Notes on Love in a Tamil FamilyUniversity of California Press, 2023 M11 15 - 320 pages Love, as a force in human affairs, is still not given much attention or credency by social scientists. With Notes on Love in a Tamil Family, Margaret Trawick places the notion of love prominently in social scientific discourse. Her unforgettable and profusely illustrated study is a significant contribution to anthropology and to South Asian studies. Trawick lived for a time in the midst of one large South Indian family and sought to understand the multiple and mutually shared expressions of anpu--what in English we call love. Often enveloping the author herself, changing her as she inevitably changed her hosts, this family performed before the young anthropologist's eyes the meaning of anpu: through poetry and conversation, through the not always gentle raising of children, through the weaving of kinship tapestries, through erotic exchanges among women, among men, and across the great sexual boundary. She communicates with grace and insight what she learned from this Tamil family, and we discover that love is no less universal than selfishness and individualism. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990. Love, as a force in human affairs, is still not given much attention or credency by social scientists. With Notes on Love in a Tamil Family, Margaret Trawick places the notion of love prominently in social scientific discourse. Her unforgettable an |
Contents
Siblings and Spouses | 187 |
Padmini | 192 |
Mohana | 199 |
Patterns | 204 |
Older Women and Younger Men | 205 |
Vishvanathan | 210 |
The Lives of Children | 215 |
Jnana Oli | 218 |
Ambiguity | 37 |
A Theory | 41 |
The Family | 42 |
Methodology | 50 |
Generations | 53 |
Themozhiyar | 62 |
Kings and Ascetics | 65 |
Growing Up Tamil | 75 |
Going Down Tamil | 80 |
Houseflows | 87 |
The Ideology of Love | 89 |
Properties of Anpu | 93 |
Desire in Kinship | 117 |
Systems and Antisystems | 118 |
Synthesis of Theories | 148 |
Tensions and Harmonies | 155 |
Conclusion | 184 |
Sivamani | 229 |
Arivaraci | 233 |
Ponni | 236 |
Final Thoughts | 241 |
MirroringTwinning | 243 |
ComplementationDynamic Union | 245 |
Sequential Contrast | 249 |
ProjectionIntrojection | 251 |
Internal ContradictionCategory Mediation | 252 |
Hiddenness | 254 |
Plurality and Mixture Boundlessness and Reversal | 257 |
Epilogue | 259 |
Notes | 261 |
References | 281 |
Index | 293 |
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Common terms and phrases
A. K. Ramanujan adults ambiguity ammā Anni Anni's anpu Anuradha Arivaraci Arivu Arulmori asked Attai Ayya Ayya's body bond Brahman called caste Celvi child cousin cross-cousin cross-cousin marriage culture daughter deity desire dosais Dravidian kinship Dumont English eyes father feelings female girl goddess guru heroine household human husband ideal India Jnana Oli Jnana Oli's kin terms kind kinship system Lacan language learned Levi-Strauss live Madras Madurai male marry means Modday Mohana mother mother's brother myth never older one's Padmini Paraiyar parakkam parallel cousin patriline patterns person Plate poem Ponni Porutcelvi Press Reddiar relations relationship sacred Saiva Sanskrit servant sexual sibling sister Siva Sivamani social soul South Indian spirit spouses story Tambu Tamil family Tamil Nadu temple texts Themozhiyar things tion Tirukkōvaiyār told Umapathi uyir village Vishnu Vishvanathan wanted wedding wife woman women words younger
Popular passages
Page 141 - As he visits mother's brother often, ego will see a great deal of the daughter: contact will be established. As he is fond of mother's brother, and as mother's brother and his daughter in the patrilineal complex, the Oedipus complex if you will, are themselves particularly close to one another, he will tend to get fond of the daughter.
Page 267 - As soon as a critical interanimation of languages began to occur in the consciousness of our peasant, as soon as it became clear that these were not only various different languages but even internally variegated languages, that the ideological systems and approaches to the world that were indissolubly connected with these languages contradicted each other and in no way could live in peace and quiet with one another...
Page 267 - ... clear that these were not only various different languages but even internally variegated languages, that the ideological systems and approaches to the world that were indissolubly connected with these languages contradicted each other and in no way could live in peace and quiet with one another — then the inviolability and predetermined quality of these languages came to an end, and the necessity of actively choosing one's orientation among them began.
Page 283 - Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship from the Perspective of Tulu Oral Traditions.
Page 243 - ... such a psychoanalytic formulation, Margaret Trawick points out that in this process of self-crafting — of defining the self in relation to the other — "as life proceeds, often, what happens to the self is neither individuation nor internal integration, but rather a continuous decrystallization and deindividuation of the self, a continuous effort to break down separation, isolation, purity, as though these states, left unopposed, would form of their own accord and freeze up life into death"...
Page xix - Trawick again, in our quest for understanding, we "have to come to terms with the fact that 'meaning' cannot be pinned down, is always sought but never apprehended, is never this and never that, never here nor there but always in between, always inherently elusive and always inherently ambiguous" (Trawick 1990, xix), a viewpoint that hijras would readily endorse.
Page 87 - are better seen as points of confluence than as "holds" in any stable sense. In them, many currents meet, mingle, and redivide.