The Stench of Death and the Aromas of Life: The Poetics of Ways of Knowing and Sensory Process among Piaroa of the Orinoco Basin

The Piaroa are people, living along tributaries of the middle Orinoco, who recognize that the dance of every bodily process participates in a poisonous, primordial design of things. This paper explores the relation of sensory processes and the cosmic to Piaroa ways of knowing and doing their arts of the culinary. In so doing it is an expedition into ethnopoetics. My focus is upon the interplay of two contrasting narrative genres—the sublime and grotesque realism—as used by shamanic chanters to unfold the manifold ways in which bodily processes and sensory life are intimately involved in ways of knowing. The imagery of the sublime evokes the beautiful sensual capacities of the upper body, while that of grotesque realism dwells upon the poisonous expulsions, and openness, of the body’s nether parts. In both genres, bodily process is an important, often ambiguous, operator in the mastery of knowledge, and also in its loss. For Piaroa, human ways of knowing are always involved in the toxic, and thus are attached to the twinned processes of degeneration and regeneration. Poison, as an agent of transformation, is creative of life and it also can kill. Les Piaroa, qui vivent le long des affluents du moyen Orénoque, sont de ceux qui reconnaissent que la danse de chaque processus corporel participe du dessin primordial empoisonné des choses. Cette communication explore l’interrelation des processus des sens et du cosmique et les manières Piaroa de savoir et de faire les arts culinaires. Ce faisant, je ferai une expédition dans l’ethnopoétique. Cet exposé traitera de l’interaction de deux genres contrastés, le sublime et le réalisme grotesque, tels qu’utilisés par les chants chamaniques pour déployer les diverses façons par lesquelles les processus corporels et la vie sensorielle sont intimement impliqués dans les manières de percevoir. L’imagerie du sublime évoque les belles capacités sensuelles du haut du corps, tandis que le réalisme grotesque traite des expulsions empoisonnées et des ouvertures des parties inférieures du corps. Dans les deux genres, les processus corporels sont un important opérateur, souvent ambigu, de la maîtrise du savoir, et également de sa perte. Pour les Piaroa, les manières de savoir sont toujours impliquées dans le toxique, et donc associés aux processus jumelés de dégénération et régénération: le poison, en tant qu’agent de transformation, est créateur de vie et peut aussi tuer

Justice and the dark arts: law and shamanism in Amazonia

The idea of “law” as a regulating force external to individuals is rapidly gaining traction among Peruvian Urarina. Its uptake and mode of use have been guided by local forms of shamanic practice, reflecting the common basis of law and shamanism in ritual and violence. Yet despite people's best efforts to deploy law on their own terms—namely as a weapon through which a higher force or authority is harnessed to individual ends—law, unlike shamanism, is inherently unifying rather than fragmenting and implies a unitary standard of truth and justice that is inimical to Amazonian political cosmology. Law epitomizes the centralizing processes of the state, promoting a fragile peace but only by establishing a monopoly on violence