abstract brute fact than from a particular intimate

15 relation’s permanent rupture. It refers to the kinds

of feelings one experiences on learning, for
Grief and a Headhunter’s example, that the child just run over by a car is
one’s own and not a stranger’s. Rather than speaking
Rage of death in general, one must consider the
subject’s position within a field of social relations
Renato Rosaldo in order to grasp one’s emotional experience.2
If you ask an older Ilongot man of northern Luzon, My effort to show the force of a simple statement
Philippines, why he cuts off human heads, his answer taken literally goes against anthropology’s classic
is brief, and one on which no anthropologist can norms, which prefer to explicate culture through
readily elaborate: He says that rage, born of grief, the gradual thickening of symbolic webs of meaning.
impels him to kill his fellow human beings. He claims By and large, cultural analysts use not force but such
that he needs a place ‘‘to carry his anger.’’ The terms as thick description, multi-vocality, polysemy,
act of severing and tossing away the victim’s head richness,
enables him, he says, to vent and, he hopes, throw and texture. The notion of force, among other
away the anger of his bereavement. Although the things, opens to question the common anthropological
anthropologist’s job is to make other cultures intelligible, assumption that the greatest human import
more questions fail to reveal any further explanation resides in the densest forest of symbols and that
of this man’s pithy statement. To him, analytical detail, or ‘‘cultural depth,’’ equals enhanced
grief, rage, and headhunting go together in a selfevident explanation of a culture, or ‘‘cultural elaboration.’’
manner. Either you understand it or you Do people always in fact describe most thickly
don’t. And, in fact, for the longest time I simply what matters most to them?
did not. The Rage in Ilongot Grief
In what follows, I want to talk about how to talk Let me pause a moment to introduce the Ilongots,
about the cultural force of emotions.1 The emotional among whom my wife, Michelle Rosaldo, and I lived
From Renato Rosaldo, ‘‘Introduction: Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage,’’ in
force of a death, for example, derives less from an Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon
Press; London: Taylor & Francis, 1993 [1989]).
167 had allowed their rage to dissipate, as best it could, in
(the beheaded victim’s) canceled another (the next of the course of everyday life. In 1974, they had another
kin). He looked puzzled, so I went on to say that the option; they began to consider conversion to evangelical
victim of a beheading was exchanged for the death of Christianity as a means of coping with their
one’s own kin, thereby balancing the books, so to grief. Accepting the new religion, people said, implied
speak. Insan reflected a moment and replied that he abandoning their old ways, including headhunting.
imagined somebody could think such a thing (a safe It also made coping with bereavement less
bet, since I just had), but that he and other Ilongots agonizing because they could believe that the deceased
did not think any such thing. Nor was there any had departed for a better world. No longer
indirect evidence for my exchange theory in ritual, did they have to confront the awful finality of death.
boast, song, or casual conversation.4 The force of the dilemma faced by the Ilongots
In retrospect, then, these efforts to impose exchange eluded me at the time. Even when I correctly
theory on one aspect of Ilongot behavior recorded their statements about grieving and the
appear feeble. Suppose I had discovered what I need to throw away their anger, I simply did not
sought? Although the notion of balancing the ledger grasp the weight of their words. In 1974, for
does have a certain elegant coherence, one wonders example, while Michelle Rosaldo and I were living
how such bookish dogma could inspire any man to among the Ilongots, a six-month-old baby died,
take another man’s life at the risk of his own. probably of pneumonia. That afternoon we visited
My life experience had not as yet provided the the father and found him terribly stricken. ‘‘He was
means to imagine the rage that can come with devastating sobbing and staring through glazed and bloodshot
loss. Nor could I, therefore, fully appreciate Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage
the acute problem of meaning that Ilongots faced in and conducted field research for thirty months
1974. Shortly after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial (1967–69, 1974). They number about 3,500 and
law in 1972, rumors that firing squads had reside in an upland area some 90 miles northeast of
become the new punishment for headhunting Manila, Philippines.3 They subsist by hunting deer and
reached the Ilongot hills. The men therefore decided wild pig and by cultivating rain-fed gardens (swiddens)
to call a moratorium on taking heads. In past epochs, with rice, sweet potatoes, manioc, and vegetables.
when headhunting had become impossible, Ilongots Their (bilateral) kin relations are reckoned
through men and women. After marriage, parents mean precisely what they say when they describe the
and their married daughters live in the same or adjacent anger in bereavement as the source of their desire to
households. The largest unit within the society, a cut off human heads. Taken at face value and granted
largely territorial descent group called the bertan, its full weight, their statement reveals much about
becomes manifest primarily in the context of feuding. what compels these older men to headhunt.
For themselves, their neighbors, and their ethnographers, In my efforts to find a ‘‘deeper’’ explanation for
headhunting stands out as the Ilongots’ most headhunting, I explored exchange theory, perhaps
salient cultural practice. because it had informed so many classic ethnographies.
When Ilongots told me, as they often did, how the One day in 1974, I explained the anthropologist’s
rage in bereavement could impel men to headhunt, I exchange model to an older Ilongot man named
brushed aside their one-line accounts as too simple, Insan. What did he think, I asked, of the idea that
thin, opaque, implausible, stereotypical, or otherwise headhunting resulted from the way that one death
unsatisfying. Probably I naively equated grief 168
with sadness. Certainly no personal experience eyes at the cotton blanket covering his baby.’’5 The
allowed me to imagine the powerful rage Ilongots man suffered intensely, for this was the seventh child
claimed to find in bereavement. My own inability to he had lost. Just a few years before, three of his
conceive the force of anger in grief led me to seek out children had died, one after the other, in a matter
another level of analysis that could provide a deeper of days. At the time, the situation was murky
explanation for older men’s desire to headhunt. as people present talked both about evangelical
Not until some fourteen years after first recording Christianity (the possible renunciation of taking
the terse Ilongot statement about grief and a headhunter’s heads) and their grudges against lowlanders (the
rage did I begin to grasp its overwhelming contemplation of headhunting forays into the surrounding
force. For years I thought that more verbal elaboration valleys).
(which was not forthcoming) or another analytical Through subsequent days and weeks, the man’s
level (which remained elusive) could better grief moved him in a way I had not anticipated.
explain older men’s motives for headhunting. Only Shortly after the baby’s death, the father converted
after being repositioned through a devastating loss of to evangelical Christianity. Altogether too quick on
my own could I better grasp that Ilongot older men the inference, I immediately concluded that the man
believed that the new religion could somehow prevent and my anger turned to nervousness and something
further deaths in his family. When I spoke my more like fear as I saw that Insan’s eyes were red.
mind to an Ilongot friend, he snapped at me, saying Tukbaw, Renato’s Ilongot ‘‘brother,’’ then broke into
that ‘‘I had missed the point: what the man in fact what was a brittle silence, saying he could make things
clear. He told us that it hurt to listen to a headhunting
sought in the new religion was not the denial of our
celebration when people knew that there would never
inevitable deaths but a means of coping with his be another. As he put it: ‘‘The song pulls at us, drags
grief. With the advent of martial law, headhunting our hearts, it makes us think of our dead uncle.’’ And
was out of the question as a means of venting his again: ‘‘It would be better if I had accepted God, but I
wrath and thereby lessening his grief. Were he to still am an Ilongot at heart; and when I hear the song,
remain in his Ilongot way of life, the pain of his my heart aches as it does when I must look upon
sorrow would simply be too much to bear.’’6 My unfinished bachelors whom I know that I will never
description from 1980 now seems so apt that I lead to take a head.’’ Then Wagat, Tukbaw’s wife,
wonder how I could have written the words and said with her eyes that all my questions gave her
pain, and told me: ‘‘Leave off now, isn’t that enough?
nonetheless failed to appreciate the force of the
Even I, awoman, cannot stand the way it feels insidemy
grieving man’s desire to vent his rage. heart.’’7
Another representative anecdote makesmy failure From my present position, it is evident that the tape
to imagine the rage possible in Ilongot bereavement all recording of the dead man’s boast evoked powerful
the more remarkable. On this occasion, Michelle feelings of bereavement, particularly rage and the
Rosaldo and I were urged by Ilongot friends to play impulse to headhunt. At the time I could only feel
the tape of a headhunting celebration we had witnessed apprehensive and diffusely sense the force of the
some five years before. No sooner had we emotions experienced by Insan, Tukbaw, Wagat,
turned on the tape and heard the boast of a man who and the others present.
had died in the intervening years than did people The dilemma for the Ilongots grew out of a set of
abruptly tell us to shut off the recorder. Michelle cultural practices that, when blocked, were agonizing
Rosaldo reported on the tense conversation that to live with. The cessation of headhunting called
ensued: for painful adjustments to other modes of coping
As Insan braced himself to speak, the room again
with the rage they found in bereavement. One could
became almost uncannily electric. Backs straightened
compare their dilemma with the notion that the Although the doctrine of preparation, knowledge,
failure to perform rituals can create anxiety.8 In the and sensibility contains much to admire, one should
Ilongot case, the cultural notion that throwing away a work to undermine the false comfort that it can
human head also casts away the anger creates a convey. At what point can people say that they have
problem of meaning when the headhunting ritual completed their learning or their life experience?
cannot be performed. Indeed, Max Weber’s classic The problem with taking this mode of preparing the
problem of meaning in The Protestant Ethic and the ethnographer too much to heart is that it can lend a
Spirit of Capitalism is precisely of this kind.9 On a false air of security, an authoritative claim to certitude
logical plane, the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and finality that our analyses cannot have. All
seems flawless: God has chosen the elect, but his interpretations are provisional; they are made by
decision can never be known by mortals. Among positioned subjects who are prepared to know certain
those whose ultimate concern is salvation, the doctrine things and not others. Even when knowledgeable,
of predestination is as easy to grasp conceptually sensitive, fluent in the language, and able to
as it is impossible to endure in everyday move easily in an alien cultural world, good ethnographers
life (unless one happens to be a ‘‘religious virtuoso’’). still have their limits, and their analyses
For Calvinists and Ilongots alike, the problem always are incomplete. Thus, I began to fathom the
of meaning resides in practice, not theory. The force of what Ilongots had been telling me about
dilemma for both groups involves the practical their losses through my own loss, and not through
matter of how to live with one’s beliefs, rather any systematic preparation for field research.
than the logical puzzlement produced by abstruse My preparation for understanding serious loss
doctrine. began in 1970 with the death of my brother, shortly
Renato Rosaldo after his twenty-seventh birthday. By experiencing
169 this ordeal with my mother and father, I gained a
field research appear to guarantee an authoritative measure of insight into the trauma of a parent’s
ethnography. Eclectic book knowledge and a range of losing a child. This insight informed my account,
life experiences, along with edifying reading and partially described earlier, of an Ilongot man’s reactions
self-awareness, supposedly vanquish the twin vices to the death of his seventh child. At the same
of ignorance and insensitivity. time, my bereavement was so much less than that of
my parents that I could not then imagine the overwhelming was the slippage from the ideal of detachment to
force of rage possible in such grief. My actual indifference, that of present-day reflexivity is
former position is probably similar to that of many in the tendency for the self-absorbed Self to lose sight
the discipline. One should recognize that ethnographic altogether of the culturally different Other. Despite
knowledge tends to have the strengths and the risks involved, as the ethnographer I must enter
limitations given by the relative youth of fieldworkers the discussion at this point to elucidate certain issues
who, for the most part, have not suffered of method.
serious losses and could have, for example, no personal The key concept in what follows is that of the
knowledge of how devastating the loss of a positioned (and repositioned) subject.10 In routine
long-term partner can be for the survivor. interpretive procedure, according to the methodology
In 1981 Michelle Rosaldo and I began field research of hermeneutics, one can say that ethnographers
among the Ifugaos of northern Luzon, Philippines. reposition themselves as they go about
On October 11 of that year, she was walking understanding other cultures. Ethnographers begin
along a trail with two Ifugao companions when she research with a set of questions, revise them
Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage throughout the course of inquiry, and in the end
How I Found the Rage in Grief emerge with different questions than they started
One burden of this introduction concerns the claim with. One’s surprise at the answer to a question, in
that it took some fourteen years for me to grasp what other words, requires one to revise the question
Ilongots had told me about grief, rage, and headhunting. until lessening surprises or diminishing returns indicate
During all those years I was not yet in a a stopping point. This interpretive approach has
position to comprehend the force of anger possible in been most influentially articulated within anthropology
bereavement, and now I am. Introducing myself into by Clifford Geertz.11
this account requires a certain hesitation both because Interpretive method usually rests on the axiom
of the discipline’s taboo and because of its that gifted ethnographers learn their trade by preparing
increasingly frequent violation by essays laced with themselves as broadly as possible. To follow
trendy amalgams of continental philosophy and the meandering course of ethnographic inquiry,
autobiographical field-workers require wide-ranging theoretical capacities
snippets. If classic ethnography’s vice and finely tuned sensibilities. After all, one
cannot predict beforehand what one will encounter Lest there be any misunderstanding, bereavement
in the field. One influential anthropologist, Clyde should not be reduced to anger, neither for myself
Kluckhohn, even went so far as to recommend a nor for anyone else.12 Powerful visceral emotional
double initiation: first, the ordeal of psychoanalysis, states swept over me, at times separately and at other
and then that of fieldwork. All too often, however, times together. I experienced the deep cutting pain
this view is extended until certain prerequisites of of sorrow almost beyond endurance, the cadaverous
170 cold of realizing the finality of death, the trembling
lost her footing and fell to her death some 65 feet beginning in my abdomen and spreading through my
down a sheer precipice into a swollen river below. body, the mournful keening that started without my
Immediately on finding her body I became enraged. willing, and frequent tearful sobbing. My present
How could she abandon me? How could she have purpose of revising earlier understandings of Ilongot
been so stupid as to fall? I tried to cry. I sobbed, but headhunting, and not a general view of bereavement,
rage blocked the tears. Less than a month later I thus focuses on anger rather than on other emotions
described this moment in my journal: ‘‘I felt like in a in grief.
nightmare, the whole world around me expanding Writings in English especially need to emphasize
and contracting, visually and viscerally heaving. the rage in grief. Although grief therapists routinely
Going down I find a group of men, maybe seven or encourage awareness of anger among the bereaved,
eight, standing still, silent, and I heave and sob, but upper-middle-class Anglo-American culture tends to
no tears.’’ An earlier experience, on the fourth ignore the rage devastating losses can bring. Paradoxically,
anniversary of my brother’s death, had taught me this culture’s conventional wisdom usually
to recognize heaving sobs without tears as a form of denies the anger in grief at the same time that
anger. This anger, in a number of forms, has swept therapists encourage members of the invisible community
over me on many occasions since then, lasting hours of the bereaved to talk in detail about how
and even days at a time. Such feelings can be aroused angry their losses make them feel. My brother’s
by rituals, but more often they emerge from unexpected death in combination with what I learned about
reminders (not unlike the Ilongots’ unnerving anger from Ilongots (for them, an emotional state
encounter with their dead uncle’s voice on the more publicly celebrated than denied) allowed me
tape recorder). immediately to recognize the experience of rage.13
Ilongot anger and my own overlap, rather like two broadly on death, rage, and headhunting by speaking
circles, partially overlaid and partially separate. They of my ‘‘wish for the Ilongot solution; they are much
are not identical. Alongside striking similarities, significant more in touch with reality than Christians. So, I need
differences in tone, cultural form, and a place to carry my anger – and can we say a solution
human consequences distinguish the ‘‘anger’’ animating of the imagination is better than theirs? And can we
our respective ways of grieving. My vivid fantasies, condemn them when we napalm villages? Is our
for example, about a life insurance agent who rationale so much sounder than theirs?’’ All this
refused to recognize Michelle’s death as job-related was written in despair and rage.
did not lead me to kill him, cut off his head, and Not until some fifteen months after Michelle’s
celebrate afterward. In so speaking, I am illustrating death was I again able to begin writing anthropology.
the discipline’s methodological caution against the Writing the initial version of ‘‘Grief and a Headhunter’s
reckless attribution of one’s own categories and Rage’’ was in fact cathartic, though perhaps not
experiences to members of another culture. Such in the way one would imagine. Rather than following
warnings against facile notions of universal human after the completed composition, the catharsis occurred
nature can, however, be carried too far and harden beforehand. When the initial version of this
into the equally pernicious doctrine that, my own introduction was most acutely on my mind, during
group aside, everything human is alien to me. One the month before actually beginning to write, I felt
hopes to achieve a balance between recognizing Renato Rosaldo
wide-ranging human differences and the modest 171
truism that any two human groups must have certain Guided by their emphasis on self-contained entities,
things in common. ethnographies written in accord with classic
Only a week before completing the initial draft of norms consider death under the rubric of ritual
an earlier version of this introduction, I rediscovered rather than bereavement. Indeed, the subtitles of
my journal entry, written some six weeks after even recent ethnographies on death make the emphasis
Michelle’s death, in which I made a vow to myself on ritual explicit. William Douglas’s Death in
about how I would return to writing anthropology, if Murelaga is subtitled Funerary Ritual in a Spanish
I ever did so, ‘‘by writing Grief and a Headhunter’s Basque Village; Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf’s
Rage . . .’’ My journal went on to reflect more Celebrations of Death is subtitled The Anthropology
of Mortuary Ritual; Peter Metcalf’s A Borneo Journey ‘‘a very easy death’’17 (I use Simone de Beauvoir’s
into Death is subtitled Berawan Eschatology from Its title with irony, as she did) is not only its lack of
Rituals.14 Ritual itself is defined by its formality and representativeness but also that it makes death in
routine; under such descriptions, it more nearly general appear as routine for the survivors as this
resembles a recipe, a fixed program, or a book of particular one apparently was for the deceased.
etiquette than an open-ended human process. Were the old woman’s sons and daughters untouched
Ethnographies that in this manner eliminate intense by her death? The case study shows less about how
emotions not only distort their descriptions people cope with death than about how death can be
but also remove potentially key variables from their made to appear routine, thereby fitting neatly into
explanations. When anthropologist William Douglas, the author’s view of funerary ritual as a mechanical
for example, announces his project in Death in Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage
Murelaga, he explains that his objective is to use death diffusely depressed and ill with a fever. Then one day
and funerary ritual ‘‘as a heuristic device with which an almost literal fog lifted and words began to flow. It
to approach the study of rural Basque society.’’15 In seemed less as if I were doing the writing than that
other words, the primary object of study is social the words were writing themselves through me.
structure, not death, and certainly not bereavement. My use of personal experience serves as a vehicle
The author begins his analysis by saying, ‘‘Death is for making the quality and intensity of the rage in
not always fortuitous or unpredictable.’’16 He goes Ilongot grief more readily accessible to readers than
on to describe how an old woman, ailing with certain more detached modes of composition. At the
the infirmities of her age, welcomed her death. The same time, by invoking personal experience as an
description largely ignores the perspective of the analytical category one risks easy dismissal. Unsympathetic
most bereaved survivors, and instead vacillates readers could reduce this introduction to an
between those of the old woman and a detached act of mourning or a mere report on my discovery of
observer. the anger possible in bereavement. Frankly, this
Undeniably, certain people do live a full life and introduction is both and more. An act of mourning,
suffer so greatly in their decrepitude that they embrace a personal report, and a critical analysis of anthropological
the relief death can bring. Yet the problem with method, it simultaneously encompasses a
making an ethnography’s major case study focus on number of distinguishable processes, no one of
which cancels out the others. Similarly, I argue in 172
what follows that ritual in general and Ilongot headhunting programmed unfolding of prescribed acts. ‘‘To the
in particular form the intersection of multiple Basque,’’ says Douglas, ‘‘ritual is order and order is
coexisting social processes. Aside from revising ritual.’’18
the ethnographic record, the paramount claim made Douglas captures only one extreme in the range of
here concerns how my own mourning and consequent possible deaths. Putting the accent on the routine
reflection on Ilongot bereavement, rage, and aspects of ritual conveniently conceals the agony of
headhunting raise methodological issues of general such unexpected early deaths as parents losing a
concern in anthropology and the human sciences. grown child or a mother dying in childbirth. Concealed
Death in Anthropology in such descriptions are the agonies of the
Anthropology favors interpretations that equate analytical survivors who muddle through shifting, powerful
‘‘depth’’ with cultural ‘‘elaboration.’’ Many emotional states. Although Douglas acknowledges
studies focus on visibly bounded arenas where one the distinction between the bereaved members of
can observe formal and repetitive events, such as the deceased’s domestic group and the more public
ceremonies, rituals, and games. Similarly, studies of ritualistic group, he writes his account primarily
word play are more likely to focus on jokes as from the viewpoint of the latter. He masks the
programmed monologues than on the less scripted, emotional force of bereavement by reducing funerary
more free-wheeling improvised interchanges of ritual to orderly routine.
witty banter. Most ethnographers prefer to study Surely, human beings mourn both in ritual settings
events that have definite locations in space with and in the informal settings of everyday life. Consider
marked centers and outer edges. Temporally, they the evidence that willy-nilly spills over the edges in
have middles and endings. Historically, they appear Godfrey Wilson’s classic anthropological account of
to repeat identical structures by seemingly doing ‘‘conventions of burial’’ among the Nyakyusa of South
things today as they were done yesterday. Their Africa:
qualities of fixed definition liberate such events That some at least of those who attend a Nyakyusa
from the untidiness of everyday life so that they can burial are moved by grief it is easy to establish. I have
be ‘‘read’’ like articles, books, or, as we now say, heard people talking regretfully in ordinary conversation
of a man’s death; I have seen a man whose sister
texts.
had just died walk over alone towards her grave and Descriptions of the dance and subsequent quarrels,
weep quietly by himself without any parade of grief; even killings, provide ample evidence of the emotional
and I have heard of a man killing himself because of his intensity involved. The articulate testimony by
grief for a dead son.19 Wilson’s informants makes it obvious that even the
Note that all the instances Wilson witnesses or hears most intense sentiments can be studied by ethnographers.
about happen outside the circumscribed sphere of Despite such exceptions as Wilson, the general
formal ritual. People converse among themselves, rule seems to be that one should tidy things up as
walk alone and silently weep, or more impulsively much as possible by wiping away the tears and
commit suicide. The work of grieving, probably ignoring the tantrums. Most anthropological studies
universally, occurs both within obligatory ritual of death eliminate emotions by assuming the position
acts and in more everyday settings where people of the most detached observer.21 Such studies usually
find themselves alone or with close kin. conflate the ritual process with the process of
In Nyakyusa burial ceremonies, powerful emotional mourning, equate ritual with the obligatory, and
states also become present in the ritual itself, ignore the relation between ritual and everyday
which is more than a series of obligatory acts. Men life. The bias that favors formal ritual risks assuming
say they dance the passions of their bereavement, the answers to questions that most need to be asked.
which includes a complex mix of anger, fear, and Do rituals, for example, always reveal cultural
grief: depth?
‘‘This war dance (ukukina),’’ said an old man, ‘‘is
Most analysts who equate death with funerary
mourning, we are mourning the dead man. We
dance because there is war in our hearts. A passion of ritual assume that rituals store encapsulated wisdom
grief and fear exasperates us (ilyyojo likutusila).’’ . . . as if it were a microcosm of its encompassing cultural
Elyojo means a passion or grief, anger or fear; ukusila macrocosm. One recent study of death and
means to annoy or exasperate beyond endurance. In mourning, for example, confidently begins by
explaining ukusila one man put it like this: ‘‘If a man affirming that rituals embody ‘‘the collective wisdom
continually insults me then he exasperates me (ukusila) of many cultures.’’22 Yet this generalization surely
so that I want to fight him.’’ Death is a fearful and requires case-by-case investigation against a broader
grievous event that exasperates those men nearly concerned range of alternative hypotheses.
and makes them want to fight.20
At the polar extremes, rituals either display cultural
depth or brim over with platitudes. In the deep cultural activity the microcosmic view, and an
former case, rituals indeed encapsulate a culture’s alternative view ritual as a busy intersection. In the
wisdom; in the latter instance, they act as catalysts latter case, ritual appears as a place where a number
that precipitate processes whose unfolding occurs of distinct social processes intersect. The crossroads
over subsequent months or even years. Many rituals, simply provides a space for distinct trajectories to
of course, do both by combining a measure of traverse, rather than containing them in complete
wisdom with a comparable dose of platitudes. encapsulated form. From this perspective, Ilongot
Renato Rosaldo headhunting stands at the confluence of three analytically
173 separable processes.
The analysis just sketched regards ritual as a timeless, The first process concerns whether or not it
self-contained process. Without denying the is an opportune time to raid. Historical conditions
insight in this approach, its limits must also be determine the possibilities of raiding, which range
considered. Imagine, for example, exorcism rituals from frequent to likely to unlikely to impossible.
described as if they were complete in themselves, These conditions include American colonial efforts
rather than being linked with larger processes at pacification, the Great Depression, World War II,
unfolding before and after the ritual period. Through revolutionary movements in the surrounding lowlands,
what processes does the afflicted person recover or feuding among Ilongot groups, and the
continue to be afflicted after the ritual? What are the declaration of martial law in 1972. Ilongots use the
social consequences of recovery or its absence? Failure analogy of hunting to speak of such historical vicissitudes.
to consider such questions diminishes the force Much as Ilongot huntsmen say they cannot
of such afflictions and therapies for which the formal know when game will cross their path or whether
ritual is but a phase. Still other questions apply to their arrows will strike the target, so certain historical
differently positioned subjects, including the person forces that condition their existence remain
afflicted, the healer, and the audience. In all cases, beyond their control. My book Ilongot Headhunting,
the problem involves the delineation of processes 1883–1974 explores the impact of historical factors
that occur before and after, as well as during, the on Ilongot headhunting.
ritual moment. Second, young men coming of age undergo a
Let us call the notion of a self-contained sphere of protracted period of personal turmoil during
Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage trail. Ilongot men vividly recall the hunger and
My own experience of bereavement and ritual deprivation they endure over the days and even
fits the platitudes and catalyst model better than weeks it takes to move cautiously toward the place
that of microcosmic deep culture. Even a careful where they set up an ambush and await the first
analysis of the language and symbolic action person who happens along. Once the raiders kill
during the two funerals for which I was a chief their victim, they toss away the head rather than
mourner would reveal precious little about the experience keep it as a trophy. In tossing away the head, they
of bereavement.23 This statement, of claim by analogy to cast away their life burdens,
course, should not lead anyone to derive a universal including the rage in their grief.
from somebody else’s personal knowledge. Instead, Before a raid, men describe their state of being by
it should encourage ethnographers to ask whether a saying that the burdens of life have made them heavy
ritual’s wisdom is deep or conventional, and whether and entangled, like a tree with vines clinging to it.
its process is immediately transformative or but a They say that a successfully completed raid makes
single step in a lengthy series of ritual and everyday them feel light of step and ruddy in complexion. The
events. collective energy of the celebration with its song,
In attempting to grasp the cultural force of rage music, and dance reportedly gives the participants a
and other powerful emotional states, both formal sense of well-being. The expiatory ritual process
ritual and the informal practices of everyday life involves cleansing and catharsis.
provide crucial insight. Thus, cultural descriptions 174
should seek out force as well as thickness, and they which they desire nothing so much as to take a head.
should extend from well-defined rituals to myriad During this troubled period, they seek a life partner
less circumscribed practices. and contemplate the traumatic dislocation of leaving
Grief, Rage, and Ilongot Headhunting their families of origin and entering their new wife’s
When applied to Ilongot headhunting, the view of household as a stranger. Young men weep, sing, and
ritual as a storehouse of collective wisdom aligns burst out in anger because of their fierce desire to
headhunting with expiatory sacrifice. The raiders take a head and wear the coveted red hornbill
call the spirits of the potential victims, bid their earrings that adorn the ears of men who already
ritual farewells, and seek favorable omens along the have, as Ilongots say, arrived (tabi). Volatile, envious,
passionate (at least according to their own explanation.
cultural stereotype of the young unmarried man My earlier understandings of Ilongot headhunting
[buintaw]), they constantly lust to take a head. Michelle missed the fuller significance of how older men
and I began fieldwork among the Ilongots only a experience loss and rage. Older men prove critical
year after abandoning our unmarried youths; hence in this context because they, not the youths, set the
our ready empathy with youthful turbulence. Her processes of headhunting in motion. Their rage is
book on Ilongot notions of self explores the passionate intermittent, whereas that of youths is continuous.
anger of young men as they come of age. In the equation of headhunting, older men are the
Third, older men are differently positioned than variable and younger men are the constant. Culturally
their younger counterparts. Because they have already speaking, older men are endowed with knowledge
beheaded somebody, they can wear the red and stamina that their juniors have not yet
hornbill earrings so coveted by youths. Their desire attained, hence they care for (saysay) and lead
to headhunt grows less from chronic adolescent (bukur) the younger men when they raid.
turmoil than from more intermittent acute agonies In a preliminary survey of the literature on headhunting.
of loss. After the death of somebody to whom they I found that the lifting of mourning prohibitions
are closely attached, older men often inflict on frequently occurs after taking a head. The
themselves vows of abstinence, not to be lifted notion that youthful anger and older men’s rage
until the day they participate in a successful headhunting lead them to take heads is more plausible than such
raid. These deaths can cover a range of commonly reported ‘‘explanations’’ of headhunting
instances from literal death, whether through natural as the need to acquire mystical ‘‘soul stuff’’ or personal
causes or beheading, to social death where, for names.24 Because the discipline correctly
example, a man’s wife runs off with another man. rejects stereotypes of the ‘‘bloodthirsty savage,’’ it
In all cases, the rage born of devastating loss animates must investigate how headhunters create an intense
the older men’s desire to raid. This anger at abandonment desire to decapitate their fellow humans. The human
is irreducible in that nothing at a deeper sciences must explore the cultural force of emotions
level explains it. Although certain analysts argue with a view to delineating the passions that animate
against the dreaded last analysis, the linkage of certain forms of human conduct.
grief, rage, and headhunting has no other known Summary
The ethnographer, as a positioned subject, grasps 175
certain human phenomena better than others. He bedded in local contexts, shaped by local interests,
or she occupies a position or structural location and and colored by local perceptions. The agenda for
observes with a particular angle of vision. Consider, social analysis has shifted to include not only eternal
for example, how age, gender, being an outsider, and verities and lawlike generalizations but also political
association with a neo-colonial regime influence what processes, social changes, and human differences.
the ethnographer learns. The notion of position also Such terms as objectivity, neutrality, and impartiality
refers to how life experiences both enable and inhibit refer to subject positions once endowed with great
particular kinds of insight. In the case at hand, nothing institutional authority, but they are arguably neither
in my own experience equipped me even to more nor less valid than those of more engaged, yet
imagine the anger possible in bereavement until equally perceptive, knowledgeable social actors.
after Michelle Rosaldo’s death in 1981. Only then Social analysis must now grapple with the realization
was I in a position to grasp the force of what Ilongots that its objects of analysis are also analyzing subjects
had repeatedly told me about grief, rage, and headhunting. who critically interrogate ethnographers – their
By the same token, so-called natives are also writings, their ethics, and their politics.
positioned subjects who have a distinctive mix of NOTES
insight and blindness. Consider the structural positions An earlier version of this chapter appeared as ‘‘Grief and
of older versus younger Ilongot men, or the a Headhunter’s Rage: On the Cultural Force of Emotions,’’
differing positions of chief mourners versus those less in Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction
of Self and Society, ed. Edward M. Bruner
involved during a funeral. My discussion of anthropological
(Washington, DC: American Ethnological Society,
writings on death often achieved its effects 1984), pp. 178–95.
simply by shifting from the position of those least 1 In contrasting Moroccan and Javanese forms of mysticism,
involved to that of the chief mourners. Clifford Geertz found it necessary to distinguish
Cultural depth does not always equal cultural the ‘‘force’’ of cultural patterning from its ‘‘scope’’
elaboration. Think simply of the speaker who is (Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed [New Haven, Conn.:
filibustering. The language used can sound elaborate Yale University Press, 1968]). He distinguished force
as it heaps word on word, but surely it is not deep. from scope in this manner: ‘‘By ‘force’ I mean the
Renato Rosaldo thoroughness with which such a pattern is internalized
in the personalities of the individuals who adopt it, its humans. Thus, the notion of force involves both
centrality or marginality in their lives’’ (p. 111). ‘‘By affective intensity and significant consequences that
‘scope,’ on the other hand, I mean the range of social unfold over a long period of time.
contexts within which religious considerations are Similarly, rituals do not always encapsulate deep
regarded as having more or less direct relevance’’ (p.
cultural wisdom. At times they instead contain the
112). In his laterworks, Geertz developed the notion of
scope more than that of force. Unlike Geertz, who wisdom of Polonius. Although certain rituals both
emphasizes processes of internalization within individual reflect and create ultimate values, others simply
personalities, my use of the term force stresses the bring people together and deliver a set of platitudes
concept of the positioned subject. that enable them to go on with their lives. Rituals
2 Anthropologists have long studied the vocabulary of the serve as vehicles for processes that occur both before
emotions in other cultures (see, e.g., Hildred Geertz, and after the period of their performance. Funeral
‘‘The Vocabulary of Emotion: A Study of Javanese rituals, for example, do not ‘‘contain’’ all the complex
Socialization Processes,’’ Psychiatry 22 (1959): 225– processes of bereavement. Ritual and bereavement
37). For a recent review essay on anthropological
should not be collapsed into one another
writings on emotions, see Catherine Lutz and Geoffrey
M. White, ‘‘The Anthropology of Emotions,’’ Annual
because they neither fully encapsulate nor fully explain
Review of Anthropology 15 (1986): 405–36. one another. Instead, rituals are often but
Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage points along a number of longer processual trajectories;
Depth should be separated from the presence or hence, my image of ritual as a crossroads
absence of elaboration. By the same token, one-line where distinct life processes intersect.25
explanations can be vacuous or pithy. The concept of The notion of ritual as a busy intersection
force calls attention to an enduring intensity in anticipates the critical assessment of the concept of
human conduct that can occur with or without the culture developed in the following chapters. In contrast
dense elaboration conventionally associated with cultural with the classic view, which posits culture as a
depth. Although relatively without elaboration self-contained whole made up of coherent patterns,
in speech, song, or ritual, the rage of older Ilongot culture can arguably be conceived as a more porous
men who have suffered devastating losses proves array of intersections where distinct processes crisscross
enormously consequential in that, foremost among from within and beyond its borders. Such
other things, it leads them to behead their fellow heterogeneous processes often derive from differences
of age, gender, class, race, and sexual orientation. souls’’ (Peter Metcalf, A Borneo Journey into Death:
This book argues that a sea change in cultural Berawan Eschatology from Its Rituals [Philadelphia: University
studies has eroded once-dominant conceptions of of Pennsylvania Press, 1982], p. 127).
truth and objectivity. The truth of objectivism – 5 R. Rosaldo, Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974, p. 286.
6 Ibid., p. 288.
absolute, universal, and timeless – has lost its monopoly
7 M. Rosaldo, Knowledge and Passion, p. 33.
status. It now competes, on more nearly equal 8 See A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in
terms, with the truths of case studies that are em- Primitive Society (London: Cohen and West, Ltd.,
176 1952), pp. 133–52. For a broader debate on the
3 The two ethnographies on the Ilongots are Michelle ‘‘functions’’ of ritual, see the essays by Bronislaw
Rosaldo, Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, and George C.
and Social Life (New York: Cambridge University Homans, in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological
Press, 1980), and Renato Rosaldo, Ilongot Headhunting, Approach (4th edn.), ed.William A. Lessa and
1883–1974: A Study in Society and History (Stanford, Evon Z.Vogt (NewYork: Harper and Row, 1979), pp.
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1980). Our 37–62.
field research among the Ilongots was financed by a 9 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
National Science Foundation predoctoral fellowship, Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
National Science Foundation Research Grants GS- 1958).
1509 and GS-40788, and a Mellon Award for junior 10 A key antecedent to what I have called the ‘‘positioned
faculty from Stanford University. A Fulbright Grant subject’’ is Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol.
financed a two-month stay in the Philippines during 1, The Problem of Social Reality, ed. and intro. Maurice
1981. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971). See
4 Lest the hypothesis Insan rejected appear utterly also, e.g., Aaron Cicourel, Method and Measurement in
implausible, one should mention that at least one Sociology (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1964) and
group does link a version of exchange theory to Gerald Berreman, Behind Many Masks: Ethnography
headhunting. Peter Metcalf reports that, among the and Impression Management in a Himalayan Village,
Berawan of Borneo, ‘‘Death has a chain reaction Monograph no. 4 (Ithaca, NY: Society for Applied
quality to it. There is a considerable anxiety that, Anthropology, 1962). For an early anthropological
unless something is done to break the chain, death article on how differently positioned subjects interpret
will follow upon death. The logic of this is now plain: the ‘‘same’’ culture in different ways, see John
The unquiet soul kills, and so creates more unquiet W. Bennett, ‘‘The Interpretation of Pueblo Culture,’’
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 2 (1946): 361–74. 17 Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death (Harmondsworth,
11 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 1969).
York: Basic Books, 1974) and Local Knowledge: Further 18 Douglas, Death in Murelaga, p. 75.
Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic 19 Godfrey Wilson, Nyakyusa Conventions of Burial
Books, 1983). (Johannesburg:
12 Although anger appears so often in bereavement as to The University ofWitwatersrand Press,
be virtually universal, certain notable exceptions do 1939), pp. 22–3. (Reprinted from Bantu Studies.)
occur. Clifford Geertz, for example, depicts Javanese 20 Ibid., p. 13.
funerals as follows: ‘‘The mood of a Javanese funeral 21 In his survey of works on death published during the
is not one of hysterical bereavement, unrestrained 1960s, for example, Johannes Fabian found that the
sobbing, or even of formalized cries of grief for the four major anthropological journals carried only nine
deceased’s departure. Rather, it is a calm, undemonstrative, papers on the topic, most of which ‘‘dealt only with
almost languid letting go, a brief ritualized the purely ceremonial aspects of death’’ ( Johannes
relinquishment of a relationship no longer possible’’ Fabian, ‘‘How Others Die – Reflections on the Anthropology
(Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 153). In of Death,’’ in Death in American Experience,
cross-cultural perspective, the anger in grief presents ed. A. Mack [New York: Schocken, 1973], p. 178).
itself in different degrees (including zero), in different 22 Huntington and Metcalf, Celebrations of Death, p. 1.
forms, and with different consequences. 23 Arguably, ritual works differently for those most
13 The Ilongot notion of anger (liget) is regarded as afflicted by a particular death than for those least so.
dangerous in its violent excesses, but also as lifeenhancing Renato Rosaldo
in that, for example, it provides energy for 177
work. See the extensive discussion in M. Rosaldo, Funerals may distance the former from overwhelming
Knowledge and Passion. emotions whereas they may draw the latter closer
14 William Douglas, Death in Murelaga: Funerary Ritual in to strongly felt sentiments (see T. J. Scheff, Catharsis
a Spanish Basque Village (Seattle: University of Washington in Healing, Ritual, and Drama [Berkeley: University of
Press, 1969); Richard Huntington and Peter California Press, 1979]). Such issues can be investigated
Metcalf, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of through the notion of the positioned subject.
Mortuary Ritual (New York: Cambridge University 24 For a discussion of cultural motives for headhunting,
Press, 1979; Metcalf, A Borneo Journey into Death. see Robert McKinley, ‘‘Human and Proud of It! A
15 Douglas, Death in Murelaga, p. 209. Structural Treatment of Headhunting Rites and the
16 Ibid., p. 19. Social Definition of Enemies,’’ in Studies in Borneo
Societies: Social Process and Anthropological Explanation,
ed. G. Appell (DeKalb, Ill.: Center for Southeast
Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1976),
pp. 92–126; Rodney Needham, ‘‘Skulls and Causality,’’
Man 11 (1976): 71–88; Michelle Rosaldo,
‘‘Skulls and Causality,’’ Man 12 (1977): 168–70.
25 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 1.
Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage
178