Echoes of the Tambaran : Masculinity, history and the subject in the work of Donald F. Tuzin

Abstract

In the Sepik Basin, which was the ethnographic crucible for everything Donald F. Tuzin wrote, ritual culture was dominated by what became known in Tokpisin as the Tambaran—a (male) tutelary spirit that anchors the ritual life of many lowland New Guinea societies. Incarnated in a particular location, geographic feature or item of ritual patrimony, its voice might be heard in the cry of bamboo flutes or the boom of water trumpets. In return for gifts, the Tambaran spirit would serve as the guardian or patron upon whom groups of people under his aegis might rely as they made their way through life. To those of us who knew him, Donald Tuzin was a decidedly generous—rather than a punitive or misogynistic—Tambaran and this book can be seen as a ritual prestation, or at least a piece of one, to his abiding spirit and voice.