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Splitting Truths from Darkness:
Epistemological Aspects of Temne Divination |
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Divination and Rationality |
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It would be difficult to find an anthropologist who would agree with the following assertion: |
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In reply to the question as to what useful purpose is served by recourse to magic and religion as fortifications against the elements and misfortune, one can only answer that lacking other means of control, such as is often afforded men in civilized societies, native peoples fall back on their oracles. (Lessa 1959:203) |
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Yet, as Devisch has argued recently (1985:6268), one dominant perspective in anthropological studies of divination has been an intellectualist one in which this characterization of divination as "failed scientific explanation" could be said to have been to a certain extent perpetuated. This is because discussions of divination as systems of knowledge have revolved almost exclusively around questions of explanatory validity, and while I do not wish to deny the importance of divination's explanatory function, it is necessary to draw attention to other dimensions of knowledge and truth which may be at least as relevant. |
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As recent critics of rationalism in anthropology have observed (e.g., the contributors to Overing 1985), when we think of "truth" in Western intellectual discourse, the positivist preoccupation with knowledge as verifiable observation tends to obscure not only the existence of alternative conceptions of truth but also the authorizing process through which truth is created. Both the ideological dimension, in which control over the definition of certain types of knowedge and meaning as "truthful" is enacted (see Asad 1983), and the semantic issue of what these definitions actually consist of are of critical relevance to divination. Nonetheless, they have been accorded little attention. |
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The classic work from which intellectualist (and, of course, functionalist) ap- |
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