The Hopi Indian Series: Kachina Dolls

Hopi Kachina dolls (aka Katsina figures)

Bowers Museum (Santa Ana, California) 

For more info click here. 

 

 

I.

 

As torpedophiles will know, I'm a big fan of all types of doll: from wooden dolls to rag dolls; sex dolls to voodoo dolls. But I think my favourite dolls at the moment are Hopi kachina dolls - once described by Paul Éluard as the most beautiful things in the world [1] ...

 

 

II. 

 

Typically carved from the root of the cottonwood tree and traditionally given to young girls (and new brides) of the Hopi tribe, kachina dolls represent the immortal beings - the katsinam - that control various aspects of the natural world, such as rainfall, and act as messengers between humans and the spirit world.  

 

Whilst, invariably, these fabulous-looking dolls are now sold as examples of Native American folk art to the public, they still, I think, retain something of their powerful magic - although they obviously do not speak to us as they do to the Hopi, for whom they are sacred objects with more than merey a decorative function or an aesthetic charm.

 

Having said that, it should be pointed out that the figures only began to take on a more naturalistic look and have a professional finish once white Americans began to take an interest in buying and collecting them during the twentieth-century. I'm not quite sure what it tells us about the Hopi, or the transformative effects of the free market, but an attention to detail was only shown once there was money to be made.

Elders of the Tribe may not have been very happy at first, but even they were impressed that as the carvings became more extravagant and consumer demand went up, prices also rose significantly. From once selling for a few cents by the roadside, some kachina dolls carved by those recognised as genuine artists can now fetch up to $10,000.

 

So, having said earlier they still retain something of their powerful magic, let me now qualify that by adding that this could simply be the allure of commercial value; i.e., more capitalist authenticity than religious authenticity.   

 

Notes

 

[1] Paul Éluard writing in a letter to his wife in late May 1927. See Lettres à Gala (Gallimard, 1984), p. 22. A bilingual (English/French) edition ed. Pierre Dreyfus, trans. Jesse Browner, was published by Paragon House in 1989.  

      The Surrealists, of course, were well-known for their love of work produced by indigenous peoples (or what was known at the time as primitive art).

 

 

To read other posts in the Hopi Indian series, click here and/or here.  

 

 

eBay and the Question of Holocaust Memoribilia

Image: BSkyB

The mock-horror and fake outrage that greeted the news that online auction site eBay does good business selling mementos from the Holocaust was, of course, all-too-predictable. 

When will the editors of The Mail on Sunday simply admit that such trade - just like child pornography - is inevitable in a free market in which, as Marx pointed out long ago, all values are resolved into exchange value and all objects and events are commodified and given price tags.

Capitalism doesn't care about respecting the memory of the dead anymore than it cares about the rights of the living. It is systematically amoral and inhuman: everything is permissible. To paraphrase Marx once more, under capitalism all the sensitive bonds and small kindnesses that tie us together are dissolved until all that's left is shameless greed, naked self-interest, and callous cash payment. 

Money is substituted by capitalism for the very notion of a social code and the possibility of living a good life. And whilst love of money may not be the root of all evil, it certainly doesn't seem to encourage ethical behaviour. And so it is that traders have no qualms about adding a small bar code beneath the yellow Star of David attached to the striped uniforms of death camp inmates.

It's a financial solution to the awkward question of genocide: what shall we do with the remains? Nazis everywhere will be smiling ...

Should We Lose the Lads' Mags?

When the defenders of so-called lads' mags argue that there is nothing wrong or shameful about the naked female form, you know they are either willfully misunderstanding the arguments made against pornography, or that they are morons. 

Personally, I tend to think that they are cynical and slimy rather than stupid. Thus they know perfectly well that the objection of feminists like Kat Banyard is not to female flesh per se, but to the sexual objectification and exploitation of female flesh.  

And they understand - as we all understand - how the young girls who model in such magazines are obliged to adopt a familiar series of poses and display their nakedness within a recognizable erotic environment. Reclining bodies on a bed, or bodies crawling around on all fours sticking out parts for penetration are not simply unclothed. They are, rather, naked for a purpose within a context of meaning and they don't so much expose the flesh as promote its desirability and advertise its availability as a commodity.

This doesn't mean I automatically lend support to the UK Feminista and Object campaign to "lose the lads' mags" from the shelves of supermarkets, but it does mean that there remains an important debate to be had on the intimate relationship between pornography, sexism and capital. 

Arguably, porn has always been the secretly privileged discourse of bourgeois society ...