Anthropologizing the Anthropologists

In his Taboo, Fritz Steiner observed that the discovery of Polynesian taboo customs was a “Protestant discovery” (50). Admitting that this was a historical accident, he still thought it worth remarking, and thought it contained a clue to 19th-century obsessions with taboo:

“The problem of taboo became extraordinarily prominent in the Victorian age for two reasons: the rationalist approach to religion and the place of taboo in Victorian society itself.” Unlike the Age of Reason, the Victorian age attended to “the residual context which did not yield to the solvent of reason,” and religion one one of the least soluble cultural forms (50).

The other reason had to do with the Victorians’ own scruples: “Victorian society itself was one of the most taboo-minded and taboo-ridden societies on record. It must not be forgotten that scholars like Frazer grew up among people who preferred, in certain circumstances, to say ‘unmentionables’ rather than ‘trousers’” (51).