Full Description
This book is an ethnography on Mapuche ritual healing transformations from the perspective of the phenomenology of the body. It explores how people identify a Mapuche shaman, or a "real Machi", a person who can see illness and misfortune through divinatory techniques. These techniques produce changes in bodily and affective experience, which are not mediated by reconfigurations of symbolic meaning. Machi also experience küymin, or ritual trance, through which a group of people can receive a direct message from 'spirits from the past'. Thus, embodying the ancestors, Machi can provide both explanations of illness and misfortune and moral guidance for future action.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. Ritual Transformations of the Self
Chapter 2. A Real Machi: Pewtun and Nguillatun Rituals
Chapter 3. Techniques for Seeing the Evil Spirit
Chapter 4. Machi Who Are Not Real Machi: Doubts and Failure
Chapter 5. Mapuche Politics and the Wetripantü Ritual
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
