C'est l'intention qui compte. Variations sur le thème de la malignité en pays shuar (piémont amazonien de l'Équateur)

It is a chapter from an edited volume published in honour of Professor Philippe Descola.

This text presents three variations of the theme of malevolent intentions from different situations: strange encounter at the edge of a house in the forest, shamanic examination under the central place of a village, and professorial speech in a meeting room of a small town. What happens in these three situations illustrates, according to the author, the singular place with which malevolent intention is invested in the animist regime among the Shuar, and more generally, enriches the question of the genetic link between relation and identification, central in Beyond nature and culture (2005) by locating the reversibility of predation at the heart of the phenomenon.

The mode of writing – by “variations” – is an experiment, playing on the structural analysis practices (cultural features as variants of one another within a set). The idea was to choose a basic phenomenon (“attribution of bad intention”), then transpose the pragmatic conditions of utterance of this phenomena (here “hunting”[preying/being a prey], “shamanism”[sorcery/anti-witchcraft], and “schooling”[reflexive discourse regarding science vs shamanism]), and finally bring light on the differences and the common that give colours to the phenomenon.