Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“Sacral kingship was once such a novelty, as was the Big Man that preceded it. The Big Man is the first to usurp the center and take upon himself the responsibility for distribution: within the gift economy he was eventually able to so smother his rivals with gifts as to bankrupt them, so to speak, thereby turning his entire relation to the community as a whole into a gift economy. The Big Man attains and maintain his position based on “merit”—he really has to provide for the community. He becomes a king in being sacralized, which really means in being killed in a (before or after the fact) ritual manner. It this then that the king takes on all the attributes of the sacred center, which is to say becomes the source of benefits and disasters, the link between the community and the cosmos. Such kings are often sacrificed, and the sacrifice is often built into the “office” itself. No doubt the terms, forms and timing of such sacrifices were dependent upon emergent power relations within the community, which is to say sacral kingship was itself highly defective in centralizing and clarifying power relations: rather than smart-ass lawyers bringing his right to rule into question, it would be some medicine man or witch. But it would still be unimaginable that there might be no one at the center.”

— Adam Katz, Way, Way, After Sacral Kingship · Jul 2018 · GABlog