Who is more aware than the shaman of the body’s boundless prerogatives? Mortified, annihilated, dismembered and disjointed, the body is the vehicle of the shaman’s metamorphosis and unveils itself to him as the interface or hub in the vast network of living things. Thanks to the gift of vision, the shaman can heal communal life and cosmic harmony as well as individual ailments. Traces of such awareness can be observed clearly in native knowledge. But in our culture, too, the aspiration persists of awakening the potential of the human being: suffice it to think of Lewis Carroll’s, and more recently Tim Burton’s, Alice in Wonderland, where the Mad Hatter reproaches Alice for losing her ‘manyness,’ and she replies: ‘Ever since I fell down that rabbit hole they’ve been telling me what I should do and who I should be. They’ve shortened me lengthened me fattened me… I was accused of being Alice and not being Alice, but this is my own dream, and now I decide what happens.’ A shamanic body indeed…
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Giuliano Tescari teaches Cultural anthropology and Anthropology of Performance at Turin University. He has spent long periods among the Huichol (self-designation: Wixáritari or Wirrarika) population of Mexico’s Occidental range Sierra Madre, where he investigated the foundations of the shamanic perspectives and the ways to access this profession. There he established a fruitful cooperation with Leocadio López Carrillo, a native Wirrarika with a broad knowledge of his tradition; together, the two scholars wrote Vamos a Tûrikyé. Sciamanismo e storia sacra wirrárika (Franco Angeli 2000). Among Tescari’s many publications on shamanic practices and cultural performances, and on the role of shamanic thinking in the assertion of native peoples’ rights, are L'etnodramma nell'insegnamento dell'antropologia culturale, in: Performance, esecuzioni e contesti (CUEM 2006); Essere indigeni: popoli e persone nelle politiche del riconoscimento (Quaderni di Thule 2010).
Giuliano Tescari & i Dialoghi
2011
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