Les lances du crépuscule

by Philippe Descola

On les appelle Jivaros. Ils préfèrent se dénommer Achuar, les Gens du palmier d'eau. Isolée dans la jungle de haute Amazonie, cette tribu légendaire fut protégée durant des siècles de l'incursion des Blancs par son inquiétante réputation de chasseurs de têtes. Plus qu'une condition de leur indépendance, la guerre est pour ces Indiens une vertu cardinale ; elle donne du prestige, renforce la solidarité, raffermit l'identité ethnique et permet le renouvellement rituel des âmes. Grâce à elle, les Achuar sont encore plusieurs milliers, fiers de leurs traditions et farouchement attachés à leur mode de vie.
Ce livre est une chronique de leur découverte et un hommage à leur résistance. Philippe Descola y relate au quotidien les étapes d'une intimité affective et intellectuelle croissante avec ce peuple dont il a partagé l'existence pendant près de trois années en tant qu'anthropologue. Ce témoignage exceptionnel sur une manière libre et presque oubliée de vivre la condition humaine tire d'une expérience singulière un enseignement pour le temps présent.

Genres: Anthropology, France, Ethnography, History, Nonfiction, Amazon

445 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 1993

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Descola cast his memoirs of youthful fieldwork (he and Anne Christine Taylor lived with the Ecuadorian jivaro from 1976 to 1978, and the book was published in 1993) in a novelistic form (he uses present tense and first person, begins each chapter with a dramatic episode, and manages to wedge the ethnographic information into a systematic form while retaining a chronological narrative.) The writing, organization, and informational content are wonderful. It sometimes became confusing because so much of the people's activities related to vendettas, joined for reasons of kinship, ceremonial friendship, or commercial debts and the narrative style made it hard to follow an individual's motives.
A truly wonderful feature of the book are the author's "explanations" of why the culture has adopted certain rituals and behaviors. He freely admits that these are his suppositions, given by none of the informants, and often based on a few shreds of evidence, but they are compelling (if abstract) and do make the reader feel as though he or she could actually experience animals and witchcraft in the very different mode of the jivaro people. Most interesting personally was his view of the categories to which the hivaro assign human beings, animals, plants, and (in western culture) "inanimate" objects.
The bibliography was a pleasure to read, and his notes on "Ethnographical Writing" were original and deeply felt.

[Brulois Brigitte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livre passionnant qui permet de relativiser nos propres codes. Entrer dans une civilisation de chasseurs cueilleurs au moment du confinement du printemps 2020 fut une expérience étonnante et pleine de découvertes.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing. Very Lévi-Straussian style.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin? This book has much meaning to me. The author along with his wife, Anne Christine, spent three years as ethnologists in Ecuador during the late 70's studying the indigenous Jivaros. This book was sent to me by my son for Mother's Day while he is currently studying indigenous cultures in Ecuador as an anthropologist working on his Ph.D. Having read numerous books about indigenous peoples, I found this book to be very in depth. Learning about the day to day lives of the Jivaros over thirty years ago makes me wonder how these people have adjusted to modernity. Dr. Descola tells his tales without prejudice. But I have so many questions, not because his writing, which was translated from French isn't clear, but just because there are so many things I wonder about. For example, the use of alcohol and tobacco were used extensively, do they have high incidences of liver and lung cancer? Dr. Descola says that this book was written by him, but that his experiences also were shared and expressed by Anne Christine. I would love to read some of her works, but unlike his, none of hers has been translated from French. I am particularly interested in the polygamist society, and how the indigenous wives dealt with child birth issues and child rearing. I can't praise this book enough. I found it completely enchanting.

[Benjamin Hollis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immersion totale aux côtés d'un jeune Descola parmi quelques familles Jivaros. A cheval entre essai ethnologique et récit de voyage, dans le sens où c'est extrêmement descriptif et détaillé, avec ici et là des petites narrations et aventures pour accompagner un travail qui reste pédagogique. Œuvre impressionnante par son exigence envers soi-même et son ambition.

[Joulia · Rating 5 out of 5]

envie de l'épouser

[Glida · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didnt finish. I enjoyed parts but not enough to continue.

[Completelybanned · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philippe Descola (b. 1949) might be the last, most prominent student of Lévi-Strauss. His ethnographic fieldwork in Peru/Ecuador with the Achuar between 1976 and 1979 constituted his dissertation, defended in 1983, the very year Lévi-Strauss retired from teaching. Descola's scholarship is well illustrated by his book Spears of Twilight, originally published in 1993 and translated into English in 1996. The book is peculiar in that it is both a stunningly detailed, finely wrought ethnography which demonstrates an attention to the people around him, and yet at every turn he insists that he knows more than his informants.

For example, writing about the ujaj ceremony, he asserts that “thanks to a vain triumph of writing over memory, I probably know more than Untsumak does about the meaning and origin of the rite that she is directing” (398). Despite the qualification that this insight is a “vain” one, by confirming the supremacy of writing over speech, of reading books to living in the world, Descola closes the door on explanations not contained in the prior scholarship.

Descola's ability to gather information, assimilate it, and apply structuralist paradigms to it is formidable. He is skilled at classifying and deploying myth to rationalize the activities of his hosts. And yet, he is also humorless. He has little ability to appreciate or elucidate the poetic qualities of life, the playful. It is as if everything must have a reason, a justifying impetus, which comes back to another time-worn critique of structuralism: it is always creating an illusion of completeness and wholeness in the world, despite certain qualifications (e.g. how Descola described the dog as inhabiting an intermediate, unstable position for the Achuar; or how he describes the disappearance of tsantsa-headhunting).