La place des maternels dans la Chine patrilinéaire. Enquête dans un village du Jiangxi (Chine du Sud-Est)

Abstract

Where Are the Maternals in Patrilineal China? An Investigation in a Jiangxi Province Village (South-East China) Abstract: in China questions concerning ancestors range across the complementary fields of kinship, beliefs in supernatural bodies and their respective rites. Study of the so called nuo ritual theatre in a Jiangxi province village encourages modification of the usual male dominant vision of Chinese society by proposing the hypothesis that the nuo masks employed in these performances represent female, maternal beings that bring fecundity to the village. These entities cannot appear as ancestors since only those of agnatic descent are acceptable, and so must appear in a “non ancestral” manner, that is to say as devils or divinities. After describing the Chinese example such as it has been presented in anthropological studies, the following aspects of the ritual theatre of the village of Shiyou are reviewed: the socio-ritual organization of the village, the relationships between masks and statue, the appearance and disappearance of masks, the development of ritual sequences, fecundity and sexuality, the actors’ status and their costumes. The chapter demonstrates the logic of complementarity existing between ancestors, devils and gods, as well as the contribution to the fecundity of feminine and