7: Multivocal Symbols: Virgin of Guadalupe--Wolf

Welcome to Section 7 of Symbols and Society. After considering the classics in the first half of the course, we now begin the second half of the course.

Symbolic Anthropology--Structuralism

The last classic theorist we considered, Levi-Strauss, could be considered as part of an approach in the anthropology of symbols that is usually called "Symbolic Anthropology".  "Structural Anthropology" or just "Structuralism" is the generally accepted term for Levi-Strauss's style of Symbolic Anthropology. Along with his followers, Levi-Strauss tried to uncover basic structures of meaning, which we are barely aware of, if at all.

Some people refer to these basic structures, borrowing from the linguist Saussure, as the langue of symbolism. Langue is the underlying structure of language (basically what you could call "grammar" or "syntax"). Similarly symbols are structured in ways we are, at least until Levi-Strauss provides us with a grammar, unaware of.

Symbolic Anthropology--Interpretive Anthropology

Fatimah

We now move into another branch of Symbolic Anthropology as theorized by Wolf, Turner, Geertz, Ortner, and others. "Interpretive Anthropology" or "Interpretative Anthropology" is the generally accepted term for their style of Symbolic Anthropology.  These authors deal with meanings we are intensely aware of; they see the symbols as providing powerful insight into other aspects of the culture.

Those who like to borrow the Saussurian terminology refer to this as the parole of symbolism. It's the part of symbols that are out there and visible; not the symbolic structures of symbols that live our heads.

Virgin Mary appears--Marian Apparitions

This week we consider an apparition of Christ.  You may be familiar with the phenomenon of people sighting Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. One example of a "Marian Apparition" (as we call these sightings) occurred in 1917 when Mary appeared to 3 shepherd girls in a place called Fatimah in Portugal."Our Lady of the Fatimah" is the name given to that sighting. The "Fatimah" image to the left is a photograph of a statue. The sculptor depicts what he or she thinks Mary looked like when She appeared to the girls. Of course, the sightings of Mary trace further back in history.

Cults of the Virgin

Often after apparitions of the Virgin, cults appear. "Cult" in the anthropological sense refers to an officially recognized branch or specialization with the mainstream of a religion. (The contrasts with "cult" as it is used in the media, to describe allegedly crazed, brainwashed, religious extremists.) So the different Church-approved apparitions of the Virgin each has their own cults. For instance, a group of people who are devoted to Our Lady of Fatimah or the Virgin of Guadalupe. Such people might spend more time worshiping their Virgin than God or Jesus.

 Virgin of Guadalupe

This week, we consider Wolf's 1958 analysis of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Who or what is the Virgin of Guadalupe? After the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Virgin Mary appeared, in 1531, to an Indian convert. Mary appeared on a site, near Guadalupe, where the Aztec Earth Goddess had formerly been worshiped. A church dedicated to the Virgin was then built on the site where this miracle occurred. Mexican people still undertake pilgrimages to this shrine, in the same way, their Aztec ancestors once did. What does this symbol mean to Mexican people?

 A Mexican National Symbol

Image in the church at Gaudalupe

Wolf analyses the Virgin of Guadalupe as a Mexican national symbol. You can normally find PDFs of this article online. If you're having difficulty with the reading, take a look at my summary of Wolf's article.

Image of the Virgin of Guadalupe can be found everywhere!

Wolf writes that "Today, her image adorns house fronts and interiors,
churches and home altars, bull rings and gambling dens, taxis and buses, restaurants and houses of ill repute. She is celebrated in popular song and verse."

Meant different things for 3 groups

Wolf suggests that there were 3 kinds of families/groups in Mexico.  The Virgin meant something different for each:
 

1. Indian families

Indian families are the Indigenous societies of Mexico; think Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya etc. They lead a "closed and static life" in the villages. In practice women and men are relatively equal:

In this kind of family, the husband is ideally dominant, but in reality labor and authority are shared equally among both marriage partners. Exploitation of one sex by the other is atypical; sexual feats do not add to a person's status in the eyes of others. Physical punishment and authoritarian treatment  of children are rare."

For Indian families the Virgin represents a return to a kind of land of milk and honey:

the image of the Virgin is addressed in passionate terms as a source of warmth and love, and the... beer drunk on ceremonial occasions is identified with her milk... Guadalupe is identified with the mother as a source of early satisfactions, never again experienced after separation from the mother... As such, the Guadalupe embodies a longing to return to the pristine state in which hunger and unsatisfactory social relations are minimized

2. Mexican families: She represents providing life to children and the death of the father

Mexican families are mobile, engaged in national life.  In Mexican families, the acknowledged, legitimate sons facing with authoritative fathers:

 Here, the father's authority  is unquestioned on both the real and the ideal plane. Double sex standards prevail, and male sexuality is charged with a desire to exercised domination. Children are ruled with a heavy hand; physical punishment is frequent"

I guess this the kind of father who would have his shirt unbuttoned to reveal gold necklaces and who take pride in 'sexual conquests' of other women. What would the Virgin mean for his family? Wolf suggests:

 the Guadalupe symbol is charged with the energy of rebellion against the father. Her image is the embodiment of hope in a victorious outcome of the struggle between generations. [The Virgin symbolizes ]  the promise of life. [The Virgin of Guadalupe is identified the] mother...within a context of adult male dominance and sexual assertion...the Guadalupe symbol is charged with the energy of rebellion against the father. Her image is the embodiment of hope in a victorious outcome of the struggle between generations...[There is a] symbolic identification of the Virgin with life; of defeat and death with the crucified Christ.

As with Indian families, the Virgin is associated with the mother and sustenance, but in the Mexican version of the Guadalupe myth, the mother is part of a struggle against the father and the sustenance does not take the specifically passionate form of warmth, love, and milk.

3. Disinherited families

Wolf also suggests that there is another kind of family. These are the families (mestizo etc) of unacknowledged/illegitimate sons. Their fathers are probably, in Wolf's thinking, the macho, women-conquering Mexican men who refuse to acknowledge the children they produce through their sexual affairs. The Disinherited:

"arose in [Mexico] as illegitimate offspring of Spanish fathers and Indian mothers, or through impoverishment, acculturation or loss of status... For such people, there was... no proper place in the social order [and no] rights of citizenship and legal protection. Where Spaniard and Indian stood squarely within the law, [the disinherited] inhabited the interstices and margins of constituted society"

 For them, the Virgin of Guadalupe story was about

 not merely the guarantee of their assured place in heaven, but the guarantee of their place in society here and now

It was also about driving out the Spanish fathers who abandoned them to their lowly status. The Guadalupe myth was a story

in which the illegitimate sons would possess the country, and the irresponsible Spanish overlords who never acknowledged the social responsibilities of their paternity, would be driven from the land. "

So there you have three different groups and three different interpretations of a single symbol.

Multivocal & Syncretic

Wolf used the word "syncretic" once and didn't use the word "multivocal" at all in this article. Nevertheless, anthropologists describe the Virgin of Guadalupe in these terms. What do they mean? Syncretic usually refers to the mixing of a world religion (e.g. Catholicism) with local religions (e.g. Aztec religion).

Syncretism
Wolf's analysis is typically associated with syncretism. This presentation introduces the idea.

 Multivocalism

Multivocal usually describes a single symbol that can have different meanings to different groups within a given society.

I misunderstood this the first time I came across the concept because I didn't realize what multivocality is not.

 What multivocality is not (i)

You may have observed that the 'swastika' can mean different things to, for example, Indian Hindus or Austrian neo-Nazis. Or you might have thought that hair can mean different things in different cultures. These are NOT examples of multivocality. Multivocality occurs within a single group in which different group members understand the symbol differently. When we consider the special topic of hair, "multivocality" does NOT mean that hair symbolizes different things in different cultures.

What multivocality is not (ii)
Similarly, the point of multivocality is NOT that a symbol can mean different things to different individuals. The point is rather that one group in a society (e.g. mestizos or mystical Muslim Javanese) apply a different meaning to a symbol (e.g. the Virgin of Guadalupe or slametan) compared to another group (e.g. Indigenous Americans or orthodox Muslim Javanese).

Combining theories

As discussed in Week 6, at university you are expected to develop skills in critical thinking. This means more than just understanding, recognizing, and applying theories. It also implies the ability to combine theories. So whose theory could we combine with Wolf?

One obvious answer is that Wolf's analysis could be tied in with Durkheim. I could draw on and say that worshiping the sacred Virgin of Guadalupe brings the people of Mexico together. Then I could note the different meanings the Virgin has for different classes in Mexican society. Then I could say, that using the idea of multivocality, as it is described by Wolf, we see that the different classes come together around (Wolf) the same sacred symbol, and this provides unity to Mexican society (Durkheim). This is not the point Durkheim (obviously) or Wolf explicitly intended to make, but combining their ideas provides new insight.

Discussion: Virgin of Guadalupe

Virgin and a Lowrider

The Virgin of Guadalupe is still a potent symbol for Mexicans both in Mexico and in the U.S.A. I've heard people joke that Mexicans believe in Guadalupe, not Catholicism! That's surely an exaggeration, but it does give some indication of how important She remains.

Discussion: Eric Wolf

Wolf was not a just Symbolic Anthropologist. He is more famous as a Marxist Anthropologist. We could call him 'Marxist' because his research focused on the global development of capitalism and the role non-Europeans played in its growth.  Actually, Wolf came to be seen in opposition to Geertz and the other Interpretive Anthropologist from the Symbolic Anthropology school. This is how Ortner describes it:

Inspired mainly by Max Weber, Geertz and his followers were interested in new ways of thinking about culture—about how culture provides people with meaning in their lives, and about how anthropologists can come to understand those meanings. Wolf and company...were inspired mainly by Marx, and were interested in the ways in which people’s lives are shaped less by their culture, and more by the economic and political forces in play, both locally and globally.

Eric Wolf

This 'Marxist' trend in Wolf's work was apparent even before he published the 'Virgin of Guadalupe' in 1958. In 1957, collaborating with Sidney Mintz, Wolf published 'Haciendas and Plantations. This essay attempted to outline two social and economic forms in Latin America. 

Subsequently, Ch 1 of Wolf's Europe and the People Without History (1982) remains one of the profound challenges to ideas of Western superiority. I see it as similar to Said's Orientalism (1978), Asad's Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973), and Kahn's "Anthropology and Modernity" (2001). Like these works, Wolf's book argues against the implied idea that Europeans in the modern period were at the forefront of modernity while non-Europeans were only bit-players. 

So Wolf came to be associated with Materialism asking questions of brute power; "who controls the guns? who controls the money? who controls the land?" and not questions like "what does the Virgin of Guadalupe mean to these people". You can probably see evidence of both approaches in the Virgin of Guadalupe article though!

Image of Mexican woman (purportedly a witch) with
Virgin of Guadalupe pictures on the wall

Summary and Main Points

Before moving on, let's recapitulate. You should be familiar with the concepts "multivocal" and "syncretism", representing the two most important concepts this week. And that's this week's take-home message. Some symbols mean different things to different groups; they are multivocal. Also, some symbols combine elements of different religious beliefs; they are syncretic.