The contagion of images: embedded voices and sensory apparatuses in an Amerindian shamanic ritual

Amazonian Runa shamans (yachak) perform therapeutic songs (ikara) that summon invisible beings—spirits, demons, animals, or hybrid entities—during rituals. The shaman's utterance involves a composition-translation that deliberately exploits the sign's deficiency: its duplicity, evanescent presence, and secret evocation. This partial deciphering and transgression of ordinary communication rules gives the mental image its power to persist and spread among participants. The article challenges Western communication models based on signifying intention or relevance, replacing them with a pragmatic approach emphasizing multiplication of voices, points of view, and possible interpretations. It reexamines Lévi-Strauss's ideas on symbol effectiveness through sensory apparatuses that affect representation and belief in ritual contexts.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article takes an Amazonian example to question one of the main issues of the shamanic ritual utterance: the operation of composition-translation that the ritual specialist has to carry out to “represent” the invisibles during his performance, and the sensory apparatuses it implies. In fact, the study of the ikara therapeutic songs of the Runa people from the Peruvian Amazon (Upper Pastaza) and the context in which they are uttered by the yachak shaman reveals the enigmatic dimension of the ritual gesture: the duplicity of the sign, evanescent presence or secret evocation, a mental image that persists and spreads among the participants. What are the linguistic, gestural or sensory means used by the yachak shaman to make up for the lack of visibility of the beings summoned on the stage of the ritual performances: spirits, demons, animals or hybrid entities? What are the tools anthropology can use to study this contagion of images among participants? How to define the sensory apparatus affecting the field of representation and beliefs surrounding the ritual? This contribution adopts a new perspective on the notions developed by Lévi-Strauss with regards to the effectiveness of symbols and pragmatic approach to the Amazonian shamanic rituals. It allows us to examine the assumption that it is precisely, in this context, the deficient dimension of the sign - the transgression of the rules of ordinary communication and the partial characteristic of deciphering - that gives the image all its power. The Western paradigm of communication, defined by language sciences in terms of signifying intention or relevance, is here replaced by a pragmatic model based on the multiplication of voices, points of view and possible interpretations of the image.