In this article, based on recent ethnographic and archival research, we explore the ramifications of an Amerindian perspective on contemporary savagery. We contend that the cannibalistic wajiarikure (‘wild people’) encapsulate powerful parallels with the wild man of the western imagination. What distinguishes Amerindian savagery from its western counterpart is not so much that fact that it is reversible: the savage in the forest – the man of the woods in the woods – is master, for the western savage is also ambiguous in a similar sense. What really distinguishes them is the kind of nurture that is used to tame and civilize the savage: if western missionaries try to transform the savage mind, Amerindians try to transform the savage body.
The Other's Other: Nurturing the Bodies of 'Wild' People among the Trio of Southern Suriname
Grotti, Vanessa
;Brightman, Marc
2010
Abstract
In this article, based on recent ethnographic and archival research, we explore the ramifications of an Amerindian perspective on contemporary savagery. We contend that the cannibalistic wajiarikure (‘wild people’) encapsulate powerful parallels with the wild man of the western imagination. What distinguishes Amerindian savagery from its western counterpart is not so much that fact that it is reversible: the savage in the forest – the man of the woods in the woods – is master, for the western savage is also ambiguous in a similar sense. What really distinguishes them is the kind of nurture that is used to tame and civilize the savage: if western missionaries try to transform the savage mind, Amerindians try to transform the savage body.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
