Munn, Transformations

Munn, ND 1970, "The Transformations of Subjects into Objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara Myth", in Berndt RD (ed), Australian Aboriginal Anthropology: Modern Studies in the Social Anthropology of the Australian Aborigines, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies & University of Western Australia Press, pp. 141-163.

[summary]

[NH: This chapter concerns the “triadic relationship” of “ancestral subject-object-human subject” among Indigenous Australians of the Central Desert. In brief, they believe that during the 'Dreaming', their ancestors (subjects) shaped or created things (objects) like rocks, hills, trees, etc. Descended from these ancestors, the Central Desert people (human subjects) are connected to the ancestors and objects. For a bit of context, Munn's findings here seem to predate work of other anthropologists on the concept of dividual. I also use Munn in a section "Self and Person" in a subject I teach on Body and Mind. Munn's researh also relates to the anthropological use of  the concepts of "self", "identity", and "personhood",.]]

Background

Aboriginal people of the Central Desert recognized two epochs—the ancestral past (Munn 1970: 144) and the ongoing recent past of human beings. The ancestral past can be referred to as “The Dreaming” or “The Dreamtime”. The ancestors were either:

 a. wholly human; or, 

 b. part-human and part-nonhuman

They performed heroic deeds. Importantly, they transformed into objects like hills and sacred items. Indeed they created “country” the total “non-sentient environment” (143). Within the total environment, specifically, “major features of the country are systematically regarded as the products of ancestral transformation” (Munn 1970:141). “Notions of the body and body parts are constantly assimilated to notions of topographical forms” (148-9). Munn tries to show how this tranformation makes sense. She describes it as a transformation from subject to object 

[Introduction]

Mauss showed that objects are imbued with a notion of person. This chapter, on Central Desert people, also describes the bond between persons and things. [Put simply, through transformation, subjects become objects.] “Transformation” refers to:

i.                    an operation/process whereby ancestors produce or take on a material form; and,

ii.                  the products of these operations/processes.

The purpose of this chapter is to understand transformation not as ‘mythology’ [ie. as a set of fascinating stories] but in relation to “the relationship between the individual and the collectivity as mediated by the object world” (141). [[NH: Note that Durkheim was also concerned with the relationship between the individual and the collectivity; how individuals represent society to themselves.]

The Structure of Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara Transformations

Ancestors transform into objects in three ways:

1. metamorphosis (ancestor’s body changes into a material object)
2. imprinting (ancestor leaves an impression of his body or a tool)
3. externalization (ancestor takes the object out of his body)

These objects contain something of the ancestor. The ancestor and the object are considered as the same thing—so “sentient being and external object world” are identified.

[Central Australian people perceive 2 epochs & 2 kinds of people]

Transformations integrate the two categories of subject (ancestral and human) [and two epochs]. Transformations are bidirectional [i.e. both separating and binding]. That is 

i. there is a separation from the subject, andii. there is a binding to an object.

Ancestors create objects unconsciously (i.e. unintentionally, e.g. “where he sits down a waterhole appears") and consciously (i.e. intentionally, e.g. “two kangaroos made their ‘tails’ by pulling them out of their bodies”) (144).

For the Walbiri, “the term for ancestors and ancestral period also means ‘dream’”. Ancestors first dream their transformations, so the movement is from inside to outside and interior to exterior. For humans, by contrast, “the object is prior, and the initial direction…must be…from object to subject, from outside to inside” (145). In other words, ancestors originate and create without limitation, while humans submit to these creations.

For these people rights over land are determined by ancestry etc. [right are not e.g. bought and sold]

Ancestors and humans are bound to country. Ancestors are bound to ‘country’ because objects they have created are still linked to them. Humans “also have certain unbreakable bonds with particular parts of the country” (145). What is the nature of these bonds/links?

Pitjantjara men have control and ties to home county and birthplace country. As far as home country is concerned, small groups of agnates usually constitute the landowners for specific localities” (146). Men usually base themselves in their father’s home country (though they might be living or hunting elsewhere). These landowners have control over sacred resources which cannot be touched without their approval. So, home country is not an economic area but an anchorage. As for birthplace country, the individual as ties with the ancestors of the place he was born. A man may refer to both birthplace and homeland ancestor as “I”. A man referred to a skin marking on his body as the “scar on a carpet-snake ancestor speared in a fight at his birthplace” (146). Therefore, ancestor, countryside, his own body, [and his identity’] are linked.

“Walbiri rights over land are also lodged in patrilineal groups, but the adult men of these groups do not constitute the core of a residential unit, localized at the sites.” So, in the same area you can get men united by various kinship ties and sites belong to [different patrilineal groups] (147).

Ancestral subjects turn themselves into objects and these objects get turned into human subjects [who eventually die and turn into objects]

Transformation usually involves ancestors imprinting on the landscape

What are the specific features of ancestral transformations?

Walbiri “think of the ancestral camp as becoming some particular geographical feature, usually a hill or waterhole (151).”

Pitjantjatjara ancestors don’t die—they go down a waterhole and become country. Imprinting: “The camps is the place where the ancestor sat down; it is the ancestor, his body” (148). “Notions of the body and body parts are constantly assimilated to notions of topographical forms” (148-9). Ancestors become boards (gulbidja) and stones (djalgarara) [NH: similar to churinga?] which are stored at sacred sites and are referred as ‘camps’ or ‘country’.

People and objects descended from the ancestors

Ancestors left progeny (guranidja) at the sacred places; these are like gulbidja but they are also people. The progeny (guranidja ) of corkwood ancestors were ovoid forms, and the nectar of the corkwood flower, thus persons and objects are condensed.

Living and remembered dead ancestors can become [ancestral/Dreaming/mythical] ancestors

Particular remembered dead may be thought of as being the djugurba of a certain place. A young man pointed to sacred stones representing grub ancestors and said “My father…is lying down” referring to his own living father.

So spirit turns into things

“There is thus a constant assimilation of subject to object” (149) both in the ancestral past and human present, ancestors and humans are reintegrated into objects [such as country and churinga].

The dead, country, & law are interconnected

Generations of dead are transformed into country, they bugaringu; sat down in a particular place and left something of themselves there. In dying, ancestors become bound to country, but also transmit of it to patrilineal descendants. Rights over country are devolved at death. “alienation of any part of the country from the rightful heirs is a violation of the essence of the moral order. It is a desecration, not merely a theft." Sacred boards and stones are the foundations of law. One man said “the law is the gulbidja [sacred boards]” another said “[stones and boards are] the law of the dead; the ancestor became country (151)”. [NH: it seems that boards, stones, and country are equivalent] Violation of the country is a violation of the very essence of the ‘law of the dead’. The ancestors thus created a physical world and moral imperatives.

Transformation and Inter-generational Transmission

[Is demonstrated in the following accounts:]

1. A Walbiri kangaroo ancestor created a string cross and showed it to many people. He and all these people then disappeared within the country. People of today then came and picked up the string cross.
2. Kangaroo ancestor carried crosses with him, when he went in he left them to patrilineal descendants who assumed authority over them (and thus country)
3. Two Wilingari [ancestors] pulled widi poles (their penises) out of their body and left them behind for their descendants to care for.

In this intergenerational transmission [NH: cf. Kula as inter-island transmission], as heir, the son is a passive recipient, and is subordinated in a social-moral order or authority of the senior generation [gerontocracy]; as donor the son, transmits “objects which are now permeated with his own will and authority, as well as those of previous generations” (153).  The object thus integrates the two roles.

Circumcision is a rebirth--it is a time of intergenerational transmission

At circumcision, the boy enters this chain. The sacra are revealed to him for the first time, and he enters the inter-generational chain. Meggit describes when the string cross was first presented to a boy, he became dazed. “Walbiri think of initiation as a kind of dying” (153), the novice is then ‘reborn’ into the world. Both in initiation and in transformation one leaves the temporal locus.

Transformation and birth

Transformation and fertility are connected, for example through the association of ancestral progeny and oval boards. Ancestral progeny are thought to metamorphise into boards. For example, the snake ancestor carried boards on his head (as men wear ceremonial head-dresses today). Men think of these boards as ribs of the snake ancestor and as his progeny (ribs = boards = children).

In another story:

1. the snake ancestor carried boards on his head (as men wear ceremonial headdresses today). Men think of these boards as ribs of the snake ancestor and as his progeny (ribs = boards = children).
2. the boards changed into women
3. women emit faces/boards
4. two men “[the sons?]” pick up the boards and

The father snake (subject) externalizes boards (objects) which become women (subjects) who externalize faeces/boards (objects). The men take over the sacred boards but also take control of “the objectified form of the ‘women-children’” ie. the boards. [This is reminiscent of Morton’s discussion of how Aranda took control of the amnion symbol and thus took control of feminine fertility.]

Summary and Conclusion

[sites]

“A single country…generally includes in its close-lying cluster of sites the bodily remnants of more than one ancestor, but only one is ordinarily dominant or representative. The ancestral transformations thus constitute a homeland to a particular group of men and women, ritual rights over it being inherited ideally from the father”

[notes]

This account seems to be structural in that it argues underlying structures of subject-object, transient-atemporal, inside-outside.

Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara like Confucian cultures have strong ancestral cults and gerontocratic structures.

[significance]

This chapter seems to be considered a classic among the generation of scholars who taught me anthropology. Munn describes a belief that is, apparently, distinct from Western Cartesian dualism. The people of the Central Desert see subject and object not as two utterly distinct realms, but rather as interrelated and interchangeable. I think it initially found relevance among anthropologists struggling in the 1970s-1990s trying to explain/translate that the 'physical' landscape is for many Aboriginal people, also spiritual. With the 'ontological turn' in Anthropology, I think this chapter should have continued relevance. Munn's findings work quite well with Durkheim's classic account of totemism. Munn shows how a sense of self and identity is linked to objects and features in the landscape. vMunn's findings also tie in with Stanner's Dreaming. Actually, Munn's chapter is so profound I think she could have written a whole book just expounding the ideas in this chapter. Munn went on to write Fame of Gawa, which is truly remarkable ethnography--one of my all-time favorites!

[critique]

The way Munn sets it out, it's as if the Central Desert people perceive two realms, it's just that they are interchangeable and interrelated. If they truly believe subjects and objects exist then they are still dualists. The difference with Descartes is that they are not as 'hardcore' / strict about their dualism. Stanner describes the Central Desert people as perceiving a wholeness. This 'wholeness' or 'oneness' would seem to contrast with dualism. 

Notes:

For more anthropological analysis

• by Munn, see her Fame of Gawa