Читать книгу A Companion to Global Gender History - Группа авторов - Страница 42

1 1 See the work of Ursula Le Guin and Donna Haraway for challenges to this limited view of reproduction.

2 2 Spay is the term used by the translators of the Loeb version that I am using. However, the word choice has more to do with an odd modesty than translation of the Greek and I have used excise to hold to the intentions of the original Greek.

3 3 The myth of the founding of the Poro relates a narrative about a wealthy and powerful old man or chieftain of the town who developed a disease of the nose (a metonym for the penis) and retreated or was made to retreat, to the bush with his wife Mabole and daughter Gboni. Although the other important men of the village continued to consult him, they decided to kill him, his wife, and his daughter and take his land. The townspeople, however, continued to want to consult the old man and so his killers told the townsfolk the old man had turned into a devil. To further frighten the people and provide proof of their story, they invented the Poro horn in order to imitate the old man’s voice. With the blowing of the horn, the first Poro was enacted and the male children were introduced to the devil. A mask representing the devil Gbeni frightens the women and uninitiated away in order to gather up the young boys who are to be initiated (Cosentino, 1982: 22–3; Arewa and Hale, 1975: 83).