El jefe deviene un lector caníbal: mímesis, persona e intención entre los matsigenkas

Abstract

The Kirineri are a recently contacted subgroup of the Matsigenka people. Since first accounts of their presence, riverine Matsigenka and white people have considered them to be the wild inhabitants of the headwaters of the Urubamba’s right bank. Today, still living in this dynamic, a Kirineri chief explores and incorporates alterity while producing his own identity. This essay examines the discourses and actions by which this chief improves his “mimetic faculty”. Two entities concern him: the cannibal devoid of intentionality and the invisible intentionality of writing. To understand this idiom of alterity this essay will pay special attention to Matsigenka personhood theory.

Keywords

• Peruvian Amazon
• Matsigenka
• Kirineri
• intentionality
• mimesis
• cannibalism