Sustaining desire : a structuralist interpretation of myth and male cult in central Australia
Creators: name: Morton, John A.
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1985

description: The Aranda Aborigines of Central Australia are one of the most intensively studied peoples in the world. This thesis surveys the extant literature, stretching back to the 1880's, and from it mounts a detailed investigation of Aranda religious life, in particular the mythology and the practice of the male cult. The analysis is also situated against the background of previous major interpretations of Aboriginal religion, notably by Durkheim, Roheim and Stanner, and suggests that a structuralist perspective, drawing mainly on the works of Levi-Strauss and Lacan, makes significant advances in the anthropological understanding of Central Australian religious life. Ethnographic interpretation begins in Part Two with an examination of mythology. Here five groups of myths are studied over three chapters, while a fourth chapter draws general conclusions about the nature of mythic speculation. The five myth sets comprise: 1) Central Australian (Arandic and Western Desert) sky myths; 2) stories concerned with the opening up of the world in terms of the separation of radically united contraries; 3) a single myth which accounts for the inauguration of ritual life in terms of the primordial wanderings of native cat ancestors; 4) stories which account for the origin of humanity from an initial protoplasmic mass; and 5) an individual myth accounting for the institution of a localised totemic cult in terms of a theme of generational takeover. A persistent undercurrent in these myths is that the universe comes into being as the result of a drift towards fragmentation and multiplicity which is allied to the symbolism of loss - particularly phallic loss. In the concluding chapter this theme is related to theoretical considerations emerging from structuralism, so-called post-structuralism and psychoanalysis. Part Three is an interpretation of the ritual cycle and charts the ceremonial participation of Aranda men 'from womb to tomb'. Broadly speaking, the findings of this part of the thesis fall into three categories: 1) that boys make their transition to 'true' humanity when they are named after their first year of life, this event being connected to the ritual use of tjurunga (sacred boards and stones) and aligned with a trajectory of psychic development which stems from a very close involvement with women, including the latter's ritual life; 2) that this close association gives rise to a pervasive symbolism of phallic motherhood which is ritually negated when a boy reaches puberty and undergoes symbolic castration at the hands of senior men - this whole process being highly elaborated and undertaken through four rituals ('tossing', circumcision, subincision and the ingkura, sometimes known as the 'fire ceremony') whose structure is laid bare; and 3) that the symbolic castration which occurs at adolescence is logically related to the donation of blood and acquisition of knowledge and tjurunga which take place in the so-called increase rites in which men participate in the second half of their lives. The three phases of ritual life- childhood participation in women's ritual, initiation, and adult participation in men's ceremonies - are finally drawn together in terms of an ancestral cycle of reincarnation based on the identity of both old men and young infants with tjurunga. Part Four, the conclusion, situates the findings of the thesis in the psychological, moral and historical (mythical) contexts of Central Australian Aboriginal society. Drawing particularly on work done by Roheim, Stanner and LeviStrauss, it is argued that absence of historical depth, a transcendental view of life and a shallow superego are all logically related not only to each other, but also to the Aranda's conception of tjurunga and the duties that people have towards them. Tjurunga are, in effect, the embodiment of 'Aranda traditions·, linking The Dreaming, consciousness and conscience in a lasting set of collective values obtaining in an otherwise anarchic, parochial-minded world.