Creating a Continuity between Selfand Other: First-Person Narrationin an Amazonian Ritual ContextSUZANNE OAKDAUE

ABSTRACT This article argues that culturally specific genres offirst-person narration as they are found within social life offer aprivileged window on a dimension of the self: the extent to whichin certain circumstances self and other have fixed boundaries orcan become merged. My focus is a ritual genre of first-personnarration sung by the Kayabi, a Tupi-Guarani-speaking peopleof central Brazil. In this genre, the experiences of past genera-tions become incorporated into the lives of contemporary nar-rators. How this incorporation is facilitated as well as itsimportance in the context of Kayabi views on human develop-ment are discussed.

First-person narratives have long been used in anthropologicalresearch for illuminating a variety of issues with respect to theself such as the adjustments individuals make to limitations(Simmons 1942), the relationship between personality andculture (DuBois 1944), and subjective consciousness (Watsonand Watson-Franke 1985), among others. Frequently these sorts of narra-tives are elicited, edited, or rearranged according to a chronological se-quence in order to form a "life history." Several have pointed out that thesesorts of procedures artificially project a Western consciousness on othercultural forms. Clyde Kluckhohn (1949), Arnold Krupat (1985,1992,1994),and David Brumble (1988) have all made this point when they call attentionto the influence of anthropological interviewing techniques and Western lit-erary genres in the production of Native American "life histories." PierreBourdieu sees the life history as based on the same philosophy of identityunderlying official presentations of the "official model of the self' in theWest such as the identity card, the civil record, the curriculum vitae, and

fl/ras 30(1/2)158-175. CopyfiQhl2002, American Anthropological Association.

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the biography (1987:4). According to him, this is a model that implicitly as-sumes the integration and unification of the self (rather than the fragmenta-tion of the self) and that life is a coherent linear development, an expressionof a subjective intention of a project.

As well as distorting accounts through the projection of Western lit-erary or "official" forms, the life history format has also been criticized asleaving out the way these accounts are socially situated. As Vincent Gra-panzano pointed out, when he called for understanding the life historywithin the context of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee,many "anthropological life histories read as though the narrator is ad-dressing the cosmos" (1984:958).

A growing body of linguistically oriented research that takes a prag-matic and semiotic approach to first-person narrative (Basso 1995; Graham1995; Miller and Moore 1989; Miller et al. 1990; Silverstein 1996; Urban1989; Wortham 1994) overcomes these shortcomings by explicitly focus-ing on culturally distinctive genres of first-person accounts as they aresituated in social life. Following this approach, I focus on a genre of first-person narration embedded in the ritual practice of a Tupi-Guarani-speak-ing, Brazilian Amazonian people called the Kayabi. This focus provides awindow on a dimension of the self that is salient in Kayabi social life, atleast at certain moments: the permeability of the boundaries betweenwhat is self and not self.

Grace Harris (1989) has distinguished two understandings of the con-cept of "self." The term refers to (1) the human being as a locus of experi-ence and (2) "the experience of that human's own someoneness" (Harris1989:601). Here, the self is understood in Harris's second sense to refer toa subject's consciousness of him or herself, in other words, "self-aware-ness," that is, the subject apprehended as object in a world of objects otherthan himself (Hallowell 1955:75) or "the unfolding reflective awareness ofbeing-in-the-world" (Ochs and Gapps 1996:20). The dimension of self-awareness that I am interested in here is the subject's reflection on his orher own continuity over time. While several have explored the extent towhich selves are fragmentary rather than coherent, in various culturaltraditions as well as universally (Ewing 1990; Kondo 1990; Murray 1993,among others), this material explores an aspect of the continuity of selfthat has received less attention, the implicit notion that this continuityinvolves only the experiences of one subject. In his discussion of the de-velopment of autobiography, Karl Weintraub has pointed out that onlysince the time of the Renaissance has the West "formed a particular at-tachment to the ideal of personality we call an individuality," by which hemeans the notion that individual specificity is a "treasured thing" and,more importantly for my argument here, that every existence is "markedby its singular locus in space and its moment in time" (1975:838, 846). A

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focus on culturally specific forms of autobiographical narration as they aresocially situated suggests that rather than showing how the speaker comesto organize a unique series of experiences, first-person accounts in othertraditions may show how the experiences of what are considered to be twodiscrete subjects become merged in certain situations.

The genre of first-person narration I am concerned with is only oneof several found within Kayabi ritual as well as everyday practice. It is sungduring an event called "Jowosi." Jowosi are rituals that end a period ofmourning. They take place several months after a death and are done ex-plicitly to help the bereaved forget about their lost relative. Jowosi songscan also be sung when a visitor arrives, a hunting or fishing party returnsto a village, or a group of warriors returns home, provided that a death hasnot recently occurred (see Travassos 1993). In the past, Jowosi singingalso concluded male initiation rites. While the Kayabi no longer hold maleinitiation, singing in this style is still a sign of adult male status, nowreached for men upon marriage.

Kayabi consider Jowosi songs to be autobiographical in the sense thatmost songs are understood by the audience and the singers to be about thesinger's own valiant experiences confronting a non-Kayabi. Songs recounthow the singer defeated an enemy in battle, how he kidnapped an enemychild, married a non-Kayabi, or simply encountered a non-Kayabi whilepassing through their territory. A few describe similar types of events withnonhuman spirit beings as well. Most recount these events through the useof a standard set of metaphors. In addition, some Jowosi songs are alsorecognized as inherited. Songs are passed down to young men from theirmale paternal relatives. As one man explained, "songs are left over afterpeople die." These songs recount similar types of encounters in the first-person singular.

Content with the idea that some songs were autobiographical andsome inherited, only eventually did I realize that the most interestingsongs were those recognized to be both at the same time. These songs, toinvoke the comments of Bakhtin on language more generally, use wordsthat are very much "half someone else's" (1987:293). My interest is in theshared nature of these Jowosi songs, how they join subjects of past genera-tions to subjects of the present through various means. In these sorts ofJowosi songs, one sees how the general characterizations of the culturalconceptions of self and person that have been made for Amazonian peo-ples and specifically for Tupi-Guarani-speaking peoples take a particularshape in Kayabi ritual practice. For example, in his analysis of ritual wail-ing and ceremonial dialogues, Greg Urban (1993) has described centralBrazilian indigenous cultures as having a sociability based on overhearingand incorporating the other into one's self. This kind of sociability is basedon a model in which distinct selves are understood to be the same, as

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sharing "the discourse that circulates by means of their interaction"(1993:170). In these traditions, "the boundaries of the self are extendedto encompass others" (Urban 1993:170). Eduardo Viveiros de Castro,drawing on the social organizations and cosmologies of Tupi-Guarani-speaking groups, particularly the Arawete, has formulated "a structure ofthe person" for all Tupi-Guarani-speaking peoples (1992:1). In describingthis model, he uses as a foil the structure of the person among Ge-speak-ing-groups in Central Brazil, societies on which Urban's model is largelybased. According to his Tupi-Guarani structure, the person is marked by"Other-becoming" rather than "Being" (1992:2, 4). "The other," be it en-emy, dead, or god is not in opposition or a mirror for the self but, rather,interwoven with the self (Viveiros de Castro 1992:2, 4). Unlike Urban'smodel, his gives more weight to "the other" than "the self," this side of thepair being seen as the end point or the encompassing term rather than theencompassed. Despite differences, both models point to the fact that theboundaries between self and other are complicated in Amazonian tradi-tions.

Following Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps (1996:22), I see Jowosi per-formances as engaging only facets of the singer's selfhood rather than theself of each singer in its entirety. The fact that a Jowosi song is sung re-peatedly over the course of a man's life, however, indicates that Jowosimay engage key or central facets of the adult self. There are, of course,many other practices, non-narrative as well as narrative, which also en-gage these men's self-awareness, and very likely do so in a different way.James Peacock and Dorothy Holland have observed that in the range oftools of identity, life stories are often particularly powerful means of com-ing to self-understanding (1993:371). The fact that these songs are treas-ured by singers and are recognized to be a privilege of mature men, whichis to say, men who have reached a certain level of self-awareness, indicatesthat these songs too may also be powerful means of reflecting on the self.

After a description of the Kayabi and the Jowosi ritual, I turn to theperformance of one man's song. I focus on how the use of metaphor, thelack of tense-evidential markers, and the use of first-person pronouns fa-cilitate the singer's identification with the experiences of relatives fromprevious generations. Then I turn to how this kind of incorporation ofanother's experiences relates to the importance of repetition in Kayabinotions of human development.

ETWtWMPWC MCKUMMMD: 1W M Y AND JOWOSIThe Kayabi are a riverine people who practice hunting, gathering, and

extensive agriculture. They have traditionally lived in isolated extended-family homesteads dispersed along river banks in central Brazil. Kayabi

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conceptualize their homesteads as lead by a senior male family headman.The headman's following consists of his wife, unmarried children, marrieddaughters, sons-in-law doing bride service, and their respective childrenas well as a variety of other relatives who may attach themselves to thehousehold. In the past, disparate households would gather together mainlyduring Jowosi festivals or shamanic cures. Currently, however, the major-ity of Kayabi have moved to a multi-ethnic reservation called the XinguIndigenous Park. Here, since the 1980s, independent extended familieshave started to settle together in large multifamily villages. These villagesare run by younger leaders proficient in dealing with the government andnongovernmental agencies active within the Xingu though senior familyheadmen continue to lead their own extended family households withinvillages.

Kayabi families have been relocating to the Xingu Park over thecourse of the last four decades from areas located further to the west andnorthwest, along the Tapajos and Peixes Rivers. Families relocated in re-sponse to pressure from miners, ranchers, and rubber tappers who havebeen moving into their territories over the course of the 20th century.Initially their relocation was orchestrated by the Villas Boas brothers, In-dianists who are credited with establishing the park beginning in the late1950s (Davis 1977:50). The park was set up in explicit contrast to thedominant government policy of acculturation of indigenous peoples (Davis1980:50). Residents were and still are to some extent encouraged to speaktheir native languages, practice traditional customswith the exclusion ofwarfareand hold ritual events. For example, upon arrival to the park,Kayabi communities seem to have held many more Jowosi rituals thanthey did directly prior to relocation (Gowell 1974; Griinberg n.d.: 170).Currently Jowosi rituals are a frequent part of village life, provided that noone in the village has recently died.

The fieldwork on which this article was based was carried out for ninemonths over the course of 1992 and 1993 in one of the larger new stylevillages within the Xingu Park. The young chief of this village allowed meto hang my hammock at one end of his long-house so I was fully engagedin household affairs both day and night. As villagers knew I was studyingtheir rituals, they were quick to incorporate me into these kinds of eventsas well. Much as another anthropologist who had lived in a Kayabi villagein the early 1980s has reported, my participation in village life was some-times more like that of Kayabi men and at other times more like that ofKnyabi women. For example, during shamanic cures I was asked if I wouldlike to sing with the men's chorus. During Jowosi, however, I was verymuch aligned with the women and encouraged to participate as such. Fre-quently, one of the chiefs assistants would offer to take over the process

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of tape recording Jowosi songs so that I could sing with the other unmar-ried women in the chorus.

The Jowosi I saw performed were done both to greet visitors, welcomehome travelers, and help the bereaved end their sadness over a death.Many times the singing performed more than one of these functions simul-taneously. In all cases the singing took place over the course of severaldays to several weeks. All of the Jowosi singing that I witnessed began inthe following manner: In the afternoon, after the heat of the sun began todiminish, young unmarried women from various households would beginto gather in the plaza or were recruited by a senior woman to form a cho-rus. This group, which grew as the afternoon wore on, went first to thehouse of one of the most senior men and verbally asked him to sing. Oncethe soloist began singing, the women served as a chorus and, standing nextto his hammock, collectively repeated each of the lines he sang first alongwith a repeating refrain (to be discussed below). After each soloist sangone or two songs, the women moved on to another man. Men were usuallyreclining in their hammocks and sang from this position. Eventually, asmore people finished their daily activities and afternoon bathing, the cho-rus began to ask some of the younger men to sing for them as well. Whilemore senior men tended to sing in a loud, robust voice, the youngest mensang in a barely audible whisper.

Once night fell the singing increased in intensity, and the women'schorus tended to attract many more members including young mothersand little girls. At night, the women made the rounds in the village andideally asked each of the married men in each of the households to singfor them. After several hours of singing at different houses, the womeneventually dispersed and went to sleep.

The last few nights of a Jowosi are the most festive. While I witnessed19 nights of Jowosi singing, most of the periods of singing I witnessed werecut short by a death or serious illness. During the Jowosi that I saw per-formed to completion, however, people gathered in one of the more tradi-tional style long-houses, large structures that are rectangular and spaciousin contrast to the newer houses, which are smaller and oval. Families camewith their hammocks and pieces of meat to roast over small fires as theylounged, visited, and participated in the singing. Families hung their ham-mocks together in clusters, and parents and their young children sat to-gether. On these last nights, only the most senior men, that is, men whowere grandfathers, were asked to sing. They began in their hammocks but,after a few lines, got up to dance.

In Jowosi-style dancing, each male soloist dances up and down thecentral corridor of the house, taking several steps forward and a few stepsback. The women's chorus follows in one or two rows behind the soloist.The women dance side by side with their arms around each other's waists

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and shoulders, alternately. Men carry weapons or hunting implementssuch as bows and arrows, fishing poles, clubs, or shotguns. In the past,when heads were taken in battle, I was told that some singers also carriedskulls suspended from poles by cotton strings. This type of Jowosi is simi-lar to the war rituals described for other Tupian groups such as the "danceof heads" for the Kagwahiv (Kracke 1978.45) or the Arawete "strong beerritual" (Viveiros de Castro 1992:133). On these last days of singing, menare also painted with designs in red annatto and black charcoal repre-senting enemies or game animals. Others are painted solid red.

During the nights of dancing that I saw, some of the oldest men dancedvery quickly and varied their steps slightly in order to trick the women'schorus who was following them. Little girls held on to the men's shorts orbelts of beads as they sang, following their steps along with the chorus asbest they could. Boys hooted with approval after a particularly well sungsong and urged the women's chorus to sing louder. People sang and danceduntil a few hours before dawn when a blast on a jaguar bone flute endedthe singing and families returned to their homes.

KU'A'S SONGThe song that I focus on here was sung by a very elderly senior man

named Ku'a, in the late afternoon on one of the first days of a Jowosi heldin order to help the young chief of the village forget the death of his babyson. The women who formed the chorus insisted that I join them in singingas I tape-recorded the event. So, tape recorder in hand, I followed them toKu'a's hammock where he was resting in the afternoon heat.

Ku'a's song describes an encounter with oropendola birds. Oropendo-las, part of the icteridae, or oriole, family, have a long sharply pointed bill,feed on fruits and insects, and construct woven, purse-shaped nests(Schauensee 1970:352). Though their plumage may be a variety of colors,some of the most distinctive are black and have bright gold tail feathersused in diadems throughout lowland Brazil. While all sorts of encounterswith enemies were sung in this Jowosi in order to help the young chiefforget about the death of his baby son, the fact that this song focuses onkidnapping baby birds seems to be particularly suited to the young chiefssituation. The two Kayabi men who translated the song for me alsostressed that the species of this bird they were familiar with did not sing.This was perhaps a metaphorical reference to people like my own who donot have a tradition of singing Jowosi.

The women's chorus began by asking Ku'a to sing. He sang a line thatwas barely audible and then they sang one of the standard refrains used inJowosi. The following text of the song begins with the chorus's opening lineas Ku'a's was unintelligible:

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1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

Ku'a:Chorus:

14 Ku'a:

Eheeeja. Eheeeja (vocables). He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him.He says to him. He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him.I am standing looking at the oropendola bird's children."I am standing looking at the oropendola bird's children," he says tohim. He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He saysto him. Eheeeja. He says to him.The oropendolas are standing grouped together, guy."The oropendolas are standing grouped together, guy," he says to him.He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says tohim. Eheeeja. He says to him.I stay looking at the oropendola's children."I stay looking at the oropendola's children," he says to him. He saysto him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says to him.Eheeeja. He says to him.Might we have a long branch to take the oropendola's child?"Might we have a long branch to take the oropendola's child?" he saysto him. He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. Hesays to him. Eheeeja. He says to him.This one moving is the child of a red oropendola."This one moving is the child of a red oropendola," he says to him. Hesays to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says to him.Eheeeja. He says to him.They [the birds] are arriving, guy."They are arriving, guy," he says to him. He says to him. Eheeeja. Hesays to him. He says to him. He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him.This one moving is the child of the white oropendola."This one moving is the child of the white oropendola," he says to him.He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says tohim. Eheeeja. He says to him.The oropendolas are standing all mixed together, guy."The oropendolas are standing all mixed together, guy," he says to him.He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says tohim. Eheeeja. He says to him.Might we have a long branch to take the oropendola's child?"Might we have a long branch to take the oropendola's child?" he saysto him. He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. Hesays to him. Eheeeja. He says to him.In any old tree, they have their children."In any old tree, they have their children," he says to him. He says tohim. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says to him. Eheeeja.He says to him.In the mountains, they have their children."In the mountains, they have their children," he says to him. He saysto him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says to him.Eheeeja. He says to him.The oropendola are standing grouped together, guy."The oropendola are standing grouped together, guy," he says to him.He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says tohim. Eheeeja. He says to him.I always go to the oropendola's tree on foot.

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Chorus: "I always go to the oropendola's tree on foot," he says to him. He saysto him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says to him.Eheeeja. He says to him.

15 Ku'a: 1 look at the oropendola's children with curiosity.Chorus: "I look at the oropendola's children with curiosity," he says to him. He

says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says to him.Eheeeja. He says to him.

The two young men (approximately 25-40 years old) who translatedthis song for me recognized it as one that Ku'a frequently sang. They bothreadily admitted that they did not know exactly what event it referred tobut thought that it was an account of something that had happened to Ku'ain the past. Despite the fact that all audience members know that some ofthe songs sung by men in their own families have been inherited, mostpeople tend to interpret songs sung by members of other families as beingabout the singer's own experiences. The two men who translated Ku'a'ssong thought it was very likely about a trip he made to the FUNAI (theBrazilian equivalent of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs) office in SaoPaulo. They knew this man had spent extended periods of time at FUNAIin urban centers undergoing medical treatment for a skin disease commonamong the Kayabi. They inferred with confidence that the white and redbirds standing together in one place must stand for the whites and theIndians who worked together at FUNAI. Line 10, "Might we have a longbranch to take the oropendola's child?" was interpreted, according to thestandard metaphorical equivalents used to decipher these songs, as mean-ing that he wanted to kidnap one of the children in Sao Paulo and take itback to raise. The fact that a "long branch" is needed in Line 10 as well asLine 12, which describes the birds as raising their children "in the moun-tains," were both interpreted as references to the tall buildings in SaoPaulo where, they said, people live in tall buildings "like birds in trees."

Ku'a, on the other hand, when I asked him about the event the songreferred to, explained that the song was inherited from his uncle. Accord-ing to him, this song recounted his uncle's travels. He said that this unclelived in an area to the west of the Xingu Park and interacted with theindigenous peoples living in this area. This song when his uncle sang it mayhave referred to another Tupian group, the Apiaca. According to many ofthe older men, songs about "white" animals refer to the Apiaca* becausethey did not wear red body paint like other peoples in the area, includingthe Kayabi. The Kayabi also frequently raised Apiaca" children in the past.Ku'a's uncle, however, may also have inherited the song, in which casewhite birds would also have previously referred to a different people ofearlier import who could have been construed as "white."

In explaining this particular song to me, Ku'a did not simply say thatit referred to his uncle's experiences. He went on to indicate that it re-ferred as much to his own experiences. Rather than referring to the period

Creating a Continuity between Self and Other 167

of his medical treatment, however, Ku'a related the song to his experienceof first coming to the Xingu Park, as a much younger man, after havinglived away from his fellow Kayabi. He explained that his uncle had raisedhim until he was an adult, and then his uncle died. During this period, hisuncle taught him this song. Ku'a said, however, that he did not sing ithimself until later. As a young adult, Ku'a went to live with the Bororo(another Brazilian indigenous people). He then moved to Sao Paulo wherehe reconnected with some of his Kayabi relatives who convinced him tomove to the Xingu Park. On the occasion of disembarking from the boatthat brought him to a Kayabi village in the Xingu, Ku'a said he sang thissong for the first time in his life. With this type of commentary, Ku'a sug-gests that his travel experiences outside of the Kayabi community paral-leled those of his uncle and that the song represented his life experiencesas much as they did his uncle's. The two young men who translated hissong for me were not so far wrong in their interpretation of how the songrelated to Ku'a, though they were unaware of the song's genesis. My senseis that other men, who also sing inherited songs, come to understand theirsongs in a similar manner, as relating to their own experiences as well asto their relatives'.

I K uvmrauiioN OF MOTHERS EKFEMENCESThe appropriation of another's experience as the speaker's own has

been reported in a number of narrative traditions. Focusing on ordinarytalk, Miller et al. (1990) have identified the appropriation or vicarious re-telling of caregiver's or friend's experiences among African American,Zuni, and white middle-class children in the United States. In Polynesia,Marshall Sahlins has drawn attention to the fact that chiefs use the first-person singular to narrate the activities of specific members of their an-cestral lineage (1981). Focusing on political oratory, Francesca Merlan andAlan Rumsey have observed that in the highlands of New Guinea, speakerscan refer to their entire segmentary unit with the first-person-singular pro-noun (1991:96, 355 n. 4; Rumsey 2000). As in Polynesia, the events beingreferred to may be activities that took place before the speaker was born."For example, 'I fought with you' can mean 'My ancestors, qua segmentaryunit fought with yours' " (Merlan and Rumsey 1991:96). Closer ethnog-raphically to the Kayabi are, however, the Ge-speaking Shokleng andXavante of Brazil. Greg Urban (1989:40; 1996:49) has identified cases inwhich Shokleng narrators occasionally switch from third to first personwhen telling their origin myth. This use of the first person is accompaniedby a trancelike state in which there is a felt projection of the narrator intothe self of a (mythic) other. With respect to the GS-speaking Xavante,Laura Graham (1995) has discussed how, through a similar shift in pronouns,

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senior men, near the end of their lives, begin to appropriate the experi-ences of mythic characters as their own during the public account ofdreams.

Perhaps the case that most parallels the material presented here isfound among the Ecuadorian Achuar. Anne Christine Taylor describes thevisions sought by Achuar men in drug-induced hallucinatory spirit quests,called arutam, in a way that is strikingly similar to the way I am suggestingJowosi songs work. According to her, the arutam is a vision of an unrecog-nizable dead person. This vision gives the seeker a "virtual biography"comparable "in achievement to the life of the dead man who transmits it,"but one which is "shorn of all its particulars" (1993:666-667). I am arguingthat Jowosi songs likewise function as templates (see Schrauf 1997) thatstructure the singer's past experiences rather than being actual accountsof specific occurrences that a singer assumes in detail as his own.

Here I am interested in the standardized aspects of Jowosi singing thatenable singers to identify with and incorporate the general contours of theexperiences of past generations. In the Kayabi case, unlike the examplesfrom the United States and the Ge-speaking groups, the formal mecha-nisms that enable the incorporation of others' experiences are much lessof a creative choice for individual singers: Aspects of the Jowosi genre arerelatively fixed. Songs are also understood by Kayabi people to be passeddown from senior relatives without any adaptations or changes.

First, the metaphors used in Jowosi songs, like those of Ku'a's, facili-tate the process whereby older songs can be taken up by new singers andused to organize and understand their own life experiences. The commonset of metaphors used in these songs gives them a timeless quality: Theydo not usually index the time period of any particular generation. For ex-ample, when a singer sings about "the noise that fish make," he is referringto the sound of battle. When he sings about "chopping down a tree," he isreferring to killing an enemy in battle. Hunting or chasing various sorts ofanimals refers to encounters with various sorts of non-Kayabi. The colorof the feathers or fur gives clues to the ethnic group being sung about. Ingeneral, these metaphors give only a general sense of the interaction butare not specific enough to clearly identify any particular instance or ethnicgroup. For most adult Kayabi who are not members of the singer's familyand not familiar with the events that first gave rise to a song, they onlyprovide the most schematic outline of action and the most general featuresabout the ethnicity of the enemy in question. As my translators' accountsproved, new interethnic relations can be easily fit within one of the typesof encounters sung about in Jowosi.

The use of metaphor in these songs also demonstrates CatherineLutz's point that "metaphors will frequently be used in attempts to under-stand and communicate the experience of the self and other" (1985:39).

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Many of the common metaphors featured in Jowosi songs are about a Kayabiappropriation of an enemy or a merging of perspective between a Kayabiand a non-Kayabi. In Ku'a's song, the narrator is contemplating taking abird (non-Kayabi child) home to raise. Other songs, however, recount suc-cessful kidnappings. The most dramatic recount how enemies are killed atthe hands of Kayabi warriors. In these songs, the singer takes on the per-spective of his victim, even quoting the final speech and thoughts of hisvictim. These songs are understood to bring back the dead enemy throughthe voice and body of the singer himself when they are sung. They ofcourse allude to the merging of a much more radically distinct self andother than that of a junior and senior patrilineal relative.

Another feature of Jowosi songs that ties them to the present ratherthan the past and leaves them ambiguous in terms of how they are relatedto the self of the singer is the lack of tense/evidential markers. Kayabi hasa series of six forms that mark how distant in the past the reported eventoccurred relative to the present and if the speaker experienced the eventfirsthand or not (Dobson 1988:28; Helga Weiss, personal communication).These forms are used in everyday speech and in other sorts of sung per-formances such as shamanic curing songs.

With respect to the narrative tradition of one of the Kayabi's neighborsto the south, the Garib-speaking Kalapalo, Ellen Basso has observed thatthe most elaborate use of evidentials occurs in story contexts when thereis an outright denial of shared experience or point of view (1995:39). Theyshow up in "situations of doubt, potential discord, and of actual disputes,and especially in situations of dialogue where persuasion and resistance topersuasion take place" (Basso 1995:39). The fact that Jowosi songs havean unusually low use of evidentials suggests that they might be particularlysuited for conveying the opposite: a shared point of view and a sharedexperience.

The incorporation of a relative's experiences into the singer's ownidentity is fostered perhaps most fully by the use of the first-person pro-noun. When Ku'a repeats a line such as "I always go to the oropendula'stree on foot," he is both repeating the words of a senior relative, and per-haps even several generations of relatives, as well as taking on the role ofan adventurous warrior himself. Greg Urban has distinguished several dif-ferent types of first-person-singular pronominal usages that he calls "typesof discourse 'I.'" The type used in Jowosi songs is most similar to what hecalls the "theatrical type." With the "theatrical T " there is virtually notrace of quote framing; rather, the individual speaks through the characterthat he or she represents much the way actors do in theatrical perform-ances (Urban 1989:36). Depending on the amount of knowledge a listenerpossesses, Ku'a either takes on the role of himself as a young man, the roleof his uncle, the role of a more distant male relative, or all of the above.

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According to Urban, the "theatrical T " hides the everyday persona ofthe speaker. An actor's usual identity is, for example, not displayed as heplays the part. To some extent this is true for Ku'a's performance. In hissolo lines, his everyday personapresently an old, crippled man who is nolonger a valiant warrioris in fact hidden. On the other hand, Jowosisongs are not entirely the same as roles played by actors, because ratherthan hide the everyday persona, they open it up and display the interper-sonal identifications that have made a mature man who he is. For thesinger and others who know the history of a particular song, these typesof performances display a kind of intergenerational mimicry or, in Urban'sterms, an "iconic otherness" that undergirds a mature singer's identity(1989:46).

KAYABI AND OTHER AMAZONIAN CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF HUMANDEVELOPMENT

The imitation of elders by a younger generation is understood by Kay-abi themselves to be crucial for human development. When male initiationwas still performed, adolescent boys were confined to their homes for aperiod of time during which they would consciously try to imitate the ac-tivities of senior male relatives. Through this process they would learn howto save seeds for gardening, weave baskets, and hunt by shooting at targetsset up in the rafters of their homes, as well as how to speak and controltheir facial expressions in an adult manner. An elaborate period of seclu-sion in which girls copy the behavior of their senior female relatives is stillpracticed.

Jowosi, which used to be held at the end of male seclusion, empha-sizes this sort of behavioral imitation in the invitation procedure. Whenpeople from outside a local group are invited to a Jowosi, a messenger issent to inform them. The messenger is supposed to shadow the headmanof the invited family, performing the same chores, taking a bath and eatingwith him. The invitation process recalls the imitation an adolescent wasexpected to undergo before becoming hilly adult.

Imitation is also an important part of the production of songs. Songsare, for example, learned through repetition. While I have never witnessedthe process of a song being passed down from senior to junior relative, mensaid that they learned their songs through a type of silent repetition. Mensaid that after hearing a song from a relative, they sang the song to them-selves in private, while walking in the forest or fishing, before singing witha chorus. Even new songs are acquired through repetition. They do notoriginate with the singer, in the sense that Western autobiography doesbut, rather, originate from an outside source. They somehow "come fromthe enemv" featured in the sung encounter as much as they do for the

Creating a Continuity between Self and Other 171

Tupian Arawete* (Viveiros de Castro 1992:240-243). The singer hears thesong from the enemy often on his way home after the encounter and thenrepeats it to himself before singing with a chorus.

In each performance of a Jowosi song, the choral singing also func-tions as an icon of imitation or mimicry, perhaps also recalling the imita-tion of seniors by their juniors which brings about maturity. In the case ofa Jowosi performance, however, it is younger women who imitate a seniorman. Most of the lines of a Jowosi song are sung first by the male soloist.Once he sings a line, the female chorus then repeats it directly after himalong with a repeating refrain. The fact that all the women blend theirvoices to form the chorus is yet another iconic representation of how as-pects of the self come to be integrated with others of a slightly differentorder. Overall, it is the choral repetition of the soloist's lines that drivesperformances from beginning to end.

The chorus in Ku'a's performance, however, does not only imitate, italso adds additional content. The women sing the refrain: "He says to him.He says to him. Eheeeja. He says to him. He says to him. He says to him.Eheeeja. He says to him." This particular refrain in effect turns each ofKu'a's lines into directly quoted speech. While not all refrains frame thesoloist's lines as quoted speech, many do. Other common refrains such as,"I say to myself," or "I say to myself as I was walking," for example, turnthe soloists' lines into quoted speech of a slightly different sort.

While the refrain in Ku'a's song may invoke the image of an ongoingdialogue between two characters at the foot of the tree with the oropendo-las' nests, the choral framing in this song also may invoke the image of asenior man teaching the song to a younger relative. It gives the sense thatKu'a is repeating someone else's words. The repetition of the phrase "hesays to him" could even be interpreted as referring to a series of momentsof quoted speech or a series of men teaching this song to their junior rela-tives over the course of several generations. This song demonstrates par-ticularly well how the choral refrain has the potential to change the"theatrical T " to an "I" that is clearly framed as quoted speech, whatUrban (1989) calls the "anaphoric 'I.' " The alternation between the "de-quotative" and "quotative T " has the potential to display the fact that aparticular kind of social relationship based on a kind of mirroring under-lies each of the soloist's lines.

The merging of experiences between two separate generations may beassociated with the process of moving toward male adulthood and matur-ity throughout the Amazon. Graham (1995), for example, describes howamong the Xavante, young pre-initiates repeat the songs and dances newlyinitiated men receive through dream. Through this repetition, the oldermen'8 dream songs move from being individually dreamed compositionsto being socially shared experiences (Graham 1995:116). During the

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Ge-speaking Suva's rite of passage, called the Mouse Ceremony, oldername givers transmit their names to young boys, and while not understoodnecessarily as bringing about a merging of experiences, this process is un-derstood as a type of replication of the senior men (Seeger 1987). Accord-ing to Anthony Seeger, "the Suya compare a man and the child whoreceives his names to a double rainbow, identical but different in size"(1987:10). In Ku'a's account of his Jowosi song, he seems to imply that hematured into his uncle's song or, in other words, that he does not matureby singing his uncle's song but, rather, matured after a period of adulttravel when his own experiences came to fit the kind of exploration hisuncle's song describes. In this respect, Ku'a's account could be said toconform to Viveiros de Castro's general model of the Tupi-Guarani struc-ture of the person: In it he tells how he matured into the autobiographicalnarrative of a significant deceased other.

CONCLUSIONIndigenous autobiographical practices as they are situated in social

life offer particularly clear windows on aspects of the self in specific con-texts within a cultural tradition (see also Lutz 1985:40 and Miller et al.1990:292). By examining one such genre, Kayabi Jowosi singing, this re-search follows others that suggest that some of the most interesting aspectsof first-person accounts may be the way that they show how, in certaincircumstances, subjects understand themselves to have a continuity withothers, or how they understand their own experiences to replicate theexperiences of others. Jowosi performances seem to involve an interestingtransmission or circulation of experiences between subjects of differentgenerations, a process that may be linked to male maturity and found inother ritual genres throughout Amazonia more generally.

SUZANNE OAKDALE is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.

NOTIAcknowledgments. The research on which this article was based was carried out be-

tween 1991 and 1993 and was funded by an HE Fulbright Grant for Doctoral DissertationResearch Abroad, a Predoctoral Grant (no. 5372) from the Wenner-Gren Foundation forAnthropological Research, and a Travel Grant from the Center for Latin American Studies atthe University of Chicago. A much shorter version of this article was presented in a sessionorganized by Stanton Wortham at the 1998 meeting of the American Anthropological Asso-ciation in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania, and has benefited from the comments of the partici-pants Illld clisCUSKJllltH in thlH NCMHiOll.

Creating a Continuity between Self and Other 173

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