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Prefigured Features: A view from the New Guinea Highlands
Author(s) -
Strathern Marilyn
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1997.tb00179.x
Subject(s) - new guinea , individuation , representation (politics) , relation (database) , rubric , portrait , set (abstract data type) , sociology , aesthetics , epistemology , construal level theory , history , philosophy , ethnology , art history , psychoanalysis , psychology , politics , computer science , social science , law , political science , pedagogy , programming language , database
Stimulated by a conference on Portraiture and the Problematics of Representation , which aimed to address portraiture as a set of cultural practices under the rubric of ‘any body‐representation that stands for an individual’, in this paper I ask some questions raised by materials from Papua New Guinea. I begin with an investigation of the notion of individuation in relation to the heads which are taken in Asmat and Marind‐Anim headhunting. I argue that if anyone's individuality is represented by a captured head it is that of the new owner, not his deceased victim. I then turn to Hagen feather plaques and suggest that they are best understood as assemblages of material resulting from mobilising relations, and hence not as portraits embodying notions of likeness.