The working through of harm

The damage done to initiates who become alone or are left in the circumcision ground pertains. If initiates being alone is improperly managed, then this does not foster discipline from teachers but corruption of the moral ethos in the event. It disrupts the small, ordinary actions required by initiates to belong together throughout the rite of passage, e.g. fetching white clay. An initiate who is alone cannot learn from peers and this teaches him to be avoidant, which sets up a life-long pattern of fearful, introverted gender-described behaviour. Having a poor sense of self then marks his status in society because this insidious harm translates into social relatedness beyond the circumcision ground in idioms of distress and stigma (Swartz, 1999). It is, however, in relation to the visible and invisible that aloneness is particularly dangerous and culturally prohibited. Aloneness brings an initiate too close to the liminal; to becoming socially invisible; likened to death, this affects other social beliefs about him, altering his psychological disposition. Thereby, an initiate’s emerging sense of self in relation to others becomes disrupted. Poignantly, this prevents him from separating out a dignified relationship between himself and others, the liminal, and his ancestors (Biihrmann & Gqomfa, 1981).

This circumstance is not unique to adolescents in circumcision rituals: Kimmel (1995) describes the same insidious harm when youth in the

US are marginalised and bullied. Kimmel argues that coming-of-age rituals have become dangerous because fathers and authorities do not watch over and mentor them. Kimmel’s discussion on the shaping of masculinity in the US has relevance to a changing cosmopolitan landscape in South Africa. He records how detrimental it is for youth to feel incredibly alone and at risk in this vulnerable time. Kimmel reminds us that neglect perpetuates harm, reversing the risk adolescents face for healthy transitional states for adulthood to tip into danger. This is because negligence undermines vital face-to-face interaction among peers, across generations and in reciprocity with other gendered identities. Psychological and social in nature, in coming-of-age events, harm transmutes and transfers to others. This includes, as Kimmel (1995) has discussed, that in the absence of older men, deviant youth seize the authority to inappropriately inflict intentional cruelty. The damage inculcated in these situations differs entirely from the purposeful wounding in the circumcision cut. Pain, Scarry (1985) states, locks into bodily sensation and mediated and suppressed instantiates into personal and social memory. As with medical ethics, the principle of beneficence must hold within those organising the procedure, if wounding is to be productive of healing and psychological and social resilience. Trust governs these conditions, especially from novices to authority figures.

Being alone in seclusion, therefore, has significant negative implications and means that the ritual healing process is less safe. There is a real possibility that the initiate might die of neglect. Whilst a fear of death might be purposefully employed to manipulate anxiety states for resilience, the reverse is also true, in that neglect and corruption embed deviance. This is illustrated in how the news of an initiate dying reverberates across the circumcision ground and, although no one can discuss it whilst there, these deaths were later described as a traumatic injury by some Xhosa men. Furthermore, while taboo can try to nullify the experience of loss and grief, it also teaches initiates to deny injustice and criminal injury. This is because an isolated death might accentuate the meaning of orthodoxy, but many deaths contradict a customary practice that once looked to embed resilience.

Held pain versus painful traumatic injury

Pain, therefore, has a dual nature; it is potentially restorative and yet can be destructive. By intentionally wounding initiates, circumcisers purposively place each in the balance between these two oppositional possibilities. In this phenomenal space, the success of the surgery is indeterminate and dependent on a youth’s ability to endure, the surgeon’s skill and teachers’ mentorship. Integral to this is the benevolence of amaXhosa ancestors and a raft of ritualistic injunctions. So powerful are these cultural codes and unconscious prohibitions that a Xhosa man, to deny pain, holds his composure (Van Vuuren & De Jongh, 1999). Pain that is held in silence, functions as a psychosomatic phenomenon and eventually surfaces as irritability, anger, and aggression.

This differs from the feeling of being named and negotiated as bodily felt discomfort or agony and expressed in tears and distress. Only when Xhosa men’s guarding mechanisms were down did they reveal their pain and its origin. Frequently, this led to them articulating their distress. This was foremost a deeply personal experience, but when men connected their feeling to an experience in the past it was described as esoteric or an abstruse phenomenon (Scarry, 1985).

Harmful pain thereby manifested in clinical and psychiatric settings where men’s ability to guard their symptoms had broken down (Le Roux et al., 2007). Its communication was thus unreliable because cultural taboo meant men did not accurately report symptoms. Painful feelings are a complex phenomenon; multi-faceted in nature, they are illusive and elude conscious expression or communication of their experience to others (Scarry, 1985). This speaks to the power of a cultural rationale in which healthy youth have a wound inflicted and this becomes an ordinary experience. As shared experience it translates as the norm for men across and down generations. This contrasts to the perspective in many Western European countries today and in biomedicine, that wounding in circumcision without anaesthetic is ethically questionable and harmful. In comparison, amaXhosa orthodoxy clearly distinguishes between functional events that inflict a cut that produces resilience versus injurious pain and dysfunction which embeds harm. Harm manifests in the Xhosa men I described who feel they failed in circumcision and this erodes the principles and beliefs that underscore engendering practices in this body social. Thus, injuries and deaths translate into increasing numbers of trau-matically injured youth. Xhosa parents have heightened anxiety, because they know that taboo, in the case of their sons’ having sepsis, will stop them getting clinical treatment.

Undoubtedly, the nature of traumatic injury, whether this was sepsis, amputation or an absent father had long term consequences that affected the man’s intimate relationships. This was clear from Mgqolozana’s (2010) account where his description of his family’s poverty and his bad behaviour described how he went for circumcision. The fact remained that no older Xhosa men took responsibility for him during the event. Consequently, no one could be held accountable for his injury. His circumstance speaks to the awful consequences brought in cultural practices that look to illegitimately punish and silence adolescents. Harm, in this context, was the result of wilful neglect. But neglect is ethically and legally as much at issue when Xhosa men do not take responsibility for their sons in a high-risk tradition.

Pain, I have argued, exists both as physical endurance and metaphor; metaphorically it describes challenge and how, in surmounting this, youths achieve resilient mindsets and dispositions. In contradistinction, metaphors about harm are framed within the orthodoxy to sit outside of it. For instance, I was often told that charlatans cause the damage. Questions arise however, if wounds do not heal and prolonged pain becomes translated into harm; enduring chronic pain and dysfunctional states. Metaphors for harm then mirror hazards and dangers; this is of deep concern when associated with physical or sexual abuse that becomes justified as part of traditional practices. Interestingly, colloquially, youth who do not go or men who appear weak are described amongst the amaXhosa as not wanting to meet challenge. This has gender rather than sickness connotations. It seems that men who committed suicide, for instance, were perceived not to have the aptitude to endure ‘pain’. A metaphor about harm thereby referenced beliefs about their being dysfunctional and bringing shame. In suicide they did not engender good into social relations. Thus, pain transmutes to suffering rather than resilience, therefore very few ever spoke of being in pain. In turn, no one was sympathetic about their suffering because this endorsed negative consequences and fostered a sense of hopelessness.