Each of us is a kind of crossroads where things happen

Lévi-Strauss
“Life, my love, is a great seduction in which all that exists seduces” The Passion According to G.H,
Clarice Lispector

Introduction

Claude Lévi-Strauss, in the introduction of his book Myth and Meaning, wrote how is the
relation he has with his work, stating that, first of all, he has no perception of personal identity. In
this sense, as it follows, he appeared to himself as a place where something was going on, like a
kind of crossroads where things happen, expect that there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’. This passive nature, as
he acknowledged, is valid for him, and constituted his own idiosyncrasy, and other different views
might be equally valid elsewhere.
If taken as a point of departure to understand Amazonians cosmologies, the meaning of the
phrase would be true, but with an essential missing interpretation. Levi-Strauss alludes to the person
only as a site where things happen, not acknowledging the proactive dimension which is part of
indigenous people’s everyday life.
In this regard, an analysis of ethnographic materials can shed light on understanding both
aspects of Amazonians cosmologies, which, in order to be fully grasped in meaning, needs a
preliminar theoretical contextualization.
Firstly, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s and Tania Lima’s key concept of Amerindian
perspectivism opposes the classical distinction there is in most Western countries of Nature and
Culture. In this sense, works here the idea that Culture, that is, the subject, is in the domain of the
universal, and Nature, the object, represents the particular. In Western though, different Cultures are
drawn from an universal Nature: a culture relativism. Instead, for Amazonia, Viveiros de Castro and
Lima attend to an unity of culture and a multiplicity of nature. In this sense, all human and, to a
certain extent, most non-human entities are subjectively persons, which means that they perceive
themselves as human beings. All entities see the world in the same way but what world they see
depends on their bodies. In this way, whats is on stake in Amerindian perspectivism is that since
Culture is given, Nature, the body, constitutes the origin of perspectives and thus can be changed.
Paolo Fortis notes that for Kuna people, changes in the external appearances of beings correspond
to changes in their points of view (FORTIS, 2012: 97).
Therefore, such active dimension that is missing from Levi-Strauss’s phrase converses with
this transformative aspect of the person’s body: the indigenous must work their bodies in certain
ways for them to be kept separated.
 With this paper, I intend to analyze what things happen, why and, most importantly, how the
body is the site of both passive and active dimensions. I address most of the time to Kuna’s and
Cashinahua’s etnographies, as my main references.
In the following sections I pay attention to how personhood, sociality, the outside and
memory are in the core of understanding both dimensions.

Personhood and Sociality

“The Cashinahua self is defined in terms of actions, the work that the body does and the work that is
done for others, especially kin” (McCALLUM, 2001: 93).

In this section I will show how the body is on the core of defining persons and social groups,
highlighting how the fabrication of the body and the intense use of the body leads ultimately to the
permanence of an outer structure, that is, the reproduction of human social life. In this sense, the
bodies of new borns and young infants are shaped by adults, allowing them to become and stay in
human form. On the other hand, to be fully integrated in adulthood, one must have the ability to
produce and to transform.
Tania Lima affirms, that the Juruna people say that human characteristics don’t belong
intrinsically to human beings - the universal Culture, common to all beings - they have to be
produced in the bodies” (LIMA: 113) In general, for Amerindians, the continuously social
construction of the body is crucial in the maintenance of their human perspective. Kuna people
believe, for instance, that the movement between different domains for normal people is dangerous
and is linked to illness and unwanted transformations of the body. (59) In this sense, if humans
share with animals and trees (FORTIS, 2012: 139) the same Purpa, that is, the immaterial double/ or
inner image, the body is, thus, what differentiates them so the possibility of communication and
exchange of substances will not be possible (FORTIS, 2012: 187).
At birth, a Kuna baby has remains of the amniotic sac covering the baby’s head or another
part of the body (FORTIS, 2012: 94). The presence of designs on the sac tells about the animal the
newborn has affinity with, and the absence of a design configures the precondition of being a
nelekana, a shaman, which means its design is completely visible to the animal domain. The kurkin,
as it is called, is a mark of ontological alterity and expresses their capacity to learn and create and
their human mortality (FORTIS, 2012: 99).
 The visibility of the design will thus be entailed to certain types of praxis and capacities,
stimulating, respectively, the development of human social praxis or that of shamanic praxis
(FORTIS, 2012: 99)
Designs of the caul are extremely important because they are a sign of humanity and convey
the stability of the human body (FORTIS, 2012: 99,106). They are what enables Kuna people to
identify the potential dangerous and to transform the affinity relationship between newborn and
animal by a series of rituals. The human body of the newborn is therefore shaped by its kinspeople
and its amniotic design, its kurkin, also shows the inner capacity of the baby: its creative skills
(FORTIS, 2012: 98).
“It is by looking at the different contributions of men and
women in the creation of bodies and artifacts that it is possible
to understand how individual creative processes fit into the
wider Kuna cosmology” (FORTIS, 2012: 69).

Learning how to carve, how to make canoes, or how to sew molas, have in common that
they all refer to the act of giving shape to something. 83 It will soon be pointed out that, similarly,
the ability of transformation, for the Cashinahua, is also what enables personhood and sociality.

“Shapes for the Kuna may be created in different ways: by

carving out wood, as in the case of canoes, stools, nuchukana,
and other wooden objects; by molding and cooking clay; by
creating a structure using different materials, as in the case of
building a house; or through the condensation of bodily fluids,
as in the formation of fetuses” (FORTIS, 2012: 83-84).

The capacity to give shape, differently from the Cashinahua, is developed by the observation
of older people, but it is considered a gift and one must be born with it (FORTIS, 2012: 84)
Men and women work at giving shapes: while women work at making designs to beautify the body,
such as clothing, men work at making plastic arts, in making canoes, carving or weaving baskets.

“‘Giving shape’ sopet, and ‘making designs,’ narmakket, are

therefore both the transformation into human praxis of the
 intrinsic openness to alterity, which is manifested through
amniotic designs” (FORTIS, 2012: 102).

Being able to develop human praxis is associated with being able to transform:

“The visibility of designs on the newborn’s caul thus provides

his adult kinspeople with a sign of the humanity of the baby
and allows them to include him in their sociality, nurturing
him and allowing his body to become a healthy human
body” (FORTIS, 2012:103).

The reproduction of human social life through transformations is what is on stake and what
differentiates human beings from other entities.
Harry Walker attests that for the Urarina, the fetus is created and built with the father’s
semen in the mother’s womb (WALKER, 2012: 61-62), and the fabrication of the body, for them, is
actually a process of ‘hardening’, as there is no such notion as ‘body’ (WALKER, 2012: 102-103).
Thus, the hardening comes to an end when there is a hardening of the heart-soul. Indeed, the
ritual of the couvade, for instance, is really important since the baby’s body is lacking a soul, in a
state of vulnerability (WALKER, 2012: 69). There is also a process of incorporating the person’s
body and make the person autonomous and social. This series of rituals are gendered tasks, as the
men focus on the ingestions of plants and medicines - along with fasting and other discipline related
practices - and women focus on fertility and moral behavior(WALKER, 2012: 87-88).
Comparativily, for Cashinahua, repeated sex intercourse and food both make and unmake
bodies (McCALLUM, 2001: 17). That is, frequent intercourse makes the vital fluids, semen and
blood, clot and grow fast and substances orally consumed by both parents affect the quality of the
vital fluids and are thus transformed into the fetus (McCALLUM, 2001: 18). It is important to note
that matter, corn seeds, cooked foods, semen, or human flesh and bones are transformable because
they are spirits, yuxin, longed to be transformed into human form. McCallum highlights that the
substances from which the babies are made of are imbued with vital force that are transformed by
the work of sex and this continuous process is described as ‘transformation’ or the creation of shape
(McCALLUM, 2001: 19).
The parents must protect a newborn from dangerous from the outside as well as a well-
controlled spirit input, that is, which food should be given to the child, in order for it to grow
healthy (McCALLUM, 2001: 20,21). Application of genipapo onto the child’s body help to make
the baby invisible to spirits and also to ‘fix’ the shape made by the hard work of the parents during
pregnancy and afterwards (McCALLUM, 2001: 21)”
The child is made into a social being by the relationship its name makes possible. Naming a
child is a crucial aspect of sociality for Cashinahua, not only it gives one’s identity but it also places
every person in a specific relationship to ego, so the child learns to engage in social relationships. It
also enables the growth of a real person by the relationship the child has with the person it was
named after, the chichi or chai. Therefore, the child learns skills and is able to care for others
(McCALLUM, 2001: 27). As the kurkin is the first important aspect that enables the creation of
sociality for Kuna people so are true names for Cashinahua.
Kinship’s terminology knowledge only enables a child to be a potential social being, not yet
a fully adult.
“Kinship is constantly fabricated, in the Cashinahua view, just
as bodies are, through daily interaction of a moral and social
nature, in the many processes that constitute
sociality” (McCALLUM, 2001: 24).

Thus, the person goes to nix pima, a process of learning, that gender differentiates children
through the learning of productive skills associated with male and female gender because only
gendered adults are complete persons. In this process, they will be taught the knowledge needed in
order to engage in adult social interaction (McCALLUM, 2001:46) and it is important to note that
this process modules the children by the complete attachment and incorporation of knowledge to the
body (McCALLUM, 2001:49).
“The child’s body is given form, protected and made to grow
by the endless labour and care of the parents. It’s ability to act
for itself is an essential prerequisite to its ability to learn those
conscious skills that it needs to be a real
person” (McCALLUM, 2001: 27).

Both etnographies show how, complementary, through their respective productive

knowledge, learned from elder people, men and women make everyday creation and reproduction
of social life possible. It is through their transformative capacities that one is considered an adult
and thus contribute to the outer structure.
Memory and the outside

“Humans engage in a variety of different kinds of social relations with the beings that inhabit these
spaces, relations that largely correspond to different forms of predation and exchange and that are
constitutive of alterity” (McCALLUM, 2001: 70).

The aim of this section is to present another aspect of sociality which is the domain of the
outside. The outside entails the ideia of what is not inside, such as visions, dreams, non humans and
death. I also intend to show how memory connects both realms through embodied knowledge,
making possible transformation and production.

In her article Eating with Your Favorite Mother: Time and Sociality in a Brazilian
Amerindian Community, Matos Viegas introduces the idea of time to sociality, highlighting that
being in the world is a process made of history and a way of making history:

“kin links are seen as relationships that need to be constantly

reiterated by daily feeding and being cared for”
(VIEGAS, 2003: 21-22),

Feeding, in this sense, is seen as a way of sharing and as a daily practice and experience
forming kinship (VIEGAS, 2003: 31). In this sense, Matos Viegas defends, that kinship is
constituted as memory of being related through caring and feeding. She also adds that that
becoming a being in the world is to also become aware that social relationships can be unmade if
one stops the daily care. (VIEGAS, 2003: 34).

For Cashinahua, the inside is the space where kinship and humanity are locked together.
(McCALLUM, 2001: 71). It is in the inside domain that kinspeople engage in social relations,
characterized as the productive and reproductive complementary interaction between men and
women based also on generosity (McCALLUM, 2001: 71).

As McCallum notices, the outside refers to certain forms of relationships, that is, a space of
interactions. Males are the responsible for the interaction with the outside, such as encounters with
strangers, animal predators or game animals. It can either lead to kinship or predation.

McCallum argues that transformations from the outside to the inside is the constructive
element in the making of community. It is on the basis of subsistence economy and transactions
that take place deal in the community (McCallum, 2001: 129). Men are responsible for making
transactions with the outside, as well as getting game. Women, thus, are responsible for
transforming the food to be eaten.

Making the outside inside also takes place on the Kachanaua ritual, in which, forest spirits
come to the village to liven things up and to ensure abundance of natural resources, putting an end
to a bad period in the community (McCallum, 2001: 145). They are greeted by the term chai, a sign
of possible kinship. They are also fed, and to give food, is also a sign of generosity, which is in the
domain of kin, of the inside.

Quoting Overing, McCallum alludes to the fact that

“elsewhere in Amazonia, reproduction is only possible when

the outside in brought in to the inside and the two are properly
combined” (McCallum, 2001: 152).

The outside is thus necessary, as people need the bodies of plants and animals in order to
reproduce themselves.

Space is linked to a temporal opposition, that is, between eternal and linear time. The dead is
within the domain of the eternal, that is placed above or below the earth, where all concrete things
are located, in the form of yuxin - spirit. On the other hand, linear time is associated with mortality
and specially, it is located along the river (McCALLUM, 2001: 72).

In terms of visibility, it is during sleep, extreme fright, illness or through drugs use that a
Cashinahua can visit the outside. Thus, the knowledge is both gained through engagement in social
relations but also through their own experiences. It is important to highlight that this experience is
embodied knowledge and is retained as memory of dreams (McCALLUM, 2001: 73-74).

The inside is a place which must always be constructed by human workers and is created
from the transformed outside in an never-ending process. This process is only made possible by
memory, that is, embodied knowledge. Men and women are, according to McCallum:

“complex persons whose bodies bear the imprint of the myriad experiences that form their capacity
to act, to know, and to be gendered” (McCALLUM, 2001: 88).

Moreover, make others into kin demands work:

 “the bodies of living beings carry this social history of their
own making as memory, so that kinship may be said to
memory itself (Gow, 1991)” (McCALLUM, 2001:67).

Memory is also linked to the knowledge of myth, which tells the story of how the world was
a ‘pure’ inside, as McCallum puts it, before historical time. Close kin lived and married together but
made contact with the outside, the wrong affines, the river spirits, which occasioned a flood.
Nowadays, the knowledge of the proper way of living must be passed on or else wrong affinities
can cause disaster (McCALLUM, 2001:148).

In Kuna world, there is also an incorporation of the outside and memory is intrinsically
connected to it. Living creatures and ancestral ones are know to have great knowledge because they
witnessed the creation of the world:

“Cultivated plants thus carry the memory of living or deceased

kinspeople; uncultivated plants provide living people with a
connection to their ancestral past. By establishing a
relationship with ancestral tree entities, ritual specialists are
able to draw from their source of knowledge and to protect
their living kinspeople against the evil predatory
forces” (FORTIS, 2012: 66).

It is through rituals that a specialist is able to access the knowledge the ancestral beings hold
since the moment of the world when there was no uncontinuity between all beings. It is by making
the outside inside that enables the reproduction of everyday life.

The shaman, however, because he is a powerful being that hold a special affinity with
animals, must first, at young age, develop memory and thought. Memory, here, allows the nelekana
to be able to remember which domain he comes from - as he has access to both realms -, as well as
his kinspeople:

“Human social life is based on kinship, which is based on the

mastering of fertile forces and emotions through memory,
thought, and love (Gow 1991, 2000) and on the reproduction
of culture and the protection against supernatural enemies
through shamanism” (FORTIS, 2012: 155).
 In order for the shaman to remember, social relationships and kinship must be engaged so
the nele can still be attached to human intentionality (FORTIS, 2012: 163). Thus, ancestral
knowledge can be channeled by shamans and make possible the existence of Kuna’s social life. The
nele has the ability to shift perspectives without losing their humanity and is able to move between
domains of the cosmos and through dreams, he can communicate with animal and trees entities
(FORTIS, 2012: 104).

Shamanism, as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro suggests in his article The Crystal Forest (2007),
is when the human and the nonhuman, the visible and invisible trade places (VIVEIROS DE
CASTRO, 2007:20). Spirits, in this sense, don't represent a class of nonhumans but a certain
obscure vicinity between the human and nonhuman. The xapiripe are, thus, more than a body, they
have a constitutive transcorporality. For him, there would be a field of visibility in which living
species and other natural kinds inhabit. On the other hand, spirits and animals would be inserted in
an anemic field of which they are the invisible and visible modes of vibration:

“while spirits, in contrast, can be imagined as vibrational

modes or frequencies of the anemic field found both below
(granular tininess, diminutive size) and above (anomalism,
excess) the perceptual limits of the naked, i.e. non-medicated,
human eye” (VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, 2007:21).

Turning back to shamans, by catching powerful souls from the cosmos and incorporating
them in human social life, that is, the wooden figure of the nuchukana, Kuna people are able to
protect themselves against hostile and predatory forces. Visually, they represent human bodies and
are the instantiation of the invisible purpa they hold (FORTIS, 2012: 204).

For Kuna people, images are the real form of everything, that is, the purpakana. Therefore, a
real image is not aimed at or cannot be created because real images already exists and they are the
original form of every living being (FORTIS, 2012: 206).

Visual experiences is the forms of seeing how to carve or to make molakana, and in the form
of dreaming are both associated with the acquisition of knowledge (FORTIS, 2012: 112). It is
through dreams that Kuna people can interact with the outside, the immaterial world in the form of
their purpa. For the nele, seeing in on the core of learning: he first leans how to master his dreams.
He dreams and has visions and relates to the alterity (FORTIS, 2012: 129):
 “It is the task of the nele to venture close to animal entities
and to establish strategic alliances, to steal their knowledge for
the sake of his human kinspeople” (FORTIS, 2012: 167)

Memory, for the Waorani people, is very social and also transformative. Waorani, in their
description of their past killing, they come to share the same identity, which is inserted in a sense of
being ‘prey’ (HIGH, 2015: 39). It is social but it can also be transformative, as in representing past
memories, often the Waorani adopt the point of view of the warrior or the victim’s. Casey High
points out that depending on the context, the story shifts and also does their relationship to the other
(HIGH, 2015: 51). To express warriorhood evokes fear, and it is sometimes beneficial in the context
of negotiating with oil workers, for instance.

If being born is the beginning of individualization, death means generalization. As it is

mentioned in the mythic times, birth highlights the separation between animals and human beings
and death marks the limit of the human condition of being alive (FORTIS, 2012: 155).

For Kuna people, they live their afterlife as couples, sterile and generic: they don’t have
their singularities (FORTIS, 2012: 183):

“Death is the end of difference and fertility (Overing Kaplan

1984) and the beginning of pure alterity” (FORTIS, 2012:
202).

For Cashinahua, their afterlife is spent by partying, playing and engaging in rituals. They
don’t suffer pain, or have the necessity to eat or to have sexual relations. It is a state, that McCallum
describes as ‘no more history’ and as ‘no more dying’ (FORTIS, 2012: 74)

Death, in both cases, is the return to the outside.

Conclusion

Through etnographies analysis, I showed how the indigenous engage themselves in the
reproduction of social life by producing and transforming various things. If being human is about
relationships, the indigenous’s life come to be the outcome of a series of relationships, both with the
inside and the outside, through memory, visions and dreams. Each person has potential capacities
and are fully integrated into the community when they can contribute through human praxis and
gendered activities. Such activities revolve around transformations, creating possible conditions to
reproduce their world.

The human body is a site of expression of cosmology, as the new baby is born. But in early
childhood, in realization of that, the self engages itself in a series of events and experiences to
maintain its human body and to reproduce human social life. Both passive and active dimensions of
the self were showed. To a certain extent, one’s own experience is a consequence of the the world in
which he/she is inserted but it is also what makes it possible.

References

Fortis, P. (2012) Kuna Art and Shamanism: An Ethnographic Approach, Austin: University of
Texas Press

High, C. (2015) Victims and Warriors: Violence, Memory and History in Amazonia, Chicago:
University of Illinois Press

McCallum, Cecilia. (2001) How Real People Are Made: Gender and Sociality in Amazonia.
Oxford: Berg
Stolze Lima, T. (1999) The Two and Its Many: Reflections on Perspectivism in a Tupi
Cosmology, in Ethnos, 64:1

Viveiros de Castro, E. (2007) The Crystal Forest: Notes on the Ontology of Amazonian
Spirits, in Inner Asia 9:2.
Viegas, S. de Matos. (2003) Eating with your favorite mother: time and sociality in a
Brazilian Amerindian Community. Royal Anthropological Institute, 9:1, 21-37.