Anaconda-becoming: Huni Kuin image-songs, an Amerindian relational aesthetics
Horizontes Antropológicos – August 01, 2018
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Ayahuasca rituals among the Huni Kuin reveal a profound connection between perception and identity, emphasizing synesthesia—where bodily sensations merge with vision and sound. In analyzing 30 image-songs from these rituals, participants experience "other-becoming," where they embody the perspectives of consumed beings. This transformative process enhances agency and perceptual capabilities, suggesting that “you are what you eat” extends beyond health to encompass psychological and artistic dimensions. Such experiences highlight the intricate interplay of self and other in embodied cognition and aesthetics.
Abstract
Abstract After depicting the contemporary scene of Huni Kuin ayahuasca shamanism and artistic agency, I analyze a selection of image-songs from this ritual. The songs unveil the workings of embodied perception and synesthesia, that is, the transductions of bodily sensations and perceptions in vision, rhythm, song and sound. The experience entails a process of other-becoming where to know means to see through the eyes of Other; to be covered with the skin/ornaments of those beings one has consumed and to sing through their voice. This other-becoming is a becoming in a deleuzian sense, which means that the lived experience is situated in-between the space of self and other. In this context the expression “you are what you eat” has specific implications for one’s health and for the acquisition of agentive and perceptive capabilities of other beings. The ritual technique of almost becoming consists of alternatingly producing and undoing temporary transformations through song.