<特集論文>パッションの共同体へ : 南インドにおける開発、身体、神霊祭祀

Abstract

本稿の目的は、ブータ祭祀とよばれる南インドの神霊祭祀と大規模開発、ならびに反開発運動の検討を通して、人間と非人間のかかわりと、そこにおいて顕れるエイジェンシーと受苦/受動性(passiones)の問題を考察することである。身体化(embodiment)や身体性をテーマとする先行研究は、近年の社会科学において身体は単なる客体ではなく、それ自身が行為者＝エイジェントであると主張している。また、こうした観点から、社会運動における身体のエイジェンシーの可能性に注目が集まっている。だが、これらの研究において、「身体のエイジェンシー」が実のところ何を意味するのかは曖昧なままである。他方、人間と非人間の関係をテーマとする諸研究は、具体的で身体的な相互行為を通して、人間が非人間のエイジェンシーの受け手となる過程を明らかにしてきた。身体のエイジェンシーに着眼することは、行為の「真の主体」として身体を措定することではなく、自律的主体とは異なるかたちでの行為者のあり方を想像することを促す。すなわち、より脆く可傷性に満ち、他者との関係性を通してのみ世界とかかわるような行為者のあり方である。本稿では、神霊との身体的な交渉を通して、開発プロジェクトによって危機に晒されている農民とプロジェクトの推進者らが神霊の「感覚的リアリティ(sensory reality)」[Pinney 2001]を共有し、互いに対立しながらも神霊のエイジェンシーの受け手として、暫定的な「パッションの共同体」を創りだしていることを示す。

The aims of this study is to investigate the embodied relationship between people and nonhumans/deities, and to examine the issues of agency and passiones that emerge through this relationship, focusing on the interface of the MSEZ, antidevelopment movements, and the spirit or būta worship in Mangalore, South India. Since the 1990s, an extensive project has aimed at the construction of the Mangalore Special Economic Zone (MSEZ). In the course of the anti-developmental movements, the farmers act as political subjects in accordance with their popular image. At the same time, they maintain an embodied relationship with the būtas and follow the deities' supreme orders. Moreover, the embodied relationship between the people and deities involves those who support the developmental projects too. This paper explores how both the affected people and developmental agents share the sensory reality of the būtas and thus create a community of passiones in relation to the deities' agency. Some scholars of the body, bodiliness, and embodiment have shown that in recent social science, the body has been transformed from mere object to agent. They have also pointed out that the body, as social agent, has the potential to become the site of bodily identified political movements [T. Turner 1994]. However, what precisely the "body as agent" or "agency of the body" really means is still ambiguous. Some scholars tend to see the body as a useful means of empowerment for the conscious self, even though they insist on the body being an "agent" of sociopolitical movements. At the same time, the question of the body and its agency cannot be solved simply by replacing mind with body as the genuine subject-agent of one's actions. Rather, when we regard the body as a social agent, we need to transform our notion of agent, namely, from the autonomous subject-agent to a rather fragile, vulnerable, and even passive agent that acts in and engages with the world only through its relation to others. In this sense, as Terence Turner [1994:46] describes, the body as social agent is at once subjective and objective, personal and social, active and passive. These findings correspond to the analysis of the reciprocal agent-patient relationship between humans and nonhumans, including the deities that Gell [1980, 1998, and 2006] and Pinney [2001] have researched. Their studies explore how people relate themselves to their nonhuman counterparts through bodily performance or physical interaction. Through embodied practices, the nonhumans/ deities become the social others who exercise agency on humans; at the same time, the people become the recipients of divine agency, undertaking their own vulnerability, frailty, and passivity. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily entail people's total denial of their own agency. Rather, their agency can emerge only through their surrendering themselves to, or being absorbed into, the embodied relation with (nonhuman) others and thus assuming the "sensory reality" of that relationship̶just as the Santals roused themselves to action under the orders of their god, Thakur [Chakrabarty 2000], and the carriers of the anga exercise their kinetic forces in the assemblage of the anga -carriers as a whole [Gell 1980]. In their struggle against land acquisition by the MSEZ, the affected farmers have often been represented as the active subjects of antidevelopment movements. The farmers, who need public attention and support, act as political subjects in accordance with their popular image. At the same time, they attach the greatest importance to their intimate, embodied relationship with the būtas and follow these deities' supreme orders. Their actions and decisions, at once religious and political, are oriented, organized, and vitalized only through their physical interaction with the deities, which repeatedly (re)creates the sensory reality of the būtas as wild śakti . The social relationship between the people and the deities involves even those supporting the 100 developmental project. Through actual interaction with the deities in rituals, company employees cannot but enter into reciprocal agent-patient relations with the deities and thus undertake their vulnerability and passivity̶in other words, they realize the defectiveness of their power as autonomous subjects̶in relation to the deity's agency. Consequently, through their embodied relations with each other and with the būtas, the Indian workers and managers, the foreign engineers in the MSEZ, and the affected farmers all share the sensory reality of the būtas and thus actualize a tentative community of passiones in which people relate to each other through their frailty, precariousness, and vulnerability. This community nonetheless contains numerous internal conflicts, gaps, and antagonisms.