'Nature' does not exist for everyone

Achuar map of their territory.

In an interview with Phillipe Descola (earlier, earlier, earlier), published in the Tipiti journal, comes the following quote that is good to have on record as it explains how Descola came to see during his fieldwork with the Achuar that nature does not exist:

...what really made me marvel was the realization that, although the Achuar certainly recognized certain discontinuities between humans and non-humans, these discontinuities were radically different from our own. And this was a bit surprising in an expected way, but also in an unexpected one. I was expecting this because I’d read, of course, not only the South American ethnography, but also Tylor, Frazer, Durkheim and a few others pioneers of our discipline whose work was entirely devoted to resolve this bizarre scandal, that some people appear not to make distinctions between humans and non-humans. So, I was prepared to find that. I was prepared to find it at the level of, as we would say at the time, ‘representations’ at the level of ways of thinking about life. But I had no way of understanding how people would actually live with this idea and put it into practice, or really experience the world in this fashion. And this is the discovery. No? It’s not only what people say; their whole way of life revolved around the fact that they didn’t make a distinction between nature and society.

Jivaro shamanic chant

Drawn by a Jivaro shaman in trance 

The main part of this post is a Jivaro shamanic anent or sung incantation recorded by Philippe Descola and given in The Spears of Twilight (earlier). There is quite a bit of neo-hippie rubbish about on Amazonian shamanic practise but surely even the most severely confused and mentally disturbed middle class American seeking for spiritual redemption does not believe that his of her illness is caused by invisible darts propelled into your body by an enemy shaman. Darts that can only be removed through various voice operations (singing, blowing, sucking) of a drugged out shaman with the appropriate spirits under his belt. There is nothing lovely or tender or wishy-washy about Amazonian shamanic practise, its dark and dramatic, gothic materialism, it deals with death directly, uncosmetic and without excuses. I can imagine that a small, properly delivered, compendium of anents like these could become a underground classic. Anyway here it comes....  

Me, Tsumai [river spirits], Tsumai ....
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!
Tsumai, Tsumai...
Me, me, me, while I make my projectile penetrate
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I am in harmony
Making my Iwianch [spirits of the death] spirits rise up
I make them pas through the barrier of darts
I make them penetrate the wall of little arrows
Giving them an immediate way out
Leaving them a free passage
In this way I blow, me, me, me...
Launching my blown projectile
Submerging everything, saturating everything
I am blowing me, me, me...
Tarairira, tara, tariri-ri-ri-ri-ri
You the extraordinary one
Tarairira, tara, tariri-ri-ri-ri-ri
As remarkable as you are, I am blowing
Tsunki [river spirits], tsunki, my spirits I am summoning you
Violently leaving a path, I am blowing, I am blowing

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

Tsumai, Tsumai...

Me, me, me...

Like a river carrying away its bank, I cover everything with my flood, I overflow everywhere,
Unmoving on this very spot
Stretching into the depths, I am blowing
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. . .
Even when they are embedded, out of reach, I unhook the tsentsak [magic dart] with a dry tap, blowing
Clearing a path for myself, I completely beguile the stranger who has invited himself into your body, by blowing, by blowing, me, me, me, me, me, me!
Tarairira, tara, tariri
Tsumai, Tsumai...
Making my breath penetrate, making it desirable, I work hard to make them let go
I work to get rid of them completely, absolutely, by opening the exit
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!
Tsumai, Tsumai... me, me... rari ri ri, rari ri ri...
Supai, supai, supai, supai, supai, supai, me, me...
Like tsunki himself, I know how to speak, me,me, me...
In your head that is so painful, in your painful head
However embedded the pain is, I unhook it with a dry tap
Leaving you perfectly well, I sing and sing, I blow and blow
Tarairira, tara, tariri, me, me ... ri, ri, ri, ri
The pasuk from the entrails of the earth, him too I call, me, me, me
The death that I now ward off, I am brushing it away with my sheaf, proudly

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

Like the pasuk [shamanic helpers] of the great trees, like the pasuk all striped, I am in the grip of natem [Ayahuasca]
Unmoving, I wear the pasuk like a necklace and death itself I beguile, carrying it far away, me, me, me, me

Tarairira, tara...

Tsumai, Tsumai...
Relentlessly drawing the pasuk from the skies, all bleeding
Wearing it constantly around me like a necklace
Death itself I sweep away with me sheaf, that's what I do with the death that inhabits you, that's what I do to the death to which I reveal myself, me, me, me
Superpowerful me, me ... tsumai ... tarairira...
With the pasuk from the entrails of the earth, with the multicoloured pasuk I make myself a necklace
Unmoving, I pass you the necklace and, repairing your lack of appetite, me, me, me, I leave you well recomposed, me, me, me ... tsumai ... tsumai ...
Pasuk from the entrails of the earth, it is you that I summon
Multicoloured one, it is you that I call
It is to you that I speak and I carry off with me all the creatures of natem
That is what I do, me, me,me,me,me,me,me!
The one that is almost unreachable, that is the one I nevertheless wear as a necklace
Unmoving, I am here on the very spot where Tsunki is preparing to do his work, there where he will unleash the floods
My Iwianch spirits, I make them turn blue in my very soul, I make them turn blue
I make them come out quivering 'puririri!', me, me, me!
Tsumai, Tsumai... 

The one called Tsunki, I make him come in that flood that roars 'shakaa!'
Relentlessly I go, unleashing my flood in his very heart, the flood of my own river, ceaselessly summoning the flood, making the waters roar, I go padding on 

I have the power of rivers in flood, ceaselessly I call for the waters to overflow
Formidable I am, like the waves rolling on the pebbles, without respite ensuring my victory, all fragrant, all perfumed, I make Tsunki roll, me, me, me

Tsumai, Tsumai... 

I become like a porcupine, wearing spines like a necklace, clothing myself in quills, I am covered with them

Your very death, I shall chain it up faraway, confident of my fearlessness

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

Having summoned the soul that is here, I seize it and hold on to it firmly

In the golden ink I have spread myself

Imbued with my valour, I am proud of myself

All adorned with the necklace, all arrayed by the porcupine, I sweep away death with my sheaf of leaves, intrepid and confident.  

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

The one called the porcupines of the heavens, that is the one I seize to make a crown of darts and definitely make death draw back from your head

By the shivers I am seized, tsumai, tsumai...

To my call Tsunki has responded

In this golden pot where your soul was enclosed, boldly I make death flee

Dressing myself in new cloths, dressed all brand new, brought by the natem, I adorn myself with them as with a necklace, me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

Tsumai, Tsumai... 

You are girded by the bow of Iwianch spirits

Twisting and turning without cease, I summon death and seize it

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

I summon the Iwianch spirits relentlessly and my voice makes them tremble

I make them come , brushing with my sheaf of leaves so that they leave you in peace...

At first sight this anent, as a translated text to be read in silence, may appear repetitive and unwelcoming to read. But once you get it into it you soon notice that it builds up incredible tension as the shaman, at the same time curing and telling about his cure, demands the spirits he commands to come out and help him, accumulating power(s), with each new sentence rephrasing and elaborating on a theme brought up in the sentence before it. But the shaman is not reading aloud from a imaginary book, he is performing a ritual at the edge of several colliding planes of reality, with death lingering at each intersection. He sings, pauses and whistles a melody again, emits strange sounds, deep sighs from his gut, ventriqualistic grunts as if a pack of animals hides inside his chest. It's a jam,  a DaDa performance without chicanery.

Periodic derangement of the senses [the twilight zone]

The anthropologist as a young man.

'Systematic derangement of the senses' is how Rimbaud's described his method to get himself psyched out into states of enlarged poetic awareness. "Long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet". William Burroughs cited this as his aim when he wrote Naked Luch, only later with the cut-up can he be said to have fully achieved it. And in mechanized form as well.


The following quote is from Philippe Descola's study of the Achuar Jivaro 'The Spears of Twilight'. It maps wonderfully well onto Rimbaud's sensual derangement as a beneficial state. French anthropologists tend to be erudite intellectuals rather than data-obsessed fieldworkers and in this context the influence of a poète maudit on an ethnologist are actually well rehearsed. James Clifford's Ethnographic Surrealism goes a long way to explain how French anthropology is almost a fully surrealist study with Debord and Bataille hovering over it with all their intellectual dominance. The quote itself affirms the connection by linking the psychogeographic, synaesthetic effects of twilight with Baudelaire, but what aesthetics was Descola thinking of exactly?   

Submerged in its green monotones, nature here is not of the kind to inspire a painter. Only at twilight does it deploy its bad taste, in line with Baudelairean aesthetics, exceeding the artifice of the gaudiest of coloured images. The inhabitants of the forest become exceptionally agitated during this brief debauchery of colour. The animals of the daytime noisily prepare for sleep while the nocturnal species awaken for the hunt, their carnivorous appetites whetted. Smells are almost definable now, for the heat of the long late afternoon has given them a consistency that the sun can no longer dissipate. Dulled during the daytime by the uniformity of the of nature's stimulants, the sensual organs are suddenly assailed at dusk by a multiplicity of simultaneous perceptions that make it very difficult to discriminate between sight, sound, smell. Thanks to this brutal onslaught on the senses, the transition between day and night in the forest acquires a dimension of its own as if, for a brief moment just before the great void sleep takes over, the human body is no longer separate from its environment.

Further commenting on the monotonous jungle where time seems to be non-existent Descola manages to write about the virtues of the bugs and pains as a form of home-making:

Time seems to be standing still, with neither depth nor rhythm, waiting for something to happen. Biological routines are all that lend a small measure of animation to our uneventful existence. The changes that they bring sometimes introduce a note of originality. An asphyxiating spice, a pretty caterpillar that inflicts an acid burn, mosquitoes that prevent you from sleeping, jiggers that eat your legs and abdomen, infected insect bites that suppurate, lice that infests your head, athlete's foot that makes your feet stink, colic that wrenches your entrails - in short, all the minor infirmities customary to the tropics combine to draw attention to, as it were, the alien nature of our own bodies in which these successive aches and pains find a home.