Department of Anthropology Seminar Series 2021: The relevance of anthropology in the contemporary world.

The Yagwoia Image of Themselves as an Ouroboric Socio-cosmic Totality

Presented by Dr Jadran Mimica

This paper surveys a series of diagrammatic representations constructed by a Yagwoia man of knowledge (Papua New Guinea). These are motivated by the local mythopoeia and ritual-architectural edifice of enwombed cosmic Tree-of-Life with intertwined roots and branches. The diagrams were intended to show interconnections between various Yagwoia latice groups and/or their internal segments. I outline the main components of these constructions focussing particularly on the metamorphoses of the part=whole identity relation, its contextual modifications (de/differentiations) in co-ordination with the pivotal One^Many dialectic which drives the logic of the arboreal network of interconnections understood as an ouroboric socio-cosmic totality. These constructions are interpreted auto-referentially in terms of the dynamics of the Yagwoia ecology of mind, its cultural imaginary and cosmo-ontological self-production.

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