Session 1 (in common with the conference “Monsters and the Monstruous”): Devouring Others
2nd Global Conference
Monday 14th September – Thursday 17th September 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford
Witiko Possession and Starvation Cannibalism Among the Cree of James Bay
Cecil Chabot
Department of History, University of Ottawa, Canada
Often originating as a human being driven to cannibalism in times of starvation, the witiko (also spelt “windigo”) attained mythical proportions in Cree and other Algonquian traditions, but remained frighteningly real. For hunters who fostered relationships with personified animals out of respect for lives they ended to nourish their own, the witiko epitomized ethical incompetence, monstrosity and madness in the extreme: the dehumanization of self and other, and the rejection of the responsibilities that flowed from persons-in-relationship.
In the winter of 1818, Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade employees who had been sent to establish an inland trade outpost on the east side of James Bay ran into severe difficulty because of imprudence, low supplies and harsh weather. Despite assistance offered and granted by Cree hunters, all of them ended up dying of starvation, or – after they had resorted to eating human flesh – at the hands of Cree hunters. In the eyes of the Cree, the HBC servants had become witikowak (plural form). An exploration of this incident as well as other fur-trade era incidents of witiko possession sheds light on Cree and non-Cree recourse to madness and monstrosity as concepts to explain and cope with incidents of starvation cannibalism.
On a more theoretical level, an explanation of the relationship between experience, understanding and action as the constitutive elements of culture allows us to better understand both the origin of and interchange between Cree and non-Cree cultural explanations of the witiko, and provides us also with a model for understanding and distinguishing between madness and monstrosity.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Monster or Clown? Bad or Crazy? Who Can Tell?
Chris Richardson
Independent Psychologist, Australia
Monsters, clowns, the bad, mad or crazy all behave in ways unacceptable by societal norms. Such individuals often find themselves the focus of criminal justice system investigation. Frequently at this point, his or her behaviour is assessed for the first time. Unfortunately, prior to such
assessment, the behaviour of mad or bad individuals can wreak havoc on themselves, their family and friends and the society in which they reside.
Forensic psychologists are expected to determine whether such behaviour is that of a psychopath or one who is mentally ill. A miscalculation can have devastating effects on the individual being assessed and on society at large. There is an inherent risk to society if a psychopath is unidentified, untreated and their behaviour unrestrained. On the other hand, an incorrect diagnosis of psychopathy is a difficult one to extinguish and may lead to inappropriate treatment regimes.
Presented in this paper are case studies of individuals assessed in the forensic setting which will illustrate mad and bad behaviours in the context of offending activities. The distinction between mental health illness and psychopathy and associated comorbidity is also examined. Finally, the difficulties associated with an incorrect diagnosis of psychopathy are discussed.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Stalking the Mikhru: Monsters, Missionaries, and Madness in Communist China
Mireille Mazard
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
In late 2007 in rural southwest China, a man’s corpse was found in the forest, his flesh rotting, with several parts of his body missing—devoured by a monster the native people call “mikhru”.
The man who had gone missing, Agwa, had been a follower of a millennial cult that arose in the area in the late 1980s. Like many of his fellow villagers, he abandoned the movement when its leader fled over the border to Myanmar. After the cult’s disintegration, Agwa’s marriage to one of the leader’s daughters also broke down. While hunting in the forest, he had his first encounter with a mikhru. As villagers told me the story, this is when the monstrous supernatural beings began to drive him insane, eventually inciting him to kill his own infant daughter.
While the villagers’ description of Agwa’s tragic story may seem a mere rationalization of an isolated, monstrous occurrence, it is indicative of other forces at work in their recent history. Shamanism was once widespread in this highland area, offering a kind of mediation with the dangerous, invisible otherworld. In the mid-twentieth century, two competing ideologies promised to put an end to that invisible world. First, Christianity offered them prayer as a means to fend off what the missionaries thought of as “demons”; then Communism campaigned to eradicate superstition outright, building a hospital in this remote area to offer protection of a very different kind. Supplanting the shaman’s mediation with outright enmity, both ideologies have had the paradoxical effect of creating monsters out of what were once the eerie guardians of the mountains. In stalking the mikhru, we discover the unique social geography of the subregion.
This paper presents the psychological and cultural dimensions of monsters in contemporary southwest China, demonstrating how the indigenous people construct the “social monstrosity” of madness. The semiotic changes these same harbingers of death have undergone serve as an expression of the profound traumas of the late twentieth century.
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