the proper use of a knife

[asakiyume]

On Thursday I sat in on a workshop critiquing some recent papers relating to Timorese culture. (It's one true blessing to come out of this pandemic: people from all over the world can meet and talk with ease via Zoom: participants were in Japan, India, Brazil, Timor-Leste, Canada, and the United States, and I, a non-academic, was allowed to audit.) All of the papers sounded fascinating (the one that critiqued NGO activity as, in some regards, a continuation of colonialism had me nodding like a bobblehead doll, as it's something I often think).

But what seized my imagination was Alberto Fidalgo Castro's discussion of the concept of lulik, which usually is translated as "sacred," as in uma lulik, sacred house. But Alberto and others point out that it's not that some things are lulik and others are not: anything has the potential to become lulik. He referenced an earlier paper of his (which I tracked down and downloaded) that gave five everyday cases of that--like the case of the knife. In the paper he writes:

One Thursday, when I was drinking breakfast coffee in the kitchen, I couldn't find a spoon to help myself to some sugar, so I used a knife that was on the table. Ms. Rosita saw me, and scandalized, she asked me to stop doing that and ordered her son to find me a spoon. I didn't want to cause any trouble, so I told her that it wasn't necessary, that the knife was fine. Ms. Rosita was surprised at my response and explained to me that I couldn't take sugar with a knife, because it was lulik: it would give me an ailment of the heart¹

In person he was more detailed: he said that a knife is for cutting, and if you stir in sugar with a knife, you are cutting the coffee, and this will cut your insides, your heart.

In the paper, another example was when he came back to the house where he was staying and, being tired, rested his head on the table. In this case he was told

Kole, ba toba iha kama. Toba iha meza ne'e lulik ("If you're tired, go sleep in your bed. Sleeping on the table is lulik." I sat up right away and asked why it was lulik to sleep on the table. They told me, Ema mate mak toba iha meza ... Ita ema moris, toba iha kama ("It's the dead who sleep on a table. We living people sleep in beds")²

I realize as I type this out that the people are saying the situation is lulik, not the object, whereas when he was talking about the concept, he seemed to be stressing a transformation in the object, too. I don't know whether it's accurate to say that both things are true or if it's even a distinction that's made in Timor, but that's what my mind fixes on: how the status of the object changes when it's misused--it seems so very, very applicable to so much of life.

¹ Alberto Fidalgo Castro, "Personas y objetos en Timor Oriental: Relaciones lulik entre entidades," Ankulegi 21 (2017), 30 (my super rough translation).
²(same, 31).

Comments

[sara]

Oh interesting. I know some traditions about giving knives and how that cuts a relationship and creates bad luck, so the knife in the coffee thing actually seems very sensible to me subjectively....

[asakiyume]

Yes! That's right! Excellent ... point. (ouch)

[sara]

I have totally given people knives, mind you. I just always feel weird about it.

[asakiyume]

I know what you mean. I actually *want* a knife right now (a Japanese style kitchen knife), and whenever I think about it, I think, Well, I guess I'd better get it for myself because no one will get it for me!

[sartorias]

That is fascinating.

[asakiyume]

Isn't it? I want to hear more!

[pameladean]

Oh dear. I've been using a table knife to scrape crystallized honey from the inside of the bottle and then just dipping the result on the knife into hot tea and stirring until the honey melts off.

I honestly would have trouble wasting a clean spoon by scraping the honey from the knife onto a presumably more appropriate utensil. Anyway, all of the honey would not come off.

As for the knife-as-a-gift issue, I know I've read at least one story where there's a mitigating behavior that makes the gift of a knife okay, somehow neutralizing the cutting aspect of the transaction. But I can't remember what it is.

P.

[genarti]

I didn't grow up with the knife-as-a-gift belief, but when I ran into it in adulthood, it was paired with the idea that you could mitigate it by paying a penny or so to make it technically a purchase -- because of course the friendship-cutting only applies to a gift! If you're buying a knife off someone who happens to be your friend, well, that's different! And so a friend of mine gave us a set of three knives for Christmas this year, but insisted upon getting a penny in return. (She got a nickel, in fact, because that's what I had on hand.)

[pameladean]

Gosh, what a markup! 8-)

And thank you, that is what I was thinking of exactly, though also not having grown up with the knife-as-a-gift issue, I don't know if the book I read was authentic in this way or not.

P.

[asakiyume]

Thaaat's it--I'd forgotten as well.

Your friend could have give you two pennies in change--that would have really sealed the transactional nature of the situation ;-)

[asakiyume]

If I were the embodiment of such customary restrictions, I might give a dispensation to knife-as-scraper on the grounds that sharp edges are indeed used as scrapers... but I think customary law would probably laugh at my foolishness and tell me the two sorts of sharp edges are entirely different.

(I've mixed my hot drinks with a knife, so I'm definitely in trouble too...)

[pameladean]

I've been giving this a lot more thought than it may deserve -- actually, I don't think so, it's a fairly deep subject. In any case, the knife I use is not sharp at all. You can't even cut a scallion with it, though we have other table knives that will do that if the scallion is crisp enough. I wonder if that particular dull table knife is really a spreader or something. It has some notional serration, which is not really functional, and I don't know if it's intent or actual function that matters more.

P.

[asakiyume]

And you know, I'm thinking this whole topic--or the *feel* of this topic--is something you capture so well in your stories (well, the ones I've read, anyway): what is the nature of a thing? When is it being misused? When is it being used rightly, because what appears on cursory examination to be its nature isn't actually its nature at all?

I know from my other readings in Timorese traditions that lulik situations aren't always dire: there can be blessings, too--though those too, like in the fairytales we grew up with, come with restrictions.

PS

[asakiyume]

And I agree: I think it's a pretty deep subject too.

[anna_wing]

The situation transforms the object, or rather gives it a specific contextual meaning.

In Chinese custom, a clock is a clock, but giving someone a clock is an ill-wish, roughly equivalent to "your days are numbered".

NGO activity as, in some regards, a continuation of colonialism

Absolutely, especially the NGOs that allow a huge and visible difference in the treatment and lifestyles of their foreign and local staff. In my experience, the taxonomy of NGO people is:

(i) Well-meaning but ignorant (some educable, some not)
(ii) Careerists (not always bad to deal with professionally)
(iii) Ideologues who have failed to impose their ideology at home and are now trying to impose it on those unable to resist.
(iv) Bullies in search of easy prey
(v) Sexual perverts in search of easy prey
(vi) Honest adrenaline junkies (mostly in emergency response NGOs - also not bad to deal with)
(vii) Social deficients, whose inability to work with other people is (a) covered by the fact that their "clients" have no choice and (b) can be dismissed as cultural misunderstanding.

[asakiyume]

I've definitely met people in most of these categories.

The guy who had written that paper was from India. He had worked for the part of UNESCO in charge of preserving intangible cultural heritage, and he mentioned two culturally painful things in particular: one was the fact that part of the UNESCO mandate was that you had to translate the phrase "intangible cultural heritage" into the local language and then use it, but in many situations he'd been in (he had also worked in Cambodia and Sri Lanka), the concept was exceptionally alien, and while you could twist the language to express the concept, it was basically nonsensical and provoked resistance/resentment. More broadly, in that case and others, he talked about the painful irony of UNESCO employees not showing awareness and respect for local behavioral customs, when their very mandate was to help people preserve them.

The one speaker from Timor had a lot to say about colonization of the mind, and how it was no good, after 400 years of colonization, during which time the colonizing force is deriding local traditions and customs, and then 25 years of genocidal occupation, to come in and blithely ask people to tell you what traditions they think are part of their heritage and should be preserved. It's like asking an abused wife to tell you her good points.

[anna_wing]

Quite. And which traditions? Wife-beating is certainly very traditional globally. Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, language, class, religion, sex and sexual behaviour ditto.

[asakiyume]

Yes, who gets to decide which customs are to be cherished and which are to be rooted out?

[cmcmck]

There are English knife traditions too.

You must never give or receive I knife without making a payment or leave a knife with the blade exposed and it's extremely bad luck to drop a knife.

[asakiyume]

I can definitely see why knives would have lore around them the world over--they are handy yet dangerous.

[mallorys_camera]

Lulik! The intersection between everyday-above-ground and magic!!! 😀

[asakiyume]

Right?? I love it.

[amaebi]

Oh, that's fascinating. Thank you!

[asakiyume]

You're very welcome, my pleasure!

[sal_doesnt_rhyme]

Hi I followed your blog recently. This is reminding me of the story "Solitude" - spoiler kind of but not really? A short dialogue in the middle of the story - A woman who moved to the story's planet as an adult scientist/anthropologist, and her kid who she raised there, are discussing how that planet's people describe the society and technology that existed there many generations ago. The woman says, "They think that airplanes and tunnels and submarines were magic." The kid says, "No, they totally understand that those things were just technologies, it was the *people* who were magic."

The woman doesn't understand and thinks these are basically the same thing. The distinction the kid understood was that *anything people did to gain power over others* - whether using a fighter jet to bomb people or establishing patriarchal marriages - was now considered a form of sorcery-against-nature on this planet, and its people's taboo against that was the basis of their current non-hierarchical way of life.

I love your frog video!

[asakiyume]

Oh wow, YES. Yes: those actions are like sorceries. "Solitude," you say? I have to look for this story!

And thanks! Frogs are such cheerful talkers.