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man who sets in motion intensive seeing" (Harris and Sawyerr 1968:136). Yet, although Temne diviners' four-eyed vision is the source of their divinatory ability and their means of access to hidden truths, it is also regarded as a cause of suspicion by ordinary Temne because witches, the inhabitants of ro-seron, are an-soki as well. Not all an-soki are witches, but there is always the possibility that they might be secretly serving their own ends at the expense of other members of the community by becoming citizens of ro-seron and invisibly preying upon the children and rice crops of their families and neighbors. Witches use their hidden knowledge and vision covertly, for destructive purposes; some say that they eat their victims with their eyes (see Lamp 1978:41). |
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For this reason, powerful hidden knowledge tends to be given ambivalent ethical connotations by the Temne, as with the lawbreaking Pale Fox. Temne diviners are able to reconcile this tension between the high epistemological value and the dubious ethical value accorded hidden knowledge by revealing in public divination sessions the secrets of others who are defined as covertly attacking the communitywitches, thieves, murderers, and adulterers. Having the hidden knowledge of an-soki oneself, then, is morally acceptable to the extent that one uses it publicly, serving the community's interests by bringing others' illicit secrets into the open. However, only some diviners achieve sufficient renown to be hired to divine publicly in this way; the majority are part-time diviners who are consulted by individuals over private problems and do not publicly expose hidden secrets for the benefit of the community. In the eyes of ordinary Temne, both these diviners and their (mostly female) private clients retain the ambivalence inherent in their own hidden knowledge. |
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Public divination takes place either in the open space in the middle of a town or village, or on the verandah at the front of the house. The verandah is a predominantly male zone in which men talk and "keep company"; it is complemented by the back yard, which in a small village usually faces the bush and is a predominantly female zone, the site of the domestic work of women. The space in the center of the village is also the site of an-bare, the chief's court house, which is an open structure with no walls in order to enable the community to view all that takes place within it. Thus both the accusation, confession, and consequent redefinition of individuals in public divination (which is a legally binding process in Temne customary law) and the chief's administration of justice can be seen as alternative ways of constituting publicly authorized, performative truth, and both are therefore carried out in space which is as open and socially central as possible. |
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Inside the house, the central parlor (an-pala) is a semi-public space, which contains seating but usually no personal possessions, while the side bedrooms (e-konko) are private. It is usually in one of these side rooms, behind a closed door, that private divination is carried out. A form of spirit mediumship called an-yina Musa is normally held in the parlor, the intermediate not-quite-public but not-quite-private room at the center of the house, and this method tends to be used when the client has a high status and when his or her problem is perceived as being |
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