11Story

28 November 2008

The purpose of ethnography: an interview with Georges Condominas with Yves Goudineau

"We have eaten the forest"

Contents:  "We have eaten the forest"  - Introduction  - Aim of the exhibition  - Synopsis        * Ethnology as an art of living        * The Sar Luk villagers        * A poetic and oral tradition        * Burning the forest of the stone spirit Goo        * Works and days        * Buffalo sacrifice        * Sickness and death         * Sar Luk today  - The purpose of ethnography: an interview with Georges Condominas with Yves Goudineau  - Biography of Georges Condominas  - Main publications

The purpose of ethnography

Interview with Georges Condominas, Director of Studies at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) by Yves Goudineau, Director of Studies at the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO)

Fragment of a reality

How do you regard this decision to mount the exhibition “We have eaten the forest” fifty years after the event? Evidently, you must have different feelings than our own for the people in the photographs, among whom you lived, and for the artifacts, which you saw in use, not simply preserved under glass … Yes and no. They are familiar to me, still a part of me, but at the same time I can look objectively at them, as I can at the person I was at the time. It is not a question of forgetting, of the passage of time, but rather of a certain autonomy of judgment that comes naturally to one. While in the field, I always forced myself to put to one side or distance myself from my esthetic and moral criteria, tastes, and spontaneous inclinations. Isn’t the exhibition also as much about yourself as it is about the people of Sar Luk? Your notebooks are featured in it, quite rightly, as being among the most striking artifacts. I drove myself to collect all that I saw, heard, touched and felt …avoiding any a priori and therefore arbitrary selectivity. I made systematic note of vocabulary and lexis in the various contexts in which they were used, drew pictures of artifacts, actions and techniques, recorded and transcribed invocations and songs, photographed people and rituals… the major events of social life along with the everyday. This wasn’t just a subjective choice, one that might seem absurd to those who set off with an analysis grid to fill in, but an adopted method, a pathway into the language of these people, in every sense of the word. I wanted to get away from our usual categories, which cut up reality, and also to dispense with an interpreter, who would have tried to translate and therefore rationalize his culture for me. That said, one cannot, of course, transcribe everything, and I knew that all I was doing was producing one point of view of this society, but I wanted it to come from within and be as accurate as possible. In this respect, in a way, We have eaten the forest takes ethnography to its limits, being both a masterpiece of description and continued unfolding lyricism, borne by a copious versified oral literature. Were you aware of its heterodox, almost experimental character? I strove above all to give awareness to this fragment of a reality which was not experienced as our own is, but which is nonetheless one aspect of our common humanity. And detail, repetition of actions and formulae, the slightest phenomena, are essential, making up the fabric, and the poetry, of everyday life. Literary critics were in fact the first to understand my intentions, people like Maurice Nadeau and Edouard Glissant. I also wanted to record the phenomena for the people of Sar Luk themselves, to reconstruct a view of their culture, hoping that they would one day be able to appropriate it, avoid criticizing it, exactly because it would be closer to their language.

A woman with her son © Georges Condominas

Ethnography, how it works?

The very detailed notes and the drawings in your investigative notebooks give the artifacts you brought back real social depth. We know how they were made, what they were used for, their history… The artifact information sheets at ethnographic museums, particularly the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, have always been a cause of frustration to me. At best, they describe, classify, and pinpoint the year and place the item was collected, but they really tell us nothing about the life of an artifact. I wanted to get beyond this and remind people that the artifact on display was not just an inert object, but had its own life history and was once part of a whole. And on each occasion, I always took the enquiry as far as I could. In general, I knew how and why an artifact was made, who had owned it, and against what it had been exchanged… Up to the time I or someone else acquired it – what sum was paid, and in what coinage. At that time, the villagers knew almost nothing of money. All at once, we had got away from a static sheet of information, and had in its place the story of a journey, a piece of social history. It seemed the natural thing for you to do, to approach a society because it had a so-called ‘material’ culture, and you were following in the footsteps of Leroi-Gourhan by doing so. But even though you are interested in technology, we get the feeling that – far from evolutionist and diffusionist typologies – it was rather the immaterial dimensions of the artifacts that interested you? Material culture – artifacts and techniques – is too often neglected by ethnologists today. Yet far from being a secondary and rather unprepossessing aspect, it is one of the surest ways of getting to a society’s symbolic structures. In a village like Sar Luk, all techniques of manufacture, acquisition, hunting, fishing, mining and agriculture – all had an intricate religious and social aspect. No technical process was without associated rituals, no artifact lacked a ‘guarantee’ from a spirit. The symbolic, immaterial aspect is always present, even in what may appear to us to be absolutely material in kind. It is us who put technique or material under a separate heading. Ethnography, with an artifact or action as starting point, can come up with an endless chain of information. Which is the reason for the many drawings in my notes – they were an essential aid for the lexicon I was gradually putting together, but also often a way of coming up against another dimension. And it’s easier to draw objects than spirits, especially when the latter have no form! Quite right! And once you have the words for the different parts of an artifact, you can spot the verbal forms describing technical actions. The same method applies just as well to rituals, which are also technical procedures. Spirits are not free of technology! There are commonplace artifacts that any villager knows how to make – for use in the house or in the fields – and there are exchanged artifacts - jars, gongs, cauldrons – made elsewhere, coming into play, in particular, in marriage transactions. They are not valued in the same way … That’s true, and such distinctions, often rather more subtle than we think, made up a part of the investigation. The idea of ‘value’ is also difficult to define, all the more so because it is constantly evolving. For artifacts of high symbolic value, exchanges between villagers worked according to what I called a ‘multiple money’ economy. A system of equivalences exists, expressed in buffaloes, jars, gongs, etc. It is worth noting that woven cloth is an important item in such exchanges. This is produced by the village, and is exclusively women’s work. It is said that a house containing good weavers has its fortune made. But value is also accorded artifacts because of personal ties to them – you’re not going to lend out such and such a bit of decorated basketwork because you’re simply too attached to it.

Man pectoral Bronze, coton, perle. 71 1951 3 233 © musée du quai Branly, photo Patrick Gries/Bruno Descoings	Field notebook: The Forge © Georges Condominas / musée du quai Branly collections

How did the villagers regard manufactured items from ‘outside’? Were there already many around at the time? And what view did they have of the ethnologist’s possessions? Very few outside items had reached the village at that point, but some were much appreciated – jerry cans in particular, which were owned by those who had had contact with the army. As for the ethnologist’s possessions, as described by Norman Lewis, after a visit to Sar Luk in my absence, in his book A Dragon Apparent – the table, chair and oil-lamp furnishing my house, which stood by itself in the village – the Mnong Gar showed little interest in them. They sometimes found my books intriguing, but they were largely considered as being one of my permanent features. The same went for my notebooks, in which I was constantly to be seen writing, and which I think they saw as a simple extension of my person. Nobody was tempted by them.

Esthetics

You say that you did not allow yourself to bring your own tastes to bear in Sar Luk, or to make esthetic judgments on things. But how did the villagers themselves make judgments on them? What were their criteria? Criteria varied enormously, depending on the person, the artifact and the occasion, but I believe that everything came back to a notion of ‘suitability’, to go well with, to be appropriate for, to be at ease … For example, such and such a machete, whose form and curve I admire today, they appreciate for its ‘adaptability’. But behind this latter term, which puts the idea in a nutshell, it should be understood that they find it, all at once, to be comfortable to handle, easy to carry on the shoulder, and effective, cutting well and a powerful weapon. This is not to say that they take no purely esthetic pleasure in it. That is something that is shared by all craftsmen. I remember having once seen an old carpenter’s plane on display by itself in the window of a Paris antique dealer, and it seemed superbly beautiful to me. But the craftsman who once used it, held it in his hands, must have had different reasons for the satisfaction it gave him.

Machete Bambou, steel, wood  71.1950.24.11 © musée du quai Branly, photo Patrick Gries/Bruno Descoings

And the same applies to a gong. It’s not only its appearance or sound that matters. You touch it, carry it, strike it – you must feel in tune with it, with its spirit in fact? Yes, and in Sar Luk the njau cing, the ‘medium (tuner) of plate gongs’ was often called upon. This is another dimension again, an essential one, the fact that being in harmony with an object is given approval by the spirits, and first of all by the ancestors. When all is said and done, it is they who put things in harmony for us. The ‘look’ isn’t absent from criteria, however. Bodily adornments are worn specifically to add ‘beauty’. We also often say of decorations used in major ritual ceremonies that they have been created to please the eyes of invited spirits. Isn’t this also true in Sar Luk? Decorative art is not highly developed among the Mnong Gar. But buffaloes are adorned for sacrifices, and there are certainly forms of elegance for the young. Here again, the spirits are watching over matters, and it is they who inspire creation of such adornments. Human beings have no real autonomy; everything is dictated by the ancestors, which does have its advantages. The same holds for motifs used in weaving; the people of Sar Luk considered the Mnong Gar to have a quite distinctive style. They only found it beautiful in the sense that it followed the predilections of the ancestors, and that they felt at ease with such motifs, each of which also had its symbolic meaning. To turn to their concept of physical beauty, I was told that my teeth – which were not filed down, as it was their custom to do – were ugly, and that I had the mouth of a buffalo!

Woman with earring © Georges Condominas	Hairpins 71.1951.3.187.1-2 a Pheasant feathers, pearl, coton © musée du quai Branly/ Patrick Gries

If the ancestors dictate everything, then the concept of the individual artist doesn’t exist? There are no specialists? Each villager knows how to do everything: know-how is shared – but there are talents that stand out and are recognized. Some are known for being good sculptors or engravers, and their aid might be sought to carve a coffin or certain kinds of village decorations. Some of the women have a reputation as weavers, even well outside the village itself. This is also true in other areas. For example, one of the village kuang (‘powerful men’) had a real talent for telling tales of justice rendered. They said of him that he ‘did well’.  I was able to see for myself the effect his simple presence had upon them, and when I translated his words, it became clear what remarkable literature they made.

Buffalo sacrifice as a total art

Collective buffalo sacrifice is the highpoint of social life, and is also a kind of esthetic accomplishment. Might it be said that it is the most successful communal expression of this notion of ‘collective well-being? Certainly. Aside from the ritual’s dramatic aspect, it is a time when the villagers are in total harmony with each other, the ancestors and all the guests, humans and spirits alike. The village becomes a sacred place, an area of plenitude, dlang ram, where the ‘joyful soul’ is a shared experience, where people must amuse themselves collectively, eat well and drink well. Arguments are not allowed, or the spirits would be angry. A collective responsibility reigns: all households must help one another, and nobody may shirk his duty.

Buffalo's sacrifice © Georges Condominas

You wrote that this was a total social event. Yes, because every aspect of social life is included here, each overlapping the other. Religious, of course – this is the renewal of the contractual relationship formed with the spirits, and a certain amount of negotiating is involved: they perform the sacrifice, and honor the spirits by so doing, but in return they expect protection for the village against disease, good harvests, and so on. A reciprocal agreement is somehow imposed by the sacrifice. It is also a time for public expression of family and neighborly relationships; alliances are strengthened and existing relationships confirmed – a debt owed to a relation might be paid back, for example – and new relationships are also made for the future. It is a special occasion for meetings between young people, often cousins, leading to marriage. And the economic aspect is omnipresent, the highly regulated sharing out of the meat of the sacrificed animals being particularly emblematic. And it’s total art: invocations, songs, rhythmic actions, decorations.. The sacrifice requires the coming together, the concentration, of all those talents that we would label artistic: iron and bamboo work, musical and plastic expression, right down to the art of cookery. And it is powerfully theatrical, for it is also a symbolic confrontation with an affective charge, a collective emotion that is absent from everyday life. Someone like Antonin Artaud, for example, in the way he saw Balinese theatre, comes very close to this idea of ritual as total art. One must also make mention of the olfactory aspect: the smell of the cooking meat is important, a sign that this is a time for feasting, crucial to everyone taking part in the festival.

Mnong Gar sabre used during the Buffalo sacrifice Wood, bambou, steel, coton  71.1951.3.54.1-2e © musée du quai Branly/ Patrick Gries/ Bruno Descoings

Might it be said that the presence of gods in the village means that the villagers’ collective performance must be beyond reproach, and that exceptional forms of expression are required? This is most certainly evident as regards how words are used. Three ways are employed during the ritual: speech, song, and also – a blend of the two – chanting, a bit like our Rap music today. This latter form is used for invocations, particularly when the spirits are called upon, inviting them to the sacrifice. It is generally only the most beautiful poetry that is to be heard during these effervescent days and nights – such as the songs of a young boy to the buffalo on the eve of the sacrifice, almost breathed in its ear, answered by a threnody chanted to the jar by a young girl. But there are also processions of gongs and drum playing, rhythms that would be unthinkable at other times. And then, to return to them, large numbers of artifacts are specially made for the ceremony, either for decorative or for ritual purposes. They are making yaang, that’s to say, they are making sacred, they are making god.

An impermanent and multiform sacredness

Among the major rituals you have written about are the shamanic séances. But in these, action is more individualized, almost totally in the hands of the njau mhö? Let’s say that the shaman’s voice is essential to the event. But he also relies heavily on the participants – he is the leader, but they are an accompaniment to his work. He will, for example, have the family follow his wanderings through the Beyond in search of the buffalo-soul of their sick child. Unlike the major sacrificial festivals, a festive side is lacking here. There is suffering to relieve, and the participants’ anxiety to ease. The shaman, the njau mhö, must really know how to lead the session and ‘keep’ his patients – not always easy to do, for though he is recognized as possessing special skills, he is not a professional, but socially speaking, just another villager like any other. In fact, no permanent representation or institutionalization of the sacred or religious exists. No places of worship or priests, and no representation of divinity. And yet, one has the feeling that supernature, as we might call it, never ceases to interfere in human affairs? In effect, yes, because, just as there are no real social categories in the village – although there are those that are richer and those that are poorer – there is no impenetrable border between categories of beings. Mnong Gar ontology sees each earthly being as having a corresponding entity in the Beyond, a buffalo-soul for a man, which is an exteriorization of his life-force, and which is brought up by the Spirits. Which is why it is necessary to honor the latter on a regular basis. The village must also perform regular rituals to guard itself against caak, malevolent beings whose attacks are feared by its inhabitants.

Shamanism figuration Bambou 71.1951.3.274 © musée du quai Branly, photo Patrick Gries/Valérie Torre

In this latter case, the exorcist is brought in, along with the symbolic artifacts – figurative this time –that he requires, a large number of examples of which you brought back with you. Yes, woven or modeled figurines incarnating a dik, a ‘slave’, and wood whittlings representing buffaloes, pigs, and so on … These are simulacra that the exorcist offers or sacrifices to such spirits to get them to leave the villagers in peace. But the latter must see them as possessing a reality of their own: they are actually consumed by the caak, as a guarantee of village safety. We are speaking, then, of a kind of permanent ritualization, largely minimal in kind, admittedly, but necessitated by the unceasing correspondence between nature and supernature, the continuity between visible and invisible. But it is circumstances that make a place sacred, the performance of a ritual, and that endow an artifact with symbolic power. There is no permanent place for the sacred, no mystique of the sacred artifact, nor really any sacred art of the kind normally associated with world religions? Absolutely. Artifacts, even those used upon ritual occasions, only have circumstantial value. Which is why it is of interest to know and understand the original context in which they were used. As regards the societies in which I worked, I have always been amused to see collectors making up a whole mythology based on the supposed sacredness of such and such an item. I myself have a dual relationship with the artifacts I brought back, always with the villagers’ approval, of course. A relationship which I believe to be scientific and professional, with, as I have already mentioned, the most thorough investigation possible, enabling them to be placed accurately in their culture of origin and in the history of that culture. The resulting documentation must be available, as it is here, at the museum where they are conserved. But also a personal relationship, free, based on my own esthetic predilections and my own culture. To the point that ‘recycling’ an artifact that belongs to me, to give it a use other than that for which it might have been originally designed, does not seem iconoclastic to me, but simply one more stage in its history.

What memories of Sar Luk?

There remains the question of how the artifacts are presented, meant as they are to represent the culture from which they came. The worst danger, one resulting in ‘neutralization’ of a society one is claiming to exhibit, would be an abusive re-contextualizing, an interpretation made for ideological or falsely didactic reasons… You may remark that this is generally the case with people who know nothing of the history of the artifacts, which had already been separated from their society of origin when they were obtained, or which had simply been run off with, nor of the history of the society in question. The paradox is that today’s ethnologists hesitate, even refuse to make collections, fearing that it would be seen as politically incorrect to do so. But at the same time, local traders, and even civil servants, within the cultures themselves strip bare entire regions without a second thought. South-East Asia is not exempt from this type of re-presentation, which seeks to reify the cultures of ‘minority ethnic groups’ by highlighting certain arbitrarily selected traits such as dances, weaving styles and so on, while reducing them politically at the same time… Yes, you’re right. Like you, I know of countless examples of such distressing attempts. And they’re a growing trend, I’m afraid. Speaking of which, is Sar Luk better protected from this risk as a result of your work? I would like to be able to answer positively, but I can’t be sure. At first sight, the village doesn’t seem to have much to do with the place I knew, and war has affected its people profoundly. What struck me when I returned, however, was that its social memory was alive and well. What I said – and what I represented, partly legendary – produced the most extraordinary resonances, even among the youngest. That said, I am not the keeper of their memory, which belongs to them alone and is surely theirs to do with as they wish. If you must play the part of witness in this exhibition, it would finally be the witness of what? At the risk of surprising you and of seeming out of place or rather immodest, what comes to mind is the ideal of Henri Matisse’s chapel at Vence. The idea of an apprehension of totality, where reality is not cut up into separate pieces, but where everything works together in an esthetic of unity. Ultimately, that is what I believe my Sar Luk experience was.

Extract from the catalogue “We have eaten the forest …” Georges Condominas Vietnam, edited by Christine Hemmet, 2006, writed by Christine Hemmet, Curator of Asian collection, musée du quai Branly, Yves Goudineau, Director of Studies at the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) and Jérémy Jammes, PhD in anthropology, University of Paris X-Nanterre Photographs of Georges Condominas and Hoang Canh Duon musée du quai Branly - Actes Sud co-publication

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