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the aesthetic of the sublime: an interpretation of Rawa shell valuable symbolism
Author(s) -
DALTON DOUGLAS M.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1996.23.2.02a00110
Subject(s) - sublime , pathos , aesthetics , interpretation (philosophy) , context (archaeology) , ethos , indigenous , colonialism , meaning (existential) , sorrow , pleasure , identity (music) , literature , art , history , philosophy , epistemology , linguistics , archaeology , psychology , ecology , neuroscience , biology
An examination of shell objects and their presentation, exchange, and roles in ritual self‐decoration among Papua New Guinea Rawa speakers relates them to a sublime aesthetic combination of pleasure and pain involving an indigenous ethos of pathos and sorrow and a sense of the inadequacy of symbolic shell images to convey the ideal concepts they embody. This sense is exacerbated in a colonial context, and the analysis of the sublime shows shells to be simultaneously repositories of indigenous meaning and influenced by colonial processes. In Melanesia the sublime is thus a colonially situated, corporeally located phenomenon of present absence. [shells, Melanesia, aesthetics, self‐decoration, exchange, colonialism, change]