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To argue for a common logic in puzzle solving is not to deny the diviners choice in their proposed solutions. We have long known that many possibilities can emanate from a single logic (e.g., Leach 1961). It follows that diviners are perfectly able to comment socially. When they specify different kinds of witchcraft, or witchcraft rather than spirit possession, or whatever, as causes of misfortune, and when they hint at social relationships in which these differently valued acts may have arisen, they variously support, tear, or repair the social fabric. The many studies by Turner (1961) and others show this role of the diviner, and I could show the different ways in which Kenya coastal diviners do this. In this essay, however, I have tried to make the point that, however much such commentary may be viewed as sometimes reflecting social changes and continuities, the diviner and client together make up a cooperative enclave. Together they create a range of possible interpretations of cause and effect and then choose from within that range. They are in a good position, therefore, to articulate new ideas in the society which have not yet come into general currency. |
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This innovative power of the diviner-client relationship derives from the initial simultaneity of packed-in propositions which become progressively unpacked. That is to say, it is the initial tangled state or puzzle that inspires the discourse. This inspiration is commonly what we understand by events having become objects of the ritual attitude, and which I have glossed as incest, some kinds of adultery, breech births, badly performed rites of passage, crossing the generation gap, and the use of physical and verbal symbols which include the idea of crossing over. Such tangled states pose questions which demand answers. |
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This is a quite different view of the innovative individual from that held by Barth in his early work (1966). Even allowing for the fact that Barth was not specifically concerned with speech, he saw redefining roles by imparting to them new value or varying amounts of old value. The diviner and client clearly cooperate more than they compete, both inspired to disentangle a puzzle. Barth's view represents one dimension of individual innovation. Mine represents another. A tempting conclusion might be to locate Barth's innovative individual in the micropolitics of everyday life and mine in rituals dealing with tangled states. That is fine as far as it goes. But the phrasing is simplistic because it assumes a single definition of ritual and ignores the fact that what we call rituals may be conservative rather than innovative. Skorupski (1973) usefully redefined the contrast between the secular and the mystical as that between observable and hidden causality. This contrast may better illustrate the difference. Barth's individual innovates in the context of visible connections. For him the causality is already laid out before him: it is up to him to provide a new causal sequence of events or roles. My innovative individual is faced with a simultaneity of hidden causalities. He must straighten them out before he can see them and explain events through them. And to do this, he must cooperate with at least one other person. |
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For this reason tangled states generate social man, while straightened-out ones generate competitive man. Small wonder that so many leave for the wilderness. |
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