The Temporality of Immortality in Lesu: The Historical Anthropology of a New Ireland Society

Abstract

This article suggests a new reading of the famous wooden sculptures formerly carved in New Ireland to celebrate the dead. It is argued in terms of a holistic approach implying different ontological perspectives and shifting cultural modalities and discusses the available fragments of ethnography stemming from observations made in the early part of the last century. It proposes that in terms of iconic semantics the making and exposition of a malanggan sculpture formed a symbolic imagery telling how recently deceased persons assumed a new but temporary body and were given a brief spell of renewed social life. It is further argued that the essence of the dead was then absorbed into an anonymous non‐structured assembly of deceased contained in some particular named malanggan design. Malanggan designs moved over time between different places, thus transporting sets of accumulated anonymous dead to new places. Thus getting rid of the departed was intuited as a device to negate the possible creation of kinship‐informed organizations, while the receivers could appropriate some sort of blessings from imported foreign dead.

Keywords:

• New Ireland
• Malanggan art
• Death
• Cultural modalities
• Symbology

Acknowledgements

This article was researched and drafted while the author was enjoying a Visiting Fellowship at the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in 2000. He is most grateful for this opportunity. In particular, the author would like to thank Steve Bourget, Steven Hooper and Cesare Poppi for a stimulating time there. Patricia Hewitt and Asia Gaskell of the Robert Sainsbury Library were very helpful. Thanks are also due to Jon Abbink, Robert Parkin and Paul Sant Cassia for useful comments. The content of this article, nonetheless, remain the author’s own responsibility.

Notes

[1] See Aijmer (2001) for a further discussion of the main theoretical propositions that inform this article.

[2] For instance, the works of Albert (1986); Derlon (1997); Gunn (1997); Küchler (1987, 1988, 2002); Lewis (1969); Wilkinson (1978).

[3] For biographies of Hortense Powdermaker, see Mark (1980) and Wolf (1971). See also her autobiography (Powdermaker 1966). For a discussion of her Lesu fieldwork, see Rosman and Rubel (1991).

[4] For surveys of the history of early colonialism in New Ireland, see, for instance, Derlon (1997: 24–29); Clay (2005); Groves (1934); Küchler (2002: 17–21); Panoff (1979).

[5] Henceforth references to this source are given only by page number, except where confusion might result.

[6] There are other accounts of malanggan celebrations from New Ireland in the early days, like that of Biró from Lemakot in 1900 (Bodrogi 1957), and Bühler (1933, from Tabar). Peekel (1927: 40–41) saw celebrations in Lugagon, Medina and Bura in 1926 and provides somewhat sketchy descriptions of them. Later accounts include Billings and Paterson (1967, Mangai, close to Kavieng), Lewis (1969, Libba) and Lincoln (1989, Panatgin).

[7] Another early visitor and collector of ethnographic objects, including malanggans, was Ludwig Biró, who passed through Lesu in May 1900. His only note is that he saw a young girl there wearing a peculiar wreath, but she would not permit closer inspection and ran off (Bodrogi 1957: 62, 68).

[8] Krämer‐Bannow’s account accords with those of Peekel (1927: 32) and Powdermaker, and also with the general observation by Anthony Forge (1979) that art in New Guinea is evasive in that it is never accompanied by any exegesis.

[9] See also Krämer (1925: 42–43); Peekel (1926: 818–820) provides yet another version from Lamekot.

[10] It has been remarked in the early ethnography that “on New Ireland” malanggan carved figures could incorporate bones and skulls—presumably of a particular dead person (Krämer 1925: 49–50, Lewis 1964, Peekel 1927: 19). There is nothing to indicate such metonymic links with regard to the making of walik in early Lesu. The presence of a fragment of the dead person seems to have strengthened the connection into an identification between a specific sculpture and a specific deceased person—they became the same.

[11] Lewis (1973: 149) has argued that each anthropomorphic figure symbolized or represented several deceased persons. Their heads were often detachable. Everything in the early ethnography suggests that each figurine made manifest one particular person—but we cannot exclude the possibility mentioned by Lewis, and this may also have been a development in a later period.