Of Humans, Pigs, and Souls – An Essay on the Yagwoia "Womba" Complex

Jadran Mimica is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Intimations of Infinity: The Cultural Meanings of the Iqwaye Counting and Number Systems and of many contributions to psychoanalytic anthropology and Melanesian ethnography. 

Introduction

Chapter 1. The womba condition of the soul

The causes and attributes of womba soul affliction and shamanistic treatment
The case of Qang
The desire for pig-meat

Chapter 2. Men and women as womba

The case of Qwoqwoldate
The case of WoGaye
A specifically female aspect of the womba complex
Womba killing

Chapter 3. Womba self-experience

The case of OMitane
The case of OAp

Chapter 4. The spectrum of Yagwoia cannibalism

An inside perspective
Exo- and endo- modes
Experience of necrophagy

Chapter 5. On ki’nye (sorcery) and the mother’s breast’s malediction

The mirror-circuit of the mother’s breast’s malediction
Sorcery in hindsight

Chapter 6. The womba complex in regional perspective

The non-Angan outsiders
Reverberations of the complex among neighboring Angan groups
A comparative amplification
Ankavi ombi’ and the Yagwoia womba
The womba imaginary and the body: closure and opening

Chapter 7. Concluding reflections: A new wave of Christianization

A Melanesian berit (covenant)
Metamorphosis of the imago Dei and the spirit of the global Evangelion