The Yanomami Anti-Babel: Some clues to a shamanistic theory of ontological communication

Abstract

This article works with the hypothesis that the Yanomami notion of “shamanistic auxiliary spirit” (xapiri) can be taken as a cosmological variant of the concept of “expression,” a topological-nominal unfolding and axis of articulation of meaning between domains that are at first distinct — a term that Gilles Deleuze attributes to the Spinozan Ethics’ “attribute.” This hypothesis takes into account Marco Valentim’s suggestion that Yanomami cosmology presents a kind of “exorbitant nominalism,” subjecting xapiri expression’s unity to a multiplicity of utupë images, imagetical-intensive doubles of the Yanomami person. If we accept this and assume that such cosmologies are permeated by a constitutive ontological equivocity, in which not only peoples/species, but also worlds/natures are in constant friction and disagreement, how can one guarantee communicability? In contrast to the Deleuze-Guattarian (by univocity) and Dusselian (by analogism) solutions to the problem of ontological communication, I propose here that Yanomami shamanism seeks to suture the communicational gap between distinct worlds through the xapiri, understood as a “transontological” expression that involves an apparently paradoxical introduction of more equivocation into the system.