Partible Bodies: ceremonial ornaments, spells and the aesthetics of production in the upper Rio Negro

Abstract

This article discusses how the Amerindians of the Upper Rio Negro engage with their ceremonial ornaments through an ethnography of the Baniwa of the Hohodeni clan, an Arawak speaking people. After discussing the morphology of these objects, I highlight the difference between their production in the past and the present. This analysis will show how mythic and ritual knowledge is mobilized in the transformation of living beings into artefacts, placing human, animal, and plant interactions within the broader set of relations between humans and nonhumans. Finally, I compare the ornaments to the ritual spells that are needed to fabricate them, proposing a broader view of the Upper Rio Negro “aesthetics of production”.

Keywords:
bodily ornaments; ritual spells; aesthetics of production; Baniwa; Upper Rio Negro