The Utopian Promise of Government
Andrew Lattas, University of Newcastle, Australia
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 12, 129-150
Below are some extracts from this article. Read the full text here.
In rural Papua New Guinea (PNG) many villagers have developed their own art of government. They have developed local schemes, techniques, and practices for creating gavman (government). In the area known as Pomio, different language groups have used the Kivung’s movements beliefs and rituals to unite and seek their own kind of government. In particular, they have sought to re-ground political legitimacy and the ethical ordering regimes of government in the dead.
It was from the underground and the dead that people derived their culture, material resources, and well-being. In the mythic past, the dead provided villagers with their songs, masks, dances, magical spells, clans, and certain species of taro, bananas, and pigs. Having provided the ordering regimes of custom, it is to the underground dead that Kivung followers turn for the modern ordering regimes of government…
The alternative worlds of the dead and the underground allowed Kivung followers to develop their own alternative clandestine versions of government and church. Those subterranean worlds are believed to reduplicate institutions in the surface world and in doing so they provide secret alternative grounds for participating in above-ground government and church structures. When Kivung followers participate in official gov- ernmental structures and practices, it often as a ‘skin’ (karamap), which serves as a cover to be pulled over the eyes of the living so as to conceal a deeper commitment to an alternative government of the dead.
The underground and the dead are the inner fruit that Kivung followers conceal through miming and participating in surface-world forms of government and church. The secret work of the underground dead has to be concealed, especially from envious edu- cated Melanesians who might angrily judge the ritual work of backward rural villagers as subversive of their legitimate authority and power.
Kivung followers emphasize that they do not reject government and mission. They especially value their moral ordering and civilizing projects; they just want those pro- jects more effectively realized in terms of their transformative promises. For this reason, they displace and mirror modernity’s structures in the underground, which provides clandestine truer versions of modernity. Rather than withdrawing from the modern world, Kivung followers reread their participation in it as a mimetic activ- ity or piksa (picture) which mirrors and draws into itself a truer unseen reality. The respected Kivung leader, Gimi, explained how this mimetic logic generated followers’ commitment and motivations through their knowledge that those down-below would copy what was being worked in the surface world.
If we do something up on top, then they [the underground] also do it. If you don’t do anything up on top, then they won’t work something down below. There are two roads that have to go together. We work its patuna [concealing skin or picture] up on top and they work its mirana [truer version] down below, that is its kaikai [food or future reward].
The dichotomy of surface versus underground, above versus below, protective skin versus inner fruit, public disguise versus hidden truth, is part of a pervasive binary logic. This logic can be found in the kinship system, where all the different Mengen clans belong to two matrilineal moieties, Magian and Marana. The major myths in Pomio are of two rival brothers, commonly called Bikpela Nutu (Big God) and Liklik Nutu (Little God).
The Salel office goes through substantial quantities of carbon paper in duplicating reports; if there is no carbon paper, secretaries laboriously copy out requests twice. It is as though the act of reduplication itself is fetishized or deemed a ritual act. Partly a copying of Western administrative forms, such copying also under- pins the mimetic logic of mirana and patuna, where a picture imitates a reality partly so as to draw it close. It is said that one copy of a report will be taken by the spiritual leader Joe (and previously Kolman) and worked in a more secret, powerful office that ordinary followers cannot see. Indeed, the main office at Salel is simply the skin, cover, or patuna of a truer underground office. In a dream, the Kol spirit medium Augustine visited this underground office at Salel and found Kolman working with his true sec- retary – Augustine’s deceased son, Joseph Seguna:
This [true office] is at Salel, but underneath. It is underneath the office that is there. This one there is just patuna, the one that is on top. The true office is there [down below] and Kolman works there with all the reports. He goes down below to work with them.
This mimetic reduplication of bureaucracy and administrative practices, this copying of Western governmental forms of copying, is not just applied to the cult’s headquar- ters. Each Kivung secretary in a village has an underground double. Moreover, as each secretary in the surface world records attendances, fines, requests, and money offerings in his books, so another secretary in the underground is recording the same information in his own books and at his own office. We enter here a world of double book-keeping which is also a world of displacement where the recorded mean- ings, statistics, and financial accounts of the surface world are re-recorded to manifest their true administrative-governmental being in the underground. The bureaucratic form becomes a magical form communicating with a double of itself something beyond itself which amplifies and redeems the recorded labours of the living.
The major rituals performed at the Kivung headquarters are called reports and involve offering money to the dead so as to buy government or, more accurately, to create its skin or picture to be later filled by its mirana (essence, hidden reality).
Otto explained:
We are working government; we are building government. The government must have a flag, it must have its own money, and it must have its own departments. The government needs to give services and it must have its officers and workmen belonging to government. Now supposing we want to become the workmen of the government, of the future government, then we must follow orders ... With all these reports [for the flag, seal, etc.], we work them so as to buy out the government; you must buy government and then this government can belong to you.
Money pledged in reports is also said to ‘straighten government’ by buying governmental autonomy. Initially money bought government from white kiaps but now it buys it more directly from the underground, which receives the soul or mirana of money offered in reports. It is this spirit of money (dare I say the spirit of capitalism) which accumulates in the World Bank from Kivung followers’ reports or requests to the dead and from their fines for cleaning away sins.
Twice a week, before they can feed the dead in their houses, followers perform a smaller private Sek, where they reflect on themselves and confess any sins. They clean themselves by thinking of their offences whilst depositing money in small glass jars that sit on the tables specially allocated for feeding the dead. One such prominent Sek jar is called Television and it is believed to watch over the household. It is called Tele- vision because a television can see everything everywhere; it can show what is hap- pening in distant countries and places and can capture and replay what happened in the past. The Television jar sits on the table for feeding male relatives and contains a watchful deceased relative who has become a malyav. This guardian spirit is ‘sat down’ into the jar by paying ten kina to the Kivung’s head office.
In a dream, Peter Avereh traveled to Salel and saw this huge Television. It was being operated by a dead person, who was watching Kivung followers in different villages by changing channels:
He was a dead person. He took this Television and he was setting it to go to each village and to me as well ... He came up to me and said ‘The Television that I have put there [at Salel] has been there for a long time. You can be in your garden or you can be wherever and whatever wrong you commit, the Television will see you. Whatever corner of the Kivung you are in, if you are not following the Constitution or these ten laws, then this Television will see it ... It doesn’t matter that you are hiding, it will see you. Later the Television will show all this and you will be judged over these wrongs of yours. Supposing you know that you committed wrongs today and you checked yourself out [confessed] then you will be alright’.
Kivung followers believe that on the Last Day, prior to the world changing, a huge Television will emerge to display each individual’s transgressions before he or she is judged by God…
The Kivung believes it is buying a future government not only with reports, banked money, confessions, purifying rituals, and the feeding of the dead but also through having sacrificed its three leaders – Koriam, Bernard, and Kolman. Their blood will also help buy government and koinapaga. In 1975 PNG received only the skin or picture of independence; a truer form is still to come. This true independence will not just be political autonomy but also economic autonomy, defined as securing one’s livelihood from one’s own ground through the help of a government of the dead.
In rural Papua New Guinea (PNG) many villagers have developed their own art of government. They have developed local schemes, techniques, and practices for creating gavman (government). In the area known as Pomio, different language groups have used the Kivung’s movements beliefs and rituals to unite and seek their own kind of government. In particular, they have sought to re-ground political legitimacy and the ethical ordering regimes of government in the dead.
It was from the underground and the dead that people derived their culture, material resources, and well-being. In the mythic past, the dead provided villagers with their songs, masks, dances, magical spells, clans, and certain species of taro, bananas, and pigs. Having provided the ordering regimes of custom, it is to the underground dead that Kivung followers turn for the modern ordering regimes of government…
The alternative worlds of the dead and the underground allowed Kivung followers to develop their own alternative clandestine versions of government and church. Those subterranean worlds are believed to reduplicate institutions in the surface world and in doing so they provide secret alternative grounds for participating in above-ground government and church structures. When Kivung followers participate in official gov- ernmental structures and practices, it often as a ‘skin’ (karamap), which serves as a cover to be pulled over the eyes of the living so as to conceal a deeper commitment to an alternative government of the dead.
The underground and the dead are the inner fruit that Kivung followers conceal through miming and participating in surface-world forms of government and church. The secret work of the underground dead has to be concealed, especially from envious edu- cated Melanesians who might angrily judge the ritual work of backward rural villagers as subversive of their legitimate authority and power.
Kivung followers emphasize that they do not reject government and mission. They especially value their moral ordering and civilizing projects; they just want those pro- jects more effectively realized in terms of their transformative promises. For this reason, they displace and mirror modernity’s structures in the underground, which provides clandestine truer versions of modernity. Rather than withdrawing from the modern world, Kivung followers reread their participation in it as a mimetic activ- ity or piksa (picture) which mirrors and draws into itself a truer unseen reality. The respected Kivung leader, Gimi, explained how this mimetic logic generated followers’ commitment and motivations through their knowledge that those down-below would copy what was being worked in the surface world.
If we do something up on top, then they [the underground] also do it. If you don’t do anything up on top, then they won’t work something down below. There are two roads that have to go together. We work its patuna [concealing skin or picture] up on top and they work its mirana [truer version] down below, that is its kaikai [food or future reward].
The dichotomy of surface versus underground, above versus below, protective skin versus inner fruit, public disguise versus hidden truth, is part of a pervasive binary logic. This logic can be found in the kinship system, where all the different Mengen clans belong to two matrilineal moieties, Magian and Marana. The major myths in Pomio are of two rival brothers, commonly called Bikpela Nutu (Big God) and Liklik Nutu (Little God).
The Salel office goes through substantial quantities of carbon paper in duplicating reports; if there is no carbon paper, secretaries laboriously copy out requests twice. It is as though the act of reduplication itself is fetishized or deemed a ritual act. Partly a copying of Western administrative forms, such copying also under- pins the mimetic logic of mirana and patuna, where a picture imitates a reality partly so as to draw it close. It is said that one copy of a report will be taken by the spiritual leader Joe (and previously Kolman) and worked in a more secret, powerful office that ordinary followers cannot see. Indeed, the main office at Salel is simply the skin, cover, or patuna of a truer underground office. In a dream, the Kol spirit medium Augustine visited this underground office at Salel and found Kolman working with his true sec- retary – Augustine’s deceased son, Joseph Seguna:
This [true office] is at Salel, but underneath. It is underneath the office that is there. This one there is just patuna, the one that is on top. The true office is there [down below] and Kolman works there with all the reports. He goes down below to work with them.
This mimetic reduplication of bureaucracy and administrative practices, this copying of Western governmental forms of copying, is not just applied to the cult’s headquar- ters. Each Kivung secretary in a village has an underground double. Moreover, as each secretary in the surface world records attendances, fines, requests, and money offerings in his books, so another secretary in the underground is recording the same information in his own books and at his own office. We enter here a world of double book-keeping which is also a world of displacement where the recorded mean- ings, statistics, and financial accounts of the surface world are re-recorded to manifest their true administrative-governmental being in the underground. The bureaucratic form becomes a magical form communicating with a double of itself something beyond itself which amplifies and redeems the recorded labours of the living.
The major rituals performed at the Kivung headquarters are called reports and involve offering money to the dead so as to buy government or, more accurately, to create its skin or picture to be later filled by its mirana (essence, hidden reality).
Otto explained:
We are working government; we are building government. The government must have a flag, it must have its own money, and it must have its own departments. The government needs to give services and it must have its officers and workmen belonging to government. Now supposing we want to become the workmen of the government, of the future government, then we must follow orders ... With all these reports [for the flag, seal, etc.], we work them so as to buy out the government; you must buy government and then this government can belong to you.
Money pledged in reports is also said to ‘straighten government’ by buying governmental autonomy. Initially money bought government from white kiaps but now it buys it more directly from the underground, which receives the soul or mirana of money offered in reports. It is this spirit of money (dare I say the spirit of capitalism) which accumulates in the World Bank from Kivung followers’ reports or requests to the dead and from their fines for cleaning away sins.
Twice a week, before they can feed the dead in their houses, followers perform a smaller private Sek, where they reflect on themselves and confess any sins. They clean themselves by thinking of their offences whilst depositing money in small glass jars that sit on the tables specially allocated for feeding the dead. One such prominent Sek jar is called Television and it is believed to watch over the household. It is called Tele- vision because a television can see everything everywhere; it can show what is hap- pening in distant countries and places and can capture and replay what happened in the past. The Television jar sits on the table for feeding male relatives and contains a watchful deceased relative who has become a malyav. This guardian spirit is ‘sat down’ into the jar by paying ten kina to the Kivung’s head office.
In a dream, Peter Avereh traveled to Salel and saw this huge Television. It was being operated by a dead person, who was watching Kivung followers in different villages by changing channels:
He was a dead person. He took this Television and he was setting it to go to each village and to me as well ... He came up to me and said ‘The Television that I have put there [at Salel] has been there for a long time. You can be in your garden or you can be wherever and whatever wrong you commit, the Television will see you. Whatever corner of the Kivung you are in, if you are not following the Constitution or these ten laws, then this Television will see it ... It doesn’t matter that you are hiding, it will see you. Later the Television will show all this and you will be judged over these wrongs of yours. Supposing you know that you committed wrongs today and you checked yourself out [confessed] then you will be alright’.
Kivung followers believe that on the Last Day, prior to the world changing, a huge Television will emerge to display each individual’s transgressions before he or she is judged by God…
The Kivung believes it is buying a future government not only with reports, banked money, confessions, purifying rituals, and the feeding of the dead but also through having sacrificed its three leaders – Koriam, Bernard, and Kolman. Their blood will also help buy government and koinapaga. In 1975 PNG received only the skin or picture of independence; a truer form is still to come. This true independence will not just be political autonomy but also economic autonomy, defined as securing one’s livelihood from one’s own ground through the help of a government of the dead.
