I Fulfilled Your Dream: The Pedagogy of Oneiromancy and Practical Knowledge among Pilagá Women of the Gran Chaco (Formosa, Argentina)

Abstract

The article reflects on the way dream experiences have been addressed by anthropology, taking up my fieldwork experience with Pilagá women of the Gran Chaco Region. It discusses the assumptions, implicit or explicit, of some anthropological approaches to the analysis of dreams and their excessive concentration on the relation of dreams to shamanism and mythology. Based on ethnographic material obtained with some Pilagá women, it takes up the links, as established by one of my main collaborators, between dreaming, narrating, interpreting, doing, and copying. It aims to emphasize that the relations between dream experience and practical action correspond to what I call the "pedagogy of oneiromancy", a category that stresses the web that connects representations to the behavior and actions associated with the life trajectories and recent experiences of indigenous women.

Keywords

• sueños
• saber práctico
• pilagá