Abstract

Abstract This article centres on the logics of knowledge transmission that underpin healing rituals among the Sharanahua of Western Amazonia. From an observer's outlook, these rituals bring together no more than two participants: the shaman and the patient. Each of them has access to different kinds of knowledge relating to the supernatural entities involved, their relationship with illness, and how they relate to and interact with shamans. The difference between these two forms of knowledge can only be understood by reflecting on their heterogeneous modes of transmission. The patient acquires their representations of the therapeutic action in an ordinary context of knowledge transmission, whereas the shaman obtains his esoteric knowledge exclusively via ritual transmission. The article proposes a descriptive model that distinguishes ordinary knowledge transmission from ritual knowledge transmission.

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