onkings Read online

  Alameida, Ralph Austen, Robert Brightman, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha,

  PREFACE

  xv

  Giovanni da Col, Cécile Fromont, Bruce Lincoln, Alan Rumsey, Gregory

  Schrempp, Alan Strathern, Dame Marilyn Strathern, and Eduardo Viveiros de

  Castro. Special thanks also to my research assistants, Jonathan Doherty, Sean

  Dowdy, and Rob Jennings. And gratitude for aid in presentations of relevant

  lectures or conference papers goes to the following: in Mexico, Antonio Soborit

  and Leopoldo Trejo Barrientos; in Chicago, Stephan Palmie, Richard Rosen-

  garten, and Charles Stewart; in London, Giovanni da Col, Fabio Gygi, and

  Edward Simpson; and in Beijing, Judith Farquhar, and Bruce Lincoln. I should

  acknowledge in advance the patience of readers—or beg their indulgence—for

  the recurrent expositions of aspects of stranger-kingship and galactic polities.

  It is not only that these lectures or essays were written on different occasions

  for different audiences, but that discussions of these same phenomena were

  necessary for the arguments in each of them. Finally, special thanks to David

  Graeber: David was a student of mine; I supervised his thesis at the University

  of Chicago. Since then it has been difficult to say who is the student and who

  the teacher.

  D. G. (London), M. S. (Chicago)

  August 2017

  introduction

  Theses on kingship

  David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins

  STRUCTURES

  Kingship in general

  Kingship is one of the most enduring forms of human governance. While we

  cannot know its precise historical origins in time and space, it is attested during

  virtually all eras on all continents, and for most of human history the tendency

  was for it to become more common, not less.

  What’s more, once established, kings appear remarkably difficult to get rid of.

  It took extraordinary legal acrobatics to be able to execute Charles I and Louis

  XVI; simply killing a royal family, as with the tsars, leaves one (apparently for-

  ever) burdened with substitute tsars; and even today, it seems no coincidence

  the only regimes almost completely untroubled by the Arab Spring revolts of

  2011 were those with longstanding monarchies. Even when kings are deposed,

  the legal and political framework of monarchy tends to live on, as evidenced

  in the fact that all modern states are founded on the curious and contradictory

  principle of “popular sovereignty,” that the power once held by kings still exists,

  just now displaced onto an entity called “the people.”

  2

  ON KINGS

  One unanticipated side-effect of the collapse of European colonial empires has

  been that this notion of sovereignty has become the basis of constitutional or-

  ders everywhere—the only partial exceptions being a few places, like Nepal or

  Saudi Arabia, which had monarchies of their own already.

  It follows that any theory of political life that does not take account of this, or

  that treats kingship as some sort of marginal, exceptional, or secondary phe-

  nomenon, is not a very good theory.

  In this volume, then, we propose some elements for a theory of kingship. The

  arguments set out from territory we have both explored already: in the one case,

  in the classic essays on the stranger-king; in the other, in the divine kingship of

  the Shilluk. The collection focuses particularly on what has been called “divine”

  or “sacred” kingship, but with the understanding that a thorough examination

  of its common features can reveal the deep structures underlying monarchy, and

  hence politics, everywhere.

  What follows are a series of general propositions inspired by the findings of

  the essays collected in this book. Certain entries, perhaps, lean more toward the

  perspective of one author than the other, but we believe the dialogic tension to

  be fertile, and that the resulting propositions may suggest important new direc-

  tions for research.

  The cosmic polity

  Human societies are hierarchically encompassed—typically above, below, and

  on earth—in a cosmic polity populated by beings of human attributes and me-

  tahuman powers who govern the people’s fate. In the form of gods, ancestors,

  ghosts, demons, species-masters, and the animistic beings embodied in the crea-

  tures and features of nature, these metapersons are endowed with far-reaching

  powers of human life and death, which, together with their control of the con-

  ditions of the cosmos, make them the all-round arbiters of human welfare and

  illfare. Even many loosely structured hunting and gathering peoples are thus

  subordinated to beings on the order of gods ruling over great territorial domains

  and the whole of the human population. There are kingly beings in heaven even

  where there are no chiefs on earth.

  THESES ON KINGSHIP

  3

  It follows that the state of nature has the nature of the state. Given the govern-

  ance of human society by metaperson authorities with ultimate life-and-death

  powers, something quite like the state is a universal human condition.

  It also fol ows that kings are imitations of gods rather than gods of kings—the

  conventional supposition that divinity is a reflex of society notwithstanding. In

  the course of human history, royal power has been derivative of and dependent

  on divine power. Indeed, no less in stateless societies than in major kingdoms,

  the human authorities emulate the ruling cosmic powers—if in a reduced form.

  Shamans have the miraculous powers of spirits, with whom, moreover, they inter-

  act. Initiated elders or clan leaders act the god, perhaps in masked form, in presid-

  ing over human and natural growth. Chiefs are greeted and treated in the same

  ways as gods. Kings control nature itself. What usual y passes for the divinization

  of human rulers is better described historically as the humanization of the god.

  As a corollary, there are no secular authorities: human power is spiritual pow-

  er—however pragmatically it is achieved. Authority over others may be acquired

  by superior force, inherited office, material generosity, or other means; but the

  power to do or be so is itself deemed that of ancestors, gods, or other external

  metapersons who are the sources of human vitality and mortality. In this cul-

  tural framework, a privileged relation to the metapersonal rulers of the human

  fate is the raison d’être of earthly social power. Moreover, as demonstrated in

  worldly accomplishments, this access to metahuman powers may have subjuga-

  tion effects on people beyond those directly affected by the acts of the persons

  of authority. It’s “charisma”—in the original, god-infused sense.

  In this god-infused sense, Shilluk say the king is Juok (the god), but Juok is not

  the king. The divinity of the king is a kind of intersubjective animism. As a mo-

  dality of the One over Many, divinity itself can be understood as the personified

  head of a class of things that are thus so many instances/instantiations of the

  godhead—which is also to say that as a partible person, the god is immanent in

  the creatures and features of his or her realm. Hawaiians speak of symbolically

  relevan
t plants, animals, and persons as so many “bodies” ( kino lau) of the god:

  in which sense Captain Cook was famously the god Lono, but Lono was not

  Captain Cook. Such intersubjective animism is not all that rare: shamans are

  possessed by their familiars and victims by their witches. Idolatry and kinship

  are likewise forms of a broad metaphysics of intersubjective being.

  4

  ON KINGS

  Compared with the kind of cosmic polities that exist among foragers and many

  others, mortal kingship represents a limit on state power. There is simply no

  way that any mortal human, whatever his pretensions, whatever the social ap-

  paratus at his disposal could ever real y wield as much power as a god. And

  most kings, despite the absolute nature of their claims, never seriously make

  the attempt.

  For half of humanity, though, the creation of mortal kingship represents a ma-

  jor blow: because kings are, in virtually every known case, archetypically male.

  Nowadays, scholars are used to writing off Paleolithic or Neolithic representa-

  tions of powerful female figures as mere “mythological” representations, of no

  political significance, but in the cosmic polities which then existed, this could

  not have been the case. If so, fixing divine political power in the male head of a

  royal household was a blow for patriarchy in two ways: not only was the primary

  human manifestation of divine power now masculine, but the main purpose of

  the ideal household is producing powerful men.

  The precise historical trajectory by which divine powers—sovereignty prop-

  erly speaking—devolved from metahuman beings to actual human beings, if

  it can ever be reconstructed, wil be likely to take many unexpected turns. For

  instance: we know of societies (in aboriginal California, or Tierra del Fuego)

  where arbitrary orders are given only during rituals in which human beings

  impersonate gods, but those who give the orders are not the gods, but clowns,

  who appear to represent divine power in its essence; in related societies (e.g.,

  the Kwakiutl), this develops into clown-police who hold sway during an en-

  tire ritual season; then, in yet others, into more straightforward seasonal po-

  lice. In such cases, sovereignty is contained in time: outside the specific ritual

  or seasonal context, decentralization ensues, and those vested with sovereign

  powers during the ritual season are no different from, and have no more say

  than, anybody else. Sacred kingship, in contrast, would appear to be largely a

  means of containing sovereign power in space. The king, it is almost always

  asserted, has total power over the lives and possessions of his subjects; but

  only when he is physical y present. As a result, an endless variety of strategies

  are employed to limit the king’s freedom of motion. Yet there is at the same

  time a mutual y constitutive relation between the king’s containment and his

  power: the very taboos that constrain him are also what render him a trans-

  cendent metabeing.

  THESES ON KINGSHIP

  5

  Stranger-king formations

  Stranger-kingdoms are the dominant form of premodern state the world around,

  perhaps the original form. The kings who rule them are foreign by ancestry and

  identity. The dynasty typically originates with a heroic prince from a greater

  outside realm: near or distant, legendary or contemporary, celestial or terres-

  trial. Alternatively, native rulers assume the identity and sovereignty of exalted

  kings from elsewhere and thus become foreigners—as in the Indic kingdoms of

  Southeast Asia—rather than foreigners becoming native rulers. The polity is in

  any case dual: divided between rulers who are foreign by nature—perpetually so,

  as a necessary condition of their authority—and the underlying autochthonous

  people, who are the “owners” of the country. The dual constitution is constantly

  reproduced in narrative and ritual, even as it is continuously enacted in the dif-

  ferential functions, talents, and powers of the ruling aristocracy and the native

  people.

  The kingdom is neither an endogenous formation nor does it develop in isola-

  tion: it is a function of the relationships of a hierarchically ordered, intersocietal

  historical field. The superiority of the ruling aristocracy was not engendered by

  the process of state formation so much as the state was engendered by the a

  priori superiority of an aristocracy from elsewhere—endowed by nature with

  a certain libido dominandi. The ruling class precedes and makes a subject class.

  On his way to the kingdom, the dynastic founder is notorious for exploits of in-

  cest, fratricide, patricide, or other crimes against kinship and common morality;

  he may also be famous for defeating dangerous natural or human foes. The hero

  manifests a nature above, beyond, and greater than the people he is destined to

  rule—hence his power to do so. However inhibited or sublimated in the estab-

  lished kingdom, the monstrous and violent nature of the king remains an essen-

  tial condition of his sovereignty. Indeed, as a sign of the metahuman sources of

  royal power, force, notably as demonstrated in victory, can function politically as

  a positive means of attraction as well as a physical means of domination.

  For all the transgressive violence of the founder, however, his kingdom is often

  peacefully established. Conquest is overrated as the source of “state formation.”

  Given their own circumstances—including the internal and external conflicts

  of the historical field—the indigenous people often have their own reasons for

  demanding a “king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles”

  6

  ON KINGS

  (1 Samuel 8:20). Even in the case of major kingdoms, such as Benin or the

  Mexica, the initiative may indeed come from the indigenous people, who solicit

  a prince from a powerful outside realm. Some of what passes for “conquest” in

  tradition or the scholarly literature consists of usurpation of the previous regime

  rather than violence against the native population.

  While there is frequently no tradition of conquest, there is invariably a tradition

  of contract: notably in the form of a marriage between the stranger-prince and

  a marked woman of the indigenous people—most often, a daughter of the na-

  tive leader. Sovereignty is embodied and transmitted in the native woman, who

  constitutes the bond between the foreign intruders and the local people. The

  offspring of the original union—often celebrated as the traditional founder-

  hero of the dynasty—thereby combines and encompasses in his own person the

  essential native and foreign components of the kingdom. Father of the country

  in one respect, as witness also his polygynous and sexual accomplishments, the

  king is in another the child-chief of the indigenous people, who comprise his

  maternal ancestry.

  Even where there is conquest, by virtue of the original contract it is reciprocal:

  the mutual encompassment of the autochthonous people by the stranger-king

  and of the king by the autochthonous people. The installation rites of the king

  typically recreate the domestication of the unruly stranger: he dies, is reborn,

>   and nurtured and brought to maturity at the hands of native leaders. His wild or

  violent nature is not so much eliminated as it is sublimated and in principle used

  for the general benefit: internally as the sanction of justice and order, and exter-

  nally in the defense of the realm against natural and human enemies. But even

  as the king is domesticated, the people are civilized. The kingship is a civilizing

  mission. The advent of the stranger-king is often said to raise the native people

  from a rudimentary state by bringing them such things as agriculture, cattle,

  tools and weapons, metals—even fire and cooking, thus a transformation from

  nature to culture (in the Lévi-Straussian sense). As has been said of African

  societies, it is not civilized to be without a king.

  As allegorized in the original union, the synthesis of the foreign and autoch-

  thonous powers—male and female, celestial and terrestrial, violent and peaceful,

  mobile and rooted, stranger and native, etc.—establishes a cosmic system of

  social viability. In a common configuration, the autochthonous people’s access

  THESES ON KINGSHIP

  7

  to the spiritual sources of the earth’s fertility is potentiated by king’s conveyance

  of fecundating forces, such as the rain and sun that make the earth bear fruit.

  Each incomplete in themselves, the native people and foreign rulers together

  make a viable totality—which is what helps the kingdom to endure, whatever

  the tensions of their ethnic-cum-class differences.

  Although they have surrendered the rule to the foreign king, the native people

  retain a certain residual sovereignty. By virtue of their unique relation to the

  powers of the earth, the descendants of the erstwhile native rulers are the chief

  priests of the new regime. Their control of the succession of the king, includ-

  ing the royal installation rituals, is the warrant of the foreign-derived ruler’s

  legitimacy. In the same vein, the native leaders characteristically have temporal

  powers as councilors of the stranger-king, sometimes providing his so-called

  “prime minister.” To a significant extent, the principle that the sovereignty of

  the king is delegated by the people, to whom it belongs by origin and by right,

  is embedded in stranger-king formations, hence widely known before and apart