OCEANIA

Vol. 62 No. 2

DECEMBER,1991

THE INCEST PASSIONS:AN OUTLINE OF THE

LOGIC OF THE IQWA YE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Jadran Mimica
University of Sydney

Part 2

In the first part of this paper (Oceania 62(1 I presented the mythopoeiccosmological foundations of incest among the Iqwaye people, a Yagwoia-Anga
group of the West Menyamya Census Division, Morobe Province, Papua New
Guinea. The core of incest passions derives from the primordial autosexualautonutritive, i.e. self-procreative, cosmic man. Here I am demonstrating how incest
as autocreation is realized in the main structural configurations of Iqwaye social
organization, specifically the naming system, patrifiliation, matrifiliation, affinity,
cross-sex siblingship and, finally, institutionalized male homosexuality.

4. Bodily Person, the Naming System, Exchange and the Circle of Kinship
Among the Iqwaye the person is neither thought of nor lived as a trans-corporeal, spiritual
entity. The primary and the irreducible reality of a person is his/her concrete body. The self
is the body. Accordingly, Iqwaye sensibilities, codetennining their sociality, are focussed
upon the bodily being which derives from the bodies of the parents. Its fleshy envelope derives
from the mother's blood and milk, the skeleton from the father's semen. Now, the core
intuition underlying the Iqwaye view of the body is the organismic fact of its genesis, namely
that the human body originates from the nutritive-procreative substances internal to the body
itself, although they are replenished through the eating of food whose origin is external to the
body. Nevertheless, the body has an autopoietic significance of being the source of itself.
Conception and nutrition in early infancy attest to this fact, for intrautero the foetus subsists
and in a large part develops out of the body of the mother. Post-partum it feeds off the
mother's milk. The significance of this organismic interdependence is that it is of cannibalistic
nature. For the life of the infant is sustained by its eating the mother's intra-bodily substances.
Oceania, 62, 1991

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The IncestPassions

This cannibalistic significance must not simply be seen as the cultural specificity of
Iqwaye experience but also as the immanent facticity of human existence. Therefore, the
potential of this significance of the mother-infant organismic interdependence is a universal
substratum in this primordial matrix of human sociality and its sensibilities. However, not in
all life-worlds is this substratum of the human situation equally articulated and objectified
into a system of values and practices constitutive of sociality.
The bodily fluids and substances are differently evaluated and accordingly treated, but
through various practices and their symbolic, specifically metaphoric formulations, these
substances and fluids which are otherwise a bodily refuse, eg., urine and faeces, are
transmuted into palatable substances and thus vicariously eaten back and reintegrated into the
body. Thus salt production is envisaged to be symbolically taking place inside the salt-maker's
body. Salt is therefore his intra-bodily product, namely semen ossified through the
transmutation of the salt plants' ashes, which are the 'faeces' left over after the fire has
incinerated (ie., 'eaten') the plants and firewood The liquid salt obtained after the water has
been filtered through the ashes is 'urine' which finally, through boiling crystallizes into solid
salt, the ossified' semen' . This symbolic process constitutes salt production as the process of
procreation of the human body and in that determination recapitulates the cosmogony, the
archetype of all procreation. The point is that the imaginary semen (salt) is a final palatable
substance produced via the non-edible faeces and urine. Through salt they are symbolically
preserved and re-ingested.
However, in another instance, in their past practice of homosexual fellatio real semen
was actually eaten by the initiates. But here too, the real substance was endowed with a variety
of significations. One followed from the significance of insemination. Apart from being the
insemination by the senior bachelors of the junior initiates this act also was intended as a
vicarious insemination of nephews by maternal uncles, although in fact a MB could not have
a homosexual relation with his ZS. The relations between the junior and senior initiates (the
inseminators and the inseminated) was and is envisaged as brotherhood between the older
brothers (+B) and younger brothers (_B).!
For Iqwaye all bodily fluids are mutually in a relation of potential and actual
equivalence. Their conceptual differentiation, identification, as well as conflation, and
substitution vary relative to the context. Furthermore, fluids can be globally subsumed under
a single categorial identity of semen and/or blood which themselves can be still further
reidentified generically with the category 'water' or 'liquid' (aalye). In logical terms all
elements of the class' liquid' are mutually equivalent and some elements, namely semen and
blood are contextually identical to either some or all the elements of the class. So a part can
be identical to the whole: [(mucus, saliva, pus, urine, cadaverous fluid) =semen,blood] =water,
i.e., 'liquid'.
Still further, in all Iqwaye exchanges, through which their sociality is structured, pork
and all other valuables have the significance and value of the bodily materiality of human
beings. In that sense Iqwaye social exchange is the continuation of that originary bodily giving
and taking - the sexual-nurturing procreation through which every person comes into being.
The core of the social exchange is the MB/ZCh which derives from the primordial matrixes
of the mother - child and the cross-sex siblingship relationship. Maternal uncle is a male
mother. The kin-term for MB naanne means literally mother's breast. Thus, the MB/ZCh
relation through exchange is the continuation of the originary cannibalistic sexual-nurturing
(i.e., procreative) flow of bodily substances. These are now substituted by other food, pork,
game, clothes, and valuables through which the body is maintained
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Mimica

This matrifilial relationship is spoken of as 'eating' while patrifiliation, the F-Ch (and
specifically F-S) is the relation of 'planting'. These relationships are processes, not static
bonds. Both are correlative: 'eating' presupposes' planting', i.e., copulation (fertilization),
and 'planting' presupposes 'eating' which itself is sexualized; it is an oral analogue of
copulation with its entailments of fertilization and procreation. This corresponds to the
equivalence of the oral and penile tracts. But since in fellatio, copulation and eating used to
coincide completely, 'eating' thus was affirmed not merely as an analogue (metaphor) but as
a complete homologue of 'planting'. In short, in Iqwaye usages oral and penile activities are
wholly conflated into a unified field of metaphoric cross-identifications and references.
The crucial aspect of the M-Ch, MB-ZCh, the B-Z, and the F-Ch relationships is the
structure of their identities, i.e., their bodily selves which are expressed in their naming
system. It articulates human corporeal identity into a global system of sociocentric
classification. Here is a brief outline.
There are three modes of naming, all of which are predicated on the patrilineal descent
groups (PDG) latice, specifically patrilineality and matrifiliation. Here I shall describe the
system of personal names, leaving aside the system of endearment names and the nick-names.
The crux of the personal names system is that the names of the PDGs are also the names of
the people who embody them. PDG are named, say, A,B,C,D, or E .. Now all members of a
PDG bear its name. There is a difference, however, between male and female names. Women
bear the name only of their own PDG. Men, on the other hand ,have in addition the name of
their mother's PDG. To illustrate: as I and my sister are of the patrilineal group named A, my
sister's name is also A. My name is A-B, because my mother's PDG is named B. If my father's
name is A-C, than it means that his mother is of the PDG C, and that her name is also C. My
FZ will be also A by name, the same as my sister, daughter, and so will be my FFz, FFFz,
and FED, FFBD, and so on. Agnatically related men will be differentiated in regard to the
names transmitted to them by their mothers. This name structure is shown below.

A
BY

Figure 1.
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1be IncestPassions

All personal names have birth-order suffixes which are also the finger names. Thus,
female names are, say, 'A-the thumb' (i.e., first-born), 'A-the index finger' (second-born),
'A-the middle finger' (third-born), and so on. Male names are' A-B-the thumb' (first-born),
'A-B-the index finger' (the second-born), etc. Birth order is calculated in reference to the
genetrix, and forms two series relative to the sex of the child So, if a woman has given birth
to three children in the order male, female, male, they will not be ordered as the 'first-born
male', the 'second born female', the 'third-born male'. Rather, their birth-order is specified
in terms of their sex. The female child, although second-bom, is classified as the 'first-born
female' . The third child is classifiedas the ' second-born male'. The system emphasizesthe
importanceof cross-sex siblingship. Sibling sets are internally graded into cross-sexsiblings
of the same birth order, and the entire field of kinship is focused on these dyads and their
derivative - the mother's brother/sister's child relationship.
The system of personal names as schematized above signifies the essence of the
indigenous conceptualization of the PDGs, and correlatively, of the corporeal person. The
man's and woman's own patrilineal group name, the patri-name, refers to their bodily
interiority, specifically the bones. The man's mother's patrilineal group name, his
matri-name, refers to his bodily exteriority, the flesh and, also, his external focus, the penis.
To that effect, for the Iqwaye and other Yagwoia, the main assumption about the nature of
the social order as exemplified by PDGs as progenitive units of people, is incarnated in the
population.
4.1. Sociocentric classification and the articulation of exo- /endo- identity of the bodily
person and the patrilineal descent group
Everyone's inner or endo-identity is literally his/her intra-bodily skeletal identity derived
from the father's semen. This patri-identity is marked by the patri-namecomponent of every
person's name. Everyone's exo- or matri-identity is his/her bodily envelope, the flesh which
came into being intra-utero from the mother's blood and milk, and was further developed by
mother's nourishment. This is encodedin the matri-name,which is a componentonly of male
names. Women have only patri-names, The reason for this is the tacit significance of the
Iqwaye corporealgender explicated in Part 1, section 2. The interior of the body has phallic
significance; the Iqwaye body is categorically a phallic body.The woman's body is eminently
so, and with a differencefrom the man's body because the woman's body is the phalluswhich
bears children.This is the main significanceof woman's corporealgender amongthe Iqwaye.
Furthermore, the female body is monophallic because woman has no exterior penis. And it
is for this reason that she does not bear the matri-name, whose primary referential focus is
the externalphallicgenitalia.That is why every man bears a matri-name, which thus identifies
his externalbodily identity. More precisely, every Iqwaye man's body is the mirror image of
his mother's and mother's brother's endo-identity, i.e., their intra-bodily phallus. His bodily
exterioritydiscloses their inner being.
The brother-sister (cross-sex siblings hip) relation is inverse of the MlMB-ZS
relationship. The cross-sex siblings have identical inner and outer bodily identities but only
the brother fully discloses their common maternal phallic identity. In that sense the sister's
maternalself-identityis her brother's exterioritywhile her own body enunciatestheir paternal
self-identitywhich only she is capable of externalizingby bearing a child This is why every
Iqwaye man says without hesitation that his ZCh is his true child; the ZS truly bears his
maternal uncle's patri-identity in his own maternal flesh. In this sense every Iqwaye bodily
fleshy envelope is the self-identity of other selves: the self of the sisterlbrother, mother, her
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Mimica

sister and brother. Fundamentally, the Iqwaye bodily self does not possess itself as its own
self but as a self, i.e., body, of another self. My sister is myself, and likewise for the mother,
mother's sister and maternal uncle. My father and father's sister are also myself, but through
the interiority of my bones. In short my child is myself. We now clearly see why among the
Iqwaye the incest interdiction is formulated as an interdiction of autosexuality or
self-copulation. For to have sex with any relation would amount to having sex with oneself
since the ego and the alter are differential incarnations of each other's bodily identity.
In view of this nature of kinship relatedness among the Iqwaye as the field of
self-identification of the self with the other (based on the primordial fact of procreation
whereby the child as the other is born out of the parents' bodily self, and therefore is the
embodimentof their selvesjust as they are ofthe child's) we can also understandthe character
of the cannibalisticmeaningsof kinship exchange.To the extent that exchange of goods from
ZCh to M and MB (and vice versa) is 'eating', it is thus self-eating. The valuables are the
substitutefor the ZCh's body which came out of the mother's body, its blood, milk, and other
food. Accordingly, the child's 'mothers' (MB and MZ) who receive prestations from their
ZCh, eat back his/herbodywhich externalizestheir own self-identity,i.e., ZCh's body is their
own body.. And vice versa, by giving food, clothes, and valuables to the ZCh, they enable
him/her to manifest in hislher body their own (intra-bodily) self-identity (further expressed
in endearment names). So by vicariously eating the body of the other one eats oneself. This
is also the additional sphere of activity which, with sex, is subjected to the interdiction
constitutive of their sociality.
To eat directly oneself, through food and valuables, would preclude sociality, for one
would close upon oneself. Therefore, the solution is to eat onself indirectly - the self who is
one step removed from oneself, so to speak. And in this way the circle of sociality centered
upon oneself, is at once opened up towards another self in order to incorporate him/her into
oneself as oneself, and closed in and upon oneself. But we observe here that in the mode of
'eating', i.e., exchange, the Iqwaye do exactly that which they cannot do in the mode of
'planting' (copulation). Although a person is prohibited from marrying his or her sibling,
parent, or child, for that wouldbe a self-copulation, like a 'dog licking its own penis', nothing,
on the other hand, precludes the persons within the inner circle of kinship to' eat' each other.
On the contrary, that is the moving force of kinship - its modus vivendi. Without 'eating'
there is no sociality. So in fact Iqwaye gift exchange is truly the metaphoric obviatiOn of
incestuous,i.e., autosexual desire, though not as its denial but as its affirmation.Obviation is
the affirmation by detour, through substitution of the real thing by its closest equivalent.
That this is so is clearly brought out by the Iqwaye view of the consumption of the
bride-price cowrie shells tungye). The bride's father is not supposed to' eat' them. If he were
to use them for buying pork or whatever, the Iqwaye would say that such a man 'would eat
his own nose-mucus', which is to say that he would drink his own semen. The shells are the
payment for his daughter who is the embodiment of his inner identity. The force of this
proscription derives from the notion that such consumption would be incestous
(self-copulatory) since the bride-price shells are not for him to eat but for his son, the bride's
brother.The proscriptionrests on the presuppositionthat the father has already eaten his own
sister's bride-price, and accordingly his daughter's bride-price belongs not to himself but to
his son for whom his sister is the exact other self. !
This example indicates how the various structural links within the Iqwaye circle of
kinship are envisaged in terms of the two constitutive modes of' planting' and' eating'. Here
patrifiliationis mediated by cross-sex siblingship. F and FZ and the progeny D and S (i.e., B
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1be Incest Passions

and Z) have the same inside identity, their bones. These two pairs of cross-sex siblings in
adjacent generations are connected by common seminal (i.e., bone) identity. By their bodily
interiority they are the same. But their respective bodily envelopes bear different maternal
identities which make them different persons.
patrifiliation (bones): F=FZ=D =S(B =Z)
matrifiliation (flesh): F=FZ,#D =S(B =Z)
F and FZ are not mirrored by D and S (i.e., B and Z) in the way they mirror their M and
MB ('mothers'). In matrifiliation the progeny's external identity mirrors the progenitors' (M
and MB) intra-bodily identity. Thus:
matrifiliation: M, MB : Ch, ZCH:: inside: outside
patrifiliation: F, FZ: Ch, BCh :: inside: inside

,/"

/;'

----

"'-

outside

"\
I
I
7

1//

/
,/

---

.-//

Figure 2.
These structures of the Iqwaye' atom of kinship' (Levi-Strauss, 1963) or, as I prefer to

call it more iconically, the 'inner circle of kinship' , are grounded in the mythopoeic imagery
of the cosmogonic creation in which sexuality and nurture are completely fused The
father-mother (husband - wife) connection is the only sexual connection. It corresponds to
primordial oral self-conjuction. Being at the inception of the circle of kinship the conjugal
conjunction creates the interior familial space, an intra-bodily space so to speak, in which all
relationships are that of 'eating'. And it cannot be otherwise, since the conjugal conjunction
effects the sexual consummation which then sets in motion' eating' (exchange). It is precisely
because the genitor's outside has been conjoined with the genetrix's inside that procreation
ensues. In every procreation man's phallic patri-identity becomes transferred into the inside
of the bodies of the progeny in the interior of the genetrix's womb. And the genetrix's own

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Mimica

inside, phallic patri-identity becomes transferred to the bodily exterior of the progeny. Ibis
transmission and transmutation of bodily identities is possible solely because the conjugal
conjunction forms a real bodily closure and it thereafter remains the concrete determination
of the ensuing structures of sociality, i.e., the inner circle of kinship. To that effect the Iqwaye
'atom of kinship' has to be envisaged as an extended autogenetic self by analogy to Omalyce' s
self-closure.'
In this configuration the patrifiliallink is markedly penile because the genitor' plants'
himself in his children. That is why the father cannot' eat' his daughter's bride-price because
he would then deprive his son of the means for getting a wife for himself, and thus to continue
with 'planting' to perpetuate their common patri- (endo-) identity. In this regard, the father
for the Iqwaye is the foremost giver-provider whose role is to continuously facilitate the
growth and well-being of his children. His affinal exchange with his WB, i.e., his children's
'mothers' (maternal uncles and aunts) is the main way of doing it.
The matrifilial link is markedly oral-cannibalistic since the accent is on exchange
(' eating'). But both patrifiliation and matrifiliation equally constitute the inner circle of
kinship as an autogenetic closure of interpersonal relationships whose passions motivate their
mutual interests: the possession and sharing of common substantial bodily identities.
The entire structure of Iqwaye kinship is founded upon the metaphoric interrelationships
of identity and difference between nurture and sexuality, the two correlative modes of the
single process of procreation and life-sustenance. But most importantly, we have now come
to understand the genuinely mythopoeic function of metaphoric activity in the construction
of the structures of kinship relatedness. Mythopoeia has transfigured and generalized the
primordial matrix of human relatedness between the mother and the child into a configuration
of interpersonal autogenesis. Thereby human sociality has replicated Omalyce' s primordial
self-creation.
In regard to the cross-sex siblingship, the case of the bride-price makes evident the dual
'consumptive' and 'planting' character of that relationship, specifically because the sister's
bride price makes possible for her brother to acquire a wife for himself. So, to the extent that
the brother cannot have sex with his sister, he can do so in the mode of 'eating', i.e., get
himself a wife for his sister's shells and thus begin to 'plant'. Brother and sister thus make a
complementary unity of self-identity since they are exactly the same inside and outside. But
as such they are each other's lack. The sister lacks the external phallus and the brother lacks
the ability to procreate a child, i.e., himself through his own body. This reciprocal lack not
only constitutes the complementarity of the cross-sex siblings but of men and women in
general. The desire to be at once the self-same unity of the inside and outside, then, is
attainable only through the union of man and woman. And although the cross-sex siblings,
like other close relatives cannot achieve their unity in the sexual mode, as we already saw,
they do so in the consumptive mode. To that effect incest in the mode of 'eating' articulates
inner unity, i.e., the closure of the kinship sphere into the shared group identity as an extended
self (the group's endo-dimension). But as such incest is operative not through negation
but as a positive, constructive affirmation of inner kinship sphere. In this perspective,
paradoxical as it may appear, it is not true that without incest interdictions there is no
kinship, but on the contrary: without the positive affirmation of incest there cannot be
kinship.
Given this archetypal autogenic (autosexual and auto-cannibalistic) character of the
Iqwaye 'atom of kinship' the immediate problem is its bearing on the practice of affinity, here
understood not as a formal-analytical component contained in Levi-Strauss' concept, but as

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a concrete structure in the Iqwaye life-world Marriage is a conjunction, a closure. But in

order to come into being there has to be a 'rupture', an opening in the sphere of kinship,
namelyin the line of patrifilialconnections.A man has to marry a woman from another PDG
because he can only' eat' his agnatically related women and his classificatory matrilateral
sisters,i.e., those women in other POGs whose mothers come from the same PDG as his own.
But he cannot have sex with them for that would be a self-copulation. How does marriage
operate in relation to the exigencies of self-creation? As we already saw, every marriage
effects the self-reproductionof the genitors in the bodies of progeny. Genitor inside, genetrix
outside. But this is the self-reproductionof the half patri-identity of each parent. What about
the self-reproduction of the whole bodily being which is what Omalyce's autogenesis truly
is? Let me examine a mode of preferential marriage which in the Iqwaye system fulfills
exactly this primordial desire. It thus not only shows the practice of marriage as a positive
affirmation of incest, but it fully articulates the transformation of affinity into patrifiliation
which is what every Iqwaye marriage is all along except that it yields solely a half of the
person's patri-identity within a string of patrifiliallinks.
5. Marriage with the Classificatory FM (ate) and the Structuring of Affinity and
Patrifiliation

For a man the Iqwaye mode of preferentialmarriageis to one's classificatory FM; or, in terms
of genealogically specified relatedness, to a FMBSD or FMBSSD. Its systematicity follows
the structures of the naming system and the bodily person, its intentionality is that of the
Iqwaye mythopoeic passions. What determines such a marriage is not the genealogically
specifiablerelation but the sociocentricidentity of the woman classified as ate (GM),who is
specifically FM. If a man is to marry a classificatory ate then she should be from the same
patrilineal group(/atice) as his true FM. For only on that condition the classificatory FM will
have the same name as the true paternal ancestress. And it is the sociocentric name identity
that matters to the Iqwaye in this context.
Given the axiomatic structure of the naming system, if such a union produces a male
child then the father of the man who married his classificatoryFM, and his son, will have the
same name, i.e., the equivalent patri- and matri-name combination (Fig. 3). This is then the
complete sociocentricidentity between the two men in alternate generations (a man and his
SS), because they are also both matrifiliates of the same PDG. They classify each other as
brothers, specifically elder brother (tate; + B) and younger brother tungwale; -B).
Furthermore, this name concordanceaffects the usage of the kin-term miqwa (father) by all
three men in question. Thus, the ego calls his own son father because the son is
sociocentrically identical to the ego's own father. Reciprocally, the son-'father' calls the ego,
father, for the latter is his father,the genitor. Now, in the first ascendinggeneration the same
usage obtains.Ego's father calls him (i.e., his own son) father, because the latter has married
the former's classificatorymother, i.e., ego's classificatory FM. And reciprocally, ego calls
his father father because the latter is his true father, the genitor. Similar usage also applies
to ego's daughter who thereby becomes his FZ and, reciprocally, he is her father." Thus, the
effect of the marriage with sociocentrically appropriate FM is that the kin-term for father, a
primary term, becomes self-reciprocal. The three men related patrifilially as the genitor and
the progeny are fathers to each other. What oneself is to another, that other is to oneself.
The ate marriage is literally the culmination of the logical (i.e., imaginative)
possibilitiesof the Iqwaye system of social and kin classification. It actually accomplishesat
the level of social practice the originarycosmogonicsignificance of procreation,namely that
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Mimica

the birth of man is his self-birth as a whole being. By begetting another male being, the Iqwaye
man gives birth to the man who in tum can give birth to himself, or, in procreating his son
the man has procreated his own father. The Iqwaye preferential marriage is the only possible
obviation of incest which purports to be exactly its closest approximation. An egocentric
formulation makes more explicit what I mean by this: instead of myself, my own son can
marry my (classificatory) mother, and as such he can give birth to myself. At the level of kinclassification, the kin-term father in its self-reciprocal usage designates exactly the
cosmogonic (i.e., ontological) sense of maleness as self-creation and thus redescribes the link
of patrifiliation. The terminological merging of the three distinct but patrifilially interrelated
individuals expresses their unity in their consubstantiality in the single kinship relation of
fatherhood which as such includes both the being of the genitor and of progeny. The two are
one, and in an empirical situation it is the three persons that are bound into oneness. The
mythopoeic conception of the original all-male creation is thus rigorously reproduced as
social reality. In Iqwaye praxis patrifiliation can maximally assimilate affinity whereby the
two become transfigured into the structure of autogenetic kinship.

Figure 3.
Let me briefly amplify this in reference to the linkages involved. The spouses themselves,
although in the same generation, are related as classificatory FM (wife) and SS (husband),
and therefore are in the alternate generations on a par to the relation between the FF and SS.
The difference, formally speaking, between these two pairs is just that with FF-SS the link is
directly patrifilial, whereas FM-SS combines a patrifilial and a matrifiliallink. And that is
the 'stuff of affinity in this type of marriage. It is the matrifilial identity of the (flesh) of the
father conjoined with the patrifilial (bones) identity of the son who in that regard is the same
as his father. Hence, patrifiliation can maximally assimilate affinity.
Another feature that adds to the ontological valency of the general meanings of
fatherhood and masculinity in Iqwaye patrilineal kinship is the morphological component of
the lexeme miqwa (father). Since, like all kinship terms, it is always formed in relation to the

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lbe Incest Passions

person, the form' my father' in most speakers is inflected in such a way that the female gender
marker -pu is suffixed yielding thus ngalyemiqwepu (or miqwopui.The lex erne itself consists
of the root mi- and the male gender marker -qwa-. An alternative inflection is ngalye
miqwoqwa in which the male gender marker qwa is reduplicated. This lingual usage
articulates the tacit idea of male sex as the unity of the male and female ( always to be
understood in the Iqwaye phallic sense of these two sexes) which as such is also the autogenic
oneness. In this sense fatherhood is the expression of the ontological desire that yearns for
self-completion; a desire to render man in relation to woman the primordial oneness, a unity
unto and in itself. This can be said to be at the core of the passions of incest. However, it
should be observed that the ate marriage is the obverse of the cosmogonic situation. In the
latter, the all-male total unity of sameness is the condition from which the differentiae via
sexual disjunction issue. In ate marriage, on the other hand, it is through the conjunction of
the two sexes that male self-unity is brought into being.
We have thus come to see one concrete instance of the operation of the negating function
(the interdiction of incest) whereby it reinstitutes the sense of autosexuality and self-creation
in the very bosom of allo, specifically heterosexuality and the creation of the other. The ate
type of marriage is an obviative affirmation of incest in the context of patrifiliation
(' planting'). Let us now consider its equivalent in-the context of matrifiliation (' eating').

6. The Structuring of Matrifiliation

The articulation of ' eating' (exchange) with matrifiliation has the following form. I shall give
here only the most skeletal outline and will elaborate on the prestations involving marsupial
meat, leaving out of the account the exchanges of salt and tapa clothes. At the birth of each
child the father has to provide marsupial meat which is distributed among and eaten by the
neonate's mother, its mother's' mothers' , and its father's' mothers' . Both the neonate and the
mother are explicitly identified with the marsupial (Mirnica, 1981:112-13) and, as already
explained, the child also embodies its mother's and father's substantial self-identity. In short,
the consumption of the child-birth marsupial is auto-cannibalisim of the self qua other. The
mother 'eats', i.e., incorporates her own progeny and, likewise, she herself, through her
progeny as the marsupial meat, is eaten, and thus incorporated by her classificatory mothers
into their bodies. And also, the father's classificatory mothers eat and thus incorporate their
sister's son and his child
Now the reason why only the parents' classificatory but not also their true mothers (MM
and FM) eat the child-birth marsupial is that true mothers always eat marsupial meat at the
birth of their children while their sisters ( actual and classificatory) cannot. The mother's
sisters come to eat the child-birth marsupial only as grandmothers.
In this shift from the adjacent to the alternate generations there occurs a corresponding
change in the consumptive practice obtaining on the one hand between persons in direct
matrifilial relation and, on the other, between co-laterals and classificatory matrifiliates. In
the direct matrifilial sequence eating, i.e., incorporation, is always direct - mother eats her
progeny directly. But in alternate generations eating is taken up by the co-laterals and other
classificatory relatives, i.e, the mother's and father's classificatory mothers (eg. MMZ, FMZ,
etc) who eat their ZChCh as the substitute for their ZCh.
The practice of child-birth marsupial consumption does for matrifiliation what ate
marriage does for direct patrifiliation by means of the narning system and the self-reciprocal
usage of the kin-term father.There, the affinal (conjugal) link is assimilated into the patrifilial
relation in the form of the full bodily identity between the FF and SS, i.e., two persons in the
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patrilineally connected alternate generations. The further effect of this is that together with
the mediating link in the adjacent generation (ego) all three become synthesized or assimilated
into a single relationship, fatherhood. Through marsupial consumption, the women related in
adjacent generations as mother and child, and in alternate generations as GM-GCh become
mutually identified into a single unity of genetrix-progeny. This identity is not merely
indicated through names but also, and primarily, through the actual incorporation of the
vicarious body - the marsupial meat which is the body of the child and the mother.

Figure 4.
To conclude: while ate marriage amplifies the sexual-copulative ('planting') aspect of
the primordial self-closure in the articulation of patrifiliation, and therefore produces
maximum endo-identity, marsupial consumption amplifies the nurturing ('eating') aspect of
the primordial creation at the level of kinship relations. But in this, matrifiliation, unlike
patrifiliation, is allocentrically constellated because it is women who marry outside and
therefore cross the boundaries of the PDGs. Hence, matrifiliation qua bodily flesh is the
articulation of exo-identity which, being the mirror of the genetrix's phallic endo-identity,
always remains on the outside of the bodies of the others, the mirror selves. Matrifiliation
remains always a process on the way to the self-closure but which can be finally achieved
only when a person dies. Only then his/her body is finally 'consumed' by the maternal
relatives. While alive, a person qua matrifiliation is in the continuous process of eating and
being eaten alive, which is how Iqwaye often feel about the sociality of exchange.
Therefore, although articulated as the practice of actual incorporation, matrifiliation has
not that kind of momentous unity and finality in kinship expression which characterizes the
transfiguration of patrifiliation when it, following the ate marriage, becomes a total
fatherhood synthesizing three generations into one. This also affirms the irreducible
cosmogonic primacy of fatherhood as self-creation, in relation to which motherhood is simply
its instrumental aspect. And as such motherhood is assimilated into the male mother - the
maternal uncle who is the father's kinship complement. Finally, because matrifiliation is
allocentrically constellated, its mythopoeia draws on the cosmogonic creation of others
(allogenesis), There, the Red Man who was born out of the cassowary-woman's womb, has
first appeared as a marsupial. Both were killed and partly eaten. In the social reality the
genetrix and the parental classificatory grandmothers eat the marsupial meat as the substitute
for the neonate and its genitors.
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6.1 Matrifiliation and Mortuary Payments: The Final Consumption

I shall not outline such Iqwaye kinship exchanges as the prestations of pork to the child's
maternal relatives (tuokle), marsupial consumption and prestations in the initiation
ceremonies, and marriage exchanges. I will only briefly outline the consumption of marsupial
meat at the the termination of the mourning period, omitting the resumption of betel-nut
chewing which follows it.
The death marsupial, unlike the child-birth marsupial, is exclusively consumed by the
deceased person's 'mothers', both male and female (MZ, MB, and other classificatory
mothers). Usually, mortuary marsupial consumption occurs only when the deceased is a child
The meat is not eaten by the deceased's true mother since, as I explained above, she has
re-incorporated her child already at birth. At death, however, as on other occasions, other
'mothers' (male and female) keep on taking back their own identity embodied in the ZCh.
While ZCh is alive they, of course, also continue imbuing him/her with their own identity
through prestations of food and clothes.
With consumption of the marsupial at death and upon reception of the mortuary
payments by the mothers, the matrifilial exchange is fully closed. The progeny's flesh is
reincorporated without residues into the stomachs of the mothers, the primordial locus in
which the child came into being. Correlative to this, when the Iqwaye used to smoke corpses
and fully practice double burial, the deceased's body used to decompose on the soil of his/her
mother's PIXi's territory which is the source and the equivalent of the body. The bones were
(and occasionally still are nowadays) collected and interred in the deceased's own PIXi soil,
which is their true substantial equivalent. Thus the closure is complete. In death the dialectics
of incest negation and affirmation , the interplay of the auto and allo orientations merge in
the final affirmation of the primordial passion for self-closure. Through bodily
decomposition, a human being is 'eaten' back by its source, the earth, which is the body of
the cosmos. In this sense, human death is the ultimate self-fulfilment of the transcendent realm
of the world which, being the cosmic man Omalyce, is also the source of himself. Death as
the human loss of the self is by the same stroke the human recovery of the self as the cosmos.

7. Cross-sex Siblingship and the Passions of Death

The foregoing examination of matrifiliation brings us to the cross-sex siblingship which is
also constituted through the process of' eating' . This significance of the cross-sex siblingship
was most acutely expressed in one context of the mortuary practices, specifically the corpse
smoking and the consumption of putrid fluids which emanate from the corpse. This practice
no longer exists due to its suppression by the Australian colonial goverment, virtually from
its first arrival in the Menyamya area in the early fifties. Among the Iqwaye corpse smoking
and related practices had persisted until the mid- sixties when they were irrevocably
abandoned
The consumption of the cadaverous fluids iingaatye) was as follows. While the corpse
was being smoked fluids were copiously dripping from its pores and orifices, especially the
mouth. Throughout, the corpse was attended to by female relatives, and especially in the case
of a man, by his sister. Among other activities she scooped the gelatinous fluids with the
bunches of a species of the green leafy vegetable (Onanthea Javanica) until they became
thoroughly saturated Then they were rolled and inserted into a bamboo tube, and cooked in
the fire. Having been steamed, the anointed vegetables were eaten by the deceased's sister
and her small children, as well as other female relatives and their small children. I emphasize

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that this was practised only by women and small children. According to informants, no man
would partake of this meal.
I might add that, together with the subject of cannibalism (which the Iqwaye denied
having ever practised, although they imputed it to their non-Yagwoia speaking neighbours),
the consumption of cadaverous fluids was the most sensitive subject I inquired into during
my entire fieldwork. Although the corpse smoking no longer exists, the prolonged handling
of corpses has remained quite intact in the current situation (my research spanned
1977-1986), and as such the presence of death in the form of the spectacle of corpse
decomposition in the midst and zest of quotidian life has lost very little of its former intensity
and splendour, a veritable celebration of the Iqwaye way of being-in-the-world
I shall now interpret this practice in terms of its significance for the cross-sex siblingship,
first by way of reflections upon some of my chief informant's explanations.
He said that were he to die, then all his mothers (i.e., classificatory mother's sisters)
could bemoan the loss of aalye (fluid) that would be gone with his body. For his body is their's
whereby, especially if he were still a young man, their relationship would be vigorously
sustained through exchange for a long time to come. Death would certainly severely deprive
all, especially the maternal, relatives of the value their ZCh embodies. In this view, the death
of a person bereaves relatives of themselves. And this primordial identification is the primary
motivation for mourning. By mourning the loss of a relative one mourns the loss of oneself.
My informant further developed this explanation of mourning in reference to his sisters,
specifically his patrilateral half-sister (same father, different mothers) and a classificatory
agnatic sister, namely his father's patrilateral half-brother' s daughter. He emphasized that
they are all 'one piece' because they have no younger siblings 'behind them'. Taqalyce, my
informant has further constructed himself as a dutiful brother of his sisters. He stated that he
does what the brother does in general: he sends pork to his sisters, i.e., maintains through
them affinal exchange with his sisters' husbands. Pork and other food items, as I emphasized
before, are the fuel of all relatedness. One's stomach doesn't get full if one only hears: 'Oh,
I am your noye (ZCh), brother, or sister, or mother'. Such relatedness is insubstantial. Only
gifts of food and valuables make relatedness substantial. And among these, pork as well as
the pandanus dry kernels are the main source of fluid which replenishes the body.
As for the cross-sex siblings, brother's gift of these two items to his sister is the most
apposite expression of his love and care. This is why, when Iqwaye speak of the sister's sorrow
for her deceased brother, they say that she will cry: 'Who' 11 give me pandanus (kernels) and
pork?' Indeed, two young informants emphasized that brother will share pandanus kernels
and pork more often with his sister than with his wife. Furthermore, they said that it is not
good to share too much food or money with the wife. This material valorization of relatedness
and its reality in everyday life are the basis of experiences and attitudes a person shall have
in any context of sociality, death notwithstanding.
Iqwaye typify and experience the death of a cross-sex sibling as a most devastating loss.
The two young informants' account, quoted above, continues. Sister's grief is motivated by
the loss of the material value which having a brother is all about. Unlike the sister, the deceased
man's widow is stereotyped as being emotionally detached (especially if a younger woman),
because she will marry another man, often in the leviratic succession - her husband's agnatic
or matrilateral classificatory brother. The wife (widow) will say (i.e., think): 'One rubbish
man (i.e., man without shell valuables, pigs, and money) is dead', and she will happily go to
another man. But sister will grieve: 'Who is going to give me pandanus and pork?' She is
liable (but also other close male and female relatives as I witnessed on many occasions) to

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cut her forehead, and she may even lop off one or two fingers. But in conjuction with or as a
substitute for this, the sister could sever her brother's finger or toe and, the two informants
said, eat it raw. They said that this is so precisely because her grief for her brother is so intense.
Furthermore, they said that if the brother was 'one piece' (no other brother to replace him),
his sister could commit suicide in the first outburst of anguish. In the context of corpse
handling during mourning, the sister often holds the brother's corpse and kisses it. The
informants' phrasing of this is not only symptomatic of their view but also of the typified
Iqwaye view of the passions which relate the sister to her deceased brother: 'Sister kisses your
entire body; she clings to it; she doesn't (worry to) choose where she kisses him - it will be
face or penis or shoulders'.
After the burial' sister doesn't know what rest is', and she continues to grieve for her
brother. Immediately upon her brother's death she will stop eating and may do so for a week
or two' until her stomach is shrunk like a small ball (and) her eyes are red and swollen because
of weeping'. The sister will also continue to attend to the brother's corpse after the burial.'
And, as said earlier, the sister as well as her children, and other related women and children
also used to eat the brother's fluid and smear it on their faces and bodies.
The brother's grief for his deceased sister, the informants said, although extremely
intense, is different. Previously he did not eat her putrid fluid. Nowadays, as before, he can
destroy valuables such as cowrie-shells (and money) or, in extreme cases, bum down his own
house.
My chief informant with whom I have rechecked the above account has also confirmed
the core typification. He said: 'If I were to die, the two Palycipu (his sisters) would be stricken
by grief. My sister - oh, she can bite my cheeks, nose, kiss my penis and testicles; bite my
thighs and fingers. It is her body. All this she does because she thinks of the meat she ate from
me. She will think: Who will give me pandanus and meat now when my brother is dead?' The
brother too can smear his own face with his deceased sister's ingaalye (putrid fluid), bite her
fingers, nose, and cheeks. On the other hand, a man would not do it for his own brother.
Taqalyce said: 'He (a man's brother) is a man like yourself. There is not much to it. Your
brother dies, you will weep, but you'll think about getting his wife' (because the Iqwaye
evaluate the brother's wife as being one's own wife). 6
Other forms of the corpse treatment are: the deceased's finger can be severed, smoked
and then attached to a necklace. Or, as I have seen during my fieldwork, a finger-nail, a tooth,
or, following complete decomposition, finger-bones can be taken and retained as
memorabilia. I was also told about a widow from the Vailala headwaters area, now long dead,
who had cut and smoked her deceased's husbands's penis and kept it in her net-bag. And if
men came to entice her to marry them, she used to produce from the net-bag her husband's
penis and tell them: 'Whose stick do I carry, yours or whose? I worry about my man and I
look at this body of his (the penis-shaft),. She never remarried and lived with her son till
death.
From this outline of the cross-sex siblingship in the context of death it can be seen that
the metaphoric cannibalistic character of the relation is transformed into actual practice.
Furthermore, since all exchange is virtually incestuous, i.e., self-eating-qua-the-other, the
sister's incorporation of the brother's putrid bodily fluids becomes equivalent, or more
accurately, the closest approximation to their complete bodily unity. This unity is negated in
the sexual, but is carried out in the oral mode as an alimentary practice. In this way the
complementary union of brother and sister achieves a complete closure in the body of the
sister. What is outside (brother's fleshy envelope) dissolves through putrefaction into its own

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interiority (fluids) and is consumed and assimilated into sister's interiority. So in this domain
of the actual consummation of the cross-sex sibling relationship, woman in the person of a
sister comes to the closest point of interiorizing her own brother's bodily substance - semen.
For, vicariously, this tacit identity of the cadaverous fluids derives from its generic (class)
equivalence with the entire class of bodily fluids (aalye) whose salient substances are semen
and blood. In this regard it is significant that the two young informants expressly equated the
putrid fluids with the corpse's blood One of them was also told by an old woman whom he
asked about this practice, that though the fluids' smell is offputting, they nevertheless were
very palatable because they tasted like salt.
The incestuous self-eating between the cross-sex siblings has to be further interpreted
in terms of its structural relation with the exclusively male fellatio practice, which together
with the previously discussed modes of consumptive-sexual practices constitute a coordinate
inner architecture of the Iqwaye field of sociality as the social articulation of cosmogonic
passions. We shall now briefly discuss this domain including an outline of the vicissitudes of
its history among the Iqwaye and other Yagwoia.

8. Institutionalized Male Homosexuality and Male Initiations: The Historical

Vicissitudes of All-Male Sociality
In Iqwaye society the relations between the three sexual modes are in a twofold tension. The
first tension, as we saw so far, is ontological, existing as the dialectical calibration between
autosexuality and allosexuality. It is the vital movement of Iqwaye and other Yagwoia' s social
existence. The second tension is within allosexuality itself. In this sphere both homosexuality
and heterosexuality are based upon interpersonal relations infused with ever fluctuating
tensions, themselves an expression of dynamics of internal relations between men, and
between men and women. The former are specifically between junior and senior bachelors
and married men as a whole. These relations historically determined the practice of
homosexuality. Among married men and women tensions and violent conflicts were and are
continuously generated by sexual interests that men have in each other's wives, and
reciprocally, that women have in each other's husbands. Adultery abounds and is actively
pursued by many men and women.
Although Iqwaye society is based upon the institutionalization of three sexual modes,
only one of them, heterosexuality, is truly the mode of actual procreation; the other two,
despite their cosmogonic primacy, are in fact contingent. This was shown to be the case with
the practice of institutionalized male homosexuality (IMH), which was central in both the
first initiation ceremony and the bachelors' life. IMH is no longer a functioning reality, for
the following reasons. The practice was confined exclusively to men and kept secret from
women. Allegedly, no woman ever knew what was the greatest secret of the initiation
ceremonies and the bachelors' life. Those Iqwaye men with whom I discussed their sexuality,
past and present, denied that a man would have allowed his wife (or any woman) to fellate
him. This was exclusively a practice of and among men. Their position on cross-sex fellatio
is concordant with male outrage over any suggestion that a man would attend orally to a
woman's genitals. To what extent the exclusiviness of male fellatio was adhered to by
individual men cannot be determined. As a prescription it has to be accepted as a definite
facet of the Iqwaye men's view of their sexuality, with the proviso that in the actual erotic
practices between men and women some men probably did privately practice oral sex with
women, just as some men did in fact have manusturbatory if not straight masturbatory
experience during adolescence.
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8.1. Historical Vagaries of Institutionalized Male Homosexuality

The Iqwaye abandoned IMH because men felt that women might learn of the practice. This
fear was entirely conditioned by the political situation in the Iqwaye territory in the mid to
late forties, and prior to the arrival of Australian Administration (9 November, 1950) and
Australian Lutheran Mission (early 1951). The entire central and NW Angan region was still
intact and 'uncontrolled' . The Iqwaye were the only Yagwoia group which had alliance with
a Menya-speaking group called Pataye. The Pataye, like all other southern Angans, do not
have IMH nor does it feature in their initiations (see Mimica 1981: section 2.3.1). The Iqwaye
were and still are exchanging women with their allies. Quite a few of them were residing in
the Iqwaye settlements. Men from both groups used to participate in the initiation ceremonies,
but Pataye regarded Iqwaye IMH as weird and repulsive. Iqwaye men likewise qualified the
Pataye initiation ceremonies because they smeared semen on the body of the initiates.
Although this was a potential point of strife, both groups were overtly tolerant of each other,
despite mutual mockery of their respective customs behind the back. However, there was a
number of Iqwaye boys whose maternal uncles were Pataye. They grew up in Pataye villages
and were initiated there. Subsequently they moved back to the Iqwaye territory but could not
acquiesce in the practice of their male peers. In this situation Iqwaye men became increasingly
uneasy because among them were those men unwilling to share in their own practice.
Finally, following an incident of adultery involving the wife of one of the men opposed
to the local custom, the general uneasiness and tension exploded into violence. In his rage the
cuckolded husband condemned his wife's partner, and further, all Iqwaye men. He loudly
castigated them for their' crooked' ways, which was allegedly heard by both men and women.
Informants told me he shouted that Iqwaye men' eat sugar cane backward'. Sugar cane refers
to semen. 'Backward' means that instead of semen going from man to woman, it goes from
man to man. This provoked a fight, but he survived because his affine (ZH), a most notorious
warrior in the area, protected him. As a consequence of this incident and the increasing
heterogenization of the male population, Iqwaye men decided to give up IMH whose secrecy
was jeopardized Initiations continued until the present day, but since IMH is missing, they
donot entirely fulfil their cosmogonic purpose. Subsequent generations of Iqwaye men grew
up experientially estranged from the deepest male secret. For instance, in Yalqwaalye village
between 1977 -1979, of 259 initiated men (age ranging from 11-80), there were 44(17%:
age 40-80) who had authentic experiences of homosexuality. Eighteen (7%; age 38-44) had
no direct experience but knew about the old custom. The remaining 197(76%; age 11-37)
had virtually no knowledge at all of what used to be the ultimate secret of the ceremonies.
The knowledge of that tradition nowadays depends on private channels of communication,
and is imparted in the same way as the secret esoteric myths.
IMH among most male Iqwaye is nowadays an aspect of the awareness of their tradition.
In recent years some Iqwaye men have independently learned about and personally
experienced homosexual intercourse from other Papua New Guineans and whites while
working in townships and on coastal plantations. It is important to mention that older Iqwaye
men regard anal sexual contact with utter repulsion, for the rectal passage is just for faeces,
not intercourse. It seems a general characteristic of Melanesian societies in which IMH
exists/ed that the two modes of contact (anal and oral) are mutually exclusive. Younger
Iqwaye men who had no experience of traditional fellatio but who learned of male intercourse
in other contexts seem also to stigmatize anal contact.The vicissitudes of these new encounters
cannot be discussed here. However,many young men, especially those aged 11-20 are
completely ignorant of fellatio. But as I have shown in the previous sections, the lived social
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reality, being a historical product of human experience and praxis, is saturated with
homosexual and autosexual significations, although they may no longer resonate in the life
experiences of young Iqwaye males. And eventually, with the death of those who have lived
the Iqwaye life-world in its full internal coherence where cosmology was truly grounded in
the lived experience of existence, the objectified structures of Iqwaye intersubjectivity will
become the fully sedimented meaning-structures of the originary past.
The contemporary socio-cultural and historical situation of Iqwaye polymorphic
sexuality as a fundamental dimension of the life-world cannot be easily comprehended in
terms of modem Western sensibilities, including those filtered by scientific rationality via the
received wisdom and ingrained moralism of anthropology and psychoanalysis. The Iqwaye
situation and the position of IMH therein can be adequately understood solely as a synthesis
of its own past, present, and future. The internal horizon of their temporality is constituted by
their cosmological design which calibrated their existence as the archetypal recurrence of its
own genesis. But this internal determination of temporality has no power to pre-determine
the future by reproducing it as an absolute token of the originary past. Indeed, there was no
internal cosmological pre-determination which could have prevented the formation of alliance
between the Iqwaye and Pataye, and one of its consequences - the demise of IMH.
Cosmological that it is, Iqwaye existence is not free of contingency. And accordingly,
although the originary Iqwaye temporality was contained within the ontological structure of
existence, which accounts for the structures of Iqwaye social organization as a veritable
ontological project, that containment was not sufficient to fully assimilate into and thus
synthesize the horizon of future (subtended by contingency) with the past. This shows that
even the most contained hwnan temporalty is so solely in relation to its past horizon. The
horizon of future is always the horizon of radical exteriority liable to modify the recurrence
of the past from within.
It can be said that though cosmologically determined, IMH had only a conditional
function in the development of mature, sexually procreative men. It was derived from the
cosmogonic situation of the creation of the first men. In that situation, autosexuality,
homosexuality, and incest were an absolute necessity. This is why homosexuality was
instituted, for the Iqwaye say that if the ancestor (the creator) did not do it, they themselves
would not have practised it. IMH thus functioned as a conditional necessity. However,
historically, even that kind of necessity proved dispensable since IMH was abandoned and
men have been living for the past forty years without it, although not without regrets and a
pathos of loss which characterize the elder men's sense of themselves. The Iqwaye and other
Yagwoia exemplify a striking case of internal historical transformations effected by the
indigenous existential choices in concrete situations of social existence. In the hindsight of
their historicity, the Iqwaye and other Yagwoia have made their cosmogony, the very source
of their necessity and being, appear as a contingency.
Iqwaye existence qua temporality has taken a more radical tum in every aspect ever
since the establishment of the colonial administration at the end of 1950, followed by the
independent nation state of PNG in September 1975. Economic transformations effected by
the introduction of cash cropping in the mid sixties became fully consummated in 1981 when
an all-weather road established a permanent link with the outside townships. When in 1983
the Iqwaye abandoned the use of cowrie shells, altogether integral to the structure of exchange
which has to be understood as a libidinal economy, they made their final and unwitting
capitulation to the outside world Having thus become dependant upon and invested into the
national currency controlled by the state and the world market, their bodies and desires are

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now grounded in an altogether diferent sphere of determining powers over which they have
no control. They are now effectively incorporated into the world market economy, yet they
still live with the conviction that their existence is generated from their interiority. In this
sense they cling to the primordial premiss of their life-world whereby they, the people of the
centre of the universe and the celestial past, are inalienably the masters of their world and
their destiny. From another world-centre (Lae, Port Moresby, Sydney, London, New York,
Paris, ...)and another perspective, that is obviously no longer so.
In two other Yagwoia territorial groups IMH probably persisted until the late fifties.
With' pacification', communication became unrestricted, and people could travel easily to
other groups. In effect, young Iqw aye initiates who had no homosexual experience at all, were
probably perceived by men in Iwola-Malyce and Hyaqwang-Ilyce territories as a threat to the
persistence of the practice in the same way as the men who grew up in Pataye villages. Thus,
by the late fifties, the practice of fellatio in these two groups also ceased because men probably
feared that it could not be kept secret, given the fact that there was increasing communication
between the local initiates and the Iqwaye. In the period after pacification one Iqwaye man
took his son to the Iwola-Malyce area to have him re-initiated there and thus inseminated, in
order to experience and grow up according to the old custom. Similarly, I heard of one man
from that area who, around 1976 took his son to the Simbari area (or Sambia as they are called
by Herdt) to have him initiated there because fellatio is still practised among the Simbari. In
1983 in a village on the border between Simbari and the Iwola-Malyce, three groups of
Iwola-Malyce novices were initiated in the old way through fellatio. It persisted for about 4
months when all the inseminators (most of whom were young married men rather than
bachelors; see below) went to work on the coast. During my last fieldwork (1984 -1986), the
practice was not in evidence, and quite likely will not be resumed This brief revival had
provoked mixed feelings among the Iwola-Malyce men. The most influential man among
them was against it. As much as he cherishes it as his own authentic practice and strength
(he was in the last generation of Iwola-Malyce initiates who were shown it), he regards it a
thing of the past.
This profound change in the homo dimension of allosexuality was entirely endogenous.
It was not induced by missionaries who tried without success to make the people abandon
initiation ceremonies altogether. The ceremonies are still going on, maintaining without IMH,
their fundamental cosmological significance. They articulate a deep cosmological conviction
ingrained in the Iqwaye intersubjectivity. It is the notion that men are the source of fertility
which through cohabitation with women is generated in the world, and the cosmos at large.
This conviction should be seen in relation to the human ontological ambivalence which
underscores Iqwaye no less than any other human social existence. For this reason it is an
expression of the simultaneous coexistence of both omnipotence and inferiority of the Iqwaye
male psyche, understood, though, in its intersubjective constitution, and therefore including
the female psyche. Power and violence are internal to this constellation, and secrecy can be
interpreted adequately in terms of the intersubjective dynamics of the male complex of the
Iqwaye self. This complex, as I pointed out earlier, must not be assimilated into such
theoretical constructs as the Oedipus complex. Rather, it has to be understood in terms of
Iqwaye culture which articulates it into a genuine existential project. I call it the
Omalyce-project. So even without IMH the Iqwaye initiations are nevertheless a meaningful
part of the general order of life.

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8.2. The Initiation Ceremonies

Iqwaye call the initiation ceremonies' the custom of the creation of man' thiuwye kwole
imakmalana). They reproduce the cosmogonic creation of men. Every boy, by being initiated,
passes through a series of ordeals and ritual performances which reproduce cosmogonic
events. In this way he enacts the stages of primordial creation of the first men, and becomes
himself transformed He is recreated (reborn) from a weak, woman-like child into a potent
and virile man. Each ceremony initiates and/or coarticulates a phase in male development in
terms of cosmogonic movements but in reverse - from allocreation to autocreation. Yet each
ceremony is internally structured as the reproduction of autocreation. In the first initiation
ceremony boys enter the mode of being which corresponds to allogenesis. When IMH was
still in existence novices would be inducted into this practice in this context. With the fifth
ceremony, which in former times also marked the final rupture with homosexuality, a man is
already married and has procreated his first child. He therefore has finally become the true
equivalent of Omalyce, the self-creator, precisely because he has himself procreated his own
child, whereas as a young novice in the first initiation ceremony he was the equivalent of the
first mud-men created and inseminated by Omalyce.
After each ceremony the initiates' attire is modified. Either a preexisting item is totally
discarded (asin the nose-piercingceremony) and a wholly new type of attire is adopted, ornew
elements are added. Attire as well as the anatomical modification ofthe men's noses in which
nose-sticks are inserted,articulate the transformation of the men's bodily being and not simply,
as the rationalistic conception would have it, their social status. Currently, if need be each
ceremony can be staged in a truncated form for a single individual, usually if he is older and
wants to get married, and if his father and/or maternal uncle is prepared to finance it.
Of the five initiation ceremonies the first one is the longest and the most important. It
is the nose-piercing ceremony during which young boys (6-15 years; in the present situation
some may be even married) are taken away from their mothers into the forest. For two weeks
or longer they live in seclusion at a ceremonial lodge especially erected for that occasion. The
lodge, and all other ritual sites represent the primordial, closed space of cosmogony. They are
subjected to thirst, hunger, extreme heat from a huge fire lit inside the lodge, then cold, and
pain inflicted upon them by senior bachelors and a few younger married men who are in
charge of the whole affair. The novices also observe ritualized cosmogonic performances, but
these are not accompanied by any lengthy mythical exegeses. Rather, the harangues and
comments made by the senior initiates occasionally indicate that the performances are about
events when the ancestor-creator and his wife were in the world at the time of darkness.
Usually the two are euphemistically referred to as Imacoqwa and Imacipu, meaning literally
'the great man' and the 'great woman'. In this way male children come to experience the
secret imagery of cosmology not as an object of contemplation but as rituals full of surprise
and bewilderment which perplex their consciousness. Indeed, these rituals are thrilling,
awesome, and in parts very funny. Everybody present, the novices and the guardians, as well
as the entire community, are the active recreators of the common primordial reality which has
a sense of 'matter of factness'. Everything appears as if the participants have not just created
the ritual situation but that it has surfaced among them. Inside the lodge activities are seasoned
with fear, pain, and moral injunctions, especially against the deleterious desire for adultery
in adult life.The novices are constantly told that the ordeals they undergo will enhance their
bodily strength, and that whatever they are shown and taught is the men's secret which must
not be imparted to women and uninitiated children.

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The paramount ritual paraphernalia disclosed to the novices are the bone, with which
their nasal septa are pierced, and bullroarers. The bone originated in cosmogony from the
body of the first woman, but the novices are deceived They are told that it is a cassowary
bone. Many men probably believe that this is so. The nose-piercing bone is believed to be
the source of procreative power which, once the novices' septa are pierced, speeds up their
bodily growth. Without this operation, the Iqwaye men believe, boys would not grow up into
strong, virile men. Following the period of seclusion, the newly initiated return to the village
whereupon, until the early eighties, many of them often spent nights at the few remaining
bachelors' houses. Formerly they were supposed to avoid any contact with women, including
their mothers and sisters. The bachelors' houses were then their permanent homes. But over
the years since IMH disappeared this is no longer the case, and most initiates return to their
homes shortly after the ceremony.
The second and third ceremonies are a further articulation and expression of cosmogonic
creation of the man's being. Again, no myths are communicated to the initiates. In the
speeches which the older men make, only obscure references to the primordial condition may
occasionally occur. The fourth and fifth ceremonies involve a smaller number of initiates,
usually two to three. A man passes through the fourth ceremony when he gets married At the
time IMH was still in existence it marked the critical transition from bachelorhood to marital
status, whereby a man would become reoriented from homosexuality to heterosexuality.
The fifth ceremony follows the birth of the first child and affirms man's status as a virile
being capable of procreating. He has become a father, and this is the most important realization
of man's being. This makes him equivalent to Omalyce.
In former times when warfare was an integral dimension of Iqwaye social existence,
another equally vital realization of man's being was the practice of violence. By becoming a
warrior, a killer of human beings, man paradoxically achieved his complete humanness.
Among the Iqwaye, then, human procreation has a twofold ontological significance: it is at
once a bodily creation and destruction. Violence is an action of the same order: a creation
through destruction. Likewise, both the procreation and killing have autogenic determination.
Every birth is the self-reproduction of the genitor's and genetrix' s bodily being and identity.
Every killing, being envisaged as the sexual fusion of the killer and the victim, is an act of
self-destruction through the victim. Those warriors who killed people by shattering their heads
with stone-clubs had to undergo a purification ritual in order to be divested of the victims'
blood, i.e., their bodily identity.
There are no female initiation ceremonies, only a special ceremony which marks the
birth of the woman's first child This ceremony is synchronized with the male fifth initiation
ceremony and articulates the cosmogonic significance of the conjugal couple whereby a man
through his wife is rendered equivalent to the androgynous being Omalyce. Among the
Iqwaye, regardless of the type of marriage through which conjugal union is effected, the
cosmogonic truth of every child-birth is that 'the child is the father of the man', because the
birth of the child is the man's (and generically, human) self-birth.
8.3. Initiation Grades and the Co-Initiates Lines
The five initiation ceremonies differentiate young men into five initiation grades or phases
which define their identities until they become fully grown, i.e, beget their own first child
The first three are all junior bachelors; the fourth are newly married men; 5th is the onset of
complete manhood But these five grades do not form permanent age grades. They are only
the phases of man-making which is the general significance of initiations. The nose-piercing

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ceremony, however, creates a permanent and global age-related system of differentiation

which I, following the Iqwaye usage, call 'co-initiates row/line', The vernacular egocentric
term ndoqwa (my co-initiate) glossed in Tok Pisin 'wan nus' (one nose), applies to all men
who were nose-pierced in the same ceremony as oneself. It further applies to all men who were
nose-pierced at about the same time (as ego) in other villages and territorial group', i.e, during the
same 'wave' of the first initiation ceremonies. Of course, for those men who were in the same
nose-piercing, who knelt in the very same row (line), whose noses were pierced by one and the
same bone, who thus felt the same pain and whose blood was mixed together, and who
subsequently underwent the same ordeals in the same ceremonial lodge, the 'co-initiates line'
entails not: just the sense of the common first initiation but the real bond of unity in pain and
suffering which marked their entry into manhood Such men feel very close to each other and
share the sense of togetherness which is theirs alone. They remain the 'co-initiates line' for life.
Every Iqwaye man will readily enumerate all his co-initiates, dead and alive, and will
know many more in other villages and territorial groups. The co-initiates lines form a clear
cut junior/senior, i.e., relative age, differentiation in the male population. But these are not to
be confused with the initiation grades which define the passage to manhood through the
initiation ceremonies. Clearly, every man passes through all five initiation grades after which
he is a fully constituted man. But he remains a member of a co-initiates line for the rest of his
life. Each such line or generation of co-initiates by itself represents a point of reference in
relation to which all other lines are either junior or senior. At any time there is the most senior
such generation of co-initiates, the eldest men, and the most junior, comprising the initiates
of the first grade (those who have only passed through the first or second initiation ceremony).
During my first fieldwork (1977-1979) there were 17 lines. The oldest was represented by
only one man since all of his co-initiates died. The next line junior to his, represented by two
men only, was separated by about two extinct lines or generations of co-initiates.
When discussing these lines, older or younger than a given ego, a man may state that so
and so were yupatnye (1st initiation grade) when certain other men were already katace (4th
initiation grade), and he was hyamaninye (2nd initiation grade), while somebody else was
already a complete man with wife and children. With regard to the co-initiates lines, he can
further elaborate and say that those in the 1st initiation grade were nose-pierced after him or
that there were two lines between him and some other men, and so on.
The junior/senior distinctions between the co-initiates lines, derived from the
nose-piercing ceremony, are definite and clear-cut. But the initiation grades are not for this
would require that all co-initiates of a single line be collectively initiated into all subsequent
grades. This is seldomly the case, one reason being that nowadays as in the past, the fathers
and maternal uncles of boys roughly the same age, are neither able nor all equally willing to
finance their sons' and nephews' initiation at the same time. In consequence many co-initiates
are neither of the same age when first initiated nor do they advance through the initiation
grades at the same time. For instance, several novices nose-pierced in September, 1983 were
married while a majority were between 7 and 13. It means that, after the nose-piercing
ceremony the eldest ones soon after were to pass through three other ceremonies in order to
accord with their de facto state of being, as married men soon to become fathers. And while
by 1987 they may have become fathers and would have passed through all initiation grades
and the corresponding ceremonies, their younger co-initiates might have passed through only
two or three ceremonies. Nevertheless, despite their different initiation grades and the factual
state of being (fathers vs young initiates still in the process of becoming men) they all remain
of the members of the same co-initiates line because they were nose-pierced together.

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Another example: two young married men had passed through all the ceremonies since
they were nose-pierced in 1973. In 1977 they participated in a second grade initiation
ceremony staged for their much younger co-initiates. The boys were now passing through
this ceremony for the first time after which they became the second grade initiates
(hyamolliye). The co-initiates were extensively beaten by all men present, except for the two
young married men because they were co-initiates. As such they are bonded for life despite
their age and initiation grade differences. The co-initiates lines, then, are age grades borne
out of the nose-piercing ceremony and not determined by actual age. They are the generations
of men created by men.
The relationship between the junior and senior initiated men was and is rendered in
terms of kinship as the same-sex siblingship, but differentiated by relative age. So a junior to
senior initiate or junior to a senior co-initiates line is the same as the relationship between-B
to + B. Nowadays, due to the cessation of IMH, bachelorhood is very much a diluted and
relatively short period of men's life so that the significance of the global brotherhood of men
is not as pronounced as it used to be. For this reason I shall outline the main features of
bachelorhood as it existed in the period when IMH was still practised First, the significance
of insemination through fellatio since this, together with the development of warfare skills in
raids on enemy villages, was the core of bachelorhood
8.4. Insemination and the Structuring of Bachelorhood
Semen is a life-giving, procreative substance. It fertilizes and enables physical growth. IMH
insemination purported to facilitate the physical growth of young boys, to make them,
literally, into physically strong, and sexually attractive and procreative men: husbands,
fathers, rapacious phallic lovers, and aggressive, fearless warriors. However, the Iqwaye did
not believe as in some other Angan (Herdt 1981,1987) and New Guinea societies (Williams
1936; Kelly 1976; Herdt ed, 1984) that young male children needed semen because they did
not have it congenitally. In fact all bodily substances and fluids are equally replenishable
through eating. Semen, like the milk in women, derives from the bone marrow and is therefore
congenital. For the Iqwaye the practice of insemination followed from the cosmogonic
procreation of the first men. Men subsequently continued the originary ancestral activity
which was a part of the continuum of the life-process. One informant said that while still a
babe a boy is breast-fed by his mother. When nose-pierced, then milk was replaced by semen.
Mother's milk feeds the individual when he is a child When he is nose-pierced then the elder
brother's (senior grade initiate) semen would give him strength. This stresses the nourishing
aspect of insemination whereby boys were made to grow up physically. In this regard there
is a general consensus among traditionalists that younger generations of Iqwaye men (and
Yagwoia in general) are physically weaker and somewhat degenerate by comparison with
those who have experienced and still cherish the value of men's secret strength (yeki'llye
pi'nye). But simultaneously fellatio was a practice that used to create and sustain erotic
experiences, thus making bachelorhood a vital context of the development of man's sexual
being and identity. Parenthetically, it has to be pointed out that the characterization of IMH
in recent literature (Herdt 1981, 1984, 1987) as 'ritualized' homosexuality is misleading.
Among the Iqwaye, some other Angans and New Guinea peoples,it was a practice of young
men's everyday life which lasted for many years. The strictly ritual context of the initiation
ceremonies was only short lived, and commonly, in it novices were solely inducted into the
practice. The mainstream life of IMH was outside the narow ritual context (for further
commentaries, see Mimica 1982). However, I shall not deal with erotic and other aspects of
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the development of the masculine self in relation to IMH. What concerns me here are the
general meanings of fellatio in regard to the structuring of bachelorhood in relation to the
global organization of Iqwaye sociality.
8.4.1 The First Insemination
Insemination was introduced in the first initiation ceremony, towards the end of the seclusion
in the forest lodge. In this ritual context insemination was also intended as a vicarious
reception of the semen of the novices' maternal uncles who, together with their fathers were
the spectators at the ritual recapitulation of the originary procreative act. The inseminators
were primarily the most senior bachelors (3rd grade), but also some married (younger) men,
that is those who just passed the 4th grade, and possibly a few 5th graders. Outside this ritual
context 4th and 5th grade men were prohibited from having homosexual relations with junior
initiates. For them bachelorhood was over. This was also enunciated in the sleeping
arrangements inside the bachelors' house where the 4th grade (newly married) initiates' place
was next to the door, because they were literally on the way out of that mode of existence.
They were to resume sexual relations with women which as such made them dangerous
(polluting)to the junior initiates whose exclusive contact was with men only.
The act of insemination was very dramatic. The novices had no inkling what was in store
for them when they were brought into the lodge packed with men from near and afar, all grave
faces and dead silent. Already emaciated and intimidated by several weeks of excruciating
ordeals, they were understandably apprehensive. All informants admitted that the situation
was eerie and that they were scared numb. The novices were arranged so that they were lying
with their knees under their stomachs, completely covered with bark-capes, and holding a
piece of sugar-cane in front of their heads with both their hands. This position represented
their intra-uterine situation, the cape being at once the enveloping womb and the closed
cosmic abode, the sugar-cane representing the umbilical cord/penis which binds the foetus to
the womb, and the sky to earth. In this ritual imagery, the equation of allogenesis and
autogenesis is explicit. The inseminators would then seat themselves in front of the covered
initiates with their legs set apart. Next, they would make a clicking noise with their tongues,
and soon after uncover the novices who thus faced the inseminators' bared masculine pride.
The novices were told then: 'Watch it! Don't break your maternal uncle's eggs (i.e.,
testicles)!' But, as one of my informants commented, 'the mother's brother's eggs were
inevitably broken, and that's why a huge payment is due to him' (when the boy is nosepierced). The next pronouncement was: 'Hold the marsupial (a specific species)!', upon
which the novices were orally penetrated and vigorously inseminated. My informants
described this action to have varied in force, vigour, violence, as did the novices' resistance,
from person to person. It seems that most novices submitted willingly to insemination, but
some had to be treated with considerable force and violence. By and large it was a heavy,
humiliating, and traumatic experience.
I shall deal with the details of Iqwaye fellatio experience in all its modalities, from
trauma to pleasure, in another paper. Here it is important to emphasize that as an action of
sexually mediated subjugation of the novices by the senior initiates, in the presence of all
men, the first insemination had the heaviness of rape. It was a ritual subjugation in terms of
a total exercise of power. What has to be grasped in this situation is the existential and heroic
sado-masochistic quality of Iqwaye male experience of which they all are acutely aware. For
to become a man is not easy! It takes a lot of pain and suffering, a fact which every Iqwaye
initiated boy knows, with or without the experience of fellatio.' The novices were further

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subjected to harangues by men in the audience. These were intended to ensure that the novices
swallowed the semen. They were told that this was the maternal uncle's semen they were
drinking. They should not think that they grew up on mother's milk. Still further it was
inculcated into them that this practice was the way the ancestor (creator) did it. An informant
recounted: 'You (novices) should not think that men copulate with women only. No! Men do
so among themselves, as did the ancestor. At the cost of your lives you must not impart the
men's secret to women or uninitiated boys!' Then ensued a particularly severe beating not of
the novices but of their' elder brothers' i.e., the senior lines of co-initiates in the 2nd and 3rd
initiation grades. Informants said they wept bitterly as senior men belaboured these 2nd and
3rd grade co-initiates. Many of them bled. Then the flagellated initiates were told that they
should not blame the men for their beating, but the novices who were liable to betray the
secret of the initiations. With this emotional blackmail the novices were made responsible for
the wretchedness of their elder brothers, those who hadjust given them semen, and who were
to do so in the future. Thereby the regimentation of initiates was set into a relationship of
subordination and domination. The juniors' burden was the pain suffered on their account by
the seniors, at the hands of the grown men. The succession of the co-initiates lines was thus
structured on the basis of pain, hard feelings and guilt.
Hard feelings were and still are produced and channelled by violence on a more
individual basis. For instance, one afternoon during the first initiation ceremony in September,
1983, a group of young married men in charge of the novices at the ritual lodge, took a break.
One of them said that the father of a novice now in the lodge was particularly nasty to him
when he was nose-pierced some years ago. He recounted how this man, then exactly in the
same position as he was now, berated him one night at the lodge for being dazed and looking
tired, as he indeed was. They were exposed to a huge fire supposed to dry their noses and
make their bodies strong and dry. His tormentor gave him such a heavy blow on the head with
a stick that he almost fainted. So many years later he was thinking whether he should even
the score by belabouring that man's son who was now at his mercy. Some of his co-initiates
encouraged him to do exactly that, for the ceremonial lodge is the place to get even for all the
pain and humiliation that one has suffered in the past. Indeed, most initiates and young men
enjoy their position of power vis-a-vis the novices, and copiously use the opportunities to
make up for the subjugation they themselves suffered This particular young man, however,
said that he was a good man and that he felt sorry for the wretched novice in the lodge, despite
the fact that his father was beastly to him. So he chose not to use the opportunity to make up
for the past pain. Nevertheless we can see that much taunting and humiliation, and vicious
beatings exercised in the initiations are generated by the same kind of experiences sustained
by every new generation of novices. They are humiliated and they suffer, but they will
eventually be able to make up for it by subjecting new generations to the same ordeals.
The ritual realization of the cosmogonic creation brings into prominence other meanings
of the male creation. The crushing of maternal uncles' 'eggs' corresponds to the opening up
of the primordial closed body, and in the current reality, to the pain that every woman bears
in labour, but which belongs to man in his position of the maternal uncle. This is yet another
expression of the idea of the bodily union of the cross-sex siblings. What the sister suffers in
reality, the brother acquires in the ritually constituted 'labours' of cosmogonic parturition. In
this way the homo dimension of allosexuality is one step closer to the originary mode of
autosexual being from which the circle of kinship has emerged Let us now have a closer look
into the regulation of homosexual relations.

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8.5. The Regulation of Homosexual Relations

The practice of homosexuality was exo-sexual and hierarchical. The members of the same
co-initiates line could not fellate each other nor could a junior grade initiate inseminate a
senior grade initiate. The flow of insemination was irreversible. My chief informant had once
explained this to me in reference to the motif of serial insemination in the myth of allogenesis.
There semen,via fellatio, proceeds from Omalyce to the first, then second, then third, ...and
ends in the body of the fifth, penis-less mud-man who became the first woman. Likewise, in
the practice of IMH semen was transmitted from seniors to juniors, never in reverse.
Members of the same co-initiates line share an endo-indentity which formerly made
them closed to mutual sexual intercourse. Nowadays too, a ritual act performed toward the
end of their stay at the forest lodge ratifies this endo-identity, The senior initiates (elder
brothers) in charge of the novices catch yeqwoce lizards whose eggs and tails symbolize
human testicles and penis. These creatures are roasted in an open fire, then their charred tails
are severed and smeared onto the novices' noses. Each novice eats his lizard together with a
handful of a steamed forest vegetable. This ends the taboo on speaking which the novices
have had to obey ever since their noses were pierced. They can now speak to each other, and
are instructed by the senior initiates that they should address each other as ndoqwa (' my
co-initiate' Tok Pisin - 'wan nus'), because that is what they are to each other. This small rite
has the following meaning. The lizards represent the novices' own genitals, the vital foci of
their bodily selves. With the tail smeared onto his nose and a lizard eaten, each novice comes
to symbolically incorporate his own genitals and thus is defined as a closed body, in the state
of sexual self-closure. In that sense he is in the state of the autosexual incest, and as such
relates to his fellow co-initiates. The incestuous mode of being (self-closure) of each novice
defines their common endo-identity and complete equivalence, and precludes sexual
relationship between them. They are bodily closed off from each other.
Thus, the members of a co-initiates line constitute in relation to each other a class of
allo-relations defined by their opposite, the autosexual relation of each member with himself.
The symbolic prevention of their mutual allosexuality is achieved dialectically: in order not
to be incestuous with each other, each of them becomes so vicariously in relation to himself.
In formal terms this symbolic autosexuallink of each novice with himself can be expressed
as A =A. It is the complete self-identity. All co-initiates are thereby made equivalent to each
other regardless of their actual bodily identities which, of course, are of a motley plurality,
since all of them have different parents belonging to various PDGs. But in the context of the
nose-piercing ceremony, this recedes into the background. What binds and unifies the novices,
despite their different sociocentric identities, is the very operation of nose-piercing, itself a
penile activity which corresponds to the cosmogonic connection beween the genitals and the
mouth.
The symbolic autosexual definition of the co-initiates' bodily being tallies with the
inhibition of masturbation, for in terms of the established bodily self-closure, a person is
sexually closed to himself as he is to his co-initiate. However, I have some indication that
some initiates did explore themselves autoerotically but I have no concrete data to develop a
more detailed picture of this situation in the past. Inhibition of masturbation, as far as I know,
was not accomplished by explicit deterrence or threats. The attitude was neatly expressed by
one of my informants who said that' my penis belongs to somebody else, and somebody else's
penis belongs to me' .
Each line of co-initiates was sexually open, as the receiver of semen, to the senior, and,
as the giver of semen, to the junior lines. Initiates engaged in homosexual relations did not
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form permanent dyadic pairs. My informants were definite about this. The juniors were
encouraged to have as many inseminators as possible in order to acquire maximum semen,
i.e., strength. Variations did occur, however and a boy could slip into a more intense relation
with one or two seniors for a period of time. Some men are renowned for the wide circuit of
bachelors' houses they used to visit in order to receive semen from many inseminators. As
the Iqwaye see it, their sexual aggressiveness was later converted into fearsomeness when
they became violent warriors. It was made sure that inseminators and inseminated were not
related, but I have recorded three cases where they were true FBSs, i.e., classificatory agnatic
brothers. However, there is no notion among the Iqwaye that the inseminator/inseminated
relationship could or should follow a pre-established social relationship, for example affinal
(cf. Kelly 1976). The inseminator/inseminated relationship was all by itself and articulated
as the elder/younger brother relationship between the initiation grades and their component
co-initiates lines. Only in the context of the first initiation ceremony, the first insemination
also carried the explicit significance of the MB/ZS relationship.
The co-initiates lines were deployed throughout the first three initiation grades which
delimit bachelorhood. The 4th and 5th grades, as I already explained, used to reorient men
towards the wider sociality where relations between men are mediated by women. They enter
this social realm first upon marriage and for good upon the birth of the first child Even when
the passage through the initiatory grades was more regimented and collective than nowadays,
there used to occur a dispersion of the members of the co-initiates lines, especially when they
reached 3rd initiation grade. This was due to the physical differences between the members.
Some would mature and grow up faster than others. Therefore, such older members of a
co-initiates line would remain in the 3rd grade for a shorter time and would get married, while
younger, more immature members of the same line would remain in the 3rd grade for a longer
time. But there were cases where a particular bachelor would resist abandoning bachelorhood
and would remain in the 3rd grade for a long time, while all his co-initiates got married and
begat children.
The relation between the co-initiates lines and the initiation grades was and is defined
as the same-sex siblingship differentiated by relative age, hence + B/-B. The first
establishment of such relationship in the life of every Iqwaye boy occurs in the first initiation
ceremony where a particular senior initiate is appointed as the guardian of a specific novice,
cleaning his nose-wound, washing his face, etc. At the end of the ceremony this 'elder brother'
receives a payment for his service from his 'younger brother's' (novice) father.
The +B/-B tuuelung wale) relationship in the context of IMH used to mark the statuses
of the semen-giver and semen-receiver. The 1st initiation grade tyupa'nye) was exclusively
the semen receiver, the 3rd grade (hipipicei the semen-giver. The exclusive semen givers
were the 4th and the 5th grades, except they were and are directed to the domain of
heterosexuality. The 2nd grade Qlyamallillye) initiates were simultaneously the semen
receivers from the 3rd and the givers to the 1st. However, as I emphasized before, it is not the
grades that define exo-sexuality but their component co-initiates lines. It was often the case
that there were members of more than one such line in any of the initiation grades, especially
in the third from where some would depart earlier than others into the world of heterosexuality
and affinity.
Due to the centrality of homosexuality, the +B/-B relationship has had also a fairly
explicit gender significance. The inseminated fellators (-B) were seen as women, whereas the
inseminators (+ B) were, by virtue of that fact, men. The latter sexual role continued
unchanged when they made transition to heterosexuality. By becoming an exclusive semen

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giver every young man was thus coming to accomplish himself in his full masculinity,
crowned finally by the birth of his first child," The sexual relationship between juniors and
seniors was also seen as a marital bond. This was brought out to me by an old informant when
I asked him why a + B, a bachelor, could not have ventured into a heterosexual relation,
despite the prohibition of such conduct. Nowadays, no initiate mature enough to have sex
would accord much respect to the past ideal of male chastity which older men frequently
appeal to when they berate young initiates for their heterosexual appetites. The old informant
objected to my suggestion that a heterosexual venture could occur because, he said, elder
brothers were married to them, the younger brothers. He meant by this that this bond, termed
ulapanettye which denotes the transmission of semen, was as binding as the relation between
the man and woman in a heterosexual relation, and more so: for the semen-givers were
responsible for the physical growth of their younger brothers.

-B

=homosexual semen transmission

][ co-initiates lines
}{initiationgrades

FigureS.

The relationship was also structured in terms of a division of labour still in evidence
nowadays among the Iqwaye initiates. The juniors used to carry out' women's work'; they
fetched water, firewood, and occasionally cooked for the senior initiates, and in general
assisted them in all sorts of ways in daily life at the bachelors' house. This further
complemented the sexual dimension of their relationship, so that the juniors indeed were like
women. As I have already emphasized, the relationship was rigidly regimented and enforced
by the frequent exercise of power by the seniors over juniors. Nowadays, such subjugation
comes into prominence only in the initiation ceremonies, not in the everyday social life of the
young Iqwaye initiates where the grade differences between bachelors are minimally
maintained When the initiates' life in the past was bound by the seclusion of the bachelors'
houses and warfare was integral to social life, many games (nowadays only rarely played)
were focussed on voluntary submission to beating and endurance of severe, sometimes
extreme, physical pain. Weakness and cowardice shown in the games used to provoke
immediate mocking, humiliation, and further physical punishment. The initiates were also
trained for warfare andgradually, as they got older, introduced to raiding of the enemy villages
under the guidance of experienced warriors. This aspect of past Iqwaye life puts the rigidity
and harshness of bachelorhood, as well as its pleasures, into a wider perspective of Iqwaye
sociality, in which violence and strife were integral to social life. They were not marginal in
the flow of Iqwaye existence, nor were they regarded with some kind of tragic pathos, or as
an expression of the ontological evil. I shall now summarize the structures of bachelorhood
and their orchestration into the global Iqwaye dynamics of the incest passions.

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8.6. Conclusion
Iqwaye bachelorhood was a closed sociality globally homogenized into the brotherhood in
which homosexuality and bodily nurture of man by man, brother by brother, were reproduced
as lived praxis of the cosmogonic passion of the all-male creation of men. In cosmogony the
creation was necessarily incestuous and it involved the sexual connection between the father
and all five sons-brothers (mud-men). It was not, however, a complete replica of the original
self-creation because the fifth, penisless son could not reinseminate the father. If he did, then
the primordial all-male allogenesis would have become a complete autosexual self-closure.
Inthe historical practice of the still living Iqwaye men, the primordial situation was paralleled
by the structuring of homosexual relations. The fifth, penisless brother who became the first
woman is an imago of the most junior initiates in the 1st grade who were the recipients of
semen but themselves did not inseminate. The 2nd and 3rd graders correspond to the elder
brothers in allogenesis. Married and procreative men (4th and 5th) correspond to Omalyce
precisely because, in conjunction with women, they are truly procreative. With women they
come to unify in themselves both the man's and woman's half of Omalyce's self, i.e., his
primordial bodiliness, and thus procreate the child who is at the same time the embodiment
of its procreators. It is the realization of self-creation.
In the sphere of homosexual allo-relations, incest, understood in the Iqwaye sense of
autosexuality, was at once obviated and affirmed Here too, no initiate was in the position to
copulate with himself, but here too the exo-dimension was constituted through the affirmation
of the autosexual closure. Thus, in order to become open, i.e., sexually available to others, an
initiate had first to become symbolically closed in upon himself as the symbolism of the
lizard-eating rite shows. In this way the symbolic self-closure becomes a permanent
self-identity of every Iqwaye man and is paradigmatic for the constitution of intra-group
self-identity (endo-identity) in other domains, eg., in the structuring of the POGs.
This construction of self-identity as the autosexually closed body also makes Iqwaye
men equivalent to Omalyce in his originary state of being. Therefore, this primordial mode
of being is the primary, innermost identity of all Iqwaye, from the individual human being to
the sociocentric POGs, and I should add, to the whole inclusive totality of the cosmos. That
is the pure relation of self-identity through which one is oneself, or A =A. To use a vivid and
most appropriate analogy, a person's reflection in the mirror is his own bodily self-identity.
He(A) who is looking into his mirror-image (A) is identical with it. But in order to be truly
identical with himself he has to fuse himself with his image so that the two become one. In
logical terms a copula must be established between himself and his mirror-image so that Ais
A (A =A). In Iqwaye thought this copulative relation is literally established through the usage
of the image of the autosexual penile link between the human being i.e., body, and its vital
bodily part. The link is often synecdochal (part =whole). By being imagined as a self-closure
the body or the entity it represents (eg., the POG) is established as a wholly self-same,
self-identical and self-procreative structure.
As in the sphere of sociality governed by heterosexuality, the obviative affirmation of
autosexuality (incest) also used to institute the exo-relations, although between the
co-initiates lines and correlatively, the initiation grades rather than the men and women
deployed in the POGs. But in heterosexual relations, incestuous sexual contact, 'planting', is
obviated and affirmed through eating, and vice-versa. Thereby exo-relations are assimilated
into enda-relations: patrifiliation assimilates affinity, most fully by means of ate marriage,
into the unity of fatherhood Matrifiliation qua marsupial eating reincorporates the child into
the bodies of the mother and parents' mothers. Matrifiliation is thus rendered a genuine
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Mimica

intrabodily unity of mother and child But in homosexuality, sex (planting) and eating are
fused into one - insemination through fellatio - which renders the sphere of bachelorhood
equivalent to its primordial imago: cosmogonic allogenesis without the mediation of woman.
The homosexual (same-sex) siblingship in the sphere of bachelorhood make it a virtual
mirror-image of the cross-sex siblingship and the practice of endo-cannibalism in the sphere
of intrafamilial relationships. Cross-sex siblings are the complete embodiments of each
other's corporeal identity, thus more identical than the bachelors whose real sociocentric
identities, and therefore their bodies, are de facto different. It is the initiations and the
categorical framework and practices of bachelorhood that confer upon them the homogeneity
of identity which the brotherhood (same-sex siblingship) intends. But the cross-sex siblings
differ by sex for real while the homosexual brothers are truly the same in that regard, their
covert sex-role difference being surreal so to speak. Likewise, in insemination the union of
two bachelors-brothers was real, whereas the cross-sex siblings' bodily union was achieved
vicariously and in the alimentary mode only, through the eating of the steamed vegetables
soaked with the dead brother's body fluids. Both types of relationship, each in its own distinct
way and sphere of sociality, articulate different yet interrelated realms of the passions of
incest. For the cross-sex siblings hip the incestuous unity and fusion into a single bodily
identity became accomplished in the situation of death. Incorporation was coterminous with
bodily dissolution, and the passions of incest were here at the same time the passions of death
understood, however, as the vital expression of the life process in its transformative devouring modality. The homosexual brotherhood was about the bodily nurture (extension
of procreation) of men by men and as such its passions were the passions of life in its foremost
male modality of creation - planting.
Finally, in the context of the first initiation ceremony, the brotherhood of men was
momentarily ascribed the identity of the MB/ZS relationship, becoming thus the expression
of the foremost imago of Iqwaye kinship, the union of the male mother and his son. Therefore
Iqwaye bachelorhood was a fully developed transformation of the Iqwaye circle of kinship,
a transformation whereby the structures of differentiation constitutive of it, became fused and
homogenised into a practical configuration which expressed the primordial condition of the
all-male sociality.
As a generalized category, brotherhood characterizes not just the Iqwaye past
bachelorhood, or a passing phase of man's life-cycle, but also Iqwaye men as a society of
men. Yet brotherhood was and is for the sake of fatherhood, a fatherhood whereby the 'child
is the father of the man' . Child is the template just as much of the being of Iqwaye men as it
is of women. To understand either entails understanding them in the mediation of the child,
and through it, of their archetypal self and its project of self-creation.

9. A Concluding Reflection
I have outlined the constitutive role of incest passions in Iqwaye social reality in terms of the
ontological project which constitutes them, their culture and history as a mode of
being-in-the-world. Specifically, it is the human praxis of becoming and being a
self-procreated totality, the equivalent of the primordial autopoietic creator, the cosmic man
Omalyce. The core of the project is self-creation which most cogently circumscribes the
nature of the passions of incest and their dialectical articulation in the structures of human
relations, i.e., in the very organization of Iqwaye sociality. Incest, thus, as a 'familiar'
anthropological, psychoanalytical, and in general, Western cultural and moraljascillosul1J has
changed its reality. As a core-configuration of an ontological project, it becomes

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The Incest Passions

understandable as not just the passions of the self vis-a-vis another, but as the passions of the
self vis-a-vis itself. I have shown that in the Iqwaye reality, from the inner circle of kinship,
to the structures of sociocentric groups, to their representations of the social field as a whole,
human beings, groups, and cosmic man form a self-producing, organismic unity (Mimica
1981). The discontinuities of the relationships between a multiplicity of individual bodily
selves is thought of as the participation in the differentiated self-identity of a single self, that
of the creator Omalyce. He is, then, at once a transcendental unifying self of the multiplicity
of concrete human selves, and their immanent inner being. He is both the inside and the outside
determination of Iqwaye existence, the outermost embodiment of the cosmos and the
innennost conjuction between the foetus and its primordial ontogenetic cosmos, the maternal
womb. He is at once the one and the many.
The genitors, the progeny, the sociocentric groups, and the social universe as a whole
are regions of discontinuities, the separated bodily beings which as such incarnate and mirror,
or more accurately, refract the continuous identity of the self-same self of the creator. The
different bodily sociocentric identities have to be seen as the specular bodily refractions of
the sameness which produces the other out of itself through its internal splitting. This
fundamental cut in the same is the condition of the emergence of the mirror-differentiations
whereby the field of human social identities, of sociality, becomes formed as an ever
fluctuating field of specular refractions of the primordial identity. All social differentiation
(eg., POGs' fissioning) is seen as the reproduction of the originary, archetypal cut, the rupture
of Omalyce's umbilicus-penis whereby the world as the realm of differentiation came into
being. Clearly, then, the dynamics of the social relationships of the plurality of the concrete
selves can only be properly described in a perspective of their primordial cosmic self out of
which the Iqwaye social reality is literally constituted But one can ask: constituted as what?
My answer is: as the synthesis of the imaginal in the exteriority of the social-culturalhistorical milieu which is the Iqwaye reality. The properly human exteriority simply does not
exist without the projection and objectification of its interiority. The historically objectified
radical imagination is also constitutive of the Iqwaye ecological milieu understood as an
umwelt, i.e., as human assimilation of the environment and reciprocally, as human
situatedness in it. Situatedness here means the totality of human activity, the praxis which in
the incessant flux of existence at once creates and actualizes the inner and outer realities
(innenwelt and umwelt) of its embodied passions, the primordial energies of the human soul
(psyche).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank the editors and the staff of Oceania, and Patrick Glass for their thoughtful
suggestions and generous help in final preparation of the manuscript. For all conceptual and
stylistic shortcomings of the paper I alone am responsible.

NOTES
1.

11Iis relationship also extends to and encompasses the entire initiated male population. Through the
initiation grades all men are related as + B/-B and it is this feature together with several others which
reproduces the original}' cosmogenic physiognomy at the level of the Iqwaye social organization. Aspects
of male fellatio practices are further discussed below.

2.

It should be mentioned that in specific circumstances a man can render his daughter's bride-price edible
without embarrassment and shame. This becomes pressing in such a case when a man has no son but only

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Mimica

daughters. He can find a man who has virtually identical shells as his and is willing to exchange them.
After detailed evaluation of each individual specimen whereby both men convince themselves that they are
exact equivalents. the two sets of shells are exchanged. This exchange transforms the bride-price receiver' s
relation to the shells. The new set that he has now received. although equivalent to the former, is,
nevertheless, de facto and de jure different from the ones he originally received as bride-price. They come
from a dUTerent man and for an ostensibly different purpose. Furthermore, this exchange is not shells for
pork (direct consumption), but these shells for those shells. That is. the concrete identities of shells
(comprised of their previous and present owners' identities and purposes) have been exchanged. The crucial
difference in the shells has been thus established and accordingly the newly received shells become edible
because they do not bear the identity of this particular man's bride-price transaction. This is indelibly
attached to those shells which are now possessed by a man other than the one who received them as the
bride-price shells. Hence the former bride-price receiver is free of the incestous stigma attached to the
father's bride-price consumption. In concrete terms he is eating shells other than those received as the
bride-price for his daughter.
3.

4.

The 'outer' circle of the field of kinship. the classificatory matrilateral siblingship (CfMSb) is a subject for
a separate discussion. Briefly. it is a relation of breast and milk. It obtains between any two persons whose
mothers are of the same POG. One's closest classificatory matrilateral siblings are mother's sister's children
(parallel cousins) and then all children of all women from mother's patriline. and further. from her
patrilineage. and the POG as a whole. The direct extension of ClMSb is precluded by the limited extension
of matrifiliation within the familial context (i.e. FW =M but FWBfMB and FWZ!M'Z). Accordingly. a
person's ClM siblings are not also his/her patrilateral half-siblings' siblings. unless they are mutually related
as siblings through other connections. This is always possible since the range of ClMSb is established not
only through a person's own matrifiliation but also through the matrilateral ties of the parents and
grand-parents. However. there is a significant difference between these siblings and those to whom ego is
related through his direct matrilateral connections. Our to the structure of the naming system all male CfM
siblings have the same name because their mothers are of the same POG. In this way the primary range of
one's own male CfMSbs is sociocentrically delimited by their names. This does not obtain for ego's
classificatory siblings traced though his/her parents' and grand-parents' matrilateral connections. The
persons related as ClMSb through their direct matrilateral connections have the same flesh. As such they
reflect each other's corporeality. and therefore each other's self. It is not an exaggeration to say that one's
CfMSb of the same sex is regarded as his/her double idoppleganger}. In dreams the dreamer's own ClMSb
represents his/her own body. i.e. self. These ClM siblings (i.e. through direct matrifiliation) assist each
other in bride-price and other prestations. In the case of death of a maternal relative they jointly contribute
to his/her mortuary payment. In the case of death of a CfM brother a man is entitled to marty the deceased'
widow. ClMSiblings are always bound by that very bond to contribute to the mortuary payment for a CfMSb
- that is being paid for. And it is the maternal relatives in common to them all that are the recipients of
that payment. For more detail on CfMSb among the Iqwaye. see Mimica 1981:46-51. I use the phrase
classificatory matrilateral siblingship after Kelly 1977. However. this relation among the Yagwoia is not
articulated.in the way Kelly describes it for the Etoro, For a critique of that study see Mimica 1980.
This does not exclude the other side of relatedness. For instance, one informant said that his son is half
son and half father. This, perhaps, is the best global characterization of this mode of kin-classification
since the relatedness based on the sociocentric identity and on patrifiliation are in this context totally
intertwined. As to the self-reciprocal use of the kin-term (/lll<)'O (FZ) between a woman and her BO, I
have some doubts because I never enquired about it. This was partly conditioned by the fact that the
informants themselves never emphasized it, while the self-reciprocal usage between fathers and sons in
three successive generations utterly captivated me so I never really thought of its implication for FZ-BO
usage. With this reservation in mind, I may nevertheless state that such a usage in all probability does
occur so that a woman calls her BO Olll<)'O and vice versa. However, it does not immediately follow that
a woman's own FZ will call her 'aunt' and vice versa, because it is only the woman's brother who is married
to her aunt's classificatory mother, and it is his ate marriage which determines the self-reciprocal usage.
Accordingly, were it the case that his FZ would reclassify his sister (i.e., her own BO) following the

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The Incest Passions

equations BS = FMBSDH = MH = F, so that BD = FMBSDHZ = MHZ = FZ, the self-reciprocal

usage of the term au 1<)'0 would obtain. However, I am quite certain that this kind of reclassification does
not occur, precisely because the focal link is man's marriage to the woman who is his father's and father's
sister's classificatory mother. Only if the man and his sister were themselves the offspring of their fathers
own ate marriage (if he contracted one), would they be as such related to their true father and father's
sister as their self-reciprocal relations, i.e., the son and daughter who are also one's own father and
father's sister. It follows that the condition for the self-reciprocal usage of the kin-term ouI<)'o (FZ) in
three (as opposed to two) successive generations is the occurrence of ate type of marriage in at least two
successive generations, i.e., that both one's father and oneself have married their respective classificatory
father's mother.
5.

Since this is a topic of a separate study of the Iqwaye mortuary practices I will forego the details here.

6.

There is ajustly famous case of a man whom I knowwell and who married several of his deceased brothers'
widows. For one of them he is reputed to have already taken her by the hand in the presence of his
brother's body. Not sure whether he was already dead he addressed him, yet still holding onto his wife's
hand: 'You (the deceased), are you dead or are you just asleep?!' This story provokes a riot of laughter
when told in an appropriate context.

7.

Despite the 'softness' of the initiations nowadays, the degree of physical pain and suffering endured in
the first two ceremonies is difficult for modern Western urban sensibilities to appreciate, be they those
of a middle class 'civilized' citizen who detests violence or those of a punk and street fighter, or a
heterolhomosexual who cultivates bondage and submission in hislher erotic life (e.g. Mains 1984). Due
to the dissolution of the rigidly regimented lifeof bachelorhood characterized by the domination of junior
initiates by seniors, the exercise of group corporeal violence has virtually no reality in the experience of
younger Iqwaye except in the context of the initiation ceremonies. Previously the disciplinarian use of
violence was an ingredient of the routines of the bachelors' everyday life.

8.

An informant from the Vailala Headwaters (Iwola'a Malyce territorial group) once humorously brought
out the gender aspect of the + B/-B relationship between the grades. He said that one did not have sex
with married men because they are like old women. Only the younger brothers are like the young women,
with whom one desires sex. Here femininity is extended to all men, married and bachelors, but this does
not invalidate the 'sexual' differentiation of the older and younger bachelors as male and female. To
explain fully this ambiguity of sex extensions among the Iqwaye I would have to discuss the full range of
sex extensions and inversions in Iqwaye social usage. This is reserved for a separate work.
married men
'old women'

bachelors
'young women'
'-B'

'+B'
(d')

homosexual
intercourse

heterosexual
intercourse

REFERENCES
HERDT, G. 1981. Guardiansofthe Flutes. McGraw-Hill: New York.
1987. The Sambia:Ritual and Genderill New Guinea. Holt, Rinehart and Winston:New York.
ed., 1982. RitualsofManhood:MaleInitiations ill New Guinea. University of California Press: Berkeley.
ed.,1984. RitualizedHomosexuality ill Melanesia. University of California Press: Berkeley.
KELLEY, RC, 1976. Witchcraft and Sexual Relations: An Exploration in the Social Semantic Implications
of a Structure of Belief. In P. Brown and G. Buchbinder, (eds), Malland Womall ill the NewGuinea
Highlands. American Anthropological Association: Washington, D.C.
19TI. Etoro Social Structure. The University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor.
LEVI-STRAUSS, C. 1963. Structural Anthropology. Basic Books: New York.

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Mimica

MAINS, G. 1984. Urban Aboriginals: A Celebration of Leathersexuality. Gay Sunshine Press: San
Francisco.
MIMICA, J. 1980. 'Anthropology in its Highest Form': Critical Comments on R.C. Kelly's Etoro Social
Structure. Canberra Anthropology 3(2):47-80.
1981. Omalyce: An Ethnography of the Iqwaye View of the Cosmos, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
Australian National University: Canberra.
1982. Review of Herdt, 1981. Mankind 13(3):287--8.
1988. Intimations of Infinity: The Mythopoeia of the Iqwaye Counting System and Number. Berg
Publishers: Oxford.
WILLIAMS, F.E. 1936. TIle Papuans of Trans-Fly. Oxord University Press: Oxford.

NOTICE
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of his papers on Coronation Hill, that he has a change of address.

It is:-

Institute of Public Affairs Ltd.,

6th Floor, 83 William St.,
Melbourne, Victoria3000.

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