In following an ontological reconfiguration of ethnological enquiry, Viveiros de Castro (1998; 2004; 2015) promotes the theoretical lens of ‘Amerindian perspectivism’ which shares many relational qualities with Descola’s animism. He employs the term ‘perspectivism’ to denote a set of practices and ideas that share commonalities throughout the indigenous Americas. These cosmologies operate with the fundamental rationale that all creatures are nonhuman people in possession of a generic soul; a shared perception that can be termed as a ‘phenomenological unity’ (Viveiros de Castro 2004). Amerindian perspectivism has its formative roots in ethnographic evidence that suggests that Amerindian cosmologies do not feature a concept that differentiates animals from humans (Viveiros de Castro 2015, 226). Central to the perspectival quality of Amerindian thought is the idea that Amerindian cosmologies operate in an ontologically oppositional framework to that of Western nature-culture division (Århem 1993). As opposed to Western notions of the monistic quality of nature and multiculturalism, perspectivism implies that Amerindians viewed all life as existing within the same metaphysical ‘culture’ although expressed in different ‘natures.’ Amerindians see all living creatures in the world as possessing spiritual unity with one other but with corporeal diversity, leading Viveiros de Castro to coin the term ‘multinaturalism.’ This implication means that all animals see themselves as persons, although their perception of personhood and the taxonomic designation of other animals is dictated by their physicality, e.g. jaguars see other jaguars as humans, see humans as tapirs (a viable food source), or see human blood as manioc beer. What separates all living creatures is not their spirits, but their bodies as ‘skins’, this governs their perspectival qualities (Viveiros de Castro 1998). Central to Amerindian perspectivism is the recognition of recurrent mythic commonalities
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within different Amerindian cultures, with many origin stories sharing the concept a creational ‘mythic age’ in which animals were once humans that lost their culture, and in turn, humans gained culture (Liebenberg 2016).
Viveiros de Castro acknowledges that not all types of animal are applied with personhood or with spiritual importance, and there appears to be a hegemonic designation of animals within relative taxonomies as either consanguineous people, edible prey, feared and respected predators or untouchable spirits (Viveiros de Castro 1998; 2015, 204). There is notable emphasis of an animal’s place in the food web and how it is perceived in terms of spiritual potency in Amerindian cosmologies, such as with the Makuna where the predatory point of view leads to the dominant paradigmatic classification of living beings as either ‘eaters’ or ‘food’ (Århem 1996, 188-9). In some cosmologies hunting and food acquisition is seen as an asymmetric mode of reciprocity between different animals, as is the case with the Yagua whom only hunt animals to ‘restock’ energy and compensate for losses caused by illness and death (Rival 2015). For this reason, personhood is usually applied to species that hold symbolic importance and a practical role for different cultures, such as a favoured prey species or great predators such as the jaguar (Viveiros de Castro 1998).
As aforementioned, the concept of ‘animals’ as separate from humans is not rendered linguistically in the region. For example, the Yawalapíti (Upper Xingu Arawakan speakers) use the term apapalultapa- mina as a designation for many creatures, the majority land-dwelling. This term is derived from
apapalultapa (spirit) and mina (derivative designation of this class), implying that for the Yawalapíti regard all land mammals as “spirit-like” (Viveiros de Castro 1978). Their lack of ability in despiritualizing these animals means that they subsist mostly from fishing (Viveiros de Castro 2015, 227-8). In Huaorani language, huao terero, there are no words designating broad taxonomical terms such as ‘animal’, ‘plant’, ‘nature’ or ‘ecology’. Abstract semiotic designations that denote separation of the mind from the body, or society from nature, are entirely missing from the huao terero lexicon. This appears to be a common semiotic trope throughout indigenous Amazonia (Rival 2012).
The attribution of personhood is also commonly seen throughout Amazonia in the cohabitation of humans with certain tamed animals such as peccary, tapir, paca, agouti, capybara and acouchi. Usually taken into societies after the killing of their parents during hunting, infant animals are often breastfed by women in certain communities and are viewed as pre-adolescent people who provide companionship for women and children. Because of the treatment of these animals as pre-adolescent people they are rarely allowed to reproduce themselves and are very rarely killed and eaten (Descola 2013, 379). In applying personhood to an animal there is also an attribution of conscious intentionality, which is embodied within the soul or spirit for which these nonhumans are thought to possess (Viveiros de Castro 2015, 244). This is contrary to Western perceptions of humanity’s place within the domain of animality, as although we are biologically designated as such there is a practice
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of exclusionism against animals as Western thought perceives humanity also as a distinctly moral condition (Deloria 1973; Ingold 1991; 1994). In opposition to this, animist systems model nature after society (Århem 1996, 185), applying aspects of human intentionality and agency to animals, which under the framework of perspectivism form the backbone of the Amerindian cosmological praxis. This designation of intentional agency is also embodied in the concept of caretaker ‘spirit masters’ for certain animals that are the subject of shamanistic rituals enforcing reciprocity between humans and animals (Viveiros de Castro 1998). This concept is found throughout Amerindian cosmologies and takes the form of shamanistic offerings that are used to develop a metaphysical alliance based on reciprocity and connivance with the spiritual embodiment of these animals, as is the case with the addressing of anent incantations by the Jívaro of Ecuador and Peru (Descola 2013, 342). There is however some merit to the argument that any notion of hunting as being a form reciprocity between humans and animals is merely imposed on animals, with co-sociality best observed not in a human- prey relationship, but rather a human-domesticate relationship (Knight 2012). It is perhaps within a co- social relationship as is evident in the tending of companion animals that perspectivism can best be employed to elucidate the cosmological rationale behind human-nonhuman entanglements. In utilising an ontological approach such as perspectivism as outlined by Viveiros de Castro, there is utility in disentangling cultural practices of people that could justifiably fit into this prescribed broad spectrum of Amerindian cosmological functioning. Perspectivism is not without its inconsistencies however, and as a result tends to suffer from criticisms of essentialising cultural differences and therefore being subject to notions of universalism.