Primordial androgyny and gender politics

Abstract

The theme of primordial androgyny is fundamental to male initiation rites and related myths in both Melanesia and Amazonia. The same theme also plays a central role in Australian and African hunter-gatherer rites and myths. Following Chris Knight’s treatment of these myths and rites, along with the model developed by him, Camilla Power and Ian Watts for the origins of human culture, this article argues that primordial androgyny – along with the related themes of the differentiation of primordial wholeness and the opening up of a sealed container or womb – are fundamental to male endeavours in Melanesian, Amazonian and Australian cultures to appropriate the powers of the womb and thereby undermine the egalitarian social system that these powers once supported. Even in their most abstract cosmological manifestations, these themes can be related to the basic ritual acts of male menstruation in these societies. However, amongst African hunter-gatherer societies, the social and religious functions of these themes are dramatically different, reflecting social structures in which attempts to build a gender hierarchy are constantly countered by egalitarian cultural institutions. Following an argument variously elaborated by James Woodburn and Camilla Power, I conclude by suggesting that the myths of egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies such as the Bushmen, who have no authoritarian religious structures, should be analysed in terms of an ongoing interaction between authoritarian and egalitarian cultural forces – that mythic motifs that in Amazonia and Australia underpin male authority are also present in Bushman culture but there they inform institutions that sustain egalitarianism.