Ambivalence, Contradiction, and the Differentiation of Primordial Wholeness in Amazonian Cosmological Thought

Abstract

In spite of the fact that the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology has championed the cause of indigenous cosmologies in Amazonia and elsewhere, the selective use of ethnographic material to promote this cause has had the effect of obscuring some of the most remarkable qualities of these intellectual systems. It will be shown here that the widely divergent interpretations of the Ge myth of the bird-nester, as presented by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Terence Turner respectively (the latter as part of his critique of the ontological turn), as well as the well-known earlier treatment of the same myth by Claude Lévi-Strauss as the key myth in his Mythologiques, arise from the fact that they are focusing on different aspects of the cosmological thought expressed by this myth—aspects that appear to directly contradict each other. This is because indigenous thought based on concepts of the differentiation of primordial wholeness accommodates these apparent contradictions in complex and sophisticated ways that have largely eluded these commentators.