Work

Rule of Self and Rule of Law: Governing Opacity Among the Shuar of Amazonia

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: Faced with the opacity of other minds, we can either confirm the impossibility of knowing or try to make other minds transparent. Among the Amazonian Shuar, two opposed regimes of intention management embody these two options. One is associated with the predatory agency of arútam, the spirit of prominent elders; the other one with the pacifying agency of the Christian God. Secret vision quests and dialogic duels generate an instability of perspectives and a rule of self, premised on the opacity of persons. By contrast, projects of state legibility, the omniscient Christian God, and the public character of biblical revelations create the conditions for the rule of law, that is, a regime of intentions in which persons are transparent and people are held accountable in public. The novelty of this mode of governing opacity bears emphasis on and contrasts with the arguments stressing continuity in Amazonian engagements with alterity.

Source: Ethnos

DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2021.1965641

Author: Natalia Buitron

Institution: University of Oxford

Language: English

Topic: Indigenous Studies in Latin America

Subfield: Cultural Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: Leverhulme Trust, European Research Council