Overview

On the little-known and darker side of shamanism there exists an ancient form of sorcery called kanaima, a practice still observed among the Amerindians of the highlands of Guyana, Venezuela, and Brazil, which involves the ritual stalking, mutilation, lingering death, and consumption of human victims. At once a memoir of cultural encounter and an ethnographic and historical investigation, this book offers a sustained, intimate look at kanaima, its practitioners, their victims, and the reasons they give for their actions. Neil L. Whitehead tells of his own introduction to kanaima-which involved an attempt to kill him with poison-and he relates the personal testimonies of kanaima shamans, their potential victims, and the victims' families. He then goes on to discuss the historical emergence of kanaima describing how, in the face of successive colonizing modernities-missionaries, rubber gatherers, miners, and development agencies-the practice has become an assertion of native autonomy. His analysis explores the ways in which kanaima mediates both national and international impacts on native peoples in the region, and considers the significance of kanaima for current accounts of shamanism and religious belief as well as theories of war and violence. Kanaima appears here as part of that wider lexicon of rebellious terror and exotic horror-alongside the cannibal, vampire, and zombie-that haunts the western imagination. Dark Shamans broadens discussions of violence and of the representation of primitive savagery by recasting both in the light of current debates on modernity and globalization.

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9780822329527

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Reviews

Feature ran in On Wisconsin, Univ. Wisconsin alumni magazine. Interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here On Earth and University On Air. Mentioned on a cannibalism web site. Reviewed in Latin American Research Review. Abstracts in The C.A.C. Review, newsletter of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink and Hispanic Outlook on Higher Education. Listed in Journal of Ritual Studies, New Mexico Historical Review, CHE, TLS Book Alert email, Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Abstract in Contemporary Sociology, Ethnos, and Kacicke. Mixed review in Australian Journal of Anthropology. Reviewed in French in Anthropologies et Societes.

"Feature ran in On Wisconsin, Univ. Wisconsin alumni magazine. Interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio's ""Here On Earth"" and ""University On Air."" Mentioned on a cannibalism web site. Reviewed in Latin American Research Review. Abstracts in The C.A.C. Review, newsletter of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink and Hispanic Outlook on Higher Education. Listed in Journal of Ritual Studies, New Mexico Historical Review, CHE, TLS Book Alert email, Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Abstract in Contemporary Sociology, Ethnos, and Kacicke. Mixed review in Australian Journal of Anthropology. Reviewed in French in Anthropologies et Societes."

Ethnographer Neil L. Whitehead enters this realm of reality and mythology, of storytelling and firsthand experience by accident, and his opening tale sustains the horror-filled storytelling power characteristic of such authors as Bram Stoker and Stephen King. As such, the kanaima, long known to explorers, poets, and ordinary people of northeastern South America, take their place in the history of modernity along with Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man. -Norman Whitten, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign An exceptionally fine ethnography of the kanaima, Dark Shamans will fill a large gap. As an ethnography located in ethnohistory and processes of modernization, this book is an outstanding example of new anthropological work at the leading edge of the discipline. -Donald Pollock, State University of New York, Buffalo

Author Information

Neil L. Whitehead is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author and editor of numerous books, most recently Beyond the Visible and the Material: The Amerindianization of Society in the Work of Peter RiviÈre (coedited with Laura Rival) and War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (coedited with R. B. Ferguson). He is the editor of the journal Ethnohistory.

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