From the Enemy's Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society (original) (raw)

1994, Anthropological Quarterly

This book is an ethnography of the Arawett\ a Tupi-Guarani people of eastern Amazonia (Middle Xingu, Brazil), that intends to situate them within the South American ethnological corpus-in particular, within the panorama of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic family. Its focus is the description and interpretation of Arawete cosmology, approached from the perspective of concepts about the person, death, Divinity, and systems of shamanism and warfare. The theme of divine cannibalism, central to the Arawete definition of the human condition, will be treated as part of the complex of Tupi-Guarani ritual anthropophagy. Along this guiding thread, I will propose a vision of Arawete metaphysics that explores the place of humanity in the cosmos, its fundamental inscription within temporality, and the logic of identity and difference that governs the distinctive ontology of this group. A considerable part of the book describes the social organization of the Arawete, tracing parallels and contrasts with other groups of the same linguistic family. Broadly, this book is an exercise in the comparative analysis of South American cosmologies; more narrowly, it concentrates on the construction of a global cosmological model for the Tupi-Guarani. Thus, coexisting in this book are an ethnography, a middle-level synthesis, and hypotheses with a broader sweep. The somewhat culturalist idea of "the Tupi-Guarani cosmology" should be understood as a provisional heuris~ic instrument permitting the consolidation of materials that until now have been dispersed and superficially thematized. In the near future, South American ethnology will allow less intuitive formulations than this present work. The linguistic-cultural criteria employed here should be seen as a mere scaffolding for structural models of greater empirical breadth and analytic power. This examination of Arawete cosmology proceeds in two registers: the category of the person, as elaborated in discourse about eschatology and the gods; and the Arawete conception of society, as revealed in social and ritual practice. The consideration of certain substances, xv xvi Preface Preface xvii modes, and attributes of the Arawete universe-the gods, the dead, enemies, shamans, warriors, cannibalism, songs-will lead to the depiction of a native anthropology where concepts of alterity and Becoming will emerge as the defining qualities and processes of human Being. The inchoate state of the person, the paradoxical character of the society, and the "minimalist" functioning of the institutional arrangements will be examined to see how their implications challenge the representation of "primitive society" current in anthropological discourse. This book is a modified version of my doctoral thesis, written from May to July and defended in August of 1984 at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. It was published (with additions) in Brazil in 1986. The modifications for this English version are aimed especially at textual clarity and fluidity, but some, enjoined upon me by time, colleagues, and a return to the Arawete in 1988, are corrections of faulty observations or interpretations. Excessively rambling passages and some of the usual apparatus of an academic thesis were deleted, as well as numerous comparative notes and a chapter summarizing the Tupi-Guarani literature. The effort of reducing the original version prevented me from undertaking a serious updating of the comparative references. Moreover, some works written prior to 1984 receive less attention than their relevance would demand: this is especially the case for Robert Murphy's monograph on Mundurucu religion (1958). Of works that appeared later, J. C. Crocker's book (1985) on Bororo shamanism and especially Bruce Albert's thesis (1985) on the warfare-funerary system of the Yanomami discuss questions that closely concern those developed here. Within the Tupi-Guarani arena, I must mention the theses by William Balee (1984) on the Kaapor, Isabelle Combes (1986) on Tupinamba cannibalism, Regina Muller (1987) on the Asurini, Dominique Gallois (1988) on Wayapi cosmology, and Alan Campbell's book (1989) also on the Wayapi. Concerning the Arawete, the articles by Balee (1988, 1989a, 1989b), covering aspects of the group's praxis that I was not prepared to deal with, represent a fundamental contribution. Perhaps I should warn the reader that this is a traditional ethnog-raphYi the questions it pursues were imposed by the Arawete but handled according to my own concerns. I suppose that if the Arawete were to bother themselves with what I have to say in this book, my approach would strike them as simply another enemy's point of view on their society-although, as will become clear later on, even this may be a somewhat presumptuous thing to say. My theoretical leanings and orientation will be evident from the outset. I have no doubt that another ethnographer, observing the same "facts," would come away with a much different image of the Arawete. At no time did I aspire to conduct experiments with literary genres or anything of the sort. Although it will be clear that polyphony and dialogism are marked characteristics of Arawete culture, they do not pervade the fabric of my description. But I have lost no sleep over this. I do not suffer from what Sahlins once called "epistemological hypochondria" and I am convinced that the Arawete are sufficiently interesting and unknown (by myself included) as to dispense with discursive fantasies. At any rate, this book is somewhat less technical and rigorous, and somewhat more rhetorical and philosophically pretentious, than the standard monograph. Between the absences and the excesses I can only hope that something remains-which will be no doubt the , , part that falls to the Arawete. From the beginning of my research among the Arawete through the writing of this book, I was helped by a considerable number of people. To name all of them would fill up an entire chapter, a pleasure I must, unfortunately, forgo. I would like, however, to extend special thanks to certain professors, colleagues,