Two Souls, Two Bodies: An Alternate Formulation of Amerindian Perspectivism
A recent conversation during the Cosmic Alternatives summer school at the ISCI has made me want to try to rearticulate not only where I feel that Viveiros de Castro’s style of recursive comparison comes to falter in its capacity to capture alterity, but more specifically where I think his own formulation of Amerindian perspectivism ought to be readjusted on empirical grounds. By stating that I wish to reformulate it on empirical grounds I am not just trying to point out the merely abstract and hypothetical character of his formulation: rather, I want to see if there is empirical basis for coming up with a different, theoretical “matrix” of Amerindian thought, in this sense, in continuity with what he has tried to do in a text like “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism.” In other words, I think a different system of oppositions might hold than: culture:nature::one:many::given:produced::soul: body.
The problem that led me to this reformulation was the fact that EVC’s matrix depends on a soul/body opposition which is necessarily underelaborated, especially given the fact that, as Laura Rival has noted, “understanding of the soul and body in Amazonia is incipient” (Rival 2005). That was in 2005 but it would still seem relevant, especially if we take into account Whittaker’s more recent assessment of the varying and sometimes contradictory theories of the soul in Amazonia (Whittaker 2016).
In my recent MA thesis at UChicago, I argued that there were two types of souls in Northwest Amazonia. Though I did not realize it at the time, this is in direct contrast to the crucial component of Viveiros de Castro’s theory that there is a single kind of soul and a multiplicity of bodies, the basis of the theory of multinaturalism seen as an inversion of Western multiculturalism. I emphasize that I argued for there being two types of souls, for in Amazonia usually there are a multiplicity of souls concretely speaking. In fact, my argument was that all souls are made up of the single kind of life-force or luminescent energy that circulates through the cosmos. There can be multiple souls because there can be multiple ‘condensations’ of this life-force - for example, the Jivaro in Ecuador think of different souls inhabiting distinct organs (Descola 1986), which I would interpret as differently localized condensations of energy.
Nevertheless, the key distinction I argued for was between the shadow-soul and the vital soul, the latter of which could also be called the ornament-soul, because it appears as a beautified, colored, patterned surface in the manner of the ornamented body. The shadow-soul on the other hand is dark and gross and is assimilated to the animal or really demonic or “animalistic” (asocial, dangerous, etc.) body. The following analogy holds: vital soul:shadow-soul::ancestor:animal(-enemy)::light:dark::beautified:ugly.
We ought to add life/death, since the very distinction concerns the vital soul which encapsulates and makes visible the vital energy that passes through the cosmos, versus the shadow-soul which stands for the possibility of its loss. Vital soul and shadow-soul are both “souls” because they refer outside the person - the soul is an operator of differentiation. The soul is a relation to an other being, but when one is that being, what was a soul appears as a body. The relational character of the soul is expressed in the idea that the soul is an image, whose difference from its referent itself codes the differential relation at play. Often it is as if the image ‘hovers’ outside of oneself.
Thus, the soul might refer either to that animal component within oneself (but which is simultaneously “other”) that is mortal and destined-to-die or itself demonic, an agent of death, or to an immortal ancestor that one is also destined to become. So in fact the two souls correspond to two types of bodies, a beautified, vibrant, immortal, ancestral body (vital soul), or a demonic, dark, deathly, mortal animal(istic) body (shadow-soul).
The opposition soul/body is thus expanded into a four-term system of two souls and two bodies. Where does this leave “monoculture,” if we no longer have ‘a single type of soul’? At least in Northwest Amazonia, “animism” is indisputable: other beings and collectives may ‘appear as human’ or ‘see-themselves-as-human,’ though particularly, I would stress, in the contexts of ritual activity. The shaman visits the animals and sees them as human during their rituals and dances where they appear in beautiful ornaments. In donning those ornaments the animals seem to become their own prototypes, itself marked out by the specific patterns they wear, which themselves correspond to their pelts (in animal form). Since it is often said that animals both celebrate Yurupary ritual (ancestral rites, where people “become the ancestors”) and funeral rites, it would seem that we would have to understand animals as instantiating the same duality as humans: i.e. animals both live and die, and both have shadow-souls and ornament-souls.
Thus, this can also be imagined as a three-term system in which a ‘person’ (human or non-human in conventional sense) is ‘in-between’ both immortals and demons, vital soul and shadow-soul. Every being participates in this three-term system. In this sense we can accept “monoculture” - every being has culture - but not “multinaturalism,” if this would mean that there are a multiplicity of bodies (in relevant contrast to a single type of soul). More simply, soul/body no longer straightforwardly line up with culture/nature. Culture does still seem to have a “deictic” meaning, however, corresponding with the ‘us’ position of my own collective, as in Viveiros de Castro’s theory. Divergent perspectives still have to do with differential positioning in the eco-system, but are not exactly about having a distinct body.
The relevant point is the way a single life-force flows throughout the universe, while different beings are differentially positioned in terms of the capture and exchange of this life-force, thus in potentially antagonistic relations to each other: the life of one might mean the death of the other. Since these relations are intrinsic to persons (human or non-human in conventional sense), each person radiates out two kinds of souls, pointers to distinct ‘others,’ those immortals that endow them with life, or those “animals”(/enemies) (here, still, a relational position) that would cause them death.
Now, I do not think that the animal body will retain the priority here of signifying ‘the Other’ as it does in EVC’s system. Viveiros de Castro accepts a third-term, supernature, which would somewhat ambiguously refer to “spirits” or “spirits of the dead” but, at least in Cannibal Metaphysics, holds that the third term is ultimately derivative of the animal position. Human-like ancestral or immortal beings, he holds, ultimately derive from the position of animals (Viveiros de Castro 2009).
My claim is that self/other will no longer really correspond to human/animal, if by that we mean a human or animal body (I’m primarily thinking in terms of shape but this would include “affect”). Amongst the Desana for example many different animals, especially those who have a yellowy-white body-surface are considered “the Sun’s representatives” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1972). These beings, allied with the Sun who is the ancestor of the Desana, the “people of day” (Ibid.), are protectors of humans, essentially allied with them. These beings thus cannot be placed in ‘the Other’ or “enemy” position, even though they take on animal bodies. The same seems to be at play in the taking on of totemic emblems by Northwest Amazonian groups, for whom at death one often in fact takes the form of the totemic animal of the phratry, a vital soul, since it inhabits the immortal ancestral realm, but in animal form. One could maybe read this as a “totemic” element mixing with an “animic” ontology, in Descola’s terms, i.e. a case of direct resemblances being posited between humans and animals (or simple homologies, if we take Lévi-Strauss’s version of totemism) combined with, in another contexts, a relation of distinction between distinct kinds of physicality but “a single type of interiority.” However, given all that I’ve said, it seems more likely that we cannot really take this as an emic distinction. Rather, these protector animals and totemic animals are defined in relation to the ‘self’ because they relate to the self’s store of life-force, and are thus in consonance with the vital soul, while ‘others’ could take either human or animal form, such as dark, dangerous animals or human-shaped demons who threaten one’s own life.
Lastly, it will be noticed that to be on the vital-side does not require one to be a predator or a prey, and on the deathly side, the Other might be both prey or predator, a prey that may be killed and thus stands for the mortal body, or a predator who takes ones own life. Both might be dark shadow-souls. There are both solar, protector jaguars (self) and dark, jaguar demons (other), human conassociates (self) and human-shaped demons (other). Predator/prey does not correspond to human/animal as analogue of self/other: rather, becoming a predator oneself is just one way to stay “human” in the sense of preserving one’s life-energy. Most of all, self/other corresponds to light/dark, life/death.
Part 2, on Viveiros de Castro’s Deleuzianism
The Desana Master of Animals, in dark, yet “human” form (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1972)