Flying away like a bird: An instance of severance from the parental abode (Iwolaqamalycaane, Yagwoia, Papua New Guinea)

Mimica, Jadran

doi:10.4000/jso.6090

Cited by 2 publications

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“…One of its diacritical aspects is the volatile equipotentiality of the life^death instinctual drives (libido^mortido), whose specific articulation is a function of the actualisation of every concrete person's life, i.e ., his/her biographical vicissitudes in the field of kinship relatedness (Mimica 2003a, 2007b, 2008b, 2010, 2020). Accordingly, the problematic of the moral fabric of Yagwoia kinship relatedness, and the structure and dynamics of the super‐ego (conscience), has to be understood in terms of its life^death matrix.…”

Section: The Life^death Circuity Of Kinship and The Notion Of The Fat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As many were hoping, it was their candidate who got elected, the first Yagwoia MP since 1972. For a more detailed introductory account of the Yagwoia life‐world with a specific focus on the history of their incorporation into the capitalist world‐system, see Mimica (2020, 2023, Forthcoming).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…They cannot have independent existence. In the Yagwoia life‐world, understood in its terms as the ouroboric world‐body, this dialectic pertains to all beings (for details, see Mimica Forthcoming).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…4 4 Mimica (In preparation); for related case studies already published, see Mimica (2006, 2008a, 2010). For a systematic account of the main structures of Yagwoia kinship and social organization, see Mimica (1991).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…This is why a psychoanalytic exploration of concrete Yagwoia simultaneously entails the exploration of the archetypal realm of their cosmic Self. For the luno‐solar quiddity of the human (Yagwoia) soul, see Mimica (2003a:262–265, 2020, Forthcoming).…”

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Stalked by the Malignant Father's Spirit: A Case of Patricide among the Yagwoia (PNG)

Mimica

2023

Oceania

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Among the Yagwoia (PNG), the dynamics of fatherhood is a process of man's transmission to and incorporation of his vital substance by his progeny. In this way, the father becomes replaced principally by his son(s). This process, referred to as the incorporation and replacement of the father's 'bone', has multiple actualisations whose concrete reality and significance can only be adequately understood through individual-biographical life-situations and trajectories. Even if not expressed through overt conflict, the dynamics of the incorporation of the father's 'bone' is fundamentally conflictual. It is frequently experienced by man as a violent loss of and disinvestment from his generative bodily core, especially in the sphere of prestations and financial provisioning for his children. In this context, the father's handling of his son's bride-price shells/money has central importance. However, it is the entirety of the father's comportment to his son and daughter that effectively generates this continuous and irreversible process of the self-transmission of his vital substance. If he is greedy, selfish and ungiving, then all the samehis 'bone' transmission will be merely keyed in and acted out in an increasingly overt negative mode, and the son's comportment to him will be equally bad. No matter what kind of father a man may be, his son's incorporation of his father's osseous strength is unstoppable. Thus, a son not only threatens and intimidates, but also may beat up and occasionally kill his father. This paper deals with one such extreme case of son's replacement and incorporation of his father's vital core.

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Section: The Life^death Circuity Of Kinship and The Notion Of The Fat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Stalked by the Malignant Father's Spirit: A Case of Patricide among the Yagwoia (PNG)

Mimica

2023

Oceania

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If the Yagwoia were the Gimi…: A Reply to Gillison's Critical Appraisal of ‘Stalked by the Malignant Spirit…’

Mimica

2023

Oceania

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In the abstract of her 'critical appraisal' Gillison (2023) foregrounds the topic of my paper as a presentation of '"the life-world" of Yagwoia people (…) a unique variant of the Jungian Ouroboric archetype…'. Among other statements, she says '[i]n bypassing anthropology's classical terrain, or treating Yagwoia lifeways as contingent upon the "ouroboric cosmic Self"a "wholly pre-genital gestalt of self-generation" -Mimica distorts the role of collective rites of passage and affinal exchange to counter, inhibit, and redirect the primary narcissism intrinsic to human beings' (ibid.:165, emphasis added).Two pages later, in the main text, Gillison further expands on this 'distortion' stating: 'Not included in the list of main processes by which a father transmits "paternal bone" to his offspring unstoppably and irretrievably is a description of exactly what happens during erection, coitus, ejaculation, detumescence, conception, gestation, and parturition, microcosmic events that transpire during coitus and in utero that serve as the model for, and source of the "ouroboric monadic world-body (macrocosmos), which contains and generates all other beings" (138). Also unmentioned among the primary means of "bone-transfer" from father to son is the "homosexual fellatio and subsequent regular insemination" practiced as part of "the old initiatory regime" (150). 'From Mimica's many richly-detailed ethnographies, and from ethnographies of other Eastern Highlands and Papua New Guinea peoples Mimica does not cite, we may suspect that the Yagwoia initiates' fellators/inseminators do not stand in the relation of fathers. Nevertheless, in a reproductive system ostensibly based upon the "incorporative-devouring dynamics of planting and eating" (142), encapsulated in the androgynous image of a snake biting its tail, "including digestion, hencesucking, eating, swallowing (self-injection, self-incorporation) and spitting, vomiting, ejaculation, speaking, i.e., phallo-oral self-ex-corporation" (138), the relationships of fellators to male initiates cannot be ignored' (167).Given the thematic scope of this paper, a case of patricide, I have provided only a few essentials concerning the Yagwoia life-world (Mimica 2023). In the first two sections (ibid.:138-42) I give a brief outline of the 'ouroboric structure of Yagwoia micro-^macrocosmos' (137-9) and the most basic lineaments of Yagwoia kinship with the focus on the notion of the 'paternal bone' (139-42). In the framework of anthropological discourse, this notion can be rendered as 'patrifiliation'. The rest of the paper, which is a detailed single-case study, is more than 11,000 words. Thus, this paper is not concerned with 'collective rites of passage', of the Yagwoia's or of any other New Guinea people, nor do I offer any arguments about whether such rites in conjunction with 'affinal exchange' may or may not 'counter, inhibit, and redirect the primary narcissism intrinsic to human beings '. That Gillison (2023:173) has framed it so has to do with her prioritization of the Gimi lif...

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Flying away like a bird: An instance of severance from the parental abode (Iwolaqamalycaane, Yagwoia, Papua New Guinea)

Cited by 2 publications

References 13 publications

Stalked by the Malignant Father's Spirit: A Case of Patricide among the Yagwoia (PNG)

Stalked by the Malignant Father's Spirit: A Case of Patricide among the Yagwoia (PNG)

If the Yagwoia were the Gimi…: A Reply to Gillison's Critical Appraisal of ‘Stalked by the Malignant Spirit…’

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