From the Enemy's Point of View

by Castro, Eduardo Batalha Viveiros De; Howard, C. V.; De Castro, Eduardo Viveiros

• ISBN13: 9780226858029
• ISBN10: 0226858022
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-07-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The Araweteacute; are one of the few Amazonian peoples who have maintained their cultural integrity in the face of the destructive forces of European imperialism. In this landmark study, anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro explains this phenomenon in terms of Araweteacute; social cosmology and ritual order. His analysis of the social and religious life of the Araweteacute;a Tupi-Guarani people of Eastern Amazoniafocuses on their concepts of personhood, death, and divinity. Building upon ethnographic description and interpretation, Viveiros de Castro addresses the central aspect of the Arawete's concept of divinityconsumptionshowing how its cannibalistic expression differs radically from traditional representations of other Amazonian societies. He situates the Araweteacute; in contemporary anthropology as a people whose vision of the world is complex, tragic, and dynamic, and whose society commands our attention for its extraordinary openness to exteriority and transformation. For the Araweteacute; the person is always in transition, an outlook expressed in the mythology of their gods, whose cannibalistic ways they imitate.From the Enemy's Point of Viewargues that current concepts of society as a discrete, bounded entity which maintains a difference between "interior" and "exterior" are wholly inappropriate in this and in many other Amazonian societies.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Translator's Note	xiii
Preface	xv
Note on Orthography	xix
Cosmology and Society	1	(29)
The Cannibal Gods	1	(5)
Living with the Arawete	6	(18)
The Tupi-Guarani Landscape	24	(6)
Approaching the Arawete	30	(28)
The Country	30	(4)
The Regional Context	34	(4)
The People	38	(10)
History	48	(10)
The Forsaken Ones	58	(34)
The Separation	58	(5)
Who's Who in the Cosmos	63	(11)
Gods and Spirits	74	(9)
Tupi-Guarani Cosmologies	83	(9)
The Frame of Life	92	(27)
The Year	92	(6)
The Village	98	(6)
A Day in the Dry Season	104	(5)
Difficulty at the Beginning	109	(10)
Nurture and Supernature	119	(23)
Mild Beer	119	(4)
Strong Beer	123	(10)
Meat and Honey	133	(4)
The Alimentary Forms of the Religious Life	137	(5)
Familiar Terms	142	(37)
The Mixture	142	(1)
Names	143	(12)
Relatives	155	(12)
Eluding Affinity	167	(12)
Birth, and Copulation, and Death	179	(36)
The Facts of Life	179	(12)
Passions	191	(5)
Death	196	(5)
Only the Bones Forget	201	(14)
Alien Words	215	(37)
The Marriage of Heaven and Earth	215	(3)
Shamanism and the Music of the Gods	218	(20)
Killers and the Music of Enemies	238	(10)
The Enemy's Point of View	248	(4)
Beings of Becoming	252	(21)
The Cannibal Cogito	252	(7)
Spiritual Dualism and Cosmological Triads	259	(10)
My Brother-in-law the Jaguar	269	(4)
The Anti-Narcissus	273	(36)
Vengeance and Sacrifice	273	(7)
A Rare Bird	280	(2)
On Dialogical Anthropophagy	282	(11)
The Anti-Social Contract	293	(8)
Eaters of Raw Flesh	301	(8)
Appendix 1-A: Arawete Villages in 1981--83	309	(3)
Appendix 1-B: List of Historical Arawete Villages	312	(2)
Appendix 2-A: Arawete Population	314	(7)
Appendix 2-B: Genealogies	321	(5)
Appendix 3: Botanical and Zoological Terms (English, Portuguese, Arawete, Latin)	326	(6)
Appendix 4: Glossary of Arawete Terms	332	(3)
Notes	335	(42)
Works Cited	377	(16)
Index	393