tânia stolze lima - juruna shamanism

TOWARDS AN ETHNOGRAPHICTHEORY OF THENATURE/CULTURE DISTINCTIONIN JURUNA COSMOLOGY*

Tânia Stolze Lima

In his celebrated comparison between stud-ies of hysteria and totemism, Lévi-Strauss refers toa situation where the thoughts of the scientistaccount for more than those of the people studied— the latter for this reason becoming “more differ-ent than they are” (Lévi-Strauss, 1974, p. 5). Thisimage comes to mind when I find myself facedwith certain characterizations of indigenous Ama-zon cosmologies employing notions such as an-thropocentrism or animism: these remind me di-rectly of the totemic illusion — that is, the idea thatit should be possible to deduce the identity be-tween animality and humanity, nature and culture,from ethnographic materials.

Starting from the obvious fact that the exten-sive and intensive definitions of the terms nature andculture are historical and/or cultural products, I shallargue that the differences in the ways this distinctionfunctions in various semiotic systems or “regimes”(see Deleuze and Guattari 1984 and 1988) is a moresignificant ethnographic fact than the diversity of

contents it may assume in particular epochs andcultures. First I shall make some brief observationsconcerning this distinction in anthropology, beforemoving on to the Juruna ethnography.1

Nature and culture according toourselves

In the process of taking these two terms asmacro classes between which all things can bedistributed, we place humans in both classes. Andwith this move, we submit the distinction to aconcentric schema. Perhaps the best illustration ofthis method can be found in Lévi-Strauss (1967 and1976). Nature includes (enables and in a certainsense determines) culture; the latter is both part ofnature and one of its particular modalities ofexpression. Even for the anthropologist who, likeSahlins (1976), rejects the abstract reductionism ofLévi-Strauss and asserts that it is culture that deter-mines nature, it seems impossible to escape aconcentric reading of the distinction. Moreover,one finds in the work of Lévi-Strauss not only bothways of conceiving their relationship but also asynthesis of the two models, one which expressesthe idea that nature must be determined by culture.

* Published originally in Revista Brasileira de CiênciasSociais, volume 14, n. 40, June 1999, pp. 43-52.

Translated by Frances Tornabene de Sousa and revisedby David Rodgers and the author.

Brazilian Review of Social Sciences, special issue, no. 1, October 2000

44 BRAZILIAN REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES - SPECIAL ISSUE No. 1

It is also true that the distinction may berepresented by a segmentary schema, since it maybe transposed to the field of culture, therebygenerating a dichotomy between “society” and“culture”. In this instance, it is generally “society”that receives the values attributed to nature, while“culture” may become newly dichotomized as anopposition between “material culture” and “sym-bolism”.

But this segmentarity should not conceal thefact that at each of its levels the terms still obey aconcentric regime. For Durkheim or Radcliffe-Brown, for example, “culture” is clearly envelopedand determined by “society”, while for Sahlins, theinverse is true.

Expressing, therefore, a hierarchical readingof the distinction, anthropology shares with com-mon sense the strange idea that nature is more realthan culture, that nature is objective while culture isnot. Moreover, it is on this basis that Lévi-Straussformulates the curious paradox of the opposition ofnature and culture. He begins by observing that itssimplicity would fall apart if it were the work (as theanthropologists claim) of humanity as such, as then,he continues, “it would be neither a primitive fact,nor an objective aspect of the world’s order” (Lévi-Strauss, 1967, p. xvii.). That is, if anthropology werecorrect in saying that humans distance themselvesfrom nature, then the opposition would be strictlyimaginary. The way out of this paradox is well-known: Lévi-Strauss proposes the existence of areal continuity and a logical discontinuity betweennature and culture, an outcome that then allows theopposition to be employed as an instrument ofanalysis.

If an anthropologist like Lévi-Strauss canchoose to disbelieve in the opposition of natureand culture in the name of a “superior naturalism”(Sahlins, 1976), it may also be rejected in the nameof a new culturalism, based on the principle of“natural relativism” (Latour, 1994).

In an attitude which at first seems to clashwith current anthropological rhetoric, Bruno Latour(1994; Latour and Woolgar, 1997) maintains that ifthere is one rule to be respected in any ethnograph-ic research into the science and cosmology of self-styled “modern” societies, this rule is none other

than to disbelieve in scientists and epistemology,and to break with the (self) definition of the modernworld. In other words, it is above all necessary tobreak with the great nature/culture division.

Arguing that the distinctions such as Us andThem, Moderns and Pre-Moderns, Modernity andTradition, produced by modern cosmology (ofwhich anthropology would be part) derive fromthe transposition of this great division onto thewhole of humanity, Latour asserts that this opera-tion casts an asymmetric character on anthropolo-gy. I think that his alternative — a symmetricanthropology — depends primarily on thinking ofthe nature/culture distinction in a non-concentricand therefore a non-hierarchical fashion.2

What deserves stressing here is the radicaltransmutation this approach allows Latour to intro-duce into anthropology: the plurality of nature! Ina gesture that evokes the figure of Boas, it isperhaps possible to say that following the pluralistrevision of the notions of civilization and thehistory of humanity, we can now envisage theextension of this procedure to nature. The out-come is doubly significant: (a) nature is not naturalbut fabricated; (b) culture is not cultural but... real.Just as real as nature, at whatever level we happento find ourselves.

Latour’s argument, on the other hand, ispursued in such a way that taken in the light ofJuruna ethnography, it appears to wrap itself in aparadox. By transforming the distinction into a trueidentifying trait of the (self-styled) moderns, Latourseems to suggest a portrait of Amerindians aspeoples who would not separate nature and cul-ture... thereby re-instating the same division of Usand Them condemned by the author himself at hisoutset.

His works are without a doubt of someinterest to those who study Amazon cosmologies,and my impression is that nowadays there is atendency to claim that “based on Latour” thesecosmologies ignore the nature/culture distinction.I will try to show why I disagree with this tendency,and that more important than the question of thepresence or absence of this distinction is thequestion of the diversity of the regimes throughwhich it operates.

NATURE/CULTURE DISTINCTION IN JURUNA COSMOLOGY 45

The hypothesis underlying my analysis isthat the great division comprises one specific re-gime for dealing with the nature/culture distinc-tion. This regime can be provisionally character-ized as follows: applying itself all at once to variouslevels of reality, the great division necessarilyimposes the overlapping of these levels, overcod-ing, as Deleuze and Guattari would say, the distinc-tions generated at each level. In other words, thedistinctions between Nature and Culture, Objectiv-ity and Subjectivity, Truth and Error, Writing andOrality, Moderns and Pre-Moderns, Future andPast, and so on, are articulated in such a way thatthe moderns retain nature, objectivity, truth andeven time itself, leaving the leftover terms for othersocieties.

What takes place in Juruna cosmology isvery different. Distinctions such as River and For-est, Living and Dead, Humans and Animals, Con-sanguinity and Affinity, White-Lipped Peccary andCollared Peccary, do not overlap: the peccary is nota consanguine, nor are the dead of the forest.

Nature and culture according to theJuruna

Looking at the question from a distance, onecan affirm that the notions of nature and culturehave no counterparts in Juruna cosmology. Suchan assertion is primarily based on two pieces ofethnographic evidence: humans do not belong tothe class of animals, nor do they distinguish them-selves precisely from the latter through the posses-sion of culture, language and social life.

These last three functions are primarily relat-ed not to humans but — how to put this? — to theliving beings that inhabit the different regions ofthe cosmos, some of whom are defined as havingsouls and others as being souls. For animals, spiritsand humans, having a soul means having aware-ness of oneself and others, being able to think,being a subject. Whoever thinks or lives in effectbehaves like humans: in this sense, animals havean awareness of their own humanity, act in accor-dance with this, and consider humans properlyspeaking to be their similars; in turn, the souls ofthe dead think of themselves as living people.

Here, culture denotes a universal functionwhich is simultaneously defined as thought andsociality (and is, therefore, neither a domain isolat-ed from an exterior reality, nor a distinctive func-tion of humanity in opposition to animality).3 Thisfact is suggestive of a profoundly anthropocentricvision of the world and seems to correspond towhat is conventionally called animism. From Tylorto Descola, the question of the applicability of thenature/culture distinction to so-called pre-modernsystems has been put forward. The question iswhether it is suitable for us to apply such labels toAmazon cosmologies: despite Descola’s argument(1992), I think it is not.

Firstly, the question of culture is not onlysituated on the level of generality that I just out-lined. There is another level, for which we mayconveniently employ the term civilization, a leveldefined by the diversity of food regimes, numerousmusical instruments and artifacts, categories ofspirits and regions of the cosmos, and even theenvironment itself wherein the lives of humans andanimals unfold. And here a differential betweenwild and civilized is introduced: certain humansocieties have practices that are reminiscent ofthose of the jaguar.

It is true that on the first level the humansimplied are the Juruna: peccaries and howler mon-keys think and act as if they were Juruna. However,as far as the human genus is concerned, each socialgroup possesses its own modes of action, and theirsubjective experience is not a simple replica of theaction and subjectivity of the Juruna.

Secondly, what I learnt about the soul andcivilization amounted to a very elementary lesson:(a) animals and the souls of the dead have differentpoints of view to ours in respect to reality, and (b)the Juruna are not necessarily in agreement withwhat these other beings think of themselves andthe Juruna.

I believe, then, that to fashion a generalcharacterization of Juruna cosmology through theuse of notions like anthropocentrism and animismis to lose sight of the essential: for the Juruna, therelation of identity between humanity and animal-ity is primarily given as a condition for imaginingtheir difference (Lima, 1996).


In order to define the relations of similarityand difference (or identity and alterity) the Jurunaemploy a conceptual device formed by the termsnana and imama.

Between two cats, similarity exists; betweena cat and a dog, difference. Between two parallelcousins, similarity exists; between two cross cous-ins, difference. Nana serves to distinguish theclassificatory kin relation from the full relation,while imama serves to distinguish (within thekinship domain as a whole) consanguinity and thefull affinity of the relation between cross cousins,marking the latter as a relation of alterity. Inaddition, when applied to the sociological domain,the two notions follow gradients: more similarityexists between two parallel first cousins than be-tween second cousins; more alterity exists be-tween non-kin than between cross cousins. Tosummarize then: (a) nana expresses the similaritybetween individuals of the same species and ima-ma the alterity between individuals of differentspecies; (b) a parallel exists between the diversityof animals and the diversity of social relations.

That one and the same device allows thetwo types of diversity to be thought simultaneouslyis not surprising following the critique of totemismdeveloped by Lévi-Strauss. In fact, the best evi-dence that Juruna ethnography provides in respectto the totemic method are two animal societies inwhich differences between kinship relations, com-bined with differences in social status, link peoplewho belong to distinct species.

This homology between the differences ofanimals and of social relations implies not only thathumans can (and should according to the messageof certain myths) apprehend the political alteritybetween social groups through the model of ani-mal diversity; animals can also apprehend theirrelation with others — those that are relativelyclose to their species — as a social relation ofalterity. This is the case in vulture society: formedby king-vultures, red-headed vultures and yellow-headed vultures, the three species are similar informing one and the same social group; but alsodifferent, since they are united through cross kinrelations and by distinct social statuses — chief-shaman, warriors and paternal aunts respectively.

In a certain sense, this also occurs with animalssuch as the peccary or howler monkeys: imaginingtheir difference with the Juruna as a case ofpolitical diversity, they show themselves disposedto take the Juruna as partners.

On the other hand, imama is an epithetsignifying “wild” when linked to the jaguar or to anunknown human group; these are distinguished as“Other of a jaguar quality” and “Other of a humanquality”. However, linked to the name of a knownperson, the epithet indicates someone with whomthe speaker has a highly elaborate and ritualizedsociability, marked as a joyous relationship.4

In effect, alterity can assume two forms — awild aspect (kill or die) and a civilized aspect. In asituation where their physical integrity is not threat-ened, the Juruna adopt a friendly and civilizedconduct with a “wild Indian”, just as (in symmetri-cal fashion) a shaman, in his dream life, would actwhen faced with a jaguar. It is said that whensomeone dreams of a jaguar (equivalent to a wildhunter in the shaman’s dream life), the dreamsignifies that in waking life the person will beattacked by a wild Indian.

It is important to observe that if we focus onthe imama relation a way that prevents ourselvesfrom being able to observe the terms it links, wewill be led to construct an artificial ethnographicproduct: alterity, and consequently sociality itself,will reveal itself to be contradictory and paradoxi-cal. Perhaps a cosmology is relatively analogous toa phonological system, in the sense that allowingthe terms to disappear represents losing realityitself to a false identity that no longer meansanything. In the case of Juruna cosmology, it is alsonecessary to consider the status of the subject(whether human, or animal of a certain species, orsoul of a particular category), as well as the level ofreality (whether awake or dreaming, in this worldor in the celestial, subterranean or aquatic worlds),for which (or in function of which) the relations inplay gain reality.

In another work, I argued that the three basiccategories of living beings in the Juruna cosmos(humans, animals and spirits) communicate witheach other in such a way that each one can containor can be contained in the other. This implies that


humanity also characterizes beings that we desig-nate as spirits, while divinity and animality alsodistinguish certain humans, and within (what wecall) spirits, some are conceived as living in theform of souls, while others are as palpable asourselves. In addition, all animals can transformthemselves into humans. It appears to me thatwhile we attempt to explain the totality of theuniverse all at once with the three orders of Man,Nature and Supernature, the Juruna proceed inanother way. Utilizing analogous notions, theirthinking appears to proceed in parts, producing aninventory of each case and distinguishing what ishuman, divine and natural in the class of humans,the class of animals and the class of spirits. Exem-plifying this, the collared and white-lipped peccar-ies are animals, but not of the same kind, since thewhite-lipped peccary is also akin to the souls of thedead, which undoubtedly makes it closer to hu-mans. The capuchin monkey is an animal, yet thenight monkey is a phantom. In sum, each one ofthe three categories ordering the Juruna vision ofthe world comprises beings marked with valuesderived from the other two (Lima, 1995, pp. 59-60).

At times, it has appeared to me that thetripartition of nature, culture and supernature is notapplicable to the Juruna materials without prob-lems and, involuntarily, I have ended up produc-ing a description that expresses a concentric andtaxonomic anthropological theory of the nature/culture relation, rather than the ethnographic the-ory that I am pursuing here. I now think it ispossible to argue that:

(1) given that the class of humans compriseshumans, animals and spirits, and that this is repeat-ed in the other two classes, these categories do notrepresent classes in the strict and usual sense of theterm;

(2) a more adequate analytical procedurewould be to examine whether we are not facedwith three relations of opposition: human/non-human, animal/non-animal, spirit/non-spirit; inthis way, we would reach an ethnographic level atwhich, instead of (the expected but non-existent)classes defined by their reciprocal opposition, wewould have access to the regime which prevails inthe cosmological system as a whole;

(3) a triad of oppositions can be applied toeach entity or type of being, in such a way that eachentity consists of “a cluster of oppositions”; forexample, a collared peccary may not be a peccaryor an animal, but a spirit;

(4) this means that, from an ethnographicpoint of view, the differential between animalspecies should not be eliminated due to its com-mon belonging to the class of animals;

(5) the same requirement is imposed onhumanity; exemplifying this, humanity divides intothe Juruna, peoples of the forest and whites: theJuruna are simply humans, the second presentvalues linked to animals (drinking only water, andeating almost raw meat), while the last, throughtheir technological power and spatial journeys,present values linked to the divine shaman whocreated humanity;

(6) as in the case of the human genus, thereare “genuses” formed by animal species that aretaken to be proximate; for example: the monkeys,which comprise (among others) four importantspecies: (a) the capuchin monkey and the spidermonkey are animals in a double sense: they arenamed as such and are considered prey; (b) thenight monkey, which is not an animal but aphantom; and (c) the howler monkey, which is ananimal in the proper sense of the term, but only theancient Juruna — they say — treated it as prey(currently, people consider that they “appear likephantoms” and feel no desire to eat them; theynarrate a myth about the conjugal life of the howlermonkeys in which the husband provokes thewife’s jealously by threatening to go to a Jurunabeer festival);

(7) it is notable, however, that the threeoppositions are applied in order to draw a differen-tial relation between the terms of a same genus;

(8) on the other hand, the relations betweenthe terms (the Juruna and the peccaries, the vul-tures, and the dead, etc.) present a considerablepotential asymmetry: if a human point of view hasa greater chance of prevailing over an animal pointof view (in hunting, for example), this chancediminishes significantly when confronted with thespirit’s point of view (in the festival of the dead, forexample);


(9) asymmetry should be understood hereas the capacity of a subject (human, animal orspirit) to impose its point of view on another;

(10) since it follows that the Juruna believean animal point of view can, in theory, prevail overtheir own (for example, a hunter becoming first anenemy and then a captive of the prey), then a spiritpoint of view can also show itself to be insufficient-ly potent to dominate a human;

(11) or put otherwise, asymmetry is a revers-ible relation, and this means that it cannot beconsidered to be determined a priori; at least inprinciple, the domination of one over another isonly determined a posteriori;

(12) in addition, the triple opposition allowsthe distinguishing of common phenomena fromsingular phenomena; this corresponds to a differ-ential between ordinary human life dominated bythe human point of view, and the unusual — thatis, a situation in which the animal or spirit point ofview transforms human reality for humans them-selves;

(13) this makes evident the fundamentalpresence of a fourth opposition, namely, the dis-tinction I/another, or put better, Other/non-Other;

(14) finally, the difference between points ofview has nothing to do with the theory of culturalrelativism, as it is not based on any of the character-istic notions of Anthropology, namely: partiality,arbitrariness, equivalence, incommensurability andantinomy between object and subject, that is, natureand culture (Lima, 1995);

(15) what the Juruna theory emphasizes isthe struggle between points of view and that realityis what the point of view affirms.

I believe, therefore, that the point of view ofthe animals represents not so much the inapplica-bility of a differential between nature and culture,but rather the inexistence of the overlapping,which, according to ourselves, may be conceivedbetween the dichotomies of nature/culture andanimal/human. I emphasize again that these termsdo not designate impermeable domains of reality,but a differential relation which is better translatedby the qualifiers wild and civilized.5

In order to describe this cosmological regime,I shall base my argument on Deleuze and Guattari

(1988). According to the authors, there are twopossible modes of dealing with a variable: eithermaking it operate as a constant, or putting it into astate of continuous variation. I think the latter is amore appropriate way to characterize a cosmologyin which the significant difference between humansand white-lipped peccaries, for example, is not thesame as that between humans and the collaredpeccary, the jaguar, or the howler monkey. And thisentails certain consequences for analysis. Whatfirstly stands out is that differential relations cannotbe analyzed in terms of concentric, hierarchical andatemporal schemas; secondly, it avoids projectingonto the Juruna materials a principle which iseffective only in our own cosmology, namely, theidea that the difference or distance between hu-mans and animals is a constant.

In a world in which differential relations areplaced in a state of continuous variation, a man,under certain conditions, can become a peccary,but in such a way that this becoming peccaryamounts to a process which never reaches its end;even in a mythic space where the continuous stateof variation encounters greater chances of realiza-tion, a differential relation persists. It is also a worldin which a collared peccary that invades the villagemay no longer be simply an animal.

The fundamental question of Juruna ethnog-raphy is less animism than perspectivism: thenotion of soul represents only a point of supportfor a specific theory of the relationship betweenpoints of view which are at one and the same timeanalogous and locally determined as asymmetric.And this theory expresses less a notion of a generalhumanity of all beings than a certain dualism. ThisI shall now address.

This dualism translates as the difference be-tween Life and Dream, between the reality of thesubject and the reality of its soul. As the dream ismarked with values linked to death and alterity, thereality of the soul is generally determined by analien point of view (the one of which one dreams).Understanding this distinction as Nature and Super-nature is not to distort the ethnographic materials,but these are here essentially relational metacatego-ries, variable according to the point of view, that is,according to the reality lived as such by a subject.


What does this mean? Imagine that in ourown cosmology the dead imagined us as souls andthemselves as living! In the Juruna cosmologicaleconomy it is thus: the dead apply to themselvesthe distinction of body and soul and conceive ofthe living as being purely soul... The relationshipwith the animals is no different, but the fact canappear extremely complex, probably due to thefact that we do not confer to souls the same degreeof reality as we do to animals.

The relation with the animal is such that,being the case that it sees itself as human (and seesthe Juruna as human as well), its animal side —ignored by itself — represents the supernaturalaspect of its existence. In this sense, the sensiblereality of humans is coextensive with the animal’ssupernatural aspect and vice-versa. Or, put differ-ently, what for the Juruna comprises the function ofthe animal’s body has for the animal the functionof its soul.6

Imagine now that the Cariocas (people bornin Rio de Janeiro) defined themselves as such inopposition to Paulistas (people born in São Paulo),who in turn defined themselves as Cariocas ! Thismay seem funny, but it expresses an excessivelyrecurrent mechanism in our experience, and we areonly not immediately aware of this because we treatthe categories of alterity as substantives. The modelpar excellence of these relational categories are thepersonal pronouns of the first and second persons(Viveiros de Castro, 1996), and the small experi-ment of deploying the terms “Carioca” and “Paulis-ta” as “collective pronouns” analogous to “I” and“you” swiftly reminds us of the strange ease withwhich humans fall into alienating processes ofreification. Among ourselves, for several centurieseven temporal categories have undergone an inces-sant process of substantiation, and now it is moder-nity itself which we attempt to freeze in the past andsupercede in the present.7

The relativity of the cosmological and/orsociological categories define perspectivism (Lima,1996; Viveiros de Castro, 1996). It may be objectedthat this label is merely a mannerism, and that theprinciple before which we find ourselves is merelya contextualism; at most, an example of segmentar-ity or “structural relativity” (Dumont, 1975). But my

argument is precisely that we are dealing not somuch a global system of segmentarity (in such away that at some moment the distinction betweenCariocas and Paulistas would dissolve to makeway for the distinction Brazilians versus othernational identities), but with a scheme for whichthe point of view of the definition of categories ofalterity pertains to the terms themselves, and not toa term situated within a superior point of view. Forit is evident that, in our sociocosmological system,the distinction Cariocas and Paulistas is permittedby a point of view which is dislocated in relation tothe terms and which is superior to them: the pointof view of the whole. The label perspectivism isuseful and, I believe, necessary in order to translatethe absence of the point of view of the whole,8 andtherefore hierarchy defined a priori.

Another objection would be the following. Ifwe consider that the most adequate anthropologi-cal approach would be that which is capable ofallowing the lived world (Gow, 1998) produced bythe groups that we study to have the last wordabout the play of symmetries in ethnographic texts,it could be objected that perspectivism conceals a“non-perspectival residue”, meaning by this thefact that, for the Juruna, the tucunaré (peacockbass) is simply the tucunaré! For the Piro, a peccaryis just a peccary! The objection is valid but is notinsurmountable, since this problem is not alien tothe Juruna, who confer on it precisely a perspectiv-ist treatment, as I will now show.9

Taken in the strict sense, the human being,alive and alert, presents an irreducibility that Icannot avoid stressing: its inimitable “wisdom”.The antonym of wisdom translates the most variedconcepts: “incest, bestiality, adultery, sexual andverbal incontinence, intrepidity, mental stupidityand the exchange of words with animals”, allrelated to incredulity, and which directly or meta-phorically evoke a tapir quality or affect, if not theactual transformation of the person into a tapir.

Human wisdom consists of that which weourselves call recursivity: the living know that thedead consider the tucunaré to be a corpse, but thedead do not know that this is what they know, northat the living consider the tucunaré as tucunaré.Their relative insensateness, or that is, this inability


to put themselves in perspective also characterizesour own dream existence and the condition ofanimals. The peccary knows itself to be human,knows that a Juruna is a similar, but does not knowthat it is a peccary for the Juruna.

This is the type of moral relation which theJuruna entertain with animals. A bit like Rimbaudput it: “Too bad for the wood if it finds out it’sviolin!”

Conclusions

To conclude, it is necessary to highlightsome points:

(1) In the study of indigenous cosmologies,it is impossible to situate the question of thenature/culture and human/animal distinction on alevel of generality such that the internal diversity ofeach of these terms loses its relevance. I have triedto show that we can understand this phenomenonas a manifestation of a positive property of Jurunacosmology, namely, perspectivism, which, formu-lated in negative terms, consists in the absence ofa point of view of the whole, that kind of panopticpoint of view which generates the illusions ofobjectivity and absoluteness. The classificatoryoperations that we can observe do not suppose adistancing of the subject in relation to the constitut-ed world, but, on the contrary, its interaction withwhat is being classified, an interaction that isalways changing and (as Lévi-Strauss showed)always attentive to sensible qualities, and also (asLévy-Bruhl showed) to the unusual.

(2) The hierarchical relation between natureand culture characteristic of our way of thinking isnot opposed to the absence of hierarchy in Jurunacosmology. What is observable in the latter ishierarchy operating in a regime that impedes the apriori codification of relations, imposing itself onlya posteriori, the cosmological dynamic dependingmuch more on a principle of variation of entitiesand of their reciprocal relations, rather than on anon-temporal system where all the entities wouldoccupy a predefined position.

(3) Mauss showed that “giving” produces anasymmetry (an obligation or subordination) andthat, in the gift regime, the only way to liberate

oneself from this is to provide a “return”. As giftsystems involve relatively long-term partnerships,this means that retribution cancels asymmetry onlyat the price of producing another. To give-and-return can be interpreted as a symmetry betweentwo asymmetric relations. On the other hand,Deleuze and Guattari characterize the gift as aregime of finite debt, while Bourdieu (1996) showsthat, in the capitalist world, the gift presents adistinct form, creating enduring asymmetries, thatis, making it impossible to return in kind! In theterms of Deleuze and Guattari, this is a regimewhere the debt reveals itself to be infinite. I hopeto have been able to show that hierarchy can alsobe finite.

(4) I propose to characterize as perspectivistthe contra-hierarchical systems in which, on onehand, hierarchy is only able to operate in a regimeof finitude and, on the other hand, the part, asHenry James (1994) suggests, comprises all ofreality. For, in truth, the Juruna notion of point ofview diverges immensely from our notion, since itis not limited by any character of partiality (that is,falsity). It is therefore necessary to define moreprecisely what is meant by an absence of any pointof view of the whole in contra-hierarchical re-gimes. It remains Deleuze and Guattari (1984, p.42) who offer the best possibility of understandingthe processes in question here: “We believe only intotalities that are peripheral”. A type of whole existsthat does not totalize nor unify the parts, a wholewhose functioning is very different from that of atranscendent totality, since it behaves as “a partalongside other parts”, “though it has an effect onthese other parts simply because it establishesaberrant paths of communication between non-communicating vessels, transverse unities betweenelements that retain all their differences withintheir own particular boundaries” (idem, p. 43).

(5) We should not invoke relations of priv-ative opposition in the comparative study of cos-mologies. Even the difference of regimes that Ihave argued here can not be taken as an opposi-tion between the Juruna and ourselves. Who canassure that the relation with a pet is a constant,independently of it being a dog, cat or a turtle?Who can assure that, for the cowboy, the signifi-


cant difference between man and cattle is the samethat exists between man and horse? The distinctionproposed by Deleuze and Guattari is not intendedto be applied to two kinds of cosmologies, but totwo uses of a single cosmology, one use “major”and another “minor”.10 In any case, the analysisprovided here should be taken as the preparativestage for a finer analysis, one capable of breakingthe illusory unity that consists in speaking of “the”Juruna cosmology, in favour of the apprehensionof more differentiated semiotic regimes.

NOTES

1 The Juruna are a small Tupi people who live in theupper Xingu. Canoeists, farmers and hunters, theyinhabited the islands of the middle Xingu until the endof the XIX century. My fieldwork with this group tookplace between 1984 and 1990 and was supported byfunding from the Ford Foundation and Financiadora deEstudos e Projetos (Finep).

2 “When I say there is no inside/outside distinction, Imean that we should not believe in the existence ofinside and outside. We should sit exactly at the placewhere the inside and the outside of the network aredefined. So the point is exactly the same: we have to seeinside-and-outside as an active category, created by theactors themselves, and it has to be studied as such.”(Latour and Crawford, 1993).

3 Thought and language mutually imply one another: thefirst is silent language, without a voice. This is recordedin the space of cosmogonic myths, where the mythicinscription of the difference between humans and ani-mals stands out, (a) the humans transformed into ani-mals already bore prefigurations of their specific animal-ity, and (b) what the myth extracts from the animals isnot exactly the language but the possibility of theircommunication with humans in the waking world.

4 This double meaning of the term imama is expressed inthe Portuguese of the Juruna through the use of twoterms: brabo and Outro (wild and Other).

5 I think in fact, that the distinction between wild andcivilized is not strange to the Juruna, nor is it lacking inimportance. But it has nothing to do with the evolution-ist anthropological distinction: the wild is not primitiveand civilization consists above all in the knowledge andpreservation of cultural practices given since the originof present day humanity.

6 While it is true that in Juruna cosmology the expressionof this perspectivism reveals itself to be fairly abstract,other Amazonian systems express it in a relatively moreconcrete form: according to the Makuna or the Wari’(Århem, 1996; Vilaça, 1996), the differential between

humans, represented as predators, and animals, repre-sented as prey, is directly expressed by means of tworelational categories. In this sense, it could be said thatthe humans are the animals of the animals! An equationof the same type is true, in part, for the Juruna dead, butnot though for Juruna animals.

7 For a critique of contemporary attempts to essentializemodernity, see the twin texts of Foucault (1994).

8 For an examination of this question in a differentethnographic context, see Strathern (1992). My distinc-tion between contextualism (parts integrated into alarger whole, that in its turn is part of a larger whole andso on in succession) and perspectivism does not mean,obviously, that the Juruna are incapable of thinking interms of context. It also does not mean that perspectiv-ism has been ignored in fields other than the plastic arts:the work of Henry James (1994) is full of this. Consideralso the example of Nietzsche.

9 My thanks to Peter Gow for criticisms which allowed meto develop this point.

10 “Majority implies a constant, of expression or content,serving as a standard measure by which to evaluate it.Let us suppose that the constant or standard is theaverage adult-white-heterosexual-European-male spea-king a standard language (Joyce’s or Ezra Pound’sUlysses). [...] For the majority, insofar as it is included inthe abstract standard, is never anybody, it is alwaysNobody – Ulysses – whereas the minority is the becom-ing of everybody, one’s potential becoming to theextent that one deviates from the model. There is amajoritarian ‘fact’, but it is the analytic fact of Nobody, asopposed to the becoming-minoritarian of everybody.”(Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p. 105).

REFERENCES

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VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. (1996), “Os Pro-nomes Cosmológicos e o PerspectivismoAmeríndio”. Mana, 2(2): 115-144.

tânia stolze lima - juruna shamanism

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