Two Souls, Two Bodies: An Alternate Formulation of Amerindian Perspectivism (part 2)
This post is meant to be a sequel to my previous post that aimed to reconfigure Viveiros de Castro’s ontological matrix of Amerindian Perspectivism upon empirical grounds (primarily on the basis of Northwest Amazonian ethnographic materials). Here, I show how my reconfiguration of this matrix makes it such that Viveiros de Castro’s attempt to reread Amazonian thought in Deleuzian terms quite simply falls apart, as the specific mappings he is constructing between his theory of multinaturalism and Deleuzian ontology simply no longer hold. This is ultimately rooted in the fact that the theory of monoculturalism and multinaturalism does not in fact correspond to Amerindian theories of the soul and body: there are two types of souls and two types of bodies, not a single soul and a multiplicity of bodies (for the entire ‘matrix’ see my previous post).
My claim is that Deleuze’s ontology is based around a number of core asymmetries, ultimately rooted in two overarching conceptual principles, and that this “system” is carried over into Viveiros de Castro’s theory of Amerindian Perspectivism in Cannibal Metaphysics: first, the “reversal of Platonism,” which subordinates Identity to Difference, and Being to Becoming; second, “the pure and empty form of time,” the “pure series” which understands the asymmetrical time-vector as primary in the generation of the actual out of the virtual plane of intensive differences. The generation of the actual is itself an asymmetric process that, in the last instance, passes from virtual to actual and not vice versa (see EVC’s explicit claim in the text on “Virtual Affinity”). Periodic time is itself subordinated to linear time, paradigm to syntagm, and synchronic to diachronic. Understanding these asymmetries allows one to understand how Viveiros de Castro can allow his theory of Amerindian Perspectivism in “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism” to lock in to the Deleuzian ontology of Cannibal Metaphysics. “Monoculture” and “multinaturalism” is an asymmetrical duality that will itself be mapped on to Difference and Identity and the whole series of Deleuzian asymmetries.
How does this mapping work? For Viveiros de Castro, the “uniformity of souls” ultimately will take the form of the original uniformity of person-like beings that populated the mythic past as the domain of virtual, intensive differences. The mythic past is a “plane of transparency” in which humans and animals were not yet separated from each other (neither speciated nor individuated) and yet their differential characteristics were present in their names or types of clothing (whose patterns would correspond to the pelts of the animal bodies they would later become) and, as such, “virtual” and “intensive.” This plane of transparency is simultaneously a plane of pure transformation, as the mythic past is characterized by the capacity of beings to freely change their forms. It is also relational in so far as one must understand the ‘monocultural’ characteristics of the soul to be simultaneously rooted in the fact that every ‘I’ is ultimately only defined by another ‘I.’ This is the cannibal imperative, to draw spiritual substance from other ‘I’s’ in order to reaffirm one’s relation to the spiritual and mythic past.
In short, virtual is prior to actual, becoming to being, relations to terms, soul to body. As we move out of the mythic past, we enter - just as we leave the virtual for the actual - the realm of bodies. Here bodies become separated and “individuated” and thus ‘differencated’ (I’m purposely supplying the Deleuzian term here) as the mutli-natural domain. Yet the virtual stays under the surface as the pure field of relations that makes this process possible. As Viveiros de Castro will directly state in “Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects,” monoculturalism and multinaturalism should ultimately be understood in the same terms as ‘Monism=Pluralism’ (notice how tight that mapping is) where the ‘uniformity of souls’ will ultimately mean nothing but the ultimately purely relational and transformational character of a multiplicity of bodies understood in terms of their virtual grounds.[1]
What does this have to do with the concept of asymmetrical time? Key to Viveiros de Castro’s argument is that we should understand Amazonian thought not in terms of totemism - in Lévi-Strauss’s terms, synchronic homologies, and thus metaphorical relations, between social groups and natural species - but in terms of sacrifice, i.e. metonymical relations between human and non-humans (in Descola’s thinking, which EVC takes up here, the sacrificial relation becomes the basis of thinking about ‘animic’ relationships relationships of social contiguity between humans and non-humans both conceived as persons). In structuralist parlance, metonymic relations correspond to relationships of contiguity in a series (or syntagm) and are basically diachronic in character, whereas metaphorical relationships refer to relationships of similarity and have, in general, a more synchronic character. The distinction is the very basis of Viveiros de Castro’s notion of the ‘two Lévi-Strausses’ where one would be oriented to the abstract, homological relations at the level of the synchronic, while the other would be a ‘trickster Lévi-Strauss’ whose usage of ‘the transformation group’ would instead orient his thought towards ‘real Becomings.’ It’s exactly this Lévi-Strauss that is supposed to indicate Lévi-Strauss’s own “becoming-Amazonian.” Finally, we are posed the extraordinary claim that Amazonian myth should itself be seen as a “minor” mythology (of becomings and transformations) rather than a “major” mythology of synchronic paradigms.
Thus the following set of homologies is implicit in Viveiros de Castro:
Sacrifice:Totemism::Metonym:Metaphor::Trickster Lévi-Strauss:Rationalist Lévi-Strauss:Minor:Major.
They correspond with the Deleuzian series: virtual:actual::difference:identity::intensive:extensive:Becoming:Being.
Which finally correspond to:
monoculturalism:multinaturalism
Forget Lévi-Strauss’s continual insistence on the theme of periodicity in Amerindian myths, which are both synchronic and diachronic through their own recursive character, and which characterize “cold” societies who aim to subordinate events to structures, and forget the fact that the structural analysis of mythology’s main contribution in many ways was to see a greater primacy of the paradigm (not the syntagm) in the “language” that constitutes myth. In EVC’s hands, Amazonian thought is the “minor” mythology of pure linearities that celebrate the ever-new.
If this is indeed the mapping, then it can be seen that the system breaks apart as long as one no longer accepts monoculturalism and multinaturalism which should correspond to the entire series of asymmetrical binaries which itself affirms the linearity of time. Thus, if my last post is correct, and the soul and the body can in no way correspond to monoculturalism and multinaturalism, because in fact there are two overarching types of souls and two overarching bodies, themselves in correspondence, then we are fully outside of Deleuzianism. The system no longer locks in and we are free to consider Amazonian ontology in completely different terms.
[1] Concrete transformations actualize virtual possibilities existing in the mythic past.
Petroglyphs of animals at the cliffs of the Master of Animals (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997)