Fragile Time: The Redemptive Force of the Urarina Apocalypse

Abstract

The Amazonian Urarina often speak of an imminent catastrophic collapse of the fragile climate that sustains life, but also claim this can be postponed through appropriate forms of action. A sense of gradual but accelerating decline is closely linked to the experience of a fluid, unstable, and constantly transforming environment. Yet the health of the land and people also reflects the present state of the wider social and moral order; human concerns are closely tied to atmospheric, geologic, and hydrologic processes. All are addressed through Urarina shamanic ritual, which emphasizes human agency in delaying an inexorable process of decline and loss. Apocalyptic discourse thus effectively provides people with the resources for moral engagement with the world. Weather and time are conceptually indistinct in Urarina cosmology, pointing to a conception of weather–time as both an existential horizon of being and a form of the common good that is continually and collectively produced through sustained human action.

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