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Journal de la société des américanistes 96-1 | 2010 tome 96, n° 1 The Kanamari

Journal de la société des américanistes 96-1 | 2010 tome 96, n° 1 The Kanamari Body-Owner. Predation and Feeding in Western Amazonia Luiz Costa Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jsa/11332 DOI: 10.4000/jsa.11332 ISSN: 1957-7842 Publisher Société des américanistes Printed version Date of publication: 5 June 2010 Number of pages: 169-192 ISSN: 0037-9174 Electronic reference Luiz Costa, « The Kanamari Body-Owner. Predation and Feeding in Western Amazonia », Journal de la société des américanistes [Online], 96-1 | 2010, Online since 10 December 2014, connection on 30 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jsa/11332 ; DOI : 10.4000/jsa.11332 © Société des Américanistes THE KANAMARI BODY-OWNER. PREDATION AND FEEDING IN WESTERN AMAZONIA LuizCOSTA * This article is an ethnography of the Kanamari concept of -1raralz, a word that simultaneously means «living body»,« owncr »and« chief ». lt ai ms to establish the relationship bctween these meanings through a focus on the replication of the -ll'arali at different scalcs: from the body of individual pcrsons, through the village chief, into the chief of a river basin. lt is argued that each of these positions implies the capacity to familiarize its inverse through acts of feeding. In this way, and respectively, the soul, co-resident villagers and the people of a subgroup are made into component parts of their -1rara/i in a process that is analogons to acts of familiarization that have been described for other parts of Amazonia. [Key words: Kanamari, Western Amazonia, prcdation, familiarization, body.) Le co1ps-111ailre kanmnari. Prédation et alimentation en Amazonie occide11tale. Cet article propose une description ethnographique du concept kanamari de - 1rara/z, qui signifie, simultanément,« corps vivant»,« maître» et« chef ». Nous tentons d'établir ici une relation entre les différentes acceptions de ce terme, en montrant que le concept ne fait que se répliquer à différentes échelles: celle du corps des individus, celle des chefs de village et jusqu'à celle des chefs d'un bassin hydrographique. Chacune de ces positions implique la capacité ù familiariser son contraire à travers l'alimentation. Ainsi l'âme, les co-résidents et les membres d'un sous-groupe sont intégrés à leur -1rara/i respectif selon un processus analogue à celui des actes de familiarisation déjà décrits dans d'autres sociétés amazoniennes. [Mots-clés: Kanamari, Amazonie occidentale, prédation, familiarisation, corps.) 0 co1110-do110 kanmnari. Predaçiio e ali111entaçiio na A111azô11ia ocidental. Este artigo é uma etnografia do conceito kanamari de -ll'arali, que significa, simultaneamentc, « corpo vivo»,« douo » e « chefe ». Busco estabelecer a relaçào entre estes significados através de um foco na replicaçào do -1rara/i cm diferentes escalas: do corpo de pcssoas individuais, passando pelos chefes de aldeia, ao chefc de uma bacia hidrografica. • Associate Profcssor al the lnstituto de Filosolla e Ciências Sociais da Universidacle l"eclernl do Rio de Janeiro, Largo de Sào Francisco 1, Sala 412, 20051-070, Rio de Janeiro, R. J., Brazil [luizcosta 1 O @gmail.com). Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 2010, 96-1, pp. 169-192. © Société des Américanistes. 169 JOURNAL DE LA SOCIÉTÉ DES AMÉRICANISTES Vol. 96-1, 2010 Argnmento que cada uma dessas posiçôes implica a capacidade de familiarizar o seu invcrso através da alimentaçào. Assim, e respcctivamente, a alma, os co-residentes e as pessoas de um subgrupo sào feitos componentes de sen -ll'aralt, num processo aualogo aos atos de familiarizaçào que foram descritos em outras partes da Amazônia. [Palavras chave: Kanamari, Amazônia ocidental, predaçào, familiarizaçào, corpo.) This article is a study of an Amazonian relationship of « mastery » or « ownership ». Relationships of this type are widespread in lowland South America and there is great variation in their scope and fonn. They generally involve an asymmetry in which one term of the relation, the« master », is often seen to encompass or contain bis creatures or followers, whom he protects and cares for (see Fausto 2008, pp. 333-335). In this text, 1 will focus on the figure of the master as a container of others, as a singularity that detains a multiplicity within his person. My discussion will concern the ethnography of the Katukina- speaking Kana mari, an Amerindian people who live in the vicinity of the middle Jurua River, in the I3razilian part of Western Amazonia 1. I will show how the master is constituted and how his relationship to a multiplicity is articulated. There arc two factors that make the Kanamari a particularly interesting case study for relationships of mastery: first, the concept of the owner-master perva- des ail aspects of their socio-cosmology; second, the Kana mari word that indexes this relationship has a meaning that makes it differ from other, analogous terms that are often rendcred as « master » or« owner ». The Kana mari word in question is -ll'arah, which, as I quickly learned, means « owner ». I first heard it used to define ownership of material things, but it soon became clear that the word was also used to refer to the chief. There is nothing particularly exceptional about this and there are numerous examples in Amazonia where mastery over people and ownership of things mcrge or deter- mine each other: the Carib words oto (Kuikuro) and e11111 (Trio) mean both owner of things and of the village, coming thus to mean chief (Heckenberger 2005; Bright man 2007, pp. 83-84); white Panoan-speakers call their chiefs by words that mean « master » and also indicate ownership of material things, such as ib11 in Kaxinawa or igbu in Matis (McCallum 2001 , pp. 33, 111-112; Erikson 1996, pp. 180-181 ). In this context, the Kanamari -wamh is simply another intcresting example of a widespread feature of lowland South American societies. The situation became more complex, however, when I learned that -ll'amh also means « living body», and that it is used to refer to the bodies of humans, animais and some plants. The first lime that l heard the word -ll'amh used in this way was in a conversation about chieftaincy with a Kanamari man called Poroya. 1 was asking about some of the characteristics of the Kanamari chiefs of the past when I questioned him concerning those chiefs' bodies, as I recalled from earlier talks that these chiefs were always described as being « large people » ( 111k1111a 170 Costa THE KANAMARI DODY-0\VNER 11ya11i111). I thus asked about the chiers -borolt. The Kanamari were always very poli te about my linguistic mistakes, but the question 1 was asking Poroya was not inunediately intelligible to him. 1 therefore asked him the question in Portu- guese, since Poroya spoke it better than other Kanamari. He explained tome that my question was wrong because the word -borolt means « corpse », not « body», and that the correct way to refer to the (living) body is -waralt. Realizing my difticulty in understanding this, he explained tome in Portuguese that « our body is our owner and our chief ». lt is impossible to say this phrase, as it is, in the Kanamari language. The order of the statcment is furthermore interchangeable, such that it would be equally correct to assert that « our chief is our body and our owner », for example. Poroya's clarification, however, is only a fraction of the story, for I later understood that the chief and the living body are but some of the figures that the concept of -ll'arah contains. It is impossible, within the scope of this article, to explore ail of the meanings of this word, and 1 will therefore take up the challenge presented in my conversation with Poroya and limit myself to two points. First, 1 will establish the relationship between chieftaincy and living human bodies by describing the constitution of both. In this sense, although 1 will briefty review how the word -warah defines ownership of what we might term « objects », my argument will focus on the ownership of people. Secondly, in so doing, 1 will reveal what may be catled the fractality, or self-similarity, of the -warah - that is, according to Gell ( 1998, p. 137), its re-occurrence at different levels of magnification a nd minification, traversing inter-persona! and intra-personal relations (Viveiro& de Castro 2001 , p. 31) 2. In the conclu- sion 1 will briefty explore one of the ways that the -lt'arah extrapolates from the chief, defining a world that pre-exists him, and which therefore deter- mines his own body. From this perspective, we shall see, the chief and the living body are a transformation of relationships that replicate themselves throughout the cosmos. BODY AND OWNER My argument will be ethnographie. l will show, through an analysis of Kanamari chieftaincy and the body, how the word -warah ean refer to both the living body and the owner. Before doing so, however, I would like to clarify some of the contexts in which we might gloss, in English, the word -warah as either « body » or « owner ». The word -warah implies a relation, such that a -warah will always be of something, someone or some people, and therc is no way to refer to an unspccific -warah that is independent of a subject uploads/Societe et culture/ costa-l-the-kanamari-body-owner-predation-and-feeding-in-western-amazonia.pdf