Paths of Speech: Symbols, Sociality and Subjectivity Among the Muinane of the Colombian Amazon (Essay‪)‬

Les Muinane, groupe indigene de la Colombie amazonienne, decrivent la subjectivite individuelle comme provenant soit des substances cultivees qui constituent le corps des etres humains, soit des substances sauvages qui usurpent le role des bonnes substances. La subjectivite morale, en particulier, provient du tabac, de la coca et d'autres substances partagees par une communaute. Dans une telle narration, la subjectivite est a la fois individuelle et collective, d'origine divine aussi bien qu'animale. Le discours des Muinane semble parfois presenter la subjectivite comme radicalement determinee par des entites extra-individuelles. L'auteur affirme, cependant, que la conscience du soi entre en grande partie dans leurs narrations de l'action -- c'est-a-dire qu'ils comprennent leurs propres actions comme etant orientees vers soi autant que vers autrui et que, de plus, leur maniere de parler de leurs propres interactions sociales ainsi que de leurs pensees/emotions conferent une forme a celles-ci. L'auteur met l'accent sur l'aboutissement de la vie sociale et sur le caractere intrinsequement social du soi, en evitant de mettre en exergue une culture monolithique qui determinerait de maniere unidirectionnelle la subjectivite et la sociabilite. The Muinane, an indigenous group of the Colombian Amazon, narratively present individual subjectivity as stemming from cultivated substances that constitute the bodies of human beings, or else from wild substances that usurp the role of proper stuffs. Moral subjectivity in particular stems from the tobacco, coca and other substances shared by a community. Subjectivity in such an account is both individual and collective, and either divine or animalistic as well. Muinane people's rhetoric at times seems to present subjectivity as radically determined by extra-individual entities. However, the author argues that consciousness of the self is very much a part of their accounts of action --that is, that they understand their own actions to be self-directed as well as other-directed, and furthermore, that their ways of speaking about their own social interactions and thoughts/emotions performatively shape them. The author stresses the achieved character of social life and the intrinsically social character of selfhood, without making a case for a monolithic culture that monologically determines subjectivity and sociality.