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On the little-known and darker side of shamanism there exists an ancient form of sorcery called kanaimÀ, a practice still observed among the Amerindians of the highlands of Guyana, Venezuela, and Brazil that involves the ritual stalking, mutilation, lingering death, and consumption of human victims. At once a memoir of cultural encounter and an ethnographic and historical investigation, this book offers a sustained, intimate look at kanaimÀ, its practitioners, their victims, and the reasons they give for their actions.
Neil L. Whitehead tells of his own involvement with kanaimÀ-including an attempt to kill him with poison-and relates the personal testimonies of kanaimÀ shamans, their potential victims, and the victims’ families. He then goes on to discuss the historical emergence of kanaimÀ, describing how, in the face of successive modern colonizing forces-missionaries, rubber gatherers, miners, and development agencies-the practice has become an assertion of native autonomy. His analysis explores the ways in which kanaimÀ mediates both national and international impacts on native peoples in the region and considers the significance of kanaimÀ for current accounts of shamanism and religious belief and for theories of war and violence.
KanaimÀ appears here as part of the wider lexicon of rebellious terror and exotic horror-alongside the cannibal, vampire, and zombie-that haunts the western imagination. Dark Shamans broadens discussions of violence and of the representation of primitive savagery by recasting both in the light of current debates on modernity and globalization.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Ethnographer's Tale 11
2. Tales of the Kanaima: Observers 41
3. Tales of the Kanaima: Participants 88
4. Shamanic Warfare 128
5. Modernity, Development, and Kanaima Violence 174
6. Ritual Violence and Magical Death in Amazonia 202
Conclusion: Anthropologies of Violence 245
Notes 253
Works Cited 285
Index 299
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Neil L. Whitehead is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author and editor of numerous books, most recently Beyond the Visible and the Material: The Amerindianization of Society in the Work of Peter RiviÈre (coedited with Laura Rival) and War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (coedited with R. B. Ferguson). He is the editor of the journal Ethnohistory.
