Shooting the sun

"Shooting the Sun reinterprets the Ida ritual of the Umeda society of Papua New Guinea, described in Alfred Gell's modern classic Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries: Umeda Society, Language and Ritual (1975). Bernard Juillerat and eight other distinguished scholars, including Gell, apply a range of theoretical constructs - Freudian, Marxist, gender-based, and Lacanian, among others - to Ida ceremonies and the similar Yangis ritual of the neighboring Yafar people." "Shooting the Sun begins with Juillerat's description and analysis of the Yangis ritual. Drawing on a secret exegesis provided by Yafar experts, Juillerat interprets the Ida-Yangis rituals as a reformulation of the oedipal ontogenetic scenario, with shooting arrows toward the sun as the ritual's finale, representing a decisive separation from the mother's womb (the earth) and the appropriation of the mother's breast (the sun)." "Five anthropologists and two psychoanalysts - including Andre Green, Francois Manenti, Marilyn Strathern, Richard Werbner, and Roy Wagner - comment on Juillerat's and Gell's analyses. Juillerat assesses the proposed theoretical concepts, reconsidering Yangis and the mythology that sustains it in lig