Mekeo chiefs and sorcerers: metaphor, ideology and practice

Oceania, Nov, 2007 by Alan Jones

   But the mind attempts to contrive a principle of order and
   regularity into certain parts of the mass of signs, and this is
   the role of relative motivation.

   (Ferdinand de Saussure 1974:133)

   Il y a trop de sens incertains et meme de apparentes contradictions.
   Les mysteres abondent encore en Mekeo!

   (From the title page of the Desnoes Mekeo-French Dictionary)

Much of the recent ethnographic literature dealing with Mekeo culture and beliefs has been concerned with what may be called key words or "key cultural concepts" (a term introduced by Wierzbicka 1997; compare Feinberg 2002, on "themes" in Oceanic culture). (1) A number of important claims made by ethnographers of Mekeo culture, particularly Mosko (1985), Stephen (1995, 1996a 1996b) and Bergendorff (1996, 2003), hinge on the interpretation and definition of key terms, or concepts. In 1995, Stephen called for "literal translations" of key words, in particular lopia and ungaunga, (2) terms traditionally glossed as "chief' (or "peace chief') and "sorcerer" (e.g. Seligman 1910; Hau'ofa 1971, 1981; Mosko 1985). She suggested translations of her own ("man of kindness" and "man of sorrow," respectively) that have since gained some currency. However, many linguists are skeptical about the possibility of literal translation. Wierzbicka (1997, etc.) would argue that there is, by definition, no such thing as a literal translation of a key cultural concept. Following Saussure, other linguists also see the value of a term as a function of its place in a linguistic system; ad hoc glosses can never capture this precise value. In response to such difficulties, Wierzbicka developed a restricted semantic metalanguage aimed at analysing cultural concepts into sets of micro-propositions meant to encapsulate both semantic and pragmatic meanings. Linguists with a specialisation in translation nowadays generally agree that the concept of literal translations is a theoretical and pragmatic cul-de-sac. (3)

Meanwhile, however, Stephen's project has touched closely upon a topic--the nature of chiefly authority among the Mekeo--that has been the subject of considerable anthropological debate since at least the 1980s (see Hau'ofa 1981 and Mosko 1985; Stephen 1996, 1999 and Mosko 1997; Bergendorff 1996 and Mosko 1998). (4) This is a debate with implications for discussions of chiefly authority throughout the New Guinea area (Hau'ofa 1981 and Mosko 1985 both end their detailed depictions of Mekeo society and culture with discussions of chieftainship in comparable New Guinea societies, such as the Tikopia, the Wogeo, and the Trobriand Islanders). Indeed, while aspects of Mekeo chieftainship contrast with similar institutions in other New Guinea societies--e.g. the emphasis on seniority of birth, the public partnership of chiefs with sorcerers, a competition for power based on mystical rather than material goods--it is possible that its roots are still to be found in as yet unwritten ethnographies of peoples of the Purari and Orokolo Rivers, Eleman societies of Gulf Province, and mountain peoples such as the Kuni, Fuyughe, Tauade, and Kunimaipa.

Stephen's use of phrases like "literal translation" (Stephen 1995) and "literal rendering" (Stephen 1999) implies the existence of 'translation equivalents' for individual words and phrases, but in translation theory this is an extremely controversial notion. Literal translation (also referred to as direct translation) attempts to adhere to the denotative meaning, as well as the grammatical form and word order, of words and phrases in a source language--so far as the target language allows. Nowadays, expert translators attempt to achieve "dynamic equivalence" or "motivated formal equivalence", aiming to identify words and wordings in the target language that will best capture the contextualised meanings of the original. Contextualized meanings are generally made up of both semantic and pragmatic meanings, and are ideally systemic. In the past, anthropologists have bypassed translation problems, to some extent at least, by using English glosses that, while referentially somewhat vague, capture the generality of an analytic concept across cultures. This facilitated comparison and generalization. I suggest below that terms such as "chief" and "magic" and "sorcery" have become sufficiently 'technicalised' to function as useful terms for generalized core meanings, from which any local departures can be noted and interpreted. They function as "non-definitional reference fixing" devices (to borrow Boyd's [1993:493] description of the role played by metaphors in science).

Stephen (1995) based her 'literal' translations on decisions about etymology and cognation, a procedure in line with earlier work in symbolic anthropology (e.g. Gell 1975). To do this, she used a Mekeo-French dictionary compiled largely in the 1930s by Fr. Gustave Desnoes of the Sacred Heart Mission, who based entries on handwritten language notes made over the thirty or forty preceding years by missionary priests of the Sacred Heart mission (Mission du Sacre Ceour, commonly abbreviated as MSC). The Desnoes Mekeo-French dictionary, as it is often referred to, is a very unusual work, and one of immense potential value to ethnography, as well as to lexicography and linguistics, because of the numerous authentic examples made up of transcribed utterances that give insights into the culture and beliefs of the East Mekeo, and very possibly those of the other tribal/dialect groupings. However, many glosses in the dictionary are explicitly based on conjecture and speculation, or are explicitly tentative. They are based on the jottings of some ten individual priests. The work was meant to be no more than a sketch for a future Mekeo dictionary, to be based on much further research, and not a finished product (as is observed in several places, for instance on the title page, dated 1933, in the Preliminary Remarks of Fr Desnoes 1933 and in the Preface by the copyist, Fr Hubert van Lamsweerde 1941).