Seductive Mediators: The Nuuraa Performer's Ritual Persona as a Love Magician in Kelantanese Thai Society

Introduction [1] Social and ritual ambiguity is a common theme in anthropological studies. Ambiguity often presents itself in all aspects of the human condition and is culturally celebrated as the negotiation of a multiplicity of diverse and shifting classificatory schema. [2] In this paper I will suggest that the magico-seductive prowess ascribed by many Kelantanese (Thais, Chinese, and Malays) to the actor-dancers of the indigenous nuuraa theatre acquires ritual meaning when viewed as the mediation of complementary binary distinctions that Kelantanese Thais employ in structuring and animating their perceptions of social and cosmic reality. [3] The nuuraa actor, like the various Malay spirit beings discussed in Kirk Endicott's work on Malay supernaturalism, symbolically breaches the boundaries of cultural categories. [4] Mary Douglas' well-read thesis spoke of how dangerous (and often negative) power accrues to ambiguous individuals who situated themselves in the "inarticulate area, margins, confused lines, and beyond the ex ternal boundaries", in short, the unstructured and anomalous regions between implicitly contrastive classificatory systems. [5] Her remark is applicable in understanding the ritual power Kelantanese Thais ascribe to the Nuuraa. Theoretically Nuuraa are ambiguous persons who occupy important social and ritual positions in rural Kelantanese Thai social structure. Unlike other persons, the Nuuraa mediates between visible humans and their formless ancestral spirits, between a familiar and cultured humanity and a distant unpredictable animal world, and between gendered masculinity and femininity. His transgression of these symbolic dichotomies commences with his formal theatrical apprenticeship as an adolescent female impersonator. Subsequent initiation into the nuuraa dramaturgical establishment situates the actor within a hierarchy of ancestral figures from which the corpus of power-laden oral spells used in the catalyzing of love magic are believed to derive. So widespread is the general belief in the nuuraa's lascivious nature that it has become ingrained in the "collective fantasy" of most rural Kelantanese. [6] Juxtaposed "betwixt and between" a multiplicity of symbols in the Kelantanese Thai classificatory system, the Nuuraa can theoretically be considered a liminal figure. Victor Turner popularized the study of liminality, adopting the concept from Arnold Van Gennep's earlier analysis of life cycle rituals. [7] Van Gennep proposed the Latin tenn limen (lit. threshold) in reference to the intermediate state in rites of passage that lay between the neophyte's separation from, and his reaggregation into, society. Like his respected predecessor, Turner reinforced the processual view of liminality as an intermediate stage within a dynamically transformative ritual structure. This temporal definition of the ritual process with its tripartite division of separation, liminality and reaggregation, holds true when considered in the light of certain nuuraa ceremonies such as initiations. Nuuraa actors may also be considered liminal persons, though their liminal status is spatially institutionalized. Nuuraa do not re-emerge from their liminal status as does a neophyte in rites de passage; their symbolic significance and power affiliations accrue from their constant maintenance of zones of uncertainty in the social and ritual order. Thus, echoing Turner, the Nuuraa's unsurpassed magico-erotic potential stems from their liminal and ambiguous qualities. I conclude my analysis with a short observation of the Nuuraa love magician in the context of contemporary Kelantan where all forms of indigenous theatre seem to be on the losing end of the battle with cosmopolitan-type entertainments (cinema, television, videos, radio, etc.) at securing audiences. This is occurring in the midst of an antagonistic political environment that officially chastizes displays of "un-Islamic" art forms in efforts at the creation of an Islamic state within a secularized Malaysian nation-state. …