Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: This essay revisits aspects of the work of Bernard Juillerat on the Yafar people of Papua New Guinea and of Meyer Fortes on the Tallensi people of West Africa. The purpose of this juxtaposition of cases is to show how each author has stressed an aspect of themes derived from the Freudian theory of the Œdipus complex. Juillerat has stressed the relationship of the son with the mother, Fortes the relationship between son (especially eldest son, the first-born) and father, in the context of practices of ancestor worship. Our argument is that it is important to take note that psychoanalytic motifs, if present, are set by the people themselves into a broader scheme, linking kinship, ritual, and the cosmos together. The essay is intended as an act of appreciation and respect for the work and thoughts of both of these authors as a part of a «long conversation» in anthropology at large regarding psychological interpretations of ethnographic materials. Both Juillerat and Fortes themselves, indeed, set their psychoanalytic interpretations into deeply woven analyses of kinship, ritual practices, and ideas of the cosmos.
DOI: 10.4000/jso.6011
Authors: Andrew Strathern, Pamela J. Stewart
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Language: French
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1968950215