book reviews
My only regret is that the authors concentrate on those areas geographically closest to
the United States: seven case studies focus on
Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean,
while only three venture farther south. While
the Monroe Doctrine itself dictated greater
U.S. involvement in the former areas, there
were interventions throughout South America
that also merit attention (U.S. ownership of industry and agriculture, construction of railways and urban improvements, the spread of
Protestantism, and soon). Altogether, the authors
of the essays collected here pose intriguing
new research questions for scholars interested
in the politics of cultural encounters, greatly
enhancing understanding of the complexities of
both the local and the foreign in Latin America.
Le roi de Kongo et les monstres sacres. Luc de
Heusch. Paris: Gallimard, 2000. 420 pp., appendix, bibliography, index.
ANITA JACOBSON-WIDDING
Uppsala University
"Structuralism is dead!" This is what I
learned in many of the anthropological research seminars that I attended in the United
States in the late 1980s. Postmodernism was
the new-ism. At first, I wondered what kind of
structural ism was supposed to be dead—was it
the classical, universalist structuralism of
Claude Levi-Strauss, or was it all kinds of structuralism, including the regionally anchored
variety that French anthropologists were referring to as poststructuralism?
To my American colleagues, this question
appeared irrelevant. To Europeans, however,
there is an obvious difference between the two
kinds of structuralism—the one that presupposes universal structures of binary oppositions is distinct from the one that attempts to
discover local or regional patterns in cultural
thought and ritual action. But no matter what
kind of structuralism happens to be the orderof
the day, most French-speaking academics
consider structures to be important; structuralism is part of the game whenever a French
intellectual analyzes data.
The same goes for Belgian academics—at
least for those whose mother tongue is French.
Luc de Heusch is such a structuralist and, perhaps, the most famous. Inspired by Levi-Strauss,
he set out more than 40 years ago to analyze
the symbolism of sacred incest. In the last couple
215
of decades he has published many works on
the adjoining theme of sacred kingship in Central Africa. In two great monographs (Le Roilvre
ou I'Origine de I'Etat, Gallimard, 1972; Rois nes
d'un coeurde vache, Gallimard, 1982), he has
used mythological and ritual data to reveal an
underlying structure of binary oppositions in
the sacred kingdoms of Central Africa.
Now,de Heusch has published the third book
of this triology, one in which he combines historical, mythological, and ritual data addressingthe western part of the basically matrilineal
Central African belt. Here, he focuses on the
old kingdom oi Kongo, moving from the late
15th century to the 1970s. Also, in a chapter
titled "Kongo en Haiti," he points to the Congolese roots of some of the religious cults in Haiti.
As in previous books, de Heusch pays great
attention to the opposition between what
might be termed order versus disorder or madness. And as before, he shows that the king
comes from elsewhere—from some strange
wiIderness, far from the welI organized society
where he is crowned. Being a representative of
the wilderness elsewhere, the sacred king has a
magical power that makes it possible for him to
make rain and produce fertility. As de Heusch
shows in this book, the sacred king of the old
kingdom Kongo also has a certain connection
with those wild spirits that de Heusch calls
"des monstres sacres." These spirits are believed to be incarnated in so-called anomalous
children-twins, albinos, dwarfs, or those who
have been born in abnormal ways. Such people are considered to be "the children of bakisi"—children of those wild spirits who dwell
in the water. De Heusch also analyzes old ethnographic sources about the connections between these anomalies and the water snake,
which can transform itself into the rainbow.
These sacred monsters are well known to
anthropologists who have worked with Congolese material, but de Heusch is one of the
first to systematize connections between the
monsters and sacred chiefs. He does so by
placing the monsters and the sacred king in the
same disorderly category, which he opposes to
secular society. The classical structuralist axiom of binary oppositions is here used to oppose culture and nature, or order and disorder.
To those theorists who conceive of the world
in terms of a universalist and dualist perspective, all of this makes sense. Disorder becomes
opposed to order as a matter of binary oppositions. However, as I have demonstrated, ritual
216
american ethnologist
experts in Central Africa tend to view the world
in a triadic perspective (Red-White-Black as a
Mode of Thought. A Study of Triadic Classifications by Colours in the Ritual Symbolism and
Cognitive Thought of the Peoples ofthe Lower
Congo, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1979;
"Chapungu: The Bird that Never Drops a
broadly defined: death, disease, infertility, matrimonial problems, even wastefulness. Drawing
on long-term research in the field of medical
anthropology, she argues that the Nyole are
keenly aware of the place oi uncertainty in
their social world and address adversity in a
pragmatic spirit.
Feather." Male and Female Identities in African Society. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis,
2000). By applying this perspective, ritual experts distinguish between a dualist, white and
blackorderontheonehandandanambiguous
red disorder on the other hand. They tend to use
thered label for anything that defies classification and to which a completely indeterminate,
and thus magic, power is ascribed. Disorder is
thus represented by a third term, symbolized
by the color red.
This is another way of looking at chaos, ambiguity, or anomalies. It is not the French Intellectual way, perhaps, but it is African. Maybe
even those academics who apply a structuralist vperspective
should sometimes look for the
v
,
,
.
. %All ,
structuresthatthenativeexpertsapply. Whether
r
u i
i
these structures are a fact or whether they con. .
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sist in cultural interpretations may be a matter
i • i* » r
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ofanthropoloeical taste. Some anthropologists
,
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have the taste for universalist perspectives while
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tive that gives voice to culturally informed interpretationsby the natives.
Nomatterwhatthereader'santhropological
taste, i e mi de Kongo et les monstres sacres is
indispensable to all who are interested in structural analysis. This well-researched book will
be extremely valuable to those interested in
Central African ethnology and history. Finally,
this book offers a major challenge to those intrigued by the eternal conundrums that are
connected to the relationship between cosmos
and chaos, order and disorder, or structure
and ambiguity.
Africans have often been assumed to respond to adversity by passively employing re|j g j O us truths—truths that many a Westerner
downplays as delusion. Whyte has no interest
i n s u c n jntellectualist queries. Instead, she
t u r n s her argument to matters of use and conseq u e n c e , drawing on the pragmatism of John
D e w e y a n ( j t n e recent writings of Michael
j a c k s o n a n d o t h e r anthropologists on the ambiguous and indeterminate nature of social experience. The Nyole's world is not composed
Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of
Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda. Susan Whyte.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997. xi + 258 pp., notes, references, index.
rs^K „ * r,,*,*
SONIASILVA
-r. „ . ,
. . . .
The Smithsonian Institution
In Questioning Misfortune—winner of the
1997 Amaury Talbot Prize—Susan Whyte deals
with the ways in which the Nyole of eastern
Uganda perceive and respond to adversity
o f b | j n d certaintieS/ a n d their d o u b t i
nQt s t e m f r o m l h e historjcaN
recent
ure
The Nyole
have beep
tjoni
and doubtj
and ex.
.
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„.
, ,.
in,v /u/,°
penmentme all alone (p. 205) (Whyte snis; • i • • u
u
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toncal insights, however, eo back only to
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••
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1970). Out of skepticism and hope, the Nyole
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.
live in a subjunctive mode (p. 24)—a mode
./....
_
. . . .
open to possibilities. Considertheir reaction to
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AIDS. The Nyole prefer trying out medicines
.
,
and rituals to takme an HIV test—to hearing
,
,
,
t h a t the
a r e d o o m e d A s lon
V
8 as uncertaintV
P r e v a i l s ' h e a l i n 8 r e m a i n s a possibility, however f a i n t Certaint
y crushes " ^ and makes
llfe
unendurable.
To
demonstrate that the concepts oi doubt
and
uncertainty illuminate Nyole dealings
with
adversity, Whyte begins by depicting the
reallt
"
y o f misfortune" (p. 21) in Bunyole, an
impoverished county in Uganda, an underdeveloped country. There, when adversity strikes,
"you" (this is Whyte's rhetorical tactic) shift to
tne
subjunctive mode and start experimenting.
If the misfortune is reasonably mild, you begin
by resorting to African or hospital medicine, today available for cash at the numerous county
stores; that is, you resort to "substantial powers" (p. 28) (substances which are powerful in
themselves) and operate in the "symptomatic
idiom" {p. 25) (a pill or herb for an ill). Ifthead.
...
.
,. .
versity rperseveres, you will consult a diviner in
'
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,
an attempt to identify the punitive agent and
the remedial action required. Whyte refers to
the power that shades, spirits, and cursers use
to afflict their kin as relational and to the corresponding medical idiom as explanatory. The
tQ m o d e r n i t
a n d pOstmodernity.
does