| Abstract: | Despite their general acceptance of pacific coexistence and village life, the Huaorani are still living in a social world structured by the continuous efforts they need to deploy to contain homicidal rage and to mitigate the ravages of violent death. Death is generally interpreted as having been caused by some raptorial agency which may in turn drive men to kill blindly. This article shows that it is because men are particularly susceptible to the predatory call of supernature that society works at embedding them within matrifocal house-groups. I discuss death and the desire to kill in relation to cultural constructions of sex and gender, especially in the context of funerary rites. Huaorani perspectivism, which articulates the point of view of the prey, not of the predator, associates the soul, maleness and conquering predation, to which it opposes the body, femaleness and resisting victimhood. |
