DRAFT 11/15/06.

NOT FOR CITATION WITHOUT PERMISSION OF AUTHOR

Note: Passages in brackets, single space, or blue print will not be read at meeting.

SAY IT WITH CHEEK: VISIBILITY, DISINTEGRATION AND OTHER DANGERS IN PO’A

(PUDALI) WORDPLAY

JANET CHERNELA, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

CHERNELA@GMAIL.COM

2006 Meetings of the American Anthropological Association; Session "Experiencing

Gender in Amazonia: Fieldwork, Emplacement, and Social Roles in Indigenous
Communities" Chair: Stephanie Alemán; Organizers: Max Viatori; Michael Uzendoski.

Abstract: Taking as its subject spontaneous songs presented by women to one another in the po'oa
(pudali), a festive ceremony practiced among intermarrying groups in the Northwest Amazon, this paper
takes the position that through an act of signification, the signifier is empowered, while the signified is
victimized. In the reciprocal exchanges considered here, where each actor alternately performs the role of
signifier and signified, the songs accomplish a multi-layered identity, with important social and personal
implications. In the successful manipulation of imagery, the signifier attempts to transforms the other into a
caricature articulated and orchestrated by her through her compositions. The performance is enhanced by
the tension between the two interlocutors as they alternate roles. At issue are questions regarding the
creations of identities – among them, gender -- and the rightful authorizations of them.

GENDERED TIME

When Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949 "one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one" (de
Beauvoir 149; Eng. transl. Simons 2006), she built upon the anthropological conviction, stated explicitly in
Margaret Mead's 1928 classic publication Coming of Age in Samoa, that gender identity, as a social role, is
culturally constructed -- that is, it is produced through specific, not universal, socialization processes. de
Beauvoir departed from Mead, however, in situating the question of gender identity within existing
philosophical discussions of the Self and Other. In The Second Sex de Beauvoir wrote, "Only the
mediation of the other can constitute an individual as an Other" (2006:13; ital. mine). In this foundational

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work, de Beauvoir introduced the problematic of Woman as Other, thereby directing feminist scholarship
toward the questions of identity and signification.
Since that time, the field of gender studies has experienced a number of new and insightful
theoretical complications.// Convincing arguments have been made by these and other authors that gender
is social fiction -- a constraint imposed by society that closes off possibilities.

Since then, much of feminist scholarship in the social sciences and humanities has been concerned
with the production of the gendered person in the company of other gendered persons through repeated
linguistic acts of both the daily and the ceremonial kind. Thus, gender is a kind of “doing” or performing a
recognized set of enactments/signs. Critical studies scholar Judith Butler phrased the cumulative body of
interdisciplinary theory this way: "...the appearance of substance is … a constructed identity, a
performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come
to believe and to perform in the mode of belief" (Butler 2004b:154). For Butler and other feminist
philosophers and critical theorists, the single means of escape from these determinations is “radical
resignification.” In her use of “radical resignification Butler seems to have in mind [a revolutionary self-
definition/auto-signification] (Butler 2004a: 325)] liberation; a triumph of the will and personal (read,
individual), freedom over determination. [//a victory of a true or autonomous self over a socially
constrained self. ]

Using as a basis my experiences among Wanano Tukanoan women of the Uaupés basin of Brazil,
I'd like to comment on this growing body of theory. First, I'd like to appropriate some of the philosophical
conversation for anthropology, repositioning the expression "radical resignification" so that it lies within
the frame of social acts, not outside them. [I use "radical resignification" in this way to make a number of
points about gender that emerge from an anthropological perspective.] First, I argue against the
depiction/notion of gender as a unified concept; I will contend, using the Wanano case [to support my
viewpoint,] that the gendered body is not singular, but multiple. The separate and discontinuous genders
are each created, reified, and reinforced through acts of signification, including ordinary as well as
ceremonially situated speech events. I argue that these gendered identities cannot be understood apart from
more inclusive, generative social models involving the individual in time. A second, and different, point I
hope to make is that the authorship of an act -- rather than the act per se – is key to an individual's [sense
of autonomy and worth] control over her identity. [The contest/struggle for control over signification (in
both ordinary and in ritual life) is the site of self-other interaction and mutual definition.]

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 The term radical here refers to a totalizing state, rather than a political epiphany. Since each
sequential gender depiction is constituted by contrasting, not continuous, "resignifications." In this usage,
by radical, I refer to a totalizing state, rather than a political epiphany.] As a carrier of signification (which
must be received felicitously) the performance/act must be carried out within parameters of recognition.
While there is some leeway for improvisation, the number of signifiers from which one can select to
broadcast a gendered self to others is limited, not infinite. (It is only the American exaultation of the
individual that would have a person determine her own set of signifiers. //there are different "gendered
selves," each manifest through a different set of signifiers.
Following the work of Suzanne Oakdale (2005), I foreground the life history of the individual in a
collectivity.
Gender as a constellation of signs is thus complicated by mutation through time. For the Wanano
Tukanoans I knew, the life of the individual-in-the-collectivity, as Oakdale terms it, moves/proceeds
through a linear succession of stages, each marked by differently manifest specificities. For the Wanano
there is as great a diversity among the variously gendered expressions during a person's life, as there are
across genders. Rather than a model of a gradual unfolding, as characterizes the Western model we label
"maturation," the Tukanoan model [is characterized by total states that replace one another in succession.
The process] involves a kind of "punctuated equilibrium" in which each new representation' (enacted
personae) follows a prior one, utterly annihilated and superceding its predecessor, producing a series of
portraits in time. These artificial and static portraits constitute an orthogonal depiction of gender-in- time.
Tukanoan woman's 'nature,' then, is not one, but multiple --- each choreographed in an unalterable
succession of significations as 'natural' and 'necessary' as the others,. By mutating I do not mean mutable,
for I am referring to social norms and not individual inclinations. Changes from one gender identity to
another are therefore psychically costly for the individual who is given little leeway or preparation as she
takes on each new identity for which she has no prior experience.
[In addition to the role played by time in defining and driving the gendered transformations of both
men and women, women’s movement in space is also fundamental in the reproduction of Wanano life in
all senses.]
THE POLITICS OF LOSS: SEPARATION AND THE MAKING OF SOCIETY

The gendered selves of a Tukanoan woman are arranged around a central axis, a social fact that
defines her life in time and in space: [the permanent leave-taking away from her own family to that of her
husband's at the point of marriage.] her move from her own family to that of her husband’s on marriage.
The departure process commences with a girl's puberty ceremony at which she is referred to for the first
time as a nu’mino. She first becomes a "new woman" wa'ma nu'mino until she marries. This pivotal
event will become the most remembered in a woman's/ her life; it will later be recalled to reckon relative

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age. Moreover, it is the first step in the "radical resignification" toward womanhood, numino. that will
alter a woman’s life.

Wanano Tukanoan communities are small, composed of no more than 150 close kin. In this setting
a girl is a “daughter” (mako) of the local descent group and a first speaker of its language. // The Tukanoan
women with whom I worked lived as girls among their own kin in small, closely-knit communities until
they married. The synergies of linguistic exogamy, virilocal postmarital residence, and patrilineal descent
reckoning, build upon one another at marriage to create a highly alienating experience for women.
Although they form strong affective bonds with each other, in-marrying wives remain outsiders in the
communities of their husbands. The "Outsideness" of married women is expressed in the Wanano terms
paye masono, "an Other person;" wa’ako, a wandering woman; and sü’sarinare, a woman who "mixes
among Others" (Chernela 1988; 1993; 2004a.) where Others are members of different linguistico-descent
groups than one’s own.

Lives of the women of/in other Tukanoan language groups have been described by Jean Jackson for
the Bará (1974; 1976; 1983); Christine and Stephen Hugh-Jones for the Barasana (1979; 1979);
Alexandra Aikhenvald for the Tariana (2002); Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff for the Desana (1971); Irving
Goldman for the Cubeo (1963), and . Cristiane Lasmar for urbanized Tukano women (1998; 2005).
Together, the collective observations underscore a point made by Irving Goldman as early as 1948 -- that
the apparently separate intermarrying language groups of [/that we refer to as] the Northwest Amazon of
Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela, constitute a “a single culture that is expressed.in variant forms”
(Goldman 1979; and see1948). When the [full/inclusive] community of intermarrying language groups is
taken into account it becomes apparent that the residential shift of women at marriage out of her own
language group into another creates the intactness of Northwest Amazonian society (Chernela 2004a).

Moreover, the speech of a married woman, the speech of an Other, indexes her outsideness within
the context of the local descent group into which she has married. The group into which she married
renders her "other." And, although it will never be her own, the children she contributes to the community
will draw her closer to it. //At marriage, a woman abruptly dislodges/cuts/__ herself away/off from her
girlhood sources of nurturance in order to realize her numino (womanness) through bearing children. This
is the defining feature of [Tukanoan] woman and it is the subject of the songs of married women/Kaya
Basa. Loss; wound; she leaves the body of the people that nurtured her. As she does, she takes on a new
personae. She will be a married woman, numino, living with her husband's family and raising children
belonging to it. Thus, the many layers of meaning in the songs of the married women, which mark their
emotional, psychological, and physical separation, from community, is the necessary glue that holds
society together, thus making a social compound, as it were, of potentially separate entities. As I argue
elsewhere, the songs of women in the Po'oa eloquently illustrate social articulation created/constructed in

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the process of speaking. Performers effectively articulate not only their own experiences to the processes
of society but also the complex forms of connectivities and separations among different social entities. By
exchanging kaya basa, and in this way, “exchanging” equivalent but pointedly different word streams in
different linguistic codes, these speech acts articulate in several senses the individuals and the groups for
which they stand." (Chernela: 2004/ck: ).
In the period preceding a girl's departure as a married woman, that is – while she has passed
through the puberty ceremony but is still living in the village of her birth, she is known as manu marieni
koro, [meaning] a woman-without-a-husband. The label anticipates the inevitability of marriage as it also
indicates the sexual maturity of its possessor. It is a state defined by what it is to become; that which is
most salient about it is its temporality. [It is, as we have recognized since its iterations by Van Genep and
Victor Turner -- a limen, a state of in-between. The manu marieni koro is not a fully socialized woman
and in that sense may be considered a pre-woman.] This paper is about that intermediate phase, its
performativity and performance. I too was an unmarried woman at the time I collected their songs.

ORTHOGONAL STRUCTURING OF RITUAL DISCURSIVE TIME

The successive, contrastive depictions of femaleness are ritually enacted during the exchange
ceremony known as Po'oa to the Wanano, and Podali to the Wakwenai. The ceremonies bring together
local descent groups to mark life-cycle passages, such as naming, female puberty, male initiation, and
recognition of ongoing marital ties. Jonathan Hill (1984, 1985, 1993 ) and I (Chernela 1983, 1988, 1993,
2001) have elsewhere addressed the activities of the po'oa and its role in the creation of group relationships
and identities.
Several performative exchanges occur throughout the po’oa, forming a nested hierarchy of lesser or
sub-prestations within the principal ceremonial. The ceremonial progression is marked by specialized
participation of different actors who take the floor according to a formulaic order. The ceremony opens
solemnly at dawn with the arrival of the guests. The earliest performances, which may be called Salutation
Songs, are sung by men who assert that things "are in place" (Chernela 1988). These are followed by an
enactment of spear throwing and rhetorical speech known as the bueyoaka (Piercing Speech) enacted by
men to reference the historic relationships of political entities. The performances by men in the center of
the ceremonial space are followed by those of women as they distribute drink along the periphery of the
dance house. They begin with the Kaya Basa (Sad Songs) of the married women and continue with the
performances of younger, unmarried women, known as Buhupu Basa.

Whereas the earliest performances by men are formal and foreground continuity in space, the later
songs by women both enact and reference displacement. Where the men's salutation forms are marked by

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formality, then bravado, and the songs of married women that follow them are mournful; the Buhupu basa
of unmarried women are brash, derogatory, and baudy (Chernela 1988). The directionality of performances
maps well onto the progression of identifications of the gendered body over time as they move from fixed
to displaced. When the unmarried women's portion begins at nightfall, their performances present a topsy-
turvy world replete with images of predatory sexuality (disintegration). This contributes to a general
impression of disarray, as the song performances proceed from most authoritative and cultural(ly-
recognized) to least authoritative and "natural." The final portions of the ceremony, taking place at night,
appear to the outsider to be an undoing, an unraveling of all that preceded.

One may well schematize a ceremonial chronotype proceeding from dawn/male/ancestors/heads to

night/female/descendants/tails. [[The ceremony opens [skip for talk] at dawn, with male performers who
reference the head, ancestors, and the community as polity. It proceeds toward midnight performances by
women who references are individual persons, [descendents, tails] and sexuality.]] Such a schema is in
keeping with the principle put forth by Irving Goldman [for the Cubeo] that Tukanoan models of the life
cycle, ritual cycles, and time itself, begin with order and proceed toward chaos and disintegration. For
Goldman, the ceremonial order was an inevitable process that began with cohesion and eroded throughout
the day toward an inexorable, orgasmic (Goldman's term) breakdown into unruly behavior and sexuality
(Goldman 1963). Goldman referred to this process as "Spontaneous Disintegration."
As we consider Goldman's notion of Spontaneous Disintegration, we must take into account the
possible convergence of Western and Tukanoan imaginings that collapse female with sexuality and the two
as agents of disintegration. In several ways Goldman's model of "Spontaneous Disintegration."
recapitulates the Western Fall of Man motif, which proceeds from the godly and pure, manifest in
coherence, to the animal and impure, manifest in chaos.
[Later, and not for talk] As we will see, however, the later events that reference sexuality are no
more spontaneous, disorderly, or disintegrated than are the earliest, most formal performative frames.
Insofar as they are normative and predictable, they are no less choreographed than are the opening
invocations. Because of their sexual innuendo, however, they are perceived to be natural and, as Goldman
concluded, counter to cultural. We will return to this point later.
To explore this point I will turn to the last performance of the Po'oa that proceed long into the night
-- the teasing songs of unmarried women.
Songs of Unmarried Women (Buhupu basa(ro) [MC]

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 When Goldman refers to ribaldry at the close of the ceremony, he may well have had in mind the
portion known to the Wanano Tukano as the Buhupu basa(ro). I turn to these now to consider how they
allow us 1) to better understand Tukanoan social life, in general, and women, in the particular; 2) to
evaluate Goldman's proposition of Spontaneous Disintegration as the model underlying all Tukanoan
ceremony; and 3) to reflect upon the implications for the problematic of self and the other -- a
conversation into which I will insert my own participation.
[Like other performance events of the Po’oa, the Buhupu basa constitute a dialogic performance
that is at once individual and collective (a phenomenon Oakdale (2005) refers to as "dividual”).] In the
Buhupu basa, two unmarried young women alternately address one another to amuse their audience by
enumerating the undesirable attributes of the other. However, the Buhupu basa differs from previous
performative frames in several ways. By using a system of nicknames, the form [/Buhupu basa] provides
the subject with a double, or alter, identity, thereby introducing a level of metaphor to the presentation of
self and other. The singers tease one another and amuse their audience by enumerating the undesirable
attributes of the animal or plant after which the person is named. The songs are marked by descriptions of
grotesque features, ornamented with creative detail. [The more distant the relationship between the
attributes of named-for and namesake [(or tenor and vehicle),] the more pleasing the play. So, for example,
calling a tall person, as I was, by the name of a small animal amuses the onlookers and embarrasses the
namesake. I was also called "painted" -- selected specifically because I was [regarded as] pale. In this
context of allegory and irony, the "meaning" at the ordinary level of conversation is its opposite. For
example, the phrase "is sooo beautiful" means "is sooo ugly!"
Examples (cite verses Big Saw with big mouth and long nose, etc. skin like a saw. Leonard case
here? This meaning, as all listeners know, must be turned on its head to receive the impact of the ironic
twist/the impact of the sarcasm. The song(s) described here are selected from approximately two hundred
songs recorded over two years in the Wanano village of Yapima on the Uaupes River in Brazil as part of an
ongoing project which consists of recording, transcribing, translating, and interpreting women's
improvised songs [in the northwest Amazon]. The songs were recorded during po'oa ceremonials, where I
was located with the tape-recorder on the women's side of the dance house. They were later transcribed
and translated by the author with the help of Wanano and other Tukanoan speakers. The material has been
selected to demonstrate the general characteristics of the song type and the range of stylistic devices
employed.
Mention that Emiria ptranslated this song as she had many others.

PARTICIPATION, SIGNIFICATION, AND VISIBILITY

The song presented here exemplifies the kind of banter that occurs between performers and
onlookers in the Buhupu Basa. The singers, Emiria and Alimi, are young adults from the same Wanano

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village, Soma. The two unmarried women sing in humorous counterpoint to each other during an exchange
ceremony given by Wanano hosts to visiting Desana in-laws. When Emiria and Alimi sing, they tease each
other by attributing to the song partner the undesirable characteristics of the recipient's animal namesake,
as each of the ritual mockers seeks to outdo the other in her comic abuse. They accompany their
performance with mimicry, body movements and hand gestures to represent wiggling tails, pointy ears, or
long snouts, provoking laughter [and delight] in the performers and nearby spectators.
In ordinary speech, these two young women address one another as "sister." Here they tease one
another by using a derogatory address form – a deeply embarrassing, nick-name. Emiria's nickname is
Caiman (Wan. kaifa) a crocodile of the genus Caiman. Alimi's nickname, Opossum, (the marsupial
Didelphis marsupialis), appears in earlier portions [of the song] but is not mentioned in the song portion
cited here. Instead, Emiria directs her remarks to onlookers, who are goaded into the play by her
performance.
The singers start out addressing one another, then turn to draw in nearby on-lookers by nick-name.
These include Ba'a, Wanano for the large, predatory fish tucunare/Cichla ocellaris; Bi'i, a rat; Bisigudo,
chicken pox; Chuintin (also called Sanyasu), a small bird; Sama, a spotted cavy (Cuniculus cavy); and
Siruwera, a small red berry. The last two nicknames referred to me. I was given two nick-names:
Siruwera, a tiny and tasteless fruit; and, for those less comfortable with the first insult, Sama, a spotted
cavy (Cuniculus paca). Seated alongside the singers with tape recorder, I featured in the part of the song I
excerpt here:

Here is the song (and to powerpoint?)

Emiria:
Sama, Samaka
Cavy, little cavy

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Noariro dorokam
Pretty [ugly], spotted

Yoarosse hirikoroka sama makunokande

She is like a little cavy baby/puppy

Marianocam Yoarosse noarirocam muka phinita

There isn't anyone as pretty (ugly) as little you, Yeahmmm.

Alimi:
Dekande
Oh

Khaya duhisina
As you sit and sadly remember (lit., "sitting, remembering")

Kokarikam
The women who wander

Janet, Mu, phini.

Janet, you, yes.

Yu'u phini
I yeahmm,

Khayase Bisigudo
You won’t remember the guy* with Chicken pox

…..

Ari horokam horina duhiro ninapa

This person, sitting over there, says

Bisigudoka, Bisigudoka,
Dear little chicken pox, dear little thing with chicken pox

Janetereka Bisika phioro!

Chicken pox is chasing [spreading to] Janet!

Taro ninapa Janetere!

'I'm coming,' he says to Janet!

Khuripa Caiman phiriro Janetereka

Big Caiman is ready to eat little Janet

Bisigudo Phinita

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That one with chicken pox, yeah,

Caiman serrote, phirio piri, phirio piri, keno yoariro,

[And that Caiman with a tail like a saw (Port, serrote), big teeth, and a long snout.

Caiman, Bisigudo, Phinita

Caiman, Chicken pox, yeah..

Emiria [who has been addressed sings]:

Samaka, rende Sama makunokarem ninoma
Dear little cavy, my child, I say

Siruwera Huremon ditacam chu sorepu

Only Huremon (a bird) eats Siruwera (fruit)

Yu phini, yu phini nikare Siruwerare

I, yeah, I yeah, say to Siruwera

Siruwerare, Janeterekam
To Siruwera, dear Janet,

Janeterekam, Sama
Janet, Cavy

Makuno dororirokam
My little painted child

…
Sama, makuno dorori kandeca
Oh, my little painted child,

Yoarosse bahurikorore, Janetekanrem nikare

Like an old woman speaking to Janet

Yu phini Siruwerare nikarikande

I, yeah, say to Siruwera

Chuintikandem chuso marerokande

Only the little bird Chuintin eats it

Nire yu ba'u
So says my little brother.

Ahbe! Bisigudo phinita

Ah! Chicken pox -- oh yes!

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Bisigudokam, Bisigudokam, mukam
You, little Chicken pox, little Chicken pox

Bisica phiokoninobu phinita sanrem

Don't bring that Chicken pox over here to us!

Bisigudokam
Little Chicken pox,

Bisika phiokoninobu
Don't spread that Chicken pox!

Janete, Janete khuira

Janet is scared

Janete khuira
Janet is scared

Bisigudore
Of the guy* with Chicken pox!

Khuira asam phini

We are scared, yeah!

Janete…

Menekam phuaro
Those two over there [referring to onlookers]

Phuaro khuiha
Those two are frightened

Khuiha Bisigudore
Afraid of the guy* with Chicken pox

Bisika phurinissore
Chicken pox is painful

Phurinissore
Painful!

Alimi:
Amichaca taku
When tomorrow comes

Ninoma Serrote phirio, dukero phiriro, keno yoariro

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 You Big Saw with a big mouth and long nose, will say…

Caimam, phinita
Caiman, yes.

Mahsa churiro mukam phinita

People that eat little you, yeah,

Niyuca arikorosse
Says this woman here,

Bisigudocam tocam companheira

Chicken pox's pal

Meneka Ba'a
With Lake Bass (Tucunare)

Duhiro ninapa niyuka arikorokanse musanrem

This little woman, sitting here, says to you all..

Mankono [ck]
She's lying.

*My choice of "guy" is to convey informality, not gender.

ALLEGORIES OF DEVOURMENT: THE POLITICS OF SIGNIFICATION

Insofar as assignation creates a spoken fact [or truth], signification may be recognized as a power-
producing act in which the signifier is empowered by the act, while the signified is victimized by it. In the
verbal dueling/contest [mc] considered here, where each actor alternately performs the roles of signifier
and signified, the song exchanges represent a contest for the rightful authority to determine
identity/[meaning].
Besides pointing out physical peculiarities to create a double, alternative identity, [the strategically
selected creature (or disease) names also confer on the namesake/assigned a relation to all others so
named.] The nonsensical, topsy-turvy world of animals also functions as a grid of relationship
superimposed upon the subject, thereby commiting acts of violent signification. The use of nick-names
provides a playful, parallel world of identities that contrasts with the "official" one. A nick-name, then,
places its bearer within a syntax that positions her in a web of alternative relationships.

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 For speakers of Wanano and other Eastern Tukanoan languages, names are indicators of rigid
social placement. Forms of address combine a relationship and sib name in a manner that indicates status.
This world is turned on its head in the Buhupu Basa.

Like humans, animals and plants are subject to systems of classification and associated
relationships governed by rules of filiation and fraternity that link like individual types into taxa or
"species" based upon commonalities. Classes of five similar entities are categorized as "brothers," with
expectations of brotherly solidarity attached to the bearers of names of like animals. These relations are
modeled on the Tukanoan notion of descent which groups individuals into sets of "brothers" or "siblings." I
call these "horizontal, familial ties."
In contrast to the solidary relations characterizing the 'intraspecific' relations, the principles
governing 'inter-specific' relations are those of "others." In the alter-world created by the Buhupu Basa,
the named subjects are related through principles of hierarchy and predation.. The bearer of the name of a
predatory fruit-eating fish, for example, is thought to "prey upon" the bearer of a fruit name. [Other
examples] These are the relations of "eat and be eaten," a euphemistic reference/allusion to sexual
relations, into which these performers are moving as novices.
The second set of relationships, which I call "food chain hierarchies," is analogous to the
relations of potential sexual partners, i.e., those in the marriageable and highly sexualized cross-cousin
category. This sexualized, play relationship among marriageable cousins, who are "Others," is
foregrounded in the Buhupu basa.
[These relationships, presented here in exaggerated hilarity, find resonance in the sexual
relationships now foregrounded in the lives of the "new women." and perhaps express the fear associated
with "devourment by the other."]

References to predation, devouring, and being eaten, are expressions of sexual pursuit and activity.
The expression "to eat" is a recognizable Wanano euphemism for sexual intercourse, and in other contexts
it retains its predatory connotation. The combination, performatively, is titillating; it may build on
whatever anxieties or fears the young women have regarding their new-found sexuality.
In the Buhupu Basa [verbal duel MC] numerous types of insinuation allude to an opponent's sexual
appetite. In the phrase, "The little cavy goes to the clay beach at midnight," the manifest topic may be an
animal's nocturnal visit to water, but the intent of the singer and the listener's decipherment are more
intricate. The singer is implying that the signified owner-recipient of the name -- in this case, me, the
anthropologist! -- is promiscuous, seeking out sexual encounters by night. In the context of this at once

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erotically charged and derogatory message, the animal/woman who "goes out at night," is said to be
sexually aggressive. The choice of the cavy, a nocturnal animal, builds on this imagery. [This is not unlike
the notion of the Honky Tonk woman of Southeastern US Appalachian songs; and it is possible that the
unmarried listeners hear it in the same cautionary manner.]
[[Predation and sexuality are conflated on several levels. Relations between in-law groups, formerly
warring enemies, are ambivalent. / In Wanano thought, a deeply embedded/ingrained equation between in-
law and enemy remains (citation). The Piercing Speech is meant for them – to transforma a former enemy
relationship into one of allies. In Wanano narratives, a woman’s body is viewed as dangerous, the vagina
likened to the mouth of a predatory fish. Allusion to Caiman's snout therefore calls upon several levels of
equating predation with sexuality. The equivalence reflects both the attraction and the fear (hostility) that
underlie Tukano affinal relations.] In a related jest performance, the same young woman sings, "Caiman --
people kill it, cut it, put it on the fire, cook it, and eat it." This is yet a stronger assemblage of references to
hostility, sex, and marriage. Killing, cutting, cooking and eating may refer to pursuit (killing),
consumation (cutting), marriage (cooking) and incorporation (eating). A series of transformative acts are
performed, in which sex, marriage, and death are made equivalents.

The innuendo is made more humorous by the fact that the two birds named are very small, the
spectator Ba'a is a small child, and the bearer of nickname Mia is the brother of one of the singer (In this
sense, pursuer is the equivalent of marriageable suitor.) In the ironic line, "Everyone will want to have
opossum as a spouse," the suggestion or insinuation is precisely the opposite. In the Buhupu basa women
and men can both be treated as predator and as prey. Although women are generally regarded as the sexual
predators (my Murphy paper), the predator in the jesting songs is not consistently of one gender. Moreover,
the nick-name carries a gender which may or may not match the gender of the bearer. While both singers
and spectators are female, the nick-name roles may be either male or female. This contributes to the sexual
innuendo of the songs. The name, caiman, for example, suggests a male, while little cavy a female. The
mismatch of gender to namesake is uproariously funny to the listeners.] Siruwera Huremon ditakam chu
sorepu Only Sanyasu (a bird) eats Siruwera (fruit)[Chuintin: change to sanyasu?] [to marriage paper] The
phrase "and only sanyasu (a bird) eats siruwera" is funny to Wanano listeners because it insults siruwera as
being too little desired. Because of pan-Tukanoan rules of exogamy and preference for ongoing cross-
cousin exchange with specific sibs, availability of appropriate marriage partners is a major concern of
marriageable adolescents.] As a ravenous killer, chicken pox is flagrantly unselective. ]]

Another conventional slur in verbal duels is the insinuation that an opponent has too few pursuers
or suitors. The following ironic lines, referring to the ethnographer, illustrate this convention:

Yu Phini
I, yes,

14
 Siruwerare nikarikande
Say to Siruwera

Chuintikandem chuso marerokande

Only the little bird Chuintin eats it

Nire yu ba'u
So says my little brother.

The phrase, "Only the little bird chuintin eats it [siruwera,]" combines more than one insult
technique and demonstrates the verbal acumen of the composer. The composition simultaneously insults
the bearer of the nickname (me!) Siruwera (a tiny fruit), as undesirable, while also implying that another
spectator, the bearer of the nick-name Chuintin -- is engaged in illicit relations with her.
Disease and contamination are further insinuations of sexual voracity. In one line the performer
warns that Bisigudo a chicken pox carrier, is wanting to "get" Janet and others nearby.
Chicken pox's wild contagion, like raw sexuality, is dangerous to those who enter into "contact"
with it. Chicken pox, like the predatory animal, threatens its victim with incorporation and death. The
combination of sexuality and death thrills and excites. (Remarks such as these also may be understood as a
projection-inversion of repressed adolescent sexual desires and fears.)
In a charter myth of western civilization commonly known as The Fall, the dangerous consequences
of female desire trigger a process in which First couple are expulsed from Paradise, from a supernatural to
an earthly realm. However, Goldman's identification of a process of Sponaneous Disintegration may
capture an important principle of Tukanoan performance. But it does not recognize that the apparent
disarray in the Buhupu basa performances of young women, that appear to be thoroughly spontaneous, are
as structured, as choreographed, as are the earlier performances in which ancestors, or history, are the
focus.
[The classical western syntax requires a MARKED closure in the form of a "return to the order of
the outset."]
[Should have given a lot of examples..from many others..convey that these ex’s of me are the
ordinary ways of speaking.]

VISIBILITY, DECIPHERMENT AND THE SELF

The performances described here may be understood as a series of embedded frames populated by
different actors. The most elementary frame is occupied by two speaker-singers who alternate roles of

15
signifier and signified. A slightly larger frame involves a triangulation between the signifier, the signified,
and spectators. These designations are heuristic, since roles shift with fluidity. By calling the nick-name
of an onlooker, a former spectator, once signified, becomes a participant in the performance, shifting the
performative center to a new locus of signification. A yet larger frame comprises the ceremonial attendees
who may or may not overhear the goings-on of the young women.
In the process we call fieldwork, the anthropologist submits her own identity to challenges
sufficiently profound to threaten the imagined coherence of the self as subject. Thus, I was moved to
wonder: Who am I without my notebook [pen: deliberate play on words]? Who am I without my
sexuality? Do I dare relinquish my social fictions? If so, what am I left with?
Challenging the many fictions that underlie the assumptions of the subject can, under the proper
circumstances, be a productive predicament. Under the proper conditions and with the appropriate
reception, the experience may be, even, exhilarating.
My own sense of gender and sexual identity was seriously challenged upon my arrival in the
Uaupés basin in April of 1978, when I was called "Padre." I was uneasy about this appellation, although I
could not be [sure/]certain the users knew the gender limits of the Portuguese referent. Gender and
sexuality are fundamental sites for the moorings of personhood, and my own is no exception. In addition
to being de-sexualized by the form of address, I was also treated deferentially. Hierarchy, and its
associated behaviors, create and maintain distances among people. As a "Padre," I was unlikely to be
teased during the late afternoon exchanges of lascivious humor. It was with great relief, then, when, after
many months of living in the Wanano village, Yapima, I was addressed by nickname in the course of these
songs. It was the very friend with whom I worked most closely, Emiria, who felt the freedom to play with
the potential violence of these names, taunting and mocking me as she would have any other unmarried
woman.
Part of the violence of the act of signification is that it renders the recipient visible -- and not just
visible in a neutral manner but in a form designed and determined by the signifier. In these songs, each
performer's signifying act depicts a fictionalized body attributed to the other. [I had been depicted as both
sexually undesireable and overly active. How should I understand this?] //[I had finally been brought into
the lascivious play extended to other human beings// as others.]
My participation and interpretation of this performance raises questions of mutual understanding
and evokes hermeneutic challenges concerning the possibilities of communication across systems of
meaning. At play in "the play" are cultural norms of reception (Butler and Salih 2004:345-6), that may or

16
may not accord with my own anticipation of what could or should happen. That which we call a common
ground cannot be identified except through the acts of interlocutors, based as they are on prior
interpretations and assumptions.
The anthropologist's project may be seen as an extension of the broader psychoanalytic project to
the self to find its own identity through the Other (Hegel 1977; Butler 1987; Simons 2006). Perhaps this
explains why I was relieved to read into the Tukanoan world a social reality that held intact some of the
fictions of my own. I was pleased to learn that I was regarded, after all, as a sexual being, a matter about
which the signifier had no basis for conjecture. In this way I read/saw/found built what I hoped was a
ground of communality between us.
Gender is a site of cultural translation as it is also a site of cultural interpretation and reception. As
I now reflect on that performance I encounter numerous (interesting) problems of cultural translation and
cultural misunderstanding. The retrospective view provides a series of problems that are potentially very
productive -- Agar's notion of a "rich moment," when things that ought to make sense do not.
[I am the only subject in this retrospection whose self-consciousness is accessible to me.] [But to
believe that I am not performing in this context is to deny a fact: Gender performativity is ongoing… In
this context, I am also delivering a performance for a definitive reception.]
As the Tukanoan subjects found themselves obliterated by the naming process, I found myself
made visible and thereby brought into a social existence by the same process. In the moment of teasing --
that is to say, in that, very moment when I am teased, I am freed of the role that had kept me apart and
isolated. A distance had been crossed, a likeness found. From the standpoint of the relationship, it
constituted a "critical subversion," a leveling of the playing field, (or an ideal speech moment in the sense
intended by Habermas ). In the process of signification I was rendered speakable in the vernacular. I
became a gendered subject among others.
If Hegel was correct in his view that the only means by which the self can overcome its sense of
alienation is through relation to an Other (Hegel 1977) this was, for me, a "significant" overcoming. In the
examples shown here, I was a spectator in the frame of triangulation, who was made visible through
signification.
Discussion
The nick-names satirize humans in a number of ways, as they are employed allegorically in the
form of thumb-nail beast fables to create irony by applying the model of relationships among animals and
plants to their human namesakes. In this way, predator-prey relations in the natural world are imposed

17
upon the human world. The interlocutors are simultaneously aware of two internally-consistent but
incompatible models: the social order of "proper" names and associated relationships and the world of
relationships assigned to non-humans, the so-called "natural order." When one of these models -- the
natural -- is imposed upon the other -- the social -- the comically degrading effect of bestializing the
subjects of the song is entertaining to the watchers while displaying the singer's improvisational virtuosity.
It creates the sense of merry imaginary chaos among the humans-made-beasts that demands resolution and
return to normalcy by the completion of the song ceremonies.
As one part of a ceremonial which appears to proceed from order to disorder, the Buhupu Basa
represents a Wanano social and performative logic. The public comic testing is a crucial step toward
reaffirming that logic. By means of the Buhupu Basa, the Wanano de-compose or disassemble and re-
integrate their social order, reaffirming it by the exercise in dipping into chaos in a humorous routine.
Since de Beauvoir first introduced the notion of Woman as Other, the idea that one can be
rendered Other through a mediating act has been amply explored, clarified, and complicated. In the
Buhupu Basa performance the art of signification calls on the performer to verbally construct a corporeal
externality of the Other that would annihilate the rights of the subject to self-determination. In the
successful manipulation of imagery, the signifier attempts to transforms the other into a caricature
articulated and orchestrated by her through her references. The signifier uses language to conger up an
identity of the signified -- drawing on grotesque imagery of tails and snouts. In the verbal dueling, each
singer attempts to outdo the other in controlling the identity and definition of the Other in a manner that
counters the Other's own rights to self-determination. Yet the signified is never fully objectified as she
remains a resistant subject, out-doing the signifier's attempts to define her in turns of her own. Her own
turn at signification reveals a more authentic self underlying the transparency of the imagined overlay. The
perfomance is enhanced by the tension between the two interlocutors as they alternate roles.
In this contest, the determination of identity is itself subject to question. The struggle before us is
the attempt of the Self to preserve an autonomy, a self-assigned identity, prior to and distinct from that
determined by -- or, as de Beauvoir phrased it -- mediated by, the Other. In the Buhupu Basa the identity
imposed by the other's acts of signification is exaggerated and temporary, its goals are to invoke humor
and to entertain onlookers. At the same time, these acts of signification stand for all acts of signification,
with special salience for gender and sexuality. The examples raise the fundamental question: What is the
identity that attaches to the individual and from where and whom does that identity
arise/emanate/originate?

18
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