Toward an Epidemiology of Ritual Chants

Pierre Déléage

doi:10.3167/sa.2020.640307

Abstract

This article develops an epidemiological approach to the analysis of ritual discourse, comparing three distinct genres of Amazonian ritual chants: Wayana, Sharanahua, and Ingarikó. The aim is not to identify the inherent properties of chants, nor to establish ideal types of ritual context (initiation, shamanism, prophetism), but to analyze the different factors affecting the stabilization of the heterogeneous elements of ritual traditions. First, I identify the different procedures (order transfer, parallelism, intersemioticity, and inscription) that stabilize content. Then, assuming that the spread of ritual chants depends on an institutional apparatus, I explore the chants’ rules of distribution and the types of legitimizing authority involved. Finally, I show how the combined analysis of these different factors offers us a new way of understanding ritual innovation.

Highlights

This article develops an epidemiological approach to the analysis of ritual discourse, comparing three distinct genres of Amazonian ritual chants: Wayana, Sharanahua, and Ingarikó
In Amazonia, we find this sort of clan distribution of ritual discourses in the collective rituals of the Upper Rio Negro (Hugh-Jones 2010)
Its ritual prayers, which were very similar to alleluia chants, were disseminated in ‘high fidelity’ using audio cassettes. This analysis of a range of Amazonian traditions has endeavored to show the usefulness of an epidemiological approach to ritual discourse

Summary

Introduction

This article develops an epidemiological approach to the analysis of ritual discourse, comparing three distinct genres of Amazonian ritual chants: Wayana, Sharanahua, and Ingarikó. Because the ritual chants under discussion here aim for verbatim transmission, they employ vastly more stabilizing techniques than other forms of traditional discourse.

Results

Conclusion