time and builds to a climax, and
we might reasonably wonder why Iatmul society does not simply explode
from both types of schismogenesis. Indeed, at least in the case of
the symmetrical rivalry, it does, and it is the naven ceremonial that
keeps latmul society from falling apart completely. Although debates
do become brawls, and brawls become longstanding feuds, the practice
of naven strengthens affinal links and thus softens the harshness of
clan opposition.