SLFK 212, February 12, 2004
Last class - some more on anomaly and dealing with it
Emphasis on the fact that what makes something anomalous can vary a great deal
Can be matter out of place
Or something from the wrong time
Or something that is the wrong shape
What I didn't do and this matters for ritual
Once something is labeled as anomalous for one reason
All sorts of anomalous features attributed to it
Gypsies are travelers; they don't live in one place like regular people
Therefore they are lazy and don't work
Therefore they have the ability to tell fortunes
Therefore they must also steal and eat babies
Rock stars are different
Therefore they have strange sex lives
Are addicted to drugs
Like Elephant Man, many accept this image and try to live up to
Professors are weird - intellectual rather than financial pursuits
Absent-minded professor
Student to me in grocery store - you shop???
Little bit about magic
It's a kind of thinking that is logic and not
Used in commercials
If you use same product as movie star you will look like one
If you use Herbal Essence, you get more than clean hair
Finally - external and internal power
Two society types - many more, but two extremes
Grid and group
Grid - things are very structured
There are official positions of power and prestige
Persons in those positions have power
Which is enforced overtly, like by police protection
US does well for this, though it seems to be going further and further away
This is power of person in political office, or running for it
More primaries Kerry wins, the more power he is seen have power
The more people want to have contact with him
Shake hands, kiss babies
And also vote for him
VA festival of the Book, Film Festival
How many people want to see and be seen with famous actors, authors
Internal power of three types:
1. That of a person who is permanently anomalous, on the fringes of society
Beggar who comes to your house and asks for something
You refuse, perhaps because, in subsistence economy, you have nothing to give
But you feel bad
Then child gets sick
Must have been evil-eyed by the beggar
Mom and the gypsy
Veresai and the man with the funny eyes
Power of a witch would go here
Issue of witchcraft complicated
Don't call selves that and don't consider selves bad
In their opinion, what they do is heal and what they say is prayers
Closest thing US might be fear of beggar
Or of the people who accost you at a traffic light to wash windshield
What can these people do to you?
Yet they are scary
Kathleen and me - Russian pollution beliefs affect the person
Make you, someone close to you, farm animal sick
American - pollution affects property
Beggars at traffic light affect car
Students in neighborhood affect resale value
2. That of a person who is TEMPORARILY anomalous
This is a person in a transitional state, say from childhood to adulthood
From unmarried to married
This very much applies to what we are doing
Power of the bride - she is the one who undergoes greatest transition at a Russian wedding
Already noted the contradiction of wanting her and fearing her as stranger
All sorts of nasty things get done to her
Yet she can make a drought go away by sprinkling water while she walks down street
Vegetation at a wedding
Other thing used for drought is the graves of suicides, which are normally considered VERY bad
Burial of suicides on margins of the graveyard
This sort of thing very much exists in US
Desire to dance with bride at the wedding
Bride (and groom) can predict future - throw bouquet, garter
3. Power of an ordinary person in an anomalous situation
When weaning is not done properly, person can grow up with evil eye
Person who is jealous can evil eye someone, even if they don't mean to
Deflection of compliments
But we will have more of this with transgression of internal lines and pollution beliefs.
Very peculiar Russian and Ukrainian situation: person who is in a better position
When all should be equal
Got there by illegitimate means
Implications for post-Soviet situation and chances of entering the market economy
Belief that economic success is not based on savvy, but on Mafia-type connections
Section on success and failure-based approaches
Witchcraft and sorcery is failure-based
Something goes wrong, someone gets sick
And you are dealing with pollution
Whether caused by another witch
Or by some person who did something wrong, not necessarily intentionally
Position power is usually success-based - luck, mana
Feeling that it can be tangibly transmitted
As in by contact
Which is why you want to touch famous people
Identify a witch versus identifying a good Democratic presidential candidate
Someone who's got the power
Versus someone to avoid (who's also got the power, but in a different way)
Chapter on external boundaries and internal lines
Body as symbol for the body politic
Ambiguity and the resolution of ambiguity through pollution beliefs
External is attack from outside by a foreign person or agent
Internal is what happens when you transgress a rule WITHIN the society
Rule can be explicit, like a law
Or implicit like a taboo
Douglas: four kinds of social pollution worth distinguishing:
Danger pressing on external boundaries
Danger from transgressing internal lines
Danger in the margins of the lines (internal)
Internal contradiction - some basic postulates denied by other basic postulates
External - someone from outside causes harm
Can be intentional or not
Veresai and the man who makes him go blind
Mom and the gypsy
External - group sees self as under attack and protects its orifices
In the case of Russia and the former Soviet state:
Iron Curtain
Train gauges
Exile as punishment, including internal exile
In villages: attacks on strangers or blaming of strangers
House fire and stranger
Punishment of the horse thief
No external marks
Symbolically articulate in terms of body
Usually articulated in terms of sexual invasion and protection of those parts
American movies of the 1960's - the Cold War
Modern version in X-files - the black oil
Please notice how it enters the body - which orifice? Or is it an orifice?
Russian preoccupation is with the mouth
What happens if you do not cross bread
To get someone to eat your food is to forever have a bond with them
Anne in Ukraine
Wedding ritual and the bridal bath - get groom to have a sip
The child and milk - relations to all milk mothers
The powers of the born witch who has drunk no milk
What witches do when they have their night-time meetings - east and west
Food is the way to see witches, to hide from them - the bread trough
Egg shells in mouth, cheese in mouth or in shirt
Recent - articulation of problems in terms of food
Collapse of Soviet Union fears
Dental hygiene
So, for Russians, all threats, external and internal, are articulated in terms of the mouth and food
It is not just you eat the wrong stuff, or fail to cross dough before kneading it
Internal power, transmitted by the gaze, because of jealousy, will also affect food
A stranger will spoil your food supply
You placate a stranger by making him eat your food
Please notice the stuff I told them about the American chicken parts and how this plays right into Russian fears
Pregnant woman asking for food
Being denied food
Stealing food
Internal lines - you do something that you are not supposed to do - you get zapped
Anything from straight and overt - you violate a law, you get arrested
Speeding, stealing, trespassing
To the more ambiguous and hidden - you have extra-marital sex
You play with self - get hairy palms
You don't go to college - your life is ruined, at least career chances
You don't give your sweetie a gift on Valentine's day
Russian and Ukrainian material is almost entirely in this amorphous and ambiguous range. What is more, the lines are taboos, NOT doing rather than doing
Furthermore, the things you are not supposed to do are things that, under normal circumstances, you ARE supposed to do.
You should work and human being is a being that works (various proverbs to this effect)
The house and the farmstead and even outside in the field space is articulated by work
A desirable bride is a hard-working woman and you can tell by the fact that she has filled up a wedding chest with all sorts of embroidery and other cloth work.
However, if you do this on Friday, esp. while you are pregnant
You will "stitch" your baby's parts together
Like adhesions between fingers, or on eyelids
Spinning will cause umbilical cord to be wrapped around baby's neck and may strangle
If baby's dad does man's work when he is not supposed to, like chopping wood
Baby will have cleft palate
Or club feet
When someone dies, you should be concerned with taking care of the deceased and properly dispatching the soul to the after life
But if you forget to stir seed in the granary, it will not germinate come spring
But there are very clear internal lines elsewhere - perhaps to compensate
One place where there are real internal lines is with the life cycle - here, if you do not follow the proper life cycle, all sorts of things go wrong
You fail to marry, at least once, you become bride of a spirit
Man who dances with rusalki
You fail to die at the right time and in the right way - you become unquiet dead
How marriage plays out in recent times and in the urban setting
Young marriage and high divorce rate
Dangers in the margins are the dangers of liminars
Already did students and Russian women of marriageable age
But it is also BEING in the margins - you are more subject to danger during a transition time in the year than at other times
Recall the various terrorist threats (presumed) at Christmas/New Years/Holiday time this past year
Concrete margins - sit on threshold - cure and also susceptibility to other world
Hair down (for women) same
Sitting at corner of table
Looking out a window at the deceased - though it is perfectly fine and in fact proper to look at the deceased in the home, when the coffin is going down the street as long as you too are outside
Creating the portal - hole in aspen wood
Looking through a harrow
The "margin" of backwards behavior to see witches
Let's look at dangers TO the people in the margins, to liminars
Students as targets of predators
Assorted rapists in Cabell Hall bathrooms, library, hot air tunnels
L-shaped dorm and pre-millennial Halloween
Hot air tunnels as place of storage of nuclear waste
Protection magic in the American wedding - veil; not seeing bridal dress
Escape to honeymoon
Russian liminars are people in transition also like the bridal couple
Pins in groom's jacket, even now
Inviting sorcerer to the wedding - or anyone who might evil-eye
Some extreme veiling, esp. in the north
Banging pots and pans - sort of like tin cans tied to bridal car in American wedding