Gell, Alfred - Wrapping in Images

rhi, h",,~ " flllhilshnj h, (hlord l'ni\Trsm Press thanks to Ihe genl'rJl ediTorslup 011,,,,, ard .\lorphy, \ ~nivl'rslt) Lt'\.,turcr in Ethnolo~ at Oxlilrd Jnd I :urator al the Pitt Rivers Museum, llnd Fred Myers. Assodatt Professor (,f Anthropology at New York University.

WRAPPING IN

IMAGES

Society and Exchange in Nias .'Indrew Bmlly :\nthropolo!(Y, Art, and\t'sthetics Fdit,.d Ir)' ],.rnnl' COOII' and .1nlhony Shdllln

Tattooing in Polynesia

The C:uhurc of Coincidmcc: .·\reidt'nt and Absolute Lial->ilityin Huli Laurellce (;oldm,n~ Exchange in Oceania: A Graph Tht'oretic Per Hat,. and Frallk- H.irtll)'

Analysis

Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Pn'sentation, Power in Japan and Other Societies 7(1)1 Hend/) \larquesan

and

Soeicties: Inequality and Political Transformation in Eastern Polynesia

Ni,.ho/as Thomas

~/O CLARE~O~RESS'OXFORD

The purpose of this book is to hring together the lacts concerning tattooing in Polynesia and to offer an interpretation of them. To what extent, and in what ways, were the Polynesians tattooed, during the historical period for which documentation exists? \\ hat can we now recover of the cultural significance of this once widespread practice? The extant evidence which bears on these questions is in some respects quite full, because tattooing was a visible trait which tended to attract the attention of early observers of the customary practices of south sea islanders; yet often enough the evidence peters out just as we appear to be approaching the heart of the matter. In order to make the fullest possible use of the ethnographic material bearing specifically on tanooing it becomes necessary to range quite widely over the field of Pol}'Desianstudies. So there are many pages, among those to come, on which the word 'tattooing' fails to make an appearance. This digressivefonnat is an unavoidable necessity, and in consequence this book takes the fonn, at least in part, of a general introduction to Polynesian culture and society, besides being a specialized treatment of one particular feature of these societies. It is not just that some knowledge of the social context and cultural background is required in order to grasp the nature and symbolic associations of Polynesian tattooing. It is rather that tattooing practices played such an integral part in the organization and functioning of major institutions (politics, warfare, religion, and so on) that the description of tattooing practices becomes, inevitably, a description of the wider institutional fonns within which tattooing was embedded. These institutions themselves pose theoretical and interpretative dilemmas, which are the stuff of the ongoing debates between specialists in Oceanic anthropology. Many of these general questions and debating points will be addressed in what is to follow. The idea which germinated this work is a simple one. It occurred to me, in the process of writing some lectures for a course on 'The Anthropology of Art', that one way of exploring regular co-variation between art style (body art, in this-instance) and the socio-cultural milieu would be to collect together the infonnation on tattooing styles fora number of Polynesian societies, and then to align these data with the corresponding social systems (i.e. degree of

:ntr.ucll\. I'rtSllll"(' or ahsuKl' of cl'ntr.lli,ed government, and so on), Would ,r turn Olit rJw thl'll' lITre IlIlcJhglolc correlations between the tattooing tyl .lIld hroadl',r sonal alld politil'al paramett'l'S among the s~"'pl f PIs . es , , " . ' •••• es 0 oyneslan SOCIl'tICS, AccordlOglv I took the social-typololJ'icaJ h " (' IJ ' " '. O' sc erne contamed m , 10 l man S ,~namf Polynesian Society (1970) and collated it with tattooin 1Il10ml,ltlOn from thl' main ethnographic sources. The resulting colla e wa~ nOl \lllhoUl sornl' mterestillg features: Hawaii, reputedly the furthest ~olved 1011.lrds statl'-formatlon 01 all the Polynesian societies, was also the socie shIm 109 the least cultural emphasis on tattooing' Tonga next' I' ,ty d" "" I ' , In mem liS rLSpelt, a so sl'cml'd to underplav hodv art n t th ~1 " , , , U l' 1> arqucsas, at the O!'posI,te l'nd 01 thc political spectrum-the most stn'fie t 1m th I ' ' I ' '. - ( , c cast stateIp o l1l.zel (I.C, the n.lOst Opell according to Goldman's schemel-had the most dabnr.lte tat!oomg oj all. Therc seeml'd, OIl /irst inspection to be some kind of 'elecn' . ffi" hetll" , ..... 'II' ,eamtv , . ,(l,n SOLletles lilt 1 e anorale tattooing .md an Open (competitive) sta~s hler.lr~h}, '10~ ~omerscly, there seemed to be disaffinitv between CI d e (stralihed) SOCIetIesand the existence of a culturally stressed trad't1' fbod°s Jrl B t ' ' I d'd ' . , ) on 0 y .: u. : .IS. I n(~t lall to pomt out in mv lecture, this crude application of thl IOgle of eorrelatlOlls produced as manv I'uzzles and bl t t' h ' j' I ' " " . a an Jrusmatc es as It III Il1tcrcstmg-lookll1g res~l.ts, There were reputedly stratified societies, sU~h. as .\.Iang~r~va an~ Tahiti, which practised tattooing extensively. And thcre ," ere soclenes whIch were not at all stratified but which had I tatto h H" ' ,' even ess , omg t an awall, such as Niue (Opl'n) and Pukapuka (Tr din al Thesl' non-correlations couJd be accounted for in two ways which a , on ). by 'illY mea' t IJ I' .. , "ere not : ' ,. . ns mu ua y exc uSlye; either there was something wron ·th th \Iay In whIch Goldman had classified Pol,,' , I g WI e , , " ynt SIan socia systems, or there was ~omethmg II rang WIth the Idea that one should expect to find correlations C('lltcn body art. and the socio-cuJtural milicu-or at any rate simple ea _ to- gct -at correJatlons. ' , sy The typological, question concerning how best to classify PI' ' SOCICtIesfi· . 0 ~neSlan " , or comparailYC purposes can be deferred until later-tho~gh th ~~~~)encle~ of a typolo~ which puts strife-tom New Zealand and peacefu~ . pula ill the same pigeon-hole hardly needs to be underlined, But the other prob.Jem h~s to be c~n:ronted without delay, because it is essential to the \~hoJe project. ~ ~gue hohstlc mtuitions apart. on what conceivable grounds s ~uJ? o~e anncl~ate a 'fit' between patterns of sociological variation and ~anatlOn m tattoolOg styJes and institutio1i5' Some kind of recondite but lllescapabJe caus~J Jinkage between body arts allU political arrangements; That h as ra the outside of the body is the part \\/uch IS pubhe .and which comes into contact with other people ~ people are the sum total of their relations with other people ~ the person is his/her skin. l'he. nlllion that the skin is a constitutive clement of the social person and proVIdes the means. of conducting social relationships is clearly a very significant one, though of such generality that, by itself, it is not very informative. There ~as, howe\'~r, been one attempt to provide a more generalized a~coulll of the role of the skin in cross-cultural perspective which, unlike T. lurner or M. Strathern, explicitly attempts to examine the transition between the symbolic significance of the skin (and skin treatments) in so-called primiti\l' societies and more evolved societies such as pre-modem states and Llltcr-dav modern societies. I am here referring to a work by Maertens which hove.rs bttween anthropology, evolutionary reconstruction, and psychoanalysis Jnd IS consequently rather difficult to classifY. Maertens's work is valuable and inspiring, Lho.ugh casual enquiries among francophor.e colleagues of mine h'IVC so. far faIled to unearth any details about this anthropologist whose book /.( /)(.

)

\ b:nens argues that tribal body art serves in ritual, . socI.11relations of solidarity on th. b" t' h ~o~te:\1s,to establ!~h ' ,e aSls 0 s ared renuncIatIon t th th" anl I th IS renunciation is achieved by fj', t' II ' 0 e mo er, rSI 0 a recaJImgthe fi ' d tIlCIIconsclluentlv re-ell'ICtI'ngth " I' act 01 sepa t' '1 , • e' ongllla p'use , state, and thc !1Iolhrr is rc~'ained but th. ' I, . ra IOn, amt ISdonned, T ' . " " r pamt a \\ays has to be washed if ' .lllt10Sand mutilatIOns serve as 'lived' si sf, ~ .agam. thc ;r~odb~ands IOlposed from represents, a ue y and what that body I

r:

The' diacritical use of body-markin s t 'd '. ' indeed an old and widespr~ad fi 0/ enn~ margmal/outcast status is Romans had to deal with the 'P' ~ta, (re? Pdre-modem state systems. The " Ie s pamte men) ha ' th· L ' while within them, slaves were customaril b rrymg e~ Honners, hihiting marking the body (Le•.iticus 19.2/ r~~ded. Th.e Mo~alc law prothe idea that the marked bod ' ' b'), an~ Its Koramc eqUIvalentreflect , , IS an a ommatlon whi h b b lI1to proximity with the sacI' d- (' I,' c cannot e rought " . e Just as a eper 0 d fi d ahomination), Outlaws (beginnin with Cain r a ~ orme person is an thun from social and religious life Bu ' ' ) were mutIlated s~ as to exclude he set the more unusual "liz' t agamst these marks of mfam~'have to marglna Illg marks which b k . sanctity: the scars left by exceptional devotions the . eto en extra,ordmary the wounds endured bv Christ h' If ,stIgmata of the samts, and \1, >, , ,I~se . , at nens shows how tattcomg m modern ind .r . . be a~sociated with marginal (though not unifo~tna Ised society connnues to verv I1lterestingpoint that tattooing th " . th Ylow) ~tatus. He makes the mes m ose margInal groups which are

confined in society, but which are denied the opportunity to reproduce within it and have little personal stake in it, apart from their own continued hodily existence. He '"suggests that these non-reproducing groups-prisoners, soldiers andSiillors, prostitutes-tattoothemselves with designs which both seek to compensate for a rootless existence (MOTHER in large letters across the chest) and simultaneously express tiltalistic acceptance of social exclusion. Lombroso had earlier remarked on the linkage between tattooing and fatalism, the philosophy most characteristic of the criminal classes, but he accounted for it merely as a consequence of animal dumbness. Maertens shows, more sympathetically, how the pennanent inscription of the hostile attitudes of the dominant group, so that they become absorbed into the very substance of the body, can be interpreted as an attempt to achieve reintegration, an encompassing wholeness, even if thc practical clfect of tattooing a device such as BORN CRIMINAL on to the body is to make social reintegration even more of an impossibilitythan it was before. The prisoner who docs this accepts once and for all that he is a criminal and seeks to reconstruct the world on that basis; either by challenging the forces of order or, more typically, by representing passive acceptance of destiny as thc s~nlbolic equivalent of exercising mastery oyer it, Tattooing is thus a bodily code for registering social forces as part of the person on whom these social forces impinge, thereby creating a conceptual closure, a unity, out of what is; in fact, a relation of marginality and exclusion. Thus soldiers and sailors (especiallyin old-style armies in which enlisted men had little cbance of marrying and having families) tended to cover themselves with national flags, regimental badges, plus sundry female figures, identified as mothers, girlfriends, ",ives, etc, so as to create an enveloping social matrix as a symbolic surrogate for the domestic envelope which their circumstances in life made it impossible for them to develop satisfactorily. Maertens's discussion of tattooing, body-painting, and cosmetics is in many ways'bighly instructive (cf, Thevoz 1984). But, quite apart from the issue of the plausibility of Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is unsatisfactory in that it is ba$ed on an excessively simple paradigm of social evolution. In particular, from the standpoint of the present work, it is unfortunate that Maertens's social-evolutionaryscheme appears to have no place at all for societies such as those in Oceania which are distinctly hierarchical, but which are none the less not states nor prone to eschatological discourse of the ]udaeo-Christian kind. Maertens is either unaware of, or at least does not mention, any instances of tribal societies with repressive codes of sexual morality, which exist in plenty,-for instance Manus (Fortune 1935) or Kaulong (Goodale 1980)nor any pre-capitalist hierarchical societies with permissive sexual regimes, which are also not uncommon (e.g. the Society Islands; cf. th. 3), Such a crude stereotype of cultural evolution cannot provide a secure basis for the kind of global theory.Maertens is aiming at, which most anthropologists would

rC.'~.lrd .IS hopdcssh amhilious ilnvwav Th" I \1·' ~ -' Is l ors not mean however th ~ .llTll'IlS IS IlClTssarilv wrong "/1 all "h' d 'I d ' ,at , 0 IS etill e analyses f hi can'v a good deal of conviction, " some 0 w eh I also entirely disagree with the idea that sta f' . , corrdated with stages of psych' d I ges 0 SOCIalevolutlon can. be ". . Ie eve opment This is tJ th otJ!o!'eny recapitulates phv'logenv' idea . .' exae y . e same" as derh.Ts frum another of ihe in(ellectual InsPlref~ fII,omkbrlo~o, only this time it I (P-) \1 sons 0 . ae e I e Fre d (G Id I, '. ,Iertens docs not deprecate a~'h . '. ' ' . u ou , . ' .c alc SOCieties as 10mb d'd b . more IIlchned to romanticize thc'l'r egal't " d'fi' roso I, e/llg . . I anamsm an usio I' , It comes to the same thl'llg fl' h' na Integratl.on, but . . e IS at IS m 't· ., h ahout states and ,thout m