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- Title
Making Skins: Initiation, Sorcery, and Eastern Min Notions of Knowledge.
- Authors
Eggertsson, Sveinn
- Abstract
In this paper I consider the Kwermin notion of knowledge as ‘making skin’ of physical experience. The skin is acted upon in women's scarification and male initiations with the aim of instilling dispositions in the novices that are conducive to their becoming competent adult beings in their particular sociocultural environment. The scarification of women's abdominal skin is thought to enhance the fertility of their wombs, whereas the acts upon male novices’ skins in the initiation rituals are focused upon making them fierce warriors, vigorous husbands, and respectful communicators with ancestral spirits. It is argued that through the male initiations the Min reenact their joint origins from the ground at Yam (‘mother’) on Oksapmin land. Contrary to this initiatory emphasis on proper skin‐knowledge as fitness of being, sorcerers, and witches are greatly feared as they wrongfully penetrate the skin, either infusing the victim with suicidal desire or extracting its life‐substance until the victim withers and dies.
- Subjects
SKIN; FERTILITY rites; WITCHCRAFT; SCARIFICATION (Body marking); INITIATION rites; SOCIOCULTURAL factors; OKSAPMIN (Papua New Guinean people)
- Publication
Oceania, 2018, Vol 88, Issue 2, p152
- ISSN
0029-8077
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/ocea.5191