SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
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né I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes<br />
Tropical Semiotics I n j<br />
the ka buru said to the young woman, "Remove all your clothing and leave it<br />
at the base of the tree here; take my clothing instead before you climb up."<br />
The young woman did so and climbed up the tree. While she was in the top<br />
branches picking leaves, she heard the ka buru whispering to herself below.<br />
"What is she saying?" the young woman wondered and called out to the ka<br />
buru. "No, it is only that some biting ants have stung me," the older woman<br />
replied. Then the young woman heard the sound of the tree trunk being struck<br />
repeatedly. "Now what is she doing?" she wondered. The ka buru called out<br />
to her, "I am going to marry your husband. You will stay here and die." And<br />
with that, the trunk of the hagenamo tree elongated greatly and the branches<br />
spread out in all directions and the young woman was marooned in the top of<br />
the tree. She looked down at the ground now far below her and thought, "How<br />
shall I leave this place now?" and she cried. That night she slept. In the morning<br />
she awoke and found that someone had built a fireplace and a small house.<br />
In this house she lived. At night while she slept, someone had fetched firewood<br />
and with this she made a fire.<br />
She lived in this manner in the little house in the hagenamo treetop and<br />
presently she became pregnant. She continued to live in this manner, and then<br />
she bore a son. She gave birth to this child in a small confinement hut that<br />
someone had built for her. The unseen provider also began to bring food for<br />
the small infant boy as well as the mother. When the child grew up to be a<br />
toddler, one night the woman merely pretended to be asleep. Waiting there in<br />
the dark, a man arrived and held the child. The woman quickly arose and<br />
grabbed the man's wrist. He said to the woman, "Release me," but she refused.<br />
Finally, the man said to her, "The ka buru who trapped you here is married<br />
to your husband. But here near this tree where you live, they will soon come<br />
to cut down a sago palm. You must make a length of hagenamo rope and tie<br />
one end onto the middle of the sago frond. In this manner, you may pull yourself<br />
and your child onto the top of the palm. When they come to cut down the<br />
palm, you can then jump off and return to the ground." The woman did as<br />
the man instructed her, and with the aid of the rope she and her child pulled<br />
themselves onto the sago palm.<br />
The ka buru and her husband arrived to set up the sago-processing equipment.<br />
While the ka buru erected the washing trough, the man began to chop<br />
down the palm. When it fell, he went toward the top to remove the fronds and<br />
gave a cry of surprise when he saw his other wife sitting there with a child.<br />
The ka buru heard his exclamation and called out to him, "What is it?" "No,"<br />
he replied. "Some wasps have stung me." The ka buru asked suspiciously,<br />
"You haven't found another woman perhaps?" The man meanwhile looked at<br />
his long-abandoned wife and was filled with shame. He brought her over to<br />
where the ka buru was making sago and the two women continued working<br />
together. They all returned when the task was done and lived together.<br />
The two women began making a garden together, but the ka buru would<br />
constantly shift the boundary marker between her ground and the younger cowife's<br />
ground, making her own bigger. The younger woman repeatedly moved<br />
the marker back to its proper place and the two eventually fought. The husband<br />
discovered their quarrel and blaming the younger wife, hit her on the<br />
head with a stick, drawing blood. The young woman became very disconsolate<br />
and remembered the words of her treetop husband: "While you live with your<br />
husband on the earth, I will be around. If he mistreats you, call out to me, I<br />
will be flying in the sky above." For he was really a hornbill and his name was<br />
Ayayawego or Yiakamuna. Now the young woman called out to him, "Ayayawego,<br />
Yiakamuna, come fetch me!" There she waited and she heard the cry<br />
of the hornbill. It approached and grabbed the woman by her hair and pulled<br />
her up along with her child. They then returned to their treetop home. The<br />
overwrought husband cried, "Come back, wife!" But in vain. At the same<br />
time, the ka buru turned into a cassowary and crying "hoahoa," she departed.<br />
That is all.<br />
Any mature Foi person hearing a recitation of this story would bring to the<br />
act of interpretation a series of collective understandings, expressions, categorizations,<br />
and metaphors which do not need to be explicitly stated in the narrative.<br />
In the case at hand, these presuppositions might include: (i) the principle that<br />
providing nourishment for a child is an essential part of being a parent, (z) the<br />
metaphor of calling co-wives "sisters" and the norm that, despite inevitable tensions,<br />
they are supposed to cooperate in supporting their husband, (3) the rule<br />
that collecting leaves of the hagenamo tree is a task for female labor, while production<br />
of sago requires the intersexual cooperation of a marital couple, (4) the<br />
knowledge of other folktales saying that, originally, the hornbill hawk lived on<br />
land and the cassowary in the sky, until the two exchanged positions, and (5)<br />
the metaphorical labeling of the hornbill and the cassowary as "cross-cousins."<br />
Given these assumptions, the story is obviously a commentary on the "difficulties<br />
of polygyny and its resolution through the separate marriages of women" (Weiner<br />
1988:163).<br />
Weiner's formal analysis can be condensed in the following list of substitutions<br />
(some of which I have expressed differently for clarity):<br />
A: solitary female labor in the garden to collaborative female labor gathering<br />
edible hagenamo leaves<br />
B: wife puts on ogress's clothing<br />
C: through treachery, ogress replaces wife, who moves from ground to treetop<br />
D: terrestrial female treachery replaced by arboreal male nurturance<br />
E: wife, who ascended on hagenamo tree, descends on sago palm<br />
F: terrestrial husband replaces arboreal husband; female cooperation replaces<br />
rivalry<br />
Substitution F returns the plot to the original situation, which has been significantly<br />
transformed: whereas at the beginning the ogress, though calling the<br />
young woman 'sister,' tries to steal her husband, at F the two women find themselves<br />
in the relation of co-wives.<br />
Although up to this point only half of the story has been segmented, it is<br />
possible to subject the method to a provisional evaluation by seeing if these sub-