Dividuality in Amazonia

Dividuality in Amazonia:God, the Devil, and theconstitution of personhood inWari Christianity

Aparecida V ilaca Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro

This article explores the Christian experience of the Wari, an Amazonian native group, in light of acentral feature of their personhood: its dual composition, both human and animal. Arguing that thecentrality of the relation with God has resulted in a more stable human person, the article providesan ethnographic examination of how this relation is produced and maintained. Analytic categoriesderived from the New Melanesian Ethnography the notions of the dividual and the partibleperson are applied to the Amazonian context, enabling a particular description of the Wari personand the Christian God, and the subsequent visualization of some key aspects of the relationshipbetween God and humans. Through this comparative exercise, the article looks to contribute to thedialogue between Amazonianists and Melanesianists that has been unfolding over the past decade orso. It also aims to insert Amazonian ethnography into the anthropological debate on Christianity,today strongly anchored in data and conceptual tools derived from Pacic societies in general andMelanesia in particular.

The missionary presenceFor five hundred years the indigenous peoples of the South American lowlands haveexperienced systematic contact with missionaries, overwhelmingly Catholic during thefirst centuries of colonization but joined since the mid-twentieth century by Protes-tants, the majority fundamentalist Evangelical Christians from the United States (seeKahn 1999). Yet despite the massive centuries-long presence of missions in the region,anthropological studies of the Christianization of these peoples seen from the nativepoint of view are relatively scarce.

As various scholars of the anthropology of Christianity have shown, following apioneering article by John Barker (1992), this lacuna is not limited to Amazonia as anethnographic region. Joel Robbins (2004) traces this oversight to the continuing influ-ence in the discipline of the Malinowskian myth of the primeval savage and to thehistorical rivalry between anthropologists and missionaries (Harding 2001; Van derGeest 1991), as well as to the relative absence, in anthropology, of conceptual tools forthinking about cultural change (see Viveiros de Castro 2002: 191). In the case ofChristianity, the situation is further complicated by the fact that this religion is thepredominant faith in the countries from which most anthropologists originate: theinterest in the exotic is incompatible with the study of Christianized natives (Cannell2006: 8; Gow 2009; Robbins 2007).

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 243-262 Royal Anthropological Institute 2011

This situation began to change over the last two decades with the production ofethnographies specifically dedicated to the topic, especially in the context of studies ofPacific regions, in particular Melanesia, which today provide the largest contribution todiscussion of the so-called anthropology of Christianity (see among others Barker1992; Cannell 2006; Engelke & Tomlinson 2006; Hefner 1993; Hirsch 1994; Keane 2007;Mosko 2001; 2010; Robbins 2004; B. Schieffelin 2007; E. Schieffelin 1981). Compared tothis output, the contribution made by Amazonian ethnology to this specific area ofstudy remains extremely modest, limited to isolatedmonographs (see Capiberibe 2007)and a few articles that have focused on the native perspective, most of them found inthree edited collections (Vilaa & Wright 2009b; Wright 1999; 2004; see also Pollock1993; Taylor 1981; Viveiros de Castro 1992b). Even here, though, with a few exceptions,the literature produced on Amazonian Christianity has failed to engage in any discus-sion with specialists from other regions (Robbins 2009), reflecting a general trendtowards regionalization of studies on native Christianity (see Treat 1996 for an examplerelating to the United States and Canada).

Establishing a broader dialogue is especially pressing in relation to the contemporarystudies of Melanesian Christianity, which have provoked an intense debate amongresearchers looking to produce more inclusive explanatory models for conversion,intended to be applicable to other ethnographic contexts.

The conversation between Amazonianists andMelanesianists has been unfolding forsome time (see Kelly 2001; 2005; Stasch 2009; Strathern 1999; 2001; 2009; Vilaa 2005;2009a; 2009b; Vilaa &Wright 2009a; Viveiros de Castro 1998; 2001; 2004), though theonly attempt to produce a systematic comparison between the two ethnographicregions to date namely the collection edited by Gregor and Tuzin, entitled Gender inAmazonia and Melanesia (2001) was limited to a specific topic, gender, which, asDescola (2001), one of the books contributors, observed in his chapter, has a differentweighting in each of these regions, playing a much more central role in the anthropo-logical understanding of Melanesian sociality. In Amazonia, as we shall see below andas various authors have already shown (Descola 2001: 108; Strathern 1999: 252-3;Viveiros de Castro 2000: 45 n. 39; 2002: 444 n. 7), this central place is occupied byrelations between humans and non-humans, more specifically the relation betweenhumans and animals.

I am not suggesting that the theme of Christianization can supplant that of genderrelations. The comparative perspective proposed in this article aims above all toadvance the dialogue between analytical concepts and tools developed by the regionalspecialists quoted above, and that has proven to bemore productive than the discussionon specific themes. My intention is for the results of this dialogue to be used system-atically to examine the intense processes of Christianization occurring in the tworegions.

In a recent work (Vilaa 2008; 2009a) I have looked to discuss Wari ethnography inlight of Joel Robbinss model (2004), based on the theories of Sahlins (1985; 2005[1992]) and Dumont (1983). My objective in this article is to explore another Melane-sian model of Christianization, based on the notions of dividuality and partibilityintroduced by the New Melanesian Ethnography (hereafter NME) and developed byMark Mosko (2010) in a recent article.1

The interest of this model for Amazonia resides firstly in the similarity between theNME conceptual tools and concepts produced independently on the basis of localethnographies, especially the idea of dualism in perpetual disequilibrium introduced

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by Lvi-Strauss (1995) and developed by Viveiros de Castro (2001). Applied to Amazo-nian Christianity here specifically the Wari experience these concepts also allow usto identify some important differences between Melanesian and Amazonian concep-tions of persons and relations in the Christian context. These emergemore clearly whenwe analyse the relationship between God and humans. I should emphasize, therefore,that this is a text about Amazonia and that my intention in pursuing the comparison isnot to seek out concrete ethnographic similarities between Christian practices in thetwo regions, but to highlight particular characteristics of the Wari relational worldthrough the use of a conceptual apparatus that, though not developed for this ethno-graphic region, strongly resonates with notions intrinsic to it.

The Wari, the missionaries, and conversionThe Wari are speakers of a Txapakura language inhabiting the state of Rondnia inSouthwestern Brazilian Amazonia. Today they number around 3,000 people living intwenty-three villages, most of them located along the Pacas Novos river and itsaffluents, the groups traditional territory. The Wari live off hunting, fishing, agricul-ture, and gathering, while some people are employed in the villages as teachers or healthworkers.

The first peaceful contacts with whites took place from 1956 onwards, involving theSPI (the Brazilian Indian Protection Service), US fundamentalist Protestant mission-aries from the New Tribes Mission (NTM), and representatives of the Catholic Church(for an ethnographic monograph on the history of the first contacts between theWariand the whites and their consequences for the peoples sociological, political, andeconomic organization, see Vilaa 2006; 2010).

As soon as contact was established, the missionaries focused their attention onlearning the native language and very soon began to preach the word of God.Accordingto one missionary, the Wari converted en masse in 1970 and remained convertedthroughout the decade, deconverting at the start of the 1980s. I cannot state with anyprecision what happened during this period, and the explanations will be necessarilyvaried. One of them, related to the arguments presented over the course of this article,is that the failure of Christianity to provide a long-term solution to a central dilemmaof Wari life, namely the instability of the human position, seems to have led them toabandon the Christian life in the past.2

However, since the 2001 revival prompted, theWari say, by the attack on theWorldTrade Center, which they were able to watch on the community television, and by thefear of an imminent end to the world (which would consign them to Hell) themajority of adults call themselves Christian and attend the services held four times perweek in the churches now located in all the larger villages. Missionary couples, most ofthem of mixed nationality (with one spouse American and the other Brazilian), still livein some of these bigger villages. In most villages, though, there are no missionaries andthe church services are conducted entirely by male native pastors in theWari language.

Various sections of the Bible have been translated by the missionaries with the helpof Wari informants. Books of Lessons have also been produced as teaching material(see McIlwain 1991). In these books, which form the main written material used in theWari church services, biblical citations are interspersed with the proselytism of themissionaries and followed by a set of questions to be answered by the church membersduring the service. There is also a hymn book containing American religious music,

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translated into both Portuguese and Wari. This is the most widely found writtenmaterial among the population.

The church services are attended by much of the population and have a fixedstructure: the hymns are followed by improvised prayers, spoken aloud, the reading ofa chapter from one of the five Books of Lessons, interspersed with explanatory com-ments and moral messages, followed by more prayers and hymns. Although variouspeople are literate, especially men between 20 and 40 years old, the Wari do notproduce any written religious texts.

Let us turn now to some questions from wider Amazonian ethnology. Here I shallfocus mainly on native notions of the body and transformation, essential to under-standing the process of producing kinship and, therefore, native relations with God,conceived as parent-child-type relations. This will allow us to formulate an Amazonianversion of dividuality.

Unstable bodies: humanity and animalityIn the 1970s, Americanist anthropologists began to draw attention to the centrality ofnative conceptions of the body and corporality in the constitution of persons and socialgroups. In the words of Seeger, Da Matta, and Viveiros de Castro (1979: 13) in apioneering work on the theme in Amazonia, indigenous socio-logics is based on aphysio-logics (1979: 13).

As the ethnographies show, the body is continually fabricated through alimentation,decoration, formal training, and even direct physical moulding in the case of newborns(see Conklin &Morgan 1996; McCallum 1996: 350-2; 2001: 27; Seeger 1980; Turner 1995;Vilaa 2002a). Defined in opposition to a genetically determined physical make-up,these native Amazonian conceptions of the body were compared to those described forother ethnographic regions in the studies of corporality that proliferated from the 1970sonwards, especially those centred on the notion of embodiment (Csordas 1990; 1994),inspired by Merleau-Pontys phenomenology (1964) and Bourdieus praxeology (1977).

However, there is one aspect of these bodies that differentiates them from themindful bodies or embodied minds (Lock & Scheper-Hughes 1987) described inanthropological works and yet has been little explored as a topic, even in Amazonianethnographies. This is the bodys unstable nature, its capacity for transformation,which indeed forms a constant focus of attention for native peoples. As I shall attemptto show briefly, this instability or transformative potential is related to an extendednotion of humanity, which includes not only the native peoples themselves but alsovarious animals and spirits. Here I shall take the Wari ethnography as my referencepoint (see Vilaa 2005 and 2009b for more detailed analyses).

The term body (kwere-) designates both the corporal substance/flesh (e.g. the bodyof a peccary or a monkey consumed as food) and a way of being. Thus someone maybe described as bad-tempered because his body is like that, or the peccary is said towander in bands because of its body. Even water and wind have bodies, giving themtheir own characteristics, such as the coldness of water or the angry blowing of thewind. In this sense, therefore, the idea of a way of being encompasses that of substancein indigenous conceptions of the body (see Viveiros de Castro 1998).

While everything that exists has a body, only humans those able to adopt theposition of subjects (see Viveiros de Castro 1998) possess a soul, jam-. Among themare theWari and their preferred prey: that is, their enemies and various animal species.All beings with jam- display the same cultural practices as theWari: they live in houses,

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hunt and roast their prey,make war, and perform festivals.What differentiates them aretheir bodies, since these imply different perspectives on the material world. Conse-quently, what each being perceives as a drink (or tokwa) for quotidian or ritual usevaries: for the Wari, this drink is maize chicha; for the jaguar, blood; and for the tapir,the clay on river shores. What matters, though, is that all humans use this drink in thesame way, offering it to their kin or, in fermented form, to festival guests.

These are not perspectives onto a universe that precedes them, as a relativist viewwould hold. As Viveiros de Castro observes in analysing Amerindian perspectivistontologies, here it is precisely the world, or nature, that functions as the variable, ratherthan culture, or social practice.While relativism identifies perspective as an attribute ofthe mind or spirit, in the Amerindian world a beings perspective or point of view is anattribute of its body (Viveiros de Castro 1998: 478).

Among the Wari, all beings with soul, jam-, perceive themselves as humans wari,a term that means we, person, human being and perceive other species as karawa,prey, food.3 The consequence of this extended notion of humanity and the location ofdifference in bodies, which are continually being produced, is that the Wari and otherAmazonian worlds are haunted by the peril of metamorphosis (see Viveiros de Castro2002: 391) an outcome of the relation with other types of subjectivities, especiallyanimals, which, through predation, capture people to live as members of their owngroup. The outcome of this capture is the transformation of the victim into an animalof the same species.

The most effective form of avoiding metamorphosis in Amazonia is the continuousassimilation of human bodies within the sphere of kinship relations, especially throughcommensality, speech, physical proximity, and other day-to-day interactions (see Ewart2008: 518). Consequently, this wider universe of subjectivities forms the background tothe production of kin through the fabrication of bodies, meaning that humanity isconceived to be produced out of others (see Vilaa 2002a; Viveiros de Castro 2001: 23).

In the words of Viveiros de Castro, the fabrication of the human body is based ona negativity: on a negation of the possibilities of the non-human body (1987 [1977]:32; also see Descola 2001: 108). The Trio Indians express this idea perfectly. Grotti tellsus that the Trio word for a mothers upbringing of a child means to undo the spidermonkey (2009: 115 n. 15).

Certain practices pervading the indigenous Amazonian worlds also make that pointclear. As I have shown on another occasion (Vilaa 2002a: 349), in a wide variety ofgroups, the fact that parents are humans is no guarantee of the childs humanity.Among the Piro, according to Gow (1997: 48), at the moment of birth the baby isinspected to decide whether or not it is human: it may be a fish, a tortoise, or anotheranimal.Among some groups, such as the Ge-speaking Panar (Ewart 2000: 287) and theTupi-Guarani-speaking Arawet (Viveiros de Castro 1986: 442; 1992a), Guayaki (Clas-tres 1972: 16), and Parakan (Fausto 2001: 396), the body of the child is literally mouldedby hand after birth, to differentiate it from the bodies of animals.

The couvade and other abstinence rituals clearly show that even this process ofdirectly moulding bodies fails to guarantee their human form. Though heavily markedduring the post-natal period, this ambivalence in identity occurs at various other timesduring a persons life. Infancy as a whole and even various periods of adult life(especially during initiation, first menstruation, warfare reclusion, and illness) areparticularly marked as highly susceptible, frequently taken to involve the possibility ofa loss of a properly human identity (see Da Matta 1976: 85-8; Lima 1995: 187; 2005;



Schaden 1962: 85-94; Viveiros de Castro 1986: 474; 1992a). Writing about the Suy,Seeger concludes: Severe illness, death, weakness, and sexuality are also transforma-tions of the social human beings into more animal-like beings (1981: 24).

The question of humanity is central to Amazonian socialities, and the human/non-human (or predator/prey) opposition ends up encompassing all others including thatof gender relations, which have an analogous centrality inMelanesian social worlds (seeDescola 2001: 108; Hugh-Jones 2001; Strathern 1999: 252-3; Viveiros de Castro 2000: 45n. 39; 2002: 444 n. 7) and comprises the key idiom for expressing difference in general(see Vilaa 1992; 2000).4

Dividuality and partibilityBefore examining the points of more direct interest to Wari Christianity, I wish todiscuss briefly the notions of dividuality and partibility as formulated in the pioneeringwork of Marilyn Strathern, The gender of the gift (1988).

Inspired by Marriots 1976 reference to South Asian theories of the person as a dividual or divisible (Marriot 1976: 111, in Strathern 1988: 348 n. 7), Strathern claimsthat Melanesian persons contain a generalized sociality within ... The singular personcan be imagined as a social microcosm (1988: 13). As the terms used synonymously byMarriot make clear, this dividual is above all a multiple person formed by relations thatcan be detached and incorporated by others.

However, when we turn to relations between persons or groups (taken as equivalentinsofar as each person contains the set of relations that characterize the group), thenotion of dividual refers not merely to the idea of a divisibility or multiplicity, but to aduality:

Although it is only in a unitary state that one can, in fact, join with another to form a pair, it isdyadically conceived relationships that are the source and outcome of action ... Social life consists ina constant movement from one state to another, from one type of sociality to another, from a unity... to that unity split or paired with respect to another ... [T]hat relation is sustained to the extent thateach party is irreducibly differentiated from the other (Strathern 1988: 14).

In Melanesia, Strathern continues, this differentiation is conceived through differencesin gender.5

In the one-is-many mode, each male or female form may be regarded as containing within it asuppressed composite identity ... In the dual mode, a male or a female can only encounter its oppositeif it has already discarded the reasons for its own internal differentiation: thus a dividual androgyneis rendered an individual in relation to a counterpart individual ... [W]hat was half a person becomesone of a pair (Strathern 1988: 14-15, 275; 1998: 117, 135 n. 10).

In sum, the notion of dividual contains the idea both of multiplicity, emphasizing itas a composite of multiple relations and above all its capacity for decomposition, andof duality (see Strathern 1988: 275-6), insofar as different multiplicities relate to eachother in the form of pairs, whether internally (as the dividual) or externally, in the formof two individuals (as decomposed dividuals) different from each other but togetherreconstituting the pair. It is in the presence of the Other, experienced as an opposite,that the person is individualized through the eclipsing of one of its two aspects precisely the aspect represented by this Other.6

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As I mentioned earlier, application of the Melanesian model of the dividual to theAmazonian context is particularly productive given its affinities to a concept elaboratedby Lvi-Strauss (1995) in the context of Americanist ethnology: namely the idea ofdualism in perpetual disequilibrium, a logical principle that implies an ordering of theworld into stable pairs that become successively differentiated.7 Lvi-Strauss argues thatNative American peoples ascribe a negative value to identity, which has the power toparalyse the societys system of reproduction. Thus each position or category demandsits opposite, such that the notion of compatriot, for example, is unthinkable withoutthat of foreigner or enemy. As Viveiros de Castro has shown in a work exploring theLvi-Straussian notion of dualism and relating it explicitly to the Melanesian model ofthe person, this dichotomy is reproduced at all levels of the system from the collectiveto the individual following a fractal model (2001: 19; see Kelly 2005). Thus compatriotsare themselves differentiated into affines and consanguines, the latter into same-sex orcross-sex siblings (or between younger and older ones), until we arrive at the individualwho, as Viveiros de Castro shows, is not so much an individual (2001: 25) as a dividual(2001: 33), constituted by a body and a soul, the former comprising the compatriot orconsanguine pole, and the latter the enemy or affine pole. In the kinship productionprocess analysed by Viveiros de Castro in this article, the affine pole is systematicallyeclipsed never eliminated at the different levels of the fractal model. It is thepersistence of affinity that explains the instability of this dualism, producing new pairsin a continuous (and infinite) movement of extracting affinity.

In contrast to Melanesia, where gender categories constitute one of the main prin-ciples of differentiation, in Amazonia, as the authors cited above have shown, the pairsof opposites are constituted at different levels by configurations of the human/non-human opposition (which includes the compatriot/enemy and consanguine/affineoppositions).

Theconceptsof dividualordualpersonelaborated inthe tworegionsshareanessentialfeature of their dynamic: the fact that relations are based on difference. The words ofViveiros de Castro on Amazonia resonate with those of Strathern (1988: 14) cited above:So the cardinal rule of this ontology is: no relation without differentiation. In socio-practical terms, this means that the parties to any relationship are related insofar as theyare different from one another. They are related through their difference, and becomedifferent as they engage in their relationship (Viveiros de Castro 2001: 25-6).8

Moving on quickly, we could say, based on the ethnographic data presented above,that in theWari case the person is a dividual constituted by two components: wari andkarawa, which have the double sense of human and animal, predator and prey. Theproduction of kinship via the flux of elements conceived as constituent parts of theirbodies (kwere-), such as semen, sweat, speech, care, affection, and the sharing of food,is ultimately based on the relation between the Wari and animals, both internallyconstituted as wari and karawa. The Wari are produced as humans by differentiatingthemselves from animals/prey, who in their confrontation with theWari are producedas animals/prey and their human component is eclipsed. The dividual wari-karawapair ceases to be internal to one person and instead characterizes theWari-animal pair,in line with the NMEmodel. It is important to add that the result of any confrontationmay be precisely the opposite: the animal preys on the Wari, assuming the predatorposition, wari, and turning its victim into a karawa (see Lima 1996 on the Yudj/Juruna). The persons posthumous destiny will be to live among the animals, acquiringa body like theirs and constituting a new family among them.



Let us see how the human-animal/predator-prey duality determines the Wari rela-tionship with God.

GodIn the beginning there was no God or, more precisely, there was no beginning. Thesurprise that, according to Wari accounts, marked the first phase of religious teachingwas connected to the complete absence of divine figures in the traditional cosmologyand above all to the lack of anything like a cosmogony. The beings populating theuniverse, whether animate or inanimate, have always existed, meaning that whatappears to us as a fundamental question creation was never apparently an issue forWari philosophy (see Vilaa 1997; 2002b; 2009a: 155).

Given the absence of mythic figures that could be associated with the Christiandivinity, one of the common practices of missionary translation, God was called IriJam, or true spirit/soul. The Wari also refer to him as our[-inclusive]-father, kotere,and commonly use the composite phrase kotere Iri Jam.

I do not know what happened between these first moments at the start of the 1960sand the mass conversion of the Wari in the 1970s. When asked about this movement,they usually say that collective life among Christians was seen to be more peaceful, withno sorcery or fights, and that their diet had expanded since people were now able to eatany kind of animal without fear of becoming ill (from counter-predation by theanimals). They also mention their growing fear of hell. All of these factors are related tothe Wari interest in avoiding the position of prey, a desire made clear in their take onthe idea of divine creation narrated in the first book of Genesis.9

After creating heaven, earth, and all the animals, God, according to theWari versionof the Book of Genesis (1. 26), said:

Let us make people who are similar to us. He will be the leader/chief (taramaxikon) of all the fish andbirds and all the strange animals. He will be the leader of all of the earth too. He will be the leader ofall the strange animals who crawl across the earth. This is what he said.

Another verse is also revealing: Eat all the animals, all the birds, and all the strangeanimals that crawl across the earth as well (Genesis 1. 30).

Divine creation, by determining that animals are prey only, de-subjectivizes them,constituting theWari as predators and therefore as the sole humans. From positions tobe adopted within a relation of mutual opposition,wari and karawa become categoriesat the moment when the Wari accept and identify with the divine perspective (seeVilaa 2009a: 154-5).10

PrayingTheWari insist that all church services must begin and end with hymns and prayers inwhich worshippers express their recognition of divine creation. One hymn, sung in theWari language at the beginning of one service, is entitled Admiration:

We admire you for your strengthFor making all the animalsFor making the sun, stars, and moon in the pastAll the things that exist on earth ...

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After the hymns come the prayers spoken out loud by anyone who wishes to do so.In the different church services I attended and on the prayer days, the theme is invari-ably admiration for creation, supplemented by a few other topics, discussed below.Here is an example:

We admire you for all the animals/things you gave us, God.We admire you for the water you gave ustoo. We admire you for the trees, honey, all the strange honeys [which are not eaten], all the animalswe eat. There are also the strange animals that we dont eat. They existed with your word. That is yourstrength.

Some prayers, mixed with others, mention the sending of Jesus as another one of Godsgifts:11 We admire you for the one you sent down to speak with us. Who collected oursins from us. He died in our place. Your son of a long time ago. This is why your sondied .... Through this and other prayers, theWari clearly express the idea that the effectof Jesus coming was to wipe out their sins, a term translated as anger or rage (kakarakat wa). Indeed, sin effectively involves an animal becoming, since the principaleffect of anger is to prevent the enraged person from recognizing kin and co-residentsas fully human.12

Another divine gift, Gods spirit, has the same effect of quelling anger, as one of theprayers shows: It is Gods spirit that stays very close to us. Thats why we bear no angeragainst each other. The capacity to hear/understand is central to receiving the divinegifts. In various prayers the Wari ask God for the capacity to hear/understand well:

We are very content to be listening to your speech today.Its your speech were hearing today.Were there other speech for us to hear ... [i.e. there is no other speech worth hearing]

The central point of these prayers is the display to God of the identification withhim, enabled by receiving his gifts, Gods belongings (oro menekun Iri Jam), as theWari say. The prayer below highlights the importance of God being aware of theirrecognition:

We [inclusive] admire you for all the animals/things you gave us.We admire you for all the animals/things we eat and for all those we dont eat [which today are few,but include vultures and snakes].Perhaps this way youll know that we admire you greatly every day.

We should note that the continual demonstration that the person is receiving andsharing a new perspective or point of view is precisely the attitude parents expect fromtheir children, which is related, as I stated above, to the fact that children are particu-larly prone to attraction by other subjectivities, especially animals, which can result intheir transformation into an animal (equivalent to adopting the animals wari per-spective). People who are without appetite, lazy, or particularly sad may be undergoinga process of transformation that needs to be reversed. Hence people are continuallyattentive to each others signs of vitality, especially those of close kin, which areexpressed not only in bodily form (as their degree of fatness, movement, etc.) but alsoin their speech and capacity to listen. Children who begin to speak properly show theyare capable of understanding what is said to them, confirming that they are graduallybecoming Wari children. People undergoing transformation are unable to hear: they



are deaf precisely because they are listening to the voices of other people calling them(see Kelly in press: 188 for a similar notion among the Yanomami; see also Ewart 2008:511). Their speech is also unintelligible. Another important sign is refusing food, whichreveals that the person now sees the food of other beings as real food drinking bloodas though it were maize beer, for example (see Taylor 2007: 152 for the Jivaro Achuar; fora description of what constitutes proper childrens speech in Bosavi, Papua NewGuinea, see B. Schieffelin 2007; 2008).13

The centrality of bodily processes in the production of consubstantiality/kinshipbecomes clear not only through the emphasis given to bodily constituents, includinghabits, among the items created by God (water, animals, honey, trees for the construc-tion of houses, etc.) or transformed by him (such as anger, which is a bodily attribute),14

but especially through the clear association between divine speech and food, as in thefollowing prayer: This is why Gods speech exists. So we can work on it much. This iswhat makes our spirit satisfied [as with food]. Its as though we ate Gods word. Thisis evidently not an original association given that the Bible and missionary doctrine arefull of these kinds of allegories: the word of God feeds, satisfies (see, e.g., in Mathew 4.4 and John 6. 35; see also Robbins 2004: 264-6 for the same equation among theUrapmin, and Rafael 2001: 24 for the Tagalogs of the Philippines). But even though theWari did not invent the association between the word of God and food, the biblicalconception seems to have fallen on fertile soil, given that for theWari food and the actof eating are fundamental mediators of relations, both constituting and defining them.Feeding others is essential to the constitution of kinship and a central aspect of therelation between parents and children.

We can conclude that sharing the divine perspective the viewpoint that sees theWari as eternal predators and never as prey involves a process of consubstantializa-tion resulting from a flow of gifts in one specific direction: from God to humans. Thesegifts constitute the bodies of the Wari in the image of God.

In contrast to the Melanesian context analysed by Mosko (2010), the counter-giftfrom the Wari for these divine gifts does not take the form of gifts of the same kind,primarily because while divine gifts produce a visible effect on the Wari person, theinverse effect is not symmetrical: Gods make-up is not affected by the Wari in thesame way. In the words of onemans prayer: You [God] are a true person (iri wari).We[exclusive] are not that much like you. Give us your good things.15

Similarly, childrens acts have a limited effect on the constitution of the bodies oftheir parents in comparison to the effects that the latters actions can have on theirchildren (on this asymmetry, seeMcCallum 1996 on the Kaxinawa,Gow 1993: 333 on thePiro, and Fausto 2008; see also Rafael 2001: 128 for the Tagalogs of the Philippines).16 Iwould point out, though, that the effects are asymmetrical, not null. A child may, forexample, involuntarily provoke sadness in his or her parents by becoming sick, whichmay in turn make them sick as well. As for God, during the period when they quitChristianity, the Wari used to say that sin could provoke divine anger, sometimesleading to the sudden death of the sinner, or, in other words, God could act as apredator vis--vis the Wari. Here we can observe a clear asymmetry: while God canturn the Wari into his prey just as, in the opposite direction, he controls the processof consubstantialization the Wari lack this capacity in relation to God, who nevertakes on the position of prey to themselves (see Kelly 2001; 2005: 125, 131 on the peculiarcharacteristics of divinities in Amazonia). Currently this effect has beenminimized andGods feeling in relation to the Wari is overwhelmingly positive and loving.17

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We could say, therefore, that while the continual prestation by humans of prayer,guitar playing, hand-clapping, testimonials, hymns, thanksgiving, and sermons asoccurs among the Karavar according to Moskos reading of Errington and Gewertzs1995 work (Mosko 2010: 222-3) to some extent elicits the flow of divine gifts, for theWari this offering primarily involves a recognition of the gifts received. In other words,what the Wari offer God is confirmation of their new perspective. By insistentlydisplaying their recognition of divine gifts, such as the creation of the world, animals,and themselves, the Wari reveal that the process of consubstantialization is provingsuccessful and that they now see the world according to the divine perspective.

Hence, it is as if the act of divine creation and the adoption of Gods perspectivethrough a process of consubstantialization created persons, Christians, in a state ofpermanent individualization (in the sense of the NME): in other words, personsstabilized in the predator position without the need for oppositional relations to eclipsetheir prey/animal component. The dividual ceases to exist since it can only be com-prehended as a moment of a cycle in which dividual and individual alternate (inaccordance with Stratherns formulation). The Wari dividual makes no sense withoutthe animal as a dividual. It means that an important problem for the Wari, theirinstability as humans, apparently disappears when they see themselves as Christians.The Christian Wari person seems to be indeed a transformed person.

But the Wari know full well that things are not so simple: in other words, theycontinue to experience life to be pervaded by the danger of animalization (when theybecome the prey of animals and other humans through sorcery), although the asso-ciation with God comprises a very efficient tool for minimizing this risk. If this threatremains present for Christians, thereby denoting the continuity of the dual person, wehave to search for its opposite term: that is, the term with which the Wari contrastthemselves in order to decompose themselves and eclipse their animal side. In otherwords, we have to locate the place where the agency of animals is now deposited, theirhuman aspect, which recomposes them as dividual and fully relational beings.

The DevilToday when a person becomes sick and this sickness is associated with the ingestion ofsome animal, or the hunting activity itself, the Wari say that the Devil entered theanimal andmade it act in a vengeful way.As oneman said: It is the Devil that joins withthe animal spirit or Animal spirits dont exist, its the Devil that enters them.18

The Devil, then, corresponds to the wari side of the animals, who thereby constitutethe Wari, their victims, as prey, karawa. They also say that the Devil raises them likepeople raise chicks, feeding and caring for them, prior to eating them. The transfor-mation of theWari into prey by the Devil emerges in clear form in their conception ofhell, the house of the Devil, a place where bodies remain in a process of eternal roasting,like prey that are never released from this state (see Vilaa 2009a: 158-9).

The relation of theWari to God is conceived in opposition to their relation with theDevil, just as kinship within the local group is inconceivable without the dialogue withanimal subjectivities. This is made explicit in various prayers and commentaries, as inthis remark made by a man during the church service:

Wow! The Devil doesnt want us to escape at all. He doesnt like us being with God. He says: stay faraway from God!

He hates all Gods things. He really doesnt like Gods things. Thats why Gods word is incom-prehensible to us [when we listen to what the Devil says]



In many of their prayers, theWari ask God to make them deaf to the calls of the Devil,translated as kaxikon jam, damned spirit.

In summary, the presence of the Devil, by reconstituting the dividual nature ofanimals, also reconstitutes the dividuality of the Wari, enabling relations with God tobe modelled on the consubstantialization of children by parents and effected throughan opposition. However, the Devil is associated with God in an even more direct way inthe biblical episode of the conflict with Lucifer and his departure. In the Wari readingof the Bible, the Devil is conceived to be part of the divine person or, we could say, amember of his kingroup, having been created by God and lived with him intensely inheaven before rebelling and moving away like a kinsman who becomes an enemy. AstheWari say: Kaxikon jam, Lucifer, was raised by God until he decided that he did notwant God to be the taramaxikon (chief) and therefore came to earth and taught theWari to disobey.

This reading allows us to suggest that, according to the Wari logic explored here,God was originally a dividual before detaching his animal component, karawa, theDevil. The latter then reconstituted the human pole of animals, acting as a typicaltrickster figure by undoing the acts of the creator: that is, by restoring to animals theagency that had been taken from them by God.We can also note that other Amerindiangroups conceive the relation between God and the Devil in similar fashion, as relatedopposed terms.19 According to Fausto (2007: 90), the Apapocuva (Guarani) claim thatNhanderu, a divinity associated with the Christian God, emerged from the darknessalong with his antitheses, cannibal beings denominated the Eternal Bats. Santos-Granero writes, [I]n the Yanesha myth of creation God and the Devil appear as rivalclassificatory brothers, and creation itself as the result of their interpersonal competi-tion of wills (2007: 68 n. 2).

The power of God, as proclaimed extensively in Wari prayers, is related precisely tohis being purely human, never assuming the prey/karawa position, and, for this reason,immortal. Gods invisibility, frequently recalled by the Wari (and other Amazonianpeople, such as the Piro, according to Gow 2006: 221, and the Paumari, according toBonilla 2009: 139), comprises one mark of his difference. Given the complexity of theWari concept of the body, I suggest that this invisibility is not related exactly to anabsence of a body (although the Wari usually express it this way), since, as we haveseen, the Wari concept of body refers much more to a way of being than a substance.What it seems to say, rather, is that Gods body is not constituted by relations, since itis not visibly affected by them.20

ConclusionThis exercise, in which analytic categories derived from the New Melanesian Ethnog-raphy have been applied to the Amazonian context, has enabled a particular descriptionof theWari person and of the Christian God, and the subsequent visualization of somekey aspects of the relation between God and humans.

We have concluded that this relation is analogous to the one between a parent andchild, effected through a process of consubstantialization via a continuous flow ofbodily components (including speech, acts of caring, etc.) in the parent-child direction,which lead to the humanization of the child through identification with the parent.This process of consubstantialization cannot be conceived outside of the most wide-reaching oppositional relation with other subjectivities, represented in the pre-Christian world by animals. Both animals and the Wari are conceived as dual persons,

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wari and karawa, which are individualized (decomposed) in the context of the rela-tion, when one of the dividuals components is eclipsed in the confrontation with theopposite term.

With the arrival of God and his act of creation narrated in Genesis, the animals werede-subjectivized. None the less, as commonly found among Evangelicals in general, forthe Wari the divine figure cannot be conceived without its opposite, the Devil (seeMeyer 1998 for the Pentecostals in Ghana), who, like the tricksters typical of Amazonianmyths, undoes the actions of the creator by restoring the human aspect to animals. Byreconstituting the dividuality of animals, the Devil also reconstitutes the dividuality ofthe Wari, who, despite the divine act, retain their animal/prey component, capable ofbeing actualized at any moment. It means that the relation between the Wari and Godmaintains the idea of the differentiation (in this case, humanization) through opposi-tion (to dividual animals) described for the pre-Christian context.

By identifying with God, the Wari seek to become capable of performing an irre-versible individualization, fixing themselves in the position of predator, which wouldimply the end of the constant threat of metamorphosis into an Other an animal.Unable to achieve this result in life, it becomes concretized in heaven, which is when thedanger of predation and transformation ceases to exist, as we will see below.

This analytic exercise has also enabled us to ascertain that the asymmetry betweenwhat is offered in one direction (from God to humans) and the other the sameasymmetry we see in the exchanges between parents and children requires a degree ofcaution in how we apply the concept of gift and exchange in the Melanesian sense where gifts affect both the donor and the recipient and are, ideally, equivalent21 to theAmazonian context (see Kelly 2005: 131-2).

The asymmetry of our model is not limited, though, to the gifts circulating inopposite directions. The two fundamental types of exchange that we have identified inthe context of Wari Christianity the exchange between God and humans and thatbetween humans/God and animals/Devil are also asymmetrical. The latter type ofexchange results in differentiation and encompasses the former, where the objective isidentification. In other words, identification takes differentiation as its reference ortarget, such that it cannot be conceived independently.22 As I argued above, the relationbetween parents and children, or between God and humans, is determined by therelation between humans and animals/the Devil.

To conclude, I wish to return briefly to Moskos point of departure, namely hiscritique of the idea present in the works cited in his analysis of an intrinsicassociation between individualism and Christianity. For Mosko (2010: 219-20), thecentral characteristic of the individual bounded persons who populate the juridical-economic Euro-American world is their non-divisibility, which makes them distinctfrom the things they transact.23 While in that specific domain of the Euro-Americanuniverse transactions occur between persons via things/objects defined as alienableproperties, in the Christian world whether Euro-American or Melanesian exchangeoccurs between persons via unalienable properties, conceived as detachable parts of thepersons involved. In this sense, Christian persons in Melanesia and Euro-Americawould both look muchmore like traditional Melanesian partible/dividual persons thanlike the bounded juridical-economic Euro-American individual.

The Wari data oblige us to introduce a further distinction into this model when wetake into consideration their conception of heaven, which shows that although they donot experience Christianity as individuals (because of the Devil), they conceive the



Christian ideal world to be populated by individuals, both in the NMEs sense and inthe Euro-American sense of bounded persons. As we have already seen, celestialpersons, as they no longer undergo any kind of transformation, are only ever wari:their karawa pole is eclipsed irrespective of any relational act of differentiation. Theybecome eternal individuals. It is interesting, therefore, that they equate this individu-alization as the annulment of a potential transformation with a Euro-Americanversion of individualism.

In heaven, the Wari say, everyone is a brother or sister to everyone else. However,each person lives in a separate house and does not interact with anyone else, only withGod, through his words, which they write down ceaselessly. In contrast to life, wherekinship is constituted through daily acts of caring, commensality, and physical prox-imity, in heaven kinship dispenses with these acts: people do not meet, eat, or speak.Although beautiful and young, they are isolated and sterile: they do not know how toproduce people (see Overing 1993: 204 on the infertility of the dead in Amazonia).

What looks like a caricature of the Euro-American individual projected onto heavenactually seems to be related to the particular understanding by the Wari of the modelof person brought to them by American fundamentalist Protestant missionaries. Theirattention seems to have been attracted in particular to the physical isolation, thepre-given generalized brotherhood rather than their own differentiated and con-structed kinship, the priority given to the relation with God and the emphasis onsolitary writing. Heaven, being the place of ideal Christians, is inhabited by a Wariversion of individuals, which suggests that in contrast to what happens among someMelanesian groups, according to Moskos model, the Wari do associate Christianityand individualism (see Vilaa 2007).24

However, although they seem to take Christianity and Euro-American individualismto be indissociable, they also hold that they cannot experience it in life, opting totransfer it to a posthumous world. Why?

The fact that they describe the celestial inhabitants as sterile beings, who do notmarry or have any children, confirms Lvi-Strausss (1995) conclusion concerning therelation established by native American peoples between identity (individualism being,in both the NME and Euro-American acceptation, a self-identity) and sterility, insofaras the system becomes unable to reproduce itself. In this sense, although such anincompatibility does not place the Wari in moral conflict as happens among theUrapmin of Papua New Guinea analysed by Robbins (2004), it does reveal a limit to thepossibility of ontological transformation implied when they adopt the Christian view:while alive, they can never become proper individuals, in any sense of the term, sinceanimals insist on acting as humans, turning theWari into prey and thus confusing thesubject/object distinction made by God.When they die and become pure subjects, theyrealize they will not be humans any more since pure subjects, being sterile and non-relational, are something other than human beings.

NOTES

I would like to thank Mark Mosko for his comments on the very first version of this article, which waslater presented as a seminar at the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York Univer-sity. I thank all the professors and students present for the vivid discussion, especially Bambi Schieffelin forher detailed comments. I am grateful to Joel Robbins and Marilyn Strathern for their reading and com-ments, as well as Luiz Fernando Duarte and the students at the Christianity seminar at PPGAS/MuseuNacional in 2009. I also thank Matthew Engelke, Simon Coleman, and the anonymous reviewers of the

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JRAI for their comments and suggestions. My thanks to David Rodgers for the English translation. Myfieldwork among the Wari was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the John Simon GuggenheimMemorial Foundation.

1 Moskos central argument (2010) concerns the persistence of a notion of the partible and dividual personboth in diverse Christian contexts inMelanesia and in Euro-American Christianity. His re-analysis of variousethnographies drew a strong reaction from the authors involved, published as comments to his article in anissue of the same journal (Barker 2010; Errington & Gewertz 2010; Knauft 2010; Robbins 2010). I shouldimmediately point out that it is not my objective to enter this discussion, except for a brief comment in theconclusion.My focus is onWari ethnography and my interest lies in exploring the possibilities offered by theuse of these theoretical tools in comprehending their experience of Christianity.

2 The inconstancy of conversion in Amazonia is finely analysed by Viveiros de Castro (1992b; 2002) in hiswork on the sixteenth-century Tupinamb of coastal Brazil. See also Gow (2006) and Pollock (1993). On casesof long-lasting conversion in this ethnographic region, see Capiberibe (2007) and Oliveira (2010).

3 The category enemy, wijam, in which both indigenous enemies and the whites are included, is asub-species of karawa.

4 In several Amazonian groups, gender distinctions tend to be conceived as human-animal or predator-prey oppositions (Taylor 2000: 314-16; pers. comm., 2004).

5 In Gells words: [A]ll terms of relations in M [Stratherns model] are gendered (1997: 36).6 See Gell, for whom eclipsing implies that the prior set of relations are still implicit, though latent (1997:

43). Although the concept of the dividual has these two aspects, multiple-partible and dual, Mosko, in hismodel for Melanesian Christianity, concentrates on the former (2010: 215, 218-19) in arguing that in theChristian context persons and divinities are not conceived as individuals, in the sense of bounded persons(opposed to the decomposed person formulated by Strathern), since they relate to each other through theexchange of detachable parts of themselves (conceived as a gift exchange) (2010: 220). Moskos argumentagainst this individualist view of Christianity forms the core of his article, a question to which I return in theconclusion. For a distinct approach to the dividual/individual contrast, see LiPuma (1998).

7 This concept is a development of the notion of concentric dualism elaborated by the author in Lvi-Strauss (1963).

8 Given the proximity between these models, I should explain why I refer more directly here to itsformulation by the NME. The most important reason is the central place given in Stratherns analysis (1988)to external agency and its effect on the obviation of one of the components of the dividual that is, on theprocess she calls individualization. As we shall see, this process is essential to my own analysis.

9 See Lepri (2003: 219) for the same interest in the Book of Genesis among the Ese Ejja of Bolivia.10 See also Keane (2007) on the relation between Christianity (and modernity) and the process named by

Latour (1993) as purification, specifically the clear differentiation between subjects and objects.11 What we can observe is that theWari, like several other native Evangelicals, relate directly with God and

not with Jesus. I thank Joel Robbins for reminding me of this point. I use the term gift here to draw a parallelof sorts with Moskos analysis of Melanesian Christian exchanges (2010: 221-31). As we shall see below, it doesnot coincide with the Melanesian concept, which cannot be applied to Amazonia without many provisos (seeViveiros de Castro 2002: 388).

12 For an example of the alteration of a subjects perspective through anger, see Viveiros de Castro (2002:278-9) on the Arawet killer.

13 The fact that the hymns primarily reveal the adoption of a new perspective allows us to compare themto Amazonian songs related to warfare, such as those sung by the Arawet (Amazonia) killer, whose perspec-tive merges with that of the dead enemy (Viveiros de Castro 1992a; 2002: 274-8). Gow (2006: 231) associatesthe Christian hymns of the Piro with their shamanic songs for the same reason: in both the singer is alteredby adoption of the Others viewpoint.

14 See also Grotti (2009) on the Trio and Akuriy, and Bonilla (2009) on the Paumari.15 See the same conception among the Ese Ejja, for whom [Gods] will is not affected by human actions,

but he gives them salvation out of love (Lepri 2003: 232).16 Strathern (1998: 120) in an article on new economic forms in Papua New Guinea, inspired by an article

by Gregory (1980), notes a difference in the gift exchange relations between persons, which are symmetrical,and between persons and God, which are asymmetrical. In the former instance, gifts are inserted within acycle of exchanges that keep them in circulation. In the latter, focusing specifically on the donations fromChristian clans to churches to which Gregory refers, wealth vanishes from circulation and does not return tothe donors. It is interesting to compare this fact with an observation by Howard (2000: 45) concerning theWaiWai of northern Amazonia, who refused to place money in the collection box taken to the church by



Protestant missionaries, arguing: Why does God need money? Indeed, it seems that in Amazonia humangifts lack the power to affect God.

17 See Fausto (2007: 86-7) on the de-jaguarization of the Guarani divinity Nhanderu, who becameassociated with the Christian God. See also Bonilla (2009) on the Paumari.We can draw parallels between thishistorical process and the biblical passage from the Old to New Testament, as sometimes expressed by theWari themselves. See also Keane (2007: 161) for a similar equation made by the Sumba from Indonesia.

18 An observation by Mosko concerning the Devil among the North Mekeo is suggestive: Villagers accord-ingly understand sin as adding to ones person some bit or taint of Diabolo, which simultaneously closesoneself off from receiving Deos gifts (Mosko 2010: 230). The limits of the present article also prevent mefrom exploring the clear similarities between the sociocosmological conceptions of the North Mekeo, whichform the ethnographic core of Moskos text, and those of the Wari.

19 This takes us back again to Lvi-Strausss analysis (1995: 73-4) of Amerindian twins, always conceived inthe form of opposites. For a detailed discussion of the concept of the Devil among the Amazonian Ese Ejja,see Lepri (2003: 239-59).

20 The divine capacity of omniscience, related to Gods global perspective, is another consequence of thepeculiarity of his body, since, for the beings that traditionally populate perspectivist ontologies, the corporalspecificities always generate partial perspectives (see Vilaa 2003). On the relation between visibility andhumanity in Amazonia, see Ewart (2008: 513-19) and Surralls (2003: 786); see also Rivire (1994).

21 See Viveiros de Castro (2002: 388). The regional complexes of the Guianas, the Upper Xingu, and theUpper Amazon, where the exchange of objects has a particular importance in the constitution of relations(see Hugh-Jones 1992: 59-60; Taylor 1981: 650-1; 2007), would require a separate analysis.

22 It is worth noting that the hierarchy between the terms of the dual pair is a central element ofLvi-Strausss model (1995: 91-2). See also Viveiros de Castro (2001). The relation between these relationssuggests a comparison with another pairing present in Stratherns model: cross-sex and same-sex relations(1988: 240-3). See Gell (1997: 41, 45) on the latter.

23 See Latour (1993) on the differentiation between humanity and nature as a central characteristic ofmodernity, and also Keane (2007).

24 There is also a further piece of evidence: if we take into consideration what Mosko considers to be thecentral feature of Euro-American individualist ontologies, the differentiation between persons and things(2010: 219), and relate it to the centrality, for the Wari, of Gods act of creation when subjects (human/predators) were separated from objects (animals/prey), we could consider that, for the Wari, the idealChristian subjects are individuals.

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De la dividualit en Amazonie : Dieu, le Diable et la constitution de lapersonnalit dans le christianisme des Wari

Rsum

Lauteure tudie lexprience chrtienne des Wari, un groupe autochtone dAmazonie, la lumire duntrait central de leur conception de la personne : sa composition duale, la fois humaine et animale. Partantde lide que la centralit de la relation avec Dieu a donn naissance une personne humaine plus stable,larticle examine du point de vue ethnographique la manire dont cette relation est cre et entretenue.Les catgories analytiques issues de la Nouvelle ethnographie mlansienne (notions de personne dividuelle et partible ) sont appliques au contexte amazonien, permettant ainsi une descriptionparticulire de la personne Wari et du Dieu chrtien et la visualisation de certains aspects fondamentauxde la relation entre Dieu et les humains. Par cet exercice comparatif, lauteure cherche contribuer audialogue entre amazonistes et mlansianistes qui sest tabli depuis une dizaine dannes. Elle chercheaussi insrer lethnographie de lAmazonie dans le dbat anthropologique sur le christianisme,aujourdhui solidement ancr dans les donnes et les outils conceptuels issus des socits du Pacifique engnral, et de la Mlansie en particulier.

Aparecida Vilaa is Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology of the MuseuNacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Her most recent books are Strange enemies: indigenousagency and scenes of encounters in Amazonia (Duke University Press, 2010) and, as co-editor,Native Christians:modes and effects of Christianity among indigenous peoples of the Americas (Ashgate, 2009).

Programa de Ps-Graduao em Antropologia Social, Museu Nacional UFRJ, Quinta da Boa Vista, s/n, Rio

de Janeiro RJ, Brasil. [email protected]

Aparecida Vilaa262


Documents

Dividuality in Amazonia