Seeing the Tubuan Perform: The role of felt experience in a Papua New Guinean masking practice

Abstract

This article seeks to combine the study of secrecy and of the sensory in order to demonstrate how the sensory is involved in the ways in which secrecy works to create groups and hierarchies. The article does this through the examination of a particular case: of the secret society and masked dance performance called the Tubuan which is practiced in the New Ireland and East New Britain regions of Papua New Guinea. The article begins by focusing on the role of sight and the control of sight over the course of Tubuan performances. Showing how sight is tightly controlled in such a way that sensory experience acts both through embodied experience and through display to create groups and divisions based on access to knowledge. The article then moves on to discuss how a similar creation of group unity and division is achieved through uses of the auditory, olfactory, bodily and atmospheric. Providing an overall description and argument regarding how the control of sensory experience acts to create power and hierarchy based on the access to knowledge which is present or absent as well as based on the degree of knowledge which is publicly displayed.