Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences
Themes on Waiwai Social Being
Publication Year: 2005
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
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List of Illustrations
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Preface and Acknowledgments
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This book has been many years in the making. Perhaps, some would say, too many years. I can certainly attest to the fact that the manuscript has been rewritten in its entirety at least three times each rewrite the result of a return visit to the Waiwai. Contrary to...
A Guide to Pronouncing Waiwai Words
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You see before you now a precautious text, once writing, once the images of an individual’s experience, once part of the lived world. Tracks of the abstract, prints left behind of experiences from the past, they can, nonetheless, lead to what lies ahead, to that which...
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A voiced resonance rather than a visual textuality, a passionate curve rather than a languid line: let me introduce you to a Waiwai literacy of social beauty. It is an appealing knowledge about people. Take care, however, because in the literary imagination, the suspension...
From the Sutured Wound of Being
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Even without the supposed ritual requirement of “torture” or imposition of “pain,” “the body mediates the acquisition of a knowledge” (Clastres 1989:180). It is an acquired knowledge about society constituting and sustaining itself in, on, and through the corporeal...
To the Mutability of Embodiment
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Let us in a mischievous manner begin with Waiwai mythic registers. Not necessarily because myths can show us how Amerindian thought “expresses itself by means of a heterogeneous repertoire” (Lévi-Strauss 1974:17), a repertoire with a nevertheless extensive...
And Toward the Body Encompassed
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A traditional Waiwai girl would have adorned herself with the white beaded keweyu apron and apomi (armband) beads after her first menses and ritual initiation into the age-grade of amas-komo. Tied around her waist, the sexually seductive beaded apron announced...
The Hidden Hazard of Generosity
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We heard shepurï, the howler monkey. His aged cough cracked the canopy in prelude to an immense aria. Then, like a hollow wind, his prolonged plea took up air and surged in one single breath through the trees. In tones of primordial delight, his monstrous voice, his...
Grief and Shamanic Breath
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From the other side of the village, from the tight cluster of houses near the river, a tremulous wave of heartfelt grief kept repeating itself. Trembling sounds of sadness engorged the damp air and congested the empty spaces between the dwellings. They lifted me...
The Archer and His Bow
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We beached on Pebbled Landing. Dark dolerite sentinels loomed on the murky shore. Burrowing beneath frond embankments, fretting fitfully in persuasive soliloquy, the sable river glided gently by. A toucan quizzed from the upper canopy. A legion of beetles, in...
When the Cicadas First Sing
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The Waiwai say that when they hear the sound of the taritari (cicada), they know that the making of farms and the planting of crops should begin.1 They profess that after porin tuna (the big rains), the heat of the sun warms up the...
The Plaited Design of Human Life
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Waiwai cultural aesthetics emphasize balance and harmony in regard to the pleasures of residential space. A proper complement to life itself has to be produced. A necessary human sense of confidence about the forest and the village must be attained and factualness...
The Wayamnu Sentiment
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The look in their eyes spoke tenderly of romance. Its voiceless words we could hear from our involuntary oblivion. Lost from the concentrated gaze of desire, we basked in the lyrical rendering of their deep affection. The gendered beauty of their entwined bodies achieved a...
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Publication Year: 2005