Abstract
This article deals with the issue of polities in Southern Amazon, and in particular the case of chieftaincy without Through the analysis of oratory among chiefs in the multiethnic and multilingual system of the Upper Xingu, it considers how the concepts of ritual condensation and chimera could be useful for the description and analysis of such polities. In the Upper Xingu, certain chiefs are fluent in a verbal genre known as chiefs' talk, composed of formalized speeches directed either to leaders of other groups or to their own people, depending on the context in which they are delivered. Analyzing discourses of the latter kind among the Kalapalo (a Karib-speaking people of the region), the article shows how both the chief and his audience are symbolically constructed as paradoxical subjects characterized by contradictory predicates, and discusses how this is related to Kalapalo ideas on kinship and power. By engaging with the concepts of ritual condensation and chimera, the article resumes the debate on political oratory generated by Pierre Clastres and investigates how uncertainty— rather than authority or belief—can enact an exchange of perspectives through which the identities of the group and the chief are produced.
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