Marriage payments, debt and fatherhood among the Bangoua: a Lacanian analysis of a kinship system
Pradelles de Latour, C.H.
Africa London 64(1): 21-33
1994
DOI: 10.2307/1161093Document Number: 313686
This article is concerned with kinship relations among the Bangoua of a Bamileke chiefdom in Cameroon. It demonstrates that marriage payments and ceremonies among the Bamileke have one main aim: to settle a special debt which enables a girl to change from the status of daughter to that of spouse. They also serve to legitimate the incest prohibition between father and daughter, which in Bamileke society is the main incest interdiction. The paper first tries to explain, with some Lacanian concepts, how a wife-taker enters into a symbolic debt after having made the required marriage payments. These are received by two wife-givers, the bride's father and her mother's father. It is then shown that this symbolic debt, linked with the marriage contract, is a guarantee against incest. This debt, owed to the mother's father, and the debt of reciprocity due to a man's own father, sheds new light on complementary filiation and on ancestor worship in Bangoua society. It appears that, for this patrilineal society, the main social law is linked to a symbolic order in language, and, paradoxically, is focused on the mother's lineage, her father and ancestors.