Copyright © 2005 Tom Ludvigson. All rights reserved.
Chapter 8: Conclusions
8.1
Recapitulation
8.2 The meanings of
kleva
8.3 Self-explications:
kleva
on themselves
8.4 Lay interpretations: others on
the
kleva
8.5 Fellow Experts:
kleva
on other
kleva
8.6 Order and disorder
8.7 Speech and visibility
8.8 Interpretive ethnography
8.1 Recapitulation
I have attempted in this thesis an ethnographic description
of the
kleva
of central Espiritu Santo, and matters relevant to their
craft. To this end I adopted an autobiographical approach,
grounding all interpretations of the
kleva
and related matters in detailed descriptions of the
incidents on which those interpretations were built. This
celebration of the particular did not in itself preclude
generalization but, contrary to what is common in
ethnographic accounts, preserved for the reader the link
between those more abstract interpretations of the
phenomena under scrutiny, and their concrete manifestation
in experience.
In Chapter One I described the setting of my study: my
fieldwork situation. Designed to provide essential
background on the surrounding context of my encounters with
the
kleva
and their world, the chapter dealt with both the history of
the island and the history of my research project. I
discussed my relationship with the people of Truvos, from
the harsh reception I received on the evening of my arrival
at Vorozenale, through the initial period of suspicion and
misunderstanding, gradually mellowing into a tacit
acceptance of my presence, which grew apace with my own
involvement in combating disease in the area with the aid
of Western medicines. I gave an account of my living
conditions in the settlement, my own ill health, my medical
work, my exchanges with local people, my difficulties with
formal enquiry, and my everyday participation in work and
recreation - all essential background to the
kleva
material, without which the latter would make much less
sense.
Chapters Two to Six dealt with those of my experiences with
the
kleva
and their neighbours that in one way or another contributed
to the development of my understanding of the
kleva
and their craft. Accounts of pertinent incidents and
conversations from my four field trips, and from my period
with the kleva Sulu in New Zealand, were interspersed with
brief summaries of my understanding of the
kleva
material at four different times during the period of
research (2:20,
3:22, 5:14, 6:22), enabling the reader
to follow in detail the processes of inference and
progressive reinterpretation that constituted my path
towards an understanding of the
kleva
in terms of meanings current within their own community.
In Chapter Seven I presented some further interpretations
of the
kleva
material which came about after the end of my research on
Santo, while I worked on the account that forms the body of
this thesis. By keeping such later interpretations separate
from the material that they elaborate and partly revise I
have attempted to preserve for the reader the diachronic
and essentially fallible nature of ethnographic
interpretation, rather than following the common practice
of letting the most recent readings pervade all
descriptions, thereby conferring on those readings an
illusory semblance of objectivity.
8.2 The meanings of
kleva
I stated in the Introduction my intention to produce a
description not only of the
kleva
and their activities, but also of the meaning of their
activities for themselves and their neighbours. I
take
kleva
to be a cultural phenomenon, in the very manner of its
constitution a phenomenon of meaning. - by this I mean that
the
kleva's
being
kleva
is inseparable from others' interpretations of them, and
their self-interpretation, as
kleva.
This
fact is thoroughly demonstrated in the account of
the
kleva.
The gradual growth of my understanding of the
kleva
and their activities is intrinsically bound up with my
being offered interpretations of what they are up to. By
describing to me what the kleva do and say, they and their
neighbours bit by bit reveal to me their respective
versions of the healers and their practices.
The
descriptions of the
kleva
and their activities not only reveal what the healers do -
they also reveal a manner of describing the world. Each new
such description extends my understanding of the world of
the
kleva,
by contradicting, supporting, adding to, or otherwise
elaborating what I already know.
Those
descriptions enable me increasingly to "recognise" or read
appropriately, and speak idiomatically about matters
like
maumau,
patua
and
vavaulu,
in their various manifestations. I learn to understand
spitting and leaves as
maumau;
owls, deaths and disputes in terms of
patua;
and illness as indicating guilty secrets.
After
reading the account of the
kleva,
the reader should know well what I mean: to some extent the
gradually unfolding nature of the account will have taken
the reader through a process of gradual growth of
understanding in some ways similar to mine, albeit
attenuated.
An
indispensable clue to meanings of
kleva
and their activities for themselves and their neighbours
is, then, what the same people say about these matters. We
can review the account from this angle, in an attempt to
gain an overview of such meanings.
8.3 Self-explications:
kleva
on themselves
The
only
kleva
that I personally heard talk about himself and his craft is
Sulu - none of the others told me about being
kleva,
or spoke about being
kleva
in my presence, despite my meeting some of them on numerous
occasions.
Most
of Sulu's self-explication is done directly to me, in
private, during our conversations in New Zealand.
His
description of how he became a
kleva
is idiomatic, wholly consistent with prevalent ideas about
how local people come into possession of special powers,
whether "leaves" for contraception (6:2), rainmaking (2:15), or, in the past,
invulnerability through the aid of
pulana
tamate
(4:1).
Sulu
begins his account of his calling and special talents with
a description of the very similar calling and talents of
the dead
kleva
Letelete. Then Sulu describes in great detail his
experience with the lizard that fell on his head, and the
same night informed him of their future arrangement. Thus
he on the one hand attributes his skills to the spirit
("...there is only one thing behind it all; this thing that
comes like that." 5:6), while he in other
places appears to give Letelete credit for showing him the
way of a
kleva
("...he showed the way of doing it like
that." 5:6).
Perhaps this is only Sulu's way of telling me that thought
his talent is relatively unique and personal, it is not
therefore wholly idiosyncratic; it is part of an
established tradition.
His
description of his working relationship with the lizard
spirit provides us with a way of understanding, in
retrospect, Sulu's instant diagnoses of my illness and
Linsus' during my second visit to Santo. Well before
someone comes to seek his services, he is forewarned by his
spirit helper of the visit and the cause of the ailment in
question. All he has to do to bring the illness to an end
is reveal the cause ("When I arrive, then I say it, and
like...the man's illness, it just
ends." 5:6).
Sulu's
account of the subsequent use of spells and fire on leaves,
to speed the slow blood and heat the cold body of the ill
person (5:6)
is our only clue to the physiological meaning of that
therapy. His explanation of
avuavuti
is different again: what I saw Mol Kleva do at Tonsiki Sulu
explains as removing the pathogenic spit of bad things that
live on the ground - presumably left on the patient's food
by a rat or a lizard when stealing some of it.
During
our conversations in New Zealand Sulu also informs me that
he has taken a public stance against
patua,
vezeveze
and kava root sorcery, linking the issues to depopulation
(5:12)
- a reformist streak that recalls the stories of Avuavu,
Zek and Mol Valivu in the past (1:1). His vehement outpouring
against these agencies of death and extinction leaves
little doubt about Sulu's feelings on the matter, or about
the sincerity of his concern over the issue.
At
home in the hills of Santo Sulu says little directly about
his craft. Instead his speech on a number of occasions
exemplifies it, as when early during my second field trip
he reveals to me and Linsus the respective causes of our
illnesses (3:2,
3:3), or when he
talks about his nocturnal experiences with the unseen:
receiving a message from Lisa's dead daughter (3:5), being attacked by
Tavui Pro and two other witches (4:4), or seeing
Patua's
patua
(6:14).
8.4 Lay interpretations: others on
the
kleva
Much of Sulu's self-explication is echoed in what other
people told me about the
kleva,
though there are also some clear differences.
Lay
versions of the source of kleva powers and techniques are
close to Sulu's own. Usa Pon tells me that the
kleva
receive their special spells and the ability to "see" from
a
devel
(2:11). Krai Tui
says that the
kleva
dream their special spells (3:12), and Eilili says the
same about Sulu (3:5). And in Memei's tale
Krai Vurombo learns a spell from a
kleva
in a dream (2:14).
All this is consistent with Sulu's account, and with
others' accounts of the sources of other exceptional
powers.
Lay
versions of the nature of
kleva
powers and techniques show more discrepancies when compared
with Sulu's.
Avuavuti
is a case in point. When, after seeing Mol Kleva's
performance at Tonsiki, I enquired about it at Duria, I was
told that he removed
vezeveze
and food (2:1).
Accounts of Patua and the Zaraparo
kleva
removing and displaying
vezeveze
objects bear this out (2:8,
3:13). Sulu, too,
endorses the removal of
vezeveze
through
avuavuti (5:13),
though he admits to never having done it himself (5:7). But in
ordinary
avuavuti
he doesn't remove food, as in the layman's account. Instead
he removes pathogenic animal spit that has entered the
patient's body through food.
Usa
Pon's account of
kleva
maumau
also diverges from Sulu's. Usa tells me that the
kleva
always know which spells to use, as they can "see" what is
wrong with their patients, and need not work through trial
and error, like Usa himself (2:11).
This is partly true of Sulu, in that he always knows which
spell to use, but his account of the manner of his knowing
is different from Usa's. What Usa describes as "seeing"
Sulu explains as messages from his spirit helper.
The
devel
informs him in advance of the causes of and remedies
appropriate to each particulate case of illness (5:6).
Indeed,
this is the area of
kleva
powers what we find the greatest discrepancy between Sulu's
"inside" account and lay descriptions. The latter versions
of
kleva
divination generally depict it as "seeing" (2:3,
6:13), sometimes
employing the original Kiai term for
kleva
(matalesi)
in its verbal form -
mo
matalesia:
"he 'eye-saw' it" (6:7, 6:9). But then Sulu's own
descriptions of particular encounters with witches seem to
endorse the lay version. He himself talks about having
"seen"
patua
on several different occasions (4:4, 6:14) - an impossibility
for ordinary people.
We
can note how much of what ordinary people say about
the
kleva
deals with what the
kleva
themselves say - revealing the causes of illness (2:3), the identity of a
rainmaker (3:14),
sorcerers (3:13, 6:7)
and witches (4:4, 6:9),
or giving people new names (3:8, 6:6).
This highlights the fact that to a large extent their
products are verbal - a
kleva
is a
kleva
through what he says as much as through what he does.
Patua's
mitin
is a good illustration. Lisa's account of that affair is in
terms of speaking: Patua
told
people to come and
confess
to him, and he
said
that he could rid witches of their
patua
(6:10).
Sulu describes it in terms of people going to Duria
to
talk
(varavara,
and Patua would then
name
them (5:10). The
italicised verbs above are all descriptive of speech. And
even the label applied to Patua's endeavour emphasises
speaking -
mitin
is used as a verb in Kiai, meaning
"discuss".
8.5 Fellow experts:
kleva
on other
kleva
A striking thing about the meanings conveyed by the
kleva
about other
kleva
is that much of those descriptions is defamatory. In New
Zealand Sulu tells me that Mol Sale had
patua
(5:13)
and that Mol Kleva is
masulu
and refuses to treat people (5:6).
And what Sulu says about Patua talking to two little
children at Vuties paints the latter as a witch.
Mol
Kleva, in his turn, tells me about Mol Sale's being a witch
(2:8).
The Zaraparo
kleva,
according to the story, reveals Mol Sale as a
vezeveze
wielder (3:13).
And we can infer that Maloi was the source of the tale of
Mol Sale's witchcraft at Moruas (7:4).
Most
of this defamatory talk revolves around evil powers. I have
discussed this above as a possible result of the inherent
ambiguity of any secret powers (3:22). There are some real
similarities between
kleva
and witches. Witches, like the
kleva,
have spirit familiars who teach them
spells (5:11).
What is more, the
kleva
appear to be able to see
patua,
in spite of the fact that the only people supposed to be
able to see them are witches themselves. Indeed,
acquiring
patua
is described as undergoing a ritual that enables you to see
them (2:5).
When
I ask Sulu if Patua and Mol Kleva operate the way he does,
he says that he doesn't know their
way (5:6).
There are differences: Mol Kleva and Patua remove
vezeveze;
Sulu has not done this ever (5:7).
The other
kleva
are a mystery to him - undefined and open to
interpretation, as in the case of Mol Sale and Patua, as
possible witches.
The
only
kleva
described sympathetically by another
kleva
is Letelete. Though other healers may be enigmatic to Sulu,
Letelete is not. His way is explicitly compared to Sulu's
own, and nothing remains unexplained. There are no
ambiguities: Letelete was a
kleva
like Sulu, not a witch.
8.6 Order and disorder
I
wrote about, in the Introduction, the apparent need for a
grounded account of Melanesian religious phenomena. I
suggested then that an account based on descriptions of
actual field experiences would help clarify the nature of
the problems we examined there. Though the
kleva
material neither exhausts, nor is confined to, the realm of
phenomena usually discussed under the heading of religion,
it nevertheless should serve reasonably well as a basis for
discussion of those issues.
The
problem was whether or not order and coherence in
Melanesian religion was intrinsic to the material or
imposed by the ethnographer, whether by analysis or by
eliciting.
Brunton
provides a definition of such order:
This
attempt at greater clarity is of little use to us, as
stating the object of our interest in such reified terms
renders it virtually unrecognisable: the task of relating
abstractions like "comprehensiveness", "religious systems",
and even "beliefs", to experience is itself fraught with
problems.
Instead
we hark back to the earlier formulation , phrased in terms
closer to actual field research praxis:
We
can examine the body of the thesis in terms of these
issues, one by one. firstly, in the account of the
kleva,
does anybody appear uninterested when definite views might
have been expected?
Perhaps Sulu's diffidence about spirits is a case in point.
One could have expected him to be able to tell me a great
deal about these things, as he dealt with them regularly,
both in dreams (3:5, 5:6, 5:7)
and when diagnosing and treating illness caused by spirits
(3:2). Yet Sulu
had little to tell me about
ria,
tamate
and
aviriza
- they were all words for the same thing
(3:2).
When the Vorokus
pataika
struck me with malaria by talking about me, Sulu wasn't
able to tell me any more details: people just call it
"talking" (6:21).
And when Sulu and Mol Kleva gave me an example of such
spirit talk at Vunpepe, it was clearly descriptive of my
own situation.
I mentioned then a suspicion that the two
kleva
were intentionally trying to put me off staying any longer
in the valley, by suggesting that the spirits objected to
my presence. Another reading of that same situation is that
they were merely being unimaginative or practical, keeping
to the case at hand: my own much-debated ill-health
(2:18).
It is interesting to note that when during our New Zealand
conversations I first try to approach Sulu's presumed
"special knowledge" with questions aimed at eliciting it in
a systematic but abstract manner, I have little success -
Sulu has little to tell me (5:4). But it is also
evident that he gets more proficient, between our first and
our last conversation, at delivering the exegesis I keep
demanding. But I doubt that his very intense sermon on the
evils of
patua
and sorcery during the last of our taped conversations is
attributable to my having "trained" Sulu in producing
exegesis. More likely it was his concern over the issues
brought up that generated that outburst. His use of second
person address (Don't take
patua
again! And you men who have taken them, you own up and let
them be! You take your
patua
and burn them! 5:11) recalls more than
anything the occasional agitated speech delivered over the
evening bowl of kava by someone wrought up about some issue
or other - verbal expositions elicited by the context and
certainly not by me.
Secondly, do the people contradict themselves and each
other?
Some of what Sulu said during our conversations in New
Zealand can be read as contradictory. I noted at the time
the inconsistency between his denial that
sova
('cough") was a
zalo
('illness'), and his subsequent us of the two words in the
same sentence, both of them then evidently referring to the
same thing (5:4).
There is also the apparent contradiction between Sulu's
account of the lizard calling him to become a
kleva,
and his statement that Letelete had shown him the way of
a
kleva
- a contradiction I tried to rationalize in my discussion
above of Sulu's self-explication (8:3).
We can easily find in the
kleva
account many instances of people contradicting each other.
I have already noted and discussed disagreements over
spirits and
totonos
(7:5), over who is
or isn't a
kleva
(3:22),
and over discrepancies between lay and "inside"
descriptions of the way of the
kleva
(8:4). Further examples are the several
versions of how Patua got his name (Did he choose it
himself or was it given to him by Mol
Kleva? 3:6, 6:6,
6:10) and of the
origin of
patua
(Two
patua
or many? Bought or given in
payment? 2:6,
4:4, 5:11, 6:8).
Thirdly, is there a high rate of ritual obsolescence and
innovation?
This issue is again phrased in terms not related to
fieldwork praxis in any direct and obvious manner. We can
still discuss the question of ritual though there is little
material on this topic in the account. The paucity of
material on ritual reflects its relative absence from the
Santo interior - except perhaps at Tombet
(1:4).
Guiart comments on the absence of traditional ceremonial at
the time of his excursions into the Santo interior, more
than twenty years ahead of my own fieldwork. He claims that
it had all been abandoned, victim of the cult activity in
the recent past (1958:214).
To sum up so far, it is clearly possible to locate in our
material some evidence of disinterest, contradictions and
ritual obsolescence, in keeping with Brunton's observations
on fluidity and incoherence in Melanesian religion.
On the other hand it is equally possible to document in the
material the opposite of what we have just done. Informant
disinterest only stands out against a background of
comparative interest. Sulu's lack of concern with the
differences between spirits, and the precise nature of
pathogenic spirit talk, can be contrasted against for
example Lahoi's (2:12)
and Maitui's (2:13) much more elaborate
versions. And the contradictions reported stand out against
a background of general agreement. We have noted above the
prevalence of similar ideas about how people acquire
extraordinary powers of different kinds (8:3), and the pervasiveness of the theme of
secrecy/revelation in informants' explanations (6:22). Moreover, even the
contradictions themselves can be seen to have a basis in
shared understandings: my informants may disagree about
whether
tamate
and
ria
are the same or different, but the topic still remains
spirits, as opposed to viruses. Or they may offer different
versions of the origin of
patua,
but all the versions agree that the deadly familiars were
supplied by Europeans. Even our appraisal of ritual can be
stood on its head: is the abandonment of traditional
ceremonial evidence of obsolescence, or is the apparent
lack of change since Guiart's visit to Santo evidence of
lack of innovation?
Indeed, it looks as if we can reduce most of our documented
incoherence to differences of detail within a larger
framework of agreement and coherence. Should we choose to
emphasize this latter material in our description we would
most likely be on our way towards an "overstructured"
presentation.
I suggested above that a grounded account of the
kleva
would help clarify the nature of the problems involved in
the study of Melanesian religions, as discussed. Access tot
he account has enabled us so far to do two things. On the
one hand, we have managed to find evidence of disorder and
incoherence, as specified by Brunton. On the other hand we
have been able to also find evidence of coherence and
order.
This seeming contradiction provides us with one insight
into the nature of the problem. It shows very clearly the
circular and self-validating character of such
interpretation. Depending on how we choose to read it, we
can sometimes even use the same material to draw radically
opposite conclusions, as in our discussion of the four
different versions of the origin of
patua
just above: whether we choose to emphasise similarities or
differences between the tales is indeed arbitrary.
The above discussion must inevitably lead one to question
the usefulness of such gross abstractions as "coherence",
"elaboration", "disorder", et cetera. If they are so
loosely related to actual field experiences as to allow for
even mutually contradictory interpretations to be made of
the same material, it follows that their use in
characterizing ethnographic material is not very
informative. One could indeed argue that they hide as much
as they reveal, in that they arbitrarily emphasize only one
aspect of the material, when at least sometimes the
opposite emphasis can be seen to be equally as valid.
In this sense Brunton is right when he talks about
"indeterminacy in much of the literature on Melanesian
religion." (1980:112). But the indeterminacy is not due
solely to overstructured accounts, as he would have it. The
same indeterminacy can be seen to lie at the heart of all
interpretations of human phenomena. We shall return to this
theme towards the end of these Conclusions.
Meanwhile, this indeterminacy prevents us from reaching a
final verdict on Brunton's problem about inherent or
imposed order. The documentation of either of those two
alternatives is in itself no less problematic than the
documentation of order and disorder.
8.7 Speech and visibility
If we examine again the evidence cited above for order and
disorder, another interesting fact comes to light: most of
it is
verbal.
The actual material that we have been discussing, in
wrestling with Brunton's problem, is in fact
speech.
We compared what people said at different times, examining
their statements for coherence or contradictions, and for
evidence of interest or disinterest. Even what little
material I have on ritual rests to a large extent on what
people said and didn't say. I was
told
about the abandonment of past ritual, while the general
absence of exegesis (i.e.
speech)
concerning the
valavala
and
mele
i
toa
performances led me to conclude that they were of no
special significance.
This, then, is perhaps a significant observation about the
phenomena we are examining. The discovery of informants'
speech at the core of our topic brings out our dependence
on what people say to us and to each other in filed
research oriented towards religious phenomena.
We can recall in this context the similar observation made
above that a
kleva
is a
kleva
through what he says as much as through what he does. Their
products are to a large extent verbal in their
manifestation in experience (8:2).
In fact, it would not be unreasonable to describe the
account of the
kleva
as almost exclusively a series of descriptions of
situations when I hear something said. And with a growing
comprehension of the Kiai language I become less dependant
on Bislama and eliciting, until, by the time of my fourth
field trip, I am able to learn by just listening. It is no
accident that so much of my material consists of
discussions around the kava bowl. Speech lies at the heart
of the unseen, as the chief medium of its revelation and
realization.
Armed with this insight into the nature of the phenomena
under study we are now in a better position to understand
Guiart's observation, quoted in the introduction, that the
ancestor cult no longer plays an apparent role in central
Santo.
Guiart backs up that assertion with the following
description of the treatment of the ill:
Guiart also has little to say about the
kleva.
In a brief discussion of the demise of magical practices in
the upper Peiorai(2)
valley, he mentions a seer, but only as someone whose
services are no longer in demand:
In
the context of a discussion of totemism in central Santo,
Guiart also mentions a diviner:
But he doesn't link up these seers/diviners with the
tradition of revelation evident in his historical account
of cult activity on the island. Ronovuro, the cult leader
executed for the killing of Clapcott in 1923, received
prophetic messages at night (1958:201). He had a
predecessor, an elder clansmen named Paia
Loloso,(5)
who sold magic that made people invulnerable to firearms.
He had revelations from a spirit familiar, a shark that
contacted much like the lizard spirit contacted Sulu
(1958:200). Avuavu too had revelation, interpreted by
Guiart as "vision
divine"(6)
(1958:203).
It seems to me that the existence of the
kleva
in the Santo interior aids our understanding of these cult
leaders, as men firmly situated within a tradition of
dreamed revelation of secret knowledge and powers.
Simultaneously, we can see in Patua's
mitin,
and perhaps also in Sulu's public stance against sorcery
and witchcraft, a continuation of the reformist
heritage:
kleva
who each in their own way attempt to come to grips with the
major public issue of their time: the problem of
depopulation.
8.8 Interpretive ethnography
When I decided to focus my PhD thesis on the
kleva
of the Espiritu Santo interior, it was with a dual purpose
in mind. The material I had gathered on the
kleva
and their concerns appeared to me interesting and in itself
worthwhile to commit to the ethnographic record.
Simultaneously, it seemed to offer a good opportunity to
conduct an experiment in ethnographic writing, constructing
what I have referred to above as a “grounded”
account of the
kleva.
The grounded account focuses attention on how the phenomena
under study manifest themselves in our experience.
Thus I have attempted in this study to portray the manner
in which the
kleva
and the unseen have their existence in concrete social
practice, through interpretations of that practice,
formulated within that practice, by participants in that
practice.
The decision to write a grounded account has meant
abandoning both some traditional concerns, such as the role
of the
kleva
in the functioning of the central Santo social system, and
traditional methods of presentation, such as generalised
description in the ethnographic present. These concerns and
methods are well matched to each other, but they were
incompatible with my interpretive aspirations.
Instead I chose to employ an autobiographical method of
presentation. At this end of the enterprise we can see more
clearly the import of this choice.
One way to bring out the difference between my account of
the
kleva
and more traditional accounts is that I have "authorized"
the interpretations that constituted my topic. That is to
say, I have tried to avoid presenting interpretations apart
from their historical context of production: the situations
within which they were formulated, and the "author" of the
interpretation – the interpreter.
In fact, my account could be characterized as an attempt to
retain and depict interpretation, to make obvious its
omnipresence within any ethnographic undertaking.
Interpretation featured in the account in several ways.
Interpretations appear as part of our object of
investigation in the processes of interpretation that
reveal themselves through what is being said in the
conversations that lie at the core of most of the incidents
described in the body of the thesis. They also appear as
part of our methods of investigation, as the processes of
interpretation that I myself went through in my own
attempts to make sense of what I came across in the Santo
mountains. Interpretations can thus be seen to occur as
part of both our topic and our tools.
Let us look at an example of interpretation, as it figures
as part of our object of investigation. In the Review
section at the end of the account of my second field
trip (3:22)I
commented on how my Santo hosts detected the workings of
witchcraft, spirits and moral retribution in their everyday
experiences. The cry of an owl close to the settlement was
interpreted as a witch on the
prowl (3:19),
a bad bout of illness was interpreted as a[the consequence
of a Duria
devel
talking about me (3:2),
and so on.
In the same place I noted the circular character of the
reasoning that appeared to underlie and make possible these
interpretations of everyday phenomena in terms of invisible
agents such as the abovementioned. It went roughly like
this: some everyday observation would be read as a
manifestation of a hidden agent. This reading was not
arbitrary; it usually followed close to prevalent notions
about what was a typical agent behind that kind of
phenomenon. But these notions of what was typical were
themselves based on and corroborated by similar readings in
the past. Thus the readings confirmed the pattern and the
pattern informed the readings, closing the circle.
We can see this very clearly in the incident with the owl
cry, mentioned just above. Eilili imitated its cry, and
after a short silence told me that it was
patua.
I asked how he knew that it wasn't just an owl, thereby
calling his interpretation into question. He replied by
citing more evidence for his reading. Firstly, it didn't
reply to his cry. Scondly, he had heard it the night
before, and this was in accordance with the habits of
witches: they were prone to attack when the man of the
house was away, like Lisa was at the time of the incident.
Last night's reading is thus part of the evidence for
tonight's reading, and while the pattern of expected attack
informs the readings, taken together the readings confirm
the pattern of attack.
Now let us look at an example of interpretation as it
figures in my own investigative practices. In the same
Review section (3:22)I
discussed the
kleva
in terms of a stage metaphor: as performers maintaining an
image of secret knowledge and power in the eyes of their
audience, by making displays of their craft. I was able to
find much evidence for this interpretation: Sulu's
instantaneous diagnoses, read as displays of his supposed
ability to "see" the causes of illness; the public removal
of
vezeveze,
read as a display of power over the unseen and so on.
Later, during my third field trip, that pattern informed my
interpretation of Sulu's account of his nocturnal
experience with three witches that come to kill him: I took
him to be making up the tale in order to impress and awe
his evening kava audience. At the same time that reading
became just further evidence for the pattern, just as we
noted in the discussion above of Eilili's interpretation of
the owl cry in terms of
patua.
It looks as if my own interpretation is just as circular as
Eilili's.
We have already come across this circularity in the
discussion of Brunton's problem (8:6).
It is well-known phenomenon among interpretive theorists.
Wilson describes it under the name of "documentary
interpretation":
It is easy to see that this characterisation of
interpretation does justice to the examples we have just
discussed.
Wilson also draws attention to another feature of such
interpretation:
We
are familiar with this too, from the account of the
kleva.
We have seen it in the interpretations surrounding the
death of Patua. Early interpretations of his condition in
terms of illness are revised in the light of Sulu's
revelation that he had seen Patua's
patua.
Instead he comes to be seen as dying the death of a witch
killed in animal form (Te
ese mo soroa:
"Someone's shot him." 6:8). This compels a
reinterpretation of his
mitin.
His claim to be able to remove
patua
was
korekorei
nasa:
"just lies" (6:10)
- he was himself a witch.
More powerfully, this process of reinterpretation is
demonstrated in my own gradually developing understanding
of Santo affairs during my field research - and after too,
as discussed in Chapter Seven.
My reinterpretations of the meaning of
poroporo
(7:7) and
masulu
(7:8) are good
examples - both propose new versions of what the meanings
previously read into some incidents in the body of the
thesis "really were". Similarly with my re-evaluation of
Sulu's sincerity (7:2): his tale about being
attacked by
patua
is no longer seen as an expression of his propensity for
deception and display, but rather as an example of an
authentic interpretation of a fever delirium.
Gadamer has drawn attention to this process, whereby
earlier interpretations less appropriate to their object
are replaced by later readings - readings which in some way
or another make more or better sense. He sees this process
of anticipation and progressive correction as an essential
and unavoidable part of any interpretive endeavour. As soon
as we encounter something new that invites our
understanding, we cannot but form a preliminary idea of
what it means. This initial reading, founded in our
prevailing prejudices and habits of interpretation, is
rarely an adequate appraisal of that which is genuinely
foreign in the object of our understanding. The latter
becomes hidden behind the cloak of familiarity of our own
preconceived notion of what the object might be.
But such preconceived notions are not a limitation that
keeps us permanently estranged from the genuine otherness
of that which we are trying to understand. They are better
understood as the starting point from which our
understanding advances - a "rough draft" that will be
progressively corrected during the course of the
interpretive reading (Gadamer 1979:149).
This description of the process of interpretation is borne
out in the account of the
kleva.
As soon as I encountered Mol Kleva in the midst of (what I
later came to understand as) performing
avuavuti
at Tonsiki, I formed an idea about what he was doing. The
way he folded up the leaves after pulling them down the arm
of Piloi's wife had me speculating about the meaning of his
actions. I took him to be some sort of magician, removing
objects from the body of the woman, while I read her part
in the exercise as that of a patient. I also took Mol
Kleva's performance to be a conjurer's trick, saving my
questions for someone else, for fear of embarrassing him
(2:1).
It is easy to see that this preliminary reading of Mol
Kleva's actions had only the most tenuous basis in
observation of what he was doing. Most of what went into
that reading was based on my reading of ethnographic
literature. And though some of these anticipations were
later confirmed, others eventually had to be revised. The
removal of pathogenic material stood the test of time,
while the implied insincerity of the "conjurer", though for
a long time a basic ingredient in most of my readings of
the
kleva,
eventually was replaced by an admittedly both slow and
reluctant acceptance of the possibility, or even
likelihood, that the
kleva
were in fact sincere.
I think this example is a good illustration of what Gadamer
calls "the anticipatory structure constitutive of all
understanding" (1979:152). Understanding always draws on
our prejudices, as a first stepping stone on our path
towards and adequate reading. But in order to proceed along
that path towards adequacy, we have to be vigilant, because
any person engaging in interpretive activity
Gadamer's characterization of "the constant task of
understanding" echoes a passage in Heidegger (1927:153),
cited by Gadamer as describing
Part
of that passage runs:
In the light of this statement we can see what is
problematic about the circular nature of documentary
interpretation. The problem is not intrinsic to that
nature. The problem arises when we imagine that just
because we have succeeded in documenting our initial
anticipation of meaning in the object of our understanding,
this means that the interpretive undertaking has reached
its conclusion, and nothing further remains to be done.
Convinced through the circularity of documentary
interpretation, we take our reading to be "correct", and
abandon all attempts at a more adequate understanding - an
understanding tempered by the object that we are trying to
understand, rather than by our "fancies and popular
conceptions".
We can see this clearly in the two examples of
interpretation that we drew from the body of the thesis:
Eilili's reading of the owl cry as
patua,
and my reading of the
kleva
as cynical performers. They are both cases of anticipations
of meaning that are presented to us by just such popular
conceptions - in Eilili's case by ideas about the habits of
witches, and in my case by the writings of the American
sociologist Erving Goffman (1959): popular conceptions
within our respective communities. Both Eilili's and my
preconception about the meaning of our observations, thanks
to their compelling sense of validity (based in a circular
nature of documentary interpretation), stifle our progress
towards authentic readings more proportionate to their
object. All we see is a reflection of our own
preconceptions.
In the light of the above discussion of the nature of
interpretation, we can now see why
it no longer makes much sense to write ethnography
according to a model where the categories of description
are pre-set by our own tradition
- "chapter-title" categories like "kinship" and "religion",
problems in the literature of our discipline, and so on.
Any such undertaking pre-empts authentic
understanding,
by deflecting us from the constant task of understanding:
to secure the scientific theme by working out these
fore-structures in terms of the object of our
understanding.
This thesis constitutes my own attempt to come to grips
with the problems seen to afflict the ethnographic
endeavour. By grounding my description in my experiences I
have tried to avoid concealing behind interpretations of
what is typical, what actually took place during my field
research on Santo island. And by letting my corpus of
incidents to be included in the account grow organically
from my object of understanding - an initial small
selection of incidents involving the
kleva
in person, as I explained in the Introduction - I have
tried to avoid an arbitrary pre-determination of what
constitutes material relevant to my topic. Whether this
attempt at exploring a different approach to writing
ethnography has been successful or not remains for the
reader to decide. But if it makes some contribution towards
a solution to the problems discussed, my effort will not
have been in vain.