“Enlazar el mundo como uno” in a wixárika ritual song

Discover the fifth session of the 2024-2025 Americanist Anthropology Seminar: “Enlazar el mundo como uno” in a wixárika ritual song.

"This presentation focuses on the ritual arts of the Wixaritari or Huichol people of western Mexico. The image and the actions and languages involved in its creation are a gateway to the study of their rituality. Firstly, we'll be analyzing the specific treatment of objects and their arrangement in sequences of actions and thematic units that structure and give shape to the ritual song, and serve as points of support for the memory of the participants and the singer. Secondly, we will analyze the images produced during the action sequences, assembled with heterogeneous human and non-human components, and recognized as the presence of ancestors, including that of Mother Cornfield. Thirdly, the analysis will concern the images produced during ritual enunciation and the manipulation of artifacts between feminine and masculine entities, which reveal the identity of the song's enunciator as a multiple being with contradictory traits (human/animal, hunter/prey, grandfather/child) who presents himself to his audience as “I, Elder Brother Blue Stag”."

• Regina Lira (Université Nationale Autonome du Mexique, UNAM)
• Discussant: Aline Hémond (Université Paris Nanterre, LESC)