Stépanoff 2009 Devouring Perspectives PDF

06 Stepanoff:Inner Asia 11/2 24/11/09 09:24 Page 283
Devouring Perspectives: On Cannibal Shamans in

Siberia
CHARLES STPANOFF
cole pratique des hautes tudes, Paris

charles.stepanoff@ephe.sorbonne.fr
ABSTRACT
Throughout Siberia, shamans are suspected of devouring other humans. This

article, based on ethnographic literature about Siberian peoples and on fieldwork
conducted in Tuva, examines different theoretical interpretations of this concep-
tion. A perspectivist approach explains that shamans become cannibal because
they see humans as prey animals. The paradoxes of this interpretation lead to a
critical discussion of the philosophical premises of the perspectivist theory.
Another approach is then proposed: Siberian traditions demonstrate two distinct
understandings of the kinds of body connected with different pragmatic contexts.
Legendary narratives elaborate a definition of the body by its position in an inter-
action. The logic of practices is ruled by distinctly more essentialist schemas. The
theme of shamans cannibalism contributes convincingly to broader hypotheses
about the internal properties of the shamanic bodies which are necessary to their
ritual practices.
Keywords: shamanism, perspectivism, ritual relations, psychological essen-

tialism, Siberia
Recent developments in studies on North Asian religious practices and concep-

tions are striking for their philosophical orientation. Abstract conceptualisation is
not something new in this domain, but never before have philosophers been in such
demand as references to interpret Mongolian and Siberian traditions. This new ten-
dency, which is quite general in anthropology, constitutes an appreciable break
with the claims expressed in the last decade to recontextualize shamanic activi-
ties (Thomas & Humphrey 1994). At that time the objective was to denounce
essentialist attempts, represented by Eliade, to display what is properly
shamanic. Today, the requirements of historical and social context seem less
urgent than the interest in theoretical insights expected to be valid over a wider area
and for a longer period. The notions of social contradictions, historical
processes or political dimension are now noticeably overshadowed by those of
immanence, transcendence, cosmology, ontology.
Inner Asia 11 (2009): 283307

2009 Global Oriental Ltd
284 CHARLES STPANOFF
Doubtless the recent increase in abstract conceptualisations reveals that the

earlier scepticism has left some issues unresolved. Beyond incontestable changes
and inventive adaptations, one must recognise some even more striking consis-
tencies observed in discourses and ritual practices. Deep principles remain,
allowing anthropologists to name distant phenomena, though recognised as dif-
ferent, as shamanism.
In this paper I will examine some modest but highly widespread facts in order
to contribute to the picture of North Asian shamanism. In all of Siberia, as in
many places where shamanism is usually identified, shamans are suspected of
devouring other humans. I will first consider the interpretation of this global
feature through a global anthropological theory, the influential Amerindian per-
spectivism. It will provide the occasion to open a general discussion about the
perspectivist approach. An earlier special issue of Inner Asia1 provided an
engaging overview of the possibility of an Inner Asian perspectivism. The intel-
lectual stimulus of this experience is critical for North Asian studies. However,
my argument is that, despite different readjustments, the historical roots of per-
spectivist theory in western metaphysics, namely idealism, make it hardly
adaptable to exotic climates. Idealism is an old and respectable philosophical
doctrine (Gell 1999: 32), which claims that there is nothing like the real
existing independently from its perceptual or intellectual representations.
Traditionally, idealism is opposed to realism, which idealists consider nave.
Realism postulates the existence of the real that I define simply in the following
way: the real is what can refute our representations and lead us to correct our
point of view (see Descombes 1995).
Idealism, though not historically spread among native conceptions, is known
in North Asia as a logical possibility. However I will argue that Siberian peoples
do not subscribe to this way of thinking, but ascribe it to spirits. Therefore,
though being quite fascinating, perspectivism turns out to have little explanatory
power for the anthropological analysis of native Siberian conceptions, which are
realist.2
I will suggest another interpretation of shamanic cannibalism which con-
trasts different positions within interactions rather than different perspectives.
Cannibalism will be integrated with the relational context of ritual practice. My
hypothesis is that in Siberia subjective perceptions, which are enhanced in per-
spectivist theory, are seen as mere secondary effects of objective relations based
on position and on causality. Both causal and positional relations insert their
relata into a background which is common and independent from them.
Consequently, the Siberian understanding of relations requires the existence of a
common world (philosophical realism).
Exploring the principles underlying the opposition between shamans and
laymen, I will show that the circulation of vital energy, expressed in the idiom of
consumption, is rooted in an essentialist hypothesis about the causal powers of
shamans bodies.
DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 285
ANTHROPOPHAGOUS SPIRITS
One of the most stable ideas about spirits in North Asia is that they are endowed
with a huge appetite. The Chukchi description of kly3 spirits as gaping mouths
in the Arctic (Bogoras 19041910: 295) strongly reminds one of the exclamation
of a Mongolian Darkhat woman about an ongon spirit: what a big mouth you
have! (Potanin 1883: 889). Humankind is supposed to become the ordinary
victim of this appetite. At the beginning of the twentieth century, most of diseases
and deaths in Siberia were ascribed to the appetite of the spirits. According to
Koryaks, the spirit called kala likes human liver particularly well (Jochelson
19051908: 102), while the Chukchi kly is fond of liver (Bogoras 19041910:
295). Yukaghir harmful spirits had the same reputation: They enter men and eat
their internal organs, thus causing all kinds of diseases (Jochelson 1926: 237).
Far in the South, Altaians said about an ill person that a krms spirit is eating
him (Anokhin 1924: 6). It is worth noticing that eating people is not ascribed to a
particular variety of evil spirits: both Chukchi kly and Altaian krms also usu-
ally designate shamans auxiliary spirits. On the victims side, what is eaten is a
vital element, like an organ or the soul. Sometimes the bites of spirits leave more
external marks: such as swellings and sores for Koryaks (Jochelson 19051908:
28), or wounds for Altaians (one said a spirit bit him, Anokhin 1924: 6).
Among North Siberian peoples, the spirits anthropophagy is specifically
described in terms of a hunt where spirits are hunters and humans are game.
Hamayon (1990) explains these representations as a feature of what she calls
hunting shamanism, where the relationship between humans and the superna-
ture is founded on reciprocity in the exchange of meat. As Hamayon puts it: this
circulation of flesh between worlds throws light on the idea that humans are the
spoils of spirits hunting as reindeer are the spoils of humans (1990: 414).
Reciprocity in exchange implies the reversibility of positions in hunting.
THE PERSPECTIVIST HYPOTHESIS
Pedersen interprets the hunting idiom differently, as an occurrence of perspec-

tivism as theorized by Viveiros de Castro (Pedersen 2001). Amerindian
perspectivism, in its canonical formula expressed by Viveiros de Castro (1998:
470), is strongly connected to hunting:
Humans see humans as humans, animals as animals and spirits (if they see them)
as spirits; however animals (predators) and spirits see humans as animals (as prey)
to the same extent that animals (as prey) see humans as spirits or as animals
(predators). By the same token, animals and spirits see themselves as humans ()
A more abstract formula of perspectivism, according to Pedersen, would be that

the Other will see itself as human, and thus humans as Others. Pedersen, after
establishing the importance of animism in North Siberia, examines the presence
of a perspectivist thinking. He provides two citations from Bogoras (19041910:

2945) about the Chukchi. In the first example, kly spirits are described as
driving a reindeer sledge: if they encounter a human shaman their reindeer stop
but the kly cannot see the shaman. In the second citation, we learn that kly live
like humans in villages and practise hunting. The object of their hunts is exclu-
sively man, whom they usually call a little seal. In a perspectivist way, one can
say that, for Chukchi, Others see themselves as humans and see humans as
Others. For Pedersen, these examples demonstrate that perspectivism does exist
in North Asia, although he suggests that it is found in a pure form only in
Northern North Asia (Pedersen 2001: 421).
Pedersens stimulating analysis leads one to reconsider classical ethno-
graphic sources about Siberian peoples in a new light. I would like to suggest that
many other perspectivist materials can be found throughout Siberia, and not
only in the North. The reversibility of the domestic/savage categories is a well-
known theme among Altai-Sayan peoples (South Siberia). Altaian informants of
Anokhin explained to him that wolves, when howling, invoke the heavenly
divinity Kudai, begging him to give them cattle.4 Thus wolves are just like
hunters who make an invocation to receive luck and humans cattle are the
wolves game animals. Moreover, for all the Turkic peoples of Altai-Sayan
massif, game animals (a) are held to be the cattle (mal) of master-spirits of the
forests. In the hunting stories of contemporary Tuvan hunters, the animal that
men call maral-stag (syyn) the master-spirit calls bull (buga), and similar facts
have been recently recorded in Altai by Broz (2007) and among Dukha by
Kristensen (2007: 277). In this way, the difference between nature (wild) and cul-
ture (domestic) is severely challenged: an important consequence of
perspectivism according to Viveiros de Castro. Similarly to Amerindian myths
quoted as illustrations of perspectivism, many myths collected among Turco-
Mongolian populations of South Siberia present animals as former humans: the
bear was originally a man who got angry and became a bear; the marmot was an
archer; the cuckoo a girl; the capercaillie a rough man and so on (e.g. Potanin
1883: 1679; Verbickii 1893: 137; Bawden 2003: 5356).
In short, there is a great deal of material for perspectivist analysis in Siberia.
How will this theory manage our cannibal shamans?
CANNIBAL SHAMANS
It is difficult not to connect representations about spirits eating people with can-
nibal tendencies frequently ascribed to shamans. Tuvans often told me that
shamans can bite and eat people(kizhini yzyryptar chipter). These are not myths
about a remote past: a shaman proudly claimed to me to have himself eaten sev-
eral people, but not yet enough, he recognized, to be called a great shaman. Of
course this is an invisible kind of cannibalism: shamans are suspected, for
example, after an unexpected death difficult to explain otherwise. In Tuvan
reports, humans eaten by shamans are mostly rival shamans in stereotypical

duels called chizhir kham [shamans devouring each other: chi- to eat and suffix
-zh- each other]. The Mongolian equivalent of this expression is idelce- (ide- to
eat and suffix -lc- each other) (Chagdarsrng 1994: 153). The Darkhats have
stories about shamans eating people (Dulam & Even 1994: 139), ancient Buryats
supposedly killed their anthropophagous shamans (Hamayon 1990: 417) and
Yakut traditions are rich in shamans eating human hearts and livers and muti-
lating people (Nikolaev 1961: 48). Among Tungus populations, according to
Delaby (1976: 222), all shamans are supposed to be able to eat human souls, so
that there is nothing like the categories of good and evil shamans. For
example, Oroch attributed the reduction of their population in the 1920s to the
appetite of their shamans (Avrorin & Kozminskii 1949: 325). The same is
recorded in North Siberia: Bogoras notices that instances of the swallowing of
souls and bodies of men by shamans frequently occur in Chukchi tales (1904
1910: 465).
Generally, the shaman is said to eat the soul or raw blood and organs of his
victim: I drink your warm blood says a Khakas shaman to his Tuvan enemy
(Butanaev 2006: 100). This consumption of uncooked blood and flesh clearly
dehumanises the shaman and identifies him with a predatory animal.5
Perspectivism seems to offer here a particularly convenient theoretical frame
to interpret such conceptions. In this theory, the shamans crucial role in relations
with non-humans is explained in that they alone are capable of assuming the
point of view of such beings and, in particular, are capable of returning to tell the
tale(Viveiros de Castro 1998: 472). Pedersens definition is similar: Basically, a
shaman can be defined as a human person with the double ability to gain the per-
spective of another person, be that human or nonhuman, and then return
un-transformed to his or her former state (2001: 423). Then, relative to our can-
nibal shamans, the conclusion arises self-evidently: having adopted the spirits
vision, shamans see people as prey animals instead of seeing them as humans.
This interpretation has been defended by Fausto in a recent analysis of very sim-
ilar facts in Amazonia. As he puts it: The shamans ambivalence stems from his
serving, in person, as a point of articulation between his perspective and that of
his ferocious familiar spirits. Fausto provides, as a manifestation of this sharing
of perspectives, the striking example of Amazonian shaman-jaguar metamor-
phosis: were-jaguar of this kind eat people, which appear to them as peccary
(Wilbert quoted by Fausto, 2004: 171). Cannibalism results thus from a very
peculiar kind of sight trouble.
Where does this shamans perspectival instability come from? An important
axiom of Viveiros de Castros theory is that each perspective is embedded in a
specific body. Indeed, animistic mythologies ascribe a particular perspective to
each species; yet in animism all living beings possess the same kind of soul;
therefore the only locus of differentiation between them is the body. The conse-
quence is an embodiment of perspectives: changing ones perspective is
changing ones body, and vice versa. This explains why the shamans exchange
of perspective is correlated with a metamorphosis (exchange of body). Pedersen

has developed a highly elaborated and suggestive reflection about the conse-
quences of these principles in understandings of shamanic accessories in North
Asia. He explains that the perspectival exchange practised by the shaman is
inaccessible to laymen because it requires much preparation and special equip-
ment (Pedersen 2007b: 323). The shamanic costume is construed as an
ontological tool which, by providing the shaman with a multiple body, enables
him to reach different perspectives (Pedersen 2007a).
THE PERSPECTIVIST PARADOX
The logic of perspectivist argumentation seems difficult to counter, and we

should certainly be satisfied, if only a tricky paradox did not appear.
Anthropologists give evidence of a perspectivist thinkingamong the people of a
society by quoting narratives which describe the world from the points of view of
spirits and animals. Of course, these myths are communicated to anthropologists
not by non-humans themselves but by people, often by lay people and not only
shamans, for myths belong to a shared knowledge. The thought experience of
perspectivism (considering non-human perspectives) can be assumed by any-
body who tells the myth or merely understands it.
As for seeing people as prey, it is not an experience peculiar to spirits and
shamans: it is on the contrary a universal terrifying knowledge. Among Chukchi
when a man was ill, he was abandoned to death by his relatives because they saw
him as the prey of kly (Bogoras 19041910: 460). It is clear that, in pre-Soviet
Siberia, people did see themselves as prey; nevertheless they did not expect, from
this cruel vision, to become spirits or shaman-like, nor did they feel compelled
to practise cannibalism. Thus, strangely, the non-human perspective according to
which humans are prey appears to be quite accessible to humans and, so to speak,
not point-of-view dependant.
This paradox is not a subsidiary one; it is intrinsic to perspectivism: the enun-
ciation of the content of different perspectives, which is necessary to any
formulation of perspectivist conceptions, by itself demonstrates that perspectives
can be taken up without bodily change. Saying that spirits see things in such and
such a way, one describes the world from a spirits point of view, although one is
not a spirit.
Since they are conveyed by human traditions, it is self-evident for anybody
that non-human perspectives are not rigidly attached to a non-human body. In
Siberia, accounts of non-humans visions are not given specifically by shamans
but rather by storytellers describing spirits villages and spirits hunting humans.
Therefore access to non-human perspectives can hardly be the defining feature of
the shaman. Further we will have to 1) identify the origin of the perspectivist par-
adox; and 2) find another explanation of the persistent idea that shamans are
cannibals.
ONTOLOGISING RELATIONS
To resolve the first point, let us come back to prey/predator relations, since
Viveiros de Castro insists that one of the central dimensions, possibly even the
fundamental dimension, of perspectival inversions refers to the relative and rela-
tional statuses of predator and prey (1998: 471). I do not think that Siberian
narratives about non-human perspectives aim to express a contradiction between
a human point of view in which humans are predators and a spirits point of view
where humans are prey. Siberians do consider that they are spirits prey from any
point of view, for death is not a perspective-dependent event. The fact that
Siberians are also predators does not express a different standpoint but describes
another empirical relation: the interaction between humans and game-animals.
Here it is important clearly to distinguish a point of view and a position in a rela-
tion. The notions of PREY and PREDATOR are relational (one is not a prey per se but
in relation to a predator, and reciprocally), but this does not mean that the posi-
tions of prey and predator in the relation are perspective-dependent. My predator
sees me as prey as I see myself as its prey.
The accumulation of relations implies an addition of roles assumed by one
and the same being. A man can be both father (of his son) and son (of his father):
these relations do not contradict each other. It would be rather strange to claim
that, as my son sees me as a father and my father as a son, it remains undecidable
whether I am a father or a son. Obviously the mistake of such a reasoning is to
take relational terms as ontological predicates. My impression is that perspec-
tivist theory is not exempt from such an ontologisation. In this regard, the
predilection for the term ontology is revealing of a tendency to focus on onto-
logical representations (what things are in themselves), and to ignore relational
conceptions (how things are related). This ontological shift leads perspectivist
theory to reconcile the being-father and the being-son by postulating the exis-
tence of two separate worlds, one where I am a father, and another where I am a
son. Beyond these opposite universes no common reality is expected to be found:
this is the principal metaphysical claim of multinaturalism made by Viveiros de
Castro.
In Siberia, such a tendency to onto-idealist climbing is not encountered: it is
not a problem to be both father and son, or to be both prey and predator. Chukchi
narratives rather constitute a reflection about relations, namely relations of rela-
tions, which a classical structural formula suffices to note:
[man : seal] :: [kele : man]
Which means: the relation between man and seal is comparable to the relation
between spirit and man. Likewise, if we take a famous Amazonian perspectivist
exemplum:
[man : beer] :: [jaguar : blood]

The relation between jaguar and blood is comparable to the relation between man
and beer.
A general formulation of these perspectivist stories would be:
[man : mans prey] :: [mans predator : man]
Doubtless, the expression of non-human perspectives is simply the best way to

underline such relations.
CAN SPECIES BE RELATIONAL TERMS?
It could be objected that perspectivisms canonical formula is not spirits see

humans as prey but spirits see humans as animals (as prey). Viveiros de Castro
forestalled our contestation by an important precision: this to see as refers lit-
erally to perceptions and not analogically to concepts (1998: 470). Indeed it is
necessary to distinguish a perspective, which is located in the body, from an
intellectual representation, a property of the mind or spirit (1998: 478). So the
intellectual representation of humans as prey may be widespread among ordinary
people: this does not contradict the perspectivist assumption that the perception
of humans as animals is embedded in non-human bodies.
Indeed, in the Chukchi example, it is not just said that kly call people their
prey (a conceptual representation), but seals (which suggests a sensible percep-
tion). Unlike prey, SEAL can hardly be considered as a relational concept and it
seems obvious that it is a natural kind term (as defined by Putnam 1975). There
is no reason to suppose that the common principles of folk-biology, considered
by cognitive psychologists as characterising human understanding of animals
(Atran 1990), are not shared in Siberia. Like everyone else, Siberian hunters and
breeders roughly expect that members of a species share the same behaviour, ali-
mentation and anatomical constitution. It means that, beyond individual
variations, people attribute to all members of a species an underlying feature
which makes them similar. This essentialist conception permits one to antici-
pate the actions of an animal whose species is known, which is obviously crucial
in hunting as in breeding.
However, I will try to suggest that, besides this ordinary practical knowledge,
some Siberian narratives elaborate rather disconcerting conceptions, in which
species terms like SEAL can effectively appear as relational terms. Here it is fun-
damental to keep in mind the distinction between practical and mythical
knowledge, the latter being often deliberately paradoxical in relation to the
former. In his time, Shirokogoroff had already criticised the ethnographic ten-
dency to attribute a mystical world-view to Siberians by ignoring this distinction.
He remarked that the folkloric and religious complex cannot be identified
with the general positive knowledge of ethnical units [groups]. He humorously
added: No one would believe that it is possible to formulate the idea of the
Englishman of the 17th century about natural phenomena by studying Miltons
poetry. Why shall we do it with Tungus? (1935: 73) Among Tungus, hunting
techniques and story telling are different pragmatic contexts which involve het-
erogeneous kinds of knowledge.
Conscious that it is counter-intuitive, let us imagine what could be a non-
essentialist, a relational apprehension of species. Viveiros de Castro has opened
the road, demonstrating the existence in Amazonia of a relational understanding
of a particular species, humankind. For that, he provided a powerful tool, the idea
of cosmological deixis which seems to have remained less commentated upon
than the perspectivist aspect of his theory.
Viveiros de Castro notices that Amazonian self-ethnonyms, usually trans-
lated as humans, are pragmatically used as pronouns rather than nouns. These
names are not a designation of humankind as a species; their signification is
rather we, people/us. Thus the animic attribution of this self-designation to ani-
mals is not anthropocentrism, but the recognition of their position as subjects. He
goes further: even the human bodily form, by which non-humans are said to
apprehend themselves, functions as a deictic, for it is the form by which any
subject apprehends himself (1998: 4767).
However, Viveiros de Castro does not extend this compelling analysis to non-
human species, and his general definition of the body remains a non-relational
one: a bundle of affects and capacities (1998: 478). Indeed it is necessary to
keep a minimally substantial and closed notion of the body for the crucial per-
spectivist axiom the point of view is in the body to make any sense.
Here I would suggest that it is logically possible to understand animal bodies
in the same way as human ones: as deictics, i.e. indications about a contextual sit-
uation. For example, what would it mean when being seal-bodied refers to a
context? In the Maritime Chukchi culture, a seal is a prey belonging to another
world than its predator (i.e. to the sea) and constituting the most important part of
this predators diet (see Bogoras 19041910: 115). Such a definition exactly
applies to the situation of humans with respect to kly, so there is no longer any
need to be surprised, with this relational definition, that kly call humans seal.
This radically relational understanding of species and their bodies is out-
standingly exemplified in the tradition of the Nivkhs, a people inhabiting
Northern Sakhalin and the Amur River estuary. Their self-designation is a perfect
illustration of Viveiros de Castros deictical theory: nivkh, usually glossed in
ethnography as human, is in fact composed from ni [I] and vo [village], so that
a literal translation would be those of my village. These who have their villages
in the mountain are consequently called pal nivkh [people of the mountain],
which is par excellence the designation of bears (Beffa 1982: 1617). A Nivkh
tale reports the adventures of a man who, travelling among unknown countries, is
caught by spirits, bound and taken away to their home. He is held on the platform
where Nivkhs usually keep a bear they will kill. The spirits chief orders:
Servant, tease the bear. Everything in the spirits attitude indicates that the man
will be killed in the ritual fashion by which Nivkhs, kill bears. The man himself
growls and stands up as a bear. There is no information in this tale about the
characters perceptions, but only description of their gestures and words (Beffa
1982: 213).
The object of the tale is not the content of the spirits perception in contrast to
that of the humans (it is not said that they see the man as a big hairy animal), but
the very fact that, because of the position he reached, in his relation with spirits
and in the home space (the bear platform), the traveller literally becomes a bear,
if only we understand BEAR in a relational sense. This episode shows that a gloss
of BEAR among Nivkhs could be something like: a respected prey captured and
kept alive at home, for whom the predators make a collective ritual play before
killing him. The fact that the hero is a bear, in this particular meaning, is not
perspective-dependent, for he is not less perceived as such by himself than by
spirits. On the contrary, this positional definition presupposes a common inde-
pendent background which the players fit into: the home space.
We will see that the positional approach is widely applied to spirits in Siberia.
POSITIONAL DEFINITION OF BEING A SPIRIT
When I asked a Tuvan hunter of the St-Khl region about the harmful spirits
called aza, usually considered as man killers, he gave me a quite disconcerting
answer: he said that they are not dangerous at all (khora chok). The aza fear
humans. Being blind, they try not to step on simple people like us. They flee
themselves (Aza kizhiden korgar. Bis yshkash bdn kizhilerni sogur azalar
kizhi-daa bazyp kaaptain. Bisten bottary dezip manazhyp). This is the first time
I had heard such statements: usually, on the contrary, it is said that humans fear
aza, because they cannot see them.
In fact, I presume now that this hunter was thinking about very specific kinds
of relations between aza and humans: those which take place in the aza realm.
One of the most beautiful expressions of Siberian concern for non-human per-
spectives is the widespread tale about a human going into the spirits world.
Different versions have been identified among every linguistic family in Siberia
from Nganasan in the Arctic to Dukha living in Mongolia (for an overview, see
Nekliudov & Novik, forthcoming). The framework of the tale is impressively
stable: one man comes by chance in the world of spirits (inferior, superior, or
other) through a hole or a cave. He encounters a camp where people can not see
him and step on him, just as my Tuvan informant said. Only dogs notice him and
bark. When the man touches people and when he teases girls, they fall ill. He
gradually understands that he is among spirits and that he is a spirit for them.
Suspecting the presence of the man, which they call an harmful spirit, spirits
invite their shaman who performs a ritual and expels the man toward the humans
hearth.
This narrative proposes a purely non-essentialist and positional interpretation
of what it can mean to be a spirit. Here the hero becomes an harmful spirit not
by a change of his intrinsic nature, nor because of his evil intentions, but by a
mere moving in the space. In this context to be a spirit means to find oneself in a
radically foreign environment. This definition is consistent with Vats detailed
analysis of the notion of kly in the Chukchi representations: she convincingly
argues that kly are not, strictly speaking, malevolent beings, but represent a cer-
tain kind of otherness. They are the nonhumans par excellence as being outside
human or domestic fire areas (2007: 229). The tale radicalises this positional
apprehension in showing that an inversion of positions in space entails an inver-
sion of roles in relations and, therefore, of identities.
We have seen that prey and predator are not mutually exclusive ontological
predications. It appears now that, in particular mythical Siberian discourses, cate-
gories such as animal species and spirits are understood as position- or
relation-dependent (for a position is a relation to an external space). This radi-
calised version of cosmological deixis suppresses the taxonomic contradiction
implied by the attribution of several species identities to the same being: I can be
both a human (with respect to myself) and a seal (with respect to a predator-spirit)
and a spirit (when I visit spirits camp), if HUMAN, SEAL and SPIRIT are relational
notions. The position-dependency of identities in Siberian myths and tales was
clearly noticed by Lot-Falck: While animal is a man in his domain, man appears
as an animal, outside of his home (1953: 21). Perspectival changes appear
now to be nothing but consequences of a primordial positional movement. This
secondary character of perception is observed by Pedersen, Empson &
Humphrey when they describe in Inner Asia some instances of movement,
which allow people to jump in and out of new positions that allow them to see
the world from different axes (2007: 150, my emphasis).
There is an important theoretical consequence of all this. We have suggested
that the perspectivist formula there are different perspectives that are rigidly
rooted in bodies entails a contradiction, for it is refuted each time it is enunci-
ated by a bodied being (how may he know that other bodies perspectives are
different?). However, this objection seemed to be invalidated by Viveiros de
Castros distinction between intellectual representation and perception. Now if
species terms in the formula spirits see humans as animal/peccaries/seal/etc. are
understood as relational, this see as cannot be, as Viveiros de Castro claimed, a
mere perception. The fact that a spirit sees me as a seal (and not as flower or a
cloud) is information about our (fairly worrying) prey-predator relation rather
than about its optical organs. A relation, no matter whether it is causal or inten-
tional, is never perceived by the senses; it can only be inferred by a mind from
perceptions. If the relation is intersubjective, as hunting is understood in Siberia
and Amazonia, the idea of this relation must necessarily be shared by the subjects
involved in it.
The perspectivist contradiction is definite; however, rather than an illustration
of this paradox, mythical Siberian discourses seem to express a kind of tautology.
It states that a being who is put in a position usually proper to a species becomes,
in a positional sense, a member of this species.
THE ORIGINALITY OF PERSPECTIVISM: A PERCEPTUAL IDIOM
Animism, even in the modern sense of recognising a social character to relations

between humans and nonhumans, all endowed with a human interiority, has not
been ignored by Siberias classical specialists. Shternberg described the animist
mans world in this way (1927: 489): animals and spirits are distinguished
from man only because they appear to him under particular aspects. Thus the
world is seen as a symbiosis of beings different by their outer appearance but
similar by their nature. For him [the animist], the world is only one society of
men, animals and spirits.
In regard to this ancient report, the originality of perspectivist anthropology is
the introduction of a phenomenological approach in a structuralist anthropology.
The phenomenological concern for the way things appear to a consciousness
leads to the use of a perceptive idiom. Where native discourses are focused on
healing, eating, metamorphosing into, i.e. on empirical relations between
beings, perspectivist analysis speaks about seeing as, contemplation and per-
spectives. This focus on perception is not philosophically neutral. While any
perception can be reduced to the perceiving subject and thus internalised (I per-
ceive nothing but my perceptions), interaction implies a difference between a
self and an Otherness. A false perception remains, though illusory, a perception,
whereas a false relation is solitude. This particularity of perception is what per-
mits perspectivisms metaphysical extension, namely the multinaturalism, a
kind of species solipsism which postulates that a species perspective, being
body-dependent, is autonomous and incommensurable with other perspectives.
These principles are very familiar to the Western reader: one recognises in
them such great philosophical traditions as idealism and phenomenology, except
that the role usually played by the perceiving subject is now allotted to whole
species.
WESTERN ROOTS OF PERSPECTIVISM
Though it is understood in contemporary anthropology as diametrically opposed

to Western thinking, perspectivism is an important trend in the history of
Western ideas. The word perspectivism was created by Nietzsche borrowing
ideas developed by Leibniz in the seventeenth century (Nehamas 1983). The con-
tinuity from Leibniz to Viveiros de Castro is explicit through the Leibnizian
formula le point de vue est dans le corps(quoted through Deleuze in Viveiros de
Castro 1996: epigraph; 1998: 485, note 12; 2006: 48). The originality of Leibniz
besides other idealists, and what makes him the founder of perspectivism, is the
claim that a world is produced not only by a consciousness, but by any point of
view, i.e. each place in the universe. The totality of the perceptions concealed in a
point of view is substantialised in a soul or a monad. This infinite multiplica-
tion of souls leads from idealism to Leibnizian animism or panpsychism. As
Leibniz sums it up, the result of each view of the universe as seen from a dif-
ferent position is a substance which expresses the universe conformably to this
view () it follows from what we have just said that each substance is a world by
itself, independent of everything else excepting God. 6 If each view is inde-
pendent from others and, therefore, from its own objects, how can perceptions be
relevant and how can interaction between viewers be possible? Leibnizs answer
is theological: what ensures that miraculously all monadic worlds can cooperate,
or to take Leibnizs suggestive metaphor, that all clocks are in time, is the
almighty action of the Great Clockmaker, God. In Leibnizian perspectivism,
God is the unique perceiving subject of all perspectives. However, Siberian
nomads do not see themselves as monads: there is no Great Clockmaker in their
cosmologies, so that perspectivism will be difficult to acclimatize there.
Our departure point was: why are shamans regularly ascribed a tendency to
cannibalism? The hypothesis that shamans see people as prey animals is not
explicative since this vision can only be the expression of a pre-existing pred-
ator/prey relation which remains to be explained. Another approach to
shamans relation with their environment can be found in Caroline Humphreys
important suggestion that religious specialists are a corollary of the native appre-
hension of causal processes pertaining to beings, or kinds of existence, in the
world(Humphrey & Onon 2003 [1996]: 51). Objects like mountains, Humphrey
argues, exemplify particular processes which require their own rituals and spe-
cialists. I would like to underline that causal processes are particular relations that
cannot be understood without exploring the properties of the terms involved in
them. Hence Humphreys stress on natural beings own kinds of causal force or
energy (Humphrey & Onon 2003 [1996]: 52).
Such a causal approach may spare us the tautologies of the above-mentioned
myths that explain peculiar relations by the peculiarity of relations. We will thus
consider which intrinsic properties ascribed to some humans called shamans
causally lead them, unlike laymen, to be involved in cannibal relations.
MULTIDIRECTIONAL FLOWS
In Siberia, shamans cannibal practices are not seen as a bad habit of a particular
category of evil or black shamans, or as a lapse contradicting their benevolent
mission of healing. Rather, it looks like an inevitable expression of what makes
them shamans. Humans are just one of the numerous objects of their appetite,
besides hostile spirits and simple presents of meat and alcohol (many old
proverbs in Altai-Sayan compare shamans greed to dogs hunger). Indeed, a
devouring power is required in shamans ritual practices against evil forces.
Swallowing is a technique integrated in shamanic healings throughout Siberia. A
Tozhu shaman described the treatment he reserved for a spirit causing disease:
Your black liver, your bloody heart, I ate (Vainshtein 1961: 190). There are
many descriptions of shamans sucking the skin of the patient in order to catch the
harmful spirit, suck it up before spitting it out or swallowing it (e.g. among

Koriaks: Jochelson 19051908: 51).
Devouring and swallowing indicate incoming flows, but there are also out-
flows from the shamans body. These are indicated by spitting, a frequent gesture
in therapeutic rituals. One complex ritual I attended in Tuva (St-Khl region)
aimed to find the lost soul of an ill man and to bring it back to him. In her songs
the shaman described her trip to the yellow steppein search of the soul. With the
help of seven wolves, her auxiliary spirits, she caught the soul and transported it
back. At the end she took some water in her mouth and spat three times on the
face of the man. By this action, the soul she had incorporated was reintegrated in
the body of the man. Not only souls but also meat can be transferred through a
shamans spitting: in an Evenk ritual, the shaman bites and tears up with his teeth
the raw heart of a sacrificed reindeer, then he spits a piece of meat at his spirits
representations (Anisimov 1958: 20910).
Apart from the mouth that yawns, swallows and spits, spirits and life sub-
stances are supposed to penetrate the shamans through their armpits, anus and
sinciput. As it appears, devouring is only one aspect of a more general phenom-
enon: the multidirectional flows of blood, flesh and invisible substances that
seem to cross shamans.
THE DEVOURED SHAMAN
In Siberia flesh consumption requires reciprocity (Hamayon 1990): this is dra-

matically true for the shaman, who not only terrifically devours others, but
himself is devoured. Tungus of Verkhne-Vilyuisk consider that auxiliary spirits
drink the blood of shamans during their ritual (Vasilevich 1969: 234). When the
Nanai shaman dances, his spirits descend into his body to have some food that
the shaman has tasted (Boulgakova 1996: 279). It is said among Yakuts that
shamans are skinny because their spirits eat the nutritious substances of their
food. That is the very reason why it is generally considered that one can feed
shamans auxiliary spirits by feeding the shaman himself. Nivkhs explained to
Shternberg that it seems to the audience that the shaman is eating, but in fact it is
the kekhn, his helper spirit, who is eating (Shternberg 1933: 322).
This situation of being both devouring and devoured is not considered as a
contingent feature of the shaman practice. This is impressively displayed in a cru-
cial episode of shamans biographies among Altai-Sayan Turkic peoples. These
narratives follow a stable scenario of development of the shaman (Stpanoff
2007a; 2007b). First, the shaman is made (chaja-/jaja-) as shaman in the womb
of his mother by the divine creator lgen/Kudai. During early childhood his par-
ents notice specific behaviour and physical features, like a growth on the toe or
the arm. These physical peculiarities are seen as the index of the presence of a
superfluous bone (artyg sk). Indeed among all Turkic people of Siberia it is
claimed that shamans have a special skeleton.
At the second stage, when the child begins to speak, his relatives will notice
his unusual perceptual capacities indicating a special relational quality. This
quality is implemented only in the third stage, when the adolescent falls under the
pressure of spirits. Among Turkic and Tungus peoples, this is indicated by
epilepsy, yawns, meteorism (abdominal distension), cramps, tendency to
swallow metallic objects (Verbickii 1893: 45; Delaby 1976: 40). All these strange
features tend to represent the novices body as an object without closed bound-
aries, a spongy being. Then the visions begin in which the novice sees himself
eaten by spirits. He is dismembered, his flesh is eaten and his bones are checked
by spirits (to my knowledge, the most ancient report of this theme dates back to
the 1860s: Khudiakov 1969: 309). This vision is found in all Turkic traditions in
Siberia, but not only there: according to some narratives, young Tungus shamans
of Angara are dismembered, their flesh is chopped, skewered and eaten by spirits
who drink their blood. Likewise, it is precisely the smell of his flesh and blood
which leads the helping spirits to attack the Nanai novice and compel him to
become a shaman (Smoliak 1991).
It is understood that eating and being eaten are connected by a causal relation,
for the latter is the material condition of the former. The dreamed devouring
engages the mechanics of circulation in which the shamans body will be
involved throughout his life.
A Yakut explained to Ksenofontov (1998 [1928]: 86) that a shaman has no
healing powers unless the spirit originating the disease has received his part of
his flesh after the cutting up. In other words, the shamans therapeutic power is
derived from the very processes that are supposed to occur in his body. The speci-
ficity of the shamans body is not assigned to his position in an interaction with
spirits; on the contrary, his particular body is the necessary condition for the
establishment of such relations. In his dream, devouring is usually connected
with the checking of the presence of the supplementary bone (among Evenks
see Delaby 1976: 45; among Turkic peoples, Stpanoff 2007a.). Thus, spirits do
not make the novice become a shaman, they verify that he is a genuine one.
These conceptions suggest that the cited peoples share an essentialist under-
standing of the shamans status, which is even more clear in the practical logic of
relations between laymen and shamans.
What is under a shamanic costume?

In Altai-Sayan, it is not sufficient to wear a shamanic costume to be recognized as
a genuine shaman. If a simple man puts on a shamanic costume it is not
expected that he will experience non-human perspectives, but rather that he will
die. Alternatively, if the shamanic costume itself is not a genuine one, nothing
will happen and the pretender will just be a charlatan. All peoples of Siberia har-
bour a creeping doubt about the authenticity of their shamans. This scepticism
cannot be related to the influence of a rationalist Soviet education. When
Potanin visited Altaians, Tuvans and Buryats, he noticed that for them present
shamans are not true, they are mere impostors (1883: 68). Shamans themselves
are the best promoters of these suspicions. A Chukchi shaman said to Bogoras
that he was not like modern shamans, but he was the equal of the ancient gen-
uine shamans (19041910: 421). This claim is still frequently heard among
contemporary Tuvan shamans, who denounce each other as charlatans.
In Altai-Sayan possessing a drum and a costume is a typical feature of the
common definition of a shaman. However 1) there are recognized shamans
without costume and drum, and 2) people would consider it excessively nave to
suppose that all shamanic costume wearers are genuine shamans. Thus, visible
criteria defining a shaman are neither necessary nor sufficient, which reveals an
essentialist understanding (on essentialist understanding of ritual specialists, see
Boyer 1994). The idea that paraphernalia is insufficient is notably circulated
through a series of narratives known in Southern Siberia since the end of the
nineteenth century: the story of a non-flammable shaman.7 In its schematic struc-
ture, the narrative begins with the decision of a ruler (Chinese emperor,
Mongolian khan, Russian tsarina or KGB officer) to sort out genuine and false
shamans. For that purpose, he organises a test: he gathers all shamans to a stake
and burns them while they are beating their drums. All shamans wear their para-
phernalia, but only one survives by flying up: he is recognised by that power as
the genuine shaman. If the narrator is a shaman, he ordinarily claims to be a
descendant of this non-flammable shaman.
ESSENCES AND POROUS BODIES
If we try to take into account the hypotheses and expectations of natives that
permit the regular appearance of shamans, it is striking to notice that they are not
concerned with the scholars demand for contextualisation. I have been surprised
several times in Tuva by the fact that, unlike urban Tuvan intellectuals, who con-
sider shamans as a product of the Tuvan cultural heritage, herdsmen expected
that shamans would appear in France as well as in Tuva. They met my denials
with scepticism and polite irony. For them, the birth of shamans was a phenom-
enon obviously independent from cultural diversity and historical change. They
interpret their social function as derived from bodily peculiarities.
Among other peoples of Siberia, it is also frequent that some atypical phys-
ical features noticed in childhood are associated with a shamanic fate. Kets
recognise turning over in the cradle as a sign of shamanhood and a mole-like spot
on the skin as a sign of witchcraft (Donner 1933); Selkups notice curly hair, a
large forehead, a piercing gaze (Prokofeva 1981: 46); for Nenecs, a birth-mark
or a pellicle at the crown of his head are significant (Khomich 1996: 43, note 4);
and such two distant peoples as Nganasans and Nanais consider that children
born in the caul are future shamans (Popov 1936: 83; Smoliak 1991: 35). These
features are generally innate, so that, adopting the definition of nature elabo-
rated by Humphrey about Daur shamanism as what is uncreated, spontaneous or
innate (Humphrey & Onon 2003 [1996]: 52), we can conclude that shamanic
status is understood as a natural fact.
Of course, these innate peculiarities on their own are never considered as the
only criteria for becoming a shaman; they are treated as visible indices of a bodily
quality which is invisible. I call it an essence, i.e. a non-obvious feature which
causally determines a cluster of other features, in particular visible ones. The
internal essence of shamans, embedded in a special bone or another invisible fea-
ture, is understood to cause the complete constitution of their bodies. Considered
as the condition for the establishment of relations with spirits, the quality of the
shamans body has to be ascertained by laymen.
In Siberia there is a type of disturbing performance which seems specifically
devoted to the public checking of the shamans body. However, although fre-
quently described in the ethnography of Siberia, these shamanic tricks have not
given rise to theoretical interpretations.
In Tuva, I was often told stories about shamans from earlier generations who
stabbed themselves in the heart or fired at themselves with a gun, and, unharmed,
could then drink their cup of tea. Such narratives are common in Siberia; they are
as ancient as the first records about Siberian shamans. Russian chronicles about
Ermaks expedition around 1581 report that Cossacks attended a ritual where a
shaman (called shaitanshchik), on being stabbed, drank his own blood (Miller
1999: 2467). From the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, reliable travellers
and scholars such as J. Bell, J.G. Gmelin and S.P. Krasheninikov have observed
in Siberia shamans stabbing themselves. Lastly, Bogoras has given a detailed
description of such techniques used by Chukchi shamans (19041910: 447). The
purpose of all these strange spectacles becomes clear if we understand that they
are a way of checking the intrinsic penetrability of the shamanic body.
In this respect, Yakuts have explicitly developed an interesting theory about
the shamans body. It was considered among Yakuts that a good shaman had to
be able to make a knife pass from one side to the other of his body (Seroshevskii
1993 [1896]: 607). Such feats are permitted by bodily differences of the
shaman: his body has holes (oibon) under the skin and this is the very sign that
he is not a charlatan but a genuine shaman (Popov 1949: 289). The best
shamans are supposed to have nine holes. In a Yakut narrative, a man becomes a
shaman, without any intervention of spirits, after having remarked that his
shadow has holes. Some shamans were also said to have a pocket in their
stomach called a kieli in which swallowed spirits were conserved (Popov 1949:
28990). Applied to the human body, the name kieli usually refers to the female
womb; therefore the shamanic kieli should certainly be connected with the
capacity ascribed to certain male shamans to give birth to animals (Seroshevskii
1993 [1896]: 609). Similar conceptions appear in the name contemporary Yakuts
give to a person somehow connected with spirits: a man with an open body
(ahagas ttkh kihi).
Thus, for Yakuts, the transference capacities of shamans are deeply embodied
in their anatomy. If these holes in the body help the shaman to eat spirits, obvi-
ously shamanic cannibalism also finds its way there. This kind of embodied can-
nibalism is explicitly suggested by Nganasans: their shamans are believed to
possess special mouths in their bodies through which they eat peoples souls
(Lambert 20022003: 234).
Porosity is a condition for being the locus of circulation through consump-
tion. Healing rituals use the devouring capacities of the shaman by turning them
in a convenient direction. Rituals and paraphernalia aim to help the shaman both
to develop and to control this capacity. But it can happen that the shaman loses his
mastery and makes his relatives his meal instead of spirits or enemies. At the
beginning of the twentieth century when they approached death, Tuvan shamans
were bound and abandoned by their relatives because in the last minutes of his
life the Tuvan shaman becomes crazy and devours all that fall under his gaze,
he kills cattle and people, he does not recognize anybody any more
(Turchaninov 2003 [19151916]: 183).
In this essentialist scheme, which is frequent in Siberia though not exclusive,
the shamans body is from birth (as opposed to by will) an active channel, and
that is why, traditionally, devouring is not precisely understood as a bad action
from an ethical point of view. Cannibal shamans are killed or abandoned in order
to preserve lay people rather than as a kind of punishment.
ANOTHER APPROACH: PERSPECTIVISM AT WORK
In this essentialist context, what status should be given to the constant concern of
Siberian peoples for non-human perspectives? If anthropology is not only a his-
tory of ideas, but a social science, indigenous theories should interest us by their
implementation in practice. Here I will try to follow Willerslevs wise proposi-
tion to bring perspectivism down to earth, recognizing that perspectivist
theory remains an abstract model, detached from the real experiences of people
in a lifeworld (Willerslev 2007: 945). First, it should be noticed that knowing
others perspective gives a serious advantage in interaction. In this way,
describing the nonhumans point of view is not a contemplation but an action
that moves the balance of power on behalf of humans. Though they seem to pos-
tulate a symmetry between human and nonhuman, perspectivist narratives
create de facto an asymmetrical situation. For example, the Chukchi, although
claiming to know the klys perspective, consider that these spirits do not know
the human perspective. In a Chukchi tale, we see a kly incapable of feeding his
human wife because when she asks for seal meat he gives her sea worm and so
on. The disgusted wife soon leaves this unsympathetic husband (Bogoras 1913:
89).
Therefore I would not apply to Siberia the definition of spirits as a view from
everywhere, which implies the world seen in totally clear and unambiguous
visibility proposed by Holbraad & Willerslev (2007: 3345). It is well known
that spirits are understood in North Asia as having limited perceptions and faulty
minds incapable of understanding metaphors. If spirits have some supernatural

capacities, they are neither perceptual nor cognitive.
In fact, a pragmatic reading of Siberian narratives about non-human perspec-
tives demonstrates that their purpose is not to claim a Western post-modern
platitude such as all points of view are equally valuable. These narratives speak
to their listeners of action and strategies, in particular how to defend oneself
against the appetite of the spirits. What does the clumsiness of the spirits per-
spective consist of? Crucially, it is manifested in an incapacity to distinguish
perception from reality. Ignoring essentialist thinking, spirits are idealists: they
have no idea of a reality independent from its ideal and perceptual representa-
tions. Siberians, far from taking such a philosophy as a model, make use of it to
deceive spirits.
We have seen that Chukchi informants of Bogoras said that humans are little
seals for kly spirits. A Chukchi tale seems to show how this particularity of kly
vision can be used to the advantage of humans. A Chukchi having met a kly
offers him liver to eat, knowing that kly like it. He puts a little dead seal on his
chest, opens its liver and eats it. The kly, thinking that the man has torn his own
liver, tries to do the same, rips open his abdomen and dies (Bogoras 1913: 43).
Here, clearly, the spirits perspective is the target of the action. The man leads the
spirit to adopt an incorrect vision, probably taking advantage of the klys ten-
dency to see humans as seals. The result of this illusion is the death of the
dangerous kly, a non-perspective-dependent event.
All specialists of North Asia could cite many examples of humans actions
which influence non-humans (spirits) perspectives: imitating ravens cawing
whilst eating bears meat, orientating a bears skull to divert its revenge, dressing
a boy or doing his hair in a feminine way and vice versa. Idealist spirits cannot
guess an essence beyond appearance. However, humans do distinguish between
reality and its perceptions; hence they seek to act on the spirits perception of
reality, which is not to change the reality itself (e.g. making ones son become a
girl).
DECEPTION IN RITUAL: DEVOURED PERSPECTIVES
Generally when a fairly traditional Tuvan shaman wants to expel a harmful spirit
from the body of a patient, his ritual action employs two kinds of technique: 1) a
manipulation of the spirits perspective, i.e. an attempt to convince or to deceive
him; and 2) an elimination of the spirit either by removing him or by eating him.
In the first stage, one can say the spirits perspective is shifted, in the second it is
devoured.
The shaman Kh. K. often uses a little anthropomorphic figure made from
dough. After having untied the spirit from the body of the patient, she makes the
gesture to put it with her drumstick in the figurine. The spirit is supposed to see
the figurine as a real human in whom he will settle, however the figurine is imme-
diately thrown in the street by the patient. Kh. K. explains that the figurine is then
eaten by dogs that will die later. The devourer and its perspective are thus eventu-
ally devoured.
The effect of ritual deception on a spirit is colourfully expressed in the tale
cited above about the man visiting the spirits country. This story explains how
it is possible to act on a spirit (in the tale: a man in the position of a spirit with
respect to spirits) in order to expel him. In the Dukha variant, the spirits lama-
exorcist offers to the visitor a horse skull and a grass doll. Laypeople see that it is
mere bone and grass, but thanks to the magic of the exorcist the visitor sees these
objects as a magnificent mount and a beautiful woman. Only back in his own
country does he realise the extent of his mistake, discovering under him the skull
and the grass (Chagdarsrng 1994: 15964). This lure is found elsewhere in
North Asia: in a Nganasan variant, the shaman gives a wooden figure to the vis-
itor who required a reindeer. The shaman forces the visitor to see the figure as a
real reindeer and to accept it. Back in his country, the piqued man eventually
recognises that this shaman has been powerful and cunning (Dolgikh 1976: 33).
If shamanic practice turns to deception in order to expel enemies, it means
that there is a difference between perspectives which correctly describe facts and
illusions which lead to defeat. Instead of the idealist postulates of Western meta-
physics, in Siberia the competition between beings implies a common reality
beyond their perspectives. The existence of the real, as defined at the beginning
of this study, is demonstrated.
CONCLUSION
The question of cannibalism attributed to shamans led us to too brief a survey of

Siberian ethnography and perspectivist theory. We have proposed to interpret
Siberian discourses about perspectives in connection with the pragmatic contexts
in which they are elaborated and with the practical uses which they implement.
Two understandings of the specificities of a body have arisen. The first approach
is an intellectual experience, often developed in the specific context of legendary
narratives. It suggests the definition of the body of a being by its position in an
interaction. To have a spirits body means to have been moved into an alien
world; to have a bears body means to be a ritually respected prey, brought home.
This positional definition of kinds of body requires in any case a common refer-
ential space. Perspectival changes appear to be mere consequences of positional
movements in this realistic frame, so that a percept-focused theory like perspec-
tivism can only superficially describe these processes.
Practices demonstrate a second logic, quite different and more essentialist.
The particular intrinsic features ascribed to the shamanic bodies are not the con-
sequence but the material condition of possibility for relations with spirits. While
Western medical representations build the image of one universal human body,
Siberians conceptualise different kinds of body which, though externally similar,
are endowed with different anatomies and powers. The theme of shamans canni-
balism both expresses and impressively contributes to spreading implicit
hypotheses about channelling properties of the shamanic body, which place it in
the centre of multidirectional flows. In rituals, thanks to these capacities and to
their knowledge of nonhuman visions, realist Siberian shamans voraciously
devour idealist spirits and their perspectives.
NOTES
I am deeply grateful to Dr Grgory Delaplace and to my two anonymous reviewers for

their corrections and their insightful criticism. I would like to thank Professor Caroline
Humphrey who encouraged my research and received me at Cambridge University. This
study was made possible thanks to the support of the Fyssen Foundation (Paris). Due to
limitations of space, I will not provide all Russian references about Siberian facts, but I am
ready to communicate them to any interested reader.
1
Perspectivism, Special Issue of Inner Asia, edited by Morten Axel Pedersen, Rebecca
Empson, Caroline Humphrey, Volume 9, Number 2, 2007.
2
It can be objected that realism is not less Western than perspectivism and as such not
more transportable in Siberia. But perspectivism is Western because it is idealist and ide-
alist philosophers are Westerns, whereas realism is Western just because Westerns are
humans. Although idealism and realism can be opposed in philosophy as two rival theoret-
ical options, the social conditions of the possibility of idealism, as Weber and Bourdieu
have shown, are so demanding that it is only restricted to elites disconnected from produc-
tion processes, whereas the postulate of a reality independent from ones own
consciousness (realism) is a universally necessary condition for the acquisition of human
language and for social interaction.
3
I follow Vats spelling (2007).
4
Kudaidan mal surap iat [begs cattle from Kudai] (Anokhin 1924: 126, note 1).
5
The drinking of raw blood is forbidden in Southern Siberia except in highly ritualised
and secret contexts aimed to appropriate personal qualities of the eaten being (e.g. a bear).
In a recent insightful analysis (2007) Fausto has shown that, in Amazonian animistic
system, ritually treating and cooking meat aims to eliminate the subjectivity of the killed
animal or human. Eating a corpse as a subject would be cannibalism. Thus the anthro-
pophagic practices ascribed to Siberian shamans are unquestionably cannibal in Faustos
sense: moreover I argue that these practices animalise shamans. Indeed there is a paradox-
ical effect of ritual and culinary desubjectification of the meat: on the one hand these
practices reveal the attribution of a subjectivity to eaten animals, but on the other hand
they deepen the difference between human and animals, which appear to be all cannibals.
6
Discours de mtaphysique, XIV: le resultat de chaque veue de lunivers, comme
regard dun certain endroit, est une substance qui exprime lunivers conformment
cette veue () il sensuit de ce que nous venons de dire, que chaque substance est comme
un monde part, independant de toute autre chose hors de Dieu. (English transl. G.R.
Montgomery in Martinich, Allhoff & Vaidya 2007: 239.)
7
Different versions from Teleuts, Altaians, Telenghits, Darkhats, Drvds are known
(Stpanoff 2007a).
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06 Stepanoff:Inner Asia 11/2 24/11/09 09:24 Page 283

Devouring Perspectives: On Cannibal Shamans in

cole pratique des hautes tudes, Paris

Throughout Siberia, shamans are suspected of devouring other humans. This

Keywords: shamanism, perspectivism, ritual relations, psychological essen-

Recent developments in studies on North Asian religious practices and concep-

Inner Asia 11 (2009): 283307

284 CHARLES STPANOFF

Doubtless the recent increase in abstract conceptualisations reveals that the

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 285

THE PERSPECTIVIST HYPOTHESIS

Pedersen interprets the hunting idiom differently, as an occurrence of perspec-

A more abstract formula of perspectivism, according to Pedersen, would be that

286 CHARLES STPANOFF

of a perspectivist thinking. He provides two citations from Bogoras (19041910:

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 287

reports, humans eaten by shamans are mostly rival shamans in stereotypical

288 CHARLES STPANOFF

of perspective is correlated with a metamorphosis (exchange of body). Pedersen

THE PERSPECTIVIST PARADOX

The logic of perspectivist argumentation seems difficult to counter, and we

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 289

[man : seal] :: [kele : man]

[man : beer] :: [jaguar : blood]

290 CHARLES STPANOFF

Doubtless, the expression of non-human perspectives is simply the best way to

CAN SPECIES BE RELATIONAL TERMS?

It could be objected that perspectivisms canonical formula is not spirits see

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 291

292 CHARLES STPANOFF

POSITIONAL DEFINITION OF BEING A SPIRIT

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 293

294 CHARLES STPANOFF

THE ORIGINALITY OF PERSPECTIVISM: A PERCEPTUAL IDIOM

Animism, even in the modern sense of recognising a social character to relations

WESTERN ROOTS OF PERSPECTIVISM

Though it is understood in contemporary anthropology as diametrically opposed

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 295

296 CHARLES STPANOFF

harmful spirit, suck it up before spitting it out or swallowing it (e.g. among

THE DEVOURED SHAMAN

In Siberia flesh consumption requires reciprocity (Hamayon 1990): this is dra-

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 297

What is under a shamanic costume?

298 CHARLES STPANOFF

ESSENCES AND POROUS BODIES

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 299

300 CHARLES STPANOFF

ANOTHER APPROACH: PERSPECTIVISM AT WORK

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 301

minds incapable of understanding metaphors. If spirits have some supernatural

DECEPTION IN RITUAL: DEVOURED PERSPECTIVES

302 CHARLES STPANOFF

The question of cannibalism attributed to shamans led us to too brief a survey of

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 303

I am deeply grateful to Dr Grgory Delaplace and to my two anonymous reviewers for

304 CHARLES STPANOFF

Anisimov, A.F. 1958. Religiia venkov v istoriko-geneticheskom izuchenii i problemy

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 305

Holbraad, M. & R. Willerslev. 2007. Transcendental perspectivism: anonymous view-

306 CHARLES STPANOFF

Potanin, G.N. 1883. Ocherki severo-zapadnoi Mongolii [Outline of North-West

DEVOURING PERSPECTIVES 307