Fertile words : aspects of language and sociality among Yanomami people of Venezuela
Abstract
In the first part of the thesis (Chapters I to 7)1 discuss two Yanomami myths of
origin, namely the myth of the origin of the night, and the myth of the master of
banana plants. While drawing heavily on Lizot's ethnographical and linguistic
work, my analysis of the myth will be embedded within two interconnected
debates of present concern to anthropology: On the one hand, the strong
linkage between the poetics of myth narration and the poetics of the everyday
life. To better explore this relationship I will also drawn on Overing's recent work
on the fundamental importance of understanding the political philosophy that
pervades such linkage. On the other hand there is also the important role that
the world of the felt, the senses and passions play in Yanomami conceptions
and practices of sociality.
In part 2 of the thesis, I deal with the issue of Yanomami warfare by describing
Yanomami people's understanding of warfare. In doing this, I endeavour to
develop a shift from the anthropologist's theories of war among the Yanomami
to the Yanomami's own theories about both peace and its failure. War and
conflict are addressed here from the point of view of the Yanomami aesthetics
of their own convivial relations and sociality, along with its multiple oral
expressions. I demonstrate that Yanomami people have their own (strong)
theories about what is conducive to peace and war and how these theories are
grounded in moral and political values attached to a particular Yanomami
aesthetics of egalitarianism. In doing this, I explore the way Lizot emphasises
the dialectic between Yanomami conceptions of peace and warfare.
Furthermore, through an exploration of the linkage Lizot establishes between
Yanomami warfare and their morality, I wish to shed new light on the political
dimensions of their conflicts and the place of warfare in their culturally specific
aesthetics of egalitarian relationships.
Part 3 of the thesis (chapters 9, 10, 11) deals with the Yanomami elders'
speech, a mode of communication that has been almost neglected in other
previous works. After having discussed various topics (myth and the everyday,
Yanomami warfare) through which various aspects of Yanomami moral and
political philosophy can be grasped, in this last part of the thesis I show the
strong linkage between such philosophy and this type of speech. The elders'
speech is dealt with in various parts of the thesis and also in various ways. First,
and departing from the way a myth of origin explicitly makes references to it, I
illustrate, the way Yanomami people conceive of this type of speech. I do this by
describing, following Hymes' (1981,2003) insights, the way in which the myth
teller "describes" this speech in his narrative. Second, in Chapter 3, I make a
brief description of the speech and in Chapters 9, 10, and 11 I provide
fragments of the speech of an elder that I transcribed and analysed.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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