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Beyond Nature and Culture
By PHILIPPE DESCOLA, Janet Lloyd THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Copyright © 2013 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-14445-0
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Configurations of Continuity
It was in the lower reaches of the Kapawi, a silt-laden river in upper Amazonia, that I began to question how self-evident the notion of nature is. Yet nothing in particular distinguished Chumpi's house from other habitat sites that I had earlier visited in this region of the borderlands between Ecuador and Peru. As was the Achuar custom, the dwelling roofed by palms was set in the middle of a clearing mostly covered by manioc plants and bordered on one side by the rushing river. A few steps across the garden brought one to the edge of the forest, a dark wall of tall trees encircling the paler border of banana trees. The Kapawi was the only way out from this horizonless circular space. It was a tortuous and interminable route and it had taken a daylong journey to reach Chumpi's house from a similar clearing inhabited by his closest neighbors. In between lay tens of thousands of hectares of trees, moss, and bracken, dozens of millions of flies, ants, and mosquitoes, herds of peccaries, troops of monkeys, macaws and toucans, and maybe a jaguar or two: in short a vast nonhuman proliferation of forms and beings left to live independently according to their own laws of cohabitation. Around midafternoon, Chumpi's wife, Metekash, was bitten by a snake as she emptied the kitchen waste into the undergrowth overlooking the river. Dashing toward us, her eyes wide with pain and terror, she shrieked, "A lancehead [the name of this snake], a lancehead! I'm dead, I'm dead!" The whole household took up the cry, "A lancehead, a lancehead! It has killed her, killed her!" I injected Metekash with a serum and she went to rest in a small confinement hut of the kind customarily erected in such circumstances. Such an accident was not uncommon in this region, especially in the course of tree felling, and the Achuar were resigned, with a kind of fatalism, to the possibility of a mortal outcome. All the same, it was, apparently, unusual for a lancehead snake to venture so close to a house.
Chumpi seemed as distressed as his wife. Seated on his sculpted wooden stool, his face furious and upset, he was muttering in a monologue in which I eventually became involved. No, Metekash's snakebite did not result purely from chance; it was vengeance sent by Jurijri, one of the "mothers of game" who watch over the destinies of the forest animals. After a long period when his only means of hunting had been a blowpipe, my host, by dint of bartering, had eventually managed to lay his hands on a shotgun, and using this shotgun, he had, on the previous day, effected a massacre of woolly monkeys. No doubt dazzled by the power of his weapon, he had fired at random into the group, killing three or four animals and wounding several more. He had brought home only three monkeys, leaving one mortally wounded, lodged in the bifurcation of a large branch. Some of the fleeing monkeys, peppered by shot, were now suffering helplessly or might already have expired before being able to consult their monkey-shaman. By killing, almost wantonly, more animals than were necessary to provide for his family and by not bothering about the fate of those that he had wounded, Chumpi had transgressed the hunters' ethic and had broken the implicit agreement that linked the Achuar people with the spirits that protected game. Prompt reprisals had duly followed.
Endeavoring, somewhat clumsily, to dissipate the guilt that was troubling my host, I pointed out that the harpy eagle and the jaguar have no qualms about killing monkeys, that life depends on hunting, and that, in the forest, every creature ends up as food for another. But, clearly, I had not understood at all.
Woolly monkeys, toucans, howler monkeys—all the creatures that we kill in order to eat—are persons, just as we are. The jaguar is likewise a person, but is a solitary killer that respects nothing. We, the "complete persons," must respect those that we kill in the forest, for they are, as it were, our relatives by marriage. They live together among their own relatives; nothing they do is by chance; they talk among themselves; they listen to what we say; they intermarry in a proper fashion. In vendettas, we too kill relatives by marriage, but they are still relatives. They too can wish to kill us. Likewise with woolly monkeys: we kill them for food, but they are still relatives.
The innermost convictions that an anthropologist forges regarding the nature of social life and the human condition oft en result from a very particular ethnographic experience acquired while living among a few thousand individuals who have managed to instill in him doubts so deep concerning what he had previously taken for granted that his entire energy is then devoted to analyzing them in a systematic fashion. That is what happened in my own case when, as time passed and after many conversations with the Achuar, the ways in which they were related to natural beings gradually became clearer. These Indians living on both sides of the frontier between Ecuador and Peru differ little from the other tribes that make up the Jivaro group, to whom they are linked through both their language and their culture, when they declare that most plants and animals possess a soul (wakan) similar to that of humans. This constitutes a faculty that classifies them as "persons" (aents) in that it provides them with a reflexive awareness and intentionality that enable them to experience emotions and exchange messages with both their peers and also members of other species, including humans. This extralinguistic communication is made possible by the recognized ability of a wakan soundlessly to convey thoughts and desires to the soul of another being, thereby modifying the latter's state of mind and behavior, sometimes without it realizing this. For this purpose humans have at their disposal a vast collection of magic incantations (anent) by means of which they are able, from a distance, to affect not only their fellows but also plants, animals, spirits, and even certain artifacts. Conjugal harmony, good relations with relatives and neighbors, successful hunting, the making of fine pottery and effective curare (a hunting poison), a garden filled with a wide variety of thriving plants: all these things depend on the relationships that the Achuar have managed to establish with many different interlocutors, both human and nonhuman—relations that ensure that these others are well disposed to them, thanks to the power of their anent.
For the Achuar, technical know-how is indissociable from an ability to create an intersubjective ambience in which regulated relations between one person and another flourish: relations between a hunter, animals, and the spirits that are the masters of hunted game; between the women, the garden plants, and the mythical figure that engendered the cultivated species in the first place and continues to the present day to ensure their vitality. Far from being no more than prosaic food-producing places, the forest and the cultivated plots constitute theaters of a subtle sociability within which, day after day, humans engage in cajoling beings distinguishable from humans only by their different physical aspects and their lack of language. However, the forms of this sociability differ depending on whether it is directed toward plants or toward animals. The women, who are the mistresses of the gardens to which they devote much of their time, address their cultivated plants as though they are children that need to be guided with a firm hand toward maturity. This mothering relationship is explicitly modeled on the guardianship that Nunkui, the spirit of the gardens, provides for the plants that she herself initially created. Meanwhile, the men, for their part, regard an animal that they hunt as a brother-in-law. This is an unstable and tricky relationship that demands mutual respect and circumspection. Political coalitions are in general based upon alliances with relatives by marriage, but these are also the most immediate enemies in vendettas. Blood relatives and relatives by marriage constitute the two mutually exclusive categories that govern the social classification of the Achuar and determine their relationships with one another; and the opposition between the two is reproduced in the conduct prescribed toward nonhumans. For the women, their plants are blood relatives; for the men, animals are relatives by marriage: the natural beings thus become real social partners.
But in these circumstances, is the description of "natural beings" any more than a linguistic convenience? Is there any place for nature in a cosmology that confers most of the attributes of human beings upon animals and plants? Can one speak of the appropriation or transformation of natural resources when the very activities favoring subsistence are regarded as one form of a multiplicity of individual pairings with humanized elements in the biosphere? Can one even describe as a "wild space" this forest that is barely touched by the Achuar, yet that they regard as an immense garden that is carefully cultivated by some spirit? A thousand leagues distant from Verlaine's "fierce and taciturn god," here nature is no transcendent element nor simply an object that needs to be socialized. Rather, it is a subject in a social relationship. It is an extension of the world of the homestead, and in truth it is domesticated even in its most inaccessible reaches.
The Achuar certainly draw distinctions between the entities by which the world is peopled. But the hierarchy of animate and inanimate objects that results is not based upon the degrees of perfection of the beings in question or upon the differences in their appearance or any progressive accumulation of their respective intrinsic properties. Rather, it is based upon the variations in the modes of communication that are made possible by an apprehension of perceived qualities that are unequally distributed. In that the category of "persons" includes spirits, plants, and animals, all of which are endowed with a soul, this cosmology does not discriminate between human beings and nonhuman beings. All that it does is create a hierarchical order according to the levels of the exchange of information that is reputed to be possible. The Achuar themselves obviously occupy the peak of this pyramid: they see one another and communicate in the same language. Dialogue is also possible with members of the other Jivaro tribes that surround them and whose dialects are more or less mutually intelligible, although it should be recognized that mis-understandings—either fortuitous or deliberate—do occur. With Spanish-speaking whites, as with neighboring peoples speaking the Quichua language, and also with ethnologists, the Achuar do meet and communicate, provided a common language exists. But mastery of that language is in many cases imperfect on the part of the interlocutors whose maternal language it is not; and this introduces the possibility of a semantic discordance that places in some doubt any correspondence between the faculties of the two parties that would set them both on the same level of reality. The further one moves away from the domain of "complete persons" (penke aents), who are defined principally by their linguistic aptitude, the more distinctions become emphasized. For instance, humans recognize plants and animals that, if they possess a soul, are themselves capable of recognizing humans. But although the Achuar can speak to them, thanks to their anent incantations, they do not immediately receive a response, for this can be communicated only through dreams. The same applies to spirits and certain mythological heroes. These are attentive to what is said to them, but in general they are invisible in their original form and so can be fully engaged with only in the course of dreams or hallucinogenic trances.
"Persons" able to communicate are also arranged in a hierarchy according to the degree of perfection of the social norms that govern the various communities to which they belong. Some nonhumans are very close to the Achuar because they are reputed to respect matrimonial rules identical to their own. Such is the case of the Tsunki river spirits and a number of species of game (e.g., woolly monkeys, toucans) and cultivated plants (e.g., manioc, groundnuts). On the other hand, there are some animals that enjoy sexual promiscuity and so constantly reject the principle of exogamy: howler monkeys and dogs, for example. The lowest level of social integration is occupied by solitary creatures: Iwianch spirits, who embody the souls of the dead and roam through the forest alone, and also the great predators, such as jaguars and anacondas. Yet, however distant they may seem from the laws of ordinary civility, all these solitary beings are the associates of shamans, who use them to spread misfortune or to oppose their own enemies. Although they are positioned on the boundaries of communal life, these harmful beings are not considered wild, because the masters whom they serve are included in society.
Does this mean that the Achuar would not recognize any entity as natural within their own ambience? Not exactly. The great social continuum that includes both humans and nonhumans is not entirely inclusive, for some elements in the environment communicate with no one, since they do not possess souls of their own. Most insects and fish, grasses, mosses, and brackens, and pebbles and rivers thus remain outside the social sphere and outside the network of intersubjectivity. In their mechanical and generic existence they perhaps correspond to what we call "nature." But does that justify our continuing to use this notion to designate a segment of the world that, for the Achuar, is incomparably more restricted than what we understand by that word? In modern thought, furthermore, "nature" only has meaning when set in opposition to human works, whether one chooses to call these "culture," "society," or "history," to use the language of philosophy and the social sciences, or "anthropized space," "technical mediation," or "oikumene," to use a more specialized terminology. A cosmology in which most plants and animals share all or some of the faculties, behavior, and moral codes ordinarily attributed to human beings is in no sense covered by the criteria of any such opposition.
Do the Achuar perhaps constitute an exceptional case, one of the picturesque anomalies that ethnography occasionally discovers in some remote corner of the planet? Have I, out of a lack of perspicacity or a desire to be original, not been able or not wished to see the actual way in which they treat that dichotomy between nature and society? Just a few hundred kilometers to the north, in the Amazonian forest of eastern Colombia, the Makuna Indians present an even more radical version of a theory according to which the world is resolutely nondualist.
Like the Achuar, the Makuna classify human beings, plants, and animals as "people" (masa) whose main attributes—mortality, social and ceremonial life, intentionality, and knowledge—are in every way identical. Within this community, distinctions among living beings are based on the particular characteristics that mythical origins, diets, and modes of reproduction confer upon each class of beings. They are not based on the greater or lesser proximity of those classes to the pinnacle of achievement that the Makuna would exemplify. The interaction between animals and human beings is likewise conceived as a relation of affinity, although this is slightly different from the Achuar model, given that among the Makuna a hunter regards his prey as a potential marriage partner rather than as a brother-in-law. However, the Makuna ontological classifications are far more flexible than those of the Achuar, by reason of a faculty of metamorphosis that is attributed to all: humans can become animals, animals can change into humans, and animals of one species can change into animals of another species. Their taxonomic grasp of reality is thus always contextual and relative, for the permanent swapping of appearances makes it impossible to attribute stable identities to the environment's living components.
The sociability that the Makuna ascribe to nonhumans is thus richer and more complex than that recognized by the Achuar. Just like the Indians themselves, animals live in communities, in "longhouses" that tradition situates at the heart of certain rapids or inside hills that are precisely mapped. They cultivate manioc gardens, move about in canoes, and, led by their chiefs, perform rituals every bit as elaborate as those of the Makuna themselves. The visible form of animals is really just a disguise. When they get home, they shed their appearance and deck themselves in ceremonial feathers and ornaments, thus ostensibly becoming the "people" that they have never ceased to be even as they swam in the rivers or roamed through the forest. This knowledge that the Makuna have relating to the double life led by animals is part of the teaching dispensed by their shamans, who are the cosmic mediators to whom society delegates the care of relations between the various communities of living beings. However, the premises upon which this knowledge is based are shared by one and all. Although they are, in part, esoteric, they nevertheless structure the conception of their environment that all the nonshamans share, and they dictate the manner in which the Makuna interact with that environment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Beyond Nature and Culture by PHILIPPE DESCOLA. Copyright © 2013 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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