The place of politics: powerful speech and women speakers in everyday Pa'ikwené (Palikur) life

This article focuses on the practice of female scolding in a community of Pa'ikwené (or Palikur), a native Amazonian people (French Guyana and Brazil), in order to explore ideas about power and speech and the phenomenon of political speaking. The article takes issue with claims that politics are to be equated specifically with the formal public arena, and that political discourse is the exclusive province and prerogative both of leaders and of men, whether institutionally 'authorized' or not. It is argued, on the contrary, that the everyday speech of common villagers, in this case women, is among other things integrally political, and no more powerless in effect than the so-called 'empty' speech of Amerindian chiefs postulated by Clastres. It is further proposed that Pa'ikwené women's scolding not only embodies their own power but also regenerates symmetrical gender relations, and thus the polity itself.