Abstract
Based on my ethnography with the Jarawara, an Arawá speaking people of the Middle Purus river, the article aims to think about the girls’ end of reclusion party, the mariná, and its effects on the composition of a “takeable” agent. The idea developed here is that the “somnolence” (nokobisa), the “tiredness” (mama) and the “beauty” (amosa) are forms of ritual actions that aim to draw out of the women’s bodies their capacities of “being takeable” (towakama), of “being carriable” (weyena). Those qualities would also be associated with the shamans, that after consuming rapé (a tobacco based powder) are carried on the back of their plant-children and experience relations with a variety of beings in the neme (the “upper layer”) – beings which they meet in their dreams as well. I will try to think how a certain notion of jarawara women agency may be linked to the oneiric activity and to the shaman’s knowledge.
Amerindian Women; Ethnography; Gender Theories; Agency; Ritual