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Social Body and Embodied Subject:
Bodiliness, Subjectivity, and Sociality
among the Kayapo
Terence Turner
DepartmentofAnthropology
University of Chicago
The meteoric rise of "the body" to the status of a primarycategory of social and
cultural theory, replacing more collective categories of social and cultural
understandinglike "society" and "culture"themselves, has been one of the most
salient aspects of the development of postmodernforms of cultural theory over
the past two decades. The reasons for this turn to the body have remained
shrouded in confusion despite the voluminous discussion it has occasioned.
Even some of the main exemplars and partisans of the new body focus have
been at a loss to account for it. Martin,for example, suggests that the body has
come so prominentlyinto focus because a new body, suitable to the postmodern
era of "flexible accumulation,"is now replacing the old, familiar body of the
previous capitalist era of Fordist mass production (Martin 1992). This formu-
lation, however, merely exemplifies the problem it sets out to solve. Why do
we suddenly find it appropriateto speak of a new regime of social production
in terms of a unique body it supposedly brings into being? Why did not social
thinkers, cultural theorists, or just ordinary folks of the previous Fordist era
conceive of their own era in such terms?Like social thinkersof most, if not all,
previous historical epochs and modes of production,they would doubtless have
found the characterizationof their era in terms of the appearanceof a new body
(as distinct from a new style of representingthe body) bizarreand mystifying.
Martin's formulationthereforeseems to me to be partof the problemratherthan
part of the solution.
The dimensions of the problem are suggested by juxtaposing Martin's
proposition with two very different passages that express ideas and attitudes
centralin the turnto the body in culturaltheory. The first, appropriatelyenough,
is from an interview with Foucault, in which he suggests that his reconception
of cultural and social theory in terms of a focus on the body as the site of disci-
plines of power not only is a more authentically "materialist"position than
143
144 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The assertion that ideological critique presupposes a concept of the subject "on
the lines of classical philosophy" is of course both logically and historically
untrue;and, as I shall try to show in this article, it is contradictedby the kind
of socially and culturally contextualized analysis of the bodily grounding of
subjectivity thatFoucault himself never bothered to make.
The second passage, from the conclusion of Game's book Undoing the So-
cial (1991), sums up her argumentthat the body alone (as the site of direct ex-
perience and concrete, pre-rationalsubjective consciousness in everyday life) is
the source of authenticknowledge and truth:
arena of Western theoretical discussion the concepts and theories (implicit if not
explicit) of non-Western peoples about bodies and bodiliness. These points
have been well made by Lamb in a recent doctoral dissertation, from which I
quote the following passage:
I believe Bengali ethno-theories of the body ... can effectively respond to some
of the problems in the current anthropological literature on the body, which has
tended to present "the body" as a reified, decontextualized, somehow trans-
historical and transcultural object....
I must ask ... whether some of this focus on the body [in recent anthropo-
logical and cultural theory] may be misleading, serving ... to foreground a
particular vision of the body that may not always resonate with the "bodies" or
embodied experiences of those we are attempting to understand.By focusing on
"the body" we tend to assume that there is (necessarily) such a thing as "the body"
that we can isolate. We tend to reify the body as an individual, materialspace....
But there are also many societies (and contexts within our own society) where
other perceptions, experiences, and constructions of the body are highlighted-
ones that do not (wholly or even predominantly) assume the body to be local,
tangible, bounded, stable, individually experienced, or the particularsite of social
and political control. [1993:29-31]
Until recently the Kayapo wore no clothing in the Western sense. They
nonetheless possess an elaborate cultural code of bodily adornment,including
body painting, coiffure, and the use of a wide arrayor ornaments such as lip
plugs, penis sheaths, ear pendants,beaded arm and leg bands, necklaces, brace-
lets, and sashes of beads or reddenedcotton string, not to mention a spectacular
arrayof ceremonial costumes: feather capes and headdresses;feather pendants,
necklaces, and bunches of arm plumes; mother-of-pearlear spools; toucan-bill
lip plugs; crushedblue eggshell stuck to the face with resin in elaboratepatterns;
and parrotbreast-feathersstuck over the whole body with latex or the wearer's
own blood. I have elsewhere described and analyzed (in ratherdifferent and less
comprehensive terms than in the present text) much of this repertoireof bodily
adornments(Turner 1969, 1979).
This varied repertoire of bodily treatments comprises several discrete
codes, consisting of distinct sets of items of wear, styles of body painting, and
coiffure, that serve to encode specific messages relating to modes, states, and
stages of development of different bodily powers, attributes,or conditions.
Cleanliness
For the Kayapo, the social presentationof the body begins with cleanliness.
All Kayapo bathe at least once a day. To be dirty, or above all to allow traces of
animal substances such as blood, meat, or hair to remainon the skin, is consid-
ered not only aesthetically unbecoming but actively antisocial and even danger-
ous to the unclean individual. Animal blood or hair are among the most danger-
ous pathogenic agents in Kayapo medical thinking: if allowed to penetrate the
skin as a result of prolonged contact they may inflict fatal disease. Health and
disease, however, are conceived by the Kayapo not as purely medical or physi-
cal conditions in our sense, but ratheras states of social integrationor dis-inte-
gration (respectively). The encroachmentof dirt (natural,and particularlyani-
mal) on the surface of the social body represents,for the Kayapo, the disruption
of social relationsby asocial elements and forces. Cleanliness, defined as the re-
moval of all naturalexcrescence from the surface of the body, is thus the essen-
tial first step in socializing the interface between self and society, embodied in
concrete terms by the skin. In this as in other contexts of bodily adornment,the
skin and hair that constitute the physical boundaryof the body is appropriated
as a symbolic index of the boundarybetween the individual actor as culturally
formed subject and the external object world. The physical skin of the body be-
comes a social skin of signs and meanings that bound and representthe social-
ized self by mediating its relations to the ambient social world (Turner 1979).
Facial and bodily hair, called 'o, which is also the word for the leaves of plants
and trees, is distinguished from the hair of the head (kin). The Kayapo have very
little body hair. Pubic hair seems to appear only in adulthood and may be
plucked, although especially in older individuals it may simply be left to grow.
The cutting of the hair of the head comprises a distinct code, communicat-
ing information about the individual's stage of development, bodily participa-
tion or intercoursewith others in reproductiveprocesses, or separationor isola-
tion from such physical mutuality."Reproductiveprocesses" is takenhere in the
Kayapo sense, which includes both reproductive sexual intercourse and the
physical continuity of parents and children in gestation and nursing. Wearing
the hair long denotes such a state of bodily continuity andparticipationwith oth-
ers; wearing it clipped short denotes the opposite state as produced by weaning
and the absence of sexual activity, or the death of a spouse or child. Infantswear
their hair long until weaning, with nursing being considered a continuation of
the physical continuity of motherand child established in the womb. The father
also participates in this continuity through repeated intercourse during preg-
nancy, his infusions of semen being thoughtto nourish the developing fetus. At
birth,he marksthe severance of this directphysical bond by cutting his hair and
painting himself black.
Upon weaning, childrenof both genders have their hair cut short, they then
being considered to have become fully distinct social and biological individuals
whose "skin has hardened"(in other words, whose bodily boundarieshave be-
come closed and clearly defined as those of autonomous individuals). Young
men begin to wear their hair long again when, as adolescents, they receive their
penis sheaths, in public recognition of their ability to engage in sexual relations
potentially leading to pregnancy and, hence, marriage.Girls start to wear their
hair long somewhat later, after a rite that signals their readiness for childbirth
(by which time they may have been having sexual relations for half a dozen
years). Actively procreative adults of both genders continue to wear their hair
long, in recognition of their sharing of their physical being with procreative
partnersand offspring. At the death of a spouse or child, however, the hair is
again cut short, signaling the severing of such a connection and consequent re-
tractionof the continuum of the individual's bodily existence to the boundaries
of his or her own body. Old people living as widows or widowers may keep their
hair permanentlycut short in public recognition of their bereaved condition.
The fundamentalidea underlyingthe social meanings of Kayapo coiffures
is that bodiliness, in the sense of participationin the life of a body, is not re-
stricted to the individual body, but may involve the individual in direct partici-
pation in the living bodies of others, specifically others involved in producing
her or his own bodily existence, or with whom she or he is involved in (re)pro-
ducing the bodily existence of others.
SOCIAL BODY AND EMBODIED SUBJECT 151
Body Painting
The bodies of Kayapo of all ages and genders are painted according to a
code comprising colors, design elements, contrastingstyles, and the mapping of
all of these onto distinct bodily regions and stages of growth. The painting of the
body marks stages and modes of socialization of the body's natural powers:
muscularstrengthand energy, sensory capacities, sexuality, and reproductivity.
Infants and young children of both sexes are painted with intricate geometrical
designs composed of a limited stock of formal elements, each total composition
being unique. Painting a child in this style requires hours of patient work, as
each line and element is tracedon the skin in black with a stylus made of the cen-
ter rib of a leaf. Only women paint in this style; typically, a mother or grand-
motherpaints her own child or grandchild.Boys cease to be painted in this way
after weaning, but girls may continue to be painted in this style from time to
time, and adult women may occasionally paint one anotherin the same way.
Older boys and men are invariably painted in another style, consisting of
broad strokes or areas of black, usually applied directly with the hand or occa-
sionally with a stampmade of the rind of a fruit.In this style, a single overall pat-
tern is created, usually called after an animal or fish species it is thought to re-
semble, or else simply by the dominant design element (e.g., stripes or spots).
Whereas the elaborate infantile style is applied individually to one child (or
older girl or woman) at a time, the coarseradult style is typically applied in com-
munal groups, usually age sets or ceremonial groups. Men paint men and boys
(at least from the time the latter are inducted into the men's house), and women
paint women and girls (in earlier times before the general use of clothing, col-
lective painting sessions were held every two weeks or so and were the main ac-
tivity of the women's age sets during most of the year). It should be noted that
infants may also be painted in the adult style, when no adult kinswoman has the
time at her disposal to paint them in the more elaborate style.
The women's style used for infants thus emphasizes individuation as the
result of a prolonged and intense interactionbetween a socializing adult and a
child, who must patiently submit to the process of being configured into a cul-
turallydefined unity, while the adult men's and women's style emphasizes col-
lectively shared, culturally stereotyped identities produced through commun-
ally organized social activity. It is also significant thatwhereas the overall body
patternsproducedin the infantile style have no names, each being a unique con-
figuration of abstract geometrical elements, the animal names of the patterns
comprising the repertoireof the adult style, consideredin the context of their ap-
plication in communal social groups, connote the socialization of fully devel-
oped natural(animal) powers throughcollective social organization and activ-
ity.
Both the infantile and adult styles, despite their differences in design, con-
text of execution, and nomenclature,employ the same conventions with respect
to the application of colors to regions of the body. Two colors are employed:
black and red. Black paint, usually made from a mixtureof the juice of the geni-
papo fruit, charcoal, and spittle, is applied to the trunk of the body, the upper
152 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
arms, and the thighs. It is the exclusive medium of the designs, comprising both
the infantile and adult styles, which cover only this inner, central region of the
body. Black designs or stripes are also paintedon the cheeks, along the edges of
the hair over the forehead, and occasionally over the mouth as well. Red paint,
made from the crushed seed of the urucu bush mixed with palm oil or spittle, is
applied to the calves and feet, the hands and forearms,and the face, typically in
a band across the eyes. The entire face may be painted red, a coat of red some-
times even being applied over freshly painted black cheek designs. In all of
these cases, red is invariably applied as a uniformcovering of the whole area in
question, with no attempt at internalpatternor design.
The two colors have symbolic associations which, taken in conjunction
with the areas of the body to which they are applied, encode fundamental
Kayaponotions of the relation between the social appropriationof the body and
the production of a socialized subject. The word for black, tuk, also means
"dead," and the term is applied to the zone immediately outside the village
where the cemetery and ritually secluded camps for persons undergoingrites of
passage or performingother secret rites, such as the constructionof ceremonial
masks, arelocated. Black, as tuk, is thereforeassociated with extrasocial, taboo,
or naturalstates incompatible with normal social existence (death, it may be
noted, is conceived as a reversion to a naturalstate, being referredto in keening
as "transformationinto an animal").Red (kamrek,a word without other signifi-
cations), by contrast, is associated with notions of vitality, energy, sensory
acuteness, and in general the intensification of the interactionof the embodied
individual with ambient reality, social or natural.
In sum, red is applied to all the peripheralparts of the body that come di-
rectly into contact with the ambientworld (hands,feet, and eyes), while black is
applied to the centralregion of the body which is the source of its natural,infra-
social appetites, powers, and energies, the direct expression of which would be
incompatible with social intercourse or effective interaction with the natural
world. Heightening (that is, reddening) the sensitization and interactive capac-
ity of the eyes, hands, and feet while insulating and suppressing the infrasocial
energies and appetites of the trunkof the body has the effect of channeling the
latter through the former into interaction with the social and natural object
world. Note that here the blackened (socially repressed) center of the body is
made to stand for the presocial, naturalinside of the body, while the artificially
activated peripheralzone of the body is metaphoricallyappropriatedto repre-
sent its outside or surface, its interface with the world. The contrastinguse of the
two colors thus establishes a binaryclassification and set of metaphoricaliden-
tities (center/inside: periphery/outside:: asocial/repressed: socialized/intensi-
fied) thatunderliethe system of bodily adornmentand notions of bodiliness and
embodied subjectivity as a whole.
It is consistent with this analysis that in rituals associated with war and the
killing of jaguars, and for actual fighting, Kayapomen replace the usual bandof
red across the eyes with a band of black. In these contexts, the intended effect is
the reverse of normal social intercourse:not heightened mutual interaction,but
SOCIAL BODY AND EMBODIED SUBJECT 153
the destruction of the other. The use of black symbolically suppresses the rela-
tion with the other as an autonomousbeing, social or naturalas the case may be,
and asserts instead the negation or suppressionof that being as the intended ef-
fect of the action of the warrior/killer.
placed at the junctures of the child's inner body and extremities. These are the
points at which the individual's developing natural, bio-psychic powers are
channeled into socialized forms of interactionwith the object world. Energizing
and amplifying the child's growth at these points thus becomes a form of mi-
metic socialization. That the bands are made and put on by the child's mother
emphasizes the role of the mother,and more generally of the child's connection
to its natal family, in shaping and channeling its relation to the world and thus
reflexively defining its social identity.
Boys dispense with these bands after weaning, but girls continue to use
them, at least sporadically, until the "Black Thighs" ceremony that recognizes
their readiness for marriageand motherhood.A feature of this rite is the cutting
off of these arm and leg bands by an adoptive or "substitute"mother, who acts
as ritual sponsor. This symbolically marks the end of the period in the young
women's lives in which their hands and feet have been connected to their bodies
throughbands supplied by their mothers (the end of the stage in which their re-
lation to the social world is fully defined by their connection to their natal fami-
lies). The removal of the bands, in otherwords, signifies the end of the women's
full membershipin their natalfamilies and the attenuationof their connection to
it as children throughthe substitutionof theirrelation to their adoptive mothers,
who henceforth act as their patrons and connections to the social world for all
public and ceremonial purposes.
The ostensible purpose of all majorKayapo ceremonies is to confer honor-
ific ritual names and "valuables" (nekretch) on young children. The children
honored in this way are distinguished, when they are carriedor otherwise made
the focus of activities during the ceremony, by special bracelets. These elabo-
ratedforms of the basic reddenedor beaded wristbandsthey wear at other times
are covered with geometrical patternswoven of light and darkstrips of cane and
inner bark. Attached to them are large bunches of reddened seeds of a hard-
wooded palm tree, to which in turnare fastened pendantsof red macaw plumes.
The giving of names and valuables by grandparents,uncles, and aunts is consid-
ered essential in order to complete the social identity of the person. These spe-
cifically social aspects of identity can come only from beyond the boundaryof
the immediate, biological family. In termsof the language of bodily space, they
amount to imposing a social form, sanctioned by the ritual involvement of the
community as a whole in the performanceof the collective naming ceremony,
on the child's developing relationshipwith the sphereof social relations that be-
gins at the peripheryof the quasi-naturalsphere of immediate family relations.
The imposition of the elaborate ceremonial bracelets on the child's wrists,
which connect the naturalcore of its body to the ambient sphere of social inter-
action concretely accessed throughthe hands (now expanded, throughthe nam-
ing ceremony, to include the name-giving extended family relations), meta-
phorically inculcates this socializing form. The reddened seeds attachedto the
bracelet suggest the activation of the power to reproducesocial identity (as dis-
tinct from the reproductionof the biological body within the nuclear family),
SOCIAL BODY AND EMBODIED SUBJECT 157
expression of their new powers, channeling and socializing them within the
new, normativesocial forms of relationshipslike marriageand age set member-
ship. The transitionfrom uncolored to reddenedbracelets simultaneously ener-
gizes and intensifies the new forms of interactionwith the social world.
Necklaces
The head is the most importantextremity of the body, the locus of the so-
cialized senses and understanding.The neck which connects it to the trunk is
analogous in this functional sense to the wrists and forearmsas connections to
the hands, and the lower legs and ankles as connections to the feet. Necklaces
are to necks as bracelets are to wrists and anklets to ankles. It is therefore con-
sistent with the general principles of Kayapo bodily adornmentthat necklaces
should be used to signify the social channeling or imposition of control on the
bodily powers located in the head (in this case, the unique and all-important
powers of understandingand communication).Elaboratenecklaces made of in-
dividually cut and ground bits of mother-of-pearl bound onto a cotton coil
stained red or black and often paralleled by additional strandsof cotton strung
with beads are a prominentitem in the decoration of infants of both sexes.
In later childhood and adulthood these necklaces are worn only by males.
There may be a practicalreason for this, namely thatthis formof necklace would
hang over a woman's breasts and overlap with her baby-carryingsling, interfer-
ing with the handling and nursing of her baby, and providing the latter with an
irresistible temptation for tugging, chewing, and otherwise harassing the
mother. At any rate, the baby sling appearsto function as the woman's "neck-
lace." The bestowing of two consecutive necklaces, the first of simple inner-
bark cords and the second a complex and delicate constructionof feathers tied
to sticks, is a majorfeature of the boys' initiation into the marriageablebache-
lors' age set. It is significant that this feather necklace is made by the initiand's
ceremonial wife's father.The representationof the affinal relationshipwith the
wife's parents, the constricted gateway through which the youth must eventu-
ally pass into adulthood,it is thus also the key symbol of the socialization of his
powers of understandingand communication in their adult form.
Penis Sheaths
The Kayapo bestow penis sheaths on boys shortly before or at the time of
the bachelors' initiation, which certifies them as able to enter into sexual rela-
tions potentially leading to marriage.The sheath is a small cone woven of inaja
palm leaf. It fits over the end (glans) of the penis, and ends in a small hole
throughwhich the foreskin is drawn,so thatit protrudesandholds the sheathon,
forcing the penis back into the body and preventing erection. Kayapo explain
that its purposeis to prevent public display of any partof the glans of a sexually
active, matureman's penis. This, implying or suggesting erection, is felt to be
ultimately shameful. The sheath is thus both a public recognition of the mature
sexuality of the youths and an instrumental,as well as symbolic, imposition of
SOCIAL BODY AND EMBODIED SUBJECT 159
social restraintupon its expression. Women wear no genital covering, but take
care not to spreadtheir legs while sitting or rising in such a way as to display the
vagina, which in Kayapo eyes would be the female equivalent of the display of
the glans penis protrudingthroughthe foreskin as the result of a public erection
for a man. The symbolic import of both practices is again the prevention of the
direct and socially uncontrolled projection of naturalbodily (in this case, sex-
ual) desires and powers into the sphereof social relations, and the channeling of
the powers in question into socially mediated forms of sexual relations and re-
production.
Sexualityand Reproduction
The Kayapo conceive of the roles of the sexes in reproductionin symmet-
rical terms: conception and gestation are effected by the mixture of semen from
the father or fathers (conception is not thought to be a unique event) and milk
from the mother, which drips down into her womb from her breasts inside her
body. The bodily connection of both parentsto the fetus is maintainedthrough-
out pregnancy, since the father contributes to the growth of the embryo with
each infusion of semen, just as the mothercontinues to nourish it with her milk.
This physical connection of both parentswith the child continues in attenuated
form after birthin the ability of the parentsto affect the health of their offspring
by eating meat when the children are ill (eating meat is thought to weaken an ill
person and is taboo for the patients themselves). As this practice indicates, the
Kayapo do not think of the bodies of parentsand their children as entirely sepa-
rate. A form of bodily participationcontinues to connect their bodies throughout
life; it is the severance of this bodily continuity at death that is marked by the
cutting of the hair in mourning.
Both women and men initiate sexual relations and take lovers, both before
and during marriage. Both genders must consent to marriage, and either may
precipitate divorce. In these respects, the symmetry of male and female sexual-
ity accords with the relative symmetryof male and female social roles. In one re-
spect, however, male and female sexuality is treated in radically asymmetrical
terms. Sexual relations with women are conceived as potential threats to com-
munal solidarity (identified with the solidarity of communal men's groups),
both as a cause of conflict among men and as a source of centrifugal attachment
of men to individual family households. The communal groupings of men asso-
ciated with the men's house thereforecollectively appropriatefemale sexuality
throughritualizedcollective intercourse,collectively sexually initiate girls, and
collectively escort or attendthe ritualsof marriageand firstbornchildren, which
are focused on collective male control of female sexuality and reproductivity.
There is thus a sense in which sexuality for the Kayapo is a collective affair
ratherthan an individual bodily function.
or confuse the vertical and concentric arrangementof the human body (people
with eyes in their feet, or headless people with their faces in their abdomens).
As this bodily imagery of the limits of the spatiotemporalstructureof the
cosmos indicates, that structureitself is conceived as isomorphic with the struc-
ture of a normalhumanbody which, as the foregoing account of bodily practices
and representationshas made clear, is also conceived as a construct of comple-
mentary vertical and horizontal dimensions. The concentric opposition of cen-
tral trunkand peripheralextremities, markedby contrasting zones of black and
red painting, respectively, is also conceived as a dimension of reversible pro-
cesses, in this case of channeling naturalenergies from the naturalinternal/cen-
tral core of the body throughits socialized extremities into the social zone of in-
teraction that lies beyond. The vertical dimension of contrastbetween head and
feet is also a dimension of linear and irreversiblegrowth, from short infant (the
"root"or "beginning"form of the body) to tall adult (the "tip"or final point of
its growth). Just as this linear process of growth is imaged as a sequence of two
consecutive phases (relatively unsocialized childhood and social adulthood,
markedby the recurrentoscillation between long- and short-cuthair), moreover,
so the vertical dimension of cosmic space-time is bifurcatedinto two successive
halves, respectively embodied by the moieties of the "root"and the "tip."
The corresponding bifurcation of the complementary, concentric dimen-
sion takes the form of the boundary across which reversible transactions and
passages occur between the central zone of cosmic space-time, normally iden-
tified at the cosmic level of macrospace with society, and the peripheralzone,
normally identified with nature.Movements and transformationsfrom natureto
society are reciprocally balancedby movements and transformationsfrom soci-
ety to nature.At the level of bodily microspace, the associations of center and
periphery are reversed. The social body is the focus of reciprocal transactions
from relatively naturalbodily centerto relatively social bodily peripheryand the
surrounding zone of social interaction. Central society receives infusions of
naturalenergy from peripheralextra-village space in the form of game and gar-
den produce and also of the plant, animal, and bird forms of ritualbodily adorn-
ment and performance,throughwhich it is socialized. Ultimately, this reproduc-
tive movement is reversed as the social person ages and dies, moving through
stages of increasing peripheralizationassociated with old age (marginalization
in the men's house, in ceremonial performance,and within the household), bur-
ial in the cemetery of the a tuk zone, andfinally existence as an animal-like ghost
in the outer peripheral zone of the forest. The inversion of "normal"secular
space-time in the sacred space-time of ritual performance preserves the same
biphasic patternin reverse. The normally"social" central plaza of the village is
now taken over by monstrous half-human,half-animal feathered beings, analo-
gous to the mythical races at the outer edges of normal space and the distant be-
ginnings of mythical time, while the nonparticipatingspectators, normal social
beings, look on from the peripheryof the centralsacred space of ceremonial per-
formance. This inversion is likewise replicated in the bodies of the dancers,
164 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
whose relatively social (human)bodies now form the inner cores upon which a
natural"skin" of feathers, claws, hooves, and tree fronds has been imposed.
From the Kayapo point of view, this thoroughgoing parallelism between
cosmic and bodily form is neithera metaphoricalcorrespondencebetween sepa-
rately given naturaland social orders or "systems of differences," nor a projec-
tion of the structureof the social body as the structureof the cosmos. Rather,
body and cosmos participatein a single process of development, the form of all
space-time, conceived as an endlessly replicated series of irreversible linear
processes in vertical space (diurnalsolarjourneys, the growthof individualbod-
ies) which in turn imply repeated cycles of reversible movement between con-
centrically contrastedzones of peripheryand center, and natureand society (as
the sun in its "vertical,"linear movement also moves from the easternperiphery
to the center of the dome of the sky, and from there back to the western periph-
ery, from there returningto rise in the east, or as the reproductionof an individ-
ual social body requiresan infusion of other, peripherallyattachedbodies, and
in turn reproducesother bodies through the infusion of powers and substances
from its central core across its peripheralboundary).
The structureof this universal macroprocessis also the structureof micro-
processes of social activity at all levels of social and individual action down to
and including intrabodilyprocesses. Both the vertical and horizontal/concentric
dimensions of the patternare replicated, in the same complementaryrelation,at
all levels of social organization.The "cosmos"is simply the abstractform of the
total process of individual and collective activity which simultaneously pro-
duces social bodies andpersons, families and households, communalgroupings
andcommunities themselves. The fundamentalreality of body, society, andcos-
mos alike is that of a process of action that unfolds from beginning to end
through a reciprocal interactionbetween central subject and peripheralobject
world, a process simultaneouslysubjective and objective, intentionaland mate-
rial, which appears,at different levels, as the form of an individual act, the life
cycle of the social body, the developmental cycles of family andhousehold, the
structureof the community as a whole, and the formation of the universe.
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