Blood Sacrifice Research Articles

‘Our father organization’: The cult of the Somme and the unionist ‘Golden Age’ in modern Ulster Loyalist commemoration

Memories of military sacrifices and demonstrations of ‘national’ characteristics of bravery, comradeship and integrity still have considerable popular purchase within contemporary states and communities, and as such can accrue significant political capital. With this in mind, this paper will show how Ulster Loyalists attempt to anchor themselves in the memory of the Somme, seeking to deliberately construct a line of direct continuity between modern Loyalism, which has been suffering from a variety of pressures, fissures and marginalization throughout the Northern Ireland peace process, and Ulster Unionism of the early 20th century, a period which in contrast was marked by unity, mass mobilization and elite leadership. Crucially, that political generation's decimation during the First World War is a potent myth of blood sacrifice which thickens, rather than pollutes, the narrative of a Unionist ‘Golden Age’ of mobilization and strength. As such, the mythic proving grounds of battlefields long gone have become advantageous sites for modern political acquisition. This use of the memory of the Great War as an identity resource will be compared and contrasted with similar projects in Canada and Australia. Rather than simply miring Loyalists in archaic and militaristic tropes, and invented links to the past, this paper will argue that commemorations, particularly that of the Somme, can have a transformative and cohering effect on modern Loyalism, in both the political and paramilitary spheres.

Slayers and their vampires: a cultural history of killing the dead

Bruce A. McClelland. Slayers and Their Vampires: Cultural History of Killing Dead Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2009 (© 2006). xviii, 260 pp. Index. Bibliography. Illustrations. Maps. $19.95, paper.Bruce McClelland' s monograph, now published in paperback, is a fascinating read for both specialists and fans of vampire folklore and fiction alike. Following in footsteps of Jan L. Perkowski, McClelland' s mentor and academic advisor, he turns our attention yet again to Slavic vampire. McClelland traces manner in which this folkloric entity, who historically never rose above any other Slavic mythological daemon or spirit, achieved such enormous mass appeal when transported to West European and later North American literary and pop cultures, becoming probably most exotic and alluring incarnation of evil today (p. 87). What makes McClelland' s monograph significantly different works of other vampirologists (such as Perkowski, whose omnibus Vampire Lore was published by Slavica in 2006) is fact that he does not limit his interest to vampires alone, but considers vampire slayer who, together with concept of vampire, migrated Slavic into Germanic and later Romanic lands, where he finally received his embodiment as Abraham Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. McClelland argues quite persuasively that slayer and vampire, while presently situated far apart on scale of good and evil, originally were not too different each other. His research on South Slavic (especially Bulgarian) demonology shows that vampire's mortal enemy may actually represent his mirror image because it possesses some of vampire's typical characteristics and hence a capacity to become a vampire. McClelland further studies vampire-slayer pair with regards to their shared connection to world of dead (p. 14) and, as a result, detects in them traces of an ancient shamanic figure (see pp. 6 and 120).Slayers and Their Vampires consists of a preface, ten chapters and an appendix. The latter is devoted completely to linguistic exploration of etymology of Old Slavic term vampir/upir', which first appeared in written form around eleventh century. As McClelland' s analysis asserts, it was unlikely that it originally had any links to realm. Rather scholar sees in it a reference to pagan groups: the word vampire was a pejorative name for a group or a member of a group whose rituals or behavior were offensive to early Orthodox Christians (p. 191). The meaning of term was later extended also to include members of various heretical sects and Jews - traditional enemies of church (pp. 31, 34).The appendix is also connected thematically with historical chapters 3 and 4, both of which are linked by subtitle A Thousand Years of Vampire. The two chapters investigate various processes out of which this Slavic folkloric entity emerged as well as elements that over years formed underlying structure of vampire motif. McClelland, for instance, notes that blood sacrifice and feasting elements of Slavic paganism became ingrained into concept of a vampire, hence reference to blood drinking (pp. 36-41, 43, 64-66). Moreover, anathemas, which Orthodox theologians laid upon heretics and pagans over time, helped form image of vampire as an outsider, a cursed evil encroaching upon society (p. 49). Such a severe attack, exercised by Church, led to fact that unorthodox behaviour and beliefs of pagan groups, including heretic sects and Jews, were transferred sphere of something odd and unnatural to sphere of supernatural (p. 5 1). Consequently, meaning, associated with term vampire, shifted from a perverse violator of taboos (child sacrifice, incest) to a demon who rises dead and attacks living and who tends to function as a scapegoat during inexplicable adversity (p. …

Ritual, Cultural Standardization, and Orthopraxy in China

This special issue contains five reassessments of James L. Watson’s influential ideas on the role of ritual in cultural standardization: Kenneth Pomeranz (History, UC Irvine) examines the Bixia yuanjun cult; Michael Szonyi (East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard) analyzes the Five Emperors’ cult and ancestral sacrifices in Fuzhou; Paul Katz (Modern History, Academia Sinica) discusses the cult of Marshal Wen and blood sacrifices to banners; Melissa Brown (Anthropological Sciences, Stanford) takes up the case of frontier acculturation; and Donald Sutton (History, Carnegie Mellon) looks at death rituals. To round out the special issue, Professor Watson adds his own rejoinder. On the basis of these essays and other recent scholarship, the introduction in turn questions the effectiveness of state standardization, outlines the phenomenon of heteroprax standardization, argues that “pseudo-orthoprax” local elites subverted the state’s cultural policies, reconsiders the applicability of the paired terms “ritual” and “belief,” and underlines the subjectivity of the notion of Chineseness.

Der Meistersinger

At the time David Krell refers to in the Grus Gott story lived in the small village of Trachslau in Switzerland. The - should say originan - story had to do, not with professional fame but with die spread of village news.' diought the Scott sound ofthe Swiss pronunciation of die greeting meant that everybody in die region knew had moved into Trachslau and were welcoming me by name. When got the facts straight about the greeting found that could respond properly and Swissly simply by saying back my name to the folks on the road. find my version much less worthy of repeating tiian David's. For die purposes of this conversation will say tiiat my version of the story is less mythological than his and very likely more factual. And it is also less interesting, less invested widi spirit, less satisfying in several ways. Mine, after all, only speaks of bad hearing, a silly mistake and die effectiveness of lines of village communication. David's addresses Hubris, Error, and Resentment against God. can say from the outset that bore no resentment against such a Creature2 and that although my interest in religion was waning during that period of my life sang in a Zurich church choir and participated fully in die congregation's life. Although more dull and prosaic, die more factual story allows me to recall an experience had that was amusing to me but considerably less than mythological in its meaning. As respond to David's generous observations and hard questions will move, as believe he moves, toward die question of sacrality by way of mythological time and quasitranscendence. The Good Pagan David is less positively moved by JudeoChristian belief than even Holderlin, Schelling, and Hegel. He goes to archaic Greek religion and sensibility, to blood sacrifices untranslated by either Jewish law or Christian redemption, to die pull, the draw, die gravity, and in his wonderful prose, die excitement of death, birth, continuous loss, creation, narration, and again, death. It's not God, it's Ananke, figured without sense or unity, figured vaguely by chora in some accounts, and perhaps (he doesn't say) by the continuous but always past mating of Ge and Uranos. am now talking with a good pagan, even if he does not say his prayers frequently during die day, or offer sweet smelling incense regularly to the gods, or offer his first-born for sacrifice. That is, David is a good pagan now who does not live in a sacred world tiiat would be possible probably only without modern science and me many lineages spawned so long ago by our pagan heritages. Or should say, pagan origins? will come back to the question of origins. The Importance of Being Earnest Scott's levity is always in earnest ___ Although believe that statement is not a criticism, hear in it a caution: be careful not to think of lightness of mind and absence of a spirit of seriousness as necessarily lacking fervor and constructive intention. It's not cynicism, and skepticism does not appropriately describe it any more than cynicism or skepticism adequately describes Silenic wisdom when it is woven into Greek drama. Lacking the spirit of seriousness and creatively appropriating the teaching of Silenus, rather, give an opening to a quality of affirmation that Nietzsche found unavailable in traditional JudeoChristian wisdom. In King Midas 's presence, captive and unfree, Silenus was certainly earnest. And we should be earnest too, given the stakes of Western spiritual bondage. There are many strands in die bond - moral, religious, political. The one will speak of is scientific, so that can respond to an issue tiiat believe hovers throughout David's paper: bondage to science (i.e. the death of the mythological). I Was Born OK the First Time. The importance of being earnest is limited. We are talking about basic sensibilities that constitute predispositions to some intentions, values, meanings, and practices and not to others. …

The Scapegoat: Establishing a Genre

MARY LEE SETTLE'S LITERARY LEGACY The Scapegoat: Establishing a Genre Thomas E. Douglass The writing of history is of course more complex than figuring out what side you are on and then adjusting things accordingly. For sides have sidestothem, obviouslymade clearinnarrativehistories andmade even more complex in narrative fiction. Mary Lee Settle's 1980 novel The Scapegoat enters the complexity of historical forces, Appalachian culture, and personality. It is no straight road-jack polemic that sets out to right the wrongs of the past, as the temptation may be there to do. The novel is book four of Settle's epic Beulah Quintet and advances the family evolution of people living in the Trans-Allegheny into the 20th century—the Lacey's, the Catlett's, the Neill's, and the McKarkle's— amid the seminal 1912 Paint Creek-Cabin Creek mine struggle. In part, the novel tells history and chooses rightly a significant moment in West Virginia history and the history of the nation—the coalescence of an inexorably successful labor movement at the precise moment that industrialized America was emerging into a world power. Settle knew she was making the right choice as she told Jennifer Howard in a 1995 interview published in The Southern Quarterly : "I've always been fascinated with where history has a turning point, and that turning point is very seldom recognized." It was a moment in history when the rub of wealth and power in the land of the free and home of the brave often resulted in painful and often abusive inequities among its own people. As David Corbin notes in Life, Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields (1981): "The Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike was fought not for narrow reasons of higher wages and shorter hours, but for justice, fraternity, and liberty, principles that were born of the miners' local experiences rather than a general ideology. The dynamics of the strike sprang not from the Socialist party, nor the UMWA, but from the rank and file." What better subject for an American fiction, and with only a few predecessors, Settle's The Scapegoat established an archetypal genre that is fundamentally American, yet specifically Appalachian. The Scapegoat tells the tale of a day and the night of June 7th 1912, near the violent beginning of the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912-1913, that by its conclusion on May 1, 1913, would by some 78 estimates claim the lives of 50 people and involve Gatling guns, grenades, automatic rifles, shotguns, handguns, an armored train mounted with a machine gun called the Bull Moose Special which would be used in the Holly Grove Massacre, thousands of rounds fired and hundreds arrested for sedition. For this novel set in 1912, Settle's personal history overlaps withthe historical record. She was born in 1918 in Charleston, West Virginia, her mother's ancestral home, and her father was an engineer in the coal industry, an owner and operator, the likes of the novel's Beverly Lacey the father of Althea, Mary Rose, and Lily. The details of clothing and place and rhythms of language were more accessible to her memory and imagination. As she told George Garrett in Understanding Mary Lee Settle (1988) "My mother and her sisters were girls in 1912. By now historic memory was getting to be personal memory. In a way I already knew the language. So I began to find The Scapegoat." The image and the question that emerged as a result of her memory and research is found in the opening sequence of the novel—the Gatling gun on the Lacey's front porch. The narrative question: "What are three pretty girls in white and a Gatling gun doing on the front porch of what looks like a house in the country?" For the most part, the novel was written in 1976 and 1977, and in that year she traveled to Italy to complete her empathetic research of the past so she could tell the story of young Eduardo Pagano and his motherAnnunziata, and Carlo Michele, who would play the scapegoat in the ritual pattern of the mine wars novel. A scapegoat or blood sacrifice is a plot element...

Blood Sacrifice in the Habrew Bible: Meaning and Power

Blood Sacrifice the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power, by William K. Gilders. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. 272. $55.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0801879930. Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism the Study of Ancient Judaism, by Jonathan Klawans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 384. $74.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0195162633. Reading Ritual: Leviticus Postmodern Culture, by Wesley J. Bergen. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. London: T&T Clark International, 2005. Pp. 160. $120.00 (hardcover). ISBN 056704081X. Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity, edited by Kristin De Troyer, Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson, and Anne-Marie Korte. Studies Christianity and Antiquity. London: T&T Clark International, 2003. Pp. 264. $34.95 (paper). ISBN 1563384000. Soon after I began writing this review, I was making small talk with an acquaintance who asked politely what I was working on. I told her that it was a review essay on biblical sacrifice. She blinked uncomprehendingly. You know? I said lamely, in the ancient world, they would kill animals. For God. She shook her head, appalled. Uneasily, I changed the subject. Given the constant use of the word today's media, it never occurred to me that an intelligent young woman might not have heard of real sacrifice, the sacredmaking slaughter that characterized so many religions the ancient Mediterranean and elsewhere. And though this same woman might not think twice about the use of the word to describe, say, what is currently taking place Iraq, and though I happen to know that she is willing to eat meat and wear leather, she experienced confusion and revulsion when presented with the idea of killing animals a sacred context. In popular culture today, animal sacrifice is the purview of Satanism and voodoo, and has nothing to do with our own religious legacy. Why is that the case? The author of one of the books under review asks the question even more pointedly: Why is our culture more comfortable with the idea of human sacrifice (soldiers, firefighters) than with animal sacrifice? (Bergen, Reading Ritual, 83). Part of the answer can be found the grim history of Christian supersessionism, which, taking its cue from the NT Epistle to the Hebrews, declares animal sacrifice to be useless routine, a temporary practice that the true children of Israel have now outgrown. Another part of the answer can be found the history of Judaism itself, which was forced by the destruction of the Jerusalem temple to reimagine the human being's relationship with God ways that did not depend on an altar. Finally, we must look to the roots of our own academic discipline, particularly among the anthropologists and biblical scholars of the nineteenth century, who saw sacrifice as little more than a quaint reminder of the curious literality with which ancient people understood the concepts of food or gift. And yet, even knowing all this, the problem has not gone away. The lengthy instructions that the Pentateuch provides for sacrificing animals feel, to the modern reader, somehow both gory and oddly abstract, both tedious and sparse. The authors of Exodus and Leviticus do not provide any interpretations for their instructions, nor do they offer any justification for the work that they describe as so important. This has not stopped generations of Christian, Jewish, and secular scholars from trying to explain what it all means, of course, but it does make an emic interpretation of the data unusually difficult. William Gilders's book, Blood Sacrifice the Hebrew Bible, addresses this problem by trying to understand specifically what assumptions the writers had about blood (although the relative dating of the Priestly [P] and Holiness [H] sources Leviticus are important for Gilderss argument, this textual analysis does not bear directly on the broader themes that I am discussing here, so I will speak more generally about the priestly writers without addressing the significance of the relationship between P and H). …

Mind and Experience in a Hindu City

Robert Levy's study of the ritual and religious or- ganization of a city in Nepal offers insights into how the peo- ple of this Hindu community are shaped by cultural context. (Hinduism, selfhood, ritual, Robert Levy) any people may assume that Robert Levy's work ended with the Tahitians, but his work in Nepal pursues themes central to his study of Tahiti. Consistent with his belief in a comparative anthropology, he continued to explore the question of how mind exists in different cultural settings, as these settings exist within different kinds of communities. Relative to Tahiti, in Nepal he finds a different kind of community, one unimagined in the wildest dreams of the South Seas: a Hindu city in the shadow of the Himalayas, a place with a caste hierarchy, an intricate ritual system, and a Tantric tradition, a place where goddesses accept blood sacrifices, and religion organizes much of life. Out of his fieldwork here comes a monumental book, Mesocosm. In it, Levy examines Bhaktapur, the city where he worked in Nepal's Kathmandu Valley, in terms of its religious organization, with a central focus on the cycles of rituals central to the civic order. What Levy offers is a study of Hinduism in an urban incarnation, of urbanism in a Hindu incarnation. The dialectical relationship is crucial. Levy shows us how Hinduism and urbanism constitute each other in a particular city, yet one that represents a historically important class of Hindu communities-those that developed as the royal centers of small Hindu states. Levy also sees Bhaktapur as relevant to the comparative understanding of a wider set of ancient cities, including the Greek cities of antiquity.

Jephthah's Kin: The Sacrificing Father in The Merchant of Venice

Jephthah'S Kin:The Sacrificing Father in The Merchant of Venice Michelle Ephraim (bio) And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then that thing that commeth out of the doors of mine house to meet me, when I come home in peace from the children of Ammon, shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it for a burnt offering. Judges 11:30–11 After Jessica steals his jewels and elopes with Lorenzo, a Christian, Shylock famously wishes her death in Act III of The Merchant of Venice: "I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! Would she were hears'd at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin!" (3.1.87–90).2 Presumably, Shylock does not intend to kill Jessica himself; her departure, however, transforms his "ancient grudge" against the Venetian Christians into active bloodlust. Buoyed by news of Antonio's doomed argosies, Shylock declares that he will "plague" (116) and "torture" (117) the Christian merchant by demanding their agreed-upon penalty—"an equal pound/Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken,/In what part of your body pleaseth me" (1.3.149–51)—should Antonio forfeit the loan he solicited on Bassanio's behalf. Though Shakespeare gives us clear evidence of Shylock's mercenary desires and cruelty in this scene, in Shylock's responses to his friend Tubal, who reports on Jessica's sale of Shylock's deceased wife's turquoise ring "for a monkey" (3.1.119) and provides consolatory news of Antonio's own economic misfortune, he also constructs a Jewish father more grief-crazed than pointedly homicidal. Indeed, [End Page 71] Shylock's heartfelt lament for Leah—"I had it of [her] when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys" (121–3)— reveals a history of familial loss that perhaps provides explanation for Shylock's brief reference to his synagogue at the end of the scene; an intimation of prayer and mourning ritual that flickers incongruously alongside his retributive declarations. Shylock's quick allusion, I believe, also foreshadows his audacious justification of Antonio's murder during the trial scene as the fulfillment of a private vow he has made to God. In this essay I contend that early modern responses to Jephthah in Judges 11:29–40, a Jewish father honored as a "hero of faith" in the Epistle to the Hebrews despite the fact that he sacrifices his only daughter, illuminate our reading of Shakespeare's ambivalent depiction of the sympathetic would-be murderer Shylock. As I will show in my discussion of Judges below, the story's ambiguous entangling of pious and profane aspects fascinated Christian readers: in the immediate aftermath of leading the Israelites to victory, Jephthah fulfills his divine vow to sacrifice the first "thing that commeth out of the doors of [his] house" (should he defeat the Ammonite enemy) by killing his daughter who has run out of the house to greet him. Although Shakespeare does not explicitly refer to Judges 11 in Merchant, his allusions to Jephthah's vow and sacrifice in 3 Henry VI and Hamlet make clear his familiarity with this provocative story.3 Like Jephthah's unnamed daughter, Jessica devastates her father by leaving the family home. This narrative echo, however, also sharply distinguishes Jessica from the obedient daughter in Judges and highlights the difference between Jephthah's deadly turn upon his daughter's departure and Shylock's. Jephthah does not intend to kill his daughter yet ultimately does so in order to demonstrate his piety; Shylock's bitter vision of Jessica and his subsequent claim to "the heart of [Antonio]" (3.1.127) are driven by vengeance and pride—his refusal to be made "a soft and dull-eyed fool" (3.3.14) who passively accepts the Christians' affronts. Poised to take a pound of Antonio's "fair flesh" (1.3.150) in Act IV, Shylock's crude form of "justice" seems to confirm contemporary notions of Old Testament blood sacrifice as evidence of the Jew's spiritual inferiority...

E-Press and Oppress

E-Press and Oppress

Body Trance and Word Trance in Brazilian Religion

Among the popular religions of Brazil, Candomblé, deriving from both West African tradition and from Iberian Baroque Catholicism, stands out as the religion of the body, its emotions and expressions. Practised with blood sacrifice, trance, music and dance, it imposes no code of ascetic conduct on its devotees, being different from other forms of religion, like Pentecostalism, which are also growing in the country. Candomblé is a festive religion, in which the notions of sin, guilt and expiation, as understood in western theology, play little or no role. Thus it has been viewed by many analysts as a religion of personal and social liberation. Yet, the recent growth of Candomblé, in all parts of Brazil and among people of all social origins, in keen competition with Pentecostalism, gives rise to some theoretical problems. The markedly concrete character of Candomblé, within a society increasingly dominated by economic and social abstraction, seems to be difficult to reconcile with a Marxist or Weberian inspired sociology of religion.

Blood for the Dead: Homeric Ghosts Speak up

But merely 'approaching' the blood is not enough. After Tiresias departs, Odysseus waits until his mother 'came forward and drank the dark blood' (152-3). Only upon imbibing does Anticleia recognize and speak to her son. So what, exactly, is the function of the sacrificial blood? Does the ghostly imbibing enable the Homeric dead to regain some form of consciousness, or does it allow the shades to speak intelligibly with the living? Or both? Does this rule always apply, or only in certain circumstances or with specific individuals? The Homeric picture of the dead is notoriously complex, ambiguous, and even contradictory. Indeed, the fate itself of the dead is variously depicted in the epics with several alternatives to the predominant shadowy world of the dead of Odyssey 11. In addition to the uncomfortable double post-mortem life of Heracles at Od. 11 .601-626, one learns of alternative afterlives provided or offered to Ganymede (II. 20.231-5), Menelaus (Od. 4.561-9; cf. Calypso's offer of immortality to Odysseus, 5.206-10, 23.336), Leucothea (Od. 5.333-5), Castor and Polydeuces (Od. 11.299-304), and Cleitus (Od. 15.250-1). Things are even more manifold once one considers other early Greek epics (see below on Achilles). A familiar critical approach to such contradictions surrounding the Homeric dead has been to try to separate out the various strands of thought into chronological layers, to attempt to tease out the development of Greek beliefs about death and dying from the Mycenaean through the Archaic Age.' Take the notorious issue of witless shades, for example. Circe tells Odysseus that Tiresias is the one

‘Blood Sacrifice and Redemptive Violence’

‘Blood Sacrifice and Redemptive Violence’

Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag

Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag

Race lynching and Christian Evangelicalism: performances of faith

This essay locates the performance of ritual lynching within the white Christian Evangelical worldview that predominated among members of the white supremacist community responsible for lynching African‐Americans. The emergence of Christian Evangelicalism is connected to Anglo‐Celtic emigration in the eighteenth century to the backcountry of the American South and the Appalachians. Through a fusion of cultural folkways with faith centered on the violent death of Christ on the cross, the practice of lynching can be read as ritual reenactment of blood sacrifice, of propitiation for the sin of blackness and expiation for the white supremacist community.

Review of From Civil to Political Religion by Marcella Cristi, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation by Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle and Perspectives on Civil Religion by Gerald Parsons

Review of From Civil to Political Religion by Marcella Cristi, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation by Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle and Perspectives on Civil Religion by Gerald Parsons

Hail to the Chief?: The politics and poetics of a Rajasthani ‘child sacrifice’

In this paper, I examine a birth ritual practised by a community of low‐status entertainers from the Indian state of Rajasthan known as Bhats. On the birth of sons, but not daughters, Bhats offer gifts to the Hindu god Bhaironji, a pan‐Indian boss of the underworld. Specifically, they sacrifice a goat, extract its stomach, slice it open so that it forms a gaping slit, and pass their wailing newborn through the dripping opening seven times. This ritual, which I interpret as a symbolic child sacrifice, would seem to exemplify ‘Sanskritisation’—the low caste copying of elite life‐styles—in the way Bhats imitate dominant Hindu ideals implicit to a kingly tradition of blood sacrifice. However, I contend that this feast is unique in the way that Bhats simultaneously mimic and appropriate, subvert and contest, as well as rework and combine ritual traditions associated with both kings and priests.

Decolonizing the Choctaws: Teaching LeAnne Howe's Shell Shaker

Shell Shaker (2001) by LeAnne Howe (Choctaw) is a novel that gives students an opportunity to learn that the history and culture of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma are alive today. Winner of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award in 2002, the novel deals with two parallel stories that converge in the present, one about the eighteenth-century murder of Choctaw warrior Red Shoes, and the other about the 1991 murder of corrupt Chief Redford McAlester. The novel illustrates how history continues to impact the present-day Choctaw characters and how those characters exemplify the process of decolonization. This article deals with how I teach Shell Shaker in the context of a course on American Indian literatures, but the strategies are useful for the novel in any course. Although other Native novels responsibly and effectively represent the history and culture of Native nations, particularly those of the "Fab Five"—N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), James Welch (Blackfeet), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), Louise Erdrich (Ojibwe), and Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene)—Shell Shaker not only excels in its rendering of the historical and contemporary Choctaws, but the writing also depicts the characters with great warmth, intelligence, and humor. Scholar and critic P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo) praises the novel as a fine literary read: "Howe seamlessly integrates a history of desperate and gruesome fights for survival with modern Faustian pacts with materialism and wealth. At the heart of the story are generations of Choctaw peoples who persevere with ritual gestures of 'life everlasting'" (Hafen 2002). Howe's novel is among the wave of contemporary Native authors [End Page 73] whose work focuses on issues of sovereignty and the decolonization process as a means of survival. The opening chapter, "Blood Sacrifice," is just one example of the strong impression the novel leaves with readers, as Shakbatina, a Shell Shaker, narrates her own death as she is bludgeoned by a war club as a sacrifice to maintain peace among the Choctaws and Chickasaws. Detailing every physical sensation, image, and sound as she dies but lives on in spirit is an example of the Choctaw philosophy of "life everlasting," a motif that appears throughout the novel: "the people are ever living, ever dying, ever alive!" (Howe 2001, 5). As the second blow strikes her head, she sees the spirit of an animal: "Mother Porcupine walks into view and takes me by the hand. I open my mouth to speak but my thoughts escape into the wind" (16). Shakbatina's thoughts will find their way over space and time to the contemporary Billy women and help them to solve the mystery of Chief Red McAlester's death. In addition to restoring peace and harmony among the Oklahoma Choctaws, the resolution also renews ties between them and the Mississippi Choctaws, as the Billy family decides that the body of Chief Red McAlester must be returned to traditional lands, the Mother Mound at Nanih Waiya in Mississippi, so his troubled spirit will rest in peace. A return to traditional Indigenous cultural values as a means to reconstruct social and governmental institutions is a theme in Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred's Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (1999, xvii). Alfred writes about Indigenous identity: "[W]hat makes an individual 'indigenous' is his or her situation within a community.... our people's reality is communal" (xvi). The narrative of Shell Shaker perfectly captures a sense of community in the way that the characters come together to support one another and solve the challenges facing their families and tribe. Alfred goes on to say, "To know indigenous people, those seeking knowledge must interact with indigenous communities, in all their past and present complexity" (1999, xvi-xvii; emphasis added). Within the scope of Shell Shaker students see how an Indigenous community negotiates life's challenges in both historical and contemporary settings, thus coming to a better understanding of the complexity of Choctaw culture and...

Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag

Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag

Colors and blood: flag passions of the Confederate South

List of Illustrations and Tables, xiii Acknowledgments, xi Introduction: Waving Colors and Boiling Blood, 1 1. The Stars and Stripes of Senator Davis. A Prologue, 8 2. The Standards of State Resistance, 19 3. Selecting and Singing a New Constellation, 39 4. Blood Sacrifice and the Colors of War, 67 5. The Southern Cross and Confederate Consolidation, 96 6. Treason's Banner and the Colors of Loyalty, 125 7. Conquered Banners, Furled and Unfurled, 153 Notes, 179 Index, 213

The ‘Civilizing Process’ in Ghana

Norbert Elias went to Ghana as Professor of Sociology for two years. Nevertheless he continued to refer to its inhabitants, despite their rural development, as naturvolk which the civilising process had not touched. That process apparently took off in Europe at the time of the Renaissance and never reached the Third World. The Ghanaians had different kinds of super-ego which did not restrain their behaviour in the same way as Europeans. The lack of restraint is shown in blood sacrifice and in their art, which gives a more direct expression of feeling. Elias' observations were necessarily superficial as he did not carry out fieldwork or learn any languages. He employed them simply to bolster the themes he had developed in a European context rather than using them to modify those themes.