Eating (with) the enemy [Thesis].

"All the plants in the gardens are Kaali's body."
"This man has powers, knowledge, because cassava is part of him.
He himself is a garden."

Our cassava body

And if we, too, eat cassava, our cells, our energy, our being would also be made of cassava. My local grocers know that the local vegetables they sell me one day can write a thesis column the next. In this way,Aywaille 's vegetables can be read in Quebec City and elsewhere.

The way we eat, how we get our food, depends on many factors: our family upbringing, our personal choices, but also our times, and our myths. We are always eating our culture.

To help us better understand this societal relationship to what we ingest and what it says about us, it can be useful to take a step back. For this, reading an ethnographic thesis from a cultural and food universe far removed from our own can be as tasty as it is appropriate!

The thesis in question

Those who enjoy epics with action, plot twists, love affairs, betrayals and murder will be well served! Mythical tales are never short of what constitutes all the dimensions of humanity, in its shadows and lights.

Milena Estorniolo 's research has focused on the food universe of the Baniwa and Koripako peoples of the Upper Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon. Her thesis is the result of 16 months' fieldwork, mainly in two villages, and research into the implementation of a fish farming project.

The researcher also had access to other villages and to work in schools linked to the evangelical presence. This has helped to broaden her perspective, particularly on ways of consuming certain animals and the occasional integration of white people into myths.

Expressing the relationship between humans and non-humans

"Ethnological research in the Amazon over the last few decades has been devoted in large part to demonstrating that the universe of social relations encompasses domains much broader than human society."

Plants, animals and other non-human beings "belong to communities endowed with cognitive and emotional capacities equivalent to those of humans, and organized according to similar rules".

The relationships between beings (human, non-human) differ according to the positions they occupy in relation to each other. For humans, these relationships are related to their diet and the type of communication they are able to engage in, in connection with myth.

In fact, the diet observable at a given moment comes from the myth, which explains it. In the founding stories of the Baniwa and Koripako peoples, the origins of foodstuffs expose stories of conflict or gift. Game, for example, comes from ancient wars, and plants from ancient sympathies.

It's never a trivial matter to go hunting or fishing, or to grow one's own food: humans then enter a cosmic order woven from visible and invisible worlds. Rules and behavioral restrictions are established to act appropriately in this capricious world order.

"The act of eating describes relationships. "

The expression of cunning, predation, luring and vengeance with regard to eating comes from the relationship to animals and their masters in the invisible world, the expression of care and giving comes from an original gift of plant cultivation in gardens.

"The edible enemy

In the languages of the Baniwa and Koripako, there is no generic word for animals. They are classified according to their mode of movement or environment: aquatic, terrestrial, aerial.

In mythical times, humans were created and protected by the hero Ñapirikoli, while animals were reproduced and protected by their own masters. Both live in different "perspective-worlds", "mutually invisible" under normal conditions.

"Animals do not depend on humans to reproduce [...] just as humans do not need animals to reproduce or to survive [...]. So instead of a 'perpetual alliance' with animals and their masters, the Baniwa and Koripako have chosen 'perpetual revenge'."

"[...] The definition of an edible enemy in Baniwa and Koripako thinking is one whose reproduction we cannot control or participate in."

Some Baniwa learned fish breeding techniques. Fish then changed their status. They went from enemies topets and "treated like inbreds [...] towards whom one felt pity at the moment of slaughter".

Chickens and the white man's bad influence

Alongside fish, it's amusing to read that hens have an ambiguous position in this respect, due to their more widespread domestication. They have achieved an even different status, and can be eaten if bought, or stolen from neighbors.

However, the possibility of stealing must be seen in the context of societies that practice gift-giving without any social obligation to return the gift, and in the knowledge that payment is considered by the elders to be a bad influence from the whites. In this context, theft is a creative solution.

Thus, in the same community, there is no exchange, only the constant giving of food, sharing and conflict avoidance. Those who have give, and those who have much (like good hunters) act to avoid taking too much, so that others can also give.

Kaali's body

"In the beginning Kaali was a person, but he was also a garden."

Plants grown in gardens have a different source and mythology from game-related predations. Working alongside the hero Ñapirikoli to help humans grappling with the conflicts of animal masters, the master of the gardens Kaali offered them various parts of his body "so that they could feed and live well".

As a result of this gift, "the care and continued reproduction of cassava and cultivated plants is [...] an obligation of humans".

Humans are therefore responsible for conserving, protecting and transforming plants, and for not producing waste, in consideration of this gift.

Garden plants, like community relationships, present an "ideal of proximity without debts or calculations"(Philippe Descola).

Indeed, in the Baniwa and Koripako way of life, "relations [between] humans and non-humans can be extrapolated to provide a better understanding of the relations between humans themselves".

"The opposition between predation and care - the latter consisting in particular of gifts and the sharing of food - is also found in the field of human relations, predation being characteristic of relations with foreign groups and gift-giving with inbreds and members of the local group."

And ourselves?

What if we let the "eyes" of the cassava plant, from Kaali's body-gift, observe the relationship we ourselves have with nature and what this expresses about our communities?

Image source: Chris Abney on Unsplash.

To read:

Milena Estorniolo, Manger (avec) l'ennemi : mythe, subsistance et alimentation chez les Baniwa et le Koripako (Amazonie, Brésil), Paris, EHESS, 2020.

Thesis available at: https: //www.theses.fr/2020EHES0054