The Counting System in the Light of the Iqwaye View of the Cosmos

Mimica, Jadran

doi:10.4324/9781003134909-4

Cited by 6 publications

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“…The Yagwoia variant of ouroboros has a unique esoteric mythopoeic manifestation as their monadic self‐created androgynous Imacoqwa (The Great‐one‐he), the phallic womb‐container of everything that there is (world‐body). He is the cosmic bi‐unity whose eyes are the sun and moon; he embodies, continuously generates and sustains the world‐body (Mimica 1981, 1988, 1991, 2020, Forthcoming). 5 His penis is simultaneously his umbilical cord, which has held, and still holds, the sky and earth in self‐conjunction.…”

Section: Ouroboric Structure Of Yagwoia Macro^micro‐cosmos3: a Brief ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For my approach to psychoanalytically and phenomenologically grounded ethnography, see Mimica (2003b, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2008b, 2009). For the Yagwoia understanding of soul, see Mimica (1981, 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In non‐esoteric mythopoeia, which deals with the world as a manifold containing the multiplicity of (separated and individuated) beings, Imacoqwa and Imacipu are overtly differentiated, individuated and as such identified with the sun and moon as well as with the sky and earth. For the discussion of the primal twinning of Imacoqwa^Imacipu and the symptomatic fluctuation of their luno‐solar identity, see Mimica (1981, Forthcoming). For the cosmo‐onto‐logic of oneness^twoity^multiplicity that drives Yagowia language, counting, and their mythopoeic thought, see Mimica (1988).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…A sexually active man, whose potency is manifest in numerous progeny and extra‐marital sex, is not only a superior ‘planter’; he is said to have ‘plenty of ginger’ ( i.e ., burning marrow = semen) flowing in his body. Similarly, the imagery of ‘bodily uprightness’ (where the spine subsumes the entire skeleton), ‘bone tightness/slackness’, as well as the recent Tok Pisin image ‘ mbateri plet ’ (battery flat) all project the fundamentally phallomorphic and libidinal (energic) image of Yagwoia embodiment (Mimica 1981, 1991, 2020).…”

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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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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: Ouroboric Structure Of Yagwoia Macro^micro‐cosmos3: a Brief ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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“…Anthropology has also made use of the image of fractals to illustrate different qualities of social organization, personhood, ceremonial exchange, and such things as indigenous counting systems (see Wagner, 1991;Gell, 2006Gell, (1999; Kelly, 2001;Mimica, 1988). Among the different qualities of fractal objects, self-similarity, the indistinction of a part from the whole, and their non-integer (i.e.…”

Section: Fractal Geometrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflections on mathematical figures and engineering approaches in anthropology

Kelly

2022

Vibrant, Virtual Braz. Anthr.

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This paper presents and discusses some examples of how mathematical figures and engineering approaches can be detected in anthropological theorizing and how a mathematical reading of certain anthropological theories is possible and sometimes fruitful. The paper proceeds in three steps: a comparison between experimental measuring and engineering “black boxing” as different ways of representing ethnographic reportage and anthropological theorizing; a discussion of feedback loops in anthropological theorizing; and a discussion of chaos theory and fractal geometry and some of their uses in anthropological writing. I finish by hinting at the fruitfulness of making allies across disciplinary boundaries given our anthropocenic predicaments and limitations in our cross disciplinary analogies.

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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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The Counting System in the Light of the Iqwaye View of the Cosmos

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 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)

Reflections on mathematical figures and engineering approaches in anthropology

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

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