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*HAU Classics in Ethnographic Theory Series*
presents
Volume II
RITUALS AND ANNALS:
Between anthropology and history
Valerio Valeri
With a preface by Marshall Sahlins and an introduction by Rupert Stasch
http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/classics/index
"He was an original. Not that you could copy Valerio Valeri in any case; he
was not duplicable for sheer erudition, intellectual power, or analytic
finesse. He disliked the word "creativity," considered it I believe some
sort of American banality--which qualifies me to use it in reference to some
of the astonishing connections he makes in these pages. As for example,
ludic myths concerning Hawaiian gods that transpose, in a different frame,
the structure of the royal sacrificial rituals that install the god in the
temple and the king in the realm. Or the related exposition of the
essential similarity of play, art, and ritual in their unification of
things distinct in ordinary experience and discursive thought, together
with how their similarities differ. Overriding such distinctions in the
received anthropological discourse, much of Valeri's work comes as an
intellectual shock, as illuminating as it is iconoclastic."
----From the "Preface" by Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished
Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Chicago, author
of *What kinship is--and is not* (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
In this posthumous collection of essays by Valerio Valeri, edited by Rupert
Stasch (in collaboration with Sean M. Dowdy and Giovanni da Col), HAU
brings you a magisterial set of works by one of anthropology's greatest
minds. Richly comparative, while showcasing some of Valeri's finest
scholarship on the history and ethnography of Polynesia, this volume is a
masterful exemplification of ethnographic theory. Among the volume's
translated works from French and Italian, we also include here, for the
first time, all Valeri's entries for the Italian *Enciclopedia
Einaudi*(edited by Umberto Eco)--an invaluable resource for students
and teachers
alike--which brilliantly engage some of anthropology's most classic topics
(kingship, rites, feasting and festivity, the fetish, belief and worship,
mourning, the ceremonial, and cosmogonies of order) With an introduction by
Rupert Stasch, a preface by Marshall Sahlins, and breathtaking works of
original art from Hawaiian artist Carl F.K. Pao, this volume promises to
attract a whole new generation of scholars to Valeri's inimitable genius.
"Any superlative diminishes Valerio Valeri and his scholarship, which is
characterized by rich, subtle, and complex ethnographic and historical
information, underscored by formidable theoretical vigor based on extensive
fieldwork. His work is comparative, including ethnographic and historical
material from ancient Hawaii, Huaulu of Seram, Yap, eastern Indonesia, and
Malaysia, but also includes European cultural and political history,
philosophy, and classics--all enabled by his scholarly training in Italy and
France, as well as having mastered at least eight languages, including
ancient Greek and Latin. HAU's publication of this collection is an
invaluable contribution which transcends the great divide between
anthropology and history and reminds us of what an exemplary anthropology
should look like."
----Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Vilas F. Professor of Anthropology, University of
Wisconsin--Madison, author of *Kamikaze, cherry blossoms, and nationalisms:
The militarization of aesthetics in Japanese history* (University of
Chicago Press, 2002) and *The monkey as mirror: Symbolic transformations in
Japanese history and ritual* (Princeton University Press, 1989).
"This new volume, with selections from Valerio Valeri's writings, is
especially timely today. It will be welcomed, not least, by all those
interested in the anthropology of sovereignty and power. The selected
essays on kingship, ideology, and power shows Valeri at his very best:
always aiming to address the truly important big issues, while unfailingly
and astutely delving into the historical particulars of each case before
him. ("But where is the ethnography?" as he would say in class!) Following
the posthumous publication of *The forest of taboos* (University of
Wisconsin Press, 2000)--a book that is, without question, the most profound
and serious work available anywhere on the classic anthropological problems
of taboo and pollution--as well as that other marvelous collection, *Fragments
from forests and libraries* (Carolina Academic Press, 2001), this new
posthumous collection from Hau is to be commended: It makes it easier for
us all to keep coming back to Valerio Valeri--to reading ethnography with
the big questions in mind."
----Magnus Fiskesjö, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University,
author of *The Thanksgiving turkey pardon, the death of Teddy's bear, and
the sovereign exception at Guantanamo* (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003).
"Here is another contribution from a great and unique master--a work of
solid, rigorous, and vast knowledge, but also a work of continuous learning
(in libraries, forests, and life). Valeri had an ability for amazement and
wonder that came from a practice of ethnography which, rather than being a
nominalist search for historical details, looked to life itself as a source
of percepts as well as a producer of concepts."
----Marcos P. D. Lanna, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Universidade
Federal de São Carlos, author of *A Dívida divina, troca e patronagem no
nordeste brasileiro* (Ed. Unicamp, 1995).
"Throughout his oeuvre, Valeri called for both an anthropological
understanding of time and a history of social structures. At the end of his
life, he set himself an ambitious task: to understand how ritual transforms
the experience of time (and the past itself) in a certain idea of
transcendence, and thus how social memory can be expressed through ritual
action. In this book, one can follow, step by step, Valeri's unparalleled
program. Among other felicities, this book offers an original appreciation
of religious ritual as a utopian order and a new way of articulating social
anthropology with history."
----Carlo Severi, Chair in "Anthropology of Memory" at the École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), author of *Naven or the other self: A
relational approach to ritual action* (with Michael Houseman, Brill,
1998) and *Le principe de la chimère. Une anthropology de la mémoire* (Rue
d'Ulm/Musée du Quai Branly, 2007, English translation forthcoming).
"*Rituals and annals: Between anthropology and history* appears on Valeri's
curriculum vitae as a planned book from at least 1991. The title can be
inferred to have at least three interwoven levels of significance. First,
there is Valeri's own intellectual location. In his writings about
Polynesian societies in the period of their early interactions with
Europeans, Valeri works with sources, methods, and topics of a his- torian,
and questions and concepts of an anthropologist. So too, in the
*Enciclopedia* articles collected here that have a worldwide comparative
scope, Valeri's empirical illustrations are drawn from works of history as
often as from works of anthropology. Second, there is the level of a
theoretical sensibility that temporality is an internal aspect of any human
order, and that anthropology's subjects are intrinsically historical
phenomena. . . . Third, there is the level of the theoretical analysis of
ritual and of narrative representations of temporal process, as two of the
most important of these anthropological subjects. . . . As the volume title
signals, Valeri is centrally concerned with a problematic of the internal
relations between order and temporality, including forms of heterogeneity
of order intrinsic to temporal existence."
----From the "Editor's Introduction" by Rupert Stasch, Associate Professor of
Anthropology, University of California--San Diego, author of *Society of
others: Kinship and mourning in a West Papuan place* (University of
California Press, 2009).
Valerio Valeri (1944-1998) was an Italian anthropologist with an expertise
in the societies and cultures of Polynesia and Southeast Asia. A student of
both Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Dumont, Valeri would go on to become
Professor of anthroplogy at the University of Chicago. He is the
author of *Kingship
and sacrifice: Ritual and society in Ancient Hawaii *(University of Chicago
Press, 1985), *The forest of taboos: Morality, hunting and identity among
the Huaulu of the Moluccas* (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), and two
posthumous volumes: *Uno spazio fra se e se: L'Antropologia come ricerca
del soggetto* (*A space between oneself and oneself: Anthropology as a
search for the subject*, Donzelli, 1999, edited by Janet Hoskins and Martha
Feldman) and *Fragments from forests and libraries* (Carolina Academic
Press, 2001, edited by Janet Hoskins).
______________________________
*More Wonderful News from HAU!*
- Stay tuned in April and May 2014 for video recordings and publications
of the *HAU-University of Rochester Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures
Initiative*! Aside from a new webpage where users will be able to access
recordings of lectures, we will also be releasing some of the classic
lectures in Open Access and Print on Demand formats. First up is the 1986
Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture, *The meaning of money in China and the
United States*, by Emily Martin.
- HAU has now teamed up with the *University of Chicago Press* to
deliver our Book Series in Paperback! That's right, this year you will be
able to support our Open Access publishing program by purchasing sleek
copies of HAU's books! Stay tuned in the next couple months for our first
releases!
- We would also like to announce that HAU received an enormous amount of
amazing applications for our *Special Issues Competition*. The feedback
from the competition was off the charts. Our Special Issues in the journal
for 2014 and 2015 will include some of the brightest minds in the
discipline, all showcasing pathbreaking scholarship and new and exciting
themes, so keep your eyes peeled for more updates.
______________________________
*HAU: Call for Papers*
The editors of *HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory* are still inviting all
anthropologists--especially junior scholars--to send us manuscripts. We
invite young and senior scholars working in or from any part of the world,
graduate students and emeritus professors, they are all welcome in HAU's
family. Dissertation chapters, serious reflections on ethnographic
material, forums, colloquia --you name it, we'd like to see it.
Why submit to HAU?
HAU is double-blind peer-reviewed, copy left (meaning, as author, you
retain all ownership rights to republish), and fast in our turn around
times. HAU is ethnographic theory. HAU is open access.
Distinctive. Classic. Rigorous. Free. Fair. Open.
Sign up on www.haujournal.org and send us your best work.
______________________________
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