Ritual,history and cognition: From analogy to hegemony in highland Malagasy polities

Abstract

Despite social change occurring over the 18th and 19th centuries in the Malagasy highlands, the same basic structure of the Merina circumcision ritual remained invariant, although some innovations and transformations have characterized its evolution. The issue is to render intelligible this co-existence of constant and shifting religious ritual forms throughout history. This case study argues that Lévi-Strauss’s ‘canonic formula’ can be reinterpreted as the law of permutation group organizing the whole series of Merina circumcision variants, thanks to relationality theories of ritual and to the structure mapping and multi-constraint theories of analogical reasoning. The canonic formula [Fx(a): Fy(b):: Fy(a): Fa^−l(x)] formalizes a counter-intuitive proportional analogical thought and action inherent to the performance of Merina circumcision as a special agent ritual. Because this kind of analogy is based on core constraints, some of them structural and insensitive to the historical context, some of them being semantic and pragmatic and thereby depending upon cultural experiences and social situations, the permanence and variation of circumcision ritual form can be related to the hegemonic rise and decline of historical Merina polities.