Vilaça, Aparecida - Chronically Unstable Bodies
Vilaça, Aparecida - Chronically Unstable Bodies
Vilaça, Aparecida - Chronically Unstable Bodies
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Aparecida Vilac;a
PPGAS ? Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de J
Introduction
Though it only became a specific research topic from the 1970s onwar
human body has held a certain fascination for anthropology since it
for two reasons: firstly, owing to its ostensible physical features, it h
used as a means of classifying different races; and, secondly, owing
impact of culture on the way the body's characteristics and potentiali
seen, it has been assumed to be a naturally given substrate (see Lock
134; also Conklin 1996: 373). The works of the French sociological
provide our earliest examples of truly sociological or culturalist appro
the body; pioneering texts include Hertz's paper (1973 [1909]) on cult
or, more specifically, religious ? aspects involved in the predominance of r
handedness and Mauss's essay (1985 [1936]) on body techniques.
Rather than provide a historical resume of studies on the body,1 I w
recall the work of two authors, also French and both contemporaries o
In texts largely forgotten now by anthropology, they call attention t
what exceptional aspects of the body that relate to its natural instability r
than its cultural fabrication. In Lame primitive, published in 1927, Lev
observes: 'He [the primitive] therefore sees no difficulty in metamo
which to us appear utterly incredible: beings can change their size and
in the blink of an eye' (1996 [1927]: 8).
Leenhardt, in Do Kamo, 2, book inspired by Levy-Bruhl and dedica
him, makes similar observations in his description of the Canaque con
the human being:
Different bodies
Humanity
In Amazonia humanity is a condition extendable to various types of beings,
while the context of its defmition is always relative. Among the Jivaroan
Achuar described by Anne-Christine Taylor, the category 'we' or 'person' is
defined in opposition to 'they' and its content is variable: it can include spirits
with a human appearance and others with a non-human appearance that
exhibit human behaviour. In other circumstances these same beings do not
fall under the 'we' category (Taylor 1996: 204; 1998: 322-3).9 Among the
Wari', the term wari\ which signifies we, people, human being, is defined pri?
marily in opposition to game animals, and more broadly contrasts with foods
in a general sense, all of which are defined as karawa. Nevertheless, the very
same animals hunted and eaten by the Wari' are also considered human, espe?
cially since they themselves can act as predators and eaters ? the core meaning
ofthe term wari'. Acting as humans and predators, they treat the Wari' as game.
In sum, while - as in the Jivaro case - the defmition of we, person, is con-
textual, in the Wari' case we can observe the potential for a complete over-
On objects
The multiplicity of perspectives does not
persons, but also 'non-persons like rock
to possess an existence of their own, a n
relations' (Lima 2002: 13).
As Viveiros de Castro comments in rel
siguenga cosmology, 'what seems to be
tivism is that substances named by substan
or "canoe" are somehow used as if they
see also 2002d: 382-7). They can be com
father only because there is another per
is a relation ... something would be "f
whose fish it is' (1998k 51). Hence propo
to jaguars', examples of which abound in
the same nature as a proposition such as:
(Lima 2002: 15). So, 'if I am alive, a pe
[A]lien perspectives are not, in theory, less true than the human
this does not mean they are equivalent or symmetrical, as the
reduce this cosmology to a known world. Given that this is abov
given that human existence here appears primarily as a huma
between two or more perspectives is necessarily asymmetric.
Conclusion
NOTES
16 See Da Matta (1976: 86) on the Apinaye, and Huxley (1980: 212-13) on the Urubu.
17 Viveiros de Castro differentiates 'between a concept of soul as a representation of the bo
and another concept of soul which does not designate a mere image of the body, but the ot
of the body. Both these ideas exist and co-exist in indigenous cosmologies' (2000: 28, n. 3
original emphasis).
18 For a further elaboration of these ideas, see also Taylor (2002: 462-4).
191 thank one of the journal s anonymous readers for prompting me to clarify this point
seems tempting to say that rather than being a false mother this jaguar is an ideal mother, sinc
she dedicates herself so much to the child that she forgets the other children. It is because s
acted as a hyper-mother that the jaguar was identified as such, which permits us to think th
the jaguar is the default state of mothers.
20 Csordas underlines this point by saying that 'the most fruitful definition of the real is tha
... of an indefinite series of perspectival views, none of which exhausts the given objects
This perspective does not deny that objects are given; as I have emphasized throughout t
essay, the body is in the world from the start' (1990: 38).
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s/n?, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil, 20940-040. [email protected]