This is a commentary article on existing anthropological views on headhunting practices. Its focus is an article by Mikkelsen (2017) in this journal, ‘Facehunting: Empathy, Masculinity and Violence ...among the Bugkalot.’ The commentary article sees value in Mikkelsen’s critical stance on the issue of extreme violence, such as headhunting not entailing a prior dehumanization of the victim. ‘Headhunting as Reflexive Violence’ addresses an issue of ‘selective empathy,’ and concludes that in light of the Bugkalot ethnography and impulsive headhunting, the discussion point could be one, following Persson and Savulescu (2017), of ‘reflexive empathy.’ The article argues that attention should be given to the material, plastic, and tonal practices celebrating and possibly even eliciting the kill. These might provide us with a rare window into the way cultural techniques can embellish violence.
An early nineteenth-century British voyager, Captain Hall, published in 1818 an account of his landing at Okinawa Island and encounter with the court nobility of what was still at that time the ...Kingdom of the Ryukyus: Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Ryûkyû Island in the Japan Sea. The paper asks: Why did the Ryukyuans respond to the unannounced entry into their waters by two British naval ships by a seemingly boundless hospitality? With a sideline view on the Sahlins-Obeyesekere controversy, the author proposes that even as the Ryukyuans were eulogizing the entry of the British by showering them with one-sided attention and acknowledging their royal credentials, they tried at the same time to make a bid for their departure. They might have been deploying ritual techniques apparent still today: of welcoming and (subsequent) sending-off in one single act.
Once, inside a house on the Taiwanese Island of Lan Yü (Botel Tobago), I listened to a story about the creation of the world (see Røkkum 1991). Events were recited for me by a Yami Taiwanese ...aboriginal as if in a dream-like state of mind. I did not bother him with any questions. Suddenly he gave a start. Eyes wide open, he turned on me with a question: 'Did you hear that?' Taking notice of my blank response, he pointed towards a lizard on the wall just below the ceiling of the room. 'The voice has changed.' With this exclamation it became apparent to me that, out of what had been a mixed cacophony of chirps and buzzes, an identifiable sign with a vigour of its own now emerged. An exemplar of an 'ensouled' animation of the concerns of humans was located in the superstructure or the dwelling house, so much so that even the boards within the house were transformed into sounding boards for these concerns. A lizard's presence became an augury in a field of societal values. The Yami narrator perceived a boundary not yet apparent to me, for he was being attentive to and immersing himself in activity on a sub-semantic plane of signification.
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