Current Anthropology Volume 57, Number 1, February 2016
Book and Film Reviews
Imagining Memory
Guilherme Orlandini Heurich
Programa de Ps-Graduao em Antropologia SocialMuseu
Nacional, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Quinta da Boa
Vista s/n, 20940-040 Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (guiheurich@gmail
.com). 5 XI 15
The Chimera Principle: An Anthropology of Memory and
Imagination. By Carlo Severi (translated by Janet Lloyd).
Chicago: Hau Books, 2015.
q1 Originally published in French in 2007 and now available in
English for the rst time, Carlo Severis inuential The Chi-
mera Principle is a book that seeks to transform the anthro-
pology of memory and imagination, as its subtitle suggests.
Based on Severis eldwork among the Kuna of Panama, as well
as on his extensive bibliographic knowledge of art and an-
thropology, the book considers long-standing anthropological
questions such as the relationship between oral and literate
cultures, the prevalence of the mnemonic form in Amerin-
dian societies, the ambiguous character of shamanic singers
awkwardly translated in the book as song locutorsand the
relevance of projection to the anthropological concept of belief.
While dealing mainly with North and Central American native
peoples, the author also argues that his propositions have
universal application, revealing Severis engagement in cogni-
tive anthropology, like many other contemporary French an-
thropologists, and thus the desire to follow in the path laid by
Pascal Boyer and Dan Sperber.
The book begins with a discussion about Aby Warburgs
work on the biology of images, focusing on some of his earlier
insights on Hopi pictograms. Severi thus tackles the debate sur-
rounding the relation between orality and writing, suggesting
that the complex development of pictography among Amerin-
dian peoples cannot be understood through either term. Ac-
cording to the author, the use of pictograms is informed by
logical principles that provide them with mnemonic salience,
which open images to diverse interpretations. As such, the
Hopi pictograms are images that indicate or demand a com-
plement. They are an intermediary step between sign and im-
age, which is how Severi denes his concept of chimeraa
form that is both visual and linguistic. In this sense, remem-
bering something like a song involves not only memorizing
certain xed verses but also learning how to read the variations
of verses found in pictograms. To illustrate this idea, Severi
draws on his Kuna material to establish that songs are mem-
For permission to reuse, please contact journalpermissions@press.uchicago.edu.
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orized through the relationship between parallelistic formulas
and visual images. This particular way of singing creates a
relationship between image and language that Severi calls
mnemonic technique because it is based on a particular way
of constructing salient images, thereby constituting so many
keys to memorization (256). It is a convincing argument, but
one is left wondering whether the concept of chimera would
work as well in the analysis of musical traditions that do not
rely on pictography as a mnemonic technique.
The move from the biology of images to the mnemonic
salience of chimeras allows Severi to discuss the role of the
enunciator in Amerindian traditions. The author claims that
it is possible to identify an art of memory in the way that
shamans sing (particularly in healing songs), which involves
the elaborate construction of an ambivalent enunciator. Sing-
ing thus relies on parallelistic techniques that produce a code
that listeners can only relate to by decoding, thus generating
belief and the transmission of tradition. Severi argues that all
mnemonic techniques are imaginative forms, which is why he
pursues the notion of belief throughout his analysis, which
leads to his denition of the enunciator as I-memorya
concept that the author does not fully explain. The author
opposes a real locutor to the ambivalent enunciator, and the
reader has a hard time understanding why this complex gure
is not real. Furthermore, his approach to the relationship be-
tween enunciator and listener goes against much of what has
recently been written on Amerindian shamanism. In Severis
approach, enunciators use linguistic devices that force lis-
teners to decode what they are hearing only because this is a
necessary step for the cognitive mechanisms of belief. In other
words, shamans use a special language as a result of universal
learning structures that shape the transmission of all knowl-
edge. Meanwhile, if we look at Graham Townsleys (1993)
essay on Yaminahua shamanism, we see that shamans use
twisted words because (according to them) their meanings
are dangerous and should not be entirely understood by the
listeners (465). Whereas Townsley builds his interpretation
from native concepts, Severi circumvents Kuna denitions of
the relationship between shamans and animals and how it
produces linguistic devices, preferring to base his analysis of
the Kuna material (as well as of memory practices in other
parts of the world) on supposedly universal cognitive mech-
anisms. In this way, the author falls into one of the main pit-
falls of cognitive approaches, which tend to ignore what the
anthropologists interlocutors have to say.
Turning to his example of the use of personal names in
the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, one also notes that the
emphasis on memory needs further elaboration. Among the
Iatmul, for example, Severi notes that the act of naming not
only denes the existence of individuals and social groups but
is coterminous with the act of creation. Every name connects
the person who bears it with the ancestors who bore it, so that
the essential function of a name is to ritually identify the
living and the dead. The ritual presentation of names in Sepik
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societies deploys objects that present two different techniques
of memorization. The rst consists in ordering names in a
sequence through the ritual display of an object such as an
Iatmul mnemonic cord, whose sequence of knots is also a se-
quence of names and locations: the enunciation of ancestral
names is thus also a way of retelling their journeys through
mythical places. Borrowing from Nicholas Thomass analysis
of objects such as the Iatmul mnemonic cord, Severi argues
that representation is a poor concept to understand the ritual
uses of names; according to him, these objects do not represent
an ancestor because they do not involve a relationship of im-
itation of a different reality. Mnemonic cords are thus ways of
making names visible. A second mnemonic technique that
appears in Sepik involves chimera-objects, according to
Severi, such as the Bahinemo clasps. These clasps can be en-
tirely abstract or have references to specic animal partssuch
as a beak or an eyeand thus are not complete representa-
tions. Severi argues that these partial references are not failed
attempts to reproduce these spirits, rather they entail a chi-
merical mental operation that only partially reveals its refer-
ence, leaving room for a counterpart projection that deciphers
whatever is salient. As the author states, it is through the
decoding of this complex of visual indications that the name is
q2 memorized. Severi claims that these two mnemonic tech-
niques demonstrate the primary principlesof order and sa-
lienceof all mnemonic relations.
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Current Anthropology Volume 57, Number 1, February 2016
It seems to me that his interpretation of the ritual use of
names leaves room for the argument (which he does not an-
nounce) that the ritual use of anythingincluding namesis
as much a matter of concealing as it is of revealing, particu-
larly in PNG societiessomething that is in line with the
work of several Melanesianists, among them Marilyn Strath-
ern. The question that remains is thus what might happen to
Severis principles of memorization when we take into account
actions that ritually uncover social aspects that should not be
revealed? If revealing is memorizing, as Severi suggests, could
we say that concealing is forgetting? These oppositions do not
seem to add up so easily. Severis line of inquiry could have
taken into account the conceptual sibling of memory that is
forgetting, but as he does not, we can ask what would happen
to his denitions of the complex enunciator and the chimera if
forgetfulness were taken into account? These questions need
not be restricted to his specic argument on the Sepik, and
Severis entire book could be reformulated to address the im-
portance of concealing and forgetting, for in the end it is clear
that there are things one has to consign to oblivion when one
tackles memory and imagination.
References Cited
Townsley, Graham. 1993. Song paths: the ways and means of Yaminahua
shamanic knowledge. LHomme Revue Franaise DAnthropologie 33(126
128):449468.
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