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Mema injua kumapa is most accurately translated as ‘a huge cunt of a dead woman’s spirit’. For the Awiakay injua is felt to be the most obscene word, roughly corresponding to (yet felt to be worse than) the English word ‘cunt’. The phrases deriving from it are the most damning insults one can throw at someone. Nevertheless, people use them on a daily basis in abusive rants at those who make them angry, which often results in serious all-village fights. However, at the same time, abusive words are reserved only for certain social situations, and using them in a wrong register is considered sinful, so people prefer not to use them at all (for more on shaming and abusive language among the Awiakay see Hoenigman 2015).
There are some Awiakay myths about the vulvas of dead women’s spirits acting on their own, as if detached from the rest of the body, having their own mind, and being as malicious as the spirits of the dead themselves can be. While speaking of spirits’ genitalia is more acceptable than speaking of human genitals, it is still limited to specific contexts.
The final design of this string figure resembles the labia, and moving the strings resembles what the Awiakay call wasingakapla ‘opening the vulva’ usually by prising the labia apart with hands. While the ‘spirit’s vulva’ is ‘opening and closing’, the string figure-maker is saying waŋguru-siŋguru, waŋguru, siŋguru… words that do not have any other meaning in themselves, but are associated with the contracting vulva of the spirit. The Awiakay have no problem whatsoever making this figure, but teenagers are very embarrassed uttering its name. The Awiakay, however, insist that if an obscene sounding word is used in a myth, a song or anything associated with ancestral ways, it should not be replaced with a more ‘acceptable’ synonym.
Images: Opening and closing the ‘dead spirit’s vulva’
Hoenigman, Darja. 2015. ‘Are my brothers fucking your sister?’ Shaming and being (a)shamed in a Sepik society. In: Bree Blakeman and Ian Keen (eds.) Language, Morality and the Emotions. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 26(3): 381-397.
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