普莱斯：和玩具一起旅行
珍贵的谈话
人类学家和民族学家理查德·普赖斯（Richard Price）的新书《与玩具同行》（和玩具一起旅行）获得了2008年维克多·特纳民族志写作奖。
Stephen Salpukas摄
普莱斯是一位人类学家和民族学家，是威廉和玛丽学院的杜安·a·迪特曼和弗吉尼亚·s·迪特曼教授。 他一年中的大部分时间都住在马提尼克岛，和他的妻子莎莉·普赖斯（Sally Price）住在一起，普赖斯也是William & Mary的人类学家。 罗兰找对人了。 普莱斯在南美洲法属圭亚那和苏里南的萨拉马卡人方面有大约35年的经验。
“In Martinique, Saramakas have a great reputation for being curers, much like the Haitians,” Price said. “But the Saramakas’ reputation is even stronger.”
通过调查，普莱斯找到了住在法属圭亚那卡宴附近的萨拉马卡人托伊·亚历山大。 罗兰同意留下图伊，并让他飞到马提尼克岛开始腌制过程。 Price serves as a translator and he and Tooy begin a series of conversations leading to Price’s book, 与玩具一起旅行：历史、记忆和非裔美国人的想象. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 旅行 was recently announced as the winner of the 2008 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, a juried competition sponsored by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.
在他的伐木场驱魔仪式的最初阶段，图伊住在普赖斯家，这一过程不仅包括献上朗姆酒和埋葬一只活蟾蜍，还包括复印一页被施了魔法的文字。 （普莱斯后来确定，原作取自1660年的一本法国神秘学书籍。） 罗兰最终临阵退缩，退出了对图伊完成驱魔所必需的回访。 Roland, an observant Roman Catholic, misunderstood Tooy’s intentions, Price said, and thought it involved making a pact with the devil.
Roland’s loss is ethnology’s gain, as Tooy and Price enter into a friendship marked by literally fantastic conversations and what Price calls a trip “down the rabbit hole” into an alternate world.
Though he uses a modern photocopier to duplicate his charmed page, Tooy is illiterate and, as Price says, “barely knows what a book is.” Nonetheless, Price refers to Tooy as an “intellectual,” and points out that Tooy has mastered several esoteric languages used in the practice of his Dúnguláli-Óbia rites—much as a Roman Catholic priest learns Latin.
玩具生活在一个由各种神灵和祖先组成的世界里。 萨拉玛卡人是分散在加勒比地区的众多栗色人种之一，他们是逃跑或反叛的非洲奴隶的后裔。 普赖斯说，萨拉马卡人一直比其他非裔美国人对他们奴隶制时代的祖先更感兴趣，部分原因是他们被奴役的时间太短了，没有留下什么集体羞耻感。
“They rebelled against slavery. They fought against it or escaped it,” Price said. “They’re proud of that.”
图伊在他的记忆中保留了他的人民和他祖先的事迹的密集而详细的历史。 During their many conversations, Price was able to augment Tooy’s oral history from his own years of study of the Saramaka culture.
A group of water deities, known as Wénti, are prominent in Tooy’s worldview. Tooy believes that the female members of this group control the world’s flow of cash. The book tells about a rock formation that marks a spot in a river known as “the mother of all money.” Price writes that under the water’s surface lies what amounts to the Wéntis’ Central Bank of the World.
The fiscal operations of the Wénti seem less mysterious than the workings of, say, the U.S. Federal Reserve, as 和玩具一起旅行 tells us that Wénti maidens can occasionally be seen rolling their barrels of gold coins up out of the water and onto the beach to dry. Also, unlike the Fed, the Wénti are open to direct appeal from the individual.
“They like bright things, foamy things,” Price explained. “They like things that are cool in temperature. They don’t have anything to do with death and dark things. They don’t like rum or other strong drink. They do like champagne.” Price attends a ceremony at which beer is offered to the resident Wénti. 他被告知，目击者经常看到一只手从水里伸出来接瓶子，但普莱斯写道，他没有看到交接。
Price says the Wénti have counterparts in the aquatic, gold-guarding Rhinemaidens of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Though Saramaka religion has African roots, 和玩具一起旅行 shows how many of its elements are traceable to European culture. Tooy’s existence may recall aspects of Classical works such as the 《伊利亚特》. In the Saramaka’s Caribbean, as in the Mediterranean of 回家r, gods mix with the daily lives of mortals and so Tooy, like Odysseus, does what he can to use the gods’ workings to make his life better.
如果图伊利用众神，众神也会利用图伊。 The book details instances of spirit possession, in which one or another of the deities enters Tooy’s body and speaks. 普莱斯记录下了这些事件，并将它们抄写成书，就像他和图伊的许多日常对话一样。 One god channeled through Tooy tells Price some interesting details about a Wénti town under the sea just offshore of the Price home.
旅行 contains a final chapter, “Reflections from the Veranda,” in which Price adds context to the rich gumbo of African Caribbean culture that produced Tooy Alexander. The book also contains copious notes, a helpful “Dramatis Personae” section and an equally extensive section devoted to Tooy’s esoteric languages.
Price maintains that so-called “modern” people are no more rational than Tooy. “We’re all human, we’re all irrational,” he says. “To pretend that we’re not is a modern European conceit.” 有文化、受过教育的美国人正在等待他们的401(k)养老金的复活，想知道这些钱都去哪里了，普莱斯对我们自己社会的神奇思维提出了一个很好的观点。
“Do you know what a 导数 is?” 价格问。 他慢慢地念着这个词，好像这个复杂金融工具的术语指的是黑莓河一条小支流特有的木树精。 “Can you explain it to me? 你知道衍生品是怎么运作的吗？ 你知道谁能解释什么是导数吗？ 没有? Well we’ve based a lot of our wealth on them. How rational was that?”