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PART FOUR
DIVINATION, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND TRUTH |
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Any culture which admits the use of oracles and divination is committed to a distinction between appearances and reality. The oracle offers a way of reaching behind appearances to another source of knowledge.
Mary Douglas, "If the Dogon . . ." |
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The essays in this section discuss the making of meaning, delineating how usable knowledge is socially and semantically constituted from oracular messages. Rosalind Shaw discusses the epistemological foundations of an-bere divination and other Temne ways of knowing. Developing several points raised in section III, Susan Reynolds Whyte analyzes how divination, as the Nyole's primary means of defining social identity, is used to investigate the pathologies of social relations of the afflicted person. From his scrutiny of diagnostic texts by three diviners, David Parkin demonstrates the dynamics and logic of Giriama and Swahili oracular speech. |
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Several new topics emerge in these essays. Both Shaw and Whyte comment on the relationship of women to divination. Whyte informs us that although there are female diviners and clients, Nyole divination is primarily situated within a male ethos with men consulting with other men, often on behalf of women. Nevertheless, women can manipulate the system, as can Temne women, who also face gender-based patterns of divinatory consultation (Shaw 1985). In the present essay, Shaw contrasts the relatively private female consultations and the more public male divination sessions. Along with Glaze's portrayal of the centrality of women diviners in Senufo society (1981) and Ngubane's analysis of male and female relations in her study of Zulu women diviners (1977), these essays serve to counter the argument that women become involved in mediumistic divination because other avenues of expression are denied to them (see Lewis 1970:3024, Gussler 1973, and Beattie and Middleton 1969). Certainly "knowledge is power" and the recipient |
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