Tasty Gifts: Totemism and Animal Semiosis inErwin Patzelt’s 1980 Documentary Descent into Prehistory Páginas
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article explores, through the filmic analysis of the documentary Abstieg in die Steinzeit: Die letzten Aucas, made by the German biologist and documentary filmmaker Erwin Patzelt (1926-2023), the tension between the Western conception of the Huaorani people of the Ecuadorian Amazon and the cosmology of this Amazonian people in relation to the animal world that surrounds them. The development of the text argues that the Huaorani cosmovision, which considers certain animals, independent of their species or origin, as sacred totems, transcends the modern Western vision that, from a development list perspective, understands the animal in an instrumental way as a mere food source. In dialogue with a series of contemporary debates on the relationship between the human and the natural environment, this article reviews the different biographical, cultural and audiovisual elements that facilitated the encounter between Erwin Patzelt and Dabo Enomenga and thus the two perspectives, the modern-developmentalist of the German biologist and the symbolic-ecocentric of the Huao people that prioritizes the healthy and sustainable relationship with the territory and the environment.
Article Details
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
ASSIGNMENT OF RIGHTS, DECLARATION OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND DISSEMINATION
The authors who publish in this journal accept the following conditions:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work registered under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows sharing, adapting and attributing the work (see: Open Access Policies).
- Authors can make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the distribution of the article published in this journal (e.g., include it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as long as they expressly indicate that the article was published for the first time in Uru: Revista de Comunicación y Cultura. In the case of reproduction, a note similar to the following must be included: This text was originally published in the journal Uru: Revista de Comunicación y Cultura N ° -, year of publication.
- Authors are encouraged to publish their work on the Internet (e.g. on institutional or personal pages) in the final version published by Uru: Revista de Comunicaicón y Cultura as it may lead to a wider and faster dissemination of the published work.
How to Cite
References
Berardi, Andrea, Jay Mistry, Lakeram Haynes, Deidre Jafferally, Elisa Bignante, Grace Albert, Rebecca Xavier, Ryan Benjamin y Géraud de Ville. 2017. “Using Visual Approaches with Indigenous Communities”. En Mapping Environmental Sustainability: Reflecting on Systemic Practices for Participatory Research, editado por Sue Oreszczyn y Andy Lane, 103-28. Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447331582.005
Cajigas, Juan Camilo. 2007. “La biocolonialidad del poder: Amazonía, biodiversidad y ecocapitalismo”. En El giro decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global, editado por Santiago Castro-Gómez y Ramón Grosfoguel, 169-94. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre / Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos / Instituto Pensar.
De la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham, US: Duke University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478093626
De Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, US: Paradigm Publishers.
Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1999. Spirit & Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader. Golden, US: Fulcrum Publishing.
Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226145006.001.0001
Escobar, Arturo. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham, US: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822389439
Goswami, Manash. 2018. “Totemism and Tribes: A Study of the Concept and Practice”. ResearchGate. Julio. https://tinyurl.com/9vyp6u77.
Kohn, Eduardo. 2021. Cómo piensan los bosques: Hacia una antropología más allá de lo humano. Traducido por Mónica Cuéllar y Belén Sánchez. Quito: Abya-Yala.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962a. Totemism. Londres: Merlin Press.
—. 1962b. La pensée sauvage. París: Plon.
Patzelt, Erwin. 1980. Abstieg in die Steinzeit: Die letzten Aucas. Ecuador y Alemania. Filme 16 mm.
Pink, Sarah. 2015. Doing Sensory Ethnography. Londres: Sage. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473917057
Plotkin, Mark. 1994. Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest. Nueva York: Penguin.
Rattasepp, Silver, y Kalevi Kull. 2016. “The Semiotic Species: Deelying with Animals in Philosophy”. The American Journal of Semiotics 32 (1/4): 35-48. https://tinyurl.com/28szmf59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/ajs2016112316
Rose, Gillian. 2019. Metodologías visuales: Una introducción a la investigación con materiales visuales. Murcia, ES: Centro de Estudios Visuales de la Universidad de Murcia.
Tschirhart, Céline, Jayalaxshmi Mistry, Andrea Berardi, Elisa Bignante, Matthey Simpson, Lakeram Haynes, Ryan Benjamin, Grace Albert, Rebecca Xavier, Bernie Robertson, Odacy Davis, Caspar Verwer, Géraud de Ville y Deirdre Jafferally. 2016. “Learning from One Another: Evaluating the Impact of Horizontal Knowledge Exchange for Environmental Management and Governance”. Ecology DOI: https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08495-210241
and Society 21(2). https://tinyurl.com/6fjj6cnv.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Londres: Zed Books.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2013. La mirada del jaguar: Introducción al perspectivismo amerindio. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón.