In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE NOBLE SAVAGE IN LABOR; OR, CLAUDE LEVISTRAUSS HAS A BABY L. LEWIS WALL'· The Frenchman Claude Lévi-Strauss is one of the most prominent social anthropologists of the 20th century. The founder of so-called "structural anthropology," author of multiple books including The Savage Mind, Tristes Tropiques, TheElementary Structures ofKinship, StructuralAnthropology, and the four volume work Mythologiques; or, An Introduction to the Science ofMythology, his influence has been far-reaching in many areas of social science. One of his most widely admired papers is "The effectiveness ofsymbols," originally published in the French journal Revue de l'histoire des religions in 1949 [I]. This paper is a detailed analysis of a magico-religious text from the Cuna Indians of Panama dealing with shamanistic curing and childbirth. In it Lévi-Strauss makes detailed parallels between the effectiveness of shamanistic curing and modern Freudian psychoanalysis. Because ofthe importance with which Lévi-Strauss' work is regarded by social anthropologists, literary critics, and many students of Western intellectual culture, this paper deserves close scrutiny; and because the focus of this paper is on abnormal labor among the Cuna Indians, some comments are perhaps in order from a social anthropologist who also happens to be a board-certified obstetrician -gynecologist. The shaman's song in question was not collected by Lévi-Strauss himself during any period offieldwork; rather, he analyzed a text collected by other authors, specifically N. M. Holmer, H. Wassen, and E. Nordenskiold. The work is called "Mu-Igala, or the Way of Muu," and it tells the story of a confused midwife who visits a shaman for help. She has a patient in prolonged labor whom she is unable to deliver. The song describes the shaman 's spiritual quest to solve this problem. He visits the laboring woman, making invocations and offerings. He creates several sacred figures of tutelary spirits (nuchu), whom he will invoke to assist him in the course ofworking his cure. *Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, LSU School of Medicine, 1542 Tulane Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70112.© 1996 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 0031-5982/96/3904-0963$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 40, 1 ¦ Autumn \996 33 The shaman leads this battalion of spirits to the abode of Muu to rescue the suffering woman. Muu is the spirit-power responsible for the formation of the fetus inside the mother. It is felt that "difficult childbirth" occurs when Muu exceeds her proper sphere of influence and "captures" the purba, or "soul," of the laboring woman. As the text goes on, it becomes clear that each organ has its own purba. Muu has laid hold of the purba of the uterus and vagina. As a result of this usurpation, the reproductive organs are not able to function in harmonywith the other organs of the body, whose respective purbas are intact. This inner spiritual discord has stopped the progress of the woman's labor. The song describes the shaman's quest to locate Muu and to make her release the purba of the patient's uterus so that childbirth can take place. This spiritual release is accomplished during a great struggle between Muu and her daughters on one side, and the shaman and his tutelary spirits on the other. It is important to realize that Muu is not an evil being; rather, she is a needed and necessary force that has merely gotten out of control. The shaman therefore does not destroy or damage her. He overcomes her, but he also placates her in order to win her future cooperation. The story is, in large part, about the restoration of the proper order of things and the healing that takes place when this is done. In locating Muu, the shaman travels along a road called "Muu's way." It is apparent from the text that "Muu's way" is really the vagina, and that the entire text is an extended description of a spiritual journey through the patient's reproductive tract in an attempt to free the soul of her uterus, thus permitting natural childbirth to occur. This leads Lévi-Strauss to expatiate in rather grand style about the psychoanalytic implications...

pdf

Share