De Boeck, F. (1994). Of Trees and Kings: Politics and Metaphor among the Aluund of Southwestern...

Of Trees and Kings: Politics and Metaphor among the Aluund of Southwestern ZaireAuthor(s): Filip De BoeckSource: American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Aug., 1994), pp. 451-473Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645916 .

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of trees and kings: politics and metaphor among the Aluund of Southwestern Zaire

FILIP DE BOECK-University of Leuven/NFWO

It is truly so. The tree is with ears, but the child of man does not have ears. Nzaamb [the Luunda Godhead] said to the tree: sit down, and the tree sits down. The child of man does not have ears. Nzaamb said to him: sit down here but man went and walked away. The tree that Nzaamb made may be found there where it has been planted. May the sky turn dark if you are not the real tree! You are the most important tree. [If one becomes ill] because of haamb or because of a sorcerer and if [subsequently] one does not turn to you, let it then become dark! [If the illness was caused by] a sorcerer, a haamb, or a dead person,1 [and if in that case] it is to you that we turn, may the light shine!

-Therapeutic invocation made by Luunda healers to the kapwiip tree (Swartzia madagascariensis).

According to Victor Turner, the Ndembu vernacular term for symbol is derived from a verb

meaning "to blaze a trai I ... by cutting marks on a tree with one's ax or by breaking and bending branches to serve as guides back from the unknown bush to known paths." The Ndembu thus consider a symbol to be "a blaze or landmark, something that connects the unknown to the known" (Turner 1967:48). "[A]s both blaze and beacon it conveys the notion of the structured and ordered as against the unstructured and chaotic" (Turner 1969:15).

The Luunda data that are discussed here chal lenge the trail-blazing view of symbols. Like the

Ndembu, the Aluund of Southwestern Zaire are geographically situated at the periphery of the Ruund nucleus in Shaba, Zaire. Culturally and linguistically, however, they are closely related to this Ruund core. The uluund vernacular term equivalent of the Ndembu's chijikijilu, "a hunter's trail blaze on a tree," is chijiingidil, "sign" or "marker." This term does not only apply to a trail blaze but is also used in a much more general sense, which suggests that Turner's reification of the Ndembu word to become "symbol" may be too decontextualized.2

In this article, I take as a starting point one particular "landmark" in the Luunda (and Ndembu) ritual landscape. Not unsurprisingly to those familiar with the Luunda-related ethnographic material, the ritual landmark highlighted here is a tree, the kapwiip(Swartzia madagascariensis), a small, unremarkable, and almost shrublike tree with very hard wood, which grows in the wooded savanna. Some symbolic aspects of this tree have been mentioned by Turner in an isolated and unconnected way for the specific contexts of isoma and other Ndembu therapeutic rituals (Turner 1967:316, 331 ff., 354ff.; 1969:23ff.), wuyang'a hunting ritual (Turner 1967:289), and kayong'u divination ritual (Turner 1975:260, 322, 333).

By means of a detailed analysis of the relationship between the political body and a particular species of tree among the Aluund of Southwestern Zaire, this article demonstrates the specific ways in which traditionalpolitical structure and ideology are constituted by ritual and vice versa. Secondly, it offers a reflection upon the

ways in which vernacular concepts are translated into anthropological metalan-

guage and presents a reconsideration of the currently used concepts of symbol and

metaphor. [Central Africa, enthronement ritual, kingship, metaphor theory, personhood, tree symbolism]

American Ethnologist 21 (3):451-473. Copyright ? 1994, American Anthropological Association.

of trees and kings 451



Not unlike the Ndembu, the Aluund conceive of trees and human beings as strikingly similar in many ways. Trees may have anthropomorphic connotations, whereas human characteristics and intentions are often referred to in botanical terms. The kapwiip tree, in particular, plays a very prominent role and occurs in almost all ritual contexts. The Aluund refer to this tree as the "elder" (mukuluump) of all trees. It belongs to a class of trees that serve as depositories of evil, polluting, or otherwise undesirable substances in a ritual context and is considered to have a

guarding and/or purifying capacity. The kapwiip possesses this quality more than the other trees. Evil sticks to the kapwiip and may be ritual ly transferred (-shemunween) to it. It is almost always at the foot of this tree that curative treatments and purification rituals are performed. Therefore, Luunda healers (ambuki; singular, mbuki) invariably invoke the kapwiip, both at the start and at the end of a therapeutic ritual, in the manner illustrated above.

The first purpose of this article is to offer a reflection on the nature of individual and societal (including political) health among the Aluund. I will do so by drawing out crucial links between the kapwiip tree, standard therapeutic invocations of this tree, and the Luunda political body. I thereby intend to demonstrate the intrinsic relationship between power and prayer, or politics and ritual, and the ways in which both constitute each other.

By evoking the metaphor of the tree, healers refer in a nonpropositional way to a broader context of relations that exists between the fields of the human body, the social group, and the natural world, against which Luunda notions of health, fertility, prosperity, and (social and political) well-being have to be viewed. For the Aluund, health results from the integration or interlinking of these three (corporeal, social, and cosmological) fields, which they regard as being intricately tied together, as in a web of "knots" (nkat). The metaphors of the knot (-puund, munuung, lukat), of tying and interjoining (discussed at greater length in De Boeck 1991c), underly much of the Aluund's conceptions with regard to the cohesion, perpetuation, and strengthening of the individual and the community, of their ritual actions to enhance life and promote life-transmission and fertility, and of their experience of the human body.

On a metalevel, the therapeutic invocations of the kapwiip tree may be understood as a metaphorical message concerning the nature of ritual interjoining. I will show how the kapwiip tree itself represents, in a basically nondiscursive way, these "knotting" or mediating qualities (for example, in terms of its color symbolism). In this respect, the tree metaphorically relates to the royal body politic, in this case that of the sovereign paramount Luunda titleholder (mwaant mwiin mangaand), who stands at the apex of the political superstructure in Luunda-land.

The kapwiip tree symbolically links the complex and rich roles of healer and political ruler to one another. Within the confines of this article, however, I will focus my attention on the figure of the paramount titleholder only. As I will show, the paramount mwaants royal body appears as the ultimate "knot," the mediating and interconnecting instance. As such, the political body forms the exemplary embodiment of the dynamics that maintain and perpetuate society at large. The fertility, health, and communal welfare of the Luunda community is explicitly based upon the preservation of the mwaant's corporeal integrity, for the office of the paramount mwaantis not an impersonal, abstract fiction but, on the contrary, a powerful reality that is concretely exemplified in the "fleshy medium," as Feeley-Harnik (1985:281) calls it, of the royal body. I suggest that the mediating and interlinking capacities of the titleholder's ritual corporeal praxis identify him with the kapwiip tree, and that both the metaphor of the royal body and of the kapwiip tree convey essential characteristics of Luunda notions of health, fertility, prosperity, and individual and societal well-being.

Starting from the specific ethnographic problem of the relationship between the kapwiip tree and the Luunda political body, I secondly address a more general problem, having to do with the way in which ethnographic data are represented and translated into anthropological metalanguage, and the repercussions this has for our understanding of these data (and ultimately for the possibilities of cross-cultural comparison and the establishment of a dialogue with

452 american ethnologist



someone else's field data). Instead of providing a more or less isolated analysis of a particular ritual context to grasp what "blazes" such as the kapwiip tree are about, I intend to break out of the straitjacket of the ritual context in order to draw out associations and "partial connections" (Strathern 1991) between seemingly unconnected elements. These include objects, notions of

spatial and temporal organization, performances, utterances, and practices and notions of body-self, of social body and political body, of health and illness, and of personhood, mentality, and emotion. In the middle section of this article, I will compare these practices and uses of meaning-making in various contexts and on various levels of the Luunda world. I will, for example, discuss Luunda notions of elderhood and chiefship by drawing out Luunda practices and related ways of meaning generation through complex and often paradoxical directional movements and connections, which may simultaneously include the movement between inner and outer convergence on and circulation around still centers, as well as movements of knotting and flowing.

Strathern (1991:xx) remarks: "The relativising effect of multiple perspectives will make everything seem partial; the recurrence of similar propositions and bits of information will make everything seem connected.... Partial connections require images other than those taxono- mies or configurations that compel one to look for overarching principles or for core or central features." By adopting a multiple, fractal perspective, I will show that the Aluund do not in the first place perceive so-called key elements such as the kapwiip as central landmarks or "dominant symbols" (Turner 1967:22) (even when "polysemic" or "multivocal") that condense all of their symbolical meaning within a particular ritual context and thereby make the inchoate and opaque transparent and convey the notion of the structured and ordered as against the chaotic. Extrapolating to the kapwiip Lambek's recent anti-reflectionist argument (Lambek 1992) concerning taboo as act instead of fact, I would say that for the Aluund the key concept is not a "thing," the tree or even the knot, as symbol, but the acts and practices of knotting and their reverberations. Rather than being grasped in a conscious, rational, and discursive way as symbol in Turner's sense, elements such as the tree appear and are experienced in a fractal way, through their establishment of partial, shifting connections between various ritual and daily contexts.

The pervasive Luunda metaphors of knotting and tying suggest a perspective on the dynamics of symbolical and metaphorical processes that necessitates a reconsideration of the functionalist and objectivist notion of the "dominant symbol," the "root metaphor" (Turner 1974), or the "core sign-image" (Fernandez 1986:47) as a unidirectional movement or "strategy for dealing with a situation" (Fernandez 1986:8), that is for making the abstract concrete, or for leading one out of the unknown bush onto known paths. In the final section of this article, I argue that it does not suffice to look at the workings or the "goals" of such metaphors and symbols (Turner 1 968b), not even to analyze their plural or "polytropic" interplay (Friedrich 1991), but that it is necessary to open up the notions of metaphor and symbol as they are commonly used in anthropological writing today into more multidirectional concepts.

Ultimately, the extension of the notions of symbol and metaphor leaves us with a question already raised by van der Geest and Reynolds Whyte (1991:174), namely, whether the extrapolation of "our" concepts of metaphor to other cultures (or, I would add, the translation of vernacular terms into our metaconcepts, as in Turner's Ndembu example above) remains valid at all, and whether our understanding of processes of meaning generation and representation should not be carried "beyond metaphor" (Fernandez 1991), in spite of the current enthusiasm for concepts such as metaphor in anthropological interpretation.

sociocultural context

The village of Nzofu, where fieldwork was carried out, forms the traditional political center of the Mabeet, the land of the western Aluund, situated in the southwestern corner of Zaire's




Bandundu province (Kwaango subregion). Luunda-land, roughly delineated by the triangle that is formed by the rivers Koombo, Waamba, and Tundwila, occupies a major part of the administrative zone of Kahemba, an area of some 20,000 square kilometers. Nzofu, which borders on Angola, is situated some 250 kilometers (by road) from this administrative center (see Figure 1). The total Luunda population in the Mabeet numbers an estimated 30,000. The village of Nzofu-with its 200 inhabitants it is one of the largest villages in the Mabeet-is considered the "royal" village (musuumb), where the Kwaango's paramount Luunda titleholder Nzav Cheend a Mashiind holds his court. The royal village is also referred to as a "knot" (mpuund): its court forms the central nodal point of a wide-ranging network that connects the numerous small villages and hamlets that lay dispersed in a glowing landscape of endless hills and valleys (hence the name mabeet, literally "holes"), an ecologically varied habitat, characterized by its mixed vegetation of savanna, bush, flood plains, and large stretches of gallery forest.

The Luunda descent system combines the matriline of both one's father's side (ku utaatukw) and one's mother's side (ku umaakw). This combination is characterized by its asymmetry: the maternal side is the more overt or dominant one, whereas the paternal side is more submerged. With regard to the father's side, the father and his brothers play an important role in daily life. The particular mixture of paternal and maternal elements gives rise to the dysharmonic combination of matrilineal descent and viri- or patrilocal (instead of the "normal" uxorilocal) residence so typical for Ndembu (Turner 1957), aRuund (Biebuyck 1957), and other Luunda-

Figure 1. General map of Zaire: Location of the Nzofu area.




related peoples in Central Africa (see White 1960). The agnatic residential household unit, referred to as "fireplace" (jiikw), is headed by a responsible elder or leemb wijiikw, who may be either a male ego's (classificatory) father or older brother. Ties to the father thus define ego's immediate residential belonging, as well as individual status and social privileges. Lineage membership, however, is predominantly reckoned in the mother's matriline, through a common, female ancestor, who is seen as a source of female regenerative powers and who is impersonated in the lineage by a senior woman, the so-called kanam in the third ascending generation ofthe matriline. A number of related residential units (majiikw), which are normally scattered over several villages, constitute a lineage or "womb" (vumw), headed by an elder, the leemb wivumw, who is normal ly one of ego's maternal uncles. Both the father and the maternal uncle (mantw) thus play a constitutive role in ego's life.

Culturally highly valued occupations, such as hunting, continue to define the main mode of existence for most Luunda men. Contrary to more northern parts of the Kwaango, the Mabeet area still abounds in game. Agriculture, on the other hand, is considered a woman's business. In the month of May, at the beginning of the dry season, men clear a part of the gallery forest to lay out a new field. The subsequent planting, weeding, and harvesting are carried out entirely by the women.

The public order is dominated by a strongly ideological masculine discourse, based on male gerontocratic authority. Women are situated at the periphery of this public social order and are subjected to the male social control, realized, for example, in the elders' authoritative speech (wiingaandj) and gaze, and expressed in metaphors of verticality and linearity, such as the sun in zenith, the rain, the crowing rooster, the root of the tree, the river's source upstream, the bush (considered as a higher location when compared to the gallery forest), the rainbow (nkoongol), or the flash of lightning (nzaj). At the same time, women have a part in the cyclical processes of birth, growth, decay, and death, which escape the control of the more linear and politically oriented male authority. In and through the specificities of the female body, in the intimacy of the household space where they prepare the food, and in their connectedness with the earth and the seasonal changes (because of their work on the field), women are identified with a vital, regenerative, and nurturing role. Within the daily life-scene, food and culinary processes provide many metaphors of growth, birth, life-transmission, regeneration, and female fecundity. Generation and regeneration of life are seen in relation to corporeal and cyclical processes, such as between day and night, gestation and birth, and life and death. Linked to the processes of cooking and cultivating, female regenerative powers are also metaphorically associated with the setting sun, the moon, the course of the river-flow downstream, the forest, and the underworld (kaluung).

In this way, the Luunda gender relations are characterized by a fundamental interdepend- ence, which in turn gives rise to two distinct, alternative-partly complementary, partly contrastive-gender models (see Holy 1985): a male (political, public) model of masculine dominance and female subordination on the one hand, and a female (more private and body-linked) model in which men are considered to be dependent on female nurturing and regenerative powers.

the political structure

The nature of the paramount titleholder's role is marked by the dual (masculine and feminine) entities of opposing complementarity that are at play in Luunda society at large. The paramount titleholder Nzav is believed to be a direct descendant of the mwaant yaaVs royal dynasty of the Ruund homeland in the east (in Kapanga, Shaba province). This homeland is referred to as kool.3 Some three centuries ago, Nzav and his followers started to migrate "downstream," in a western direction toward the Kwaango, whereas other Luunda groups migrated to the east and




the south (see Cunnison 1962; Hoover 1978a; Papstein 1978; Schecter 1976; Struyf 1948; Thornton 1981; Van Roy 1988; Vansina 1965).

The paramount titleholder stands at the apex of a pyramidal political superstructure. In his capacity of sovereign mwaant, he rules over a large geographical and political unit, a territory referred to as ngaand. In his court, called mwingaand ("in the ngaand," that is the epicenter or central nexus of this unit) the paramount titleholder is assisted by numerous dignitaries. Immediately below the paramount titleholder and the dignitaries of his court, the political superstructure of the Mabeet consists of some thirteen major subregional titleholders (ayilool ajim), who, according to the Luunda political ideology, accompanied Nzav duringthe migration from kool, the Luunda nucleus situated in an upstream direction toward the east (in Kapanga, Shaba province). These subregional titleholders are also considered as "children of kool " (aan a koo), that is, as belonging to descent groups of the dynastic line from kool.

Although Nzav is identified with the land of the ngaand, he does not own it. Of the paramount titleholder it is said that "he does not have the land, he has ayilool." In his capacity of mwaant mwiin mangaand, the paramount titleholder allocates large parts of the ngaand to the subregional titleholders.4 They administer their allocations of land as delegates of Nzav. In this capacity, they are given tributes (milaambw) by the inhabitants of their area. At set times, a small but highly valued part of these tributes (which include palm wine, meat from the hunt, and first crops) is turned over to the paramount titleholder.

It is the paramount titleholder who instal Is all these titleholders, distributes the regalia at their enthronement, and gives them kaolin as a sign that he delegates his ancestral power to them. All these major titles (as well as those of the numerous minor local titleholders, called ayilool akeemp) are distributed according to a system of perpetual kinship, which fictionally maintains "original" blood ties between the various titleholders, and positional succession, which identifies the actual titleholder with the original holder of the title (see Cunnison 1956). In this way, use of land and political administration are linked to perpetual titles that are defined in terms of real, putative, or fictive consanguinity and that further strengthen the typical Luunda tributary network (see Bustin 1975), which links the various layers of the smaller segmentary authority structures into one integrated whole.5 Over a large territory, there exists a real network of men united by kinship. All these titles are integrated into a vast genealogy that focuses on the person of mwaant Nzav. As such, he is compared to the sun, shining from the center, while the halo that surrounds this celestial body is compared to the titleholders and dignitaries who surround Nzav. The paramount's omnipresence illuminates all things he supervises and is the ultimate point of reference for the subjects of his ngaand. Furthermore, he is metaphorically associated to the rainbow, the flash of lightning, or pouring rain.

This cosmological imagery (common to all savanna "kingdoms" and Bantu-speaking peoples ofthe region [see de Heusch 1972; Hoover 1978b:69; Reefe 1981; Roberts 1980, 1983; Studstill 1984; Yoder 1992]) illustrates how the social and political organization of the ngaand, which is essentially pyramidal in its structure, is converted into more vertical and hierarchical relations on the level of the mwaant mwiin mangaand, turning him into a sovereign ruler.6 The vertical and hierarchical character of his rule is further indicated by the way in which the Nzav title is passed on. Unlike the titles of these ayilool, which are predominantly inherited according to a matrilineal principle from mother's brother to sister's son, the paramount title of Nzav is inherited from father to son.

As a sovereign ruler, Nzav represents and imposes the hierarchical structures of social organization, vertical and linear public order, and social control. He embodies the mythical ancestral order (wiinshaankulw), which is prior to the origin of society but also the source of this social order and of cultural ritual and political Luunda institutions. As such, the royal title is associated with the east, which points to this ancestral space-time. As I have indicated, kool, the cradle of Luunda culture in Shaba, is situated in the east and is considered by the Aluund




as a geographically higher point. It is there, in an eastern or upstream direction, that the source of the (male) cultural order springs. The sovereign ruler's metaphorical association with the sun comments upon his making present this primal space-time. In a praise-song for Nzav, it is sung that it is in the east (kwiingaangyeel, kuchivuumbikin) that the sun comes up (-vuumbuk: "to grow," "to come out of the ground," "to resurrect") and the world awakens (mwiingaangyeel mwacha).7 Therefore, the enthronement ritual always unfolds spatially from east to west, in a cosmogonic enactment of the migration movement from kool, situated at the headwaters (muluub, downstream (mwiyaand) to the west, to the land the Aluund of the Mabeet presently occupy.

Yet, the nature of the paramount titleholder's rule is twofold. Among some neighboring peoples, such as the Yaka (see Planquaert 1971:124), a distinction is made between dominium and imperium (Crine 1964), that is, a distinction between political chiefs who hold the political and judiciary rights as well as the right to the tribute, and landowners without important political functions. No such distinction is made in the case of the paramount Luunda titleholder. Mwaant Nzav unites the function of sovereign ruler and paramount political territorial chief (mwiin mangaand) with that of mwiin mavw, a title that refers to identity with the land rather than to "ownership."

In his capacity of "lord of the soil" (mwiin mavw), Nzav assumes the responsibility for the more cyclical and regenerative elements in Luunda culture and enables the fertility and fecundity, the social and biological reproduction, and the material welfare of the community as a whole. As such, the office and function of the paramount titleholder is marked by a political and hierarchical characteristic as well as a regenerative and mediating one, by both typically agnatic and vertical/linear, as well as maternal and more cyclical principles. One of the royal praise-names, "bridge" (chaw), renders his mediating function (see also -lal, below). The royal body politic embodies a continuous attempt to reach a necessary integration between these convergent and divergent forces (see also Adler 1982; de Heusch 1972; Devisch 1988; Muller 1980; and Tcherkezoff 1983 on dual symbolism in traditional African chief- or kingship).

the elder: notions of ideal male body and personhood

Luunda men view the ideal male body-self as a self-contained, relatively autonomous entity. This ideal is embodied by the senior man, the elder (mukuluump), the family or lineage head (leemb), and, in the most exemplary way, by the paramount.

In growing toward the status of senior elder, a man "becomes a person" (-eekal muntw). This progressive acquiring of "personality" (wuuntw), again metaphorically expressed through cosmological images of verticality, "uprightness" (nteendeend), and hardness, implies an increasing bodily verticality, autonomy, and containment. These qualities are most overtly articulated in the musaangw sword dance, the stylized performance of the Luunda conquest during the migration. This dance is exclusively performed by individual elders during court festivities or enthronement rituals. It is the bodily enacting of a male Muluund's pride.

The process of growing toward the status of senior man and, thus, toward the acquiring of erectness, goes together with the acquiring of "wisdom" (manaangw). This wisdom covers outstanding male capacities, such as alertness, perspicacity, sagacity, judgment, discretion, and longsightedness. The progressive growth toward this wisdom, and the gradual appropriation of a meaningful social body as elder, also implies a growing interconnection and interrelatedness with others, whether members of his own family, his descent group, or his village. As he grows older, a man acquires more wives and children and engages in new relationships through his children's matrimonial alliances and/or through his professional/ritual skills. A man's growth toward individuation and self-appropriation thus comes about by means of a growing optimali- zation of his relational or interjoining abilities.




An important way for a man to realize his increasing relational insertion in the social order is through his oratorical capabilities. Rhetoric ability (wiingaandj or mweenz wa kuloond) is both the privilege of the senior man as well as a prerogative for the full attainment of his status as elder. It is the expression of his self-identity, and it distinguishes him from the others. On the other hand, speaking is essentially viewed as an act that engages the speaker in a reciprocal relationship, for speech is predominantly colloquy; it is "the passing on of words," and is conceived of as an intertwining of words. Luunda conversational practice and use of formulae of greeting clearly express this verbal reciprocity. Conversations usually converge around a still center, a central person, usually a family head or elder, who initiates the talking and to whom the "words return" after each intervention. Performing the common gestures of greeting, this elder claps in his hands twice, lowers the right hand to the ground, brings it up to the left side of his chest, and then claps twice again, while inviting the interlocutor to voice his opinion or relate the news he has by saying "give me" (niinkaany). On the second hand-clapping, the interlocutor joins in, claps his hands simultaneously with the elder's hand-clapping, and then in turn repeats the same gestures of greeting and starts to talk. When he has finished talking, he repeats the same gestures once again while saying: "We cause [the words] to come out" or "we have given them [that is, the words]." At the second hand-clapping, the person who directs the conversation joins in again and says "they entered." Thereupon this central person invites a third party to relate his news or voice his opinion while clapping his hands another time. In this way, the conversation moves on in a circular way, each time returning to a central point, the elder, who functions as a bridge between the interlocutors and interconnects their words. At the end, the elder who directed the talking greets all those who are present but have not spoken.

A dispute between people may be referred to as mak, a reference to leprosy (mayeejma mak): as leprosy separates the toes from the foot, so, too, a dispute separates the members of the same family, lineage, or village. A dispute "makes a wound in the village tree," that is, disrupts the village's unity. In the palaver, the council of elders reunites what is separated through speech, that is through the interweaving of words, by means of which people are interrelated and "talk to one another" (-kanijaan). Significantly, the word muloong denotes both a palaver and the spool or spindle of the weaving loom, which men use for the fabrication of raffia tissue. The word muloong also means "line" or "row." Just as the raffia fibres are connected and put in line by the act of weaving, so the words are ordered and "knotted" or intertwined into a sentence through speaking. As such, the capacity to speak also implies the responsibility to make connections, to maintain the social tissue of the group's unity and to dissolve possible sources of conflict. The senior man is the socially and publicly unifying instance. As elder, it is his responsibility to maintain the stability in the group and, in case of disagreement or conflict, to arrive at a consensus between its members, so that "they may eat maize and beans together" (for social stability is commonly expressed in terms of commensality). The word of the elder reaffirms reciprocal relationships, expressed through images of commensality, which imply the mutual "opening up" of the body. Reconciliation (-buluk, "to reconcile"; see related verb -bulul, "to open up") takes place while drinking palm wine together, as a token of taking away the misunderstanding and as a means to re-establish mutual confidence.

However, this reciprocal relationship is not only arrived at through speech but also through a man's capacity to listen. Of a skillful orator it is said that he "does not speak before he has listened" (ngaandjkakuloondap wakakoov). Listening is essentially the capacity of interpreting, of paying attention to the other, or, as the Aluund express it, of "doing with the ears" or "straining the ears" (-tmatw). The verb -oov(il) denotes understanding and concern but is equally used in the sense of "to feel" (both physically and emotionally).8 Whereas speaking is "making oneself understood" (-oovakan), listening is predominantly "feeling oneself into" the speech of the other to "establish a mutual understanding" (-oovijaan: "to understand with one another"; -oovijadiin:




"to come to an understanding"). Speaking, understanding, interpretation, and thus wisdom only come about by listening. Therefore, the ears are called the "lord of the head" (mwaant wa mutw).

The dynamics of the interlinked Luunda practices of listening and speaking convey a double movement, which shapes and expresses the way in which Aluund "knot" relations. The seeming passivity of Iistening (a movement from outer to inner) is a prerequisite for one's speaking activity (a movement from inner to outer). The interiorizing movement of listening is a withdrawal into oneself by means of a reception and integration of, and participation in, the world of the others. The more ties a man has with the fellow members of the group for which he bears responsibil ity, the more his behavior is characterized by this process of interiorization (on similar notions of

interiorizing listening among the neighboring Yaka see Devisch 1991, 1993). Self-appropriation progressively marks a man's way of communicating with others, as, for

example, in his "seeing" (-tab or "fixed, intense staring" (-tal ne), which contrasts with the sideways look of women (-tal nkeew). This fixed stare is also the expression of the elder's longsightedness and almost visionary capacities (symbolically rendered, for example, by the rooster). The sight is not only a faculty of perception, but also implies communication. It is by his look that the elder reveals his intentions. Therefore, it is said that "the elder requests with the eyes" (mukuluump wiit ni mees), rather than by using his voice. One of the paramount's praise-names, "the eye of reconciliation" (diis dia nakayuul) clearly illustrates the importance of the elder's visual powers.

Together with this increasing internalization, a man's growth toward self-containment (and thus socialization) is marked by his increasing immobility. Gradually, he becomes the fixed center of the group for which he is responsible. As I will show in the next section, the paramount titleholder's immobility exemplifies this to the highest degree. The elder forms the middle of the relationships that are being knotted around him and of which he becomes the constituting focal point and nexus. Of a family head it is said that "he sits in the middle" (leemb nash mukach). Aluund also say that it is unbecoming for a senior man to travel a lot. Seated in front of his house, the family head or elder is likened to a tree, firmly rooted in the earth. An elder may be referred to as shin ikuny or shin dia mutoond, "root-man," or "foot of the tree." By his increasing immobility, a senior man is thereby also rooted in the ancestral past, and, as such, he is associated with the rise of the sun, the east, the beginning. The complex spatiotemporal continuity between the present cultural order and its primeval origin is conveyed by the notion ku mashin, literally, "to the base of the trees." The related notion -chishin means "source" or "origin." As the elder becomes older, he in turn stands at the apex of descent (in the case of the maternal uncle as leemb of the lineage, in the case of the agnatic elder as leemb of the residential unit) and is more and more associated with the lineage's ancestors and ancestral wisdom (mabaanz ma ukuluump).

The immobility of the elder exemplifies the ideologically important "unchanging continuity" of the societal order, against the transformations of society as it is lived in everyday life. This is also one of the meanings implied by the invocation to the kapwiip tree. In addressing the elder of all the trees, the therapist addresses the unchanging, fixed normality of which the tree testifies through its immobility, and which is also the reason why the elder is compared to the tree: both elder and tree have the capacity to listen, acquired through immobility. Through this capacity to listen, they assure the interjoining of individual, social group, and cosmos and thereby maintain and perpetuate the ideal cultural order. Unlike the tree, however, the elder has the capacity to exert his authority and impose his will: "you can escape from a tree, but not from an elder" (tukuchiinaang mutoond, mukuluump kakumuchiinaanyap).

the paramount titleholder as ultimate elder

I lingered on the Luunda notions of male person- and elderhood because they are crucial for the interpretation of the figure of the paramount titleholder. Nzav is taken as the point of




reference for the proper behavior of all elders. As ultimate elder, Nzav appears as both a father and a maternal uncle to the subjects of his ngaand.

In a general way, all the subjects are spoken of and view themselves as "children of Nzav" (aan a Nzav). As the father of the subjects of his territory, the mwaant's invocation of the royal paternal and maternal ancestors at the ancestral miyoomb-shrines in his courtyard (see Figure 2) is not only relevant to his own family and lineage members, but also to all the commoners. Nzav will invoke his ancestors before harvests, the laying out of new fields, collective hunts, and so on, to assure the well-being of the whole population and to enhance social and natural reproduction and fertility.

At the same time, he appears as the ultimate maternal uncle. The structural relation of reciprocity between a maternal uncle and his sister's children is indeed similar to that between Nzav and the subjects of his ngaand. Just as the sister's son shows respect and reverence (lujit/u) toward his mother's brother, and sends him frequent gifts, so the muluund sends tributes and inclines himself in front of the paramount titleholder to show him the respect (kalimish) due to his position. In return, Nzav, in his function of paramount titleholder, has to show the generosity and a willingness to share. These qualities are characteristic of the leemb's role and of the

relationship between mother's brother and sister's children. The avunculate represents the maternal location of the vital life-flow (mooy). The maternal uncle, in his capacity of "male mother" or "mother without breasts" (maakw wakaadi mayee), is identified with female nurturing and regenerative powers. As the Aluund say, "A [woman's] bosom is fit to carry [children], the maternal uncle is fit 'to cause to eat' [to nurture one]" (nkoond yafiil kuseend, leemb wafiil kudish).

WEST (KU MAZEEMB)

fence fence

SKITCAHEN COMMUNAL

|^KI~~~ | ITCH KITCHEN

PRIVATE MALAL (P NZAV \ MALAL

+ bedside CHOOT NZAV - HOUSE

I l \ - NTIMIN

HOUSE / (SECOND MWAANT WIFE) MWAADI

HOUSE OTHER WIVES +

CHILDREN

Right Left

fence Moom- Miyoomb fence "tom iyom

EAST (KWIMPAL)

Figure 2. The spatial layout and organization of the courtyard of the mwaant mwiin mangaand.




Popular representations concerning political power have it that a titleholder is generous and shares whatever he has with those for whom he bears responsibility. This royal generosity is not

only expressed by kinship terminology, but also by means of a tree metaphor. To express the relation between the paramount mwaant and the commoners, it is proverbially said that "all the animals gather at the foot of the mupach tree to eat" (ambish awoonsw akuungmeen kwishin dia mupach keemb dia kudi). The saying compares the subjects to animals, whereas the

paramount titleholder is compared to the mupach tree. This fructiferous tree (Sapindaceae, Dacryodis edulis) bears an abundance of edible fruit, and animals come to eat the fruit that falls off the tree.

Again, the titleholder's nurturing capacity is clearly viewed as a maternal quality. For

example, it is said of the paramount mwaant that "he is a mother of twins and sleeps on his back" (mwaant udi naampas, walaal kalal). The mother of twins, considered by the Aluund as the iconic personification of the feminine fructuous body, sleeps on her back so that she can feed the twins with both her breasts. This nurturing, maternal power of the titleholder is equally covered by the metaphor of the mupach. I mentioned already that the root and the foot of the tree are considered to be a tree's male parts and symbolize the rootedness in the ancestral past, related to the eastern origin. The root also refers to the male sexual organ and has clearly phallic connotations. Its sap is compared to seminal fluids. The phallic verticality of the root-image is also related to the rain, which pours down. Rain (nvul) is spoken of in paternal terms as shanvul, the prefix -sha denoting fatherhood. The verb -vul means "to multiply," "to become numerous," "to be many." As such, the root symbolizes the genitor of, as well as the individual's attachment to, the ancestral origin of male fecundity.

On the other hand, the trunk, the branches, and the fruit of the tree signify the genitrix and the progeny. The trunk of the tree is considered to be a tree's female part and may be referred to as "the womb of the tree" (vumw dia mutoond), that receives the sap of the root and is

impregnated by it. The fruit, the result of this coming together of root and trunk, is considered to be the offspring. As the Aluund say, "All of us, we are from one root, we are from one father [that is, the paramount titleholder], we are the branches, (eetw awoonsw tudi mwiish umwiing, tudi taatuk umwiing, tudi mitay mitay)."

The fruit/offspring symbolism is most clear with respect to the banana tree. Again, the trunk of the tree is compared to a womb or a bosom. Both a woman's bosom and the banana tree are called nkoond. The expression -baakan mwinkoonddenotes the holding of a child at the bosom (and is used as a euphemism to denote childbirth). The bananas themselves suggest to the Aluund generous fecundity and, thus, offspring. Chapw denotes the "hand" of a banana cluster

(yapwya makoond) and also a "multitude." To dream of a banana tree (or, for that matter, of a

regular palm tree [ngaj: Palmae, Elaeis guineensis], since it bears an equally abundant supply of palm nuts) announces the birth of children or a fruitful hunt. The relationship between the

paramount titleholder and his subjects is explicitly expressed in these terms as well. The titleholder may be called mwaant makoond makashiimb, "the lord of the banana regime": he

keeps the bananas (meaning the families and lineages) together. The tree is a general metaphor for the union and mediation of male and female in regenerative

sexuality, which is itself spoken of in terms of knotting and intertwining. Sexual intercourse is, for example, referred to as the "knotting into one another" (-katijaan) or the "twisting" and

"intertwining of legs" (-biindjik meend). More generally, the tree metaphor expresses the mediation between male and female principles upon which the fertility of Luunda society is based.

Some trees mediate more than others. The male and female aspects are not always carefully balanced in all trees. The Aluund consider certain trees to be overtly "male" trees, whereas others are more "female." The mulooztree (Caesalpiniaceae, Daniella oliveri), for example, is an exclusively male tree. This tree, which plays a prominent role in men's hunting ritual, is the




largest to grow in the bush (mpat) and wooded savanna (matuumb) and is characteristic for its white sap, which is likened to sperm. Its most important feature is said to be the fact that it has onlyone large root,which penetrates deeply intotheearth, suggesting insemination. The musaal tree (Caesalpinaceae, Dialium englerianum), on the other hand, is called "the tree of motherhood" (mutoond wa umaakw). This tree is remarkable for the red color of its bark and the wide-ranging network of its branches, which are far more prominent than the short roots that seem to barely anchor the tree into the earth. The musaal tree occupies a central position in menarche rituals (ufuundeej) and is believed to stimulate female fecundity.

In my interpretation, the kapwiip tree is considered the "elder" of the trees because it is neither a male nor a female tree, but mediates in an exemplary way between the male and female polarities. This mediation shows, for example, in terms of its color symbolism. The tree's extremely hard wood has a red (female) core, covered by a thinner layer of white (male) wood right under the bark. Aluund also describe the tree's therapeutic qualities as both "hot," which belongs to a feminine series of relations (in relation to fire and cooking), and "hard" or "bitter" (linked to notions of masculine physical strength and health) (see also Turner [1967:347-348] for a similar classification of this tree among the Ndembu). In a ritual context, the kapwiip also mediates between right (that is the male side) and left (the female side) (see below). Given its mediating capacities, the kapwiip tree is therefore not only able to remove negative influences, but also constructively to tie and link together, to reintegrate and to mediate, between oppositions based on gender, or (as its role in sorcery and mourning ritual shows) between day and night, between sorcerer and victim, between widower and deceased, between illness and health, or between life and death. By its mediating capacities, the tree has a healing, that is, interlinking and unifying, power, capable of restoring the proper boundaries between individual body, social body, and cosmological space-time; therefore, it is also considered to be purifying. I suggest that, on the institutional level, the application of the tree metaphor to the paramount titleholder forms the expression of the fact that the latter combines cyclical, female regenerative capacities and more male, vertical and hierarchical characteristics. The paramount is both root and fruit: he is the root of the tree as well as the branches and the fruit. I will now show how this mediation is realized and embodied in the royal body itself. In order to do so, I will focus on the royal body in relation to the spatiotemporal layout of his courtyard.

the enclosing of the royal body

The royal courtyard's boundaries, indicated by a surrounding fence (chipaang), are rigorously demarcated, protected, and bound off by means of ritual weapons that are hidden at important points of transition between high and low or in and out, such as doorways, roofs, in the soil, or under the fire or the bed (the placement of ritual weapons is indicated on Figure 2 by little circles).9 The same also applies to Nzav's own bodily boundaries. Nzav will, under normal circumstances, never leave the courtyard. He permanently remains within the courtyard's inner fence, where he receives visitors in the circular parlor hut (choot). But here too his body is shielded from the eyes of those present by means of a fence, called musaal. This fence delineates a ritual space, which is called malal. A second, even more private malal is situated inside the house of the titleholder's senior wife (see Figure 2). In this private malal, the titleholder takes his meals, unseen by others.

The vulnerable and secluded body-self of Nzav shares the characteristics of the secluded feminine body. The ritual space of the malal has feminine and womblike connotations. Musaal, the name given to the malal's fence that shields the titleholder from the intruding gaze of his visitors, is not only the name of "the tree of motherhood" (see above), it is also the name of the

protective fence in a pregnant woman's seclusion hut (maseeku), where she gives birth when

endangered by a malevolent spiritual agency (haamb). The seclusive setting created by the




musaal denotes the sheltered and womb- or ovumlike quality of the seclusion of the maseeku, in which the mother and the child will remain until the child is able to crawl outside the fence.

The fence that separates the titleholder from his visitors consists of three long, forked sticks, interconnected by the wood of the mudidi palm (Palmae, Rapphia vinifera). The fence's central stick consists of a kapwiip, which in this way mediates again between right and left. The two sticks on either side of the central kapwiip stick are made from the wood of musehe (Vangueri- posis lanciflora) to the left of the kapwiip (the musehe stick is indicated by the number 1 on

Figure 2), and the wood of the musaangul(Guttiferae, Harungana madagascariensis) to the right (number 2 on Figure 2).

The musehe, a tree from the symbolically male space of the bush (like the kapwiip) is considered to possess the same purifying capacities as the kapwiip. The musehe stick is planted to the left corner of the fence, which is also the side where a female servant, the so-called kaseey (one of the junior wives of the titleholder), sits (to her husband's left) to serve the palm wine. It is said that "musehe is like kaolin" (musehe udi amudi lupeemb); that is, it is a purifying tree, like the kapwiip. The latter, however, is a "stronger" tree, referred to as "the big one of musehe." The musehe relates to the kapwiip as female or wife (mukaj) to male (mulum). I propose that this lesser strength of the musehe tree derives from the fact that the musehe does not mediate or interjoin oppositions, such as white and red or male and female, as strongly as the kapwiip does. Instead, when the musehe is not considered in relation to the kapwiip, it is taken to be a very masculine tree, as one already suspects from its association with the bush and the whiteness of the kaolin. Further, the "masculinity" of this tree is strongly present in other ritual contexts, such as the circumcision ritual. Among the Ndembu, the masculine connotations of the musehe (musoli in Ndembu vernacular) are even more pronounced: there the tree is used "for speaking publicly" (Turner 1968a:60). Ndembu also refer to the musehe, and not to the kapwiip, as the "elder" of the trees (Turner 1968a:185).

The musaangul, a tree from the symbolically female space of the forest, also possesses mediating, integrating, and restorative capacities. In the Shaba uruund, the verb -saangul means "to raise from the dead" (see Hoover 1975). As far as I know, this connotation does not exist as such in the uluund variant of the Mabeet area. Instead, the verb -saangul denotes the specific technique of tying or knotting raffia fibers into the suit or envelope (chivuvw) that is worn by mask dancers (akish). These masks are said to have risen from death. The related verb -saanguk, which has indeed the meaning "to raise from the dead" in Shaba uruund, is used in the Mabeet with a slightly different connotation to refer to a person's recovery after a therapeutic treatment. It means, literally, "to tie into [to restore to] good health [because of having been treated]." The musaangul tree is equally endowed with these restorative and healing powers, and, as such, it is able to mediate and interknit in a positive way between opposites.

The kapwiip, together with the other elements of which the fence is made, weakens the powers of approaching evil, disease, and misfortune and reverses them into an integrative, restoring healing force. Thus, the physical body of Nzav, hidden behind the fence, is protected and shielded from the dangerous intrusion (shadow, gaze, speech) of other persons.

Every physical act that implies the opening up of the royal body (eating, drinking, defecating) is concealed or subject to protective ritual action. Ideally, the titleholder is considered to have a completely closed and autonomous body, almost as if he did not share the corporeal necessities of other human beings. Typically, a titleholder is not allowed to show bodi ly disease, decay, and old age; he should not show any signs of suffering or aging in his body. To keep all harmful influences away from him, the intimacy of his private physical body and its corporeal functions are hidden and secluded within the well-defined boundaries of the royal courtyard and the space of the malal. The royal body is thus made into an unchanging entity, immobile and fixed inside the courtyard, which he is not allowed to leave, except on very important occasions. On those occasions, his rectum will be blocked off by means of protective herbal




substances. On arriving home from a travel and entering the courtyard, the body of Nzav is immediately purified and reinserted into the "closed" order of the courtyard by his senior wife. Only afterward can he enter the malalto greet the bracelet (rukan) that symbolizes the political power.

Being the fixed, unchanging, and still center of the political territory (ngaand), the titleholder is firmly rooted like the kapwiip, the immobile "elder" of the trees. Just as it is said of the kapwiip that it "has ears" and knows how to "listen" because it remains in one spot (see the invocation), so the paramount titleholder does not move from his malal, where he receives his subjects and where he mediates, judges, and cuts through disputes and thereby removes dissension from his

ngaand, by means of his "listening" capacities, acquired through his immobility. The Aluund, therefore, say that "he is the lord who brings us together" (mwaant watukuunga). The idea of the titleholder as unifying center is also expressed using tree metaphors. One day, in the midst of a palaver that was held in the court, I heard a man addressing Nzav in the following terms: "You are the trunk of the tree under which we shelter. The Aluund are numerous [that is, widely dispersed over many villages], but it is around you that we sit down, in your vicinity."

The connections between the tree and the knot (or between knotting and branching-see below) reverberate in other directions as well. Being the fixed and immobile center, and in his twofold role of father and mother/maternal uncle to his subjects, the paramount is also compared to river's water flow and, more in particular, to the river's core, the water in the middle of the river/life-stream, where it is considered to flow more slowly than toward the river's sides and where it forms the river's still epicenter.10 Just as the elder/tree as central point is surrounded by his family members or interlocutors, so the paramount, in his capacity of central core of the river's waterflow, is surrounded and kept in place by the dignitaries and by the commoners." Just as the river flow unites primal beginning and underworld, high and low, day and night, east and west, and male and female spaces (bush and gallery forest), and as the kapwiip tree mediates between male and female opposites, so the paramount titleholder is the unmoving center where the mediation and meeting between various complementary polarities may take place. As such, the royal body assures the transmission of life-flow, the abundance of children, game, and crops. As I mentioned, the royal village (musuumb), of which the titleholder himself in the courtyard forms the center, is therefore also spoken of as the central "knot"

(mwimpuund) of the territory of the ngaand as a whole. The guarding of the intimate body-self of Nzav, taken care of by the titleholder's senior wife

(mwaantmwaadi), is necessary to assure the unity and the general well-being of the village and the ngaand, its land, inhabitants, animals, and crops. Through his seclusion, and by means of the rigorous ritual prescriptions and prohibitions that he has to observe, the titleholder's intimate and private body-self is transformed into a public and political body that symbolizes the

interlinking of individual and communal health, fertility and well-being, the social relationships in the village, the political and territorial unity of the ngaand, and the cosmological order of the world.

It is during the elaborate enthronement rituals that the actual transformation from body-self into a bridging political body takes place. It is not possible to give a detailed account of Luunda enthronement within the confines of this article. Let me merely say that the most important ritual

sequence does not concern the formal, public investment, but rather the subsequent nocturnal installation of the titleholder's private malal (including the installation of the kitchen, as well as the paramount's fire- and bedside, see Figure 2), in a ritual that symbolically brings about the

bridging of complementary (male-female) opposites. This bridging is already indicated by the word malal itself: the verb -lal quite simply means "to bridge" (and in turn refers to the

paramount's praise-name of "bridge" [chaw, see above]). The installation of the malal, and its ritual joining of feminine, cyclical symbols of life transmission to male political symbols, prefigures the titleholder's ritual transformation from individual to institutional body.




In order to achieve this bridging, the titleholder is ritually cut off from his own double-paternal and maternal-origin and belonging through a symbolic separation from male life-giving powers and a rupture with his matrilineal kin during the enthronement rituals. The morning following the installation of the malal, the newly invested mwaant sets out by himself in search of a kapwiip-tree. After addressing the ancestors, he cuts a triangle, representing the female

genitalia, out of the bark of the kapwiip, and applies his penis to it. He then rubs the tree with kaolin, applies his chest to it, and blows some kaolin in the direction of the village, by way of blessing. By applying his penis to the representation of the female genitalia grafted on the

kapwiip, he leaves behind his own individual physical sexuality (and, thus, the male part of the life-flow from which male sexual powers spring) and ritually signifies his transformation from individual body-self to institutional political body. His intimate corporeal functions are trans- mitted to the tree and are left behind in the maternal line (represented by the vaginal opening) from which he has ritually been cut off as well, in a ceremony on the morning of the formal investment. In this ceremony, the mwaant's maternal side ritually renounces its claim on him, upon which he offers them a compensatory gift (including goats, manioc flour, palm wine, and cloth).

The titleholder's detachment from both paternal and maternal sides, and from his own ascendants and descendants, is further consolidated during the nocturnal installation of the malal. For this installation to be effective, it is believed that the new titleholder has to "give" a (primary or classificatory) maternal uncle of his, as well as a sister's son and one of his own sons. These are said to be killed by ritual means during the interregnum period, so that their corporeal substances may be unearthed and used for ritual purposes during the nocturnal ritual that is part of the enthronement.

It is also important to note that the bed, which is installed inside Nzav's private malalduring the same night following upon the public enthronement, does not have legs but is directly constructed on the ground. Within the household, the bedside commonly defines the legitimate space in which conjugal (that is reproductive) sexuality may take place. Of a bachelor or a widower, it is said that "he sleeps on the ground" (walaalpaansh). That the royal bed lacks legs denotes the fact that the paramount and the senior wife (mwaant mwaadi) (ritually) abstain from sexual intercourse. Like a bachelor, the titleholder "sleeps on the ground." This is in complete accord with the royal ideology, for it is generally believed that the wearing of the royal bracelet (lukan) prevents a titleholder from engendering.

By becoming the paramount, Nzav becomes a sexless and detached body outside of and withdrawn from all forms of physical reciprocity. Ritually stripped from the body-self as actively engaged and engaging relatum by means of which an individual's interrelatedness and insertion into the lives of other selves is realized, the secluded, orificeless institutional body of Nzav reveals that he is to be situated outside the ordinary human and social exchange, as well as outside the ordinary life cycle between origin and end, ascendants and descendants, birth and death. The conditions for the societal renewal and the transmission of physical life are shaped by means of his merely ritual display of abstinence and detachment from all physical and familial ties. It is in and through the self-containment of his institutionalized body that individual health, gender relations, commensality, and conjugal sexuality are defined, authorized, and legitimated.

As such, the paramount acquires boundless dimensions. His guarded and bounded-off, immobile body turns the political body of Nzav into an omnipresent, androgynous body without boundaries. He becomes nzaamb paansh, the "godhead on earth." Significantly, sculptural representations of nzaamb from Luunda and Chokwe origin present it as a Janus-like figure with a male and a female face (see also Roberts 1991 on dichotomous representation among the Tabwa). Situated outside the ordinary life cycle, the paramount mwaant is capable of mediating between masculinity and femininity, as well as between different spatiotemporal fields and




oppositions such as life and death, day and night, sun and moon, high and low, inside and outside, center and periphery, sky and underworld, and human, animal, and spirit world.12

of trees and kings: metaphor and beyond

In invoking the kapwiip tree, healers may be understood to evoke the integrative nature of individual and social health among the Aluund. Indirectly, the invocation also refers to the paramount's mediating and unifying or interknitting capacities, brought about in the enthronement ritual and impersonated in the central nodal point, or "knot," that is the royal body itself, firmly rooted like a tree in the center of Luunda land.

The pervasive Luunda metaphors of knotting, tying, and interjoining suggest a dynamic perspective of symbolical and metaphorical processes, a "kapwiip tree theory," so to speak, of metaphorical expansion, with metaphors like branches ramyifing into all directions. Let me consider this by returning to Turner's "landmarks" with which this article opened. Turner viewed the strategy or efficacy of the "landmark" as a movement from unknown to known, from unstructured to structured, or from chaotic to ordered. As such, symbols serve "goals" (Turner 1968b:148). In a similar vein, metaphorical transfers are commonly viewed as a "strategic predication upon an inchoate pronoun" (Fernandez 1986:8). Metaphor, as it is commonly understood, has a clear function. Its movement has a clear aim: it transforms the inchoate character of the pronominal subject by means of the concrete qualities of the predicate and as such redefines the subject. By predicating the qualities of the kapwiip tree onto the titleholder, for example, a concrete statement is made about the nature of the titleholder and the Luunda political institution. The "knotting" characteristics or features of the "sign-image" "kapwiiptree" are predicated upon the Luunda titleholder, and this predication allows us to understand better what the nature and the function of this political institution is.

In my opinion, standard conceptions of predicative metaphor imply an impoverished view of the metaphorical transfer (see also De Boeck 1991 b) and thereby pose some major problems when used in the interpretation of ethnographic data. First, Aluund do not make a simple statement such as "the titleholder is a kapwiip tree." Second, the metaphorical "trail" does not necessarily lead from unknown bush to known paths. Does it, for example, lead from kapwiip tree to royal body only? Both the metaphors of the tree and of the royal body move off into various other directions as well. They "overgrow" the path, to stick to the uluund translation of the verb -jik(see note 2) and make it "dense" with all kinds of meaningful connections.1 I would therefore argue that there is no clear direction in which the process works, no primary "path of transfer," to stick to Fernandez's Ndembu-like terminology, from predicate to subject. The interaction theory of metaphor (Beardsley 1958; Black 1962; Richards 1936) has recognized this better, although it still sticks to the two terms of predicate and subject (or "vehicle" and "tenor") and the idea of directionality. Whereas Fernandez states that "metaphor accomplishes an unaccustomed linking of domains" (1986:12), Black, in one passage, went much further and

rightly asserted that "it would be more illuminating to say that metaphor creates the similarity than to say that it formulates some similarity precedently existing" (Black 1962:37). The link is not only "unaccustomed," it is nonexistent before the metaphor creates it. It implies that the metaphorical process is not only a movement or an "assessment by analogy" (Fernandez 1986:7) between two different but similar domains. It may also creatively generate similarities by crosscutting through domains that were previously completely unrelated.

If no similarity exists between the domains before the metaphoric linkage takes place, then

metaphoric movement does not have to move in one direction only (from abstract to concrete, or from the chaotic to the orderly). This has been recognized in part by Van Dijk (1972), who has significantly extended the transfer notion by stating that a cross-redistribution or a mutual transfer may take place in both senses. I would argue that the transfer does not even work in




both directions, involving subjects and predicates, but develops in a potentially unlimited number of directions and according to multiple, simultaneously operating, directional movements, which are reflected in the Luunda "knotting" structures of directional movement highlighted throughout this article and which render unnecessary the distinction between subject and predicate. I could easily have extended my analysis of tree metaphors and the metaphor of the royal body to show how they in turn spill over into other metaphorical associations that derive, for example, from spatial and temporal elements or from the animal world (chameleon, fish eagle, elephant, leopard, crocodile, and various species of snakes and mythological beings), and that would carry us into yet other, even contradictory, fields of meaning (for example, in relation to the royal body's nocturnal, desintegrative, and coercive powers as opposed to its life-generating forces).

Even recent semantic and semiotic interaction theories and constructionist or "operational" theories of metaphor (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; see also T. Turner 1991 ) have offered a rather restrictive view of the directional nature of the transfer. Notwith- standing the fundamental criticism of objectivist interpretations of the metaphoric process, and in spite of its extreme "experiential" and interactional character, the logical semantics of Lakoff and Johnson still sticks to the idea of a clearly circumscribed directionality in metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:112). For them, "the essence of metaphor" remains "understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another" (1980:5), and they still see metaphor as an attempt "to structure the less concrete and inherently vaguer concepts ... in terms of more concrete concepts" (1980:112), in a movement from "source" to "target" domain, "mapping" one domain of experience onto another (Lakoff 1987). In my opinion, however, such an essentially modernist image as "mapping" fails to capture the absence of a clear-cut directionality in metaphorical or symbolical processes as a whole. It is the inherently "unmappable" nature of the involved processes in their totality that accounts for their creative capacities and intrinsic ambiguity, as they expand into multiple, often contradictory, meaning in a multidirectional way. This does not mean that, on a more restricted level and within a circumscribed context, specific acts of "knotting" may not be apprehended. However, the "mappability" of the parts is realized only partially, and through metonymical elaboration of the metaphorical innovation rather than through the metaphorical transfer as such. Since the process of transfer does not work in one or even two directions but is instead potentially unlimited, it has the capacity to disregard the most essential structural and classificatory rules of combination. In this sense, metaphor is truly autoproductive, a "self-referential coordinate" (Wagner 1986:5). What metonym does is to concretize the impact of the innovative metaphorical disturbance, in a metaphorical-metonymical interplay between invention and convention, innovation and repetition. Every metaphor is expanded and elaborated by a multitude of metonymical associations or "a system of associated commonplaces" as Black (1962:40) has called it. Metonym concretely inserts the innovative metaphorical expansion into specific daily and ritual contexts.

One way of conceiving how the metonymical process mediates the innovative character of the metaphor is to view it as a process of comparison. Whereas metaphor creates a relation of similarity or identity between elements of previously unconnected domains, the metonym as simile merely asserts likeness or resemblance between elements within one domain. The simile retains of course a metaphorical aspect, for itequal ly creates a metaphorical relation of similarity between dissimilars. At the same time, the simile also makes use of the metonymical principle of contextual combination, contrary to the metaphor, which disrupts it because of its radical character of multidirectional transfer. Fernandez himself has rightly stated that metaphor follows a different kind of logic from the logic within customary domains (Fernandez 1986:12). The logic of metaphor is indeed characterized by its "logical absurdity," as Beardsley (1958:138) has called it. It defies "logical" logic and instead is characterized by its logical laxity, a "logic of the approximate and the hazy" (Bourdieu 1980:146, 434, my translation). Because of the




metonymical processes involved, the actual realization and "understanding" of the metaphorical logic is of an essentially practical nature and grounded in day-to-day experience. The

meaningful constituents that Turner calls "dominant symbols" are the outcome of this metaphorical-metonymical interplay. The kapwiip tree is such a meaningful constituent and so are, for example, the pestle and the mortar, the axe, the hoe and/or the machete, and the bow and the arrow. Because of the innovative and autoproductive capacity of the metaphorical process, the possible list of these constituents is endless. The metonymical component of these constituents (for example, the fact that the wood of the kapwiip tree is used by men to make axe handles) links them to specific contexts both in the world of daily life and in the natural environment. For example, reference to the kapwiip as axe links the tree itself to the notion of confl ict (spoken about as a cut made by an axe in the village tree) and of conflict resolution and the "cutting through" of disputes in a tribunal. The (masculine and political) context of the tribunal is in turn linked to the paramount as ultimate elder and judge and, through this implicit reference to the royal body, also refers to more overarching cosmological principles of bridging and knotting.

The proximity of the metonymical elaborations that link the metaphorical generation of new meaning to daily reality accounts for the fact that the actual set of constituents is rather limited, although not closed. It also accounts for the fact that metaphorical meaning generation potentially forms part of every Muluund's daily experience.

Meaningful constituents holographically retain and condense (see note 13) the expansive movement of the metaphorical associations and metonymically exemplify them. As such, one could say that they constitute a bridge and bring the metaphorical innovation into a relational context. As I pointed out, however, the totality of meaning generated in the metaphorical process is never conveyed in its entirety in any one instance. Because the metaphorical logic works on the basis of what Bourdieu has referred to as "uncertain abstraction" (Bourdieu 1980:146), its richness never fully resounds. The metaphorical process creates an abundance of possible meanings, a myriad network of associations that result in a poly-isotopic ambiguity that can never be fully mapped or realized by the metonymical shifts that insert the metaphor into any particular context. The interlinking "knots" of meaning that modulate into one another are themselves open ended: it is not established which ends have to meet in order to produce a knot that ties together. The knot, as an essential "limit-situation" (Eliade 1952), may also be untied and disconnected, or connected in an opposite sense. By knotting into new configurations that which may not have been knotted before, the metaphorical process of meaning generation partially blows up meaning; it causes meaning to explode and thereby knots new webs of meaning, in an ever-changing and transformative integration between various morpho- genetic or formative fields, to borrow a notion from cellular biology. Tree metaphors expand into bodies, knots, rivers, universes of shifting meaning. Even an "obviational" analysis of the process of metaphorization (Wagner 1986) does not quite capture this expansion, for, according to Wagner, obviation is manifested "as a series of substitutive metaphors that constitute the plot of a myth (or the form of a ritual), in a dialectical movement that closes when it returns to its beginning point" (Wagner 1986:xi). The metaphorical-metonymical process of knotting and tying suggests, on the contrary, a dynamics in which the closing dialectical movement between beginning and end is broken open into an ongoing movement of partial-connection-in-transformation, to paraphrase Strathern, and on levels that surpass by far the internal ritual structure.

The connection-in-transformation comes about in an organic way; it is gradually realized through a temporal unfolding, in the ritual praxis and in the acting out or living through in various daily contexts. I would, therefore, reverse Turner's statement that "symbols ... produce action, and dominant symbols tend to become focuses in interaction" (Turner 1967:22) by saying that the "symbol," or the generation of meaning and a (doxic) sense of what the world one lives in is about, is produced in and through action. For the Aluund, the stress is not on the symbol or the metaphor as thing but on the action of knotting, performatively realized in




interaction with the natural environment, with other participants in the ritual contexts, and with other actors in the social context. As Jackson (1989:149) notes, metaphors are basically also "means of doing things and not merely ways of saying things." In this sense, metaphors and symbols do not make explicit; they do not make Aluund "suddenly ... aware of a wider classification of things which was heretofore only implicit-embedded in experience" (Fernan- dez 1986:205). Precisely because they are embedded in experience and generated in practice, the "knowledge" and understanding of metaphorical or symbolical meaning remains implicit to a large extent. A cognitivist stress on the efficacy of symbols and ritual knowledge (as leading from the bush to the village) may hold, for example, on a predominantly rhetorical level and for smaller parts of the whole, and may lead to the possibility of "exegetical supervision," as Schieffelin (1985:720) has called it. There may indeed exist a specialist as well as a popular exegesis of various aspects of the ritual practice (with the first putting the stress more on the metaphorical relationships at play, whereas the second stresses the metonymical ones). The Luunda ritual specialists' invocation of the kapwiip may be considered as an example of an encoded, exegetical elaboration of crucial aspects in the field of ritual knowledge concerning the tree.

Exegetical mappings make explicit the understanding that is embedded in individual experience and comprised by each individual actor into what I would call a personal whole, that is the individual practice and experience of every Muluund. These Luunda personal wholes are comparable although not identical, given differences in personal relationships and idiosyncra- sies, in ritual experience and degree of participation, in life trajectory and personal biography, and in motive, volition, gender, and age. The personal wholes relate to the macro-whole just as the individual practice relates to the group practice. Each of these personal wholes presents a different, fragmentary, and personal synthesis of the larger whole; they are incomplete and yet encompassing, implicit and yet experienced by all.

The macro-whole eludes total mappability. The emphasis on the (verbal) communication of meaning by means of symbols as arguments that may be cognitively grasped therefore reveals only one side. The open-endedness of processes of symbolization and metaphorization makes it difficult to dam in and comprise into cognitive understanding, and in an explicitly discursive, predicative, or logocentric way, all the possible meanings that may be generated. It may even be asked whether, in the end, processes of symbolization and metaphorization do not move beyond, and thereby elude, the mere generation and "revelation" of meaning. In a sense, performance theory has hinted at this possibility (and has thereby indirectly indicated the limits of semantic and semiotic theories of metaphor). As Schieffelin (1985:707) has stressed, "symbols are effective less because they communicate meaning (though this is also important) than because, through performance, meanings are formulated in a social rather than cognitive space, and the participants are engaged with the symbols in the interactional creation of a performance reality, rather than being merely informed by them as knowers." In other words, it is in the ritual praxis, or in those instances where ritual spills over into daily life, that "meaning" is embodied and again excorporated as lived experience in a very immediate and practical way. As such, it ceases to exist on a purely semantical level or in a propositional way. I do not believe that the Aluund cognitively interpret the kapwiip tree, through its various ritual occurrences, as a meaningful constituent that reveals to them the potentially integrative and mediating nature of Luunda political rule. Even in specialist exegesis, a lot remains unsaid and implicit: knowing is doing, and specialist knowledge is more often a "savoir-faire," a way of knowing how to carry out certain ritual practices, rather than a way of talking and reasoning about these practices on an abstract level. What is more, however, the royal body itself basically surpasses the level of the metaphorical generation of meaning. The essence of the royal body situates itself beyond metaphor (or even performance) to become ontological instead. In such instances, knowing is not only "doing," but basically becomes "being." Rather than metaphorically generating,




symbolically representing, or performatively actualizing the "meaning" of integratedness and

well-being in Luunda society, the royal body for the Aluund essentially is the vital life-flow (mooy) in itself. It is in instances such as these that metaphor ceases to be and that life takes over. And as the Aluund say: "the breath of life is like the wind, it cannot be trapped."

notes

Acknowledgments. Research was conducted among the Aluund of the Nzofu territory in the upper Kwaango (Bandundu, Zaire), along the Angolan border, some 1,200 kilometers to the southeast of Kinshasa, from September 1987 to March 1989, from March to August 1991, and from February to May 1994. I gratefully acknowledge grants made available to me for this research by the Onderzoeksfonds of the University of Leuven and by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research. Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the 1990 Conference on Religious and Political Processes in Past and Present, Amsterdam, and at the 1992 Satterthwaite Colloquium on African Ritual and Religion. I thank the anonymous reviewers of American Ethnologist for their useful suggestions.

1. Sorcerer, mahaamb [nonancestral spiritual agencies], dead person: in the Luunda etiological grid these are the three categories considered to be possible "causes" (yisaku) of illness, misfortune, or death. The popular etiological concept of chisaku attributes the origin of the problem to the intervention of these malevolent entities, according to a logic of linear or instrumental causality (see De Boeck 1991 a).

2. It is interesting to note that the uluundtranslation of the Ndembu term chijikijilu, a hunter's trail blaze on a tree, would be "that which 'blocks' or 'overgrows' (both denoted by the verb -jik) the path (njil)," which is the exact opposite of "blazing a trail" or bringing order to the chaotic.

3. A similar concept of koola is used by the neigbouring Yaka, who locate it in the south (i.e., in the direction of the Nzofu territory). The concept of kool, nkola, and a number of other related linguistic variants is used by Ndembu, Bemba, Nkoya, and many other Luunda-related peoples.

4. In this respect, it must be remarked that the data concerning the royal titleholder presented in this article also apply to lesser titleholders, but in a scaled-down form.

5. The policy of the Belgian colonial administration with regard to traditional Luunda authorities seems to have consisted in undermining this system of tributary gifts. The colonial conversion of the tributary network into a system of tax payment, in which traditional authorities were forced to play the role of tax collectors, had a negative effect on the power base of those traditional authorities (see Bustin 1975:124ff. on the effect of colonial policy on the mwaant yaaVs power base; see also M'bokolo 1985:193 and Vellut 1972:62ff.).

6. Note, however, that the pyramidal image, so commonly used to refer to African polities, does not convey the same meaning as, for example, the local Luunda image of the king's court as a central knot in a regional network. On alternative models of political centralization see also Drucker-Brown 1989.

7. It is no coincidence that the word mwingaangyeel, "there where the world awakens" (i.e., the common denomination for the east), is also used among various other Luunda-related groups to designate the mwaant yaavs royal court in Kapanga (see Hoover 1978a:640).

8. To express physical sensations, it is used in expressions such as -oov mutosh, "to feel cold"; -oov iimpw, "to feel thirsty"; -oov maluungul, "to feel heat," and so on. It is used to express emotional states as in the following expressions: -oov musaangal, "to feel happiness"; -oov woom, "to feel fright"; -oov mujim, "to feel angry" (literally, "to feel big").

9. I found no evidence of turtle symbolism in the layout of the court. Carvalho (1890:225-238) was the first to mention the mwaant yaavs court's tortoiselike groundplan. (See also Hoover 1978a:107ff. and Margarido 1970 on the layout of the Luunda court. Roberts 1980 provides comparative data from the regional ethnography.) The east-west orientation and the mees (kwimpal)/mazeemb organization of the Nzofu court is in accordance with Carvalho's plan.

10. Being like the still core of the water stream, the titleholder is not allowed to drink from or to bathe himself in streaming water or rainwater. Instead, he may only use motionless water. Also, in Nzav's kitchen or malal, the use of water will be subjected to certain rules. It is the mwaant mwaadi's responsibility to see to it that all these yijil are observed (-chijil, -jidik: "to forbid"; -jil: "to forbid oneself," "to abstain"). When water for the paramount mwaant is drawn from a stream, it will be taken from the middle of the river, where it is said to flow less rapidly than at the borders (dreaming of someone who is swimming in the middle of a big river is also considered a sign of protection and good luck). From the moment the water enters the mwaant mwaadi's homestead, it may not be seen by anyone but the mwaant mwaadi herself. Never will Nzav drink water that has been drawn on the same day. It will always be left to "sleep" one night in the malal, so that it is completely still before it is used. Just as he himself is the still center and core of the life-flow, the water he drinks or uses is water that is without movement. After the meal the water with which Nzav washed his hands, together with the leftovers of his meal, are thrown away by the mwaant mwaadi into a hole in the ground, which was dug for that purpose, either in the malalor outside the royal courtyard's fence under the kapwiip tree. This is done without anyone's noticing it. By pouring the water into the hole, it returns to the ancestors and thus to ancestral time and the origin or source of life.




11. Significantly, the court dignitaries and regional titleholders are referred to as the "riverbank of power." The uluund term for riverbank is muchim. The same term is used to denote the liver. As such, the image of the riverbank/water flow, moves off in yet another direction, for the liver is said to form the bracket on which the heart reposes. Just as the liver supports the heart, so the people support the paramount and form the "bracket" on which political power rests.

12. The encompassing and interjoining capacities of the titleholder are exemplified, for example, in the build-up of the chiefly staff he carries. This staff, made, significantly, from the wood of the kapwiip, consists of three levels: a bird (in particular, the African fish eagle), a female human figure, and, on the third and lowest level, a snake and a crocodile. The three levels (heaven, earth, and underworld) represent the titleholder's ability to mediate between the cosmological level, the human or social world, and the unknown hidden forces of the underworld.

13. Another uluund translation of the verb -jik, which we also find in the Ndembu term chijikijitu, is "to be dense" (see also Hoover 1975 for the same connotation in Shaba uruund).

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submitted June 25, 1992 revised version submitted October 15, 1992 accepted December 11, 1992




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