The Aesthetic of the Sublime

An interpretation of Rawa shell valuable symbolism

Bibliographic Data

ID2467436
AuthorsDouglas M Dalton (Longwood University, corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume23
Issue2
Pages393-415
Publication date1996-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.1996.23.2.02a00110
OpenAlexW1982643736
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited62

An examination of shell objects and their presentation, exchange, and roles in ritual self-decoration among Papua New Guinea Rawa speakers relates them to a sublime aesthetic combination of pleasure and pain involving an indigenous ethos of pathos and sorrow and a sense of the inadequacy of symbolic shell images to convey the ideal concepts they embody. This sense is exacerbated in a colonial context, and the analysis of the sublime shows shells to be simultaneously repositories of indigenous meaning and influenced by colonial processes. In Melanesia the sublime is thus a colonially situated, corporeally located phenomenon of present absence. [shells, Melanesia, aesthetics, self-decoration, exchange, colonialism, change

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Ethos · Identity (music · Indigenous · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential · Pathos · Pleasure · Sorrow · Sublime · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Culinary Culture and Tourism · History · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Philosophy · Psychology