Publisher Description

Taking a novel approach that adapts Freud's theory of the Primal Crime, this book examines a wealth of ethnographic data on the Gimi of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, focusing on women's lives, myths, and rituals.  Women's and men's separate myths and rites may be 'read' as a cycle of blame about which sex caused the ills of human existence and is still at fault.  However, the author demonstrates that in public rites of exchange in which both sexes participate, men appropriate and subvert women's usages as a ritual strategy to 'undo' motherhood and confiscate children at puberty. In doing so, she reveals how Gimi women both rebel against the male-dominated social order and express understanding of why they also acquiesce. 
The result of decades of fieldwork, writing and reflection, this book offers an analysis of Gimi women's complex understanding of their situation and presents a nuanced picture of women in a society dominated by men. It represents an important contribution to New Guinea ethnography that will appeal to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, gender studies, and cultural, social and psychoanalytic anthropology.

Back Cover

Taking a novel approach that adapts Freud's theory of the Primal Crime, this book examines a wealth of ethnographic data on the Gimi of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, focusing on women's lives, myths, and rituals. Women's and men's separate myths and rites may be 'read' as a cycle of blame about which sex caused the ills of human existence and is still at fault. However, the author demonstrates that in public rites of exchange in which both sexes participate, men appropriate and subvert women's usages as a ritual strategy to 'undo' motherhood and confiscate children at puberty. In doing so, she reveals how Gimi women both rebel against the male-dominated social order and express understanding of why they also acquiesce. The result of decades of fieldwork, writing and reflection, this book offers an analysis of Gimi women's complex understanding of their situation and presents a nuanced picture of women in a society dominated by men. It represents an important contribution to New Guinea ethnography that will appeal to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, gender studies, and cultural, social and psychoanalytic anthropology. Gillian Gillison is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada.

Author Biography

Gillian Gillison is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Daily Life in an Eastern Highlands Village.- Chapter 3. Portrait of Karapmene.- Chapter 4. Totem and Taboo in the New Guinea Highlands: The Collusion of Sisters and Brothers.- Chapter 5. "Eating the Head of the Child": Ritual Exchange as Remedy for Crimes of the Mythic Past.- Chapter 6. The Problem with Women.- Chapter 7. The Mother's Crime and the Cycle of Blame.- Chapter 8. Conclusion: Totem and Taboo Revisited.

Review

 "This book is another gift from Gillian Gillison and Papua New Guinea's notorious Eastern Highlands, perhaps one of the strangest places on the ethnographers' earth." (Frederick H Damon, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 96 (3), September, 2023)

"Gillian Gillison's new monograph is based on her long-term field research among the Gimi people of the Eastern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea. … Gillison produced an outstanding empirical ethnographic corpus in publications that combine superb ethnographic information and a systematic psychoanalytic interpretive framework pivoting on Freud's foundational texts and seminal insights. Without doubt, She Speaks Her Anger represents a new threshold of Gillison's ethnographic and theoretical research and thought." (Jadran Mimica, Ethos, Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, Vol. 51 (1), March, 2023)
"This great book was a pleasure to read because it explores how the violent aspect of humanity exists alongside its loving aspects. It would interest anthropologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts but also those studying and teaching on gender, sexuality, power, and philosophies of embodiment." (Andrew Lattas, Psychology of Women Quarterly, Vol. 46 (2), June, 2022)

Feature

Offers a nuanced psychological ethnography grounded in the correspondences between Gimi myths and rituals and Freud's theory of the Primal Crime Adopts a novel approach, which stands as critique of current anthropological discourses on mythopoeia, kinship, gender, personhood, and human sociality Provides new insights into the contested relationship between men's and women's understandings of the world they share

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