ABSTRACT
Dual structures are one of the recurring features of Melanesian societies. Lowie has already remarked on the diversity of the areas in which dual organization is found, but Levi-Strauss refuses to see so many institutions. The Yafar are subdivided into two moieties marked respectively as ‘male’ and ‘female’. This chapter shows that these units were nevertheless the product of a formal bipartite division of the moieties which, working together with the dualism of the first level, reflect on the whole a cross-cutting dual system in which the two axes of bipartition intersect at right angles. The world was born from the activation of the sexual principles, which were the starting point, the primum mobile of the organization of the universe and of life. The mythic tale begins by presenting male and female as primordial beings and their coupling as the primal act.
