Virgin Birth

Wyatt MacGaffey; Rodney Needham

Man, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 3. (Sep., 1969), pp. 457-458.

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 CORRESPONDENCE
talking, and asserting one's ego are all
striking ways o f drawing positive attention to
oneself. (Today, o f course, nakedness,
crawling, speechlessness, and depersonalisa-
tion attract still more attention-at least
among adults. But the attention they attract
is clearly negative in type and virtually
guarantees low hierarchical status to those
exhibiting these traits.) Individuals capable o f
not only drawing but also holding the
attention o f their fellows are, in effect, al-
ready controlling the behaviour o f their
observers.
Initially, then, as I interpret them, tool-
carrying, bipedalism, speech and personality
were hominoid devices for achieving domi-
nance within relatively small conspecific
communities. Gradually, however, hominid
imitative virtuosity led to their diffusioneven
among subordinate males, females and young.
W h e n this saturation point was reached,
I surmise, these four dominance devices
'overflowed' into the sphere o f interspecific
relations, increasingly enabling men, first
through predation and later through domesti-
cation, to control other species. As a result,
by the Holocene epoch, man, through
concentrated application o f generalised
primate dominance techniques, had made
himself uniquely dominant among terrestrial
species.
Roger W . Wescott
Drew University
NOTE
As orally cited by Phyllis Jay in the
Symposium on Primatology at the Annual
Meeting o f the American Anthropological
Association, Seattle, Washington, November,
1968.
Du Chaillu, Paul 1861. Explorations and
adventures in equatorial Africa. London.
Kortlandt. A. van 1965. Comment on: The
essential morphdlogical basis for human
culture. Curr. Anthrop. 6, 322.
Schaller, George 1963. The mountain gorilla.
Chicago : Univ. Press.
Yerkes, R. M. 1951. A gorilla census and
study. J. Mammal. 32, 429-36.
Virgin birth
SIR,
I share Douglas's doubts, expressed in an
earlier issue (Man (N.S.) 4, 133-4) that a doc-
trine o f procreation which sees the woman as
merely a bag for the foetus is clearly extremely
patrilineal, as Leach asserts (1967: 44).
Patrilineal and matrilineal are not very good
labels for comparisons o f this kind. As
characterisations o f entire societies they
457
reflect an anthropological preference for
administrative units and processes rather than
political ones. Accordingly, most writers
on the matrilineal BaKongo o f the western
Congo have taken the rule o f exogamy, that
'those o f one blood may not marry' (Van
W i n g 1959: 54), as a predictable example
o f a matrilineal doctrine, without inquiring
further. In fact the BaKongo regard the
father as the source o f the child's body, blood,
bones and spiritual qualities, and the mother
as only the source o f nourishment. Various
proverbs express this, e.g. 'Father engenders,
not mother. Mother is a bag to keep the child
in' (Doutreloux 1967: 106). This doctrine is
consistent with political reality, since the
estate o f each matrilineal descent group is
created and maintained b y political activity
in a field o f affinal and patrifilial relations;
prototypically, the father endows the son with
land and magical attributes which are sub-
sequently inherited in the female line. The
'blood' o f the descent group is the members'
common rights in this estate. Success, for
individuals and groups alike, comes from
having a powerful father, i.e. a patron o f
some kind. This political structure is accur-
ately reflected in Kongo religion, ancient and
modern; the ancestor cult, for example, is
primarily a cult o f the fathers. All this makes
a good deal o f sense. The inconsistency, i f
there is one, comes from calling the total
society 'matrilineal'.
W y a t t MacGaffey
Haverford College
Doutreloux, A. 1967. L'ombre des Jtiches.
Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts.
Leach, E. R. 1967. Virgin birth. Proc. R.
anthrop. Inst. 1966, 39-49.
Van W i n g ,J. 1959. Etudes Bakongo. Bruxelles:
Desclte de Brouwer.
dim,
The lively continuance o f the debate
provoked by Dr Leach's lecture on virgin
birth makes it seem useful to furnish some less
familiar references which have not been
adduced b y the participants.
I . Powell, as quoted by Leach, reports two
Trobriand views about human conception:
the Malinowskian version, according to
which the man is not the genitor, is attributed
to men and is said to be valid in formal
situations; whereas another explanation,
according to which the man's semen coagu-
lates the menstrual blood to form a child, is
ascribed to women and children (cf. Powell
1968).
Hocart has written in this connexion: ' A
lady who has been in the Trobriands and
talked with the women assured me that they
knew much more about it than the men and
458 CORRESPONDENCE
deceived their husbands to conceal their Van Wouden, Lkvi-Strauss and Fortes
amours' (Hocart 1954: 99). This passage has
not much intrinsic value as evidence, but it 'IR9
may now be thought a quite interesting gloss AS M' A. Jaspan remarks in his
on the sexual partition ofideas which Powell review of Needham's translation of F. A. E.
relates. Van Wouden's Sociale structuurtypen in de
2. In Europe, the idea that a woman may
GrOOte Oost (Man (N.S.) 4, 1571, a
conceive without the physical intervention of work to 'Omprehend, it is con-
a man is not limited to ,-hristian theology or siderable theoretical importance. This lies
to the relationship between gods and men. In principally in its antedating the work of Ltvi-
1517 the Parliament of Grenoble declared the Strauss On structures
legitimacy o f a child born to Mme Montlkon some fourteen years. This fact, together with
four years after the departure of her husband, the latter" admitted knorance Of Van
accepting the lady's asseveration that she had Wouden's for some time, been a
conceived of her husband in a dream. The feather in the cap of Dutch anthropologists of
court took into account the depositions of the Leiden tradition (De Josselin de Jong
learned doctors of the University of Mont- 'g6O: 7 ) .
pellier to the effect that this could well Where I would disagree with J a s ~ a nis in
happen; and it relied also on the witness of his comparison of the work under review to
four or five other women of Grenoble who that of Fortes, in particular his suggestion
affirmed that they too had borne children that the historian of kinship studies will be
conceived by &imaginaryconjunctions7with forced to recognise Van Wouden rather than
their absent husbands and not by actual Fortes as the theoretical innovator. It is clear
copulation. hi^ case is cited by ~ ~van ~ that some
~ kind
l ofd theoretical similarity exists
Gennep, who makes it the introduction to an between Fortes's 'web of kinship' concept and
ethnographical survey of such notions pub- the structural approach of Van Wouden.
a concubitu9 Both are concerlled with kinship behaviour
lished under the title c ~ u c i nsine
in the R~~~~des idles, I, 1904, 554-8 (re- in relation to social structure, with its role as
printed in his Rites, moeurs et 1kgendes, Paris: 'a mechanism for the ordering of social
Societ&du M~~~~~~ de F ~ onthis
~1908). ~ relationships
~ ~ ,within a given society' (Fortes
topic van Gennep recommends [C. de] 1949: 347). Yet, apart from this, the two
Saintyves, Les vierges-mdres et les naissances works are surely of a rather different genre.
miraculeuses (Paris: Nourry, 1908) and H. de Jaspan himself acknowledges the clear
Charencey, Le ftls de la vierge (1879). affinities of Van Wouden's work to that later
3. The dogma of the Virgin Birth may in undertaken by Lkvi-Strauss, and this alone
some sense be regarded as having been, as nukes any comparison with Fortes appear
Leach asserts, 'orthodox among Christians somewhat obscure. It is doubtful whether it is
for about 1,600 years' (196~:42), but the at all meaningful to compare a synthesis of
orthodoxy was not that of an unchanging structural elements derived from a culture-
doctrine over this period. Its gradual develop- region, with, it is true, a large degree of
ment, as established by G. Herzog, in La homogeneity, with an analysis ofa much more
Sainte Vierge duns I'histoire (Paris: Nourry, localised community. Further, Types qf social
1908), has been outlined by van Gennep in structure in eastern Indonesia is based on, for the
'L'action individuelle et I'action collective most part, inadequate 2nd second-hand
dans la formation du culte de la Sainte ethnography, quite unlike Fortes's work, the
Vierge' (Revue des idJes, 5, 1908, 386-92; product of his own substantial and systematic
reprinted in Rites, moeurs et IJgendes, pp. 122- fieldwork experience.
36). His first concern is to urge, as does Leach, Whether or not Van Wouden's thesis is
that the comparative study of such meta- correct or not is still very much an open
physical ideas should begin with that religion question and will remain so as long as there is
which we know best and the history of which a paucity of good material from this area. But
has been most reliably attested. then, as Van Wouden was dealing, even in
Rodney Needham 1935, with historical records, it is unlikely that
~ n i v e r s i t yof Oxford fieldwork can either validate or invalidate his
ethnographical statements.
Hocart, A. M. 1954. Social origins. London: ~h~~ to vanWouden we owe a theory
Watts. which adequately explains the facts at his
Leach, E. R . 1967. Virgin birth. Proc. R. disposal, whereas F~~~~~~~ work derives its
anthrop. Inst. 1966, 39-44. very significance from the use of an intensive
H. A. Virgin fieldwork method, though he recognisesthat
birth. Man (N.S.) 3, 651-3. facts only acquire meaning in the light of an
[This correspondence is now closed- adequate theory (1949: vii). In this respect it
Hon. Ed.] is arguable, therefore, whether Van Wouden's