Do Kamo: LA Personne Et Le Mythe Dans Le Monde Melanesien

(DO Person and Myth in the Melanesian World) Maurice Leenhardt arrived in New Caledonia in 1902 and remained there for many years. Thus he conducted “fieldwork” long before this became a regular requirement for anthropologists. Leenhardt studied the people in whose midst he lived while he reflected on the questions and hypotheses that arose in the circles of Marcel Mauss and Levy-Bruhl. He became keenly aware of the differences in thought in human traditions. This was for him not only a matter of theoretical reflecting, for as a missionary in New Caledonia, he had an active part in the fight against alcoholism which decimated the community. The function of myth in ordinary life as well as in ritual occupied him continually. Mythical traditions are not ornaments “on the side,” but, as he learned from Marcel Mauss, “total social facts.” The Melanesian traditions he concerns himself with here distinguish the living (kamo) from the dead (bao), but basic is the image of a life beyond both, articulately expressed in myth. French Text