by Faun Rice
Alameida, Ralph Austen, Robert Brightman, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha,
PREFACE
xv
Giovanni da Col, Cécile Fromont, Bruce Lincoln, Alan Rumsey, Gregory
Schrempp, Alan Strathern, Dame Marilyn Strathern, and Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro. Special thanks also to my research assistants, Jonathan Doherty, Sean
Dowdy, and Rob Jennings. And gratitude for aid in presentations of relevant
lectures or conference papers goes to the following: in Mexico, Antonio Soborit
and Leopoldo Trejo Barrientos; in Chicago, Stephan Palmie, Richard Rosen-
garten, and Charles Stewart; in London, Giovanni da Col, Fabio Gygi, and
Edward Simpson; and in Beijing, Judith Farquhar, and Bruce Lincoln. I should
acknowledge in advance the patience of readers—or beg their indulgence—for
the recurrent expositions of aspects of stranger-kingship and galactic polities.
It is not only that these lectures or essays were written on different occasions
for different audiences, but that discussions of these same phenomena were
necessary for the arguments in each of them. Finally, special thanks to David
Graeber: David was a student of mine; I supervised his thesis at the University
of Chicago. Since then it has been difficult to say who is the student and who
the teacher.
D. G. (London), M. S. (Chicago)
August 2017
introduction
Theses on kingship
David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins
STRUCTURES
Kingship in general
Kingship is one of the most enduring forms of human governance. While we
cannot know its precise historical origins in time and space, it is attested during
virtually all eras on all continents, and for most of human history the tendency
was for it to become more common, not less.
What’s more, once established, kings appear remarkably difficult to get rid of.
It took extraordinary legal acrobatics to be able to execute Charles I and Louis
XVI; simply killing a royal family, as with the tsars, leaves one (apparently for-
ever) burdened with substitute tsars; and even today, it seems no coincidence
the only regimes almost completely untroubled by the Arab Spring revolts of
2011 were those with longstanding monarchies. Even when kings are deposed,
the legal and political framework of monarchy tends to live on, as evidenced
in the fact that all modern states are founded on the curious and contradictory
principle of “popular sovereignty,” that the power once held by kings still exists,
just now displaced onto an entity called “the people.”
2
ON KINGS
One unanticipated side-effect of the collapse of European colonial empires has
been that this notion of sovereignty has become the basis of constitutional or-
ders everywhere—the only partial exceptions being a few places, like Nepal or
Saudi Arabia, which had monarchies of their own already.
It follows that any theory of political life that does not take account of this, or
that treats kingship as some sort of marginal, exceptional, or secondary phe-
nomenon, is not a very good theory.
In this volume, then, we propose some elements for a theory of kingship. The
arguments set out from territory we have both explored already: in the one case,
in the classic essays on the stranger-king; in the other, in the divine kingship of
the Shilluk. The collection focuses particularly on what has been called “divine”
or “sacred” kingship, but with the understanding that a thorough examination
of its common features can reveal the deep structures underlying monarchy, and
hence politics, everywhere.
What follows are a series of general propositions inspired by the findings of
the essays collected in this book. Certain entries, perhaps, lean more toward the
perspective of one author than the other, but we believe the dialogic tension to
be fertile, and that the resulting propositions may suggest important new direc-
tions for research.
The cosmic polity
Human societies are hierarchically encompassed—typically above, below, and
on earth—in a cosmic polity populated by beings of human attributes and me-
tahuman powers who govern the people’s fate. In the form of gods, ancestors,
ghosts, demons, species-masters, and the animistic beings embodied in the crea-
tures and features of nature, these metapersons are endowed with far-reaching
powers of human life and death, which, together with their control of the con-
ditions of the cosmos, make them the all-round arbiters of human welfare and
illfare. Even many loosely structured hunting and gathering peoples are thus
subordinated to beings on the order of gods ruling over great territorial domains
and the whole of the human population. There are kingly beings in heaven even
where there are no chiefs on earth.
THESES ON KINGSHIP
3
It follows that the state of nature has the nature of the state. Given the govern-
ance of human society by metaperson authorities with ultimate life-and-death
powers, something quite like the state is a universal human condition.
It also fol ows that kings are imitations of gods rather than gods of kings—the
conventional supposition that divinity is a reflex of society notwithstanding. In
the course of human history, royal power has been derivative of and dependent
on divine power. Indeed, no less in stateless societies than in major kingdoms,
the human authorities emulate the ruling cosmic powers—if in a reduced form.
Shamans have the miraculous powers of spirits, with whom, moreover, they inter-
act. Initiated elders or clan leaders act the god, perhaps in masked form, in presid-
ing over human and natural growth. Chiefs are greeted and treated in the same
ways as gods. Kings control nature itself. What usual y passes for the divinization
of human rulers is better described historically as the humanization of the god.
As a corollary, there are no secular authorities: human power is spiritual pow-
er—however pragmatically it is achieved. Authority over others may be acquired
by superior force, inherited office, material generosity, or other means; but the
power to do or be so is itself deemed that of ancestors, gods, or other external
metapersons who are the sources of human vitality and mortality. In this cul-
tural framework, a privileged relation to the metapersonal rulers of the human
fate is the raison d’être of earthly social power. Moreover, as demonstrated in
worldly accomplishments, this access to metahuman powers may have subjuga-
tion effects on people beyond those directly affected by the acts of the persons
of authority. It’s “charisma”—in the original, god-infused sense.
In this god-infused sense, Shilluk say the king is Juok (the god), but Juok is not
the king. The divinity of the king is a kind of intersubjective animism. As a mo-
dality of the One over Many, divinity itself can be understood as the personified
head of a class of things that are thus so many instances/instantiations of the
godhead—which is also to say that as a partible person, the god is immanent in
the creatures and features of his or her realm. Hawaiians speak of symbolically
relevan
t plants, animals, and persons as so many “bodies” ( kino lau) of the god:
in which sense Captain Cook was famously the god Lono, but Lono was not
Captain Cook. Such intersubjective animism is not all that rare: shamans are
possessed by their familiars and victims by their witches. Idolatry and kinship
are likewise forms of a broad metaphysics of intersubjective being.
4
ON KINGS
Compared with the kind of cosmic polities that exist among foragers and many
others, mortal kingship represents a limit on state power. There is simply no
way that any mortal human, whatever his pretensions, whatever the social ap-
paratus at his disposal could ever real y wield as much power as a god. And
most kings, despite the absolute nature of their claims, never seriously make
the attempt.
For half of humanity, though, the creation of mortal kingship represents a ma-
jor blow: because kings are, in virtually every known case, archetypically male.
Nowadays, scholars are used to writing off Paleolithic or Neolithic representa-
tions of powerful female figures as mere “mythological” representations, of no
political significance, but in the cosmic polities which then existed, this could
not have been the case. If so, fixing divine political power in the male head of a
royal household was a blow for patriarchy in two ways: not only was the primary
human manifestation of divine power now masculine, but the main purpose of
the ideal household is producing powerful men.
The precise historical trajectory by which divine powers—sovereignty prop-
erly speaking—devolved from metahuman beings to actual human beings, if
it can ever be reconstructed, wil be likely to take many unexpected turns. For
instance: we know of societies (in aboriginal California, or Tierra del Fuego)
where arbitrary orders are given only during rituals in which human beings
impersonate gods, but those who give the orders are not the gods, but clowns,
who appear to represent divine power in its essence; in related societies (e.g.,
the Kwakiutl), this develops into clown-police who hold sway during an en-
tire ritual season; then, in yet others, into more straightforward seasonal po-
lice. In such cases, sovereignty is contained in time: outside the specific ritual
or seasonal context, decentralization ensues, and those vested with sovereign
powers during the ritual season are no different from, and have no more say
than, anybody else. Sacred kingship, in contrast, would appear to be largely a
means of containing sovereign power in space. The king, it is almost always
asserted, has total power over the lives and possessions of his subjects; but
only when he is physical y present. As a result, an endless variety of strategies
are employed to limit the king’s freedom of motion. Yet there is at the same
time a mutual y constitutive relation between the king’s containment and his
power: the very taboos that constrain him are also what render him a trans-
cendent metabeing.
THESES ON KINGSHIP
5
Stranger-king formations
Stranger-kingdoms are the dominant form of premodern state the world around,
perhaps the original form. The kings who rule them are foreign by ancestry and
identity. The dynasty typically originates with a heroic prince from a greater
outside realm: near or distant, legendary or contemporary, celestial or terres-
trial. Alternatively, native rulers assume the identity and sovereignty of exalted
kings from elsewhere and thus become foreigners—as in the Indic kingdoms of
Southeast Asia—rather than foreigners becoming native rulers. The polity is in
any case dual: divided between rulers who are foreign by nature—perpetually so,
as a necessary condition of their authority—and the underlying autochthonous
people, who are the “owners” of the country. The dual constitution is constantly
reproduced in narrative and ritual, even as it is continuously enacted in the dif-
ferential functions, talents, and powers of the ruling aristocracy and the native
people.
The kingdom is neither an endogenous formation nor does it develop in isola-
tion: it is a function of the relationships of a hierarchically ordered, intersocietal
historical field. The superiority of the ruling aristocracy was not engendered by
the process of state formation so much as the state was engendered by the a
priori superiority of an aristocracy from elsewhere—endowed by nature with
a certain libido dominandi. The ruling class precedes and makes a subject class.
On his way to the kingdom, the dynastic founder is notorious for exploits of in-
cest, fratricide, patricide, or other crimes against kinship and common morality;
he may also be famous for defeating dangerous natural or human foes. The hero
manifests a nature above, beyond, and greater than the people he is destined to
rule—hence his power to do so. However inhibited or sublimated in the estab-
lished kingdom, the monstrous and violent nature of the king remains an essen-
tial condition of his sovereignty. Indeed, as a sign of the metahuman sources of
royal power, force, notably as demonstrated in victory, can function politically as
a positive means of attraction as well as a physical means of domination.
For all the transgressive violence of the founder, however, his kingdom is often
peacefully established. Conquest is overrated as the source of “state formation.”
Given their own circumstances—including the internal and external conflicts
of the historical field—the indigenous people often have their own reasons for
demanding a “king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles”
6
ON KINGS
(1 Samuel 8:20). Even in the case of major kingdoms, such as Benin or the
Mexica, the initiative may indeed come from the indigenous people, who solicit
a prince from a powerful outside realm. Some of what passes for “conquest” in
tradition or the scholarly literature consists of usurpation of the previous regime
rather than violence against the native population.
While there is frequently no tradition of conquest, there is invariably a tradition
of contract: notably in the form of a marriage between the stranger-prince and
a marked woman of the indigenous people—most often, a daughter of the na-
tive leader. Sovereignty is embodied and transmitted in the native woman, who
constitutes the bond between the foreign intruders and the local people. The
offspring of the original union—often celebrated as the traditional founder-
hero of the dynasty—thereby combines and encompasses in his own person the
essential native and foreign components of the kingdom. Father of the country
in one respect, as witness also his polygynous and sexual accomplishments, the
king is in another the child-chief of the indigenous people, who comprise his
maternal ancestry.
Even where there is conquest, by virtue of the original contract it is reciprocal:
the mutual encompassment of the autochthonous people by the stranger-king
and of the king by the autochthonous people. The installation rites of the king
typically recreate the domestication of the unruly stranger: he dies, is reborn,
> and nurtured and brought to maturity at the hands of native leaders. His wild or
violent nature is not so much eliminated as it is sublimated and in principle used
for the general benefit: internally as the sanction of justice and order, and exter-
nally in the defense of the realm against natural and human enemies. But even
as the king is domesticated, the people are civilized. The kingship is a civilizing
mission. The advent of the stranger-king is often said to raise the native people
from a rudimentary state by bringing them such things as agriculture, cattle,
tools and weapons, metals—even fire and cooking, thus a transformation from
nature to culture (in the Lévi-Straussian sense). As has been said of African
societies, it is not civilized to be without a king.
As allegorized in the original union, the synthesis of the foreign and autoch-
thonous powers—male and female, celestial and terrestrial, violent and peaceful,
mobile and rooted, stranger and native, etc.—establishes a cosmic system of
social viability. In a common configuration, the autochthonous people’s access
THESES ON KINGSHIP
7
to the spiritual sources of the earth’s fertility is potentiated by king’s conveyance
of fecundating forces, such as the rain and sun that make the earth bear fruit.
Each incomplete in themselves, the native people and foreign rulers together
make a viable totality—which is what helps the kingdom to endure, whatever
the tensions of their ethnic-cum-class differences.
Although they have surrendered the rule to the foreign king, the native people
retain a certain residual sovereignty. By virtue of their unique relation to the
powers of the earth, the descendants of the erstwhile native rulers are the chief
priests of the new regime. Their control of the succession of the king, includ-
ing the royal installation rituals, is the warrant of the foreign-derived ruler’s
legitimacy. In the same vein, the native leaders characteristically have temporal
powers as councilors of the stranger-king, sometimes providing his so-called
“prime minister.” To a significant extent, the principle that the sovereignty of
the king is delegated by the people, to whom it belongs by origin and by right,
is embedded in stranger-king formations, hence widely known before and apart
