Revisiting the Nacirema

 

In the American Anthropologist of June 1956, noted anthropologist Horace Mitchell Miner (1912-1993) 

described the bizarre “body rituals” of a relatively primitive people known as the Nacirema. Well into the 

1990s, the classic description remained a staple of undergraduate anthropology courses, where I first

 encountered it.

Traveling recently by automobile from the wilds of Montana to the wilds of Georgia, I was reminded of 

the Nacirema and decided to interact with some of them, dangerous as that has become. They still live

 on the same territory described by Miner. Despite adding a veneer of modern technology to their 

relatively primitive ways, their body rituals and use of magical potions has changed but little. They are 

much more numerous now than in the early postwar period despite relying on their magic now more

 than ever, but their fortune may soon reverse.

Perhaps the biggest change in the Nacirema since Miner chronicled them is the devolution of their two 

great political factions. In Miner’s time, and for long afterward, one faction wanted to control most 

aspects of the daily lives of Naciremans, while the other wanted to control all aspects.

Today, both factions want total control but members of one faction believe that the “nation,” as they term

 their territory, has never been better, while the other believes that it needs to be reformed root and

 branch. Various smaller factions also vie for attention but receive little because the great talisman 

Demos holds that only the great factions matter. To follow the magic of one of the lesser factions is to

 waste one’s life, or so it is made to appear.

Both great factions are, of course, led by elders of legendary antiquity. Those from the smaller factions

 and other outsiders find most of the elders comically ludicrous in their pronouncements but members 

of the great factions hold them in great esteem and repeat their mantras whenever and wherever they 

can. Buffoonery, they believe, magically transforms into wisdom through mere repetition. Of course 

such magic is extremely weak tea, so both of the great factions appear ready to splinter into pieces at 

any moment. 

The faction that thinks that Nacirema has always been a horrible place is animated by a great many 

young people who spent years of their life imbibing deeply of a metaphorical liquid resembling Kool-Aid.

 They show great disdain for their ancestors, even desecrating graven images depicting their hoary 

exploits. They also disdain their own elders who do not repeat their youthful mantras with sufficient 

verve or, even worse, offer up antiquated mantras of their own. Their Chosen One barely speaks when 

he leaves his dwelling, which seldom occurs.

The Chosen One of the faction that believes that Nacirema is better now than ever before is technically 

the putative nation’s Supreme Elder but his leadership is largely ineffectual, partly because of the 

machinations of the other great faction, partly due to the machinations within his own faction, and partly

 due to his own inadequacies. Many from all factions have asked him to step down but he refuses to do

 so because apparently he has nothing else to do even though he claims to possess great riches.

The not-so-novel coronavirus has exacerbated the fissures in almost all the factions, great and small.

 Most Nacirema, being the relatively primitive, un- or rather ill-educated people they are, at first believed

 that the virus could be “defeated” by staying indoors, unless an elder said it was necessary to go out. 

When that magic failed, they decided that staying outdoors would work but only if they shielded their

 faces from Demos. Any old rag will do for these deeply superstitious people.

COVID-19 ravaged some parts of the putative nation, especially those where staying indoors was most

 fervently encouraged by the elders and their armed minions. Of course these relatively primitive people

 have little sense of natural law, human rights, or constitutional protection of civil liberties so they 

deserved to remain imprisoned in their own dwellings while their shamans concocted new magical 

medicines. Other parts of Nacirema, especially those where staying indoors unless absolutely 

necessary was thought to be more than a little silly, were barely touched by the pandemic, but their

 magic remained unpopular or unknown. 

Some shamans, especially the ones fed by the great factions, appear to be little more than zombies

 programmed to repeat mantras like “stay in your dwellings,” “remember to complete your body rituals

 often and for a long time,” and “cover your faces” before Demos. Other shamans appeared to reject

 such magical incantations for something akin to Western scientific methods. The Big Hawkers fed by

 the great factions roundly disparaged such shamans, however, and removed their images from public

 places for their apostasy even though their magic would likely have saved many Nacirema lives, some

 of which are considered of even more momentous import than others.

The Nacirema appear doomed but a few of them remember their Origin Story and believe it could again

 help their tattered “nation” to heal and grow. Many, many moons ago, some of the ancient Chroniclers

 say, a Great Demon a Long Way Off ruled over the Nacirema. At first his rule was relatively benign but

 he increased his exactions following a series of great wars against the frogmen. Although relatively few

 and poor and of course primitive, the Nacirema eventually stood up to the Great Demon a Long Way 

Off, not once but twice, both times sending his minions scurrying away, once by the great East sea 

and once by the great South sea.

Then, the Origin Story continues, the Nacirema lived in increasing peace and prosperity for generations

 simply by promising to leave each other the hell alone unless absolutely necessary. Only a dispute over

 the proper boundaries of property ownership broke that promise and calcified in power the two great 

factions that trouble the people today.

If you still do not know the identity of the relatively primitive people to which I refer, please read this. 

I would hate for anyone to think that I am disparaging an American Indian tribe when I am actually 

disparaging all Americans (= Nacirema backwards.)