The Weaving of the Person: the Wapichana Naming System

Abstract

The majority of the indigenous societies of Lowland South America fosters a reflection on the corporeality not only in the preparation of their cosmologies, but also when preparing a language symbolic focal person. The proposal of this article is to problematise how the naming system used by the Wapishana the Malacacheta village, the current state of Roraima, bunch communication processes of the body with the world. To name implies to manufacture bodies and such a practice is supplemented by decoration, affirmation and ritualization of the bodies. The grounds of the epistemological of this production converges to the postulates of the person, the body and corporeality. This is an onomastic study, nature of the names and qualitative perspective, whose objective is to show how the Wapishana shape the body through words, gestures, paintings, fumigations, ornaments, rituals, and visions cosmogonics, so that the body can be thought of as a matrix of cultural symbols and configures an object of social significance.