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the book divinations. So if we can speak of a pattern on the basis of records from only three diviners, it is that in spirit divination, men tended to consult on behalf of women who were not there, whereas in book divination, the afflicted women were more likely to be present. I believe that this fits with the fact that the book diviners were also medicine men who gave treatment in connection with their divination practice. A woman who went to consult could get medicine at the same time. In addition, book diviners often suggested medicinal shortcuts to avoid ritual. Instead of having a curse removed or carrying out a clan spirit ceremony, one could take medicine. This sort of therapy does not support male authority in the way that ritual remedies do. It is a more individual treatment, in some ways more similar to that of biomedicine. This therapeutic perspective may account for the fact that afflicted women themselves were more likely to consult the examiners of Arabic books. |
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This situation is somewhat reminiscent of that described by Shaw in her analysis of the gender politics of Temne divination. She suggested that Temne women, who only consult private diviners, gain ontological assurance from a diagnosis which reaffirms their experience of reality, although they do not obtain the public validation that men achieve through public divination (1985:300). In Bunyole, all divination is private, but some forms of treatment are more public than others. As among the Temne, private forms allowed women to deal with misfortune in ways that more often reflected and reaffirmed their own experiences. |
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The dominant Nyole view of misfortune contains a male perspective. Whether suffering is attributed to cursing, ancestral ghosts, clan spirits, or sorcery, there is a tendency to define women in terms of their relations to men. There is a clear innocent victim pattern in which women's afflictions are associated with conflicts or offenses of their fathers or husbands. The curse discussed in the grandfather's case is typical of the way new brides are made to suffer because of the bridewealth dispositions of their fathers. The same diviner recorded the case of a husband who came to consult about his wife, who was very ill with a swollen arm. It was determined that she had touched a dead monitor lizard and bad medicine placed in her sweet potato garden by a neighbor with whom her husband was quarreling about land. In both these cases the consulters were interpreting women's afflictions in terms of their own relations with other men. In so doing they defined the suffering women as daughter and wives, as dependents and extensions of themselves whom other men (or spirits) might strike in order to hurt them. What I want to emphasize about this innocent victim pattern is the implications it has for women's perceptions of themselves. Divination creates such views in regard to situations where women are susceptible and in need of help. At such points they must be particularly receptive to definitions of who they are as social persons. |
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The tendency to define other people's problems from the consulter's own point of view can sometimes be seen where women are clients. In the case of the Dry Tree reported elsewhere (Whyte 1990), the consulting mother suspected her husband's mother of having caused the barrenness of her daughter, because she had often quarreled with her mother-in-law. The Dry Tree's affliction was interpreted in terms of the conflicts and interests of her mother; she was defined as her mother's |
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