Tik Merauke

Tik Merauke untangles the complex roots, contexts, and effects of donovanosis-a sexually transmitted infection from the tropics-among the Marind people of New Guinea in the early twentieth century.Enriched by the author's personal experiences as a physician and researcher in Papua New Guinea, together with an extensive engagement with primary and secondary sources in anthropology and the history of medicine, the book offers a detailed and compelling account of how attempts by foreign actors to eliminate the donovanosis epidemic helped prevent the total eradication of the Marind people while also radically undermining their way of life, cultural identity, and social organization.The book skillfully alternates between thematic, chronological, and actorcentered perspectives on the donovanosis epidemic, interweaving ecology, history, culture, politics, religion, and medical science across its chapters to unearth how and why the disease came to affect the Marind people across gendered and intergenerational lines (Chapters 2-3).Central to this endeavor is the author's critical analysis of accounts produced by Western scientists, anthropologists, missionaries, administrators, cinematographers, and doctors, achieved through meticulously descriptive forays into their aspirations, values, perceptions, and representations of the Marind people.These include the celebratory yet orientalizing depictions produced by Swiss art collector Paul Wirz (Chapter 7), the opportunistic logic and civilizational ethos of colonial explorers and administrators Captain John Strachan and Sir William Mac-Gregor respectively (Chapter 5), and the concomitantly deep esteem for Marind culture and problematic religio-colonial agendas of Catholic priests Jan Verschueren, Jan Boelaars, and Petrus Vertenten, and anthropologist-administrator Jan van Baal (Chapters 5-8, 13).At times respectful and protective of Marind lifeworlds, at others denigrating and patrimonial, each of these actors and their associated colonial institutions shaped Marind's sense of self, struggle, and survival under past and ongoing colonial rule.This actor-centered approach brings to life the identities and imaginaries of key Western figures in Marind history in a nuanced yet necessarily ethically ambiguous way-including through the critical lens of Marind themselves, as exemplified by the anti-colonial critique of renowned Marind intellectual and activist Yul Bole Gebze (Chapter 14).Tik Merauke's central thesis points to a profound and tragic paradox at the heart of the donovanosis epidemic and its aftermath.Marind responded to

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Ethos · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

• The Collectors of Lost Souls

  Open Access•B Welling Hall, Ben Hall•The Australian Journal of…•2011

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