Ujnarone Chosite: Ritual Poesis, Curing Chants and Becoming Ayoreo in the Gran Chaco

Abstract

Ujnarone Chosite: Ritual Poesis, Curing Chants and Becoming Ayoreo in the Gran Chaco. This essay describes the ujnarone curing chants among the so-called Ayoreo Indians of the Bolivian and Paraguayan Gran Chaco as a communicative and media technology whose potency was rooted in the multiplicities of social time and the dynamism of performative contexts. Although ethnographers have imagined ritual forms like the ujnarone to be the locus for Ayoreo cultural authenticity, they have been entirely abandoned by contemporary Ayoreo, many of whom now view them as dangerously taboo. This essay argues against the ethnographic fetishization of traditional practices such as ujnarone, and provides a way to conceptualize ritual discourse as a precedent, not an opposite, to contemporary Ayoreo Christianity and use of electronic media technologies.

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