Images of person in an Amerindian society. An ethnographic account of Kuna woodcarving

Images of person in an Amerindian society. An ethnographic account of Kuna woodcarving. The long debated problem of representation in Amerindian art discussed by Boas, Kroeber and Lévi-Strauss is reconsidered in this article through an ethnographic account of Kuna woodcarving. By analysing the makin...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 2012, Vol.98 (1), p.7-37
1. Verfasser: Fortis, Paolo
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Images of person in an Amerindian society. An ethnographic account of Kuna woodcarving. The long debated problem of representation in Amerindian art discussed by Boas, Kroeber and Lévi-Strauss is reconsidered in this article through an ethnographic account of Kuna woodcarving. By analysing the making of wooden anthropomorphic figures and the Kuna exegesis of it, along with some comparative examples from other Amerindian societies, this article argues for an understanding of the sculptural representation of the human figure as an instantiation of alterity. Kuna wooden figures, it is argued, are metonymically related to soul images and instantiate the more general Amerindian principle of a continuity of souls behind a discontinuity of bodies. Explored through art the theme of alterity, both at the level of the person and the cosmological world, provides a framework to look at ideas of birth and death, and the centrality of kinship in the creation of human bodies.
ISSN:0037-9174
1957-7842
DOI:10.4000/jsa.12119