Prefigured Features: A view from the New Guinea Highlands
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Stimulated by a conference on Portraiture and the Problematics of Representation, which aimed to address portraiture as a set of cultural practices under the rubric of ‘any body-representation that stands for an individual’, in this paper I ask some questions raised by materials from Papua New Guinea. I begin with an investigation of the notion of individuation in relation to the heads which are taken in Asmat and Marind-Anim headhunting. I argue that if anyone's individuality is represented by a captured head it is that of the new owner, not his deceased victim. I then turn to Hagen feather plaques and suggest that they are best understood as assemblages of material resulting from mobilising relations, and hence not as portraits embodying notions of likeness.
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[4] M. Strathern. The Self in Self-Decoration , 1979 .
[5] R. Wagner. analogic kinship: a Daribi example , 1977 .