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ÉTUDES ET ESSAIS

Les masques de la mémoire

Essai sur la fonction des peintures corporelles jivaro
Anne-Christine Taylor
p. 223-248

Abstracts

The Masks of Memory. On Body-Painting among the Jivaro (Shuar) of Western Amazonia. – Although most Jivaroan Indians no longer dress in a traditional way, many of them still insist on wearing face painting. The aim of this article is to explain the reasons for the persistence of this practice, by relating body painting to the construction of a certain form of identity. The author shows that the painted motifs index a complex relational figure that ritually condenses two sorts of agonistic rapport: that between a man and his equals (i.e., other adult male Jivaro), and that between a live male human and a dead person encountered in the course of a drug-induced vision quest. This configuration forms the basis for a type of sharply individualised and highly confrontational selfhood that is held to be specifically Jivaroan.

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References

Bibliographical reference

Anne-Christine Taylor, “Les masques de la mémoire”L’Homme, 165 | 2003, 223-248.

Electronic reference

Anne-Christine Taylor, “Les masques de la mémoire”L’Homme [Online], 165 | janvier-mars 2003, Online since 27 March 2008, connection on 29 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lhomme/204; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/lhomme.204

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About the author

Anne-Christine Taylor

École normale supérieure-CNRS, Équipe de recherche en ethnologie amérindienne, Villejuif.

By this author

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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