PERFORMING RICE FARMING RITUALS BY PENAMPANG KADAZAN OF EAST MALAYSIA: BETWEEN SACRED RITUAL AND SECULAR PERFORMANCE

The rituals of rice farming amongst the Penampang Kadazan essentially affirm the continuance of abundant harvest, family and household security over evil vibes and evil wind, and the permanency of residential guardian spirit, miontong. For aprotracted balance of all the forces within the miontong spatial domain, spiritual abodes contracted to the performance space are supplicated through the ritual cleansing and appeasement of musical instruments (drums and gongs) and performative aspect of female shamans, bobohizan, and her entourage. These are the sacred rituals of monogit or cooling down of the heightened temperament, the emblem of Kadazan people’s sacred and cultural identities. It has survived through extant practices by the Penampang Kadazan on the grounds of sacredness and inviolability. However, performing sacredness becomes less efficacious when emblems of this rice farming rituals become the signifiers of cultural performativity in secular events, namely, Kaamatan or Harvest Festival. This paper looks into performative dichotomies and contestations of Penampang Kadazan’s perceptions of performing the sacred in secular spaces through the discourses of cultural anthropology, theatre, and ethnography.