Mortuary Dialogues: Death Ritual and the Reproduction of Moral Community in Pacific Modernities, David Lipset and Eric K. Silverman, eds., Berghahn., 2016
In: Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce. 2013. L. Greenspoon, ed. pp. 177-205. Studi... more In: Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce. 2013. L. Greenspoon, ed. pp. 177-205. Studies in Jewish Civilization, Vol. 24. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
This article corroborates Alan Dundes’s psychoanalytic interpretation of flood myths as expressin... more This article corroborates Alan Dundes’s psychoanalytic interpretation of flood myths as expressing male envy of female fertility and birth. My data consist of two deluge tales collected in a Sepik River society in Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and 1994. But I do more than simply test Dundes’s thesis. I also show that it is possible and, indeed, imperative to embed psychoanalytic analyses of oral tales in the local cultural context. I also update, in a sense, Dundes’s framework with insights from Lacanian and feminist anthropology. Last, I discuss how Iatmul women respond—both to the tale and its psychodynamic innuendo.
The outstanding papers in this collection raise important points for not only a fuller understand... more The outstanding papers in this collection raise important points for not only a fuller understanding of the contemporary Pacific, but also for issues of identity and belonging much further afield. Specifically, I propose that we can approach these papers from a Jewish Studies perspective gazing upon Melanesia, but also from a Melanesianist perspective surveying the broad field of Jewish Studies. For in many respects, the case studies ask us to rethink conventional boundaries. Melanesians, I argue, draw variously on Israelite, Israeli, Biblical, and Jewish themes, all refracted through Christianity, to re-centre themselves in a global history so they are both valid and validated. But in so doing, we must ask ourselves, If Melanesians lay claim to Jewish affinities, broadly construed, what do these claims pose for Jewish identities as well as the very concept of identity in terms of notions of diaspora and centre? Indeed, if Melanesians are Jews, then how do we define not only Judaism but also Melanesia? My goal, then, is not so much to focus on the chapters as to use the chapters to probe fundamental questions about self and society in a globalised, mutable world.
... pairs exchanges roles, in active-passive games like finger-pulling (LOC: MMP, Fieldnotes, 6/9M... more ... pairs exchanges roles, in active-passive games like finger-pulling (LOC: MMP, Fieldnotes, 6/9May 1938). ... In Beyond Victory, ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen, 66-87 ... Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson 141 Romy, Fatimah Tobing 1996 The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic ...
Mortuary Dialogues: Death Ritual and the Reproduction of Moral Community in Pacific Modernities, David Lipset and Eric K. Silverman, eds., Berghahn., 2016
In: Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce. 2013. L. Greenspoon, ed. pp. 177-205. Studi... more In: Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce. 2013. L. Greenspoon, ed. pp. 177-205. Studies in Jewish Civilization, Vol. 24. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
This article corroborates Alan Dundes’s psychoanalytic interpretation of flood myths as expressin... more This article corroborates Alan Dundes’s psychoanalytic interpretation of flood myths as expressing male envy of female fertility and birth. My data consist of two deluge tales collected in a Sepik River society in Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and 1994. But I do more than simply test Dundes’s thesis. I also show that it is possible and, indeed, imperative to embed psychoanalytic analyses of oral tales in the local cultural context. I also update, in a sense, Dundes’s framework with insights from Lacanian and feminist anthropology. Last, I discuss how Iatmul women respond—both to the tale and its psychodynamic innuendo.
The outstanding papers in this collection raise important points for not only a fuller understand... more The outstanding papers in this collection raise important points for not only a fuller understanding of the contemporary Pacific, but also for issues of identity and belonging much further afield. Specifically, I propose that we can approach these papers from a Jewish Studies perspective gazing upon Melanesia, but also from a Melanesianist perspective surveying the broad field of Jewish Studies. For in many respects, the case studies ask us to rethink conventional boundaries. Melanesians, I argue, draw variously on Israelite, Israeli, Biblical, and Jewish themes, all refracted through Christianity, to re-centre themselves in a global history so they are both valid and validated. But in so doing, we must ask ourselves, If Melanesians lay claim to Jewish affinities, broadly construed, what do these claims pose for Jewish identities as well as the very concept of identity in terms of notions of diaspora and centre? Indeed, if Melanesians are Jews, then how do we define not only Judaism but also Melanesia? My goal, then, is not so much to focus on the chapters as to use the chapters to probe fundamental questions about self and society in a globalised, mutable world.
... pairs exchanges roles, in active-passive games like finger-pulling (LOC: MMP, Fieldnotes, 6/9M... more ... pairs exchanges roles, in active-passive games like finger-pulling (LOC: MMP, Fieldnotes, 6/9May 1938). ... In Beyond Victory, ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen, 66-87 ... Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson 141 Romy, Fatimah Tobing 1996 The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic ...
... In so doing, the Chambri man (named Maliwan) could assert polit-ical power in the arena of to... more ... In so doing, the Chambri man (named Maliwan) could assert polit-ical power in the arena of tourism. ... Berkeley: University of California Press. Goody, Jack 1977 The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ...
... Above the Forest: A Study of Andamanese Ethnoanemology, Cosmology, and the Power of ... One o... more ... Above the Forest: A Study of Andamanese Ethnoanemology, Cosmology, and the Power of ... One of the Remaining Groups of Andaman Islanders," presents a brief history and description ... Controlling the interaction between humans and spirits is crucial for maintaining Ongee life. ...
This article challenges the moral parable of the film Cannibal Tours by drawing on long-term ethn... more This article challenges the moral parable of the film Cannibal Tours by drawing on long-term ethnographic research in a Iatmul-speaking village along the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea—one of the very communities featured in the film. In this article, first, I argue that Cannibal Tours silences indigenous agency and thus contributes to the very symbolic violence the film-maker aims to critique. Second, I interpret Sepik River tourist art not as meaningless trinkets, as the film implies, but as complex aesthetic expressions of postcolonial identity. Finally, I discuss the recent emergence of cargo cult ideation in a Sepik society as a response to heightened fiscal marginalization after the sale of the tourist ship in 2006. The moral force of Cannibal Tours leads most viewers to wish that the tourists would simply leave. And they have. Local villagers, however, desperately yearn for the return of tourism—and now enlist the dead in this effort.
Page 1. POLITICS, GENDER, AND TIME IN MELANESIA AND s MORIGINE AUSTIA FJ b / Eric Kline Silverman... more Page 1. POLITICS, GENDER, AND TIME IN MELANESIA AND s MORIGINE AUSTIA FJ b / Eric Kline Silverman Tt/ DePauw University t This article interprets the symbolism and politics of Iatmul time (Sepik River, Papua New Guinea). ...
I enjoyed reading The Lost Drum very much. The book takes as its subject matter the myths of a nu... more I enjoyed reading The Lost Drum very much. The book takes as its subject matter the myths of a number of New Guinea societies including the Foi (where Weiner conducted fieldwork), the Yafar, the Marind-anim, and the Gimi. The enjoyment of reading the book had to do ...
Journal de la Société des Océanistes, Jul 15, 2018
Si l’art du moyen Sepik de png est notoirement connu dans le monde entier, il est en revanche peu... more Si l’art du moyen Sepik de png est notoirement connu dans le monde entier, il est en revanche peu compris. Cet article presente les resultats d’un long terrain ethnographique mene depuis 1989 et dont l’objet fut la signification des changements de sens lies a la peinture et la couleur tels qu’ils sont percus par les gens de Tambanun, un village de l’est de l’aire Iatmul. J’analyse comment la peinture et la couleur evoquent le paysage en terme d’histoire mythique, de totemisme, la valeur esthetique accordee au mouvement, le dialogue irreductible sur le pouvoir generateur cosmique et le principe ontologique des changements du monde aquatique. J’interprete aussi les peintures touristiques et comment les Iatmul de l’Est percoivent les decorations de style occidental recemment produites sur les camions qui transportent des passagers. Chez les Iatmul de l’est, la perception traditionnelle du monde irrigue toujours d’un sens ancestral les couleurs et les peintures mais, de nos jours, les Iatmul colorent leur art d’une aspiration au developpement, d’une vue romantique de la nature et d’une anxiete face a la globalisation.
International Journal of Anthropology, Oct 1, 2003
... One of the most brilliant works in the Garden is a bare pole that contains only a hint of the... more ... One of the most brilliant works in the Garden is a bare pole that contains only a hint of the sculpture it might have become. This work, titled "untitled" (Figure 2), expresses the processual aspects of the Garden, and the unfinalizability and partiality of any interpretation. ...
This article challenges the ethical allegory of the widely hailed film Cannibal Tours, drawing on... more This article challenges the ethical allegory of the widely hailed film Cannibal Tours, drawing on two decades of ethnographic research in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, most recently in 2010. First, I sketch the contemporary plight of a middle Sepik, Iatmul-speaking community that yearns for a “road” to modernity and tourism but increasingly sees itself as “going backwards.” Second, I argue that tourism allows middle Sepik inhabitants to express artistically subtle messages about contemporary gender, identity, and sociality in the Melanesian postcolony. Third, I demonstrate what happens when the tourists go home. And almost all of them have done so, especially after the sale of the tourist ship, the Mela nesian Discoverer, in 2006. Tragically, the recent decline in tourism corresponds to a dramatic degradation of “basic services” offered by provincial and national authorities, and a devastating flood during the 2009–2010 rainy season. Facing all this, Iatmul feel increasingly disenfranchised, despondent, and desperate to attract new tourists and to discover, after a century of unfilled commodity desires, the source of material plenitude locally associated with modernity. Toward this aim, villagers now speak about something I never expected to hear in this once prosperous community: narratives about deceased kin, voyaging back to the village like ghostly tourists on a numinous ship, striving to bring local people wealth and commodities, only to be barred by Europeans. What happens after Cannibal Tours? The ideology of a cargo cult.
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Articles and Book Chapters by Eric Silverman