Grace Is Incommensurability in Commensuration

Abstract

Since the seventeenth century, prophets have reappeared periodically among the Wa and Lahu ethnic groups of mainland Southeast Asia. Exceptionally talented, these men built on the syncretic cults of runaway soldiers, secretive Buddhist sects, and Christian missionaries and became leaders of millenarian movements. Typically, in the Wa language, such leaders are said to be very strong and blessed, or full of grace (bwan). The prophets might be understood as reincarnations of mythical ‘men of prowess’ or as the representatives of the peripheral situation. However, both interpretations fundamentally misread the semantics of grace in Wa and neighbouring languages: a kind of cunning and strength that is so radical that it cannot be measured or mediated. Grace, here, is neither a ‘mediative concept’ (as Pitt-Rivers suggested), nor is it the consequence of Christian conversion. Instead, grace is the incommensurability that emerges at the margin of a world that is being measured.

Unlearning hope: White Christian encounters with grace as a logic of exchange

“…That warrant for hope was built on the fact that though stories of grace were usually intimately personal, they carriedat least in the minds of the White people involveda larger dramaturgical significance. Anthropologists have pointed out that grace often acts as a point of convergence, transversal, or commensurability between personal, social, and otherworldly levels, as well as between ideal and real worlds (Breen, 2022;Edwards & McIvor, 2022;Pitt-Rivers, 2017;Steinmüller, 2022). Any gifts tend to provoke an imagination of future gift exchanges that stretch into infinity (Simmel, 1964), and grace gifts do so especially.…”

“…While theorists of grace have noted that grace can take quantifiable and unquantifiable forms (Lloyd, 2022, 127), the examples of grace in this research were most often immaterial and unquantifiable, such as a text message signaling friendship, an invitation belong in a group, an effort to correct, or an expression of care. Grace points to possibilities for relationships within the incommensurability of debts that cannot be fully reckoned (Edwards & McIvor, 2022, 10; Steinmüller, 2022).…”