Ritual as Communication - Roy Wagner

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Ritual as Communication: Order, Meaning, and Secrecy in Melanesian Initiation Rites

Author(s): Roy WagnerReviewed work(s):Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 13 (1984), pp. 143-155Published by: Annual ReviewsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155665 .

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Ann. Rev. Anthropol.1984. 13:143-55Copyright? 1984 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved

RITUALAS COMMUNICATION:Order, Meaning, andSecrecy in MelanesianInitiationRitesRoy WagnerDepartmentof Anthropology, Universityof Virginia,Charlottesville,Virginia22903

No topic in culturalanthropologybears more significantly on the relationbetween the anthropologist'sunderstandingrexplanationof a culture,anditsown internalrelations,than ritualdoes. Ritual, then, relates-and sometimesconfounds-two differentsortsof relativity: hatof theanthropological nalystand the subjectculture,and thatof significantpartsorcategoriesof the subjectculture. The study of ritual amounts to a sort of double relation. It is acommunicationbetween the anthropologistand his readershipof whathe haslearned, through fieldworkand analysis, regarding he ritual and its signifi-cance. And on anotherevel it is a communicationnvolvingitsperformersandperhaps ignificantothers-persons, groups, spirits, deities, abstract orces-recognized in theirculture.

The first relationis fairly clear-cut; f ritualis, in its usualdefinition, whatMaryDouglascalls a "restricted ode"(8, p. 77), then theanthropologist's obis to decipher t. But what is encodedandwhy?And whatis the natureof thecode and why is it formulated n that way? These questionsbear upon therelationalrole of ritualwithin the subject-culture,what it does as communica-tion, regulation,or whatever.Here, too, anthropologyhas made, since Durk-heim, a fairly explicit assumption. ParaphrasingGluckman,J. ChristopherCrockerdistinguishesritual as against ceremony, the expressionof the statusquo:"Ritualalwaysinvolves moral ssues, and has adefiniteoutcome,whetherpositiveornegative. .. Above all, ritualhas, or seeks to have, atransformativecapacity. . ."(6, p. 160). Thus, if we choose to approach itualas communica-tion, the differential,or relation,acrosswhich communication akesplace for

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144 WAGNERits performersamounts o the kindof differencethat, in the wordsof Bateson,"makesa difference"(3, p. 110).The issue in recent anthropologicalwriting seems to be that of how thisdifference is made. Is it purely conceptual, involving the relation betweenknower and known, symbol and symbolizer'?Does it involve, directly orindirectly, relations among groups or categories of people. communicants,subjects,or objectsof communication'? oes it further, nclusiveor exclusiveof these first two possibilities, articulate he relationshipof a people to theirphysicalor social environment'? one of these alternatives or howritualmakesits differenceis entirelyindependent f the first relationmentionedabove, thatof the anthropologist'scommunication.For the anthropologist,whateverhisidea of the efficacy of ritual and its means, must communicate this ideasymbolically-he does not affectthesociologicalorecological balanceof thoseto whom he communicates.An anthropologicalaccountof ritual s always to this degree "symbolic": tmust be conveyed throughour symbols. This condition of anthropologicalanalysis has a significantbearingon the way in which ritual is conceived tooperate.For if the actionof the ritual is consideredas wholly symbolic in itseffect, then it will be of the same "scale," or phenomenal order, as itstranslation,whichcan, if effective enough,amount o anexpressive relayingofthecommunication.Butif theritualcommunications freightedwithsociolog-ical or ecological implications as well, then as mere translation,howeversensitive it may be, it cannotpossibly bringacross all of its implicationsandeffects. In this case, the "message"has a pragmaticsignificance all out ofproportion o its mode of conveyence; it is not merely enacted meaningbutenactedregulation,a "meaning"on several levels at once.The differencebetweenritual as conveyed meaningand ritualas conveyedregulation-message as against metamessage-marks a significantwatershedin modernculturalanthropology.In a recentcollection of essays on Ndemburitual, Victor Turnersummarizesthe developmentof his views:

At one time I employed a methodof analysisderivedessentiallyfrom Durkheimvia A. R.Radcliffe-Brown. I considered the social function of Chihamba with reference to thestructuralormof Ndembusociety The ritualsymbol, I found, hadits own formalprinciple.It couldbe no morereduced o, orexplainedby any particularategoryof secularbehavior,or regardedas the resultantof manykinds of secularbehavior,thananamino-acidmolecularchaincould be explained by the propertiesof the atoms interlinkedby it (19, p.186).Yet the significanceof Chihamba,for Turner,has to do with communica-tion, though in an elusive and transcendental sense: ". . . we have, in Chihambathe local expression of a universalhumanproblem, that of expressing whatcannotbe thought of, in view of thought's subjugation o essences" (19, p.187). Becauseritualhas "itsown formalprinciple," t is notprimarilya form of



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RITUAL AS COMMUNICATION N MELANESIA 145Durkheimian ocial glue, nor is it necessarily any sort of social or mechanicalregulatorymechanism. Its address to moral issues, its definite outcome, itstransformativecapability, is realized in an altogether different direction.Ritual, in Turner's aterworks,has the "performative"unctionof transcendingthought's verbal and categorical boundariesby enacting meanings that areinterstitial o them. Itcompletesthe conceptualworldof a cultureby allowingman to experience what thoughtcannot frame.ThisTurnerian iew, it mightbe said, makesreligionmorerealthansociety,because of society's categoricallimitations. It forms a sharp contrast,at thispoint, with the approachof another eadingmodernauthorityon ritual,MaryDouglas.

The tendencyof Douglas's work, especially fromPuirity in1Daniger 7) toNatural Svmbols (8), has been to develop a frameworkaround he parametersof categorizationand social grouping,withinwhich thesignificanceof ritual nvarious, differentiallysituatedsocieties can be compared.Thus, having begunwith the same subject as Turner, and from a similar orientation, Douglasproceeds n theoppositedirection, making hesignificanceandeffect of ritualafunctionof category (classification,boundaries)and social solidarity "secularbehavior"), precisely those elements which ritual, in Turner'sanalysis, tran-scends and eschews. But Douglas's "groupandgrid"model is neithersimplefunctionalismnorsimply social determinism,buta supple, generative systemcorrelating he stuffof Durkheimian ocialitywithcognitive categorization.AsDouglas puts it, "The restricted ode is usedeconomicallyto convey informa-tion and to sustaina particularocial form. It is a systemof control as well as asystem of communication" 8, p. 79).Ritualas control,as a socially effective regulator,manifeststheanthropolo-gist's descriptionor communicationof the phenomenonas a kind of absolutepresencewithin the cultureitself. Itbecomes, as a reificationof the heuristic,somethingmorethana description,for it reveals whatthe natural ciences callan "order" n the subject. Orderin the social sciences may be manifested asmeaning (more often "coding"or "classification")or as behavior(as in the"rituals" f animal-behaviortudies);whatis importants that t is notlimitedtoeither.A classic example is GregoryBateson's concept of schismogenesis (2, p.58), in which social norms and behaviorinteractdialecticallyto bringaboutculturalchange. Bateson, who first introduced he idea in the 1936 edition ofNaven, was only able to resolve the runaway dynamic of schismogeneticchange into a model for stability throughthe introductionof the cyberneticconceptof "feedback"n his 1958epilogueto the book. A recentgeneralizationof this solution, Roy A. Rappaport'sEcology, Meaning, and Religion (I8),expands"order"ntocybernetichomeostasisandthe"restricted ode"of ritualinto a general model of culture. The collection of essays representsa meta-



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146 WAGNERmorphosisof the ecological homeostasismodel of Rappaport's arlier mono-graph,Pigsfor theAncestors(17, p. 67), intoabroader ybernetichomeostasisin which"Wholeness, holiness, andadaptivenessareclosely related . ." (18,p. 234). The significantinnovation, then, is thatthe meaningfulelements inritual, and therefore n culture,assumea centralplace in Rappaport'shomeo-stasis, they ". . . define the teleology of such systems . . ." (18, p. 125).Like Douglas's and Bateson'smodels, Rappaport's ybernetichomeostasismakes ritual meaning integral to the culturaldynamic; more than that, forRappaport t is the raison d'etre of the system. But for that very reason,meaning is not andcannot be separated romthe regulatorysystem as it is inTurner's ater work.

The critical point at issue here is not one that has often been raised inconnection with ritual, nor necessarily is it one that most writers on ritualconsciously address.Anthropology's iaison betweenthe interpretiveandthenatural ciences tends to blur over sharpdistinctionsbetween the significanceorpurport f a semioticexpressionon onehand,andtheregulatory unctionsofactions, images, and ritualorderingson the other. Granting hat the fusion ofthese two considerationswas a remarkableachievement of Bateson's schis-mogenesismodel, it does not follow thattheycan be automaticallyorthought-lessly synthesized. More to the point, however, it is by no means establishedthatsuch a synthesisis in any sense crucialto the understanding ndexplana-tionof ritual. Commitment o one positionor the other s verymuch a matteroftheoreticalassumptionand expectation.The pointwas raised,however,becauseit is central o anexchange thattookplaceinthejournalManin 1980 and 1981, followinganarticleby Ron Bruntonon "MisconstruedOrder n MelanesianReligion"(4, p. 80). Brunton ocuseson two recentstudiesof ritual,Alfred Gell's Metamorphosisof theCassowar-ies (9, p. 75), andFredrikBarth'sRitual andKnowledgeamongthe Baktamanof New Guinea(1, p. 75), in developinga critiqueof what he construesas the"oversystematizing" f Melanesianreligions. In the most succinct terms, heargues n effect thatfactorssuchas ambiguityandinnovation,"antisystematic"tendencies if you will, constitute evidence for certain socially correlateddeterminatesof religion. Bruntoncriticizes academic traditions or puttingahigh premiumon intellectualorder(4, pp. 112-13), althoughBrunton's ownexpectationsof "order" re fairly rigid andproblematicand make of it some-thingof a "strawman." Beforerejoininghis strategy, then, it mightbe helpfulto consider more closely the prime targetof his attack,Gell's monograph.

MetamorphosisftheCassowariesmaywell be, as Brunton laims, ". . . themost sophisticatedand detailedattempt o date to uncover an internallycoher-ent patternin the religion of a Melanesian people" (4, p. 120). Certainly,however one might feel aboutthe significance of inherentpatterns,it is themost detailed. Perhapsno other accountof a Melanesianpeople makes the



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RITUAL AS COMMUNICATION N MELANESIA 147immediacyof sociological, lexical, andritualdetail as available o the readerasGell's does, and the sense of familiarity s heightenedby the author'sdryandoften brilliantly witty asides. On the other hand, for all of the masterlycraftsmanship ndskillwithwhichGell hashandledhisdata,theanalysisof theida ritualis strikingfor its lack of theoreticalcoherenceandconclusiveness.Applications of the ideas of Victor Turner, Levi-Strauss, and the linguistStephenUllmanabound,as well as germinal nsightsintoindigenouscosmolo-gy. The most original theoretical innovation involves a "breaking"of theacceptedrulesfor semiotic analysis. Gell extends the notion of lexical motiva-tion to include muchbroaderrangesof verbalrelationship,based primarilyonsound-similarity, han areconventionallyadmitted,and achieves a remarkable"core" cosmological metaphoras a result. This is what he calls the "tripleanalogy" 9, p. 148)of social role, bodypart,andpartof atree,a principle hatserves to orient Umedasocial and anatomical pace. Themetaphors salient inthe ida ritual and Gell often returns o it. But it is not conclusive. As Bruntonremarks, Gell's interpretive method is "centripetal," and ". . . using any of anumberof proceduresof widely differingstatus,he isolates an aspect, whichmaybe only one out of many possibilities,andincorporatest into thegraduallyunfolding model of the ida's meaning." (9, p. 118).All of this, in Brunton'sview, would be justified if we had some goodevidence of the unityand consistencyof the Umedaworld view. If, in otherwords, Gell can explain Umedaritual to Westernersbetter than Umedacan,then Gell's "meaning"or theritual s notlikelyto exist amongtheUmeda,andhe will be guilty of "oversystematizing"heirreligion. But what if Gell hadused the ambiguitiesin Umeda ritual n sucha way as to give a morecoherentaccount of it? Should he then be praised for "undersystematizing"Umedareligion, or should he be criticizedforyieldingto perniciousacademic tempta-tion andtransmuting n honest ndigenousconfusion into aself-seeking clarity'?If oversystematizing s one sort of misconstruingof order, then equatingtheanthropologist's xplanationwitha described,intrinsicentity maybe another.This also raisesthe issueof coherence in symbolism generally. Is a "looselystructured"ymbology possible?Whatwould be thereactionof linguistsif Gellhad reportedan indigenous grammarfull of major ambiguities and gapingirregularities? t is partof anthropology'sconventionalwisdom thatthere areno primitive languages; what, then, of primitivesymbologies? Granting,ofcourse, that languages and general symbologies are ratherdifferent things,have we the rightto assumethat thepatterning f publicutterance s somehowless subjectto the"pushes"and"pulls"of socioenergetics han hepatterning fpublic conceptualization?It is also partof anthropology'sreceivedwisdomthat all grammars"leak,"andthe play of ambiguity(andoften ambivalence), innovation,andnesciencein Melanesianculturesgenerally is establishedethnographic act. Like other



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148 WAGNERantipodalempiricists,Brunton he cites McArthur'sKunimaipaworkapprov-ingly) hascapitalizedheavilyon thisfact in advancing hecase forsociologicaldeterminism.But whatif ambiguity, innovation,andnescience arepartof themeaningfulprocess (ratherthan the sociological undertow, so to speak) ofMelanesianreligion?This is the implicationof much of the Telefolmin-areadata, presentlyto be considered,and, as we shall see, it is also significantinGell's areaof research.Ambiguityandinnovation,as muchas anything, testthe resourcefulness,flexibility, and imaginativerangeof theoreticalconcep-tion of "order."A very brittleor frangibleorder(like the "dogmas"of theHogbinera in Australiananthropology), ntroducedas straightforwardmodelor as argumentivefoil for anothermodel, is certain to succumb.

This brings us back to the argumentthat underlies Brunton's critique.Assuming that". . . we are probablynotjustified in assumingthatthereis abasic humanneed to develop comprehensiveandconsistentresponsesto whatwe might see as fundamentalexistentialquestions"(4, p. 123), he states hismajor hesis:"It s particularorms of socialorganization,ormorespecifically,cleavagesof a certain ypebetweencategoriesorclassesof people, whichcausethe supernatural to be 'colonised ...'" (4, p. 123). "Sociology" for Brunton(and also, apparently,for Gell) involves, as its major"players,"the indige-nously generatedcategorieswithinthe population(e.g. age-sets, senior mar-riedmen, young unmarriedwomen, etc). These categories (they arecertainlynot self-sufficientandcorporate ike the "groups"of traditional ocial anthro-pology) may vie with one anotherin terms of theirparticular nterests, andexpressthis competition n attempts o controlreligious"order."Thuswe canexpect to find a highdegreeof order n those partsof a religioussystem beingused to advancea group's (sic!) political interests. . ." (4, p. 125). Bruntonspeaks of a "continuum,"ratherreminiscentof Douglas's "groupand grid,"across which religion is more or less affected by competitionof this sort.

There are seriousproblemshere, even at the level of definition. Brunton'ssociological argument s reminiscentof the functionalists'attempt o explainsegmentarysocieties in termsof the organicsolidaritythatDurkheimpositedfor hierarchicalsocieties-having no evidence of an institutionaldivision oflabor, they proceeded o cut one out of whole cloth, then stitch it togetherwith"functions."Bruntonadduces the major competitive dynamic of a societyamong categories defined in a complementaryrelationshipto one another.What, then,of thecomplementary nterests, mpliedbydefinition,thatserve tounite them against any divisive "political" ntereststhey may conceive? Andwhat of the cross-cutting"symmetrical" ompetitionamong opposed lineagesor villages?The mostdamagingflaw, however, involves anassumptionaboutpriorities. Why, if competition is engenderedthroughthe categorizationofpeople in a certainway, should the competitionaffect religious"order"morethan, or rather than the equally conceptual order throughwhich the social



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RITUALAS COMMUNICATION N MELANESIA 149categorizationwas made?Is not social categorizationas muchof a problemasritual categorization?The next contributionto the exchange is that of Bernard Juillerat, whoworked with the Yafar, immediate neighbors of Gell's Waina-Sowanda (Ume-da). Juillerat'scomment suggests a much more immediatereason for Gell'sdifficultiesinresolvinganinterpretationf theida, andraisesthe issueof ritualsecrecy, which has widespread theoretical ramifications elsewhere inMelanesia.The Yafarhave, according o Juillerat 16, p. 732), adopted he idafrom the Umeda "some time ago," and so Juillerat s able to offer the closestthing to comparativetestimony. Accordingto Juillerat,

Gell's mistake s not, as Bruntondeclares,thathe "exaggerated"heunityandconsistencyofthe Umeda world picture (p. 124). It is rather hathe wishes to reconstitute his coherentpicture by his own intellectualmeans, having alreadydecided, as an establishedfact, thatthere was no exegesis (16, p. 733).The claim that a ritualtraditionhas no exegesis was made also by Barth, inthe Baktaman tudythatJuilleratdeclinesto discuss. It is interesting,however,that the two majormonographs o which Bruntonaddresses his critiquebothsupporttheir analyses on this claim. I shall consider Barth's study and itsethnographic ontextpresently.The substanceof Juillerat'scriticismof Brun-

ton as well as Gell is thatthe ida ritual does indeed have an exegesis, andheproceeds to list a number of significant events of the ida in which secretinterpretationsevealedby his informantscontrovertGell's conjectures. Juil-lerat argues,on the basis of his own field experience, thatexegetical materialconcerningthe ida is consciously withheld,or releasedto the "foreign nvesti-gator" only in small and unconnected details. The core of the exegesis ismythic, and, according o Juillerat,"Isubsequentlyestablishedthat the small-est ritualdetails(beforeandduring hepublic ceremony),thebriefestof spells,andthe natureand the mineral or botanicalidentityof the materialsused, allreferred ystematically ocertaindetailsof chronologicalnarrative xpressed nthe myth" (14, p. 732).It might be supposedthat the ethographicfact of secrecy-interpretationitself regarded as a scarce and precious commodity-would subsume thesubstanceof Brunton'sethnosociologyat a single stroke.Why graphcontinuaof organizationalcomplexity in relationto the competitivedynamicof com-plementaritywhen the subjectsof studythemselves manipulate"order" on-sciously in the neatly packagedform of exegetical secrets'?And if this putstheball of religious orderand sociological competition squarelyin the "natives"court,theball, by thistime, is aninvisible one-for whatis moresecretthan hetraffic in secret knowledge'?Barth's monograph s very much a treatise onthe sociological and epistemological implications of this sort of invisibletennis.



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150 WAGNERBrunton, n his responseto Juillerat,remarks hat thissortof secretexegesisis just exactly the sort of thing that his sociological interpretationof theUmeda/Yafarwould lead us to expect-do they not belong to the "highlyordered" ide of the continuum?He accuses Juilleratof implicitly denying thatthere are substantialvariationsamong Melanesiansocieties in "theextent towhich secrecy is stressed and maintained" 5, p. 734). He credits Juillerat,however, with correctlyrelatingsecrecyto complementarymale/femalecom-petition. It is clear, at this point, that the differences between BruntonandJuilleratarethose of sociology as againstsymbolicinterpretation. orBrunton,this comes down to whyreligiousmaterial s controlled,andhe tracesthecruxof their differencesto Juillerat'ssubscription o the assumption hatthere is "a

basic humanneed to develop comprehensiveandconsistentresponsesto whatwe might see as fundamentalexistential questions"(5, p. 735). Brunton'sremarks ndicatethatJuillerat s ignoringempiricalevidencethatthis is notthecase-the evidence beingthe sociological readingsBrunton s able to make ofostensibleintersocietalvariation n Melanesia.(However,ajudiciousobservermight wish to point out that it was Juillerat who provided the empiricalevidence-both the fact of a secretexegesis andsome specific details-here,and thatthis was evidence of which Bruntonwas ignorantwhenhe formulatedhis initial position.)Before I follow up on this most significantmatterof secrecy, it might behelpful to consider Gell's rejoinderto both Brunton and Juillerat, whichfollows Brunton's comments (10, p. 736-37). Gell castigates Bruntonformaking "broken-backed" rgumentto the effect that he (Gell) is guilty ofoversystematizingthe Umeda symbolic system, but that the system is itselfextremely systematic and ordered. He takes Juillerat'spart, essentially, asagainst Brunton,but he also seems to favor a sociological as opposed to astrictlysymbolicapproach.Gell uses theextremesecrecyof Juillerat'sreported

exegesis, in fact, againstJuillerat'sposition, in a commentthat bearssignifi-cantly on the issue at hand:It would be Juillerat'saccount, not mine. which would be parochialor mystical" f. as heproposes,the "explanation'sda is to be found in localmythological ore. Suchanapproachmakes of every culture a windowlcss monad, and begs every conceivable interestinganalytical question (10. p. 736).Gell defendshis lack of awarenessof, or rapportwith, the nativeexegeticaltraditionby appealing o receivedtheory-the "applications" f L6vi-Strauss,

Turner,and Ullmanthatenter into his involvedeffort to make sense of the ida.Data, no matterhow significant or revealing, are not theory. The point isimportant nough to compel an immediaterejoinder:whatare the theoreticalimplicationsof a secret, mythologicalexegetical tradition'?Gell suggests thatthey are sociological andpolitical, and that"Withthis recognitionthere also



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RITUALAS COMMUNICATIONN MELANESIA 151follows . . . a general devaluationof the explanatoryvalue of such secretknowledge, for it is patentlyobviousthat what is most importants not what issecret, but that it is secret"(10, p. 737).

Separationof contentfromstatus,andperhaps hereforeof symbolics frompolitics, is perhaps ess useful than Gell's remarks uggest:how canthere be asecret withouta content, somethingto be secret? And it is Gell himself whodrawsour attentionto Barth'smonographon this issue, so let me consider itnow.The actual engthof Barth'sfieldresearchamongtheBaktaman,a smallandisolated community of Faiwol speakers in New Guinea, has the status ofprofessionalrumor(thoughit is an unknown that both Bruntonand Juilleratcomment upon). Barth's preface speaks of "fieldwork during January-November 1968"(1, pp. 6-7), though t is clearthatBarthspentaconsiderableamountof timetraveling.He was at the time ahighly experienced ieldworker,however.Ritualand Knowledge amongthe Baktamanof New Guinea, whatever elsemight be said of it, providedthe first monographic reatment,and the firstserious anthropologicalassessment, of the remarkable ecret initiatorycom-plex of the "MountainOk"peoplesin its full implication.Eventhoughthe workis addressed o what its authorcalls "TheEpistemologyof Secrecy"(1, p. 217)and addresses itself at the outset to culture as ". . . an ongoing system ofcommunication . ." (1, p. 15), Barthdifferentiateshimself methodologicallyand theoretically from what is usually called "symbolic anthropology."Addressing himself to "spontaneous,unelicited word and act" and to theconversationsof Baktamanwith oneanother,he seeks to freehis studyfromthecontamination f the"feedback" ngenderedwhen ananthropologist tructuresinformant nterviews (1, pp. 224-25).If it is possible at all, such a search for the pure, uncontaminated"emic"presumesverymuchonthelinguisticandkinesthetic"fluency"afieldworker saptto achieveinthe eleven-monthrangeBarthallows for his fieldwork. (And ifa good bit of fluency were not present by the second or thirdmonth, it isquestionablehow muchobjective eavesdropping ould have accompanied heauthor'sparticipationnthe entire nitiatory eries.)Barth inds,notsurprising-ly, that Baktamanritual has no exegesis, and that it is primarilybased onnonverbalcommunication:"insuch a world, only 'realobjects' persist whilecommunication s by definitionephemeral" 1, p. 229). Granting he ethnog-rapherbothpoints (the force and effect of nonverbalcommunicationhas beenseriouslyunderestimated ndundervaluedn much Melanesianresearch)onlyserves to make his methodology the more questionable.What is to be con-taminatedn sucha world?Unless the nonverbalmeaningsare to be directlyortelepathically ntuited,theirunderstandingwould seem to requiremuch morecare, background,and communication n areas where verbal articulation s



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152 WAGNERpossible, thanverbalmeanings.The alternative,which Barth seems to advo-cate, is a kind of "dumbbarter"of quizzical tokens.A self-imposedtabooon verbalproliferationmakes theverbalmessagesoneis able to overhearvery precious.This also seems to be the way the Baktamanepistemology operates: he scarcegood (whichBarthprovides, very sparingly,in AppendixIII) is just precisely verbaland mythicalknowledge. So are the"secrets" hat seem to be focal in Baktamanmagic, power, andritualunder-standing-names, myths, and mythic details-all of them in words.Thus it is not the undervaluingof verbal communicationthat animatesBaktamanritual,but a cult of secrecy thatassures that words andthe shared,conventionalunderstandingshatthey convey will retaintheircentrality andsignificance. When Barth tells us that Baktamancollectivities are "poorlyconstitutedand conceptualized,"that patrilinealexogamous clans "emergemore as a by-productof certaincult activities"that manifestmembershipandsolidarity obliquely through ritual (1, p. 25), and that "the striking fact . . . istheabsenceof ... commonpremisesandsharedknowledgebetweenpersons nintimateinteraction" 1, pp. 264-65), he is documentingthe operation of apowerfulindigenouspraxis for controllingandcompellingthe collective. Hisaccount, however, emphasizes the outward and experientialeffects of thiscontrol rather hanprovidinginsightsor explanationsregarding ts manipula-tion.Barth's heoreticalandmethodological tance s interesting, romthegeneralstandpointof communication,in that it seems to have reversedthe order ofcontamination.Insteadof inadvertantly ommunicatingthe overstructuringsand biases of the anthropologisto his informants,he appears o have internal-ized their communicative constraints. It is practically inevitable then thathowever eloquenthis evocation of thefact of secrecy, its content will remainuncommunicatedn the same way, and for the same reasons, thatthe Faiwolthemselves curtailcommunication.A parallelwithGell's worksuggests itself here, forJuillerat'scomments onUmedasecrecymightbe extendedto theBaktamanas well. Is thereavitalcoreof exegesis in Baktaman r Faiwolculture,protectedas a vitalsecretagainstallcomers? Or are the Baktaman,as Barth insists (and as Gell asserts for theUmeda)withoutexegesis? Fortunately,some comparativeevidence exists forthe "Mountain Ok" area, as a considerable amount of field research hasoccurred heresince Barth'svisit. Withveryfew exceptions,however, most ofthe findings are as yet unpublishedand remainin dissertation orm.

At least two dissertations address the issue of communicationcentrally.BarbaraJones spenttwo years with a largerandsomewhatmore acculturatedgroupof Faiwol speakers hanthe Baktaman,at Imigabip(13). Heraccount isno less emphatic hanBarth'sonthesubjectof secrecy, and ts delineationof anintegralambivalencein Faiwol culture is also reminiscentof Barth'sdescrip-



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RITUAL AS COMMUNICATION N MELANESIA 153tion. But whereasthe Baktaman eem largelyto be missing a sense of sharedconvention, the Imigabiphave, in theirinsidiousbiis witchcraft, wroughtthecollective into what Jones calls ". . . a powerful negative image of society associety with no higher motivating principle"(13, p. 8). Jones's informantsamong the elder cult-house guardianstold her that they were "cowboys,"drawinga conscious parallelbetween the dangerous ife of a Westerngunmanin films they had seen and the dangers they incurred n protectingcult-houserelics. These are absolutelyessential to the growthof taro, and hence to thewell-being of the community, but they exert a debilitatingor lethal effect onthose who keep them (12). Taken altogether, Jones's evidence, althoughacquiredamonga largerandmorenearly"acculturated"ommunity, representsa greater degree of ambivalence and uncertainty han Barth's! If there is aFaiwol exegesis at all, it must be a well-kept secret indeed.DanJorgensen'sdissertation,basedon extensive researchwithelders of theacknowledged"motherhouse"of the initiatory bani) ystemforthe entireStarMountainsregion, at Telefolip, gives a good indicationof just exactly wherethe exegetical traditionmay be. Somewhatafter the conclusion of his initialfieldworkin 1979, Jorgensenwas requestedby the elders to return o Telefolipandpreparea permanent ecordof therelics, mythologicalcorpus,andexeget-ical doctrineof the motherhouse. FundamentalistChristian lements hadset inmotion an effort to destroy the "pagan" complex (they did not, in fact,succeed), and a numberof Telefol, including government officials, wereconcerned o preserve heirheritage.Jorgensenwas ableto accomplish his. Hereceived permission to publish the material, and it is incorporated n hisdissertation,whichappearedn 1981(14). Theexegesis, comprisinga seriesofrevelations, encompasses the serial negation of the symbolic premises ofTelefol culture, and is impressive by any philosophicalstandard.Insofar as the Faiwol, as well as most otherpeoples in the "MountainOk"region, recognizetheprimacyof theTelefolipmotherhouse and sendyouthstoits initiations, the case can be made thatthe ritualexegesis for a numberofdiscreetethnic unitshas been maintainedas an exclusive secret at Telefolip.This possibility bears significant implicationsfor our assumptions regardingtheautonomyof culturalmeanings,and itwould also tendtoconfirmJuillerat'scommentaryon Gell's material. The initiatoryritual is concerned with themoral, is transformative, nd is exclusively male. It is, aboveall, communica-tive, and the communication takes the form of a revelation of exegeticalinterpretationoncerningcentralculturalmeaningsby elders to ritualnovices.It represents, n otherwords, the same "scale"of communication-that of theexposition andanalyticalpenetrationof culturalmeaning-as the anthropolo-gist's accountof it.In this context, Jorgensenaddsa commentaryon Brunton'sposition to theManexchange:". . . Brunton eems to thinkthatwe can 'explain'thesymbolic



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154 WAGNERrealm with reference to the political (never clearly defined)-presumablybecause political relations are in some sense prior to or more 'real' thanreligious understandings f the world"( 15, p. 471). "Theonly sense in whichdifferentials in cult lore are political is simply by definition, by equatingesoteric knowledge with secular power" (15, p. 471). He criticizes Gell forretreating into ". . . a stylised affirmation of sociological faith," and suggeststhat Gell's work will be rememberedmorefor its exegesis of the idaIthan forany contribution t might make to general sociology (15, p. 471).A final word in the exchange is RagnarJohnson'sreview of the discussion,in which he criticizes Gell in particular or adherenceto a rigid structuralmodel. Johnson stresses the importanceand effect of analytical models, andnotesthat "Theproblemof 'order' n Melanesianceremonial nstitutions s onethatderivesalmostentirelyfrom the models usedby anthropologistso presenttheirresearchfindings"(1 1, p. 474). A tight, logically integratedmodel, inotherwords, is aptto projectacademicstandardsonto ritual,andobscurethedynamic, "becoming"aspects of its enactment.Johnson'spointis acogent one, whetheror nottheanthropologist ntendshismeanings to replicatethe indigenoussense of a ritual.Forwhether he anthro-pologist's communication is presented as sociology or epistemology, andwhether it presentsthe natives' understandingof a ritualor some order orschemepresumed o explainor determine hatunderstanding,t deals with therepresentationof human creativity. The anthropologist may representthecreativityof the ritualas the static artifactof hisowncreativity;he may attributethat artifact o the nativeculture tself, as an inherentordeterminative"order";or he mayuse his creativityto communicatesomethingof thecreativityof theritual. If ritual is understood o be transformative-the productionof a socialstatusor a cosmological state-then only the last of these three alternativesdoesjusticeto thatfact. Forotherwise,however incisive or insightful tmay be,the production andthe creativity) s thatof the anthropologistalone. Jorgen-sen's criticismalso strikesto thecore of theexchange;when it comes downtosecrecy (and the Waina-Sowanda/Yafar nd Mountain Ok converge at thispoint), it scarcely matters whether one refers to "religion," "sociology," or"politics."Secrecy is, perhaps,the politics of meaning.The "sociology"thatGell and Bruntoninvoke is an epiphenomenonof culturalcategorization,amatterof categories in confutationrather hangroups in competition.Itwould seem, then, that"order" an be misconstruedn as many ways as itcan be construed n Melanesianreligion. ForMelanesianreligion, if we are tounderstandBarth, Jorgensen, and Johnsoncorrectly, is itself the process ofconstruingorder, and disorder.



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RITUALAS COMMUNICATIONN MELANESIA 155LiteratureCited

1. Barth, F. 1975. Ritual and Knowledgeamong the Baktamanof New Guinea.New Haven:Yale Univ. Press2. Bateson, G. 1958. Naven. Stanford:StanfordUniv. Press3. Bateson, G. 1979. Mind and Nature:ANecessary Unity. New York: Bantam4. Brunton,R. 1980. Misconstrued rder nMelanesian religion. Man (NS)15(1):112-285. Brunton,R. 1980. correspondence.Man(NS) 15(4):734-356. Crocker,J. C. 1983. Being an essence:Totemic representation mong the East-ern Bororo. In The Power of Symbols:MaskaandMasquerade n the Americas,ed. N. R. Crumrine,M. Halpin. Van-couver:Univ. British ColumbiaPress7. Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger.London:Routledge& Kegan Paul8. Douglas, M. 1973. Natural Symbols.New York:RandomHouse9. Gell, A. 1975. Metamorphosisof theCassowaries. London: Athlone

10. Gell, A. 1980. correspondence. Man(NS) 15(4):735-3711. Johnson,R. 1981. correspondence.Man(NS) 16(3):472-7412. Jones, B. 1979. Personalcommunication13. Jones, B. 1980. Consuming society:Food and illness among the Faiwol. PhDthesis. Univ. Va., Charlottesville14. Jorgensen, D. 1981. Taro and arrows:Order, entropy, and religion among theTelefolmin. PhD thesis. Univ. BritishColumbia,Vancouver15. Jorgensen, D. 1981. correspondence.Man (NS) 16(3):470-7216. Juillerat,B. 1980. correspondence.Man

(NS) 15(4):732-3417. Rappaport,R. 1967. Pigs for the Ances-tors. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press18. Rappaport,R. 1979. Ecology, Meaning,and Religion. Richmond, Calif: NorthAtlantic Books19. Turner,V. W. 1975. Revelationand Div-ination n NdembuRitual. Ithaca:CornellUniv. Press

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Ritual as Communication - Roy Wagner