Facehunting: Empathy, Masculinity and Violence among the Bugkalot

Abstract

This article discusses how anthropological explorations of empathy can be enriched through a focus on transgression. Empathy is commonly understood as a human capacity that allows a person to share the feelings of others through some form of mental engagement. Thereby, it is believed, empathy establishes compassionate relationships between people and prevents violence from breaking out. In this article, I suggest the opposite may be the case: in fact, empathy may be the very foundation for acts of radical violence and killings. The ethnographic basis of my inquiry is research conducted among the Bugkalot (Ilongot) of northern Philippines on the practice of headhunting. I propose that empathy is what allows violence to achieve its transformative capacity. Furthermore, I seek to show how understanding headhunting as 'murder' may disclose how this particular act is tied to masculine ideals of autonomy. Headhunting, I argue, targets not the head but the 'face,' that is, it strikes at the very fulcrum of the ethical relation and the foundation of empathy.

Headhunting as Reflexive Violence

“…This has been a comment on Mikkelsen (2017) and some additional literature. Issues raised in Facehunting deserve further comment and discussion along such conceptual lines as 'prereflexivity' and 'transgression.'…”

Out of the Ordinary

“…This topic was commonly broached in relation to the type of ritual headhunting, ngayó that had formed an integral part of life among the Bugkalot until the 1970s. My informants explained how during 'the days of cutting' (magon ma pa momotog), all social life revolved around the desire of young men to achieve the same recognition as those among their peers who had taken heads (Mikkelsen 2017;2013, Mikkelsen andSøgaard 2015).…”