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BOOK REVIEWS
| ALEJANDRO TSAKIMP: A SHUAR HEALER IN THE MARGINS OF HISTORY. By Steven Rubenstein. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. Softbound. 322 pp. Cloth $70.00; paper $24.95.
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While postcolonial studies have turned our heads to the complex relationship between knowledge and power, scholarship in the field has largely centered on the workings of Euro-American empire in Asia and Africa. Compared to the number of books on Anglo-colonialism, relatively few works interrogate the modern colonial system in the Americas. Still fewer spotlight indigenous knowledge, and still fewer turn their floodlight into a reflexive probe of ethnographic practices. Alejandro Tsakimp seeks to correct some of the asymmetry by illuminating the life history of a South American shaman and beaming light rays on the struggles of Equador's native peoples. |
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Evolving out of interview sessions conducted by anthropologist Steven Rubenstein in the upper basin of the Amazon, Alejandro's testimony comprises the centerpiece of the book—flanked, on either side, by Rubenstein's commentary and background information on the Shuar. Rubenstein claims he took Alejandro's words out of the context of their relationship, "in order to say something about the larger context of colonialism"(82). |
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In 1988, Rubenstein was awarded grants to study conflicts between shamans and the Shuar Federation—the political apparatus set up to represent the collective interests of the Shuar peoples, who have the reputation of being fierce head hunters and of successfully thwarting intrusions of Spanish and Equadorian power. Tsakimp's story underscores the fact that while the institutionalization of the colonial policy of private property was adopted by the Federation as a means to shore up a defense against the Euro-Equadorian colonos, or settlers, the concomitant practice of individualism also had the effect of pitting family members against one another. |
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Traditionally associated with the power to cure and kill, Shuar shamanism can be an intensely political practice. As conduits of supernatural power and as "public servants," it is not enough for a healer, or uwishin, to be equal to others; he must serve others and care. As Alejandro is advised and taught by his aunt, "A shaman must cure to earn and defend the health of your fellow man"(148). Violation of this shamantic code has various interpretations and dramatic consequences as revealed in Alejandro's life story—which pivots around the death of his father, who was accused of witchcraft and subsequently killed by another shaman for refusing to come to the aid of a community member. Relating how the accusation of witchcraft led his family to relocate from Andean highlands to the Upanos Valley, Alejandro's narrative is a searing testimony to colonial effects and what singular events tell us about communal histories. |
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In the opening chapters and last part of the book, Rubenstein takes up some of these issues, noting how shamanism serves to diminish the power of state and equalize the distribution of wealth. In the regard, he highlights the relationship of Shuar agency and social structure. He calls for a return to the ideas of Franz Boas, who posited a kind of historical anthropology. Especially well suited for classroom discussion, Rubenstein's chapter on "History and Culture" takes Levi Strauss to task for portraying native peoples as "outside" history, and offers a deconstruction of rhetorical devices like the "ethnographic present" used to describe cultural practices. Citing recent works by Gerald Sider, Joan Scott, and Michael Taussig as models, Rubenstein advocates "life history" as a corrective. |
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I appreciated the importance of Rubenstein's work and its relevance to the field, but I was also struck by an "absence" and a rather unrealized "presence." By Rubentstein's own admission, relationships with women were constrained by Shuar gender roles and he was not able to collect much in the way of their testimonies. Alejandro does speak of the role women shamans play in Shuar society. Perhaps the veil over women's connection to knowledge in this culture—as well as economic power—will be lifted in future works. |
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Another concern is that while Rubenstein interrogates western discourse about indigenous peoples, he does not take equal steps to illumine the active presence of Alejandro's voice. Although there are no easy answers to the challenges of representing, presenting, and describing life histories, consider the combined effect of removing interview questions for the sake of narrative flow, structuring the book so that Alejandro's story is separated out, and most importantly, stating that his heavy editorial hand has rendered Alejandro's story "utterly useless for any linguistic analysis of Shuar narrative, Shuar history or life history"(73). Rubenstein has muted the fact that Alejandro's testimony emerged out of a collaborative exchange, and he has downplayed the poetry inherent in the telling of the healer's life story. |
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Rubenstein claims he is "not presenting the book as a record of his relation with the shaman but ... a portrait of one's man's experience of a culture in-flux"(76). In emphasizing the information in Alejandro's life story, rather than the nuances of the healer's storytelling, Rubenstein has set up a curious opposition—seemingly at odds with his larger purpose. Pertinent to an understanding of the connection between the performance of life history and resistance, the question of enunciation and language is very much on the table. Not only is this an issue among Central and South American writers but, as evidenced in the testimonies and works of indigenous peoples at the Oral History Association meeting in Anchorage, Alaska (1999), among Native American storytellers and scholars on this continent, as well. |
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In this sense, Rubenstein's presentation of Alejandro's life story begs comparison with another work, Breath on the Mirror, where anthropologist Dennis Tedlock calls our attention to the intonation, pauses, and parallel phrasing of the spoken words of Mayan healers. Stressing the poetic dimension of Alejandro's storytelling, rather than diminishing its significance because it was translated from Spanish, would reveal the role language plays in Shuar shamanism. "My divine love of the divine force of nature, the arutam, has brought me to this point," says Alejandro. "For my future rights, I'll fight with paper and pen, not with bullets" (200). As noted in the books of South American poet Cecilia Vicuna on divination, language is intricately related to spiritual power and—in the case of Alejandro Tsakimp's life story—to the space of resistance that persists. |
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| Christine F. Zinni |
| State University of New York at Buffalo |
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