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The meteoric rise of "the body" to the status of a primarycategory of social and
cultural theory, replacing more collective categories of social and cultural
understandinglike "society" and "culture"themselves, has been one of the most
salient aspects of the development of postmodernforms of cultural theory over
the past two decades. The reasons for this turn to the body have remained
shrouded in confusion despite the voluminous discussion it has occasioned.
Even some of the main exemplars and partisans of the new body focus have
been at a loss to account for it. Martin,for example, suggests that the body has
come so prominentlyinto focus because a new body, suitable to the postmodern
era of "flexible accumulation,"is now replacing the old, familiar body of the
previous capitalist era of Fordist mass production (Martin 1992). This formulation, however, merely exemplifies the problem it sets out to solve. Why do
we suddenly find it appropriateto speak of a new regime of social production
in terms of a unique body it supposedly brings into being? Why did not social
thinkers, cultural theorists, or just ordinary folks of the previous Fordist era
conceive of their own era in such terms?Like social thinkersof most, if not all,
previous historical epochs and modes of production,they would doubtless have
found the characterizationof their era in terms of the appearanceof a new body
(as distinct from a new style of representingthe body) bizarreand mystifying.
Martin's formulationthereforeseems to me to be partof the problemratherthan
part of the solution.
The dimensions of the problem are suggested by juxtaposing Martin's
proposition with two very different passages that express ideas and attitudes
centralin the turnto the body in culturaltheory. The first, appropriatelyenough,
is from an interview with Foucault, in which he suggests that his reconception
of cultural and social theory in terms of a focus on the body as the site of disciplines of power not only is a more authentically "materialist"position than
CulturalAnthropology 10(2): 143-170. Copyright? 1995, American Anthropological Association.
143
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arena of Western theoretical discussion the concepts and theories (implicit if not
explicit) of non-Western peoples about bodies and bodiliness. These points
have been well made by Lamb in a recent doctoral dissertation, from which I
quote the following passage:
I believe Bengali ethno-theories of the body ... can effectively respond to some
of the problems in the current anthropological literature on the body, which has
tended to present "the body" as a reified, decontextualized, somehow transhistorical and transcultural object....
I must ask ... whether some of this focus on the body [in recent anthropological and cultural theory] may be misleading, serving ... to foreground a
particular vision of the body that may not always resonate with the "bodies" or
embodied experiences of those we are attempting to understand.By focusing on
"the body" we tend to assume that there is (necessarily) such a thing as "the body"
that we can isolate. We tend to reify the body as an individual, materialspace....
But there are also many societies (and contexts within our own society) where
other perceptions, experiences, and constructions of the body are highlightedones that do not (wholly or even predominantly) assume the body to be local,
tangible, bounded, stable, individually experienced, or the particularsite of social
and political control. [1993:29-31]
This article is conceived, in the spirit of Lamb's remarks, as an attempt to
combine a critical anthropological examination of general aspects of the significance and treatment of bodiliness in human cultures with an account of the
bodily practices and ideas, amounting to an implicit "ethno-theory" of the social
body, of an indigenous people of the Brazilian Amazon, the Kayapo.
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Until recently the Kayapo wore no clothing in the Western sense. They
nonetheless possess an elaborate cultural code of bodily adornment,including
body painting, coiffure, and the use of a wide arrayor ornaments such as lip
plugs, penis sheaths, ear pendants,beaded arm and leg bands, necklaces, bracelets, and sashes of beads or reddenedcotton string, not to mention a spectacular
arrayof ceremonial costumes: feather capes and headdresses;feather pendants,
necklaces, and bunches of arm plumes; mother-of-pearlear spools; toucan-bill
lip plugs; crushedblue eggshell stuck to the face with resin in elaboratepatterns;
and parrotbreast-feathersstuck over the whole body with latex or the wearer's
own blood. I have elsewhere described and analyzed (in ratherdifferent and less
comprehensive terms than in the present text) much of this repertoireof bodily
adornments(Turner 1969, 1979).
This varied repertoire of bodily treatments comprises several discrete
codes, consisting of distinct sets of items of wear, styles of body painting, and
coiffure, that serve to encode specific messages relating to modes, states, and
stages of development of different bodily powers, attributes,or conditions.
Cleanliness
For the Kayapo, the social presentationof the body begins with cleanliness.
All Kayapo bathe at least once a day. To be dirty, or above all to allow traces of
animal substances such as blood, meat, or hair to remainon the skin, is considered not only aesthetically unbecoming but actively antisocial and even dangerous to the unclean individual. Animal blood or hair are among the most dangerous pathogenic agents in Kayapo medical thinking: if allowed to penetrate the
skin as a result of prolonged contact they may inflict fatal disease. Health and
disease, however, are conceived by the Kayapo not as purely medical or physical conditions in our sense, but ratheras states of social integrationor dis-integration (respectively). The encroachmentof dirt (natural,and particularlyanimal) on the surface of the social body represents,for the Kayapo, the disruption
of social relationsby asocial elements and forces. Cleanliness, defined as the removal of all naturalexcrescence from the surface of the body, is thus the essential first step in socializing the interface between self and society, embodied in
concrete terms by the skin. In this as in other contexts of bodily adornment,the
skin and hair that constitute the physical boundaryof the body is appropriated
as a symbolic index of the boundarybetween the individual actor as culturally
formed subject and the external object world. The physical skin of the body becomes a social skin of signs and meanings that bound and representthe socialized self by mediating its relations to the ambient social world (Turner 1979).
Facial and Bodily Hair
The removal of facial hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes, carries out
this same fundamentalprinciple of transformingthe skin from a mere natural
envelope of the physical body into a sort of social filter, able to contain and insulate within a social form the natural,unsocialized forces and energies within.
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Facial and bodily hair, called 'o, which is also the word for the leaves of plants
and trees, is distinguished from the hair of the head (kin). The Kayapo have very
little body hair. Pubic hair seems to appear only in adulthood and may be
plucked, although especially in older individuals it may simply be left to grow.
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Body Painting
The bodies of Kayapo of all ages and genders are painted according to a
code comprising colors, design elements, contrastingstyles, and the mapping of
all of these onto distinct bodily regions and stages of growth. The painting of the
body marks stages and modes of socialization of the body's natural powers:
muscularstrengthand energy, sensory capacities, sexuality, and reproductivity.
Infants and young children of both sexes are painted with intricate geometrical
designs composed of a limited stock of formal elements, each total composition
being unique. Painting a child in this style requires hours of patient work, as
each line and element is tracedon the skin in black with a stylus made of the center rib of a leaf. Only women paint in this style; typically, a mother or grandmotherpaints her own child or grandchild.Boys cease to be painted in this way
after weaning, but girls may continue to be painted in this style from time to
time, and adult women may occasionally paint one anotherin the same way.
Older boys and men are invariably painted in another style, consisting of
broad strokes or areas of black, usually applied directly with the hand or occasionally with a stampmade of the rind of a fruit.In this style, a single overall pattern is created, usually called after an animal or fish species it is thought to resemble, or else simply by the dominant design element (e.g., stripes or spots).
Whereas the elaborate infantile style is applied individually to one child (or
older girl or woman) at a time, the coarseradult style is typically applied in communal groups, usually age sets or ceremonial groups. Men paint men and boys
(at least from the time the latter are inducted into the men's house), and women
paint women and girls (in earlier times before the general use of clothing, collective painting sessions were held every two weeks or so and were the main activity of the women's age sets during most of the year). It should be noted that
infants may also be painted in the adult style, when no adult kinswoman has the
time at her disposal to paint them in the more elaborate style.
The women's style used for infants thus emphasizes individuation as the
result of a prolonged and intense interactionbetween a socializing adult and a
child, who must patiently submit to the process of being configured into a culturallydefined unity, while the adult men's and women's style emphasizes collectively shared, culturally stereotyped identities produced through communally organized social activity. It is also significant thatwhereas the overall body
patternsproducedin the infantile style have no names, each being a unique configuration of abstract geometrical elements, the animal names of the patterns
comprising the repertoireof the adult style, consideredin the context of their application in communal social groups, connote the socialization of fully developed natural(animal) powers throughcollective social organization and activity.
Both the infantile and adult styles, despite their differences in design, context of execution, and nomenclature,employ the same conventions with respect
to the application of colors to regions of the body. Two colors are employed:
black and red. Black paint, usually made from a mixtureof the juice of the genipapo fruit, charcoal, and spittle, is applied to the trunk of the body, the upper
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arms, and the thighs. It is the exclusive medium of the designs, comprising both
the infantile and adult styles, which cover only this inner, central region of the
body. Black designs or stripes are also paintedon the cheeks, along the edges of
the hair over the forehead, and occasionally over the mouth as well. Red paint,
made from the crushed seed of the urucu bush mixed with palm oil or spittle, is
applied to the calves and feet, the hands and forearms,and the face, typically in
a band across the eyes. The entire face may be painted red, a coat of red sometimes even being applied over freshly painted black cheek designs. In all of
these cases, red is invariably applied as a uniformcovering of the whole area in
question, with no attempt at internalpatternor design.
The two colors have symbolic associations which, taken in conjunction
with the areas of the body to which they are applied, encode fundamental
Kayaponotions of the relation between the social appropriationof the body and
the production of a socialized subject. The word for black, tuk, also means
"dead," and the term is applied to the zone immediately outside the village
where the cemetery and ritually secluded camps for persons undergoingrites of
passage or performingother secret rites, such as the constructionof ceremonial
masks, arelocated. Black, as tuk, is thereforeassociated with extrasocial, taboo,
or naturalstates incompatible with normal social existence (death, it may be
noted, is conceived as a reversion to a naturalstate, being referredto in keening
as "transformationinto an animal").Red (kamrek,a word without other significations), by contrast, is associated with notions of vitality, energy, sensory
acuteness, and in general the intensification of the interactionof the embodied
individual with ambient reality, social or natural.
In sum, red is applied to all the peripheralparts of the body that come directly into contact with the ambientworld (hands,feet, and eyes), while black is
applied to the centralregion of the body which is the source of its natural,infrasocial appetites, powers, and energies, the direct expression of which would be
incompatible with social intercourse or effective interaction with the natural
world. Heightening (that is, reddening) the sensitization and interactive capacity of the eyes, hands, and feet while insulating and suppressing the infrasocial
energies and appetites of the trunkof the body has the effect of channeling the
latter through the former into interaction with the social and natural object
world. Note that here the blackened (socially repressed) center of the body is
made to stand for the presocial, naturalinside of the body, while the artificially
activated peripheralzone of the body is metaphoricallyappropriatedto represent its outside or surface, its interface with the world. The contrastinguse of the
two colors thus establishes a binaryclassification and set of metaphoricalidentities (center/inside: periphery/outside:: asocial/repressed: socialized/intensified) thatunderliethe system of bodily adornmentand notions of bodiliness and
embodied subjectivity as a whole.
It is consistent with this analysis that in rituals associated with war and the
killing of jaguars, and for actual fighting, Kayapomen replace the usual bandof
red across the eyes with a band of black. In these contexts, the intended effect is
the reverse of normal social intercourse:not heightened mutual interaction,but
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the destruction of the other. The use of black symbolically suppresses the relation with the other as an autonomousbeing, social or naturalas the case may be,
and asserts instead the negation or suppressionof that being as the intended effect of the action of the warrior/killer.
Hearing, Speaking,Ears, and Lips
Seeing, as these contrasting treatmentsof the eyes imply, is conceived by
the Kayapo as an active form of knowing directed outward toward interaction
with the world. Hearing, by contrast, is treatedas an inwardly directed mode of
passive understanding, more directly tied to verbal communication. It is, as
such, the complementof the faculty of active social communicationexemplified
by speaking. These meanings are implicit in Kayapo adornmentsof ears and lips
and their transformationsover the life cycle.
The ears of infants of both sexes are pierced, and reddened wooden plugs
are inserted that are gradually increased in size until they reach a diameter of
about 2.5 centimeters. Upon weaning, these are replaced by loops consisting of
single strandsof reddenedcotton or beaded string supportinga large bead, button, or piece of mother-of-pearl.These earpendants,usually aboutfive centimeters in length, continue to be worn throughoutlife by both sexes. Boys also have
their lower lips pierced before weaning, and a single reddenedcotton or beaded
string with a large bead, nut-shell and feather pendant, or a bit of mother-ofpearl is insertedin the hole. After weaning, this ornamentis removed, leaving an
empty hole. After marriage(that is, the inception of social and biological fatherhood), a man traditionallyinserts a wooden dowel into this hole, gradually increasing its size until it reaches a diameterof about six centimeters by the time
he joins the senior men's age grade, comprisingmen of grandfatheror father-inlaw age. Women's lips are never pierced;lip plugs, like penis sheaths, are exclusively masculine ornaments.
Hearing, as noted above, is associated by the Kayapo with understanding,
and thus with sociality. Respecting, following the advice of, or generally feeling
socially close to anotherperson or persons is referredto as "listening to [them]
strongly" (mari taytch, where mari is "hearing"or "listening" and taytch is
"strong[ly]").Love or strongpositive attachmentto anotherperson is referredto
as oamak (where o- is an activizer and amak is "ear";as a verb, prefixed by kam
["on"or "for"],it means "to wait"). A literal translationof oamak might be "to
listen for," but the expression is metaphoricaland plays on activizing the normally passive connotations of hearing/understandingthroughthe ear, implying
the subject's active desire for the social relationship of solidarity and close understandingwith the otherperson. Inappropriatesocial behavior, deriving either
from stupidity, faulty socialization, or antisocial motives such as greed, which
inhibits or disruptscivil social relations, is referredto as stemming from a "lack
of holes in the ears" (amak kre ket, where amak is "ear,"kre is "hole," and ket
is negation). The reference here is primarilyto the aural cavity, but metaphorically the relation to the artificially pierced earlobe is suggestive.
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placed at the junctures of the child's inner body and extremities. These are the
points at which the individual's developing natural, bio-psychic powers are
channeled into socialized forms of interactionwith the object world. Energizing
and amplifying the child's growth at these points thus becomes a form of mimetic socialization. That the bands are made and put on by the child's mother
emphasizes the role of the mother,and more generally of the child's connection
to its natal family, in shaping and channeling its relation to the world and thus
reflexively defining its social identity.
Boys dispense with these bands after weaning, but girls continue to use
them, at least sporadically, until the "Black Thighs" ceremony that recognizes
their readiness for marriageand motherhood.A feature of this rite is the cutting
off of these arm and leg bands by an adoptive or "substitute"mother, who acts
as ritual sponsor. This symbolically marks the end of the period in the young
women's lives in which their hands and feet have been connected to their bodies
throughbands supplied by their mothers (the end of the stage in which their relation to the social world is fully defined by their connection to their natal families). The removal of the bands, in otherwords, signifies the end of the women's
full membershipin their natalfamilies and the attenuationof their connection to
it as children throughthe substitutionof theirrelation to their adoptive mothers,
who henceforth act as their patrons and connections to the social world for all
public and ceremonial purposes.
The ostensible purpose of all majorKayapo ceremonies is to confer honorific ritual names and "valuables" (nekretch) on young children. The children
honored in this way are distinguished, when they are carriedor otherwise made
the focus of activities during the ceremony, by special bracelets. These elaboratedforms of the basic reddenedor beaded wristbandsthey wear at other times
are covered with geometrical patternswoven of light and darkstrips of cane and
inner bark. Attached to them are large bunches of reddened seeds of a hardwooded palm tree, to which in turnare fastened pendantsof red macaw plumes.
The giving of names and valuables by grandparents,uncles, and aunts is considered essential in order to complete the social identity of the person. These specifically social aspects of identity can come only from beyond the boundaryof
the immediate, biological family. In termsof the language of bodily space, they
amount to imposing a social form, sanctioned by the ritual involvement of the
community as a whole in the performanceof the collective naming ceremony,
on the child's developing relationshipwith the sphereof social relations that begins at the peripheryof the quasi-naturalsphere of immediate family relations.
The imposition of the elaborate ceremonial bracelets on the child's wrists,
which connect the naturalcore of its body to the ambient sphere of social interaction concretely accessed throughthe hands (now expanded, throughthe naming ceremony, to include the name-giving extended family relations), metaphorically inculcates this socializing form. The reddened seeds attachedto the
bracelet suggest the activation of the power to reproducesocial identity (as distinct from the reproductionof the biological body within the nuclear family),
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expression of their new powers, channeling and socializing them within the
new, normativesocial forms of relationshipslike marriageand age set membership. The transitionfrom uncolored to reddenedbracelets simultaneously energizes and intensifies the new forms of interactionwith the social world.
Necklaces
The head is the most importantextremity of the body, the locus of the socialized senses and understanding.The neck which connects it to the trunk is
analogous in this functional sense to the wrists and forearmsas connections to
the hands, and the lower legs and ankles as connections to the feet. Necklaces
are to necks as bracelets are to wrists and anklets to ankles. It is therefore consistent with the general principles of Kayapo bodily adornmentthat necklaces
should be used to signify the social channeling or imposition of control on the
bodily powers located in the head (in this case, the unique and all-important
powers of understandingand communication).Elaboratenecklaces made of individually cut and ground bits of mother-of-pearl bound onto a cotton coil
stained red or black and often paralleled by additional strandsof cotton strung
with beads are a prominentitem in the decoration of infants of both sexes.
In later childhood and adulthood these necklaces are worn only by males.
There may be a practicalreason for this, namely thatthis formof necklace would
hang over a woman's breasts and overlap with her baby-carryingsling, interfering with the handling and nursing of her baby, and providing the latter with an
irresistible temptation for tugging, chewing, and otherwise harassing the
mother. At any rate, the baby sling appearsto function as the woman's "necklace." The bestowing of two consecutive necklaces, the first of simple innerbark cords and the second a complex and delicate constructionof feathers tied
to sticks, is a majorfeature of the boys' initiation into the marriageablebachelors' age set. It is significant that this feather necklace is made by the initiand's
ceremonial wife's father.The representationof the affinal relationshipwith the
wife's parents, the constricted gateway through which the youth must eventually pass into adulthood,it is thus also the key symbol of the socialization of his
powers of understandingand communication in their adult form.
Penis Sheaths
The Kayapo bestow penis sheaths on boys shortly before or at the time of
the bachelors' initiation, which certifies them as able to enter into sexual relations potentially leading to marriage.The sheath is a small cone woven of inaja
palm leaf. It fits over the end (glans) of the penis, and ends in a small hole
throughwhich the foreskin is drawn,so thatit protrudesandholds the sheathon,
forcing the penis back into the body and preventing erection. Kayapo explain
that its purposeis to prevent public display of any partof the glans of a sexually
active, matureman's penis. This, implying or suggesting erection, is felt to be
ultimately shameful. The sheath is thus both a public recognition of the mature
sexuality of the youths and an instrumental,as well as symbolic, imposition of
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social restraintupon its expression. Women wear no genital covering, but take
care not to spreadtheir legs while sitting or rising in such a way as to display the
vagina, which in Kayapo eyes would be the female equivalent of the display of
the glans penis protrudingthroughthe foreskin as the result of a public erection
for a man. The symbolic import of both practices is again the prevention of the
direct and socially uncontrolled projection of naturalbodily (in this case, sexual) desires and powers into the sphereof social relations, and the channeling of
the powers in question into socially mediated forms of sexual relations and reproduction.
Sexualityand Reproduction
The Kayapo conceive of the roles of the sexes in reproductionin symmetrical terms: conception and gestation are effected by the mixture of semen from
the father or fathers (conception is not thought to be a unique event) and milk
from the mother, which drips down into her womb from her breasts inside her
body. The bodily connection of both parentsto the fetus is maintainedthroughout pregnancy, since the father contributes to the growth of the embryo with
each infusion of semen, just as the mothercontinues to nourish it with her milk.
This physical connection of both parentswith the child continues in attenuated
form after birthin the ability of the parentsto affect the health of their offspring
by eating meat when the children are ill (eating meat is thought to weaken an ill
person and is taboo for the patients themselves). As this practice indicates, the
Kayapo do not think of the bodies of parentsand their children as entirely separate. A form of bodily participationcontinues to connect their bodies throughout
life; it is the severance of this bodily continuity at death that is marked by the
cutting of the hair in mourning.
Both women and men initiate sexual relations and take lovers, both before
and during marriage. Both genders must consent to marriage, and either may
precipitate divorce. In these respects, the symmetry of male and female sexuality accords with the relative symmetryof male and female social roles. In one respect, however, male and female sexuality is treated in radically asymmetrical
terms. Sexual relations with women are conceived as potential threats to communal solidarity (identified with the solidarity of communal men's groups),
both as a cause of conflict among men and as a source of centrifugal attachment
of men to individual family households. The communal groupings of men associated with the men's house thereforecollectively appropriatefemale sexuality
throughritualizedcollective intercourse,collectively sexually initiate girls, and
collectively escort or attendthe ritualsof marriageand firstbornchildren, which
are focused on collective male control of female sexuality and reproductivity.
There is thus a sense in which sexuality for the Kayapo is a collective affair
ratherthan an individual bodily function.
CeremonialCostume:Feathers, Palm Leaves,Hooves, and Claws
Ceremony for the Kayapo is a collective dramatizationof the creation of
social form. In Kayapo social theory, however, the forms of society and basic
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or confuse the vertical and concentric arrangementof the human body (people
with eyes in their feet, or headless people with their faces in their abdomens).
As this bodily imagery of the limits of the spatiotemporalstructureof the
cosmos indicates, that structureitself is conceived as isomorphic with the structure of a normalhumanbody which, as the foregoing account of bodily practices
and representationshas made clear, is also conceived as a construct of complementary vertical and horizontal dimensions. The concentric opposition of central trunkand peripheralextremities, markedby contrasting zones of black and
red painting, respectively, is also conceived as a dimension of reversible processes, in this case of channeling naturalenergies from the naturalinternal/central core of the body throughits socialized extremities into the social zone of interaction that lies beyond. The vertical dimension of contrastbetween head and
feet is also a dimension of linear and irreversiblegrowth, from short infant (the
"root"or "beginning"form of the body) to tall adult (the "tip"or final point of
its growth). Just as this linear process of growth is imaged as a sequence of two
consecutive phases (relatively unsocialized childhood and social adulthood,
markedby the recurrentoscillation between long- and short-cuthair), moreover,
so the vertical dimension of cosmic space-time is bifurcatedinto two successive
halves, respectively embodied by the moieties of the "root"and the "tip."
The corresponding bifurcation of the complementary, concentric dimension takes the form of the boundary across which reversible transactions and
passages occur between the central zone of cosmic space-time, normally identified at the cosmic level of macrospace with society, and the peripheralzone,
normally identified with nature.Movements and transformationsfrom natureto
society are reciprocally balancedby movements and transformationsfrom society to nature.At the level of bodily microspace, the associations of center and
periphery are reversed. The social body is the focus of reciprocal transactions
from relatively naturalbodily centerto relatively social bodily peripheryand the
surrounding zone of social interaction. Central society receives infusions of
naturalenergy from peripheralextra-village space in the form of game and garden produce and also of the plant, animal, and bird forms of ritualbodily adornment and performance,throughwhich it is socialized. Ultimately, this reproductive movement is reversed as the social person ages and dies, moving through
stages of increasing peripheralizationassociated with old age (marginalization
in the men's house, in ceremonial performance,and within the household), burial in the cemetery of the a tuk zone, andfinally existence as an animal-like ghost
in the outer peripheral zone of the forest. The inversion of "normal"secular
space-time in the sacred space-time of ritual performance preserves the same
biphasic patternin reverse. The normally"social" central plaza of the village is
now taken over by monstrous half-human,half-animal feathered beings, analogous to the mythical races at the outer edges of normal space and the distant beginnings of mythical time, while the nonparticipatingspectators, normal social
beings, look on from the peripheryof the centralsacred space of ceremonial performance. This inversion is likewise replicated in the bodies of the dancers,
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whose relatively social (human)bodies now form the inner cores upon which a
natural"skin" of feathers, claws, hooves, and tree fronds has been imposed.
From the Kayapo point of view, this thoroughgoing parallelism between
cosmic and bodily form is neithera metaphoricalcorrespondencebetween separately given naturaland social orders or "systems of differences," nor a projection of the structureof the social body as the structureof the cosmos. Rather,
body and cosmos participatein a single process of development, the form of all
space-time, conceived as an endlessly replicated series of irreversible linear
processes in vertical space (diurnalsolarjourneys, the growthof individualbodies) which in turn imply repeated cycles of reversible movement between concentrically contrastedzones of peripheryand center, and natureand society (as
the sun in its "vertical,"linear movement also moves from the easternperiphery
to the center of the dome of the sky, and from there back to the western periphery, from there returningto rise in the east, or as the reproductionof an individual social body requiresan infusion of other, peripherallyattachedbodies, and
in turn reproducesother bodies through the infusion of powers and substances
from its central core across its peripheralboundary).
The structureof this universal macroprocessis also the structureof microprocesses of social activity at all levels of social and individual action down to
and including intrabodilyprocesses. Both the vertical and horizontal/concentric
dimensions of the patternare replicated, in the same complementaryrelation,at
all levels of social organization.The "cosmos"is simply the abstractform of the
total process of individual and collective activity which simultaneously produces social bodies andpersons, families and households, communalgroupings
andcommunities themselves. The fundamentalreality of body, society, andcosmos alike is that of a process of action that unfolds from beginning to end
through a reciprocal interactionbetween central subject and peripheralobject
world, a process simultaneouslysubjective and objective, intentionaland material, which appears,at different levels, as the form of an individual act, the life
cycle of the social body, the developmental cycles of family andhousehold, the
structureof the community as a whole, and the formation of the universe.
Conclusions: The Social Body as Will, Representation, and Fetish
A general point thatemerges from the foregoing account of the production
and representationof bodiliness among the Kayapo is that the culturalhorizon
of bodily representationsis articulatednot in terms of abstractconceptualattributes such as sex, age, strength, and so on, but in terms of schemas of concrete
bodily activity. The horizon of Kayapo representations of the body, in other
words, is not formulatedin abstractionfrom agency and subjectivity or from social relations, but on the contraryit is built up out of them, as they become embodied in materialsocial activities. Both the objective and subjective aspects of
the living social body are represented as they are realized in social activity,
broadly defined to include both moment-to-moment acts of sensing and doing,
and long-term processes of growth, sickening and healing, reproductionanddy-
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sesses thereforecannot be understoodas a positive reflection of the naturalunmediated wholeness of the individual body in itself, that is, "the body." The
unity of any individual body, as socially represented,is a mediated and derivative product of the social coordination of concretely differentiated aspects of
bodily processes and powers, on the one hand, and of contrasts among a plurality of types of social bodies, on the other.
The performance and representationof bodily activities in culturally patterned and significant ways comprises the social appropriationof the material
body. "Appropriation"in this sense is tantamountto the social production of
both social body and embodied subject, includingthe culturalmeanings and significations in terms of which they are socially defined.
That the social body is produced as an ensemble of bodily activities thus
implies that it must be understood as a pattern,or patterns,of social appropriation of the real: specifically, the materialreality of the body-in-action. In epistemological and ontological terms, Kayaporepresentationsof the body thus imply what in Western philosophical terms would be called a realist analysis of
bodiliness. Realism may be defined for present purposes as the position that
there is an objective reality that exists independentlyof the perceiving individual, and that this reality contains levels that are not directly accessible to individual experience. The Kayapo realist approachto bodiliness proceeds from the
presuppositionthatthe body is an objective reality that constructs itself through
interactionwith objective realities both internaland external to itself, and is at
the same time possessed of propertiesof agency and subjectivity, by virtue of its
fundamentalproperty of being alive and its consequent capacity for volitional
action, sensory perception, knowing and feeling.
Social body and embodied subject,jointly constructedas active processes
of appropriation,participatein the organizationof social (re)productionand reflexively take on the pattern of that organization. The embodied subject thus
plays a dual role in productive activity: both as producerand product, agent and
object. The processes through which Kayapo bodies are produced as social objects consist of the willed acts of Kayapo subjects. I use the term subject to refer
to an embodied consciousness possessing purpose and will and capable of
agency. In general terms, this usage does not imply that such an agent need correspond to an "individual"in the Western sense or that the consciousness involved should necessarily be conceived as uniformand continuous across all the
contexts in which a person participates.Subjectivity and agency may ratherbe
represented,as they are among the Kayapo, as dividual ratherthan individual
and as embodied in discrete bodily processes and modes of activity ratherthan
as attributesof a disembodied and integralCartesianego. The Kayapo represent
social persons as individuals denoted by personal names, but, as I have described, they treatpersons in their capacity as agents or acting subjects as constructed of heterogeneous, concretely embodied modes of subjectivity that
change and become substitutedfor one anotherat differenttimes and in different
contexts.
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A Kayapo person assumes such a mode or aspect of subjectivity as a constituent of his or her own subjectivity through willed activity involving what
Mauss (1979 [1936]) described in generic terms as techniquesdu corps: the use,
direction, and presentationof the body in socially prescribedways. Mauss emphasized the patterningof modes of bodily activity and presentationas means of
disciplining the will and thus of the production of socially standardizedmodes
of subjectivity.Kayapo rites of passage, as I have described, consist in large part
of such socially patterned,willed bodily usages, and the general Kayapo pattern
of pairedrepetitionof successive rites of passage and items of bodily adornment
can be understood as a metapatterning of willed activity directed to the selfreproductionof social forms.
The dual role of the embodied subject as both producerand product of its
own activity, however, becomes the focus of misrepresentationas well as representation.The willful productionof the body as subjectively intendedproduct
is elided when the resulting socially patternedbody and its activities are represented in terms of the objective, collective patternto which they conform. The
subjective contributionof the producerand his or her activity, both in individual
and collective action, thus tends to become misrepresented as an objective
(natural)feature existing independently of the subject and imposing its form
upon his or her activity. Among the Kayapo, as we have seen, this form is represented as the "natural"structureof the cosmos and the mythically established
and ritually renewed form of society as embodied by the village community as
a whole.
As a result of this fetishistic inversion, the realism of Kayapo representations of bodiliness takes a Platonic form, in which the form of the cosmos
is seen as replicating itself at all levels of Kayapo culture and bodily activity,
from the structureof the cosmos to the organization of ceremonies to the spatiotemporalcoordinates of simple activities, like hunting, gardening, and preparing a meal, to the culturalarticulationof the growing, acting, living body itself.
This analytical account of Kayapo cultural representationsof bodiliness
has been an attempt to translate into the categories of contemporaryWestern
theory the ideas and principles implicit in Kayapo practices and beliefs relating
to the body. It comprises, as closely as I can understandand translateit, an immanentKayapo"theory"of the natureof the humansubject, the socialized body,
and the relationbetween the two (if the term theory can be stretchedin this context to apply to an unselfconscious system of ideas not abstracted,as a set of
generalpropositions,from the specific instances they are understoodto govern).
In the introductionto his recent collection of papers,Another Tale to Tell,
Fred Pfeil (1990:3) makes the point that the thinking embodied in the films,
works of fiction, and otherpopularculturalproductionsthatare grist for the mill
of the cultural critic are often fully equal or superior,as social analysis or cultural interpretation,to the critical theories and analyses deployed by the critics
who analyze them (contraryto the virtually universal opinion of the latter). In
the same way, I would like to argue here that the theories, ideas, and interpreta-
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170 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY
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